| EDH in a Nutshell | by Neil Pritchard on 09/07/2010 | First of all, lets have a giggle at the mental image of Nicol Bolas, trapped inside a nutshell. Amusing isn’t it XD
Ok if you’re an EDH veteran, this probably isn’t the article for you, but you’re more than welcome to read anyway and correct me where I’m wrong. This is primarily for people new to EDH who don’t really get what its about, but are looking to take an interest or wonder why when we keep saying that you should play 60 card decks, we then sit down with 100 card monstrosities, so without further ado...
What is Elder Dragon Highlander?
EDH is a multiplayer variant of Magic based on two concepts-that of the Elder Dragons, and that of Highlander.
The Elder Dragons are/were the precursors to the dragons of the multiverse and are about as powerful as Planeswalkers, and for the Vorthos in you, as far as we are aware, there is only one Elder Dragon remaining, Wizards current protagonist of choice, Mr Nicol Bolas.
Highlander was a rather awesome if dubiously accented action film for the 80s, with the tagline, “There can be only one.” This lead to Highlander Magic, wherein you are only allowed a single copy of each card in your deck
EDH combines these two ideas by having a 99 card deck with a singleton of each card other than basic land, and a 100th card, your “General”. Originally, your general was one of the Elder Dragons, Nicol Bolas, Chromium Ruhell, Arcades Sabboth, Palladia-Mors, and Vaevictis Asmadi. Over time this was changed and can now be any legendary creature from magic, but not a Planeswalker-for example Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker isn’t permitted as a general, but Nicol Bolas is.
The colour of your general defines the colour or colours of your deck with the extra provisio that if a card has other mana symbols printed on it other than those of your general, it isn’t allowed in your deck Worldheart Phoneix is a good example of this, and could only appear in a deck with a 5 colour general due to its WUBRG resurrection ability, despite being a red card.
On the bright side Worldheart ol' buddy ol' pal, you do kinda suck anyway...
This isn’t to say you have to play all the colours of your general, but it would be a waste of a general to only use certain colours and an alternative general might be a wiser.
How to play
Each player starts with 40 life, and at the beginning of the game, each player declares who their general is, and places them in what is called the general zone. A general in the general zone cannot be interacted with other than by it’s controller to bring it into play. At any time you would normally be able to play your general, (atypically during your main phases though there are exceptions), as long as you have the mana to do so, you can. At this point it is treated as any other creature within the game. If your general leaves the battlefield for any reason, you have a choice. You can either return it to the general zone, or to wherever it would go depending upon it leaving the battlefield-back to hand with bounce, to the graveyard if its death and so on. If you return your general to the general zone, the next time you play him/her/it, you must pay an additional 2 mana for each time it has previous been played-Isamaru Hound of Konda par example costs W, then 2W, then 4W, and so on.
You win by most conventional methods, however there is another introduced specifically to EDH, and that is General damage. General damage is combat damage dealt by a general to another player, If a player has been dealt 21 or more points of damage by any one general, they lose, and this life loss is cumulative over time.
How to build an EDH deck
Contrary to what it may appear, building an EDH deck is riduclously easy, the simplest way being:
1)Pick your general
2)Add the fiftynine best cards you own that share a colour with the general.
3)Add 40 relevant coloured land
4)Sleeve up and shuffle up
5)Play!
Over time you’ll get a feel for your deck and find new cards for it, expanding on themes within the deck, synergising with your general-Akuta Born of Ash deck-lots of discard for them, lots of draw for you.
Why play an EDH deck?
You get to play with all those expensive, overcosted cards that you’ve never really played with before, pull off tricks that you could never do in standard, and most importantly, have fun. EDH is primarily about fun and about looking awesome doing it, With access to most cards in the game, the possibilities are endless, so building one infinite mana combo into your deck and then having 90 ways of finding the pieces isn’t really that much fun-especially when you realise you forgot to include a win condition. Its can also be quite cheap, and you can have a spectacular deck thats made up of random cards out of your files at home.
So until next time remember: Its Nicol Bolas trapped in a nutshell!
Paul David Jones
10/07/2010 | i always thought infinite mana became more fun without a win condition :P
its such a shame sun titan isn't legendary. |
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The Week Ahead
Tuesday - Casual, EDH & more at West Coast Gamers (7:15pm)
Wednesday - FNM at The Gaming Crypt (7pm)
Friday - Standard FNM at Cleator Gaming Club (7pm)
Saturday - Peasant Vanguard at Workington Gaming Group (11am)
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