Game On!

Art from promo planeswalker cards exclusive to 2016’s San Diego Comic Con. ZOMBIES!

So we had a 3v3 edh game going. And another group of people asked if we wanted to play this other game. We said “sure we should be done soon.” An hour goes by “are yall almost done” “They are at 12 life this should be done really fast” Another hours goes by “Wtf” “Sorry dude they just won’t die…omg please just die!” Our match took so long that the other group kinda left lol. A couple of people said they took naps during our match and woke up to us still playing. Edh can be time consuming but man is it fun.

Later we were watching Season 2, and Andrea did some stupid shit again, as she does, and I go all about how much I dislike her, how she is bad for the group and all, to which my gf says “No, she does this because she is the true survivor! Unlike that sissy weak Carol, Andrea will be just fine out there!”

Mark Rosewater, a head designer at WotC who forced Extort (purposefully) on EDH by abusing the CI loophole dealing with reminder text. And who wants to disband the CI rule so that he can run hybrids in any color deck. Mark Rosewater, doesn’t understand EDH - he never will. So its best for the format, AND everyone playing it - if he forgets it exists and stops trying to force his views on it.

But i for one, I am sick of Mark Rosewater constantly trying to drag EDH/Commander down a peg by bitching constantly about how Hybrid in EDH doesn’t match his view of hybrid; or how he *happily* constructed Extort to get around the rule of CI.

You’re right, I don’t like Maro - as a person he’s an egotistical narcissist that thinks even casual formats created by people that aren’t WotC’s employees, should be under the control; or leverage, of WotC and its employees. Maro has lots of indirect influence on the format - because idiots keep asking him questions that he isn’t qualified to answer - but he does anyway - in the answer he gives in the original reblog, he doesn’t even mention that the format is under jurisdiction of a separate group that isn’t WotC. 

Yeah, I’m just not crazy about the Izzet commanders. Aside from Jhoira, who isn’t super fun to play with or against, most of the other Izzet Commanders don’t give much direction. Without direction, people tend to slide into just playing goodstuff, which is bad for the format’s diversity, or playing the only strategy that’s specific to Izzet: spell-based combo. Unfortunately, spell-based combo is pretty noninteractive. 

Overall, I just don’t think any of the Izzet Commanders push the player in a direction that is both healthy for the format and interesting to play with and against, so I can’t really recommend any of them. I know there are a lot of Izzet players out there who are really passionate about their guild and build it into part of their identity, and I’m not trying to dump on Izzet by saying that the Izzet Commanders are bad/boring/unfun. On the contrary, I’m annoyed that there aren’t better options for this color combination and I see myself as advocating for better, more thoughtful designs from Wizards.

I feel the same way about the Boros Commanders: I don’t hate the color combination, but I hate the options available for legendary creatures. What percentage of Boros Commanders involve attacking, dealing damage, or the combat step? Why is it that Azorius gets Daxos and Grand Arbiter, Golgari gets both Skullbriar and Savra, and Simic gets both Edric and Kruphix, but Boros is pigeonholed into playing only a single archetype thanks to a lack of diversity among its Commanders’ abilities?

Look at these guys. You get to choose between pumping your creatures, pumping your creatures, attacking twice with your creatures, forcing your opponents to attack you, dealing direct damage to players, doubling your damage to opponents, helping out your attackers, pumping your creatures, dealing direct damage to creatures, and blowing up the world with Worldslayer (after you attack with three or more creatures).

Is red/white’s mechanical overlap really so small? How about a Commander that explored the colors’ hatred of artifacts? Or even better, the color pair’s affinity for artifacts? How about a Commander that explores red/white’s love of equipment? Maybe one that shares its parent colors’ ability to generate tokens?

Any one of those ideas could lead to a cool Commander that didn’t necessarily force you into an aggressive strategy. But I doubt we’re going to see a red/white Commander like that as long as Wizards continues to make Boros legends using the same tired template.

I just wanted to share another perspective:

One of the first deck I ever built was original Niv-Mizzet, that was all built around his ability. I intentionally left out Curiosity/O-Eye, and focused on the challenge. So it featured Psychosis Crawler, Teferi`s Puzzle Box, Whirlpool Warrior and several instant speed card draws, like BSZ, Careful Consideration, etc. It is very fun to control the combat through instant BSZ, dividing damage to creatures that you don`t want to see attacking, introducing a little politics. The most fun way to win is to target the other player with card draw, and then Runeflare Trap+Twincast them to death.