Tocasia's Welcome

Enchantment

Whenever one or more creatures with mana value 3 or less enters under your control, draw a card. This ability triggers only once each turn.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Alchemy	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Arena	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Historic Brawl	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Modern Beyond Horizons	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Pre-release	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Standard	Legal
Standard Brawl	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (50)

kamarupa on Orzhov's Ally Debt Collectors

1 month ago

Love me some Allies! Nice! +1

Raise the Past might be worth considering - 4MV to hit so many creatures is just value town.

Ephemerate seems like it would be nice, especially with Tocasia's Welcome, which would probably draw you enough cards to be worth the slightly higher MV than Sign in Blood and slower, more conditional requirements. Sword-Point Diplomacy might be worth considering, too. And given how few dual lands you're running, I might opt for Night's Whisper over Sign in Blood. While technically you can kill an opponent with a Sign in Blood, I think in practice we almost never do. But we do often not have BB to cast a Sign in Blood when we need it most.

kamarupa on Martyr Life

2 months ago

I'm so glad/grateful you're not offended by my urge to have a back and forth!

Ephemerate would be another somewhat decent way to trigger to Tocasia's Welcome and it plays nicely with Soul Sisters. The fact that you lack any creatures with their own ETB triggers is why I didn't suggest it earlier.

Also, I had to look this up to remember the exact name of the spell and what it did, but maybe Assemble the Players would be more to your taste? It's 1 more MV to cast than Recruitment Officer but it's WAY cheaper to 'activate' and gets you every creature in your deck, albeit only once per turn. It's just a little sad there's no cheap way in mono-white to give your creatures flash! The best I could find was Emergence Zone (only works once - boooo!) and Vedalken Orrery (too much to cast!)

Another removal option to consider: Sheltered by Ghosts - I don't like that it's 2MV to cast, but lifelink and ward seem well aligned with your brew. (and it doesn't give opponents a land, so there's that upside, too)

kamarupa on Martyr Life

2 months ago

Yes, I counted each soul sister as .5 and each Giver as 1.

I think at 36 creatures, you're beyond creature heavy. Cutting 3x for good draw card should make the deck faster, not slower. Since, as you said, the deck relies on speed, draw card should make the deck not only faster, but "better." I didn't bother mentioning Tezzeret's Gambit as the phyrexian mana (that makes casting it a turn faster) works against your lifegain strategy. That, and it's barely card advantage. It is, however, another 'option' so to speak. Anecdotally, I've loved Tocasia's Welcome with 'sisters and repeatable token generators like Thraben Doomsayer, which allows me to draw cards on my opponents' turns in addition to my own. Granted - that's trying to get 2x 3MV spells into play isn't a "fast" strategy, but it does help to gain gobs of life.

Of course - it's your deck and you should definitely do what you like. I'm just speaking from my own experiences, preferences, strategies, etc and only because while I not only like to try to be helpful, I also enjoy chatting about such things (experiences, strategies, preferences, etc) and also like arguing a bit, too ;)

kamarupa on Martyr Life

2 months ago

I like this deck a lot. My own experience and preference leads me to suggest 3 things:

1) having lots of a weenies is better with card draw. Tocasia's Welcome does that well, Esper Sentinel less well but for less MV.

2) While technically you meet my rule of thumb of 8 disruption spells (Rune sisters count for 6 + 2 Path), I think 4x removal is really a minimum. I'd cut 2 Rune sisters for 2x more Path to Exile (or perhaps some other removal like Winds of Abandon.

3) If Martyr of Sands is really so great (and I do think it is, then something like Patch Up or Raise the Past should make it even better.

4) 1xCastle Ardenvale is nice with Soul Sisters and also Tocasia's Welcome. Oops. I guess I had 4 suggestions, lol.

kamarupa on Cumulative Fire

2 months ago

hmm, I'm not sure I see what you see, Cloudy2024. I can't know how familiar you are with the Turbo Fog archetype, but typically, it relies not just on packing a ton of Fog spells, but also a lot of draw card (usually group draw), which are an essential component to keeping your hand full of Fog spells. It's just not enough to have lots of Fogs in a deck. A deck must also have a way of getting all those fogs into our hand. There's simply no avoiding the need for land, so even if a deck had 40x Fog and 20x Land, there's a 33% chance every draw step yields a land. Which means that it's likely an opponent is going to get to hit us eventually. Unless we can draw more cards each turn. So in my mind, adding more Fog spells at the expense of draw card will actually make the deck work less well.

I did consider dropping Ghostly Prison or cutting it back to fewer copies, but that doesn't yield a lot of slots and more importantly, the advantage Ghostly Prison gives the deck is a static defense that allows us to have a chance of tapping more mana on our own turns without being completely defenseless. I'm not 100% sold on that strategy, namely because I really don't like dropping 3 mana on it, but I know it works, so the real question is how much weight can it pull in this brew.

When it comes to other non-fog spells, the most slots are devoted to Ashling, Flame Dancer and Leyline Tyrant, which are basically 33% of the combo. Without those creatures, the cumulative mana we get from Braid of Fire evaporates before we can use it to cast Banefire at Sorcery speed. Since neither red nor white really have anything I'm aware of for creature tutoring, there's no way I can see cutting them.

I really don't like Idyllic Tutor as it's not only quite narrow in a deck that requires more than just an Enchantment to win, but it also costs 3 to cast. At least with Ghostly Prison we can a static defense. With Idyllic Tutor, we get a single use out of that 3 mana while also exposing the card we need, which, in many cases, won't get cast until the next turn. If I could grab anything and not reveal it (like Mastermind's Acquisition, I could see the possible value of adding more tutors. But it's just too inefficient to add more tutors that are so specific. I'd have to devote space in the deck for Sorcery, Enchantment, and Creature tutors. Which bring us back to the value of simple card advantage spells. I need all the spells in the deck. United Battlefront gets us slightly closer than Idyllic Tutor, but still misses on creatures (and my essential creatures are too big anyway). So my verdict is still out on that spell, but I'd likely not choose to run a full set if I thought there was even room for it at all.

I suppose I could try to run more creatures like Kami of False Hope and go the Tocasia's Welcome route, but that seems... I dunno... convoluted.

So to sum up - in my mind, "focus[ing] more on the strategy of the deck is probably the opposite of what you suggested - not more fog and white control spells but less. I could drop the Fog spells altogether and resort to creature based defenses. Not the worst idea, but I think it would come at a higher mana cost, which slows down Banefire.

The only other thing I'd add to all this is that the biggest issue Turbo Fog faces is decks that aren't creature driven. Things like Burn, Mill, Life-drain, etc go right through Fog. That's the primary reason I included Riot Control - because it doesn't just stop combat damage - it stops ALL damage. I mainboarded it because it also has the potential to result in a big lifegain, which is a good stall tactic against lifedrain (keep in mind this is intended to be a multiplayer brew, so it could very easily be facing threats from both creatures and lifedrain in the same game). And that's the other major issue with going in even harder with the Fog strategy (which is itself a secondary, defensive strategy). Granted, the sideboard can help a bit to shore up Turbo-Fog weaknesses.

Bottom line - While I really don't expect this brew to be top tier in any sense, I do like exploring with brews and try to make them the best I can. It's probably clear that I think about strategy, uh, let's just say, "enough." I want to be clear about this though - I'm not saying "I'm right and you're wrong" or that I don't appreciate your advice. It's quite the contrary - I write all this because I'm [overly] interested in these things and want to have conversations about all of it. I understand if you're not interested in that. I just don't want you to feel like I have any intent of antagonizing you, etc. It's just so easy to give/get the wrong impression over the internet.

kamarupa on Cumulative Fire

3 months ago

I'd love to get more of your input, Cloudy2024 - my thinking with Hyena Umbra was that Esper Sentinel is going to draw me more cards if opponents have to pay 2 (or more) instead of 1. Since there are so few creatures in the deck, instead of going with something like Ethereal Armor, I thought it made sense to double down on the functionality of the Aura and go for some static protection (Totem Armor). I have a lot of reservations about this strategy, namely that it's a bit convoluted. Ideally, I like to include 2-4 card advantage spells in most of my decks. That said, red doesn't offer much in the way of card advantage, and I don't like what it does offer as too often it requires a high amount of available mana to utilize otherwise cards end up in exile or the graveyard. Similarly, white offers very little as well. As much as I love Tocasia's Welcome, that's obviously not the answer here. And that leaves me with Esper Sentinel, which is nice, but a major target for removal and a pretty low tax that opponents can easily pay. You can see I've already included 1xIdyllic Tutor, but I consider that much too narrow and it's really acting more as a placeholder for United Battlefront, which itself still doesn't fully meet what I'm looking for. And I suppose I have the final option of adding a 3rd color for a card advantage spell, but I'm very unlikely to do that as I'm a firm believer in limiting a deck's colors to as few as possible for consistency, efficiency, and cost reasons. So ya, I'd love to hear your thoughts on all that - is there a better card advantage spell? Does it really make sense to forego both pump and protection for an instant that only offers temporary effects, keeping in mind this deck is intended on being able to go up against 2 or more other decks in multiplayer matches? Is there another strategy I'm not considering? Much apprecaited!

kamarupa on Population Bomb

3 months ago

Nice work! I guess you really deserve some props, as I've seen plenty of people on here that aren't new list decks as certain formats but still include cards that aren't legal in that format. So that's why I asked.

In terms of advice, I probably have more than you want. For starters, I'm not sure a Populate/Tokens deck is going to be what I would consider "fast-paced." It may or may not keep up with a Goblin deck - it would really depend on the caliber of each deck and to a lesser degree, the player piloting that deck. When it comes to speed, I think of low MV infinite combos, burn, Elves, +1/+1 counter Humans... So if you're really looking for speed, then there may be better place to look.

That said, if it's not so much speed, but a tokens, and tokens that can maybe compete with a fast paced Goblin deck, I think that is probably possible. As it stands, it looks like you've got a fairly budget brew going, though I notice a few pricier spells in the sideboard. So I'll be mentioning both cheap and pricier spells and let you decide where you want to draw the line.

For starters, land is one of the best investments you can make. All decks need it and the better lands you have to choose from, the more solid your decks' foundations will be. In my opinion, there is no point in spending big bucks on spells when your land base can't consistently cast them. www.managathering.com is an awesome resource to find lands. It didn't exist when I first started brewing, but I go there all the time now, namely because I just can't remember all the card names like I used to, lol. Ideally, you want lands that don't enter tapped, especially if you're going for speed. If you can afford them, Temple Garden & Windswept Heath are the perennial favorites. But Razorverge Thicket, Overgrown Farmland, and Branchloft Pathway  ^Flip are all decent. I recommend 22 lands for a "fast deck" - IE a deck with an Average MV of 2 or less (2.05 is close enough). Much greater than 2 average and I'd recommend 23-24 lands. Which stinks, I know, because the more land you include, the less spells you get and more likely you are to get mana screwed. But I've found that if you ever want to reliably cast spells that are 3 or more, you're going to need those extra few lands. Even with mana ramp, 16 is not enough land.

Typically, Artifact/Enchantment removal spells go in the sideboard. And typically, people run 4x creature removal in the mainboard: Any of the following would be good: Winds of Abandon, Sheltered by Ghosts, Path to Exile should be in the mainboard.

Druid's Deliverance is fun, but even in decks where I include Fog, I rarely include more than 1 copy. At double the MV, Druid's Deliverance is either going to tie up your mana (slowing you down), and/or delay instead of remove, and/or get cast just for the populate, which you already have spells for. So I'd suggest cutting it 1 copy.

Fight as One is... a decent spell. Heroic Intervention would be better. Since all but 1 of your creatures is white, Brave the Elements would be more versatile and cheaper and Tamiyo's Safekeeping is just cheaper. In my experience, 1 is the MV that is best for protection spells because it doesn't need as much mana to be available - that is - they're just more versatile. And I usually only include 1-2 of such spells.

I'd just cut Selesnya Charm. It just doesn't do anything that well and it's single use doesn't make it valuable enough to include.

Call of the Conclave is similar to Selesnya Charm - tokens aren't much about how big so much as how many. Repeatable token generators are going to be bigger threats than single-use spells.

The thing with Populate is that it doesn't really give you much oomph unless you've got bigger tokens. So you're not wrong looking for tokens that are on the bigger size. But since tokens are easy to get rid of and impossible to bring back, most people ignore the Populate mechanic altogether in favor of making lots of tokens as quickly as possible and at instant speed if they can.

Thraben Doomsayer is pretty good, though I do hate the 3MV casting cost. But you can make tokens at instant speed, which is great, and you can do it every turn.

Lingering Souls is one of the best token spells because you get so many for not that much mana, though you don't have the black mana here to make it worthwhile.

Tocasia's Welcome is great card draw for tokens, namely if you can create a token on your turn and your opponent's turn.

Creatures that care about ETB triggers are really good with tokens, too. You really can't go wrong with Soul Warden and/or Soul's Attendant - with 6+ Soul Sisters, I'd imagine a Goblin deck would find it very difficult to hit you for more life than they cause you to gain. And if you can gain enough life, Speaker of the Heavens gives you tokens that are worth Populating.

Growing Ranks is pretty good, but at 4MV,it's on the slow side.

Overrun is a good spell here, and I think you've got the right number.

Wake the Reflections is ok, I guess, but again, only copying 1 token just isn't as good as it might seem. At least it only costs you 1 to cast. The question is whether its actually powerful enough to be worth including, verses using that space for more token spells.

Something like Ephemerate or Cloudshift would probably be good with Hare Apparent

I like Finneas, Ace Archer, but I don't like it enough to overlook its Legendary status to run 4 copies.

Broad-stroke advice: 4x creature removal, 2x protection spell, 1x fog spell, 22x lands, 2-3x card advantage spell, 12x token generators, 8x ETB trigger spells. That leaves you with about 10 spells to lean into a mechanic like populate or more removal, etc, etc.

Please don't think what I write is definitive or that I'm insisting. Ignore whatever you want. I'm just throwing out my thoughts, hoping something might be useful for you.

DadHumanPraetor on Aurelia, the Warleader

3 months ago

I used to run a similar build. I always ran out of cards. Cards like Jeska's WillGC Firemane Commando Esper Sentinel Dawn of a New Age Trouble in PairsGC The One RingGC didn’t exist. Even Smuggler's Share Tocasia's Welcome Welcoming Vampire and Rumor Gatherer weren’t around yet, so I had to depend on Mangara, the Diplomat Sword of Fire and Ice Mask of Memory Mentor of the Meek I also ran Enlightened TutorGC and Open the Armory to find the helm. I wonder how this deck would fare against a typical commander deck, which has a lot more ramp draw and removal