once you know the format you'll realise how little 100 cards actually are so dont worry about the card amount
commander also has way more archetypes due to the giant cardpool. besides aggro/control/midrange/combo you also have voltron, aristocrats, land matters, pillow-fort, group-hug, boardwipe tribal, normal tribal, the list just keeps going
especially in casual formats you'll realise how nosensical rotation is
rotation is there to keep competitiveness low, something you don't want to see in commander anyways.
so in brawl rotation really only limits your creativity
.
additionally you can also just try to play unlimited brawl, aka brawl with the commander cardpool.
brawl may finally get support from wotc but don't forget that it died without that support and commander survived and thrived to EARN support from wotc.
wotc seem to be trying to express how strong our evil dragon overlord really is by making all sets revolving around him packed with power
and altough lots are appropriately priced to make them not too strong for standard some cards i think will slip trough pushing the power limit a bit too hard.
what do you guys think? at first glance it definitely seems to have more power than required.
only amass seems fair to me so far because you can only have 1 token at any given time so any killspell or pacifism effect shuts it down, not to mention an amass deck will get completely stomped by superfriends since it cant attack muliple planeswalkers.
but the rest seems REALLY good so far.
cards im thinking of Dreadhorde invasion (very similiar to a certain 40$ card) Jace, Wielder of Mysteries and Teferi, Time Raveler is gas for some very obnoxious control decks. Bolas's Citadel not neccesarily too strong in standard, but in EDH this thing is going to be an absolute powerhouse. Tezzeret, Master of the Bridge grants affinity for artifacts... probably again trying to make a contrast to show the power of our evil dragon overlord. just like thousand year storm it probably won't be too strong but it's still a mechanic pretty high on the storm scale.
i play jazal goldmane which is basically trample-less craterhoof behemoth on a stick.
i use collorless ramp and draw (obviously)
if i catch a player of guard (which can be rather easy in white) while i have ~5 tokens and jazal and 5 mana i can usually one-shot them
this means if i draw the correct cards i can do some real damage from turn 5 possibly eliminating 2 players by turn 6-7 lest they have no quick way to deal with it.
the collorless card draw and manaramp can and has kept me in for the long games as well. giving me the resources to rebuild to that fatal 5 tokens+jazal wincondition.
things like mask of memory and skullclamp are key to boros and mono-white edh.
im planning to find a copy of teferi's protection so i can possibly one shot someone and protection to my turn to avoid the consequenses
boros and mono-white can definitely be strong if you know how to build it.
ofcourse we also now have endless atlas to play with
boros/white is a fun color imo because you must play around its weaknesses while still playing to it's strengths.
bad at carddraw but great at combat? great, draw with combat!
you can however sacrifice the creature during the end step before your turn begins since there isn't a tap ability involved (like svannahlion said, this is assuming reccuring nightmare somehow isn't restricted to sorcery speed)
so a while ago in MTGA i had the strangest thing happen to me
and i think my opponent tricked me on purpose with whatever this strange rule is
i played a noxious gearhulk with the effect targeting one of his creatures
in response he played a card that created 3 saprolings.
so after that card resolved the game asked me if i wanted to change targets(?!)
confused about what the game just asked (since in general you are not supposed to change targets after targets have been called wtf game?)
I clicked the cancel/no/whatever it said button, because i still wanted the same creature dead.
and then the noxious gearhulk didn't kill the creature. because somehow not changing my target was the same as nto chosing a target at all.
i was bamboozled!
so what rule caused this to happen? because the game acted as if i were allowed to change targets, which i obviously shouldn't have been able to, right?
just make what you want.
i mean those m19 set decks are there because m19 is a recent set which means most stores sell stuff from m19.
but sets are generally close in power level.
as long as your not playing the standard format (only the X most recent sets legal in standard) you could use any set you like.
just a fun little multiplayer format i like to call party tower.
it is aimed at commander players, prefferably kitchetable commander players (because the "tower" needs copnstruction and dissasembly time it is not super suitable for lgs players for example)
the rules are quite simple:
-you grab any number of commander decks (differently sleeved to keep them apart) and shuffle them into one giant tower of cards. i suggest 3 or more.
-then you grab the top 60 cards or so from the tower and put them in the middle of the table
(i think you know where this is heading by now)
-every player grabs cards from the center pile.
-have not settled on life total yet but 30 seems like a good idea since commander synergies have been thrown out the window
-speaking of commanders, (optionally) each player grab cards from the tower until that player grabs a nonland permanent, that card becomes that player's commander (yes a izzet signet can become your commander)
-color requirements are removed to prevent mana screw (basically everyone has a chromatic lantern emblem)
-to prevent manascrew furthermore if a player is suffering from mana screw that player may decide to choose a card at random from his/her hand and put that card face down onto the battlefield as if it was a basic land card)
-if the shuffled commander decks have particularily many tutor cards you may set the rules that if a player searches the tower that player waits until the end step to do so and if not done tutoring yet when getting passed the turn the player skips that turn instead
any of these rules can be changed to your liking but the idea is generally that shuffling up random commander decks not expecting this creates a fun format or rng synergies.
another important note is the colors in the game. each color has strengths and weaknesses but it's not per-se rock-paper-scissors. this means you can create your deck to your taste. glass cannon type of guy? you can do it, control freak? you can decide what your opponents get to play (they wont like it though), prefer resilience? its very possible.
so try each color and see what you like
green mana, red mana white mana generally orientate around getting cards on the table on your side of the "battlefield"
while black mana, blue mana, and white mana (again) generally can control what your opponents have on the table.
each color also has something it is incapable of doing in any way
-Wwhite is olmost 100% completely unable to draw more cards, but ignoring this aspect of white it is a jack of all trades.
-Ublue is olmost completely incapable of putting things your opponents control into their graveyard or exile. but in return they can stop spells from ever happening (countering them) and returning cards that got past into your opponents hand, blue is also adept at drawing more cards but blue creatures generally cost 1 mroe mana than if they would have been in another color.
-Ggreen believes it does not need to remove it's opponents creatures and instead focuses on creating bigger creatures.
-Rred is olmost completely unable to draw more cards. well it can draw cards but you always have to discard a card for each card you draw. red is the most fast and aggresive color so it doesn't feel like it needs more cards. it tries to win before it gets to point of wanting more cards
-Bblack has a tough time removing enchantments and artifacts and instead tries to win the game by destroying creatures very efficiently and sacrificing it's own life total and creatures to demons in exhange for more strength
colorless cards can do anything but are less efficient in result of this (unless they come from an artifact focused set, in which case they are way to strong for what they cost)
also probably a good idea too read up on the color pie a bit more.
so you know what colors offer what options and what kind of thrats they pose to play vs.
a good thing to know also is that in mtg due to the nature of having no limit to the amount of creatures you have (which i believe wasa a maximum of 8 in yugioh) "resilient hard to remove" adopts another meaning as well.
nothing in magic is safe (unless you run ungodly amounts of freaking counterspells)
yes you can run hexproof and along the lines but the so called boardwipes destroy everything in play that does not have indestructible, and even then you can have the misfortune to run unto an hour of devastation or simply have it get exiled (which mean not just destroyed, but removed from the in-game universe) or force-sacrificed which indestructible and hexproof both do not protect against.
another more important note is that sadly in extremely competitive standard play you don't decide which deck types you can run, the meta decides, now luckily for you green is being pushed to be very strong atm, but atm before rotation the only allowed decks have been teferi-control and red-rush meaning one deck kills you before you can introduce yourself and the other drags the game out so far you could lose due to having the game last 50 turns and you losing to an emty library. both these decks are hated.
the modern format has more freedom to this in which there is no rotation. more deck archetypes are playable.
it is however a faster format than standard and initially buying a deck is far more expensive.
last piece of advice
try getting into the mtga beta, not per-se what you are looking for but since it is a computer version of magic you can't mess up rules and will see the 'stack' in action. the stack i btw want to explain myself because i just rlly want to. think as the stack as a physical object, when you play a card it is put onto the board, then i put my spell on top of your spell. if you want to you could put a third card on it. when the stack resolves sadly we can't grab the bottom card because it is burried beneath the tower, or stack, of cards. we need to go from top to bottom to resolve the spells played.
*takes of sunglasses*
my god
the second guild infiltrated is BOROS!
noooooooo!!!!!!
boros my babe!
don't do this to me!
#BorosIsBetterThanBolas!
however on the bright side, knowing both infiltrated guilds share the color red we could speculate all guilds in the second set sharing the color blue and black are infiltrated. this would fill all the grixis colors, and would mean 3 guild infiltrated. ohrzov, azorious, rakdos and simic are targets for the infiltrated tag i speculate. so gruul is defenitely safe if this hold any truth, and i find rakdos less likely as it is too chaotic for bolas to trust on and freaky circuses doesn't seem like bolas's style.
i think you will love those games
magic however is here to fill the gap for cardgames that dont allow creatures to have heat-seeking-missiles built into them
once you know the format you'll realise how little 100 cards actually are so dont worry about the card amount
commander also has way more archetypes due to the giant cardpool. besides aggro/control/midrange/combo you also have voltron, aristocrats, land matters, pillow-fort, group-hug, boardwipe tribal, normal tribal, the list just keeps going
especially in casual formats you'll realise how nosensical rotation is
rotation is there to keep competitiveness low, something you don't want to see in commander anyways.
so in brawl rotation really only limits your creativity
.
additionally you can also just try to play unlimited brawl, aka brawl with the commander cardpool.
brawl may finally get support from wotc but don't forget that it died without that support and commander survived and thrived to EARN support from wotc.
his ugly face before he had his facelift
and altough lots are appropriately priced to make them not too strong for standard some cards i think will slip trough pushing the power limit a bit too hard.
what do you guys think? at first glance it definitely seems to have more power than required.
only amass seems fair to me so far because you can only have 1 token at any given time so any killspell or pacifism effect shuts it down, not to mention an amass deck will get completely stomped by superfriends since it cant attack muliple planeswalkers.
but the rest seems REALLY good so far.
cards im thinking of
Dreadhorde invasion (very similiar to a certain 40$ card)
Jace, Wielder of Mysteries and Teferi, Time Raveler is gas for some very obnoxious control decks.
Bolas's Citadel not neccesarily too strong in standard, but in EDH this thing is going to be an absolute powerhouse.
Tezzeret, Master of the Bridge grants affinity for artifacts... probably again trying to make a contrast to show the power of our evil dragon overlord. just like thousand year storm it probably won't be too strong but it's still a mechanic pretty high on the storm scale.
i use collorless ramp and draw (obviously)
if i catch a player of guard (which can be rather easy in white) while i have ~5 tokens and jazal and 5 mana i can usually one-shot them
this means if i draw the correct cards i can do some real damage from turn 5 possibly eliminating 2 players by turn 6-7 lest they have no quick way to deal with it.
the collorless card draw and manaramp can and has kept me in for the long games as well. giving me the resources to rebuild to that fatal 5 tokens+jazal wincondition.
things like mask of memory and skullclamp are key to boros and mono-white edh.
im planning to find a copy of teferi's protection so i can possibly one shot someone and protection to my turn to avoid the consequenses
boros and mono-white can definitely be strong if you know how to build it.
ofcourse we also now have endless atlas to play with
boros/white is a fun color imo because you must play around its weaknesses while still playing to it's strengths.
bad at carddraw but great at combat? great, draw with combat!
if they can get a resupply they will keep one aside for me so that's nice.
and i think my opponent tricked me on purpose with whatever this strange rule is
i played a noxious gearhulk with the effect targeting one of his creatures
in response he played a card that created 3 saprolings.
so after that card resolved the game asked me if i wanted to change targets(?!)
confused about what the game just asked (since in general you are not supposed to change targets after targets have been called wtf game?)
I clicked the cancel/no/whatever it said button, because i still wanted the same creature dead.
and then the noxious gearhulk didn't kill the creature. because somehow not changing my target was the same as nto chosing a target at all.
i was bamboozled!
so what rule caused this to happen? because the game acted as if i were allowed to change targets, which i obviously shouldn't have been able to, right?
i mean those m19 set decks are there because m19 is a recent set which means most stores sell stuff from m19.
but sets are generally close in power level.
as long as your not playing the standard format (only the X most recent sets legal in standard) you could use any set you like.
it is aimed at commander players, prefferably kitchetable commander players (because the "tower" needs copnstruction and dissasembly time it is not super suitable for lgs players for example)
the rules are quite simple:
-you grab any number of commander decks (differently sleeved to keep them apart) and shuffle them into one giant tower of cards. i suggest 3 or more.
-then you grab the top 60 cards or so from the tower and put them in the middle of the table
(i think you know where this is heading by now)
-every player grabs cards from the center pile.
-have not settled on life total yet but 30 seems like a good idea since commander synergies have been thrown out the window
-speaking of commanders, (optionally) each player grab cards from the tower until that player grabs a nonland permanent, that card becomes that player's commander (yes a izzet signet can become your commander)
-color requirements are removed to prevent mana screw (basically everyone has a chromatic lantern emblem)
-to prevent manascrew furthermore if a player is suffering from mana screw that player may decide to choose a card at random from his/her hand and put that card face down onto the battlefield as if it was a basic land card)
-if the shuffled commander decks have particularily many tutor cards you may set the rules that if a player searches the tower that player waits until the end step to do so and if not done tutoring yet when getting passed the turn the player skips that turn instead
any of these rules can be changed to your liking but the idea is generally that shuffling up random commander decks not expecting this creates a fun format or rng synergies.
humorous but informational
another important note is the colors in the game. each color has strengths and weaknesses but it's not per-se rock-paper-scissors. this means you can create your deck to your taste. glass cannon type of guy? you can do it, control freak? you can decide what your opponents get to play (they wont like it though), prefer resilience? its very possible.
so try each color and see what you like
green mana, red mana white mana generally orientate around getting cards on the table on your side of the "battlefield"
while black mana, blue mana, and white mana (again) generally can control what your opponents have on the table.
each color also has something it is incapable of doing in any way
-Wwhite is olmost 100% completely unable to draw more cards, but ignoring this aspect of white it is a jack of all trades.
-Ublue is olmost completely incapable of putting things your opponents control into their graveyard or exile. but in return they can stop spells from ever happening (countering them) and returning cards that got past into your opponents hand, blue is also adept at drawing more cards but blue creatures generally cost 1 mroe mana than if they would have been in another color.
-Ggreen believes it does not need to remove it's opponents creatures and instead focuses on creating bigger creatures.
-Rred is olmost completely unable to draw more cards. well it can draw cards but you always have to discard a card for each card you draw. red is the most fast and aggresive color so it doesn't feel like it needs more cards. it tries to win before it gets to point of wanting more cards
-Bblack has a tough time removing enchantments and artifacts and instead tries to win the game by destroying creatures very efficiently and sacrificing it's own life total and creatures to demons in exhange for more strength
colorless cards can do anything but are less efficient in result of this (unless they come from an artifact focused set, in which case they are way to strong for what they cost)
so you know what colors offer what options and what kind of thrats they pose to play vs.
a good thing to know also is that in mtg due to the nature of having no limit to the amount of creatures you have (which i believe wasa a maximum of 8 in yugioh) "resilient hard to remove" adopts another meaning as well.
nothing in magic is safe (unless you run ungodly amounts of freaking counterspells)
yes you can run hexproof and along the lines but the so called boardwipes destroy everything in play that does not have indestructible, and even then you can have the misfortune to run unto an hour of devastation or simply have it get exiled (which mean not just destroyed, but removed from the in-game universe) or force-sacrificed which indestructible and hexproof both do not protect against.
another more important note is that sadly in extremely competitive standard play you don't decide which deck types you can run, the meta decides, now luckily for you green is being pushed to be very strong atm, but atm before rotation the only allowed decks have been teferi-control and red-rush meaning one deck kills you before you can introduce yourself and the other drags the game out so far you could lose due to having the game last 50 turns and you losing to an emty library. both these decks are hated.
the modern format has more freedom to this in which there is no rotation. more deck archetypes are playable.
it is however a faster format than standard and initially buying a deck is far more expensive.
last piece of advice
try getting into the mtga beta, not per-se what you are looking for but since it is a computer version of magic you can't mess up rules and will see the 'stack' in action. the stack i btw want to explain myself because i just rlly want to. think as the stack as a physical object, when you play a card it is put onto the board, then i put my spell on top of your spell. if you want to you could put a third card on it. when the stack resolves sadly we can't grab the bottom card because it is burried beneath the tower, or stack, of cards. we need to go from top to bottom to resolve the spells played.
*takes of sunglasses*
my god
the second guild infiltrated is BOROS!
noooooooo!!!!!!
boros my babe!
don't do this to me!
#BorosIsBetterThanBolas!
however on the bright side, knowing both infiltrated guilds share the color red we could speculate all guilds in the second set sharing the color blue and black are infiltrated. this would fill all the grixis colors, and would mean 3 guild infiltrated. ohrzov, azorious, rakdos and simic are targets for the infiltrated tag i speculate. so gruul is defenitely safe if this hold any truth, and i find rakdos less likely as it is too chaotic for bolas to trust on and freaky circuses doesn't seem like bolas's style.