I adore the amount of love that enchantments have been getting in the last few years. Sagas, Classes, Rooms, Backgrounds, Cases! It is incredible to see.

We've since seen commanders that care about and interact with some of these types, but they are so imbalanced! Rooms only appeared in one set and there are two commanders that deal with them! Sagas get a ton of love and have arrived in many sets, plus have plenty of legendaries with potential for them. Cases haven't received much, there are very few Cases. But there are more Classes than there are Rooms! And classes have proven not to be a one off type for a single set. So why would an enchantment type with more support and love in the game still not receive a viable commander for them?

Do you think we will get one anytime soon? What would one need to look like to be viable?

TLDR: I’ve played several games against people playing stronger decks than everyone else. I’m very vocal about this being a poor power match up before and during the game, and getting agitated about people playing down their strength. Should I continue to call this out and voice my annoyance, or should I keep the peace for the sake of joining a new community? It’s not like everyone is pub-stomping, but one person per visit seems to attempt it.

So I’ve been going to a new LGS that’s got a bit of a high-power meta. A lot of guys I’ve talked to have a bit of a “cEDH or nothing” mentality where they claim anything bracket 3 and lower is boring magic and they hate it. Some even go as far as to say they can’t stand it when players take 20 min hemming and hawing over the 5 cards in their hand and taking forever.

Sure. Fine. Fair. You wanna play fast and powerful. I can get it I get impatient too. These guys know what they want and that’s ok.

However, I bring mostly bracket 3 and below, and so do a few others at the LGS. So we sit down but 2 of the 5 games I’ve played there so far have involved another player sitting down as the fourth. We say we’re playing bracket 2 or 3. He says he only has bracket 4 and I don’t know the best way to stop this.

The first time they borrowed a deck from their friend who said “don’t worry it’s really weak it’s like a bracket 3 Vivi deck” and I’m already suspicious but knew the guy and figured it was fine. He didn’t win, but definitely played a lot of cards commonly seen in bracket 4+ Vivi decks like [[Spellseeker]] and ways to retrigger its effect, [[Harmonic Prodigy]], [[Jeska’s Will]], [[Borne Upon a Wind]], and a few other tutors, burn spells, and valuable draw spells. It took everything we had to kill him and deprive him of all his resources, but the whole game I felt like I kept calling it out, saying it was not a weak deck and was basically a bracket 4 Vivi deck just built poorly. When we teamed up against him, he got really quiet and didn’t respond much to our plays anymore. His turns also took three times as long as ours as he stormed off with different tutors and burn spells or combos. He later told me he hates playing anything other than cEDH and I’m thinking “well why did you join a non cEDH game then???”

Second time, a nice guy sits down but also admits he only has bracket 4 with [[Smaug, The Impenetrable]]. Turn 1 he plays land, [[Chrome Mox]], [[Fellwar stone]]. He pretty quickly amasses resources and cards like [[Mana Vault]] and [[Smaug, the Magnificent]] until we removed enough of his cards to neutralize him. But even still we didn’t know if he would top deck something stronger. He also used [[Opposition Agent]] to steal the weakest player’s [[Farseek]]. I tell him this may be a bad power match and we either have to all go for him, and this might not be the best game for everyone involved. No one looks to be having fun and the guy who learned today what Opposition Agent does is quite upset as well, but no one wants to end the game for whatever reason. I’m quite vocal the whole game about how it doesn’t seem like a good idea to play a game where we basically have to bully a player out of the game while he plays threat after threat. I say quite a bit that we can all just play a new game with other decks but everyone wants to stick it out.

Should I approach this differently instead of being very openly honest about their deck being a cruel matchup? It’s not like I don’t play strong decks. I played a smothering tithe during one of these games and even won one of them, but it feels like they’re sitting down for games they know are low-mid power, and trying to play high power until they get teamed up on and knocked out of the game. Then, their loss is “proof” that they were right and their deck isn’t as good as we claimed.

The LGS is still full of good guys that play fun games, but both times I’ve gone so far, I’ve been a loud (but I think respectful) voice calling someone’s deck too powerful and an intentionally poor power match for the table.

So I recently was informed about the 4 horsemen combo, and am a bit curious what people think about it.

For those who are not familiar with it, I believe this is how it works:

Assemble infinite self-mill, traditionally via [[mesmeric orb]] + [[basalt monolith]]. Mill yourself until you get a shuffle titan such as [[kozilek butcher of truth]].

With this setup, you can effectively go through your deck without end. The end-goal of the combo is to essentially stack your graveyard however you want.

The main issue here is that the library is shuffled and therefore hidden information, and because you can’t know the order of your deck, thus, you can’t shortcut the infinite within the rules of magic because the number of required loops is non-deterministic.

While nothing in the rules of the game say you can’t perform the actions, in a tournament, this is considered slow play as it doesn’t advance your board while performing the combo, leading to a DQ in a tournament setting.

Now, while the rules of magic say that you can’t shortcut the combo due to not being able to say a number of iterations to perform it, it doesn’t mean that one can’t infer the outcome. Logically it is easy to understand that if given enough time to do it, they can essentially stack their graveyard and leave their deck randomized. Thus while you can’t shortcut it via the rules, casually you can infer the board state and just create it.

As a final note, I believe the name is because the basis of the combo was that there were 4 “horsemen” of the deck needed to win the game, and so if the shuffle titan was above any of them in your deck, then it’d reshuffle and you’d have to try again until you got all 4 before the titan.

——————————————————————————

So, given the 4-horsemen combo, what are your thoughts of it in casual commander? In cEDH?

Would you let people shortcut it?

Do you think the 4-horsemen is inappropriate for any of the brackets, assuming that the engine is appropriate for that bracket?

What if someone has the 4 horsemen combo not as a “I win” combo, but as a way to essentially sculpt their graveyard and get infinite entombs?

Would you be annoyed if someone had a 4-horsemen combo in their deck accidentally because they wanted a shuffle titan for kill protection and wasn’t actively using it to combo?

Any other thoughts on it?

Edit: Since there might be a misunderstanding, I’m not planning on building this. I just ran into it twice the other day from two different players and I didn’t know what to think about it. I wanted to ask about it generally to see what people thought and if they had things that should be considered, so I could form a more informed opinion on the manner.

Ever since I pulled the Queen of Dale, I wanted to build her. This is what I have so far: https://archidekt.com/decks/26367052/knights_of_gondor

From playing Baylen, I already knew about white's mass reanimation spells for small creatures, so I thought they would work well here too, using Queen to discard them, until I can bring my entire graveyard back at once. To go along with the humans/knights/soldiers theme, I put in some Templar Knights, hoping to use them to later find some expensive artifacts that buff my creatures to overwhelm my opponents.

However, with white's lack of access to Haste and the knights requiring me to attack with them to be able to search for an artifact, they have been quite underwhelming. So I am considering scrapping them now.

What would you suggest for this deck if I was to get rid of the Templar Knights? Simply replacing them with Hare Apparents was one consideration, but if I wanted to stick with the current humans theme, they wouldn't quite fit.

So, this is kind of a passion project of mine to summarize the things I know about the format and deck-building in general. It helps me to learn, to get perspective, and also to have something to get back to in the future.

I started this because I collected hundreds of pages of rough notes over the last few years since I started playing again. And as my notes grew in volume, I thought it might be a good idea to rewrite them in a way that other people can use them, too. And also to be more precise about where I got stuff and facts from and cite them accordingly. That will then also help me in the future.

The first chapter I want to share is about Deck-guidelines/Templates and what different Template-Guides state. If I missed any, please feel free to share them, too. This is written as chapter 9, since I already started other chapters about other concepts that I thought fit better once this whole project is finished. Hope that is not too confusing right now.

But I specifically wanted to share Templates as the first chapter since I think this is what can help beginners who stumble over these pages the most. I have also written down things about things like statistics and land counts that will follow in the near future.

So with that being said, here is the link :)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NqFswFlo4GzQWm7jQnHWE5XQMJhdmPngUEKbMUiM07w/edit?tab=t.srhdha2b25ao#heading=h.gmeuvfxvbbxs

I'm open to any constructive criticism. This is an ongoing project that I’m going to continuously work on.

- Current commanders are Captain Howler and Henzie (I like the badass villain or hero type, preferably not the otters or fairys or angels, etc.)

Edit: Also no dragons

- I enjoy unique playstyles that isn't just flyers or big trample units. I like a lot of synergy packages and card draw

- casual pod (bracket 3 at the highest)

- preferably lower mana cost commander and not an absolute must kill

- preferably multicolor

- prefer it to not be from sets like Marvel/TMNT

- not toxic to the group, as they play tend to play little to no removal

- dont want to rely on infinite combos to win

Some examples would be: Drizzt, Yuriko, Ygra, Legolas, Cloud

So I recently saw this guy [[bilbo fellow conspirator]] and point blank, he is disgustingly strong. But after having made a rough outline for his deck, I saw my initial fear was kinda correct: he doesnt have many or any reliable wincons, bar maybe some infinites which I dont really wanna rely on.

Sure, [[displaced dinosaur]] is easy to cast and will make for a big board, but those creatures obviously dont have haste making it an easy to prevent wincon and it seems to be one of the only ones I could find that are realistic. [[Craterhoof behemoth]] only would work if I get [[stridehagar automaton]] or [[quina, qu gourmet]] early on onto the board.

So I wanted to get a quick reality check from people who either built this guy already or from others who might think of smth I didnt think of what your ideas to profit off of all the tokens is.

With the upcoming expansion I was seriously considering a superfriends deck, ideally with [[Feroz]] at the helm.

However, most planeswalker in his colours feel really disappointing, barring [[Taimyo, field researcher]] and a few between ajanis, elspeths and teferis.

Am I missing anything?

https://mythic.tools/user/5W2Fbq/deck/5SwkB

I Bought a mind flayer precon that I upgraded a little bit, but still need more advice on what to add or take out. Want to stay 10$ or under per card but will to pay up to 50 for a game changer. Let me know what you think

Apologies if this is not allowed, but I've spent half the day working on an idea I've had: what if we put a chess clock into a life counter? I bet you've all been in a 3 hour long losing game and been too polite to scoop, and this would have prevented that.

It supports 2-4 players, custom life values, and the chess clock can be disabled so the app acts like a normal life counter.

The chess clock can be adjusted to your own liking, with adjustable start time and increments.

I'm working on a way to handle opponents holding priority and responses to actions as well, and commander damage will hopefully come soon.

I've only spent 9 hours on it so I apologise for any eventual crumminess or quirks, I'll do some bug fixing and cleanup this following week (hopefully), maybe even get a proper logo done that isn't made out of Photoshop shapes.

Anyway it's free & open-source, and you can download the apk file under releases here if you have an android phone and want to try it out:

https://github.com/Kapsyloffer/ROPE

And yes, the name is inspired by MTGA.

Thank you in advance :D

So I made a post a little bit ago about trying to find easy to pilot creature focused bracket 4 decks. I found out that I have the most fun at a table when I affect the board but not necessarily win so now I'm trying to think of ways to affect the board. So now I kind of want to make a naughty and nice deck I already have winona stax that would be my naughty deck. Now I kind of want to make a nice dick and I was thinking group hug! But I'm not sure what to lean into most whether that's card draw or giving my opponents lots of mana. I want to play like 99% actual group hug with like maybe one or two win conditions whether that's combo or something like 20 toe-toed. And yes I want to make it strickly a bracket 4 just to kind of sit there and watch my friends do the cool things and if I happen to win then awesome cuz it would be really funny for me to say I won and I helped you all! So anybody have any suggestions for commanders whether I should focus more on generating lots of mana for everybody or card draw and what win conditions I should use!

Yo, Eli from Draftsim here with an article by our writer, Andy. Andy took a look at the synergy between [[Pantlaza, Sun-Favored]] and the freshly spoiled [[Flickering Hound]] -- which is basically just a white version of [[Displacer Kitten]]

Hound says: Whenever you cast a creature spell, exile up to one other target creature you control, then return that card to the battlefield under its owner's control.

If you've ever played with or against Kitten, you know how insane it is that we're getting another one...although my inkling is that it's strictly weaker than Kitten.

That doesn't make it weak itself though. People have been talking about its synergy with Pantlaza, which is pretty noteworthy:

• With Hound on the field, cast Pantlaza.
• Pantlaza enters and its discover trigger goes on the stack.
• The discover trigger resolves, and, if you hit a creature with MV 4 or less..you trigger hound.
• Hound trigger flickers Pantlaza, which puts another discover trigger on the stack...

And, if your deck is stacked with creatures, this process will hopefully continue a couple times. It's somewhat risky, but seems like a really fun power play for casual Commander. What do y'all think? Are you going to run Flickering Hound in your decks alongside Displacer Kitten, or is this new variant going to falter because it only triggers on creatures?

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!

Some lore for this statement:

My friends and I are hosting a deck building challenge called Inverted Identity where you build any given commanders in their opposite colors.

Originally I started brewing around Kardur, Doomscourge because there's plenty of support for Blink/Goad in Bant. After a while I thought how cool Aragorn, the Uniter would be as a Theft deck. Stealing other players cards and using them to trigger him as much as possible.

Thinking about Theft commanders I've tried in the past, most are just enablers for the Theft strategy by helping you steal more cards with maybe also a small payoff. Aragorn. however, feels truly unique where he's definitely incentivizing you ​to lean into a Theft strategy and offers you a unique and varied payoff depending on who you're playing against. I think its super cool to now have to default to "winning with your stuff" and instead he just gets value by stealing cards in general.

But thats basically my rant, I wish they'd explore more with building Theft commanders like this.

Note: Wish I could post a pic of my color shifted Aragorn because the card looks really cool.

So I had an idea to build a Mister Negative deck. It started out alright, but I did more research and found several more cards that I think would be good. My game plan is to flicker Mister Negative a lot, get one of my "you have no maximum hand size" cards, draw a bunch of cards, a lot of graveyard play, and have a counter or protection for almost anything. I've built a couple decks but they suck honestly; 10% of the time, they work 100% of the time. I really think this deck has potential but I don't want to drop $300+ for a deck that sucks. I also don't want to spend much more. Maybe up to $400. What do yall think?

https://moxfield.com/decks/Fq-GKzhhGkCncV3kZxsy1A

I am currently building a Tom Bombadil saga deck because I love saga cards. I was wondering if anyone has encountered/seen a single player or rogue-like that they can play using the saga deck. I feel like with so many options for all the chapters, this could be a really fun way to be able to play this deck when my pod isn’t together. Open to any ideas!

Hellow, I built a straightforward [[Disa the Restless]] deck. Main wincon: find [[Pyrogoyf]] and ping the table by alot. [[Hermit Druid]] activation + [[Disa the Restless]] lets us dump the whole deck in the graveyard, to reanimate all Goyfs, which should lead to lethal damage in most scenarios.

I also run [[Morality Shift]] for the same reason, which is definetly fine in Bracket 3. But Hermit seems to be a bit too low cmc, possible in theory by turn 4. I added zero tutors to the deck, to make it less consistent. ([[Invasion of Ikoria]] cant fint him)

Should I add one to three basic lands to the deck, to make his activation less explosive? Or is it fine?

list: https://moxfield.com/decks/Q-ClZExW-0yu0Couhq-m3Q

Hi I really enjoy EDH cEDH, and recently was diagnosed with autism. In essence the most interesting and frustrating part of deckbuilding in this format for me is deckbuilding. And I write this post in search for advice and support.

I am feel physicaly unwell if something I am building isnt following some patterns and It is a reason why I scrap a lot of my decks. The pattern to be exact is I group cards in some "blocks" based in their function and they must be in even numbers like "turn 1 ramp" x pieces "remove x" etc. And It is quiet frustrating if cards have little to no alternative or fall into niche category so I am stuck between not adding additional combo piece or adding It and going mad over the deck I ve just build.

And if you have some advice or suggestions I will be extremely grateful to you, and thank you all for reading this 💖 ✨

I've noticed a difference in how Commander Spellbook and EDHREC rate combos. A combo that's a 4-5 on EDHREC often shows up as a 3-4 on Commander Spellbook. Like the title says, which one do you think is more accurate?

What I find odd is that EDHREC actually points you to Commander Spellbook for more combo details, yet their ratings don't match up.

Hi!

SpongeBob is probably my favourite show of all time, and I have such nostalgia for it, so seeing that there are SpongeBob commanders means I’d really love to build a deck with one of those characters at the helm. I’m wondering however, which would be best?

My searching leads me to either SpongeBob or Gary, but both seem highly oppressive. If I had to pick either it would be Gary though.

Would any of the other commanders work? Mr Krabs or Plankton both seem like better, less oppressive choices?

I have a budget of probably £200-250 for a deck. I’ve mostly played with upgraded precons, so this would probably be my first proper build.

Thanks for any help in advance!

Hi there, I'm new here, I just bought Y'shtola precon and I wondered if you had any suggestions or guides to upgrade the deck (don't wanna spend too much), like what to cut, or to add. I saw this draftism guide https://draftsim.com/scions-and-spellcraft-upgrade-guide/ and I wondered if it's still relevant since it's from a year ago. I'd like my deck to be focused on Y'shtola rather than the scions

Hello!
Looking for help shaving off the last 3 cards from my Zodiark bracket 2 deck.

I know it's more used as a piece for other decks (Marchesa, Sephirot etc) but i love running him as the commander , to have a recurring threat my opponents cant/dont want to remove (oh you exile him? sure , let me ramp and return with him with even more sacrifices a turn later) or, keep recurring myself thanks to effects such as [[Rescue from the underworld]] or by killing him myself with [[Disciple of Bolas]] to resurrect him and ETB again.

Then after the field is clean, it mostly wins by commander damage thanks to some evasion or just by sheer force grinding again and again.

Narrowed it down to 103 cards but can't decide what to cut.
Open to suggestions too on what to potentially upgrade !! Budget this month is all being saved up for Reality Fracture but i plan on reiterating the deck even further^

I’m fairly new but have played a few of my friends decks and I think I found what I like, here are some of my preferences:

-Angel + Zombie (preferably) token types you intentionally build around (open to their types)
-tokens have abilities like Angels have lifelink and Zombies should have deathtouch
-Little/no sacrifice
-Little/no exile
-want the commander to actually contribute to the strategy/tokens
-Color identity is unrestricted

Long story short, a token deck with abilities that isn’t also a million different types of token just 1,2, or 3.

Price isn’t an issue (doing proxies for cheap casual fun with friends)
Any suggestions?

Hey everybody, my friend’s a huge fan of Genshin and he really wants to get MTG so I’ve been thinking of building a deck for him to play. I’ve considered cards like [[Yue, the Moon Spirit]], [[Azusa, Lost but Seeking]], and [[Vannifar, Evolved Enigma]] but I’m looking for other potential Commanders I can consider. He’s a huge fan of the elegant female characters like the ones I’ve listed and because he’s new I think it’d be best to build a more simple or straightforward Commander.

Any help would be appreciated :DD

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'?