#mindmoil

[magicalgirlmindcrank]

Post Izzet Niv 3.0 deck list please?

Mebbe when we're up, but it's main deal is using mindmoil/Arjun and/or possibility storm to just draw hella cards also Minds Desire is there. Also like twenty cantrips or something. It's a pretty silly and fun deck.

[dailymtgflavortext]

"My criticism of the Izzet is that their impulse for learning seems too much like impulse and too little like learning." —Trigori, Azorius senator

-Mindmoil

[magicjudge]

If I happen to have my commander in my hand when Mindmoil triggers (say, with 5 other cards in hand), and I choose to put my commander in the command zone instead of the bottom of library, does it reduce the number of cards I draw from Mindmoil? (i.e. in this case, would I draw 5 or 6?) (not sure if "that many" counts things that were replaced or not)

If you have five cards in your hand, including your commander, then you'll draw five cards off of Mindmoil's trigger despite sending your commander to the command zone. "That many cards" in Mindmoil's text means the number of cards that moved out of your hand as a result of the first part of the trigger resolving. If replacement effects change where some or all of those cards go, such as the commander moving to the command zone, Mindmoil just doesn't care and counts them anyway.

[big-dumb-fish]

What to do when I run out of Big Dumb Fish

As far as I can tell, I'm going to run out of overcosted blue creatures to rate at some point in october or november, but I'm having a lot of fun with this blog and I want to keep it going, but I'm going to need a new theme. Any suggestions?

The best idea I have so far is red "chaos" enchantments (Grip of Chaos, Mindmoil, Yet Another Aether Vortex, etc) but I'm not sure if I can come up with a simple three-axis scale like the Big Dumb Fish scale.

[overgrown-estate]

Arjun, the Shifting Flame = ~$4.00

Mindmoil = ~$3.00

[nehebthewordy]

EDH Budget Picks: Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain

I’ve been playing Commander for a few years now and still Jhoira is one of my favorite generals I’ve ever built, so I’m sharing with you all my key cards for making her work. Now unlike many, my Jhoira isn’t storm; in fact, it’s really just good artifact synergies, but even at that she’s a powerful value engine.  For clarification, budget in this case will mean no cards above $5 and no more than three above $2. I also won’t include any particularly obvious cards like Padeem or Unwinding Clock.

My particular build focuses on her draw aspect, so I run a lot of wheel-benefiting cards. Additionally, cascading also digs deep and increases my draw power.

#1: Psychosis Crawler Yeah, it’s just an all-around good card, but here it’s one of my primary win conditions. Drop this guy immediately after your general and follow up with all your rocks and you’ll be in perfect shape to keep the flow going. Even better, its recent reprinting in last year’s commander set keeps it affordable for all your decks.

#2: Paradoxical Outcome Part 2 of my win condition, Paradoxical Outcome can put probably two-thirds of your deck into your hand at once. Play out some artifact-discounting cards and then this to bounce your rocks and your chain will go crazy. Just be careful not to deck yourself unless you’re running a Lab Man.

#3: Psychic Corrosion While not as powerful as #1, this can buy you loads of time, presuming of course you’re not up against Kess or Muldrotha. If it goes on long enough, it may even steal the game.

#4: Mizzium Transrelinquat One of my personal favorite cards, Transrelinquat is amazing. Clone your best artifact, or an opponent’s, and clone again later if you need it. Need an extra Psychosis Crawler for a quick kill or your Unwinding Clock is about to be destroyed? This is perfect for that situation.

#5: Reckless Fireweaver While he probably won’t win the game single-handed, this friend from Kaladesh will put on some pressure on your opponents. And if he isn’t answered quickly, he might do half the work alone.

#6: Etherium-Horn Sorcerer Cascade is good on its own, but with Jhoira leading the charge this guy turns into cast-two/draw-two. With its activated ability, you can cast it over and over again for immense value.

#7: Saheeli’s Artistry This falls in line with Mizzium Transrelinquat as one of your best clone effects. It can either target the same artifact creature twice, or you can copy your best artifact in addition to a creature.

#8: Mindmoil Bad news: Arjun just slips out of this list’s price limit. Good news: He exists in enchantment form. While it’s just good here on its own, when paired with Psychosis Crawler and Paradoxical Outcome it can kill extremely quickly.

#9: Spellbook An easy inclusion for many decks, Spellbook has the added bonuses for Jhoira of simply drawing a free card and keeping your hand large enough for options.

Unfortunately, I have to cut this list short since the rest are cards you’d put into any artifact deck, but for honorable mentions we have Etherium Sculptor, Foundry Inspector, and Jhoira’s Familiar, all of which empower your artifact-draw shenanigans. If you want to further tune your deck, include many cheap artifacts to keep your dig going.

And that’s the end of our list! Be sure to send in your own budget picks and decks; until then, see you on the battlefield.

[the8x8theory]

Arjun Wincons Package - $19.77

request by @grandios-gamer​

Arjun is a great way to have endless Mindmoils on hand. The only problem is it doesn’t really have a set way to want to win. This can make it hard to determine how to win with Commanders like Arjun. Luckily, we can find a few ways to win with all the cards we’re drawing.

Jace’s Erasure - $0.15 This gives us card advantage by making sure our opponents lose a card for every one we draw. The biggest downside to this is it’s targeted. Just make sure to have ways to get around player hexproof and you should be fine though.

Laboratory Maniac - $7.25 With the premise of an Arjun deck being draw as many cards as possible, how better to win than to deck yourself.

Chasm Skulker - $3.33 This is a two-fold threat. First, you get a creature that just gets bigger with every card you draw. Then, once it finally dies, you get an army of Squids to beat face with.

Diviner’s Wand - $0.29 This can make Arjun into a psuedo-Voltron Commander. It also provides another way to draw additional cards when you need them.

Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind - $0.76 Another way to draw additional cards. The key is you can use the other ability to get rid of nuisance creatures when Arjun triggers. 7 damage should take care of nearly every creature you come up against.

Psychosis Crawler - $0.45 A Colorless Maro with one of the best abilities in the package. Deal 7 damage to each opponent anytime you cast a spell. That’s going to be very powerful. With these two cards out, you put your opponents on a 6 spell clock. That’s where cheap instants/sorceries will come into play perfectly. There’s no reason you shouldn’t have 7 or more cards in your hand.

The Locust God - $5.82 Instead of waiting for your creature to die in order to get an army of tokens, why not gain them along the way? Play a card, draw a new hand, get Insects. You should have no shortage of blockers.

Sphinx’s Tutelage - $1.72 One more Generic mana gets you a much more powerful Jace’s Erasure. One card draw mills two cards at minimum. 6 mana for a loot is a bit steep and overpriced, but late game it be a good mana sink to either find the card you need or help with a Lab Maniac win.

There you go, folks. The fun of always having new spells can be turned into a powerful win. With the added benefit of cheap spells, we can trigger Arjun many times a turn. The more we trigger Arjun, the more powerful we will be. Keep the spells flowing like water and...

Victory shall be yours

--- Jake, @apok-the-combomancer

[blogging-phelddagrif]

EDH Deck Tech: Jhoira Chaos

[you can see every deck tech here]

Hello & welcome to this weekly deck tech! This week it’s time to talk about EDH and we have something a bit different than usual. Let’s just say that it’s a very interesting and crazy deck this week: Jhoira Chaos. Jhoira helps you cast spells that cost a lot for almost free, something that this decks loves a lot; most of the spells have a high CMC and Jhoira makes things much smoother.

While most EDH decks have a straight-forward strategy on how to win, wether it be combos, creature-centric, control etc. this deck relies on something very different, you want to make the game as chaotic as possible. Will you win with this deck? It shouldn’t matter, all you want to do is cause mayhem and screw everything up for everyone. You don't care about the outcome, you just want to spice things up. The deck has a few different ways of doing so and we’ll go over those different ways.

Flip it Up

A good way to add some chaos to the mix is to have things get decided with a 50-50 odd. You’ll want to have quite a few coin flip cards just to make things more interesting. So cards like Chance Encounter, Goblin Bomb, Impulsive Maneuvers, Planar Chaos, Risky Move, Tide of War, Fiery Gambit, Game of Chaos, Mana Clash, Squee’s Revenge, Stitch in Time, Puppet’s Verdict, Goblin Archeologist, Goblin Assassin, Goblin Kaboomist, Karplusan Minotaur, Mogg Assassin, Volatile Rig, Boompile & Krark’s Thumb. Just try to flip a bunch of coins to spice up the game, to do something different than usual.

Messing with the Board

Now that you’re making things exciting with coin flips, it’s time to play with the board state. You want cards that will add some random factor to whatever comes into play or is already in play. Some cards like Confusion in the Ranks, Mana Cache, Pandemonium, Puca’s Mischief, Teferi’s Realm, Cultural Exchange, Goblin Game, Illicit Auction, Indomitable Creativity, Scrambleverse, Thieve’s Auction, Warp World, Whims of the Fates, Chaos Warp, Divergent Transformation, Capricious Efreet, Fatespinner, Perplexing Chimera & Tyrant of Discord. With these you really get to mess up the board state and make things a bit more interesting.

Messing with the Stack

It’s all fun to play with the board but now let’s play with some spells. It’s time to mess with all the control players and make sure everyone is experiencing the chaos! With cards like Curse of Echoes, Eye of the Storm, Grip of Chaos, Hive Mind, Possibility Storm, Psychic Battle, Mages’ Contest, Radiate, Reverberate, Wild Ricochet & Knowledge Pool. With all those cards it’s starting to be a very chaotic game. Also, you’ll want to play Pact of Negation & Pact of the Titan just so you can win the game out of nowhere by forcing players to cap them as well and have to pay for the cost. We’re not done yet though.

Messing with the Libraries

The only thing left to do is play with all the cards that are not in play or on the stack. Start messing with whatever your opponents draw or what they haven’t drew yet. You want to play cards like Mindmoil, Mind’s Dilation, Shared Fate, Sunbird’s Invocation, Wild Evocation, Zur’s Weirding, Humble Defector, Gate to the Aether, Omen Machine, Pyxis of Pandemonium, Teferi’s Puzzle Box & Timesifter. Now we have just enough chaos I think.

Wrap-Up

That’s already it for the deck! It’s quite simple and very chaotic; all you want to do is cause as much mayhem as possible, as fast as possible. That’s why Jhoira is very important, you can just suspend a few expensive chaos spells each turn and keep things interesting for a cheap price CMC-wise. You’ll probably won’t win with this deck, but it’s going to make for some very interesting an unique games; though your opponent’s might not like you for this. In any case, if I missed anything let me know! I’ll see you guys next week for a fishy Standard deck tech!

[dailytopimagic]

Topi’s Daily Card #1172:  The Locust God

When it comes to UR commanders there’s a pretty high penchant for them being combo oriented, and The Locus God is no Exception.  Every card you draw equals one creature token with both flying and haste, which with the right cards can lead to an outright win.  Skullclamp and Ashnod’s Altar makes for a three card combo, and throwing in an Impact Tremors or Purphoros in the mix will make it much faster of a win con.  If you’re worried about drawing out your deck, things like Teferi’s Puzzle Box, Mindmoil and the Whirlpool creatures from Apocalypse can cycle you hand and keep your board full.  Even by himself he’s a fine support creature, but I think more often than not you’ll see him as the commander leading the 99.  

[commandertheory]

So what is your take on the craziness that is The Locust God?

These are awesome colors and a plague of locusts is a sick reward for doing the broken things that Izzet spellslinger decks were already doing. My Locust God list is basically just fast mana, card draw, and anthems to make my bugs beefier; initial testing has shown that this deck is hella fun. Here’re the cards:

Accelerating the End

Fast mana is super important because the deck doesn’t really get rolling until the God’s on the field. I mostly went for stuff that could get him down two or more turns early, with the notable exceptions of Thought Vessel (because having no max hand size is sweet in a deck with this much card draw) and Thran Dynamo/Gilded Lotus (because they’re so useful in the turns after you cast him).

Coalition Relic

Basalt Monolith

Gilded Lotus

Grim Monolith

Mana Crypt

Mana Vault

Sol Ring

Thought Vessel

Thran Dynamo

Worn Powerstone

Ancient Tomb

Myriad Landscape

Temple of the False God

Summoning the Swarm

I tried to stick to effects that drew at least three cards (anything less didn’t seem like it was worth the card slot), with consideration being paid to the ratio of cards drawn to mana cost.

Brainstorm: In this build, it’s not only efficient card selection; it’s also insanely efficient token generation.

Memory Jar: It’s pretty sweet that you can pay the cost in advance and have this ready to fire off as soon as you drop the Locust God.

Teferi’s Puzzle Box

Mindmoil

Whirlpool Rider

Whirlpool Warrior

Whirlpool Drake

Consecrated Sphinx

Oath of Jace

Rhystic Study

Cephalid Coliseum

Blue Sun’s Zenith

Careful Consideration

Fateful Showdown

Pull from Tomorrow

Read the Runes

Stroke of Genius

Thirst for Knowledge

Rush of Knowledge

Chandra, Flamecaller

Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Braingeyser

Cathartic Reunion

Collective Defiance

Compulsive Research

Dream Cache

Faithless Looting

Mind Spring

Recurring Insight

Reforge the Soul

Time Reversal

Time Spiral

Wheel of Fortune

Windfall

Winds of Change

The Plague

There’s a lot of filthy stuff you can do with a bunch of locusts.

Skullclamp: Sac one token, draw two, make two more tokens, etc.

Ashnod’s Altar: Goes infinite with Skullclamp, but it’s not bad on its own, either. Sac all your tokens for mana, spend that mana to cast a “draw X cards” variant to get twice as many tokens as you started with.

Bident of Thassa/Coastal Piracy: Draw a million cards and double your tokens every turn.

Keep Watch: Draw a million cards and double your tokens once.

Coat of Arms/Shared Animosity: Locust power^2.

Purphoros, God of the Forge: Another extremely effective force multiplier.

Obelisk of Urd

Throne of the God-Pharaoh: Good way to help your locusts scale up to the number of opponents.

Gravitational Shift: Not only does it triple your locusts’ power, but it also protects you against all the dirtwalkers cowering beneath your swarm.

Mana Echoes: FYI: each token counts itself when it triggers Mana Echoes; if X locusts enter the battlefield at once, you get X^2 mana.

Battle Hymn: Generate mana off your locusts.

Opposition: If you’re not yet ready to kill your opponents, you can just lock down their mana and creatures.

Miscellaneous

Alhammarret’s Archive

Mizzix’s Mastery: Gives you another use of your draw spells.

Psychosis Crawler: If you were already planning on drawing tons of cards…

Wrapping Up

You can take a look at the full decklist here. Please let me know if there are any important cards you think I’m missing, as the deck is very much a work in progress. Thanks for reading!

[kii-chan-reloaded]

I had kind of a shitty start to my day yesterday, so I bought myself all 15 of these cards for about $25 for my Niv-Mizzet the Firemind EDH deck. I feel like I did a good job in terms of the quality/quantity/cost of these cards, and I'm hopeful it'll be a relatively cheap improvement to my deck, which I've been disappointed in recently. I'm very excited to discard Enter the Infinite, then cast it later using Mizzix's Mastery. That's going to feel good when I do it. Other fun things will be Mindmoil+Arjun+Niv at the same time and having two nearly-infinite combos with Curiosity and Ophidian Eye.

[magicalgirlmindcrank]

Mindmoil and Arjun are so good with locust God

[mtgbracket]

Round of 8192 - Batch 7

You can now vote in Batch 7!

Currently open batches:

Batch 7 Batch 6 Batch 5 Batch 4 Batch 3 Batch 2 Batch 1

Feature match: Rite of Flourishing wants you to play more lands; Overgrown Estate wants you to sacrifice the ones you already have.  Which will you pick?

Full list of matchups:

Renewed Faith vs Spell Snare Skittering Invasion vs Bartel Runeaxe Makindi Sliderunner vs Wall of Lava Ashcloud Phoenix vs Chimeric Egg Paragon of Eternal Wilds vs Rush of Vitality Vastwood Animist vs Spoils of Blood Archers' Parapet vs Curse of Exhaustion Daraja Griffin vs Crosis's Charm Mistbind Clique vs Cemetery Puca Rites of Flourishing vs Overgrown Estate Ballot Broker vs Destructive Revelry Glamer Spinners vs Eldrazi Displacer Epitaph Golem vs Ethereal Armor Aether Adept vs Bull Hippo Beacon of Destruction vs Oriss, Samite Guardian Helm of Possession vs Grizzly Bears Pia and Kiran Nalaar vs Nahiri's Wrath Mindmoil vs Mindwrack Liege Phyrexian Battleflies vs Blood Artist Blanchwood Armor vs Wild Research Ajani Steadfast vs Grand Abolisher Blizzard Specter vs Daghatar the Adamant Scars of the Veteran vs Sphere of the Suns Moggcatcher vs Wrecking Ball Crawlspace vs Launch Seed the Land vs Magus of the Jar Izzet Charm vs Umbral Mantle Bounding Krasis vs Noxious Dragon Cabal Torturer vs Darigaaz, the Igniter Thought Scour vs Decree of Annihilation Sensor Splicer vs Bar the Door Starke of Rath vs Stangg

[magicjudge]

I control both Arjun the shifting flame and Mindmoil with six cards in hand. I then cast say, unsummon. What happens to the other five cards? How many cards do I draw?

When you cast a spell, both Arjun and Mindmoil will trigger. Their triggers are identical, so the relative order in which the triggers go on the stack is irrelevant.

When the first trigger resolves, you’ll put the cards in your hand on the bottom of your library and draw that many cards. (5 in your example.) When the second trigger resolves, you’ll put those new cards on the bottom of your library as well and then draw that many cards again.

Having both effects doesn’t let you increase the number of cards in your hand, but you can cast any instants or cards with flash that you draw from the first trigger. Doing so will trigger both Arjun and Mindmoil again, however, and you’ll draw fewer cards from the triggers when they resolve since you now have one fewer card in your hand.

[commandersociety-blog]

bEDH: Arjun, the Shifting Flame

Hey bEDH fans, I’m glad to be back with you today to introduce the second place finish in the $200 bEDH tournament. If you’re interested in what got first place and missed the article here. Last week we talked about how playing efficient cards will allow you to get more bang for your buck when building on a budget. This week I’m going to focus on how you can use your commander to make even the most average of spells explosive. I present, Arjun, the Shifting Flame.

Consistency

You can find the decklist here.

Designed by Auston Tramper

Having efficient draw was good for Azami, Lady of Scrolls. However, Arjun, the Shifting Flametrades out  pure card advantage for massive card filtration. Having a Mindmoil in the Command Zone is awesome, and it’s truly what allows this deck to shine. If you look there is a surprising lack of tutors in this list. Maybe to some of you familiar with the color combo it won’t be as surprising. The Izzet color combination isn’t well known for its tutor ability. In order to overcome this weakness we have Arjun. Every spell you cast bringing you a new grip should keep you poised to interact, draw cards, and eventually either combo off or chain enough spells to win the game. I haven’t gotten to personally play this list but there are lots of cool things going on that I will highlight.

Playing with Flames

“For the most part, this is the fairest deck I have ever played in Commander.” – Auston Tramper

Arjun, the Shifting Flame plays like a Izzet Control deck for the most part. According to deck designer Auston Tramper, “the deck is great at setting up and not being a target until it is too late.” Often you will find yourself using Arjun to sculpt your hand and playing out some rocks to build up mana for the turn you “go off”. Arjun also successfully turns all of your interaction into mini Tolarian Winds with the upside of them being put on the bottom. This makes keeping a hand of 1 or 2 interaction spells much easier. As you play through the game you will slowly be able to build up your mana presence and once you hit critical mass and have a pay off card you go for the kill.

What’s the Pay Off?

When looking at the Arjun list you can see there are quite a few “win conditions”. A few of them have innate compatibility with Arjun. I am talking about Metallurgic Summonings, Sphinx’s Tutelage, and Psychosis Crawler. These cards take advantage of Arjun’s ability to cycle your hand allowing you to constantly gain value. Many of the spells in the deck are instants and many of those instants are draw spells. This allows you to not lose card advantage when Arjun wheels your hand away. Playing draw spells allows for you to see more cards each time arjun triggers. By having them be instants you can cast a draw spell, trigger Arjun, cast another draw spell, and continue to trigger Arjun. Finally, you can let the stack resolve which will involve you drawing a ton of cards and triggering any of your pay off cards many times in a turn. Metallurgic Summonings giving you an army, Sphinx’s Tutelage mills your opponents out, and Psychosis Crawler just kills them. These wincons are extremely powerful, but knowing when to use them will take playing the deck a few times. Making sure you have enough mana to start a big chain is important. It’s also important to remember that barring an effect like Stifle, your opponent can’t stop the Mindmoil triggers on Arjun, even if they counter the spell you cast.

Engage Emergency “I Win” Button!

Although the deck is built to interact with Arjun heavily, there are a few backdoors to victory. Any deck that relies too heavily on its Commander knows that while being a strength it is also a weakness. Luckily Arjun often plays as a draw-go control deck, and when you don’t have the gas to go off he functions well enough as a card selection engine. By making every single spell you cast dig for new cards you can quickly cycle through your deck and find the two card combos this deck plays. The combos are as follows:

There are also a few spells that if resolved at the right time will just win you the game, a la Insurrection and Rise from the Tides. Having these “I win” buttons is extremely important for a control deck like Arjun. Going the distance can be difficult when people know what you’re up to and being able to jam a 2 card combo and call it a day is a necessary concession to make in the deck building process.

Extinguishing the Flames

As with the previous Azami deck there are definitely some cards to look out for when playing Arjun, the Shifting Flame. Most of your power house plays involve revolving multiple spells, as such, things that prevent doing so hamper your game plan. There are also a few cards that can make your two card combos a little harder to resolve. Cards that cause creatures to enter tapped can be an issue, but less so than you might think!

Eidolon of Rhetoric / Rule of Law / Arcane Laboratory: These cards make it very difficult for you to go off, on the other hand however they make it easier to control the game. As long as you find a way to remove it on your combo turn you should be fine.

Thalia, Heretic Cathar / Blind Obedience and other similar cards: These cards hamper your 2 card infinite combos. However, with Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker or Splinter Twin combos you can get around this. Wait until your opponent’s end step after having your tapped Kiki-Jiki and flash in that Pestermite or Deceiver Exarch. Untap Kiki and make your infinite creatures on their end step. They will now be around until your next end step because the timing has already passed for the sacrifice trigger to happen.

Glow Rider / Vryn Wingmare / Thalia, Guardian of Thraben: Taxer’s like this can make it difficult for you to accomplish much of anything on your combo turn, so it’s pretty important to find that chain reaction to get rid of these guys when you can.

Iona, Shield of Emeria: Naming blue can be catastrophic for this deck since it doesn’t run Chaos Warp or Blasphemous Act. Adding either shouldn’t be difficult though.

Notion Thief: Much like last time, this guy just kills your source of card advantage. If they resolve it in response to Arjun triggering you are in serious trouble. Don’t let him resolve if you don’t want to have the worst day.

In the Izzet colors Arjun has access to Counterspells, bounce magic, artifact and creature destruction. As such, Arjun has the tools to compete and to get past his silver bullets. Having a Commander that allows for unmatched card filtration increases the consistency of the deck. This allows you to find your answers and have them when you need them. This deck looks like a blast and I’m glad Auston brought it to the Tournament. If you’re still feeling a bit confused on how to play the deck we’ve got some last minute advice from the designer of the deck:

“TL:DR Draw some cards and let everyone else fight it out.” – Auston Tramper

Tune in next week for the final part of this venture in bEDH where I will feature a Selvala, Heart of the Wilds deck that boasts being the “fastest deck in the format.” Don’t believe us? Come check it out and decide for yourself.

[overflowchute]

alhammarret’s archive is an awesome card for any color, but it’s particularly impressive in red - it gives a lot more value from tormenting voice and cathartic reunion

this is most important to red because red otherwise struggles pretty hard to not run out of everything

in slow formats like edh it also shines really well with ye olde mindmoil