Thursday, November 22, 2012

The Right Amount of Random

I’ve made it pretty clear that I like a certain amount of random in my EDH decks. Cards like kaboom, ruhan, and tariel have all gotten the thumbs up on this blog. There is however a clear line that can be crossed - where random becomes giant nuisance, such as chaos moon. I recently tried to jam as many “random” effects as I could into an intet the dreamer deck; from clear the land to explosive revelation to stronghold gambit. It has its moments, but while I like the cards I’m not sure I like a deck that is just doing the dice-roll effect turn in turn out.

I think I like it better when I’ve got some random impact cards sprinkled into a “normal” deck - for example in my Axelrod Gunnarson deck I’ve found a slot for this little beauty:


I’d like to run the card in zedruu or intet but the triple red can be painful for a 3 colour deck, so for now its confined to Axelrod. The deck plays some dubious creatures (starting with the general) so donating them can sometimes mean the joke’s on the receiver as they try to optimize play with Pavel Maliki.

What’s cool about risky move is that it doesn’t steal creatures - it gives them away. That’s such a better mechanic for EDH than the usual ray of command effect. It means that as long as you have a lousy creature around, the card doesn’t really hurt you, but if you’re the joker playing a 20/20 uril the miststalker and nothing else shit just got real.

I think what I like most about this card are the decision points - which creature do you want to risk, and who do you want to risk giving it to? You get to play a little politics. I also love that it affects everyone, so that each player in turn faces the same decision. While it messes with the board, the 50-50 nature of the effect resolving means you can still play your awesome creatures out even if they’re your only dude.  


Macaroni or Cheese

While I should probably wait to actually see this in action, I feel like I know how it’ll go and that it’ll be a hoot each time a player chooses a creature, a player, and rolls the dice. Risky move mixes things up while still keeping the game sane. No question, this is elbow macaroni!


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