Weekend Update

Ugh, so Time Spiral is now a $40 card, I guess. It was unbanned in Legacy and now pretty much every online store on the 'net is sold out. Last week you could by one for about $4.00, now it's 10 times that. I'm not sure how I feel about this... I mean, I already have my playset, thank God, but it's a really fun card that I like to play a lot, so I was always interested in acquiring more.

Hopefully the initial hype will wear off and it won't be as heavily played as people are expecting, and the price will drop. Or, it might be more broken that Wizards anticipates and they'll just re-ban it.

Here's what I don't understand: At the same time, they BANNED Survival of the Fittest, but the prices haven't dropped a dime yet. What the hell is that all about? I need a SoF for EDH, but there's no way I'm shelling out $40 for one, now that it's banned. I'm still hoping the price will drop in a few weeks...

By the way, if you haven't seen the Judge Promo for SoF, check this shit out:

 

I desperately want one of these for my big Highlander. (Christmas idea! Christmas idea!)

So, anyway, I spent a good portion of my weekend building two new EDH decks. The catch is that I couldn't use my own cards. You see, I was building decks for two of my friends in my regular playgroup. They were getting tired of 60-card multiplayer, so they asked me to help them assemble a pair of playable EDH decks. I wasn't too sure I was up to the task. Or rather, I wasn't sure they had quite the card pool to support two decks.

In the end, I was able to assemble feasible working models for Intet, the Dreamer and Teneb, the Harvester. I didn't necessarily plan to use Planar Chaos Dragons for both generals, but we had to compromise between what they wanted to play and what their card pool could realistically support.

The decks turned out better than I expected, though they still certainly need some work. The real challenge was working with a card selection of about 10% the size of what I'm used to having at my disposal. That made it a bit more fun, though, because I wasn't able to just throw in dozens of pet cards and must-runs. Especially in the Intet deck, I had to get really creative with my removal. (Thanks to the boys at CommanderCast for the tip on Lignify. That ended up being one of my go-to spells for Intet)

Last night we took the decks out for a test-drive in a three-for-all game that lasted for several hours before we just declared Teneb the winner due to exhaustion. The Intet deck performed rather admirably, having the advantage for most of the game. The main weakness of that deck is the lack of suitable board sweepers. The next biggest weakness is the general herself. Intet is fun and cool, but ultimately underpowered. Hopefully the two new options in the forthcoming Commander precons will provide something more powerful than Mrs Dreamer.

So two new EDH players have joined the fold and seem to be happy with their new decks. I'll have to pick them up some goodies next time I can hit up the dollar binders around town. I'll try to get decklists later, as I built the decks at their place. Hopefully I can have them up by next weekend or so.

Later.