[D&D] Demilich

alt text

UUUU
Creature - Skeleton Wizard
This spell costs U less to cast for each instant and sorcery spell you've cast this turn.

Whenever Demilich attacks, exile up to one target instant or sorcery card from your graveyard. Copy it. You may cast the copy.

You may cast Demilich from your graveyard by exiling four instant and/or sorcery cards from your graveyard in addition to paying its other costs.
4/3

It's a turn 1 play with Lotus, of course, but without Probe and Gush floating around, how castable is this and how much better (or worse) than Arcanist it really is? I mean, this is pretty good with [[Manamorphose]] but I don't think Vintage decks are about to start splashing that just for this. Any other free spells we could play to help this?

EDIT: just got that you need to pay the mana cost of the spell you exile when you attack. So this is just unplayable. Will leave it here anyway so no one posts it again

Botvinik

I was very excited till I read your edit.

Protoaddict

You guys are not Memeing hard enough to make this work.

4 Demilich
4 Pact of the titan
4 Summoners pact
4 Pact of Negation
4 First Day of Class
4 Chatterstorm
4 Manamorphose
1 Gitaxian Probe
4 street wraith
4 Angels Grace

1 lotus
5 moxen
1 lotus petal

Some number of lands

Someone make this happen.

LieNielsen

Hypothetically you could play this in dredge. I would think it’s possible to fire off enough free instants/sorceries (Therapy, Unmask, Dread Return, Probe, etc.) that you could cast a bunch of these from the graveyard for free.

When you cast an instant/sorcery from your graveyard using Demilich, may alternate casting costs be used? For example, can I cast an Unmask from the grave by exiling a black card from my hand?

@lienielsen said in [D&D] Demilich:

Hypothetically you could play this in dredge. I would think it’s possible to fire off enough free instants/sorceries (Therapy, Unmask, Dread Return, Probe, etc.) that you could cast a bunch of these from the graveyard for free.

When you cast an instant/sorcery from your graveyard using Demilich, may alternate casting costs be used? For example, can I cast an Unmask from the grave by exiling a black card from my hand?

As far as I know yes you can. But I doubt this is something Dredge wants. You reanimate this and then cast what? Basically Probe, or Unmask, right? Do you really need any of those after you are already kinda winning?

BlindTherapy

I think hitting 4 spells is going to be awfully hard for dredge to do; or rather, unmask is usually cast on turn 1 (when still played, grief now being better). dread return doesn't really count, as if you've got a dread return then a 4/3 that doesn't do anything for a turn doesn't matter much.
Casting unmask on turn 3+ is pretty underwhelming.
If this card was just a vanilla 4/3 with 'you can cast this from your yard by exiling 4 instant/sorceries and paying 0 mana' it would probably be playable. 4 spells being cast, though, is a very high threshold to meet in most cases; it usually means all 4 therapies or 3 and a dread return.

Botvinik

Could you side-board this in DPS style decks for the more controlling matchups perhaps?

John Cox

There was an arclight pheonix deck a while back that this might fit in.

MaximumCDawg

@fsecco The art depicts a Pez dispenser.

That aside, I wouldn't compare this to Arcanist. It's big enough to be a win condition on its own, and it recurs itself. Seems like it gives you a lot of inevitability plus some random utility.

@maximumcdawg said in [D&D] Demilich:

@fsecco The art depicts a Pez dispenser.

That aside, I wouldn't compare this to Arcanist. It's big enough to be a win condition on its own, and it recurs itself. Seems like it gives you a lot of inevitability plus some random utility.

You do understand my comparison with Arcanist was when I thought you didn't have to pay for the spell, right?