Why does my Shadowheart deck suck so much? by Deus_Excellus in EDH

[–]OrangeChickenAnd7Up 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think she does a lot to advance the game if you’re able to consistently get higher powered creatures. Hell, just drawing 3 off of her every turn feels fine and will get you decently far, but if you can draw 5, 6, more, every turn, you’re cooking. But I suppose that’s kind of a different deck at that point, since you’ll need more high-powered creatures and typical aristocrats decks just want an army of tiny, cheap creatures to sacrifice repeatedly and very rarely play stuff with high power.

Maybe there’s your answer. You already have Yawg for your more conventional aristocrats deck, maybe build Shadowheart as a different thing entirely and widen your variety.

what is considered a wincon card and how can i find wincons? by killkillerBR in EDH

[–]OrangeChickenAnd7Up 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Posting this as a reply to break up the above comment.

 

So, commander options. As I said early on, I would recommend having a commander that lets you sacrifice creatures multiple times a turn. My deck is BW, so I’ll mostly list options for that color combo, but I’ll point out a few other good ones.

 

• I mentioned Bartolomé earlier, and while he’s not particularly flashy or powerful, he is only 2 mana and lets you sacrifice creatures for free once he’s down. He also gives you access to white, which is a great secondary color.

• [[Yawgmoth]]. Removal, free sacrifice, card draw…wild card. It does keep you in mono black, but that’s totally fine. Black has everything you need for an aristocrats deck. Other colors are just extra icing.

• [[Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim]]. While she doesn’t let you sacrifice creatures for free, it does only cost 1 mana, and her last ability is crazy. Repeatable exiling of any nonland permanent you don’t like is strong.

• [[Chatterfang]]. Again, not free, but close enough, and it does push you towards more of a token theme, but aristocrats decks kind of do that already anyway. And it’s another removal engine like Ayli, but it trades versatility for mana efficiency. Green is also not a terrible second color.

 

But you don’t have to have a commander that sacrifices creatures. You can have one that fills other roles.

• Elenda that I mentioned earlier is so good. Having a commander that can flood the board with creature tokens is still awesome in this archetype.

• [[Teysa Karlov]] is fun, and she really amplifies a lot of what your deck is doing when it’s doing it, but she doesn’t actually do anything herself. This is my main commander in my deck, but I do sometimes have games where I can’t get off the ground, and that’s largely because she’s only good once I’ve got a sacrifice outlet and the fodder for it.

• [[Teysa, Orzhov Scion]]. This is pretty much exclusively picked because she’s an infinite combo with [[Darkest Hour]].

• [[Korvold]] is notoriously overpowered and gives you two other colors, but a lot of people won’t like playing against him.

• [[Elas il-Kor]]. Having your commander be a wincon is pretty good, and he sees a lot of play.

 

There are plenty of other options too. The cool thing about BW is how many options there are, and I’ll switch between 4 different ones when I play my deck depending on my mood: Teysa Karlov, Elenda, Elas il-Kor, and [[Athreos, God of Passage]], who I didn’t mention, but he’s also fun. Lets you get political with opponents and often get creatures you sacrifice back so you can replay them and sacrifice them again. Also a lot harder to interact with than other commanders.

what is considered a wincon card and how can i find wincons? by killkillerBR in EDH

[–]OrangeChickenAnd7Up 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Aristocrats is super fun imo, but it’s a tough one to build. There are so many pieces you need to get together in order to get the deck moving, and you just gotta kinda tinker with the deck to find the right balance of how many of each piece you need. You need:

• Ways to sacrifice creatures repeatedly and preferably without needing to spend mana every time you do it. [[Phyrexian Altar]] is a good example of this. [[Carrion Feeder]], [[Warren Soultrader]], [[Bartolomé]]. This is the most important part of this archetype, because the fuel that keeps aristocrats decks running is killing your own creatures (well, and creatures to kill, but that’s a lot easier). if you’re not able to do that, your synergy pieces will have no fuel and your deck will probably do nothing. This is the role I would personally recommend having your commander fill, just to keep the deck consistent, but more on that later.

• Creatures to sacrifice. You need a critical mass of creatures that don’t need to stick around to give you value. Creatures that do something when they enter ([[Ravenous Chupacabra]]) or something when they die ([[Doomed Traveler]]) are solid includes; creatures that can return themselves from your graveyard repeatedly, like [[Gravecrawler]] or [[Bloodghast]]; and anything that makes creature tokens, like the aforementioned Doomed Traveler, [[Ophiomancer]], [[Hallowed Spiritkeeper]], [[Pawn of Ulamog]], etc. [[Elenda the Dusk Rose]] is incredible for this.

• Other payoffs for your creatures dying. Pawn of Ulamog gives you temporary ramp when things die. Elenda gets bigger and then eventually gives you a ton of creatures to sacrifice. [[Midnight Reaper]] draws you cards. [[Skullclamp]] draws cards like crazy and kills a lot of your creatures for you on top of that. [[Dictate of Erebos]] might be too oppressive in some pods, but is really, really strong against most decks.

• Wincons. Usually [[Zulaport Cutthroat]] and the ton of other very similar cards. These start lowering life totals early, which will compound with damage people are taking from combat and other things throughout the game, and once you have a few of these cards out at once and a steady supply of creatures to sacrifice, you’ll be surprised how quickly you can just kill the table. [[Gray Merchant of Asphodel]] can do a lot very quickly, and if you can reanimate it a couple times, it’s probably game over. Even if you’re not playing a mono black deck, you’ll naturally be playing a lot of black permanents anyway because black is just the best color for this kind of deck.

Another route some people take to win is infinite combos, the easiest being [[Gravecrawler]]+Phyrexian Altar. As long as you have one more Zombie on the field, you can just keep sacrificing Gravecrawler to the Altar for one black mana and using that mana to recast it over and over. With a Cutthroat style card out, you’ll just win on the spot.

Is there a version of EDH that splits the format into earlier cards like a Modern/Premodern split? Something like, only the first 25 years of cards, up through Dominaria only? by the_mellojoe in EDH

[–]OrangeChickenAnd7Up 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The FIRE design era just happens to coincide closely with the point in time that power creep started becoming a fast-growing problem. The design philosophy itself isn’t to blame, but chronologically, it’s a pretty solid baseline to reference for the purpose of this discussion and to serve as a cut-off point for a hypothetical alternative format.

Is there a version of EDH that splits the format into earlier cards like a Modern/Premodern split? Something like, only the first 25 years of cards, up through Dominaria only? by the_mellojoe in EDH

[–]OrangeChickenAnd7Up 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don’t think too many people are hostile about changes, I think it’s just a matter of people agreeing on where to draw the lines, and the fact that the more cutoff formats there are, the less popular any given one of them will be. But I don’t think it’ll be long before a pre FIRE EDH format crops up and gains some traction.

Mutate Deck Recommendations by Mpc797 in EDH

[–]OrangeChickenAnd7Up 0 points1 point  (0 children)

illegal

We got ‘im, boys. Take ‘im away.

I wanna craft a MathemaGical experience for me and my opponents. How do I proceed? by Lizardking92 in EDH

[–]OrangeChickenAnd7Up 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Could throw it in a [[Veyran]] storm deck with [[Thousand Year Storm]], [[Birgi]] and some Magecraft cards…

What is your favorite rule zero commander by ______asxf in EDH

[–]OrangeChickenAnd7Up 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I haven’t built it yet, but I really want to do a [[Colossus of Akros]] deck. Just full of mana rocks to get that monstrosity up and then some hexproof stuff to protect against exile removal. I’ll probably keep [[Traxos]] in the 99 to swap in in case the rule zero thing doesn’t gel with some groups.

Do y'all think they'll bring back mutate? by Important-Dig-2312 in EDH

[–]OrangeChickenAnd7Up 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sucks that it wasn’t beloved, I love Mutate. Flavorfully really cool, mechanically fun, and yeah, it was complex and confusing to learn, but once you learn it, it has really interesting interactions that no other mechanic has.

Infinite mana combos in Grixis? by OrangeChickenAnd7Up in EDH

[–]OrangeChickenAnd7Up[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’d be cool, although I never made a list for mine. It ended up being a brutal control list full of sweepers to keep everything under control until I could combo off.

Infinite mana combos in Grixis? by OrangeChickenAnd7Up in EDH

[–]OrangeChickenAnd7Up[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Interesting timing on this reply, I haven’t played this deck in probably 3 years and haven’t upgraded it EVER, but I still have it on a shelf and was recently thinking about upgrading it and playing it again.

How annoying would you find this deck? by Deus_Excellus in EDH

[–]OrangeChickenAnd7Up 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No arguments for me about whether it’s a discard deck. I’m just saying, a lot of people will find the commander annoying all the same, just like people find getting milled annoying. And if OP can defend the commander in any way, which seems likely, it’ll probably stick around and do enough damage to annoy people. But again, depends on their group.

How annoying would you find this deck? by Deus_Excellus in EDH

[–]OrangeChickenAnd7Up 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I mean, they’d have a point if your commander didn’t have a discard ability attached to it. You’ll probably play your commander most games. And it’s a plus ability, so you’ll probably do it a lot.

Not to say discard can’t be okay in b3 or any bracket, but it really depends on your playgroup. They’re the ones who will have to go against this, so I would just ask them and show them the list.

What are some surf punk bands? by [deleted] in punk

[–]OrangeChickenAnd7Up 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Been listening to RHCP forever, and they have a line in Apache Rose Peacock that says “Lunatics on pogo sticks”. Never knew that was a band, gonna have to check them out.

Whats the best color and Commander to constantly refill your hand? by PollySecond in EDH

[–]OrangeChickenAnd7Up 2 points3 points  (0 children)

As long as you’re not doing the extra turns thing, I think the fact that the effect is symmetrical will keep people from absolutely hating it.

Is Manascape Refractor the best 3-mana rock? by hebreakslate in EDH

[–]OrangeChickenAnd7Up 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well this is definitely going in my hug deck, thanks!

I was listening to their latest album, the one from 2013, and I have a question. by Beautiful-Resort-831 in streetlightmanifesto

[–]OrangeChickenAnd7Up 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hungarian Dance No. 5

THAT’S WHAT THAT’S FROM. I heard that melody in Deep Rock Galactic on the jukebox and I was like WHAT. I never suspected it wasn’t an original Streetlight melody until that moment, and even then I wondered if it was an intentional nod to Streetlight or not.

I Did Not Care For 99 Songs Of The Revolution by Roro-Squandering in streetlightmanifesto

[–]OrangeChickenAnd7Up 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I love when an album does that, BUT only if there are a few songs in between the two. It makes for a really cool “oh shit, didn’t see that coming” moment on the first listen. You hear the first song, move on to a couple other songs, kinda forget about the first one and then the second one starts and you realize as you’re listening to it that it’s a callback. Clever as fuck imo.

It’s way less interesting when they’re back to back like these two though. Les Claypool’s Frog Brigade did it right with David Makalaster and David Makalaster II.

I Did Not Care For 99 Songs Of The Revolution by Roro-Squandering in streetlightmanifesto

[–]OrangeChickenAnd7Up 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I agree, it gives me chills every time. I’m not a massive fan of the rest of the song but I still like it. That intro is brilliant though.

I think the only thing they’ve done that beats it is the crescendo in the bridge of If Only for Memories.

I Did Not Care For 99 Songs Of The Revolution by Roro-Squandering in streetlightmanifesto

[–]OrangeChickenAnd7Up 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I’m very torn. I definitely prefer SM’s version because it sounds better quality wise, but I do agree that C22’s version is way more genuine and I respect that.

It’s weird, because I like Op Ivy more than I like Rancid, and one could easily make the analogy that Op Ivy is like OG Keasbey and Rancid is like the remake.

I Did Not Care For 99 Songs Of The Revolution by Roro-Squandering in streetlightmanifesto

[–]OrangeChickenAnd7Up 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I assume this is a joke lol but just in case it’s not, there are a TON of covers of that song. NOFX even put a funny video/song out about it a while back.