The guys in my group did this when the French list was a lot shorter. Now we just say screw it and just play 1on1 with multiplayer rules, except whomever goes first forgoes thier first draw
^^ This.
We tried he Duel Commander list and it devolved into Geist, Kami of the Crescent Moon polymorphing into Emrakul and other stuff. It felt like the format was on a slowdown as well. The only things I prefer on the Duel Commander ruleset is 30 life to start and the no tuck rule.
There have been attempts at Duel Commander events but just zero traction so far.
Four more days and you may just have your wish. I would like to see any combination of SP, DEN, or Prophet banned, personally, but I will be happy with anything other than "no change" because part of me feels like our voices are falling on deaf ears (even though I know this isn't true).
Why do you feel Prophet is an issue? Is it the Flash on creatures? Seedborn Muse untaps everything and it barely raises an eyebrow these days, so I'm kinda puzzled about Prophet. To be fair, I do use Prophet with Deadeye and other stuff, but I'm a horrible person.
Omniscience
Tooth & Nail
Hermit Druid
Deadeye Navigator
Mana Crypt
Time Stretch
Contamination
Sylvan Primordial
Derevi, Empyrial Tactician (Commander, maybe)
Grim Monolith
Vampiric Tutor, Personal Tutor, Mystical Tutor (Miracle enabling mostly)
That's 13.
Add one of either Enter the Infinite or Ad Nauseam and that would be a good way to go.
You're getting rid of some early fast mana in Monolith/Crypt, some unfun lock cards in Cotnamination, some bomby game ends/extends for no reason in Time Stretch, Omniscience, Enter the Infinite and Ad Nauseam and some weaking of "TerminusVille" by axing top of the library tutors.
Likely a flawed list in that there might be worse offenders, but that's where I'd start.
Alright, after answering him 3 times yesterday, then finally getting blown out by him, I am ready for the banning of Sylvan Primordial. The copying and animating of him allows him to wreck to many games.
Was really funny yesterday. The Jhoira player casts Bribery. I'm on Derevi (I have Sylvan Primordial + Deadeye etc), Karador has Primordial, other GB commander has Primordial. He doesn't Briberey me because he thinks I'm msotly running utility dorks and gets SP from Karador. On turn 3. So Karador and I go down to two lands, the other guy was completely hosed and went down to one Wasteland as a mana source. At least Jhoira didn't clone it that game, because he didn't need to...but yeah, I've seen enough blinking, cloning and so on of this guy for one lifetime. It's similar to Prime Time, excepet instead of ramping everyone it JUST ramps you...oh, and it destroys three permanents too. Huzzah!
I've been talking with someone over in another Sydri thread and the problem they found was they couldn't close out the game without comboing. I would really love to build Sydri but my meta has a house rule against infinite combos, they also don't like the Darksteel Forge interaction because it's extremely hard to deal with once it's out. Maybe I'll just build it anyways...
My Sydri deck is basically a stealth Arcum Dagson. I get Myr Incubator and incubate for 40+ and kill a player, or Blasting Station + Disciple + Incubator can kill a few as well. I also have Forge/Lattice etc...it's like Arcum and Karn with Vampiric Tutor, Englightened Tutor and Mystic Tutor and Demonic Tutor and...
I don't like playing with white border cards at all, the exception being some borrowed dual lands. Generally I'll either get first printings of the card (Alpha or Beta) or just have them full altered by a friend when an original black border isn't available or printed.
Most of them inolve the stupid Mana Crypt/Sol Ring draw.
Had this one the other day in a casual game.
Turn 1, Island, Sol Ring, Mana Crypt.
Turn 2, (-3, 37), Swamp, Myr Incubator.
(Go around table, no answers for Incubator)
Turn 3, crack exile 40 artifacts from library, kill a player.
Answer? No? Kill another player. Heh.
Had some pretty sill draws with Thalia in the day too, think the dumbest was turn 1 Plains, Mana Crypt, Skullclamp, Thalia.
Turn 2 Plains, Hero of Bladehold.
Went downhill from there.
Then there are the stupid late game Tooth & Nail plays, but meh.
We've been doing multi tournaments for close to 3 years and have never had any issues outside of the occasional player losing their tempers.
The Gauntlet:
Round 1:Four player pods. (Two hours)
Players are randomly assigned to a pod and points are assigned as follows:
1 point for each opponent defeated
1 point for being last person standing
House rules:
If you infinite combo the table at this stage, you get a single point for last person standing but no points for the individual kills.
You may not concede or suicide at this table. Basically to prevent someone with Necro or whatever out to just go to 0 to prevent a kill.
Round Two, 2 v 2 (One Hour)
You are seated diagonally from your partner, as follows:
A B
B A
House Rules:
If you wish to discuss a card or strategy to play, you must reveal that card to the table. For example "I want to blow up the table." and it's Jokulhaups, you just say it's Jokulhaups. While it might seem you're losing some hidden information here, it's more of an expedient to get the game going.
Points are distributed as follows:
1 point for every one of your opponents defeated.
1 additional point if both members of your team are alive.
Round Three: 1 v 1 (One Hour)
You play your deck in a 1 v 1 best of three, no additional rules or anything.
Points as follows:
One point per game win. No additional points for being the match winner.
We charge a $5 entry which gets thrown back to the top (usually 6-7 in the Gauntlet, can be top 8 in the 1 v 1 with multiple pods) in the form of store credit.
Works great, there's even an EDH Invitational that's spawned from it, to be held January 5.
BIG EDIT:
I noticed you said ten people. I'd just run 1 v 1 with normal banned list, 40 life. If you could get like..6 more people or even two more people you could do three tables of four, then the 2 v 2 and so on. Our events generally draw 40 people for gauntlets and 28-36 for the 1 v 1s so.
Duel Commander rules might work great for your group and I certainly encourage you to use them, but there's been absolutely zero traction for them in Ottawa. We had one big DC event for judge foils, and people hated it. There's a new group trying to get a DC tourney going but generally it's disliked because you lose huge parts of your deck and need to go from "scratch" (Basically the $5 strip mine replaced with a $50 Wasteland, no Sol Ring so you need to get other stuff).
But again, if DC is fine for your group I wish you luck.
Kresh would probably be something I'd like to play against.
He gets there through the zone, you have a lot of board wipes in red and black to clear the way and green gives some nice ramp.
You can add some fun stuff like ENdless Whispers or Grave Pact too, those always make for interesting boardstates.
Any chance of a test unban of Time Vault? It would go really, really well in my Derevi build. As in, my opponents would never take another turn unless they had Krosan Grip, Trickbind or a counterspell. >_>
Serious question:
Any chance for another Commander's Arsenal, perhaps with a somewhat larger print run?
The last one was cool but there were at most a dozen sold around here.
Hmmm generally not. In the competitive meta I just check out what the more dominant decks are then build to win and deal with those. I keep par with everything most days anyway, and I'm probably the first to break new stuff, which causes a reaction.
The thing is, as Commander continues to grow in popularity, more competitive players wi start playing, bringing their mindset and desire to win with them. While this does not mean much to the playgroups in a house, it has an impact for the weekly groups that regularly meet in an LGS or school. This isn't an attempt to label or stereotype certain groups, but I think we can generally agree that the users on this forum tend to identify more with competitive than casual. It's also a fact that this forum is the most viewed on mtgs.
Maybe it is time to start looking at balancing the list for both groups of players.
This wouldn't be a bad idea, but I think it's vastly uphill climb to get the RC to examine this; it looks like their mindset is basically "EDH is a sandbox but we want the casual sandbox to work, the competitive sandbox can make its own rules."
The more I think about it the more I think the most drastic change could be the best one to start with. Lower the starting life total to 35 or 30. In multi 40 life is a fairly large cushion; you can set up and durdle for a while with no real fear and the amount of sweepers in the format makes a mostly aggro build claw for a victory. Starting at 30 means more early pressure decks can get a chance to gnaw away stuff and maybe get a kill before the Wraths/O-Stones etc. start slowing things to a crawl.
I know when I do informal surveys around some of the more competitive players around here it's always the same cards/items that come up. Get rid of Mana Crypt, Sol Ring, Tooth & Nail and look at the starting life total. Interestingly no one wants to play French Ban List since they want to keep most of the goodies without morphing into "Polymorph into Emrakul.dec" and so on. Maybe a case of having your cake and eating it too? I've always felt pretty strongly that the RC should ban some ubiquitous cards at least once a year just to shake up the format. If I had my druthers T&N would be up there for sure.
This sounds like a lot of fun. I would enjoy trying something like this.
It is very fun. We get a large cross-section of Commander for this, from hardcores to moms and dads to students...everyone gets along.
If you have access to a Facebook account I'll PM you the name of the organizer, he lists event results weekly and he made a Commander Invitational event for us to participate in as well in January.
^^ This.
We tried he Duel Commander list and it devolved into Geist, Kami of the Crescent Moon polymorphing into Emrakul and other stuff. It felt like the format was on a slowdown as well. The only things I prefer on the Duel Commander ruleset is 30 life to start and the no tuck rule.
There have been attempts at Duel Commander events but just zero traction so far.
Why do you feel Prophet is an issue? Is it the Flash on creatures? Seedborn Muse untaps everything and it barely raises an eyebrow these days, so I'm kinda puzzled about Prophet. To be fair, I do use Prophet with Deadeye and other stuff, but I'm a horrible person.
IF we're going to do our own 14:
Omniscience
Tooth & Nail
Hermit Druid
Deadeye Navigator
Mana Crypt
Time Stretch
Contamination
Sylvan Primordial
Derevi, Empyrial Tactician (Commander, maybe)
Grim Monolith
Vampiric Tutor, Personal Tutor, Mystical Tutor (Miracle enabling mostly)
That's 13.
Add one of either Enter the Infinite or Ad Nauseam and that would be a good way to go.
You're getting rid of some early fast mana in Monolith/Crypt, some unfun lock cards in Cotnamination, some bomby game ends/extends for no reason in Time Stretch, Omniscience, Enter the Infinite and Ad Nauseam and some weaking of "TerminusVille" by axing top of the library tutors.
Likely a flawed list in that there might be worse offenders, but that's where I'd start.
Was really funny yesterday. The Jhoira player casts Bribery. I'm on Derevi (I have Sylvan Primordial + Deadeye etc), Karador has Primordial, other GB commander has Primordial. He doesn't Briberey me because he thinks I'm msotly running utility dorks and gets SP from Karador. On turn 3. So Karador and I go down to two lands, the other guy was completely hosed and went down to one Wasteland as a mana source. At least Jhoira didn't clone it that game, because he didn't need to...but yeah, I've seen enough blinking, cloning and so on of this guy for one lifetime. It's similar to Prime Time, excepet instead of ramping everyone it JUST ramps you...oh, and it destroys three permanents too. Huzzah!
My Sydri deck is basically a stealth Arcum Dagson. I get Myr Incubator and incubate for 40+ and kill a player, or Blasting Station + Disciple + Incubator can kill a few as well. I also have Forge/Lattice etc...it's like Arcum and Karn with Vampiric Tutor, Englightened Tutor and Mystic Tutor and Demonic Tutor and...
Had this one the other day in a casual game.
Turn 1, Island, Sol Ring, Mana Crypt.
Turn 2, (-3, 37), Swamp, Myr Incubator.
(Go around table, no answers for Incubator)
Turn 3, crack exile 40 artifacts from library, kill a player.
Answer? No? Kill another player. Heh.
Had some pretty sill draws with Thalia in the day too, think the dumbest was turn 1 Plains, Mana Crypt, Skullclamp, Thalia.
Turn 2 Plains, Hero of Bladehold.
Went downhill from there.
Then there are the stupid late game Tooth & Nail plays, but meh.
If not, Edric is as cheap as it gets. Bunch of 1/1s, some pinpoint counterspells and a time warp effect or two and you're off to the races.
The Gauntlet:
Round 1:Four player pods. (Two hours)
Players are randomly assigned to a pod and points are assigned as follows:
1 point for each opponent defeated
1 point for being last person standing
House rules:
If you infinite combo the table at this stage, you get a single point for last person standing but no points for the individual kills.
You may not concede or suicide at this table. Basically to prevent someone with Necro or whatever out to just go to 0 to prevent a kill.
Round Two, 2 v 2 (One Hour)
You are seated diagonally from your partner, as follows:
A B
B A
House Rules:
If you wish to discuss a card or strategy to play, you must reveal that card to the table. For example "I want to blow up the table." and it's Jokulhaups, you just say it's Jokulhaups. While it might seem you're losing some hidden information here, it's more of an expedient to get the game going.
Points are distributed as follows:
1 point for every one of your opponents defeated.
1 additional point if both members of your team are alive.
Round Three: 1 v 1 (One Hour)
You play your deck in a 1 v 1 best of three, no additional rules or anything.
Points as follows:
One point per game win. No additional points for being the match winner.
We charge a $5 entry which gets thrown back to the top (usually 6-7 in the Gauntlet, can be top 8 in the 1 v 1 with multiple pods) in the form of store credit.
Works great, there's even an EDH Invitational that's spawned from it, to be held January 5.
BIG EDIT:
I noticed you said ten people. I'd just run 1 v 1 with normal banned list, 40 life. If you could get like..6 more people or even two more people you could do three tables of four, then the 2 v 2 and so on. Our events generally draw 40 people for gauntlets and 28-36 for the 1 v 1s so.
Duel Commander rules might work great for your group and I certainly encourage you to use them, but there's been absolutely zero traction for them in Ottawa. We had one big DC event for judge foils, and people hated it. There's a new group trying to get a DC tourney going but generally it's disliked because you lose huge parts of your deck and need to go from "scratch" (Basically the $5 strip mine replaced with a $50 Wasteland, no Sol Ring so you need to get other stuff).
But again, if DC is fine for your group I wish you luck.
He gets there through the zone, you have a lot of board wipes in red and black to clear the way and green gives some nice ramp.
You can add some fun stuff like ENdless Whispers or Grave Pact too, those always make for interesting boardstates.
Serious question:
Any chance for another Commander's Arsenal, perhaps with a somewhat larger print run?
The last one was cool but there were at most a dozen sold around here.
Nice list by the way.
This format is so awesome, so incredibly broken.
This wouldn't be a bad idea, but I think it's vastly uphill climb to get the RC to examine this; it looks like their mindset is basically "EDH is a sandbox but we want the casual sandbox to work, the competitive sandbox can make its own rules."
The more I think about it the more I think the most drastic change could be the best one to start with. Lower the starting life total to 35 or 30. In multi 40 life is a fairly large cushion; you can set up and durdle for a while with no real fear and the amount of sweepers in the format makes a mostly aggro build claw for a victory. Starting at 30 means more early pressure decks can get a chance to gnaw away stuff and maybe get a kill before the Wraths/O-Stones etc. start slowing things to a crawl.
I know when I do informal surveys around some of the more competitive players around here it's always the same cards/items that come up. Get rid of Mana Crypt, Sol Ring, Tooth & Nail and look at the starting life total. Interestingly no one wants to play French Ban List since they want to keep most of the goodies without morphing into "Polymorph into Emrakul.dec" and so on. Maybe a case of having your cake and eating it too? I've always felt pretty strongly that the RC should ban some ubiquitous cards at least once a year just to shake up the format. If I had my druthers T&N would be up there for sure.
It is very fun. We get a large cross-section of Commander for this, from hardcores to moms and dads to students...everyone gets along.
If you have access to a Facebook account I'll PM you the name of the organizer, he lists event results weekly and he made a Commander Invitational event for us to participate in as well in January.