Warleader's Helix
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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander 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
Highlander Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Pioneer Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Warleader's Helix

Instant

Warleader's Helix deals 4 damage to target creature, player or planeswalker and you gain 4 life.

robertsonuku on Firedong

3 years ago

Cut 1:

Out:

In:

Pyrra on Prismatic Dragon

3 years ago

DemonDragonJ: lifegain is tertiary in black though. dealing damage and gaining life is more a RW thing, as seen in cards like Lightning Helix or Warleader's Helix

MagicMarc on Need Some Help Brewing. I'm …

3 years ago

I didnt see if anyone pointed this out yet. Just in case no one mentioned this yet, what about the Sunforger engine/toolbox in the deck? It's very boros, very powerful and will give you repeatable burn and lifegain if you put the engine in with support for it. A basic recap is:

Load the deck with quality instants you can tutor with Sunforger. Add in equipment tutors to find the sunforger. Then add a recursion engine with cards like Reito Lantern to put the instants back in your library after you cast them. You can, for example, then do stuff like cast any of these once per turn if you wanted: Comeuppance, Settle the Wreckage, Warleader's Helix or Radiating Lightning. Or any other instants as long as they are cmc 4 or less and white or red.

Joe_Ken_ on FireSong and SunSpeaker use IQ not punches

4 years ago

I run a Neheb, the Eternal burn deck and I think you could swap out a few spells for some more efficient burn. I also play Boros and will pretend to ignore this spell slinging propaganda.

I'd swap Warleader's Helix for Flame Rift since it will net you 12 life for just 2 mana and is just godly if you have Neheb, the Eternal on the board.

Another good one to help you wipe the board or just to sink a lot of mana into is Rolling Earthquake since unlike the normal earthquake odds are it will kill every creature on the board. There is a version of it that is like $10 since it is one of those From the vault foils.

Tzefick on Two Life-Draining Spells

4 years ago

WizardOfTheNorthernCoast But Warleader's Helix is generally considered overcosted - although that's maybe not entirely a fair appraisal.

Lightning Helix is the combination of Healing Salve and Lightning Bolt. We all know the value of Lightning Bolt, but much less so that of Healing Salve. These days, Lightning Bolt is too strong for Standard and we refer to Lightning Strike for a more appropriately costed card for that damage range. If we look at specifically instants or sorceries that deal 4 damage, we come into the midrange territory and the costs are similarly higher or with extra conditions or restrictions. Char, Collective Defiance, Electrify, Flame Lash, Exquisite Firecraft, Lightning Blast, Slaying Fire, Stoke the Flames. On the cheaper side we have Cut, Flame Slash, Heartfire, Galvanic Blast, Lava Coil, Reckless Abandon.

I think at the least we can say that dealing 4 damage to any target unconditionally is more likely a CMC 4 spell that usually has some additional benefit stuck onto it or a 3 CMC with some requirements. So the raw unconditional 4 damage is somewhere around 3,X CMC.

Now healing 4 is way cheaper and can be done with Life Goes On for a single mana, at instant speed, with a condition to gain more life. The only other card to note is Sacred Nectar, which I believe we can quickly agree is overcosted and underperforming. All other cards that gain life around these ranges have something else going on for them, Feed the Clan, Blessed Alliance, Life Burst. As such, the raw 4 life is not even worth a mana.

So 4 damage is roughly worth 3,X CMC and 4 life is worth 0.Y CMC. Put those effects together on a multicolor card and Warleader's Helix seems like a fairly costed card at uncommon. Although fair does not equal good.

That was a rather long way to go just to say that Warleader's Helix is a fairly costed card... but not a very good one.

A condition may shave off a mana in the cost, but that leaves us at 3 CMC for a 4 damage, 4 life spell. The Vampiric Helix is definitely undercosted by 1 or needs a tougher condition, say control 2 or more vampires.

Now the biggest issue I take to this card is the ability to play it mono black. Mono black is not that efficient, seeing cards like Consume Spirit or Agonizing Syphon, Pharika's Cure. However neither red nor white has these effects by themselves. I think a good midway would be to have black as a required cost and then have the supplementary color be hybrid: would be fair in my eyes. Alternatively you could have white as the primary color and black/red as the supplementary, but that is not very flavorful as far as Vampire tribal goes. To compensate the increased cost, you could have the base version be 3 damage/3 life.

WizardOfTheNorthernCoast on Two Life-Draining Spells

4 years ago

Nice idea and thank you for sharing! Love the flavor :)

My opinion: I think Vampiric Helix is too strong. Lightning Helix is already very strong and represents a limit to this kind of effect IMO (just like Lightning Bolt acts as a comparison point for burn spells). You just need to take a look at the ridiculous Warleader's Helix - which is the closest thing they printed since the original helix - to understand how undercosted Lightning Helix is.

The mana cost is even less restrictive with double hybrid (should mono-B really have access to yet another drain effect that is that strong?) and the condition to deal 4/drain 4 (ultimately resulting in an 8-HP difference which is HUGE) isn't even hard to get. It should be 2 or 3 vampires or something to really insist on the fact the card goes into a tribal deck.

Markov’s Grasp is really neat, though.

HARDsofty on

4 years ago

Warleader's Helix is what it's called. Had to look it up on Google.

MaddMattt on Boros Burn

4 years ago

Not too shabby. I have some suggestions if you're interested: Warleader's Helix instead of Stoke the Flames, and maybe move the Skullcracks to the sideboard so you can run the full 4 Smuggler's Copter

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