99 Problems: Chainer, Deck Doctoring
Hey again. Last week, we talked about creating a softlock and controlling the board. This week, we’ll be doing an in-depth analysis of a Chainer deck a reader sent in.
99 Problems: Under Lock and Key
Hey again. Last time, we talked about priming your deck against opponents by including cards to deal with their strategies, and being able to play around whatever cards your opponents might play to deal with yours. This week, we’ll be taking a look an in-depth at softlocks in commander, how to establish them, and how to break them.
allthingsedh reblogged
Pretty stoked for that Elesh Norn.
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Poison in Commander
Let’s pretend for a minute that all Infect creature cards are viably good in Commander. (Hint: They’re not.)
Maximum number of Infect creatures in a…
- BG Commander deck: 38
- Mono-B Commander deck: 25
- Mono-G Commander deck: 23
- 3-color Commander deck: 42
- 5-color Commander deck: 48
Granted, proliferate will factor in for some wins. In addition, there are the cards that give a presumably strong creature Infect. The main issue I have is that, even at maximum color inclusion, the deck will be weak. Commander is a multiplayer format and trying to kill multiple players with Poison at 10 is more challenging than any complex and multi-card combo. If you only include the strongest and best Infect cards, you will end up with an even smaller creature base. The support simply does not exist for anything past 10 poison and I respect anyone who is able to beat EDH players by using such a strange base of cards.
On a related note, I’d like to address the fact that Infect is a wincon for some Modern and Legacy decks. There is an unbelievable difference between four copies of 2 or 3 good Infect creatures in a 60 card deck (13%-20%) versus one copy of those same 2 or 3 Infect creatures in a 100 card deck (2% or 3%). Glistener Elf, Blighted Agent, and Blightsteel are good cards. That said, creatures, removal, and in-game politics are part of EDH for that reason.
99 Problems: Bullets and Vests
Hey again. Last week, we talked about how politics can affect optimal play in a multiplayer format. Today, we’ll be talking about the best hate-cards to run, and how to protecting your easily breakable deck.
99 Problems: Politically Correct
Hey! Welcome back. Last week, we talked about how this being a multiplayer format encouraged different strategies, or archetypes. This week, we’ll be talking about how politics works at a four-player table.
99 Problems: The Difference
Commander’s not much like other formats. In Legacy, there are “defined” decks - RUG Delver, Combo Elves, Reanimator. Only occasionally will a large event have a rogue deck in its Top8. In Commander, this isn’t so - when I sit down to a pod with strangers, the most powerful decks are often the typical Arcum Dagsson, Sharuum, whatever, but are just as often Nin, the Pain Artist or Heidar, Rimewind Master or some other commander I’ve never seen before. That’s one thing that’s pretty different about this format - you can take your own idea and make it a legitimate deck.
allthingsedh reblogged
mosswort-bridge
Synergy! While your opponents struggle to decide which creature to untap, you get to untap everything when it’s not your turn!
Also another fun fact, both of these cards are collector number 199/249 in their respective sets.
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Choose Your Tribe Carefully
If you don’t care about building strong decks, don’t read this post. I get that a lot of people like tribal, and if your primary concern is having fun and playing with the cards you want to play with, then this post isn’t for you.
But! If you’re unsure about tribal decks, or you think certain tribes might be bad but you aren’t sure why, AND you want to improve your deckbuilding ability, read on:
For the purposes of this article, a tribal deck is one that actively rewards you for playing a certain creature type. You can play a deck with 20 Angels, for instance, but it’s not a tribal deck if there’s no synergy between the cards; if you have no support for your tribe, then there’s no reason to play those 20 Angels instead of a mix of Angels, Avatars, Praetors, etc.
Another quick definition: a Lord is a creature that increases the power and/or toughness of creatures of a certain type.
Every tribal deckbuilder starts by putting a really strong constraint on themselves. If I want to build a reanimator deck, I have access to all the creatures that reanimate stuff, whether they’re Avatars, Rats, or Humans. However, if I want to build a tribal Rat deck, or a tribal Human deck, or whatever, I’m limited to the effects that appear in that tribe, regardless of the power level of those effects and whether they have any internal synergy.
In exchange for this narrowing of focus, you would ideally receive access to tribal synergies that boost your deck’s power level above that of a deck that has a smorgasbord of different creatures types. The problem is, most tribes don’t have a lot of synergistic cards available to them, and even fewer have synergistic cards that scale well to a 40-life singleton format. It might be easier to explain why the good tribes are good than to try to explain why everything else is, uh, less good.
Goblins
Goblins have been red’s staple race forever, and small trickles of tribal support over the last 20 years have coalesced into a critical mass of token production, lords, and direct damage. Moreover, they have multiple tribal commanders, one of which creates new Goblins at an exponential rate. The combination of history, focus, and relevant commanders makes Goblins an ideal race to build a tribal deck around.
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♥ MTG Themed Valentine Cards ♥
Series One From Last Year :)
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One of the meanest Combos I have ever seen. I refuse to put it in a deck out of self respect!
WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
theinkstainedknight
ah shit….ah shit…
I might cry
These are the best and only appropriate reactions to this combo
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Stating the Obvious
It’s blatantly obvious, but the MtG community is generally pretty gorram awesome. After all, we all just want to play a game, talk about cards, to have some fun…
…And, don’t forget, to feel like BAMF’s.
Who's going to SCG St Louis? Reblog this post and I'll inbox you; I'd like to set up a game of EDH and make a few friends! Trading, whatever.
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masculinemallard-deactivated202
Category 1: Manafixing (Cube Glue)...Finished!
This category is finished! 30 artifacts and 30 lands. Do I have any notable omissions? I would love to hear thoughts
Where can I see it?
What are all your guys' commanders? Submit a decklist to me and I'll critique!
So I was recently in a debate between a couple friends about the presence of mana spells. I've always thought that the best accelerants in green decks were ramp spells, but a friend said that mana creatures (IE Sakura-Tribe Elder) were better. What do you think? Which spells and creatures do you prefer?
Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/jarad-edh-09-12-13-1
Here's my Jarad list currently; it's my "competitive" deck and I've been fine-tuning it for a few years now. It functions as a combo deck with a reanimator engine. It goldfishes around turn 5-6 win and has about a 60% win ratio in a 4-man pod.
The game plan goes something like this: It typically can reanimate a creature within the first four turns, usually an It That Betrays or a Baleful Force. After a couple turns of generating card advantage, you start drawing hate and getting shut down by opponents' removal. Hopefully by this point you're far enough ahead that you can afford it and start playing ramp spells and mana rocks. After this, you tutor up combo pieces, depending on the boardstate. While the deck is full of combos, I have a philosophy that it's poor form and inefficient to run a plethora of combo pieces that do nothing by themselves. For example, Phyrexian Altar is a piece in many of my combos, but it's also useful on its own. To finish the game, play a couple combos and win. The combos are as follows:
- The one I usually attempt to use first is simple: Phyrexian Devourer + Jarad. I can exile the top card of my library to make it large. With the Sacrifice trigger on the stack, I repeatedly use it's first ability to add to its power, then sacrifice to Jarad. If for whatever reason I can't activate Jarad (Hinder, Pithing Needle, not enough mana) I can instead sacrifice Devourer to an Altar of Dementia and kill one player.
- With Mikeaus and Woodfall Primus, I can sacrifice Woodfall repeatedly to any sacrifice outlet and destroy all noncreature permanents I don't control. As this includes lands, this is usually met by concession from the rest of the table. If my sacrifice outlet is Altar of Dementia, I can mill the table out. If it's Phyrexian Altar, I can generate infinite mana, cast Jarad, and burn the table to death. If it's anything else, a 1-sided mass land-destruction usually ends the game itself. This combo is convenient as I can find them both off of an entwined Tooth and Nail. If I don't have a sacrifice outlet but I do have either the Mike or Primus, I can find Flesh-Eater Imp instead.
- Grave Titan or Avenger of Zendikar with Ashod's Altar and Nim Deathmantle allows me to recur these creatures and sacrificing the accompanying tokens gives me more than the four mana it costs to recur them with the Deathmantle. This gives me infinite tokens and infinite colorless mana. If using Avenger of Zendikar, I can replace Ashnod's Altar with Phyrexian Altar. If I have Phyrexian, I can use Corpse Dance on Avenger if I need to. Mikeaus on the field would also allow me to do these things with Grave Titan instead.
- With an Eternal Witness and a bunch creatures on field or in the 'yard and a Phyrexian Altar in play, Living Death or any other mass-reanimaton spell allows me to recur them and generate more mana than it costs to cast the reanimation spell itself. E Wit will grab back Living Death and I can repeat this process indefinetely for infinite mana. Then, I can cast Jarad and use his sacrifice ability repeatedly to burn the table. If Jarad is tucked, many other creaturse with an Enter the Battlefield abilities like Rune-Scarred Demon or Woodfall Primus can also make this combo practically lethal as I get those abilities repeatedly.
There are several other semi-hidden combos, but those are the ones that frequently matter.
Cards that may soon be cut in this deck include Grave Pact and Butcher of Malakir as I rarely find neccesary, Nim Deathmantle which often is win-more, Herald of Leshrac as I'm still testing it as a Sylvan Primordial replacement, and Avenging Druid as there are several other cheap mana-creatures I'd like to fit in.
What are your thoughts or suggestions?