Clash of the Titans

A while back, I was discussing with a friend and fellow Magic player the relative merits of Grave Titan. This conversation led us to the surprising conclusion that, except in specific decks, Grave Titan is the “worst” of the cycle, at least in EDH. I’ll talk a bit about why that is, but I want to take the time to discuss the value of each of the members of the powerful Mythic cycle. Starting with the clear winner for best of the bunch…

Primeval Titan – This shouldn’t really warrant much of a discussion, as it’s pretty well-known to be the most powerful member of the cycle. It is the only one, for example, to inspire multiple debates on whether it should be banned in EDH (no, it should not be, is the correct answer!). Obviously, this thing is at its best (or, worst, depending on your viewpoint) when grabbing ridiculous land-combos like Urborg + Cabal Coffers or Gaea’s Cradle + Kessig Wolf Run. But even just as a boring ol’ mana-fixer, grabbing two “fair” lands per turn repeatedly can really swing a game in one player’s favor. It is without doubt or hesitation that I call Primeval Titan the most powerful Titan.

Sun Titan – I find myself almost as surprised by this ranking as by Grave Titan’s. I initially discounted Sun Titan’s usefulness largely because of the mana cost factor. Sun Titan’s recursion caps at three mana, and most EDH decks seem to have a mana curve starting at four! I figured he’d be good at getting back Eternal Witness, which could in turn get back things the Titan could not… but after a great deal of experience playing with and against Sun Titan… well, he’s a lot better than I gave him credit for. In fact, he’s so damn good that I have found it to be often worth streamlining and lowering your mana curve just to maximize his value! I first began to take him seriously in my Oros/Equipment build that later became a Jor Kadeen/Equipment build. In both decks, I took advantage of Sun Titan by keeping my curve as low as possible and making sure that Sun Titan could target at least 50% of my permanents if not more. This worked out a hell of a lot better than it looked on paper and I began experimenting with Sun Titan in other decks as well.  Since then, I have come to really appreciate what he can do in almost any deck. Sure, I wouldn’t play him in a Kaalia deck, for instance, but he’s really good in a much wider variety of decks than you’d expect.

Frost Titan – This one is pretty close in power to what I expected, but I do find myself slightly more pleased with his performance than anticipated. I think he’s actually much, much closer in power to Sun Titan than I initially estimated, though Sun Titan still beats Frosty by a decent margin. He’s actually more narrowly effective than Sun Titan, which doesn’t seem apparently obvious at first glance. He doesn’t require you to make any particular deckbuilding conceits to maximize his potential the way Sunny does. Yet, it turns out Frosty’s power instead depends more on what your opponents’ are doing – thus taking the ability to really push his power out of your hands. That said, being Blue, he is always playable with Rite of Replication, and that interaction alone is enough to push him over the top. But, without absurdly broken copying effects, he’s usually at his best against decks like Thraximundar or Rafiq that frequently try to rely on one badass attacker to kill you. Being able to neuter an opponents’ biggest (and only) threat turn after turn is not to be taken lightly.

Inferno Titan – I had this one pegged as the worst of the cycle by a long shot, but he’s really surprised me over time. Also making his debut (for me) in that Oros deck, he was originally just meant to be a combo with Basilisk Collar. While putting the Collar on this guy is still one of the best uses for him, he’s actually pretty good even without Deathtouch. I assumed the 3 damage would far too often fail to kill the most significant threat on the table – after all, EDH is the land of huge creatures swingin’ into each other. But usually, just a little application of Haste is all that’s needed to start killing the real scary things. Being able to swing for 6 while scattering 6 more damage around at will is quite good. But even when you can only get three damage out of him, there’s almost always something relevant to kill with it, even if it’s not the biggest threat. Sometimes that’s enough. The rest of the time, there’s Basilisk Collar!

Grave Titan – This is, perhaps, the coolest member of the Titan family. He’s 10 power for 6 mana, not a bad deal even for a Mythic. His art is awesome/disgusting – a giant walking around literally spilling zombified corpses out of his carapase as he goes... nevermind how they got there in the first place (did he eat them?? WTF?). It’s one of the coolest art-to-mechanic relationships I’ve seen in the game. Yet, this guy is the only member of the cycle to consistently underperform, sadly. And as my friend and I discussed our disappointment with Grave Titan, we hit upon the reason WHY he fails to live up to the hype. Allow me to explain.

Simply put, he is usually just a vanilla 6/6 for six mana.

Nevermind the fact that, in theory, he’s “ten power for six mana!!! OMFG!”. Let’s think critically about this. Yes, he’s a 6/6 with two 2/2 bodies along with him. But, in this format, on most battlefields, those two 2/2 Zombie tokens are almost entirely irrelevant. They often can’t block the scariest threats (because those almost always have evasion), they usually can’t get through as attackers (because there’s almost always something that can block them with little risk), so they just sit there neither attacking nor blocking. And for MOST decks, the only way to actually get value out of those little guys is by attacking or blocking with them. So, realistically, Grave Titan is more accurately described as “six power for six mana”.

Now let’s look at the Titan himself a moment. Other than the tokens, what does he do? Deathtouch. On a 6/6 non-Flying body, Deathtouch is probably even MORE useless and irrelevant than those tokens. No one is ever going to block with something bigger than a 6/6 unless they’ve got tricks up their sleeve. So he’s either already going to kill whatever blocks him, or trade with them at best. And no one is ever going to swing INTO a Grave Titan unless they’re relatively sure the Titan has NO chance of blocking. I have never, EVER seen the Deathtouch matter in the slightest. You could put a Lure effect on him, and kill up to 6 enemy creatures - that’d be cool, but I’ve never seen it happen. So, in most cases, Grave Titan is really just a vanilla 6/6 for six mana… in other words, he’s basically this guy:

Would you play this guy? Probably not…

Now, there are exceptions to every rule, and Grave Titan does have its time and place to shine. Ghave decks, for instance, are very well-suited to get value out of Grave Titan and his zombie tokens in a number of ways. Consider Aura Shards: if there are Artifacts and Enchantments you want to destroy (and there are. Always.), Grave Titan gives you three triggers all at once. Not bad. Consider Fecundity: if the Titan scares someone into a Wrath (and he often does), you’ll draw three cards to replace one. Nifty! Consider Doubling Season: Duh. It’s Doubling Season! Now GT is 14 power for 6 mana. Still not a huge deal, but if you have almost any other way to get value out of your tokens, it can make a HUGE impact.

So, it seems that the key to making Grave Titan really shine is to find multiple, reliable ways to make sure those 2/2 Zombie tokens actually matter, and don’t just sit there ineffective and useless. Not every deck is equipped to do this, of course, and if you’re thinking of including GT as a “good stuff” inclusion, it’s probably not gonna work out. Make sure that he actually belongs in your deck – if you’re playing Ghave or any kind of Zombie tribal, he’ll probably be okay. The rest of the time, I guarantee you can find something better.

I currently have 7 EDH decks sleeved and ready to play. It’s been a while since I built any new decks, though, so I feel like it’s time to deconstruct some and build new decks. So, today I’m going to run down the roster of my current decks, and critique each one. This will hopefully give me a good idea of which decks are gonna get cannibalized, which in turn will help guide me as to what colors/combinations I will have available to pull from. Also, it gives me an idea of what to try and fix, if I ever decide to revisit or revamp one of these decks.

1. Wrexial, the Risen Deep – This deck is a personal favorite, and unlikely to get the axe anytime soon (much to the chagrin of my playgroup – no one seems to like this deck quite as much as I do!). It’s powerful and fun to play, and though it doesn’t really win all that often, that’s usually because it is powerful enough that it draws too much hate from all of my opponents. It often feels a little like Archenemy – me versus the rest of the table. And yet, it’s still capable of pulling out a few wins, and even when it loses, it does so in spectacular and epic ways. Easily one of my Top 5 favorite EDH decks to date. Grade: A

2. Ghost Council of Orzhova – This deck is one of my experimentations with two-color decks. Until recently I played three-color decks almost exclusively, but the success of Wrexial made me reconsider my bias, and so I built a few more two-color decks. This one is arguably the most successful of the batch (excepting Wrexial, because that deck wasn’t actually part of this experiment, just the catalyst). The deck is quite powerful, and certainly capable of racking up a fair win-ratio. It does have a few issues, however. One is that the choice of general – Ghost Council or Orzhova – seems mildly inorganic. I instituted a token-making subtheme to help make GhoCo relevant and useful, but in the games I’ve played, he hasn’t been all that stellar. The other theme of the deck is a bit more abstract – “the duality of life and death” – wich was inspired by the fact that White and Black are opposing, enemy colors, but have so many of the same effects that they’re like two sides to the same coin. This theme carried through remarkably, but the janky token subtheme and the usefulness of the general count against it somewhat. Grade: B-

3. Edric, Spymaster of Trest – It’s hard to grade this one because it hasn’t yet been given the opportunity to do what it was built for. When I put it together I was expecting to be playing more frequently at my Local Game Store, where I’d never know what random opponents I would be up against, and I built the deck to “spy” on my opponents. Effect that let me look at my opponents’ hands and libraries are the big theme, with other spy-ish things shoehorned in. However, I never really got in the habit of playing at my LGS, preferring instead to play at home with my regular group. This makes the spy theme somewhat less useful as my regular players don’t change or build new decks that often, so I usually know all their decks in and out. The deck is easily the most flavorful and thematic deck I’ve ever built, though, and in that regard it is a resounding success. It’s fun to play, even when I know the decks I’m up against, but it doesn’t have a lot of winning power. It relies heavily on politics to stay alive, and tries to sneak in a win once it is down to one opponent. I’d love to see how well it plays in the intended environment, but it’s been okay in my regular group. Grade: B

4. Stonebrow, Krosan Hero – “Trample” is the defining theme here. Just big guys with Trample. This deck has performed to mixed results. A big part of the problem is that I play in a very Wrath-heavy metagame, and this is a deck that just begs to overextend. I added in as much recursion as I could fit, to help counteract the devastating effects of seeing multiple board sweepers most games. It helped somewhat, but not nearly as much as I’d hoped. Most games end up kinda boring because really, all this deck can do is play dudes and swing. When the board state isn’t conducive to aggressive red-zoning, I often wind up sitting there behind a wall of guys with Trample waiting for someone to drop their shields. I really need to find ways to interact along more axes if I want this deck to be both fun and viable. For now, though, it’s pretty much a failure. Grade: C-

5. Kaervek the Merciless – This deck is a lot like the Edric deck, in that I initially built it with the idea that I’d be playing at stores a lot more often. Since I would be playing a lot of random people and some of them might be… shall we say overcompetative?... I wanted to have a greifer deck on-hand in case I encountered any “douchebag” players. Really, though, I just wanted an excuse to indulge my own inner-douchebag, without pissing of my regular group, which is comprised entirely of IRL friends who I don’t want to piss off! Well, since the whole thing with playing at my LGS didn’t pan out, I have little opportunity to play this deck. I’ve been tempted a few times to bust it out on my regular group just to see what would happen, but I’m just not that mean. I can’t rate this deck on its performance as I never really played it, but the one game I did try it out, I just got hated out before I could mount a defense. Grade: D (is for "douche"!)

6. Ruhan of the Fomori – Another sort of experimental deck. With this one, I was trying to dual-wield themes – and Equipment-based “voltron” strategy for 1v1 play, and a Giant Tribal theme for multiplayer. I wanted the deck to be equally viable for both 1v1 and multiplayer games without having to swap cards around. I never really got the chance to test it in 1v1, but in Multiplayer it only ever won off the voltron theme meant for 1v1 play. The Giant Tribal theme never really took off; again this is likely due in large part to the oversaturation of Wrath effect in my playgroup’s meta. The absurdly high mana curve likely didn’t help either, but in the games I played with it, I always got the distinct impression that if I could just keep a few creatures on the board for more than a turn, my Giants would easily outclass everyone else’s guys. The presence of a Sunforger package makes the deck at least more interesting and interactive to play than the Stonebrow deck. If my group ever backs WAY off on the Wrath overload, I’ll definitely give this one another shot. Grade: C+

7. The Mimeoplasm – Born out of a desire to play abuse Necrotic Ooze more than anything else, I wound up with what was essentially a dirty combo deck, except that it didn’t have any actual infinite combos, and really, it couldn’t put games away without Infect guys, so that was almost as distasteful to most of my opponents as a true combo deck. Add to that the fact that it was full of masturbatory wankery (sure it’s fun for ME to get a Necrotic Ooze in play, with Arcanis and Morphling in the graveyard!) and not really capable of interacting with the other players. Oh sure, it’s got stuff like Avatar of Woe and whatnot that are meant to give me the means to interact, but usually the deck could just win on autopilot and could safely ignore what my opponents were doing 90% of the time. The rest of the time it’d just fail to draw the right things in the right order and would be a “do nothing” deck for several turns until I drew Skittles or Putrefax and abruptly ended the game out of nowhere. Cute deck with good intentions, but producing lame results. Grade: D

Well, that certainly was helpful. Explicitly stating my thoughts and feelings on each deck actually helped me figure out which decks I can live without and which I might hang on to a while longer. Obviously The Mimeoplasm,  Kaervek and Stonebrow are on the chopping block. Ruhan likely will be too.

I really want to make Stonebrow and Ruhan work, but I just don’t think either deck is truly compatible with my group’s current meta. I’m not the slightest bit upset that Mimeo and Kaervek didn’t work out – both were borderline d-bag at best, full-on dick mode at worst. Probably not the best idea to play those with people you like talking to.

Edric, I’m on the fence about. I like the deck a lot and as I said above, it’s just SO damned flavorful that it’s fun to play even though it never wins. That said, if I’m going to keep it around, but only to play in my regular group, I’m going to need to scale back on the “spy” aspect and build more into the political angle. I think I’ll go back and overhaul it – it might turn out quite different from the current build, but should still be recognizably the same basic deck.

Ghost Council, too, likely needs a bit of an update, but I want to wait until Avacyn Restored comes out, as I have a suspicious feeling that there will be a shit-ton of cards in that set that will be worth looking at. For now I might just swap the General to Vish Kal and replace some of the token theme cards with better, more relevant stuff.  Maybe I’ll give it some of the Equipment from Ruhan… dunno.

Okay, folks. Armed with the info above, I will begin drafting ideas for new decks and revisions to those that need ‘em. Updates will come as I finish them.

Enjoy!

Theme vs. Power - Developing Your Deck Ideas

I've been vaguely interested in an Edric, Spymaster of Trest deck for quite some time now. However, multiple attempts at developing a deck around Edric have always faltered and fallen by the wayside. I just assumed this was because perhaps I didn't find him as interesting as I thought, or just didn't think the card selection in U/G was on par with what, say, a Blue/Black/Green deck would offer.

Today, though, I had something of a revelation. I was browsing the EDH forums looking at every Edric decklist posted since Obsidiandice's first development thread right after he was spoiled, and was jotting down various cards and ideas from each one - anything that caught my eye and didn't seem too terrible.

After doing this research and looking back over all my notes and scribblings, I finally realized why I could never get the deck off the ground before. The deck had no identity. No theme. Nothing compelling to guide and inform the construction process, nothing to give the deck a clear goal or path to victory. It’s basically just “play blue and green stuff that doesn’t suck” and hope a plan forms mid-game. But, the deck needs an identity, or else it’s just kinda boring. Not to mention it makes it really hard to build the deck, because frankly Green and Blue both have about a million cards that could be considered “good in EDH”. It seems an impossible task to sift through that many cards and cherry-pick the best of the best without some underlying structure to inform the selection process.

A “theme” can be just about anything, and it can be as specific or as vague as you need it to be – the important part is just to HAVE one to begin with. It’s important to know what you want the deck to DO, before you can decide how best to make the deck do it. For example, if you want your Edric deck to be as aggressive and fast as possible, you’re probably going to go with Infect as a major theme. Cheap evasive creatures will be a second, but closely-related, theme. From there you have a clear, concise idea to build around, and when you run out of thematic cards, you can go ahead and fill the blanks in with miscellaneous “good stuff”.

Or, maybe you want to model the deck after the UG Ramp decks of Standard back in the days of Zendikar when Explore, Treasure Hunt, and Prime Time all lead up to a back-breaking Avenger of Zendikar. Ramp is certainly a proven archetype in EDH, so that’s a solid game plan, too.

Maybe you just want to make Edric your primary win-condition by voltron-ing him up with equipment or auras. I’d say you’re in sub-optimal colors for that, but if you can make it work, God bless you!

Either way, the important part is having a theme or a purpose or some kind of plan to follow. Otherwise your deck is just an incohesive collection of cards that might be good on their own, but don’t really function together quite the way you want them to. The deck will be harder to build because the power level of some cards will be next to impossible to weigh in a vacuum, and there isn’t enough synergy to weigh them in context of the deck.

The exact amount of “theme” you need and the allowances you can make for random “good stuff” will vary greatly from deck to deck, depending on the colors and abilities of your general. I’m of the opinion that Blue/Black/Red is a pretty phenomenal color scheme for a deck that’s mostly just good stuff with only the barest hint of a theme tying them together. The sheer strength of your card selection in those colors is such that you can get by with only the minimal amount of synergy – you just have to avoid any glaring anti-synergistic combinations and you’ll probably win more than a few games off the strength of your individual cards. My Thraximundar deck was basically 90% “good stuff” with the only real “themes” being “board control to clear the way for Thraximundar” and “exploit the graveyard as a back-up plan”.

On the flip side, my Rafiq deck is one of my favorite decks of all time simply because it’s one of the most thoroughly synergistic decks I’ve managed to assemble, and while the list actually allows for quite a bit of variance in its “good stuff” selections, the core of the deck is so fundamentally synergistic that virtually every non-land card I draw feels like part of some little mini-combo.

Both decks were powerful and played very well. They played quite differently, but it would be rather difficult for me to weigh one against the other.

With Thraximundar, I chose cards primarily based on raw power alone, only avoiding cards that I found un-fun, too mean, or just too at-odds with the rest of the deck’s cards. Other than that, I made little to no concessions to theme over power. If it was good, it was in the deck. Cards only ever got cut for being too weak or being outstripped by a new card. It was just a collection of powerful effects, and true, they would occasionally produce surprisingly subtle effects and little synergies would emerge now and then, but most of that was by chance rather than design. Yet the deck still functioned as desired, playing smoothly and cohesively far more often than not. The game plan was remarkably simple most of the time – try to get Thraximundar out and swinging, keep blockers out of his way and if you drew something powerful and relevant, cast it! It didn’t really NEED anything more concrete or complicated.

With Rafiq, I went the other route – I chose many cards for theme rather than stand-alone power. Giltspire Avenger is probably the single worst card in the deck, yet I have never been able to cut it, because it does have Exalted, and thus even when it’s tap ability fails to do anything of use, the Exalted bonus does often prove quite relevant in pumping Rafiq or some other attacker. Sure, I’m not running EVERY Exalted card in print – some are just too underpowered, but Giltspire Avenger is a perfect example of hitting that sweet-spot where it’s a weak card on its own but it adds JUST ENOUGH synergy that the way the deck plays overall makes the Avenger better than he seems at first glance. It’s like a well-oiled, finely-tuned machine and the Avenger is just one tiny cog in the intricate workings of that machine. It’s not the most important cog, by far, yet it’s still making a significant contribution to that machine’s operation. Removing that one tiny cog won’t disable the machine – at most it’d lead to a very small drop it it’s efficiency… but the fact that the machine runs even .0001% better WITH that piece than it would without is all you need to justify that cog’s role in the grand scheme.

Drawing the line between theme and power is probably one of the toughest aspects of EDH deck-building to get right. More often than not, there is no clear answer; you just have to let play-testing sort it all out. I started out the Rafiq deck by playing literally EVERY card in print with the Exalted ability. Obviously some got cut quickly, like Sighted-Caste Sorcerer. Other stuck around a while but eventually revealed themselves to be too weak for their thematic contributions to make up for their deficiencies – Rhox Bodyguard being a prime example. Eventually I came to realize that despite not having Exalted, Loxodon Heirarch was just so much better than the Rhino that the deck as a whole benefited more from the Elephant despite the fact that I was diluting the theme. Giltspire Avenger, on the other hand, lands just on the other side, where his power level in a vacuum might be under the curve, yet cutting him in favor of a more powerful but non-Exalted-having card would dilute the theme too much and the deck would actually be worse off!

So, from this we can extrapolate two things:

1.       Sacrificing thematic cards for more powerful cards can, ironically, weaken a deck by diluting its primary game plan with off-theme or non-synergystic cards that seem better in a vacuum.

2.       The opposite of #1 is equally true: sacrificing raw power for thematic cards is also just as capable of weakening a deck, if the card’s contribution to synergy is less than its contribution to average powerlevel.

It’s usually easier to tell when #2 is happening. When you play a Rafiq deck and you’re disappointed every single time you draw Court Archers, you know you have a case where you’re letting the theme dilute the power. Recognizing when power is diluting the theme is a bit trickier to identify in most cases. I’m hard pressed to find a good example, but I think Planeswalkers provide the most immediately relatable example: take Jace, the Mind Sculptor for instance. Say you throw him into your Blue/Green deck. Jace is obviously an insanely powerful card in his own right, and can be quite good in EDH – no surprise, right? But how many people run him, only to find that every single time they cast him, they use is 0 ability to brainstorm once, then find that he get’s wiped of the face of the table before their next chance to use him. Is he worth running, then?

Well, most people would argue that Brainstorm itself is a pretty mediocre card for most EDH decks, and most of the folks who do run it have pretty flimsy justifications for it.  If it’s that unpopular as a 1 mana instant, how many fans do you suppose Brainstorm would have it were a 4-mana sorcery? Yeah, probably somewhere in the ballpark of ZERO!

So you might be operating under the assumption that your deck is stronger because you’re running Jace the Mind Sculptor, but stop and think about it: Is he really that good, or are you just running a 4-mana, sorcery-speed Brainstorm? 

Bringing this all back to the matter at hand – Edric, Spymaster of Trest – I realized that the several aborted attempts I’d made before all failed to coalesce into anything with a unifying theme, or a recognizable game plan. I realized that with something like Thraximundar, who is about as subtle as a concrete cinder block through your window, simply throwing a deck full of powerful stuff in those colors behind a dominatingly powerful general was all the strategy or theme that deck required, but Edric was a beast far more subtle and clever, and as such needed more subtlety and cleverness in the deck he’s meant to command.

I haven’t yet sorted out precisely what this means for the development of the deck, but it does give me a good starting point: Spies. Edric is the SpyMASTER of Trest. Meaning, he has some number of other spies at his beck and call, ready to venture out into the world and gather information for their Spymaster. This thought lead me to the new idea I have that will guide the development and construction of the deck: Spying. I want to spy on my opponents and barter and broker what I learn on my path to a subtle, sneaky victory. Creatures like Jhessian Infiltrator will certainly fit the theme, but also cards that let me look through my opponent’s libraries. Extract, Bribery, Knowledge Exploitation jump to mind. Rogues as a creature type could provide a small tribal sub-theme.

My goal is to have this deck become my go-to whenever I am playing with a new batch of players, or when someone in my regular group shows up with a new deck. “Oh! I know what you’re up to! Better make friends with the spy master, or he’ll divulge your naughty schemes to your enemies!”

Now I have something to guide the deck’s construction, and how I want it to play. There will certainly be plenty of room for some miscellaneous good-stuff at the end, but I’ll have a core to build around that gives shape and structure to the rest of the deck around it, which will make it easier to build and to play the deck, while giving it more of an identity – it’s not just an Blue/Green deck, it’s a SPY deck!

Hopefully these insights will help illustrate the importance of the roles that theme and synergy play in the EDH format… not just that it’s important to have a theme, but to realize when the theme becomes more of a hindrance than a helper. And that sometimes, just sometimes, the only theme a deck needs is “More Power!”. Finding the right balance between the two is the key to making each deck you build successful and fun. Of course what counts as a “success” also varies from player to player, but that’s a whole different article…

Well, with these profound thoughts guiding me, I shall begin developing the Edric deck at once, and with a little luck I shall have a list ready to post in a few days. Until then, best of luck to all you EDH deckbuilding geniuses out there.

Enjoy.

Post wherein I have the gall to complain that my decks are too good...

So, my recent experiment with Rafiq seems to be  a big success, at least along one axis. The tiny smattering of Infect cards I chose to add (in order to give the deck some much needed “oomph” in a Multiplayer matchup) has been overwhelmingly successful in making the deck capable of going the distance with three opponents as opposed to just the one. Putrefax in particular seems to be the best of the bunch, combining with Rafiq to one-shot an opponent or Finest hour to possibly even kill TWO opponents in a single turn.

In a recent three-player game involving myself and two opponents, I actually had to hold back a little to avoid just killing them two quickly. I had an opportunity to take one player out very, very quickly, but I was less certain to be able to kill the remaining opponent as fast, so I didn’t want one of my friends to have to sit and watch us duel for the next thirty or forty minutes. I held back until I felt like I had a much higher chance of winning the whole game within two or three turns, then went all in on one player taking him out with Finest Hour shenanigans, keeping Putrefax in my hand to swiftly kill the other player next turn, but the other opponent saw the writing on the wall and just scooped anyway.

The downside (and if you don’t understand why this is a downside and not an upside, you probably shouldn’t be playing EDH in the first place) is that it has made the deck WAY to fast and deadly in 1v1. Keep in mind I primarily designed the Rafiq deck to be my 1v1 go-to deck, and just wanted the option of playing it in multiplayer. But for some reason I now draw Inkmoth Nexus and Putrefax in basically every game. I’ve one-hit killed an opponent with Rafiq or Finest Hour + Putrefax in about 75% of the 1v1 games I’ve played with it so far (about 10 or so).

In fact, a week or two ago, I played two games with the deck whilst completely smashed out of my mind on Vodka. I could barely even tap my mana properly and I still managed to win two games in a row in less than 15 minutes. I fear I have created a monster, and I await the spoilers of the next set with trepidation and excitement. The heady rush of power makes me yearn  for more Infect cards, but the fact that my regular and most frequent opponents are already starting to grumble makes me queasy and anxious. I hoped the tiny amount of Infect (4 cards total, so far) and the removal of Umezawa’s Jitte (far and away the most unfair card in the deck previous to the Infect build) would keep my friends from bitching and moaning, but already that has proven to be a gross miscalculation.

It may just be Putrefax that needs to go – the other cards have so far been met with much less hostility. In fact, Karthuus has been such a bane of our group lately that the first time I kill the Karthuus player with his own General via a Corrupted Conscience on it, I’ll probably get a cheer from everyone (except the Karthuus player, obviously).

But what to do about 1v1? I play it significantly less than I used to, but I still wanted the Rafiq deck to be my primary 1v1 deck, but honestly it feels far more mean than even my Zur deck, or even my Oros deck (which was designed specifically to troll my regular group). I like winning, and I like playing a powerful strategy, but I want some give and take in my games as well. The problem is that the deck is so synergetic and so well-tuned that nearly every draw feels like an amazingly lucky top-deck. Which is one of the primary reasons I love the deck so damn much. Which in turn makes it hard to cut anything, even in the name of fun and being a social player.

I still think Putrefax is the most egregious offender here, but I’m loathe to cut it so quickly. It’s on the watch-list as of now, but I will play it more and see. Statistically I really should be drawing it less than I currently am, so most likely it’ll suddenly stop showing up and I’ll go 10 games without seeing it at all… by that time, either my group will have learned to accept his presence and not feel so hostile towards it, or New Phyrexia will have provided some new option that it not QUITE as offensive as Putrefax, but still good enough to take his place.

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In other multiplayer news, of a non-EDH variety, I got to bust out my Vampire deck this weekend for a couple of games. It’s a Vampire Tribal deck that borders on combo, but doesn’t go infinite and it can very easily go from straight aggro to midrange control/aggro. The only big difference in the deck since the last post is a single copy of Skullclamp, added a long time ago, but I haven’t played the deck for even longer…

Folks, let me tell you, it’s no secret how utterly broken Skullclamp is, but in this deck it’s pure synergy. My deck likes to repeatedly sac and recur Bloodghasts (for various reasons) AND it was rather desperately starved for card-draw. Well, Skullclamp happens to fulfill both of those needs stupendously. I still have two copies of Phyrexian Arena in the deck as well, but I would replace those with additional Skullclamps without a second thought, but alas all my other copies are tied up in various EDH decks.

It usually plays an Aggro early game, typically spreading some damage amongst all my opponents (that’s actually a key to the strategy for a few reasons), but depending on the draw it can also play defensively, hiding behind Nighthawks and Tendrils until you draw your business spells. Sometimes you’ll start out playing the defensive/control game and then a top-decked Nocturnus just comes outta the blue to wreck face aggro-style, but more often you set up a Grave Pact, then just control the board and amass an army of Eldrazi spawn via Pawn of Ulamog, which combines with Cabal Coffers and/or Nirkana Revenant to fuel a massive Exsanguinate.

For reference, here’s the current list:

4 Bloodghast
4 Bloodthrone Vampire
3 Kalastria Highborn
3 Pawn of Ulamog
4 Vampire Nighthawk
2 Vampire Nocturnus
2 Malakir Bloodwitch
2 Nirkana Revenant

1 Skullclamp
1 Vampiric Tutor
2 Buried Alive
2 Phyrexian Arena
2 Gravepact
2 Tendrils of Corruption
1 Liliana Vess
1 Sorin Markov
2 Exsanguinate

3 Cabal Coffers
3 Leechridden Swamp
17 Swamp

I’ll just come right out and say it: I’m very proud of this deck. I put a LOT of work into it, and it started out as a pretty terrible deck, at least for a multiplayer environment, but I doggedly stuck with it and after every crushing defeat I analyzed what the decks weakness was that lead to my defeat, and tried to shore up those weaknesses as best I could. And when I (rarely) won a game I looked at what the deck managed to do right for once, and made sure to keep that intact and emphasize it.

One of the biggest boons came in the form of WotC printing Exsanquinate, which is obviously a huge boon to all multiplayer decks of the appropriate color, but really it gave me a way to pull out a win after getting my board nuked over and over again (which previously made it virtually impossible for the deck to perform). So that shored up one weakness. The next biggest boon was my re-discovery of Buried Alive. The dream play is to Buried Alive for three Bloodghasts, drop a land and a Skullclamp, then follow it up next turn with Grave Pact. Very few creature-oriented decks can deal with that opening.

But the beauty is that cards like Vampire Nocturnus, Vampire Nighthawk and Malakir Bloodwitch allow for fairly easy victories without drawing any of the key “combo” cards. It’s one of those rare decks that can play Aggro, Combo or Control depending on what you draw and what your opponents do, all without swapping any cards out.

The last thing I must add is that, while the deck looks like it really needs a Bloodcheif Ascension or two, I had those in at first, and the deck really plays MUCH better without them... Weird, I know, but somehow that card just isn’t a good fit here.

Ubiquity in EDH, Part 2: The benefits of "Good Stuff"

A while back, I posted an article examining ubiquity in EDH - the phenomenon of running all of the on-color auto-includes in every deck, and how it made the format seem stale and repetative despite the singleton-nature of the format. Obviously, variety is the point and appeal of EDH as a format. I accept that as why I'm drawn to EDH in the first place.

It's also a great showcase format, where you can easily get away with running cards that are just terrible in almost any other format. In 60-card Magic you probably wouldn't dream of running Darksteel Colossus unless you were running Tinker, Shape Anew, or Master Transmuter - essentially any way to bypass the 11 mana cost. In EDH, you'd still probably like to do those things, but it's not unheard of at all to just hard-cast the Iron Giant. In fact 11 mana is nothing, considering Emrakul was being hardcast often enough to get himself banned, despite the steep 15-mana price tag.

So, anyway, I wrote the previous article decrying this trend of running too many staples in every deck, making all of my decks seem like slightly different variations on the same basic deck. Essentialy, every one of my decks was a three-color "good stuff" deck with a few pet cards and on-theme cards tossed in where I could. I decided the best way to remedy this situation was to build new decks with themes that restricted the number or "good stuff" slots and demanded more "on-theme" slots.

I built a Sharuum deck with zero combos (but plenty of synergies) and focused on making it an Aggro/Midrange deck that primarily won through creature combat. I also built a Sek'Kuar deck with a Token/Sac/Grave Pact theme. The Sharuum deck was unimpressive. It did what I wanted it to do, but not so well that I particularly enjoyed playing it. The Sek'Kuar deck was a good deal more fun overall, but it was too dependent on sticking a Grave Pact to do much without that Enchantment. Gradually the fun  wore off when I realized I basically never won a game without Grave Pact.

This little experiment might not have been a success, but it did prove very enlightening. I realized that there was a tangible upside to the ubiquitous nature of "good stuff" builds. You see, if your deck is designed to do one thing really well (like control the board via Grave Pact tricks) when you're allowed by opponents to carry out your Plan A, you'll dominate nearly every time, but your deck is easier to thwart. Your opponents will know exactly what you're up to, and will know the lynchpins of your strategy, thus can use pinpoint answers to severly cripple your game plan.

"Good Stuff" decks have an appeal based on two principals. First, they are jacks of all trades, and can do nearly anything and everything you'd need them to do. Second, nearly every business spell in your deck has potential to be a must-answer spell. This makes it harder for your opponets to disrupt your whole game plan by killing one or two specific permanents.

There is a big difference between running Mirari's Wake because it's good in your deck and helps your overall strategy, and building your deck around Mirari's Wake. I've tried building around cards in my deck that aren't my general, and it's been pretty much a failure every time.

That's not to say I don't like to have a theme or strategy at all. All of my decks have some basic underlying purpose. but I try to find themes that are broad enough that they leave room for a lot of high-powered spells and aren't easily disrupted by spot-removing a key permanent. If there IS going to be a lynchpin to your deck, it should only ever be your general. My Rafiq deck basically needs Rafiq to win usually, but since he's my general, that's not a tall order for the deck. Almost every card in the deck is a two-card combo with Rafiq so it really doesn't matter what I draw, or in what order.

My Sek'Kuar deck was the opposite. It had a very specific theme and battle plan, and once my opponents had seen the deck in action once, they new exactly wich permanents were "lynchpins" and which were just good stuff. They'd go after the lynchpins first, and I had to just hope the "good stuff" got me there, but it rarely did. Partly becuse there was less of the good stuff than my other decks, and partly beause the good stuff I chose for the deck was still at least sorta dependent on the lynchpins to be really effective.

Since then, I've disassembled the Sek'Kuar and Sharrum decks, and built a Zur deck and rebuilt my Rafiq deck. Even after getting bored with Rafiq and taking it apart, it was still only a few short months before I grew to miss it dearly. I'm also highly considering rebuilding my Vorosh deck. Both decks have themes and run cards specific to those themes, but both are mostly just "good stuff" decks with a light theme tying them together. Vorosh in particular has no single permanent that is crucial to the deck - Genesis in the 'yard is the only real "lynchpin" but I have enough redundant recursion that I can live through multiple Bojuka Bogs.

So where does this leave me? Well, it seems to me that decks like Sek'kuar, that want to do a very specific thing or set of things are more fun than just a random "good stuff" deck - IF your opponents let you do what it is your deck is designed to do. But once they learn what you're up to, they'll be in a much better position to counteract your strategy. On the flipside, Good Stuff decks only have one real theme: cast powerful spells. That's a much harder strategy to disrupt. So while Good Stuff might get old from time to time, there's a reason it's called Good Stuff...

The key is to balance linear strategy or theme with random powerful staples. You need both. How much of each you need, what the right balance is, will vary from metagame to metagame. But it is important to find that balance, because too far one way and you won't have any fun seeing your whole game flushed away with a single Krosan Grip, too far the other way and all your decks will start to look and play exactly the same and you'll get bored.

For me, the balance seems to be that I can push my theme as far as I want, provided I don't have any sort of lynchpins for success, especially ones that are easy-to-remove permanents. If you think your deck NEEDS Grave Pact to win most games, that's a problem. If you NEED to stick a Mimic Vat to win, you're going to loose a lot. If your deck is simply BETTER with either of those cards, but fine without them, you're golden.

Ubiquity in EDH, or A Format Gone Stale

So I currently have no EDH decks built. As previously mentioned, I took apart all of my decks, so that I could get some reorganization done on my collection, and also so that I could rebuild my Big Highlander. I have several legends in my Highlander deck, so I can convert it to an EDH in about 10 minutes time, if I want to. For instance, I could choose Teneb the Harverster for a General, and remove all Blue and Red spells and lands, then remove anything banned in EDH such as Kokusho and Recurring Nightmare. I should be left with a little over 100 cards, so I can just cut cards until I have 100, shuffle up and I’m good to go.

The idea here was to have one big highlander deck that contained within it multiple possible EDH builds. That way, instead of having all my good cards tied up in 4 or 5 EDH decks, I’d have a maximum of 1 copy tied up in the highlander, but I’d still have access to a variety of builds. This idea was born out of a realization that among the 4 most recent EDH builds, there was a LOT of overlap. For example every deck that ran Islands had Mulldrifter and Rite of Replication. Every green deck had Indrik Stomphowler and Sakura-Tribe Elder. It was really a huge strain on my collection, as I was also trying to build a multitude of 60-card decks.

Thus I thought that if I could just build one BIG deck that contained within itself a number of possible EDH builds, that would alleviate this problem somewhat. It hasn’t worked out quite as well as I thought. For it to really succeed as I hoped, I would probably need to expand the big Highlander to 300 cards, at least. Which is doable, but I prefer not to. So, I consider the experiment a partial failure for now. The big deck can be converted to a passable Teneb or Thraximundar deck, or possible a Kaarthus deck even.

The problem, though, is that any of those decks would be considerably different than what I would build if I just set out to build an EDH in those colors. For instance, a Kaarthus EDH deck would probably run a good deal more Dragons and Dragon-related cards. Teneb might consider running Buried Alive. Furthermore it all but precludes something like a Zur build. I might run Zur himself in this big deck, as he can help me find such gems as Survival of the Fittest or Recurring Nightmare. But in EDH, Nightmare is banned all together and Survival wouldn’t be legal in a Zur-colored EDH. Then the reverse of this problem is also true – in a Zur deck I’d want to run things like Battle Mastery and Steel of the Godhead, but in a 250-card 5-color deck, neither of those auras is worth a slot.

Now having highlighted the issues around my idea and why it’s not working out as I’d hoped, let me switch gears and talk about something that I learned from this experiment. In looking at the decklists for several of my EDH decks, I realized that all of my EDH decks tend to be 3-color “good stuff” decks. They might be loosely based around a theme, but more often than not, my “theme” is simply to analyze what that particular color combinations strengths are and play to those strengths by running the most powerful effects I can find. I tend to keep my General in mind and play to his strengths. My Thraxi deck had a very high number of removal spells and Barter in Blood type effects. Mostly the deck just wanted to keep the ground clear for Thraxi to smash face. Rafiq ran quick evasive creatures and combat-damage abilities, as well as buffs to make Rafiq himself more lethal. But overall, I frequently ran the same bloc of utility spells. Mulldrifter, Forsee and Harmonize were my go-to spells for drawing cards. Indrik Stomphowler and Acidic Slime were just as ubiquitous in green decks, and Flame-Tongue Kavu, Anger and Spitebellows are pretty much the only 3 red creatures I would ALWAYS run no matter what.

There were so many cards like that – cards that I considered auto-includes regardless of strategy or theme – that I came to realize that there was a certain homogeneity to my EDH decks that contributed to them all feeling very similar to play. Perhaps that is indicative of my play stile and card preferences. In fact, I’m certain it is. But, it also reveals to me that as different as I thought my Rafiq and Thraximundar decks were, they really offered up similar play experiences. This was in large part due to the fact among all my decks, there were more duplicates of cards than there were unique cards. Only Thraxi could play Slave to Bolas, for example, but most mono-colored cards tended to be the same from deck to deck. The blue cards I was playing in Rafiq were nearly identical to the blue cards in my Vorosh deck, and the blue cards in my Thraxi deck.

It was really only in the multicolor cards that there was a great deal of variance from deck to deck. This, to me, defeats the purpose of having multiple decks built. If I play a few games with Rafiq and get tired of playing that, I could switch to… say, Vorosh maybe. Vorosh was certainly a good deal more controlling than Rafiq, with much more removal AND more graveyard recursion as well. However, both decks contained Green and Blue, and so many of the G and U cards in each deck were the same. It really felt pointless to have two decks with completely different themes and strategies but still containing nearly half the same cards.

It is my understanding that the format of EDH was invented and designed specifically to reward players with many varied game experiences. First off, you have a 100-card deck that also happens to be singleton. The intent behind these deck-building requirements is plainly obvious: to allow you to play one deck over and over again and have a new experience with each game. The problem is that I was playing FOUR decks and STILL managed to get bored. Obviously I’m doing something quite wrong. This is what led me to build the Horde of Notions / Tooth and Nail deck. It was a deck that felt quite unlike most of my other EDH decks. For one thing, it was 5-color which meant that more and more of my “pet cards” and “must runs” had to be cut – if I’d run them all, I wouldn’t have had room for all those wacky Tooth and Nail combos, which made the deck play much more like a themed deck with a specific strategy and purpose. Sure, I included what utility I could, but overall, it had a MUCH higher number of slots dedicated to doing one specific thing than any other EDH I’ve previously built.

But this approach had it’s own problems. My previous 4 decks all had variety within themselves, but ubiquity amongst them all led to a very repetitive feeling in playing them all. This one was far less homogenous than those decks, but at the same time was just as redundant because it was TOO focused on it’s core strategy. Basically, the deck wanted to do one thing, and one thing only: Cast Tooth and Nail for a devastatingly synergetic pair of creatures. It could go on the offensive early with Horde but that WASN’T what the deck wanted to do, and every time I won with Horde before getting to cast T&N, it felt more like a defeat than a victory.

Then there was the fact that, while I had a vast enough array of creature pairs that I could tailor my T&N targets to best fit whatever the board state was at the time of casting, 90% of the time the best possible pair was Emrakul + Madrush Cyclops, with Avenger of Zendikar + Flamekin Zealot being a very close second. There was almost never a situation where any other pair of dudes was better than either of those pairs. I occasionally went ahead and got something else just for the sake of variety, but ultimately I came to understand that the deck was less of a “cast T&N” deck than it was a “get Emrakul out” deck. I could have taken Emmy out, of course, but then Avenger of Zendikar would have just become the go-to guy and only slightly more often would some other creature pair be more appropriate. I still would have the kind of variety I’d hoped for. So even though I could customize my Tooth targets in a vast number of ways, I still wound up getting bored with it rather quickly, because no matter what the situation a select few pairings just kept cropping up as the best possible answer to the board.

So now we finally come to my point. EDH is about variety. You get to play a whole bunch of cards from all over the game, many of which you would be ruthlessly mocked for playing in any other format. You have a big deck full of random stuff, so you can play a whole bunch of games with this one deck, and if you’re doing it right, you’ll win all of those games in a different manner, or at least with a different huge creature. In a Rafiq deck, you’ll probably win with Rafiq most often and that’s fine, but if you ALWAYS win with Rafiq + Might of Oaks, then it just gets boring too quickly. Sometimes you want to win with Rafiq + Finest Hour, or Sheild of the Oversoul or Eldrazi Conscription, or maybe just Rafiq by himself gets the job done in three hits. Then occasionally you’ll win with Simic Sky Swallower + Sovereigns of Lost Alara getting Conscription on your big Shroud guy, and you didn’t even CAST Rafiq this game.

Again, the point is: Variety. Tutors a fine. Important even. But if you’re 100-card singleton deck plays out the exact same threats and answers nearly every game, then you’re missing the point. Less obvious, though, is that if you have 4 or 5 EDH decks built at the same time and your most Control-ish deck and your most Aggro deck have nearly 40 cards between them that are the same – you’re missing the point. That was my mistake. I just had TOO many cards that I felt I HAD to run in any deck of the appropriate colors.

Why is this a problem? Well, it’s not variety. The decks became too similar, despite there strategies and some unique cards among them, Uril, Rafiq, Thraxi and Vorosh all just really offered up the same play experiences as one another. Switching from one deck to another didn’t give me enough variety. Too many pet cards. Too many games won by casting Rite of Replication with Kicker on something awesome. Too many games won by accelerating out a fast Thraximundar and wining in three hits. I like winning. And I don’t mind winning the same way over and over again with a 60-card deck that is designed to do just that. But in EDH it seems like the point is to win in as many different ways as possible with the same deck.

Now, this is just my interpretation of the format – you’re certainly entitled to take EDH in a different light, if that’s your preference. However, I feel like my view is more in line with the original intent of the creators of the format. Perhaps I’m wrong, but why would they have designed the format the way they did, unless they were actively trying to encourage diversity and creativity?

That all said, what’s next? I got bored with EDH, but now I already miss playing it. How do I go about getting back into the spirit and fun of EDH, while avoiding the ubiquity and narrowness that made it boring in the first place?

The first step is that I have to avoid the trap of “must run” cards. Pet cards are fine, as they tend to be more fun to play regardless of power level. Unfortunately many of my pet cards are also in the must run category; things like Bribery and Treachery. I really don’t know how to go about this step. I’m terrified of building a green deck without Greater Good. How do I draw cards?! I don’t know if I can really successfully avoid doing this sort of thing.

However, another approach is to emphasize building to my General’s themes. My Vorosh deck only played Vorosh for the colors – I rarely cast him in-game, and usually when I did it was for an emergency blocker, or I just wanted to sac him to Greater Good for cards. I rarely cast him, and NEVER won with him. I could try to build a Vorosh deck that actually wants to cast him and tries to win with him.

My Rafiq deck did an excellent job of playing to the General’s strengths and still managed to be fun and offered a decent variety of experiences. In contrast, Generals like Uril, are harder to work with. My first Uril build was really just a Naya “good-stuff” deck, but it had some issues. Once I started tailoring the deck to suit Uril better, it played better and won more often, but it also started playing very repetitively, and consequently got boring quickly. It’s a fine line between “playing to your General’s strengths” and simply having a linear strategy. A linear strategy, if I understand it correctly, is where you deck seeks to play out each game similarly, and often sets up the same win condition each time.

In Rafiq’s case I could win with Rafiq buffed by something else, OR Rafiq could act as the buff instead, boosting another creature to lethality. This was a slightly linear strategy in that I primarily won by attacking and combat damage, but the specifics really could vary quite a bit.

Uril, on the other hand, almost always won through General Damage caused by an Aura-laden Uril. And while I had a variety of Auras to put on him, the end result was simply that he was made bigger and harder to block. It was a very linear strategy, and for it to work properly I had to have Uril, the Auras and ways to find them/cheat them out. The deck became all about doing that one thing – Enchanting Uril all to hell. I started cutting alternate win conditions like Big Fat Guys and adding things like Three Dreams and Enlightened Tutor.

Sadly, I think this is the only way to properly build a Uril deck. So I either suck it up and play a deck with a very linear strategy, or choose a new general. I could play Rith. “Tokens” can be a pretty wide-open strategy with plenty of room for variance and experimenting. There are some must-run cards, sure – Doubling Season, anyone? – but ultimately it’s a clear theme but with more room for variety than Uril allowed.

Another idea floating around in my brain has been to attempt that mythical Aggro Sharuum build I lamented over in my Scars set review. I really want to play a Sharuum deck that wins 99% of its games through combat damage. Things like Tempered Steel and Etched Champion make me think this can be accomplished. I want to try it.

Overall, I need to learn to dedicate more slots to what the deck is about, rather than cramming it full of ubiquitous good stuff. Some of that HAS to be in each deck, yeah. I don’t think any deck can reasonably expect to win without a solid utility package and a few good alternate win-conditions. But to make EDH fun, and more importantly to sustain the fun indefinitely, I need to avoid the trap of ubiquity. My decks need more individuality, more room to do their own thing and shine or fail based on their uniqueness, rather than to rely on a bunch of proven spells to prop up a handful of unique ones. Less unanimity and more variety between decks, coupled with less linear strategies, will result in a wider and more open-ended game experience, which in turn will keep the format fresh and interesting, rather than stale and boring.

I must begin to collect these thoughts and internalize them – then I start building!