Commander Deck Of The Week: Astor, Bearer Of Blades Takes The Helm, Rules Of Civility Book Discussion

July 5, 2024, 3:00 pm
Playing in Rakdos gives access to black's incredible draw power, which can really work for us with our strategy. While this plan is expensive (we need to re-equip Helm of the Host every single turn, since it falls off when Gideon returns from creature form), the end result is that we can pay five mana to make another Gideon. It won't become tapped. There's not really any competition here: Captain Karlach it is, thanks to Sword Coast Sailor.

Godo Helm Of The Host Combo

Your early game legends include Kari Zev, Skyship Raider and Ashling the Pilgrim, but mostly you'll use the first two or three turns to ramp accordingly. Waves of Aggression is perhaps my favorite way to take extra combat steps. Rise of the Dark Realms is included for good measure. 1 Wayfarer's Bauble. Embercleave is the most powerful, as it will bump our Commander to lethal on its own. 1 Akiri, Fearless Voyager. In the next attack, use the token's ability, extorting it to get another combat phase. One of the most popular creatures to play alongside Rionya is Combat Celebrant. I already mentioned some value generators like Shanid, Sleepers' Scourge, but may I submit the Amonkhet Monuments for your consideration? Sword of the Chosen is mostly a flavor pick since it can easily be outclassed by other 2-drop equipment, but its cheap mana value and lack of an equip cost means it might be faster in some edge cases. Rhythm of the Wild is often an auto-include for Gruul, but here it gives Karlach the +1/+1 counter she needs to clean up. First, I love that Astor has an enters the battlefield trigger that helps you dig for an Equipment card, so even if Astor immediately dies you've likely gotten some value from your mana. While our Angels aren't as game ending as Combat Celebrant or as resilient as our Gods or Gideon, they are still fine targets for Helm of the Host.

You can still bring two lands back each turn for the next two turns and be relatively okay. Helm of the Host is pretty simple: we equip it to a creature and get free hasty copies of the creature at the beginning of combat on each of our turns. I moved Bruenor to the 99 because he makes a great haymaker play once the battlefield is otherwise stalled. I wouldn't run this card with lower than 37-38 lands. Karazikar has been super popular in Isshin decks, and I see no reason it can't work here — especially if we lean into goad. Marionette Master, which can speed up the damage if we make it bigger. This one's legendary, and since it can copy activated and triggered abilities we control without any legendary-related restrictions, it opens up a world of possibilities. Do you think Astor is better or worse than Bruenor Battlehammer for an Equipment commander? We basically assemble a hexproof lock if we get two copies of Shalai, Voice of Plenty on the battlefield, since each copy gives the other (along with our other stuff) hexproof, which means our opponent needs a (non- Settle the Wreckage) wrath to deal with our board. It's hard to believe, but since my last article another set has already been fully previewed.

Astor really helps with the high configure cost of the best of them such as Cloudsteel Kirin and Komainu Battle Armor. Last week, we had the third all-Dominaria Against the Odds poll, and it was a tight one, with Rat Colony and Helm of the Host running neck and neck. It's not necessary to the combo, but it really does smooth things out. This isn't exactly a combo but in my Jodah EDH deck, I once cast a Howl of the Horde (with raid) with mana from a Primal Wellspring and I cast Worst Fears (everything for free due to Omniscience), so I effectiely stole my friend's next seven turns. Portal Mage is also a card I want to try.

Helm Of The Host Rulings

Daretti, Scrap Savant is perfect here, as it can serve both needs with the card draw and bringing artifacts back. To keep this deck functioning, we'll really need to focus on two things: card advantage and graveyard recursion. Either way, Aggravated Assault is reliable and powerful. Create a Port Razer token with haste. By framing the deck's strategy around those two abilities you'll strike a balance between swinging in and gaining life or digging through your deck and generating mana. Firebrand Archer + Scuttlemutt + Ghastlord's Helm. Ghalta will almost always be just two green mana, and Ghalta coming at you twice in one turn is terrifying. That level of ramping up and disposability is pretty cool! If you like this video please give it a thumbs up. Shizo, Death's Storehouse. Here are the deck stats from our friends at Archidekt: What would you put in your Astor, Bearer of Blades deck that I may have missed here? Tags: infinite-mana. Combat Celebrant + Helm of the Host.

Karlach's base power of five is also a game-changer. A slow win, unless we're going infinite untaps, but it also triggers off other players' artifacts. As proxy cards are made from actual cheaper bulk common Magic the Gathering cards, they will still have the same back as the normal cards. You've always got The Reaver Cleaver, possibly the most exciting card to come out of Dihada's precon. Over all the main point of this deck is to win with Commander damage. Equip Godo, Bandit Warlord with Helm of the Host 2. Whenever Godo attacks for the first time each turn, untap it and all Samurai you control. Warning: Contents Easily Broken. If you control a Leyline of the Void, then all lands that hit the graveyard from your Fall of the Thran are heading to the great Exile Zone in the Sky, save for your own. Or is there another planeswalker you think can doll out an advantage quicker? If you enjoy the content provided on The 99 and have wanted to help support the Channel directly, you can do so by becoming a Patron! Ascp certification requirementsGodo, Bandit Warlord.

After Helm of the Host won the poll, I knew immediately that we'd be playing both Combat Celebrant and Gideon of the Trials, since they were the two most obvious and hyped combo pieces for the equipment. Don't forget to vote for next week's deck! You have two tapped 6/6's, two tapped 8/8's, and a tapped 10/10. Helm of the Host attached to Port Razer. The first category of legends are synergistic ones; the creatures and spells with abilities that trigger or otherwise play nice with your other legends. Cards like Batterskull or Scytheclaw can be brought back to your hand after they hit the hay for another round of dork-making and infusing. Its list is surprisingly coherent.

Helm Of The Host Infinite Combo

If you're in enchantress or just not playing red, the best (and only) option is Finest Hour. Forebear's Blade + Greater Good. Akroma, Angel of Wrath. Rhonas the Indomitable and Oketra the True are pretty insane with Helm of the Host.

You can also find my LinkTree on my profile page there with links to all my content. With Rionya, you can just send the token in, and if it dies to a blocker, you can just send another at the beginning of the next combat phase, infinitely. While the blowout potential is high, it's very hard to lose if we can equip it for just a turn or two! After this phase, there is an additional combat rvices may be provided by Western Union Financial Services, Inc. NMLS# 906983 and/or Western Union International Services, LLC NMLS# 906985, which are licensed as Money Transmitters by the New York State Department of Financial Services.

Let me know what extra-combat deck you're running on Twitter. Now, both pieces use art from previously released sets, but the full-bleed version of Sword of Fire and Ice.. Masters Foil: Godo, Bandit Warlord. Champions of Kamigawa. Toshiro Umezawa (Japanese: 梅 (うめ) 澤 (ざわ) 俊 (とし) 郎 (ろう); rōmaji: Umezawa Toshirō; known as Toshi for short) was a ronin samurai, kanji magician and con artist from Kamigawa who lived during the Kami War. 1 Bruenor Battlehammer. Which of these Dominaria cards should we play in Standard next week?

Tinker orbits in the world of the wealthy; Katey and Eve stretch their few dollars out each evening on the town. Many other exhibit photographs are woven throughout the novel. If you could get a novel about any of the secondary characters in this book, which would you choose? Rules of Civility, which was published in 2011, was a New York Times bestseller and was named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the best books of 2011. I'm very interested in periods where there is a density of creative invention: Like the early Renaissance in Tuscany (with Massacio, della Francesca, Botticelli and Donatello), or jazz in the late 50s in New York (with Davis and Coltrane and Monk and Gillespie); or crime drama on TV in the 70s (with Kojak, Rockford, McGarrett, and Columbo). Some of the other characters are also almost too hard to believe as well. What is a right choice that you have made and what did you leave behind as a result? More Rules of Civility reviews. One thing I wanted to mention is that Katey met Val years before she married him so I gather he might have figured out her connection with Tinker.

Discussion Questions For Rules Of Civility

The Walker Evans portraits in the book are somewhat central to the narrative. When I first started it I did not like it as much. She had taken so much for granted. His latest, The Lincoln Highway, is an instant bestseller and obvious choice for book clubs looking to explore another fascinating era in history—it was even chosen as a Read with Jenna Book Club pick! One interesting aspect of New York in particular is that it is a leading capital for advertising, art, broadcasting, fashion, finance, food, journalism, music, publishing, theater, etc. On New Year's Eve in 1937, Katey and her vivacious friend Eve scrape together their meagre dollars and head for a Village jazz club to see in 1938. Why is the medium of photography a fitting motif for the book? But, Wooly was very different than the other boys. Do you think hardship forces kids to grow up faster? I was sorry that Tinker felt he had to walk away from Katey and his former life, although we understand from the photo exhibit that he finally found inner peace once he gave up the money and the falsities of his pampered life with Ann. And then there is a book like Rules of Civility which is, quite simply, a joy to read. In 1989, I had a fellowship to teach for Yale in China for two years.

Book Club Questions For The Rules Of Civility

Namely, I loved the dynamics between Katey, Eve, and Tinker, and I was fascinated by their interactions. On the last night of 1937, twenty-five-year-old Katey Kontent is in a. second-rate Greenwich Village jazz bar when Tinker Grey, a handsome. This book explores many of the same themes as The Lincoln Highway–expectations, ambition, class and family–set amongst the backdrop of a New York City emerging from the depression. At its outset, there is a budding love triangle between Katey Kontent, that's "kon-tent, like the state of being"; her boardinghouse roommate, Eve; and a handsome banker, Theodore "Tinker" Grey, but an unexpected accident sends the story in a more serious direction. So I really didn't do any applied research for the book. He graduated from Yale University and received an MA in English from Stanford University, where he was a Scowcroft Fellow. This event has passed. Oh, I forgot that detail. Perhaps I didn't struggle too much with comparison because I am such a lover of collage. If Wooly were alive today, how do you think his journey might have ended? What is the motive behind his actions? The playlist is not meant to be comprehensive or exact. 'Spectacular Now' Writers Set to Adapt 'Rules of Civility' ( Hollywood Reporter).

Rules Of Civility Goodreads

In today's world, Wooly might have been diagnosed with a mental health or cognitive condition and received treatment. What did you think of the novel? This article contains affiliate links. Questions about Themes. I know I've crossed paths many times with some people. And here are three more books like The Lincoln Highway: Rules of Civility, Amor Towles. Eve goes off to Los Angeles, never to return. I am fascinated by Towles's writing style in this and even more so in A Gentleman in Moscow. This, too, is a Manhattan reality that has persisted for generations. The novel takes its title from young George Washington's "Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation"; you'll find all 110 of them in the novel's appendix. My personal challenge as an artist has been having a day job which is intellectually satisfying and fun – and thus can easily supplant the desire to make art. Val's looks are a cross between an aviator and a judge. He just wants to find his eight-year-old brother and head off to California for a new life, but his plans are thwarted by the discovery that two of his friends from the farm have stowed away in the warden's trunk. Then the prevailing winds shifted from west to east, blowing the dust of the Okies all the way back to Forty-second Street.

Rules Of Civility Review

And one attendee said it best when, after having this subject come up several times in meetings, she noted "the clear indication that Rules of Civility was written by a man is that Katey Kontent is not obsessed with her relationship with her late mother. I was sixteen when the Depression began, just old enough to have had all my dreams and expectations duped by the effortless glamour of the 1920s. I waited until four days ago to start the book, and while I finished it with time to spare (yesterday, just after lunch) I won't do that again. Observer 'Irresistible... A cross between Dorothy Parker and Holly Golightly, Katey Kontent is a priceless narrator in her own right - the brains of a bluestocking with the legs of a flapper and the mores of Carrie Bradshaw. '

Rules Of Civility Book Discussion

The relationship between Eve and Tinker ends when she turns down his proposal. It features a multigenerational story set in 1920's rural Louisiana and present day New Orleans. One reason for the long hiatus is that I have been an investment professional since my mid-20s. Ultimately, Katey finds great success with the magazine, "Gotham, " and years later she marries a wealthy man of upstanding character.

This novel reads like a sublime cinematic experience. Emmett and Billy would prefer to go looking for their absent mother, but as they set out against an American landscape that is just beginning to make its comeback from the Depression and war, their journey will take them all to unexpected places. But though that what happens (the story is looking back from the 1960s to the 1930s, with Katie well-heeled in middle age), what I love about the story is that it's a little more complicated than that. It's like a teacher waved a magic wand and did the work for me. Lady Jayne, I'm looking forward to your comments. Towles gives a knowing nod to some classic American authors, no less than F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Edith Wharton among them, but this book is much more than an homage. Surprisingly, Katey is elusive and seems interested in reading books. At the onset, I had my premise from the Walker Evans' photos (of an individual undergoing transformation in 1938 New York) and my narrator (with her wry, ambitious intellect and sharp moral compass), and I tried to let all else spring essentially from those elements. In so many historical novels, the women are mostly pretty proper or even if not, they often seem much more subtle than the women in this book. Katey finds it with Valentine. However, their relationship is changed for life when they get an accident and Eve gets injured. A central theme of The Lincoln Highway is ambition–wanting more than you were born into. I feel like it's a lifeline. And why is the life Tinker offers her so contrary to the new life she intends to pursue?

Tinker moves Eve into his luxury apartment, feeling obligated to take care of her. Written by first-time novelist Amor Towles, a principal at a Manhattan investment firm, the book has shot up the best-seller charts and is drawing rave reviews from critics. Amazon rating: 4 1/2 stars. Over the years, I listened to the music, saw the movies, read the novels and manifestos, lingered in front of the paintings. This The Lincoln Highway discussion guide also includes a synopsis, selected reviews and discussion prompts. I kept forgetting that her family were Russian immigrants living in Brighton Beach, and when I did I had a hard time seeing how she went from there to here. What expectations do you carry about the world and people around you, even seventy years later? "Amor Towles spins a beguiling and rollicking historical adventure set in the 1950s, brilliantly imaginative, and with an unforgettable cast of character…A superb novel that I recommend highly, a wonderful must read. Katey Kontent narrates her own journey through the year 1938, from the future perspective of 1966, after she runs upon photographs of a man named Tinker Grey. The bands laid down their instruments and the crowds made quietly for the door. Crafty Eve engineers a trip to London and Paris with Tinker, which they mostly spend apart. The playlist also reflects the influence of the great American songbook giants (Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, Irving Berlin, Rodgers & Hart, the Gershwins), many of whom were at the height of their powers in the 1930s.

Genre: Literature, Historical, Romance, Drama, Mystery. What does he mean when he describes Katey as someone of "such poise and purpose"? Finally, I was beyond impressed Mr. Towles's writing. Are they ''just another'' group of New Yorkers? My first night in the city, I got invited to a party at the home of an acquaintance. Then in my late 30s and early 40s, I wrote a novel set in the farmlands of Stalinist Russia, which I stuck in a drawer.

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