MTG Salvation

I'll use both because why not? One is more balenced one let's me make more broken vintage plays win win. Mtgo needs more choices would love the ability to host games with custom ban lists and rules.

If Iran for 1v1 but they don't use the 20 life and duel commander rules I'll be disappointed just one more set of rules keep track of. I don't mind it as it is now as it's easier to test my multi builds but I they have had full duel commander support I Would love that but this half way thing just seems like a pain in the ass.

If you want a balanced ban list step one is life total to 20 and ban vintage power ring crypt drain yawgwin demonic tutor etc.

This list is pretty horrible you banned Zealous conscripts but are ok with vintage power like demonic tutor mana drain and yawgmoth's will lul.... even in the same catgories like buried alive is not ok at 3.... but I can play entomb at instant speed for 1? I cant play Paradox Engine to essentially give me infinite mana but I can play Mind over matter which essentially gives me infinite mana... Let me inform you as someone who plays vs tons of random casual players on mtgo it does not matter if i have the worst win condtion in the world if my deck has a good curve the correct proportions of spells to make the strategy flow perfectly casuals will hate it. The strategy can be no where near top tier and casual players will get blown back and hate playing against it because they have decks with way to many expensive cards, pet cards that generally suck and a deck that is in no way optimized. I have plenty of decks with none of these cards save the obligatory and stupid crypt ring. They consistently make people rage. you want to know how to make a deck that works in a casual setting ? its not by pulling out Armageddon its by intentionally building weakness in your deck... its by not turning your deck into a fine tuned machine with a purpose, but rather a random pile of cards with poor proportions, by using cards that are sub-optimal in power level IE choosing to play deprive over Mana drain, essentially building your decks the same way they do. I have a consistent casual playgroup and I have found the decks that make for the best games with these less skilled deck builders/players didn't need to abstain from using "unfun cards" they needed to abstain from trying to "make my casual idea as perfect as possible". I have found the best way to play with them is simply to intentionally build weaknesses in the decks I use agaisnt them and to intentionaly bump down the overall power level of the cards im using let Demonic tutor ride the pine and give increasing ambition a chance at the plate or even better not using the correct number of tutors and just playing some random card that will probably be underwhelming and horrible for my curve like Grave Betrayal which will normally suck and once in a blue moon be epic and awesome.

Ah Christmas that magical time of year where you can type "merry xmas all" into mtgo chat and the people just leave when you combo kill them instead of raging and stalling.

Sol ring is fine in the RCs vision type game so its fine . I will say it is without a doubt the single most centralizing card in the format and has a huge impact on more games than any other card in the format in my experience playing thousands of different decks and players on mtgo and in paper. The first thing I think every game is I hope no one else has crypt or ring in their opening hand unless im sitting on copy artifact or dack fayden + mox diamond or something of that nature then im probably hoping they do have and its still the first thing im thinking about.

It's important to note the exact costs of the cards. For instance a 5 color deck cannot
Hope to support necropotence cryptic command eternal witness grasp of fate and still intended to land it's red splash. So you make concessions and decide you don't need cryptic command or necro or w/e. As with most decks when your drawing your fetchlands your typically fine however running a large number of basics in these decks will give you many combinations of lands that do not allow you to cast your cards on time similar to Running too many colorless utility lands. If you think thier is not a drawback to playing any card you want and not paying attention to the colored costs at all your going to have issues. Even with fetchlands say your deck is skewed to have many blue cards but you draw a green black fetchland with a swamp and a Forest in your hand but you want to use enlighten tutor turn 1 to fetch sol ring. You now hav to choose between possibly top decking blue spells and being unable to cast them and not casting your enlighten tutor. With enough fixing you will often be fine and it very much depends on your splash but you will run into issues trying to support a a massive variation of different colors he deeper you go into each. Now if your 5 color deck has very few multi same colored cards it gets easier. So while some builds can indeed run perfectly fine and the benefits can outweigh the cons this is not always true. That being said I don't think non basic land hate is that much of an issue and in many of my 3 color decks I don't play around it depending on the hand if I have a counterspell up I want usea and watery grave and volc island not island, in fact playing around blood moon seems bad when I just played opened myself to other hate I find scarier like strip mine. I don't think the mana bases are much different than 3 color mana bases in this format all the same lands are the best lands. If your mono color you run cards like back to basics because they are good if they fit your strategy. As with most things in Magic the answer is "it depends" and whether or not you should use a 3 color or 4 color commander from a optimization stand point will vary from deck to deck based on your goal. At he end of the day I don't think you avoid playing extra colors because ruination I think if you avoid them it's because the commander is not as good or the strain on your mana base is not worth what the splash brings to your deck or a combination of both. Either way the same decks should be using blood moon and friends and I don't think blood moon being a thing is the reason you choose not to play a 4/5c deck.

I will be honest the 20 life change has me interested the format actually looks quite balanced and fun now. It doesn't however have mtgo support if it did i would already be playing it.

Paradoxical outcome is a great card an I have had alot of success with the card in vintage and as somethign that lets me play FOWs in a storm shell its quite awesome. Here however its not quite as good as I do not run a high enough % of cards that make it great. Becuase of that while its true it has more potential on the combo turn it will be very dead at all other phases of the game with quite a few of the hands I would get. FoF is consistent and the card quailty of this deck is pretty damn high it sees 5 cards and you get all of them as far as YW is concerned. While its not one of the strongest cards in the deck I have never felt it was underwhelming. Turn 1 ring into T2 FoF is not so much worse than t1 ring into t2 wheel. I would play somethign like gifts over it in a heartbeat but the bottom line is while Outcome is very powerful in the right deck I simply dont play enough to support it here. I have put it in my teferi deck though and I found it to be quite good thier where I have more artifacts and often spare mana and also in need of more good hit cards without acess to the tutors you get from black. I will say I do Main phase FoF here more foten than any other deck I play it in which can seems odd but its never felt like a weak card.

This election is stupid. Let me sum up what I hear ... Donald trump is a rapist ... No he's not Bill Clinton is !!! Stfu noob bills not running so doesn't matter bra. Does anyone even care about the differences in what they actually plan to do anymore? No they care about making stupid memes. Mr trump how will you fix X? Hillary Clinton is a murder she should be in jail crooked!!!! .. Ok Mrs Clinton how would you fix X? Donald trump hates women and is racist don't believe me go to hillaryclinton.com. Like what a joke this is. The worst part is you know someone gets payed a lot of money to inform the candidates those kinds of answers are he ones that are actually changing people's minds. I think I'll just take Donald's (the Mtgo user) approach to the next level skip voting all together knowing my one vote won't matter then pretending I voted for whoever most benefits my current company's opinion. Welcome to a brave new age. Hashtag idiocracy.

Quote from metalevolence »

Hunter's prowess is super high risk, high reward. It's super ridiculous in xenagos, god of revels, where both the cards and the trample are huge, but probably shouldn't be in anything that considers itself "competitive" because it's so clunky and easily disrupted

There's some decks where it's not easily disrupted, though, and that removes quite a bit of the high risk portion. I run it in Sigarda, Host of Herons where it's much, much harder to remove the creature after I cast it, and a friend runs it in his Dragonlord Dromoka where the same is true. Uril the Miststalker and Thrun, the Last Troll would probably also fall into the category where it's really safe. In those situations Hunter's Prowess, Hunter's Insight, and Soul's Majesty are all pretty gross.

Outside those four though I'd be fairly hesitant to run it.

Quote from elfric »

this is not playing to win - even if you play and probably win.
this is just training your goldfish moves.
this might be donkeyspace making you worse.
but this is not playing to win.

but now i see why all those constructive conversations just went circles and didnt bring anything worthfull.

this is a threat full of people too arrogant to read sirlin because their own bias is the key to everything.

alot of you gyus are probably winning.
and alot of you know why.
(and some might be upset now because how can someone state something like i did - that must be arrogant - so better do not read further)
and those reasons are probably true.
but in the end you are just slashers, but not playing to win.


just a side note about commander that everyone submitting in this threat SHOULD (in my opinion) know:

how was commander made?
ah yes it was about playing not to win.
is that relevant when playing to win?
ah i guess sirlin told something usefull YEARS ago that can still be found on his FREE page.
hint - honing suboptimal tactics may have to do with it.

The problem with everything you have said thus far is that you are using definitions which (at least to me) differ from most of ours.

Also, saying that strictly playing against people, who are also playing to win, is playing to win is a circular definition that gets you nowhere. This "playing to win" quality needs to be further quantified.

Another thing. Dissmising people because they have not read some arbitrary (albeit probably very interesting) piece of text isn't very constructive. You are free to use any text or body of work to try and more efficiently defend your arguments, but the burden is on you to at least provide a somewhat meaningful summary of it. At this point I have to mention that if you have already done so earlier in this thread, I must apologize, since I must've missed it.

I'd also be interested in you explaining what you meant by "training your goldfish moves"? Personally I find adapting to the metagame one of the most interesting and skill testing elements of EDH and the driving force of innovation. However, I know that many people don't actually play in conditions which foster any semblance of a metagame (like Cockatrice), so the adaptation manifests itself in more subtle ways.

2 things.

1) You weren't there, so you missed the part where the other player stated they were playing the counter for the lolz.
2) When he dropped Glisela, he had lethal on board for both of us anyway.

Either way, how is it any different from telling the Kaalia player "If you kill him on your second combat, I'm good with drawing my card and letting you steamroll me next turn so we can get a new game going"? Good ol' multiplayer politics.

Personally, I see no difference to killing yourself with cardboard, or scooping my cards. If you're playing online, snap concessions something to account for. If you're playing at a table and you don't like someone's ability to snap concede, make a house rule. Simple.

I'm reading these anti-sol ring posts, and wow you guys are noisy. There's a lot of talking and not a lot of listening. I used to share that view but I hope I never sounded that angry about it

First of all - show some damned respect. Sheldon, papa_funk, and the rest of the RC are legends in the magic scene. If you've watched pro tour footage you've probably seen Sheldon judging final tables. He understands competitive magic, and doesn't need a lesson on broken cards.

Secondly - they didn't just invent this wonderful format that we all love, they defined its guiding philosophy which has been the reason for its popularity and growth. This vision of EDH that has been continually challenged for these last ~10 pages or so IS what EDH is.

Perhaps instead of lecturing them on things you *think* they don't understand, stop and listen. There is wisdom and experience behind this philosophy, and if you make some effort to understand and appreciate it you might start to realize that it isn't "inconsistent" or "flawed" - it's actually beautiful.

I'm speaking as a guy who, at first, thought it was ridiculous that sol ring was legal. If you search my username on the now-retiring wotc forums, you'll see me making the same exact points that are being made now. Like EXACTLY. But that was a long time ago and I 'get it' now. And if you open your mind a little, you could too.

And you really should, because believe me, group magic is WAY more fun this way. Deckbuilding....somewhat less so, I'll admit. There is a certain pleasure to be found in tuning a decklist to near-perfection. But as far as actually sitting down for a game with others and enjoying the process of playing? Not even close...embracing the casual EDH philosophy is the way.

I see a lot of examples given, none of them actually applicable. Many of you are confusing banlist problems with social problems.

A guy dumping a bunch of mana rocks and winning uninteractively is not a banlist problem - that's a job for the social contract.

A guy enjoying a great start for krenko, or his voltron general can be fine - but if he decides to use that to focus one single opponent out of the game in 2 swings - that's another social issue too, believe it or not.

Casual play is all about understanding that sometimes it's worth sacrificing some %age of your win rate to ensure the game is more fun for your peers. And that includes everything from deck-building, to deciding who to attack.

Quote from Action_Mane »

Mass land destruction, infinite combos, tutors, Ad Nauseam anything that isn't players curving out into giant 8 drops isn't acceptable for some.

MLD is a legitimate strategy and belongs in the same ranks as ramping (playing more lands than 1 per turn) and card drawing (drawing more cards than 1 per turn).

The obvious tactical advantage is lost on some people, Magic is a game of resources. If you consume too many of those resources you should be punished, just as people who don't consume enough are punished. It's the way the game it supposed to be played. People say "it's not fair, it doesn't let us play Magic". While that isn't exactly true - it doesn't let you play Magic the way you want. Greedy players never realize they're greedy until they're confronted with a counter strategy

I agree with that Magic is a game of resource management, but consider this. Of all the TCG's that have followed in Magic's footsteps, and there are a ton of them, almost none of them put the burden on the players to draw from their deck and lay down in play the resource that dictates the pace of the game. Some give you an automatic "mana" per turn, others have some sort of card per turn limit, but almost none have decided to follow Magic with the way Land cards work.

In Magic itself also, I see players of every limited format repeat the question over and over of how many lands to run. They will study pick orders, archetypes, table tendencies, etc, to a very minute level of detail, but they don't take much interest at all in the idea of a mana base, other than a liability of drawing badly. I have read articles on Limited play where they literally say that the stronger the cards of your deck are, the more land you should play regardless, because it reduces the number of games you lose to mana screw and you should be winning most of your other games once you do that. It's literally viewed as nothing more than a liability. EDH players ask all the time about how many lands you should run, and a lot of them to prefer to just settle the question at an exact number that works for every single deck rather than building the deck to manage its resources. Even when R&D asked the question of the community through "the great designer search", what are some positives about mana screw, MaRo responded that the best answers had something to do with making sure even extremely skill-imbalanced games or unfavored matchups contain some chance to win for the underdog. And everyone knows that design has cut back on MLD, spot LD at 3cmc or less, etc, until it practically doesn't exist now. Overall, the idea is that the way mana works in Magic amounts to little more than an uncomfortable liability.

To sum it up, Magic is an extremely odd game in that it's completely different than the game that everyone wishes it were, and still people play it anyway. It's true that it's about resource management, with the player effectively amassing the most resources nearly always winning. It's also true that most people dread that aspect about Magic.

For me, Magic continues to have its appeal for the very reason of these aspects that are widely considered mistakes. An EDH game where players are jockeying for resource strangleholds on one another, or are vying to exploit very narrow timing windows where they can combo off, those are fun games to me. TCG's without these things seem a little bit flat and childproof to me. And those strategies continue to prove that they are central to the game due to how effective they are in every game setting. But, those happen to be things that players loathe to learn, and design likely regrets.

In EDH specifically, you find a higher concentration of players wanting to play the game that they wish Magic was, and not the game that it actually is. You're going to have to confront that fact somehow.

It's never been "my way or the highway." It's "Look at this nice highway we paved; we're going to take a trip down it. You're welcome to come along. Also feel free to do all the off-roading you want.

A T3 bomb can easily be countered by anyone running Blue.

If you're having problems, I feel bad for you son, I've got 99 problems but Ramp ain't one. Heck, I've gotten T2 Zur and still lost multiple times despite of it WITH FoW protection. Run more Answers.

Yes that's a blanket/"unhelpful" answer, but the funny thing about EDH is this; those who actually run answers aren't the ones complaining about things being hard to answer. You can find a ton of them at the 0-2 mana cost, so even without ramp you should be able to prevent the board from going off. There is a reason why most bombs cost 6-8 mana and most answers cost 0-2.

First off, I'll concede that you have some valid points here. I'm still a bit resistant, though.

I didn't mean to imply that it should be a regular occurance that people are going above 50 life on you or anything. My point was more along these lines: I think the appeal of DDFT is that the Doomsday/Burning Wish combo allows you to access so much of your deck/sideboard at any given time that filling your 75 with the most versatile and varied cards creates a toolbox that gives you game in most situations if you're experienced enough to recognize what to do in certain situations when they come up.

In this way, what I feel like I'm seeing is that you haven't gained the experience to see better ways to increase your storm than using Ideas Unbound and Ill-Gotten Gains, whose only use in the sideboard seems to be to increase storm. I'll concede to you that I was unaware that the Ideas Unbound in the sideboard made for cheaper requirements for Burning Wish piles...because in the time I've been following Doomsday I haven't seen a single player wish for Ideas Unbound because I haven't seen a single other player with Ideas Unbound in their sideboard, and I haven't seen anyone reflect on their games and say "I really wish I had Ideas Unbound in my sideboard because I would have won so many more games than I currently do." I suppose it isn't my place to say that it's wrong, but I would suggest trying to see if there are other ways to increase storm in your practice games (Double Doomsday Piles, Time Spiral Piles, Looping your Sensei's Divining Tops) because it seems like if nothing, you are relying a lot on the sideboard Ideas Unbound when everything I know about the deck implies that you shouldn't have to be. Also, if I may ask, how much does the pile you normally use cost? It seems like you're saying that the pile you're talking about is predicated on you having Ideas Unbound in hand, and that you're casting Burning Wish for Ideas Unbound, which seems really slow to me.

I would also say that I never side in Time Spiral because it's easier to access the card from your sideboard than it is to find it in your deck, and it's easier to cast it off of your LEDs than it is to put together 6 mana when your opponent is actively disrupting you.

That lands matchup does seem tough, I won't lie. I would seek more advice from more experienced players by starting a thread on the Storm Boards about that one. That being said, if I were in your meta, I'd probably have Emrakul and Shelldock Isle in my sideboard with a Pithing Needle and just hope for a quick Doomsday with Pithing Needle to prevent the lands player from Wastelanding Shelldock Isle (does the deck have room for more than one or two Ghost Quarters?) Maybe Trickbind or Stifle if I didn't want to gamble on which land they'd play.

If no one is maindecking Force of Will, you should be smashing your opponents with ease instead of worrying about disrupting them. I see what you're trying to get at with Inquisition of Kozilek, but I disagree with you because I don't think that Gitaxian Probe is necessary for making Cabal Therapy do what it's supposed to. You see, I feel that the function of Cabal Therapy in this deck is "Make sure your opponent has 0 copies of [Card X] in hand." Because you're playing a Storm Deck, the range of cards your opponent could be holding that are relevant to you should be narrow enough that you should know what to name with Cabal Therapy most of the time, which makes Inquisition just a worse version of Cabal Therapy to me. It is also very much worth burning that Gitaxian Probe if you're afraid of actually naming the wrong hate card. I'm with you on Fireblast, though--I joke that it's actually "Red Force of Will" against this deck. Another thing though is that Inquisition doesn't discard Mindbreak Trap, which can be relevant.

It does appear that lejay did say that about Ideas Unbound, but I've never seen him play an Ideas Unbound in his sideboard, which leads me to believe that it shouldn't be that important to be playing one. We definitely side Contract in "just for four Pyro" because it blanks your opponent's disruption against you at almost no cost to your Plan A. The main decks I sideboard Infernal Contract in against are Goblins and RUG, so I don't feel like the burn comes into play as much against the decks that want to Red Blast you (Delver only plays four Lightning Bolt, but plays enough permission that I think it's a good choice to try and naturally blank some of their spells--but I won't get into my sideboard table here). The "All Bolts" Burn deck is the exception to the rule when it comes to playing Contract.

When you side in Emrakul, you're saying one or more of these things:
"My opponent has no game against me losing half of my life and passing/double passing the turn with Shelldock Isle." ("Scrub" decks that don't play Wasteland)
"My opponent's deck plays enough oppressive hate cards that my best bet is to try to cast an early Doomsday before their hate comes online and hope they can't disrupt Shelldock Isle." (Stax Decks, Counterbalance Decks, Enchantress)
"Just having Emrakul in my deck can really mess up my opponent's plans." (High Tide, Show and Tell decks)

All in all, it seems like a lot of what you're saying is "I'm still learning" and "My choices are metagame calls." I can certainly see where you're coming from in these regards--your choices aren't completely egregious to the extent that I would say that you're making a clear mistake or anything. I do feel that your sideboard could be better constructed with more experience, though. I recall you saying that you started off with emidln's list from the SCG event, but I also recall very soon after that lejay convinced him that 2 Trop 4 Decay was less good against the decks he uses it for than 1 Trop, 3 Decay, 1 Shelldock Isle, 1 Emrakul.