Lastly you'll probably want something along the lines of Oblivion Stone, All is Dust, and/or Nevinrryl's Disk for a little more board control. Right now if someone floods the field early on, you don't really have a way around it (outside of killing them with your general, of course).
Okay so I'm a bit unsure about how Possibility Storm handles a Commander that is cast from the hand and then put into the Command Zone (as a replacement effect) when cast. Am I wrong in thinking that it messes up the ability as there is no exiled card to share a card type with?
If I DonateBronze Bombshell, and my opponent controls a planeswalker, they choose whether or not to redirect the damage, correct? It's a little ambiguous due to the way the Bombshell is worded...
Alright so, I've read the first page of replies and the last page and everyone seems to be saying similar things for the most part.
I think the biggest problem is the people that are playing/building group hug. Things like Howling Mine are fine when you capitalize on it harder than most of your opponents. The big thing is who you hug. If you ONLY hug the group as a whole, or if you Trade Secrets the control/combo player, or if you play Tempting Wurm without some sort of contingency (My personal favourite is Weird Harvest for a few, and then Tempting Wurm with Hallowed Burial or another wrath effect in hand just in case.), then you deserve to be hated out of the game. The trick is to use your hug cards to even the board state, not throw things out of balance like the decks you guys are suggesting (Which "give the game" to combo or ramp decks). Also, a hug deck should run a couple win conditions, even if they're somewhat crazy.
I play a Karona, False God group hug deck with the five Vows to turn her into a win-con. It's a lot of fun and everyone enjoys playing with it at the table.
Acidic Slime is one of the best cards for a deck like this. Always going to kill the opponent's creature, and take at least a land with him as he goes. I'd run 3-4 MD. Also, Thragtusk lol. Also you can tutor for the slime. Win/win/win.
If you cast an Epic spell and Radiate it, you'll have X copies of the Epic spell on the stack (let's say 3 for 3 opponents). On your next upkeep, you'll get the same number of copies, though you're no longer forced to choose separate targets.
That's right! So when my buddy playing Rhys the Redeemed has 12 little tokens, and the other couple of players have a creature or two and I play Undying Flames with Radiate I get to watch the whole world burn
Of course you risk milling yourself but that just makes things interesting!
You guys have the right idea, but you're more focused on manipulating the experiment when cast, than looking at the contents of the experiment itself. Today I cast the Experiment for 12, Increasing Vengeance'd it, and flashed back the vengeance all at once, for a grand total of Epic Experiment 48. I'm more looking to brute-force a massive experiment!
If you're curious, the game ended when I used Eternal Dominion, copied, to snag Leyline of the Void and Helm of Possession from my opponent's deck. While destroying all his lands and bouncing all his artifacts and shuffling his hand into his library. Oh and I searched out all basic lands and wheeled three times and everyone drew a bunch of cards and...yeah.
Epic Experiment. This card is...pretty alright. It's not great, but not bad by any means. My friend Intet the Dreamer and I are going to craft the most convoluted, crazy experiment ever, but we need some help!
To help build this experiment we need some serious ramp effects, and a way to store mana would be a good plan as well. Cultivate and friends are always good, but some other one-shot effects might be useful (Mana Geyser?). The new Mana Bloom and the older Gemstone Array do this well enough, but it would be nice to have more effects similar to this. (Preferably not storage lands though.)
Of course I'm running things like Mystical Tutor to help find the Experiment itself, as well.
Any ideas? Any cards with particularly awesome synergy I didn't think of yet?
I do everything I can to not really need to split my resources. I have eight decks. One of every mono-colour, one bicolour (W/G), one tricolour(R/U/G), and one five colour.
I have a Sol Ring for almost every deck. I just put them in whichever decks I was having the most fun with when I picked them up. Aside from that there are very few cards that I'd put in more than one of those decks that aren't some simple common like Cultivate.
Basically, my advice is: Make your decks as wildly different as possible to allow for multiple colours being used across them. As you may have noticed, all my multi-colour decks run green. However, my Azusa deck gets all the big fatties and crazy X-spells and things, my Sir Shandlar of Eberyn deck gets a small pile of ramp, mostly in the form of creatures, and all the life-gain creatures like Thragtusk, my Intet, the Dreamer deck gets all the cheap-ish "comes into play tapped" ramp spells like Explosive Vegetation that I can copy with Twincast and such, and my five-colour deck gets mostly multi-coloured cards.
Each one of these decks look for very specific things in a card, despite all drawing from the same pool of cards. It can be really tough when you have a small collection though, I understand that. Hope this helps in some way. Good luck!
My first general was Intet, the Dreamer.
I wanted to play my favourite colours, and I like random big spells and cataclysmic plays. I built a deck with a ton of ramp and giant explosive spells that do hilarious things when copied multiple times. Spells like Eternal Dominion!
It has its problems, but I still find it more fun than the other formats, and eventually I'll find some solutions or figure out something to make it better!
Ral, thankfully I don't have to deal with players like the ones you mentioned as much. Well, there are a few people who don't get along, but that's life, and they can deal with it okay.
That said, your voting system seems really interesting, and I think I might give it a shot the next night everyone gets together to play. It might be what our group needs to right itself, at least until I figure out another method.
Alternatively, I was considering creating a commander cube. A few hundred cards, and then a pool of 50 legendary creatures. You draft or sealed through the cube and then pick your legendary creature for the deck you've built. Just tossing around ideas with some of the players around here.
The whole new playgroup thing would be exactly what I'd do...but I own the store the playgroup plays in. I've tried talking to them all about it but...nobody is even remotely inclined to power down their decks.
The pauper idea is really interesting. I've tried getting people to play Pauper before but with a theme idea that might be a lot of fun. I'll suggest that next time they're here.
Haha, I was also going to suggest a new playgroup. Where are you located? I'm always looking for new casual, easygoing players as my playgroup is tiny (usually three, max four) and it'd be nice to see some new decks every now and then on the rare occasion that we can all coordinate work/personal schedules to play.
If you're in the GTA and are reasonably mature and easygoing, feel free to PM me if you'd like to try out my group.
I'm about 3-4 hours away from the GTA sadly, in Brockville, Ontario. Some day, if I'm going to be in the area for a bit (I have relatives in Whitby) I might toss you a PM and see if your group is up for a couple games.
Lastly you'll probably want something along the lines of Oblivion Stone, All is Dust, and/or Nevinrryl's Disk for a little more board control. Right now if someone floods the field early on, you don't really have a way around it (outside of killing them with your general, of course).
I think the biggest problem is the people that are playing/building group hug. Things like Howling Mine are fine when you capitalize on it harder than most of your opponents. The big thing is who you hug. If you ONLY hug the group as a whole, or if you Trade Secrets the control/combo player, or if you play Tempting Wurm without some sort of contingency (My personal favourite is Weird Harvest for a few, and then Tempting Wurm with Hallowed Burial or another wrath effect in hand just in case.), then you deserve to be hated out of the game. The trick is to use your hug cards to even the board state, not throw things out of balance like the decks you guys are suggesting (Which "give the game" to combo or ramp decks). Also, a hug deck should run a couple win conditions, even if they're somewhat crazy.
I play a Karona, False God group hug deck with the five Vows to turn her into a win-con. It's a lot of fun and everyone enjoys playing with it at the table.
That's right! So when my buddy playing Rhys the Redeemed has 12 little tokens, and the other couple of players have a creature or two and I play Undying Flames with Radiate I get to watch the whole world burn
Of course you risk milling yourself but that just makes things interesting!
If you're curious, the game ended when I used Eternal Dominion, copied, to snag Leyline of the Void and Helm of Possession from my opponent's deck. While destroying all his lands and bouncing all his artifacts and shuffling his hand into his library. Oh and I searched out all basic lands and wheeled three times and everyone drew a bunch of cards and...yeah.
Here's what I've figured out already:
Storm is hilarious. Seriously. So that gives us:Temporal Fissure, Hunting Pack, Ignite Memories, Mind's Desire, Brain Freeze, and Empty the Warrens.
Epic spells (Undying Flames, Eternal Dominion) and Twincast effects also work perfectly.
To help build this experiment we need some serious ramp effects, and a way to store mana would be a good plan as well. Cultivate and friends are always good, but some other one-shot effects might be useful (Mana Geyser?). The new Mana Bloom and the older Gemstone Array do this well enough, but it would be nice to have more effects similar to this. (Preferably not storage lands though.)
Of course I'm running things like Mystical Tutor to help find the Experiment itself, as well.
Any ideas? Any cards with particularly awesome synergy I didn't think of yet?
I have a Sol Ring for almost every deck. I just put them in whichever decks I was having the most fun with when I picked them up. Aside from that there are very few cards that I'd put in more than one of those decks that aren't some simple common like Cultivate.
Basically, my advice is: Make your decks as wildly different as possible to allow for multiple colours being used across them. As you may have noticed, all my multi-colour decks run green. However, my Azusa deck gets all the big fatties and crazy X-spells and things, my Sir Shandlar of Eberyn deck gets a small pile of ramp, mostly in the form of creatures, and all the life-gain creatures like Thragtusk, my Intet, the Dreamer deck gets all the cheap-ish "comes into play tapped" ramp spells like Explosive Vegetation that I can copy with Twincast and such, and my five-colour deck gets mostly multi-coloured cards.
Each one of these decks look for very specific things in a card, despite all drawing from the same pool of cards. It can be really tough when you have a small collection though, I understand that. Hope this helps in some way. Good luck!
I wanted to play my favourite colours, and I like random big spells and cataclysmic plays. I built a deck with a ton of ramp and giant explosive spells that do hilarious things when copied multiple times. Spells like Eternal Dominion!
It has its problems, but I still find it more fun than the other formats, and eventually I'll find some solutions or figure out something to make it better!
That said, your voting system seems really interesting, and I think I might give it a shot the next night everyone gets together to play. It might be what our group needs to right itself, at least until I figure out another method.
Alternatively, I was considering creating a commander cube. A few hundred cards, and then a pool of 50 legendary creatures. You draft or sealed through the cube and then pick your legendary creature for the deck you've built. Just tossing around ideas with some of the players around here.
The pauper idea is really interesting. I've tried getting people to play Pauper before but with a theme idea that might be a lot of fun. I'll suggest that next time they're here.
I'm about 3-4 hours away from the GTA sadly, in Brockville, Ontario. Some day, if I'm going to be in the area for a bit (I have relatives in Whitby) I might toss you a PM and see if your group is up for a couple games.