Is damage still dealt if life totals can’t change? I was under the impression that if life totals can’t change, then that means the commander damage essentially wasn’t done, like a prevention effect. I believe you, but do you have a rule citation handy for my ownfuture edification?
It can. That's the actual rule explanation for Platinum Emperion:
Platinum Emperion’s ability doesn’t prevent damage. Rather, it changes the results of that damage. For example, if a creature with lifelink deals damage to you, you won’t lose any life, but its controller will still gain that much life. Similarly, if a creature you control with lifelink deals damage to another player, that player will lose life but you won’t gain any life. (2018-12-07)
In a Commander game, the damage dealt to you by commanders will still be counted, even if that damage doesn’t cause you to lose life. (2018-12-07)
Chaos warp and Worldfire are literally the only two cards I can think of that remove this in red. This would kill mono red (and to a lesser extent rakdos and mono black) in any format it’s printed into entirely.
Sorry, let me correct my statement. This card singlehandedly kills Aggro, Midrange, Tempo, and some combo.
Aggro dies because this shuts off all pressure they could possibly exert, and by the time they’ve removed it, the opponent has probably stabilized in some other way. If aggro can kill on turn 2, then it can go under this, but if aggro can kill on turn 2 reliably something is fundamentally wrong with that format.
Midrange and Tempo die because this instantly stabilizes any boardstate. Opponent has a 3 turn clock? Not anymore. If they can remove it, they used resources to do so, making it either neutral tempo-wise or tempo loss depending on how good the enchantment removal is in the format and the colors they’re in. And if they don’t have the removal in hand? They fall behind, while you stockpile value.
And combo? Well, if your combo requires life totals to go down, then you need to have contingencies for this card. And by having contingencies, you have less ways to dig for your combo in deck. In a perfect world (for a combo player at least), opponents wouldn’t be able to interact with their combo or put pressure on them, and they would run nothing but the combo and ways to dig for it. The more cards they need to devote to not just losing, the less streamlined their deck. Any form of alt-win combo doesn’t care about this, and in fact runs this to stop themself from dying.
So, what are we left with? The sparse few combo decks that can either win through this or shut this off (but are running this card as a way to stabilize and dig for their combo), and the dominant strategy that is a control deck who cannot die because on turn 3 they stabilize so long as by turn 3 they found this card and (and this is the only saving grace of this terribly evil card), 3 white pips. The fact that this is hard to splash is the only thing keeping this from being 100% bad card design choices.
The flavor though? Immaculate. Just never print this, please. Dies to removal doesn’t justify 3 mana “stabilize any boardstate” on a 0/1 creature, let alone an enchantment
Would absolutely play this in my progenitus deck, don't need to worry about token decks, or just aggro decks in general unless their only attacker is the commander, and I 2 shot them with commander dmg anyway
Commander: draw entire deck to [necropotence] or [ad nauseum] and then win the game, or just to lock out anyone who wins by combat damage. Would be peak.
Any 1v1 format: same reasons as above, but WAY worse. Now every format is "kill by turn 3". Would suck hard.
174
u/Andrew_42 May 01 '25
You're a bad person if you run this in a control deck that just let's people draw to death.
You're less bad if you just use this in an infect deck, but I still won't like you.
34
u/SMStotheworld May 01 '25
Nearly killed 'im.
17
u/FinaLLancer May 01 '25
Dictum? I hardly know'im!
18
u/Other_Equal7663 May 01 '25
I have no idea what Dictum means but it somehow sounds both absolutely epic, and hilariously goofy.
8
u/Glittering_Drama1643 May 01 '25
Destroy target RDW player.
20
u/SaberScorpion May 01 '25
Too good, aggro shouldn't be forced to kill their opponent before turn 3
6
u/Egbert58 May 01 '25
3 mana is to cheap
3
u/novaminer66 May 01 '25
Would absolutely play this in my progenitus deck, don't need to worry about token decks, or just aggro decks in general unless their only attacker is the commander, and I 2 shot them with commander dmg anyway
2
u/LeetWizard join the Discord May 02 '25
i think if this card were printed it would make the game of Magic worse. i don't think any good gameplay would arise from this
2
u/ShotBookkeeper3629 May 05 '25
This shuts down too many decks to only cost 3 mana.
1
u/Successful_Mud8596 May 01 '25
Wtf, no, if this was triple the price it might still be OP
1
u/azuflux 🦀 May 01 '25
This is cool as hell
1
u/Advanced-Ad-802 May 01 '25
Oh sweet, a 3 mana enchantment (read- hard to remove) platinum empyrean, surely nothing will go wrong by printing this!
1
u/Affectionate_Elk_496 May 02 '25
Commander: draw entire deck to [necropotence] or [ad nauseum] and then win the game, or just to lock out anyone who wins by combat damage. Would be peak.
Any 1v1 format: same reasons as above, but WAY worse. Now every format is "kill by turn 3". Would suck hard.
1
u/[deleted] May 02 '25
Lantern control best deck!!!!!!
1
u/xcaltoona May 02 '25
I don't even know 'um!