Which Card Should Replace Temple Bell?
Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on Aug. 1, 2020, 11:47 p.m. by DemonDragonJ
I have a copy of Temple Bell in nearly all of my EDH decks, because it is such a great card, but, for my Atraxa deck, I am considering replacing that card with on that uses counters, and, thus, will be amazing in that deck, but I am having difficulty in deciding which card to use, so I shall ask the other users here for their advice.
The first, and most obvious, card that I am considering is Otherworld Atlas, because it is very similar to temple bell, but its only problem is that I worry about enabling my opponents to draw a large number of cards, although I suppose that that could be remedied by not putting too many counters on it. I may not control a Reliquary Tower at the same time as the atlas, plus, three or four counters should be more than sufficient for each activation of the atlas, and one more bonus is that my opponents will be reluctant to attack the player who is providing them with such great card advantage.
The next card that I am considering is Culling Dais, as it requires very little investment for a potentially major profit, but it has several drawbacks: first, this deck does not have a great number of cards that generate tokens, so getting the first counter on the artifact may be difficult; second, it must be sacrificed to activate its ability, so it provides its cards all at once, rather than in small increments, and, again, I may not have a Reliquary Tower when I activate it, which would obviously be a problem.
The final card that I am considering is Mindless Automaton, which has the advantage of being a creature and also an ability that is easily repeatable, but the only reason for which I have not already added it to my deck is that replacing temple bell shall mean that there shall be one less non-creature spell to trigger the ability of Flux Channeler, but I wonder how often that shall actually be relevant.
What does everyone else say about this? Which card should replace Temple Bell in my Atraxa EDH deck?
spoonieluv1023 says... #3
May I suggest Walking Archive? It is a creature but synergizes with Atraxa pretty well. Plus, you only put the +1/+1 counter on it when it will benefit you the most.
August 2, 2020 12:23 a.m.
I think the best card draw options you should be running are Tome of Legends and Generous Patron.
August 2, 2020 1:11 a.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #6
Everyone here has given me a different suggestion, which shall make this more difficult to process, but I shall address each suggestion in turn.
spoonieluv1023, Walking Archive is a nice card, but the fact that its ability triggers only during each player's upkeep severely limits its usefulness.
StopShot, if Tome of Legends did not require mana to activate its ability, I likely would have chosen it,but none of the other cards that I have mentioned here require mana to sue their abilities, so that is very important. As for Generous Patron, I would like to limit how frequently I place counters on creatures that I do not control.
Daveslab2022, King_marchesa, I was already considering Otherworld Atlas, anyway, so I shall most likely use that card, but I will also purchase a copy of Mindless Automaton, to see which card performs better in this deck.
August 2, 2020 8:59 a.m.
@DemonDragonJ, In that case you should run Soul Diviner. The card draw doesn’t cost mana and it won’t rely on your opponent’s creatures to get value either.
August 2, 2020 10:10 a.m.
I am going to go out on a limb and say Temple Bell is not a good card. In a 1v1 match, would you play an artifact that read “draw 1, your opponent draws 3”? In a four player pod, that is what Temple Bell ends up being - you get 1 card, and your collective opponents get three.
The same goes for the replacements you have listed - they might seem fair, but the actuality is they are incredible net card disadvantage.
August 2, 2020 11:18 a.m. Edited.
DeinoStinkus - It is also not 100% true because the odds are not exactly the same between draw three from three decks and draw 3 from a single deck. I'll admit it is not a perfect conceptualization, but I have found the analogy is a bit more effective than going through a bunch of math.
I think you raise a good point--one should really know their meta. In "fair" Magic, Temple Bell and its friends are less damaging, and might buy you enough time to pull a win by making you non-threatening. However, if any of your players are running combo or have other ways to win the game on a single turn, giving them extra chances to draw into what they need is always going to be a problem.
August 2, 2020 11:50 a.m.
Staff of Nin but out of the ones youisted I'd say culling dias. Your stuff will die in a game of edh and you'll easily be able to get the first counter on it. You can sacrifice your stuff in response to a kill spell
August 2, 2020 1:33 p.m.
RNR_Gaming says... #11
The best draw engines without any budget restrictions are Rhystic Study, Necropotence, Sylvan Library and to a lesser more meta-dependant extent Mystic Remora; though they're not very flavorful they will keep your hand extra fat. If you're a tad more on the creature heavy side Edric, Spymaster of Trest and Tymna the Weaver
are super reliable draw engines. Though if I had to pick out of the ones you're considering I'd go with the atlas but would include Notion Thief and Narset, Parter of Veils but I'm a degenerate :)
August 2, 2020 7:35 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #12
StopShot, Soul Diviner is a nice card, but it is limited to drawing one card per turn, and the other options that I am considering all for drawing multiple cards per turn.
Caerwyn, many players have said that, but they always forget the crucial detail that any game that is not an archenemy game is not one player against all the others, it is a free-for-all, with each player opposing all others equally (at least, that is the ideal situation).
DeinoStinkus, yes, that is exactly the type of scenario to which I am referring; most players will not wish to eliminate the player who is providing card advantage to all players until that player is their final opponent.
shadow63, Staff of Nin is an amazing card, but its mana cost is too high, so I cannot consider it, at least, not for this deck.
RNR_Gaming, I am not willing to spend such great amounts of money on those cards, and your suggestion of the atlas further supports my preexisting inclination toward it.
August 2, 2020 7:39 p.m.
RNR_Gaming says... #13
Well, once theres a restock of jumpstart you'll probably be able to snag Rhystic Study for 10 or less; since it is print to demand. Also, outside of Sylvan Library all the cards I suggested are currently valued less than your commander; though those 6 cards would still have a hefty total so I understand.
August 2, 2020 7:44 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #14
RNR_Gaming, if the price of Rhystic Study decreases significantly, I will be very tempted to put it into more of my decks, but, for this particular deck, any card that can take advantage of counters is desirable. I do have several cards in this deck that do not interact with counters, but that is because they are too good to not put in any deck that allows them.
August 2, 2020 7:49 p.m.
RNR_Gaming says... #15
Well one more suggestion seeing as you have Doubling Season and Deepglow Skate if your not opposed to an ultra value synergy Jace, Architect of Thought has what I feel is the single best ultimate in edh and popping it off usually means victory or insurmountable value.
August 2, 2020 8:14 p.m.
@Caerwyn, @DeinoStinkus, Group draw is a fickle subject that I think needs more analysis than it gets credit for. I've heard the argument that your opponents get more value out of it than you do, but I feel like this argument always presumes your opponents are always going to use whatever cards they draw against you. Even if you're running a non-group-hug deck I don't think that's the case. Let's say in our 4 player game I play Temple Bell. Yes, my opponents are now drawing more cards than me, but what about for my opponents? The opponent sitting across the table shares the same predicament now, his/her two opponents and I are now are collectively drawing more cards than they are and same for the other two opponents. If anything cards like Temple Bell increases the effectiveness that your playgroup can team up against any given player in the game.
There's also some nuance to this too. Cards like Temple Bell aren't played in 1-v-1 settings because it only increases the power gap of the two decks playing. If your deck is already expected to win a certain match-up why would you use up card slots for win-more cards if you're already expected to win? If your deck is expected to lose, then cards like Temple Bell means the number of advantageous cards your opponent draws is doubled which is not what you need when making a turn-around. Ironically though, cards like Temple Bell have the opposite effect when put into a multiplayer setting. If you're the weakest deck at the table you'll effectively be giving yourself and your opponents more options to take down the strongest player or the person who won last match. As for the top player, they'll have more resources to use to stop whoever is the second or third best deck at the table. If your opponents are busy using up all their resources on each other while your side floats under the radar, then you have effectively turned Temple Bell from a, "tap: each player draws a card" into a "tap: draw a card." By decreasing the win rate of the strongest players you are effectively increasing the win rate of the weakest players by shrinking the power gap, and if your deck is below the power curve, cards like Temple Bell are exactly what you want to be putting in your deck.
Of course this only makes Temple Bell a situational piece of card draw and it would be entirely fair to say that it would be far better to run cards that you only draw from as there will become times where you may end up becoming the biggest threat at the table, at which point cards like Temple Bell will only hurt you whereas self-oriented card draw will give you the edge. That said, do keep in mind however that in a multiplayer setting giving yourself card advantage isn't strictly better than giving everyone card advantage. If you and an opponent are drawing three cards each per turn and your two other opponents are drawing one card per turn, a lot of the cards you draw from your card draw resources are likely going to be spent trying to combat the opponent drawing the three cards per turn and that opponent will likely be spending a majority of their drawn cards trying to combat you as well. The card draw ratio at the table would be 3:3:1:1, but if we take the same scenario and change one of our card draw sources into a group draw card then the card draw ratio at the table changes to 3:4:2:2. In this scenario your main opponent has gone from drawing three times as many cards as either of your opponents to only drawing half as many as either opponent or to put it another way your other two opponents are now drawing just as many cards as your main opponent unlike in the previous scenario. What you have done is you're still drawing the same number of cards as before, but now you can rely more on your other opponents to deal with your main opponent meaning you don't have to use up as many of your resources as you did before.
Now, of course, its fair to argue that in this scenario you're still the second biggest threat at the table and giving your opponents more cards to draw can comeback as a double-edged sword as you may lose resources to what your opponents can play against you and you may have to split your resources by trying to deal with your other two opponents who are now drawing twice as many cards as they were before, but this is where politics in play groups matter so much even if you're not running a group hug deck. In the 3:4:2:2 scenario you absolutely have the case to make that if your other two opponents decide to take you out the scenario will become a 3:1:1 card draw ratio as your Temple Bell will no longer be in play and it will be harder for these two opponents to deal with the player drawing three cards whereas they have much more of the advantage now with you still in the game. Your opponents 9 times out of 10 I would also say are less likely to use their resources against you unless if you happen to be the biggest threat at the table. There can be a lot of power in shame and guilt when it comes to biting the hand that feeds you. Even if one of your opponents starts using their resources to hinder you, other players might find that in bad taste and gang up on that player due to the enemy of my friend is also my enemy mindset. (That is presuming if that opponent hinders you while you are not the biggest threat at the table of course.) This in turn makes all the bigger deterrent for your opponents not to go after you even though you're reaping a big advantage here as I see it.
I wouldn't argue group-hug draw is better than self-draw either. There are plenty of ways you could tweak the scenario to make it where group-hug draw is worse than self-draw, but the point I'm wanting to make here is group-hug draw can have just as much merit to it as self-draw so long as you're thinking critically about when and where to use it. I also want to say some group hug cards are far more superior than other group hug cards. Cards like Howling Mine and Font of Mythos makes it so all your opponents draw before you do whereas cards like Temple Bell and Stormfist Crusader let's everyone draw cards at the same time, and you can have it be drawn on your turn so that you're the first one to play your sorcery speed cards before anyone else can. There's a check-list I could make for if your deck would benefit from group-draw. Does your deck not run blue or green? Can your deck handle set-backs better than other decks? Does your deck not run certain cards over how much of a threat it will make you? Do you hate playing against stax decks? Is it hard for players to gauge how ahead of the game you are? Do you prefer to play more reactively than proactively? There may be a couple more that aren't coming to mind, but the more times you answered yes to any of those questions the better suited group-draw might be for your deck.
August 2, 2020 8:56 p.m.
@DemonDragonJ, on that basis you should run the Otherworld Atlas as the other two fail pretty hard to draw you more than one card per turn. With Culling Dais you can proliferate once per turn, but that only amounts to drawing one card per turn. If you want to effectively draw two cards per turn you'd need to be sacrificing a creature to it every turn while proliferating too. I noticed you have other proliferate sources in your deck, but if you don't have them on the battlefield with your commander out the card draw will fall below your standards. You also can't draw the cards right away either as you have to let it sit for as long as you'd need it to. If I had to pick a delayed build-up draw effect I would rather run Barrin's Codex or Pursuit of Knowledge even though they cost more mana.
Mindless Automaton I think is also the worst of the three as you'd need to put 4 counters on it every turn just to meet your card draw standards. While you can get the card draw right away without losing the Automaton it seems like much more work than running the Culling Dais.
I would run Otherworld Atlas, however; if the Atlas turns out to not meet up with your liking I would instead switch it out for Soul Diviner as I feel it would reliably draw you more cards in an average game than Culling Dais or Mindless Automaton would. Perhaps I might run Pursuit of Knowledge over the Diviner, but having something that doesn't draw you the cards right away can make it feel slow and clunky. That said if you compare Pursuit of Knowledge and Otherworld Atlas they both would draw you 5 cards after two turns being on the battlefield. (Keep in mind skipping two draws makes Pursuit of Knowledge provide a pay off of 5 cards drawn.) So the downside to one is you let your opponents draw extra cards along with you and the downside to the other is you can't draw anymore cards afterwards.
Daveslab2022 says... #2
I personally think the Atlas makes the most sense. But if you do go that route maybe play bitterblossom or other repeatable early tokens
August 2, 2020 12:07 a.m.