Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Ep. 33 - Overlapping The Competition
19 Plays2 months ago
We return with a new topic of the week, classic deck tech, and game recaps! Also libraries are rad.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Theme
00:00:13
Zachary Jeblonski
Hello, hello. Welcome to another episode of Midlife's Crisis. I'm Zach. I'm joined again by Charles.
The Value of Libraries
00:00:18
Ciderspence
How's it going, Zach?
00:00:19
Zachary Jeblonski
I'm doing pretty good. do you have a do you have a library card?
00:00:24
Ciderspence
I do.
00:00:24
Zachary Jeblonski
Wow.
00:00:24
Ciderspence
I've been going to the library.
00:00:25
Zachary Jeblonski
Big pause.
00:00:25
Ciderspence
Sorry.
00:00:25
Zachary Jeblonski
Okay.
00:00:26
Ciderspence
Yeah, I do. I've been going to the library a good bit over the last few weeks. My son is working on a research project for school.
00:00:34
Zachary Jeblonski
okay
00:00:34
Ciderspence
So yes, I have one. It has been somewhat inactive over the last year before this little spell of activity. But yeah.
00:00:44
Zachary Jeblonski
Now we, my wife and I had got a library cards like a while ago and we just like, wow, this place is really cool. We should come back here
Libraries vs. Consumerism
00:00:50
Zachary Jeblonski
more often. And then just didn't for like two years. But just recently we've started going back and we branded a movie recently. We were, there's the, one of the libraries near me has like a whole selection, like I like hundreds of video games that are there that we're probably going to start renting. And it's just like,
00:01:08
Zachary Jeblonski
This is just a feel good opener because I'm like, wow, libraries are cool. And it's cool that we have them. Yeah.
00:01:15
Ciderspence
Nice, yeah. Books are great and resources are great and sharing is great.
00:01:19
Zachary Jeblonski
And also just like, it is such a, like when everything in this world is trying to milk you for, for something like money wise, it's like the library is just like, nah, man, have this, have this game that just came out this week. Here you go Or have this book that just came, you know, it's like, oh, I don't have to like subscribe to anything. i don't have to sign. Like, you know, I don't have to like do a subscription or something. you know, no, no, no. You just, here go. It's like, oh my gosh.
00:01:45
Ciderspence
Yeah, libraries rule.
00:01:46
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:01:47
Ciderspence
Yeah, I think probably back when I lived in Brooklyn, I was super into libraries. And
Libraries for the Youth
00:01:53
Ciderspence
of course, growing up, I was into libraries.
00:01:53
Zachary Jeblonski
Nice.
00:01:55
Ciderspence
Libraries are especially great for kids and young adults because it just gives you access to stuff without...
00:02:03
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:02:07
Ciderspence
you know This is going to tie into what I want to talk about today. It gives you access to stuff without making you pay or commit your resources to that stuff. All you need to do is get a library card, and then you can just have access to all the stuff at the library.
00:02:20
Ciderspence
It's not perfect because sometimes the stuff is in bad condition. Sometimes you don't get the exact thing that you want, but it does it's available, you know and I think that availability is key.
00:02:30
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. Yeah. And I, and it's like one of those things where you know, it's just like i said, we would so few things and in our modern society that doesn't, that don't ask much of you.
Libraries as Rebellion
00:02:41
Zachary Jeblonski
Like, it's just, it's just really refreshing to go into a building and get something and walk out without spending any money or anybody asking you for money or anybody, you know, it's like, it's just, it's, it's bizarre almost like when you, when you do it, cause you're just like, wow, I'm not used to this treatment.
00:02:58
Ciderspence
What definitely feels kind of old school, right? Like it is not a remnant of of a bygone era, but it is, you know, a feature of society that was created kind of prior to the overwhelming dominance of the capitalist model.
00:03:01
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:03:16
Zachary Jeblonski
It is, and not to like overplay my hand and make libraries sound more grandiose than they are, but it is also in a weird way like a middle finger to modern society of like yeah, we're going to give you this stuff we're not going to ask for And we're never ask for money on this stuff. We're just going to give you this stuff. And it's just like, yeah, man, fight the power. Libraries.
00:03:39
Ciderspence
Yeah, I mean, I would stop shorter there. but i I agree that it is a respite in an era where we could use some respites.
00:03:46
Zachary Jeblonski
Yes, respite is a good word for it.
00:03:51
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, there's little wholesome opening to today's episode. But we got some, we got a big topic to cover today. So why don't we hop in do you want to start with your topic or we want to jump into our normal stuff and then we'll end with yours?
Podcast Structure and Game Recaps
00:04:04
Ciderspence
Yeah, let's do our normal stuff and then we'll then we'll jump in the topic. That way we can give it kind of as much or as little room as we need.
00:04:11
Zachary Jeblonski
Okay. Eventually, want get some jingles for these different sections, but let's move on to our game recaps. And yeah, so I guess, yes yeah, so I've had just one day of games. I had Tuesday since we last talked, which you showed up for, but I'll i'll kind of start with, well how about we each start with the games that we didn't play together on, but I'll start with one of mine.
00:04:35
Zachary Jeblonski
I played, well, so the first thing I wanted to highlight, one thing I don't want to talk about, it's not normal or commander content, but I got the Dan Dan secret layer while ago for like, you know, my, my, my vision for it was like, Hey, when you show up to a store or whatever and you and you, and you only have one other person, it's not enough to like start a game
Game Night Highlights
00:04:54
Zachary Jeblonski
yet.
00:04:55
Zachary Jeblonski
Like this would be a good thing to do while we wait for people to show up. And, uh, so me and I meet another guy, another player there. We were waiting, we were waiting probably a good, like maybe like hour for somebody to show up to, to get our first pod going.
00:05:09
Zachary Jeblonski
and we played Dan, Dan and man, that's a lot of fun. so I highly recommend that as a, a deck to take with you. If you have the space in your bag or whatever to just like, uh, while we wait for a pod, this is, this is a lot of fun. Are you familiar with the, the Dan, Dan secret layer or Dan, Dan in general?
00:05:24
Ciderspence
Yeah, I think I saw some content creator demoing a game of Dandan. It looked interesting.
00:05:30
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, it's just, it's really nice because it's so like, you know, I had that, I had that quintessential moment of like, Hey man, I got this Dan Dan deck. You want to try it? And he's, and he was like, well, i'm sorry. I don't, I don't have a Dan Dan deck. I'm like, well, that's great because the per point of this is there's only one, you don't have to have anything.
00:05:47
Zachary Jeblonski
and they did a, you know, they did a good job of like constructing the deck where, you know, the the deck is full of cards that mess with the library and stuff like that. because you're, you know, the point of the day the end, if nobody's familiar is that you have one deck that you're both drawing from and you have one graveyard. You guys are both working off of.
00:06:05
Zachary Jeblonski
so there's a lot of cards in there like brainstorm, for instance, where, you know, you can ensure that your opponent draws something that great, you know, and, uh, and there's a lot of back and forth of like, well, you know, I brainstorm right before his turn.
00:06:19
Zachary Jeblonski
And then in response, or after my brainstorm resolves, he brainstorms before he gets to his turn. So once again, I'm stuck with these bad, you know, it's just like back and forth. It's really cool.
00:06:28
Ciderspence
Yeah, it definitely looks fun.
00:06:30
Zachary Jeblonski
But as far as games, games go. So I got some in. I had the interesting experience of a fourth player came in and didn't have any decks with them.
00:06:39
Zachary Jeblonski
So I let him borrow some decks. and of And of course, when I let him borrow some decks, like the the decks did not perform, I didn't think very well. so I felt bad for him. He kind of got rolled. I guess I I'm actually having a little trouble of remembering but what happened in some of the games, but I do want to talk about one moment, which is, I was playing Ashling, which is the blue, red flip, uh, Ashling from, uh, Lauren eclipse.
Card of the Week: Fairy Artisans
00:07:05
Zachary Jeblonski
And, I'm going to segue into my car of the week. So I had a, I had maybe like eight or nine, uh, permanents on the board that were not, uh, lands.
00:07:16
Zachary Jeblonski
And i had a ferry artisans on board.
00:07:20
Zachary Jeblonski
Oh, I'm sorry. no mean Man, I'm doing a great story. No, I had i had i had a Fairy Artisans in my hand, and then I had on the board, I had a Storm of Saruman. And a Storm Saruman is an enchantment that's for six mana, has ward three, and whenever you cast your second spell each turn, copy it, except if copy in Legendary.
00:07:38
Zachary Jeblonski
So i had I had the Mirror Form draw, and did I need to cast it? Did I really need to do what I was going to do? no but I did decide to make 10 Storm of Sarumans. and then I cast that.
00:07:50
Ciderspence
Oh my.
00:07:51
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. And then I casted my fairy artisans after I forget what I started with. I started with some spell that didn't really matter, but then I cast my fairy artisans. So i had 10 fairy artisans. So let me read my card of the week here.
00:08:02
Zachary Jeblonski
it's a three to blue, fairy artificer flying. Whenever a non token creature enters the battlefield under an opponent's control, create a token. That's a copy of that creature except it's an artifact in addition to its other types.
00:08:15
Zachary Jeblonski
then exile all all other tokens created with fairy artisans. So basically, anytime my opponents played a non-token creature, i would get 10 of them until they played their next creature, and then those would go away and yada, yada, yada.
00:08:31
Zachary Jeblonski
I didn't plan this out because my opponent had a creature on his board. i think it's Assault Intercessor from the 40K. And the only thing you really need to know is that it causes two damage to to your opponents anytime a creature of theirs dies.
00:08:45
Zachary Jeblonski
So you might be invis you might be seeing the line of how I died very quickly after this. so my opponent after me, after putting 10 fairy artisans on the board, played as commander.
00:08:56
Zachary Jeblonski
So I made 10 of his commander and nine of them died to legendary. So I took 18 damage right off the bat.
00:09:02
Ciderspence
Oh, it's wait damage to opponent or to target player when their creature dies.
00:09:07
Zachary Jeblonski
Now to like that player, let me actually out pull up the exact order.
00:09:09
Ciderspence
Oh,
00:09:10
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:09:11
Ciderspence
gotcha.
00:09:12
Zachary Jeblonski
So, you know, I didn't really like, think through my, so my line. I just got so excited that I had mirror form for the first time in my hand with a board that I can mirror form.
00:09:23
Zachary Jeblonski
so, you know, I died very quickly after, but, but it's still like car the week because, uh, it was fun. but it's not, yeah.
00:09:29
Ciderspence
Yeah, I think a thing that's come up a few times when I've played the last few months is like, I think I've played enough commander and I think you've probably played enough commander that you kind of want to see interesting, cool, silly stuff as much as you want to, you know, develop your board state or like be competitive in a given game.
00:09:50
Ciderspence
You know there are circumstances, like i I mentioned, I went through that dry spell where I really wanted to get a win. But in general, like when I play, I'd rather do something fun and interesting and different than play optimally if given the chance to do something really exciting.
00:10:02
Ciderspence
So mirror form, I think, is really exciting.
00:10:03
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah
00:10:04
Ciderspence
And especially mirror form with the fairy artisans just sounds silly and exciting. So I get it.
00:10:08
Zachary Jeblonski
oh yeah i was like i you know it's just like i if you know i'm a pretty straight you know so i don't know serious is the right word but i am a pretty like i guess streamlined player but i one million percent if i have the stupid play in my hand i'm gonna fire it off especially if it's something i haven't been able to do yet and i was like yeah there's no chance i'm not you know, making like in my hand, when I was doing all this, this, these dumb plays, I had a city on fire in my hand. So I could have made like 10 city on fires and just kind of like either ping somebody immediately out of the game or won the game. But i was like, nah, we're making, we're making 10 storm or Sarmron. So I can make 10 fairy arsons and we're going to go from there and see what happens.
00:10:52
Zachary Jeblonski
But no, it was worth it. Definitely my car the week. Yeah, why don't you tell me about maybe one of the games you played before we started playing together?
00:10:57
Ciderspence
Nice.
00:11:02
Ciderspence
Yeah. I, I think I also only got in games that Tuesday, this week and I played one game at a separate pod. before we got in games together.
00:11:14
Ciderspence
it's It was interesting because I showed up late to the store that day. And so when I got there, there were games underway. So I just kind of hung out to the side on the table. I was working on a deck that I wound up playing later that night. And you know I saw a three pod and I said, hey, if if you guys are going to play again after this and you're looking for a fourth, let me know. I'll jump in when you're done.
00:11:37
Ciderspence
So I said, great. And then when I finished or when they finished, they came over. So I walked over and then another guy was also looking for a pot at that same time. And so he said, do you mind if we play five?
00:11:50
Ciderspence
And the guy said, yeah. Yeah. and i said okay and then before we started i was like you know what i'm gonna duck out and just work on these decks i don't i think it'll probably be more fun for everybody if it sticks to five and i thought that was the right decision but then it led to this awkward situation where like then the guy who came after me was like well i guess technically i should leave like he clearly wanted to play but he like i guess it was a a weird social gesture to say, I'm going to duck out of the game because then other people felt obligated to duck out of the game instead so that I could get a game in.
00:12:27
Ciderspence
But I tried to explain to them, no, I seriously will would be happy to just work on this deck. Like I would like to play it later tonight and it's not done.
00:12:33
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:12:33
Ciderspence
i still need to cut some cards. I still need to sleeve some cards. I did wind up playing in that pod. The other guy wound up playing. One of the guys who was there at first decided to walk around or something. And, you know, we did the kind of like,
00:12:47
Ciderspence
the who wants to pay for dinner routine about who wants to leave. But that's how it shook out. I think everybody was you know feeling fine afterwards. But then I proceeded to play my Emissary Green deck, which is pretty slow.
00:12:54
Zachary Jeblonski
That's good.
00:12:59
Ciderspence
There was there was a literal child at the table. I think it was like 12 or 15 or something.
00:13:02
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, I played with him. He's shown up to like the last like two weeks. so he yeah he's Yeah, I played with him recently.
00:13:10
Ciderspence
Yeah, so for whatever reason, that always makes me think to kind of power down a little bit.
00:13:10
Zachary Jeblonski
i know who you're talking about.
00:13:15
Ciderspence
So i played the Semissary Green deck. He's got a really cool ability, but he's he's expensive and the game plan is a little slow and linear-ish.
00:13:25
Ciderspence
So it doesn't perform great at tables that are highly interactive or have really powerful explosive decks.
00:13:31
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:13:32
Ciderspence
Sorry, really powerful explosive early decks. And so the kid was playing... I don't remember what the kid was playing. One of the other guys was playing some sliver something. It was either the first slir sliver or sliver overlord. I don't know, one of the sliver commanders.
00:13:49
Ciderspence
So I should have known at that point it was just going to be asymmetric and I should play something stronger if I wanted to participate more, but I wasn't that concerned about it.
00:13:57
Zachary Jeblonski
I'm sorry, who who had the slivers in that?
00:13:59
Ciderspence
us what So one of the non-children players yeah i was playing like Sliver Overlord or something.
00:14:01
Zachary Jeblonski
One of the non-children players. Okay.
00:14:04
Ciderspence
like One of the Sliver Hive Mother. I think of them all basically the same because so many of the cards are the same.
00:14:11
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:14:11
Ciderspence
I don't know if it was the tutor one or the... I don't i don't even know what they all do.
00:14:18
Zachary Jeblonski
I did yeah i mean, i mean i know I know the Sliver Commanders pretty well, and they're all broken.
00:14:18
Ciderspence
I just know that they all run all the slivers.
00:14:24
Zachary Jeblonski
i guess...
00:14:24
Ciderspence
Yeah.
00:14:27
Ciderspence
And then the new, the the guy who came in after me, don't remember what he was playing either. So yeah, I'm doing a great job explaining what was happening in this game.
00:14:35
Zachary Jeblonski
Oh, yeah. we're but My brain's a little fried, so i feel yeah
00:14:38
Ciderspence
But yeah, it was, you know, I think it went, oh, the the kid was playing Joel Rael. Nope, was playing Tatiova, the landfall, not, sorry, not the landfall one, the land creatures one.
00:14:46
Zachary Jeblonski
I feel it.
00:14:50
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, i think that's the I think that's his deck. like i' I've played against that same one a couple times, yeah.
00:14:53
Ciderspence
All right. Let me just, as a PSA, apologize for the preceding several minutes. I'm going to go to Skyfall and start reading some cards so at least we can have some shared context for.
00:15:02
Zachary Jeblonski
All right, well, i'll I'll start you off while you're doing yeah i'll start you off while you're doing up with Emissary Green because I have that up.
00:15:04
Ciderspence
her
00:15:08
Ciderspence
great.
00:15:09
Zachary Jeblonski
Emissary Green is a four and a green legendary creature, Human Advisor. And when Emissary Green attacks, starting with you, each player votes for profit or security. You create a number of treasure tokens equal to twice the number of profit votes.
00:15:22
Zachary Jeblonski
And you put a number of plus one, plus one counters on each creature equal to the number of security votes. He has a 3-3 with no keywords. That's like the first thing that jumped out about Emissary Green. So I can imagine it might be hard to attack with him sometimes.
00:15:39
Ciderspence
I think it's, if you get to that point, it's fine to attack with him because you're going to get to put counters on him right away. I think it's more a question of like, given that he is expensive and doesn't have haste, you kind of need a lot of, we've talked about this a little bit before, notably from my perspective with like Chun-Li, where it's a deck that does something cool, but it needs you to do several things for it to be reasonable.
00:16:02
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. Yeah.
00:16:02
Ciderspence
So this deck kind of needs haste.
00:16:04
Ciderspence
It kind of needs trample. It could also probably use cheap or free protection. But it also needs all the other stuff that any deck needs. Card draw ramp, recursion, removal, protection, board protection, commander protection.
00:16:15
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah
00:16:20
Ciderspence
So there's just a lot of slots that you need to fill in a deck like this. and so I've done it and it's it's playable, but it's not you know it's it doesn't compete well at high-powered tables. Okay, the kid was playing Tatiova, Steward of Tides. Land creatures you control have flying.
00:16:39
Ciderspence
Whenever a land enters a battlefield under your control, if you control seven or more lands, up to one target land you control becomes a 3-3 elemental creature with haste. It's still a land.
00:16:50
Ciderspence
And then... The other non-kid player who had been at the table already was playing, I'm going to say it was Sliverhive Mother. I really don't think it matters, and I'm not sure it was that one, but...
00:17:01
Zachary Jeblonski
If it's, not if I mean, for me, it's like the worst one for me to deal with is the first sliver. Anything other than that, i'm I'm like, yeah, they're all the same, kind of
00:17:11
Ciderspence
Well, let's read that one then first.
00:17:13
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, the first sliver is, yeah, it's your slivers have to cascade.
00:17:19
Ciderspence
Yeah, maybe it was that one. I don't know. I played against another Sliver deck in the last six months, and it basically went the same, so let's just say it was that.
00:17:26
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:17:26
Ciderspence
Yeah, Sliver spells have Cascade.
00:17:26
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:17:28
Ciderspence
So pretty good, and in a deck of all Slivers, pretty good. And I'm forgetting what the with the new player with the new player the other new player to the table played.
00:17:39
Ciderspence
But we got to a situation where the Sliver deck kind of popped off and was threatening to win basically at any point for several turns but i guess that the pilot hadn't played it frequently enough to immediately recognize all the lines so they had a buddy was uh standing with them looking at their hand telling them you could win you could win and kind of help trying to help them through turns but the other the other new player was pretty interactive and probably had a better hold on what was
00:18:04
Zachary Jeblonski
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:18:14
Ciderspence
what was going on with that player's deck than they did so was able to kind of stop them at every turn i was i was doing nothing i was still trying to ramp to be able to cast my commander and attack with a very small board and the kid was participating he was throwing some damage around but it basically came down to the sliver player going off the other player stopping the sliver player and then we got to a point where Like I said, like three or four turns in, the sliver player had been threatening to win. They didn't. And then the player who'd been stopping them won, not out of nowhere, but kind of all of a sudden.
00:18:49
Ciderspence
And so, you know, I thought it was a fine game. The kids seemed to have fun.
00:18:52
Zachary Jeblonski
Okay.
00:18:53
Ciderspence
i had a good time. But yeah, I think Emissary Green rather predictably didn't didn't do great in that circumstance, but I enjoyed playing him. I like him.
00:19:02
Zachary Jeblonski
Okay. Cool.
00:19:07
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. So I think after that, then we got into some games with each other and we had to
00:19:12
Ciderspence
Did you remember anything about the games you played before? Oh, I guess you talked about one of them.
00:19:16
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, I mean, I just talked about the one with the Aisling. I had another game with Valgavoth. My Monoplyle of Valgavoth deck, which continues to be deck that I really enjoy. i think it's I think it's in a good spot.
00:19:32
Zachary Jeblonski
And I did... Oh, it's got 41 lands in. I should change that. anyway, that the only thing really noteworthy about that game, I was always playing against one of the guys that I like playing with a lot at that store, but he he does have my least favorite archetype of all time, which I think I've talked about, which is clones.
00:19:50
Zachary Jeblonski
specifically decks that are just designed to clone your stuff. And so I played Valgavoth into that. And it's just like definitely, it's just one of those situations where like I can never play my commander while he's alive because to allow him to clone Valgavoth is like basically like game over. or so I, I, I literally never played Valgavoth the whole game until somebody had killed him.
00:20:13
Zachary Jeblonski
And then, then I basically won because they, that's basically them taking the, uh, restraints off of me. And I was like, Hey, thanks for killing him. All right. Now here's Valgavoth. Here's this, here's that, you know, like, and at the end of the game, one of the other players is like, wow, I probably shouldn't have killed the clone guy. Shouldn't i was like, no, you probably shouldn't have.
00:20:32
Ciderspence
yeah It's one of the funny things about playing an annoying archetype is that sometimes you're helping the table, but they don't see it that way.
00:20:40
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, they don't see it.
00:20:40
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:20:42
Ciderspence
Which, you know, is but i mean, if by helping the table, you're also making the other players play less than they want to play, then you're helping them. But like, I don't know, they're not doing what they came to the store that night to do.
00:20:53
Ciderspence
So I kind of think both things are right.
00:20:55
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, I mean... Yeah, I mean, I often will like, I mean, this is something I do somewhat regularly, especially if I'm playing against a stacky type of deck. If I can tell that that stacky deck is hurting one of my opponents more than it's hurting me, you know, I'll let them live. Like, or if I have the capability, I'll let them live. I'll, you know, keep it around because like, maybe I need them, you know, to to stamp down or clamp down on this other deck while I'm getting going.
00:21:20
Zachary Jeblonski
And the stacks isn't hurting as me as much. Right. But, yeah, that, that, that's seeing it through line with, you know, you know, the other players hadn't played against my Valga Vought deck yet. So they didn't really understand quite how much the clone guy was keeping me at bay.
00:21:35
Zachary Jeblonski
even though I did verbalize it many times, I'm like, hey I'm never going to play Valkyrie while the clone guy's here. You know, but, you know, they they had to... It's not like the k clone guy was doing nothing, right? So they did he did have to kill the k clone guy. I can't remember what he was doing, but he was still...
00:21:52
Zachary Jeblonski
becoming a problem himself. So like, I get why he had to die, but it was very much like, introducing mongoose mongooses to take care of a snake. and now you have a mongoose problem, you know, kind of thing. Like, so yeah, but that was about, i think that's about the only really noteworthy thing. Otherwise it was just like, wait, wait, wait, wait wait wait clone guy dead. All right. Val Gawath plus Ms. Miracorb. Yay. you know, so,
00:22:16
Ciderspence
Sometimes games like that are kind of nice because it doesn't sound fun to wait, wait, wait, wait. wait But if what you're doing instead of casting your commander, especially earlier than you can win with it, is like building up your board state so that when you do cast your commander, you can win with it.
00:22:34
Ciderspence
Those games can actually be kind of satisfying.
00:22:36
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, no, that particular game was pretty good. Like, I didn't mind it. What I mind is the whole archetype in general, because, you know, and this is just that... Uh, you know, that just weird magic brain sometimes we're like, you know everybody's got the things about magic. Sometimes they don't like archetypes. They don't like, and what I don't like is, you know, I spent seven mana to cast my creature and then you get to have it for two mana because you're two mana clone. It's just like that in my head just bothers me, you know, I'm like, wait a minute. It's like, and the fact that clones don't target drives me bananas. So I can't even like put a swift food boots on my value or something. It doesn't matter.
00:23:14
Zachary Jeblonski
you know But anyway, that's just that's just that's just me complaining about that archetype. and I have another friend that that has that as a deck and it's just like, oh my God, all of your clones are more efficient than my creatures. you know It's like, oh, great.
00:23:28
Ciderspence
Yeah, I think what really bothers you is being outvalued.
00:23:30
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, outvalued. Yeah. Like if the clone was like, you know, spend the CMC of the target creature to clone it, then I'm like, okay, yeah, then cool. You're paying for it just like I'm paying for it. But like, no.
00:23:44
Zachary Jeblonski
So, but yeah. Yeah. Do you want to get into the games that we play together?
00:23:50
Ciderspence
Yeah, let's do it.
00:23:51
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. So we got off the bat, a good friend of mine named Charles, gave me a wither bloom, the new Golgari dragon from Strixhaven.
00:24:04
Zachary Jeblonski
so I already had the deck made, just needed to slot, slot them in. and then just for people that are new, well, because Strixhaven is new, Seekers of Strixhaven is new. Uh, they did a cycle of five, mythic rare dragons, uh, from each of the schools and the Golgari one, Witherbloom, the balancer is six black green elder dragon.
00:24:23
Zachary Jeblonski
He has infinity for creatures. And then an instant sorcery spells you cast have affinity for creatures and flying death touch and five, five. yeah, he's, he's pretty broken.
00:24:36
Zachary Jeblonski
Who would who would have thought?
00:24:38
Ciderspence
Yeah, it was pretty cool. like i So i I knew this was coming-ish, right? like i wait I actually don't typically play at this store on Tuesdays, I'm going to try to come late again because I just can't get there...
00:24:51
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:24:52
Ciderspence
at the time that the games start. And I don't love going to a commander night when I know I'm going to be late.
00:24:57
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah
00:24:58
Ciderspence
But i've I've started to just be OK with it because it's if I can fairly reliably get a couple of games in, it's probably still worth it. And my other options for getting to a late game are so far away that it makes me drive pretty far late at night, which you know as I get older, like isn't great for me.
00:25:13
Zachary Jeblonski
Right.
00:25:16
Ciderspence
so But anyway, yeah, so I knew Witherbloom was coming. And I wouldn't say I wasn't ready for it. But yeah, it was it was the power it was the powerhouse it was anticipated to be.
00:25:27
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, the, yeah, it was the whole, the, basically we had a, it was an, it was an oddly slow game. I would say like, I think that's another reason why I think the deck felt as powerful as it did is because there was like the first six, maybe even seven turns and there really wasn't major threats going yet.
00:25:46
Zachary Jeblonski
and I wasn't drawing, Like any token generation, I wasn't really drawing much of anything. the only thing I had over and over again, i was, I just kept replaying Shigeki over and over again.
00:25:58
Zachary Jeblonski
and Shigeki, I guess I'll probably, it probably would have been the better choice for my card of the week because it actually is a card that actually did something. but it's, it's a one in a green, uh, legendary creature, Shigeki, Jukai, visionary.
00:26:12
Zachary Jeblonski
And you can pay one in a green to tap and return them to your hand and reveal the top four of your library and put a land from among them onto the battlefield tapped in and the rest in your graveyard. And he's also got channel XX green green. Discard Shigeki and return X target non-legendary cards from your graveyard to your hand. So I just spent the first like six, seven turns playing Shigeki, returning to my hand, playing Shigeki, returning to my hand. Like, and just because like I was just waiting to do something just because...
00:26:39
Zachary Jeblonski
I just didn't really have anything in my hand. but eventually we got to the point where I felt confident to like, all right, it's time to roll. So I fired off a board wipe and then, played wick in the woods. And that's probably the one of the most broken cards with Witherbloom because it makes a 1-1 forest triad creatures that are also lands that tap for mana.
00:27:01
Ciderspence
Yeah, that was pretty good. And I mean, that you know on that turn, Shigeki also kind of was the best supporting actor, right? like Because that ramp allowed you to cast Awake in the Woods for like six or something and then cast your commander.
00:27:10
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. Yeah.
00:27:14
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah
00:27:14
Ciderspence
And your commander has the cost reduction, so like it kind of helps itself. But still, like if you hadn't ramped a few times, that would have been awake in the woods for four or something. So you're you know your X is just lower. Your ability to recast your commander if it gets removed is a little bit lower.
00:27:29
Ciderspence
So ramping in those early turns actually you know also kind of made the difference.
00:27:35
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, yeah. And Shigeki was the full package because i didn't play Shigeki on the last turn. And instead I channeled him and I returned back to my hand Exsanguinate and I think Rise of the Dark Realms, both of which I casted that game because my graveyard was getting exiled.
00:27:53
Zachary Jeblonski
So in response, I shageky or i channeled the Shigeki to get those cards back.
00:27:57
Ciderspence
Right.
00:27:58
Zachary Jeblonski
So yeah, consider him the honorary card of the week, number two, the one that actually did something. Shigeki. I do put him in most of my green decks at this point. like he he He has been steadily rising in terms of... like but When we get to our topic, we're go talk about this. He's been steadily rising in my ramp slot. It's just because he just...
00:28:18
Zachary Jeblonski
You know, you do whiff every now and then you do reveal the top four and there's no land, but for the most part, you don't whiff if you have as many lands in your decks as I do. And just the ability of like you draw em late in the game and you don't really need them for ramp anymore. You can just channel them and get a bunch of cards back. It's just, yeah, he he's really good.
00:28:37
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah. But yeah, I mean, I guess that like basically the way the game kind of played out is I fired off a a cheap Rise of the Dark Realms, got everybody's creatures and then eventually fired off, you know, a very souped up Exsanguinate.
00:28:53
Zachary Jeblonski
And that was kind of it. it It is. Yeah, I mean, he's broken. This is going to this is going to segue into my deck on deck that I'm working on because I'm going to kind of tie this in into what I'm working on. But The fact that he reduces his own cost is, I think, a huge deal because like commander attacks doesn't really matter as much.
00:29:14
Zachary Jeblonski
Because i you know if I have enough tokens in the commander attack session, it doesn't really exist. and I'm just paying green and black again getting him right back. But I know i got to play him a couple more times and and and see how he fares when the game... But I'm not given nearly as much space as I was that game. Because like you know like I said, I was not facing...
00:29:33
Zachary Jeblonski
existential threat, you know, really for for a little while there.
00:29:38
Ciderspence
Yeah, you are you are facing, i don't know, spitballs for most of the game. So I played Aziza Mage Tower Captain.
00:29:46
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah
00:29:46
Ciderspence
She's a 2-2 Djinn Sorcerer with whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell, you may tap three untapped creatures you control. If you do copy that spell, you may choose new targets for the copy.
00:29:56
Ciderspence
So this was my first version of the deck. I just finished putting it together. I'm actually pretty excited about it. I found a kind of a theme for the deck that i that I think speaks to me in a very positive way. So I'm excited to play it and to tinker with it. But this version of it had a lot of X spells that make creature tokens and a lot of creature ETB pingers.
00:30:22
Ciderspence
And so Basically, through the first three or four turns, I was just able to deploy some cheap creatures. There were no really big attackers on the board, so they weren't really in threat. I didn't have to block with them or anything.
00:30:35
Ciderspence
And then I just kind of started casting stuff, and then I had a few sorceries that I cast once Aziza was out that I was able to copy. and then as the creatures came in, it was you know one damage to everybody here, two damage to everybody here.
00:30:49
Ciderspence
And we got to this turn where I had a fairly wide board, like maybe five or six creatures, something like that.
00:30:54
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, you were. Yeah, I think I might have been downplaying your side because you were chunking like you were like whittling me down because I think all this stuff started to happen when I got to like below 20.
00:31:05
Zachary Jeblonski
But you definitely got to the point where you dropped the peripherals and i was like, OK, OK, we're this this is getting real sketch now. like
00:31:13
Ciderspence
Yeah, there was one turn in particular where After a lot of the pinging damage, I actually had an attack that was going to do some significant damage too. And what's funny is I think I've since decided that this deck just shouldn't be trying to do that.
00:31:27
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:31:28
Ciderspence
but I, I had a turn where I like one of the spells I cast gave my creatures plus one, plus one or plus, oh, plus two, plus two.
00:31:35
Ciderspence
It was, that it was an MDFC.
00:31:35
Zachary Jeblonski
But it's less so, yeah.
00:31:37
Ciderspence
Uh, so I gave my creatures plus two, plus two, and then I gave them plus two, plus two again. And I was, oh yeah, I was i just played Aurelia, the Aurelia who cares about how many creatures you attack with, unless you draw a card and burn your opponent.
00:31:46
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, yep, yep, yep.
00:31:49
Ciderspence
And so I had the five creatures to swing, so I swung five creatures, and I wound up swinging three of them at Zach. And I think when you were going to take, i don't know, eight or ten damage, you were okay with it, but then when you' were going to take 18 or 20 damage, you weren't okay with it.
00:31:59
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, I was going to do nothing and take. Yeah. Yeah, I was going to take that one because you originally sent one to me and I think two to him. and I was like, OK, I'm fine with it.
00:32:08
Ciderspence
Yeah, I attacked with three creatures to draw a card, but then I was like, I could burn you guys for three if I attack with five creatures.
00:32:09
Zachary Jeblonski
I'll take it.
00:32:14
Ciderspence
And that's kind of what I'm trying to do. so I'll just do that. So Zach, take these two more. And then he said, actually, how about I don't do that?
00:32:20
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, actually, and then I've been sitting on an arachnogenesis, arachnogenesis is two in a green instant. You make X one, two green spiders with reach where X is the number of creatures attacking you and prevent all non, prevent all common damage. zone That would be dealt this term by non-spider creatures. So like, I really wanted, you know, like somebody to swing at me with 10 so I can make 10 spiders and make wither bloom cheaper and all that. But when when I went from one creature to three creatures, I was like, that's probably good enough. And then I just fired it off.
00:32:48
Ciderspence
Yep, and it was good timing on your part.
00:32:49
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah.
00:32:50
Ciderspence
I think it was good threat assessment. Yeah, it was good.
00:32:56
Zachary Jeblonski
but yeah, no, that was, yeah, the, and our opponent was playing, uh, Ramos, uh, the five color. but It looked like he was just playing multicolor slash five color. Good stuff. Basically. But I could tell his deck.
00:33:08
Zachary Jeblonski
And I think actually what spurred me into action was one, playing the Arachnogenesis, but two, it was, it was, he, he was very quickly going to, was getting out of control because he had an Emote on the board and then played the new Atraxa into it, refilled his whole hand.
00:33:24
Zachary Jeblonski
Like he was, he was going. Yeah.
00:33:27
Ciderspence
Yeah, and i don't know if we mentioned, but this was a three pod, which I think, in my experience, has been kind of a...
00:33:29
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:33:36
Ciderspence
a a wellspring for popping off. Like if you have a deck that you want to see if it can do the thing, it's going to do the thing in the three pod because they're just, there's one fewer player to interact.
00:33:39
Zachary Jeblonski
but
00:33:43
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. Yeah.
00:33:45
Ciderspence
Like if you become the problem, there's just a little bit less slowing you down. But also I feel like they are often a little bit more siloed where everybody's trying to get to the point where they can pop off. And so they're less like,
00:33:58
Ciderspence
crabs in a barrel, let's all hold each other down so the game goes longer. It's more like everybody's kind of trying to race to do the thing.
00:34:04
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah
00:34:04
Ciderspence
So yeah, I think, especially given how slow the first few turns were, because I was just, you know, I was just putting creatures on the board. You were just shigekking a lot. And this this opponent was just kind of setting up.
00:34:14
Ciderspence
But it was to the point where, like, you know, that setup kind of feeds on itself so that three, four or five turns in, what you're able to do is setting up is pretty scary and makes, you know, the next turn look like it could be the end. So
00:34:27
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, I was just like, you know, was because it use because the Atraxa has lifelink on it, so it's like, that was, after he played the Atraxa and filled his hand, that's when I fired my board wipe off because, you know, once you start attacking with that Atraxa and getting whatever, seven life a turn, you know, it's just like very quickly the game's going to get away from us.
00:34:45
Zachary Jeblonski
you know, and I've been sitting on that boardwalk for a while. And really what I was setting, waiting for was I was waiting for 13 creatures to be on the board. and there was at least one turn where we were at 12 because it was blasphemous edict was what I was playing. And it, the cost is reduced yeah from five mana to one. If there's 13 creatures on the board.
00:35:04
Zachary Jeblonski
and we had like, we just got there. All three of us had 13 creatures total when I fired it off. Cause I wanted the ability to then play with a bloom right after that. and yada, yada, yada, and do the do the thing.
00:35:15
Zachary Jeblonski
But that was definitely like when the attraction came out with a Modi and then he had like something else on board. i was like, okay, this is getting, this is getting scary.
00:35:26
Zachary Jeblonski
But yeah. And then do we want to talk about the, the last game or just jump into decks on deck?
00:35:35
Ciderspence
Yeah, well, yeah, you mentioned that you played Exsanguinate, but I think, was it Exsanguinate that finished or was it Torment? What it what was the the actual finishing?
00:35:41
Zachary Jeblonski
Tormat was the thing i I actually finished with you.
00:35:43
Ciderspence
Yeah.
00:35:44
Zachary Jeblonski
Exsanguinate though is I would say the actual finisher because that wiped him out and then took you down to like six or something.
00:35:49
Ciderspence
Yeah.
00:35:51
Zachary Jeblonski
And I just fired a sanguinate for like 15 or something like that. And that's just, it's a sorcery. It's X, black, black. Each opponent loses X life. You gain life equal to life lost this way. It's one of the main finishers in the Witherbloom deck.
00:36:05
Ciderspence
Yep. was pretty good.
00:36:06
Zachary Jeblonski
And yeah, and then Torment to Hailfire is, you know, that is the strongest finisher for sure.
00:36:12
Zachary Jeblonski
And that's same cost, Axe Black Black, but... Repeat the polling process X times each opponent loses three life unless that player discards a non-land permanent of their choice or discards a card. And usually when you're firing this off, you have so much mana that like, it's it if the person is not dead, they're so beyond disabled that they might as well be. Yeah,
00:36:34
Ciderspence
as was the case here.
00:36:36
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah so that was that. And then the last game we played, I played my dumb Mentor deck and it performed about as well as I expected it to, which is not at all.
00:36:48
Zachary Jeblonski
But you had your car you had your deck with your card of the week in that game.
00:36:52
Ciderspence
Yeah, i played I also played a theme deck that I think in hindsight I guess I should have known was stronger than the Minotaur deck, but our common opponent played an Enchantress deck.
00:36:58
Zachary Jeblonski
No, no, it was totally fine. Yeah.
00:37:01
Ciderspence
And so I felt like there was some, you know, it's pods are, pods are funny, right?
00:37:07
Zachary Jeblonski
Thank you.
00:37:08
Ciderspence
Like often a pod will be really well matched. You'll see commanders that you feel like are all about the same. And then sometimes, or, you know, maybe 50, 50 split of like, you're not really sure how it's going to go.
00:37:19
Ciderspence
Cause you know, one thing looks really threatening and one thing doesn't look threatening. And you're like, well, I don't know. But so I played my, I call it Axes and Allies.
00:37:29
Ciderspence
There was a board game back in the 90s or eighty s or 90s or something. It was called Axes and Allies where you like simulated building international...
00:37:38
Zachary Jeblonski
It was like a better risk, right? Yeah.
00:37:40
Ciderspence
Yeah, it was like it was like a Risk variant.
00:37:43
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah
00:37:43
Ciderspence
Anyway, I remember playing that with my buddies. And so this deck is themed around axes, like the the weapon, the dual-bladed hand weapon, and allies, the creature type, or ally the creature type.
00:37:57
Ciderspence
i had it I had an original version of it built around Tazri, one of the Tazris. But I've recently, after Avatar came out, which had a lot of ally support, I fashioned it around Sokka and Suki, blue, red, white, legendary creature, human warrior ally. Whenever Sokka and Suki or another ally you control enters, attach up to one target equipment you control to that creature.
00:38:21
Ciderspence
Whenever an equipment you control enters, create a 1-1 white ally creature token. It's a 3-3.
00:38:26
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:38:28
Ciderspence
So it kind of it kind of reads like what the game plan is, right? you You like equipment, you like ally cards, but you're also making allies. So you really kind of need equipment maybe more than you need allies, but then whatever creature supporting stuff you have, allies probably make it stronger.
00:38:45
Ciderspence
So that's kind of how I built it. And most of my equipment are axes, like Inventor's Axe, Bloodforge Battle Axe, Two-Handed Axe, just all the good all the all the good ones.
00:38:56
Ciderspence
I mean, not good ones as in the cards are good, but like the playable ones.
00:38:56
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:38:59
Ciderspence
Kind of like your Minotaur deck worth all the playable Minotaurs.
00:39:02
Zachary Jeblonski
I mean, they're all there.
00:39:06
Ciderspence
Yeah, and then the Enchantress deck was playing...
00:39:06
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:39:11
Ciderspence
The good one, right?
00:39:12
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, she's playing he was playing Sithis. And fun fact, Sithis is the first deck, not this guy specifically Sithis, but like playing against Sithis. was the first time when I ever decided to go to a different store.
00:39:27
Zachary Jeblonski
but When I was early on in my magic career, I used to go to a store where I was living at the time. And I played against a gentleman's Sithis deck and the turns took forever. And and i at that point, I decided to start looking around at other stores to go to. So Sithis holds a very special place in my head of like commanders that have are such miserable so miserable to play against that I went to other stores try and find somebody else to play with.
00:39:59
Zachary Jeblonski
but yeah he said this is uh if you don't know and and i'm very grateful that you don't it's green white legendary enchantment creature nymph whenever you cast an enchantment spell you gain one life draw card so that was that's what he was playing no it doesn't yeah
00:40:14
Ciderspence
Which doesn't sound awful, but the decks are almost always supported with things that basically do the same thing. Enchantments that draw cards when you cast enchantments, and the deck is, you know, 40 or 50 enchantments.
00:40:22
Zachary Jeblonski
yep
00:40:30
Ciderspence
So it's a lot of card draw. And it's that a scenario that you've described before, where... You draw a card so often and the card you draw changes the information you have, which changes what you want to do so often that you're your turns take a long time and you get a lot of information every turn.
00:40:42
Zachary Jeblonski
Yep.
00:40:48
Ciderspence
So it's it's understandable that they take a long time, but unless you pilot it often enough to kind of see lines coming or know what to do based on what you expect to draw, that, you know, it just, there they're kind of time sinks.
00:41:04
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. I mean, it's yes. Yeah. That to me, you know, you know, as we know from our salt discussions, time equity is my biggest thing and and sit this as like, if you don't, you know, if you don't goldfish it a lot, you don't play it a lot. it just creates a lot of decision or analysis paralysis, right.
00:41:20
Zachary Jeblonski
because you keep drawing cards, which keeps changing your decision and then you play a card and that draws you a car, which changes your decision. It's just like that over and over and over again. And then since Sith is lax red, you can spend an entire turn doing a lot and then having a ton of enchantments and and and doing all this stuff and then still not be able to close the game.
00:41:41
Zachary Jeblonski
And so you can have this really long turn and then pass at the end of it anyway. And and then you get board wiped and then you get to your turn again and it's like the process starts all over again. So that's kind of that's kind of my my my beef, so to speak, with Sithis. But to this player's credit, the one we played against, he did not play it that way. Yeah, he you know was a normal normal game with normal turn times and all that. And we may or we may have found out why at the end of the game. Yeah.
00:42:10
Ciderspence
Oh, why was...
00:42:12
Zachary Jeblonski
Oh, did do you? Oh, did you? Okay. So while he,
00:42:13
Ciderspence
Oh, because he he was intentionally not playing the more broken stuff?
00:42:15
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, he was intentionally holding cards back in his hand because he he realized that he thought that that deck might have been too strong for what we were doing because he I guess he had a guy's cradle and a Sarah sanctum in his hand.
00:42:29
Zachary Jeblonski
And those are both cards that tab and make mana equal to the number of creatures you have or the number of champions you have respectively. So I can imagine if, and they're very expensive lands, like in guys cradles over a thousand, I think Sarah sanctum is couple hundred or something like that.
00:42:43
Zachary Jeblonski
so yeah, if he had played those, I'm sure this turns would taken longer, which he would just have that my many more resources to keep churning to the deck and all that.
00:42:51
Ciderspence
I guess I'm curious what the what that version of the game would have looked like. Because I guess, I don't know, I forget what turn it was. like It was earlier than the turn we got to in the first game, but not super early.
00:43:02
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:43:03
Ciderspence
But like by turn six or seven, i had already deployed my card of the week, which was Dalakos, Craft of Wonders, one blue-red, legendary creature, merfolk artificer.
00:43:14
Ciderspence
And you may be thinking, that's not an ally. Why is that in your deck? It taps to add two colorless mana that you can spend only to cast artifact spells or activate abilities of artifacts.
00:43:18
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:43:24
Ciderspence
Useful for equipment. And equipped creatures you control have flying and haste. He's a 2-4. So that... so that played a large role in the game, giving my equipped allies evasion from the flying and haste so that the turn they came down, they could attack.
00:43:41
Ciderspence
I was able to kind of get a good bit of damage in on both players. And then we got to a point where the Sithist player had recently deployed like a damage prevention enchantment that was going to make it hard to attack.
00:43:54
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:43:55
Ciderspence
And we had just taken it off the board. And so I said to Zach, Zach, buddy, old pal, if you can remove, there was some piece that was going to stop me from attacking. And I said, if you can remove that plate piece, I think I can i can eliminate the Sith as player.
00:44:13
Ciderspence
And you rightly said, I'm not sure i want to eliminate him because I don't know what I would do with you. And I think I said rightly, i get that, but... I don't know what you are going to do with the Sithis player either. So I guess you got to decide which of these decks you're not sure you want to play against. Do you want to play against?
00:44:31
Ciderspence
Because I don't know what, I don't know if we're gonna get another shot at the Sithis player if we give them another turn.
00:44:35
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:44:36
Ciderspence
And I guess to your point, maybe that's what the man acceleration would have done would have been. They could have just played more of the things that we can't deal with.
00:44:44
Zachary Jeblonski
I'm pretty sure that if he had that Sarah Sanctum on the board and the guy's cradle, with Sith is on the board, he would have just, yeah, he would have kept drawing, kept playing, kept drawing, kept playing. like you know And then usually with a Sith deck or something like that, if they're not doing Voltron, it's probably like Sigil, the Frozen, I forget what, whatever that white enchantment is that makes angels every time they play enchantment.
00:45:04
Ciderspence
Empty throne. Yeah, yeah. Make all the angels. Yeah.
00:45:07
Zachary Jeblonski
That's usually how I die to Sith as players is usually that one or you know something like that.
00:45:14
Ciderspence
Yep.
00:45:15
Zachary Jeblonski
Yep. But you were able to seal the deal. You got us you got us both.
00:45:20
Ciderspence
Yeah, i was able to get in a clean attack on the Sith's player, eliminated them, and then Zack lasted one more turn and then I think saw the writing on the wall.
00:45:26
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, I really...
00:45:28
Ciderspence
This is also like the last game of the night, so little looser.
00:45:29
Zachary Jeblonski
i Yeah, I drew so poorly that game. like I literally just kept drawing removal.
00:45:35
Ciderspence
I agree, your minotaurs didn't look anything like minotaurs, and I didn't want to say anything because, you know, i I feel like your art is a sensitive topic, but yeah, you got to do better with the drawing.
00:45:35
Zachary Jeblonski
like My hand had like... yeah
00:45:46
Zachary Jeblonski
Oh, you mean am I drawing the deck or drawing in person?
00:45:51
Ciderspence
Exactly.
00:45:52
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah Yeah, I don't know. I don't know about this Minotaur deck. I don't know if it's going to survive because that was, we we we have seen the Minotaur deck when it's per when it runs perfectly and even then it's it's okay at best.
00:46:05
Zachary Jeblonski
And then now you've seen the Minotaur deck when it doesn't run perfectly. Yeah. Yeah, it's a rough one. but let's, I'll tell you what, we'll, we'll save my thing that I want to talk about for, for next week. So we have time to get to the topic.
00:46:20
Zachary Jeblonski
so do you want to introduce the the topic for this week?
00:46:23
Ciderspence
Yeah, i just wanted to talk about overlap cards.
00:46:28
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:46:28
Ciderspence
There was a few weeks back, there was a video on, I think the Command Zone and then also a video on Rebels channel, both kind of talking about overlap. I think the the Commander, the Command Zone video was saying, hey, you need to get more overlap in your decks. It's going to help you level up.
00:46:48
Ciderspence
And Rebels video, I think the title was a little incendiary. It was like why overlap is killing your deck or something, but it also kind of talked about, it was more, it seemed like the spirit of it was more, there's a particular type of overlap that I think helps and maybe the other overlap doesn't help as much as it might seem to.
00:46:53
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, the yeah, Okay.
00:47:06
Zachary Jeblonski
come
00:47:12
Ciderspence
I, I've been thinking about it a lot more as I built decks, Just by overlap, I mean cards that serve more than one function. Where, you know, you think about, you know, there have been a lot of commander templates coming around over the last few years. I've used many of them and in building my decks. I just, you know, I don't like look at them on paper anymore, but I think kind of through my head,
00:47:34
Ciderspence
about what categories I want my decks to have. You know, I need so many lands, like these days, I think 38 plus, typically 40. But I also include like MDFCs as lands, I include land cyclers as lands.
00:47:48
Ciderspence
But I want at least 40 of those. Card advantage, I want 10 to 12 pieces of card advantage, like either card draw or card filtering in a deck that cares about discard or something like that.
00:48:01
Ciderspence
Protection for my commander or for my other high value pieces, I tend to think, I don't know, somewhere between three and five of those.
00:48:06
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:48:10
Ciderspence
Recursion, again, I think three to five-ish pieces of that. Removal or other in instant speed interaction, tend to run, i don't know, 10 to 15 pieces of removal.
00:48:24
Ciderspence
Ramp, I tend to run 10 to 15 pieces of ramp. And so... what that leaves you with is like a pretty small number of cards left after all the lands and stuff that let you build around the theme. You know, what is your commander trying to do in particular with this deck that you maybe aren't trying to do in all your other decks?
00:48:41
Ciderspence
And that tends to be where a lot of the fun is in building decks and in playing decks and expressing, you know, your style and your enthusiasm about a commander.
00:48:52
Ciderspence
And so i think the main function of overlap is if you can find cards that, kind of fill more than one of those needs at a time, it kind of opens up spots for your pet cards or cards you're excited to play in a particular deck.
00:49:06
Ciderspence
And so I just wanted to talk about some of the overlap cards that I've been going to more often or that I'm always happy to see when I have in my collection available for a new deck I'm working on.
00:49:10
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:49:16
Zachary Jeblonski
Well, kick us off.
00:49:19
Ciderspence
So I picked a couple of categories. and that you may have different categories, you might have some other candidates in some of these categories, but one of the categories I had was utility lands. This is this is kind of a linchpin of the idea of overlap.
00:49:34
Ciderspence
And the two I wanted to talk about or just mention, talk about is a little strong. Most of us have heard of these cards, I think, but Temple of the False God taps for two colorless, but only taps for mana if you have five or more lands.
00:49:47
Ciderspence
So it's obviously really bad in the early game if you don't have enough lands, but I think I've had that happen before. And honestly, I've played it on turn four when it doesn't tap for mana and then played another land on turn five. And I thought that was fine too. I just think this is a nice card to have because it just gives you an extra mana as long as it, you know, isn't a brick early in the game. And so I, and it's free, you know, it's colorless.
00:50:12
Ciderspence
So if your deck has three or four or five colors, that might be not something that you're interested in, but for two or three colors and certainly from how to color, I think it's a great card and myriad landscape.
00:50:24
Ciderspence
Uh, it enters tapped taps for colorless and you can pay two and tap it and sacrifice it to search your library for up to two basic land cards that share a land type, put them on the battlefield, tap, then shuffle. Uh, I think this is like a well-known card that's in a lot of decks.
00:50:36
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:50:40
Ciderspence
I think it's in a lot of pre-cons. It's slow because it enters tapped and then you have to pay two and tap it to put two tapped lands on the battlefield. So there's a lot of tapping. It requires a lot of turns to do its thing.
00:50:52
Ciderspence
But its thing is to put two basics on the board and basics are you know probably the safest of all cards that you can deploy in Magic. So if you're running basics...
00:51:00
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah. it yeah
00:51:02
Ciderspence
it's pretty good. And I've recently found that it's a lot easier to stomach the the pace hit of having intertapped and then also having to pay two and tap it to put tapped lands on the board.
00:51:14
Ciderspence
If instead of thinking of it as a ramp spell that you deploy immediately, you think of it as a tapped land that becomes a ramp spell when you have the time to use it. And so I like that one a lot as well.
00:51:26
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, no, I, I, you know, not to get off topic and I'm just going to, this is what where I'll say for now is like my tolerance for tap lands has gone up dramatically. I'd say in the last year or two the point where, there's a lot more tap lands on my desk than there used to be just because,
00:51:41
Zachary Jeblonski
There's certain things that I'm valuing a lot more than lands coming in on tap. One of them is land types and stuff like that where like I'm just valuing that anymore. But like yeah, I think Myriad Landscape has kind of creeped back into my decks when I take i had taken it out completely out of all my decks.
00:51:56
Zachary Jeblonski
Because like as my tolerance for tap lands goes back up, Myriad Landscape's been creeping back up. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I think my addition to this is like I'm not the biggest proponent of single target removal in general and magic in general to the point where a lot of my decks have one if two ways to do it.
00:52:18
Zachary Jeblonski
But when I do put target removal in, it's almost always an MDFC at this point. Just because i just I put so little stock in it that I want to be able to use it for some other purpose.
00:52:29
Zachary Jeblonski
So i for me, it's like if you have a blue if you have a blue deck, and you know obviously if you can afford these cards, that's part of it. If you have a blue deck, if I have a blue deck, Sync and the Super is in it.
00:52:40
Zachary Jeblonski
It's an MDFC from Modern Horizons. It's one blue-blue instant return target spell or non-land permanent to an opponent controls to it's understand. And on the back is it's a land that taps for blue. You can pay three life to have it come in untapped. So like any blue, all of my blue decks have this in there.
00:52:55
Zachary Jeblonski
it It has that overlap of, you know, it's a removal when I need it and it's a land when I need it. And, and I, and this is one of those NBSCs where I don't, I, there's no way for me to know, but I'm sure if you look at the statistics of my life, this one's pretty close to 50, 50, whether or not it's been used as removal or whether or not it's, been used as a land in my decks.
00:53:16
Zachary Jeblonski
And to an a lesser extent with the on the black side is I run and all my black decks both Felda Profane, which is Destroy Target Creature Planeswalker, or Hagermalling, which is Destroy Target Creature, and they're both lands on the back. Same thing.
00:53:31
Zachary Jeblonski
to me is I'm like, oh, that's, that's three pieces of removal and all three of them are lands. So if I, they're lands when I need them and the removal when I need them, good to go. so I know MDFCs and those particular ones that fulfill the removal slack are just huge for me as somebody who doesn't like to run dedicated, targeted removal.
00:53:50
Ciderspence
Yeah, and I think those are all great examples of, you know, we we were talking about libraries to open the episode. And, you know, the thing about libraries is they come with drawbacks is too strong, but you don't always get exactly what you want at the library, right?
00:53:56
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:54:05
Ciderspence
Like they might not have the book that you want. The book might be in bad condition. It could be missing a page or something. You have to return it. So you might not get to keep it for as long as you want to keep it. But I think it's still worth the trade-off.
00:54:16
Ciderspence
And I feel that way about a lot of these overlap cards, in particular, like the MDFCs, right?
00:54:19
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:54:20
Ciderspence
It's like on the back, it might enter tapped, which is bad if it enters as a land. And the removal side or the utility side is often a little over-costed, as is the case, certainly with Hagra Mauling, right?
00:54:28
Zachary Jeblonski
Yes. Yeah.
00:54:30
Ciderspence
And then Felder Profane, I think, is a little cheaper. But, oh, they're both for it?
00:54:33
Zachary Jeblonski
No, they're both for, they're both over costed.
00:54:35
Ciderspence
Yeah. So it's like they're over-costed, but...
00:54:36
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:54:39
Ciderspence
If you think about a commander game going seven to 10 turns, I think there's still space to work around the slowness and having the optionality is just almost always something that pays off.
00:54:48
Zachary Jeblonski
Yes.
00:54:52
Zachary Jeblonski
and And yeah, and and not to go off, and I'm not going to go further in this topic. That's another time for another day. It's like, I think Felda Profane and Hagrimal and Sink and Distrooper all over costed.
00:55:03
Zachary Jeblonski
But I think when people, I think a lot of times people fire off removal too early or on things that don't matter. And cards like this will help train you to really fire it off on the stuff that matters.
00:55:16
Zachary Jeblonski
Because, you know, it's four mana. So you need like you would not spend your four mana to take out somebody's two mana thing or you probably shouldn't depending on what it is. So these cards have helped me as a player, like get off of that itchy feeling of I have removal my hand, I should fire it off. And now very much like it is like, no, this, this thing has to be that bad. And this thing has to be that detrimental for me to fire this off.
00:55:40
Zachary Jeblonski
And it's helped helped me with threat assessment for sure.
00:55:46
Zachary Jeblonski
do you have another example of overlap that you want to touch on?
00:55:48
Ciderspence
Nice. Yeah, I'm just going to run through. i i i had a lot of categories, but I want to just talk really quickly about a few more. One is like over-costed mana rocks.
00:55:57
Zachary Jeblonski
Okay. Okay.
00:56:00
Zachary Jeblonski
okay
00:56:01
Ciderspence
The two I wanted to bring up are the Earth Crystal, which is a four mana, two green, green. Green spells you cast cost one less to cast. But if you would add a counter to a number, of to a creature or something, sorry.
00:56:13
Ciderspence
If one or more 1-1 counters would be put on a creature you control, put twice that many 1-1 counters on it instead, basically. And then for for green, green, and tap it, you can distribute two 1-1 counters among one or two creatures. So in counter decks, if you can afford to play this, like if your curve isn't really low, such that a four-mana spell that doesn't do anything on ETB is something you can afford to run, it's great because it doubles your counters.
00:56:40
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah
00:56:41
Ciderspence
And in a pinch in the endgame, if it's just on board and you have the mana, you can also put counters on things, which can be useful. But it's really expensive. Again, like the whole over-costed element of it.
00:56:52
Ciderspence
But it's still a useful ability to have in doubling your counters. Again, when you can afford to run it, I've i've always thought it was a useful card in most decks that have it.
00:57:01
Zachary Jeblonski
No, it's really good. yeah I have my run some green decks as well.
00:57:03
Ciderspence
And then my Yeah, yeah it's it's certainly in that Emissary Green deck.
00:57:08
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:57:09
Ciderspence
And then, of course, my old favorite, Bonner's Ornament. Three mana, Mana Rock, taps for one mana of any color. You can pay four and tap it, and each player who controls an artifact named Bonner's Ornament draws a card.
00:57:22
Zachary Jeblonski
Yep.
00:57:22
Ciderspence
I just like this card. It's not good, but again, I like seeing it. I like having it. It's over-costed for Mana Rock. It's over-costed for card draw, but in a deck that wants to do other things, it is a mana rock and it is card draw.
00:57:36
Ciderspence
So if you're just trying to ensure that in a game that goes seven to 10 or 12 turns, you have resources and you don't get stuck, it's it helps.
00:57:47
Ciderspence
Yeah.
00:57:49
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, I love Bonder's Ordment for you.
00:57:52
Ciderspence
I'm glad we found each other.
00:57:58
Zachary Jeblonski
I don't have a whole other category going in, but and this kind of keeps up with my theme, which is like, once again, I don't like running dedicated removal. another example is when removal is stitched onto other things, not just MDFCs.
00:58:12
Zachary Jeblonski
And i run a couple of these in some of the other decks, but, one of the ones that I run in my white decks is, uh, in the trenches. It's a one white, white enchantment creatures you control get plus one, plus one.
00:58:26
Zachary Jeblonski
And then you can pay five in a white, uh, to exile target non-land permanent. You control until in the trenches leaves a battlefield activated as a sorcery only once. and I run this in my white decks a lot and you know, it's a, it's an over-costed Anthem cause like, uh, giving your creatures plus one plus one and is more of like a two cost thing in white.
00:58:45
Zachary Jeblonski
Uh, so you pay an extra mana, but it gives you the flexibility later to pay six and exile something. And I would say the vast majority of the time that I play in the trenches, I would say 70 to 80% that, that I played in trenches in a game. I ended up firing off that six mana removal.
00:59:02
Zachary Jeblonski
and that six man removal, super over costed, you know, it doesn't even exile the thing permanently. If in the trenches goes, it goes, it comes back. But it's just like, once again, it's that, it's that overlap, that flexibility of like, if I don't need to remove everything, anything, then I don't have to.
00:59:18
Zachary Jeblonski
but if I do, it's there. and I'm a big proponent of paying more to do things, uh, if it gives me the flexibility to do other things.
00:59:28
Ciderspence
Yeah.
00:59:28
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah, that's another example I have.
00:59:31
Ciderspence
Yeah. And the I think it. One thing that's nice about these overlap cards or this type of card is it makes it easier to do things that you you think you should do anyway. You're just having trouble finding the will to not put in cards you want to play to kind of eat those vegetables, right?
00:59:40
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:59:48
Ciderspence
Like I think Graveyard Hate is a great example of this. Like Bajookabog, it's not on this list, but like just a land that exiles a graveyard.
00:59:50
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:59:55
Ciderspence
We know that we need graveyard interaction.
00:59:55
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
00:59:57
Ciderspence
We've all seen graveyard decks. Like they're more popular now than then they probably have been. historically, i myth that might not be true, but they're popular now.
01:00:04
Zachary Jeblonski
I have a bajookabog in every black deck for sure.
01:00:08
Ciderspence
Yeah, just like it's just an easy piece of graveyard interaction that doesn't cost a landslot or it doesn't cost a card slot.
01:00:16
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, speaking of graveyard interaction, Bogart Trawler, that's also in every black deck of mine.
01:00:19
Ciderspence
yep
01:00:22
Ciderspence
hu
01:00:22
Zachary Jeblonski
Because it doesn't do much other than be a 3-1 creature, but it's always nice to have a creature that you can chump with. You like, oh, that it's already done its job, I don't care if it dies, you know.
01:00:30
Ciderspence
Yeah, Dauntless Scrapbot, I think, is also in that category.
01:00:32
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
01:00:33
Ciderspence
Yep.
01:00:33
Zachary Jeblonski
That's a ramp plus graveyard, hey, yeah.
01:00:35
Ciderspence
All right. The next cards I want to... Oh, and as for mana rocks that I know you run, Machine God's Effigy. a Four mana mana rock that gives you the ability of a creature, but on an artifact.
01:00:42
Zachary Jeblonski
yeah Oh, yeah.
01:00:47
Ciderspence
Versatile.
01:00:48
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah, it comes in as a copy of another creature, except that it's an artifact. So you get the text box of a creature, but it remains just an artifact, and it taps for blue. And that's in every blue deck. it is It is such a house. I have won so many games off of that Meta Rock.
01:01:04
Zachary Jeblonski
and and what's even more fun is just as like very quick, uh, little fun thing you can do with it. If you're, if you know you're going to board wipe and you're going to sweep your commander along with the board wipe, you can play the machine gods, FG legendary rule, your commander, then fire off the board wipe. And now you have the text box of your commander on that artifact, which for certain commanders means you never really have to play your commander again, because you have the text box.
01:01:28
Zachary Jeblonski
but yeah, sorry, go ahead. and
01:01:30
Ciderspence
No, I actually think, let's wrap it here. Maybe this can be a recurring segment where we just talk about, like in addition to our card of the week, we can maybe talk about, I don't know if they're necessarily deep cuts, but kind of our
01:01:33
Zachary Jeblonski
Okay. Yeah.
01:01:42
Ciderspence
not They don't even have to be overlap picks, but just like cards that we we find either overperform or regularly perform highly that we think are worth including in more decks than we see them in or you know cards we want to make a case for.
01:01:54
Zachary Jeblonski
Yeah.
01:01:56
Ciderspence
i feel I feel good about the ones we've talked about. And therere there are more that I'd rather talk a little bit more about them next time than just shout them out briefly here. So yeah, maybe we'll maybe we'll keep this thing going.
01:02:06
Zachary Jeblonski
All right. Sounds good. Well, thanks for joining me on another episode. All right.
01:02:12
Ciderspence
Yeah, of course. My pleasure.
01:02:14
Zachary Jeblonski
And to all the listeners, we'll be back next week. Thanks for joining us.
01:02:17
Ciderspence
Take it easy, everybody.