I haven’t made a post about deck building in what seems like forever so lets dive into a topic about an ability on some of the more awkard yet powerful cards in the Commander format; Suspend.
So, some of the suspend cards from Time Spiral were callbacks to some of the most powerful cards ever printed in the early days of Magic, but they came at the drawback of requiring you to wait for them as they had no Mana Cost. Black Lotus, Ancestral Recall, Balance, these cards are all banned in Commander and with good reason, and even Wheel of Fortune despite being not banned is one of the more powerful cards that is legal. Waiting is a big drawback though. As the power level of decks goes up the amount of turns you have to make relevant plays goes down, and you can very easily just lose while still waiting on a card. This isn’t even a cEDH consideration, a well tuned deck can put down heavy pressure that must be answered pretty quick. The other big drawback is just how inconsistent these cards are in a 99/98 card deck that is singleton. If you could guarantee a Black Lotus would drop down on your 3rd turn every game then these cards would be cEDH staples. Not only do you have to wait for the effect, but you also need to find them quickly or you could be waiting on them when the game has already developed pretty far and they have become a lot weaker. Are the most broken cards ever printed worth so many drawbacks? Well, a lot of the time the answer is no, but not always.
I will only really be discussing Lotus Bloom, Ancestral Vision, Mox Tantalite, and Wheel of Fate. Hypergenesis and Living End have their merits, but are not well suited to Commander, and Restore Balance is very niche in its uses.
Playing them Fair:
So when is the benefit worth the drawback? Many times that comes down to what other options are available or a lack thereof. Despite the cards being pretty slow, they still do occasionaly see cEDH play in decks like Godo, Bandit Warlord, and Daretti, Scrap Savant, and I once saw Teshar, Ancestor’s Apostle running a single Lotus Bloom. These are not top tier decks, but they can hold their own in certain pods. Two Commanders are noteably mono-red and the other is mono-white, which means their options are very limited. Daretti and teshar have some ways to synnergize with Lotus Bloom, but Godo does not, so when that deck chooses to play this card it is solely weighing the reward and cost and finding that it is worth it. Red does not have an abundance of card draw and mana ramp available, neither does white, so these mono-color decks may have some benefit from a rare effect for their decks.
Thats the cap of cEDH (at least not top tier cEDH anyway), the cards are more playable as the power level goes down. When the game lasts longer the odds of these cards coming out of exile is better, not amazing, but much better. Only a few archetypes can really make the best use of them though. This mainly comes down to resilient combo decks, more midrage value decks, and decks that can make really big swings with some powerful help. Mox Tantalite is weak even in these decks, as a Jeweled Amulet can often provide more effective ramp with a downside that is a bit easier to work with even if it is not perfect. 3 Mana from nowhere out of a Lotus Bloom however can really power out a big turn, or 3 extra cards or a full hand refill if planned around can allow a deck to freely spend resources knowing that as long as they keep things under control then they will be rewarded later. Ancestral Visions has a bit of competition though as Blue has an abundance of card draw so even with the low mana investment a faster card can be more useful. Wheel of Fate provides card draw to decks that don’t have as many options though, and so a Red deck with White or even Black and extra benefits from a full grave can be well worth the wait.
The other time these cards may be worth it is due to budget. Lion’s Eye Diamond while it also has a hefty drawback is much more reliable than Lotus Bloom, but one of those cards costs over 10 times the other. Wheel of Fortune is pricey as well, as are most of the legal Moxen in regards to Tantalite. Its not optimal to have a worse card in your deck, but sometimes that’s what you have access to. If you have a budget and so does your playgroup then the power level could be lower and these cards can have a chance to really shine.
Playing them Unfair
How do you make these cards better? By circumventing the drawback. These cards are pretty interesting in that they are pretty easy to abuse. they cannot be directly cast, but any effect that allows you to cast them including an alternative cost or so allows them to be played right away. A card like Dreadhorde Arcanist can cast the sorceries for no mana when it attacks, and a much more popular Commander card Bolas’s Citadel can cast them without a life cost making them even better than the card they were mimicing in some cases. The artifacts in particular are easy to abuse because there are many effects that put them right into play. Reshape and transmute Artifact can trade a used up artifact for a Lotus Bloom and net mana. Without casting them and milling or discarding them will allow cards liek Scrap Mastery to put them into play to power a big often game ending turn, and so on.
One of the more popular way fo using these cards in both Commander and Modern is Cascade. Noteably Yidris, Maelstrom Weilder and The First Sliver are commanders that work very well with these cards (Maelstrom Wanderer would rather hit things much bigger so it doesn’t benefit). Yidris can give every card you cast from your hand Cascade, and whenever you cast a 1 cmc spell it can reward you with one of these very powerful cards. The First Sliver on the other hand grants all your slivers Cascade, and so if your deck is mostly Slivers you can cascade chain all the way down to a 1 drop Sliver that will then reward you with one of these cards. Even Mox Tantalite becomes better than a Diamond, Chrome Mox, or even an Opal if you lack Metalcraft in these kinds of decks. Its is not the most popular of strategies, and The First Sliver is better for Food Chain than Sliver tribal, but it still demonstrates that these cards do have homes in Commander where they shine.
So try them out if your deck is the right fit for them, or if your playgroup just is at a power level where they don’t feel dead. They are swingey, but just like the power of a turn 1 Sol Ring including more high potential cards in your deck can grant you more explosive starts. Just don’t overload on them as they do fall of later.
The enchanted dimension of Fairies has existed side by side with our human one for thousands of years. Many modern witches have softened their gazes to work with the Fae. To enter the world of Fairy magic is a remembering indeed, for we must look back into ancestral vision, childhood dreams, and the deep sub-conscious aspects of self that intuitively comprehend the existence of other realms. We must remember to stop, to listen, to think, to perceive, to dream, and to learn. So much enchantment awaits the open mind and heart! Borrowed from: www.wiccanspells.info/wiccan-pagan-articles/fairy-magic/
Available in my etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/TheEnchantedWren
Fairy Grimoire Book of Shadows
Fairy Door Grimoire Book of Shadows
I don't get why you can cast Ancestral Vision with As Foretold but you can't play it with Snap Caster form your graveyard.
Ancestral Vision has no mana cost. A null mana cost like this is unpayable.
Snapcaster Mage gives the card it targets a flashback cost that’s the same as its mana cost. So it would give Ancestral Vision a null (and thus unpayable) flashback cost.
As Foretold allows you to pay 0 instead of Ancestral Vision’s unpayable cost, thus making it able to be cast.
Sometimes, a card is spoiled and I can’t help but be excited. Normally, I care most about commons, particularly removal spells, because they’re the lifeblood of Limited. However, sometimes a card comes along that just makes me brew up a new 60 card deck. The last time I was this excited about a card was for [casthaven]Bedlam Reveler[/casthaven]. You may sense a theme: I really, really like…
Ancestral Recall. Wizards has actually done a good job of printing plenty of fixed versions of this card, whether it be with suspend or raising the mana cost to 4+. So I wanted to keep the mana cost at one blue. Tried to keep it as an instant but ended up with a wall of text :\
