I personally disagree but I'm not a political expert by any means. You seem to be making the classic "dies to doomblade" argument. No Mercy is just one political card, we should be playing lots of other political cards too. It also depends on how your opponents theat assess, using resources to remove a No Mercy that isn't actively messing with their permanents nor advancing a plan seems kinda silly to me. Then again, some people don't like feeling manipulated and may destroy it anyway.
Sorry for the slow reply, I haven't really hopped on MTGS in a while.
I'm not saying No Mercy is bad because it can be destroyed, I'm saying that it's bad because it doesn't actively encourage your opponents to attack people who aren't you; It just discourages people from attacking you until it is eventually destroyed (or until someone can kill you in one swing). And when that happens, No Mercy has bought you basically nothing except for maybe a higher life total than you otherwise would have had, which isn't super good to spend mana or cards on unless it completely puts you out of reach of your opponents. Since No Mercy can't do that, it's probably not worth putting in your deck in the first place for the same reason you wouldn't run something like Blood Tithe.
I personally disagree but I'm not a political expert by any means. You seem to be making the classic "dies to doomblade" argument. No Mercy is just one political card, we should be playing lots of other political cards too. It also depends on how your opponents theat assess, using resources to remove a No Mercy that isn't actively messing with their permanents nor advancing a plan seems kinda silly to me. Then again, some people don't like feeling manipulated and may destroy it anyway.
Sorry for the slow reply, I haven't really hopped on MTGS in a while.
I'm not saying No Mercy is bad because it can be destroyed, I'm saying that it's bad because it doesn't actively encourage your opponents to attack people who aren't you; It just discourages people from attacking you until it is eventually destroyed (or until someone can kill you in one swing). And when that happens, No Mercy has bought you basically nothing except for maybe a higher life total than you otherwise would have had, which isn't super good to spend mana or cards on unless it completely puts you out of reach of your opponents. Since No Mercy can't do that, it's probably not worth putting in your deck in the first place for the same reason you wouldn't run something like Blood Tithe.
Although this is meta dependent. If your opponents have a reason to attack in general, then giving them a reason not to attack you is, in practice, giving them a reason to attack someone else. So if your opponents use a lot of attack or combat damage triggers, No Mercy sends them at each other. Its weaker in mono black than it is in B/X/x where other colors can give you access to cards that give your opponents reasons to want to attack (or in the case of red, force them to).
Private Mod Note
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The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
That's fair. I guess it depends on the decks your playign against. If I'm playing against voltron or Xenagod they're gonna be attacking someone, its just a question of who. Do you attack the guy with a No Mercy out, or the guy with the 6/6 flyer. Probably the latter. But against a deck more docileor thats playing with direect damage it may not do anything. Are you against playing Ghostly Prison too?
That's fair. I guess it depends on the decks your playign against. If I'm playing against voltron or Xenagod they're gonna be attacking someone, its just a question of who. Do you attack the guy with a No Mercy out, or the guy with the 6/6 flyer. Probably the latter. But against a deck more docileor thats playing with direect damage it may not do anything. Are you against playing Ghostly Prison too?
In general I think that pillowfort cards are not very good because they don't help you start winning and they make losing take longer. There's not a really good reason to play them if you want to maximize your chances to win, but if you just like playing with those sorts of cards or they fit a theme, by all means play with them.
In general I think that pillowfort cards are not very good because they don't help you start winning and they make losing take longer. There's not a really good reason to play them if you want to maximize your chances to win, but if you just like playing with those sorts of cards or they fit a theme, by all means play with them.
I agree they aren't very good. Competitive decks have no interest in playing them but then again competitve decks dont play politics period. Idk if I agree with your reasoning though. There are planty of very good cards that don't help you start winning and just make losing take longer, that description fits virtually all disruption that isn't on a stick or had another ability. Every board wipe, every piece of removal, every counterspell etc.
Yeah if anything that part of the game is heightened in those situations I have found because people are still talking and it is still mutiplayer.
It is strange to me that 'politics' where Commander is concerned is most often aligned with making yourself not a target in a physical way in game which seems like the opposite to me.
My answer to the question is Gonti because I really like Gonti and that deck is extremely fun to navigate and play.
I guess I could be wrong on politics in competitive edh but it seems to me that Stax decks which do quite well competitively are very anti-political and there isn't a lot of need for politics if your goal is to assemble an infinite combo asap. But the more casual you get the more you run into situations where you have an 8/8 and your trying to decide which person to slam it into.
How is Stax anti-political? From my experience, the opposite is true when I'm playing it. I'm always having to play politics. A stax deck cannot keep 3-4 other players down on it's own for the entire game. You need some help. Things like getting people to protect my stax cards that are hurting the other opponents more than them. I'm always talking to other players, trying to get them to support what I'm doing, pointing out how dangerous their other rivals are even if I'm the one with the annoying lock piece in play. That's more political to me than deciding who to hit with an 8/8.
In general, I view politics as less about specific cards, and more about your interactions with the players. And at a competitive level, while you do get some games where someone just rushes into a combo before anyone else can react, often, due to the high amount of interaction the decks run as a reaction to said fast combo, there is a lot of interplay between the players. Threat assessment is often pretty difficult when the biggest dangers aren't sitting obviously on the board, so there's a good amount of advantage to be gained through playing politically, talking to the other players.
Imo, its unpolitocal because it pisses everyone off making you target number 1. When no one gets to play magic except the stax player, usually people don't want to team up with them. Thats been my experience at least. Anytime someone brings something like a Grand Arbiter Augustin deck to the table, they die first if thay can't keep everyone down before assembling a combo
Imo, its unpolitocal because it pisses everyone off making you target number 1. When no one gets to play magic except the stax player, usually people don't want to team up with them. Thats been my experience at least. Anytime someone brings something like a Grand Arbiter Augustin deck to the table, they die first if thay can't keep everyone down before assembling a combo
And that's why you have to be political when playing stax. If you just sit there and play your cards, people will kill you. You need to interact with them, convince them to support what you're doing. There are usually good reasons for at least one other player to want the stax effects in play, you just need to get them to see them....
Can you give me an example of how that would go down? Cause I'm not sure I'd go for a deal that hurts me for multiple turns. I understand making a deal to let me allow your board wipe to resolve because it will set the other 2 back further than me, but thats just a 1 turn thing that im probably not going to regret down the road. Idk if I'd let a Land Equilibrium resolve even if it looks like I will benefit in the moment cause its gonna keep paying dividends and it might cost me the game later. I'd probably regret it.
If you had a land equilibrium and I knew one or more of the other decks was a ramp deck (say wort, the raidmother) and my deck wasn't particularly high-mana or had a lot of artifact ramp, then I could certainly see being in favor of it. After all, it's going to push the wort player to fight the stax player, and I'm not particularly hampered, this seems like a pretty good tradeoff.
And then there are other things that might not affect me at all, but might affect certain players a lot. Like, say, stony silence if I'm playing a deck with very few artifacts. No skin off my back. Stax away.
Politics is kind of nebulously defined in commander, but personally I would apply it to any situation where you're considering the reaction of the table when making decisions. In 1v1 you're motivated simply to make the best play, which will give you as much advantage and your opponent as little as possible. But in commander things aren't so simple, sometimes it's worth letting someone else have an advantage because it hampers someone else, or even because it can take the heat off what you're doing or planning to do. Being able to read the table like this is, imo, core strategy to the format and not optional for anyone trying to be good at the game, regardless of what type of deck they're playing.
My issue is that the Stax deck is probably designed to break parity with the effect, so on one hand it looks like a thing for you in the moment, until later they play the thing that breaks parity which is usually around the time I start kicking myself. But I do kinda see your point. Ill take back what I said about competitve decos never playing politics. Ill just say that the types of politics they play seems different to more casual play
Of course, you never can trust people these days Naturally being aware of what might happen down the line is important threat assessment - that stony silence looks fine up until they play a mycosynth lattice. A savvy player might hold up removal or a counter as insurance, while benefiting from the situation until it becomes necessary to intervene. No reason to go trading cards 1:1 until it becomes YOUR problem. And in the land equilibrium case, you can probably bet the wort player is a lot more interested in dealing with it than you are. Let them exhaust their resources solving it, at least until it becomes a significant problem for you and it's clear the wort player doesn't have the right cards. You get the idea.
To expand on Dirk's points, another example that sums up how stax and politics really work is with Winter Orb. Most people's initial reaction to that card is (probably understandably) "KILL IT WITH FIRE". But there's a decent chance that, while it is certainly hurting you, it's hurting someone else more. Lets say that the stax player and you both have a 2-3 mana rocks or dorks, one of the other players has one of those, and the last player has nothing to get mana from but a load of land they've been tutoring up. Sure, you can't work to the full capabilities of your deck. But you're a fair bit better off that the last player (who is probably the biggest immediate threat), and no worse than the stax player. In this case, it's usually in your interest to keep the Winter Orb around - possibly even to the extent of using countermagic on the land ramp player's removal. Of course, keeping a Nature's Claim or Disenchant up your sleeve is a good idea - not only can you pop the Orb when you want (i.e. on the player before you's EoT), but you can react to the stax player going for some nasty asymmetry like a Sword of Feast and Famine.
As the stax player, you want to try to get other players to buy into this kind of attitude - that while your effects are hurting them, they're also hurting one or two of the other players even more and thus it's in their interest to help you out, at least in the short term. It doesn't have to be some kind of formal deal, just point out the impact of them trying to take out your disruption ("kill the Winter Orb and Mr. Lands over there is gonna go off...").
It depends on the Stax deck too I suppose. If the deck if playing various types of stax cards where each card is pissing off a different player, that seems somewhat unpolitical to me.
I think what I'm looking for is a much more casual politics deck where I get to use fun stuff like Diaochan, Artful Beauty but you don't see her at the competitive scene. That said, you might see something like Pestilence which has political applications. Maybe Diaochan is just bad lol.
Would you say Grand Arbiter Augustine is a good choice for a politics general? Cause my buddy tried and he never won a single game due to the mass hate lol. Maybe he just wasn't good at convincing the rest of us.
If you end up pissing off everyone to the point where you're public enemy number 1, then you've failed at your politics. It does happen at times, even when you do the "right" things, but your goal is to avoid it. And, frankly, you probably shouldn't try to cover all avenues of attack with stax pieces, not only because it annoys everyone, but also for the simple fact that it's rarely feasible. Try to lock off the biggest chances of you losing (for a competitive deck, that's fast combo and storm), but don't necessarily go so far as to alienate potential allies. In particular, having a control player around is great. They want the same thing as you - a slow game - so avoiding needlessly antagonising them can be a good way to get them to help you. That's not to say you don't want to have some anti-control tools in your locker, just that you don't always want to play everything you have. Consider who you're playing against, what they're playing and what the board state is. Basically, be like a politician and tailor your message (plays) to your audience (opponents)
This sort of ties in with a mistake that many people make with stax - you should not be trying to completely lock everyone else out of the game. Why? Because it's really hard to do against 3-4 opponents. There's too many angles of attack that you need to interact with, and too much removal. Instead, stax should be considered to be a tool for keeping the game in check long enough for you to win (much like a good countermagic/removal suite). A good stax deck wants to slow things down, allowing them to develop their board and hand in relative safety, then see things out with reliable wincons (for example,the popular "BloodPod" competitive list runs a KikiJiki combo with several tutors for it).
The problem with Grand Arbiter as I see it from a political perspective, at least regarding the general, is that it's often harder to come up with reasons why others will want him around. Unless there's a known storm deck around, he's going to be effecting the players in a roughly similar way - decks with lower curves will typically be built to have less mana sources - and he gives a significant benefit to his controller. He also suffers from the classic Azorious problem of not having good wincons. As I said before, having some way to see the game out in the end is important, and UW isn't that good at doing it, especially at a competitive level. So GAAIV tends to fall into the kind of deck that people really don't like playing - asymmetrical stax which takes ages to actually get to the end of the game.
Diaochan is a really fun card, and lets you do all sorts of shenanigans (hint: give her protection from red) but she's not going to get to the competitive level. That said, if you like her, go for it. Not every EDH deck needs to be (or indeed should be) competitive.
Sorry for the slow reply, I haven't really hopped on MTGS in a while.
I'm not saying No Mercy is bad because it can be destroyed, I'm saying that it's bad because it doesn't actively encourage your opponents to attack people who aren't you; It just discourages people from attacking you until it is eventually destroyed (or until someone can kill you in one swing). And when that happens, No Mercy has bought you basically nothing except for maybe a higher life total than you otherwise would have had, which isn't super good to spend mana or cards on unless it completely puts you out of reach of your opponents. Since No Mercy can't do that, it's probably not worth putting in your deck in the first place for the same reason you wouldn't run something like Blood Tithe.
Although this is meta dependent. If your opponents have a reason to attack in general, then giving them a reason not to attack you is, in practice, giving them a reason to attack someone else. So if your opponents use a lot of attack or combat damage triggers, No Mercy sends them at each other. Its weaker in mono black than it is in B/X/x where other colors can give you access to cards that give your opponents reasons to want to attack (or in the case of red, force them to).
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
BChainer, Dementia Master(Big Mana/Reanimator)
BRRakdos, The Showstopper (Mass Life Loss/Ramp)
BUThe Scarab God (Zombie Tribal/Control)
BWKarlov of the Ghost Council (Life Gain)
BGJarad, Golgari Lich Lord (Stompy/Dredge)
BRGProssh, Skyraider of Kher (Tokens/Non-infinite Combo)
In general I think that pillowfort cards are not very good because they don't help you start winning and they make losing take longer. There's not a really good reason to play them if you want to maximize your chances to win, but if you just like playing with those sorts of cards or they fit a theme, by all means play with them.
BChainer, Dementia Master(Big Mana/Reanimator)
BRRakdos, The Showstopper (Mass Life Loss/Ramp)
BUThe Scarab God (Zombie Tribal/Control)
BWKarlov of the Ghost Council (Life Gain)
BGJarad, Golgari Lich Lord (Stompy/Dredge)
BRGProssh, Skyraider of Kher (Tokens/Non-infinite Combo)
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
It is strange to me that 'politics' where Commander is concerned is most often aligned with making yourself not a target in a physical way in game which seems like the opposite to me.
My answer to the question is Gonti because I really like Gonti and that deck is extremely fun to navigate and play.
BChainer, Dementia Master(Big Mana/Reanimator)
BRRakdos, The Showstopper (Mass Life Loss/Ramp)
BUThe Scarab God (Zombie Tribal/Control)
BWKarlov of the Ghost Council (Life Gain)
BGJarad, Golgari Lich Lord (Stompy/Dredge)
BRGProssh, Skyraider of Kher (Tokens/Non-infinite Combo)
In general, I view politics as less about specific cards, and more about your interactions with the players. And at a competitive level, while you do get some games where someone just rushes into a combo before anyone else can react, often, due to the high amount of interaction the decks run as a reaction to said fast combo, there is a lot of interplay between the players. Threat assessment is often pretty difficult when the biggest dangers aren't sitting obviously on the board, so there's a good amount of advantage to be gained through playing politically, talking to the other players.
BChainer, Dementia Master(Big Mana/Reanimator)
BRRakdos, The Showstopper (Mass Life Loss/Ramp)
BUThe Scarab God (Zombie Tribal/Control)
BWKarlov of the Ghost Council (Life Gain)
BGJarad, Golgari Lich Lord (Stompy/Dredge)
BRGProssh, Skyraider of Kher (Tokens/Non-infinite Combo)
And that's why you have to be political when playing stax. If you just sit there and play your cards, people will kill you. You need to interact with them, convince them to support what you're doing. There are usually good reasons for at least one other player to want the stax effects in play, you just need to get them to see them....
BChainer, Dementia Master(Big Mana/Reanimator)
BRRakdos, The Showstopper (Mass Life Loss/Ramp)
BUThe Scarab God (Zombie Tribal/Control)
BWKarlov of the Ghost Council (Life Gain)
BGJarad, Golgari Lich Lord (Stompy/Dredge)
BRGProssh, Skyraider of Kher (Tokens/Non-infinite Combo)
And then there are other things that might not affect me at all, but might affect certain players a lot. Like, say, stony silence if I'm playing a deck with very few artifacts. No skin off my back. Stax away.
Politics is kind of nebulously defined in commander, but personally I would apply it to any situation where you're considering the reaction of the table when making decisions. In 1v1 you're motivated simply to make the best play, which will give you as much advantage and your opponent as little as possible. But in commander things aren't so simple, sometimes it's worth letting someone else have an advantage because it hampers someone else, or even because it can take the heat off what you're doing or planning to do. Being able to read the table like this is, imo, core strategy to the format and not optional for anyone trying to be good at the game, regardless of what type of deck they're playing.
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
BChainer, Dementia Master(Big Mana/Reanimator)
BRRakdos, The Showstopper (Mass Life Loss/Ramp)
BUThe Scarab God (Zombie Tribal/Control)
BWKarlov of the Ghost Council (Life Gain)
BGJarad, Golgari Lich Lord (Stompy/Dredge)
BRGProssh, Skyraider of Kher (Tokens/Non-infinite Combo)
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
As the stax player, you want to try to get other players to buy into this kind of attitude - that while your effects are hurting them, they're also hurting one or two of the other players even more and thus it's in their interest to help you out, at least in the short term. It doesn't have to be some kind of formal deal, just point out the impact of them trying to take out your disruption ("kill the Winter Orb and Mr. Lands over there is gonna go off...").
I think what I'm looking for is a much more casual politics deck where I get to use fun stuff like Diaochan, Artful Beauty but you don't see her at the competitive scene. That said, you might see something like Pestilence which has political applications. Maybe Diaochan is just bad lol.
Would you say Grand Arbiter Augustine is a good choice for a politics general? Cause my buddy tried and he never won a single game due to the mass hate lol. Maybe he just wasn't good at convincing the rest of us.
BChainer, Dementia Master(Big Mana/Reanimator)
BRRakdos, The Showstopper (Mass Life Loss/Ramp)
BUThe Scarab God (Zombie Tribal/Control)
BWKarlov of the Ghost Council (Life Gain)
BGJarad, Golgari Lich Lord (Stompy/Dredge)
BRGProssh, Skyraider of Kher (Tokens/Non-infinite Combo)
This sort of ties in with a mistake that many people make with stax - you should not be trying to completely lock everyone else out of the game. Why? Because it's really hard to do against 3-4 opponents. There's too many angles of attack that you need to interact with, and too much removal. Instead, stax should be considered to be a tool for keeping the game in check long enough for you to win (much like a good countermagic/removal suite). A good stax deck wants to slow things down, allowing them to develop their board and hand in relative safety, then see things out with reliable wincons (for example,the popular "BloodPod" competitive list runs a KikiJiki combo with several tutors for it).
The problem with Grand Arbiter as I see it from a political perspective, at least regarding the general, is that it's often harder to come up with reasons why others will want him around. Unless there's a known storm deck around, he's going to be effecting the players in a roughly similar way - decks with lower curves will typically be built to have less mana sources - and he gives a significant benefit to his controller. He also suffers from the classic Azorious problem of not having good wincons. As I said before, having some way to see the game out in the end is important, and UW isn't that good at doing it, especially at a competitive level. So GAAIV tends to fall into the kind of deck that people really don't like playing - asymmetrical stax which takes ages to actually get to the end of the game.
Diaochan is a really fun card, and lets you do all sorts of shenanigans (hint: give her protection from red) but she's not going to get to the competitive level. That said, if you like her, go for it. Not every EDH deck needs to be (or indeed should be) competitive.
BChainer, Dementia Master(Big Mana/Reanimator)
BRRakdos, The Showstopper (Mass Life Loss/Ramp)
BUThe Scarab God (Zombie Tribal/Control)
BWKarlov of the Ghost Council (Life Gain)
BGJarad, Golgari Lich Lord (Stompy/Dredge)
BRGProssh, Skyraider of Kher (Tokens/Non-infinite Combo)