EDH/COMMANDER GENERAL

user, don't build that. If you're going to build maelstrom, he's good enough on his own. You can literally throw a bunch of hanky rares together and it will be good. Start simpler. For mine I picked 10 good ramp cards, 10 big fatties and filled the rest with cards that synergize. Scry is good, arcanis the omnipotent is worth it, and heartless hidestugu is awesome. Seriously, with all those staples you could make like 8 other decks.

Define "hardcore"
If you want cancer, play Riku or Animar as commander. Both are cancer in cancer colours, and Temur Slot Machine is shitty anyway. Do you want to play or hope for the RNG gods to smile upon you?
If you insist on playing him, play some boomerangs, like Temur Sabertooth. Shit's one of the best uncommons in the set, if not the best.
Best way to play 3 colours is esper, no UG cancer. Play stax and watch your opponents eyes wet from the tears of frustration for the 10th round in the row when they say "draw go" when they can't cast anything.

name it Maelstrom Führer

Why are all Oloro players assholes?

>Best way to play 3 colours is esper
>Not junk master race

It's like you don't enjoy relentlessly comboing turn after turn while generating further value until your opponents run out of steam and you win anyway

well no wonder it looked so weird

so is she crappy as a commander then? i mean i'm not playing competitively, i just don't want to play a anything that doesn't feel viable. last time i made a list for a hero, i was told the commander was bad and my colors were bad and then i decided i should switch to marchesa

i really wanna make an aggressive deck with creature stealing but my favorite colors (RB) are apparently pretty shit. i guess i could make an olivia deck still? isn't olivia pretty good despite her colors?

For reference, what is your group playing?

>(RB) are apparently pretty shit

RB is indeed pretty shit. The only worse color pair is RW.

>is she crappy as a commander then?

Marchessa is okay, you can do a pretty decent Marchessa deck based on either value or infect. But we're talking firmly Tier 2 at best, here.

>an aggressive deck with creature stealing
Pure aggro, especially pure RB aggro, in most cases performs poorly in multiplayer EDH. Stax/Control/Pillowfort/etc will keep you from getting going, Combo will just win before you do, and dedicated voltron can suicide headshot you easily. Theft as a theme is also generally casual and performs poor to mediocre. There's a few cards that are very viable depending on your meta's flavor and power level (bribery, thada adel, etc) but that's about it.

tappedout.net/mtg-decks/budget-titania-1/

how did i do? any changes i need to look at?

I prefer to combo hard enough to win, not to generate value. When I wanna generate value and despair, I go full on stax.
I want to sit around until I can force opponents to sac everything or steal everything they have.
It's glorious to see people unable to answer my Luminarch Ascension while I keep feeding angels to my beloved Smokestack.

I disagree with everybody saying this deck has "too many staples", if anything id rather see you take out the weird cards like enclave cryptologist and put in more green ramp (no Skyshroud claim? Wtf?)

Also you have a bunch of powerful 8 drops, which seems very strange in MW

You should really invest in a Strip Mine. It's not that expensive.

Also, if it's in your budget, I'd recommend World Breaker and a couple of Wastes.

>tfo the oloro guy in my deck when I played tainted remedy

basically, people in my group play 100-150 dollar decks, so i guess that'd be budget

>some voltron decks
>one guy who shits out tokens with some green deck
>zada
>a guy who suspends stuff a lot
>very few counterspells

one important thing is that combo is basically banned. i don't like playing combo either so it's fine though. it's basically a fungaming table but it's not completely casual, people still play tuned decks that mean to play to win

yeah i know aggro doesn't work, that's why i said "aggressive" instead. so basically i want something that can speed up games or kill players who are playing dumb slow pillowfort shit.

sadly i also don't really like voltron decks. i'd rather have the commander have an everpresent supportive role instead.

as far as i know, edric is someone who fits the description but i just really dislike blue/green as colors.

maybe since my table is somewhat casual, i should just run something i want to run, like RB vampires or something

Why the hell is Wasteland so expensive while Strip Mine costs next to nothing?
While typing this i actually figured it out myself and I hate modern even more now.

>digging through old box of cards
>hermit druid, merchant scroll, personal tutor, capsize, anger, thawing glaciers (damaged)

Useful finds. Also a Colossus of Sardia but I'm not sure Volrath needs that.

Strip Mine is banned in Legacy.

>wasteland
>modern
What

I want to build another deck or two, but I have no idea what to go with first. Here's my current list:

>Liliana
Grindy value

>Gisa
Zombieseverywhere.toy story

>Jeleva
Cast Jeleva fast, Time walks, and control

>Saffi
Super redundant combo

I'm going to turn Gisa into Gisa and Geralf as soon as I get the card.

The ideas I had:
>Emrakul
I pulled 3, so I feel obligated to do SOMETHING with at least one of them. Mono brown good stuff with a 13/13 Mindslaver doesn't sound terrible.

>Rayne
I want to build a trickster kind of deck full of clones and misdirects, and Rayne is nice for that since you can draw off of redirecting to your own shit. Misdirecting a Time Warp to myself with an enchanted Rayne sounds heavenly. The kill would be Lab Maniac+Mirror of Fate/Mad Phantasm.

>Bant
I pulled Tamiyo, so I also feel obligated to play Bant. I have no idea what to build, though since Bant is typically cancer no matter what. Maybe Rubina thefts and polymorphs?

oh so it's different than i thought

I honestly thought it was newer than tempest. I also had conversation about it with a friend who mainly plays modern, but seems like we were talking bout legacy. we were on a party and pretty drunk.

>ask /edh/ if a 3/10 commander is any good.

Ignore the plebs that dare insult the great and powerful legendary creature. If you build to his strengths, you may yet experience his true potential! I put time into mastering his technique and have become a force to be reckoned with! You may too realize the untapped strength within him. The only boundary to his realm of power and happiness is the most degenerate and corrupt of communities where dishonestly and cruelty are omnipresent and chivalry is dead.

>ask /edh/ if a 7/10 commander is any good

Absolute shit. Doesn't support any strategy that doesn't get turn 2 derevi/teferi locked. Shit commander can't even turn 2 food chain table kill. Wew lad I'll bring my ANT and angry hermit decks to prove it. Mew mew mew.

so how do i know when the commander i ask about is a 3/10 or a 7/10

Play Arjun. Add in instant low drop draw, a bunch of rocks, and all the steal spells and creatures you want.

Arjun wheels you through your deck pretty quick so you shouldnt have trouble getting stuff like control magic and insurrection and similiar spells out pretty regularly. Plus you get all the agressive red creatures.

prior knowledge. It's not possible to learn anything from Veeky Forums about magic unless it's from a tripfag that sucks somewhat fewer cocks than the average tripfag.

Sad but true. Veeky Forums hates merit in every case.

What are some fun glass cannon decks?

It may be a bit above your tables power, but running marchesa with grave pact effect will hose the voltron dude while putting serious dents in tokens.

For similar effect you could run pic related, which can be cheap. Just avoid any nasty combos.

well can you tell me if erebos, god of the dead is a 3/10 or a 7/10

i'm so sick of building around my commander so i just want to make a deck that does group slug shit and has a commander that doesn't die. erebos seems like it'd be good for it. exsanguinate, whip of erebos, exquisite blood, black good stuff, idk

>Bant

I think I may have told you thise already, but be a man

Mogis is better for group slug, he might be what you're after.

>>Bant
here's your general. now go annoy your friends and family until you're all alone.

>>It may be a bit above your tables power, but running marchesa with grave pact effect will hose the voltron dude while putting serious dents in tokens.

yeah the thing is that i don't know if i like marchesa. it feels really awkward to play her in tappedout playtesting. she seems like she could be fun if things work out, but at the same time, she seems pretty janky, and it seems like it would be pretty easy to topple the weird engine you set up with her if you just hit her prior to turn 5. on top of that, i constantly get confliction information on whether she's actually good or not, and whether that amount of jank is healthy or just bad. the same jank seemed to be present in other marchesa decks too. it just feels weird to play her and not really be doing anything relevant for long periods of time

i was looking at him earlier too, but the impression i got was that him being rakdos kind of screws him over

Yea, no. I'd rather not pay $20 for dog shit. He does nothing for the ever increasing amount of Exile spells, not to mention Wrath of God. Roon does effectively the same thing with more upside.

>$80
>eight fucking zero

Other wise I would for super fiends.

You'd rather play mono-black than Rakdos? You can just splash the red I guess.

Marchesa isn't strong.

You may get conflicting information about her though because she interacts with a lot of different cards, which makes her fun to play when it goes right. The issue is that interactive decks way not draw all the pieces to the puzzle, and feel shitty.

If you go straight aggro w/o infect, you will never kill anyone, and the deck will be weak. Going the pact route routinely clears people boards, but will get you hated pretty quickly.

I actually like Mogis, but Mogis grinds out damage and johnny mcvoltron will kill you dead before then.

Maybe try Crosis the Purger? It's in the color you want and it seems like you got a couple mono players at your table.

people just keep hammering into me that "rakdos = BAD" so i guess i'm just parroting that

i'm new to EDH, but not new to magic. red has been my favorite color in modern since i love playing aggro. but apparently red is bad in EDH, and the best things it has going for it is stuff like insurrection and that one instant that kills everyone who has nonbasic lands

i'd love to play rakdos but i don't really want to make my first EDH deck into something that i know is considered less than good, because if i lose with the deck i'm gonna get salty and frustrated and blame the deck instead of myself

im pretty dumb

Here's what you do:
>make mono-black
>remove 5-10 cards
>replace with key red stuff: Insurrection, Price of Glory, etc.
>add a little color fixing
>replace Erebos with Mogis

>Mogis

He should have gotten the lifegain cancelling effect from Erebos, while Erebos should have had a "all damage has deathtouch" clause instead of that weird and out of place mini-Greed.

>Deathpits of Wrath
>the commander

Holy shit. I never realized how much I wanted this until now. Indestructible would've just been icing on the cake.

I agree, lifegain prevention is almost an exclusively red attribute.

But the greed effect is essentially a recursive sign-in-blood, which is very black.

yeah that sounds pretty close to what i'd like to do, although not sure how well that would actually work with like 4 out of 8 guys having at least 1 voltron deck. wouldn't you need like 8-16 cards that have an effect similar to exquisite blood though? and tons of blockers or force-sacs to not die to voltrons? seems like a hard deck to pull off

also insurrection is apparently house-banned in my group on the account of it being "a dumb end to a game" so i guess i'd have to play mob rule instead lmao

>housebans
Your group is awful.

it's only fair to ban a red wincon card considering how strong red is in EDH

but yeah lmao i'm gonna bring it up at some point. there are so many other insta-win cards that it makes no sense to single out insurrection. they're all very old friends so i don't mind some weirdness

>But the greed effect is essentially a recursive sign-in-blood, which is very black.

Black, yes, but not Erebos. He's not a god of knowledge, he's Inescapable Hades. Greed would have been a better fit for Aetheros.

>considering how strong red is in EDH
Lolwhut

>best three color is esper
>goes on to mention stax

what? Esper stax? you mean that deck that's bad?

Esper doomsday or youre a fucking scrub

Basically what said.

>we can't stop over extending so this 8 mana spell is fucking overpowered! WAAAAAHHHHH

I really hope that's sarcasm.

because they're playing a shitty commander, and they just dont understand why they keep losing when everyone else plays oloro (so he must be good, rite? rite?)

Because he's a nickle-and-dime commander who kills everyone very slowly. Such commanders are attractive to sadists who want to drag the game out and watch the other players squirm.

>Group has voted to ban 5 cards I've used
>0 combined for the rest of them
>mfw

they're not even incredibly broken cards

Well, I phrased the thing wrong. I meant that esper is nicest of the 3 colour combos, but best stax comes from UW I think.

it was sarcasm yes

i don't know how serious they were about to house ban, i think one guy played it, and he played it so good that the rest of the group hated him every game so he decided not to play it anymore.

but i guess if i'm playing mogis, it won't matter if everyone hates me since they will already be hating me.

i do wanna make a mogis deck now but can someone just tell me if the deck has any chance of actually winning a game more than once every 20 times

Which ones?

makes more sense.

GAAIV is pretty fucking annoying.

What cards? I'm legitimately curious because your group sounds like Turbo Shitters.

>Divining top
>Invoke Prejudice
>Kira, Great Glass Spinner
>Jitte
>Winter's Orb

Granted, I guess invoke Prejudice can be kinda gay

Erebos is strong as a full on eldrazi goodstuff deck, he gives you card draw while denying life gain meme decks.
He's in the color able to tutor everything and has access to some of the fastest mana generators (urborg/cabalcoffers/nykthos), this in combination with black's ability to keep board control (powerful board wipes) and having some of the best draw spells makes erebos be a very powerful general.

oops, I forgot Scroll Rack.

Make that 6 cards

>I don't know what krosan grip is; the post

Invoke Prejudice is kind of dickish. The rest is dumb. I guess I can sort of see where the rest are coming from, but who the fuck bans Kira?

people who don't like to play more than 1 spell a turn

Not just K-grip, but artifact/enchantment removal in general.

These types of cards are good, people, you should put them in your deck

Best color 3 color combo is sultai, this is the general consensus and isn't really debateable (just like how RW is the worst color combi).
UW (brago/augustus) or mono U (teferi) are the best stacks decks.

>banning Kira and Winter Orb

>Winter's Orb

i can sort of understand this if the person playing it is a dick about it. not saying you are, but sometimes it happens

>"hm it's turn 3 and i have a 1/3 mana dork and some shitty wall on my table"
>"i better play winter orb in order to remain in my top dog position"

at least stuff like chaos festival makes the game faster instead of slower and shittier

I don't think targeted housebanning of onenperson if fair in the slightest, but to be fair, that banned list stinks of Azami bullshittery

The best 3 color combo is perfectly debatable when every single Sultai commander is garbage.

Tasigur is passable garbage. he's good, but he doesn't do any particular strategy super well, since he doesn't add bits of that strategy to the deck. he's just kind of something to dump mana into.

do you have a list or any more detailed recommendations? i'm done trusting tappedout decks.

however i'm on a budget of around 150 bucks and i still intend to have fun

The funny thing is that I'll constantly, in response, make an even dumber deck that wins

>We don't like your Geth deck. It's too good
>Ok, I'll completely tear my deck down, retool it for Volrath
>That seems ok
>Alright, i swing at you and discard Draco
>mfw

I mean, of all the things to ban, I wasn't expecting a legit list like that.

Top is powerful and "End of turn, top" gets annoying. Going to assume that they chose it because they don't have it.

Invoke is strong and unfair in that its $100+ dollarydoos. However, as an enchantment, there should be no issue removing it unless there is no green or white.

Banning Kira is weenie hut jr territory. She's annoying, sure, but she doesn't do shit to sweepers.

Jitte is really good, but not ban worthy.

Winter Orb is dickish against what sounds like turbo weenie players.

Scroll rack is not banable.

Fucking tell them to run Disenchant/Naturalize spells. That being said, the real underlying issue seems to be centered around money. Every card on there is $20+ except Orb and Kira, though Kira is close.

I really don't understand my group sometimes. They hate things that slow the game down but get mad at me when I don't summon Ulamog, the ceaseless hunger on turn 2 because "I'm not playing to win"

I think it depends on the mood, somdtimes people wanna sit down for a serious, challenging game. In that case it's (in my opinion) disrespectful to your opponents not to try to beat them. Sometimes you wanna sit down with some beers and shoot shit over a 3 hour durdlefest, and that's fine too.

Are you sure user? I don't really read the lore, but I don't see how Athreos is knowledge.

Athreos is called the god of passage, I assume as in passage to the next life. He also has a fucking scythe, and white is far more about reanimation than card draw.

>implying house bans are a bad thing

A guy in our group has a sharum deck that has knowledge pool. He searches for knowledge pool, exiles 15 cards with it, then uses sharum to bring in phyrexian metamorph to copy knowledge pool, exiling another 15 cards. I've never seen a deck like it and I thought it was very interesting and funny. The decks we were playing were about 70% powered and had no shortage of artifact hate. Each player still exhausted their resources fighting over three-four knowledge pools. The five-person game dragged on to almost four hours. Sharum had an entire deck dedicated to protecting knowledge pool, so no amount of hate was sufficient. The concept of the deck was funny up until the second hour, then it was painful. Over 200 cards were exiled that game.

Sometimes GIT GUD is not the answer when it comes to how you spend your leisure time. It's a facet of basic interpersonal skills to be able to say "That kind of sucked." without personal convictions getting involved. Taking a break from a certain card is one of the easiest ways to break up the monotony of a strategy that not everybody enjoys.

>but I don't see how Athreos is knowledge.

He's a cipher for Hermes in his role of psychopomp. This is the kind of knowledge typically implied in black, knowledge obtained by interrogating the spirits of the dead. And the lore of Theros makes it clear that NO-ONE can return the dead to life there, whihc makes Athreos ability a flavor fail.

What are some of the best ways to break group hug synergy? I'm converting my Tasigur BUG control list into a light group hug deck that still polices as best it can. I figure Tasigur can take advantage of the mutual mana accelerators pretty well, it's the possible mutual card draw that I'm wary about.

I'm not the guy who was bitching about Veeky Forums and their rating of generals, but I am the guy who you replied to about Erebos being strong.
The thing about mono black you need to realize is that it's an expensive color if you want it build as a full power-house (Urborg / Cabal Coffers / Tutors are expensive), how ever, you should also realize that a budget version of the deck which you can slowly upgrade card by card is also very possible in this color without being utter crap.
Just build a list on your budget and get those expensive black cards later if you feel like the deck is right for you.

Some cheap good cards in mono black are:

Grey Merchant

Blood Chief Ascension

Increasing ambition (not as mana efficient as other tutors, but gets the job well done - especially in play groups that do not run optimized decks)

Read the Bones

Crypt Ghast (extort colorings are in the reminder text and don't count towards identity)

Magus of the Coffers

Liliana of the Dark Realms

Liliana Vess

Reaper from the Abyss + Blood Speaker - this is a small combo'ish loop, which can be very rewarding if you run more demons that are good (Bloodgift Demon / Rune Scarred Demon)

Would also honourably mention Ob-Nixilis Unshackled, which can be a huge pain for your opponents

Once you have some money to spend: Try to get both Ulamogs and the old Kozilek in your deck once you have Urborg & Cabal Coffers (make sure you run an expedition map to search for the lands), your deck will be easily able to cast eldrazi's especially if you also include an Eye of Ugin, adding even more efficient mana and tutoring effects which is how Erebos shines.

Don't bother with meme enchantments like Grave Betrayel, these are way to expensive and unless you have a dedicated combo to make them work which you can search for will slow your deck down and do nothing for you most of the time.
Go for the efficient stuff that draws you cards or has impact the moment it goes down.

>Preators Grasp

That's what I do in Liliana.

If he's playing the linear game of only getting KP, then start countering his tutors, which is a perfectly valid strategy against Sharuum. Hit his mana rocks, block his tutors, and slow him down. FFS, learn to play with instead of taking the shitter way and house banning.

Notion Theif

>Notion Thief
I completely forgot he exists, largely because I was wanting to keep the deck creatureless, but that card is powerful enough to warrant an inclusion.

Accelerating the game like this requires you to have enough enchantment/artifact hate, I used to have a similar setup in one of my Kruphix decks where I would accelerate the game and then abruptly stop it by blowing up all the accelerators when I hit my sweat spot, look at cards like Creeping Corrosion (if you're running howling mine and similar artifacts), for enchantments I used to run Consign to Dust, removing anything unwanted from my side (due note that this was possible due to the nature of Kruphix's mana storing, I don't think a similar strategy will be quite effective in a Tasigur deck).

Plagiarize is the OG spell, but it's only target play until eot.

There's always Words of Waste, assuming you're drawing cards too with mana to burn.

Take advantage of the card draw with Cadaverous Bloom, though the cards are exiled with sucks for Bananaman

>That, and we average a boardwipe every 2 turns.
So.. Cancer.

The pro play is swing at one enemy with Volrath, discard Draco to Volrath, swing at the other guy with one of your 9/9 fliers and cast Tainted Strike on it.

Black's knowledge is various different kinds, it isn't "typically" speaking with the dead. It honestly doesn't even make flavor sense when it's flavored like that such as on Read the Bones. Athreos was a Charon equivalent primarily, even though iirc Charon was not technically speaking a "god". But the visual of a "underworld ferryman" is an extremely common and ingrained idea especially in reference to greek mytholog so they probably felt the need to do their own spin on it. The idea was that your opponent pays the toll and they either remain in the world of the living or get ferried across to the underworld. It isn't a 100% flavor hit but the intention is pretty clear. I agree that Erebos's draw ability doesn't make any flavor sense at all. I think they just wanted a very black ability that wasn't overtly related to killing things, since ideologically Erebos himself doesn't actually kill things as he believes everyone comes to him eventually without his intervention.

What is the best Esper commander for artifacts?

I currently run Sydri. I would post my Decklist but I'm currently updating it, so I'll post it soon.

Sharuum the Hegemon

Probably Syndri, every other one is an insane aggro magnet

What if I'm not playing blue.
What if he draws a tutor or KP before I can get one of my six artifact hate cards.
What if there are other things happening in the game besides knowledge pool.
What if we are not interested in a 4v1.

Also note that the power level of the deck was never mentioned, nor whether he won the game or not. The problem was that we had a four hour game.

Modifying the local rules for the sake of gameplay is not inherently a shitter thing to do either. There is a reason that hyrule temple is banned in super fox brothers, and it has nothing to do with scrubs.

He's such an awesome card, I've managed to shut down couple of times card draw entirely from a game thanks to having a good hand that could protect before dropping him.

Sharuum is in my 99 for synergy with Eldrazi Displacer and Venser, I wonder if a Sharuum commander would be more useful for that