Moxnix's opinions and reasoning on Jeleva vs Yidris just seem... wrong.

"Adding green means you have to increase your land count."

This statement makes little sense, has no justification, and is false. Adding green opens up more options for efficient, powerful ramp like BoP and Carpet of Flowers. it by no means forces a higher total mana source count.

"Yidris doesn't really get you anything useful."

Apparently ramp, card advantage, tutors, and a massively increased storm count are no longer considered useful in Storm.

I hate to say it, but Moxnix isn't a great source of competitive information any more. Whether it's misinformation or raw unrestrained bias, he's spouting nonsense. Back in the day he did a huge amount of work for Jeleva, but his decklists and outlook are out of date.

Not sticking up for Mox, per se, but you didn't really back up your assertions yourself. The only thing that matters is playtesting, and a lot of it. Adding an extra color does a whole lot of things that change consistency in the deck. That color may make up for those changes, or it may not.

Unless you're sitting with playtests that show that Yidris is certifiably better/more consistent, then it is not exactly fair for you to rip him over his opinion that Grixis is better than Null-W for Storm.

If we are just looking at the pros and cons of Jeleva vs. Yidris as commanders for Storm:

Jeleva can be ramped out using Sol Ring or Mana Crypt, which you can't do with Yidris so he's more likely to come out a turn slower on average than Jeleva. Jeleva gives you (potential) access to additional cards without any other card or mana investment, whereas with Yidris you need to cast other spells to benefit from his ability. Jeleva has built-in evasion and only needs to attack for you to get a free spell off her, while Yidris needs to attack and land combat damage before you get his effect.

However, Yidris has a big enough body that it is conceivable that he can take out an opponent through combat damage, his ability is better for chaining spells, and he gives you access to green.

So the big argument is about the benefit that playing green brings to a storm build. Mana ramp is a big plus for having green, but what would be worth including when most of the spells you want to cast don't need green mana? Birds of Paradise and Deathrite Shaman offer good colour-fixing for 1 mana, while Carpet of Flowers, Burgeoning, and Exploration potentially offer huge mana acceleration over the first few turns. The downside of running Burgeoning and Exploration is that their benefit depends on you having land cards in hand for them to do anything, which may be where Moxnix's comment about needing a higher land count came from. Honestly though, all Burgeoning or Exploration has to do is get just one addition land out early to be worth the mana spent on them, so I'm not sure how much that conflicts with Storm's low land count.

Mana dorks that just produce green mana like Llanowar Elves seem slow for what you get since they don't colour-fix well in the deck and don't offer an immediate mana return to keep a Storm spell chain going, although I suppose having something at 1 mana to cascade into that can also potentially help ramp the next turn isn't a horrible deal. I don't know, I may be undervaluing their usefulness in a Storm shell so feel free to correct me.

So what else does green offer Storm? I've seen cards like Noxious Revival mentioned. Would Manamorphose be worth a slot? For players who put more emphasis on the Doomsday kill, Leovold, Emissary of Trest is a jank option that offers protection for Laboratory Maniac and could take advantage of the Storm deck's wheel effects to cripple the opponents' hands. I honestly don't know what else in green would be useful if you are aiming for a quick storm kill, so if there is anyone with more ideas then please chime in.

Along with Noxious Revival you also get the other Regrowth clones which I can imagine are great.

What did we decide about Partner re: adding them to the list?

So in late night news, Imperial Seal is being reprinted.

Woah, what? in what set? not standard, so what?

Trtl: Judge Promo. So the lagality of the card isn't changing.

Oh, that's kind of disappointing...

End of the day its something small shrugs.

Wouldn't be surprised if the Judge Foil is more expensive than the original (or as expensive). It changes little in terms of actual player access to the card, just like the Mana Crypt judge foil.

Imperial Seal is only used by super spikes.
I have one but never use it. It just isn't good. If I have to run extra tutors I use Grim Tutor.

I think it will bring the price down a bit and stabilize the price.(I.E) Mana Drain

Hopefully this is a forerunner to Seal being reprinted in Eternal Masters 2 or another upcoming non-standard set...

I think the argument about it being like mana crypt is wrong. Mana Crypt is a very popular and sought after card in both casual and competitive formats, this being the occasional vintage play. However, nobody really cares about Imperial seal.Its a 800 dollar card, now Japanese versions already at 250-350 so saying it wont effect price is wrong as it already has seen a 50% decrease, that is worse then a 20 dollar card, Vampiric Tutor, which does see play everywhere its allowed to be played in. Yes, this is a tremendously small reprint but because is a reprint is why this card is dropping in price. Nobody wants it, Vintage players don't want it, and only the most spiky of spikes in commander use it, and even then, as stated above, theres Grim tutor and other slightly more expensive,CMC, and more effective tutors out there for much cheaper.In the last month alone the card dropped 100 dollars, so even before the reprint it was dropping in price.Lack of ability doesn't matter if theres no demand for the product, and as stated before with the reprint,as small as it may be, has already effected the price and will continue to do so.

After testing both cards extensively Grim Tutor is significantly worse than Imperial Seal. Pretty much any cedh deck with black would be much better with seal. It is such a good turn 1-2 play for a combo deck. Grim Tutor on the other hand is barely playable. That double black has left it a dead card in my hand many times. Its just so clunky. There are transmute cards I would rather have in some of my decks over it (i.e Muddle the Mixture in HD Thrasios; Drift of Phantasms in sidisi). It only has a spot in most cEDH lists due to the importance of tutor density.

The point is that there are other cards not just Seal, because honestly after all the good ones are gone you get cards like Seal. Grim Tutor, Muddle the Mixture, even Dark Petition sees play.The point I was making is that only the most spikey of people even play it and lets be honest, since most people in cEDH play online this conversation doesnt really impact cEDH as a format as much. I play cEDH in paper and I can say that Imperial Seal is rarely seen except by some few people who run it and get very little use out of it.The main point I was making is in terms of accessibility, which is a term that is awkwardly used because Seal is easily accessible to everyone...the internet...its the artificial accessibility of price that stops most players, but most players neither want it or need it...in terms of casual play there are better tutors and you wont need as high of a density of tutors and the marginal percentage isnt needed either. In terms of cEDH, where the dominate location of play is MTGO if not places like cockatrice, so accessibility is still just fine. Its paper magic where accessibility is a "problem", but with copies already at the mid 200s and dropping that wont be as much as a problem because once it hits the low 200 or high 100 the question of accessibility cant be made because that is in peoples reach it just becomes a matter of how much will you cry once you get it. And if your talking about the everyday player, they just dont need it. I dont shove every gaea's cradle or mana drain into my deck nor really should because that would be massively unhealthy to the format as a whole if every player did. This reprint is honestly more for casuals looking to spike it up a bit and collectors and investors. Like i said before vintage no longer uses this card and hasnt for a while and cEDH is dominated in MTGO where its 5 dollars or like 12 in foil.

Also I keep forgetting to add this, the 200 dollar copies are Japanese, Portal Three Kingdoms saw a much bigger printing in japan and as such is why those have always been cheaper. I mean you can buy the 600 dollar English version, which is better then the 800 of a month ago, but why would you? The foils will clearly be more expensive, that is true...but that becomes a matter of peoples tendencies to buy the pretty shiny stuff, I admit I just purchased a foil promo of Azusa, over what just works.

I would just like to say that as someone who runs a Gonti, Lord of Luxury deck as a casual deck, I hope all my opponents start running imperial seal lol.

lolol i see what youre doing

T1 Imperial Seal pass turn, T1 Mana Crypt, Swamp, Mox Diamond, Gonti, Lord of Luxury

opponent flips table.

i say we all petition for Gonti, Lord of Luxury to be the strongest tier one.

I would be interested to see a fully tuned list for him.

why is ishai t3, while akiri is t4? shouldn't they both be t4

cuz

trotax those are my thoughts exactly. I also play in paper, while I do have an Imperial Seal, I used it rarely and it was never a 'feel good' moment casting it.

+1 for Gonti to be the new uber-tier 1 list