Thanks. I'd consider myself an expert if I was still actively playing the deck. On Telepathy, I played it for entertainment value and because my meta was full of blue combo decks. Knowing what all your opponents are capable of doing for only 1 mana is pretty powerful in that kind of situation. While Future Sight is good, Recurring Insight is just downright insane if it resolves - I have drawn 12-14 cards between the initial cast and the rebound. Only Ad Nauseam has more draw power. Honestly, the deck makes so much mana that the 5-6 margin isn't usually too much of a problem. Keep in mind that Insight (like Necro) isn't a card that wins you the game that turn - it sets up an almost sure win the following turn.Originally Posted by Killane
Lord of the Chalice
Stompy Discord: https://discord.gg/6cesvkz
Oona list is about 85/99 the same as mine, so I highly recommend it. I've actually found the deck to be somewhat fragile, but YMMV. I'd like to point out that if you replace a land with Magosi, the Waterveil, you have an infinite turns combo with Rings of Brighthearth and Candelabra of Tawnos.
Were I crushing pods at GenCon, I'd run my ramp into Tooth and Nail Damia deck. It's powerful, resilient and ends games fast. My Edric deck is probably stronger, but it takes forever to kill people as you have to chain a bunch of extra turns to win. If you really want to make people miserable to get +5% chance of victory, it's a better choice.
I can provide deckbox.org links to some of my more killer decks if people are interested.
"Casual sex, NO Touching/Licking/Sucking/Groping/Fondling/Riding/Tickling/Binding/Quitters/Italians. Play Fast, Be Polite, Have Fun."
Sure as hell sounds like fun.
I've recently come to a higher-power playgroup and my Edric landwalker/infinite turns deck needs a re-tool and i'm tired of Sharuum for the lockout kills. please post!
There's also a local player with a pretty sick Damia infi-mana pile (prophet/awakening/seedborn/kruphix/drana/geth/nemesis wave) whose list i'll try and get.
@warfordium on twitter.
What do you use as T&N targets?
Also, this isn't really for the pick-up pods which I expect are truly the wild wild west since the EV is fairly high for the time invested. I'm building this for one of their "Commander Cabana" events, which unless I'm mistaken is a multi-round kind of deal. I'm hopeful that at least some of the people in the event actually want to play a real game instead of seeing who can masturbate their deck the fastest, which is why I'm semi-reluctant to just go for broke. Besides, combo bores the shit out of me and this is supposed to be a fun weekend.
Deckbox links
https://deckbox.org/sets/974196 Edric
https://deckbox.org/sets/974241 Damia
https://deckbox.org/sets/974218 Animar
https://deckbox.org/sets/974313 Oona
Mike and Trike
"Casual sex, NO Touching/Licking/Sucking/Groping/Fondling/Riding/Tickling/Binding/Quitters/Italians. Play Fast, Be Polite, Have Fun."
Sure as hell sounds like fun.
So this happened, right?
I believe you are obligated to say how it went.
Fair enough. Here's a quick report:So this happened, right?
I believe you are obligated to say how it went.
I ended up caving to my inner casual and taking a more tuned version of my Dragonlord Silumgar deck which is posted elsewhere on this forum (I think). My reasoning was the deck adapts fairly well to the other decks at the table while also providing me with a fair bit of control over the game. I didn't want to get into some sort of arms race and go full combo, either.
The Judge informs us that since EDH is casual and this event isn't sanctioned, he's not going to assign seating. He also says that we are more than welcome to change decks between rounds, and I immediately regret bringing only one with me to the event. Would have been nice if that was in the event description, since had I known I could have brought something more powerful for subsequent rounds if needed.
I end up sitting down with a group of three gentlemen who appear to be friends for Round 1. The table is Silumgar vs. Isperia, Supreme Judge, Oros the Avenger and Mogis, God of Slaughter. The game proceeds at a reasonable pace with everyone taking a fair bit of damage from Mogis. Meanwhile, I'm unable to draw a black mana source for an absurd amount of turns. Thankfully, the other three players seem content to interact with each other and leave me alone as I haven't done anything particularly relevant. I finally draw a Capsize, and use it to bounce a Turn 12 Consecrated Sphinx played by the Isperia player (with buyback) as my first relevant action in the entire game. Everyone agrees that this was a reasonable play, even the guy who cast the Sphinx. One second later, the Oros player kills me with Oros wearing a Sword of Fire and Ice and a Loxodon Warhammer by giving it double strike using Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion. His reasoning? Capsize with buyback is scary. Go figure. Overall though, this was a good game and I was feeling fairly hopeful for the rest of the event.
Round 2 rolls around, and I end up at a pod of three. It's Silumgar vs. Derevi and Titania, Protector of Argoth. Once I see Derevi, I start to wonder if maybe my good feelings about the event were premature. I get off to a fairly solid start, and Derevi is playing some "bad" cards, so I have no issues there, either. Then it's Titania's turn. I let a Crop Rotation resolve (mistake), and he grabs Gaea's Cradle. Then he casts Wood Elemental, sacrificing everything except the Cradle to make 6 elementals. Then he casts Concordant Crossroads, which met my Swan Song. I hope to peel a wrath effect and don't get there. Meanwhile, the Titania guy is cackling because he "couldn't believe he won with Wood Elemental". Seems to me like that was the whole purpose of running it with the Concordant Crossroads and all...but hey, what do I know?
Round 3 was unfortunately exactly what I feared going into this event. I'm in the double losers bracket, facing Arcum Dagson, Saffi Eriksdotter, and Rune-Tail. I spent my early turns digging out a Strip Mine for the Saffi player's Boseiju so that I could counter the inevitable entwined Tooth and Nail, and trying to keep Arcum in check. Saffi replaced the Boseiju with Dragonlord Dromoka, which met Damnation. Apparently sick of my shit, he tutored for Iona and named blue...locking out half of the table. From there, I was forced to play draw-go for the next 15 minutes while he assembled his combo and swept the table. So yeah, that was a good game.
Props:
My round 1 opponents for keeping things fun despite the rest of the room.
The Arcum Dagson player who commiserated with me once we were both locked out of the game.
Damnation, for saving my bacon if only temporarily.
The Derevi player for not playing "that Derevi deck".
Slops:
The tournament organizer, for not bothering to point out that deck switching was allowed between rounds prior to the event.
Iona playing guy, for taking the boring and predictable way out and otherwise preventing two people from actually playing the game.
"I can't believe I won with Wood Elemental" guy, for acting like the card didn't do exactly what he intended it to do when he cast it.
Thanks.
What are your take-aways knowing what you know now?
What would you play or bring to another similar event?
How did your friends do?
It seems the room was fairly split between "busted" and "fair" decks, which is kind of what I expected. The game next to us Round 1 involved a turn 2 Consecrated Sphinx, which the 4 of us agreed was fairly stupid. Similarly, there was a Zur deck next to us Round 2 that swept the table on turn 3. Everyone at that table went on to play another game immediately thereafter, minus the Zur player. Both the Derevi deck and Rune-Tail deck I saw were fairly casual, and there were definitely some other more causal decks there that I noticed in my downtime.Thanks.
What are your take-aways knowing what you know now?
What would you play or bring to another similar event?
How did your friends do?
Given all of that, it seems like if your goal is to win points for fabulous prizes, you should probably bring your bleeding edge deck. If you couldn't care less about prizes and just want to play three rounds of EDH vs. some random strangers, you should be prepared to deal with the bleeding edge guy long enough to get a game in.
If I had to play it all over again, I'd build a less casual control deck (if that makes any sense). The problem I was having is that clone effects are great unless the only creature you could conceivably clone is the one that is currently winning its caster the game. Similarly, counter magic is fine...but all you're really doing is shifting the win one seat to the left. It seems to me that the "best" deck for an event like this would leverage things like Gaddock Teeg or Cursed Totem since they're broad in application and effective regardless of what your opponent brought to the table. That said, it's a fine line between staying alive long enough to actually play while also not being "that guy" everyone talks about in their report.
As for how my friends did - I'm the only magic player in the group of people I went to GenCon with. They apparently had a great time checking out some other games while I was playing EDH.
I don't know, dude. Wood Elemental is widely regarded as one of the worst cards in Magic. I'd be pretty psyched if I won a game with it. Isn't what most people want out of EDH to do cool things with really bad cards?
"Casual sex, NO Touching/Licking/Sucking/Groping/Fondling/Riding/Tickling/Binding/Quitters/Italians. Play Fast, Be Polite, Have Fun."
Sure as hell sounds like fun.
Yes, Wood Elemental is a bad card that no one in their right mind would play. Unless of course your commander is Titania, Protector of Argoth, and casting Wood Elemental nets you a 5/3 elemental token for each forest you eat, plus the X/X elemental itself. It's no different from any other two card combo draw, regardless of how bad the individual components are on their own, and especially because half of the combo sits in your command zone for the entire game. Pestermite is a terrible EDH card too, but there's no one out there running the humblebrags when they Kiki-Mite the table out.
Unfortunately there is a lack of context here because your sample size against the opponent is 1...
Based on his reaction, I'm led to assume he had this terrible card in his deck for a while and it was mediocre or never seen in all his prior games. Realistically, in a 4-man pod (I realize this was a 3-pod), playing Wood Elemental (which isn't a treefolk? WTF?) without some haste-enabler is super risky. If he was playing tighter, he'd only have sac'd 2 or 3 Forests, but he had the Concordant Crossroads to, so YOLO I guess.
Generally if your 'combo' doesn't make an infinite number of tokens, and requires you to attack to win, it's pretty fair. Especially in a tournament setting.
EDIT - Hah! Found this in the discussion on the Gatherer page:
Let's put it this way... if there was a sorcery spell that read "Destroy X target Forests an opponent controls. Put an X/X Elemental green token creature into play under that player's control" it would be playable.
Fun fact: when my friend was building a Titania deck, I told him to put Wood Elemental into it for exactly the reason the "I can't believe I won with Wood Elemental" guy did it: you can kill people with one of the worst cards in the game while cackling gleefully about it. Wood Elemental is super legit.
That said, if I was playing against a bunch of high-powered deck with Titania, I'd be pretty shocked if my Wood Elemental wombination combination went the distance too. I would have fully expected to be dead to a combo or a Wrath or something and would have just run that out for funsies.
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