Sphere of Resistance

Artifact

Spells cost {1} more to cast.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Premodern	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (49)

Neotrup on Can I buyback a spell …

3 months ago

Yes. When you cast a spell without paying it's mana cost, you can still pay additional costs like buyback, and must still pay additional costs like those imposed by Sphere of Resistance or Silvergill Adept.

sylvannos on How Do I Explain to …

5 months ago

Just proxy up the following and play it against the person in question:

Lands by Dominic Harvey

...and swap out 1x Boseiju, Who Endures, 1x Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth, 1x Dark Depths, one copy of something that doesn't do anything against the person (i.e. cut Bojuka Bog if they don't have graveyard strategies), and put in 4x Strip Mine.

They'll understand why Strip Mine is broken once you lock them out under Sphere of Resistance and Life from the Loam.

DreadKhan on Need help ruining a combo players day

1 year ago

Thorn of Amethyst, Glowrider, Sphere of Resistance, Vryn Wingmare, and Eidolon of Rhetoric all exist, but I'm guessing they didn't make the cut?

Retribution of the Meek might be a reasonable wipe with so many smaller creatures, ditto Elspeth, Sun's Champion. If a wipe is one sided it's not just resetting the board, not sure how many of these you're willing to run. Elspeth makes a small army, much better at blocking than the Samurai from Wanderer fwiw, but Wanderer is really strong too. Smothering Tithe is great with Stasis out, Brago, King Eternal might be fun too. If people are running obnoxious stuff, you could run Enlightened Tutor to find your Stasis/Tithe cards as needed, Muddle the Mixture can find both Stasis or Brave the Sands, while also being a counterspell. If you like Stasis, you could also try Static Orb, Meekstone, Crackdown or even Winter Orb/Rising Waters, not sure how hostile you want to be but Stasis is harsher than these. How often do you cast Approach of the Second Sun in here? I ask because there are a lot of tax effects, but if it's not trouble have you thought about running some tutors to find it? The best ones I can think of are Mystical Tutor, Personal Tutor, and Solve the Equation, they can also find other cards as needed, handy if you need removal, a wipe or a counter.

As for alternatives that can do similar things, you might look at either Zur the Enchanter or Hinata, Dawn-Crowned as alternatives that offer more offensive punch while still offering a solid route to shutting the table down. Zur can dig out enchantments like Rule of Law, Stasis (and Black Market Connections) and various ways to fairly quickly win the game, all while being able to hold up lots of mana for interaction, be it counters or removal. Hinata is another tax effect, but you get access to Red as well, and Red has some interesting additions to the Stax department, you'd definitely want Grand Arbiter in your Hinata deck, and you'd run most of the same cards, but you also have the option of running a bunch of cards that care about Hinata's discount, Hinata makes interaction better, especially if it has multiple targets, the annoying thing for both is that they're much harder to cast than Grand Arbiter, so you'd have to raise your budget to have the same consistency. The big problem with Zur is protecting him. If there are literally specific players you know are a problem you can run either Baral, Chief of Compliance or Talrand, Sky Summoner, Baral is better at playing 'Counter Everything' but Talrand can be just offensively good vs a specific player since he also is generating evasive bodies while interacting with that player's win attempts. The nice thing about he mono-Blue approach is you can just brutalize a player or two while letting the others play a smaller (but more normal) game.

Oh, if those players run specific colours (and nobody else likes them as much) there are old school colour hosers, cards like Karma can make life extremely hard. They exist for all colours, and they were so staggeringly unpopular that the developer stopped printing cards like it.

SynergyBuild on Ideas to make Krenko Cedh

1 year ago

While I have no issue with the concept of a Mono-Red Najeela style cEDH deck that rather than comboing with combat->mana cards instead turns tokens->untap cards into an auto-win, it's not capable of making goblins competitive on its own, it's more of a Thornbite Staff combo deck at best, with you wanting to run mono-red stax (Magus of the Moon, Trinisphere, Sphere of Resistance, Thorn of Amethyst, and Blood Moon) and using Krenko's Inevitability to take over a long game. Any Altar (Ashnod's or Phyrexian) and any untap for mana effect combos too (Staff of Domination, Sword of the Paruns, and Umbral Mantle) might be functional too, but sadly even though it adds 6ish more 2 card combos, they all cost a lot of mana and aren't easy in mono-red to tutor and fetch.

Godo and Helm might be an easy include as well, since helm and your commander win in a few turns, with the math meaning if you have both your commander from the start of the turn before attaching helm, and have no other goblins, you activate them both after making the new one and get a total of 8 on the first turn, 72 on the following turn, and 1168 goblins on the turn after that, most likely winning the game.

Outside of that a fast mana package to back up your combos and stax, some easy includes such as a couple counterspells like Pyroblast, some cheap removal and a manabase that works well enough since you are mono-colored to not stress about your own land hate backfiring and you have a successful Tier 3ish cEDH deck.

legendofa on Help me torture

1 year ago

Hand = hurting: Black Vise, Ebony Owl Netsuke, Iron Maiden, Misers' Cage, Sword of War and Peace

Bounce: Blood Clock, Crystal Shard, Surgical Skullbomb, Umbilicus

Standard stax/tax effects: Smokestack, Tangle Wire, Winter Orb, Thorn of Amethyst, God-Pharaoh's Statue, Damping Sphere, Trinisphere, Sphere of Resistance, Cursed Totem, Static Orb, Meekstone, Norn's Annex, Mindlock Orb

Artifact creatures with these effects: Viseling, Neurok Replica, Esper Sentinel

Pulled mostly from EDHrec, and I only hit the highlights. https://edhrec.com/themes/stax

thefiresoflurve on WIP Control Deck

1 year ago

Hey, there!

First, what's your budget like? 'til I know that, I'll keep suggestions "standard".

Second: Cuts.

Sleep + River's Rebuke - not really an EDH card, since you usually have more than one opponent.

Martial Law - similarly, this is just one creature, and there are bound to be so many more problems than just one on the field at a time.

Invisibility - There are better sources of evasion (getting damage through to other players). Also, getting damage through is something Augustin isn't the best at, so that might not make for a strong win-con.

Robe of Mirrors isn't bad to protect your commander, but for 1 more mana you can use Curator's Ward (because Augustin reduces it) and then get 2 cards if someone uses a boardwipe later. I call that a deal. Diplomatic Immunity is another equally costed option as well, if you find your playgroup runs an obnoxious amount of enchantment removal, since it itself is also untargetable.

Consulate Crackdown - Kind of mediocre for what it does. For just one more mana, you can instead run Farewell or Austere Command, which both produce a much better effect.

Some things traditionally run in Augustin are used to basically slow the game to a crawl, and others are used to tax your opponents while this is going on to create advantages for you while you draw into your win conditions: Cursed Totem, Hushbringer, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Vryn Wingmare, Containment Priest, Reidane, God of the Worthy  ^Flip, Hushwing Gryff, Silent Arbiter, Ethersworn Canonist, Wandering Archaic  ^Flip, Smothering Tithe, Rhystic Study, Linvala, Keeper of Silence, Sphere of Resistance, Torpor Orb, Damping Sphere, Static Orb, Karn's Sylex, Meekstone, Crawlspace... not quite an exhaustive list, but it's a really good start, and gets the point across.

There are some weird cards that you can use as win conditions to go with the "stax" style, like Azor's Elocutors.

If you're interested, https://edhrec.com/commanders/grand-arbiter-augustin-iv has some more suggestions as well - in my opinion, it's not a terrible place to start as a new player, although I'd encourage you to switch it up as you and your wallet like from what's listed there.

https://scryfall.com/ can also be a really good tool if you like to go full nerd and search for alternative cards with similar effects to really expensive cards - I've stumbled across a few hidden gems over time by using it.

Hope that helps, and Happy building!

Rhadamanthus on Interaction between Animar, Soul of …

2 years ago

Some additional notes: To determine the total cost to cast a spell (or activate an ability), you start with the base mana cost after making all the necessary decisions (modes, targets, value of X, etc.), consider the effects of any additional costs (kicker etc.) or alternative costs (flashback, overload etc.), add the effects of any cost increases (Sphere of Resistance etc.) and then subtract the effects of any cost reducers (Animar etc.) and finally apply Trinisphere if needed (yes, it has a special rule all of its own).

The rules of the game do allow for a cost to be reduced to {0} this way. If an effect only allows reduction to some minimum amount it will specifically say so (e.g. Heartstone).

Epicurus on I'm looking to build a …

2 years ago

Shattergang Brothers would make a very interesting Stax commander, if you have the cards to build it. Having said that, you'd be leaving out two of the best colors to use in Stax, but it wouldn't be impossible.

Is Jund Superfriends Stax even a thing? I don't know. But it sounds like something I'd personally try to build. Probably not even close to the best way to accomplish an Every-Garruk deck, but you know how I roll ;)

Combination Turbo Fog, Land Hate and Toxic Battleground, with the various Garruk incarnations providing the endless supply of tokens. Not a lot of Tax power without white or blue, but you could add all the classic artifacts, like Trinisphere, Defense Grid, Sphere of Resistance and so on. Add in Tangle Wire, Smokestack and so on. Black is by far the best Stax color anyway, and Jund is the second best land hate color combination next to Naya. This could totally work.

And then nobody will ever want to play against it. Ever.