MTG Salvation

simplest answer, imo: have multiple power levels of decks. You're not going to be able to make a deck that has a good chance against a small competitive table but doesn't curb stomp casual decks. So build a couple decks, one that's mostly fun stuff and one that's more competitive. for myself I went with zirilan of the claw (fun) and glissa (more competitive).

You don't really need to PLAN to build more competitive and more casual decks, though...just build some decks, and find the ones that are most fun for their power level and keep them. Then use the deck that's most suitable to the playgroup.

what defines "having" a deck?

100% real cards?
mostly real cards?
all proxies ok?
do we have to be currently using it? I've got some decks 95% together that I've stolen a few cards from for other decks, but are otherwise intact and could be revived in 5 minutes.

you left out chaos warp and oblation, 2 very strong options.

while keeping something on the field early is important to prevent opportunistic attacks, in most groups I've played with it's more important to avoid looking like the threat than to gain a tempo advantage. while there are certainly plenty of goodstuff decks out there, the most unique part of EDH is playing with a general, so most people I play against (and most decks I build) try to build around the general to some extent, and losing him (semi) permanently can drastically slow down the deck.

Sure, if you're looking at the most powerful decks conceivable, many of them might not focus much on the general for consistency's sake, but it's a casual format and generals are fun, and tuck is effective against those decks. If you're saying that you can "just kill them" because you remanded their general...I think it's fair to say that your meta doesn't reflect most metas.

Quote from timmiej

What strategies?
Let's have a look at the strongest decks my group plays:
Kaalia
Ghave
Sissay
Azami
Mimeoplasm

All those decks can easily play their general again and most of them depend on activated abilities.

It's going straight to my Mimeoplasm deck.
I think it's ten times as good as Avatar of Woe and Visara, but that might be because we play a lot of reanimate and stuff.

except that 100% of those generals are cheaper than the gorgon. And if they're really so devastated by the thing, they'll just kill it before they play their general. And who's not running sac outlets these days?

Alternately, compare it to empress galina. She's an even nastier form of immobilization, for cheaper (on cost and ability cost). But she still doesn't see a ton of play.

To me, my biggest problem with it, perhaps, is that you can't use it to stop attacks that already happened. With visara, you can wait until someone tries to attack you or kill visara, then kill their general. With gorgon, you have to preempt the attack. proactive hate is much worse than reactive when we're talking multiplayer. Also, being forced to leave 3 mana up is a big bummer.

it seems unplayably bad to me, considering it's in the same color as avatar of woe and visara the dreadful. Maybe if it didn't tie up so much mana, or it worked after they were declared as an attacker like visara does. As it is, besides the fact that it probably draws a lot less hate than visara, it seems terrible. and it also seems like it doesn't work against most good strategies.

Quote from Secularon

Exactly. You don't even need to cast her to win. The fact that you can cast something like that is just icing on the cake. I almost never cast her in my build.

see, i don't understand this argument at all. if you almost never cast her, why not try something worth casting? mimeoplasm seems a lot more effective with the same colors, or you could run any of the 5 color legends and have the ability to splash R or W if you want.

I like my generals to be something that really helps my deck substantially, to the point where I don't mind casting it for +6, +8, +10 until it sticks.

haha, why is "tithing" land tax instead of, i dunno, tithe?

Can't say my experiences match up. I haven't seen many damia lists, and imo she's not a good general except for the colors. Mostly because a 7-cost general with little immediate effect is not what I would call "competitive".

but in a casual game where people don't pack much spot removal, sure I guess she's strong. I feel like arcanis and azami are better CA engine generals, or even something like sygg (b) or nin because of the much lower cost. She strikes me as a general for timmy control players, not for spikes.

Quote from Bhaelfur

EDH has a set limit of 100 cards.

From EDH's Website: "A Commander deck must contain exactly 100 cards, including the Commander."

Well the relentless rats lied to me, because it said ANY NUMBER not ANY NUMBER LESS THAN 100.

The rules just broke.

for those curious about the totals, adding the # of votes for each color gives:

w: 65
u: 79
b: 69
r: 49
g: 71

the numbers are a little bit more even now - although it's still weird that izzet is doing better than azorius or dimir, since R has much fewer votes than W or B. Although it's pretty obvious when you look at the data: apparently people love enemy pairs way more than friendly pairs (despite the relative lack of generals).

glissa and teysa are both cheap black generals with aggro/control options. Xiahou dun can go aggro or control too. sygg is basically the definition of cheap and control. lyzolda is one of the aggroest generals ever. Hey, look at that, one of each pair + mono!

It's interesting...some colors lend themselves more to combos, some more to mono. I like mono-red, but don't like pairing it with anything too much. I don't like mono-green, but it's a great support color, and similar for white and black (although mono-black is also ok). Blue is sort of in the middle. I don't mind it either way.

Quote from sH0opdAwoOp

Yeah, I'm hoping this poll will attract a couple hundred people before it peters out, so we can get a reasonable data set. It might have something to do with the available generals, I suppose. Sygg, River Cutthroat, Wydwen, the Biting Gale, and Dralnu, Lich Lord don't really function well as goodstuff.dec generals. Grimgrin, Corpse-Born is a pretty popular casual-yet-capable :symu::symb: general, though, and you have Oona, Queen of the Fae and plenty of other very competitive generals. And who doesn't want to build Skeleton Ship?!

really? I feel like sygg totally works as goodstuff, and wydwen isn't that bad as goodstuff either. Dralnu's not really goodstuff, but then most of the best stuff in blue and black are sorceries and instants anyway.

Anyway I don't hate those generals (maybe grimgrin) but I don't love them that much (I would love dralnu but he's got the same problem as arcum - he's cool, but too breakable), none of them generate as cool of a deck imo as, say, glissa or zirilan (my current top 2). I voted dimir for my favorite blue (teferi, uyo, talrand, thada) and black (xiahou, geth, chainer, toshiro) generals, not any of the blueblack generals.

As with all proxy debates, I think the real issue is with one person having access to too many cards (whether it's by having a big budget or using proxies). if he's monopolizing games and making them unfun, tell him that he can use proxies but he's got to conform to the power level of the group because it's not fun.

If it's really just that you don't like proxies, then I guess that's harder to resolve - having been in plenty of debates on the subject, many of them on this forum, it's at least as hard a debate to resolve as "which god, if any, is real?" So it really comes down to, as mewens said, whether you prefer to play against proxies or play somewhere else.

I'm one of the few, the proud...they 3 people that voted for dimir.

To be fair, this might be because I'm a dick.

I think it's interesting that they have so few of votes, usually U and B are the two most popular colors. Could be EDH gathers a different breed, though.

The results are sort of weird in that there's no strong preference for any one color as far as i can tell. of the top 3, we've got all 5 colors covered, and the one that shows up twice isn't in the #1 (blue). And the least popular in the top 3 (white) isn't present in any of the bottom 3. So...I dunno, it's weird. I guess the color pairs take on flavors of their own? or maybe there's just not a sufficient sample size.

EDIT: after doing some counting, turns out the average popularity is in uwbgr order (black and green are tied). not surprised to see u high, but white is unusual. Also it's interesting that the most popular pair isn't represented in the top 2 colors.

Quote from umtiger

If you're going to build around Edric, then he is more powerful.

Niv-Mizzet is fun, but you'd probably never copy him in Riku.

well you'd be stupid to try...

edric is about 1/3 the $$ cost of niv, doesn't really seem a fair comparison. Anyway it depends massively upon how the rest of your deck works. is it a bunch of easy-to-copy evasive weenies? you'd be stupid not to play edric. is it mostly combotastic instants and sorceries (aka douchebag riku)? then there's no real point to edric so you may as well run niv i guess.

context is everything, my friend.