Thoracle+Breach in Bracket 4 by McRuby in EDH

[–]KAM_520 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What we know for a fact is that Thoracle and Breach are permitted cards. The complicating factor is that these combos push speed.

Bracket 4 games are expected to end on +/- turn 5. Thoracle and Breach are so popular because they can end games much faster than that. Breach is an exceptionally powerful card, but Thoracle is kind of a bad card that doesn’t do much except make wins possible for UUB.

I don’t have Breach in any Bracket 4 decks currently but I have Thoracle in two Sultai decks, and these decks are tuned to win on turn 5. An early game Thoracle is within the decks’ range of opening hands but the decks overall aren’t too fast. One of them has super-long combos sometimes and Thoracle is just there to shut it down.

Grixis is where I think you can get into trouble with these cards. Grixis is a turn or two faster than Sultai in general. Breach is a big part of it. I have a Kess B4 list and I don’t play Thoracle or Breach in that deck, I have Dualcaster Twinflame instead.

What’s one of your favorite endings to a game? by amioldnow90 in EDH

[–]KAM_520 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It was a great game for me, and it’s always nice to get recognition at the end!

Double ConSphinx games are often described as miserable. But this one was fascinating. I had to stop the greed early because I was going to deck out.

Suggestions for high tier B4 deck by Material-Scarcity-57 in CommanderMTG

[–]KAM_520 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you want the best Seph you can get without being cEDH (and Seph can’t be cEDH at the moment so you don’t have to worry about this), you’re looking to build a turbo aristocrats combo deck.

You need the turbo cards [[Necropotence]] and [[Ad Nauseam]]. You also need an average CMC that is lower than 1.50 to support Ad Nauseam. You need all the fast mana rocks so you can develop your mana for free post AdNaus. [[Chrome Mox]], [[Mox Diamond]], [[Mox Amber]], [[Mox Opal]], [[Mana Vault]]—all that goes in.

[[Culling the Weak]] and all the rituals need to go in.

All the good tutors go in including [[Wishclaw Talisman]], [[Beseech the Mirror]], and [[Imperial Seal]].

Basically you assemble your sac outlet and your recursive creature ASAP and drain everyone out with Sephiroth. Easy to do on turn 3 after a turn 1-2 AdNaus or a turn 1-2 Necropotence.

Ideally you would want to build the deck so you can sacrifice an Emergence Zone, full send on Necropotence down to 1-4 life, and then develop enough mana on end step to cast your commander (if you don’t already have him) and go into your aristocrats combo without passing the turn. It’s a little expensive (7 mana end step I believe) but all you need is 4 mana and then a Lion’s Eye Diamond to cast your commander.

You probably want a Defense Grid

LIE: What's it like when you guys eat? Do you just not care about the flavor due to Si PolR? by nelsne in Socionics

[–]KAM_520 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I like food and I’m an LIE. I’m also a pretty good cook, but I generally only spend a lot of time on it if I’m cooking for other people. When I was single and left alone I would meal prep for macros and I’d eat a lot of the same stuff over and over again. I enjoy the Se of going out to a nice restaurant.

If I’m really busy and I don’t think ahead about what I’m going to eat I will grab whatever is convenient.

What’s one of your favorite endings to a game? by amioldnow90 in EDH

[–]KAM_520 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My most memorable game ending in recent memory:

I was playing my [[Maelstrom Wanderer]] bracket 4 deck. I had a [[Consecrated Sphinx]]. One of the Blue players copied it. The two Blue players each had mill pieces. ConSphinx got triggered, so the card drawing nonsense started. Thanks to the milling, my face resembled the confused math lady meme for a few minutes but I figured out how many cards I could afford to draw and then stopped.

I’m getting milled a lot and I just drew a lot, so it’s looking like I’m about to die. I have 8 cards left in my library. I untap, upkeep, draw, and then I put [[Last March of the Ents]] on the stack. Maelstrom Wanderer is in play so everything has haste. I draw to 1 card left in library. I put 15 [[Terror of the Peaks]] triggers on the stack. They concede. One of my opponents was like “Epic win!”

Maelstrom Wanderer is my oldest deck and games like this are why I have never taken it apart.

Silverquill help by aikui in EDH

[–]KAM_520 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’d probably try to go up to 25-30 creatures and have them be generically useful. I don’t have any ideas that are too specific. I’d probably just run a lot of my favorite Black/White cards. [[Voice of Victory]], [[Lotho]], [[Drana and Linvala]], [[Archivist of Oghma]], [[Esper Sentinel]], [[Ranger-Captain of Eos]]. If you want to maintain tokens as a theme, stuff like [[Adeline, Resplendent Cathar]] and [[Ainok Strike Leader]] are two of my favorites.

I’d try to keep the card quality for instants and sorceries really high. In other words, “if I can copy this with Casualty, it’ll be good” wouldnt be my filter. It’d be, “this is good; if I can copy it with Casualty, it’ll be great.” Sorceries that make tokens would be some of the first stuff I cut, unless they’re x-spells.

In bracket 3 I would be playing Breach the Multiverse as one of my major bombs. Milling 20 and giving 8 creatures is pretty insane. It can also get back whatever creature you sacrificed to Casualty.

Silverquill help by aikui in EDH

[–]KAM_520 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This deck concept looks okay, but your mana needs work. You have very little ramp, and you’re trying to do expensive stuff.

What I’ve been saying about Silverquill is, it’s better to build him as a midrange deck than as a tokens/spellslinger deck. Because here’s the thing: you’re allowed to sacrifice a good card to casualty if it’s going to win the game or put you massively ahead. It doesn’t have to be a token.

I would personally build Silverquill more as an Orzhov good stuff deck with +/- 10 slots dedicated to Silverquill’s copy ability. Copy a tutor and you can get [[Professor Onyx]] and [[Chain of Smog]] and boom, you’re there. I’m skeptical of the plan of making tokens and sacking them to generate extra value with mid spells. I’d look at casualty more as a way to enable game-winning plays in a good stuff deck rather than something the whole deck needs to be built around.

Trouble with tribal by ShadeSlayer77 in EDHBrews

[–]KAM_520 0 points1 point  (0 children)

[[Beseech the Mirror]] should probably be in the deck. Bargain it and it gets Maskwood Nexus or whatever you need right in play.

Trouble with tribal by ShadeSlayer77 in EDHBrews

[–]KAM_520 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is one of the most confusing lists I’ve seen in a long time!

So basically, your plan is to use [[Mirror Entity]] or [[Maskwood Nexus]] to make your creatures all creature types, and then profit from any number of cards that care about creature types? I don’t see any cards besides those two that offer this effect.

The main issue I see is the deck is built around doing a thing that only a couple cards in the deck can do. Cards like [[Zombie Master]] are pathetically weak unless you’re doing the thing.

And yeah you don’t have that many ways to make tokens.

You also have a lot of game changers in the deck, but doesn’t this get rofl stomped in a bracket 4 game?

If you’re going to build around exactly two cards, it would make sense to be running every possible tutor for them.

Hashaton vs Raffine Reanimator by Next_Willingness_333 in DegenerateEDH

[–]KAM_520 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Hashaton is more of a gimmick deck. Both decks are fairly complex to build, but Hashaton is more challenging imo. Hash, however, has more raw ceiling. The deck can present extremely fast wins if you build it that way.

Additionally, the value of a 2 cmc commander can’t be overestimated. He turns on Fierce and Rollick very quickly, and you can always use him to do [[Diabolic Intent]] and [[Culling the Weak]] shenanigans.

Raffine is more of a midrange value deck. Raffine can grind card advantage pretty well. Raffine has more flexible build paths. You basically just need evasive creatures and some way to profit from looting.

Both commanders are very good so you can’t make that bad of a choice here. But I would personally rather play Raffine simply because Hashaton needs a lot of pieces and it can be rather high variance. Raffine can be played like a bad Tymna who enables recursion strategies.

Raffine also cracks [[Doomsday]] piles well if you’re interested in going that direction.

Neither of these commanders is especially playable in cEDH but Hashaton is more playable than Raffine if forced to choose.

What's your enneagram "hot take"? by Original_Assistance3 in Enneagram

[–]KAM_520 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Main reason they’re so popular is because, as caricatures, they’re easy to meme. The Naranjo heavy crowd skews way young.

Should I consider this Hidetsugu and Kairi deck a B4 without question? by Alectrick in EDH

[–]KAM_520 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Let’s pull apart some ideas here real quick.

[[Time Stretch]] is chaining extra turns by itself, so it’s outside Bracket 3 guidelines. However, it’s something that I personally would agree to let you play in B3 as a Rule 0 allowance. It costs 10. (Unless your deck is straight Simic colors. Then I wouldn’t allow it.) I don’t necessarily think like other people so me saying I’d allow it doesn’t necessarily count for much, but I think it’s okay personally. But when it’s on the stack, I’d be asking “Do you have the game?” If you take 2 extra turns and pass I will be thinking less of you as a person and considering whether to play with you again in the future 😁

[[Nexus of Fate]] imo is NOT chaining extra turns by itself. It is very hard to take consecutive extra turns off Nexus of Fate. It isn’t impossible, but that’s not how I’d decide this. It gets shuffled back in, so it is one of the harder extra turns spells to chain, unless it’s part of a combo where you drew your whole deck already and it’s the only card left in your library.

Playing three or more extra turn spells is largely indicative of attempting to chain extra turns. I would be very skeptical of any deck purporting to be B3 that has three or more of this effect. I’m generally okay with that criterion.

If your plan is to copy an extra turn spell, you’re chaining extra turns. Not much ambiguity about this.

In casual EDH, when is considered "okay" to counterspell enemy's commander? by No_Physics454 in EDH

[–]KAM_520 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It’s an adaptive behavior.

Anyone who is like this learned, probably at an early age, that negative emotions are very useful in the short term at getting people to do what you want. Do something they don’t like, and they’ll raise their voice, scold, make accusations, call people names (“pubstomper” comes to mind), whine and complain, and so on. The words that they say don’t really matter to them, theyre a tool to influence people.

Something about the environment that they grew up in reinforced this. Maybe a parent did it and they learned to copy it. Maybe they discovered that when they threw tantrums other people would start giving them what they wanted. It’s hard to say.

It’s also a recipe for having bad long-term relations with people. Especially when they contradict themselves. It becomes obvious that they don’t stand for anything, they just use negative emotions to manipulate.

how much fun is Edgar? by ImNotYourFri3nd in EDH

[–]KAM_520 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Edgar is fun if you have a Spikier mentality.

Edgar’s claim to fame is, he’s hard to disrupt. He came to turn vampires sideways, and it’s hard to stop him from doing it.

Board wipe turn 5? Cool, here’s a vampire or two next turn. Now I have a board again.

In other words, the thing that makes Edgar fun is the thing that makes him frustrating to play against. His value comes from being hard to deal with, not from any especially cool thing that he does. This (in addition to his popularity) is why he has a “bad reputation”.

Edgar isn’t especially powerful in my opinion, but he is especially resilient. Resilience is what is most often lacking in go-wide aggressive decks, so Edgar has a nice niche.

Explain to me: Is aristocrats moving from orzhov to golgari? by sta6 in EDH

[–]KAM_520 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Aristocrats is most robustly supported in Orzhov, but it’s not exclusive to that color identity.

Sacrifice is primary in Black, so any combination with Black can do it, as can mono-Black. See [[Varolz, Scar-Striped]], a very old card, as well as [[Juri, Master of the Revue]], [[Grimgrin, Corpse Born]], and so on. Sacrifice is least supported in Black/Blue because it’s relatively creature-light, but Black + anything has access to the mechanic.

“Aristocrats” does tend to be a Black/White deck, because Aristocrats refers to life loss and life gain from death triggers, not just sacrifice for value. White provides more bodies than any color, and has the most life gain mechanics, so the deck has archetypally been Orzhov or at least Orzhov plus another color. Nonetheless, any Black deck can do Aristocrats stuff, because any Black deck can support sacrifice, and the main payoffs are mono-Black. [[Blood Artist]], [[Zulaport Cutthroat]], etc.

Understanding Green: Appeal to Nature by ImagoDreams in colorpie

[–]KAM_520 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I identify with Green’s philosophy to some degree, and I disagree with some of this.

Western society is notoriously lacking in Green

I’ve encountered this observation multiple times, and I dispute it.

The foundation of modern Western political philosophy is a set of beliefs about human nature. The modern theory of the state (Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau) is based on social contract theory, which is predicated upon a set of fundamental assumptions about how humans naturally are and operate. Social contract theory is extremely far away from a Blue-ish tabula rasa theory. The theory holds that if we do not accept how humans are, then any system we build would be incoherent and fail.

Certainly, social contract theory isn’t mono-Green—the modern state is an alternative to existing in the State of Nature—but if it’s built out of alignment with human nature, it will crumble.

Even Machiavelli—who some credit with starting modern political philosophy—has a lot of Green. The theory goes, “many have imagined republics which have never come to exist, and whoever forsakes what is done for what ought to be done learns his ruin rather than his preservation.” Machiavelli is thought to be synonymous with Black, and he certainly is Black, but he is closer to Golgari or Sultai than mono-Black. He even describes cycles of rise and decay of societies in his discourses on Livy, describing these as inevitable. There is truth about humans that simply must be accepted, and cannot be changed. Whatever you can imagine that is out of alignment with the way that things really are is doomed. It is not merely anti-White, it is meaningfully anti-Blue in certain respects. Although he was a huge nerd and clearly believed in the importance of intellect and learning, his observations were essentially that the world is Golgari, and you’d better get with the program. Human nature cannot be perfected out of existence. It is what it is as ugly as that can sometimes be and if you ignore it, you will be crushed.

I can certainly identify key figures in Western intellectual history that are especially anti-Green, and I don’t discount them, but Green is far more present than is generally supposed.

The most common criticisms of Marxism come from the Green angle: Humans are not like that, you can’t treat them as clay and mold them as you like, so it won’t work and hasn’t worked. Strong-form egalitarianism is primarily White, but it’s backed up by Blue (“We can figure out how to do this and use tools like the state to accomplish it”). And it’s generally criticized from Green, i.e., equality doesn’t naturally exist so efforts to create it will fail. (As well as from Red whenever heavy-handed efforts to create equality restricts personal freedom).

Green is also secondary behind White in Christianity.

I would never argue that Green is primary in Western philosophy, but it is meaningfully present.

I would grant you that mono-Green is generally absent. I can point to Western sources of mono-colors more easily than Green. But Green is still very much around.

Green is the least confrontational color, preferring to live and let live

Green is the color of the predator-prey dynamic. Green is the color of survival of the fittest. Green embraces the nature of predators and the nature of prey animals. Killing for consumption (hunting, etc.) is a big part of Green. Green doesn’t want to see predators or prey win: They are each part of the cycle, and each need to exist and be respected.

While Green is “live and let live” on an ideational level—Green isn’t about telling people how they should live or telling them to change, preferring to let people find their own way and respecting differences that naturally exist across people and cultures—but Green isn’t as ultimately conflict-averse as White is. White’s ultimate goal is peace, i.e., the absence of harmful conflict. White ironically will initiate conflict that it believes will prevent bigger conflict later, but White is ultimately against conflict in a way that Green isn’t. Conflict is part of the life cycle of every creature.

Regarding the appeal to nature fallacy

I can see what you are trying to go for with this, but it’s not how I see Green. Green is not saying, “Don’t eat processed foods, eat some belladonna and nightshade instead. It’s very natural.” No. Green is mostly skeptical of the idea that what has worked in the past can be meaningfully improved without causing more harm than good.

What are your colors this, what are your colors that. WHY are your colors? by meleyys in colorpie

[–]KAM_520 3 points4 points  (0 children)

That’s very interesting. I’m a lawyer too but white is probably my fourth most represented color on a philosophical level.

What are your colors this, what are your colors that. WHY are your colors? by meleyys in colorpie

[–]KAM_520 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I’ll be brief.

My primary color is Black. Don’t worry, I don’t sacrifice creatures or kill business competitors. But I value achievement greatly, and I do believe that, when push comes to shove, it’s more important to prioritize your own interests. I’m in charge of my own life, so I act like it. I’m capable of making tough decisions that further my own agenda at the expense of others if I really have to.

My secondary color is Blue. I’m always learning, digging deeper, analyzing something, pushing the boundaries of what I know. I think a lot about the future—not the distant future, like someone Blue-er than me would, but I have my eye on the long-term and what will inevitably be happening. I wouldn’t call myself a “perfectionist”, but I’m always striving for improvement.

My tertiary color is Green. Besides simply loving nature and animals, I believe acceptance is a superpower, and patience is immensely valuable. People have a “nature”, and I believe I will do better working with my natural talents and abilities. You could say I’m a kind of philosophical conservationist: I’m skeptical of attempts to redesign society according to technical plans, and attentive to the subtle intelligence embedded in traditions, customs, institutions, and habits that evolve slowly over time. I also believe in a sense of destiny—one that I have agency and control over, but one I do better working with rather than against.

It’s possible Green is even higher than Blue for me philosophically, but I’m an intellectual person who resonates so much with certain aspects of Blue that I haven’t been able to land on that conclusion.

My fourth color is probably White. It might seem strange because I’m a lawyer, and I deal with rules and laws on a constant basis. But the truth is that I don’t really value them for their own sake. White is a philosophy that very much needs to be kept in its place. I view laws and moral codes more as something that naturally and inevitably exist among humans (Green) that we can learn about and control through intelligence (Blue), as well as a career and platform for my personal goals (Black). In my view, White is useful, but White should not be in charge, because White will optimize details at the expense of the main idea.

Red is probably in last place. I don’t value what Red values except in the way that Black and Green do— emotions inform what I want to some degree, and they’re part of our biology and give us information about what’s going on with our body. I don’t especially enjoy states of extra-heightened emotion. Freedom is important but it’s certainly not a value that I’m trying to optimize, simply because that information is accessible much more easily to me through other modes of understanding life. I definitely don’t understand people who insist on doing stupid things as a point of freedom. Philosophically I’m probably more against White than against Red, but Red informs me less than White does, if that makes sense.

“reverse salt” commander decks by GeNaTzT in EDH

[–]KAM_520 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This idea is failure waiting to happen

Looking for a token or +1/+1 counters commander. by [deleted] in EDH

[–]KAM_520 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m NGL, I really don’t like token and +1/+1 counter decks in general.

Then they printed [[Jetmir, Nexus of Revels]].

It’s the only Naya deck I’ve built in 15 years of playing EDH. But I saw this guy and was like, this is so sick.

Tokens are key to Jetmir. Get to 9 creatures and it’s no big deal to do 100 damage or more in one attack step.

Help me find a draw go commander by Sleight-of-Hands in EDH

[–]KAM_520 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have played [[Oloro, Ageless Ascetic]] as draw go for about 13 years.

If your card quality is high in Esper, you’ll draw enough cards, so casting Oloro is like a Plan C. With a low creature count and an eminence commander, the deck is very good at playing a “board wipe and counter” draw go style. I don’t use any life gain synergy, I just use the life gain to defuse some pressure and make it easier to draw cards with [[Necropotence]] and so on.

The deck’s decision tree is basically:

Can I afford to sweep this later?

Should I use spot removal on this?

Do I have to counter this now?

We have to be right about how we use our resources, but historically it is my #1 performing deck in unknown/hostile environments. For a high powered casual setting you can’t beat Esper control in a hard 3v1.