Manabarbs and Burning Earth if he has a lot of nonbasics. Bedlam is nice if you're aggro and they're putting up token walls and such. Of course it opens you up as well.
Do they run a lot of utility dorks? Yasova Dragonclaw is the temur general I'd choose. Steal their Seedborn and run it into someone else's big blocker. Or sac it for profit.
Depends on what your gameplan is. Olivia would work for a more aggro version of the deck where you want to pump creatures and swing right away. You also have to play a creature in order to get the discard ability. If you have a card in hand that you want in the graveyard because you'd rather pay 2 to flip it than its full mana cost, then the cards I suggested are more flexible. Sliversmith will even give you a creature to sac to Ashnod's Altar to help pay for a flip. *shrug* Again, depends on how you're running the show.
I'm still trying to find a good, viable way to get cards out of your hand, and either into the graveyard, or on the bottom of the deck.
So, I didn't see any comments in the thread regarding Olivia, Mobilized for War!
1) When you flip a creature, you may discard.
2) It gives a +1/+1 buff, and haste.
3) It's fairly cheap to cast from hand.
Good point re the more subtle ways of pointing attacks somewhere else aside from the blatant "don't attack me while I assemble my shenanigans". That's something I could do more of in my decks.
As far as attracting unwanted attention though, Seedborn is a huge red flag. Unless you were going to throw in some mana dumps to take advantage of her I see her being a 5 mana make an opponent discard a removal spell play. Reconnaissance seems like the better choice there, unless again you wanted to get more out of Seedborn.
Was just thinking how cool it would be to have black in this kind of deck so you could play Archetype of Finality, vigilance and deathtouch make quite a nice wall. Saskia could head that, but Saskia is playing different politics than I think you're wanting here.
I'm a huge fan of Gahiji... Enjoy the well-balanced look of your build. Always Watching is a card I keep forgetting about and very much need to play with.
Many steal stuff decks in your meta? I've had Gahiji stolen and cloned and I'd be tempted to put Homeward Path in here, though your colorless land count is already pretty high. Heroic Intervention also saves you from theft and cloning, but something else wouldn't hurt. Teferi's Veil would be ideal here, but not a cheap card. Ghostway maybe?
Enough enchantments to make Sphere of Safety worthwhile, to help protect your walkers? Yeah, I know vigilance also does this, but might be worth a slot.
Interested in your non-infinite version, what you cut, how you still win...
Of course! For my casual version I took out all of the major combo enabling pieces and either replaced them with other cool cards or weaker versions of themselves. So essentially, the cards I took out were:
Phyrexian Altar - still strong, but much harder to abuse as quickly
Balthor the Defiled - had to bring this guy back in for the consistency since the deck is slower
Mindclaw Shaman - Since it's a more casual meta, I have a lot more fun with this card. Also, it feels really good to catch someone else's Merciless Eviction and hit all of the enchantments with their own card.
Silent Arbiter - My casual meta has a lot of token decks
Other than these changes, the list is all the same. It does slow down the deck a bit in the sense that you don't run into the "oops, I win" scenario as often; but the pace of excitement is still the same. The win-cons now become one of the three:
An infinite combo that requires Phyrexian Altar, Heartstone and a creature that creates 3+ tokens (if you let me get 4 pieces out and keep them, I don't feel bad for infiniting)
Last game I played, I still managed to flip through most of my deck and actually found that I got to see a lot more of it since I have to dig a lot deeper for the win sometimes. So I really enjoyed these changes and my meta appreciated the ability to to play longer games as well.
Awesome. I do love the explosiveness and randomness of this deck, but sometimes don't want to risk accidentally going Kiki/Zealous and making the table groan. I might find a way to keep Kiki in there because he's so awesome with most of the cards in the deck. Take out Lightning Crafter and Zealous and play with that. Maybe add Krenko and go wider. Thanks!
I really like Afflicted Deserter as repeatable artifact destruction. It's probably not fast enough for the current list, but I'm definitely going to add it into my more casual version (non-infinite, little slower).
Interested in your non-infinite version, what you cut, how you still win...
There have been several of these I've noticed over the years, but more in the recent legendaries printed for Commander products. The one that recently stood out to me was Yennett, Cryptic Sovereign. I built her like a lot of people, focusing a lot on odd-costed bombs and top deck manipulation. Thing is, she's also a 3/5 flyer for 5 that has Vigilance and Menace. And if you don't have a single odd costed card in your deck she draws you a card whenever she hits. Realizing that, she's got a lot of potential and if you have a handful of odd bombs, cool. I too am guilty of looking at a new commander and trying to figure out the magical Christmas land scenario I want to build, but sometimes just half of a commander is plenty decent.
The other one that stands out to me is Atraxa... if you just cut off the bottom half of the card, took away the proliferate nonsense, she'd still be plenty playable at her cost. I was wanting to build her and looking at various uses of proliferate and finally realized I wanted to build her enchantress voltron. I've got a Spike Weaver I can proliferate, but that's it.
I have a friend who put Horde of Notions in his EDH cube even though there is just a smattering of elementals because he's a 5/5 haste/trample/vigilance for 5.
Anyways, my point in this thread is to discuss commanders you've found that are plenty good even if you don't build to their abilities and also to point out that assessing a commander doesn't necessarily mean looking at how good a deck you can build according to the card's salient abilities.
Kefnet is pretty easy to keep active in monoblue, though he does require a tailored build. A lot of "land go" and enchantments that slow others down and a good number of Oblivion Stone effects. With Training Grounds out you draw a lot of cards....
When I think about EDH games that the whole table considers fun I think of the games where everyone is relevant for most of the game, nobody is dominating with multiple turns or really long turns, and there's a feel of back and forth, close calls, turns of fortune, etc. It feels like a game. Generals that contribute to games like that add some grease to a deck without demanding a linear gameplan and without dominating the game or turns of the game. I'd say pick colors you want to play and then pick a general that adds some flexibility to those colors. Like Simic? Play the new land general who both ramps you and is a big beater, like Azorius, play Raff who will let you flash in artifacts and legendaries but doesn't win the game on his own, etc.
Got the deck put together, ready to play. Subbed in Hell's Caretaker as I love that card. Am also curious about Millikin... do you find it useful to get the random dump into the graveyard? Was thinking of swapping out Plague Myr for it.
Do they run a lot of utility dorks? Yasova Dragonclaw is the temur general I'd choose. Steal their Seedborn and run it into someone else's big blocker. Or sac it for profit.
Mindless Automaton, Rummaging Goblin and Sliversmith come in off flips and allow you to discard for value.
As far as attracting unwanted attention though, Seedborn is a huge red flag. Unless you were going to throw in some mana dumps to take advantage of her I see her being a 5 mana make an opponent discard a removal spell play. Reconnaissance seems like the better choice there, unless again you wanted to get more out of Seedborn.
Was just thinking how cool it would be to have black in this kind of deck so you could play Archetype of Finality, vigilance and deathtouch make quite a nice wall. Saskia could head that, but Saskia is playing different politics than I think you're wanting here.
Many steal stuff decks in your meta? I've had Gahiji stolen and cloned and I'd be tempted to put Homeward Path in here, though your colorless land count is already pretty high. Heroic Intervention also saves you from theft and cloning, but something else wouldn't hurt. Teferi's Veil would be ideal here, but not a cheap card. Ghostway maybe?
Enough enchantments to make Sphere of Safety worthwhile, to help protect your walkers? Yeah, I know vigilance also does this, but might be worth a slot.
Cool deck!
Awesome. I do love the explosiveness and randomness of this deck, but sometimes don't want to risk accidentally going Kiki/Zealous and making the table groan. I might find a way to keep Kiki in there because he's so awesome with most of the cards in the deck. Take out Lightning Crafter and Zealous and play with that. Maybe add Krenko and go wider. Thanks!
Interested in your non-infinite version, what you cut, how you still win...
The other one that stands out to me is Atraxa... if you just cut off the bottom half of the card, took away the proliferate nonsense, she'd still be plenty playable at her cost. I was wanting to build her and looking at various uses of proliferate and finally realized I wanted to build her enchantress voltron. I've got a Spike Weaver I can proliferate, but that's it.
I have a friend who put Horde of Notions in his EDH cube even though there is just a smattering of elementals because he's a 5/5 haste/trample/vigilance for 5.
Anyways, my point in this thread is to discuss commanders you've found that are plenty good even if you don't build to their abilities and also to point out that assessing a commander doesn't necessarily mean looking at how good a deck you can build according to the card's salient abilities.
Thoughts?