0:09

Hello and

0:11

welcome to the EDH Wreckcast, where

0:13

we're all about commander, data, and dad

0:15

jokes. I'm Joey Schultz and I'm joined by my

0:17

fantastic co-hosts. Up first,

0:19

he wishes that the card Donna Noble

0:22

had the creature type Noble. It's

0:24

Matt Morgan.

0:25

I was talking to my friend's sons the other day and

0:28

I told them, actually, I can do magic. I can do some telekinesis.

0:31

And they said, well, Uncle Matt, can you show me? I said, I

0:33

can't show you because then it would be telekinefuse.

0:37

Oh, that

0:39

one took me a moment, but that's adorable. Telekinesis.

0:42

That's super funny. I love that. I mean,

0:44

they are cute kids and all, but sorry,

0:47

the cat's out of the bag on that one. I couldn't show them my magic

0:50

tricks. That's great.

0:52

All right. Up next, he cast the

0:55

spell once upon a time, and when he did,

0:57

he flipped over the top cards of his deck and revealed the card

0:59

twice upon a time. It's Dana

1:02

Roach.

1:03

I'm actually taking a trip next

1:06

summer to Europe. I

1:08

think Switzerland is a place I want to see the

1:10

most. I'm not sure why, but

1:12

the flag's a big plus. Another

1:15

pirated dad joke from the early years

1:18

of doing dad jokes on this

1:20

podcast. But Dana.

1:22

I was going to say. This is a reboot

1:25

of Matt's. A remix. Okay.

1:27

Oh no. Yeah.

1:30

I love that Matt has this just absolutely

1:32

analytical, like, no, I know that I've done that dad

1:35

joke before. He has it logged. He

1:37

has a perfect memory for it. I don't know

1:39

much about names and dates, and

1:41

especially this game, but I remember a dad

1:43

joke. Yeah. It's

1:45

just like, don't know all the new cards necessarily, maybe even

1:48

some face blindness in there, but dad jokes,

1:50

that's on lock. Mine is a steel trap for

1:52

dad jokes. A steel trap. That's so terrific. What

1:55

is it that we're talking about in this week's episode,

1:57

man? We're

1:58

going to be talking about a risky.

3:59

is cards that we're not

4:02

gonna talk about? I think there's

4:06

a collection of cards that might get

4:08

lumped into this, but I don't think they really

4:10

are. The main one to me is

4:13

EDH Staple Chaos Warp. Chaos

4:15

Warp's a risky card. There's a risk you

4:18

are going to flip over something

4:20

absolutely heinous and have it come into

4:23

play. But generally, the risk

4:25

and reward, that's just more often

4:27

than not, if you are willing to cast a Chaos Warp,

4:30

the thing that you are removing is probably

4:32

a serious problem, if not

4:34

a game ending problem. And maybe

4:36

something terrible will come into play, but

4:38

that's better than losing to that playstyle colossus

4:41

that you were trying to deal with that was coming at you, the hasted,

4:44

and going to remove you from the game.

4:46

You know, Chaos Warp also hits permanent

4:48

types of red can to really deal with most

4:50

of the times. There's a bunch of reasons

4:52

you run Chaos Warp. There's a risk to it.

4:54

But the risk is worth doing because it does

4:57

things that you can't otherwise

4:59

do in those colors.

5:00

And you will occasionally take a loss

5:03

from Chaos Warp because without having Chaos

5:05

Warp, you take the loss way more often. Tippled Strickery,

5:08

I think, is like that too. I mean, the spell

5:10

that you're countering is definitely worth countering.

5:13

Yeah, that's actually a good thing to clarify as well. There

5:15

are some cards out there that probably seem risky,

5:17

but in actual execution, they're definitely

5:20

worth it. So the bulk of this episode, yeah, we're not going

5:22

to talk about the Chaos Warp of the world, but I'm sure that there are other

5:24

examples of cards out there that maybe initially seem

5:27

risky, but we are playing because in fact, the

5:29

risk is mitigated by how it is that we

5:31

play or our deck building or the times that they're executed,

5:33

stuff like that. Well, I'm surprised that Dana

5:36

started off with saying Chaos Warp because your

5:39

life is a resource. And so Sylvan Library,

5:41

Black Market Connections, all of those types of cards,

5:44

I feel like that's kind of one of the big cards in just

5:47

the category of these where you're paying life

5:49

to get some sort of benefit. That's one of

5:51

the first big hurdles I think a lot

5:53

of new players get themselves into. It

5:56

is, why would I pay two life to have this land come

5:58

in and play untapped? It said

6:00

why would I pay for life to draw

6:02

one extra card? There's all those types of

6:04

situations where yes It initially

6:07

looks like a downside, but then when you see it kind

6:09

of executed to its fullest extent That's

6:11

when you're like, oh

6:13

I get it now But those are both cards

6:15

to were like when that downside becomes

6:17

too much You can just not do

6:19

it. You could just not draw the extra cards

6:21

Well, I don't do that very often.

6:23

I just keep drawing but you There's

6:26

a downside there you are paying a price but

6:28

when that price gets too costly you can just not do

6:30

it It'll be different if they were ones where they were forcing that

6:33

every single turn and there was a point

6:35

where it's definitely gonna burn You it doesn't

6:37

necessarily have to do that like there's there those

6:40

are cards that make you pay a price but I wouldn't

6:42

call them risky because When you get to the point

6:44

where there's a risk you could just not put yourself in that position

6:47

Well and also like in the case of black market connections

6:49

for instance paying the three life to get the three to changeling

6:51

token I mean that three two is probably gonna block

6:54

something that has more than three power So it is

6:56

in fact saving you life a lot of the time

6:58

when you use it in that way and paying life

7:00

to draw cards I mean necropotence I'm getting so

7:02

much going advantage off of that that the benefits

7:05

far far far outweigh the costs in basically

7:07

every single scenario I'd always be happy to see that

7:10

one Another that I'll

7:12

put in here would also probably be like Settle

7:14

the wreckage type of effects or a card that I

7:16

really enjoy is winds of abandon like yeah

7:19

Those are mass path to exile effects

7:21

You were giving your opponents a whole lot of lands and that

7:23

might seem risky But the times that you

7:25

play a settled a wreckage or a winds of abandon and

7:27

you can just crack back for lethal on an opponent

7:30

It's now completely empty board Girl,

7:32

they don't got time to use all the land that you gave them because they're

7:34

dead now So like in the actual execution

7:37

of those cards the risk is mitigated by the

7:39

times that they are Like necessary

7:42

and when they will appear so again Those are probably

7:44

some cards that like they seem risky and maybe

7:46

that you wouldn't want to put them into a deck But the times that I've seen

7:48

them played man have they swung a game completely

7:51

and often won a person in the game So that's

7:53

another example of those cards that might seem risky But are

7:55

actually totally worth the effort and probably

7:57

won't be the main focus of our episode, but we're spending a lot I'm

8:00

talking about the cards. We're not talking about this

8:02

is kind of funny Well, why don't we just jump in then to

8:05

some categories of types of cards on why we don't

8:07

play them because of whatever reason So

8:10

I know for me giving your

8:12

opponents any sort of just on board

8:14

power That I hate doing that giving

8:16

buffs giving just anything to your opponents. So

8:19

stuff like primal vigor to me Yes,

8:22

my deck likely is gonna be built to abuse it But

8:24

giving that door to for

8:26

opponents to walk through get a lot of power

8:28

out of it I don't love that we talk a lot

8:30

on the show about coat of arms coat of arms is

8:33

an overrun effect It's not an anthem effect and

8:35

there's a big difference in how those are executed

8:37

and why we would you know make that distinction

8:40

Yeah primal vigor being a doubling season

8:42

for everybody. I'm gonna

8:44

level with you that's probably like the reason that we

8:46

made this episode because Every

8:49

time that I've seen primal vigor in play It has not

8:51

won the controller of the primal vigor the

8:53

game It's fully like enabled someone

8:55

else to make either so many tokens or buff up

8:57

all of their stuff so much that someone else was able To

9:00

run away with the extra resources that that card gave

9:02

that it was just like that was a real

9:04

risk to put onto the battlefield And I like

9:06

the distinction there between that and coat of arms because

9:08

coat of arms is also a symmetrical ability But that

9:10

is again one of those cards that you can by

9:13

by choosing when you deploy it You can mitigate

9:15

that risk completely because you turned it into more of a

9:17

sorcery and then the game is over as opposed to a persistent

9:20

Thing on the battlefield. So there are things that can be mitigated

9:22

with timing and there are totally ways where primal vigor

9:24

could be one of those Cards, but in

9:27

general giving that symmetrical double

9:29

bonus buff to everybody at the table

9:32

I've seen opponents really really easily

9:34

abused that type of effect So even if

9:36

your deck contains more of the things that primal vigor could

9:38

abuse that is still a tough sell

9:40

to put into A deck I think at least in my

9:43

case For me personally

9:45

on a lot of these cards The reason I

9:47

don't like them is the feel of lack of

9:50

control Like I

9:52

don't know what my opponent is going

9:54

to do

9:55

with the buff. I provided them

9:58

That is out of my hands

9:59

I have done something and at that point

10:02

my opponents might possibly kill me based

10:04

on a thing that I did. Now,

10:06

coat of arms, I can't control

10:08

that necessarily except for you can

10:11

a little bit in the right deck. Like I've read this for

10:13

a lot of years in my Tower of the Sky Summoner deck because

10:15

I'm not playing this on turn four or something

10:17

and letting it sit there in the like, well, I

10:20

hope no one else has a bunch of creatures that they're going to attack

10:22

me with. I'm dropping this when I've ate drakes

10:24

out and I'm killing everybody before they

10:27

can take advantage of it. So like this is a card that

10:29

I have played in decks and the reason I

10:31

have put in decks is I can control

10:33

to a degree how much of a benefit

10:35

my opponents get

10:36

from it.

10:37

Evolutionary escalation works similarly.

10:39

You can put three plus one counters on a creature you control

10:42

and then put three plus one counters on a creature your opponents

10:44

control. I've got some control over

10:46

that. I put them on a creature that's going

10:48

to probably have some kind of a huge benefit

10:51

because it's in a plus one counters deck and

10:53

I may well have ways to double those counters or

10:55

triple those counters. Now I put the other three on

10:57

one of my opponents Sakura tribe builder that

11:00

is either going to get sacrificed and go away or

11:03

it's going to make them not want to sacrifice or

11:05

get the benefit, whatever. I have some control

11:07

over where those go. So that's

11:09

for me again the real difference in a lot of these

11:11

is how much control I have or I have

11:14

over how effective the card is.

11:15

Well, and a tragic thing about some of these is that often

11:18

risky cards are also like really fun. Like,

11:22

and like honestly that can be enough

11:24

reason to play them. If you want to sow a little bit

11:26

of chaos and into the play experience. If

11:28

that's what you're up to then totally lean into it completely.

11:31

And in fact, a card that we've mentioned liking

11:33

on the show in the past is crescendo of war, which is

11:35

a white enchantment from the very first commander 2011 set. A

11:38

white four man enchantment that says at the beginning of each

11:41

upkeep put a strife counter on crescendo of war attacking

11:44

creatures, not just your attacking creatures, all attacking

11:46

creatures get plus one plus oh for each strife

11:48

counter on this enchantment. But blocking

11:51

creatures you control get plus one plus oh for

11:53

each strife counter on crescendo of war as well. So

11:55

this is the thing that like hypercharges

11:57

all combat steps and it just keeps going.

12:00

bigger and bigger and bigger every single

12:02

turn. And honestly, the things that that

12:04

does to a game, the stakes that get increased

12:06

and increased, and it isn't a completely symmetrical

12:08

effect because there's a slight extra bonus for you, but

12:11

in general, it's definitely the case that

12:13

this is the thing that your opponents could totally abuse if

12:15

you are not able to control it like you were just saying

12:17

there, Dana. I think that this still could be fun to put

12:19

into a deck, but I've got a tokens

12:21

deck and as much as I've considered this one, it

12:24

has not made it into my roster. I

12:27

have not played it because I'm just like...

12:30

Man, it would be fun, but it would

12:32

probably blow up in my face too. Yeah,

12:35

and there's cards too, like Fractured Identity

12:37

that I certainly think this falls

12:39

into. It's fun, but is it good?

12:42

Probably not type of category where if

12:44

a card is worth spending something to get rid

12:47

of it, why would you want to give it to

12:49

the two other people at the table? And

12:52

yeah, you can do the phage trick where you give everybody

12:54

a phage, the one where

12:56

it enters the battlefield, and if you didn't cast it, you

12:58

lose the game. Well, yeah, that's all well and good,

13:01

but that's very narrow to put a card in your deck. Why

13:04

would you want to give somebody a creature that is worth

13:06

removing because that just means there's two more

13:08

on the battlefield you have to deal with? And

13:11

since this is a sorcery, you have

13:13

to deal with theirs before you

13:15

actually get to use the one that you got for yourself. And

13:17

I think that's why I know two

13:20

cycles of cards that I personally really

13:22

like in my decks. I know both of you don't

13:24

though, is the Vows and the Impetus

13:26

cycles where you're putting them

13:29

on creatures that opponents control and basically

13:31

those creatures can't attack you with

13:33

the Vows or the Impetuses where they're

13:35

goaded so they have to attack and they can't attack you

13:38

until there are no other opponents. I

13:40

like those a lot because like Dana

13:42

said, you have control over that. So

13:44

you're moving the board forward, you're controlling

13:46

what creature is getting that so you can choose

13:48

the most opportune thing. So if

13:51

you're giving it to some infecting

13:53

creature, well you can make sure that that player picks off

13:55

the other two players before you

13:57

have to worry about it. So it's a way to kind

13:59

of fog for yourself or just

14:01

make sure, okay, the rest of the board might be

14:04

scary, but I don't have to worry at least about this

14:06

specific thing, which a lot of times

14:08

is better than removal sometimes because you

14:11

still have to get rid of the other two players and that's what's

14:13

really motivating you playing these cards.

14:15

I'll clarify real quick. The Vows I'm

14:18

not a fan of. I do like the impetus cards.

14:20

Some of them are expensive, like the green

14:22

one is pretty expensive, but like I do have ghoulish

14:25

impetus and I think psychic impetus each

14:27

in a different deck. Yeah,

14:30

I do appreciate that those do kind of

14:32

turn a potential problem into a potential

14:34

asset and that is kind of neat. The

14:37

risk involved here I think is just like sometimes

14:39

the thing that you need getting rid of is

14:41

more of a utility creature or a commander that isn't

14:44

necessarily punching really hard or it's got

14:46

a tap ability and you're just like, dang it, I wish I could do

14:48

something actually. It's static ability is actually the thing

14:50

that's frustrating me right here. There are

14:52

a lot of people who are able to cleverly get around

14:54

the stuff that the impetus would do. In some cases it does

14:56

feel like, oh, I wish I had a proper removal

14:59

spell here, but the impetus is in

15:01

particular I am just kind of like, it's fun

15:03

to make that a you problem instead of a me

15:05

problem. Yeah.

15:08

Well guys, so far in this episode we've talked

15:10

a lot about stuff going outward, the

15:12

risk of giving your opponent stuff that can eventually

15:16

come back and blow up in your face or something like that, but

15:19

there's also another version

15:21

of risk that definitely needs to be examined

15:23

here and that's the inward level of risk.

15:25

The risk where potentially

15:29

Dana, those Sylvan Library-esque type

15:31

of cards do come back to bite you in

15:33

the butt because you've gone overboard with them or where

15:36

if your plan does not line

15:38

up the way that you hope it will, then you just

15:40

completely massively set yourself

15:43

back in potentially a way that you can never

15:45

come back from. So there are other cards like Shrekse

15:47

and Processor, for example, which is an artifact

15:49

that you can pay a bunch of life into to make

15:52

huge tokens. And in the right

15:54

deck, hopefully those tokens will life-link

15:57

you back up into getting all of that life that you spent

15:59

back or your you'll be able to use the tokens in such a way that

16:01

it doesn't matter how much life you paid. But

16:04

like if that thing gets blown up before you're able to

16:06

make any use of it, then you've just paid a whole bunch of life for nothing,

16:08

for example. So there are a lot of other cards

16:10

that are, the risk comes with their self-infliction

16:14

and how much you are yourself putting on the

16:16

line. Not something that's going on to other people that they could abuse,

16:19

but something where you maybe, your

16:21

eyes get too big for your stomach. When

16:24

I was first playing commander, a friend

16:26

of mine played almost exclusively

16:28

token decks. And he had Michaeloth

16:31

in almost all of his decks.

16:33

It's a fungus with Devour II and

16:35

at the beginning of your up keep you create a plus

16:38

one plus one green saproling token for each

16:40

counter on Michaeloth.

16:42

He got burned every time he cast it

16:44

because every time he'd be like, I'm

16:46

in a second place, you know, 90%

16:49

of my tokens I have out in place to

16:51

put as many counters on as possible and then like one

16:54

sword supply shares and it's

16:56

just all gone. So

16:59

yeah, this is a situation where like

17:02

absolutely there's a massive upside, but

17:05

how deep

17:07

of a hole are you going to dig to try

17:09

to take advantage of that? Well, there's all

17:12

sorts of cards that they look

17:14

flashy, they look really good, but then sometimes

17:16

they just don't even work at all. Like you can set

17:18

yourself back, you can just totally whiff. There's

17:21

all sorts of cards. One that I want

17:23

to play more often than I do is

17:25

Hunter's prowess and kind of along the same line, Soul's

17:28

majesty where you have

17:30

a big creature, you want to draw a bunch of cards from it. Well,

17:33

it's very easy. Okay, well, I'm going to cast this, I'm going

17:35

to target Soul's majesty, I'm going to target my

17:37

commander. Well, like you said, Dana,

17:39

a simple source of plowshares and all that benefit

17:42

is gone, all that work you put into it, it's

17:44

all for nothing. And so it's just, I

17:47

understand the allure to it because I fall

17:49

right into that, but sometimes it just,

17:52

yeah, you swing

17:54

for the fences and you just miss, you strike out. Yeah,

17:57

yeah, the risk involved with that one is dead. The

18:00

card is just like the dead completely

18:02

dead or the stitch in time

18:04

is another that comes to my mind in that vein a little

18:07

Bit where you flip a coin and if you win the flip

18:09

you get an extra turn and in a coin slip deck You can probably

18:11

manipulate the results a little bit and that's really good for you But if

18:13

you're just playing and is it deck I can't say I recommend

18:15

playing this one because what if you fail and you

18:18

just spent All card slot and a whole

18:20

bunch of mana on like I think that just like

18:22

straight up did nothing Nothing at all.

18:25

Yeah, I think that things like like the final fortune spells

18:27

There's there's also last chance and warriors Oh, I

18:29

think they're

18:29

all basically the same thing where

18:32

you take an extra turn after this one And then

18:34

you lose the game at the end of that turn I

18:37

mean There's I think

18:39

those don't see a good bit of play in like CED H

18:41

because they're used in decks where you're gonna

18:43

win Very often if you have an extra turn

18:45

then they're there you're being intentional

18:48

about using them in a situation where You're

18:51

going to win and those decks are explosive and

18:53

intend to function in a way where like You

18:55

can see that winning turn coming and you've set that

18:58

up Outside of that environment

19:00

There's a whole lot of variables to worry

19:03

about that make casting a spell

19:05

that just says you're gonna lose next turn if

19:07

you don't Kill everybody much more

19:09

risky than it is in the super competitive

19:11

environment Yeah There's ways that you

19:13

can get around like say you you plan on you know

19:15

having a delay trigger and you play sundial the infinite Well,

19:18

you can just have somebody blow up your sundial I

19:21

know right one of the wildest things I

19:23

ever saw when I was playing modern years

19:25

ago was somebody cast a pact of navigation

19:28

and Counter spell which is very

19:30

important But then somebody just stone

19:32

range their fifth land So they just pass

19:34

the turn they untapped and lost because they couldn't pay

19:36

for the pact of negation trigger There's

19:38

all sorts of just the you lose the

19:40

game triggers. I I feel like are

19:42

easy to Get tempted

19:45

into but sometimes players maybe

19:47

buy off more than they can chew when it comes to these types

19:49

of cards Yeah, and demonic

19:52

pact like you've got the four modes on that

19:54

one and you can't choose the same mode twice So

19:57

eventually like oh you get great benefits from it,

19:59

but then eventually If you haven't mitigated it, it will

20:01

lose you the game. Or like, nine

20:03

lives to mitigate damage, but then if you take

20:06

too many counters from it, then it also

20:08

will lose you the game. Lich's Mastery, there's a whole bunch of those

20:10

cards that are playing on a knife's edge, but

20:13

man, you'd better be really, really good

20:15

at manipulating them, because if you don't, your

20:18

own card will just completely kill you. And those

20:20

are fun! Those are really fun to try and build around.

20:23

But they're also tough. They're also tough to

20:25

try and build around. There's a lot of these risk

20:27

cards out there,

20:29

ones that might not work at all.

20:32

When we're talking about the final fortunes of

20:34

the world, we're going to get an extra turn.

20:36

There are some cards that just are dead

20:38

sometimes.

20:40

And this depends entirely

20:43

on

20:43

maybe your play style as well, but

20:46

I've

20:47

had really good luck with Council's judgment

20:49

of a voting card, but I've also

20:52

seen other people who aren't really used

20:54

to using it

20:55

have it absolutely do nothing.

20:57

So how often you play

20:59

the cards and what your plan is to can really

21:02

swing how effective they are. Yeah, very

21:04

much. Another that I've kind of encountered,

21:06

and these are ones that I feel like I always want to play

21:08

more of in my deck, are legendary

21:11

spells. But if I don't

21:13

have a legend in play, then I just cannot cast them. And

21:15

that is getting easier to do, because they've been printing

21:17

so many legends these days. But they are

21:19

just straight up dead spells if you don't have one of your creatures,

21:22

or maybe specifically your commander in play. And

21:24

that can feel pretty bad. The risk is a deck building

21:27

choice there. Or another that I used

21:29

to play a bunch of was Blade of Sells. I

21:32

had that in a whole bunch of decks, because giving Myriad to a creature

21:34

sounded really, really cool. But once you're down

21:36

to a one-on-one, that card is also just

21:38

completely dead. It does literally no single

21:41

thing for you. And that can also have

21:43

a bit of a feels-bad moment when you run into

21:45

those situations. And I can't lie, that

21:47

does affect me during deck building about whether or not I want

21:49

to play those things, because of the risk that

21:51

they maybe do nothing. And this is just

21:53

us talking about tokens and stuff. I

21:55

think this gets even more complicated when

21:58

we move into talking about... The risky

22:00

cards that actually give your opponents card advantage

22:03

in some way. Yeah. Those

22:05

are especially thorny. Those

22:07

ones make me feel even more like, uh oh, like,

22:09

can I afford to play these? I don't know. Yeah,

22:12

well if you want to talk about risky propositions,

22:16

Horn of Greed, it's so

22:18

fundamentally tied to what you're doing in the game of

22:20

Magic. You're playing lands and

22:23

letting people draw cards is

22:25

not really the way to go. This is another

22:27

card, and I feel like a lot of cards we're probably going to talk

22:29

about for the rest of the episode, they're going

22:31

to be cards that they served a purpose for a time,

22:34

but people kind of realized, man

22:36

Horn of Greed is great, but letting people draw cards and

22:38

like, oh, there's another landfall deck

22:40

at the table. So they're just really cranking

22:43

out all the cards and they probably end up drawing more than I

22:45

did. That happened all the time

22:47

and just all the howling mind

22:49

type of effects. Unless you're playing a group hug

22:51

deck, you probably don't want to be playing those anymore

22:54

because you have so many other ways that are more efficient

22:56

to not give your opponent's cards.

22:59

One thing I know, Joey, you love to point out is a howling

23:02

mind effect draws you an extra card, but

23:04

it draws your opponent's three extra cards every turn

23:07

and that just doesn't hold up when you're trying to keep up with

23:09

the benefits that you're giving out to other players. Yeah,

23:12

to clarify on that is like, if you view

23:15

your opponent as a single opponent, it

23:17

is like giving a single person three extra cards

23:19

in that regard. Not that a single person is drawing three extra

23:21

cards. No, no, no. Unless you have

23:23

howling mind and temple bell and dictated

23:26

crew fix and all that, like that whole game. Listen,

23:28

if you banned the top 200 draw

23:31

spells in EDH, I still

23:33

wouldn't run howling mind. Wow. I

23:36

would not have card draw in attack when

23:38

I'm howling mind. Really?

23:39

I think you are better off not drawing

23:41

cards. I'm better off being down one

23:43

cards and having my opponents be up three

23:46

cards on me. Like, how does it just not draw that I would

23:48

give my opponent three cards for no mana? Yeah,

23:51

I think that that's – I think it's true. Howling

23:53

mind is a terrible – with the exception

23:55

of like maybe some particulars deck

23:58

where like you're punishing your opponents for drawing.

23:59

cards or and that's your

24:02

playing group hug for the particular for the fun of it but like

24:04

strategically speaking how long mine is

24:06

a card where your deck is worse if

24:09

it's in it some bold words for like

24:11

a terribly popular card and I don't mean that

24:13

in like it's bad that it's popular but howling

24:15

mine is in a huge amount of

24:18

decks and so yeah that's not

24:20

to say it's not fun there's

24:22

situations where I get where like you want to create

24:25

that effect but I think it's a bad card there's 65,000

24:29

angry listeners right now and they're going to let you

24:31

know that you said that Dana well

24:33

so here's another thing that makes these especially risky

24:35

is I mean Matt you just

24:38

meant 65,000 decks is how much howling mine is showing up yep

24:41

smothering tithe is showing up in 373,256 set

24:46

time of recording so like yeah

24:48

playing some of these extra things it's not even just that you are

24:50

giving your opponents extra cards that they could use it's

24:52

that also at any moment of smothering

24:55

tithe which shows up in a quarter of decks that are eligible

24:57

to play it could come down and or really

24:59

start to abuse all of that extra card draw trigger

25:02

so I feel like I know what the answer to this one

25:04

will be but like Dana when you were talking about

25:06

you know the extra card draw for opponents your

25:08

thoughts on secret rendezvous my guy

25:10

the three-man-of-white source where you and target opponent each

25:13

draw three cards or yeah with

25:15

that one fella so I do

25:17

think secret rendezvous has that thing going on where

25:19

you can control it a little bit

25:22

you can target the person who probably

25:24

isn't a threat and I feel like very

25:27

often there's someone at the table that's

25:29

missed three land drops in a row and like

25:31

gotten burned by that last board wipe and hasn't

25:33

able to rebuild and and I

25:35

don't think you are going to like I

25:38

don't really for the most part believe you can make friends

25:40

in any age because

25:43

you'd made them draw three cards I don't think that's a real thing

25:45

that but I do

25:47

think you can like control that

25:49

to a degree and sculpt

25:52

it in a way that it benefits you way more

25:54

than a benefit to the other person that

25:56

said I think there's enough other good ways to draw cards

25:58

that maybe you don't even need to worry about

25:59

that? I'm not far off with

26:02

where Dana stands. Yeah, there's

26:04

always gonna be situations where maybe one person they

26:06

jump out to an early lead but then the rest of

26:09

the pot kind of gangs up to make sure

26:11

that they're beaten down, they're kind of brought back to

26:13

the rest of the pace and maybe they just

26:15

can't recover. So there's been a lot

26:17

of games I would say maybe even

26:19

half the games I've been in where one person just

26:22

gets set back so far and they just can't really recover.

26:24

Giving opponents like that a chance

26:27

to maybe catch up because you are, you know, Dana

26:29

said you're not making friends in a game of

26:31

EDH, you know, you're making friends because of EDH

26:34

but not in the game. Yes,

26:37

maybe you are gonna need that person to

26:39

help take out somebody who is a problem now

26:42

and so it's more it's not so much I'm

26:44

giving you cards or I don't want to give

26:46

you cards because I have to beat you it's because

26:49

I need you to have cards because we have to beat

26:51

this person and that's a situation

26:53

I think has come up a lot more than

26:56

anything else and Tenuous Truths is a similar type

26:58

of card as Seeker Rendezvous

27:00

where yes we're gonna

27:02

agree that I'm

27:05

not the problem you're not the problem this person is

27:07

a problem and we need to work together to do this and

27:09

so kind of incentivizing that

27:12

Tenuous Truths quite literally yeah

27:15

yeah I can see why these types of cards get

27:17

played because you're acknowledging

27:20

that hey we need to work together to

27:22

beat this common enemy yeah I

27:25

think wedding ring is another that potentially falls

27:27

into that where like there's a mutual benefit

27:29

going for that and I do like the interplay

27:31

that can happen from from those like it

27:33

sometimes you do need help taking down a mutual enemy

27:35

I totally get that the thing is you don't

27:38

always need need need that

27:41

and so for me when I see the Seeker Rendezvous showing

27:43

up in 41,000 decks I have

27:45

a little alarm bells in my head to

27:48

fully be transparent about where I'm at with this card I've

27:50

seen it four times in games of EDH and

27:53

every single time the person who got the free extra

27:55

cards has won that game because yes

27:57

maybe you needed help to take down a mutual

28:00

or something, but in so doing, you

28:02

have created another even more powerful person

28:04

potentially. So just from

28:06

my completely anecdotal situation here,

28:09

every time I've seen Secret Rendezvous occur,

28:12

it did not go well for the person casting

28:15

it. They did not end up winning

28:17

that game, and to me that strikes me as like a,

28:19

hmm, I think I personally

28:22

am going to avoid this one. That's

28:24

too risky for me. Well, and sometimes it just feels

28:26

good to be like, I drew three cards,

28:28

I'm going to, you know, give you three cards.

28:31

I've done a bunch of segues. Joey, would you

28:34

like to also do a segue of some sort?

28:36

So like, sometimes you need to throw someone

28:38

a bone when they are way behind. We're not

28:40

even done talking about the card advantage section

28:42

here, Dana. Come on, man. But

28:45

sometimes it just feels good to get a segue

28:47

in, Joey. It feels good to help somebody out who's struggling. We

28:51

thought you would want to do it for once, so. Alright,

28:53

fine. Well, instead of talking about Skullwinder

28:56

next, which I was excited to do, Dana, because

28:58

that has a similar vibe, instead, I

29:00

guess, I will take the opportunity and

29:02

have a secret rendezvous so that we can

29:05

segue into challenge the stats. How

29:08

very, very gracious of you. I

29:11

don't like this evolution of this bit

29:13

that we've been doing on the show, where instead

29:15

of stealing it, you've generously decided to

29:17

give it back. How magnanimous of you? That

29:19

makes me more uncomfortable somehow. I don't know

29:22

how you managed to pull that off. It

29:24

is a tenuous truce both within the cards and

29:27

between the three of us. This is,

29:29

I feel, this feels icky. Okay, well,

29:31

we're just gonna do it. Let's take a

29:33

quick break for challenge the stats, because there's so

29:36

much data on Ediatrek that we don't always agree

29:38

with, so we will be right back after this quick

29:40

break. Ugh, that doesn't feel earned.

29:43

How dare you, Dana? Hi, everyone. I'm

29:45

Nolan Sykes, and I'm one of the hosts of Past Gas.

29:48

Past Gas brings you a weekly episode about the most

29:50

amazing, scariest, craziest,

29:52

and weirdest moments in automotive history.

29:55

From Formula One to flying cars to

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30:00

Past Gas. You don't have to like cars to like

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Gas by Donut Media. Check it out.

30:15

My challenge this week is brought to us by MJ

30:18

Brown. Hey Transporter, thank you very

30:20

much for supporting the show MJ, we appreciate it. MJ

30:22

says I was building my Fight Club deck using

30:25

Naeth of the Dire Hunt, and

30:27

I realized that having a lot of incident sorcery

30:29

fight spells made Naeth one of the best

30:32

sources of card draw in the deck. So Naeth

30:34

is a human warrior, a 3-3, and whenever

30:37

one or more creatures you control fight or become

30:39

blocked, you draw a card. MJ

30:41

says I wanted something that acted like

30:44

her, so if she got removed I could still

30:46

draw more cards. Hence I fell upon

30:48

Gnarlback Rhino. Gnarlback

30:50

Rhino was two green greens, so same casting

30:52

cost as Naeth. It has trample, and

30:54

it says whenever you cast a spell that targets Gnarlback

30:57

Rhino, draw a card. It's currently

30:59

only in 28 of about 2500 Naeth

31:02

of the Dire Hunt decks.

31:05

It's a simple common 4-4. He triggers

31:07

every time he is targeted by a fight spell,

31:10

so having 15 or 20 fight spells in the deck

31:12

means you're going to get your fair share

31:14

of card draw off him, and as a 4-4 he's probably

31:17

going to survive most fights as well. He

31:19

makes a really great backup for Naeth

31:21

if you have a commander who's either been removed

31:24

or stolen or who is just too expensive

31:26

to recast after having been knocked out

31:28

multiple times.

31:29

So yeah, I am very

31:31

much on board this. It's a

31:34

card that does exactly what you want your

31:36

commander to be doing. It's a perfect backup for it,

31:38

and it's only in 28 decks. It should be in way more for

31:40

sure. So thank you very much MJ for your

31:43

contribution and for supporting the show. Sweet deal. We'll

31:45

all move to my challenge next,

31:48

and this is one that

31:50

came up in the last weekend

31:52

that I was playing at the Portland Command Fest.

31:54

I played against a bunch of fantastic listeners,

31:57

had some seriously truly amazing games

31:59

there.

31:59

There was a couple of cards that came up in a game

32:02

against a player named Lily, who I really

32:04

wanted to shout out here. This was a

32:06

younger player who had a really fantastic

32:08

Thalia and the Gitrog Monster deck, which is

32:10

that odds on deck that lets you sacrifice stuff to draw

32:13

all the cards. And Lily made excellent,

32:16

excellent use of Audric and

32:18

Majestic Muryark, which

32:20

are those really fantastic things that help

32:22

you spread around or gather a bunch of amazing

32:25

keywords from your team. So Audric Lunark

32:27

Marshall, for example, that's the four-man-a-white human that shares

32:29

any keywords that you have on one creature to

32:31

all of your creatures. And Majestic Muryark

32:34

is that green bird-looking kind

32:36

of creature that absorbs any keywords that your team

32:38

has. And it also, its power and toughness

32:40

are equal to double the number of creatures that you control, so it

32:42

hits like a truck. And when Lily got

32:44

these cards in play, it was just so

32:47

much damage, particularly because Thalia

32:49

and the Gitrog Monster, the commander right there,

32:51

has First Strike and Death Touch. So

32:54

like, suddenly none of the players at

32:56

the table were ready to block, like, anything

32:59

that she had in play. And then she played like a

33:01

single Birds of Paradise with a gift flying, and

33:03

then suddenly we couldn't block anything. Cards

33:05

like Audric or Muryark are pretty

33:07

common maybe in cards like, in decks like Cathril,

33:09

for example, since that's a deck that is already themed

33:12

around sharing tons of keywords. And we also

33:14

tend to see Audric in, like, some mood force

33:16

of descent who also has amazing keywords that you want to share around

33:18

with the whole team. But I also just want to take a leaf

33:21

out of Lily's book here and sort of encourage

33:23

folks to consider these cards for any commanders

33:25

that have multiple cool keywords. Like,

33:28

Wilson, Refined Grizzly has Trample

33:30

and Vigilance, for example. But the Muryark

33:32

and Audric don't appear on any of its pages

33:34

where it has a green or white background pair. Or I

33:37

think Dristourden would especially be powerful

33:39

for both of these cards, because Drist has Double Strike

33:41

natively, and Drist makes

33:43

a token that has Trample. So that's really cool

33:45

stuff for these cards to absorb. So

33:48

give Audric and Majestic Muryark

33:50

a look for any commander that has a couple

33:52

of cool keywords. Lily proved to me

33:54

that you can deal a lot of damage this way, and I

33:56

agree with her that these cards have

33:59

plenty more homework. out there. Well I'll

34:01

wrap us up here with my picks. So one thing that I like

34:03

to do is look at commanders and then

34:05

compare it to a kind of a similar strategy

34:07

maybe that has a color or two difference

34:10

anything like that and just to get help on

34:12

maybe something that is missing from the commander's page.

34:14

So King of the Oathbreakers is one of the new

34:16

Lord of the Rings cards and I

34:18

know that Dr. Who just came out but I'm still excited about Lord

34:21

of the Rings and all the legends there and so

34:23

this Orzhov spirit is

34:26

it's fantastic and it has a lot of overlap in

34:28

the strategy as far as cards

34:30

like Millicent's Restless Revenant.

34:33

So that was one that came out when we

34:35

were in Innistrad last, it was a pre-con commander

34:37

and one card that is not showing up on King

34:40

of the Oathbreakers at all for all of its spirit

34:42

synergies but is showing up on Millicent

34:44

is Hallowed Spirit Keeper and

34:47

this card it's just such a

34:49

great fantastic creature that benefits from

34:51

playing a bunch of creatures having them in your graveyard

34:54

but also you're gonna create an army of spirits.

34:56

So Hallowed Spirit Keeper is one white white for

34:59

a creature avatar that with vigilance it says

35:01

when Hallowed Spirit Keeper dies create X11

35:03

white spirit creature tokens with flying where

35:06

X is the number of creature cards in your graveyard.

35:09

This is not showing up on King of the Oathbreakers page

35:11

at all and it's playing black if

35:13

you're playing against necromancers you'll know

35:15

that black decks usually have a lot of creatures in the graveyard

35:18

but why not play something that's gonna

35:20

benefit you from having that. Now I know Hallowed

35:22

Spirit Keeper is not a spirit itself it is an avatar

35:25

so there is a little bit of a line that you have to walk here

35:27

where you're making sure you're not diluting the amount

35:30

of creatures and amount of spirits that are in

35:32

your deck because obviously the King of the Oathbreakers

35:34

you want spirits in there so they can phase in

35:36

and out make more spirits but

35:39

I think with a card that has as much upside as Hallowed

35:41

Spirit Keeper it is absolutely a card

35:43

you want to consider it's in 28% of Millicent

35:46

decks but like I said it's not on the page

35:48

at all for King of the Oathbreakers you're gonna

35:50

make a whole bunch of them and the

35:52

tokens can phase in and out and it's gonna trigger King

35:55

of the Oathbreakers as well it's just it's a

35:57

fantastic way to make a whole bunch of spirits

36:00

have them go wide. I love

36:02

this card. Halas Spirit Keeper is a card I find

36:04

myself cutting but I wish I didn't and

36:06

I just think in King of Oathbreakers decks, you

36:08

want a whole bunch of spirits. Halas Spirit Keeper makes

36:11

a bunch of spirits so I think it's just a great match right

36:13

here. Yeah, I do like those cards that

36:15

are sort of a little insurance policy

36:18

on like if someone wipes your board, you've

36:20

got your board completely back again. Oh

36:22

yeah. Like and they're only like you know

36:24

usually we'll do insurance policies like oh here's

36:26

a selfless spirit. I'll sacrifice it to give my board indestructible

36:28

so that my board won't go anywhere but there are only

36:31

so many selfless spirits out there and another way

36:33

to make sure you still have a board left over is

36:35

with cards like that that if they die, well the

36:38

pinata pops and I've still got a whole bunch of stuff

36:40

left over so your board wipe didn't get you out of the mess

36:42

that you thought it would and so I

36:44

definitely like cards like that. That is a really cool pick.

36:47

Yep, me too. Alright, well I am going

36:49

to segue us back of my own

36:51

accord and setting instead of having it handed

36:54

to me by Dana, you rapscallion

36:57

because we were just talking about... I'm glad.

36:59

Holding

37:00

you responsible for this, I dare you. We

37:03

were just talking about cards like the

37:06

Secret Rendezvous and all of that and there are

37:08

a couple of other cards and this is one Dana that I know

37:10

you have actually run in your death touch

37:12

deck before probably because it was just

37:15

a creature with death touch but it was Skullwinder, the

37:17

green snake that when it enters you get a card back from

37:19

your graveyard but you also give an opponent

37:22

a card back from their graveyard. I mean

37:24

I've seen some pretty cool moves happen

37:26

with Skullwinder in a way that didn't necessarily

37:29

feel quite as like hugely

37:31

monumentous in the way that like three extra cards off of a rendezvous

37:33

has felt. I've also seen Skullwinder give

37:35

people back stuff that they definitely shouldn't have back

37:38

but I don't know, Skullwinder is a very political

37:40

card that I've seen used to pretty interesting

37:42

effect and I'm wondering whether that's a risky

37:44

card that Dana you have played in the past and do you

37:46

play it still? I do play it still. I think

37:49

it's one of those cards that you can control what's

37:51

going on and how I usually

37:54

wind up playing it is looking

37:56

at some situation where there's a very clear problem

37:59

on the board.

37:59

and

38:01

I maybe have some way to deal with something

38:03

and someone else has a way to deal with something and I

38:06

can usually do a I will play skull

38:09

winder right now and I will deal with

38:11

that problem if you use your Thing

38:13

in your graveyard to deal with that problem Mmm,

38:16

and people are usually willing to take you up on that kind

38:18

of deal and there's usually that kind of thing

38:20

in play There's usually something that you can

38:22

make a deal with someone Whereas

38:24

you will remove one thread of their move another

38:26

thread There's just almost always going

38:28

to be someone in a position that wants

38:31

to it was willing to make that

38:33

kind of a swap. So Again,

38:35

it's one of those cards that I think I have enough control

38:38

over the outcome It

38:40

works out favorably in my case. Gotcha.

38:43

See I'm torn

38:44

Yes, you're giving somebody and it

38:47

becomes a political deal sometimes but also if

38:49

you're just trying to get stuff back for yourself and just

38:51

kind of Picking yourself up by your bootstraps

38:54

or anything like that. You have a turn of witness You

38:56

have a few different variants of that

38:58

at this point where sure yes for

39:00

a death touch specific deck Then yeah,

39:02

that makes sense to have school winder in there But

39:05

if you don't want to be giving your opponents any

39:07

cards back from their graveyard You

39:09

don't need to be pulling school winder There's a bunch of other

39:11

ones that you can be playing if that's the type

39:14

of gameplay you're going for I think

39:16

it's much like that secret rendezvous thing

39:18

I said where you can definitely probably

39:20

make it work out in your favor Most

39:23

often or you could just run something

39:25

that always works out in your favor like eternal witness

39:29

Yeah, I think that like related to

39:31

these are also kind of the tutoring ones like

39:33

scheming symmetry and Wish

39:36

call talisman which are tutors But you also

39:38

like potential like you have to let your opponents

39:40

tutor as well and that one strikes me even more

39:42

dangerous like school Winder I feel like Dana you're right. It does

39:45

open up specific like

39:47

there is a Very delicate

39:49

but a very specific instance that that would come up

39:51

where you see that someone has like a path to exile in their graveyard

39:53

And you're like I want them to get that back so that they can use

39:55

it against the person that we need to get that Like that thing

39:57

off of the board. Whereas like a scheming symmetry

40:00

Like, you can say, like,

40:02

oh yeah, yeah, hopefully we get this kind of thing, but you don't really

40:05

know necessarily what it is that people are going to get.

40:07

And they could get just like the most powerful thing, as

40:10

opposed to a removal spell that they've already

40:12

used. Or the secret rendezvous, giving them, you

40:14

don't know what it is that they're getting. And so the

40:16

school wonder specifically giving you back something that, like, you

40:18

know, and that sort of baked into the deal

40:21

of you casting the card in the first place and choosing that

40:23

player. I think that that has a lot of extra

40:25

built-in safety mechanisms in a way

40:27

that I don't feel necessarily as good about the

40:29

others. And symmetry is a card that I know a lot of people

40:32

have used to amazing effect, because especially if your deck

40:34

is powerful enough to just abuse the tutor or the instant that

40:36

you do it and your clones won't even get a chance to draw that

40:38

card, then yeah, go ham, that can totally

40:40

happen. But I've already been

40:43

avoiding tutors kind of just in general, but especially

40:45

this one. Because I'm just like, you know what? I

40:47

can't trust that if I give Matt something real good

40:49

that it's not going to end up killing me in this game,

40:52

because that's just what Matt does with the good cards

40:54

in his deck, so I'm just too afraid to do it. I

40:56

mean, yeah, the solution to never

40:59

drawing bad cards is only playing good cards. That's

41:01

just... Somebody

41:03

said that once, and I feel like

41:05

I'm just going to take credit for it. Fun. There

41:08

is one, though, that does give opponents card advantage that

41:10

I've just been enjoying so much, and that's keen duelists,

41:13

where you're like enemy Bob

41:15

with another person, if folks know the Bob reference.

41:18

You and a target opponent will flip the top card of your decks,

41:20

and then you'll put them into your hand, but each other

41:22

will lose life equal to the mana cost of the other person's

41:25

deck. That's a little mental duel.

41:27

That one, I just love. I've got that in my Yannette deck,

41:29

so it's top deck manipulation, and I've been able to manipulate

41:31

it, but honestly, I'm having so much fun with it that I'm just

41:33

like, do I put this into other places? Because

41:36

you do get to choose every single turn, and

41:38

I don't know, I

41:40

just really, really enjoy it, and ultimately, you are getting

41:42

more benefits than anyone else's, so if you give it to

41:44

one person, then another person, then another person, you are still

41:46

ending up more positive over the long term

41:49

in this way. And so I really,

41:51

really enjoy that one. That's the one that I definitely

41:53

enjoy running. So that one, ooh, relying

41:56

on your opponents not to be playing big and expensive

41:59

creatures. creatures or cards or anything

42:01

like that. That's where I would be so

42:03

afraid of, I know I'm building my deck correctly,

42:06

quote unquote, but

42:08

I'm playing against myself and I have

42:10

a bunch of eight drops in my deck. That's

42:12

where it gets kind of scary. You have to be very careful about

42:14

who you're selecting to also draw

42:17

the cards because as we

42:19

noticed a few episodes back when the

42:21

average CMC in a deck

42:24

is going up again and so cards are getting

42:26

more expensive. Payoff cards are getting more

42:28

and more expensive to cast and so

42:31

keen duelist, I understand why

42:33

you would want to play this, but also you have

42:35

to be super, super careful with

42:37

who you're selecting because otherwise you could be taking a

42:40

hefty amount of damage. Yeah, I

42:42

think honestly if I'm being just completely

42:44

truthful, this is one of those cards that were like it's

42:47

just exciting enough that that kind of justifies

42:49

it for me. Fair, fair. The moments

42:51

that it creates are just like, you know what, this is

42:53

just dang fun. Like when you do the flip it's just

42:55

like there's a dramaticness to that moment in the

42:57

game and that's really what I'm enjoying the most of, but

43:00

also like the extra advantage even if it's a little bit dangerous.

43:02

Like this is a card where I feel like I'm willing to live dangerously

43:05

for the fun moments of whoa, but

43:07

it can create. Matt, we were talking about giving

43:09

other people tokens before when you mentioned Fractured

43:12

Identity. I'm curious what you think of like the

43:14

offering cycle, like Sylvan offering for

43:16

example. That's another pretty famous one, X and

43:19

a green. You give one of your opponents

43:21

an XX green tree folk and you

43:23

also get that and then you can give an opponent,

43:25

maybe the same one, maybe a different one, a bunch of elf

43:27

tokens and then you also get those elf tokens. So you are

43:30

ending up more positive out of this deal, but you

43:32

are giving away a whole lot of bodies. Is

43:34

that one that you as a green player have ever enjoyed

43:37

in your decks or is that one kind of like

43:40

giving away too much stuff and this could be,

43:42

that could turn against me? I've never

43:44

played any of the offering cards. I know

43:46

that I would say probably

43:48

before the format got so big when these were

43:51

originally printed for example, these

43:53

were much, much better. But even, so

43:55

stuff like this and even the Join Forces cards,

43:58

those also were kind

44:00

of they were very good for the

44:03

purpose that they were printed at in the times

44:05

like stuff like collective voyage for example where it was

44:08

one of the Joint Forces cards where everybody can pay

44:10

any amount of mana and you search the library for

44:12

up to x basic lanes where X is the total mana

44:15

that was invested that way and you put them on everybody

44:17

puts them on a battlefield tapped so it's nice

44:19

if you can get people to pay mana

44:22

to ramp you with the downside

44:24

of they're also ramping but

44:27

the downside of that can be so

44:29

massive you you really have to be building

44:31

your decks in a very specific

44:33

way to benefit from either the offerings

44:36

Joint Forces cards all of that because it's

44:39

not just you getting one thing somebody else is getting

44:42

just as much as you and it usually

44:44

want to limit how much you're giving out mm-hmm

44:46

that definitely makes sense a lot of this stuff

44:48

is very situational to like Sylvan offering being

44:50

a good example you know when

44:53

I run that in a generic token deck

44:56

probably not because even if I

44:58

maybe have access to Dublin season or parallel

45:00

eyes here or there and will on

45:02

occasion be

45:04

able to reap twice as much benefit as somebody

45:06

else because of a token doubler there can be times when

45:08

I don't do it all I'm doing is paying a

45:10

bunch of mana and losing a card to give my opponent

45:12

the same advantage I have

45:14

on the other hand if I'm like maybe playing

45:16

a Marwan the nurturer deck or something and

45:19

dropping seven elves in the battlefield

45:21

off of this is gonna give my

45:23

opponent seven elves too but it's also gonna put seven

45:25

counters on Marwan and then make her tap for

45:28

you know 22 mana or something absurd

45:30

like that that I can then use for some then

45:32

some other ginormous bit of advantage

45:35

so it's gonna depend very much

45:38

on

45:38

whether or not this one-sided

45:41

spell the spell that helps my opponents how

45:43

much more is it gonna help me and that's gonna

45:46

make a lot of

45:47

that's gonna be wildly dependent on

45:49

what your particular deck isn't how it's built well

45:52

a difficult part with some of that too though is that like there

45:54

it never hmm I can't okay I can't say never

45:57

sometimes it feels though that there are opponents

45:59

at Like you don't realize how dangerous it could be to give

46:02

them some of these things. Yeah. Because then they

46:04

might drop a single anthem next turn or

46:06

like, you know, a

46:08

moonshaker cavalry and like suddenly, uh oh. And

46:11

I didn't know that that was going to happen, but now

46:13

this is a problem. Or an astronaut's altar or a skull

46:15

clamp of some kind. And it's just like, oh, dang

46:17

it. Or you don't even realize how much all of those extra

46:19

blockers and extra sacrifice floater have

46:22

helped to insulate their Voltron player from

46:24

sacrifice-based removal, for example. So

46:26

like sometimes these things really can come up and bite

46:28

you. So like even the times that you are getting your

46:30

own advantage, it turns out that your opponents can

46:33

also have a lot of ways to abuse extra stuff

46:35

that you give them. I'd be remiss not to mention

46:37

some reanimation spells in this discussion too,

46:39

I think. Like incarnation technique

46:42

is one of my recent favorites. Uh,

46:45

side mana, you mill five cards and then

46:47

you can reanimate a creature from your graveyard. But

46:49

you can also demonstrate so that you get to copy it, but you also

46:51

make someone else copy it. And most of the time you

46:53

do have control over this. But sometimes, you know, you

46:55

could give someone something really good that they

46:58

happened to flip off the top of their deck. You

47:00

just usually will point it at hopefully the person who's

47:02

maybe just playing a couple of like elf mana

47:04

dorks and maybe won't get something, you

47:07

know, huge. And so this has been a really

47:09

successful card for me. Getting two creatures back is

47:11

very much worth it. There are some that I

47:14

don't always go for, though, like Exume.

47:16

That's the symmetrical reanimation spell for

47:18

only two mana. Everyone gets back one thing.

47:21

And that's that that one

47:23

feels a little bit harder to mitigate

47:26

for compared to some of the other like

47:28

bigger mastery animation spells. Like when I cast a living

47:30

death, I know that I'm getting the best benefit

47:32

out of that one in a way that Exume, where it's

47:35

just the one off, feels like it's a little bit harder to

47:37

really thread the needle as much

47:39

as I really want to. And

47:41

then I think also another one that I'm hit or miss

47:43

on is Command of the Dread Horde. I've seen some really

47:46

great success with that one, but it does so much

47:48

damage to you that it feels really

47:50

risky to me. And I feel

47:52

like I've usually aired towards other reanimation

47:55

spells instead. And let's be honest,

47:57

when it comes to just reanimating stuff, I'm going to

47:59

love doing it.

47:59

No matter what the last kind of

48:02

grouping here among this this

48:04

bunch of cards. I think we should maybe talk about

48:06

is wheels Okay,

48:09

so so my thought on the various wheels

48:11

and those are cards that make everyone You

48:14

know do a discard and drop some amount of cards

48:16

either a full new seven or the amount

48:18

They had in their hand or the greatest amount that an

48:20

opponent controlled or whatever a couple

48:22

different variants on that

48:24

I've seen a lot of games lost by

48:26

people who cast wheels over the years

48:29

I think people have a tendency to kind

48:31

of tunnel vision down on What

48:34

this wheel is going to do to my hand

48:36

without maybe thinking about the broader

48:38

implications about what it does to everyone

48:41

else's hand And everyone else's board state and

48:43

I think it's a result of that It's

48:45

result of people just kind of looking exclusively

48:47

at what it's doing to me and not thinking about

48:50

how this is impacting everything else Around them

48:52

Dana. I have fully seen people cast or reforge

48:54

the soul or a windfall into a smothering

48:57

tithes so like That's

49:01

that yeah, that doesn't feel good. Mm-hmm.

49:04

And that's one thing too. And I think that's why

49:06

smothering tithes is so heinously

49:10

Imbalanced because smothering

49:12

tithes you have to pay to mana in

49:14

order to prevent your opponent from gaining one So just automatically

49:17

you're investing more mana to then

49:19

it the opponents are getting That's

49:22

where it gets so out of hand

49:24

for me is if it were a one-to-one ratio

49:26

I would understand but two to one that's

49:30

Especially for something so fundamental is drawing

49:32

cards Everybody wants to draw as many cards

49:34

as possible in this game and punishing people

49:37

at that rate. Oh Yeah,

49:40

that's another that's another topic altogether We

49:42

don't need to bash or praise smothering

49:45

tithes more than we have More than

49:47

the entire community has yeah pretty much

49:49

wheels as a genre of deck I

49:51

think like it's very clear like oh they know how

49:53

to abuse this for sure Like

49:56

neckus are you're just like probably gonna wheel

49:58

into a wheel into a wheel into everyone dead. Exactly,

50:01

yeah. But like when it is

50:03

just sort of generally used as like, oh, I hope to refill

50:05

my hand because I'm playing mono red. I think that I've

50:07

seen some very dangerous situations where

50:09

it actually wound up benefiting other

50:11

players a little bit more. And that now

50:14

there are especially other forms of card advantage that

50:16

I hope that wheels don't need to be the only way to do it. Those

50:18

definitely strike me as a very risky

50:20

proposition that people can, I mean, heck,

50:23

even the fact that it fills up the graveyard for some players, like,

50:25

if you're playing mill

50:27

against me, girl, that's a risk too because I

50:29

will use my graveyard. So even mills can

50:32

be

50:32

like a risky thing there too. Yeah,

50:35

yeah. Or situations where like someone

50:37

is in

50:38

a situation where they are taking off

50:41

maybe about to win and you have an answer

50:43

in hand to stop them. And then the third

50:45

party does some kind of a wheel to reset

50:47

everything and then no one has

50:49

an answer. You know, maybe they,

50:52

someone draws well, maybe not. But like,

50:54

that's been a situation I've seen happen before too

50:56

where like, you are going to stop someone from

50:58

winning and it's prevented

51:00

by a third party casting a wheel. Yeah,

51:03

not even just giving people cards, but giving

51:05

people the opportunity to use the cards they draw

51:07

before you have a chance to. That's

51:10

also something that I see happen a whole lot is

51:13

somebody, you know, they cast a couple of spells

51:15

and then, well, I have this wheel and so they

51:17

tap out to cast the wheel and then they end the turn. They

51:20

don't have a chance to use any of the cards they

51:22

just drew and they are passing over to

51:24

somebody who is going to untap their lands. They

51:26

are going to have a full grip and that's when you

51:28

really come into these situations where you are actively

51:31

just handing over a whole lot

51:33

of benefit to three other people before you

51:35

have a chance to draw whatever benefit you happen

51:37

to get from casting that wheel.

51:40

Well, and Matt, you talk about like giving people the ability to

51:43

cast those things. I mean, what about the cards out

51:45

there that give extra

51:47

mana resources to your opponents, not just extra

51:49

cards in hand, but like fully doubling the

51:51

amount of mana that everyone's lands produce. Or

51:53

there's a really fun one that I've seen a whole lot, a descent

51:56

into Avernus, a red enchantment. Beginning

51:58

of your upkeep, it gets two descent counters. and then each

52:00

player creates treasure tokens and takes

52:02

damage equal to the number of descent counters that are on it.

52:05

And that will definitely speed up a game.

52:07

Like, it is producing very fun moments. But

52:09

also giving out extra treasures. That's extra mana for everybody.

52:12

You know, there are rites of flourishing cards to give extra

52:14

land drops. There are a heartbeat of springs

52:17

and you mentioned collective voyage earlier, I think. Like,

52:20

this can supercharge a game, but

52:22

sometimes supercharging a game gives

52:25

players like a really fast out into a

52:27

combo or something like that. And that

52:29

can be especially difficult to rein in or

52:32

to control. Yeah. And

52:35

one of the things about those kind of effects

52:37

that I don't love either is I feel like

52:39

there's a weird thing where they

52:42

disadvantage decks that

52:44

are built really well. For

52:48

example, if you've built your deck with a bunch of like,

52:51

with a really good curve and a bunch of efficient

52:53

draw and you're building up to this big game

52:55

maker series of spells you're going to use to win

52:57

the game. When suddenly everyone's

52:59

drawing five cards a turn, then having

53:02

that ponder in your deck that you've baked in

53:04

to be a way to bridge yourself from like

53:06

one step to the next and make sure you have lands in hand becomes

53:09

way less meaningful. And the person

53:11

who's just running some, you know,

53:13

poorly costed 8.8 that

53:16

they can now that they would normally

53:18

not be able to ramp out, but it's been enabled

53:20

by this, by this, you know, large amount

53:22

of mana that's been input into the game. I feel

53:25

like it's a situation where sometimes it punishes

53:27

good deck building and rewards quote

53:30

unquote poor deck building. I hate to say that,

53:32

but like deck building where you're like just

53:34

hoping, Hey, maybe I'll get to that point where I can start casting

53:36

all these nine drops and someone

53:39

else enables you to cast them all. Whereas

53:41

your efficient cards then become way less useful.

53:44

So yeah, I find that maybe

53:46

not

53:47

great to deal

53:49

with any game. You know, a lot of the stuff we've been talking about

53:51

for the, you know, a past couple minutes have been

53:53

like, this is the gambit of the group hug deck, right?

53:55

Where you are giving extra stuff to people and

53:57

you're hoping that you can indeed control.

54:00

what you give out, but sometimes it's hard

54:02

and it requires a definite bird's eye view of

54:04

knowing how people may end up using the resources

54:07

that they need or that you will give out

54:09

to them. And unfortunately, like giving

54:11

extra cards or extra mana resources are one

54:13

of the only like universal things that people

54:15

definitely do want when it comes to making political

54:17

deals. That and potentially like

54:19

removing mutual problems in my

54:22

experience with Group Hug, those tend to be the things that are

54:24

kind of the only stuff you can rely on as opposed to like,

54:26

oh, I'll give you a one-one. People don't necessarily always

54:28

go for that politically versus give

54:30

you a card draw. So that is the group

54:33

hug in particular is always like dancing on a knife's

54:35

edge because it could very much be enabling your opponents

54:37

just take over in a way that you cannot in fact

54:39

rein in. So it's especially difficult for

54:42

those decks, but there are plenty of decks that could use cards

54:44

like this. Well, in one card too, that I think

54:46

paces itself very well because whatever

54:49

an opponent gets something, you're also getting something when

54:51

it comes to mana. Curse of opulence, I

54:53

think is a card that really walks

54:55

that line very well because with a

54:58

lot of these other cards, we talked about how you get a

55:00

card, but everybody also gets a card. Well,

55:03

every mana that somebody gets, you also get that mana.

55:05

So the ratio keeps up and it paces

55:07

itself. So yes, with Curse of Opulence, you're

55:10

encouraging people to attack, but also it's

55:12

doing a couple things where you're getting just

55:14

as much mana that is given out to the opponents, but also

55:17

one opponent just can't get that. So you can choose the biggest

55:19

and scariest person. You're not getting

55:21

them any benefit where some of these

55:24

symmetrical effects would otherwise be giving them

55:26

mana, but also the

55:28

two opponents who do get mana, you just keep

55:30

up with that. So the ratio, the

55:33

pacing of Curse of Opulence, I

55:35

struggle to think that it's too much of a downside. Yes,

55:37

you are giving them a little bit of mana, but

55:39

you're getting just as much in return and the

55:41

best player doesn't get it. So for a couple of those reasons,

55:44

I really like Curse of Opulence. I don't think

55:46

it's a card that is super risky

55:49

because you're always pacing along with

55:51

what's happening with it. You're also not

55:53

just getting extra mana

55:55

off those gold tokens. In a lot of cases,

55:58

you might be running a deck that's...

56:00

Taking additional advantage maybe you're playing

56:02

jury master into review where your commander gets buff

56:05

on counters I've already sacrificed a thing. So now you're

56:07

making gold that's providing with mana That's also putting

56:09

counters on your commander Or maybe you're running some kind

56:11

of a artifact deck where things

56:13

get buff based on a lot of artifacts you control

56:16

So you're creating all this mana. That's also like buffing

56:18

other things based on you having artifacts. There's

56:20

just a bunch of Ways

56:23

to take advantage of them like curse of opulence

56:26

that maybe doesn't exist with a holy mind

56:28

effect or something You can really lean

56:30

into the ways that helps you

56:32

in a way that doesn't help other people Another

56:34

one that comes up sometimes is grasp of fate and

56:38

I think this is a card that I

56:40

Early on in our show was a little bit down

56:42

on because

56:43

the issue I had ran into with it was

56:46

Because you're hitting multiple

56:48

permanents and exiling them with grass of fate that's

56:51

three times as many people that have Have

56:54

a reason to remove grass of fate if

56:56

you're just like oblivion ringing something Then

56:58

you own the only person that wants to remove it and

57:00

get their thing back is the person has a thing that's been Ringed

57:03

with grass of fate. You have three people with

57:05

a reason to remove it until I saw

57:07

someone use it to remove a scary thing

57:09

And then hit someone else's like Demir

57:12

signet and a third person's, you

57:14

know, whatever it was The

57:16

other two people had no reason to remove it

57:18

to get that signet back So you so

57:21

what it wound up being was like, oh you can

57:23

just run this as an oblivion ring That

57:25

gets a little bit of extra value. You

57:27

just have to not be greedy with it But

57:30

that's the kind of thing that like you have to

57:32

sometimes play a card for a long period of time to

57:34

figure out how To really work we talked about working

57:37

around the downside I

57:38

missed that early on and it wasn't until I saw

57:40

someone else that knew how to work around the downsides

57:42

that I Then realized how to better

57:45

use that card Yeah I've had kind of similar

57:47

experiences where if you make sure

57:49

that the thing that is getting rid

57:52

of is Scary enough that the other two players

57:54

don't want it to come back Then you're

57:56

not really working against three other players

57:59

two players kind of except like, okay, you got something good

58:02

for me, but like that thing over there, that was

58:04

really scary. I don't want that coming back. And

58:06

so there's kind of an understood situation

58:09

where even the person who has the biggest

58:11

thing that was removed, they're also thinking, well,

58:13

I do want this back, but I also don't want them

58:16

to get their two things. And so

58:18

everybody's kind of invested in like, okay, let's

58:21

just let this be. So it really has to

58:23

be something incredibly valuable

58:25

to one specific person for them to

58:27

want to get rid of grasp of fate. They've had great

58:29

success with the card. Yeah, ultimately,

58:31

as with a lot of these, I think it does come down to

58:34

like, there are ways to mitigate risk in

58:36

the way that they're played specifically with like, the

58:38

timing of them. There are ways to mitigate risk on

58:40

any and all of these cards. And

58:44

I think like for that, like, these

58:46

are also just like, like a bunch of the

58:48

cards that we've read out, I'm just like, these are also just fun cards.

58:50

Like living a little bit on

58:52

that nice edge, like is

58:54

kind of awesome sometimes. And

58:57

sure, I don't like, some

58:59

of these are just like, I can see situations where

59:01

they would not work. So for the most part, I've avoided plenty

59:04

of these. But sometimes

59:06

getting more of that experience, like you guys were just saying,

59:09

is actually the important thing. And that

59:11

can help you lean into the fun of

59:13

them and find ways that they might be even better than you

59:15

thought that they were based on your first impression.

59:18

And so yeah, a little bit of risk

59:20

is how you get the good reward. So I think ultimately

59:22

a lot of these cards are worth checking out

59:24

more and more because

59:27

of the fun stuff that you can unlock with them.

59:29

So even if they're not necessarily optimized

59:31

and guaranteed to help you in all of the situations, the

59:34

times where they do shine, they might shine

59:35

brighter than what you're used to. And that could be

59:37

incentive to actually give them more of a try

59:40

than you have historically. What would be

59:42

interesting here too is like,

59:43

in two or three years, we might

59:46

come back and look at a couple of these spells through

59:48

a different lens. Maybe things in the

59:50

game will change that will like mitigate the

59:52

risk on some of them. Maybe we will find

59:54

out that some of them function a little bit differently once

59:57

we learn how to play around them like the grasp of fate

59:59

thing, for example.

59:59

So

1:00:00

a lot of

1:00:03

this stuff is changing, whether the game changes around

1:00:05

it or

1:00:06

how you change it or what you want

1:00:08

from the game changes probably how you want

1:00:10

to play these cards as well. So

1:00:14

none of this is necessarily set in stone. It's

1:00:16

always going to be in flux a little bit. Yeah, yeah.

1:00:18

No, I feel that. I think I find myself

1:00:20

wanting to try out a few more of these

1:00:23

in the future and we'll see whether

1:00:25

or not that pays off for me or if, like

1:00:28

the segues, it blows up in my face. We'll

1:00:30

find out. Listeners, we've got

1:00:32

to hear from you about what your favorite risky

1:00:34

cards are out there in the EDH world.

1:00:37

What are the things that feel a little bit like you're living on

1:00:39

the edge and are they worth it? Which

1:00:41

cards do you want to play and which cards do you super want

1:00:43

to stay far away from? You got to let us know. But

1:00:46

with that, we will call this episode to a close. So fellas, if

1:00:48

our listeners want to get in touch with us, where is it

1:00:50

that they can find you all? Matt? Matt

1:00:52

is anywhere social media can be found at Mathemist55.

1:00:56

That's M-A-T-H-I-M-U-S-5-5. And

1:00:58

don't forget, we stream Wednesday evenings. So make sure you

1:01:00

tune in to that over at twitch.tv

1:01:02

slash EDH RecCast. We have guests on

1:01:04

every single time that we stream and it's

1:01:06

always a super fun time. So tune in. And

1:01:08

Dana, how about you? You can find me on the interwebs

1:01:11

at Dana Roach. I'm writing articles for EDH Rec

1:01:13

and Commander's Herald. And you can find all

1:01:15

of us together at patreon.com

1:01:17

slash EDH RecCast.

1:01:18

And I'm Joey Schultz. You can find me online at

1:01:21

Joseph M. Schultz and you can find the cast online

1:01:23

at EDH RecCast. And if you've got a question for us,

1:01:25

you can contact us at EDH RecCast at

1:01:27

gmail.com. Our thanks go out once again

1:01:29

to Chase for assisting me with the post-production

1:01:31

of the show. You can find them online

1:01:34

at ManaCurves. And listeners, we'll be back at you

1:01:36

next week with more data and insights. But until

1:01:38

then, remember, EDH, rec your deck before

1:01:40

you rec your deck.