Every draw creates a replacement trigger, so chosing the opponent is done for each separate draw that is replaced.

If one instance creates multiple triggers, they're added to the stack in APNAP order. So the last player in the turn order after you will be the first to start exiling for each card they would have drawn, and then work your way back through the turn order.

Because the effect is not targeted (Leyline of Sanctity will not protect your library from being exiled from) you choose the opponent as the trigger resolves, no need to announce who you plan to draw from when the trigger is put on the stack.

Ancient Den not being a spell is mostly so that it counts towards your land drops per turn, and doesn't trigger a Sai, Master Thopterist for example. For the purpose of Oswald Fiddlebender it is still an artifact with mana value and can be sacrificed to get an artifact that costs .

Lymrith is not spelled Lymrith though, the first letter is a capital i.

TypicalTimmy a slight correction: you said Darksteel Mutation's target isn't a Commander anymore, but that's not true. The card is still your commander, and if you could load it up with +1/+1 counters, that would still count as commander damage. Which has been relevant for me more than once '^^

I would have expected a mention of Umbral Mantle with creatures that tap for more than 3 mana. That's where I know the symbol from, that or Pili-Pala + Grand Architect for infinite mana in EDH

Containment Priest does work against the Bridge, at least when they flip creatures. The planeswalker part of that card is still a problem.

The converted mana cost of a card, or "mana value", as it is called on more modern cards, is an inherent characteristic of the card, and doesn't change with how much mana you're actually spending to cast it.

A Negate is a card with a converted mana cost of 2. No amount of Glowriders or Sapphire Medallions can change that. It changes how much mana you pay to cast the card, but not the converted mana cost, which will always be 2.

When equipped creature stops being a creature, all equipment will unattach.

Same would happen to a Gideon, Ally of Zendikar if you'd +1 and equip a Lightning Greaves to it. It will only stay attached as long as it's a legal target for an equip ability, and only creatures are.

Yes, Phyrexian Dreadnought entering the battlefield will create a trigger which can be responded to, and you can respond with both floating your mana and activating the Temur Sabertooth.

None of the cards you mentioned will untap Selvala, Heart of the Wilds, so casting and bouncing Phyrexian Dreadnought will stop after your initial 12 mana is spent. You can probably draw a few cards with it, if 12 power is the greatest power on the battlefield, but it's not going on forever. Apart from that, everything works as you described.

There's two separate effects at play:

1. Whenever Fell Specter enters the battlefield, target opponent discards a card.

2. Whenever an opponent discards a card, that player loses 2 life and you gain 2 life.

Ability 1 happens once when the creature is cast, not countered, and enters the battlefield, and will always happen, even if you would Murder the Fell Specter in response to its trigger, target opponent still discards a card.

Ability 2 is a static effect, meaning as long as the Fell Specter is on the battlefield, every card discarded will create a trigger for the life loss.

When Fell Specter enters the battlefield, it makes 1 happen. Because it's on the battlefield after entering, 2 will happen too, as a direct result as one. However, when target opponent is already empty-handed, and doesn't actually discard a card, 2 will not trigger.

When the Fell Specter is destroyed after entering the battlefield, but before the discard trigger has resolved, ability 2 will no longer trigger from the discarding, because the creature is no longer on the battlefield the moment the discarding happens.

So if you play Fell Specter, and it enters the battlefield, the discard trigger goes on the stack, and you point out who you target with it. Then there's an opportunity for other players to respond. If nobody does respond, the target will discard if able, and lose life accordingly. However, if an opponent uses Murder on the Fell Specter before discarding happens, the creature will die and not be on the battlefield anymore when the discard happens. Then target opponent still discards a card to the trigger, but no life will be lost and gained because of it anymore.

So generally, you are right that both will happen with nobody interfering. But because both are caused by different lines of text, you can prevent one of the two from happening, with instant speed removal.

Well, he is a mind-controlling mage... oh wow it's way creepier than just being a chad...

Turn 1: Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh (commander) + Darksteel Citadel + Mox Amber + Colossus Hammer + Masterwork of Ingenuity copying the Hammer

Turn 2: Plains + Ardenn, Intrepid Archaeologist (other commander), go to combat, equip both hammers for free and swing in for 20 commander damage.

My Klothys, God of Destiny enchantress deck that collects punishing effects, with on the board:

Spellshock

Ancient Runes

Burning Earth

Primal Order

War's Toll

Tectonic Instability

Roiling Vortex

Manabarbs

Sandwurm Convergence

And everyone so low that trying to play a land or cast a spell would kill them, so everyone could just look sad at their greedy mana bases with their duals and their mana rocks until they died in their upkeep.

Deflecting Swat on my opponent's Wrong Turn (which was trying to give away my one-shotting commander) felt all kinds of sweet

Opponent's end step: Dictate of the Twin Gods

Mana Geyser into Fiery Emancipation into Insult / Injury into Fiery Confluence for 2x3x2x6= 72 damage to each opponent.

Commander is an increasingly fast format because of the cry for not ramping on turn 2 being a death sentence. You can still Farseek off of one of these if you play it turn 1. The only turn they're bad is turn 2, and if you have to play it tapped turn two, you should probably have mulligan'd your hand. I'll play Deserted Beach over Seachrome Coast in any commander deck. Which doesn't mean I'll play it, to be honest, I think it goes the two-colored equivalent of:

Tundra

Hallowed Fountain

Sea of Clouds

Glacial Fortress

Horizon land if available (Horizon Canopy and such)

Mystic Gate

Hengegate Pathway  ^Flip

Prairie Stream but only with fetches

Celestial Colonnade

Adarkar Wastes

Irrigated Farmland better with fetches, cycling still solid

Deserted Beach

Temple of Enlightenment

Azorius Chancery

Seachrome Coast

Port Town

Glacial Floodplain higher with fetches, of course

And then all the tapped minor downside stuff like Razortide Bridge or Tranquil Cove or a Campus for enemy colors, whatever fits your deck for synergies could raise those too of course.

That's the general order I'd consider them to include in my 2-color deck if available, I guess.

Ah gotcha, it was meant as the Chandra, Torch of Defiance first +1. If you want to make those in the future, add an "if you don't", that would clarify a bit ;)

The +2 says "play it, otherwise, put it in your hand." Did you mean "put onto the battlefield" instead of play? Because you can still play it if it's gone to your hand.

Yes, the non-combo ways to win are significantly more effort. By definition, I'd say. I disagree that the structure of EDH encourages it. Or maybe the structure does, but the philosohpy of the format explicitly encourages its players to not rush to the finish like you would in Standard or Modern, and express themselves by elaborate game plans for fun instead. To end the game with Thassa's Oracle and Tainted Pact on turn 4 is trying to enjoy magic more, by playing less of it. Which sounds weird in my ears, but that's the way competitive play works. I can understand, if my deck is full of the coolest 5- and 6-drops I could find, that I'd be severely displeased if that would happen.

But if you're only allowed to win with combat in your playgroup, someone will have the luminous idea of: if I run enough boardwipes, I'm never going to die. And the game just won't end. When you're playing the same game for 2 hours straight and every threat is dealt with adequately, you feel equally powerless, yet it costs everyone way more time. That's why I include some non-combat way to win in almost every deck I build. From Laboratory Maniac to Approach of the Second Sun to multiple card win-the-game combos, I want to play at least one I-win-button to punish someone who drags out the game with 20-minute turns without winning. That's why I play combos, and within that space, there's plenty of room for creativity.

There's almost 10000 combos listed on EDHREC, some of these cards you're going to stumble upon by accident just by building your deck. Forbidding people to play any of them just seems short-sighted and selfish to me. I recognize people can not like it, I just don't empathize with their point of view. Just like they won't empathize with mine. It's why we play different decks to have fun in different ways. Don't limit other people's freedom of fun by your own conviction, that's like saying "You can't eat ice cream, because I am lactose intolerant."

And when someone does end the game prematurely and you don't like it, that is where you should voice your concerns in constructive ways. Like: "I didn't get a chance to see my own deck perform, can you play a less powerful deck next?" Instead of: "F*** you for putting that trash in your deck, you suck as a human being and should burn your collection."

I've been at the receiving end of both, and I was a lot more willing to play another game, maybe hold my strong plays for a bit, and give the other decks time to shine, when approached the first way. When using the second way and still agreeing to play another game, I'm a lot more tempted to play full on winconless stax just to show that longer games aren't better games, and combos serve a function. I do the same thing when people say: "Fun is a zero-sum game and I'm going to have all of it!" I'm making it my personal mission to ensure you have just as much fun as I do.

The Exquisite Blood wincon already is on a Commander though, Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose says hi. Creature removal is more prevalent in Commander than planeswalker removal though, if you ever want your Commander to not be attacked down immediately, and actually profit from the use of the abilities more than once, it might be wise to lose the kill-on-sight ability.

If the first ability stays at +2, the emblem is fine as is. Reminiscent, but less deterministic than the emblems from Ob Nixilis Reignited. Because this card is your commander, and you can keep recasting it and trying, I think it's great to show a little restraint in the ultimate. If you have Doubling Season or Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider you could hand out your emblems immediately, and Timmy's suggestion would make that a little hard to recover from for your opponents. If you're going for Timmy's suggestion anyway, I suggest to lower starting loyalty or raise loyalty requirements to an amount that will not play so well with a counter-doubling effect like Doubling Season.

aholder7 it's plakje (= slice in Dutch) kaas (= cheese in Dutch), don't try to make me look like a jackass over here :P

The whole "doesn't feel fair" but unable to actually explain why is an excellent point. Because your point 1) and point 3) contradict each other. Let's see what happens when you cast Gideon's Sacrifice and Arcbond on the same, Indestructible creature (it's usually Brash Taunter in my deck) and then any 1 damage is dealt to a permanent its controller controls:

1] Gideon's Sacrifice redirects the 1 damage to Brash Taunter.

2] The damage triggers Arcbond, which makes Brash Taunter deal 1 damage to each other creature and each player, including yourself. It also deals 1 damage to target opponent from its own ability.

3] The 1 damage at yourself is prevented by Gideon's Sacrifice, and dealt to Brash Taunter instead. Oh look, we're already back at step 1].

And I can't stop it. The loop keeps itself going, and it's truly infinite. I got foiled once, by one of my opponents having Selfless Squire, which meant the game ended in a draw, because when I killed all other creatures and players, there was no way for me to stop, I had no answer for my own creature. The loop wasn't progressing the boardstate anymore, but the stack was never empty, so I couldn't pass my turn.

As said in my previous post, I've never had negative responses at going off with this. It's a great introduction to infinity, because it doesn't feel never-ending, your life total dwindles with every iteration of the loop. Yet it is a feedback loop that feeds into itself, keeps itself going but doesn't spiral out of control, yet it blows up the entire world. It's completely stopped by Swords to Plowshares on the Brash Taunter. But the damage Brash Taunter needs to start the loop, is usually combat damage... which makes it ok due to rule 2)? I do agree with rule 4) though, if I would use Sunforger repeatedly to find Arcbond, Gideon's Sacrifice and a Lightning Bolt to start the loop, that feels a lot less earned.

People usually don't know what they're afraid of, and protest against what they don't want to learn to understand. And when you see someone try for 20 minutes to piece something convoluted together the way TypicalTimmy describes, only to end up botching the win, in an ungodly amount of different steps that you can't be bothered to keep track of, yet you're hogging all of the gametime with your game of solitaire, that's how you alienate less experienced players and bully them into big creatures - combat only battlecruiser magic, making them feel too dumb for the intricacies that actually make the game more interesting and enjoyable if you take your time mastering them. Being able to explain how your cards win the game is vital, if your argument is: "I saw someone else play these cards, they win the game, trust me", showing you yourself don't even care how the game works, then why should your opponents be ok with that? They're not having fun, they're not even seeing you have fun, they just feel robbed of the game they thought was going well until someone threw a wrench in everything.

Yet when you enthusiastically explain how you found the perfect, underplayed cards in the bowels of your binder that synergize very well together, even though the EDHREC page for your commander doesn't mention any of these cards, that end the game in two or three simple steps that keep repeating themselves, you're showing that you actually used creativity and effort, way before you even sat down to play this specific game. That is something people will respect, especially if they can see you're excited to pull it off this time, because it doesn't happen every game.

As I said before, I believe the line is defined by effort spent, playtime hogged, and opportunity to interact. Yet the ultimate goal of EDH is having fun, and when you're seen to have fun playing your combos, that will get you a lot more leeway about how you're actually winning the game. There's no general solution, no hard definition, of what's ok and what isn't, because there's as many ways to have fun as there's magic players, and there's cards to satisfy all of them. Communication and compromise are key, not everyone can have fun all the time every game. I try to optimize for the most amounts of fun had by the most players when building my deck, because I want to keep playing with these people, more than I'm trying to pubstomp and be the very best, like no-one ever was.

Your mileage, of course, may vary.