Quote from Hawk7915 »One I've railed against elsewhere (and there's a whole article on EDHRecs) is Doom Blade.
Missing on black creatures is a big drawback. Eight out of ten of the top commanders of all time are black, so you miss them and their minions. Go for the Throat, Dismember, Victim of Night, and Devour in Shadow will hit far more reliably. Tragic Slip and Murderous Cut have some deckbuilding constraints but are also generally going to be more powerful and reliable if they work for you.
If your meta allows for running Doom Blade because you're the only black mage...you can still do better! Snuff Out is 0 mana and prevents regeneration. Slaughter Pact is a great tempo option. Malicious Affliction isn't strictly better but in monoblack or two color decks is almost always better. Vendetta really hurts, but 1 mana is a good bargain for decks that need to maximize their tempo. This is all in monoblack. Adding other colors includes Terminate and Orzhov Charm.
I like my removal efficient, but I also like it flexible and advantageous. As a result, I would strongly consider Putrefy, Mortify, Unmake, Anguished Unmaking, Unlicensed Disintegration, Ashes to Ashes, Reckless Spite, Curtains' Call, and Hero's Downfall as generally better than Doom Blade in most decks even though they cost a smidgen more.
I've limited this to instants as well, but given just how much D-blade misses I think Shriekmaw, Walk the Plank and Dreadbore also deserve mentions.
That's, what, 25 removal spells to run over Doom Blade? 16 for Mono Black? Even Toshiro Umezawa probably doesn't want to run that many removal spells.
Yea I almost always avoid nonblack removal. I think Attrition is perhaps one of the only ones I will allow an exception for just because in those cases it works.... it REALLY works.
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I think that things that just generate value are only a target in the very early stages of the game. Pretty quickly, there is not enough removal at the table to kill all of the things that are actually melting your face off.
If it is something like Mizzix of the Izmagnus and somebody has a Sword of Fire and Ice trigger to spend, that is another story. Butin playing other generals like Rashmi, Eternities Crafter, nobody really feels compelled to launch something like a Putrefy at it, or actually spend their own resources. Especially when there are more threatening things like Skullclamp, Consecrated Sphinx or Greater Good that actually do go away for good after you kill them, rather than a general that is just going to be cast again for 2 mana more.
Now if you are trying to combo for some reason with the general itself, that’s a target. Much easier though IMO to just assemble one of Blue’s many, many options for infinite mana/draw, and use the general’s draw ability to get you into your deck faster for it.
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I’m not really trying to draw a direct comparison of Mox with Exploration et al, but I don’t agree with the idea that they suck after Turn 4. In my playing decks that include them, they are about the top of the list of cards I want to see when I draw 7+ cards from a card like Greater Good. They are often as good or better than Reliquary Tower and friends in taking the ceiling off of the advantage you get from drawing out your deck. They cost 1 mana, then let you drop all the land out of your hand and onto the board where they go to work for you.
To repeat, there is nothing worse than the second to last land card in your hand. That fact can stand on its own in what makes Moxes good. They don’t need to be strong early. It’s just a question of how costly their condition is. Granted if you are playing a deck that only wants to cast its commander once a game, or rarely, and you have no other creatures, then the condition is too hard to meet. But, I was just adding that point in response to the posters who claim that Moxes are only good because of the early acceleration. That is what they are known for in Constructed 60-card, but they are actually very worthwhile to be drawing off your deck in the later game too.
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First, I see the term “75% deck” misused about 100% of the time. The term is intended for a deck that is “just good enough to beat a deck built to be 100% optimal if I play tight and get lucky.” “…That way, it is a challenge for me and allows me to benefit from the 100% decks facing opposition from some of the other players at the table. These 75% decks are also not going to turn four an entire table of casual players…” (http://www.gatheringmagic.com/jasonalt-021314-building-a-75-commander-deck/).
So by original definition, a 75% deck needs to have some marginal chance to take a game off of a table of 100% decks. But most decks people claim are “75%” don’t have a snowball’s chance. The term just seems to be used as a way of saying that you are playing whatever the world you want, and any deck that beats you is piloted by a player who doesn’t get it. You do have to actually put in some effort to build to this theory of “75%”. You can’t just build a Warrior tribal deck with Stangg, call it “75%”, and then claim that it is your deckbuilding theory that is preventing you from making a fair showing at a table.
Two, the entire theory of 75% is contradictory, as originally authored – “In a good night of Commander for my playgroup, I will win 1 ÷ X games, where X is the number of players at the table.”
Of course presuming everyone else is playing a “100% deck”, you have a far lower chance of winning. Actually, your chances of winning are exactly the above if you, in fact, are playing 100% against everyone else’s 100%. It is simply a proportional chance to win, aside all other factors. So a deck whose card power is 75% of what is possible in the format I would say has such a low chance of winning against 100% decks that no person would be satisfied playing one in an environment like that. So if the goal is to have involvement in a game that grows beyond what you designed for your deck, then you will fail that goal by building 75%. Based on the above equation, you only reach this level of balance and participation when the power of your deck is exactly what everyone else’s is.
I think the real concept presented in that series is one that just about every source on EDH has commented on – scaleability. (In fact, it goes on to explain how clones scale to the creature-beats decks you are facing). What you want is for your deck to be able to scale to the competition you encounter. Again, you won’t get there automatically. You have to actually play up to the competition. If you are going to do it in a way that doesn’t abruptly foreclose on less explosive decks, then you will generally do it by playing a high answer-density. Ironically that is the exact opposite of the design space the self-styled “75%” players seem like they want to carve out for themselves – one where Clone spamming is a reasonable approach to a game.
In the end, if you do want to play up to these MLD and combo decks, then you will have to react. Play either land-recursion or White-based defensive cards against the MLD. Play lots of Instant removal for combo pieces, and Pithing Needle effects for Mairsil and other such.
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I understand the appeal of the collection-building aspect of trading card game, but it is different now in 2018 than it was in 1998. The fact of there being limited physical quantities of cards like Mana Crypt is a bit silly.
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Targeted with an Oblivion Sower? That doesn’t set someone behind at all. The top card of their deck is still random. It does make sense for an opponent to target that player over two other players that somehow have about 1/3 of their deck’s total land count in play, but no, your deck does not “owe” you those three lands from off the top. And knowing after the fact that 3 cards off the top are land is of Zero predictive value before the fact. The average number of lands hit by that trigger is still between 1 and 2, and so that opponent’s information at the time the decision is made is that it will affect whether that player’s next card is land or non-land by a little over 1%. Even having hit 3 land, it affected chances of drawing land by less than 5%.
The emotional impact though is huge. You get targeted with something. How could they when you are behind on land? And hey… you just knew that your deck was going to bail you out of this, and sure enough, there it was. If it only weren’t for that Oblivion Sower. That’s what put you out of the game, for sure.
This is just too great of an example of a player being affected very little by something (here it’s even something random), and then scapegoating the blame for the game state onto that thing. You might as well blame the person who attacked you with Burnished Hart early rather than passing for why your life total is low enough now to get attacked for lethal. I actually see this happening all the time in EDH.
To summarize on what you are asking, the state of the game will nearly always (or ought to) ensure that decisions whether to hold back are rarely arbitrary like this. For other examples, if two players each have a Xenagos, God of Revels, then the one with the biggest creature will probably get theirs eaten first. If two players have a big threat, the one with the most mana will get targeted. If two players have a draw source (say Arena) or a mana source (say Sol Ring), then otherwise equal, the one with the most other stuff will get the removal.
The examples with Annex are a little bit more complex. On the one hand, lands like Ancient Tomb are the reason that you run Annex. But, I think it boils down to how you want to direct the table’s attentions. The player who is behind and has Tomb will notice that you took something else, and might want to cooperate with you. One mana is one mana, but an ally against the leading player can be worth more. That’s the benefit there, and even if it does end up weighing more heavily than other considerations, then it’s not because of some cosmic sense of fairness. It’s because it was the better play in the game, those factors considered.
Also FYI, it’s a rule that whenever a player leaves the game all of the permanents that they own cease to exist on the battlefield. So, there is no difference between scooping on the spot to an Oblivion Sower trigger and scooping after it resolves. Any lands that player got are gone.
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Highly linear, open-ended general like this one gets printed (e.g. Keranos, God of Storms or Jhoira) – “Ugh, lackluster and mediocre. Why would I run this over such and such? This doesn’t fill any role that we don’t have filled already.”
You can’t have your cake and eat it too. It seems like players expect a general that explodes off of the table, is a valid pick competitively, and yet somehow flies under the radar and lets you put anything you want in your deck and still function. Do I really need to say that not all of these boxes will be checked by one general?
If you ask me, I would rather get the support-type general in these colors. I am not fond of developing decks like the Locust God, Arjun, Melek, Niv-Mizzet or Mizzix where the table can immediately identify your win condition and expect the same set of 40+ cards out of your deck right as you sit down. Those generals got stale very quickly because there was little territory left to explore with them, and you just put the question to the table whether or not they can kill a creature, and win shortly after if they can’t. Not a lot of back and forth, and not the best in the game at putting the question to your opponents, besides.
In the support role, I see Jhoira as a great alternative to decks that might have gone with something like Keranos or Nin before. Nin is great on volume as a Braingeyser in the Command Zone, but is very slow on tempo. On the other hand, Keranos is a flat 5 mana investment that you will rarely have to pay for twice in a game, but is quite slow at what it does. Niv Mizzet 2.0 is decent, but somewhat mana intensive as well, or reliant on combat. And, people still think you are playing combo. Jhoira doesn’t seem to me to be as much of a general that wants you to get 10 artifacts and Darksteel Forge on the table, but just a general who draws you cards. Every UR deck will want to develop its mana base, and the only option really to do that are artifacts.
Also nice to have the draw effect on PW’s and legendaries as well. Niv-Mizzet, Melek, Daretti, and the Locust God are cards that I want to be running in most of the URx decks that I make, but running legendaries in the 99 that are known to be powerful commanders just feels odd to me. With Jhoira, it makes sense to be running them, and you finally get to see what they do in isolation rather than as build-around-me.
The draw with this type of general is that you can build your deck how you want, and players won’t grow weary of what you are doing. For me, I have always wanted to go beatdown with UR creatures like Djinn Illuminatus, Niv-Mizzet and Hypersonic Dragon all equipped up with Swords, and not really any of the current UR options were going that route. Jhoira seems nice for that, and also a bit of beatdown with some artifact creatures like Precursor Golem.
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Maybe a Basilisk Collar for your equipment package to go along with your pingers? Seeing as how you included them anyway, might be worth a shot.
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This problem usually comes from a lack of draw, but I see that you have a decent set of options there. The only ones I can think of adding are the Kozilek's, if you are consistent enough with your mana production.
Another issue might be cards that don't accelerate you or affect the board - Price Of Glory, Blood Moon, Stranglehold, so on. They are quality hate-cards for sure, but I consider hate-cards generally a luxury available only to decks with high density and solid draw options otherwise. With Mono-R being tutorless, you are basically married to your opening hand and early top decks. Two or more cards like that showing up in the same grip can be hard to draw out of.
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Tier 1 – Storm or Doomsday/Lab Maniac, as best supported by Kess, Jeleva, Thrasios and Tymna, and Yidris.
Also Tier 1 – Food Chain combos, supported by General Tazri (yes, the general is important), Prossh, and possibly others I am not recollecting atm.
Tier 1.5 – Blue-based infinite mana combos with Isochron Scepter or Basalt Monolith. These as supported best by Teferi, Thrasios and Tymna (second mention), Grand Arbiter, and down the list to Derevi, Azami, Narset and others worse at doing it than Teferi. Not every deck itself is Tier 1.5, although the strategy generally is.
Tier 2 – Prison, as best supported by Zur, Arcum Dagsson, Brago, then on down the line from there (Derevi, etc).
Also Tier 2 - Some sort of general-based combo out of a classic control shell, as best supported by Breya, Thrasios and Tymna, Tasigur, so on.
Tier 3 – Other general-based combo not out of a control shell, such as Yisan, Gitrog Monster, to include decks with tutors in the Command Zone – Sidisi, Razaketh. Captain Sisay.
Also Tier 3 – Graveyard based or other creature-based combo, as supported by Animar, Karador, Scion (Hermit Druid), and so on.
That is all I really care to rank, not as deep as the list above. There are other generals that do strong things, and the strategies above can also be supported by other generals. But when you get to the point that a deck has no counterplay against a storm deck with Nicol Bolas, never casting the general, you are at that point safely into territory where your general is not the main question. These decks would be worse than decks where the general is used to some effect, but would still perform better than many decks that do use the general for a different strategy.
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I’m not sure if you have any inside track to the inner-workings of the DCI, but I see that conclusion as impossible from the public statements they have issued regarding bans. Look no further than the latest experiment – Modern.
First of all, it debuted with the explicit premise that they wanted to keep decks that win on Turn 3 or earlier out of the format. Notwithstanding whether there was diversity among those decks, or whether other decks had the tools to compete with them, they have had that as a goal because of the type of gameplay they want to foster. Maybe that’s a bit of a given, but take that for what it’s worth. The Magic players and designers want it to be a game about the board, not fishing through your deck for the fastest combo.
On top of that explicit, non-diversity related goal, Modern also initially debuted with fewer options (not more) in a couple cases, just because the DCI thought people didn’t want to play against those decks. Bitterblossom and Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle were banned, not because they were thought of as hindering competitive diversity, but simply because they were foreseeably going to be used in a strong deck, and it was a deck that they didn’t want seeing played. Not diversity related at all, and in fact, were specifically intended to reduce diversity by precisely two decks. (https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/latest-developments/welcome-modern-world-2011-08-12 )
Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle – “…Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle doesn't do very many cool things on its own, and usually results in non-interactive combination kills any time it shows up.”
Bitterblossom – On the initial Modern banned list because “its historical popularity is not very high”.
Take further DCI statements also. Granted that the meat of the message is format diversity, but bans are also colored with statements about how fun/unfun it is to play against a certain deck. No coincidence that Jund was let to go on to the tune of 60% representation for so long – it’s not a combo deck, it always wins through combat, and it allows your spells to resolve. There was action taken in the end, but it would be disingenuous to say that it would have taken the DCI equal amounts of time to ban a combo or a prison deck.
Other examples, which you also hint at in the article. Like you mentioned above, Second Sunrise was banned because nobody liked playing with or against Eggs. Same thing with Sensei’s Divining Top in Legacy, although to a lesser degree. The bans both reduced the diversity of the format by exactly one deck (Eggs, Miracles), purely because people simply didn’t like playing the game as much when those decks were getting sleeved up.
In fact, I would say that most bans in Magic that were aimed at diversity absent the element of whether the deck(s) it supported were fun, most of those ultimately turned out to be unwarranted. Aside from the Bitterblossom scare, the DCI also tried a ban of Wild Nacatal to see if it would increase diversity of “attacking decks”, and it turns out that it just irritated people interested in Zoo and the others didn’t care. The one reason, they didn’t mind as much losing on board to a Nacatal. Likewise with Legacy, tons of things got unbanned as the card pool deepened, but stuff like Necropotence, Tinker, Survival, they stay good and banned.
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The reason I wanted to raise this is to remind you that no player exists who is the fun-ruining boogeyman that the tournament-going players are labeled. There’s not really anyone whose voice should be ignored, on the basis that they just aren’t the kind of player we want. If they’re playing Commander, I say that they have as good of a reason as you or I do.
There are enough purely competitive games out there that those people really don’t show up in Magic anymore, if they ever did. Most players would rather play a deck they like, even to a Grand Prix. In fact, the premise of format diversity being good for the game and for organizers is that there must be some people on the fence whether to participate, but that they will do so if there is a deck in the metagame that they enjoy.
So players wanting bans, is it possible that their motivations are other than wanting to make the format more like a tournament one? In my eye, I see a large portion of the community who just wants to be able to play against a wider variety of people. I think you’re right on that the role of the ban list is to give the format “shape”, and wider playability. If bans make certain decks a little harder to make, but lead to more people being able to sit across from one another, then I say that’s a good ban. That goes not only for the purpose of a ban list itself, but the cards on it too.
Also, five color failed as a format because it was hot garbage. No other reason, really. They had to ban things because of that, not the other way around.