I have never heard a more pure thought spoken than "I got a foil sitting in a box and he's just so lonely" I feel that in my soul

Path of Discovery is actually amazing in Sidisi, Brood Tyrant. If you have a huge amount of creatures in your deck like Sidisi wants, this card can allow you to make five or six 3/3 zombies with one instance of mill to set it off. Highly recommend.

for me fae offering is worth giving a shot in any deck that is already doing a clue, food, or treasure tokens and just seeing how much value you can get off of it.

Seize the Day fizzles with Surge to Victory damage triggers, because you aren't casting during the main phase. You need Savage Beating.

Joey saying “oh my sweet prince” to individual magic cards he loves is hilarious. I picture him flipping through his trade binder like Wolverine with the photo

myrkul is a good deck for grim guardian, because you can spam a lot of enchantments out of nowhere and when grim guardian becomes an enchantment itself and you also have your blood artists and sacrifice creatures ready its nuts, and when you have setessan champion out,.. goddamn maybe thats the deck matt searches

Grim guardian fits well into a Tatsunari, Toad Rider deck. It fits into the overall theme and strategy the deck is trying to pull off so might be worth a look

Casting Surge to Victory in an Ovika deck is just the most fun I’ve ever had in a game of magic, even with just ovika out and an empty board, surge can straight up win the game pretty much by itself. My favorite is targeting something like an Unexpected Windfall, drawing you a massive amount of cards, making an insane amount of treasures, and fueling your graveyard for more Spelltwine type of shenanigans. Maybe this could be a challenge the stars?

Swans of Bryn Argol is a really neat card that I played in standard way back when. It would be really cool to have a Jeskai "burn value" commander. Turning a lightning bolt into an ancestral recall was a lot of fun. A deck like that would also potentially give a home to brash taunter and stuffy doll, which are also neat cards.

This episode is excellent. Lots of hidden gems. Path of Discovery works SO well in my Sidisi zombie deck, and I'm excited to try Taunt from the Ramparts in Marisi.

I think the reason there's not that many Dreadhorde Invasion cards in Sauron decks is the large proportion of players who are running LotR-only decks. It's cheap, recent, and highly available - but very thematically-specific to a plane and storyline.

I run Fae Offering in a Jaheira and Agent of the Iron Throne deck. Having access to both types in the command zone make it easy to find one or the other. I find that if I get a few triggers from it it is worth it. Jaheira effectively making them into forests is really good. Plus if you cast a creature in the same turn you cast the Fae Offering, you will trigger it.

If you wanna play Grim Guardian --> Myrkul, Lord of Bones. Love it in that Deck.

Wild Pair, Grave Betrayal, Predatory Senses, Lurking Predators, Death’s Presence and Retribution of the Ancients are all cards that I never seem to find a deck for it but I love them all

I run aminatou's augury in my maelstrom wanderer cascade deck. So, so good there as the deck tends to run a variety of card types (as cascade exists in a lot of card types and there is a bunch of artifacts and enchantments that are synergistic with the deck). The augury usually gets at least 4 cards and a land and then I get a couple cascades. Wonderful in that deck and I am never short on mana to cast it there :)

I absolutely love surge to victory. Currently running it in my Ovika Enigma Goliath

Fae Offering is a huge win in an Adventure deck (with Chulane or Gorion at the helm) - then you can pretty reliably play the adventure side of a creature and a creature in the same turn! :)

That opening was genius, thanks Matt for a great laugh! 😂

Aminatou's augury was so good in both Anhelo and Yarok!

The interaction described at 15:38 with Surge to Victory exiling Seize the Day does not work, as at the time of casting the copies you would still be in the Combat Phase, and Seize the Day only grants an extra Combat phase "After this main phase, (...)". Quoting Seize the Day's rulings: "If you somehow cast it not during a main phase at all, all that happens is you untap the target creature." Incidentally, Surge to Victory and Taunt from the Rampart are both excellent inclusions in Narset, Enlightened Exile: make a lot of Creature Tokens with cards like Monastery Mentor and Hordeling Outburst, Prowess them all up with Narset, then cast a free Surge or Taunt from your graveyard for big value! While I'm on the subject; Savage Beating is an extra Combat spell that does work with Surge to Victory (and Narset, Enlightened Exile!), and it just got a reprint in Commander Masters! When casting it for free, you can even still pay its very affordable 1R Entwine cost to grant your team Double Strike in addition to the extra Combat Phase!

I have lots of these cards currently employed in many decks! 1. Surge to victory is in Magnus the Red, (izzet tokens/spell slinger) and Zada 2. Taunt from the rampart is in Marici, breaker of the coil, and Commander Lirara Portyer, both go wide Goad decks. 3. Fae offering I'm running in Jahira, friend of the Forest, and passionate Archaeologist. It's like a proper deck, in gruul. GLORIOUS in that deck cuz I usually cast 3/4 spells a turn, and the ratios are just right

I very rarely have this problem because I work backwards: if I see a sweet card or synergy, I find a commander that supports it and build that. My favorite example is Bludgeon Brawl, where I crammed it, every d+ or better mana rock and card draw artifact, and budget tutors into Syr Gwyn to make an all-in Voltron tower of power. Similaly, I'm working on a Nazgul deck, and despite the many flavorful LotR commanders, I'm going with Tayam, Luminous Enigma for the counter synergies and recurring threat potential. Nazgul and Bloodbond March: a match made in Barad-dur.

I use war cadence in my Magar of the magic strings deck as a way to help get basic 3/3 spell creatures to hit people so they can cast themselves. Been pretty useful for that deck so far

Lux Artillery is pretty cool in Vrondiss. If you have vexing puzzlebox, sun droplet you can easily get 30 counters on it

One of my favorite cards ever is Illusionary Mask. The way that it works is so bizarre. I love it so much. But because you still have to spend AT LEAST the actual mana cost to cast the creatures, it never really had a good home. Until they printed the Morph Commander Pre-con: Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer. It was like the Heavens opened. It was the perfect place for my beloved artifact and I was so happy that it lived there.

Joey, on the topic of finding a home for Tormod, have you considered Sivriss, Nightmare Speaker? Sivriss's ability to mill a card for each opponent, and then return the card to your hand unless that opponent pays life cannot be processed simultaneously, and so Tormod will see each card leaving your yard separately. Sivriss is just generally slept on I think.

So I played Fae Offering in a mid power Kinnan list. It worked pretty well in the early turns when you are ramping with dorks, rocks, and or sorcery ramp spells. I found the weakness to be that once you have crossed out of the early game, if you didn’t draw Fae Offering, then when you get it in the late game it is almost a dead card.

For grim guardian, you want it to be at least rakdos. There are a lot of red enchantments that ping down players. Forgeborn oreads and descent into avernus are a couple of examples

I've only had Tormod, the desecrator work in one deck, but even then, he was just okay. I ran him in my retired Kethis, the Hidden Hand deck. Tormod is three mana with Kethis' cost reduction and gives you a zombie everytime you activate Kethis' exile ability. The additional token per activation was good, but felt like a consolation prize. The trouble is that tornmod's wording is one or more cards as opposed to a card.

Venetrated Rotpriest is in my Ixhel deck, not necessarily because of its specific ability (though that does discourage target removal), but because in its core it is still a one mana body that gets the counters going when they most crucially must get going.

Path of Discovery goes so well with Desecrated Tomb in a casual Grolnok the Omnivore deck. If you're playing with any effects that have you play with the top card of your deck revealed and dorks like Millikin or Deranged Assistant or any tap-to-mill artifacts, you can ditch lands cards before the explore trigger resolves to make an absurd number of 2/2 flying bats and dig through dozens of cards

Tormod and Sidar Kondo was my specialty deck. Uses a lot of under the radar cards to spam the board, plays usual drainer to prevent board wipes. The you find yourself with 40 power on the board and play SK to finish off the table.

Notion Rain was a favourite card for its art and I love surveil, and it was when i stumbled into my Alora, Merry Thief/Criminal Past self mill voltron deck that I finally had the perfect place for it and it made me very excited to be able to use it!

Path of Discovery is perfect in a Sidisi, Brood Tyrant deck. It buffs your tokens, it can chain with Sidisi’s triggered ability to mill until you hit a non creature, and finally finds you lands to keep fueling your turns.

I can imagine Cankerbloom fitting into almost any green deck, particularly +1/+1 counter decks. 2 mana for a 3/2 that can sack to Disenchant or proliferate is amazing as either a removal piece or as an engine to make more of all your lovely counters. I view it as a modal spell stapled to a creature, a little overcosted mana wise but never a bad draw due to its ability to do a bit of everything.

To Joey, I have a Tormod + Ravos partner deck that is Zombie tribal. It's definitely not a fast deck by any means, but I think it's kinda unique at least. It's not doing anything too creative, it just wants repeatedly cards leaving the graveyard and ways to pump zombies; both with lords and anthems. I call it Doots of the Dead!

Littjara mirror lake made it into my uncommon only Moritte Slivers deck! Wow… yeah Matt’s right about magic players. Hoops.

I was brewing a Isshin, Two Heavens as One, this episode actually helped me finish the deck. Shout out to War Cadence and Invasion Plans.

I love Aminatous Augury in my Elminster deck. Not only you can exile it to make a bunch of faeries, but you can also play it really early. And yes the deck tends to be a bit more heavy on instants and sorceries, but it still got enough variety and a bunch of the spells in the deck are really expensive and really explosive. Its perfect there!

Hey matt, Grim Guardian is pretty great in my Yarok enchantress deck! Obviously can double your own enchantment triggers but can also double the triggers of enchantments that trigger off opponents like Lifegift or Trespasser's curse

Love this episode! Really enjoyed the premise.

Surge to Victory is amazing in Ovika, because you smash peoples faces with 1/1 goblins and other tokens in an Izzet spells deck

Symmetry Matrix goes wild in Adeline. It doesn’t turn off after anthems like mentor of the meek and welcoming vampire. If you run Divine Visitation, it lets you continue to draw cards while the rest of your “weenie draw” turns off.

Season of Growth is great in Zangief (with fight spells) and Blanka decks. I'm running it in both. Helps keep the destruction engine churning.

I love Taunt from the Rampart in my Aragorn, King of Gondor deck. It's all about becoming the Monarch and goading the table to keep it for yourself.

I don't really know if it's challenge the stats worthy but fae offering is in like 50% of Gorion wise mentor decks, the adventure commander it goes really well in that deck as you cast the spell half then the creature in 1 turn and profit

Sivriss Nightmare Speaker's trigger are separate instances. So if you have Tormod on the field and all 3 cards are returned, that's 3 tokens. Sivriss paired with Cloakwood Hermit is extremely fun. Works well with Syr Konrad too.

I have surge to victory in my Ovika deck which both makes 6 goblins and when those connect copies the spell, AND since the copies from surge to victory are CAST without spending mana, they trigger Ovika for each spell you cast making even more goblins. The silliest thing I've managed to do is cast Twinferno into Complete the circuit which gets copied, resulting in 4 copies of surge to victory. With these I exile the twinferno and complete the circuit and Time Strech, resulting in each copy of twinferno and complete the circuit copying eachother and then all copying Time Stretch resulting in basically infinite turns :D

My favorite part of fridays!! Love yall!

Dauthi Embrace is an interesting card as you can give ANY creature shadow. Ive used it during other players' turns to make one of their creatures unable to block for the turn, which usually lights up the eyes of the person who is yet to declare an attack phase 🥳

For the Fae Offering card. I put together a deck that loves it. It’s the Bant Adventures matter deck. Since half of your spells can be either a creature, non creature or both, it becomes rather easy to trigger.

Both Fae Offering and Academy Manufactor are all stars in my Jinnie Fay deck because of the token replacement to cats and also a majority of my spells, both creature and non-creature are low mana value.

Aminatou's Augery clicks in my Neera Wild Mage deck. So dope to wheel for it for one mana then copy it twice!

Offspring's Revenge is a card I find very interesting but difficult to find a home for. I want to use it in a deck with creatures that have multiple triggers (so creatures that have an ETB and an attack trigger for instance) but there just aren't that many and so it doesn't feel worth running over other methods of reanimation.

Next off “don’t let you Fae-vor” while talking about Fae offering, nice accidental pun. Fae Offering is perfect for an adventure deck as the creatures have built-in non creature spells.

Lux Artillery is made for Urtet. Most of the red combat cards fit really well in pramikon, which can have good spell and or enchantment recursion.

Joey!! Taunt from the rampart and taunter, I raise you Queen Marchesa Goad!! It’s my favorite deck to play by miles and has all of the fun goad mechanics AND the taunters!!

For Lux Artillery, the deck other than Zabaz/Modular, is Urtet, Remnant of Memnarch. Use Urtet's tap ability and then you should have all the counters you need for Lux Artillery to do its thing.

Never realized Wastes didn't have a basic land type. Good to know!

So one place I could see myself running Life of the Party is in a Jetmir deck. You want lots of creatures for Jetmir, you're in white for some blink shenanigans, and running Primal Vigor just gives your opponents even more Goaded LotPs to kill each other even faster.

I've only seen the thumbnail, but Aminatou's Augury is BIG in my Vega, the Watcher deck - Sieges will get cast from exile too on flips, so they're not too off-flavor to run a couple lol. It's a mix of Cast-From-Exile stuff and UW Flyers

Grim Guardian is a staple card in my Eriette of the Charmed Apple deck, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it would work well in one of the Abzan enchantress decks, using either Anikthea like they mentioned, or Myrkul!

I use lux artillery in my Tawnos, Urza's Apprentice charge counters deck. Specifically it is amazing when played with eternity vessel or vexing puzzle box which naturally get to 30+ counters total the turn they are played. (Plus Tawnos can copy the triggered ability)

Path of Discovery is nuts in a Sidisi, Brood Tyrant deck. Make a 2/2 when something goes to the graveyard from the library, then explore and if it's a creature, create a 2/2 and do it all again. I've chained 5-10 2/2's (really 3/3 with the +1/+1 counter) per cycle.

Grim Guardian actually did a lot of work in my Tatsunari enchantement deck, which played and bounced a lot of cheap enchantements 🙌🏼

9:08 I built a Gisela, Blade of Goldnight deck that was a goad deck. Taunt from the Rampart was really fun

I've been looking a long while for a deck to run Dreams of the Dead, but neither of my Esper blink decks wanted it (Zur Astral Slide and Aminatou Miracles) - cards can be oddly specific even within a given deck archetype. I also had a copy of Teleportation Circle sitting around to go with it, so I went down the rabbit hole of trying to find a new commander (as if 50+ commander decks wasn't too many), and I'm going to try Sefris reanimator/blink with dungeons.

I have a ghired, conclave exile deck that I made into a spellslinger deck (I like doing things in the wrong colors). Surge to victory is a banger when it targets second harvest. I know people think second harvest is a win more card but I view it as something to move the goal posts closer.

Perfect home for Life of the Party is my Thantis, the Warweaver deck. I dont get to play that deck often, but it’s a lot of fun.

There's an Isshin deck that runs Life of the Party. It makes the game so fun and it works really well since Isshin doubles the attack trigger so even if you only have a few creatures, it still hits like a truck.

War Cadence is a house in my Krenko deck, you can wait until you have 5/6 mana to cast and activate it in the same turn so people who tapped low without expecting it get locked out of blocking! Evolving Door is one I want to find a home for, I was thinking about Oviya Pashiri, Lifecrafter but I never went through with the deck in the end

I got a budget Feldorn list and it makes disgustingly good use of Surge to Victory. Somehow it has already happened twice that I exiled an Inspired Tinkering with it and connected with 7ish 7/2 wolves. Now because Tinkering is in exile, so is the copy that you cast, meaning I got 7 more wolves before I even started to exile my top 21 cards and make 21 treasure tokens. And it's not like that's the only hit either. Hits like Escape to the Wilds, Titanias Command and especially Volcanic Torrent are nothing to scoff at either.

My challenge the stats submission is that only 14 out of 520 decks with Elrond, Master of healing run Cultivator of Blades. Which is a cheap card, it is an elf, it enters with +1/+1 counters that works with your commanders ability and you can very easily buff that creature a lot with Elrond and then potentially smack your opponents with massive damage. Seems like a must include if you ask me.

I like using tasunari in sultai and grim guardian can be solid. I use whip silk and effects to bounce the enchantment. You get all the green enchantresses, sylan library, rhystic study. I also do infinite frog combos with Keimi

Symmetry Matrix is probably expecting you to have powerstone tokens hanging around.

Aminatou’s Augury does work in Thryx, the Sudden Storm. Big blue bombs raining from the sky - for less!

Grim Guardian works well in my enchantment reanimator deck helmed by Ghen, Arcanum Weaver. A filled graveyard, Grim Guardian in the yard or on the field and something like a Brilliant Restoration is a wincon of the deck

What about an adventure deck like "Gorion, wise mentor'' for Fae Offering? I put symmetry matrix in my "watcher in the water" deck. Once a 1/1 tentacle comes in because of a card I draw, I just pay 1 to draw once more and spawn another tentacle (and on and on if I have the mana for it). I have an ashnod's altar to sacrifice my tentacles if I need mana, meaning that I can also untap my krakens and stun opponent permanents at the same time.

Surge to victory goes in Faldorn the exit from exile precon. Surge to victory CASTS the copies. And the copies are considered being cast from exile. You can copy a delayed blast fireball 10 times and get 10 wolves. Or more.

Lux Artillery + Vexing Puzzlebox seems like a decently easy way to get it going, if you build around rolling dice.

Okay now you made me build a goad goat deck (zedruu). I thought the tokens would work with zedeuu's ability but the deck turned out a lot different then I had imagined! Giving away creature tokens and goading the creatures would give zedruu an unique spin. No need for dumb pillowfort cards and even running cool cards like bedlam to ensure the creatures dont die in combat. Also the perfect place for taunt from the rampart and might try aninatou's augery there :).

Aminatou's Augury is in a lot of Neera, Wild Mage decks (the ones without the Displacer Kitten to go infinite Storm) but I personally cut it out because it misfires a lot: even if you cheat it out with Neera, you will burn 8 cards with high chances to hit a) a lot of cantrips, and/or b) a lot of high mana threats and you can cast very few of them. Yes, you can hit 2-3 big things and get a lot of value instantly, but you usually give up a lot of other powerful cards in the process and the deck itself has really no problems cheating things out of your library each turn and has no needs for such a burst of speed. It is a cool card to use, but easily the first one to cut out to make it down to 100, IMHO. War Cadence is spectacular in a Karona, False God enchantments deck to the point I honestly consider it a staple: you usually unleash Karona around the table with goad and hexproof/shroud, so you can't Rogue's Passage her, and even so you can't do every turn unless you run something like Seedborn Muse. War Cadence goes around that and you can activate it on each opponent's turn, and it scales very well if the opponent controlling Karona has already a wide board (and probably not attacking you behind your pillow fort).

The Mirrorlake and other kaldheim utility lands are fantastic at low-power tables. My highest priority is always playing the game, so having mana sinks and extra value in my land slots feels so fantastic. I imagine the 1 mana landcyclers from LOTR will function similarly.

Surge to Victory is my favourite way to win in my Ovika deck. Exiled an extra turn spell 😂 24 goblins hit, 24 extra turns and 216 more goblins

I use Grim Guardian as a wincon in my Ertai, the Corrupted Esper enchantment deck that wins via a Day of Dragons loop. It's like 4 cards, a billion mana, but when it's happened it's been awesome.

i've got a will and rowan kenrith (partner pair from battlebond) deck with Aminatou's Augury in it. it works there because there's a lot of copy effects. one time i cast it and it was copied four times. top 8 cards may not hit much variety, but top 8 cards 5 times... the whole theme of the deck is 'spells that cast spells' to get the most out of will's emblem. it can get out of hand fast. i had to take thousand year storm out just to reduce confusion.

Challenge the stats suggestion: Leyline Immersion in Ivy, Gleeful Spellthief. Two reasons it's overplayed: if you are running mutate cards in Ivy, you usually put the larger mutate creature on top of the pile, thus making Ivy no longer legendary; LI has to target a legendary creature so, if you want to get maximum Ivy value (doubling targeted spells), you need a non-Ivy legendary creature to target (and, of course, Ivy has to still be legendary when you target another legendary creature), and Ivy decks run as few as zero legendary creatures in the 99 (though I'm seeing 1GG Legolas show up in some lists lately). There are cheaper and instant speed) ways to protect Ivy and Simic doesn't need to spend four mana to ramp.

I have Taunt From the Ramparts, Brash Taunter, and Life of the Party all in my Isshin deck, which is built in more of a political/chaos gremlin style than the usual "all the extra attacks" Isshin. It's focused around attack triggers that affect everyone, not just me, like the attack Curses or, well, Life of the Party.

Lux Artillery may be fun in Urtet maybe? Myr's have multiple colors to tap for mana and if you pair with cards that make Oil counters it may boost the counter number up higher.

It may just be because I'm working on the deck currently, but Lux Artillery is fantastic in any deck focused on charge counters. I'm currently working on a Jhoira, Ageless Innovator deck based on charge counters, and this will likely go in there.

I love Combat Tricks but it’s hard to find space for them sometimes for my Narset, Enlightened Exile deck. It’s such a flexible Commander that you can build in so many different ways. But after Ramp, Card Draw, and Removal it’s tricky to find enough space for enough Protection and my Combat Tricks. For Narset, Enlightened Exile I like to use card with a lot of flexibility in how they can be utilized. Modal Spells and Spells with an Additional Cost are really good for Narset in particular if it can be weaponized by her Attack Trigger. Boros Charm, Twinferno, and Jeskai Charm are great flexible utility cards that can easily be used in great effect in a Combat focused Toolbox deck like how I like to play it. My Spellslinger ain’t shooting Magic Missiles, it’s throwing Fists and Curveballs.

So back when Grim Guardian first came out I saw it and immediately thought of Aluren and made a legacy constellation deck. Aluren was MUCH cheaper back then. Also multiple Grim Guardians are where the real fun lies in that deck. I am in the process of making an Ob Nixilis, Captive Kingpin deck and I think I would use one there if I have a fifth one currently unused.

Symmetry Matrix is pretty cool in my Polukranos Reborn (the new transform one) deck, since there are many hydras entering as 0/0, and then Polukranos creates 2 3/3s, so usually, for 4-5 mana, i can get 2 3/3s and 3 cards, which is pretty good. also, its really flexible with how i want to use my mana, i can pay for all 3 triggers, or only 1 or 2 if i got other things to do

Yess on grim guardian, ive been trying to run weird commanders to get Underworld Coinsmith to be able to be thrown into my decks.

Animatou's Augury is fantastic in my Imoti big mana deck. Has a solid spread of perfect hits and cascade doesn't care about how you cast the spell, only about its mana value

The only place I have really found a home for the things like Brash Taunter and Stuffy Doll are in my chaos deck but really only as indestructible blockers.

I have life of the party in my hinata blink deck, those tokens start to get out of hand pretty fast. Fun card!

For Grim Guardian, zur works pretty well as a commander and gets you Niko Aris that makes x enchantments on etb 13:32

Yeah, I lost to Taunt from the Ramparts this past week - it took out a couple players and brought the game to a rapid close. 10:16 - In answer to Joey's question, there are a handful of decks out there helmed by either Piru or Queen Marchesa that run all of the Stuffy Doll/Boros Reckoner/Mogg Maniac variants alongside Simulacrum (not Solemn) and Gideon's Sacrifice/Pariah's Shield effects to blow out opponents. It's not the most competitive, but it is hilarious when it blows people out. I may have to add Taunt to my Queen Marchesa build.

Taunt from the Rampart looks like it will fit nicely into my Gisela, Blade of Goldnight deck!