Magic Deck Vortex: A Series of Tubes: Enter the Dragon

While this series may have a brand new name for MDV, it's something I've been writing about since my very first article here (although for pure trivia it wasn't the first published. For those not familiar with the meaning of the series name it comes from Senator Ted Stevens’s explanation of the Internet as merely a series of tubes during a debate on net neutrality. For those of you confused on what net neutrality is I offer a very basic definition: the ability for any user to connect to any other user shall be impartial. I can think of no finer banner for talking about Magic Online, as most people who talk about MTGO are just as far off base as Senator Stevens was with his concept of the Internet.

In this series, I will look at things unique or not so unique to Magic Online. Topics might include formats that really only Magic Online (MTGO) players can take true advantage of such as Momir-Vig Basic, unique decks that would be hard to play without use of MTGO, and of course the very program itself. In this inaugural article, I had a plethora of topics I could feasibly touch on from the countdown then postponing of Version 3.0 to the release of Morningtide or even the massive rumors swirling about it being ported to Xbox Live! The later of which gets me awfully excited for some reason.

Instead, I wanted to write about a new format that is in public testing and quite fun to play: Elder Dragon Highlander (EDH). MTGO of course calls it something entirely different—Commander's Rules—but it still plays almost exactly the same as paper EDH. For those not familiar with the format, it's time to flip over the box lid and read some rules (please note that they are far more stringent than paper rules):

1. Deck Construction Rules

1.1. Each player must choose a Legendary creature as the Commander for his or her deck.

1.2. A Commander's mana cost symbols dictate what mana symbols may appear on cards in the deck. A deck may not generate mana outside its colors; anything that would generate mana of an illegal color generates colorless mana instead. This includes hybrid mana.

Example 1: Thelon of Havenwood is Green so only Green cards and Green mana could be used even though his ability would need Black mana to be used. The card Simic Guildmage would not be able to be used due to the Blue portion of the hybrid.

Example 2: Sliver Legion is all five colors so all five colors could be used including all hybrids.

1.3. The deck must contain exactly 100 cards, including the Commander.

1.4. No more than one copy of any card can be used, except basic lands.

1.5. All cards that are Classic legal may be played.

2. Play Rules

2.1. If a player suffers 21 points of combat damage from a single Commander, he or she loses. This is an additional state-based effect, similar to poison counters, but separate and specific to each Commander. This damage cannot be healed or undone, even if the creature is removed from play temporarily.

2.2. At the beginning of the game, all Commanders are removed from the game. While your Commander is removed from the game, you may put it into play anytime you could play a sorcery by paying its mana cost plus two colorless mana for each previous cast.

Example: If Norin the Wary is your Commander the first play costs R, the second 2R, the third 4R and so on.

2.3. If a Commander would be destroyed you may either put it into your graveyard or remove it from the game again.

2.4. Commanders are immune to the Legendary rule. If a Legendary permanent and a Commander have the same name and are both in play, the Legendary permanent is put into its owner's graveyard as a state-based effect, but the Commander remains in play. If two players have the same Commander, both remain in play.

2.5. Players begin the game with 40 life.

As of right now the only way to check deck compliance is to start a solitaire game and test it in the Commander’s rules. If you can choose a Commander you're all set, but if you can't select one you messed up and need to check your deck. Like I said it's a very new format to MTGO and still in testing; there have been "quirky" issues that show up in random games. Anyway, the following are notes from my first ventures into the format and what I learned.

It all starts of course with the choosing of a Vanguard ... er, Avatar ... er, Character ... er, Commander! There we go, geesh, darn names and concepts being so similar; can't we get on the same page ever? Anywho, being me, I only had a few fun gimmicky Commanders I wanted to look at:

Initially, I thought Tsabo and Visara would be insanely powerful with massive bodies and powerful tap kill abilities. I decided they would be kind of boring though since Black-Red and mono-Black are both things I've overdone in my day. The other choice I immediately ditched was Haakon, because I wasn't entirely sure I'd even be able to get him into play for instance, can I play him from the removed from the game zone when it says "only playable from the graveyard". Which left Ink-Treader and his shenanigans, the enchanting Zur, and the sliver-rific Overlord.

If you're familiar with my articles at all you'll be surprised to know I did not pick Sliver Overlord or the goofy goodness that is Ink-Treader Nephilim. Instead I decided that Zur and I would hold hands and go off dancing at the prom where I'd finally get to play my first game of EDH. Of course before the big date, I had to pick out the perfect accessories for Zur—and my oh my I had to find ninenty-nine separate ones.

What to wear what to wear? Oh I know, lots of enchantments. Oh yeah, we'll need some draw support too. And can't forget about the mass wipers. Recursion? The more the better. This is the prom after all, not some silly dance, and if I don't bring the best date, I'll have to steal someone else's. So here we go, my approximate deck breakdown:

Many of these categories easily cross over into each other. For instance, Phyrexian Arena can be fetched by Zur as an enchantment and provide draw support. Oblivion Ring and Seal of Doom as well as the whole Pacifism line both provide great spot control while being enchantments. Notice I really don't have a category for creatures—this is because we're going to be shopping for them.

So let's look at the deck list (oh yeah, break out your $ $ eyes, I'm going to blow your hearts and wallets away with this Singleton list):

First off, don't scoff at the price tag, I wanted to come in guns blazing and most were cards I already had or cards I always said I needed. Also since every card is a one shot there's no buying four, which helps to lower the price and really allows for lots of substitution. I'll cover some "budget" decks at another time, but I know the meta and I wanted to come out with a bang. I didn't want to get caught with my pants down in my first time out on the field and to be honest, the price tag could have been far worse.

So how did it do? Well my first game was as expected—I built the deck wrong. We had to restart because I included Shielding Plax with its Green hybrid mana and couldn't choose a Commander, but once I took it out it luckily worked perfectly. My opponents were:

I thought I had most of the game figured out from the start: Tick was mono-Black recursion tricks (and lots of Zombies), bubbakush was running a Treefolk/Doran Rock variation, demonichords was running fatties and burn, with movieholic playing pure Sliver goodness. I was almost correct, but movieholic would surprise us all on turn two throwing down of all things Tempting Wurm—revealing that our Sliver player was in fact a Free For All (FFA) chaos player.

In case you're not familiar with a FFA chaos player, it's a person who doesn't play to win. It's a person who plays to mess people up, distort the game, and cause mass confusion. Sometimes they win by pure luck, but usually they just mock everyone and cause players to get frustrated. From the second I saw Tempting Wurm, I just knew Confusion in the Ranks, Time Shifter, Gate to the Æther and the like would be coming as well. We got to see a few more chaos cards before he died much later, but that sole Wurm showed up at least five more times and made the game fast-paced from the start.

While one person creating havoc can often fully disrupt a game, the brand of chaos he was creating actually helped everyone more than it hurt. It was our mono-Black player who put out the hurting on everyone playing a Call to the Grave that no one had an answer for. His Zombies amassed while the rest of us fought to keep any creatures alive. It got ridiculous and showed that enchantments really were the safest of all cards in this format with not a single player out of four having an answer for it. Luckily every round after the Call dropped seemed to include a full creature wipe. My poor creatures that I had in play on turn two had a total of one attack opportunity and my Merieke Ri Berit never even got to steal despite coming into play over four times. Needless to say, this game was crazy and I will definitely have to rethink future endeavors into this format.

Now why were there so many wipes? Because Balthor kept recurring his creatures and everyone else's too. If it wasn't Balthor himself bringing them back, cards like Patriarch's Bidding or the like would be played. Luckily one player was able to keep up a sizable force against the Zombie horde: Mr. Doran. One unscrupulous player (I guess that would be me) helped him keep his army afloat and supported it while he whittled away on Balthor. Eventually though it became time again to wipe and wipe and wipe and wipe and wipe, and as the cliche goes, wipe some more. It was literally a wipe or more every round—Wrath of Gods, Damnations, Decree of Pains, Routs, Akroma's Vengance—just about everything was dropping.

Eventually we all gang-killed Zombie boy due to his recursion and ability to dominate the game. It took close to twelve rounds to get the board right, but Solkanar's fatties made fast work of him from the sky after Doran's Aggro train finally stalled after delivering a fatal blow to all Zombies after recursion finally wasn't an option. The Treeboy was the next to fall at the hands of Solkanar's ever-increasing ridiculous army with creatures like Nightmare, Mortivore, and Bogardan Hellkite dropping. I had to let Doran go because he kept trying to recast his Gaddock Teeg which left me with nothing to do (not that I could have done much anyway). Finally, it was down to me with some goofy tricks left in my bag, chaos Sliver, and Solkanar with his fatties. The chaos Sliver player had actually begun to play lots of Slivers dropping a massive Sliver Legion into play amongst others. I took my opportunity to win when he played a Mirror Entity which I immediately stole.

I swang at Solkanar with three massive 12/12 "Mirrored Changelings" which put him into kill range, but then something I hadn't calculated happened. He swung into the Sliver player full force and killed him, wiping "my" Mirror Entity from the game, denying me my kill card and more importantly leaving me with a stupid Auramancer and a Shadowmage Infiltrator vs. a Nightmare, a Bogardan Hellkite, and a few other just as nasty fatties. I used my entire hand to draw five cards searching for an answer. Luckily, for me every single card I was land because I'm a master top decker, and then Zur too fell to the might of Solkanar whom had never even been called into the fray.

And that was my first experience at the magical EDH prom. Next time I'll be a seasoned pro and can share some great new decks. In fact, I'll let you choose my next featured Commander if you vote in the forum:

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