EDH/COMMANDER GENERAL

>Gives your opponent 2 ( TWO ) cards

i cry whenever i see it being casted and watch the other guy drawing 3 cards on their next upkeep refueling his hand.

>on their next upkeep

It's just straight up "the next upkeep". This is especially important in multiplayer.

The important thing here is that you replace the card you spent stopping him, retaining your own card advantage.

>normal counterspell scenario
>opponent casts a spell
>you counter it
>he is down 1 card
>you are down 1 card
>2 opponents are down 0 cards
>2 negative card advantage in relation to the rest of the table

>arcane denial
>he is up 1 card
>you are down 0 cards
>2 opponents are down 0 cards
>1 negative card advantage in relation to the rest of the table

Sarmento best
Guay a shit

So, it turns out that my Tabletop club at uni only really plays Commander and I know nothing about it.
I was wondering what a good jumping point would be.

The commander precons are probably the best preconstructed product WotC has ever sold. They are usually a pretty good starting point if you have a small collection.

If you have a decent collection from other formats, or want to make your own deck from scratch, just look through the OP.

edhrec.com is a good tool for finding commander staples.

The roof

I've only got a basic Standard deck from like, Gateway I think. Maybe Zendikar.
I was looking at the precons, which would you consider the most fun?

That depends entirely on your playstyle, what's your favorite archetype, colors, method of winning etc?

There are so many precons in multiple colors. Your best bet is to look over some of the precon legendary creatures and pick one you like.

Do you like recurring creatures from the graveyard? Countering and controlling the board? Crazy spell shenanigans? Attacking with lots of small minions, attacking with one huge minion? Commander has all the varying flavors.

Assuming you know the basics of Magic, edhrec.com/ is a good site to start off with (it's what I used). First find a commander that you like the look of (a uni club shouldn't be too competitive so almost any will do). From there, the site will tell you cards that are commonly used in decks with that commander, or cards common in that colour combo. For now, don't be scared of filling the deck with a bit of chaff. If you're pretty frugal about it then a serviceable deck should only cost you about ~£40. From there you can chop and change over time, and in response to the local meta. For instance, Dave loves counterspells so you begin to use more cards with split second. Shit like that.

Or just find a popular netdeck and blow your cash on that.

Lockwood>Guay≥Yang>Sarmento

This is going directly into my jank Doran deck along with the tree. Any other suggestions?

Taking it out, it's a garbage card.

I run a Treefolk tribal doran, Is there any point to this? if you pull off the Tree of perdition life swap they're going to lose probably

Rate my Goblin combo deck that has zero defence really or interaction besides being able to go off explosively and win in a single turn.

tappedout.net/mtg-decks/goblin-parade-1/

Is there any real reason for me to run more removal or disruption and try and be competitive or should I just focus on being a wildcard and pull wins out of my ass, I only play kitchen top EDH games.

Also how good is Zur control, ive been trying this out on xmage and im considering buying the rest of the deck physically.

tappedout.net/mtg-decks/zur-destroyer-of-world-voltron/

Commander precons are actually good, even the most recent ones are competitive enough with some upgrades but only if the tribes are what you want. Wizards has about 80USD of value inside and even the vampire deck has some dank cards.

Otherwise choose a commander and plug into EDHREC choose a particular strat and check out the recommended cards. EDH is entirely about enjoying the variety of a strategy in a barely restricted format. I made my first deck over at least 6 months, changing it up constantly. Playing at uni is the best because people will trade promos and foils with you and help with the deck and it becomes really nice and personal.

I made this out of the vampire pre-con,

tappedout.net/mtg-decks/vampire-all-stars/

someone has saved my shitty MS paint mock up, i feel honored.

both of you are gay

I tried running it, every time was a huge disappointment

They're all amazing art, Guay would be the best card if it weren't for the big fat disgusting DCI logo

You are correct, but you also have to consider where the card advantage/disadvantage actually goes. Most of the time you're using Counterspell/Arcane Denial on whoever's in the leading position, and giving the guy in the leading position card advantage could be much more detrimental to winning the game than giving yourself card disadvantage.

Start out with a precon, play a couple of sessions and figure out what power level the club is at.
There's everything from "below precon quality", "precons with $50 in upgrades", "we know how to break the game but it's more fun to play at 75% power" to "cEDH: legacy lite edition".

I have a giant boner for big mean green dudes. Post big mean green dudes.

...

>Are counterspells worth running in multi?
Only a few per deck, but yes. The conditions are that the counter must be an unrestricted hard counter, and generally it must have an upside. Some that I'd usually consider

>Arcane Denial
Cheap, replaces itself, and in multi giving the guy you scorned cards is fairly acceptable, unlike in a duel where it's a fairly crippling flaw. Probably the counter I most run thanks to having basically all the advantages when you just want that one silver bullet to stop an incoming game loss.

>Counterspell
Doesn't usually make the cut, its only virtue is being mana-cheap. That said, it is mana-cheap and totally unrestricted so it could make the grade, especially in a blue deck.

>Memory Lapse
Also doesn't usually make the cut, because its situational, but it's still worth considering since sometimes top-of-deck is a far worse place to put something than the graveyard.

>Mana Drain/Spell Swindle
Basically the same card. True, Swindle costs 5 instead of 2 which is significant but it also gets you any-color mana, that you can use immediately or later, in the form of artifacts rather than straight colorless on your next main. It's also not Gorillion Dollars like Mana Drain. Both are pretty awesome counters because they set you up.

>Spelljack
As long as you don't point it at somebody's commander like an idiot, this is a favorite of mine since it gives you such massive value. It really hurts to hold back 6 if you're not in Flash Tribal, though, so I'll often consider it, then pass it over.

>Cryptic Command
Heavy Blue devotion (both 3 symbols and 75% of its cost) so it really hurts in multicolor decks and probably doesn't show its face there but as a counter+ it does really, really funny things. True, the most common mode selection is probably counter/draw to get an Arcane Denial that doesn't help anybody else but I'm also a fan of counter/bounce to answer two problems or counter/tapdown to open up the board.

Counterspells are very good to have to prevent winning plays from your opponents but the only ones worth playing are less than 3 mana if you at a more competitive table.

Mana drain
Force of will
Flusterstorm
Spell pierce
Counterspell
Muddle the mixture

Now if you are at a casual table sure go ahead and run 3,4, and 5 mana counterspells that have big upside but the better your meta gets the more they are going to fuck your over

Dismiss. The equivalent to draw a card and counter from Cryptic is Dismiss.

I feel sad because I'm a proliferatefag and I hate planes walkers, so Atraxa is perfect for me but since so many other faggots are into super friends and shit she's everywhere and also a million dollars. I just wanted to wind up my tinker toy artifacts with counters.

I like the way you think, but you should add Mystic Confluence to the list. Instant speed draw 3 for 5 is a good baseline and it's a Cryptic Command+ in many situations.

I'm not usually a huge fan of pay-or-counter in EDH since they're often dead draws late unless I'm staxing, but I can get behind that one, it's versatile and can just draw you cards if everybody has all the mana. That, and "Or pay 9" is basically hard against anyone who's not already going infinite, if you really have to burn all the choices on that.

Fair enough. Speaking of counters from Tempest, I was remiss in not bringing up Forbid, the counter you use to alchemize your CA into moar denial.

Assuming he doesn't miss his trigger :^)

I'd say the raw coverage makes Disallow ideal. Shutting down a powerful land ability, or an artifact that was cheated in is very potent.

Atraxa is 4 colors so the manabase can be pretty expensive
But you could play a green based deck with dorks and multicolored mana rocks
She can be a pretty tough voltron commander, already has flying, vigilance, DT and LL

One of my favourite green creatures. If only he was legendary.

user, I've never been more disappointed than when I tried to pull that combo off. It's so easy to stop.

You want a motherfucking god tier combo using Tree of Perdition? Wound Reflection, a way to flicker the tree, and a way to give it haste. If you can flicker it 3 times, it's game over.

>Are counterspells worth running in multi?
absolutely, they stop people from winning the game. if your not running counterspells if you can you are playing EDH wrong, at least 2-3

But there are other ways to stop combos - if that's what you mean.

No, there aren't.

yes but a lot of the time you need to stop the combo right now and if that last spell resolves your donezo. better to be able to counter it right then and there than lose

so if you don't play blue you dun goofed?

There are counter spell analogues in other colors, and split second spells that can fuck combo up as well.

Depends on the combo.
You can interrupt a good number of them with permanent removal, or completely reverse them with something like Deflecting Palm or Rakdos Charm.

Gimme cute WB artifact support. Marionette Master and Tempered Steel isn’t enough.

Carnage Tyrant
Hydra Omnivore
Kalonian Hydra
Khalni Hydra
Mossbridge Troll
Oran-Rief Hydra
Panglacial Wurm
Pathbreaker Ibex
Siege Behemoth
Stonehoof Chieftain
Terastodon
Thunderfoot Baloth
Ulvenwald Hydra
Worldspine Wurm

You have two options:

>play Ux, and use blue as your draw and counterspell support

or

>play something primarily colourless, and hatefuck everyone's mana base until you can stop whatever they wanted to do in the first place

One of these methods is proactive, the other is reactive, and reactive is almost always stronger.

You're missing the point. You can have a niche answer in your hand to answer a specific threat, or you can have an emergency valve to be like "Nope" the second someone does something suspicious.

...

Fuck that, for Soulscour. All in or bust.

I'd say you're missing the point too. There are plenty enough situations where a counterspell isn't going to help, especially thanks to Boseiju and Cavern of Souls.

Throw a counterspell at Dark Depths and Thespian's Stage and see where that gets you. Outside of specifically Disallow, you're not going to do so well.

Add to the fact the natural vulnerability of counterspells being that you have to have them available before the "suspicious" thing happens, whereas you can snipe a combo piece off the board after the fact with removal, and you'll start to realize that counterspells are not the end-all be-all of Magic.

>10 mana

Would a praetor deck be viable?

gimme some advice please

deckstats.net/decks/96599/842870-creatureless-mogis?saved=1&lng=en

They're much better inside a deck than at the head of it.

Yes, but it doesn't sit useless on the field waiting to eat removal. You can at least play it outside your upkeep, and it hits lands.

Yes, but between counterspells and the occasional bounce, you're probably fine if you're running blue, whereas every single other colour has a giant reason why it's less efficient. Green has good ramp and spot removal, but terrible card draw unless you're late game. Black can't deal with enchantments at all, despite being able to do everything moderately well. White can deal with anything, but will never have enough mana/card draw to be able to compensate. Red is the god of artifact destruction, but at the cost of poor card draw and no way to deal with enchantments.

Blue, on the other hand, gives you a universal reactive answer, often for zero cost, and failing that, you can always bounce just about anything and wait. Look at thespian's stage/dark depths. Sure, you can't counter it, but you can counter the start up costs, and a single blue mana can bounce your 20/20 flying indestructible.

Either your run a strategy where you make sure that can't happen in the first place, like stax, or you run a strategy where it doesn't matter because you're comboing off first, in which case a counterspell will serve you better.

Treeskaidekaphobia.

Also, run Tree of Perdition.

Alright, the conversation seems to have gotten away from you a bit there. Or, was that the real reason you were arguing from the start? To you, it wasn't actually a discussion about counterspells specifically, but a chance to wank Blue?

Ah you got me, you saw through my ruse.

Counterspells are good in low/mid power level groups, and top tier groups running Force of Will. Everything in the middle, which is 99% of normal EDH, is very manageable. I'm actually an anti-blue player. All my decks are built around the idea that I'm going to get countered at some point, and I need a way to punish them for it.

Personally, I run Kira, Great Glass Spinner as my meta-counterspell deck, I run a Mirri deck all about forcing a poor counter then punishing them for it with hatebears, and I run a Dimir/Grixis deck that constantly changes, centered around milling their good stuff, and playing someone else's counters to counter their own stuff. I also run a Ghave deck that goes at warp speed and can usually combo off through counterspells by t5.

I learned to play from "that guy" who ran talarand counterspells.dek and learned to adapt. Some things can't be answered without fucking with the stack, like most instant speed combos, but most things can either be answered with Suture Priest, or limiting them to one spell per turn.

Joined a random EDH lobby on cockatrice using a moderately competitive deck. A few turns in I realize that one of the players is literally playing nothing but counterspells so I turn on my TV and start just drawing a card and passing the turn over and over again and letting him hit me with his Glen Elendra, it took that fucking retard 10 turns of me discarding lands for him to realize that I was fucking with him.

He goes "Oh wow." I'm like "What?" and he says "Why aren't you playing your cards?" and I said "Because this win was more important to you than it was to me, does it feel good?" and he left.

What a sad state of life, to lack self awareness so much to the point where you're completely oblivious to obvious social queues.

Just found a box full of old magic cards and wanted to build a deck out of them just for fun at my comic shop: are the circle of protection viable?

Only Circle of Protection White and only because of Eight-and-a-Half-Tails.

How do I tell "competitive" EDH players to stop ruining easygoing pods and just play legacy? If you're going to spend upwards of a grand to stroke yourself for your ability in a card game, you might as well do it in a format designed for it.

Easy, either bring a deck that kicks the shit out of them, tell them to make their own group, or politely ask them to bring something more fun.

Do one of those things where everyone is assigned a goofy commander out of a hat.

Swan song is also very good. Mental misstep is worth considering if your table is high power. Delay is excelent in stack wars and serves as a hard counter on a combo turn.

Depends, if you are at an lgs and are playing for money or prizes then shut up and deal with it, when prizes are at stake people are going to get more competstive.

If you are just playing with your playgroup and one of your friends is fucking the table with a turn 3 combo deck then yah tell them to stop playing it. You don't have to play with anyone and if someone is ruining the game then just don't play with them and they'll get the message

Yah definitely, I was just naming some off of the top of my head. Pact of negation is good if you are playing a combo deck and you need free protection

I have a challenge for this general:

>Can you create a deck that is perfectly meta to the decks /edhg/ normally plays?

This is really two challenges: figuring out what you're most likely to see, and building a deck specifically to fuck it over. I know not everyone here is one person, and a lot of you play obscure random colored things, but there have to be some general trends. Post your deck lists, I'll bust out an excel sheet, and let's make something special.

My money is on that one Ruric Thar deck being a good answer, or some combination of removing +1/+1 counters and hating artifacts. There may even need to be a few meta choices.

This is just a clever ruse in disguise to steal my secret tech isn't it?

We don't have a lot of people at our LGS, so we can't even strum up a casual pod if we don't include tryhards. Beating turn 3 or 4 combo isn't beyond my capacity, but it isn't what I want from an EDH game. Most people who DO respect keeping EDH casual around here also play legacy for when we feel competitive.

I'm not posting my list just so you can copy me you NETDECKER

The problem where I live is that a lot of people don't have money for legacy but most of the time it works out because people will have a competitive deck and a casual deck

>when user was a bigger asshole than the person he tries to shittalk

This pasta wasn't very fresh the first time around.

I'm not going to copy you.

I'm going to get you guys to team up with me, and together we'll engineer a deck to fuck you over. Let's break down the data of a variety of decks into an extremely autistic spread chart with arbitrary sorting parameters and figure out what the average person plays.

Really, if I wanted to steal your tech, I'd just start an attention whoring thing like "post your decklist and your themesong", "what does your meta look like", or "roll call, everyone represent". We can still do that, but I want to have a couple of people who really understands why.

I'm game but tappedout is shitting the bed.

>tfw the first netdecked deck I played was from "thedojo"
>a guy who had internet handed me the list
>the latest edition was from Tempest

>tempest
Shit I miss that set

One of the best designed blocks, IMO. Kind of a shame we won't see it's progression anymore, but maybe it's for the best seeing how blocks have been for the last, what, decade? Probably less than that...

Fuck ya. I'm sure it'll be back up at somepoint, according to their facebook they're just doing some maintenance.

tappedout.net/mtg-decks/the-frogs/
have fun with your spreadsheeting user! I lend you my 'tism in hopes that it shall strengthen yours.

>The Frogs
>Brekekekex-koax-koax

True patrician taste. Brought a tear to my eye to see an Aristophanes reference rather than Pepe/Hypnotoad/Kermit nonsense.

Tempest was great. Probably my favorite block, even more so than Urza's. That set gave us the sol lands, lotus petal, aluren, ensnaring bridge, static orb, earthcraft, circles of protection with Harold McNeal art, capsized, buyback, humility, intuition, time warp, diabolic edict, reanimate, living end, goblin bombardment, apocalypse, miri's guile, the medallion cycle, scroll rack, grindstone, wasteland and more. Baller set.

And mox diamond. How could I forget. Tempest was a hella fast mana block.

>Living End
>Tempest

Yea it's for the best, last block that was good was maybe alara. Zendikar was alright was not as good, felt very lackluster. Eldrazi were a mistake. I miss the weatherlight crew

Greatshit there. So manyfun cards and decks never really got stale. That block was so good, start of something great. Fucking earthcraft, that and intruder alarm are so much bs but I love them

I'd have said Scars was the last solid block, because it's the last time the structure was actually used and used well, with the progression of Phyrexia through the block. It didn't really evolve its mechanics or mechanical themes, though, so I can see the argument against it.

I too miss the Weatherlight. Didn't realize how much until we got the Gatewatch playing pale imitation.

I think it did evolve it's mechanical themes. Scars absolutely was the last solid block.

Guay's art should've been for RiP