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

Born of the Gods Set Review: Answers

Welcome back! This is the second installment TGZ's review of Born of the Gods! If you missed the first segment you can check it out here: Part 1

In today's segment we will be going over the answer cards from the set. Answers deal with your opponent's threats and allow you to survive to set up your own game plan. Things like removal, counter spells, and disruption all fit into this category. This article is going to be much shorter than the first part, just because of how the cards were broken down within the set. This is a very creature heavy set and the removal so far in Theros block has been very disappointing.

The Cards:

First up we have a very narrow removal spell with some even more narrow opportunities for card advantage. Theros block has a strong Enchantment theme and removal like this needs to exist for limited purposes. With regards to constructed though, this has very little to offer even in the context of casual decks. Missing on Artifacts really limits the versatility and playability of this card.



I like 'big wraths' quite a bit, but seven mana is really stretching things. At this price point I would expect it to destroy literal everything or only our opponents' things. There are even better ways to get this effect at instant-speed. This card and cycle and really this whole set are all together unexciting. A very lackluster follow up to Theros, which was one of the most powerful sets in recent memory.



I rarely talk about combat tricks in these reviews. Most often they are too weak to be useful and creature combat is often not the main focus of Commander games. I think this card mainly has implications for Pauper, where Blue is really starting to mount an impressive collection of pseudo-removal combat tricks that let you interact favorably with the board. This signals a slow, but significant change from Magic's early years where Blue was basically stuck trying to answer threats before they got to the board.



This has several disappointing aspects. It has a generally unacceptable targeting restriction, but it also has the restrictive cost that is typical of more flexible counters. It is probably just worse than Swan Song, which basically sees no play because of how weak it is. The fact is that there are plenty of ways to deal with Creatures, even in Blue decks, so a new answer really has to beat the average power of those cards by a significant margin to have an impact on the format.

I am not much of a grammarian, but you definitely don't nullify people.  Nullify would be much more appropriate for a Negate-style effect. This card should be called 'Fork It'. Or 'Fork You'. 'Fork Your Guy', maybe. At least, 'Stick a Fork in it'. Did I mention that the choice by the creative team to use a BIDENT instead of a trident as Thassa's weapon of choice was absurd?



This on the other hand is pretty decent. It is definitely worse than some of the other soft counters like Miscalculation or Condescend, but soft counters are pretty good in Commander despite what people seem to think. The truth is that people never stop tapping out, even in the late game. Also, consider this: Soft counters are usually cheaper and more effective in the early game. Every game has an early game. Not every game has a late game. Tempo decks love cards like this because they plan to win before the late game ever happens, so they don't mind playing cards that are bad in the late-late.

That said, you have to do a decent amount of work to make this as good as Mana Leak and it is never going to be as good as Counterspell, so you can probably find something better.


IT'S THE BLUE WRATH OF GOD! Hide your children, hide you wives, the wave is coming and it is going to wreck your whole neighborhood! I like this card quite a bit. It buys you a ton of time in the early game and is almost just as good as a Wrath if they have to end up discarding some number of things because their hand is overflowing. This card was probably nerfed a little bit by design. If you think of it from a flavor perspective, there isn't a great argument as to why this returns fish, merfolk, and fliers, but that would make the card significantly more powerful if it didn't

Speaking of flavor, I cannot see why this appeals to Thassa. As the god of the sea isn't the largest portion of her constituency fish, merfolk, and plants? What about whales? Save the whales man. If I ever have a Water Elemental in play when this resolves, I am not picking it up.



This has been billed as the premier removal spell from the set and it is a pretty nice one. In Commander it doesn't kill a whole lot of the real threats, but it is perfectly suited to getting rid of utility creatures, mana dorks, and tokens. Token hosers are definitely important to include in any deck list, but I like the next card on our list much more for that task.

This reminds me a lot of Echoing Decay. Let me tell you a story from long ago. Echoing Decay was meant to keep Frogmite from getting out of hand, but instead Affinity became the most degerate Standard deck of the last decade. Bile Blight is obviously aimed directly at Burning-Tree Emissary, which has been tearing up Standard for months. The problem with these answers is that they aren't as good as just having your own Frogmites or BTEs and they usually aren't playable in the mirror because of color requirements. Sometimes you see innovative deck builders like Gerry Thompson tune popular lists to fight the mirror by adding Black or Red to include more efficient answers to the key cards in the matchup. While I love that kind of strategic deckbuilding, a mana cost of BB makes it slightly more difficult to pull that off.


This is a strict upgrade to Infest, a card that sees only minor play in Commander and next to no play in any other format. Adding Scry 1 is a modest, but relevant bonus and has the potential to push this card into the mainstream. As I was just saying token hosers are important in EDH and getting a little bit of extra value out of a card that you already needed anyway feels great.




What a delightfully weird little card! Black rarely gets the ability to generate mana and even then, it is almost never mana of any color. This also produces non-Creature tokens which, while not unique, is very rare.  This presents a reasonably efficient way to answer all of the new god cards that Theros has brought us, although the upside of generating a free Lotus Pedal is not enough to justify this card costing four mana. Cute, but ultimately mediocre at best.



It is not often that I get to talk about burns spells in our set reviews. Often they are too small in scale to be relevant in EDH, but 5 damage isn't completely irrelevant and this is the first card in this cycle that is actually reasonable to cast on your own turn. Burning a potential blocker to get in profitable attacks is very reasonable. Going straight to the dome in the late game is also fine. You reduce your opponent's life total and solidify your next couple plays by stacking your draws. This card isn't incredible by any stretch of the imagination, but is probably playable and is the best of the cycle in my opinion.



I love the diverse and exciting design space that the Fight mechanic created. This is very similar, but obviously better because it doesn't require you to break the symmetry. This will let you leverage any lead on board into targeted removal and likely profitable attacks. Unlike most Red removal though, this can't go to the face and sucks post-wrath. I definitely think that this is playable in the right decks and helps Red as a color, but it isn't going to crack the Commander format wide open.

I dig this art. It makes me think that Purphoros is playing a gigantic game of croquet all across the plane of Theros. Thousands of innocent bystanders are left dead in his wake as the destruction reaches epic proportions.


This is the most important removal card in the set by far. The gods have had a profound, format-warping effect on Commander. The way we build our decks must accommodate permanent solutions that allow us to remove the gods without falling behind on cards. This is a functional reprint of Deglamer, for those who don't remember. Tuck and shuffle effects are generally very good in Commander because of the physical nature of the deck building restrictions. Hiding a single card in a big pile of 99 other cards is a good way to get rid of it. I am certainly glad that we have another card to use in a singleton format, but this is still in the same color, so Black and Red decks still don't have an answer to an active god AT ALL and that isn't likely to change any time soon. I love that this made it to print, but we will need to see more before I feel comfortable at the kitchen table again.

On a side note, unravelling aether sounds like a Blue thing to do. This effect definitely needs to be Green or White, but if you look at all of the cards with aether in their name, about half of them are Blue. The other half are split between Red and colorless. Now I think that Green and Black will have one each. The more you know.

AAAAAND that is all folks. I told you it would be a bit shorter. Next up I'll be back with the final installment where we cover the last few cards in the set. That article will be even shorter still as their are only a couple of cards left that are worth discussing. After the set review finishes up we will be back to our regularly scheduled posts. Make sure to like, comment, and follow us here at The General Zone and I'll see you again soon.
-GG