Messages

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Commander Discussion / Re: Smothering Tithe..... is it currently worth it? (from a Mardu standpoint)

« on: November 23, 2023, 10:38:45 am »

Feels like that call really depends on your meta and the way you're planning to build your deck as always.. Personally I like using smothering tithe when I have a very efficient deck that can really make any extra mana go far (high Aminatou) or when I can get tons of mana (Jeskai deck with wheels for example).

It's definitely a good card but I like to avoid using same cards too many times so I'll try to put them where they can really shine. Would it shine in a Caesar deck? If your opponents like drawing cards, you have some generic token doubling synergy and you use some wheels and the game doesn't progress too fast - probably it would.

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Commander Discussion / Re: Best Card In Your Deck

« on: August 30, 2023, 01:41:03 pm »

Aminatou, the Fateshifter - it would probably have to be Parallax Wave; it multiplies my blinks and protects Ami from aggression. It just has proved itself to be very handy and oppressive time and time again.

Gyruda, Doom of Depths - Rite of Replication is great with the etb trigger and sometimes there may be even better targets on the field like an opponents Reaper King..

Raff Capashen, Ship's Mage - Teferi's Puzzle Box can either dig you deeper by itself, ruin your opponents' hands or give you tons of mana in combination with Narset, Patter of Veils or Smothering Tithe.

Malcolm, Keen-eyed Navigator + Kediss, Emberclaw Familiar - Academy Manufactor just makes things nuts especially if you can copy it a few times. Current record for most artifacts is just shy of 15 million but I know I can break that if I ever get Brudiclad on the board with a few spare treasures and a copy of Academy Manufactor.

Those are some of the easier ones to figure out personally. Looks like thus far there's a tendency for people and myself to pick cards that are enablers & force multipliers - makes sense!

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Commander Deck Reviews / Re: [Insert Pirate Pun Here]

« on: May 18, 2023, 01:06:14 am »

Hey, nice progress! I do understand you want to keep the deck as your own and it's getting there! I have to say I think you're overestimating the blocker threat to Malcolm and the deck does have some other stuff you could definitely cut such as Captain Vargus, Warkite Marauder, Merchant Raiders, most of the unblockable cards and Mechanized Production. For the last one I get it, but anyone letting you win with that one isn't playing cEDH or you've managed to land it with a ton of protection up.

If you're going for combo you have to go for combo - it feels like there are still a lot of "fluff pirates" in there and you're missing some good ones like Dockside and Ragavan + some of the better mana rocks. Budget wasn't touched upon but seeing as the deck is already quite pricy it's probably not an issue. Also I'm not a cEDH expert or anything and there's already a lot of research being done into these decks so I feel it's again best to just search for lists and get inspired there. I don't really want to start linking different sites and stuff here but there's a whole cEDH Malcolm Discord for this sort of thing. Hope this helps..!

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Commander Deck Reviews / Re: [Insert Pirate Pun Here]

« on: May 17, 2023, 05:28:10 am »

I would consider switching Dargo out for Kediss, Emberclaw Familiar - the little dude adds a nice treasure generation bonus and even makes voltron-esque options available if going for the more casual route (Nettlecyst). From the looks of it at the moment it looks like you're more after cool synergies than cEDH efficiency. If you were to go for the latter I'd try cutting out all but the best combos and focus on being able to fetch and protect those.

I'm obviously biased since I have a Malcolm & Kediss deck that has omitted some of the strongest combos and it still spirals out of control usually by turn 5 or 6. Last time I think I made just shy of 15 million artifacts and killed everyone with a Flame Fusillade on turn 6. It can make for a high power casual deck even with limited tutoring etc. I can get into cuts after you've really decided what you want to do with the deck and maybe narrowed it down a bit further.

There are some threads about the aforementioned pairing on Reddit competitiveEDH if you want to look at what the lists for that could be like. Hope this helps!

P.S. I called my deck Das Booty, I'm not proud.

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General Magic / Re: Puzzle 2: the Unnecessarily Complicated Edition

« on: January 19, 2023, 02:39:27 pm »

Edit after looking: doesn't Cecily only have 3 mana

The Extraplanar-Lens doubles also Cecily's blue mana from Islands. They have 4 mana and 5 if High-Tide resolves.

ah true, haven't played that card too much so forgot that it applies to everyone else as well. I guess one would usually try going for snow-covered islands due to that.

Have to use a bit more resources to keep them in check then, but one seems to have everything needed. Cool puzzle, only would've liked to know my commander and their status although it can be assumed to be the Kami and also the card exiled with Chrome Mox although it's pretty clear if one can be totally sure we're monoU.

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Commander Discussion / Re: Mostly one-sided boardwipes

« on: January 19, 2023, 10:57:56 am »

A lot of good ones have been mentioned already. I wouldn't count this next one as a Voltron wipe but more of a control one in a spellslinger deck or similar; Promise of Loyalty. Sure it's not great if their most important creatures aren't meant to see combat but otherwise it's going to let them have something and at least they can't attack you or your planeswalkers with it.

Hard to come up with anything that hasn't already been said! There were a couple of interesting ones I wasn't aware of like Extinction Event (I have a Gyruda deck) and By Invitation Only also slipped through the cracks from recent sets.

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General Magic / Re: Puzzle 2: the Unnecessarily Complicated Edition

« on: January 19, 2023, 10:20:37 am »

Okay let's give this a go, I might miss something but I'll go with the clearest line I see.

Rona and Suture Priest need to go, so first order of business after playing an island is to cast Teferi, master of Time and phase out Rona. Now one can High Tide and Snapback Suture Priest, Foiling the dispel by discarding an island if Cecily tries to counter either one. At this point one should have a blue floating or used one from chrome mox if it produces blue. Sol ring and an island tapped and minimum 9+1 blue available from islands and 4 colorless if chrome mox had a colorless card exiled.

Cast psychosis crawler, cast Echo of Eons and kill everyone with Psychosis Crawler thanks to your consecrated sphinx triggers from them drawing in addition to you.

Edit after looking: doesn't Cecily only have 3 mana so they can't Aetherize? Regardless you have enough mana to stifle the trigger from commander

I hope that works?

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General Magic / Re: Cards you refuse to use

« on: August 03, 2022, 07:07:51 am »

Probably chaos cards, although refuse and never are pretty strong statements. Chaos Warp and its recent brethren are ok, I'm more talking stuff like Warp World - cards that take a ton of time to resolve and which you can't really rely to work for you. Some randomness is fun and even total randomness can be fun a time or two, but imo it gets old really fast.

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Commander Discussion / Re: Commander Baldur's Gate Interest?

« on: May 20, 2022, 04:25:09 am »

I'm wondering what can be done with Shameless Charlatan. Unfortunately, since you lose all your other commander abilities after you activate it, it doesn't exactly synergise with... anything. You probably just want a cheap commander, perhaps with a worthwhile ETB effect. Faceless One is definitely the flavour/theme win, but also doesn't seem to do much without a lot of work.

Well it's basically a more restricted mirage mirror (that doesn't end) for your commander in the command zone. They were probably scared someone might break it (pun intended ).

One thing that comes to mind is turning your commander into a huge mana dork akin to Sanctum Weaver and then turning it into a Pili-Pala or something. There are definitely easier ways to reach infinite mana though.. another option is just having something cheap and evasive (surely there's at least something like that that's background compatible?) and turning it into the nastiest thing on the field before damage and it can work as a sort of expensive pseudo haste / evasion.

Since the ability is given to a creature Training Grounds should work with it afaik so maybe a deck that has bunch of creatures that benefit from being tapped and a bunch of untappers is one of the better routes to abusing it as somewhat alluded to earlier. But just a copycat deck sounds fun to me as well!

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Commander Discussion / Re: Weathered Wayfarer

« on: May 03, 2022, 03:51:32 pm »

Agreed on using it mainly in a sans green decks. I feel it's sort of a repeatable more vulnerable expedition map. I tend to play expedition map in decks that have Cabal Coffers, Ancient Tomb or Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx in them and don't have green so I can see Weathered Wayfarer being useful in similar cases but it can be hard to find a deck where you can pair it with coffers, although it's one of the few cards that can potentially get both Urborg and that.

Anyway I think it sort of lives in an interesting spot where it's good as a toolbox thing and a fixer in casual decks but requires some expensive cards to be great.. and then when you jam in "too many" expensive cards it starts to be too slow to be included. So I'd say there's definitely a sweet spot for it somewhere around higher mid powered or lower high powered decks

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Commander Discussion / Re: Planar Collapse? Why are not people playing this in Edh?

« on: May 02, 2022, 07:54:43 pm »

I've considered that card for a few decks but I'd really want to be able to get it out there instant speed at the end step of the player preceding me - otherwise there's a high risk everyone will smack me before losing their creatures if my board allows for it and it probably does because I want to boardwipe. It also requires me to have an instant speed indestructibility effect for my team due to being an upkeep trigger if I want to do the old "protect my board and wipe everyone elses".

Having only one pip is nice but if I'm playing something that's heavily in white (2 colors or less, pretty easily 3 for VtH) I'll usually like Vanquish the Horde or Hour of Revelation and adding colors allows for different options too.. All that said I can see myself happily playing it in Ghen, Arcanum Weaver if I ever build it Just feels a bit niche to be that good outside of the specific decks that want it.

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Commander Deck Reviews / Re: Rafinne’s Obscura Syndicate

« on: April 22, 2022, 10:41:19 am »

Hey!

You're not trying to ramp into stuff really but the ramp section feels too small regardless (3 rocks in the revision I looked at) - just getting to a point where you're able to cast multiple spells a turn is valuable by itself.

It also feels like there are either too few good reanimation targets or too many reanimation spells. I know one wants to keep the CMC in check but if we're not cheating out bombs then why are we cheating stuff out in the first place? Even for recursion I'd imagine there are some other more repeatable options.

This one's personal preference for this deck but while there are some evasive creatures and Wonder that you can pitch and few other things it'd still be nice to have a little bit more built in evasion.

Maybe I'm totally off my rocker here but restructuring the ramp and figuring out what direction to take the reanimation strategy should help out a lot in making things run smoother. Sorry to be a negative Nancy!

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Commander Discussion / Re: Targeted Removal Showdown

« on: March 22, 2022, 11:17:59 am »

Depends on the power level and what I can feasibly run in the deck based on colours and what the deck is trying to do.. that said I do prefer the more efficient (2 mana) multiple type answers when it's possible to run them, for example assassin's trophy, fracture and despark. They're often somehow narrower than their 3 mana cousins, and mostly require two colours but they're a nice compromise between speed and flexibility.

Creature removal is fine being narrow for the most part thanks to commanders mostly being creatures so the efficient cards are great there. I'll also happily play narrower/more expensive cards if they help my decks gameplan (artifact mutation in Wort, the Raidmother or reality shift in Aminatou). Synergy is all.

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Commander Deck Reviews / Re: Let's get political!

« on: March 08, 2022, 11:57:04 am »

First of all, cool deck idea and a good excuse to play big blue stuff! Not using the Eldrazi is otherwise a good call imo, you won't get the cast triggers with Braids anyhow and that pretty much leaves annihilator..

Replication Technique comes to mind, although it only copies your own stuff but you can negotiate who gets to copy as well.

Memnarch is pretty mean and eats a lot of mana, but you can hold it over your opponents to force them to do stuff.

Also not the sort of cards you asked about and I know you're trying to cheat stuff in, but High Tide and Energy Tap seem like they could do work here?

That's what I got the top off my head for now!

Edit: remembered one more; Illusionist's Gambit. Should be fun forcing people to send their bombs elsewhere

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Commander Discussion / Re: Preliminary results for ideal number of lands and ramp in a deck (warning: math)

« on: February 17, 2022, 08:45:57 pm »

As mentioned being able to see if including mdfc spells in the sense that one could allow for hands that contain more "lands" to be considered keepable - if only to see what kind of an effect they have compared to not running any.

One must be really specific when asking questions from the pantheon of statistics. I think what you're asking is "what if you can keep the fourth land in the case it's a MDFC"? That is an interesting question. I'll see if I can answer that.

This was the earlier way of alluding to it:

and accounting for mdfc spells somehow - since having those would also increase the keepability of the hand if the 4th "land" was a mdfc one.

So that is indeed the question, I guess I'll have to try to be clearer instead of assuming (which is a no-no in general) that people can easily see inside my head and grab onto what I mean. I too think it's an interesting question and it'd be awesome to see the results!

Try again. Instead of attacking the person behind the argument, attack the argument itself. Explain why it's bad advice, and what should be done instead.

I'm not sure I was attacking the person there, the last bit was about genuinely wondering why you'd reply with that.

I didn't bother explaining further since I figured it'd be pretty clear from the context if a person read what was being written. I'm noticing I can't just use stream of thought for these posts.

Counting mdfc as lands is pretty much an established way of looking at them, however in relation to generating the chart they can enable a starting hand to be keepable that would've otherwise "flooded" with too many lands to fit the success -category. The chart just doesn't account for that possibility so one can't really ballpark guess, the math needs to be done if that is to be figured out.