I voted for combo, but only because the only constructed format i play is EDH. And combo in EDH is boring as ****.
You've a 100 card deck that just does the exact same thing over and over again - in the same order with maybe slight variations. Also there's usually no meaningful interaction except counterspells, which won't work either due to Pact/Force and they'll OHKO the whole table from the hand.
So now what do you do as a playgroup, if you know your mate pulled out the combo? Right, kick him out of the game ASAP, because he'll blow up the game by turn x. So it becomes a 1vEveryone. Over the years people often tried to play some infinite / storm combos and it always resulted in them dying first.
And our games can take quite a while. Gettin' kicked out of a game in the first few turns and then havin' to watch 3-4 other people play a game of magic for up to 2 hours can't be fun. But when you've the potential to kill infinite players from basically thin-air, people can't just sit idle and fight each other while the combo player does his thing.
That's the other thing: Most of these decks are incredibly non-interactive. Yes, they disrupt you once in a while but their combos is just: Counter or die and their boardpresence is minimal. You're havin' one person on your table starin' at his hand and doing alot of math 99% of the time.
Bleh.
What irks me more though are decks not designed for such combos, but which still have 1 of them at random in the deck anyway. You're playin' like an hour of awesome 4-5 player EDH with lot's of blowouts, table politics and a constant back and forth and some player at the table goes: "Woops, drew my rnd combo, game over" Just always feels like someone spoiling you end of the movie during the halftime break.
Jeah, it's fair but it's a cheap end to epic games.
On second place though is stax/lockdown. Pullin' a Workshop + Trinisphere or Braids/Stasis lockdowns by Turn 2/3 is just ZZZZZZZZZZ. If you want to play alone just tell me. And then people get pissy if you scoop because they've drawn double your cards and a bajillion more mana. "Well, you can maybe still win".
Yes maybe. But i'm not sitting here another hour, playing a card every X turns (if i'm lucky) while waiting for the lockdown-player to draw his win con - which then still needs quite some time to deal up to 120 dmg.
At least combos restart the game.
Ugh, slowly i'm really agitated with what blue gets compared to others. Atm i really don't see a reason why the non-blue confluences are sorcery! Specially because the blue's 3 modes were a given as soon as i saw the first red one.
And the pain-train of UG and UGx decks being +75% of all decks i ever see continues.
Anyway the life gain is decent, since it's 3 effects, so you can abuse that fact and also 15 is a sufficient amount. Line 2 is a huge Turn to Dust. The first mode is.. uh.. jeah. I can't see alot of decks wanting to pay 5 mana for 3 dudes.
The reason you play stuff like White Sun's Zenith or Decree of Justice is to dump a million mana EoT and then kill everyone. Mode 1 seems incredibly underwhelming.
When i look back at the blue one, they could've added an artifact (or ench) tutor (top library) as the first mode instead of the knights.
My Derevi Proliferate deck just weeps in terror. And my friend playin' super friends isn't stoked about this either. We're sure 1 or 2 people are going to use the card just to hose our decks.
And this will be way harder than a wrath. This is one-sided deck removal.
I'm really not fond of this card and Bane of Progress. Though Bane actually punishes yourself fairly well. This though? Hoses some weak+fun decks completly out of the game while not really bringing anything interesting to the table. Counter it or lose. *yawn*
Can you target the same creature/player more than once? I know you can't when it says "another", but unsure here. Great card if you can, kinda lame if not.
If you could, it would be rather busted. 8 Mana 20 damage to the face is kinda nuts if you compare it to Searing Wind
I can never have enough Witnesseseses. Every once in a while when i'm at a GP i buy 1 or 2 more and i play EDH since 10 years (ok, first it was only 60card-highlander decks) and i still never have enough of those damn buggers. They're like socks in the washing mashine!
Just fyi, the deck is totally not optimized yet but currently i'm tinkerin' on other decks, so this one has to wait.
Currently it lacks in spot removal and/or solutions in general. Suntitan could do well, due to the many 1-3 drops. The manabase sofar is sufficient.
Depends a lot on your group I guess. Mature groups don't care, and becide, we often NEED someone to slow all that ramp, stop the combo from going off, etc.
Is there a reason for backhanded insults? Someone isn't mature if he finds a certain way of boardgames unfun? Do you think this is in any form of fashion helpful to get a discussion going?
Land denial is usually either useless or oppressive. Either it tries to stop a whole table and fails, so it did nothing but trying to hinder everyone to play - or it succeeds and the game is over immediatly. And i usually wintenessed these things happening before turn 6 in really strong decks.
Personally i do not like these kind of decks at a table either, because they usually just die first and then sit there for up an hour doing nothing. Because nobody is going to just tolerate the timebomb tickin'. Same with storm combo decks or other infinite combo shenaningans. People just pile onto them until they're gone.
And stopping ramp and combos can be done without relying on MLD, which is a mechanic designed to stop all other people on the table from playin' magic. There's also nothing to it, if your group like to play with these decks, but don't try to be the funpolice and be disrespectful because people don't share your opinion.
Bad manners, in my opinion, covers every reaction to Gaddock Teeg, or MLD, or Stax, or every other of the numerous strategies or effects that get a community soft ban because of being "unfun" that isn't a reaction of acceptance. Good manners is recognizing that there is no entitlement to get to play your favorite card. Earn the big splashy effect - don't house rule for it. Gaddock Teeg is great.
It all depends on the competitiveness of the group and the difference of card pools. LD is a good example. LD is boring because if it achieves it's gameplan it's about not playing the game and is very non-interactive and onesided. Ontop of that, if the LD deck is any good, chances are only 1 out of X players is playin' the game unless the group knows what's coming and is prepared.
There's a reason Sundering (and Primordial to a lesser extent) is on the banlist, because it was miserable when that guy hit the board around T3.
Stax is a whole other can of worms. Jeah, Winterorb and consorts can be managed, but when the accses to cards vastly differentiates between the players it can become really unfun really fast. If one players plays with mostly modern cards but the stax player has Tabernacles, Mana Crypts, Workshops, Candelabra etc. the outcome of 9/10 games will be clear after turn 2.
That's what happened in our playgroup. The stax player would manage to pull wins in games, where we teamed up on him 1v3 just due to power of his cards.
In the end EDH is a fun format and i hope people are old enough to talk with each other before they sit down and play. My goal is to have a fun time with friends. And when there's a discrepancy between decks, philosophies and card accses i'd assume friends would talk to each other and figure out a way so everyone is happy. So i say: Yes, house rule anything you need to house rule.
I can't see the fun in stompin' weaker/poorer/less competitive friends in a few turns over and over again.
If everyone is super cutthroat and competitve then such a discussion won't happen anyway, because everyone will play at the same level.
I currently use Derevi, but i only stuck with him as a commander because the deck he's in went through multiple iterations. At the moment he resides in a creature based proliferation deck as the top dog.
The deck first started out as heavy artifact based using all kinds of way to produce charge counters (e.g Energy Chamber) + proliferate and fill up cards like: Lux Cannon, Darksteel Reactor and Planeswalker to do all kinds of shenanigans. It was ultra durdle.
When evolve and outlast/bolster hit us in rapid succsesion i reconstructed the deck into its current version; more aggressive and creature based. It still plays all proliferation cards (e.g. Contagion Engine, Inexorable Tide) but now focuses on +1/+1 counters (e.g. Hardened Scales, Doubling Season, Bred for the Hunt, Master Biomancer)
Jenara, Asura of War is also a posiblity for the deck but Derevi does it better - even though he's not directly producing counters. But due to his put-ability he can greatly benefit from graft and triggers evolve & ETB's. Enables you to use your high power creatures aggressively without leaving you wideopen for counter attacks due to his trigger but also gives you the flexibility to get multiple uses out of Everflowing Chalice and Contagion Engine or just use the untap on lands to put more pressure on the board.
I chime in on Zur. He's so oppressive that not even our stax/control player wanted to build a deck with him. It depends on your budget though. If we're talkin' about all the goodies it gets nasty. Stuff like Moxen, Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, Stip mine, Wasteland, The Tabernacle at Pendlehaven, Bazaar of Baghdad etc. At that point if you start to search up stuff like Solitary Confinment and Stasis then i'm sure you won't have alot of friends at the table (anymore)
Then you want best-in-slot mana rocks like those mentioned but also Talismans, Signets, Gilded Lotus and Grim Monolith. And the rest is just pure control-deck goodies: CA, deck manipulation, boardwipes, counters, tutors and Snapcaster Mage. There's also a Voltron variant possible, but i'm not sure how well that one plays out in a multiplayer round. Lockdowns are probably easier to achieve.
I wouldn't say rude, but he can warp the game around him.
I'm not sure what decks people are thinking about, when writing in this thread, specially when i see people only talkin' about handling Teeg. If we talk about scenarios we should apply the same standards of play for every hypothetical player.
So the Teeg players knows everyone is running 10 low-cost spotremovals, because the opponents play fitting decks, but then is stupid enough to just cast Teeg T2 to let him die. That doesn't make any sense.
If all parties play smart the Teeg deck will have other disruption and the other decks won't just sit there twiddle their thumbs and not pursue their own game plan. This is what makes EDH rounds interessting but hard to theorycraft. Yes, the Teeg vis-a-vis could become a problem but the Prosh to left and the Animar to the right will be a threat too. Exact board state, cards in hand, play order, knowledge about the potential of the decks, playstyles - all that matters.
The problem with a Teeg isn't the commander himself, but the deck he'll be played in and how the commander will aid the plan very reliably and strongly. Our Teeg player play fairly competitive decks, but adds some additional limiters to his deck building plan to have more fun while deck building (finding the right solutions/cards to compensate the additional hurdles) and his deck ended up as an enchantress EDH additionally filled with all the hatebears and annyoing shenaningans enchantress-decks usually run.
So Aven Mindcensor, Hushwing Gryff, Grand Abolisher and friends accompanied by more annyoing stuff such as: Aura of Silence, Sterling Grove, Torpor Orb, Damping Matrix. Then the enchantresses etc. and protection for Teeg via hexproof, indestructability and totem armor.
Like this there's lockdown, tons of CA and the ability to kill a player out of nowhere with something like Rancor + [card]Ancestral Mask[/cards].
All in all the deck has a huge impact on the game most of the times and the rest of the table has to re-think their original game plans - maybe more so than other decks would force them too. On the one hand it's refreshing to play like this from time to time, but often times the games itself feel like the rest of the table is trying to keep Teeg in check because the combination of CA+lockdown is incredibly dangerous.
Also decks are affected very diffrently by the deck (not only talkin' about Teeg here). As an example: One of my decks is a Saffi ETB Blink/Recursion deck and even though it's heavily creature based Rest in Peace, Torpor Orb, Hushwing Gryff, Linvala, Keeper of Silence etc. + the deny from playin' green X-spells + boardwipes can completly lock this deck out of the game until you draw one of the either creature or artifact removal spells - and yes, i play most of the available ones for GW.
So long story short: I consider Teeg a strong commander and his decks can be a pita. If your group isn't very competitive, i'd consider him a poor choice and rather "rude" or just out of place. If your group runs competitive or even completly degenerate decks he's fine and can breathe some life into stale metas of a playgroup.
The Teeg deck in our grp is on the stronger side of all decks combined (atm), but we've had worse with really strong stax or LD decks, specially before Sundering Titan was on the banlist. Seriously, these decks ran stuff like Mishra's Workshop + Trinisphere, hardcasted Sundering on T3, played The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale and everything else unfun under sun you can imagine. UB Dralnu control which played Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur in the first 3-5 turns and ran +6 extra turn spells. Bleh.
You've a 100 card deck that just does the exact same thing over and over again - in the same order with maybe slight variations. Also there's usually no meaningful interaction except counterspells, which won't work either due to Pact/Force and they'll OHKO the whole table from the hand.
So now what do you do as a playgroup, if you know your mate pulled out the combo? Right, kick him out of the game ASAP, because he'll blow up the game by turn x. So it becomes a 1vEveryone. Over the years people often tried to play some infinite / storm combos and it always resulted in them dying first.
And our games can take quite a while. Gettin' kicked out of a game in the first few turns and then havin' to watch 3-4 other people play a game of magic for up to 2 hours can't be fun. But when you've the potential to kill infinite players from basically thin-air, people can't just sit idle and fight each other while the combo player does his thing.
That's the other thing: Most of these decks are incredibly non-interactive. Yes, they disrupt you once in a while but their combos is just: Counter or die and their boardpresence is minimal. You're havin' one person on your table starin' at his hand and doing alot of math 99% of the time.
Bleh.
What irks me more though are decks not designed for such combos, but which still have 1 of them at random in the deck anyway. You're playin' like an hour of awesome 4-5 player EDH with lot's of blowouts, table politics and a constant back and forth and some player at the table goes: "Woops, drew my rnd combo, game over" Just always feels like someone spoiling you end of the movie during the halftime break.
Jeah, it's fair but it's a cheap end to epic games.
On second place though is stax/lockdown. Pullin' a Workshop + Trinisphere or Braids/Stasis lockdowns by Turn 2/3 is just ZZZZZZZZZZ. If you want to play alone just tell me. And then people get pissy if you scoop because they've drawn double your cards and a bajillion more mana. "Well, you can maybe still win".
Yes maybe. But i'm not sitting here another hour, playing a card every X turns (if i'm lucky) while waiting for the lockdown-player to draw his win con - which then still needs quite some time to deal up to 120 dmg.
At least combos restart the game.
And the pain-train of UG and UGx decks being +75% of all decks i ever see continues.
Anyway the life gain is decent, since it's 3 effects, so you can abuse that fact and also 15 is a sufficient amount. Line 2 is a huge Turn to Dust. The first mode is.. uh.. jeah. I can't see alot of decks wanting to pay 5 mana for 3 dudes.
The reason you play stuff like White Sun's Zenith or Decree of Justice is to dump a million mana EoT and then kill everyone. Mode 1 seems incredibly underwhelming.
When i look back at the blue one, they could've added an artifact (or ench) tutor (top library) as the first mode instead of the knights.
And this will be way harder than a wrath. This is one-sided deck removal.
I'm really not fond of this card and Bane of Progress. Though Bane actually punishes yourself fairly well. This though? Hoses some weak+fun decks completly out of the game while not really bringing anything interesting to the table. Counter it or lose. *yawn*
You have to play stuff immediatly but can work around some uncounterable things. Also UUU vs UU.
I don't think we should compare it to Commandeer, since Commandeer costs no mana - usually.
If you could, it would be rather busted. 8 Mana 20 damage to the face is kinda nuts if you compare it to Searing Wind
Anyway: Yay, Witness!
I didn't, but since i wanted to sign up to MTGVault anyway, i just did that and here's the link to the deck: http://www.mtgvault.com/aspartem/decks/derevi-proliferate/
Just fyi, the deck is totally not optimized yet but currently i'm tinkerin' on other decks, so this one has to wait.
Currently it lacks in spot removal and/or solutions in general. Suntitan could do well, due to the many 1-3 drops. The manabase sofar is sufficient.
If you've question, shoot!
Is there a reason for backhanded insults? Someone isn't mature if he finds a certain way of boardgames unfun? Do you think this is in any form of fashion helpful to get a discussion going?
Land denial is usually either useless or oppressive. Either it tries to stop a whole table and fails, so it did nothing but trying to hinder everyone to play - or it succeeds and the game is over immediatly. And i usually wintenessed these things happening before turn 6 in really strong decks.
Personally i do not like these kind of decks at a table either, because they usually just die first and then sit there for up an hour doing nothing. Because nobody is going to just tolerate the timebomb tickin'. Same with storm combo decks or other infinite combo shenaningans. People just pile onto them until they're gone.
And stopping ramp and combos can be done without relying on MLD, which is a mechanic designed to stop all other people on the table from playin' magic. There's also nothing to it, if your group like to play with these decks, but don't try to be the funpolice and be disrespectful because people don't share your opinion.
It all depends on the competitiveness of the group and the difference of card pools. LD is a good example. LD is boring because if it achieves it's gameplan it's about not playing the game and is very non-interactive and onesided. Ontop of that, if the LD deck is any good, chances are only 1 out of X players is playin' the game unless the group knows what's coming and is prepared.
There's a reason Sundering (and Primordial to a lesser extent) is on the banlist, because it was miserable when that guy hit the board around T3.
Stax is a whole other can of worms. Jeah, Winterorb and consorts can be managed, but when the accses to cards vastly differentiates between the players it can become really unfun really fast. If one players plays with mostly modern cards but the stax player has Tabernacles, Mana Crypts, Workshops, Candelabra etc. the outcome of 9/10 games will be clear after turn 2.
That's what happened in our playgroup. The stax player would manage to pull wins in games, where we teamed up on him 1v3 just due to power of his cards.
In the end EDH is a fun format and i hope people are old enough to talk with each other before they sit down and play. My goal is to have a fun time with friends. And when there's a discrepancy between decks, philosophies and card accses i'd assume friends would talk to each other and figure out a way so everyone is happy. So i say: Yes, house rule anything you need to house rule.
I can't see the fun in stompin' weaker/poorer/less competitive friends in a few turns over and over again.
If everyone is super cutthroat and competitve then such a discussion won't happen anyway, because everyone will play at the same level.
The deck first started out as heavy artifact based using all kinds of way to produce charge counters (e.g Energy Chamber) + proliferate and fill up cards like: Lux Cannon, Darksteel Reactor and Planeswalker to do all kinds of shenanigans. It was ultra durdle.
When evolve and outlast/bolster hit us in rapid succsesion i reconstructed the deck into its current version; more aggressive and creature based. It still plays all proliferation cards (e.g. Contagion Engine, Inexorable Tide) but now focuses on +1/+1 counters (e.g. Hardened Scales, Doubling Season, Bred for the Hunt, Master Biomancer)
There are so many mechanics that can use/move/place counters and so many creatures that benefit from it! (Just a few examples each)
Graft: Novijen Sages, Plaxcaster Frogling, Cytoplast Root-Kin
Hydras: Hooded Hydra, Managorger Hydra, Kalonian Hydra
Evolve: Fathom Mage, Gyre Sage, Renegade Krasis, Simic Manipulator
Proliferate: Thrummingbird, Viral Drake
Other stuff: Planeswalkers, Hangarback Walker, Outlast Creatures, Bolster, Persist tricks and others
Jenara, Asura of War is also a posiblity for the deck but Derevi does it better - even though he's not directly producing counters. But due to his put-ability he can greatly benefit from graft and triggers evolve & ETB's. Enables you to use your high power creatures aggressively without leaving you wideopen for counter attacks due to his trigger but also gives you the flexibility to get multiple uses out of Everflowing Chalice and Contagion Engine or just use the untap on lands to put more pressure on the board.
Even though Zur searches up Enchantments you should only run the really important ones: Solitary Confinment and Stasis as already mentioned and then: Necropotence, Bitterblossom, Contamination, Land Tax, Phyrexian Arena, Rest in Peace, Aura of Silence.
Then you want best-in-slot mana rocks like those mentioned but also Talismans, Signets, Gilded Lotus and Grim Monolith. And the rest is just pure control-deck goodies: CA, deck manipulation, boardwipes, counters, tutors and Snapcaster Mage. There's also a Voltron variant possible, but i'm not sure how well that one plays out in a multiplayer round. Lockdowns are probably easier to achieve.
I'm not sure what decks people are thinking about, when writing in this thread, specially when i see people only talkin' about handling Teeg. If we talk about scenarios we should apply the same standards of play for every hypothetical player.
So the Teeg players knows everyone is running 10 low-cost spotremovals, because the opponents play fitting decks, but then is stupid enough to just cast Teeg T2 to let him die. That doesn't make any sense.
If all parties play smart the Teeg deck will have other disruption and the other decks won't just sit there twiddle their thumbs and not pursue their own game plan. This is what makes EDH rounds interessting but hard to theorycraft. Yes, the Teeg vis-a-vis could become a problem but the Prosh to left and the Animar to the right will be a threat too. Exact board state, cards in hand, play order, knowledge about the potential of the decks, playstyles - all that matters.
The problem with a Teeg isn't the commander himself, but the deck he'll be played in and how the commander will aid the plan very reliably and strongly. Our Teeg player play fairly competitive decks, but adds some additional limiters to his deck building plan to have more fun while deck building (finding the right solutions/cards to compensate the additional hurdles) and his deck ended up as an enchantress EDH additionally filled with all the hatebears and annyoing shenaningans enchantress-decks usually run.
So Aven Mindcensor, Hushwing Gryff, Grand Abolisher and friends accompanied by more annyoing stuff such as: Aura of Silence, Sterling Grove, Torpor Orb, Damping Matrix. Then the enchantresses etc. and protection for Teeg via hexproof, indestructability and totem armor.
Like this there's lockdown, tons of CA and the ability to kill a player out of nowhere with something like Rancor + [card]Ancestral Mask[/cards].
All in all the deck has a huge impact on the game most of the times and the rest of the table has to re-think their original game plans - maybe more so than other decks would force them too. On the one hand it's refreshing to play like this from time to time, but often times the games itself feel like the rest of the table is trying to keep Teeg in check because the combination of CA+lockdown is incredibly dangerous.
Also decks are affected very diffrently by the deck (not only talkin' about Teeg here). As an example: One of my decks is a Saffi ETB Blink/Recursion deck and even though it's heavily creature based Rest in Peace, Torpor Orb, Hushwing Gryff, Linvala, Keeper of Silence etc. + the deny from playin' green X-spells + boardwipes can completly lock this deck out of the game until you draw one of the either creature or artifact removal spells - and yes, i play most of the available ones for GW.
So long story short: I consider Teeg a strong commander and his decks can be a pita. If your group isn't very competitive, i'd consider him a poor choice and rather "rude" or just out of place. If your group runs competitive or even completly degenerate decks he's fine and can breathe some life into stale metas of a playgroup.
The Teeg deck in our grp is on the stronger side of all decks combined (atm), but we've had worse with really strong stax or LD decks, specially before Sundering Titan was on the banlist. Seriously, these decks ran stuff like Mishra's Workshop + Trinisphere, hardcasted Sundering on T3, played The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale and everything else unfun under sun you can imagine. UB Dralnu control which played Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur in the first 3-5 turns and ran +6 extra turn spells. Bleh.