Wishclaw Talisman
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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

Wishclaw Talisman

Artifact

This enters with three wish counters on this artifact.

, , Remove a wish counter from this: Search your library for a card, put it into your hand, then shuffle. An opponent gains control of this artifact. Activate this ability only during your turn.

Rhadamanthus on Wishclaw Talisman, Player Dying

4 months ago

It will return to whoever had it before player B.

When a player leaves the game, any control-changing effects that are giving them control of things end, and then if there are still some things they somehow control but don't own (like if they got something onto the battlefield from another player's graveyard) then those things get exiled.

In your example the control-changing effect that is giving player B control of the Wishclaw Talisman will end, so now its controller will be based on the next most recent control-changing effect that it was subject to, if any. This distinction can matter if it's a game with more than 2 players and something has been passed around between more than 2 people, which can definitely happen with the Talisman.

builderboy7 on Wishclaw Talisman, Player Dying

4 months ago

I'm asking this since this interaction came into my head, but in a game of commander, if Player A kills Player B who controls Player A's Wishclaw Talisman, does it return under Player A's control or does it go into exile when that Player B dies? I also assume it works the same way if Player C kills Player B in this scenario where it would return to Player A. I've looked generally at what happens to stolen permanents but I want to ensure I understand what happens in this interaction.

rckclimber777 on Build a Deck with Me …

6 months ago

Sometimes when I'm deckbuilding, I focus less on the commander and more on an interesting concept/combo that I want to use or exploit. This is the case with one of my favorite decks in my profile and actually one of the first commander decks I ever built. This deck began years ago when Magic finally started caring about the EDH format. It was a more simple time then, Rhystic study was $1.27 (exactly the price I paid for mine over 10 years ago), Cyclonic Rift was a bulk rare, and demonic tutor could be found for $10.

The combo that I was interested in was Palinchron and Deadeye Navigator. The latter was my favorite card at the time and is still one of my favorites. It was a great tool and with all the ETB effects that were out around then it was an underrated and uber powerful card. In fact, the entire blink mechanic was and is a very powerful strategy.

When I built this deck, I played a few times in shops and was quickly told that edh is a casual format and interaction of any kind is not fair (was told this by a land destruction deck...) So this deck is definitely more on the competitive side, but it would be the distant fringe of cedh. Alright with that let's get into it.

Initial thoughts

So we have a combo that we like Palinchron and Deadeye Navigator, but we don't even have a commander yet and going mono-blue seems not great, so we want to figure out what color(s) to add and what commander to choose. In a combo deck, there are generally three things that I like to make sure I include beyond the normal ramp, and card draw. That is redundancy, the ability to tutor up my combo pieces, and ways to protect my combo. So when thinking about tutoring up my combo pieces, I generally like to have the best tutors. Those are in black. So things like Wishclaw Talisman, Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor and Imperial Seal (if you have money to burn or your playgroup is fine with you proxying the best cards so you can obliterate their precons j/k I proxy all my expensive cards and put them in a binder in case someone has an issue).

So we have Blue and Black and we can certainly add another color if we wanted to, but at the time I liked Dralnu, Lich Lord because Snapcaster Mage was in standard and flashback was cool. So I stuck with it when I revamped it, but decided that I wanted something that could ensure I can protect my combo from any threat and then also use it to win if I wanted to. The answer came in the form of Ertai Resurrected. He can counter basically anything from spells to activated abilities (which will come in handy) or he can take a threat on the field at the cost of letting your opponent draw a card.

So now that we have our commander, how to build the deck?

Redundancy

Combo decks need redundancy. If you don't get your two cards or one of them gets exiled, you need a backup plan, or scooping is your only option. Fortunately, there are some great redundancies here. We have Ghostly Flicker and Displace. Both of these will blink your creatures (ghostly flicker will also blink artifacts). Displacer Kitten can be helpful too, but I don't own it and it is a little more chaotic than I need it to be. Palinchron is great because you can return it to your hand and potentially play it again and create infinite mana through the use of High Tide, but a similar combo that has added benefits is Peregrine Drake, Archaeomancer, and Ghostly Flicker. This bounces both the drake and the archaeomancer untapping 5 lands, and returning ghostly flicker to your hand. Rinse and repeat for infinite mana. Archaeomancer also will help in returning key counterspells and tutors to your hand. Nothing like doing double duty. Mnemonic Wall and Great Whale also fit here. The great thing about this combo is that each component is useful in and of itself. Bring out your Great Whale early untap some lands and do some other stuff or play out the rest of your combo with the untapped lands. Cast Archaeomancer to grab a used tutor for another combo piece.

One note here, if you get Peregrine Drake (or one of the other two) paired with Deadeye Navigator and you generate infinite mana you can now draw your deck with Ertai as commander: Step 1: Bounce Deadeye, when he enters don't soulbond with anyone.
Step 2: Cast Ertai, don't choose anything or if you want kill one of your opponent's creatures. It doesn't matter.
Step 3: Soulbond ertai and deadeye. Step 4: Bounce Deadeye and while that is on the stack bounce Ertai. Step 5: Ertai enters the battlefield counter the Deadeye bounce on the stack Draw a card Step 6: Soulbond ertai and deadeye again rinse and repeat. Draw as many cards as you need. Which means draw until you find your wincon.

Wincon

Since this is an infinite mana combo we need something to use all that mana. Obviously the activated ability on deadeye is great, but we need something to actually win with. I went with Commander's Insight and Blue Sun's Zenith. Both of these cards are useful even when they aren't being used to force your opponents to draw their cards. Blue Sun's Zenith works nicely because once you cast it goes back into your deck, which I showed above you can draw as many cards as you need so you cast it once, put it in your library draw again until you find it, cast it again on the next opponent, then again. You can also tutor them up or bring them back from the graveyard with the tutors or the archaeomancer/mnemonic wall from earlier. I like this more than straight damage, because if you don't have infinite mana these cards will still draw you cards.

Tutors

This is a fairly simple step, we need some good tutors. There are a number of good choices in black so I won't belabor that too much. I don't have some of the standard ones and feel like the deck performs fine with the ones it currently has. I do have a Tribute Mage in the deck because nearly all my mana rocks are 2 mana and so is Wishclaw Talisman. I found that the consistency with the deck is vastly improved by being able to tutor up my ramp. Also with deadeye I can bounce it multiple times and get more rocks or the talisman.

Protecting the combo

So I needed to figure out how to protect my combo and do so in a way that is flexible or can be used as needed. So Counterspell. Honestly, this part was fairly simple, most blue counter magic is here. Only reason Fierce Guardianship isn't here is because I don't have it. Other than that we have the typical cards here Force of Will, Mana Drain, Cyclonic Rift, Force of Negation, Pact of Negation, etc.

I also have a couple other standouts. Venser, Shaper Savant is great here as it can be bounced with Deadeye Navigator to essentially boomerang my opponent's board and all their spells. Ertai Resurrected also protects the combo and with deadeye becomes a nice repeatable counter/removal spell.

glen_elandra_archmage can be bounced when she has her -1/-1 counter allowing her to be used again and again to counter noncreature spells.

Typical stuff

There is a lot of ramp in the deck, so Mana Crypt, Sol Ring, and other mana rocks including some larger ones like Gilded Lotus and Basalt Monolith to really get the ramp going, the sooner you can get to 7-8 mana the sooner you can combo out.

For card draw some key performers here are Rhystic Study, Black Market Connections, Phyrexian Arena, The One Ring. Mystic Remora. In my initial hand I want to have 3 lands, and one of these/tutor to find one or I typically mulligan.

Special notes

A couple other cards deserve mention here. Time Stretch and Time Warp. These are both repeatable with Archaeomancer and Mnemonic Wall and I can honestly say that if I'm able to resolve either of these, it is unlikely that I'm going to lose, especially Time Stretch. With the ramp in the deck or a well timed Dark Ritual/High Tide I can play this fairly early and get a huge advantage.

Lands

Since this deck tends to be fast, you don't want lands that come into play tapped, so this deck uses fetch lands, shock lands, and duals that have the ability to come in untapped. (there are a couple that come into play tapped, but they are fetchable so I fetch them only when I know that I'm not going to be able to use the mana and only on an opponent's turn.)

I've had this deck for a while and it performs far better than any of my other decks. It always presents interesting lines that if followed will lead to surprising victories. As always let me know what you think in the comments and if you have a commander in mind that you want to see me build put it in the chat.

Here is the final decklist: Unlimited Power!

Profet93 on Stax Colony

10 months ago

Opposition Agent - Make your negative into a positive

Scheming Symmetry/Wishclaw Talisman - Since you don't mind letting others tutor

Deliver Unto Evil - Recursion for thrumming

Lunar_Wing on Mishra, Eminent One | Artifact nonsense

1 year ago

I am surprised to NOT see Wishclaw Talisman on this list. But thank you for posting this. Gives me some good ideas to editing my Mishra

Azoth2099 on Repanse De Lyonesse (Knight Tribal and Recursion)

1 year ago

Rizikar

Oi! Nice Commander pick, Mardu Knights are my jam.

If you're trying to give the decks some legs via recursion, Reanimator is the only way to go imho. Fortunately & are the perfect colors for that! Here's the Reanimator package that I typically start with if I'm building a deck in that style:

Animate Dead, Dance of the Dead, Necromancy, Reanimate, Entomb, Buried Alive, Final Parting, Phyrexian Reclamation & Sevinne's Reclamation are sick. There are also some pretty spicy loops that can be accomplished with things like Corpse Dance & Dread Return, but we can get into all of that if you decide to run Reanimator as a strategy for this build.

There's also some pretty great card draw options in this color combination that I think will do the deck some good. Necropotence, Black Market Connections, Esper Sentinel, Archivist of Oghma, Dark Confidant & Dark Tutelage all come to mind. Tectonic Reformation could provide some value here too.

I'd also also maybe cut down on some of those lands in favor of some more Mana Rocks. Talisman of Conviction, Talisman of Hierarchy, Springleaf Drum, Fellwar Stone & Chromatic Lantern would be good includes.

Tutors are expensive af, but there are a few nice choices that are very affordable right like Open the Armory, Wishclaw Talisman, Diabolic Intent, Diabolic Tutor, Gamble & Reckless Handling. Vampiric Tutor & Enlightened Tutor were just reprinted a little ago, so they're as cheap as they're going to get right now. I'm pretty sure Vampiric Tutor was like $90 a little bit ago, food for thought. Oh man, Stoneforge Mystic also exist, and is wonderful.

Some non-specific Tribal support like Shared Animosity, Mana Echoes & Coat of Arms, Cryptic Gateway & Vanquisher's Banner could also do stuff!

Lastly, a short list of neat Equipments you could consider are Conqueror's Flail, Hammer of Nazahn, Bloodforged Battle-Axe, Heartseeker, Masterwork of Ingenuity & Mask of Memory. I guess Halvar, God of Battle  Flip is technically an Equipment card too?

Good luck in refining your list!

77hi77 on Rakdos the Defil-Loving, Kind, Salt …

1 year ago

I'm in that awful/exciting place where I'm working on 4 decks at the same time. My wallet hates it.

I've always known that I want to build a Rakdos the Defiler deck. A while ago, I posted on here looking for ideas of chaotic cards/archetypes that fit his theme. "I attack, I sacrifice myself to do it. Uh oh, you took damage, sucks to be yoouuu" is such a chaotic way to play. As I'm building the deck now, though, I'm realizing that it's so much more fun to lean hard into the politics of it. Rakdos the Defiler is a commander that forces you to get into character, and I've been fantasizing about various ways to politic with Rakdos, which should also make it a more fun game than the rampant destruction I was originally aiming for.

The two cards that really made it click for me: Sower of Discord and Scheming Symmetry. I can just imagine myself drawing a card then, grinning ear-to-ear, asking: "If this were a 2v2 game, what would the teams be?". Then proceeding to play that character of the overtly nice one to my new bestie while we both tutor. Or Wishclaw Talisman, I tap it, tutor, then give it to my new bestie; now my new bestie has to decide whether they want to give it back or betray me. It presents everyone with character choices that they have to deal with, and Rakdos the Defiler is very likely to be the scariest commander on the board, which just adds to it all. That also allows me to build my favourite kind of deck: the glass cannon, knowing that it has built in politics as a defensive measure.

So I've been looking for cards in Rakdos like Secret Rendezvous, and more Sower of Discord kind of effects to go with that theme. So far I've got the cards I've already mentioned, Zurzoth, Chaos Rider to help my bestie draw cards (and to give Rakdos some tokens to sac), Bloodthirster to pick on my non-besties, and yeah that's about all I can find. If you know of cards that help, or if you've seen decks that really play into the Generous Untrustworthy Demon archetype, I'd love to see them!

Thanks all!

Azoth2099 on Sen Triplets - Esper Control (Seeking Help)

1 year ago

Iraeus

Okay, so if you're specifically trying to outdo Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait, you're going to have to make sure that you're not being outdone by it's immense card draw & Ramp. Deep Gnome Terramancer, Archivist of Oghma, Esper Sentinel, Alms Collector, Monologue Tax, Smuggler's Share, Consecrated Sphinx, Faerie Mastermind & Ledger Shredder will help accomplish this. Black Market Connections, Scroll Rack, Sensei's Divining Top, Dark Confidant, Dark Tutelage & of course Necropotence are also great card draw options, but won't scale with whatever your opponents are doing. Tithe, Gift of Estates & Land Tax are generically great, but extra great in this context.

Consider Rule of Law, Arcane Laboratory & Archon of Emeria as well. Sanctum Prelate, Void Winnower & Chalice of the Void will also hit 'em with a big ole "NOPE" when adequately applied. Decree of Silence + Solemnity will do so as well.

Weird stuff like Deathgrip will also probably help you lock the game down, but it might not translate very well outside of trying to take down Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait lol. Depends on how heavy your group is, really.

Speaking of that, you really might just need more Counterspells or something! Stuff like Tale's End seems pretty good for your goal here. More Mana Rocks seems like a great idea here too. I'm sure you're buddy is running a bunch of traditional Ramp & Dorks, right? You absolutely must keep up, or you're gonna lose.

More Tutors will help you grease the wheels, too. They can get pretty expensive dollar-wise, but options like Diabolic Tutor, Diabolic Intent & Wishclaw Talisman are very affordable right now.

Let me know how you feel about these suggestions! Cheers!

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