Protecting Your Board | EDHRECast 179

[Music] hello and welcome to the edh recast my name is joey schultz and i'm joined as always by my fantastic co-hosts first up his moral alignment test results just came back and he is definitely chaotic good it's matt morgan so joe i have a question for you why is that fingers are the most reliable part of your body something something fingerprints i'm not sure matt why no no it's because you can always count on them they're so reliable dependable even that's that's exceptionally good i know there's a dad joke coming every week and you always manage to fight i will point you in the right direction for the answer listeners you can't see my face right now but it just fell it's very very angry very very disappointed well done matt up next his moral alignment test also came back and his results came back as lawful neutral milk hotel that's dana roach wow joey well played you uh yeah yeah i am a uh yeah for sure um i just got my first look at some of the new spoilers from midnight hunt and if someone doesn't alter that night and day token to a nightmare and day man token i'm gonna be very very disappointed oh we um we already have elf smith champion the son um and to fairy master of time and friendship for everyone so we just need the nightmare man now and we're gonna go i love where this is going this is perfect matt i'm glad that you get it because this went right over my head but that's completely okay anyway this is the edh recast idiotrack 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 dex and here on the podcast what we like to do is give all of that data a little more context hey dana what is it that we're talking about in this week's episode we are going to talk about protecting the board protecting the board this was a topic that you pitched and i at first thought them like i don't know is there really that much to say about this topic and it turns out yeah there are a lot of really important ways to protect the board's date that you've got to make sure that you can keep your winning position in a game of edh because that can be the final you know last lap that gets you to victory so this is going to be a whole lot of fun i'm really excited to talk about it real quick before we get to our main topic let's pause and thank the folks at the command zone for handling all of the post-production work on the podcast making it look as awesome as it does and we want to thank our sponsors for the show too uh yeah the idiot track cast is sponsored by card kingdom and a tcg player the midnight hunt and crimson vow of online card shops just go to idiots rec and click on the card in question choose the vendor link down below and doing that supports both the site and the show and if you prefer to support the show directly you can do so over at patreon.com edh recast we have patron tears of all sorts of levels we have a patron only discord we have everything that you're looking for in a awesome awesome patreon website support way just head over to patreon.comrepcast you can support the show directly and we even have that a very special tier actually where we say thanks to a patron just for supporting us so this week we want to give a shout out to j.d umberson thank you so much um quite the umbridge to make your ado uh what and now um joey take me out of here but thank you thank you jd is what i want to say thank you jdm person we do not take umbrage with your support we are very happy for yourself i'm going to be honest i don't know what that word means but i've heard it said a couple times all right i think we're in a weird energy right now so this should make the show a whole lot of fun let's get into our main topic fellas we are talking about protecting the board state making sure that the stuff you've got on board is the stuff that you're going to be able to keep on board dana you pitched this episode why is this such an important topic for us to discuss when it comes to playing commander i think it's one of those things that you maybe don't think about right away when you start brewing commander dex and start playing commander um and part of the reason i think is particularly because of blue um you know i myself had that thought before like well i i can just use blue counter spells to save my stuff you know whenever i need to worry about it the beauty of protecting your board a lot of times though is you're not just stopping a thing from going off you're allowing the thing to go off and affect everybody else while not affecting you i think that's oftentimes the real strength of of protecting your board you know sometimes it's just a single target thing but like a lot of times the beauty of it is you get to dodge an effect that hits everybody else when the person casting it was hoping they could just start the game over kind of yeah well like dana said like a lot of times people just kind of default to well i'll just find a commander that has blue in it and play some counter spells to protect everything but really like you don't need to do that anymore there's there's plenty of ways in literally every single color there's some sort of way to protect either your entire board or those key pieces that you need to keep around in order to make sure you're not losing um so you can you know then go on to win the game possibly uh there's all sorts of different ways every color kind of does it a little bit differently but the common thing here is we want to make sure that people know what kind of cards you can be looking towards and why they're so impactful in doing these things like protecting your board states very very much because dana as you mentioned sometimes it is actually better not to use a counterspell in those situations so that you end up completely with the scales lopsided in your favor even after a huge board wipe so yeah let's get into them i think we're going to start off just in color order with the color white matt do you want to start us off with some of your favorite board protecting spells in white and all of the different stuff that white is up to when it comes to keeping your stuff alive well the best thing that white does is protecting its own board state it may not have many things worth protecting sometimes it feels but i will say that when it when it comes to protecting what you already have on board white probably does this better than a lot of colors um you have all sorts of options you have a chrome as well you have root borne defenses unbreakable formation all sorts of ways of making your battlefield and specifically creatures indestructible that's kind of what white does the best there's the free spell flawless maneuver which you can cast as long as you have your commander in play it's a great way of protecting your commander from a boardwipe there's just so many ways within white that are going to give your board indestructible which is so so key when you're you know maybe getting alpha striked at and you have a bunch of blockers or you have to block um or just board wipes cast a board wipe and you know cast flawless maneuver protect all of your creatures it's a great thing that white does well and one thing i want to point out here about white in particular matt mentioned white does this really well does a lot of it it does it to the point where like almost every set at some point features a you know white instant speed common that gives a creature indestructible um you know just looking alphabetically even at the at the you know 50 or 60 entries if you search for a white indestructible instant you have adamant will which is a two mana one that gives creatures plus two plus two indestructible or gives a target creature i should say um in white there's so many of those that just do one target that it's not worth really getting into all of them particularly because there's ones like you mentioned like root bar and defenses that will protect your entire team um whereas in other colors we're probably gonna at some point talk about ones that seem a little bit more narrow but the difference is there's just not many options in other colors necessarily so the the more narrow spells seem a little more impactful there where as in white you have just some absolute i think the ferris protection the you know best protections um so you have those options in white that are like absolute hammers versus other colors where you have to be much more picky to find ways to protect your stuff well yeah i wanted to i wanted to leave to fairy's protection for you dana i didn't i didn't want to take up all the creative ones i got to softball it to somebody so man it was a ticking time bomb for teferi's protection to be mentioned in this episode the card that shows up in over 40 000 decks gives all of you like phases all your stuff out gives you protection from stuff you're not going to change so it protects you in addition to your board which makes it just absolutely amazing but like you know we all know to ferry's production another card that i want to shout out here for protecting your board is also that new guardian of faith when it enters the battlefield it's got flash you can also phase out the other stuff that you've got i think that's also like a really good contender just like a lot of these indestructible cards will be good against you know a damn nation or something like that guardian of faith and to ferris production are also really good against that and they also are really good against the infamous cyclonic rift because i mean phasing isn't going to touch them either and if you do cyclonic rift when there's a guardian of faith out you'll just get the guardian of faith right back in your hands so you can do it again in a later turn which i think is awesome yeah what's great about a lot of the really good white ones is they kind of can can function offensively as well you know guardian faith is on a body and you can reuse it it's a it's something that people then have to bear in mind after you do it once they have to bear that in mind for anything they do in the future you've got that in hand um teferi's protection i've used that offensively plenty of times when i know i am going to be able to win the game next turn and i don't want anyone to interfere you know make me discard whatever until then i'm just going to not participate in the game i'm just going to like punch out for the the next spinner on the board um a chrome as well we talked about um that is a great way to protect your board but offensively that thing is a powerhouse like that can just kill people as well so that's the beauty here of white in a lot of these effects in white not only can you use them to turn something into kind of a one-sided effect defensively but offensively a lot of them are very strong well yeah if you want to talk about putting these effects on creatures like with guardian of faith a selfless spirit's one of my favorite on-board tricks as joey loves to you know point out my affinity for um selfless spirit's just a great card like it's an early drop it comes down it's only two mana you can just sacrifice it to make all your creatures indestructible but also like it's a two one flyer like you can beat down with that um you know when push comes to shove you need to save the board at instant speed you know selfie spirit is fantastic at that and it's just a reusable body you can bring it back with any sort of regrowth or reanimation effects like this card is is so good and if we're gonna mention guardian of faith like i feel like we have to mention selfless spirit because it's it's just a card i want to put in any creature-based deck in general well and i also feel like if we're going to bring up self the spirit we're probably obligated to also mentioned white as avason angel of hope just giving all of your stuff indestructible like that is a really huge creature to reanimate as well i guess you know talking about avason even like the the quote-unquote bad avacyn um gives creatures protection from color and white has a lot of things that do that as well you have a lot of ways um to protect your creatures from effects just by like keeping them from being targeted by giving them pro colors so there's quite a few effects you know obviously mother of runes being the most notable one but like that kind of thing is the thing white does as well so um and that can also be used offensively to allow you to swing past blockers indeed um just the utility in white is really nice well and we also are going to be completely remiss if we don't bring up another really effective board protecting but also really good utility effect here too which is just the blink spells in white every interlude to temporarily blink all of your creatures away ghost way to do the same i think there's a new semester's end from strict saving as well that does something similar like you can just have your creatures temporarily peace out avoid a board wipe and then come right back and if you've got enters the battlefield effects for all of those i mean you can just use those even without a board wipe to get a whole bunch of stuff going right all over again yeah it's very easy for white just to accrue a lot of value the flickering another strategy that i really like is kind of the face reward type of cards where you're able to bring stuff back from the graveyard joey that's something i hear you may enjoy doing now and then but you're able to do it in white like say you need to you know rebuild after a board wipe stuff like faith's reward brought back like those are going to be able to grab things out of your graveyard and bring them right back into play so it's a great way to just kind of instantly recover and get important pieces back oh yeah cosmic intervention is another one that i really really really like because you can foretell that to make sure that you cast it cheap when you need it and again you can kind of use that as a ramp spell as a way to recur your fetchlands it has matted utility aside from just a way to protect your board oh i didn't even know about that that's not a little bit sneaky there dana that's really clever and i'm sure that that sounds like we've probably hit all of the different things that white can do right like there aren't any other tricks that you've got hidden up your sleeve in this category are there dana there are a couple more uh wow no certainty mana tithe and dawn charm white's counter spells um and i'm not sure any of those are would crack the top 300 best counter spells in blue um and i don't know if i'm exaggerating that could be correct however they're not in blue they're in white and the authority to drop a counter spell on someone in white is backbreaking sometimes like laps of certainty popped up on game nights you know a year or so ago and and was absolutely disruptive and whenever i've cast it in games or scenic cast in games the look on people's faces and the impact on the board is much more impressive than almost anything you see from a blue counter spell because no one's ever ready for it well lapse of certainty like if you compare it almost to delay which is like it sees a decent amount of play about six percent of decks out there um lapse of certainty is only played in about 5 000 decks but like whenever you see it in like a boros colored deck you know the red white or seleznia it's not these decks aren't playing blue so you're never going to expect a counter spell and there's there's a whole category of cards that you know you don't see these effects very often in those colors so when you do they're insanely impactful and maniting somebody who you know spends all of their mana on some massive villainous wealth like that's that's the best feeling in the world you're using a mana tithe and it's countering something big which doesn't always happen yeah those are really really awesome and so okay now i think we've exhausted some of the stuff that white is up to there are plenty more but we got to move on to blue because we've been talking about counter spells for a while so let's move now to the ways that blue can protect its board and yeah a lot of the discussion that we'll have here is going to be around counter spells you've got your traditional counter spell you've got your free ones like fierce guardianship you've got your like even a cheap negate is also going to do a ton of work for you because are you playing a fumigate across the board no i'm just going to counter it are you trying to play some huge board wipe no i'm just going to keep everyone's stuff here because i like the position the board is in those can come in super clutch dana do you have any personal favorite counter spells um you know matt mentioned delay i do kind of like delay actually to be honest i i tend to like counter spells that only cost a single blue um in part because i run a lot of utility lands in my decks so i don't often times have two blue mana free um and whose fault is that yeah that's that's not me that's my that's that's my fault um but also like i'm not really a control player either i tend to use counter spells as a way to not lose the game like i'm not trying to use them for tempo hits or anything i'm just using them to stop an emergency so like it's just much easier to keep that single swan song man up or that single stubborn denial man up than it is to you know worry about double blue from a counterspell or more on some of the more expensive counter spells stubborn nile is so dang good the ferocious trigger it's already met because that's what you're going to protect with your board anyway you're going to use it against some type of like enemy brat spell that would come for your board like so the ferocious trigger like it's all that i i stubborn is like just my it's my personal favorite i i do think that that's the thing about counter spells that that people maybe miss a little bit is though what you're using your counters for in your deck can change from deck to deck to deck and from person to person to person depending on your play style and i do think people need to spend maybe a little more time thinking about like what am i trying to protect in this deck because a lot of times it changes depending on what you're playing it occurs to me that maybe we've alienated matt from this part of the conversation because he doesn't really play blue you know you know what um i have some blue index not a lot but some accidentally but i but yeah it's not by choice yeah but no like i i do i do play counter spells every now and then um one that i'm really a big fan of that i don't see a whole lot of play even though it's like a five cent card is a disdainful stroke um it's a single blue mana but counters anything um creature or non-creature spells that cost four or greater which really like you're in commander like you're they're people are casting big powerful spells so really it's just a more flexible negate in a lot of situations like yes there's something small it's always gonna sneak through but i man the stainful stroke is usually like if if i'm playing that many counter spells in a deck like the third or fourth counter spell that i will try to find room for i just think it's it's so good in commander specifically that's a really good example of specific counter spells depending on what you want to do um you know i have a sphynx tribal deck that's really really greedy in terms of how much blue mana it uses so that's one where i definitely don't like to have double blue um in my counter spells but the main thing i'm concerned about in that deck is board wipes because i don't want to try to recast those nine drops fixes um and have to rebuild my bar state with them whereas if i'm just using something like um this infostroke that's just a great way to stop anyone from wiping the board it's just stops any boardway basically so the main concern in that deck is stopping that kind of thing from happening which makes that a great spell there now i do think it's important to mention that blue's only specialty when it comes to protecting your board isn't solely counterspells there are some other tricks that it's got up at sleeve and there's one that i feel like we gotta call out here and that is a personal favorite of both dana and me that's the card to fairies veil whenever your creatures attack at the end of combat they will phase out so they won't exist until your next turn this is so stinkin good to make sure that other people's sorcery speed board wipes are not going to touch your stuff and they basically can only interact with your creatures on your own turn this thing is nasty powerful and players should absolutely be using it because it's just so good yeah where to fairy's veil especially shines is in a deck maybe that's going wide or at least it has a lot of creatures that don't have static abilities that you care about you know if you're playing a deck with things that you want them and play to do a particular thing even when they're not attacking it maybe isn't that useful for you but like do you care if a bunch of your tal ran tokens for example phase out like those aren't doing you any good tapped anyway so you might as well protect them in case somebody board wipes next turn well one card that does pretty well at protecting your board even though it may not necessarily protect the board you have right now but more rebuilding your board afterwards um is synthetic destiny it's a card that was originally reprinted back in commander 2015 but was reprinted um in call time commander um and it's man it doesn't see a whole lot of play um but it's uh for blue blue for an instance that says exile all creatures you control and at the beginning of the next end step you reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal that many creature cards and you put all those creature cards revealed this way onto the battlefield and shuffle the rest into your library so you may not get the exact board that you had but you're getting exactly that many creatures back onto the battlefield after a wrath of god the timing on this one is is kind of why it's it's so powerful and a lot of people don't necessarily expect it coming out of a big blue spell like this yeah six mana is probably what causes this to be a little bit lesser played but if you've got even a handful of tokens and you'll eventually turn them into other big creatures that you want to have out anyway i mean that's why you put them in your deck then i'm i quite this this would definitely catch me off guard i i really like what this spell is up to blue's slice of this color pie is not what i would call narrow because there's a gazillion counter spells but it really is specifically focused on counter magic whereas when we move over to black things get much more diverse even if it maybe isn't as deep with the spells we care about this is true black has a checkered history as i guess how i'll say it when it comes to saving the board because some of the most protective things that it's really got are just things that are going to get your board right back for example michael's the unhallowed he gives your stuff on dying so when they would die they're just going to come right back with a plus one plus one counter on it and so that's really great for death triggers that's really great for enter the battlefield triggers that's really really cool and there are also the occasional spells like thrilling encore that get back all of the creatures that died this turn and plop them right back onto your board so you don't prevent the death from happening but usually in the case of black i mean that's perfectly okay because we're probably going to get like a blood artist trigger or 17 when things die anyway so we don't mind just bringing everything right back even though there was an interim death in the middle of that whole process well i'm a big fan in in some of my decks like my okima and kaiser deck where you know ukema tends to die a little bit i really like cards like kaya's ghost form or malakir rebirth where yeah if you know okema's gonna die i may as well just bring it right back to the battlefield because i would need it to die anyway for those the the death triggers are leaving the battlefield triggers to happen anyways so having these kind of quick reanimation things at least on specific single target spells um black does that pretty well i i also like yeah i mean it's there's sort of a pseudo-reanimation thing going on there like it's a re-animation adjacent right but like also i do kind of feel that like a form of quote protecting my board is that like if i've got like a twilight's call in my hand that's gonna revive all of the creatures anyway like i don't mind running a whole bunch of creatures out onto the battlefield because if they die i know that i'm gonna just get them right back next turn so like mass reanimation is also kind of a way of keeping the huge lethal board state that you've got it's it's kind of a double-sided assuming a double-pronged card like some of the ones the white gets where you can use it defensively but with sac outlets as prevalent as they are in in black as well it's very often you can use those effects offensively and having the option to do both is really really useful can confirm everyone should play more reanimator it's absolutely the best the versatility is off the charts dana do you have any other favorites i have two that are kind of fun um one is dark dabbling it's an instant for tuna black and it just says regenerate target creature and draw a card which is kind of underwhelming but if you spell mastery so if there are two or more instant or sorcery cards in your graveyard regenerate each other creature you control um that's really easy to hit spell mastering commander especially unless someone just emptied graveyards by the time anyone's blowing up the board you're just gonna hit spell mastery it replaces itself and regenerates everything most of the time that's gonna save you from a board wipe that's very very useful and if you go back a little bit further to mirror then there's a card called whale of the nim for the same casting cost also an instant and it regenerates each creature you control but it has entwine in the second ability is it deals one damage to each creature or player so you can use it to you know if you need to clean out a token swarm or just spend one more mana to entwine stuff and also save your stuff if you need to um and do a little bit of damage to people it's just a very versatile card that i'm a fan of and i think i should see more play so this isn't this is kind of my bonus challenge the stats pick is i mean i do like it but you know keep in mind that regenerate doesn't you know protect you from a classic wrath of god because wrath of god does have the can't be regenerated clause on it so that is something to keep in mind for sure yep but that is still a pretty clever card and now dana what you just did right there was you mentioned having a bonus challenge the stats but i i think that's a signal for us right now to pause and get into the actual challenge the stats segment of the show it's one of our favorite things to do here on the podcast because there are so many cards on idiotrax so much data but we don't always agree with it sometimes i think that cards see either too much or too little play so we'd love to challenge those statistics and don't forget folks as always challenge of stats is brought to you by altersleeves.com so you can head over to altersleeves.com edhrecast that will let you know that we sent you over there their great website if you want to bling out your decks there's all sorts of different versions out there for cards but if you want to change your mind you want to try out different ones that suit you alter sleeves lets you do that all sorts of different art you can slip over any of your magic cards it's great the sleeves are actually super high quality i was so impressed the first time i saw them so make sure you head over to altersleaves.com edhbrecast to pick up your altar sleeves yes indeed thank you for sponsoring challenge the stats and now matt it's time for your challenge well this week actually i don't have a challenge but i do want to shout out a listener challenge that they submitted because somebody went to patreon.comrecast and joined and they're supporting us at the two dollar level or more um so spiruta i believe is how we're going to pronounce this the doom of deaths went to our challenger stats channel and said they want to challenge standardize in eureka lists currently standardized which is a blue blue instant that says choose a creature type other than legend or wall and each creature type becomes that type until end of turn well challenging this in your rico decks actually makes a lot of sense um so spiruta says they're challenging in eureka list it only shows up in 28 decks it can turn all the creatures you control into ninjas probably not all eureko decks want this card but only 28 copies in eureko decks seems very low to me well sparuda i very much agree if you're playing any sort of go wide you have a whole bunch of one ones and if you're playing tokens um any sort of deck like that you're gonna be able to draw a whole lot of cards with standardized out there because eureka's ability cares about ninjas so you just cast standardize name ninjas and you have a whole bunch of ninjas hitting opponents triggers it's real nasty you're gonna draw a whole bunch of cards you can do a whole bunch of damage probably so yes i i do agree probably not every eureka list once standardized in there but the decks that have any sort of go wide capabilities they definitely want this in there that is a really really interesting one eureka's got so many little unblockable cards that turning all of them into ninjas that sounds really really dangerous i'm gonna move now to my challenge here i've got a card that i think is being overplayed but in very specific scenarios the card feed the swarm the two mana black sorcery that destroys target creature or enchantment and opponent controls and then you lose life equal to its mana value that is a great card for monoblack for rakdos or for grixis but you don't need it in a golgari deck and you don't need it in an orzov deck and yet it still continues to show up in a whole bunch of golgari or orzov or even obs-on decks for example i'm looking right now at the page for dina soul steeper and feed the swarm is showing up in 25 of dina's soul steeper decks she doesn't need it green has access to enchantment removal already and if you're using this to get rid of a creature you could just be using better forms of removal so this card is way overplayed don't use feed the swarm in golgari deck specifically save this spell for your mono black decks or your recto stacks or grixes or any of those other color combinations that have a lot harder time getting rid of enchantments well my challenge of stats this week is for a creature from corset 2021 gadrak the crown scourge um it's tuna orange scorch scourge tuna red for a dragon it's a 5 4 with flying um gadrak can't attack unless you control four or more artifacts but the important part here is at the beginning of your end step create a treasure token for each non-token creature that died this turn there's been a lot of treasure stuff being done since forgotten realms came out and added that much more treasure alongside modern horizons to the edh universe but because this isn't part of that two set cycle or it's not part of that original burst of treasure stuff way back in ixalan i think people kind of forget this card exists it's only in 122 decks an 8h rack um number one it probably should be in more laughless dragon queen decks only in about about a third of those decks because it's just a three mana way to make a six six and be a five four that's probably gonna accidentally be able to attack just because you have manorax in play um but beyond that that's a pretty good treasure maker in a treasure deck or even just in some kind of aristocrats deck where you're sacrificing stuff there's this card just has a lot of utility for a three man of five four and it should show up in more than like just over a hundred lists i think matt this is weird what happened to dana he's challenging a card that wasn't printed back in the year 2000. i know hey this is such a trick i thought dana only plays cards that are old enough to vote like that's just how i thought his his criteria was oh man okay guys you know dana you mentioned a red card there so let's get back into our discussion about protecting your board with the color red we're talking about reds different ways to keep your stuff around to keep all of that the big threatening board state that you've got what are some tools in red dana that you really really like to use to make sure that your very threatening board gets to stay that way number one the very obvious deflecting swat um it's not gonna save your board but it's gonna save the most important piece that you have in play and it's going to redirect that over to take out the most important piece somebody else has it's probably much more important in a you know combo deck or a voltron deck or something where that singular piece is much more valuable than the bunch of goblins you have out in a cranko deck or something but in those decks being able to save that stuff is invaluable and i have a couple of decks that function that way where i need to keep that one attacking creature alive and being able to um like turn that away from from my super important piece particularly for zero mana with the case of deflecting swat but bolt bend is a single red to do the same thing that's a really big deal and there's even a couple other options do the same thing wow to ricochet lets you copy a spell and redirect a spell it costs a little bit more it's four mana to do it but um being able to save your stuff is a pretty big deal in a lot of decks so it's a way to do it in a ricochet trap if someone casts a blue spell you can cast it for free and basically use it to counter their counter spell um it's so so if you're playing one of those decks in in red um and you know joey you have a grevin deck that you probably want to keep safe in plenty situations these spells are a way to do that in that kind of deck where you are going to be swinging at somebody for 25 damage that they absolutely let can't let come through and you very badly want to have it come through can confirm bolt bend saves my bacon so often in that deck it's very very important you mentioned some personal favorite cards that i haven't read dana could you possibly possibly be referring to pyroblast in red elemental blast i i i feel like the fact that you've used these on sheldon menry himself probably makes them even higher status among your favorite cards i mean yes it's really nice to destroy you know someone's random atrexa because it happens to be blue but it also feels really really good to counter a cyclonic rift everybody it's so great i totally totally like these cards but i also totally get that these are a bit niche and even the redirection spells there are a little bit niche matt are there any other effects that come to your mind when it comes to protecting your board in red well i mean i haven't cast this card but i hear tibble's trickery can be pretty decent at doing this um if you haven't read this card in its entirety you're not alone don't worry um we are out there taking five or six minutes to set aside yes pause the video go read tibbles trickery um but basically like it it's a counter spell of sorts um but yeah people just don't expect counter spells outside of blue so like we mentioned with white like when they do show up they're just gonna be highly impactful um that's why pyroblast and red elemental blast like joey loves them so much because people just don't expect pyroblast to come out of nowhere um they're very much the john cena of the red spells you don't see them and all of a sudden you do um but yeah so temple's trickery just if we're gonna mention red counter spells i feel like the trickery is something we all should should be mentioning i i totally love it that's probably the strongest protection effect of the ones we've mentioned so far because that one actually stands a good chance of genuinely countering a wrath effect there's another dynamic here that i do want to bring up that i know you guys are a little bit softer on but i also really favor mutually assured destruction as a tactic to protect my board so an enchantment like vicious shadows which deals a bunch of damage to your opponents whenever your creatures die or even like the dragon's mode on outpost siege that is a pretty sizable deterrent in my opinion that is going to keep opponents from wanting to cast a wrath effect in the first place and i do think that that therefore deserves a mention here if i've got a big board of tokens and one of those enchantments in play my opponents probably don't want to cast that wrath because they would just take so much damage that it just would not be worth casting i tend to feel like those generally get used as offensive threats and any defensive work they do is kind of accidental um but red doesn't have a lot of options and right anything that protects your board is pretty useful um we had this conversation off air but like we were wondering if there might well not be enough to just do a full show on mutually assured destruction and there may well be so we're not going to delve too deeply into this but it's definitely something that you can do to keep touching your stuff for sure yeah we we definitely had the had the debate behind closed doors of well is this actually a protection spell is this actually um so yeah like it punisher pieces stuff like that like they can be used in some situations it really just depends on the deck i'm not too keen on them but some people out there i'm sure are building them that way and if you are that's awesome um keep doing keep doing you yeah it's very very effective but you're right we are a little bit slim on things that red is going to use to really protect its stuff because red's just so aggro that it usually doesn't care if its stuff dies because it's going to just bring a bunch of other stuff out so that tends to be the usual dynamic that we see with red which is why it pairs so beautifully with other very aggressive colors such as green matte red might not have been your your hugest forte when it comes to those mutually assured destruction spells but i feel like green green is your cup of tea and you probably have a lot of thoughts about ways that green can keep its board around well there's mutually assured destruction in green um as in like i'm just gonna attack you with big creatures and path breaker ibex people to death so yeah the everything the destruction is definitely mutual there but the the spells that protect your board um this actually green does it very very well as well i mean heroic intervention is kind of the the banner card for this effect it's just two mana one and a green for instance makes all your creatures indestructible and hex proof until in turn um it's it's powerful man this is one of the like oh it's so good folks there's probably no spell in the last five or six years that i've slept on more than heroic intervention when it first came out i remember reading through those spoilers and you know we talked about how white always gets kind of that draft card that gives a creature plus two plus to an indestructible green tends to get the same thing you know target creature gets plus two plus two indestructible and fights a creature or gets hex proof in plus one plus one or whatever there's always one of those in every green set and i remember when i saw heroic intervention i kind of read it that way i wasn't really paying attention i just assumed that's what it was and it wasn't until like four or five months later when someone casted against me in a commander game and i was like wait what does that do hex proof and indestructible for your entire team um i felt so bad like i literally felt bad that i didn't catch that the first time through because that card is insane and almost any green deck well and dana it is possible that i undersold it too because i i said creatures yeah it's all your it's everything all your permanent entire battlefield oh yeah oh man that one's that one's absolutely ludicrous that yeah that's that's certainly the poster child's but matt are there other options in green that you will maybe also like to use instead of just that one because i mean well it's big and famous it is big i mean it's the teferi's protection of of the green spells in this episode so yeah um but asceticism is another great way just to give your entire battlefield uh hex proof and regenerate creatures if you're able to sometimes you know a wrath of god has the cannot be regenerated clause in there but asceticism is a great way just to do all that and work around it's a really hard card to get rid of because it's an enchantment so not every color can always deal with that give it a couple years i'm sure they will be but it's just a very resilient card it makes your entire battlefield resilient it's it's a wonderful card i'm a big fan you know someone will talk about regeneration not being maybe perfect but it does the job a lot of times um you know one of the interesting things about regeneration is because they don't really print it anymore that means we're probably not going to get many new cards that say creatures can't be regenerated so i think as time passes you're going to see some of those things that will allow you to regenerate a board state maybe become a little more powerful because there's just not going to be things that work around that effect and rap in vigor is a green instant that regenerates your entire board is one of those it's maybe a little underwhelming compared to heroic intervention but as a backup plan that's still pretty good regenerating an entire board you know yeah damnation and wrath of god are gonna hit it but not every board wipe does it's gonna dodge plenty of those or it's gonna let you use your blockers to stop an alpha strike and then regenerate them all plenty of times too it's a really solid card that one's not bad i'm gonna throw out a personal shout out here for inspiring call this one's pretty specific to just plus one plus one counter decks because it only gives the indestructibility to your plus one plus one counter packed up creatures but that's also just a really cool effect too and i kind of like finding those more specialized versions not the like oh this does for all of the creatures the way that you know heroic intervention famously is just like i'm good in all the scenarios but finding the niche ones also feels really really nice in the right deck see i i'm gonna give a shout out to all of our long time listeners who dana and i told you joey to try that card out many many episodes ago and so i'm very glad to hear that you're you're adopting and listening to us finally all the sage advice yes i know 179 episodes before i finally listen to you but yes that's awesome okay so moving away now from green let's ditch the colors entirely dana i know that you like playing a whole bunch of artifacts out there so when it comes to colorless sources of keeping your board alive what are some artifact or colorless spells that you like to use uh one that i'm a huge fan of is veilstone amulet um it's a three-man artifact and all it says is um whenever you cast a spell creatures you control gain hex proof um now it feels a little bit like in a blue deck i remember thinking well again i'll just run counter spells but the ability to turn every can trip that you have in your deck into a counter spell not a true counterfeit but like a way to prevent removal i should say is really really useful in the right deck and i've found it's a super powerful effect particularly because you can bait things out people have to then decide okay is it worth trying to remove this thing because there's a couple mana available and it's that person just going to cast an instant speed spell and then give their thing hex proof that's really really powerful because it winds up being a thing that you don't have to actually pull the trigger if people are scared you're going to pull the trigger they might just not do their thing i just am a big fan of this card now and i have it in a couple different decks that's a pretty spicy one matt what about you um so cauldron of souls is an oldie but a goodie i think it's it depends on the decks but um it's a little expensive these days five mana for an artifact um and it's just tap it and you can choose any number of target creatures and those creatures gain undying until end of turn so that means whenever they die they come back with a minus one minus one counter on it if it had no minus one minus one counters on it when it died uh it's not necessarily the most powerful spell anymore but i have a couple decks these days especially because like being able to just bring your entire board back or if you need to use it politically like you can make a deal that oh your your reclamation sage can come back if you promise to blow up that problem thing over there that's definitely got some applications i'm a big fan of cauldron of souls um just something to keep in mind because any deck can play it too so if you don't have any options it's worth a look yeah keep in mind there you just mentioned reclamation sage which is a two one so the persist would it would come back as a one zero and immediately die but you would get the you would get the etb ability though right which is totally worth it totally worth it yeah that's that's awesome i also like this one and if you do have some creatures that would come back as you know they've got a minus one counter on them and then you like you blink them and then the minus one counter goes away you can repeatedly use the culture initials and i also think that's really nice you're welcome you're welcome um another one i'm gonna quick shout out here because i i you know had kind of forgotten about it until we started doing this list eldrazi monument is a five-man artifact that gives your creatures indestructible um and you have to sacrifice a creature during your upkeep to pay the the upkeep costs on or you have to sacrifice it um i had a friend that used to run this in a token deck and by a token deck i mean all his token decks because that's all he played it's a little bit um easy to underestimate this card yes it gives yourself indestructible but there were so many games when i would think i was fine because i had a handful of blockers out and the math that changes when suddenly they all get flying and they all get plus one plus o and indestructible it's a great defensive tool but again it's one of those tools that offensively it just kills people sometimes dad in the right deck this is an absolute beast of a card i i played that i play eldrazi monument in my titania deck because i am constantly spitting out tons and tons of creatures eldrazi monument is the truth when you are you've got tons of tokens to sacrifice it does not matter i will pay that cost all the time if i get evasion on my stuff a nice lovely buff and also you can't destroy the board this thing it's so good playa draws it's it's so good you don't realize how good plus one plus zero is on creatures now there's 14 of them with flying indestructible coming so so dang good i want to shout out a curious one here that i just felt had to be mentioned because we are talking about artifacts do y'all know kolfanore's urn this one's only showing up in like 750 decks but it's so weird that i felt like we had to put it in this episode it's a three-man artifact that says whenever a creature you control with toughness 4 or greater dies you can exile it and then at the end of turn and that's end of any turn keep in mind if three or more cards have been removed from the game with the urn you sacrifice the urn and then put all of those creatures back into play under their owner's control so if you've got some really big creatures that you want to keep around and you are afraid of them dying coefficient can get them all back for you which i think is pretty cool utility and since it's colorless it can go anywhere you know joey i've never heard of that card um i would have expected dana to be the one to suggest it is it is back from lorwin which apparently has been a while but um that is an interesting card i i like the idea of being able to to load that up and then bring everything back um it's a very very necromancer thing of you to suggest but um i do like the suggestion that's that's that's pretty solid and i just checked matt you said it was a while ago lauren came out in 1972 so yeah we forgot how much time has passed but it was yeah it's almost 40 years that was the best year for dodge chargers i hear right yeah the sarcasm in sports will be finished we will move on now if that's where we're at we talked about some cuddlist cards let's move now to our final category those are the multi-colored cards so they are a bit more specific but that also means they usually tend to pack a lot more punch matt talk to us about some of your favorite multi-colored cards to use to save your board well i've gone on this podcast many times and you know shouted praises on the charm cycle it's any charms really um but boros charm and golgari charm both of those are just great fantastic tools for saving your board for having a whole bunch of other uses if you watch over at twitch.tvhrecast um you'll see the boros charm that was heard around the world when i was able to finish a game with it's like it's just boro's charm just has the has the mode of being able to make all of your creatures indestructible for a white and a red mana golgari charm regenerates all of your creatures for the same thing for a green and a black mana plus you're able to destroy um a whole bunch of permanents able to give minus one minus one to the battlefield like there's so many different uses in all these charms but golgari charm and boros charm always are finding so many slots index i would argue they're two of the more powerful charms that exist in magic just because those two the two modes i should say that we're mentioning are so incredibly powerful they are very much kind of the platonic ideal of charms where all of the modes are almost always useful at most points in the game like they're just really really good and you never feel bad about using whichever one you're using i'm i'm totally on board with that i'm gonna shout out a multi-colored card that has completely won me over because i've watched my mom use it in her flying tribal deck that's linvala shield of seagate which is just a creature sort of like selfless spirit that you can sacrifice to give your creatures indestructible or hex proof for the turn that is a very very potent ability that is going to be really really helpful it's a bit more proactive but that also means that you can reanimate it matt like you mentioned with selfless spirit earlier so that's another card that i didn't expect to like very much but the more i see it in the 99 the more and more it impresses me to the point that it's not just my mom playing it in her decks she's convinced me i got to be playing it in mine too yeah it's a it's one of those cards that i think um you don't appreciate just reading it and it it plays much better than it reads when you actually see it atop a deck um it's much scarier than it look than it is when you're just looking at the card and trying to figure out if it's good or not mm-hmm dana do you have any favorites um privileged position um is is kind of a seleznia asceticism um except for it protects all of your stuff by giving it hex proof um that is a really good card that also hasn't had a reprint since 1972 in the warwin block i don't think um um but yeah like if you have access to those colors and you are playing a deck that cares about permanence which seleznia decks tend to do um that's a fantastic protection piece because it it then puts that position that that situation out there where someone's looking at the board saying like okay i need to deal with this next turn then the person drops that privileged position and suddenly you're like i can't do anything now until that's gone so instead of like dealing with the problem i have to deal with that before i can get to the problem and adding that extra layer in place makes it really difficult to interact with somebody's board state in a way that you may need to do to keep from losing that game uh dana you know as the resident celestia player i i do appreciate that card i'm gonna throw out another one too um i feel like i'd be doing myself a disservice if i didn't mention dauntless escort oh yeah especially since i already talked about selfless spirit when they're they're roughly the same card um you can sacrifice dauntless escort to make all your creatures indestructible um just a three three for three mana um which already is like the type of card i love playing anyways so yeah if you if you're playing selfless spirit if you're in green white um you probably want to consider dauntless escort just because it's an extra copy and if something is usually good enough to be included once you might want to consider including a second copy of it and this is just that that is just that there are coming to mind like oh there are a whole bunch of creatures that can save your board that like like flash ones like archangel avacyn for example can enter and give all of your stuff indestructible too and i think to me one of the most important aspects of this whole category of protecting your board is the redundancy of ways that you have to do it because just one of these spells can be a really well-timed blowout it's true but actually having multiple versions of these in your deck can guarantee that you actually get them to your hand more often which allows you to dare to extend onto the battlefield in the first place and i feel like that's just a huge aspect of what makes this such an important category is that having more versions of this effect in your deck just kind of allows you to line up the place where these cards are good in the first place if that makes any sense yeah putting yourself in that position to succeed or or be able to be at that that much stronger of a position than everyone else is a huge part of what takes one a game would you say that that position is rather privileged but okay perfect you are silly but but yeah it's just like seriously i do think it's like a huge important factor of this entire discussion this entire topic is that the ability to you know know that you stand a good chance of drawing one of these cards kind of gives you carte blanche gives you the confidence to go and actually put stuff onto the battlefield so i feel like that's just a huge important thing when it comes to protecting your board is knowing how many of those effects you've actually got in the 99 but now fellas as we come to a close on this episode i do have one final question for you what do you think about the cases where you failed what happens if you didn't manage to protect the board like are there things that are good for rebuilding after a huge setback what do you think i mean i think this sounds like an entirely different podcast episode um there's the the world of rebuilding after a board wipe or just how to play around them that sounds like an entirely different episode so i i suggest i hope dana backs me up here because i have no better answer other than let's talk about that next week uh that sounds like a good plan to me you know what i think that's fair because you're right that is a pretty complicated question and it probably depends on the specific strategies that you're using because just like we saw with all of these different board protection spells a lot of them can be very strategy specific so matt that's a great call see i'm still listening to you after 179 episodes perfect's working i mean it only took three and a half years but here we are here we are all right fellas this was so much fun to talk about and thank you so much for joining me but if our listeners would like to get in touch with us now where is it that they can find us all matt well you can listen to me listeners over at mathims55 on twitter that's m-a-t-h-i-m-u-s-55 and don't forget wednesday evenings we are streaming games over at twitch.tv edh recast so make sure you tune in because our guests are always awesome we have a super super great time um the guest oh man so many great guests like cag members rules committee members just great people in the community it's always super fun and dana you can find me on the twitter birds at dana roach you can hear me on the other podcast cmdr central i'm writing articles for edhrec and for commander's herald and you can find all of us together at patreon.com social media trekcast and i'm joey schultz you can find me at joseph m schultz on twitter and you can find the cast at edhfratcast on both facebook and twitter as well plus if you've got a question you can contact us at edhrecast gmail.com our thanks go out once again to the whole team at the command zone for handling the post-production work on the podcast and we want to thank our sponsors once again too they are tcgplayer and cardkingdom.com and you can visit altersleeves.com for cool custom edh rex sleeves listeners will be back at you next week with more data and insights but until then remember idiots wreck your deck before you wreck your deck [Music] you

Channel: EDHRECast

Views: 15,755

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

Id: 3OdVf04UZfc

Length: 53min 38sec (3218 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 10 2021