Urza's Incubator

Artifact

As Urza's Incubator enters the battlefield, choose a creature type.

Creature spells of the chosen type cost {2} less to cast.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	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
Premodern	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (48)

TheOfficialCreator on Eldrazi Colourless v3

1 week ago

Here are some fast mana/cost reduction ideas to help speed the deck up.

Mox Opal, Jeweled Lotus, Sol Talisman, Mox Tantalite, Ancient Tomb, Metalworker, Semblance Anvil, Urza's Incubator.

ShiningEyes on Edric extra turns Elves

1 month ago

Hi! First off, fun concept.

That said, I'm seeing that this deck struggles to come back from cards like Wrath of God or Settle the Wreckage. You can help buff your resilience to this one of two ways; having competent counter plays such as Counterspell, Heroic Intervention, and Teferi's Protection. Or you can have some ways to keep your hand full, such as Deep Analysis, Harmonize, or Chemister's Insight.

Also worth considering since you're running so many elves are the high-quality tribal cards like Urza's Incubator, Herald's Horn or Icon of Ancestry. There are many cards like these, some better than others. Consider running a search for Choose a Creature Type as text to find others.

Best of luck!

Forkbeard on Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm: Double Dragon

1 month ago

Lotta comments to catch up on here!

Copy Artifact - I like the idea of it, but nah. Hard nah. At the time of typing this, I have 12 targets and only 5 of which aren't just 2 drop rocks. Certainly a cool idea and I love the thought of doubling up on a Panharmonicon or The Great Henge, it's just too conditional/too rare of a scenario.

Cultivate + Kodama's Reach - I was doing my best to stick to 2 cost ramp cards, but I do enjoy the land fixing + teensy bit of deck thinning these cards provide. Your idea of swapping signets out for these 2 ramp classics has me thinking.

Cursed Mirror - I am running this! It's hiding in my ramp category along with Urza's Incubator as my only 3 drop cards there.

Swan Song - Long story short, I didn't have a Swan Song to hand. An Offer You Can't Refuse has been an ok counterspell, but I think I might cut it for Nature's Claim.

Dragonspeaker Shaman - I ran the dragon cost reduction dorks in my Atarka deck and while they're decent, they got pruned out over time as I found that ramp spells + rocks always served me better.

Prime Speaker Zegana & Recurring Insight - great burst draw, albeit conditional. Persopnal preference, I'd rather have the repeateable draw effect with Kindred Discovery. Yes it's also conditional, but I've used it to great drawing effect in other decks and as you point out, the trick is to cast when you've got some dragons ready to swing.

'You don't have a lot of ways to deal with enchantments' - You're not wrong and as I mentioned above, I think I'll swap in Nature's Claim for that reason.

Sea Gate Restoration  ^Flip & Valakut Awakening  ^Flip - Super cool cards that I might try to squeeze in here. Perhaps a Bala Ged Recovery  ^Flip for good measure, swapping out a basic of each for these 3. Good idea!

Blasphemous Act - Yep. I want to include this. Having played the deck a few times now, sometimes you just need a wipe and I've only got Cyclonic Rift & Ugin, the Spirit Dragon for nuke options. BA is also a potential win condition with Wrathful Red Dragon on the table too.

Korlessa, Scale Singer & Scaled Nurturer - Nice tech and it's cool to have some little dragon dorks like this, but I also don't think they're strong enough to warrant the slots.

Lots of good ideas and food for thought here, thanks all.

griffstick on Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm: Double Dragon

1 month ago

I think this deck needs Copy Artifact. You've got so many good options to target. With the amount of card draw in this deck I think it should be an auto include. Think about pairing Urza's Incubator with Copy Artifact

enpc on Deckbuilding Necessities?

2 months ago

TypicalTimmy: While I understand the merit of your comment, I don't agree with the statement that cost reduction is better than ramp. Yes, cost reduction is good but there are lots of times where ramp is just better.

The main issues with cost reduction are:

• It's very targetted. Most of the time it only affects a colour, or a card type (or even just a specific creature type). This means that while it helps some cards in your deck, it also doesn't help a large handful, unlike traditional ramp.

• Most of the time it doesn't help with hard costs. Reducing the generic cost is nice, but a lot of places where decks get stuck is paying for hard costs, which most cost reducers don't help with at all. This is exacerbated when a deck is 3+ colours.

• It does nothing for cheap costed spells. If I'm running a lot of one cost spells, or two cmc completely hard costed spells (think something like Dovin's Veto) then a piece of mana ramp will do just as much as a cost reducer, or in some cases much more.

• A lot of decks are only playiing one or two spells a turn. If this is the case then reducing one spell by one mana is the same as playing one ramp piece. Don'ty get me wrong, there are decks where the storm count is high and in those decks I fully endorse running cost reducers, but there are a lot of battlecruiser style decks where a ramp spell would have done just as much.

• The better cost reducers are expensive and generally few and far between. You're looking at 3+ mana for the more flexible ones, where you want your ramp spells to be coming down generally between one and two mana. And even at three mana, cards like Cultivate get you two coloured sources of mana, which then feeds back into my earlier point.

• Cost reducers will become more high value targets than ramp pieces. While you can destroy a mana rock in the same way, an Urza's Incubator will pull a lot more aggression against it than a Chromatic Lantern. And the loss of the incubator will generally much more negatively affect the deck than the lost of a single ramp piece.

• A lot of players will only run a few cost reducers in place of the correct amount of ramp. "this does more so I don't have to run as much ramp" is a pretty common deck building attitude that I see (especially in sliver decks - seriously, sliver decks are some of the most unimaginative decks out there) as they expect that something like their Urza's Incubator will be all they need for ramp. But this reduces the overall ramp the deck has which in turn ends up making it slower overall. And I understand that this is a shortcoming of the player, not the cost reducer but I'm still listing it here as it's pretty common.

Don't get me wrong, ther are lots of places where cost reducers do some serious legwork, however it's important to actually assess what the deck is trying to achieve and understanding the pros and cons of each rather than just apply a blanket rule of X > Y.

It's also worth mentioning the decks where they do the most legowrk, the cost reducer is treated more as a combo piece rather than a mana rock substitute, for example with Elsha of the Infinite + Sensei's Divining Top + Helm of Awakening.

TypicalTimmy on Deckbuilding Necessities?

2 months ago

Cost reduction.

• Cost reduction > ramp

An Arcane Signet in a mono-green deck will get you {G} when you tap it. You net 1 mana per turn. Conversely, an Emerald Medallion will reduce all of your green spells by {1}. If you cast 3 green spells in a single turn, you effectively "netted" {3} mana for free.

Same thing with spells such as Oketra's Monument in a white deck, which are known for playing heavy amounts of creatures. Or Urza's Incubator in a tribal deck. Or Cloud Key in perhaps a Voltron or Enchantress deck, or a spellslinger deck.

Cost reduction will always get you far, far FAR more mana out of it than you paid to get into it.

TypicalTimmy on Maelstrom the bringer of Eldrazi

3 months ago

Question. I see you have Urza's Incubator. Do you aim to have this tagged with Eldrazi, to make them easier to hard cast - or, do you prefer to tag Elemental, so that your Commander costs {2} less, but still cascades for {8}?

DreadKhan on Tiamat semi-competitive

3 months ago

I tend to run a higher land count in my 5 colour decks (37-39 feels 'normal', your more competitive mana base would allow you to run less and still fix reliably, but I'd hesitate to go below 34 with a 7 MV Commander). As you're not at the full size for your deck, you have room to throw in some lands, and since opponents sometimes run effects that have 'find a Basic', you might want one of each Basic. Rampant Growth (and Expedition) has to find a Basic Land, so you should either add basics or switch it with Nature's Lore or Wood Elves.

I feel like a few more creatures would help, Birds of Paradise is a good ramp source, Ignoble Hierarch is a slightly worse one, and Tireless Provisioner offers a potentially better Lotus Cobra (you could use both IMHO). Very good if you run enough Fetch lands obviously. If you run both, you probably want all 10 Fetch lands, and might even run Krosan Verge, which is great with Triomes anyways. Really $$, but Urza's Incubator is a strong card in Dragons, even your Commander benefits. Really weird, but I guess Herald's Horn and Descendants' Path are pretty sweet. If you can get your creature count in general high enough, Lurking Predators can bring out multiple dragons per turn cycle, and when it doesn't find a creature you still get to scry. Dragon's Hoard, and Dragonspeaker Shaman are probably solid includes.

You probably want some card draw in here, but if you use Tiamat as your Commander over Ur-Dragon, you probably don't need Rush of Knowledge, but Stinging Study still draws a hand's worth of cards for 5 almost regardless of where your Commander is. Garruk's Uprising would probably fit. Due to having lots of big creatures, Return of the Wildspeaker is probably not bad, and Overwhelming Stampede might be good enough to close games for you.

You probably don't want to run stuff like Land Tax or Gift of Estates with actual Green ramp, if you have access to Green, you usually are better off running Green ramp over Gift of Estates type spells. YMMV!

Counterspell is a risky card to run in a 5 colour deck, it's hard to have UU mana up to cast it. Does it mostly deal with creatures, or protect vs wipes? Swan Song and Arcane Denial are both cards worth a look, the new An Offer You Can't Refuse might be interesting as well. I personally like 1-3 counters in my 5 colour decks, with competitive decks running more, overly Casual ones might run just 1 as a wildcard. Negate is much easier to cast I expect, and thus you're more likely to have the mana up.

If you are interested, Tyrite Sanctum can give Tiamat an Indestructible counter right away since she's already a God. Not sure if you care about keeping her out though!