Skullbriar and The Databases

 With a bit of diligence and a salting of lazy, I made these additions to Skullbriar:

Pine Barrens (which everyone knew I was going to do)
Grakmaw, Skyclave Ravager
Inspiring Call
Necropolis Regent
Garruk, Cursed Huntsman
Pernicious Deed
Bonders' Enclave (testing this out)
The Ozolith
Steelbane Hydra
Dig Up
Vraska, Relic Seeker
Casualties of War

I made some last minute adjustments because I have an issue with Terastodon and Champion of Stray Souls. 

I never understood why Champion is/was a thing. It's been reprinted three times! But a 4/4 for six mana with no evasion and an expensive tap ability seems bad. Especially at Mythic rarity. Even though I am creating some tokens in this deck, this card just doesn't generate the kind of impact that I want it to.

Terastodon though is thought of as a Commander staple. A popular card, there are nine! reprints of this one, five of them in Commander sets. That is wild to me. 

However, I never thought of it as good. Eight mana for a 9/9 with no evasion that has a reasonable ability but a not inconsiderable drawback...there has got to be better ways to do this, especially in Black/Green. 

That left me two creatures to try and replace in Skullbriar, ones that should be on the top end of the curve and really do something that impacts the game!

I promptly got as lazy as I could about it and just thought: Well, why not look for Planeswalkers? It didn't take long for me to decide on Garruk, Cursed Huntsman and Vraska, Relic Seeker. (Although I will admit I was looking for a Garruk Apex Predator in my collection at first. Surprisingly I don't have any!)

I feel a wee bit disappointed about this, but also: who has the time? 

Here's what I mean: Planeswalkers are the most powerful card type in the game. They've posed a problem since they were introduced and I don't see that ever changing. While their power has been curbed a bit since War of the Spark started giving players common removal spells, the fact still remains they are very strong.

So, if I'm looking for a card to fill a role in a deck, why wouldn't I start with Planeswalkers every time? Especially in a format like Commander, which allows and encourages players to build up manabases to cast absurd spells. 

Given this quality, plus the sheer volume of Magic cards that come out now, anything that we can do to minimize the processing time we have to spend just figuring out what card should go in a deck vs getting to play said deck is a bonus in my opinion. 

Magic is a game that you now want an online database to access for deckbuilding. That's part of being a 30 year old game, and part of a flood of new material appearing over the past five years. 

There are certainly creatures I could consider for this deck but because the possibilities can only be managed with a database, it's overwhelming to deal with unless you've just got a lot of time. It's why sites like EDHrec become so valuable! 

Even then though, why mess about? Why not just look at the strongest card type in the game and see if something fits?  

That still feels lacking to me, though. As if an element of creativity has been dimmed. 

That observation aside, I do like my picks. Garruk and Vraska both do something necessary in Commander games: Work to an endstate. If I can ultimate either of those Planeswalkers, I am putting myself in a position to either win or be defeated, and quite promptly. No faffing about with destroying your permanent but also making a 3/3 elephant, or waiting a turn to combo tokens into other creatures that don't just win. 

So let's run it like that.