But the funny thing about collectable card games is that they are games as well. You play games. Having a stack of baseball cards does nothing, as you can look at them through the plastic pages in your binder, but there’s nothing really that you can do with them. Magic, being a game, means that you can collect and play them at the same time. You can fill your decks with treasures that you open or trade for. That’s part of Magic’s appeal, you can do both.

Yesterday WotC released the newest From the Vault series where it’s all Legends. By having all 15 special foiled cards be Legends, we can use them to build our decks around. This naturally would be amazing for Commander since we love to pimp out our decks as much as possible. Personally, I’m not going to open my box.

This is a huge disappointment to me. I’m not trying to short the market by having fewer copies of the product around, I just don’t see the value in opening them up. I really wanted to play with these cards too, so it’s not like I’m trying to jump on a bandwagon here. With reasons I get into in my next GatheringMagic piece, I just don’t see this as a good meshing between the concepts. Not because I only have one of those Commanders in my Highlander Collective (We’ll get to that in September), but because I feel that WotC didn’t take full advantage of the situation.

The product was created to help bring back high level collecting to Magic. I’ve got some weird things in my Magic collection: unopened Mirrodin Besieged Faction packs, the old Duelist abacas counter, a print copy of The Sideboard from the Summer of 1998 and about 100 copies of Madrush Cyclops. Looks like I’ll be adding an unopened From the Vault: Legends, still in its white protective box, to that collection.

I wanted to have it to complete my collection of my FtV purchases. It’s not going anywhere. Right now it has the same play value as my Baseball cards.

None.

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If you’re curious about the whole “99 Problems” issue, I would direct you to my MTGCP post and Sean’s post describing the situation (To be fair to both sides). If you’re looking to comment about that, please keep it in one of those two areas, anything left on here will be heavily moded. This thing could go on forever if we let it, but my wife looked at me this week and made one simple observation:

“It doesn’t look like you’re having fun with your ‘hobby’.”

And she’s right, I wasn’t.

Writing about Magic isn’t a full time job for me, hence why posts on here and MTGColorPie.com come at random times. I’ve now got a weekly series on Commander over at GatheringMagic if you want a normal weekly column. As anyone who has ever met me, or possibly even read some of my work, knows I’m not really normal. I write parodies of movies and put them as Magic characters/personalities; Aaron Forsythe has told me that it’s a little odd to see a fictional version of himself and tried to explain it to other people.

But this isn’t a blog about writings, or anything like that. This is a Commander blog, so let’s talk about Commander.

One of the main attractions to Commander, and Magic is general, is that it’s a game. With all of the facets that Magic has, it’s real easy to treat this than more than just a hobby. People earn money writing, playing and creating this game. There are things like the Pro Tour where if you want to be serious enough with the game, you can devote a huge chunk of your time and effort into earning a living. Then there are the people who cover the players playing at the highest level, and they get paid for that. There’s also people who buy and sell cards, some on speculation, and that’s how they earn money.

I play Commander. I look at Magic design theory. I make jokes.

I need to remember that Magic is a game. Games can be, and should be, fun.

That’s why I started to play Commander; it’s a fun format. Being able to build wacky theme decks and ten card combos is normal. You don’t have to stress out what the metagame has to be since nothing is on the line. Maybe pride. There’s no FNM for Commander, no Pro Tour Qualifier, no Open Series. Just some friends sitting together to play cards.

Your biggest worry in Commander should be how you’re going to get that foil to complete your deck, not all this dumb political stuff.

Now that the Commander product is released, there’s a huge growing interest in the format. I imagine that it’s one of the most popular casual formats that Magic has (I’m lumping Commander with Multi-Player). Players want to know more about it, which is why Sean and I write about the format. If no one card about this Highlander format I would see the numbers in my blog stats dwindle and my editor, Trick, at GatheringMagic would most likely let me go (We’re ignoring the content quality at the moment even though I’m assuming that would play a part in it).

But Commander is popping up all over the place on the major Magic sites and more Commander blogs are popping up all over the place. Players are excited for this format and are hungry for more information. It’s not just what Commander to pick, but which cards work well together and what’s good for playing in the format. This is an exciting time to be interested in Commander because Commander is interesting.

Cliché, sure, but it’s true.

What’s more fun than swinging in with your Dragon army? Or how about making 1,000 tokens? Or playing that one card that makes your opponent shirk down in his chair because it was the right card at the right time to destroy his plans? Or traveling from one Plane to the next and suddenly everyone’s trying to scramble to survive. Or teaming up with two of your friends while you try and take down the great Archenemy?

Right now we are living in the Wild West of Commander. There are hardly any laws and everyone has their own opinion about what should be done. So here we play, guns ablaze, smiling all the time.

Magic and Commander should be fun. And I intend to focus on that.

One of the things that I wanted to do when I brought back 99EDH was to publish articles by people wanting to write about Commander. I’ve got a submission that I need to edit, polish it up and you’re going to see it next week.

After that, I’ll dig into the Highlander Collective that I’ve started over on GatheringMagic. There’s a bright future for 99EDH and for Commander. I hope you’re along for the ride.

Until then, if you want to join in on some Commander discussion, head over to Google+ and add me (gplus.to/MTGColorPie) where I’ve got a Commander circle going. I’ll throw some Commander news and questions out every once in a while. Feel free to ask questions and engage in conversations.

Let’s go have some fun.

A card that makes Pegasi? Count me in!

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When I was opening up my Commander product boxes and getting out the new yummy cards, I noticed something disturbing on the back of the Counterpunch deck box.

Each of the decks have a blurb on the back of the box that quickly explains the format and what you can do with the deck. This is normal marketing stuff that you see with everything. But, one of the great things about Magic is that you can actually use the product to sell. If people aren’t seeing awesomeness with the large foil Commanders on the front, they can see what else might be in the deck by looking at the back. Let me set it up for you if you haven’t paid attention or haven’t picked up your Commander product yet.

On the right side there are seven cards from the deck. They all share a pattern: You’ve got all three wedge Commanders, the new enemy colored Commander, Sol Ring, and a new card and a reprint that only exclusive to this deck. The five you can’t change, nor should you, but I have to question the choices for the other two cards.

Now, seeing how you almost can’t find these anywhere at the moment, this argument almost becomes a moot point. After all, this is a product that could be packaged in a plain white box and people would still buy this in droves. This product is still going to be on the shelves a year from now like Planechase and Archenemy before that. Maybe some players who haven’t played in years are looking at what these cards do, or someone just getting started in Commander.

I would have to believe that Wizards did market research for this product and what I could be saying could be against all evidence. But even with the Johnny/Spike/Timmy model, there are some strange choices here. I’m going to look at each of them from the standpoint of selling the product. The obvious rule I should say is that I have to use existing cards from the deck, I can’t add or change those at all.

Heavenly Inferno

New: Archangel of Strife
Reprint: Malfegor

The Rundown: The deck is based around Angels, Demons, and Dragons, so the obvious choices for these two cards would be a combination of one of those three creature types. Malfegor is a Demon Dragon so that fit all three with the new Angel so (brushes hands together) our work is done. Wait, you mean Malfegor was a Prerelease card so players might want a different choice on the back of their product? I imagine the reason for picking Malfegor was A) Another Commander you can use in the deck and B) it has the words “Each opponent”. When selling a multi-player product, it’s important to push the multi-player portion of it.

Options: But Archangel of Strife already has each player written on the card, so it can be implied that you want this with multiple opponents. If you keep Archangel of Strife, you need a new reprint of the Demon or Dragon variety. Bladewing the Risen was in new frames for FtV: Dragons, but still is a splashy effect. The other choices don’t look that exciting, so I would actually change the reprint to be an Angel: Angel of Despair. Looks pretty sexy when you vial it into play with Kaalia. This opens up the new card to be Mana-Charged Dragon which promotes multi-player. Too bad the name sucks so we’d might have to look at Dread Cacodemon, which ironically doesn’t work with its Commander.

My choices:

New: Archangel of Strife
Reprint: Bladewing the Risen

I really hate the name of Mana-Charged Dragon; if it was called any other name I would gladly switch that over to the new card. But that name won’t sell anything.

Mirror Mastery

New: Hydra Onmivore
Reprint: Prophetic Bolt

The Rundown: The deck is all about copying creatures and spells and they give us something so unexciting as a Lightning Blast that Impulses? Alright, it’s not bad, but it’s not something I’m picking up my wallet for. The Onmivore, however, is something that screams awesome. “You mean if I deal damage to Jake, I can also deal damage to Sam and Greg?” It’s basically Green direct damage, and WotC decided to use another direct damage spell on the back. It doesn’t scream that this is going to be a powerful deck.

Options: Truth be told, there’s a ton of spells in this weak that are kinda weak in the format on their own. Brainstorm? Fire//Ice? I’m not saying their bad, but nothing I would put on the back of the box. You have to see both sides of this Commander: the copying creatures and copying spells. Call the Skybreaker is one of the more powerful spells in the deck and for 9 mana you get 2 5/5 flyers. Ruination is something you can’t copy because there will be no effect, and the only new spell is Collective Voyage, which is a strange spell to copy. Magmatic Force is a new creature that you could use to replace Onmivore, but is it as cool? You’re replacing one fatty for another. I would love to us Simic Sky Swallower as the creature, but then you’re using Collective Voyage as the spell and does it really upgrade over what you already have?

My choices:

New: Hydra Onmivore
Reprint: Call the Skybreaker

The lack of awesome exclusive new spells really hurt selling this deck to it’s full potential.

Counterpunch

New: Hornet Queen
Reprint: Storm Herd

The Rundown: The one that started this whole piece. Great, so we’ve got a flying Green creature and a spell that fluctuates with your life total, where only four cards in your deck that can abuse it (two of them Lifelink, one activated ability and the other is an upkeep effect). Yes, this deck makes tokens; we can tell because both of these cards make tokens when you cast them. While the other decks so far have had two different sides that you wanted to show off, all this does is scream “Tokens!” It’s not bad, but it’s narrow. And sorry, but Storm Herd has never wanted me to buy anything.

Options: Luckily I feel we can play around with both cards since there’s no other parameters we have to meet besides tokens. For new, we can actually show off the Join Forces mechanic with Alliance of Arms since it does meet our one requirement. Hell, even Acorn Catapult will work because it gets people thinking what you could do with it. Symbiotic Wurm is a great way to show off some of the sacrifice mechanics that you have in the deck (as well as anti-board wipe). The enchantment Attrition can give you other ways to show off a what you can do with your mound of tokens.It might be a little too close to its actual printing but Awakening Zone might be a great way to show of token creation.

My choices:

New: Alliance of Arms
Reprint: Symbiotic Wurm

I wanted something that showed creating tokens and other ways to sacrifice stuff besides just the Commander. But Attrition with Alliance of Arms just looks weird. You keep the same colors with the same style of effects (one time spell and creature/token combination), but it looks better than Storm Herd on the back of the box. Don’t get me wrong, I think it works in the deck, but that’s not a marquee card.

Political Puppets

New: Martyr’s Bond
Reprint: Brion Stoutarm

The Rundown: Three/Fifths of these decks’ reprints are other Commanders that are in the deck. This seems a little odd to me since I’ve had it beaten into my head by MaRo that people love cycles. Why don’t we put all the extra Commanders on the back of the box? As for Brion Stoutarm here, seems a little odd to be talking about sharing with others and all we’re going to do is fling stuff at them. You really don’t steal anything (Insurrection is a one time steal, and Reins of Power you lose him anyway. Dominus of Fealty is you’re only saving grace and you’re lucky if that survives a turn), which is the real fun with Brion, and you don’t have all that many exciting creatures to fling anyway. What are you doing on the back of the box? As for Martyr’s Bond, this might be the most right on pick out of the design of these packages.

Options: This deck is an embarrassment of riches. Chaos Warp is in here. Flusterstorm is in here (Though it might not wow the Commander crowd). Crescendo of War is a great political card. But mostly we’re looking for reprints, and there’s no shortage of good ones. While none of the other decks have uncommons (a point could be made for Devour for Power), new frame Propaganda would sell. I already mentioned Dominus of Fealty, which makes more sense when vying for a political style anyway. Commander favorite Wild Ricochet, but it’s not like you can’t find those in dollar bins anywhere.

My choices:

New: Martyr’s Bond
Reprint: Wild Ricochet

Both of these play real nicely with the political theme going on. They give you the ability to play politics by giving you bargaining chips to reason/threaten your opponents. Most of the other reprints that are rares are cute, but the ones that would be nice to put on the back of the box are uncommons. This deck has some awesome new cards, but I think more players would be excited by this enchantment.

Devour for Power

New: Minds Aglow
Reprint: Wrexial, the Risen Deep

The Rundown: Here’s a deck that’s all about customizing your Commander to be really awesome and the best you can do is a mass drawing spell? This is one of the new must have Commanders and you’re trying to sell me on a drawing spell that will also help your opponents? That doesn’t make sense. Sure, you want some supporting spells, but it would be cool to see some more creatures that you can use. One of them is Wrexial, which is pretty nice to exile, but the main focus of this deck is creatures, let’s use that.

Options: One of the better decks in terms of reprints. Solemn Simulacrum, Avatar of Woe, and the uncommon Eternal Witness are all great creatures to promote on the back of the box (Grave Pact, Fact or Fiction and Living Death would be great, but we’re looking at creatures). The Witness alone would be enough to sell the boxes as it’s only seen print twice: in Fifth Dawn and as an FNM promo. As for the new cards, Sewer Nemesis seems pretty nice; Johnny and Timmy like the card. But there are hardly any new creature cards (which is a disappointment), so Minds Aglow might’ve been an alright choice. But there aren’t that many new cards in this deck, but plenty of reprints. The best one might be the other Join Forces card, Shared Trauma; at least that one puts the cards in the graveyard for you to copy with The Mimeoplasm.

My choices:

New: Shared Trauma
Reprint: Eternal Witness

Yes, I threw an uncommon on the back of the bock. But she isn’t like every other uncommon, she’s almost like a rare. She will sell boxes. Wrexial is pretty awesome and all, but it was printed within the past year, and it’s been 8 years since Eternal Witness was last seen. As for the new card, I went with Shared Trauma, because this just cements this one as a graveyard based deck. It helps gets the creative juices flowing for deck building.

I ended up changing 7 out of 10 spots. Some of the choices on the back of the box were a little confusing, but somewhat understandable. I think that the marketing department could’ve done better but like I said before, the product sells itself. If you know what’s in the box, then it doesn’t matter what’s on the outside.

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If you live in the Seattle area, and are free tonight, I would highly recommend heading to Card Kingdom to play some Commander. I helped start a Commander Night that had a successful launch two weeks ago with 18 people (not bad for a first time event). Now, this is something that Card Kingdom is doing every other week, so if you don’t make it this week, come out in two weeks on the 19th. I won’t be there this time because something about my wedding anniversary being tonight and Wife is putting her foot down not wanting me to go play cards.

Women.

(That was just a joke, ladies. I’ve said plenty of times I do pay a huge amount of love and affection to my wife, um, what’s her name.)

Anyway, the situation that we’ve got set up is very simple. We’re looking for casual decks and players who just want to have fun and come out. You’re gong to be put into Pods of 4 and play. At the moment, we don’t have a league going (only our second time around), and there’s no points system to keep track of yet. If people are interested in doing something like that, we can talk about doing it in the future. If you have Planechase or Archenemy and want to see if your pod’s interested bring those along too.

We all had a ton of fun last time and I got to meet some nice new people. It’s unsanctioned so you don’t need a DCI number to play and, hopefully, won’t find a bunch of Spikes trying to kill everyone early to try and get prizes. Speaking of prizes, there will be some given out randomly so there’s no need for your Hive Mind/Pact turn 4 combo deck. There were plenty of people wanting to play more games after the first round, it looked like the games went about 90-120 minutes, and plenty of trading opportunities.

This is a great place to try out the new Commander Deck you just bought or test out your re-worked deck against unsuspecting people. They follow the Official Commander banned list (Found here). The entry fee is $5, and that’s only to help pay for the staff overseeing it and for prizes. They’re going to start around 6:30, and you can give them a call to reserve a spot (206-523-9605). Get there early, or stay late to grab a bite to eat and a drink (if you legally can) at Cafe Mox. If you do go, let me know either here or on Twitter (@MTGColorPie) how everything went.

Nom Nom Nom

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Sheldon releases another one into the wild:

We don’t unban cards lightly, but it’s time for Worldgorger Dragon to get out of the penalty box. It is no longer a particularly strong example of unwelcome, format-warping, combo-play style, but simply another infinite-combo piece. Those applications are narrow enough that it should not cause problems for social players, and the type of player who wants to play this kind of infinite combo isn’t going to play a more fun deck because Worldgorger Dragon is available. Thus, since it’s a goal to keep the list as short as possible and focused on more fun-oriented games, we believe it can come off the list.

If you don’t know the combo, it’s Animate Dead enchanting the Worldgorger in your graveyard. The Dragon enters the battlefield exiling everything you own, including your Animate Dead. With the aura gone, the Dragon heads back to the graveyard returning everything back onto the battlefield untapped, including your Animate Dead. Then you target your Dragon again, but tap all your land for mana. Keep repeating until you get as much mana as you want (plus whatever enters the battlefield/leaves the battlefield effect) and do whatever you want with that mana.

While people were wishing the other Dragon would come off this list, I find this one to be somewhat acceptable. It’s not the only two card combo on the list: Lion’s Eye Diamond is also there. Is this a card I’m going to shove in any of my decks? Most likely not. If you’re playing this, I’m going after you.

The Banned list has been updated (as well as that bug issue where the Banned Commanders were showing up as banned in decks. I didn’t see that issue and it’s now fixed).

Everybody and their mother now sees +1/+1 counters and other counters on a new card and they instantly go to everyone’s favorite new mechanic: Proliferate. So, here’s my list of the top 10 cards that have Proliferate for use in the Commander format. The way I wrote that, makes it sound like it was an Oscar category announcement.

Honorable Mentions:

Core Prowler -

Running into a 2/x creature would kill it. But it’s basically a wall or kills an opponent’s token as it just sits around waiting to be killed.

Grim Affliction -

Because let’s give one creature a -1/-1 counter. For 3 mana. Yeah, that’ll be amazing in Commander. (Yes, I know technically it would give 2 -1/-1 counters, but that still isn’t enough for 3 mana).

Thrummingbird -

Great in the early game when you have nothing to Proliferate. I want to see it get past my Dragon turn 6.

Steady Progress -

Well, at least it’s instant speed. It’s got that going for it, which is nice.

And now, the Top 10:

10. Tezzeret’s Gambit -

Paying 3 mana and 2 life to draw 2 cards seem much better. Wish it could be played in every deck, but alas, it cannot.

9. Spread the Sickness -

The lack of “Nonartifact/nonBlack” rider makes it awesome.

8. Fuel for the Cause -

Not up to the level of Cryptic Command or Dismiss, but can still have a great effect on the game.

7. Volt Charge -

The only Red Proliferate spell, this one gets up here because of the instant speed.

6. Plaguemaw Beast -

Green can play with a ton of tokens that you can use. Green also likes to play around with +1/+1 counters. I smell a deck.

5. Throne of Geth -

Can sacrifice itself, which is awesome, but is a great rattlesnake on the board for anytime activation.

4. Contagion Clasp -

Kills early X/1 dudes, but the utility and cost almost makes you want to put it into every Commander deck.

3. Viral Drake -

You have enough mana, you can kill someone with 36 mana. Now, getting that first poison counter.

2. Contagion Engine -

In Commander, you want big effects. This is a big effect. Bonus: Can kill an opponent’s team.

1. Inexorable Tide -

Blue can cast a ton of spells, especially with buyback favorites as Capsize and Whispers of the Muse. Johnny players enjoy!

As you can see, the top cards were all repeatable effects. Repeatable effects are amazing. Except for Thrummingbird; you’re jumping through too many hoops to make it hit constantly. Stop it.

In Every Commander Deck

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I did decide to play the two extra mana to recast myself for resuming this blog. Most of you don’t really need a reason, and that’s fine. I’ve done some growing up since a few months ago (the list time I wrote here) and I would just like to say a few words and let you get ready for Monday.

No, I’m not leaving GatheringMagic.com (Formally ManaNation.com). In fact, let me be the first to tell you that I’m no longer going to be published on Mondays. Trick (My main editor and head honcho over at GM) is actually moving me to Thursdays; Monday will be my last Monday there. I would really encourage you to check it out as there is a pretty neat surprise. Does it have to do with the upcoming Commander product? It just might.

But starting this blog up again I can do some silly and fun things that I couldn’t do over at GM. It’s not that Trick is mean or anything, but I bet he would’ve been less than amused at my foils piece that I did Wednesday without some writing to go along with it. Yes, I will do some small stuff like that and some extra notes about what I’ve written about over on GM. No matter what I write, and how long I’m given, I always think of stuff to add later, and this will be a perfect spot.

The other main thing is Card Kingdom. If you haven’t been paying attention to Twitter or my other blog (MTGColorPie.com), you don’t know that they opened a fantastic new store here in Seattle. I was tapped to write about it (With the last part coming soon), and it just seems rude to write about another online store even if I was talking about the offline component on a competitor’s website (GatheringMagic is financed by CoolStuffInc.com).

Card Kingdom is starting a casual/Commander night every other Tuesday night starting the 21st and I would like to talk about it/take photos and would think of it to be really rude to write about it all the time on GatheringMagic. That’s me personally and I would like to keep those two separate.

Another reason why I’m coming back has to deal something with StarCityGames. No, I’m not the guy who writes the “99 Problems” column over there. I already said I won’t write decklists (I actually took the pages off this site) and he argued for staples when I did the opposite. I won’t speak much on this issue as I’m currently writing a piece for QuietSpeculation.com about this very situation. All I will say is that I am not happy with StarCityGames at the moment. If any of the editors are reading this (which I know isn’t the case because there wouldn’t be this issue), feel free to contact me (99edhproblems, gmail.com).

Now on to happy news. One thing that I did miss was getting guest submissions sent here. This was one of the launching pads for Derfington and his work over at QuietSpeculation. I did have several people wanting to take over 99EDH in my absence, but decided against it. I am taking Commander/EDH articles again if you want to see some of your stuff published. I will help you edit it and find your voice, but since I’m not paying you for these pieces, don’t expect a fast turn around. It was part of this community thing that I liked. Send me your work at (99edhproblems, gmail.com) and we can go from there.

In all, I’m glad to have this blog up and running again. I wouldn’t expect posts every day, like my other blog. The best way to follow and get a hold of me is through Twitter (@MTGColorPie). Now, let me go blow some dust off my cards here and you get to GatheringMagic on Monday.

Seriously.

*Obviously we’re going to ignore the Commanders.

Yes, I’m back. For the full story, come back Friday.

Yes, as of today, I’m not looking to create original content for 99EDHProblems.com.

Don’t don’t be sad, it’s not all bad news. Here’s some possible questions that you might have:

Really? Why are you shutting this blog down?

If you’ve noticed that there has be little content on this blog recently. It’s not because I don’t love you guys. I just can’t create content for this blog as often as I’d wish.

So, you’re not writing about Magic anymore?

Whoa, that’s not true at all. For those that don’t know, I started the blog MTGColorPie.com (hence my name), years before this one. After I started to fall in love with EDH/Commander, I started another blog (where you’re currently at) about the format. So, for over a year, I was managing 2 blogs about two separate Magic topics at the same time, where this one accepted user content as well. That’s when a new variable entered into my life:

I’ve been writing for ManaNation about EDH/Commander.

For those keeping track, I’m also writing for part time on QuietSpeculation.com and in discussion to write for another website for which I can’t talk about just yet. MTGColorPie is continuing as well (a new post should come in the next day or two for those that are wondering). As I’m planning out articles and topics, 99EDH was the one that always got shafted because of the overlap with ManaNation. Anything I would want to write for this site kept getting pushed back and put in the pile “I’ll get to it next week.” When people asked where I wrote, this blog was starting to get left out of my locations. Not because I didn’t love it, it was just getting too much to keep track of. I didn’t want to write about Commander for ManaNation and then do the same thing for this blog as well. I had been holding back in both places afraid to step on toes.

And I’m afraid it was hurting my work.

Now I won’t hold anything back for when I write for ManaNation.

But the other thing good for you is that except for a break when I was on the Magic Cruise, I’m writing every week over there. You were lucky to get one every other week on here. That’s great for you, since you’re actually getting content on a regular basis, and great for me, since I won’t feel like I’m trying to spread things too thin. Because you’re getting my Commander thoughts there, this blog has really become redundant.

But what about stuff like Stone Cold Commander of the Century (Of the Week)?

I’ve got a ton of ideas. I don’t have the time nor the energy to do them all. I thought that I could do something fun and easy to keep this blog going. We know how well that went. So, I’m taking my talents to ManaNation where I might be talking about things like that every once in a while. SCCotC(OtW) seems like a nice thing I might tack onto the end of posts every once in a while, so it’s not going to disappear.

What happens to this site?

I’ve paid for the domain name until later in the year. I’m not deleting this blog at all so if you keep coming back here you’ll find the same stuff. I was struck earlier this year about how UGMadness.net has now gone down and is gone for us forever. While I may or may not keep the domain name, I’m keeping the blog up for reference.

Listen, I’m not saying that stopping this blog this is a bad thing. This blog has helped launch my work for ManaNation.com and Derfington’s at QuietSpeculation.com with both of us writing about Commander. You’re still getting Commander content, it’s just not going to be here.

I hope you guys understand that, and respect that. It’s been great giving you my thoughts on this blog, I wish you’re with me for the next step at ManaNation.com where I’m continuing the adventure.

Thank you for the fun times at 99EDHProblems.com

• Reviews of Sets. Unless Trick wants anything in particular, I think I’ll keep them over here. Yes, Derfington did a great job last time but I’ll work time into my busy schedule to work it in (hopefully). Did you know Derfington’s writing about Commander on QuietSpeculation? (articles here) Yep, we be spreading out.
• Talking about upcoming Commanders. Yes, Glissa 2.0 has been revealed and I’ll get to that shortly (before Mirrodin Besiged gets released). Again, not as long, but that will be the focus.
• Random things. I want to do some charts on this site, such as what you can tutor up with Trinket Mage, etc. All in due time.
• And now, introducing today’s column, once a week.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you the “Stone Cold Commander of the Century (Of the Week)”. Where does this come from?

Yes, an Adult Swim video about football with Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Listen, I know I’m not the only one that loves MTG, and football, and Adult Swim (but I don’t like ATHF, don’t like the humor). And, I may be the one or two that love the “Charlie Whitehurst in a living nativity scene” joke, but we’re rolling with it. After all, I live in the Seattle area, and I still haven’t lived down the excitement of Lynch going full on “Beast Mode” to seal the game.

Alright, enough Football talk. Yes, you’re getting a weekly column where I write some notes about a Commander chosen randomly from Magiccards.info. Yes, completely random (only I won’t repeat them if I’ve done them in this context before). Hope this will give you some good ideas for decks if you’ve been thinking about building around them. If you already have, make your comments below about what you’ve done with him/her.

And yes, this is all completely random. You have seen who the Commander is in the title, but as of this I have no idea. Ready?

Oh, fun.

For those that can’t see the card, here it is:

Mannichi, the Fevered Dream 2R
Legendary Creature – Spirit (Rare)
1R: Switch each creature’s power and toughness until end of turn.
1/2

Good news, he’s kinda like a Red Doran. You know, without good colors backing him up. I kid, I kid, but it is a little harder to make the deck work. And yes, ever since the M10 rules change, you can’t do many tricks with this Commander. The Spirit creature type makes it uninteresting for long term value in Commander (thanks Kamigawa block!). At leas he(it?)s  cheap, so we can get it out early. Let’s take a look at interesting Red creatures that have higher toughness than power.

Ugh. Nothing exciting.

I mean sure, you can get firebreathing effects, but I think it’s time that our friend “Comprehensive Rules” pays a visit. What do you gotta say about switching Power/Toughness?

613.3e Layer 7e: Effects that switch a creature’s power and toughness are applied. Such effects take the value of power and apply it to the creature’s toughness, and take the value of toughness and apply it to the creature’s power.

Example: A 1/3 creature is given +0/+1 by an effect. Then another effect switches the creature’s power and toughness. Its new power and toughness is 4/1. A new effect gives the creature +5/+0. Its “unswitched” power and toughness would be 6/4, so its actual power and toughness is 4/6.

Example: A 1/3 creature is given +0/+1 by an effect. Then another effect switches the creature’s power and toughness. Its new power and toughness is 4/1. If the +0/+1 effect ends before the switch effect ends, the creature becomes 3/1.

Thanks Compy!

Basically, when you switch a creature’s P/T, all effects that would now change the power now changes the toughness, and vice versa. You want to Firebreathe? Won’t happen the way you want it to. However, equipment like Slagwurm Armor which gives the creature +0/+6 is just perfect.

With Red being so aggressive, almost all of the P/T changes you can find are increasing the Power and lessening the Toughness. That makes sense when you want to attack; deal more damage to get it down quickly and you don’t mind “sacrificing” the creature to get it done. There are hardly any cards that increase toughness, making it difficult to do what the Commander wants to do.

Obviously this won’t be a real powerhouse deck to mess with. But, you can have a little fun with it. Besides annoying your friends by packing in many P/T switching effects (About Face, Dwarven Thaumaturgist, and Strange Inversion) and confusing the board, maybe you can do something Red isn’t used to doing: playing defense.

With the idea of the firebreathing creatures setting up as your “Walls”, it will allow you as the Red player to start picking off opponents one by one. Let’s do some discarding to do damage (Pyromancy, Jaya Ballard, Task Mage, Knollspine Invocation, Chandra Ablaze) all dealing damage to creatures or your opponents (with creatures, switching their P/T might be useful too). Using Mind’s Eye to gain card advantage and refueling your hand (as well as discarding Squee and other Phoenix creatures), it might be able to work. For this type of deck, you really have to play politics and not be afraid to win some people over. If you’ve wanted to try it, this will really be a good deck to work on that.

Really, this is almost an empty cupboard from what I’ve done real quickly. Yes, you can use Dwarven Armorer in this deck, but is it even worth it? Again, this is going to be a “fun” type of Commander, where you’re not looking to win but cause havoc. Go ahead, be a little Griefer. There’s nothing wrong with having fun, but I believe in the long run, you’ll get crushed. Before then, you can have all the fun in the world.

At least the art’s nice to look at. Right?

You have any ideas, throw them down below. Seriously, this Commander’s a doozy.