I love to see my opponents play temple bell. It means I get to draw extra cards without paying mana or being dependent on my untap phase/turns. The only time I would consider running it is when I am trying to go infinite in some way (mind over matter)
I think what we see here is not a lack of specific answers, but a lack of general answers. High-threat commanders like Omnath shouldn't be able to stick around on the board long enough that early to do such terrible things. Your deck, and the other decks in your playgroup, should probably be running more cheap (1-3 mana) spot removal to prevent this from happening.
Definitely agree. Without looking at your deck, I would say run more tuck effects for generals, as well as spot removal. Almost all of the problem decks that go crazy in the first couple turns do it because of their commander.
Remove Omnath or Azusa or Kaalia of the Vast when they first come out, and you can significantly slow down their decks. Not to mention when people play those commanders, everyone should be aware of how explosive they are consistently.
I like it for the mana cost. I'd like to see more planeswalkers that arent 4-5 mana cost that don't have abilities that protect themselves while going up in loyalty (for the mere fact that a planeswalker who comes out on turn 1-2 while protecting itself can be extremely hard to take down in most formats).
She's versatile. She combines multiplayer aspects with 1 person hate and has a -2 ability that is incredibly useful in a format with evasion and indestructible creatures running rampant. She can combo with discard decks so well in EDH.
Only problems I have are with her art and her ult. The art seems very cartoony and flashy...just not my preference. Her ult (in multiplayer EDH) is a difficult one to decide whether to do...sort of like Nicol Bolas. Do you waste most of your loyalty counters to severely hinder someone else, thus pissing them off for the rest of the game at you, or do you go control with edicts? In both cases, unless I am far far ahead of everyone else in board position, I go with their first and second abilities (still talking about liliana and bolas here). Obviously she really shouldn't be used except in decks that have plenty of draw and/or recursion, but with black, that should be easy most of the time.
Overall I woulda liked a different ult, but I like the low mana costed planeswalker.
I would just stick a random legendary creature into every pack being drafted. Similar to rare drafting, some people might always pick from the 'general slot' first, while others would try and pick up cards they KNEW would be good. It adds some tension, too, if you're a couple packs in and everybody else has grabbed the legends so far. :3
But then, I'm a little crazy like that...
I do like this idea...I'd love for the draft to include suspense in not being sure whether you'll see something you want/need. Just like in normal cube, there should be small combos that work extremely well together but aren't always gonna come around, and can screw you. The only thing that I would want guaranteed is for people to have picked at least 1 commander and have enough cards in a commanders color available.
If you sit down ready to play an EDH cube with 3 other people for 3 hours (including the time it takes to play the game), how many non-land cards do you think you could get away with drafting per person and not run too long?
I was thinking of drafting lands separately...especially if I were to stick with color identity rules.
One of the problems you would run into would be overlapping general colors and different powerlevels of generals.
My suggestion for choosing a general is to make pools of generals that have a more even powerlevel, and a good split of color association; then let players vote on the pools and distribute the generals randomly.
I'm a little confused on what you mean by overlapping general colors, or rather how that is a problem. If, say, we each draft a pack containing 10 legendary multicolor creatures, then some legends can be used in other legend's deck. For example, if I choose to play The Mimeoplasm, but also get Sapling of Colfenor out of the commander packs, then isn't it a good thing that they are overlapping if I can use Sapling in the Mimeoplasm deck? Sorry if I misunderstand your original statement.
As for powerlevel of commanders, I think the politics of a multiplayer game basically even it out. When you can't choose the broken best cards that combo with your commander, those broken powerful generals that everyone talks about aren't so broken anymore. Zur the Enchanter is pretty difficult to get broken when the cube doesn't include the auras that make him powerful like Diplomatic Immunity. Definitely something I'd keep in mind though.
I have experimented with this using my cube, and I would recommend one change to the EDH rules for cubeing it: No color identity deckbuilding restrictions.
Color identity causes a few major problems in draft:
1. It makes 3&5 color generals absurdly more powerful than mono- or bi-color generals.
2. It creates too much forced overlap in people's drafting choices and takes out the ability to do things you might do in a regular draft like splash or switch colors in response to signaling.
3. It frankly just kills a lot of creativity and decision-making. If I have the only Bant general, then I'm pretty comfortable letting Bant Charm wheel, even though it seems like it would otherwise be first- or second-pickable.
Anyway, that's my take on the format. It is a ton of fun, though, I recommend it highly.
Taking out the color identity rule feels weird to me. If its the only way to make it work, I might do it. But it just seems to change the cube into a more regular cube with a legendary creature that's always handy. I want to shy away from regular cubeness.
This does, however, confirm a suspicion of mine that I should only have bi, tri, and penta colored generals to select from. I agree that mono-colored decks just wouldn't cut it in terms of players getting enough color-identity legal cards to play with. Maybe I'm wrong though, cuz I'd love to also include some mono-colored generals to spice it up.
I don't want people to splash. Splashing feels like other formats. I feel like EDH should have healthy doses of each of its colors. Switching colors doesn't seem like too big of a problem if you give enough multicolored generals for people to choose from. If people start to not see a color or color combination, they can switch to one of the other 5-10 commanders that they chose before drafting.
I see how if someone has the only bant or jund or grixis general that can cause problems for things like ultimatums and charms, but I think that can easily be avoided if I have 2-3 commanders to choose from in each color combination. Those ultimatums could then become very high picks as 1-2 other people could be looking for them as well.
In a EDH deck you have 100 of singleton. Scying isn't a solution for tutor you card. You need real tutor. If you play real tutor you shuffle you library so Top become really usefull. You see three land with Top are card you didn't want right now, so you play a tutor for finding something you want and after that you check your new top3. With Crystal Ball you cannot do this type of trick because you can only use 1 time per turn the ability of Crytal Ball.
If you find Crystal Ball usefull because you can put your top card at the bottom of your library when it's isn't the card you want. Maybe you deck isn't well build. Maybe you put some card on your deck you didn't need.
If you prefer Crystal Ball over Sensei's Divining Top maybe you deck can be the problem. Yeah Sensei's Divining Top was a 10$ Uncommon but it's a great investment and it's a must for every deck. If you are really budget, I have no problem with that you can run Crystal Ball over Sensei's but if you think Crystal Ball is better than Sensei's put Crystal Ball on you deck and try it without Sensei's. You will see the real different with this two cards.
And for finish, in a EDH deck you didn't need two card like that so you have to choose Sensei's Divining Top or Crystal Ball... No a hard choose for me. So it for that I think Crystal Ball was only a option for a budget deck that need to check what his draw for a better tempo.
You're right about the tutor for a specific card, but like I said: if you don't have a tutor, it can be used somewhat for that. Its really just better in somewhat tutoring for a general-type card, say a counterspell or targeted removal. With limited shuffle and tutor effects (I'm looking at you U/R) scrying 2 a turn can help in a general sense.
Additionally, you're somewhat right about it being a poor man's top. When I see budgeted players, they generally run crystal ball. But they are 2 different effects. Top is better for its versatility, but crystal ball can be a great addition to a 3 prong system of searching for cards: shuffle effects, top (rearranging top cards of library), and scrying. I've had plenty of times where I shuffled my deck only to use Top afterwards and find 3 lands on top and immediately wish I had scrying. Not saying its always worth a slot in decks, but don't discount its ability. I lost a EDH tournament because of it actually...at end of turn dude scryed away 2 cards then used top to find the only wincon that could win him the game and prevent me from killing him next turn.
If you are having trouble doing damage to kill people in mono white, might I suggest 2 things, one strategy and one card-selection:
strategy-let others do the majority of the damage. You are mono-white and therefore have the best instant-speed removal in the game, along with the best creatures to block with (most pro-color creatures of any color). You can survive longer than others, so wait until people are below 10-20 life before going all out.
You might not even want to draft the generals... you can always have the selection spread out, and in a random order have everyone pick one. If you wanted you could let players pick more than one, ie if they're running a multicolor deck they might want a mono-colored legend as well. This would be up to you.
I definitely agree that you want to avoid powerful cards, though having some moderately powerful cards mixed in will keep things interesting (not sure which side I'd put genesis wave on. My current deck proves that Genesis Wave can be broken to hell so...). With that in mind, you should probably avoid providing 'broken' generals or cards that infinitely combo with some of the generals provided as well.
For the "generals" draft, I was thinking of making packs of say 5 or so legendary creatures each, and drafting them normally, so that people have a much broader choice and can even include the ones they draft from the "generals packs" in their deck if they decide not to use them as the commander. This is what I did recently in a EDH draft (not cube, just drafting from actual WOTC booster packs) and it worked out very well.
As for the powerful cards, I wouldn't be including things like ophidian eye when niv-mizzet is in the cube and something like worldslayer would be on the fence if indestructible generals were included. If we draft for 30-60 minutes just to make our decks, the last thing I want is for the game to be over in 10 minutes because of mass LD, infinite combos, hard locks, etc.
It seems like a great idea to get new people oriented with EDH and cards that work in the format and why. I see plenty of people playing the format with other formats in mind that just don't work, or aren't mindful of multiplayer politics. It would give folks an opportunity to test out the format and/or colors/generals without having to spend the money to see if they like em. Honestly, the more I think about it, the only thing keeping me from making it right now is the possible monetary cost of getting 500 EDH staples.
Are you looking for white aggro finishers? or control/combo finishers?
Since you're listing storm herd, I'll assume aggro, so I'd suggest serra avatar for a start.
I like crystal ball in decks that have one or more of the following: weak draw support, strong combo, and strong removal.
If you rely on removal, you're going to want to make sure that you have removal in hand at nearly all times. So if you are devoid of it, the scrying can sift through your deck fast to reach it. If you run little removal, however, then it wont work very well as the scrying won't go very deep as you'll need it to.
If you rely on strong combo, you'll want it to sift through your deck for that one card you need to combo with another. Have basalt monolith in hand and need your power artifact? Gonna need to scry a bit if you can't tutor for it in your colors.
If you have weak draw spells and sources, then the scrying is going to be important to sift through those lands and other cards that you won't want to waste your 1 draw a turn on. If you've got strong draw, chances are you'll just sift through it and get card advantage anyway, so the scrying won't help much, especially not to warrant a slot.
Its definitely a good EDH card when it only costs 1 and can sift through a 100 card deck for you and can be run in any deck. But I wouldn't call it a staple.
There isn't much feedback in that thread and the OP never updated what happened, so with the rush of EDH's popularity since about a year ago, I'd like to get players opinions on the best way to build an EDH cube.
My idea at the moment would be to include staples, along with a couple cards that go well with each general. It obviously would follow EDH's banlist and the overall cube would be singleton.
The trouble with it I have at the moment is figuring out how many cards it would need to hold for a maximum of 5 players (it would be drafted for 1 game of multiplayer), so that players wouldn't have to take only cards in the color they want to play, therefore they could end up with about 100 non-land cards.
Additionally, would it be better to draft the generals before or after?
Drafting before:
Pros- Makes it easier for people to know what colors they want to aim to draft
Cons- Can make general deciding boring as people may go for the same generals over and over
Drafting after:
Pros- Forces people to take chances on what they might see with generals in deciding what normal cards to take, therefore more randomness between each draft
Cons- Players could be stuck with a ton of colors because they aren't sure which color generals they will see, thus making everyone play 3 colors each draft
I'm not worried about how long it would take to draft and play, as I wouldn't be looking to play it often, and plenty of groups out there fit in 2-4 games a night, which is what I would assume this could take in terms of time.
I would steer clear of far powerful cards, like genesis wave, sundering titan, etc.
Please comment with suggestions and opinions, as long as those opinions aren't just "This is stupid and can't work." I'd like to hear some reasoning.
It doesn't make sense to be staunchly in favor of EDH always being casual, because if you want to play casual EDH, then you should just find others who would like to play as you do. Expecting others to play a certain way for an unsanctioned format runs the same mistake both ways: a competitive player shouldn't expect that all people should conform to their playstyle. Both groups should understand that there are avenues and paths for them to meet up with like-minded players in which they can all enjoy this format as they like. No one is forcing you to play casual against a competitive or vice versa.
Additionally, this idea of which is better and which is the truer form of EDH makes no sense for a format that has become so widely accepted and mainstream. It is a format with rules and banlists and a following. Deal with what the actual rules are. None of us are on the RC for EDH, so none of us can say that EDH is meant a certain way. I highly doubt that anyone on the RC has ever openly stated anything about this issue.
As for what constitutes competitive vs casual, I believe there are some competitive players who consider themselves casual because they don't take their competitive level as far as physically possible. However, none of these players compare their own decks and combos to classic casual ones. There's not a general rule of thumb on the issue, but as a casual player, I can just tell when something I might do with a card could seem dirtbaggy and I use self-restraint. I think if anything could tell you whether you whether you are casual or not, its thinking back on the last time you decided not to make a specific play or target because you could see how you wouldn't want that to happen to you, for the overall game fun aspect. Do unto other players as you would have done unto you. If you don't care whats done to you, its pretty safe to say you're competitive.
If people are really that scared of the annihilator ability, try running sacred ground if its in your colors. It protects you from annihilator, and can even free up mana for you if they still really want to attack you. Plus its just a great card for all the times people wanna mess with your lands.
why wouldn't you want to keep the 4/4 flier you made for just 1 per turn?
Definitely agree. Without looking at your deck, I would say run more tuck effects for generals, as well as spot removal. Almost all of the problem decks that go crazy in the first couple turns do it because of their commander.
Remove Omnath or Azusa or Kaalia of the Vast when they first come out, and you can significantly slow down their decks. Not to mention when people play those commanders, everyone should be aware of how explosive they are consistently.
She's versatile. She combines multiplayer aspects with 1 person hate and has a -2 ability that is incredibly useful in a format with evasion and indestructible creatures running rampant. She can combo with discard decks so well in EDH.
Only problems I have are with her art and her ult. The art seems very cartoony and flashy...just not my preference. Her ult (in multiplayer EDH) is a difficult one to decide whether to do...sort of like Nicol Bolas. Do you waste most of your loyalty counters to severely hinder someone else, thus pissing them off for the rest of the game at you, or do you go control with edicts? In both cases, unless I am far far ahead of everyone else in board position, I go with their first and second abilities (still talking about liliana and bolas here). Obviously she really shouldn't be used except in decks that have plenty of draw and/or recursion, but with black, that should be easy most of the time.
Overall I woulda liked a different ult, but I like the low mana costed planeswalker.
I do like this idea...I'd love for the draft to include suspense in not being sure whether you'll see something you want/need. Just like in normal cube, there should be small combos that work extremely well together but aren't always gonna come around, and can screw you. The only thing that I would want guaranteed is for people to have picked at least 1 commander and have enough cards in a commanders color available.
If you sit down ready to play an EDH cube with 3 other people for 3 hours (including the time it takes to play the game), how many non-land cards do you think you could get away with drafting per person and not run too long?
I was thinking of drafting lands separately...especially if I were to stick with color identity rules.
Sneak Attack would be good if you are playing that color...since you said you don't care if they are sacrificed.
I'm a little confused on what you mean by overlapping general colors, or rather how that is a problem. If, say, we each draft a pack containing 10 legendary multicolor creatures, then some legends can be used in other legend's deck. For example, if I choose to play The Mimeoplasm, but also get Sapling of Colfenor out of the commander packs, then isn't it a good thing that they are overlapping if I can use Sapling in the Mimeoplasm deck? Sorry if I misunderstand your original statement.
As for powerlevel of commanders, I think the politics of a multiplayer game basically even it out. When you can't choose the broken best cards that combo with your commander, those broken powerful generals that everyone talks about aren't so broken anymore. Zur the Enchanter is pretty difficult to get broken when the cube doesn't include the auras that make him powerful like Diplomatic Immunity. Definitely something I'd keep in mind though.
Taking out the color identity rule feels weird to me. If its the only way to make it work, I might do it. But it just seems to change the cube into a more regular cube with a legendary creature that's always handy. I want to shy away from regular cubeness.
This does, however, confirm a suspicion of mine that I should only have bi, tri, and penta colored generals to select from. I agree that mono-colored decks just wouldn't cut it in terms of players getting enough color-identity legal cards to play with. Maybe I'm wrong though, cuz I'd love to also include some mono-colored generals to spice it up.
I don't want people to splash. Splashing feels like other formats. I feel like EDH should have healthy doses of each of its colors. Switching colors doesn't seem like too big of a problem if you give enough multicolored generals for people to choose from. If people start to not see a color or color combination, they can switch to one of the other 5-10 commanders that they chose before drafting.
I see how if someone has the only bant or jund or grixis general that can cause problems for things like ultimatums and charms, but I think that can easily be avoided if I have 2-3 commanders to choose from in each color combination. Those ultimatums could then become very high picks as 1-2 other people could be looking for them as well.
You're right about the tutor for a specific card, but like I said: if you don't have a tutor, it can be used somewhat for that. Its really just better in somewhat tutoring for a general-type card, say a counterspell or targeted removal. With limited shuffle and tutor effects (I'm looking at you U/R) scrying 2 a turn can help in a general sense.
Additionally, you're somewhat right about it being a poor man's top. When I see budgeted players, they generally run crystal ball. But they are 2 different effects. Top is better for its versatility, but crystal ball can be a great addition to a 3 prong system of searching for cards: shuffle effects, top (rearranging top cards of library), and scrying. I've had plenty of times where I shuffled my deck only to use Top afterwards and find 3 lands on top and immediately wish I had scrying. Not saying its always worth a slot in decks, but don't discount its ability. I lost a EDH tournament because of it actually...at end of turn dude scryed away 2 cards then used top to find the only wincon that could win him the game and prevent me from killing him next turn.
strategy-let others do the majority of the damage. You are mono-white and therefore have the best instant-speed removal in the game, along with the best creatures to block with (most pro-color creatures of any color). You can survive longer than others, so wait until people are below 10-20 life before going all out.
cards-run some artifact creatures that can finish games, such as darksteel colossus, blightsteel colossus, ulamog, the infinite gyre, kozilek, butcher of truth. If you really want to run white creatures, look at the angels. There are a ton of angels out there with 5 power or greater. Or, if you want to, run some equipment to make your hits harder, such as quietus spike, or umezawa's jitte
For the "generals" draft, I was thinking of making packs of say 5 or so legendary creatures each, and drafting them normally, so that people have a much broader choice and can even include the ones they draft from the "generals packs" in their deck if they decide not to use them as the commander. This is what I did recently in a EDH draft (not cube, just drafting from actual WOTC booster packs) and it worked out very well.
As for the powerful cards, I wouldn't be including things like ophidian eye when niv-mizzet is in the cube and something like worldslayer would be on the fence if indestructible generals were included. If we draft for 30-60 minutes just to make our decks, the last thing I want is for the game to be over in 10 minutes because of mass LD, infinite combos, hard locks, etc.
It seems like a great idea to get new people oriented with EDH and cards that work in the format and why. I see plenty of people playing the format with other formats in mind that just don't work, or aren't mindful of multiplayer politics. It would give folks an opportunity to test out the format and/or colors/generals without having to spend the money to see if they like em. Honestly, the more I think about it, the only thing keeping me from making it right now is the possible monetary cost of getting 500 EDH staples.
Thanks for the input.
Since you're listing storm herd, I'll assume aggro, so I'd suggest serra avatar for a start.
If you rely on removal, you're going to want to make sure that you have removal in hand at nearly all times. So if you are devoid of it, the scrying can sift through your deck fast to reach it. If you run little removal, however, then it wont work very well as the scrying won't go very deep as you'll need it to.
If you rely on strong combo, you'll want it to sift through your deck for that one card you need to combo with another. Have basalt monolith in hand and need your power artifact? Gonna need to scry a bit if you can't tutor for it in your colors.
If you have weak draw spells and sources, then the scrying is going to be important to sift through those lands and other cards that you won't want to waste your 1 draw a turn on. If you've got strong draw, chances are you'll just sift through it and get card advantage anyway, so the scrying won't help much, especially not to warrant a slot.
Its definitely a good EDH card when it only costs 1 and can sift through a 100 card deck for you and can be run in any deck. But I wouldn't call it a staple.
There isn't much feedback in that thread and the OP never updated what happened, so with the rush of EDH's popularity since about a year ago, I'd like to get players opinions on the best way to build an EDH cube.
My idea at the moment would be to include staples, along with a couple cards that go well with each general. It obviously would follow EDH's banlist and the overall cube would be singleton.
The trouble with it I have at the moment is figuring out how many cards it would need to hold for a maximum of 5 players (it would be drafted for 1 game of multiplayer), so that players wouldn't have to take only cards in the color they want to play, therefore they could end up with about 100 non-land cards.
Additionally, would it be better to draft the generals before or after?
Drafting before:
Pros- Makes it easier for people to know what colors they want to aim to draft
Cons- Can make general deciding boring as people may go for the same generals over and over
Drafting after:
Pros- Forces people to take chances on what they might see with generals in deciding what normal cards to take, therefore more randomness between each draft
Cons- Players could be stuck with a ton of colors because they aren't sure which color generals they will see, thus making everyone play 3 colors each draft
I'm not worried about how long it would take to draft and play, as I wouldn't be looking to play it often, and plenty of groups out there fit in 2-4 games a night, which is what I would assume this could take in terms of time.
I would steer clear of far powerful cards, like genesis wave, sundering titan, etc.
Please comment with suggestions and opinions, as long as those opinions aren't just "This is stupid and can't work." I'd like to hear some reasoning.
Additionally, this idea of which is better and which is the truer form of EDH makes no sense for a format that has become so widely accepted and mainstream. It is a format with rules and banlists and a following. Deal with what the actual rules are. None of us are on the RC for EDH, so none of us can say that EDH is meant a certain way. I highly doubt that anyone on the RC has ever openly stated anything about this issue.
As for what constitutes competitive vs casual, I believe there are some competitive players who consider themselves casual because they don't take their competitive level as far as physically possible. However, none of these players compare their own decks and combos to classic casual ones. There's not a general rule of thumb on the issue, but as a casual player, I can just tell when something I might do with a card could seem dirtbaggy and I use self-restraint. I think if anything could tell you whether you whether you are casual or not, its thinking back on the last time you decided not to make a specific play or target because you could see how you wouldn't want that to happen to you, for the overall game fun aspect. Do unto other players as you would have done unto you. If you don't care whats done to you, its pretty safe to say you're competitive.