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  • 1

    posted a message on What Card Do You Wish You Owned for a Deck?
    Pretty sure my collection is worth 200-400% more than when I paid for it. Doesn't get much more pragmatic than that.

    If I sold everything now I might have netted money from playing magic. Crazy to think.
    Posted in: Commander (EDH)
  • 1

    posted a message on Is it too Early to discuss c19?
    Quote from tstorm823 »
    I think you may have misspelled terrifying. Karona is terrifying. It's like 5-color command zone craterhoof.
    I'm assuming you're mostly kidding, but I'll take the bait:
    -+3/+3 is a far cry from +x/+x
    -not trample is a far cry from trample
    -needing same type creatures is a far cry from not needing that
    -attack triggers are a far cry from Etbs
    -dying to any sac outlet or bad attacks on enemy turns is a far cry from not
    -getting killed by your own commander is a far cry from not

    That or you misspelled jazal goldmane.
    Posted in: Commander (EDH)
  • 3

    posted a message on Random Card of the Final Day: Maelstrom Nexus
    Man, people really got stop overusing the quote feature. Reply works just fine most of the time. If you ever quote a post that's longer than a quarter page, the interface really ought to ask "are you sure? It's going to make the thread really annoying to read."

    Anyway, high tide is a boring combo card and I don't like it.
    Posted in: Commander (EDH)
  • 2

    posted a message on Which creatures are the best at blocking?
    See, that's just it. I'm not sure that is the point of blocking. I mean, yes, redirecting attacks that might otherwise be directed at you is certainly advantageous, but at what cost? Because it seems to me you pay a heavy price to do so. The way I see it, the goal of having good blocks is not to leverage opponents into possibly damaging one another; it's to mitigate damage. If your opponents do happen to fight one another, great. That's wonderful, but that's just icing on the cake.
    I'm not sure what you mean about a "heavy price", but sure, damaging an opponent is, broadly speaking, 1/x as important as preserving your own life, where x is the number of opponents, so generally self-preservation is more important. But on the other hand, dealing damage > gaining(/preserving) life. And sometimes in casual formats people develop grudges against each other for attacking and then you're even more likely to be ignored, and it just generally raises their threat profile. So sure, directing attacks elsewhere is the lesser of the two, but it's a pretty thick and rich icing imo.

    I think it's also worth mentioning that you can have the best defenses without simultaneously being the archenemy though.
    Agreed, I think it's all a matter of context. Ideally you've got the best defenses by a nose, but significantly less offensive power, in order to win the "least likely to be attacked" award. Keeping yourself in the right position in these regards is a key part of smart politics imo.

    I find this really interesting. Did you end up winning that game? This may sound provocative (and that is not my intention), but rather than making too many, I suspect you may not have made enough snakes.
    Well it was all I could make (I played liliana's influence), if I could have made more I would have. At that point I assumed I'd be the biggest threat, but in a way that would make it very difficult to mess with me profitably. Which was true, but it didn't stop people from doing it. So yes, more snakes would definitely have been better at that point since I was already the threat. Possibly fewer snakes would also have been better to avoid making me the threat, although idk how many fewer would have been necessary. Hard to be sure. I think I also have a bit of a rep for winning frequently, even if I don't play anything frowned upon. So that also makes it more likely I'll attract ire.

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you and I both understand that there's this valley one can enter where, by accumulating power, one becomes a target. What's interesting about this valley is that, at its nadir, you're actually more vulnerable than if you hadn't entered it at all since, despite your collection of power, you've now drawn the attention of each of your opponents, and the not-insignificant-but-not-significant-enough power you've obtained isn't enough to stop your collective enemies, so you usually end off worse for having traveled there.

    What I believe you're concerned about is entering the valley. You don't ever want to reach the nadir. After all, it's possible to accomplish your goals without ever going there in the first place. You need only install minor deterrents, as you've already pointed out. I'm on the opposite side. I'm not concerned about entering the valley. I'm concerned with not crossing it. I understand that, once you reach the nadir, there's nowhere to go but up. If you've already drawn the ire of all your opponents, you can't draw out any more ire; the valley only ascends, so every further bit of power one accumulates comes without cost.

    Some strategies (like combo decks that win out of nowhere) have the luxury of never having to appear threatening. Other strategies don't have this luxury; they broadcast exactly how well they are doing to the entire table. But sometimes it doesn't matter if you're broadcasting this because there's nothing your opponents can do about it. Maybe everyone at the table understands you're a problem, but no one can do anything about it, so they just resume playing, and everyone plays their cards to the best of their ability given the situation anyway. It doesn't mean the most powerful person will always be on the receiving end of every card. Sometimes you're in a powerful state, everyone knows it, and not much can be done about it, but the game isn't over either.
    Oooh, these are really good observations. You've put them into words very nicely. The valley metaphor is uncannily apt (:P), so now I'm going to abuse the hell out of it.

    Generally I think once you're in the valley, most likely you're going to get dragged out of it by the table ganging up on you. Most of the time, if you're able to make it to the other side of the valley, it's because you jumped straight over it with some burst of power - a combo, a strong synergy, or maybe just one particularly nasty bomb, most often. If you're legitimately at the nadir of the valley I think you've usually got a hard time getting up the far side. Maybe you can tiptoe up to the edge of the valley and then jump over before people are paying too much attention, but to make it from the nadir back up I think is very hard, because from the nadir onwards everyone is ganging up on you. If you do make it out, I think most of the time it's because you weren't really at the nadir at all, but some ways up the far side.

    Part of why I like to play how I play is because it appeals to what I think feel like "earned wins". I used to play, for example, my child of alara deck. It started wiping the board around turn 4-5 and basically just does it every turn until the game is over, and it's pretty hard to dismantle since it has tons of recursion and protection built in. And it was kind of fun for a little while, but pretty quickly it got boring because my group just wasn't really capable of beating it. I made it to the far side of the valley, but it wasn't very satisfying. I think the same thing about making most combo decks. If you're playing it well against an average LGS commander group, I think it's almost trivial to win. In a cEDH group ofc it isn't, but most LGS players won't have answers, and if they do they won't have many and they probably won't leave them up at the critical time, especially if they haven't seen the deck before.

    Maybe a better example is something value-oriented, like maelstrom wanderer. When I played maelstrom wanderer I was usually archenemy from around turn 3-4 and never really stopped being so, and I still usually won. At that point it seems like I won just because my cards/deck was so much better(my collection contributes a lot to this, ofc), not because of any skill. In medium-powered commander I think it's pretty easy to make it up the far side of the valley with either a powerful deck or something that jumps you over quickly, but if that's your only objective then I don't think that's an interesting goal for exactly that reason. So instead, I like to focus on how to win without ever feeling unfair or overpowered, but trying to find ways to win that rely as much as possible on skill, and as little as possible on having better cards. Usually this means it's very advantageous to stay on the near side of the valley for as long as possible, since I lack cards and combos that can easily catapult me over to the other side.

    Of course I realize that isn't necessarily how much people like to play, but everyone who isn't playing cEDH has to draw their own line in the sand for how they're going to limit their deckbuilding.
    Posted in: Commander (EDH)
  • 3

    posted a message on Cards Most Needing a C19 Reprint
    All the commanders and bab promos that have been only been printed in foil.

    I DON'T LIKE FOIL, WOTC.
    Posted in: Commander (EDH)
  • 2

    posted a message on Is it too Early to discuss c19?
    Quote from Drain Life »
    Every Commander product until 2018 had interesting decks. At the very least, they had interesting alternate commanders.

    This was the first year I did not buy any of the decks. I hope it is the only year that happens.

    According to The Command Zone, Sol Ring is the most valuable card in the set now. Let that sink in. They are the ones who try really hard to avoid negativity on their podcast, and even they couldn't avoid the truth of how bad the 2018 product is/was.
    thats just plain untrue. Just off the top of my head, windgrace and yuriko are both worth a few bucks more than sol ring. Although they have lost a lot of value.
    Posted in: Commander (EDH)
  • 4

    posted a message on Is it too Early to discuss c19?
    I'm hoping for NOT tribal. Tribal are boring to build and have little applicability outside of their exact deck. Plus for trash tribes like kavu you'd need to dedicate a ton of spots to kavu synergy or it'd never work, and then it's even less useful in other decks. The atrocious cat deck being a good example of this.
    Posted in: Commander (EDH)
  • 1

    posted a message on [[Official]] Unreleased and New Card Discussion
    See, I've cleverly avoided this by buying every card in advance. Only cost me like $10,000!
    Posted in: Commander (EDH)
  • 2

    posted a message on [[Official]] Unreleased and New Card Discussion
    Sure, but personally I still find it hard to have fun building non-broken versions of broken commanders. You garner the hate for playing it without the benefit, plus you know you've made a weak deck on purpose. I'd rather venture into unknown territory, than find a worse trail in an area that's already got a highway through it, if you'll pardon the stretched metaphor.
    Posted in: Commander (EDH)
  • 5

    posted a message on Random Card of the Final Day: Maelstrom Nexus
    Quote from ChazA4 »
    Quote from JWK »
    Next one would be Trump Mage. It allows you to to make a 0/2 wall for 26 mana, and you can't win the game if you have Trump Mage in play.


    Could you make your opponents pay for it? :3
    no but you can stop the game for everyone else until you have enough mana.
    Posted in: Commander (EDH)
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