Magic the Gathering

Casual

Viva La Revolucion: Elder Dragon Highlander

By Trent ⋅ May 6, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅

Once in a great while, sig­nif­i­cant events occur in Magic that draw us all closer together both as play­ers and com­peti­tors. The advent of Fri­day Night Magic is a great exam­ple of this in that it not only pro­vided an arena for the casual/competitive but it also broad­ened the play­ers hori­zons by allow­ing them, as Magic play­ers, to come in con­tact with the greater Magic com­mu­nity in their local area. It is devel­op­ments like this that enrich not only the play­ing expe­ri­ence, but the com­mu­nity expe­ri­ence we feel as Magic play­ers (which this author thinks is cru­cially impor­tant to the suc­cess of both the game and the indi­vid­ual player).

Friends, we have on our hands one of these mono­lithic events: the rise and glo­ri­ous ascen­sion of the Magic for­mat known as Elder Dragon High­lander (or EDH). Think 2001: A Space Odyssey. Think of the first time you ever heard Jimi Hen­drix. Think Beck­ham com­ing to the states. Ok… per­haps that last exam­ple really only works for peo­ple who under­stand the dif­fer­ence between Foot­ball and Foot­ball but the point still remains: these are rev­o­lu­tion­ary times for our global Magic community.

To clue in our read­ers who may not know yet what EDH is, allow me to give a very brief expla­na­tion. EDH is a con­structed for­mat that allows play­ers to build 100 card con­structed decks. You may have only one copy of any card that is not a basic land in the deck, hence “High­lander” (“There can be only one!!”… cue laugh track now). Pre­vi­ously, there have been other high­lander for­mats; what makes EDH so dif­fer­ent is the intro­duc­tion of the con­cept of Gen­er­als. Now, Gen­er­als are leg­endary crea­tures that begin the game removed from the game and that you can play at any time as if they had been in your hand. As far as that goes, cards that are used in EDH decks can only be the cor­re­spond­ing col­ors of your leg­endary Gen­eral. For a much bet­ter, both coher­ently and tech­ni­cally, expla­na­tion of the for­mat, I would rec­om­mend: http://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~geduggan/EDH_rules.html.

Now you may be ask­ing your­self “Well sure Trent, I’ve seen sin­gle­ton for­mats before, they can be fun at times but really noth­ing more than that. What makes this such an impe­tus for larger change in the magic com­mu­nity?” Friendly reader, I’m glad you’ve asked. And so elo­quently too! Allow me to expound a lit­tle on exactly why EDH is so spe­cial. The con­cept of EDH com­bines the acces­si­bil­ity and “ran­dom­ness” of other legacy–esque sin­gle­ton for­mats with the coherency and deck build­ing strat­egy of more com­pet­i­tive con­structed for­mats due to the con­cept of Gen­er­als. It is a per­fect blend of Thurs­day night Beer and Magic (where your friend Charles is bring­ing his squir­rel deck that he swears is going to fun­da­men­tally alter the meta-game and our very under­stand­ing of real­ity as we know it) and sit­ting across from Mike Gur­ney in the finals of a round robin draft (believe me it’s NOT fun). It’s once again where we see the con­flu­ence of the casual and the com­pet­i­tive. And, the for­mat is most pop­u­larly played in multi-player envi­ron­ments where often three or four peo­ple are play­ing at a time. This opens up the game for rarely seen mechan­ics and sit­u­a­tions that you could never find your­self in dur­ing restricted lim­ited for­mats or con­structed for­mats that are so often dom­i­nated by four or five deck arch-types. It also encour­ages peo­ple who once played the game and are now afraid they won’t under­stand the rules to return to a magic play­ing envi­ron­ment that is friendly and casual while still hav­ing a com­pet­i­tive fla­vor to it.

EDH’s rise in pop­u­lar­ity has not gone unno­ticed by the Wiz­ards folks in Ren­ton. In fact, there is a move­ment towards the greater stan­dard­iza­tion and even sanc­tion­ing of this for­mat. This would be a HUGE step for Magic. A home-brew multi-player for­mat being sanc­tioned by the greater pow­ers that be at Wiz­ards would acknowl­edge the influ­ence of casual group play on the larger magic world and would broaden the hori­zon for “rene­gade” play types and com­mu­nity orga­ni­za­tion in the future. I also see this as Wiz­ards fos­ter­ing what often goes so unno­ticed in the title of Magic, the whole con­cept of a “Gath­er­ing”. We are once again return­ing to what makes the game great, being able to sit around, enjoy the com­pany of friends, and enjoy sum­mon­ing 6/6 fly­ing, tram­ple, drag­ons to melt your friends’ faces. So often, espe­cially with Magic Online, social rela­tions in the game have become merely a mat­ter of pro­to­col. I can’t tell you how many awk­ward silences I’ve had to sit through between games in a match while my oppo­nent and I shuf­fle our decks and how much that makes me die a lit­tle on the inside. With EDH, social inter­ac­tion is once again a major player in the game and opens us up to talk to one another again and truly become a greater gath­er­ing (a lit­tle cheesy, I know).

A reli­gious scholar once said: “We are liv­ing in rev­o­lu­tion­ary times.” Unfor­tu­nately, he was refer­ring to Armaged­don, the Rap­ture, and the over­all end of the world. How­ever, this quote does serve as a deli­cious lit­tle jux­ta­po­si­tion for us as a new world of casual/competitive Magic play is open­ing for us. The lines are becom­ing blurred and peo­ple are once again com­ing together and not play­ing the drab for­mats they once were. EDH has cer­tainly ignited my inter­est in con­structed magic anew again and has opened up a greater bond­ing to my magic com­mu­nity in the Seat­tle area. Hope­fully, the for­mat will be able to catch on as it has here and other places and peo­ple can see once again what is beau­ti­ful about play­ing this game. Viva la Revolucion!

– Trent