Locations
The seminal 1992 animated movie FernGully: The Last Rainforest has inspired many things. Not only did it influence the highest-grossing movie of all time, it also indirectly influenced this article—namely, the title. There's a scene where the human character has shrunk to miniature size and the fairy is trying to change him back to his original size by casting a spell. Random parts of his body were attempting to grow to full size, but kept changing around and making him look like different animals. A bat (voiced by Robin Williams) was trying to guess the animals the human looked like. Then came the immortal throwaway line that only Robin Williams could create:
"Oh, I know. Darwin's grab bag!"
Grab bag meaning, of course, a miscellaneous collection, which is what this post is going to be. As for Darwin?
The Erik Lauer Experience
A member of WotC R&D, Erik Lauer, has voiced his distaste about how much shuffling there is in the game. What's been known as the "Erik Lauer experience" is the insignificant bonus you get by constantly shuffling. Aaron Forsythe explains it here, but the basic gist is that there is so much time wasted to get a small advantage. You play a fetch land, crack it, look through your cards to find one card, put it into play, and then shuffle your library.
If you're playing competitively, you want every advantage possible. No matter how small, you want that advantage. By using a fetch land to get a land and put it into play, you've now eliminated the chance of drawing that land and "wasting" a draw, giving you better odds of drawing a business spell.
But in casual, is it really necessary?
One of the biggest gripes about multiplayer is how long the games can take. From politicking to constant board wipes, it's not surprising that the thing that can eat up the most time is constant searching and shuffling. When you're dealing with a large deck where each card is different, it can take time to find that one card and then shuffle the larger than normal deck. And I'm sure that you don't have just one card in your deck that searches.
That adds up.
And it's not just you, but each other player searching and shuffling. Again. And again. And again.
If your opponent has a Sensei's Divining Top, he wants to shuffle every turn.
I get it. It's just so . . . ugh.
Hear me out. I'm not advocating that no one should put search-and-shuffle effects in a deck, because that's just silly. There is a difference between searching up a creature with Green Sun's Zenith and replaying a fetch land with Crucible of Worlds. The minimum effect you get for not drawing a land versus getting a creature that can do something on the battlefield is huge (a boat's a boat, but the mystery box could be anything!). Some Commanders require constant shuffling (cough) Zur (cough), and it just gets annoying to wait for someone to continuously search and shuffle.
"Oh, I'll get Diplomatic Immunity. Oh, I'll get Oblivion Ring. Oh, I'll get, you know, something good."
Of course, Zur is hardly the only card that is easy to activate and causes constant shuffling. One of the best Green cards ever, Survival of the Fittest, is really guilty of this as well (ah, that's where the Darwin comes in!). Because it just requires
and a creature in your hand, it can be easy to activate this several times between your untap phases. Which means multiple times shuffling.
But what does all of this mean?
It all depends on your playgroup.
If the people you play with are super-competitive, and you have to put in multiple search-and-shuffle cards in order to compete, that's one thing. But if you and your friends aren't the strictest players in the world, and allow take-backs if something doesn't work, maybe you don't need every fetch land in your deck. You're there to have fun, and sitting around waiting for people to search and shuffle isn't fun.
It's science; no one likes watching you shuffle your deck.
There are several things that you can do to help minimize the time wasted. First, when someone else searches, and you want to search, do it at the same time. Don't always wait until the last minute to crack that fetch land. It's the correct play to wait, but not everyone is that competitive in multiplayer. If you are going to search something, I'm sure it'd be all right to say, "I'd be doing this at the end of so-and-so's turn, but I'm going to do it now since he is shuffling. So don't target that." I'm sure most players would say that's okay. Just remember that it's a two-way street; allow it to happen against your opponents, and don't be the jerk to target what they just searched for.
The other idea that you can implement is during deck construction: Don't put in so many search-and-shuffle effects. While you might think you want that fetch land in your deck, unless the deck is five colors, you might not need that land. I've got a Rafiq deck that fetches would be perfect for, but since I've got so many other sources of mana, I don't put them in there. Because I don't have the fetches or the dual lands in there, I've opened it up to other lands that work in the style of the deck. Since I'm not the type of player who wants to play in tournaments with my Commander deck, this doesn't bother me. It's more fun—to me, at least.
Again, I'm not advocating that you need to get rid of all search-and-shuffle effects, but just be cautious of how many you put in your deck. If you don't think ten effects is too many, think: That's a tenth of your deck. I'm not saying that's a benchmark, but just pointing it out.
This is the one area where the online world shines over the real world. There are always people who complain about the MTGO shuffler, but the fact is that it's quick, it tells you what you can search for, and you're back playing the game. Yet you get quickly pulled out if you don't have all the hotkeys memorized and have multiple triggers and four players manually clicking to pass priority.
There's a time sink no matter where you play. All I ask is that you pay attention to it.
Commander: The Product
Last Friday night, WotC had a panel about Commander at PAX East. Because I was not there, all the info I was able to acquire was from Twitter. But we got some great pieces of information, and a few new cards that give us an idea of how the product is going to shake out. Some of this is speculation, some of this is fact. You've been warned.
I talked about Commander (the product) before, when it was first announced, and we can add some news to that. We know that there are going to be five new decks, each based on a wedge. There are going to be three Commanders for each deck (making fifteen total): the wedge dragon from Planar Chaos, a new wedge Commander, and now each enemy pair getting a new Commander.
Like this one:
Nin, the Pain Artist – 
Legendary Creature - Vedalken Wizard
, 
: Nin, the Pain Artist deals X damage to target creature. That creature's controller draws X cards.
1/1
Pretty saucy, right?
Great political card; you can kill an opponent's creature and get him to draw cards. Even better, you can direct it to your own that you want to kill (Solemn Simulacrum), and draw cards.
Or your Stuffy Doll.
Yes; you target Stuffy Doll, it deals XX damage to target player, and you draw X cards. It's the best of both worlds.
There was one more card previewed as well, which makes me believe there is so much more going on in this set than meets the eye:
Archangel of Strife – 
Creature – Angel
Flying
As Archangel of Strife enters the battlefield, each player chooses war or peace.
Creatures controlled by players who chose war get +3/+0.
Creatures controlled by players who chose peace get +0/+3.
6/6
Ignoring the obvious synergy with Doran, the Siege Tower, this explores new multiplayer design space. It doesn't create emblems, but instead creates an abstract idea that's just ripe with flavor. This is how I feel some of the new cards are going to play out (see the previously previewed Death by Dragons). Even though they are all Legacy-legal, I don't feel that a majority of the new cards will affect that eternal format. In fact, it was asked at the panel:
"We will be very surprised if the new #Commander cards see tournament play, but there are some we have our eyes on." —@pureval
Oh, and:
"New Commander sets not considered collectible will be on the shelf for a while." —@pureval
Like the other multiplayer products in the past few years, they will be sold at Target and Wal-Mart-type places, so they're not going to be rare like the From the Vault series. The goal of the product is to get people into Commander, not to distribute new cards for that handful of tournament players who want something awesome.
I'm really excited about this whole thing. When I get new info, you'll get new info.
Stone-Cold Commander of the Century (of the Week)
I did this once on my old EDH blog (99EDHProblems.com), and would like to continue it over here. This comes from the skit that Carl of Aqua Teen Hunger Force does on AdultSwim.com where he predicts a football game and what he believes is the betting lock for that week. Every once in a while, I'll pick a random Commander and look at how you build around it. Nothing fancy, but just a starting point. I don't pick the Commander until I write the post, so it's all random and off-the-cuff thinking. This week's Commander:
Rosheen Meanderer – 
Legendary Creature – Giant Shaman
T: Add 4 to your mana pool. Spend this only on costs that contain X.
4/4
She works well as a Commander in both Giant and Shaman tribal decks, especially since both colors have many creatures; the key is in the creatures' abilities.
Good X spells in Red or Green?
The full lists are here and here.
I haven't even touched on the artifacts yet, but there are plenty of things that you can do with her. Most of it is damage, which is typical Red, but there are plenty of other fun effects you can exploit. She's not going to be a power Commander, but she looks like a fun one where you can unleash your inner Timmy. Being able to get 4 mana for free? That's pretty awesome.
That's it for this week. I hope it had something for everyone. If you already have a Rosheen deck together, tell us what you've put in there. Did I miss something amazing?
Happy Pi Day, everyone. You know I'm enjoying it.
