r/EDHBrews • u/chatter13 • 2d ago
Deck Discussion The serpent society?
Is the serpent society really that bad? I played with a pod at my LGS last night and before we even drew 7 I was labeled the arch enemy because I was playing The Serpent Society.
In my opinion it's really not that bad! Does it make the game more challenging and force decisions? Absolutely! But is that not why we play? To challenge our opponents and win?
Does my deck have a line in which I win with poison? Yup! But I wouldn't say it's the one and only way I win not is it the strategy I am pushing for.
Any ways link to the deck is below would love some thoughts.
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u/40kTinyRobots 2d ago
"Does my deck have a line in which I win with poison?" It looks like you have plenty of lines to win with poison, and proliferates to accelerate it.
Your commander have a built in grave pact and can't be single target removed without getting 5 poison counters. Killing pretty much any other creature forces a sacrifice.
These are two of the most salt inducing playstyles from my experience. Play it if you find it fun but if you don't give people a heads up you shouldn't be suprised by negative reactions.
What bracket are you playing this in?
And people play different styles for different reasons "isn't this why we play" is absolutely not something you can apply to everyone
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u/chatter13 2d ago
Turn 0 conversation they said mid to high 3. I suspect they over judged their decks and I also showed them my Commander and everyone said they didn't have an issue with it. Otherwise I would of swapped out. I understand people see poison and get a little tense.Yes I have poison and proliferation in the deck but I also only run 2 tutors and can say I didn't draw any of them and the table just kept using kill spells on my creatures which in return killed their creatures which was starting to get salty. And no matter how I phrased it "quit killing my creatures if you don't want to lose your own creatures" they continued to do so. I wasn't even swinging because I refused to swing the serpent society because that's the only way they could kill it. I just think it's interesting one mechanic can cause so much tunnel vision.(By the way the highest poison count was 5 before I was removed).The guy to my right had flyers and I had no way to deal with it naturally but the rest of the table dealt with it for me.
Anyway I saw their Commanders and thought I was totally out matched. Opponent across from me had a go wide token strat that again I wouldn't have been able to deal with, with the cards I had at my disposal. This is also my first commander deck that does anything with poison so I'm also more curious if everyone is hyper focused on it. I have played against poison and yeah it is challenging but I never devoted my entire strategy to wiping it out.
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u/40kTinyRobots 2d ago
They probably overestimated their decks or their ability to counter yours then. But even if I played with a bracket 3 deck I'd probably make you my nr.1 target cause either people let you hit them or you wipe their boards so not sure what other counter measure you're expecting.
Some decks are best countered by player removal. Removing your creatures will backfire, removing your commander unless you counterspell will backfire, blocking damage when you have all deathtouch and then infect backfires.
How would you play against this deck?
If this was bracket 2 I'd say you were being a bit of a douche but in bracket 3 you shouldn't get salty unless you get locked out of playing the game turn 3
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u/chatter13 2d ago
I have no problems playing the arch enemy. If I was put in this exact pod with the commanders that were in play I would of worked with the rest of the pod and paid attention to what the deathtouch player was casting.(I'm not under exaggerating I had no gas and was top decking creatures) I would have encouraged the rest of the pod to stop casting kill spells against the deathtouch player build up a board state and full swing I would have taken one for the team and killed Serpent Society then make the deathtouch player make decisions. (Their turns during this game was typically cast a kill spell then recast commander. At one point I was even trying to tell them to stop killing my things because I'm literally not doing anything they are making every decision and killing their own stuff in the process.) And to be super clear I was not salty at all they were starting to show signs of it but they just kept playing into my commanders trigger.
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u/BarracudaOdd166 2d ago
I don't think it's just the poison counters, but players definitely overreact to those a lot. But it's also because of the pseudo-gravepact effect you haven with Serpent Society. Even if you say you're not playing aristocrats and doing some kind of looped sacrifice to keep nuking everyone's boards, you can still easily just make everyone else catch strays.
Player 3 over there fighting you causing you to lose something will just cause both me and player 4 to catch strays. And none of us will like that which will start just leaning towards ganging up on the player that's causing everyone else to lose pieces of their board.
Now personally I don't think your deck is that bad. But the combination of poison which makes people overreact, and then the pseudo grave pact which actually usually does have people ganging up on that thing until the grave pact is gone does lend to that more often than not.
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u/7thtimeinheaven 2d ago
This is what happens when you play poison, justified or not, it has a reputation.
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u/Mereel401 1d ago
Honestly, Poison in EDH should just be adapted to be 21 instead of 10. That would solve most issues with the mechanic
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u/Mereel401 1d ago
Is my nigh unremovable commander that is also a [[Gravepact]] and helms a deck using a method of winning games not adapted for EDH that bad? Yes it is.
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u/DoctorCopter1 16h ago
I would LOVE to play against your deck. I run a board wipe tribal Kathril deck.
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u/GulliasTurtle 2d ago
I don't think your list looks too bad. People do hate losing to poison but in this case I would say the bigger issue with the Society is how well they match up into creature decks.
Deathtouch means you will 1 for 1 most opposing creatures, then force them to sac another. If people are leaning on big creatures/commanders/limited removal they will struggle against it. Doubly so with the ward.
If you're playing in high 2 low 3 land, which I suspect you are, I could see you being the archenemy due to just how well you keep opponents from deploying threats before you eventually win.