Situation today: I cast Word targeting a player, snake his Putrefy and then nail his general.
So far, so good. Then the question comes up – can I force him to leave his general in the grave, rather than placing it in the command zone? My gut says yes:
1. Word of Command allows me to control the player until it finishes resolving. Putrefy will resolve before Word does; ergo, I control the player when the general is binned.
2. Since the general's command-zone ability is a replacement effect, there's no stack to worry about, so the decision is also made while Word is resolving.
Rule 712.5 seems to indicate that that I'm correct, assuming that I understand how the stack is working in this case. Can anyone confirm? Appreciate it – thanks!
Knowing full well that what I'm about to say is technically invalid logic, I think it's safe to assume that anyone who is willing to sit for 30 minutes to force someone else to sit for 30 minutes over a trivial point probably doesn't have anything rational, valuable or worthwhile to add to any conversation.
In other news: EDH decks are already full of redundancy. Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile aren't the same card, but, you know – same effect, same role. It's essentially the same thing as Kodama's Reach v. Cultivate or Fyndhorn v. Llanowar elves.
In my opinion, blue's strongest assets aren't its counterspells; I'd go so far as to say that much of the complaints about counterspells miss the reason the color's traditionally been strong. Blue's really good at card-advantage engines, and I'm pretty sure that, backed up by strong card selection, blue's removal would have felt oppressive no matter what form it took. (Unless it was all inefficient trash, of course.)
As a thought experiment, I'd guess that going mono blue without counterspells just means that you'll lean that much harder on CA engines – after all, without blanket "no, you can't" spells, you'll want to assemble your kills faster or find your niche answers in time. Either way, blue's still being blue.
If you really want a "fair" blue deck, which is my guess as to what you're really looking for, try making Hakim, Loreweaver. Blue's not good at fetching enchantments and its auras are generally mediocre – but you'll need a certain critical mass of 'em for your general to function. It's the kind of setup that lets you indulge in blue's ridiculous card selection while still doing something relatively fair and resilient.
I'm actually terribly excited by these little gods. This Thassa card has a huge impact on the game, is within the realm of Eternal playable (it's certainly EDH playable, and I think it's deceptively good) and, most importantly, they do a ton.
It's refreshing to see Wizards investing in strong midrange drops with a neat "build-around-me" vibe rather than 9+ mana bombs that are obviously good / intentionally rules-breaking.
I'm not entirely sure this option will do what you want it to do, but it can't hurt to try it out.
My biggest suggestion: Keep it simple. You've got a dozen or so abilities listed in the OP; I'd pare it down to as few as possible at first. If players have to have a checklist in front of them just to play the game, it's probably too complex. Maybe just make the favor Mindbreak Trap at first.
Ah, I'll double-check my timeline notes + URLs when I get home tonight. (Patiently waiting for my work's intranet to unbork, which is why I'm goofing around atm.)
The Shahrazad saga has been the hardest thing to pin down because everyone's posting to an audience that already understands the state of the format as it existed; there's clearly a subtext to its repeated banning / unbanning that I'm missing still.
Source? (I'd like to know actually for my Commander FAQ thread as I track the bannings/unbannings).
The old Dreamwizards site that used to host the Alaska (EDIT: Derp, spoke too soon – it looks like this was actually during Sheldon's time in Virginia or wherever he moved to, but I don't have the time to dig through the archives / SCG articles right now to match up the timeline) EDH scene. It's dead now, but you can use Wayback Machine (or whatever your archiver of choice is); the dead URL is dreamwizards.com/edh.html. There's in-depth information in the link in my sig; the short story is that a swath of Vintage playables, including Worldgorger, were banned sometime between October 2004 (per the original article about the format on StarCity Games) and April 22, 2005 (per the archived url above).
Except for Ring of Ma'Rûf, I'm pretty confident I tracked down at least a general guideline for when all the cards banned in EDH were banned (and later unbanned); the period before the formal Rules Committee is pretty interesting, from a game-design standpoint.
My search efforts haven't turned up anything definite, as I can't find when Worldgorger was first added to the EDH Banned list, but it's still banned in Legacy. It has been off the EDH Banned list for over 2 years now.
I'm fairly certain EDH didn't start with Worldgorger on the list.
April 2005, according to my light research – well before the format was an international juggernaut of unstoppable might. Same time power 9 (erm, 8) got the ax; my guess is a whole slew of Vintage cards got crushed in one fell swoop.
OT: But you can run Rout and teach them a lesson. Sometimes that's more fulfilling than a win. (I punted the game the other night to blow someone out with Healing Leaves. I figured the story of "and then he Healing Salve'd to kill me" was worth giving up the game win w/ my pauper deck.)
I think the upshot of no tutoring would be more good stuff decks, more blue and more green.
Think about it – if you can't rely on silver bullets, you're going to want more generic answers, more "always good" threats and more raw card draw as well as stronger selection. What colors fit that profile? Blue and green. I think the predictions of an influx of Edric decks are spot-on.
Yeah, Cryogen beat me to it. Channel was hit due to Eldrazi (specifically Emrakul, who was banned later that year). I'm not so sure that Channel's safe to take off, even with the world's biggest tentacle monster safely shoved back into the ground.
Channel was banned due to the legendary Eldrazi, iirc. I can't remember exactly when, or if it was before the Emrakul ban. ... I'll double check the ban history and see if I can't find the rationale.
good point, but isn't this kind of a social contract type of situation?
I wouldn't think so: I can imagine a B/W/G deck that aggressively tutored for the card to set up Strip Mine locks game after game; with the sheer number of tutors, ways to get extra land drops and recursion in those colors, it'd be easy to create situations where you're the only player with any lands on board.
I totally agree that the card's not bad after a few turns, when everyone's got a decent mana base up and running.
Situation today: I cast Word targeting a player, snake his Putrefy and then nail his general.
So far, so good. Then the question comes up – can I force him to leave his general in the grave, rather than placing it in the command zone? My gut says yes:
1. Word of Command allows me to control the player until it finishes resolving. Putrefy will resolve before Word does; ergo, I control the player when the general is binned.
2. Since the general's command-zone ability is a replacement effect, there's no stack to worry about, so the decision is also made while Word is resolving.
Rule 712.5 seems to indicate that that I'm correct, assuming that I understand how the stack is working in this case. Can anyone confirm? Appreciate it – thanks!
In other news: EDH decks are already full of redundancy. Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile aren't the same card, but, you know – same effect, same role. It's essentially the same thing as Kodama's Reach v. Cultivate or Fyndhorn v. Llanowar elves.
As a thought experiment, I'd guess that going mono blue without counterspells just means that you'll lean that much harder on CA engines – after all, without blanket "no, you can't" spells, you'll want to assemble your kills faster or find your niche answers in time. Either way, blue's still being blue.
If you really want a "fair" blue deck, which is my guess as to what you're really looking for, try making Hakim, Loreweaver. Blue's not good at fetching enchantments and its auras are generally mediocre – but you'll need a certain critical mass of 'em for your general to function. It's the kind of setup that lets you indulge in blue's ridiculous card selection while still doing something relatively fair and resilient.
It's refreshing to see Wizards investing in strong midrange drops with a neat "build-around-me" vibe rather than 9+ mana bombs that are obviously good / intentionally rules-breaking.
My biggest suggestion: Keep it simple. You've got a dozen or so abilities listed in the OP; I'd pare it down to as few as possible at first. If players have to have a checklist in front of them just to play the game, it's probably too complex. Maybe just make the favor Mindbreak Trap at first.
The Shahrazad saga has been the hardest thing to pin down because everyone's posting to an audience that already understands the state of the format as it existed; there's clearly a subtext to its repeated banning / unbanning that I'm missing still.
Thanks!
The old Dreamwizards site that used to host the Alaska (EDIT: Derp, spoke too soon – it looks like this was actually during Sheldon's time in Virginia or wherever he moved to, but I don't have the time to dig through the archives / SCG articles right now to match up the timeline) EDH scene. It's dead now, but you can use Wayback Machine (or whatever your archiver of choice is); the dead URL is dreamwizards.com/edh.html. There's in-depth information in the link in my sig; the short story is that a swath of Vintage playables, including Worldgorger, were banned sometime between October 2004 (per the original article about the format on StarCity Games) and April 22, 2005 (per the archived url above).
Except for Ring of Ma'Rûf, I'm pretty confident I tracked down at least a general guideline for when all the cards banned in EDH were banned (and later unbanned); the period before the formal Rules Committee is pretty interesting, from a game-design standpoint.
April 2005, according to my light research – well before the format was an international juggernaut of unstoppable might. Same time power 9 (erm, 8) got the ax; my guess is a whole slew of Vintage cards got crushed in one fell swoop.
OT: But you can run Rout and teach them a lesson. Sometimes that's more fulfilling than a win. (I punted the game the other night to blow someone out with Healing Leaves. I figured the story of "and then he Healing Salve'd to kill me" was worth giving up the game win w/ my pauper deck.)
Think about it – if you can't rely on silver bullets, you're going to want more generic answers, more "always good" threats and more raw card draw as well as stronger selection. What colors fit that profile? Blue and green. I think the predictions of an influx of Edric decks are spot-on.
Channel was banned due to the legendary Eldrazi, iirc. I can't remember exactly when, or if it was before the Emrakul ban. ... I'll double check the ban history and see if I can't find the rationale.
I wouldn't think so: I can imagine a B/W/G deck that aggressively tutored for the card to set up Strip Mine locks game after game; with the sheer number of tutors, ways to get extra land drops and recursion in those colors, it'd be easy to create situations where you're the only player with any lands on board.
I totally agree that the card's not bad after a few turns, when everyone's got a decent mana base up and running.