Staff of Nin

Artifact

At the beginning of your upkeep, draw a card.

: Staff of Nin deals one damage to target creature, player or planeswalker.

Discussion (50)

Tzefick on White seems to be moving …

4 days ago

While the effect in essence is powerful, especially for white. I don't think this is a good route to achieve it for white. It becomes too mana intensive to achieve card draw, and the worst part would be to cast this, only to have another player nuke it with a Reclamation Sage or well... a Counterspell .

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Personally I always found it a bit puzzling, seeing as white is bad at card draw and mana acceleration, the "solution" is often to pair card draw with high mana costs - either through straight cost ( Staff of Nin , Mind's Eye ) or through activations - like Dawn of Hope .

Red gets their impulse draw on a 4-mana enchantment Outpost Siege with no additional investment and red is the second worst color in Magic to draw cards.

If WotC had made Dawn of Hope with a 1 mana activation, I think it would have been an interesting card. As it is, it's pretty poor. And yes it can create tokens at a very poor rate as well, but that is unrealistic to matter in constructed formats, so that isn't much of a positive.

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I believe it would be more interesting to attempt to craft a better solution for white's lack of card draw than simply putting high costs and drawbacks on it.

White has always been a combat focused color and I think it would be appropriate to create at least some kind of synergy that results in card advantage. We have cards like Sun Titan and Bishop of Rebirth that directly reanimates smaller permanents/creatures whenever they attack. However this is bound behind there being anything in your graveyard and seeing how white doesn't deal in discarding, or selfmilling, or having an oversized hand the only way they get cards into their graveyard is by casting them and having them destroyed - or utilize a small array of artifacts like Key to the City .

What if we made other mechanics that combines with White's strengths and ideology?

Now we're just entering brainstorm mode

brainstorm Show

One time combat-trigger

Conquer X (This creature enters the battlefield with a Conquer counter on it. Whenever it deals combat damage to a player, you may remove a Conquer counter from it. If you do, Scry X then draw a card.)

Building up to benefit

Whenever a creature you control attacks, put a Scout counter on X.

Remove three Scout counters: Draw a card.

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This plays well into white board wide strategies and plays fairly well with their ability to protect their creatures through indestructible and with Reconnaissance .

Protect the king / Luminarch Ascension

White has a taste for combat, but also for defending themselves - having the highest amount of Vigilance creatures and enablers.

At the beginning of each opponent's end step, if you didn't lose life this turn, put a counter on WhatsHisFace.

Then either

Remove X counters: gain card advantage (draw, scry , self-mill)

--Or--

At the beginning of your turn, if there are X counters on WhatsHisFace, do A. If there are Y counters, do B (instead or in addition).

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It could be

Lawmaking

Enchantment

At the beginning of each opponent's end step, if you didn't lose life this turn, put a counter on Lawmaking.

At the beginning of your upkeep, if Lawmaking has at least 2 counters on it, you may have each player mill three cards. Then if it has at least 5 counters on it, you may draw a card. Then if it has at least 10 counters on it, you may return a permanent card from your graveyard to the battlefield.

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There's some milling to enable white's reanimation tools, there's straight card draw for a moderate amount of effort, there's a large payoff for having it stick around for a long time that also ties in with the self-milling.

It would be better to restrict the condition to only count combat damage dealt to you, so you cannot just be kept out with a Pestilence or afflict or any kind of non-combat damage that white has limited means to counter. But then again it would require the opponents to play white's game of creature combat to counter this enchantment. That is not necessarily a bad thing, having a card that "forces" the opponent to play at a game white is already pretty good at, and if they don't you reap some benefits.

symmetrical draw

We have already seen Secret Rendezvous as a way for white to get card draw by giving a similar benefit to an opponent - which in a multiplayer format is not as bad as it is in a 1v1 scenario. However this card is giving more advantage to that opponent than it does you. The white player is down 3 mana and a card and then both players draw 3, leaving the white player at net +2 and the other at +3 cards with no payment.

It could be more interesting if the opponent had to do something to get their benefit.

Picture

New rendezvous

Sorcery

You draw two cards and target opponent draws a card.

That opponent may pay or have you create a Treasure. If they do, you and that opponent each draw three cards instead.

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This means if they want the goodies, they'll have to pay up or grant you some additional benefits to get their part - both prosper the most when they are willing to give fair compensation.

The catch-all with the Treasure could be removed so the White player can choose to just draw 2 and have an opponent who can't or wont pay the draw 1. Pretty similar to Divination but that card is already seen as poor in blue - at least in the Commander format.

However the Treasure token does present itself as a possibility for white early mana ramp in addition to the card draw, if you target someone who cannot pay the mana. The choice between giving the caster a Treasure and netting two cards for yourself is a deal that most players would take.

Anyhow, that's just a brainstorm on ideas how to give white some card draw/advantage mechanics that ain't just plastering high costs on a card draw engine. I would love to see some more creativity in that direction.

Not to discredit your suggestion Mcat1999, it is a strong card for multiplayer formats, but I also feel like it is a trap. Both in terms of gameplay and in design. The latter mostly because simply gating card draw behind mana requirements is just attempting to fix one of white's issues by forcing them to do something else they are poor at performing.

jamochawoke on Anafenza, Alpha Strike

1 month ago

Hi there! I've been playing around with 2 mono-white EDH decks for a while. You can see how I solved some of the biggest problems white has in them:

Pure Nahiri

Protection

The things I see you can easily add to help for ramp are:

• Lotus Field
• Isolated Watchtower
• Terrain Generator - use extra mana you have on your opponents' end steps to drop a land before your turn
• Settle the Wreckage - this works if you can make a bunch of tokens, swing with them, then exile your own tokens to put a ton of lands into play
• Sol Ring And you already have Sword of the Animist, which is the best ramp mono-white can use tbh.

For card draw you can use these:

• Dawn of Hope - white's best draw engine
• Skullclamp - Clamp your tokens to draw two
• Sram, Senior Edificer - You're a bit light on Artifacts and Enchantments to get full use out of him but he's still pretty great if you need a draw engine and white does pretty good at protecting its creatures
• Endless Atlas
• Seer's Sundial
• Well of Lost Dreams
• Alhammarret's Archive
• Staff of Nin

jakeyuki12 on Boros Soldier Tribal: Tajic

1 month ago

Hiya! Long time Boros player here, got some thoughts on your deck.

The biggest thing I can see with your deck- you aren't running many tribal payoffs. PLaying a deck full of soldiers just because you like soldiers is fine, but you might as well reward yourself for sticking to only soldiers. There are soldier tribal payoffs and generic tribal payoffs, I recommend running more of them as I only see two cards in your deck that actually reward you for running a ton of soldiers.

The next thing- there are some choices among your different categories that I think should be adjusted. For example, I think you're running just a bit too much removal. Running too much removal can actually be a bad thing- you don't want to spend too much time on removing your opponent's threats, you want to make sure you're developing your board. Running too much removal leads to games where you draw a ton of removal and don't draw your key pieces. I recommend cutting one or two pieces of removal, probably Lapse of Certainty imo. For your ramp I recommend replacing one of the mana rocks (probably Worn Powerstone ) with Dowsing Dagger  ^Flip as it synergizes better with your deck that wants to attack with creatures. For your card draw, you're running some rather suboptimal choices. I would cut Staff of Nin and Mind's Eye in a heartbeat, the cards are way too clunky, way too slow, Boros has much better options nowadays. Look at some of the impulsive draw options we've gotten recently. Stuff like Showdown of the Skalds or Light Up the Stage is much better. Finally, you're running too many non-soldiers in the deck. A lot of them make soldiers, but it might be better to not run them and run actual soldiers.

GenericToaster on Top 10 colorless cards at …

1 month ago

Staff of Nin

multimedia on Gisela, The Boros Goddess

2 months ago

Hey, well done so far on a budget.

An area to consider improving is ramp, especially two drop ramp.

• Arcane Signet : staple of multicolor decks in Commander.
• Boros Signet
• Talisman of Conviction
• Knight of the White Orchid
• Keeper of the Accord
• Starnheim Aspirant
• Mind Stone
• Thought Vessel
• Verge Rangers
• Cartographer's Hawk
• Nyx Lotus
• Worn Powerstone

Keeper and Rangers have nice repeatable effects that can help for card advantage for white. Keeper in my opinion is a $5 staple of white. The four drop spot on the mana curve has lots of good cards with Gisela thus more two drop ramp helps to cast these cards.

There's a disconnect between the low amount of lands to low amount of ramp to the high avg CMC of your deck. A 4.0 avg is high for a nongreen deck. With 4.0+ avg then you want to account for this with more lands and ramp to be able to cast cards. Consider more lands? 32 is low, consider 36?

• Command Tower : staple of multicolor decks.
• Battlefield Forge
• War Room
• Needleverge Pathway  ^Flip
• Myriad Landscape
• Alpine Meadow : cards that can search for a Plains can search for Meadow.

Cards to consider cutting are 5 CMC or higher. Your goal is to cast Gisela and to help to do this it's best to use the early/mid game to ramp. Gisela is the high CMC card you want to cast more than others therefore having a lot of other high CMC cards is not helping to cast Gisela. There are some exceptions to keep such as Heartless Hidetsugu , Sun Titan , Aurelia, the Warleader , Elspeth, Sun's Champion , Assemble the Legion , Staff of Nin , Austere Command , but all the others could be cut to for more lands/ramp.

Good luck with your deck.

poulsenb123 on Livio, Alena Secret Lovers

3 months ago

Thanks man, The Alena likes to go infinite with Sword of the Prans or Staff of Dominence. The biggest problem that I am running into is card draw. I've tried the exile stratgy to get around it. Any suggestion?

I am thinking of putting Staff of Nin or Mind's Eye

Maximariusmagillius on I'm Darienya to Hit Me

4 months ago

forbrannir I really like the idea of doing 1 or 2 damage to yourself, making a bunch of tokens, and just gaining the life right back and then some. One good draw engine i can think of that would fit into this theme is Staff of Nin. Maybe something like Angelheart Vial too or Alhammarret's Archive, but that one is a little expensive for me.

MagicMarc on Razor Burn

4 months ago

I think they were talking about the price of the card being a little steep not the mana costs to play or activate.

The best things about either Grim Lavamancer or Cursed Scroll is that they are repeatable and targetable burn. Either one basically lets you Shock at will with easy requirements to use them.

As already mentioned, it is unlikely that Razor Pendulum will change the outcome of any game you are playing and you have zero control over the damage the card provides. Replacing it with any form of repeatable and targetable burn is a better idea than that card. Especially if you go with the assorted Chandra planeswalkers or any card with an activated burn ability like the lavamancer or scroll.

There is a giant pool of cards better than the razor to help burn decks win games. Stuff like Double Vision, Pyromancer's Gauntlet, Staff of Nin, Thermo-Alchemist, Guttersnipe, Torbran, Thane of Red Fell, Tectonic Giant, and Firebrand Archer and many more. There are a lot of choices depending on the deck and format that are better options than that Razor Pendulum.