Bramble On #7: Griselbanned

I was out at the bar with some friends last night getting a couple drinks and enjoying their company when I get a text message from my good friend, Carlos. He gives me the most dreaded news I'd ever want to hear. Griselbrand is banned in EDH/Commander. I was in disbelief and scrambled to find the evidence on my smart phone and finally found it; all while tears streamed down my face. Seriously? Why Griselbrand.. WHY?? I was building a deck around him already! WTF! They listed the reasons HERE, but the banning doesn't make the feelings hurt any less. The EDH Rules Committee tried to buffer the announcement by adding in Sundering Titan into the mix, but the wound still stings.

So, why did they change him from Griselbrand to Griselbanned? (cute term courtesy of Jav) Sheldon Menery explained that Griselbrand was extremely similar to Yawgmoth's Bargain (already banned in the format) and the card is notorious for being overpowered because you get the cards exactly when you want them, compared to Necropotence, where you only get the cards at the end of your turn. This subtle difference separates these two cards from the banhammer. Drawing cards at the end of your turn doesn't allow you to float mana and cast an infinite combo or give you enough time to lay down your Venser's Journal or Reliquary Tower, so you won't be able to keep any cards in excess of 7. If you go back to the Griselbrand Article I wrote in May, I mentioned that this creature does everything and buys you a bag of chips afterwards. If your opponents target your mana development, the card draw-ing power helps you find more Extraplanar Lens abilities to replace it. If your opponents try to destroy him, he can easily draw you into a reanimation spell to get him on the battlefield again. The biggest problem is Lifelink. He fuels himself and requires little to no work replenishing your life total other than swinging into the red zone. One of the major gripes I've heard about Griselbrand EDH was it's ability to win extremely fast. Mono-Black players would use mana rocks to quickly ramp into a turn 3-5 Griselbrand and draw out their entire deck to find whatever infinite combo they wanted to win with that game. Kinda degenerate. 

Unfortunately, I haven't had the pleasure to play against a Griselbrand deck, so it's difficult to gauge exactly how powerful it was as a Commander or even in the list of 99. After playing him in my Teneb, the Harvester EDH deck and against him in my friends' EDH decks, I think he's an extremely strong creature, but I never felt he was too overpowered. I assume our playgroup didn't really try to break the card other than just playing him for fun and drawing the occasional 7 cards with him. At the end of the day, I'll live on. I understand why my favorite card in Avacyn Restored was banned, but it doesn't amend a broken heart. Farewell, Griselbrand; I hardly knew ye. 

Sundering Titan. The fuck? Where did banning this card come from? I mean, I'm not complaining at all. This card is all kinds of unfair. If the ability just triggered when it entered the battlefield, I could kind of get behind it, but leaving too? I can't even exile/bounce this thing to prevent the trigger? Yeah, this one had to go. I'm surprised the banning came so late on this guy. I figured they'd let it slip by like other offenders like Mind Twist and Contamination. Overall, Sundering Titan can make games completely unplayable for opponents, since he shoots 5 different lands when he enters and leaves the battlefield. Sundering Titan is also extremely degenerate in popular blink strategies that use Cloudshift and Momentary Blink to access multiple Sundering Titan triggers to one-sided Armageddon the board. With each concussive hit, Sundering Titan decreases your opponents' resources and effectively suppresses their ability to stop or interact with your board. I'm glad he's gone and the day I see this titan in another EDH match, it'll be a day too soon. 

After all the commotion over these bannings. Wizards earlier this morning announced their seasonal bannings. Nobody got the axe. The notorious bad guy in the room, Standard U/W Delver escaped without losing a hair and that has mixed feelings across the Standard environment, but ultimately I think it's a good reason. According to the magicthegathering.com Daily Articles (click HERE to see it!), they claim statistically, Delver wins a little under 51% of the time and they feel the format is diverse enough that Delver and non-Delver decks can live in harmony. Honestly, I think Delver is ruining the format, so much so that you have to print Cavern of Souls to help fight against Snapcaster Mage. Seriously? I think Snapcaster Mage is the true villain and it's almost unfathomable to ban it because they already screwed control magic for the next year with the Cavern, so what do they do now? It's also rather disappointing that may have to ban yet another Blue card. I don't know if we see a clear cut bias towards Blue, but this is getting a little old. 

The craziest thing we see after today is the unbanning of Land Tax in Legacy. 

With Legacy becoming an increasingly more difficult format to get into because of the cost of pricey engines like Show and Tell, Natural Order, Candelabra of Tawnos, and the dual lands, Legacy as a format is in limbo of not having enough cards to support the format. Interestingly enough, WotC looked to Land Tax as a potential player on the Legacy scene. A card that's been banned since 2004, Land Tax focuses primarily on basic lands and interacts with relatively well-priced cards like Seismic Assault, Life from the Loam, Knight of the Reliquary, and Mox Diamond (although somewhat pricey). Currently, Land Tax doesn't do anything for the more popular decks like RUG Delver, Maverick, Dredge, etc, so it's perfectly poised to be a Tier 2 archetype, potentially Tier 1 if someone manages to break the card. This enchantment is an extremely powerful effect, potentially drawing you 4 cards/turn under ideal circumstances, so it's likely some deck builder will find the right cohesion of engines and lands to make Land Tax an automatic 4x of in a Legacy archetype. We've already seen the power of cheap/powerful enchantments in Legacy with Survival of the Fittest, so Land Tax might be well positioned to take the format by storm. 

My biggest gripe with the unbanning is the price. Before the banning, Land Tax was a stable 8-10 dollars for a white-bordered copy and about 15-20 for a Legends copy. After the unbanning, copies were sold out everywhere and you couldn't find a copy for any less than $40. As I'm writing this, the card is around 25 on the low. As a huge Commander staple and a vital piece to non-Green decks for getting mana fixing and lands in hand, this card is a linchpin in White decks for achieving some consistency. The price jump will make it more difficult to obtain for EDH players, so I'm hoping the price stabilizes around 15-20, so players can pick up a copy if they need it. 

Seems like we covered everything, right? Well, there was a small piece of information that Sheldon Menery mentioned in his post on the Commander bannings. 'remember that there is ongoing Kokusho testing, so no decision will be made on it until the September update' -Sheldon. Did he just say.. Kokusho?? One of my favorite dragons of all time might be legal in Commander? Hooray!! I'm really excited if they bring this drain everyone for 5, gain a billion life dragon back into Commander and let me sleeve up my own copy. I think this card is extremely dangerous in multiples, but we're playing in a format where you can only play 1 copy. Furthermore, we already have Exsanguinate, which is arguably more difficult to fight against with the Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth/Cabal Coffers interaction. Since there are more Clone effects in the format with new additions, Phyrexian Metamorph, Evil Twin, and Sakashima's Student, the EDH Rules Committee may feel there are enough answers for opponents to kill Kokusho. Hopefully their testing is in favor of rising the Evening Star from exile. 

Overall, this is how I feel: 

+0 Griselbrand Ban in EDH/Commander

+1 Sundering Titan Ban in EDH/Commander

+0 No Standard Bans

-1 Land Tax Unbanning in Legacy

+1 Kokusho, the Evening Star Potential of Unbanning from EDH/Commander

I can't say I'm thrilled, but the new format changes will have to do for now. We'll see what the next round of bans has in store for us come September and the results from Standard tournaments to determine the fate of U/W Delver. Until the next bramble, Magic players!

Can't get enough brambling content? Check out the Bramble On Series on the MTG Casual Network Archive!

-David J.

Connect with us on Facebook!

COMMANDER! Review: Krond the Dawn-Clad

Hey guys! Planechase 2012 is here! It's very exciting because we get a handful of new cards, phenomena, new planes, and 3 new legendary creatures to talk about. Today, we look at Krond the Dawn-Clad and the Planechase 2012 Deck, 'Savage Auras'.

If that isn't an epic archon, I don't know what is. Very reminiscent of Blazing Archon from Ravnica and Archon of Justice from Eventide, we get this new one that is White AND Green. Similar to the Sigarda article I tackled last month, it's very rare that we get Green fliers and Krond joins the ranks of unusual green creatures. Krond is a GGGWWW 6/6 with Flying, Vigilance, and a really interesting Vindicate/Beast Within ability to snipe a permanent whenever he attacks and is enchanted. Similar to Bruna, Light of Alabaster, Krond requires a full suite of Aura enchantments to support him. Click HERE if you'd like to see the possible list of Auras to use with Krond in Green and White. Also, take a look at all the deck lists for the Planechase 2012 product by clicking HERE!

Cards you'll play: Ancestral Mask, Angelic Destiny, Indrik Umbra, Pollenbright Wings, Felidar Umbra, Rancor, Armadillo Cloak, Battle Mastery, Eldrazi Conscription, Bear Umbra, Daybreak Coronet, Empyrial Armor, Shield of the Oversoul, Indestructibility, Spirit Loop, and Moldervine Cloak.

Cards you might play: Blanchwood Armor, Armored Ascension, Dragon Fangs, Dragon Scales, Druid's Call, Epic Proportions, Keen Sense, Pentarch Ward, Verdant Embrace, Wurmweaver Coil, Spirit Mantle, and Mythic Proportions.

Krond is a really interesting card to talk about. He has no colorless mana in his mana cost, which is extremely unusual, so you can expect him to be a really pushed 6 mana creature. His mana cost forces you to have really strong fixing from your lands to avoid situations like 4 Plains and 2 Forests being your available mana and unable to cast Krond on turn 6. Luckily, Krond is in Green which is a heavy fixing color, so finding the right colors and getting to 6 lands should be fairly easy. Coincidentally, Green is also a color notorious for Auras that attach to lands to fix your mana or add more mana with cards like Utopia Sprawl, Wild Growth, and even Abundant Growth from Avacyn Restored. Along with enchantment favorites like Mesa Enchantress, throwing down these Auras late game can also cycle for more cards, helping you dig through your library for cards you need to answer your opponents' threats. His 'exile a permanent' ability is extremely powerful and isn't something to overlook. Very similar to Spine of Ish Sah or Karn Liberated's -3 ability, Krond can create some serious board control. Staring down a very problematic permanent like that you can't deal with? Just exile it. This ability is extremely powerful in casual and Commander because most decks play an element of recursion, even if it's a small one. By exiling a permanent instead of destroying it, you almost completely remove it from the equation and your opponents can't bring it back with a Regrowth or a Reanimate ability. The longer Krond stays on the field and attacking, the weaker your opponents' recursion cards become and the more dead draws they're more likely to draw.

In constructed play, Krond is only legal in Vintage, Legacy, and Commander. Unfortunately, too many things would have to happen to Vintage or Legacy for this card to see any play in those formats. However, if you're thinking about building a Krond the Dawn-Clad commander deck, you can take a ton of notes from a Legacy classic, G/W Enchantress (click HERE to see an example!). Enchantress is notorious in Legacy as a soft-lock control strategy that spams Enchantments and Auras to draw tons of cards off of Argothian Enchantress and Enchantress's Presence while pumping out tons of 4/4 Angel tokens from Sigil of the Empty Throne. If you're more of a Spike player looking to build a a soft-lock control strategy around Krond, favorites like Runed Halo, Solitary Confinement, Karmic Justice, and Sterling Grove are great support for Krond as you prevent your opponents from targeting you or your permanents while using Krond to swing in for lethal, general damage to your opponents.

How good is Krond in Commander? Although his Triggered ability is the biggest piece of flavor behind the card, it's also the biggest limiting factor to his potential. The conditions to fulfill his Triggered ability are 1. He must be enchanted and 2. He must attack. Although harmless independently, fulfilling both conditions can be somewhat daunting, since Krond lacks Hexproof compared to Uril, the Mistalker, Thrun, the Last Troll, Geist of Saint Traft, or Sigarda, Host of Herons; all of whom are great at holding Auras because they evade death by card advantage. The downside to heavy Aura strategies are the lack of creatures. In order for most Aura cards to work, they need a legal target to enchant, which makes them extremely vulnerable. If you attempt to enchant one of your creatures and your opponent has the timely removal spell for your desired target, they not only destroyed your creature, but the Aura doesn't resolve because it no longer has a legal target and also hits the graveyard. It's extremely easy for opponents to 2 for 1 you with removal spells on your creatures. Furthermore, finding the balance between Auras and creatures is very difficult. Most of the creatures in the Aura strategy are very frail without any Auras to hold, so having a bunch of creatures in hand sucks. On the flip side, having a bunch of Auras and very few creatures can be very dangerous, since your opponent can easily snipe your creature and put you in a bad spot with a hand full of Auras and no legal targets.

How can I overcome these problems? One way to approach this problem is playing Auras that return back to your hand after the enchanted creature dies (Angelic Destiny, Rancor, and Spirit Loop), which allows you to enchant your weaker creatures and generate tempo while you bide your time to cast larger impact creatures to enchant. Recursion, or bringing back cards from your graveyard, is really useful for generating card advantage, which is extremely vital to the Aura strategy in Commander. For Krond, he's perfectly positioned as a 6/6 creature, so Dragon Fangs and Dragon Scales are perfect for keeping Krond enchanted when you recast him after several untimely deaths. If you want to push the Krond recursion strategy further, you could play Moldervine Cloak and use the Dredge ability to re-buy the enchantment and mill yourself a few cards; along with Sun Titan, Miraculous Recovery, Breath of Life, Saffi Eriksdotter, Monk Idealist, and Hymn of Rebirth to grab creatures and enchantments back to reuse. Heck, you can even go big and cast Open the Vaults to grab a ton of auras to enchant any number of creatures you have sitting on the board. Another way to protect Krond and all of his enchantments is to play cards that protect your permanents with Indestructibility or Hexproof like Asceticism, Priveleged Position, Sigarda, Host of Herons, and Avacyn, Angel of Hope. If your opponents can't target or destroy your permanents, you can safely enchant your creatures with auras and swing them in the red zone without fear. Finally, you could always use Krond in a simple macro strategy with ramp and tutors like Congregation at Dawn, Eldrami's Call, Worldly Tutor, Enlightened Tutor, Idyllic Tutor, and Academy Rector to grab your Argothian or Mesa Enchantress and draw tons of cards off of your enchantments to bury your opponents in card advantage and tempo. Although Krond's triggered ability is pretty aura-dependent, Krond simply needs to hold one enchantment to become absolutely devastating, so that opens some flexibility in how you can build the deck.

Now, let's take a look at Savage Auras from the Planechase 2012 Summer expansion! Some really sweet utility cards that come straight out of the Planechase deck are Sigil of the Empty Throne, Three Dreams, Celestial Ancient, Kor Spiritdancer, and Auratouched Mage are some of the power cards you'll be relying on when you're playing the deck against your friends. I also really like the new rares they printed just for the Savage Auras deck, Indrik Umbra and Elderwood Scion. The Scion has a really cool ability and works really well with the auras you'll be playing in the deck. He's a nice win condition that you can use to distract your opponents, while you wait to cast the mighty Krond. I really like how the precon is a great start to keep it as a casual deck or head straight into converting it into an EDH deck, including a lot of great tools you can use straight out of the box. Although this particular deck doesn't have a lot of money cards in it, the set has a relatively simple and unique play style that's perfect for beginners and interesting enough for veteran players alike.

Overall, I like the Aura theme they pushed on Krond and his 'exile a permanent' ability will catch a lot of players' eyes as players look for a semi-aura-dependent general that can play both offensively and defensively. Hopefully you'll take to the skies and start enchanting Krond the Dawn-Clad yourself. Until the next Planechase Legend!

Can't get enough Commander/EDH content? Check out the Commander Series on the MTG Casual Network Archive!

-David J.

Connect with us on Facebook!

In the Deck Box #7: Oona, Queen of the Fae

Hey guys! Gyula here. I'm part of the Bramble On group and I play test Magic/hang out with David, Jav, C.J., and Evan quite frequently. Today, David asked me to share with you a particular deck I've been building to play in our EDH playgroup. This deck has gone through many forms but I think I finally found a nice niche of cards I enjoy playing. I've never written an article before, so I hope you guys enjoy the discussion about none other than Oona, Queen of the Fae.

Let me give you guys a little backstory about myself and Magic. I started out playing Commander with a deck I fondly remember, but recently gutted for cards, Dromar, the Banisher. I ended up getting bored with the particular play style after several months and decided to rip it apart and evolve the deck with a new general. After looking at different options, I came across Oona; and she looked like an incredible general and quickly became one of my favorite cards. I decided to drop White in favor of Black and Blue and tackle this monster of a general. I'll admit, the start was very shaky. It took me almost 4-5 months to complete the first draft and it completely fell apart. I tried to do too much and fell into the trap of just playing the best cards in my general's colors, so my deck lost a ton of synergy. My deck also lacked strong development to give me more resiliency as the longer multiplayer games dragged on. Then one fated day at my local card shop, I was playing a game of Commander with C.J., Jav, and Evan and a random player who brought Crosis, the Purger to the table. The Crosis deck was really interesting and ran a psuedo-mill/group-hug strategy that allowed everyone to draw cards with artifacts like Howling Mine and Font of Mythos along with some artifacts to make copies of them like Sculpting Steel and Mizzium Transreliquat, so players would be drawing 2, 3, maybe even 5 cards a turn. He also ran cards that profited from all the card draw with Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind, Kederekt Parasite, and Psychosis Crawler as win conditions. After seeing this strategy, I rejoiced. I found the play style Oona wanted me to play. Mind you, I was only able to test this deck a hand full of times, but I really enjoy it now. To see the deck list, click HERE!

What is the theme to my deck? Milling and drawing tons of cards. I force everyone to draw more cards than they should while Milling or Exiling the rest of their library. Interestingly enough, cards like Kami of the Crescent Moon and Forced Fruition are strange inclusions, but double up in my strategy. While reducing the size of your opponents' library every turn and forcing them to draw cards, it makes some of their cards dead draws, namely one the cards that draw them more cards. I can also turn all that card draw against them with cards like Jace's Archivist and Windfall to make my opponents mill even more cards from their library. Brilliant! Finally, the strategy also interrupts strategies that rely off the top card of opponents' libraries (cough* Intet cough*). My set-up often throws off my opponents' set-up but at a steep price. While I'm reducing the size of their libraries, I'm also allowing my opponents to dig deeper for extra cards that they can use against me and interrupt my strategy. It also fills up opponents' graveyards, helping fuel reanimation strategies and making me really weak to Living Death. >_<. That's why I included a ton of removal in Oona, including Evacuation, Capsize, Damnation, and plenty of countermagic. This attrition style of play is necessary to keep opponents from beating me in the face with a mottly crew of giant creatures.

Now that your opponent's cards are flooding the graveyard, how do you use that to your advantage? Cards like Undead Alchemist, Puppeteer Clique, Geth, Lord of the Vault, Body Double, and even Havengul Lich allow you to take their creatures right out from under your opponents' noses, which allows me to generate tons of variation that Blue and Black largely lack. When I was building Oona, I had thought about how I wanted to play the deck, so I thought to myself 'what do faeries do?' They play tricks! So why not steal things from graveyards, from the battlefield or even from opponents' decks? Cards like Bribery, Clone, Sower of Temptation, you can use opponents' creatures to defend yourself while you setup your draw engines. Once you have all these creatures and you're done using them, you can use Altar of Dementia to turn them into more cards milled off the top of opponents' libraries. Coincidentally, I have one infinite combo with the Altar, Puppeteer Clique and Mikaeus, the Unhallowed, just in case.

Ok, the early game setup makes sense, but how do you keep up the tempo in the late game? Cards like Keening Stone and Mesmeric Orb do just that. The more players commit to the board and tap their lands to cast spells, the Orb punishes them for it and the more I mill opponents out, the Keening Stone cleans up for the kill. Unfortunately, these two cards draw a ton of hate, so I use cards like No Mercy and Dread to dissuade my opponents from attacking me like hungry hungry hippos and buys me enough time to mill them out. Since Mesmeric Orb punishes me too, I'm considering running Feldon's Cane or Elixir of Immortality.. more testing to come!

So, in order to pull this strategy off, you need a lot of board control and tutors to give you some consistency to get the right type of removal or milling engine. I hope you all enjoyed my rant about my Oona EDH deck and how it works. It will continue to evolve as I test it, but for now, I'm really happy with how it works.

Want to check out other EDH/Commander decks? Check out the In the Deck Box Series on the MTG Casual Network Archive!

-Gyula Goreczky

Connect with us on Facebook!

COMMANDER! Review: Gisela, Blade of Goldnight

Hello Casual Net! Javier here with a change of pace for the Commander articles, bringing you a brief look at the newest R/W legendary angel, Gisela, Blade of Goldnight. Gisela offers a very aggressive ability that can be highly explosive after a bit of set-up. Now, without any further ado, let's get to the details!

Holy art, Batman! (no pun intended). Jason Chan remains my favorite Magic artist and cards like Gisela are the reason why. Between the sunlight breaking through the clouds and the raw determination on this red-headed angel's face, let's just say I wouldn't want to be on the business end of one of her assaults. Everything about this art screams 'Victory!' and Gisela herself does not disappoint. To arms!

Gisela is a 5/5 First Strike flier for 4RWW, which is a fairly lofty cost; however, she has two abilities that make her a force to be reckoned with. Her first ability states that any damage your opponents and their permanents take is doubled (Malignus, anyone?). This not only applies to damage you or your spells do, but also damage opponents do to each other, which is a huge factor when considering the politics behind multiplayer magic and Planechase. Gisela's second ability prevents half of the damage rounded up that you and your permanents take. This combination makes your army both stronger and more resilient, giving you a huge upper-hand in combat.

Taking advantage of Gisela's abilities is fairly intuitive, but has some tricks that you might have to dig to find. The first route we'll look at is combat damage. Double Strike suddenly feels like quadruple strike and trample damage goes even bigger (although you do have to assign enough damage to kill a creature before doubling it). Gisela already has First Strike, so she deals a whopping 10 damage to most creatures blocking her before they even have a chance to fight back for half their own power. Good luck killing her in combat. Other damage is also doubled, so Lightning Bolt becomes a 1 mana Titan-killer, Slagstorm feels like a one-sided board wipe, and Devil's Play is completely devastating. If we delve further down the damage multipliers, Furnace of Rath and Gratuitous Violence double your damage once again and allow Gisela to start dealing 20 damage with every vengeful swing. Gisela's ability also works great with Infect and opposing general damage. Cards like Threaten and Mark of Mutiny can steal opponents' generals and use them to finish off other opponents who have been wounded by them earlier. Grafted Exoskeleton gets a special shout-out for giving Gisela another one-shot combo when equipped or even to one of your measly 3/3 creature while Gisela is on the board. Finally, my favorite interaction with Gisela is Pyrohemia, the timeshifted version of Pestilence. Gisela prevents all of the damage dealt to you and your creatures while dealing 2 damage to your opponents and their creatures for each activation. This interaction also works favorably with Furnace of Rath. The order of replacement effects such as Gisela is chosen by the player being dealt damage, which means you can half the damage from Pyrohemia first, then double it with Furnace of Rath to net you 0 damage!

Gisela has a lot of casual appeal, acting not only as an enormous bomb, but as a pseudo-anthem for your already-existing creatures. For Standard, the most obvious home for Gisela is in Frites, the R/B/W reanimator deck. Attacking for 10 as early as turn 5 off of a Faithless Looting and Unburial Rites is pretty rad, if I do say so myself. Alternatively, Gisela could also serve as a secondary win condition in Naya Pod. The deck generally just plays strong, aggressive creatures and simply gets better if you land a Birthing Pod. Most White Pod decks finish off with Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, but having a second 7 CMC card to Pod into is useful if your opponent manages to kill E. Norn (which you're probably only playing 1-of). I'm none too familiar with other formats, but I'd imagine Gisela would fit into other Reanimator strategies if she did have Legacy appeal, although I'm sure they have better targets.

The first immediate hurdle to building a Commander/EDH deck around Gisela runs into is its inability to macro (check out David's article on macro HERE!). Red and White are the two colors that suffer the most from lack of card draw and mana ramp, so early game development and running out of late game steam are two very real problems for the Boros (R/W) color combination. One way of approaching Gisela is a fast aggro deck; playing cheap, efficient creature threats to whittle opponents' life totals down while your opponents spend their removal spells and development turns trying to stay alive. Creatures like Kinsbaile Cavalier and Goblin Guide can create an early aggressive board state that opponents may not have the tools (or immediate desire) to answer that can rapidly take out a good chunk of life. By the time opponents are responding with a Day of Judgment, you've already dealt them 15+ damage or have the means to protect your creatures with Ghostway or Second Sunrise. If this strategy feels like a Gamble, you could alternatively try to macro out Gisela with mana rocks, Solemn Simulacrum, Kor Cartographer, Knight of the White Orchid, Land Tax, and Wheel of Fortune to power out large, flashy spells. Furthermore, Gisela presents an immediate threat to every player, regardless of how much back up you have--which makes protecting her a priority! Hexproof and Protection from cards like Swiftfoot Boots and Brave the Elements, or even evasion tricks like Cloudshift (my favorite card from AVR) can often protect Gisela long enough for you to untap and unleach havoc.

For comparison, I'd say Gisela is most like Razia, Boros Archangel in Commander/EDH. Both are aggressive generals that also protect your team, which allows you to have some combat tricks with smaller creatures against the format's high density of large creatures on the battlefield. If opponents are spending time using removal spells on your smaller creatures, you can bait them out of removal to clear the way for your unanswered R/W angel. A strong onslaught of early game aggression would force opponents to deal with your early Figure of Destiny or Mirran Crusader while you plan to curve out into your 7 or 8 mana general. Both Boros bad-asses complement each other fairly well and potentially serve as lieutenants to each other in their respective decks, even better with both of them on the board simultaneously!

That's more or less Gisela, Blade of Goldnight for you. She has two very strong, relevant abilities that let you be explosively aggressive in the mid-game. There's a few cool ways to build the deck and she is one of the most satisfying generals to get into the red zone with. I know I'll be picking up my own copy soon and maybe even build a rough draft for a deck. Until next time, deck builders!

Can't get enough Commander/EDH content? Check out the Commander Series on the MTG Casual Network Archive!

-Javier Remy

Connect with us on Facebook!

Bramble On #6: May Overload

Hey guys! It's been forever since I've been able to sit down and just blurb about random things. There are so many new cards from Planechase 2012, cards from Avacyn Restored I haven't talked about yet, and even M13 spoilers starting to pop up! There's so much content to cover, it's crazy! My days have been pretty packed recently, so I'll have to put a few things I wanted to write about on hold. I also wanted to take some time to finish up a couple EDH decks that I promised I would build; namely Numot, the Devastator and Griselbrand, more on those later. Now, let's get brambling!

Some new things to talk about really quick is the new 'The Trade Grounds' set up by our very own Tomas Bustamante. The link is HERE if you'd like to check it out and will also be on the right hand side of the blog under Useful Links. Register for an account, setup your trade binder and local card shops, then begin trading! Tomas set this website up to streamline trading conducted on Casual Net and to replace our very outdated and underused Trade Document we had setup before. The site is free and extremely easy to use. Tomas will be the head admin of the site and will be experimenting with the website and changing things up as the The Trade Grounds grows. If you have any questions, please contact him on The Trade Grounds. Happy trading!

Speaking of trading, if you were curious, here's a few things I traded for over the past couple weeks:

and...

Not too shabby. You can see the skeleton of mono-Black Griselbrand forming, so I'm really excited. And yes, that is a Foil Griselbrand in a pink sleeve! I picked him up on eBay for 32. It was a little painful, but he'll add some wow factor. I can't wait to start building the deck. I think the Plateau is the heaviest ticket item if you're a value hunter. I ended up trading a bunch of cards I'd been trying to get rid of (including a Personal Tutor that saw a nice spike from the new miracle cards) and I found a ton of money cards in bulk lying around from old deck pieces, so I was able to get some pretty good stuff. 

I really do need to bunker down and get to deck building. I also finally decided on a blink theme for Numot where Dead-Eye Navigator really caught my attention and I have a few plans for him. He's really powerful with any EtB trigger on another creature so abusing it is fairly easy. The problem is getting enough mana to setup the engine, which I think I'm going to solve with mana rocks like Gilded Lotus, Thran Dynamo, Mana Vault, etc. The creatures that you souldbond with him don't have to be the best cards ever, he's great for incremental advantage over time and the blink ability makes them annoyingly difficult to kill.

In other news, Evan won a side event draft at the SCG Open a couple weeks ago and opened a Sigarda, Host of Herons; so he was really stoked. So much, in fact that he built an EDH deck with her. I'll probably have to pester him to get the decklist later. Also, we have C.J. who finished building his Kresh, the Bloodbraided EDH, Gyula built his new Brion Stoutarm deck, and even Jav actually spending money to rework his Kaalia of the Vast deck! There's so much innovation it's impossible to keep up! Once I have the decklists, I'll post them on Bramble On. If you're ever in the Orlando area, let us know! We're always looking for new players to stomp. =]

Oh yeah, I have some sweet sneak peeks at some of the decks that will be featured soon in the In the Deck Box series. Check them out!

Urabrask, the Hidden: by Sean Wang

Oona, Queen of the Fae: by Gyula Goreczky

And a pair of random pics. 

*Evan Forster showing off his Sigarda that took him to a 3-0 1st place victory.

*Orion Taylor showing off his pack 1 pick 1 in an AVR draft.

Anyways, those are all the sweet stories, updates, and pictures I have from May. In more ways than one, May was a huge month for the blog, since we hit 1500 views in one month! If you've kept up with the blog this whole time, I can't thank you enough. I'm hoping to tackle June with a vengeance and get more Commander articles out and editing some In the Deck Box stuff. Until next time, Magic players! 

Can't get enough brambling content? Check out the Bramble On Series on the MTG Casual Network Archive!

-David J.

Connect with us on Facebook!