The other day I got an instant message from Josh. He told me that Richmond Comix was taking up the issue with house-banning Emrakul, the Aeons Torn because a lot of EDH players were complaining about how the card really pulled the plug on fun. They wanted to hear feedback from the EDH player base before making a ruling on it, and Josh said to go to the forums and let them know what I think. “No one wants to hear what I think,” I joked, considering the uproar spawned by my EDH column a few weeks back. Josh talked me into voting, but much to his surprise I voted “no ban on Emrakul.”
It was surprising because I’m no big fan of the Eldrazi, especially the legendary ones at the top of the mana curve. When ROE came out I expressed some concerns about the impact of Eldrazi spells that can go in any EDH deck, and while my concerns remain I’ve also come around to seeing the value in allowing some of these effects to be played in any EDH deck that can pay the mana cost for them. I know for a fact that ROE gave a huge bump to Mono-Green EDH decks, and there’s one or two running around locally that have turned into real monsters.
Now, the argument I’ve been hearing from folks for the banning of Emrakul is because he’s big, hard to deal with, and the annihilator trigger can really set a player back when he or she is attacked by Emrakul. While all that is true, I don’t see how it’s any different from any number of big, scary monsters that you’ll run across in EDH that can just flat out kill you in one attack, which is a lot more final than having to sacrifice six permanents. Yes, he can’t be targeted by spells, but he’s just as vulnerable to mass removal as most any other creature in Magic. If he entered the battlefield and had to wait a turn to attack, he’d be of great concern but surely somebody will have an answer before he gets too many attacks, right? No, the real problem is the uncounterable Time Walk that comes attached to him, because Time Walk effects are insane in EDH. You rob all other players of their next turn, and then you get to untap and have your 15+ mana available to protect Emrakul and stop any answers your opponents may have.
I’ve seen more EDH games than I can count completely go off the track once Time Stretch gets cast and, not infrequently, gets recurred somehow. Emrakul has the same sort of issue, but now it’s available to any color and not just blue decks. The argument I made was that, if you want to go down the path of house banning Emrakul, what you really should do is house ban Time Walk effects altogether, which I think is a much bigger threat to “EDH fun” than Emrakul. Emrakul, in effect, spreads the Time Walk brokenness to other non-Blue decks if they want it, and I don’t agree with taking it away from the area non-Blue decks while leaving the Blue decks with that option.
But I am only one man, with only one vote. Ah well.
Before moving on from this topic, I did want to share a bumper sticker I made for my friends on the opposite side of the Time Walk/Time Stretch issue from me, and hopefully you will appreciate the spirit of fun in which it is intended:
I have a nifty “techy” EDH card I want to share with you, along with the deck I built to showcase it. The card?
Thornbite Staff
2
Tribal Artifact – Shaman Equipment
Equipped creature has “2, T: This creature deals 1 damage to target creature or player” and “Whenever a creature is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, untap this creature.”
Whenever a Shaman creature enters the battlefield, you may attach Thornbite Staff to it.
Equip 4
When this card came out a couple years back, plenty of people saw the combo potential of combining this with creatures that tapped to do stuff, but it never really worked out in Standard and it quickly fell off the radar. Last fall, while I was sorting out Lorwyn block stuff and adding in Zendikar, I ran across this card and it got me to thinking… Thornbite Staff and Visara the Dreadful. Not too shabby for EDH!
I’m sure I’m not the first person to think about throwing a Thornbite Staff into an EDH deck, but I can also say with certainty that I haven’t seen it across from me in any EDH game I’ve played. At the very least, the card is flying under the radar, so I thought it would be a perfect sneaky, innocuous card to build around and, if things come together, I’d do something spectacular and surprising.
So for the past half-year or so, I’ve been pulling cards and setting them in a stack with my Thornbite Staff, waiting to reach a critical mass. Here’s what I ended up with:
Creatures that tap to do stuff: Spinal Villain, Jaya Ballard, Goblin Sharpshooter, Cunning Sparkmage, Stuffy Doll, Kiki-Jiki, Kamahl, Visara the Dreadful, Tsabo Tavoc, Avatar of Woe, Rings of Brighthearth. I originally had some demons in this stack as well, since there are a handful of demons that tap to do good stuff, but I was a bit worried about my mana curve and ended up cutting the demons for a future, demon-themed deck.
By the way, Spinal Villain’s original creature type? Summon Villain. It’s hard to beat that, but unfortunately he fell victim to the great Creature Type Overhaul some years back and is now sadly a beast.
Supporting cast: Welding Jar, Lightning Greaves, Slobad, Distorting Lens, Scuttlemutt, Umbral Mantle, Thousand-Year Elixir, Anger, Akroma’s Memorial. The Jar and Slobad are basically there to protect the Staff once shenanigans have been revealed. The Lens and Scuttlemutt combo with Spinal Villain and Jaya Ballard to turn problem cards that aren’t already Blue to Blue. The haste-enablers let you at least get some use out of your tappers before their inevitable demise.
Yawgmoth’s Win goodies: Mind Stone, Spoils of Evil, Mana Geyser, Dreamstone Hedron. I did have some other stuff here too (including Urza and Mishra Baubles) but they ended up getting cut for more proactive cards.
Sacrifice outlets: Claws of Gix, Goblin Bombardment, Helm of Possession, Magmaw. Once you equip one of your tappers and people realize that you’re getting ready to mow down every creature that bothers you, people will naturally try and stop you with some instant creature kill. Sacrifice outlets let you get on the other side of the stack and continue with your tap/untap shenanigans. I’ve been trying to find my Phyrexian Plaguelord to add to the deck but he’s MIA from my collection currently…
Obviously it would be foolish to build a deck that relies solely on combo-ing with one particular card, so I tried to fill out the deck with other powerful cards and synergy that also play nice with my Thornbite Staff plan, and here’s what I ended up building, with Tsabo Tavoc as general:
1 Tsabo Tavoc
1 Claws of Gix
1 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Welding Jar
1 Basilisk Collar
1 Deathgreeter
1 Dragonmaster Outcast
1 Skullclamp
1 Sol Ring
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Thornbite Staff
1 Fellwar Stone
1 Mind Stone
1 Rakdos Signet
1 Sun Droplet
1 Fork
1 Reverberate
1 Shattering Pulse
1 Gate to Phyrexia
1 Terminate
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer
1 Goblin Bombardment
1 Myr Retriever
1 Distorting Lens
1 Spinal Villain
1 Jaya Ballard, Task Mage
1 Scuttlemutt
1 Umbral Mantle
1 Sudden Spoiling
1 Goblin Sharpshooter
1 Cunning Sparkmage
1 Darksteel Ingot
1 Coalition Relic
1 Rings of Brighthearth
1 Khabál Ghoul
1 Thousand-Year Elixir
1 Spoils of Evil
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Crystal Ball
1 Tenza, Godo’s Maul
1 Mortivore
1 Anger
1 Filth
1 Damnation
1 Jester’s Cap
1 Vedalken Orrery
1 Helm of Possession
1 Black Market
1 Mana Geyser
1 Word of Seizing
1 Stuffy Doll
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1 Cauldron of Souls
1 Magmaw
1 Dreamstone Hedron
1 Conquering Manticore
1 Kamahl, Pit Fighter
1 Visara the Dreadful
1 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni
1 Akroma’s Memorial
1 Avatar of Woe
1 Plague Wind
1 Volrath’s Stronghold
1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Shizo, Death’s Storehouse
1 Leechridden Swamp
1 Vivid Marsh
1 Vivid Crag
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Rupture Spire
1 Vesuva
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Dragonskull Summit
1 Rakdos Carnarium
1 Reflecting Pool
1 Blood Crypt
1 Lavaclaw Reaches
1 Akoum Refuge
7 Swamp
11 Mountain
I picked Tsabo as my general as a little bit of sleight-of-hand; Tsabo is not a nice general, and I imagine many of my opponents would be more concerned with dealing with her rather than the little ol’ Thornbite Staff and other random tappers until things go crazy. Tsabo also happens to work well with the cards I’ve selected.
To make things even nicer, Richmond Comix had the new Ultra Pro sleeves with the Phylactery Lich artwork on ‘em—awesome!
Unfortunately when I got there, everyone was deep into drafting M11, and after waiting a bit to see if anyone wanted to fire up an EDH game (and sleeving up with my new Liches), I went ahead and jumped in another M11 draft. I opened an Obstinate Baloth in my first pack, and had to choose between a good White or good Blue card for pick two, I chose Blue and ended up fighting with two other Green/Blue drafters, leaving me with an okay but not spectacular deck. I did end up drafting five rares (Sword of Vengeance, Redirect, Angelic Arbiter, Protean Hydra), and a Relentless Rats*.
I managed to beat my first round opponent, one of the other Green/Blue drafters, and then lost to a R/W aggressive deck. After running me over in the first game, I handily secured board dominance but then went through too many turns of I draw lands/he draws gas and he squeaked out the win. That pretty much took the wind out of my sails, so I went ahead and dropped, and was dismayed that a group of folks had fired up an EDH game while I was drafting and didn’t look like they were yet close to finishing. Somehow I got talked into going to the sports bar next door to drink a couple beers and take some shots. After starting with a hit of Maker’s Mark bourbon, someone suggested a tequila shot with a dash of Tabasco in it—which actually sounded like it might be good despite the face the lady behind the bar made when we asked for it. It was damn tasty, and in fact will be how I drink tequila shots from now on if there’s Tabasco or hot sauce available.
By the time we wander back from the bar, I’m a bit tipsy but find two others who’re up for an EDH game, so I shuffle up Tsabo to see what we can see! I was a bit too buzzed to take notes, so I don’t have the turn-by-turn rundown but I do remember the endgame. Tommy’s rocking his broken Momir Vig deck, and Josh pulls out his tribal allies EDH deck with Korona, False God as his general. The allies deck is actually pretty sick, and benefits from people not really taking it seriously until you start losing massive chunks of life.
Tommy starts out strong, ending up with both Seedborn Muse and Teferi in play pretty early. I’ve got a Goblin Bombardment in play and a Word of Seizing in my hand, so on my turn I Seize Teferi, and use some pingers and Goblin Bombardment to kill off the Muse and sacrifice the Teferi. Josh piles on shortly thereafter, dealing damage to me and lethal damage to Tommy. Josh then plots my demise with Patriarch’s Bidding, which between the Allies he’s got in the graveyard and the lose-life ally he’s got in play, will pretty much kill me. I just happen to have Thornbite Staff in play, which indeed drew hardly any notice from the other players, and Kiki-Jiki is in the graveyard after getting hit with a counterspell. Since K-J is a shaman, if I name Shamans with the Bidding, he’ll come back and get equipped with the Staff… and I suddenly notice I’ve got an infinite combo I hadn’t realized with the Goblin Bombardment! So the Bidding resolves, Josh names allies, I name shamans, a bunch of ally triggers go on the stack, I equip Kiki-Jiki with the staff, then tap to copy another dude I have in play. I then sac it to Bombardment to do a point of damage to Josh. “Hang on a second,” he says, reading the Staff and realizing I can kill him before his triggers kill me. He responds to my next tap of Kiki-Jiki with a Swords to Plowshares on him, but I just sac another creature to Bombardment to put another Staff trigger in front of it on the stack and continue. If he’d known what was coming he could have Plowed K-J before it got equipped by the Staff, so the element of surprise certainly worked! He won’t get caught by that next time, I’m sure.
The Adrian Sullivan EDH Experience
Adrian Sullivan was flying out to gunsling at an M11 prerelease, and he wanted to have an EDH deck on hand. He posted his first stab at an EDH decklist and invited all sorts of people to chime in with their thoughts; he got a lot of feedback, including folks like Sheldon Menery, Aaron Forsythe, and Scott Larabee. Old school usenet writer Alan Webter chimed in with the funniest comment: “IMO you should go with more of a ‘Ladies from Hades’ theme since you’re playing Gwen. Add Liliana and as many femme fatales as you can.” Gwendolyn Di Corci was his general. I thought it would be interesting to share his first stab at EDH deck building, and Adrian was kind enough to let me put it here in my column.
1 Gwendolyn Di Corci
1 Chrome Mox
1 Mox Diamond
1 Lotus Petal
1 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Gamble
1 Mana Vault
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Brainstorm
1 Firestorm
1 Sol Ring
1 Gorilla Shaman
1 Sensei’s Divining Top
1 Lightning Bolt
1 Skullclamp
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Sudden Shock
1 Fire/Ice
1 Pyrostatic Pillar
1 Lim-Dul’s Vault
1 Grim Monolith
1 Mind Stone
1 Terminate
1 Dwarven Blastminer
1 Chartooth Cougar
1 Igneous Pouncer
1 Tainted Pact
1 Bitterblossom
1 Isochron Scepter
1 Dark Confidant
1 Arcane Denial
1 Smash to Smithereens
1 Cerebral Vortex
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Blood Moon
1 Magus of the Moon
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Jaya Ballard, Task Mage
1 Windfall
1 Viashino Heretic
1 Psychatog
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Trinket Mage
1 Electrolyze
1 Flametongue Kavu
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Ravenous Baboons
1 Goblin Ruinblaster
1 Diminishing Returns
1 Detritivore
1 Wild Ricochet
1 Obliterate
1 Kaervek the Merciless
1 Time Spiral
1 Null Profusion
1 Arc Slogger
1 Sarkhan the Mad
1 Memory Jar
1 Prophetic Bolt
1 Bituminous Blast
1 Chandra Nalaar
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Mind Twist
1 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
1 Badlands
1 Blood Crypt
1 Watery Grave
1 Steam Vents
1 Polluted Delta
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Graven Cairns
1 Lavaclaw Reaches
1 Vesuva
1 Reflecting Pool
1 Swamp
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Shizo, Death’s Storehouse
1 Phyrexian Tower
1 Swamp
1 Tolaria West
1 Island
1 Snow-Covered Mountain
1 Mountain
1 Keldon Megalith
1 Hammerheim
1 Shinka, the Bloodsoaked Keep
1 Forgotten Cave
1 Barbarian Ring
1 Great Furnace
1 Kher Keep
1 Strip Mine
1 Wasteland
1 Petrified Field
1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
1 Mishra’s Factory
1 Urza’s Factory
1 Gemstone Caverns
1 Volrath’s Stronghold
Anyone familiar with Adrian’s decks over the year would not be surprised at the fairly strong land-destruction/mana-disruption themes he’s got in the deck. If you’re curious, here was my initial feedback:
Remove Chrome Mox, Mox Diamond, and Lotus Petal & add Darksteel Ingot, Coalition Relic, Fellwar Stone.
Sudden Shock feels pretty weak, what about Hammer of Bogardan?
Remove “unfun” EDH cards—Obliterate, Magus of the Moon, Blood Moon, Detrivore, though a couple pinpoint LD cards are fine for things like Maze, Cradle, etc.
Instead, add some “signature Sullivan” cards, like Kiki-Jiki, Dream Leash, Mahamoti Djinn (the Baron!!)
Add Thousand-Year Elixir for your general, and some of your other critters.
Afterwards, I asked Adrian about what he thought about my suggestions, and his impression on how his EDH fared at the gunslinging table. He said I was dead-wrong on the mana artifact suggestions, which in retrospect I realize was wrong—my advice was geared towards multiplayer, where games go slower, you have time to develop, and you don’t want to open yourself up to getting two-for-one blown out. In 1v1 EDH, the acceleration afforded by Chrome Mox, Mox Diamond, and Lotus Petal are much more helpful. Here were some other things he said:
I did NOT have enough Terminate style effects, I should have had Slave of Bolas and other things. Magus of the Moon and Blood Moon were liabilities more than anything else, I have such powerful cards that they would sometimes lock me out.
This had me thinking about the EDH gunslinging that happened in Richmond, where Chapin brought a brutally potent Mono Blue deck that kept crushing people, while Evan Erwin borrowed a few of mine and kept getting crushed. There’s a big difference between multiplayer-style EDH and 1v1-style, and I think in the future if ever I build EDH decks for gunslinging play I’ll need to keep that in mind.
From the Vaults: EDH
In case you missed it, the contents of From the Vaults: Relics was recently spoiled, and not surprisingly the set is certainly a must-have for anyone who wants to pimp out their EDH decks. Check out the list:
*Karn, Silver Golem
*Ivory Tower (new art)
AEther Vial (new art)
Mox Diamond (new art)
Isochron Scepter (new art)
*Mirari
*Nevinyrral’s Disk (new art)
*Jester’s Cap
Sundering Titan
Zuran Orb (new art)
Masticore (new art)
Black Vise (new art)
*Sol Ring (new art)
*Memory Jar
Sword of Body and Mind
I put an astrix for what I consider EDH staples, though plenty of the other cards can be used in EDH decks too. Of course, great equipment are staples too, and I expect the Sword of Body and Mind (a sneak peek card from Scars of Mirrodin) to be just as good as the two we saw in Mirrodin. I’m really excited about this set, and certainly hope I can get my hands on one!!
Okay, that wraps things up for this week. I’m hoping to head up to Richmond Comix late Friday night to get in a game or two of EDH… maybe I’ll see you up there?
Take care…
Bennie
starcitygeezer AT gmail DOT com
New to EDH? Be sure to check out my EDH Primer, part 1, part 2, and part 3.
My current EDH decks:
Phelddagrif (carrots & sticks)
Tsabo Tavoc (red & black nastiness)
Reki, the History of Kamigawa (more legends than you can shake a stick at)
Korlash, Heir to Blackblade (brain-eating zombies, Commander)
*P.S. I’m trying to trade for Relentless Rats, so if you have any to spare please let me know!