My Generals

Time for you to see the decks I play!  I've got 15 Commander decks, and that's going to be a hard limit for me.  I've got friends who are engaged in a contest to make a deck of every possible color combination, but that feels impersonal to me.  These decks are ideas I wanted to play with, or generals I wanted to build around.

I'll give you a blurb about each, but no decklists, as 1500 cards is just too much for me to do and too much for you to read.

One of the first things people find out when I play EDH is that in the past year, I've learned how to make custom foil generals, thanks to my girlfriend, Elizabeth.  These are thicker than regular cards, so they are not tournament legal.  A little research will guide you to the process.  I am an active member of MTGSalvation's forums, notably the Digital Rendering Thread, and I'm going to follow their guidelines and not talk about how to make these cards.

I would suggest that if you dig these, that you learn just a little photoshop/GIMP (I'm self-taught on GIMP) and go from there.  It's going to be a process, and not an easy one.  My first attempts were godawful, and even the ones I'm posting aren't perfect.  Some have shadows, some don't. 

In alphabetical order:

Adun Oakenshield (BRG)

Notable for: Adun has just five noncreature spells: Green Sun's Zenith, Lurking Predators, Fires of Yavimaya, Primal Surge, and Genesis Wave. (all foil, no less! :D )

Favorite Card: Diamond Valley.  I traded a stack of rares and mythics I opened at Worlds to get this.  Couldn't be happier, as it's a free sacrifice outlet, gains me a lot of life, and combines well with my general to re-use the creatures.

Animar, Soul of Elements (URG)

Notable for: Playing Eldrazi for free if the silly thing levels up enough!

Favorite Card: Hands down, Guided Passage.  There are no correct decisions.

Azami, Lady of Scrolls (U)

Notable for: Wizard card draw shenanigans, leading to the stealing of your stuff.

Favorite Card: A tie between Braids, Conjurer Adept and an rk post-altered Fatespinner where she's holding a STOP sign.

Balthor the Defiled (B)

Notable for: Zombies!  More Zombies!

Favorite Card: Walking Dead.  Not a strong zombie, but such great art and flavorful name!

Darien, King of Kjeldor (W)

Notable for: Being the Soldier King, possibly the most synergistic tribe around

Favorite Card: Kjeldoran Outpost.  Known for a long while as 'the dude ranch' it's been a favorite forever.

Garza Zol, Plague Queen (UBR)

Notable for: Foil Vampire goodness!  This is the only deck I'm making an attempt to pimp out, as I've got lots of the foil vampires and accessories.  Foiling the lands out will take a lot longer.

Favorite Card: The general is amazing, with hasty draw-a-card goodness, but my foil, signed Bloodline Keeper just makes me happy to gaze upon.

Hanna, Ship's Navigator (UW)

Notable for: Artifact and proliferate shenanigans ahoy!

Favorite Card: Darksteel Reactor.  It's great to have alternate routes to victory, even if I get attacked like mad for it.

Kaalia of the Vast (WBR)

Notable for: Being my most 'competitive' deck, it's all about the general and cheating huge things into play.  I'm giving serious thought to pursuing the dual lands and fetchlands for these colors.

Favorite Card: Quicksilver Amulet.  A friend of mine swears by Sneak Attack in his Kaalia build, but if I have the amulet, I'll skip on playing the general we all love to hate.

Experiment Kraj (UG)

Notable for: Serious Voltron potential. (Meaning that a lot of things come together to make a supercharged machine of massive destruction)

Favorite Card: Ley Line.  Sure, there's all sorts of sweet abilities to give my general, but watching people hestitate to put counters on their awesome creatures just makes me giggle.

Lady Evangela (WUB)

Notable for: Cleric tribal, heavy humans too. This will likely be the deck I take apart when the next idea strikes me.

Favorite Card: Gallows at Willow Hill.  A terrible card, but repeatable creature kill when all this deck does is prevent damage...super-useful.

Mangara of Corondor (W)

Notable for: This is my 'problem solver' deck.  It's lacking counterspells, but if it's a permanent or in a graveyard, this deck will take care of that.

Favorite Card: Stonecloaker.  No one seems to remember this card exists, but 2W to exile any graveyard card in response to targeting that card is so good!

Multani, Maro-Sorcerer (G)

Notable for: Big Green Spells.  Card after card. BOOM BOOM FATTY RAWR

Favorite Card: Gaea's Liege.  He gets dead a lot, but in a deck that's mostly forests he answers a lot of problem lands.  Bonus points for when I have Hidden Path handy.

Nin, the Pain Artist (UB)

Notable for: Pinging anything and everything!

Favorite Card: Repercussion.  The only thing better than killing creatures is making their controllers feel it too.

Sliver Queen (WUBRG)

Notable for: Token Madness!

Favorite Card: Cathar's Crusade.  Now this is a card that takes a lot of counters/dice/whatever keeps track but the payoff is tremendous!

Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter (WB)

Notable for: Gaining life.  Lots and lots of lifelink and gain and getting attacked because I have double someone's life.

Favorite Card: Kuro, Pitlord.  Insanely good when I've got lots of extra life, and still good if I need just a little of what he offers.



So there you have it.  All of my generals.  I rarely bring all 15 with me somewhere, I'll usually have 6 on me.

In case you're wondering, I like using fat pack boxes to hold my decks, as they fit three decks at a time, but we'll get to the storage later.

See you next time!