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u/Possible_Beach6603

▲ 1 r/mtgrules

Question on Undercity Plague

I'm building a mono-black deck which is essentially zombie and forcing opponents to sac their stuff which builds my zombie army with [Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet]].

I have the Sorcery [[Undercity Plague]] with Cipher on it.

  • Ability 1: Target player loses 1life, discards 1 card, and sac's a permanent
  • Ability 2: Cipher - encodes it to another creature and creates a copy of it itself when that create does combat damage.

The way I understand it, I cast Undercity and put it on a creature. I attack & do damage, and Cipher copies Undercity Plague card and it gets cast again which i can encode on another creature during my combat phase. ALSO... in my opponents combat phase, If i block with the creature and it survives, I can then also cast Undercity again since it did Combat damage to my opponents creature, essentially making that target lose 1 life, discard, and sac again.

Is that correct? Seems like that could be abused across your board.

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u/Possible_Beach6603 — 1 day ago
▲ 8 r/EDH

Golbez, Crystal Collector - Looking for some guidance

[EDIT] Well after reading through a lot of the decks and suggestions on her, I'm going to rebuild this from semi-scratch. As some have suggested, its trying to do to many things at once. I have got my mana based fixed fairly well.. but could def use more Arty lands... ill need to pick up a few. As for the other cards, im going to break up an Urza deck that i never play which has a ton of Arty cards in it that ill be able to use. So ill work with that and rebuild it from there.

Thanks for everyones help. The link will eventually update with the end version here at some point. Thanks!

I've built a semi-artifact deck (25 artifacts) with [[Golbez, Crystal Collector]] at the helm.
The deck focuses on putting large (expensive) cards into your GY using a few typical ways (discard, sac, & cycling) and then having Golbez's triggering effects get your cards back and start whittling down your opponents health.. its just slow. So far the deck is somewhat decent. It just takes a bit to get it up and running. On test runs, its taking about 12-14 turns consistently to get it to where its a solid threat. One thing I started noticing is that I'm playing more towards the sacc'ing with Gisa than utilizing Golbez's triggering effects.

[EDIT - after thought] I especially love the ability to play with my GY as a second hand. So maybe i just build the deck around his ability to pull cards from the GY with the bonus of extra damage and lean into the zombie thing and add in [[Scarab God]] to the 99.

Deck Strat:

  • Get cards into my GY that I can eventually pull out when i get 8 artifacts to trigger Golbez 2nd which is X damage to opponents based on power. So high power cards that can be discarded to GY.
  • Essentially using GY as a second hand and pull cards from it if/when i need to. I can sac some cards to put cards directly onto the BF.

What's working:

  • Mana is constant and works well since he only costs 2 to get out. I never really have mana issues throughout, even if starting out with 2.
  • By turn 6-8 i can usually get 8 artifacts out. Quicker if i can get [[Mycosynth Wellspring]] by tutors or draw; then everything is an artifact.
  • I have a few cards that I can drop [[Myr Battlesphere]] 7C to drop but it gives my 5 artifacts. Huge value to get Golbez hitting on endstep.
  • Saccing/Cycling/Discarding is working great. I can get plenty of cards into the GY.

Win Cons (so far):

  • Create tokens with [[Ghoulcaller Gisa]] making 7-9 zombies with some large creatures. Then next turn, sac those zombies with a few $0.35 sac cards to get +2/+2's on that creature turning it into a 20/20. Sac that creature for 20 zombies. Having [[Syr Konrad]] out takes out ppl pretty quick with all of the sacc'ing. Total of ~30 damage.
  • Slowly... using Golbez triggered ability to hit opponents for power level damage on endstep; so 9 damage for a 9/9 creature card. This is VERY slow and it happens only once per turn.

I'd like it to be a little bit faster.. but im wondering a few things.

  1. Am I trying to do something with a commander that needs to be played differently?
  2. Is there a way to speed him up? Hard because its on the endstep
  3. Is there a better commander for what im trying to do with roughly the same colors?
  4. Should I pull some cards out like Gisa? Shes not artifacts but can give good value with the large cards.

Thanks in advance!

Deck Link. https://manabox.app/decks/AZ4Uve1De--DcQOaf7BOGQ

u/Possible_Beach6603 — 6 days ago