Another MtG post!

Thought I’d share some arrivals that I’m considering for various Commander decks.

Brand as you can see is a card that will be a must have in my 99 for the mono red decks that I have, plus any that splash red like my dinosaur tribal or dragon tribal decks.

It’s a fact of Commander life that certain cards like the new Planeswalker card Tevesh Szat, Doom of Fools in the soon to be released Commander Legends steal permanents from under your nose. Having a card to regain control of those stolen permanents is essential. I had a card or two like that in my token spam deck. But nothing in red.

Luckily I stumbled across this card in a twitter discussion and instantly thought it was cool and needed for my decks.

I couldn’t remember if I had Voracious Greatshark. I certainly didn’t have the foil extended art version. Obviously this is a card looking for a place in the horrors from the deep deck.

What I like about this is it has flash. It’s a counterspell and gives me a 5/4 body. Ok it’s not cheap at 5 CMC, but that’s not bad, otherwise it’d be broken if it was cheaper.

Another card looking for a place in my mono red goblin deck is Outnumber. That could potentially take out very big creatures.

Lurking Predators is a strong contender for a couple of decks. Cheating creatures out onto the board, especially big expensive ones is always a neat trick to pull off. This would certainly make opponents reluctant to play stuff.

Whelming Wave can only potentially go into my horrors from the deep deck. A board wipe that leaves my creatures on the board. Ok not ideal that it’s bouncing back to the opponents hand. But that gets rid of tokens, and slows the opponents down a little as they have to recast the creatures to rebuild their board state. That is if they survive.

Man-‘o-war was chaff that came with Brand to help protect Brand. But I’m actually considering it. It’s that bouncing a creature back to hand etb that makes it attractive.

I think I need to start the deck updating process and share the new updated decks lists.

Nearly a week without me posting anything. Not a record, but still in these uncertain times finding stuff to write about without just writing drivel (ok you could describe my regular content as that) is hard. Mix in a little apathy and you get these gaps between posts.

Read this next sentence like the Rock in the square circle! It’s been a while but FINALLY the UK and Europe gets the Jumpstart set.

It was looking very uncertain for a long time. Delay after delay. It came out in limited supply in the US and other parts of the world. But it was not looking good for here.

Then about three, four weeks ago WotC made an announcement that Jumpstart would hit the the shelves and tables of UK and European FLGS.

If you have played Smash Up! where each player chooses two themed decks, shuffles them together, and then plays against each other. Then you have basically how Jumpstart works for MtG.

I like this format a lot because it is very new player friendly. They don’t need to know how to build decks, or own lots of cards. Buy some Jumpstart boosters, chose two, shuffle together, and play. All a player has to do is decide which themed boosters they like or want to mash together.

Just because you get say two minion decks does not mean you have the same two decks. For most of the deck types there are at least two versions of the deck.

Naturally there are some sweet reprints within this set, such as Rhystic Study (which sadly I didn’t get).

But I did get a card I wanted for my goblin deck, Muxus, Goblin Grandee.

I nearly bought it as a single. But it’s price put me off. I usually use Krenko as the decks commander. However I’ll definitely be giving the deck a run with Muxus as the commander. Although my gut is saying one of the ninety nine. So I’m chuffed to have pulled the card.

Because players are mostly, ok very, no definitely going to be playing duel colour decks, each booster gets the appropriate Thriving land.

These lands are great for Commander players. Ok they come in tapped, but being able to name a second colour that it can be tapped for is the cool part. It’s another dual land basically. That all important mana fixing. I expect Commander players will be picking these up fast especially while they are “cheap”. I’ll be using these definitely in my multicoloured decks such as Scarab God, Dragons Tribal, Dinosaur Tribal, etc.

I’m really happy that we finally get to play with Jumpstart. If WotC are intelligent they will keep this set in print and make them the basis of open house events (once we are back playing in our FLGS). They are that new player friendly.

Wow like buses, you wait for MtG content on this blog and all of a sudden three posts come along at once!

With Zendikar Rising officially releasing on Friday it meant we also got the two Commander decks that accompany this set. Ok they were meant to be out for prerelease. But a week delay these days is neither here or there.

As the back of one of the new Commander deck boxes (see image below) shows these decks differ from the annual Commander offering we get.

The first is the large version of the Commander is not in these decks. I miss them. I’m a fan of them.

The included deck box although relatively thin cardboard so won’t last forever, does allow for the decks to be sleeved. Unlike the annual Commander deck boxes. Although those are a bit more durable.

I like the addition of the life wheel. Although it could be improved so that it caters for life totals greater than 40. Once again this is not a durable item, and a short term solution. But needed for a new player to start using the deck straight away.

Naturally these new decks are built around Zendikar Rising and mechanics from the set. So Land’s Wrath is all about making use of the landfall mechanic. So naturally it has creatures that have the landfall mechanic that triggers some benefit when a land is played, it has cards for fetching lands from the library and playing extra lands on a turn, white gives the deck a couple of board wipes. And there is some playing cards from the graveyard. Which is going to be handy considering the other deck.

Sneak Attack is a rogue tribal deck. Black gives this deck it’s board wipes and removal. It’s got milling (look at the Commanders abilities for starters). Along with that it has graveyard shenanigans that allows the player to play creatures from opponents graveyards. Because this is a tribal deck there are cards that play into that.

Its obvious these two decks are designed to be played against each other. However they are also less powerful than the annual decks. Which I think is reflected in their cheaper price, and the number of new cards and reprints.

I’ve not played the decks yet, for obvious reasons. But they look good starting points for new players to the format. If they haven’t already I’m pretty sure MTGoldfish will have some sort of budget upgrade post for these decks going up soon.

I like this idea of releasing Commander decks based on a set. Although I’d like to see them release a set of 4 instead of just a couple so a group of friends can play against each other with decks at a similar level. Like the annual decks are designed for.

This feels real odd writing a post about MtG. I’ve not written anything about it for what seems an age.

With the Zendika Rising prerelease due to happen this coming weekend, I ended up splashing out for some singles to go into a couple of my Commander decks. Don’t ask me how that happened or what the thought process was.

The three decks that will be seeing these cards as tweaks are my Scarab God Zombie tribal deck, Big Green Stompy, and Mono Red Aggro.

Ayara will be so dangerous in the Scarab God deck. It can generate lots and lots of zombie tokens. This card is definitely a threat if allowed to stay on the battlefield. Damage/life gain for just doing what my deck is designed to do! Add in card draw too. This card could be amazing.

Tectonic Giant should be a nice card in my mono red aggro deck. Especially if I can trigger it’s abilities.

Shamanic Revelation hopefully will give some card draw and life gain. Which I think I’m missing from my Big Green Stompy deck. Whilst Garruk’s Uprising will also do that, it’s another source of trample for my creatures. Both cards will easily be triggered, iirc there are hardly any creatures less than 4 power. And if my hydras or any X power creature is coming in at less than 4 power I’m in a very bad position. Liege of the Tangle just gives me another big body that can turn lands into even more big bodies.

As I said these cards are tweaks, with only one being a major game changer.

The big question for me this Autumn/Winter is, will I jump on board the MtG Arena bus when allegedly it arrives on mobile at some point before the end of the year?

Obviously I’m a bit sceptical about WotC being able to do this.

At the moment I’m not feeling very warm and cuddly towards WotC and MtG Arena. I’m not expecting that to change anytime soon. But we will see.

Thanks to current events the physical release of the latest MtG block/set Ikoria was a little late hitting your FLGS. But now it is in our grubby hands. FLGS have been keeping the postal service busy shipping out orders of physical product.

My pre-order arrived this morning.

Although I loved the Greek inspired theme of Theros, and the fairy tale, Arthurian legend inspired Eldraine. Ikoria is the set that speaks to me a lot. A land of big creatures. Which is basically four of my Commander decks, Big Green Stompy, Horrors from the Deep, Dinosaurs Tribal and Dragons Tribal.

Thanks to not playing Standard now (I think I’ve documented those reasons enough on here) I can save money by target buying the singles I need. Although it was fun cracking open the packs that came with the Prerelease kit.

So below are some of the cards that caught me eye for various reasons, such as I like the art, it’s shiny, or will go into a deck I have.

Ikoria brings back cycling, keyword counters (I want to know how this interacts with Atraxa), introduces a new keyword mutate and companions (which I believe some are already calling broken).

Pretty happy with my pulls. But I know need to look at a list of all the cards and get the singles I’m interested in.

Just can’t wait to play the new Commander decks with friends. But patience is needed on that front. That day will come, but in the meantime vigilance and safety are the keywords.

Yesterday was Commander Christmas.

I picked up my new Commander decks from my FLGS and got some games in as well.

The first couple of games were with the Faceless Menace deck, with a handful of cards swapped out. The graveyard hate really does slow down those madness decks.

One player particularly was getting through their deck fast (I hadn’t realised the madness deck was capable of that), hunting for solutions. Which meant they had many more cards in their graveyard than the rest of us. So although it seemed like targeting it wasn’t, just the obvious choice when it came to deciding which graveyard to exile when I was able to exile a graveyard.

It also helps that when playing a morph deck that you draw morph cards. Which I was having a hard time getting. Despite not touching that side!

But still I enjoyed playing the deck. It has potential.

Our third and final game saw me testing my modified Atraxa precon.

I took an early lead that saw me becoming a major threat.

After casting Atraxa using Opal Palace to get a +1/+1 counter on her when she enters the battlefield. Doubling Season and Corpsejack Menace kick in.

You play Vorel of the Hull Clade. Then end turn. Proliferate. Which puts 4 more counters on Atraxa.

Next turn, you activate Vorel. Which after the other triggers becomes an extra +32/+32 counters going on Atraxa.

At this point Atraxa is a 44/44 with flying, vigilance, lifelink, and deathtouch.

If a player who had been shown mercy hadn’t killed Atraxa on their turn (the ungrateful so and so) then Atraxa was going to start getting into silly numbers. It’s a shame I couldn’t protect Atraxa by say making her also indestructible. One shot kills are cool.

But after Atraxa getting killed, a board wipe taking out the rest of those nice cards, I was not able to reestablish a boardstate to get a win.

I didn’t win a single Commander game during the afternoon. But cool stuff happened. It was fun seeing other decks going off. A most enjoyable afternoon.