Category: Syndicated

Most lists go for Emry Eggs – small artifacts with cheap (best CMC 0 or CMC 1 with cost reducers) and self-sacrifice abilities, like the baubles. That in combination with untap effects for Emry ([[Intruder Alarm]] if you go for cheap creatures and sac outlets, [[Mirran Spy]] if you go for normal artifacts) allow you to dig deep into your library and grab stuff from there and rebuild or win. She tends to go combo, but you can also go token go-wide with stuff like [[Sai, Master Thopterist]], [[Mirrodin Besieged]] and [[Efficient Construction]]. And you can even combine the stuff to have multiple strategies. For more casual tables I would opt to not run tutors but to rely more on deep draw and digging spells and creatures, so you don’t go linear combo win but instead see what happens and comes up.

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/tin-elves/ is my list that runs most of what I talk about above 😉

For competetive settings I love love love my Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain deck, because it’s super fun and consistent – but for casual tables it is super overpowered. It’s not cEDH tier 1, but it’s tier 2 at minimum. So for more casual settings that are still higher power, I went with [[Emry, Lurker of the Loch]], because she can circumvent commander taxes in a way (just have enough artifacts out when you need to replay her). Arcum Dagsson was my go-to commander when Paradox Engine was still legal, but that again was mostly a cEDH tier 2 deck. Urza – well, I love Urza and play him in my 99 in many artifact decks of mine, but it’s damn hard to not build him in a totally broken way. So both Arcum and Urza will usually experience a lot of table hate. Emry on the other hand kinda flies under the radar at first and even if she gets concentrated on, she is still easy to get out.

An alternative could be to go wider in colors and go for Jeskai, with either [[Elsha of the Infinite]] or [[Kykar, Wind’s Fury]], as they add the good artifact tutoriing of white to the already passable artifact tutoring from blue. I myself built me a Kykar deck that concentrates on equipment and vehicles and uses Kykar as kind of a battery to get the mana for equipping stuff after playing. Definitely a way to get more and broader interaction and synergies than in mono-blue.

I know it and play it in a lot of my lists – my Emry on purpose doesn’t run any tutors aside from Inventor’s Fair, because I want to mainly focus on getting there by draw loops with Emry and some baubles or other things like that. It’s a power level decision. If I go for combo decks in a more casual setting, I leave out tutors, going for more redundancy and draw instead. Produces a more varied game play.

If I was going for a more linear combo play style, Drift would definitely be in, it’s one of my favorite tutor effects, because there are so many great targets at CMC 3 (and for CMC 2 I use Muddle the Mixture, as that is also a passable counterspell). And it being almost uncounterable (aside from Stifle effects and who plays those) is another upside.

Intruder Alarm is “2U, random opponent discards a removal from hand” in this deck, because if that doesn’t happen, I flat out win. Very many of my loops are based on creatures ETB/LTB – usually one of the X creatures with X=0 does the trick, or some mana producing creatures and Ancestral Statue.

So no, Intruder Alarm never was a liability, because so far I haven’t seen the game progress with it on the board beyond my turn, one way or the other 😉

Her combo plan plays a lot like Teshar Loops, just trading the silence effects for counterspells and draw effects. Was by far my best performing list at Bologna, and most wins weren’t on the first combo run, but required (and were able to do) multiple runs at winning. So games were really fun, even for others at the table – in two cases my opponents and me discussed the board state to find out wether I did or didn’t have infinite, then proceeded to find the best way to stop it to see if I could get through with my grip of interaction or not.

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/tin-elves/ is my list. I call it “Tin Elves”, because it plays a lot like combo elves, just with artifacts. It contains a lot of sac-reanimate loops and some etb-based loops, tons of overlapping combos. I ditched tutors, because it is meant for more casual but still higher power tables and it performed really good at MF Bologna for me. It’s a lot of fun to play, because you almost always win in new and weird ways. My saying is that when I have 10 artifacts out, I probably have at least two combos out, which I just might not yet see myself 😉

My non-combo plan – which also worked out charmingly – is token and Throne of the God Pharao, because that can just end games.

The thing I love the most about her is the cost reduction – in one game at Bologna she was a 12U commander and I just played her again for a single U, because by then I had enough thopters and myr to reduce her cost fully. Very resilient commander with some really fun options.

The vouchers only get you 150 price tix that you can spend at the price wall (and three foil basic lands) and you can spend them on on-demand commander events, which I think didn’t happen at Bologna. They can’t be used for any of the limited or constructed side events, which is why I think most I met just used them to turn them into booster packs at the price wall (150 tix got your 9 boosters if you didn’t go for the newest sets). If you want to put tix on a game, you just have to check with all people playing – if everybody is fine, you can like put 10 tix in each and the winner takes those or something like that. I didn’t do anything like that, because I don’t like to play for cash, even if it is virtual cash 😉

Yay! That one cEDH game I joined you in was fun, too! And I remember your fancy card sleeve marking method. It’s on the plan for me to do, too, to cut down on staple buying.

I had the Command Zone 3 day pass for Bologna and it was a blast. Don’t worry about getting into commander games – the judges actively try to get people into pods there, asking about power levels you look for to play at and checking tables for free spaces and matching up people. It was a super fun experience (my first Magic Fest and/or GP or whatever that stuff was called before 😉 ), everybody was laid back and had fun playing whatever showed up. Just keep in mind, most people at the command zone will be randoms, too, I seen people coming in groups, but more often than not it was maybe 2 people and even if it was more than that, everybody loved to play someone outside their known meta.

But of course, if you love side events, then Command Zone 3 day pass might not be your thing, because while you do get some vouchers, they mostly are there for betting on the game’s outcome (if you want) or just trading them in for 150 price tix and 3 random basic foil lands. I haven’t seen anyone using their command zone vouchers for anything else, they were traded in for tix early to either combine them with won tickets or just trade in for stuff at the pize wall.

Oh, and the Sol Ring promo you get with the 3 day CZ pass trades for around 55€, so that makes up for a big part of the 3 day pass already. So I’d say it is even worth it for just two days.