If that's accurate, then these colors are pretty easy slots to start with, especially as they typically try to tie the Commander products into recent themes/sets in order to allow easy access to cards to modify the decks (think of the recent vampires deck releasing near Ixalan). I expect the decks to be two or three color, but if there are three color decks, then the main pair is likely easier to call.
madness - This is a pretty easy RB, especially after the last innistrad. Green has historically had some place in madness decks, while U for looting/wonder could work well as well. RUB can tie well into reanimation themes on top of the madness/discard, with things like Sedris, the Traitor King. Since the recent RB madness has been themed with vampires, a white splash could fit here for the Ixalan support.
My guess: BR
flashback - Flashback as referenced on cards has usually been UB - thrink Wrexial, the risen deep or Dralnu, Lich Lord - however R has often had a lot more support in color. Kess, Dissident Mage is a recent print that falls right into these colors.
My guess: UB, possibly red - but having two decks share RB seems odd. Especially since the themes are so similar.
morph - Morphs are in every color, but Morph support has typically been UG (Secret plans). Blue has some of the more popular and powerful morphs, followed closely by green, but this is a bit harder to pin colors on. Red would give an oppurtunity to toss Akroma in, because that's always funny.
My guess: UG.
populate - WG - wg has always been the populate colors, but as far as token support goes, I'd love to see some U added in here as well. Blue has much better token (copy) creation, which is far more interesting to populate. That said, white and green have some decent token copy support, especially with abilities like eternalize.
My guess: WG maybe a third color.
Red and White are underrepresented in those color pairs.
greater mossdog is a crappy card, so dredge is a totally fair ability astral steel is a crappy card, so storm is a totally fair ability
That's hardly a sensible comparison. Like, wow my 5-6 mana beatsticks being 4-5 mana beatsticks are totally comparable to spending 10 minutes to play or dump your entire deck. You might as well condemn something like Haste because it has the potential to be put on a creature that has "tap: You win the game".
The 4 commanders we got with Eminence were relatively well designed. The passive effects weren't horribly oppressive and you had good incentive to actually risk casting these cards to the field. Again, not an ability I'm in a hurry to see again and I can see the annoyance in someone having an advantage that you can't take away from them but you really can't compare giant growthing a cat each combat step to draining everyone with Tendrils of Agony in a number of turns that one could count with one hand.
The passive effects weren't horribly oppressive and you had good incentive to actually risk casting these cards to the field.
And that's just like your opinion. Many find Edgar Markov and Inalla oppressive. To me Inalla is the worst offender, going either from turn 2 combo win without never ever casting the general to slow garbage deck with no middle ground.
you really can't compare giant growthing a cat each combat step to draining everyone with Tendrils of Agony in a number of turns that one could count with one hand.
You can't really compare giant growing a cat each turn to giving a creature +1/+2 then.
The comparison is valid only when you compare the worst eminence card with the best storm card, but not when you do it with the worst storm card?
Your hypotethical haste card is broken, but not because of haste, because of the broken tap ability.
And Tendrils of agony is also a really tame effect. Draining 2 for 4 is kinda weak. Except when you add storm, then you broke it.
That's how you measure a failed mechanic. They are either too strong or absolute garbage with almost no middle ground.
Same for eminence.
No please we got so many pentacolor legends this year...
I hope populate will be bant or naya. Ooooh, print a legendary godsire please!
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How i feel about competitive players and casual players in EDH: The competitive are german tourists, the casual are italian tourists, both in a italian beach. The italians asking themselves "why are the germans here?" make a legitimate question, the answer is because the beach is beautiful, no matter the country you came from. The italians wanting to ban the germans are dumb, because if the germans pay for their stay and follow the rules like everyone else, they have the right to be in the beach. Hovewer, if the germans started to ask themselves "why are the italians here?"... they would be dumb as hell.
Here's the thing: I have the notorious examples of a mechanic gone wrong to use as comparison. We have 4 legal cards with eminence and none of them really ruined EDH. The most degenerate example is Inalla and she's still pretty far from the worst "Spike commander" we have gotten from a round of commander precons. It doesn't help her usage percent that a more busted commander lurks within her deck. You know, the one that flashes back instead of has eminence.
Outside of like, duels, I have never seen anyone fear Edgar. Playing aggro in multiplayer is basically reliving the 5 stages of grief over and over. As far as token value strategies go, we have much worse like Najeela and Ghave who don't need no out of play abilities to know how to rock.
I can see how eminence is a really hard ability to balance since you can't usually permanently strip someone of these effects and for what we got, wizards did a decent job of not pushing it way too hard. I bring up the haste comparison because I trust that they could do that again in another tribal/specific theme round of commanders much in the way they showed me that I can trust them to not make that haste, tap to win the game creature. Though I prefer the keyword theme we're apparently getting now for sure.
If people are sick of reading about stuff just stop taking part. You have 100% control over what you read. Simic Ascendancy isn't going to get banned just because you didn't tell someone to shut up on the internet.
Oloro did have proton-eminence and I will not even attempt to defend that thing. He was a mistake, plain and simple. In fact wasn't he why they tried harder to make eminence abilities narrow and more fair?
I fail to see what's toxic about Edgar. Heck I've played against a build with stuff like contamination and it's still not even remotely close to the worst, cheesiest experience I have had in EDH. I see Edgar's ability as an attempt to make a weenie strategy try and work against 3 other people that start with 40 life points each and that all have board wipes.
Just because you have not seen Edgar do well doesn't mean he isn't a powerful deck.
In fact, what surprises me is how few people have actually caught on to how strong Edgar is as an aggressive Commander. My list is a budget version of what ISBPathfinder put together, and even mine is too strong for my playgroup.
A ton of one and two drops, anthem effects, evasion, and lots of card draw.
I have games which go:
Turn 1: Land, one drop + token
Turn 2: Land, swing for 2, two more 1-drops and tokens
Turn 3: Land, Shared Animosity swing for 36, killing a player. The other two have a panicked look after underestimating Edgar and try to top deck answers.
Turn 1: Land, 1-drop and a token
Turn 2: Land, a pair of 1-drops and tap all 6 creatures for Obelisk of Urd and threaten 18 power on board by the end of my second turn.
Turn 1: Land EtB tapped
Turn 2: Land into 2cmc mana rock
Turn 3: Door of Destinies
Turn 4: Some one and two drops
Turn 5: Swing for something like 56, killing one player and damaging another for a lot. They had one round to play a board wipe and failed to. Even if they had, I was holding card draw and the Door keeps the counters.
Another game where Purphoros and Malakir Bloodwitch get there quickly.
Anthems which grant +2 or more power means that you do not have to over extend. three one drops can present 18+ power and likely a two turn clock.
I do not win every game, but I win way more than 25% (the expected rate in a 4 player pod). Players do not have infinite board wipes, and often have little incentive to use them until vampires are pointed their way. Then, with an opponent or two being knocked out of the game, it suddenly becomes a game of "How many board wipes do you have, because I can tell you how much card draw I have to rebuild with" as those free tokens go a long way.
Then there is a combo deck or two which leans on the free tokens to chain Razakath tutors into a win.
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"Whatever style you wish to play, be it fast and frenzied or slow and tactical, the surest way to defeat your opponent consistently is by dominating him or her in the war of card advantage." - Brian Wiseman, April 1996
If you throw all your one drops on the field, even 1 board wipe can be the end. I can see that he is really powerful in 1vs1 but multiplayer? When you are the threat on turn 2 and everyone is throwing removal-spells at you? It seems like your game group has too little or no early game. If you play Edgar you are at least forced to play those mediocre or even awful 1 drops or to the vampire tribal. Oloro on the other hand is just good stuff.
I'd love a version of eminence that is only relevant to deck building.
"Expertise - If ~ is your commander, your deck may include vampire/atog/aura/trap/arcane/curse/whatever cards of any color identity, and you may spend mana as though it were mana of any type to cast them."
Or something along those lines.
As for actual eminence. I'm quite fond of the Ur-Dragon and Arahbo. I think Edgar is busted and that aggro being a bad commander archetype doesn't really justify him, and Inalla is completely rediculous. I don't think the issue of eminence is that there is no interaction, but that WotC pushed it a bit too far given that there is no interaction.
I have games which go:
Turn 1: Land, one drop + token
Turn 2: Land, swing for 2, two more 1-drops and tokens
Turn 3: Land, Shared Animosity swing for 36, killing a player. The other two have a panicked look after underestimating Edgar and try to top deck answers.
Some games, I’m going to say not most games. Cool beans, a boardstate left unmolested for 3 turns does damage! We could probably link a hundred deck lists that can do that too, that aren’t Edgar.
He’s a glass cannon that gets stumped a lot of ways. Hardly the strongest deck at any given table.
Powerful, but swingy, and very much so meta-dependent on how powerful he is. I prefer Alesha, who smiles at Death. Not tribe dependent, low cost, exploits supposed “drawbacks” of some cards. Heck, she can win via Commander damage, something I’ve yet to see an Edgar deck do.
If you throw all your one drops on the field, even 1 board wipe can be the end. I can see that he is really powerful in 1vs1 but multiplayer? When you are the threat on turn 2 and everyone is throwing removal-spells at you? It seems like your game group has too little or no early game. If you play Edgar you are at least forced to play those mediocre or even awful 1 drops or to the vampire tribal. Oloro on the other hand is just good stuff.
Among various forums, threads, facebook groups, youtube comments and real life experience, I do not know where you and people like you get the idea that casting a combination of three 1-drops and 2-drops is the same as casting ALL of the one and two drops in my hand. I alsp do not know where this idea of overextending comes from. Nowhere in my comment, nor any time I talk about or play the deck does that ever happen.
I can take a guess and assume that other Edgar Markov pilots play poorly and do that, but this is pilot error, not a deck problem.
You also mention being FORCED to play awful one drops. It seems clear that you fundamentally don't get it. Those one drops are the backbone of the deck. Edgar Markov doesn't care about the power or utility of an individual creature. Each creature is generally no more important thannthe token which comes along with it. That is alao what makes it so resiliant. Losing creatures to a boardwipe is not a meaningful setback. Rebuilding is quick and easy.
Some games, I’m going to say not most games. Cool beans,
Your condecending attitude aside, you clearly do not respect the various aggressive play lines open to a well made Edgar deck. Especially one using solid tutors.
a boardstate left unmolested for 3 turns does damage! We could probably link a hundred deck lists that can do that too, that aren’t Edgar.
There is that condecending attitude again. Well, I do not know what play groups you participate in, but non-cEDH decks spend the first three turns playing ramp, utiluty, tutors, and card draw. Some might save a mana up for emergency spot removal... which does nothing meaningful to Edgar Markov. My example was multiple strong openings, not turns 5-7 without interactions.
Moreover, in a pod of four, two of the opponents are often happy to sit by and watch Edgar beat down a known combo or stax deck and they get 3+ turns unmoleested by two decks (Edgar and the person defending themselves). This is even especially common as most players underestimate the deck as much as you have.
He’s a glass cannon that gets stumped a lot of ways.
That is demonstrably false. It is just creatures, anthems, and card draw. It smashes faces and rebuilds easily. It has answers for common defensive plays and rebuilds quickly without overextending. I do not know how difficult this is to understand for people.
Hardly the strongest deck at any given table.
Not a claim I have ever made. This is what I hate about the internet which will never change. Saying how something is good suddenly becomes "This is the best ever" or to show the flaws of something means "This is the worst ever."
Instead, I was just trying to explain how powerful Eminence is with Edgar. Inalla grants part of an infinite combo while Edgar makes aggro viable and can fuel a combo with Razakath.
Powerful, but swingy, and very much so meta-dependent on how powerful he is.
if by that you mean non-cEDH decks, then thanks for stating the obvious. That is true for every non-cEDH deck, even your example of Alesha.
Heck, she can win via Commander damage, something I’ve yet to see an Edgar deck do.
Who ever wins with Commander damage? Sure, infinite combat step combos will result in such a win, but that is a technicality. You say that you have never seen Edgar win through commander damage. I would raise that and say I haven't seen commander damage be the reason somebody lost in over 10 years.
In fact, it is so rare that on The Command Zone, they recently were talking about potentially changing the commander damage rule to work closer to infect, where you do not have to keep track of indiviual commanders, but instead lose to 21 collective commander damage. However, now things are getting way off topic.
"Whatever style you wish to play, be it fast and frenzied or slow and tactical, the surest way to defeat your opponent consistently is by dominating him or her in the war of card advantage." - Brian Wiseman, April 1996
I'd love a version of eminence that is only relevant to deck building.
"Expertise - If ~ is your commander, your deck may include vampire/atog/aura/trap/arcane/curse/whatever cards of any color identity, and you may spend mana as though it were mana of any type to cast them."
Or something along those lines.
As for actual eminence. I'm quite fond of the Ur-Dragon and Arahbo. I think Edgar is busted and that aggro being a bad commander archetype doesn't really justify him, and Inalla is completely rediculous. I don't think the issue of eminence is that there is no interaction, but that WotC pushed it a bit too far given that there is no interaction.
I like that ability. Make a R/B goblin that can also run vexing husher.
I run my ur dragon deck as an aggro deck. It is fast and deadly. Seldom do I kill a player with commander damage as my ur dragon seldom stays on the Feild. But my other dragons (averaging 6 power) usually do the job for me.
Deck has no combo, just great synergy.
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madness - This is a pretty easy RB, especially after the last innistrad. Green has historically had some place in madness decks, while U for looting/wonder could work well as well. RUB can tie well into reanimation themes on top of the madness/discard, with things like Sedris, the Traitor King. Since the recent RB madness has been themed with vampires, a white splash could fit here for the Ixalan support.
My guess: BR
flashback - Flashback as referenced on cards has usually been UB - thrink Wrexial, the risen deep or Dralnu, Lich Lord - however R has often had a lot more support in color. Kess, Dissident Mage is a recent print that falls right into these colors.
My guess: UB, possibly red - but having two decks share RB seems odd. Especially since the themes are so similar.
morph - Morphs are in every color, but Morph support has typically been UG (Secret plans). Blue has some of the more popular and powerful morphs, followed closely by green, but this is a bit harder to pin colors on. Red would give an oppurtunity to toss Akroma in, because that's always funny.
My guess: UG.
populate - WG - wg has always been the populate colors, but as far as token support goes, I'd love to see some U added in here as well. Blue has much better token (copy) creation, which is far more interesting to populate. That said, white and green have some decent token copy support, especially with abilities like eternalize.
My guess: WG maybe a third color.
Red and White are underrepresented in those color pairs.
Retired EDH - Tibor and Lumia | [PR]Nemata |Ramirez dePietro | [C]Edric | Riku | Jenara | Lazav | Heliod | Daxos | Roon | Kozilek
I think morph is gonna be temur
Flash back is dimir atleast but the other 3 colors pretty neck and neck
Madness being rakdos almost a given if there was to be a third color it would be blue
Of real anyway
That's hardly a sensible comparison. Like, wow my 5-6 mana beatsticks being 4-5 mana beatsticks are totally comparable to spending 10 minutes to play or dump your entire deck. You might as well condemn something like Haste because it has the potential to be put on a creature that has "tap: You win the game".
The 4 commanders we got with Eminence were relatively well designed. The passive effects weren't horribly oppressive and you had good incentive to actually risk casting these cards to the field. Again, not an ability I'm in a hurry to see again and I can see the annoyance in someone having an advantage that you can't take away from them but you really can't compare giant growthing a cat each combat step to draining everyone with Tendrils of Agony in a number of turns that one could count with one hand.
And that's just like your opinion. Many find Edgar Markov and Inalla oppressive. To me Inalla is the worst offender, going either from turn 2 combo win without never ever casting the general to slow garbage deck with no middle ground.
You can't really compare giant growing a cat each turn to giving a creature +1/+2 then.
The comparison is valid only when you compare the worst eminence card with the best storm card, but not when you do it with the worst storm card?
Your hypotethical haste card is broken, but not because of haste, because of the broken tap ability.
And Tendrils of agony is also a really tame effect. Draining 2 for 4 is kinda weak. Except when you add storm, then you broke it.
That's how you measure a failed mechanic. They are either too strong or absolute garbage with almost no middle ground.
Same for eminence.
No please we got so many pentacolor legends this year...
I hope populate will be bant or naya. Ooooh, print a legendary godsire please!
Outside of like, duels, I have never seen anyone fear Edgar. Playing aggro in multiplayer is basically reliving the 5 stages of grief over and over. As far as token value strategies go, we have much worse like Najeela and Ghave who don't need no out of play abilities to know how to rock.
I can see how eminence is a really hard ability to balance since you can't usually permanently strip someone of these effects and for what we got, wizards did a decent job of not pushing it way too hard. I bring up the haste comparison because I trust that they could do that again in another tribal/specific theme round of commanders much in the way they showed me that I can trust them to not make that haste, tap to win the game creature. Though I prefer the keyword theme we're apparently getting now for sure.
I fail to see what's toxic about Edgar. Heck I've played against a build with stuff like contamination and it's still not even remotely close to the worst, cheesiest experience I have had in EDH. I see Edgar's ability as an attempt to make a weenie strategy try and work against 3 other people that start with 40 life points each and that all have board wipes.
In fact, what surprises me is how few people have actually caught on to how strong Edgar is as an aggressive Commander. My list is a budget version of what ISBPathfinder put together, and even mine is too strong for my playgroup.
A ton of one and two drops, anthem effects, evasion, and lots of card draw.
I have games which go:
Turn 1: Land, one drop + token
Turn 2: Land, swing for 2, two more 1-drops and tokens
Turn 3: Land, Shared Animosity swing for 36, killing a player. The other two have a panicked look after underestimating Edgar and try to top deck answers.
Turn 1: Land, 1-drop and a token
Turn 2: Land, a pair of 1-drops and tap all 6 creatures for Obelisk of Urd and threaten 18 power on board by the end of my second turn.
Turn 1: Land EtB tapped
Turn 2: Land into 2cmc mana rock
Turn 3: Door of Destinies
Turn 4: Some one and two drops
Turn 5: Swing for something like 56, killing one player and damaging another for a lot. They had one round to play a board wipe and failed to. Even if they had, I was holding card draw and the Door keeps the counters.
Another game where Purphoros and Malakir Bloodwitch get there quickly.
Anthems which grant +2 or more power means that you do not have to over extend. three one drops can present 18+ power and likely a two turn clock.
I do not win every game, but I win way more than 25% (the expected rate in a 4 player pod). Players do not have infinite board wipes, and often have little incentive to use them until vampires are pointed their way. Then, with an opponent or two being knocked out of the game, it suddenly becomes a game of "How many board wipes do you have, because I can tell you how much card draw I have to rebuild with" as those free tokens go a long way.
Then there is a combo deck or two which leans on the free tokens to chain Razakath tutors into a win.
"Expertise - If ~ is your commander, your deck may include vampire/atog/aura/trap/arcane/curse/whatever cards of any color identity, and you may spend mana as though it were mana of any type to cast them."
Or something along those lines.
As for actual eminence. I'm quite fond of the Ur-Dragon and Arahbo. I think Edgar is busted and that aggro being a bad commander archetype doesn't really justify him, and Inalla is completely rediculous. I don't think the issue of eminence is that there is no interaction, but that WotC pushed it a bit too far given that there is no interaction.
- Rabid Wombat
Some games, I’m going to say not most games. Cool beans, a boardstate left unmolested for 3 turns does damage! We could probably link a hundred deck lists that can do that too, that aren’t Edgar.
He’s a glass cannon that gets stumped a lot of ways. Hardly the strongest deck at any given table.
Powerful, but swingy, and very much so meta-dependent on how powerful he is. I prefer Alesha, who smiles at Death. Not tribe dependent, low cost, exploits supposed “drawbacks” of some cards. Heck, she can win via Commander damage, something I’ve yet to see an Edgar deck do.
Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest WUR Voltron Control
Temmet, Vizier of Naktamun WU Unblockable Mirror Trickery
Ra's al Ghul (Sidar Kondo) and Face-Down Ninjas
Brudiclad, Token Engineer
Vaevictis (VV2) the Dire Lantern
Rona, Disciple of Gix
Tiana the Auror
Hallar
Ulrich the Politician
Zur the Rebel
Scorpion, Locust, Scarab, Egyptian Gods
O-Kagachi, Mathas, Mairsil
"Non-Tribal" Tribal Generals, Eggs
Among various forums, threads, facebook groups, youtube comments and real life experience, I do not know where you and people like you get the idea that casting a combination of three 1-drops and 2-drops is the same as casting ALL of the one and two drops in my hand. I alsp do not know where this idea of overextending comes from. Nowhere in my comment, nor any time I talk about or play the deck does that ever happen.
I can take a guess and assume that other Edgar Markov pilots play poorly and do that, but this is pilot error, not a deck problem.
You also mention being FORCED to play awful one drops. It seems clear that you fundamentally don't get it. Those one drops are the backbone of the deck. Edgar Markov doesn't care about the power or utility of an individual creature. Each creature is generally no more important thannthe token which comes along with it. That is alao what makes it so resiliant. Losing creatures to a boardwipe is not a meaningful setback. Rebuilding is quick and easy.
Your condecending attitude aside, you clearly do not respect the various aggressive play lines open to a well made Edgar deck. Especially one using solid tutors.
There is that condecending attitude again. Well, I do not know what play groups you participate in, but non-cEDH decks spend the first three turns playing ramp, utiluty, tutors, and card draw. Some might save a mana up for emergency spot removal... which does nothing meaningful to Edgar Markov. My example was multiple strong openings, not turns 5-7 without interactions.
Moreover, in a pod of four, two of the opponents are often happy to sit by and watch Edgar beat down a known combo or stax deck and they get 3+ turns unmoleested by two decks (Edgar and the person defending themselves). This is even especially common as most players underestimate the deck as much as you have.
That is demonstrably false. It is just creatures, anthems, and card draw. It smashes faces and rebuilds easily. It has answers for common defensive plays and rebuilds quickly without overextending. I do not know how difficult this is to understand for people.
Not a claim I have ever made. This is what I hate about the internet which will never change. Saying how something is good suddenly becomes "This is the best ever" or to show the flaws of something means "This is the worst ever."
Instead, I was just trying to explain how powerful Eminence is with Edgar. Inalla grants part of an infinite combo while Edgar makes aggro viable and can fuel a combo with Razakath.
if by that you mean non-cEDH decks, then thanks for stating the obvious. That is true for every non-cEDH deck, even your example of Alesha.
Who ever wins with Commander damage? Sure, infinite combat step combos will result in such a win, but that is a technicality. You say that you have never seen Edgar win through commander damage. I would raise that and say I haven't seen commander damage be the reason somebody lost in over 10 years.
In fact, it is so rare that on The Command Zone, they recently were talking about potentially changing the commander damage rule to work closer to infect, where you do not have to keep track of indiviual commanders, but instead lose to 21 collective commander damage. However, now things are getting way off topic.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
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I like that ability. Make a R/B goblin that can also run vexing husher.
I run my ur dragon deck as an aggro deck. It is fast and deadly. Seldom do I kill a player with commander damage as my ur dragon seldom stays on the Feild. But my other dragons (averaging 6 power) usually do the job for me.
Deck has no combo, just great synergy.