Welcome to Gaia! ::

I know every play group has expectations and sometimes houserules. I also know we all each have our own styles and philosophy around deck construction.

I'm still new to the EDH format and wanted to compare notes on philosophy pertaining to approach this format.

The group that introduced me told me the following:

1) You like old cards, you can play them in this format
2) It's a slower format so you can try less lethal things

I'm predominantly a vintage player. So I tend to have the attitude that budget is irrelevant. If I am going to play an effect, lets play it optimally. This serves me well top 8ing at eternal events. But this is a casual format.

So I am curious as mentioned to how my short list of things I try to achieve in any EDH deck I design stack up against the wider community, they are as follows:

1) I want to take terrible old cards with hilarious potential and break them into functioning (eg: naked singularity, caltrops)

2) I want to play magic the way it used to be played. I want to kill with crazy spell interactions, artifacts and enchantments. Creature beats is modern magic, where is the fun in that?

3) if I must combo, I shall do it in such a stupid way as to be headdesk worthy.

4) I will utilise all the resources at my disposal to ensure the deck works from stalling tactics, the entire card pool and irrelevant budget. I want to show the younger players what amazing cards there are out there other than those in standard.

To me, EDH is a lot about redundancy and sustainability.

Since most games will be multiplayer, your main plan of attack has to be repeatable if you want to win, so multiple cards with similar effects are absolutely necessary. It obviously makes your deck more consistent as well.

Flashy is good; threatening is not. Again, since most games are more than two people, I like to build up a board presence without setting off any alarms or drawing fire. Cards that help everyone, like Howling Mine or Baby Jace's +2 ability, tend to make people stay off of you for at least a few turns since they want to benefit from your cards. EDH early game tends to be a lot of politics, waiting for someone to make the first attack. If you can convince the other players to stay off of you, or do some things to help them out, they'll be less aggressive towards you.

Maybe that's just my playgroup, though. They are ridiculously easy to turn against each other.

The comboes that essentially take advantage of interactions between completely different eras of game design can be fun.

Leyline of the Void + Helm of Obedience is a good one of those. Also good in that both cards do something by themselves (assuming hating out GY creature recursion is something you want to do.)

I have to say I'm against Howling Mine effects in general. Political advantage is a factor but in the goodwill department it tends to be an overvalued one and I don't see it as worth giving up tangible advantage for. I also think people underestimate just how much advantage you're giving up with Howling Mine effects.

Also, those effects don't even generate goodwill from every player. I dislike Howling Mines even more when someone else plays them than when I do.

What I do like for managing impressions is cards that come out scary but are quite easily dealt with. Taurean Mauler is a great example. It generates an initial "crap we need to deal with that" reaction but dealing with it is ultimately very easy. The reason this is good, impression wise, is that it frees you of the "he hasn't played anything so he must be up to no good" assessment and also puts you into the "he played that and we handled it so he's not too dangerous" slot which is a good place to be when it comes to being ignored as a target.

Decree of Silence+ Some Proliferate abilities= Opponents never play anything ever again.

yeah, read Decree of Silence wrong.
Still the right idea though!

I can see why my decks get alot of Aggro

Cards like Painful Quandary, Martyr's Bond, Plague Wind, and Insurrection bring me TONS of aggro due to my "Hurt all opponents equally" tactic rather than the politics.

Yep.

Another thing that USED to bring me a lot of aggro was when I was playing R/B/U, and I had Lighthouse Chronologist, Vesuvan Shapeshifter, and a Body Double in play as a copy of Lighthouse Chronologist (Due to me having brought back the Chronologist.) I leveled them all up all the way (partially actually leveling, partially using proliferate and venerated teacher) And I was getting 3 turns for every opponents 1.

And reading some errata for Lighthouse Chronologist showed me that if two players in a multi-player game have a lighthouse Chronologist out that the players without the Chronologist don't get a turn until one of them leaves play.

EDIT: An interesting political ploy would be to have a Homeward Path out and use Zedruu The Greathearted's ability to give an opponent a copy of a level 7 Chronologist.... I haven't tried it, but it would be interesting.

I answered the deck questions on the deck thread.

Tornado: This is a card I've returned to repeatedly as well. The decision I have consistently made is that it's just too expensive to be worth it even though it's an awesome ability.

The life cost and the 3 mana activation wouldn't be so bad, esp if you could leave it sitting on the board as a rattlesnake to get people to leave you alone. The problem is, if you try to do that, the upkeep cost eats up your mana in a few turns. It might be worth it in mono G decks that vomit mana all over the board to such an extent that they'd never even notice the cumulative upkeep but in a deck that is even slightly fair mana generation wise I think you'd be putting into it more than you were getting out of it.

On Lighthouse Chronologist: Yeah, taking extra turns via a permanent is a really good way to get hated. Chronologist is right up there with Luminarch Ascension on the list of cards that will get you beaten on.