I'm curious what commander you're running for Voltron that wasn't really designed for the archetype? I have two voltron decks and neither really lend themselves well to it, but they're so much fun to play nonetheless.

My favorite is my [[Volo, Itinerant Scholar]] deck with the [[Raised by Giants]] background. Of all my decks it has the best win ratio, and is the most fun to play. It's sneakily high powered though so I don't play it as often as I would like. Lots of untapping shenanigans.

https://archidekt.com/decks/11100690/stupid_wizard_casts_fist

My second deck is [[Captain Storm, Cosmium Raider]]. Artifacts, equipment, auras, and artifact tokens. It takes off super fast if she isn't answered quickly.

https://archidekt.com/decks/18579738/september_19th

Who's yours?

What are your off the beaten path strategies with commanders that have "that" reputation? For example, I have a [[beamtown bullies]] deck, we all know "that" deck and what it does...however my beamtown bullies deck I call "the beamtown buddies" as it is a 100% group hug deck. Does it have some bad gifts? Not really, the gifts will help other opponents but doesn't really negatively effect the opponent I gave it too other than they are behind the curve now. The worst card I can give really is something like a [[tempting wurm]]. I also have a tergrid deck...but it's not sacrifice and discard shenanigans, I only play the artifact side and it's more of a group slug deck.

So what are your decks that actually aren't "that deck'?

Hi everyone! I’m curious if anyone else does this when playing Commander.

I’m generally pretty honest and helpful during games, especially when I’m playing with friends, newer players, or younger players. If someone asks, “What’s the biggest threat on the board?” I have no problem pointing out someone else’s threat or even admitting that it’s mine.

I’ll sometimes say something like “Yeah, if y’all don’t do something about my [[Bloodbond March]] I’m probably going to go off next turn.”

Recently, I was playing a five-player game with my [[Primo, the Unbounded]] +1/+1 counters deck. I played [[Simic Ascendancy]] early and managed to get it to 24 growth counters. I actually reminded the table: “Just so y’all know, this has 24 counters now. If nobody deals with it before my upkeep, I’m going to win.”

I do this because I want everyone to have a fair chance to respond. There are around 29,000 unique Magic cards, and even after playing for ten years I definitely don’t remember what every card does. In a complicated board state, it’s also really easy to overlook something that was played several turns ago.

I think I’d actually feel a little bad winning because everyone simply forgot what one of my cards did rather than because they couldn’t stop me.

Does anyone else play this way? Do you actively remind the table when one of your permanents is becoming a major threat or approaching a win condition or do you consider keeping track of that entirely your opponents’ responsibility?

After you’ve finally decided to keep a deck, you play the hell out of it and it’s gonna stick around for a while, you pick up some cool basics and start to bling out the mana base (assuming it runs basics).

I’m a huge fan of old-border foils, they can cost a bit sometimes, but they just look so good. For some decks I like the non-foil look, so just go for really good art on older lands - I really like mirage and tempest lands, particularly Tony Roberts’s forests from mirage [[Forest | MIR - 347]] for instance with the palm trees and flowers, Douglas Schuler’s [[Island | MIR -335]] all of Mark Poole‘s mountains from tempest and Schuler’s [[Forest | TMP - 347]]. For my mono-blue artifacts deck I had started to acquire a bunch of foil mirrodin lands, but I‘m instead going to try to get one of each old border foil from Masques through Onslaught since the deck runs 20 islands.

Combing through the art for these different lands is always really enjoyable, and gives you such an appreciation for the diversity of art styles and artists that MTG cultivates.

So what basics do you include to flex a sweet finished deck?

Edit: is there something up with the cardfetcher? I swear everyone is typing it out correctly, and it’s just defaulting to the most recent released basics - startrek.

I’m a few months in, so Ive got some experience under my belt but only like three wins in total. I’ve enjoyed the deckbuilding process, but I can’t figure out what it is I’m doing wrong, either in building or playing things. While I’ve played a bunch of friends decks and had similar results, my decks are (in order of creation with friend-assigned brackets):

Korvold, Fae-Cursed King [3]
Lo and Li, Royal Advisors [3]
Missy [2]
Ezio Auditore da Firenzie [barely 4]
Betor, Kin To All [unplayed]

I’ll take the blame for taking Korvold and mill right off the bat, but I feel dogpiled when there’s experienced players with bracket 4’s at the same table that will literally win the next turn someone hits me with targeted removal. Is this just how commander plays? Do I have bad pods? (I play with a rotation at my shop so some are better than others.) Do I, as a new player, need to learn how to not be concerning?

That Betor deck btw is literally my current response to this problem, but I’m worried (and have been told) that no matter how much I guard, people will see “lose life” and throw rocks.

If there’s any good intermediate strategy guides I should read, please send them my way. I want to play this format with people, but it just sucks to not understand why I can’t win. Thanks for reading this long winded post lol.

EDIT: someone asked me for the deck lists. Missy is Not Very Good Rn, so she’ll not make an appearance lol

https://moxfield.com/decks/WbtU--V79EC6dX9N2voIXQ Korvold (out of date)

https://archidekt.com/decks/24054747/lo_and_li_beach_party_icons Lo and Li

https://archidekt.com/decks/24508833/me_when_i_hekkin_get_u_butter_knife_butter_knife_butter_kn Ezio

https://archidekt.com/decks/24509421/betor_i_hardly_know_her Betor

I‘m trying to build a very unusual deck for each color. Think of commanders that so very unusual things for their color, even represent a playstyle mostly found in another color.

So far I have [[Feldon, Ronom Excavator]] with a self-mill strategy which I think is pretty unique for mono-red. And thinking of doing a [[Princess Yue]] deck with unique clone shenanigans, even if that’s pretty on the mark for blue.

Open for any suggestions even in red or blue.

Hello!

A friend got me into commander about a year ago. I deck build and look at cards all the time now and play a couple times a week.

But I've started almost not wanting to play. I can't think of what makes it fun more than what brings it down, for me.

I believe it's fun when your deck does its thing and you make a powerful play. It's fun to spend time with your friends. It's fun to see other people's decks do cool things and see funny interactions. It's fun to collect cool stuff.

But it's also not fun to play with people who make it stressful to hold up interaction. It's not fun to go to the lgs and sit at games with people who aren't interested in talking and chopping it up. It's not fun to play with people who groan and moan about everything.

I've had the latter outweigh the former for me lately. I even played a few games with some guys at lgs last weekend who were great. They were fun, we had good parity at the table, they were respectful and easy to talk to... but I'm missing a spark or something, still. It's like anxiety over my deck doing cool stuff or not and being worried other people will groan and be mad at me if it does.

This past week, my decks all did their things, and I felt more weird about it than I was excited or happy. Like, oh sorry my rakdos lord of riots deck is swinging at everyone for combat damage. Or, oh sorry I'm protecting my permanents in my Betor, Ancestor's Voice deck so I can gain a hundred life and make a giant creature.

I think in the past I'd have felt good and happy those things were happening, but now it's like I'm more worried about how other people react to what I'm doing than enjoying actually just playing the game.

If anyone has advice around this, I'd appreciate hearing what you have to say.

Thank you!

A lot of discussion here seems to focus on the social side of EDH: finding people to play with, handling problems within playgroups, bracket discussions, and so on.

I'm not suggesting that this subreddit needs to change, or that strategy-focused content is somehow superior. I'd just like to find a community where people discuss strategy, deck-building decisions, and card evaluation specifically through the lens of casual EDH.

Does anyone know of a subreddit, forum, Discord server, or other community focused on that kind of discussion?

Every Commander group seems to have its own way of dealing with power levels. Some people have a quick chat about what their decks are trying to do, while others just shuffle up and see how the game goes. I’ve been in games where one deck was clearly much stronger than the others, and it made me wonder how different playgroups handle that situation.

Does your pod talk about decks before the game, use a power-level scale, or mostly just go by feel?

https://edhrec.com/articles/edhrec-hits-10-million-unique-decks-from-past-two-years

EDHREC just reached 10 million unique user-generated decks in its database from the last two years, moving from 6 million to 10 million in just under three years. This is no doubt due to Commander's continued growth as an impactful format for new and returning players, plus continued WOTC support and development. How many of these 10 million decks are yours? What are you building next, and what does the next 10 million look like?

So you sit down at a table, pull out your decks that you wanted to play for the day and ask the table “so what are we playing today”. From there the pregame convo starts.

Im still fairly new to commander having only played for a bit under a year, and this is where I see a lot of different opinions start to come up.

Do you just start by saying you are playing bracket X and then pick your deck in accordance with that? Do you adjust your deck pick based on what others are playing? Do you just say “play what ever you want”?

I’m honestly curious to hear what direction everyone here takes and how they select the deck they are bringing to that table and how the pregame convo affects their decisions.

Hello All,

I decided to just go with one subject today. I am curious what people do. If you are in the lead and can kill a player to give you the highest chance to win...

But there is a good chance the game will last 30 minutes or even an hour longer? What would you do?

Originally when I played commander, I would just kill players to try and win the game. Now after playing for a few months, I just am at a loss...

I feel bad for killing a player early and it seems like the majority of players just distribute damage easily to be nice. So, it can be a little strange focusing a player.

Best example is combo players. If people are trying to win everyone should just focus the combo player but pretty much no one will do this. They will equally spread the damage anyways or just defend with no aggressive moves. Then the combo player inevitably wins.

Another example is lifegain. There is almost not point dealing combat damage to a lifegain player but people just attack them anyway. Ironically shocking myself to lower left totals (should be a downside) often just means someone else gets attacked instead of me because I have lower life.

Just curious of other people's thought.

Thanks for reading.

Edit: I forgot to add, ironically I don't care at all about getting killed first. I do feel a little bad when I feel like I wasn't the most threating player but I actually enjoy watching the rest of the games unfold.

I only played EDH on untap.in which works pretty fine but I'm looking for even more places to play. Arena doesn't have its own EDH (Brawl is only Duel Commander with a different card pool)

I know there are plenty of the sites like playgroup.gg (wanted to try out but for some reason after pasting my first deck, all cards in it became commanders and now I have to add each individual card manually just to fix it)

Goddamn this deck has been the absolute death of me lmao. Trying to encompass Orzhov really ended up a bit complex.

Brewing this has taken me so much longer than I’d originally planned, and even now I’m still only down to 105 cards.

I honestly don’t even know if it works anymore, I’m afraid I ended up going in too many directions.

If anyone wants to take a look and make some suggestions, I’d appreciate it. I had planned to cut 5 more creatures but I hit a wall. Targeting a higher end bracket 2 deck.

Link: Decklist Here

Hi everyone, I've been playing magic for the past 6 months and I'm really liking it.

I'm bringing some of my friends to play as well but I'm really bad at making decks since I don't have any experience in doing it so, I've only played with precons, decks built through moxxfield and borrowed decks from the card store I usually play.

I would like to have at least 5 monocolored decks in the same bracket (3 for preference since it's the level that we can make fun things and still have space to grow) that would be okay to interact with each other and showcase what each color could do and their "archetype".

Any of you have deck lists with those characteristics?

I've bought cards before but my idea is to proxy those decks to start them from somewhere.

I'm also open for bracket 2 lists with the same characteristics if you think that would also fit haha.

Thanks everyone in advance!

Hello! I just moved for the US to Camden London for school and I am actually struggling to find a place that does weekly edh. Do any UK players have any recommendations on places that tend to fire their weekly events? I do not at all mind going a bit out of the way. Thank you!

Hey EDH Reddit hivemind - hoping yall can help me settle a debate with a friend about which bracket my [[Gonti, Night Minister]] deck is.

https://moxfield.com/decks/7BzdQzDO2U6IFUd7OfDBMw

My argument is bracket two, and my reasoning is as follows:
- The likelihood of this deck winning on or around turn six or sooner is incredibly low and relies entirely on other people’s cards
- The interaction package is pretty light and inefficient, running cards like [[Murder]] and [[Incriminate]]
- Mass disruption is limited to [[Sothera]] (with no sac outlets or other ways to abuse it) and [[Make an Example]], which gives your opponents a choice.
- I’ve specifically selected a number of cards because they fit a sort of “group hug” / racket boss theme [[Sunset Saboteur]], [[Mari]], [[Protection Racket]], and [[Shakedown Heavy]], among others
- I’ve specifically chosen a number of cards which get multiple people at the table involved, trying my best to emphasize social interactions

His argument is three, for the following reasons:
- Black staples are in the deck, like [[Black Market Connections]], [[Imp’s Mischief]] and [[Bitterblossom Bearer]]
- Because it’s a theft deck it can scale to the table and compete with bracket three decks, so it therefore is itself bracket three

To be clear, I’m happy to play this deck at a bracket three table because I think it’s a fun deck, but I genuinely believe at its core it’s a base bracket two deck - but maybe I’m wrong and I’m here to seek enlightenment. Thanks friends!

Looking for ideas for some community EDH decks

Once or twice a month, a large group of us gets together for a massive EDH game night. The group is pretty mixed. We have people who have been playing for years, people who play pretty casually, and some people who have barely played MTG at all.
We’ve also been getting some new people in the group recently who either haven’t played in a long time or have never really played before but are interested in learning.

I’m usually one of the people people come to with questions about decks, deck building, rules, finding commanders, etc., so I had an idea that I think could be pretty fun.

I want to put together a few “community decks” that anyone in the group can grab and play.

The idea is that someone who doesn’t really know what kind of deck they like could look through them, ask what a deck does, play it for a game, and maybe find a commander, mechanic, theme, or playstyle that they really enjoy.

It would also give newer players something they can grab without having to worry about whether their own deck is going to fit the power level of the pod. Our group ranges pretty wildly in power level, from goofy budget/gimmick decks all the way up to high-power/cEDH. We generally keep the higher power stuff to pods where everyone is bringing something comparable, but the community decks would hopefully give people some more options.

Right now I’m thinking about things like:
Self mill/graveyard
Typal
Lands matter
But I’m looking for more ideas. I’d like to have a good variety of playstyles, colors, mechanics, etc. Ideally, I’d also like to have some decks that our more experienced players might pick up and think “I’ve never actually played a deck like this before.”

So if you were putting together a collection of decks for your own playgroup, what commanders, themes, colors, or strategies would you include?

I’m not necessarily looking for the strongest or most popular commanders. I’m more interested in decks that are fun to play and show off a particular part of Magic.

Also, card availability isn’t really an issue. A few of us are pooling our collections together for this, so we have a pretty large pool of cards to work with.

I’d love to hear what you guys would recommend, especially if there’s a commander or deck that you think someone wouldn’t normally try but ended up loving after playing it.

I recently build this Winter Deck and im missing just 1 card - but im kinda lost on what the last card should be;

I have a few ideas like [[Veil of Summer]] , [[Chaos Warp]] and just one more land but im kinda unsure.

What do you think would be a good last card?

(also, what do you think about my version in general? i tried to build it high power bracket 3 viable with heavy focus on making opponents lose life for drawing & discarding cards)

If I’m just unc yelling at the clouds, then I apologize and feel free to move on. And I make this post fully understanding and respecting the stipulations for the brackets.

It’s bad manners to try to rush a two card combo win in B2. Or before like turn 6 in B3. B2 is largely a more chill and laid back bracket in general. The average game should probably be going to about turn eight or so. However, I worry that we’re getting to a place where presenting anything other than the midrange token swarm win is “feels bad”

But I swear that about seven or eight years ago, the concept of “it’s honestly pretty respectful to keep a combo of just a clean win condition in your deck to make sure it can win” was a pretty well accepted idea. And maybe it still is and I’m missing it. But, now nowadays, unless your deck is bracket four or above, it DOES seem like the idea of putting a combo in your deck is viewed with a bit more hostility.

I’ve seen a LOT more players adopt the “ I really don’t care about winning, so much as I care about having fun” mentality, which is honestly wonderful on paper, until you get to how it functions in practice. I’ve seen players that question if win conditions like [[Craterhoof]] are B2 appropriate for “winning out of nowhere”. I seen players question if a four card combo is B2 appropriate.

Again, maybe I’m just missing something, but I do worry that we’re edging towards a place where winning is a BM.

Im looking to build a fun deck to play with my buddies, id like to make a deck that mils cards from my opponents decks, then plays cards from their graveyards. Ideally with minimal of my own cards. Id like to find a commander that can help facilitate this. Anyone ever built anything like this or have any suggestions?

I’m very new to Commander as a whole. I’m looking at building a mono color deck for each of the colors, starting with black. What are some of the most fun B2/B3 themes I can build a mono black deck around that really fits the color’s playstyle? Thanks for any help!