So here's a new and goofy deck for you all. Effectively, it abused one specific card known as Ith, High Arcanist.
He's a bit old, only being printed once during the Time Spiral block. There's a few fun lore references that you can do with him with cards from The Dark set, but I'm not going to go into that. Instead, let's focus on the combo elements.
First, let's establish what he does. Normally, when a creature attacks in MtG you tap the card. This is prevented in Ith's case by the Vigilance keyword. This becomes very interesting because he has an ability which lets him tap to 'untap target attacking creature'.
That's the fun of this guy. You see, in order to use his ability, Ith is tapped before the ability goes onto the stack.
Which means he can untap himself.
Which means that he can then tap himself.
And untap himself.
As many times as you want.
I can't recall any other card that goes infinite with just itself like this. Infinite taps and untaps are a bit more difficult to take advantage of in some cases, but the deck does have a few, most relying on a card called Illusionist's Bracers, which doubles Ith's ability. This allows for infinite untaps of any of our attacking creatures, which can lead to a number of results.
Infinite Life: Illusionist's Bracers + Ballyknock Trapper (or another tapper) + Oreskos Sun Guide Illusionist's Bracers + Xenograft (naming Merfolk) + Judge of Currents Infinite Card Draw: Illusionist's Bracers + Ballynock Trapper (or another tapper) + Sphinx's Disciple Illusionist's Bracers + Arcanis the Omnipotent Infinite Mana: Illusionist's Bracers + Aphetto Alchemist (or another tapper) + any artifact that produces mana Infinite tokens: Illusionist's Bracers + Ballyknock Trapper + Stonybrook Schoolmaster Infinite P/T (Temporary): Wake Thrasher + Ith, High Arcanist Infinite Self-Mill: Mesmeric Orb + Ith, High Arcanist
Infinite mana leads to a number of other combos: Infinite Tokens: Infinite Mana + Inspire cards that make tokens Infinite Equipment Tutor: Infinite Mana + Stonehewer Giant Infinite Bounce: Infinite Mana + Surgespanner (Bounces all permanents that don't belong to you)
Overall, a fairly goofy deck that isn't really good. I can't tutor for most of the combo pieces outside of Illusionist's Bracers (for which I have a few ways of grabbing it), and Ith himself is a 7 drop without haste. Once activated, most of the combos can still be interrupted by instant speed removal, as Ith cannot do anything while his ability is still on the stack. It also gives at least one turn to respond to any combo due to Ith not having haste, and the infinite mana combo requires at least 4 semi-specific cards.
Don't try this in a competitive metagame, but if you're playing somewhere where these combos can be pulled off with some regularity feel free to utilize this deck. Keep in mind that Laboratory Maniac will often win you games, and short of Sun Titan you have no way of getting him out of the grave once he's in it. Therefore, only go for the Mesmeric Orb win with either Sun Titan or Lab Man in hand, and keep at least a bit of countermagic up in case of someone trying to interfere.
Such a fun line of text to put on any card. Such a deadly line of text to give to any card. Any card which has a downside of potentially making you lose the game is fantastic in my book, and here's a small retrospective on them. I'll be speaking about them in no particular order.
These three cards are all absolutely silly. For proper reference, there is a card called "Time Warp" which is one of the Power 9, the most powerful cards in Magic, which has almost the exact same casting cost (Time Warp is simply blue instead ). Most other extra turn cards are 5 or more mana, with the most recent printing of an extra turn cost being a massive 8 mana!
These cards can allow for some magnificent shenanigans, including a lovely combo with Isochron Scepter and Sundial of the Infinite, with the first allowing you to 'imprint' this card under the Scepter, letting you pay it's cost and tap the Scepter to cast it again, and Sundial of the Infinite allowing you to end the turn in response to the 'lose the game' trigger, preventing it from resolving and letting you take infinite extra turns! In Red!
Other shenanigans include using a Platinum Angel (which prevents you from losing the game and your opponents from winning), and using it to sneak in an extra turn while an opponent is taking infinite extra turns. Due to it functioning as an instant, you can cast it on your opponent's end step, and since Extra Turn effects resolve by 'whoever cast the latest one gets theirs first', you get to sneak in your extra turn and potentially disrupt them.
As well, since their are 3 different variants of this effect, you can run 12 copies of this spell! (good luck casting them all though).
This spell is quite odd, and not necessarily as abusable as the previous cards. While it allows you to redraw any card in your graveyard, it makes you quite vulnerable as there are many cards which can exile a player's graveyard. It's debatable whether or not this is really that useful. The upside is really cool, and there is potential synergy with Wheel of Sun and Moon (a card which sends any cards that were sent to the grave back into your library), but the need to protect your graveyard in that way it makes it very difficult to prevent a quick loss. In some ways, the best way of abusing this is to donate it to your opponent then exiling their graveyard, but such plays are a bit too questionable to be that great.
Still a fun card.
More to come later on, including a card all the way from Alpha!
Going to be repurposing this thread. This will function as a 'Uni blog', which will just be a lot of discussion of things that I've been learning about. I welcome discussion on topics that I bring up. This will also help me focus my efforts, forcing me to review my material in a different way than what I've done before.
Hopefully I provide some interesting discussion threads. It might also be a bit of discussion on interesting things I read/watch in the school year as well.
I honestly like all of my classes so far this semester.
Survey of World Literature brought an author known as Pedro Neruda to my attention, and his poems are simply fantastic.
Ode to the Book is a masterfully written poem that subverts your expectations and gives you insight into the creation of art. It's less about how books are amazing so much as a reminder that life does not occur in a book. It opens with the lines: "When I close a book / I open life"(1-2), and it continues on to paint a picture of a country, fish swimming close to "the chalk ribs / of my country" (14-15).
It paints an image of what he hates, calling it "the spider book / in which thought / has laid poisonous wires / to catch the juvenile". The book is a trap one that will take your life and consume you inside fiction, without the chance to interact with humanity which feeds into your own ability to create your own wonderful art.
So I was thinking about Munin's existence as an entity as a separation of body and mind. There's a few things that should be cleared up:
1) How do you define 'mind'? 2) How do you define 'body'? 3) Where does one stop and the other begin?
Munin's 'mind' is in a lot of question here, because what is a mind? Is it the thing that processes information? If so, the memory hedron is not quite Munin's mind, as it requires an outside source in order to process information.
Munin's 'body' is a container that provides sensory information, but also provides what one could call life to the memory hedron, interfacing with it and allowing the body to act. So what is it then?
Is Munin's mind fully detached from its body? Is the mind contained within the memory, or is it not? What happens when you change the parameters?
Hello everyone! I am going to be on the internet again soon, this time with friends!
Collectively, we're publishing videos five days a week, at least two of them featuring yours truly! I'm going to be playing Ico, in collaboration with a friend. I'll be linking the first video here, and hopefully you all enjoy it! First video will be up on Tuesday!