Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage

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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Block Constructed 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
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Pioneer Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage

Creature — Dryad Shaman

: Create a 3/3 green Centaur creature token.

: Populate. (Create a token that's a copy of a creature token you control.)

thefiresoflurve on Ghired, Conclave Exile

1 year ago

Scaretiller -> Solemn Simulacrum - same cost, but scare tiller has fewer cards it synergizes with in your deck. Especially since you don't have an excess of draw, and solemn can help with that a bit, too. Bonus points if you clone it with Feldon of the Third Path etc.

Leaning a bit into the red side of token creation, some things I might recommend:

Growing Ranks/Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage -> Determined Iteration - a lot cheaper for a similar effect. Note: definitely keep the Guildmage if you can manage infinite mana; it's a great outlet.

Heart-Piercer Manticore -> Fable of the Mirror-Breaker  Flip.

enpc on Feedback Requested! Tsukimi Moon's Mirror

1 year ago

sean360: generally, the point of tapping creatures (or even tapping additional creatures) is to help reduce the mana cost of an ability (an example would be Selesnya Evangel vs Selesnya Guildmage). This also works ith powerful abilities as your options would be to have them cost prohibitive amounts of mana, or to have hybrid costs.

Given that Trostani, Selesnya's Voice only costs 3 to populate as a tap ability and Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage only costs 4 mana to populate with no other restrictions, 3 mana as a tap ability is very reasonable. Also worth noting is that sure, the commander gets much better with Seedborn Muse, but so do a lot of other commanders. That's more about seedborn muse than it is about your commander though.

The point of this creature though (similar to Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage) is that it has the ability to create a token which you can then start populating from (i.e. it doesn't need any additional card support to do its thing). Guildmage has the ability to create multiple tokens at a high cost (6 mana for a 3/3 is quite expensive if it were a creature, but on an ability it makes a lot of sense). Your idea here is that your commander does a similar thing. While you can't keep churning out 'seed tokens' (something guildmage can do if all tokens are destroyed), your token has the ability to be very powerful.

This is why I would recommend tying it to "creatrue you control" which helps self balance the card. You can't just copy the biggest baddest thing on the battlefield, unless you're the one who already played it (regardless of how you got it onto the battlefield). It also stops you from just straight up cloning an opponent's commander. Again, there are cards that do this but you have to work for it (in that you have to find/draw the card and then play it - it's not just straight up tied to your commander).

Additionally, this isn't a "copy/steal" deck as much as it's a "play big tokens then make more of them" deck. Not only are you the wrong colours for that kind of deck (typically they lean more into grixis) but also you really don't want to play a copy/steal deck.

KayneMarco on Spellslingin' Token Makin' Sharknado

2 years ago

Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage and Nyxbloom Ancient would be very good in here. Make only 4 copies of the ancient and your tapping each land for 81 mana. Think of how many times you could activate the guildmage with that much mana. One plains and one forest would give you 162 mana of the colors you need. That’s 40 activations of the guildmage by tapping 2 lands. I think they would be huge additions in here.

Tzefick on Kimni, Life's Reflection

3 years ago

sean360 Happy to share my thoughts and considerations.

As for why you kept it more simple. The Populate cost of 4 makes it a lot stronger when just copying good stuff at high CMC, especially ones with ETBs or easy triggers. Imagine copying a Magmatic Force at 4 mana. Normally it takes 3 CMC and a card to make a token of a creature you control. To copy any creature you often turn to Clone and their ilk.

I hesitated suggesting a Populate of 4 because the creature itself provides the token that it can populate. Most of the Populate cards synergizes off other cards making those tokens, so there's a weakness that you need one to use the other. In the case of Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage the token generation is really expensive, so it is more efficient to have another card provide the token and then the Guildmage can Populate it. Kimni is one package, and there's a danger in making that too efficient. That's why I sought other ways to make it stronger without breaking it.


Making the creature and the copy token a changeling (not linked to the Populate ability, only the on-cast) seems close to a no-cost. It definitely makes Kimni stronger in certain deck shells but in others it is meaningless - like when you just copy the best creature on board when you cast it and have little self-synergy when copying your own stuff. And the strength it draws from tribal synergy seems rather small, where it would be more beneficial to run a Commander directly from that tribe.

WotC have already made 2 Changeling token producers in; Birthing Boughs and Maskwood Nexus - the later even being an Arcane Adaptation on steroids. I think the Birthing Boughs were made cautiously because it had to account for limited play. Token generators are very powerful in limited, especially without color restriction. The Maskwood is exploring the use of changelings but at rare, so it doesn't affect limited significantly.

I doubt that making them changelings would break the card. Making the Populate at 4 is stronger than changelings and Populate at 5. At least IMO.

Tzefick on Kimni, Life's Reflection

3 years ago

There's a slight problem in the templating that allows for infinite combos by itself and an outlet. If you have the token copy Kimni her-/himself, there's another ETB of creating a token put onto the stack. State based actions tells you to scrap one of the legendary creatures, so you scrap the token. The ETB of creating a token is then resolved on the stack, rinse repeat. Put any kind of death-trigger synergy card in there and you have an infinite combo outlet.

Can be corrected by having the token only copy non-legendary creatures or if the ETB have you choose another creature (than Kimni), then create a token that's a copy of that creature.

Another slightly different solution is to change it from an ETB to an on-Cast trigger. Like the Eldrazi.

The ETB-variant also enables any kind of ETB-flicker to go infinite. Like Felidar Guardian. Perhaps it is best to have it an on-cast trigger after all.


Why is Kimni a shapeshifter if she/he doesn't do any actual shapeshifting her-/himself?

Wouldn't she/he rather be an elemental, an avatar or god that creates these tokens that are copies of other creatures?


As for power level: 5 CMC for a 2/4 is rather harsh, but the weight is attributed to the token and the Populate ability.

I would say that the Populate is slightly over costed considering we have Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage who does it at 4 and only 2 color pips. And there's Trostani, Selesnya's Voice who does it at 3 but by tapping.

However those are best when combined with something else that creates a strong token to populate. Kimni possibly provides that strong token and can populate it by themselves.

I would still say the Populate should be reduced to 5 mana and it still feels lackluster.

If you aren't sinking 6 mana into Populate, what does this Commander do? Most likely nothing. Sitting on guard duty should any smaller creeps seek to bash you in the face. Seeing as the only thing the Commander can do is utilize its Populate ability, I would say it should be more feasible to use it.

I would love to tie in a Convoke reduction in it. So if you use it to copy good-stuff creatures, you generally don't want to tap those creatures, and you have to pay up. If you utilize it on smaller self-synergistic creatures (like tribals) they can help you go wide with small creatures.

As is the way with cost reduction mechanics, the starting price goes up. So say 7 CMC for the Populate and a Convoke mechanic could be a choice as well. Additionally combining two of the Selesnya mechanics on one card.


To broaden this Commander, it could be considered to have the main body be a Changeling (every creature type) and have the tokens they create be Shapeshifters with Changeling in addition to the copied creature. (It could be considered to have the token be non-legendary.)

This opens up tribal benefits by having the Commander be within the relevant tribe, and the token copy can be used to copy strong synergy creatures, like a Lord-esque creatures or just strong creatures from that tribe.

Having Populate instead of merely making another ETB copy token, makes it harder to capitalize on the copy effect and makes it less flexible (for instance you cannot make redundant copies of multiple strong utility creatures without another way to generate those tokens in the first place), but it does keep the power level more in check.

Of course you can run token copiers or just flicker Kimni to more easily get those copies from the ETB.

You could also run multi-tribal goodstuff, so you select a variety of good tribal lords, and your shapeshifter army gets all benefits. Like include Lord of the Unreal, Lord of Atlantis, Joraga Warcaller, Knight Exemplar. Add some utility creatures like Voidmage Prodigy.



I see an interesting idea that could be utilized in a multitude of deck shells as long as it is kept in check.

Podkomorka on Rasaru

4 years ago

Hey Rasaru, thanks for reaching out! If possible you should come join the PDH Discord server (here is the invite link https://discord.gg/AUUBCku). This can make for much quicker communication!

To see which commanders are the most powerful I'd point you to the Tier List. At the moment only Tier 1 is accurate. You can find good deck examples for them in the Compendium.

Obviously fun is subjective so all I can do is list some of the decks I've enjoyed playing. You can find my lists for these here.

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