Decks vs the Data: Lessons from Dana's Decks | EDHRECast 249

[Music] thank you hello and welcome to the edhretcast my name is Joey Schultz and I'm joined as always by my fantastic co-hosts up first every time he sees a creature with the toxic keyword he can't help but start singing Britney Spears it's Matt Morgan so it is a well-known fact Joey that if you run in front of a moving car you're gonna get pretty tired but it is not as well known that if you run behind the moving car all you'll get is exhausted oh wow tired indeed a bit too many of the time wait too tired um and very working on some on several levels here Matt I I I'm trying to just make my jokes a little more complex all I want is to be adored [Laughter] we're gonna truck along to our next introduction okay I was hoping you could recover from that one oh that was that was fantastic all right up next his sword of Forge and Frontier is more like a sort of Forge in Frontier that's Dana Roach uh why can't Pirates play Magic uh why is that are you gonna tell me there's no way to deal the cards when you're standing on the deck um I don't know Dana that was a pretty patchy joke I think I think it was or inspiring but we could just Sail Away now I want to know what it means to swab the poop deck when you're playing Magic I don't okay so we're gonna go on this is the edhretcast oh no this is this sure is an introduction EDH rack is the best deck building resource on the web for the commander format compiling data from deck lists all over the Internet to provide helpful recommendations for new Commander X and here on the podcast we like to give all that data a little more context uh Dana I think you can maybe be trusted with this question what are we talking about in this week's episode well just like last week where we talked about Matt's favorite topic Matt this was my favorite topic this week which is me and my decks oh goodness you mean you and your murder boards yes there we go this is true Dana does have a pretty uh a complicated version of how he puts decks together it's a very intricate and almost conspiratorial type of process but yeah we're going to do a bit of a dive into one of your commander decks and see what it says about you the way that it differs from the data and learn what we can like the different lessons from the journey that you went on through building it and that should be a pretty fun introspective uh kind of thing to go through I think but before we get into talking about you Dana we got a couple of sponsors and a couple of fun folks that we want to shout out the first one I shout out and thank Chase also known as Mana curbs for they're helping editing the show and you can find them on Twitter at Mana curves we're ecstatic to tell you that edhrek has also partnered with coalesce apparel and design coalesce has an amazing line of magic inspired apparel and if you've ever wanted edhrek shirts or hoodies you can now go browse the EDH Rec collection head to coalesce and use code EDH Rec for 10 percent sent off your order that's code edhrec and if you'd like to support the show you can do so by liking and subscribing on YouTube subscribing on your local podcast app or by going to patreon.com edhretcast where you have patreon tiers of all sorts of levels whether you want to see all of our historic challenges stats picks you want to see the episodes a day early there's all that and more over at patreon.com edhretcast including the coveted weekly shout out to one of our patrons who just went to that site and signed up so this week Tim Collings we're calling out your name because you are the supporter that we're calling out calling me maybe Matt I think you found your calling in life which I did were the top ridiculous jokes Tim Collins thank you so much the jokes right themselves but thank you Tim for all the support we definitely appreciate it all right so let's let's get into our topic here guys so Dana we're doing a bit of a a depth Tech on one of your commander decks and we'll see what it says about you the ways that it differs from the data on Eda Trek what lessons we can learn about how you built it and all of that but first we got to know what the deck is why you built it how does it work what is the commander that you're going to introduce us to here in this episode so the deck we're looking at is my Arden Intrepid archaeologist and SEO reward-wing familiar uh equipment Voltron deck it's at this point about two years old I think um and I'm pretty happy with it I think I've made a significant amount of changes over the course of those two years obviously I still add cards when new sets come out but I'm pretty happy with how it plays um and it's pretty effective for being something you don't see very often which is an azarious equipment deck very much so let's go through the exact wording on those commanders too real quick sure so Arden um is two in white for a core Scout 2-2 at the beginning of combat on your turn you may attach any number of auras and Equipment you control to Target permanent or player um Arden has partner and scr is just a 1-3 flying bird um spells your opponent's control that Target one or more commanders you control costs three more to cast so it's not truly Ward because it only affects spells but it does make it more difficult for people to remove both of my commanders yeah think we're probably all pretty familiar with Arden as the commander I think that we see it a lot and especially like any boros equipment decks out there but the actual combination here of Arden plus essior that combination only has 278 decks according to edhrek of which you are one member um so Dana once again we are seeing that you tend to find Decks that don't see as much play in a lot of other places you have have found your way into combinations that are a little bit more off the wall compared to the more mainstream stuff that I like to build and I am very interested to see why you've gone with this color combination and what are the things you learned from doing it uh especially because as you said yeah it is by the Numbers a little bit more rare than usual yeah I mean that's definitely something I intentionally did here um at some point years ago I picked up a couple of the original mirrored and swords so I had them sitting around and I had judge foils of a couple of them it's like I want to put those in some deck here at some point so I'll build an equipment Commander along the way but I I knew I didn't want to build a boros one there's a handful of different borrowers equipment options and I just felt like no matter what Commander you pick it's probably going to look like every other boros equipment deck so I I the best way I felt to make it play differently or and feel unique was to go with some different color combination the first thing I tried years ago was was taste the envoy of ghosts um in black and white but she was seven Mana like if I had enough time to get tasa out and suit her up she could punch through and it was fine but like once somebody board wiped and I'm casting nine and I have to re-equip stuff and and hope I have drawn like that pure steel powder or something there was just a lot of things that that didn't work and additionally taste has protection from creatures which I thought would be nice when it came to attacking people because I could I could consistently poke through and hit them regardless of blockers except for swords kind of wind up doing that if you've got a couple swords on a creature they probably have protection from some combination of things that very often make your creature unblockable particularly at once you've you know got seven Mana to get your screenshot in the first place you probably have enough equipment on it to punch through so then it felt like the keyword was kind of being wasted as well so I folded that deck after a couple months of testing it out and it was one of those things that in the back of my mind for a long period of time I was just like okay what would work what can I figure out and when we got Arden in that the the commander Legends partner set the fact that I compared that up with any color combination kind of it was something I knew I wanted to do so then it was just a matter of me like thinking about it until I eventually decided on zorius and and then s2r1 would be the obvious pairing well and one thing I want to point out Dana's you I think you've undersold this deck several times every time we've talked about it on the podcast before because you mentioned that you know yeah SEO are not quite ward 3 is basically hex proof for the first few stages of the game and this deck is so stinking resilient I I am always impressed with how well you're able to protect your board State throughout pretty much any stage of the game whether it's because Sur protects your commanders which the deck doesn't lean into quite a bit but even as you go on you're not playing a ton of counter spells but the the support cards around everything protect your your important pieces so stinking well and it's just it's always frustrating to play against [Laughter] yeah I'm not going to tell you that that was my plan from the get-go I mean I I was aware that the SEO ability was useful but I didn't go into it assuming that okay what I can do is I'll play this Commander I'll be able to play us here on turn two and I can drop Arden and turn three and that will keep them protected until I can get some equipment and turn four and start suiting them up with stuff that gives protection from colors that wasn't what my thought process was but that's how it worked out right it's like a deck and started playing it sure I realized oh I can be very aggro with this because SEO it does protect both himself and Arden and I get and then once I get equipment on on my commander then at that point when people are able to pay that word tax it becomes irrelevant because they have protection from multiple colors and since you're in blue you have counter spells which is the other amazing way that you can protect this stuff but like it's actually not even just counter spells that are doing this like you've also got access to like the deferies protection style stuff that's keeping you're like your stuff is so safe from removal that it's just like that that is kind of exactly what you want from a Voltron like you see a little one three in the air and you're like oh it's got evasion that's probably some something I should take note of but you have so many other things that are protecting you beyond the ward and Beyond the counter spells and Beyond even the TEF Pro like yeah Matt is absolutely right in saying how resilient this thing can be I kind of want to linger on something you just said there about like playing Sur on turn two and then Arden on turn three is that usually the play pattern or is it actually that Arden is more of a I play this late after I've gotten a couple of equipment in play like how does that Dynamic tend to unfold in terms of the Dex Tempo probably depends what I have in in hand for equipment so like if I only early on have one piece of equipment in the hand that I don't necessarily need to rush Arden out because I could just I can just equip up scr just with a hard cost and then focus on doing something else so like let's say I I only have one piece of equipment and a couple draw spells well then I'll leave Arden back and I'll just get scr suited up and then Castle straws spells to hopefully get a couple pieces of equipment then drop Arden and play the equipment and equip it all for free so it's just gonna it tends to depend what the opening hand is but almost every time I do want to get get scr out right away so so Dana what do you think is probably the biggest surprise so we this was a question that I really liked how you guys asked me this about my Raga Dragon deck last week so turn the question back on you when you play this deck what surprises people the most after the first few turns and then just over the course of the game what do you think people don't expect the most or don't expect the least however you want to phrase that question back to you um you mentioned the resilience for one um that's definitely part of it but I think the other thing would be how fast it can generate like killing a player amount of damage um on a 1-3 bird because sometimes the Voltron decks like sometimes the plan is to hit somebody for you know eight or nine damage three times um this deck tends to not really work that way um I I will spend a couple turns maybe jumping people for you know two or three damage and it doesn't look necessarily that scary and then I'll hit that inflection point where I've drawn a couple cards and then all of a sudden drop like three or four pieces of equipment with protection in hand that I can sit up with the commander and then just start like one-shotting people so it goes from not being very scary for a couple turns and to all of a sudden people like oh I we're just gonna die over the course of the next three turns uh the can co-sign yeah that's something I think people not only don't expect just because the deck always does it very quickly you tend to not expect that in azorious which is a color combination kind of known for struggling with wind conditions that aren't infinite combo wind conditions yeah so so seeing that like Commander damage combat damage thing coming from azorious deck tends to throw people off well and it shouldn't throw me off because my whole family plays this game with me and like my mom has two different azorious decks and one of them is winning with Commander damage another one is winning with a bunch of Flyers like I am used to being combat damaged by azorious and yours still surprises me with how much output it has and I think the fact of how cheap your commanders are is what plays into that like even if I do find a way to let's say wipe the board from your stuff your first Commander only cost you two Mana so it's only four to recast and your other Commander would only cost you five Mana to recast so like rebuilding is actually not even that much of a worry for you either and that is another thing that I know surprises me is how quickly you bounce back even when I think I finally got a moment to breathe I actually just super don't Arden just bounces around every single equipped cost by itself and you can do it all in one swoop so it's kind of like putting a pure steel paladin-esque effect into the command Zone which is so silly powerful because in a in an azorious where you're not ramping a whole lot either you're still able to skirt those Mana costs because Arden's ability is just that powerful which helps with the rebuilding process yeah and the other thing that Arden adds too especially about rebuilding is I'm running a handful of lands that very cheaply turn into creatures um so I think there's a blink moth Nexus in here and ink moth Nexus there's a you know mistress Factory um things that I can spend like one or two mana and turn them into a creature and where that's useful is after somebody board wipes so like someone casts a wrath of God or a day of judgment or whatever it is that I can't deal with well all our creatures die and then usually the assumption is there's a turn or so where you have before you have to worry about me casting a creature and then re-equipping it and before I can swing back at you but those creature lands let me skirt that I can come back to me and like even if our if if Arden is costing like seven or nine um which doesn't necessarily even happen that often I can just drop drop art in spend one Mana to turn that ink Nexus into a creature and then use Arden's ability to to throw you know 24 damage back onto worth of equipment back onto that creature and so I can take somebody out so not only does let me rebuild the the quote unquote correct way it lets me kind of cheat that sometimes and use those creature lands I I Really Wanna like that is it's so Dastardly and so cool so a thing that I wanted to bring up is that I compared your decklist against the average Arden and SE or decklist and you have 45 cards that are different from that average deck list and one of the biggest things that does make your deck unique is precisely what you just mentioned there is all of the self-animating creature lands that just come out of nowhere but are actually like probably your deck's other biggest secret weapon because yeah suddenly a blink moth Nexus that is wearing a couple of swords and an Inquisitor flail to double all the damage that it's gonna do and it has double strike and like all of that pump is just like oh oh yeah no I I shouldn't be afraid of Commander damage I should just be afraid right yeah yeah and particularly at the point in the game when that happens too people have lost a little bit of life so I'm like less reliant on Commander damage if I'm hitting you for you know 18 or 20 at that point in the game that's probably a kill anyway regardless better damage or not so this does make me wonder given all of those unique cards that are in the deck do you have any specific Pet cards that are different from the usual equipment D kind of stuff or the usual azorious stuff any pet cards that you just cannot help but run in this deck um Echo storm is one of those cards that yes almost always funny um I'm so happy you brought that one up sorry if you didn't I was going to because I love that card so much so when you cast this spell you copy it for each time you've cast your are Commander from the command Zone on this game and you can choose new targets for the copy and you create a token that's a copy of targeted artifact so five Mana almost every time I cast it it's just giving me three copies of something which is almost always some disgusting piece of equipment so the value on that is insane like the worst case scenario winds up being like three copies of whatever the best sword I have out is I now have Hammer like that just sounds amazing um and I think also the other one I would say at this point in time I don't think it's that big of a secret how good Shimmer dragon is um but in terms of Shimmer Dragon for those that don't know once you tap two artifacts to draw a card um and it has hex proof If you have four or more artifacts which I basically always do in the stack um so despite that everyone knows it's a great card for some reason I think it's like people forget that you can you can tap equipment and I have multiple things in the stack though let me just tap whatever sword SEO is wearing at the time to get some extra benefit that doesn't really make a difference at all so Shimmer dragons out and I'll you know attack and hit somebody and then tap all six pieces of equipment to draw three cards that always feels really good um in the summer early there's a couple things um stuff like reverse engineer that has improvise so I can I can tap three artifacts to basically make reverse engineer be a two Mana draw three because the artifacts I'm tapping are almost always equipment so be able to tap pieces of equipment is actually is is not only very effective it always feels like I'm like doing something that no one's ready for that's definitely interesting Dana although I I am kind of curious looking through your deck list which by the way everyone all of our decklists are in the show notes of every episode by the way if you wanted to check this one out for yourself I realized that we didn't actually state that earlier but it probably should have said it um but Dana in looking over your deck list I can't help but notice that you're not currently playing inspiring statuary which would also let you tap all of your equipments all of your artifacts for more Mana because of that improvisibility um is there a reason that you're not using that one given how much you like tapping all of those artifacts I do like doing a lot and that was in the deck Once Upon a Time the reason is that's firing statutory only works with non-artifact spells so this deck has has 30 artifact spells in it of my 11 creatures I think four of them are also artifacts and then there's a handful of them that like don't have any colorless Mana costs at all um you know pure steel Paladin dozen swords to plowshares doesn't Exile doesn't um a couple of the counter spells don't so it wound up being I can't remember the exact number but at one point in time when I counted it it was like it only actually was able to be used for like 19 of my spells or something in the deck versus if I just ran some Mana Rock in that slot I could use it for like you know 56 things or something um so when I had it very rarely did I find it actually was better than just a Mana Rock and there were enough times when I had it out and I couldn't actually use it for what I wanted to use it for so I just replaced it with Amanda rock this just happens to be a deck where the amount of artifacts I have makes it so it doesn't quite work yeah Dana I was also wondering about inspiring statuary but that makes a lot of sense hearing you talk that out and then looking at the deck list yeah there there's a couple cards that are nice like it helps you cast your Shimmer dragon and maybe an austere command sure like there are some good cards but that's literally every deck but then if you look at the typical card it's not yeah you're right it's maybe getting you a Mana or two every turn which that case you can just run a whole slew of other cards so that that is a interesting interesting explanation and appreciate that thought process but I do have a question for you so we we've talked a lot about what this deck is good at what it what it does well which is a lot of things but is there anything that the deck doesn't do well or does it have a particular weakness that you have had to kind of play around as you've been tuning the deck more and more so the the one I wasn't quite prepared for is because of the amount of treasure um people run these days I've run into multiple different copies of Titania's song which is a an old green enchantment that turns all artifacts into basically creatures that have the same same uh Power and toughness as their Mana value which people run to kill Treasures primarily because if your Treasures are zero zeros they're dead so it's I've seen it multiple times the anti-treasure attack it has the added effect of turning off equipment as well yeah um so I I've actually I think on a couple different occasions at least twice with this deck ran into someone who had a titanium a song out and if I can't equip stuff or I can't use my equipment because it doesn't have abilities and I I'm kind of dead in the water I have to be able to put equipment onto a creature and hit somebody that that's not something I can do I don't have like any backup plan that doesn't involve punching someone in the face that's yeah no no backup plan is a really important weakness to point out there like you are all in on the the equipment or yes making you win the game so all into the point where I have no I intentionally so have no enchantments in the stack it's a it's it's a deck that I have which is something I tend to do I like to have a deck that doesn't have a card type just because I it's something that I kind of find fun and this is this is the deck that has no enchantments in it at all so yeah I'm I'm very heavily leaning into that strategy intentionally so so that was something that I noticed and I was going to say this question for later on but since you brought it up was that intentional to not do any enchantments in the deck because I know that you have cards like nettlesis that can count out the enchantments that you have but also you only have Patrician scorn which is an enchantment board wipe it destroys all enchantments is there a reason why you haven't played more enchantment destruction because enchantments are very very powerful card type and you only really have heliad's intervention and generous gift as ways to get rid of them once they're on the board is that something you've considered playing around for a little bit more or is that just kind of what was the thought process there I guess is my question um yeah so Patrician scorn for those that don't know um if you play a white spell this turn you may play Patrician scorn without paying his Mana cost and it says destroy all enchantments including your own um so it's very frequently just a like free spell on my hand I will you know cast a source Supply shares to blow up I think I need to blow up and then I will just also drop petition scoring and blow up every enchantment and I have no enchantment so it doesn't affect me yeah it was a situation where I I found myself at one point down to just like three enchantments in the deck and one of which was regardless Aid that I actually then wasn't really using because I had Arden out so often it became redundant yeah and it gets around that yeah it's good to have redundant effects not saying you shouldn't but this was a case where the redundancy wasn't Ever Needed particularly because I had a couple other things like pure steel Paladin to let me get around costs so I only needed so many red and effects and that one felt like it was the easiest one to remove pure steel pattern also draws cards has a little extra utility I can put equipment on it if I need to swing in so like then I cut cigar and say it's all back on down to two enchantments that and at that point I'm like let's just make this be a deck with no enchantments because at that point I had an enchantress Deck with no artifacts so I just thought that would be kind of a cool parallel to that one to have my equipment deck then have no enchantments as well and then I've always wanted to put Patrician scorn in a deck and I so I'm like well there we go so I'll just pull all my enchantment the last two I have I'll put Patrician scorn in and and run from there sure um sure could I use maybe one or two rule spells probably but you always kind of can um and this deck does draw a ton of cards so it's a situation where despite the fact that I probably only have you know four or five different ways to end answer other people's enchantments I tend to see them to the point that I need to see them because I'm digging down deep enough yeah a lot of these blue equipment draw cards so like I was I was gonna say if we had a yearbook quote for each of us in the podcast status would be yeah this deck draws a lot of cards that's just that's just Dana's yearbook quote right there that's very very funny I I also like lingering on the nettlesist point though like that is an equipment that I can easily see some Domino deck building that's gone on here like nettlesis is just a really good equipment you get Buffs for every enchantment you're not playing those but also Buffs for every artifact that you have and that has wormed its way not only into the types of cards that you choose like in terms of which spells You'll Play but also your land base is Mega affected by the presence of just that one card I'm seeing a lot of artifact lands in this deck ancient Den the whole works like you have a lot of those things which will incidentally just happen to buff up some of those other like metal Sisty type of cards and I mean it does mean that your weakness again you will fold to that Titania song you will hold to Matt playing a bane of progress a vandal blast really wrecks your day my guy absolutely but those are really cool ways to find extra edges and I think for you it's probably just an excuse to not have to play as many basic lands because for some reason UA basic lands but all because there's still only eight in a two colored deck yeah you have a lot of utility lands here but the artifact lands make a whole lot of sense and it's all just because of single card like that's a big lesson for me to take away from this if I was wondering why what's with all the artifact lands there's one card that is an explanation for like five six seven eight of the slots that are in your land uh in your land base and that's an important distinction to to point out about decks like this yeah uh the other I mean I guess technically there is a Max opal in here too so it does help with things like hit Speedy affinity for Max Oppo and you know if I have four artifacts out for shimmer Dragon it's what gives it yeah um hex proof at that point there you go uh indomitable Archangel has a metal craft too so like there's a couple of things that that making sure I have three or four artifacts over that threshold helps with so it isn't necessary just for one card but yeah it's it's for like just three or four cards that's the only reason I have those those artifact lines in there for sure well Dana I I really appreciate all of those insights and I it's hard for me to challenge a lot of those thoughts but Matthew is not hard to challenge but at least for me is the stats and that's Joey's ability the Segway into our challenge stats segments this week Matthew Sarah Jessica Parker Morgan I I let me have you don't get to have you I I will not let you just have I I just this is this is the Eternal trade-off that I've made isn't it I got a little bit better at the dad jokes this year which means I've lost my ability to make Segways into different positive podcast listen we're a month into 2023 and you haven't gotten a segue yet and we're gonna keep it that way thanks let's challenge some stats I'm so excited thank you Matt there are a few other things specifically I want to dig into the cards that uh Dana isn't playing but we'll save that for part two we've gotten some groundwork here but we've got to pause to challenge those stats challenge that data on Eda track we'll take a break for that and then come back alrighty well I am going to start off the challenge the stats segment this week and specifically I want to look into a grixis commander a pretty new Commander ashnod the uncaring there is a card sort of non-bo here that I think is really worth considering especially given that the card I'm going to challenge here is a little bit expensive so it's kind of a rule situation that I want to make sure uh folks know if they're going to build this Commander astronaut the uncaring is that new five Mana grixis 1-4 death Dutch human artificer that says whenever you activate an ability of an artifact or creature that isn't a mana ability if one or more permanents were sacrificed to activate it you may copy that ability and you may choose new targets for the copy and I mean that's a really cool effect if you're sacrificing stuff you get to double up those effects I mean this is sacrificing things this is way up my alley and I can totally see the appeal there's a lot of just general aristocratsy stuff going on here there's also a couple of cards that are a bit more about the artifact recursion and manipulation and that's way fun like if you are using caldotha Forge Master you sacrifice stuff and you get multiple effects of cold water Forge master I totally see the appeal here this is kind of neat but there's the card Goblin Welder showing up in about a third of astronaut decks so far and that one is a little bit trickier and so I wanted to linger on it because it's about a 20 card and I want to make sure that if folks are going to put this into their astronaut decks they know the way that the rules work here Goblin Welder specifically does have a tap ability that will cause a sacrifice of an artifact but you gotta take very careful note of where the colon is placed in that ability because it doesn't have sacrifice as part of the activation cost that has a sacrifice as part of the resolution of the ability where it switches an artifact in play with an artifact in the graveyard so gob welder won't actually have that effect be doubled by ashnod because the sacrifice wasn't part of activating the ability it's part of the ability of resolving this chat just kind of a complicated thing and since Goblin Wilder is 20 bucks that is a rules number that I just want folks to be aware of if this is a commander that they are going to build if you're going to do some cool artifact graveyard stuff this could be a really good card but know that it will be different than a lot of the other sacrifices stuff that you're doing in that deck that was a whole bunch of stuff that's me with my challenge let's move it on to the next one the card I'm going to challenge her tonight is one that's in the deck we're actually discussing that's unexpectedly absent it's an instant speed spell x white white and it says put Target non-land permanent into its owner's Library just beneath the top X cards of that Library this card's been Ron for a few years and I ignored it for a long period of time um I think the X on it is distracting and that's why it's only in just over 6000 decks I think people look at it and think I don't want to have to spend like six minutes to bury a permanent down like four or five cards where they can't get to it um you don't have to do that what I found in my testing and I've liked it so much it's found its way into like three or four of my decks now um very often just putting the card on the top of someone's library is enough to number one deal with a problem that turn like if someone's trying to Alpha strike you with something you need to have gone just put it on the top of their library is oftentimes long enough to get rid of it to solve to solve the problem or solve them as a problem um you know maybe you need to bury it down one or two if you're if the game's really early but like oftentimes that's enough particularly given how often people search libraries in Commander I found really really often I can just do it for white white in response to someone cracking a fetch land or casting a Tudor spell and just bury it without having to like spend any Mana at all on the ax there's also some utility in the card that isn't really super obvious you can use it to stall at a top-a-deck tutor like even if somebody if there's something that you don't care about that much but somebody Vamp tutors you buy yourself a term by putting a card above the vamp tutor and I've even one time used it to buy a turn off an approach with a second son or someone casts an approach and then went to dig down to that approach and they were digging down the number of cards to get to it and I was able to delay that by a turn by putting one card above on top of their Library where the approach was so it's one of those cards that I think is very very good when you just look at the face value and it's even better when you kind of realize there's a lot of extra utility you could use with this card so it's in 6000 decks it's dirt cheap and it should be in more so Dana I am I am going to push back actually Dana so you said you can just bury the card in response to somebody doing a shuffle effect Barry is an old term for destroy Fair okay Fair Point hasn't been used since I believe beta but just so you know destroy and it can't be regenerated if it was a berry yeah there it is I believe technically yes yes well and also like unexpectedly absent is also unexpectedly mean just because like you blank their next draw step yeah like you will get exactly the thing that you had before you're not going to get anything new so even if you are going to replay something that's very impressive you will not have gotten anything new that will help you adapt to whatever the board looks like now a full round later and that's another kind of like secretly Insidious aspect of this card that is also worth noting I uh yeah I might I might give this one another look that's interesting yeah so I'm going to wrap this up then with our listener submitted uh challenge the stats this week uh and so Simeon Dickman sent us an email which you can do as well edhretcast gmail.com and they so I Simeon sent us this email and they pointed out two things that I love one is when they're challenging a card that is overplayed and two when it's a card that otherwise is fantastic and so believe it or not we're saying this week that the Reaver Cleaver is overplayed in certain commander deck so the Reaver Cleaver is fantastic card it's two in a red and the equipped creature gets plus one plus one and has this trample and whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player or Planeswalker you create that many treasure tokens this is a really good point by Sybian if you're playing a commander like Carn the betrayer uh slicer one of the new cards slicer hired muscle which also goes around the table you're giving opponents a chance to generate a huge Mana Advantage with the Reaver Cleaver on there currently in Karn the betrayer decks 41 of decks are playing this and that is too high for a commander that is very easily given around the table your opponents are still going to be able to generate all the Mana so if you're playing any commander that changes hands fairly often the Reaver Cleaver probably is not the equipment that you want to be slapping on there because it's just going to backfire more often the knot this is especially like the wording of Weaver Cleaver is the super important thing here because it gives the ability to the equipped creature rather than the equipment being the thing that generates the treasure and that's actually super different from a lot of other equipment that we usually see which would totally work like sort of the animist for example if you've got a sword of the animist on your card and you're passing it around to other people the sword still belongs to you and the sword has its own triggered ability rather than giving text to the creature that it's equipped to and there are plenty of the sword of cycle that have uh similar effects too where the trigger belongs to the sword which is still yours rather than a creature ability but the Reaver Cleaver is different in that regard and that definitely passed me by so I really appreciate this challenge to point that out because I mean I certainly didn't notice it and uh it'd be nice to not be blown out by my own Reaver Cleaver yeah I I would very much not like to give my opponent 10 Mana because I had a little bit of an oversight so this is this is a fantastic catch um I love challenges like this so very very good job this week Simeon fantastic okay fellas we're going back into our topic here looking at this Arden and seoor deck of Dana's and um Dana I don't know I'm kind of interested to talk about some specific cards that you do not play in this deck which have kind of caught my eye um specifically there are a lot of classic equipment that I can't help but notice are absent from your list and this could be a long list of equipment that you're not playing here but they are noteworthy uh bear with me everyone argentum armor big plus six destroys stuff I mean that's a really big classic one that Arden loves to equip you don't use fire Shrieker the double strike equipment uh Masterwork of Ingenuity the equipment that copies things a new thran power suit is a cool buff that's similar to a nettlesist effect the card Shadow spear even Swift boots these are all equipment that you are not using in your deck and knowing you and how meticulous you are about your decks I know that there's some red string theory going on about why these equipment have not made it into your list and I'm curious to hear I have a theory but I want to hear if I'm right so Dana go ahead sure so um first of all a Mana value is the fact where some of them argentum armor being one because I can equip stuff with with Arden I I found I was much better served playing multiple pieces of equipment that I could equip for free than I was playing one big one that I could equip for free it made it much easier for folks to solve a problem by deleting that one piece of equipment than it is if I have two or three out okay um and again because I'm drawing a lot of cards I oftentimes have the option to play two or three pieces of equipment and I have some interroclimation in the deck which lets me bring things back from a graveyard and it won't hit argentum armor yep so I just found efficiently cost that equipment was was way more useful to me than like a big home run hitter like argentum armor um I think I only have one piece of equipment in the entire deck that I can't hit with switch Reclamation and that is um an hourly better skull so like I I kept everything very lean intentionally the fire freak here was one of those situations where I ran into a couple of games where it didn't stack um the ability that you get from stuff like hell of our god of battle and that annoys me but I I I I find myself getting frustrated by by something that I draw in my hand and I oh I can't really use this because something else does the same thing um so I just found like I was better off running something else that punched somebody in the face I think I wound up putting in Imperial plight instead which you know doesn't give me double strike but like it's going to add five or six or eight or ten sometimes damage onto the swing as well so like it kind of does the same thing but it's gonna stack with halvar in a way fire Streaker didn't so that was the reason like fire Shrieker in particular didn't make the cut there so there's usually an answer for all the stuff Masterwork of Ingenuity there was one or two times where I had a piece of equipment out that like I didn't want to copy I'm like I just wish this was a piece of equipment that what that was doing something different than than copying you know if I have just Black Blade reforge on it doesn't do me any good so it's a personal thing where I tend to get a little bit frustrated by a piece of equipment that does that isn't almost always playable and usable every single time yeah Dana I I'm glad that my theory was right to looking at the deck there's several cards that mention having Mana value of three or less they have Kayla's reconstruction as well that three is kind of that magic number in the deck so I'm glad that my my Spidey Sense was going off and I was on the same page as you I like the Restriction because you do get a lot of flexibility with cards like that being able to get those important ones back and then yeah just dumping your hand there's a whole lot of value in doing that because you're skirting the Mana cost anyways so yeah getting around one big thing and instead doing a few other things there's a lot of wisdom to that and I really appreciate that another one too like talking about I I looking at our show notes Here one of the things Joey's asking what is dispatch oh oh yes which in this kind of deck winds up oftentimes being a better sort of Supply shares or path to Exile um but you know sometimes it isn't if I don't have enough pieces of better artifacts out that was a situation where I at some point I I just needed something that hit multiple targets more than I needed a third piece of creature removal so like that came out at some point for something like unacceptably absent or generous gift or something that was able to hit multiple targets so dispatch is fantastic in this kind of deck and that I absolutely can see a situation where I rotate it back in but at the point in time I just wanted something that had that it hit more different paths and I wanted something hyper efficient that only hit creatures this is interesting to me Dana I feel like the vibe I'm kind of getting from like as you describe these cards that you're not playing it I mean this in the best way buddy I promise uh I feel like the vibe I get from you a little bit here is that you have a bit of a you have failed me for the last time Stars three absolutely I take this I take this personally yeah no no joke years ago when I used to play sports games if like a player would like fumble the football or something in a game I would absolutely bench that player and take that out of the lineup and put somebody else in play just to like teach them the less let me be motivate them a little bit to play better next game I would 100 do that in sports games it's kind of the same thing here like you have failed me fire Shrieker you have lost your job someone else has stepped up and came off the bench and they're going to do it better than you did so so but Dana that doesn't explain Shadow spear that's one card that I I have absolutely 100 a fan of I've had great success with it and there's a lot of utility beyond the actual abilities that it gives to the creatures why did you skip Shadow spear other than the fact that it's like a 25 card now which would be a good reason I I do have one and I did run it in the in the deck for some period of time um a couple reasons trample for the most part wound up being redone because so many of my things give protection from colors sure that trample winds up kind of being irrelevant when stuff can't block you anyway um so beyond that the abilities it gives us plus one plus one LifeLink and I have the ability to remove hex proof for instructable from permanence right um it's it's really good and maybe I should try it again um but I just remember putting it on a on my creatures multiple times I mean like I just it it felt like it did a bunch of things but it never did them frequently enough to to change a game whereas something that seems way simpler like Imperial plate that I already mentioned once that consistently made a difference like being able to give my my creature plus seven plus seven almost every time I drew that was relevant whereas there was enough times I drew Shadow Spear and felt like it wasn't relevant I feel like the if if the lesson that it took away from Matt's decklist last week was a a thing about like optimizing for your own play experience that you're you're not trying to just like tune the deck within an inch of its life but Matt is very focused on like I want to create some memories with this thing I want to make it easy and fun for me to play and therefore easy and fun for everyone else to enjoy as well the lesson that I feel like I'm taking away from yours is that redundancy issue is that you are very very keen to avoid any instances where this equipment is doing the exact same thing as that other equipment and I'm not getting as much bonus as I can this dispatch I only have two artifacts so it's not going to be as reliable as it could be it feels like you don't want to have almost any level of that redundancy in here so that you can that is another way of fabricating a more unique experience every time that you do it and you'll be happy to see any a card that you draw yes very much so like whenever I draw it I want to feel like it's it's got a home and it's useful it's going to advance my my game State versus just being something that's okay um and that that sounds like I was sure when I first built this deck like literally one of the first pieces of equipment I put in was Shadow Spear and I was convinced it was going to just be a bomb every time and it was one of those things that every time it just felt okay and I want I wanted everything that I was that was worthy of a slot to feel more than just okay yeah and it's so interesting because that is just such the opposite of How I build like like for real like for me I'm just like oh if there's one effect that does X thing I you know source to Pleasures being the classic example sure well then I'm going to want that dispatch because I want that redundancy and it's just like it's gonna be amazing like that's the type of thing that is like mind-bending for me I'm just like oh would you get rid of the dispatch just because it disappointed you one time Starscream like that doesn't that is not the way that I build if I have one version of effect if I have like one plague Crafter or I'm gonna want all of the things that are three Mana make people sacrifice stuff like I'm very much that type of a deck builder and that is the exact opposite way that you've taken this and that is really informative because that speaks to the way that you will be able to enjoy the cards that you draw and I think actually I remember dispatch was a card I took out for re-sculpt because the thought process was I'm paying one more Mana to have the option to hit one additional card type still at instant speed it's still an exile effect so I'm like that felt worthwhile to me and then re-sculpt turned into unexpectedly absent at some point I believe is what happened so yeah it was a situation where like I was willing to sacrifice a little bit of efficiency for more utility and that was the the the card that was the best one to remove for that utility another thing I'll note like in an early iteration of the deck I had a few more things that copied um my existing equipment um because like on the list or you mentioned match work of Ingenuity um and and part of the reason I pulled that was because I hit a few situations where it let me like I couldn't really use it because of what I had out but more than that it I actually found I just wanted to run a bunch of equipment and like I I would rather one some run something even if it might not be quite as good like you know Masterwork copying a sword is always going to be amazing um but I wanted to run a different sword or I wanted to like run something else that I wasn't already running same reason why like frexian metamorph for sculpting steel aren't in the list I mean technically I'm probably better off anything I'm going to copy with a sculpting steel is probably better off than my you know 15th best piece of equipment but I also just like wanted to run that 15 piece of equipment and have it just be something that you didn't usually see versus just you know copying the same like three gray pieces nice okay yeah well Dana so we challenged the stats and didn't let Joey do the Segway so we'll we'll I want to steal the Segway again uh so so last week again you both took an opportunity to to suggest some cards that I wasn't currently playing in my in my deck and I want to encourage you I know you've taken a look at them because the cards that I absolutely would love for this deck are they're already in your maybe board but I I would really like you to give them another Gander I we already talked about Shadow spear you broke my heart I get it but but a couple cards that I really really enjoy especially because you talked about why you're not playing firestick you're not playing equipments that give double strike so cards that have native double strike turn into such a just a hammer not Colossus Hammer but like a literal card that's just gonna beat through bronze Guardian is a card that the deck that I have it in isn't very good but the card itself is so it bronze Guardian four in a white for a star five with double strike and ward two other artifacts you control have Ward 2 and then bronze Guardians power is equal to the number of artifacts you control so I don't have to say but I'm going to for the listeners bronze Guardian gets huge really quick in this deck and equipping a whole bunch of stuff on there I don't think it's too far the question to say bronze Guardian lands and you probably knock somebody out that turn I mean Grant go to combat with not having something sickness or anything like that but also another card that I assume it's not there because you're not playing a whole lot of creatures but Heavenly blade Master that's another one you're able to skirt a lot of the equipment costs you're able to buff up all of your other creatures I I assume Heavenly blade Master correct me if I'm wrong it's not there because you're only playing 11 creatures in the deck maybe if you're playing something like side Master thefters next to Blade master that might be a package that you incorporate in but if you were able to go wide I I love Heavenly blade master I also I'm biased I love going wide myself but maybe those few cards something you could reconsider as well so interesting that you mentioned um bronze Guardian I was just looking at that this morning because I was the show airs we've gotten most of the spoilers for um all will be one forexia and um the most recent set so I was already like trying to find a spot for this sort of artisan or sort of a fortune Frontier um and in the process of starting with the deck I was looking at bronze Guardian again and like mentally trying to like decide if I wanted to swap a lean and abunus with it which is one less man that's three in a white and it gives um artifacts who control hex proof so that so I was mentally like okay is it worth downgrading because because bronze Guardian gives um equipment or artifacts to control Ward 2 excuse me so if Ward isn't as good as hex proof but like no it's pretty good it's probably going to solve like no one's going to be able to remove multiple things they might have the manager to remove one thing but I'm like that's definitely a downgrade but is the double strike upgrade in the ability to suit up bronze guardian and make it just hit like a truck worth that swap probably so so I was literally just mentally going over all this this morning and trying to decide if I wanted to make that move so so um hearing you so that makes me probably reconcile it makes me want to make that swap even more I think I'm going to give that one a go for sure yeah you just especially with all the equipments that you have in there you have the sort of X and Y you have a whole bunch of those in there but you also have cards like mask of memory cards that they care about when you deal combat damage and putting cards like that on a creature double strike that always just seems to make make my heart feel warm inside so maybe it does the same thing for you especially because bronze Guardian is an artifact which will tick up your nettle cyst but also you can copy it with Echo storm sure you can get a lot of bronze Guardians with Echoes yeah I love echostorm there it is I yeah I'm I'm way into that suggestion and also Matt your suggestion there for Dana to look into would also synergize really well with a card that I am wondering why Dana doesn't play because I think it's fabulous and it also has a combat damage trigger and Dana if you want to have a very cheap equipment that will provide you with a lot of power and which Arden will help cheat a lot of costs around then I find it strange that you don't have a blood forged battle ax in this fantastic deck because because this thing just for I feel like it runs away with games blood Forge battle ax one Mana plus two plus o uh is what it gives the equipped creature and it equips for two but whenever the equip creature deals combat damage to a player it makes a copy of itself and then Arden will just like cheat that onto a thing and then you hit someone again and it will make two copies of itself and then you keep doing that and then this one card can just like take care of all of the power that you'll ever need it takes up your other artifact matter stuff like uh the Shimmer dragon that you mentioned earlier I don't know I feel like this would do a lot of stuff with with the deck and so I that's the one that I want you to consider a little bit I I looked at it at some point in the past and I can't remember what I think it was a situation where like I don't know what to cut all my babies are beautiful and unique and special I don't know what I'm gonna pull out very fair um that's a that's a really good point and you know what at the very least what I will do um is try it out and if it doesn't work it's very easy to pull it back out again because it's it's a card that I definitely know I have and if if I don't it's relatively inexpensive anyway so at the very least as an experiment I can test it out and report back down the road here how that worked it's just it's got It's a it does a lot it just fills up a board it's just so fun so so I just think you'll like it yeah well it's also something I can do on turn one which is useful um because not a lot of my equipments give me the option commanders play basically is the only one that I can cast on turn one when I you know underneath SEO and then play SEO or then play Arden and equip it immediately onto 2 unless you're on turn three that's a good reason to run it as well so I I will I you know you have convinced me and I've convinced myself I'll give it a try well Dana before we wrap up your favorite episode that we've ever done talking about yourself and a pet deck of yours are there do you have any parting nuggets of wisdom anything you have tip wise for folks considering an Arden and SEO or deck for themselves just anything you wanted to to throw in before we wrap up this week uh the advice I have would be less about this deck in just the concept of of building outside what you normally are accustomed to doing for a a particular like archetype in this case equipment um because we talked about on our New Year's resolution show one of the things I had wanted to do was just to kind of take a flyer on decks more often and just try them versus spending so much time like Theory crafting and not actually putting them in paper until I was sure they were going to work um and one of the this is a good example of a deck where I spent a ton of time on it but even after doing so it wasn't until I actually got it in me out in cardboard and did reps that I realized how well some of the things synergize together and found a lot of the intricacies that I just you never would have found until I actually built a deck um so I guess I will tie back to that resolution of mine just just build decks sometimes just like take chances zoria's equipment is not something that's really a supported archetype but like it worked really well and if you've got an idea um try it like just throw the cards together you know go get some reps and see how it works and maybe it won't work but like maybe you'll find out like I said I I was not expecting this to be a deck that I could add grow out my commanders that quickly but it worked out really nicely that I could just get some reps and find out because I particularly when you're dealing with with with color pairs that don't use we do that particular thing it winds up being a lot of kind of unexplored territory it's a lot of fun and you'll find a lot of cool things that's cool that's a very good lesson I I have one final question on my end for you too actually it just popped into my head like I know that you like to be a little bit hipster a little bit unusual with the stuff that you're doing seems a little bit more off the wall as opposed to the mainstream stuff that I like to do if watsi makes more azorious equipment stuff in the future is that going to make you want to take this deck apart like genuinely asking like I am not gonna lie it would it definitely would annoys me and makes me not want to play a deck it's like there's a pre-con that comes out with like an azarius equipment commander and a ton of stuff that like would make someone want to build that free conduct that looks a lot like this yeah if I'm being truthful it would make me not want to play it or find a maybe move it over to an orzov deck or something who knows um yes I I am not immune to you being in my own head about stuff like that for sure these whippersnappers come in and taking an idea that I thought was all much stuff absolutely I just think I think it's funny that when Watson puts a deck idea into different colors Joey's like okay cool I can do this idea in different colors now and Dana takes it as gosh darn I just want to be alone that's a personal it's a personal affront the Hipster Factor went all out the window and you just Grumble on your front porch uh amazing yeah there's there's a lot to take away but Dana being a curmudgeon is the most important that that is that is a very astute observation oh goodness all right with that I think we probably will now call this episode to a close but listeners again you can check out the deck lists in the description for any of our shows if you want to check these out and we'd definitely like to know any of your Voltron or equipment decks and what you've learned from those processes as well because there's a lot to learn in these are pretty intricate decklists for sure but with that fellas how about we let our listeners know where they can find us if they want to get in touch with us online Matt so you can find me on the twitters at mathimus 55 that's m-a-t-h-imus55 and don't forget you can watch us playing all these decks and more Wednesday evenings over at twitch.tv edhret cast where you have guests on every single week it's always a super fun time so make sure you tune in for all of that as well and Dana you can find me on the Twitter birds at Dana roach you can find me for a few weeks longer on my other podcast the MDR Central I'm writing articles for Idiot tracking commanders Harold and you can find me where all curmudgeons are up in the balcony heckling The Muppets The Statler to my Waldorf and I'm Joey Schultz you can find me at Joseph M Schultz and you can find the cast at adhretcast on the online plus if you've got a question for us you can contact us at adhretcast gmail.com our thanks go out once again to chase for assisting me with the post-production of the show you can find them online at Mana curves and listeners will be back at you next week with more data and insights but until then remember EDH wreck your deck before you wreck your deck [Music]

Channel: EDHRECast

Views: 26,131

Keywords: magic the gathering, commander, edh, edhrec, mtg

Id: YsjcejtTJ8s

Length: 57min 3sec (3423 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 03 2023