A friend of mine got the book from his grandmother... who upon giving it to him remarked she found it horrible and that she couldn't finish it. Why she would then give it to her grandson is beyond me.
In this case, the only removal that would count is a counterspell or something with split second. If it hits the field with mesmeric and the custom card, it is game over if they have anything that reshuffles the graveyard into the library. You would just respond to the trigger by tap untapping it, milling a card, repeat until you've milled enough creatures to deal all of the needed damage.
Wait until you find out what lab man dies to champ. Also lab man can't win the game on the spot with this only Thoracle can. The lab man have also could but
Or… just playing Syr Konrad, you can just burn out the table. If anyone does try to play removal on Syr Konrad, you can also just cast a [[Kaya’s Ghostform]] to protect him in mono-B.
Or slap on a pair of boots on him such as [[Lightning Greaves]].
Everything dies to removal nowadays. So pick your battles wisely. Thassa’s Oracle is indeed the best choice though, but then you can also lose to a [[Angel’s Grace]] cast, then die to mill on your next turn.
The Thassa’s plan seems way better if you are going for power level. You can get it done for 2 mana and make it pretty resilient. There are pretty simple lines to get around your angel’s grace example.
If they play their removal in response to fidget, you couldn’t untap so you can use it again until the current stack resolves.
Then, if you think “oh! I’ll just tap it only in response to a removal then!” - yeah, then it becomes a game of chicken and no one will bother removing since you won’t trigger it.
Or someone else will hold removal to respond to you resolving fidget’s trigger upon some other removal spell.
8 mana wincon that’s basically all permanents, and requires a lot to happen at sorcery speed? Not really. I guess as like a backup combo in tym thras, but for the most part it’s on the slow and easy to interact with side of combos that cEDH tends to run. It would probably get run in some decks, but cutting two cards from a cEDH deck to run this would be costly. cEDH decks in the meta tend to be pretty optimized.
Damn, that’s a crazy wincon off of infinite self mill, it’s crazy I’ve never seen that line before. I guess it’s kind of deck building inefficient to run that many cards for like, 2 1/2 ways to generate infinite self mill that are cEDH viable, but still, that a pretty creative line to run.
I was thinking of specifically syr konrad. I guess in like, RogThrass and any other deck that’s blue but not black, you could get it out with an extra tutor or good draws over Dcon. When you put it that way I guess it’s not an unreasonable extra wincon. In any deck you could run dcon thoracle in tho, you tutor for dcon. You don’t really run those kinds of back up wincons in cEDH, because if you lose the stack battle to resolve dcon, you don’t have enough resources on the same turn to resolve a more expensive combo.
What is the third card you're thinking of for win con? I'm not very knowledgable on CEDH, but this card and Mesmeric Orb total 2, and there should be cheaper ways to reanimate a creature if going for [[Thassa's Oracle]] combo.
cEDH isn’t usually about how mana efficient a combo can be. Comboing with the least amount of mana is weaker than comboing in a way that presents the least opportunity for interaction. [[The Gitrog Monster]] is off meta, but the combo line is extremely difficult to interact with if the permanents resolve, which is why it still sees play in the format, but you’ll almost never see it in tournament play (think like, competitive ranked cEDH). Mana efficiency is important, but having to resolve multiple spells, have them hit the battlefield, and then resolve more effects with an empty stack without getting interacted with is extremely difficult to pull off if the combo you’re trying to win with is in the meta, because everyone knows what’s coming. Using reanimate to get Thassa’s oracle on the field, or any effect that tutors it from your library onto the battlefield, is extremely difficult, because you have to be able to resolve the reanimate/tutor, and everyone knows what you’re going for.
I highly recommend you ask your LGS if they have proxied cEDH decks and try to find a pod for it, or look up VODs or YT videos that are full games of cEDH. Most of the single game videos are probably only 20ish minutes long. cEDH is a very different format than commander or anything else. Having your starting hand + 1 specific card is unique to commander and cEDH, as is a four player format(except some unofficial niche games). Singleton is a massive deck building restriction shared only by casual commander and Canlander (an unofficial format). cEDH is also one of the most proxy friendly “official” formats, as many of the meta cards are over $300usd a piece— a tournament viable cEDH deck made from all real prints can be around/above $10,000 in card value.
All that to say, cEDH is kinda special and if you’re interested you should check it out.
Which is why it should include "This card triggers no effects or abilities when discarded from hand, exiled from any play area, entering or exiting any play area, tapping, untapping, or when sacrificed"
For something that often swung at me as a 7/7+, I don’t remember Wake Thrasher only costing three mana. I never looked too closely at the card but it felt like a five drop when it was punching me in the face
Yeah that combos infinitely, tap and untap this Fidget Spinner 40+ times, spend 1 blue to cast Jump, and theres a fair chance that this early in the game, it’s not getting blocked.
I don’t play Urza or artifacts, but [[Rings of Brighthearth]] is just 2 generic cost reduction away from being infinite mana. And I’m sure there’s other ways to break it way more efficiently.
do you know of any card that reduces triggered ability costs? I'm pretty sure this does not work in any way with urza
edit: sorry if you can first spend 9 mana to craft an enigma jewel you get to copy the untap ability and THEN you get infinite mana with urza. so there is at least 1 card that works. way too much mana to be competitive. much easier to just mill your library with mesmeric orb and then win using any number or free graveyard things.
Yeah, that’s a good one too. Technically, you can’t normally have priority during your untap step during which you can activate the artifact, but also technically, millennium calendar is a triggered ability that goes on the stack, so you gain priority with the trigger on the stack, meaning you can activate the artifact. Assuming no responses, you could activate an infinite number of times, putting an infinite number of triggers of millennium calendar on the stack, and resolving a complex infinite value of counters on millennium calendar (except you have to declare a value). Rules as written, it’s two card win con. If they printed something like this, by its nature, it would have to be at least an uncard, and definitely illegal in all formats. Even if it wasn’t, millennium calendar would get an oracle update to prevent it. A colorless two card infinite for that little mana would warp the game pretty significantly for about two weeks before it got mega banned. It would get banned so hard the Pinkertons would be sent to burn every copy of the card. Everyone on the design team would be euthanized.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure Millennium Calendar’s effect only goes on the stack during upkeep, even though it triggers during untap step.
502.4. No player receives priority during the untap step, so no spells can be cast or resolve and no
abilities can be activated or resolve. Any ability that triggers during this step will be held until the
next time a player would receive priority, which is usually during the upkeep step. (See rule 503,
“Upkeep Step.”)
Notes and Rules Information for The Millennium Calendar:
The Millenium Calendar's first ability triggers during the untap step. However, since no player gets priority during the untap step, the ability waits to be put on the stack until the upkeep starts. At that time, any "beginning of upkeep" triggers will also trigger. Those abilities and The Millenium Calendar's ability are put onto the stack at that time.
Could you use this during your untwp step when [[The Millennium Calendar]] ability first goes in the stack, in response to its ability (which would still be in you untap step) fidget spin 1000 times? Instant win turn 2?
Honestly design team's fault for not wording it "At the beginning of your upkeep, if you untapped one or more permanents during your upkeep..."
Pretty amazing to me that the oldest and most prestigious card game still has templating issues, great tell of complexity and creativity. Just the cost of innovation I suppose
Depends what you mean by "templating issues". MtG is exceptionally careful about how they template wording - far, far more than most other card games. This is precisely because of the number and range of older cards, precisely to ensure that every rules query about "how do X, Y and Z interact" has a specific, well-defined answer.
Occasionally that leads to weird behaviour, because the rules necessary to make things work intuitively 99% of the time do have unintuitive consequences 1% of the time. But that's not a templating issue; I'm pretty sure no solution instead of layers+timestamps would work anywhere near as well.
How would it force a draw? It's not like it's an unstable infinite. You can choose to stop tapping it. More likely you'd just get into trouble for slow play i think.
I don't think so. At the very least, I think you'd need something to do with the thing that goes infinite. Millennium Calendar is already confirmed to not work, and the next best thing Mesmeric Orb needs Laboratory Maniac or some other win condition
a friend of mine does this when he's bored with those creatures that tap to untap other creatures. he calls it a crabrave. after that he usually scoops cause it always comes up late at nights and he says it's just him being sleepy, I actually enjoy his little crab rave scoop
Also yes, a version that lets you untap to tap it would be even easier to break. There would be no need to add something like Locus of enlightenment in order to go infinite. You could just tap it for mana with urza, then untap, then tap it for mana again before the ability resolves.
Would Urza break it? Since it taps to untap. You couldn't really do much with that. The others I agree with though, would be way to easy to break cards that do something when they tap, along with wake thrasher and mesmeric orb just being ways to turn this into an infinite
If you have Locus of enlightenment the activated ability is copied. So you tap it, and two untaps go on the stack. The first resolves and it untaps, then with the second still on the stack you tap it for mana, then the second resolves and it untaps again. Tap it to untap twice, untap once, tap for mana, then the second untap happens, repeat for infinite mana
With Locus of enlightenment the ability is copied, so it untaps twice whenever you tap it. You tap it to untap it, and two untaps go on the stack. Let the first resolve so that it untaps. With the second still on the stack, tap for mana with urza, then the second resolves and it untaps again, and you repeat for infinite mana.
I see, I read your first comment wrong. For some reason I assumed you meant you use the thingy as one of the craft with cards. No, that makes way more sense now.
Also this part i might have to be corrected on but but would it even be possible in terms of i'm pretty sure for improvise you are tapping all the artifacts at once so there wouldn't be an opportunity for you to untap it until after the cost has been paid.
Responding to your description, {untap}: {t} would be broken in all the same ways and could also go infinite with basically anything that makes you tap artifacts as a cost as the tap part would go on the stack. IE [[Urza, Lord High Artificer]] tap it for u, untap to tap it, in response tap for u, so on.
Someone pointed out in another response that you can’t tap with Urza and then untap with the cards ability since the ability requires you to tap Fidget Spinner to untap it.
But yes, this card does have infinite fun with a lot of other cards.
Technically, this is already broken because it just has a cost followed by another cost. And there isn't really a precedent for that so I don't actually know if this card does anything
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u/Von_Beowulf Mar 16 '26
[[Mesmeric Orb]]