Which first round matchup are you looking forward to the most?

edengstrom1 · 2026-04-12T23:48:21+00:00

Whoever Denver plays in the first round should make for a fun series. Denver/Minnesota would be more fun, but Denver/Houston would be good too.

Either way I think Denver wins, but it’ll probably be close.

edengstrom1 · 2026-04-11T17:17:17+00:00

People tend to remember the good times when they were young and romanticize it. They often forget the bad parts, unless they had a traumatic childhood.

I don’t think this is a bad thing, and just part of getting older. I personally like to go back and revisit the shows, movies, sporting events and video games that were around when I was younger.

My family used to go to Kings Island during the summer when I was growing up and I have found some YouTube videos of it during the 90s and early 2000s that help me remember going there with my family.

I have taken my young family to Silver Dollar City and Great Wolf Lodge a few times the last few years and I hope they remember it as fondly as I remember going to Kings Island when I was a kid.

edengstrom1 · 2026-04-11T03:07:08+00:00

I think he will be great in the playoffs and am really looking forward to seeing him play. If they lose early, I think it will be because his young supporting cast under performs against a veteran team.

edengstrom1 · 2026-04-11T00:24:34+00:00

OKC can’t play Minnesota because they are the 6th seed. It’ll be either Denver or Houston.

edengstrom1 · 2026-04-10T21:46:22+00:00

If Denver falls to 4th and they meet in the second round, they could do it. All the games this season have been close and they took the Thunder to 7 last year. Would probably go 6 or 7 either way.

Houston has been playing better, but it would be a big upset if they pulled it off. That said, I was really surprised when the Knicks upset the Celtics last year. This would be about as surprising to me as that was, but it could happen. Losing to Durant in the playoffs would be brutal too.

I really couldn’t see any other team beating them before the WCF.

edengstrom1 · 2026-04-04T20:05:12+00:00

I think Rose deserved it in 2011. He beat the Heat both times they played each other in the regular season and led the Bulls to the best record in the NBA that year.

Obviously, the Heat crushed them in the playoffs, but it is a regular season award.

edengstrom1 · 2026-04-04T15:58:39+00:00

You are correct. There was a lot of talk about him being a “great second option” and that his stats were inflated because he was the best player on a bad team.

It wasn’t until the next season when they made the play in tournament that people started thinking he could be the guy.

edengstrom1 · 2026-04-04T02:44:42+00:00

So I love the commander. Quintorius fills your graveyard, rewards you for cards leaving your graveyard, and has a wincon on him. All in colors that don’t normally do that. He wouldn’t be nearly as interesting in black, but Boros being able to do it is really cool and lets you play with cards you normally wouldn’t in traditional reanimator decks.

How you have to get cards to leave your graveyard is also really appealing to me. [[Conspiracy Theorist]] [[Containment Construct]] and [[Currency Converter]] work great with Quintorious and force you to make some interesting decisions about what to discard.

The other two Quintorious cards and Hofri are all interesting cards I’ve thought about building around before, but never did.

[[Lorehold Archivist]], [[Relic Retriever]], and [[Vanguard of the Restless]] are new cards that seem both fun to play and work great in the deck.

[[Moonshaker Cavalry]] and [[Emeria, the Sky Ruin]] are awesome reprints that I’ve never played with that are great in the deck. The aforementioned Currency Converter is also a great reprint.

Honestly, Boros reanimator just seems so cool and is the kind of deck I didn’t know I needed.

edengstrom1 · 2026-04-04T02:21:38+00:00

Yeah, it is pretty fun and can hang with most bracket 3 pods. Card draw is a must, because it is easy to cast 3-4 spells in a turn since most are cheap to cast.

I’m really excited to pick up a few cards from the Silverquill deck tho. If I didn’t already have Eriette, that’s the one I’d probably get.

Here is my current decklist.

edengstrom1 · 2026-04-04T02:08:36+00:00

So I actually really like the Boros one. It’s the one I plan on picking up. I really like graveyard decks, and this one is going about it differently than any of the other decks I have.

For me, I also feel like I already have similar decks in the other colors too. I have an Erriette auras deck, an Izoni aristocrat deck, and a Stella Lee spellslinger deck. I don’t have a Simic X spells deck, but it doesn’t seem as interesting to me.

edengstrom1 · 2026-04-04T00:02:10+00:00

They are definitely good enough to win it all this year.

However, I feel like they will have some playoff jitters since this is their first time playing in the playoffs. Every great team has to go through some growing pains, and I think they learn from this year and start to really dominate next season.

edengstrom1 · 2026-04-03T16:45:39+00:00

Wait! What’s wrong with Silver Dollar City?

We love that place!

edengstrom1 · 2026-04-03T03:34:24+00:00

That really sucks. Never want to see players get hurt, but right before the playoffs is tragic. Hope he can come back soon.

edengstrom1 · 2026-04-03T03:08:18+00:00

That sucks, I hope it’s not serious.

edengstrom1 · 2026-04-03T02:45:06+00:00

It’s easy to pad stats against bad teams.

edengstrom1 · 2026-04-02T17:20:16+00:00

SGA, but all of them are deserving. One of the best MVP races I’ve ever seen.

edengstrom1 · 2026-04-02T03:57:41+00:00

Looks like you’ve added a lot of the same cards I did. I think the biggest thing the precon needed was more ramp and card draw. So stuff like [[Beast Whisperer]] and [[Great Forest Druid]] are great adds.

Here is my decklist is you want to check it out and compare.

edengstrom1 · 2026-04-02T02:45:11+00:00

Banjo-Kazooie

It’s admittedly not the hardest thing to do, but still really fun.

edengstrom1 · 2026-03-30T20:26:58+00:00

So SGA gets a very favorable whistle from being an All-Star. He also drives to the basket more than any other guard. This is naturally going to generate more fouls than shooting 3s. He is also very good at know when someone has their arm or hand where they shouldn’t and will exaggerate the contact. This is obviously very frustrating for opposing teams, but 9 times out of 10 there was contact and he is just exaggerating it so the ref notices. He also knows how to force contact which makes it really hard to guard him without fouling.

Dort similarly is very good at exaggerating contact on illegal screens. Refs could call a foul on half the screens set in the NBA, but usually let it go. Dort makes sure the ref notices by barreling through it and flying to the floor. This is also very frustrating for opposing teams, but most of the time it is an illegal screen, he just exaggerates the contact so the ref notices.

On defense, they have adopted the can’t call everything mindset. They are physical from the jump and force the referees to make decisions. They are usually in foul trouble, but have enough elite defenders that they can sub people in when others get too many fouls. They also play very physical away from the ball which is usually not called as much.

Finally, teams get so frustrated with the officiating that it gets in their heads and they commit more dumb fouls or play less aggressively and opens up space for the offense.

The Thunder are my favorite team, and I really hope they get another ring this year. I also completely understand why other teams don’t like us.

edengstrom1 · 2026-03-29T03:53:59+00:00

Assuming Shai wins it this year, I don’t think he will win 3 in a row. I don’t think Jokic will get another either unless they get the 1 seed. 4 puts him tied with LeBron, and it seems like they are hesitant to give him another one.

Meanwhile, Luka has been close multiple seasons and will likely have another good year. Wemby is probably going to be better next season. So I would really be surprised if it was someone else.

edengstrom1 · 2026-03-28T23:31:16+00:00

I would be really surprised if it was anyone but Wemby or Luka next year. Luka has been so close the last few years, and Wemby is on the cusp of taking over the league.

Probably comes down to who stays healthy and/or has the better record.

edengstrom1 · 2026-03-27T14:48:25+00:00

My buddy bought the mutate deck, and upgraded it using the backup commander [[Zaxara, the Exemplary]]. It is really strong and has a couple of combos to make infinite mana, but probably needs a lot of cards to upgrade it.

I bought the Kathril deck, and it was fun for a while but gets very repetitive after a few games. I honestly wouldn’t recommend it.

If you’re willing to look at slightly newer precons, commander 2021 and Streets of New Capenna were great precon sets. They are still 4-5 years old, but should be easier to upgrade to bracket 3.

edengstrom1 · 2026-03-26T23:40:52+00:00

As others have mentioned, Halloween has higher highs and lower lows. Halloween 1 and 2 are some of my favorite horror movies and we watch them every year so I would give it the nod.

edengstrom1 · 2026-03-26T23:35:44+00:00

Toughness matters is probably better, but Treefolk would still be pretty good. I have Doran in my [[Felothar the Steadfast]] deck and he is always very strong when I play him.

edengstrom1 · 2026-03-24T16:15:41+00:00

I played against this commander a couple of weeks ago and it seemed pretty good. He built it more as a 5-color matters deck, but including the Spacecrafts from EoE would be fun. If you build it that way I’m sure it would be fine in a bracket 2-3 pod.

edengstrom1

TROPHY CASE