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Magic: The Gathering |OT| Core Set 2020 - Red Head Wins
- Thread starter SigmasonicX
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The format is still extremely popular and I do love it. 2 things I don't love about it is the current upkeep cost and how commander products have pushed some bullshit in the format since inception
EDH at it's competitive worst is just as bad as any other format with a shit meta.
That said, there's so much flexibility with the card pool that you can build pretty much whatever you want and make it fair. There's really no excuse for bringing nothing but broken linear combo/stax decks every time.
That said, there's so much flexibility with the card pool that you can build pretty much whatever you want and make it fair. There's really no excuse for bringing nothing but broken linear combo/stax decks every time.
Maybe it was too much for me at the time, as I was still learning the ropes and then I had to deal with 3-6 other people with strong decks while I was running prebuilt decks. Now that I think about it, if I had been seriously playing Magic for 10 years, EDH would probably be an interesting change. 🤷♂️
Yeah, that's a fair point, too.
I personally take a Johnny+Vorthos approach, finding on-theme cards that fit into my deck's overall strategy instead of just copy-pasting in a bunch of staple cards that don't make sense. For example, if I'm making a Slimefoot the Stowaway saproling sacrifice deck I won't put in Blood Artist because it makes no thematic sense even though it can be a win condition. My Ral deck for Oathbreaker has zero burn spells that are fire based, just electricity. Stuff like that.
C19 - River Kelpie; Mandate of Peace (?); Basic Lands; Empowered Autogenerator
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Reprint, which surprised me a bit since it seemed so much like a supplemental set new addition.
Mandate of Peace/平和の執行
Rarity - R
1W
Instant
Cast this spell only during combat.
Your opponents can't cast spells this turn.
End the combat phase.
The basic lands form a panorama.
C19 - Backdraft Hellkite; Ignite the Future; Prismatic Strands
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C19 - Dockside Extortionist; Wall of Stolen Identity; Pramikon, Sky Rampart
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see that's the kind of design that's unacceptable to me and incredulous to see this coming from a commander set. The only thing this card does is take away meaningful decisions from players for almost no gain.
Legendary Wall!
Like best case you play this as a superfriends or pillowfort general hoping the player to your left or right has a creature light deck.
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Jeskai wall tribal baybeeeee
Edit: That card sucks ass for everyone in 5-player star, you have to kill 3 people instead of 2 to win and you have to Ace a frenemy first.
Edit: That card sucks ass for everyone in 5-player star, you have to kill 3 people instead of 2 to win and you have to Ace a frenemy first.
Dockside Extortionist seems absolutely insane in EDH. Can't wait to hit one with a kicked Rite of Replication or throw one on a Soul Foundry late game.
And Arcades is the better wall commander. Pramikon I think will appeal to the kind of player that enjoys playing rule-setting, game-controlling cards like Rule of Law or Jin Gitaxias.
And Arcades is the better wall commander. Pramikon I think will appeal to the kind of player that enjoys playing rule-setting, game-controlling cards like Rule of Law or Jin Gitaxias.
It occurred to me that they just printed a legendary red, white, and blue wall so get ready for hilarious jokes.
as a non-commander player, it feels like the commander sets have been pretty bad for commander. just a bunch of dumb bullshit and fake cards like this that take away from the format's charm.
Nah, I love this, we used to do this as teens way back in the day before EDH ever existed. Will definitely make a deck for this.
I play Fireball and Disintegrate in my dragon tribal deck even though I could play the more powerful Comet Storm or Devil's Play instead. I also refuse to play Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots because it'd look silly on dragons.
If you're not Vorthossing your EDH decks you're doing it wrong.
C19 - Ghostly Prison; Ral Zarek; Clever Impersonator
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Mandate of Peace creates a legitimate reason to play sorcery speed spells during your first main phase, which is funny to me.
I want to play this on someone constantly until I've trained them to summon creatures during MP1, and then take it out of the deck.
I want to play this on someone constantly until I've trained them to summon creatures during MP1, and then take it out of the deck.
I think Niv would look positively fetching in some Lighting Grieves, a Captain's Hook and Explorer's Scope.
Thoughts on Commander Supplemental Products:
I am not an "old-school" EDH player here so my criticism may be off base, but wasn't one of the original appeals of the format using old cards from disparate sets and creating unusual or unforeseen synergies and interactions? For me that is what is most appeal about the format is taking cards that would never have been used together and making something, ahem, magical happen. Taking cards that R&D never had to balance together and seeing how busted the game can get has always seemed to me one of the hallmarks of the format.
With the introduction of Commander specific product it feels as if some of the magic of discovering the strange interactions has been removed. Each new commander pre-con pretty clearly demonstrates what the deck is about and serves up the explosive interactions on a platter. The alchemy of brewing is laid bare and all the personal toil of researching and collecting cards means less when a pre-con deck comes with a cards designed to do a specific ability tailored to a specific commander. It seems to me, again, this is my feeling, not based in any science or research, that each year the new pre-cons release several "strictly better" cards for commander, designed for commander and for the multiplayer environment. Each of these "strictly better" cards remove one more card decision I need to make as a brewer, or at least means that I will be at a specific disadvantage for not including the better option.
I don't know, I feel like I'm ranting. Each year, around this time, I get the urge to remove any card that appeared in Commander supplemental products first from any of my decks out of "principle." To, in some way that is only meaningful or impactful to me, stay "true" to the spirit of the format...which, I know, is just me yelling at a cloud.
I am trying to get my wife on board with me taking the plunge to just buy all the pre-cons this year, even though none of them seem that specifically interesting to me...
Niv-daddy doesn't need haste. He'd just try to win on the spot. :P
C19 - Elsha of the Infinite; Faithless Looting; flashback deck list
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I'm fine with the Commander product, honestly. I'll take their efforts to make entire chunks of the color pie (mono-white and Boros) actually playable/interesting in exchange for their tendency to sometimes create cards that specifically become broken due to the Commander mechanic itself, which honestly is only a rate of about one in every four or five, anyway. (People talk about Eminence, Partner, and Experience Counters as being borked mechanics, but if you really think about it it's actually just one or two of the several generals from each of those sets that are problems. No one's losing their shit over Daxos or Arahbo.)
Yeah they handily beat any other sleeves I've tried. Only downside is that they seem to catch dirt pretty easily
C19 - Garruk, Primal Hunter
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I'm super disappointed by Jeskai. Hoping this is better. Really I'd just like a good Gruul commander.
C19 - Feldon of the Third Path; Cliffside Rescuer (?)
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Feldon of the Third Path reprint
With populate, you get a copy of the token that you don't have to sacrifice.
Cliffside Rescuer {1}{W}
Creature - Kor Soldier (U)
Vigilance
{T}, Sacrifice Cliffside Rescuer: Target permanent you control gains protection from each opponent until end of turn. (It can't be blocked, targeted, dealt damage, or enchanted by anything controlled by those players.)
2/2
Illus: Caio Monteiro
Would the new Commander precons be worth getting to play 1v1? My wife mentioned she'd like to get back into Magic (we got a few planeswalker decks around the time Ixalan came out and she really liked playing with them, though she wasn't a fan of limited when I introduced her to Sealed).
I've never played Commander and from what I gather the increased variance caused by the singleton decks is balanced out by playing in a group. If you're not drawing into your main threats it likely doesn't matter as much as it would in other formats since other players will prioritize attacking opponents with a more developed board. Am I right in this or would they be fun to play the occasional casual 1v1 game?
If they aren't the best choice for two-player games, what are some other good options? As much as I like sharing a hobby I love with my wife I really don't want to play with Planeswalker decks. I think Challenger decks may be a little intense, at least to start with. Are any of the old Duel Decks considered classic? I thought about just googling lists of cheap decks that would be balanced against each other as well, if anyone has any recommendations I would appreciate it!
I've never played Commander and from what I gather the increased variance caused by the singleton decks is balanced out by playing in a group. If you're not drawing into your main threats it likely doesn't matter as much as it would in other formats since other players will prioritize attacking opponents with a more developed board. Am I right in this or would they be fun to play the occasional casual 1v1 game?
If they aren't the best choice for two-player games, what are some other good options? As much as I like sharing a hobby I love with my wife I really don't want to play with Planeswalker decks. I think Challenger decks may be a little intense, at least to start with. Are any of the old Duel Decks considered classic? I thought about just googling lists of cheap decks that would be balanced against each other as well, if anyone has any recommendations I would appreciate it!
If you wife is more casual about Magic I would recommend the Commander decks. In 1v1 you will always have this more competitive nature of havong only one opponent to attack but the singleton format helps leveling the playing field a bit with the higher variance. This also makes cames more exciting as they play out differently each time. The occasional stomp due to mana screw erc. will happen in any format.
We also got into commander with my wife. Been playing casual 1v1s and we both enjoy it a lot. I spent around 20€ / deck on singles and used our collection for the rest (about a years worth of buying boosters every now and then).
Our decks being very casual and very budged we have very little (actually, almost none) tutors in our decks so that means there is a lot of variance how the matches go and we love it. Still get to play big plays and cool interactions.
Our decks being very casual and very budged we have very little (actually, almost none) tutors in our decks so that means there is a lot of variance how the matches go and we love it. Still get to play big plays and cool interactions.
I was thinking these might be a good choice. Also might want to look into the Guild Kits; each is themed around one of the Ravnica guilds and uses cards from all three Ravnica blocks.
We will know more when the rest of the decklists are posted but the BUG morph deck looks well built out of the box while the Jeskai Flashback deck looks horribly thrown together with no clear gameplan.
Ah, I'll look out for that. The other downside, at least right now, is they are super-expensive due to scarcity.
Are you talking about Challenger Decks? I picked up the R/U yesterday and it's pretty crazy the amount of card synergy.
I thought VMA was fun outside of Battle Screech (and TPF has the worst format-ruining common of all time), but, wrt the poll, I'd expect a lot of recency bias: a lot more people who follow Magic Online would've played VMA during its introduction (2014) than Time Spiral Block in 2006.
Think TTT was > TPF anyways, though I'd definitely have TPF >>> VMA.
Think TTT was > TPF anyways, though I'd definitely have TPF >>> VMA.
There was a poll at one point with the option to remove it from the format for flashbacks, but removal lost pretty comfortably. I think it was stupid: there's a slippery slope wrt adjusting old formats, nostalgia value, etc but Sprout Swarm is so outlier atrocious it easily should've been removed.
C19 - Doomed Artisan; Bramble Sovereign (FAKE); Trostani, Selesnya's Voice; Angel of Sanctions; Commander's Insignia; Tahngarth, First Mate
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Interesting design.
EDIT: This one turned out to be fake.
Reprint
Interesting design
Interesting way to reference how the original Tahngarth card was monored but had vigilance.
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It at least opens up Minotaur decks to a color that might work well with them, fight mechanics, cloning. You know. Green stuff.
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