Sword of the Animist

Legendary Artifact — Equipment

Equipped creature gets +1/+1.

Whenever equipped creature attacks, you may search your library for a basic land card, put it onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle your library.

Equip

Discussion (51)

Joe_Ken_ on Mardu Crusade

1 week ago

I wouldn’t take out lands for more mana rocks since rocks are meant to just make you go faster in Commander not replace land slots especially since you are at 36 lands already.

I would remove Soul-Guide Lantern , Aurification , and Student of Warfare since he will take so long to level up to a point of being useful.

Sword of the Animist is a good equipment that will also help you ramp in the deck.

Profet93 on When your commander runs away and chaos ensues...

1 week ago

Elmalco

Ramp

Burnished Hart

Caged Sun

Curse of Opulence

Gauntlet of Might

Gauntlet of Power

Gilded Lotus

Hedron Archive

Honor-Worn Shaku

Mind Stone

Myriad Landscape

Sword of the Animist

Thran Dynamo

Draw

Endless Atlas

Arch of Orazca

Commune with Lava

Humble Defector

Ignite the Future

Light Up the Stage

Mind's Eye

Skullclamp

Content goes here

These are all suggestions that will help make your deck function better as you can replace underperforming cards with ramp and card draw, both of which red desperately needs. Your land count is a little low given your avg cmc and your lack of ramp. I can imagine you have a hard time casting your higher cmc cards quite often

multimedia on Karlov/Sorin Blessed

1 week ago

Continuing my advice, streamlining high CMC cards becomes an important step when choosing what cards to cut. Streamlining means you cut unnecessary high CMC cards, four CMC or higher that are not vital for your deck. Some cards that are redundant, there's two or more cards that do the same thing and one/more of them are not as good as others. Tutors help to break high CMC card redundancy because you can use them to get the better high CMC card thus leaving out others. Streamlining starts at the top of the mana curve and then work your way down.

When streamlining, the cards that are not selected doesn't mean these cards are bad, they're less needed in your deck than others. For streamlining your deck I would look to decrease cards from the 4, 5 and 6 CMC spots.

You've recent update is good, other cards to consider cutting:

• Temple of the False God: will not tap for mana until you have four other lands. That's not good enough when you want to be casting low CMC cards and extort.

• Armillary Sphere: isn't ramp since it puts the basic lands into your hand not onto the battlefield. Playing a mana rock that is ramp instead of this will help.

• Life's Finale: has great artwork, but is lackluster for a creature board wipe especially at 6 CMC. Tutoring for and putting creatures into your opponents graveyard will most of the time backfire in Commander since reanimation and recursion are popular.

• Hedron Archive: can get repeatable draw from other sources and four drop colorless ramp is not what you want with Karlov.

• Ray of Distortion: not needed because you have Heliod's Intervention and/or Crush Contraband, two better cards for the instant effect of destroying an artifact or enchantment.

• Mire in Misery: sorcery speed makes this a lackluster removal spell.

• Burnished Hart: is too slow as ramp since the basic lands you search for ETB tapped. For six total mana you get two basic lands that ETB tapped and don't even get a body because you have to sac Hart to get the lands. Just about any mana rock that ETB untapped is more helpful than Hart.

• Fountain of Renewal: effect is limited, only happening once at your upkeep and that's all it does. There's more impactful repeatable life gain in your deck.

• Beacon of Unrest: there's too many five drops here and Beacon is the worst of them. The potential repeatable reanimation is not really worth five mana. It is nice that this spell can reanimate any opponents creature or artifact, but even so for five mana that's not really helping your strategy with Karlov. For five mana you would be better off casting Exquisite or Bond or a tutor to get one of them.

• Solemn Simulacrum: can be great for midrange strategies, creature dying/reanimation strategies, but it doesn't fit here since it's too high CMC for ramp.

• Sangromancer: is the least good source of repeatable life gain. It's too situational for a four drop, only triggering when opponent does one or two specific effects.

• Underworld Connections: requires tapping the enchanted land to draw which means you can't use mana from that land on your turn. There's better repeatable draw sources here.

• Kaya's Wrath: has too difficult to make colored casting cost.

---

Some upgrades to consider:

• Rogue's Passage > Temple of the False God
• Scheming Symmetry > Armillary Sphere
• Open the Armory > Life's Finale
• Mask of Memory > Hedron Archive
• Serra Ascendant > Ray of Distortion
• Walking Ballista > Solemn Simulacrum
• Suture Priest > Mire in Misery
• Ruin Raider > Burnished Hart
• Blood Artist > Sangromancer
• Mother of Runes > Fountain of Renewal
• Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim > Beacon of Unrest
• Arcane Signet > Orzhov Cluestone
• Divine Reckoning > Kaya's Wrath
• Dark Tutelage > Underworld Connections

Scheming Symmetry and Open the Armory are excellent cards to add for streamlining, they can do a lot here for their budget prices and low CMC. Scheming can tutor for any card and has great interaction with Bolas's Citadel since it puts the card you tutor for on top of your library. Yes, you choose an opponent and they also get to tutor for a card, but that is a cost you pay for having to use an alternative budget one drop unconditional tutor. Armory gets one of the best cards with Karlov, Shadowspear. Seriously, this card does everything you want to make Karlov a threat.

Mask of Memory is an underrated source of budget repeatable draw. It goes well with the voltron strategy of attacking with Karlov and equip 1 to draw two cards is nice. Equipment is good with Karlov and by adding Mask of Memory then Open the Armory can tutor for one of four different effects that can be repeatable with equipped Karlov: Shadowspear/Basilisk Collar for lifelink, Mask of Memory for draw, Sword of the Animist for ramp, Lightning Greaves/Swiftfoot Boots for protection.

If adding Serra Ascendant and Walking Ballista then I wouldn't cut Ranger of Eos since it can tutor for both of them and that's a powerful play for a four drop. If not adding Ascendant or Ballista then Ranger could be cut. Divine Reckoning can be a powerful board wipe with Karlov because it doesn't kill him and it can clear the battlefield of an opponent with many blockers. Yes, each opponent gets to keep their best creature, but most likely Karlov will be bigger than all the other creatures on the battlefield.

partana3 on Aurelia - Weapons of War

1 week ago

Hey. Have you considered reducing the number of equipment in your deck? Of course, there are utility equipment that that are needed such as Sword of the Animist, but I think you could consider cutting back on some equipment that are meant for beating. I would consider using Sunforger, Sword of Fire and Ice and Sword of Feast and Famine as your designated beat equipment and the cutting down on less crucial ones. Is Umezawa's Jitte really necessary if you are able to consistently get Sword of Fire and Ice? I would cutting Umezawa's Jitte, Blackblade Reforged and Shadowspear if you need more space.

Also, is Aggravated Assault good without Sword of Feast and Famine? It seems quite clunky. Outside it's combo with the sword, it seems a little slow. Given that Aurelia already gives an extra combat phase, maybe Aggravated Assault is a little excessive? I would also consider cutting it.

multimedia on Karlov/Sorin Blessed

2 weeks ago

Hey, you're welcome. I like the changes you've made, but you left out Command Tower. Tower > Guildgate :)

It's good you're thinking about the ratios you want to have for each parts to balance your deck. An approach, which you're doing well, is to play lots of low CMC cards to boost Karlov, get more out of extort, but I think you can expand on these further. Take more advantage of extort since you have to pay at least one extra white/black mana to trigger it, meaning that spells cost at least one more mana to cast. This is important to keep in mind and you can make extort better simply by the cards you choose to have in your deck. For example because of extort 2 CMC mana rocks are going to be better options then 3 or higher CMC rocks, Pristine Talisman is the exception.

With this kind of strategy I prefer more repeatable draw sources and tutors than ramp because draw sources get more cards into my hand which I want with low CMC cards. Ramp helps less with low CMC cards. This doesn't mean I don't play ramp; at least six mana rocks/other sources. I want some ramp/color fixing from rocks/other sources to help the manabase.

If you're keeping the Exquisite + Bond combo then you will want more ramp because that combo is mana expensive. Being able to ramp into Citadel, Krrik, Pontiff, Aetherflux or Sorin M. can be a game changer especially Citadel and Aetherflux. However, consistently this will not happen, but having the option can help game play. Sword of the Animist is nice, the kind of ramp you want, because it goes with the voltron strategy with Karlov making it repeatable. In my opinion draw helps more than ramp in this version of Karlov.

I will continue my advice in another comment, including upgrades to consider making.

Vulnoth on Turbo Aggro Grind Time

2 weeks ago

Continuing where I left off.

continuing from creatures

Something to consider when addressing what to drop for my suggestions is how it affects your overall strategy and politics. Ashenmoor Gouger looks good because on paper it can deal damage, but consider what happens if you draw it 10 turns in and the table has all dug in for the long game. Hyper aggressive cards of the sort that do little else aren't going to help you after the first few turns. Hackrobat, Rakdos Firewheeler, Thrill-Kill Assassin, and the like are what you should look for when hacking cards out of the deck in the creature department. You might be gearing up to go fast and hit hard, but you still are playing the "long game", if you can even call it that.

Support

Onwards we march, starting with the strict spell category. Here, you should be looking for either utility or pure power. Spot removal cards like Go for the Throat work in regular 60 card formats, but lose a ton of value as the game is slowed enough for that one spell to have a diminished effect because it can only hit a single creature, often to little effect. Now Bedevil, on the other hand, is outstanding because you can hold it for either an artifact or 'walker, thus expanding your range and making it always live and effective.

• Allure of the Unknown - A huge resource generation spell. Additionally, it plays into politics well by letting an opponent (or friend) have a card. Gotta keep the train moving.

• Bituminous Blast - Perhaps not the most clutch of cards, but at least worth considering since EDH is slow enough for these types of spells to put in work, mostly because Cascade is nuts. I'd understand if it didn't make the cut, though.

• Captive Audience - Hilarious and effective. Instant enemy-maker, but if you haven't farted in the general direction of everyone at the table, others might turn a blind eye. In my experience, when Joe Shmoe poops out an army of dargons and you slap him with this, the table would generally point and laugh.

• Cauldron Dance - A nice little shuffling of creatures, which is nice if you're rich in chunguses.

• Kolaghan's Command - The best charm from its cycle, for good reasons. It's always live in EDH.

• Spiteful Visions - Perhaps risky for politics, but it does put damage on board, thus making Rakdos live, and generates card advantage.

• Fork/Reverberate/Wild Ricochet - copy spells, in my experience, tend to do a lot since they're just whatever everyone else is playing.

• Beacon of Unrest - There will always be something in the grave, and self-recursion is a godsend in my books.

• Scheming Symmetry - Helps your consistency and makes a friend.

• Subversion - Nibbles at your opponents while sustaining yourself, and makes Rakdos live.

• Generally any spell with X in its cost. As the game drags on, they only get better.

I did a brief skim of cards in Gatherer and from among my own decks, but don't be afraid to look at other decks or EDHRec for things that will help you. Just remember that your goal boils largely down to pinging to make Rakdos live, cards that Rakdos is payoff for, and utility general support that rounds out the deck.

Artifacts

Necessary gears to get the machine moving. Mostly it will boil down to mana rocks to accelerate your state, but there will be others that you want purely because they work well for you.

• Cryptolith Fragment  ^Flip - Mana plus ping.

• Commander's Sphere - Obvious utility.

• Sol Ring/Gilded Lotus - Big mana staple.

• Mind Stone/Hedron Archive - Both have their uses, and I adore them both, but in a multicolor they can run the risk of being unhelpful due to generating colorless mana.

• Firemind Vessel - Perhaps slow, but produces plenty of mana.

• Thought Vessel - A personal choice, but if you don't have enough draw power to fill your hand, then it's not worth the cash.

• Tome of Legends - Easy draws.

• Conqueror's Galleon  ^Flip - Another personal choice, but I find that once it transforms, the advantage it generates does wonders, and as a deck stuffed with creatures that could crew it, the fit seems nice to me.

• Lightning Greaves/Swiftfoot Boots - Staples for protecting your Commander. Also Haste.

• Sword of the Animist - Free Rampant Growth on attack. Obvious value is obvious.

Lands

Here you can start to have some fun. Being 2-color, you do have to be somewhat mindful of what you're running, but you can definitely make use of a lot of offbeat lands since you're not trying to be a fool and mana fix 5 colors. Keep in mind that you may not necessarily need everything listed here, but it's just a matter of helping keep your ability to produce both colors consistent.

• Temple of Malice - Slow lands may be unappealing, but Scrying usually helps.

• Arch of Orazca - Yet another personal choice. All you need is to have 10 permanents at any point while controlling/playing a card with City's Blessing and you have it for the game. At which point, Arch becomes something to do with spare mana.

• Reliquary Tower - Like Thought Vessel, it's worth considering, but is acceptable to pass on if you keep burning your hand up.

• Command Tower - Staple.

• Graven Cairns - Filter lands are always nice.

• Rakdos Carnarium - Slow, yes, but in the long run gives more mana.

• Shadowblood Ridge - Another pseudo Filter Land

Chopping Block

I encourage you to think these things out on your own or ask friends about this part, because understanding the process of what and why things stay or go is important to understanding your deck. Below are my suggestions for what needs to get yeeted.

• Ashenmoor Gouger/Hackrobat/Hellhole Flailer/Rakdos Firewheeler/Thrill-Kill Assassin/Rakdos Guildmage - All just don't do that much. Awesome to drop in the first turns, but soon are just fodder. They're nice fodder for Lysolda and Judith, but overall too narrow in use and too low impact.

• Void Winnower/Blood Moon - As someone who wins almost all his games through player politics, I advise against these types of cards that choke the entire table. Like infinite combos kept as panic buttons in decks, you really only get to pull it once before the group starts remembering what you have up your sleeve. After that, you risk being targeted because they'll know what you have.

• Phyrexian Obliterator - BBBB in 2-color is a bold move for what's essentially a 5/5 unblockable.

• Dark Ritual/Doom Blade/Go for the Throat - I personally would cut them, but feel free to play around with at least the removal spells for consistency in board control. Ritual, however, is just not suited for this format.

• Everlasting Torment - It's the only card of its type in your deck, and actually makes you vulnerable to getting chump blocked.

• Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth - Urborg serves almost no purpose in this deck.

• Rakdos Guildgate - Guildgates are just packfiller.

• Rakdos Signet/Rakdos Keyrune - In the modern day, your mana rocks mostly should be more useful than an overcosted creature, and if it only produces mana, it needs to be efficient like Sol Ring.

• Lava Axe - Shouting "Catch" while literally throwing this is hilarious, but the card's just horribly overcosted.

• Anthem of Rakdos - You will lose a lot of games you shouldn't lose because of this.

• Ogre Battledriver - Giving a dude Haste to swing is nice, but it's a lot easier to just run a pinger like Goblin Fireslinger or Lobber Crew

• Ob Nixilis, the Fallen - His Landfall is nice, but by nature isn't consistent, which is what you're looking for in ways to ping your opponent. Becoming a chungus is nice, but you're better off just skipping the hoops and playing an actual chungus.

• Vial Smasher the Fierce - This one I'm not totally sold on cutting, but she seems more complicated than just running a pinger. Play around with her and see how Vial Smasher synergizes.

• Master of Cruelties - Another I'm not totally sold on chopping, but he can only attack alone, which bottlenecks your options.

I know this all is sort of messy, but when making edits, start with comparable replacements (i.e. swapping a creature for a creature), run a few test turns, and see how things work.

Emearq on Syr Gwyn - charging back into commander

3 weeks ago

Hey, just wanted to say thanks for your feedback - hadn't checked in for a couple of days.

Honestly, think although Sunforger is a great card and with Syr Gwyn, Hero of Ashvale even moreso, the building towards more instants to get value out of it (although undoubtedly more competitively viable) means I have to sacrifice too many of the cards I want to play with (whether that be knights, equipment pieces to bling them out with or ramp to get all the toys on the board). It's a personal choice, and likely not the right one to win games, but it is what it is. The Mistveil Plains interaction is super cool though, hadn't heard of that before.

However, two of your suggestions I think are really good considerations and I'll definitely be looking to see if can find space for, these are Steelshaper's Gift and Weathered Wayfarer. Really not sure how I missed Steelshaper's Gift in the first place! Its a perfect fit, even if its just to grab something like Sword of the Animist early. Weathered Wayfarer looks as though it would be great too, in my only games with the deck I have fallen behind on lands very quickly (but still done fair with artifact ramp).

I dropped a comment on your deck as well, hope you get more feedback on it from folk's with more insight and game experience - it's sweet, just so very different from my own image for the Syr Gwyn build!

jconeil1988 on Knights Unite

3 weeks ago

Woah, holy knights.

Okay. So. first thing is first. Obviously, we are going knights tribal. The second thing to think about is what is it's theme. You said you want to go King Arthur. Honestly, King Kenrith makes for a better King Arthur deck. But, we're working with Syr Gwynn, so, we are more focusing on the Knights of King Arthur.

Are you wanting more of a knight heavy creature based deck, or equipment based deck. in my deck Valiant Knights of Eldraine, I focused more on a split of equipment and knights giving me 13 equipment and a total of 11 knights including Syr Gywn and 6 non knight creatures. Now, I've built my deck to try to be as powerful as I possibly can make it. What I'm going to suggest below is more flavor and theme based.

I think a cool direction to take this would be focusing on the Legendary theme, after all King Arthur is the most legendary legend of all time. And there is a perfect card that is knightly and legendary centered and it is, The Circle of Loyalty. For each knight already on the field, it costs one less. And when it is on the the field, for each legendary spell you cast, it creates a knight, and lets you sink some unused mana into making another knight.

Okay, we have our legendary theme. Let's round this out with some legendary weapons (think Excalibur) and legendary knights. Most renderings of King Arthur has anywhere from 12-15 knights at his table. I say we go somewhere in between and pick 13 legendary knights. Looking at the gatherer, I see a total of 31 legendary knights, but only 24 possible in our colors. I'd wittle it down to these 13 knights and 1 dragon. Adriana, Captain of the Guard, Arvad the Cursed, Aryel, Knight of Windgrace, Balan, Wandering Knight, Danitha Capashen, Paragon, Josu Vess, Lich Knight, Kwende, Pride of Femeref, Lena, Selfless Champion, Sylvia Brightspear and her dragon buddy Khorvath Brightflame, Syr Gywn, Hero of Ashvale, Syr Konrad, the Grim, Varchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor, and Vona, Butcher of Magan.

Next, I would put in an equipment for each of the knights. So, 13 equipments. Keeping with the legendary theme, there are 18 legendary equipments. My choices for the 13 to use are Blackblade Reforged, Elbrus, the Binding Blade  ^Flip, Embercleave, Godsend, Helm of Kaldra, Sword of Kaldra, Shield of Kaldra, Helm of the Host, Konda's Banner, Shadowspear, Sword of the Animist, Tenza, Godo's Maul, and Tatsumasa, the Dragon's Fang.

So far that is a total of 28 legendary cards. You're going to want between 35 and 38 lands in this deck, I'd personally go with 36 bringing the total up to 64 leaving 46 spaces. Out of those 46 spaces, I'd want atleast another 10 ramp spells so, I'd look into Tithe, Weathered Wayfarer, Knight of the White Orchid, Arcane Signet, Boros Signet, Orzhov Signet, Rakdos Signet, Talisman of Conviction, Talisman of Hierarchy, and Talisman of Indulgence.

With the 36 spaces left, we probably want some card draw and tutors to get our knights equipment. Knights of the Black Rose, Puresteel Paladin, Stoneforge Mystic, Stonehewer Giant, Enlightened Tutor, Open the Armory, Steelshaper's Gift, Scheming Symmetry, Herald's Horn, Icon of Ancestry, and Vanquisher's Banner are all really good here giving us 11 options to dig, leaving us with 25 spots left.

Can't forget removal. I'd personally go with 7 single target and 4 board wipes. Those being Path to Exile, Swords to Plowshares, Crackling Doom, Utter End, Righteous Confluence, Return to Dust, Rakdos Charm, Wrath of God, Single Combat, and Tragic Arrogance.

With the remainder of the 15 spots, I would fill it with some utility and cards to push through for the win. Here I would look into Knights' Charge, Master Warcraft, War Flare, Boros Charm, Unbreakable Formation, Heavenly Blademaster, Knight Exemplar, Leonin Shikari, Silverwing Squadron, Nahiri, Storm of Stone, Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, Sorin, Vengeful Bloodlord, Bloodforged Battle-Axe, Sunforger, and Sigiled Sword of Valeron.

This should be a pretty well rounded and focused deck, or at least a path for you to take if you so choose.