Gemstone Mine
Episode
E105 -- The Power of Flash -- Lessons from cEDH
August 9, 2023
If you were around for the era of Prophet of Kruphix in Commander, or the Flash // Hulk Metagame in cEDH, you know how strong playing your permanen...
Episode
E104 -- Orcish Bowmasters -- Lessons from cEDH
July 12, 2023
There's been a lot of hype around a particular 1/1 for 2 in the new Lord of the Rings: Tales from Middle-earth set, and this week, we're going to b...
Episode
E103 -- Vhal's Azorius Untap Combo Primer
June 7, 2023
It's tournament season again, and this week, we're taking a look at a deck people have been asking about since John took it to a top-16 finish at M...
Episode
E102 -- Lessons from cEDH -- Crowd Control with Orzhov Voltron
May 10, 2023
One of the fundamentals of Commander gameplay is that cards which say "each opponent" or "on each player's upkeep" or other cards which scale to mu...
Episode
E101 -- Lessons from cEDH -- Building a Better Manabase (feat. Catnap from Sad Naus!)
April 27, 2023
Believe it or not, we're back from our unexpected hiatus with a special episode! John interviews David (aka "Catnap") from the Sad Naus team! David...
Episode
E100 -- Building an Engine
March 15, 2023
Scrap Trawler is John's favorite Magic card, because it's the heart of a *lot* of different engines that he's built over the years. From mono-white...
Episode
E099 -- Lessons from cEDH -- Evaluating Setup Costs
February 24, 2023
Sometimes a new card is spoiled and the internet just breaks. Calls for pre-bannings, that a card is going to "destroy the format", a demand to "se...
Episode
E098 -- Multifaceted -- Is Poison Too Strong?
February 8, 2023
Should Commander require 10 poison counters to eliminate a player? The argument has been around almost as long as the format has, and John has been...
Episode
E097 -- The Commander Curve
January 18, 2023
A common pitfall in deckbuilding is to try to make the conventional wisdom with ramp fit into every deck you build. I mean, isn't 2-mana ramp good ...
Episode
E096 -- Lessons from cEDH -- Mastering the Stack
January 11, 2023
Priority. The Stack. Active Player / Nonactive Player. When you hear the judges at your local events throwing around these words, they sound big, i...
Episode
E095 -- Laelia, the Blade Reforged -- Polishing Gems
January 4, 2023
There can be a lot to learn from how different players with different perspectives build their decks. Someone else's preferences for a Commander yo...
Episode
E093 -- Lessons from cEDH -- Anatomy of a cEDH Deck
December 21, 2022
It's time for the big question, one that a lot of curious players find themselves asking: what makes a deck into a cEDH deck? Is it the dual lands?...
Episode
E092 -- Lessons from cEDH -- Responsible Removal
December 21, 2022
A common mistake that less-experienced players make is to spend their removal on the first target which presents itself, firing off a counterspell ...
Episode
E091 -- Okotoberfest 2022 Tournament Report
November 30, 2022
What happens when you bring a fringe deck 2-color deck with a Commander-centric combo to the largest in-person paper cEDH tournament in US history?...
Episode
E090 -- Tutors & Card Access Pt. 3 -- Lessons from cEDH
November 23, 2022
Closing out our series on Tutors and Card Access, we finally get to the higher-color decks: shards, wedges, four-color and five-color! There are so...
Episode
E089 -- Tutors & Card Access (part 2) -- Lessons from cEDH
November 16, 2022
Now we get to the fun stuff: how multicolored decks in Commander can make use of tutors! Each color's suite of tutors plays into other colors' tuto...
Episode
E088 -- Tutors & Card Access (part 1) -- Lessons from cEDH
November 9, 2022
They always have it. How do they always have it? How come *you* never get to have it? Certain colors and color-identities in Commander gel better w...
Episode
E087 -- Lessons from cEDH -- Bad Matchups
October 26, 2022
If you play this format long enough, you find some decks which are really difficult for some of your favorite decks to play against. Sometimes you ...
Episode
E086 -- How to Brew a Casual Deck
October 12, 2022
Many cEDH players ask the question, "How do I brew a casual deck again?" It can seem like a major challenge to "unlearn" all the efficiencies and c...
Episode
E085 -- Instant Brew -- Celestine, Living Saint
October 5, 2022
There's a new quartet of Commander decks coming out, and some Commanders are getting more hype than others. As usual, John wants to look at one of ...