Casual Friday: Food Chain Griffins

I was typing up new cards spoiled to post when I saw that the entire DECKLISTS of commander 2013 were posted. I'll be posting a special edition of that with QSP sometime very soon.

Also as a side note, for the Rafiq of the Many deck, I changed up a card:
-1 Saffi Eriksdotter
+1 Snapcaster Mage

Anyway, on to our casual section! I decided that today's casual article should be based on the namesake of this blog. The combo that is in question is:

 You can cast misthollow griffin and then exile it to food chain, do it as many times as you want for infinite mana.

Although misthollow griffin is the premier card to do this with, there are other good cards to do this with. There is the famous food chain elves and food chain goblins that use this with cheap guys to dump their hand and swing fast.
However, let's look at other casual applications.

Food chain is extremely good with evoke creatures. Let's take a look at mulldrifter:

Now, for its evoke cost, it's essentially a divination. It's a great card, always been a staple during its standard years, extended years, and cube draft.
However, if you cast it for its evoke cost of 3, then with the evoke trigger on the stack, exile it to food chain, you essentally have done this:
Pay 3 mana, draw 2 cards, gain 6 mana of any color. This is insane. I would also work with the evoke card aethersnipe, which is just as insane.

Another good card to use food chain with is Burning Tree Emissary. Let's look at that card:

So with a food chain out, let's see. You pay 2 mana to make the 2/2, then exile it to food chain. You end up with 5 total mana, having only spent 2 mana. That's better than a seething song!

Finally, I tried to think of other ways to abuse Misthollow griffin.

Chrome mox is a great card because of imprint (sadly it's the only imprint card that is good with it) Let's take a look at it:

Play chrome mox, imprint misthollow griffin. Then you can cast misthollow griffin from exile still!!

Some other cards that you can use to exile misthollow griffin to gain something are:

Anyway, let's get some fun deck lists out there!

First, here's a more budget build using the ideas I have above:

//Lands
8 Forest
8 Island
4 Yavimaya Coast

//Spells
4 Beck/Call
4 Food Chain
2 Manipulate Fate
4 Preordain

//Creatures
4 Court Hussar
4 Misthollow Griffin
4 Mulldrifter
4 Raven Familiar
4 Wall of Roots
2 Worldspine Wurm
4 Æthersnipe

Manipulate fate can fetch the griffins and put them into exile, and worldspine wurm is your big guy that you can cast if you have the mana to do so. Court hussar and raven familiar let you set up your draws and then you exile them away before they go away due to echo costs or the sacrifice effect.
Beck is there because you can start comboing off, you play a creature, draw a card, and then exile the creature. If you draw into another creature, you can cast it and keep going.

As far as upgrading this deck, I would say that you would first want to upgrade the mana base with things like shocks, duals, fetches. Glimpse of nature is a direct upgrade (and about 5 times the cost) of beck//call. Finally, Worldspine Wurm should probably be changed to Emrakul. You also probably could start putting in stuff like Force of will and chrome mox.






Finally, here is a higher modified deck that I would consider tier 2 for legacy:


//Lands
2 Ancient Tomb
2 Forest
2 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Tropical Island
4 Verdant Catacombs

//Spells
3 Brainstorm
2 Daze
4 Food Chain
4 Force of Will
2 Ponder
4 Chrome Mox
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor




//Creatures

4 Coiling Oracle
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Griselbrand
3 Misthollow Griffin
2 Mulldrifter
4 Noble Hierarch
3 Wall of Roots
1 Æthersnipe

//Sideboard
SB: 3 Tinder Wall
SB: 2 Flusterstorm
SB: 4 Spell Pierce
SB: 1 Surgical Extraction
SB: 4 Pact of Negation
SB: 1 Krosan Grip

10/17 Commander 2013 spoilers Thoughts

There were 3 commander 2013 spoilers just now. I wanted to talk about each of them and what I thought about them.

First up we have:

I think this is a cool land. Outside of your commander, its just a filter land which isn't that great. But the counter clause is extremely good with some of the commanders. Any voltron style commander this will help immensely such as Thrun. I can also see this being very very good with the Jund and Naya commanders as they rely on counters. Any commander with counters is going to be really good with this. Thromok the Insatiable from the planechase decks will be really really good with this.

 The next card spoiled is this blink general. I actually do not think that it is the most interesting in terms of design. However, bant has some of the best enter the battlefield abilities, and there has not been a good commander to be able to blink them all until now. I can see myself feasibly changing rafiq into Roon of the Hidden realm after it comes out. The best part is that you can exile creatures you don't control if you need to get in for that last push of damage, or you want to be mean and combo off with Gilded Drake.

Here is the final card spoiled. It is the weakest card in my opinion mainly due to the mana cost. I think it is a fun card that will be used in multiplayer commander, but I still think it is too slow. It is a nice reliquary tower effect that punishes players for holding cards, and could combo well with cards like the rack or something like rule of law that forces them to only play one spell per turn so they are stuck holding cards, especially if you are making them draw. Probably really good vs a consecrated sphinx as well.

Anyway those are my initial thoughts on these cards. I could be completely wrong! Bottom line: I am excited for these commander 2013 decks to come out!

Some of the new Commander 2013 spoiled cards

Since we have a lot to talk about in our Round Robin EDH, I wanted to make a quick post about the commander 2013 spoilers that were spoiled today.
Well my thoughts on two cards anyway:

This first card, I think can be more fun of a commander than the other one they've shown so far. I think something like mycosynth lattice or memnarch would be fun with this commander. Also, I like Terese Nielsen as an artist, so the art on the card is icing on the cake.

The curses don't look as fun politically as the vows did in the original commander precons, but I really like everything about this one. I could see it working really well with bident of thassa and edric spymaster of trest, since you can tap things down before declare blockers step. Additionally, it acts as a mini-sword of feast and famine ability. 

The thing that really makes me like the card though, is how it references puppet strings in its flavor text.