Magic the Gathering

Casual

EDH: Slim Pickings in Shadowmoor

By Trent ⋅ June 3, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅

Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE Shad­ow­moor. I’m so much hap­pier to be in this grim and frost­bit­ten world of eter­nal win­ter than the posy-sniffing, mind-numbingly PG world of Lor­wyn. Cards I feel have more fla­vor, mechan­ics seem to be com­ple­ment­ing each other won­der­fully, and new cards in the set seem to be open­ing up the meta-game (I’m look­ing at you Faeries). How­ever, the one thing I absolutely DID NOT appre­ci­ate was the lack of multi-player minded cards that the set presents us with. I sup­pose it makes sense on some the­o­ret­i­cal level; multi-player magic is every­thing that is light-hearted, charm­ingly mis­chie­vous, and casual about the game which seems to be exactly oppo­site the themes given to us in Shad­ow­moor. So with­out any fur­ther ado, here are some of my favorite multi-player cards run­ning around the world of Shad­ow­moor.

Blowfly Infes­ta­tion:

Why I like this card: Blowfly Infes­ta­tion is flat out a fun card. I’m one of those guys who loves it when a card plays in accor­dance with the fla­vor it evokes. When you play this card, it feels like you are hold­ing the leash of the Bubonic Plague. A board with one tough­ness crea­tures can be absolutely dev­as­tated by the small­est token being put into play. Being able to knock down crea­tures as if they were domi­nos is a won­der­ful and amaz­ing expe­ri­ence as a magic player. As a side note, in draft­ing, this card is a dia­mond in the rough that often can be snatched up 7^th or 8^th pick.

Decks this card would work in: A con­trol deck with a –1/-1 counter removal theme. I could see Ser­rated Arrows really mak­ing things painful for your oppo­nents along side Blowfly Infes­ta­tion. There are so many good cards in Shad­ow­moor that deal with –1/-1 crea­ture con­trol (see: Grim Pop­pet), Blowfly Infes­ta­tion could def­i­nitely be some­thing to anchor around in board con­trol. While look­ing through magic’s his­tory I noticed there are a lot of other cards that play nicely with Blowfly Infes­ta­tion and would be worth look­ing into if think­ing about mak­ing a –1/-1 counter/control deck. Giant Oys­ter, Har­bin­ger of Night, Aboroth are just to name a few.

Ceme­tery Puca:

Why I like this card: What’s more fun than see­ing the look on your friends face after you wipe out his big carry crea­ture he just put into play? Watch­ing his jaw hit the ground as it hits the board again… under your con­trol! Ceme­tery Puca offers this delight­ful oppor­tu­nity to you in a con­ve­niently priced three-drop pack­age. The power of Puca is two-fold: first, it doesn’t tar­get a spe­cific grave­yard so your crea­tures and each of your opponent’s crea­tures are fair game. Sec­ond, it’s a repeat­able effect as Puca’s abil­ity trans­fers over to the creature’s form that it takes. If you like a crea­ture that hit the yard bet­ter than the one you cur­rently have Puca set to, tap one measly col­or­less mana and that crea­ture is yours.

Decks this card would work in: Frankly, Puca is a util­ity card. There isn’t really too heavy a theme with the card (although I’m sure some­one is going infi­nite with it on turn 15 some­where some­how) and really the only con­di­tion you need to have in your deck in order for it to be very effec­tive is hav­ing lots of removal or at least to get crea­tures into the yard.

Ever­last­ing Tor­ment:

Why I like this card: The most annoy­ing multi-player decks, for me, are ones that loop life gain and even­tu­ally reach crit­i­cal mass by going infi­nite. Well friends, they’re day in the sun has come to an end thanks to arrival of ever­last­ing tor­ment. It such a sassy lit­tle global effect and if your oppo­nent is run­ning life gain/damage pre­ven­tion, they’re toast (hope­fully they aren’t run­ning too much enchant removal). What’s also nice is the wither abil­ity it grants all of your dam­age sources. So now all of your Tims can deal with larger scale threats and direct dam­age nukes have their util­ity value increased. When put up with Blowfly infes­ta­tion (pointed out ear­lier) this card can really wreak havoc.

Decks this card would work in: Some­thing aggres­sive. Very aggres­sive. And cer­tainly noth­ing that cruxes on life gain­ing at any point. The counter-synergy there is too pow­er­ful to try and work around. If you don’t have some­thing fast to work with in a deck that runs Ever­last­ing Tor­ment you are going to be run­ning into prob­lems. This enchant­ment hit­ting the board is in a sense clos­ing off an out to your oppo­nent who is already on their heels from tempo you have gen­er­ated. At least, this seems to be the desired effect in the most pow­er­ful sce­nario cre­ated by Ever­last­ing Tor­ment.

Fire­spout:

Why I like this card: Bread and but­ter R/G aggro board sweeper (read: hur­ri­cane and earth­quake). It’s so excit­ingly ver­sa­tile as well, espe­cially in a R/G deck where you have the poten­tial option of acti­vat­ing only one side of the destruc­tion coin that is fire­spout. Another great thing is how this card fits in terms of cast­ing cost. Being able to tai­lor a pyro­clasm effect, with one more point of dam­age for one more mana, and being able to splash it into green is good, very good. The power of this card is cer­tainly evi­denced in how highly it is taken in draft. I think at my weekly draft (another shout out to First Pick!) fire­spout is taken right below incre­men­tal blight in terms of draft picks.

Decks this card would work in: Prefer­ably some­thing R/G. This way you have the option of tai­lor­ing your fire­spout to what­ever crea­tures your oppo­nent is throw­ing at you. While R/G in and of itself doesn’t have many fliers, hav­ing the option to only remove all non-fliers is still some­thing to keep in mind when con­sid­er­ing the options this card gives you.

God­head of Awe:

Why I like this card: Do you even have to ask??? A 4/4 flyer hit­ting the board and effec­tively dis­abling all of your oppo­nents armies for five flex­i­ble hybrid mana is insane. Really there isn’t much else that needs to be said about the card, the power should be just that obvious.

Decks this card would work in: I could see the God­head fit­ting in decks that run pretty far along the con­trol end of the deck spec­trum. Cast­ing God­head just screams of counter and board con­trol. And don’t under­es­ti­mate the abil­ity of a 4/4 flyer to carry you home all on its own (espe­cially when all the other fly­ers have been reduced to 1/1). See Brian Weissman’s The Deck if you are hav­ing a dif­fi­cult time believ­ing me.

Hol­lowhorn Bargh­est:

Why I like this card: Pun­ish­ing your oppo­nents for hav­ing no cards in hand while simul­ta­ne­ously reward­ing your­self if you end up in that unfor­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion is nice. Besides that, it is a very effi­ciently priced black crea­ture. It avoids ter­ror effects and pesky things like Sud­den Death. There are very few cards out there that effec­tively deal with 6 tough­ness crea­tures quickly and effec­tively. Black is not known for being a bar­gain base­ment crea­ture cast­ing costs but hon­estly, a 7/6 for 7 mana is not bad.

Decks this card would work in: Any basic rack decks where you can piggy back dam­age onto dis­card. Another thing that I love about The Rack is its value in multi-player in that it does not tar­get oppo­nents but rather includes every­one in the fun. Hav­ing a 7/6 beat stick attached to dis­card dam­age nor­mally used to fin­ish your oppo­nents off in rack decks also gives you another win con­di­tion and is very tough for your oppo­nents to deal with.

Kul­rath Knight:

Why I like this card: All of a sud­den, Ser­rated Arrows is hand­ing out Paci­fisms like it was the Sal­va­tion Army. Work­ing this card into a deck focused on con­trol in the form of –1/-1 coun­ters would be very men­ac­ing. Not only that but the card itself actu­ally dis­penses out –1/-1 coun­ters because it has wither. And it flies over for three. Not to men­tion the art is incred­i­bly sexy. Seri­ously, do you need more reasons?

Decks this card would work in: Sim­i­lar decks that Blowfly Infes­ta­tion would work with. Decks that run board con­trol in the form of –1/-1 counters.

Prison Term:

Why I like this card: Options, options, and more options. It’s great to dis­able crea­tures early in the game and even bet­ter as the game goes on because it forces your oppo­nents to think one crea­ture a head. The fact that you can use this card to jump between crea­tures regard­less of con­troller is sick and is some­thing that will come in handy numer­ous times in a multi-player game. Also, this card is a won­der­ful polit­i­cal pawn as you can choose to move it or not depend­ing on whom you are play­ing to stop and who you are in cahoots with.

Decks this card would work in: Any­thing white. Seri­ously. This card has an incred­i­ble range of playa­bil­ity. Its abil­ity is so sim­ple yet so powerful.

World­purge:

Why I like this card: Evac­u­a­tion effects have always made me smile. It always has seemed to be that blue is the kid that has been left out at the lunch table in the cafe­te­ria of mass removal. With World­purge you get some nice part­ing gifts short of lit­er­ally remov­ing the crea­tures. Forc­ing your oppo­nents to dis­card to seven imme­di­ately forces them to make painful deci­sions. I’m not sure exactly how the mana pool emp­ty­ing will play out as you can only cast it at sor­cery speed, I’m sure some­body knows why that’s good too.

Decks this card would work in: Decks that are sim­i­lar to the ones that would work with the God­head of Awe. Some­thing con­trol heavy that oper­ates on shut­ting down com­bat and pre­vent­ing your oppo­nents from car­ry­ing out their poorly thought out plans.

Those are some cards that I could see really mak­ing an impact on a table with three or more peo­ple sit­ting around it. I would also like to men­tion that specif­i­cally for EDH, Oona, Queen of the Fae and Sygg, River Cut­throat are PHENOMENAL Gen­er­als. Unfor­tu­nately, in the world of Shad­ow­moor, Wiz­ards printed the sex­i­est gen­er­als for EDH in the same col­ors. I’ve already seen a milling deck that runs around Oona cour­tesy of my friend Ben (he swears it has milled 300 cards in a match before). And for the longest time, some kids at first pick were dying to crack a foil Sygg to have a nice shiny Gen­eral to lead their troops into battle.

Now there are a few cards that I did not men­tion that I think would do just fine in a multi-player envi­ron­ment, Mass Cal­cify is a good exam­ple. The cards I pre­sented above were some of the ones that I would imag­ine as fun to play in a multi-player envi­ron­ment and pro­vide some open-ended pos­si­bil­i­ties for deck design.

As for me, I have finals next week­end so I may or may not be able to deliver another timely multi-player/EDH arti­cle for next week. If I do find time buried between Ara­bic and Pub­lic Pol­icy text­books, I’m hop­ing to write another deck pro­file and give another detailed play report the fol­low­ing week.

Until Then,

Trent