Hey there, folks. My last post announced and explained the EDH league system my playgroup is running as an experiment. I went over the structure and points, etc. Today I will talk a bit about the way we're handling upgrades and changes to our decks and I'll talk specifically about the deck I'm going to be playing in this league.
We are going to be playing our first league game with completely unmodified lists, straight outta the box. But after each game we will have a specific number of changes we can make. Since we opted for an eight game run for our first outing, that means we have seven chances to tweak the lists - no point after game eight as the league will be over at that point, and everyone will be free to go hog wild on changing or scraping their respective decks.
We want a good balance of changing enough to matter but not changing too much too fast. At first I was shooting for about 20 cards total to be changed, but then I realized that some of these decks really need a bit of attention in the land department and it would be hard to make appreciable changes to the mana base AND the functional parts of the deck and make everything work.
25 changes feels a little more reasonable. That's still only 25% of the deck overall and you can easily change around 5 lands to make the mana run a little smoother, while still having a good chunk of cards to put into the main deck.
So for after the first game, with the stock lists is over, we'll all be able to change 5 cards. After each subsequent game, we will change 3 cards at a time, except after the 5th game, where we will get one more 5 card swap. By the time we go into the 8th and final game, 25 cards will have been swapped.
Now let's talk about the fun stuff. I was lucky enough to get one of the two decks I most wanted - Nature's Vengeance, the Jund "Lands Matter" deck headed by Lord Windgrace. I'd have been cool playing any of the 4 decks but this is the one I wanted most so I am happy it worked out that I could claim it!
Of course part of the idea of this is to fine tune the deck as I go. It's always best to use real playtest date to optimize rather than theorycraft. However, it is also very possible to overcompensate or overreact to a single game experience. Maybe the deck has a good amount of removal but one game I just don't draw enough and so I burn 3 card swaps jamming answers when I really didn't need too, in the grand scheme of things. For this reason I want to have something of a road map to help me make these incremental cuts without getting lost in the weeds and mucking things up.
As it happens I have already played a handful of games with these precons with my playgroup. I've played a few with this very deck and I've played against it a few times as well. So I already have some actual gameplay data to back up my theoretical cuts and additions. Furthermore, I've played a number of land-oriented decks in the past including Karametra, Gitrog and Omnath. So I feel confident I can map out at the very least a GUIDE to help me make swaps, but I will of course leave things open to improvisation and inspiration based on the games I play throughout the league.
Starting off I know I have a grand total of 25 card slots to play around with. I also know that I want to goose the land count just slightly. In my previous games one thing I did take note of was that I really like using Windgrace's +1 but only if I have a spare land to discard. But while playing, I often found I was only holding a single land and, if I wanted that sweet, sweet card advantage I had to choose between pitching it to Windgrace to draw 2, or making my land drop for the turn. Of course if my land count is sufficiently high enough I would A) have to make that choice less, and B) when I DO have to make that choice I can be more confident that pitching my only land to draw two has a high chance of yielding another land so I can still make my land drop.
At the same time I don't want to go too high as I'm not likely to have room for a whole ton of pure draw and card selection with only 25 slots to work with. The precon starts at 40 lands so I think I probably just want to nudge it up to 42 lands. I think I had 43 or 44 in my Gitrog deck but that was also a more tuned deck overall. 42 probably gives us a good, steady stream to both pitch to our commander AND make consistent land drops, but won't flood us out too often. And of course we want to just improve the man quality as well, so we will need to dedicate a few swaps to switching out some of the worse lands with better ones.
Even in a Lands Matter deck, the mana base is still not the most exciting thing to spend swaps on so I'm probably looking at 5 land swaps. 2 of those will be non-land spells getting swapped for lands to give us our desired increase in land count. Then we can remove 3 of the weaker lands for 3 better ones. This leaves 20 more non-land cards to swap in.
The list of cards I want to add in is almost certainly going to be longer than the list of cards I want to take out (or CAN take out, as per the guidelines of this league experiment). For this reason, I think it best to start by identifying cards we'd consider removing. THEN we can worry about what to replace them with. That way we can kind of try to swap like for like where possible or at least keep our swaps on curve.
Now, ideally, I'd prefer to avoid cutting cards that are either new or on-theme. So we'll keep that in mind as a guideline but not a strict rule. Especially since I can already tell you, in this deck, a lot of the new cards are decidedly not on-theme, unfortunately. There are also some thematic cards that fit, but are weaker that other options. For example I'd dearly love to ditch Farhaven Elf in favor of Wood Elves, or upgrade the so-so Far Wanderings for the always-reliable Kodama's Reach. If I had carte blanche to change all I wanted, I would definitely make those swaps.
But I have to spend my swaps wisely and so, I'm not so sure the power level difference between Wood Elves and Farhaven Elf is big enough to warrant spending one of my 25 precious slots! Still, if we earmark a card to be cut and then it winds up performing well... well then I may have some room to make a few small utility upgrades after all.
With that in mind, here is the list of cards that I think have a high potential for being replaced:
Centaur Vinecrasher
Loyal Guardian
Baloth Woodcrasher
Loyal Subordinate
Bloodtracker
Soul of Innistrad
Loyal Apprentice
Emissary of Grudges
Flameblast Dragon
Xantcha, Sleeper Agent
Gyros, Waker of Corpses
Zendikar Incarnate
Thantis, the Warweaver
Charnelhoard Wurm
Grapple with the Past
Far Wanderings
Consign to Dust
Hunting Wilds
Stitch Together
Ruinous Path
Reality Scramble
Fury Storm
Grisly Salvage
Decimate
Deathreap Ritual
Savage Twister
Gaze of Granite
The astute reader will note that this list is 27 cards long and indeed contains a fair few cards that are either thematic or newly printed. This is simply a list of cards I can see an argument for cutting. Some I simply think there are more powerful options for the same effect, while others are just effects we probably don't want at all.
If I stick to the 42 land plan I outlined above, that means five of the above cards will definitely not be cut. And if one of the cards I did NOT name in the list above turns out to be a lemon, then even more cards could get pardoned. Again, I plan to leave room for improvisation based on gameplay. For instance Gaze of Granite has already almost single-handly won me one game. If it keeps performing well, obviously I will elect to keep it in the deck.
As I mentioned before, the list of cards I want to ADD is even longer than the list of cuts above. But I'm not going to spoil them just yet. Many of my choices will likely be predictable and you can probably guess a high % of the cards I'm considering - but even I don't know which ones will actually wind up making it in.
I can tell you that I have at least identified the 5 lands that I will be adding in:
Bloodstained Mire
Wooded Foothills
Verdant Catacombs
Canyon Slough
Sheltered Thicket
Originally I wanted the three fetches and the three shocklands but I couldn't quite make 6 land-swaps work. Then I remembered the fetchable duals with cycling that were printed in Amonket. Convenient that there are only two of those in our colors - I could not bring myself to run only two shocks when three options exist. I'm too much of a completionist and perfectionist to tolerate that. But if I have no choice, say, because the third land in the cycle doesn't exist yet? Well I guess I can live with it then.
It's nothing too groundbreaking. Fetchlands and Cycling Lands are already in the deck - these are just better ones of those. And you can be sure that I will be adding more cards that will add to these land-oriented synergies. But more on that to come later. For now, that's all I've got.
Enjoy.
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