Bad Guys. You know it, they know it. We all love it.
Nightmare on Elm Street without Freddy scraping his claws through your abdomen? Bor-ing!
Friday the 13th without Jason silently coming on and on, again and again, implacable, unbeatable? Probably Freaky Friday tbh.Speaking of "freaky", Rutger Hauer in The Hitcher? That's some scary biscuits right there!
A Pro-Tour without Mike Long? You know it's just not the same as back in the day. People LOVED Mike, or rather, people loved hating Mike. If you followed Mark Rosewater's writing over on MTG.com daily a couple of years back, you may remember this pieces that justified his vote for Mike Long on the Hall of Fame ballot. Here's what he said about his vote for one of the most hated professional players in the history of the game (emphasis mine):
[M]y job was to make the Pro Tour interesting and exciting. I had to make all of you care about it. And in the history of the Pro Tour three players blew everyone else out of the water. Interest in them dwarfs all the other players combined. Those players were Jon Finkel, Kai Budde and Mike Long.... How did Mike fare at star building? He's the best I ever had. If I put him in a feature match or on camera, people showed up. In large numbers.
The best example I can give of this was the PT Los Angeles won by Trevor Blackwell. Mike got into the Top Eight after a controversy with Darwin Kastle in the last round of the Swiss. Now, normally the quarterfinals are low turnout as the event starts at 9:00 am, but in Los Angeles, the room was packed. It was, at the time, the best attendance we'd ever had for a quarterfinal match. Mike wins and advances to the semi finals. Even more people turn up out of the woodwork to watch. In the semi finals, Mike loses. The finals was the lowest turnout we'd ever had. Everyone came to see Mike lose. Once he did, they left..... I quickly learned the golden rule – “show Mike”. Everyone always loves to go on and on about how they hated him yet no one could resist watching him. You'd think people would shun him to make the point that they don't like what he was doing. Yet the opposite was true. Mike made people emotionally invest in the Pro Tour.
"Mike made people emotionally invest in the Pro Tour." That's a pretty big deal to get the average non-PT player to be anyway interested in the pro-tour outside of their friend's participation or the tech they were going to net-deck off the event. For a company like WotC, garnering interest in their flagship events among non-participants is crucial as this interest triggers a renewed interest in the game at local level, renewed competitiveness, an interest in top tier decks and strategy. Mike was one of those who caught everyone's interest.
| Fap. Fap. Fap. |
A week or so ago, I posted the following in the Cool Plays thread over on the Official EDH boards:
Just wanted to post a quick congrats to my playgroup last night. We had 3x 4-man games in which we had 12 instances of Eldrazi legends in play (counting each casting as a new copy), most of them Emrakul and not one ever entered an attack step. There was a major amount of scrambling but nothing was annihilated in the entire game.
There's nothing like sitting back after all that and saying "Ok, we can do this! Those guys (and gal) aren't so bad!"
Sounds absolutely horrid. Spending a whole night scrambling to not get blown out by the same 2-3 cards over and over doesn't fit my model of fun. I'm glad your group enjoyed it at least, but this kind of shenanigans is why I don't think the Eldrazi (primarily Emmy) belong in the format.
Really "absolutely horrid"? A run of 3x 4-man games, featuring 2 developing players, constantly and effectively dealing with EDH's Public Enemy #1 again and again is "absolutely horrid"? Sure, I get the concept that it must be a pain always having to deal with these Eldrazi again and again but to go so far as to put a downer on congratulating someone for getting the job done right again and again in the face of these colourless behemoths speaks of some pretty deep-seated hatred for Emrakul and Friends.
You know when a new set comes out and everyone jumps up and down about the new "must-have" rare or mythic to the point that pre-sales post the card up at around $50-$60? And then it either lives up to the hype or flops abysmally and is always graded against the initial hype generated about it, whether fair or not.
| Not Emrakul. |
We all know how difficult it is to reach a full consensus in a playgroup as to what constitutes "fun". Everyone has a different read. Some think Emrakul is just flat out unfun. Others are fine with Emrakul in a vacuum but have an issue with her in any sort of combo. Some even gasp! have nothing against her at all!
My view is this:
If you're paying 15 mana, you want to be getting an effect more than simple combat damage. Emrakul provides this. Other effects that cost 15 mana, like say Death Cloud for 12, can be much worse if they don't win the game right there as they can cause it to drag on indefinitely.
If you plan on playing fair, i.e.: only hardcast Emrakul after turn 10 with normal mana generation and you win off the back of casting her, well your opponents should have done something about your potential earlier and only have themselves to blame.
If you have an Emrakul in your deck and you'll see it once in a while and play it while accepting that you are likely to have it stolen from you at some point and are ok with that, then you're probably doing it right.
| Don't try this at home, kids! |
If you're planning on accellerating out a hard-cast Emrakul as your #1 plan, you're getting very close to crossing that mythical boundary a lot of EDH players out there have set. Linear, ultra-consistant decks intent on putting a grinding hurt on the entire table every single game are just not "fun". As EDH is about the "fun", you should probably revise this strategy.
If you're planning on constantly cheating Emrakul into play in any other way than getting her with Bribery off an opponent, you are firmly in the camp of not "fun" and should definitely revise your strategy. Quickly.
If you are planning to play, bounce and re-play Emrakul constantly in order to benefit from her "Take an extra turn" ability enough to kill everyone, just go home. Now.
Why should we be calling for a ban for a creature that embodies "The Line" in EDH? Emrakul is the perfect card to test where everyone stands on the "fun" issue in your playgroup. Just playing an Emrakul should be the first step in finding what everyone feels about her and cards of her power level. Stealing her from another player's deck will give you not only a good read on Emrakul but also on Bribery and most especially the take of the Emrakul owner as he watches his own Emrakul kill him. We had a situation where a steal effect garnered someone a bounce ability from Stormscape Battlemage. The Emrakul in his deck was pretty much ignored by the rest of the table until he found a way to combo off to infinite turns. What was most interesting was that the Emrakul player had no intention of going infinite and stated this but was told not to steal the ability to go infinite in future; his own deck didn't contain cards to allow him to go infinite on his own. That's a fair approach, don't you think?
| "Get it? Bunnies, lettersz, -X/-X? Me neither." |
Emrakul is also the stiffest test a lot of tables can face and setting yourself up to beat her multiple times is an excellent excercise in group metagaming and an excellent tool for up-and-coming players to find solutions and ways to find them. She's the boogey man (woman), but one that you can come to grips with if you are prepared.
For me, Emrakul, the Aeons Torn is not an annoyance in EDH but essential for the development of your local EDH Group. She can't just be tarred with the "DB" brush without getting some props for what positive things she engenders in your group.
The World needs bad guys and EDH needs Emrakul.
