Updates

After my post a few days ago, wherein I graded each of my current EDH decks on performance, I came to the conclusion that most of my decks were NOT living up to my expectations and it was time to rebuild.

After brainstorming over the weekend, I've come up with the following plan:

1. Three decks will remain in the line-up - Edric, Wrexial and the deck led by Ghost Council.
That W/B deck would undergo some changes and become a Vish Kal deck.
Wrexial remains virtually unchanged, with the exception of a few minor card swaps.
Edric would undergo minor but significant alterations to play better with a stable playgroup.
Instead of being a "super spy" deck, it's more of a "political advantage" deck, but  remains roughly the same deck overall.

2. Four new decks will be added to the roster - Agrus Kos, Jenara, Sedris and Rith.

Agrus Kos will be a "Battle and Warfare" theme deck, but will largely resemble both the Jor Kadeen and Ruhan decks that I ran before. It will include and Equipment theme with an emphasis on Sunforger and an appropriate package of targets for that powerful Equipment. None of this is groundbreaking or anything, and the deck will simply replace Jor Kadeen's artifacts-matter emphasis with an emphasis on cards like Crescendo of War and Fight to the Death - R/W spells that flavorfully reference battle and Warfare. Expect the Battlecry mechanic to replace Metalcraft.

Jenara will be the Enchantress-themed deck already posted about last week, but it's still undergoing development and revisions. I expect to finish this before I move on to Agrus, but it depends if I can solve the issues I'm currently having with trimming the decklist down to a manageable size.

Sedris will be a bit of a Zombie tribal deck mixed with an Unearth/Recursion theme, and seeks to exploit the Unearth mechanic's synergy with stuff like River Kelpie and Flayer of the Hatebound. We'll see if I can manage to fit both of these themes into the limited deck space. I'm actually making good progress on this one, so it should be more or less finalized within a few days.

Finally, Rith the Awakener will be a token deck, based off the article I did for Commandercast Crossover Week. A member of my playgroup had an underperforming Rhys the Redeemed token deck that he wanted to improve upon by adding a third color. Brienne of CommanderCast covered adding Blue to the deck, while I worked with Red as the third color. That player ended up doing neither option and built a Grixis deck with Thrax at the helm instead. LOL. So, rather than waste a good idea, I decided to go ahead and sleeve up that Rith token deck, with some updates and changes of course.

There's already a "finished" list on the CC website for the Rith deck, but it was built with my friend's collection in mind, not my own, so I think I probably have the card pool to improve upon that list quite a bit. I'll start working with it as the base as soon as I finish up the other In-Progress lists!

Stay tuned for more lists!

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!

MBS: Fat Pack Vanity Post

So cracking the box last weekend was an immensely satisfying venture... one I was quite eager to repeat. So much so, that one night this week I dreamed that I was buying a Fat Pack at a store and the guy at the counter accidentally gave me a free booster box!

Unfortunately, even in the dream world, I'm too goody-goody and I ended up going back to the store to give the box back... Nonetheless, the dream put the idea in my head that I really needed to open more packs. So today on the way home from work, I acquired myself a Fat Pack.

Fat Packs are now the semi-ridiculous price of $40.00, but I've been buying them since ever since Ravnica, and I kinda like having the D20, the box it comes in, and especially the little booklet with a laughable "Top 10 coolest cards" list that is almost always WAY off the mark... perhaps if they defined their criteria for "coolness" it might make more sense, but whatever...

Mostly, I just like to have the nice, glossy visual spoiler contained within, but the various flavor-centric parts are pretty cool, too. This one talks all about the Praetors of Phyrexia... ooh, ominous! How much you want to bet Phyrexia wins in the next set? Anyone?

So anyway, most would argue that the fat pack is rather bloated and overpriced, and you'd be better off just buying $40.00 worth of packs... and I'd agree, if the cards were the only thing I cared about, but I actually LIKE most of the frivolous material in these things. I was fine with them doing away with the novels, because those usually sucked anyway. The booklet seems to be shedding page count, but as long as it has a complete visual spoiler, it's worth having.

The newest inclusion is the two card-board deck boxes... yeah these are WORTHLESS to me. They won't hold a sleeved deck, so they're pretty much junk. Fortunately, I'm pretty sure these are added-value, and don't really contribute to the sticker price much, and I think there's a good chance their meant to be unique to MBS and it's faction-based war theme. I hope so, at least.

Enough chatter, though. As much as I like the spin-down die, we all know even I wouldn't buy the damn things if they didn't come with packs to rip open, and in this particular instance that aspect is really all I cared about, and I'd been craving the new-card-smell all damn day.

So Pack 1... rip, flip from the back (because who cares about commons anyway?), and it's a foil! Uh... Peace Strider. Meh, oh well... The rare: Shimmer Myr... not bad - I have a potential use for this if I get a few more.

Pack 2... Hero of Oxid Ridge. Nice. Nothing too exciting but it's a Mythic and one that I have a potential idea for. I'm happy to pull it, but kinda hope it's not the only Mythic... (Into the Core makes a fine EDH-playable Uncommon pull, too).

Pack 3... Psychosis Crawler. On one hand, it's pretty much worthless monetarily speaking. On the other hand, it's a poo rare that I happen to like and even though I haven't quite worked out the best use for it, I am sure to put it to good use somewhere. Go for the Throat in an uncommon slot is pretty good, though.

Pack 4...Phyrexian Revoker! Nice. a card with some monetary value that is worthless in EDH, which means I should be able to trade this to a Type 2 player relatively easily, and will probably come out ahead. Goblin Wardriver is the star uncommon of the pack.

Pack 5... Foil Leonin Relic Warden is lame, but looks kinda cool. Rare is Myr Turbine, a great casual card, and one that I'll happily put to use in a Myr Tribal deck. Viridian Corrupter is a nice uncommon pull. Kinda weak pack, overall...

Pack 6... Inkmoth Nexus! Score! Now we're talking - a rare of significant value, and somewhat playable in EDH. If I can trade this up for something sweet, I wouldn't mind doing so, but I'll be just as happy to hang on to this for later use... nothing else of note in the pack, but that's okay, the rare was great.

Pack 7... Magnetic Mine. Ouch, this fat pack is starting to hurt a bit... I'm going to have to REALLY appreciate the book and the spindown at this point. There isn't even a good uncommon in this pack.

Pack 8... Foil Spread the Sickness. Not really EDH playable, but cool art, and someone might want to trade for it... oh well. Three foils and none of them all that good... The Rare adds insult to injury: Bonehoard. Yikes, this has zero value - I am fairly certain I will never use this in any deck ever, and now I have THREE of them.

Pack 9... I'm so glad there is one last pack... if these things were still 8 packs, I'd have just gotten screwed. But here's the lightning round, all or nothing:

...

It's a Planeswalker.

That's right the last chance to open something amazing, and I rip THE money-rare: Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas. Thank you God!

Now all I have to do is decide: Do I trade him off now before his value nose-dives? Or do I keep it until it reaches lofty heights a la the Mind Sculptor? Or do I just keep it for personal use, never minding the street value?

Because, I just began dismantling my Sharuum EDH, which was basically my only likely use for him... however I have been pondering a 60-card list for multiplayer involving Master Transmuter...

What to you prognosticators out there think? Is this guy's street value going to skyrocket like gold or crash like the housing market?

Anyway, pulling a $45 card from a $40 fat pack makes all the $1 rares that I admittedly was happy to open rather painless... I can safely say this was a worthwhile investment, and it satisfied my craving to open packs... for now!