This is the call-in episode we've been anticipating for a while. I hinted about it on Twitter last season, but now it's become a reality. For a little over a week, I've been asking people if they're interested in making a CommanderCast appearance. Well, this week, eight of those people are getting UP IN THIS PIECE and we're doing a sort of super Free-For-All Roundtable. Each caller has their own subject and we discuss them over the span of ten minutes apiece; me and Carlos are hosting, and we have two callers tagged in for any given subject. We're getting a variety of viewpoints of a huge range of topics here.
Be advised this isn't as focused as our usual podcast, and the organization is atypical, but we wanted to do something special and give our listeners a chance to be on the show. Keeping CommanderCast accessible has always been a huge priority for me, so this seemed like an ideal expression of that.
Show notes and pertinent links below. Enjoy.
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00:00 to 02:54: Intro: Introducing the podcast, your hosts, and a brief rundown of podcast news for the week.
02:58 to 1:33:05: SUPER Community: Call-In Episode: Introduction to the format for the episode; two callers, two hosts, ten minutes per caller subject. LET'S GET IT.
02:58 to 1:33:05: SUPER Community: Call-In Episode: Introduction to the format for the episode; two callers, two hosts, ten minutes per caller subject. LET'S GET IT.
- Brad's Topic: Targeting Prioritization: In light of an ongoing forum discussion, Brad would like to talk about target prioritization and threat assessment, the Achilles heel of Commander tryhards everywhere.
- Chris' Topic: Targeted Land Destruction: In a recent deck he built, Chris has started to use target land destruction like Dwarven Blastminer and is curious about how much is enough, when you have too much, and what kind of cards that fulfill this role provide the best value.
- Justin's Topic: Colour Preferences: How many colours do you like to use, and why? What's the advantage of mono-coloured vs multi-coloured? How do you stay away from all the 'mandatory' colour staples?
- Jars' Topic: White-Border Only: We talk about a deckbuilding challenge where we construction the ugliest deck ever... one with only white-borders. What kind of cards do you have available? What colours would be feasible? Also, this is what Raging River does.
- Omar's Topic: Ban List and Tuck: Porting a debate from the real, Omar brings up some people's interest in changing the 'official' rules; namely, the banned list and how 'tuck' effects work.
- Calvin's Topic: Playstyle and Effectiveness: Have you ever built a deck that worked really well, but didn't like playing? That's what we're talking about here. How can you remedy this issue? Also some more general discussion about branching out and playing different types of decks.
- Adrian's Topic: Scars of Mirrodin and EDH-Centric Design: Adrian presents the idea that Scars block appears to have Commander in mind more than prior blocks. What kind of impact could this have on the format? Is it good, bad, or ugly?
- Shoe's Topic: The Ultimate Showdown: This is a multiplayer format that requires sixteen people to play. Click the link for more. It's... kind of crazy.
1:33:07 to closing: Outtro.
PERTINENT LINKS
- Durdling Around this week. AWESOME
- Targeting discussion on the MTGCommander board.
- Land Destruction Packages video.
- My article on the banned list.
CONTACT INFORMATION
- General show contact/E-Mail Andy: CommanderCast(at)gmail(dot)com
- To E-Mail Carlos: cag5383(at)gmail(dot)com
- To Tweet Andy: (at)CommanderCast on Twitter
Great episode guys!
ReplyDeleteSo much interesting discussion, methinks this sort of call-in thing might become a season staple?
First of all, speaking of targetted land destruction; run Strip Mine. Period.
It goes for ridiculously cheap these days and it goes into everything.
I feel that 2 colors is the optimal choice for Commander. It gives enough flexibility to offer more options and strategies and general choices to be less linear than a mono-colored deck without having as frail a mana base or as many crippling card choices as a three or more color build.
On that train of thought, I make it a matter of principal to build my decks with my general in mind, so from the very get go, the first twenty or so cards I include tend to be along the lines of "how cool would this be with my general?" and not whether or not its an autoinclude. This process is helped even further if you're playing a really off the wall (read; sub-optimal) general. My first was Mayael.
Tuck effects are a necessary evil.
You don't ban Wrath effects if someone wants to play tokens.
You don't ban Shatterstorm if someone is playing artifacts.
You don't ban JesterCap effects if someone plays combo.
A general-specific effect is no different.
That being said, it's up to your group. If everyone is okay and in favor of tuck being no different than destroying or exiling a general, by all means, go ahead.
I find the very obvious EDH inserts in recent sets to be highly disconcerting for most of the reasons mentioned. I feel that, in the beginning, a long long time ago, when EDH was just crawling out of the primordial ooze, a big appeal of the format was "making due" with the big splashy, janky spells that didn't work in other formats. And now that we don't have to "make due" anymore, I feel that part of the Magic (heh) has been lost.
Andy, I remember last season you mentioned this time when you realized that you had become an asshole when you were playing with your Intet deck, and you triggered intent and used Top to put Time Stretch on top and you used that sublime metaphor of when Luke goes into the cave and cuts off Vader's head and OHMYGAWD it's Luke underneath the helmet.
I feel like that's sort of what's going on in R&D these days, BUT FOR EVERYONE IN THE FORMAT.
I'm not too terribly worried though because Commander is at its heart not a committee driven format, but a player driven one, and when and if a playgroup plays with Sphinx, or the Praetors or any other holy freaking crap must have EDH cards and realizes on their own, as a group, "You know what? These cards aren't fun." They will come to a consensus and not play those cards.
Alternatively, those who want to use those same cards and has no problem with the balls-to-the-wall cutthroat nature of their meta will continue to do so.
Such is Commander.
And I'm all for that.
And finally once again I must channel my NERD RAGE:
Jin-Gitaxias is a dude.