I have had a mono black Demon tribal EDH deck for the better part of 3 years now and the two demons I have found to be best suited as the Commander are:
Ob Nixilis, Unshackled Pros: Demon decks run lots of threats, often expensive to get out. Protect all that work by adding another layer in the form of Ob Nixilis, Unshackled to be such a road block to further removal that he soaks it up himself, or if the opponent(s) have no answers to your already scary boardstate, he protects it even further by denying tutor-responses. Think of Ob Nixilis, Unshackled as a blanket of protection for what you're already trying to do. His sac trigger also helps immensely against other black that may have sac themes, and can sometimes push him over the edge if nobody removes him fast enough while you're doing your demon-like-business of killing lots of creatures. Positive synergy is easy with this commander.
Cons: Getting this fella out too early will often hose multiple people trying to set up their early game and get you more enemies than necessary. Not a great choice as the very first Demon to put out and can get you hated out of a game if your timing is bad. A lack of an ETB also makes his power level rather flat. His 4/4 base is also within range of dying to most aggro Commanders if you had to chump block on the turn after playing him. That's especially painful to have a 4/4 body on a 6-drop if you had no ramp or other chump blockers. Even more reason to use him strategically for his anti-tutor and sac synergy, meaning there could be some games where he's unnecessary.
Pros: Has a scaling ETB trigger that is even more powerful if combined with lots of ramp. This ETB combined with 6/6 base stats makes him relevant as your first demon on the table or as your last. Jamming the necessary ramp in the deck to make Demon tribal a serious threat is also mitigated by the extra ETB card draw and can actually speed up demons to a ridiculous level of power. My personal Demon deck ramps so hard with Demonlord Belzenlok that the threats become exponential and diverse enough - and mind you black is very good a disrupting your opponents - that I run away with the game even 3 vs 1. If the deck is tuned enough to average Demonlord Belzenlok on T4, by virtue of this deck-design you're going to be set up to steamroll the table regardless of what toys you jam into the deck. He is also a prime target for reanimating over and over and getting immediate value from the card draw.
Cons: Without mitigating the ETB life-loss, you will burn through your own life and be susceptible to being ganged up on. If you're doing Demonlord Belzenlok right you'll be getting ganged up on anyways. The fact that Demonlord Belzenlok also exiles all the lands he goes past is relevant in long grindy games, or games where you can't rely on keeping mana rocks in play to assist the flow of the deck. Exiling Cabal Coffers T4 is always painful - but it wouldn't have mattered if it were a Thran Dynamo.
Kind of happy Iona got the ban. She locked some opponents out of the game completely.
Iona is such a cheese card in EDH that:
every one of my monocolored EDH decks ran at least 4 devoid/colorless spot removal cards
(that's 8 EDH decks *4 = 32 cards)
every one of my black or red-dominant multicolor decks also ran the same suite of spot removal
(that's at least another 6 decks *4 = 24 cards)
So I bought 56 copies of duplicates of the same 4 colorless removal cards just for that *****.
So what that means is that I had to pay the cost of those 50+ cards as an overhead cost on all those decks, just so I can play EDH.
Banning Iona in itself means a depression in value is coming for all that colorless spot removal, if any significant number of other folks gameplanned specifically for Iona like I was doing.. That's a format warping card if I'd say so. Glad she's gone
This thing can have... reach ??? I have in mind a picture of a ceratops chewing a dragon's leg in midair.
Yeah it can Reach those backwards-facing tusks right over its back to defend from the expected "bite behind the head-crest" technique
It can "Reach" behind its own head to fend off flyers, see?
WoTC Card Design: "we need a triceratops with reach, how do we do that?"
Co-worker: "let's, you know, just....have its horns point backwards"
Card Design: "Lumbergh, get that artist on the phone!"
You might consider Edgar Markov instead as he generates extra bodies effortlessly from t1 and on, and you can add Impact Tremors to the rest of the suite. Plus, added bonus: you get some solid on-tribe support.
I can't speak to the viability of going Vampire tribal with the theme OP is wanting
BUT I do support the inclusion of Black to the colors - there are so many options in black that compliment dealing damage/lifeloss outside of combat
Such a rapid preview, wouldn’t people get overloaded by cards? I personally prefer a slower preview so I could digest.
You don’t already feel completely overloaded with new cards?! With War of the Spark, Modern Horizons, M2020, and C19 all coming out at basically the same time it feels like giving us a whole week is slow.
Precisely why I feel the need to slow down a bit. As an EDH player who could use cards from all sets, there’s no resting/brewing time between War, Modern Horizon and Core 2020.
WoTC's product releases are so close together - we may as well all be paying monthly subscriptions! The effect is the equivalent
Tournament magic is expensive, fine. If you want to restrict people who play in tournaments to those with deep pockets instead of skill, that's fine, keep your hollow pay-to-win tournaments.
But casual magic doesn't have to be expensive, and as others have stated many casual players turn to proxies. So why doesn't WotC bank on that, and release these desired cards in a non-tournament legal gold bordered form? They've done it before. Perhaps these could be slotted into the advertisement card slot, or with an advertisement card back?
I really like this idea and they are so close to making it happen. It could also be a lesser selling point for packs. These new Modern Horizons Art Cards are practically proxies themselves. Instead turn them into Gold/Silver Bordered reprints of past powerful cards. I'm not sure if it could skirt the Reserved List but wouldn't it be cool to look for a chase Black Lotus again? Gold or Silver bordered with modern fronts and either blank or an advertisement on the back. People would love to collect them and they would still probably be worth money on the secondary market. I'm not going to pay 50K for a Black Lotus but I might pay up to 5 bucks for a new proxy. Do that for the Dual Lands, Power Nine, whatever. Just a thought.
No no no, we should not be suggesting ways for WoTC to guarantee that the gold bordered cards be locked out from ever becoming tournament legal.
I'm going to quote myself from over a year ago on this very subject, to save myself the time of re-typing my thoughts for why we should be suggesting WoTC UNBAN the gold bordered cards for tourney play:
I've posted a few times on these forums in favor of such an action as unbanning GB cards. I'm in favor of an unban because this is literally the only option to increase the exchange of hands or increase new ownership of reserve list cards.
I'd suggest people give a thought to what else could be done to increase availability of tournament legal reserved list cards. Unfortunately any other options I'm aware of require a reprint. We all know WOTC will not do reprints so.......this is the only option I see.
Many people I've debated on this subject take the position that this is only reasonable if everyone can afford the cards and that affordability is only possible with reprints (to provide necessary quantities to drop prices). They argue that if there's not enough reprints to make the RL cards affordable to all, then there's no point at all. I think this line if thought is flawed.
I would suggest that we take a moment to accept, finally, that reprints are not an option for WOTC. The best alternative as players that we can get in hindsight is an unbanning. I see this as the only means of increasing how many people own these cards and can use them for legal tournament gameplay.
We have to take the history of these cards into consideration though and accept that not everyone is still going to be able to afford them if unbanned, and that's ok. We can't be so greedy as to argue for nothing instead of something, and trust me -something is absolutely better than nothing in this case.
and another quote, for the sake of opposing argument of "availability" - note this is from a locked thread so I have to copy/paste instead of directly quoting this text. quote links are removed in locked threads.
" Quote from Goblin Death DJ »
Quote from Shea_0 »
Quote from Goblin Death DJ »
Unbanning gold border cards is not going to lower the price of anything. Use common sense.
If unbanning gold borders didn't lower the prices of the originals then what's the problem? You might not want to buy a $500 CE black lotus that would be tourney legal but a hell of a lot of people certainly would and I bet they'd even pay $2k a week later as the prices go up.
If you aren't trying to lower the secondary market price, what's the point of making these already overpriced gold-bordered cards tournament legal?
Quote from Shea_0 »
We should acknowledge that "overpriced" is a relative term. We can't get hung up on whether an unbanned card falls into every person's budget...especially when it comes to the cards on the reserved list or power 9. Prices in regards to reserve list cards will behave differently than our typical card because of the fact that reserve list cards can't be reprinted. All we can do for these reserve list cards is increase availability.
The beauty of an unban is that the reprint policy is subverted. We understand this though, we've talked that subject to death. We also know that WOTC will not reprint.
We shouldn't worry so much about lowering the secondary market price with reseved list cards because that is requesting the impossible, that requires reprints. Reprinting isn't a realisic thing to expect.
What is realistic is increasing fluidity, increasing the exchange of ownership of reserve list cards. Unbanning can accomplish this.
Prices would have to adjust in the first few days and weeks for sure but that's about the best "price drop" we're going to get.
TLDR: Wo no longer use silver and gold border markings to determine tournament legality on cards. This was the method of the early 90's and has since become outdated in such a way that the original intent has since been lost and is now no longer associated with these borders due to multiple products existing and precedence set by newer products and formats than what was floating around in '94. We should be arguing for the unbanning of gold bordered cards from tournament play because we have card sleeves now that render the entire point of colored borders' signification as irrelevant. The limitations of the early 90's, where penny sleeves were as good as it got should no longer be relevant in ANY context to us determining tournament legality in the year 2019 and beyond. The existence of opaque card sleeves in themselves rendered gold/silver bordering as a pointless mode of demarcation for tournament legality.
Edit: Additionally, when WoTC released the loathsome Invocations in the Amonkhet block they had gold borders on them. WoTC's own antiquated border-color association with tournament legality got in their own way in this instance and they updated their rules language to specifically allow the Invocations to be tournament legal - despite the gold borders. So here we have a modern example of WoTC themselves having made a product with no care for the implications of border color, until only afterwards when people reminded them of this nuanced conflict of a bygone era. What was the argument people made for the Invocations? Why did they get special consideration? Because the solution - that we have sleeves nowadays that make the border color irrelevant - is so ubiquitous that it was common sense that won the argument here. Common sense should extend to all gold bordered cards.
Tech for Modern Boros snow-matters with On Thin Ice and Chained to the Rocks? Boros isn't matching the snow-matters colors in Modern Horizons however... I have no idea what will make this guy good
EDIT: Maybe find a way to flicker this fella + Titania, Protector of Argoth + some other jank for a RGW toolbox deck?
I've seen quite a few commanders that are the inspiration for a deck
this creature however requires an already successfully operating deck - before any useful contributions from the command zone can ever be made...
There needs to be a line of text on this card to justify building the deck just to get him out. Building a wide deck to pay for this tall guy means you are giving up one strategy for the other. Many small creatures or one big guy.
This creature doesn't justify going wide for any other reason than to jump through hoops to get this guy out. Interesting design but extremely lacking as a commander. Too bad he didn't have a Lord-effect for your team. It would better justify requiring 7 other cards to at least get him on the board. If not 7 cards then even more hoops to cheat him out.
I'd nickname this creature "overburden" both for the connotation to mining and for the ridiculous burden of getting it in play.
There are plenty of passionate and skilled people who frequent this site who may be willing to offer you assistance in getting a new site on its feet.
It would be a tragedy to lose content/fail to get all of us a new home just because the workload was insurmountable for too few people. There are those who are willing to help if you ask us.
I don't have skill in coding/comp sci but I have dollar bills that can help. If there is funding needed for the creation of a new home for us, I would gladly pitch in to guarantee that reality.
Solid card, even though the elf druid himself looks like he's probably hitting some shrooms at a Phish show while he tries to sell you some poorly made burlap clothing.
What else besides hitting shrooms would a druid be doing? Much flavor!
A very abusable Harrow with flicker effects. Astral Drift makes this look interesting for sure.
I really REALLY wish this kind of ability were keyworded and more prevalent. I want more activated abilites from creatures in the yard that isn't flashback in effect, like what Eternalize has become.
Maro also said there would be over 40 named mechanics in this set
Dare we see Banding or Flanking make a return?
A legend that gave Banding or Flanking to the team would be cute. Even more so if they had matching colors... I've never had the opportunity to try, but I would enjoy swinging in with a mob of banded 1/1's that all had flanking and band together and kill some big 'ole 5/5 before damage even with the banded flanking alone. Heck, gimme a Lord Legend that gives the team both banding and flanking and that's all it need say on the card to have a bunch of fun!
I expect to see a handful of cards with notably powerful mechanics. I would expect Dredge, Storm, Affinity, Infect... all of these would like some new toys and this is a good set to bring them back.
I hope to see at least one card with an alternate casting cost, aside from FoW, and that is Fireblast - specifically at uncommon. If WoTC were to include Fireblast into Modern....
If it were a topdeck, like someone else mentioned I'd suggest exiling it and drawing a replacement. I've had that exact scenario happen in a game before.
Since it was a tutor, and if it were still his same turn, let him tutor for something else. Otherwise it it's some turns later and the boardstate has changed, giving a free tutor to replace a card that can't be verified if it were the target of the prior tutor - could be game breaking. So in that case it's a judgement call..
Ob Nixilis, Unshackled
or
Demonlord Belzenlok
Ob Nixilis, Unshackled
Pros: Demon decks run lots of threats, often expensive to get out. Protect all that work by adding another layer in the form of Ob Nixilis, Unshackled to be such a road block to further removal that he soaks it up himself, or if the opponent(s) have no answers to your already scary boardstate, he protects it even further by denying tutor-responses. Think of Ob Nixilis, Unshackled as a blanket of protection for what you're already trying to do. His sac trigger also helps immensely against other black that may have sac themes, and can sometimes push him over the edge if nobody removes him fast enough while you're doing your demon-like-business of killing lots of creatures. Positive synergy is easy with this commander.
Cons: Getting this fella out too early will often hose multiple people trying to set up their early game and get you more enemies than necessary. Not a great choice as the very first Demon to put out and can get you hated out of a game if your timing is bad. A lack of an ETB also makes his power level rather flat. His 4/4 base is also within range of dying to most aggro Commanders if you had to chump block on the turn after playing him. That's especially painful to have a 4/4 body on a 6-drop if you had no ramp or other chump blockers. Even more reason to use him strategically for his anti-tutor and sac synergy, meaning there could be some games where he's unnecessary.
- - - -
Demonlord Belzenlok
Pros: Has a scaling ETB trigger that is even more powerful if combined with lots of ramp. This ETB combined with 6/6 base stats makes him relevant as your first demon on the table or as your last. Jamming the necessary ramp in the deck to make Demon tribal a serious threat is also mitigated by the extra ETB card draw and can actually speed up demons to a ridiculous level of power. My personal Demon deck ramps so hard with Demonlord Belzenlok that the threats become exponential and diverse enough - and mind you black is very good a disrupting your opponents - that I run away with the game even 3 vs 1. If the deck is tuned enough to average Demonlord Belzenlok on T4, by virtue of this deck-design you're going to be set up to steamroll the table regardless of what toys you jam into the deck. He is also a prime target for reanimating over and over and getting immediate value from the card draw.
Cons: Without mitigating the ETB life-loss, you will burn through your own life and be susceptible to being ganged up on. If you're doing Demonlord Belzenlok right you'll be getting ganged up on anyways. The fact that Demonlord Belzenlok also exiles all the lands he goes past is relevant in long grindy games, or games where you can't rely on keeping mana rocks in play to assist the flow of the deck. Exiling Cabal Coffers T4 is always painful - but it wouldn't have mattered if it were a Thran Dynamo.
Iona is such a cheese card in EDH that:
every one of my monocolored EDH decks ran at least 4 devoid/colorless spot removal cards
(that's 8 EDH decks *4 = 32 cards)
every one of my black or red-dominant multicolor decks also ran the same suite of spot removal
(that's at least another 6 decks *4 = 24 cards)
So I bought 56 copies of duplicates of the same 4 colorless removal cards just for that *****.
So what that means is that I had to pay the cost of those 50+ cards as an overhead cost on all those decks, just so I can play EDH.
Banning Iona in itself means a depression in value is coming for all that colorless spot removal, if any significant number of other folks gameplanned specifically for Iona like I was doing.. That's a format warping card if I'd say so. Glad she's gone
Your PDH group lets you use any legendary as the commander huh? Never seen that
My group / groups I have played in all used an uncommon as the commander, with the legendary restriction lifted/optional.
Regarding the Gorging Vulture in singleton format, it has decent value for 3 mana
Yeah it can Reach those backwards-facing tusks right over its back to defend from the expected "bite behind the head-crest" technique
It can "Reach" behind its own head to fend off flyers, see?
WoTC Card Design: "we need a triceratops with reach, how do we do that?"
Co-worker: "let's, you know, just....have its horns point backwards"
Card Design: "Lumbergh, get that artist on the phone!"
I can't speak to the viability of going Vampire tribal with the theme OP is wanting
BUT I do support the inclusion of Black to the colors - there are so many options in black that compliment dealing damage/lifeloss outside of combat
Archfiend of Despair
Wound Reflection
Final Punishment
Exquisite Blood
Kaervek the Merciless
You could even dabble with Repercussion for shenanigans with cards like Pyrohemia or Pestilence or Chandra's Ignition
WoTC's product releases are so close together - we may as well all be paying monthly subscriptions! The effect is the equivalent
No no no, we should not be suggesting ways for WoTC to guarantee that the gold bordered cards be locked out from ever becoming tournament legal.
I'm going to quote myself from over a year ago on this very subject, to save myself the time of re-typing my thoughts for why we should be suggesting WoTC UNBAN the gold bordered cards for tourney play:
and another quote, for the sake of opposing argument of "availability" - note this is from a locked thread so I have to copy/paste instead of directly quoting this text. quote links are removed in locked threads.
" Quote from Goblin Death DJ »
Quote from Shea_0 »
Quote from Goblin Death DJ »
Unbanning gold border cards is not going to lower the price of anything. Use common sense.
If unbanning gold borders didn't lower the prices of the originals then what's the problem? You might not want to buy a $500 CE black lotus that would be tourney legal but a hell of a lot of people certainly would and I bet they'd even pay $2k a week later as the prices go up.
If you aren't trying to lower the secondary market price, what's the point of making these already overpriced gold-bordered cards tournament legal?
Quote from Shea_0 »
We should acknowledge that "overpriced" is a relative term. We can't get hung up on whether an unbanned card falls into every person's budget...especially when it comes to the cards on the reserved list or power 9. Prices in regards to reserve list cards will behave differently than our typical card because of the fact that reserve list cards can't be reprinted. All we can do for these reserve list cards is increase availability.
The beauty of an unban is that the reprint policy is subverted. We understand this though, we've talked that subject to death. We also know that WOTC will not reprint.
We shouldn't worry so much about lowering the secondary market price with reseved list cards because that is requesting the impossible, that requires reprints. Reprinting isn't a realisic thing to expect.
What is realistic is increasing fluidity, increasing the exchange of ownership of reserve list cards. Unbanning can accomplish this.
Prices would have to adjust in the first few days and weeks for sure but that's about the best "price drop" we're going to get.
TLDR: Wo no longer use silver and gold border markings to determine tournament legality on cards. This was the method of the early 90's and has since become outdated in such a way that the original intent has since been lost and is now no longer associated with these borders due to multiple products existing and precedence set by newer products and formats than what was floating around in '94. We should be arguing for the unbanning of gold bordered cards from tournament play because we have card sleeves now that render the entire point of colored borders' signification as irrelevant. The limitations of the early 90's, where penny sleeves were as good as it got should no longer be relevant in ANY context to us determining tournament legality in the year 2019 and beyond. The existence of opaque card sleeves in themselves rendered gold/silver bordering as a pointless mode of demarcation for tournament legality.
Edit: Additionally, when WoTC released the loathsome Invocations in the Amonkhet block they had gold borders on them. WoTC's own antiquated border-color association with tournament legality got in their own way in this instance and they updated their rules language to specifically allow the Invocations to be tournament legal - despite the gold borders. So here we have a modern example of WoTC themselves having made a product with no care for the implications of border color, until only afterwards when people reminded them of this nuanced conflict of a bygone era. What was the argument people made for the Invocations? Why did they get special consideration? Because the solution - that we have sleeves nowadays that make the border color irrelevant - is so ubiquitous that it was common sense that won the argument here. Common sense should extend to all gold bordered cards.
Tech for Modern Boros snow-matters with On Thin Ice and Chained to the Rocks? Boros isn't matching the snow-matters colors in Modern Horizons however... I have no idea what will make this guy good
EDIT: Maybe find a way to flicker this fella + Titania, Protector of Argoth + some other jank for a RGW toolbox deck?
I've seen quite a few commanders that are the inspiration for a deck
this creature however requires an already successfully operating deck - before any useful contributions from the command zone can ever be made...
There needs to be a line of text on this card to justify building the deck just to get him out. Building a wide deck to pay for this tall guy means you are giving up one strategy for the other. Many small creatures or one big guy.
This creature doesn't justify going wide for any other reason than to jump through hoops to get this guy out. Interesting design but extremely lacking as a commander. Too bad he didn't have a Lord-effect for your team. It would better justify requiring 7 other cards to at least get him on the board. If not 7 cards then even more hoops to cheat him out.
I'd nickname this creature "overburden" both for the connotation to mining and for the ridiculous burden of getting it in play.
There are plenty of passionate and skilled people who frequent this site who may be willing to offer you assistance in getting a new site on its feet.
It would be a tragedy to lose content/fail to get all of us a new home just because the workload was insurmountable for too few people. There are those who are willing to help if you ask us.
I don't have skill in coding/comp sci but I have dollar bills that can help. If there is funding needed for the creation of a new home for us, I would gladly pitch in to guarantee that reality.
Thank you for your work on this site
What else besides hitting shrooms would a druid be doing? Much flavor!
A very abusable Harrow with flicker effects. Astral Drift makes this look interesting for sure.
I like doing this too, and there are previous examples of creatures having activated abilities from the graveyard that are quite useful, one being
Carrionette
I really REALLY wish this kind of ability were keyworded and more prevalent. I want more activated abilites from creatures in the yard that isn't flashback in effect, like what Eternalize has become.
Dare we see Banding or Flanking make a return?
A legend that gave Banding or Flanking to the team would be cute. Even more so if they had matching colors... I've never had the opportunity to try, but I would enjoy swinging in with a mob of banded 1/1's that all had flanking and band together and kill some big 'ole 5/5 before damage even with the banded flanking alone. Heck, gimme a Lord Legend that gives the team both banding and flanking and that's all it need say on the card to have a bunch of fun!
I hope to see at least one card with an alternate casting cost, aside from FoW, and that is Fireblast - specifically at uncommon. If WoTC were to include Fireblast into Modern....
If it were a topdeck, like someone else mentioned I'd suggest exiling it and drawing a replacement. I've had that exact scenario happen in a game before.
Since it was a tutor, and if it were still his same turn, let him tutor for something else. Otherwise it it's some turns later and the boardstate has changed, giving a free tutor to replace a card that can't be verified if it were the target of the prior tutor - could be game breaking. So in that case it's a judgement call..