In standard/modern/legacy, yes, in my sweet bitch edh, it’s just getting started
Ugh, this is a completely brutal few months. Modern masters just went official like two weeks ago and M20 is fully spoiled with prerelease in two weeks. Then after that, new commander decks.
It’s always really hard for me to focus with this much product being pumped out in that time.
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… If only
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So.
Bridge from below banned in modern cause Hogaak a ■■■■■■■■■■■■. Iona and paradox engine bans in commander with painters servant getting unbanned.
The former ban is being criticized for probably not being enough in stopping the newer dredge/graveyard decks popping up and dominating. This is good criticism for a ban to have - you always want to take the nards out of a combo without totally hozing an entire deck archetype. Time will tell if it was enough, but y’know stuff.
The EDH decisions though…
Ok. Iona is a bitch -
(Pictured, a bitch)
which can lock out any mono colored deck. But she’s hardly prolific in the format at all, and the stats on edh rec report she barely shows up at all (6%), and usually does as a white finisher. For sure, she’s a reanimator target in more competitive decks, but if your goal is to limit those then many people point out the Flash Hulk combo for being more definitive. The best thing you can say about this ban is “Ok, so you banned a feelbad card.”, which is good. The problem is that there are somewhere around ten billion feelbad cards that feel badder and aren’t getting targeted. Hers is really unique and oppressive in it’s own weird way, but Static/Winter orb are much easier ways to make all your friends hate you.
The other ban is Paradox engine… which for sure, is a big combo opener. Like, a lot of decks rely on this thicc boi to get to infinite mana and melt face-
The main reason cited for its ban was “lengthy turns where others are doing nothing” and… yeah, it can do that, but can also combo out fairly quickly as a game ender. More to the point, there are plenty of other combo pieces that break the game by stretching out turns that again, never see play. More to the point, in comeptitive EDH, this monstrosity is just an added win con on a deck that already relies on stupid win cons. It’s does… very little to help the overall meta out, and flash/hulk (a combo that a lot of players have actively been complaining about) is effectively being ignored.
Right now the drama is real on EDH boards, with a lot of people feeling like this is coming down from the RC on high which historically has been run by the people who created the format. There’s been grumblings for awhile that this team is doing less to ban cards that actually hurt the format (like unbanning protean hulk) and more for banning cards they don’t like (Shelden Menery is a longstanding member of the RC with a long history of making demons out of “anything that untaps stuff”. He in particular has become the target of a lot of fire for this, especially after how outspoken he was about Prophet of Kruphix being manned) and this has done nothing but spark it up.
Interestingly, not too long ago WOTC set up the “Commander Advisory Group”, which is a group heavily invested in Commander (article writers, competitive players, social media figureheads) and this was the first major rules change to take place since the formation of that group. The only member I’ve heard from was Josh Lee Kwai from the Command Zone, who says there was a heavy amount of debate in it, but he personally didn’t support either ban. More salt to come as other members make their opinions known.
I could care less about Iona, because it’s a big feelbad and I never used her at any table because of that (and the hate she draws), but Paradox Engine feels kind of out of left field and a lot of players feel irritated by it.
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Feeling weird.
Anyone have any MTG questions about anything that you’ve heard of recently?
So lets talk drama for a minute.
This takes a lot to unpack and I’ve got time to ramble tonight so I figured I would.
A big factor in competitive magic tournaments is having available, qualified judges at events to settle disputes between players. This is a pretty thankless job - a lot of the time judges are called in from anything from sportsmanlike calls to heavily complex game rulings (don’t know if I’ve mentioned it here, but the comprehensive rules for MTG are 189 or so pages long [and grow every set] and the tournament rules are around 40 pages long on top of that [the latter of which includes game penalties, etc for high level play]). Judges typically exist at 1-4 tiers, RA (Rules Advisor, not really a judge, but good enough for a stores FNM to settle disputes), into Level 1’s, all the way up to level 3’s.
Depending on the size of an event, it could require a lot of L1’s with an overseeing L2 or L3. Wizards does not have a great history in dealing with these people. Usually judge payment is the responsibility of a TO (Tournament Organizer). There is no baseline policy for what judges are to be paid, and according to wizards, it is still a “volunteer position”, but pay is still available. Historically “Team Lead” or “Event Lead” judges can make around 500 dollars a day for handling a grand prix (or so I’m told), so around 1000 for a weekend. L1’s make significantly less (and there are many stories of them working GP’s and not being paid at all). WOTC has had a long standing Judge Rewards Program where they provide “gifts” to these volunteers in the form of very limited edition promos (usually of high value cards). Whether or not you want to call that wizards compensating the position or not… it’s a real weird precedent to send, especially for those lower tier judges who are effectively getting paid for the time and very specific skill set in literal ■■■■■■■ cardboard. We’re talking 10-12 hour “volunteer” days of work where the pay may be a few sandwiches in a break room.
So a few years back many judges bound together and put together a labor suit against WOTC. Those lawsuits were settled about 1-3 years ago, and the scuttlebutt is that WOTC was ready to axe the judge program all together, presumably to leave the responsibility to TO’s. I don’t know the full backstory to it, but instead of that happening, a new company was “Formed” called the Judge Academy.
On paper this group was formed by a group of high level judges with the “partnership” of WOTC to revamp how judges are handled on the whole. Instead of WOTC handling the certification of judges as they have for however many years, JA would host online courses and provide certification for judges, as well as a matchmaking system (likely the same one that was already in place) to get the right amount of judges for events, and to “strong endorse” the use of certified judges at major tournaments rather than other groups. This change has taken players largely by surprise and has a lot of… criticism.
- First and foremost, WOTC is no longer directly distributing the previous (highly valued) cards directly to judges. Instead the JA is buying these promos in bulk from WOTC and distributing them “as a completely separate entity from WOTC”.
- Membership dues for judges have been instituted at the level of L1 - 100$ per year, L2 - 200$ per year, and L3 - 400$ per year. Effectively in order to be eligible for promos, you have to pay in a subscription fee to volunteer your time. Given, there are other benefits as dictated by TO’s, but no baselines have been set.
- While many of the judges already picked to start the program are singing it’s praises as “taking power away from WOTC” in this case, the new company has made it explicit clear that they are a “new, for-profit company” and has denied “members” rights to see where the money is going. They have also made it clear that they are “not a labor union” and would not be working with TO’s or Event Organizers to set baselines of pay or penalizing members who perform free work, although they are “interested in the data to see what the benchmarks are”, likely because they are operating as a “contractor” for WOTC and would likely be making money on “recommending” judges to TO’s.
- The company seemingly takes pride in “being seperate” from WOTC, but it’s leadership was hand picked by Hasbro and WOTC chairs, and in a question in the linked ama they indicate that they’re “not sure” how much leeway they have according to their lawyers. In any case, if the company did make any decisions WOTC didn’t like, all WOTC has to do is to break their partnership with them and quit providing the judge promos.
- The only concrete benefit aside from offering the promos that were already available for “free” (pending training and labor at your own cost), is online training tools on a website that currently looks like garbage and has none of these “courses or tools”.
Given the rest of their structuring, including increased pressure on L2’s and L3’s to aggressively bring more judges into the fold, the move has been criticized as everything from “A cheap attempt for WOTC to avoid liability for their ‘not employee’ judges, passing the buck along to a shell company” to “oh hey, my favorite hobby started an MLM”.
The changes do little to address the grievances that judges have had for years, and so far the only “good” tangible that’s shown up is that the position of RA is back, which offers no promos to people assist with magic tournaments but “make them eligible for compensation from event organizers”. As in, “we are graciously not making you pay in and maybe your LGS owner can pay you.”.
It’s a ■■■■ situation.
It’s a super weird time for MTG. The designers in R&D are some of the most charismatic, hard working people that very truly love the game and are producing some of the best product that WOTC has put out in literal decades, with lots of great feedback.
However almost every other function of the game has been ■■■■■■ for a while. The story team has been largely producing sub-par work that barely functions as a Rick and Morty skit, and Hasbro’s business team has been busy with stupid cash grabs like the “Mythic” draft series that @AMG_75 and myself were talking about not too long ago.
This move in particular seems… insanely shortsighted. I’d love to be wrong and for this to end up being a great thing for MTG judges, but if nothing else they have gloriously ■■■■■■ up the launch.
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Well, the time is nigh.
New commander decks drop this friday. My brothers and I are getting a full set. Everyone’s going to pick one to keep, and then we’re going to draft cards out of the one that’s leftover.
The contenders!
Kadena, trying to give Animar a run for it’s money as the best morph commander.
Ghired, a stompy boi out of every naya lover’s heart.
Anje falkenrath, notable for being the first legendary vampire of the falkenrath line, also a bitch literally crazy cards.
And finally, an odd set of commanders in Jeskai, any of which can be pilots depending on what you’re shopping for.
I mention all 3 of the new legendaries here because it seems pretty goddamn likely that I’m going to end up with the America deck. Probably going to run Elsha as the commander until I start upgrading and then… I’m not sure.
I was hoping to really go hog and try to play with sevienne, but any route that I go there involves buying duplicates of a lot of cards I already have in Riku, or trying to go into some jeskai combat tricks. Been thinking of other angles as well, such as reconstructing the deck as Narset-
but again, I feel like doing that would probably stray too far once I’m started to call it a “mostly precon”, which I kind of want to keep together for my brothers sake.
Building around flashback is hard, because it’s hard for me to find out and out “finishers” with this. At the same time, it’s fun because I may end up just using a lot of on pace copy effects to try and get some juice out of what I can. Could end up with just a decent control / damage engine deck, but only time will tell.
Anyone have any thoughts?
Regardless, really geeked to get some game time in with the brosephs. All the decks look fun and well built.
Great time to get into commander if you’ve ever been interested.
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Occurs to me that I may not have posted some of my more recent creations.
Strategy: Play walls, draw cards from those walls for value, beat people to death with walls and do a lot of one sided board wipes.
Strategy: Vaguely godzilla themed green stompy. Ramp and play good things ™ to get the power counter up to cast Ghalta for stupid low, beat face. Not my best deck but I made it mostly out of spare cards I already had, and it works pretty well.
Strategy: … Well there’s a couple. The overall idea is “spellslinging”. I’ve thrown in a few storm cards and at least one “go infinite” strat, along with general board control and “DON’T HIT ME” strats on top of it. Complex, needs work,b ut seems fun thusfar.
Not sure if I’ve shown this vid here before, but in case I haven’t-
This has been called one of the greatest plays in MTG history… for some good ■■■■■■■ reasons. To explain what’s going on- Ichikawa has been getting the ■■■■ beat out of him for some time by cunningham at this point. The board state is that Ichi only has one scavenging ooze out-
Against Cunningham’s fairly decent board, which includes a token from Voice of Resurgence-
Currently sitting at 2/2 (it’s p/t is the number of creatures it’s owner controls) because he has another creature on the board, a token from advent of the wurm-
which is a 5/5 with trample.
So having been dealing with this beatdown all game, Ichi knows that Cunningham has been nursing a particular card for several turns. Another threat would probably mean game over, so it’s either a pump spell he’s looking for an opportunity for or a removal spell to deal with the blocker.
In this case, it’s both - Selesnya Charm has several solid effects -
Which is why it’s in the opponents deck.
It’s cunningham’s turn, who attacks with the wurm, leaving the token safely (or so he thinks) in reserve.
Ichi responds by using scavenging ooze’s ability to exile a creature from cunningham’s graveyard, bringing it up to a 5/5 and blocking to offer a trade (both creatures would die). This is what cunningham has been waiting for. Selesnya charm can only target a creature that has power five or greater, giving him the oppurtunity to remove the last road block to him beating Ichikawa’s face in.
Ichikawa responds to selesnya charm with golgari charm-
choosing the “all creatures get -1/-1 until end of turn” mode.
This does several things when it resolves.
Voice of Resurgence gets -1/-1, turning to a 1/1.
The worm token goes from a 5/5 to a 4/4.
The Ooze goes from a 5/5 to a 4/4.
The card finishes resolving, then the stack moves on to Selesnya charm, which “fizzles” (read, is countered because it’s target is no longer legal) and goes to the graveyard.
As Selesnya charm resolves, priority cycles between both players once before damage is dealt. While Ichikawa still has priority, he uses the ooze’s ability again to move it back from a 4/4 to a 5/5.
When damage is finally applied, Ooze kills the Wurm and lives because the wurm only deals 4 damage.
When the Wurm dies, the token’s p/t drops to 0/0 because there’s no longer another creature on the board and it still has -1/-1.
Selesnya charm is the only card that Cunningham has been sitting on for several turns, so he passes turn to Ichi, having been board wiped by a 2 mana card and 2 ability activations.
Ichikawa essentially turned these resources into a 3 for one and won the game, but sadly not the match.
In sports, this is the kind of play that people talk about when an athelete makes an incredibly smart play like Reggie Miller running to the three point line to send it into OT. The presence of mind to recognize this interaction especially at this world stage is utterly staggering.
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I don’t Magic, but I appreciate the explanation.
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Well, might as well give a sad ass report of my prerelease this saturday.
I went in a bit hungover, knowing that I’d have to leave early to attend a friend’s party. Secretly hope my pulls are bad so I can party out wayne and go home.
So the one time I hope for a bad pool-
Is my promo.
The pulls that follow-
The deck I put together can only be described as “brutal”. I only got to play one match but I straight out monkeystomped my opponent 0-2 with oko trading him food counters for everything he dropped and questing beast just running over him afterwards. Anything that wasn’t a bomb in my deck was card draw (2x Opt, 1x Into the Story), a medium body (Animating Faerie, the U/G 4/4 for 4 that draws me cards when I cast fatties), flying blue bodies, with my only real removal being fight based or counterspell.
So after I give the kid I stomped his free wins (hey, I was leaving, I don’t want to be that guy), I pick up the box I bought my brother to pay him back for some stuff. The buy a box stuff is a collectors pack and the buy a box rare who’s kentrith, kind of a thing for EDH.
I pop the collectors pack (hey, im the one who bought the box) and pull a borderless vantress gargoyle, the planeswalker deck version of oko, and a foil version of the same Oko I already beat face with.
So… we did ok.
Pretty ok.
Best 0-1 drop I’ve ever done.
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Went my my local store last week to get rid of both okos. Picked up a lot of general EDH pieces and bought a brawl deck to play for FNM which remained a brawl deck for…
About 4 hours.
Took it home the night after and tore it the ■■■■ apart to make commander deck sigh number 14.
Ladies and gents, Syr Gwyn, hero of ■■■■■■■ my goddamn wallet.
She is pretty badass though, and I didn’t have an equipment/voltron deck yet.
Already have an amazon order in for sigarda’s aid, godesend, sram, and the new red double strike sword to fatten the list up.
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How much did you pay for her?
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40 for her deck, which I’m told is high… but it cane with s lot of goodies and I was still supporting my lgs who got historically screwed by wotc. So I feel fine about it.
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$40 isn’t bad.
This is what matters most.
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Still holding strong at it’s highest price. Makes me want to buy some new cardboard.
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Reserve list is en vogue my friend.
May want to check out /r/mtgfinance if you’re looking to headhunt anything. They have some decent ideas sometimes.
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I’ll have to check them out. Need to do some financial planning and check around. Maybe by December I can make a large purchase. It’s been some time since I’ve picked up any cardboard crack, so I need to indulge a bit.
You have anything planned on the horizon?
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MTG Wise is quiet horizons for awhile after the ■■■■■■■ gauntlet that is their summer release schedule now.
Like I understand they generally aim to really unload during the summer months because school is out, but this year has been particularly brutal. War of the Spark came out on 05/03. Counting that since then in the last 5 months we’ve had 3 standard set releases, one (totally not masters) set, commander precons, and brawl decks from throne come out. I think Gideon’s spellbook came out somewhere in there too. Given just the massive amount of cards they’re putting out and the attention they’re paying to commander now, it’s getting harder and harder to try to keep up even with what I’m running.
I think all they have on the docket for the rest of this year is the next Throne set. If I’m thinking correctly the third one of those will come out in 2020, followed by the Theros reboot, another core set, and then they’re heading back to zendikar in fall of next year.
I’m expecting crazy ■■■■ from theros so I’m hoping I get to bank up some money for it. Gods are coming back and it looks like Elspeth is going to drag her way out of hades, both of which could have serious commander implications.
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