Ziatora's Proving Ground

Land — Swamp Mountain Forest

({T}: Add {B}, {R} or {G})

This enters the battlefield tapped.

Cycling {3} ({3}, Discard this card: Draw a card.)

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
Pioneer	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Pre-release	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Standard	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (10)

wallisface on Is Leyline binding worth it?

2 months ago

Yeah Ziatora's Proving Ground should suffice as far as providing the colours, though its probably going to also require going up to ~12 fetches to ensure you can reliably get everything you need early

Icbrgr on Is Leyline binding worth it?

2 months ago

yeah i figured just adding a Ziatora's Proving Ground to run alongside Raugrin Triome combined with my fetches (because they can all grab mountains} would be enough to get domain with little effort if i went that rout.

eliakimras on Jund Dragons

7 months ago

Forgot to say what to take out for the three cards above: Green Sun's Twilight, Hull Breach, Lukka, Bound to Ruin. The Twilight is unrealiable until you spend a lot of mana into it. The Breach is sorcery-speed. The planeswalker does not do much here.

Now some small upgrades you can make:

• Assassin's Trophy and Tear Asunder are more versatile than Artifact Mutation and Putrefy.

• If graveyard decks are rampant on your playgroup, Baleful Mastery works better than Terminate.

• If you run fetchable lands (Ziatora's Proving Ground, Blood Crypt, Stomping Ground, Overgrown Tomb, Canyon Slough, Woodland Chasm, Sulfurous Mire, Highland Forest, Haunted Mire, Geothermal Bog, Wooded Ridgeline), consider running Three Visits, Farseek, Into the North and Skyshroud Claim instead of Sakura-Tribe Elder, Rampant Growth, Explosive Vegetation and Thran Dynamo.

• Since you run Crux of Fate, it might be better not depend on non-dragon creature ramp: Courser of Kruphix, Shaman of Forgotten Ways and Solemn Simulacrum could instead be Scaled Nurturer, Fellwar Stone and Coalition Relic.

• Garruk, Primal Hunter and Return of the Wildspeaker draw way more cards than Read the Bones and Dragonmaster Outcast (this last one is too slow to get going).

• You probably want to run Ash Barrens, Blighted Woodland and Myriad Landscape for more fixing and ramp. Exotic Orchard and Secluded Courtyard wouldn't hurt, either.

to_regatha_and_beyond on CocoFang

1 year ago

Nice deck, this has a lot of power!

I'm mostly wondering about your mana base. Is there a reason you're running Indatha Triome instead of Ziatora's Proving Ground? To me it would make a bit more sense of those were flipped to provide all of your mana colors. The only white card you're running is in your sideboard unless you count Jinnie Fay, Jetmir's Second, so I don't see a reason to favor white over red.

ndame24 on Counter Deck

1 year ago

Rebullet I get what you're saying. My thinking on Dragonskull Summit and Rootbound Crag is that Overgrown Tomb, Stomping Ground, or Ziatora's Proving Ground are all a combination of forest, swamp, and/or mountain. So lands like Dragonskull Summit and Rootbound Crag will entered untapped. And Ziatora's Proving Ground gives cycling if drawn later in the game

fg_cutts on Simic Gravestomp (Original. Budget)

1 year ago

I playtested your deck and I think it would benefit from some hand discard mechanics and haste so you can swing immediately with your big baddies.

I recommend Catalog or Artificer's Epiphany for draw/discard.

I recommend running Manamorphose, Anger, and like two Stomping Ground or Ziatora's Proving Ground Jetmir's Garden (budget) so that you can run anger in your graveyard.

I know this changes your color scheme to more of atemur deck than simic, so it's that not what you want ignore this.

Also, Vivien, Champion of the Wilds's flash mechanic could help with the haste thing.

Eldmoi on Ur-gonomics

1 year ago

Thanks, I'll definitely take those suggestions into account! I look forward to playing this deck, hopefully I won't be taken out of the game first when I find a pod to play in and can make friends with other players at the LGS and play EDH on a regular basis. I'll look into some more shock lands and triomes with basic land types like Ziatora's Proving Ground and Ketria Triome and find copies of Nature's Lore and Three Visits. Replacing some more non-creature cards to add in other dragons also sounds like a good plan. After seeing it in Arena I was considering Moonveil Regent for some extra card draw but I could see adding Rishkar's Expertise as well. I'd like to have closer to 30-33 creatures and have more creature spells than non-creature spells so I'm almost there. Thanks again for the help, I didn't even know about a majority of the cards you suggested and I can see why they get so much play in EDH!

Decidares on Ur-gonomics

1 year ago

Hey Eldmoi, thanks for the info. There's a quite a bit I would recommend optimizing. The long story short is that most of the dragons I'd recommend are already on my budget primer that you've seen and my super budget deck list that was part of the primer but is also available here if you're interested here.

First of all, you need to make sure your deck has a decent amount of ramp to cast your awesome dragons within a reasonable amount of time. If you are on a budget then I'd recommend Cultivate, Kodama's Reach, and Sakura-Tribe Elder at the very least. Other options for cheap ramp are Farseek, Wild Growth, and Fertile Ground. If you want to further optimize ramp, then adding in Nature's Lore and Three Visits on top of some forest based shock lands (e.g. Stomping Ground or triomes (e.g. Ziatora's Proving Ground would be ideal.

Second, you want to optimize your mana base by minimizing the number of taplands and ensuring you have the colors you need. Any tap lands that tap for only 2 colors (e.g. guild gates) could safely be dropped for basic lands. Tri-lands like you mentioned are decent enough to start off, because they can tap for 3 colors, but even those are suboptimal in the face of options like Dragonskull Summit and Blood Crypt. Furthermore, almost 50% of your deck requires red mana, so I'd ensure your lands reflects that.

Regarding the planeswalkers you have, I'd say Sarkhan, Fireblood is the most useful (distantly followed by Sarkhan Unbroken and Kiora, Master of the Depths). I'd consider cutting the others.

Some things off the top of my head for instants and sorceries: I would consider Crucible of Fire to be a win more card. Lozhan, Dragons' Legacy is almost a strictly better Sarkhan's Unsealing. Damn and Farewell are really good board wipes that aren't as mana intensive as some you're running. Garruk's Uprising is a very potent form of card draw. Monster Manual is probably better than Thran Temporal Gateway in most cases.

Finally the dragons. There are so many good dragons to consider, many of which I've mentioned in my deck primer, and many of which are available on most dragon lists online, that I'll focus on highlighting dragons I would recommend removing:

• Acid-Spewer Dragon - Overcosted and doesn't do much. Deathtouch isn't as useful on a dragon that should be big enough to kill most thing it hits in the first place.

• Backdraft Hellkite - Most instant and sorceries you have are too expensive or are simply aren't as immediately useful (e.g. don't want to board wipe your own dragons). The most useful ones you run are removal, but at that point you can just play dragons that can inherently remove things like Steel Hellkite.

• Crosis, the Purger - Hard to save mana to take advantage of its effect. It'll feel bad to take advantage of its effect in casual metas anyways. If you really want to run a dragon like this then Teneb, the Harvester might be more fitting but even then I wouldn't really recommend it, because of the mana investment needed to make it work.

• Dragonmaster Outcast - Not a good early game play and easy to kill later on.

• Dream Pillager - This dragon is overcosted and is mostly a means of pseudo card draw. I'd just play an actual card draw card instead like Ancient Craving or Sign in Blood or Rishkar's Expertise.

• Kargan Dragonlord - Costs too much to do too little. We have so many dragon options, even in budget decks, that vanilla dragons simply aren't worth it.

• Malfegor - Discarding our hand isn't good to do unless it involves redrawing more cards (e.g. Knollspine Dragon).

• Necromaster Dragon - Summoning vanilla 2/2 zombie tokens for 2 mana isn't good value in a dragon deck, and you have to go through combat to get it off. In a world where Ancient Gold Dragon exists, it's hard to justify an effect like this. Dragon Broodmother and Lathliss, Dragon Queen and Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm would be far more effective token generators.

There's always more we could do to optimize any deck, including mine for sure, so I'd be happy to comment more later if you'd like. But I also want to emphasize that as long as you and your playgroup are having fun, you really can't go wrong :)