MTG Salvation

Yeah logan your logic... Isnt logic jund is colors brohan not a deck from alara block it thrives on 2-1s and card advantage and ill happily smash your naya deck with my jund deck come rotation not trying to be rude but your arguing a fact that you have no grounds on and its getting real anoyying go troll somewhere else man

Lmao i love to see all these delver fanboys in here complaining and whining muhahahahah all the while ive been collecting you tears mmmmm so tastey!

Oh boy, it's time for another round of "Make a card on the spot and then be disappointed that your unreasonable expectations are not met".

My initial reaction stayed the same even after I've read through the thread: it lets you use your dudes for the second time, giving you some reasonable blockers that can also be used as sac fodder or Constellation triggers. Sounds good on paper to me. I didn't really pay attention to the fact that she can exile creatures from any graveyard, but trading them snakes for their creatures does make sense for the impartial god of life and death. However, it seems like people want her to be a graveyard hate god for some reason, which clearly wasn't the intent behind her design. Yes, she can work like that in a pinch, but most of the time, getting the token for yourself is going to be more important than exiling a creature in their graveyard - and in the latter case, giving them a measly token is a cheap price for getting rid of their reanimation target.

Then there is the natural desire of people to "upgrade" the card by making it produce the token on your side even when you exile their creature, and I could totally see that happening - if it wasn't for Deathtouch. That single word means that the token you make with Pharika is basically indestructible in combat, since it produces more and more fodder for itself by blocking more and more creatures, giving you some sick card advantage in the process. The most obvious way to fight that is to never attack the Pharika player (or attack with evasive creatures), and we all know how fun that is. It's very easy to make a card more powerful, sky's the limit, but it's a bit more difficult to make it fun to both play with and play against.

Let me put it this way. When Phenax was spoiled, lots of UB fans complained that Wizards print nothing but mill cards for their color combination. But when Pharika is spoiled and she doesn't fit the usual Dredge/reanimation strategy of BG, people are disappointed that they can't use her in their favorite decks. You can't have the cake and eat it, too, guys. Try building something new around her.

EDH reminds me of when I was a ten year-old Timmy who could only build cards with the random ones he got in packs and the bulk rares he he could get for twenty five cents at the local game shop. When i first began Magic as a kid it was all about the big creatures and the high mana costs, and in our crude sixty-card casual decks we never managed to cast them. EDH is all about fulfilling that little Timmy's dreams and allowing him to master his beloved deck of singletons and multiple Redwood Treefolks and Spirit of the Nights.

Quote from Orangesilk

As a former U/W/R player I can say. Spamming the board with creatures is not how you deal with control. Heck, control is made for that. You play a single threat, force me to deal with it in an awkward way (say, forcing me to verdict a single blood baron) and punish me for doing so (rakdos return works, or obzedat, or a haste dragon). I often lose if didn't find the right answer to your complicated threat.

Thoughtseize and sin collector are great tools against control, since they take away the tools to respond to certain threats. WBR also has access to slaughter games, or pithing needle, which both shut down the wincons of the control decks right now. I'm honestly more worried about WBR viability against mono-red or G/R mid than against control.

Quote from pruettjohn

I agree with this. I also don't understand the reasoning on this thread. That guy's deck in the SCG was very, very, very similar to what I've seen posted on here. What exactly makes his deck so much worse? The fact that he placed at a major tourney? He's a couple cards off what people have successfully played at the local FNM? That he was possibly more prepared for certain decks than others? Is this a competitive thread or a circle pat(on back or other terminology)?

If you don't think the deck is good, then why are you here?

Just pointing that out...

The Deck's here are pretty different compared to the deck that placed 27th at SCG Open.

Almost all of his disruption was in the Side while most our lists have included about half of the disruption package in the mainboard as utility.

My guess he would probably change that up if he had known that Control was going to dominate the top 15.

Also we do run more creatures, it's not about running more or less IMO. Its the creatures that we chose to go with VS the ones he did.

Sure Blood Baron is definitely the same to our list and his, but we also run Obzedat in most of our lists, also extremely hard to deal with. VS Esper I also think that Stormbreath is a pain to deal with. Consider that Esper sees this matchup and sees that the only real tough card to deal with is just Blood Baron. Where as our matchup, not only do they deal with Baron, but Obzedat, and Stormbreath, really putting a lot of pressure on how they play and the tools they use for specific threats. I think something could be said to that point right there...

My list also mainboards a few Sin Collectors to not only pull removal from my opponents that can possibly target any of my hard to deal with creatures, but to also attack Esper or UW Control type decks that run Revelations and Verdicts.

I haven't talked badly about that list like some have here... I try really hard not to knock ideas or to knock peoples lists, unless they come at me first.

I feel his deck was a bit more control style then our aggressive midrange style. Just cuz I say aggressive, doesn't mean it means we're aggro. I say aggressive because we are proactively attacking our opponent from a lot of different angles. Hand Disruption, Threats, and great value removal spells.

To me this is the premise of the deck, and if you ask me - That is not the strategy that the SCG list really did well. Sure he has the Returns, he has 2 Thoughtseize in the main, but it's not one of the main strategies to his deck like it is with most of our lists.

And who knows, maybe our lists bomb too...

I sincerely believe though that BWR Midrange will be a top deck, it may have some growing pains to go through since there are still a lot of unknowns with how the Format fleshes out.

But I think it has all of the tools to get it there...

Quote from Orangesilk

As a former U/W/R player I can say. Spamming the board with creatures is not how you deal with control. Heck, control is made for that. You play a single threat, force me to deal with it in an awkward way (say, forcing me to verdict a single blood baron) and punish me for doing so (rakdos return works, or obzedat, or a haste dragon). I often lose if didn't find the right answer to your complicated threat.

Thoughtseize and sin collector are great tools against control, since they take away the tools to respond to certain threats. WBR also has access to slaughter games, or pithing needle, which both shut down the wincons of the control decks right now. I'm honestly more worried about WBR viability against mono-red or G/R mid than against control.

A mono red player made a play that seemed very intelligent last night that follows this philosophy. It's turn 3, the mono read player has some 2 drop and a firedrinker. Against U/W Control he pretty much goes, "okay, instead of dropping a creature here, I'm going to do this intelligently." Pumps up the satyr, swings in, gets his damage, passes turn. Next turn the U/W supremes, the mono red player now has an extra creature card because he recognizes this. You don't need to overextend, and for WBR midrange, the idea of extending is maddening.

"Hello U/W/X, here is blood baron, I'm sure you'll be fine against me right? Oh, while we're at it, I'm going to slaughter games in game 2 against Rev, the card that keeps you reloading. If I find a needle, aetherling is leaving town as well, or maybe your Jace." I don't even know HOW U/W/X can beat that right now. I just don't.

Our matchup against U/W/X is really good BECAUSE of the creature packages we have at our disposal. We can punish turn 4 Jace very well with a slew of creatures, removal, and spells. We play a variety of creatures that aren't good, but are a pain in the dick to deal with.

For this reason I have been contemplating very long and hard at a 4th blood baron. Once this thing sticks it is an allstar against BOTH aggro and control. When I first saw him, I assumed he was legendary because very rarely I saw lists with 4, but really, what exactly are we waiting for? What makes a fourth blood baron so taboo?

Also, with a control matchup where we have a minimal amount of threats that we HAVE to deal with, why haven't we started taking a closer look at Anger Mainboard? There's no shame in playing 4x Anger of the Gods mainboard, hell if you compare it to Slagstorm it happened ALL the time.

I think our deck can treat the meta like this, "we have to tool kits to completely hose aggro as well as provide reasonable disruption for control, once we move to game 2 we can really start grinding down on the matchup by fine-tuning the deck and removing 2-3 dead cards as well as sideboarding in 4-5 much more finely tuned cards for the matchup."

I think Dega is EASILY in the best spot, unlike U/W/X we can timely land creatures to clamp down on aggro, and for a midrange deck we certainly contain a hell of a lot of hand disruption and can pretty much dictate how control has to play, which feels like a rare gift.

Has anybody tested with Chandra? I haven't tried her in Dega yet but in every other red deck she has been ridiculous.

Quote from acidfreeze

That blink ability feels like it should be on a U/W creature, since those are the blink colors. It's not as blatantly off as Daxos's ability, which I still think should've been on a U/B creature, but it still seems weird to me. As far as I can remember, the only W/B blink is the Ghost Council's self blink.

Blink is firmly in white's color pie. See Cloudshift, Sudden Disappearance, etc. just because blue can also do it doesn't mean commander blink needs to be on those colors.

The flavor of this card is amazing! You put a fate counter on something and literally spend white mana to save them or black mana to exile them to the underworld. It had to be WB to pull that off and it's one of my favorite designed cards in the set for these reasons.

Quote from SharkFinnigan

But commander isn't the only thing we should expect. I expect more thermos info and possible spoilers on the heros v monsters duel decks.

I, too, would enjoy more info on thermos.

I was looking through cards and saw Recycle. I thought about a deck that won by casting lots of spells for cheap, and then casting more. And more. Until you find an infinite loop to draw everything i.e. Aluren + Dream Stalker.

I thought about colors and decided that Null Profusion and Recycle seemed good with Damia.

So, any ideas to fill out the rest?

I am really confused by the ability to assess Legendary creatures for EDH if you guys do not like these new generals. So far every one of them has given us something new for a general. Everytime Wizards introduces introduces a new legendary creature means the more and more diverse our playing field can get.

I personally love every one of these guys:

Malek- this guy has libarary manipulation and UR sorcery/instant shinnanigans written all over him. Someone out there is going to do some mean things to other people involving time stretch and this guy.

Ruric Tar - Talk about a big nasty ugly ogre who does something cool? A creature heavy deck with him as the general is going to be a lot of 'ROAR ME SMASH YOU!' fun. And with green you will be able to ramp him out very fast!

Vorel - I do not know if you guys realize this, but there is A LOT of dirty dirty things you can do with this guy in the lead, and you got the best two EDH colors to do it. I will be building this guy and it will have a lot of money and even more dirty looks when I play him and he is know. The cool part... he is piss cheap to cast and you got the ramping color to keep dumping him out.

Teysa - I have heard a lot of people complain about your cost, you super beautiful woman you, and to them I say... you get what you pay for. She is an unblockable, vigiliant beast with 4/4. How much would you pay for that? 3 mana? 4 mana? Her other ability is... swing at me and not only do you lose your guy.. but I gain a dude. Thats easily a 3 or 4 mana enchantment. Do the math folks. If you dont like her cost as the boss.. throw in Black Market and some more ramp. A major plus, she is a completely different General than BW ever has had.

Exava - This chick is going to become one of the loves of our 1 v1 Croissant eating friends. She screams fast and brutal, which is exactly the kind of general they love over on that side of the pond. Not so convinced of her in a melee game, but we need to remember that the folks in Wizards have crowds of people in Limited, Standard, EDH (both), Legacy, Cube and whoever else to please!

I for one am super happy with all the new Legends and have confidence the last ones will be just as cool in a wide variety of ways.


Heheh also I collect legends so every time the release a new one, my collection gets bigger!