#Blasphemous quicksilver how to

The best cards in the deck, generally, are nigh-unplayable in other decks. Rather than going the “Grixis Goodstuff” route that could quite easily be helmed by fellow Arcane Wizardry legend Kess, Dissident Mage, Mairsil, the Pretender is hyper specialized. Mairsil is often in a strange place regarding deck composition and color combination. That said, there are plenty of powerful staple artifacts to use, most notably the signets ( Dimir Signet, Izzet Signet, and Rakdos Signet), the talismans ( Talisman of Dominance and Talisman of Indulgence), the three-mana staples of Command Sphere and Chromatic Lantern, and of course, Sol Ring. While many other color combinations have the ability to ramp into lands, Grixis is forced to rely on artifacts to get going, which can be dangerous. Grixis’s downfall lies perhaps in its lack of ramp. Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker, Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh, and Cruel Ultimatum are examples of powerful, oppressive cards that can either completely change the board state when cast or outright turn a losing position into a winning one. We ought not forget that Grixis has no shortage of powerful single spells. This signals perhaps Grixis’s greatest strengths in the format – the inherent power of blue and black combined, coupled with some of the format’s best removal. Within the Grixis sphere, red adds more powerful staple removal in the form of Terminate and Dreadbore as well as neat utility spells in the charms – Izzet Charm, Rakdos Charm, and Crosis's Charm are all flexible modal cards that should probably be considered for play no matter which Grixis commander you’re looking at. Vandalblast, Chaos Warp, and Blasphemous Act are all mono-red removal and staples of the format, for very good reasons. So, why bother with Grixis when we could play Sultai? Well, red adds some very attractive things to our suite of cards, most notably some of the best removal spells in the format. Blue doesn’t really have any ramp to offer, nor does white, and red is stuck with the ritual-like spells of Seething Song – very powerful in the 60-card formats, but not quite as awesome in EDH. Black has the potential to be very explosive with cards like Cabal Coffers, Crypt Ghast and other similar staples, but these effects are diminished the more black is diluted by other colors. Adding a third color to the mix, I would argue that green, in a vacuum, is the strongest contender since green patches up Dimir’s biggest issue nicely – namely, ramp. Blue brings the best countermagic and best card draw to the table, while black has some of the best removal, the best tutors, and also great utility in reanimation spells. I think I could quite easily defend a position like “black and blue are arguably the two strongest colors in the format,” and for long stretches of time I've played Dimir as my main color pair. Before we get into it though, I want to discuss some of the basics of the color combination. Think of this article is a means of making up for that, in my own way. While Mairsil is very cool, and while the lore behind the character is pretty fascinating stuff (back in a time when Magic stories came in books rather than in an online column), I couldn’t quite get the deck to click for me personally. I too bought Arcane Wizardry upon release, and I too built a Mairsil, the Pretender deck, but I have to admit that I didn’t play it for very long. Quite soon, people discovered cards like Quicksilver Elemental and really opened up the combo-tastic aspects of this commander.

#Blasphemous quicksilver how to

Before release, there were quite a bit of buzz around Reddit and other places on the internet about how to properly utilize Mairsil, the Pretender’s ability, and the card’s uniqueness even tickled the fancy of non-EDH players.

I think the third commander option from Arcane Wizardry, Mairsil, the Pretender, hasn’t come into his own quite yet. The former is one of the options available for a Wizard tribal deck, and the latter is a fairly competent spellslinger commander. The Arcane Wizardry deck wasn’t the most hyped deck before release, but two of the commanders available in the deck – Inalla, Archmage Ritualist and Kess, Dissident Mage – have both grown in popularity, with each propagating their own pretty unique strategy. Although we’re in the middle of Commander 2018 spoilers right now, this week in General Medicine we’re going to take a look at a commander from last year’s product that got a lot of hype before the release, but perhaps didn’t live up to its potential.