Augustin's $t4ks (cEDH Primer)

Commander / EDH Winterblast

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evaluation of the latest changes —Feb. 14, 2019

After testing for a while I have some impressions on how useful the most recent changes are. Upfront I have to say that most of them were fine but I have misjudged certain cards a bit.

Narset Transcendent, Muddle the Mixture and Time Spiral are the added cards I'm most happy with. Preordain and Fragmentize are solid because they are cheap and can help in making a questionable hand keepable. Fragmentize could possibly be something else though, not sure of I really need that single removal for artifacts/enchantments.

Karn, Scion of Urza looks nice because he's colorless but as an engine he isn't that impressive. Planeswalkers in general are really good engines in a stax but I think a few requirements have to be met:
- the card advantage ability has to be + or at least a 0
- a protective ability should be a + or
- cheap enough - removal ability that doesn't leave the walker at 1 loyalty if you have to remove something upon resolving
Karn has the basic card advantage on + but the protective ability is not as strong as it should be imo. Non-flying blockers won't even keep a traded Gilded Drake in check.

As for walkers, Tezzeret, Artifice Master has been brought to my atention. I would say he is the most reasonable next best include for my build because he protects himself for +, usually will draw 2 for 0 and it's not unrealistic to ultimate him. Other options would currently be Teferi, Hero of Dominaria and Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Of these two I would prefer JTMS because the land untapping of Teferi is mostly irrelevant in this build and he draws fewer cards per activation. JTMS can potentially use the removal ability twice in a row and 4 times in a row after +2 once. As I am in a rahter low creature meta, keeping single creatures at bay for longer is the better removal ability. With another walker, Supreme Verdict becomes a better choice over Cataclysm and Porphyry Nodes is also worth testing imo.

Another card I have tested is Puca's Mischief. As I was looking for engines instead of one-time effects, this seemed to be interesting. Indeed, it worked well so far by exchanging global stax effects for useful things. I have counted around 14 or 15 cards I would happily trade against something else - this includes Trinket Mage and a used Mana Vault or Grim Monolith. Adding Spellseeker again along with Puca's Mischief seems to be reasonable.

Mana Breach is in again instead of Winter Orb because it's a lot easier to break parity on and it has better synergy with Land Equilibrium, Scroll Rack and Lavinia, Azorius Renegade. The possibility of drawing both Back to Basics and this is there but it's not much of a problem. I think I evaluated the card incorrectly at the time of cutting it.