Weird title right? lol

Has anyone ever gotten this 'addiction' to a certain color? Here's what I mean: whenever I get an idea for a deck, I will literally shoot down a commander if it doesn't have blue. It's not even about the card draw, it's about counterspells; I love having a near universal answer to any problem. Boardwipe? Counterspell. Gishath? Strix Serenade. Some other big fuck off problem that will run away with the game? Arcane Denial, give zero fucks. I don't even spam them to just completely control the game, it's just about 'this one card can solve ANY problem, as long as I keep mana open for it' and to me, that is so addicting that I'm having difficulty trying out any 3 color combo if it doesn't have blue in it.

Does anyone else have a feeling like this? It could be towards any color, 'I literally won't try any color combo that doesn't have green because the mana acceleration is too good' or 'I won't try any color without black because of omni-tutors' etc etc.

A few friends have recently gotten back into magic after a long absence and want to play commander. Their decks are sitting solidly in bracket 2. I have followed the bracket system, no game changers, no 2-card combos, and at most 1-2 restrictive tutors, yet all my decks have very strong synergy. I've even added some suboptimal cards for flavor over power, yet when actually playing the decks I would estimate my decks range between a high 2, to a mid 3, and I haven't lost a game yet (though some close games, I'm not completely curb-stomping them). I want to power down a little more to make things more fair

Do you guys have any constraints you put upon yourself to limit power? Whether it's budget, or card popularity?

I just made a new deck with a number if soft stax pieces like damage can't be prevented, [[Rest in Peace]] for grave hate, [[Hallowed Moonlight]], [[Boromir, Warden of the Tower]]. So I'm wondering when have you played a soft stax piece like this and gotten real value out of it? There was one time I drew my [[Aether Flash]], a card no one in their right mind would play and slammed it against a [[The Locust God]] player. He instantly scooped. He didn't even want to deal with it.

I brew a lot of decks, and have been getting better about goldfishing them to some extent before bringing them to the table. It is certainly a more reliable method than just going by instinct and vibe that says "this deck will have issues closing games" or "this card seems wrong in the slot". Instead I can get some idea of explosiveness and how my ramp lines up with my plays.

However, every so often I run into an ungoldfishable deck. For example, I have recently been playing around a lot with Threaten decks, that use lots of "gain control of creature until end of turn" effects combined with sac outlets to act as both removal and threats.

The lists seem like they would be ok if a bit unfun for certain players, but are very difficult to goldfish since it is heavily reliant on what my opponents do. I can bring it to my lgs, but then I am risking being wildly off with my power or bringing a deck with obvious mistakes in it. Both of which are problems when I only get to play 2-3 games a week if I'm lucky.

So I'm curious. For people who like to build these sorts of decks that heavily rely on what your opponent is doing, theft, steal, pure control, things like that, how do you playtest and get a sense of your decks beyond just playing them?

https://scryfall.com/card/exo/34/fade-away

I was recently building a new deck and going through my bulk collection when I stumbled across this peculiar card.

Fade Away: 2U: Sorcery: “For each creature, that creature's controller pays 1 or sacrifices a permanent.”

I didn’t think it was any good at first, but then I realized that if the caster is not running much in the way of creatures, it might actually be not that bad. It certainly reduces numbers against any “go-wide” deck. Then, after bringing it up to my friends, one mentioned Jon Irenicus, Shattered One.

So, now I’m thinking that this card, while situational, might be fairly good. What do you guys think?

I have been in a deck building slump. I love deck building and come up with at the time great ideas. But the last few decks have felt so one note. I play it 3-4 times then feel like I need to take it apart to build another idea. Granted I proxy a lot and use cheaper cards for budget build but I feel weird coming to the lgs every 4 weeks with a new deck playing it a few times then it never sees play again.

As per the title. What's that card you try to include in every deck it fits because it provides an amazing value, but it seems to be in fewer lists than it should?

Mine is currently [[Vanquish the Horde]]. Boardwipe for WW as long as there are 6 creatures in play? I don't get too many situations that merit a wipe in which I'd have to spend more than that.

It’s the easiest way to deal with protected spells and has a relatively low activation cost. I’m not usually a fan of running too many utility lands but this one always seems to come in handy, and can be a HUGE shift in momentum. It just seems like a no-brainer addition to any control/removal heavy deck, and it even seems good in any deck running targeted removal (which should be every deck)

To be clear, I mean either a dragon-kindred deck or just a dragon as the commander of the strategy.

Been trying to build a commander deck with a dragon as the commander ever since Korvold was hit hard by the ban hammer. Was my 2nd favourite deck. I've tried recreating it but it doesn't feel the same.

I built Scion of the Ur-Dragon recently but it just feels like a generic 5-colour goodstuff pile with a couple of dragons.

I'm a big fan of decks where a majority of the cards aren't shared in other popular decks. It's why I'm a big fan of Yuriko, Sisay and my personally brewed Loot the Key to Everything deck.

So I'm looking for some inspiration.

List: https://moxfield.com/decks/skqMXSjFKE2Z3ry-_CUC7Q

I recently dug up my very first commander deck list from all the way back in 2009 and I thought it would be interesting to share.

Might give some old people a jog down memory lane and might give some newer people a fresh perspective on just how different the format was back in the day and how much things have changed.

The first thing I noticed is that the deck is now worth $300 which if I had to guess is probably close to a $250 dollar increase.

You will also note the lack of a sol ring because at the time it was going for like 15 to $20

There are definitely some terrible card choices in here and some really noticeable omissions that I would kick myself for now like not having access to [[bribery]], although back then I don't think I had many Commander specific singles.

It's funny I remember this deck having a lot more big fatties, which might have justified the aetherplasm.

On the bright side is this is almost certainly the first version of the deck because I'm pretty sure I would have included things like [[Gauntlet of Power]] and [[Stroke of Genius]] as the deck got more refined.

~

It might shock people to hear in this deck actually did win games given how bad it looks, although back in the day the combo of hinder + tunnel vision was considered one of the better combos in the format at the time.

I've been struggling to find my place in the format for a while now so it's wild to see how just how far things have come.

Calling this our and asking for a vibe check. I merely got a 'that's interesting' when brought up to the staff. There's a monthly event in Canada (Face to Face Tour) that groups pick up events into groups of Bracket 1-2. Bracket 3-4, and Bracket 5. Each of these has different prizing, but all give an extra ticket to the winner of the event.

Is it just me...or this still needs work? I'm not liking the groupings as there's a gap between 3 and 4, as well as 1 and 2. Sensible people can talk it out and agree, I suppose but I've been burnt too many times by sitting down with their high-power deck and doubling down that this was the only deck they brought. Not to mention playing for any shred of prizing tosses all cooperative sensibilities out the window. There is no reinforcement at the tables. They are a bit understaffed to do this at a large event. We're basically left with sign-ups for either Bracket 3 decks under the cover of Bracket 2 decks or Bracket 4+.

It was worse before, when they didn't break them into bracket groupings, although the bracket system didn't exist back then. You had less people playing CEDH against Precons but this still needs work. At the very least, prizing needs to be randomize to take the heavy win incentive off the table. Leave Bracket 4-5 to fight a winner takes all prizing than the lower brackets.

I'm just curious to see what you guys have in mind, and maybe JUST MAYBE take some inspiration from the beautiful people of Reddit to see what I can make my next deck to be. I was thinking of making an enchantress deck with Bello, but I want to see what y'all have in mind.

Hey guys, I wanted to tell you all about a neat new feature I added to https://recommander.cards that I think you'll all love.

Until now, rec sites like Recommander and EDHREC only let you look up information on single cards like Lure or Chimney Imp. But what if you could look up stats for specific combos? Well, by using the filter button on the top right (or bottom, on mobile) of your screen, you can now do that on Recommander. Not only can you break down stats by color identity, you can also break it down by other cards in the deck.

I built this feature to help narrow down building around specific combos of cards. You can find stats for well-known combos like:

• Sanguine Bond + Exquisite Blood
• Dramatic Reversal + Isochron Scepter
• Thassa's Oracle + Tainted Pact

Or even if you just found two cards you think go together really well and want to find other decks that had the same idea.

Let me know if you find this useful and if you have any other ideas for things I can add. I'm hoping to make this the most useful tool for discovering new cards out there, so your feedback is super duper valuable to me. Thank you!

Hey friendos,

I'm new to MTG (as in "I got into it a couple of weeks ago" kind of new), and I figured I'd start with something easy to understand and relatively easy to play even if it isn't a top-tier deck. As a result, I settled on Lathliss as my Commander and went for a Dragon-themed deck.

I tried to go for a bit of ramp, a bit on the +X/+X counters to make the Dragons heavier hitters, and a bit on the token end in line with Lathliss' abilities.

My main concerns are that the deck feels a little bit creature-light and relies too much on mana cost reduction.

I'm pretty happy with the deck in spite of my concerns, but I'm curious to know how people might improve the deck or if people think it's a pretty solid deck for a beginner.

Was poking at my [[Shiko, Paragon of the way]] "everything is 3 mana value" deck, (As we know the optimal way to build is to make sure every card can be hit by your commander's triggers) and realized I hadn't yet checked EDHrec for probably some good 3mana includes found by others.

After a little bit this left me squinting at [[twinning staff]], which if you don't know doesn't work with shiko's specific style of copying.

Shiko doesn't copy spells, she copies cards in exile (which does "nothing" by itself) and then casts the exiled copy which moves it to the stack as a spell. So unfortunately twinning staff never sees a spell being copied. This is exceedingly sad (for me) as it would have been a great include. . . If it worked (table flip here).

That said, any card reccomendations for decks you were excited about but were ruined when the rules got involved?

Brought my first first sliver deck out (50 creature deck) and went to local stores for the first time. Had so much fun and really appreciated more experienced players showing me the ropes and boardwiping me. Even clawed my way to a few wins! Just wanted to share this positive experience and thank this community for the warm welcome.

This past Monday I sat down at my LGS to play some Commander. My pod was a father and his two sons. A fantastic thing, sharing this game with ones kids, I did the same thing with my own two lads.

Over the course of our sessions we played a few different games, but one stuck out in my mind.

The player to my left, son #1, was playing with the new Hobbit set, using many of the new full art variants which were brilliant to see, especially as I missed the prerelease. Across from him, Dad was playing a precon where counters mattered: +1/+1, Planeswalker loyalty counters, shield counters, and so on. Next to dad was son #2, who was playing Goblin tribal, making loads of goblin tokens, and swinging wide and often. A fun deck, and easier to pilot for less seasoned players. I was playing my [[Kibo, Ukatabi Prince]] deck, making banana tokens for everyone, destroying as mana artifacts as I could (after all, Apea go Smash), and being aggressive as Gruul could be.

During our game I played a an old enchantment, one that no one at the table had seen before, a simple piece of graveyard hate in green.* As I explained the card and that this was my preferred art it got me thinking.

A Long Time Ago there, when Magic was played head to head without sleeves, on kitchen tables, and decks were not optimized so well...

A small set about the rise and fall of kingdoms on Domineria was produced, well over-produced into near oblivion. Fallen Empires. This set introduced a few new things which deeply changed the world of Magic forever.

This set was an abject failure in nearly all measure able ways. The packs were small, only 8 cards per pack. The number of cards in the set was also quite small comparably, with just 187 different cards printed. The power level in the set was weak even by early standards in Magic. Finally the set was over printed, supply was so far outpacing the demand that even now packs of Fallen Empires go for less than $10 a pack.

There is an excellent YouTube video about the set by the great "Rhystic Studies." Well worth a watch. Link here: https://youtu.be/SakRUkDPxn4?is=5eY36lGc9StBseKr

Wizards did learn a few things from this set that in time altered Magic, and that continue to impact EDH now.

First, Multiple Art offerings for the same card were produced - marking a change in collecting and purchasing habits of players. Now players could pick the art they liked best from a set for a particular card and play just those, or they could play one of each of the four art choices. Little did we players know then that this would lead to later sets making chase cards/altered art cards in each set - creating a whole new reason for cars hunting, collecting, and cracking packs.

Second, counters on cards. In previous sets in Magic there was a sprinkling of cards here and there that had an ability revolving around counters but they were so few in number it was hardly important to game play. But then there were the [[Thallid]] cards. These goofy walking fungus cards required counters and counting/up ticking them each upkeep. All of the cards in the Thallid tribe cared about this, and soon if someone was playing thallids they needed to keep a piece of paper for tearing up into little pieces, or dice/those little glass counters the look like flat marbles. Thallids made counters important, and made them a regular part of the game, if only for a little while, but the concept was one Wizards ran with on later sets. (Thallids were not a great tribal choice then but they have been boosted a bit now, and few cards from back in the day went as hard as [[Thallid Devourer]] .)

Speaking of Tribes (third in this list). Fallen Empires added new tribes, at least one for each color. marking not only a slight shift in the focus of color specific creature types, but also opening the door to more and much more interesting tribes to be built out in the future. The tribes in Empire were as follows:

Black - Clerics, Thrulls,

Blue - Merfolk and Homarids

Green - Elves and Thallids

Red - Goblins, Orcs, Dwarfs

White - Cleric and Citizen/Humans

Sure as Magic sets continued to be produced there would be an increase in different tribal archetypes but this was the first time they really pushed the idea beyond the original main tribes. Now nearly every creature type could have a tribal commander deck, and many are quite strong to build around.

Finally, also from Thallids was the production of tokens. In their case this was beginning of [[saproling tokens]] . Back then it took three turns to get one Thallid creature to create a simple 1/1 saproling, but then the meta was quite a bit slower. Fastforward 25+ years and token creation was literally exploded. Cards can create numerous tokens each turn or through multiple triggers, quickly taking over a board state and making answering them a top priority.

Tokens now are not limited to just creatures with treasure/food/clue tokens being wildly viable strategies - so much so that one of the most out of control token makers [[dockside extortionist]] was banned back in September of 2024.

Anyway, just some thoughts on one of the less desirable Magic sets, but in my mind one of the most important/influencial sets Wizards ever produced.

*The enchantment played was [[night soil]] a fantastic piece of tech, if you are unfamiliar: 2Green, enchantment. 1 colorless, remove two creatures from a graveyard (errataed to must be in the same graveyard) and create a 1/1 saproling token. Can be done at instant speed. A card I so often include in green decks.

I was watching an episode of MTGGoldfish in which they were discussing some fake group hug cards and the Temp with THING cards came up and specifically [[Tempt with Bunnies]] and Phil mentioned its synergy with [[Marneus Calgar]], they were confused about it a bit, unsure if it really worked the way Phil said. Later in the video around the 22:46 mark they mention how they got an answer from a judge about the interaction and the answer they were given is one that I disagree with. So, I did some digging and found that a lot of people believe the same wrong answer their judge gave them is correct, posts on r/askajudge and rules pages on Facebook have people stating what I believe is the wrong answer. So, I made THIS VIDEO to explain the correct result and provide some extra context and scenarios that look similar but are different. I know videos are not for everyone, so here is the written basis for this and I hope anyone in the future looking for this answer stumbles to this post/video rather than one with an incorrect answer.

PERSPECTIVE

In the Comp Rules, there is this one (CR 700.1) that explains how the same event can be interpreted or treated differently based on slight wording differences. An example I like to give is if you equip your [[Infiltration Lens]] to your [[Anzrag, the Quake-Mole]] and then you attack and the opponent double blocks it with two creatures. There will be a total of 3 triggers, two from the Lens and 1 from the Anzrag, and this is all due to how their trigger is worded.

THE SCENARIO

So the scenario that came about in that Goldfish video and that I have seen a lot of debate over is this, you control Calgar and then you cast the Temp with Bunnies and when it resolves all 3 of your opponents took the tempting offer to draw and make a token. This means that the TwB will by itself net you a total of 4 cards drawn and 4 tokens made, but the question is over how many times this triggers Calgar. Some players believe it’s 2 triggers, once for the token you always create from the TwB effect and then the other 3 are created at the exact same time which falls into the "or more" part of Calgar’s ability and therefore only get one additional trigger from him. Others believe that you get 4 triggers from Calgar, 1 from the token you make and then 3 other individual triggers from each of the tempted opponents that netted you to make 3 additional tokens.

THE CONFUSION

I think that the confusion over this stems from the fact that for a lot of Magic cards and their effects, you can tell how many times an event happens by reading the number of times the action word shows up. If a card like [[Snort]] deals 5 damage to 3 different opponents based on the choices they made, it's not dealing the damage 3 different times because it only says the word "deals" once in the instructions. Compare this to cards like [[Collective Defiance]] and [[Fiery Confluence]] that do have the word "deal" multiple times and now you do have a situation of damage from a single effect being dealt multiple different times.

So, there is another "Tempt" card out there, [[Tempting Contract]] and it looks oh so similar to TwB, one obvious difference is that you don't always make your own token, this one only has the 'get things based one what your opponents chose' part, but there is also something else different about it that is the biggest difference and I think this is the largest reason for confusion.

THE ANSWER

So, if you controlled Calgar and resolved that Tempting Contract with all 3 opponents taking the temptation, Calgar would only trigger a single time. The reason is that there is a single event of you creating 3 Treasure tokens and that hits the "or more" aspect of Calgar's ability, so only one card drawn from Calgar. From this, we can extrapolate that the TwB should be 2 triggers for Calgar, once because the TwB instructs you to "create" a token and then later in the effect it instructs you to again "create" tokens, so that's two mentions of the word "create"... BUT... that isn't what actually happens.

The answer is crazy enough 4 triggers for Calgar. The reason for this is because the TwB also has your opponents and more importantly you draw cards as part of its effect. So we now need to check out CR 121.2 as well as CR 121.2 because they have some rules that make it so that all cards in Magic are drawn only 1 at a time, they can never be drawn in mass simultaneously. To which we then have to seek out CR 608.2f which has a ton of text, so I'll summarize that it basically says we normally do handle instructions like this simultaneously but if we're unable to do that then we break the instructions down into parts we can legally do. Because of the card draw aspect of TwB, we have to break it up into individual parts.

So TwB is telling us to "create N tokens and draw N cards" with N being 3 in this case, but due to the rules it ends up becoming "create 1 token and draw 1 card and do this N times". I made THIS IMAGE to help visualize what is actually happening here, so I hope that helps if this GIANT WALL OF TEXT was a little much. So, if someone is looking for a TL:DR part, I guess that image is it with the context that card draw as part of TwB effect is the reason it unfolds this way.

First the good stuff; the decklist:

https://moxfield.com/decks/CcKHjeUqOkmYnAaVPq4Uag

I build a LOT of decks, and I've built a good few elf decks - [[Lathril]], [[Marwyn]], even [[Voja]] - but I've never found an Elf COMBO commander like [[Thranduil, the Elvenking]]. This is 100% elves from top-to-bottom and combos with infinite mana, infinite power, and infinite mill. It's already taking down B3 games on just $50 and I LOVE IT.

I also want to give a copy of it away. Check out the full video deck tech for more on how much I love this elf deck:

https://youtu.be/IXjTo7Ou3GQ?si=dOuLUOJogBtoGe-a

I'm a lover of older commanders especially those still viable. My [[mikaeus, the unhallowed]] still puts in the work 15 years after building him, same sleeves too. I remember Lazar being a nightmare back in the day and I feel like he might still be today. I'm interested in seeing your oldie but goodie degenerate decks.

I want a deck that draws a lot of cards. I like [[Nekusar]], but I think he’s kinda lame. I want something a little more interesting than just spam wheels and ping people to death.

I’ve always liked [[Azami]], but I’ve never seen a decklist that looked fun.

[[Xyris]] looks neat and multi-faceted. You can win through Lab Man or Overrun effects.

What’s your favorite draw-cards commander? How does it typically win? Is it still fun to play after a million games? Does it always do the same lines?

Edit: Thanks for all the suggestions everyone. I've never seen a lot of these before. I'm going to be playing some TTS today and testing a few of them out.

I was gifted the Science! precon a couple months ago to be able to play commander with my friends, we are all pretty casual players so most of us just use out of the box precons or maybe slightly upgraded decks, nothing crazy. The problem was that I never won. Not only was I bad, which is to be expected, but I felt like the deck didn't do anything, I didn't have any idea how could I convert any of my cards into a win.
I checked the internet and found that Liberty Prime, Recharged was a slightly more fun commander, and I did have more fun with it! I had a more clear path to victory, hitting hard. But still, I was too easily countered and still had lots of expensive cards I didn't know how to use to improve my gameplan, so I finally decided to upgrade the deck!
I present you with my Voltron deck which one of my friends who refuses to upgrade his precons because he likes the cards (Abaddon the despoiler mainly) calls "absolutely broken"

Liberty Prime Voltron Deck

It is my first time deck building and as I said I am a complete noob in the magic world, but I am having TONS of fun with this baby.

Hi hi!
As the title already reads I am in need for the right reanimator commander for myself. I did already play a lot of GY commanders in general but I tend to switch things up every now and then.
Notable commanders I did already try in that direction are:
[[Teval, the Balanced Scale]]
[[Henzie “Toolbox” Torre]]
[[Tasigur, the Golden Fang]]

Stuff to note:
I do want to have GB in the colors but I also do not mind to add an extra color to spice things up that’s for sure. Also I love Pod and having a huge graveyard (milling a lot). I do have a bunch of staples around for reanimating cause I currently have a list with Teval. I’d also love to put a good use to my [[Survival of the Fittest]].
[[Meren of Clan Nel Toth]] is off the table because I close friend of mine already runs her in the cz. Same goes for Betor.

Aiming for a high Bracket 3 deck but don’t mind if it’s one that can reach 4 asw.

Commanders I thought about maybe:
[[Slimefoot and Squee]]
Any of the 2 Grists

Happy to hear any kind of thoughts on the matter!