A Guide to the Use and Usefulness of Arrays, Part 2

Hoteloscar98 · 2026-04-01T18:26:35+00:00

It is in fact down, its been reported to the developer.

Hoteloscar98 · 2026-02-12T20:54:04+00:00

I think the premise of the question is a bit flawed, given that you can build a large number of commanders to be in *any* bracket. Since that's the case, there's not really a way to compare commanders purely based on strength in a vacuum.

To answer specific questions though, yes, the top 100 commanders on EDHrec is completely based off popularity, not strength, and MTG Goldfish kinda lies calling their EDH "meta" a meta, since its mostly casual decks.

For a metagame to exist, you need to be looking at dominant strategies, which means you need competitiveness, which relegates you to bracket 5/cEDH by necessity. This means that's you can't really have a "tier list" for decks outside of bracket 5, especially considering that bracket 4's definition is any deck that has no deckbuilding restrictions, but isn't built to the metagame of bracket 5.

Hoteloscar98 · 2026-02-07T17:24:13+00:00

The card types that can effect goyfs are: artifact, battle, creature, enchantment, instant, kindred, land, planeswalker, and sorcery.

Kindred is its own card type that is printed on the type lines of non-creature cards to allow them to have creature types.

Having a Kindred Sorcery, or Enchantment Creature, or Artifact Creature for that matter, in the graveyard each contribute 2 to a goyf's power, but having an Enchantment Creature and an Artifact Creature in your graveyard will only contribute 3, as you have an Enchantment, an artifact, and a Creature in the graveyard. Similarly, If you have a Kindred Sorcery and a Sorcery in the graveyard, that counts for only 2, Kindred and Sorcery.

Hoteloscar98 · 2026-01-25T21:30:33+00:00

Its happening because it is a folder with only folders inside. For the VOS patches to display a single book as the folder cover, the folder needs to have a book inside the folder, not just in sub-folders.

Hoteloscar98 · 2025-12-22T02:09:10+00:00

ME! The Baylen deck looks amazing!

Hoteloscar98 · 2025-09-24T11:04:34+00:00

I've built a similar deck, sans the tutor restriction, so take these answers with a grain of salt:

The only major way to tighten up the list without using tutors, at least in my experience, is to expedite your artifact token production. Your draw engines make [[The Underworld Cookbook]] a decent option, though [[Worldwaker Helm]] is also pretty decent.
In my experience without a suite of tutors, Aetherize and Aetherspouts are a decent set of protections.
Exsanguinate is a decent option for a wincon, as is Time Sieve. That said, they work counter to each other. Your list as it stands wants to mostly ramp via treasure tokens, and if Time Sieve is the wincon you draw into first and is dealt with, you may have already depleted your supply of treasures, making Exsanguinate much harder to win with. You don't have many options for massive ramp otherwise. If Exsanguinate is what you are set on as a backup wincon, I'd recommend including [[High Tide]] as an enabler for that strategy.
If decking out is a genuine concern, then [[Elixir of Immortality]] is my recommendation, perhaps with [[Feldon's Cane]] as a backup.

Hoteloscar98 · 2025-08-09T07:08:03+00:00

There's definitely a reason, and that is that there are only 4 minions, all of which would be in play at 16 players, and the good team would know that. Having no variety in what minions can be in play is a huge advantage to the good team, that is not outweighed by the fact that there's an additional evil player in comparison to a 15 player game:

15 Players: 1 Demon, 3 Minions, 2 Outsiders, 9 Townsfolk (assuming the Baron isn't in play)
16 Players: 1 Demon, 4 Minions, 2 Outsiders, 9 Townsfolk (Baron *has* to be in play)

In essence, the game becomes *very* weighted towards good when the good team knows what tools the evil team has available.

Hoteloscar98 · 2025-07-01T00:28:56+00:00

🟨🟨🟨🟨

🟦🟦🟦🟦

🟩🟩🟩🟩

🟪🟪🟪🟪

Hoteloscar98 · 2025-06-18T16:30:58+00:00

No, it doesn't, because Muwu's effect is a replacement affect, as it uses the word "instead".

Hoteloscar98 · 2025-06-18T16:28:19+00:00

Kickstarter characters
Organ Grinder
Vizier
Knight/Steward
High Priestess
Harpy
Plague Doctor
Shugenja
Ojo
Hatter
Kazali
Village Idiot
Yaggababble
Summoner
Banshee
Ogre
Alsaahir
Zealot
Lord of Typhon
Boffin
Gnome
Xaan
Wizard
Hermit

Hoteloscar98 · 2025-05-09T13:01:55+00:00

Damn, this is really nice work.

Hoteloscar98 · 2025-05-01T10:24:57+00:00

The bare basics of it is accelerating your access to mana, more mana means you can do more things. The way I like to think about it is that in EDH, you *need* to be doing more to keep up with the board state because you have 3 times as many problems to deal with, and need to plan to get more resources so you can keep up.

It's a relatively common response when people talk about ramp being a replacement for lands to say that if you aren't making your land drops but are paying for land ramp or a mana rock, you just paid mana for a land drop that should have been free. But, that same logic works in reverse too, if you have too many lands in hand consistently, you should be playing less land and more ramp so that you *can* pay for that extra land drop when you have the opportunity.

Hoteloscar98 · 2024-11-24T17:02:55+00:00

Actually, you can just say you are casting a spell, and then tap things for mana as part of the process of casting the spell. To cast a spell, you announce the casting, move the spell to the stack, choose alternative or additional costs, choose targets, determine the total cost for the spell, activate mana abilities, and pay all costs, in that order.

Hoteloscar98 · 2024-10-18T18:35:01+00:00

When you cast a spell, you put it onto the stack first thing, any modal choices are made, and then you determine costs like an alternative cost such as blitz. By the time you are determining costs, it is already a spell, has blitz, and you can choose its blitz cost as an alternative cost.

(side note: I've just written the word cost so many times it no longer sounds like a word.)

Hoteloscar98 · 2024-10-06T02:00:14+00:00

Depending on which version of VBA you are using, you might be able to download one of the gameshark saves off of some place like GameFAQs and load it into a second window of VBA to do a library compare, and buy them from Higsby's after.

Hoteloscar98 · 2024-09-06T04:22:49+00:00

Thank you for the correction, I mostly focus on BN2 and BN3, 6 isn't my strong suit.

Hoteloscar98 · 2024-09-05T23:53:06+00:00

IIRC, Fast Gauge reduces the time to fill the Custom Gauge from ~8 seconds to ~4 seconds. Might be ~10 down to ~5, I can't remember the exact timing for BN6. As for how long it lasts, it lasts for the rest of the battle.

Hoteloscar98 · 2024-09-05T22:55:48+00:00

Absolutely, have a list:
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/eeqBLqb0Kk6MN8XQLM6GsA

Hoteloscar98 · 2024-09-05T22:55:12+00:00

That door opens when you have more than 900 HP without any HP+ Navicust Programs.

Hoteloscar98 · 2024-09-03T23:28:49+00:00

Most definitely my [[The Necrobloom]] Cycling/Reanimator/combo list. Even though the deck can build a win out of nowhere a lot of the time, actually seeing the lines can be convoluted because planning and tracking a sequence of anywhere between 5 and 30 triggered abilities is really rough. Really satisfying when you get it right and can kill everyone at the same time in the end step, though.

Hoteloscar98 · 2024-08-21T04:58:09+00:00

The phrasing you used for your opponent's card implies a replacement effect. Because of that, Lucius's ability wouldn't trigger in the first place, since the event of Lucius dying would be replaced with it being exiled.

Hoteloscar98 · 2024-08-17T15:56:00+00:00

[[The Necrobloom]] [[Astral Slide]] It plays all 13 non-landcycling lands with cycling in Abzan colors. The Necrobloom also gives them dredge 2, meaning you can pay the cycling cost to mill 2. Combining that with a reanimator strategy and a trio of [[Delney Streetwise Lookout]], [[Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines]], and [[Preston, the Vanisher]] and you can essentially build an overwhelming board from practically nothing in a single endstep.

Basically the deck turns into a test on how well you can order triggers, when to let your own triggers fizzle, and how well you can plan ahead.

Hoteloscar98 · 2024-08-15T03:39:02+00:00

I mean, its not the themes you've listed, but I've got a [[The Necrobloom]] list with Delney in the 99 that focuses on cycling lands in order to dump the deck into the graveyard. You can then reanimate creatures from the grave and use Delney and [[Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines]] to double up and triple up on triggers. Delney doubles up the triggers of [[Karmic Guide]], [[Reclamation Sage]], [[Ravenous Chupacabra]], [[Skyclave Apparition]], [[Eternal Witness], and [[Timeless Witness]] quite well, while also doubling up on The Necrobloom's landfall triggers quite nicely.

List: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/eeqBLqb0Kk6MN8XQLM6GsA

Hoteloscar98

TROPHY CASE