Is the Immortal Sun Broken?

Tilwin90

NP is the real culprit here. Be it as it is, The Immortal Sun is actually a very fun tool that brings a new angle to the game. Sacrificing your own planeswalker abilities to disable the opponent is a very nice angle and I can say I am super happy it doesn't have the stupid "lose 1 shield per turn" mechanic.

Cost reduction of course is a big deal and it encourages combo decks, but without Baral it's not that big of a deal. Yes, it can further enable Imminent Doom decks, but I found NP to be the real issue there (as granting 3 mana to spells is obnoxious!). I am actually not that excited to put TIS in an ID deck. Drawing into multiples kind of hurts your combo (even with all those deserts, filling a 17 mana support is a big deal!).

Finally, the +1/+1 pump on the creatures is negligible, if relevant at all. In paper magic +1/+1 is a huge deal, but in MTGPQ it's whatever... I tend to forget that effect even exists on TIS and it hasn't bit me in the tush yet.   (and I have faced TIS quite a bit).

Sirchombli

Finding a way to abuse a card when you have all the cards is a pretty awkward metric to gauge if the card is broken. Og baral, for instance , was oppressive in a deck with 9 commons. Imminent doom is more broken than sun , but I wouldn't consider either one to actually be broken. 

GrizzoMtGPQ

If this was a poll, I would vote "No". It's just a fun combo.

Mainloop25

So, I used this deck for RTO black node, and it actually worked to get full points. You can shut it down with enough support destruction but once it gets going it's as effective as any other ID combo.

jtwood

From a player point of view, it's a pretty bonkers combo because it regularly wins the same turn you assemble it.

From a Greg point of view, I have yet to face it (knowingly), so I have no idea how often the AI would accurately pilot this combo.

Laeuftbeidir

jtwood said:

From a player point of view, it's a pretty bonkers combo because it regularly wins the same turn you assemble it.

From a Greg point of view, I have yet to face it (knowingly), so I have no idea how often the AI would accurately pilot this combo.

It does surprisingly well

Gilesclone

Greg prefers supports to spells and doesn’t like duplicates so it should be fairly effective.

babar3355

Tilwin90 said:

NP is the real culprit here. Be it as it is, The Immortal Sun is actually a very fun tool that brings a new angle to the game. Sacrificing your own planeswalker abilities to disable the opponent is a very nice angle and I can say I am super happy it doesn't have the stupid "lose 1 shield per turn" mechanic.

Cost reduction of course is a big deal and it encourages combo decks, but without Baral it's not that big of a deal. Yes, it can further enable Imminent Doom decks, but I found NP to be the real issue there (as granting 3 mana to spells is obnoxious!). I am actually not that excited to put TIS in an ID deck. Drawing into multiples kind of hurts your combo (even with all those deserts, filling a 17 mana support is a big deal!).

Finally, the +1/+1 pump on the creatures is negligible, if relevant at all. In paper magic +1/+1 is a huge deal, but in MTGPQ it's whatever... I tend to forget that effect even exists on TIS and it hasn't bit me in the tush yet.   (and I have faced TIS quite a bit).

Well, not sure NP is the "real culprit" considering it isnt in my deck .  Also, I can't seem to build a deck that is even remotely as loopy with NP as I can with TIS... am I missing something?  There aren't that many cycling cards that have 3 or less cast value and can be cast without other things to target...

boopers

babar3355 said:

Well, not sure NP is the "real culprit" considering it isnt in my deck .  Also, I can't seem to build a deck that is even remotely as loopy with NP as I can with TIS... am I missing something?  There aren't that many cycling cards that have 3 or less cast value and can be cast without other things to target...

Yeah, the best NP version requires 8 spells, so I haven't played it yet.  But adding NP + Immortal Sun makes any cycling card with cost of 5 an auto-play as well.  The big adds are Hieroglyphic illumination and Blue desert if you use NP as a third support.

It's also worth noting that your version requires a level 59 Bolas... and I'm leaving mine at 52 for a long while I think. So many players looking to build a version of this deck need a third support anyway.  I saw one with Search for Azcanta and NP (4 supports) that worked magnificently and beat me to a pulp on the red node of RtO.

Quantius

Imminent Doom + Greg's constant infinite cascades has been eating my face. I think I've seen Immortal Sun maybe one time and it was easy enough to destroy. But ID with the AI dumping it's hand over and over is just stupid. It's not even a game, it's a coin flip.

boopers

IDoom isn't the issue... it's the cards that facilitate loops to @babar3355 's point at the end of the video. Some cards that facilitate niche loops may happen, but Immortal sun was obviously going to facilitate loops.

Grixis197

Immortal Sun not broken you can’t use abilities either only spells cost 2 less and get +1 for your creatures not overpowered at all

Bil

Grixis197 said:

Immortal Sun not broken you can’t use abilities either only spells cost 2 less and get +1 for your creatures not overpowered at all

   The overpowered part is that you are able to cast spells for free (<2 mana)... Among them are some drawing spells that can create "infinite" loops of drawing/casting spells.
   Its easily abusable with imminent doom or any card that gets an effect on spellcasting.
   

Mburn7

Bil said:

Grixis197 said:

Immortal Sun not broken you can’t use abilities either only spells cost 2 less and get +1 for your creatures not overpowered at all

   
   Its easily abusable with imminent doom or any card that gets an effect on spellcasting.
   

The thing is, there are only 2 cards I know of in standard that can give a win off spellcasting in a loop, Doom and that red Archer creature.  If you try this combo in UG there's also the spell Hydra and Merfolk.
If you add in legacy, you get the Aetherflux Reservoir and another support or 2.

Thats it (correct me if I'm wrong).  None of these other than Doom (an exclusive mythic most people don't have, even with crafting) are really an insta-win condition.  Sure its annoying, but not particularly broken.

babar3355

I actually think there should be more win conditions like iDoom, AoSS, etc.  Makes for a more varied and fun game.  The game always gets iffy when you include infinite draw engines with infinite mana engines.  Baral 1.0 was both in one card which was the most broken thing ever.

Bil

  I actually don't consider the immortal sun as a broken card by itself, but some interactions make it quite abusable (like many cards though). ID is the most obvious but as you mentionned it rherecare several ways to abuse of a drawing spell loop.

  That dragon that get boosted by spell in graveyard or the demon that gets boosted by cards in graveyard can grow quite fast. The locust god or the cards that depend on drawing may be options too.

  That being said, there are many ways to abuse of many things in this game and that's also an interesting part of deckbuilding. In other words, i think sun can be broken in some ways, but nothing from outer space neither.

Mburn7

babar3355 said:

I actually think there should be more win conditions like iDoom, AoSS, etc.  Makes for a more varied and fun game.  The game always gets iffy when you include infinite draw engines with infinite mana engines.  Baral 1.0 was both in one card which was the most broken thing ever.

The problem is, there aren't many alternate win conditions in paper to adapt.  The last one was Revel in Riches which was completely changed when ported over to PQ.  Unless you mean more ways to kill in creatureless, in which case I don't quite agree (since creatureless decks are usually nasty and not fun to play against)

boopers

@babar3355 you will be happy to know that since you posted this, I’ve run into some form of this build 5 times compared to 0 before hand. It usually gets log jammed in each case. I find the AI plays the non immortal sun version with NP better. It has trashed me in events a couple times. 

Gunmix25

@babar3355 hey buddy, thought I would take a moment and tell ya that this build of yours does very well in most BoFT nodes and still meet objectives easily. Like 5.1 for instance, whip him down to 100 hp and then cast non disabled cards one or two at a time to ping him to a safe range of easily taking him out. Then I just sit and let him ping me to just below 20. Then finish him off. Works beautifully.  Well done my friend. You deserve some kudos for sharing this.

morgue427

i like id, in a decent medium power spell deck he can race through with baral helping pay some of the cost. Immortal sun never had so much luck with and couldnt get it to work consistentlt with sphinxes decree, that is just my finding so far.