MTG Salvation

Well it's always going to be hard to talk about this card without remembering the hell that was MLP standard. And sure, we all remember the horribly broken "friendship locks" that dominated the format until it was banned, but I think it's safe to say that chrsyalis was nearly as overpowered, and probably would have gotten banned had the format lasted longer. What really made her broken was the double-tribal synergy with not only ponies, but also care bears from the previous set, which made the care bear stare combo so much easier to assemble. Of course, she's seen fringe legacy play, but her abilities have mostly proven to be fairly balanced in a larger format. Since there were no legendary ponies or care bears printed, of course, she has a hard time fitting into an EDH deck synergistically, but she's still good enough for some blue tribal decks like azami wizards, sygg merfolk, or rainbow slivers. 7/10.

o-stone is 5-stars easily. Arguably the best wrath in the format, imo (I realize most people wouldn't go THAT far, but if you don't think it's 5 stars you're wrong). All is dust is maybe 4 stars, the only big bonus imo is that it's colorless.

evac is at least 4.

obliterate is at least 4, as is jokulhaups.

child of alara is at least a billion stars.

Quote from 4Lark

DirkGently, the assumption that you're making—and it's not a bad one—is that you build your deck around your general's mechanics. My commanders are chosen for first and foremost for their flavor. Their mechanics are unnecessary icing that I may or may not lick off the spoon.

For example, I designed three Final Fantasy decks (only posted one so far) based on different jobs in the game. All three commanders were chosen for their flavor and the decks were built around them thematically, but not mechanically. Nekusar, the Mindrazer helms one, and although there's no need to cast him, he's often useful. However, the Kaalia of the Vast deck runs less than a dozen creatures, only four of which benefit from her ability. So, why Kaalia? She was the only general in those colors to fit thematically. Same thing for the Ragnar deck. He only comes out if I'm terribly—and I mean terribly—desperate for a regenerating blocker. But no other Bant generals fit the theme I was going for. Mind you, the deck's mechanics do reflect the spirit of Ragnar's abilities.

TL;DR: Folks choose (and cast) their commanders for different reasons—and it's NOT always because they're running a "goodstuff" deck with no theme, either.

I stand by exactly what I said - if I am building the deck then I am going to build it around the general, mechanically. What you do is your own business.

And also, as I said, I don't see the point of building around flavor or themes or whatever. Personally I think it's silly. I don't get what people enjoy about it. But you know, that's just me. I was only ever talking about myself.

Man I love how narcissistic I am.

Quote from BaconofLight

It depends what your deck is running.

I don't understand why people don't utilize their brains when they make their land bases.
Why do you think my decks can survive Blood Moon, Magus and Back to Basics with a max of 6 basics?
It's because I do basic calculations to maximize my dominant and recessive colours in every deck I run. I also run a modifier adjustment in accordance to my mana rocks and dorks.

Let's get it real, Magic is really easy if you don't over think it.
The rules of 10 Duals, 10 Shocks and 10 fetches never works in developed metas and competitive metas.
It might work well against a meta filled without land destruction, Stax, Blue, Mass Discard, Blood Moon, Back to Basics, Magus of the Moon, Ruination-esque cards and infinite combos.
It doesn't need to contain all of them, but any combination of those cards will show how weak your five colour deck performs against real decks.

I love how this post basically calls everyone a noob and then promptly provides no solutions whatsoever.

The truth is, 5C is always going to be weak to nonbasic hate, or it's going to be inconsistent with mana, or it's going to have to run just a holy crapload of a lot of lands. You can minimize risk by cracking fetches for basics and using basic land ramp and artifact ramp, but it's hard to avoid taking some serious damage off a ruination in 5c. Blood moon and back to basics are generally easier to work around since, once they're gone, you're fully recovered, but they can still be problematic. Ultimately if people are using a lot of nonbasic hate it might be a bad idea to play 5c, but if it's just the occasional blood moon or ruination you should be ok with some good generic removal (chaos warp, oblation, the sort of stuff that's good to run anyway), some counterspells, and ideally lftl/crucible to help you recover from ruination.

Quote from AzureShadow

Quote from ElliotS

It's bad if used for 1/1 or charge counters, so it's only going to be used it it is abusive. It would probably be used mostly for adding divinity counters to myojin. (Want to discard your hands EVERY TURN!?!?)

So it's broken and horrible to play against if it comes down, and dead if you're missing one of a few creatures/cards. I'd be happy leaving it banned.

Don't tell anyone (or do, because it's fantastic), but Un-set cards aren't banned in EDH.

Commander is played with vintage legal cards, with some exceptions

Highlighted for your convenience.

ok....so are you actually going to give people this letter? Print it out and hand it to them? I'd like to see that.

There's sort of an obvious hypocrisy here. You're unhappy that they want you to change, but you demand that they change to keep up with you. You're unhappy that they're complaining, but you're complaining about their complaining. Your intro makes no sense at all - you're apologizing for your plays, but not the cards you're playing? It doesn't sound like any apology at all.

Here's my suggestion, as someone who also has a hard time toning down the power level of my decks - pick a general that's a little janky and build around it to the max. For example, my favorite all-purpose deck is zirilan of the claw. It's a pretty decent deck, but it's limited by the general and the color from doing anything too obscene, and I've chosen to focus around the general so there aren't a lot of boring auto-includes. I agree that it's lame to intentionally neuter decks, but this way I still get to enjoy maximizing the power of the deck without annoying everyone or overpowering most games.

EDIT: the new top 10 lists! (In approximate order)

artists:
1 Dream Theater
2 Ayreon
3 Diablo Swing Orchestra
4 Circus Maximus
5 Edenbridge
6 Muse
7 Tool
8 Vanden Plas
9 Shaman
10 Kamelot

albums:
1 The Theory of Everything by Ayreon
2 Metropolis pt 2: Scenes from a memory by Dream Theater
3 MyEarthDream by Edenbridge
4 Butcher's Ballroom by Diablo Swing Orchestra
5 The Black Halo by Kamelot
6 Ritual by Shaman
7 Christ 0 by Vanden Plas
8 Nine by Circus Maximus
9 Rebel Mind by Eumeria
10 Operation: Mindcrime by Queensryche

songs:
1 A Change of Seasons by Dream Theater
2 Perfection? by Guilt Machine
3 Free of Doubt/Faded Crystals by Pathosray
4 Place of Higher Power by Edenbridge
5 Born to Be by Shaman
6 Sin by Circus Maximus
7 Sound of the Apocalypse by Black Bonzo
8 Silently by Vanden Plas
9 Memento Mori by Kamelot
10 March of the Varangian Guard by Turisas

OP:

A little while ago (June, maybe?) it occurred to me that my iPod/android are full of crappy music I don't like, and I really mostly end up listening to the same 20 bands 95% of the time. Just about every band I've heard is because it was on the radio, or a friend recommended it. My exposure to new music sucked.

Also, as hipsters discovered long ago, it's no fun to talk up a band if everyone's already heard them to death.

So, armed with naught but steely determination and a startling amount of free time, I set out to rectify this injustice in the most methodical, unfeeling, robotic way possible.

For science.

Step 1) I figured I'd start with progressive rock and metal, since that's traditionally been "my jam", as the kids are saying these days. God willing, one day I'll be able to move on to other genres, but for now, it's prog.

Step 2) I went through Wikipedia's entry on progressive rock and copied down the name of every artist listed under progressive metal, symphonic rock, neo-progressive rock, new prog, space rock, and Italian progressive rock. This gave me about ~400 artists to check out. A good start.

Step 3) I put them all into an excel spreadsheet (because what good is anything if it's not in a spreadsheet?) and added columns for the overall quality, the heaviness, and the progressiveness of the music, plus a column for notes, and for the songs I listened to by that artist. Also, some other columns that are somewhat more half-assedly filled out and should probably be ignored.

Step 4) I sat down and plugged every single band into Pandora (yes, Pandora, I don't care if Spotify is better, they wanted my Facebook account info before I could use it and SCREW FACEBOOK). I evaluated them on the above mentioned criteria, and added any new bands that came up to the spreadsheet. If the band was good, I'd listen for a while and sometimes add quite a few bands. If it sucked, I'd switch to the next station pretty quickly, because even scientific integrity isn't worth listening to "Between the Buried and Me" for longer than 10 seconds.

Step 5) For those bands who weren't known to Pandora (marked with a question mark), I used the miracle of the internet and found them on YouTube. Sometimes I'd check the comments section to find similar artists as an equivalent to Pandora, but I'm sort of lazy so usually not.

Of course, remember that all music preferences are subjective. But I do have numbers I made up to back my preferences up...so...I mean, I don't want to say my preferences are BETTER than yours but...well...but yeah....

There's 2 kinds of phelddagrif decks:

1) the kind that run rites of flourishing, which suck and enable combo, and

2) the kind that don't.

Don't build the first kind. And don't call it "hug", what you want is more "political". Run instant-speed removal and counterspells to break combos and dismantle engines as needed, and use phelddagrif to help allies/stragglers/people willing to do you favors. Cards that have myriad uses, such as mistmeadow witch, are excellent - you can fog a big attack to save someone or yourself, enable someone else's etb, enable your own etb, clear a path of blockers, save someone else's creatures, save your own creatures, perma-exile a general with stifle, etc etc etc. Then you can help people when they need it, but also keep things under control. and enable the beatdown on the jerk who's constantly threatening to overrun the table.

If possible, get an alter of Frank Underwood for your general.

EDIT: scratch the perma exile thing, at least for mistmeadow witch in particular. works with parallax wave and journey to nowherethough.

Quote from Raining Frogs

Kaalia ruins games, period. Anyone playing kaalia deserves to be hated off the board immediately every single game because it WILL BE the same game, every game with kaalia around. Incredibly boring uncreative general that should not exist.

You're a whiner. Kaalia isn't that great. She just demands you pack a decent amount of spot removal. To even bring up kaalia in a thread about sol ring is ridiculous.

Quote from Cornebus

Unbalanced cards is the reason I play EDH. You need to have a challenge in life, sometimes. Beating a T1 sol ring hand once is very satisfying, even if I have to die 10 times to it. There's duel commander if you're into long-winded banlists and "fairness" and such.

go play dark souls or something if you want a challenge. Magic should at least attempt to be balanced.

You know what else is a challenge? Winning a against time vault. Why don't we unban that?

Quote from frodooftheshire

That's not the point you have to have to place enough lands in your deck to fit your curve, what the previous person was trying to say in the first place was that sol ring helps when you do get land screwed and just because you get land screwed once doesn't mean you should throw more lands, but sol ring can help if you have it in those situations. That was more of my point sorry if I didn't explain it well enough.

He was saying that having a sol ring in hand means he's not getting mana screwed. But if that sol ring was a land instead, he also wouldn't be getting mana screwed.

Sol ring is basically a really, really, really, really, really good land.

The banning or nonbanning of sol ring doesn't change how many mana-producing cards you ought to use, and saying "without sol ring I might get mana screwed" makes zero sense. If you're getting mana screwed frequently, run more lands.

Quote from DirkGently »

You think the elf is bigger than dakkon blackblade? Hell no, that's all dinosaur baby.

Every time I go on here, I try to find something that makes the trip worth it. Tonight, it's all dinosaur baby.

Your posts in this thread are really cool to read, a sort of 'faith in humanity' restored moment. I've been a sore loser before as well. My reason is that when you get used to winning sometimes you make excuses or get salty when you loose. I feel ashamed about it and its not often that I act that way but it does happen. Youre not the only one and I find it inspiring that you admitted it and moved past it.

So I know why Commander Damage is set at 21 it is because 7x3 and 3 is a good number of swings that all checks out. What I don't know is why the overall life total is set at 40. The simple answer is that is is double 20, and there are a couple others I can think of that make sense but why is it 40 for real and do you guys think 40 is still a good number.

Personally I think it is too high, and I think lowering that number would actually help a lot of other things people don't like about Commander that 40 Life helps facilitate.

1) Certain cards which relay on you having life to pay get drastically weaker as the starting life totals get pulled down now.

2) 40 Life is a pretty nice cushion and it allows people I think too much time to sit in relative safety and accumulate a win without needing to worry or care about a total.

3) Aggro is a pretty non-existent archetype in Commander it more exists on the fringes or in completely different forms (Voltron and decks like Purphoros are the big examples or more Battlecruiser type sets ups)

4) I play primarily combo decks and I know for me depending on the deck I know I don't need nearly as much protection / disruption because of the 40 Life I start the game with, especially if the any part of what I am doing also has life gain built into it.


I haven't personally gotten to try something smaller (that wasn't 1v1) because the places I play Commander stick pretty heavily to the rules as written, but I have been trying to figure out if there would be any massive downsides to lowering the starting life total.

(I put that 3rd entry in the poll in mostly as a joke but does anyone actually think 40 is not enough?)

Quote from DirkGently »

Another very political card is "every instant-speed removal ever printed". "Do what I want and I'll kill his thing, otherwise I'll kill your thing" is a staple political maneuver.

Completely agree with this. Helping people isn't politics. Getting them to do your bidding is. Coercion is the epitome of politics.

One cool move I saw was with someone who had Kamahl, Fist of Krosa out, and a bunch of untapped green mana. Someone wrathed. Did he animate the wrather's land out of spite? No, he animated the land of Mr Mono-Blue with 8 untapped islands. Mr. Mono-Blue now has to counter the wrath he otherwise would've liked to resolve.

To me, that is far far more political than going "Oh, I gave you those centaur tokens from Hunted Horror two turns ago, now you should help me". If you give me stuff, I have no incentive to help you, as I already have the stuff.

The Rampaging Baloth!

........ ohhhhh you said deck.... yea..... I usually just go off of the commander when referring to them. I will sometimes give it a fancied up title for the thread name but I usually refer to my decks by means of the commander.

Quote from Dechs Kaison

I wish it were that easy. I simply cannot ignore the underhanded tactics he used to discredit and misrepresent certain groups of players. This article is going to be touted around by way too many people screaming "but Sheldon said you shouldn't use these, and if you do, you're a bully* and a bad player!**"

Misrepresentation number one: Real competitiveness isn't about winning fast or controlling the game. It's about winning reliably and getting better every time you play. The guys that just want to roflstomp a table are bullies and have nothing competitive about them.

Misrepresentation number two: I've written books on this in the thread already. Suffice to say he's lying about the argument MLD people use for why it counters ramp.

I partially agree. First though, I will say to your previous comments that 99% of the time the internet says that something is a Strawman, it's actually just someone arguing against a position that the accuser just doesn't happen to hold. So while I agree (and Maro historically agrees as well) that what motivates competitives is the drive to get better in building and in play, Sheldon might be arguing against players (if any) who just want to win. As to whether those actually exist, I happen to think they do because I consistently see the same people on MODO show up with T5 combo decks in public games. He's saying that he's not really going to cater to those people.

Likewise with MLD, he's saying that people can't justify it as a naked answer against ramp. That's not necessarily saying that's the only thing to recommend it. He's just saying that it doesn't counter ramp. Which is deceptively true. You can't just slide it into your deck. What you have to do is build a control deck around resource denial, or to sensibly fit it in and use it in an aggro deck. So if you're in the boat crying that you need MLD against ramp, then he's saying you're wrong, but if you're not in that boat he's not arguing against your position. No strawman.

But I do agree that he's being a bit deceptive in places. It's almost Napoleonic when he says that most people came up with things that they themselves refuse to play rather than disallowing from others, when the very title of the thread he used here to elicit feedback was, "things YOU might consider not using". He seems to be pinpointing the group he wants to talk to and play with, then using the fact of those discussions and those games as support for the conclusion that this is what all or most EDH'ers are. Elsewhere, his lack of knowledge of the format seems to come from legitimate lack of play against competent decks, rather than deliberately singling them out. The fact that he doesn't like Vicious Shadows, a card that never wins before Turn 10, says a lot about the kinds of decks he faces.

---

In fact, that struck me a lot. It's evident that his experience with the format is widely different from my own, and so I find myself wishing his feedback were more constructive in the setting that I play. I think you can essentially divide the format into three groups:

1) The, "It sucks you played Vicious Shadows because otherwise my Decree of Pain would've kept me alive" group. The 5 board wipes in every deck group because creatures are the only thing that wins group. Apparently, Sheldon's group.

2) The group that doesn't do anything super-fast at the expense of being uninteractive but nevertheless builds decks that win by Turn 9-10 group. The Survival-Mimeoplasm, BUG Combo-Control, Zur, Arcum, UBx Orb Stax, Obliterate.dec group. The I don't care about board wipes group. Probably the fastest growing group, to my eye at least.

3) The Tier-0, never get tired of Hermit Druid group. Nuff said.

It seems that 2 and 3 seem like the exact same thing to group 1. And it seems that no respect is being paid to group 2 when they complain about degenerate cards, and most of all, they're not being evaluated for whether their games are interactive and in the "spirit of EDH". They're just labeled tryhards when Rite of Replication on top of a 7-drop isn't their win-con. And the apparent fact that Sheldon's never played in Group 2 is disappointing to me.

---

One more thing that I found troubling - the Dream Theater example. In any controversy, one party has to carry what's called the burden of persuasion. That party's case is evaluated, and if it's insufficient, things stay on the status quo without the other party having to make its counter-case. Who has the burden of persuasion on what kind of play should be allowed in EDH is cripplingly unclear, and nothing in that article clarified it. In the Dream Theater example, it's one thing to not listen to that band when the two are "hanging out". It's another thing to go passive-aggressive and delete the songs from the other person's iPod. But the real comparison is whether to go to the concert of a band that covers 90's music generally, or whether there should be both DT and non-DT playlists of 90's music. Who has the burden of persuasion? Should you have to tell me that you don't like DT before I pop in my mix CD, or should I know beforehand somehow?

Because there's a category of cards that are allowed and not allowed in EDH as per the RC banlist. It seems to me that anyone arguing against a card not on that list has the burden of persuasion. Yet this article along with the house-rule mentality in it seems to suggest that people who want to run legal cards that are nevertheless undesirable under a set of unofficial, nebulous criteria have the burden of persuasion shifted to them instead. It suggests that people have to open up the discussion every time a game is had so that this house-rule crowd has its legally guaranteed say-so. This group has judicial protection against things it doesn't like, because the banlist is just a "starting point" preparatory to this group's right. It's just shifting the burden of persuasion. And so the existence of a ban list simultaneously with the peremptory right of this group to have their first say is a source of enormous confusion in the format, and I don't even see any acknowledgment paid to that.

So Sheldon professes tolerance for other styles of play and vows to keep the banlist uncluttered owing to that respect, but meanwhile, the whole format is just procedurally stacked in favor of the unspoken majority that Sheldon and others apparently see.

---

Also troubling from the opposite angle is the RC commitment not to enforce their ideals on anyone else, when in fact, every other established format has had no problem with Wizards responsibly enforcing its own vision of it. If people want to play Cloutpost in Modern, too bad, because it's outside for Wizards vision of the format. And rather than being worse off, it's actually better because of the responsible oversight is coupled with a vision of play that a lot of people (not everyone) can find fun. That there are other types of fun outside that format has never bothered any rules body ever before.

Honestly, that makes me suspect it's something else. Fear of backlash. Perceived difficulty of regulating the format. Something. Evidently belonging to group 1 above maybe leads to some doubt about whether the RC can even evaluate the validity of group 2's interests, much less enforce a vision that's acceptable to both, which is in my opinion possible.

Quote from BaconoftheArk

For example any deck with U/x can run Vendilillion Clique, Mutavault, Spellstutter Sprite, and Mistbind Clique for a soft lock.

You seem to be missing something here. Is there supposed to be a Riptide Laboratory or something in here? Because that's very far from a lock, even a soft one. At best, that's a 4-card counterspell. Which isn't very good on its own, even in a format where you're permitted multiples of each.

I'm not really sure I understand your post. As far as I can tell, you feel that tossing a few faeries into your deck turns it into the empitome of control, and that's enough to ensure a combo deck wins the game.

That's an extremely erroneous assumption.

Quote from Wingedkagouti

This list would be far better if you completely left out any personal opinions, regardless of how funny they might be. Otherwise, nice job.

Totally disagree. These where all good for a chuckle. Nice work on the list.