Eternal Bargain

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Happy Wednesday MTG peeps, 

We have for you today part two of five separate articles we are doing on the new Commander 2013 decks just recently released by WotC to a very welcoming Magic: the Gathering fan base.  Each of these new Commander pre-constructed decks provides a ready to play stack of 100 cards including a choice of three legendary creatures to act as your general which may be also represented by an oversized foil card.  The card list is a solid foundation which you can easily adjust to taste - we'll likely throw a few of our nostalgic favourites we've picked up from MTG Mint Card into the original mix. 

The is the overview / review for Commander 2013's 'Evasive Maneuvers' deck and we've prepared a video with our good friend Jon from 'Command Tower' on Tumblr.  

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This Esper deck (white/ blue / black) has the following Commanders to choose from:

Oloro, Ageless Ascetic
This legendary Giant Soldier costing six mana (3 colorless and an 'esper' gives you a 4/5 body on the field and has a lifegain theme in each of the cards three abilities.  Ability one nets you two life, while the second one allows you to pay one coloress whenever you gain life to chip one life off your opponent.  To ensure the life train keeps going, you also add another two onto your total even if Oloro is in your command zone.
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Sydri, Galvanic Genius
This Human Artificer costs three (one 'esper') and provides a 2/2 onto the battlefield.  Both activated abilities are all about artifacts.  For one blue mana, you can turn a target noncreature artifact into an artifact with p/t equal to the cmc.  The second ability allows you to pay a white and black to give a target artifact lifelink / deathtouch until end of turn.
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Sharuum, the Hegemon
Here is the reprint - for six mana (three colorless and an 'esper') you get a 5/5 flying artifact Sphinx creature.  The enter the battlefield effect has the ability to return an artifact card from the 'yard back onto the battlefield, which can get really crazy if you develop a strategy to cheat huge fatties or other high costed artifacts onto the field.
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This is certainly not an 'all in' artifact deck and frankly the list developed by WotC is not meant to be that but rather yet another robust list able to adapt to the game situation and happens to have an artifact theme.  Having just said that, we are keen to develop a major artifact theme with this deck at it's base - we would want to consider both Tezzeret the Seeker and Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas in this mix along with similarily themed card choices.  One concern we have is that should you play Oloro in multiplayer, you could get hated on simply because of his lifegain potential.  
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Artifact EDH

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Happy Friday MTG peeps,

Here in central Ontario, Canada-Land, all that rain courtesy of the rain-bands of Hurricane Sandy has now abated and we are getting snow.  We looked out of the window this morning at our MTG-Realm-mobile to see it covered in white stuff.  At first we thought it could be ash from a nuclear accident but it was worse - snow.  The weather may be craptastic and we've not really see the sun in the past two weeks but we're going to OMG! Games to cheer ourselves up and get take some notes on how our newer standard constructed decks fair against the metagame.

Anywhoos, MTG Realm member RetroTech wanted to build an Commander / Artifact stack.  She had always had a soft spot for artifacts since Alara block.  Here is the linky to some previous posts - Myrball and post-M11 standard arifact builds.  To this end, we all sat down, and given the limited resources of what goodies were on our shelf (essentially almost all of it from sets past Lorwyn), settled on Sharuum the Hegemon as general or commander and started filling in the 99 blanks in an Esper (white / blue / black) artifact-centric strategy.  Let's have a looky-loo at what we've come up with so far.  We encourage you to provide suggestions and we'll start making a list of purchases to make at MTG Mint Card.

Sharuum may not be the best card for the command zone but it at least meets our requirements of being a legendary artifact creature in the correct colours.  We may think of including some blink effects like cloudshift or Ghostly Flicker to maximise artifact recursion from the yard.  Master Transmuter was also an 'auto-include' for either 'comes-into-battlefield' effects or to cheat a high cmc critter into play.

To ensure we tutor the cards we want during game play, we are considering cards such as Treasure Mage, Trinket Mage, Fabricate, Sphinx Summoiner, and Kuldotha Forgemaster.

RetroTech's fav strategy back in the day involved pumping smaller artifacts and swarming.  She typically used Master of Etherium as an anthem / monster or Tempered Steel with Voltaic Key . Unwinding Clock to untap the Overseer and load up with +1/+1 counters again.  With Lodestone Golem on board to punish non-artifact spells, she was often able to outpace opponents.

As we are clearly with artifacts here, why not a Stoneforge Mystic package?  So far we like Bonehoard, Batterskull, Sword of Body and Mind, Sword of War and Peach, Argentum Armor, Basillisk Collar and that very nasty Quietus Spike.

As we said, we are still early in development on a list and invite your input.  We also have on the table for possible inclusion that monstrous 11/11 Infect Blightsteel Colossus, Platinum Angel, Akroma's Memorial, Magister Sphinx, Myr Battlesphere, Sharding Sphix, Wurmcoil Engine, Eldrazi Monument, and the very unfair Scourglass.

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