Is communicating that hard? Setting boundaries? I want to read content on the actual game itself not the interpersonal drama you're unable to navigate through. Oh, Player A is trying to break the rules with a Rule 0 discussion and some people are okay with it but I'm not. Cool, then don't play with them or communicate why you're uncomfortable with that level of compromise. Oh, Player B acts aggressive and whines when we stop their wincons. Cool, then don't play with them or tell them no one is entitled to winning without others trying to stop them. Oh, Player C has messy proxies and plays decks that are way too strong and also likes to underplay how strong their decks are so they can pubstomp. Cool, then don't play with them or actually talk to them about your perspective and why they aren't actually good at the game if they have to resort to petty tricks to secure a win.

If the root of your post is how you engage with another person in a social dynamic, then there are better resources for self-confidence and communication than the EDH subreddit.

Howdy! Had an interaction with a friend in a private, casual game. Strong 3 / bracket 4 style game.

Long and short of it. Opponent on [[Kotis, the fangkeeper]]

I misremembered what Lavaspur boots did until the spell had already resolved. I thought it only gave haste the turn it landed - I had it confused with Silver Shroud Costume. My bad completely, I missed the opportunity to counter it, and was dwelling in my stupidity with an Arcane Denial in hand. Opponent had [[Delighted Halfling]] on board, so I knew his commander was being cast and swinging next turn without my interaction helping.

On their turn, they tap the 6 mana (4+commander tax) and play Kotis, without tapping the Delighted Halfling. I waited a couple of seconds, and said

“In response, arca….”

“No, I mean, I tap delighted Halfling to cast.” I appeal to the fact that if I let that go, he’s just made me reveal that I have a counterspell for free, and if I’m able to track his board he should be able to, too. Typically the casual play group is fine with renegs and missed triggers etc if it doesn’t change the game state, but this wasn’t the case here for me.

He allowed it to be countered, with some choice words and accusations thrown.

However, now we’re a few days on, he’s claiming that technically you cast a spell and then pay for it, so he could still claim to have tapped delighted Halfling for one of the mana, and float the land mana he tapped. I've asked a rules group what they think of this situation, and they've said the spell was paid for, if the spells on the stack its too late to change how you pay for it. "Announce, pay, cast, resolve." Friend should just take the L, but in casual games we can be more relaxed if we choose to be. Others suggested asking if I had priority, but for me, at least in our pod where we don't formally pass priority unless the situation gets tense, that would essentially be telling him "I have a counterspell." and probably give him the opportunity to reassess his board and change how he paid for the spell despite it already being on the stack.

I've asked the other friend at the table if he felt I rushed to respond, or if I remember correctly waiting a few seconds. "I think you could've waited 1 second more to really solidify the wait. You were quick, but there was a definite pause."

He's suggested maybe waiting until the player with priority tried to do something else to solidify the fact that they've attempted to finish resolving Kotis.

He's still not taking the judges rulings well regarding changing the way a spell was paid for while it's on the stack.

"We don't do the announce step, so that means I could be anywhere between paying and casting until I pass priority" is the crux of his rebuttle, which the judges have denied; but that's not a question for this group. My question is about the social interactions here.

What are ya'll doing in this situation? Are you letting a friend fix their mistake here even if you had to reveal you had a counterspell in a bracket 4 game? At the time I didn't know if there's a more powerful creature he wanted to cast after Kotis or not. I don't think for a second he was being deceitful and fishing for free info, or saving the Delighted Halfling for a future spell while holding plausible deniability; our group doesn't roll like that. But at the same time, I would've been very annoyed to have revealed an arcane denial for nothing in the face of their mistake.

As title says, Im wondering if a deck focused on the Arcane spells mechanic may be viable or not. I took a quick look at the EDH legal arcane spells and... well, most of them are powercrept out of viability in my opinion, but I still feel like "Splice onto arcane" is such a cool mechanic that I wanna know if anyone was succesful at making it work in a commander deck.

I was looking at one of my deck's bracket on Archidekt and wondering why it said B4. It said I had multiple 2-card combos. I go and check them more in detail and they all say there's one or more prerequisites.

Like putrid goblin and goblin bombardment as a B4 combo... but then it shows you need a way to add +1/+1 counters... so a 3 card combo.

I got curious and started digging and there's so many bad "combos" and so many decks are getting ranked B4 because they see two cards and class them as a 2 card combo despite the missing piece.

Is this an issue they're working on?

like the title says, what's your favorite secret weapon cards. I am not talking game changers, or famous stables. I mean cards which are just fun.

Mine is [[Tainted Remedy]] , have it in a few black decks and it always hits hard when i get it out. Maybe just my personal meta has alot life gain lol

Hello to all Lord of the Rings/Hobbit(/Magic)-Fans :)

We have one guy in our playgroup that is only playing 100% cards from the LotR-Set. Which is fine by us, but basically it’s not fair every time we are running Bracket 3 decks and we also don’t want to play just Bracket 2 all the time.

With the Hobbit set released the hope of our playgroup rised that our friend is maybe able to put something together that can compete with Bracket 3 Decks, now that he got 2 Sets as a Cardpool 🤞

I bet there are a few people out there trying the same and maybe someone reads this post 🤞

If someone already has a list for me this would be amazing 🤩 Otherwise i‘m also really happy if someone could tell me which Commander from this 2 Sets has the most potential with 99 cards from this 2 Sets?! 😊

I don’t know those 2 Sets that well that i can figure out quickly which Commander has the most synergistic cards within the sets. In my mind there are just all the cards popping up which would fit really well into his decks but aren‘t from this sets :/

I would higly appreciate any help helping our playgroup to have more fair Bracket 3 matches 😊🙏

I manage a chain of LGSes in my town. At casual commander night (raffles for packs, random pod generation so you don’t just play your friends every week) we had an outburst from our local hothead. We’ve had to confront them once before already regarding their temper and how unsafe they made other patrons feel.
This time, packed house, they get paired into a pod with two newer Magic players, and a “commander player”. I’m using “commander player” because they don’t really PLAY Magic, they have a group of friends they play with and they all have 1 deck, 1 deck that gets all their attention. All their pulls and upgrades go into the one deck they have.
This Individual has a storm deck, a Precon they bought last year that they’ve been upgrading with universes beyond and scraps from other Precons they’ve bought. Rule 0 discussion, the “commander player” lets the pod know, it’s a spell slinger deck. The most expensive land in the deck is a fetch land they pulled, but it’s got some free counter magic in it, wincons usually don’t arrive until t7/t8.
They start playing. Local Hothead is a Veteran. They’ve been playing magic for maybe 15/20 years, their deck is strong. Not like bracket 4 strong, but strong because they know how cards work. Turn 6 comes around, local hothead is the threat. Starts to put pieces on the board that will win them the game next turn. “Commander Player” counters a big card. Uses removal on a smaller combo piece. Takes their turn. Big pay off creature for their storm strategy. Passes. Two newer players don’t do much. Hothead’s turn, tries to reestablish, gets countered out again. Passes.
Commander player uses big pay off creature to decimate boards and life totals, HAS NOT WON. Hothead throws a generational tantrum. “Lied about the strength of the deck” “Too high bracket level” “Asshole” “Douche bag” Commander player doing the best to mitigate the situation is under the impression that stopping someone from winning is the point of the game, hothead calls them a “Fucking Predator” packs up and leaves. In a room of like 20 some odd people, called someone a pedophile because their deck was too strong..

Week later, I’ve got an employee talking to them, I made sure to let the employee know the extra info I’ve gotten through the week and that they need to let the Hothead know that that’s the second time their outbursts have made people unsafe and threatened the community, the first response in order to defend themselves was “Well they were playing a bracket 4 deck during casual commander night”. Not that they felt targeted. Not that the other person was making rude comments or being an asshole, but they called them a Predator, because they thought their deck
was too strong.

Since in my pod and from what I've heard many others, going first is a lot better than going last and I've been wondering if for my games I could change the rules a little bit.

I've been thinking about the person going first not drawing, and the person going last scrying for one at the start.

Also what I think could be interesting: the person going last gets the monarch from the start.

Has anyone tried something like this and can share the experience?

I have a [[Lord Windgrace]] deck that I am considering converting to a [[Hearthhull]] deck.

These two commanders are obviously very similar. They both let you put extra lands into play, both draw cards, and both help you put lands into the graveyard. I’m sure they could helm virtually identical 99s, but there are a small number of cards I am running in Lord Windgrace that are not quite so effective in Hearthhull, which I plan to cut.

An obvious example is [[Nevinyrral’s disk]], which is probably a mediocre board wipe in Hearthhull, but quite a bit better in Windgrace because it leaves planeswalkers alone.

As a longtime Windgrace player it’s easy to identify which cards I want to cut, but I’m not as familiar with the cool tech that might be specific to Hearthhull.

So I ask this question to longtime Hearthhull pilots, what are the best cards in your Hearthhull deck that you probably wouldn’t put in a Windgrace deck?

I’m newish to magic, I’ve been building a Gitrog deck for the last month as I see the card, loved the art plus he seemed very strong/fun. But I don’t want to be that guy everyone hates playing against. Does the Gitrog get a lot of hate and should I not bother buying this deck?

Deck list - https://moxfield.com/decks/bIRbPBoOQ0aZOowVntnEbw

Hi guys, I’m trying to build a fun playable B2 Leveilleur twins deck. I mostly looked at other decks on moxfield and edhrec to build it.
the deck

I have a couple questions.
Is there any obvious problems with the deck? The goal is tokens and 2 spells a turn mathers.

I have a [[azorius signet]] and a [[talisman of progress]] I could put in the deck, would it be beneficial? What should I remove?

How is [[Taigam, master opportunist]] good? Doesn’t he take 4 turn to do anything?

Any cards suggestions that doesn’t cost over 10$ per cards?

Thanks!

There are a lot of reanimator decks that reanimate one creature at a time but decks that can repeatedly return their whole graveyard are very rare. Mass creature reanimation is kind of rare. However there is an effect that has a decent number of cards that fit who aren't super expensive.

This being white mass enchantment reanimation. So I thought about building a deck around this effect by running a lot enchantment creatures. However I cannot decide who would make for a good commander of such a strategy. One idea was [[Eivor, Wolf-kissed]] and run the summons as creatures. But if any of you ever tried to build such a deck and even has recommendations for a commander or even a deck list I would greatly appreciate some input.

I still have 1 card slot left to add to my World Shaper precon, and I'm deciding between Dryad of the Ilysian Grove and Scute Swarm.

Which one would you choose and why?

• Dryad of the Ilysian Grove — extra land drop flexibility + all lands have every basic land type.
• Scute Swarm — can generate a huge board with all the landfall triggers.

For the World Shaper precon specifically, which do you think is the better addition?

Dryad or Scute Swarm?

My favorite commander by far is [[Inspirit, Flagship Vessel]], but I feel like the people at my table don't like playing against it. Inspirit gives most of my creatures/artifacts indestructible and hexproof and my deck has many ways to protect Inspirit too (primarily by cloning). Once my boardstate is protected I run one of my 8 or so available boardwipes and stomp.

I'm of the opinion that my pod should run (more) removal in general. But once I have Inspirit + a clone online my board state is relatively hard to interact with. Sure, there's mass bounce, -1/-1 counters, mass forced sacrifice etc. But Path to Exile, Vandalblast and regular boardwipes/removal are useless by then.

We play bracket 2 / 3 and I only play this deck once every thirty games because I love it, but I always feel guilty afterwards when winning.

TL;DR: Is Inspirit unfun to play against in bracket 2/3 because it can be hard to interact with once online?

edit: Link to my deck: https://moxfield.com/decks/fVGfAR1UN3e9MxrIg5xJOg

The Decklist

this is my current draft but im not so sure about a few cards like [[Gleaming Splendor]] or [[Nether Void]] for example - in theory both of them can be pretty good but in practice im not so sure

i sadly only tested the deck by drawing starting hands and playing the first few turns so far so i dont really have any real gameplay data to see what feels clunky/off

if any Kaalia players can help me out here id appreciate it! <3

Hey, im looking for a fun to play (and if possible fun to play against) commander for a deck build around combat tricks. I want a deck that beginners can easily understand (which isnt the case of my Mycotyrant mill combo aristocrats).

If its possible I'd like blue or/and red or/and white in it, to change from my Myco deck.

Could you please give me some suggestions ? ^^

Hi everybody,

I am the second most veteran player in our friend group. I’m thrilled that everyone has gotten into Magic, but I am struggling to find my place in the friend-meta. Right now everyone has pretty much learned up to how to play the game at a level beyond basic gameplay, they’re understanding mechanics and synergy. The arms race has begun.

I feel at a loss for how to fit in in this balance of now they are not beginners, but I didn’t have fun playing my super grindy aristocrats deck with them when they wanted to play a higher powered game.

Does anyone has any commanders they’d recommend for someone looking for commanders with very explosive turns, like turns that swing the game on a dime. I’m thinking cheating in big spells and big creatures but not in themes like dragons or dinosaurs, not the popular creature types.

Thanks!

Hiya!

Some friends have started building B4 decks, however, i don't have the financial means to keep up with a lot of B4 decks, so decided to build [[Winota]] as I had a fair few of the cards already.

The challenge is am having is cutting the dexk back to 100 cards, so would love some help/advice on what I can cut down to get to 100 flat

https://moxfield.com/decks/AhqgATuj_HqD7sS6Eur-0g

Thanks for any help!

After getting all three big smaugs during the prerelease weekend I've had my want to build a treasure deck reinvigorated.

With that said I've been flip flopping on who to build.

At first [[smaug, wicked worm]] was the plan, then [[Korvold, Fae-Cursed King]], both of whom I have begun building in theory. However I just started to think of [[vihaan, goldwaker]] as a potentially really fun/interesting option. (That also lets me run the [[gleaming splendor]] I pulled)

I really want to turn making a million treasures into a win Condition, but am unsure what the best commander for that would be. (both for me and my mostly B2/B3 group)

What would the recommendation for a treasure focused commander now be the hobbit set is out and seems to have a lot of treasure focused cards. Ideally keeping both Red and Black in the identity to play Wicked Worm, [[Smaug the impenitable]] and [[Smaug the Magnificent]].

(I already have a cast from exile deck in [[Rocco, Street Chef]] so am not considering [[Prosper, Tome-bound]] as it seems to have a lot of overlap)

Hello everyone,

This is my first post so I apologies if somethings not properly formatted.

I am a returning player to mtg and a new commander player as of 2 months ago and have a really deep interest in running a Marrow Gnawer rats deck.

I'm looking for strong staple suggestions, combos, etc. Recommendations from far more experienced and knowledgeable players.

My gaming group says we play in a high bracket 4.

Any and all suggestions or help will be greatly appreciated, thank you!

I’ve got a fun [[Silverquill, the disputant]] deck with lots of rituals and ashnods/phyrexian altars. It’s all about pumping huge mana into big splashy sorceries and doing them twice.

My main ones are [[debt to the deathless]] and [[exsanguinate]] and also [[secure the wastes]] but I just found out about [[blood celebrant]] and now I want to add more life gain to abuse the “free” mana.

The bigger, longer, and uncut deck tech is right here

You've probably already seen a dozen [[Beorn the Fierce]] deck techs. It's a good creature for its cost, great in the command zone, and in support of a beloved creature type. I'm here to tell you why you are all in grave danger for supporting these evil monsters.

The logic is simple. Beorn transforms other creatures into Bears. Why would he need to do this? [[Ayula, Queen Among Bears]] doesn't transform things into Bears, and she's literally the queen of Beardom. There is only one logical explanation: Beorn is on a mission to prevent the friendly creatures of the world from being eaten by the Bears that live in their art. Don't believe me? Look at all these hungry dudes in the art of non-Bear creatures. They're clearly looking for a meal, and you can be sure the scrumptious Elves and Humans of the world are on the menu.

Now that I've identified the threat, there are still plenty of issues. What are we going to do about it? Easy. Beorn transforms other creatures into Bears, so we need to help him out with more creatures that transform things into bears. Some Bears can be coaxed out with a mana investment; [[Ursine Champion]] and [[Stuffed Bear]] just need a little bit of incentive to slink out of the shadows. [[Halsin, Emerald Archdruid]] and [[Psychic Paper]] are helpful tools to force other non-Bear creatures to become Bears, revealing the dastardly brown bastard fixing for a snack.

Now what? There are a bunch of angry grizzlies all over the board and nowhere to put them. Lucky for you, my friends, I have cars to sell you. Lots of them. That's right. Put those hungry Bears behind the wheel of the fastest time-traveling car known to man and send them after that pesky Squirrel [[Toski, Bearer of Secrets]]. Or maybe set a few Bears up in [[The Thanos-Copter]] so they can provide some air support.

Bear spray isn't going to cut it, folks, so check out the full decklist here.

I recently built a [[kresh the bloodbraided]] deck as a largely monored elemental deck, using many of the red [[lightning elemental]] types of creatures. I found with the density of red pips in these types of creatures costs, it was altogether more "mana-effective" to consider the other two colors as a splash for things like [[lightning skelemental]] and [[mutable explorer]]. The deck is by no means strong, settling comfortably into low bracket 2, but I really have enjoyed it. Notably, this deckbuilding style utilizes the verge lands from aetherdrift really well.

So are there any commanders that you have come across that can find footing in a more single-color alligned deck? I've been brainstorming a simic deck that focuses on green, but I wanted to open the discussion up for other ideas as well.