My playgroup has talked about everyone building wishboard decks for a while now, so I'm curious to hear other players' experiences who have ACTUALLY PLAYED WITH WISHES. Was it fun? Was it a fun variation, like planechase etc? Did it ruin the spirit of edh by omg adding 10 cards to the format that is based on adding 40 cards to normal magic? Real experiences, people.
There were some wrinkles with them at first for one guy who was playing U/R and he used his wishes to just find hosers, but since then has swapped them out to let them search up situational but still fun cards. For refernece, this includes Warp World so that isn't errybody's cup of tea, but I think it's a creative and fun use. And as has been argued elsewhere, it's hardly imbalancing or hard to answer.
The only other people who have used wishboards have been the types who like convoluted or cornercase interactions, so they want Wishes just because they're weird and unique. I'm sure you have friends that fit into that category, or maybe you do yourself; the type of player who just likes exploring what can be done for the sake of doing it. I'm not one of these people, but I do enjoy seeing what more creative deckbuilders come up with using Wishes.
Overall, I give the ol' wishboard a big thumbs-up. It's no different from most of the insanely abusable tools we have access to in this format. If a guy is a dick with his wishboard, you can take that away and he'll just end up abusing something else. I do recommend giving them a spin in your group if you've been looking at them, you'll never know if you don't try but I imagine if it's a healthy group you'll end up liking them.
That said, when everyone has a Wishboard, it'll end up feeling a lot less special, which is part of the appeal to me.
EDH is a format with a ton of variants, which is funny because they're variants on a variant. That said, it helps a lot to keep the format interesting and fresh. If you're playing with the same local guys a lot, Commander can get stale, especially if you're not building new decks. Taking a look at some variants on EDH can get you into the deckbuilding mood again, or at least let you look at an existing metagame in a new light.
Here's a few things on Commander variants I've produced personally, or have found useful myself in the past. Some of them require building new decks and others allow you to just use standard Commander decks.
Pauper Commander: A commons-only format, Pauper is a fun take on EDH because it provides a departure from expensive staple and bomb cards that are exciting at first, but can get boring after extended exposure. I covered Pauper EDH in S3E10 of CommanderCast with Adam Styborski and d0su, who plays a very nasty Pauper deck. Additionally, my man Max writes about Pauper regularly here.
My personal experience with Pauper is a mixed bag. I do recommend trying it out to see what you think. I found it got stale after a while, with a strong tendency to stall on creature floods. Without strong knockout punch cards, aggro is even worse in Pauper than normal Commander. A lot of games ended up being grindfests for card advantage, which is my least favourite way to play Magic. I did discover a lot of new cards that surprised me with their effectiveness. It's also pretty boss to take on full-powered EDH decks with a pauper one.
There's also some debate on what to use as Commanders. I've heard everything from any uncommon creature, to common-only Legends, to any Legendary creature. I strongly recommend using any Legendary creature. The true pauper Commanders are just boring, and allowing mythics and rares lets your general feel very unique.
Horde Magic: This is a funny format where you and your friends play against an automated stack of cards. My understanding it it's like a 'raid' in the WOW TCG, but I can't tell you much about that since I've never played it. You build a pile of tokens and spells, and then play against it. You can find the original articles on the format here and here, and my video primer (with me and my wife playing against the zombie horde!) here.
I like Horde a lot. It's inexpensive to build a fun Horde, and provides a welcome break from competitive play in the form of some co-op. That said, it's even less mechanically sound than regular EDH. A lot of cards let you kill the Horde outright. Sometimes, the Horde will have an unstoppable opening and kill you in two turns. The variance is about as high as it gets. This is probably the wonkiest, most casual Magic I have ever played, but it's a lot of fun if you can get into it.
EDH Cube: The good people over at One General To Rule Them All are the leading resource on EDH Cube, and I have the good fortune to have Coda on CommanderCast to discuss the Cube with me once. One of the regulars on the show has also built an EDH Cube. It's a lot like regular cube, expect that you're drafting Commanders and building full EDH decks.
The concept is incredible on paper to me, but the execution is so daunting I've never tried it. It's too many expensive cards and then too much time to draft. You could certainly build a cheaper EDH Cube, but then I'm too lazy to build ANY cube. If you think you can go through with it, I'm sure your playgroup would love it, but how much time would you spend doing this? The time investment to complete one draft seems offputting.
Planechase Variants: Aside from the 'traditioonal' Planechase, there's also a few variants on it: Eternities Map and Single Stack are the most common in my experience. We talked about Planechase in S4E13. Personally, I love Planechase and am super stoked for the upcoming product. I think that every now and then it's the perfect compliment to Commander, adding a lot of randomness and overall spice.
If you've never tried it, do look at the Eternities Map. It helps reduce the randomness, if you don't like that, by providing a measure of control over what planes you play on. I think it's ok, but not great. It consumes a LOT of table space. Personally, I prefer the simplicity of single stack Planechase.
Traditional Alt. Formats: Most alternative formats like two-headed nicely project themselves over EDH if you're willing to put up some some degree of wonkiness (if you're playing Commander, then you probably are). If you just want to take a look at some alternative formats, I recommend my friend Shoe's website, WOOBERG.com. He has a list of tons of format templates you can mess around with in conjunction with Commander.
Deck Draft: This isn't really an alternative format or ruleset, but does shake up a playgroup. Basically, you set everyone's decks up in a line and everyone rolls some dice. Then, starting with the high roll, that player picks a deck, and you do this down the line. It just lets you play some new decks and gain a new perspective, and is super easy to do. If you want to make it even better, you set up two lines of decks, and then you also do a reverse-draft for the second game of the night, where the guy who picked a deck list picks first form what remains.
This is a great old time, but you do need to implicitly trust the people you play with not to steal from you. That's the only real drawback. I love playing this way with my friends, and it often inspires new deck designs from me.
Respawn Magic: A common issue in some EDH groups is a single player gets eliminated, and then the rest of the players spend hours playing the same game with the dead guy skulking off to the side. Respawn Magic fixes that to some extent by letting 'dead' players jump back into the game. You can use a set number of respawns, a time limit, or a score limit to determine the ultimate winner, or just play an endless battle where you murder your buddies repeatedly. I've played a ton of Respawn with my friend Scott, and we talk about it a good bit on S3E11.
For the original (as far as I know) article on Respawn, check this link out. For a document I made to help explain various scoring mechanisms, click here.
Personally, I love playing Respawn. It has an entire meta-strategy to itself and lets you play a deck totally differently from how you normally play it. Plus, racking up kill counts is awesome. That said, it has some issues. Sometimes, a player will pull fairly far ahead and just assume a stranglehold on the game, making himself unstoppable. A combo player who can theoretically just kill everyone as they respawn also needs some remedy (we usually just have a combo guy 'suicide' and respawn). It's hardly a technical masterpiece but respawn is good sloppy fun.
I've historically enjoyed seeing Wishes played. Maybe it has to do with the fact that it doesn't happen terribly often, as not a lot of players around here are hardcore enough to care about the giant strategic advantage it might give you. But I've seen both good applications and bad. We talked about it on the show a while ago, but in short:
You can use them to find the appropriate crushing hoser at an ideal time for you. This is the least interesting and most actively harmful function for Wishes in casual groups, but I find people doing this usually get told to stop pretty quickly or do so of their own volition.
A use proposed on Off-Color Cast that I'd never heard before was to use Wishboards to keep some of your stronger and less popular cards out of the deck unless it's appropriate to play them in a given playgroup. This is a great idea I think. For example, my local groups have all unbanned Kokusho, but when I travel I ask people if it's cool for me to use it. If not, having a sideboard with other cards that are RC Legal would be perfect, and I can also sub out stuff like Armageddon in groups that don't like those effects for something else instead. This is one of the best uses for the Wishboard I could imagine.
The kind of utility-oriented board described by Uranium sounds good in principle, so long as the hosers like Acid Rain come out. I can see leaving Insurrection in the board and would take no issue with it.
Some people just like them for various functions. I've seen them used to store Eldrazi on the side to fetch up with Spawnsire of Ulamog in an Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder deck that would chain together sacrifices to eventually plop in the Eldrazi. He was doing it with a non-infinite combo and it was easy to disrupt, so we let it ride because it's kind of awesome. Similarly, my man who liked really convoluted decks built one designed to win via Battle of Wits and Ring of Ma'rûf with a bunch of other weird stuff. Was it good? No. I don't think he ever won. But he had spirit and that's where it counts.
Overall, when I was learning to play EDH in college I was brutalized by a deck that used Wishes quite a bit, but I've seen more than enough fun functions for them to approach it with an open mind. It's like pretty much anything else in Commander: we all have access to the tools to build an oppressive piece of crap and nobody likes playing against. Not every card that has a reputation for being evil (even Necropotence!) is necessarily going to be abused to the fullest. If you enjoy playing against somebody, it's unlikely their sudden addition of a wishboard is going to change their overall demeanor or deck style. I like leaving the option on the table for the creative types to mess around with.
I'm a little surprised Sengir Autocrat hasn't gotten more love. Four bodies for four mana is very powerful, even if three of them are 0/1s that are exiled when Autocrat dies. Certainly one of my favorites from Homelands.
I've got mad love for the Autocrat. Also, whoever is rolling with Winter Sky wins boss status immediately. That's just awesome. I have been known to use Headstone from time to time as well. Cremate is good enough that I'm willing to run a second, crappier version. Plus, being from Homelands, it's worth some style points.
This has been a pretty useful thread, as I've been brainstorming this guy a bit as well and my sort of goal has been similar to fallenfromgrace's. In general, I'm just going to try and have five guys around so that Thromok can devour them and become a one-shot machine. Obviously, going bigger than that is ok, but I've been tooling around my collection looking for individual cards that either create five creatures independently, or can reliably do so over time. This deck isn't going to be especially powerful but I'm sure it'll be a fun gimmick to pull out from time to time.
Nemata, Grove Guardian is a card I've been considering. Given the liklihood of having lots of Saprolings on hand and his ability to create the saps himself, he seems like a fun choice.
Seed the Land might work for you if you have a lot of ramp. The symmetry hurts you, but if you plan to ramp a lot and give Thromok trample (which I imagine is on the agenda), then it might be pretty awesome. Along the same lines of potentially symmetrical stupidity, Liege of the Hollows isn't very good, but might be hilarious enough to try out in this deck.
A lot of people have mentioned Deranged Hermit but Thelonite Hermit, while certainly not as good, could also go nicely in this deck. It helps with a saproling sub-theme and makes five guys Thromok can consume to become lethal-type large and attack immediately. If you really need to go in with Saprolings, this can also make it slightly less likely to look entirely embarassing.
On the morph end, you could also use Warbreak Trumpeter, which is not good but would add to the deception of your worthwhile morph cards, can make guys at instant speed, and is very funny to kill somebody with. Maybe even Ib Halfheart, Goblin Tactician could make a cameo appearance, though I'm not sure you'd have enough mountains.
As a believer in incredibly stupid gimmicks, I would also probably put in Life and Limb. In you really want to go all-in, this card will let you do it. It can also produce some pretty interesting game-ending plays with Aggravated Assault and Breath of Fury, and with the aforementioned Nemata, it usually spells game over. I know it's not for everyone, but I like this kind of dumb stuff.
.RT. also mentioned Artifact Mutation and that's one of the cards I'm most looking forward to in this deck. Given the number of five-plus mana artifacts running around, getting five or more guys at instant speed on the end of an opponent's turn should be an amazing deal.
Also, don't forget Nim Deathmantle if you plan on flinging Thromak. If you have enough creatres in play (and with something like Avenger of Zendikar, it won't be hard), you can probably fling him with a Bloodshot Cyclops, bring him back, and have him eat enough creatures to be a lethal fling or attack again.
A lot of the cards I've suggested here are kind of stupid, but the decks I'm building with the new Planechase commanders are all going to be decks where I'm avoiding using cards I already have in other decks. It means I'm going to have to try some new things, which I look forward to a great deal.
In an unfortunate twist, I’m being forced to take my literacy skills out of their life support cribbing so I can write an article nobody will read on CommanderCast. One of my earlier efforts at this was made a LOT easier because I asked people for help, and they really came though, so being as unoriginal as I am, I wanted to dip into the same well twice.
The subject is essentially a list that will provide people with a broad range of restrictions they can choose from when building a deck (maybe even mixing and matching them). This type of thing is a common topic on the show and I often get asked for themes and restriction suggestions in e-mails, so I figured by writing an article I can point people towards a solid resource for a common question (note this is not an attempt to avoid answering e-mails or whatever, that’s probably the biggest upside of the show). I have quite a few restrictions of my own in place on some of my decks, ranging from things that are super-basic like budget cutoffs to things that might not actually occur to people who are playing against the deck.
I was hoping that members of the forum who also like to use self-imposed restrictions to spice up their deck construction and avoid monotony could post their ideas that they’ve used to some effect. They can be abstract restrictions, of course—I’m hardly about to turn up my nose to much of anything given how half-assed most of my own ideas are—but I would absolutely love to see decklists that have been made with the restrictions you’re suggesting. I know a lot of people post decklists online, either here or places like TappedOut, so if you have a list you’ve made with a restriction, providing a link would also be appreciated. It really helps people see what you can do with a restricted building mindset and still craft a good, fun deck.
Anyway, tldr: post your restrictions on deck construction you use yourself to help make building decks more interesting to you. Suggestions are hugely appreciated.
…oh yeah and I’ll totally give you credit instead of just plagiarizing you, I SWEAR
Hi guys, I'm looking for some advice on building my first cube. While I've got some experience i engineering limited environments (I built a Mental Magic stack, a Type 4 stack, and have spent plenty of time helping friends assemble their cubes), this will be my first time building a cube proper. We have no shortage of cubes in my local area so I need to make mine stand out if it's ever going to get any play. Towards this end, I've decided I want my cube to emulate the limited environment of Rise of the Eldrazi in a way, which has been my favourite 'official' limited play format in years.
To me Rise draft and sealed were characterized by the slow build-up of resources to giant, game-ending bombs like Ulamog's Crusher, along with building defensive positions with tons of Defender creatures. There were other draft decks that were pretty sweet (like the U levelers deck) but I would like to make sure that flavour of slowly building to a giant brawl is intact. So myself and a friend started referring to it as being a 'critical mass' cube, where the need to defend early is still there because of solid early-game threats, but there's also lots of support for late-game bombs and getting to 7+ mana is commonly needed to play the biggest threats in the cube.
Towards this end I have a few questions I'm hoping veteran cube builders can help me out with:
1) Do you think the cube would work better if it included multiple copies of some cards, even a bunch of the cards? Maybe even retain a sort of rarity system with 4-of commons, 2-of uncommons and singleton rares? I've never seen this kind of thing in any cube and would like to hear any feedback on it.
2) If the goal is to kind of build up to a 'critical mass' phase of the game where large effects are eventually going to clinch the game, what are the best ways of controlling the pace but ensuring green still has a strong identity in the cube? I normally associate green with fast aggro and ramp, but I don't know if the ramp will kind of betray my idea of slower games with a bigger buildup.
3) Other than Invokers, what are some good cards that can be played in the early game but also provide a clear, devastating endgame option?
Other generic stuff: not sure about the size of the cube, I can access most cards pretty easily but want to keep the environment from centering around early-game bombs like Swords of X+Y, and the cube will be played 1v1.
Any help would be appreciated. I'm just sketching out the rough idea for this now, so nothing's been purchased or set in stone. If the whole idea sounds stupid, feel free to tell me (I'll probably still build it though).
Hi all, on an upcoming episode of CommanderCast (for those unfamiliar, it's my hobby podcast about EDH) I am going to be hosting a Q&A session with two members of the Commander Rules Committee. In it, I will be asking questions directly from the playerbase. We have done this once in the past and it lead to plenty of good discussion, so I wanted to have a second round of direct audience-to-RC questions on the show. The people being interviewed will be Alex and Gavin, who have generously agreed to be recurring guests on the show.
If you have ever wanted to ask a member of the Rules Committee a question, then this of an opportunity to get an answer. There's not really a whole lot else to it. If you have a question you would like me or Donovan to ask them, feel free to post it here, send it to me on Twitter (@CommanderCast), or e-mail me directly: CommanderCast(at)gmail(dot)com. I will say the best way to make sure I don't miss your question is to e-mail me as I can stash those in a folder, but I'll copy/paste off the forum as well.
Since I have virtually no shame or sense of self-consciousness, I will ask almost anything you think is a good question, and I will be sure to state who asked it. That doesn't mean every question will be asked: the segment will probably be about 40 minutes long and last time I had the open Q&A I got almost a hundred extra questions that I couldn't ask. Not every inquiry will make it onto the show, and we're probably going to get tons of duplicant questions.
If you want your question to have a higher likeihood of getting asked, I would probably consider the following:
Keep it relatively short and to the point. This is mostly in the interest of fairness since there will be a lot of questions.
Avoid questions that you can probably figure out by reading the official rules. I know that sounds bone-crushingly obvious, but last time I got a lot of questions that had pretty clear answers.
Questions about the banned list are less likely to get air time because we've gone over many of them already. On CommanderCast we've already discussed with both Alex and Gavin the process behind a card being banned, why some cards are banned and others are not, and so on. I will ask a few questions related to the banned list, but there's going to be a lot to cover (I know there will be a lot of questions about Kokusho, and I will inquire about it again because of sheer volume).
Don't be foul about your questions. This doesn't mean you can't ask about something you think is bad/wrong/needs improvement--I absolutely encourage you to ask about your issues and gripes--but anything needlessly hostile is going to be sidelined. Including some kind of attack on anybody in your question will have it discarded regardless of the rest of the content.
We won't be talking about 1v1 EDH. There is a seperate governing body for that format and the RC has repeatedly said that the duelling format is not in their wheelhouse.
I know that's mostly common sense stuff, but it was still worth stating. Otherwise, I would like this segment to be as helpful and informative to the community as possible so anything you want to know or think needs some light shed on it, you might as well ask (there's no harm in asking). While I'm sure I could sit around and make up some stuff, I'd much rather make sure my questions are pertinent to as broad a section of the community as possible.
Again, to submit questions for the Q&A, you can...
E-Mail me: CommanderCast(at)gmail(dot)com (probably the best method)
Tweet me: (at)CommanderCast (probably the worst method, easily lost in a crush of tweets)
Post a question in this thread (perfectly fine), but stay away from PMs as I often forget they are things
Either I live in some awesome idealized bizarro-world, or many of the other posters in this thread live in a horrible nightmare wasteland that parallels my reality, because this idea that all Commander players do is *****, whine and moan is so far from most of my experience that it's just amazing to see so many posts that seem the same. I'd assume most of them were kind of off-the-cuff remarks about the typical 'omg magic players are such whiners' thing, but in this volume there has to be some truth to it.
To the original topic, I actually own two decks that were explicitly built to fulfill the "minimize complaints" requirement. One is the deck I use to teach people to play Commander, so it includes lots of format conventions (mana rocks, recursion, high CMC spells). It's stripped of annoying cards I personally love because I use it to sell people on Commander at conventions, the LGS, wherever. While you could certainly argue it's a 'kid gloves' kind of deck, there's no doubt that it's also fun to play and helps get people hooked on Commander so that's all that really matters.
It's a mono-red 'control' type of deck with Jaya Ballard, Task Mage at the helm. There's stuff like mass burn spells (Inferno, Earthquake, etc.), lots of damage-based removal (Chain Reaction, Blasphemous Act), recurring phoenix creatures, dragons, and so on. I had to leave most of mono-red's best tricks at home. Mono-red control is about as weak as it comes, but again, it's fun to play and that's what counts.
The most excellent facial hair in Magic. Refined, seasoned, majestic and more masculine than everyone who has posted in this thread combined except for y'all with irl moustaches. A scholar of manly pursuits. He doesnt even care about that ring of fire behind him, because he has transcended petty concerns like "physics" and "being burned to death". I have no doubt he is basically the Dos Equis guy of MtG.
"I don't always play Blue decks, but when I do, I prefer ones with a moustache theme
If you are posting about multiplayer strategy on MTGS, you are already taking multiplayer Commander more seriously than the vast majority of people who play it. But in general, this statement sets off a lot of alarm bells:
Maybe it's just because I don't particularly like any of the people I play EDH with in real life. None of us are friends, it purely a competitive environment, so there isn't any friendship based guilt when you consistently single someone out throughout a match. I have a group of about six close friends and we get together once a week to either play poker or magic, but we stick to Archenemy or Planechase most of the time, maybe a couple of two-headed dragons or 1v1 grudge matches. They refuse to play EDH because they see it as a unnecessarily complicated version of Archenemy.
This sounds like the polar opposite environment of where Commander is designed to flourish. If you're trying to play a socially-based game with people you openly admit you don't like, and are trying to treat it similarly to other formats with a highly competitive attitude, then those two things when mixed together is really a bad combination. As a 'technical' format, EDH is embarrassingly unsound. The only thing that makes it playable to me is the duct tape of social conventions holding it together. It sounds like you're lacking that and it's really hurting the experience, which I'd expect.
If you think the 1v1 format is more fun then go ahead and pursue that, there's certainly nothing wrong with it. EDH isn't for everyone, either, so you might not actually like the format as-is and that's cool too; it can't be everything to everyone. Like you've said, you're already playing all kinds of other formats and enjoying them, so having one more not work out isn't a huge deal.
I'm not sure what you mean... are you trying to punish people for having cards placed into their graveyard a la Bloodchief Ascension, or punish the person making others place cards into graveyards?
In either case, I don't know of many people who continue to run mill strategies. Playing out of the graveyard is a well-documented (even played-out) Commander strategy. These decks are often just feeding their opponents advantages, and even if they aren't, mill in multiplayer is a pretty difficult proposition (though it can be done for the hell of it). As Blackjack said, there's even cards that amount to virtually serving as hard counters to mill in the Eldrazi; some decks even run draw-seven 'resets' like Time Spiral.
Can you provide some more information on why the milling thing is such a problem, and the environment where this is happening? Are we talking 1v1, multiplayer, or what?
BTW great episode today. I came really close to building a Mishra deck this morning. It was a lot of fun considering what I would run.
Thanks for the compliment! d0su has built one and he says it's been faring pretty well, and I ordered components for my own a little while ago and will be playing it soon. If you do end up building it, send me an e-mail about how well it's been faring and what you've used in it. I'm very interested to see where other people take the deck.
I haven't liked it very much in most of the decks I've played it in. There are decks, like Wizard tribal or Faerie tribal, where it would be super-useful, but in general if I'm using a steal effect I want one that's less conditional (like Gilded Drake), completely permanent (Dominate), or at least harder to remove/interact with (Treachery). Sower has a fragile body with no protection that explodes if somebody looks at it the wrong way in Commander. In things like Cube drafts I value the Sower very highly, but in EDH unless you're exploiting other synergies I've found this card consistently disappointing.
There were some wrinkles with them at first for one guy who was playing U/R and he used his wishes to just find hosers, but since then has swapped them out to let them search up situational but still fun cards. For refernece, this includes Warp World so that isn't errybody's cup of tea, but I think it's a creative and fun use. And as has been argued elsewhere, it's hardly imbalancing or hard to answer.
The only other people who have used wishboards have been the types who like convoluted or cornercase interactions, so they want Wishes just because they're weird and unique. I'm sure you have friends that fit into that category, or maybe you do yourself; the type of player who just likes exploring what can be done for the sake of doing it. I'm not one of these people, but I do enjoy seeing what more creative deckbuilders come up with using Wishes.
Overall, I give the ol' wishboard a big thumbs-up. It's no different from most of the insanely abusable tools we have access to in this format. If a guy is a dick with his wishboard, you can take that away and he'll just end up abusing something else. I do recommend giving them a spin in your group if you've been looking at them, you'll never know if you don't try but I imagine if it's a healthy group you'll end up liking them.
That said, when everyone has a Wishboard, it'll end up feeling a lot less special, which is part of the appeal to me.
Here's a few things on Commander variants I've produced personally, or have found useful myself in the past. Some of them require building new decks and others allow you to just use standard Commander decks.
There's also some debate on what to use as Commanders. I've heard everything from any uncommon creature, to common-only Legends, to any Legendary creature. I strongly recommend using any Legendary creature. The true pauper Commanders are just boring, and allowing mythics and rares lets your general feel very unique.
Personally, I love playing Respawn. It has an entire meta-strategy to itself and lets you play a deck totally differently from how you normally play it. Plus, racking up kill counts is awesome. That said, it has some issues. Sometimes, a player will pull fairly far ahead and just assume a stranglehold on the game, making himself unstoppable. A combo player who can theoretically just kill everyone as they respawn also needs some remedy (we usually just have a combo guy 'suicide' and respawn). It's hardly a technical masterpiece but respawn is good sloppy fun.
Overall, when I was learning to play EDH in college I was brutalized by a deck that used Wishes quite a bit, but I've seen more than enough fun functions for them to approach it with an open mind. It's like pretty much anything else in Commander: we all have access to the tools to build an oppressive piece of crap and nobody likes playing against. Not every card that has a reputation for being evil (even Necropotence!) is necessarily going to be abused to the fullest. If you enjoy playing against somebody, it's unlikely their sudden addition of a wishboard is going to change their overall demeanor or deck style. I like leaving the option on the table for the creative types to mess around with.
I've got mad love for the Autocrat. Also, whoever is rolling with Winter Sky wins boss status immediately. That's just awesome. I have been known to use Headstone from time to time as well. Cremate is good enough that I'm willing to run a second, crappier version. Plus, being from Homelands, it's worth some style points.
Nemata, Grove Guardian is a card I've been considering. Given the liklihood of having lots of Saprolings on hand and his ability to create the saps himself, he seems like a fun choice.
One Dozen Eyes will give you six non-threatening dudes.
Seed the Land might work for you if you have a lot of ramp. The symmetry hurts you, but if you plan to ramp a lot and give Thromok trample (which I imagine is on the agenda), then it might be pretty awesome. Along the same lines of potentially symmetrical stupidity, Liege of the Hollows isn't very good, but might be hilarious enough to try out in this deck.
A lot of people have mentioned Deranged Hermit but Thelonite Hermit, while certainly not as good, could also go nicely in this deck. It helps with a saproling sub-theme and makes five guys Thromok can consume to become lethal-type large and attack immediately. If you really need to go in with Saprolings, this can also make it slightly less likely to look entirely embarassing.
On the morph end, you could also use Warbreak Trumpeter, which is not good but would add to the deception of your worthwhile morph cards, can make guys at instant speed, and is very funny to kill somebody with. Maybe even Ib Halfheart, Goblin Tactician could make a cameo appearance, though I'm not sure you'd have enough mountains.
As a believer in incredibly stupid gimmicks, I would also probably put in Life and Limb. In you really want to go all-in, this card will let you do it. It can also produce some pretty interesting game-ending plays with Aggravated Assault and Breath of Fury, and with the aforementioned Nemata, it usually spells game over. I know it's not for everyone, but I like this kind of dumb stuff.
.RT. also mentioned Artifact Mutation and that's one of the cards I'm most looking forward to in this deck. Given the number of five-plus mana artifacts running around, getting five or more guys at instant speed on the end of an opponent's turn should be an amazing deal.
Also, don't forget Nim Deathmantle if you plan on flinging Thromak. If you have enough creatres in play (and with something like Avenger of Zendikar, it won't be hard), you can probably fling him with a Bloodshot Cyclops, bring him back, and have him eat enough creatures to be a lethal fling or attack again.
A lot of the cards I've suggested here are kind of stupid, but the decks I'm building with the new Planechase commanders are all going to be decks where I'm avoiding using cards I already have in other decks. It means I'm going to have to try some new things, which I look forward to a great deal.
In an unfortunate twist, I’m being forced to take my literacy skills out of their life support cribbing so I can write an article nobody will read on CommanderCast. One of my earlier efforts at this was made a LOT easier because I asked people for help, and they really came though, so being as unoriginal as I am, I wanted to dip into the same well twice.
The subject is essentially a list that will provide people with a broad range of restrictions they can choose from when building a deck (maybe even mixing and matching them). This type of thing is a common topic on the show and I often get asked for themes and restriction suggestions in e-mails, so I figured by writing an article I can point people towards a solid resource for a common question (note this is not an attempt to avoid answering e-mails or whatever, that’s probably the biggest upside of the show). I have quite a few restrictions of my own in place on some of my decks, ranging from things that are super-basic like budget cutoffs to things that might not actually occur to people who are playing against the deck.
I was hoping that members of the forum who also like to use self-imposed restrictions to spice up their deck construction and avoid monotony could post their ideas that they’ve used to some effect. They can be abstract restrictions, of course—I’m hardly about to turn up my nose to much of anything given how half-assed most of my own ideas are—but I would absolutely love to see decklists that have been made with the restrictions you’re suggesting. I know a lot of people post decklists online, either here or places like TappedOut, so if you have a list you’ve made with a restriction, providing a link would also be appreciated. It really helps people see what you can do with a restricted building mindset and still craft a good, fun deck.
Anyway, tldr: post your restrictions on deck construction you use yourself to help make building decks more interesting to you. Suggestions are hugely appreciated.
…oh yeah and I’ll totally give you credit instead of just plagiarizing you, I SWEAR
To me Rise draft and sealed were characterized by the slow build-up of resources to giant, game-ending bombs like Ulamog's Crusher, along with building defensive positions with tons of Defender creatures. There were other draft decks that were pretty sweet (like the U levelers deck) but I would like to make sure that flavour of slowly building to a giant brawl is intact. So myself and a friend started referring to it as being a 'critical mass' cube, where the need to defend early is still there because of solid early-game threats, but there's also lots of support for late-game bombs and getting to 7+ mana is commonly needed to play the biggest threats in the cube.
Towards this end I have a few questions I'm hoping veteran cube builders can help me out with:
1) Do you think the cube would work better if it included multiple copies of some cards, even a bunch of the cards? Maybe even retain a sort of rarity system with 4-of commons, 2-of uncommons and singleton rares? I've never seen this kind of thing in any cube and would like to hear any feedback on it.
2) If the goal is to kind of build up to a 'critical mass' phase of the game where large effects are eventually going to clinch the game, what are the best ways of controlling the pace but ensuring green still has a strong identity in the cube? I normally associate green with fast aggro and ramp, but I don't know if the ramp will kind of betray my idea of slower games with a bigger buildup.
3) Other than Invokers, what are some good cards that can be played in the early game but also provide a clear, devastating endgame option?
Other generic stuff: not sure about the size of the cube, I can access most cards pretty easily but want to keep the environment from centering around early-game bombs like Swords of X+Y, and the cube will be played 1v1.
Any help would be appreciated. I'm just sketching out the rough idea for this now, so nothing's been purchased or set in stone. If the whole idea sounds stupid, feel free to tell me (I'll probably still build it though).
Moved from WW Knights
-Rascal
If you have ever wanted to ask a member of the Rules Committee a question, then this of an opportunity to get an answer. There's not really a whole lot else to it. If you have a question you would like me or Donovan to ask them, feel free to post it here, send it to me on Twitter (@CommanderCast), or e-mail me directly: CommanderCast(at)gmail(dot)com. I will say the best way to make sure I don't miss your question is to e-mail me as I can stash those in a folder, but I'll copy/paste off the forum as well.
Since I have virtually no shame or sense of self-consciousness, I will ask almost anything you think is a good question, and I will be sure to state who asked it. That doesn't mean every question will be asked: the segment will probably be about 40 minutes long and last time I had the open Q&A I got almost a hundred extra questions that I couldn't ask. Not every inquiry will make it onto the show, and we're probably going to get tons of duplicant questions.
If you want your question to have a higher likeihood of getting asked, I would probably consider the following:
I know that's mostly common sense stuff, but it was still worth stating. Otherwise, I would like this segment to be as helpful and informative to the community as possible so anything you want to know or think needs some light shed on it, you might as well ask (there's no harm in asking). While I'm sure I could sit around and make up some stuff, I'd much rather make sure my questions are pertinent to as broad a section of the community as possible.
Again, to submit questions for the Q&A, you can...
Thanks for your time!
To the original topic, I actually own two decks that were explicitly built to fulfill the "minimize complaints" requirement. One is the deck I use to teach people to play Commander, so it includes lots of format conventions (mana rocks, recursion, high CMC spells). It's stripped of annoying cards I personally love because I use it to sell people on Commander at conventions, the LGS, wherever. While you could certainly argue it's a 'kid gloves' kind of deck, there's no doubt that it's also fun to play and helps get people hooked on Commander so that's all that really matters.
It's a mono-red 'control' type of deck with Jaya Ballard, Task Mage at the helm. There's stuff like mass burn spells (Inferno, Earthquake, etc.), lots of damage-based removal (Chain Reaction, Blasphemous Act), recurring phoenix creatures, dragons, and so on. I had to leave most of mono-red's best tricks at home. Mono-red control is about as weak as it comes, but again, it's fun to play and that's what counts.
The most excellent facial hair in Magic. Refined, seasoned, majestic and more masculine than everyone who has posted in this thread combined except for y'all with irl moustaches. A scholar of manly pursuits. He doesnt even care about that ring of fire behind him, because he has transcended petty concerns like "physics" and "being burned to death". I have no doubt he is basically the Dos Equis guy of MtG.
"I don't always play Blue decks, but when I do, I prefer ones with a moustache theme
Stay ballin my friends"
This sounds like the polar opposite environment of where Commander is designed to flourish. If you're trying to play a socially-based game with people you openly admit you don't like, and are trying to treat it similarly to other formats with a highly competitive attitude, then those two things when mixed together is really a bad combination. As a 'technical' format, EDH is embarrassingly unsound. The only thing that makes it playable to me is the duct tape of social conventions holding it together. It sounds like you're lacking that and it's really hurting the experience, which I'd expect.
If you think the 1v1 format is more fun then go ahead and pursue that, there's certainly nothing wrong with it. EDH isn't for everyone, either, so you might not actually like the format as-is and that's cool too; it can't be everything to everyone. Like you've said, you're already playing all kinds of other formats and enjoying them, so having one more not work out isn't a huge deal.
BANNED
- Erayo, Soratami Ascendant as a Commander
- Shahrazad's exemption status removed
UNBANNED
- Lion's Eye Diamond
In either case, I don't know of many people who continue to run mill strategies. Playing out of the graveyard is a well-documented (even played-out) Commander strategy. These decks are often just feeding their opponents advantages, and even if they aren't, mill in multiplayer is a pretty difficult proposition (though it can be done for the hell of it). As Blackjack said, there's even cards that amount to virtually serving as hard counters to mill in the Eldrazi; some decks even run draw-seven 'resets' like Time Spiral.
Can you provide some more information on why the milling thing is such a problem, and the environment where this is happening? Are we talking 1v1, multiplayer, or what?
Thanks for the compliment! d0su has built one and he says it's been faring pretty well, and I ordered components for my own a little while ago and will be playing it soon. If you do end up building it, send me an e-mail about how well it's been faring and what you've used in it. I'm very interested to see where other people take the deck.