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Showing posts from January, 2019

The Command Tech: The Boogeyman Archetype of EDH

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Written by Jeff Tan         Combination (aka combo) is defined in Magic The Gathering as utilizing 2 or more cards that could either stretch your advantage to certain victory or potentially win you the game in an instant. By extension, combos also include using 2 or more cards that combine to form advantage flipping effect that would render several of your opponents hard-worked turns meaningless. This concept exists in many of MTGs formats ranging from:         Standard’s Saheeli Cat combo (now banned), to modern’s Living End Aggression, to Legacy’s Show and Tell surprise   Saheeli Cat Infinite Combo Living End Cascade Combo OmniTell Legacy Combo         The result is usually a chain of cards that make your opponent go, “Oh… damn.” This is none more true than in EDH, where thousands of potential card combinations not only net fantastic results, but also make people want to scratch their heads in bewilderment as to what just happened or is still happe

Into the Vault: Vannifar Deck Tech

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Written by Christian Gil Portugalisa         Hi All. Welcome to Into the Vault . This will be our official deck tech article. This is to show aspiring commander players how I build decks and with the hopes of helping them become a better deck builder, ultimately become a better overall Magic the Gathering player. Now that Ravnica Allegiance is out, I’d like to do a deck tech on one of best legendary commander of the set. Let me introduce the Simic Commander: Prime Speaker Vannifar. The Commander         Let’s get the obvious thing out first. It is basically Birthing Pod on a stick. Just like Birthing Pod, Vannifar needs to sacrifice a creature to ‘cheat’ out another creature whose CMC is 1 more than the sacrificed creatures CMC. Cheating creatures out is a very powerful effect. This is the reason why Birthing Pod is banned in Modern. It’s just an all powerful card. However, there are a few critical points that are different.         You can immediately act

The Flasher's Journey

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The Historian’s Origin Written by: Vincent Xavier Del Rosario         “Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get.” These were the words from the movie Forrest Gump (1994) that I never knew would be the spice I needed in my life. The excitement and anxiety of facing the unknown future, and finding the means of conquering them to create a better version of who you once were. The balance of both learning from failures and rejoicing from miraculous victories are the very moments that I Yearn to experience within my youthful life as a teenager and for the years to come. These feelings are what peeked my interest, as I glanced by my school’s study area, watching my fellow college students play Magic: The Gathering (MTG), specifically in the “Commander” format of the game. Taken from: mtg.gamepedia.com          I highly respect MTG for its identity as the “granddaddy of all card games”, both before and after I started playing the

Commander League Season 1

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Play2Learn Top Decklists Written by: Christian Gil Portugalisa         The first Commander League has ended and it was definitely a great experience. We got to see a variety of commander decks from casual unmodified lists to a more hard core competitive approach. What amazes me the most is how diverse the meta really was. Personally, I saw people bring in competitive lists that got shot down by pre-cons or get ploughed by land destruction or even dominated by the mighty dinosaurs. ” format of the game.         Here are the top decklists that made the it and ruled the league. I still have not figured out how to make the links pop out yet. Hopefully I can get that working in the next articles. The fourth spot is actually shared between two decks. 4th Place Lord Windgrace Piloted by: Leo Dineros Berio Lands (42) 1 Evolving Wilds 8 Forest 1 Forge of Heroes 1 Forgotten Cave 1 Gaze of Granite 1 Golgari Rot Farm 1 Gruul Turf 1 Barren Moor

The Command Tech: Commander Strategies Part 1

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Commander, also known as Elder Dragon Highlander (EDH), is a casual multiplayer format for Magic the Gathering. The appeal to join and play commander is the opportunity to make use of cards that are usually unused in other formats and a multitude of game strategies that they cannot play anywhere else. From a “Wall” strategy using Arcades, the Strategist to a more competitive combo storm build with Jeleva, Nephalia’s Scourge, Commander brings with it numerous play angles that tests the deck building capabilities of the contenders. In today’s The Command Tech, we will breakdown the reason why we play certain colors and delve into the different archetypes specially in a more competitive setting. Colors and Archetypes Based on the study done by the Command Zone Podcast, here are the colors from best to worst. 1.     Black – A color full of tutors, reanimation effects, and stax pieces. Creature types are generally zombies, vampires or demons. 2.       Blue – A