The Black Gate

Gond Gate

Most gates have a replacement effect on themselves that says they enter the battlefield tapped. On those Gates, you can choose to have them enter the battlefield tapped or untapped, by ordering replacement effects.

In the case of The Black Gate, you can have it enter untapped even if you don't pay the 3 life. You may also pay that 3 life if you still want to (for example, if you're trying to grow a Death's Shadow)

I think you need to work on some things:

• Posting a coherent sentence. Your above commentary reads more like a disjointed stream-of-consciousness than anything actually readable.

• Learning to interact civilly on the internet. I came here only to offer some (very legitimate) pointers. Your responses are absurdly combative - and completely unnecessarily so. Even if you disagree with suggestions someone is offering, there’s a way to do so without being an ass.

• Being able to think critically. Your responses indicate someone who’s put their “head in the sand” and wants to defend their case to the death without being able to properly and reasonably justify their position.

• Learn to learn. As said before, your position appears to be to chuck your “head in the sand” to any and all feedback. Thats not only going to lead to your deckbuilding skills stagnating, it’s also going to cause problems throughout life. Being ok with being wrong about things is a big step towards actually being able to grow as a person - ignoring that sets you up for repeating the same failures ad-infinitum.

Anyway, I can see there’s no point me trying to do any conversing here, as it’s entirely unproductive. So good luck with whatever mess you’ve brewed, and peace.

Correct there are still multiple instances and Odric will bestow Hexproof as you describe.

mooffalosystema i have played a load of competitive mill, winning tourney with it, and know full-well the ins-and-outs of competitive play.

If you do the math on Mind Funeral you’ll find that it is absolutely terrible when compared to almost all other 2-and-3 mana mill spells. There’s a very good reason no competitive builds ever run that card.

Indiscriminate discard is always worse than being able to target and remove the card that actually poses a threat. There will be a bunch of games where Inquisition is only able to grab the cards the opponent doesn’t really card about. Not being able to grab a Sheoldred, the Apocalypse or Scion of Draco or Murktide Regent or Yawgmoth, Thran Physician is a massive mistake when these are all very-commonly seen threats.

Your assessment of Lazotep Plating baffles me. It only temporarily stalls some combo decks, and feels negligible anywhere else. I think Storm is the only deck that would ever need to be cautious of this card, and nobodies playing Storm atm anyway cause it’s bad. If your local playgroup somehow validates this cards existence, it’s still only a sideboard card at-best (and even then, a terrible one - there’s sooo many better options!).

No, the targets have to be legal when you put it on the stack, which they won’t be. Even ignoring that problem, Dance of the Manse returns everything at the same time, so there’d be no window for those graveyard cards to see Encroaching Mycosynth in play and be able to act on that

Yes it would. It’s functionally the same as any other one of these effects, just with slightly less agency on your part.

Whenever you cast a spell without paying its mana cost, X is always 0.

So in your example, the X in your Green Sun's Zenith will be 0

With only 16 lands in your deck, you won’t have the mana to cast Desolation Twin until you’ve drawn around 38 cards… there is no way a game is going that long regardless of format/playstyle.

If I were making changes, I would ditch all of Hedron Blade (too weak, too niche), Slab Hammer (really bad card), Desolation Twin (the game’s never going long enough to cast it), and both Retreat to Hagra and Retreat to Valakut (neither really do anything).

In their place I would add 6 more lands, 4x Lightning Bolt, and 4x Flame Slash

AxonsReplete the lust is looking a lot better! I think you should be able to win games with this so i’d suggest getting some games in with it!

My only thought if you’re wanting to strengthen this would be to swap Ugluk of the White Hand with Mayhem Devil.

Two thoughts:

• I’m not sure what Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer is doing here - it doesn't really fit with what the rest of the deck is trying to do, and it’s not standard legal anyway. I’d swap it for Mountain personally.

• Standard decks only need to be 60 cards big. I’d suggest dropping 40 cards to get down to that number, as it’ll increase the reliability of what you’re doing and give you better odds of drawing the cards that matter.

Other than that, this is looking super competitive!

I’m not sure where the first iteration of this deck ended as it got deleted before I could read any closing comments. So apologies in advance if i’m stating something that’s already been discussed.

Your description has the opening statement of “I know the deck is slow, don't really care about that. These are the type of decks I like to build. So don't comment if you're not interested in helping try and help with the deck” - this commentary is at-odds with itself… in that the absolute-best way to make this deck more playable is to speed it up. It’s going to be very hard to offer suggestions that aren’t just “make the deck faster”, because that’s the primary thing this deck soo sorely needs.

Specifically, your deck needs to be doing something in all-of turns 1, 2, and 3 to progress the game… otherwise you just get left in the dust. Your options for that includes:

• potentially having a ramp engine. Green has loads of 1-mana options for generating mana which could easily accelerate your win condition by a few turns. Ramp also helps mitigate some of the woes you’ll face with this extremely greedy mana curve.

• potentially having control elements. If you’re wanting the game to go long enough to do your thing, you need to make sure the opponent isn’t just winning. Counterspell, Fatal Push, Thoughtseize etc all play a part in dragging the game out and allowing you time to assemble your pieces.

• potentially dig through your deck to assemble all the cards you need. Your combo requires a lot of working pieces, and as said before, those Transmute cards are super clumsy. Cards like Preordain, Serum Visions, Opt, and Consider could all help you dig through your deck to try and get your card pieces asap - to try and make a turn 5 win as reliable as possible.

^ each of those three above options could be viable - the important thing is that your deck needs to be working towards achieving its goal from turn 1, not turn 3-4. At the moment your shell is both super slow and super fragile, which is just going to lead it to not-working.

Kavle yeah as legendofa already mentioned, the maybeboard isn’t a reliable source if anything, so is pretty common to skip over. However specifically with those transmute cards, while they may allow you to get Endless Whispers into your hand, they are incredibly slow.. taking 2 important turns to get your enchantment in play while doing nothing else means you’ve probably just lost the game (i don’t see any deck being able to recover from effectively doing nothing for the first 4 turns of the game. Most modern games are decided by turn 4-5).

Some thoughts:

• 35 lands is a ridiculously high number.

• you mana curve is waaay too high. Soecifically, not being able to play anything until turn 3 means you’re starting two full turns behind the opponent - a really dangerous place to be!!

• your deck does practically nothing without Endless Whispers in play, which is a problem because you’re not guaranteed to draw it, and have no way to find it. Added to this, it’s 4 mana cost means you’re not doing anything at-all until very late in the game.

Good news then - as Marks mentioned a few times that they’re actively trying to reduce the number of legendaries in a set. How that amalgamates is anyone’s guess though.

TypicalTimmy that’s not at all the series-of-events i’ve gotten from reading the stories, though admittedly i’ve only recently read this Thunder Junction story, and the All-Will-Be-One & March-of-the Machine arcs - so if extra story happened in MKM, Eldraine, or Ixalan i may have missed it.

I’ve not heard anything around Teferi having any part in anything like what you’re suggesting.

DemonDragonJ yeah no worries - I just believe your opinion might be quite different after catching up on the whole story - particularly the 2 aftermath chapters, as that covers a lot of why Jace/Vraska are here at all. Of course, you might still dislike where the overall story is at - but we won’t know that until you’re up to date.

I think hating on the story without knowing the story isn’t productive. And it makes it hard for anyone to discuss the nuances of what’s happening and what’s good/bad.

I would suggest finishing the story, as well as the 2 “aftermath” chapters from the set, and see if that changes your view.

At the moment you’re getting annoyed about something without having a full understanding of what’s currently going on.

DemonDragonJ some cards will always inevitably be overpowered. I don’t think it’s entirely responsible to assume a new card is too-strong until it’s had time being played in a meta - if it becomes format warping then there becomes reason to question its validity in a format.

I think magic players generally are too keen to “cry witch” with new cards before they’ve been given any time to be evaluated and played in the meta.

DemonDragonJ the game is super old, and has a lot of baggage. Not all of it makes sense or has any reason to exist. I’m sure if the game were recreated today with all of Worc’s learnings, there would be a ton of rules and nuances they’d just straight-up ditch.

legendofa, just to follow-up on the legendary-power discussion from earlier, today somebody asked the following on Blogatog: “Are there different parameters for creating a Legendary Creature? (Are they allowed to have more powerful effects or higher stats than a similarly costed non legendary?)”

Marks response: “Mostly, no.”

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