Better Deckbuilding: Obzedat, Ghost Council

Happy Thor's Day Zoners, and welcome back to Better Deckbuilding!

I'm pretty excited to share my deck based around the Ghost-iest Gangstas of Gatecrash- the Obzedizzle!

While some might say it's not that difficult to build a Commander deck, that doesn't mean it's good. I spent a lot of long hours building several different iterations of Orzhov, finding them to be clunky, somewhat boring iterations of GoodStuff decks that never resonated nor represented the kinds of decks I wanted to play.

Although I only made the Resolution last year to find versions of Boros and Orzhov I could be happy with, you could say that this has been moving a lot longer than that.

So I'd like to dedicate this special episode of Better Deckbuilding to others who may be on the strugglebus, still looking for that Legendary Creature to get excited about, or that one special little space in design that you've always seen, but never found before. Although playing and winning with these decks is awesome, nothing gets me more jazzed than finding the surprise. And building around Obzedizzle was surely that!

WHY OBZEDIZZLE?

Back when I reviewed Gatecrash, I was pretty salty about the flavor of this card. My biggest criticisms being 1) Generally, that the creatures on cards updated from our last visit felt a little "too easy" to design and 2) Specifically, that gaining Haste felt like a forced flavor foul, made so that it would see play in Standard (which, it did.)

None of this is to say I didn't think the card was good- just a little unimpressive in terms of design. It stunk that I couldn't get excited about a new potential Commander in colors I wanted to play. I mean, I love Haste just as much as the next person. I even get the argument for being the "Black" part of the ability, and that the combined effect is a "Chinese Take-Out Style" (This is what Mark Rosewater calls it when they combine effects of two different colors. See also Recoil) print on the card.

So it took me some time to get over myself in order to take him for a test drive. Fortunately, some other things I didn't realize were compelling me towards Obzedat, as well as a good headspace for deck design.

The first factor was a metagame choice to bring back the Wrath. Over the last couple years, my metagame has experienced some serious shifts. We've had too many Wraths and not enough spot removal. We've had not enough removal, and too much Battlecruiser Magic. Now we have a ton of spot removal, and not enough ways to clear the board.

Because a healthy metagame really wants to have the same qualities that pitchers and hitters do in baseball, where they're constantly making adjustments to psych the other one out. I liked the idea of playing a Wrath deck, but with a little bit of a twist.

The twist, naturally, involves playing around our General. With the additions of some powerful, faster mass removal effects, a combination of old stand-by's and ones that I wanted to try out, I came up with a really nice control-based Orzhov deck that I've had a lot of success with.

THE STRATEGY

Basically, it's a Wrath-Based Control Deck. We are fortified with answers, so that we can play most of the early game with spot removal for serious threats while building up a big enough mana base to get Obzedat out and doing its thing.

While there are a lot of Obzedat lists out there doing some serious Extort and dedicated Life Gain strategy and Combo, this deck is avoiding these intentions. There are a few cards in the deck that help create engines based on the Obzedat's Syphon Life trigger, but the deck's not specifically designed to rely on these effects, making them ironically, as you'll see, a little bit more potent.

THE TECH

There are quite a few popular cards that see a significant power boost in this brew- Oblivion Stone, Nevinyrral's Disk, and Magus of the Disk.

I've attempted to make the Wrath-proof battle deck several times with no success. Tajic and Zurgo have been the Commanders, and they weren't successful.

What's better about this deck is the timing flexibility and its conjunction with Obzedat's ability. With Tajic, the problem was that being only a 2/2, he needed stuff he could pick up and swing with. Not wanting to lose the equipment, these cards were avoided in favor of cheaper, Sorcery-speed Wraths, which made the deck hard to play, with too many cards and not enough mana to play them all in a single turn.

With Obzedat, we get to, much more literally, get people to "play into our Wraths." We have a solid creature needing no equipment, and, with no creature on the battlefield, we can actually lure players into attacking us, protecting the Obzedat from our own stuff while also eliminating cards from our opponent's hands and board.

Because I don't get to play this color combination enough, you can almost always guarantee that I will be rocking this card, and mentioning it as a piece of tech.

I understand that this innately makes it almost the opposite of tech, but it is my favorite Fog effect, because I get to say,  "Nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh Batwing!"

Fun story- I have actually won multiple games with this card, so even if it it isn't tech anymore, I can't explain how it continues to win me games.

Anyway, back to Wrath tech. I think people are very reluctant to commit to such an expensive card, but it's a good one.

Frankly, it's not on my list of favorite Wraths, but it shines here, where I already play Rout and Angel of the Dire Hour. Seven sits at a good spot in our curve, where we're cleaning up the big 6-drops, clearing way for the Ghosts to get in for damage.

One of the cool tricks with this card is the ability to respond on our own turn, before Obzedizzle returns, or on our end step, when we exile him.

The latter, tapping out on our end step, may sound inefficient, but it's actually fine. Letting our opponents untap is sometimes too much time, and we all need a good scry every now and again.

Before we get back to our cool removal, let's talk about some of the creatures I'm playing.

Stinkweed Imp, as I've found out across the Interwebz, is becoming a relatively popular include for Karador decks, and that makes me happy.

I think this is a card that Gramps brought up when talking about Pauper a while back, and I decided that I should just play this card in normal EDH and see what happens.

What happens is you get an incredible creature with a lot of re-tread value. Having a huge Dredge cost attached to a huge Rattlesnake effect makes this an effective card for decks that don't play a lot of creatures, and don't want to tap out so much while also having at least some permanents permanently on the board (Obzedizzle tends to come and go, remember).

Long story short, I will be trying to slide more copies of this card into more decks. And I will be looking for a foil one too. Cause this is the kind of card I like to get in foil. Janky weird stuff.

My copy of Retaliate had an unsuccessful run in my Darien, King of Kjeldor deck, where it was silly for anyone to want to attack when Darien was out, and chances were, I probably didn't have enough mana to support it.

Doing my binder check after my first run with the deck, I had Executioner's Swing sitting out, and realized this would be a much bigger improvement. With Obzedat gaining a steady amount of life, I don't mind giving my opponents the opportunity to think they've done something meaningful if I can get rid of their board as a result.

Sometimes, cards we think are bad don't turn out to be so horrible. I've already used this a couple times, taking like 15-20 damage, and completely obliterating my opponent's board because they chose to attack.

So we'll run back the other Fated card in Obzedizzle's colors.

Fated Return has been an incredible addition to both of the decks I've played it in so far.

My first was in the Doran Defender deck, where I cast Fated Return to Reanimate an opponent's Sun Titan and ensure I had my Rolling Stones out for my nonsense Walls.

A few weeks ago, I cast Fated Return on my opponent's Pontiff of Blight and took Obzedat into Extorts-ville. It was the coolest.

And by coolest, I mean, I won the game by casting Solemn Simulacrum with multiple Extort triggers. So I've done that.

Last card I'll talk about is a piece of old school CommanderCast tech- Seht's Tiger.

This card is seriously, seriously bonkers. I don't usually tell you to get up IMMEDIATELY and go buy a card, but if I did, it'd be this one.

I've been listening to a lot of Mark Rosewater's Drive To Work podcast, and one of the elements he's mentioned that he likes to do in design is create cards that players have to discover their possibilities.

Seht's Tiger is definitely one of these. Because at face value, this doesn't look like a way to both counter Fact or Fiction and Fog your opponent. But it's both. And it's a creature. Also, I love Flash. This card is all the things I love, which is why it was on one of our first episodes of The Stack, and it's back again (and so too, will be The Stack).

Here's the list in its entirety, so's you can check out the rest of it. Obzedizzle

Remember to come back by on Saturday for the triumphant return of The Stack!

Pass.
-UL

Ban This Sick Filth! - Prophet of Kruphix

Hello Zoners, and welcome to my humble column. I'm Tom, I'm new around here, and in this regular feature (hereby abbreviated to BTSF because seriously, who's got the time to keep typing that out?) I'm going to be looking at some of the Commander community's least favourite cards and asking whether they are truly as banworthy as they're purported to be. We're getting the party started with the oft-maligned Prophet of Kruphix, but first, let's recap the banlist criteria put forth by the rules committee, under whose guidelines a card can be banned if it;

Creates Undesirable Games / Game Situations.

Warps the Format Strategically.

Produces Too Much Mana Too Quickly.

Interacts Badly with the Structure of Commander.

Creates a Perceived High Barrier to Entry.

So, given that the PoK is one of the two cards I see most ban requests for (to the surprise of absolutely nobody, the second is Deadeye Navigator), how many of those criteria can we apply to the card?

 Wacky waving inflatable arm tube woman!

Creates Undesirable Games / Game Situations

This one's pretty much a given. As anyone who has seen one played can attest, the Prophet has an instant warping effect on the game. It rapidly devolves into a race to copy, steal or murder the Prophet and either gain her enormous advantages or prevent other players from untapping with her on the board. I've seen players use the their carefully hoarded board wipes just to be rid of this one card, and if that isn't indicative of an "undesirable game situation" then I don't know what is. When an entire game of Magic is derailed by a single card every time it sees play, that's an issue.

Warps the Format Strategically

Commander is a pretty difficult format to warp thanks to the rules regarding colour identity. PoK's two-colour nature makes it difficult to sleeve it up into the huge number of decks that, say, Primeval Titan found its way into. While there are no shortage of generals who can gleefully become downright abusive with Prophet in the deck, ex: Animar, Momir Vig, Prime Speaker Zegana - it's still situational enough that I can't honestly say it's warping the format. Individual games in which it sees play, absolutely, but it isn't impacting the format as a whole by it's very existence.

Produces Too Much Mana Too Quickly

Ha! Yeah, let's just go ahead and put a big ol' tick in that box. Untap all your lands on every other player's untap step? In terms of mana generation the Prophet pushes you far, far ahead of the table as well as being in the right colours for actual ramping and counterspells to keep other players behind.

Interacts Badly with the Structure of Commander

This one's debatable. It's more akin to interacting badly with the structure of Magic itself rather than the format-specific rules. PoK makes the turn structure largely meaningless if the controlling player can actually protect it for a few turns, as the incredible increase to mana generation and the ability to drop creatures with Flash means that every turn is also your turn.

Creates a Perceived High Barrier to Entry

We shall safely ignore this one, given that it's from a set so recent that some stores are still carrying Theros boosters, and that SCG lists the price at under two dollars with 27 currently in stock. Black Lotus it ain't.

So, how does it stack up? Is the Prophet deserving of all the ire? Is a ban impending?

"I say thee NAY!"

On balance, despite the obvious problems shown above, I find myself leaning towards keeping Prophet around. One key factor in this is that well-worn maxim that it "dies to removal", and in fact is almost guaranteed to do so. While the warping effect it has on a game is undeniable, it's also quite easy to dispose of. It isn't a key piece of any super-janky combo that I can think of, it just enables other combos to be put into place faster. Is it annoying to have a resolved Prophet on the table with no answers in hand? Sure as hell is. Is it irreparably busted? Not so much. If you can play it, resolve it, and protect then unless your deck is very, very bad you're probably going to win the game on the strength of your mana flow alon. However, the same can be said for a few other cards as well, and I don't see anyone calling for an immediate Crypt Ghast ban.

I appreciate that the RC haven't taken steps to ban Prophet. It may be incredibly powerful and extremely annoying, but it absolutely isn't format breaking, and I'm glad we don't have a format where cards earn a ban simply because players don't want to have to deal with them.

Until next time gang, remember to keep a Doom Blade in reserve!

Pass the turn.

SURPRISE MONDAY ANNOUNCEMENT!

Hola Zoners! I'm making a splash early in the week to give you some time to get excited about the new changes I've been talking about.

The first order of business is the debut of one of our new writers- Tom. Tom has been writing for a variety of other sites about Commander, and we're really excited about some of his upcoming columns here on TGZ. His first column, "Ban This Sick Filth!" will feature tomorrow as he steps on and off the ol' soapbox to examine emotionally and more objectively the "ban-worthyness" of Commander's most contested cards.

He doesn't have a nickname (We don't all need them, do we?), and he isn't Captain Falcon (as far as I know), but his first piece comes out swinging, so be sure to come back by for that tomorrow.

Yeah, this is a big heap of pancakes- but do you know what it means? THE STACK IS BACK!

This Saturday will be the return of TGZ's prodigal series, The Stack, chock full of all the flavor-silly, underrated, and crazy broken pieces of tech me, Gramps, Tom, and our list of special guests can find to talk about. 

Sandwiched in between the New-ness, Better Deckbuilding will return with my no-nonsense, slow-rolling Black-White Control deck run by a group of familiar Ravnican ghosts who've rotated out of Standard, and are ready to go to work in our durdly little format.

That's all the surprises I have for now, but stay tuned- we've got more stuff to look forward to as we sail into 2015. Don't miss it!

Pass.
-UL

In General: Manifest Destiny

Hello and welcome back to In General. Every Sunday here on The General Zone, I get to talk about anything and everything relating to Magic the Gathering. This week we are taking an in-depth look at the new Manifest mechanic and what it means for both designers and players. By now everyone has had a chance to read our set review articles and play with the cards a bit, so I want to discuss the limited environment of Fate Reforged.

The Morph Format

For those of you who played Time Spiral limited, you know that Morph can be tough to play against. Also, you have no idea how easy you had it. Does anybody out there remember Onslaught block?! Jeez.

When Morph first debuted we had no standard by which to evaluate it. At first we didn't know all the morphs, and there were quite a few whammies that you needed to watch out for. Have you ever run into a Zombie Cutthroat and then felt really bad about yourself? This card was in Cubes for a long time because it it was so hard to play around....but we learned, didn't we?

The level of Instant-speed interaction in the average game of Magic has gone up significantly over the years. On board tricks use to be less common and easier to play around...until Morph happened. You used to be able to pick up a card and read it to find out what it did. Morph FORCED you to remember every detail of every Creature that it was printed on. That lead to many frustrated new players who couldn't compete with players who were more acquainted with the format.

Morphs in Khans of Tarkir

It is much easier to predict what your opponent's Morphs are in Khans than it was in Time Spiral. The penalty for guessing wrong is still high, but most people are playing rigidly defined color combinations, which helps you narrow down the possibilities.

This restriction makes designing Morph cards much simpler. This gave the designers a little more freedom to experiment with different types of Creatures. There are Morphs that you can flip up for no mana, but if you examine them more closely you will find that they aren't likely to just eat an attacking Creature. At best, they will trade. This helps reduce the mental tax on players. You don't need to be able to determine precisely what their face down Creature is... as long as it won't affect the board much if it were turned face up.

Imagine this hypothetical Morph card:

This illustrates my point perfectly. When it is face down, you are still unsure what to do about it because you don't know what it is, but when it is turned face up...nothing changes. Any play you made by just assuming it was a colorless 2/2 is still valid because it IS, IN FACT, a colorless 2/2 when turned up.

Morphs in Fate Reforged

In Khans limited, the Morph varied greatly in size, shape, and color. You could be running into a woolly mammoth for crying out loud.

By contrast, In Fate Reforged literally anything could be hiding under that Morph bug...right? Well no. If you take a look through the cards in the set, the majority can't ever be flipped up at all, so they are just always the 2/2, but let's focus specifically on the Creatures.

Scrolling through Gatherer you will find that most of the Creatures in the set will trade for a 2/2. That didn't happen by mistake. We have a 4/1, 3/2's, a 4/2, several 2/1's, a 5/2 Defender...coincidence? Nope.

What does it all mean Basil?

From a design standpoint, Morph is complex and rewards more knowledgeable players. Manifest, raises that bar even higher, perhaps too high for normal humans to consistently achieve. Manifest has the effect of increasing variance within the game because it is so difficult to manage all of the necessary information. Sometimes a less skilled player will defeat a more skilled player by flipping a big Manifest threat. This empowers newer players to stay in games that they would otherwise lose.

The bottom line for me is that playing against a Manifested card is always going to be complex and stressful, which I love, but is also just plain fun. You are never really going to know what is under there. You can play the numbers, play a guessing game, or you can just play like you have nothing to lose.

That is a feeling that I haven't gotten from Magic in a long time.

-GG

Remember The Fallen #2- The Re-Reboot

Welcome back to another Thor's Day, Zoners!

So, 2015 is going to be a pretty exciting year for TGZ. We've got some fresh new writers pumping out content, Stack episodes everywhere waiting to get booted up, and several other old/new ideas that the gang and I are going to re-start. I can't wait to share it all with ya!

The first of which is a one-off series I started last year and never continued- Remember the Fallen. Kudos to you if you remember, Remember the Fallen- but if not, I'm going to tell you anyway.

(If you want, here's the first one: Remember the Fallen #1)

FACT: Some decks are going to sound awesome. Like the Xenagos Ball Lightning deck I featured in my first installment of Remember the Fallen.

FACT: Not all decks are going to be good. 

More importantly, not all decks are going to be ones that we like, let alone ones that we keep.

This is what Remember the Fallen is all about. Often, I use Better Deckbuilding as my own little primer for deck designs I like and make so that they may inspire you to take some of my tech and try your own little spin on it. 

However, because I'm a constant deckbuilder, and again, I can't like every design I make, there are some real bad ones that often get dismantled or abandoned quickly throughout my deckbuilding process. And because I believe it is important to show that I am not a machine that gets it right every time, we're going to make time and place so I can show you all the deck designs that didn't quite make it- which might inspire a few of you to share your lists and show me a thing or two. 

So let's get started (again!)

Prime Speaker Zegana, aka PSZ, is a card that I've openly admitted I was entirely wrong to be disappointed with when she got spoiled back in Gatecrash. Everything about this card is right, I don't know what I was thinking, mea culpa like twenty-thousand times to William Murai for the brilliant art, as well as Design and Development for a fully functioning Simic Alternative.

And because it is well known that my love for Simic is moderately infinite, I did take her for a test drive last Fall.

The design was difficult- I didn't want to make the Control/Hexproof Dinosaurs deck, or this neat little Loam/Land Play deck that looked really solid.

I settled on a Wizard-Tribal/Combo deck, which ended up being not bad. Unlike some of my designs that don't make it past the Goldfish rounds, the 1v1 and multiplayer test drives did yield some victories.

Door of Destinies in conjunction with Master Biomancer set up Fathom Mage to always Evolve, as well as create some hilariously big Thought Couriers.

My big combos in the deck involved Biovisionary or Lab Maniac, so I was either drawing into a Rite of Replication or drawing everything. Oh, yeah- and I got to play Prophet of Kruphix. #HagridToldHimHeWasAWizard

Ultimately, the counterspells made the deck durdle, and the combos went stale quickly, mostly because the set up was very similar to Azami. There was just too many big-time, one-trick things in this deck to keep my interest in it long term, so I pulled off a Lab Maniac combo, a Biovisionary combo, and retired it.

So another year, another Boros deck dismantled. That seems to be a common thing for me as I continue to search for the right one for me in Red and White.

I'll admit the reason Anax and Cymede failed was a lot on me in deck design.

The concept seemed cool- Auras combined with Trick Voltron to make for a little Aggro deck with opportunities for multiple Heroic triggers. I'd done some serious Gatherer searching for Auras like Flickering Ward and Ghitu Firebreathing, which could be bounced and re-cast for Heroic value. Coupled with a few nice Storm spells like Astral Steel, I thought this was going to make for a nice deck.

What went wrong was two things. The first was that I forgot that mana was required, not only to bounce the enchantment, but to also re-cast it. Not compensating for this, the deck had a heck of a time repeating and resetting the effects of the Auras as many times as I wanted.

The other thing I got wrong, which was dumb, was a rules oversight with regards to Storm. Any copies I got off of Storm weren't going to trigger Heroic because, guess what? WE DON'T ACTUALLY CAST THE COPIES OFF OF STORM!

Those were probably the two biggest blunders I made in design, but there were actually two additional issues that broke the camel's back, leading to deck demolition.

The third problem was that we were swimming in options. What I mean is that I really threw every Heroic card I could play into the deck so I could figure out what, if any, were going to work. Like, do I always target A & C to get pumps and trample? Do I target this Vanguard of Brimaz to get Cat Tokens?

Having so many different options may sound good, but design-wise, none of these cards were big enough to get around creatures, so we were always making a sacrifice, and that's without trying to account for removal.

The last issue was just one I've had with all Boros decks I've made since the beginning of time- I never seem to have enough cards in my hand. While I like to think that I've become a better Aggro player, I'm still a calculating one. I take chances when I can, play tricks to protect my stuff, and most of my designs can support the tempo I want to play at.

Because of the innate need for R/W to get wide, I feel like I'm constantly over-committing to the board state, putting myself on a clock that's going to run out faster than I want. Clearly, I'm doing something wrong, and I've got to fix it- until then, the search continues!

I talked about Mirko a little bit in my strategy column over on CommanderCast, but I thought I'd get a little bit more in-depth about what was going on.

I'm still on the lookout for my Mill Commander. I'm also on the lookout for having a deck that's fun, that can win, but that I'm just as comfortable losing with. I'm also looking to have a successful Dimir deck at some point.

So against my better judgment, I threw together a scraggly-little Mill deck so I wouldn't be so behind while Mesmeric Orb was trending on Twitter (NOTE: I don't know if that's true. I actually don't Twitter). Fact though- Sidisi has made this Mesmeric Orb a pretty known quantity.

At first, I thought I might have some hope. Mirko, being just the right amount of unplayable, could come in under the radar and take away/potentially give my opponents a bunch of cards.

Ultimately, the deck got taken apart because it was just too slow. No joke- I did at least 18 damage with Mirko by the time I had an opponent's library in the Shelldock Isle zone (That's 20 cards or less, in case you've forgotten your Hideaway lands), and I just thought, "That's too much for not enough." The deck was working, and I could've probably made it better, but I just didn't want to spend any more time goofing off.

Well, that's all I have for now. Before I go, here's a link to the Milling article published yesterday over on the Big Brothership, CommanderCast:

Mill-osophy

Also- Here's a link to my first podcast, in which I got to guest interview one of the creators of Tiny Leaders, Steven Hamonic.

CommanderCast #185- Tiny Leaders (and I'm on it!)

As always, my failures hopefully lead to your gain. If you've got decklists featuring any of these Fallen heroes, or you've seen some in action, and they have a nice online list for us to look at, share them with us!

Thanks! Turn's To You.

-UL

In General: Fate Reforged Pauper Cube Update

I will start out by discussing my expansion slots. I am constantly trying to keep the cube fit and trim, so as to keep the format consistent. I allow myself to add cards to the cube two at a time when a new set is released to limit the growth and force me to use discipline in making cuts. I reserve the right to occasionally trim out any number of cards when I make an update so as to facilitate a new theme, but can't make additions at will.

I cut no cards in this update, but did use both of my expansion slots.

In: Soul Summons

A 2/2 for two is fine, but unexciting. Normally, I would not consider this a good card in my cube format, but I want to make a point of pushing Manifest. This powerful new mechanic creates very interesting gameplay situations and tests player's knowledge of the format, while adding variance.

The fact that this can almost always trade with another Morph or generic two toughness Creature means that card will never be dead, and it may result in significant upside.



In: Sultai Emissary

I was immediately excited by this card when it was spoiled. There are plenty of ways to get value in my cube, but getting value off of your two mana play is a choice moment indeed. There are still plenty of one toughness Creatures in this format and opponent's are not going to want to trade off when you get to replace it with a potentially much higher impact card.

This can be a real game changer when you are behind as well. If you are in a chump blocking situation and get to trade up for a 2/2 you are already doing very well on your investment, but if you ever flip up a Creature off this you are going to eat their attacker for sure. A near-certain 2-for-1 is excellent, but adding the possibility of a 3-for-1 is enough to get me to draft this every time.



In: Formless Nurturing
Out: Sandstorm

This should be pretty clear. If I am moving away from aggressive decks towards midrange, I don't need a card that hoses aggressive decks. 1/1 tokens will naturally be much worse because of the glut of 2/2 Creatures, so Sandstorm is unnecessary. That being said, I think that Formless Nurturing is the worst of the Manifest cards and I can't imagine it staying in the cube for very long. Creatures with three power and/or toughness are easy to come by and at cheaper costs. Hill Giant isn't really a playable card in my cube.

In: Ethereal Ambush
Out: Shambleshark

Shambleshark has been a strong role-player for some time in the cube, so I was hesitant to cut it, but I don't want to have too many U/G Flash Creatures because I want to keep the complexity down. Ethereal Ambush is more expensive and harder to see coming, but it also gives more value. I expect Shambleshark to come back at some point in the future, but for now I want to play with the shiny new card.





In: Write into Being
Out: Font of Fortunes

Font of Fortunes has under-performed my expectations. There are better card draw spells available and it just isn't that hard to pick up quality 2-for-1's. I am also moving the focus of the cube to midrange, Creature-heavy decks with this update, so I don't mind shaving a card draw spell. When you are battling it out with nearly equivalent 2/2's, having more is better. Write into Being will hopefully decide games with subtle edges, rather than raw card advantage.

This decision really wasn't difficult because I only have one 'flex slot' to work with in Blue; I wouldn't consider touching the other cards. I am glad that I didn't have to use one of my expansion slots in this color, that allowed me to use them for other colors that actually need some support. I don't expect Write into Being to stay around for very long, but I want to push Manifest.


In: Gurmag Angler
Out: Dimir House Guard

Dimir House Guard is great and it will be back. Unfortunately, a regenerating 2/3 matches up so well against Morphs that I had to take it out in order to push the theme I want to try out. On a board full of of 2/2's House Guard goes from a role-player to an all-star and that isn't something that I wanted to happen. In the previous edition, Black had no cards that were above cmc 5 so I am happy to add a beefy finisher to this color.

Also, I have two cards that I want to get into Black, so saving an expansion slot for this color is crucial.




In: Lightning Shrieker
Out: Act of Treason

Without support from Dimir House Guard, the Act + sacrifice combo can't happen. So this was a natural cut. Lightning Shrieker will still end most games where Act would be good, but you don't have to give anything back to your opponent at the end of the turn. A 5/5 Flyer is going to be the biggest thing in the sky by far, so I am excited to see this card's potential in action.

Speaking of House Guard and being a 2/3: I considered cutting Flurry of Horns for the same reason, being that 2/3's will become much more powerful in this update. My logic for leaving it is that I am much more comfortable boosting Red's power level than I am Black's. Red has struggled to make good late game decks in my cube and I hope that this change, as well as the next card, will make the color competitive in longer games.


In: Fierce Invocation
Out: Pharagax Giant

I thought long and hard about what to cut for this card. Eventually I settled on Pharagax Giant because there was too much overlap. They are both trying to the same thing and are likely to be good/bad in similar situations. If Manifest plays out to be less fun, and I end up changing the cube dramatically after Dragons of Tarkir is released, expect Giant to come back.

The fully updated list is available HERE. See you next week Zoners.
-GG

Better Deckbuilding: Titania, Protector of Argoth

After about 3-4 games playtesting this Titania brew, I texted Grandpa Growth something to the effect of, "You remember those Green Loam decks we were trying to play three years ago? Titania was the General we were looking for, and it's just too damn good."

Of course, Gramps doesn't get out of bed for anything less than Emrakul unbannings and/or the reprint of Strip Mine, so he gave me his typical, "You need to hold your horses/I have to see this with my own two eyes/Why do you overexaggerate about nonsense all the time?" response, and I brought my exaggerations down to earth, and that was that. In all fairness, the last time I talked like this, the debate was about Ruric Thar, which wasn't earth shattering, but also not as overwhelming as I'd anticipated.

All of this was some time in December, post-C14 release, and so I kept my mouth shut, tested this deck, and held it over as the first Better Deckbuilding of 2015 so I could research and test and tweak and prove that Titania is every bit the unstoppable force I thought she was.

So I'm beyond stoked to talk about Titania today (say that five times fast), not only because this deck is straight up OP, but because I get to talk about value, token-beatdowns, and my absolute favorite part of any Magic deck I've ever made- The Got-Damn Land.

WHY TITANIA? 

I wasn't going to build this deck. My playgroup actually has a pretty traditional precedent set where we make conscious efforts not to override someone else's Legendary Creature as a Commander, and that's what I thought was going to happen. Whenever there's a new product coming, we tend to call "dibs," which is silly, but we do try to be gentlemanly (I would've been more gender neutral, but we're all dudes these days) about it. Another guy did, and though I was chomping at the bit, I had no problem with this. I tend to give my group the first crack at new cards. Decks fall in and out of favor all the time with us, so there is some inheritance of a Commander when another player decides to retire decks.

Right before the release of C14, I'd begun to assemble a Loam deck with Xira Arien, based on a list I'd found scrolling through rogue decks in MTG Salvation. Once I'd gotten that silly-looking little bug in the mail though, I wasn't really feeling the deck design at all. 

This happens a lot more than I admit, but it's not that I'm unwilling to talk about it- there's just not much to say when I scrap a design. I find zero shame in shelving a deck that you aren't consciously and continuously motivated to play and re-tool throughout the deckbuilding process and its ensuing sleeved-up career, so I went back to the drawing board.

Then, I was getting ready to go play some 1v1 and I decided, "Screw it. I'm gonna play Titania with this Loam stuff and see what's up. If I have to take it apart, I will, but I can't help myself." Although the pieces to a Jund Loam deck were together, building around Titania at the helm was probably one of the quickest, most natural decks I've ever assembled. That's what will happen when cards and combos are floating around in the ol' noggin. It was literally world-record timing for me. From choices to fully sleeved, it was less than 40 minutes. That even included a couple Magic Solitaire/Goldfish tests.

So I played it with the idea that if it was any good, I'd be a sport and ask if it was okay.

Sure enough, it was all these things, my courteous takeover was fine, and my badass beatdown Titania deck was born. 

THE STRATEGY

Lands. Lands are our strategy- playing multiple lands per turn, playing a bunch of non-basics for utility- and then of course, making sure they end up in the graveyard with Titania out so we can beat down with 5/3 Elementals. 

I like to categorize my decks, and I think the best phrase for it is "Aggro-Loam Token Engine." With the extra value Titania generates, we are able to increase the value of the Tec Edge/Wasteland/Ghost Quarter/Strip Mine/Dust Bowl suite by grabbing some cards to go on the offensive. With help from cards that give us extra land plays, as well as the creation of an engine via Life from the Loam, we have the strongest mono-Green graveyard deck in current existence, as well as one of the strongest pure-value engines I've ever seen.

THE TECH

Working our way towards the stronger cards, we'll start with the most obscure and "not terrible."

Arcane Spyglass, without Titania, is probably one of the fairest cards. We don't draw a single card until we have 6 mana, and then we actually have less than 6 mana (the assumption being we don't have mana rocks).

It may not be as absurd as some of my other tech (Sylvan Library, Horn of Greed), but I designed the deck with some serious draw power. There are upwards for 45 lands in this deck, and so digging with our extra resources will yield value that isn't always contingent on having a Titania in play.

However, if she happens to be around, which she usually is, we end up with a midrange creature that will probably have some friends. Also, for every three lands we sacrifice, we get a free card.

Creeping Renaissance has been experiencing an actual creeping renaissance in my metagame, and though most people would be content to say, "Shit man, that's awesome," and move on from literal flavor being IRL flavor, I am not one of those souls. There's always more, and I always want it.

In fact, the coolest part about Creeping Renaissance's creeping renaissance is the fact that we're all playing it in decks for COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SET OF PERMANENTS!

Titania, like me and Brick Tamland, loves Land, our Sidisi player loves to make Zombies and get the ones he's milled away, and our Cromat player gets back all his Superfriends. Like eating Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, there's just no wrong way you can go when playing this card. 

When I don't get Lands back with Renaissance, I'm probably looking for all the cards my Bane of Progress has blown up.

We haven't talked about them yet, but because of the nature of the land-driven-token-generating that his happening, I really like the all-in Wrath effects. Most of my creatures are expendable, and the ones that aren't, I'm not attached to them. Titania is the biggest part of the deck, and because of the way she creates value with her ETB trigger, we will usually have plenty of land to cast her.

As far as Bane of Progress goes, he's powered up in design. Nicknamed after a bygone song from a bygone Teen Pop band in the lost years of the mid 90's, "mmmBoP" here is one of the better ways to police the board. I've struggled since C13 to find the right home for him, simply because I didn't like that he got in the way of my stuff, but again, I don't mind it so much here. I can play around or deal without the noncreature permanents I invest in, and when I need a big thing, he is the big thing.

So far, my high score with Bane of Progress is fifteen +1/+1 counters, without Enchanted Evening or Mycosynth Lattice or Doubling Season/Vorel effects. I'd like to keep track of the high scores in this mini-game, so leave me a comment if you've beaten it. 

For the last year and a half or so, I was actually cutting most of my O-Stones out of decks. What I found was that timely spot removal was really getting the job done, so I went with more of that and less Wrath effects.

Disk and Stone are solid options for decks with expendable creatures, or ones with ways to generate advantages out of them. Most of my Disks and Stones are back in decks now where the design supports them better, like Karn, where I can protect them with Darksteel Forge or Soul of New Phyrexia, or my the topic of my next Better Deckbuilding segment, Obzedat, where investing in Obzedat and having an Instant-speed activation ensures my guild leaders are going to take a couple chunks of damage out of a life total.

The best cards in Titania are the ones you don't expect. By now, I'm sure the Internet has gotten real wise to just how insanely powerful Titania can be with this, but it's still worth mentioning we use it, and more importantly, how it's used.

Zuran Orb, much like Sylvan Safekeeper, should be an actual game-ender in this deck. With Titania out, we can always make enough tokens at Instant speed at the end of someone's turn so we can compensate for blockers whilst avoiding most Wrath effects.

Personally, I don't prefer to use this ability sparingly. By that I mean that I have no problem sacrificing most of my lands if need be. Again, this is a little bit bold, but I've found that what separates the mediocre Aggro player from a better one is not the blind risk, and attacking every turn if able- it's knowing how to manipulate your own momentum by preventing Control players from buying extra turns on the damage clock.

Rites of Flourishing has been long recognized as part of the 99 of most Group Hug decks.

I do not support this archetype at all (another article I will be writing for Commander Cast, as I continue to foreshadow future segements), but this is a card I tend to play with a little more caution when I put it in decks.

The thing most people don't realize is that the secret to successful decks with RoF is that the winner is the player whom consistently plays the additional land that this card allows, thereby maximizing its value.

With 45-47 lands in the deck, we can support this card nicely while also using it to dig. In combination with use and re-use of Fetches, Panoramas, and Myriad Landscape, this is usually not about generosity. Sometimes, you have to help others get ahead so you can. This is clearly what's going on here.

There's a pretty extensive Land Destruction package in the deck. With Crucible, and access to cards with extra land plays, there is plenty of opportunity to play a heavy resource denial strategy.

The cool thing about the Strip Mines and Ghost Quarters is that we have additional options for targets in our little Loam engine. We can control our opponent's lands, and in the process, we gain extra creatures.

What's cool about Ghost Quarter is that grabs more land out of the deck when we do this. The value, again, is just overflowing here.

One of the obvious includes in the deck are cards with Landfall triggers. Of course, most people will be holding up their removal for Avenger of Zendikar and Rampaging Baloths, which can get really out of hand.

Grazing Gladehart, on the other hand, has a really nice home here in the deck because of the bigger targets and tokens in the deck. Before our little Antelope meets his end, the opportunity to gain upwards of 10+ life is significant.

The last card I want to talk about is Arashi, the Sky Asunder.

Although the art for this creature looks like it's lacking one, there is plenty of punch here.

Captain Sisay players can probably attest to the excellent utility Channel adds to its deck design.

In Titania, I replicate this a little bit with my Time of Need package. It's exponentially smaller, but there's only three creatures I really need at various stages of the game: Azusa, Kamahl, and Arashi.

Green typically has some issues with flying, and this is a way I've found to get to my answer, should I not get my go-to Silklash Spider.

Per usual, here's the full list. Feel free to drop me a comment, +1, or whatever.

I Love Land- Titania EDH

We've got a new look, some new people, and I'm pretty excited to be inching towards Year 3 of TGZ. Thanks for making it happen!

Pass.
-UL

In General: Banned and Restricted Update

Hello an welcome back to In General. I am Grandpa Growth and here on Sundays, we cover just about anything and everything relating to Magic: the Gathering. I promised at the end of the Fate Reforged Set Review that I would be discussing the top commons from the new set in my Pauper Cube update article. That will still absolutely happen, but I am pushing it back a week because we got some incredible news in the Magic world.

If you haven't already seen it, the new banned and restricted list has been announced. You can read all about it here: B&R Update. This is huge news friends: several cards were banned, some were unbanned, and multiple formats were affected. Let's walk through the changes and I will give you my take on each card.

Modern

Banned: Treasure Cruise

This is about as predictable as the sunrise, but I still think it is worth talking about. Treasure Cruise was abusive and had created a stranglehold. It singlehandedly forced about a dozen decks completely out of the format. Tight aggro-control lists require specific, high-synergy cards to coalesce into a solid game plan. These decks often need some cheap card draw or cantrips to glue the deck together. Without Treasure Cruise, Delver really isn't going to be a deck. This opens up lots of space in the format for decks that were more easily disrupted by Delver's cheap counterspells.



Banned: Dig Through Time

Although the debate was not unanimous. no one should be surprised to see Dig get buried along with Cruise. Delver decks would easily just switch the cards. They would be worse, but still strong. The trouble is that a slightly weaker Delver deck couldn't beat things like Scapeshift or Twin, who still get to freely abuse Dig. Banning Dig Through Time will make it so that Twin, UWR, Tron, and Scapeshift are back to their pre-Khans status in terms of power level and metagame share.





Banned: Birthing Pod

This caught many by surprise, myself included. I thought that Pod would be banned a year ago, but it wasn't. Since then, I just assumed that Wizards was endorsing, or at least accepting, Pod as the dominant deck in the format. The argument had been brought up that Cruise and Dig HAD to go, but then we were just left with the same format that existed pre-Khans (plus Siege Rhino). Many people thought that this would not lead to an interesting Pro Tour format, thus the banning of Birthing Pod.

Those who paid attention to the announcement of PT Fate Reforged will probably remember that it was slated to be a Standard constructed portion. This was later changed, as announced by Aaron Forsythe himself. This seemed a little fishy at the time, but I didn't think anything of it until now. The reason for the change is clear and it shows that Wizards has been leaning towards banning Pod for a long time now.



Unbanned: Golgari Grave-Troll

There is no Dredge deck in Modern and there won't be one even with this being legal. Troll was pre-preemptively banned when Modern was announced as a new constructed format. The thinking was that they wanted to differentiate this new format from old extended and restricting the power of non-interactive combo decks like Dredge and Dark Depths was a clear first step. I like the unbanning of Grave-Troll because I am not sure it should really be on the list in the first place.

As it stands Grave-Troll really can't have an impact on the format by itself. Dredge could be a problem with the right cards, but Dread Return is the key card in the archetype. Bridge From Below and Narcomoeba are cute, but there are a dozen or more high quality sweepers to solve that problem. E.g. Slagstorm, Drown in Sorrow, Wrath of God. This would only ever be a problem if you could Dread Return a Flamekin Zealot.


Legacy

Banned: Treasure Cruise

Again, no surprise here. The card is simply too powerful in concert with a critical mass of cheap threats, disruption, and burn. Importantly though, Dig Through Time has not been tested as rigorously in Legacy and could play a role in certain decks like Miracles, given an opportunity. An opportunity which the card will get it seems.


Unbanned: Worldgorger Dragon

This isn't as clear cut to me. This card was crazy and abusive and let to degenerate games with degenerate decks. In the announcement article on the mothership, this change was explained by the fact that any reanimator decks would simply rather reanimate Griselbrand than Worldgorger anyway. I am not so sure that it true though. Griselbrand almost always draws enough cards to find a combo finish, which is tough to beat, but that only speaks to the idea of banning that card.

In my opinion, the choice to bring back Dragon shouldn't be based only on the fact that Griselbrand is more appealing. Why would you unban a card that can instantly create a two-card infinite mana combo as early as turn one? Is that what we want to happen in Legacy? Force of will and Daze help keep unfair decks in check, but I don't want Wizards putting me in the position of choosing between only two decks: broken or Blue.


Vintage

Restricted: Treasure Cruise

I like this decision. Vintage is the broken format where no one cares what you are doing as long as it is awesome. Treasure Cruise was a little too strong, but things never really get banned in Vintage, which I like.

As you know I am a huge fan of Pauper and compete regularly on MTGO. I was expecting to see Treasure Cruise banned in Pauper, but it wasn't. I think that the format is diverse and healthy, but many people complain that Delver was already the best deck before Treasure Cruise and now there is no stopping it.

That is dramatic, but I am surprised about this no-call. It could be that Wizards doesn't really care if the format is imbalanced right now because there is no premier level events in Pauper. That would be unfortunate, but I expect it to be at least a little true.


Unrestricted: Gifts Ungiven

Okay. Well that is cool andall, but I am not sure it matters too much. Don't get me wrong, Gifts is a totally broken card and it leads to many truly miserable games. It often means that you just can't lose when you cast it. We all know what the card is capable of.

My thinking here is that there are cheaper ways to win in Vintage, so why pay more? Most decks weren't even taking advantage of their ability to play the first copy of Gifts, so that tells me they probably didn't want the second, third, or fourth.

That's all for today Zoners. As promised next week I will have the Fate Reforged Pauper Cube update article. See you then.

-GG

Calling All Autobots!

Happy Thor's Day Zoners! 

We got a few pieces of mischief I'd like to manage today. First of all, if you're looking for an article from me about what I like to talk about, here's my "Trick" Voltron piece that featured on CommanderCast yesterday. Check it out, leave me a line in the comments if you've got questions or an inspiration.

CommanderCast- Trick Voltron

In other news, let's get to the title for this article. Me and Gramps are in the market for some people that want to talk about Commander content and general Magic news. We're also gearing up for a big return of your favorite tech segment, The Stack, and we're looking for guests for that too.

This message goes out to all Autobots, particularly writers and avid Commanders looking for a soapbox.

So if you have a cool idea for an ongoing segment, or you're interested in chatting about cards, shoot me an email at unclelanddrops@gmail.com. We're here. We're waiting.

You can look forward to next week's feature, where I get to talk about the most Land Dropping Land Drops deck I've designed to date- Titania, Protector of Argoth. 

Alright. Mischief Managed!

-UL

Fate Reforged Set Review: Utility and Mana

Welcome to the final installment of The General Zone's Review of Fate Reforged. If you missed any of the previous articles, you can find them linked here:

Legends Part 1
Legends Part 2
Threats
Answers

In today's segment we will finish up our review by discussing every thing that is left: Utility cards and mana producers.

A mana card is very simple. It either produces mana, fixes colors, or puts additional lands into play. Easy.

A utility card is harder to pin down. Utility cards add flexibility to your deck. They expand your functionality or your resources. Good examples include Glorious Anthem and Ponder. Obviously this category is diverse. It is a catch-all. Let's see what we are working with in Fate Reforged.

I am only one paragraph into this article and I am already confused. The dragons are attacking the humans. They are besieging the Abzan's sandsteppe citadel. Why then, is the Dragon's ability defensive (preventing potential attacks) and the Khan's ability offensive (boosting the stats of Creatures just before you attack). Yet another flavor fail. The conveyance of concept on this card just isn't satisfactory.

The abilities themselves are not bad, but neither one is really powerful enough to justify play in a good Commander deck. This is a particularly bad time for a cycle of Enchanments. Last year's God cards and Dictates, as well as the recent reprinting of Doubling Season, has pushed the value of Enchantment removal to all time highs.



Mastery of the Unseen has a lot of hidden value. It is ostensibly an expensive source of 2/2 dorks. This is still completely reasonable. Compare to Mobilization and Heliod. The bonus here is the ability to flip up a Manifest(ed) Creature. That turns your 2/2 into an entire extra card. Combine that with the fact that this will gain you 5+ life over the course of most games, and we are talking about one spicy little engine.






I play Merfolk Looter in a couple of decks. No, I am not joking. Looting is actually a tremendous boon to any draw. Commander decks are full of expensive cards, situational removal, finishers, and combo pieces. The ability to smooth out your draw will let you set up more powerful late game plays. Increasing your access to removal and lands will help you reliably survive to cast your fatties. Basically, its everything that a control deck wants and it is slightly more resistant to removal than traditional looters.

As far as I am concerned, this card doesn't have a second mode.

I love taking extra turns; the effect is just so powerful. However, I do not love jumping through hoops. You have to Delve away six cards just to make this the same price as a regular Time Warp. A cost of 6UU would have been pretty insane, but the third Blue sends this card to the doghouse. It is disappointing that the design team couldn't find a middle ground.

I am very disappointed with the flavor of this card. Sarkhan literally goes to the past in this set. Why is he not in the art, DOING JUST THAT?! Secondly, He has traveled backwards, with the intention of changing the past. Delve as a mechanic is the perfect conduit for doing that. You are literally going through the things that have been used previously in the game and GETTING RID OF THEM.

Cards in graveyards have previously been used to represent ancestors, memories, and sometimes literally events in the past within the flavor of the game. The only excuse that I am willing to accept is that the character pictured in this art is somehow accidentally brought forward in time because of Sarkhan's actions. If she doesn't feature prominently in future stories or cards, then this will have been a complete waste.

The name of this card is perfect, no complaints there.


If you are going to choose Khans, you overpaid by a significant margin. Oversold Cemetary is appropriately (not really, but oh well) costed at 1B. If you are choosing Dragons in 1-v-1, you should be playing Sorin Markov instead. Combining these two thoughts, I recommend that you don't play this card.

Weird card alert! As I alluded to in my article last Sunday, this is one of my favorite cards in the set. It is going to create a very interesting dynamic in multiplayer games and is sure to see quite a bit of play. It is unfortunate that this is Red. It is also unfortunate that this isn't great in 1v1 games. Still though, this card is going to be a ton of fun.

I want to briefly dive into the psychology of playing this card. You are going to activate it asap to get your free cards. Done deal. You pick your favorite opponent to give it to and then they are most likely to cash it for some quick cards as well...but then what happens? Do they give it back? That is the big question.

This card rewards cooperation and political alliances, to be sure. The interesting thing to me is, the first person to jump off the gravy train can really screw over the other one. If I give it to you, you give it back, and then I give to to yet another person, I have four cards, but each of my opponent's only have two. In any game with an odd number of people (especially three) this gets very risky. You play it, but then have to give away control to an opponent, who can screw you over and start their own card draw treaty with a third party. This will result in them both getting way ahead of the table and leaving you in the dust. If you are going to play this, make sure you have someway to stop it from getting out of control.


This card ends up being very similar to Chandra Pryomaster, but just worse. You are locked into whatever you choose and you only get to ping stuff AFTER you lose a Creature. I would say that Chandra is already pretty mediocre and a further reduction in her power and flexibility is just not worth playing.

Again, massive flavor fail. What do either of these abilities have to do with what is going on in the art or the mechanics of these groups represented? Am I expected to believe that the dragon's siege strategy is to fly overhead, get killed, and then fall on top of the opposing army thereby injuring some of the soldiers? That doesn't sound like the tactics of an ancient, hyper-intelligent, apex predator of colossal size.


We have finally done it. We got a card that makes some sort of flavor sense, even if it is only on one half of the card. A new dragon shows up to the battle and they get to immediately scrap with somebody else's dude.

Unfortunately, this card sucks. If you choose Khans, you would have way rather had a Garruk Wildspeaker instead. It would allow you much more flexibility in which colors of mana you get and also provide other options with his minus abilities. In point of fact though, this does add mana on BOTH of your main phases, which could potentially be a difference maker, however unlikely.

If you pick Dragons then you are setting yourself up for failure. Green has a relative dearth of quality Flying Creatures and this ability isn't attractive enough to make me want to play under-powered cards.


At Green's higher rarities we see some quality pieces of card advantage and recursion. There are some high points in this card's design: It is an Instant, it doesn't require targeting of specific cards, and it conveniently dodges effects that remove your graveyard by giving you new choices during the resolution of the spell. Someone cracking a Tormod's Crypt in response to your Grim Discovery is an effective counter. Sudden Reclamation is still likely to get SOMETHING even if your graveyard is empty when it starts to resolve. I am not sure that this is worth doubling the cost of the card, but I think that it is still worth looking at, particularly in budget lists.

This land isn't exactly exciting. In Commander, virtually any nonbasic land that you include in your deck is going to tap for any relevant color anyway. Some five color decks, like say: Scion of the Ur-Dragon, might be interested, but I don't foresee this card making much of a splash in the format.


Final note: I left out a great deal of cards in this section of the review because I thought that many of them were just stone unplayable in the current format. If you feel a case could be made for one of those cards, strike up a conversation in the comments.

By all descriptions, this set looks pretty sweet. I am excited to play with the new cards in Limited and Commander. I hope you enjoyed last weekend's prerelease events and as always, leave your feedback on the review articles in the comments below. I will see you again on Sunday!

-GG