Monday, July 25, 2011

CommanderCast S3E9: Real Talk Redeux

Posted by ANDY aka GHoooSTS
An exciting week here at CommanderCast! Season 3 contest winners selected? Check. The end of the monocoloured madness? Check. Rules committee R&A, part two? YOU SEE IT! Brace yourself for this episode because it's totally sweet. There's a lot going on here (about two hours worth of material), but don't worry... between Donovan, Brionne, Alex and myself, we should be able to guide you through the material without an unexpected vomiting fits or joy seizures.


I also want to provide extra thanks to my co-hosts. Brionne was super helpful as our point man for the mono-white discussion, and I assure you she was very good in this role. Alex also deserves extra thanks for making himself super accessible to us and you, answering pretty much any question, and generally chilling with us. Alex and Brionne also both came through big time when a file was lost and re-recorded a segment with me early on the weekend. Also, as always, Donovan prooflistened this joint up.

Also, don't forget to check out the Circle of Judgement this week featuring Derfington! We pick our winners (if you're lame, you can also just check the contest results page and scroll down) and talk our picks.




Show notes and links below. Enjoy.



00:00 to 05:50: Intro:Who is this yelling at you? Why should you care? Also announcing the Season 3 Contest Winners and announcing the next Call-In Episode. Get the details and e-mail us to be on CommanderCast!

COMMUNITY

06:03 to 47:45: Rules Committee Real Talk II: Since S3E1, I have been soliciting your questions for the Commander Rules Committee's Alex, who made an appearance in season 2. Alex has been kind enough to descend from the RC's equivalent of Mount Olympus to grace us with his wisdom and insight. He answers questions from our listeners and ourselves for a long time.


48:00 to 49:37: Community Spotlight: Castles and Cooks: It's games, it's cooking, it's ridiculously tasty. Check out Castles and Cooks and start getting fat!

STRATEGY

49:50 to 1:12:51: Mono-White: It's mono-white's turn to be discussed. Why play mono-white, and where are it's strong points? What are the weaknesses? How can you compensate for the colour's shortcomings? As tricky as this can be, you can count on Brionne to guide you into this topic. In fact, you better be counting on it, because me and Alex don't know too much about mono-W in Commander.


As a note, this is a second recording of this segment, the first was lost. Donovan has a dramatic reenactment of the event. He was unable to make it to the recording.





Note, this is not what ultimately transpired, but is rather a horrifying view into what COULD have occurred.



TECHNOLOGY

1:13:02 to 1:24:16: Mono-White Technology: Here's some helpful cards for mono-white decks.

Alex's Picks:
Donovan's Pick:
Andy's Picks:
Brionne's Picks:

1:24:29 to 1:37:07: Entourage: Celestial Kirin: He's a Spirit, he's from Kamigawa, and he blows stuff up. He's underused. Mono-white? Check. A perfect fit for this podcast, we're assembling a skeleton around this explosive, underplayed Commander. Let's do this shit.

Andy's Picks:
Erratic Portal
Brionne's Picks:
Blinking Spirit, Kami of False Hope, Ranger of Eos, Shining Shoal, Yomiji, Who Bars the Way

1:37:21 to closing: Outtro.

PERTINENT LINKS
CONTACT INFORMATION
  • General show contact/Andy: E-mail CommanderCast(at)gmail(dot)com / Twitter @CommanderCast
  • To Contact Donovan: E-mail donokun(at)gmail(dot)com / Twitter @d0su
  • To Contact Brionne: E-Mail snapple.coffee(at)gmail(dot)com / Twitter @snapplecoffee
  • To Contact Alex: PM Ban-Ki Moon over on mtgcommander.com's forums

10 comments:

  1. First off great cast!

    Just noticed the Brionne's Picks section is missing "Shining Shoal". :)

    Can't wait for the next episode.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nice catch homie, glad you like the show.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Just wondering, how long does it take each episode to get to Itunes?

    ReplyDelete
  4. I know literally nothing about iTunes, and have no clue how that works. That's all done by MtGCast.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ah well, I'll get it here then. *Grumble*

    Thanks for your help, I do enjoy the show!

    ReplyDelete
  6. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Mono-White for the win! :D I think my Darien, King of Kjeldor deck is my longest surviving deck (besides Verdeloth which Justin has commandeered. :P)

    I agree that Mono-White is expensive. So many cards that are probably just as good in other decks are necessary to make my Darien deck competitive. Part of that is that, yes, White needs some help from Artifacts to compete with really powerful EDH decks.

    Speaking of Darien, King of Kjeldor, no love for that guy? The Darien strategy is one that I feel is hard to replicate without Darien himself as your Commander.

    A lot of card drawing is done by artifacts. Land Tax + Scroll Rack is my favorite. Skullclamp goes a long way for me, as well.

    To force through, White has a lot of ways to just suddenly have a bajillion creatures, as well. Storm Herd, Decree of Justice, and White Sun's Zenith are all cards that can let you just end the game if you're stuck.

    White actually has Lapse of Certainty, which is better than the options that Green has against the big game-winning spells (which are pretty much limited to Artifacts). White also has access to some powerful disruption effects besides Chant and Silence, like Aven Mindcensor and Leonin Arbiter to slow down search effects. So yes, White sucks against the stack, but it's not nearly as powerless as Green.

    Many of White's wraths can actually be used for other purposes if you're not facing the Creature deck. Some of my favorites (Austere Command, Akroma's Vengeance, Hallowed Burial) are very hard to fail to find uses for. I've cycled Akroma's Vengeance before and not felt bad about it.

    I do the token swarm thing. Token Swarm is super-fun and one of the things White is very good at.

    White also finds Enchantments pretty well (Idyllic Tutor, Enlightened Tutor, Academy Rector, the underplayed Three Dreams), some of which are very powerful. White has access to some interesting Enchantments, and White is the master of Anthems.

    White actually gets a ton of answers to Artifacts and Enchantments. You get Aura of Silence and Seal of Cleansing, you get Return to Dust which is amazing, you get Devout Witness for repeatable answers, you get Kor Sanctifiers if you want a creature too. Plus all the "Destroy all" effects you get. Disenchant was a White effect first!

    People need to understand how good Soul Warden is in EDH.

    Wow I need to put Oath of Lieges in my deck. White actually has a ton of ramp effects available, with Knight of the White Orchid and Kor Cartographer in addition to the Oath and some of the available Artifacts. Plus Land Tax and Gift of Estates, you can get quite a few lands.

    Overall, though, it was nice to learn more about Mono-White, and I'm glad to know there are more people enjoying the fun of it than I thought.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Great points Travis, I'm actually kind of surprised that we just forgot to talk about White's enchantment interactions. I will say that often if we seem to be leaving out a general or specific cards, we only have 20 minutes or so to speak on a topic, so lots of cards will be left out. I also personally won't like to talk about cards I don't use myself, which limits what I can speak on.

    I have seen a few Darian decks that have made me want to tear my hair out. That jackass is so annoying!

    One thing is that I'm an older Magic player, so I often forget that for many people, green is considered the colour of artifact/enchantment hate (and drawing cards, and big creatures, and land destruction, etc). I always forget that white isn't necessarily the go-to Artifact/Enchantment killing colour. Stupid colour pie shifting.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Understandable, I definitely appreciate the philosophy of talking about cards you actually have played before. I have been waiting for the Mono-white episode for a while, so it's only natural I have stuff to say.

    Yeah, the fun part about EDH is that every color can do so many things that the color pie says it shouldn't be able to do now. It's strange how you can dredge up old cards like Disenchant or Swords and steal color pie from another color for your White deck, just as an example.

    Also, in case you were wondering, I'm Justin's brother and I've been listening most of this season, so keep up the podcasts, they're a great source of info for me!

    ReplyDelete
  10. I think it says volumes about how amazingly well done the Commander products are when you guys gave four different answers to what you thought the "worst" commander was.

    ReplyDelete