The monument could be good in an elf deck with Nissa. Sac a Chosen, get a Chosen, etc. Not to mention, you'd always have a 3/4 flying, indestructible guy every turn. It's still probably a win more card.
I guess the Invasion duals mean nothing to people anymore. If you need three colors, you'll play Shard lands. If you're playing just two allied colors, the only fixing we currently have are M10 duals. These might provide a nice supplement to those lands instead of Shard lands. They aren't amazing, but I can see them getting played.
I started drafting during Shards-Shards-Conflux so this is the first core set I've drafted and it is a much less predictable format than Shards block was. Is this characteristic of all core sets? What I mean by unpredicatable is that you can draft a deck that you think is the nuts with 23 awesome playables, a great curve, removal, etc, and you can just go 0-2 drop and not be surprised.
I drafted a deck with Garruk, Master of the Wild Hunt, 2 Mind Control, Clone, and counters and early drops and deck manipulation. I was very satisfied with the deck. I lost the first game in all three of my matches, but ended up winning the whole draft. I kind of expected this deck to win the whole draft, but it was so scary losing the first game in every match. But I can't say I was surprised because this format lends itself to these sorts of shenanigans, am I right?
Oh, on a side note: In game three of the final round, time expired and I was going to be taking the last turn. I took a second to plan it out, but I was able to get enough creatures and Garruk on the board to overrun on the final turn of the final match for lethal plus 1. I was entertained by the hijinks.
It would depend on the pick as to whether or not you could take Essence Scatter over Snapping Drake. It is not a universal decision to pick the Drake, while I would agree, it is the correct decision 80% of the time. You might have an overloaded 4 drop. You might already have plenty of flyers with 2 toughness. You might desparately need removal. It is not a 100% pick to take the Snapping Drake over an Essence Scatter.
You take Overrun and hope you can cut green like a madman to upset the person to your right because they can't play this stupid rare they got passed.
Here's the funniest part. They cost the same amount of mana to put into play, so compare effects and then reconsider this "comparison" between these two cards. LOL!!!
If you went T1 Llanowar Elves or nothing, T2 Elvish Visionary, T3 Borderland Ranger or Centaur Courser, T4 another similar dude. Let's say you did not play a dude one of those turns, but yes on the other three... something quite realistic if you first pick Overrun and build accordingly... You've probably already done maybe 4 points of damage if not more... and on turn 5 you just kill them. That's something Ant Queen does not do.
And while I'll be the first to say that a mainboard Duress and a mainboard Negate are not the worst ideas in the world, there is still SOO much more hate for Ant Queen than there is for Overrun.
Well, we could consider the constructive portion of this thread to be in the title.
By saying "Blue's still good," it seems to be implied that blue was bad at some point in M10 draft. I would disagree with this statement as I think it's an amazingly solid color in M10. As long as you pick up a couple of bombs, (probably non-blue) blue helps you stay alive long enough to cast it and it helps you dig to those bombs. I've always been happy to see that blue is open in an M10 draft. Flyers, counters, and card advantage. "Oh, my!" indeed!!!
I'd say you should have had one Ice Cage mainboarded and put the Righteousness and Armored Ascension in there instead. If they have fear, unblockable, or land-walk and it seemed to be the reason you lost game one, you can put an Ice Cage in to replace Righteousness.
I would probably say Righteousness is better than Ice Cage in most situations if the mana is easy either way.
I imagine that someone in my circle will sacrifice a Lord of Extinction to a Xathrid Demon pretty soon. At least, that's a new "combo" that I can think of. There are probably hundreds of existing combos that people use to either generate infinite mana and use it somehow. They gain infinite life. Taking infinite turns is also a popular route.
the reason I personally opted against Rakdos the Defiler when deciding on "Demons" to build a deck around... was because even if you have Conspiracy (which I don't see in this list) in play naming Demons, and all your creatures in play are effectively Demons. You still have the problem that when Rakdos the Defiler swings you are going to lose exactly half (rounded up) of all your lands, enchantments, artifacts, etc... so the question becomes, is he really worth running?
FYI, you can build a Demon and Dragon Theme deck based around Malfegor and only risk losing up to however many cards are in your hand at the time you play the only card that is both a Demon and a Dragon at the same time (not counting Changelings and Mistforms).
You get style points for running Rakdos. You get zero style points for running Malfegor. *shudders* What a cheesy, bad general he would be. You could also have the option of not always summoning your general until you're ahead in board position. Many decks in my EDH circle do that anyway.
updated my list. changes are all listed on the bottom and i am open to opinions. I'm really wondering if Insurrection can just save your butt so much that I shouldn't cut it.
I think there are basically three options - 1) play the most powerful and ridiculous legal deck you can imagine, but do it subtly so people stil think they have a chance against you; 2) play whatever deck you like and have fun, but don't complain when better players/decks beat you or 3) play a strong "tier 2" deck that can beat most of the über decks while still having a good shot at fun and successful multi-player games (my thoughts when making my Lin Sivvi list).
Well, if you read my post, you'd see that I kind of opted for option #2. I said, to the same effect, in the end, do whatever you want. Make a deck with whatever general you wish. In my circle, at my store, if you showed up for casual EDH with Rofellos or anyone that powerful, you wouldn't get a lot of 1v1 matches and as far as casual goes, your multi-player experience might be a fair one. If you came to EDH league night with that deck, you'd experience a savage 3v1 until you were dead.
Those results are not the kind of results I aim for when I play EDH. Therefore, I will not play a general that I see as overpowered. My initial response was to the OPs comment that your opponents would be in for a not-so-fun match, which, regardless of what level of power you're going for with your deck, should not be a goal of EDH. This is, of course, simply my opinion.
353+ deck lists for almost any realistically half decent General. I'd recommend starting there. It's an incredibly fun format and not as expensive as you might think to get into. Granted, many of the powerful cards in constructed formats are powerful cards in EDH, but the comprise a maximum of 1 slot in your 100 card deck. So your "woes" about not having powerful cards aren't felt nearly as much.
And as was already said, EDH turns junk rares into powerhouses.
I guess the Invasion duals mean nothing to people anymore. If you need three colors, you'll play Shard lands. If you're playing just two allied colors, the only fixing we currently have are M10 duals. These might provide a nice supplement to those lands instead of Shard lands. They aren't amazing, but I can see them getting played.
I drafted a deck with Garruk, Master of the Wild Hunt, 2 Mind Control, Clone, and counters and early drops and deck manipulation. I was very satisfied with the deck. I lost the first game in all three of my matches, but ended up winning the whole draft. I kind of expected this deck to win the whole draft, but it was so scary losing the first game in every match. But I can't say I was surprised because this format lends itself to these sorts of shenanigans, am I right?
Oh, on a side note: In game three of the final round, time expired and I was going to be taking the last turn. I took a second to plan it out, but I was able to get enough creatures and Garruk on the board to overrun on the final turn of the final match for lethal plus 1. I was entertained by the hijinks.
Here's the funniest part. They cost the same amount of mana to put into play, so compare effects and then reconsider this "comparison" between these two cards. LOL!!!
If you went T1 Llanowar Elves or nothing, T2 Elvish Visionary, T3 Borderland Ranger or Centaur Courser, T4 another similar dude. Let's say you did not play a dude one of those turns, but yes on the other three... something quite realistic if you first pick Overrun and build accordingly... You've probably already done maybe 4 points of damage if not more... and on turn 5 you just kill them. That's something Ant Queen does not do.
And while I'll be the first to say that a mainboard Duress and a mainboard Negate are not the worst ideas in the world, there is still SOO much more hate for Ant Queen than there is for Overrun.
By saying "Blue's still good," it seems to be implied that blue was bad at some point in M10 draft. I would disagree with this statement as I think it's an amazingly solid color in M10. As long as you pick up a couple of bombs, (probably non-blue) blue helps you stay alive long enough to cast it and it helps you dig to those bombs. I've always been happy to see that blue is open in an M10 draft. Flyers, counters, and card advantage. "Oh, my!" indeed!!!
I would probably say Righteousness is better than Ice Cage in most situations if the mana is easy either way.
More info.
These are a few to consider, perhaps. There are even some old, cheaper creatures with this effect from Portal Three Kingdoms and elsewhere. I did //gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanced&color=|[G">|[W]|[R]&text=+[can't]+[be]+[the]+[target]+[of]+[spells]+[or]+[abilities]+[your]+[opponents]+[control]"]this search in Gatherer to find them.
You get style points for running Rakdos. You get zero style points for running Malfegor. *shudders* What a cheesy, bad general he would be. You could also have the option of not always summoning your general until you're ahead in board position. Many decks in my EDH circle do that anyway.
Open the Vaults
Well, if you read my post, you'd see that I kind of opted for option #2. I said, to the same effect, in the end, do whatever you want. Make a deck with whatever general you wish. In my circle, at my store, if you showed up for casual EDH with Rofellos or anyone that powerful, you wouldn't get a lot of 1v1 matches and as far as casual goes, your multi-player experience might be a fair one. If you came to EDH league night with that deck, you'd experience a savage 3v1 until you were dead.
Those results are not the kind of results I aim for when I play EDH. Therefore, I will not play a general that I see as overpowered. My initial response was to the OPs comment that your opponents would be in for a not-so-fun match, which, regardless of what level of power you're going for with your deck, should not be a goal of EDH. This is, of course, simply my opinion.
353+ deck lists for almost any realistically half decent General. I'd recommend starting there. It's an incredibly fun format and not as expensive as you might think to get into. Granted, many of the powerful cards in constructed formats are powerful cards in EDH, but the comprise a maximum of 1 slot in your 100 card deck. So your "woes" about not having powerful cards aren't felt nearly as much.
And as was already said, EDH turns junk rares into powerhouses.