The Kitchen Table #181 — The Compendium of Alternate Formats, Entry 8: Elder Dragon Highlander

Hello all, and welcome back to both my next Kitchen Table article – the next installment in the Compendium. Today I am going to tackle a fairly common format as has been mentioned in several writers’ articles, including a surge from MagictheGathering.com page all the way over here… Elder Dragon Highlander!

I was introduced to the format by [author name="Sheldon Menery"]Sheldon Menery’s[/author] article. However, I didn’t start playing the format until recently. I intend to introduce the format as we play it at my playgroup, and then give two decks that I have built and played. Please note that the way my playgroup plays the format, and therefore the way I introduce the format, may vary slightly from how others have presented it or play it.

For those who have never played the format before, the concept is simple at first. You choose any legendary creature in the game. This becomes your general. Then you build a 100-card highlander deck using only the colors of your general. Then you play each other, yay!

Alright, there’s a bit more to it than that, but that is the base. Now let’s go over the rules in more detail. Ready?

1) Choose Your Legend. You may choose any legendary creature in a set that your group allows. If they ban Unhinged, no choosing Richard Garfield, Ph.D., for example. Some writers have advocated that you can only choose Legends from the Legends set, but that is a disadvantage to newer or more casual players who may not have many, or any, cards from that set. As such, we allow you to play any legal legendary creature. That means you can play anything from Sun Quan, Lord of Wu to General Jarkeld and Hazduhr the Abbot.

2) And That’s It. After selecting your Legend, you may not put any other legendary creature in your deck. There is room for just one general in your army. You may play with other legendary cards, from artifacts to enchantments to lands. You may also play cards that later become legendary creatures, like Dark Depths, Bushi Tenderfoot, or Tatsumasa, the Dragon’s Fang.

3) A Note on Color. One discussion I started regarding the color question in our playgroup was what I called the Daughter of Autumn Problem. In the original rules our group used, you could only put colors in your deck that were included your legend’s cost. If you had out a Darksteel Ingot, for example, you could only use it to produce the colors of your legend. Daughter of Autumn, however, has an activation cost in a different color. Could you not play White in a Daughter of Autumn deck? Doesn’t that seem limiting? For other issues, see Bosh, Iron Golem and Memnarch. Each of those have activations in colors that the artifact legend does not have in its casting cost. At the end of the day, I believe that you should be able to include cards of the color in your legendary’s casting cost and abilities. You may also play artifacts all day.

4) The Start. At the start of the game, you will have an elevated life total, and this changes radically based on the writer writing the article. I suggest 40 life for each player to make it simple. Your general begins the game in a removed from game zone. At any time you could play a creature, you may tap the appropriate mana and play your general from this zone. For this purpose, I suggest having your general in a different colored sleeve.

5) A few Quid Pro Quos, Provisios, etc. Your general is never removed from the game by an opponent’s effect. Instead, it is placed in the graveyard. Indestructible legends still go the yard as the result of an RFG effect other than your own. Your group may want a banned list. Suggested cards include Test of Endurance (your life total already begins high). If you take twenty damage from one legend, over time or all at once, you die from that general. (For this reason, I like to play a Deep Depths).

6) The Side Rule. If you choose a legend that would normally be unplayable by playing it from the RFG zone (like Haakon, Stromgald Scourge or Phage the Untouchable), then it is legal to play it and you won’t die. Now, if Haakon gets bounced to your hand or Phage gets Momentary Blinked, then the RFG initial play of your general rule does not apply.

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To verify, these rules are the ones we’ve fleshed out over time, not necessarily the rules you may have read elsewhere. The basic concepts are still the same – build a deck around a legend, lotsa life, 100-card highlander. However, there are often side issues and corner cases, and the above rules try to handle those.

Your playgroup might want to bend the rules a bit for certain flavorful things. For example, maybe someone wants to try out Brothers Yamazaki. In that case, allow her to have both removed from the game at the start, and able to cast one or the other or both during the normal times. It’s not like someone will dominate with them. Therefore, you are encouraged to spice to your own flavor.

With that out of the way, let’s take a look at my two decks. We’ll start with my first creation:

Bad Blue Control

Abe Sargent

Test deck on 05-20-2007

Casual

Creatures (11)

Lands (40)

Spells (49)

The legend that goes with this deck changes. I could use Memnarch, Teferi, Ertai, or Empress Galina for the deck. No one in our group had built a mono-colored deck at the time, so I called Galina, and then realized that a lot of legends would work with the deck, and I change it up from time to time to get a different feel. I call the Ertai build my Johnny version, the Teferi build my Spike version, and the Galina build my Timmy version.

The mana is set at forty sources. Cards that are missing and would be great to toss in include Academy Ruins, Maze of Ith and Ancestral Recall. Since I only have one Ancestral, and its in Abe’s Deck of Happiness and Joy, and my Mazes and Ruins are currently in use, that leaves me bare.

I don’t have a Vintage deck built right now, which gave me access to Mana Drain, Force of Will, and Morphling. Otherwise I’d just replace those with lesser counters and maybe another beater.

As you can see, the deck is designed around quite a few bad removal spells. Somehow Mana Drain and Morphling feel okay when used alongside Tidal Wave and Icy Prison.

Let’s a look at the deck:

The Creatures – This deck runs creatures that are designed to win the game, and utility creatures. Utility creatures include my three morph creatures. Willbender is great because I feel very comfortable with one out. It will send abilities and spells elsewhere – great in a multiplayer setting. Shaper Parasite is obviously played for the removal ability. I just added the Quanar to the deck in order to try it out. I expect good things, sure, but we’ll see.

Vodalian Illusionist is a great utility creature, that can either phase out a creature of an opponent’s to keep it from attacking or blocking, or to send one of my own guys away to save it from removal or a Wrath effect. Ixidron often acts as a bad Wrath Effect, but he often gets killed because people don’t like him. With no evasion or protection, I do not rely on him to win games.

Morphling, Greater Morphling, Bringer of the Blue Dawn, Rainbow Efreet and Draining Whelk are my beaters. Morphling’s antics are legendary. Greater Morphling is almost as good. Bringer of the Blue Dawn is a new addition because I felt I needed another beater. With no protection, I expect him to die if I can’t protect him, but his card drawing should give me the resources to do so. Draining Whelk is a great counter / beater, and I have had Capsize / Whelk locks before. Efreet is my smallest beater, but it can block for an eternity, protect itself from removal, and is small enough to avoid hate.

As you can see, the deck has a small number of creatures. To be fair, it has Dark Depths, man lands, several ways of taking creatures, and the general legend to fall back on. With just ten creatures, there are a lot of things I can do to hose my opponents.

The Countermagic – This section may be a little boring. Every card in this section counters a target spell. I won’t go over cards like Cancel, Counterspell, Dismiss and so forth. Instead, I’ll look at the different styles of counters.

Desertion is one of my all time favorite counters. It can counter something, sure, but it also takes an artifact or creature and puts it right into play. Note that a similar spell like Spelljack allows you to play it later, so a creature comes into play one turn later. Deserting a creature gives you a blocker now, and an attacker on your turn. Commandeer doesn’t even take a creature, but at least it’s pitchable, so I tossed one in.

With enough mana you can get a Spell Burst lock, and that can mean game over. That makes it a valuable counter for the deck. There are several pitch counters, that way the deck can be dangerous even when tapped out. This is especially true when protecting one of the holy game-winning creatures.

I had some people question Counterbalance. However, every time I end up playing with it, I hit a few cards randomly. The deck also has Scroll Rack and Brainstorm to play around with the Counterbalance. It’s nice to be able to counter something without having to use a hard counterspell from your hand. This is especially useful when multiple players are trying to crack your counter shield.

The Removal – This will be the long section, because there are a lot of janky removal spells included. The good stuff is easy. There should be few questions why the deck includes a Nevinyrral’s Disk, the Oblivion Stone, or the Powder Keg, for example.

Wasteland and Desert are pretty good. They may not take out much, and they may cause my deck to run slightly less perfectly from a colored mana perspective, but they are worth it. Their ability to serve as threats for smaller creatures is often enough to keep attackers at bay if they are of a small enough size. I once kept a Phyrexian Totem at bay with the Desert because the owner didn’t want to sac a permanent.

Many of the Planar Chaos removal spells are here. The aforementioned Shaper Parasite makes an appearance. The best ever removal spell for Blue multiplayer is also in the deck (Pongify). Ovinize is a solid card, and you can find it hiding in my blue shield sleeves. Erratic Mutation is probably the worse removal spell in the deck, but it kills so often that I like it still. Even Reality Acid is here, and it can take out anything, although it makes you a target until then.

Icy Prison isn’t that great, but it can handle a problem until you find a more permanent solution. You can also use it on one of your creatures and then pop a Disk or something and take out the Icy Prison, bringing back your creature all nice and snug. (This trick also works with the Illusionist.)

Tidal Wave might create a creature token, but it’s all removal. Blocking an annoying attacker with a 5/5 wall is a great way to kill a pest. Unfortunately, it cannot block many forms of attackers, because it has no evasive abilities. It can come as a nasty surprise against players who are not prepared for it. Sometimes opponents don’t use powerful utility creatures because they ran out of mana or whatnot, and having a 5/5 wall ambush them when they attack is beautiful.

Free-for-All is a jank Unglued rare in many cases. In this deck, it is your only Wrath effect. In multiplayer, suppose there are eleven creatures and five belong to one player who is attacking you. Drop Free-for-All. Now you have some breathing space. The first player gets a random creature, the next player gets a random creatures and so forth. The distribution of creatures becomes even over the course of several turns. What happens to aggressive players in multiplayer when they lose creature advantage? They usually stop attacking. Free-for-All can give you creatures for defense while taking critters away from the best deck at the table or the most aggressive player. Note that if the Free-for-All leaves play, the set aside creatures go in to the graveyard. That’s a ripe combo with Capsize – just waiting to be plucked.

There are several ways to steal a creature in here, and I consider them removal as well. Vedalken Shackles, Treachery, and Dominate will all take a creature on a permanent basis and turn it into an ally. Ray of Command does so at instant speed, allowing you the opportunity to block an attacker and get a two-for-one deal.

Floodgate is one of those little tricks that you wish the deck had more of. I often have ten, twelve, or even more Islands in play when it dies, thus causing a major sweepage of the non-flying, non-Blue creatures. It is one of the most flavorful cards ever. The errata to phasing prevents the old Illusionist-Wall trick from keeping those creatures off the board, but them’s the breaks.

I included a Tormod’s Crypt to have at least one answer to opposing decks with graveyard strategies. In one of my earliest games a Genesis hosed me, and I wanted at least one card in my deck that could provide an answer. Wasteland is in for the same reason to ward off Academy Ruins or Volrath’s Strongholds.

The Miscellany – There are a few cards that are neither counters, nor creatures, nor removal. Most have an obvious purpose, like Merchant Scroll or Fact or Fiction.

I love Flash of Insight because the flashback cost is so cheap. The deck has nothing else to do with the graveyard, so you might as well flashback your Flash of Insight for maximum effect.

Pendrell Mists and Invoke Prejudice have always been favorites of mine. I like their ability to mutually slow down the opponent’s game enough for you to get some form of control. With so few creatures, the Mists is an obvious choice. Note that if you have no creatures, opponents will have to pay for Invoke Prejudice. In a format that is all about having multiple colors, this should help keep the mid to late game creatures away for a while.

Capsize works well with a variety of cards in the deck. You can use it on your own cards like Floodgate, Draining Whelk, or Free-for-All. It also gets played a lot on opposing cards to keep one or more opponent’s down. You can also use it to bounce a permanent to give you another shot at countering it. It’s a very versatile card. If I were allowed to play a duplicate of just one card in the deck, it’d be Capsize. Evacuation is good as a reset button – which again works well with the paucity of creatures in your stack.

Other cards the deck could use include Propaganda, Rhystic Study, Spelljack, the aforementioned Ruins, Maze, Ancestral Recall, and so forth.

Alright, with that deck down, let’s take a look at this next one.

Wraths and Beats

Abe Sargent

Test deck on 05-20-2007

Casual

Creatures (26)

Lands (31)

Spells (43)

This deck has 38 mana or mana retrieving cards. The only legend this could be is Oros, the Avenger. Cards in this deck have a tendency to be in one of only a few categories – beaters, removal, and then a small number in each of utility and graveyard hosing.

Graveyard Hosing – This deck has a minor graveyard hosing theme. I felt that our metagame was leaning too strongly towards graveyard abuse and I had to make a choice. I could either follow suit with this deck, pushing recursion as a theme. Alternatively, I could hose graveyards and hit opponents.

I decided on the second strategy. From Genesis to Eternal Dragon to incarnations, this deck will hose all graveyards equally. Planar Void is a great hoser. It comes down early and removes all cards from ever hitting the yard. I’ve seen players take out Planar Voids faster than Mirari’s Wakes or Future Sights. Joining it is the recently printed Yixlid Jailer. I already used him well in his first outing in the deck, and I have high hopes for him. Morningtide is an uber-Crypt that hits all yards with no discrimination. Finally, I have Void Maw to eat the creatures in play that try to go to the graveyard.

Sweeping Removal – In order to give me more categories, I am splitting up sweeping removal with pinpoint removal.

This deck has several Wrath effects, including Damnation, Rout, Decree of Pain, Desolation Giant, and Kirtar’s Wrath. Note that Final Judgment is good here because it permanently takes out annoying creatures, and fits with the anti-graveyard theme. Akroma’s Vengeance is almost a Wrath variant, and is often played like it.

Starstorm is a great way to deal damage to creatures at instant speed. I love reacting to an attack by playing Starstorm and taking out an entire team. Cards like this won me a reputation as a serious Spider at the multiplayer table (Spider as in Anthony Alongi animal assignments).

I have extolled the virtues of Void in previous articles, and here is no different. Void is a precision tool of death and card advantage. It is also one of the few Red or Black answers to Akroma that don’t involve certain conditions (like there being just one creature in play when you Edict or something).

Pinpoint Removal – This deck has a lot of options when it comes to taking out highly specific permanents. From Orim’s Thunder to Vindicate to Agonizing Demise, I doubt many of these cards need introductions from me. From my articles on Underused Cards to my Essentials double article, through me discussing real Multiplayer Basic cards, I have embraced a lot of these cards again and again publicly. You don’t need some Internet writer to tell you that Vindicate is good and Orim’s Thunder is rock solid.

Because legends cannot be permanently removed from the game, my graveyard hosing strategies will not remove them from the yard. Therefore, if I want to deal with a legend, I have to find an alternate way to do so. As such, I have Condemn and Oblation in my deck. Both will shuffle an offending legend back into the deck, and both will also handle other threats as needed. I don’t normally run Condemn, but I wanted a backup removal spell to Oblation, and it fit the bill.

I’m experimenting with Brightflame here. It may end up being really great, or I may dismiss it after a few more goes. In its first appearance, it wiped out a ton of tokens. I need to see it have more consistency. For now, it’s still an experiment.

Beaters – This section is dedicated to the big swingy creatures that are in the deck. There are a lot of them. I wanted this deck to maximize big creatures and big removal spells. Wraths and Beats, that’s my deck.

Some beats are what you would expect. Avatars of Woe and Fury, check. Exalted Angel, check. Void Maw and Phyrexian Plaguelord, check. Pristine Angel, check. These are beaters that are proven by time or obviously work with the theme.

The deck has a snow-covered land theme, and thus running the Stalking Yeti and Rimescale Dragon is a solid choice. Both add reusable creature control in the form of a creature, and that’s handy to have.

I’m starting to become disenfranchised with Herald of Leshrac. I have never gotten him to work. He always gets immediately killed. I’ve had cards like Bringer of the Blue Dawn and Arcanis stay out and active for longer than the Herald. Herald comes out and people start to act silly. Just last week I was obviously targeting the person in the best position. I played a Herald, and then someone else who was also targeting the best position person killed it. I looked at him dumbfounded and asked why. He claimed that he didn’t want me to steal his lands. Of course, I pointed out that I had no intention of taking his lands so long as this other player was the real threat at the table. That’s the sort of reaction Herald gets. Herald of Leshrac should be this:

Maddening Target of Leshrac
Spent a Lot of Mana
Creature – Clown
Force opposing players to ignore the board position and immediately go crazy until they have destroyed the Maddening Target of Leshrac.

That’s not really my thing. This is the Herald’s last chance.

Some of the beaters in my deck you might not have predicted, but after seeing them, you understand why they are there. Cards like Flowstone Overseer and Stronghold Overseer have obvious uses in this deck. Other cards that might fit this theme include Sedge Troll and Shivan Dragon (especially after reading last week’s article).

Miscellany – Yawgmoth’s Bargain is broken is this format, and I doubt it will be long before my playgroup bans it. Rector gets it, or gets something like Planar Void.

Tatsumasa and the Sword of Light and Shadow are in the deck to help my creatures out while also giving me something else. Tatsumasa can be a big creature after a Wrath effect. The Sword protects from a lot of commonly played removal. Both have value here.

With all of the Wraths, I really like Ghostway in the deck, and I have always found a use for it in my hand. Some cards just sit in your hand, but Ghostway has a variety of uses, from dodging removal, to blocking and putting damage on the stack, to reusing comes into play abilities.

Captain’s Maneuver is an old standby of mine. I used to love tossing it to reflect damage from a variety of sources. Simulacrum is also an old friend of this deck. It’s becoming less and less valuable the more I pull out cards like Spectral Lynx and Mogg Maniac. It might be the next card I remove.

Soul Sculptor is another way to dodge removal, typically of the mass kind. I like to use it once at the end of my opponent’s turn, untap, use it on my turn, then Wrath. If I have the mana, play a creature, turn my enchantments back into creatures, and serve with them. It’s a brilliant card and one of my favorite tricks.

There are other tricks in this deck that are the normal expected allotment of fun. Congregate, Skullclamp, and Goblin Charbelcher all provide aid to the deck with normal, expected cards. I think I have a symbiosis with the Charbelcher at times, because I often get hits for double digit damage from my decks.

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That concludes my quick investigation into the second deck, Wraths and Beats. With that, we reach the conclusion of another article.

I hope that you have enjoyed another excursion into the Compendium of Alternate Formats. See you next week!

Until later,

Abe Sargent