Happy Holidays!

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, yet another time!

I just wanted to wish you a very merry christmas and a happy new year in advance! Enjoy the holidays, be it for the meals or the general mood of everybody! I hope you eat vegan as much as possible in order to let animals have a merry christmas aswell.

Contentwise I will take a little break during the holidays in order to return strong in the new year!

So I'll see y'all 'round in 2016

Pretty charming to have options isn't it?!

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, yet another time!

Maybe you've already encountered one deck of the rare species called "5-Color Charms". The basic idea behind the deck is that having multiple cards for different situations is great, having one card for multiple situations is better but having multiple cards where each one has different uses is best. For that reason you play nearly every Ravnica-Charm, Alara-Charm, Tarkir-Charm and Dragon-Charm.

Now I'm not here to talk about the deck even though I'd love to, but simply about Charms in general. While some of them have, for example, two rather situational modes and one outright "meh" one, there are some among them I would definitely include in any deck that can play them no matter what.

Much like the ChannelFireball-Series I have prepared a Top 8 - List and some honorable mentions to go through today, so let's get going...

Honorable Mentions

All of these are pretty useful in many situations but just didn't make it onto the list because of one mode that's not too exciting most of the time.

Take for example Crosis' Charm: Destroy target nonblack creature? Yes I'll take that. Destroy target artifact? Sign me up. Return target permanent to its owner's hand? Ehhhh, might have some uses sometimes but as I said: "meh". The same is true for the rest of them:

• Darigaaz's Charm: "Target creature gets +3/+3 until end of turn."
• Esper Charm: "Target player discards two cards."
• Mardu Charm: "Target opponent reveals his or her hand. etc,etc."
• Selesnya Charm: "Target creature gets +2/+2 and gains trample until end of turn."

Simic Charm is definitely the worst of them, having no real bad mode, but no real good one either, except for maybe the hexproof mode but that one is still very situational. I just wanted to mention him because in decks that look to protect key creatures for cheap, he can be a nice addition providing three modes that will probably protect it against anything your opponents can throw at you. No swiss army knife like some of the others but still pretty decent.

Without further ado, I'll start with number 8...

Nr.8 - Jund Charm

EDH is a very durdly and grindy format, so often times you'll encounter at least one deck that heavily interacts with the graveyard in a four player game.
And since it's multiplayer, board wipes are pretty strong and important to have. Jund Charm has a little bit of everything. Most of the time the Charm will fizzle a spell that target's something in a graveyard while at the same time dealing with the rest of said graveyard aswell making future spells and abilites of the same kind a whole lot weaker.
And if that's not the situation you're dealing with, you can also get rid of token armies and small utility creatures at instant speed while possibly not harming your own team.
Of course he wouldn't be #8 if he had a third good ability but still, I doubt you'll encounter many games where you wish you hadn't drawn Jund charm...



(Except when you hope for that miracle-topdeck-one-outer of course...)

Nr.7 - Rakdos Charm

As small and minor as the modes look, I've yet to play a game where Rakdos Charm wasn't at least pretty handy. It's just one of those cards that make me feel comfortable passing the turn because "What could possibly happen that my Charm doesn't stop?!" Sure, there are many things, but some of the more broken ones can be stopped for the small price of a black and a red mana:

-  Graveyard wise you get the same deal as with Jund Charm for one green mana less.
-  A decent amount of combo-kills in the format involve at least one artifact so having artifact removal isn't bad to have.
-  What could be better than interrupting the player producing infinite creatures? Letting him do it and then killing him with is own combo!


As you can see, good old Rakdos Charm really is worth his money in regards to broken things and while sometimes he's just Shatter, having two "fuck your combo"-modes strapped onto it definitely makes him worth running 99% of the time.

Nr.6 - Rith's Charm

Slowly but surely we're getting into "three-mode" territory.

Rith's Charm is one of my personal favourites. Never overwhelmingly good but always pretty neat.

There're almost no games where someone isn't controlling a troublesome nonbasic land: Reliquary Tower with 10+ cards in hand, threatening hefty attacks with Kessig Wolf Run or turtling behind a Maze of Ith.
And if you don't worry about a land you can always produce three power in form of tokens at instant speed to block with or go offensive, especially if you're running Anthem-style effects.

Supposedly there have been situations where if you could've survived that last attack with a simple Fog you would've won the next turn... Just putting that out there.

Nr. 5 - Naya Charm

Naya Charm was one of the cards I didn't have on my radar for a long time until it was cast against me several times, always getting some serious stuff done.

Be it handling my Prophet of Kruphix, regrowing a Wrath of God to clear to board or buying that one turn that would tip the damage race to the opponents favor, Naya Charm never seems to be a dead card, because at the very least you can trade it for a more effective card you've already used at the end of turn.

The removal-mode is decent, not insane, and tapping down creatures is better in 1v1, but still having that instant-speed Regrowth with two additional modes is pretty damn good.

Nr. 4 - Abzan Charm

Still no "three-mode" Charm, but the two good ones are pretty insane considering you have them on one card. 

Exiling a creature with power bigger than three is pretty much Swords to Plowshares without the drawback in many situations, especially since EDH is so slow that big creatures matter more than in any other format.

Now the "All-Star"-Mode is definitely the Night's Whisper effect. Only that it suddenly has instant-speed! This can never, ever be bad. Whenever you encounter a game with little to no relevant creatures because everyone is playing control or your hand is full with other removal, Abzan Charm stays relevant by providing cheap and efficient card draw.

Not to forget the corner cases where the Charm might save an important creature from the likes of Mardu Charm or simple combat damage. No game-winning effect or even relevant in more than 5% of the games but hey, I prefer having access to the effect in these games instead of not.

As for the Top 3 ....

Nr. 3 - Treva's Charm

Three seems like the lucky number since the last three charms funnily enough are the ones I consider "three-mode".

The first of them all - Treva's Charm - is a really excellent piece of cardboard. Admittedly there are more defensive uses to it than offensive having the "attacking" clause on the removal part, but still, exiling a big attacking creature with lifelink/vigilance and then swinging back for a bunch seems to have some offensive parts.


What I like about Treva's Charm is, when everything falls apart, you still have the "draw a card, then discard a card"-mode to search for that unlikely out.

As much as I like that part of Treva's Charm the other two are juuuust a bit better...

Nr. 2 - Sultai Charm

Given this thing costs only 3 mana the options it provides are amazing. Dealing with most non-creature permanents except Planeswalkers while also providing an answer for many creatures is definitely a thing I want in a card.

Somehow I get the feeling the Sultai found Treva's Charm while delving through some junk and thought: "Hmmm let's do that... but better!"

While still dealing with enchantments you get to deal with artifacts aswell. The creature-removal part is still very conditional, especially in a format where more "golden" creatures see more play than usual and a high percentage of the games those creatures are very key to the strategy of the opposing decks as they're the commanders. But to make up for that the "draw-discard"-mode suddenly doesn't make card disadvantage... which is obviously huge.

Something that you tend to forget is that having access to black instead of white makes discard effects a whole lot better as black offers so many ways to reuse creatures in your graveyard while blue offers the same kind of deal for instants or sorceries.

To get to our "Numero Uno"...

"aaaaaand the oscar goes to..."

Nr. 1 - Bant Charm

Very similar to Treva's Charm but so different at the same time. Not only do I see Artifact-removal as more important than Enchantment-removal but the actual removal-part of the card is also a lot less situational.

Where before you might've looked at that Prophet of Kruphix or Jin-Gitaxias and saw them running away with the game you now have a very handy answer.

But that's not all. Bant Charm is just the swiss army knife I was talking about before. While handling a good 66% of the permanents you'd ever want to deal with, this beauty ALSO protects the answers to those cards itself can't deal with. Or protect your own permanents you know... whatever...

Admittedly before the change to how your commander interacts with "changing the zone" - aka the tuck-rules - this card was even more insane, but still it made it to the top of my list... or the bottom of this article at that...



Alright, that's it for today, I hope you enjoyed the read and that you're checking back in for more content in the future... If you do I'll...

See y'all 'round!

Soulshifting through the format

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, yet another time!

Ever had this one deck idea that seemed really cool and somewhat potent but then got stuck while actually building it? Well, if I hadn't had such a situation before I would've now.

Let's go back a month or two. I was pretty hyped about the idea of building Celestial Kirin as my Mono-White deck, since a) the idea of playing a deck based on the opposing converted mana cost just seemed really cool and b) I am a sucker for Tribal decks since they just feel soooo cohesive. So I browsed the internet and my mind for white Spirits of any CMC while also looking out for non-Spirits that still might add synergetic effect. (Shout out to Bastion Protector for getting printed btw)

 

As I was going through cards, I came across the ol' "Soulshift" mechanic and surely they'll go fine into a Celestial Kirin deck. But then an idea sparked inside the chaos I call brain: Why not also build a deck that focused more heavily on this seemingly neat keyword. Effects like Eternal Witness have been and always will be among the stronger ones in EDH, and building a creature-based deck that has pseudo-protection against Wraths in Soulshift can't be too bad, can it?!

A quick magiccards.info-query later and I was pretty much sold:

Now while Abzan or Golgari might be good enough, I wanted to make sure blue and red didn't offer some hidden gems... And while red really wasn't that impressive...

Some of you might begin to see the problem: You'll want to play green and black for sure, since the majority of Soulshift creatures is in those two colors, while you don't really want to pass up on either white or blue.

Fortunately my playgroup allows any of the Nephilim to be played as your general, but still, playing a 4c deck that will want a certain density of spirits/soulshifters might become a problem when distributing slots since you'll also want some amount of fixing and utility in the deck (if you don't want to spend 1.000€ on your mana base that is...).

Additionally I came up with this insanely awesome toolbox, which added another pile of cards that would make me cry out in pain if I had to cut them from the deck:

...

There's just everything you'll ever need in a game of EDH printed in the form of a legendary spirit: mass removal (that even works around Indestructible), resilient threats, recurrsion, life drain, protection, and so on and so forth.

The real issues started when I actually sat down and started to build a rough draft of the deck. I just didn't know where to take the deck: 

1. If I wanted to use soulshift for maximum value - as a tool for grinding out games - I'd have to incorporate a sacrifice theme. Unfortunately a really good sacrifice engine requires quite a lot of room in a deck (outlets, additional effects, fodder, etc.), therefor I'd have to cut down on Utility-Spirits/Ramp/Toolbox. And especially cutting down on the Spirits would then make the tool box and soulshifting that much worse...
2. Going for a more aggressive approach would make many of the rather expensively costed soulshift-spirits pretty bad, but cutting them would, on the other hand, take away the safety net Soulshift provides.

Also a big thing to consider is that, depending on the curve of the deck, soulshift has a natural threshold: If you play many low drop spirits like Geist of Saint Traft and Kira, Spirits with soulshift 3 are viable additions to the deck, whereas a higher curved spirits deck might want soulshift 5 to be the lowest. This means that you can't just jam the "better" soulshift-Creatures into the deck because the quality of soulshift depends on the non-soulshift Spirits you might want to get back every now and then.

Sadly I've not come up with the perfect solution yet. Some of the Spirits that have neat little effects in addition to soulshift just are too small to return anything while others provide little to nothing besides soulshift which makes them have a bit of an awkward feel to them due to the high costs.

My "angle of attack", if you'd like to call it that, is trying to work around the high casting costs while also focusing more on the value providing Spirits instead of "comboing" with Soulshift at all costs. Also since Lifespinner will want some fodder, playing cards like Lingering Souls fill the double role of somewhat synergizing with Drogskol Captain and the likes while also providing Spirits to sacrifice. As for the "cheating" the mana costs:

Now Urza's Incubator is pretty good in most tribal decks for the acceleration it provides. But cards like Victimize or Rescue from the Underworld really shine in this deck: Either you sacrifice a small Spirit and return at least one of the better/bigger ones or you sacrifice a big one and return two Spirits to the game AND one to your hand while potentially having yet another creature with soulshift in play.

Mix one of these in there and you're pretty much set for any grinding you'll ever need.

Of course this is still not a real gameplan, but at least it's a base and I'll try to build form there. Provided all your spirit legends offer pretty insane effects, just backing them up with this recurrsion engine of Reanimate-Effects, Regrowth-Effects and of course Soulshift might be good enough in many cases, so maybe I'm just overthinking things. I hope to get a first draft of the deck running after the holidays and simply playtest my way from there to a more finely tuned pile of sweetness.

And never forget, simply running a good ramp package and value creatures is a good place to be in EDH:

With that I want to end it for today. I hope I could inspire at least one of you to try build a similar deck or maybe someone has already built a deck similar to this and wants to share his experience with me/us, because as always I'll...

See y'all 'round!

Infinity Evolved #7 - In sight

Podcast #1

You can also download the episode here!

Infinity Evolved #6 - Rockcrusher

Celeriac-Schnitzel someone?

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen!

It's been a decade - at least it feels like it - since I've posted a recipe. So why don't I stop this "bad roll" I'm on today, with one of my favourite recipes at the moment. What I really love about it is that there's no "faux-meat" involved but still a very hearty dish while of course being vegan (who would've thought eh?). So without further ado...

Celeriac-Schnitzel

Ingredients (for 2-3 servings):

• medium sized knob Celeriac
• 200-300g Soy yoghurt
• 100g Breadcrumbs
• Salt
• Pepper

Now the beatuy of this recipe is in its simplicity. Just peel the Celeriac, cut it into 0.5mm thick slices, boil up some water in a pot - don't forget to add a decent amount of salt - and cook until the slices are "al dente". Fish them out and put the slices on a paper towel or the likes. While waiting for them to cool down a bit put the yoghurt along with a pinch of salt and pepper - mix it up - into a soup plate and the breadcrumbs into a second one. Once cooled down a bit, take the celeriac slices, dip them into the yoghurt until fully covered by a thin layer and then into the breadcrumbs with them. So basically your standard breading pattern.

With that done all that's left is throwing them into a pan with a bunch of (plant-based) oil - wait until the oil has heated up - and fry the schnitzels until they're gold-brown. As side-dishes prepare whatever you prefer... rice or potatoes are my favourites!

Bon Appetit!

Please let me know if you liked the recipe or not, I'm always curious if I'm able to explain it in a way that people can replicate my dishes.

See y'all 'round!

Infinity Evolved #5 - UberLength Special