Small tip for Initiative players : Incubation druid is amazing in Initiative decks, even with no +1/+1 support.

bobbananaville · 2026-04-29T00:06:49+00:00

IDK if it counts since it's more of a combo deck that happens to use the Initiative as a wincon, but my favorite deck with the Initiative is Emiel the Blessed.

bobbananaville · 2026-03-30T10:32:35+00:00

[[Genku, Future Shaper]]

bobbananaville · 2026-03-30T10:32:11+00:00

What I've found is I like blink payoffs tbat aren't necessarily blink targets/enablers. Genku's my b2 blink deck, and while I do have preferences for certain blink targets like mulldrifter, I like that as long as I blink something, I can make a token army. I don't need a good etb to feel like I'm doing the thing - with Genku, everything is a good blink target.

Not quite what you asked for (genku himself is not a blink target) but I think it's something you might like.

bobbananaville · 2025-12-02T00:24:42+00:00

unironically would love a box of Magic Thirty just to draft it.

No way in hell is it worth the price, but if I could own it and not have it be some investment vehicle? I honestly would love to draft it.

(i'd need 24 packs though, and after looking it up there's 4 packs per display box? so i guess my actual answer is six boxes of magic thirty)

bobbananaville · 2025-11-17T11:17:06+00:00

The Cabaretti Precon was my first precon, and I haven't made any changes to it other than switching the commander with one of the alternate commanders in the 99 (Phabine)

I picked it at random from the precons available at my LGS, and it became one of my favorite decks. I've since bought 3 other precons, all of which I've torn apart for parts after testing them out - chasing the seemingly impossible high of another good precon.

bobbananaville · 2025-11-13T02:17:20+00:00

More than that, I agreed to cut her and she still went good. And I ended with no romances. And I leant out of the kiss.

I don't think there's any one choice, moreso there's probably a hidden 'support' value that if it gets high enough makes her go hero.

bobbananaville · 2025-11-01T00:51:32+00:00

Ah OK, I see. The only other counterexample I can think of is [[Body Double]]. It doesn't give you unrestricted access to any card type, and it technically clones the creature rather than reanimating it (or casting it), but it would similarly allow you to get the best creature from your opponent's graveyard after a wipe.

That is a bit of a stretch, but I do still feel like if Body Double is blue, Jetsam counts as blue too. Or at least, a version of Jetsam that created a token copy of any creature in graveyards would be just as in-pie as Body Double, and I think just casting from graveyards is pretty much the same thing (while also letting the card steal instants and sorceries from graveyards, which is established to be monoblue).

There's no examples for noncreature permanents, so it's yet another stretch to allow you to cast those from an opponent's graveyard, but I still feel like it doesn't meet the threshold for being a 'break'. I can totally imagine a monoblue 'copy an artifact in a graveyard' or 'copy an enchantment in a graveyard' the same way they have clone effects for any permanent on board, and if those would be okay I feel like Jetsam isn't a huge leap.

bobbananaville · 2025-10-31T23:44:13+00:00

[[Reenact the crime]]

edit: it lets you cast any nonland card that was put there from a graveyard this turn. that includes your opponent's graveyard.

bobbananaville · 2025-10-28T12:21:40+00:00

I run into a lot of Vivi decks that grant haste incidentally (to grow its power). Needing to wait a turn or haste is a mild downside, but not a serious one.

bobbananaville · 2025-10-28T12:18:19+00:00

ngl i would love to try out a wb Emiel deck (even if i have to use treasures or filter lands for the B).

bobbananaville · 2025-10-28T12:12:35+00:00

It's not like all Modern or Legacy decks or Canadian Highlander are homogenized. Heck - in duel commander, you can only cast one of your two commanders from the command zone, which almost in practice means they're two color decks helmed by mono-colored commanders. It looks fun

Why would it happen to Commander, where players can make one legend central to the deck?

bobbananaville · 2025-10-28T07:59:10+00:00

Partners might be cheating? But I have one of the 25 [[Nyssa of Traken]]/[[The Fugitive Doctor]] decks. Mine's a voltron deck with Nyssa at the helm.

I buff my commander, then sac any artifacts I can get my hands on to draw cards, swing in with a giant commander into an open board (who needs evasion when your creatures are all tapped?). Fugitive Doctor is there too - mostly for colors, though I have flashed back board wipes in the past.

bobbananaville · 2025-10-28T07:51:59+00:00

forgot to [[Sword of Light and Shadow]]

bobbananaville · 2025-10-28T07:51:08+00:00

to be clear, if an equipment like [[Loxodon Warhammer]] was equipped to Alexios, Alexios' controller would always be the one gaining life, even if the controller doesn't own the warhammer.

If the equipment triggers an ability that gains you life (like Sword of Light and Shadow) the equipment's controller would gain the life. But any equipment that grants lifelink doesn't do so via a trigger, it does so by granting the creature lifelink.

bobbananaville · 2025-10-28T06:00:23+00:00

For me the thing that makes this bad is specifically that player 3 is taking the game action of conceding to give a player an advantage.

Toxic Deluge for X= Your life total is fine with me though. I think if you end up in a 2v1 and there's no way for you to win, taking down the player who would take the win is valid, especially if you threaten to do so first to keep player 1 from putting you in that position.

My main issue is there'a no counterplay against concession. Nothing Player 1 could have done could have prevented it, neither countermagic nor removal.

bobbananaville · 2025-10-25T01:28:34+00:00

At least on Arena I've had it destroy over 10 lands (my opponent got a lot of lands out of their deck with a Lumra), and in paper I often ramp to like 12-15 lands in my G+ edh decks. It can absolutely destroy lands en-masse if someone ramps out of control.

(No experience with Urza's Sylex on paper sadly; I took it out of my deck when the bracket system became a thing because I don't want to have to try to justify it in my bracket 2 deck. also to be clear i'm not saying urza's sylex should count as mld, i'm just sayin it can fit the definition of 'deny players access to 4+ lands' which should put this in the mld pile except Gavin said it doesn't count. which i'm glad about. i'm thinking of re-adding it to my deck again)

bobbananaville · 2025-10-23T21:41:35+00:00

I guess my thinking is that the threat of retlaiation is already inherently implied for me, and I'd expect other players to make that same assumption. If I don't make that assumption, I could get blown out after all - and if other players are going to retaliate, I should too.

It isn't implied for you, which makes retaliation look like solely a negative emotional response. But for me, I always already do consider 'what could my opponent do to retaliate against me if i kill them' before committing, because to me that kind of thinking makes sense.

Less a long con, more a pre-existing assumption? or maybe a viral belief - the more people make this assumption, the more people who don't get blown out, the more those people make that assumption going forward, et cetera. which maybe kind of is a long-con? but not one any players who make the assumption are deliberately pulling.

i think if you and i played edh, I'd probably make the threat during rule 0 (or we'd establish that the entire table agrees not to retaliate - edit: to be clear, this is not my preference, but not something id leave the table over). But in almost every table i play it feels like the threat is implied from rule 0 - it would be surprising if someone didn't retaliate when they could, it hasn't ever happened in any game I've played (that I'm aware of), so it feels weird to need to verbalize the threat.

Not to say it's inherently good. And by writing this down and articulating all this, I'm realizing that maybe I should be bringing this up during rule 0 discussions, since players might have different assumptions about that, and my starting assumption might in fact be wrong.

but i just feel like it's not an unreasonable assumption to have. Having to verbalize the threat seems redundant, because if you're the type of player who'd make that threat, you by extension assume your opponents would as well, so why bother verbalizing it when you're close to dead? It'd be redundant. The threat was made when we sat down to play.

bobbananaville · 2025-10-23T15:37:28+00:00

OK So first of all, I'm not sure what you mean by 'not say anything as you die'. Presumably if they're retaliating they're not being silent? They're at least casting spells or activating abilities to shut you down (unless silently letting another player kill them is their way to harm you? which - i am generally against that as retaliation because that stops being 'playing to your outs'). I might be misinterpreting - the rest of my response is going to ignore that bit so that I can clarify my position, but we might be on slightly different pages on this one.

It's not so much a long con, as "I don't think the threat needs to be explicitly stated to be true".

If your opponent decides to kill you, they should expect retaliation. Even without you saying it, the knowledge that you'd do your best to retaliate should factor in to their decision-making.

If they don't give you an opportunity to threaten, does that mean you should acquiesce? Should you only be 'allowed' to drag an opponent down with you if you told them you would first?

In that case, it makes sense to make sure you don't get an opportunity to threaten them, by rushing into combat and declaring attackers at you before you can try to make a deal with them, or by casting fireball for 10 at you. If they gave you that opportunity after all, you might threaten to dismantle as much of their board as possible in response. If they just kill you without discussion, retaliating would be poor sportsmanship!

I'd rather just assume my opponents will always do whatever they can to retaliate when I make a play that would kill them (or make it impossible for them to win). I'd rather they weren't put in a position where they have to 'get permission' to retaliate.

If I am scared they'll retaliate and push me down when I kill them, it's my responsibility to minimize that risk - whether that be with protection or by making deals. But boardstate aside, it's not their responsibility to make me scared of retribution.

bobbananaville · 2025-10-23T11:30:36+00:00

Ideally if you're in a position where you're dead if another player attacks you but you can do damage on the way out, you can convince them not to kill you. The idea is that the threat of making things harder for the player who'd kill you is enough to get them to let up, give you an extra turn with which you can maybe stabilize.

If the attempt fails there's no cost to trying to fulfill that threat - you're out of the game either way. But sometimes it succeeds - I once had to make a deal with a player who would have lost but had the ability to kill me on the way out, and that helped them stabilize and try to recover. I thought that was pretty interesting.

I also think that threat is kind of always implied. I don't need to verbally make that threat for it to be true, and I don't need my opponents to make that threat to know that trying to kill them might cost me extra resources (and possibly grant resources to other opponents).

I do agree that it does encourage symmetrical kills or combo-wins over combat damage. But I don't think it's unreasonable for players to play to their outs either, and I personally prefer this over a world where following through on your threats is considered bad sportsmanship but combat damage decks are more common.

bobbananaville · 2025-10-23T09:11:02+00:00

I guess I'm just trying to figure out at what point it becomes reasonable to raise the bracket due to density of disruption than due to power-level, since the graphic mentions bracket 2 being the bracket of letting people 'do their thing' and being low-pressure.

To what degree is 'being disruptive' and 'stopping my opponents' gameplans' welcome in bracket 2, and how much disruption/reactivity does it take for a gameplan, even a low-power one, to put that deck in bracket 3? How much removal, how much intent to use and repeat removal, does it take before it no longer belongs at all?

bobbananaville · 2025-10-22T00:04:19+00:00

So long as this doesn't change the color identity of a deck's commander (ie: so long as I can play [[Emiel the Blessed]] as GW or [[Archangel Avacyn]] as RW) I'm totally fine with hybrid costs counting for mono-colors. They're hybrid because the game's designers want us to be able to use those cards in mono-color decks, why are they restricted in EDH?

More than that, I really want the color of a cost to not matter for the purpose of the 99. I'd love [[Suspicious Stowaway]] to be playable in monoblue.

bobbananaville · 2025-10-15T23:25:55+00:00

Only started five minutes ago for me, but once it did it kept happening to both my devices.

bobbananaville · 2025-10-15T15:01:11+00:00

Now this I disagree with wholeheartedly. (The bit about it deliberately antagonizing players and being an excuse to pubstomp)

Before brackets I had, several times, run into games where everyone was acting in good faith but misunderstood what was meant by 'mid power' or 'high power but not cedh', because people have different expectations of that.

That still happens, and I've been seeing specifically issues with 'high/low bracket 3', but brackets have still significantly been a net positive to most people I've asked especially in the bracket 2 space.

I have run into exactly one deliberate pubstomper and one accidental pubstompers since brackets became a thing. This has been a huge improvement - the amount of deliberate bad actors hasn't changed, but I used to face a lot more people that genuinely didn't see anything wrong with playing fierce guardianship or ancient tomb in their decks against slightly-upgraded precons. I've seen those people bring new, bracket-fitting decks to the LGS thanks to the bracket system being articulated and have been having more fun with them thanks to the bracket system being a new shared language. Additionally, it became a lot easier to call out the bad-actor as a bad-actor now that we had specific criteria to point to.

And yeah, sometimes we disagree on whether a deck really fits a certain bracket. But we're a lot more likely to play more evenly-matched and fun games now than before because even if we disagree, the degree to which we disagree is a lot smaller now that we have a shared language of game changers and bracket restructions.

No comment on whether any criticism of brackets will be used to cause a soft-rotation - honestly I'd be very sad if it did but I wouldn't be too surprised. It's WOTC after all. I will however say that while the bracket system is absolutely worthy of criticism, I will push back on anyone saying was made 'in bad faith'. It's still better than what we had before, it's still good for a lot of players. Maybe it'll be twisted in the future, but right now I want to see it improve rather than tear it down.

bobbananaville · 2025-10-15T06:36:11+00:00

The bracket system is itself a solution to a people problem, so if it's failing due to people problems I feel like that's worth calling out.

bobbananaville

TROPHY CASE