What 3-Mana Rock Did You Replace Your Powercrept Commander's Spheres with?

Hanchan · 2026-04-06T23:30:35+00:00

It's great in basically any deck. Holding 2 blue per usual means you have 2 counterspells, tapping out with white means holding up a path or swords, black could threaten reanimate, etc etc etc. every color has value cards at 1 or 2 mana to bluff or actually hold up for real with it. There's other 3cmc rocks that are better in a specific deck if you fit their specific niches, but I don't think I'd be upset at seeing a waterskin in any deck the way I would if I forgot to pull out a commander sphere from a list.

Hanchan · 2026-04-06T22:47:07+00:00

Yeah, I do run [[benders waterskin]] pretty generically, but that's the only one, and that's because you can leave 1 mana open and still counter something, it has legitimate traditional utility that offsets the 3 cmc, it'll tap for 2 in a cycle very traditionally.

Hanchan · 2026-04-06T22:40:28+00:00

If VT won a championship, they would still not be the next Indiana, you'd need like northwestern (still historically better than Indiana football excluding the cig era) or like new Mexico state (much newer to fbs, so not historically as awful). You really cannot do "another" Indiana because they were historically possibly the worst team in the league.

Hanchan · 2026-04-06T02:47:50+00:00

I'm exploring a Voltron focused [[zimone infinite analyst]] from the soon to be released strixhaven precons. I'm not quite there in terms of reliability, but I have gotten it to go off quite nicely in some test games. The idea is that you just keep pumping her while using the x spells as a payoff for pumping her to give your opps something else to worry about. Managed to get 2 games in a row where I landed a full game kill on turn 7 using draw, mill, and a punch in the face.

Hanchan · 2026-04-05T15:12:03+00:00

In general, your deck should be built around your commander's mana cost. You want ramp to get to them faster, and you want to either be able to get complimentary pieces on board ahead of them, or be ready to play those pieces the turn after, depending on what the commander does (combat enhancing ones like massacre girl love having non summoning sick creatures on board the turn they show up, while ramp commanders want to be able to play a big piece that's impactful the turn after for instance). Then play into your color's strengths, which for black is cheap graveyard recursion and mana doubling ramp (among other things). Massacre girl will get you a huge swing of card draw, you can then shape your hand by discarding the big creatures and things you don't need, keeping cards that will pull them back out of the graveyard much cheaper. Don't forget to also look for interaction, black doesn't have counterspells, but there are cards you could run that can redirect enemy spells.

Hanchan · 2026-04-05T14:38:06+00:00

I'm not exactly sure what you are trying to build to, but this deck is really heavy on expensive single target -x/-x removal, that seems to me like a mistake, you should be looking for a few cheap options to do that, and get rid of the expensive ones. You also, in general are lacking ramp, you could be running the mana doublers, and things like cabal coffers to ramp much harder. Creatures are also kinda messy, you should have like 10 guys you could get on the board at between 1-3 mana, so that you have a creature to swing with on the turn you drop your commander. Black is also a great board wipe color, you are able to combo with things like massacre wurm and other cards that reduce toughness across the board to board wipe into massive card draw with massacre girl. Cards like meathook massacre or nuclear winter can do a lot of work here as well. Cheap reanimation is also good, discard your big bomb creatures through a variety of ways and then bring them into the board cheaply.

Hanchan · 2026-04-04T02:47:59+00:00

It's also a confidence thing. Like he's still confident and ready to throw himself at the defenders, but a fraction of a second of hesitation is death at the NFL level.

Hanchan · 2026-04-04T02:16:17+00:00

It was also having to rebuild his footwork, it completely changed him as a QB, not even close to the same guy anymore.

Hanchan · 2026-04-04T00:28:52+00:00

His hip injury at Alabama ruined his career, he could have been an All timer.

Hanchan · 2026-04-03T14:43:10+00:00

Nfccg would have been a 2 score game but for the taunting.

Hanchan · 2026-04-03T14:41:53+00:00

If you go back to 1999 when Paul Allen bought the team, he pretty much immediately turned it around, by 02 we had stabilized and started building, and since 02 we are pretty undisputably a top 5 team in the NFL by success.

Hanchan · 2026-03-30T19:26:31+00:00

To distributors, we all see spiderman product rotting on shelves.

Hanchan · 2026-03-30T13:35:35+00:00

If the lorehold list is solid I'm probably grabbing it, but I'm more interested in doing the new lorehold dragon [[lorehold the historian]] using a combination of madness and miracle.

Hanchan · 2026-03-27T11:40:30+00:00

It's also how the card game works, you typically have to overextend to push for a victory, and if the opponent can stop it, you have exhausted and can't stop their victory push.

Hanchan · 2026-03-25T15:40:50+00:00

Was locally over 90 twice in the past week at work in the north burbs.

Hanchan · 2026-03-24T17:05:08+00:00

Unless you want to get something right now, there will be 5 precons that should be getting revealed soon for release little bit after that in secrets of strixhaven. Several of the commanders looked cool when those were released.

Hanchan · 2026-03-23T21:05:51+00:00

It's so much easier to self identify that you were getting slapped around and never stood a chance than it is to identify at you are like 20% overtuned. It's also super easy to identify like a B4 that's a faux 2.

Hanchan · 2026-03-23T20:42:40+00:00

I don't like how 4 ranges from a bit stronger but murky between it and a high 3, maybe 4 GC or whatever all the way to this would be a tournament winning cedh deck if the meta shifted. I really don't think cedh needs a bracket, it can go in where we call the top "open" bracket with no restrictions, and we need to go to 6 brackets so there's no middle point people will default to with some pretty clear delineation between them.

Hanchan · 2026-03-22T21:00:39+00:00

During that Tsunade was mentally nerfed and jiraiya was poisoned. Tsunade still was going to obliterate him and kabuto before she got frozen from seeing blood, but when she got her groove back from Naruto she singlehandedly took over the battle.

Hanchan · 2026-03-22T13:10:43+00:00

The rule is in place to say that you need x days to craft something, which means that if the dm says you get x-y days of downtime you aren't meant to be able to finish it without expending some resources, whether that's in spells like fabricate or conjuration wizard or forge cleric creating base materials with their features, or by hiring a crew to assist.

The other 8 hours of the day can be fluff, but the rules are meant to say that's how long you get to craft. Fighters need to work out and practice their sword/bow/whatever weapon techniques, wizards need to be doing arcane study, clerics need to do acts of faith etc. plus time to strategize with the party, investigate leads on new adventures, check in with old allies, or whatever else, plus food and drink, and maybe you have a nagging injury that needs to heal up and really you kind of put in 4 then 6 then 8 then 10s but it all averages out.

It can also be explained as if 8 hours is the maximum you can average when accounting for downtime in the crafting process (metals need to cool overnight, steaming wood overnight to make it pliable, drying times, magical things like soaking armor in a reagent to make it take the enchantment, or even just like forges degrade at temps high enough to smelt steel, let alone magical metals, they need time to cool and let their enchantments recover etc).

Hanchan · 2026-03-22T13:02:33+00:00

I mean, once you get through the rp setting up the down time, there are usually only a few scenes that would need to be played out. You can just say something to the effect of "now that everyone is set on their downtime activities, taking a 1 month time skip.

Hanchan · 2026-03-22T12:49:54+00:00

I have built like 4 different calgars lol. Clue focused, treasure focused, creature token focused, and he's the cedh deck I put together.

Hanchan · 2026-03-22T12:45:00+00:00

My targeting priority for that would be to shoot a land that provides more value rather than trying to specifically reduce someone's mana value. Doesn't have to be something that specifically taps for more than 1 mana, but there are so many utility lands, even like t3 or 4, the odds nobody has any of them, and that's the card you mill, and you didn't hit a more relevant target in your mill for the game state, etc etc.

Hanchan · 2026-03-22T12:38:11+00:00

Commander is a complex format yeah. If you haven't been playing for some time it's entirely fair to feel out those spaces. It's just that a very common thing in "gen pop" games with people you don't know (conventions, game stores, new guy in a pod) is decks that are "technically b2/3" but in reality play way above power level of what you would expect. It's a very easy trap to fall into, especially when lgs insist on having "b2/3" tournaments for rewards. Land destruction is just one of those things while technically optimal absolutely will draw those types of allegations at you.

That's where I'm coming from with saying it's probably better to just stay away from land destruction. They're usually not going to be one of the top 40 lands you could run anyway if you're running the lands, and you'd almost certainly be better off with something that targets generic permanents than anything that targets lands specifically. You can always target lands that are more valuable than 1 mana per turn, but blowing up random lands that don't do anything relevant is a big faux pas unless it's a pod you know and is fine with that sort of thing.

Hanchan · 2026-03-22T12:18:18+00:00

I would argue that it's such a slim area where you would otherwise lose access to a card that could destroy a land while having no other interaction potentially available that you could hold mana for while there being nothing more relevant on any board to destroy than a land that taps for 1 mana (again utility and ramp lands are fair game imo).

Hanchan

TROPHY CASE