Magic the Gathering

So I came into Game Day with my Blue-Red control deck, thinking it'd do alright, since it was heavily skewed towards beating Mono-Red or Mono-Blue devotion decks, which I thought might be popular at the shop I play at.

Turns out, it was mostly Black-X midrange decks, two aggro decks, an enchantment control deck (which was funny to watch), and a RUG player (who I asked extensively about, since his deck was something I wanted to play, too, but couldn't figure out the mana base for).
aka, Bad matchups, for the most part. Those aggro decks and that enchantment deck, I can beat. But there were no Devotion decks...

I only went 1-3. Might need to switch to a different plan, entirely. My burn spells didn't do anything, lol. I didn't expect much from the deck to begin with, but I at least thought it would hold its own better than it did.

The list I ran (The Lightning Strikes should have been Stormbreath Dragon, but I didn't have them at the time):



Sideboard:

Bought all 5 2013 Commander Decks. They are all so good~!

heeeeyyyy, i remember this game.... i have a briefcase of cards under my bed cos i stopped playing it.... i think it was mainly cos i wasn't very good at it but still wouldn't mind giving it ago again after all these years

I so want the Grixis deck. One of the Commanders in it is finally what I've been looking for in a Commander in those colors. It's the howling mine guy. I've wanted a Grixis commander that is more passive, instead of the others that seem to want to get into combat more often.

And, I get Baleful Strix and True-Name Nemesis in that deck, which I'd like so I can try building a Legacy deck for the first time.



You don't need to be good. As long as you understand the game, you can enjoy it with other friends casually.

Legacy Merfolk? I can predict in the near future that True-Name Nemesis is going to be banned in Legacy. He's WAY too good of a card for Legacy, especially merfolks.

I'm running the Esper Commander now. Almost finished foiling/Promoing my Boros Commander deck, and I was looking into creating a new one, and this one is pretty broken. Sanguine Bond + Exquisite Blood + Upkeep w/ Commander = Infinite. Plenty of infinites to go around to with these colors.

I kinda doubt that. I was watching the Eternal Championship, and even though True-Name Nemesis certainly made a splash, it didn't seem as incredible as people made it out to be. Being an unstoppable threat is impressive, being three mana for three damage a turn, but any combo deck can kill you faster than a Nemesis can. And it still dies easily to the other new Commander card that seemed popular: Toxic Deluge.
Of course, these were in the Shardless BUG decks, making greedy cuts: shaving 2 Tarmogoyf and 2 Baleful Strix for 4 True-Name Nemesis. That doesn't sound like a good plan, slowing down the deck by shaving 2-drops for 3-drops, and also losing pretty good Cascade targets.
In Merfolk, it does indeed sound pretty broken. I didn't know that it was a Merfolk until a buddy at the card shop showed it to me. I remember my exact words: "It's a Merfolk, above all else!?" With so many lords, that guy is basically a Lava Axe each turn.
I'll be trying to use the card in BUG, as well, if I can ever get my hands on enough copies. I still think it's a great addition, but not with the cuts others made. They seem to go for around 40, according to the people around me. Steep, but I fear they'll only go higher, so I might as well try now.


The esper commander is funny. We're helping my friend whose getting back into Magic fix up the deck so it can stand up to our more powerful ones. He already enjoyed it beforehand, too.
In those colors, I kinda wanted to try that other Commander, too. The one that deals with artifacts (not Sharuum, I already have a Commander deck built around her). If nothing else, I wanna use her in my 99 in my Sharuum deck, since she'd work there, too.

Oh man, that new grisix commander is BUSTED! One of the guys I played with used a grisix deck with a bunch of wheel of fortune effects alongside permanents that smack opponents for drawing and discarding cards. He would wreck everyone pretty quickly. This new commander will break that deck.

I didn't get to experience that in the last commander game I played against it (my friend tried it out for the first time, but I knew we could get wrecked easily by him, so somehow, it never survived the turn it was cast.
He did manage to do 6 damage to everyone the first time, though. After that, we slung all the removal we could against him.

Yea that guy would need to die. I told the dude that playes the grisix deck about this guy, and he said he's stickin with Gwedolyn. Not because she's good, but because he likes her (lol, his mtg waifu). I can see why he wouldn't care about getting this guy tho. The commander in his deck really doesn't even matter actually, since he can easily combo out without one. I hate combo decks.

Lol, i love the art on the new giant commander. He's jus chillin' in his pimp chair.

Honestly, I always put at least one infinite combo in my EDH decks somewhere. I play commander casually, but when someone decides to be an asshole and try to do dumb shit that ruins the game for everyone, I can kill them on the spot, so the ones wanting to have fun can continue doing so. It's a thing a bunch of my friends do, just in case.

Yea, I keep a combo or too up my sleeve too (I run junk elves, so it's not that hard).

On a different note, i played against one of the most inovative edh decks i've ever seen. Check this:
The guy ran a 5 color Ally deck, with Silver Overlord as the commander. Why Silver Overlord? Because he can constantly fetch changlings that then set off the Allies' effects! It's a really cool idea, but it generated alot of hate from all the simple-minded people who were like "oh, no Silver Overlord!? You're automatically lame!" He tried to explain that he wasn't playing slivers, but nobody (except me) was hearin' that, and he got hated outta his games pretty quickly. Oh well.

The idea is neat, but it seems very shaky, and the land base = mega $$$.

Mind Over Matter OP. My go-to choice for an emergency infinite, usually.

Not many people remember how Changelings work. I even forget things like stuff that search for specific creature types can also fetch noncreature spells if they had Changeling.
I'd probably have a similar reaction for a short while, until I realize what his deck is actually doing.

I've been playing for 2 years, but I've only been playing seriously for a few months. Originally I just got whatever black cards I could find and put them into my deck without really caring what they did, I got bored of loosing all the time so I actually made a serious deck. It is a swamp, island, and mountain deck, which sounds like shit but honestly it plays quite well, especially against forest decks or decks that focus on creatures. I use swamps for spells and early game creatures, mountain for defense and early game offense creatures, and island for early game defense and late game offense (mostly due to island walk and fly).

Black, Red, Blue, we call Grixis, because in the story of Magic, that was a place that utilized those three colors.
Believe me, it's not shit. I play competitively and I love that color combination, I usually go to it whenever I try to build new control decks, for similar reasons as you: It's a control deck with aggresion.

I'm just really curious, who are the Commanders that you find really annoying or just not fun to play with?

Zur, Animar, Omanth, Sliver Overlord, Karador, Grand Arbiter Agustin IV, Sen Triplets, just to name a few.

Still wondering why they banned Gifts Ungiven, but haven't banned the card,
Intuition, which does the same exact thing.

Anyone who is a part of a two or three card infinite, such as Arcanis, Niv-Mizzet, Sharuum, or Mikaeus (there's more, too).
Which makes me a hypocrite because I use all of the ones I named. Except I only use the infinite if someone else plans to, and I'll only kill that person.



Maybe people don't play it? They ban stuff that's usually impossible to beat, and people keep playing it, but as long as it's not seen around often, it's not a problem. Or maybe the fourth card in Gifts matters somehow.
A comparison I make is Staff of Domination, which is an infinite combo piece as long as you have a mana guy that, alone, can make at least 5 mana (I think). A friend of mine thought for sure it was banned, since his commander group thought so too, but it turned out it wasn't.

EDIT: I think I figured it out. Gifts makes your opponent choose what goes to graveyard. If you find, for example, Unburial Rites and Iona, they're forced to choose those two, whereas for Intuition, the opponent chooses a card to go to your hand, so it's be harder to exploit. In that same example for Intuition, they'd probably just let you take the Iona, because then you'd need to hardcast it, if you had no way to discard it somehow.

I haven't played in a while because I'm too busy, but when I play, it is always with 6-8 people, which makes our games really long and fun. In our EDH, aside from the ban list of Wizard, we added Shahrazad, but everything else is good to use.

Someone tried to join us in our commander game before, and when we found out he is using Niv-Mizzet, we allowed him to join but we decided he should be the first to go. He was really unhappy when his lands got blown up and his Niv-Mizzet was Hindered when he first played it.

Is Karador that good? Aren't there a lot of exile all graveyards in EDH? I haven't really played with this one.

Infinite combos are funny. It's just very hard to do when you are playing with a lot of people who really enjoys politics...

Karador is managable to my playgroup for that exact reason. Any reanimator deck is powerful, but it's hard on them when the graveyard gets nuked often. Karador is green, though, so it could still hardcast it's fatties.

The most powerful of decks can inifinite fairly consistently at turn 5. It's pretty stupid. I don't know why some of the EDH players at my shop think that's fun.

Infinite combo decks are fun to play with. Usually, they are the first one to go in my playgroup.
Hmm... Isn't trying or doing the same thing over and over again in every games kinda boring? Especially commanders that guarantees a "this is my strategy" event?