I have recently finished my 450 unpowered cube, and had do dismantle most of my EDH decks to do so. I love cubing more than I love playing EDH, but there is a part of me that misses EDH. I know there are a few "EDH Cubes" floating around out there, and I give major kudo's to the people who thought that up, awesome idea. I too would love to incorporate elements of EDH into my cube, but I don't want to rework my cube to do so as I want to maintain the flexibility to just draft and play normal games.
Would it be feasable and enjoyable to create an "EDH expansion" consisting of only generals and maybe a few other cards to facilitate EDH games with my cube as it exists now? As I don't want to alter my cube list to facilitate "EDH" games, I think some deck construction and game rules would need to change.
Here is what I'm thinking for the rules of this "expansion" set:
Deck size: 50
Life total: 20 (25?)
Color Identity rules: Not sure about this one, I would want to hear some feedback from those of you who have commander cubes.
Generals:
1 of each mono color
2 of each guild
1 of each wedge/shard
The generals would have to be chosen to support themes that are already supported in the cube. Also I would probably have to limit how many super expensive generals I include.
Bant: Rafiq
Naya: Rhith
Jund:Sek'Kuar
Esper: Ertai
Grixis: Sedris
UBG: Oozey guy
UWR: Ruhan
WBG: Ghave
RUG: Either Animar or Riku
WBR: Dragon... forget his name.
Additional Cards:
I don't currently run the signets, so maybe they could be thrown in as well to facilitate multicolor a little better. I wouldn't want to add much more.
With this expansion games would definitely be shorter, and aggro would be a viable strategy. My goal isn't to incorporate the "true spirit" of EDH, just to allow some fun alternatives to cube play that are "EDH like".
Deck size: 40
Life total: 20
Color Identity rules: Not sure about this one, I would want to hear some feedback from those of you who have commander cubes.
We stick to true edh color identities with our edh cube. I know that at least one other edh cuber on here is a little more flexible saying that a card is viable for your deck as long as you can cast within the colors of your general. E.g. Figure of Destiny could fit just fine in a Geist of Saint Traft deck. For the purposes you're looking for, I would go with the more flexible rule.
Generals:
1 of each mono color
2 of each guild
1 of each wedge/shard
The generals would have to be chosen to support themes that are already supported in the cube. Also I would probably have to limit how many super expensive generals I include.
I would also be hesitant to include too many super expensive generals. Games will still go long, but not the same length as a normal edh game.
Potential Commanders:
W: 8.5 Tails
U: Talrand, Sky Summoner
B: Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief
R: Akroma, Angel of Fury - Kiki Jiki fits better in the cube itself, and isn't a bad inclusion into a traditional cube in the first place. Akroma would be a bad mama-jama of a general in a mono-red aggro deck.
G: Kamahl - If your green decks focus more around ramp than aggro, then this guy is fine. If your green decks focus a lot on aggro, I might take a look at either Omnath, Locus of Mana or Yeva, Nature's Herald.
RG: Radha, Ulasht
UG: Edric, Momir
BG: Skullbriar, Nath
WG: Saffi, Sigarda - Rhys, the Redeemed is another option.
WR: Brion, Basandra
WU: Grand Arbiter, Geist
BR: Lyzolda, Olivia
UB: Oona, Sygg (or Wydwen) - I'd go with Sygg
WB: Teysa, Ghost Council
UR: Nin, Niv-Mizzet - I'd go with Jhoira of the Ghitu over Niv
Bant: Rafiq
Naya: Rhith
Jund: Sek'Kuar
Esper: Ertai
Grixis: Sedris
UBG: Oozey guy
UWR: Ruhan
WBG: Ghave
RUG: Either Animar or Riku - Riku all day long.
WBR: Dragon... forget his name.
Additional Cards:
I don't currently run the signets, so maybe they could be thrown in as well to facilitate multicolor a little better. I wouldn't want to add much more.
Including more ramp than your cube normally has will hurt the already wounded aggro decks. I would leave your cube without the signets.
Comments above in blue.
We played some multiplayer games out of my 360 a few times and the turn 1-2-3 aggro rushes were fairly non-existent in those games. But if a deck like that could put in just enough support to get them into the late game, they actually did quite well. Should be a fun experiment for your group. I'm fairly confident it will work just fine.
I'd say just run a "bring your own general" draft, where commanders the players have selected are kept hidden until the deck design phase. Given the size of your cube, I wouldn't attempt to do a full 8 person, but 450 could definitely facilitate 4 people drafting an extra pack or two apiece, and building 40-60 card decks that recreate the feel of edh. This also gives folks the ability to unconstrainedly experiment around a general or two that they are interested in, or haven't been able to build otherwise.
In case folks land up selecting the same color(s) during the drafy, encourage your players to pick a 2 or 3 color general, minimizing the likelihood of being forced into an illegal deck. If you BYOG two commanders, you even further reduce the chance that a player gets shut out of an edh deck entirely.
Thanks for the comments guys. My group (4) gave this a shot last night, and it was pretty fun. Here is what we did:
1. We played sealed, 7 packs per player. We would have done 8, but my cube is just short of being able to support 32 packs. If we were to draft we probably would have drafted 5 packs, in which case more players could be supported (up to 6).
2. After deckbuilding (50 cards including general) we each selected a general from a list I mocked up over the past few days. I don't have the list on me at the moment, but will post later. These are the decks/generals we ended up playing:
-GR beatdown - Radha, Heir of Keld
-WGBu control - Rafiq of the Many
-WGu midrange - Saffi Eriksdotter
-UB control/reanimator - Geth Lord of the Vault
Wait a minute... how can a WGBu deck play Rafiq as a general?! And the Saffi deck can't splash blue! Right? Conventional EDH principles say so, but we decided to toss the color identity rules out the window for three reasons. One, we wanted to have as many options as possible when building decks and picking generals as we were concerned that building a playable deck would be difficult if color was restricted and the fact that my cube isn't specifically designed for EDH. B, as the cube is a closed environment we didn't feel that opening up the rules a little bit would introduce crazy broken shenanigans, as would most certainly be the case in true EDH. III, we thought/think that throwing out the color identity rule will create more variability and longevity to the subformat.
3. Shuffled up, started at 20 life, and played some games. Here is what we noticed:
-20 life seems to be the right starting amount. As my cube is built (like many others on this forum) to support aggro, if life total was higher aggro would have a difficult time competing. As it is, expanding the decksize to 50 cards takes a little bit of wind out of aggro's sails. However...
-Aggro is a very viable strategy. The consistency added with having an aggressive general (in this case Radha) more than makes up for the effect of increased decksize. I was piloting UB Geth and lost a couple games by turn 6 because the Rhada deck was just too fast. Always being able to hit your 2 drop is a good thing.
-As some of the best generals are fairly expensive (Geth, Oona, ect...) we found that more ramp was necessary. You EDH players will know what I'm talking about here. I currently do not play any of the signets, so next time we play with generals I plan on including the signets in the draft. I figure 10 extra mana rocks should do the trick. Will want to keep an eye on aggro to make sure it doesnt get outclassed entirely by control.
-In a lot of ways the games were true to the "spirit of edh." In fact moreso than I anticipated. In one game against WGBu Rafiq I had exactly 30 life and lost to a one shot from Elesh Norn double striking and swinging two swords. In another game I managed to recur Snapcaster Mage 4 times and recast Hym to Tourach, Thoughtseize, Demontic Tutor, and Consuming Vapors. These are very EDH like plays that are possible in regular cube games but just don't seem to come together as easily. The addition of generals and increase in deck size stretched games out a little bit, even though life total remained at 20. It was suggested by one player that deck sizes be left at 40 (echoing Theogony_IX). This will be considered with more playtesting.
-I need to develop a draft variant to pick generals.
-This was FUN!
I can't wait to test more. Next time I hope to build a BR reanimator/control deck around Jaya Balard
Sounds like a great time, and thanks for sharing your experience! I mentioned this in a discussion in my cube's thread, that I'm happy to see how much breathing room there is in the draft/deck/game structure of these edh cubes, while still ensuring that the "feel" of a big, crazy, swingy edh session gets preserved.
Here are the Generals I'm thinking of using for the "expansion" set:
White:
8.5 Tails
Odric
Mikaeus
Blue:
Teferi
Talrand
Thada Adel
Black:
Mirri the Cursed
Geth, Lord of the Vault
Drana
Red:
Jaya Ballard
Kiki-Jiki
Akroma, Angel of Fury
Green:
Yeva
Kamahl
Omnath
Guilds:
Grand Arbiter
Brion Stoutarm
Olivia
Edric
Teysa
Glissa
Saffi
Nin
Oona
Rhada
Shards/Wedges:
Rafiq
Sek'Kuar
Sedris
Rith
Ertai, Corrupted
Mimeoplasm
Riku
Ruhan
Oros
Ghave
I feel like blue is the weakest. I would rather have Kira and Meloku than Thada and Teferi, but I am trying to not touch the actual contents of the cube. On that note, Edric and Rafiq are both in my normal cube list as well. I don't want to cut Rafiq, and absolutely REFUSE to cut Edric, so I may just need to pull these guys out and change the sleeves every time we use the expansion.
I've tried to give each monocolor a variety of generals that facilitate the strategies natural in that color. For multicolor I picked the ones I thought had the best utility/cost ratio, or simply the ones that were playable (WBR, WRG). I'm not entirely sold on Oona either, as her ability/stats are so similar to Geth's. I would love feedback on my choices here.
Also, those of you who have cubes specifically designed for EDH, how do you go about selecting/drafting generals?
Your's seems like a pretty good spread of possible generals. But since you have such a diverse selection of mono, bi, and tri-colored legends, why not just open it up to "any legend a player wants or is able to personally supply?" Since you've also dispensed with the color identity rule, why not let your players experiment with all kinds of novel cube/general interactions.
When I first designed my cube, I organized my commander section as 2 legends per guild/shard/wedge and tried to select an "aggro" and "control" general for each paring. After a while I expanded mine to the current 3 per, when I got impatient leaving lots of viable choices back in my edh storage. Since most of my regular drafters are lapsed or super casual players, we preserve the general drafting phase because they simply can't supply a lot of legends in the first place, but with a group as seemingly experienced as yours, it seems like BYOG might be a more advanced approach to take.
Your's seems like a pretty good spread of possible generals. But since you have such a diverse selection of mono, bi, and tri-colored legends, why not just open it up to "any legend a player wants or is able to personally supply?" Since you've also dispensed with the color identity rule, why not let your players experiment with all kinds of novel cube/general interactions.
Since most of my regular drafters are lapsed or super casual players, we preserve the general drafting phase because they simply can't supply a lot of legends in the first place, but with a group as seemingly experienced as yours, it seems like BYOG might be a more advanced approach to take.
I like the idea. I will definitely present it to the group. Our core group consists of 4-6 diehards and a constantly revolving mass of players from the local shop. When we organize games its usually the core group around my kitchen table, but often when we are at the good old LGS there are just people who want to play. These impromptu cube-fests necessitate a pre-populated list of generals to choose from.
Can you explain how you guys go about drafting generals? If you end up with 2 playables, do you allow swaps in between games as part of the "sideboarding" process?
Can you explain how you guys go about drafting generals? If you end up with 2 playables, do you allow swaps in between games as part of the "sideboarding" process?
Every user who's posted an edh cube here probably has a different system for general drafts...
For my group, we usually hand out a pack of 5 legends per player, and then just draft as normal. You can focus by selecting generals that share one or more colors, or pick a diverse group, keeping yourself more open for the main draft. Our approach to the post-draft general pool is that anything legal in your chosen general's colors is a-ok to include in the deck (I do this all the time, including cards like Gisela in a Mayael list, for instance).
Since drafts with my group usually take an hour+, with games lasting another 1-2 hours, we don't always get to play a second game at all. My group also frequently plays at a local bar, where we don't have a ton of room for all the left over cards, so we rarely sideboard actually. Further complicating matters, many of my players are either too casual to contemplate sideboarding, or so experienced and cocky that they "demand to win this next round with deck they've built," and land up keeping the deck the same.
Since drafts with my group usually take an hour+, with games lasting another 1-2 hours, we don't always get to play a second game at all. My group also frequently plays at a local bar, where we don't have a ton of room for all the left over cards, so we rarely sideboard actually. Further complicating matters, many of my players are either too casual to contemplate sideboarding, or so experienced and cocky that they "demand to win this next round with deck they've built," and land up keeping the deck the same.
This has mostly been my experience as well. Between shuffling, creating the packs, distributing the packs, explaining the rules to the new players, drafting, deckbuilding, and then an EDH game, it frequently takes about 4 hours end-to-end. Only twice out of my drafts has there been time for a second game before people had to start leaving.
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Necroing this thread. Back in 2012 we played around with the setup I discussed above and it worked out pretty well and was a lot of fun, but then I got married and stopped cubing for a while and it fell off my plate. Now that I'm back into cubing, I've increased my cube from 450 to 540, cube archetypes are better represented, and there are a ton of awesome new legendary creatures, I've decided to revisit this expansion. Below are the list of generals I plan to include:
I'm not adjusting the content of my cube so legendary creatures already included in my cube are not eligible as generals. For the most part I've also tried to shy away from generals that would totally dominate cube style games on their own (Ruric Thrar Unbowed ect) in favor of generals that are synergistic with the cube archetypes I'm currently supporting (Teysa, Orzhov Scion for BW tokens, or Radha, Heir to Keld for RG stompy/fires) along with a few "goodstuffy" type generals (Sidisi, Undead Vizier ect).
Probably the biggest departure from traditional EDH is that we have done away with color identity rules, so if you want to put Jaya in a UR tinker deck or a RBG midrange deck, feel free. This has worked really well for us in our initial testing and has opened up some really fun decks. Some of these generals I'm not super happy with on paper, (mainly Simic and Boros), but hopefully further testing will reveal what works and what doesn't. We have also been back and forth between using 50 card decks and 40 card decks, but for now 40 cards seems to work just fine.
Has anyone tried this or something similar over the past couple years since this thread died? If so I'd love to hear your feedback. If not, I will soldier on and hopefully pioneer a fun new expansion that cube owners can keep in their back pocket for some variety, and I'd also love to hear your feedback!
EDIT: Mods, can this be moved into the card/archetype forum?
Last night 1v1 drafted with the above list of generals. I built a Lyzolda, the Blood Witch aggro deck with all the right pieces like Bitterblossom and Goblin Rabblemaster and my opponent built a Teysa deck featuring a bunch of white token production. The games were and the generals were relevant and added a level of synergy that was really cool.
I've made a few changes to the general pool, and in so doing broke another sacred rule of EDH. I'm going to try out some non-legendary creatures as generals:
Didn't like the old generals, but I also didn't like the other options in those colors. I tried to chose generals that would play well in the color pair and that feel somewhat "general-y". I won't be adding Llanowar Elves as a general anytime soon, but I am open to adding other non-legendary creatures if it seems like a good idea.
Took out some weak generals in favor of big hitters. These three all have the ability to take over games, but only if you build your deck appropriately. Hopefully they work out.
Leonin Shikari: Very narrow but in a deck with a couple swords she could be very strong. I don't think it will see much play but I love the equipment deck so I thought I'd try it out. Joiner Adept: Fragile 5c enabler. Not sure she'll stick around for long, but she seemed like a fun experiment. Ashling the Pilgrim: I think she'll play best in Wildfire type big red decks. Sygg, River Cutthroat: Re-add. Black doesn't have many good mono colored options so he's going in. I don't expect many blue based decks will be interested but he should play well in black based aggro builds.
Got another playtest in last night and the results were pretty good. As we were playing 1v1 we dealt out 7 random generals each before the draft. I cracked Jaya Ballard, Taskmage, Zo Zu the Punisher, and Zurgo Helmsmahser, among others so I drafted WBR aggro. My opponent built a really solid Brago, King Eternal with all sorts of bouncy castle shenanegans.
First game I nominated Zurgo and lost miserably. I missed my 1 drop and he was able to get enough early tempo with Man-o-War and Venser, Shaper Savant to set up a Brago loop before I could stabilize. Once he had double bounce every turn it was gg.
Second game I decided to go with Zo Zu, which was definitely the right call. I curved out perfectly on the play into Zo Zu on turn three, who dealt 8 damage over the course of the game. I killed him with a Blood-Chin Fanatic attack that made Zo Zu (warrior!) have menace. Good times! Third game I also ran Zo Zu and it was really close, but I lost. At 4 life he manage to Brago bounce Reveillark with a Whirler Rouge and a Knight of Meadowgrain in the yard. I wasn't able to push through the last few points.
We played a fourth game and I rebuilt my deck to be a bit more midrangy with a re-animator sub theme and Jaya Ballard as my general. Against a blue deck she was nuts and I managed to pull a victory by reanimating Ulamog 2.0 off a Jaya discard (to kill Brago haha). This game felt very "EDHy" as we were both playing midrangy value centric strategies.
These games caused me to re-evaluate my general selection a bit. It was pretty obvious that it is harder for aggro to win in this format as your opponent always has a creature available that is immune to hand disruption. Furthermore, Zo Zu is pretty much the only "hard aggro" general in my pool. Not good. I want the general selection to represent archetypes and theaters already represented in the cube. Also, up to this point I've been adamant that if a creature is in the cube it can't be a general because I don't want to "de-optimize" my cube for the sake of an expansion set. I thought about removing Isamaru, Hound of Konda and Zurgo Bellstriker so they would be available as aggro generals, but this sucks because they are top tier creatures. Then I thought, why not just have them in the cube AND allow them to be generals. Obviously, the singleton rule will still apply in deckbuilding, so if you want to run little Zurgo as your general you can't use him in your deck. I think this will work, especially because we glimpse draft so the potential of being stuck with doubles is pretty low. Also, with the new legendary rule you wont have to worry about your opponent dropping a copy of your general to ruin your day. This opens up several more general options for me:
These are the generals I plan on including initially but there are also a ton of other options. I still want to be careful to only include generals that push specific syngergies or archetypes rather than just big dumb beats, like Polukranos or something, so I'm not going to go haywire and throw in every possible legend in my cube. I'm guessing with more playtesting I'll find more candidates.
Have you made any updates or have anything new to share about your EDH expansion lately? My group and I have been looking into MP stuff recently and your expansion looks quite interesting! I like how you don't want it to change the composition of your cube for 'regular' drafting.
Woah! Reading through this makes me want to try a 'Commander module' aswell for my cube.
Exciting stuff . I already have many legendary creatures to throw in as commanders.
So I've had a chance to playtest a bit more and have tinkered with my commander list a bit. I'll have to look through the my current commanders to remember every general and will post he full list when I do. What I can do now is talk about a couple of the matches I've had.
1) Generals draft followed by standard glimpse draft: I built an almost perfect Sharuum deck with both Tezzerets, Trinket Mage, and a ton of support cards. The only piece I was missing was huge robot to re-animate with Sharuum. My opponent built a brutal Thalia deck. You are probably thinking a brutal Thalia deck is a hard aggro/stax/white weenie deck. Wrong. He built an almost mono-green ramp/cheat deck and only splashed white for Thalia and O-ring. While my deck had a ton of synergies and could really get things going once I had a few pieces on the board, I lost the series, mostly because it's tough to curve out with mana rocks with a Thalia on the field haha. Most of his ramp was in creature form so Thalia's tax ability was very asymmetric. This match perfectly illustrates what I'm trying to accomplish with this EDH expansion in that the games were very EDH like, and the generals highlighted tons of random cube synergies that don't often see play. Who would have thought Thalia is boss in a creature ramp deck. Hilarious.
2) Sealed pool of generals, sealed cube: Playing this way was a real deckbuilding challenge, but ultimately was a good time. I ended up with a Pia & Kiren Nalaar RW control deck and my opponent built an Animar goodstuff creatures deck. The games were fun and engaging but I took the series 2-1. The one game I lost my opponent managed to stick Animar (pro white ftw) and get 2 counters on him. Primeval Titan for 2GG is a pretty good deal! I won two games due to having superior removal, evasive threats, or being able to stick Pia & Kiren (which pretty much nullified his Animar). Good times.
3) Sealed pool of generals, glimpse draft: This is probably my favorite way to play with the EDH expansion. General drafts are fun, but it's pretty easy to figure out what your opponent is going to be doing in draft based on their general picks. This leads to super aggressive hate drafting (which in glimpse is super easy). Also, opening a sealed pool of generals (we did 7 per player) has a tendency to push you out of your comfort zone. I typically go for archetype decks (re-animator, tokens, artifact.dec, ect..) or hard aggro, and almost never play ramp. However, I happened to crack an Omnath and decided to go with it. Man, so much fun. I drafted pretty much the ideal green blue ramp deck with crazy threat density on the top end. There were a couple games I was able to hardcast Eldrazi titans as early as turn five. My opponent had built a Zurgo RW aggro deck that was pretty scary. He won the initial series but we had so much fun with the decks we ended up playing best out of 11, lol. The most memorable moment was when we got into a stalemate where I had a Kozilek on the field but couldn't attack because I needed the blocker. He had a couple aggro dorks but couldn't swing and leave himself open. Four turns of draw-go until he top decked a burn spell, which I countered. Next turn he dropped Sarkhan, Dragonspeaker and I was toast.
Overall, I'm super happy with how the expansion is playing. I'm still not 100% on some of my general choices (Kamahl Fist of Krosa), but it will work itself out. Highly recommend you guys proxy up some generals and try it out. I'd love to see more people testing this thing out and giving feedback!
@Iplaat: If you do this type of commander draft, do you change the number of 'boosters' you draft with? If you make 50-card decks, wouldn't it be reasonable to draft 4 boosters of 15 cards each or do you use the standard 3 boosters or another configuration entirely?
i really like this idea! it is so awesome. it combines several ideas that i think are great. i think that this could be what "minicommander" or "tiny leaders" is evolving into. I really like the idea of drafting a commander then drafting the deck as well. i think one thing that should be considered is whether or not the commanders are revealed after drafting or if they are kept discreet until after the final drafting. i really like the some of the choices for commander in that you have picked a few that arent often played. i really would like to see more commanders that dont see much play. many potential commanders get thrown out due to speed or lack of power in a full scale EDH game. i feel like some of these smaller commanders could see a good foothold here.
@lplaat: Thank's for chiming in. When you say "Commander Legal" I take you follow color identity rules? This would be a significant difference between our expansions as my group doesn't adhere to color identity. As such, we use mono color generals ALL THE TIME and we've had decks that splash a color just to play an off-color mono general. We also play 40 card decks (commander included but a lot of time we just play 41 card decks because we are lazy) and 20 life and typically just play 1v1. The main reason we wanted to do away with color identity in cube is that there aren't that many great generals that support common cube archetypes in multicolor. For instance we run Isamaru and Zurgo Bellstriker to support aggressive decks and Braids to support Stax. Do you find that certain cube archetypes are under-represented when you use your EDH expansion or is it a non-issue? Our solution might not be for everyone as it's not super true to the "spirit" of EDH, but we love how it plays in cube.
@iM4g1c: We definitely keep commanders secret when drafting. We glimpse draft so if your opponents know your commander your will be hate drafted to kingdom come.
More playtest results:
I played a 1v1 over the weekend and we decided to just deal out one general as an experiment. We wanted to see how it would effect the drafting process if you were locked in and didn't have options. We were also interested to play a bit outside of our comfort zones. I cracked Borborygmos Enraged, which is definitely not my cup of tea. My opponenent cracked Narset, Enlightened Master which was also outside of his comfort zone (he's typically a midrange creature beats kind of guy). We got lucky in that we didn't end up with generals that shared more than one color, but even if we had I think the draft would have been ok because of our flexibility w/ color identity.
The games were a total blast. I built a super ramp deck with Tooth and Nail, Mimic Vat, Sneak Attack, and Kozilek, Atarka, and Hornet Queen as fatty options (aside from Borborygmos). It was a blast to play and Borborygmos won me a couple games from his land discard ability. I was on the fence about including him as a general because he's so expensive, but he really didn't disappoint. There are a bunch of cards in cube that he's super synergistic with (Loam, Land Tax, Kodama's Reach, draw 7s, Nissa, Vastwood Seer). Narset also looked pretty good in action, but my opponent definitely didn't build around her very well and didn't have many powerful non-creature bombs. I think she'd be really powerful in the right deck (Karn, Ugin, Form of Dragon as finishers) and could definitely make some crazy plays. For a while I was kicking around testing Shu Yun in her place, but I want to give Narset more time to shine.
lplaat: I checked your cube out on cubetutor and I definitely see the multiplayer focus, it looks like a lot of fun. My cube is strictly designed for 1v1 matches, so we are dealing with completely different animals. Still, I'm curious how Animar has been working out for you? I played a match last night vs. an Animar deck and my opponent had a really hard time getting off the runway. On that note:
Playtest report:
Sidisi, Brood Tryant reanimator (me), vs Animar midrange (them)
This time we dealt out two commanders each so that we'd have a fall back during the draft. I cracked Sidisi and Thalia, and since I've already seen Thalia in action I opted to go with Sidisi. I pretty much had a dream draft and managed to grab all the right pieces: Recurring Nightmare, Survival of the Fittest, Life from the Loam, Crucible of Worlds, Strip Mine, Pack Rat, Meren of Clan Nel Toth, ect... My one weakness is that I didn't have any removal that wasn't black, so Animar, Soul of Elements was pretty much unkillable. My opponents deck had a lot of the right pieces (etb dudes with low color requirements) but he either didn't have enough draw or enough ramp to make his deck truly shine. He took one game out of the three when I simply couldn't stop his 5/5 Amimar, but in the other games he either couldn't string together enough creatures fast enough, or ran out of gas after a couple turns. While I couldn't kill his Animar, I had plenty of ways to take out his other creatures so often he was left with just a 3/3 or 4/4 general that needed to stay back and block. On my end of things, Sidisi was a total blast to play. I've always wished that cube had more viable dredge type cards, and Sidisi does a pretty good impression. One game I flipped over three creatures with a Reanimate in hand. That's 9 power on the board for 4 mana. Boom. Another time she milled me into Strip Mine when I had Crucible up. Good times. She'll definitely be my long term choice for a UGB general.
So my opponents deck was definitely lacking some gas, but I'm wondering if Animar is truly for my cube. He needs so many of the right pieces in just the right amounts to really fire. I'm considering Surrak Dragonclaw and Maelstrom Wanderer as alternatives but neither has me super excited. As I've said here many times, I want my generals to enhance synergies and strategies already present in my cube, or promote archetypes that already exist, not just be big dumb beats. Surrak is pretty much just a midrange threat, so I don't think I'll test him out. Maelstrom on the other hand could be a legit general for RUG rampy decks, but feels pretty linear. I've also considered Yasova Dragonclaw, but she's even more goodstuffy than Surrak. Alas. Anyone else have thoughts?
I honestly like Riku of Two Reflections as a viable option. He is a little slower than Animar, Soul of Elements but pays for himself after a fashion in the late game. He does not immediately affect the board state when cast, if cast early. So, you know there is at least the opponent's following turn to deal with him if he/she so chooses or is able. And, if you look at the limited card selection that a player will have to chose from after his/her draft, the chances of extremely uneven or bonkers plays goes out the window. He is a general with manageable power and toughness so he can be dealt with and usually will not be a commander damage win. But, his abilities give the pilot the ability to decide to go creature based or spell based or some mixture. It could create some interesting matchups. I would prefer Riku over Maelstrom if you are looking to get away from linearity. He really has the most flexibility in those colors.
I've thought long and hard about Riku, but I can't bring myself to pay 5 mana for a 2/2 that requires additional cards to be good. It's just too inefficient for fast paced cube game IMO. I'll probably just keep Animar in for the time being.
More playtest data:
1) Muzzio, Visionary Architect sucks. I built a really strong UR artifact deck with all the pieces and never once wanted to spend the mana for Muzzio or his activation. I'm going to be replacing him with Bosh, Iron Golem to maintain a dedicated general for the artifact deck.
2) Mikaeus, the Lunarch is a beast: Played against him in a WBG token/midrange deck and he was a total monster.
3) Exava, Rakdos Blood Witch was... meh: Built a hard RB aggro deck and she was fine, but not too exciting. Seeing as I already have a couple great aggressive generals for BR I'm thinking I'll cut her for a more control oriented general. Maybe its time I sleeve up Olivia...
Built a Ghave, Guru of SporesWBG value midrange deck and he was a beast. I was trying to go full on WB tokens but the draft didn't go my way. Even so, if you can untap with him he's a nightmare to deal with. One game stalled on the board and I was able to blank a few combat steps by making saprolings and then sacrificing them pre-damage to replenish Ghave's counters. Then I built a Birds of Paradise into a 6/7 flier and went to town.
Would it be feasable and enjoyable to create an "EDH expansion" consisting of only generals and maybe a few other cards to facilitate EDH games with my cube as it exists now? As I don't want to alter my cube list to facilitate "EDH" games, I think some deck construction and game rules would need to change.
Here is what I'm thinking for the rules of this "expansion" set:
Deck size: 50
Life total: 20 (25?)
Color Identity rules: Not sure about this one, I would want to hear some feedback from those of you who have commander cubes.
Generals:
1 of each mono color
2 of each guild
1 of each wedge/shard
The generals would have to be chosen to support themes that are already supported in the cube. Also I would probably have to limit how many super expensive generals I include.
Potential Commanders:
U: Arcanis
B: Xiahou Dun
R: Kiki Jiki
G: Kamahl
RG: Radha, Ulasht
UG: Edric, Momir
BG: Skullbriar, Nath
WG: Saffi, Sigarda
WR: Brion, Basandra
WU: Grand Arbiter, Geist
BR: Lyzolda, Olivia
UB: Oona, Sygg (or Wydwen)
WB: Teysa, Ghost Council
UR: Nin, Niv-Mizzet
Bant: Rafiq
Naya: Rhith
Jund:Sek'Kuar
Esper: Ertai
Grixis: Sedris
UBG: Oozey guy
UWR: Ruhan
WBG: Ghave
RUG: Either Animar or Riku
WBR: Dragon... forget his name.
I don't currently run the signets, so maybe they could be thrown in as well to facilitate multicolor a little better. I wouldn't want to add much more.
With this expansion games would definitely be shorter, and aggro would be a viable strategy. My goal isn't to incorporate the "true spirit" of EDH, just to allow some fun alternatives to cube play that are "EDH like".
What do you guys think?
Comments above in blue.
We played some multiplayer games out of my 360 a few times and the turn 1-2-3 aggro rushes were fairly non-existent in those games. But if a deck like that could put in just enough support to get them into the late game, they actually did quite well. Should be a fun experiment for your group. I'm fairly confident it will work just fine.
360 Unpowered Cube | Cubetutor
In case folks land up selecting the same color(s) during the drafy, encourage your players to pick a 2 or 3 color general, minimizing the likelihood of being forced into an illegal deck. If you BYOG two commanders, you even further reduce the chance that a player gets shut out of an edh deck entirely.
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
1. We played sealed, 7 packs per player. We would have done 8, but my cube is just short of being able to support 32 packs. If we were to draft we probably would have drafted 5 packs, in which case more players could be supported (up to 6).
2. After deckbuilding (50 cards including general) we each selected a general from a list I mocked up over the past few days. I don't have the list on me at the moment, but will post later. These are the decks/generals we ended up playing:
-GR beatdown - Radha, Heir of Keld
-WGBu control - Rafiq of the Many
-WGu midrange - Saffi Eriksdotter
-UB control/reanimator - Geth Lord of the Vault
Wait a minute... how can a WGBu deck play Rafiq as a general?! And the Saffi deck can't splash blue! Right? Conventional EDH principles say so, but we decided to toss the color identity rules out the window for three reasons. One, we wanted to have as many options as possible when building decks and picking generals as we were concerned that building a playable deck would be difficult if color was restricted and the fact that my cube isn't specifically designed for EDH. B, as the cube is a closed environment we didn't feel that opening up the rules a little bit would introduce crazy broken shenanigans, as would most certainly be the case in true EDH. III, we thought/think that throwing out the color identity rule will create more variability and longevity to the subformat.
3. Shuffled up, started at 20 life, and played some games. Here is what we noticed:
-20 life seems to be the right starting amount. As my cube is built (like many others on this forum) to support aggro, if life total was higher aggro would have a difficult time competing. As it is, expanding the decksize to 50 cards takes a little bit of wind out of aggro's sails. However...
-Aggro is a very viable strategy. The consistency added with having an aggressive general (in this case Radha) more than makes up for the effect of increased decksize. I was piloting UB Geth and lost a couple games by turn 6 because the Rhada deck was just too fast. Always being able to hit your 2 drop is a good thing.
-As some of the best generals are fairly expensive (Geth, Oona, ect...) we found that more ramp was necessary. You EDH players will know what I'm talking about here. I currently do not play any of the signets, so next time we play with generals I plan on including the signets in the draft. I figure 10 extra mana rocks should do the trick. Will want to keep an eye on aggro to make sure it doesnt get outclassed entirely by control.
-In a lot of ways the games were true to the "spirit of edh." In fact moreso than I anticipated. In one game against WGBu Rafiq I had exactly 30 life and lost to a one shot from Elesh Norn double striking and swinging two swords. In another game I managed to recur Snapcaster Mage 4 times and recast Hym to Tourach, Thoughtseize, Demontic Tutor, and Consuming Vapors. These are very EDH like plays that are possible in regular cube games but just don't seem to come together as easily. The addition of generals and increase in deck size stretched games out a little bit, even though life total remained at 20. It was suggested by one player that deck sizes be left at 40 (echoing Theogony_IX). This will be considered with more playtesting.
-I need to develop a draft variant to pick generals.
-This was FUN!
I can't wait to test more. Next time I hope to build a BR reanimator/control deck around Jaya Balard
If you have thoughts chime in!
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
White:
8.5 Tails
Odric
Mikaeus
Blue:
Teferi
Talrand
Thada Adel
Black:
Mirri the Cursed
Geth, Lord of the Vault
Drana
Red:
Jaya Ballard
Kiki-Jiki
Akroma, Angel of Fury
Green:
Yeva
Kamahl
Omnath
Guilds:
Grand Arbiter
Brion Stoutarm
Olivia
Edric
Teysa
Glissa
Saffi
Nin
Oona
Rhada
Shards/Wedges:
Rafiq
Sek'Kuar
Sedris
Rith
Ertai, Corrupted
Mimeoplasm
Riku
Ruhan
Oros
Ghave
I feel like blue is the weakest. I would rather have Kira and Meloku than Thada and Teferi, but I am trying to not touch the actual contents of the cube. On that note, Edric and Rafiq are both in my normal cube list as well. I don't want to cut Rafiq, and absolutely REFUSE to cut Edric, so I may just need to pull these guys out and change the sleeves every time we use the expansion.
I've tried to give each monocolor a variety of generals that facilitate the strategies natural in that color. For multicolor I picked the ones I thought had the best utility/cost ratio, or simply the ones that were playable (WBR, WRG). I'm not entirely sold on Oona either, as her ability/stats are so similar to Geth's. I would love feedback on my choices here.
Also, those of you who have cubes specifically designed for EDH, how do you go about selecting/drafting generals?
Thanks guys!
When I first designed my cube, I organized my commander section as 2 legends per guild/shard/wedge and tried to select an "aggro" and "control" general for each paring. After a while I expanded mine to the current 3 per, when I got impatient leaving lots of viable choices back in my edh storage. Since most of my regular drafters are lapsed or super casual players, we preserve the general drafting phase because they simply can't supply a lot of legends in the first place, but with a group as seemingly experienced as yours, it seems like BYOG might be a more advanced approach to take.
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
I like the idea. I will definitely present it to the group. Our core group consists of 4-6 diehards and a constantly revolving mass of players from the local shop. When we organize games its usually the core group around my kitchen table, but often when we are at the good old LGS there are just people who want to play. These impromptu cube-fests necessitate a pre-populated list of generals to choose from.
Can you explain how you guys go about drafting generals? If you end up with 2 playables, do you allow swaps in between games as part of the "sideboarding" process?
Every user who's posted an edh cube here probably has a different system for general drafts...
For my group, we usually hand out a pack of 5 legends per player, and then just draft as normal. You can focus by selecting generals that share one or more colors, or pick a diverse group, keeping yourself more open for the main draft. Our approach to the post-draft general pool is that anything legal in your chosen general's colors is a-ok to include in the deck (I do this all the time, including cards like Gisela in a Mayael list, for instance).
Since drafts with my group usually take an hour+, with games lasting another 1-2 hours, we don't always get to play a second game at all. My group also frequently plays at a local bar, where we don't have a ton of room for all the left over cards, so we rarely sideboard actually. Further complicating matters, many of my players are either too casual to contemplate sideboarding, or so experienced and cocky that they "demand to win this next round with deck they've built," and land up keeping the deck the same.
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
This has mostly been my experience as well. Between shuffling, creating the packs, distributing the packs, explaining the rules to the new players, drafting, deckbuilding, and then an EDH game, it frequently takes about 4 hours end-to-end. Only twice out of my drafts has there been time for a second game before people had to start leaving.
Currently Playing:
Legacy: Something U/W Controlish
EDH Cube
Hypercube! A New EDH Deck Every Week(ish)!
White:
Blue:
Black:
Red:
Green:
Guild:
Shard/Wedge:
5cc:
Sliver Queen
I'm not adjusting the content of my cube so legendary creatures already included in my cube are not eligible as generals. For the most part I've also tried to shy away from generals that would totally dominate cube style games on their own (Ruric Thrar Unbowed ect) in favor of generals that are synergistic with the cube archetypes I'm currently supporting (Teysa, Orzhov Scion for BW tokens, or Radha, Heir to Keld for RG stompy/fires) along with a few "goodstuffy" type generals (Sidisi, Undead Vizier ect).
Probably the biggest departure from traditional EDH is that we have done away with color identity rules, so if you want to put Jaya in a UR tinker deck or a RBG midrange deck, feel free. This has worked really well for us in our initial testing and has opened up some really fun decks. Some of these generals I'm not super happy with on paper, (mainly Simic and Boros), but hopefully further testing will reveal what works and what doesn't. We have also been back and forth between using 50 card decks and 40 card decks, but for now 40 cards seems to work just fine.
Has anyone tried this or something similar over the past couple years since this thread died? If so I'd love to hear your feedback. If not, I will soldier on and hopefully pioneer a fun new expansion that cube owners can keep in their back pocket for some variety, and I'd also love to hear your feedback!
EDIT: Mods, can this be moved into the card/archetype forum?
I've made a few changes to the general pool, and in so doing broke another sacred rule of EDH. I'm going to try out some non-legendary creatures as generals:
OUT > IN
Gaddock Teeg > Knight of the Reliquary
Sygg, River Cutthroat > Dimir Doppleganger
Ezuri, Claw of Progress > Prophet of Kruphix
Didn't like the old generals, but I also didn't like the other options in those colors. I tried to chose generals that would play well in the color pair and that feel somewhat "general-y". I won't be adding Llanowar Elves as a general anytime soon, but I am open to adding other non-legendary creatures if it seems like a good idea.
Regular changes (legendary for legendary)
Kruphix, God of Horizons > Prime Speaker Zegana
Ertai, the Corrupted > Sharuum the Hegemon
Marchesa, the Black Rose > Sedris, the Traitor King
Took out some weak generals in favor of big hitters. These three all have the ability to take over games, but only if you build your deck appropriately. Hopefully they work out.
Hard adds:
Muzzio, Visionary Architect
Karn, Silver Golem
Just wanted to add some support for the artifact.deck here. Also, Karn is hilarious without color identity rules.
I'll report back when I have more playtest data!
Leonin Shikari: Very narrow but in a deck with a couple swords she could be very strong. I don't think it will see much play but I love the equipment deck so I thought I'd try it out.
Joiner Adept: Fragile 5c enabler. Not sure she'll stick around for long, but she seemed like a fun experiment.
Ashling the Pilgrim: I think she'll play best in Wildfire type big red decks.
Sygg, River Cutthroat: Re-add. Black doesn't have many good mono colored options so he's going in. I don't expect many blue based decks will be interested but he should play well in black based aggro builds.
First game I nominated Zurgo and lost miserably. I missed my 1 drop and he was able to get enough early tempo with Man-o-War and Venser, Shaper Savant to set up a Brago loop before I could stabilize. Once he had double bounce every turn it was gg.
Second game I decided to go with Zo Zu, which was definitely the right call. I curved out perfectly on the play into Zo Zu on turn three, who dealt 8 damage over the course of the game. I killed him with a Blood-Chin Fanatic attack that made Zo Zu (warrior!) have menace. Good times! Third game I also ran Zo Zu and it was really close, but I lost. At 4 life he manage to Brago bounce Reveillark with a Whirler Rouge and a Knight of Meadowgrain in the yard. I wasn't able to push through the last few points.
We played a fourth game and I rebuilt my deck to be a bit more midrangy with a re-animator sub theme and Jaya Ballard as my general. Against a blue deck she was nuts and I managed to pull a victory by reanimating Ulamog 2.0 off a Jaya discard (to kill Brago haha). This game felt very "EDHy" as we were both playing midrangy value centric strategies.
These games caused me to re-evaluate my general selection a bit. It was pretty obvious that it is harder for aggro to win in this format as your opponent always has a creature available that is immune to hand disruption. Furthermore, Zo Zu is pretty much the only "hard aggro" general in my pool. Not good. I want the general selection to represent archetypes and theaters already represented in the cube. Also, up to this point I've been adamant that if a creature is in the cube it can't be a general because I don't want to "de-optimize" my cube for the sake of an expansion set. I thought about removing Isamaru, Hound of Konda and Zurgo Bellstriker so they would be available as aggro generals, but this sucks because they are top tier creatures. Then I thought, why not just have them in the cube AND allow them to be generals. Obviously, the singleton rule will still apply in deckbuilding, so if you want to run little Zurgo as your general you can't use him in your deck. I think this will work, especially because we glimpse draft so the potential of being stuck with doubles is pretty low. Also, with the new legendary rule you wont have to worry about your opponent dropping a copy of your general to ruin your day. This opens up several more general options for me:
These are the generals I plan on including initially but there are also a ton of other options. I still want to be careful to only include generals that push specific syngergies or archetypes rather than just big dumb beats, like Polukranos or something, so I'm not going to go haywire and throw in every possible legend in my cube. I'm guessing with more playtesting I'll find more candidates.
Exciting stuff . I already have many legendary creatures to throw in as commanders.
1) Generals draft followed by standard glimpse draft: I built an almost perfect Sharuum deck with both Tezzerets, Trinket Mage, and a ton of support cards. The only piece I was missing was huge robot to re-animate with Sharuum. My opponent built a brutal Thalia deck. You are probably thinking a brutal Thalia deck is a hard aggro/stax/white weenie deck. Wrong. He built an almost mono-green ramp/cheat deck and only splashed white for Thalia and O-ring. While my deck had a ton of synergies and could really get things going once I had a few pieces on the board, I lost the series, mostly because it's tough to curve out with mana rocks with a Thalia on the field haha. Most of his ramp was in creature form so Thalia's tax ability was very asymmetric. This match perfectly illustrates what I'm trying to accomplish with this EDH expansion in that the games were very EDH like, and the generals highlighted tons of random cube synergies that don't often see play. Who would have thought Thalia is boss in a creature ramp deck. Hilarious.
2) Sealed pool of generals, sealed cube: Playing this way was a real deckbuilding challenge, but ultimately was a good time. I ended up with a Pia & Kiren Nalaar RW control deck and my opponent built an Animar goodstuff creatures deck. The games were fun and engaging but I took the series 2-1. The one game I lost my opponent managed to stick Animar (pro white ftw) and get 2 counters on him. Primeval Titan for 2GG is a pretty good deal! I won two games due to having superior removal, evasive threats, or being able to stick Pia & Kiren (which pretty much nullified his Animar). Good times.
3) Sealed pool of generals, glimpse draft: This is probably my favorite way to play with the EDH expansion. General drafts are fun, but it's pretty easy to figure out what your opponent is going to be doing in draft based on their general picks. This leads to super aggressive hate drafting (which in glimpse is super easy). Also, opening a sealed pool of generals (we did 7 per player) has a tendency to push you out of your comfort zone. I typically go for archetype decks (re-animator, tokens, artifact.dec, ect..) or hard aggro, and almost never play ramp. However, I happened to crack an Omnath and decided to go with it. Man, so much fun. I drafted pretty much the ideal green blue ramp deck with crazy threat density on the top end. There were a couple games I was able to hardcast Eldrazi titans as early as turn five. My opponent had built a Zurgo RW aggro deck that was pretty scary. He won the initial series but we had so much fun with the decks we ended up playing best out of 11, lol. The most memorable moment was when we got into a stalemate where I had a Kozilek on the field but couldn't attack because I needed the blocker. He had a couple aggro dorks but couldn't swing and leave himself open. Four turns of draw-go until he top decked a burn spell, which I countered. Next turn he dropped Sarkhan, Dragonspeaker and I was toast.
Overall, I'm super happy with how the expansion is playing. I'm still not 100% on some of my general choices (Kamahl Fist of Krosa), but it will work itself out. Highly recommend you guys proxy up some generals and try it out. I'd love to see more people testing this thing out and giving feedback!
@iM4g1c: We definitely keep commanders secret when drafting. We glimpse draft so if your opponents know your commander your will be hate drafted to kingdom come.
More playtest results:
I played a 1v1 over the weekend and we decided to just deal out one general as an experiment. We wanted to see how it would effect the drafting process if you were locked in and didn't have options. We were also interested to play a bit outside of our comfort zones. I cracked Borborygmos Enraged, which is definitely not my cup of tea. My opponenent cracked Narset, Enlightened Master which was also outside of his comfort zone (he's typically a midrange creature beats kind of guy). We got lucky in that we didn't end up with generals that shared more than one color, but even if we had I think the draft would have been ok because of our flexibility w/ color identity.
The games were a total blast. I built a super ramp deck with Tooth and Nail, Mimic Vat, Sneak Attack, and Kozilek, Atarka, and Hornet Queen as fatty options (aside from Borborygmos). It was a blast to play and Borborygmos won me a couple games from his land discard ability. I was on the fence about including him as a general because he's so expensive, but he really didn't disappoint. There are a bunch of cards in cube that he's super synergistic with (Loam, Land Tax, Kodama's Reach, draw 7s, Nissa, Vastwood Seer). Narset also looked pretty good in action, but my opponent definitely didn't build around her very well and didn't have many powerful non-creature bombs. I think she'd be really powerful in the right deck (Karn, Ugin, Form of Dragon as finishers) and could definitely make some crazy plays. For a while I was kicking around testing Shu Yun in her place, but I want to give Narset more time to shine.
Playtest report:
Sidisi, Brood Tryant reanimator (me), vs Animar midrange (them)
This time we dealt out two commanders each so that we'd have a fall back during the draft. I cracked Sidisi and Thalia, and since I've already seen Thalia in action I opted to go with Sidisi. I pretty much had a dream draft and managed to grab all the right pieces: Recurring Nightmare, Survival of the Fittest, Life from the Loam, Crucible of Worlds, Strip Mine, Pack Rat, Meren of Clan Nel Toth, ect... My one weakness is that I didn't have any removal that wasn't black, so Animar, Soul of Elements was pretty much unkillable. My opponents deck had a lot of the right pieces (etb dudes with low color requirements) but he either didn't have enough draw or enough ramp to make his deck truly shine. He took one game out of the three when I simply couldn't stop his 5/5 Amimar, but in the other games he either couldn't string together enough creatures fast enough, or ran out of gas after a couple turns. While I couldn't kill his Animar, I had plenty of ways to take out his other creatures so often he was left with just a 3/3 or 4/4 general that needed to stay back and block. On my end of things, Sidisi was a total blast to play. I've always wished that cube had more viable dredge type cards, and Sidisi does a pretty good impression. One game I flipped over three creatures with a Reanimate in hand. That's 9 power on the board for 4 mana. Boom. Another time she milled me into Strip Mine when I had Crucible up. Good times. She'll definitely be my long term choice for a UGB general.
So my opponents deck was definitely lacking some gas, but I'm wondering if Animar is truly for my cube. He needs so many of the right pieces in just the right amounts to really fire. I'm considering Surrak Dragonclaw and Maelstrom Wanderer as alternatives but neither has me super excited. As I've said here many times, I want my generals to enhance synergies and strategies already present in my cube, or promote archetypes that already exist, not just be big dumb beats. Surrak is pretty much just a midrange threat, so I don't think I'll test him out. Maelstrom on the other hand could be a legit general for RUG rampy decks, but feels pretty linear. I've also considered Yasova Dragonclaw, but she's even more goodstuffy than Surrak. Alas. Anyone else have thoughts?
More playtest data:
1) Muzzio, Visionary Architect sucks. I built a really strong UR artifact deck with all the pieces and never once wanted to spend the mana for Muzzio or his activation. I'm going to be replacing him with Bosh, Iron Golem to maintain a dedicated general for the artifact deck.
2) Mikaeus, the Lunarch is a beast: Played against him in a WBG token/midrange deck and he was a total monster.
3) Exava, Rakdos Blood Witch was... meh: Built a hard RB aggro deck and she was fine, but not too exciting. Seeing as I already have a couple great aggressive generals for BR I'm thinking I'll cut her for a more control oriented general. Maybe its time I sleeve up Olivia...
Built a Ghave, Guru of Spores WBG value midrange deck and he was a beast. I was trying to go full on WB tokens but the draft didn't go my way. Even so, if you can untap with him he's a nightmare to deal with. One game stalled on the board and I was able to blank a few combat steps by making saprolings and then sacrificing them pre-damage to replenish Ghave's counters. Then I built a Birds of Paradise into a 6/7 flier and went to town.
Daxos of Meletis is weak. I'm going to try Medomai the Ageless instead.