Mid-Week Update: April 14

Posted by ANDY aka GHoooSTS

Thursday is the scheduled day for the CommanderCast Mid-Week Update. As a result, the website has seen the expected updates for the occasion. This includes a new installment of "The Arcane Laboratory" written by Carlos. The subject for this article is his creation of a Karn, Silver Golem deck for use in the popular Commander variant format of Magic the Gathering. Additionally, Byron, whose internet alias is SurgingChaos, has recorded and uploaded a new installment in his series of Video Blogs that is hosted on YouTube. There is an embedded player below, though if you prefer there are also hyperlinks you can follow to visit the video on YouTube.

There is also the matter of CommanderCast's Season 2 Contest. If you have any interest in winning the prize, please remember that the time to make a submission ends on Monday.

Additionally, in this Mid-Week Update, there are several new posts by CommanderCast's affiliates that may interest you if you enjoy the material seen on this website weekly. It is recommended you click on the hyperlinks, though this is not mandatory (but only due to a lack of effective enforcement mechanisms).

• On Completely Casual, Dominik has posted an article called "Follow Suit, Or Not!" The article features not only his contest entry into CommanderCast's Season 2 Contest, but also discusses avoiding use of common resources as a strategy in Commander.
• On EDH or "How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Bombs", Owen has posted an article called "That Old Chestnut" analyzing recent discussions on popular opinion of what should be banned in Commander.
• On Muse Vessel, Bruce has posted a primer called "Now you too can build a Commander Deck in Three Easy Steps". He details a methodology for deckbuilding in the Commander format.
• On BelcherSucks, John has compiled "Cheap Black Tech", the third installment in his ongoing series providing good cards that are economical options for budget-concerned Commander players.

Here is Byron's Video Blog.

Here is Carlos' article about Karn, Silver Golem.

Arcane Laboratory 011 – KAAAAAAAAAARN!
By CARLOS

Now it’s time to wrap up the series of mono-colored decks with a mono-brown list.  Having a colorless general raises a whole slew of interesting problems that don’t come up with a typical deck, the most obvious of which is your manabase.  It becomes pretty difficult to fill out 40ish lands when you can’t use basics.  It’s also reasonably difficult to build a cohesive deck when you’re using exclusively artifacts.  Each color has a unique identity and a set of things that it does well, and artifacts are typically used to supplement those identities.  When the artifacts are the central theme, sometimes you’ve got to reach and focus more on the interactions than on individual cards.

Which brings up another concern:  In general, there are three kinds of decks that are playing lots of artifacts.  First, there are decks that don’t have access to mana acceleration, so they use mana rocks instead (example: Mono Blue).  Second, there are decks that are going Voltron and use equipment to suit up their general (example: Kemba).  Lastly, there are prison-themed decks that use artifact-based mana disruption to prevent people from interacting positively with their plays.  Now, I’d argue that none of these styles are particularly interesting when you’re building mono-artifacts.  I think that the pivotal point here is choosing a general that enables you to do novel things, thereby forcing the deck’s style away from these overly familiar archetypes.

There aren’t very many choices for colorless generals.  In fact, there are only three, now that Emrakul got the banhammer.  Here are your choices in all of their colorless glory:

Karn, Silver Golem
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre

I must say that I have a fundamental problem with the two Eldrazi legends as generals.  When your general is an absolutely absurd win condition unto itself, the entire purpose of your deck is going to be ramping out that general and trying to give it haste.  I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t seem like an interesting deck to me.  It’s like the Tooth and Nail decks from the first Mirrodin block.  Can you count to 9 mana?  Did you untap?  If yes, win the game!  I guess it’s fine if you really like casting Eldrazi, but the novelty has sort of worn itself out for me, so I’m not really interested in that sort of deck.  These Eldrazi decks ultimately fall under the “overly familiar problem” I mentioned already.

That sort of leaves Karn by default, doesn’t it?  Karn is actually the most popular colorless general by a significant margin, and it seems pretty obvious to me why that is.  Firstly, Karn is a defensive powerhouse.  He’s colorless, has a huge 8 toughness, and is capable of blocking a significant portion of the gigantic threats that Magic has to offer.  Granted, blocking isn’t always what you want to be doing to those threats, but hey, Karn can do it.

Secondly, his ability to turn non-creature artifacts into creatures is really interesting, and has all kinds of niche applications.  Salvaging Station is a great example of what can be done with Karn in mind.  Turn an Expedition Map into a creature, tutor for a land, untap Salvaging Station and buyback your Map?  Do the same with graveyard hate trinkets, or all kinds of other tricks.  You can turn artifacts into creatures and then abuse Voltaic Construct.  That seems pretty powerful with something as simple as an Everflowing Chalice, much less Lux Cannon or something else absurd like that.

Lastly, he’s an artifact.  The Eldrazi tentacle-monsters are just colorless, so you can’t really build a mono-brown deck with them, now can you?  Maybe I’m in the minority for being that nit-picky about my theme-decks, but it just seems more fitting to me, regardless of how silly it might be.

I think the biggest trap here is that I don’t want to build artifact-fueled combo.  I want to build something with powerful synergies that isn’t just trying to assemble a combo as quickly as possible.  It’s entirely possible that there will be unintentional infinites in the deck (such as Chalice and Voltaic Construct above!), but I think that by minimizing the pieces that go infinite and not intentionally tutoring up the pieces that go infinite, then I think it should be a pretty fun and powerful deck while not being overbearingly powerful.

Well, let’s get started with this then, and see what this ends up looking like!

Unlike with other decks, I want to start with the mana base.  This is going to be a pretty important part of the deck, especially since I want to avoid running infinite utility artifacts and mana rocks. I want the lands to be as efficient as possible.  If the lands can cover some of the burden of ramping up and providing generic utility, then I won’t have to waste non-land slots on these effects.

Cloudpost
Glimmerpost
Vesuva
Urza’s Tower
Urza’s Mine
Urza’s Power Plant
Temple of the False God
Ancient Tomb
City of Traitors

Wasteland
Strip Mine
Tectonic Edge
Dustbowl

Mutavault
Mishra’s Factory
Blinkmoth Nexus
Inkmoth Nexus
Dread Statuary
Stalking Stones
Gargoyle Castle

Blasted Landscape
Petrified Field
Deserted Temple
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Mystifying Maze
Miren, the Moaning Well
High Market
Reliquary Tower

Gods’ Eye, Gate to the Reikai
Gemstone Caverns
Crystal Vein
Darksteel Citadel
Tower of the Magistrate
Ghost Town
Rath’s Edge
Scrying Sheets
Mouth of Ronom
Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
Sheltered Valley

There are a few different sets of lands here.  Firstly, there are the mana-ramp lands, Urzatron, three Posts, Temple of the False God, that kind of thing.  I’m really surprised that Cloudpost and Glimmerpost don’t see more play in Karn lists, or in mono-colored lists in general.  I mean, there are almost no drawback, but it pays off pretty well when the interaction comes up.  I’m sure it helps that most of my decks run a pretty extensive set of tutors for non-basics.

Second, we’ve got some land destruction.  Just a heads up; there’s a Crucible of Worlds.  The thing is, the land destruction isn’t there to grief.  It’s there to be a land that doesn’t have colored symbols and provide some additional utility when you need it.  There are a lot of broken lands in the format, and you HAVE to have ways to deal with them, so I don’t feel bad about running these spot removal lands.

Next, some manlands.  If you’ve got to run colorless lands, they might as well do some work, right?  Vesuva can copy Blinkmoth Nexus or Mishra’s Factory to help go on the beatdown plan, you can use them as blockers.  Manlands just provide you with a lot of options that you wouldn’t have otherwise, and I don’t see a reason NOT to run them.

Then there are the lands with utility effects that might be relevant in a reasonable number of circumstances.  Deserted Temple untapping Blinkmoth Nexus or Urza’s Tower or some such seems reasonable, and drawing cards off of Blasted Landscape is fine.  These are lands that you’ll find yourself frequently using for their secondary effect  instead of just using them for mana.  The one land I’d really like to take a minute to discuss is Hall of the Bandit Lord.  People need to run this card.  It is INSANE what this does for you.  Don’t want the tapped land?  Cut a spell for it, it’s that good.  These are going for $1 on SCG right now, while other utility lands like Miren and High Market are going for about $3, and there’s no reason for that difference.  I mean, really, Titans, Forgemaster, Colossi, Eldrazi, even generals with activated abilities that involve tapping--all of these things get about infinitely better with haste.

Lastly, there are some lands that have effects that you might use once or twice, but in general will just tap for colorless mana.  There are a really, really low number of snow-covered lands, just in case you get Mouth of Ronom and a Snow source, but that’s almost never going to happen.

There are two lands I wanted to take a second to talk about; the first is Tower of the Magistrate.  I mean, have you ever seen a card that hates on Voltron any harder?  It’s a land that even beats Lightning Greaves: just give the guy pro artifacts when they try to equip it. You can make most other equipment falll off, and sometimes just beat voltron decks by having this in your 99.  If you’ve got Kemba or Godo running rampant, pick up a copy and blow them out!

Second, Gods’ Eye, Gate to the Reikai.  Making a 1/1 is relevant more often than you’d think it would be, but it’s not something you want to take advantage of too often.  If you wanted to run Smokestack, Gods’ Eye would make Smokestack a lot better.  It’s really powerful with Vesuva and Dustbowl.  Just don’t forget that Gods’ Eye has an effect, since it’s relevant reasonably often.

Now let’s cover the mana artifacts.  I don’t want to run too many of these, since they’re just ramp, and take up slots in the deck. As always, you’ll notice a distinct lack of Sol Ring and Mana Crypt.  I hate what these cards do to games, and I don’t want to play them.  I don’t mind other people playing them, but I don’t enjoy games where I pull ahead from the very beginning, and no one really gets a chance to keep up.

Mana Rocks
Sisay’s Ring
Coldsteel Heart
Mindstone
Everflowing Chalice
Worn Powerstone
Thran Dynamo
Mox Opal
Cloudstone Key

Heartstone

Most of these are reasonably straightforward.  Coldsteel Heart is there for making snow mana in case that’s ever relevant.  The only other one that’s even a little bit interesting is Cloud Key.  Cloud Key actually enables a couple of different loops that aren’t infinite, but makes them cheaper.

Hearstone is really interesting here, actually, and it’ll become apparent a little later why that is.  Karn is your general, so you can animate your other artifacts to reduce their activation costs.  
Removal
Brittle Effigy
Oblivion Stone
All is Dust
Spine of Ish Sah
Nevinyrral’s Disk

About what you’d expect, right? I wish Effigy didn’t exile itself, but there’s not much that can be done about that.  It was actually really hard to justify adding Disk and Oblivion Stone, since more often than not you’re going to wrath your entire board, which is pretty unfortunate.  Still, you can add Darksteel Forge to the mix and it’ll be fine.  (Sidenote: I intentionally didn’t add Mycosynth Lattice to the deck, since it does so many “unfun” things with Karn, like destroying lands with Disk or Karn’s ability.)

The card I’m most excited about here is Spine of Ish Sah.  I mean, this thing is probably my favorite card from the new set, and one of the things that I really wanted this deck to do is to abuse this card as much as possible.  We’ll see if I managed it!

Station Combo!
Salvaging Station
Grinding Station
Blasting Station
Summoning Station

Hey, why not?  Who can be upset if you win with the four card combo Wizards advertised from Fifth Dawn?  Besides, multiple pieces are pretty powerful in the deck, especially because you can activate a lot of them multiple times in a single turn.  Karn even eliminates the need for some of the stations as long as you can afford to activate him a ton of times.

Salvaging Station is the one I’m really excited about here.  Animate an artifact that sacrifices itself, like Expedition Map.  You now have as many activations of Map as you can afford, which seems awesome.  You can add sacrifice outlets so that you don’t need to “combo” with just Expedition Map, but there are a ton of interesting things that you can do with it that I’m really excited about.

Salvaging Station Targets
Phyrexian Furnace
Scrabbling Claws
Expedition Map
Voltaic Key
Welding Jar

The first three cards here seem pretty obvious to me.  Recurring graveyard hate that also draws cards?  Tutor up your utility lands?  Yes, please!  Not to repeat myself too much, but you can even animate your Phyrexian Furnace/Scrabbling Claws to recur them repeatedly with Salvaging Station, which seems pretty absurd when you’re facing down a graveyard-based deck.

Equipment and Sacrifice Outlets
Mortarpod
Basilisk Collar
Skullclamp
Nim Deathmantle
Lightning Greaves

Sculpting Steel
Krark-Clan Ironworks

So I’m just going to say up front that I am hooked on Mortarpod.  This card is absolutely awesome, and has been making its way into more and more of my decks.  It started in a Kemba deck, then moved into a Tolsimir deck, Horobi deck, and it’s been awesome in all of them.  Seriously, this thing provides a good amount of utility and combo potential for just a 2cc artifact, and I’d be more than willing to say that it’s the best uncommon in Mirrodin Besieged for Commander.

I’m running Mortarpod so I can animate an artifact, like Spine of Ish Sah, equip it with Mortarpod and sacrifice it to buy it back.  Then why not add Basilisk Collar to deathtouch guys with Mortarpod?  Then why not add Skullclamp to draw cards when you Mortarpod a guy?  Then why not add Nim Deathmantle to buyback the Spine you just sacrificed?  Mortarpod adds a lot of interesting interactions, especially with Karn, so I’m definitely running it for now.  Maybe I’ll get a little more disenchanted with the card as time goes on, but right now I’m convinced it’s one of the best cards in the set.

Last, Sculpting Steel provides some of the generic utility that it always does, copying good artifacts like Spine of Ish Sah and whatnot.  Krark-Clan Ironworks is really good because you don’t have to animate artifacts to sacrifice them to it, and because it gives back mana. This plus Nim Deathmantle is kind of stupid, and add any kind of token generation to go absolutely broken. Seems good to me.

The Artifact Creatures – Myr Themed!
Kuldotha Forgemaster

Myr Battlesphere
Myr Turbine
Palladium Myr
Plague Myr
Myr Retriever
Myr Welder
Shimmer Myr

I have been looking for an excuse to play Kuldotha Forgemaster since the card was printed.  The thing seems pretty absurd; Tinker on a body is really, really powerful, and I want to find a way to abuse it.

Myr Battlesphere and Myr Turbine are ways to abuse it.  They make tokens for you to sacrifice, and you can untap the Turbine to make more and more tokens.  It also gives me an excuse to run a small Myr theme, which is always awesome.  Unfortunately, most of the myr have colored symbols on them, which makes me really sad, but there are still some good ones.

Palladium Myr and Plague Myr are just mana guys.  Worn Powerstone on a creature is still really good.  Plague Myr even gives you a chance to poison someone out, which is awesome and hilarious.  Myr Retriever is obviously really powerful in an artifact deck, especially one that’s weird enough to be running Mortarpod and other sacrifice outlets exclusively to make cards like this better.

Myr Welder and Shimmer Myr are a little interesting, since I’m not exactly sure what they do for the deck.  I mean, you can theorize about it all you want, but I think these are two of the cards that you have to play with to see how good they are or aren’t. They seem like they could be really powerful, but I just don’t know.

Recursion and Card Drawing
Junk Diver
Mimic Vat
Arcbound Reclaimer

Ichor Wellspring
Serum Vat
Sensei’s Divining Top
Mind’s Eye

I’m a big fan of all of these cards, and I’m really excited to get a chance to play some of them.  Junk Diver is another Myr Retriever, which is always awesome.  It’s a little overcosted relative to Myr Retriever, but that’s fine.  Everyone knows that Mimic Vat is awesome, but it’s even more awesome when you can untap it multiple times.  Last, Arcbound Reclaimer seems really good, especially when you can recur it and especially with the proliferation coming up next!

Next, there are some powerful card-drawing effects.  Serum Vat is obviously awesome with both proliferate and when you’re casting a ton of artifacts.  Mind’s Eye is obviously awesome, and everyone knows that it’s a really powerful source of artifact card drawing.  Ichor Wellspring and Sensei’s Divining Top are both really interesting ways to draw cards.  It should be noted that you can tap Top and then sacrifice it in response to Mortarpod or Krark-Clan Ironworks to get a card but NOT put it on top of your library.  Ichor Wellspring is another card from Mirrodin Besieged that I think is secretly awesome.  I mean, you’ve got infinite ways to sacrifice it not only to get value out of the sacrifice, but also to draw a card?  Sign me up!  In Slobad, Ichor Wellspring is actually just “draw 2 cards, counter a removal spell” for 2.  That seems really, really good.  This card is going to see more and more play as people realize that it’s a cheap way to draw cards AND get utility.

Proliferate!
Rings of Brighthearth
Contagion Clasp
Contagion Engine

Darksteel Reactor
Orochi Hatchery

And here’s the proliferate package and the cards that love it.  These are especially powerful when you’ve got untap effects, which the deck does.  In playtesting, I managed to win with Darksteel Reactor the turn after I played it, which seems pretty good to me.  There’s a lot of interesting and powerful things you can do with these, especially since you’ve got the tools to keep them going in and out of play with Deathmantle and Retrievers and such.  These are just really powerful  effects, and this deck is uniquely equipped to abuse them.

Bombs!
Duplicant
Wurmcoil Engine
Steel Hellkite

Eye of Ugin

Obviously all awesome, especially with recursion.  Lots of colored decks go out of their way to run these guys, and you still get to run them as a colorless deck, but with more ways to abuse them.  Then add Eye of Ugin to tutor up the ones that are powerful?  I’m sold!  Honestly, even though I’m not running Eldrazi, giving up a land drop to be able to tutor up your best creatures seems more than good enough to me, so I’m going to run with it.

Generic Utility
Crucible of Worlds

Darksteel Forge
That Which was Taken

Clock of Omens
Voltaic Construct

And these are your generic utility effects.  Recurring lands is always good, especially when you’ve got Strip Mines.  You can even use Petrified Field to recycle Blasted Landscape for card drawing, if you need to or just recur your lands that get destroyed.  Crucible is powerful even when you don’t build around it, but when you’ve got a few built-in synergies, it’s absurd.

Darksteel Forge and That Which was Taken are both really good ways to make your permanents indestructible.  What other deck gets to make its whole team indestructible?  Not many.  That Which was Taken edged out Darksteel Plate by a little bit, so you could definitely run that instead, but I think that, with your untap effects, That Which was Taken is probably better.

Lastly, there are the untap effects I keep coming back to!  Clock of Omens is the weaker of the two, since you have to commit to tapping your other cards.  Remember that you can tap Equipment, and it should be fine though.  Voltaic Construct is one of those cards that becomes infinitely better with Karn as your general.  Being able to animate a Contagion Engine, and then repeatedly proliferate in a single turn is REALLY good.

And that’s the Karn deck, the real end to my series of mono-colored decks.  This is definitely one of my favorites of the series, since there’s so much synergy.  I’m sure I couldn’t play it anywhere near optimally since there are going to be so many complex board states, but it’d still be fun to play!  I’d also be interested to see some kind of voltron deck using Karn.  Actually, I just really like the idea of equipping a Sword of Fire and Ice with a ton of other equipment just because I can.  This is such a stupid game sometimes, and I love it.

Anyway, if you’ve got any comments or criticisms, have a deck you want to talk about, or just have some questions, I’d be glad to hear from you.  I’ve been pretty good about staying on top of my mail right now, so I think I’ve gotten back to everyone who’s sent me an email recently.  Next week I’ll be taking a look at a Tribal deck, since that’s something I don’t do terribly often, so get excited!

Carlos
cag5383(at)gmail(dot)com

CommanderCast S2E9: GIANT SHARK

Posted by ANDY aka GHoooSTS

THE REALEST SHIT

This week on CommanderCast Andy is BRINGING THE INFORMATIONS with Adam and Donovan. Providing us with fierce backup we have Bennie Smith, who started writing about Magic like a week before the Big Bang or something. This week he has decided to grace our podcast with his presence. To investigate Bennie's body of work, one need go no further than StarCityGames.com, where his long history of authorship is chronicled (they're still translating some of the stuff he wrote on animal skins with his own blood... this is metal). He is the best advocate for Commander as a format on one of Magic's biggest websites, and that's a pretty big deal.

GIANT SHARK
 

Show notes and pertinent links below. Enjoy.

>>>>> DOWNLOAD IN MP3 FORMAT HERE <<<<<

00:00 to 04:27: Intro: We are introducing ourselves, providing a bit of a preview to the Mid-Week Update, and a reminder about the contest.

04:35 to 14:49: Community: Free-For-All Roundtable: Hermit Druid: Recently there's been some debate on the bannability of Hermit Druid. As is our up-to-the-second nature at CommanderCast, we're debating the topic. Carlos will probably strangle me for not putting him on this one but whatever, I don't need air to live.

GIANT SHARK

15:00 to 30:21: Community: Sideboards: As per Bennie's recent article, this week we're looking at the optional Sideboard rule in Commander. The ten-card sideboard has been an optional rule on the books for a long time, but it's super rare to see in play. So what's the deal? We're giving a general discussion on the topic; why use sideboards, what is their purpose, and how do they change your games?

30:34 to 31:53: Deckbuilding Challenge: Phase 3: We've got our number of colours and $40 limit. Now, we're picking our colours. Scope the upper-left corner for our poll. What will Carlos do? The suspense is making me vomit!

32:06 to 33:38: Community Spotlight: BelcherSucks: This is a site run by my man John, who produces some quality material on Commander. He updates about once a month. Topics are generally awesome, and the articles are very high-content. It deserves a look. Please follow the link.

GIANT SHARK

33:51 to 52:23: Alt. Format Strategy: Star: Star is an interesting five-person format that when applied to EDH, has some significant ramifications in terms of what strategies are improved, which become worse, and how you are going to apply politics to the game. If you have any interest following this segment please give Star a try, it might be the format for you. This is just an introduction, 

52:30 to 1:12:06: Strategy: 'That Guy' Status: We've all read complaints about 'That Guy' in EDH; the guy who wins too many games, the guy whose decks are all disproportionately expensive, the guy who talks like he's the greatest thing to happen to Magic since Chaos Orb. When you are 'That Guy', what are the strategy ramifications? How can you use it to your advantage? How do you pass on the 'That Guy' belt if you need to lose it?
 

1:12:18 to 1:26:20: Entourage: Chisei, Heart of Oceans: The Ib Halfheart nation was born with our last Technology segment. Given it's wild success, it only seemed to make sense to do another one. We have a real turd this week with Chisei, Heart of Oceans. Can we build a worthwhile skeleton around this thing? Listen and find out.

Adam's Picks: Mesmeric Trance, Dreams of the Dead (addendum Glamerdye)
Andy's Picks: Paradox Haze, Glacial Chasm
Donovan's Picks: Decree of Silence, Glen Elendra Archmage
Bennie's Picks: Snowfall, Strata Scythe 


If you want more Entourages, please send us in some more sub-par Generals, we'd love to see what else we can pull off!

GIANT SHARK

1:26:34 to 1:49:01: Technology: Bad Cards We Love: Everyone has pet cards. sometimes these are not ideal pets, but we love them despite their flaws, like a dog that refuses to do anything you ask it to do, or a bird that won't stop pooping on your head (less likely). These cards are the MtG equivalent.

Bennie's Picks: Ice Cauldron, Hellcarver Demon
Andy's Picks: Menacing Ogre, Bullwhip
Adam's Picks: Stone Idol Trap, Overtaker
Donovan's Picks: Demonic Consultation, Giant Shark

GIANT SHARK

BLOOD IN THE WATER SON

1:49:16 to closing: Outtro.

PERTINENT LINKS

• Sick article featuring the rules for Star.
  
• Derfington's customized cards gallery
• Hermit Druid discussion
• GIANT SHARK Monday on Twitter! LETS GET IT

CONTACT INFORMATION

• General show contact/E-Mail Andy: CommanderCast(at)gmail(dot)com
• To E-Mail Adam: adnelso(at)gmail(dot)com
• To E-Mail Donovan: donokun(at)gmail(dot)com 
• To E-Mail Bennie: starcitygeezer(at)gmail(dot)com
• To Tweet Andy: (at)CommanderCast on Twitter

Mid-Week Update: April 7

Posted by ANDY aka GHoooSTS

I posted the podcast late this week so I figured "probably shouldn't screw up the Mid-Week Update". Here it is POW. Like we promised in our podcast, Carlos is up in here with a deck heavily featuring Quest for Ula's Temple in the last coloured entry in his series of mono-colour decks. Next week my man is going fully colourless, so be sure to stay on deck for that one. Otherwise, here's some updates from my mans from around the internet:

• Neale from Wrongwaygoback has posted an interesting piece on a theoretical new MtGO interface and how it would accommodate spontaneous networking, socialization, and can change the nature of MtGO into something more social, tying into our discussions last week.
• Shoe from WOOBERG.com is throwing out a sort of variant on Commander called Deck Master. If you're looking for another interesting format akin to EDH, check it out.

Also, as a little bonus for our Season 2 Contest, I'm going to throw in some runner-up prizes to the grand prize (the custom art card from Derfington, like this thing). You'll also be receiving a custom art card should you get a peripheral prize. Who's the artist responsible for this one? None other than myself, Andy aka GHoooSTS. Bet you didn't know about my mad skillz with card customizing? Well scope this shit homie:

STRAIGHT PAPER

So be sure to drop your entry for a chance to win something as totally awesome as the above. I'll be giving out 3 customized cards of my own making (value under $5, just like the main prize... if you want me to vandalize something more expensive for whatever reason, you're paying me the difference). There's only two weeks left to submit your entries to CommanderCast(at)gmail(dot)com!

And as always, here's the meat and potatoes: Carlos' Arcane Laboratory, the Mono-Blue Edition.

The Arcane Laboratory  010 -- Something's Fishy...
By CARLOS

And finally we come to the mono-blue deck. I have not been looking forward to building this deck, because blue and I have had a pretty hit or miss relationship in this format. It’s not that I don’t like the color; just the opposite, actually. Blue does a lot of awesome things, and brings a lot to a deck that no other color is capable of. The problem is that the color is really powerful, and tends towards broken shenanigans which can be seen as “against the spirit of the format.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m absolutely fine with combo existing in the format. I love building and playing combo decks. That doesn’t mean that I want my blue decks to devolve into “Mind over Matter plus Temple Bell. Good game?” Let me reiterate: I have no problem with other people who play decks that do these kinds of things, but as a deckbuilder, it just doesn’t do anything for me. Neither does sitting back on a grip of countermagic and just answering everything that anyone tries to play.

That means that I love all the things that blue can do as a support color. Drawing cards? Awesome. Mulldrifter is one of my favorite cards in recent memory. Countermagic to protect my stuff? Yes! Cryptic Command is my second favorite blue card (behind Gifts Ungiven). That said, I hate having to use blue to actually win a game, because all your ways to win are about preventing people from playing the game. Tidespout Tyrant, giant guys backed by countermagic, locks, infinite combos, and nonsense like that isn’t really what I’m interested in doing.

These are some of the common mono-blue decks that get played an awful lot. You’ll notice theme here: they’re either combo-control decks, prison decks, or awful. That’s what I hate about this color. The individual cards may not be terribly offensive, but the sum-total of the effects is really, really obnoxious. It’s hard to build a blue deck that’s not broken without intentionally building it to be awful. Here are the good decks:

Arcum Dagsson – Prison
Azami, Lady of Scrolls – Combo Control
Memnarch – Mono-Blue Control/Steal Your Stuff!
Sakishima, the Imposter – Mono-Blue Control/Steal Your Stuff
Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir – Combo/Control

So, as I said going into this, you’ll notice that there’s a lot of control here. It’s what blue’s good at. Still, before I really start looking into what these decks DO, I have a request to make to all the people playing mono-blue decks. Can we PLEASE stop pretending that blue only has card draw, countermagic, and control magics? I’m fine with people playing with all those cards, but I’ve played with a few too many people who act like they’re the first person to think that it might be good to put a bunch of control magics and counter spells in the same deck. I promise there are different things you can do in blue, just try to meet me halfway.

Now, more seriously, we can learn from this that blue is a combo-tastic color. These decks are all built to abuse the general to the fullest, which is powerful because the blue deck essentially gets to start with a piece of its engine in its hand. When you’ve got two-card combos that win the game, and you always start with one in your hand, it can be pretty hard to lose sometimes.

What I get from this is that, if one wants to build a more casual or “fun” blue deck, you either need to pick a weak general, or build around a non-general theme, so that you lose some consistency. This is definitely a place where I’m going to pick the flavor or theme of the deck over power. Blue can do a lot of cool things, but it just so happens that most of those things are way overdone and not fun for anyone at the table, even the person who’s comboing off. Also, because of my personal vendetta against the decks that just run 20 counterspells, 10 clones, 10 control magics, I want to avoid those kinds of cards as much as possible. You obviously can’t avoid them altogether since they are some of the better cards that blue has to offer, but you can certainly cut back on the number of similar effects that you want to run.

That said, here are the generals that I considered for this particular deck. Notice, most of these are absolutely awful, and I would never consider playing them outside of a hilarious theme deck. There might be one or two reasonable ideas for a real deck in here, but the vast majority of these generals are just worse versions of another deck, which is something I generally can’t stand to build.

Aboshan, Cepalid Empress
Hakim, Loreweaver
Higure, the Still Wind
Kaho, Minamo Historian
Llawan, Cephalid Empress
Lorthos, the Tidemaker
Meloku, the Clouded Mirror
Patron of the Moon
Reveka, Wizard Savant
The Unspeakable

So…there are a lot of bad ideas here, but let’s go through some of them quickly, since I’m sure I’ll want to come back to some of these. Unfortunately, Blind Seer didn’t make the cut here, but there are still some reasonably interesting things going on. Here’s what I’m thinking:

Aboshan, Cephalid Empress. Go! Go! Cephalid Tribal! Question of the day: how many non-changeling cephalids are there in magic? Only fifteen, which is pretty unfortunate. It’d be really hard to build a tribal deck out of this that’s not fundamentally based on things like Alter Reality and Artificial Evolution. It could be reasonably powerful, but your fundamental strategy is going to be to stop people from doing stuff with creatures while you….do….what exactly? Beat down with 1/2 cephalids? Seems weak. I’m sure there’s something awesome to be done here, but I don’t know what it is just yet.

Hakim, Loreweaver seems like he could be really, really fun. Traumatize yourself, suit him up with Eldrazi Conscription, go to town? Seems good. I just don’t know how I feel about building yet another deck that scoops to graveyard hate AND spot removal. That seems like a poor decision. I mean, you could always back it up with countermagic, but it still seems like you’re a little all-in on a pretty shaky gameplan. Maybe someday Hakim, maybe someday.

Who wouldn’t want to build Ninja tribal with Higure? Besides, I’ve got a pirate-themed commander deck, so it would only make sense to build the foil, right? Unfortunately, there are only 8 non-changeling ninjas in the entire game, and only half of those are blue. That’s not nearly enough to build a “real” deck, and it’s not even enough to be a real theme. Maybe later, if they ever revisit the Ninjutsu mechanic, which seems unlikely, as unfortunate as that is.

Kaho, Minamo Historian is a trap. Don’t fall for it. It seems pretty good right? “All the best blue cards are instants, and I get to pick the best ones in my deck! I’ll grab a way to bounce/protect Kaho and be fine! Maybe even tutor up High Tide + Twincast and combo off sometimes!” That’s all well and good, but nine times out of ten, you’ll cast Kaho, tutor up your best answers, just to eat a removal spell to the face. I tried building this deck. I tried playing it for the longest time. I have NEVER untapped with an active Kaho in play, so eventually I just started using her to thin my deck of the worst instants I was running. But then I realized that I was only playing those instants because my general was Kaho.  Awkward…

Now, Llawan is a legend that came to my attention at the last Legacy event I went to. Merfolk has never been a real deck where I played since everyone’s running Engineered Plagues, but Llawan is just a beating sometimes. This could be the basis of a hilarious deck that deals with changing colors, and running as many pseudo-Painters Servants as possible. Still, that’s a little gimmicky for me, and after all that work all you’ve accomplished is assembling a multiple-piece combo that stops people from playing creatures. Seems pretty sub par for a creature-based combo that’s vulnerable to all the removal ever.

Lorthos, the Tidemaker is actually a general that doesn’t get nearly enough love. Notice that when he deals damage to a player, he can tap ANY eight permanents, not just ones that player controls. Lorthos is pretty efficiently costed, can lock a player out of the game, and is just a beating if he resolves. Also, he’s an Octopus.

Honestly, I’m genuinely surprised that Meloku doesn’t see more play. This has been one of the best win conditions in both standard and extended at various points in time, and is one of my all-time favorite cards in Cube Draft. It’s an absurdly resilient win condition, gives you more ways to abuse Mind over Matter, since you can fill your hand, and gives you an excuse to play Skullclamp in a blue deck. Sounds good to me. The problem that I see is that it’s a pretty slow clock when you’re trying to deal with multiple players, especially since you’ve only got the one land drop per turn. You’d have to add some sort of combo to the deck to pump out tokens more quickly, but I’m not completely sure what the best way to go about that would be. All I know is that I’m excited for Grand Architect + Meloku.

Patron of the Moon is one of a few good interactions with Meloku. But he also interacts well with card draw. This is one of few ways that blue has to ramp that doesn’t involve artifacts, which makes it uniquely immune to a bunch of the hate that gets thrown at blue decks in my metagame. Add a way to abuse landfall and Amulet of Vigor, and go to town with this guy. The problem that I see is that you’re going to have to play some sort of prisonish tempo deck to stall until you land Patron and then have a big combo turn as quickly as possible, which is kind of what I wanted to avoid. Definitely expect to see me come back to this one!

Reveca, Wizard Savant is one letter off of being my favorite general. You see, my girlfriend’s name is Rebecca, so I’ve been pretty tempted to get a Reveca altered to have a different name and resemble Becca. That said, what exactly do you DO with Reveca? Well. Freed from the Real and Pemmin’s Aura spring to mind, and those seem pretty sweet. I’m not totally sure what else you could do, just that it would definitely involve Thornbite Staff and Basilisk Collar, but I think there’s some untapped potential here.

And lastly, The Unspeakable. Really, the name means that it’s unspeakably bad, but come on; it’s named The Unspeakable. That’s all kinds of awesome. Unfortunately, the Arcane mechanics was one of the worst things ever printed. That’s not to say I don’t love the mechanic to death, because I do. I played Arcane combo in standard for awhile, and I’ve got an arcane-themed combo deck in the works for a future article. That said, a 6/7 for 8 that gets you back bad cards doesn’t really seem like what you want to be doing, even in this format. Maybe if you wanted to build mono-blue spirit tribal?

So, out of all these options, I wanted to pick something that was fun; a little more unique than the more standard “build around me and protect me with countermagic” blue generals which are becoming more and more prevalent. So, what I decided to do was to build around a card IN the deck, and then find a general that fits the theme. The card I wanted to build around is one I’ve wanted to build a deck around for the longest time: Quest for Ula’s Temple. Come on, the card is hilarious and awesome! Leviathans, Octopi, and Serpents, what more could you want from a deck? So this deck is going to be built around cheating giant Denizens of the Deep into play, which should be hilariously awesome. The general? Lorthos, obviously; who better to play Poseidon than a Legendary Octopus?

The problem with decks built around a single card is that if that card is dealt with in some way, you’ve got no backup plan. So, there are two ways to deal with that in this particular deck. Firstly, you don’t want all of your creatures to be Lorthos-sized. You’ve got to have a curve so that you can actually run out creatures and buy yourself time to set up. Second, you’ve got to have multiple mechanisms of getting your Leviathans into play. Quest for Ula’s Temple on its own just won’t do it. Take a look:

Cheating Guys Into Play
Quest for Ula’s Temple
Copy Enchantment

Aether Vial
Copy Artifact
Sculpting Steel

Tutors
Dizzy Spell
Muddle the Mixture
Drift of Phantasms

Fabricate
Trinket Mage
Transmute Artifact
Tezzeret, the Seeker
Merchant Scroll
Mystical Tutor

Card Selection
Sensei’s Divining Top
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Serum Visions

So these are the key pieces of the “engine” such as it is. The goal here is to find and resolve either Aether Vial or Quest for Ula’s Temple. Obviously, Quest is more powerful since it gets active faster, doesn’t care about mana cost, and triggers at the end of each turn. That said, Quest requires some library manipulation, hence the cantrips. You want to hold onto those as long as possible so that you can use them to set up Quest triggers.

You’ve got ways to copy both Quest and Aether Vial, and tons of ways to tutor up various pieces. Merchant Scroll for Dizzy Spell, transmute for Quest. Transmute an artifact into an Aether Vial. These are all reasonable plays which, while not impressive, allow the deck to function at a reasonable pace. The real trick here is how to get more counters on your Quests and Vials faster. Fortunately, Scars of Mirrodin Block has brought an awesome mechanic for all decks that are struggling: Proliferate!

Proliferation
This is the real meat of the deck, since the proliferation ties together some themes in the deck. Proliferate effects give you a mechanism of ramping up Quests, ramping up Mana, and controlling the board. Here are the proliferators and the cards with counters of various types:

Contagion Clasp
Contagion Engine
Thrumming Bird
Steady Progress
Fuel the Cause
Voltaic Key
Rings of Brighthearth

Lux Cannon
Everflowing Chalice
Coalition Relic
Blue Mana Battery
Saprazzan Cove
Saprazzan Skerry
City of Shadows

This section seems pretty straightforward. All the artifacts with Proliferate (sans core prowler), all the blue cards with Proliferate, and a bunch of ways to abuse them. Storage lands and mana artifacts are actually just awesome with proliferate. You start casting spells for free, ramping up your mana, and you can actually just cast multiple leviathans more often than not. The only one of these that I’m really iffy on is City of Shadows, since there aren’t going to be too many creatures you want to remove to it, but there are always wraths and the like in Commander games, and you only really NEED one counter on it to start proliferating it up.

I think the most important question remaining is: what creatures are you going to be playing with your Quests and whatnot? Unfortunately, blue has shifted to having Sphinxes be the giant creatures of choice these days, so there actually aren’t terribly many leviathans or octopi that are on par with the power level of things like Sundering Titan and Consecrated Sphinx. There are a few good ones, but other than that you have to start reaching to the REALLY bad guys, like Eater of Days and Jokulmorder. Here’s a collection of serpents and whatnot that tries to balance power, flavor, and mana curve:

Deep Sea Kraken
Isleback Spawn
Tidal Kraen
Grozoth
Inkwell Leviathan
Segovian Leviathan
Stormtide Leviathan
Thing from the Deep
Kederekt Leviathan
Giant Octopus
Benthic Behemoth
Dreamwinder
Harbor Serpent
Sandbar Serpent
Serpent of the Endless Sea
Shrouded Serpent

So, it’s actually pretty difficult to find Leviathans that don’t have either islandwalk or islandhome. Man those mechanics were awful. It might be worth making space for some Spreading Seas or something similar so that you can justify running some of the islandwalkers, since those tend to be more powerful, but can’t really do anything against non-island decks.

This much of the deck takes up 48 of the slots in the deck. The only thing that’s really left here is to fill out the rest of the deck with utility and lands. For utility, we want a little more consistency, protection, and generally powerful plays. Control Magic, Counterspell, and a few additional tutors should fill that out pretty well.

Utility

Treasure Mage

Cryptic Command
Dismiss

Homarid Spawning Bed
Gauntlet of Power

Corrupted Conscience

Treasure Mage mostly finds contagion engine, but that’s definitely enough. You could fit Steel Hellkite in the deck if you wanted to, and it would be a pretty powerful target, since you really don’t have any way to deal with things once they’re on the table, and you’ve got limited countermagic.

The two counterspells are the best ones in the format, as far as I’m concerned. They’re definitely not splashable, but drawing a card makes it less awful to go 1-for-1 with people, which is really important in this format.

Corrupted Conscience should be Take Posession or Dominate or Treachery, but I just love the idea of poisoning someone to death with all the proliferate effects. If I were to play this deck, I’d do one of two things: either run Corrupted Conscience until I poisoned someone to death, or keep a tally on the card of home many people have been poisoned. Either way, it’s hilarious and totally worth the slot to me.

Lastly, Gauntlet of Power is a powerful way to ramp out your leviathans, and Homarid Spawning Bed is a unique little gem that doesn’t see nearly as much play. This card is actually just awesome, gives you a way to dodge removal, swarm past blockers, and do all kinds of cool things. Turning Leviathans with crippling upkeep costs and whatnot into a bunch of little guys is more than reasonable, especially when you can Anthem them with Gauntlet of Power.

There are two things that I considered here that are worth mentioning. Firstly, Grand Architect. Architect is also an anthem for Homarids, but also lets you ramp out your artifacts even faster. It seems like it could be really powerful. Secondly, Extraplanar Lens. I HATE this card so much, and it honestly baffles me that people consider is a staple. There are decks that want this kind of effect, sure, but more often than not, it gets destroyed before you get a chance to really use it, and when it does, you can get blown out really hard. Keeping a 3 or 4 land hand with Extraplanar Lens is a really risky proposition, and I’m tired of getting crippled early game because someone has artifact destruction.

The last batch of cards here is a concession to an archetype that I think is pretty awesome, and has really broken out in legacy recently. Is it really a Leviathan-themed deck without a High Tide?

High Tide
Turnabout
Twincast
Time Spiral
Mind’s Desire
Blue Sun’s Zenith

Here’s a pretty crazy way to “combo” your way into a ton of mana and just hardcast a bunch of leviathans. It’s certainly not as powerful as the legacy deck that just wins the game, but it’s definitely powerful enough to be worth including. Each of the cards on their own is reasonable as a way to cheat on mana or provide some additional utility, but if you hit a combination of these cards, you can have some pretty absurd turns.

Last but not least, there’s got to be some kind of mana base to back all this up. Minus the two storage lands and Saprazzan Skerry, here’s what I think is a pretty reasonable mana base for this deck:

Thawing Glaciers
Scrying Sheets
Maze of Ith
Deserted Temple
Vesuva

Strip Mine
Tectonic Edge

Mouth of Ronom
Academy Ruins
Tolaria West

Terramorphic Expanse
Evolving Wilds
Seat of the Synod

25 Snow-Covered Islands

This seems pretty standard to me. You’ve got a bunch of ways to make sure you hit your land drops, a few extra shuffle effects, some fetchlands to ramp with Rings of Brighthearth if that ever comes up. I think the biggest discussion point is the snow mana base. Nine of ten mono-colored decks are improved by using snow-covered lands. Mouth of Ronom and Scrying Sheets are really powerful cards that don’t see nearly enough play. I couldn’t fit it in here, but Mouth of Ronom plus Crucible of Worlds is a pretty good for card advantage. Scrying Sheets plus library manipulation makes sure that you draw gas for the rest of the game, and helps you dig deeper for cards that actually do something.

I mean, honestly, it’ll cost about $10 to build a reasonable snow-covered manabase. It’s DEFINITELY worth it. I finally added snow lands to my Kemba deck about two weeks ago, and the deck has been running much, much better since then, just off of Scrying Sheets. If you’re really too cheap, ask your group if they’re okay with you just having Scrying Sheets and saying that all your basics are snow-covered. Odds are people won’t care; it IS a casual format after all.

So, that’s all I’ve got for Lorthos, the Tidemaker. I’m pretty happy with the deck, since it doesn’t do any of the things that I hate about blue, and seems like it’s a reasonable deck. There are definitely some powerful plays that the deck is capable of, and I can see it winning a fair number of games. Besides, you get to play with LEVIATHANS! How awesome is that?

Next week, I’ll be wrapping up the mono-colored decks series with a mono-brown deck. I’m not sure whether or not I’m looking forward to it yet. I know I’m NOT looking forward to building the mana base, that’s for sure. In the meantime, if you’ve got any comments or criticism, a deck you’d like looked at, or even just a question or two, I’d be glad to hear from you!

Carlos
cag5383(at)gmail(dot)com

S2E8: Hugs and Hatervision

Posted by ANDY aka GHoooSTS

Better late than DEAD!

This week Andy, Jeremiah and Carlos are bursting through your speakers and into your ears with the latest edition of CommanderCast. Joining us, we have a guest; Neale of WrongWayGoBack, acclaimed Commander blogger, Aussie living in Hong Kong, and the ONLY guest who swears more than me. This episode is a bit more... uh... 'unbuttoned' than usual, so be advised, there's a bit of strong language up in here.

As a reminder in case you read the show noes and don't listen to the podcast (YOU ARE A WEIRDO), we're running our Season 2 Contest right now! Be sure to check out the rules and submit YOUR Secret Tech for the chance to win our superb, fully-decided-upon prize; a custom art card from Derfington (check him out doing his thug thizzle on ManaDeprived)!

Also, remember to vote on the next restriction for Carlos' DECKBUILDING CHALLENGE! Last restriction decided on was a $40 budget; now, we're working out the colours. Vote for 5C, tri-, bi-, or mono-coloured this week in the poll in the upper-left corner!

Show notes and links below. Enjoy.

>>>>> DOWNLOAD IN MP3 FORMAT <<<<<

00:00 to 02:42: Intro: We are introducing ourselves, providing a bit of a preview to the Mid-Week Update, and a reminder about the contest.

02:52 to 05:18: Community Spotlight: WrongWayGoBack: Neale is on the show and he's going to talk about his website. This makes too much sense y/n

05:29 to 24:24: Community: LOL INTERNET vs In The Real: As internet play of Commander blossoms, we see a difference between play 'in the real' and online, and even differences between play on MtGO, Cockatrice, and Magic Workstation. How does online play differ from kitchen tables? What influence does the online player base exert on the format as a whole? All this and more in a very broad-ranging discussion.

24:40 to 25:28: Deckbuilding Challenge: Phase 2: In the first phase Carlos' Deckbuilding Challenge, the votes have spoken; the $40 restriction is now in full effect. This week (and this week only), you vote on the colour setup: 5C, tri-, bi-, or mono-coloured? Check the poll in the upper-left corner. Next week, we'll figure out the actual colours!

25:43 to 39:07: Strategy: Hated Out: Mass Land Destruction: It's been a while since we turned on our Hatervision goggles. This time, they're actually used defensively, talking about Mass Land Destruction. The most hated strategy in EDH? Possibly. But how warranted is this? What is the value of Mass LD as a strategy, and when should it be deployed? What are the good reasons to hate it, and what might warrant reconsideration?
 

39:23 to 56:00: Strategy: Archetype Rundown: Group Hug: Hatervision googles deactivated: Hug Mode ENGAGED (Jeremiah forgot to turn the goggles off). Neale and I both play 'Group Hug' decks quite a bit, which benefit opponents, play politics, and try to navigate the mass of resources you've given to your opponents to come out on top. How do you play one of these decks, and why? What are the pitfalls?
 

56:14 to 72:53: Technology: Retro Cycle Review: We're reviewing the Kamigawa dragon cycle, best to worst. Cards below, then our rankings.


Jugan, the Rising Star; Keiga, the Tide Star; Kukosho, the Evening Star; Ryusei, the Morning Star; Yosei, the Morning Star.


Andy's Picks: Yosei, Kukosho, Ryusei, Keiga, Jugan
Jeremiah's Picks: Yosei, Kukosho, Keiga, Ryusei, Jugan
Neale's Picks: Keiga, Kokusho, Yosei, Ryusei, Jugan
Carlos' Picks: Yosei, Keiga, Kukosho, Ryusei, Jugan

God why is Jugan so bad

73:08 to 81:40: Secret Tech: Neale Edition: I hope you like THICK Aussie accents and swearing. If so, you're in for a treat. The cards are pretty cool too.

Common: Night Soil, Furious Assault, Obulette
Uncommon: Inheritance, Defensive Formation, Arboria
Rare: Earnest Fellowship, Celestial Convergence, Dual Nature

81:55 to closing: Outtro.

PERTINENT LINKS

• Derfington's DeviantArt page (if you want to see more)
  
• Neale's sweet website, WrongWayGoBack

CONTACT INFORMATION

• General show contact/E-Mail Andy: CommanderCast(at)gmail(dot)com
• To E-Mail Carlos: cag5383(at)gmail(dot)com
• To E-Mail Jeremiah: jeremiah(at)s1group(dot)com 
• To Contact Neale: Follow this link
• To Tweet Andy: (at)CommanderCast on Twitter