You Find a Cursed Idol

Sorcery

Choose one —

• Smash It — Destroy target enchantment.
• Lift the Curse — Destroy target enchantment.
• Steal its Eyes — Create a Treasure token and venture into the dungeon. (If you aren't venturing through a dungeon, choose one of the dungeon cards you own from outside the game, put it into the command zone and put a venture counter on the first room of that dungeon. All effects of that room trigger. When you venture into the dungeon while you have a dungeon in the command zone, advance to the next room downward of your choice and triggering all effects of that room. When you have resolved the effects of the last room of the dungeon, remove that dungeon from the game. You can only venture through one dungeon at a time.)

Tokens

• Dungeon: Tomb of Annihilation
• Dungeon: Dungeon of the Mad Mage
• Dungeon: Lost Mine of Phandelver
• Skeleton 1/1 B
• Goblin 1/1 R
• The Atropal
• Treasure

Legality

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

Discussion (4)

Blackgate on Tomb of Annihilation (Venture into the Dungeon)

7 months ago

Hello K4nkato thank you for the feedback!

I agree the deck could use more 1 and 2 drops (currently there 4x Dungeon Crawler, 4x Intrepid Outlander, 2x You Find a Cursed Idol and 2x Fates' Reversal).

Mosswood Dreadknight is a good recommendation. How do you recommend squeezing this in?

I considered using Assassin's Trophy for removal but Murderous Rider as a creature with lifelink (and Zombie synergy) helps off set the loss of life when traversing through Tomb of Annihilation. I found this additional life gain to be quite handy as the deck can complete Tomb of Annihilation quite fast and is pretty consistent.

Castle Locthwain is a great idea and I’ll add it to the deck- thanks!

K4nkato on Tomb of Annihilation (Venture into the Dungeon)

7 months ago

I have a few observations:

1) Your curve is too high. Too many hands have nothing to do on turn 1 & turn 2. Against midrange decks like Rakdos Midrange they’ll likely have Bloodtithe Harvester in play with Fatal Push ready to kill your three drop (they sack a blood token to trigger Revolt). Unless you open an Intrepid Outlander you’ll be defenseless until turn 4 or 5. You should diversify your curve with more 1 and 2 drops to smooth out your plays. While it’s not directly dungeon related I think Mosswood Dreadknight would be a great 2-drop.

2) You don’t have enough interaction. A combo deck like Greasefang, Okiba Boss can combo on turn 3 before you have a chance to remove her with Murderous Rider. If you remove her vehicle with You Find a Cursed Idol but don’t kill her she’ll just combo again the next turn. There’s a lot of great removal options in G/B like Abrupt Decay or Assassin's Trophy that handle tons of different matchups.

3) You don’t have a good plan for over-the-too value decks. The dungeon plan takes time to grind (not a bad thing), but your need to give yourself the time to grind. If you play against a deck with something like Bring to Light or Enigmatic Incarnation you might get completely ran over by Omnath, Locus of Creation or The Scarab God. You can fight back against these decks with unconditional removal like Go for the Throat and discard spells like Duress and Liliana of the Veil.

4) You need some more card draw. If you’re lowering your curve you should expect to play longer games & can pull ahead of opponents with card draw engines. Castle Locthwain pulls you ahead of your opponents in long games. Hive of the Eye Tyrant gives you an option to win the Dungeon back from an opponent when you’re out of creatures & closes long games against control decks. Field of Ruin is great for midrange mirror matches bc it blows up your opponent’s castles.

Dungeons can be a hard mechanic to work with but it rewards you for playing long games & slowing your opponent down. If you run a solid midrange deck with Dungeon cards to break parity and pull you ahead you’ll have a solid game plan.

Omniscience_is_life on None

2 years ago

I'd he happy to help! I'd recommend starting with around 10 cards that ramp your mana (Llanowar Elves, Rampant Growth, Arcane Signet, and more), 10 that draw you more cards (Armorcraft Judge, Bred for the Hunt, Benthic Biomancer, Fathom Mage, Inspiring Call, Towashi Guide-Bot, and stuff like that). After that, around 10 more cards should be dedicated to dealing with scary things your opponents play (like Beast Within, Ravenform, Resculpt, You Find a Cursed Idol, Oversimplify, plus others like those), 37ish lands (this one is a little more flexible, just see how many makes it so you're getting enough each game. You can also use the MDFC land/spells from Zendikar Rising, such as Glasspool Mimic  ^Flip, Tangled Florahedron  ^Flip, and Vastwood Fortification  ^Flip.

Once you have all that, the rest can really just be whatever you want. A bunch of cool creatures with strong activated abilities for your commander (I can give some suggestions if you want, but it sounds like you already have some ideas), some ways to untap those creatures with cards like Kiora's Follower, Kelpie Guide, and Clever Conjurer, and some ways to get counters on your creatures like Bow of Nylea, Burst of Strength, Ecologist's Terrarium, Jiang Yanggu, Wildcrafter, Hadana's Climb  ^Flip, and Ivy Lane Denizen.

Have fun, and let me know if there's anything else at all I can help with!

Tzefick on Critical Banishment

2 years ago

I really like the idea of more colors getting access to interact with the stack and I really think White is a good color to add some additional design space. Obviously it cannot get on par with blue so it needs some additional conditions or costs associated to get this effect.

I think this is a very good example to fit that space. Nice work.

Just a side note, for the sake of reducing word count could it be written as "... costs less for each spell cast and each ability activated by your opponents this turn." ?

I get the point in being specific about only caring about your opponents' actions but I think it would be consciously misinterpretation of the above line to think it isn't specifically for your opponents' actions.

Why is white a good fit? (wall of text) Show

First of all it seems like counter magic is a vital tool to interact with combo strategies especially when considering the Commander format, and it is the reason we've seen so many "free"-to-cast counter spells especially for Commander and why they drive sales so much. However that is only accessible to Blue, so the rest of the color pie is borderline useless in attempting to interact with most combos. I mean a Silence could work to interact with some combos, but that is such a narrowly applicable card in the rest of the game that it remains a tech card with a heavy drawback. And it might just eat one of the aforementioned "free"-to-cast counter spells and there's not much redundancy available either.

There's a reason why most competitive cEDH decks are including Blue. Coincidentally a lot include Black and Green as well as the three most powerful colors in Magic - at least for single-ton formats.

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White used to have some affinity for artifacts but that seems to have been handed over to blue/red. Right now White is mostly concerned about Equipments within the artifact realm and the synergies are not that widespread nor that powerful.

White used to be the best or on par to deal with artifacts and enchantments with Disenchant and Purify and similar effects but green has mostly taken over in acquiring design space for this mechanic - Bane of Progress Broken Bond You Find a Cursed Idol. The best improvement on the mechanic that white has is Austere Command due to flexibility and Heliod's Intervention to snipe multiple without harming yourself. And that's one of the bigger differences. White leans more on Enchantments and Artifacts than Green does, so Green doesn't have much drawback in including Bane of Progress. Whereas White leans on Artifacts for mana ramp and Equipments and they lean on Enchantments for strong synergies.

White once had their card advantage through ensuring their board survives, either through protection, prevention, regeneration, then shroud to a lesser degree, then indestructible - but only on creatures. However Black has gained exile mechanics, red has "burn to a crisp" mechanics and blue Cyclonic Rift or Curse of the Swine. So indestructible as a safety measure is getting worse and worse. Not to mention they get outdone by Green - again. Only exception is the ever increasing price on Teferi's Protection but that has its drawbacks too - namely you remove yourself from the game and can't interact further - unless you somehow can cast spells without mana from permanents.

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Cards like Rebuff the Wicked or Lapse of Certainty are interesting to expand upon within the design space for white and will grant it back some strengths and uniqueness it used to have. However to be able to properly interact with the stack it cannot just be conditioned behind being the one targeted - that would equate it to hexproof/protection and also make it useless against board wipe or the infamous Cyclonic Rift one-sided board sweep.

Possibly the design space could include some "punisher" mechanics loaned from red but transformed instead of inflicting pain on the opponent, you gain a benefit - for instance:

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Inspection

Instant

Choose target spell or ability an opponent controls. That opponent may have Inspection counter the chosen spell or ability. If they don't, choose one:

• Create three 1/1 white Human Soldier tokens.
• Create two Treasures then gain 4 life.
• Search your library for up to two basic land cards and put them into your hand, then shuffle.

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The flavor being to pass the spell you have to pay the toll (chosen by the Inspector for their benefit) or be rejected.

Taxing is the most recent mechanic that white has expanded upon and embraced but that is usually done on permanents as static or triggered abilities. This means WotC have to water down these cards' immediate impact and make the mechanic less enticing in the short run, which is often when it matters the most. Drawing Thalia, Guardian of Thraben on turn 5+ is often not that impactful, whereas on turn 2 you can cripple some decks. It would be refreshing if WotC would expand on the mechanic for ETBs or instant/sorceries with a here-and-now benefit rather than dragging it out.

Additionally the taxing mechanic could utilize other taxes than just paying mana to do stuff. Inflexibly taxing mana has a good chance to affix unfriendly eyes on you whereas gaining a taxing benefit - say Smothering Tithe is less likely to breed anger toward you but may instill fear.

Anyway, I think it would be good for White to gain a little more design space and I think more colors being able to interact with the stack would be a good thing - even if that means Blue has to share some of their mechanics to a degree with another color.