MTG EDH/Commander General

Izzet Lifegain Edition
Previous thread: (Cross-thread)

>Official Site: Contains deck building rules and the current ban list.
mtgcommander.net
>Deck List Site: You can search for decks that other people have made. Authors often have comments that explain their deck’s strategy and card choices.
tappedout.net
>Another resource for commander discussion; they have an entire forum dedicated to discussing decks. People often make primers, which go into detail about how they built and play their deck.
mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/commander-edh
>Statistically see what everyone else puts in their commander decks based on what is posted to the internet.
edhrec.com/
>Find out what lands you can add to your deck, sorted by category, based on a chosen Commander’s color identity.
manabasecrafter.com/
>CARD SEARCHING
>Official search site. Current for all sets.
gatherer.wizards.com/
>Unofficial, but has GOAT search interface.
magiccards.info

Other urls found in this thread:

tappedout.net/mtg-decks/super-zombio-bros/
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

First for hypno-toad

>Not posting best wheels.dec general

Kydele is crazy when you build around wheeling.

I partner with Ludvic for that sweet deck spinning into a giant fireball or huge X-spell finisher.

Seriously powerful, but Leovold can suck a dick...

Izzet lifegain storm?

IS there a way to make Arjun actually work? I always liked the mind moil idea but don't really see an easy way to make it work...

Omniscience + enter the infinite + psychosis crawler. :^)

also postem

I'm currently working on my first deck. Basically esper-theme deck with sphinx's as finishers.

need/want help/advice?

Sen is a lot of fun. I have a buddy who plays Sen with a lot of Sphinx finisher choices. Pretty sure the professor also has a deck list or youtube video about his Sen build that you can look at for some ideas.

Well I still think my win con is a bit lackluster, and I'm currently looking for some kind of combo to win if need be but other than that the deck is almost complete. except for the mana base because for some reason I refuse to buy fetchlands right now.

Rn the only edh deck I have to my name is my turbo-combo Gitrog deck. It's total Spikeshit and is just meant to combo off as fast as possible.

Looking into starting a budget Zada deck to fall for the mono-red meme and have a more casual deck for playing with my pals.

...

>Rn the only edh deck I have to my name is my turbo-combo Gitrog deck. It's total Spikeshit and is just meant to combo off as fast as possible
I approve

Psychosis crawler and OG Niv Mizzle would be your main wincons.

Currently running 4 color thopter tribal with breya (previously yore tiller nephilim, c16 was a fucking winning lottery ticket for this deck), bant token goodstuff with derevi, and Uncle Oros the racist dragon

Well I don't have a pic so you'll have to settle for a post

>Ezuri Claw of Progress, manages to win through huge dorks or commander dmg via ezuri
>Breya, Etherium Shaper, artifacts.dec, lots of abuse of etb effects and ramp
>Mazirek Kraul Death Priest, lots of self sac and forcing other players to sac as well or works as B/G goodstuff
>Mimeoplasm, heavy reanimator and self mill, the most competitive of l my decks
>Erebos God of the Dead, I just wanted a mono black deck

Thought reflection and lab maniac

What are some fun artifact-based decks I can build? I basically have a mid-tier colourless deck lying around after taking apart memnarch, and with a little kanoodling, I could make it into just about anything.

Right now I was thinking something Izzet, so I could have access to all the Darietti tech, while also using my monoblue artifact shenanigans, which would also free up gilded lotus for my monoblack deck, but I'm willing to build basically anything. It just has to be fast and either super flashy, or very reliable.

...

>look mom, I posted it again!

>not minion of leshrac

You can probably guess what I would recommend

Fair enough, do you have an Arjun list I can look at? The deck would primarily be a ramp deck, which is why I was thinking Jori En would be pretty good, but as a Golgari sort of guy, this is completely new territory for me.

>pray for artificer in aether revolt

Well I referred to Daretti actually

Eh, not even as picky about the artificer part. Originally I was going to turn it into Lazav artifacts, until I realized that I'd never have the devotion to cast lazav in a reasonable time frame.

Well, I've built darietti before, any spicy things I should be aware about, outside of the ol' recursion decree of annihilation nonsense? Seems a shame not to be able to use teferi or tezzeret though.

I want to make something else than these.
I was thinking about Braids, Conjurer Adept and just steal everything and put big beaters on the battlefield.

I still don't get this. Is this a stupid combo that does something stupid, or is the joke that it doesn't work? I know dirk is a meme, but I don't know what the hell the gorilla is doing there.

How do you folks feel about infinite combos? Integral part of the format, or an annoyance that ruins a match?
I imagine the biggest factor is how competitive the particular game in question is. Maybe I'm just casual scum, but I feel like too many games turn into a race to go infinite.

Is there a better resource than EDHrec for deck suggestions? I'm tired of seeing samey format staple lists, and any time I try to build something new, I always get discouraged when I'm inevitably recommended the same garbage for every deck I want to make.

You people meme'd me enough to use Scrambleverse. So, I'm make a Vial Smasher the Fierce + Ludevic deck that sticks a middle finger to control decks harder than a Gruul deck.

What's the most bullshit stuff I should put in? I want to keep this mostly Spellslinger based, but here's what I plan on using so far:
>Possibility Storm
>Emrakul, Worst Fears, Cruel Entertainment
>Dictate of the Twin Gods
>Grafted Exoskeleton/Phyrisis
>Various suspend/Delve 10 drops.

No green for maximum fuck-blue spice?
Vexing Shusher is A-tier.

You're also forgetting Xanthid Swarm.

I tried it with Kydele + Vile Smasher but it ended up being a different deck entirely. I like Ludevic giving me a card every turn and for the under-the-radar factor.

Besides, Vexing Shusher is in my Gay Kings deck.

I made this deck, so what you do is:

>possibility storm
>warp world
>epic experiment
>mizzix's mastery
>blue sun's zenith / stroke of genius

Toss an infinite mana combo in there, so you can kill two people on their upkeep by making one draw 100 cards and the other take 100 damage. Strionic Resonator also helps here. Vial Smasher works really well as X-Cost tribal. Otherwise, you just sit around and happen to ping people. Also, x-cost counterspells are the shit.

Though I recently switched the commander to Kraum. He's a bigger body that curves out later, with haste in case I want to bludgeon people with him, and he discourages other people from casting spells / countering shit too often.

>I meant to say 'axe possibility storm' because it's x-cost tribal and that's a nonbo

sorry.

I also included a bunch of copy effects, so I can flood the stack with bullshit that nobody wants to resolve.

Both. They're both.
Consistent fast combos in a deck devoted to fetching them and countering anything that isn't them are hot cancer and utterly horrible, but having a few combos in a deck isn't bad and is, in fact, probably one of the better ways to end games.

Not to mention, there are good combos and bad combos. In order to figure out which one your combo is, try and explain how fucking awesome it is to a person who either does not play Magic, does not play EDH, or is not a combo lover. If you're saying things like "And then I summoned a bajillion dragons and ate everyone's face", "Everyone drew their entire deck and lost the game", or anything you could make a death metal song out of, it's good. If you're saying "I made sure no one could do anything, no one could stop me, then took fifty turns to dig through my deck looking for a single card to instantly win the game", burn your deck. Don't sell it, burn it. Sleeves and all.

Every deck should run a small portion of combo disruption- and they usually do. Krosan's Grip and such usually suffice. Having combos, and even trying to get them to go off, isn't cancer- it's when the entire deck does nothing but get and protect a shitty unfun combo that things get horrible.

Make sure to have a few ways to make Vial Smasher have Infect, it gets pretty crazy when you start insta killing people with giant X spells.

X Cost Tribal does sound good. I'll try to try that version and pitch Possibility Storm.
>Kraum
Eh, I'm not too crazy about the guy because I rarely see people cast more than 1 spell in most cases. But he does work for adding in that extra needed damage on the spot.

Thanks for the solid responces.

I don't really mind that people are "racing" to go infinite in the sense that it seems fine that people should be trying to win as fast as their deck can win

But I don't want it to be a "race" in the sense that nobody is trying to stop the other players from comboing, only trying to combo first

Some people say in really competitive arms race metas, there's no point in trying to be interactive, it's better to just try to find your combo faster. Idk if that's true, it doesn't sound true to me (just look at legacy vs modern, legacy has more powerful cards but it's more interactive), but if it IS true, then I'm not a fan of that kind of game

I think people can reasonably be expected to hold up instant speed interaction OR play some kind of disruptive permanent by their turn 5, so somebody who went before them and was trying to combo on their turn 6 would have to beat at least one piece, possibly more pieces of disruption to actually combo

Some of my favorite moments in mtg are when people are trying to combo off, but they get interrupted, and then they have to improvise a way to either recur a disrupted combo piece, or find another combo, and sometimes they do, which is cool, sometimes they don't and they have to switch to defense, so they don't lose to the next guys combos

I have 0 problems with infinite combo's if they win right there, on that turn, because then we just reshuffle and go again.

Decks that tutor for only one win condition and pull it off every game by turn 4 are annoying, because the group I play with usually isn't fast enough to do anything, but anything later is usually fine.

>Eh, I'm not too crazy about the guy because I rarely see people cast more than 1 spell in most cases.

That is what Possibility Storm is for.

One of my favorite decks I've ever built- the one I'm most proud of- is old!Grenzo. That deck hits like a sexual tyrannosaurus, it combos non-infinitely, has the Bigger, Blacker Draw Engine, and gets better as time goes on.

The main combo in the deck uses Zulaport Cutthroat, Ashnod's Altar, and Grenzo. You pull creatures off the bottom of the deck with Grenzo, hope they make tokens, and dig as deep as you can while everyone bleeds slowly.

>Idk if that's true, it doesn't sound true to me
It isn't, in full competitive EDH all of those racing decks are fucked over by the stax players. Its a triangle of racing decks vs stax decks vs midrange decks at that level of play.

That sounds really fun. And like it would get you hated off the table.

The only Infinite combo I run is a CloudStone Curio in my Rakdos, Lord of Riot deck. I only have a Rune Scar demon to tutor and the rest of the deck is drawing a bunch of cards but if I get the Cloudstone out it usually leads to shenanigans.

Cloudstone + 13 damage+ 2 eldrazi in my usually hand means infinite cast triggers.

Oblivion sower is the best as I exile everyone's decks

Both Ulamog's just remove the field

Emrakul allows me to control everyone's turns

Kozilek, Butcher allows me to draw my deck

Devestation Twin gives me infinite 10/10 tokens

Artisan of Kozilek revives my grave

Distended Mindbender Removes hands

Conduit of Ruin, Void Winnower and Endless One are just used to keep the bouncing going.

Its funny when it happens and I didn't really need to change anything with the deck, I just threw it in once on a suggestion and figured out how crazy Eldrazi were with it.

any spicy memes for mazirek? tireless tracker already in

If you have the mana dorks for it, I'm a fan of Contamination.

You are weak-willed. It warms me to know that nobody will want to play with your faggot ass.

Post cards you love dearly

I play that in Mizzix, at least helps holding life totals up to win through other burn like Guttersnipe or Sphinx-Bone Wand.

Emrakul's Evangel

List?

Saskia: The card too difficult for EDH General to build around? The card to finally defeat EDH General's "intelligence"?

Survey says: Yes.

Saskia is just bad, why would I want to build a deck when ones that do what she does better?

I built her with samurai because that's the only time I would be able to.

Why would I build
"Boring: the deck" , especially when I'm gimping myself without blue

STATUS: Defeated

That too. Alhammerret's Archive could be in there too.

I don't take the format very seriously.

The deck takes a little too long to get good, but it's really amusing to me.

people don't like the weakest of the C16 commander, what is so hard to understand

"Saskia: the most boring commander" with the wrong subtype and a boring as fuck build pattern.
She's bland, ugly, and requires too many colors leading to a muddled final product. Did I mention she doesn't have blue

I'd sooner build a janky blue deck with my foiled chisea,heart of oceans built around getting glacial chasm and comboing out while protecting my shield.

It's really that there's no point in building around it

You could make a fine goodstuff deck in those colors tho

I'm building her right now actually.

Infect and persist themed around studio ghibli reference cards

It's not going to be amazing, but I need a lower power level deck to play against my easy going friends so it'll do well.

looks like she and Kalemne would get along

Would there be a better mono white commander for a lifegain strategy. Its going to be a casual deck for my fiance to get going in commander. She wants to do mono white too.

I was gonna pick her or Gisela, the Broken Blade as the commander, cuz she likes it and it has lifelink. I'm gonna be jamming a bunch of life based wincons, prevention effects, and stuff like Aurification/Force Bubble/Ghostly Prison into it too.

Yes, make sure you have early turn plays and some way of protecting his raggedy ass. He dies super duper easy, and while Golgari doesn't feel like combo colours, you need to build it in a combo-facilitating setup. The biggest issue is surviving long enough to actually win with Maz.

I really like this guy, but for monowhite life gain, I think either atalya or rune tail. Gisela broken blade is cool too

Either way, put all three in the deck

>people are still trying to brew 4c decks
The problem is with the commander, not the playerbase. I already have to sift through 300+ cards for a tricolour, how the shit are you supposed to do it for a 4c, and at that point, why not build a 5c?

looks solid, cleric tribal can be fun esp with battletide alchemist & 81/2 tails

>Make sure to have a few ways to make Vial Smasher have Infect, it gets pretty crazy when you start insta killing people with giant X spells.

Wait a minute. what you pay in an X spell isn't counted as part of the CMC of the card.

a Spell's CMC uses X for when it's on the stack, a Card's CMC doesn't, so yes it would work

Make sure you run crackdown, silent arbiter, crawlspace, aetherflux reservoir, sphere of safety, spiritual asylum, meekstone, windborn muse, lightmine field

Best of luck dodger, having your other play edh is very rewarding. My girlfriend is building queen marchesa right now, it's her 4th "serious " deck.

Grafted Exoskeleton + Magnetic Theft


>[Shitbrewing Intensifies]

And glacial chasm!
Don't forget that!

Mono white oloro is the only way to go

>4c is too many options, even 3 color is hard to decide
>better do 5c instead

??

...

I need to cut 12 cards from this casual-ish Gisa & Geralf deck. I'm stuck and need a swift kick in the "stop playing bad cards x y and z."

tappedout.net/mtg-decks/super-zombio-bros/

What are some good mill cards? I'm not milling as a wincon, I'm milling to dump things into the yard for Lazav 1v1 deck. Here's what I have so far:

>Coercion
>Seer's Parable
>necrogen mists
>memory jar
>Honden of Night's Reach
>Creeping Dread
>Mind slash
>Dark Deal
>Whispering Madness
>Sphinx Tutelage
>Trepanation Blade
>Mind Grind
>Mind Funeral
>Curse of the bloody tome
>Jace's Erasure
>Memory Erosion
>Traumatize
>Talent of the Telepath
>Phenax

I know it'd be easier to post the decklist but I'm still in the process of smoothing things out. In general, the idea is to play low-key mill cards, tutor up traumatize, then dump a metric fuckton of their library into the yard for Lazav to gloat about later. If that fails for whatever reason, set up Lazav and some hand hate, then stall until something good winds up in the yard. Finally, if both plan A and plan B fail, plan C is to drop sphinx's tutelage, and wheel my way to milling every land card in their deck.

Grave Betrayal, Forbid maybe since you want to keep it casual and Army of the Damned

It's sort of 50/50 to use in Lazav, but things like Brain Maggot or (better, with Academy Ruins) Jester's cap can really remove the eldrazi splinter from your feet if you give up on making your Lazav an eldrazi fatty.

I play Lazav in multiplayer, but its plan A is yours without low-key mill and lots of additional copies like Sakashima the Impostor and other good clones.

If you're that mill heavy consider Consuming Aberration, usually combined with Rogue's Passage.

Probably right about Forbid being too much. I really like Grave Betrayal though, since it feeds so nicely into Call to the Grave.

Also, I mostly am trying to make it less combo oriented or "oops I win." I want to be able to win still, but give the rest of the table a shot if they're running lower power decks.

>Seer's Parable
wat

Anyway, Induce Paranoia, Geth, Geralf, Dreamborn Muse

How effective are clone/stealing effects in your deck? Personally, I ran a very strong Memnarch deck that involved stealing shit, and it was very powerful, but Lazav can copy things that are tossed in the graveyard, so I'm having difficulty justifying running those things over just straight removal.

Seer's Vision, I don't really know where the parable part came from.

I actually have both Geth and Geralf, and I was planning on using them with Havengul Lich for hilarious results. Necrotic Ooze was another thing that came up when I was searching, but is it really worth the cost?

Not really in 1v1, the ooze is way more effective in multiplayer. Might be a dead card if you don't get anything interesting on your opponent's graveyard

Telepathy is slightly better than Seer's Vision in my opinion but it'll make people target you much faster if you do land it turn one.

Quite effective, really! The usual black-blue tactic is steal things first, then sacrifice them when they become a threat to you. That way it lands in the graveyard, and Lazav can make use of it.

This is especially effective in cards like Bribery and Acquire, and (in multiplayer groups) it usually quickly makes people reconsider adding Avacyn, Iona or a Blightsteel to their decks. In 1v1, getting a Iona from your opponent can very much mean a victory sometimes.

Control Magic, Order of Succession...Blatantly stealing things sounds better than copying them in 1v1, and while there are some spells like Steal Artifact and Steal Enchantments, they might not suit you very well.

Also, Commandeer. Really important. Merely tutoring it will make your opponent think twice before playing a lot of things.

Thanks for the heads up.

How does Dimir do colour fixing? Do I just throw in the various U/B generating artifacts and call it a day, or is there a more reliable way to make sure I get UUBB by turn 4?

>telepathy
Oh, that's a mean card. I'm running Gitaxian Probe too, but I could always use some more support. I have bunch of stealing stuff effects, tell ya what, give me an hour or so to throw together a decklist, and I'll see what I can do.

Now, how does Lazav work with replacement effects? Can I copy Blightsteel as the replacement effect hits, or does it "see" the graveyard without actually going into it, like it would with reanimator?

I'm not gonna run a lot of cards that need reminders for triggers. She's still trying to grasp the concept of phases and stuff.

What's some fun cards for newbies to run tho? Artifact and white cards.

You can't Lazav blightsteel as it doesn't hit the graveyard, sadly (the key word here is the "Instead" in its text.)

Compare it to Ulamog or Emrakul (first generation) who do hit the graveyard, then are shuffled because of a trigger. Lazav can copy those.

I just use the cluestones/signets, a chromatic lantern and this guy

Jinxed Idol will teach her the value of her creatures until it gets broken. My newbie relative loved playing it.

Sacred Mesa's sort of fun, the general grouphug-type of white cards are "fun".
Planeswalkers notably Ajani are fun. The first one especially, fits the whole lifegain thing.

I've been considering running her in Breya.

Anyone had any luck/experience?

That's a spicy fucking meatball. Why doesn't that see more play? Is it particularly expensive?

I don't have the budget for a lantern, but based on what I have, I'm running a lot of any-colour generating rocks, the cluestone, and the monument. It should be workable, but without the fancy expensive lands I need, I'm worried I'll get fucked more often than not.

Perfect, that's what I needed to know, thanks user!

Why not build monowhite weenies with Anafenza as your commander? You could even make it warrior/soilder tribal, which should both be pretty straight forward, and fairly easy to assemble. My friend runs this deck, and I'm always surprised at the cheeky wins he gets out of nowhere. Alternatively, why not Karlov? Dual colour decks aren't too too complicated for brand new players if you've already assembled it, and I think he's one of the more straight forward lifegain commanders.

>pod doran
Could you share what 2-drops you're using? I'm curious

>s it particularly expensive?
I just looked myself, and no, it's like 30 cents.
I'm gonna pick one up myself.

He's really cheap, but, depending on a really weak creature for manafixing is never a good idea. He usually goes unnoticed though, so it tends to work in the end

>30 american pennies
By the beard of Zeus, I'm getting one of those today.

Personally I like cheap creatures that have versatility late game. I mean, if someone really wants to waste their removal on it, that's all on them, and means I can play something bigger later to completely fuck up their day.

>the only black counterspell still gives the blue player a way out

I love this card. I love to convince other players into paying life for me to counter it.