MTG Salvation

Quote from Nayenyezgani »

Quote from ilovesaprolings »

Quote from Nayenyezgani »

How is that funny?

That you talk about commander without knowing it. This set is less edh appealing than, for example, Avacyn Restored

What is there to know? It's a casual format. People play whatever garbage wizard's prints. "That will go in my..." is a recurring theme on these forums and the cards are trash.

"Garbage" should be a pretty subjective term, here. MTG history is rife with cards that were "garbage" when they were released, or even for years after, and then suddenly they found the right deck and the demand and price skyrocketed (here's looking at you, Lion's Eye Diamond).

Be a little more patient and take the long view on the game. If every set was Ravnica or Zendikar, power creep would spiral out of control and there would be no point in playing cards more than 2-3 sets old.

As far as Ixalan, I'm pretty disappointed that dinos are so narrow (in EDH terms), but there's always hope we'll get something more down the line. I think limited will be fun, and personally I'm excited about Overflowing Insight for Locust God and Tashana for Animar.

Quote from Idiotic Specter »

A commander deck with this lion and Raksha Golden Cub, Jedit Ojanen of Efrava and Regal Caracal would be really fun.

Don't forget Nacatl War-Pride!

I had a Rhys, the Redeemed EDH when I first began in the format. I came across Common Cause in someone's trade binder and thought "Holy crap, that is an amazing anthem effect. How have I not heard of this card yet?". It didn't take much to get it from him, he seemed happy to be rid of it. Only after I got home and prepared to make a spot for it in my deck did I discover that it doesn't include a "creatures you control" clause.

I frisbee'd the card across the room and didn't look at it until we moved out of that apartment a year later.

Kresh The Bloodbraided is fun due to all of the sacrificing shenanigans that can go on with him. Plus having red gives you access to Vicious Shadows, which can wreak havoc on a board with a way to recur creatures, which green and black just happen to do pretty well.

Karador, Ghost Chieftain gives you a built in reanimate engine, though the one creature per turn clause does put a hamper on things. In the right deck, though, you'll never pay more than 3 for him. Add Hermit Druid, and some dredge (Golgari Grave-Troll, Life from the Loam, Dakmor Salvage, etc) and you're good to go.

I have a friend who runs a Captain Sisay deck that uses things like Reya Dawnbringer, Karmic Guide, Saffi Eriksdotter, Genesis, Survival of the Fittest, Fauna Shaman, Loyal Retainers, etc, to create a pseudo-reanimator deck. It's a bit out there, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Snap basically get's played for free every turn.
Surprised no one mentioned Silence
Diabolic Edict
Impulse
Bind

I like the idea of a pump based Hexproof strategy, at least for kitchen tables. Some other options that are relatively cheap:

Phytoburst while sorcery speed, pairs well with trample or unblockable.
Wildsize cheapish combat trick that grants trample, plus cantrips.
Unnatural Predation another cheap trample instant.
(edit) Didn't see that GibbonMonk mentioned Wild Defiance

Maybe something like this:



Creeping Renaissance isn't the best choice because it doesn't synergize with Runechanter's Pike at all, and by the time you have 5 mana to cast it off of 20 lands, it would probably be too late to matter. You could look into Regrowth, Reclaim, and Recollect for less mana intensve alternatives, if you feel you need a way to get things back out of the gy.

New Ajani...good grief. I also really like the new bestow cycle for limited.

Can we also all just agree that this set (and block) have given us some gorgeous artwork?

I definitely agree with the sentiment, OP. I am kind of glad that we never got an Urza, Planeswalker planeswalker card due to how infinitely powerful he actually was. I don't think he could be represented in a way that would balance his power with the general player base's expectations. Also, wasn't there something about Phyrexians not able to become planeswalkers themselves?

I used to run a Geth, Lord of the Vault deck based on a similar concept. It was eventually gained the nickname "MegaGeth".

While I won't be crying tears out of my butt, I am kind of disappointed in the ban. That being said, I only had one copy that I would throw into whatever deck needed it most, and now I can just throw it in the bulk rare pile that's about to be shipped off to Star City.

He had been floating in and out of Animar for while, but I finally hard cut him due to me trying to cut down to as few expensive double colored casting cost creatures as possible to maximize early game profitability with Animar's ability. I still run Brutalizer Exarch, Acidic Slime and Bane of Progress which can all serve his purpose pretty well.

I had him slotted into the Karametra list I brewed up just as another "big mana do dumb things creature" alongside his aforementioned cousins Terastodon and Woodfall Primus, as well as one that hasn't been mentioned, Mold Shambler. I'll probably just fill the slot with the Courser of Kruphix I picked up over the weekend. The only role he uniquely filled was a Wild Pair target for Iona and vice versa, but I'll probably just toss in Elderscale Wurm or Novablast Wurm if I can get my hands on one.

The rest of my green decks either didn't want him (tokens) or I hated that I felt obligated to run him (reanimator) and that would actually make me want to play the deck less.

Went 8-1 at my prerelease this evening, losing in the finals to ridiculously good luck on my opponents part in the form of 2x Sudden Storm and 2x Voyage's End, plus other combat shenanigans that just led to me getting out tempo'd.

All in all, my pool was awesome. My only gripe was the lack of better playable removal, but I can't really complain due to how many bombs I packed in.



Crypsis - Easily the MVP common of my night. When combined with Heroic or Inspired triggers, this card can blow out an opponent. I lost count of the number of times I used it to untap Wavecrash Triton to block a smaller creature and use the Heroic trigger to lock down a fattie.

Siren of the Fanged Coast - I was really pleasantly surprised by her, as it ended up being a 4/4 flyer for 5 every single time. No one wanted to give up a creature, even if it meant eating 4 in the air every turn.

My favorite play of the night was in my top 8 match. Game 3 I got taken to 5 life really early from an aggressive R/W deck with a lifegain subtheme. I managed to stabilize with some removal, and landing Prognostic Spinx on board turn 5. Turn 6, down came Arbiter of the Ideal, and the game quickly swung in my favor from there, as it turns out picking what you want Arbiter to find with it's Inspired trigger via Scry 3 is really, really good.

Quote from Sivartus

Any chance of more casual play on off-event Saturdays? I'm unfamiliar with the store schedule. It is about a half hour drive for me, so just popping in to see whats going on becomes rough, lol.

There's usually some kind of tourney going on from 1pm on, but from my knowledge there's less turnout on Saturdays, leaving room for casual play. If people aren't actively participating in the tournament, then they're generally up for pick up games. My best advice is to just call ahead and ask if there's enough room for you to come play casually alongside whatever is being run. Sorry I can't be more specific, I usually work Saturdays and I don't get to go to the shop as often on that day due to my schedule.

Quote from Sivartus

Yea I was not trying to imply that, quite the opposite in fact. I also agree that a lot of the road bumps are from the infancy of the event itself. The turn out was really good and I hope that future ones will be just as fun. Apart from the next event on the 21st is there a day that EDH is played during the week?

No, unfortunately not yet. Up until recently the shop has been very focused on competitive Standard and Modern metas. Recently they've been trying things like 2HG and Pauper Standard to spice things up, and I think the owner saw this as an opportunity to reintroduce EDH as a supported format at the shop. I've purposed running casual EDH play alongside FNM (because the only formats I play are Limited and EDH), but typical FNM turn outs are in the high 30's to 40's which doesn't leave much room to shop, much less open up casual games. Bear in mind that he doesn't mind people coming to play casually during the week, it's just difficult to corral a bunch of people in one place at one time.

I've gathered people at the local Barnes and Nobles cafe for EDH play a few times with varying degrees of success. They generally don't mind as long as you buy a drink or something, but trying to get more than 4-5 people in there at once can be difficult.

Quote from kinematik

Quote from Stroggoii

We once had a tournament where random 4 man pods were made and the winner was determined by points under these rules:

Winner: 4 points.
Last survivor of the table: 3 points.
Beat a player with combat damage: 3 points.
Beat a player with commander damage: 2 points.
Beat a player with poison: 2 points.
Beat a player with non-combat damage: 2 points.
Beat a single player by infinite combo: 1 point.
Win by non-infinite/stall alternate win condition: 3 points.
Win by infinite combo or stalling into concession: -2 points.

These rules did make the tournament quite fun cause everyone could play however they wanted, they just had to pay the price in points of winning thru non-interactive odious means or reap the benefits of a victory well earned, which as much as Merieke and other Espers may cry about, is much harder and more commendable than their 2-card combos and stalls. The tournament ended up being won (with all five new commander decks as the prize) by a Ruric Thar voltron player who didn't win a single table but had the most opponents beat thru combat and Ruric damage.

Thanks for this info, to me this seems like the most concise and relatively even set of rules I've seen for an EDH tournament and I hope more shops adopt a similar format.

Agreed. I'll definitely be taking this to the shop to see how everyone feels about it.

Jack - I'll PM you after the next tournament to let you know how things go. I haven't gotten a chance to talk to the TO about the results of the tournament, but I'm sure he picked up a lot for the next go round.

I'm actually a regular player at this particular shop, and though I didn't get to participate in the event, I showed up later in the afternoon to check the turnout. I'm a huge EDH enthusiast and one of many voices that have been pushing the TO to create some some sort of event that would support the format.

He's been open to it for awhile, but has had trouble nailing down a set of guidelines for play due to having negative experiences with the format in the past from a small group of players coming in with ultra tuned, but ban-legal decks and repeatedly wiping the floor with anyone relatively new to the format. That's a very toxic thing for a new meta of any format and is part of the reason it's taken us almost 2 years of coaxing to get him to agree to do it again.

The point system was something I suggested to him as I've seen EDH leagues use similar systems to good effect. He took a few pieces from different systems that he liked and decided to try them out, albeit last minute as a lot of this was decided only a few days before the tourney. This was our first EDH tourney in a long time, and I know he wanted to try several different things to get it right. I'm sure that there will be a lot of changes to it as time goes on, but that's a part of developing rules and guidelines that every one who plays is comfortable with. We all knew that things weren't going to sit in stone from the first event.

I'm sorry that you had a mixed reaction to the event, Jack. It sounds like you mostly had fun, and I do encourage you to provide feedback to the TO. With the negative issues you ran into after the 3rd (I believe) round, you could and should have approached the TO about it and had a discussion - I guarantee he would have been open to the feedback, provided it was constructive and civil. I hope you return, as we are attempting to develop a strong community for the format in this area, and all players should feel welcome.

Quote from Sivartus

As the 3rd guy in the group I'll first say that yes I had fun. Was the fun I had worth $5? Sure. Do I plan to go back? Yes.

Going into something like that blind was kinda a bummer but a work in progress is better than no work at all. I'm glad to see a nice turn out (22 people) for commander and the event made me excited about reworking decks to preform better in a 4-5 man pod. I disagree with some peoples post about most TOs being in it for nothing more than my $5. I feel there are a lot of TOs out there (including this one) that are striving to build communities that get together to turn cardboard sideways and have an overall good time doing so.

I'm really glad you enjoyed the event. I know that there were hiccups with it, but it's honestly the most fun I've seen a lot of the regular players have in a long time.

I believe the three of you left before prize pay out, but I feel it's also worth noting that each of the top 4 players all received at least something, and any player who didn't make top 4 was given the opportunity to roll for random prizes. To my knowledge, very little if any of the entry fee actually went into store profit. He usually asks that all entry fees be paid in cash, because most of it goes right into the prize pool.