Category Archives: Magic: the Gathering

December 3, 2009

December 2009 EDH Bannings

By MTGColorPie

My boyfriend's back and you're gonna be in trouble...

There was two changes made to the EDH banned list on December 4th:

Painter’s Servant – BANNED

Grindstone – UNBANNED

From the official EDH Website:

Painter’s Servant has been the fuel for unpleasant combos, most notably with Grindstone and Iona, Shield of Emeria. The latter two cards occupy some interesting design/deckbuilding space, so we’d like to see them in the format. Swapping Grindstone/Painter’s Servant seemed like a natural fit to bring back a decent card and get rid of the true offender.

My thoughts:

Truthfully, this was only a matter of time. Painter’s Servant is a broken card when it’s mixed with a few certain cards (Grindstone, Iona, Chaotic Backlash, Jaya), and there are still plenty of ways to effect the color of cards that are on the battlefield. That’s the reason Painter’s Servant was so good, it hit everything else that wasn’t in play. I had dabbled in a Iona/Servant deck and had seen people run it in combination with Tooth and Nail, which ended multiplayer games right there.

Grindstone can come back to help hose mono-color decks, though less effectively.

These bannings take effect December 20th. Changes to the Banned List have been made.

4 Comments | posted in EDH, Magic: the Gathering

December 1, 2009

EDHing Your PDS: Slivers Deck

By MTGColorPie

Shiny. Magic players like shiny objects.

Released last weekend was Premium Deck Series: Slivers. While it’s a 60 card deck, it’s a great place to start if you love Slivers and have wanted to stat out in EDH (Rules here). Due to the request of my twitter audience (@mtgcolorpie), I’ve been asked to finish off the deck and make it into a Full EDH deck. But there’s a problem.

I hate Slivers.

It’s an unhealthy hate that I’m sure the next time I’m play Legacy, someone will beat me with a Slivers deck and it will be poetic justice. I am biting the bullet to make you, my audience, happy. Don’t say I never did anything for you (you know, besides writing). This will also be the first deck that I haven’t played so there might need to be some tweaking.

For the time being, this will also be the only Sliver EDH article on this site. If you build one, you’ve built them all (thanks to the wonderful linear design concept). I do, however, like the idea of the PDS and love the packaging; if there was another one, I might purchase it. (For those of you wondering where my journalistic “keep emotions and feelings out of your articles” integrity is, I don’t report the news). Let’s get started.

Sliver Queen vs. Sliver Overlord

Since the Overload comes with this deck, we’re going to be using that one. Actually, it’s a better General than the Queen because it has two neat functions:

3: Search your library for a Sliver card, reveal that card, and put it in your hand. Then shuffle your library.
3: Gain control of target Sliver.

With these two powers combined, it is a very interesting General and you can still play the Queen and Legion in your deck, and to tutor them out. If you’re playing a Sliver EDH deck, at least use the Overloard as a General; it’s the most logical choice. Continue reading

6 Comments   |  tags: | posted in EDH, Magic: the Gathering

November 28, 2009

This Week in EDH – 11/22-28

By MTGColorPie

He also sees the winning lotto numbers

In order to get more EDH out to the public, I’ve decided that here on 99EDH, we’re going to link to the articles and points of interest that this week had for our favorite format. While searching for the usual suspects, I’ll need some help from my readers.

If any of you like any other EDH articles or posts from this week (Sunday to Saturday) that didn’t make it, mention it in the comments below.

While you read the internets during the week and you notice something awesome about EDH about the past week, e-mail (99ehdproblems AT gmail.com) or twitter (@mtgcolorpie) me the link. If you submit it and it makes it, guess what, you get a mention and a hearty thumbs up for spreading the word.

Week #1

I Got 99 Problems But a General Ain’t One

Leave a comment | posted in EDH, Magic: the Gathering, This Week in EDH

November 25, 2009

Derfington’s Corner: Playing with Fire – Jaya Ballard

By Derfington

The Lady in Red

I must confess, I’ve always had a smoldering nerd crush on Jaya Ballard. The feisty Task Mage is the hotness, hands down. With a blazing bod and a fiery personality to match, this girl is almost too hot to handle.

Okay, no more fire puns. Let’s talk about mono-Red in EDH.

Compared to the other colors, Red seems like it’s got the short end of the utility stick. The other colours are well-equipped with counters, versatile card draw and spot removal, reliable mana acceleration and tutors of all shapes and sizes. So what has Red got?

There’s no inherent enchantment removal, which is dangerous when your buddies play fun cards like Debtors’ Knell. Tutors? Gamble, while funky, is no Demonic. But Red’s got great sweepers (both damage-based and non), brutal X damage spells, respectable artifact and land removal, and some of the scariest creatures anywhere.

I don’t think many players gravitate towards Red as readily as they do towards other monochrome options because they feel it might play too narrowly. I think there is merit to this belief, but I aim to prove that mono-Red can scrap as well as the rest, while being a tremendously fun EDH archetype to play.

Here’s the text of the totally sweet Jaya:

R, T, Discard a card: Destroy target blue permanent.
1R, T, Discard a card: Jaya Ballard, Task Mage deals 3 damage to target creature or player. A creature dealt damage this way can’t be regenerated this turn.
5RR, T, Discard a a card: Jaya Ballard deals 6 damage to each creature and each player.

Now tell me that isn’t spicy. Continue reading

10 Comments   |  tags: | posted in Derfington's Corner, EDH, Magic: the Gathering

November 17, 2009

EDH Rules and You

By MTGColorPie

Insert opponent here. (Via @Metaknightmare)

Editor’s Note: This post is going to teach you how to play EDH. It will not teach you how to play Magic: the Gathering. Basic knowledge of Magic is required to understand how EDH works. If you want to learn how to play Magic, please visit playmagic.com.

I know you’re interested.

You’ve heard your friends say you should build a deck. You’ve seen games of players laughing as they do something you’ve never done in your FNM matches. You’ve read articles about EDH and now, you’ve decided to take the plunge.

Welcome to the best format in Magic.

Welcome to Elder Dragon Highlander.

This post will show you all you need to do when putting together an EDH deck and playing in this format. I’ll try and make it exciting but it’s rules people; sometimes it helps to be a little dry. Continue reading

25 Comments | posted in EDH, Magic: the Gathering

November 15, 2009

The Dragon’s Library – Ob Nixilis

By dalkoncledwin
Ob Nixilis, the Fallen

Feed Me!

Black has various ways to ramp up mana. However it is relatively difficult to find ways to ramp lands. However this task is not all together impossible. One of the most fun decks I have come across to date, at least for multi-player, is a deck whose General is the only General at the current time with the Landfall mechanic.

Building around the Landfall mechanic in mono-black is extremely difficult to do. You have to be willing to add in cards that may be sub par in many other decks. However these additional cards are generally what make the deck run extremely smoothly. It isn’t at all unlikely in this deck to see the General on exactly turn 4 or 5, and then to proceed to kill not just one, but two players simultaneously with the General thanks to his ability which has an interesting ability which I will get to in a moment. First however I need to cover a special note about General Damage: General Damage can only be caused by Combat Damage. As such this General’s ability, which causes life loss cannot cause General Damage as it is neither damage, nor combat damage. Now as for that ability, it reads as follows:

Landfall – Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may have target player lose 3 life. If you do, put three +1/+1 counters on Ob Nixilis, the Fallen.

The beauty of this ability is that if you can find a way to make Ob Nixilis unblockable, he can easily become a 12/12 creature in less than two turns. Further, even on the first trigger, if an opponent burns out Ob Nixilis with something like a Lightning Bolt, the primary trigger still occurs. That opponent will still lose three life before Ob Nixilis is killed. However the +1/+1 counters do not get put onto Ob Nixilis until after the Lightning Bolt has resolved, thus it is impossible for the creature to survive the Bolt that way. Alternatively, if an opponent goes to burn out Ob Nixilis, and you respond by using something such as a fetchland to trigger his Landfall ability, he will survive the bolt due to the way the stack resolves.

Now, Landfall is a mechanic that requires a very specific category of mana ramp. That is ramp that instead of generating as much mana as possible, instead puts as many lands as possible into play from either the deck or your hand in either a single turn or over the course of multiple turns. So… lets take a look at some of the better cards that generate such forms of land acceleration available to Black: Continue reading

7 Comments   |  tags: | posted in Dragon's Library, EDH, Magic: the Gathering

November 11, 2009

Celebrity EDH Decks – Aaron Forsythe’s Radha

By MTGColorPie
Radha, Heir to Keld

Do you Like Huey Lewis and the News?

The people at Wizards of the Coast love Magic. They really love the game the make, which shouldn’t come as a surprise. Building decks and trying out new cards before we do can get tiring (Sure, whatever). What do they do when they want to play something else?

That’s right, they EDH it up; just like you and me.

If you are planning to go to a large pre-release where WotC employees will be gunslinging (usually playing sealded decks against yours), I would highly suggest that you bring along an EDH deck. Most of them are carrying them around when they go and would like to see what you’ve done with yours.

Today’s Celebrity EDH deck comes from Aaron Forsythe (@mtgaaron) who was kind enough to share one of his decks with us. After the deck list, we’ll give a little analysis about how to play the deck and what you should be watching for while playing this (For those of you wondering why we didn’t do that with Bennie Smith’s Baron Segnir deck, it’s because he wrote about it himself).

As you can see, Aaron’s General for this deck is Radha, Heir to Keld. Let’s take a look at what she does:

Whenever Radha, Heir to Keld attacks, you may add RR to your mana pool.
T: Add G to your mana pool.

What I liked about her is that she does mana acceleration in a different way, an aggressive way. Plus, with new M10 rules having no mana burn, there is no reason why you shouldn’t be attacking with her if you can. Let’s listen to the deck’s pilot and creator about this deck. Take it away Aaron:

It’s like all your favorite ElfBall decks rolled into one!

Thanks Aaron! On to the deck. Continue reading

Leave a comment   |  tags: | posted in Aaron Forsythe, Celebrity EDH Decks, EDH, Magic: the Gathering

November 9, 2009

Deck Skeleton – Verdeloth the Ancient

By MTGColorPie
Verdeloth the Ancient

Get off my lawn!

Green card draw. That’s a funny concept, right? I mean, if there was going to be a color that was good at drawing, wouldn’t it be Blue?

Well, you’ll find out today that Green isn’t all that bad at drawing either. And when people see you pull this off, they’ll laugh and cheer you on (hopefully). I’ve got friends who see when they have a choice of EDH decks to choose from for me to play, this is the most commonly picked. It doesn’t always have the best defenses, nor does lock an opponent out of the game. As long as you don’t abuse it, nor take five minute turns (yes, that’s possible in a Mono-Green EDH deck), people will want to you play this as well.

This deck has one of the most powerful cards ever that isn’t banned in EDH; infact, this is the only deck I’ve seen it in (it’s not an artifact nor a land, discuss), and it can only really go in this deck. Thanks to the way this format is set up it’s ripe for doing whatever we want. Really, it’s absurd.

Without furter ago, let’s get cracking. The Oracle updated Verdeloth’s text box with fancy new text, including the awesome line “if it was kicked.” Let’s see the “official” text:

Kicker X (You may pay an additional X as you cast this spell.)
Other Treefolk creatures and Saproling creatures get +1/+1.
When Verdeloth the Ancient enters the battlefield, if it was kicked, put X 1/1 Saproling creature tokens onto the battlefield.

Does that mean we get to build a Treefolk/Saproling EDH deck? Of course it does. Today, we’re going to build a fun semi-casual EDH deck that people can appreciate. It isn’t as finely tuned as it could be to become really good (hint: you drop the Treefolk theme), but I decided that it wouldn’t be as fun. EDH is a fun format and I wanted to play Treefolk. Why shouldn’t I?

And if you haven’t figured out the awesome totally “hyped-up yes it’s really that good I’m not exaggerating” card by now, you’re in for a huge shock. No, it’s not a Legend that tons of people want banned as a general again (though he is in the deck, but without his weapon of choice). To the tech! Continue reading

5 Comments   |  tags: | posted in Deck Skeleton, EDH, Magic: the Gathering

November 4, 2009

The Dragon’s Library — Sedris, the Traitor King

By dalkoncledwin
Sedris, the Traitor King

Much Scarier then the Disco King

In the first few articles in this series I am going to try to explain the thought processes I went through when I designed my EDH decks.

An EDH deck is supposed to be a work of love in my opinion. These decks are perhaps the single most customizable decks in all of the various formats of Magic the Gathering combined. This is because the pool of cards one has access to when designing one of these decks is so large that they have a nearly infinite supply of cards from which to draw from, with very few exceptions.

The deck I am going to be discussing in this first article, was my first and is currently one of my favorite EDH decks I have put together. This deck is my Sedris, the Traitor King, Elder Dragon Highlander deck. One of the most important things to realize when designing a Sedris EDH deck, is that the majority of Sedris decks are going to be reanimation based decks. Those that aren’t just aren’t using their General’s ability to its fullest potential and probably would be better off using Garza Zol or another Legend as their General. The text on Sedris that makes him perfectly suited to reanimation is as follows:

Each creature card in your Graveyard has Unearth 2B. (2B : Return the card to play. The Creature gains Haste. Remove it from the game at the end of turn or if it would leave play. Unearth only as a sorcery.)

Now, when one designs a Sedris deck there are a variety of things one has to consider. The first thing one has to consider is the overall strategy that one is going to follow as outlined below: Continue reading

6 Comments   |  tags: | posted in Dragon's Library, EDH, Magic: the Gathering

November 1, 2009

Deck Skeleton – Uril the Miststalker – Auras

By MTGColorPie
Uril the Miststalker

Miststalker? I hardly know her...

In “Deck Skeleton,” we take a look at what would be a good start to build a deck around a certain General. Now with some Generals it will be more obvious then others to build around a deck around, but this is just one way to do it. Please remember that EDH decks are your creation; there is no Pro Tour where you have to practice for where you have to follow the decklist exactly. If you don’t like the card choices, change what fits to your play style.

Now, on to the deck. I’ve got a Uril, the Miststalker deck that I want to remake, so this is a great opportunity. The deck was acting fine but it wasn’t running amazingly well. People on twitter were saying that they love their EDH deck to be built around the General (quick rules primer if you don’t know what I’m talking about) and Uril is one of the better ones to do this with. If you’re starting out or looking for a fun yet powerful General, take a look at Uril; he’s cheap (money-wise) and it’s easy enough to get started with him. Since we want to work with Uril let’s see what he does:

Uril, the Miststalker can’t be the target of spells or abilities your opponent’s control
Uril gets +2/+2 for each aura attached to it.

Two things, both powerful. The first is “Troll-shroud” named after “Troll Ascetic.” One of the most common ways people control generals is by casting spells such as Condemn, Dupilcant, and bouncing effects but luckily they won’t be able to be used on this guy. Second, you won’t get card disadvantage when you play auras so feel free to play them on him. We’ve now got our theme: play auras and swing with Uril. (Thumbs up) Continue reading

6 Comments   |  tags: | posted in Deck Skeleton, EDH, Magic: the Gathering