When all else fails...

Play Triumph of the Hordes.

While you won't find me at the top of the Sheldon Menery fan list, I can get on board with his Triumph of the Hordes ban theory. I mean...let me start over:

I love Triumph of the Hordes. I think you can equate my happiness playing Triumph of the Hordes is the same as a small child in footie pajamas running downstairs on Christmas morning and seeing a crap ton of presents. However, the payoff of Triumph of the Hordes is like finding out all those presents are socks. Sure they are useful and at the end of the day, it's something you will use, however, you would have been happier with a Gameboy.

Triumph of the Hordes falls into a category that my friends and I have been making of cards that, while not powerful enough to ban, do what they shouldn't do in EDH. Example?

Yep. Cards that should be fine on their own, but they make the EDH rules work for them instead of the other way around. Infect is a mechanic that does this. What Triumph of the Hordes should read in EDH is:

Until end of turn, all of your creatures get +1/+1, trample and all of your opponents life totals become 10.

Yep. Nice and tidy.

I was playing a game last night where I was playing Elves (link goes to deck list) and I was able to go: Concordant Crossroads, Genesis Wave (for 9), Triumph of the Hordes. Win. Did I get the win? Yes. Did I feel good about it? No.

So, you have to look at Triumph of the Hordes as a card that does something that it shouldn't do. We have already banned cards that do things that they shouldn't do in EDH. Does this card warrant a ban also? If we do that, do we ban other cards that simply do things that they shouldn't? You know, that Felidar Sovereign just wins you the game? He does that. Infect is just a mechanic that isn't made for EDH.

However, on the other side of the coin, the argument of why to ban it is exactly the reason why it can't be banned. If you ban Triumph of the Hordes, you should also ban the following:

ALL OF THESE

If you ban something that is related to the mechanic that makes it broken, then you would need to ban the mechanic all together. Triumph of the Hordes is a great card, but, if you are looking for friends, I don't suggest Triumph of the Hordes.

We are going in circles here. Point being, Triumph of the Hordes wrecks.

A great P1P1 cube

So, I wake up, and find this:

I honestly can't make this pick. At first I thought:

1. Time Walk
2. Jace the Mind Sculptor
3. Mox Ruby
4. Maze of Ith
5.....My brain exploded.

Who can make this pick? The biggest problem is that after you pick Time Walk, you will be splitting blue with the next 3-4 players (depending on where they pick Mox Ruby and Treachery).

Ugh. Just had to share this. But I think Time Walk is pick 1.

Angus Mackenzie Version 2.0

Bigger. Faster. Stronger. More foiled.

General (1) Angus Mackenzie Lands (36) Savannah Tropical Island Tundra Hallowed Fountain Breeding Pool Temple Garden Vivid Meadow Vivid Creek Vivid Grove Flooded Strand Misty Rainforest Windsweapt Heath Selesnya Sanctuary Simic Growth Chamber Azorius Chancery Ancient Den Tree of Tales Seat of Synod Stirring Wildwood Celestial Colonnade Seaside Citadel Command Tower Reflecting Pool Vesuva Maze of Ith Academy Ruins Reliquary Tower Minamo, School at Water's Edge Forest x2 Plains x3 Island x3 Creatures (21) Mother of Runes Birds of Paradise Noble Hierarch Ethersworn Canonist Grand Abolisher Gilded Drake Edric, Spymaster of Trest Peacekeeper Jace's Archivist Windborn Muse Solemn Simulacrum Kuldotha Forgemaster Silklash Spider Sphinx of Jwar Isle Consecrated Sphinx Sun Titan Frost Titan Vengeful Archon Blazing Archon Inkwell Leviathan Blightsteel Colossus Planeswalkers (7) Tezzeret the Seeker Venser, the Sojourner Ajani Goldmane Gideon Jura Jace, The Mind Sculptor Jace Beleren Garruk, Primal Hunter Instants (9) Path to Exile Swords to Plowshares Condemn Constant Mists Tangle Capsize Bant Charm Fact or Fiction Cryptic Command Sorceries (7) Ancestral Vision Armageddon Wrath of God Time Warp Bribery Hallowed Burial Recurring Insight Artifacts (13) Sol Ring Expedition Map Voltaic Key Howling Mine Lightning Greaves Grim Monolith Scroll Rack Swiftfoot Boots Horn of Greed Crawlspace Gilded Lotus Norn's Annex Mindslaver Enchantments (6) Elephant Grass Luminarch Ascension Rites of Flourishing Ghostly Prison Propaganda Future Sight

Gen Con Indianapolis 2011

By this time tomorrow, my plane will be landing in Indianapolis. 

Why, one would ask, would someone voluntarily make their way to the hottest place on the planet (yes, I know that is from about 2 weeks ago, but it is still bloody hot)?

Gen Con Indy.

Magic 24/7. US Nationals. Legacy championship. EDH tournaments. Drafts. ETC ETC ETC!!!!

So, I am going to try and update this as often as I possibly can. But after the tournaments, I will have tournament reports, deck write ups, pros and cons, and pictures.

Very exciting. Stay tuned!

Just a great play

I had a little moment last night playing EDH. One of my favorite things about playing a new deck is that you begin to find combos that you would have never seen on paper. I was playing Kaalia of the Vast and my conventional combo for the deck was something like this:

So, it takes a person who is possibly asleep to miss the interaction here. But there was something I never thought of using this. So, here is the situation: I have Blood Speaker on the table, along with Sarkhan the Mad (with 5 counters), Dragon Mage, a Dragon token, Akroma, Angel of Fury, Kaalia of the Vast and a Mother of Ruins. My opponent was at about 37. I was just about to combo out with Blood Speaker with the Conspiracy in my hand, but then I saw that I could play Conspiracy, name dragons, and then use Sarkhan's last ability to deal damage to my opponent. 22 damage there and the rest flies over to pick up the scraps. GG.

Pretty sick.

Shoes

Oh my god. Shoes.

For a great long while, Lightning Greaves has been a staple in all EDH decks. Your deck could essentially look like this:

General
Lightning Greaves
Sol Ring
97 other cards

and you wouldn't be too far off from a winning deck. However, something new is on the horizon that is going to make all EDH players take a second look at that Lightning Greaves. Ladies and Gentlemen, Swiftfoot Boots:

Sure, it isn't the best picture ever, but spoilers are spoilers are spoilers and this is a confirmed spoiler from the new M12 set. Swiftfoot Boots reads as such:

Swiftfoot Boots
Converted Mana Cost: 2
Artifact-Equipment
Equipped creature has hexproof and haste.
Equip: 1
Uncommon

For those of you who are not in the know, hexproof is the new keyword for Troll shroud....Ugh! You don't know what Troll shroud is either?! I have to do everything around here. Troll shroud is where you can target your creature with spells or abilities and your opponent cannot. So, lets do a side by side comparison of Swiftfoot Boots and Lightning Greaves:

Lets go from top to bottom. Between the battle of names, we are going to have to give it to Lightning Greaves. Swiftfoot Boots is a pretty lame name.

Lightning Greaves: 1
Swiftfoot Boots: 0

They both cost 2 so that is a push there. As far as picture go, I really like the FNM promo picture better than the regular Lightning Greaves picture, however the picture of Swiftfoot Boots is much better than the regular picture of the regular picture of Lightning Greaves. So....push?

Okay, now that that is over, we can get down to the nuts and bolts of the card which is the comparison of which is better:
Hexproof and a Equip cost of 1

OR

Shroud and Equip cost of 0

Honestly, both are amazing. I can see both scenarios working to your advantage. I really like throwing the Greaves from one creature to the other, however, I have had times where I have had a pump spell or some kind of spell that gives a protection from a color, but I can't play them. There was a scenario where I had a Hallowed Burial, Venser, The Sojunour  and Lighning Greaves on Angus Mackenzie. My whole plan was to use Venser to exile Angus and then send everyones creatures to the bottom of their decks. I had to do some tricky maneuvering to make Stirring Wildwood a creature, put the boots on him, exile Angus and then Hallowed Burial. Swiftfoot Boots would be so easy to work around that.

However, a argument can be made for moving the boots back and forth from one creature to the other to get that haste ability without spending any mana. Equipping a Kuldotha Forgemaster, using him to sac 3 artifacts, getting Blightsteel Colossus, putting the boots on him and infecting. You can't do that with only 5 mana with Swiftfoot Boots.

So, I guess it is up to you. Do you have a deck that doesn't want your opponent to target your general but you can exile/pump/protect your general, but you have a lot of expendable mana? Or do you have a deck that just wants your dudes to just get there?

Close call. You don't want to make the wrong choice for your deck do you?

.....

Wizards of the Coasts and the Commander format and other dysfunctional relationships

In the past few days, we of the EDH/Commander format saw cards spoiled that will "help" us play EDH (I'm dropping Commander from now on in this article). I use the quotations around "help" very loosely. Wizards of the Coast saw a cash cow in the EDH format and jumped in with both feet. And then jumped on it again and again like a small child who just found a puddle.

Now, I am all for stupid, ridiculous cards that are just not fair. However, when I see that WotC is making these new decks that make me say "Well jeepers, I have to buy this to stay competitive!" it kind of makes me a little peeved. I get over that quickly and just come to terms that. Now, I start looking at the cards and about the 3rd card deep I start going into this:

I mean, holy shit snacks! Are you kidding me?! All of these cards look like they have never been play tested and are just dumb! With that being said, here are the cards I am really excited to play myself:

Easily the best land you can have in a EDH deck. Just think, you are playing some kind of Bant commander. You have Seaside Citadel in your hand and you also have this. You have to generate a mana on turn one. Is there even a argument here?!

Ways to make this card not broken: Make it Legendary. How fun would it be to battle over a Command Tower.

Ugh. Moving on. (Love Command Tower)

I like the Join Forces mechanic. I really REALLY like the Join Forces mechanic. I like, even more than the Join Forces mechanic, Collective Voyage. Sure, you can draw some cards with the blue one or make a dragon really beefy, but for one mana, you can excel your turn 4 into turn 6 (1 to play Collective Voyage, 2 mana to search out 2 lands, turn 4 you play your 6th land). This means, for those of you not getting it, if a turn 4 Primeval Titan, who turns your turn 5 into turn 9 (Same as above, but add two more lands from the Titan)! Holy land ramp Batman! Joining Forces is fun, but I really like the idea of watching people tap out then playing a card like this.

Finally:

I've always thought that red has gotten the shaft in EDH. You can't burn them out and trying to out control a blue deck is...well...Link to funny "Not fair" picture .

Stranglehold are what blue decks are going to be saying that isn't fair (you can just click on the link with the picture again). I would have loved to see this card cost 1 red, but at 4 mana, you can still get it in under the wire before they can go off with Time Warp. This one card makes me want to start playing decks with red in them...now if there was a good general with red.....Hmmmm....

Nope. Can't think of one.