Some Apologies

   Welcome to the Daily MTG, your one stop shop for all of your Magic content needs.

     Hey guys, sorry I haven't put out a blog post in a while. I've been kinda sick, plus it's midterm and finals season, so my schedule's been pretty tight. I will be posting as much as possible, but until the Christmas Holiday's, it will be infrequent.

Sincerely, me

Opinions: Infinite Combos in Commander

     Hello and welcome to the Daily MTG, your one stop shop for all you Magic content needs. Today we will be touching on a very delicate subject for some. That is the idea of having infinite combos in Commander. In more competitive formats, combos are completely legal and are only restricted by the ban list of their appropriate formats. Commander is different though, it is not a format where you sit across the table from some guy you've never met before and duke it out until one of you drops. Commander is defined by it's more relaxed mood and setting. Rarely are there times where you'll be headed off to a tournament to play competitive Commander, but rather you gather up your Commander deck to go and kill a few hours with your playgroup. We will go over the pros and cons of having combos in your meta, and whether or not they should be allowed.

 
  Combos are when certain cards interact with each other in a way that creates an endless loop, which, depending on what said cards do, can allow you to generate infinite mana, draw infinite cards, or even deal infinite damage. A combos' power is determined by two things, especially in Commander: How many cards are in the combo, and how easy is it to put the combo together. Our example will be the 2-card combo of  Exquisite Blood and Sanguine Bond. This is a very powerful combo, because it only requires 2 cards, both of the cards are enchantments, which are difficult to remove from play, and finally, it can be assembled by turn 6 with no ramp. As you can see, combos are very powerful and efficient ways to win a game, so the question is simple. Are combos too powerful to be allowed in Commander?


    Having combos in your meta can be a bad thing. A lot of people don't like to lose a 2 hour game of Magic because somebody was able to find two or three cards from their deck and play them. Decks can be made to consistently grab combos with no issue using card draw and tutor effects. This can mean that, without a proper control deck, or if your meta just isn't equipped with the proper responses, then a combo deck can become very hard to play against. This would mean that you would have to change your deck to have answers to a particular combo, which can be difficult for a lot of decks, especially theme decks. It's hard to find enchantment removal with a cool hat or a chair in the art. So it is understandable why certain play groups would prefer to house-rule ban combos, or play on after someone has combo'd out, which can feel bad for the combo player.

    There are some pros to having combos in your meta though. Commander is a powerhouse format designed to reward clever deck builders, and these combos, and finding a way to consistently put them together, is one of these rewards. This is why it is bad to punish someone for taking the time to put a cool combo deck together by house-ruling them out of the game, or making them wait until you've finished your game after they've combo'd out. In fact, combos are a good thing for any meta. A combo deck can help shake up the meta, forcing people back to the drawing board to figure out how to beat the combo, or make whole new decks to compete with the combo. Combos provide a challenge to your playgroup, not only to the person who has to put the deck together in the first place, but also to the rest of the group who now have to create better decks to fight the combo deck.

    So, obviously I am on the side of the combo kills. I am a big fan of carefully crafting a deck to make an interaction between cards a way to kill everybody else, or at least make the game unwinnable for everyone else. This may be because I am a bit of a spike, but there are other pros to having combos in a meta, even if you aren't the one playing the combo deck. It forces growth, expansion in everyone's deck, revitalizing play groups and making Commander the ultimate deck-building, game-play, and political challenge that it truly is. That's all from me today, if you have any questions or feedback, feel free to comment! I'll see you all tomorrow!

Opinions: Banned Lists

        Hello and welcome to the Daily MTG, your one stop shop for all of your Magic needs. Sorry about the interlude during the weekend. I will not be writing on Saturdays, but Sundays I will be from here on in. Also apologies for the late posting of this article, but worry not, because we are now back on track. This piece is an opinion piece, which means I will be giving you my opinion, and backing that up with evidence, and if you don't agree, that's fine, but at least consider what I have to say. Now that we've got that out of the way, it's time to give my opinion on ban lists.

     A ban list, for those of you who don't know, is a list of cards that are banned in a format. This attribute of formats is designed to give objective control to WotC to keep formats diverse and interesting. If it is well regulated and strives towards making a fun and competitive environment in all formats, it can be a beautiful thing. Unfortunately, being objective can be difficult for anyone, and because of the amount of planning that goes into the production of Magic, WotC is unable to make bannings in formats that desperately need it in a reasonable time.

     Despite their reputation of being slower, WotC does do it's job well enough. All formats under WotC to date are functioning, and have good diversity in their metas, but WotC isn't the only group in charge of the ban lists of beloved formats. The best example of a non-official format doing well under an independent ban list is Commander. In Commander, there is a small group of people who gather, listen to the laments of the community, and adjust, not only the ban list, but the rules of the format. This groups most notable changes to the Commander format in recent history have been the banning of Prophet of Kruphix, and the annulment of the Tuck Rule.

    Now that we understand what ban lists are, how they are made, and why they exist, I can give my opinions on them. Though ban lists are clearly a necessity for any format, there is such thing as going too far. A ban list that is too restrictive can be damaging for any format. The inherent danger to ban lists is that it is always tempting to ban the most powerful thing in any format. For example, people these days are calling for the banning of cards in Modern, for example, Become Immense. Banning cards from the most powerful decks in a format can help diversify the meta of that format, but if there is excessive banning, it begins to constrain on the creative freedoms of deck builders, it lowers the power level of the format, and can dissuade people from the format if their decks are constantly having to be revamped and rebuilt to adjust to bans.

     The good news is that Wizards has always been slow to ban cards, are very careful in there deliberations on cards that can be banned, and rarely ban cards unless completely necessary. However, there is a format where unnecessary bans have been applied and, though the format is still vibrant and alive, it is weekend by it's oppressive ban list. That format, of course, is Commander. As an avid Commander player, and a bit of a spike at that, I enjoy few things as much as I enjoy putting Commander decks together. I like it when a deck comes together and it hums, full of synergies, cool combos, and just a dab of oppression. I believe that Commander can possibly be the most powerful format, but also the most fun. This is why I believe that ban lists should be as short as possible, and cards on  ban lists should continuously be under review, to find out if there can ever be a place for these cards in their appropriate formats.

     Again, this is just an opinion, and there are many good points to be made about aggressive expansion of ban lists. Feel free to tell us about your opinions and questions and I'll see you tomorrow!

Pauper Survives!!!

  Hello and welcome to the Daily MTG, your one stop shop for all of your Magic needs. Not 24 hours ago I had written an article about the Pauper format, and it's inevitable doom. It involved the card Peregrine Drake. This sucker has been a part of a three card combo that is next to impossible to disrupt or out race. This meant that Pauper had become a solved format. The most recently solved format was Tiny Leaders, that faded into nothingness because of the overwhelming power of the deck which had solved it. Some may disagree, but Tiny Leaders is mostly decayed to nothing. This is where my fear for the Pauper format, a format which is close to my heart, came from. So instead saying why it should be banned, I'll go over why it was banned, and reasons that it needed the banning.

    The problem that raised the most concern, and the one that WotC used on the official statement, was that it was ruining the meta. The deck was completely unbalanced, and everyone knew it. That's why we were all so surprised that it wasn't banned at the release of Kaladesh. At that point it occupied 11% of the meta. If a super power deck is built in a format, and no plays it, there isn't a problem. That obviously wasn't the case for Pauper, but WotC decided that it wasn't extreme enough to take action against it. Since then, the deck had over doubled it's presence in the meta and was obliterating all of the other competitive decks in the format. So WotC came out yesterday and declared that the card was too broken to be fixed.

    That stat is good enough reason to ban any card, but why Peregrine Drake? Why not another part of the combo? The answer is simple. The combo can survive or be revised to survive any of the other pieces to be banned, but when you ban the Drake, the combo falls apart, with no way of fixing it. This is important, because if we ban one version of the drake deck, another will emerge, and will warp the format once again. The problem had gotten so bad that people were putting Pyroblast in the main, which would be a dead card if they didn't match up against a blue player.

   Today though, we know that this will no longer be the case, and we can finally put our Pyroblasts, back in the sideboard! It's exciting conclusion to Pauper's version of Combo Winter, there are some questions that we must ask WotC; Why did you print Peregrine Drake at Common level if it was evident how badly it would warp the format? and Why did you wait so long, even when the stats showed an unprecedented number of this deck in the meta? , but probably the most important question, Did you intend to damage Pauper? Was Pauper not making enough money, or attracting more attention to it? If Pauper would cost more then it was making, then a good way to kill it is to print an undeniably powerful card, that is way out of the power range of the competitive meta in the format. Then, suddenly, a large crowd cries out to fix it, which draws in a lot of new players, which makes Pauper popular enough to pay for itself. WotC puts out an emergency ban, and voila! the perfect crime.

    Of course this is just one theory, maybe WotC really did think that the meta could keep up with the card, and this was a complete surprise to them. Nobody can really know, but if it were the case, then we would probably see a decline of players in the next 3 years for the format, then Pauper not making enough money, and when this happens, we'll just see another card at Common that can destroy the format. I hope that this never comes true of course, and that Pauper becomes as popular as Legacy or Modern.

   There will be another post tomorrow, so follow me and I'll see you tomorrow!

Leovold Stax

     Hello and welcome to the Daily MTG, your one stop shop for all of your Magic needs. Today we delve into the wonderful format of Commander for a deck tech of fun and happiness. Of course, if you know anything about the word "stax" and what it means in the land of Magic, you know that the last bit was sarcasm. Stax is in reference to the concept of a taxing control build based around opponents discarding cards and sacrificing lands, and just making the game difficult to impossible to win for your opponents, while you grind them out with accumulated value over the course of the game. You may be thinking to yourself one of two things,  "Oh dear mother of God, that sounds like a horrific experience for everyone involved!" or "THIS IS MY JAM!!!". Either way, this is going to be fun for me.

     Now that we know what Stax is, we can get to the other part of the title means. That is of course, the king of being a huge d**k himself, Leovold, Emissary of Trest.

     Yes, he is exactly as oppressive as he seems. In the format of Commander, you always have access to your Commander throughout the entire game. So when your objective is to do two things, it's always handy to have your Commander do at least one of those things. This used to be a dangerous wager when tuck was a thing, but it isn't anymore, so go ham. In a Stax deck, we will want to tax our opponents lands, and make them discard their hands. Leovold here helps A LOT with the discarding of hands, thanks to his first ability. This ability works very well in conjunction with a little something called a "wheel effect", which is when all players discard there hands and draws a certain amount of cards. So there's good news and bad news. The bad news is that Red is the king 

of these effects, and Leovold doesn't have this color. The good news is that Black and Blue are pretty good supplementary colors for this. So, to go over why this is so good, when you cast, say Windfall, and the most cards is 7, all players discard their hands, then your opponents draw 1 and you draw 7. This is insane value, obviously, and can put you ahead of the curb, but Commander is a crazy format by nature, and all it takes is for someone to rip a big fat spell to make you real sad. That's where the second part of Stax comes in.

     A neat thing about Magic, is that your opponents only cast spells if you let them. Everybody knows this, at least deep down in their souls, but they play fair to almost kinda fair Magic. Unless you want to play Stax. Which is what we're doing. YAY!!! In this deck, we are going to tax our opponents for playing lands, creatures and spells, and for having them. Smokestack is a beautiful example of this concept. You have permanents? That sucks, how about instead you slowly sacrifice them all. The flip side of this coin is that it is a symmetrical effect, meaning that it effects everyone, including you. Throughout the deck there are multiple effects that are similar to Smokestack, as that it is such a beauty, and this is why Smokestack is gorgeous. This gets a little complicated, so pay attention here. You are playing a normal game of Commander, you play Smokestack, now, not only do you have to sacrifice your permanents first, but throughout the course of the game, everyone keeps casting spells and permanents to sacrifice, and eventually you just have to sacrifice Smokestack, and that was a huge waste of time and now everyone hates you. The thing that you have forgotten though, is that this is not a normal game of Commander. In this game, your opponents have no hands and can draw the bare minimum of cards possible, while you are unhindered in you activities. This means that your opponents will have to start sacrificing their important permanents, i.e. their lands, while you can continue to throw out  random cheap permanents. The best part is, once your opponents are properly neutered, you can sacrifice Smokestack to itself.


     Now that you have made sure that your opponents can do nothing for the rest of the game, it's time for the hard lock. This deck has a neat one. The first card that you will require is your Commander. The next is a sweet gem called Teferi's Puzzlebox. This card is a hidden gem, found usually in punishing card draw decks, like Nekusar, or in Chaos decks. In this deck though, it provides the ultimate lock. You'll have to explain it to your opponents when they ask if there's anyway out of it. At the beginning of there draw step, the Box triggers, then they draw a card for their turn. The trigger then resolves, so they put all the cards in their hand, including the one that they just drew, onto the bottom of their library. At that point, they would usually draw that many cards and continue with their turn, but thanks to Leovold, instead they now draw nothing, and have no hand. Each turn now, they only have the chance to cast the one card they draw during their draw step, which means that it has to be an instant, and if you've done your job right, they'll never be able to cast them.

     Finally, we look at one of the most important aspects of any Commander deck, consistency. For this, the deck needs two main elements; ramp and card draw. Card draw is basically covered thanks to all of the wheel effects we run, and thanks to Green (the best ramp color around) we have access to an array of very nice ramp spells, not to mention the very powerful artifact ramp. As you may note in the decklist linked below, there are a ton of artifacts, which is why artifact tutors are important for this deck. For that specifically, I would like to bring up Tezzeret the Seeker. This is the man of my dreams here people. He ramps by untapping mana rocks (artifacts that tap for mana). He can also search for our artifact lands with his -X ability, which creates redundancy in lands, which means more mana, and more fodder for Smokestack. Finally, he can search for Teferi's Puzzlebox as soon as he hits the board, which, of course, is amazing.

Thanks for reading, and if you have anything you'd like to add or suggest for the deck, go ahead and comment and I'll get to you ASAP! See you tomorrow!

The decklist: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/16-10-16-leovold-stax/

If the link doesn't work, you can also access it by going onto tappedout.com and typing in Leovold Stax. The deck will have been created by ShimianSpectre.

Intro to The Daily MTG

Hello all and welcome to the Daily MTG! I will be creating daily content for Magic lovers of any level, from set reviews to deck techs across the wide spectrum of Magic's of beloved formats. I am mostly a casual player of Pauper and Commander, but am an avid fan of almost all formats, and I follow the SCG tour as close as I can! Have fun and enjoy all that I have to offer!