Good Bad + Ugly article is up. I did have an edit that I forgot to make, though, in regards to Stella so I'll just post my updated version here. Stella Lee, Wild Card There are a few easy points of comparison for Stella - Jori En, Ruin Diver of course, and Rootha, Mercurial Artist is a good stand-in...

Okay I've got an initial decklist up.

It's currently very very curve focused, tons of 1-drops to maximize the odds that we hit a quad-copy on turn 4. Curve is low enough that I'm not even running sol ring because we have so little need for colorless mana, which is kinda wild.

I played her as the commander of my "most expensive deck ever". Can't remember if I ever actually won with it, but I flexed suuuuuuper hard.

Got a bunch of APAC-only promo materials from doing 4 prereleases over the weekend. The pins and tokens are really nice, solid metal.

I have absolutely no idea what to do with this stuff outside of hoarding it and scaring away any dwarves/hobbits who try to claim it. Thoughts?

This is a fun conversation. I'm glad I put the deck together, it's making this a lot more interesting to talk about. TLDR; I don't think defaulting to Pir's Whim everyone for a land is wrong in this list 1) You can somewhat expect to piggyback off their resources so ramping everyone else isn't as wo...

Evo Sage is gated by once/turn barring exploration effects (so a multi-card combo assuming you have extra lands). Any other proliferate is retail 4 which is a fairly extraordinary cost that you can see coming with more than enough time to react. Lemme tell you about a little something you might'a h...

I have no issue with aggro. But I do find myself annoyed with poison because of how pushed proliferate has become.

The card whose price I'm most confused at from the new set so far is Lotus Ring . I can't really see it as much more than a Vulshok Battlegear with some minor upsides. By the time you paid 6 mana and sacked a creature, it's hard to imagine a 3 mana refund is terribly exciting. And even if you can ch...

I'd pay 3 for something that draws me an extra card each turn, if I didn't have better synergies. In principle this could draw you 2 cards per turn, if you have nothing else that generated the monarch. I guess it's alright if you're playing a 2-drop evasive blue commander, but I'd want to be damn su...

Ok, Culling Ritual then, which I see somewhat regularly. The protection creatures help, but that will depend upon sequencing. Interesting, Don't think I've seen it. Maybe once or twice, idk. Not recently. Anyway unless your meta is really weird I think the broader consideration is board wipes in ge...

What happens when they do have the board wipe, or the spot removal for Ghired, and your field/hand is full of 1-drops and a couple french vanilla 4/4's? Yes, aggro is weak to board wipes. But if they don't have it, they die. You can't win them all, but that's not the goal - the goal is to win more ...

Okay, I know I rated Ghired, Mirror of the Wilds ugly on GBU (article's finished, just waiting to hear back on when it'll be put up), but considering how completely insane he looks, he is getting remarkably little hype on EDHrec. Ranked 14th in the set is crazy to me. Still, I figured the decklist w...

I got them both on board once and the resident control player immediately killed Kharn upon reading him. This was less a specific point and more that I just thought you'd find this interaction especially obnoxious since it is a turbo-charged Humble Defector upon which this thread started. I mean, t...

I can agree that I'd rather see commanders like this than some of the broken nonsense like Chulane that usually get pushed as face cards, but I don't think it needed this much complexity to get there. Maybe merge the last to clauses, so instead of the Ring tempting you when an army you control deal...

Ward 3 will generally play the same "hexproof until you really need it to be hexproof" role of discouraging targeting. I disagree. Voja is a great example since it typically comes out turn 3. Even an STP could be uncastable targeting it, let alone Beast Within or other more expensive remo...

%$#%$#% it, just realized that plotted cards can only be cast as sorceries. Why did they do that? It has very little impact on the mechanic in limited/standard/competitive formats that wotc cares about, and then they make the two plot-focused commanders - Lilah, Undefeated Slickshot and Fblthp, Lost...

Nice, I kinda wanted to talk about this guy. I disagree strongly with onering about the ward cost - I think it might be my favorite ward ability they've ever printed. Because it will rarely be trivial to pay, but it will almost always be possible to play, which means (as he says) that your opponents...

Again, super cool that you did this. At a certain point it seems kinda silly to argue for so long rather than just playing the damn thing xD Advantages of a big collection. 1 Victory Chimes - same as spectral searchlight This untaps every turn so you can give people mana on their main phase. If the...

I'm more confused how ya'll can recognize cards by their arts, I'm like 30% at best :D Pokken outing himself as a casual xD In fairness I do sometimes not recognise new cards because of all the alternate arts. But I think I can identify the approximate mechanics for like 80%+ of cards by at least o...

Holy cow Obeka, Splitter of Seconds is exploding on EDHrec. Triple the second most popular commander in the set.

NZB2323 i was mostly kidding, but I do think it's a good card if you can afford a colourless land and are playing control. Being able to tutor a utility land into play plus a pretty good effect on the body for 2 is kinda insane. Deserts are a bit limited ofc but I don't think it's a crazy impositio...

@CommanderMaster999 Spelljack and Smirking Spelljacker .

@NZB2323 are you not maining Scavenger Grounds in every deck?

Busted in limited, mediocre in commander, and nobody is left happy.

sand scout is one hell of an upgrade on Knight of the White Orchid . I guess it does put the land into play tapped, but still. embrace the unknown is pretty spicy for a new retrace spell. Retrace is a really strong mechanic with basically no good cards. This might be the best one? Thunderclap Drake...

@Chromaticus i don't want to detract from SP as the best enrage enabler. Then it just becomes another enrage deck which isn't particularly interesting.

Granted Wayta does detract herself somewhat, but SP still scales a lot further.