About 10 years ago, I traded for a Ring of Ma’rÔf. It was an elusive card that neither I nor any of my friends had ever opened during the brief time we had Arabian Nights packs available to buy. Over the next few years I’d run across it in a binder on a rare occasion, but each time I excitedly point to the card and the guy would grimace, rub his chin, and deeply sigh. “Nah, don’t think I can trade that.”
I’d nod, and close the binder. Inside I was screaming then why the f**k did you put it in your trade binder?! The Ring was one of those weird, near-mythical cards that I think some players liked to show off in their trade binders but never wanted to trade.
Me, as soon as I got my hands on it I immediately threw it in my multiplayer casual decks. I’m sure I probably traded too much for it. Technically it was considered valuable, but nobody played the card and I could have probably driven a better bargain.
But I sooooo wanted it. After I made the trade, I held it up close to my face, studying it closely. Admiring the weird face the ring made. Marveling at the italicized rules text that said outside of the game.
Ring of Ma’rÔf
5
Artifact
5, tap, Remove Ring of Ma’rÔf from the game: The next time you would draw a card this turn, instead choose a card you own from outside the game and put it into your hand.
Now granted, the card wasn’t by any means insanely powerful; to get the effect you had to spend five mana to cast the Ring, five mana and remove the Ring to activate it, and then you gave up your next card draw opportunity, all just for the option to go get a card from outside the game that you could have just as easily thrown in your deck anyway – back in those days we battled with 250-300 (or more) card multiplayer monstrosities. But the card was high on the “coolness” scale.
That oddly italicized rules text — outside of the game — nicely highlighted the fact that the ring did something no other card in Magic did. You got to dig into your collection and find just the right card you needed at the time. Of course, my collection was unwieldy and not something I used to carry with me, but I had a “Box of Ma’rÔf” I’d bring along that I’d stuff with every sort of situational toolbox or finisher card I could think of. If something came up in a game where I was slapping myself for not including a card in my deck, afterwards I’d add it to my Box of Ma’rÔf.
Of course, then along came Judgment and each color got a Wish spell, and even the priciest of the bunch was much cheaper than the ten mana and a draw step the Ring demanded. Suddenly, the Ring was just a clunky old inefficient dinosaur compared to these slick new kids on the block. Living Wish, Cunning Wish and Burning Wish were all the rage.
The printing of Rings of Brighthearth had me take another look at good ol’ Ring of Ma’rÔf, since now you could copy the Ma’rÔf activation, and with one you could retrieve the Ring itself, and with the other you could go get the card you really wanted or needed to go get. I just had not cooked up an EDH lately where that card would have really fit.
Now… with the M10 rules, that idea is dunzo. Presumably, the Ring is going to be errata’d like the Wishes, and can only get cards outside of the game rather than from Exile too, which is where I’m assuming the Ring goes once you activate it.
I’ve been trying to figure out why Wizards decided to “nerf” Wishes with the new rules changes regarding Exile (formerly the Removed From Game zone). Here’s how Aaron Forsythe and Mark Gottlieb explained the change:
This is, for the most part, another cut-and-paste terminology change. Every card that removes something from the game, from Jester’s Cap to Astral Slide to Identity Crisis, will be getting errata to use the word “exile” instead. But none of these cards are functionally changing.
However, the acknowledgment that this zone is, in fact, fully within the game does bring about functional changes to the six Wishes, Ring of Ma’rÔf, and the Research half of Research // Development. These cards let you get cards from “outside the game,” which has been ruled to include your card collection (in casual games), your sideboard (in tournament games), and the removed-from-the-game zone. That’s no longer the case. Exiled cards are not outside the game (and you could argue that they never really were), so these cards will no longer be able to access cards in that zone. Their primary functionality – getting cards from your collection or sideboard – remains unchanged, of course.
So no big deal, right? Well, maybe the situation doesn’t come up much, but I can recall on occasion when having a Wish be able to grab something that’s been removed from the game (Cranial Extraction, for instance) was very helpful. Would it have been that difficult to just errata a handful of cards so that they could get cards from either your card collection, sideboard or Exile, preserving their entire functionality?
For the first week or so of the announcement I was annoyed by this rule change, but it occurred to me just recently that perhaps this was a deliberate move. Some of the moves Wizards has made of late have opened up design space, a precious resource for Magic designers to exploit and Magic players to enjoy. It occurred to me that, by making the Wishes unable to access Exile, they’re going to be able to make more cards that put cards in Exile without risking that someone’s going to be able to utilize them for additional tutor power. Imagine something like a new Force of Will that, instead of removing a Blue card from your hand from the game for an alternate cost, instead you remove half your library to Exile. Then imagine you could Wish for one of those cards. Wizards obviously couldn’t make such a card because of the shenanigans that would ensue, but now that Exile is considered an in-game zone untouchable to Wishes they certainly could. Last week I hypothesized they could make a new dual land that comes into play tapped unless you Exile some number of cards from your library. There’s a whole realm of options utilizing Exile as a cost or resource that don’t get nearly so tricky or dangerous with it out of reach for Wishes.
So… while I’m still a little sad about Ring of Ma’rÔf getting the high hat… now that I’ve considered the possibilities, I can live with it so long as we get some cool cards from the decision down the line.
Lamenting the token ownership rule change in EDH
Let’s take a look at one of the neatest little cards you’ve probably never played with:
Brand
R
Instant
Gain control of all permanents you own. (This effect doesn’t end at end of turn.)
Cycling {2} ({2}, Discard this card: Draw a card.)
I’ve got a playset of these. Whenever I made a multiplayer deck that had Red in it, Brand was a card I always strongly considered. Sometimes I’d just have a few in “just in case” because you never know when it might come in handy and you can always just cycle it.
Sometimes I’d build decks specifically to take advantage of Brand. These sorts of decks were really neat because you could really turn certain oddball cards on their ear and do some spectacularly fun and unusual things that usually would get reactions ranging from confused stares to applause around the table.
So I was particularly sad to hear this from Aaron and Mark:
The current “token ownership” rule is poorly understood, mainly because it doesn’t make a ton of sense. Currently, the owner of a token is “the controller of the effect that put it into play.” That means I own the tokens put into play under your control due to my Hunted Dragon or Forbidden Orchard, which allows me to do unintuitive tricks with cards like Brand or Warp World. Few people are aware of this rule, and assume that the owner of the tokens is the player under whose control they entered the battlefield.
We are matching most players’ expectation by changing the rule such that the owner of a token is, in fact, the player under whose control it entered the battlefield.
Yes, I am a Warp Worlder. When I wrote for Wizards and had a Magic Online “god” account I had a Ravnica-era Warp World deck with Hunted Troll to up the permanent count I “owned” even if I didn’t control them. It was an absolute blast to play, and it did my heart good that this weird little rule made a card like Hunted Troll a competitive tool. Is it really so bad that you can do tricks with cards like Brand and Warp World? Any time I’ve pulled off those tricks, most people I’ve seen are laughing and start planning their own Brand or Warp World deck.
Plus, whenever I’ve explained “the trick,” it’s not so difficult to understand. Just like if I play Sower of Temptation and steal your creature – that creature is under my control, but you still own it. I think there were cards in the early days of Magic that would gain control of cards your opponent owned and specifically said “give this back at the end of the game,” but you don’t need that sort of reminder now. People get the difference between controlling and ownership, even if with some oddball cards it seems a little weird or unintuitive.
In honor of this cool, unintuitive trickiness going the way of the dodo – such that we likely won’t even remember it ten years from now – I’m proposing an Elder Dragon Highlander deck you can play or crib from to experience the joy of owning creatures your opponents control for the few weeks you can still get away with it.
Own You.dec, by Bennie Smith
1 Karona, False God (general)
1 Brand
1 Despotic Scepter
1 Tel-Jilad Stylus
1 Dizzy Spell
1 Sol Ring
1 Norin the Wary
1 Essence Warden
1 Rhys the Redeemed
1 Crop Rotation
1 Carpet of Flowers
1 Sensei’s Divining Top
1 Skullclamp
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Fellwar Stone
1 Fertile Ground
1 Trace of Abundance
1 Joiner Adept
1 Varchild’s War-Riders
1 Gilded Drake
1 Phantasmal Sphere
1 Hunted Horror
1 Saproling Cluster
1 Genesis Chamber
1 Elephant Resurgence
1 Sylvan Library
1 Wall of Roots
1 Scroll Rack
1 Coalition Relic
1 Darksteel Ingot
1 Eternal Witness
1 Spawnbroker
1 Vedalken Plotter
1 Sword of Light and Shadow
1 Fires of Yavimaya
1 Phyrexian Infiltrator
1 Mercy Killing
1 Moonlit Wake
1 Haunted Angel
1 Hunted Phantasm
1 Hunted Troll
1 Hunted Lammasu
1 Kamahl’s Summons
1 Juxtapose
1 Clone
1 Anger
1 Harmonize
1 Greater Good
1 Dimir House Guard
1 Tombstone Stairwell
1 Puca’s Mischief
1 Chromeshell Crab
1 Vesuvan Shapeshifter
1 Vesuvan Doppelganger
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1 Hunted Dragon
1 Mogg Infestation
1 Anarchist
1 Izzet Chronarch
1 Nucklavee
1 Infernal Genesis
1 Netherborn Phalanx
1 Warp World
1 Forbidden Orchard
1 Rainbow Vale
1 Exotic Orchard
1 Gemstone Mine
1 Reflecting Pool
1 Grand Coliseum
1 Undiscovered Paradise
1 Ruptured Spire
1 Vivid Crag
1 Vivid Creek
1 Vivid Grove
1 Vivid Meadow
1 Vivid Marsh
1 Bayou
1 Breeding Pool
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Savannah
1 Stomping Ground
1 Taiga
1 Temple Garden
1 Tropical Island
2 Island
2 Swamp
2 Plains
3 Mountain
6 Forest
Good lord… pulling this list together has me completely bummed that it’s going to be completely invalidated in just a few short weeks. If only I’d thought about making a deck like this months ago! Just check out all these cards you probably haven’t ever played before, or at least not in a long while… Despotic Scepter and Tel-Jilad Stylus “rattlesnake” your opponents from attacking you with the token creatures you created for them, so hopefully they’ll send ‘em after other players. Varchild’s War-Riders! What a great card from back in the day, with the old-school Rampage ability making sure he couldn’t be stopped by the Survivor tokens. Phantasmal Sphere… I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that played before. Elephant Resurgence, giving everyone weird Lhurgoyf Pachyderm hybrids. How about Mercy Killing, taking down something huge and making a bunch of Elf tokens? Haunted Angel needs a little assistance to the graveyard in order to hand out token Angels to everyone, I’m sure someone can oblige.
Kamahl’s Summons has the potential for making a ton of bear tokens that know, deep down inside, who their maker was. What’s really insane is an old favorite of mine, Tombstone Stairwell, which makes a ton of tokens for everybody, every single upkeep, tokens you own.
(Which reminds me – I had a group game deck that won one time with Tombstone Stairwell, Coat of Arms, and Altar of Dementia. During each player’s upkeep, I’d sac my gigantic Zombie tokens to the Altar to mill them out so they’d lose during their draw step… it was pretty gross.)
Infernal Genesis is not quite as insane as Stairwell, but you don’t have to keep paying for it each upkeep either.
I figured that with Brand, Scepter and Stylus would also work well with cards that swapped your stuff for stuff your opponent controls, so I added fun stuff like Gilded Drake, Spawnbroker, Vedalken Plotter, Phyrexian Infiltrator, Juxtapose, Puca’s Mischief, and Chromeshell Crab.
Going a tad astray, I figured Norin the Wary would be fun in any deck rocking Puca’s Mischief and Chromeshell Crab (with Vesuvan Shapeshifter!). And of course Genesis Chamber plays nice with both Norin and Brand, now don’t it?
The general even gets in on the fun – Karona, False God, which many people probably view as unplayable. Let him loose and you can keep him off you with Scepter, or snatch him back with Brand when you’re ready. I was actually talking to Shane Stoots the other day about Karona, and how helpful he’d be in attacking a player who’s gotten too large for his britches. After all, it doesn’t matter how much life they’ve gained, all they need is 21 points of damage from Karona—no matter who controls it—and they lose. So you play Karona and attack, pass to the next player who attacks with Karona, who then passes to the next player who attacks… five attack steps and the deed is done.
To top all the fun madness – Warp World, baby! Between giving everyone tons of tokens and four creatures to bring back Warp World (Eternal Witness, Anarchist, Chronarch, and Nucklavee), you should be able to Warp World a couple times.
EDH Karrthus Deck Wins!
Speaking of EDH… last Friday night I brought what I thought would be an interesting twist to the Bant decks I’ve run of late. This version had Sovereigns of Lost Alara – solid sized Exalted dudes that fetched up Auras like a latter-day Zur. I also ran uber-Wombat Uril, the Miststalker, who really looks nice wearing an Epic Proportion or Runes of the Deus. The rest of the deck was standard-issue Bant beatdown.
Unfortunately, my Alara-centric deck couldn’t hang with Lorwyn/Shadowmoor tribal synergies and Bitterblossom (Rogues) or Lorwyn/Shadowmoor combo engines (Swans), ending my shot at Top 4.
I am sooooo ready for the Standard rotation this fall…
There was a fairly large crowd of players itching to play some Elder Dragon Highlander, and I jumped at the chance considering the misfortune I detailed last week preventing me from giving Karrthus a try. My expectations with the deck was that I’d get some big monsters out and take out maybe a player or three before somebody went off or otherwise killed me.
I had no idea I’d win our 10-man EDH!
Things started off pretty fast, with Shane playing a turn 2 Kami of the Crescent Moon feeding me lots of cards and I get Darksteel Ingot and Dragon Speaker Shaman into play. Then I draw it – Mana Geyser! It’s turn 6 and everybody’s flush with cards and have tapped nearly all their mana every turn trying to play out their hand rather than discard too much. I draw my cards for the turn, and one of them is Golgari Signet, so I tap low to cast the Geyser and add somewhere in the area of 30 Red mana to my mana pool, play the Signet, drop all the dragons in my hand—including a Dragon Tyrant—play Karrthus and attack the guy across from me for 41 points of dragon-swooping damage. YEAH!
Actually I felt a little guilty, because no one had attacked me or messed with me at any point prior to that, so I didn’t have a ready target for flying fury. I picked this guy simply because he’d not really played much of anything yet, so I apologized, explained he looked like Dragon prey, and swooped in on wings of death.
Everyone – including me – looked shocked at the display, the sudden appearance of an army of Dragons. Of course, shortly thereafter someone played a creature sweeper, and once the guy next to me started dropping large indestructible creatures he started pounding on me since I’d demonstrated myself as a threat.
I got down to 9 life and my deck had no provided me much of anything other than a Dragon Broodmother to provide me with lots of little blockers. At that point other players started ganging up on the aggressor because he had a pretty gross set up with Mayael’s Aria and Twilight Shepherd (not to mention other large beasts), so I kept things quiet, drawing cards, playing out a Dragon or two but being careful not to go too crazy.
Several hours into the game I’d sculpted another a ridiculous hand thanks to someone’s Nature’s Resurgence (which had come close to decking some people including me), and once Josh dropped a Cradle to legend-rule Tommy’s Cradle, I knew it was time to try it again. During my upkeep I used Genesis to get back Vexing Shusher, then I played my own Cradle, tapped it for a lot of Green mana (thanks, Broodmother!), played the Shusher and then played my Eternal Witness, getting back Mana Geyser and playing it. Nobody had instant removal handy for the Shusher, so when two players tried to counter the Geyser, my Shusher was able to punch it through. I added a ton of Red mana and started playing spells, starting with Where Ancients Tread and Kilnmouth Dragon (with Amplify 3, revealing 8 Dragons in my hand), and then playing Patriarch’s Bidding naming Dragons. Tons and tons of Dragons came into play, and Where Ancients Tread took down one of the remaining five guys. I replayed Karrthus again and attacked three of the guys for lethal dragon damage, not quite having enough to finish Josh off too. Since I couldn’t kill Josh this turn, I kept back some creatures and it was a good thing too – he had a ton of Elves now from the Bidding, and immediately starting figuring out whether he could kill me. I was sure it was close, but I was also figuring I had an ace in the hole – my Kilnmouth was huge, with 24 +1/+1 counters, and I had an untapped Diamond Valley ready to bring me up from the teens to a more comfortable 40-something. Josh freaked me out a moment when he played Coat of Arms, making his Elves huge, but making my dragons even larger (believe it or not, I had many more Dragons out than he had Elves). Now my untapped creatures could easily block his tramplers, and my Kilnmouth was epic-sized, so when I pointed out the Diamond Valley he scooped it up. It was damn late – pushing 3am – and we were both not sure whether Josh could have pulled if off pre-Coat of Arms, there was just too much math involved for such a late hour. However, we were both pretty sure the Coat saved me.
Alright, well I’m past deadline so I best get this in to Craig… anyway, this weekend is my birthday weekend, and my plan is to find something fun to do with the kids. Might be time to break out the pool, I suppose?
Y’all have a good one!
Bennie
starcitygeezer AT gmail DOT com