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Magic: the Gathering |OT11| Amonkhet - Have you ever had decks with a Pharaoh?
- Thread starter SigmasonicX
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Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
are you so eager to snipe people with scion?
Imperfected
Member
Scion doesn't really care if it costs 10 mana, anyway.
Strictly better Spell Snip!
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
true but he does care about reanimating them after getting use out of.
i don't have any 5cc edh decks. the first thing i do is target the 5cc decks because they didn't choose a theme and instead chose to just play the best cards
i'm just making a snarky comment on how white only does everything
green too. fuck green/white!
Imperfected
Member
Why are you reanimating things in such a way that you care about their CMC while doing it? Are you doing some nutty drunk deck-building pauper shenanigans, and if so, where do I sign up?
Edit: Hey, 5-color decks can have a theme. Despite the name, my 5-color Godstuff is actually a tribal Gods/Enchantments deck, and running very little good stuff!
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
It also has an upkeep cost.
Play all the dragons, that's the theme.
Imperfected
Member
I would much rather see a 5-color "play all the dragons" deck than a Prossh "just fuck their faces" deck, personally.
Besides, why would anyone play five color for good stuff? It's not like you need Red.
Besides, why would anyone play five color for good stuff? It's not like you need Red.
pelicansurf
Needs a Holiday on Gallifrey
This card seems very legit. Might even be playable in Animar EDH. I'd pay 1 green mana for this card.
Yooo that's some insane card advantage.
yeah i'm cool with scion i guess
not saying it's common but my group has 5c decks that never play their commanders which i think defeats the purpose of commander
Imperfected
Member
Eh, I think for a fully-themed deck, you will sometimes see them not play the commander because the commander isn't (and can't be) in-theme, themselves.
Like, I have a four-color Eldrazi deck that runs Yidris because those are the colors I need to run an Eldrazi at every CMC all the way up to 13 (no, it isn't just a ramp to titans deck, it's an actual tribal deck), but obviously I'm not super interested in playing Yidris because he isn't actually an Eldrazi himself. I'm not interested in running an Eldrazi commander because that locks me out of playing 80% of the Eldrazi creatures.
Most of my good-stuff decks have honestly been 3/4 color (Kaalia, Atraxa, etc.). If I go up to 5 colors it's usually because I'm trying to squeeze in some dumb theme-appropriate cards at the cost of raw power. (Listen, I could play Angels in 3 or even 2 colors, and god knows running them with Kaalia is the smart way to go, but if I run them in 5 colors I can have all the named angels!)
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
Angel tribal is the only deck of mine that doesn't revolve around the commander. The commander is what makes EDH unique.
I'm now up to 6 Commander decks
currently working on a marchesa grixis aggro.
I'm now up to 6 Commander decks
- Akiri, Lineslinger + Silas Renn - Voltron and Combo
- Archangel Avacyn - Angel Tribal
- Akiri, Lineslinger + Silas Renn - Voltron and Combo
- Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis - Combostax
- Narset, the Enlightened Master - Deploy Superfriends
- Scion of the Ur-Dragon - Dragon Tribal
- Zur the Enchanter - Voltron Control
currently working on a marchesa grixis aggro.
Imperfected
Member
The commander is what makes the format unique, but being singleton at 40 Life is still the real crux of it. "Battlecruiser Magic", after all, is about the fact the game lasts long enough to play battlecruisers; if you're just fishing for easy win-cons off the guaranteed presence of your commanders, you aren't playing Battlecruiser Magic, and honestly are missing most of the fun of EDH.
divisionbyzorro
Member
The only way you can play EDH wrong is by telling other people how to play EDH.
i don't think the singleton rule really matters when you can play tutors
(they should ban some tutors)
T
Transhuman
Unconfirmed Member
If you're not playing the Ad Nauseum + Skirge Familiar combo, you're playing EDH wrong.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
if you want a skirge familiar combo there's Gitrog Monster and Darkslick Shores'
they would have to ban searching libraries then as tutors are a highly arbitrary denomination.
Imperfected
Member
I'm pretty sure that's an interesting argument the people who maintain the format have had more than a dozen times.
I'm honestly not quite sure what the right approach is. At the very least I could get behind banning the super cheap (in terms of mana cost, and conversely super expensive in terms of real money cost) tutors for the same reason cards like Ancestral Recall and Time Walk are banned. Maybe just blanket-ban every tutor under a given CMC.
It's a somewhat complicated problem, though, because a lot of completely fair decks still want tutors badly, so removing them might winnow down the field of viable decks rather than expanding it.
Yeah, I personally never use tutors (with some exceptions for those with narrow conditions, like in my General Tazri Allies deck). The whole point of the format for me is high-variance games with weird, creative cards. Don't really see the point if you're playing the same game every time.
T
Transhuman
Unconfirmed Member
*Dakmor Salvage
But that is a pretty nice combo. I gotta pick one of those up
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
Can't agree with this at all, everyone runs manafixing and most run card draw and selection but it's the same principle. You want consistency in singleton formats just the same and there'd be little point in playing combos if you don't have reliable ways to find it.
There's also decks with a hidden commander thät rely upon finding it.
There's also decks with a hidden commander thät rely upon finding it.
Imperfected
Member
More or less. I want Zur the Enchanter for 5-color gods, but he has to go in the 99 since he can't provide the colors. I once built a dumb Ooze Tribal deck that desperately wanted to tutor for Gutter Grime and Doubling Season; it was still a terrible deck even with tutors, but it would have been functionally unplayable without them.
As always, it's a more complicated issue than just "ban it and make everything better". Except Smuggler's Copter. Fuck you, Copter.
pelicansurf
Needs a Holiday on Gallifrey
Smuggler's Copter is pretty good in Alesha EDH
T
Transhuman
Unconfirmed Member
The only tutors I run are Vampiric Tutor, Demonic Tutor, Mystic Tutor, Enlightened Tutor, Tainted Pact, Eladami's Call, Bring to Light, Green Sun's Zenith, Lim-Dul's Vault, Homing Sliver and Sliver Overlord.
Giant Panda
Member
They should just ban tutor commanders. They make games play out too similarly.
Is it just me, or is Oketra stupid pushed compared to the other two gods we've seen? Stupid easy to turn on and hits harder than either of them, which I was 100% not expecting. I was onboard with her needing like 4 other creatures to turn on and having Vigilance, but Double Strike? On an Indestructible beatstick that makes tokens? Jesus.
Imperfected
Member
She definitely feels way better to me, but I'm no master of Standard's meta, so I can't say how relevant that is in terms of how well she actually fits decks that might run her.
Again, assuming he isn't banned, are there any decks that run her over Gideon? I mean, Gisela was a pretty solid 4 CMC beater and she didn't seem to get any play. Oketra is admittedly better than Gisela, but is she better enough that people make the reach to build around if they weren't interested in mono-white beatsticks at 4 to begin with?
I guess it's ultimately going to depend on how the rest of the set shakes out. As someone who plays White/Red Human Aggro casually for Standard, my feeling is that of course no one else wants to leave the Mardu Vehicles bus to join me in glorious White Weenies.
Giant Panda
Member
She seems more generically good than the red and blue ones, because she requires the least support (making dudes). The other two ask for things that decks don't seem to do as often. Though the other two look like they can be pretty good if they have enough support cards.
Pair her up with new Odric and baby, you got a stew going!
Yeah, that's the biggest issue. Gideon is just totally better in almost every way. Makes better dudes, makes dudes better, no restrictions on attacking, yada yada.
But even if he isn't banned, he won't be in standard forever. And then it's Oketra's time to shine!
Imperfected
Member
I know you're being slightly hyperbolic, but I actually want to see a deck where you run nothing but tutors, so you can only tutor for tutors.
You would need to have some really dumb and pointless card sitting at the end of the tutor chain, though. The sort of thing where just having it resolve--and preferably not win the game--is a sort of emergent win condition in and of itself.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Damnit that would have been worth it for that joke alone
T
Transhuman
Unconfirmed Member
It's like having a second Demonic Tutor. Also uncounterable.
Muddle the Mixture much better obvs.
Play both
I legitimately loled.
FYI, in the real world, Japan knew of naga from Chinese translations of Buddhist texts, which equated them with the Chinese dragon. As in, they are translated using the same word (pronounced lóng in Mandarin, ryū in modern Japanese), and considered the same thing. Indian stories about naga then came to shape how the Chinese and Japanese view dragons via Buddhist writings.
An inevitable side effect of MtG's "theme park" approach to world cultures is at least in the current lore, the planes are isolated thrill rides that seldom communicate with each other except through a select few Planeswalkers, when in reality they had always been interconnected. Alexander's conquest brought Greek art to India, which in turn influenced Chinese and Japanese sculpture; Greek architecutre and sculpture itself can be described as an offshot of Egyptian culture.
Oh come on... another sorcery PW removal?
All the aftermath cards are so disappointingly bad.
Imperfected
Member
The hydra and one of the cats have Snake in their typelines and the snakemen don't. Seriously?
Edit: Also, Never To Return is once again kind of messing with their implicit "To", as it actively contradicts itself with the "To", given the second half is "returning".
Edit: Also, Never To Return is once again kind of messing with their implicit "To", as it actively contradicts itself with the "To", given the second half is "returning".
Imperfected
Member
Yes, outside of Innistrad (OG and Shadows) Curses have only ever been printed in Commander, as far as I'm aware.
I'm guessing "Snake" is for animals, "Naga" if for humanoids.
Man, I wish there were a bunch of Mulch-like cards were in standard to pair up with that hyrda. Milling it out and playing it on turn 4 seems like a dream (if the enemy doesn't have any kind of removal of course).
Never // Return looks fine. I like it better than Ruinous Path because at least you can play it for 3 and still get the creature later on.
Never // Return looks fine. I like it better than Ruinous Path because at least you can play it for 3 and still get the creature later on.
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