[Off-Topic] Community Chat Thread

[toctheyounger]

Lol, I'm actually just more confused now. When we're comparing good to bad commander design, are we saying bad design in terms of being too weak or uninteresting (i.e. Zalto, Fire Giant Duke) or bad design in terms of being too easy to go off the rails (i.e. Golos, Tireless Pilgrim)?

To me its not necessarily where it falls on that spectrum. A good design to me allows variance in play styles, has strong synergies that aren't immediately busted and aren't pseudo-flavor text, and leads to enjoyable and fun pkay patterns. Its not an easy mark to hit tbh.

A slightly biased case in point is Varina, Lich Queen. I know you despise tribal so let's not go there, but in every other way its a strong but well balanced card for the format that's capable of playing in a variety of ways and at a variety of power levels.

Honestly I find the 'good vs bad design' discussion a little weird. Often it just devolves into 'can this card go off and how quickly' or 'not strong enough, why would you run this' and nothing between. It just feels like there's often a gap between what designers think a good design is and what your average player thinks a good design is, especially if they're just wanting the most value they can get in the 100. Its hardly a neutral footing to be assessing cards from.

Objective assessments of cards, especially in this format, is tough. Plus, if we're talking about content creation, a hot take is most likely going to draw more clicks than an objective evaluation of a card's quality based on some set of metrics.

Example:
"Toxrill is Breaking EDH and the RC is Doing NOTHING! (More at 11)" vs. "A Scientific Approach to Determination of Card Quality: Determining the Metrics, Part IV"

Hyperbole aside, I'm willing to bet more people side with sensationalist over rationalist. Especially on the internet.

You're probably not wrong, click bait sells. Its why 8m fairly selective with what content im interested in at all. Mitch from CQ for example has the click bait titles down to an art and I just constantly find myself disappointed in his brewing and opinion content. His takes aare mostly valid, but that sort of formatting towards click bait just annoys me.

[DirkGently]

Lol I despise Feather. The premise is strong and from what I've seen if she goes unheeded she can put the table on a very short clock, but she does precisely one thing and nothing else. I get the Varina thing and while it does look strong there are a few hoops at least to jump through in terms of making her deck really hum. So, different strokes for different folks I guess.

I guess this just goes to show card design can't be everything to everyone.

I don't think that's quite fair. There are a few different places to focus on - you can use her to generate value via cantrips and go slower, or focus more on aggression with pumps. You can plan to use her alone as the target, or include stuff like heroic dudes or other spellslinger synergies.

At the very least, it's at least something different and relatively unique. Not a lot of payoffs for pump spells in this format.

[toctheyounger]

Lol I despise Feather. The premise is strong and from what I've seen if she goes unheeded she can put the table on a very short clock, but she does precisely one thing and nothing else. I get the Varina thing and while it does look strong there are a few hoops at least to jump through in terms of making her deck really hum. So, different strokes for different folks I guess.

I guess this just goes to show card design can't be everything to everyone.

I don't think that's quite fair. There are a few different places to focus on - you can use her to generate value via cantrips and go slower, or focus more on aggression with pumps. You can plan to use her alone as the target, or include stuff like heroic dudes or other spellslinger synergies.

At the very least, it's at least something different and relatively unique. Not a lot of payoffs for pump spells in this format.

I guess you're right. Most of what I've seen from Feather is pretty one dimensional so its hard to see past that.

It is pretty interesting design space so thats cool, and especially in colors that desperately need to do something other than combat matters.

[BeneTleilax]

All-in Feather voltron is annoying for much the same reason most all-in aggro decks are annoying. They either keel over to early removal or they steamroll the table, in the process incentivizing everyone else to lower their curves and play faster. That said, control Feather using cantrips, weird chaff answers and a zillion different protection effects to grind out a win is quite fun, as is flicker Feather and general spellslinger/heroic Feather. It's incremental value over time defended by obscure spot removal and clever stack use, what's not to love?

Varina is fine. I got a bit tired of her slowly shifting towards looping mass-reanimation or typeline-goodstuff, but she builds pretty slow for a tribal deck and incentivizes value over time rather than explosive win-or-suck bursts of card draw. Even the mass-reanimation shenanigans tend to culminate in a finite and combat-based win. She's in the "gets boring to play, but fun to play against" bucket for me, and honestly, that's what I expect of most generals.

[DirkGently]

Maybe a less controversial pick for "good design" would be an old favorite of mine, Glissa, the Traitor. Two colors = best imo, she has an interesting trigger condition that depends on enemies so it's different every game, and the result that can be exploited in a lot of different ways, from tiny stuff like baubles up to bigger stuff like o-stone.
Because the trigger and result aren't directly related, and especially with the trigger itself being enemy-dependent, deciding on a balance is tricky. You can run a ton of artifacts and count on your opponents to have creatures dying on their own, or run a bunch of removal and risk that you'll miss out on free value from not having enough recursion. You've also gotta decide if you're going to fuel your grave with dredge-y stuff, or put it into graveyard from play by using artifacts that sac themselves. Anyway, just a lot of good complexity to get the brain juices flowing, in multiple different ways. Plus she's a solid brawler that plays a good offensive and great defensive game.

On the GoT rewatch front, I forgot how nothing interesting happens in season 5. And it's taken me until the third viewing to notice, but now it's driving me crazy - Westeros has exactly 2 songs - "the Rains of Castamere" and "the Bear and the Maiden Fair". Whenever someone is singing a song or playing a song, it's always one of those two. You'd think they could have at least pulled some actual medieval songs in, just to fill the roster in a bit.

On the plus side, the plot summaries on the site I'm watching them on are brilliant. The season 5 plot summary is "Game Of Thrones Season 5 revolves around the war usurping the throne, the battles and conspiracy struggling for power, the erotic games are used for political purposes, or myth the medieval fire dragon..."

Oh also:

Secret Lair: the Astrology Lands

ew.

[Rumpy5897]

When we're comparing good to bad commander design, are we saying bad design in terms of being too weak or uninteresting (i.e. Zalto, Fire Giant Duke) or bad design in terms of being too easy to go off the rails (i.e. Golos, Tireless Pilgrim)?

The latter. I'm not saying Satoru is the same level as Golos, but you get both ramp (in the form of the ninjutsu discount on fatties) and card advantage (in the form of the free Anticipate on your first ninjutsu each turn). Satoru holds your hand and smooths out the game for you as you play your Dimir fatties, technically with some slight modularity due to the ninjutsu twist. The deck is not the stupidest thing in the format, but the fact that bodying someone with Blightsteel Colossus on turn 3-4 does not raise too many eyebrows is a pretty good testament to the level of power we're currently operating at. Satoru just got on my nerves as that's both the training wheels on at once.

I tend to prefer legends which do something interesting that is tangential to the strategy. Daxos sits and watches the enchantments get cast, and uses that to churn out a vanilla beef army. Or even a recent example - Saryth juices up tramplers, incentivises risky nonstandard ramp, and has some degree of shielding to mess with spot removal.

Feather is a complicated legend, as that ability looks wicked cool. Turning spells into activated abilities, how awesome is that? But it's ultimately card advantage, a rather soul-crushing kind at that. Once somebody tries to spot remove something and gets their efforts blanked, and the protection spell returns to hand, their spirit gets broken and they are unlikely to try again. Feather hasn't seen any spot removal pointed at anything of hers in my group since that one time a stack war erupted over Mirrorwing Dragon over a year ago.

Does the fact I enjoy Feather but dislike Satoru make me a hypocrite? Possibly. The fact Saryth got made recently means not everything is training wheels, but there are quite a lot of hand-holding legends getting pumped out these days.

[DirkGently]

The latter. I'm not saying Satoru is the same level as Golos, but you get both ramp (in the form of the ninjutsu discount on fatties) and card advantage (in the form of the free Anticipate on your first ninjutsu each turn).

Gotcha, I'm also not a fan of Satoru, although for slightly different reasons - every time they print a commander that lets you cast a spell for free or put a permanent into play, with no restrictions...obviously people are going to gravitate to the biggest stuff over and over. Golos, Esika, that jeskai 5c dude whose name escapes me, etc. Having a bunch of different commanders ultimately pay off in the exact same way - putting the same big fat fatties into play - is real boring imo. I'd love to see Satoru with some sort of incentive to play anything besides the biggest fattest fatties as I don't think the design is necessarily broken powerful, but the stuff it incentivizes is just boring.

[Janky_as_heck]

Following the heels of conversation about the community being more involved, whenever we don't have am interview guest for wnxs, we like to fill time by having magic players talk about their deck on a segment called news brews. Would anyone like to spend ten or fifteen minutes chatting about their babies in the next few days?

[materpillar]

Following the heels of conversation about the community being more involved, whenever we don't have am interview guest for wnxs, we like to fill time by having magic players talk about their deck on a segment called news brews. Would anyone like to spend ten or fifteen minutes chatting about their babies in the next few days?

I love boring people by blabbing about the random synergies and dumb cards in my decks. XD

[Janky_as_heck]

Following the heels of conversation about the community being more involved, whenever we don't have am interview guest for wnxs, we like to fill time by having magic players talk about their deck on a segment called news brews. Would anyone like to spend ten or fifteen minutes chatting about their babies in the next few days?

I love boring people by blabbing about the random synergies and dumb cards in my decks. XD

Let me dm you to set up a time

[wildfire393]

Just noticed the "MTGNexus is streaming live" thing up the top - might be my new comp not having adblock installed yet lol.

Kinda disappointed to not see familiar names playing - I recognize wildfire but he's more of a mod and posts pretty rarely.

Who would you like to see play?

Well I'm not big on watching streamed mtg tbh (weirdly I like watching Hearthstone), but it'd be interesting to see people who post a lot on here play. Legend, 3drinks, TheAmericanSpirit, ISBPathfinder, lyonhaert, TheGildedGoose, SocorroTortoise, hyalopterouslemur, toctheyounger, Dunharrow, cryogen, onering, materpillar, tstorm823, Yatsufusa, pokken, hermes_, benjameenbear, kirkusjones, Hawk...other people I'm probably forgetting...I'm just scrolling through random threads looking for names I see a lot...so don't get upset if I didn't mention you please....pretty much anybody who's done at least a couple hundred posts in the commander section (outside of those that only post on particular decklists since I don't really look at those).

Lyonhaert is a regular participant. Cryogen was actually the one who started the stream, but he has basically retired from the game and so I took over running it. If anyone wants to get in on the action, you're all welcome to shoot me a PM, we can get you added to the list of people we draw from. Currently, it's mostly been some combination of me, JankyAsHeck, RabidVacin, Lyonhaert, Kaburi, Rumpy, and Segrus. But we're happy to mix it up

See, I feel the same way about the MTGN podcast ngl. It's not that I have anything against them or how they do their show, but none of them are people I would associate as "premier" members of the site. I can't look at their bibliography of posts and threads on the site and really understand the nuances of their opinions or personalities as broadcast representatives of the community. %$#%, there should just be a podcast of 3drinks, Dirk, Legend, and Pokken (with a special guest each week!) arguing about speculative EDH rule changes and bans/unbans. That would a podcast that would register on the Richter scale and be measured in Scoville units.

Again, if there's people who want to collaborate with the podcast team, they can shoot me a PM and we can get them going, either as guests or as regular features. Our three regular podcasters have been putting in a lot of work creating WNXS, but you are definitely correct that as of current there's a bit of disconnect between the front page of Nexus and the Commander Forum, which is our largest and most active. Anything we can do to bridge that gap would be amazing, and we're definitely open to ideas from the community.



That goes for basically everyone. Want to do monthly deck brew feature articles? Rotating primer of the month from the primer committee? Want to talk about finance, or new set Cube inclusions, or even lore? Want to stream Arena, MTGO, or even webcam games and have them show up on the front page? Please drop me a line. We're always looking for content creators, and we do have a small (but non-zero) budget for paying for content.

[Janky_as_heck]

I'm working on putting together a personal rating list of cards that the EDH community at large considers over-powered or just plain strong. I posed this question on Twitter, but I want to ask it here: what do you think is the absolute strongest single spell that's legal and used in EDH? I plan to stick to the casual side of the format if that matters to your answers.

[DirkGently]

I'm working on putting together a personal rating list of cards that the EDH community at large considers over-powered or just plain strong. I posed this question on Twitter, but I want to ask it here: what do you think is the absolute strongest single spell that's legal and used in EDH? I plan to stick to the casual side of the format if that matters to your answers.

That really depends on what you're asking. You say you're looking at the casual side, but does that mean no high-budget cards are allowed? And where is the line - does Thassa's Oracle count as casual? And do you mean most impactful, or do you mean best? Mana Crypt takes the cake hands down in terms of "best" imo (Sol Ring if we're restricting budget). Most impactful would probably be something like Expropriate.

I don't really think there's a good answer to the question unless it's very specific.

[Janky_as_heck]

I'm working on putting together a personal rating list of cards that the EDH community at large considers over-powered or just plain strong. I posed this question on Twitter, but I want to ask it here: what do you think is the absolute strongest single spell that's legal and used in EDH? I plan to stick to the casual side of the format if that matters to your answers.

That really depends on what you're asking. You say you're looking at the casual side, but does that mean no high-budget cards are allowed? And where is the line - does Thassa's Oracle count as casual? And do you mean most impactful, or do you mean best? Mana Crypt takes the cake hands down in terms of "best" imo (Sol Ring if we're restricting budget). Most impactful would probably be something like Expropriate.

I don't really think there's a good answer to the question unless it's very specific.

I mean casual as opposed to blatant cEDH, as I'm wildly uninformed on that part of the format haha. And it can be either impactful or most powerful, totally up to the reader of my question. Budget doesn't seem to matter in a wide part of the "casual" meta so I'm going to say yes, high Budget is fine.

[DirkGently]

I mean casual as opposed to blatant cEDH, as I'm wildly uninformed on that part of the format haha.

I think the line between those two has gotten fuzzier and fuzzier recently tbh.

[BeneTleilax]

I think the line between those two has gotten fuzzier and fuzzier recently tbh.

Maybe online, but in-person and with people I know from stores, people have been much more willing to declare themselves cEDH or casual. Sometimes the odd cEDH castoff tries to pubstomp a casual game, but they tend to do something funny like go down to 10 life on turn 4 with Necro+Citadel and then get mulched by dragons, so the table still has a good time.

[Toshi]

I'm working on putting together a personal rating list of cards that the EDH community at large considers over-powered or just plain strong. I posed this question on Twitter, but I want to ask it here: what do you think is the absolute strongest single spell that's legal and used in EDH? I plan to stick to the casual side of the format if that matters to your answers.

Off the top of my head: Brainstorm, Cyclonic Rift, Skullclamp, Ashnod's Altar, Phyrexian Altar, Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Dockside Extortionist, Craterhoof Behemoth, Teferi's Protection, Teferi, Time Raveler, Narset, Parter of Veils, Gaea's Cradle, Field of the Dead, Scroll Rack, Oko, Thief of Crowns, ...

Most of them are nothing short of weapons, even in the hands of mildly experienced players. MTG easy mode basically. Don't get me wrong, i wouldn't want to see them all banned or anything.

If you want to speed up part of your research you can look up the salt list on edhrec (https://edhrec.com/top/salt). While its focus is a little different, plenty of disliked cards are usually that significant tad too strong.

[DirkGently]

Maybe online, but in-person and with people I know from stores, people have been much more willing to declare themselves cEDH or casual. Sometimes the odd cEDH castoff tries to pubstomp a casual game, but they tend to do something funny like go down to 10 life on turn 4 with Necro+Citadel and then get mulched by dragons, so the table still has a good time.

I've never played a game of commander online.

People use those labels in person but everyone has a different line. I've had people downplay their decks and say it's casual but be constantly threatening to explode the table. I've also had people say their deck is competitive but actually be fairly weak. At least in my memory, time was that even playing any kind of 2-card combo was considered competitive, but a lot of people making "casual" decks whose intent is to win that way and set it up as quickly as they can. So without further information it can be hard to tell what's actually going on.

Most of them are nothing short of weapons, even in the hands of mildly experienced players. MTG easy mode basically.

I find this sentiment confusing. Brainstorm doesn't "easymode the game". As a single piece of a much larger puzzle - i.e. some sort of storm deck - it can be very efficient, sure. But just because someone has brainstorm in their deck doesn't tell me very much about the actual power level, and them casting it doesn't make much of an impact on their chance to win. I've seen plenty of people who put a brainstorm into their Beckett Brass pirate tribal or whatever because it's just a fine card.

By contrast, if someone has Doomsday in their deck, that almost always tells me that they're playing something very powerful, and if they resolve it they'll likely win. I'd say there's only a couple of cards in your list that rise to that level imo.

[Hermes_]

it's comments like the above made by @DirkGently that would compel me to listen to an interview with him over his EDH views and takes.

On a different topic Finally got the book case set up and filled, now i just need to rearrange the top two shelves,so i can have every book spine out

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[TheAmericanSpirit]

@Janky_as_heck The most powerful card I see regularly cast in casual games is probably either Dockside Extortionist or Cyclonic Rift. DSE is a huge boost of mana at almost any point in the game and punishes your opponents' development, whereas CR is essentially the tide-turning blow that can both snatch games away from defeat when behind and provide a final nail if you're ahead.

[wildfire393]

A card that's overperformed for me recently is Karn, the Great Creator. A lot of people get caught up on the fact that his biggest draw is that he Wishes and Wishes don't work in Commander, but I included him in a deck because I wanted some redundancy for using Guardian Beast to break the symmetry on Wishclaw Talisman and Bucknard's Everfull Purse and he really impressed me.

Null Rod is a real, powerful effect, as it shuts off all opposing mana rocks, equipment, general artifact synergy decks, etc. It also stops treasures - it was great watching someone sit on a Smothering Tithe with 8+ treasure tokens but no way to remove Karn. In a graveyard-based deck in particular, it protects you from Tormod's Crypt and Relic of Progenitus type effects, which is nice.

The + ability seems like it's really minor at first, but it actually can be really clutch. You can use it to auto-nuke any 0-mana artifact, including artifact lands, Moxen of various types and descriptions, Mana Crypt, etc. You can target equipment to make them fall off, which can be great for hitting a commander hiding behind some Lightning Greaves, Darksteel Plate, or a Sword of Eff Your Colors. You can animate an artifact to make it vulnerable to your creature removal too - I took out a Darksteel Forge with Solitude after pulling this trick.

And even the "Wish" mode has the functionality of being able to grab from Exile, which is a fairly rare characteristic. So if your deck has any key artifacts that you really don't want to see go bye bye forever, Karn can grab them for you in the event they do.

[Toshi]

Most of them are nothing short of weapons, even in the hands of mildly experienced players. MTG easy mode basically.

I find this sentiment confusing. Brainstorm doesn't "easymode the game". As a single piece of a much larger puzzle - i.e. some sort of storm deck - it can be very efficient, sure. But just because someone has brainstorm in their deck doesn't tell me very much about the actual power level, and them casting it doesn't make much of an impact on their chance to win. I've seen plenty of people who put a brainstorm into their Beckett Brass pirate tribal or whatever because it's just a fine card.

Yikes, should've chosen my words more wisely. I didn't mean "easy" as in "plug it into any deck and you'll be fine anyhow".
What i meant with "easy mode" is that enables plenty of things (filtering, draw triggers, top deck rearrangement, securing land drops, ...) you might want out of a card - at instant speed and for one mana.

[tstorm823]

I'm working on putting together a personal rating list of cards that the EDH community at large considers over-powered or just plain strong. I posed this question on Twitter, but I want to ask it here: what do you think is the absolute strongest single spell that's legal and used in EDH? I plan to stick to the casual side of the format if that matters to your answers.

Sol Ring. Just Sol Ring like 15 times.

[Janky_as_heck]

I'm working on putting together a personal rating list of cards that the EDH community at large considers over-powered or just plain strong. I posed this question on Twitter, but I want to ask it here: what do you think is the absolute strongest single spell that's legal and used in EDH? I plan to stick to the casual side of the format if that matters to your answers.

Off the top of my head: Brainstorm, Cyclonic Rift, Skullclamp, Ashnod's Altar, Phyrexian Altar, Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Dockside Extortionist, Craterhoof Behemoth, Teferi's Protection, Teferi, Time Raveler, Narset, Parter of Veils, Gaea's Cradle, Field of the Dead, Scroll Rack, Oko, Thief of Crowns, ...

Most of them are nothing short of weapons, even in the hands of mildly experienced players. MTG easy mode basically. Don't get me wrong, i wouldn't want to see them all banned or anything.

If you want to speed up part of your research you can look up the salt list on edhrec (https://edhrec.com/top/salt). While its focus is a little different, plenty of disliked cards are usually that significant tad too strong.

Yeah I'm using that list (honestly this will probably be a series broken up into colors) but I also like to get player perspective, anecdotes and experiences give fun answers that I didn't expect. For example, I just didn't think about brainstorm and I like seeing it on your list haha.

[Janky_as_heck]

Sol Ring. Just Sol Ring like 15 times.

I'm feeling like you're hinting at sol ring