Ideas for a newly casual meta

[Phreshdawg]

After months of what was essentially a cold war-like arms race, the competitive edh meta at my lgs finally imploded. The survivors have all agreed to some self imposed deck building restrictions in an effort to make it fun again. We were thinking that limiting ourselves to our respective Commander's block would be a fun way to go about it. Basically, I'm looking for either some imput or potential pitfalls to look out for. Thanks.

Edit: I guess I should post a little more content to spur interest. The first player to do this decided to make Cromat, ala the Invasion block all stars. I was thinking of doing all Masques Block Lin Sivvi, myself.

[Baumeister]

After months of what was essentially a cold war-like arms race, the competitive edh meta at my lgs finally imploded. The survivors have all agreed to some self imposed deck building restrictions in an effort to make it fun again. We were thinking that limiting ourselves to our respective Commander's block would be a fun way to go about it. Basically, I'm looking for either some imput or potential pitfalls to look out for. Thanks.

I've done a variant EDH format that strips all the power cards out of the format. There is a Top 50 list of cards for each color, multicolor, artifacts, and lands on MTG Salvation (I won't link since I'm not entirely sure on forum etiquette for that, but you can just search for it on Google). We banned all of those cards and it makes for a pretty chintzy format with a lack of good tutors and combo pieces. This allowed me to build a multiple-combat-per-turn Gahiji, Honored One that would have never survived in a normal pod. This format is very creature heavy, so just keep that in mind.

I have also done a no-Blue and no-Green (UGless, if you will) format and that can be pretty fun.

[Ace/Homebrew]

Restricting the card pool to a block is probably a good way to limit the power level if members of the group have no restraint. :wink:

Honestly if the try-hards are gone, then there isn't anyone left to initiate a new arms race. The remaining members of the group can probably build without restriction and openly communicate with each other if a deck or card or combo is ruining the fun. Generally speaking, there is a moment the game is 'ruined' which 3 of the 4 players can point to as 'the moment this stopped being fun for me'.

If that moment is identified by the group, and the consensus is that it ruined the game, then the offending player can make the changes necessary.

But Block-EDH will probably also be fun!!

[Mystical_Jackass]

I think that would be a lot of fun. Invasion is actually one of my favorite Blocks in terms of EDH cards, the volvers and multicolored cards with Kickers and Cantrips make for actually some of the strongest cards for this format.

Although I'm not playing as a block restriction, funny enough I did just recently build a Mercenary themed mono black deck with Irini Sengir as my General (I know, first time for every commander!). There is a lot of :g: & :w: in my playgroup, and I themed my deck around Irini and cards like Dystopia to build a pseudo taxing/stax, I'm running things like Loadstone, Nether Void, and a ton of other artifacts/enchants that screw over ppl for casting creatures, then I use things like Quicksilver Amulet/Belbe's Portal/Cryptic Gateway to sorta flash the Mercenaries into play. There's not really a ton of tribal synergy to go about, but Mercs do have a tutor with Cateran Summons to go with Demonic, Diabolic, and friends and there is some cute stuff you can do like get Nameless Inversion and Strongarm Thug.

For me it's not so much the utility shit that makes the game less enjoyable, it's more the constant power creep of newer and newer cards printed the last 6 years in the format. To give a comparison like Heartstone, playing EDH in my group feels like everyone's just dropping Dr. Booms non-stop all game long. What makes it unfun is that players just get too much value off triggers that you really can't afford to run much spot removal-- for example, someone Duplicants a 6/6 and you StP it, or someone casts Grave Titan or Avenger and you StP it... this is mana efficient but the opponent still gets their value and you come out behind in life and CA. It used to be in the past when creatures like Visara were more prevalent, that casting a Terminate on that would put you way ahead, but there's too much value now with every card being a Dr. Boom.

[phonics]

The thing about block decks would be that if you wanted to play another deck, you would basically have to build it completely from scratch.