EDH/Commander General

Enlightened EDH Deckbuilder Edition

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>Thread Topic:
Do you intentionally power down your decks for your group?

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I have a friend who plays card games online. I've asked him if he would like to play magic, and he says he doesn't want to because of the time and money investment, so I was thinking of buying him a slightly tuned up pre-con for Christmas. Alternatively, I'm an experienced deckbuilder so I could build it from ground up, but I don't want to spend too much money on it or it will make things weird

Anyway he might not accept the deck as a gift, so I might have to keep it for myself. Which deck should I get? Needs to be cheap to tune up, doesn't have to be too high-power but it should still win occasionally. It also has to be fun and straightforward. Meren is an obvious option but he's overplayed so please not him.

I had a similar experience with a friend of mine, I chose Zada, Hedron Grinder. He actually flies under the radar a lot, but can explode out if left alone. He's incredibly straight forward, and he was >50 for the initial cards. Most of his stronger choices are cheap too, unless you want to go super crazy with things like blood moon and the like. I don't know what type of playstyle your friend, or you favor, but Zada has been a blast and since my friend moved away I ended up buying the deck for myself and it's one of my favorites.

>I don't know what type of playstyle your friend

Yeah I was just trying to stalk his Shadowverse profile to check what kind of stuff he plays lmao

Zada isn't a bad option but I think I might go for something a bit more stable, kind of like alesha hatebears or something like that. I don't know if mono-red is a good way to enter the format since he will have to play against UG degeneracy

edric flying men would be an option if it wasn't for the fact that he won't know what spells are worth counterspelling and so on

Kruphix ramp then? He doesn't need to counter stuff, just stick some way to hexproof Kruphix and go to town with big mana and big spells

Fair enough, I'm not personally a fan of hate bears, but that's because in my playgroup it seems to slow the game down a decent amount.

>Hatebear player gimps everyone else
>Starts working towards his win con
>One of the other 3 stops him and we begin pushing forward
>He plays a hatebear and pushes us all back to start with him as he tries again

I don't hate the playstyle, and I can actually see how it could be a lot of fun to play a deck that slows everyone down but yourself, I just can't seem to get into it personally so I can't offer much in the way of advice for that.

And in regards to the knowing what to counter thing, the best way for him to learn is to play and figure it out. Alternatively if he does accept the deck you can just play a few rounds with him and talk about some of the common moves in EDH to look out for.

Maybe Glissa the Traitor? She's fairly easy to learn the game with, and she has a pretty fun combo type commander.

oh oops by hatebears i meant "cute 2-4 mana creatures that do something funny when they etb"

>Festering Goblin is a Goblin Zombie
>There is not a single Human Zombie, even though the overwhelming majority of zombies used to be humans before they became undead
What a blunder. I hope they fired someone for this.

But scrambleverse and Thieves' Auction and such fall into "lol XD randumb"-category which only retarded ebin memesters play, and literally in the same group as grouphug players.
Enlightenment means that you realize that the only fun is not letting your opponents to play anything, because they have no mana, hands or permanents.

I'd recommend just buying one of the new precons that you would be interested in and have him play it out of the box.

If he doesn't like it you can just keep it for whatever you wanted it for, if he does like it, you can just buy another one.

The current ones are surprisingly powerful & fun to play even against somewhat tuned decks.
I've been keeping a sleeved up precon with me to use against low powered groups or for someone to borrow.

If you want a budget deck you kind of have to go 1 or 2 colors. And if you go 2 colors, ideally you deck should have more of a early ramp/midrange strategy so you're not mana screwed by budget dual lands.

The general opinion is that Daretti and Meren are the two best Commander pre-cons, and they both meet the criteria established above. The UG Ezuri one is also alright.

Meren is a cool/popular/flexible commander, and BG is a good color identity. I would go for her pre-con deck and then buy some cheap staple fatties to fill it out.

>>Enlightenment means that you realize that the only fun is not letting your opponents to play anything, because they have no mana, hands or permanents.

no, young one. what you are describing is the penultimate step before reaching enlightenment. by making your opponents lose their mana, hand and permanents means they are losing, and that is not true meaning of EDH. instead, true meaning is making everyone involved lose, not just you. that means tutoring and casting scrambleverse, resolving it for half an hour, then recurring it with archeomancer and casting it again and again until your group realizes that this is all there is. just scrambleverse, being resolved again and again. the outcome of the game becomes irrelevant, but everyone loses.

Oh, and if you want mono color options, Krenko/Grenzo/Purphoros Gobbos and Yisan/Ezuri Elfball are very viable strategies, and not too expensive to build, all things considered.

>Do you intentionally power down your decks for your group?

no i just play worse / "miss" lethal

>Ezuri Elfball
yeah i've been looking at tribals a lot since they're very straightforward and intuitive. no weird fuckery, just create a billion beaters and smash face. i'm just afraid monogreen might be boring to play, but that's just a gut feeling.

i tried theorycrafting a zombie tribal deck but sadly a lot of the zombo lords and stuff are 5-10 bucks so that's not an option. would make a really fun deck though. i've also been thinking of a sigarda human tribal but no idea how that would work

>Krenko/Grenzo/Purphoros Gobbos
i know from experience that this is not really the correct way to start playing EDH. krenko basically just sees the first 5 turns of an EDH game, purphorous gets hated out and grenzo, havoc raiser is just in wrong colors for his gimmick. I tried to make a grenzo deck earlier but it just didn't work well enough for me to be happy with it

i've actually been doing that but i end up regretting it because then one of my opponents might end up ass pulling some memetastic win and then i just feel sad that i didn't smash them up when i had the chance

But I want to have fun too, not to numb my mind. I want to have everyone else not to do anything just so I can also not do anything but to prolong the game to infinity and prevent everyone from dying, and shuffling hands and grave back to library when they are close to decking themselves.
I don't want scrambleverse-world, I want to push everyone to purgatory and drag them back just when all of their sins are burned away.

>Do you intentionally power down your decks for your group?

I'll take out certain cards like mass land destruction or stupid infinite combos, but even that's just so I last longer at the table and can politic my way into more wins.

The best solution to the "I have better cards than my friends" is a clone/steal/copy deck, where you just win with whatever your opponent does. It also lets you run a good amount of countermagic to make sure everyone is playing fair.

>But I want to have fun too

then you are but a child

most fun shenanigans commander to make everyone want to murder suicide?

holy fuck i'm writing like a fucking schizophrenic, i need to rewrite my post

>Do you intentionally power down your decks for your group?

funnily enough, i used to think limiting your budget is a good way to limit your power level when it comes to deckbuilding. turns out that isn't really the case. my friends play expensive goodstuff while i play cheapo mega-synergy secret tech, yet i'm the archenemy every game.

my decks don't even run infinite combos, stax or anything like that. my group just gets out-valued.

interestingly enough, they still call me a retard when i give out my value assessments on specific cards, like when i called black market bad and slow

thing is, i can't even really power down my decks at this point. my group is already traumatized and will aggro me down regardless whether i'm playing something powerful or not. so now i'm stuck playing pseudo 1v3 nearly every game

Build a monoblack goodstuff deck. You can throw it together super cheap, a lot of the best cards synergize with other playstyles, and it's generally pretty fun to pilot. Just grab t2 cheaper things like dictate of erebos and butcher of malakir instead of grave pact, run a fuckload of token producers like ophiomancer and endrek, and throw in some giant splashy black creatures for reanimator. I run a more tuned version of this deck with Volrath at the helm, and if you cut pact/demonic tutor/top/massacre wurm/kokshun falls, the deck is like 60 bucks.

>look at a deck primer online
>"Elvish Archdruid"
>"Dwynen, Gilt-Leaf Daen (foil)"

why is it important to notify people which cards you own are foils and which are not

it's useful if you're trying to foil out a deck ad want to use it as a checklist

You might have a super cool foil you're proud of. I have a alternate art foil archfiend of depravity, and it's one of my favorite cards, despite being like a buck.

>wanting to have fun in EDH

You've got a long mountain to climb. Start with trying to get possibility storm and grip of chaos out at the same time and go from there. Enlightenment will come.

oh I know how strong a cheap monoblack can be, but sadly I just made one for me so it'd suck if I had to keep it for myself

guys i just put together a surrak, hunt caller deck on cockatrice
haste in monogreen is incredible, can't believe he's 50c
i kinda want to build it irl, but have almost none of the cards required
what do?

i have the same alt art, but really i prefer the stock art
pic related i quite like it
>the light shining through the membrane of wings
>darkness contrast
>huge wings itty bitty body
>best flavor text

Is there a way of making Progenitus unique? I have a foil one and I thought about making it but I just can't think of anything but voltron with anthem effects.

In a game I was in, the Group Hug player cast Warpworld and made two copies of it.

I made a third because why the fuck not?

Is that close to Enlightenment?

I have 2 green land sources and a simic signet and a mother of runes on board.

Can I cast chord of calling where X is 1

How fun is Toshiro Umezawa? He looks neat, but I've never tried mono black before.

can you generate 3 G mana/tap a green creature to help pay for the green cost in Chord of Calling?

no

Gonti is better

why is this?

Monogreen can also be built decently for pretty cheap. I just yesterday convinced someone to build Yeva because you can get a ton of value eithout much investment.

If you've got the money for the manabase, I do the "cycles" route.

Use all the titans (minus primetime), all the bringers, all the gearhulks, a bunch of cards that benefit from multiple land types and mana spent from multiple colors, some fun infinite combos, lots of tutors and generic goodstuff and the rest is rocks and ramp.

5 color is so slim to be honest when it comes to deck idea, imo

But my fun is proportional on making my opponents have less fun.
I enjoy each game more the less my opponents do. Orgasm for every tear of frustration.
I have to change my underwear pretty often if I forget to wear a condom during games.

But I want to play my own deck, not someone else's.

But Gonti deck is not even closely similar compared to Mr. Chaingun

you are still on level 2 of edh deckbuilding then. you are motivated by your pursuit of fun, not by the pursuit of unfun like a true level 4 deckbuilder. perhaps in time you will reach level 3 and onward

I'm both the volrath user and the one whose building yeva. The thing about monogreen is that removal is a little weird. Enchantments and artifacts are easy, but cheap green decks are often very combat-centric and unless you're fighting, you won't be able to remove non-blocker threats very easily. The other issue is card draw. A lot of cheap card draw costs 3-6cmc, or is enchantment/etb based, which means you can run out of gas early if you get the wrong hand.

Nah, man. I lately have been designed my decks simply to make the game as infuriating and as difficult for others as possible. My fun is simply a by-product.

Is the best way to resolve scrambleverse to just collect all the permanents, shuffle them together, then deal the cards out 1 at a time to each player?

Unfortunately, no.

With scrambleverse there is a nonzero chance of one player getting every permanent affected or that the permanents would be distributed in some other unbalanced way, so if you wanted to actually do the effect properly you would have to do it as written

>testing a deck worth literally 30 dollars on xmage
>host a casual game
>guy joins with breya and plays 2 og dual lands on first 2 turns
>me: "those don't seem very casual"
>"my deck is casual it would just be very slow without them"
>me: "if you're worried about speed then it is not a casual deck"
>"it's slow"
>next turn he plays a mana crypt and daretti

wow man

>Do you intentionally power down your decks for your group?

Hell no, why should I have to make my decks weaker when my playgroup could just improve? I always offer to help them when it comes to deck building but they would rather just bitch.

who here /enlightened/?

Trips are the true path to enlightenment.

Also fuck Confusion In the Ranks, the embodiment of how retarded red can be.

To kill creatures in green use fight spells

I don't see the problem here

You're deck isn't casual it's trash, you should've hosted a trash only game so people knew not to join if their deck was playable

beat me in a 1v1 if you're so great

After I'm done 1v1ing your mother

Ow the edge. People like you give spikes a bad name.

There's a few options at 2 like explore, elvish visionary, that new one that draws a card and draws one for every creature that blocks you so it scales well, bind is situational secret tech. Removal is admittedly limited but you've got beast within and song of dryads, ambush viper is basically destroy target attackinh creature without flying.

That's literally what I said. Mechanically, fight isn't as good as regular removal for a variety of reasons, but it should be fine for a budget casual deck.

>tfw I build budget decks tuned for 1v1 that are absolutely overwhelming if you aren't prepared
>that other feel when I frequently make more expensive decks cry for 1/10th the budget

WHY DO THEY LET BUGGERS PLABEN

It's not even about budget or casualness, you take what your color can get and ride that color's strengths

You don't need the best creature removal when you have the best ramp and crazy card draw and recursion all in one color

Fight removal is good anyway, it's not like you have any chance of winning a game where your opponents creatures are bigger than yours AND you need removal for one of them that isnt attacking. Fight works perfectly within mono green's gameplan

So how would I achieve the top level? I'm assuming something along the lines of Mishra?

buy the singles online, you dork.

>budget is trash hur hur
no, dumbass, some people want to be able to buy the decks we make online instead of spending 3k on a pile that can win on turn 3 consistently.

>can't win turn 3 consistently

Deck is trash

Anyone got any card suggestions?
tappedout.net/mtg-decks/zada-goblin-explosion/
deck is pretty casual

>year of our god emperor trump 2016
>still level 1


LOL

What? Have you ever built a green deck? You have situational draw power, with things like elemental bond and hunters prowess, but you don't really have anything like night's whisper, ponder, or faithless looting. Harmonize is probably your best bet other than various cantripping multipurpose things, but it's still 4 mana.

Ramp can be supplemented in any mono colour decks with artifacts because you don't need to worry as much about devotion, and while tempo acceleration is both easy and cheap in green, you need to get those cards out and have things to suck up mana.

This is why fight is a bad mechanic. You get your fuckhuge dump truck to fight something easier, only to have it immediately blow up. As far as I'm aware there are very few things that let you fight without using a card from your hand and also putting a creature in the danger zone if you're swinging with it.

Like I said, I love green, but it has some pretty obvious weaknesses that are difficult to overcome in one colour. Steel hellkite and smokestack with tokens is usually how I deal with bullshit, but that's hardly going over well its casual environment.

Grip of Chaos, Possibility Storm, Ink-Treader Nephilim, and playing on Glimmervoid Basin plane is the true apex of enlightenment.

Green doesn't have as good of cheap draw 1-3 as other color's but it has powerful splashy draw spells like regal force and shamanic rev, and draw engines like soul of the harvest and elemental bond as you mentioned

I don't really understand your complaint against fight, green doesn't need to remove every vaguely threatening creature to win, only the few that are throwing a wrench in its plans, like killing a consecrated Sphinx so the blue player doesn't draw too many and take over the game

>checked
How about adding this one to the mix to make more triggers of Confusion in the Ranks?

>Do you intentionally power down your decks for your group?
I have a pair of designated shitty decks that I can pull out when people are using precons/first draft builds.

What's the point of having a foiled out pimp deck if the entire world doesn't know about it?

Meren really is the correct answer, but what about U/G Ezuri? You'll have to pass on some the unfair U/G staples, but all the deck really needs is a bunch of cheap ETB dorks and some infect creatures. Azami can also be pretty good on a budget.

Satisfying play:

Five player game. I'm running Niv-Mizzet but drawing shit - plenty of mana, no draw spells. Player to my left is running Yidris cascade. Player after that is running Purphoros, but he let his Commander get O-Ringed by the next player.

I pass my turn. Yidris guy tries to Windfall us so he can get something good in his hand. I Counterspell. He passes. Purphoros guy gets excited, tries to Chaos Warp the O-Ring to get his Commander back. I flash in Torrential Gearhulk and re-Counterspell that. My next turn, I overload Vandalblast, completely crippling the Yidris player since he had no green sources after that.

Unfortunately, I went on to lose that game because I didn't block when I should have and left myself in a precarious, low-life position against the guy playing Avacyn.

>Want to build Yidris
>Have no idea where to take it
Do I go for wheels and shit like a Nekusar deck, or do I go mass reanimator with Living End?

>enlightenment is making sure nobody wants to play with you ever again

play every second cascade cards you can play.

>not being an enlightened nomad
>not wandering from group to group spreading your wisdom before being cast out
>not finding comfort in this simple lifestyle

It's like your chakras aren't even aligned user.

I mean I know your faggot ass wants to play mono red outside daretti but there are better ways than chaos decks.

I know that, but I don't know what else to put in

these are in my jhoira chaos list
really need an enduring ideal

I think you're just bad at green, or maybe Magic in general. Bond and Prowess are terrible, but that just means they're irrelevant. The draw you're actually running multi card ramp like cultivate, token cracking effects like Evolutionary Leap, big spells like Genesis Wave, ETB effects like Regal Force, Planeswalkers like Freyalise and Caller of Beasts, and mass recursion like Praetor's counsel and Season's Past. I have six decks in all five colors and the mono green one draws by far the most cards outside of infinite combos.

As far as fighting it's a powerful mechanic, but there are a limited number of good enablers like Ulvenwald Tracker. You need Gruul colors for it to be a major theme, and you should generally do it during an opponent's end step or as an ETB trigger.

This is just evil man.

That's why I ordered one for every deck that I have with blue in it

Thank you and I agree, fight's one problem in my opinion is that a lot of the cheap fight cards are sorcery speed, but anyway you're exactly right, mono green has huge draw power

How do I make Zur fun?

He's already fun, fuck the haters

Just build around your favorite 3 mana or less enchantments

The Tracker, Ezuri's Predation, and Polukranos (not fight in the strict sense) are your good options in G. GR adds Gruul Ragebeast, Domri Rade, and Contested Cliffs to the mix, which makes it a real removal engine. I really want WotC to give us another good creature option or two, preferably G and with the beast type.

>zada
>he

The complaint about fight is that it's inefficient. It requires you to damage your creature in order to damage an opponent's creature, and that damage stays on your creature until the end of turn. You're right, you don't need to fight absolutely everything at all times, but recurring threats are much more difficult to handle, and multiple powerful creatures can cause big problems. Not a big deal, like I said, just something to be mindful of when you're building.

>here's 10 situational cards to prove my point, when the main complaint is that there is very little cost effective reliable draw power in green and it's difficult to remove many non-combat threats
I think you need to work on your reading comprehension, and your card evaluation.

Elemental Bond is one of the best budget draw cards printed, because it doesn't say "nontoken", and it's on ETB. In Sek'Kuar, while it isn't monogreen, elemental bond draws me a hilarious amount of cards.

I'd like to see a decklist user, because I don't really think you understand what you're talking about, and are instead just listing cards you know that might be good.

he, as in my friend, not zada

There's nothing situational about any of the cards he listed

"muh pronouns"

user, you're going to make me do it arent you...

>praetor's council is 8 mana and doesn't draw you cards, it only gives you things that are in your yard
>all the "multi card ramp" has as much to do with card draw as a fetchland
>season's past is 6 mana and requires cards of different cmc to be in your yard
>evolutionary leap is pretty good, but still requires you to sacrifice a creature and pay mana to only get you creature cards
>genesis wave is hilariously expensive
>caller of beasts is 6 mana, only draws you creature cards, and would be better used to drop a creature and eat an attack
>Freyalise needs to be on the field of 2 turns without taking damage before you draw any cards and is 5 mana, then only draws you cards based on the number of green creatures you have

Like I've said a bunch, I love playing green, but don't pull that weak magical christmasland jazz, particularly when elemental bond is 3 mana and actually useful.

What's the best path to enlightenment? I've always wanted to build Norin or something, but do I need to go deeper?

When will wizards finally print enemy colour filter lands that aren't hybrid filters?

>Praetor's Counsel, Season's Past, Evolutionary Leap, Genesis Wave
>probably Birthing Pod too

>weak magical christmasland jazz

Shit bait, senpai

I'm not the same person as the other guy, I just take issue with your usage of the term "situational"

Being a lot of mana doesn't make something "situational", situational is stuff outside your control, like containment priest is situational, it's only good if your opponents are trying to put stuff in play at the right moment

if you're in a green ramp deck, having a lot of mana isn't a niche situation, it's every game

I'm not really sure what you're trying to argue here, it's well established in competitive edh that mono green can compete with multicolor decks and is one of the better mono color combos

green has decent card advantage. it has not-so-good straight up draw. a lot of green decks also run high power-per-card so draw is less needed than in blue or black or whatever, where you'll throw a billion tiny spells around because who cares lmao

my xenagos deck has shitty card draw. i think all i have are skullcamp, momentous fall and harmonize. the rest is pseudo card advantage like genesis wave and selvala's stampede. i still almost never run out of gas because the deck is composed of cheap ramp spells that add card advantage, big fatties that do a TON by themselves and then a bit of utility stuff sprinkled throughout. meanwhile, my fucking crazy necropotence-greed-phyrexian-arena-15-card-draw-spells monoblack deck runs out of gas constantly because it just burns through cards.

Green has some of the best "straight up draw", just because you don't put it in your deck doesn't mean it doesn't exist

>greentext reply with no substance that didn't read the post, and instead got mad over the phrase "magical christmasland jazz"
Look, I get that you have a hand full of cards and 5+ mana available at all times, but if you don't understand the critique, you're incredibly bad at magic. Birthing pod is actually useful, and a card that I run whenever I can, but it still has very little to do with card draw.

Also, do people actually use seasons past? I'm genuinely curious, because it seems like a shitty version of black recursion for a ton of mana.

Alright, it's clear that both of you fucks are just mad and incapable of card evaluation. I was specifically talking about a budget deck built cheaply or some guy's friend, and explaining that removal and cheap reliable card draw are going to be difficult to incorporate. Instead, you faggots are waxing poetic about how green is a competitive colour, that has basically nothing to do with what I'm talking about.

Every single 6 mana card that isn't tutored onto the battlefield is situational because it requires a shitload of mana that you could be using for something else. When you're forced to discard a few cards, what are you going to do, pray you top deck some 6 mana card draw? Jesus christ Veeky Forums is bad at magic.

This is actually a reasonable post from someone who understood what the critique was. Thank you for being able to read user.

If you'd like, I'd be more than happy to help you even out the curve on your monoblack deck, I'm building one myself.

>and an idiot instantly responds without substance for no reason, yet again

name 2

Name a better card draw engine than this. You CANT. Mono red is INSANE

Ironically, green does this pretty well too. Irresistible Prey is another one that I actually run.

Black doesn't have anything like seasons past, black can't recur noncreature spells to hand generally, though a few cards exist for it like that new one in Kaladesh than can grab and artifact or that one commander who gets any black spell

Regal force and glimpse of nature

>if you don't understand the critique

>Season's Past is magical christmasland jazz because it requires cards in the GY

>But Elemental Bond isn't conditional because you always have a hand full of 3+ power creatures

You get all the greentext you deserve

>>If you'd like, I'd be more than happy to help you even out the curve on your monoblack deck, I'm building one myself.

nah it's basically fully optimized already. i have like 15 card draw cards, even with some smaller scale stuff like night's whisper and sign in blood. but i still manage to dodge drawing a good engine occasionally (or a tutor to find one with). adding even more draw now would just make the deck weaker since i would be drawing a ton more redundant cards when i do actually draw a good engine