I hope everyone who wanted to got to go to the Scars of Mirrodin prereleases! We had a great turnout at the StarCityGames event at the Richmond Convention Center, and everyone seemed stoked to get their hands on their Wurmcoil Engine — a fantastic promo choice, Wizards! Not only is it a great card to pimp out your EDH deck, but it’s nice to have a bunch of them in circulation to hold down the price of that mythic rare, since everyone should want to have a play set of that awesome card.
Josh and I have been busy scrounging cards for the upcoming 2010s Champs, and have set up a Google doc to share so we can record what mythics and rares we have combined. This way we always know what we collectively have, what we need, and what we can trade away. With just a week to go for Champs, it’s imperative to be as efficient as possible getting the cards we need, right?
Even while I’m focusing on the new Standard format, I can’t help but spin my wheels a bit as I think about all the cool new stuff for Elder Dragon Highlander in this new set! Artifacts are sweet, because they can go into nearly any EDH deck — and when you have a set with so many artifacts, you can’t help but let your inner dragon get greedy and start pulling together cards for your EDH hoard. I thought I’d share what’s got me excited for EDH and I’d love to hear your take in the forums.
NEW GENERALS
Of course, if we’re talking EDH we’ve got to start with the batch of new Legends to recruit as our generals.
Ezuri, Renegade Leader
Obviously a great addition for Elf tribal fans out there, though he’s rather small and demanding on mana to protect himself and his elf buddies. Still, you’re playing Priest of Titania, Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary, and Gaea’s Cradle — so what’s mana among elf friends?
Kemba, Kha Regent
I think this is a pretty interesting general to think about building around. I could see loading your deck up with tons of equipment, a handful of creatures that do cool stuff with equipment (such as Auriok Steelshaper, Stoneforger Mystic, Steelshaper Apprentice, Stonehewer Giant), and just equip Kemba to the heavens and grow your pride on each upkeep. Not likely a high-powered EDH deck but probably pretty fun.
Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon
While there aren’t enough black or artifact infect dudes to fill out a singleton deck — even if you go back to the past to use all of Magic’s poisonous dudes — I think this general would do well as a finisher for a mono-black control EDH, especially if you load up with ways to pump its power. (I’m thinkin’ Nightmare Lash.)
Geth, Lord of the Vault
Now
this
is my kind of general — he’s big, he’s scary, and he plunders people’s graveyards! As a bonus, he’s a very relevant creature type if you want to get down with the zombie tribe.
Artifacts
Accorder’s Shield
While the equip cost is a little steep, you obviously can’t get a cheaper casting cost, and vigilance is a particularly strong ability to have in multiplayer Magic.
Argentum Armor
Expect to see this in just about every EDH deck, especially the ones that can cheat on equipment costs in some way. The power boost and utility it provides is perfect for EDH.
Bladed Pinions
As someone who builds a lot of green EDH decks, not surprisingly I often step back and look at my decklists and immediately think,
oh crap — what do I do about fliers?
Bladed Pinions is a perfectly reasonable way to boost your green fatty to hold the skies with first strike — especially the ones who have deathtouch!
Chimeric Mass
This guy has a lot of appeal — it’s flexible, it dodges sorcery-speed creature removal, and it can get really scary if you’re running any big mana engines.
Keep in mind, however, that the more people you have around the table, the harder it becomes to use this fellow on defense. Also, you’d hate to drop this on turn 4 and have it get outclassed later in the game without a way to charge it. My hunch is this will be infrequently used, but will be decent with the right support.
Clone Shell
I like this guy a lot (talked about him
using him in Standard last week
), but you obviously need to have some elements in your deck to take advantage of him reliably — lots of creatures, ways to stack your deck, and some way to sacrifice him in case your opponent does something heinous, like bouncing or exiling the poor little Shell.
Contagion Clasp
I’m high on this for Constructed, and will certainly be packing this in just about any EDH deck where I’m playing a fair number of counters. Proliferate is a great mechanic for EDH, because you can also choose to help out other players’ permanents with counters if you need to win friends (or defeat common enemies).
(Isn’t that the same thing? — T.F.)
Contagion Engine
Necroskitter has been waiting a long time for this insane card! Everything I’ve been saying about Contagion Clasp goes double — heh — for this card.
Culling Dais
I was just talking about sacrificing creatures above, wasn’t I? This is actually a great card to have in any EDH deck as a way of protecting your general from “tuck” effects or harmful Auras. Some generals in particular will love to have this available: Asmira, Holy Avenger; Child of Alara; Homura, Human Ascendant; Kresh the Bloodbraided; Saffi Eriksdotter; Sek’Kuar, Deathkeeper; Shirei, Shizo’s Caretaker; Teysa, Orzhov Scion; and Yomiji, Who Bars the Way. Also, if you’re playing any of the Eldrazi titans, it can be handy to sacrifice them to prevent them from getting stolen or to get an instant graveyard shuffle into your library.
Darksteel Axe
Equipment is great in EDH, but they tend to get swept away by things like Akroma’s Vengeance, Nevinyrral’s Disk, and Oblivion Stone. It’ll be nice to have one that I know will stick around, even if it’s only a two-point power booster.
Darksteel Juggernaut
If you’re playing enough artifacts, this seems like a no-brainer, especially if you go to a Magic search engine to find every indestructible artifact you can to stuff into your deck. Sure, it has to attack each turn — but if you’ve got a Juggernaut in play, you don’t want to be on the defense!
Darksteel Myr
This little goofball will likely be better as an infinite blocker once everyone’s excitement over infect and -1/-1 counters dies down in a couple of years.
Golem’s Heart
If you’re going to be playing with a lot of artifacts, this is probably a decent card to use over the next year, since you can expect your fellow players will be drunk on artifacts until the new Mirrodin block is over.
Grafted Exoskeleton
EDH’s “general damage” rule is a great one to have, because there are some seriously degenerate life-gaining effects that would otherwise put some players beyond the reach of defeat. I suspect a card like this will also prove handy as a backup way to defeat someone in one or two hits regardless of his life total. Personally, I’d consider this a new EDH staple for any deck with a decent number of creatures — especially ones with evasion or haste.
Grindclock
Let me just say that I acknowledge there will be some number of EDHers out there who will be eagerly grabbing their copy of this card to put in their decks. I’m not one of them. Wanna trade?
Horizon Spellbomb
I was talking to a gentleman this weekend who was lamenting that he couldn’t play a five-color general because he didn’t have enough dual lands (original or Ravnica versions) to put it together. I told him that wasn’t true — while the duals plus fetches are certainly the most efficient options for pulling together a five-color mana base, I also think that Wizards has done a great job of providing less efficient (but still decent ways) of searching for specific basic lands or providing multicolor mana at uncommon and common rarities. Horizon Spellbomb is yet another tool for this.
Infiltration Lens
If you’re playing an aggressive general that likes attacking, this is a fairly awesome card to equip to him (unless he’s got evasion of some sort). Also combos nicely with Lure effects like Taunting Elf, Shinen of Life’s Roar, Nemesis Mask, Tempting Licid, Prized Unicorn, Elvish Bard, Talruum Piper, and Stone-Tongue Basilisk.
Kuldotha Forgemaster
The shenanigans potential for this is high, so be warned — you gotta kill this guy or be killed by it.
Liquimetal Coating
This goes right next to my Aura Shards, Viashino Heretic, and Nullmage Shepherd in my EDH toolbox…
Lux Cannon
A great utility card like this is sure to make a big splash in EDH, just make sure you include ways to speed up the charging process, since three turns is an incredibly long time to wait to cap a permanent. Obviously proliferate helps, but I suspect the most ridiculous Lux Cannon enabler will be those cheesy players with Seedborn Muse in their decks. *shakes fist*
Mimic Vat
Oh man, I can’t wait for the shenanigans with this guy! EDH encourages playing a high number of efficient creatures, many of which have special abilities. Those creatures also die a lot. Being able to snag one to copy over and over — and then being able to upgrade later — is just incredible.
Mindslaver
Ruder than a Time Walk — and you know how I feel about Time Walk. If you’re packing ways to do this over and over… well, we call those sorts of players “unfun” nowadays, don’t we?
Molten-Tail Masticore
The original Masticore was awesome but rarely sees play in EDH. The fact that this one can dome players directly means that it might see some play, especially with things like Squee, Goblin Nabob available or reanimation strategies.
Myr Battlesphere
This is the kind of card that will have some player cackling with glee as they scramble to build a tribal Myr EDH deck. I may or may not be one of those players.
Myr Reservoir
Myr shenanigans aside, I’d also point out to keep this in mind if you find your deck with a fair number of changelings in it.
Nihil Spellbomb
It’s always handy to have graveyard hate available in EDH, and if you’re playing black it doesn’t get much better than this.
Nim Deathmantle
This card is intriguing. While I suspect the manual equip cost of four (plus the four mana you’ll want to hold open to use its special ability) will ultimately make this card better on paper than in practice, there are some interesting possibilities. For instance, if your general has died enough times that casting him from the Command Zone has gotten quite expensive, keep four mana up and circumvent that. What if you’ve got a Greater Good on the table and four mana lying around? There’s probably something nasty you can set up with Mana Echoes, too…
Platinum Emperion
Big Plats looks impressive, but he puts more restrictions on your deck than Platinum Angel does — for instance, when you start out at forty life, sometimes you
want
to be able to pay life to do stuff! You can’t use fetchlands, you can’t use the pitch ability on Force of Will, you can’t use Necrologia…
Still, there are some reasons why you’d like to lock your life total in place—cards like Luminarch Ascension, Ad Nauseam, Dark Confidant, Dark Tutelage, Death Cloud, Death Wish, Infernal Contract, Maralen of the Mornsong, Minions’ Murmurs, Phyrexian Arena, Promise of Power, Reanimate, Skeletal Scrying, Illicit Auction (it’s life
loss
, not life
payment
), and Heartless Hidetsugu.
Ratchet Bomb
Yep, this card is great in every format, and it’s going to be pretty good in EDH as well. Not
great
, mind you — it’s going to be a pretty bad topdeck later in the game when everything you need to deal with costs three or more mana. Still, being able to sweep away tokens will matter a lot in some metagames, and if you add good ways in your deck to increase the charge counters you’ll increase the value of the Bomb (proliferate, Clockspinning, et cetera).
Steel Hellkite
There are going to be a lot of decks that will appreciate having access to this sort of utility — red and black immediately spring to mind. You’ll probably want to add some way for him to punch through, like trample (such as one of my faves, Power Matrix), to make sure chump blockers don’t ruin your play.
Strata Scythe
If you’re playing a mono-color deck without too many non-basics, this can be quite the scary creature booster, especially since you benefit from the lands other players are playing. Also, don’t discount its ability to give your deck a nice shuffle when you’re manipulating your top cards with things like Sensei’s Divining Top, Sylvan Library, and such.
Strider Harness
Again, there are a lot of decks that will appreciate getting haste for cheap. It’s like Fires of Yavimaya for everyone — power to the people!
Sword of Body and Mind
If you dig Millstone strategies, have at it, hoss.
Throne of Geth
Allows you to proliferate, cheaply (at least in terms of mana). There are plenty of artifacts that give you value for going to the graveyard to feed this. One day soon, I’ll build an EDH that goes nuts with proliferate! And I’ll share it with all of you!
Tower of Calamities
Okay, I’m the first to admit I’m looking forward to pairing this with Stuffy Doll and Mogg Maniac…
Venser’s Journal
If you’re playing Spell Book in your EDH deck, this is a strict upgrade for you. If you’re running Ivory Tower and Reliquary Tower, then the Journal gives you some redundancy. If you have enough ways to draw cards in your deck, there’s no real reason not to run this card.
Wurmcoil Engine
A superstar in Standard, and a superstar in EDH. Big, badass, and not terribly expensive. The lifelink ability will be particularly welcome in heavy red or blue decks, and black has fun stuff that can sacrifice a creature to reanimate a creature to make sure your Engine keeps revving.
White
Glimmerpoint Stag
Some decks really like blinking abilities, so here’s another tool for that toolbox. The vigilance is quite handy as well.
Indomitable Archangel
If you’re going nuts with artifacts in general (or, if you’re white, maybe equipment in particular), you hate it when your well-laid plans to go poof in a cloud of Aura Shards. The Archangel is the solution to your problem without having to go black for Guardian Beast.
Leonin Arbiter
I’d warn you against playing this fellow. He’s the epitome of the kind of card that annoys everyone without putting them away, which is the kind of card that gets you ganged up on and killed.
Razor Hippogriff
If you’re playing some decent artifacts, this is a pretty good deal in EDH—life gain, card advantage, and a flying 3/3 body for a reasonable five mana.
Revoke Existence
I suspect that we’re all going to want the ability to exile an artifact or enchantment on occasion.
Soul Parry
This is an interesting way to intervene in other player’s combat step, making friends or punishing enemies as you see fit.
True Conviction
While I totally agree this will be a great inclusion in white-heavy EDH decks, I also think that some people might be making a mistake writing this off in Standard. Even if all you have are a couple creatures in play, dropping this enchantment can really turn things around.
Anyway, this is an EDH article, so… this is perfect for EDH in that it’s potent and something you’d only ever want one of anyway, since extra copies don’t give you any benefit.
Blue
Dissipation Field
A pretty good card to dissuade attackers from coming your way, especially token creatures, and if you’ve made them pay to attack you too (such as Propaganda) then it gets even uglier. That said, be careful — it turns you into an attack magnet for cards with “enter the battlefield” triggers like Mulldrifter and Shriekmaw!
Grand Architect
This card is going to bonkers in Standard, and you can surely imagine how much crazier it’ll be in EDH.
Inexorable Tide
While this card feels a little slow for Standard, all you need is an untap step in EDH and the proliferate possibilities get really crazy with.
Neurok Invisimancer
Making your general unblockable for the turn can be quite deadly, and if you load your deck up with various blink effects… well, you get the picture!
Quicksilver Gargantuan
I’m torn on this guy. On the one hand, it’d be nice to have a 7/7 Seedborn Muse on the table. On the other hand, it would suck to have a 7/7 Spectral Force. 7/7 can be big in EDH — but it can be small too, and if I’m paying seven mana, I wanna be big.
Volition Reins
Being able to steal any permanent (and get it untapped) is a pretty strong upgrade, and there are all sorts of Aura shenanigans you can have in your deck to make this card even better.
Black
Exsanguinate
This card is clearly made for multiplayer shenanigans, and will certainly prove to be a potent game-swinger, especially given how ridiculously easy it is for black to generate a truckload of mana in EDH. Just be prepared for the Public Enemy #1 bull’s-eye that will immediately get slapped on your forehead by the survivors.
Necrotic Ooze
While I’m flying high on this card for Standard, I’d generally steer clear of it in EDH unless it’s going to be part of some game-winning combo. Otherwise, it’s going to be incredibly bothersome to have to keep asking people to see the creatures they have in their graveyards with activated abilities, and then have everyone wait while you crank through the possibilities in your head (imagine turn 10 after several board sweepers). It’s one of the reasons I avoid playing Cairn Wanderer in EDH.
Painful Quandary
This is catnip to those of you who love cards like Underworld Dreams in EDH… And while I can tell you not to play these sorts of annoying cards until I’m blue in the face, it won’t convince you, will it? Just keep in mind that five-life chunks are even more painful than what Underworld Dreams brings, so expect the reaction to be even more violent.
Tainted Strike
Again, the beauty of this card is its ability to intervene in someone else’s combat — in this case turning, what seemed to be just a big hit from a fat 10/10 beatstick into an immediate loss. Conversely, if someone’s at like five life and is about to die to a five-power creature, you can effectively fog him and give him non-lethal poison counters instead. Also a great way to deal with indestructible creatures. If you’re playing black, I’d recommend finding a spot in your deck for this nice combat trick.
Red
Furnace Celebration
While it’s a bit expensive for annihilator defense, there are plenty of players who enjoy throwing around forced sacrifices (Grave Pact, Magus of the Abyss, and the like) and this Celebration gives you a way to pay ’em back. Add in your own self-sacrificing effects — something red doesn’t mind doing with its temporary stealing themes — and you’ve got some nice, spicy synergy.
Hoard-Smelter Dragon
Reusable artifact destruction is always handy in EDH and will be even more so in this new era of Mirrodin. He’s got solid dragon stats, and his activated ability is reasonably costed and reusable if you’ve got enough mana. Keep in mind you can use this on an indestructible artifact if you’d like — you won’t actually destroy it, but you’ll get the boost just the same. Maybe you can’t melt down that Darksteel Colossus, but you can certainly build up a pretty good head of dragon steam off it!
Green
Asceticism
Yep, this is pretty much an auto-include for any green EDH deck — all upside, no downside, protects your creatures from pinpoint creature removal, laughs off Maze of Ith, and helps with mass destruction effects (or at least the weaker ones these days that let you regenerate). It also has the bonus of not being as overtly threatening as other artifacts and enchantments when someone’s got a Krosan Grip to burn off and is trying to figure out a target.
Bellowing Tanglewurm
Giving all your own green creatures intimidate is pretty awesome. Sure, trample is green’s evasion of choice, and a damn fine one at that, but green fear is pretty sweet too. Yet another card to go with my pet fave Distorting Lens.
Blunt the Assault
A “fixed” Congregate at half-strength with a Fog attached? Some decks are certainly going to want this.
Engulfing Slagwurm
I have to admit I simply love the flavor of the abilities on this card. Basically, he’s like D&D’s Purple Worm — you run into one and you just get swallowed up whether you’re attacking him or he’s attacking you. I just love how he deals with opposing creatures during the declare blockers step, so it dies even before you get to any damage steps. Now
this
is what Lure was made for — GULP!! *burp*
Genesis Wave
In a format rife with Gaea’s Cradle and Mirari’s Wake mana shenanigans, I fully expect this card will create lots of fun, explosive, haymaker plays that will spawn countless tales of woe and weal. Much more fun than Tooth and Nail because of the randomness involved — it epitomizes Sheldon’s Embracing the Chaos!
Liege of the Tangle
I realize that this was made for casual players, and you’d think a big green monster like this would be right up alley… but I’m not digging it. Turning your lands into 8/8 monsters that can’t even attack until your next turn just doesn’t feel wise when everyone is packing Wrath of God and Damnation. Sure, you can choose to just animate one or two lands at a time… but still feels like you’re being suckered into bad things happening to you.
Withstand Death
Gotta love this one — making any target creature, yours or another player’s, indestructible for a turn is pretty sweet for just one green mana, and I just can’t wait to make the guy playing Obliterate turn all kinds of sad when I save some gigantic beast from destruction… and then send it his way.
So what new cards are you eager to try out in your EDH decks? Let’s discuss in the forums!
Next week is States, and I’ll be focused like a laser beam on that, but afterwards I plan on cooking up some new EDH decks. First on the menu will be something sick with Proliferate… but I’d also like to build something with one of the new Scars of Mirrodin legends. Vote which one you’d like to see a deck built around below and I’ll get cracking on it…
Take care,
Bennie
starcitygeezer AT gmail DOT com
Make sure to friend/follow me at:
http://twitter.com/blairwitchgreen
http://community.wizards.com/blairwitchgreen
New to EDH? Be sure to check out my EDH Primer,
part 1
,
part 2
, and
part 3
.
My current EDH decks:
UNDER CONSTRUCTION!!!