Commander 2013 discussion

[Star|Scream]

2/10 would not buy.

[TsumiBand]

To be fair, in the last year we did just get twenty new two-color generals, plus five more in Theros. There's also the fact that the shards had more legendary support prior to this Commander release than the wedges did at the time - or, indeed, than some of the enemy two-color combinations did (like UG).

That said, I, too, was hoping for more new legendary creatures.

I figured that was part of the logic. There are a bunch of old, newer and new Shard-colored Commanders - doing a cycle of Shard generals is cool with me, but honestly after a while some lists just get to looking like "good stuff in the following colors" that more generals is a little uninteresting. Unless you're referring to the lack of supporting legendaries like Nin the Pain Artist and things like that. Eh.

[Barook]

http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazin...g/daily/ld/269

This article is about how they plant cards for Eternal in the Commander sets and how Unexpectedly Abscent is one of them.

Fun fact: Wizards considers Edric, Spymaster of Trest as impactful on Legacy as Flusterstorm and Scavenging Ooze.

[Goaswerfraiejen]

Toxic Deluge does indeed look very promosing. Depending on the composition of the deck that it is in, it can be a one-sided sweeper against goblins, merfolk (especially with the new mini-progenitus), D&T, and BUG or cascade variants that don't run high goyf/tombstalker (for BUG) counts. I am just not sure yet what deck wants this card.

Yeah, I think it's something of a sleeper. TBH, I'd even pay 15 to get rid of an Emrakul.

[dontbiteitholmes]

Unexpectedly Absent is sick. It has a powerful effect and a surprising amount of versatility. I can think of a lot of interesting interactions where you could get tricky with this guy.

Examples, oh you Brainstorm to fix Delver, how bout I put that Tarmogoyf back on top for you.
You Siezed my Batterskull I fetched off SFM early game? I'll just chump your dude then put him back on top before damage and tutor up a Jitte later.
Hey you're in topdeck mode and need to find an out? How about I put your worst permanent on top of your library instead!
You miss a 3rd land drop. EOT put your 3 drop on top of your library and Wasteland you.

Then of course late game you can just eot bury problems a little deeper then the game is likely to last or at least until you have time to draw answers.

I can think of a lot of corner cases where you could totally blow someone out with this. IMO much better than the Vindicate slot if UWb Blade ever comes back. It's interesting that it can be used offensively, defensively, as removal, as a combat trick, as ghetto bounce, as tempo, or to time walk potential top-deck outs, so many uses. I think it's a card not a lot of people are going to "get" but if the format is slow enough this guy is going to shine.
Very scary as a one of, blowout potential relevant.

Too bad Deadguy never really was a deck, it would have loved this guy.

Also can I say how much I LOVE that this is WWX and not WBX or UWX or 1WX or some other too easy to splash bullshit! It's like WOTC read my diary.

[apple713]

Unexpectedly Absent is sick. It has a powerful effect and a surprising amount of versatility. I can think of a lot of interesting interactions where you could get tricky with this guy.

Examples, oh you Brainstorm to fix Delver, how bout I put that Tarmogoyf back on top for you.
You Siezed my Batterskull I fetched off SFM early game? I'll just chump your dude then put him back on top before damage and tutor up a Jitte later.
Hey you're in topdeck mode and need to find an out? How about I put your worst permanent on top of your library instead!
You miss a 3rd land drop. EOT put your 3 drop on top of your library and Wasteland you.

Then of course late game you can just eot bury problems a little deeper then the game is likely to last or at least until you have time to draw answers.

I can think of a lot of corner cases where you could totally blow someone out with this. IMO much better than the Vindicate slot if UWb Blade ever comes back. It's interesting that it can be used offensively, defensively, as removal, as a combat trick, as ghetto bounce, as tempo, or to time walk potential top-deck outs, so many uses. I think it's a card not a lot of people are going to "get" but if the format is slow enough this guy is going to shine.
Very scary as a one of, blowout potential relevant.

Too bad Deadguy never really was a deck, it would have loved this guy.

Also can I say how much I LOVE that this is WWX and not WBX or UWX or 1WX or some other too easy to splash bullshit! It's like WOTC read my diary.

how about, in response to your fetch land, bye bye permanent....

[bruizar]

Lol, that article on printing for eternal seems like total backwards rationale. I'm pretty sure they didn't print Baleful Strix for eternal because there was simply no home for it unless you considered UB Tezzeret a deck, which at the time totally wasn't. At that stage it was still called Bridgewalker as far as I know. Sam Stoddard is touting his horn for RND's great design skill, when in fact, they have admitted to not even considering eternal formats when designing new sets.

This is just a PR stunt to keep the eternal players happy and thinking that RND gives attention to eternal formats (other than modern).

I also highly doubt how ubiquitous Unexpectedly Absent is going to be. It is not a Submerge, because Submerge is sided in when it is FREE. Unexpectedly Absent costs WW which limits it either to Miracles, Death 'n Taxes or maybe, Esper (if it werent for vindicate). In all reality I see this card in Miracles as a 1-off in the maindeck, and 1 in the sideboard. These decks are already chock full of good cards, so there simply isn't much place for cards like this.

It seems like mono-white and UW control's version of abrupt decay, but with more utility and more constraints. Especially since Abrupt Decay is in the same colors as Deathrite Shaman, which requires a heavy fetch manabase to operate and thus gives Unexpectedly Absent more applications against Abrupt Decay/Deathrite Shaman decks. At the same time Abrupt Decay's can't be countered clause is great against the decks that use Unexpectedly Absent, since those will either be DNT (Lots of targets) or UW control / miracles / Counterbalance (Strong against permission).

This card will start at $10, then get hyped up by mtgthesource players to $20, then fall back down. Finally, it will be reprinted as a judge foil or a coreset foil, and the old version will be worthless. BTW this also happened with the planeswalkers hype. Every new planeswalker was thought to be the next Jace and the price of most of them came down hard. The same thing is happening to sets like Commander and Planechase now. Just because there were eternal cards in the previous ones, doesn't mean there will be eternal cards in the next one. Wizards is trying to sell you on the idea that this is true, but they only do so because they want to sell packs to eternal players too. Don't be a fool and judge cards on their merit, not on historical phenomena.



As far as Etched Merfolk goes, we already had Etched Champion. While that card certainly is fine in a deck where an over-costed 2/2 can be played with mana ramp and equipped with insane artifacts like cranial plating, merfolks dont have access to those type of things. Sure, Aether Vial is al nice and cool, but attacking with a 3/1 on turn 5 isn't exactly pushing the edge of competitiveness. Also, I would probably prefer to drop a lord with aether vial on turn 4 that gives me an IMMEDIATE impact on my opponents life total. Perhaps as a sideboard card against Tarmogoyfs and no Islands it could be used, but I'd rather just rely on terraforming a land with spreading seas and walking my lords all over the place, or submerging that goyf or something. The only aspect that I do like is that it doesn't suffer from the usual problem of merfolks, which is dealing with the lords before they can get big (punishing fires, lightning bolts, swords to plowshares). The problem though, is that this card isn't a lord itself. If it was, I would totally love the card. If you are still considering to get this card, ask yourself if you think you can wait until turn 5 in a format where emrakul and ad nauseam make fishburgers out of your deck.

[Final Fortune]

The problem with Toxic Deluge is that there's not actually a lot of good control-y lifegain in black to make up the difference again. You could go white but I'm not sure at that point that it's better than Terminus or Supreme Verdict.

It's an obvious replacement for Damnation in that U/b 8 Planeswalker deck

[TsumiBand]

Lol, that article on printing for eternal seems like total backwards rationale. I'm pretty sure they didn't print Baleful Strix for eternal because there was simply no home for it unless you considered UB Tezzeret a deck, which at the time totally wasn't. At that stage it was still called Bridgewalker as far as I know. Sam Stoddard is touting his horn for RND's great design skill, when in fact, they have admitted to not even considering eternal formats when designing new sets.

This is just a PR stunt to keep the eternal players happy and thinking that RND gives attention to eternal formats (other than modern).

I also highly doubt how ubiquitous Unexpectedly Absent is going to be. It is not a Submerge, because Submerge is sided in when it is FREE. Unexpectedly Absent costs WW which limits it either to Miracles, Death 'n Taxes or maybe, Esper (if it werent for vindicate). In all reality I see this card in Miracles as a 1-off in the maindeck, and 1 in the sideboard. These decks are already chock full of good cards, so there simply isn't much place for cards like this.

It seems like mono-white and UW control's version of abrupt decay, but with more utility and more constraints. Especially since Abrupt Decay is in the same colors as Deathrite Shaman, which requires a heavy fetch manabase to operate and thus gives Unexpectedly Absent more applications against Abrupt Decay/Deathrite Shaman decks. At the same time Abrupt Decay's can't be countered clause is great against the decks that use Unexpectedly Absent, since those will either be DNT (Lots of targets) or UW control / miracles / Counterbalance (Strong against permission).

This card will start at $10, then get hyped up by mtgthesource players to $20, then fall back down. Finally, it will be reprinted as a judge foil or a coreset foil, and the old version will be worthless. BTW this also happened with the planeswalkers hype. Every new planeswalker was thought to be the next Jace and the price of most of them came down hard. The same thing is happening to sets like Commander and Planechase now. Just because there were eternal cards in the previous ones, doesn't mean there will be eternal cards in the next one. Wizards is trying to sell you on the idea that this is true, but they only do so because they want to sell packs to eternal players too. Don't be a fool and judge cards on their merit, not on historical phenomena.



As far as Etched Merfolk goes, we already had Etched Champion. While that card certainly is fine in a deck where an over-costed 2/2 can be played with mana ramp and equipped with insane artifacts like cranial plating, merfolks dont have access to those type of things. Sure, Aether Vial is al nice and cool, but attacking with a 3/1 on turn 5 isn't exactly pushing the edge of competitiveness. Also, I would probably prefer to drop a lord with aether vial on turn 4 that gives me an IMMEDIATE impact on my opponents life total. Perhaps as a sideboard card against Tarmogoyfs and no Islands it could be used, but I'd rather just rely on terraforming a land with spreading seas and walking my lords all over the place, or submerging that goyf or something. The only aspect that I do like is that it doesn't suffer from the usual problem of merfolks, which is dealing with the lords before they can get big (punishing fires, lightning bolts, swords to plowshares). The problem though, is that this card isn't a lord itself. If it was, I would totally love the card. If you are still considering to get this card, ask yourself if you think you can wait until turn 5 in a format where emrakul and ad nauseam make fishburgers out of your deck.

I'd believe that they design for Eternal in EDH product considering some of the things that came out of the last Commander set. The EDH product is never Standard or Modern legal, so the bar is necessarily higher; if they just poop out a bunch of Modern schlock the whole product will just look like overcosted jank next to even half-decent EDH decks. Flusterstorm is a pretty obvious plant; I think Baleful Strix was a decent try but didn't really catch because it's a bit homeless; Chaos Warp is decent-not-broken and is kind of not-very-Red, but it is another clearly planted card since it is just a 1v1 card to begin with.

It's kind of like the same problem with Legacy or Eternal in general; really if we're playing to win we're playing the biggest legal fuck-ups that they ever printed. It's hard to bring yourself to make mistakes when you feel like you know what you're doing, even if you're trying to be unintentional. I liken it to knowing how to play an instrument -- you've been at it for like 15+ years or whatever, and then someone says "now act like you have no idea how to play", and you find that if you think about it, you can't really accidentally play something nearly as shitty as you did 15 years ago, but if you don't think about it and try to just let your hand fall in random places on your instrument your muscle memory goes "Aha fucker, that's secretly a Cmaj9 I made you play right now. you thought i'd let you down after all these years?" So new "for Eternal" cards tend to be done with a little too much 'on-purpose' design; it isn't a bunch of young guys inventing a game, it's people who've got 20 years of theory to draw from and probably couldn't let themselves print anything remotely like the old stuff, even if they wanted to.

The Etched Merfolk/Etched Champion comparison is a near-miss, IMO - to split hairs, for one thing Etched Champion's protection is conditional whereas you can drop True-Name into a ton of Blue-heavy decks and get the same 3/1 with pro-player - basically it's free to show up wherever it wants to, Merfolk, UW Stoneblade, fuckin Blouses bitches, and so on. Additionally Etched Champion is 'only' protection from all colors; if one had a colorless response to that creature they could play it, whereas with True-Name Nemesis, one can't even do that because it has protection from everything in your deck regardless of what it is. I can't think of too many cromulent colorless 'spells' that aren't just like artifacts that blow up CMC X stuff like Engineered Explosives or whatever, but it wouldn't care either way.

I really think that it's not a broken card it's just in the wrong color. It will be a bitch to take out in a Merfolk deck though; I mean basically it's surrounded by Lords and shit so any -X stuff won't scale well, or "sac a creature" spells will just eat the other things in play - it's Supreme Verdict or nothing.

Anyway, the WW spell should see a strong resurgence of Angel Stompy, because fuck 'em. Just fuck 'em. Turn 2 I will flip my Exalted Angel with Mother of Runes on standby, and suckers will be all "Tombstalker I choose yoooou" and I be like untap and "so that guy costs a bunch next turn, right?" and they'll punch me in the breakfast for being an asshole and I will probably have to drop from the tournament because I'm pants in a fight

[Finn]

I find it interesting that Sam Stoddard referred to Legacy as the "most popular eternal format". If that is so, why are there three to four times as many Modern GPs?

[Barook]

I find it interesting that Sam Stoddard referred to Legacy as the "most popular eternal format". If that is so, why are there three to four times as many Modern GPs?

Because Legacy doesn't make them enough money.

[Megadeus]

I find it interesting that Sam Stoddard referred to Legacy as the "most popular eternal format". If that is so, why are there three to four times as many Modern GPs?

Because modern by definition is not an eternal format

[ivanpei]

Unexpectedly absent costs too much mana for that sort of effect. Memory lapse type cards are best in tempo decks and Tempo can't pay WW to deal with a permanent. Most legacy permanents are 3 to cast and below so unexpectedly absent will not gain you that much tempo. Also white has some of the best anti everything cards such as Dsphere and Oring. That's probably what limits Unexpectedly Absent. I would much rather have Venser, Dsphere or Oring because this format has a ton of Show and Tell. I think Unexpectedly absent will see some play, maybe a 2 off in some sort of Tempo list. WW is really too much for a lot of decks, you really need to be heavy white to use it.

[bruizar]

I know this is a commander thread, but if you're looking for a nice new white card, I'd look at Theros' Gift of Immortality over Unexpectedly Absent. Yeah, I'm so confident that that card is good that I'm willing to speculate on a white aura.

[AngryTroll]

It looks like the value cards are True-Name Nemesis and Baleful Strix in the UBR deck, Unexpectedly Absent in the UWG deck, and Toxic Deluge in the UWB deck. Each deck has a Command Tower and a Sol Ring. Am I missing anything?

It's kind of frustrating that the cards that are interesting for Legacy are in one deck each instead of multiple decks. Wouldn't True-Name Nemesis be perfect in the UWG Twiddle deck?

[Tylert]

It looks like the value cards are True-Name Nemesis and Baleful Strix in the UBR deck, Unexpectedly Absent in the UWG deck, and Toxic Deluge in the UWB deck. Each deck has a Command Tower and a Sol Ring. Am I missing anything?

It's kind of frustrating that the cards that are interesting for Legacy are in one deck each instead of multiple decks. Wouldn't True-Name Nemesis be perfect in the UWG Twiddle deck?

I guess they planned it. Split the value cards in all decks, so you have to buy all of those :)

[CalebD]

Did a set review with my thoughts and some lists:

http://www.channelfireball.com/artic...13-set-review/

[Kayradis]

Good review.
Loved the troll factor with Opal-whatever-its-called.

[lyracian]

Did a set review with my thoughts and some lists:

Nice read. Surprised to see you did not put Nemesis into Team America though.

[TsumiBand]

I feel like Toxic Deluge deserves a slightly bigger level of enthusiasm, since it's probably the most playable 3-mana Wrath in Legacy that isn't beholden to creature types or colors or indestructible nonsense.

Otherwise I like it.