Card Spotlight...

Pandemonium

Pandemonium is fun, in the same sense that running on hot coals is fun. It's actually down right dangerous but if you gear your deck up to use it well then you should be able to use it to beat your opponents before they beat you.

Before I go any further I should emphasise the rule that Commander damage is Combat damage so Pandemonium doesn't help in that regard.

On the face of it you just use it to get an extra hit in with the creatures you cast. Cast a big creature deal lots of damage.

Something like Inferno Titan maybe? Nothing like doing 9 damage rather than 3 when you play him.

But wait a second what if we can double it?

Gratuitous Violence states if a creature you control would deal damage.....  Pandemonium states "Whenever a creature enters the battlefield that creature's controller may have it deal...'

So it is the creature that is dealing the damage and therefore Gratuitous Violence will double it.  So that's 18 damage from playing the Titan.

Playing Inferno Titan is one off though, you would have to hope to draw another big hitter and another. That's unreliable even if you have plenty of draw engines in play to help.

What if you could play an Inferno Titan every turn?

Mimic Vat lets you do exactly that. Okay you either need the Inferno Titan to die or a way to sacrifice him yourself but get him, or another equally large creature, exiled with Mimic Vat and you have a way to deal plenty of damage every turn without relying on what cards you draw.

Another way to achieve a similar effect is to use a card like Eldrazi Displacer.

I wrote about the Displacer in a previous article as it's such a great card.  Here it just gives you such a great repeatable way to keep damaging your opponents with Pandemonium.

What if we could play more than one creature when casting a spell? Well there is a way to do that we can use spells to create token creatures. And once we start creating token creatures then we start having fun with Doubling Season, Primal Vigor and Parallel Lives.

With one or more of these in play you just then need the right card to drop plenty of tokens for you.

How about Crush of Wurms? 18 damage on it's own. Doubling Season would make that 36. Then Primal Vigor would make it 72 and Parallel Lives would make it 144.  Admittedly you're not likely to have all three in play but it's worth considering in a token heavy deck.

Crush of Wurms as good as it is can only, under normal circumstances be played twice, don't forget it has Flashback.

But what if we used a creature that generated tokens? Like Captain of the Watch.

Captain of the Watch comes into play first then triggers and the tokens then hit the battlefield so they are 2/2s when they do so.

So all told that's 9 points of damage via Pandemonium. If we had Doubling Season in play that would be 15 damage instead.  Three 2/2 soldiers double to six is 12 damage + 3 from the captain herself.

The cool thing then is that the Captain can be flickered with Eldrazi Displacer to produce yet more damage and lots more soldiers.

Captain of the Watch is a lord which gives a certain creature type a bonus, in this case Soldiers. I discuss this in more detail here.

This is useful because it means the creatures we are putting into play have greater power and therefore deal more damage.

There are of course other ways to achieve a similar effect. Cards like Caged Sun or Obelisk of Urd give a boost to creatures of a certain colour or type.  Coat of Arms goes one further in that it boosts the creatures for each other creature.

In the case of Captain of the Watch each creature including the Captain herself gets an additional +3/+3.  So she ends up being 6/6 and the soldiers 5/5.  That's 21 points of damage dealt by Pandemonium.

Another way to produce tokens is to use Blade of Selves

Inferno Titan is a bad example to use here as Blade of Selves won't trigger it's attack ability only it's enter the battlefield ability. But what we are really interested in is the extra creatures entering the battlefield any way.

Still that's an extra 9 damage for each opponent after the first. And what's more you can choose which opponent or creature receives that damage. That's a lot of damage being dealt from one creature attacking.

I've been talking about token creatures and neatly sidestepping the obvious - infinite combos.

Oh look here's one now:

I chose a mono red combo as Pandemonium is also red. Also Raka Mar produces 3/1 token creatures so they do a nice bit of damage already. Although in an infinite combo that doesn't really matter.

In this combo you sac the Elemental to Phyrexian Altar. The Altar gives you the mana to produce another token and Thornbite Staff allows you to untap him so that he is read to be tapped again.

So that's infinite 3/1s with Pandemonium providing the damage which equals game over.

Which ever way to use it Pandemonium is sure to live up to it's name you just need to make sure you stack the odds in your favour.

Until next time may you top deck the response you needed.

Phil

Stalking the mists

There are various labels give to different types of magic decks; Aggro, Control, Mill etc and EDH is no different but it does have it's own types.

One of those is Voltron.

Voltron is a robot formed from 5 smaller robots and thus it is deemed to be greater than the sum of it's parts.

In Magic terms Voltron focussing on two things:

1.  Commander damage - you only need to deal 21 points of combat damage to an opponent with your commander to defeat them.
2.  A Commander who can be equipped and enchanted so that he becomes unstoppable.

For this post I obviously wanted to focus on a commander that benefits from a Voltron build and who better, I asked myself, than...

Uril, the Miststalker

Let's have a look at my chosen commander in more detail:

Always good to start with the commanders colour identity. RGW give us access to just the right spells. Some of the best Auras at in White and Green.

He's a Beast both literally and figuratively speaking. I'm not likely to go down the tribal route with this commander so it's just something to note.

So he has his own version of Hexproof. Your opponents can't target him but that still means cards like Wrath of God will hurt him.

But it's his second ability that makes him just so good as a Voltron commander.  For every Aura attached to him her gets +2/+2.  That adds up very quickly especially with some of the auras we are going to use with him.

Lastly he is a 5/5 for 5 which is about right given his abilities.

One thing to note Uril lacks evasion of any kind which means he can be blocked by a 1/1 token and destroy all our hard work. So when we're looking to enchant or equip him evasion of any kind will be a big deal.

Before I look at what enchantments (and equipments)  I want to use I want to first have a look at cards that interact favourably with enchantments that I want to be using.

First and foremost the tutors:

There are four enchantment tutors in white and each one is slightly different to the others. 

Academy Rector, for example, is a creature that needs to die (not be exiled) to let you search for an enchantment but he does then put that enchantment into play.

Enlightened Tutor is an instant which put an artifact or enchantment at the top of your library. Great for getting Equipment cards as well as enchantments but needs to be used at the right time.

Plea for Guidance is a sorcery that has a fairly steep casting cost but it does grab you two enchantments for your money.

Idyllic tutor is a sorcery that allows you to find an enchantment and put it into your hand. Simple, unflashy but very usable.

While not strictly a tutor I am also running Kruphix's Insight it's the closest thing Green has to tutoring enchantments.

Next up are the Enchantresses, creatures that care about enchantments. Now I'm only using two - even with 100 card decks space is limited - and an actual enchantment as well but you'll see why.

These are the two Enchantresses I went for. There is a third a green version of Mesa Enchantress that I wanted to play but ended up cutting.

Enchantress's Presence does the same job as the creatures but is an Enchantment instead.

I also chose one Planeswalker because of her interaction with Enchantments.

"You get an emblem with "Artifacts, creatures, enchantments, and lands you control have indestructible." What's not to like about that in a deck like this.

I think I've kept you waiting long enough....so here are the Enchantments I chose to go into the deck:

Keep in mind that every one of these when cast on Uril gives him +2/+2 before they apply there own bonuses. So Epic Proportions gives Uril a total of +7/+7 and Trample.

There is as much defensive work going on here as offensive. There's plenty of evasion in Flying, Trample, and Protection from Creatures or Colours and there's even a way to make him unblockable using Alpha Authority and cards I'm going to talk about later.

Keen sense is just there to increase my draw opportunities, regular readers will know I love having plenty of ways to draw cards.

One Aura I'm playing is not intended for my own commander at all but for one of my opponents.

Aside from outright stealing your opponent's commanders this is one of my favourite ways to shut them down.

There are some other enchantments I'm also playing I've not mentioned above; Creature Enchantments.

First up Enchantment Creatures with Bestow. I think these four represent the best of the bunch. Note that when Bestowed on a creature they are Aura's. This is important for Eidolon of Countless Battles for example.

Purphoros's Emissary and Alpha Authority make Uril unblockable. They act to exclude any number of blockers.

Next up are the Gods. I originally wanted to play with every God available in my commander's colours. However, I ended up whittling it down to just two; Nylea and Iroas.

Nylea I chose because she pumps and gives my commander Trample which helps to get that Commander damage through any blockers. Iroas because again it has synergy with Alpha Authority and also offers protection to my commander when they attack.

With my Enchantment choices out of the way I turned my attention to Equipment. Artifacts are pretty good when it comes to Voltron decks. But, Uril has a particular affinity with Enchantments that makes Equipment cards slightly less attractive. With that in my mind I sat down and looked long and hard at all the best choices I could make and ended up choosing 4 swords. Now I have to admit the choice was tough but these are the swords I chose:

Sword of Fire and Ice I chose because it lets me draw cards. Sword of Feast and Famine I chose because I get to untap all my lands which gives me a big boost. Sword of Kaldra because it gives a whopping +5/+5 and has a form of Deathouch that Exiles. Finally Sword of Vengeance because it bestows  First Strike, Vigilance, Trample and Haste.

With all that as the 'guts' of the deck I added ramp, sweepers and spot removal until I was happy with the results. 

You can see my finished deck here,

Until next time may your next draw always be relevant.

Phil