Messages

1

Deck Comments / Re: Deck of Greatness - Comments

« on: April 20, 2024, 01:04:13 pm »

I'll just leave this here.

 Cool spells to Jumpstart:
Conjurer's Ban - more like no-mmander
Growth Spiral - draw & ramp
Countersquall - counter
Izzet Charm - counter
Rakdos Charm - multipurpose
Simic Charm - multipurpose
Soul Manipulation - sick counter
Decimate - sick removal

 Jumpstart Support:
Bag of Holding - recouping discarded cards
Containment Construct - recouping discarded cards
Storm-Kiln Artist - he stormin
Surly Badgersaur - multipurpose
Oskar, Rubbish Reclaimer - recouping discarded cards

 Multicolor Support:
General Ferrous Rokiric - good source of tokens
Lilah, Undefeated Slickshot - sick general value
Widespread Thieving - sick ramp
Tome of the Guildpact - draw

2

General Magic / Re: A Commander League for Everyone.

« on: December 21, 2019, 11:45:31 am »

I like the idea, but it seems borderline impossible to find a workable standard to quantify a decklist's powerlevel.

The Volcanic Island & Torpor Orb in an optimized Narset, Enlightened Master shell are decidedly not the same as the Volcanic Island & Torpor Orb run by a janky Lord of Tresserhorn beatdown list.

Any assessment would need to go beyond "It does/n't contain X card, ergo it belongs into Y rank", and I don't really see a way of doing that without also prompting discussions of the "hey, why is that guy allowed to run X card on this table but I'm not?"-kind.

Plus, EDH has some of he biggest potential for variance from one game to the next - you can play 3 games with the same deck without ever drawing the same card twice. Which prompts the issue of consistency vs. explosivity - like how do you tier a deck with two cards that can combo as early as turn 2, but has no tutors to set it up? Is that rank X or rank Y? And how many tutors am I allowed to add before I get ranked up?

3

Deck Comments / Re: Pauper lantern control - Comments

« on: November 30, 2018, 07:32:15 pm »

Uhm, I don't think this one's Pauper-legal.

Field of Dreams is a bit of a rare.

4

Deck Comments / Re: burn - Comments

« on: November 23, 2018, 11:49:12 am »

You got the right idea, but the card-choices aren't exactly optimal.

I'd really drop the X-spells. Banefire & Fireball feel extremely slow and inefficient in comparison to the rest of the deck. You need to sink 4 mana into them to get the same impact as a single Lightning Bolt, at sorcery-speed. Yaya's Immolating Inferno is even worse - you can't even cast it, unless you have one of the two copies of your planeswalker on the board, meaning the soonest it can happen is turn 6, if all the stars align in your favor. There's plenty more efficient burn spells to choose from; Forked Bolt, Rift Bolt, Brimstone Volley, Staggershock...

And Yaya Ballard herself is a bit of a headscratcher... your plan is to close out the game way before she's had enough time to build up her final and if you've had enough mana to cast her, you won't need the mana she generates to cast the other spells you're running - leaving her draw/discard ability as the only one that's really relevant to you. But if it's just hand-optimization & card-advantage you're after, there's other red Planeswalkers who do it better - Chandra Pyromaster or Chandra, Torch of Defiance, for instance.

You might also consider handing the card-advantage job over to an enchantment, since those are less likely to die before you get your invested value back. Experimental Frenzy, Outpost Siege or Vance's Blasting Cannons can work wonders.

Next, I'm not a fan of Fire Urchin. You only get a net of 1 extra damage out of every spell you cast - Firebrand Archer, Thermo Alchemist or Electrostatic Field can do the same without the risk of getting blocked, and if you're torching blockers out of the way anyway, Kiln Fiend would offer a 3 times greater pay-off. Other creatures worth thinking about would be Bomat Courier & Ghitu Lavarunner.

And finally, why settle for Shock when strictly superior versions like Wild Slash / Burst Lightning are also available?

5

General Magic / Re: Most underrated current evergreen keyword on creatures?

« on: November 23, 2018, 11:10:32 am »

Trample. A 15/15 will only do so much if it can get distracted by a 0/1 bird.

Seriously, trample has been making the difference between chump-blocks and game-overs since day 0, yet the only mention it got in this thread so-far was in a post about how nasty it is to combine first strike with deathtouch. As far as underrated goes, you got your winner.

And on that note, yes, deathtouch & first strike do form a pretty spiffy synergy, but did you ever wonder why there's not a single creature out there that combines trample and deathtouch? Well, it turns out that "any amount of damage is lethal" is a bit too ludicrous if you pair it with "any damage done to blockers beyond lethal damage carries over to defending player/planeswalker."