Those making the argument that its OK to push the rarity on these because the P9 should be that rare and expensive are gluttons for punishment. Your format is dead in paper magic for that exact reason, and you want them to do it AGAIN?
You mean like Legacy is dead in paper magic with cards that that far exceed the cost of everything online? Cause if that is your defintion of what will happen to formats where you need dozens of $80-350 cards then sign me up.
Seriously, does anyone in here even bother to look the prices of cards online vs paper for this stuff? Or do you all still think Force of Will is cheaper in paper?
Legacy is far from a dead format, but if I walk into my LGS and pull out my grindstone deck and ask if anyone wants to sling around some legacy, there's an 80% chance no one has a deck. It's not dead, but I wouldn't call it healthy either.
All I'm saying is MTGO has a chance to fix the wrong that the reserve list has done to Vintage so that you can get more than a handful people together to play a really fun format. Maybe this is part of a big Wizards plan to release this set every year to keep supplies up, but if this is a one and done, you could be enjoying yourself in a Vintage daily with a whole dozen people.
Those making the argument that its OK to push the rarity on these because the P9 should be that rare and expensive are gluttons for punishment. Your format is dead in paper magic for that exact reason, and you want them to do it AGAIN?
They need to be soldiers to scratch my tribal itch.
Too funny, because I can't get myself to play Conqueror's Pledge because I like my deck to be humans. It annoys me to no end that Pledge creates Kor Soldiers, but there are no Human Soldier makers. Makes my Shared Triumph really awkward sometimes.
Also, RRRR is a bit intense. Players like to have planeswalkers that are splashable.
I think this is a general design statement that hurts mono-red the most. Red has a notorious reputation (in modern magic, the past 8 years or so) for its overpowered cards being overpowered when they are splashed. Lightning Bolt isn't OP in mono-red, its OP in UR and Jund, so mono-red suffers.
Wizards has been convincing in their history that they are scared to print a powerful R planeswalker for fear that it gets splashed in and becomes degenerate. Koth is arguably the best R planeswalker and he's not splash-able due to his abilities not his cost. I like the idea of making it a heavy R costed in order to be able to push the power level.
I wouldn't try to add custom rules... run sack outlets to stop your "leutenant" from eating a Swords to Plowshares and some reanimation and you will be fine.
Considering your general IS a sack outlet, it's even better
You should have plan B in case he is removed anyway, but that applies even if he's the general.....
Thanks Rebel. Yeah, since these been equal interest in both solutions, I'd like to see where both conversations go, but I definitely am trying to solve this with no custom rules so that I can play the deck at GenCon or other conventions.
That said, I don't have the greatest collection ever, but I do have a good collection of sac outlet lands, and since its black and I can play Urborg, I won't be shy about smashing them all in here.
I'll have to see how it actually plays. My initial thought is that putting the tax on the Lt. as well as the general would make it a deterrent to casting the Lt. because board wipes basically added 4 to the commander tax, not 2.
I'm hoping that rule 3 is enough to keep degenerate Lt. casting in line, but I'm sure testing is needed. Also, I haven't come up with any broken combos in these rules, I'm sure there's something.
I think at the moment, I'm going to try with a pretty heavy tutor package to see if I can make it work. I tend to despise tutors because I like the variance EDH provides, but I'll make the deal with myself to use the tutors responsibly for the Lieutenant.
This will definitely not be a deck at the top of the power curve, but I think flavor wise it might be an evil genius, so I'll post it once I get the list made up, and I'll update this thread with how well its working.
Lieutenant Specific Rules
I've been thinking more about alternative rules for having a Lieutenant game as well, and so far, this is what I think I like the most so far. If anyone in the Columbus Ohio area wants to try the concept out, let me know.
1) The Lieutenant must be a Legendary creature that is within the color identity of your general. (Optional - Your Lieutenant must share a subtype with your general).
2) When not in play, the Lieutenant occupies the command zone and follows the same rules as the general when it comes to replacement effects to send the card into the command zone.
3) The Lieutenant may only be cast from the command zone when your general is on the battlefield. This is a condition on casting the spell, not on resolution, so if the general is removed in response, the lieutenant is still a legal spell.
4) The casting cost of your Lieutenant is increased by 2 for each time you have played your commander from the command zone, but casting the Lieutenant from the command zone does not increase the 'commander penalty' (not sure what the correct term for this is, please correct me if it is not.).
5) Lieutenant damage does not count towards commander damage.
Even when I'm winning (which is rare), I always try to keep the game social with table chatter. I praise the guy's cool foils. I suggest oddball Mirage-era cards for the mono-black player. I dig into the intricacies of basic land art with the guy who clearly hearts John Avon. Anyway, the point is, regardless of how the game ends, all the players feel like they are awesome-r for having sat down at the table with me. That's a pretty decent goal to strive for. And every now and then it contributes to me winning the game.
Great post. One of the ideas we need to start circulating more is not that the 'spirit of EDH' is to do unpowerful things, but to have a socially fun experience during the game while doing powerful things. One of the biggest charms of EDH is that turns take a while, which gives you a lot of time to BS with the other players when your not the active player. That is the 'spirit of EDH', not the power level of the cards on the table.
Perfect fits inside of KMC Super Series, but like the others, the top sleeve differences don't matter much. Biggest thing I find is to store them packed tightly. It doesn't eliminate the air, but it keeps it to a minimum and makes them less likely to topple when stacked.
To carry them around, I keep my decks in the smallest size of the generic white card boxes. A full deck leaves about 1" of extra space, which I fill with a hinged plastic card holder that I keep tokens the deck might need. I'll get a picture up later.
I know this is ambitious, but part of the reason I'm doing this is the challenge.
I'm pretty interested in the idea of making a rules spin-off for an actual Lieutenant concept, but I do want to be able to take this deck to conventions and such, so at least for now I want to try to keep it within the standard rules. I'll take the Lieutenant idea as a side project.
I normally tend to shy away from tutors because I find the charm in EDH being the randomness, but I think the power level of this deck is low enough to use the tutors to get my Lieutenant without ruining my desire for randomness.
My problem is, I'm in love with two deck ideas that are extremely close to working together, but I need some help making it work.
Idea 1 - Cleric Tribal - There are a handful of cleric cards I just love, and I love the whole idea of the 'church' flavor of a deck. To get the clerics I like, it'll be W/B, probably with one of the Ghost Councils as General.
There are lots of 1 power Clerics, to play with Shirei, so naturally I greedily want to smash these two together. The problem is, the deck is pretty terrible without a reliable way to play Shirei without having him as my General, which I can't do because he's only one color identity that I need to make Clerics work.
So, I beg for your assistance. What are the best ways to play a deck with a General (which I am happy to play), but play a 'second general' or 'Lieutenant' as well?
I'd be happy to use this thread as a overall discussion for all colors, but obviously I'm interested in answers in W/B.
I'll be there for a few hours on Saturday early afternoon looking for a game or two. I'll try to find trees and maybe we can setup a spot for EDH players.
Its really hard to make a Rakdos LoR deck without overextending, so as a fellow Rakdos player, I say embrace it. You may not win a lot, but for a few turns a game, your definately the most feared player at the table.
If your going to run large artifact creatures (which I HIGHLY recommend, nothing feels better than a free Darksteel Colossus) don't shy away from the all opponents burn life Flame Rift. With Rakdos out, it basically reads 1R: Add 12 for each creature spell you want to cast this turn.
Legacy is far from a dead format, but if I walk into my LGS and pull out my grindstone deck and ask if anyone wants to sling around some legacy, there's an 80% chance no one has a deck. It's not dead, but I wouldn't call it healthy either.
All I'm saying is MTGO has a chance to fix the wrong that the reserve list has done to Vintage so that you can get more than a handful people together to play a really fun format. Maybe this is part of a big Wizards plan to release this set every year to keep supplies up, but if this is a one and done, you could be enjoying yourself in a Vintage daily with a whole dozen people.
Too funny, because I can't get myself to play Conqueror's Pledge because I like my deck to be humans. It annoys me to no end that Pledge creates Kor Soldiers, but there are no Human Soldier makers. Makes my Shared Triumph really awkward sometimes.
I think this is a general design statement that hurts mono-red the most. Red has a notorious reputation (in modern magic, the past 8 years or so) for its overpowered cards being overpowered when they are splashed. Lightning Bolt isn't OP in mono-red, its OP in UR and Jund, so mono-red suffers.
Wizards has been convincing in their history that they are scared to print a powerful R planeswalker for fear that it gets splashed in and becomes degenerate. Koth is arguably the best R planeswalker and he's not splash-able due to his abilities not his cost. I like the idea of making it a heavy R costed in order to be able to push the power level.
Thanks Rebel. Yeah, since these been equal interest in both solutions, I'd like to see where both conversations go, but I definitely am trying to solve this with no custom rules so that I can play the deck at GenCon or other conventions.
That said, I don't have the greatest collection ever, but I do have a good collection of sac outlet lands, and since its black and I can play Urborg, I won't be shy about smashing them all in here.
I'm hoping that rule 3 is enough to keep degenerate Lt. casting in line, but I'm sure testing is needed. Also, I haven't come up with any broken combos in these rules, I'm sure there's something.
I think at the moment, I'm going to try with a pretty heavy tutor package to see if I can make it work. I tend to despise tutors because I like the variance EDH provides, but I'll make the deal with myself to use the tutors responsibly for the Lieutenant.
This will definitely not be a deck at the top of the power curve, but I think flavor wise it might be an evil genius, so I'll post it once I get the list made up, and I'll update this thread with how well its working.
Lieutenant Specific Rules
I've been thinking more about alternative rules for having a Lieutenant game as well, and so far, this is what I think I like the most so far. If anyone in the Columbus Ohio area wants to try the concept out, let me know.
1) The Lieutenant must be a Legendary creature that is within the color identity of your general. (Optional - Your Lieutenant must share a subtype with your general).
2) When not in play, the Lieutenant occupies the command zone and follows the same rules as the general when it comes to replacement effects to send the card into the command zone.
3) The Lieutenant may only be cast from the command zone when your general is on the battlefield. This is a condition on casting the spell, not on resolution, so if the general is removed in response, the lieutenant is still a legal spell.
4) The casting cost of your Lieutenant is increased by 2 for each time you have played your commander from the command zone, but casting the Lieutenant from the command zone does not increase the 'commander penalty' (not sure what the correct term for this is, please correct me if it is not.).
5) Lieutenant damage does not count towards commander damage.
Thoughts?
Great post. One of the ideas we need to start circulating more is not that the 'spirit of EDH' is to do unpowerful things, but to have a socially fun experience during the game while doing powerful things. One of the biggest charms of EDH is that turns take a while, which gives you a lot of time to BS with the other players when your not the active player. That is the 'spirit of EDH', not the power level of the cards on the table.
To carry them around, I keep my decks in the smallest size of the generic white card boxes. A full deck leaves about 1" of extra space, which I fill with a hinged plastic card holder that I keep tokens the deck might need. I'll get a picture up later.
I know this is ambitious, but part of the reason I'm doing this is the challenge.
I'm pretty interested in the idea of making a rules spin-off for an actual Lieutenant concept, but I do want to be able to take this deck to conventions and such, so at least for now I want to try to keep it within the standard rules. I'll take the Lieutenant idea as a side project.
I normally tend to shy away from tutors because I find the charm in EDH being the randomness, but I think the power level of this deck is low enough to use the tutors to get my Lieutenant without ruining my desire for randomness.
So far, this is what I'm thinking as my keep Shirei around package:
Tutors
Demonic Tutor
Diabolic Tutor
Vampiric Tutor
Beseech the Queen
Keep Him Around
Resurrection
Phyrexian Reclamation
Animate Dead
Dance of the Dead
Reanimate
Darksteel Plate
Oversold Cemetery
What awesomeness am I missing?
My problem is, I'm in love with two deck ideas that are extremely close to working together, but I need some help making it work.
Idea 1 - Cleric Tribal - There are a handful of cleric cards I just love, and I love the whole idea of the 'church' flavor of a deck. To get the clerics I like, it'll be W/B, probably with one of the Ghost Councils as General.
Idea 2 - I LOVE Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker, in an unnatural way.
There are lots of 1 power Clerics, to play with Shirei, so naturally I greedily want to smash these two together. The problem is, the deck is pretty terrible without a reliable way to play Shirei without having him as my General, which I can't do because he's only one color identity that I need to make Clerics work.
So, I beg for your assistance. What are the best ways to play a deck with a General (which I am happy to play), but play a 'second general' or 'Lieutenant' as well?
I'd be happy to use this thread as a overall discussion for all colors, but obviously I'm interested in answers in W/B.
The best Rakdos enablers I've found so far are:
Shepherd of Rot
Guttersnipe
Murderous Redcap
Pestilence
Pyrohemia
Shivan Gorge
If your going to run large artifact creatures (which I HIGHLY recommend, nothing feels better than a free Darksteel Colossus) don't shy away from the all opponents burn life Flame Rift. With Rakdos out, it basically reads 1R: Add 12 for each creature spell you want to cast this turn.
1 Rakdos, Lord of Riots
Creatures (34)
1 Avalanche Riders
1 Anger
1 Anathemancer
1 Balefire Dragon
1 Blightsteel Colossus
1 Bloodfire Colossus
1 Bogardan Hellkite
1 Charmbreaker Devils
1 Cryptborn Horror
1 Darksteel Colossus
1 Disciple of Bolas
1 Dragon Mage
1 Dragon Tyrant
1 Flametongue Kavu
1 Guttersnipe
1 Harvester of Souls
1 Hateflayer
1 Hellrider
1 Hoarding Dragon
1 Hoard-Smelter Dragon
1 Inferno Titan
1 Keldon Champion
1 Knollspine Dragon
1 Kulrath Knight
1 Magmatic Force
1 Murderous Redcap
1 Sheoldred, Whispering One
1 Shepherd of Rot
1 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Steel Hellkite
1 Thundermaw Hellkite
1 Urabrask the Hidden
1 Utvara Hellkite
1 Viashino Heretic
1 Oversold Cemetary
1 Gratuitous Violence
1 Furnace of Rath
1 Necropotence
1 Pestilance
1 Pyrohemia
1 Warstorm Surge
Artifacts (7)
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Darksteel Plate
1 Rakdos Signet
1 Rakdos Keyrune
1 Charcoal Diamond
1 Fire Diamond
1 Darksteel Ingot
Sorcery (7)
1 Reforge the Soul
1 Bonfire of the Damned
1 Promise of Power
1 Flame Rift
1 Dreadbore
1 Sign in Blood
1 Vandalblast
Instant (6)
1 Rakdos Charm
1 Geth's Verdict
1 Comet Storm
1 Volcanic Fallout
1 Ricochet Trap
1 Price of Progress
14 Mountain
8 Swamp
1 Akoum Refuge
1 Barbarian Ring
1 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Blood Crypt
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Cavern of Souls
1 Dragonskull Summit
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Graven Cairns
1 Lavaclaw Reaches
1 Rakdos Carnarium
1 Rakdos Guildgate
1 Shivan Gorge
1 Tainted Peak
1 Urborg Volcano
1 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
1 Bruna, Light of Alabaster
Creatures (11)
1 Academy Researchers
1 Sun Titan
1 Sovereigns of the Lost Alara
1 Iridescent Drake
1 Rayne, Academy Chancellor
1 Lone Revenant
1 Isperia, Supreme Judge
1 Azor's Electors
1 Soul Seizer
1 Wall of Frost
1 Wall of Denial
Enchantments (25)
Helpers
1 Rhystic Study
1 Sigil of the Empty Throne
1 Land Tax
1 Arrest
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Detention Sphere
1 Martial Law
1 Propaganda
1 Ghostly Prison
1 Sphere of Safety
1 Control Magic
1 Mind Control
1 Treachery
1 Corrupted Conscience
1 Abduction
1 Angelic Destiny
1 Eldrazi Conscription
1 Steel of the Godhead
1 Righteous Authority
1 False Demise
1 Spirit Mantle
1 Ethereal Armor
1 Pemmin's Aura
1 Auramancer's Guise
Sorceries (5)
1 Three Dreams
1 Winds of Rath
1 Terminus
1 Supreme Verdict
1 Hallowed Burial
Instants (9)
1 Dissipate
1 Hinder
1 Fall of the Gavel
1 Counterspell
1 Forbid
1 Condemn
1 Exile
1 Sphinx's Revelation
1 Fact or Fiction
Artifacts (9)
1 Azorius Signet
1 Azorious Keyrune
1 Sol Ring
1 Tooth of Ramos
1 Eye of Ramos
1 Marble Diamond
1 Sky Diamond
1 Skull of Orm
1 Crown of the Ages
9 Island
10 Plains
1 Serra's Sanctum
1 Command Tower
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Glacial Fortress
1 Celestial Colonnade
1 Nimbus Maze
1 Seachrome Coast
1 Winding Caverns
1 Coastal Tower
1 Wanderwine Hub
1 Boreal Shelf
1 Sejiri Refuge
1 Azorious Chancery
1 Azorious Guildgate
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Temple of the False God
1 Hall of the Bandit Lord
1 Vesuva
1 Island of Wak-Wak
1 Maze of Ith