MTG Salvation

Well, at least you could go "all in" and play Grip of Chaos as well...
that card trolls HARD.

Guy wants to be a famous magic personality so he figures he'll just be infamous instead.
I really hate the way he comes across on the page as he isn't garnering any sympathy from the community, that's for sure.
However, the DCI set a bad precedent with the Bertoncheaty extension. How exactly did Alex get back involved with all of this through Twitter. I read some of the back and forth comments, but didn't see anything incriminating. This guy on the other handseems to have just had his original suspension re-instated.

My God, it looks like you have the most casual of casual babies in your playgroup and for that, I am extremely sorry.

I mean someone had the audacity to put mindshrieker on the list. MINDSHRIEKER.
Anyways I would pull the voltron deck as suggested earlier. Then they'll understand counters and other such answer cards are sometimes key plays to you don't lose (as opposed to allowing you to actively win). Don't let them fall any further into "die-hards" who will sit atop their piles of mana and creature cards and dictate what people can and can't play. It's important that they see the error in their ways now. I mean, even land destruction has its place in EDH.

Also, they don't have mindslaver on the list... muhuhhahhahaa...

Gotta give it up to Serra. Seems like the most "mystical" of the walkers. I imagine after all of the crazy stuff that she's done she would have a lot to teach. (I mean she went through the whole Ice Age ordeal and created her own plane... sounds like stuff I would want to know as a planeswalker)

As an individual who frequented the Legacy forums, I gotta say thanks for all of your work Warden. Take some time off and hopefully you can return at a future date.

Work that masters!

All I want out of modern masters is that on release there will be an initial decrease in the price of modern staples.
Since there is no reserved list for the format, I don't know why anyone would want to "invest" (okay now that I'm writing that it just sounds stupid...) into the market at full price, especially since wizards can pull a reprint run like this at any time now.

For all you collectors I feel like this is the initial test for a potential change in policy. Wizards wants to see how the market reacts to the release of this product. If people are greedy and supply runs short then guess what? A lot of butthurt people are going to make a lot of noise and WOTC is going to hear that as "we want to spend our money, but we can't" so they will probably get right on doing Modern Masters II or whatever.
So actually the "I'm gonna by 12 boxes" guy is good. He will be creating inflated demand for future release of a product that will make the market for staples go down.

On the other hand, going too far and marking up the price too much may leave a bad taste in people's mouth leading to less demand. It's a tricky situation and one where we will likely have to wait and see how the market reacts before knowing for sure whether staples will move up or down in the future.

Hey there EDH/Commander forum. I was wondering if I could get a little community input on what are some cards that "help" opponents? Obviously I did peruse the group-hug style lists here on the forum, but I did not see any thread specifically for digging up the cards that help generate this type of game environment. Since all different type of cards fall into this category, I will list some examples that I know of since this isn't the easiest thing to search on gatherer:
Arcane Denial
Trade Secrets
famously, Phelddagrif
and the Hunted Wumpus masques cycle of creatures (Hired Giant, Enslaved Horror... ect)

to narrow it down, I am not looking for symmetrical effects such as those found on heartbeat of spring or howling mine.
Thanks in advance if anyone manages to turn up anything else.

Seems like legacy is healthy to me.
Show and Tell is not the "best deck" it has plenty of weaknesses as described in the thread. I mean even wasteland is a proactive answer against the deck.

However wizards should know that casting cost of a card alone is not really a restriction. Case and point Omniscience. Hopefully there won't be too many more cards (enter the infinite) printed with that level of raw power.

I feel that when playing a legacy deck, a lot of being able to do well is the capacity to know the ins and outs of your deck.
If you test with a deck long enough be it goblins, merfolk, dredge, Omitell, or U/W miracles, experience will carry you in a lot of close games because you are fighting to your decks strengths.
Getting back to your question, personally the deck that I would choose out of the options you've given would be U/W miracles. Why? Because it can win even when fumbling. Sometimes it really does take a "miracle" to get that come from behind win. Also, when piloting the deck, you will feel much more in control of the outcome as opposed to "please let me draw that combo piece so I can try to win."

Plus who doesn't like playing Jace against reanimator or show and tell?

A good start would be to include Elvish Harbinger and Wirewood Herald. They help to search other elves out of your deck, so they should deserve some consideration.
Ezuri, Renegade Leader is kind of a beast.
Always liked Elvish Promenade, since it can be searched out and generally gets a ton of tokens. In the same vein you could play crib swap, a decent tutorable removal spell.
Krosan Drover can help get out the fattie fats.
Lastly I would consider Masked Admirers as a decent source of card advantage.
These are just some basic suggestion that I've seen people run, God knows there's a whole gatherer full of elves.

Just do whatever is comfortable for you.
Honestly, if your opponent can't enjoy a little cordial conversation and multitask on a match at the same time, then they have some problems.
Sometimes people at FNM act like they're at the pro tour and get frustrated over the most trivial stuff.
I say go for broke. If they don't like it then that's their problem.

I feel like we need something like this in magic again.
My greatest hope is that Wizards is just waiting for the right time to take us back to Dominaria and show us what happened after the whole Timespiral incident.
Maybe they want the past to stay in the past thanks to Hasbro overlords, but come on. Give us a little something to sink our teeth into. I would be perfectly fine with a story like the one that revolved around the Mirari. Just let the creative team be actually, you know, creative. I want the flavor of the cards to come off the cardboard at me. I think that they did a good job with conveying the flavor of cards in Innistrad block, so they may be ready to pull off something like this.

I like that it is a battle of the cards.

I definitely can't wait to see more results as I want to see what the community overall rates cards versus other cards. There is always debate over which is the best card for such and such a reason, but what is the best card of all?

^Apparently Millikin. Makes sense.

I feel that there is some disconnect between casual and competitive. People on either side play the same game but sometimes can't imagine the reasons why the other would do so.

I've seen plenty of competitive players mock casual players saying that they're "wasting their cards" because they'll never use them to accomplish anything more than beating their friends at a kitchen table match.

I've also seen many casuals sit atop their high horse and scoff at competitive players for their inability to enjoy a game. Using the word spike in a derogatory manner to refer to someone who just wants to win like its a bad thing. Also this is usually accompanied by an attack on how that player "just netdecks" and "can't see the creativity (and therefore can't fully enjoy) of the game."

There are similarities though. I've encountered numerous "rage quit" episodes from both sides of the spectrum. As well as players on either side making atrocious plays and writing them off as their opponents "getting lucky."

All in all I feel that these are the outliers in the population. I'd like to think that most magic players can straddle the line between casual and competitive. At least the majority of the ones I know in real life can.

I think that one thing that could be good in controlling the "power level" of your cube is to carefully consider the removal. You cite swords as being an auto-pick, but that isn't necessarily true depending on what other cards are in the pack.

I've played a few "different styles" of cube, including building one myself and one thing that I find to be good when starting out is that having access to answers in the format is good. Nothing feels worse than having a stale boardstate with a bunch of mediocre creatures that can't break through your opponent's defenses. Plus "removal" can come in may different forms. From doom blade, to counterspell, to boomerang, to giant growth make sure that your cube allows for these interactive effects and you should have some fun games even if the creatures themselves aren't ridiculous in power level.