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The Command Tower (EDH Hangout)


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My turn to weigh in on counterspells.

Of those mentioned, Remand, Grip of Amnesia, and Flusterstorm are terrible in EDH: delaying spells for the former isn't generally worth it unless you can kill that player before their next turn rolls around; giving your opponent a choice as to whether their spell should be countered or not is a terrible plan; and Flusterstorm's only really that good imho to stop opponents from storming off (hence the name).

The ten best counterspells in the format in my opinion (regardless of price) are Force of Will, Foil, Pact of Negation, Mana Drain, Hinder, Spell Crumple, Voidslime, Time Stop, Render Silent and Counterflux. These cards are all either a. cheap to cast, b. break the back of whomever they hit by denying resources, or c. say "no" so very effectively (aka: "Time Stop-Your-Turn").

I'm surprised that Swan Song wasn't mentioned, though. A 1-mana hard counter is always worth playing, especially because the token is pretty middling in a battlecruiser format like EDH.

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The thing that holds Swan Song back is what it can and can't hit. A number of threats in EDH come from permanents and their abilities - being unable to hit 3 types of permanent (artifact, creature, walker) makes Swan Song a bit more situational than, say, Negate.

*looks at local metagame*
Control
Control
control
melek combo
control
Karametra guys
reanimator
control
Swan song very well may be the strongest card in my meta... also holy shit we got a lot of control up here.
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My playgroup sees:

 

  • Wrexial Mill / Melek Combo / Marath / Karador Reanimators / Grimgrin Zombie Tribal
  • Roon Flicker
  • Jarad Dredge
  • Derevi Bird Tribal / Glissa Control / Brago Flicker / Zirilan Box-o-Dragons
  • Marchesa buffs / Uril Tron
  • Kemba Tron / Slivers
  • Sharuum ft. Time Sieve / Xenagos Aggro / Karametra Landfalls
  • Niv-Mizzet Combo Control / Talrand Control / Roon Flicker / Vorel Super-proliferate / Phage
  • Animar sillyramp / Phelddagrif
  • Scion Box-o-Dragons / Hidetsugu Seppuku / Uril Tron

Each bullet point is assigned to a particular player. They'll rotate between what they have.

 

The number of counterspells flying around is relatively low, a majority of the threats there are permanents, and there's an uncanny amount of grave reliance.

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My EDH playgroup has been inactive lately... :c
 
We should create our own playgroup here :3


The issue is that our levels of competitiveness vary greatly. Like, my deck is competitive-level strength, and so are all of your and Ashley's, but the people who are newer to the format would just get roflstomped.
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Our Playgroup is comprissed of 4 people occasionally 5

We have these, decks per player

  • Karador/Intet
  • Sharuum/Prossh
  • Aurelia/Ghave
  • Uril/Lazav
  • Hanna/New Obzedat

Only the Sharuum/Prosh Guy play with competitive cards, and Infinite Combos...(Guess who ends up being the target most of the time, wink wink)

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To be quite honest...the entire "EDH playing policy" is stupid. Rodrigo has overtuned, strong decks, some others prefer casual ones, and...why should we take away from ANYONE? Sure, forcing someone into playing a more competitive deck isn't good, but forcing someone into purposely weakening theirs is an unfair IMO. It's not that you can't win with a more casual deck vs a well tuned one. Let's not have double standards here.

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Well to be fair Rodrigo's Statement is correct...our friend...despite being a good man and all is a Dick in Magic and will take any advantage (Specialy since he has monetary Advantage over us) To mantain himself as the only winning deck in our playgroup, his play style is also pretty fast both of his decks are turbo versions where he can combo off in 4 turns aprox...(While in those 4 turns we are barely starting to generate plays and stuff).

 

However we made something about it...XD we balance power levels via the use of randomness (Particualy Planechasing)

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Well, power level of a deck is one thing, power level of the CARDS is something else. Like, if we're to make a playgroup, we should stray away from cards like ABUR Duals, or Force of Will...I mean, honestly.

 

But just because Rodrigo in this example is playing a high powered Wanderer deck, it's not bad...he's not playing anything like Power 9 or something. I despise playing against this deck, but I can't hide the fact it's fair.

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So, my meta looks like...

  • Nin artifacts, eventually Adun/Shattergang reanimator/control (mine)
  • Rhys tokens, Thassa control, Teneb reanimator, Bolas goodstuff, Progentius 5C jank
  • Hanna artifacts, Narset control
  • Karador combo
  • Vaevictus ramp, Gwafa Hazid group hug
  • Erebos control, Niv-Mizzet II control, Rith tokens
  • Xenagos aggro, Hidetsugu "combo"
  • Zegana ramp
Of the seven, only Hanna and Karador are the more ruthlessly competitive players, with Rhys sometimes being so as well. There's a pretty good balance to counteract them if they try to do something stupid, but I've slowly noticed a seas change as people ramp up their deckbuilding quality a bit.
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I'm playing against 3 elf tribal decks(kill me pls) a mono black ob nixils deck, a horrible blue terefi deck (this guy has no idea how EDH works), Grenzo, Krenko, Giselia angel tribal, Derevi stone blade, niv mizziet and animar. The one guy and his brother started playing tooth and nail into palichron and dead eye decks which made me take Ghave back out, fight degenerate decks with even more degenerate decks.

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Ok, club has been quite, so I got a discussion question!
Who is the best Stax commander?
In my opinion it is Grand Arbiter Augustin IV, due to his cost-increasing effect making your opponents have a generally bad day, but other options certainly exist, such as Teysa, Orzhov Scion with her powerful removal and easy combo wins, or Keranos, God of Storms for the sheer advantage and inevitability he brings to games.

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