Pick a Number: Knowing What to Choose and When in cEDH
Preview season for Wilds of Eldraine is just around the corner, but we’ve already been treated to an early look at a handful of new cards. Among these, there exists a card that has generated some buzz among cEDH players, a new Dimir Faerie Noble commander that allows you to pick a number. That certainly sounds pretty fun. Let’s take a closer look and find out what the excitement is about.
Talion, the Kindly Lord is an interesting card design where choosing the right number could have you swimming in card draw…but how do you know what the right number is? The simple answer is that you won’t always know the answer. Fortunately, there are a few things that you can do to help yourself improve the odds. In this article, we’ll go over some ways to help yourself make the best choices as often as possible.
Numbers in cEDH
cEDH is a game of numbers. Some of these numbers are absolute, like the one spell per turn that each player can cast while Archon of Emeria is on the battlefield. Others are more flexible, like the amount of life that you pay into Toxic Deluge to enable a sweeper that might leave your most important creatures alive. These are just some examples of the many ways that numbers come up in cEDH.
In the case of this article, we’re mostly going to be focused on choosing numbers for mana value, power, and toughness with Talion. Cards that care about these things are not even remotely new to cEDH. Let’s take a quick look at some examples of cards that care about numbers. These cards will be presented in pairs, with one of them clearly being less suited for cEDH play than the other.
Mental Misstep and Isolate are both cards that care about things with a mana value of 1. If you’ve played cEDH before, you’ve probably seen the former show up in lists including blue. Being able to counter a spell with mana value 1 without even paying mana opens up a lot of possibilities to counter important early spells before you’ve even taken a turn. In comparison, Isolate is a significantly more limited spell. It’s easy to see why it hasn’t seen the same level of success. Let’s take a look at a couple more cards.
Imperial Recruiter and Welcoming Vampire both care about creatures with power 2 or less, but they both do very different things. Imperial Recruiter will find any creature card with power 2 or less and put it into your hand, while Welcoming Vampire relies on you casting additional creatures in order to do anything at all. It also only triggers once per turn! While there are plenty of great creatures in cEDH with power 2 or less, being able to tutor them is a lot more effective than casting them to draw a single card each turn.
Now that we’ve looked at cards that care about numbers to see what makes a card playable in cEDH and what can hold a card back, let’s take a look at a pair of cards that can also be customized to meet your needs in cEDH in a manner not completely dissimilar from Talion.
While neither of these cards sees a massive amount play, you might run into stax decks that can leverage Sanctum Prelate or Chalice of the Void in cEDH from time to time. Cards like these exist to discourage or even outright prevent players from casting spells with a specific mana value. While this presents a markedly different approach that Talion, much of the information in this article applies equally to these cards. As such, I’d be remiss to not mention them, especially since I play them both.
The Right Number
Let’s be real. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer to find the right number with cards like these. There are different situations where different numbers can be valuable and you’ll often have to make decisions based on guesswork. All you can really do is try to educate yourself on different scenarios and deck-building choices in order to improve your odds of making the correct choice. It certainly won’t always be obvious.
I decided that I needed a data-driven approach for this article, so I enlisted some help. My good friend Mino put together some statistics on cards with different mana values, power, and toughness on cards that see play in cEDH. Talion is much more likely to trigger on smaller numbers, so we stopped at 2. The data was sourced from the decks that appear on the cEDH Decklist Database at the time of writing.
Warning: Lots of numbers ahead! Proceed with caution.
Choosing 0
Fast mana such as Mana Crypt is found in decks of all stripes and Pact of Negation appears frequently in decks featuring blue. Birds of Paradise is far and away the most common creature with 0 power or toughness. While you can’t actually choose 0 with Talion, I wanted to run this for comparison with the other numbers. That said, deploying Chalice of the Void on 0 can be back-breaking if you have a suitable opener and turn order is in your favor.
Average number of hits for 0: 8.645299145299145
Deck with the most hits for 0: Storm the Weatherlight (15)
Top 10 cards for 0:
Mana Crypt
Chrome Mox
Mox Diamond
Lotus Petal
Jeweled Lotus
Pact of Negation
Mox Opal
Birds of Paradise
Lion’s Eye Diamond
Mox Amber
Choosing 1
Choosing 1 will primarily play to mana rocks such as Sol Ring and Mana Vault or early value engines such as Mystic Remora, but you'll also run into tutors, interaction spells, and small creatures when you choose this number. In the case of Talion, I would probably focus on 1 if you find yourself able to cast your commander on turn 1 as a lot of these early game spells won’t be as relevant after the early turns. It can be challenging to play a card like Chalice of the Void on 1 without also hindering your own play, but it’s not unheard of.
Average number of hits for 1: 29.21794871794872
Deck with the most hits for 1: The Suite Life of Sacking Codie (42)
Top 10 cards for 1:
Sol Ring
Mana Vault
Mystic Remora
Mental Misstep
Vampiric Tutor
Swan Song
Imperial Seal
Flusterstorm
Mystical Tutor
Birds of Paradise
Choosing 2
Choosing 2 offers a huge variety of cards. Demonic Tutor is a mainstay of any deck that can run it, and you’ll fun into other commonplace cards such as Arcane Signet and Tainted Pact with frequency. There are also a ton of creatures with mana value, power, or toughness equal to 2. This number feels extremely solid for Talion at all stages of the game and it’s also a great number for Chalice of the Void and Sanctum Prelate if you’re looking to stop a variety of things that can hinder a stax gameplan.
Average number of hits for 2: 24.431623931623932
Deck with the most hits for 2: Prison Tentacles (37)
Top 10 cards for 2:
Demonic Tutor
Arcane Signet
Tainted Pact
Dockside Extortionist
Fellwar Stone
Cyclonic Rift
Grim Monolith
Opposition Agent
Thassa's Oracle
Wishclaw Talisman
Choosing Other Numbers
There’s nothing that stops you from choosing another number, but you aren’t likely to get nearly as much value out of Talion if you choose something other than 1 or 2. That aside, I’ve chosen other numbers such as 3 or 4 on Sanctum Prelate on more than one occasion in order to stop problematic spells such as Fire Covenant and Culling Ritual from decimating my board presence while playing stax. cEDH games can easily get weird when people are forced outside of their preferred play patterns!
Conclusion
The best thing about cEDH is how many different ways you can play it. Whether you choose to live on the razor’s edge while betting on probabilities with Ad Nauseam or you enjoy cheating in a Void Winnower in order to keep your opponents playing odd spells, cEDH can be an exciting way to play that’s full of numbers and different ways to engage with them. If you aren’t already playing cEDH, I hope that you’ll give it a try.
I’m not certain how good Talion, the Kindly Lord will turn out to be in cEDH, but people have already been talking about the card and even playtesting it. It definitely feels like a unique card design that might have some legs in the format, as long as you pick the right number. I’m excited to see the card in action. I’d also like to thank Mino once again for his help on this article. You can find more of his statistical handiwork on cEDH.guide.
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