S6E10 – Outdated and Boring

July 2, 2012

This entry is part 10 of 13 in the series Podcast Season 6

Posted by ANDY aka GHoooSTS
Well, we recorded this like a week before Griselbrand got banned so a lot of the bitching in the one segment doesn’t seem terribly current today. But that’s ok, because the rest of the episode should still be good. It’s like the ultimate too-slow news outlet: COMMANDERCAST. Just pretend things are in the state they were like four weeks ago and I’m sure you’ll be nodding with approval.

But aside from that segment, this episode contains two epic-sized joints. Make sure you’ve hit the washroom prior to listening (or listen in there, I don’t even give a shit [oh no sick pun]), because there’s so much information it’s possible you’ll have to jettison weight elsewhere to retain it. Myself, Donovan, Carlos and Scotty Mac deliver some club bangers this week. I’m referring to our Commander Profile on Child of Alara (again, a general everyone on the show has played extensively but me), where we look at it from all kinds of angles and builds, followed by an exhaustive hands-on review of Innistrad. By exhaustive, I mean it’s like 45 minutes. Which cards did we love, and which were stinkers? How about the new Legends? Which of the new cards can be called staples?

Show notes and pertinent links below. Enjoy.



SHOW NOTES

00:00 to 03:10: Introduction: INTERNET RADIO: THE FUTURE IS NOW

COMMUNITY SEGMENTS

03:34 to 24:29: Doucheology: Two new douchebags on deck this week. One might not make a whole lot of sense given the Griselbrand situation. Just pretend for ten nightmarish minutes that it never got banned and I guess the segment will make more sense.

  • Mono-Black Douchebag: According to Scott, if you play mono-black, you’re a douchebag because you play tutors and Griselbrand. This is the guy who is all like ‘no no don’t even worry guise my black deck is different, it has eight ways to get Cabal Coffers instead of ten’.
  • Delayed Combo Guy: I’ve gotten a bunch of mail and such about this guy lately: they guy who sits with a combo on the board, says ‘yo y’all could git kilt by me whenever but don’t worry, I don’t do it’ and then when they feel a bit of pressure immediately combo. They play with their food like a sadistic cat and make the game stretch on for a bunch of extra turns without just ending it. Who likes this guy? Nobody.

STRATEGY SEGMENTS

26:06 to 45:11: General Profile: Child of Alara: “I’m a big stupid baby and I blow up” ~ Child of Alara

We all know stupid babies need the most attention, so here we pay lots of heeds to the Child. If you like the idea of using a big stupid baby as your Commander, then hopefully this segment is illuminating. We examine using Child as a general in various builds, from the high-rollers only lands-based build to Donovan’s close-to-the-streets pauper build. What are you supposed to do about a Commander who just tramples over smaller creatures and then explodes? How do you break the symmetry? Advice from experienced players on all things Child of Alara in this segment.

TECHNOLOGY SEGMENTS

45:25 to 1:35:49: Innistrad Set Review: Holy shit this is a huge set review! We took our time releasing it to make sure we had a good handle on the set with actual play instead of basically giving you a hype preview that Wizards loves to get for free from most ‘reviews’. We’ve taken a few months of play and formulated our thoughts on the set in a multi-part examination.

Staples:

New Legends:

  • Geist of Saint Traft: Dick, but pretty powerful. Strong voltron mans. Can send the angel in a different direction to hurt somebody’s conventional damage.
  • Olivia Voldaren: Giant boner. Flavourful and pretty fun, without being too powerful. Requires some build-around-ness, and lots of mana.
  • Grimgrin, the Corpse-Born: Zombie champion, combo boss, and can be a bit of everything to everyone. Combo, aggro, tribal, whatever. Come at him bro! (didn’t work for Donovan)
    • Max’s million-dollar Surestrike Trident deck
  • Mikeus, the Lunarch: boring

Likes:

Cards We Hatin’:

OUTTRO

1:36:04 to closing: Outtro: Thanks for listening!

CONTACT INFORMATION

  • Andy: E-Mail: CommanderCast(at)gmail(dot)com // Twitter: (at)CommanderCast
  • Donovan: Contact via MTGS forums
  • Carlos: E-Mail: cag5383(at)gmail(dot)com // Twitter: (at)cag5383
  • Scott: E-Mail: mrscottymac(at)gmail(dot)com // Twitter: (at)captainredzone
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16 Comments »
  • Draconicgaul

    Wow, nice episode. So much to cover. Rooftop storm continues my love of conspiracy combos in progenitus but otherwise I agree on it being a crap card. I prefer to assume you all realise that child of alara is very griefer/douche deck. Not to hate on it too much it though. Its just to griefer for me whether im playing it or against it. I know black decks can and often do have a lot of stupid value griefer type card/combos but they don’t have too. I have 2 mono black edh decks, geth and maga, and they’re not nearly as oppressive as my two favorite decks can be. Those being skullbriar and animar. One point I wanted to bring up is that some things can used in a degenerate fashion but are mostly there as pinpoint removal or other less degenerate combos but can still, if we so choose, combine with other things to be very douche. For example ulamog in animar. I can use it as a, relatively, fair way to elimate things like cabal coffers or it can combine with cloudstone curio and crimson kobolds to wipe your board. Or gravecrawler and phyrexian altar with gravepact? or with door of destinies? Seems different but that could just be me. As to if you don’t want to do it why put in your deck? Well maybe I just want the option but don’t always want the game to go that way. Ulamog for example is one the best answers available to permanent based problems with animar. Doesn’t mean I want o take the entire board with it but it is nice to know I could in theory. I’m starting to ramble so I’ll try to wrap this up. One last thing. While black is one of the best colors in edh there is another one to fear as well. Its not blue. Not on its own at least. Yes I know those decks do exist but as color I think green is much worse. It has tutors, for land and creatures, it has ramp, and it has ways to abuse the ramp. So when the monoblack player says hey at least im not playing blue he may be right. However the mono green or green black player is potentially just as bad if not worse. Oh and child alara to me at least ranks right up there with joira and the like so I will my best to annilate said player probably with skullbriar.

  • thaumaturge

    Ha ha, Moldgraf Monstrosity is fuckin’ awesome. You’re just not doing it right.

    • KrosanZero

      Except the part where “at random” effects are generally terrible, unless
      you’re playing something like Gamble, in which case you’ve spent so
      little mana to do something so powerful it probably doesn’t matter
      anyway. If you have 4 cards in hand and you tutor for your Kiki-Jiki
      with a Zealous Conscripts out, one mana and a 75% chance to win the game
      is a pretty good deal, if no one stops you.

      The problem with Monstrosity is that in addition to seven mana, you need
      to have a sac outlet to have control of the effect. Ok, that’s not
      that hard…but even then you don’t have real control over the effect
      unless you have out some like, idk, Scavenging Ooze so you can
      manipulate your graveyard. At which point you’re in the tank 7+ mana, a
      sac outlet and you’re selectively exiling your graveyard. You better
      be getting back two pretty kickin’ creatures or that’s just not worth
      it. Unless your meta is packed to the brim with graveyard strategies,
      it’s probably just better to run Miren or High Market and Genesis.
      There’s a reason those cards are $5+.

  • http://www.facebook.com/paul.pelly Paul Pelly

    On the topic of “delayed combo douche”, I used to run a Niv Mizzet deck, and more often than not I could combo out pretty early in the game, often times accidentally. So i would just say to the table “well guys, i win, but i’m going to drop out so you all can finish the game without my insanity.”

    • http://twitter.com/GUDoug Judson Gruber

      What exactly is the point of even playing then?

    • KrosanZero

      If someone is playing combo and they have the ability to win with their combo, they need to try to win. There’s no reason not to; as Andy says, you put those combos in your deck for a reason and that reason is to win with them. The game needs to end and other players at the table need to pack answer to combo, or combo out themselves, or be doing something that is just as good. Niv-Mizzet + Curiosity isn’t even that good of a combo when you start playing at a higher level; any spot removal will do. Even green can stop it with various under-rated anti-air creature destruction like Crushing Vines, or a well placed Krosan Grip. Or you can run Witchbane Orb/Leyline of Sanctity and just laugh. Or some kind of Jester’s Cap effect. Or you know, a counterspell.

      The point is, there are plenty of answers to combo and in a good meta, players are equipped to deal with it. It’s more worthwhile to just go the route of extreme resiliency than combo, because in the latter, the table will just gang-bang you every time you sit down. If your deck is a cockroach, you can much more easily have a chance of realistically winning the game instead of failing to combo out and realizing you’ve pretty much just bent yourself over for everyone to have their way with you.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Cassidy-Silver/20003013 Cassidy Silver

    Haha, how you like Mirrormad Phantasm now, Andy?

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1163970094 Drew Crash Lindell

    I had someone do the whole delayed combo thing with the table with Triskelion, Scythe of the wretched, and Ashnod’s Alter. It was dumb.

  • fjook

    I hate planeswalkers

  • http://www.facebook.com/george.keagle George Keagle

    Faithless Looting setting the bar for Red draw/filtering.

    • http://www.facebook.com/george.keagle George Keagle

      Didn’t get that far in the show yet. Thanks for the shout out? Super excited for Faithless Looting if you can’t tell.

  • http://www.facebook.com/oatestwder Thomas Oates

    what was the first douchebag in the douchology segment? that wasn’t a douche, that was just hating on a deck type? it was just a bitch session on monoblack decks, not down with that, at least not as part of douchology.

    • GHoooSTS

      You could probably hear that I didn’t understand what was going on during that segment really either. I think “mono-black players who think their deck is socially acceptable but it isn’t”… maybe? I don’t know. It was Scott’s thing.

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  • agentofbolas

    The actual deck list portion of the child of alara articles in the quiet speculation links appear to be broken. Are those deck lists posted anywhere else?