Damia, Lord of Gorgo… Oh My God what am I doing with my life

So, I’ve made a horrible horrible mistake. Sultai (or, if you’re an old bastard like me, BUG) is widely regarded as the best colour combination in Commander (or, if you’re an old bastard like me, EDH). Green’s acceleration and big ol’ fatties. Blue’s permission. Black’s discard and destruction. Sultai, not Abzan (or, if you’re an old bastard like me, “Junk” – yeah, let’s face it, the new names are better…) is the true colour of inevitability.

My old Damia, Sage of Stone deck was BUG Sultai Goodstuff.

Yep. Real card. They sure don’t make ’em like that any more. Thank God.

Well, it was and it wasn’t. I had janky-as-hell cards like Teferi’s Puzzle Box (hey, I’m skipping my draw step, I didn’t care), Ice Cauldron (see right) and EDH all star Bottled Cloister in there, but I also had Genesis Wave and Avenger of Zendikar and Hinder and Living End and Rite of Replication and a bunch of other really good cards.

I hated it.

It was slow, and grindy, and boring, and totally soulless, and although it tried to do cool stuff with Damia triggers and drawing cards and so on, it usually just ended up Genesis Waving for a thousand and winning with whatever came up.

HOW ORIGINAL OF ME I AM A DECKBUILDING GOD LOOK UPON MY WORKS, YE MIGHTY, AND DESPAIR

So, back to my bad decision.

“Self,” I said to myself (since that’s the only way I get intelligent conversation these days, since the restraining order and all – Oh hai Mark!), “what you need to do is give yourself an actual theme. Something to tie the cards in the deck together. A restriction if you will. A wise man once* said ‘restrictions breed creativity’. (Oh hai Mark!) So, think of a decent theme, restrict yourself to that and let the creativity flow, man!”
*way way waaaaaay more than once

But what theme? Do I want to Enter the Infinite? Do I want to Doomsday my way to victory? Do I want Horror tribal? While all of those sound amazing (….) I decided I wanted to do something else. Why win when you can…not?

Here’s where I made my first big mistake. I came up with too many ideas. I managed to knock them down to:

• Sultai Goodstuff (hey, it is the best colour combination in Magic after all)
• Gorgon Tribal
• “Snake” Tribal (Gorgons, Naga, and Snakes)
• All Deathtouch, all the time
• Poison/Infect/Wither (with Proliferate)

Way back when Kamigawa was legal in standard with Mirrodin I had a pretty fun (but definitely causal – after all this was when Mirrodin was Standard legal and if you weren’t playing Arcbound Ravager you were playing it wrong) Snake deck – with Seshiro, Sachi, Sosuke, Shisato, and Sosuke’s Summons, with Orochi Hatchery and draft deck all-stars like Orochi Ranger (I’ll let you look that one up yourself). It was a lot of fun and I thought maybe this deck could recreate that with some additional oomph from black and blue.

I eventually more-or-less settled on the Wither/Poison/Infect deck though.

Then I realised I hated playing against Poison, so why would I want to do that to a table?

So I settled on Deathtouch “Tribal”. But that’s kind of meh as theme.

So I went back to Gorgon Tribal. And then to Snake tribal.

And then I made my second big mistake. I asked a local Facebook group which deck I should build. And of course, their most popular answer was Sultai Goodstuff, because they all have no soul.

The second most popular result in that poll was Gorgon Tribal, so (after way too much writing) here we are. Gorgon Tribal, go!

So I sit down at Scryfall, type in “type:Gorgon” and hit go.

15 results. Fif. Teen. Turns out, there are 15 Gorgons in all of Magic, and that’s counting the Golgari in the most recent Ravnican expansion. Adding changelings doesn’t even help that much – as it turns out there’s only an additional 16 changelings in Sultai colours, and most of them are pretty awful. However, there’s enough…just… to work with here, so let’s get to brewing!

Definites, sorted by CMC:

• Pitiless Gorgon
• Reaper of the Wilds
• Gorgon Recluse
• Infernal Medusa
• Pharika’s Mender
• Archetype of Finality
• Hythonia the Cruel
• Visara the Dreadful (hey look a genuinely good EDH card!)
• Xathrid Gorgon
• Sisters of Stone Death

So, 10/15 isn’t a bad ratio – there are a few interesting options in there. Plenty of Deathtouch, but what grabbed my attention was that Gorgon Recluse and Infernal Medusa have an ability that isn’t seen very often – they destroy any (nonblack for one, or nonwall for the other) creature they block or are blocked by – even if they don’t deal it any damage. This is an ability shared by a few creatures – notably Basilisks and Cockatrices – some of them require dealing combat damage and some of them don’t. Of note, just about the only creature that has this ability, and that can destroy any and all creatures blocked by it is Tangle Asp – one of the creatures I had in my CHK-era snake deck. In it goes! And, as it happens, the only other creature with that condition-less text is Venomous Dragonfly, which is a flying 1/1 for four. I’ll pass on that one for now. I’ll keep an eye on the other creatures in this category that do the same thing to non-Walls, as Walls are a lot less common than black creatures. That only consists of Cockatrice and Thicket Basilisk.

Looking at the rest of the gorgons; Arisen Gorgon is a 3/3 for 3 that has deathtouch if we control a Liliana planeswalker. Maybe decent, if we end up with any. Keepsake Gorgon is a 2/5 for 5, which for a the low low cost of 7 more mana, becomes a 3/6 and destroys a non-Gorgon. No thank you! Likewise Korozda Gorgon is a 2/5 for 5 that messes with +1/+1 counters, which isn’t something I’m likely to be interested in. Masked Gorgon will give all of my opponent’s green and white creatures protection from my deck. HARD pass. The last gorgon not on the list is Damia herself. Might be playing that one.

Looking at the available changelings, there’s only two I actively want to run: Chameleon Colossus, and Cairn Wanderer. That ain’t helping much. Some of the instants are interesting though – Nameless Inversion and Ego Erasure both remove all creature types from their “targets” (Ego Erasure doesn’t actually target any creature), which would handily get around the whole non-Wall thing we were talking about earlier. I suppose at a stretch I could include Amoeboid Changeling for the same reason.

So, how do you take advantage of the fact that your creatures kill everything they block, or everything that’s blocking it? The first thing I thought of was that since people tend to want to keep their creatures, they just won’t block. Of course that has it’s own advantages when it comes dealing 40 damage to your opponents! So then I thought of adding things that trigger when damage is dealt to players – Curiosity effects, Saboteur (“destroy target “) effects, and things like Quietus Spike. The list of playables (note that I have a pretty relaxed idea of playable) is:

• Bloodforged Battle-Axe
• One with Nature
• Sixth Sense
• Sigil of Sleep
• Dowsing Dagger
• Hammer of Ruin
• Mask of Memory
• Mask of Riddles
• Rogue’s Gloves
• Quietus Spike
• Snake Umbra
• Spellbinder
• All the Swords of Stuff and Junk^(tm) (although I only own three swords and they’re all in other decks)
• Bident of Thassa
• Larceny
• Scytheclaw
• Nature’s Will

Obviously some of these are better than others and I won’t be putting all of them in. In particular, since I’m in Blue, and my General is Damia, I shouldn’t need a whole lot of creature-based card draw.

There’s another angle to this though; if I have a creature that destroys all the creatures blocking it, why no make all the creatures block it? I’m talking old school Lure effects here. Similarly to the “Curiosity” effects above, I’ll be valuing repeatable/persistent effects over instants and sorceries. As far as I can make out, my options there are:

• Lure
• Gift of the Deity
• Nemesis Mask
• A bestowed Noble Quarry (expensive, though)
• Seton’s Desire if I have Threshold
• Tempting Licid, in enchantment form

Special mention to Ochran Assassin, who has this ability and Deathtouch, Breaker of Armies, who has this ability and 10 power (which is it’s own kind of Deathtouch, if you look at it a certain way), and Stone-Tongue Basilisk, which has this ability if I have Threshold and destroys creatures it damages; two conditional, uh, conditions, is probably one too many for what I’m trying to do. Also there are a few cards (not many) like Courtly Provocateur and Provoke which sort of do the same thing – Predatory Rampage seems especially good – but again one shots probably aren’t going to cut it here.

That’s a shorter list than I’d like, but 6 (3 good, 3 not so good) is probably enough to get one when I need it. Especially since I’ll (hopefully) be drawing multiple cards per turn with Damia. More on that later.

Making my creature alluring (DO YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE) does two things; if the lure effect is on something with Deathtouch or the Tangle Asp ability, it effectively functions as a one-sided Wrath; and it all but guarantees the rest of my team getting through and getting those combat damage triggers.

Of course, my creature is almost certain to die when it gets blocked by someone’s whole team (which, incidentally, makes Nemesis Mask way better than all the Aura Lures). Unless, of course, they don’t! So, part 3 of my unnecessarily complicated death machine is to give the Lured creature regeneration or indestructible. Luckily quite a few of these effects are serpent-themed, to wit:

• Asceticism
• Blessing of Leeches
• Molting Skin (and it’s identical twin, Broken Fall)
• Draconian Cylix (synergy with Damia!)
• Medicine Bag (even better with Damia!)
• Rushwood Herbalist (Medicine Bag with legs)
• Gaea’s Embrace
• Gaze of the Gorgon (is a one-shot, but it has to go in this deck)
• Jolrael’s Favor
• Nurturing Licid (handy things these Licids!)
• Regeneration
• Serpent Skin
• Strands of Undeath
• I should mention Yavimaya Hollow here, but I will also mention that it’s a bit pricey for me
• Darksteel Plate
• Shield of Kaldra
• Soul of New Phyrexia (expensive to activate every turn)
• Stonehoof Chieftain
• And a few other instants that grant indestructible until end of turn

There’s way too many there to play them all, so I’m probably going to add these ones:

• Asceticism – just a really good card in general
• Molting Skin
• Medicine Bag
• Rushwood Herbalist
• Gaea’s Embrace
• Gaze of the Gorgon
• Serpent Skin
• Stonehoof Chieftain

Which still might be a couple of cards too many. We’ll see.

This is turning out to be a pretty mana hungry deck (and I have some plans for big game-ending plays), but I think we’ve got to a point where we’ve got a decent theme going, we’ve got some cards we want to put in to play out that theme, and now we get to the (for me…) boring part of deckbuilding where we put in ramp, card drawing, and removal. About the only thing I need to talk about now is how we’re going to win this thing. Having a bunch of 2 and 3 power Gorgons isn’t going to cut it – but we are (if the plan works) going to have a TON of creatures in my opponents graveyards. It’s always fun to get your head beat in by your own creatures, right? Enter these:

• Animate Dead/Dance of the Dead/Reanimate
• Beacon of Unrest
• Bone Dancer (this card could be completely amazing if it’s attacking alongside a Lured creature!!!)
• Boneyard Parley (this is probably really bad, but picking five creatures out of everyone’s graveyards is pretty tempting)
• Coffin Queen
• Endless Obedience
• Extract from Darkness
• Fated Return
• Fool’s Demise
• Grimoire of the Dead
• Necromantic Summons
• Puppeteer Clique
• Rise from the Grave
• Rise of the Dark Realms
• Scion of Darkness (ties into the whole Lure/Combat damage thing as well)
• Sepulchral Primordial
• Thrilling Encore(!!!! – among other things I don’t need a regenerator to get my Lured guy back using this, as it’s all creatures from all graveyards)

Again, I won’t be putting all of these cards in, but it’s nice to know we have options. Now, I have to make cuts, and put in the usual boring stuff. Here we go!

Gorgons

• Pitiless Gorgon
• Reaper of the Wilds
• Gorgon Recluse
• Infernal Medusa
• Pharika’s Mender
• Archetype of Finality
• Hythonia the Cruel
• Visara the Dreadful
• Xathrid Gorgon
• Sisters of Stone Death
• Amoeboid Changeling
• Chameleon Colossus
• Cairn Wanderer

Other Creatures

• Tangle Asp
• Tempting Licid (also really an enchantment)
• Ochran Assassin
• Breaker of Armies
• Rushwood Herbalist
• Stonehoof Chieftain
• Puppeteer Clique
• Sepulchral Primordial
• Oracle of Mul Daya works great in this deck since (in theory) I’ll be drawing up to seven every turn, and will have multiple lands to drop every turn.

Lure Effects

• Along with Tempting Licid:
• Lure
• Gift of the Deity
• Nemesis Mask
• Seton’s Desire

Regeneration/Indestructible Effects

• Along with Rushwood Herbalist and Stonehoof Chieftain:
• Asceticism
• Molting Skin
• Medicine Bag
• Gaea’s Embrace
• Gaze of the Gorgon
• Serpent Skin

Saboteur/Combat Damage Effects

• One with Nature
• Dowsing Dagger
• Mask of Riddles
• Quietus Spike
• Snake Umbra (can also function as a one-time “regeneration” effect for a Lured creature, if necessary)
• Bident of Thassa
• Larceny
• Scytheclaw
• Night Dealings
• Nature’s Will

Reanimation Effects

• Along with Puppeteer Clique and Sepulchral Primordial:
• Beacon of Unrest
• Endless Obedience
• Extract from Darkness
• Fool’s Demise
• Grimoire of the Dead
• Necromantic Summons
• Rise of the Dark Realms
• Thrilling Encore

Ramp

Honestly I haven’t thought too hard about this one; the following are just what I thought of off the top of my head, that are good enough to include:

• Sol Ring (of course!)
• Farseek
• Kodama’s Reach
• Cultivate
• Harrow
• Skyshroud Claim
• If I have room, maybe some Signets as well

Card Draw/Card Advantage

Our General is all the card draw we’d ever need, but there’s no guarantee she’ll be in play so we’ll need some back up:

• Along with the Oracle of Mul Daya:
• Rhystic Study
• Night’s Whisper
• Read the Bones
• Compulsive Research

Counters

• Hinder and/or Spell Crumple (putting stuff in peoples library is often better than their graveyard – although in this deck I may want them in the graveyard)
• Void Shatter and/or Dissipate and/or Faerie Trickery (similarly, exiling spells is good)
• Rewind (free counterspells are great)

That’s 66 cards so far (67 including the General, of course). That leaves 33 slots, and there is no removal included so far. That’s not really optimal. I don’t think I’ll need a lot of creature removal as that’s what this deck does (all going according to plan) but I’ll definitely need some artifact/enchantment/Planeswalker removal in here. I want to add at least 4 slots for removal, and I want to run 36 or 37 land, so that means dropping seven cards and taking the card count down to 59.

Time for everyone’s least favourite game show:

First off; all of the Gorgons are staying. In the other creatures category, Ochran Assassin is a nice backup but is probably too weak to be of any use. (66) Rushwood Herbalist is a bit slow, and as a creature is probably too vulnerable. (65) The other creatures are all fine.

Seton’s Desire goes as I can’t guarantee I’ll have Threshold – if the abilities were the other way round, I’d be keeping it. (64).

I like all the Regeneration effects – Molting Skin and Serpent Skin are probably the two weakest, but they’re also the two that are most on theme, so I’ll keep them.

The Saboteur effects is probably the category I most overloaded on – I know for sure I want to keep Quietus Spike, Scytheclaw, Bident of Thassa and Snake Umbra. Nature’s Will is an absolute beating, and can stand in as a budget replacement for the good half of the Sword of Feast of Famine (which I don’t own). That leaves One with Nature (staying), Dowsing Dagger (which I’d like to keep but will cut for now – 63), Mask of Riddles (cut, 62), Larceny (staying for now) and Night Dealings (cut, 61).

From the reanimation suite, the only one I really want to cut is Necromantic Summons (60). The rest all do something game-ending, or have an angle that I’m keen to try out (Convoke, repeatability, non-targeted).

For the counterspells, I’ll be targeting non-creature spells with them most of the time. The exile spells and Rewind stay, but I think I’ll cut Hinder (59) and Spell Crumple (58).

Adding in 37 lands gives us 95 cards, so we have 5 spots for removal, which seems about right (remember, all going well we’ll be drawing 3 or 4 cards every turn). Hopefully I don’t need to worry too much about creature removal, although a board wipe or two never really goes amiss.

Removal

• Decree of Pain
• Acidic Slime
• Golgari Charm (also regenerates! How did I not find this until now..)
• Krosan Grip
• Garruk, Apex Predator (this card is NUTS)
• Silumgar’s Command (this is going in in the place of a counterspell, probably Void Shatter since I’m not sure if I have one spare currently)

Add lands to taste (I’m going to put Dowsing Dagger back in and count that as a land) and by God I think we have a decklist! I won’t type all that out again (again) but here’s a link to the deckstats page for it: Damia, Sage of Gorgons

And, that’s it! Now I just have to hit up Card Kingdom and get a bunch of these cards and I’ll actually be able to play the deck!

If you made it this far, thanks very much for reading the increasingly boring ramblings of some random guy on the internet – you go and have yourself a great day, and watch out for the Gorgon invasion!

EDIT:

Welp, turns out Rhystic Study and Stonehoof Chieftain are waaay more expensive than I thought; in the meantime I’ve removed them and replaced them with Mystic Remora and Darksteel Plate respectively.

 

Is this thing on?

So, uh, it’s been a while. Like, a looooong while. I didn’t exactly take a break from Magic, but for a while there I played maybe one game every 4 months or so. Lately though I’ve been on a bit of a deck updating blitz, and have actually been playing again, and I think I’m maybe ready to dust off the ol’ Opinion Machine(tm) and have at it.

Wonder if anyone is still subscribed to this thing? I guess we’ll find out.

Content coming SOON.

Probably.

Hint:

 

Whoops, I Did It Again…

Well that’s certainly my bad deed for the day.

SOOOOOO how about that content, huh? Yeah, uh, well….

Now, I wasn’t foolish enough to make any New Year’s Resolutions about keeping this thing here active, but I did make a resolution to finish off my Deck Building Challenge of Doom – one deck of every currently legal colour combination. For those of you following along at home, this is what I have so far:

Mono Colour (4/5)
White: Kitsune Mystic (allowed in my playgroup), Enchantments
Black: Lim-Dul the Necromancer, Zombies
Red: Jaya Ballard, Task Mage, Burn and Jaya themed (every card with Jaya Ballard flavour text that can legally go in the deck. Yes, including Mystic Compass and Melting…)
Green: Omnath, Locus of Mana, OMNATH SMASH (General Damage deck)

Allied Two Colour (2/5)
Red/Green aka Gruul: Radha, Heir to Keld, Tribal Elf/Warrior
Green/White aka Selesnya: Tolsimir Wolfblood, Tokens

Enemy Two Colour (4/5)
Black/White aka Orzhov: Ghost Council of Orzhova, Blink/Tokens
Blue/Red aka Izzet: Nin, the Pain Artist, hurting you for drawing cards. And making you draw cards.
Black/Green aka Golgari: Savra, Queen of the Golgari, Sacrifice and board control
Green/Blue aka Simic: Edric, Spymaster of Trest, Rogues and Superspies

Shard (3/5)
Blue/Black/Red ala Grixis: Jeleva, Nephalia’s Scourge, Tribal Vampires
Black/Red/Green aka Jund: Sek’Kuar, Deathkeeper, eating my own dudes for Fun and Profit and Face Smashing
Red/Green/White aka Naya: Mayael the Anima, My Friends Are Bigger Than Your Friends

Wedge (5/5) (C’mon Wizards name these things already)
White/Black/Red: Kaalia of the Vast, Demons and Dragons and Angels OH MY
RUG: Animar, Soul of Elements, Big Creatures on the Cheap
Black/Green/White: Doran, the Siege Tower, I Like Big Butts (vaguely Treefolk tribal)
Red/White/Blue: Zedruu the Greathearted, Take My Stuff
BUG: Damia, Sage of Stone, I Drop My Hand, I Pick It Up Again

I haven’t built 5-colour or colourless yet…

Since I made my resolution, I actually finished some of the half-built decks I had lying around, so these decks are now built but haven’t been tested yet:

White/Blue aka Azorius: Isperia the Inscrutable, toolbox fliers
Green/White/Blue aka Bant: Rafiq of the Many, A Rafiq Deck Like Every Other Rafiq Deck

And I’ve also started and ordered cards for Black/Red (Rakdos) which is Wort, Boggart Auntie, Goblin Tribal, and have sleeved up the White/Blue/Black (Esper) C13 Precon with Oloro, Ageless Ascetic at the helm, which I’ll be tweaking here and there. The Isperia and Wort decks make up for the otherwise lacking Allied Colour Pairs listing.

So what do I have left?

Mono-Blue
Blue/Black
White/Red
5 Colour
Colourless

Not too bad (although I am cheating on the Esper deck a bit since at this point in time it is literally just the pre-con deck).

So, I need some ideas for what I have left. Time for a poll!

The Mono-Blue options

1. Ixidor, Reality Sculptor. I’ve tagged this one “Ixidor’s all signing, all dancing, all morph, 3-card Monte of DOOOOOM”. As many mono-U morphs as I can fit in, and as many ways to turn them face down as I can find (so far limited to Ixidron, Master of the Veil, Weaver of Lies and maaaaybe Backslide. If I’ve missed any – aside from ones that can turn themselves face down like Vesuvan Shapeshifter and Mischievous Quanar – please let me know!). This was my first idea for a mono Blue deck; I’m not a fan of decks that just counter everything and I’m a bit of a Timmy/Johnny so constantly flicking morphs up and down amuses me… Turn Weaver of Lies face up, flipping all my other morphs back down, one of which is Master of the Veil to turn Weaver of Lies face down… do it all again… But that doesn’t really get me anywhere.
2. I have mentioned this guy before:
   
   I don’t think any more needs to be said 😛
3. Born of the Gods gave us this guy
   
   And this spell..
   
   Again, not too much more to be said, I think. Leviathans, Kraken, Octopi, Serpents and Merfolk, AHOY!

The other colour combination I’m considering is Red/White. Again I have three options:

1. Gisela, Blade of Goldnight. YAWN. But I have been thinking about this one for a while, so I’ve pretty much got it mapped out in my head. But it will look like everyone else’s Gisela deck, and that’s not a good thing.
2. Anax and Cymede. I keep seeing all these “two target creature” spells and thinking “Hey….” This one will be about 50/50 Heroic and Battalion, and I think could be interesting… Right up until all the little solder dudes get outclassed by every other creature on the board (sometime around turn 6)…
3. Aurelia, the Warleader. Also known as ATTTTTTACK!!!!!! ATTTTTACCKKKKK!!!!!!

So, gentle reader, I give you the chance to help me decide. Hit me up in the comments, and/or vote in the polls below!!!

Until next time (whenever that is)!

 

He’s not dead, he’s restin’!!

(tap tap tap) This thing on?

Holy Mother of Pearl, can this be content? Well, I guess only you can tell me that…

Things have been… hectic… over the last year. I’ve missed posting on here though and have been tangentially keeping up with the EDH world, mostly through mtgcommander.net and generaldamagecontrol.com. I’ve just started playing EDH again, and have been teaching it to my girlfriend – it’s really interesting getting a new player’s perspective on the format, especially one who is (practically) new to Magic. I’ll be posting more about that – and may ask her to write a guest piece – sometime soon. (Update: I’ve asked her and she’s keen – upcoming post sometime in November after final exams)

What has finally pushed me over the edge though, and forced me to start posting here again, is this guy:

Where was this guy a couple of years ago? The last time the Commander Precons came out, a lovely little lady called Nin, The Pain Artist was released onto the unsuspecting world. I ended up choosing Nin as my R/U general for my Deck Building Challenge of Doom™ – one general of each (legal) colour combination. Nin’s general theme is “here, have some cards. Now HOW DARE YOU HAVE CARDS I KILL YOU” with Psychosis Crawler, Sudden Impact, Molten Psyche, and friends.

While making that deck I came across such fun cards as Phyrexian Tyranny and Spiteful Visions and Underworld Dreams and thought “Wow it would be great if there was a Black/Blue/Red General who cared about card draw…”

AND NOW THERE IS

The problem (and it’s very much a “first world problem” problem) is that my Nin looks like this:

(Alter done by MTG Card Extensions on Facebook. Check out her work here)

Also, I already have a UBR deck – Tribal Vampires, headed by Garza Zol. It’s not a great deck, but it is fun to play and I was going to swap out Garza Zol for the other new hotness in the upcoming UBR deck, Jelava:

Now admittedly Jelava doesn’t have a lot to do with my deck other than her creature type, but she’s new and exciting and the art isn’t as bad as Garza Zol (hint: Nothing Is), and she’s considerably cheaper. However, I’m reasonably fond of the Vampire deck as it is. I could theoretically drop the blue out of it and run it as a B/R build, since I don’t have a B/R deck. The planned B/R deck was going to be a Wort, Boggart Auntie goblin tribal, but I haven’t actually started to build it yet, although I have a number of ideas and I’d quite like to build it.

Basically I can’t make my damn mind up. I really do want to add black to my Nin deck – do I just suck it up and have two (completely different) UBR decks? That would leave a hole in UR, plus I’d have an altered Nin who wouldn’t be the general. If I make the Nekusar deck do I retire Garza Zol? Do I make Garza Zol RB (probably with Olivia Voldaren at the helm) and forget the Goblin Plan?

Whoever said options are a good thing?!?

So, to the polls! (This is also a not-very-sneaky way of seeing if I can stimulate some interest in this blog again 😛 ) Vote for as many options as you like; Should I keep or change Nin? Should I have two UBR decks? If not, should I have to RB decks? Vote early and often!

Footnote: If anyone can tell me how to do those fancy mouseover card images on this site, I’d be mighty appreciative. As far as I can tell, it needs Javascript, and I can’t run Javascript on this (free) site, but can if I move to wordpress.org and host it on my own server – except I don’t have one of those, and have no intention of getting one. I’m pretty happy to stick with the links to magiccards.info for now, but if some clever clogs out there knows a better way, please do let me know!

Cheers all, good to be back 🙂

Matt

 

Deck Analysis – Radha, Heir to Keld

Hi again folks,

Well the votes are in and as you can see from the lovely lady with the extra head above me, the deck you want me most to talk about (thanks to the people out there that voted!) is Radha, Heir to Keld. I have this deck built at the moment, but it’s unique amongst my decks in that I already have a stack of cards I want to put in, and I’m not really sure what direction I want to push her in.

Radha is somewhat unique in another way; I’ve only read one Magic novel in my entire life, and that is the Time Spiral novel in which Radha plays a reasonably large part. In the novel Radha is all fire and action, and is obsessed with proving her worth through battle. It’s also revealed that she has the beginnings of planeswalker spark, although that obviously doesn’t go anywhere (Hey WotC! Let’s see a R/G Radha, Planeswalker of Keld!).

My original thoughts were to make a pretty basic Red/Green aggro deck, using Radha’s ability to make mana in the combat phase to power Tricks™. Unfortunately the “new” rules changes (this is an old idea 😛 ) mean that the mana she provides is generated and must be used during the Declare Attackers step, which reduces the surprise value somewhat. Actually it reduces the surprise value to nil, which is a real downer….

What I’ve ended up with is a Red/Green kinda aggro semi-tribal Elf/Warrior/Beserker mess, including such all stars as Lovisa Coldeyes and Raging Goblin. (OK so the Raging Goblin is in there because I love me some Raging Goblin…) I’ve played it a few times and as soon as it runs out of steam – and it does that fairly quickly – it’s full of 2/2’s and 2/1’s and 3/3’s that everyone can pretty much ignore. (My Damia deck has a similar problem, but for a different reason – it’s full of mana dorks to help me get to Damia ASAP – but once they’re in play, they tend to be somewhat irrelevant.)

The other idea I had is a super ramp deck (Radha is a mana source, after all) and build up to massive X spell after massive X spell, preferably assisted by Radha’s mid-combat mana-adding ability. Most of the spells in the “sideboard” are these X-spells; but there are some in the deck already as well, along with such cards as Rosheen Meanderer. (Who, you may note, is not an Elf, a Warrior, or a Beserker. I is good at the theme decks!). The other, similar but different, option is to build an EDH version of “Elfball” – a deck which utilises a ton of mana producing elves, and ways to untap them, to build up to arbitrarily large amounts of mana and use a Fireball (or Comet Storm, or similar) to take out the entire table at once. I have some of those cards in here as well.

The list as it currently stands is missing a lot of good Warriors – most notably Imperious Perfect, Wren’s Run Vanquisher, and Bramblewood Paragon. Apparently I’m also good at the giving away playables… I swear I have them in the Black Hole that is my hobby room… somewhere… but I’m still looking for the last kid I sent in there to get something for me.

I’ve done a bit of searching (on mtgsalvation and mtgcommander) for other Radha lists, and there are a few popular archetypes for Radha decks. For some reason the most common one I can find is a combination mana ramp/land destruction build; since Green and Red have the best LD spells, I guess. This is a type of build that interests me about as much as pulling my own fingernails out with a pair of pliers; if I had to sum up my personal EDH philosophy in one phrase it would be:

Let people play their deck

(For the record, yes I run decks with counterspells and creature destruction and board control. I run Faerie Trickery, but not Forbid. If you can’t see the philosophical difference between those two spells, this blog ain’t for you 😉 )

Other types of Radha decks floating around are:

• A quite cool and tricksy Life from the Loam/Crucible of Worlds/Seismic Assault/Storm Cauldron deck (but really, this could be any R/G general)
• Goodstuff Aggro/Ramp… accelerating into Avenger of Zendikar and friends. How exciting!!!
  • Having said that I did find one deck which had quite a cute idea with Birthing Pod, Weatherseed Treefolk and/or Shivan Phoenix; basically you can pull every 6 or 7 drop out of your deck (one per turn) since the Treefolk and the Phoenix just keep coming back
• Elfball (as described above, and in more detail below)
• Elf-without-the-ball – all the big mana but only used to power out more and more Elves, usually killing with Ezuri or Kamahl, Fist of Krosa (not that he’s an elf)

ElfBall (from someone who clearly doesn’t know how it works)

The general idea with the old-school Elfball lists that were floating around in casual land since forever is that you use an Elf that taps for a lot of mana (typically Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary or Wirewood Channeler) and some way to continually untap him that costs less mana than he produces, making an arbitrarily large amount of mana and Fireball everyone for the win (hence ElfBall). Most of the decks I’ve seen in action splash blue for one or both of Pemmin’s Aura or Freed from the Real, as they only require a single mana to untap. In red and green, your options are limited somewhat:

• Umbral Mantle (requires the creature to tap for at least four mana)
• Sword of the Paruns (ditto)
• Aggravated Assault

There are other ways the ElfBall works as well; the most common that I’ve found is to make an infinite storm count by using Cloudstone Curio and Heritage Druid, along with two other one-drop elves. It works a little like this:

• Have Cloudstone Curio in play, and Heritage Druid either in play with one other one-drop Elf, or in your hand with two other one drop Elves.
• Play the Elf in your hand (Storm 1)
• With the Cloudstone Curio trigger on the stack, tap three Elves to make GGG
• Return a tapped Elf to your hand
• Play that Elf (Storm 2, GG in mana pool)
• Return a tapped Elf to your hand
• Play it (Storm 3, G in mana pool)
• Return the last tapped Elf to your hand
• You’re now back at stage one – You have two untapped Elves + Curio in play, and a third in your hand

Things get even wackier if one of your Elves is Nettle Sentinel – because it untaps itself when you play another Elf, you don’t need to return it to your hand. This means you make green mana out of the deal, which leads to infinite storm, and infinite green mana (essentially it’s another way to ElfBall). Finish off with your choice of Ignite Memories or Grapeshot (or Haze of Rage or Hunting Pack if you’re feeling weird, or Volcanic Awakening if you’re feeling like a dick…)

ElfBall Pros

• It’s about the only way to make Elves relevant in EDH
• It comes out of left field (at least the first few times)
• It’s reasonably resilient
• It doesn’t require the combat phase to win
• I don’t play a lot of combo – this will only be my second combo deck (the first being Animar, which is more a U/G creature deck with some combos in it. It has a grand total of 3 red cards, as I write this, and two of them are only there to give haste to my team.)

Elfball Cons

• It’s not particularly interactive. This of course applies to most combo decks
• It needs all it’s pieces (and it needs lots of pieces) at once which means either a) tutors, or b) lots and lots of waiting
• Being R/G, it won’t have a lot of ways to protect itself
• It’s much harder to get the right bits assembled when only one of them is in the deck.
• It will pretty much play out the same way every game

Another option is…

Warrior Tribal!

There are some great Warriors in Magic. The vast majority of them are in Green and Red. This seems relevant, since Radha is herself a Warrior. (As an aside there are 5 legendary G/R warriors. A 4/4 First Striking, Legendary Landwalking lass for 6, a 4/6 Rampage: 1 for 6 (wow…), Radha, A 3/4 guy who comes with his twin for 6, and a 4/4 Trampler for 5, with a mid-combat pump. Radha seems best to me, although a couple of these guys could sneak in.)

Lorwyn block really is the star here; it gave the Warrior tribe a lot more late-game punch with the addition of Giant and Treefolk Warriors (as well as Goblins, Elves, and Elementals). There are 68 Green and/or Red Warriors in Lorwyn/Shadowmoor block alone! They did need the help though – there are only 183 Warriors in the rest of Magic history, and most of them are…. sub-par (Akki Raider, looking at you here…)

After going through the list, these are the ones I thought may actually be worth playing:

Elf Warriors

Allosaurus Rider
Bramblewood Paragon
Elvish Skysweeper
Elvish Vanguard
Imperious Perfect
Joraga Warcaller
Lys Alana Huntmaster
Nath’s Elite
Nettle Sentinel
Talara’s Battalion
Winnower Patrol
Wren’s Run Packmaster
Wren’s Run Vanquisher

Goblin Warriors

Bloodmark Mentor
Boggart Ram-Gang
Goblin Bangchuckers
Goblin Wardriver
Zo-Zu the Punisher

Elemental Warriors

Brighthearth Banneret
Inner-Flame Ignitor
Nova Chaser (if enough Elementals)
Vengeful Firebrand

Giant Warriors

Boldwyr Heavyweights (requires Stranglehold?)
Boldwyr Intimidator
Countryside Crusher (requires mana acceleration, or some way of getting lands from graveyard to hand or play)
Furystoke Giant
Hamletback Goliath
Hotheaded Giant

Treefolk, Human, Troll, Vampire, Cat, Wolfir and Snake Warriors Oh My!

Ambassador Oak (brings an Elf Warrior friend!)
Champion of Lambholt
Drumhunter
Falkenrath Marauders
Hunted Troll
Jedit Ojanen of Efrava
Kargan Dragonlord
Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs
Markov Blademaster
Matsu Tribe Sniper
Nacatl War-Pride
Petrified Wood-Kin
Sosuke, Son of Seshiro
Splatter Thug
Viridian Zealot
Vulshok Battlemaster
Wolfir Silverheart
Zealous Conscripts

While it’s not a particularly impressive list, there is some potential there. However, I think a lot of the work will be done by only a few of the creatures; notably Bramblewood Paragon and Boldwyr Intimidator. Everything else either makes more creatures, or make themselves or others bigger. There’s a distinct lack of evasion, which I guess for Warriors isn’t a huge surprise.

Aggro decks in EDH just plain don’t work – there is one aggro deck I can think of in our playgroup that is any good, and it’s a G/R Stonebrow deck that ramps up to big trampler after big trampler, usually with Savage Beating (THE most appropriately named card in all of magic) to finish. Having a bunch of 3/3’s and 2/3’s simply doesn’t cut it against the haymakers most EDH decks are throwing around, and that’s before the somewhat inevitable board wipes. So in order to make a tribal deck work, you have to be able to FINISH HIM!!

So, I thought to myself… what if I could combine the two decks? Have an Elfball Tribal Warriors mashup?

Such a deck would have a game plan kinda like this: In the early game throw out some threats in the form of Warrior beatdown, as well as a fair bit of ramp-age (turns out that word needs a hyphen, otherwise it’s just rampage, which is kind of appropriate I guess). In the mid game it’ll prey on targets of opportunity while setting up for the Big Finish, which will be a large X-spell of some variety. Cards like Earthquake in this scenario are fine, since if the early game has gone well I’ll be on more life than anyone else.

For this strategy (and I use that term loosely) I’ll have to cherry pick only the very best Warriors, and the ElfBall cards which are essential to creating large amounts of mana – although it must be noted that I don’t have to have the ability to go Infinite – if I get to X=20 or so, that should be more than enough. First let’s look over the Warrior list above for cards which also work in ElfBall:

Nettle Sentinel.

Hmm. This could be harder than I thought. There are a few good Warriors which can act as mana sinks for Arbitrarily Large Amounts Of Mana (Wren’s Run Packmaster, Joraga Warspeaker, Boldwyr Intimidator, Inner-Flame Igniter (sort of), Vengeful Firebrand, Kargan Dragonlord (although he “only” needs RRRRRRRR)). The trouble is, if I draw all (or worse, only some of) my Elfball stuff too early, I have nothing to do in the early game. If I don’t draw it at all, I’m just going to sit around with a bunch of outclassed creatures. Still it’s not all doom and gloom. I think I can build enough resilience in – without resorting to a bunch of tutor effects – that Fun Times will be had. So, this will be my initial build:

General: Radha, Heir to Keld

Warriors: (sorted by converted mana cost)

1. Elvish Skysweeper, Joraga Warcaller, Nettle Sentinel
2. Bramblewood Paragon*, Brighthearth Banneret, Goblin Wardriver*, Kargan Dragonlord*, Matsu-Tribe Sniper, Varchild’s War-Riders*, Wren’s Run Vanquisher, Viridian Zealot*
3. Boggart Ram-Gang, Champion of Lambholt*, Imperious Perfect*, Inner Flame Igniter, Markov Blademaster, Mirri Cat Warrior, Zo-Zu the Punisher
4. Ambassador Oak, Hunted Troll, Lys Alana Huntmaster, Sosuke Son of Seshiro, Vengeful Firebrand, Wren’s Run Packmaster
5. Nath’s Elite, Stonebrow Krosan Hero, Vulshok Battlemaster*, Zealous Conscripts*
6. Nacatl War-Pride
7. Allosaurus Rider, Boldwyr Intimidator, Hamletback Goliath

*Cards I don’t actually own… Champion of Lambholt incidentally makes all my dudes unblockable if I cast an infinite number of Elves in a turn. Handy!

I considered Nova Chaser here but I only have three other Elementals – not good odds.

Counting that up we have 32 Warriors. Pretty good numbers for a semi-tribal deck, and still plenty of room to add the ElfBall pieces. So far, so good! Adding to that, Elfball pieces (remember, I’m not trying to go infinite, but simply Large™

Combo Number 1: Infinite Mana: Rofellos Llanowar Emissary, Elvish Archdruid, Priest of Titania, Wirewood Channeller, Umbra Mantle, Sword of the Paruns. Finish with Comet Storm, Earthquake, Hurricane, or something else that gets everyone at once, preferably at instant speed.

Combo Number 2: Infinite Storm Count: Cloudstone Curio, Heritage Druid, any two other 1-drop elves (currently Elvish Skysweeper, Joraga Warcaller, and Nettle Sentinel). With Nettle Sentinel this also gives me Infinite G mana. I’ll have to put in more here – getting Heritage Druid and 2 out of the other three one-drops in play at once seems pretty unlikely. Candidates are: Arbor Elf, Centaur’s Herald, Copperhorn Scout, Elvish Lookout, Essence Warden, Gladecover Scout, Greenseeker, Joraga Treespeaker, Llanowar Elves (and maybe Fyndhorn Elves), Quirion Ranger (this guy is a shoe-in, given the next category), Skyshroud Ranger, or Taunting Elf (although he probably wouldn’t survive long enough!). That’s 12 more to choose from. After the infinite storm, I will have Grapeshot, Ignite Memories, and Hunting Pack (hopefully with a haste enabler like Fires, see “Other bits” below…). I really want to throw Haze of Rage in here, but without something else to help it out, whatever dudes I have (that will be infinitely large power, but no more toughness than normal) can just be chump blocked.

“Combo” Number 3: Big Enough: Rather than generating an “arbitrarily large” amount of mana, this uses the mana producers from Combo 1 above to generate merely “enough mana to kill you all”; Quirion Ranger, Wirewood Lodge, Magewright’s Stone, Scryb Ranger, Seeker of Skybreak, Seize the Day, Thousand Year Elixir, Wirewood Symbiote.

The idea here is that I have approximately 30 cards to work with after including the 32 Warriors above; after a little jiggering around this is what I’ve decided on:

ElfBall Package, sorted by Converted Mana Cost:

0. Wirewood Lodge
1. Essence Warden, Fireball, Hurricane, Heritage Druid, Joraga Treespeaker, Llanowar Elves, Quirion Ranger, Skyshroud Ranger, Taunting Elf, Wirewood Symbiote
2. Comet Storm, Fault Line, Grapeshot, Magewright’s Stone, Molten Disaster, Priest of Titania, Rofellos Llanowar Emissary, Rolling Thunder, Scryb Ranger, Seeker of Skybreak, Squall Line
3. Cloudstone Curio, Elvish Archduid, Sword of the Paruns, Thousand Year Elixir, Umbral Mantle
4. Wirewood Channeler
5. Aggravated Assault, Ignite Memories
7. Hunting Pack

Altogether that’s 62 cards. That’s what you get for trying to shoehorn two different decks into one – ideally I want to run 35-37 lands (the curve is reasonably low) so I have zero, one, or two cards left… and no real way to deal with anything my opponents are doing (short of killing them dead, of course).

This is what the deck looks like so far (I added Stomping Ground, Rootborn Crag, and Basics).

I’m tempted to call it there and play a few games with the deck as it is; partially because I want to see if it’ll work at all, partially to see if I need to add things like Fires of Yavimaya, and partially because this post is nearly 3,000 words long and has taken me nearly a week to write 😀 (That also explains the somewhat sporadic card tags… If you need to see what a card is click the link in the previous paragraph and just hover over the card name 🙂

What do you think? Does the complete lack of meaningful interactions with the rest of the table kill this off? Does the complete lack of mana ramp sink this deck before it takes off? How can I play a Radha deck without Bang Veggies!? Stay tuned! Comments as always, welcome!

 

Konda, Lord of Eiganjo; a study in Theme Deckery

I find myself with nothing to complain about. This is a sad state of affairs indeed, and so I must turn to more creative endeavours! Thank you to the voters in my poll from the last post (vote now!) and I’ll be looking at one or more of those decks in the near future. In the meantime, I’m going to go through a theme deck I’ve been building off and on for a while now – a second Mono-White deck whose general (uh, Commander, I guess, but come on, he’s ACTUALLY a General!) is this guy:

Bit of a beast, this fella. A 3/3 Vigilant dude for seven isn’t exactly at the top end of the power curve. A 3/3 Vigilant indestructible dude, if we’re honest, doesn’t really cut it either (see for reference: Avacyn, Angel of Hope. For one more mana you get +5/+5, and flying, and she makes all of you shizzle indestructibizzle, my nizzle. Ahem). Bushido 5, while impressive and the highest Bushido ranking of any creature in the game, currently, is not usually going to be relevant.

So why this guy? Flavour. Story. Badassness. This is the fella that started THE war. This is the guy that brought down a plane. This is the guy who just plain refused to listen, and Kept On Fighting. One of the very few white villains in the MTG Multiverse, Konda don’t take no shit from no one.

How to best represent this? Well, I figure he’s the type of guy who’d take on the world, by himself if need be, to get the job done. He’ll put on his armour and grab his weapons, and go out and win this damn war. So that’s more or less what I’ve done with this deck. It’s a Voltron style, General damage inflicting deal, full of things a Warlord is going to need to get the Job Done(tm).

Of course no man is an Island (not after they errata’d Island Fish Jasconius, anyway…), and so Konda is going to need a little help. I’ve restricted myself to either people that are directly related to him – in one case literally! – or work with him in the storyline (OK, so I haven’t actually read the story. Wikipedia is my friend, right?). I’ve also added a few creatures that help with the Equipment and Swing gameplan. In I dived to my collection, and pulled out:

Konda, Lord of Eiganjo
Konda’s Hatamoto
Opal-Eye, Konda’s Yojimbo
Konda’s Banner
General’s Kabuto (actually going to be reasonably important; it’ll stop most Exile and Tuck effects)
Eiganjo Castle
That Which Was Taken

I would have added Isamaru, and Michiko Konda, but I don’t own any – I will be attempting to trade for them soon.

Next on the list o’stuff were some supporting characters – some from Konda’s own story, and some from other realms. Because I’m trying to make this as themey (it’s a word!) as I can, the extra creatures here must either fit well with the deck, or with the theme. So in go:

Characters from Konda’s storyline and setting:

Masako the Humorless
Kami of Ancient Law
Takeno, Samurai General (making that Bushido 5 of Konda’s actually useful!)
Eight-and-a-Half-Tails
Nagao, Bound by Honor
Myojin of Cleansing Fire
Samurai of the Pale Curtain
Yosei, the Morning Star

Now, you may notice some spirits on there. “What gives!” you might be screaming impotently at your computer screen. “Konda started the war against the spirits!” True, but in the story I’ve been able to find Yosei actually helped defend Eiganjo castle when the big spirit attacked it. Kami of Ancient Law has a quote about Konda right there in the flavour text, and the Myojin is a taste of things to come… more on that later. (Also, That Which Was Taken + Myojin of Cleansing Fire = BFF’s, amiright? Iright 🙂 )

Other dudes that aren’t from Konda’s timeline

Stonehewer Giant
Mageta the Lion
Brass Squire
Kor Outfitter
Magus of the Disk
Puresteel Paladin
Steelshaper Apprentice
Taj-Nar Swordsmith
Stoneforge Mystic

So basically, dudes that get equipment, or dudes that kill everything… for some reason. Okay, so after all the dudes, the rest of the deck is Weapons of War and Killing. Everything. Hell, if I’m paying seven mana for a 3/3, I’m going to equip him up and make sure he connects! Keeping to the theme as much as possible, I’m only putting in equipment suitable for a General. With that in mind, this is the initial list:

WEAPONS
Oathkeeper, Takeno’s Daisho
Bonesplitter
Warlord’s Axe
Vulshok Morningstar
Trusty Machete
Tenza, Godo’s Maul
O-Naginata
No-Dachi
Leonin Scimitar
Hammer of Ruin
Dead-Iron Sledge (seems good when you’re indestructible 😀 )
Banshee’s Blade
Greatsword
Inquisitor’s Flail
Loxodon Warhammer
Sword of Kaldra
and of course (you knew this was coming, right…. Worldslayer

ARMOUR

Slagwurm Armor
Vulshok Battlegear

SHIELDS

Kite Shield
Pariah’s Shield
Shield of Kaldra

OTHER WARGEAR

Vulshok Gauntlets
Golem-Skin Gauntlets
Swiftfoot Boots
Champion’s Helm
Helm of Kaldra

Now we’re just about ready to go on the warpath. All we need is some way of getting through with the damage; white isn’t too big on trample effects, but there is one thing it is good at:

KABOOM

I could dick around with Protection style unblockability, but really let’s just keep blowing the world up while my indestructible General takes large chunks out of your life total 😉

Day of Judgment
Wrath of God
Rout
Austere Command
Phyrexian Rebirth
Sunscour

plus the Mageta, Magus, and Myojin I already have. Should do the trick 😉

Adding those up, I have 57 non-land cards, including Konda. Normally in a mono-coloured deck I’ll try and cheat on a land or two, since it’s only the number, and not the type of land that’s going to be important. In this case though, I need to get to seven mana reliably, and then have a bunch of equip costs on top of that. So I’m going with 37 land, plus a mana rock or two. That only leaves me about 6 cards to play with. On a whim I did a search for “Metalcraft” since it seems this deck will have a lot of artifacts at any given time. In go:

Auriok Edgewright
Dispatch
Dispense Justice
Etched Champion (if I can find one)
Indomitable Archangel (ditto)

One space left…. I think I’ll just chuck in Day of Destiny, just because it ain’t going in any other deck…

The manabase is going to be pretty standard – Eiganjo, Drifting Meadow, Secluded Steppe and Emeria the Sky Ruin. And lots and lots of plains.

And there we have it. Konda, in all his blasty, screw-you glory. I don’t expect this to be a good deck – if I was trying to make it good, I’d play Swords of Stuff and Junk* and Umezawa’s Jitte, and card draw and artifact removal and all that good stuff. I don’t usually play decks with this many sweepers in them, but I don’t plan on using them until the Big Guy hits the table and starts swinging.

So what’d I miss? What should I have put in? What shouldn’t I have put in? Comments below!

*Swords of Stuff and Junk (c) Cassidy McAuliffe 2011

 

Getting back on the EDH Bandwagon

Hi folks,

That’s right, it’s me! After a somewhat long hiatus, I’ve decided that it’s time I started my particular brand of whining on the internet again. This here post here is going to be a mishmash of stuff I’ve nearly posted but haven’t, after which I’m gonna try my best to get more content out there. After all, my voice is important, right? Of course it is. So without further ado, on to the Wisdom!

Return To Ravnica: Pre-Release

I loved me some Ravnica block. It was the first successful block that was released while I was running my game store (I opened during Fifth Dawn. Then came Kamigawa Block. Ugh…) As a result I have a real soft spot for Ravnica, and have resolved (and so far, succeeded!) to participate in every draft I can, just like the good ol’ days. However, that’s getting ahead of myself a bit. First, there was the pre-re! I signed up for all 5 pods that our LGS had set up; the first kicked off at midnight on the Fri night, so given our timezone (GMT +13, in New Zealand) it was entirely possible that we were one of the first people in the world to (legally) crack into the cardboard. Can I just say here that the “guild booster” was an inspired idea, and one that worked pretty awesomely well all weekend (apart from that one time when I was Selesnya, and… well.. it’s the worst pool I’ve ever opened. But it happens). I was randomly assigned guilds, but got all 5 over the weekend.

My first guild was Rakdos. And boy did it smash face! I went 3-1 (all our pods were 4 rounds, in order to save a bit on time) and the match I lost was against another Rakdos player. I kid you not, this was how Game 1 went:

• Mull to 4
• Opponent plays turn two Gore-House Chainwalker, unleased to my empty board.
• Opponent plays turn three Grim Roustabout, unleashed, to my empty board.
• Opponent plays turn four Rakdos, Lord of Riots. Enter scoop phase!

And this was game 2:

• Mull to 5
• Opponent plays turn two Gore-House Chainwalker, unleased to my empty board.
• Opponent plays turn three Grim Roustabout, unleashed, to my empty board.
• Opponent plays turn four Rakdos, Lord of Riots. Enter scoop phase!

Smashed ’em bro!

Ah well. Over the course of the weekend I went 3-1 (Rakdos), 1-3 (Selesnya, with the worst pool you… ah never mind), 3-1 (Golgari), 1-3 (Azorious), 2-2 (Izzet). My Azorious deck was fragile but conditionally good, while my Izzet pool could have been explosive but instead resolved to colour screw me. What really annoyed me was in my 36-odd packs I got one Shockland (my fifth Steam Vents) and no Guild Legends at all. (Obligatory sob story: I’m opening my Izzet box, and the guy across the table from me – who got the very next Izzet box – goes “Hey! Foil Overgrown Tomb! And Steam Vents in the same pack! And oh hey, Hallowed Fountain in this one!” FML….)

All in all I had a blast at this event, and will be doing the same come Gatecrash. Come on, Simic!!!

Return to Ravnica: Draft

With two drafts in the books, how’m I doing? Well, I 0-3’d the first one with what I thought was a fairly solid G/B/w deck… although I opened a Jace in Pack 3, so not complaining too hard. Then I went 2-1 in the second with a very solid G/B deck, which people kept gifting me cards for. I got a Golgari Guildgate LAST PICK in pack two. That’s not right, right? I really want to pick up some other cards, but people keep passing these Golgari things to me. Everyone’s in love with U/W skies or U/R Burn or G/W populate it seems. Having a bunch of 2/2’s isn’t that bad people. Oh and a pro-tip – the 3/4 Hexproof Rhino guys are REALLY good if you have a lot of scavenge 😉

EDH Bannings

(Yep, it really has been that long since I’ve posted…)

– Worldfire: Can’t get behind this one quickly enough. If this is what WotC think Commander players want, they are waaaay out of touch (see next rant…) I’m glad the RC jumped on this one. Nothing says anti-social like “I don’t give a flying f**k what’s happened so far. I’m gonna nuke you all back to the stone age.”

– Primeval Titan: OK so I can see why they did it, but I’m not sure the combination of ubiquity + power was enough to actually bring the hammer down on this guy. Sure, in our playgroup we don’t abuse him as much as we can, but even for those who do, the argument “the game revolved around him” doesn’t really hold any water for me. I only got my hands on three of these (they were in Damia, Animar, and Mayael) so I’m not too disappointed but I don’t think it deserved the banhammer. Ah well.

+ Kokusho, the Evening Star: Love it. Love everything about it. This shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone. I ordered a couple before the announcement hoping Koko was going to come off the list. Huzzah! The reasons why Kokusho deserved to come off the list have long been debated everywhere so I won’t go through it again, but I will sum up with: Other creatures have caught up. Not as format defining as she was previously. (She? Really? How do you tell?)

So now they just need to unban Protean Hulk, and I’ll be happy. (Yes, combo. Yes, broken. They unbanned Worldgorger Dragon, and it’s not exactly causing any problems.)

Commander: Arsenal (aka The Arse)

Hoo boy. After my last post on this subject (see here), and several other people adding their much better formed arguments (samples here, here, and here), and pretty much everywhere that talks about EDH (especially mtgcommander and mtgsalvation) I don’t think there’s a lot to say about this one. It’s a huge miss, as far as I’m concerned, and the cards in it will simply push the prices up beyond what the average EDH’er can afford. As it turns out, that’s what they were going for; this from Mark Rosewaters blog (Now called BlogAtog, previously Tales from The Pit):

sentancedtosaturnus asked: What was it about the original Commander Pre-Cons that made you (I know it wasn’t you) decide that a “luxury product” was a good follow up? Usually when a car dealership sells out of a affordable mid-sized sedan, they don’t respond by ordering Luxury car. I have faith in Wizards and I know there has to be better reasoning than that in the case of Commanders Arsenal. Was there some need to use an all-foil product due to printing arrangements or something else that we don’t know?

Commander came out last year. It was a huge success. We realized it should be something we do every year, but due to our lead times the quickest we could get it out was 2013. So we decided to make a smaller product that could be made much quicker.

Due to the much shortened lead time, we made a product capable of being made in the time allotted. That product couldn’t have a lot of cards which greatly limited our options. We made a list of items that we could make and a luxury items for high-end Commander players who like to “bling” out their deck was picked.

I understand that a lot of Commander players want more cards for Commander. We’re making that product – as something annual even – but that’s not what Commander’s Arsenal is. The product you want is coming out just not until next year.

Here’s hoping next year’s product is the same price as the original pre-cons (or close), and at a much, MUCH higher print run…

In the interests of full disclosure; I am currently on the waiting list for one of these; mostly because it does have cards I want, and also (and most importantly) our very FLGS is selling it for retail (well, NZ retail) prices. That doesn’t make the product any better, and it’s still a significant (but obviously cost-effective) outlay for me that will curtail my Magic budget for quite some time.

Deck Updates

I have not been sitting idly by these last few weeks  – most of my decks have been through a little rebuilding process, especially considering the release of Return to Ravnica. (Although having said that, my Nin, Tolsimir and Isperia decks haven’t picked much up. Savra got a bunch of new cards though – 12 in all – and that’s without the Jarad that I haven’t manage to trade for yet). When I run out of things to complain about – which probably won’t be for a while – I’ll run through a detailed analysis of one of my decks. This is where you (the four of you that still read this) come in – there’s a poll! Vote for which one of my decks you’d like to know more about. I’ve limited the options somewhat, as the decks below are the ones I want to talk about 😉 ) So without further mucking around – if I were to talk about a deck, which one would you like to hear about?

Welp, that’s all from me for now – I’ll be back (this time I mean it….)

 

Zombies!

The latest addition to my stable of decks is this cheerful fella:

Nothing too innovative here; Zombies, and ways to kill your creatures so I can have them, preferably as Zombies. To the decklist!

Click here for decklist

Notable things about the decklist – some things serve several purposes. Graveborn Muse, for example is both a Zombie, and card draw. Gravespawn Soveriegn is both a Zombie and Brings Yours Back… and so on. There are some cards I still want to get – most notably Army of the Damned and Endless Ranks of the Dead – but this should be a pretty good start, I hope. Am I missing anything obvious?

 

Deck Update: Doran, the Siege Tower

Doran, the Siege Tower

I finally got around to “finishing” this one – I sent the old list off to Thaumaturge from The Command Zone (who seems to have disappeared – Thaum, you out there still?) and he rebuilt it for me – I’ve put in all the changes for cards I can get, but need to put in a card order for around 9 more – in the meantime the deck looks better than it ever has, and I’m keen to take it for a test run! Stay tuned for a game report over the next few days.

 

 

Permanent Links to my decklists

As some of you have discovered, I’ve been working on a set of pages for my decks, proposed or existing. It’s up there, and the main page has links to all my decks, what’s in them, and how they’re supposed to work. If you hover over the main page link, you’ll also get a dropdown showing the sub-pages (which hopefully will be self-explanatory).

I’ll be updating those pages every now and then, especially when cards go on or off the Wantlist and Watchlist (which will be available for each deck… eventually.) When I make changes to the decks I’ll still post here, but I’ll also update the decklists on these pages.