Monday, February 21, 2011

CommanderCast S2E2: We're So Silly

Posted by ANDY aka GHoooSTS
CommanderCast's weekly installments continue as S2E2 belches fourth from your speakers. Relish the belching, my people. We are joined this week by Mr. Nicholas Walsh, author of 'There Can Only Be Fun' over at 02drop.com. Nick has provided his insight on a few topics this week, along with the usual goodness we're running. Our episode this week is mostly based around his e-mailed topic submissions, so it only seemed natural to have him pop onto the show to dish on this stuff in person.

Otherwise, this week is the same CommanderCast stuff that we do every week. Your opinion on that being a good or bad thing is obviously subjective, but you're here for a reason I assume.

Show notes and links below.



SHOW NOTES

00:00 to 06:30: Intro: Andy, Carlos, Byron and Nick introduce themselves and provide some quick news tidbits related to CommanderCast.


06:39 to 15:57: Free-For-All-Roundtable: Partial Paris Mulligans: Believe it or not, Partial Paris mulligans are actually a formalized part of the EDH rules. If you're not playing with it, you're house-ruling it. Did you know that? Apparently, lots of people don't. We're discussing the value of this mulligan system on the roundtable today.

16:09 to 33:57: Community: Tournaments: Between the Casualness Inquisition calling everyone with cards better than Craw Wurm a douschebag and the EDH Mafia predating on your local event,  Commander tournaments have caught a bit of a bad rap. Can these be good? How can you promote a local EDH tournament? What other issues revolve around the notion of a 'casual format tournament'?


34:09 to 35:50: Community: Spotlight: Muse Vessel: Do you like casual Magic? What about things that are awesome? If so, you should probably check out the Muse Vessel, a new MTG blog that's on-point when it comes to the casual multiplayer realm. I don't actually even care about your answer to the first two questions, just go scope 'em.

36:06 to 53:08: Strategy: Hosers: When we talk Hosers, we don't mean Canadians (necessarily). Instead we're looking at cards that are often considered 'too narrow' because their effects might not do much in a given game, but Nick is on to a different theory. Beyond actually using them, WHEN should you use them, and which ones?

53:22 to 54:50: Technology: Break My Card: It's our new thing on Twitter. STRICTLY for our followers there because before this our e-mail guys got all the love (and the contest). Here's how it works:
  • Once a week, I give you a single card. It can be anything.
  • You let me know how to use it via Twitter. It has to be in one Tweet. You can use short versions, abbreviations, and acronyms, but if I can't decipher them you're busted. You can't send a second tweet, e-mail, or telegraph to explain what you mean.
  • You have to tell me what Commander will be in charge of the deck the card is used in. After that, you can say whatever; a combo? Some synergies? The type of deck it works in best? It's up to you to do something awesome with the card. 
This week's card to break is TELEKINETIC BONDS.
 
55:06 to 75:48: Technology: Secret RECKLESS Tech: This Secret Tech, Nick is uppercutting your brain RIGHT IN THE NECK with some card selections. We are actually unleashing such torrents of Tech that it becomes uncontrolled at one point with us wildly spewing Tech all over the place, resulting in an uncontrolled Tech spill. Thus, this is actually RECKLESS Tech.

Nick's Picks:
Rare: Quicksilver Amulet, Bonehoard, Inferno (be advised: may kill guys who aren't even playing)

76:10 to closing: Outtro.

PERTINENT LINKS
CONTACT INFORMATION
  • To E-Mail Andy: CommanderCast(at)gmail(dot)com
  • To E-Mail Carlos: cag5383(at)gmail(dot)com
  • To E-Mail Byron: surgingchaos19(at)gmail(dot)com
  • To Tweet CommanderCast: (at)CommanderCast on Twitter

5 comments:

  1. Four people just seems too many. I think three is a good number for people on a podcast. Perhaps others disagree. It wasn't *bad* with four, but it just seemed like there was less time for each person to fully express himself.

    Other than that, a very solid show. I look forward to the next!

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  2. Whenever I play EDH the paris mulligan rule is totally acknowledged.... but of cause not liked by everybody.
    In my experience the partial-mulligan basically says in most cases: "Reshuffel all your non-land cards and draw..."
    As it is in most cases a mulligan to prevent manascrew, or gives you more mana in a format where more mana is needed!

    Of cause I encounter player who dislike it at all... our solution is in most cases to let them choose before they draw their opening hand. If they rather want a free mulligan with the normal mulligan rules. Or if they want the partial paris. So everybody is normally happy.
    As this is a casual format it doesn't really matter who gains a little edge here, as long as everybody is happy!

    I prefer the partial paris, for the aforementioned help not to get manascrewed!

    Yours Dominik
    from www.completelycasual.net

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  3. Partial Paris is too confusing. My play group just plays with "mulligan until you get a playable hand".

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  4. Hey Spezza, get off these here boards and start getting some points for me in my fantasy pool! :p

    I think the partial paris is there to help get around mana screw but the combo players have been able to abuse it slightly in their favor. Liek Andy said, the ones who want to game the system will find a way no matter what.

    My suggestion would be to take a page from my playgroup back in '94 and allow people to do a free full mulligan if they have 1 land, no land or all land, providing they reveal their hand to you before they ship it. Back then we used to allow people to do it twice.

    The one change I would make to the above rule in order to save time (because shuffling when everyone has eleventy-billion tutors is kind of pointless anyway) would be to just pitch the original 7 after revealing them and draw 7 more. Draw until you have a hand that fits the outlined criteria and then put the rest on the bottom.

    Anyway, those are my ideas and yes...if it wasn't printed in The Dark it's not as good! Go Inferno!

    -Wheel_of_Armageddon

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  5. Holy balls, guys. That judgebreaker deck looks AWESOME! Thanks for sharing that, it made my brain bleed just from reading the decklist. I'd love to build a facsimile of it, minus a few of the really old and expensive cards ($40 for Guardian Beast? NO WAY!) that I don't have.

    It looks fun as hell to play, though.

    ReplyDelete