KromaticLanturn's Magic the Gathering EDH/cEDH journey

Hey yalls,

I’ve made quite a few posts on E4 explaining my love for Magic the Gathering. Magic has literally changed my life for the better in many ways: meeting new friends, opening up new business opportunities, and giving me an outlet to express my creativity through deck building and piloting. I started my journey into Magic in 2018, having never played it before and knowing next to nothing about it. A good friend and I wanted to start playing a game, a TCG, that would really test our limits. On a whim, we bought a booster box of Amonkhet, and had a booster box opening party with 3 additional friends. The box had really cool Egyptian inspired artwork on it, which my friends and I loved at first sight. We didn’t build decks or play at all that night, as none of us knew how haha. We just had a great time opening packs and admiring the beautiful artwork. I was fortunate enough to pull a Masterpiece Entomb, which has an exceedingly improbable pull rate, and needless to say, I was HOOKED. Here is the exact card I pulled that night that started my love affair with Magic and with the color Black.


Over the past 5 years, that “playgroup” who started out as a 5 person group of friends, has blossomed into a miniature community of over 25 players who frequently play together online and in person. The people in this playgroup are some of the most wonderful, most genuine, most generous, and totally down-to-Earth folks I’ve ever had the fortune of knowing. We meet at least once a month, all together, on a rotating basis at someone’s house, and have a night of good food and EDH. For anyone who isn’t aware, EDH stands for Elder Dragon Highlander, and is a 100-card, singleton format, also referred to as Commander. Through the years I’ve watched others (and partially myself) grow in their learning and understanding of Magic, and become fantastic and formidable players, with critical thinking skills to rival even the most seasoned philosophers (obviously joking here haha). As with many playgroups in Magic (at least I’m assuming), over time the power level and gameplay has become more and more competitive. The turns are faster, the interaction is more frequent, and the combos are more lethal. We have slowly decided to take the plunge into cEDH, or competitive EDH. This is the same format as EDH, but aims to play only the most efficient lands and spells, in the most efficient way possible. It has sort of opened up a new world to us, now having to learn optimal play lines and keep up with meta-dependent plays and restrictions. Needless to say, this format gets expensive QUICK. The most efficient cards tend to be the more expensive cards. Unlike Pokemon, the value of Magic cards are largely determined on their playability, rather than condition. Well, unless we’re talking about Reserved list cards, but that’s a whole other can of worms I won’t open in this post. Regardless, I thought I would start to share and document some of my cEDH pickups of various staples and interesting cards as I make them. I hope any Magic lovers out there enjoy this thread, and hope that non-Magic players can appreciate the artwork at the very least. On to the collection! Thanks for looking!






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Some awesome pickups there! I’m a huge cEDH fan myself, having recently completed foiling out Sythis (minus foil 7ED BoP, which I still need to pick up).

MTG has also been a humungous part of my life. I learned how to play at sleepaway camp during Eventide spoiler season (Talara’s Battalion hype was real), but didn’t really get heavily involved until right around Conflux. Fast forward 13 years, and I’m still just as passionate about Magic. I’ve met so many amazing people through the game and I wouldn’t give it up for the world. Looking forward to seeing this thread as you continue to add to it :blush:.

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Thanks man! Funny enough, I just actually helped one of my buddies put together a high powered Sythis deck! I’m leaning into Magda at the moment, but also considering going the Selvala direction soon.

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