If I remember well, there's a special clause in the contract of the design team that forbids them to look at fanmade design propositions... But that design doesn't seem out of this world to me, so we maaaaay see something ressembling it a bit? Maybe? I'd still bank on a delver reprint if DFC are indeed there (I didn't check)
It's sad to see the forum so empty nowadays, I used to roam a bit there to see how the archetype was faring after I took my long hiatus from it in 2015... to a few months ago when I started experimenting using Russell Lee's as a base. My latest iterations made me instead copy the legacy formula, with the following list (some elements are still very much a work in progress, I'll detail them below):
- No scalding tarns because I'm a cheap **** and need to save for these very, very painful FoN;
- Not including the sideboard here because I'm not satisfied with it yet;
- I might change the list of spells a little bit to find room for 2 more cantrips;
- The payoffs are still very much a work in progress and change heavily between each iteration: right now, the only two guaranteed slots are Delver and Arcanist at both 4 copies (arcanist is EXCEPTIONAL even outside of legacy, I'm hating myself for disreguarding the card as a combo tool instead... I'm currently thinking about sloting Become Immense in the deck just for its incredible game ending potential). Still diehard on keeping two snaps for counterspells value and removal heavy matchups, and after that what you see is still uncharted territory were you can find a range of creatures like Young Pyromancer,Sprite Dragon, Stormwing Entity, Brazen Borrower or even good old Vendilion Clique.
From the amount of test I ran, Dreadhorde Arcanist is by far and wide the best card in the deck. It is the value engine it so desperatly lacked, and what Archmage's Charm could only dream of being. Simply put, in this shell, it is a stricly better Bob! You've got to try it out for yourselves to believe it.
Well, here we go for quite the sad tournament report. I got my ass handed to me pretty violently, but had some fun and even discovered a card.
So, let's get onto the MUs:
- Rock, 0-2. G1 he slammed a LotV on turn 3, and I couldn't recover from a decay on my only mine. G2 went in the same way. Both games didn't feel that unwinable, but I couldn't get there fast enough even with the ramp package (and you'll see that it will be a common theme going into the rest of the report).
- Classic Affinity, 1-2. G1 I went down honorably, G2 went on for fourty damn minutes as I couldn't get my 3 TiTis which were constantly getting shuffled back on the bottom of my deck. It was a crazy game were I did cast Snapcaster Mage 11 times despite only having two Snapcaster mages in the 75 (two snaps, engulf, two snaps, engulf, two snaps, FB engulf, two snaps, FB engulf, two snaps, FB Cryptic boucning snap). It felt awful and amazing at the same time. We actually go to additional turns at the start of g3, he strugles to choose whether to mulligan or not, I'm starting to think he won't be able to kill me... I was wrong. He top decked a ravager on his second turn, dealt 5 infect to me, I draw a card which was not the Gigadrowse I absolutely needed, and I conceded after making my second land drop.
- Mono R Phoenix, 0-2: died both times on t4. It pretty much felt unwinable as he did not care about any tap schenanigans and I couldn't topdeck engulf on g2.
- Ad Nauseam, 2-1: first victory, lost g1 to a double Angel's grace+Pact of negation, won g2 and 3 without much trouble as I was faster than him and could disturb his ramp and lands easily by bouncing them.
- Amulet Titan, 2-1: second (and spoiler alert, last) win. He had the nuts g1: t1 amulet, t2 amulet+Azusa+pact+Titan... which led him to die on his third upkeep to a very well timed Exhaustion. He played around exhaustion very well g2 and eventually beat me, and g3 Damping Sphere plus well timed gigadrowses/exhaustion to lock him out of green mana allowed me to buy enough time to win on the third additional turn.
- Another Rock, 1-1: he didn't disturb me at all g1 leading me to kill him on his fifth turn, utterly annihilated me g2, and I went off a bit too late leading me to fail to kill him after playing all five of the additional turns in front of an amazed audience of 15 persons watching our game (they really liked the deck, which helped me cope with the sadness of my underperformance of the day)
- The weirdest elves deck ever, 0-2: I lost to confusion on g1 as he seemed to be yet another rock deck (shocking himself with a tomb on t2 to keep decay/trophy available)... before playing Archidruid. I then felt like I got some time, slammed Jace a turn after, only to face a CoCo at the end of my turn revealing two Dwynen's elite into a combo kill with Umbral Mantle. I lost g2 to fatigue, I litterally had the in in hand but a brain fart prevented me from seeing it.
- Mono G tron, 0-2: g1 went like a breeze for him, I sided out all green of the deck to get back to mono U turns with damping spheres, and after I managed to deal with two Ulamogs, two different Ugins and a Wurmcoil he just out valued me out of existence.
Conclusion: 2-6-1, which makes it one of my worst tournament results ever (only slightly better than a 1-3-drop at a GP last year). The green splash hardly felt useful as it was all built on the back of thing in the ice and I apparently wasn't good at drawing them. But even bigger disappointment than the splash, Jace felt awful. He was basically a 4 mana one shot brainstorm. I advise all of you to switch to Narset who's in my opinion much better at doing what we need to beat our opponents (denying extra draws was game changing in some cases). Plus, since she's only minusing opponents often went for the head instead of her to gun me down, which paradoxically led me to gain more time and value from her (plus, bouncing her with Cryptic is actually a thing).
TL/DR: green splash isn't good and control/real sideboard tools are much more usefull than ramp. Narset seems to be the real deal, and her lock should be envisaged as a real option. Lama, out~
Exhaustion returning mainboard is one hell of a wild bet, but the number of relevant match-ups it helps to smooth is too high to ignore. It went at the expense of Remand, but I'm betting on two things for that one: 1) Growth Spiral is enough of a pseudo turn 2) My opponents might still respect it since all Blue control/combo deck are running it.
SB has been streamlined, I really like what I've got here. I do not plan on siding in more than 4 cards per match-up.
Also, one temple. Might bump it up to two in the future.
Tournament is tomorrow morning (starts in 7 hours), let's see if I get the chance to warm up my frozen lobsters with that hairdryer of mine. All it takes is a few turns after all !
Quick rundown of my decisions:
- Growth spiral: it's much more of a Time Walk than Remand, which in this obscenely fast meta is incredibly helpful. - Search for Tomorrow: very good ramp, very good synergy with Thing in the Ice (T1 surch, t2 thing, t3 resolve search)
- Thing in the Ice mainboard: the meta is really creature heavy and beside beeing a very good control tool, closing a game with only two extra turns provides more stability to the deck.
- Savor the Moment: quite the hard card to break, but combining it with another extra turn spell (ex: miracl'd Mastery, or Savor-Snap-Savor) in a single turn breaks its drawback and sometimes all you need is just one more turn... (be careful, TiTi doesn't untap too during the first extra turn)
- Temple of Mystery: placeholder for Yavimaya Coast, figured out I could really take advantage of a few scry here due to the heavy ramp package. Will 100% be replaced in the future by Waterlogged Grove.
I'm going to attend the MKM European series in Paris with my UG taking turns on saturday, wish me luck~
I already posted my list here, but I'm wondering about switching JtMS with Narset, Parter of Veils mainboard. The real reason behind that is that the difference of 1 cmc matters a lot when trying to combo off. The extra digging helps too, and after three extra turns I'm often assured to win the game so extra activations don't seem to matter much to me. The synergy with mines effects is also not to be underestimated... But yeah, her ceiling is much lower. I've only 4 more days to decide.
So far Teferi, Time Raveler has felt good against both creature decks and combo/control decks. Ticking down to deal with permanents and get an extra draw is awesome, but my favorite part about him is getting to Wrath/Day's at instant speed. So far the mana hasn't been too much of a problem running 3 colors, I went up 1 more land to have room for a few more fetches while still keeping the basic count high. I also cut one Geier Reach for a plains which has been nice against field of ruin/path, though I do miss the extra combo piece. Verdict being blue, (and also being 4 cmc) has been great in place of damnation, and obviously it deals with creatures better than Engulf. Haven't tested Dovin's Veto yet, mostly because I'm not sure where I can fit it in.
If you're going the Teferi way, I think it could be interesting to bring in some black mana and get IoK/Thoughtseize instead of the pitching package. Tef's making these cards useful in the late game too. That'd give you the opportunity to run two snapcasters or Quellers to have a real clock too, allowing you to win with a single day's undoing "discard" without Brokers
I am currently building two additionnal versions of the narset lock combo: esper Spirit of the Labyrinth prison/miracles, and bant (maybe splash black for thief) turbofog. I will report when both have reached a level worthy of publication. I also think locking the deck in mono blue just for the pitching isn't very rewarding, and Teferi's puzzle box seems to be actually quite insane with Narset/thief: even with an unrefined version of the deck, it kills the opponent very easily.
I still think Teferi's puzzle box is bad, but I haven't tested it at all. Pros: it locks the opponent out completely with just 1 card in addition to Narset or Thief. Cons: it does basically nothing when you don't have Narset/Thief in play. Day's, Lore Broker and Geier Reach/Mikokoro all do at least a little something when you don't have a Narset/Thief, and they all help you draw into Thief where Puzzle box doesn't if you don't have much in hand, being 4 mana and sorcery speed also sucks.
That being said, if it is tested and is found to be a viable replacement to Day's/Thief it could save us some slots, (from 11 down to 4+ however many of the old combo pieces we may want to keep for consistency), and cutting cards out of the combo slots will help our interaction suite a ton; so even if it's a slightly worse card when we aren't comboing it, maybe that's ok because the rest of the deck is more efficient anyways with the saved slots.
On the topic of trying different colors: I am currently attempting to brew an esper list myself, (though not for playing Spirit of the Labyrinth). I'm interested in getting to play Supreme Verdict, Dovin's Veto, Path to Exile and my personal favorite, Teferi, Time Raveler. Other than path, they are all still blue cards so they don't interfere with our pitch plan, (a huge plus for Verdict over Damnation, where Engulf just doesn't feel like enough a lot of the time), and Teferi, Time Raveler is a) another answer to both creatures, which the deck struggles with, and b) can also hit resolved artifacts and enchantments which helps a ton because we don't have a lot that can interact with those if they hit the board, being able to hit Aethervial is great, and also making Void Snare instant speed is sweet. Being able to play Day's at instant speed is great too. Teferi's passive also hurts some opponent's naturally and also makes our lock with Thief instant-proof. The awkward part is the mana base. We need lots of blue sources and still have to splash black for Thief, so playing lots of basics is harder when we need 3 colors, (notably WW to cast verdict), but not playing as many basics hurts our borderposts a ton. So do we cut border posts or just play a few basics and then a ton of fetches to make sure we can always find a basic if we need to play a post. Let me know what you guys think here.
I disagree on the "do nothing" part of puzzle box: it's an incredibly effective digging engine that will make you go through so many cards you'd be highly unlucky not to hit Narset or Thief or any card you're actually looking for while already disturbing your opponent's gameplan. I wasn't on the box team, but trying it out just for a few games sold it to me!
1RU for a sol ring isn't great, but that's not what Dack is in that situation. He's 1RU for a solid ring that also gets rid of an opponents sol ring, and that's a big swing, and then he sticks around with a strong looting ability building up to steal the next one. He also serves a rattlesnake function where just being in the command zone threatens to steal people's rocks. His ult is fairly easy to hit once you have that Mana advantage to protect him, but I'm not sure it would be worth it to run cards to make it worthwhile, so it's usually worthless (though if you get it it can be game winning with a few buyback spells).
I'm not saying he is not strong, but is it banworthy? Power level wise, he still seems around Aminatou, the fateshifter. I doubt he can really get out of hand easily since none of his abilities can really be abused on their own... If we were talking about a UR general to ban, I think Saheeli, Sublime Artificer is much more dangerous (being a much stronger Sai/Talrand).
I am currently building two additionnal versions of the narset lock combo: esper Spirit of the Labyrinth prison/miracles, and bant (maybe splash black for thief) turbofog. I will report when both have reached a level worthy of publication. I also think locking the deck in mono blue just for the pitching isn't very rewarding, and Teferi's puzzle box seems to be actually quite insane with Narset/thief: even with an unrefined version of the deck, it kills the opponent very easily.
I completely agree for Ashiok: their biggest shortcoming is that because of the "opponent controls" clause, the ability can't be abused. I'll still add them to the list.
As for Dack, that power of looting can be impressive, but not really abusable as well: the best use of his -2 would just help his controler to get all of the ol rings around the table, which is cool but sol ring for 1UR is clearly not as impressive as the real sol ring.
For Tamiyo, I'm not sure yet... But I'll add her nonetheless. The two-cards combo part isn't banworthy, as Teferi shows us: however, the access to a two-cards combo with three colors that are quite good at tutoring is clearly something else.
I'll try to brew a bunch of lists to try a few walkers on the watchlist. Who would you like to see first? Gideon, champion of Justice and Saheeli, sublime artificer seem to be good points to start with, as they do not require much build around to be really powerful.
Over the past few weeks, the upcomming release of War of the Spark made a lot of people wondering wether or not Planeswalker should be allowed as commanders. This reignited (pun intended obviously) the discussions in the thread [POLL] Planeswalkers as playable generals, multiplying by five the number of comments under this two years old thread. But what both side always agreed on was the lack of empyrical data and overall testing that was needed for such a groundbreaking thing to happen.
Lately, the discussion seems to have slowed down as people started agreeing more and more on the pros and cons of allowing planeswalker as generals, as well as some apparently necessary rule changes that would have to take place for that to happen.
The purpose of this thread is the following: summing up pros and cons that both sides can agree on, proposing rule changes, discussing and editing them so that we can all try to have a standardized approach to the testing so that the Commander Advisory Group (CAG) can have the data they need to take a decision that won't break the format or be only motivated by a fear of breaking the format. Remember, the goal here is not to create another format (praise be to the previously unwritten yet basic law of EDH, rule 0: "Local groups are welcome to modify [the rules] as they see fit. If you’d like an exception to these rules, especially in an unfamiliar environment, please get the approval of the other players before the game begins"), but to help both the CAG and playgroups who would like to have a fun experience while running PW based decks.
So, without further ado, let's jump into it!
Pros:
Flavor: had the format been created after Lorwyn, it would most likely have had planeswalker legal as commanders from the very beginning. What other reason could there be to play specifically legendary creatures as generals and not any "normal" creatures in a singleton format?
Bringing more people to the format. This point is fairly tied to the first one, as many of us probably found their first commander by opening a booster with a flashy creature we couldn't make shine anywhere else. It's even more flagrant now that Planeswalkers are the litteral face of MTG and the core of the flavor (and advertisement) of the game.
These points mostly care for the future of the format. However, as people against a hasty change saw soon enough, there would be a number of issues that may end up spoiling the fun of many entitled EDH players and eventually drive them away from the format. Here are the most concerning cons I could gather.
Cons:
Planeswalker tend to slow the game down by encouraging value/control based decks and virtually augmenting the life total of their controllers, making it harder for aggro decks to thrive in a format where they already are in minority. And forcing a whole strategy type out of the format for flavor reasons is obviously a no-go.
Many planeswalker-based strategies would just end up being races to get to their general's ultimate, many of which are nigh on impossible to remove emblems (the only solution being going full archenemy and killing the emblem's owner). This could create very frustrating games.
No matter what arguments people may have about the power level of a certain card (especially using the good old Teferi, temporal archmage comparison which may or may not be valid), there are some planeswalker perfectly fine in the 99 that would be bound to be banned if they were accessible from the command zone. People still like playing planeswalkers in the 99, and the RC philosophy on the banlist is to keep it as short as possible. Having too many broken generals leave entirely the format would be very unpleasant to many. Players' favorites like Venser, the sojourner and Sorin Markov are pretty likely to get banned, and I would be among the first persons to be saddened to sleeve them out because of that.
Rule changes
Now that we've seen some of the most important consequences, here are the two other rule changes that have been discussed and that seem to be pre-requisite for a healthy format with Planeswalker as generals:
Bringing back the banned-as-a-commander (BAC) banlist. This would allow a lot omre flexibility on the bans without hurting decks that aren't abusing planeswalkers. Due to their flexibility Planeswalker are often always good in the 99 which isn't the case of several banned legendary creatures like Braids for example. Having them outright banned du to one specific combo abusing the command zone would hurt the perennity of the format. This unfortunately may end up creating a longer banlist (hence why the RC dropped it), but the added flexibility seems necessary with Planeswalkers around.
Lowering the starting life total to 30. This one will probably be more controversial but has the added bonus of creating faster games while allowing aggressive strategies to be viable again, even if the aggressive player is alone against three other planeswalker commander decks. While this may end up making Najeela, the Blade-Blossom busted (we'll have to keep an eye on her), this is a rule that I've been experiencing with some friends at a casual and experienced level for years now (with or without Planeswalkers). My playgroup's experience can't be generalized for the whole world obviously, but this is an already popular rule change among playgroups which are using Rule 0 so we can hope it will work out as intended.
Banlist
Bringing back the BAC banlist obviously means that we'll have to part ways from the current RC banlist (but I'm still going to use it in my first draft). Here is a proposition, please debate it with both theories, decklists and eventual results:
I don't think anybody should diss building around ultimates, I would really build Gideon, champion of justice if I had the chance! What's fun to you may not be fun to other people, I mean look at me, I'm a Jhoira player. What I love most about this format is playing the archenemy of the table, and if possible winning in the flashiest way possible (and what's better for that than annihilating all of your opponents' boards?)!
On the topic of Legendary creatures design, MaRo confirmed several times that they do not do that. However, he did say that they want legendary creatures to be as cool design as possible so that people can be drawn to the character (or at least feel like the card doesn't betray said character, unlike Emmara Tandris for example which is sad considering she was supposed to be what eventually became Voice of Resurgence). And truth be told, they have been constantly killing it these days, both for creatures and walkers alike. They stopped using the legend rule as a balance tool a long time ago after all, hence cards like Helm of the Host :')
So while I'm completely for PW as generals... Making them legal in the CZ wouldn't make their design healthier for EDH. But again, that's already the same for legendary creatures so they're pretty much equal on that aspect.
Finally (still on the talk about balance), I think designing for commander is probably the hardest kind of design there is for one specific reason. Designing for EDH isn't only designing for one format. While Standard, Modern, etc are all pretty much branded as competitive formats, there's sooooo many ways to play commander! It's by far the supported format that has the widest range of player types. Something that is branded "crazy broken" by a casual player can be considered "trash" by a cEDH player and reciprocally... so I think that's why they just choose to go with the approach "does it look cool to most people", which I personally think is fulfilling its purpose.
True, wheels weren’t the only reason, considering it was all in one package. It wouldn’t have been banworthy at all without that line of text, though. So that isn’t a very valid point one way or the other.
For every “Well, it’s not as broken as this”, there will be a “you sure about that?” from me. Because, again, nobody is building with these because they aren’t legal.
Karn would be such an interesting card to build around indeed, that static ability would allow colorless players to finally have a real cEDH option to choose! That combo doesn't win games outright though, especially since it doesn't stop creatures from being turned sideways to kill Karn... or his controller. But while his -2 can't be used for tutoring in EDH though (and colorless is the worst at tutoring anything anyway), be I'm sure there's some nice combos waiting to be found with cards that exiles themselves like Ugin's nexus. Even in the 99, his -2 can be used to bypass the commander tax if you're using a legendary artifact creature...
But let's not linger in the "is-it-broken-or-not" department: after all you are perfectly right, as much as I'd like to think all planeswalker have already more or less been figured out, nothing would beat the test of time and experience (which is why I'm really happy to see that despite being completely against that, you're still compeltely willing to try it out and see things for yourself).
However, this leads us to another topic being widely discussed here: the banlist itself.
Why should we be afraid of banning a few highly problematic walkers? I mean, there's already a handful of banned legendary creatures. And to caricature, we're not banning all legendary creature from being chosen as generals out of fear of them being broken since they're not designed for that purpose... Or else we'd just be playing Highlander! That also brings us to what was EDH at the core: a fun format where you could lead your army and cast your spells as your favorite character. Had the format been created after Lorwyn, walkers would have probably been allowed from the start.
Banning a few problematic walkers would be better than outright banning all of them from being in the command zone don't you think? As walkers aren't a very common permanent type in decklists, banning one after proof that it would be unbalanced in multiplayer wouldn't have a very high impact (and truth is, I probably hate to see bans as much as you do as I have to switch variants of my decks to play with my friends in multiplayer or French 1v1).
Anyway, I hope you'll get to the same conclusion as me after playtesting with your friends... and that more importantly, you still get to have fun doing so!
I have, but it was actually a a Maralen of the Mornsong deck that was trying to abuse it. And what I mean is that... it's just not that crazy of an effect in EDH. Leovold's wheels aren't the only reason why that card is busted: the access to the best control colors of the format, the second ability always netting value and his very low cmc all combined are what made him so scary. Tasigur was almost as terrifying to me before his ban in the Duel variant of commander for most of these reasons.
The Teferi argument is obvious though: he's got a easily tutorable one card (two if you count the one rock required to go off) combo that instantly wins the game upon completion. The only ones that comes close to that are most likely Sarkhan, unbroken and Samut, the tested for being able to combo out with Doubling Season (which du to the nature of said ultimates are more fragile than Teferi + Veil) while having access to more colors and having a very good value package.
I'm quite surprised that Ashiok is sparking such a debate. After all, search deniers have been here for ages already, some of which even allowed to be cast from the comand zone (even though, I have to admit, at a higher cost).
What search-preventing card is a legendary creature?
Leonin Arbiter and Aven Mindcensor are the only ones I'm aware of that are even creautres at all.
So, what are the reasons to make planeswalkers legal? Other than for flavour. Are there any walkers that people want to build around without just trying to force the ultimate?
Daretti, Scrap Savant was interesting because his first two abilities could be built around. I would argue that almost all planeswalkers than can be played as commanders have sub-par ultimates and are really focused on the first two abilities.
So how many other planeswalkers would be interesting to build around?
I like playing planeswalkers in the 99, and I would not be a fan of having to ban a bunch of cards to enable very few new decks. So, please tell me what cards would be interesting new decks.
I'd say that there would be winners all across the different EDH tables: casual players would get to play with the flashiest cards of their collections, Vorthos fans would be able to create the most flavorful decks, Spikes like me would also get more options to choose from... The meta would just get more diversified, and more people would be drawn to the format. There's no real drawback from that. I also don't understand the part about slowing down games: there's a ton of value-based generals already, yet nobody is complaining about them. I have a few players in my different groups who show up with walkers, and games with them are equally as long as the games without. Just look at video lenghts on YouTube to try to compare, and you'll see that this feeling is based on no concrete evidence :/
It's sad to see the forum so empty nowadays, I used to roam a bit there to see how the archetype was faring after I took my long hiatus from it in 2015... to a few months ago when I started experimenting using Russell Lee's as a base. My latest iterations made me instead copy the legacy formula, with the following list (some elements are still very much a work in progress, I'll detail them below):
1x Fiery Islet
3x Flooded Strand
2x Mystic Sanctuary
3x Polluted Delta
4x Snow-Covered Island
2x Spirebluff Canal
3x Steam Vents
4x Delver of Secrets
4x Dreadhorde Arcanist
2x Snapcaster Mage
3x Sprite Dragon
2x Stormwing Entity
Spells
2x Burst Lightning
1x Deprive
4x Force of Negation
4x Lightning Bolt
2x Magmatic Sinkhole
2x Mana Leak
4x Serum Visions
2x Spell Pierce
4x Thought Scour
2x Vapor Snag
- No scalding tarns because I'm a cheap **** and need to save for these very, very painful FoN;
- Not including the sideboard here because I'm not satisfied with it yet;
- I might change the list of spells a little bit to find room for 2 more cantrips;
- The payoffs are still very much a work in progress and change heavily between each iteration: right now, the only two guaranteed slots are Delver and Arcanist at both 4 copies (arcanist is EXCEPTIONAL even outside of legacy, I'm hating myself for disreguarding the card as a combo tool instead... I'm currently thinking about sloting Become Immense in the deck just for its incredible game ending potential). Still diehard on keeping two snaps for counterspells value and removal heavy matchups, and after that what you see is still uncharted territory were you can find a range of creatures like Young Pyromancer,Sprite Dragon, Stormwing Entity, Brazen Borrower or even good old Vendilion Clique.
From the amount of test I ran, Dreadhorde Arcanist is by far and wide the best card in the deck. It is the value engine it so desperatly lacked, and what Archmage's Charm could only dream of being. Simply put, in this shell, it is a stricly better Bob! You've got to try it out for yourselves to believe it.
So, let's get onto the MUs:
- Rock, 0-2. G1 he slammed a LotV on turn 3, and I couldn't recover from a decay on my only mine. G2 went in the same way. Both games didn't feel that unwinable, but I couldn't get there fast enough even with the ramp package (and you'll see that it will be a common theme going into the rest of the report).
- Classic Affinity, 1-2. G1 I went down honorably, G2 went on for fourty damn minutes as I couldn't get my 3 TiTis which were constantly getting shuffled back on the bottom of my deck. It was a crazy game were I did cast Snapcaster Mage 11 times despite only having two Snapcaster mages in the 75 (two snaps, engulf, two snaps, engulf, two snaps, FB engulf, two snaps, FB engulf, two snaps, FB Cryptic boucning snap). It felt awful and amazing at the same time. We actually go to additional turns at the start of g3, he strugles to choose whether to mulligan or not, I'm starting to think he won't be able to kill me... I was wrong. He top decked a ravager on his second turn, dealt 5 infect to me, I draw a card which was not the Gigadrowse I absolutely needed, and I conceded after making my second land drop.
- Mono R Phoenix, 0-2: died both times on t4. It pretty much felt unwinable as he did not care about any tap schenanigans and I couldn't topdeck engulf on g2.
- Mono R Goblins, 1-2: on the draw, died to double Quest for the Goblin Lord+Mogg war marshall and Goblin Instigator which I never knew was a thing on t4. I won g2 in a breeze thanks to the ramp, and lost g3 to a turn 2 Thorn of Amethyst which rendered my poor Ratchet Bomb completely useless. Lesson: explosives was indeed better.
- Ad Nauseam, 2-1: first victory, lost g1 to a double Angel's grace+Pact of negation, won g2 and 3 without much trouble as I was faster than him and could disturb his ramp and lands easily by bouncing them.
- Amulet Titan, 2-1: second (and spoiler alert, last) win. He had the nuts g1: t1 amulet, t2 amulet+Azusa+pact+Titan... which led him to die on his third upkeep to a very well timed Exhaustion. He played around exhaustion very well g2 and eventually beat me, and g3 Damping Sphere plus well timed gigadrowses/exhaustion to lock him out of green mana allowed me to buy enough time to win on the third additional turn.
- Another Rock, 1-1: he didn't disturb me at all g1 leading me to kill him on his fifth turn, utterly annihilated me g2, and I went off a bit too late leading me to fail to kill him after playing all five of the additional turns in front of an amazed audience of 15 persons watching our game (they really liked the deck, which helped me cope with the sadness of my underperformance of the day)
- The weirdest elves deck ever, 0-2: I lost to confusion on g1 as he seemed to be yet another rock deck (shocking himself with a tomb on t2 to keep decay/trophy available)... before playing Archidruid. I then felt like I got some time, slammed Jace a turn after, only to face a CoCo at the end of my turn revealing two Dwynen's elite into a combo kill with Umbral Mantle. I lost g2 to fatigue, I litterally had the in in hand but a brain fart prevented me from seeing it.
- Mono G tron, 0-2: g1 went like a breeze for him, I sided out all green of the deck to get back to mono U turns with damping spheres, and after I managed to deal with two Ulamogs, two different Ugins and a Wurmcoil he just out valued me out of existence.
Conclusion: 2-6-1, which makes it one of my worst tournament results ever (only slightly better than a 1-3-drop at a GP last year). The green splash hardly felt useful as it was all built on the back of thing in the ice and I apparently wasn't good at drawing them. But even bigger disappointment than the splash, Jace felt awful. He was basically a 4 mana one shot brainstorm. I advise all of you to switch to Narset who's in my opinion much better at doing what we need to beat our opponents (denying extra draws was game changing in some cases). Plus, since she's only minusing opponents often went for the head instead of her to gun me down, which paradoxically led me to gain more time and value from her (plus, bouncing her with Cryptic is actually a thing).
TL/DR: green splash isn't good and control/real sideboard tools are much more usefull than ramp. Narset seems to be the real deal, and her lock should be envisaged as a real option. Lama, out~
4x Breeding Pool
2x Forest
4x Hinterland Harbor
1x Temple of Mystery
1x Yavimaya Coast
6x Island
1x Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
4x Misty Rainforest
Spells
4x Growth Spiral
2x Cryptic Command
4x Dictate of Kruphix
3x Exhaustion
1x Gigadrowse
2x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4x Search for Tomorrow
3x Serum Visions
4x Temporal Mastery
4x Time Warp
2x Snapcaster Mage
4x Thing in the Ice
2x Damping Sphere
1x Disdainful Stroke
2x Engulf the Shore
2x Gigadrowse
1x Narset, Parter of Veils
1x Surgical Extraction
2x Ratchet Bomb
2x Relic of Progenitus
2x Spell Pierce
Exhaustion returning mainboard is one hell of a wild bet, but the number of relevant match-ups it helps to smooth is too high to ignore. It went at the expense of Remand, but I'm betting on two things for that one: 1) Growth Spiral is enough of a pseudo turn 2) My opponents might still respect it since all Blue control/combo deck are running it.
SB has been streamlined, I really like what I've got here. I do not plan on siding in more than 4 cards per match-up.
Also, one temple. Might bump it up to two in the future.
Tournament is tomorrow morning (starts in 7 hours), let's see if I get the chance to warm up my frozen lobsters with that hairdryer of mine. All it takes is a few turns after all !
I should have posted my list again, so here it is:
4x Breeding Pool
2x Forest
4x Hinterland Harbor
6x Island
1x Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
4x Misty Rainforest
2x Temple of Mystery
Control
3x Cryptic Command
2x Remand
1x Gigadrowse
4x Growth Spiral
4x Search for Tomorrow
Creatures
2x Snapcaster Mage
4x Thing in the Ice
Card draw
4x Dictate of Kruphix
2x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3x Serum Visions
Turns
4x Temporal Mastery
1x Savor the Moment
4x Time Warp
1x Ashiok, Dream Render
2x Engulf the Shore
3x Exhaustion
3x Gigadrowse
1x Jace, Wielder of Mysteries
3x Sun Droplet
2x Relic of Progenitus
Quick rundown of my decisions:
- Growth spiral: it's much more of a Time Walk than Remand, which in this obscenely fast meta is incredibly helpful. - Search for Tomorrow: very good ramp, very good synergy with Thing in the Ice (T1 surch, t2 thing, t3 resolve search)
- Thing in the Ice mainboard: the meta is really creature heavy and beside beeing a very good control tool, closing a game with only two extra turns provides more stability to the deck.
- Savor the Moment: quite the hard card to break, but combining it with another extra turn spell (ex: miracl'd Mastery, or Savor-Snap-Savor) in a single turn breaks its drawback and sometimes all you need is just one more turn... (be careful, TiTi doesn't untap too during the first extra turn)
- Temple of Mystery: placeholder for Yavimaya Coast, figured out I could really take advantage of a few scry here due to the heavy ramp package. Will 100% be replaced in the future by Waterlogged Grove.
Stuff I need to figure out before saturday morning, French time:
- Is Narset, Parter of Veils better than Jace, the Mindsculptor in my gameplan?
- Is Narset's reversal worth it over Remand?
- The hell should I do from here with my sideboard?
I already posted my list here, but I'm wondering about switching JtMS with Narset, Parter of Veils mainboard. The real reason behind that is that the difference of 1 cmc matters a lot when trying to combo off. The extra digging helps too, and after three extra turns I'm often assured to win the game so extra activations don't seem to matter much to me. The synergy with mines effects is also not to be underestimated... But yeah, her ceiling is much lower. I've only 4 more days to decide.
Also, I'm having troubles with the sideboard right now. I thought about going with Jace, wielder of Mysteries and Ashiok, Dream Render as ones-of, a bunch of engulf the shore, and maybe siding in the full Gigadrowse+Exhaustion package. And two Relic of Progenitus, while wondering about the impact of Sun Droplet.
So, what do you think about that?
If you're going the Teferi way, I think it could be interesting to bring in some black mana and get IoK/Thoughtseize instead of the pitching package. Tef's making these cards useful in the late game too. That'd give you the opportunity to run two snapcasters or Quellers to have a real clock too, allowing you to win with a single day's undoing "discard" without Brokers
I disagree on the "do nothing" part of puzzle box: it's an incredibly effective digging engine that will make you go through so many cards you'd be highly unlucky not to hit Narset or Thief or any card you're actually looking for while already disturbing your opponent's gameplan. I wasn't on the box team, but trying it out just for a few games sold it to me!
I'm not saying he is not strong, but is it banworthy? Power level wise, he still seems around Aminatou, the fateshifter. I doubt he can really get out of hand easily since none of his abilities can really be abused on their own... If we were talking about a UR general to ban, I think Saheeli, Sublime Artificer is much more dangerous (being a much stronger Sai/Talrand).
I'm also wondering about Engulf the shore's maindeckability.
As for Dack, that power of looting can be impressive, but not really abusable as well: the best use of his -2 would just help his controler to get all of the ol rings around the table, which is cool but sol ring for 1UR is clearly not as impressive as the real sol ring.
For Tamiyo, I'm not sure yet... But I'll add her nonetheless. The two-cards combo part isn't banworthy, as Teferi shows us: however, the access to a two-cards combo with three colors that are quite good at tutoring is clearly something else.
I'll try to brew a bunch of lists to try a few walkers on the watchlist. Who would you like to see first? Gideon, champion of Justice and Saheeli, sublime artificer seem to be good points to start with, as they do not require much build around to be really powerful.
Over the past few weeks, the upcomming release of War of the Spark made a lot of people wondering wether or not Planeswalker should be allowed as commanders. This reignited (pun intended obviously) the discussions in the thread [POLL] Planeswalkers as playable generals, multiplying by five the number of comments under this two years old thread. But what both side always agreed on was the lack of empyrical data and overall testing that was needed for such a groundbreaking thing to happen.
Lately, the discussion seems to have slowed down as people started agreeing more and more on the pros and cons of allowing planeswalker as generals, as well as some apparently necessary rule changes that would have to take place for that to happen.
The purpose of this thread is the following: summing up pros and cons that both sides can agree on, proposing rule changes, discussing and editing them so that we can all try to have a standardized approach to the testing so that the Commander Advisory Group (CAG) can have the data they need to take a decision that won't break the format or be only motivated by a fear of breaking the format. Remember, the goal here is not to create another format (praise be to the previously unwritten yet basic law of EDH, rule 0: "Local groups are welcome to modify [the rules] as they see fit. If you’d like an exception to these rules, especially in an unfamiliar environment, please get the approval of the other players before the game begins"), but to help both the CAG and playgroups who would like to have a fun experience while running PW based decks.
So, without further ado, let's jump into it!
Pros:
- Flavor: had the format been created after Lorwyn, it would most likely have had planeswalker legal as commanders from the very beginning. What other reason could there be to play specifically legendary creatures as generals and not any "normal" creatures in a singleton format?
- Bringing more people to the format. This point is fairly tied to the first one, as many of us probably found their first commander by opening a booster with a flashy creature we couldn't make shine anywhere else. It's even more flagrant now that Planeswalkers are the litteral face of MTG and the core of the flavor (and advertisement) of the game.
- Diversifying the format even more. Bringing back strategies that fell out of favor years ago (Liliana of the veil as a fairer Braids, cabal minion?), or create brand new ones (I've seen quite a number of people really hyped about Liliana of the dark realms and Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast for example).
These points mostly care for the future of the format. However, as people against a hasty change saw soon enough, there would be a number of issues that may end up spoiling the fun of many entitled EDH players and eventually drive them away from the format. Here are the most concerning cons I could gather.Cons:
Rule changes
Now that we've seen some of the most important consequences, here are the two other rule changes that have been discussed and that seem to be pre-requisite for a healthy format with Planeswalker as generals:
Banlist
Bringing back the BAC banlist obviously means that we'll have to part ways from the current RC banlist (but I'm still going to use it in my first draft). Here is a proposition, please debate it with both theories, decklists and eventual results:
Banned:
- All ante cards and conspiracies;
- Ancestral Recall
- Balance
- Biorythm
- Chaos Orb
- Coalition Victory
- Channel
- Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
- Falling Star
- Fastbond
- Gifts Ungiven
- Griselbrand
- Karakas
- Library of Alexandria
- Limited Resources
- All five Alpha moxen
- Painter's Servant
- Panoptic Mirror
- Primeval Titan
- Prophet of Kruphix
- Recurring Nightmare
- Shahrazad
- Sundering Titan
- Sway of the Stars
- Sylvan Primordial
- Time Vault
- Time Walk
- Tinker
- Tolarian Academy
- Trade Secrets
- Upheaval
- Worldfire
- Yawgmoth's Bargain
Banned as a commander:- Braids, Cabal Minion
- Erayo, Soratami Ascendant
- Leovold, Emissary of Trest
- Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
Watchlist for BAC (heavily debatable):I hope that thread managed to catch your interest, and if so I'd be glad to update it with your feedback.
See you on this plane or another, fellow Planeswalkers!
On the topic of Legendary creatures design, MaRo confirmed several times that they do not do that. However, he did say that they want legendary creatures to be as cool design as possible so that people can be drawn to the character (or at least feel like the card doesn't betray said character, unlike Emmara Tandris for example which is sad considering she was supposed to be what eventually became Voice of Resurgence). And truth be told, they have been constantly killing it these days, both for creatures and walkers alike. They stopped using the legend rule as a balance tool a long time ago after all, hence cards like Helm of the Host :')
So while I'm completely for PW as generals... Making them legal in the CZ wouldn't make their design healthier for EDH. But again, that's already the same for legendary creatures so they're pretty much equal on that aspect.
Finally (still on the talk about balance), I think designing for commander is probably the hardest kind of design there is for one specific reason. Designing for EDH isn't only designing for one format. While Standard, Modern, etc are all pretty much branded as competitive formats, there's sooooo many ways to play commander! It's by far the supported format that has the widest range of player types. Something that is branded "crazy broken" by a casual player can be considered "trash" by a cEDH player and reciprocally... so I think that's why they just choose to go with the approach "does it look cool to most people", which I personally think is fulfilling its purpose.
Karn would be such an interesting card to build around indeed, that static ability would allow colorless players to finally have a real cEDH option to choose! That combo doesn't win games outright though, especially since it doesn't stop creatures from being turned sideways to kill Karn... or his controller. But while his -2 can't be used for tutoring in EDH though (and colorless is the worst at tutoring anything anyway), be I'm sure there's some nice combos waiting to be found with cards that exiles themselves like Ugin's nexus. Even in the 99, his -2 can be used to bypass the commander tax if you're using a legendary artifact creature...
But let's not linger in the "is-it-broken-or-not" department: after all you are perfectly right, as much as I'd like to think all planeswalker have already more or less been figured out, nothing would beat the test of time and experience (which is why I'm really happy to see that despite being completely against that, you're still compeltely willing to try it out and see things for yourself).
However, this leads us to another topic being widely discussed here: the banlist itself.
Why should we be afraid of banning a few highly problematic walkers? I mean, there's already a handful of banned legendary creatures. And to caricature, we're not banning all legendary creature from being chosen as generals out of fear of them being broken since they're not designed for that purpose... Or else we'd just be playing Highlander! That also brings us to what was EDH at the core: a fun format where you could lead your army and cast your spells as your favorite character. Had the format been created after Lorwyn, walkers would have probably been allowed from the start.
Banning a few problematic walkers would be better than outright banning all of them from being in the command zone don't you think? As walkers aren't a very common permanent type in decklists, banning one after proof that it would be unbalanced in multiplayer wouldn't have a very high impact (and truth is, I probably hate to see bans as much as you do as I have to switch variants of my decks to play with my friends in multiplayer or French 1v1).
Anyway, I hope you'll get to the same conclusion as me after playtesting with your friends... and that more importantly, you still get to have fun doing so!
The Teferi argument is obvious though: he's got a easily tutorable one card (two if you count the one rock required to go off) combo that instantly wins the game upon completion. The only ones that comes close to that are most likely Sarkhan, unbroken and Samut, the tested for being able to combo out with Doubling Season (which du to the nature of said ultimates are more fragile than Teferi + Veil) while having access to more colors and having a very good value package.
I really hope you'll have fun trying these out!
The card I was refering to was specifically Ob Nixilis, Unshackled.
Here's a nice list of potential very cool buildaround commanders: Elspeth, sun's champion Gideon, champion of justice (I'd love to build a deck around him) Serra the benevolent Jace, architect of thought Jace, cunning castaway Jace, wielder of mysteries Narset, parter of veils Tezzeret the seeker Liliana of the dark realms Liliana of the Veil (pox almost doesn't exist, that'd be a cool new archetype) Liliana, dreadhorde general Sorin Markov Chandra, Flamecaller Chandra, torch of defiance Jaya Ballard (and she would be awesome) Koth of the hammer Sarkhan, Fireblood Garruk Wildspeaker Nissa, Worldwaker Nissa Revane... and that's just a personnal pick of monocolored walkers. Plus, the ban argument doesn't seem right to me, as I don't believe there is a single walker banworthy. I mean, none of them is even remotely close in terms of power to Teferi, Temporal Archmage and he is still alive and kicking after all !
I'd say that there would be winners all across the different EDH tables: casual players would get to play with the flashiest cards of their collections, Vorthos fans would be able to create the most flavorful decks, Spikes like me would also get more options to choose from... The meta would just get more diversified, and more people would be drawn to the format. There's no real drawback from that. I also don't understand the part about slowing down games: there's a ton of value-based generals already, yet nobody is complaining about them. I have a few players in my different groups who show up with walkers, and games with them are equally as long as the games without. Just look at video lenghts on YouTube to try to compare, and you'll see that this feeling is based on no concrete evidence :/