In my opinion Bant and Jeskai are the best colour combinations for tri-colour superfriends; Bant's got Doubling Season and friends while Jeskai's got Decree of Annihilation and friends. I guess I give Bant a slight edge as green planeswalkers are slightly better than red ones.
With her having hexproof, does anyone think she might become one of the big hexproof generals like Sigarda who is next to useless except for her hexproof?
Really? You'd have to actively build your deck with no good non-creature spells for her attack trigger to be useless.
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You would never guess, at the terrifying sight of the man, that Hunding was as charming a companion as one could wish for.
well of course a lot of high cost instants and sorceries and gamechanging enchantments, but her effect would throw out planeswalkers as well. but really the coolest thing i see is armageddon. if shes already hexproof just make her indestructible or unblockable. if she is hexproof and unblockable or indestructable with her ability and a lot of high cost cards being played for free, why do you need mana?
I was pretty disappointed when I saw her because I've been waiting for a build-around-me commander in these colors for a long time. Zedruu is pretty single minded, ruhan is fun but kind of bland, and numot is public enemy number one at the table because of his ability.
This commander is gonna be the scariest thing at the table and I don't like that too much. = /
With her having hexproof, does anyone think she might become one of the big hexproof generals like Sigarda who is next to useless except for her hexproof?
Really? You'd have to actively build your deck with no good non-creature spells for her attack trigger to be useless.
I was saying that Sigarda is only used for her hexproof showing how important hexproof has been for commanders historically to see if anyone thought it would have a huge impact on her. I personally think that her free stuff ability is really cool and fun. That's why I made this thread
Hexproof will annoy the crap out of your opponents, I always loved having it on Lhazav. It also means that if you have a Fervor out, you're pretty much guaranteed at least one trigger from Narset - and one trigger can already be enough to be worth it, basically drawing you up to four cards and casting them for free. Everything after that is just gravy. I'm really excited for her, considering Jeleva is my favorite commander by far, I'll just have to figure out a build that otherwise plays differently from Jeleva. Don't wanna build the same deck twice.
Hexproof will annoy the crap out of your opponents, I always loved having it on Lhazav. It also means that if you have a Fervor out, you're pretty much guaranteed at least one trigger from Narset - and one trigger can already be enough to be worth it, basically drawing you up to four cards and casting them for free. Everything after that is just gravy. I'm really excited for her, considering Jeleva is my favorite commander by far, I'll just have to figure out a build that otherwise plays differently from Jeleva. Don't wanna build the same deck twice.
I think a pretty good way to make her even more different than Jeleva than she already is, would be to focus on permanents. I personally plan to go Voltron Enchantress the first time I build her. Additionally, I checked out your Jeleva list and it looks like its trying to grab quick advantage early and leverage that to a victory as soon as possible. So, you might want to go for a longer grindier game, possibly with a soft lock and leverage incremental advantage to the victory.
I think this commander works really well for tap out midrange, control or tempo builds. For storm combo decks I would imagine that zur/jelava is generally the better choice, as costing six mana, having to wait a turn to do something and then not being assured of 4 useful cards for your storm combo makes it a bit unreliable. If you're looking to cheat out omniscienceJhoira, academy rector or show and tell seem better and don't require you to place it in the top 4 cards. As a value creature it however seems amazing, and requires very little work to generate a lot of return. I just wish she had flying as she would work so well with moat. Imagine the value mind's desire can bring.
There are a number of moving parts to this legend.
The first part, she costs six mana. Six mana for a creature you want to be attacking with is steep. So we either want to have stuff to do before we get to her, or run a mass of acceleration. I don't imagine the creature type is going to matter, but its worth noting that she is a human. Next up, her combat abilities. She has hexproof, which immediately removes a burden from deckbuilding. Hexproof means that interacting with our general is limited to mass removal. When we get to six mana this makes it pretty safe to just run her out there. It also makes it safe to load her up with equipment and enchaments. This brings us to her other combat ability, First Strike. Having no natural evasion and an attack trigger means we want to pump her power very high so attempts made to block her down don't work. This is very similar in principle to a Geist of St. Traft deck, who I would incidentally play in this deck. Finally we get to the juicy part, her on attack trigger. The trigger digs deep enough where Top or other manipulation effects aren't spectacular. You will attack every turn, so a ponder or preordain only really serves to clear out land. They are worthwhile to play to get setup, and to play off the trigger to improve your draws, but not overtly amazing. Tutors on the other hand are great. On average, you only need to play a land and a card to make attacking the equvalent of getting in a turn with Kaalia. Everything after that is gravy. Packing the deck with expensive stuff though is not a good idea since you already need to spend so much mana on Narset. Really what you should be doing is looking to maximize the impact of the spells you can fit into the turns before playing her, and counterspells are terrible with her trigger.
To summarize, We want to play lots of non-creature cards that enable us to survive till our general is online. We want to play permanents that increase our generals power or grant evasion. We want to play creatures that operate on a similar axis such as Geist. We want to play to library tutors. So I would start with a Sunforger and Stoneforge package and work my way outward from there.
I'm thinking I might do a non-combo build with a ton of ramp, protection, fork effects, extra combat, and 6-9cmc spells. Definitely going to go creature less with a ton of stealy stuff
Obviously, she does not enjoy creatures; however, I am not sure you run her with no creatures. If you want to go the proteus staff infinite combo route, then of course you can't run creatures. For just a strong build of her that doesn't rely on that wincon, I think she can get away with 5 or so creatures. At least Stoneforge Mystic for obvious reasons. After that, probably Mistmeadow Witch for anti-wrath and extra Stoneforge uses, Azorius Guildmage for obvious reasons, and maybe Stoneforge's big brother, Stonehewer Giant. Next, I would probably add some form of redundancy for her, maybe Geist of Saint Traft. I would definitely use Bruna, Light of Alabaster as redundancy if you are doing any form of Enchantress style Voltron because if Narset gets tucked, Bruna can swoop in and grab all of those spicy auras as a back up win-con.
What do you guys think about creature count for her? Additionally, what would you run and how might your count change in different settings. In more casual groups, would you run more creatures? In more cutthroat groups would you go completely creatureless combo or only run a few select important creatures?
I put her at the helm of my zedruu enchantres deck, I took out the few zedruu related cards and she's much stronger. I added in a few time magic and that's it, hitting 2-3 enchantments off a swing is pretty back breaking.
As I see it, this is how she will be played at her worst:
Drop her, next turn tutor on top using either mystical tutor or the portal one for a mass all destruction, i.e. Decree of Annihilation (there are quite a few so you can also just go for the top deck). Attack. She dies or not. Next main phase, add mana to cast her again. Play Decree of Annihilation for free. Play her.
This requires some fast (artifact) based ramp to get the eight mana needed to cast her the second time (or I guess you could use some exile until eot, of which white/blue has quite a few). The advantage is that you have basically won at that point.
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I think a pretty good way to make her even more different than Jeleva than she already is, would be to focus on permanents. I personally plan to go Voltron Enchantress the first time I build her. Additionally, I checked out your Jeleva list and it looks like its trying to grab quick advantage early and leverage that to a victory as soon as possible. So, you might want to go for a longer grindier game, possibly with a soft lock and leverage incremental advantage to the victory.
I agree, that sounds like a good way to go. I'll probably try my hand at Enchantress Voltron with her, that's two things currently missing in my commander lineup
i think will ultimately make a boring playing experience where you just attack with her to get the trigger setting up an ultimately game-winning combo using mass destruction, omniscience and other bombs kind of like Jhoira.
I think the only time it will be a boring deck, is if you try to make it hyper competitive tier 1 with infinite combos. If instead you just go for a fun synergistic route that looks to use her as an interesting value engine, she will probably be loads of fun.
P.S. I'm not trying to say that combo or hyper competitive lists are boring I just think she would be a boring way to go about it.
Penance can be a good way to put the big mana spells u drew on accident back on top so u can get it for free with Narset. Also u don't have to bother with fancy voltron effects like Auras and Equipment. Just have Reconnaissance. She will still get her trigger off.
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To the people that say that a card needs to be a higher rarity because of Limited... I hate you guys so much. I present to you with this.
I'm glad someone else brought up reconnaissance, because I've been waiting for days for someone else to bring it up first.
Someone else on this thread said that there was a lot of moving parts to this general. That may be true, but if this general takes an angle where through deck construction, you can guarantee enough effects of a certain type to be consistent, then we have a winner. Looking at the UWR color pie, I see some things this color combination can pull off in multiples:
Spells that net tokens (all colors)
Extra Combat effects (blue and red)
Combat pumps/ creature enhancement (all colors)
Artifact interactions (all colors).
Haste enablers (red and blue if including time walk effects)
Mana generation (mostly red, some blue)
Spell copying (red and blue)
Seeing this would lead me to build a com issue deck that aimed to kill with repeated creature combat, less like tendrils and more like empty the warrens. If I were to build my first aiteration of this general, it would be through getting a haste enabler in the table, dropping this general, and flipping into more hasted tokens and additional combat steps, sprinkled with card draw and filtering, copy effects to increase consistency, and extra mana sources in between. This could probably lower the kill turn while increasing consistency. If you get this guy to attack twice in a turn, it should be enough to avalanche into what you need to take the table if enough hasted tokens and additional combats steps are flipped over. Swinging for a little damage can quickly dismantle a table, especially as you add more creatures and the combat pumps stack. And it would be a lot more effective than a random blink effect or two while resetting a board and prolonging opponent misery
This general could be what the Riku token builds always wanted to be without the need for land tutors to ramp mana to cast and copy all these spells. Mana Severance could make this general a slot machine of pure value.
Looking at the proteus staff combo build - is there a better win condition than turnabout/reiterate for infinite mana and an x spell? I was thinking there should be a combo that uses less cards, but most combos in these colors use creature cards. in a creatureless build, im just wondering how the deck actually wins after you draw the whole thing with EtI and Omniscience. Anything besides an X spell?
The only thing I can imagine, is some form of infinite mana + X spell or an infinite token with say myr turbine which is similar just with infinite untaps and needs a haste enabler on top of that. That's yet another reason that I will probably shy away from any form of infinite combo type route and just use minimum creatures.
Edit: Probably should have prefaced this with saying that I am not really a combo player per se and it's one of the archetypes I have very little experience with. So, for all I know there are hundreds of obvious creatureless combos that I'm just not seeing.
With Proteus Staff, one could stack the deck to put Turnabout and Beacon of Tomorrows on top. On the attack trigger, reveal Turnabout to tap all creatures. Then cast Beacon of Tomorrows to take an extra turn; shuffle it into your deck. On the additional turn, activate Proteus Staff to put Beacon of Tomorrows back on top of the deck. Win by attacking for lethal general damage. That's just what a monk would do.
@batdown: I think the most compact, non-X way to win with Narset in a creatureless Proteus Staff build will be this:
Stack Omni and ETI on top, swing and cast them both. Howl of the Horde, Spiraling Embers. Aim a copy at each player and they each take 80.
Another option is Penance + Beacon of Tomorrows (+ some way to make it so they can't block Narset). Each turn, draw the beacon, put it back on top, then swing and cast it for free. Narset will slowly beat each person down.
Edit: Actually, you don't even need Penance there, just cast the Beacon post combat for free with Omniscience, and then redraw it next turn. Derpa derp.
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Playtesting | Karador, Ghost Chieftain | Narset, Enlightened Master | Ephara, God of the Polis
Established | Gahiji, Honored One | Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker | Opal-Eye, Konda's Yojimbo | Rubinia Soulsinger
Retired | Medomai the Ageless | Diaochan, Artful Beauty
Hmmm...
T1: Land, Sol Ring, Scroll Rack
T2: Land, Hammer of Purphoros
T3: Land, Long-Term Plans grabbing Additional Combat Spell of Your Choice.
T4: Land, Narset, Attack, Additional Combat, Attack, Cast 4 spells for free, Time Stretch, Sudden Disappearance, Apocalypse, get her back end of your turn, start two more turns.
She can get kind of ridiculous.
Really? You'd have to actively build your deck with no good non-creature spells for her attack trigger to be useless.
This commander is gonna be the scariest thing at the table and I don't like that too much. = /
She's going to be the new Zur, methinks.
I was saying that Sigarda is only used for her hexproof showing how important hexproof has been for commanders historically to see if anyone thought it would have a huge impact on her. I personally think that her free stuff ability is really cool and fun. That's why I made this thread
Marath, Will of the Wild Tokens!! / Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund Dragons! / Muzzio, Visionary Architect / Brago, King Eternal / Daretti, Scrap Savant / Narset, Enlightened Master / Alesha, Who Smiles at Death / Bruna, Light of Alabaster / Marchesa, the Black Rose / Iroas, God of Victory / Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury / Omnath, Locus of rage / Titania, Protector of Argoth / Kozilek, the Great Distortion
Modern
Elves / Titanshift / Merfolk
I think a pretty good way to make her even more different than Jeleva than she already is, would be to focus on permanents. I personally plan to go Voltron Enchantress the first time I build her. Additionally, I checked out your Jeleva list and it looks like its trying to grab quick advantage early and leverage that to a victory as soon as possible. So, you might want to go for a longer grindier game, possibly with a soft lock and leverage incremental advantage to the victory.
Marath, Will of the Wild Tokens!! / Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund Dragons! / Muzzio, Visionary Architect / Brago, King Eternal / Daretti, Scrap Savant / Narset, Enlightened Master / Alesha, Who Smiles at Death / Bruna, Light of Alabaster / Marchesa, the Black Rose / Iroas, God of Victory / Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury / Omnath, Locus of rage / Titania, Protector of Argoth / Kozilek, the Great Distortion
Modern
Elves / Titanshift / Merfolk
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Playtesting | Karador, Ghost Chieftain | Narset, Enlightened Master | Ephara, God of the Polis
Established | Gahiji, Honored One | Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker | Opal-Eye, Konda's Yojimbo | Rubinia Soulsinger
Retired | Medomai the Ageless | Diaochan, Artful Beauty
All is Dust
Decree of annihilation
Time Stretch
The first part, she costs six mana. Six mana for a creature you want to be attacking with is steep. So we either want to have stuff to do before we get to her, or run a mass of acceleration. I don't imagine the creature type is going to matter, but its worth noting that she is a human. Next up, her combat abilities. She has hexproof, which immediately removes a burden from deckbuilding. Hexproof means that interacting with our general is limited to mass removal. When we get to six mana this makes it pretty safe to just run her out there. It also makes it safe to load her up with equipment and enchaments. This brings us to her other combat ability, First Strike. Having no natural evasion and an attack trigger means we want to pump her power very high so attempts made to block her down don't work. This is very similar in principle to a Geist of St. Traft deck, who I would incidentally play in this deck. Finally we get to the juicy part, her on attack trigger. The trigger digs deep enough where Top or other manipulation effects aren't spectacular. You will attack every turn, so a ponder or preordain only really serves to clear out land. They are worthwhile to play to get setup, and to play off the trigger to improve your draws, but not overtly amazing. Tutors on the other hand are great. On average, you only need to play a land and a card to make attacking the equvalent of getting in a turn with Kaalia. Everything after that is gravy. Packing the deck with expensive stuff though is not a good idea since you already need to spend so much mana on Narset. Really what you should be doing is looking to maximize the impact of the spells you can fit into the turns before playing her, and counterspells are terrible with her trigger.
To summarize, We want to play lots of non-creature cards that enable us to survive till our general is online. We want to play permanents that increase our generals power or grant evasion. We want to play creatures that operate on a similar axis such as Geist. We want to play to library tutors. So I would start with a Sunforger and Stoneforge package and work my way outward from there.
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What do you guys think about creature count for her? Additionally, what would you run and how might your count change in different settings. In more casual groups, would you run more creatures? In more cutthroat groups would you go completely creatureless combo or only run a few select important creatures?
Marath, Will of the Wild Tokens!! / Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund Dragons! / Muzzio, Visionary Architect / Brago, King Eternal / Daretti, Scrap Savant / Narset, Enlightened Master / Alesha, Who Smiles at Death / Bruna, Light of Alabaster / Marchesa, the Black Rose / Iroas, God of Victory / Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury / Omnath, Locus of rage / Titania, Protector of Argoth / Kozilek, the Great Distortion
Modern
Elves / Titanshift / Merfolk
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Drop her, next turn tutor on top using either mystical tutor or the portal one for a mass all destruction, i.e. Decree of Annihilation (there are quite a few so you can also just go for the top deck). Attack. She dies or not. Next main phase, add mana to cast her again. Play Decree of Annihilation for free. Play her.
This requires some fast (artifact) based ramp to get the eight mana needed to cast her the second time (or I guess you could use some exile until eot, of which white/blue has quite a few). The advantage is that you have basically won at that point.
I agree, that sounds like a good way to go. I'll probably try my hand at Enchantress Voltron with her, that's two things currently missing in my commander lineup
I think the only time it will be a boring deck, is if you try to make it hyper competitive tier 1 with infinite combos. If instead you just go for a fun synergistic route that looks to use her as an interesting value engine, she will probably be loads of fun.
P.S. I'm not trying to say that combo or hyper competitive lists are boring I just think she would be a boring way to go about it.
Marath, Will of the Wild Tokens!! / Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund Dragons! / Muzzio, Visionary Architect / Brago, King Eternal / Daretti, Scrap Savant / Narset, Enlightened Master / Alesha, Who Smiles at Death / Bruna, Light of Alabaster / Marchesa, the Black Rose / Iroas, God of Victory / Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury / Omnath, Locus of rage / Titania, Protector of Argoth / Kozilek, the Great Distortion
Modern
Elves / Titanshift / Merfolk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY8h2vp5Xis
Someone else on this thread said that there was a lot of moving parts to this general. That may be true, but if this general takes an angle where through deck construction, you can guarantee enough effects of a certain type to be consistent, then we have a winner. Looking at the UWR color pie, I see some things this color combination can pull off in multiples:
Spells that net tokens (all colors)
Extra Combat effects (blue and red)
Combat pumps/ creature enhancement (all colors)
Artifact interactions (all colors).
Haste enablers (red and blue if including time walk effects)
Mana generation (mostly red, some blue)
Spell copying (red and blue)
Seeing this would lead me to build a com issue deck that aimed to kill with repeated creature combat, less like tendrils and more like empty the warrens. If I were to build my first aiteration of this general, it would be through getting a haste enabler in the table, dropping this general, and flipping into more hasted tokens and additional combat steps, sprinkled with card draw and filtering, copy effects to increase consistency, and extra mana sources in between. This could probably lower the kill turn while increasing consistency. If you get this guy to attack twice in a turn, it should be enough to avalanche into what you need to take the table if enough hasted tokens and additional combats steps are flipped over. Swinging for a little damage can quickly dismantle a table, especially as you add more creatures and the combat pumps stack. And it would be a lot more effective than a random blink effect or two while resetting a board and prolonging opponent misery
This general could be what the Riku token builds always wanted to be without the need for land tutors to ramp mana to cast and copy all these spells. Mana Severance could make this general a slot machine of pure value.
Just my 2 cents
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UBRThe MindrazerRBU
UUUSpymaster of TrestGGG
GGGThe South TreeGGG
RRRHuman AscendantRRR
Edit: Probably should have prefaced this with saying that I am not really a combo player per se and it's one of the archetypes I have very little experience with. So, for all I know there are hundreds of obvious creatureless combos that I'm just not seeing.
Marath, Will of the Wild Tokens!! / Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund Dragons! / Muzzio, Visionary Architect / Brago, King Eternal / Daretti, Scrap Savant / Narset, Enlightened Master / Alesha, Who Smiles at Death / Bruna, Light of Alabaster / Marchesa, the Black Rose / Iroas, God of Victory / Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury / Omnath, Locus of rage / Titania, Protector of Argoth / Kozilek, the Great Distortion
Modern
Elves / Titanshift / Merfolk
Stack Omni and ETI on top, swing and cast them both.
Howl of the Horde, Spiraling Embers. Aim a copy at each player and they each take 80.
Another option is Penance + Beacon of Tomorrows (+ some way to make it so they can't block Narset). Each turn, draw the beacon, put it back on top, then swing and cast it for free. Narset will slowly beat each person down.
Edit: Actually, you don't even need Penance there, just cast the Beacon post combat for free with Omniscience, and then redraw it next turn. Derpa derp.
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