M13 : Disciple of Bolas

[Guli]

Disciple of Bolas
   3

When Disciple of Bolas enters the battlefield, sacrifice another creature then gain life and draw cards equal to its power
   2/1

With Exalted around this can draw you 4-5 cards in second main. Can you imagine a deck with a lot of effective Legends? Sacrifice them to replay the second copy. Maybe the morbid mechanic can be used with it? Or Undying? Also Ninjutsi can be interesting to use the ETB trigger.

The life gain is relevant too, because of race wars and Dark Confidant.

The casting cost is 4, but that is not bad, because you don't want to play this the first 3 turns anyway, you want to play your disrupting cards.

I think the card is worth discussing so I opened a thread.

[MaximumCDawg]

I hadn't considered the interaction with Exalted, thats kind of cute. 

Even so, I don't see how this gets the nod over Selkie.  Selkie does more or less the same thing (cards for exalted bonus) and functions as a game-winning engine once it gets going.  I guess this is easier to cast, with only one colored mana requirement, but it is conditional - it requires a creature to sac - whereas Selkie is perfectly fine on her own if you are in a pinch.

Going outside of the realm of Exalted, this seems inferior to Dark Confidant.  You drop Bob turn 1 or 2, then by turn 3 or 4 when you cast Disciple, Bob has already netted you cards to make up the difference.

Seems cute for dredge except they have better card draw creatures if they want to do this angle.

[psyburat]

Although this handles redundant draws of Legendary cards, that requires a 6 mana investment over two turns, plus a serious drop in tempo.  Four mana in a non-blue card is pretty backbreaking too.  I don't see this making a significant impact, although the GWx non-FoW beats will undoubtedly attempt.

[boggyb]

Selkie is conditional, too: she has to connect with your opponent. Bob is also conditional: he has to survive a turn. Not saying this is better, but there is a big difference between drawing a small number of cards over a period of time in the future, and drawing a lot of cards all at once immediately; the difference is that the latter is more explosive and a lot harder to disrupt. If someone can make this work, ideally by seeking to cycle redundant legends as Guli suggested, it would function a lot like Amass The Components does in T2's Angel-Delver lists, and very effectively.

[serracollector]

This card is lol with a Wurmcoil.  I hope its a Human.

[MaximumCDawg]

I still dont see this making a splash just for the Exalted bonus.  I like that he wants to play with high-power dudes, since thats a good win condition by itself.  Maybe there's an undercosted creature that works well with this dude?  Doing a min/max on cost/power, you have some contenders.

(1) The dudes who are sometimes very large: Death's Shadow, Nyxallid. 

(2) The dudes who are fascinating but as of yet unbroken: Dormant Gormazoa is huge for its cost, but you need to keep feeding it self-targeting spells.  Rage Nimbus is almost removal against bears.  Sheltering Ancient leads to draw 5 cards for 6 mana over two turns, which is not awful. 

(3) Ball Lightning-type (temporary) dudes who stick around long enough to be sacrificed: Ravaging Riftwurm, Phyrexian Soulgorger,

(4) Creatures that are terribad on their own and no one will even try: Runious Minotaur, Cosmic Larva.

(5) Sui-black creatures: Flesh Reaver, Phyrexian Negator, Phylactory Lich, Drinker of Sorrow

Of all of these, I feel like No. 5 has the best chance of being worthwhile to run with Disciple.  Negator in particular is cool on turn 1 off a ritual, then gets embarassing when they drop a creature.  Replacing him with five fresh ones in midgame certainly seems worthwhile...

[Saya]

Sometimes i get confused which format they talk

[Guli]

Jotun Grunt seems interesting with this. Add that the the list of mechanics, cumulative upkeep costs. It is also important not to start running trash just for Bolas.

In a deck with high creature count, you can afford sacrificing one of your dudes to refill.

Bolas is like a huge skullclamp in 1 go with bonuses.

Edit* This would work well WITH skullclamp

[MaximumCDawg]

Yesh.  I like to re-examine former trash in light of new printings, however.  I'm the guy who will run Disciple and Soulgorger just so I feel like I won the tourny when I get to draw 8 cards off it.

[Nydaeli]

Pretty broken with Wall of Blood.  Too bad Wall of Blood is trash by itself.

[MaximumCDawg]

Pretty broken with Wall of Blood.  Too bad Wall of Blood is trash by itself.

Wall of Blood combos with Rite of Consumption...?

[A.-1.]

Guli, I like Jotun Grunt and Skullclamp as well with this new card. Perhaps a GWB shell with 4x of all the good Legends? I think the 3B casting cost is reasonable if you're only running 2 or so.

[brianpk80]

I think it's expensive, but maybe there is some explosive deck waiting to be made out of Wall of Blood combo.  Wall of Blood, Phyrexian Dreadnaught, Death's Shadow, Rite of Consumption, Hidden Horror, Engineered Explosives, Trickbind, Dark Confidant, Disciple of Bolas, Oath of Ghouls, Children of Korlis, Jotun Grunt, Thalia, Wasteland, Mishra's Factory.  It remains to be seen.   

[Guli]

Jotun Grunt is a card that will almost never stick around for that long unless you do something about it (for example bounce it). Instead or ON TOP of a bounce plan, I really like how grunt will clean their graveyard, swing with a fat body, net you at least 4 cards (with exalted even more) and on top important life points.

I would probably start with Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, 4 Noble Hierarch, 4 Jotün Grunt and 4 Disciple of Bolas and work from there. You want plenty of mana acceleration to cast Disciple and also to play out your fresh cards and new Disciples and so on.

[ELD]

Swing for lethal with Goblin Piledrive and friends.  Vial in this guy to draw ALL THE CARDS!!!  Really though, I'm not even running Tinker right now.  Casting costs matter. 

[Blue Lotus]

I love drawing cards as much as the next guy but the tempo loss just doesn't seem worth it to me.

Would love to see it work though!

[Guli]

Human Wizard!

Interesting things will happen :p