Category: mtg

  • Elder Dragon Highlander Extreme

    As Commander Week wraps up on Daily MTG, we’d like to reveal our biggest surprise yet – a new variant to the Commander format! Elder Dragon Highlander Extreme (EDHX) is super exciting, and you will be able to get products for it starting in August of 2011.

    Extreme: To the Max!

    You can probably tell that EDHX is extreme, but why is it that way? We’ve removed all of the dusty old rules for no-fun-havers, and replaced them with interesting, insightful, interactive rules that just make more sense. We hope you’re as excited about this new format as we are, because frankly, we’re frustrated by the stagnant and restrictive EDH rules that were dropped in our laps.

    Card Restrictions: Breed Creativity

    You get 200 cards and an Extreme General. Each card must be unique! The general has to be a Legendary Creature.

    Bonus extreme rule: You can have two Kawasaki Samurai if they are your Extreme Generals, as well as any number of Relentless Rats, and up to seven Squadron Hawks.

    Color Identity: It’s me, God. What color am I?

    Each card has a color identity tied within its mana symbols and text, but sometimes things aren’t so clear. What about snow and Phyrexian mana? Hybrid mana? Purple mana? This is an easy area to be confused about, so we’ve redone everything. The only thing that stays the same is that the color identity of your Extreme General has to be the same as every other card in your deck.

    Every spell has a cost – imagine paying that cost! It turns out, sometimes you can pay it in different ways. All you have to do is choose one of the legal ways, and lock that in as part of the color identity of the card. This means that hybrid can be either or both colors, alternate costs can go either way, and Phyrexian mana can be treated as colorless – but only if your general includes life payments as part of its color identity.

    Costs as part of abilities on a card also count as part of the color identity, with a couple of caveats. If no one is ever known to have used an ability, ever, then you can skip over it. Armorer Guildmage’s green ability is an example of one of these. Remember, if you skip over one of the abilities, you have to cross it off with a marker.

    If an ability is actually paid by your opponent, such as that on Quenchable Fire, then your opponent has to play with a General that includes that color. This rule is included for fairness, because wildfires are a serious problem, and if left unchecked, many people could become homeless.

    Get a Life: I wonder how many times people wrote that in MTG articles?

    Players in a game of EDHX start with 29 life, and take 14 poison counters to become poisoned.

    Summoning your Extreme General: A new creature is born!

    Your Extreme General starts in the Extreme zone, and you can summon it as if it was in your hand. Each time your General dies, put it back into the Extreme zone – unless it died in a really lame way, like to Snakeform and a 1/1 Citizen token.

    Each successive time that you summon your Extreme General from the Extreme zone, it costs an additional 2 colorless mana.

    Extreme Generals do an additional type of damage to players – not only does the helpless defending player take regular combat damage, but they get Extreme General Face Ouch tokens, one for each Extreme General damage. (A player with 17 or more Extreme General Face Ouch tokens loses the game.)

    FAQ

    Q: What is EDHX?

    A: Elder Dragon Highlander EXTREME.

    Q: Like EDH, but EXTREME?

    A: Yes.

    Q: In EDHX, can I use a Sharpie to change my general’s name to “He Hate Me”?

    A: Of Course!

    Additional Rules

    • Players must have a glass of liquid next to their deck at all times (no lids or sippy cups)
    • Rickety card tables are optional, but recommended
    • You have to play with Planechase and Archenemy cards
    • … and Vanguard
    • … and Old Vanguard
    • The entire time you must have both feet standing on a skateboard
    • Life totals must be kept on over-sized 30-sided dice
    • At all times you must have a slim jim in your mouth
    • If your deck falls over, each card becomes all Chaos Orbs
    • For each game you must have a separate general
    • You start with 1 additional life per foil card in your deck
    • To determine who goes first, hold a round-robin arm-wrestling tournament
    • If you only have one card in your hand you have to shout Uno
    • You start with 15 cards in your hand
    • You can play unglued cards, but only if their mana symbols match EXACTLY to your Extreme General
    • At the end of each turn, you must assume form of the something, and strike the appropriate pose
    • Whenever there’s a coin flip, you have to use a POG slammer instead of a coin
    • If a card is exiled, it is dipped in your glass of liquid
    • Rhys, the Exiled starts in your glass
    • Whenever you sacrifice a creature to Devouring Strossus or Doomgape, you must eat it
    • If you would create a copy of a spell or a token that is a copy of a permanent, you must immediately produce another actual copy of the chosen card or else the copied spell or token is not created.

    Bannings

    • No sleeves allowed (on cards or shirts)
    • Commons are banned, except in some cases
    • Edged weapons (Maces and nunchaku are encouraged)
    • All other spells are legal in the main deck, except Shahrazad
    • Shahrazad is automatically cast when your life hits 20, then again when it hits 10
    • Subgames are played in the nude
    • 60-card decks are banned in EDHX, except for the event deck that has two Stoneforge Mystics
  • Tha Gatherin: A Critical Review

    Tha Gatherin, the debut by Patrick “Tha Innuhvaduh” Chapin and Bill “Spruke” Boulden, is a rap album about Magic: the Gathering that magnificently delivers on all the promises it makes by containing both rap and lyrics pertaining to Magic: the Gathering. The album boldly moves past typical hip hop cliches such as internal rhyme schemes and basslines and onto completely uncharted territory. Any true hip-hop fan will have nothing but praise for the true old-school classics such as Ultramagnetic MCs, and Tha Gatherin deftly pays tribute to such late-80s artists by rapping in a style deeply indebted to theirs and others; shunning the “mainstream” method of supposedly natural-sounding rhymes, Tha Gatherin brilliantly makes use of the classic staccato style. It takes true courage, in this day and age, to proudly display love for the history of the genre and they should be saluted for that. Other subtle references abound: listeners of Mobb Deep’s classic “The Infamous” (they weren’t quite real enough to properly spell the album title, unfortunately) are no doubt familiar with the record’s almost painterly usage of vinyl hiss, cracks, and pops that made the samples sound even rawer than they already were. Tha Gatherin updates the practice by using lower-bitrate sounds in their songs. A truly remarkable innovation that feels fresh and current in the internet age.

    In a clever acknowledgement of the ethical dilemmas innate in the genre’s theft of other artists’ material (often called “sampling” by some hip-hop producers), mastermind Spruke doesn’t go the easy route of stealing from James Brown like some others. Instead, he creates something truly unique by programming all drums himself to ensure that no beat that appears on the album has ever been heard by the rap community. It literally moves to the beat of its own drummer! Ha ha, just a little music pun there for you. But don’t worry: even though wordplay is all over the radio thanks to hacks like Lil Wayne, Tha Gatherin is certified to be free of it. That’d right, you can listen to the whole thing and be confident that you won’t feel stupid by missing a reference or needing to back up to hear it again; the lyrics are straightforward and understandable, a breath of fresh air in the world of hip-hop where the jargon can often be difficult to penetrate and the ideas overly complex. Even better, Mr. Chapin has a clear unaccented truly all-American voice, not like the mumbly gravelmouths you’ll hear on other records. Theater teachers the world over will be proud. Even the name of the project serves to explain what the work is about: I’m sure you could ask middle-aged people what they would guess a rap group about Magic: the Gathering would be called, and a large portion would answer “Tha Gatherin.” And they’d be so right!

    Mr. Chapin should also be commended for his rapid turnaround from his previous incarceration after a conviction for dealing large quantities of Ecstasy. He is possibly the first rapper to get out of jail on drug charges and not rap about it as soon as he gets the chance; instead, he brings us uplifting stories about how he “invented Jace.” Truly, we all have a lesson to learn from his bravery and humility.

    Just as the transcendent genius of Hall & Oates brought an improved version of “soul” music to a whole new demographic, Tha Gatherin updates, innovates and reincorporates hip-hop into something totally fresh that should appeal to all Magic fans that have never been exposed to the genre. It should certainly be a new experience for so many of them! I look forward to the ecstatic reactions from the community as an entire world of music is opened to them through the fantastic work of these two up-and-coming musicians. It’ll definitely be a candidate for my end-of-year lists, as it came out this year.

    Buy the album here

  • Akroma’s Memorial Day

    Fire up your ironworks, put some meat on a stick, open a bottle of venomous ichor (as cold as the ice age), and wave those banners around.

    It’s memorial day!