2HG EDH
Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on Nov. 16, 2017, 5:25 p.m. by Chandrian
Hello everyone,
with my playgroup we usually play 4-player EDH in free for all form.To mix stuff up a bit, we're looking to play 2HG EDH every once in a while.
We have done this already once and played with 50 life.What would you consider the best starting life total?
And what strategies do you think are very powerfull in a format like this?
(ps: if any of you already played something like this, feel free to share your experiences with this :) )
40 or 50 is just right from my experience, maybe 45. My playgroup use to do this a few times back when we had more people around the shop.
November 16, 2017 7:48 p.m.
We play it often, and we start at 60, with the commander damage threshold at 31. Our experience has been that it plays just like regular EDH, except weaker decks get a power boost from having an ally.
The best decks are ones that combo off and win (things like Teferi, Temporal Archmage or The Gitrog Monster) or decks that hurt each opponent (Nekusar, the Mindrazer or Jaya Ballard, Task Mage). While some decks do synergize (my Glissa, the Traitor will clear the board of enemy creatures and my partner's Krenko, Mob Boss will swing wide), it's really a "win-more" synergy, not a "Couldn't have done this without you" synergy. The latest game we played ended when the Kresh the Bloodbraided comboed out of nowhere and did lethal commander damage.
If you want to mix things up, try randomizing who plays what deck. We take all our commanders, lay them out in a grid (ours is currently 8x6) and then roll dice to see what you get (in our case, we roll a d8 and a d6).
November 16, 2017 9:09 p.m. Edited.
A dedicated combo deck partnered with a counterspell heavy control deck tends to be a strong combination. A friend and I used to run Azami, Lady of Scrolls and Animar, Soul of Elements at some small tournaments we went to a few years back. I liked using Animar because it ran cards like Peregrine Drake and Cloud of Faeries for its combos, which I could also use to help ramp my partner for a turn by untapping his lands. The decks were designed to be able to combo off each other.
I've also seen people run Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon to try and win off infect.
If you give people a lot of room to pre-plan and coordinate, the format can get pretty degenerate really quick. If everyone is just playing for fun and doesn't take things too seriously it should be fine. I like Epidilius's suggestion of some form of deck randomization, even if it is just each player presents 3 decks and rolls a D6 to pick which of them they will be playing that game. Or each person picks their deck and then gets paired with a random partner.
And I wouldn't go over 50 life starting total. Just sticking with 40 is probably better. It's already a lot of life to stall out the game or use as a resource, so any higher and a player who drops and early Sylvan Library would be free to go nuts drawing extra cards to help pull their team ahead in card advantage. I've seen games that started with 60 life and it made most aggro strategies pretty much useless, forcing people to resort to infinite combos as their main win-con.
Profet93 says... #2
I have very limited experience in the format. That being said, extra turn cards work WONDERS!
November 16, 2017 5:30 p.m.