I'm in the "wait and see camp" on this change. On one hand, I think tuck is a great tool dealing with some commanders. On the other hand, I think most commander players run light on instant speed answers, which tuck has allowed them to get away with. I also think too many decks/meta have allowed others at the table to take care of problems, while they durdel around building their board state under the protection of the control player(s). Hopefully, this change will drive change so people are packing more removal in general.
I'll be interested to see if this opens a can of worms if people start running more mind control and pacifism effects.
I am currently thinking about getting a MTGO account with the main purpose to play commander. I have set a fixed quarterly budget to prevent it from getting out of hand. I'd like suggestions on how to get the best bang for my buck with limited funds. I know that fixing artifacts and lands are high on the list of items to initially purchase (Sol Ring,etc). I also know that many of the less desirable duals are also an item that should be picked up over more desirable duals.
What color(s) would be the best to invest in?
Should cards be focused on support over bombs (cultivate vs. Avenger of Zendikar)?
Commander is a multiplayer format. The easiest way to stop high powered and expensive decks is to make the gave X v 1. As long as X is greater than 1, it should make it easier to keep the oppressive player in check as they will get tired of being the prime target each game.
$10 per pack retail is way too high. At that price, I am legitimately at the price where I know I can buy the rares I want outright rather than gamble on a pack. It also drives draft cost up to $35 per draft, which is also way to high. The only way I can see myself buying packs to open for this set is if the rares in the set are worth $8+ per card, with no trash rares.
I may buy a box or two to sit on and sell later. The only MM1 product I bought was two boxes, which are both still sealed at my house. The product is too expensive to bust packs on or draft casually.
A lot of it depends on what you want to do. Several commanders do different things that make them more or less appealing.
My RG build focuses on taking advantage of red and greens aggressively costed big creatures, particularly with flying and trample. For that style of play, I like Xenagos, God of Revels as he is reasonable to caste and hard to remove. His ability is great because the majority of the creatures your going to play are going to be the highest threat on the board and probably not make it back around to your turn. Xenagos allows you to get good value as you can use every creature like a burn spell and if it sticks around, all the better.
Bloodfray Giant is a 4/3 with trample or a 5/4 with trample that can't block. Xenagos makes him a 10/9 with trample and haste, so even if he dies, you still probably got in either 10 damage or killed a creature and got in some damage. Your opponent has to have instant speed removal to defeat your threats and has to have it right now. Add in Ogre Battledriver and the giant turns into a 14/13 haste trample.
If we venture into magical Christmas land a little bit more, Xenagos, Battledriver and Scourge of the Throne turn into 28 damage (((5+2)*2)*2) if you are a mere 1 life behind the person with the most life when you play the scourge. Add in Gratuitous Violence and its up to 84 damage (28+56).
I saw this product at my FLGS last night, along with some other people. It was generally agreed that at $100 the product is overpriced unless all of the decks are relatively balanced against one another. If the decks are relatively balanced, then it could be used as a stand alone game for 2 to 4 (is guess up to 8) players where everyone could pick a deck and play a mini tournament or as a multiplayer game. However, I doubt they are balanced against one another and the card value for set is relatively low.
For me, the card value is around $50 in the set and therefore I don't have any reason to purchase it over just buying the singles. I also don't think it's a good investment product because other than the black boarder demonic tutor, there are not that many chase cards in the set. If I could pick it up for $60, I'd consider doing that, but even the normal discounters are pricing it at $110, which is well above what I am willing to pay. For another $30, I can buy another full set of Commmander 2014 decks, which I think is a better value.
I have been thinking about putting together a Zurgo Helmsmasher voltron deck with him as the only creature. The Mardu colors RWB, are very strong in sweepers, about 20 viable ones, and Zurgo is indestructible on your turn. I would fill in the remainder of the deck with equipment, spot removal, tutors, ramp and maybe some token generating enchantments.
What are peoples thoughts on this type of strategy?
I tend to think the colors are never 100% balanced and I think the primary issue is color depth. If the color is shallow, then it may appear to be a weak color because if too many people draft the color, it can't support them. I also think that the blue suffers from mill cards which are usually completely worthless in other decks and hard to draft around. Black still has color identity problems because WotC can't decide what they want it to be. Is it evasive, is it direct damage (that doesn't hit creatures), is it recursion, what? Black and blue are also struggling with the fact that WotC is continuing to increase the cost of counterspells and removal, the primary removal for those colors. Red has had problems in prior sets with the toughness being high and this set has a fairly low toughness in comparison, which makes red feel elevated. I think red is probably the deepest color, but I don't think it's all the more powerful with reasonable decks, but some of the other colors can only handle 2 drafters instead of 3.
I am currently trying to decide on a mono-color relatively low priced deck. Black is probably my favorite color and I really like the flavor of most of the demons. The deck below is around $100 in paper. My primary concern is that the deck is not focused enough, running voltron and creature sacrifice, but not heavily focused on either. I am also pondering making the deck swampwalk/fear/intimidate focused, rather than demon. I'd like peoples thoughts on what refinement to make to the deck, keeping price in mind. I would also prefer to stay away from infinite combos.
I fairly happy with the set overall. I like it better than Theros block currently, but that may be due to burn-out. My observations thus far:
G and W are solid colors with G having big beaters with some token generation. W has vigilance, big butts and flyers, allowing them to defend and assault without compromising defenders.
R,B and U seem to be a bit further behind. U and B don't seem to have the base creatures to hold up under the assault from G and limited removal. R has the same problems that it has always had in multiplayer, it runs out of gas with few ways to push through the final bit of damage.
Gx or Wx decks seem to do the best from what I have observed.
My on real head scratcher is dethrone. It's on red and blue, but mostly red. R in multiplayer, with the way they build it, is almost always the leader in life total, meaning you get 1 or 2 activations of dethrone and then it's over. Any subsequent dethrone cards a useless, until really late in the game, where they don't matter. I think R would have done better with an emphasis on first strike and dethrone going on W or B cards. W because the then to play from behind occasionally and B because they can get their life total down.
Conspiracy cards have been fun and make the game a bit different. No complaints here.
But on number 7, the putrefy is cast in response to the soulbound trigger, then the navigator dies, because it can't blink itself because it isn't paired.
This is the key part of my question because I see a lot of whining about Deadeye Navigator in EDH and how it is "impossible" to get rid of. Basically, once it or the soulbound creature is flickered, there is trigger which can be responded to by instant speed removal.
I've been thinking about about a bestow deck for EDH. The general theory is you play a creature, probably another bestow creature, and then stack bestow creatures on top of it. If someone decides to play removal, then the creature unstacks, leaving some number of creatures left the battlefield to start assembling another threat. This makes the deck resistant to some level of removal. With that being said, tranquility is the utter death to the deck, but few people run that. I tested a bit with a friend over the weekend and it was surprisingly fun and did better than expected. It has some level of randomness and you end up with some interesting combinations of creatures.
Here's the way bestow breaks down:
White - 7 (flying, first strike, double strike, lifelink, vigilance, tap target creature an opponent controls)
Blue - 4 (can't be blocked, flying, deals combat damage to a player, draw a card)
Black - 7 (deathtouch, flying, intimidate, attacks defending player loses 2 life)
Red - 4 (fire breathing, first strike, can't be blocked except by two or more creatures)
Green - 5 (reach, trample, lure)
Multi - 1 (flying, first strike, vigilance, trample, lifelink)
That is 28 bestow creatures in 2 sets, with 13 coming from Born of the Gods, thus I would assume at least 12 more would be printed Return to Nyx. That yields 40 bestow creatures to work with. Obviously white and black currently have the most depth in bestow creatures. I like blue as the third best color because 2 of the red bestow creatures are worthless in multiple colors. There is also an arguement for green as green is the fixing and ramp king; with green also having the second most number of bestow creatures.
I'm currently looking at 5-color with Horde of Notions as the commander. Once the next set comes out, the I'll assume black, white and green or blue would be the best colors meaning I would probably run Teneb, the Harvester or Ertai, the Corrupted. I also like the idea of running all the archetypes and bringers in the deck.
I went 3-2 with the deck, loosing the first place player who was playing mono-white with two Eidolon of Countless Battles and two the 3rd place player who was playing two Arbiter of the Ideal with HEAVY blue black control. I think red is second tier in sealed as your limited on cards that are need for fast aggro. Elite Skirmisherand Everflame Eidolon are cards I can see being good in draft, but I didn't feel they pulled their weight in sealed. The primary weakness I found with the deck is that most of the red removal was hitting at 3 damage, which is really easy to get above.
The new UB trend to support mill over other mechanics.
I'll be interested to see if this opens a can of worms if people start running more mind control and pacifism effects.
I may buy a box or two to sit on and sell later. The only MM1 product I bought was two boxes, which are both still sealed at my house. The product is too expensive to bust packs on or draft casually.
My RG build focuses on taking advantage of red and greens aggressively costed big creatures, particularly with flying and trample. For that style of play, I like Xenagos, God of Revels as he is reasonable to caste and hard to remove. His ability is great because the majority of the creatures your going to play are going to be the highest threat on the board and probably not make it back around to your turn. Xenagos allows you to get good value as you can use every creature like a burn spell and if it sticks around, all the better.
Bloodfray Giant is a 4/3 with trample or a 5/4 with trample that can't block. Xenagos makes him a 10/9 with trample and haste, so even if he dies, you still probably got in either 10 damage or killed a creature and got in some damage. Your opponent has to have instant speed removal to defeat your threats and has to have it right now. Add in Ogre Battledriver and the giant turns into a 14/13 haste trample.
If we venture into magical Christmas land a little bit more, Xenagos, Battledriver and Scourge of the Throne turn into 28 damage (((5+2)*2)*2) if you are a mere 1 life behind the person with the most life when you play the scourge. Add in Gratuitous Violence and its up to 84 damage (28+56).
For me, the card value is around $50 in the set and therefore I don't have any reason to purchase it over just buying the singles. I also don't think it's a good investment product because other than the black boarder demonic tutor, there are not that many chase cards in the set. If I could pick it up for $60, I'd consider doing that, but even the normal discounters are pricing it at $110, which is well above what I am willing to pay. For another $30, I can buy another full set of Commmander 2014 decks, which I think is a better value.
What are peoples thoughts on this type of strategy?
1 Ob Nixilis, Unshackled
Creatures
1 Disciple of Bolas
1 Bloodgift Demon
1 Indulgent Tormentor
1 Harvester of Souls
1 Disciple of Griselbrand
1 Daggerdrome Imp
1 Vault Skirge
1 Vampire Nighthawk
1 Burnished Hart
1 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Reassembling Skeleton
1 Tenacious Dead
1 Xathrid Demon
1 Steel Hellkite
1 Reaper from the Abyss
1 Pestilence Demon
1 Kuro, Pitlord
1 Kagemaro, First to Suffer
1 Havoc Demon
1 Reiver Demon
1 Skirsdag High Priest
1 Pawn of Ulamog
1 Ogre Slumlord
1 Abhorrent Overlord
1 Demon of Death's Gate
1 Blood Speaker
1 Rune-Scarred Demon
1 Dark Prophecy
1 Whip of Erebos
1 Attrition
1 Dictate of Erebos
1 Breeding Pit
Artifact
1 Carnage Altar
1 Phyrexian Vault
1 Sol Ring
1 Armillary Sphere
1 Spine of Ish Sah
1 Nevinyrral's Disk
1 Perilous Vault
1 Trading Post
Equipment
1 Bonehoard
1 Lashwrithe
1 Nightmare Lash
1 Gorgon Flail
1 Nim Deathmantle
1 Deathrender
1 Elbrus, the Binding Blade
Instant
1 Altar's Reap
1 Dark Ritual
1 Cabal Ritual
1 Tragic Slip
1 Silence the Believers
1 Sign in Blood
1 Promise of Power
1 Exsanguinate
1 Reign of the Pit
1 Black Sun's Zenith
1 Decree of Pain
Planeswalker
1 Liliana of the Dark Realms
Land
1 Cabal Coffers
1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
1 Crypt of Agadeem
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Temple of the False God
34 Swamp
G and W are solid colors with G having big beaters with some token generation. W has vigilance, big butts and flyers, allowing them to defend and assault without compromising defenders.
R,B and U seem to be a bit further behind. U and B don't seem to have the base creatures to hold up under the assault from G and limited removal. R has the same problems that it has always had in multiplayer, it runs out of gas with few ways to push through the final bit of damage.
Gx or Wx decks seem to do the best from what I have observed.
My on real head scratcher is dethrone. It's on red and blue, but mostly red. R in multiplayer, with the way they build it, is almost always the leader in life total, meaning you get 1 or 2 activations of dethrone and then it's over. Any subsequent dethrone cards a useless, until really late in the game, where they don't matter. I think R would have done better with an emphasis on first strike and dethrone going on W or B cards. W because the then to play from behind occasionally and B because they can get their life total down.
Conspiracy cards have been fun and make the game a bit different. No complaints here.
- Deadeye Navigator is paired with Mulldrifter on the battlefield
- Doom Blade is cast targeting the Mulldrifter
- Controller of Deadeye Navigator elects to exile Mulldrifter and return it to the battlefield
- When the Mulldrifter returns to the battlefield, it is not Soulbound with Deadeye Navigator.
- Mulldrifter owner draws 2 cards
- The Soulbound trigger now goes on the stack.
- Once the Souldbound trigger is on the stack, Putrefy is cast on the Deadeye Navigator.
- Deadeye Navigator is not Soulbound to another creature at this time and dies to the Putrefy.
- Doom Blade fizzles as it's original target is no longer on the battlefield.
Is the above basically correct?Here's the way bestow breaks down:
White - 7 (flying, first strike, double strike, lifelink, vigilance, tap target creature an opponent controls)
Blue - 4 (can't be blocked, flying, deals combat damage to a player, draw a card)
Black - 7 (deathtouch, flying, intimidate, attacks defending player loses 2 life)
Red - 4 (fire breathing, first strike, can't be blocked except by two or more creatures)
Green - 5 (reach, trample, lure)
Multi - 1 (flying, first strike, vigilance, trample, lifelink)
That is 28 bestow creatures in 2 sets, with 13 coming from Born of the Gods, thus I would assume at least 12 more would be printed Return to Nyx. That yields 40 bestow creatures to work with. Obviously white and black currently have the most depth in bestow creatures. I like blue as the third best color because 2 of the red bestow creatures are worthless in multiple colors. There is also an arguement for green as green is the fixing and ramp king; with green also having the second most number of bestow creatures.
I'm currently looking at 5-color with Horde of Notions as the commander. Once the next set comes out, the I'll assume black, white and green or blue would be the best colors meaning I would probably run Teneb, the Harvester or Ertai, the Corrupted. I also like the idea of running all the archetypes and bringers in the deck.
Thoughts?
Played Red-White with the deck being 75% red.
Notable Cards:
2x Fall of the Hammer
2x Revoke Existence
2x Divine Verdict
1x Bolt of Keranos
1x Felhide Spiritbinder
1x Forgestoker Dragon
1x Oracle of Bones
1x Lightning Strike
I went 3-2 with the deck, loosing the first place player who was playing mono-white with two Eidolon of Countless Battles and two the 3rd place player who was playing two Arbiter of the Ideal with HEAVY blue black control. I think red is second tier in sealed as your limited on cards that are need for fast aggro. Elite Skirmisherand Everflame Eidolon are cards I can see being good in draft, but I didn't feel they pulled their weight in sealed. The primary weakness I found with the deck is that most of the red removal was hitting at 3 damage, which is really easy to get above.
Yeap, still not a huge fan of sealed.