MTGNexus

Rumpy5897 wrote: ↑

4 years ago

which is my bet on most popular commander from the set

Could be. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a bunch of Naya combo decks, too.

In the grand scheme of things, open-ended goodstuff tends to outperform cute brews for longevity. Sure, you'll get your polymorph eggs for a while, but with time the goodstuff will prevail. A number of the M20 legends will probably end up joining Muldrotha, the Gravetide in the pantheon of mayors of Value Town, immortalised in constant new lists popping up. Feather, the Redeemed has been a breakout jankatron sensation, but Kykar, Wind's Fury has gotten over twice the number of lists in the past month. A number of folks in my MTG circle have realised that you can ram Golos, Tireless Pilgrim at the helm of anything five-colour and get value out of him. That's just how it is

New Greven is the real wall general of the set.

Aeon engine seems abusable if you can make copies of them. You can lock up to 2 players out of a game if done properly.

loving the bone miser being the effect for yourself although i do wish it was a 1/1 which cost 3 as cmc 5 is a little expensive.

Im having such a hard time deciding which commander deck i want to purchase as i only have the money to buy one only. T.T

It's like they thought of me when they printed Greven 2.0 <3

Yep, it's a wicked cool design. I gushed about eating Hunted Horrors and giving Greven shadow to guys in my playgroup, and got asked to not pursue it

Welp I've got a mixed response to the whole shebang. There's no denying the awesome cards they're printing, and how Wizards is continuing to deepen their lore with the printing of old beloved characters that are actually decent to play. But I was hoping to see how morph and madness in particular might be made powerful synergistic strategies and while there's more support for those strategies, they haven't been advanced to the point of "man I want to do that!"

I also recognize they can't just shove reprints in unless they fit the decks they're making, but Teferi's Protection would've gone in the Naya deck just fine, and maybe the Jeskai deck. Cyclonic Rift would certainly go in the Jeskai and Sultai decks. They might not want to support Rift being in more decks, but when they're sponsoring Youtube shows that have decks that use these now high priced cards all the time and it would've been easy to fit now staple cards in the C19 decks I'm bummed they missed the opportunity.

Some interesting new cards revealed....

Chainer, Nightmare Adept looks pretty sweet. Not as efficient as Chainer, Dementia Master, and not as much value as Meren of Clan Nel Toth or Karador, Ghost Chieftain. However, granting haste gives Chainer 2.0 a sweet niche for enabling stuff like Etali, Primal Storm, Visara the Dreadful, and other haste-wanting creatures (in addition to any discard synergies you may be running).

Curse of Fool's Wisdom looks absolutely brutal, and another reason to beware of curse decks. My condolences in advance to any monoblue players hit by it that don't have access to enchantment removal.

Idol of Oblivion looks fantastic for token decks - really efficient card draw, but less likely to be kill-on-sight compared to Skullclamp. Cracking it for a giant token isn't entirely irrelevant either, especially if you have some populate synergies. Cool that the card works with any token, and not just creature tokens - you can throw it into a deck with Clue or Treasure production too.

Aeon Engine looks like jank, but I imagine there are some nasty things you can do with it. Or run it relatively fairly as a chaos card.


Overall thoughts on the precons:

I'm generally happy with them, from a 'would I recommend these decks to someone new to EDH' perspective. The decks are well built, and look fun to play. Commanders seem to be fairly well-balanced - strong enough to be worth building around and make their decks function well, but not horribly overpowered or uninteractive, unlike certain other precon commanders (cougheminencecoughpartnerscough).

From an 'am I going to actually buy any decks' perspective, I'm likely going to pass on the decks. That is largely because I already have decks doing similar things, and don't feel like retreading over those concepts. I'm not a person just getting into EDH, and already own many of the staples in these decks, so for me the decks are more about which singles I want. There are a things I'm happy to buy and new cards I want to test out, but not enough in any individual deck to justify picking up.

From an 'am I happy with the reprints' perspective, mixed feelings. There are certainly some cards I'm glad to see reprinted that I plan to acquire (assuming the prices fall enough), such as Seedborn Muse, Feldon of the Third Path, and Solemn Simulacrum. However, most of the reprints I really want are in a higher price range, such as Stoneforge Mystic, Oracle of Mul Daya, and Cabal Coffers, and there don't appear to be reprints of more expensive cards. On the other hand, I don't pay much attention to the prices of cards I already own / am not interested in, so it's very possible I'm missing something. (I had no idea how expensive Geth, Lord of the Vault had gotten, for example)

....I'll probably go through all the decklists later and figure out exactly which singles I'm interested in.

I just realized putting Curse of Fool's Wisdom on somebody controlling Vilis, Broker of Blood has potential to mill them out if they can't get rid of Vilis at instant-speed. (Well, Underworld Dreams, too, but Curse may be slightly easier to flash in.)

Yeah, all told there's not a ton for me. I'm definitely keen for a copy of Bone Miser - Varina wants very much. K'rrick, son of Yawgmoth is cool too, but I'm not sure I actually have a place to use it, so I don't know if I will pick it up.

If I had to pick a deck I'd most like to grab it'd be the madness theme, but I still won't. It'll likely be the 1-2 singles for established decks and that's it. Which is fine for me, I've built plenty of stuff recently.

so far only card has screamed I need it for a deck and that's Song of the Worldsoul which will go into my enduring ideal deck

I'm a little disappointed that Wizards didn't take this opportunity to nuke some overpriced staple prices do the ground (even something like Akroma's Memorial would have been a welcome reprint).

I know people say that if they put too much reprint value in the decks it limits their availability, but at the same time putting too little reprint value makes the new, precon-only cards expensive as well. If, after all the prices have settled, a deck only has maybe $10 or $20 of over-$2 reprints in it, the rest of the deck's value will be represented by the best new card in the deck, like what happened with Command Beacon. In the case of a super-staple like Teferi's protection, it eats all the value of the deck.

Aeon Engine seems like a horribly unfun card. It's like all the unfun parts of extra turn cards minus the good. Waiting 7 turns instead of 3 to play is exactly what I don't want to do in casual EDH, which is probably the only place where it will be played.

Anyways there are a bunch of fun cards in the set. Bloodthirsty Blade is exactly what I've wished for, I just had no idea what I wished for it. Sevinne's Reclamation is a fun value card, Wildfire Devils and Anje's Ravagermight not be great, but I sure will try them out nonetheless.

75chan wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Aeon Engine seems like a horribly unfun card. It's like all the unfun parts of extra turn cards minus the good. Waiting 7 turns instead of 3 to play is exactly what I don't want to do in casual EDH, which is probably the only place where it will be played.

It'll be at most 5 turns, not 7 (barring multiples) in a 4-player game.

DirkGently wrote: ↑

4 years ago

75chan wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Aeon Engine seems like a horribly unfun card. It's like all the unfun parts of extra turn cards minus the good. Waiting 7 turns instead of 3 to play is exactly what I don't want to do in casual EDH, which is probably the only place where it will be played.

It'll be at most 5 turns, not 7 (barring multiples) in a 4-player game.

Sorry, I don't know what I was thinking. Thanks for the correction.

I dread playing against aeon engine. My college friends and I used to get stoned and play competitive multiplayer Uno and reverse cards caused so much grief because inevitably someone would blank on turn order and screw it up without really noticing until much later.

To this day, I don't really play board/card games unless I can roast a bone beforehand (it helps me relax and it's also why I prefer fairly linear, uncomplicated decks) and now through Aeon Engine, that old collegiate scourge has returned to corrupt my favorite game and beat me senseless with my own damn doper's memory. I can only hope this cards falls into the dustbin of commander history faster than Lucifer could plummet down to hell, otherwise I'm sure gonna be one real game structure liability for a few months.

TheAmericanSpirit wrote: ↑

4 years ago

I dread playing against aeon engine. My college friends and I used to get stoned and play competitive multiplayer Uno and reverse cards caused so much grief because inevitably someone would blank on turn order and screw it up without really noticing until much later.

To this day, I don't really play board/card games unless I can roast a bone beforehand (it helps me relax and it's also why I prefer fairly linear, uncomplicated decks) and now through Aeon Engine, that old collegiate scourge has returned to corrupt my favorite game and beat me senseless with my own damn doper's memory. I can only hope this cards falls into the dustbin of commander history faster than Lucifer could plummet down to hell, otherwise I'm sure gonna be one real game structure liability for a few months.

There are much worse pitfalls, like when you are looking through your library and you realize you have absolutely no idea why you have the deck in your hand. Or even worse when you shuffle your hand into your library. The downside of getting blazed.

I remember playing limited with my gf and both of us being totally incapable of counting to 17 lands. It took at least a half-dozen tries to get it right.

She'd opened a Lyra so I maindecked 3 plummet variants, and the idea of maindecking 3 plummets kept making me collapse into fits of mirth.

Aeon engine is the only card I don't think I'll add to my collection...I can't think of any realistic way to make it good or fit into a commander's strategy. I guess you could use mechanized production, cogwork assembler, or something like that to keep reversing order, but ultimately it's a lot of effort for a worse version of lighthouse chronologist.

I think my concern with Aeon Engine loops is that they lock out half or more of the table while leaving 2 people to play the game. In my group that's a big no-no since we all play together as a single pod, so making 3-4 other players wait for everyone else is a real dick move. At least with traditional infinite turn setups everyone is equally incentivized to concede.

It's more efficient to just loop/copy Mindslaver then try to break Aeon Engine. It may find home in dedicated troll decks only.

Guys, it's okay: We received one blue morph card that hates on abilities in this set. That will solve it!

Bone Miser LOOOVES cycling.

Lifeless wrote: ↑

4 years ago

I think my concern with Aeon Engine loops is that they lock out half or more of the table while leaving 2 people to play the game. In my group that's a big no-no since we all play together as a single pod, so making 3-4 other players wait for everyone else is a real dick move. At least with traditional infinite turn setups everyone is equally incentivized to concede.

You would need to be making 2 aeon engines per turn to do that. If you make one per turn cycle (much more feasible) you're cycling between your turn, left's turn, your turn, right's turn, your turn, left's turn... So you're getting twice as many turns as anyone else, but again, comparable to lighthouse chronologist except a lot more work. Or if you just want to lock out the table, there's lots of easy ways. Teferi Pool for example.

Honestly I don't see any way the card is viable in any real sense. It's a silly troll card imo. Comparable to cruel entertainment - have you ever even seen anyone cast that who wasn't playing a right-out-of-the-box precon? I don't think anyone should get themselves all worried about it.

Oh I wouldn't say I'm terribly concerned, I just see the troll potential going well beyond any actual benefit the card provides to the game.

I ranked all the legends from my favorite to my least favorite. Idk why.

Savinne - two interesting abilities and a fun color combination.
Anje - I just love how madness feels - getting value from discard. And I like flashing stuff in. I don't care that most of the madness cards are jank, it's a better challenge that way.
Elsha - She'd be #1 if I wasn't worried that she'll end up being OP with top (or maybe even other things, who knows). But I love flash and topdeck casting is pretty exciting.
Rayani - I thought I'd like Mairsil but she ended up being too easy to break imo - Rayani seems like a more fair way to slowly assemble a godlike creature from the bodies of others.
Volrath - his ability is pretty interesting...I feel like it's going to be breakable, but if it's not, maybe I'll end up building him.
Marisi - the ability is fun but I kinda hate naya. If an idea strikes me the right way, I might build her.
Chainer - I don't like creature-based decks much and he's very similar to Karador, but at least he doesn't need the same density or self-mill to get going. Could happen.
Kadena - I like morph in limited...idk if I like it enough in commander. More importantly, her synergy is pretty boring imo. Still, not impossible.
K'rrik - He seems probably breakable. If he's not breakable there's a small chance I build him, but idk that he appeals to me much, even if the design is kinda cool conceptually.
Tahngarth - It's a cute ability but I don't think it's for me.
Ghired - Combat, tokens, big numbers bonking into each other...eh, just not interested.
Greven - I really don't like Greven and it's hard to pin down exactly why. I think part of it is that he's got too many moving parts. You want high-power, low toughness creatures...but then you also need to protect him in combat...and find a way to use all the extra cards...and maybe counteract the life loss if you're playing a lot game...idk, it just doesn't look fun to build to me. I like my decks to have a very clear plan.
Pramikon - One of my favorite things about commander is the table's ability to direct hate appropriately, and Pramikon puts a medium-sized wrench in that. Medium-sized, because most important hate isn't attacking, but still. Not my cup of tea.
Atla - Ooh, it's naya again but more combo-oriented or just run a bunch of big bombs eww eww eww hard pass.
Gerard - Eggs, one of the boringest archetypes to play against. Cool. Or, like, a crappy wrath protection. Either way, I'm definitely out. Boros is feather plus no one else.
Grismold - if you put in the work, you get...a big beater. Whoop-de-do. Pass.

I'm primarily interested in the new generals, but there are some solid cards added to the set, and fortunately nothing seems too over the top. ^.^