Pillow Talk MtG 11: A Little LDXP, A Little Spoilers

Welcome to Pillow Talk, the official competitive Magic the Gathering podcast of Team Pillow Fort! This week, Austin and guest Michael recap the Laughing Dragon LDXP modern event, and then take a swing at some early spoilers and how they might fit into the meta. Thank you as always for listening!

Team Pillow Fort's Twitter: https://x.com/TPillowFortMTG 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Welcome to Pillow Talk, the official podcast for Team Pillow4 MTG. I'm your host, Austin Walker, and today we're joined by special guest Michael, also known as the underscore control freak, on both Twitch and YouTube. Definitely check out his content. He had recorded a little bit in the beginning that got cut off, so he is going to skip his intro. I'm gonna give us that intro here, and then he'll join us in just a moment. Jonathan uh was a little busy playing the challenge earlier today. Uh he top aided, was doing pretty well. Uh you and I actually both played in that challenge, and funny story, uh out of how many people? 103, 108, something like that. We actually ended up getting paired up round one. Me and Michael did, so uh that was funny. Um but uh Michael is one of the members of Team Pillow Fort, and so he's just joining me today, uh talking a little bit about modern, talking a little bit about LDXP, the big event up in the Northwest, and um then we'll talk a little bit about spoilers. So uh Michael, what did you play today in the challenge? How did that go?

SPEAKER_02 1:23

Yeah, so I played uh my on-brand Esper Frog, so a little bit of fair Esper mid-range with Psychic Frog, Kaito, Bane of Nightmares, Quantum Riddler, a lot of the control tempo-y style cards that we've come to know and love in modern. Ended up four and three, could have been a little bit better, had a 4-1 start, was feeling really good, and kind of had some uh some subpar decision making against yeah, against Gorios in round six, and then just got steamrolled by the Simic Ritual deck in round seven, like not even close.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

I played a Jeskai control deck that I had not piloted before, and the deck seemed pretty good. Uh I I feel like we had a pretty close match round one, and then uh I don't even remember what I played against round. Oh no, I played against the four-color omnath control deck that was also doing the same type of orum's chant thing that I was, um, and my opponent just got to orm's chant me harder. And then uh the third round, I was I was way ahead, but I was behind on the clock against uh blue-white energy, and I just I just couldn't ever could never find a way to close out the game. Game one, I think I had like six minutes left on the clock, and my opponent had like seven and a half, and they were at over 70 life, so I said, yeah, I'm just gonna I'm just gonna pack this in.

SPEAKER_02 2:44

So like for for me, I never really play any of the hard, like all in control variants. What would you say is like the big draw to it? What's your your control reason for waking up in the morning?

SPEAKER_01 2:58

Yeah, so uh this isn't something that I typically play a lot either, but I was looking at some of the win rate uh win rate matrixes, and it looked like this deck had a really strong matchup into both Boros Energy and Titan. And, you know, with with all the Boros Energy and Titan running around, I figured that was a pretty good place to be, so so I decided to give it a shot. But I think it just leads me back to wanting to be on decks that have a strong proactive game plan with um you know resilient plan B, C, all of that.

SPEAKER_02 3:32

That does make a lot of sense. Like, I'm always the jam my head against a wall kind of person. Like I'm gonna make my deck work regardless. So when I hear about other people, you know, using this fancy actual data stuff and making informed decisions, like, ah, that's that's nonsense. That's for the birds.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

Yeah, inf informed decisions are not for control players.

SPEAKER_02 3:55

Exactly. Like my entire being is jamming psychic frog. And if I have a chance to do that, I'm going to do that.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

And you had a chance to do it.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

I did. And for four out of seven rounds, I absolutely did. It's just there's other three that we need to work on a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

Right. Right. Um, so let's talk about LDXP. So for those who don't know, it's a big event up in Washington. It's a Laughing Dragon event. And uh, so we had a big tournament. Uh, not sure how many people we had this um uh I it looks like I'm looking at the at the data now, and it looks like we had 211 players. So it was a two-day event. The 10k was a two-day event, and then after day one, if you didn't qualify for day two, there was also a 5k. So we'll talk a little bit about both of those. Um but yeah, so it looks like right now, um looking at this this uh archetype breakdown, Boros Energy was the top deck, which I think comes as no surprise to anybody. Me and Jonathan talked a little bit about it last week when we were talking just about the general modern metagame, and we were saying that you know Boros is kind of on top. Um do you have any thoughts as to why Boros is just always like the number one played deck right now and and why you just see so much of it? I mean, it it seems it seems weird that like we have a deck that's always like 15% plus of the metagame, right?

SPEAKER_02 5:16

No, I agree completely. Like, I think Boros is I've got obviously several thoughts on it because I've bashed my head into the deck over and over again. But I feel like Boros is so popular because the floor of the deck is so incredibly high where you can just sequence however you feel like it, you can hit multiple copies of anything, and they don't conflict with each other, and you're happy to see them, and it's just so difficult for the deck to stumble in a meaningful way. So you just have so few games where you actually hurt yourself or take yourself out of the running, and all you really have to do is worry about how do I stop my opponent if they're doing something so absurdly broken. But most of the time in modern they're just not, right? Like you've got all these blink decks going around and affinity and decks that are really cool, but they're not killing you on turn two. So Boros has a field day just getting to do its game plan, make you stop it, but it's so efficient, so consistent, it's so difficult to stop it with any sort of consistency.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

Yeah, absolutely. Uh, I will say though, it doesn't look like there were any copies in the top eight of the 10k, uh, which is a little surprising. There was one copy in the top 16, uh, but nothing, nothing in the top eight.

SPEAKER_02 6:39

Yeah, I did notice that I I feel like Boris is really, really good for getting to top eight, and it's shown a little bit of a weakness at converting top eights, just because once you get to that point, everybody obviously has a game plan for Boris coming into the event because you know it's got such a target on its back. And once you get into those top eight rounds where people are playing decks that not only are prepared for you, but a lot of times have very good game plans in general, it becomes a little sketchier, but yeah, there was, I think, like a top nine player, so right at the cusp of top eight.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

Yeah, so it looks like our top eight was uh Titan, Affinity, Esper Blink, Simic Ritual, uh, Demir Frog player, uh, Ruby Storm, Living End, and another affinity player. So two affinity players in top eight, but other than that, like very diverse uh top eight. Um what what are your what are your thoughts? Like what do you make of such a diverse top eight out of uh out of a 211 player event?

SPEAKER_02 7:49

I mean, I love to see it because I want Modern to be a healthy space, and when the format is pretty diverse and you can't like spend all of your resources fighting over one or two archetypes, I think that's a pretty good place to be in. Um I do like that there's a reasonable amount of interaction in top eight. We've got like Living End has got some good counter magic to it. The affinity decks are pretty good at fighting over the board. Uh, we did have the Demir mid-range player, shout out to them for bringing frogs into the glory. Um, so I think it was pretty good. Like, we've got some combo elements, some control elements. Um, surprisingly, not a ton of aggro elements, unless I don't know if you consider the affinity deck to really be agro slanted, but it can have those draws, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Yeah, it's it's so weird. Affinity is one of those decks that like you can call it a combo deck, you can call it an aggro deck, but it's it's really just kind of a hybrid between the two, you know, like it has elements of both.

SPEAKER_02 8:52

Um I I agree there completely. Like, it definitely has draws that can slant either direction, and it does a fairly good job of being able to adapt its plan to whatever hate it expects to see. Um I I think that the top eight was really promising. I was surprised to see that there were what seven different archetypes, and then once you go farther down and include like nine, ten, there's two more right there, another different one at twelve, another different one at thirteen.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

Like, yeah, that's kind of crazy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we I mean in the in the top 16, we've got Boros Energy, we've got Is It Prowess, uh, another Titan, uh, Golgari Yoggmoth. Surprised to see that back. Haven't seen that in a minute. Um, and then we've got Jeskai Blink, another Titan, uh, another Ruby Storm, and then Is It Metalcraft, which is the deck that Jonathan played today. Um, and that's that's a really cool deck. I I think you got to see a little bit of that in action. Do you want to talk a little bit about like what the Is It Metalcraft deck is trying to do?

SPEAKER_02 9:58

Oh, absolutely. I think this deck is super sweet. So the affinity lists, as I'm sure people out there in TV land know, uh really utilizing cards like Pinnacle, Emissary, Weapons Manufacturing to overload the board with little uh artifact tokens to power out Kappa, Canadier, and Krang. But this uh blue-red Cory Steel list is using Mox Opal, Mox Amber, like Tameo and Emery to get ahead on mana, start double spelling really early with Cory Steel Cutter and using up a lot of its resources, but then being able to refill your hand with Quantum Riddler. And now that you've got all these mox opals, moxambers in the on the battlefield, you can very easily warp out an early Riddler, draw two, and then just hard cast your Riddler like two turns later on turn three or so. Uh so it's really, really good at dumping its hand, double spelling early, and getting some insane value off of like Tameo rebys and flame of a nores, and a little bit, in my opinion, better removal like Unholy Heat. So it's a lot more fair of a game plan, but it does a really, really good job of playing out to the battlefield early and having some super explosive draws with Urza Saga just like the normal affinity lists do.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

Yeah, uh looking at the shell, it looks a lot like the breach deck uh that was banned, except instead of breach, your one and a red spell is Corey Steel Cutter. Uh so very obviously very different game plan, you know. You're you're not really trying to combo, um uh like so so to speak, not not combo like the breach deck was, uh, but you you are I I mean you you do have some combo elements, but like I said, the the shell is is almost identical. You've got your four Tameo, your four Emery, um your your Urza Saga package with your Haywire Might, your spell bomb, uh Tormod's Crypt in the main, your removal is unholy heat, and you've got Flame of Inores, Strixerenade uh was was in both, and then really, I mean, instead of the four underworld breach and the three uh grinding stations, you've got four Cory Steel Cutters and three quantum riddlers, and it looks like that's really that's really kind of the the biggest difference.

SPEAKER_02 12:13

Yeah, it would be pretty fair to just call the deck like breechless breach, because everything else outside of not having um malevolent rumble and grinding station, everything else about the deck is almost card for card what was running rampant through the format a year ago. Uh so it's cool that that shell has still remained around and just picked up the Quantum Riddlers sort of like a fair backup plan instead of the combo plan that Breach had. Uh and then getting to see Jonathan run it through the challenge today was super nice because the deck has got so much game into just about every matchup. I watched him out-counter a belcher player uh in one of his rounds, just fighting like three, four spells on the stack. I saw some great games against some aggressively slanted combo decks like Neoform. Um yeah, I was really, really impressed with that deck.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

Yeah, um, so so looking looking at the rest of our archetype breakdown, uh, after we've got Boris Energy at 16%, we've got Jess Guy Blink at 10%, which again we talked about last week, Amulet Titan at 9%, we talked about, Affinity at 8%, we talked about, Eldrazi Tron at 6% we talked about. A lot of these decks are are really just kind of consistently toward the top of the meta, of course. Ruby Storm at 5, Is It Prowess at 4. Uh, one of the differences that in in a deck that we didn't talk about a lot last week was Neoform at 4%. Now I've seen Neoform a lot in uh like on MTGO and online, but I really don't see a whole lot of Neoform in paper. Are you surprised to see Neoform at 4%?

SPEAKER_02 13:56

I I really am. I feel like Neoform ever since the card Neoform got printed has been a 0.003% of the meta deck. Like you hear about it kind of in whisperings and back alleys from time to time, but you never actually see people register it at events. Uh online, a little bit different because you don't get to see people ahead of time. Like in paper, you see the people around you over the course of a tournament. So there's a little bit less of a surprise when you run into a neoform player like late in the event, where online every round might be completely in the blind. So especially if you've never played neoform in an event before, the likelihood of somebody tying you to it is pretty low. But to see it do well in paper or whether it did well or not, to see it registered at 4% in paper is really, really surprising. Because I feel like it's the kind of deck that people don't just pick up on a whim and play on a a weekend. Like they gotta have some reps on it, and to hear 4% of the room had reps on it, I'm pretty shocked.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

Yeah, yeah. I was I was shocked too. Uh, like I said, I I see that deck from time to time on Magic Online. I don't know that I've ever played against it in paper. Um, but I don't know, maybe maybe there's some strong neoform gamers up in the Northwest.

SPEAKER_02 15:27

Right, like I've I've maybe played against it once in paper, if I'm honest. If you absolutely held a gun to my head, maybe I could come up with a second time, but I I don't think I could.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

Right. Now, taking a look at the 5k, which was the the uh event on the second day, uh a lot of the lists and uh archetype breakdown look pretty similar, with the exception that Boros Energy goes from 16% to 22%, which tells me that there was not a lot of Boros Energy converting to day two. Um but interestingly, when I look at the top eight of the 5k, we've got half of it as Boros Energy. So we've got first, second, and then it looks like seventh, eighth, uh somewhere around there, are all Boros Energy. Um so we go from zero in the top eight to four, half of the top eight, and then another three after that in top sixteen.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

Yeah, that's it's really surprising to see that much Boros uh in the side event day two, or I say the side event, still a very good competitive event, but to hear about that much uh on the second day, just because you typically expect a deck that underperformed day one, I don't even know if you can call it underperformed, didn't didn't convert into top eight, but surely there were a decent number of players in in day two. Uh but to not convert as well as it would have hoped day two, I would expect more people to kind of drop off of it and play something else going into the side events. Um but apparently that wasn't the case. Yeah, yeah. I showed up regardless.

SPEAKER_01 17:13

Yeah. Um, and you know, like I said, looking at the rest of the the breakdown, a lot of it's the same amulet titan at 10%, affinity at 8%, Is It Prowess at 6, Jess Guy Blink at 6, uh Domain, Esper Reanimator, Esper Blink, and then Neoform still at 4%. Uh had a handful of belcher players. Um, so again, all decks that we you know we've already talked about on the podcast, and and you know, people are I'm sure familiar with, really, the the meta isn't changing. Uh, even even with it being so diverse, it's not it's not really changing very quickly. You still see a lot of these same decks that you've been seeing for the last six months to a year. Um But one of the things that I wanted to talk about is looking at the number of most played cards in the room for both days. Do you want to take a guess at what number one is? I don't know if you've already looked at this, but do you want to take a guess at what the most played card was for both days?

SPEAKER_02 18:07

Uh I haven't looked at it, so let's see if I can put my modern chops to the test. I'm gonna take a guess and say I'll give you a hint and tell you it's not a land. Alright, well that that narrows down my guesses, thankfully. Um I'm gonna say Blage.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

It is not Flagge. Uh day one, Flagge was in eighth, and day two uh it doesn't uh no, it's in ninth. Um so still in the top ten. Uh and and you would expect that, right? With with so much Boris Energy, I mean 22% Boris Energy. Uh, but the number one played card both days is consigned to memory.

SPEAKER_02 18:46

That makes sense. I know there've been spurts where consigned to memory was the most played card on Magic Online on uh the like MTG Goldfish breakdown, but paper usually a lot more like amulet titans, stuff like that. It would expect less of it. But that's that's pretty interesting, you despite the amount of boros and amulet and non-blue decks running around.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Yeah. So let's I mean, let's take just uh a few minutes and talk about consigned to memory. I mean, when when it's the most played uh card in the room across two different events and two different days, like obviously that that demands some questions, right? So is that a problem? Is there anything that we can do about it? Um my initial thought is that like consigned to memory is just such a flexible card. It's both proactive and reactive. You see it in the Jess Guy Blink deck as a way to um to like counter the the triggers from Thelia to be able to uh you know get something exiled forever. You see it as a way to counter, like, you know, these random triggers from uh ley line binding and and um the scion of Draco out of out of the uh zoo lists, and you you also see it obviously as a way to hate up the Eldrazi decks. So, you know, I I I don't know if there's any way to really combat this like surge of consigned to memories, you know. It almost feels like if if consigned to memory is the number one played card, then you almost are kind of locked into playing either Boros or Blue, right? I mean that's that's kind of the the takeaway that I get from it, but I don't know, maybe maybe there are some other thoughts.

SPEAKER_02 20:32

No, I I think you hit a lot of the big points on the head. I was kind of uh thumbing through some of the results from the main event, and so far I'm down to the 106th deck list, and there have been two copies of Eldrazi in the top 106. So people are playing Consign in their sideboard, Eldrazi's not doing well, and they're still playing four copies, three or four copies of consigned in their sideboard, regardless, even though there's like no other matchups outside maybe Amulet Titan or Belcher that you really want to bring it in for. But it's the proactive consigned to memories that I think are doing so much work right now. Like we've seen Casey Jones get added to the Jet Sky Blink decks. So now you've got Quantum Riddlers and Casey Jones and uh uh flages that you can consign triggers of, you can replicate them to make sure that your your consign is going to resolve, and that just blows so many people out of the water because how many good answers are there for a four six flyer that draws a card on turn three or Casey Jones on turn three drawing three and then having the trigger consigned on turn four? Like they're just such good value plays and consigned. Memory is just the backbone of those things occurring in the format.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

So it is there anything that we can do about that? I mean, it seems like if we got rid of Consign, then the Eldrazi decks would just be so, so strong. Is there is there anything that we can do to like keep that in check, or is this just a desirable state of Modern? Or do you think that kind of we've just opened Pandora's box and and we just have to live with whatever Modern is right now?

SPEAKER_02 22:26

I think that if consigned to memory were to be dropped from the format, Eldrazi would be incredibly dominant. Like I think that the only reason that Eldrazi is not as popular as it could be is literally because people are packing for consign, whether they want to or not. Um, I do think that if you cut something like Ephemerate out of the format, consign naturally gets a little weaker because you don't have the critical mass ways of efficiently blinking some of these creatures or efficiently consigning triggers to keep them around, and a lot of the ETB triggers get a bit worse. But if you're not gonna like ban something like Ephemerate and you don't want Eldrazi running the format, then I think people just playing four copies of a reactive what we would want to think is a reactive card is probably the best outcome. Uh at the end of the day, if people want to consign their flage ETB trigger to keep it around, that's good, but it's not back breaking, it's not format warping. Uh, so I would rather have consigned be the most played card than something else like shutter to say Coligan's command or uh Kozlek's command, that one, the worst K command. Right. Um I'd rather have Consign be playable than everybody just running four copies of Kozelex command. But I do think that if you want to power down consign, it would take some amount of the ETB trigger stress out of the form, or you would have to remove some amount of the ETB trigger stress out of the format, just having so many things that are so good at producing value on the battlefield, or being having their drawbacks taken away by consigned to memory.

SPEAKER_01 24:21

Yeah, yeah, that all makes sense. Uh looking at the rest of the top played cards, number two across both events, uh Wrath of the Skies, which makes a lot of sense. It's very good against Boros, obviously, but it's also played by Boros, which is notable. Um, and so so it's a good way of keeping affinity in check. Um, all of the the really cheap artifact decks uh just really struggle to beat uh a timely Wrath of the Skies. So seeing that as number two doesn't surprise me at all. Uh we've got a lot of lands here, uh, and then of course Fage and then Force of Negation uh in one, Blood Moon in the other. Um, you know, so so we we've we've got a little bit of diversity there, but but yeah, obviously a lot of the lands are gonna be, you know, in the top ten just because they're so flexible. The the fetch lands, you know, just go in so many decks. Uh I I will say though, it is it is surprising not seeing like Arid Mesa or something, you know, as number one where it's seen as a four of in Boros Energy and and it's it's played in all the Jess guy decks, and uh Domain I think plays uh Arid Mesa. So it's just I I don't know. I I would have I would have guessed that there would have been a lot more lands toward the number one and two and three slots, but I'm sure a lot of that comes down to decks like Belcher that are running three, four copies of consigned to memory, but no copies of Arid Mesa.

SPEAKER_02 25:43

Uh or like prowess players playing uh wooded foothills and maybe Bloodstained Meyer instead of Ared Mesa, just places where they kind of flex away from Aaron Mesa specifically, or uh Steam Dent specifically or something like that. So it's probably they could be up there if people happen to register those lands for the weekend, but I wouldn't take too much away from them not being there. I think they very easily could be, and just happens to be that people wanted to register consigned to memory more, I guess.

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SPEAKER_01 27:12

That's GameNight in Columbia, Tennessee, where the community actually shows up. Well, let's move on a little bit from the tournaments in the Northwest and talk a little bit about spoilers. Now we don't have the full spoiler list from Strixhaven yet, but I do want to talk a little bit about uh some of the cards that we've gotten so far. We had our big preview that started this week, and so uh we've we've got a lot of good toys to play with now. Um I want to talk first about the charms. What are your thoughts on the new charms? We we've got uh a full cycle, or I shouldn't say full cycle, we've got uh five of the all of the enemy color charms at two mana. Um each of them has three modes, just like you know, the the Ravnica charms. Uh, any thoughts on standouts from those?

SPEAKER_02 27:58

Oh man, so spoiler alert, the charms in general, not just this set, but over Magic's history, any modal spells are some of my favorite in all of magic. I love a good modal spell like nobody's business. But why does the Witherbloom charm have gain five light as a quote playable mode in 2026?

SPEAKER_01 28:27

I know.

SPEAKER_02 28:27

Why is that on a magic card?

SPEAKER_01 28:30

Man, I was I was looking at these charms and like all of them have like you know two pretty good modes and then one like maybe okay situationally, and I get to Witherbloom and I'm like, you know, sacrifice a permanent to draw two? That's a that's an effect that we've seen a lot of. That looks great. Destroy target non-lay and permanent with mana value two or less. That seems really good at two mana, and then game five life, like that was a front runner for like the best charm out of the cycle until you read gain five life as one of the modes. You just pushed it off a cliff.

SPEAKER_02 29:00

That thing tanked immediately. Um, out of the charm cycle, I think that Prismari uh charm, the blue-red one is pretty cool. Like surveil to draw a card, instant speed is kind of nice. Um the middle mode, the deal one damage to each of up to one or two targets. I don't know why they didn't format that to deal one damage to two targets or one damage uh divided how you want in up to two targets. Like I feel the blue-red instant speed two drop should be able to do two damage to one creature, yeah. But I don't think that it can the way it's formatted. Uh, so that really bugs me.

SPEAKER_01 29:47

Yeah, that's that's notable. Um, because you know, Badger Mole Cub is is still a real card. Uh, we're still seeing Badger Moles in standard. Uh, you know, hard to say what the format's gonna look like after Strixhaven, but I really don't think that Badromole is going anywhere. And the fact that the the Prismari Charm cannot kill a Badramole, I think, is very relevant.

SPEAKER_02 30:06

Uh, it can kill two elves, but Yeah, and it can't kill like a Gran Grand.

SPEAKER_01 30:10

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:11

That's a big deal.

SPEAKER_01 30:12

That is a big deal. Um, I think the surveil two and draw card is definitely the glue that holds the Prismari Charm together. Um bouncing an online permanent is good, as we've seen, obviously, from Into the Flood Maw. Uh, that's been, you know, a highly playable card for a very long time, but I think at two mana it's definitely a little weak.

SPEAKER_02 30:32

Yeah, I was gonna say we have like four playable bounce effects in standard right now with bounce off, boomerang basics, into the flood mall. Unsummon is in foundations. I just found that like a week ago. So we just have like these good instant speed bounce effects or boomerang basics to just get insane value with Storm Chaser's talent. So printing that same effect nerfed down on a two-drop seems a little awkward, yeah. And probably not enough of a reason to play the card.

SPEAKER_01 31:07

Yeah, it's also kind of awkward that like all of these other cards are also able to return the Earthbent Land from the Badramol Cub, but this one is not. Um, so Boomerang Basics is the only other one that cannot bounce an Earthbent land. Um, so you know, for that reason, we we've seen some into the flood maws, even with Boomerang Basics being so strong. Um, but but yeah, this not being able to hit that is is pretty pretty rough. So, you know, the the Prismari charm, it just feels like they they did not want to give Blue Red any more tools to beat up on the green decks or the cub decks or whatever. Um, you know, which I I mean traditionally has has been a little bit of a struggle. I think recently the new um iterations of the Is It Prowess decks are much better into the cub decks than they were previously. Um, but yeah, I I guess I don't know. They they really really didn't want you to be able to kill a cub or an earth pen land.

SPEAKER_02 32:07

Right. And once you get past prismary prismari charm and wither bloom charm, like the rest of the cycle feels pretty awkward. Silver quill charm, putting two one-one counters on a creature's whatever, uh exiling a small creature is cool, but then you have the same problem as Witherbloom Charm, where you just strap on this drain three life at the end that doesn't really mean much of anything. Or you got Quandrix Charm, like counter a spell unless they pay two. All right, that's pretty cool. Destroy an enchantment might be relevant, but you're already in green, so you probably have some better disenchant effects, and then target creature becomes base power and toughness five five until the end of the turn. Like, just just give me three playable modes. I promise it's not too difficult. I won't abuse it. Just let me have this one.

SPEAKER_01 32:59

Yep. Uh lore hold charm uh could be interesting. Um if there is a good tokens deck, I think that that would be really cool. Um having an opponent sacrifice a uh like uh uh monument in out of the lessons deck would be would be great, but also just being able to get back, you know, one of your two drops um like a voice of victory. Getting back a voice of victory in the end step of your opponent's turn is always really great. Uh, and then you know, if if you're on some type of token strategy, being able to just pump your team by one, give them trample, uh, is is pretty nice.

SPEAKER_02 33:32

So yeah, what's that uh what's that three mana enchantment, like war leaders call or something like that? Maybe a deck utilizing that could be interesting, lore hold charm, because like you said, getting back voice of victory is a big deal, uh, getting to pump a bunch of tokens along with these other pump effects. But I don't think that deck has been very relevant in the format up until now, and I don't think lore hold charm is necessarily enough to put it over the edge, but who knows? Maybe a better brewer than me can uh put something together there.

SPEAKER_01 34:07

Right. So moving off of the charms, we've got uh one black black for Withering Curse. It's a sorcery where all creatures get minus two, minus two until end of turn, and if you've gained life this turn, destroy all creatures instead. Uh how do we feel about this card? I feel like this card's really strong.

SPEAKER_02 34:22

Uh, this one's a tough one for me personally to judge because I'm so used to looking at things through the modern lens, and in modern, it's basically unplayable. Like gaining life doesn't really come up much. Uh, if you do, you have to combine it with another card, at which point stuff like damnation just becomes kind of the de facto. But in standard, I think that there are some cool implications with the card. Like as somebody who's played a lot of demire mid-range, playable sweepers are in high demand. When you start having to get to a point where you're playing five and six mana sweepers just because they're the only thing available, you're always in the in the interested market of something that's a little bit lower. And the fact that you can play this on turn three to take out like badger mole cubs, but then curve into it later and take out the entire board is really nice. The only issue I have with it is I don't know how many playable gain life options you really have outside of stuff like Preacher of the Schism lifelink tokens, or uh coming up with some convoluted two, three card combo that you gotta put together to enable it consistently. Uh, but if you have some better opinions, I am all ears because I need this to be good.

SPEAKER_01 35:52

Well, here's here's what what has me a little interested, and and I it's hard for me to evaluate this next card, but I I feel like it ties into this wrath pretty well is the new black green planeswalker. So it's two black green, so four mana, uh, for a planeswalker, uh, one of the professors, uh, Delian Fell, and it starts at five loyalty and it plus twos to gain three life, which is going to be a good way to um, you know, turn on your your wrath for three mana, which is great. Uh zero is you draw a card and lose a life. Um, so that that feels like you know it's gonna be great. You get card advantage tacked on, and losing the life really doesn't feel like it matters too much when you also have the ability to gain life if you need it. Uh minus three, destroy target creature, so it can protect itself, which has always been kind of one of the hallmarks of a good planeswalker. And then minus six, which you're able to do the turn after it comes into play, is you get an emblem with whenever you gain life, target opponent loses that much life. Um so it's one of those enchantments, exquisite blood or or what whatever that one is. So whenever you gain life, opponent loses that much life. Um, but I mean if if you're able to get another one, then you know, another one of these emblems, then you you get two of these effects. So um I don't know. Again, I I feel like being able to uh to minus six that on the second turn, like the turn after it comes down, and still have it stick around, uh, seems seems like it's gonna be a perfectly playable card. And you know, if if you've got this this wrath at one black black to be able to uh play it early on turn three to just clean up the board, but also if you can play it, you know, on turn five after you've played this planeswalker um to just blow up everything, then I don't know, maybe maybe there's something there.

SPEAKER_02 37:42

Yeah, I I definitely like the planeswalker a lot. I think that it does a really good job of being like a solo win condition if you want it, because you play it, you take up, next turn you emblem, and now all of a sudden every time I take it up, it's effectively a six-point life swing, and that compounds extremely quickly, even if you don't add anything else to the board with it. But obviously, you can draw cards, uh, protects itself when it comes down, so it is like a four-mana removal spell when you want it. Um the only problem I have with the wrath effect line is I already mentioned before we even started recording that my personal magic RNG is really, really bad. So, what's the floor of Withering Curse when you don't see the Planeswalker? Like, is if you have your Delian Fell on five or on turn four and you take it up, that's great. But as soon as you don't have that, now your wrath effect isn't uh isn't scaling the way you want it. And if you're waiting till turn five to cast it anyway, then it's not really any better than like deadly cover-up that just wouldn't have the drawback of if you don't gain life, you can't do this. Um so I think it's a cool interaction. I don't know how well it fights into like the prowess decks and the things that are extremely popular right now. But if the meta slows down a little bit, if mid-range gets a little better, if uh control gets a little better, then obviously planeswalkers have a really healthy spot in a metagame like that. And being able to play to the board with these hard to interact with permanents like planeswalkers becomes significantly more appealing. Yeah. So I think the kind of line you're talking about could have a lot of merit if some of these mid-range decks start picking up and start picking on the aggro stuff, and then we get all these planeswalker wars. That's the meta I want to see, but that might be beside the point.

SPEAKER_01 39:53

Well, I've got some bad news for you. I don't think that we're gonna have many planeswalker wars in this next standard, uh, because the next card is a single white mana for an instant, uh, that is functionally a path to exile, uh, except it can target planeswalkers. Uh notably, it destroys them, it doesn't, it doesn't exile them, but uh the card is erode for a single white mana, it's an instant, destroy target creature or planeswalker, its controller may search their library for a basic land, put it on the battlefield, tapped, and then shuffle.

SPEAKER_02 40:21

I legitimately almost cried when I read this card the first time around. Because like one of the saving graces of standard mid-range and control matchups to me, which I've been a Kaito gamer since day one, is the fact that if they don't have inevitable betrayal or get lost, Kaito just runs away with games. And now you get four more copies of those, which scales so incredibly well. Because, like, if you erode something on turn one, yeah, they get a land, that's cool, whatever. But you can erode their two drop, you can erode their five drop that they play ahead of turn, you can erode whatever you feel like eroding. There is no drawback with this card. Yeah, this card's really good.

SPEAKER_01 41:07

This card's really good. Um, yeah, uh in in there's obviously the the tech with one cheetong. If you're playing uh some type of blue-white deck that wants to play one sheetong with this, then you know, even the downside of giving them the land, uh you still get a 1-1 counter on your creature and you're drawing a card, which seems great.

SPEAKER_02 41:28

Yeah, I'm I'm a little concerned that cards like this are just gonna push us back into like a lessons style meta where cards like Storm Chaser's talent are so good against erode because you just don't care if they kill your token and you're playing a bunch of non-creature stuff because you just don't want to be weak to a premier removal spell in the format.

SPEAKER_01 41:54

Right.

SPEAKER_02 41:54

But at the same time, if I'm a badger mole cub gamer and my opponent erodes my badger mole cub, and I just get to like hard cast a Riddler ahead of curve, I'm pretty happy with that.

SPEAKER_01 42:06

Right.

SPEAKER_02 42:07

So it could be the kind of card that's really, really geared into demire mid-range and ends up not being as impactful as we think it's gonna be against everything else, but it is still a premium removal spell, and if I'm playing white, I'm looking at this card heavily.

SPEAKER_01 42:24

Yeah, yeah. And obviously, you know, I I talk a little bit about the control decks, that's kind of the the obvious home for it. But I think if there's a way for the aggressive white decks to abuse it, I think that they're going to care less about your opponent getting an extra mana. Um so you know, some of the tempo decks that just need cheap interaction uh might might be able to really take advantage of this, but I don't know, maybe maybe that's maybe that's not the direction that it ends up going, but yeah, there's no telling.

SPEAKER_02 42:52

Like Standard, in my mind, has got a little bit of a a soft spot for effects like this because a lot of plays are so mana conscientious and so aggressively slanted that like giving an extra mana doesn't really matter that much because you're not curving from two to four or from three to five, you're just playing a bunch of one mana spells. Right. So giving a little extra mana doesn't have that big of a drawback. We don't really have a lot of like ramp decks in standard outside of to an extent badger mole crater hoof, but that deck's fallen off pretty heavily, and a lot of the more combo-centric ramp decks, so like your um Ice Till Explorer Harmonizer decks, getting their creature eroded is a serious drawback, and the land is not saving them from that. Right. So I think that in the current meta, the way modern is at the moment, I think this card. Like just an S-tier removal spell. We'll see if things shape up a little differently going forward, but man, I'm I'm scared of a road. Yeah. Rode terrifies me.

SPEAKER_01 44:11

Yeah. Yeah. I definitely hear you there. Um, a couple more cards that I want to mention real quick is um the Black Planeswalker, which is Ral, uh, who has ventured out of his color identity of blue red for the first time. And uh he's now one black black and uh starts at three loyalty, and again we have four uh loyalty abilities. So plus one to surveil two, minus one, any number of target players each discard a card, minus two, return target creature card with mana value three or less from your graveyard of the battlefield, and minus seven, flip five coins, target opponent skips their next X turns, where X is the number of coins that came up heads. Now I know that there's a lot of hype about this card, and I have uh typically undervalued three mana planeswalkers with four loyalty abilities, but uh I think I I think I'm not as excited about this card. Uh I think the obvious home is something to do with Oculus, but short of that, I don't really see a place where I'm wanting to cast this card. Uh what are what are your thoughts here?

SPEAKER_02 45:16

Yeah, so first off, I want to say I missed the days when Jace the Mind Sculptor and Chandra Torch of Defiance were the only four ability planeswalkers out there. I can't keep up with all the text on some of the new ones coming out. Um I'm gonna go through Rao with like the modern scope real quick because I think a lot of the gameplay that Raoul really lends itself to is a little more popular and modern than it is at standard at the moment, but there's a lot of carryover between the two. Um first off, I'm 100% convinced that Rao is just like Liliana in a hockey mask at Halloween because this feels like it should be a Liliana to me. Yeah. Um but regardless, the tick up, surveilled, it it's mid. Like having a plus on your planeswalker that's not actual advantage is a little bit awkward. Uh it does something, but it doesn't really do anything to impact the game state unless you already have other things in your hand that can take advantage of that. And at that point, it's just a toss-up as to whether or not the surveil actually helps. Like if you got an unearthen hand, you're hoping that the surveil flips over an Oculus, but if it doesn't, then your plus one just does nothing. Uh the minus one, each or any number of target players each discard a card. Really bad is a minus. Like, I get what they're trying to go for here with oh, I've got an Oculus in hand, I minus my row, we each discard, I discard Oculus, and I get to unearth it. But ultimately, card disadvantage, especially in modern, just does not get you anywhere. You want it to, it doesn't. There's too many free ways to interact with stuff. Uh, there's too many like good hate pieces. Plus, if you play out the row on, say, turn three, minus discard your Oculus past the turn to try to set up minus two the next turn, then you're giving your opponent an entire turn to interact with whatever you discarded. Uh the minus two return target creature card with mana value three or less from your graveyard to the battlefield, obviously unearth on a stick, sounds pretty cool, except for the fact that there are at this point a hundred billion unearth effects for like one or two mana. There's multiple and standard right now. Yeah. So tacking this onto a three mana card is really clunky. Um, and then the minus seven, flip a bunch of coins, your opponent skips their however many heads come up, complete RNG. Like you're gonna have games that you minus seven this route and flip over five tails and they do nothing. Uh, and you feel like you just wasted your entire life away. Plus, the worst part about the minus seven, the ultimate, is you had to tick it up and surveil two four times.

SPEAKER_01 48:31

It's a lot.

SPEAKER_02 48:32

So you're getting no value on the minuses.

SPEAKER_01 48:35

Like, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:36

It's not good. It's just so many subpar abilities. I think if the plus one, the surveil two, or the minus one, any number of players discard, if either one of those had comma draw a card tacked onto the end of it, I would be so much higher on this thing.

SPEAKER_01 48:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:58

But as it is, there's just no advantage to be gained if it sticks around on the battlefield. It's very dependent on things being in the right place at the right time, and your opponent not having like ways to interact. Right. And I think all of that coming together is just too much for Ral Zaric guest lecturer to overcome. Yeah. I know that was like a bit of a rant, but I wanted this card to be good, and it just it just wasn't.

SPEAKER_01 49:26

Yeah, yeah, I I agree. You know, like I said before, one of the hallmarks is can a uh can a planeswalker both protects itself and also provide advantage, and this does neither of those two things. Uh, it's a terrible turn three play because presumably you don't have anything into the graveyard to reanimate by turn three, uh, just because in standard, at least we really don't have that many ways of reliably getting stuff in the graveyard. Um, you know, you have cards like cash grab and stuff like that, but uh, I just don't see those being super relevant. Um, so to play it on three, take up your whole turn to surveil two. Uh, you know, you compare this to Kaido that comes down on three mana as well, but your surveil two comes with a draw card, which is just so much more attractive to me. You know, it has hexproof, it can attack, you know, Kaido does all the things that you want it to do, and Ralzaric does all of the things that uh Kaido can't do, or or doesn't do any of the things that Kaido can't do. Um, so so yeah, I'm I'm super low on Ral. Um I don't think that it's I'm looking at it.

SPEAKER_02 50:28

If you're playing this with Oculus, you're already having to splash in your Oculus deck, right? But in this case for double black, but if you just splash for say white, you have access to cards like helping hand. You have a one mana unearth already in standard, so you can unearth if you've let's say you've already got your Oculus in the graveyard on turn three, and your options are between Rao minus get it back or helping hand get it back and have two mana left over to do something else. Yeah, hold up interaction, pretty big distinction in the early turns of the game.

SPEAKER_01 51:03

Yeah, and and we're really not even seeing any Oculus decks in standard right now, anyway, you know. So I just don't see a world where Ralz Eric brings those back to life.

SPEAKER_02 51:12

Yeah, Oculus suffers really, really hard with all the good bounce effects in standard because your opponent just ended like bounce-offing or yeah, uh into the floodball, your Oculus. Now you get no value, you don't have a graveyard, uh, presumably to exile to hard cast it. It it's kind of a nightmare scenario. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:35

Well, let's talk about a blue card that I think we'll see some play, and that is the first of the emeritus cycle that we got. That's Emeritus of Ideation, and that is five mana, three blue blue for a five-five flying ward two. It enters prepared, and when it attacks, you may exile eight cards from your graveyard. If you do, this creature becomes prepared, and the prepared spell is none other than legendary ancestral recall. Target player draws three cards for a single blue.

SPEAKER_02 52:04

This card is sick. Like, even if it sees less play than I want it to, it is a super, super cool card. It's like the top end of your mid-range or control deck. Uh, it's a fantastic reanimate target. Uh, if you've got something like say uh what's Kaivero, um, because Kyvero enters as a copy of it, so it enters prepared, and you can just go ahead and recall because that's just stapled onto the card, as far as I'm aware. Uh, so we've already got really good Soul Thai reanimator decks in standard, and being able to tack this onto it or into the lineup is huge. In modern, we've got Faithless Looting Persist decks that can just get this back as turn as turn as yeah, uh, get this back as soon as turn two and then just start recalling on turn three or get it back turn three and recall right there. It it's so dope. I I love this card so much. And I think people are really underestimating, especially in standard, how big of a deal like Ward 2 is in an unfair deck getting this back early. Right. There's not gonna be a lot that can can handle it, especially if you get it back and you have the mana to recall because you're so close to just hard casting it again.

SPEAKER_01 53:32

Yeah, yeah. And you know, people have been comparing it to loot, the the five mana three-four with haste that you know you can tap a blue and tap it to draw three cards. Uh I think that people are really, really underestimating the difference between this and loot. You know, that like the argument that I've heard is, well, loot can already do this for the same mana value, and you know, that's not seeing any play. But like the fact that loot costs three different colors of mana, so you're locked into teamer right off the bat. Uh, it's a 3-4 instead of a 5-5. It does not have flying. You also have to tap it in order to get your three cards, whereas with this, you don't have to tap it to get your three cards. Um, you know, so it can attack, it can block. Um I I just think there's such a world of difference between those two cards.

SPEAKER_02 54:20

And it's got the built-in protection, so you can get it down to turn early. Like, if you loot, you've got to play it out on turn six. You've got to play it out for five and then activate it immediately. But this, like, you can play it out sooner, you can reanimate it sooner, whatever the case may be. It doesn't have summoning sickness, uh, which I know loot doesn't, but when you like strap loot abilities with like cauldron onto other stuff, uh, that's a big deal. Um, built-in protection. You mentioned the bigger body, the 5-5 flyer instead of the what is it, two, four double striker. And then the biggest like biggest difference is you can ancestral recall multiple times with this emeritus. It can reprepare itself. You can't re- or unexhaust a loot, like it's looted or it's it's done its thing. That's it. But no, emeritus, you can get it back, recall, interact, recall again, laugh at your opponent because they're not recalling. Right.

SPEAKER_01 55:27

All right. Well, we've got some other cards to talk about, but we won't uh spend any more time today on those. We'll probably do uh a little bit more chatting later, uh, once we get Jonathan back with some more of the spoilers after we get our full list. But before we go, as always, we have to end our uh episode today with a little bit of pillow talk. So the way that we do this is it is closing time, you've got to take a deck home. What are you choosing to play? Big event tomorrow. What are you choosing to play in modern and what are you choosing to play in standard?

SPEAKER_02 56:01

Oh boy. Well, my obvious answer is I'm choosing anything with Psychic Frog and Modern, uh, but especially the fair, fair Psychic Frog decks, but that's just because they're near and dear to my heart. If my game plan is win at all costs, which I like to think a lot of people out there kind of have the opinion of registering what they think is gonna do well for them, not just what they can beat their head against a wall with. Uh, if I'm familiar with the deck, I'm taking Amulet Titan like all day, every day. I think that card is, or that deck is absolutely busted. If I'm not familiar with Amulet Titan, I'm just biting the bullet and picking up Boris energy because I don't want to pick something that's gonna lose to itself over and over again over the course of a tournament, and Boros absolutely is not in standard Kaito, Kaito Bana Nightmares, obviously where I want to be anytime I have the opportunity. But again, if I'm picking something that I think actually has a chance of winning the format, sorry to Kaito, I'm picking up either lessons or prowess. I think that the red cards right now are so, so, so good. Uh, I think that like boomerang basic storm chasers talent is insanely good. And I think that those decks are very, very customizable, just kind of depending on what you're expecting to see. So I would probably say Amulet Titan and or Boros energy in modern, and I'm gonna go with is it prowess and standard.

SPEAKER_01 57:35

Yeah. Uh for standard, I agree. My my choice was also is it prowess? That deck is just very strong right now. Uh, it's also the deck that I have the most reps with and I feel the most comfortable with. So I'm super happy to be jamming some prowess. Uh in modern, I think I'm probably gonna be on the uh cutter deck that Jonathan played today in the challenge, um, that also did uh did okay in the uh LDXP event. And that that was the one that uh top aided by or sorry, top 16 by Enzo. Um and that's the Is It Metalcraft deck. I think that that deck is really, really cool. Uh it's got some legs, like I said, it's got a strong proactive strategy. Um, that's got you know a resilient plan B, plan C. So yeah, that's uh that's where I'm that's where I'm feeling like I'm gonna be.

SPEAKER_02 58:23

I would say those are both extremely solid options and can't go wrong with either one.

SPEAKER_01 58:28

Yeah. All right, well, Michael, thanks so much for filling in today. We really appreciate you uh you taking some time and and recording and chatting with us. And uh hopefully we'll see you sometime again in the future. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 58:40

Thanks so much for having me on. Had an absolute blast. Looking forward to jamming some events, maybe even uh trying out some of these pillow talk decks.

SPEAKER_01 58:48

Yeah. All right, have a good night, everybody.

SPEAKER_02 58:51

It's easy.