I really hoped Dana would name any basic land

@deadNdivine12

6 ай бұрын

That would've been neat.

It's important to remember that convoke can be used to pay for the colored pips as well as the colorless.

@RuudAwakening

6 ай бұрын

but in the case of Ovika you (mostly) produce red gobbo tokens so I think that's why they tip it off

@thatguycam1989

4 ай бұрын

@RuudAwakening Ah yeah. Good point.

The amount that I look forward to this every week is unreal, love you guys!

I read Virtue of Courage and saw how bonkers good it is! I have drawn it only once so far in my Syr Carah deck only for it to be blown up before I could use it.

@xanderjones6239

6 ай бұрын

Virtue of courage definitely should get blown up, but goddamn is a cool card. I have it in my dragons approach deck

@mibbzx1493

6 ай бұрын

Disagree its not that bad, its impulse draw depending on how much damage and you deal and you can only play them that turn. Its depend on how much damage your dishing out if you need to get rid of or not. It is not a kill on sight card, unless you have something obsurd like terror of the peaks or warstorm surge type cards, sarkhans unsealing ect. Then id consider it but you need alot of mana to really get off with it

Absolutely top tier pair of dad jokes today, loved the modern take on "worst thing to hear from your surgeon"

I stopped playing blasphemous act, and now play reckless endeavor instead. People lean in REAL close when i start rolling that d12. Could do a ton of damage, or could make a ton of treasures, or neither. Fun, over function 😅

@mibbzx1493

6 ай бұрын

Agreed i mostly stopped playing board wipes in general because ppl just wipe a million times when they’re losing and it causes 5 hour games and i mentally check out after a 2nd or 3rd wipe.

@NoTengoIdeaGuey

6 ай бұрын

Only thing is Reckless endeavor is always 7 mana while Blasphemous Act is almost always one red when you need to actually cast it. But I like reckless endeavor regardless just because of the flavor of the card. It truly is Reckless what you do with it.

@xanderjones6239

6 ай бұрын

@jakemobley1835 yeah! For efficiency, blasphemous act is one of the best. I'm definitely moving away from optimum deck building, more for fun lol

@delailama736

6 ай бұрын

​@@mibbzx1493 Yeah, I stopped playing them but recently got a 2020 precon cheap. Was playing it and had Akroma's Vengeance so I played it. A bad game became a bad game plus 60-90mins.

This is why when I deck build I always count my colored pips and tally them, I put in one land of that color for every five pips.

@WMDistraction

6 ай бұрын

Upvoted your comment before nitpicking: This kind of portioning works to a point. After that point (which I am by no means a statistician so don’t hold me accountable for specifics!), it becomes more effective to “lean” one way instead of keeping it proportional. This is why in draft it’s very common to simply run a 9/8 split of basics (assuming no duals). Once you get past that third (or god forbid fourth) pip, every additional basic is meaningless, so you just need enough to get spat that threshold consistently. This is also why I try to build my mana bases to be resilient and generally build agnostic. As long as I have enough lands, it doesn’t generally matter what my color requirements are (unless it gets into that 4+ pip territory). e.g., I try to run Urborg (or the green one) so I can cut down on that basic just a hair. I also run several fetchable duals, even if they enter tapped (maybe 1-2 in addition to shocks and tangos), so I don’t draw a fetch late in the game and realize I can only get basics.

@vasylpark2149

6 ай бұрын

@WMDistraction i currently have 38 commander decks, one for each color combination, including colorless and then some. The way I build my decks is that I will not use infinite combos or tutors. I use the tally system for 2 and especially for 3+ colors. When I add lands, I dont just add basics. I count one for every color that land could produce. I keep 25 or less of my cards (including the commander) are CMC 4+. I have 15+ sources of card draw or pseudo card draw (loot, rumage, exile, from graveyard, etc), 7+ sources of mana ramp, 36+ (often 38) lands.

It's Friday! After a long day , I get to lay down on the couch and watch EDHREC cast. It's a good way to decompress 😊

in defense of ozolith, the shattered spire, i will say that in my Falco Spara artifact creatures deck, it is excellent because unlike other hardened scales effects, it applies counters as well which when youre removing or spending counters is quite good. checks two boxes for distribution and acceleration for counters.

@robotov2334

6 ай бұрын

Hey that deck sounds sweet--care to share?

I'm loving Virtue of Courage in Meria, Scholar of Antiquities. Occasionally getting to play out my whole deck in one turn is just delightful

Congratulations Joey, well done 😄

That Virtue of Courage would be pretty hectic in any partner pairing with Kediss, madness!

I was going to comment how I'm not running Herald of Secret Streams in my Kumena list because I'm not really running a +1/+1 counters subtheme. Then when Cold-Eyed Selkie got brought up in the episode, I realized I had overlooked that one as a card I should cut as well.

My Ovika deck is artifact based and doesn't run Skirk Prospector. It does run Ashnod's Altar and Phyrexian Altar, both of which trigger Ovika and fit with the Artifact theme of the deck.

I run Anger in Mono-Red Daretti since it's pretty easy to get in the graveyard through the +2 and giving Triplicate Titan and Bosh haste is fun. But I acknowledge there are plenty of enchantments that do the same thing

With Kyler I feel like with Sigarda is mainly out of thematically. Sigarda is literally mentioned by Kyler.

I built an Ojer Axonill deck and Virtue of Courage is so good in this deck. It feels good that it's a may ability too. Great challenge Matt! Great video overall guys! Happy Holidays!

Battle Hymn isnt supposed to be for most decks. It excels in hyper specific deck techs. Zada Hedron Grinder for example, by design it is supposed to lay low turns 1-4 and explode on a single turn and win.

I have an urabrask//the great work deck and virtue of courage is literally just an engine that will allow you to win the game. It’s nuts.

Happy Holidays!

Rhystic Study and Smothering Tithe are the two cards I refuse to play any more, particularly Tithe. The more I have played commander, the less I like any popular cards.

I literally build my Mimeoplasm last month and I was surprised to see how many people play ooze. I focused on pure reanimation madness with Mimeoplasm being my "I ran out of spells to reanimate so I'm going for a crazy mimeo" (Threefold Thunderhulk + Lord of Extinction is quite a win con)

Oh, hell no Matt. Sigardas are amazing support, they're worth not triggering Kyler, I speak from experience, and Angel of Glory's Rise, if timed right, wins games. That's one support card I'll play in any and all humans deck, it's simply too much recovery in a single card.

I find it crazy you wouldn't play Feed the Swarm in a mono black deck that gets wrecked so hard by a number of enchantments. I run it in my Phage deck which doesn't really get totally wrecked by 1 specific kind of Enchantment.

I’ve got Virtue of Courage in my War Doctor // Clara Oswald deck. It goes HARD.

It's funny that Dana at 15:30 asks "How often do someone sit and check." I have been swapping out a lot of cards from one of my decks, and literally just checked the mana base and pips not even 30 minutes ago. But I knew it had been a couple of years since I last did that.

Both virtue of courage and exocrine are going into my Rakdos deck now !

I've stopped playing, just... most high-end generic staples. Cyclonic Rift, Rhystic Study, Demonic Tutor, Teferi's Protection. I find most of these thoroughly uninteresting, unless I play a deck that has a gimmick that specifically benefits from having these (like Toshiro Umezawa and Vampiric Tutor). The years have introduced many options that can still get my job done and are much more interesting to me, while still befitting the powerlevel of my playgroups. I really just have to look.

I have a challenge the stats for Jodah, the Unifier. Storm of Saruman is only seen in about 100 decks. It creates a non legendary copy of whatever you cascade into. Overall it's just free value that's guaranteed when you cast a legendary spell. With any top deck manipulation in that deck, it can be disgusting. Otherwise, you can order your spells to double removal, ramp, or whatever else you want. Also, Virtue of Courage is definitely going in my new Ojer Axonil deck.

Virtue of courage sounds perfect for my immard the stormcleaver deck

In my Ovika deck i'm actually not playing any creatures at all, even the ones that are super popular on EDHRec because i want to make sure everything i cast will make goblins because i enjoy just spamming as many tokens in a turn as i can, so i dont allow myself any creatures to keep to that plan

@EDHRECast

6 ай бұрын

Neat restriction!

@jordansams6240

6 ай бұрын

@@EDHRECast Thank you!!! it actually made the deck really fun for sure!!!

I’ve basically cut Sol Ring from anyone of my builds. Only time I include it if I’m in a 2 color deck and if it’s 6+ CMC

joey got me with that segue

@shrevident91

6 ай бұрын

I am so proud of him for getting a segue.

So to clarify, with Virtue of Courage on the battlefield, if I cast Dragons Approach, would I be able to exile 9 cards?

@profane_random

6 ай бұрын

yes

All of my decks are deviations from the standard builds: Edgar Markov is more of a combo deck rather than just a ton of small vampires. Karona is a Voltron deck that’s just as dangerous to me as she is to my opponents. Licia leans heavily into life gain/loss with the only other vampires being Twilight Prophet and Vona, and I may just cut both of them with the next update. Queen Marchesa uses the monarch to get people to attack me and then punishes them when they do. My most deviant is probably Kelsien. I don’t use Basilisk Collar or any of the other Deathtouch equipment because I use a lot of blink effects to protect/reset him. It does still use Thornbite Staff to machine gun down everything though.

When I was being circumcised the doctor told his assistant "NO, NOT THERE!" and I freaked out so they had to put be under. I swear this happened.

I have to disagree with Dana on the exocrine utility aspect to get rakdos onto the field. You have to pay 4 mana for it to deal 1 damage to each player, which means that to actually get rakdos out will cost 8 mana in total. In colours that don't have much ramp, this is not a very effective strategy early game.

For me I tend not to play heroic intervention style protection in my Gishath deck. I find it’s timing a bit restrictive and would prefer dedicating the deck to engine/consistency pieces that both help with initial set up and give the resources to rebuild if a board wipe does come down

@chall3ng33v3rything

6 ай бұрын

My brother in Christ the timing is the least restrictive it can be

Discarding Anger or Filth from opening hands feels great

it's a saturnalia miracle! joey got the segue

Just by the thumbnail alone this is going to be fun

Huh, I play Syr Konrad, and slammed Feed the Swarm as soon as I could specifically for RIP. Since then I’ve used it for Rhystic Study, troublesome creatures, etc, but I see what you mean about the pacing being off. I’ll definitely need to think about it.

@irisnegro

6 ай бұрын

Maybe it a thing of playing against decks that win on 3 or less turns and you need to cut it because you need space for more fast mana, otherway there are many good targets for Feed the Swarm and it's only 2 manas that can be easily tutored.

@swain1153

6 ай бұрын

Yeah but I’m looking at Joeys linked deck list and it has stuff like bitter triumph and infernal grasp. Feed would prolly be better than both of those

Def disagree with the shire sheriff challenge, if you’re banishing commanders then it basically just becomes a removal spell, and there’s enough Halfling payoffs once upgraded with cards like meriadoc brandybuck, that it being a creature and a Halfling matter

So something that happend to me was swapping between stores that had very different metas. Originally I just played at university that was basically no time limit play for as long as you want so my decks were slow and grindy and power over efficiency but now I play instore I have 50 min to finish a match I have to change completely what my decks are doing. The card I just didn't understand was Mystic Remora, I'd play it my opponents would just wait for me to get sick of paying for it or play mana dorks. But then I have swaped meta's now I regret trading it away. Without a time limit with slower decks no one cares about Mystic remora but if you have 50 min well if you want to win you have to end the game and you have to get moving. Similarly I have a Glissa the traitor deck that originally was very little ramp and all 6 drops but now I have 50 min to end a match I have put in some mana rocks and turned up the combo aspect of the deck up, rather than powerful 6 drops its a whole lot of efficient things that eventually swap from synergy to combo and I win.

I did once, during a pretty minor procedure , have my doctor say, "Huh," in an interested tone. I didn't like that

I've only cast virtue of courage once in my imodane deck, and it did not resolve 😅

❤Merry Xmas Joey😂

Virtue of courage is great in decks like Judith

But feed the swarm isn’t narrow. The creature that ungoads your creatures is.

Gisa and Geralf actually comes in wilhelts precon

21:22 Yes that was so smooth...

I gotta disagree with the two cards with convoke, especially Ovika. For those your mana base doesn't matter quite as much as your creature colors and since there's a bunch of blue/red token creators or even white/black token creators for the other convoke card it makes it less difficult than implied to cast those cards

I kept evo sage because she makes my merfolk bigger, she does it twice if I attack with my commander

Anger should only be played with the Koth art

"Cards we don't play" first topic: Negate, a card all 3 play in a bunch of decks XD

Wdym we don’t play shire shirriff. I mean I get it it’s not optimal BUT flavour-wise is just hilarious. All we needed was a halfling, a rope and a fkin hotdog and there u go, no more Sauron no more problem :)

See I don't agree that hour of reckoning and Battle hymn are win more cards. The idea that is being expressed is that a lot of creatures = winning position and that isn't always the case. There are several times I have had a bunch of creatures up anf due to the board state I basically am just holding them for chump blocking. Battle Hymn has absolutely given me mana needed to win games much as hour of reckoning has took me from being behind a bit to catapulting me into the front.

What is that Syr Konrad art y'all were showing off?

@alexthatsme.

6 ай бұрын

It’s an Altersleeve. They had it quite a while ago.

I literally heard my nurse yesterday say "uh oh"

There may be some terrible wordplay but I think I can Barrett

I use popular cards

Matts mustache is giving me life right now

@danaroach29

6 ай бұрын

I may brain that every man with a mustache either looks like an all-star infielder from 1986 or the Green River Killer, and there’s no third option. Matt is safely in all-star infielder territory.

@xanderjones6239

6 ай бұрын

@danaroach29 I can see the green river killer as well.

What happened to the Upping the Average series? Someone is slacking. All I tune in for.

1000th like rollover!

In all honesty, I hated the intro song, but loved the content. But now, the song is a banger haha

Lightning bolt.

Efficiency vs fun can sometimes really kill the creativity of the format. But I guess that’s the downside of aiming for higher and higher deck power levels.

I would love to see more episodes on this topic of "cards that people think are good but are actually bad, and vice versa"!

Joey makes comment about "all of a sudden you have 32 lands." Me, a person who plays a lot of very aggressively curved decks, "bro, that's a land count increase for me; I can't afford that." 43:16 I have that same view with any >=2 mana removal spell in creature-centric decks; they just feel waaaay too clunky when I could just spend more time in KO-ing the problem player. Especially for your case, being in black, it's much easier to use the player removal option, due to having access to drain/ping effects (I have 3 or 4 black decks and NONE of them run Feed the Swarm, either). 48:20 My thoughts exactly. To try to prevent something undesirable happen like that, you sacrifice a lot of gas, by doing so is a form of preparing to fail.

Matt and Dana's sound keeps cutting out intermittently.

I once hardcasted Hour of Reckoning with no creatures in play. I actually won that game.

So i think at least 90% of the decks on edh rec are not actually played let alone updated. Not sure if you can "sort by" updated in last 3 months or something like that on the site but it would be useful.

Feed the Swarm isn't very much of a tempo hit in my opinion, because it's only 2 mana. I don't have a Syr Konrad deck, but if I did I'm very confident I would put that card in it. Currently it serves a good role in my Mono Black Demon Tribal deck!

Maybe joey run that colorless exile non land permanent..it's nice to have a answer

Almost all of these examples had the same answer of "this card works well in some of the archetypes of the commander but because mine is slightly different I have omitted them." Its not really useful to know that you dont run ex. Goreclaw but its a good card in most Reki decks that run beefy creatures. From the title i was expecting something like: i dont run Rhystic Study because its annoying for people to pay 1 or you dont run Bolos Citadel because its both broken and makes your turns too long.

How you gonna not play feed the swarm?!

@lordsauron8546

6 ай бұрын

In decks without good access to enchantment removal, ie Dimir, I have seen Feed the Swarm do really good work; in any deck with green or white, the card falls off because the niche "enchantment" targeting black has is abundant in white and green, and thus Feed the Swarm is more like a reason to loose life rather than giving my deck more answers or redundancy. That's just what I've personally seen.

@zachbechtel2101

6 ай бұрын

@@lordsauron8546 that's great. Joey says he doesn't run it in a mono black deck. He gon wish he had it when someone turns his commander into an indestructible 0/1 bug

@Blacklodge_Willy

6 ай бұрын

​@@zachbechtel2101 to be fair though most black decks have some kind of sacrifice outlet for that particular instance.

@zachbechtel2101

6 ай бұрын

@@Blacklodge_Willy yeah I shoulda used imprison in the moon for my example. I realized that as soon as I hit send

@lordsauron8546

6 ай бұрын

@@zachbechtel2101 oh yeah no, I agree with that lmao; I missed a tiny bit of context. I think it's almost essential in a mono black deck at this point

Joey, why do you trim your tache wonky ?

@10:30 does Joey swear and it's beeped out?

You should stop playing Anger. Um, NO!!! While it doesn't make sense in Dana's Ognis deck, it fits perfectly in Lord Windgrace or any deck where you can easily put it in your graveyard.

@EDHRECast

6 ай бұрын

No one never said anyone should stop playing Anger. Dana just said he doesn't in that one deck even though it's usually popular for that commander. Anger is amazing in Windgrace!

Just coming here to say that anytime someone casts an overloaded cyclonic rift my eyes roll to the back of my head in annoyance. Such an unfun card for everyone but the caster, and usually leads to miserable post-rift gameplay or it is a 7 mana "i win the game" which leads to a feels bad for the rest of the table who are attempting to win in more interactive/incremental way.

@mofomiko

6 ай бұрын

I don't get how people hate and dunk on green so much lately, when blue has had this level of stank since forever. But I don't mind it that much, it's still worse than a board wipe and more of a tempo play. The part of screwing just one person, since it will probably be at the end of turn before discards, irks me though

@tthien93

6 ай бұрын

In my playgroup, if a blue player leaves up 7 mana, and we know they have a rift in the deck, then the whole table assumes they have it and goes after them (unless someone else is clearly archenemy). It goes a long way in deterring the card in people's decks

@MomirsLabTech

6 ай бұрын

I think people dunk on green so much because one of its core mechanics of land ramp skirts any sort of interaction due to the community's general opinion on land destruction. I get how some people wouldn't mind rift as much as a board wipe, but in basically every game I have played this year where a Rift has resolved, the caster has won the game on their next turn. In that context it feels like the rest of the game was irrelevant and was decided by the caster making it to 7 mana and drawing a Rift and no one else having a counterspell to interact with them at that specific point in the game. I personally don't play it for that reason. I also refuse to play rhystic study and smothering tithe solely due to how annoying it makes gameplay for the entire table.

@mofomiko

6 ай бұрын

@@MomirsLabTech the community not running land hat and then complaining is on them and on wizards themselves. We need more ways to punish greedy ramp, that isn't just global back to the stoneage wipeouts. And don't get me wrong, if I see a Rift resolve, I still let out a fat ass groan

@WMDistraction

6 ай бұрын

I’ve gotten hit by this simply because I’m “good at the game.” No advantage except a mana rock and my commander. Sent back to the Stone Age. So fun 🙄

I plainly disagree with Dana. Negate is a budget friendly, extremely powerful counterspell. It does not commit the cardinal sin of being 3 mana, or 50 dollars like Mana Drain. Offer is upwards of 4 dollars, and arcane denial is, too. Despite arcane denial being a very bad card. Delay is really good but also a dollar fifty. Swan song, fluster, et. Are all high in budget. Negate is so good.

@ericsanchz

6 ай бұрын

Arcane denial is not a very bad card…

@midnalight6419

6 ай бұрын

@@ericsanchz There is a reason your opponent is giddy when you cast it.

45: seconds, no thanks.