Start Your Engines! | EDHRECast 121

[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 the guy who didn't want to build a cycling deck because that's not his favorite type of cardio it's matt morgan well i found out the hard way this weekend that there is a certain type of nail you're not supposed to hit with a hammer that is your fingernails ow ow ow not pleasant that is visceral that's oh painful way to begin a show man ouch anyway next the guy who claims that it's not that he wasn't paying attention it's just that he had phased out for the turn that's dana roach i'm going to combine a challenge to stats with a little life lesson here ancestral masks should be in every enchantress deck they're wearing their masks and please you should be too darn right absolutely hopefully and this is the edh rec cast edhrec is the best deck building resource on the web for the commander format compiling data from decklists all over the internet to provide helpful recommendations for your new commander dex and here on the podcast what we like to do is give all that data a little more context fellas what are we talking about this week we're going to be talking about engines and wind conditions yeah we want to sort of study the difference between those two categories in the deck and sort of see maybe where a balance can be drawn or the different relationships that those cards have to one another should be really interesting but before we get to that topic we of course have to give an enormous thank you to the folks at the command zone joshua and the whole team at command zone handle all the post-production work on the podcast and make it look as spiffy and nifty as it possibly can excellent work so huge thank you to them and of course we would love to thank our sponsors for the show as well well yeah our the show wouldn't be the same without our great sponsor so cardkingdom.com and tcgplayer.com they help keep the lights on they help produce the show so of course we want to thank them whether you're buying or selling you know i just ordered all my magix core 21 singles they arrive pretty dang quickly i must admit um so i use that that affiliate link just cardkingdom.com edhrec or if you prefer tcgplayer.com you can just click on one of the price links on edhrec that'll take you right to tcgplayer.com that'll let you know that we sent you over and they'll get you taken care of as well so thank you as always to our great sponsors card kingdom and tcgplayer.com it's very delightful and uh i cannot wait to destroy you guys in games with all of those new cards that i've gotten hey another thing that we want to mention before we get on to our main topic is something really exciting and that is edh rec is redoing the assault scores so as folks probably know we've done a couple of episodes on this in the past edhrec has a log of what the community has agreed upon are the most salt inducing cards in the game the stuff that people maybe don't like seeing all that much in games of commander and that list can be found at edatrec.com which will show you the top 100 most salt inducing cards that people have voted upon to say yeah i think that this is a really salt inducing card that card makes me salty indeed but what we want to do is keep that updated who knows maybe things have shifted around and so we want to poll again and you may have already seen that link on our social medias on facebook and twitter and stuff like that it's been pinned up there this whole week because we want folks to vote and to tell us what the most salty cards are in commander nowadays that link is edhrec.com nacl and if you need a mnemonic for that nacl is the chemical formula for sodium chloride so that is where you can go to vote on what you think are the most salt inducing cards in edh let us know what are the cards that you don't like seeing all that much and hey if stuff has shifted around maybe we'll do a new episode about it in the future who knows um but one other final thing that we want to mention before we get started there's one more thing and take it away yeah and that is you know you can join the edh rec team edhrec.com apply and submit any of your article submissions if you have a nice idea you have a cool pitch for an article maybe you want to talk about the salt score and some of that data and how you know the users of the site can use that to further help their deck building skills go and join the team just edhrec.com apply submit your pitch for an article series and we'll go over that and it's an easy way to join the team yeah awesome stuff okay now let's get to it we are talking about engines and wind conditions sort of studying the difference between the engines that makes a person's deck run smoothly in edh versus the the win conditions of the deck so maybe let's just set the stage for what we'll be you know sort of defining for those terms what would you say necessarily is uh something that makes a an engine like what is that it's kind of a loose term maybe but what is an engine in an edh deck well an engine as the term that we've used and tons of other podcasts you know it's it's very common sling in the magic world but if you haven't really been keyed in for that long an engine is kind of the cards that you use to propel your deck forward whether it's drawing cards or generating mana just something that's going to advance your deck and further that game plan that you set out in that game to go about uh there's so many different engines it's it's hard to just be a comprehensive you know here's all the cards because it varies from deck to deck too that's kind of one of the things that we're going to talk about in this episode yeah a really big piece i think there like when i hear engine i think the first idea that jumps to my mind is maybe a card such as guardian project for example whenever you get creatures into play you'll draw cards that is an engine that keeps my deck fueled so that i can continue to cast more of those creatures but i think it's really important not to just think of engines in the context of they help you draw cards there are a lot of other ways that a deck can have a quote-unquote engine as well yeah like a sac outlet married to a grave-packed effect could be the engine that keeps the board entirely clear of your opponent's creatures allowing you to then get to the win condition which is the next thing we want to talk about here the win condition is how you close out the game um people sometimes tend to focus on that being a specific card versus a game state and it definitely can be both crater hoof behemoth is absolutely a win condition in some decks but sometimes the win condition is just the position you're trying to maneuver yourself into that then lets you win the game whether it's a board spread of tokens or um you know a bunch of things that have in fact whatever um so the win condition is just how you actually close things out i i really love that distinction that you make there because like yeah greater hoof behemoth is totally the wind condition but if you play that into an empty board that's not doing a whole lot of anything now is it so it these are very much things that you have to plan for in an engine maybe one of your engines might be something a token producer like a tender shoot dryad for example which creates tons and tons of sapper lings which then facilitates your ability to have a lethal craterhoof behemoth in the first place and another point too i think about engines to make sure that we remark upon isn't is not just that they propel you forward but sometimes they're also the thing that helps you catch back up in the game if everything kind of went south if your greater health behemoth plan didn't work out and then someone wrapped the entire board and you weren't able to get anywhere an engine sometimes is also the thing that lets you get back into that game even when everything has gone completely downhill well another good thing to say about engines too is sometimes they can be the commanders and they just help maximize the cards that you have in your deck joe you have a rune deck and that thing you know not any one specific card is incredibly powerful on its own but with rune around maximizing what you get from each and every card in the deck roon as the commander is quite a powerful engine just making sure that all those things you have in the deck you are getting so much value from that it's it's a good way to get to that end game you want to be at yeah absolutely he is an engine not because he's drawing me cards but simply because he can repeat multiple blink effects over and over again and maybe those drama cards or maybe those make me tokens or something but roon and other link effects within the deck are definitely what facilitates the strategy to become to put me into a position to maneuver myself into that area where i can play a win condition maybe like a creator of behemoth i don't know just throwing that out there uh which would then make that uh point lethal so yeah blinking effects is definitely one of those things um what are some other examples for decks that you guys have though um like if you were going to hand someone your deck for example you'd be like yeah these are the cards that will help the deck do what it wants to but here's how you close the door what are some distinctions within your own personal lists um you know for example to use i've talked about my veil of the nightclub deck on this on the show before um vela herself is a a win condition in that once i've got to the point in the game where i either have a bunch of beater artifact creatures out she will make them unblockable so i can swing in and kill somebody or if i'm in a position where i have a bunch of tokens and a sack outlet she when she comes into play can i want me to just kill everybody by sacrificing a bunch of those those token creatures and doing damage directly to players so i have to like like with the creator who behemoth she kind of functions like that i have to have put myself in that position but once i'm there right there in the command zone i have a card that can take advantage of multiple different ways in multiple different board states i've achieved yeah and for me for example uh riyal the otherwise is one of my favorite commanders it's that is it kind of spellslinger but you want to be discarding a lot and real kind of functions as both a engine and a win con in that you know whenever i discard cards i draw that many cards whenever i do that for the first time on the turn that's a crazy powerful ability but then as i'm discarding and casting more and more spells throughout the game real's power gets pretty sizable which i can then use to chandra's ignition the table or i can fling or any sorts of other different cards that allow me to take advantage of how big griel has gotten over the course of the game so it's kind of fun to play around with that balance of is real in the moment an engine or a win condition yeah and that's i think also an important uh thing for us to note here too um if folks remember on our synergy episode when we were talking about setup and payoff um i think that was episode 117 that's probably a lot of this sounds fairly familiar we're talking about the things that help facilitate what the deck wants to do and then ways to spike that down but even within that particular episode not all of the payoffs that we talked about were necessarily win condition payoffs for example when we got to the landfall category in that episode we noted some payoffs were like lotus cobra which creates a bunch of mana which is really good but that's not quite the same thing as this is how i'm going to defeat my enemies that's not reducing their life totals or or anything like that and so that's why we kind of want to focus on that too especially in the context of matt what you just mentioned there where the commander fills very distinct roles too and what we found in that episode was so cool that depending on what the commander does that sort of dictates how much of the other category you need in the deck a commander that does a lot of the setup needs more cards in the deck that are going to do more of the actual winning the game or the paying off a commander that is all payoff really needs other cards in the deck that will help facilitate that it needs more engine cards in the deck so maybe let's run through some examples of commanders that strike us as falling within the the enabler or the engine category other commanders that fall within the win condition category and then commanders that sort of fulfill both of those roles what are some examples that come to your guys's mind for engine sort of commanders where they're like almost oops all engine but don't necessarily win the game outright i just from personal experience i know my mold growth of the grave tied deck that card is all engine and there's just so many ways to get value over the game but one thing that we've talked about on the podcast before too is moldrotha players yes it's it's incredibly easy to get an insane amount of value and it's it's not even not even funny it's just gross how quickly muldroth decks find a ways just to get value but finding a way to close the game is where those decks tend to struggle and so yes muldrotha is 100 in the oops all engine category there where just lots and lots of value but not very many ways of actually closing a game out sure uh broadway the king of turtle um very much like rune ware and maltrotha i guess same thing it's just generating a ridiculous amount of mana by blinking creatures and almost always in that deck have some kind of an etb ability um brago's never going to kill anybody himself um you know i don't know if anyone's probably ever done that i would love to see that that achievement unlocked commander damage bravo kill oh goodness that sounds like a long game yeah yeah that seems rough but brago is going to generate so much value that you are going to hopefully find that win condition um or just get so far ahead that no one else can keep up and they just scoop because you've drawn a gazillion cards off the mall drifter every single turn right yeah those those sounds like great examples on the flip side maybe some commanders that are sort of all win condition but not necessarily engine uh an example that comes to my mind might be zenigo scott of revels which pumps up the the creatures that you play doubling their power giving them haste and it's really really great like that's how you are planning to win that game is by smashing your enemies with enormously powerful creatures but it's not exactly the kind of commander that necessarily like gives you those creatures in the first place it doesn't draw you cards to help you find more of those creatures it's just turning them the things that you already have through other means into something more lethal so that's one of those commanders that would strike me as maybe more of the this is the win condition type of role for this commander what i think a new example would be bruvac the grand diliquence the the mill commander that we just talked about on our jumpstart review that commander is all about just making all those little mill cards that you have insanely powerful and doubling everything up so yeah it's all wind condition because it's dead set on here's this one thing that we're going to do we're going to do it twice as well as we were doing it before so that to me would put it very much in the wind condition category one punch man shu yun is same thing a commander that's it's right there in the commander you tell her what you're gonna do um and it's on that card you're going to cast a bunch of spells and just dome somebody in in one turn so dana that's a good point about shu yoon but how about some commanders that happen to be both win condition and engine stapled onto one card we kind of hinted about that a little bit what do you guys think are some some interesting commanders that function in both roles well i mean we talk them we talk about them in sort of hushed grumbly tones but corvolve is definitely the thing that's gonna beat you and the thing that's going to let the deck continue doing thing because he draws so many dang cards but also gets bigger as he does so and he is the sacrifice ability himself like he's the entire package all in one card which is probably why he's so dang popular yeah i mean i think urzah falls under that same that same heading um maybe erza himself isn't killing you but he's making that ginormous token that probably is gonna be killing you and he's gonna bring the free stuff into play that's going to make that token bigger or also um work to kill you so i think urzah very much would qualify for this as well not only that but he also allows your artifacts to tap for mana now like or honestly like it kind of just reminds me there's like a famous literary quote of like the greatest authors have the privilege of creating the standard by which they shall be judged or something like that and that's how i feel when i see urza i'm just like he has created 18 different contexts that make him deadly and i need to be able to artistically appreciate all of them because of how much he has raised the bar like that's how i feel when i look at urza so if you want to look at a lot of these designs to be honest yeah speaking of raising the bar i mean 2019 2020 has done that so just to to keep picking on you know these these very recent commanders cannon bonder prodigy oh yeah that card also does kind of same thing that urza does where it takes advantage of what you're already doing on board but then also has an ability stapled on there to look at the top five your cards your library you can put a non-human creature card onto the battlefield that's cheating things into play and it's making it much much easier you know on account that that ability that on canon that adds extra mana i mean adding extra mana free mana tends to be pretty powerful so urza cannon those kind of fall into the same vein yeah for sure absolutely and you can compare that to a commander that came from the same set that has a very similar ability is zirda which is the boris commander that reduces the activated ability costs of your stuff that um feels very much like hey this is the engine but it isn't necessarily a win condition outlet and that's where gannon goes absolutely crazy because he both gives you the extra mana when you're using some of those same cards that even xero might be using such as a basalt monolith but then also can allow you an outlet for all of that mana too and that's what makes it like it does feel like you mentioned matt it does feel as though the marrying the merging of both the wind condition and engine is a lot more popular in designs for commanders recently especially within the past years although some examples do come to mind for um for other commanders from the past i think that uh like brea for instance would be a really good example of a commander that facilitates the stuff that she needs to sacrifice but also can certainly be her own win condition outlet too well and and if we're going to go with that too narset is one of the most historically just busted commanders because you get to cast all these spells for free and you just chain off you know extra turn time warp spell after another time warp spell after a time stretch spell that in itself it combines the engine of being able to get all those free spells but then the fact that you're just being able to put them so many you know back to back to back it turns into its own win condition because you're doing that so easily right uh gabe guru spoilers from way back in that first commander pre-con bundle gabe makes the tokens that you need to facilitate that win but the interaction on gabe also makes it so you can combo with almost anything it's everything right there in one card yeah yeah no absolutely and also i would say um the new tiny bones strikes me as a great example that is an engine that will draw you a bunch of cards as you are forcing your opponents to discard with other cards in your deck but then it also has the win condition stapled right onto the ability thank goodness in this particular case because otherwise the discard games might go a little bit long when everyone's stuck top decking but tiny bones can pay mana to have all of the opponents lose 10 life if you've successfully gotten rid of their their hands to help close out that game more efficiently so it's definitely strikes me as a much more common uh design philosophy to have uh you know the commander that helps set the stage and makes um those plays a bit more lethal it's the kind of thing to to watch out for for sure and especially like i would say personally i think the most powerful commanders in the game are the ones that merge those things that fuse them maybe a little bit too well such as the case with urza this is one that's doing all of those abilities really really really well and that's what makes him so powerful whereas if he wasn't able to be an engine but he still had powerful abilities in some other category it wouldn't be quite as stunning but the fact that he does both and that he does both of those things so well is what makes him so bonkers crazy so here's a question for you guys then in general not in any given specific deck what would you rather have more of would you either have too many engines or too many wind conditions in a deck i think i would err on the side of the engines um in part because engines make it easier to get to that wind condition whether it's an engine that's keeping your opponents board free or if it's a filtering or card draw engine letting you get down to those those win conditions i think if you have to lean one way or the other i myself would lean into engines because that would make up for the the lower amount of win conditions whereas i don't think vice versa it works that way yeah and actually i would say that the the data probably agrees with you there dana when we look at the most popular commanders of all time i would say that that's probably why muldrotha has slammed into the number one position because she is all engine um or other commanders such as lord wingrace also shows up as i believe numbers the number seven most popular commander that is very much an engine type of commander who is going to be drawing you cards for all of those lands and he's not really winning you that game i would agree to like having the ability to find more of the things to make the deck do us something whether that's drawing cards or making tokens or blinking stuff um if you do enough of that even if you have very few win conditions in the deck you should be able to be engaged in that game you'll never necessarily be completely out of it if you have aired on the side of more engines yeah one and i always make the comparison that commander is a format about resource accumulation so yeah having more engines to you know get all those resources on your side that's going to help get you to those wind conditions more consistently whether it's you know get to it mana wise and making sure you always have enough mana to cast your win conditions or you have enough cards in your hand you draw to those win conditions i agree having more resources typically in a game of commander is going to be better than having very few resources but those are are the good resources that you're going to win the game with yeah but with that said you definitely need those win conditions you really can't skimp on those either because if your deck can do a lot of value value doesn't win the game in many situations value and going you know playing too many of the uh of the mole drifters for example that's not going to close things out you do need ways to make sure that your board does become lethal make sure your deck is still going somewhere and use those win condition cards as sort of signposts that the deck is eventually building towards dana like you mentioned you're not just playing individual cards you are also making sure that the rest of the deck maneuvers into a position where those cards become lethal for sure so don't forget the win conditions but engines are most likely more valuable and they are in fact so valuable that sometimes the engines can be so good that they too become almost like a win condition and that will be the second half of our show which we will get to after our favorite segment which is challenging those stats there's a lot of data on eda track but we don't always agree with it sometimes you think that cards are seeing too much play and sometimes i think they're seeing too little play so what we like to do is challenge those statistics here dana start us off this week what is your challenge uh the challenge i have was sent in by twitter user common spence underscore 16 but it's exactly of my alley cuts are old cards that nobody plays perfect pennants is a white enchantment two and a white choose a card from your hand and put that card on top of your library prevent all damage from a black or red source it's in 559 decks currently and there's there's two useful axes here about this card number one there's a bunch of commanders that care about having cards in the top of your library you have yanet you have elsha the infinite you have winoda avapani narset golos those cards just using it as a way to set up your top deck is very very useful the other axis here though that's very very relevant 19 of the 20 most popular decks in edh rack in the last two years are black or red so you are almost always going to be seeing a black and red source that's useful and going to get double duty out of this you're going to stop damage from hitting you and you're going to set up the play you want to make with the the free cast at the top of your library so i i'm i okay i so i have a yanet deck and this this is making me feel things i'm not gonna lie putting stuff on top of the deck to get i i i really like this pic i i think joey's just so dumbfounded about it that he just can't find the words to express uh it is interesting too yeah just being able to manipulate the top deck whether it's yeah with the yanet whether it's with uh nars where you want to be playing all those you know free spells off the top of your library not from your hand i think there's a lot of different top deck manipulation specific applications here but then even like you said dana there's a ton of black and red commanders that are very very popular lately so yeah being able to have protection from those for just having to redraw you know your third land in hand i don't think that's too bad of a deal right there and it's not just damage it's it's it's not just combat damage it's damaged from a source so there's it will get around that that shiner's ignition that's gonna dome you for 20. oh yeah yeah this reminds me a lot of the uh the enchantment fanatical devotion because it is a sacrifice outlet which is really the thing that you want but it also can occasionally regenerate a creature when you sacrifice you can like pick a creature to regenerate which like is just the bonus icing on the cake which sometimes is useful but doesn't even necessarily need to be and that's how i feel about this card this is very intriguing and dana can't leave it to you and to our awesome listeners of course yes to find obscure cards that totally make my day i absolutely love this um i'm gonna move into my challenge now and this is a card that i think is seeing too much play the card kaya's wrath this is a four mana wrath spell that costs white white black black to destroy all creatures and you gain life equal to the number of creatures you controlled that were destroyed this way this card shows up in 6300 decks and i just can't get with this card even in specifically orzov decks the double white and double black pips on this spell make it very very difficult to cast and i would genuinely rather play just a regular wrath of god or a fumigate even if it is a little bit more expensive on the fumigate it will gain me more life and it isn't as strict on the casting cost to cast i've just never been impressed with kaya's wrath i don't feel like that bonus is worth the really strict mana requirements i just really don't like this wrath and i don't think that it should see nearly as much play as it does yeah i think if it had the fumigate clause where it was all creatures that would be a different story but i think the upside there over a wrath of god having to pay two extra black is j is not a good trade-off yeah it's and and there's always the like well you can play both sort of argument here but this color combination is not hurting for amazing ride effects and this is really low on the list compared to the austere commands and the merciless evictions even if those cost a little bit more their efficacy is so much greater than maybe gaining a little bit of life off of this but they also don't require such strict mana i just i can't get with this card and 6 300 x is way way too much for this one so i think that this should see way less play than it does all right matt how about your challenge so my challenge is for one of our new corset 21 commanders we have a little bit of data coming in and so far uh joe real monvoli recluse has been built a little bit one of the mid-tier commanders as far as popularity goes but one card that i haven't seen as much that i think should be in order to take advantage of the first ability on uh joel rail i think should be seeing a little more play so joel real reads whenever you draw your second card each turn create a two-two green cat creature token that's the ability that we really want to dial in here so being able to draw that second card per turn it's pretty easy to do it in green on your own turn but being able to do that every turn is something that i think people could be taking better advantage of a card that can do that is mind's eye so that's an artifact for five mana whenever opponent draws a card you may pay one mana if you do draw a card so it's currently only seeing playing 13 of the decks so far for joel rail i think that should be a little higher for a couple reasons the first one being you're in mono green you're probably drawing a ton of cards and we're not drawing a ton of cards you're probably doing that because it's modern green in 2020 but you're drawing a ton of lands because you are mono green so you have access to the best ramp out there and there's already a lot of cards in the deck that are going to be drawing extra cards on your turn whether it's staff of nin or a slate of ancestor to draw a bunch of cards all at once but mind's eye lets you take advantage of what everybody else is going to be doing at the table with that extra mana obviously you know with joel real's second ability work costs six mana you want to be building up to a lot of mana on the battlefield anyways so being able to use that in between the beginning and the end with mind's eye is something i think is very powerful that's going to help you build your army a little bit quicker than you would have otherwise another cool thing there is that mind's eye we usually think of it in the context of colors that have more difficulty with accumulating cards in hand and particularly the barrier there is how much mana this costs before you start actually drawing those cards that is not a concern for green decks they've got tons no mana this won't be difficult at all so that's a really clever pick that you can actually use to get more of those cats on board to then fuel joel rail's ridiculous over run ability of making your stuff really yeah i like this especially because that's not a weakness that uh exists for green at all that's a barrier that is really really low bar for her yeah and we've talked a couple times on this podcast about how mind's eye maybe has been power crept out a little bit but i still think there's some good applications there this mono green you know with having mana to spare kind of deck that obviously wants a lot of cards in your hand too i think it's just a good mana sink in a deck that's probably going to have some spare mana laying around all right cool stuff you guys now let's move into the second part of our show and this is where things get a little bit trickier and specifically we're hoping that this conversation will be a good uh helpful tool to help folks out when they're doing threat evaluation because there's a funny thing that happens for some of these engines and some of these win conditions because some cards are so good at being an engine within given context within a certain commander's deck for example that they actually can become the thing that facilitates the victory in the first place they are almost more valuable in the deck than whatever cards are that are helping you end the game those engines are just that good and so we want to talk about some cards that maybe in one deck they look like a regular average engine but in another deck they literally help facilitate victory in a pretty unexpected way so let's get to some examples of those maybe just moving through and cuddle and color order uh what are some examples that jump to your guys minds of cards that are really good engines in one place but also kind of turn into wind conditions in different contexts so the first one i think we should talk about because it's just one of the newer ones that has kind of taken the format by storm i would say is smothering tithe now this is an insanely powerful mana engine it's three and a white for an enchantment that says whenever an opponent draws a card they may pay two mana if they don't you create a colorless treasure artifact crete or excuse me artifact token with tap to sacrifice this artifact to add one mana of any color it is such an amazing mana generating enchantment it's i have some trouble explaining the context so i'm just so overwhelmed by it uh what do you guys say about this i mean yeah i look at that card and in the average deck i'm like oh this is going to give me a ton of mana that's really cool like it's real but it's you know it's just mana except that in some decks for example wheel decks like shabraz and brolin which include white you can play a single windfall and you're getting like 21 mana from this and you'll just have drawn a bunch of new cards which means you can probably cast another wheel type of ability this card the smothering tithe is the thing that lets that deck go completely off so in that context it is way more valuable than just being a mana producing enchantment well in something like a curie lineslinger where a kiri gets stronger based on the amount of artifacts you have in play it turns your commander into a one-shot machine if you are playing in black and you have access to revel and riches it suddenly makes revel and riches really really easy to just win you the game as well yeah absolutely so if you are playing against an akiri deck and you see the smothering tithe the threat level on that card in that context is way bigger than if i'm playing against dana's sphinx tribal deck for example another example that comes to my mind is a suture priest i see this all the time in life gain decks this is one that whenever you have creatures enter the battlefield under your control you gain a life but your opponents will lose a life if they get creatures into play and this strikes me in normal life game decks they just want to life gain trigger say for example um a karlov of the ghost council deck for instance you'll play some creatures you've got maybe some other soul sister type cards that help out with this and usually i would just sort of think of that as an engine that gives you a lot of life and a lot of life gained triggers but there are definitely ways that you can turn that lethal to yeah i mean feldagriff decks have kind of historically made kind of a t he moment out of using suture priest and just destroying the battlefield because feldegriff is the band commander it's back from alliances i want to say but it has this really cool ability where you can pay one green man and give felder griff trample but you also give somebody else on the battlefield a 1-1 token so you use this with suture priests to give them a token and you dome them for life and then you activates the begin give them another token hit them again with suture priests and it's just this instant little combo that's really really cool uh it's gets pretty gross with suture priests punishing them for having creatures come into the battlefield on their you know on their battlefield yeah that's really really great i love that you called it a teehee moment because that is that's the ultimate kind of so there's gotcha then there's oh did you see that and then t he is like the tip top of the of the the scale right there good night you also have karmic guide that's just a really really useful value card in white but if you have access to revelark as well then you can get a loop going and take advantage of that in all kinds of ways whether it's to abuse some kind of an etb trigger or particularly usually what happens so it goes from being just a nice value piece in white to a straight up win condition yeah and and it's kind of funny looking through the data 52 percent of people who are running karmic guide uh are also running revlarc and i expected that to be a much higher number i expected them to almost be part and parcel with each other doing that combo reviving something and then revelart leaves the battlefield and get the karma guide back and then it revives and yada yada but there are plenty of decks that are just running one of those pieces and not the other and in those contexts that's probably just a regular sort of helpful reanimators uh effect maybe in like an election deck but if you put it into a corridor deck then it's much more likely to be a bit of a combo problem and so if you can exile it from the graveyard that would be very very helpful indeed probably would be yeah don't don't touch joey's graveyard don't touch my graveyard but i don't play corridor so you're welcome to exile characters graveyard but yeah just like if you have the opportunity like the threat level of those cards in different decks definitely way way high what are some other examples if we move on to blue so i mean one of the first ones that jumps out that people can use they don't typically use it but time warp and just time walk effects where you're taking extra turns those tend to be you know kind of a value play in the average deck but there are definitely some decks that can run away with those yeah things like narset or edric fiber trust want to get that first extra turn and use that to get another extra turn into an extra turn and just run the game mode infinitely but it's also possible just to cast it as a value play like i do see both of those things happen and you can't necessarily be sure which what's going on unless you're looking closely at what the commander does yeah absolutely mystical tutor similarly and there's also things like long-term plans in blue that put cards in the top of your library oftentimes i run a mystical tutor just to get an answer um same thing with long-term plans i have that in one deck as well but if you're playing in one of those blue decks that takes advantage of things being on the top of your library that's a whole different thing oh yeah absolutely like you mentioned the penance for yanet earlier uh yeah yeah i will use mystical tutor to put something absolutely nasty on top of my deck and you should be much more afraid of my tutor in that deck if i'm putting an expropriate on top of the deck for example um you should be much more afraid of the tutor in that context like if you have the ability to get out of my hand or something that will probably be better than in the average spellslinger deck maybe oh and i've totally used this as an unfair holy cow i'm going to run with the game when i would had my narset deck together i would put time stretch on the top of my library and just that would start the chain like dana said it would turn one extra turn spell into another one into another one and that's kind of how i would combo off but i've also seen people a god eternal a kefnet they set up kind of a value play and get something even though they weren't playing the you know the infinite turns type of deck but there's you know trying to get you know extra uh draw spells that they would copy off with that so yeah i've seen a little bit of both with the mystical tutor as well yeah or jalayva strikes me as another really impressive one that will turn a tudor into a oh this game's gonna go way way south way quick so yeah in those contexts it isn't just a value card it is much more of a card that is going to facilitate the victory conditions by which that deck will be judged or whatever that i'm butchering the quote that i had mentioned earlier anyway um a windfall strikes me as another example i think in blue because i've seen plenty of decks i i i run it in my mimeoplasm deck as a way to fill the graveyard and i think kes decks uh kestison and mage who can cast spells out of her graveyard she also really likes just filling up the graveyard by using spells like this but windfall also can be kind of the engine that makes wheels decks go nuts in the first place so windfall is absolutely a value card but if you're playing something like the locus god or nekizar it's very much a win condition in those decks yeah especially because like with this mothering type example usually a wheel will chain into another wheel which will chain into another wheel and it tends to be like one big turn for sure um so yeah in different contexts those cards become way more deadly um another example that kind of jumps to my mind would be if we're moving onto a black a zulu port cutthroat is a card that i've also seen some life gain decks just used to proc some karlov triggers um but i mean i think we all know that i make that a very deadly card in different contexts too yeah well i mean obviously joey you have your marin of clandell toth where you just have so much value going over and over again that zulaport cutthroat just nugs everybody to death but in my taste of carlob deck too that's kind of the win condition there when i get some loop going of i'm sacrificing my creatures generating mana but all the while zulaport cutthroat is doing the heavy lifting by actually attacking the life totals yeah it's definitely been a win condition by itself in my taste of karloff deck and and that's i think an important thing probably the the context with which most people are familiar with the report with zulu cutthroat is in the aristocrat style decks where they know that that one's going to be very very deadly but then if you see it in a life gain deck it won't be as deadly but if you're carrying over your threat assessment from those other contexts into the life gain deck example then you might overvalue the zulaport cutthroat on that board when it isn't necessarily as big an important thing for that particular deck and so that's really what we want to try and keep in mind is you know in these different contexts they are more deadly in than other things so watch out for those because in one deck it might be the win condition but in another deck it might be the engine and don't you know if this deck is just using it as an engine make sure that you don't you know treat it like it's going to be as like a win condition because then that can save you a lot of usefulness in the game i think uh making sure that you understand the difference of the power of those cards in those different contexts well speaking of powerful cards this is one that always seems to sneak up on me and really just catch me off guard dread presence is a black card though every time that i see it it seems to get better and better and dread presence a lot of people forgot about it so i'll read it right now it's three in a black for a 3-3 nightmare but when a swamp enters the battlefield under you control you get to choose to either draw a card and lose a life or have dread presence deal two damage to any target any targets a creature planeswalker player and then you gain two life that right there i mean it has i mean modal cards always seem to be very very good engines but where do you guys see this one shifting gears i mean if you're playing lord wind grace and you have access to herborg that's that's it right there no no we can't move on we've got to talk about that this is a win condition that i loved using in lord wind grace it's so so good because he will get so many lands into play and with urborg they're all swamps so this can be a way to draw some cards in a regular mono black deck but can also just totally win you the game if you are doing this there are 37 percent of uh wingress players are using urborg and only 14 are using dread presence if you are one of those 37 percent using urborg immediately put dread presence into your wind race deck it those numbers should be exactly equal it is it is one of the most more powerful win conditions that i had in that deck because when you play splendid reclamation and get like 10 swamps quote unquote into play and you dome someone for 20 and you gain 20 it feels so good they feel so good uh if we jump over to red we have outpost siege and enchantment that has two modes you can pick when it comes into play uh first mode at the beginning of your upkeep exile the top part of your library until end of turn you may play that card so it's basically a reds version of kind of fraxion arena uh the second mode whatever a creature you control leaves the battlefield outpost siege deals one damage to any target so it can just be an engine if you're playing in a deck that needs draw which bread decks often do but if you are playing in the right kind of deck that has a whole bunch of tokens whether it's you know elves goblins what have you it's very much a win condition well so so you know how joey just got super super excited to talk about dread presence a minute ago this is where i am without post siege in valdoc decks because it is a leave the battlefield trigger death trigger uh so valduck has a tendency to create a bunch of three one elemental tokens every combat uh so one thing that you can do since they have to get exiled at the end of the at the beginning of the end step they leave and trigger outpost siege this card is so good it's so versatile too that's like the best thing about this is you can shift gears and so if you draw it early yeah you get that dry engine you you know keep your card advantage you know moving along but you draw a late game and you have four or five plus uh you know things on valduck that gets so good so quick guys like it's and if you combine that with torbrin for example because corbin gets to add that extra damage on top of it i'm sure goblin players you know hit you have a goblin bombardment out there man this it's so easy for this car to snowball into just an insanely powerful win condition very very much and it could be an engine and a win condition yeah that's a very nice card indeed and also in red you have things like aggravated assault which gives you that extra combat step this is similar to the time warp we mentioned in blue where sometimes just getting a little bit of extra value getting a second swing in is really really useful but it's not the kind of thing you're planning on as a win condition unless unless you're playing cards like savage vent maw which just happen to go infinite uh that's where it can get really out of hand it spirals pretty quick i know uh nehab is a combo commander with aggravated assault because it's so easy to generate mana every combat step which you just reinvest back into aggravated assault to get another combat step so it's yes it can be a nice little value engine you get an extra combat step here and there but it's also very easy to just use this as a blatant infinite combo take over the game type of card yeah and uh compare it with sort of feast and famine as well because that will until it lands whenever you deal damage to someone so knowing what those are capable of that might you know make you want to reassess ooh how threatening is that aggravated assault on the battlefield that i see are they just going to use that for an extra 10 damage are they going to use that to make this game become over well and it's funny too that you say sort of feast in famine because they actually made an errata on that card that says protection from dana roach i've never had that card come up and it just did not just blank everything dana was doing so yeah i need to play aggravated salt more often that's awesome yeah yeah so hopping over to green we have elemental bond which is a pretty useful card in your average stompy deck it lets you draw a card whenever a beefy or creature comes into play that's the kind of thing green decks tend to do and that seems like a pretty good piece in the average green deck and we can probably just move on to the next one i think oh no no we can't because i am going to give everyone a huge piece of advice if you ever have uh the the ability to play against me when i am playing my titania protector of argoth deck elemental bond is the best card in that deck in a lot of other decks elemental bond will just draw you like oh yeah i played a big dragon i'll draw a card i made a big token i'll draw a card titania specifically i can sacrifice all of my lands very very easily say with like a zurin orb and i'll make like 10 elementals and i'll draw 10 cards and from among those i'll probably find some type of effect like a splendid reclamation to bring those lands back maybe with more and then i can sacrifice those lands again and maybe make 15 elementals now and i've just drawn 25 cards and that is a low estimate i am not kidding what i said that elemental bond has facilitated my ability to draw like upwards of 50 cards in a game when i'm playing titania because of how easy it is to create those tokens which is what allows me to find the things that then make those tokens gain haste like a concordant crossroads for example if you see a garrix uprising or an elemental bond against a titania player you should be much much much more afraid of that elemental bond in that context than in probably any other context because that is what will draw them like 50 cards that card is not so it's not just value that right there is what helps me win that game more than anything else goodness i love that card so much in titania well let's go from a card then that's going to draw you 50 cards per turn to generating 50 mana per turn that card is seed borne muse it's three green green for a two four spirit untap all permanent so you control all permanents you control during each other player's end step now it's pretty obvious to see that this you know you untap everything you get all your lands back and you just get a bunch of mana that could be pretty good if you're operating at instant speed quite a bit but i'm sure you know getting lots of mana there's no way to use that degenerately right oh yeah no no way at all nothing like maybe crew fix who collects and keeps all of that mana or thracios who will allow you to then use that mana very efficient efficiently every single turn i'm sure that there's no way for the value that seaborne uses to provides for those commanders to become so overwhelming that seaborne muse is practically the thing that's making you win ah yes uh the old simic commanders with seedborn muse how naive of me too you forget that interaction exists oh yeah oh man gre and green's full of them i think that doubling season is a great case study for us to look at here too because i think it can serve as a pretty good engine for maybe a plus one counters deck and the decks that i have that use plus encounters this amplifies them quite a whole lot but i wouldn't say that it's necessarily the thing that really seals the deal in the game but there are definitely other ways that doubling season becomes oh no this is the thing that will make them win like within the next card that they play well i mean super friends if you get to play a planeswalker and then right away ultimate it that by that in itself is just a win condition right there you take over a game instantly with whatever massive ultimate that you have it's so hard to come back from that because you can't really see it coming either i mean you see the doubling season but then having the planeswalker come down and ultimate right away that's oftentimes is going to be devastating yeah although you know in both contexts you should probably get rid of the doubling season let's be real and if you're playing a token strategy it can kind of be both it can be your win condition that gives you that that maximum presence unless you finally have enough tokens to kill everybody or it can just be what enables you to get tokens along the way even more of them whether you're sacrificing them or using them to buff something else so i think in in that kind of deck it does a little bit of both so let's move now into some artifacts uh uh one that comes to my mind that i think really hops the line between being a win condition card versus an engine card is uh mesmeric orb the two mana artifact whenever people untap stuff they mill that many cards in the decks that i tend to play mr graveyard i know i usually view this as an engine to fill up the graveyard for example i have that maybe a plasma deck and he loves a huge big graveyard but he specifically only likes the orb because it is making the graveyards big and then he will use those graveyards but i mean we know that there are definitely some decks we talked about it on our last episode that use the mesmeric orb in a very different way well bruvak i know we talked about him already being just a mill win condition gets especially lethal with mesmeric orb or i know joey the card that can kind of shift gears and deck of yours sir conrad early game mesmeric orb is definitely an engine but once you have it you know established the board and cert conrad is out mesmeric orb has to get taken care of immediately yes very much because otherwise sir conrod will see a lot of creatures at the graveyard and takes over absolutely takes over ton of damage it's it's very beautiful but yeah very different purposes for those different uh decks for sure and so their threat level you'll have to base based off of those like how much do you fear a big graveyard because you probably don't need to worry all that much about the mesmeric orb if you've got a rest in peace but if you're playing against that mill player the rest in peace is not necessarily going to save you because they are still planning on milling you and milling you very very efficiently so it's definitely a thing that you got to watch out for the other thing here are the artifact sacko what's probably worth talking about for a minute uh particularly phraxian ultra and azure at the altar and maybe to a lesser extent kci those are artifacts they'll let you sacrifice a creature to generate mana and people do often times use those just defensively as a way to keep someone from stealing their creatures that's common in their meta or if you tend to make a lot of tokens it lets you sacrifice those tokens to to make kind of a big play and generate extra value um so people do run those i don't want to use the term fairly but they do run those just as a value generator however matthew i think may have some thoughts on this i mean i have plenty of thoughts but uh how how often do i want to bring them up but artifact commanders they do so many crazy things just sacrificing you know to crack clan iron works which just generates a ton of mana you're using things like you know tap soul ring for two mana then you sacrifice it so you net four mana uh brea is one of those commanders that just is it's so easy to combo off with any of these types of effects and i even know that you know valdec kind of can turn astronaut's altar into a very good value engine you know sacrificing those elementals that are going to go away anyways but yeah it's very easy to turn sack outlets into win conditions i mean who's ever heard of powering up you know sacrificing your board for a bunch of mana and then torment to hell fire for 15. that's never happened right oh yeah i especially think of them in like you're talking about a red deck that sacrifices creatures and i'm just over here like come on sacrificing creatures is the the black decks absolutely love this because i'm thinking of sacrificing all my avenger of zendikar tokens to get a bunch of mana to then cast like a living death which will then bring the avengers zentikar right back for me uh to get even more mana and maybe if i have an eternal witness i'll get that back to you like the thing that is facilitating all of that becoming lethal is the phyrexian altar and in those like it can be an engine to get me experienced counters if i'm playing marine of clan mel thoth but usually it's the thing that's actually making that engine become so obnoxiously lethal that it itself is what facilitates the actual victory i mean it's almost like literally any action in the game of magic doing it and that requires zero mana to activate or maybe even generating mana is a powerful effect yeah doing anything for zero mana especially at any time not just that but like some of these they create mana therefore they are mana abilities which like can't even be countered like that's a special action or something like you can't it's not even something that necessarily uses the stack like even that is what makes them absolutely bonkers so yeah that's that's a really tough one uh to probably parse out i think they're always very dangerous but they do you know flip between that line of this is the engine and this is the win condition for sure all right well we've kind of gone over quite a bit now let's let's wrap this up let's get back on task here because we could go for days and and days probably weeks and weeks talking about just all the nonsense that you can go do in this format which is great that's why we play this format but let's wrap it up do you guys have any final thoughts before we we head out of here just to make sure that you observe when a card is fulfilling a certain role in one area but when you move it into a different area it could become way more deadly or way less deadly and that knowing whether a card is an engine or it is a win condition in specifically the context that surrounds it is sometimes more important than the card itself like dana mentioned earlier at the show it is about maneuvering yourself into certain positions and that is true for these cards for sure and so yeah just make sure that you're you you want to have a lot of engines but also know when sometimes those engines become different or become so powerful that there's something uh more than just an engine that's a really valuable lesson i think that will help uh figure out what you should be trying to destroy or what you should be valuing most in your own games of commander yeah like if there's a particular card that's being your value engine you're probably much more comfortable rolling it out early on in the game to start accruing that value if that card is your win condition or part of the win condition and you need it to be around at a point in the game when you have set yourself up to get to that point you don't want to play it early so like you need to also yourself be aware of what role those cards fill in your particular deck to play them at the appropriate time because it's really easy to get excited and get that smothering tithe out early thinking you're going to get a bunch of value off it but if you are really counting on that to power up your akiri line swinger you might want to wait till it's a point in the game when you can keep it safe and also have your commander out and have the ability to to punch that damage through yeah shifting gears is absolutely one of those soft skills of playing this format that you can always get better i know i definitely can get better about timing when i'm playing things and knowing what i'm building towards as well you know if if i know that dana has two board wipes in hand maybe i'm not looking to establish my creatures on the board but you know play that smothering tithe because he doesn't have answers for that that i know about so just practicing you know the when and the wear of all your engines and how you're going to be able to maximize all that just by you know managing the win just as much as the what yeah absolutely this was a really great discussion guys it was so awesome but with that i think what we need to do is call this episode to a close so thank you guys so much for joining me and if our listeners would like to get in touch with us where can they find you all matt so you can find me on the twitters at mathemas55 that's m-a-t-h-i-m-u-s-55 and we haven't mentioned this yet but you can find all these weird interactions that we're talking about with each other most likely on the stream twitch.tv edh recast where we are playing games every wednesday night we have amazing guests we obviously have amazing games because you know we like to pick on each other so you should definitely check those out twitch.tv slash edh recast and dana you can find me on the twitter birds at dana roach you can read my articles a couple times a month on ddh rec main website and you can hear me on another podcast at least once a week cmdr central and i'm joey schultz you can find me at joseph m schultz on twitter you can find the cast at edihrecast on facebook and on twitter and don't forget if you visit those right now look at our social medias so that you can participate in the polling for the salt scores we are updating those lists so make sure that you find idiotrex on social media to update make some votes about what you think the saltiest cards in commander are and we'll have an episode soon coming out to see if there are any changes that have happened once the polling has completed uh if you have a question for the site as well maybe an insight to idiotrx data or a challenge the stats pick that you would love for us to know about that you want to appear right here on the show you can contact us at edhrrecast gmail.com our thanks again to josh lewis and the entire team at the command zone who handled the post-production work on the podcast and of course our thanks to our sponsors tcgplayer and cardkingdom.com you can find them using the price info links on idiotrack or by visiting cardkingdom.com idiotrack to show your support for the show we would love to hear from you about what your favorite engines and wind conditions are in your decks and maybe any cards that you think are engines in one context but become almost like win conditions themselves in different contexts we would love to hear from you we 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 you

Channel: EDHRECast

Views: 42,214

Keywords: magic the gathering, edhrec, commander

Id: _Fg33lf81sQ

Length: 56min 17sec (3377 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 24 2020