[MH2] Sol Talisman
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I was reevaluating some of these new cards and Sol Talisman seems like a sleeper to me. I mean you can play 4 additional Sol Rings.
I’ve always thought suspend cards were fringe playable in Vintage, most appropriately Ancestral Visions. Lotus Bloom is not great because it’s still card disadvantage (the same as a Black Lotus in that respect). We have seen Wheel of Fate in a Greater Gargadon Deck a long time ago as well.
So the immediate reaction should be “ew, suspend...” but I think there’s gotta be a way to get multiple Sol Rings into play. Once that last suspend counter is removed, it’s a Sol Ring. There’s no sacrificing it, nothing restrictive at that point. It’s one card for 2 mana. I think this could be good.
Sol Talisman
1 - mono artifact
Suspend 3
Add 2 colorless mana -
@lienielsen said in [MH2] Sol Talisman:
No deck we currently use wants 2 extra mana in 3 turns enough to play this but if a big blue deck rose to prominence with stuff like the mindslaver lock and thirst it could find a real hom there. Also maybe belcher.
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Yes well, you can gain more mana with fewer cards. You can sacrifice a card in your hand on turn 1 for a pretty substantial future gain. I don’t think a vintage deck has to be so incredibly desperate on turn 1 to forgo a stronger late game. What would be the alternative?
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Maybe there is a KCI/Scrap Trawler deck that does some self mill/discard that wants this as its redundant 0 cmc artifact to return at the end of the trawler loops as it generates more mana than a mox, but otherwise I think that the assessment of it being too weak and too slow is pretty on the ball.
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Slow, yeah. But weak? Sol Ring is widely viewed as the best stand alone card in the game. 1 mana, 1 card for a 2 mana rock. It’s broken
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@lienielsen I am fairly sure that the accolade applies to cube, but even if not, consider this:
T1 Sol ring -> +1 mana
T2 +2 // +3 total
T3 +2 // +5 total
T4 +2 // +7 total.T1 Sol talisman -> -1 mana
T2 0 // -1
T2 0 // -1
T3 0 // -1
T4 +2 // +1Sol ring is powerful because it provides both an immediate and consistent mana advantage. Sol talisman doesn't even start to accrue that kind of value until the fifth turn of the game. If we are being particularly generous in a very interactive matchup then maybe you get to tap it for mana twice. Think about when the critical turn for a lot of vintage decks happens, Doomsday, Oath, PO, Rav. Shops, even most Jeskai lists are threatening to win with Breach on T4 and that is when they are facing meaningful disruption, if we are exiling a card on T1, essentially going down a card for the first three turns of the game its even harder to find a way to make it beyond that T4 event horizon.
Moreover, we can't be mulliganing to find this card and we can't do much with it if we draw it on later turns. So running four of them has a big opportunity cost.
I cannot think of a deck that can suspend this consistently on turn one, survive until turn four and still have the resources to take advantage of the mana on turns 5+.
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Clearly Sol Ring is better than Sol Talisman. I’m never going to argue otherwise, except for that if either is in play, they’re exactly the same card.
There’s plenty of instances where a deck will play a one mana creature or artifact such as Voltaic Key, Nihil Spellbomb, or even Mana Vault on turn 1 only for it to do nothing for several turns. It’s such a low commitment, you might as well just use your excess mana on it and forget about it until it comes back to help in a big way.
Not every deck needs to be hellbent on trying to win the game by turn 4. A deck can exist where prolonging the game is part of the game plan. I think Sol Talisman is a good card, and I don’t think it’s obvious so I’m not surprised that nobody agrees.
As Foretold is a deck
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I hope my read it wrong but it seems like you are digging in to a position for no purpose other than to argue, the goal here is a discussion and engaging in one means actually engaging.
I'll go point by point:
They are not the same card if either is in play, one has cmc 1, the other has effective 0 cmc, one can be used with PO, repealed for value, the other cannot. This is nebulous but looking at the cards that get played in vintage right now the new talisman has more negative interactions which is an important to consider when building with it.
The difference between a key/spellbomb/vault on T1 and a suspended card that is inaccessible until turn four is huge. That mana vault could pay for a Fluster, always threatens Tinker, Spellbomb can be cashed in for a card or remove a gy and Key threatens infinite turns along with a dozen other positive interactions. They all might go unused till turn four or longer, but they also have value in threatening to do things in the intervening turns while Talisman doesn't.
Importantly, and intentionally I didn't say win the game by turn four, I said critical turn. Decks that want to prolong the game still have a critical turn, where they establish their gameplan (Golos Shops with spheres and null rods, standstill with the titular card in play and a full grip of counters, BUG with a leovold/ouphe/Oko or a resolved delve spell).
Sure not every deck has to be trying to push its critical turn as soon as possible, but every deck in vintage is so if we are proposing a critical turn that falls later than the norm for the format bad results are going to follow.
As foretold is a card, as for being a vintage card I can't for the life of me find a deck that has been played including it in vintage. Build it, test it, demonstrate your belief.
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Here is one of many lists that have used As Foretold in Vintage
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This deck aims to use the card the turn it is played to use ancestral visions. These cards are less analogous than you seem to believe.
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@botvinik we shall see young padawan
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@lienielsen
Make a (legal) deck with 4 Sol Talisman, I’ll make one with 4 Feldwar Stone. We can settle this question fairly easily -
I'm not that competent with the change from converted mana cost to the new mana cost rules. Could this be fetched with Urza's Saga (the land/Saga)?
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@john-cox there is no meaningful change in rules, only terminology. 'converted mana cost' is now 'mana value'
no, urza's saga can't find this. it doesn't actually care about mana value, but rather looking for a specific mana cost: [1]. It can't find arcum's astrolabe or esper sentinel, and it can't find any zero drops, whether they cost [0], [X], or lack a mana cost at all. -
@blindtherapy said in [MH2] Sol Talisman:
arcum's astrolabe
Ah ok, I saw someone mention finding lotus with saga so I thought this might be game.
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@john-cox any mention of lotus with saga would have been people talking about how they very clearly printed the card worded in such a way that it would not find lotus bloom in modern.
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@nofuture said in [MH2] Sol Talisman:
As foretold is a card
If you have a resolved as foretold or some number of electrodominances, would this be the card you wanted to play with it? Once you have it in play mana would seem to be substantially less important for you.
Here are things you could cheat play instead in this situation Sorceries with 0 CMC
Some of these potentially end the game on the spot like Living End or Gaea's will in the right build, so I am not sure why 2 mana is suddenly a thing you need. If the argument is you can suspend the card for value late game, I would probably rather make two 4/4s to close out the game.
Likewise I would make the argument that any deck that is considering this card would probably be considering Lotus Bloom first, and that just seems like it would win out in most deck building considerations.