CommanderCast S7E4 – Help My Brother Out

September 3, 2012

This entry is part 3 of 14 in the series Podcast Season 7

Posted by ANDY aka GHoooSTS
This week on CommanderCast we’re joined by a unique guest: Eric, the administrator of the service PucaTrade. Why does this matter? Well, we’ve never had a guest on the show that I can recall who is here because they provide an actual service to the audience. I guess you could argue that CommanderCast itself is a service but whatever. Eric runs his own site with no advertising or any other such gibberish, despite absorbing a (presumably) considerable cost up front for it. This is unto itself is admirable. PucaTrade itself is something that I think is uniquely beneficial to the Commander crowd, because we don’t want to spend a bunch of time pissing around trying to trade for individual cards from Mirage (necessarily). But I’ll recommend you go and check the site out itself, or listen to the show. If you’re not sold after that, well, you never will be.

…regardless of Eric’s service, he’s also an experienced Commander player and was a much-appreciated guest. Also on deck with me for this week’s episode is long-time CommanderCast contributor Brionne, the author of Line in the Sand, and one other…

So, on top of that, it’s also totally important to note that this week marks the beginning of Gifts Given 2012. The means you can start picking up the new, super-duper swag shirts by ordering them from me and picking up an estimate on how much they’re going to cost. Every shirt includes a donation to charity and if you want, you can give extra monies to the charity too. You can even chalk up those donations to selfish ulterior motives, since they get you extra raffle tickets for our Super Secret Mystery Prizes.

Show notes and pertinent links below. Enjoy.


SHOW NOTES

00:00 to 04:26: Introduction: Hey guys it’s internet radio, how sweet is that

COMMUNITY SEGMENTS

04:40 to 19:31: Diversity Training: This week we’re discussing a topic suggested by Phil via e-mail; the number of colours we like to put into a deck and why. Phil sparks the topic with this little diddy:

“I find that I enjoy my bicolored decks more than my tricolored in general, from both a deck-building and gameplay perspective – they’re more consistent in mana but from a personal enjoyment point of view, I just find them easier to keep on theme. I’m not sure I really miss having that third mass of cards to choose from either, as it’s usually a tyrrany of choice – with that color’s pet cards quickly shoving out cards that would have made for a more unique and differentiated deck experience.”

So where do we all fall on the spectrum? Personally, I like two colours lately, but let’s be honest, nobody gives a shit what I think so let’s go to the panel for this one.

19:37 to 29:07: Community Spotlight: PucaTrade: Eric’s created a new way to trade cards online with his service PucaTrade.

29:19 to 50:50: Deck Stylists: At Eric’s request, we’re going to discuss the idea of ‘style’ as it pertains to the construction of deck building, card evaluation, and so on. How does our perspective influence the type of decks we build and how we play them? We also look at the process of self-analysis, learning from others, and paying attention to our own biases on cards and archetypes. What’s the value in stepping outside the boundaries we’re comfortable in? Why is important to understand your own likes and dislikes as it building decks goes?

STRATEGY SEGMENTS

51:01 to 1:06:42: Planeswalker Strategy: Listener Daniel asked me to discuss Planeswalkers, so here we are. While I think in a meta-sense Planeswalkers are one of the worst things ever to happen to Magic as a game, I certainly find them effective to have in-game on my side. There’s a lot of people out there who don’t think Planeswalkers are all that great in Commander, but I disagree. In this topic we discuss the way we view Planeswalkers in Commander and how the multiplayer environment influences their effectiveness.

TECHNOLOGY SEGMENTS

1:06:55 to 1:36:25: HELP MY BROTHER OUT: Brandon played Magic way back in the day. I’m not talking about some Shadowmoor shit. I’m referring to a guy who owns no cards printed after Mirage block.

Please leave any recommendations you can make to Brandon in the comments section so he can see them easily.

OUTTRO

1:36:37 to closing: Outtro: Thanks for listening!

CONTACT INFORMATION

  • Andy: E-Mail: CommanderCast(at)gmail(dot)com // Twitter: (at)CommanderCast
  • Brionne: E-Mail: snapplecoffee(at)gmail(dot)com // Twitter: (at)snapplecoffee
  • Eric: E-Mail: eric(at)pucatrade(dot)com // Twitter: (at)PucaTrade
  • Chris: E-Mail: lansdellicious(at)gmail(dot)com // Twitter: (at)lansdellicious
Series Navigation<< CommanderCast S7E2 – Macabre Waltz: The Nightmare Maker™CommanderCast S7E3 – Yambags >>
Posted by CommanderCast
Filed in CONTESTS, PODCASTS, Season 7 ·Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
13 Comments »
  • Mark

    Incidentally, a spell that specifically destroys planeswalkers got spoiled today. :P

    • Mark

      Oh, and ANOTHER card that was spoiled today sounds like the absolute king of Tim creatures: Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius.

      UR are strongly in theme with the pinging creatures thing. :D

  • http://www.facebook.com/CizzKid Corry Newton

    Hey how soon, will puca trade have foils available, because I mostly have foils

  • RTaaaa

    What was the 2 generals swtich/secondary general game type, I listened but can’t remember anymore can someone help where I can find the rules for this.

  • http://twitter.com/NewSpectrum Lyall Alfred
  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=21725844 Joe Scharphorn

    Andy mentioned that sometimes players should stop trying to build decks completely different from what they like, since they like certain archetypes for a reason. I partly agree with this. FOr instance, I’m not a big fan of traditional control decks, so aside from an accidental Grave Pact control combo in my Glissa, the Traitor deck, I’ve been unable to build a control deck that would both be decent and something I’d be willing to play. For some players, they could probably play essentially the same deck every time and have fun; after all, just switching the colors for your token swarm deck gives you Rhys and elves or Krenko with goblins. If you need slightly more of a change, there’s token overrun in Rhys and Krenko or token combo in Ghave. So, for some people, having all their decks be token decks is just fine. Others require drastic changes. That’s actually why I’ve pushed the control combo in my Glissa, the Traitor deck after I noticed it, because I wanted to differentiate it from my other two decks; despite Rafiq being Voltron and enchantment-themed, Glissa being artifact-themed, and Kaalia being ETB-themed, they all play very similarly in their “swing with big dudes” strategies. So I started building very different decks on tappedout.net, including the aforementioned control deck (Isperia, actually, inspired by Donovan’s deck), a Kaervek Group Slug deck, and a Zedruu Group Hug deck. This lead me to decide that my next deck, whenever I get the money for it (school will do that to you), will be Nin, the Pain Artist heading a Commander Owling Mine deck. Sure, attacking with big dudes is its secondary plan, but its primary one is dealing spell-based damage.

    Which leads me to my interesting choice of colors. Nin is a cool commander, but Owling Mine damage effects are Red and Black, so the deck really should be Blue/Black/Red. While my Rafiq and Glissa decks were chosen based on the commander, my Kaalia and Nin decks were based on colors: I wanted a Commander with Black and Red in it when I was choosing which precon to buy, so I chose Kaalia because she had those colors, and I don’t want my next deck to be another three-color one, so I chose Nin over, say, Mishra (and then chose Nin over Niv-Mizzet because I prefer having Niv-Mizzet be less accessible as part of the 99). So while I suggest choosing decks based on commanders – doing so supports building decks around that commander rather than good stuff in those colors – I also understand choosing a deck for its colors as a tool to force a different building style for yourself.

  • Brian

    Not even a mention of Tezzert the Seeker? He’s easily the best PW, or at the very least as good as Karn, Bolas, GPH. He is an auto-include in any of the artifact blue decks that are very, very good like Sharuum or Arcum. He either accelerates out more artifacts or Tinkers an artifact into play to finish off your Thoper-Sword combo or whatever silliness or his ultimate is guaranteed to one shot a player/table. Casting him with a Lotus and Dynamo in play feels freaking great. Definitely better than something like Ajani, Elspeth, or Garruk 1.0.

  • http://twitter.com/LuisBarba Deafbeats

    The thought just popped to me, Daybreak Ranger is a good Tim in RUG, 2 damage to flyers, and if it flips she goes bannanas on any creature.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/ExDPhoto David Strauss

    To add to the planeswalker segment, *note I’m catching up on CC because of being afk at work for ages, I’d add Chandra Ablaze as one of the most game shifting planeswalkers. Sure the -7 is hard to get to, but the +1 is some significant damage and the -2 is completely backbreaking to hand sculptors. Especially when you play Red/Blue mass card draw/Mill Nin The pain artist with no win condition except for mill.

  • http://www.facebook.com/CizzKid Corry Newton

    Quietus Spike, is so sick for the Mono Tim Deck.

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=581761807 Travis Miyashiro

      The Mono-Tim Deck is awesome. I have one myself. You’d be surprised at how much you get out of 17 cards that tap to deal 1 damage to target creature or player.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=50300736 Shawn Hudson

    Puca Trade’s awesome in theory. I hope it pans out. I’m sending out a Flooded Grove and Noble Hierarch today, paying it forward in hopes that some other folks out there send me some of my needs – most of which are commander cards. Thanks for creating it. It’s supremely helpful to someone like me who lives in a rural area and has no real playgroup to speak of.