Well I haven’t been playing much EDH lately. With all the M11 prerelease events going on they have occupied most of my magic time. I played in a sealed pre release last weekend and it was a lot of fun. I don’t remember the last time I played in a sealed tournament.
The M11 set is fantastic, I pulled a Sword of Vengeance at the first event. This is a monster in sealed. I don’t remember a game that I played “The Sword” and lost. The other all star would have to be sleep, its an uncommon and a beast.
Magic The Gathering 2011 Core Set is just around the corner and the spoilers are already starting to trickle in. SO far of the cards that have been spoiled my favorite for EDH would have to be Reassembling Skeleton.
1b Return Reassembling Skeleton from your Graveyard to the battlefield tapped.
Though you may see the same spoiler, you’ll never see the same skeleton twice.
The reason I like this card is its the ultimate skeleton. It can’t regenerate but it can do you one better. It can return from the graveyard to play with just its original casting cost. The EDH games we play always have a lot of creatures and a lot of sweepers. A card like this that can basically dodge sweepers would be a really nice addition to a number of decks.
This card will also work nicely with the large Eldrazi with Annihilator!
This page will obviously change often as more and more cards are spoiled but from what I have seen so far it looks like Rise of the Eldrazi was MADE exclusively for EDH format. First we will look at “Eldrazi Titans” then “Leveler” creatures and finally “Rebound”.
Eldrazi Titans are huge colorless creatures that cost great amounts of mana to play. First lets look at the fact they are colourless. EDH players will look at this much differently than players involved with other formats, every other format will consider colourless to be a bonus but in EDH not having any colours will actually limit them as an EDH general. Neither format will look favorably on the fact that they require a lot of mana, but they are a lot more likely to see the battlefield in an EDH game.
Eldrazi Titans also all have Annihilator X, where X is equal to the number of permanents the defending player must sacrifice when they attack with the Titan. This rocks in any format, what more can you say about this mechanic.
Leveler creatures have the ability “Leveler” which allows you to pay mana to enhance their abilities permanently. Obviously it depends on how much you have to pay and what you get for payment but the architecture of such a card screams EDH. Bring in a 1/1 creature than level him up every turn, this will be fun. Not only does leveling up creatures make them bigger in many cases they actually add abilities to them as well.
Finally the mechanic “Rebound” if you cast this spell from your hand, exile it as it resolves. At the beginning of your next upkeep, you may cast this card from exile without paying its mana cost. The spell, like with suspend, is put into your graveyard after the upkeep trigger. I don’t see this mechanic being any better or any worse in the EH format.”
*UPDATE*
I spent the first few weeks of May on vacation so I haven’t had a lot of exposure yet, but in the weeks I have been back I have played a lot of EDH magic and it seems everyone is playing Eldrazi Titans in their decks. In a one on one EDH game they usually finish the game. In a multiplayer game they generally get you so much hate they lose the game for you. Obviously playing or not playing the Titans is a personal choice, I for one haven’t added any to my decks, but I have added a lot of solutions. I don’t want this post to get too long so I’m not going to include my Eldrazi solution in this post but instead save it for my next post. So if your playing against a lot of Eldrazi Titans in your local EDH environment stay tuned!
Memnor & Kozilek, Butcher of Truth are the first two “Legendary Creatures” to be previewed from the new Rise of the Eldrazi expansion. If these two cards are any indication as to the power specifically as it relates to EDH we are all in for a real treat.
Memnor is the craziest creature I have seen in a long time and the fact that he is blue (a colour I play predominantly) makes me very happy. The only possible draw back I see to Memnor is the fact that he is so good, permanents of this calibre don’t tend to last long within the EDH format. I guess we will just have to wait and see how Memnor and the rest of the Rise of the Eldrazi expansion affects the EDH format.
Last night a few friends and I where playing EDH Magic and the subject came up regarding Wizards and their opinion of the EDH format.
In the conversation that ensued almost every point that was brought up would have gone in a pros column for Wizards. Someone suggested that only needing one of a particular “money” card could potential cause Wizards to loose revenue but that point was quickly dismissed because Wizards doesn’t participate in the secondary market anyway. The individual store owners may not sell as money “money” cards as they normally would but I think any revenue lost to the “money” cards would be made up in rotating old stock that before EDH had no value.
Standard players are still going to play standard, they use MTG cards and that is where the similarity to EDH ends. Standard is about winning not playing. EDH on the other hand is all about playing, sure winning is fun but not at the expense of having fun.
I also think a format requiring only one of each card will push people back towards building sets instead of buying the individual cards they need for net decks. When I was playing extended and standard I never bought boxes of cards. I would wait for net decks to be posted online I would race to my local store and buy only the cards I needed to build a particular deck. If you got on it fast most store owners didn’t see an excess in demand and change prices accordingly until your deck was complete. Now with EDH most cards could see some action, which makes owning a complete set of cards more important than in other formats.
I also think FOIL cards will see more demand with EDH. When I was playing standard or even extended for that matter decks changed so fast buying FOILs for your deck wasn’t practical (like it is in EDH). Not to mention not to many conversations ever take place during a standard game about the art on one particular card like they do in EDH.
EDH is first and foremost a fun game. If you can make your experience more enjoyable buy adding cards you don’t normally play with or adding a FOIL here and there I say BRAVO.
Just finished another great night of EDH play. Tonight I played a slight variation of the Kalitas, Bloodchief of Ghet deck. It was a very interesting evening because one of the players was playing a White EDH deck that allowed him to gain crazy amounts of life, which was nice because it caused almost the whole table to attack him constantly leaving me alone. He was crazy amounts of life and fighting off half the table while I stood back and watched the carnage. Once he had outlasted the table and there was just the two of us in turned into another game all together.
I played Blood Tribute first, I think he was at about 120 life. So he lost 60 life and I gained 60 life but the best part is I had Sanguine Bond out so when I gained the 60 life he lost another 60 causing him to go to zero and loose the game. I love playing this deck because it has a ton of answers to different creature problems. I will be doing some tweaking to the decklist and I will let you know when it is ready.
Have fun playing EDH until next time.
On Tuesday night I had a chance to play both my new Sygg, River Cutthroat and Endrek Sahr EDH decks. I played the Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder deck first and although I won the game it really wasn’t fun to play. I ended up sitting back for most of the game with my army of fat in front of me and let the others do battle. When there was only myself and two other players I brought out contamination (I actually had it in my hand from the beginning but wouldn’t think to play it with a table full of people). I beat them up with my fat until it was myself and one other person playing dragons. Most of the dragon had activated abilities that required something other than black mana to make it work so I easily defeated him. This deck is great if your going after the win (granted your play group doesn’t know your ultimate is locking them down with contamination because if they do you will probably be out fast). Personally it wasn’t much fun for me. I play EDH because I enjoy PLAYING the game not sitting on the sidelines than swooping in for a win. I doubt I will play Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder again.
Now Sygg, River Cutthroat on the other hand was a great deck to play and surprisingly powerful deck. For the most part the creatures are tiny so no one pays much attention, but Merfolk are similar to Slivers they work together really well and can do some very cool things once you have a little bit of mana and a few Merfolk on the deck. I will definitely play this deck again, I am definitely going to make some adjustments to the original deck but this one is a winner because its very fun to play, not because it necessarily wins (but it does actually win a lot). I will update the Sygg, River Cutthroat decklist as soon as I have some time to go over it. The nice thing about this deck in a big game of EDH Magic is Sygg, River Cutthroat states “At end of turn, if an opponent lost 3 or more life this turn, you may draw a card.” for the most part you don’t have to do the damage if Sygg, River Cutthroat is on the board and others are battling your drawing cards. I had no idea it would lead to as many cards as it did. I love the card Windfall but plan to remove it because I’m always the player with the most cards. I also plan to add more cads that eliminates hand size restrictions.
Sygg, River Cutthroat is an awesome un-assuming general. I have played to many big bad nasty generals in the past and the second they hit the board they get hate from every player sitting around the table and generally in EDH when there is that much hate cards don’t last long. Sygg, River Cutthroat isn’t one of those cards. One of the amazing parts about Sygg, River Cutthroat in EDH is the card states “if an opponent lost 3 or more life this turn”. It doesn’t say how he lost or even that your opponent lost it too you. In a large game this can give you a huge card advantage if your opponents are smacking each other upside the head. I don’t have time to go into details about the cards in the deck right now but I will as soon as I have a chance.
More…
Normally you wouldn’t give Seers Sundial much thought in any other format but I think in EDH this card might get a lot of play. First and foremost it gives you a ton opportunities to draw cards. Unlike other formats most EDH Magic decks run around 35-40 lands. With a deck stack with this many lands your sure to be able to use Seers Sundial as often as you like.
As of June 20th, 2010, the following cards are now banned: 
