#extus

[xantchaslegacy]

[ask-red-and-solomon]

Hey Not Monsters, can you guys still turn into the Chimera or no?

* Unfortunately... Solomon got rid of the head's remains once he was sure the Not-Monsters were gone.

The short answer? No, and it's all Sol's fault.

He didn't think they'd come back from the dead!

[niuttuc]

Extus, Oriq Overlord/Awaken the Blood Avatar, focusing on the back half, aggro aristocrats kinda

Alright, let me recalibrate my brain from my Extus deck that focuses on the front side. The issue I typically have with the deck is TOO MANY good options, not not enough, so be prepared for that.

So, since your deck is focused on AWAKENING THE BLOOD AVATAR, you have the liberty of focusing mainly on creatures, which seems like a positive in today's environment of pushed creatures and with some potent death payoffs for nontoken creatures... Which I will only reinforce.

Can I have another death trigger please? These cards do great work in both keeping your creatures alive, and getting more triggers out of them, and are terrifying in combination with a sac outlet. Breathkeeper Seraph is likely the worst of the lot with her hefty mana cost, but she can keep bringing things back indefinitely, protects herself too, and you can do shenanigans with her by keeping pairing her with new creatures, saccing them, and repeating the process on your upkeep as they come back one by one and the Seraph can keep pairing them for half a second before they're sacced again. Plus, all of these can be gotten for around $2-$3 each, which is a refreshing thing after Broodmoth was $10 or above for years before its recent reprint.

What if you got more creatures per creature? Pawn of Ulamog is a common inclusion in aristocrats decks, but red opens up a couple more options in the three-drop slot to do that job, and they're both quite decent.

I wouldn't count these as sac outlets as they cost mana (and Stormclaw is sorcery speed), but card draw out of a sac for a single mana is quite potent, and worth taking a look at. Stormclaw Rager is more reliable for the effect, but Gas Guzzler is lower on the curve and isn't terrible as a thing to sac either if you can't get the speed going.

You mentioned also being relatively aggressive aristocrats. Well, this new piece from the Aetherdrift zombie deck is excellent at turning all your fodder tokens into threats very quickly. Since it triggers on each end step, you can keep doing your shenanigans as normal, and then on the end step before your turn, with the trigger on the stack, sac whatever three or so creatures you don't need and get a permanent overrun, immediately untap and swing.

It's a black deck that does anything remotely related to the graveyard, so I'm obligated to mention Chthonian Nightmare. The card is still incredibly good and versatile and fun and I bring it up every time, sorry, not sorry.

Body Launderer and Vat of Rebirth are a bit more clunky to use. Launderer has a nice floor as a two-for-one body, a creature that you can sac to get back another creature. And then the random conniving will do work, even if it only works with nontokens. Vat of Rebirth is usually fairly easy to keep fueled, though the three mana to use it at sorcery speed can be hard to muster in some cases.

A couple of just Fun removal options. Are they optimal? Definitely not. But people don't expect their commander to be permanently stolen by the Mardu deck with Ritual of the Machine, and there are so many ETB creatures to take advantage of with Come Back Wrong these days, and even get a death trigger out of the deal.

Flares are just very good, doubly so in a deck that WANTS to sac creatures, triply so for the red flare when it can duplicate your commander for free. The black one is only very good most of the time and can be used in response to removal for a blowout.

Sun Titan is one of the most fun cards in commander, and Guardian Scalelord has become my favorite white card in the format since as a cheaper and flying sun titan. Redemption choir is also alright if you have a variety of creatures and tokens to enable it, but an aristocrats deck should have no trouble there.

If you have the budget, Seasoned Pyromancer is just a lot of bodies and value and filtering all in one immediate package. Not much more to say here, it's a Good Card.

[incorrect-mtg]

Extus: Be careful when dealing with the Witherbloom students. You can never be sure what new living horror they cooked up in their swamp.

Lukka: Oh, so they study triology or something?

Extus:

Lukka:

Extus: I think you mean biology...?

Lukka: I most certainly don't.

[magicjudge]

If I cast Awaken the Blood Avatar from a place that is not my hand, sacrificing Poxwalker as one of the creatures for its additional casting cost, does the Poxwalker immediately go back to the battlefield when Awaken is cast as it died in the process of paying the cost which is before the spell is considered cast?

Yes, this works.

A spell isn't considered to be cast until the whole casting process is complete. The casting process includes paying the costs of the spell, which can include sacrificing creatures in the case of Awaken the Blood Avatar. Therefore, a Poxwalkers sacrificed to reduce the cost of the spell will have its return ability trigger as long as AtBA was cast from somewhere other than your hand.

[niuttuc]

You gave me such good recommendations for Myra that I was wondering if you might have some insight for me? You see I'm looking to build an adventures commander deck! While I'm looking for overall recommendations for an adventure deck, I'm actually looking for some other kind of input... As I don't know if I want to build Gorion, Wise Mentor or Beluna Grandsquall?

Can't speak of these two, my Adventures deck has been led by Extus for a couple years now!

Generally speaking, white and green will have the most good adventure cards so far, which would lead you towards Gorion. However, it's important to note that the cost reduction from Beluna I'd value more than the copy from Gorion. Copying the spells is powerful, but the main issue that arises when playing adventures is that the cards are bad and inefficient on both sides.

While Gorion remedies the problem by making the spell half better, Beluna remedies it by making the permanent half cheaper, and as such less inefficient. This leads you to wanting to play both halves of the card to get your value, and as such actually do the thing Adventures promise. Both of them are worthy payoffs, Gorion just lopsides the deal on spells' side.

Something really neat with adventures is that you can interact with them like creatures, which makes them easy to get back to hand from the battlefield or the graveyard, to be able to reuse the spell. You can't do that if you cast the spell half and then it sticks forever in exile because the creature is just bad to cast.

So, personally I'd lean towards Beluna out of these two, but if you want an experience more focused on the spellslinging half, Gorion is a fine choice.

[xantchaslegacy]

Food so good you’ll attack a school

From MtGJP Twitter

[theyuanman]

''I left the stage, and was shown what was probably the strangest quirk relating to the "Solomon" monster. Every time you complete a stage or defeat a boss with Solomon, this screen appears. I have no idea what "STILL THE BEST 1973" means. Neither the date nor the phrase has any meaning or significance to me that I can think of, and I've spent a lot of time thinking about it.'' - Ngc chapter 6