The Command Tower (EDH Hangout)

[bury the year]

the spin sultai gives to zombie tribal is being able to mill things like wonder to make your zombies fly and gaea's blessing (i guess you could use an eldrazi titan but at the time they were like 40 bucks still no thanks) to reshuffle your graveyard when you're using mesmeric orb and basalt monolith to mill yourself forever. doing it this way creates a number of cards hitting the grave triggers equal to the number of cards hitting the grave, so you get basically however many zombies you want off of sidisi. at the time, i didn't have gaea's blessing either, because frankly i didn't know the card existed. so it was a fun all-in kinda deck that had to rely on elixir of immortality instead, and if i milled that, well... hope my 40+ flying 4/4 zombies will do the job before my lack of deck does me in.

 

Once you get infinite zombies:

• Mill Dread Return and Gravespawn Sovereign into graveyard.
• Sacrifice three zombies to flashback Dread Return, reanimating Gravespawn Sovereign.
• Mill sac outlet on a creature (Dimir House Guard is my favorite) and Zulaport Cutthroat into graveyard.
• Tap 10 zombies to trigger Sovereign twice, reanimating sac outlet and Cutthroat.
• Sacrifice infinite zombies to get infinite Cutthroat triggers and kill your opponents.

That's how you do it in style.

 

Also, if you want to shortcut to infinite zombies through Monolith + Orb + Sidisi, you can't use Gaea's Blessing. It has to be either old!Ulamog or old!Kozilek.

[Sixty]

can't you?

 

 

 

still reshuffles your graveyard all the same, you just get one less zombie per infinite iteration

[bury the year]

can't you?

 

 

 

still reshuffles your graveyard all the same, you just get one less zombie per infinite iteration

 

Math lesson time! (Hint: it's the same reason why trying to run the Four Horsemen combo in Legacy will result in a game loss for you.)

 

[spoiler=Lesson within.]

 

Imagine you have the combo on board (so Sidisi, Orb and Monolith all untapped), and all cards have been exiled from your deck and graveyard save two: Grizzly Bears and Gaea's Blessing. You just shuffled your deck, so the order of the cards in your deck is now unknown. There are two potential orders to your deck, which we can represent with this notation:

 

Heads: Grizzly Bears -> Gaea's Blessing

Tails: Gaea's Blessing -> Grizzly Bears

 

The likelihood of your deck being in either position is just as likely as flipping a coin and getting that result. Now, imagine you perform one iteration of Orb-Monolith. That's the coin flip. If you get heads, Grizzly Bears is milled into your graveyard and you produce a zombie; at which point you Orb-Monolith again, mill Blessing and shuffle back up. If you get tails, Gaea's Blessing is milled first, and you reshuffle the two cards without getting a zombie. In short:

 

Heads: 1 zombie

Tails: 0 zombies

 

Thus, even if you flip the coin an arbitrary number of times, there's an small - but still extant - chance that you'll flip tails every time and get 0 zombies total. You thus cannot shortcut the combo, as it's an indeterminate loop - you cannot confidently declare how many zombies you produce with each loop. This is expanded to a situation where your deck isn't just 2 cards, in which instance the chance of getting no zombies off the trigger is the probability of you milling Blessing before any of your creatures hit the graveyard. As long as the possibility exists, the rules won't let you take the easy way out. (The Four Horsemen combo in Legacy requires a similar indeterminate loop to be performed, so you'll be performing loops without advancing the game state. This results in a Slow Play infraction.)

 

For the rules to allow you to shortcut the loop to get infinite zombies, you need to be able to guarantee that you produce at least 1 zombie in each iteration. This is why you need either old!Kozilek or old!Ulamog: as the shuffle trigger is now on a creature, you have to mill at least one creature (the respective Eldrazi titan) in order to reshuffle.

 

[Forest Fire]

i haven't actually done this challenge (i did build  shitty pure red and shitty pure blue commander decks that were taken apart later tho)
 
W: Odric, Lunarch Marshal
U: Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir / Sun Quan, Lord of Wu / Sakashima the Imposter
B: Sheoldred, Whispering One (Have) / Ashling, The Extinguisher
R: Urabrask the Hidden / Zada, Hedron Grinder / Grenzo, Havoc Raise
G: Voriclex, Voice of Hunger (Have) / Kodama of the North Tree
 
WU: Ojutai, Soul of Winter
UB: Dragonlord Silumgar / Gisa and Geralf (Have)
BR: Kolaghan, the Storms Fury (Have)

RG: Mina and Den, Wildborn (Have)

GW: Dromoka, the Eternal (Have)

BW: Daxos the Returned (Have)

UR: Mizzix of the Izmagnus (Have) / Melek, Izzet Paragon (Have) / Tibor and Lumia

GB: Ehh. Don't like any of them to much.

WR: Iroas / Gisela / Aurelia

UG: Ezuri /Kruphix

 

bored. will edit soon.

[Sixty]

Math lesson time! (Hint: it's the same reason why trying to run the Four Horsemen combo in Legacy will result in a game loss for you.)

 

[spoiler=Lesson within.]

 

Imagine you have the combo on board (so Sidisi, Orb and Monolith all untapped), and all cards have been exiled from your deck and graveyard save two: Grizzly Bears and Gaea's Blessing. You just shuffled your deck, so the order of the cards in your deck is now unknown. There are two potential orders to your deck, which we can represent with this notation:

 

Heads: Grizzly Bears -> Gaea's Blessing

Tails: Gaea's Blessing -> Grizzly Bears

 

The likelihood of your deck being in either position is just as likely as flipping a coin and getting that result. Now, imagine you perform one iteration of Orb-Monolith. That's the coin flip. If you get heads, Grizzly Bears is milled into your graveyard and you produce a zombie; at which point you Orb-Monolith again, mill Blessing and shuffle back up. If you get tails, Gaea's Blessing is milled first, and you reshuffle the two cards without getting a zombie. In short:

 

Heads: 1 zombie

Tails: 0 zombies

 

Thus, even if you flip the coin an arbitrary number of times, there's an small - but still extant - chance that you'll flip tails every time and get 0 zombies total. You thus cannot shortcut the combo, as it's an indeterminate loop - you cannot confidently declare how many zombies you produce with each loop. This is expanded to a situation where your deck isn't just 2 cards, in which instance the chance of getting no zombies off the trigger is the probability of you milling Blessing before any of your creatures hit the graveyard. As long as the possibility exists, the rules won't let you take the easy way out. (The Four Horsemen combo in Legacy requires a similar indeterminate loop to be performed, so you'll be performing loops without advancing the game state. This results in a Slow Play infraction.)

 

For the rules to allow you to shortcut the loop to get infinite zombies, you need to be able to guarantee that you produce at least 1 zombie in each iteration. This is why you need either old!Kozilek or old!Ulamog: as the shuffle trigger is now on a creature, you have to mill at least one creature (the respective Eldrazi titan) in order to reshuffle.

 

 

fair enough. one of those corner cases where math actually plays a huge factor. thanks for explaining it to me

[bury the year]

Short story:

 

Best feeling in an EDH game? Resolving an overloaded Cyclonic Rift the turn after someone resolves Rise of the Dark Realm.

 

Thanks for getting all the creatures out of my graveyard and into my hand, bro.

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

Probably using planar cleansing after an opponent used song of the dryads on my Elspeth

[Rodrigo]

Topdecking Food Chain with Eternal Scourge in hand after every other player had exhausted their resources and combos =D

[Flame Dragon]

Having Sire of Insanity eat your hand and then top decking Zendikar Resurgent into Palinchron.

[Sixty]

winning the game with a combo with a draw a card trigger on the stack while your library is empty

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

winning the game with a combo with a draw a card trigger on the stack while your library is empty

Now I kinda miss Niv

[Flame Dragon]

winning the game with a combo with a draw a card trigger on the stack while your library is empty

Thats a dream I have. The fact that my one friend plays the gravestorm card that decks everyone I may one day get to do it.

 

 

Anyway, I'm actually really tempted to do the 27 deck challenge. Decided to do Kozilek since not a ton of cards are even legal for the deck. Also wrote it out on Tappedout to price check (not as bad as I was expecting tbqh)

 

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/28-09-16-kozilek-edh/

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

So, with kaladesh now properly released, what changes has everyone been making to their decks?

[Delibirb]

Well, Kurkesh is the only one I've added anything too, because artifacts. I've installed an energy subtheme with Aetherworks Marvel, Electrostatic Pummeler, Aether Hub, and Multiform Wonder. It wasn't terribly difficult to find slots for them, fortunately, though the creatures may end up being removed depending on how many more playable energy artifacts are in Aether Revolt.

 

Inventor's Fair is an obvious land to replace a colorless land that I didn't use much.

 

I'm testing out Aetherflux Reservoir, as well. Theoretically, it should be another wincon, and with Kurkesh of course, I can kill two opponents rather than one. I'm unsure how efficiently i'll be able to gain life without reaching godmode though, at which point I may as well use my usual wincons. So we'll see there.

 

I've also sprung for the Invention Sculpting Steel and Rings of Brighthearth to replace my ordinary copies, and I'll be buying a Sol Ring with some of my next paycheck. I was planning on starting to foil out Kurkesh anyway, so I also got foils of all the aforementioned Kaladesh cards I needed, and a foil Kurkesh.

[Flame Dragon]

Not counting lands since these are pretty good additions to commander decks

 

For sure getting something

Animar: Panharmonicon

Gahiji: Nissa, Vital Force

Sharuum: Panharmonicon, Cataclysmic Gearhulk, Refurbish, Padeem, Consul of Innovation, Inventor's Fair

Ezuri: Panharmonicon, Cultivator of Blades

Gitrog: Nissa, Vital Force,

Kozilek: Metalwork Colossus, Inventor's Fair

 

Might get something

Freyalise: Nissa, Vital Force

Grenzo: Panharmonicon

Karador: Panharmonicon

Sedris: Combustible Gearhulk

 

Gets nothing

Hanna

Sliver Overlord

Iroas

[bury the year]

Okay, so things are pretty dead now. Let's change that. New topic of conversation.

 

What sort of bling do you aim for to trick out your deck?

 

For me: English only. No pack foils unless they're of white-bordered cards, but if something has a neat promo I'll be looking to use that. Art is the priority, then printing (ex. original Modern Masters printing is most desirable, but stay away from MM2.) Long-term considering some of the following to get - not all of these are expensive but they can be a pain in the ass to acquire:

• Expeditions: Breeding Pool, Dust Bowl, Flooded Grove
• Masterpieces: Chromatic Lantern, Scroll Rack, Solemn Simulacrum, Sol Ring
• FNM/Judge: Birds of Paradise, Bribery, Command Tower, Cultivate, Reliquary Tower, Sylvan Scrying (bought yesterday!)
• Duel Decks/Precons: Arcanis the Omnipotent, Avenger of Zendikar (bought yesterday!), Temple of Mystery
• Other Pricy Stuff: Force of Will (EMA), Land Equilibrium, Vendilion Clique (MM2)

In terms of bling I currently have, not much. Only thing of significant value is a Kor Haven Expedition, which I'm looking to trade into a Bribery promo.

[~Faytl~]

I play budget, I don't bother with giving a damn about blinging my decks out. If it's paper and in relatively good condition its good enough for me. That being said, I HAVE considered trying to go full-art on all my basic lands, now that that's more viable.

[Flame Dragon]

The most I do to bling out my decks is all full art lands. Part of it is just because I REALLY like lining up all my land art, but the fact that they are so easy to get made it pretty simple as well. Now that all my current decks have full arts, I kind of feel forced to do that for all my decks.

[Forest Fire]

i don't really care if a card helps 'blinging' out my decks, i just care about getting what i need. i do, however prefer later printings, especially if that makes it easier to get my hands on it. (i do enjoy getting foils though)

[Flame Dragon]

I think most people prefer later printing. I also imagine if the price difference is small enough getting the art you prefer is also a common goal. I know I much prefer the Core Set Sad Robot to the original.

[Forest Fire]

I think most people prefer later printing. I also imagine if the price difference is small enough getting the art you prefer is also a common goal. I know I much prefer the Core Set Sad Robot to the original.

i think the kaladesh sad robot looks the best. it might just be that hnnng border tho.

[Flame Dragon]

i think the kaladesh sad robot looks the best. it might just be that hnnng border tho.

Funny you say that since that is the least popular of the 3. The border does do wonders for it though.

[Forest Fire]

Funny you say that since that is the least popular of the 3. The border doe do wonders for it though.

probably cause of the rarity increase.

 

hnng border best border.

[Flame Dragon]

probably cause of the rarity increase.

 

hnng border best border.

No, generally speaking people much prefer the Masterpiece art.

[Delibirb]

I've fallen so in love with my Kurkesh deck, I've begun the process of foiling. So far, just the Kaladesh cards are foil, as well as Invention Rings of Brighthearth and Sculpting Steel. I'll probably try to get only pack foils, unless there happens to be a lot of stamped versions available, and ideally latest printings only. I just wish Daretti and Unstable Obelisk had foils.