MTG EDH/Commander

I'll chime in: Some players when they play want the best challenge they can get, it's more interesting. I've in the past seen players play decks not to their full capacity to baby a player with a weaker deck, which is fine in some situations, but to be honest I feel like it's kind of disrespectful to your opponent not to play the game to win.

advice for building a Gitrog Monster deck?

I've been working on a vampire tribal deck that I'd love some input on. I've yet to do the land and I think it needs some trimming of creatures. Basically I just want to turn vampires sideways and survive most attacks by stealing life as often as possible. Any advice would be appreciated.
tappedout.net/mtg-decks/drink-deep-of-life/

Is it possible to make a b/r goodstuff deck that isn't shit? In my head I've brewed this janky artifact recursion deck but I have no idea who to use as a commander. Would it be better to just go jund or grixis?

I get your point. After they made it known they didn't like it when I durdled, I started playing faster decks and they eased up. Despite what I said, they are a pretty cool group and while they all have very spikey decks, most of them prefer to play lower power decks. It's just they all prefer games to end quicker than most EDH games, so even in casual decks they all have combos, but no one is just rushing out vintage level brokenness.

This is a neat little tactic that i have had work with my Kemba build. Silverskin Armor + Indomitable Archangel or Leonin Abunas. Infinite artifact shield
[Spoiler] so long as no-one boardwipes[/spoiler]

And i drop the ball and fuck that spoiler up.

most players I know tend to play a single 2 or 3 card combo, just to end the game when it goes for too long and everyone in our group agrees , it's better to end the game just before it turns "too long" and no one enjoys it

With a tribal deck, you need to focus on which subtheme to push. Vampires can be aggressive, but it does not work well if half your cards are aggro and half are slow. Actually, even if you were all out aggro, a lot of the cheaper vampires are just not good enough, like that flip card that requires you to wait a turn and tap to creatures to get a 3 mana 4/4 that will just suck anyway.

Its a very linear deck, basically you want a lot of land ramp, a lot of graveyard recursion, and the rest is up to you, but generally it works best as a sort of midrange control deck that kills all your opponents shit while dropping efficient 4-6 drop creatures. A guy in my group built one and after 3 games we declared it our new least favorite deck to play against.

By the way, is anyone else having problems with Captcha being really fucking laggy?

I've posted it on Veeky Forums before, but it's still my favorite:

Argothian Elder
Maze of Ith
Forbidden Orchard
Rakdos Charm

Thing is, EDH is a fun casual game (inb4 muh spirit'o'edh). If the people you play are Melvin enough, you might get away with something like Jeleva Storm and people will like it rather than be pissed off. Otherwise, the social contract exists and everyone should generally abide by group expectations for most things.

Modern/Legacy, on the other hand, is full of unironic tryhards, and it's fun piloting the Eggs/Tide/Horseman equivalent of the month, go to time on every round, spend 20 minutes resolving the 4th or 5th turn of overtime, and generally watching the whole room squirm with impotent rage.

So, I'm thinking of building a Sidisi brood tyrant deck. Should I go for reanimation or more of a zombie tribal?

Either way, there will be self mill and control elements

The problem with the EDH crowd is usually that groups are made up of players who play the other formats aswell , and there's a few that don't stray into those wastelands like me. So the same dickhead tryhards are probably in someone's EDH playgroup since they want to ruin multiple people's fun at the same time as opposed to just one

Sure, but that's where abiding by group expectations come in.

If your group is full of spikes, either play competitively or leave.

If your group is full of casuals but some tryhard is ruining it for you, ask him to change his ways, ask him to leave, or (for the passive-aggressive betas among you) headshot him ASAP every game and then continue having a casual fun EDH game with the rest of the table.

Janky combos? Sign me the fuck up:

>Kiki Jiki, Intruder Alarm, Zealous Conscripts

For when Insurrection just isn't enough! Steal every permanent your opponents have.

>Kiki Jiki, Intruder Alarm, Meddling Mage, Sundial of the Infinite

Make 13167 Meddling Mages, name every nonland magic card, end the turn, with the delayed triggers on the stack activate Sundial. (Yes you could just win on the spot, but it's more fun to let it go around the table for 1 turn)

>Living Lands, Forbidden Orchard, Pemmin's Aura, The Great Aurora

Give each opponent 100 spirits then cast TGA. Each opponent draws more cards than they have in their deck and loses. Works with any infinite untap engine really.

I love how your definition of a jank combo is a perfectly good game winning combo with extra junk added on top in order to act like a dick rather than just winning.

I'm not one for janky combos, I am all for bullshit combos that cause my group to scoop however. Also are spirits worth running in og isperia?

>mill 80 cards with Gitrog Monster + Dredge
>Worm Harvest
>Cull the Weak
>Exsanguinate
>mfw I kill the entire table

Dakmor Salvage
Saproling Cluster
Squandered Resources
The cycling lands

Then throw in whatever you want

>Culling the Weak
>Exsanguinate
so you made them lose 2 life? or did you skip a step

Maybe he hasn't read the oracle text for culling the weak?

I should probably tell my play group.
Whoops.

This. The game does 'inherently' trend towards casual, but some people want to play it super double hardcore. That's not wrong, you just need to read the room. If everyone in your area is hyper hardcore, and you're the guy bringing 5 Color Jellyfish Tribal and whining when you get blown out, you are the asshole. You need to understand what your group dynamics are, and either abide by them, politely ask them to maybe build a lower-power deck so you can participate, or just sit out.

Ditto on the opposite end- if your area is nothing but kids with precons and cobbled together pet decks where games have 6 players and go for 3 hours, and you bring Hermit Combo, you're the asshole. Either try to convince them to build some Big Dick decks for the occasional crazy game, try building a lower-power deck, or sit it out. Don't demand and expect everyone to conform to you.

Fun cards.

My favorite kind of combos are combos made up of cards you were already going to play anyway.

>ghave combos with Ashnod's Altar and X
Gee who woulda thought

Wait.. what is she holding?

Yes. By all accounts, my Liliana deck is "fair" because there are no infinite combos, but my group hates it because "I never have any fucking cards". All but takes is a Phyrexian Altar and I can go infinite, which is currently in the list because I was messing around.

Best jank right here

If that was an enchantment it would be insane

Alright, how's this for clunky then?

But the problem lies with people who refuse to respect this and show up with kiki combo.dek no matter the group and always win with some card + kiki or thornbite goblin bombardment or some shit , those players ruin the game for most others

>stop liking what I don't like
>calls someone else a tool

I don't think anyone is having fun with someone shitting out five Wurmcoils every turn. At least if someone combos off the game is over. Nobody wants to have to sit through half an hour of one guy masturbating his way to victory when it could be one turn of masturbation instead.

Do you have any decks you consider "the big guns"? Do you keep a few less powerful decks around for when it's all fun and games so you can slide out your powerhouse for something more serious when you need to?

They can, but here's the fun thing about a casual, group-focused hobby: you can tell them to fuck off.

Someone bringing Kiki combo to a low power group and wrecking fun is like the guy powergaming your D&D game, or always playing some creepy fetish thing. You don't have to play with him. You can say "Hey, we don't like X, and we'd like if you tried Y instead", and if he continues to be a fun-wrecking assclown, you just don't play with him.

My decks do have a power range, but even "the big guns" fall far short of actual dangerous shit, out of personal preference. For a while I had a bullshit hypercombo deck I'd only bust out to "put someone in their place" when they tried to be a combo dick in a casual game (not that combo is evil, mind you), but I realized I hated WINNING that way as much as I hated LOSING that way. So now I just decline to play with people who have to win at all costs.

>I don't think anyone is having fun with someone shitting out five Wurmcoils every turn.

ObligatoryI'mNotThatAnon or OINTA

Depending on the stage of the game, a finite amount of wumcoil engines is not necessarily game over at all. There are a thousand ways to interact with such an engine, and it's a very forgiving win condition. I've had fun interacting with such tame engines with decks as basic as the precons. I would much rather try to keep up with 30 power on the board that doesn't have flying or trample than a sharum that instantly combo-kills the table.

Not him, but I love it.

Add the effect of your choice, really. Also similar with Teardrop Kami.

My main deck is an actual competitive deck almost completely by accident, but my usual playgroup is high-power anyway. I am building Molimo voltron and Riku salt tribal, though.

Literally the power gamer of our RPGs that ruins it for like everybody, but he's someone's friend so they invite him in, we've talked to him about it but he's an arrogant dick at the best of times and listens to no one and he spouts twitch chat memes 24/7 and he's just generally a spoilt brat

So go talk to the 'someone' he's friends with and say either he doesn't belong in the group or you don't.

Why would you keep eating a bag of chips that is 30% shattered glass by volume? Try to fix it and if you can't, leave.

Is there a rough number for every type of card that you need for most good stuff decks? I'm doing a fatty creature heavy + some reanimation deck and I got about

>8-10 destroy creature effects or force sac effects
>5 destroy artifact effects
>1-2 remove enchantment effects (colors dont rly allow for more)
>4-ish reanimation enchantments and spells
>11-ish card draw enchantments and spells

rest of the deck is damage-dealers, lands and other wincon stuff

anything else to worry about? what can i cut first if i do cut something?

But it's the only LGS even remotely accessible to me and there's basically only one playgroup and there's nowhere else I could play that isn't MTGO which is full of these dickheads

How much of what effect you need is highly dependent on your meta. My area tends to go wide more than going tall, so I prioritize board-clears over spot removal.

Just take your first draft and see what it plays like; are you hurting for more artifact removal, but you're flush with more creature removal than you need? Do you need way more spot removal for creatures, and fewer wraths? Are you drawing enough? etc.

So your options are

1) Try to remedy the situation before moving on to other options

2) Continuing to metaphorically slam your dick in a car door because every tenth time a cute girl licks the tip

3) Doing without the dick-lick because it's not worth the door slamming

And you select 2. That is dumb as shit.

the dick licks are fun though when there's no car door involved , the rest of the group is great

So why wouldn't you take SOME measures to try and minimize car door slams and maximize dick licks? Just talk to the group about your concerns, explain that him spouting stupid memes and being an asshole to you is making it less fun. See if anyone else has a problem with it but wouldn't come forward, see if they don't MIND it but want to kibosh it for your sake. See if they say "fuck you asshole" and then you can comfortably tell them to jump sideways up their own asses.

Or you can just sit around bitching about your situation and doing absolutely fucking nothing to try and improve it. I'm sure that'll fix things.

I have and we generally tell him mid game to stop being a dick if he is , or in my case i just kill him if he gets on my nerves enough. I have also talked to everyone in the group about it and they all think he's a bit of a cunt but in a harmless way , also him being a cunt and tryharding against basically kids has actually caused two new customers to complain to the shop owner and not come back, i have taken all the steps you suggest , but its literally the only place he goes outside of his room

This is 100% group dependent. You can't make a perfect list or formula.

8-10 removal pieces might end up being high for some groups. The most dangerous cards in commander aren't creatures, and you can easily find yourself wasting a significant portion of your draws throwing away a kill spell at something not relevant.

Graveyard hate might be necessary for some groups.

Having a low amount of proactive cards can be a liability if your opponents have anything that can disrupt your tempo. In particular, you're probably going to end up folding to blue decks.

Not running any cheap utility creatures can backfire heavily against decks like yours. Your large amount of removal and card draw is not going to be effective against high value creatures.

Putting all of your stock into creatures is going to make any kind of exile effect against you hurt a lot. Non-creature wincons are also important.

Your colors are extremely important in making these decisions.

So quit. Fucking. Tolerating it. All of you grow the fuck up and quit just letting him run rampant. Be adults, christ. Sit him down and tell him that he has an Asshole Threshold from now on, and if he crosses that line you will all continue the game as if he got up and left, and completely ignore him.

If you keep coddling him by just occasionally going "hey dude don't" and then quietly wincing when he continues to be a shithead, of course he's not gonna stop. Why would he? There's no repercussions.

In your opinion would it be wiser to focus on aggressive cheap vampires or the heavier ones? I tend to play a lot of 1v1 and four player games. I'm really not sure what would be best...

"aggressive cheap" tends to run out of gas fast in Commander. If you go wide you need to go VERY wide, otherwise go tall.

Hello, my name is user and I'm addicted to Big Black Decks.
Can't keep off that sweet, sweet swamp juice.
Just love it when my big, throbby Exsanguinate slurps down the table.

I have a filthy Ayli control deck designed to wipe the board repeatedly. It has a super durdly low cmc wall theme with a super fast recursion engine facilitated through tutors. It might stall before the kill shot, but the board state is super oppressive, and most people pose little threat. Anything with artifacts enchantments or tokens is in trouble.

do you have a list?

If you sac a guy that has been brought back from graveyard using Dawn of the Dead, it doesn't get exiled, right? So having a sac outlet on the board with Dawn of the Dead means you can bring back the same creature at the start of every turn as long as you sac it every time?

i'm assuming it's like this because whip of erebos specifically states that the creature gets exiled if it dies

correct, if you were unearthing the creature or Whipping it it would be a different story

Right. Dawn only exiles as the delayed trigger resolves later on, and if it isn't on board when that trigger resolves, nothing exiles it. That's why later things like Whip and Unearth set up the replacement effect on top of that, to make sure it does get exiled.

"aggro" isn't a thing in commander. You either:

* piss away your cards trying to kill everybody, which doesn't work because you have to chew through 120 life.
* You try to kill one person and then die, which is legitimately griefing because you're doing nothing but trying to make one player lose without any intention of attempting to win the game.

Dealing damage is good and all, but you can't treat it like sprinting instead of a marathon. You need the focus, the gas, and the synergy to chew through three other players over the course of a game.

>cracking Memory Jar 4 times in a single turn
>realizing I can stack the triggers for which hand I want to keep
>right into a Scrap Mastery
Is this what heaven is like?

When I don't know what meta I'm going into, I usually try to have a somewhat weak or large combo (ones that can be broken easily or require more than three cards), as well as a few anti-combo cards. That way, if I come across weaker decks, I might be able to combo off but I won't utterly stomp anyone, and I can at least throw a wrench into powerful "i win" decks unless they're super-tuned- and if they are, that's not my general style of EDH so I'll probably find a new group.

>can't attack during extra turns
So, it's basically any other Nephilium combo that isn't infinite?

>what is commander damage?

He is already attacking, even though he can't.

>When Yore-Toller Nephilim attacks, return target creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield tapped and attacking

please consider how retarded you are before posting on this malaysian basket-weaving forum

What a control deck uses to close games whilst using its main deck pieces to control the board

>tappedout.net/mtg-decks/drink-deep-of-life/

get rid of the vanilla vampires like vampire interloper and child of night. in a tribal deck always seek creatures that have utility, like mana sinks or activated and triggered abilities.

I am personally not a fan of the vampires that say "target creature can't block this turn" because your opponent is likely to have other creatures to block with if thats what he/she is doing anyways.

vampires that you might want to include:

vampire hexmage
drana, liberator of malakir
kalitas, traitor of ghet
blookseeker
pawn of ulamog
blood artist
bloodthrone vampire
vampire aristocrat
viscera seer

I feel like the only effective way to go "Aggro" in EDH is Infect.

Half the fun of the combo is people who don't understand how it works.

I would love to see how mad you get over Alesha + Master of Cruelties

All my decks have an instant-win button, usually only 2 or 3 cards, but they're a last resort. They're for something like "This game has been going for 3 hours and is miserably stagnant but nobody wants to scoop" or "Our movie starts in like 30 minutes you fuckhats"

i'm about to pull the trigger on this deck and buy it, i'd appreciate if someone more experienced took a look at it

tappedout.net/mtg-decks/angry-rakdos-raargh/

basically, the plan is to hopefully get something that can deal damage to a player, then drop rakdos, then drop half my hand on the board. when they inevitably get wiped, reanimate them. i also put in 5 sac outlets because the mind control memery is apparently strong in my group

any obvious mistakes i made? this is my first EDH deck, so i'm guessing there are some. like, i'm not sure if the "draw 2 cards" type cards are worth it in a deck like this and if i should just replace them with reanimation or removal or something.

note that there are some obvious upgrades i could make (murder -> dreadbore) but i'm over budget as is so i can't make them

thanks in advance

>Any obvious mistakes I made?
You built a Rakdos deck.

so you're telling me i should run boiling seas?

>rakdos

I'm so sorry

No, the problem isn't that you built a B/R deck.

The problem is that you built a Rakdos deck.

building a B/R deck is a problem.

welp i didn't realize he was that bad. i thought only rakdos, the defiler was shit, the impression i got was that lord of riots was considered okay-good

i guess i could just switch him out for mogis and just go mega group slug mode. although that might be boring. i dont know, shit

i just wanna play something aggressive

It's not your fault. R/B really isn't that great unless you're running old Olivia for Vampire tribal or that one witch I think. There's also some old negro wizard guy that's pretty good apparently.

The problem is that Rakdos feels a bit... winmore. You have to actually be hitting people to even get him out, and then you need to be consistently doming people for his ability to matter. If you're getting 3, 4, 5 mana discounts off of him, you're probably already winning. And he's really really bad at actually getting out from a bad start.

>some old negro wizard
Don't you diss Kaervek

Kaervek is pathetically bad.

I wasn't, I was just saying he was a negro. I can't say "African," wizard because there are no official Earth Planes, so it wouldn't have been technically correct.

Yeah but compared to other RB he can do a slight bit more.

Go into a third color. Zurgo and Kresh are both fun. Go Prossh if you want to play the game at a severely low handicap.

I've never seen a decent Rakdos list.

I had a Lyzolda deck I loved to death. Gravepacts, card draw, damage. Had O-Stone and whatnot to deal with enchantments.

i noticed that about rakdos myself too, but decided to persevere and build the deck so that he compliments it instead of the other way around. but whatever, i don't want to feel like i've spent 150 bucks on garbage.

i'm gonna start looking at other rakdos + extra color generals. BR are really my favorite colors though, so i do wanna keep them. what exactly should i be looking to add when i do add another color? what does BR lack the most? enchantment removal is one of them at least.

>You have to actually be hitting people to even get him out

There's always cards with Extort, or cards like Cryptolith Fragment or Staff of Nin.

Not trying to make a fool out of you or anything, but...

Every single person with this idea that posted such things thinking their solution is clever has never sat down and tried to tune a Lord of Riots list for even ten games. Lord of Riots demonstrates the disconnect between what deckbuilders think will happen in a game and what actually happens more than any other creature in the game. Lord of Riots is a labor of love card that's in the league of decks like Norin the Wary or Nahiri.

I feel like Cryptolith Fragment is a perfect fit though.

What are opinnions of an endrek shar deck? would it be viable?