2HG Degeneracy

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pokken
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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

So my local playgroup is having a pretty hardcore 2HG tournament and I've had a lot of ideas on how to do completely unfair things. The prizes are pretty massive so I'm going to go pretty hard.

It's still up in the air but most likely will be using unified deck construction rules, so 1 sol ring total, which means almost surely it is correct to play a green deck and rock deck - and kinda discourages the typical flash hulk stuff because a strong flash hulk deck leaves the other deck as mono red or mono white with no rocks. Or a mono blue deck with all the counterspells used up.

My current thought is - to avoid fetchland overlap and rock overlap - Azusa strip mine tribal and Baral counterspell tribal. Azusa is much stronger with the degenerate rocks but can survive without them (or maybe just the ones that enable turn 1 Azusa, e.g. Crypt).

I had a lot of thoughts along the lines of Edric / Yuriko, Edric / Edgar Markov, etc., which I think may be slightly more consistent.

Some other random thoughts I had while noodling:
1) Cards like Silence and temporal mastery go waaaaay up in stock in 2hg. Similarly Fog effects are quite good if your opponents are not trying to combo, since there's only one combat step to worry about.
2) it's probably a mistake not to have a strip mine/loam/crucible deck (I think?) given how insanely strong those effects are in 1v1
3) Playing a metric %$#% ton of targeted interaction is almost surely correct - even stuff like Diabolic Edict is very very good.
4) Given the inevitability of people playing lots of mana dorks (because they are great and the only real option opposed to mana rocks for ramp), cards like Electrickery and Massacre are probably pretty good. But it really depends on how much people tune their decks.
5) Effects that trigger each turn (e.g. rashmi, seedborn muse, unwinding clock) are quite a bit less powerful. Even mystic remora is quite a bit worse with two opponents instead of 3 and the likelihood one of them will be creature heavy because of unified.
6) Fast commanders feel pretty important; by the odds the game should be MUCH faster, so being able to play your commander early feels like a pretty big advantage (yuriko, edric, azusa, etc.) -- eminence commanders are also potentially quite good (oloro, edgar and inalla seem best).
7) Stax effects feel much better; tanglewire is brutal, hitting both your opponents for 4. Orbs feel very good too although winter orb somewhat worse (since incentive is high to play nonland ramp as it's faster). other sac effects like Smallpox and Crack the earth seem particularly good.
--subnote: Commanders with stax effects that do not hurt your ally are doubly good, like GAIIV and Lavinia
8) Planeswalker commanders feel potentially very good since you only have to worry about two opponents and your ally can block for you.
9) Discard spells feel a lot better, especially with only one deck really getting to run counterspells; my thought is that not playing Black and Blue both in your cardpool is probably wrong?
10) Karador seems...really good? Basically 100% more free casts than you'd normally get, and the edicts and catterpillars forever are pretty strong. And he's in the color to be very complementary to an artifact ramp U deck.
11) Dragonlord Dromoka's effect is amplified quite a but, basically reads "My partner may combo off whenever" - so possibly the ideal partner to a UBx combo deck like Kess.

I'd love to hear your theory crafting thoughts.

--Note: my cardpool is basically everything except Workshop and Twister, which is a bit of a bummer because I think shops would be pretty good in this format; turn 1 Tanglewire is insane.

--NOTE2: I am not interested at all in discussion of problems with this potential format. I know them all and agree that it's dumb. But I like a deckbuilding challenge. :)

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Post by gilrad » 4 years ago

From my experience playing 2hg in cube:

Extra turns and wheel effects are very strong as you would expect. memory jar is the gold standard; you can pop it on-curve and get a bunch of value while denying the value to your opponents.

Cards that can help your teammate if you need it to are also really good (kiora's follower versus traditional mana dorks for example).

Cheap targeted land destruction, cheap artifact removal, counter-heavy strategies, and other similar cards that are generally a risk to play in 1v1 and outright bad idea to run out in multiplayer are also really good; you're not always going to want to strip mine your opponent turn three, but if it looks like he is mana screwed, a well-timed single removal spell can effectively make the game a 1v2.

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Post by cryogen » 4 years ago

If your budget is pretty much unlimited, then I would recommend Kozilek/Counterspells. My friend and I have consistently won every 2HG tournament we entered (4 tourneys with 4 rounds each, if memory serves me) with hom running a tuned Kozi deck (loosely based on the primer either here or Sally), and me playing a BUG deck loosely off one of Moxnix's Doomsday/LabMan brews but with more counters and obviously letting Kozi have all the overlapping mana rocks.

Our tourneys were probably less competitive thank what yours sounds to be because prize support was only entry fees dispersed to top 3, but we did hit our share of competitive decks running Food Chain and MUC.
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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

cryogen wrote:
4 years ago
If your budget is pretty much unlimited, then I would recommend Kozilek/Counterspells. My friend and I have consistently won every 2HG tournament we entered (4 tourneys with 4 rounds each, if memory serves me) with hom running a tuned Kozi deck (loosely based on the primer either here or Sally), and me playing a BUG deck loosely off one of Moxnix's Doomsday/LabMan brews but with more counters and obviously letting Kozi have all the overlapping mana rocks.

Our tourneys were probably less competitive thank what yours sounds to be because prize support was only entry fees dispersed to top 3, but we did hit our share of competitive decks running Food Chain and MUC.
Is it annihilator that makes Kozi so good you think? it does seem pretty effective which is one of the reasons I was thinking Azusa Eldrazi/Strip mines (Emrakul, the Promised end pretty sick too).

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Post by cryogen » 4 years ago

pokken wrote:
4 years ago
cryogen wrote:
4 years ago
If your budget is pretty much unlimited, then I would recommend Kozilek/Counterspells. My friend and I have consistently won every 2HG tournament we entered (4 tourneys with 4 rounds each, if memory serves me) with hom running a tuned Kozi deck (loosely based on the primer either here or Sally), and me playing a BUG deck loosely off one of Moxnix's Doomsday/LabMan brews but with more counters and obviously letting Kozi have all the overlapping mana rocks.

Our tourneys were probably less competitive thank what yours sounds to be because prize support was only entry fees dispersed to top 3, but we did hit our share of competitive decks running Food Chain and MUC.
Is it annihilator that makes Kozi so good you think? it does seem pretty effective which is one of the reasons I was thinking Azusa Eldrazi/Strip mines (Emrakul, the Promised end pretty sick too).
That, and the explosive starts. With all the broken mana rocks and MetalWorker, getting it out turn 2 isnt unreasonable, and your partner just protects you. And even if it gets countered your hand is refilled, but once you swing it's game over. And with something like Doomsday as a backup, you can potentially bait out counters and tutor up a win. I supposed FlashHulk works also, since like I said earlier, you won't overlap outside mana rocks and a couple other cards like SDT, and you just see who wants the overlap more.
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Post by Dunharrow » 4 years ago

Since you have every second turn and because it is 2v2, I would look at what is good in 1v1 Commander.
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Post by Rumpy5897 » 4 years ago

Scheming Symmetry was born for this moment :P

My main brush with 2HG was at OGW prerelease, and we cleaned house by having one of the decks be pure control and the other be more aggro focused. This matches cryogen's Kozilek plus counterspells setup. Splitting the functionality into separate decks helps smooth out variance to a good extent.
 
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pokken
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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

Dunharrow wrote:
4 years ago
Since you have every second turn and because it is 2v2, I would look at what is good in 1v1 Commander.
This is one of the reasons I was thinking edgar, and also what got me thinking crucible strip mine (banned as hell in 1v1). And also Baral.

Because we won't have the same life total stuff, some of the effects banned in 1v1 don't relate though (e.g. Fireblast). I think life total is 50 or something.
Rumpy5897 wrote:
4 years ago
Scheming Symmetry was born for this moment :P

My main brush with 2HG was at OGW prerelease, and we cleaned house by having one of the decks be pure control and the other be more aggro focused. This matches cryogen's Kozilek plus counterspells setup. Splitting the functionality into separate decks helps smooth out variance to a good extent.

This has me really inclined to play Gitrog. I have it built already and it's pretty easy to tailor it to 1v1 by adding a little more interaction and I already play scheming symmetry (which has been surprisingly good in CEDH :P).

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