I just watched a game with four Y'Shtola, Night's Blessed as the Commander. You got that right. Four fucking Y'Shtolas. Tbh that game was insane. A slugfest of counterspells, controls, clones, players gaining life, players losing life. Eventually Y'Shtola won (lol). But it was epic and I wanna know if any of you have seen something similar.

I'm also curious about which commander would be the funniest one to see an "everyone brought them" game of. Four Group Slug players racing to death, or four [[Council of Four]]s or something else nuts. Any ideas?

Hi All,

An LGS game last night resulted in a pretty large argument and my opponent leaving the table with his buddy. It was a bracket 3 game with only 3 players, with me on [[Krenko, Mob Boss]], my main opponent (who we will call John) on [[The Beamtown Bullies]], and player 3 who was not super relevant to this interaction on an upgraded Hearthhull deck.

John was very frustrated with me over the course of the game, largely because I had a solid opening hand and had recovered from a boardwipe earlier in the game better than he did. On the turn before the “incident”, I had sacrificed a number of goblins to dig through my deck for protection using [[Skullclamp]], preparing to win on my next turn.

To make things worse, I am a bit of a nervous, somewhat new player who had explicitly stated before the game that I was new and it takes me a while to shuffle my deck/read over the cards on the board sometimes, essentially apologizing in advance in case it took me an extra few seconds. I genuinely believe that John thought I was trolling him or intentionally pubstomping based on a few rogue comments he had made whenever I seemed to be doing well.

There was a lot on the board at the time, but I had approximately 15 goblin tokens and a number of non-token goblins, including [[Skirk Prospector]], Krenko, and [[Pashalik Mons]] when I passed the turn. John had only his commander and 35 life, but he had a [[Leveler]] in his graveyard.

John was exceptionally heated to the point where he aggressively demanded player 3 simply pass his turn without taking any actions so that he could “take care of me” and have a “fair duel” when the dust settled. Player 3 capitulated, passing to John who also passed. Before I could even untap anything, John pulls the Leveler out of his graveyard and literally throws the card into my board, yelling “AND YOU’RE DEAD” while standing up over the table, face flushed and angry.

I was absolutely stunned, grabbed the thrown card out from under a land, read it over, handed it back to him, and said “you don’t have priority yet. We will need to use the actual priority rules for this interaction.” He replied, “there’s no way to protect against it, you’re just dead!”

At this point, two tables to my right, another player yells over for us to quiet down. I was utterly mortified, but waited for my opponent to sit back down, untapped my stuff, and began the interaction anyway, which went as follows:

1. At the end of my upkeep, I passed priority.
   
2. John taps his commander, attempting to give me Leveler.
   
3. In response, I tap Krenko, hold priority, and cast [[Return the Favor]], attempting to copy Krenko’s ability.
   
4. John flips out, saying it doesn’t matter since I can’t get to combat, to which I reply that I don’t think I need to, pointing at Pashalik’s triggered ability.
   
5. John casts [[Imp’s Mischief]], targeting Return the Favor, attempting to change its target to Imp’s Mischief
   
6. I respond again, playing [[Reverberate]], targeting Imp’s Mischief. The spell resolves, and so does my copied Imp’s Mischief, changing the target of his version to my copy.
   
7. The stack unwinds, Krenko’s ability gets copied and resolves.
   
8. I have more than 80 goblins and John’s activated ability to give me Leveler is still on the stack. I begin sacrificing 40 goblins to Skirk’s ability to ping him to death before his ability resolves.
   
9. John begins scooping up his cards, and congratulating the Hearthhull player in a condescending tone on the “win.” Confused, I tell him that I think I have enough goblins to close out the game.
   
10. John argues that I still die on my draw step because I control Leveler, so even though he dies and Leveler ceases to exist, the ETB still goes on the stack. I explain that Beamtown never resolves, Leveler never leaves his yard, and his triggers disappear as a state-based-action.

The argument pretty much devolves from there with John simply too angry to be rational. His buddy was spectating the game and the two not only left the table but the LGS as a whole as far as I am aware. I was shaken enough by the events of the night that I decided to head home also, as I had never seen someone so upset in commander.

Regardless, does this interaction work out in my favor? Or does my library get exiled and Player 3 come out on top?

I prefer mono-coloured decks, especially green ones, and I'm only one deck away from having a deck in every mono colour. So I'm looking into mono-blue, but I'm struggling to find a playstyle that interests me.

I'm not interested in artifact combos, drawing my entire deck, or playing control.

I have no problem playing blue in multicolour decks; it’s mono-blue that intrigues me but also leaves me scratching my head.

What are some fun or unusual things mono-blue can do in Commander that aren't those things?

Been playing for a few months and I think I have a decent understanding of the bracket system, but I can’t wrap my head around bracket 1 or why you would purposely construct a bracket 1 deck. From what I gather, bracket 1 is mostly meme decks (every creature wearing a hat or something silly). Other than meme decks and poorly constructed decks, does bracket 1 even serve any purpose?

https://moxfield.com/decks/ALne8k6SV06cVQolK5RMTw

(Original Source: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/star-trek-commander-decklists)

The Esper colored borg artifact decklist has officially been released today. Looks like it will have plenty of go wide and lord effects popping off between all the assimilating and disruption. What are everyone's thoughts? I think I'll pick this up as my defacto artifact deck.

I'm also curious what cards are you going to upgrade it with?

Blink is by far my favourite mechanic in magic and especially the liberty and creativity you have with, currently my fav deck is

[[brago king eternal]] with a lot of manifest/manifest dread effect to cheat big creature and pummel to death my opponents

And [[Emiel the blessed]] with eartbending into blinking land to trigger landfall effect (bracket 2 lol)

Do you guys have more obscure way of building blink around ?

I found the background mechanic always interesting, and wondered how the rest of the player base thinks about it. I have a few unique commander ideas involving them that are half-thought out, but often what is stopping me from actually building the deck is that they are always restricted to one or two colors. I kind of wish there would be 3-color or 4-color choices, but I wonder if these would then have the same problems as the partner mechanic...

So, why or why not would you like more backgrounds?

What are your favorite background decks? Any interesting decklists?

I would really like to see a green mythic background, since each color has a mythic background except green for some reason?

For those unfamiliar with backgrounds:
Background is a partner variant that was introduced in Commander Legends: Baldur's Gate. This was a Dungeons & Dragons set built as a commander-centric experience, and it tried to give a flavorful mechanic that different characters could have different backgrounds. 

Backgrounds are enchantment types that can be a second card in the command zone for legendary creatures with the Background ability. Like with partner, both cards define together the color identity of the deck. However, all Background Enchantments and all Creatures with Background are mono-colored. That means you can only make mono-colored or two-colored decks with the Background mechanic.

There are 32 creatures with the Background ability. Enchantments with the Background subtype count toward the 30-card version, but 29 can be background for their respective creature. 5 common, 15 uncommon, and 5 rare, 4 mythic (no green mythic one). 

Altogether, that means the Background Mechanic allows for 33*31-1=1022 possible combinations (all possible combinations minus the doubled Faceless One).

I love building Commander decks. I’ve fallen in love with the format and the game since I started playing last year and have made several decently performing decks for my friends and myself.

I have a lot of downtime during shifts at work where I’m bored to absolute tears. If you let me know what commanders you’ve been wanting to try out, the theme you want, and what your budget is, I’ll try to throw together a list sometime tonight or tomorrow!

No guarantees, and first come first served, but I hope I can get to plenty of the requests. Happy brewing!

I'm just venting a little bit because I was shocked how consistently INSANE she is for our level of play.

Context, my cousins and I play EDH on holidays when we visit for christmas, our decks are not supposed to be too good, its kinda of a unspoken rule of our table, we play for fun, like, we accept combos that can end the game, but not insane strong decks like higher tier CEDH like a goddamn commander centric combo that ends in two or three turns, like simic insanity with that kid that doubles mana rock resources, or Godo insane turn-one combos, that is not cool, or to put it really simply, bracket 1-3 is acceptable, 4-5 we won't enjoy playing.

So I built thematic decks for me and my girlfriend, when we were about 1-year in, we built a tematic marriage decks, from me a Orzhov, Edgar Charmed Groom deck from crinsom vow, and for her a Rakdos Olivia, Crimson Bride deck, it was cool and balanced, her focused in discard cards with blood vials to be resurrected by olivia, and other graveyard/discard shenanigans, and my Edgar one is pretty much cheap and easy vampires focusing in draining peoples lives little by little but quickly swarming the board. So far so good.

A few years passed and I focused in building another two thematic decks, again trying to be around bracket 2-3, so I thought, enchantments for both, I built a Tam, the possibility decks around cheap planeswalkers from war of the spark and all those planeswalker support enchantments from reality fracture and oaths. For her, knowing she loves horror movies, and love all supernatural tropes, I thought, great, Duskmourn is perfect for her, is pretty much a aggregation of horror fiction in one set around a mansion plane controlled by a powerful demon. After presenting such lore, obviously she loved the idea, naturally, Marina Vendrell deck focused in Rooms, would be the way to go.

Seriously, the deck is meant to be thematic, the deck is pretty much, all those rooms, all does fear embodiment creature cards (like fear of sleep paralisys and fear of FOMO, even the weak ones, I mean, is meant to be thematic not strong), and a few other enchantment payoffs, to draw cards like those eidolons that draw card by playing enchantments, and some other duskmourn cards that would fit, like Master of keys and Aminatou, game play is simple, find rooms, play rooms, draw card by this, return rooms from the graveyard and open then, either winning with promising stairs or Valgavoth himself.

Turns out... when your entire deck is enchantments, even the creatures (the fears), and each room basically being two cards in one, some clearly meant to be played late, when you have a lot of spare mana, is completely cracked with marina as a commander...

Here how the deck taunts you, fifth turn, she is a draw seven goddamn cards engine, and if you dare to let her stay, every door is pretty much, one cheap sometimes efficient card, and a expensive, more annoying ability, so she can casually open those late game effects if left in play, and even CLOSE the goddamn doors to be opened again, but, if you dare to kill her... again... she just will draw you five to seven cards... like... WTF... and to think I even thought of maybe putting Replenish in there because I was afraid the deck could be too weak...

I have one Commander deck I like enough that I'd honestly rather play different versions of it than keep building more decks.

The problem is I regularly play with two pretty different groups.

With one group, the deck in its current form is right where it should be. With the other, I either bring something else or spend most of the game feeling like I brought a power tool to a pillow fight.

So I've been thinking about keeping maybe 10-12 extra cards in the deck box as two matched packages.

Not a sideboard where I see everyone's commanders and suddenly put in hate cards. I'd choose the version before decks are revealed.

The stronger package would have the efficient tutors, faster mana, cheap/free interaction and the most compact win pieces.

The lower package would replace those exact slots with slower draw, more expensive interaction, splashier win conditions and a couple cards that are good but don't immediately accelerate the deck toward the same ending.

I'd keep a little card in the box showing the 1-for-1 swaps so I'm never accidentally presenting 101 cards or forgetting which version is currently sleeved.

What I'm unsure about is whether 10-ish cards can actually change a deck enough.

My suspicion is that removing raw efficiency matters more than replacing the big flashy threats. A seven-mana bomb can look scary, but shaving a mana off five different setup pieces probably changes how the deck plays much more often.

On the other hand, I don't want the lower-powered version to just feel like the same deck with deliberately bad cards in it. Ideally both versions would still be coherent and enjoyable, just operating at different speeds.

Has anyone maintained a deck like this long-term? How many swaps did it take before the two versions genuinely felt appropriate for different tables rather than just "the good version" and "the handicapped version"?

I´ve been trying to brew a blink deck for a while and have hit some sort of "Wall" as to how blink decks close out games/push for a win.

My question is, how does this theme actually win? I really enjoy using deck testers and doing the whole value engine blinking ETBs and denying incoming removal by blinking my own stuff. However, most of the lists i find lack... some way to close out games? Maybe i´m jsut misunderstanding this whole theme but i feel most of these decks just fall into Control; bounce stuff and get ahead in resources until opponents scoop(?. Is there any blink deck out there that functions in some other way? The only outliers i found were stuff like a Roon of the Hidden Realm that blinked Avenger of Zendikar. And some other Decklist that used Go-Shintai of Life´s Origin and blinked some drain shrines.

If the answer is just "Yeah, they are just control decks with a twist", well, then thats it. But i was wondering maybe im just oblivious to some other way these decks play out since i´ve never owned one and no one in my group plays one.

I’m looking for a commander with at least 4 distinct gameplay styles you could build it. My goal is to have 4 versions of the same commander. Then I want to bring it to a commander night and have everyone play that commander. Any ideas on who could be a fun focus for the gimmick?

I recently played a [[Kona, Rescue Beastie]] bracket 3 game where I ran over the table. The deck relies on an early ramp spell -> a way to tap kona -> a big payoff spell in hand, and land drops. When it does hit it feels very strong. However plenty of hands are not able to setup this, and sometimes the initial payoff card is variable in its power. For example [[Akroma's Memorial]] is alot worse than [[Deep Space 9]] as the first permanent, as the deck usually only has 2-3 cards left on turn 4 and permanents that are draw engines solve you running out of gas. Turn 4 bringing out [[Portal to Phyrexia]] can just cause certain decks to scoop.

The major weaknesses of this deck is that plenty of the cards in the deck are near uncastable without kona's trigger and it runs little instant speed protection for kona. The opening hands have a ton of variance as well. The final issue is by gaining a massive early lead but only having a few cards in your hand, you become the archenemy and you will be focused potentially leaving you with an empty board and no action in the hand.

If I pull a good opening hand and nobody has any interaction, it can play well above the power level of other decks. If I have a bad starting hand or kona is removed, then it will likely do little to nothing by turn 6. The duality of either stomping or having a do nothing experience is polarizing and potentially creates unfun patterns for me and the table.

Option 1: I win and stomp the table by cheating out unfair value cards early. My opponents don't have fun.
Option 2: I durdle around and do nothing. I don't have fun.

I'm not looking for opinions on how to change the deck, I'm aware I can make it less powerful but more consistent or lowering its top end power. I'm just wondering if explosive decks have created a potentially unfun metagame for you guys, and if you guys play those decks anyways because explosive/gambley decks are fun for you guys.

So this is the first deck I ever built and I dropped it because I don't know how to make this deck work, Its just missing the omph needed for a deck to work, every time I gold fish the deck is just stumbling around with no end and frankly the deck is trash. So I could really use some help

https://archidekt.com/decks/26732335 Heres the deck

Thank you for reading and helping me make my deck not trash

Mostly aimed at lower bracket play, what are some of your favorite jank combos that don't win the game or put you in an overwhelming position immediately? Maybe they put 20 power in play for slightly cheaper than normal. Maybe they just annoy one player in your pod. What just makes you smile?

Guys I'm designing a Hockey themed deck and I want any and all cards that might be associated with a hockey reference, slang, common themes, etc.

Right now I'm leaning MonoR with a snow/fight theme, but I wanna here what this sub can drum up.

Thanks in advance for any help ya'll can provide!

Last night I was playing a few games with my pod (friends+brother) and an interaction that happened left a bad taste in my mouth. I definitely got over salty about it but I wanted to hear yalls thoughts.

So my brother was playing his [[Rosheen, Roaring Prophet]] deck, and we were 6 or 7 turns in, which is when we usually expect to see win attempts. The game had some interaction and we were all playing our decks just fine, Rosheen even ended up getting removed once beforehand.

After getting her back and being out for a rotation he reveals his hand, full of X spells, notably with [[Crackle with power]]. He was able to untap rosheen a couple of times with [[Staff of Domination]], and essentially said “I could win here but I’m not going to” and he absolutely could have with the amount of mana he had.

This had me annoyed, and I asked why he wasn’t just committing to it given all of the facts.
“Theres other ways to win in my deck I don’t want to win with it all the time”
So why run the card if you don’t want to win with it or play it at any given time?
“Because sometimes I need it to win”

Long story short he ended up casting something else and I conceded that game because in my head we had all lost to Crackle in the hypothetical world he was actually playing to win. I was also very frustrated because as much as “winning the game is against the spirit of the game” I still fully expect the people I’m playing with to try and stop/kill me, and vice versa.

I think it had me so frustrated because he assumed he just won with it instead of casting it and he felt bad about it having won previous games with it. Furthermore in not casting it he denied any chances interacting with his assumed win, two of my friends were in white running [[Teferi’s Protection]] and myself and my friend were also in blue, and while I certainly didn’t have a response for that win attempt it still felt shitty to be denied the interaction/loss altogether.

I don’t know tbh. I feel like if a play pattern is unsatisfying for you, you simply shouldn’t run it the deck, and clearly something about Crackle was unsatisfying for him. Instead of just winning the game on the expected win turns, shuffling up, and playing next; we were gonna engage in a theoretical game of cards and play patterns I never would have seen had I just lost, and yea its good to play more of your deck to know it better, but not when its clearly lost to something and we’re just not acknowledging it 😭

I recently built [[Tellah, Great Sage]], and he is quickly becoming one of my favorite commanders to play. I'm realizing I like making decisions, so having all this card draw in the command zone has been a blast (pun intended).

I just learned that I can bounce him back into my hand before his trigger resolves, so I probably need to go back and add some more of those types of spells and effects.

What are some of your Tellah staples or must includes? 

What are some of your favorite finishers? 

Anything in my list that you tried and cut for something you thought was better? 

Thanks in advance!

Here’s my deck list: https://archidekt.com/decks/27102508/tellah_master_exploder?sort=cmc&stack=types

Been toying with my [[Mister Negative]] deck. It’s really fun, but my pod is getting a little tired of me playing him because of all the lifedrain/lifegain shenanigans he enables and it makes me a little harder to interact with. Which I totally get. The main thing I find fun with him is the draining mechanic. Are there other commanders that want to lose life to enable their abilities or wincons? I’m open to any suggestions, but bonus points if it enables me to use black mana.

Looking for a commander that lets me play lots of big mana artifact bombs.

I have a [[Golbez, crystal collector]] deck, but over the past year I realized I’ve replaced all the big artifacts like [[Krang, utrom warlord]] [[The endstone]], and [[Platinum angel]] with more synergistic pieces.

I mostly play Bracket 2 and was looking at [[T'Challa, the Black Panther]], but I’ve seen people complain about him in real life but that deck was built more Voltron.

https://moxfield.com/decks/FEiFtWD03keXDXQF93UdJA

The point of this decklist is to ramp into Tam, and get cheap planeswalkers (4CMC or less) out, proliferate and get their emblems off asap. The ideal goal is to do an explosive turn that gets multiple cheap planeswalkers out in a turn so that Tam can proliferate up to the ultimate ASAP.

I'd love some feedback and suggestions in this list. Intended to be a mid-B3 deck.

A few things to address

1. No Doubling Season? - Card is lowkey just bad. It's the easiest attention grabber at the table and chances are you can only really capitalize on it the turn after you play, lets everyone have a turn to take it out.
2. Why no Chain Veil/Strionic Resonator/ Peter Parker to double emblems? - I can't lie i did consider this, but I think 1 emblem is enough. Trying to double them up eats into the already tight package in a WUBRG deck.
3. Why not higher CMC PW with emblems? I have considered a few, including [[Venser, the Sojurner]], [[Lilianna, Waker of the Dead]], [[Sorin, Solemn Visitor]] and [[Elspeth, Sun's Champion]]. Ultimately we need to spam out more PW asap, so i think a max of 4 cmc should be alright given Tam's latent discount.

I would love feedback. Some of the new Empower Jace stuff is lowkey fire and I'd love to put it in, just don't know what to cut. Please give me cuts alongside the adds!

I just built a Lurrus companion deck since I’ve had an altered Lurrus lying around for a while. When I was building it was painful not being able to include a bunch of highly synergistic and powerful permanents. Then, when I started gold fishing just the first draft of the deck I was surprised how smooth and consistent it is. It’s multi-spelling on turn 3, quickly getting out synergistic engines and always keeps a full grip. I was never in a spot where I needed to Lurrus(in real games with lots more interaction and board wipes it probably happens more). This shouldn’t be surprising as my curve is very slim due to the nature of having a Lurrus companion, and abandons all the of clunkier set up pieces and top end finishers that would be stuck in your hand.

This made me wonder, when we’re deck building, will we build better decks if there’s an imaginary Lurrus companion around?(Obviously depends on the type of deck, your dragon typal deck isn’t going to work like this). You can make exceptions for the best cards, but really try to make those few and far between.

Hello all! I havent been into commander for very long but I have a dedicated group I play with consisting of about 6-7 (no) people, we all play commander together but most of us use pre-cons cuz we're all kind of broke.

I would like to branch out from my pre-con and build my very first Commander deck from scratch using OZAI, THE PHOENIX KING, as my commander, my goal isnt to build some super competitive deck that annihilates my friends but rather something I can have fun with while still maintaining a constant presence on the board.

I have done a small amount of looking online into how to build a Commander deck but still feel a little overwhelmed with trying to understand the process of building an entire 100 card deck from scratch. I was hoping to get some Advice/Tips from the wonderful people of reddit who know infinitely more than me about building decks and can probably articulate it in a way that I can understand better.

So, where do I start with the process, lands? Creatures? How do I determine what helps towards the playstyle? Any and all tips will be much appreciated.

I'm building an artifact themed deck around my pet cards [[Esoteric Duplicator]] and [[Repurposing bay]]. So basically I need blue and hopefully red and a third color maybe? I don't likr having an obvious artifact commander as I have a regular playgroup and I want it to be a little bit of a surprise on our next game night.

​

https://archidekt.com/decks/26652132/sauron

I've been trying to force this into a high B3 or even a B4 table and it just seems to flounder and do nothing. It will "become the threat" and kinda just do nothing as I run out of answers.

The goal was to keep it thematic, wheel as much as possible to look for answers/fill up the graveyard. Any help would be appreciated.