**Yore-Tiller Nephilim: I honestly don't think any of the current Jeskai generals are any good, especially in the cube. So, I put in Yore. At first there was some hesitation from my playgroup that he would be OP, but we quickly found out he was pretty fair and actually fun.
In a constructed environment, I once played against a Narset, Enlightened Master deck that consisted of sorceries and instants that produced tokens and planeswalkers. It was shockingly effective. I managed to finally beat it one turn before I would have been overrun, by tutoring Plague Wind with a Blade of the Bloodchief on Vampire Nighthawk, which was quite satisfying, but I was very impressed with the deck. If your cube has enough UWR noncreature spells to support him, I suspect Narset might surprise you.
I agree that it's difficult to find decent Jeskai commanders, though.
I've left Conspiracy out of my cube. It's a lot of fun in my friend's non-EDH cube, but I just felt like it was unnecessary. Anyway, outside of commanders, I have exactly 800 cards in my (admittedly large) cube, 100 of each color, 100 land, 100 colorless, 100 guild (10 of each). My OCD feels threatened by adding extra cards.
I realize this post is almost a year old, but I figure I'll throw in my answers to these questions
Quote from Dolono » »
Do you and your players tend to build/play 2 color or 3 color generals? How often are mono colored generals drafted?
My cube only contains 2 and 3 color generals in the commander draft (we draft them first, 2 packs of 4). Most people go for 3-color but 2-color happens quite often. Mono-color legends are legal generals if you pick them up in the rest of the draft, but it's unlikely you'll see enough cards in a single color to build a deck.
Quote from Dolono » »
How much do you try and force a certain general vs keep your self open during the draft?
Since we draft 8 potential commanders before the main draft, people have a few options, but if you haven't made up your mind by the second pack you're asking for trouble
Quote from Dolono » »
Have you tried experimenting with a variety of general draft methods? If so, which have worked best? Which have you hated?
Not really. I initially started with this method and it has worked well:
1. Draft potential generals in 2 packs of 4.
2. Draft a 60-card deck in 5 packs of 12
Everything is in the same sleeve, so compatible generals can end up as soldiers in each others' armies.
If it's just me and a friend, we use the same method, but we do it as a shuffle draft. Exactly the same as above, but instead of passing packs back and forth, we shuffle all unchosen cards from all packs and deal them out again. This gives each player less perfect information about the other player's choices.
Quote from Dolono » »
Has the general drafting ever lead to any train wrecks or deck failures?
Yes. In a heads-up game, a friend of mine tried to draft a 2-color deck but couldn't get enough cards. We solved it by simply agreeing to mutually lower the deck size to 50.
**Yore-Tiller Nephilim: I honestly don't think any of the current Jeskai generals are any good, especially in the cube. So, I put in Yore. At first there was some hesitation from my playgroup that he would be OP, but we quickly found out he was pretty fair and actually fun.
In a constructed environment, I once played against a Narset, Enlightened Master deck that consisted of sorceries and instants that produced tokens and planeswalkers. It was shockingly effective. I managed to finally beat it one turn before I would have been overrun, by tutoring Plague Wind with a Blade of the Bloodchief on Vampire Nighthawk, which was quite satisfying, but I was very impressed with the deck. If your cube has enough UWR noncreature spells to support him, I suspect Narset might surprise you.
I agree that it's difficult to find decent Jeskai commanders, though.
I've left Conspiracy out of my cube. It's a lot of fun in my friend's non-EDH cube, but I just felt like it was unnecessary. Anyway, outside of commanders, I have exactly 800 cards in my (admittedly large) cube, 100 of each color, 100 land, 100 colorless, 100 guild (10 of each). My OCD feels threatened by adding extra cards.
Unfortunately her ability is too narrow. The same logic applies that I used in my last post regarding ESPER Commanders. At 450 cards, those colors have approximately 80 non-creature spells. Assuming you see 75% of those in any given draft pool and with the chances that someone else is in those colors, the ability on Narset becomes hard to take advantage of. I do agree, she is probably the 'best' in the color combination, though. While the same math applies to Yore, creatures are infinitely easier to acquire, especially in your hand (versus getting a non-creature spell on the top of your deck). There's is a little psychology
that's goes into it as well - IE being able to actually benefit/have fun from drafting and playing a commander.
MM, did you change yore-tiller's casting cost to 1URW, or is it a 4-color general in your cube?
It's a 4 color General. BWUR - Note: Unless my team has a serious issue with me taking him out of the cube, he will be changed out for the first playable Jeskai General. He was originally an experiment that turned out to work really well.
I was intrigued by the idea that if I gave a player access to 4 colors, would it be beneficial or a detriment ? Was the player able to overcome the consistency issue 4 colors presents in a draft, or were they able to focus on 2-3 colors to complete their list ? Would Goodstuff.dec be the inevitable outcome ? There was a lot of variables I want to see play out and so far, its been really cool to see 4 color commanders outside of just theory crafting.
FWIW, the winning deck at our last cubing was a Jeskai deck running Numot, the Devastator as a commander. Numot himself did some hurt and wasn't bad, but it was also a solid deck in good colors. MVP of the game actually went to Soul Warden
I've seen an essence warden pull some incredible weight in a couple of games myself (G/W tokens and the like). EW and soul's attendant have been cards that I've frequently pondered including.
An LGS near me has a copy of hazezon tamar that I'm strongly considering forking over the cash for. What are the most important cards in edh cube for supporting/abusing this guy?
He's one of my two Naya generals and he's pretty solid. You want the token doublers for sure, but a couple sac outlets are crucial as well. I have Goblin Bombardment and Phyrexian Altar to toast Hazezon before the next upkeep, but I also find that he is just fine without pulling those shenanigans. He isn't the lightning Rod/powerhouse that Marath is, but if you play him, get some dudes, and attack... all good. I would add Purphoros, Vicious Shadows, and Warstorm Surge to that package as well... and maybe even Sneak Attack since I play him in Marath too.
An LGS near me has a copy of hazezon tamar that I'm strongly considering forking over the cash for. What are the most important cards in edh cube for supporting/abusing this guy?
He's a strong card without any of those things. As Gals said, sac outlets are the biggest thing, so they can't nuke your army by removing him. I've found that haste enablers and anthems are also very good, especially ones that combine both (In the Web of War/Ogre Wardriver) or really big anthems (Beastmaster Ascension and Cathars' Crusade). Cards like Purphoros and Vicious Shadows that guarantee high damage regardless of size are strong too. Surge is alright, but one damage per dude is less than stellar.
I can't stress how important Haste is though. You have a one turn delay on the dudes, so adding a further turn delay before you can use them generally means that your opponents will get to shut them down before they can do too much. But you DO have access to all of your mana the turn you get them, so being able to drop Fires of Yavimaya + Dictate of Heliod or something is a very strong move.
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I only mentioned Surge because it's the kind of card that will probably already be in a Cube that wants to machine gun with tokens. It's not an all-star at all in Hazezon, but I assume there are other things that might make it worthwhile... at least as redundancy.
It's funny though because all the cards mentioned are already in my Cube without even thinking about Hazezon... they're all really just useful and flexible cards anyway. I wouldn't worry about building around him too much since I think you already have.
Haste ogre battledriver - yes anger - cut in the web of war - cut fires of yavimaya - cut
~ may be a little light in this section, but I'll be using conspiracies and hero's path cards with the cube that grant haste effects. I also have a lot of haste equips, although that isn't a perfect solution
Got two games in during a 5-player draft with Hazezon as my general (vs Kaalia, Marchesa, Xenagos, and Derevi), and the legends legend performed admirably with pieces of the token support discussed above. I emergency slotted in hammer of purphoros and goblin bombardment the night before the draft. My only complain is that I wish the card just didn't have such a high cmc, as it was difficult at times to chain plays together that took into consideration his cost, trying to get hazezon off the board ASAP, the delayed entrance of tokens, and sticking anthems/haste ennablers.
I accidentally won the first game when my remaining xenagos and marchesa opponents burned each other to the ground via the bust side of boom // bust and ulamog. Six sand warriors, no vulnerable hazezon, and enough non-token permanents to sac to annihilator allowed me to weather the storm & kill the vulnerable marchesa player after they dispatched xenagos. Draft picks of phyrexian altar and trading post worked as intended, keeping hazezon off the board after dropping him from the command zone. Not having any blink effects or enough mana doublers kept me from double casting hazezon, but the number of tokens produced after even one cast was impressive.
Game 2 I bore the wrath of being the previous session's winner and got stomped repeatedly by the kaalia and xenagos players. I did survive long enough to cast hammer of purphoros & craterhoof behemoth off the back of a green gauntlet of power. With 6 sand warriors and hazezon on the board, each of 8 creatures was at least a 10/x trampler. Due to being magnanimously left alive the previous turn by one of the other players, I distributed the attackers equally between my 4 opponents. I died a couple turns later after accidently attacking into dack's duplicate that I didn't realize was a cloned Kokusho. I was very pleased how well the emergency hammer came in handy!
It seems like with his high casting cost, early turns with hazezon need to be spent dropping and sticking as many anthems, haste ennablers, and sac outlets as possible before casting the general. The turn delay for the sand warriors actually came in handy a few times, as their appearance followed a player's wrath or mass damage effect the turn before.
Now that we've seen all 5 Elder Dragons, anyone slotting one into their general section?
To me they all seem pretty bad for cubing. Except maybe the UW one, and not by much, all the others are not appeling me. The BR seems specially awful IMO since he lost half of his value in a singleton environment.
I don't think I am going to land up using any of the new elders, except I might poll my group on whether they'd like the new atarka over the fate version. In general, I'm not seeing a whole lot in DTK that I'm interested in testing, other than stratus dancer, the new narset, new sidisi, and silumgar's command. I am very disappointed that they didn't fix kolaghan with an ability more conducive to edh play.
Which of the ten newly revealed Comm2015 generals do folks have their eyes on? Are there any changes you'll be making to your base cube, to beef up the specific strategies and archetypes they facilitate?
Edric out, Ezuri, Claw of Progress in
I've been waiting to swap out edric for quite a while, and have been looking forward to seeing what comm2015 was going to offer in the simic general department. I have been gradually offering more and more +1/+1 counter support in my cube, with hydras and cards like hardened scales. Ezuri should fit in quite well.
Considering Kruphix out, Kaseto, Orochi Archmage in.
Kaseto isn't the most exciting general in the group, but I'm afraid that kruphix is a bit too oblique for the draft environment I run...
Considering Jhoira out, one of Mizzix of the Izmagnus or Arjun, the Shifting Flame in.
There's not a ton of conviction backing this decision up, as I have seen some very successful Jhoira lists piloted out of my cube in the past. Swapping in mizzix would provide some interesting information on the state of spells in my cube. Arjun would probably be nice complement to Niv.
Considering either Jarad or Nath out, Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest in.
This one is a bit tougher, but I am leaning on the Nath cut. Mazirek will dovetail nicely with the aforementioned counter support I'm running.
Considering Obzedat or Vish Kal out, Karlov of the Ghost Council in.
Obzedat is just a little too fiddly in the edh environment, and vish kal's enormous CMC has always rubbed me the wrong way. I am excited to give the new GC a shot, as I have been waiting for an inexpensive, voltron-ish general in those colors for a long time!
The new daxos I am totally unsure of so far, and will probably wait for reports of interesting or unexpected synergies before making a decision.
Boros - no changes expected. I'm currently running Iroas, Aurelia, and Gisela. I could see trying Anya as a test over aurelia, but I imagine that anya would probably just play 2nd fiddle to a superior gisela or kaalia deck...
In a constructed environment, I once played against a Narset, Enlightened Master deck that consisted of sorceries and instants that produced tokens and planeswalkers. It was shockingly effective. I managed to finally beat it one turn before I would have been overrun, by tutoring Plague Wind with a Blade of the Bloodchief on Vampire Nighthawk, which was quite satisfying, but I was very impressed with the deck. If your cube has enough UWR noncreature spells to support him, I suspect Narset might surprise you.
I agree that it's difficult to find decent Jeskai commanders, though.
I've left Conspiracy out of my cube. It's a lot of fun in my friend's non-EDH cube, but I just felt like it was unnecessary. Anyway, outside of commanders, I have exactly 800 cards in my (admittedly large) cube, 100 of each color, 100 land, 100 colorless, 100 guild (10 of each). My OCD feels threatened by adding extra cards.
My cube only contains 2 and 3 color generals in the commander draft (we draft them first, 2 packs of 4). Most people go for 3-color but 2-color happens quite often. Mono-color legends are legal generals if you pick them up in the rest of the draft, but it's unlikely you'll see enough cards in a single color to build a deck.
Since we draft 8 potential commanders before the main draft, people have a few options, but if you haven't made up your mind by the second pack you're asking for trouble
Not really. I initially started with this method and it has worked well:
1. Draft potential generals in 2 packs of 4.
2. Draft a 60-card deck in 5 packs of 12
Everything is in the same sleeve, so compatible generals can end up as soldiers in each others' armies.
If it's just me and a friend, we use the same method, but we do it as a shuffle draft. Exactly the same as above, but instead of passing packs back and forth, we shuffle all unchosen cards from all packs and deal them out again. This gives each player less perfect information about the other player's choices.
Yes. In a heads-up game, a friend of mine tried to draft a 2-color deck but couldn't get enough cards. We solved it by simply agreeing to mutually lower the deck size to 50.
Unfortunately her ability is too narrow. The same logic applies that I used in my last post regarding ESPER Commanders. At 450 cards, those colors have approximately 80 non-creature spells. Assuming you see 75% of those in any given draft pool and with the chances that someone else is in those colors, the ability on Narset becomes hard to take advantage of. I do agree, she is probably the 'best' in the color combination, though. While the same math applies to Yore, creatures are infinitely easier to acquire, especially in your hand (versus getting a non-creature spell on the top of your deck). There's is a little psychology
that's goes into it as well - IE being able to actually benefit/have fun from drafting and playing a commander.
EDIT: Also love the Nighthawk play
This was overkill, but I also had Falkenrath Noble on the table.
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
It's a 4 color General. BWUR - Note: Unless my team has a serious issue with me taking him out of the cube, he will be changed out for the first playable Jeskai General. He was originally an experiment that turned out to work really well.
I was intrigued by the idea that if I gave a player access to 4 colors, would it be beneficial or a detriment ? Was the player able to overcome the consistency issue 4 colors presents in a draft, or were they able to focus on 2-3 colors to complete their list ? Would Goodstuff.dec be the inevitable outcome ? There was a lot of variables I want to see play out and so far, its been really cool to see 4 color commanders outside of just theory crafting.
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
doubling season obviously
parallel lives
I'm considering including cloudshift in my white section
Too bad he isn't in bant colors to rack up mistmeadow witch, venser, or ghostly flicker effects...
Thanks!
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
WUBRGPauper Battle BoxWUBRG ... and why I am not a fan of Wayne Reynolds' Illustrations.
He's a strong card without any of those things. As Gals said, sac outlets are the biggest thing, so they can't nuke your army by removing him. I've found that haste enablers and anthems are also very good, especially ones that combine both (In the Web of War/Ogre Wardriver) or really big anthems (Beastmaster Ascension and Cathars' Crusade). Cards like Purphoros and Vicious Shadows that guarantee high damage regardless of size are strong too. Surge is alright, but one damage per dude is less than stellar.
I can't stress how important Haste is though. You have a one turn delay on the dudes, so adding a further turn delay before you can use them generally means that your opponents will get to shut them down before they can do too much. But you DO have access to all of your mana the turn you get them, so being able to drop Fires of Yavimaya + Dictate of Heliod or something is a very strong move.
Currently Playing:
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It's funny though because all the cards mentioned are already in my Cube without even thinking about Hazezon... they're all really just useful and flexible cards anyway. I wouldn't worry about building around him too much since I think you already have.
WUBRGPauper Battle BoxWUBRG ... and why I am not a fan of Wayne Reynolds' Illustrations.
Currently Playing:
Legacy: Something U/W Controlish
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Hypercube! A New EDH Deck Every Week(ish)!
I think I'm off to a good start:
Marshal's Anthem - anthems
mirror entity
spear of heliod
Cathars' Crusade
gaea's anthem
beastmaster ascension
hall of triumph
mirari's wake
gauntlet of power
dragon throne of tarkir
Altars
Dementia - yes
Ashnod's - yes
Phyrexian - yes
goblin bombardment - cut last month
Haste
ogre battledriver - yes
anger - cut
in the web of war - cut
fires of yavimaya - cut
~ may be a little light in this section, but I'll be using conspiracies and hero's path cards with the cube that grant haste effects. I also have a lot of haste equips, although that isn't a perfect solution
Doubling ~ abuse
Doubling season - yes
parallel lives - don't own
mimic vat - yes
Purphoros - yup
pandemonium - yes
vicious shadows - yes
warstorm surge not in my cube
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
I accidentally won the first game when my remaining xenagos and marchesa opponents burned each other to the ground via the bust side of boom // bust and ulamog. Six sand warriors, no vulnerable hazezon, and enough non-token permanents to sac to annihilator allowed me to weather the storm & kill the vulnerable marchesa player after they dispatched xenagos. Draft picks of phyrexian altar and trading post worked as intended, keeping hazezon off the board after dropping him from the command zone. Not having any blink effects or enough mana doublers kept me from double casting hazezon, but the number of tokens produced after even one cast was impressive.
Game 2 I bore the wrath of being the previous session's winner and got stomped repeatedly by the kaalia and xenagos players. I did survive long enough to cast hammer of purphoros & craterhoof behemoth off the back of a green gauntlet of power. With 6 sand warriors and hazezon on the board, each of 8 creatures was at least a 10/x trampler. Due to being magnanimously left alive the previous turn by one of the other players, I distributed the attackers equally between my 4 opponents. I died a couple turns later after accidently attacking into dack's duplicate that I didn't realize was a cloned Kokusho. I was very pleased how well the emergency hammer came in handy!
It seems like with his high casting cost, early turns with hazezon need to be spent dropping and sticking as many anthems, haste ennablers, and sac outlets as possible before casting the general. The turn delay for the sand warriors actually came in handy a few times, as their appearance followed a player's wrath or mass damage effect the turn before.
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
To me they all seem pretty bad for cubing. Except maybe the UW one, and not by much, all the others are not appeling me. The BR seems specially awful IMO since he lost half of his value in a singleton environment.
Zetsu's Cube on CubeTutor.com
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Zetsu's Poker Draft Method
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
Edric out, Ezuri, Claw of Progress in
I've been waiting to swap out edric for quite a while, and have been looking forward to seeing what comm2015 was going to offer in the simic general department. I have been gradually offering more and more +1/+1 counter support in my cube, with hydras and cards like hardened scales. Ezuri should fit in quite well.
Considering Kruphix out, Kaseto, Orochi Archmage in.
Kaseto isn't the most exciting general in the group, but I'm afraid that kruphix is a bit too oblique for the draft environment I run...
Considering Jhoira out, one of Mizzix of the Izmagnus or Arjun, the Shifting Flame in.
There's not a ton of conviction backing this decision up, as I have seen some very successful Jhoira lists piloted out of my cube in the past. Swapping in mizzix would provide some interesting information on the state of spells in my cube. Arjun would probably be nice complement to Niv.
Sisters of Stone Death out, Meren of Clan Nel Toth in
Easy, easy swap. I am very pleased with both of the new golgari generals
Considering either Jarad or Nath out, Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest in.
This one is a bit tougher, but I am leaning on the Nath cut. Mazirek will dovetail nicely with the aforementioned counter support I'm running.
Considering Obzedat or Vish Kal out, Karlov of the Ghost Council in.
Obzedat is just a little too fiddly in the edh environment, and vish kal's enormous CMC has always rubbed me the wrong way. I am excited to give the new GC a shot, as I have been waiting for an inexpensive, voltron-ish general in those colors for a long time!
The new daxos I am totally unsure of so far, and will probably wait for reports of interesting or unexpected synergies before making a decision.
Boros - no changes expected. I'm currently running Iroas, Aurelia, and Gisela. I could see trying Anya as a test over aurelia, but I imagine that anya would probably just play 2nd fiddle to a superior gisela or kaalia deck...
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."