MTG Salvation

Locally my stores would happily charge between LP/MP prices but I think most of these posters are right to say it should be a bit lower on the scale.

Given these cards are about as old as cards get you'll probably find more leniency than you expect though, people can't exactly expect pack fresh duals anymore.

Golds, Silvers, the metallic blues that I forgot the names of, Copper, and obviously the black sleeves are all alright

For anyone who might be having a tough time double sleeving with Dragon Shields I learned a neat trick a few years ago - put your card in the perfect fit, and then put it in the Shield with another, non-sleeved card and the added friction will prevent the perfect fit from wiggling away. Then you just slip out the unsleeved extra card and carry on

Yeah I don't think I've ever purposefully ruined a pod for several people because I wasn't man enough to accept that I didn't win a game of cards but I think it's reasonable to puke your removal on the guy who kills you specifically. Picking fights is part of the mental metagame and if someone goes for a swing they need to expect to pay for it, whether or not the guy is going to die. It's 100% their fault that they'll be the next person packing up because they weren't smart enough to assess threats properly and avoid killing people who've got bombs.

As you probably know, once the other guy knows you're trying to do ninja stuff the gig is gonna be pretty much up so you're going to want a bunch of evasive dudes. Running Bitterblossom is a coy way to get Ninjutsu enablers. To that end a lot of Faeries are pretty useful here, Sower of Temptation can grab a new goodie pretty consistently, but even little things like Cloud of Faeries or Pestermite - Quickling lets you get more of whatever ETB you're enjoying if you can't Ninjutsu it. Obviously Baleful Strix too, but yeah I think Faerie dudes can back you up pretty well on your creature base.

Yeah I second using Daxos, the Returned because he gets to dip in on all those "Zombies you control" buffs - I remember a Grimgrin EDH I used to have that would have him in the double digits upon casting and there's been nearly a doubling of those kinds of effects lately so I'm sure it would be even spicier now. He's got next to nothing to do with Zombie tribal.

Hilariously that's the only Zombie legend I could find that was W/B/X or W/B - guess we're having a chicken/egg situation with the White Zombie support

The big thing is that house rules are called that because they're meant for kitchen table games. If your meta is you and your girlfriend and you guys decide that you're not gonna play with Protean Hulk and you're going to keep your 2000$ Leovold deck intact, Papa Sheldon isn't going to kick your door down and make you play his way. But for roaming players or big metas it's a significant complication.

For example, I play 90% of my EDH at home with my girlfriend, but the other ten percent is split up across four cities and about a hundred different players representing maybe three hundred EDH decks. If her and I say "yeah let's play with Primeval Titan" that's okay but when we stop in at the card store or the next town overs' store, what's to be done? Do we just tell everybody see to join the revolution and let the rules be forgotten? Do we carry around a spare RC-friendly stand-in like Verdurous Gearhulk? There's fixes but the vast majority of people are going to feel that it's way too much effort just to get access to a card that makes their performance illegitimate anyway.

Seance is cool in grave based decks that thankfully, typically have white in them anyway. I have a hard time not laughing during discussion of the card though - just memories of all those people getting together and burning them trying to get rich

But yeah typically you'll get your four mana's worth if you have the infrastructure for it, follow Hawk's tips and check EDHREC for B/W/X generals that you might like.

Yeah just go ham on the tokens and use that big buff off the general to get maximum value, humans are pretty good at that strat anyway - Secure the Wastes and Martial Coup are easy picks, but I think what would be the biggest challenge would be not making a 60% white decks, considering that's where most cool humans are parked. I have my suspicions that a lot of cards were humans in R&D but get stolen by other tribes - elves usually.

Aside from that, it would be cool to see a Guild subtheme with a bunch of the more useful Guildmages

Typically with younger players or newer players, going the tribal route is a good way to make things simpler and more visual - I've got an elf, I can see the picture of the elf on the card and right under that it says "Creature - Elf", he wants to be with his elf friends - using the narrative and the flavour is a good way to explain the structure of the game to people who don't yet see the bones underneath.

I guess a big thing to consider would be the CMC of the general and the costs of it's activated abilities, etc., - but in a vacuum yeah I suppose it's Elk

Frankly you're better off just sticking to Atraxa and joining the other two and a half thousand lists on EDHREC - having two commanders and a deck based around buffing just one is always going to be a bit awkward, and spending all that mana getting both generals out is just going to distract from setting up exalted and progressing the gameplan. Atraxa is the best brawler in the game at four mana and proliferate is relevant in most exalted lists anyway.

The appeal of taking the unconventional route is strong, I know, but at the cost of this much potential it's hard to see it leading anywhere but disappointment

In my experience typically people who make decks like these also just bring along a second, legal legend in the event of someone throwing a fit over their unofficial pick. Obviously K&T aren't going to be able to run Ink Treader's deck perfectly so there's kind of a dip in game quality when you're stuck swapping over, but if said player expects people to be flexible with what constitutes a commander, I think it's only fair they be flexible when someone has an issue.

Do yourself a favour and don't go the route of "make something even ruder to put him in his place" - there's always a reckoning for petty behaviour.

That said, yeah it's essentially majority rules. WotC isn't going to kick down the card shop door and Taser this kid for playing Banrakul, and you're not playing for cash in a sanctioned event, so you can't exactly make the guy put it away. That said, if he's playing a banned card in matches where no one else is using banned cards, his wins are illegitimate and he's using a crutch in order to keep up. Either keep that information to yourself as reassurance when you annihilator sixed, or present it to him (politely) and see if he's willing to try to ride without the training wheels

This is kind of the same principle as the whole "Tolarian Academy is banned but Gaea's Cradle isn't" - basically, it's pretty easy to, with just some basic format staples like Sol Ring, Tormod's Crypt, Mana Crypt, Mox Opal, "accidentally" wind up with like 4 or 5 mana on T1 or T2, and that's not okay. Gaea is okay because once you've established enough tokens or whatever to get your ridiculous 25 mana per tap or something, it's already a few turns in.

The idea is that the first couple of turns are the really formative ones, and to have a consistent experience, they need to be, not necessarily "fair", but balanced - no one should be able to God hand a Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger out before I've gotten a chance to put my first Swamp on the table.

Power level they definitely hit more like a rare than a mythic, but for reasons outside of power level (draft matters, card complexity, yada-yada) they'd have to be mythics if they were in packs - so it's a yeah/no from me