Dana Roach

@danaroach.bsky.social

He/him | EDHRECast and CMDR Central | Writer @ http://EDHREC.com and http://commandersherald.com | Black/trans lives matter | His mom says he’s handsome.

One thing I do with decks is make every creature in the list fit the deck's theme in some way. For one it gives a deck character so I'm not just jamming Esper Sentinel into every white deck, etc. But frankly at this point with so many set coming out it just makes it easy to ignore cards.

I've been playing a lot of Competitive Brawl on Arena (it's fun) and it feels a whole like like where WotC design wants EDH to go; people smashing pre-defined, obvious lists where you're racing to play a game-ending bomb faster than your opponent can play their game-ending bomb.

One thing WotC EDH design has done well is understanding "slots". You can print a card like Erode because StP and Path already exist in those slots, and it's not an auto-include as a result. Almost every set gets a bomb 8-9 drop artifact creature, but they're all fighting each other for a slot.

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Last night with a Leyline of Anticipation and Storm of Saruman in play I had to flash in a Curiosity, then a Vanishing which was copied by Storm, drop them onto two attackers swinging for lethal, and phase them out to survive. Not exactly optimal removal, but any port in a storm.

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I know it wasn't intentional, but the RC naming a specific turn brackets shouldn't end before was inevitably going to end with a whole lot of players taking that as a target for which to end games, and that's been very, very bad in a lot of ways for EDH.

Someone asked me why I so obsessively upgrade/tweak my decks, and the answer beyond enjoying it? Because if I didn't, I never win a game playing commanders like Callaphe and Isperia against your recently-printed three drop that copies every spell you cast, draw a card when you cast it, has ward 3.

I commented for years on podcasts about how cards like Deadbridge Chant would be so much better if you didn't have to wait a turn for the trigger. How wrong I was. The current design template where you should get everything and get it immediately with zero risk or downside is terrible. Mea culpa.

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