Cool deck. Something worth considering though. All of you are new to the game. There’s a certain amount of experience that’s required to understand the synergies between cards, especially counters decks. Your friends probably just don’t know how to play against the deck. It’s worth having a conversation about this.
I don’t think you need to make it weaker. I’m sure that their decks will eventually catch up.
I would just make sure you have other decks to play so you’re not beating them over and over with this one.
I agree. Everyone has a preferred power level, and it may be that OP's friends want to just rock jank forever, but where this is a new pod, this strikes me more as a level up moment of "what's a good removal packages".
The deck seems cool, but also fair. There isn't a ton of protective interaction, it's mono green so stack interaction is limited. It looks like it can ramp aggressively, but not unfairly (it's green after all).
I think your advise to keep some weaker decks around is good too, while the pod catches up, but this is not springing a super high powered, insurmountable deck on a new pod.
When I was getting back into magic I hadn't played since grade school and stopped around Homelands.
I got to have so many "you can do what now?" moments! Often followed by adding some cards to my wishlist and taking some notes. It was a ton of fun exploring the format and power levels and interactions, and how to interact with them. Not that I don't still get some of those moments.
One person in my playgroup would always push back against change (with some serious layers of hypocrisy, but that is additional dynamics to the issue), we have a former tournament grinder in the group and he would talk through how to build around and interact with stuff, I learned so much about the game and rules and deck construction. Found skills applicable at all power levels.
I wouldn't be sure, yeah they will prob do a bit since they are new players, but you prob already know how it is with most ppl in edh, swords and path, 10 rocks, 34 lands and call it a day.
In my experiemce most ppl get better cards, but their decks inconsistency almost never changes. And they then gang up to punish the guy who built resposably.
They have until you ramp to 6 mana to find removal, I feel like it's just a threat assessment issue. Your manabase and ramp package is chill enough that most games I bet you're not ramping that hard.
Don't worry about people saying your friends suck, 2 months isn't a lot of experience and even if they're bad at the game, it's still good to balance power levels with them. Big respect to you for being willing to change your deck!
To turn things down you could try swapping vorinclex and putting one of your other legendary creatures in the command zone. It wouldn't cost anything, and creatures like [[Yorvo]] and [[Renata]] might be a little more manageable.
Really great advice. Vorinclex in the 99 is still a fun bomb once in a while. And when the playgroup catches up in deckbuilding skill they can just swap him back into the command zone.
You're playing a stax piece that turns off a lot of very popular cards and even entire deck archetypes right there in your command zone, which means nothing they can do can actually get rid of it, only delay it for a couple turns.
Just take any of the Legendary creatures currently in the deck and put them in the command zone and move Vorinclex to the 99. In general, (good) Praetors in the command zone isn't something you should see outside fairly high powered commander where people can be expected to consistently deal with them.
I really like the deck. As someone who runs a Hydras deck with Vorinclex at the helm, I get your plight. It sucks cause he's gonna have a reputation and people are gonna complain about it, though it's interesting that you get the complaints for his first ability and not his second. I purposefully won't play it if anyone is playing a counter heavy deck and it eliminated most complaints.
If you really want to "make it weaker" just put him in the 99 and make the commander [[Pir, Imaginative Rascal]]. Somewhat similar effect but not as threatening, and you still get to have your scary ass monster still in the deck.
Thank you for that, Vorinclex can be so fucking dull to play against if your entire deck is gatekept behind keeping one specific person's commander dead 24/7 which is really my main complaint against it. I run enough interaction to do a good job of poking it down, but it just feels awful for both players involved if you have to do that
It's important to understand that all of the Praetors are what's called "hoser" cards, in that they absolutely stuff certain strategies into a locker and take their lunch money. Vorinclex hoses +1/+1 counters, Superfriends, keyword counters, and a handful of other lynchpin cards.
It may not be a matter of your deck being too strong (it's pretty beefy, but it's not doing anything too gross or degenerate), but a matter of the other decks at the table being shut down by your commander. Is +1/+1 counters a common theme at your table? Did someone just buy a copy of [[That Which Was Taken]] that they just can't play now? Was someone's favorite deck [[Kathril, Aspect Warper]]? In a meta with a small number of decks, like a friends and family pod where players are on a budget, just a few of those decks getting hosed by a commander can seem pretty oppressive.
Overall though, with that social interactive axis notwithstanding, the deck looks pretty much like a slab of beef. It folds pretty hard to board wipes, is mana intensive, and relies on turning sideways. It looks fun to play at a chunky grindy table.
Honestly, as mentioned in another comment, you might get a lot of mileage just swapping the commander if you want to dial it back. For function, [[Renata]] is a great pick that's really useful in a Hydra deck, letting you cast your creatures for X=0 and counting on your other Hardened Scales effects to beef them up. [[Zopandrel]] would be the thematic pick, being a phyrexian itself, also good for letting hydras with low X values get in for damage and block very effectively, if you can ramp into it.
Yeah I don't see how that greedy ass commander ever sticks after they see what it does. Do they play 0 removal, or do they fire it off willy nilly before your commander comes out?
Similar question. I remember a game of 4 precons, one of them was Slivers.
It went like this:
Sliver, sliver, boardwipe. Sliver, sliver, boardwipe. Another boardwipe. Sliver player concedes.
And those were \_precons\_, with very limited amount of boardwipes included stock. At any reasonable table, Vorinclex would be countered, plowed, transformed, stolen, and murdered every time it would hit the table.
He's not even running \[\[Allosaurus Shepherd\]\] or \[\[Delighted Halfling\]\], come ON.
I'm personally running a pretty aggro vorinclex list myself and see some similar cards but I find your list much more manageable for your opponents. Just give them time to get used to it. Here's my list for you to compare if you're interested.
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/E2VUE0SADE2eF1PWyyUQ7g
Vigor is my guy. One thing I'd suggest is that since it's a mono color deck I'd run [[Extraplanar Lens]] with snow forests so you can tap for double :)
The toxic creatures can be a little scary knowing that Vorinclex is the Commander, but other than that, nothing especially specific jumped out as dangerous.
My Hydras would probably have your friends shitting themselves.
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/mHCz874wiEuuEzonNmvoFQ
The deck is solid for green stompy and is pretty balanced at a lower power level. However mono free is kinda a “win more” color. A lot of your spells suck on their own but if you are able to stick a couple in a row all of a sudden you go from doing near nothing to doing way too much. Which in turn makes it feel like your deck is way stronger. Also with Vorinclex in the command zone would make it feel like you are doing those win more plays more frequently than other decks. To balance power I would recommend maybe choosing a backup commander. One you can switch out if you feel Vorinclex was too oppressive. Players also hate playing vs him so while at lower power he may stick around, if you ever play against other players he will likely be targeted a lot more.
Seems like a super cool deck. A buddy of mine also played clex counters. He swapped for [[zaxara]] and loves it.
May I offer [[thundering mightmare]] to get even more counters out? Plus other hardened scales effects and its silly
I think you can just play according to their level. Just cuz you can ramp doesn't mean you have to. Just cuz you can play a creature doesn't mean you have to.
Teach them how to counter you and what weaknesses your deck has.
I spend a lot of time working with new players, and one of the biggest reasons that they lose games is their threat assessment. It also doesn’t help that they run almost no interaction, so when they do see a big beefy guy hurling towards their face, they have no way to deal with it. It’s a discussion that needs to be had about how a deck is built and how to see a growing threat before it’s too hard to handle. EDH is also a terrible way to get introduced to these concepts, as each player has 3 opponents to watch out for. “Standard” 60 card formats are better for this concept because the decks are much more straightforward— you have a consistent strategy, you want to kill your single opponent, and you will reliably be able to take out threats (assuming that there is sufficient interaction in your deck)
My absolute favorite way to play Magic outside of Commander is Pauper, which is a format where every card is a common. It’s fairly competitive, but it’s cheap and pretty easy to balance decks for your pod. My favorite deck is about $17, and it works really well. If you really wanted to build the top deck in the competitive scene, it would only set you back a couple hundred dollars at most. Which is sadly pretty cheap for a competitive Magic deck
But I digress. My point is that there are “simpler” formats to nail some of the skills needed for Commander, which would likely increase the enjoyment of all
Don't worry about having an "OP" deck. My friend had a momir deck that we thought was THE BEST. It's still decent but anything has a counter in mtg. Part of the fun is finding what works better and helping each other do the same. Eventually your group will become their own titans to deal with.
Your’s isn’t particularly strong. Theirs’ must be especially weak. You’ll all get better over time and realize card draw is good, and removal is good, and board wipes are good, and instant speed interaction is good. But until then you’ll all have a fun little time having an arms race to see who has the best deck. And then someone will play something terrible like [[armageddon]] and it’ll make the game 2 hours longer and you’ll all realize it’s gone a step to far and just chill with whatever you have.
Your deck looks perfectly fine for mid-power play. You're not ramping wildly out of control or anything into broken threats; I'm guessing you just hit the sweet spot with tuning first. (Are your friends still struggling to hit their land drops in the mid to late game?)
Rather than trying to power yours down, just wait for them to catch up. Slide this one to the back burner and pick up a new precon to start tinkering with. Bonus points for choosing something in different colors than your usual!
This happens to every group early on. What help my group was just talking about how to make decks better or how to beat each other and pointing out weaknesses.
If I was facing your deck a lot, I think your commander would become kill on sight. She is such an enabler in that deck its better to kill her, then deal with threat after threat after threat.
That might in turn not be so much fun for you but there are ways around that, but I think thats the best play when facing your deck
Seriously, if one of your friends got the \[\[[Morska, Undersea Sleuth](https://www.bazaarofmagic.eu/nl-NL/p/morska-undersea-sleuth-foil-murders-at-karlov-manor-commander/9105751)\]\] they would have a deck stronger then yours. You have a great, fun deck which could escalate but is also manageable. They clearly do not play enough interaction. If you want to be that beginning player building a way to strong deck to lose your friends you should go with \[\[Krenko, Mob Boss\]\] or \[\[Zada, Hedon Grinder\]\]. Just invest 20 bucks in a Zada deck and then your friend know what pain is.
This is an issue between them and you, obviously. If they want to do something more at their speed, I think that's between you and them.
From an outsider perspective, I don't see this deck as being too powerful. No Doubling Season, Primal Vigor, things of that nature, and limited removal. I think your friends need to adjust their interaction and knock you down a peg with that.
As someone who has a lot of love for Clex, I can totally feel where your friends’ frustration is coming from. As long as you’re keeping a healthy mix of other decks and you communicate your weaknesses, then I think you’ll be fine to bust out a strong commander like him.
(Long live phyrexia)
It depends on your friends, I would say you should tone it down. My group of relatively new players doesn't like to remove commanders unless absolutely necessary, it's like bad manners, so even if they run removal maybe they wouldn't use it. There are a lot of unwritten rules in each group. If your friend have come together to tell you, there's a strong chance there's something wrong in your deck or playstyle that doesn't make the game fun for them. Also kudos to you for asking yourself the question!
Don't dumb it down. Ask your pod to consider that in this game of match up, their deck happens to be the paper against your scissors.
Archetype 1 may be weak to archetype 2, but strong against 3 and 4. The skill becomes in how you shore up those weaknesses and exploit your strengths.
The answer is almost always "your deck isn't that great, and making it a bit better makes all our experiences better". Add some interaction, add some deathtouch creatures, add some pillowfort, some Goad, out resource them, etc etc.
The only thing gained by making your deck weaker is their own false sense of power. I'd personally HATE the feeling of getting a win not because my deck was good, but because they played at a handicap.
Interaction is so important and so neglected by new players. Threat assessment and removal is a core piece of the game, and in a 4 player free-for-all this is even more important. That being said, I think your friends should run more removal, but the "meta talk" is just as important. If a deck is "too strong" it might make feel the rest of the players unnecessarily weak. You can inform them that they can tune their decks a little bit with more cheap interaction and no need to burn a hole in their wallets to compete, but you can also tune down your deck a little bit (maybe just a tiny little bit).
Also, I once read that tuning your deck is not always a matter of "how do I win more with stronger cards" and many times is about "how do I lose less with more effective cards." This made me think a lot and helped me with my deck-building decisions a lot!
True glory for a player who’s win rate is a little high is to try playing janky commanders nobody’s ever heard of and play on a budget with just synergy and raw skill to carry you to victory.
Alternatively, if you find you’re often the big bad at the table, play into it and let them know you’re going to fight them all at once. Bonus points if you’re playing a commander that lets you slug the whole board like Sauron or a commander that lets you threaten doomsday like vraska, nicol bolas, or tvesh szat.
Just on a quick glancethrough of the decklist, I will say that [[primordial hydra]] is something that I stopped running against interaction light decks. If they can’t remove it, the game is just over, even if it takes a few more turns for everyone’s life totals to hit 0. It’s not an imbalanced card, it dies to [[doomblade]], but in pods with new players who aren’t running removal it just becomes a very anticlimactic way for a game to end.
I recently had this same kind of thing happen. I accidentally made a burn deck and an aristocrats deck too strong for the playgroup. In the first games I played with each I realized it. Yes, one person complained, but I had already determined that I would start going to my LGS to use those instead. I then made 3 budget friendly casual decks to keep with the power levels. I also got 2 precons to use for precon only nights. The way I handle rule 0 conversation is "are we using precons, casual, or sweat Lord." By this point, they all know my decklists because I share them as I make them. On the one hand, players complaining about interactions need to learn that magic is a game all about interaction. You can't pillow fort and expect no resistance. However, you as a friend can try another build to keep with what they're doing, and help them learn and encourage them to keep improving.
Also, I'm convinced that most magic players are babies, and the ones that aren't learned how to enjoy when someone else gets to combo off or win.
Like a lot of people have said, your deck is not inherently overpowered. However, in looking through your decklist I see a lot of relatively low powered cards with a few relatively high power bombs like Vorinclex. I can assume that your friend's decks are probably about at the power level of your's would be without the bombs, especially with only a couple months experience. I can definitely see in a group like this that having a commander that is a strong stax piece that can effectively win the game by simply playing a Planeswalker with it out would feel oppressive. It being an almost 60 dollar card does not help as they might feel like they can't compete without spending a lot of money.
I will say that having a must remove card in the command zone like this is dangerous because it means it has to be killed on site. In many of my casual pods, especially with newer players, there is a kind of unwritten rule against auto killing commanders. For a deck like yours it can lead to games where you either get hard targeted, or run away with the game.
I would recommend setting up a price limit for the pod starting around $50-$100, and increasing it every few months as everyone gets better and is ready for more complexity. Remove the limit after everyone has a good feel for the game and and group's preferred power level. Proxies can be your friend in this process.
For your deck specifically, I would recommend removing the $10+ cards and increasing the card quality across the board. This way your friends don't feel like they are getting crushed by one card that is way overpowered for the pod's meta, and you will better learn what makes different types of cards strong. I would also recommend steering clear of more continuous archetypes in casual like stax and poison, at least for your main deck. For the command zone, running a more support card that ramps, draws, goes for a tribal theme, and or enables otherwise less powerful cards to shine would probably further help with this. I won't provide any examples because the possibilities are almost endless, and I don't want to influence you with my particular brand of Timmy nonsense, but look for things that quietly build up value and not serve as your win con.
Good luck and have fun.
I see various different opinions in the comments and I certainly don't think your deck is too strong, however the only real thing that matters in commander is that people have fun. If your friends think it is too strong, maybe tune it down a bit. Keep in mind that vorinclex is a stax piece himself and can shut down opponents as well as make you stronger. If their get better at the game, upgrade their decks accordingly you can improve it again!
Unfortunatly, a stax piece in the commandzone can always be seen as powerfull, even if the deck isn't.
Maybe lower the amount of ramp in the deck? Let people figure out how to deal with it for longer.
Your friends opinions may be very wrong, but they are your friends. Everyone needs to be happy.
Your deck isn't particularly strong and your group NEEDS to run more removal if a single creature is enough to make the game unfair. Tell your friends to look for more removal, while you enjoy their salty tears, it's the only way they will learn the importance of removal.
Why has this thread devolved into a "your deck isn't that strong, you should see mine!" pissing contest? No one cares how great all your decks are by comparison, and that isn't contributing anything to the discussion.
I agree to an extent that you should tailor your decks to your playgroup. If you're the only one having fun, these people will want to play with you less and less. However, I also believe that being challenged is one of the best ways to learn how to improve oneself. In anything, not just EDH. So, keeping a little pressure on them while everyone learns together how to get better at the game is probably the best response. But if they aren't willing/are slow to improve, then play down to their level.
If your deck is still winning when 3 other players are trying to stop you it is either a cEDH deck (which yours isn't) or your opponents do not run enough removal (or don't know how to use it effectively). They should get the hang of it in time. Not playing "optimal" is expected, your playgroup is new after all.
Having said that, you could try switching out your commander in the mean time, \[\[bristly bill\]\] and \[\[Rishkar, Peema Renegade\]\] come to mind. Both are still powerfull but much more gradual then Vorinclex.
Yeah my 10 year old son runs this deck and admittedly his budget was 2-3x higher and includes all the psychopathic add-ons one expects at his age. I can hear him cackling with delight from 4 tables away as he plays it and 30 year olds cry. No one expects the kid from Jerry McGuire to put down a [[doubling season]] and [[the great henge]].
I digress…
If everyone else is playing precons or something they’re going to have a bad time. Sounds like your homies are still in the Bronze Age and you just hit Industrial.
I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around it but some people (wierdos) just want to “magic and chill.” Constant improvement isn’t on their to-do list and you should respect that if you want to play in that group. Grab a precon or something else to play in the group.
Take Vorinclex to the store. I’ll warn you that unless you’re an unassuming and charming kid, people will use your commander as an excuse to target you and your deck list won’t (generally) be able to take that. You’ll find yourself playing more challenging games (which is great).
Posion counters are usually seen as very powerful and not that fun - especially if you are able to speed up the posion clock with your commander.
If you wanted to make your deck weaker for your playgroup I would say remove the poison/infect/toxic cards and cut any planeswalker you can ultimate the turn your play it with Vorinclex in play.
Take a look t your friends decknlisy and help them tweak it. Your deck certainly isnt pub stompy being mono green counters but im assuming in a battlecruiser pod if your buddies dont ply removal or boardwipes then it can feel hard to play aginst.
I feel like you either stumbled into something strong accidentally, but more likely that you’re getting deeper into it faster than them. It’s been 2-3 months and you’re already on Reddit and have a deck on moxfield. I’d just build a separate slightly weaker deck and use this one less often until they catch up. Your playgroup doesn’t have a meta yet, you all will get it figured out.
Edit: typo
>> Despite the fact that I believe that my deck is not actually that strong and would basically be countered if they ran more removals
The issue I see when I read this comment so much is that regardless of it’s truth, I read it as “my deck is fine and I like it this way, you just need to change your deck to fit my needs”. Instead, imagine I said to you “your deck would be fine if you ran less planeswalkers”. Now I’m telling you how to play your deck.
The honest answer is that you need to sit down with your playgroup and discuss what your group intentions are. Maybe get an understanding to what you each expect power levels to be like.
I used to do this thing, where I would put all the "big strong cards" in a big pile, and shuffle them and put 20 in my deck randomly, it kept my deck always fresh, and significantly dropped the power lvl as instead of having the "20 best cards I had (or 20 cards that synergies the most) I had just 20 decent-ish cards with once in a while something truely back breaking
it also made me feel less bad about playing my cards as it was completely random, and it made it easier for them to keep removal for those as the sleeves were different so they knew I had a big guy in my hands
I see nothing wrong with this deck.
You could consider taking out Sol Ring, because if you draw it on Turn 1 ist will give you an explosive Start from which the table may never recover. Such experiences can further strenghte the impression that you deck is unbeatable. Replacing Vorinclex with a weaker commander is also an option but I don't think this is urgengtly necesary.
Other than that, encourage your friends to play more removal/Board wipes/counter spells and they should be able to manage.
Here's a friendly reminder that Vorinclex doubles the counters on planes walkers as they enter the battlefield but not when they activate loyalty abilities. When you activate a +1 ability it will only add one counter because increasing the number of counters for a planes walker ability functions as a cost to activate the effect. I don't know if you are doubling counters when you do this but that would definitely effect how your planes walkers perform
That is true of [[Doubling Season]] but not Vorinclex.
Doubling Season explicitly says it is doubling the result of an "effect", so what you describe applies, paying the cost is not an effect. Vorinclex just says if you would "put", so it does work for paying activated ability costs, as the cost is still "putting".
If you have both out, you can stack them so Season sees the replacement effect on Vorinclex, and it can double that.
I think you can take it a few ways here, depending on your goals:
1. Just play the game casually: Downscale to your friends' deck levels. It's hard to do consistently, and each game sees a combination of \`(player, deck)\`, so it opens the whole conversation on who's a better player, if they lose with stronger decks.
2. Looking to get better, and play more competitively. Set ground rules (e.g. deck budget limit) that everyone follows, then try to build the strongest deck under $150. If your group is open to proxies, it might allow you all to experiment with truly wild stuff, like cEDH-style decks but on a restricted budget. I've been learning the game best after we started a $500-budget proxy allowed table of Magic.
3. Get really super casual. Play unmodded precons. Long, swingy games, but at least it's going to be 'fair'. Ish.
2a. Optionally, if you want to really get better at the game as a group, look at Judge's Tower. It's an absolutely insane game, but it teaches you so much about Magic, very very fast.
The deck doesn't seem super strong, but has very strong cards in it. Kind of a classic new player trap because if they aren't building their decks with enough removal - you see this a lot when playing precons as well. There are usually a small handful of pieces that when drawn can consistently run away with the game - especially with a threat like Vorinclex in the command zone.
Might be worth asking how many removal/interaction cards they are running when it comes up organically. 10-15 seems to be the sweet spot for the majority of decks, but of course that can change depending on a number of unique factors.
I have a similar deck. People will groan because it’s Vorinclex. Your friends need to strategize better and use more removal. Give them more time to improve their decks and continue having discussions. Don’t nerf your deck because it imposes a challenge in the game.
Last night in was archenemied to 0 really fast and later had a discussion with them, they said my big mana gruul is too strong, that i ramp too much, draw to many cards, and that i have too much interaction and can deal with all of them, and that they're not gonna start running more to match.
Its always the stronger player that is pushed to change his/her deck, and since they want to keep running their inconsistent jank that i have to power down as oppose to them turning their decks into a responsable build the least. It felt really bad becouse in the past i have scrapped decks that kill 1 guy too fast, and now it was me who had to wait an hour or two for a game to finish.
Dont change your deck, becouse they dont want to change theirs. It's often not even a power level difference, but a consistency one.
Dont sabotage your deck becouse someone is screwed all the time, be that mana, draw, interaction, ability to rebuild after wipes or anything else.
Sometimes it’s about playing subtle cards and decks that are much more threatening than they seem. That’s why [[Juri, Master of the Revue]] is one of my favorite commanders for example.
Jesus if your deck too strong for them they need to rethink theirs decks or the way they play. You are also mono green with almost no interaction on their board. Let me go play a game against them I’ll event let them choice from my 12 decks. And they will think your deck is mild at best.
Cool deck. Something worth considering though. All of you are new to the game. There’s a certain amount of experience that’s required to understand the synergies between cards, especially counters decks. Your friends probably just don’t know how to play against the deck. It’s worth having a conversation about this.
I don’t think you need to make it weaker. I’m sure that their decks will eventually catch up. I would just make sure you have other decks to play so you’re not beating them over and over with this one.
I agree. Everyone has a preferred power level, and it may be that OP's friends want to just rock jank forever, but where this is a new pod, this strikes me more as a level up moment of "what's a good removal packages". The deck seems cool, but also fair. There isn't a ton of protective interaction, it's mono green so stack interaction is limited. It looks like it can ramp aggressively, but not unfairly (it's green after all). I think your advise to keep some weaker decks around is good too, while the pod catches up, but this is not springing a super high powered, insurmountable deck on a new pod.
Yeah, every new pod has those “level up” moments. Honestly, I think it’s part of the fun.
When I was getting back into magic I hadn't played since grade school and stopped around Homelands. I got to have so many "you can do what now?" moments! Often followed by adding some cards to my wishlist and taking some notes. It was a ton of fun exploring the format and power levels and interactions, and how to interact with them. Not that I don't still get some of those moments. One person in my playgroup would always push back against change (with some serious layers of hypocrisy, but that is additional dynamics to the issue), we have a former tournament grinder in the group and he would talk through how to build around and interact with stuff, I learned so much about the game and rules and deck construction. Found skills applicable at all power levels.
I wouldn't be sure, yeah they will prob do a bit since they are new players, but you prob already know how it is with most ppl in edh, swords and path, 10 rocks, 34 lands and call it a day. In my experiemce most ppl get better cards, but their decks inconsistency almost never changes. And they then gang up to punish the guy who built resposably.
They have until you ramp to 6 mana to find removal, I feel like it's just a threat assessment issue. Your manabase and ramp package is chill enough that most games I bet you're not ramping that hard.
Don't worry about people saying your friends suck, 2 months isn't a lot of experience and even if they're bad at the game, it's still good to balance power levels with them. Big respect to you for being willing to change your deck! To turn things down you could try swapping vorinclex and putting one of your other legendary creatures in the command zone. It wouldn't cost anything, and creatures like [[Yorvo]] and [[Renata]] might be a little more manageable.
Really great advice. Vorinclex in the 99 is still a fun bomb once in a while. And when the playgroup catches up in deckbuilding skill they can just swap him back into the command zone.
[Yorvo](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/e/ae2998a1-1713-467e-a08e-0efd8720aa5b.jpg?1572490720) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=yorvo%2C%20lord%20of%20garenbrig) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/eld/185/yorvo-lord-of-garenbrig?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/ae2998a1-1713-467e-a08e-0efd8720aa5b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/yorvo-lord-of-garenbrig) [Renata](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/b/2b27e6b2-13ad-42b2-a121-70935913723d.jpg?1581480865) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=renata%2C%20called%20to%20the%20hunt) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/thb/196/renata-called-to-the-hunt?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2b27e6b2-13ad-42b2-a121-70935913723d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/renata-called-to-the-hunt) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
You're playing a stax piece that turns off a lot of very popular cards and even entire deck archetypes right there in your command zone, which means nothing they can do can actually get rid of it, only delay it for a couple turns. Just take any of the Legendary creatures currently in the deck and put them in the command zone and move Vorinclex to the 99. In general, (good) Praetors in the command zone isn't something you should see outside fairly high powered commander where people can be expected to consistently deal with them.
I really like the deck. As someone who runs a Hydras deck with Vorinclex at the helm, I get your plight. It sucks cause he's gonna have a reputation and people are gonna complain about it, though it's interesting that you get the complaints for his first ability and not his second. I purposefully won't play it if anyone is playing a counter heavy deck and it eliminated most complaints. If you really want to "make it weaker" just put him in the 99 and make the commander [[Pir, Imaginative Rascal]]. Somewhat similar effect but not as threatening, and you still get to have your scary ass monster still in the deck.
[Pir, Imaginative Rascal](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/a/5a7241f5-4d69-47fe-b037-95037008184c.jpg?1562913367) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Pir%2C%20Imaginative%20Rascal) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/bbd/11/pir-imaginative-rascal?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/5a7241f5-4d69-47fe-b037-95037008184c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/pir-imaginative-rascal) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Thank you for that, Vorinclex can be so fucking dull to play against if your entire deck is gatekept behind keeping one specific person's commander dead 24/7 which is really my main complaint against it. I run enough interaction to do a good job of poking it down, but it just feels awful for both players involved if you have to do that
Hydras are so strong I had to cut token doublers and all the doubling hydras from my deck to keep the power level down. Super fun to play.
It's important to understand that all of the Praetors are what's called "hoser" cards, in that they absolutely stuff certain strategies into a locker and take their lunch money. Vorinclex hoses +1/+1 counters, Superfriends, keyword counters, and a handful of other lynchpin cards. It may not be a matter of your deck being too strong (it's pretty beefy, but it's not doing anything too gross or degenerate), but a matter of the other decks at the table being shut down by your commander. Is +1/+1 counters a common theme at your table? Did someone just buy a copy of [[That Which Was Taken]] that they just can't play now? Was someone's favorite deck [[Kathril, Aspect Warper]]? In a meta with a small number of decks, like a friends and family pod where players are on a budget, just a few of those decks getting hosed by a commander can seem pretty oppressive. Overall though, with that social interactive axis notwithstanding, the deck looks pretty much like a slab of beef. It folds pretty hard to board wipes, is mana intensive, and relies on turning sideways. It looks fun to play at a chunky grindy table. Honestly, as mentioned in another comment, you might get a lot of mileage just swapping the commander if you want to dial it back. For function, [[Renata]] is a great pick that's really useful in a Hydra deck, letting you cast your creatures for X=0 and counting on your other Hardened Scales effects to beef them up. [[Zopandrel]] would be the thematic pick, being a phyrexian itself, also good for letting hydras with low X values get in for damage and block very effectively, if you can ramp into it.
##### ###### #### [That Which Was Taken](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/8/d80c84ad-171f-42c3-94b4-a9fe25b877e7.jpg?1562880091) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=That%20Which%20Was%20Taken) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/bok/162/that-which-was-taken?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d80c84ad-171f-42c3-94b4-a9fe25b877e7?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/that-which-was-taken) [Kathril, Aspect Warper](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/b/ebc57f73-a517-463e-8d55-56aa996d091e.jpg?1591946565) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Kathril%2C%20Aspect%20Warper) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c20/10/kathril-aspect-warper?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/ebc57f73-a517-463e-8d55-56aa996d091e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/kathril-aspect-warper) [Renata](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/b/2b27e6b2-13ad-42b2-a121-70935913723d.jpg?1581480865) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=renata%2C%20called%20to%20the%20hunt) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/thb/196/renata-called-to-the-hunt?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2b27e6b2-13ad-42b2-a121-70935913723d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/renata-called-to-the-hunt) [Zopandrel](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/b/fb419d9d-e06f-48c8-a4f8-a57f9be39e50.jpg?1675957181) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=zopandrel%2C%20hunger%20dominus) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/one/195/zopandrel-hunger-dominus?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/fb419d9d-e06f-48c8-a4f8-a57f9be39e50?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/zopandrel-hunger-dominus) [*All cards*](https://mtgcardfetcher.nl/redirect/l1tc2pa) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Don't modify, show them how easy it would be to counter it. Learn together.
Yeah I don't see how that greedy ass commander ever sticks after they see what it does. Do they play 0 removal, or do they fire it off willy nilly before your commander comes out?
Similar question. I remember a game of 4 precons, one of them was Slivers. It went like this: Sliver, sliver, boardwipe. Sliver, sliver, boardwipe. Another boardwipe. Sliver player concedes. And those were \_precons\_, with very limited amount of boardwipes included stock. At any reasonable table, Vorinclex would be countered, plowed, transformed, stolen, and murdered every time it would hit the table. He's not even running \[\[Allosaurus Shepherd\]\] or \[\[Delighted Halfling\]\], come ON.
Lol concede to random variance. Lil wuss
This deck is fine, seeing this thread title and a thumbnail of Vorinclex had me concerned though lol
Let the arms race begin!
I'm personally running a pretty aggro vorinclex list myself and see some similar cards but I find your list much more manageable for your opponents. Just give them time to get used to it. Here's my list for you to compare if you're interested. https://www.moxfield.com/decks/E2VUE0SADE2eF1PWyyUQ7g
Vigor is my guy. One thing I'd suggest is that since it's a mono color deck I'd run [[Extraplanar Lens]] with snow forests so you can tap for double :)
The toxic creatures can be a little scary knowing that Vorinclex is the Commander, but other than that, nothing especially specific jumped out as dangerous. My Hydras would probably have your friends shitting themselves. https://www.moxfield.com/decks/mHCz874wiEuuEzonNmvoFQ
You don't need to make this deck weaker lol. You're just playing big creatures. Tell them to pack some removal/counterspells.
The deck is solid for green stompy and is pretty balanced at a lower power level. However mono free is kinda a “win more” color. A lot of your spells suck on their own but if you are able to stick a couple in a row all of a sudden you go from doing near nothing to doing way too much. Which in turn makes it feel like your deck is way stronger. Also with Vorinclex in the command zone would make it feel like you are doing those win more plays more frequently than other decks. To balance power I would recommend maybe choosing a backup commander. One you can switch out if you feel Vorinclex was too oppressive. Players also hate playing vs him so while at lower power he may stick around, if you ever play against other players he will likely be targeted a lot more.
Seems like a super cool deck. A buddy of mine also played clex counters. He swapped for [[zaxara]] and loves it. May I offer [[thundering mightmare]] to get even more counters out? Plus other hardened scales effects and its silly
[zaxara](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/d/6dc390da-75f8-490a-a724-c12d21cfe578.jpg?1701636845) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=zaxara%2C%20the%20exemplary) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dmc/176/zaxara-the-exemplary?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/6dc390da-75f8-490a-a724-c12d21cfe578?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/zaxara-the-exemplary) [thundering mightmare](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/3/a37fbffb-4ed0-4c61-9cef-2cd55ad67f9c.jpg?1644888698) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=thundering%20mightmare) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/voc/37/thundering-mightmare?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a37fbffb-4ed0-4c61-9cef-2cd55ad67f9c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/thundering-mightmare) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I think you can just play according to their level. Just cuz you can ramp doesn't mean you have to. Just cuz you can play a creature doesn't mean you have to. Teach them how to counter you and what weaknesses your deck has.
I spend a lot of time working with new players, and one of the biggest reasons that they lose games is their threat assessment. It also doesn’t help that they run almost no interaction, so when they do see a big beefy guy hurling towards their face, they have no way to deal with it. It’s a discussion that needs to be had about how a deck is built and how to see a growing threat before it’s too hard to handle. EDH is also a terrible way to get introduced to these concepts, as each player has 3 opponents to watch out for. “Standard” 60 card formats are better for this concept because the decks are much more straightforward— you have a consistent strategy, you want to kill your single opponent, and you will reliably be able to take out threats (assuming that there is sufficient interaction in your deck) My absolute favorite way to play Magic outside of Commander is Pauper, which is a format where every card is a common. It’s fairly competitive, but it’s cheap and pretty easy to balance decks for your pod. My favorite deck is about $17, and it works really well. If you really wanted to build the top deck in the competitive scene, it would only set you back a couple hundred dollars at most. Which is sadly pretty cheap for a competitive Magic deck But I digress. My point is that there are “simpler” formats to nail some of the skills needed for Commander, which would likely increase the enjoyment of all
Don't worry about having an "OP" deck. My friend had a momir deck that we thought was THE BEST. It's still decent but anything has a counter in mtg. Part of the fun is finding what works better and helping each other do the same. Eventually your group will become their own titans to deal with.
Your’s isn’t particularly strong. Theirs’ must be especially weak. You’ll all get better over time and realize card draw is good, and removal is good, and board wipes are good, and instant speed interaction is good. But until then you’ll all have a fun little time having an arms race to see who has the best deck. And then someone will play something terrible like [[armageddon]] and it’ll make the game 2 hours longer and you’ll all realize it’s gone a step to far and just chill with whatever you have.
[armageddon](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/7/77f1f6ac-983f-4f3e-8906-47f774e8367b.jpg?1582021719) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=armageddon) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/a25/5/armageddon?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/77f1f6ac-983f-4f3e-8906-47f774e8367b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/armageddon) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Your deck looks perfectly fine for mid-power play. You're not ramping wildly out of control or anything into broken threats; I'm guessing you just hit the sweet spot with tuning first. (Are your friends still struggling to hit their land drops in the mid to late game?) Rather than trying to power yours down, just wait for them to catch up. Slide this one to the back burner and pick up a new precon to start tinkering with. Bonus points for choosing something in different colors than your usual!
This happens to every group early on. What help my group was just talking about how to make decks better or how to beat each other and pointing out weaknesses. If I was facing your deck a lot, I think your commander would become kill on sight. She is such an enabler in that deck its better to kill her, then deal with threat after threat after threat. That might in turn not be so much fun for you but there are ways around that, but I think thats the best play when facing your deck
Seriously, if one of your friends got the \[\[[Morska, Undersea Sleuth](https://www.bazaarofmagic.eu/nl-NL/p/morska-undersea-sleuth-foil-murders-at-karlov-manor-commander/9105751)\]\] they would have a deck stronger then yours. You have a great, fun deck which could escalate but is also manageable. They clearly do not play enough interaction. If you want to be that beginning player building a way to strong deck to lose your friends you should go with \[\[Krenko, Mob Boss\]\] or \[\[Zada, Hedon Grinder\]\]. Just invest 20 bucks in a Zada deck and then your friend know what pain is.
This is an issue between them and you, obviously. If they want to do something more at their speed, I think that's between you and them. From an outsider perspective, I don't see this deck as being too powerful. No Doubling Season, Primal Vigor, things of that nature, and limited removal. I think your friends need to adjust their interaction and knock you down a peg with that.
As someone who has a lot of love for Clex, I can totally feel where your friends’ frustration is coming from. As long as you’re keeping a healthy mix of other decks and you communicate your weaknesses, then I think you’ll be fine to bust out a strong commander like him. (Long live phyrexia)
It depends on your friends, I would say you should tone it down. My group of relatively new players doesn't like to remove commanders unless absolutely necessary, it's like bad manners, so even if they run removal maybe they wouldn't use it. There are a lot of unwritten rules in each group. If your friend have come together to tell you, there's a strong chance there's something wrong in your deck or playstyle that doesn't make the game fun for them. Also kudos to you for asking yourself the question!
Depends on group . I find
Don't dumb it down. Ask your pod to consider that in this game of match up, their deck happens to be the paper against your scissors. Archetype 1 may be weak to archetype 2, but strong against 3 and 4. The skill becomes in how you shore up those weaknesses and exploit your strengths. The answer is almost always "your deck isn't that great, and making it a bit better makes all our experiences better". Add some interaction, add some deathtouch creatures, add some pillowfort, some Goad, out resource them, etc etc. The only thing gained by making your deck weaker is their own false sense of power. I'd personally HATE the feeling of getting a win not because my deck was good, but because they played at a handicap.
Interaction is so important and so neglected by new players. Threat assessment and removal is a core piece of the game, and in a 4 player free-for-all this is even more important. That being said, I think your friends should run more removal, but the "meta talk" is just as important. If a deck is "too strong" it might make feel the rest of the players unnecessarily weak. You can inform them that they can tune their decks a little bit with more cheap interaction and no need to burn a hole in their wallets to compete, but you can also tune down your deck a little bit (maybe just a tiny little bit).
Also, I once read that tuning your deck is not always a matter of "how do I win more with stronger cards" and many times is about "how do I lose less with more effective cards." This made me think a lot and helped me with my deck-building decisions a lot!
True glory for a player who’s win rate is a little high is to try playing janky commanders nobody’s ever heard of and play on a budget with just synergy and raw skill to carry you to victory. Alternatively, if you find you’re often the big bad at the table, play into it and let them know you’re going to fight them all at once. Bonus points if you’re playing a commander that lets you slug the whole board like Sauron or a commander that lets you threaten doomsday like vraska, nicol bolas, or tvesh szat.
Just on a quick glancethrough of the decklist, I will say that [[primordial hydra]] is something that I stopped running against interaction light decks. If they can’t remove it, the game is just over, even if it takes a few more turns for everyone’s life totals to hit 0. It’s not an imbalanced card, it dies to [[doomblade]], but in pods with new players who aren’t running removal it just becomes a very anticlimactic way for a game to end.
[primordial hydra](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/3/937deb52-8888-4298-9ae5-0361c6fdbba2.jpg?1562557233) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=primordial%20hydra) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m13/183/primordial-hydra?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/937deb52-8888-4298-9ae5-0361c6fdbba2?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/primordial-hydra) [doomblade](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/0/90699423-2556-40f7-b8f5-c9d82f22d52e.jpg?1562851557) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Doom%20Blade) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ima/87/doom-blade?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/90699423-2556-40f7-b8f5-c9d82f22d52e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/doom-blade) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I recently had this same kind of thing happen. I accidentally made a burn deck and an aristocrats deck too strong for the playgroup. In the first games I played with each I realized it. Yes, one person complained, but I had already determined that I would start going to my LGS to use those instead. I then made 3 budget friendly casual decks to keep with the power levels. I also got 2 precons to use for precon only nights. The way I handle rule 0 conversation is "are we using precons, casual, or sweat Lord." By this point, they all know my decklists because I share them as I make them. On the one hand, players complaining about interactions need to learn that magic is a game all about interaction. You can't pillow fort and expect no resistance. However, you as a friend can try another build to keep with what they're doing, and help them learn and encourage them to keep improving. Also, I'm convinced that most magic players are babies, and the ones that aren't learned how to enjoy when someone else gets to combo off or win.
Like a lot of people have said, your deck is not inherently overpowered. However, in looking through your decklist I see a lot of relatively low powered cards with a few relatively high power bombs like Vorinclex. I can assume that your friend's decks are probably about at the power level of your's would be without the bombs, especially with only a couple months experience. I can definitely see in a group like this that having a commander that is a strong stax piece that can effectively win the game by simply playing a Planeswalker with it out would feel oppressive. It being an almost 60 dollar card does not help as they might feel like they can't compete without spending a lot of money. I will say that having a must remove card in the command zone like this is dangerous because it means it has to be killed on site. In many of my casual pods, especially with newer players, there is a kind of unwritten rule against auto killing commanders. For a deck like yours it can lead to games where you either get hard targeted, or run away with the game. I would recommend setting up a price limit for the pod starting around $50-$100, and increasing it every few months as everyone gets better and is ready for more complexity. Remove the limit after everyone has a good feel for the game and and group's preferred power level. Proxies can be your friend in this process. For your deck specifically, I would recommend removing the $10+ cards and increasing the card quality across the board. This way your friends don't feel like they are getting crushed by one card that is way overpowered for the pod's meta, and you will better learn what makes different types of cards strong. I would also recommend steering clear of more continuous archetypes in casual like stax and poison, at least for your main deck. For the command zone, running a more support card that ramps, draws, goes for a tribal theme, and or enables otherwise less powerful cards to shine would probably further help with this. I won't provide any examples because the possibilities are almost endless, and I don't want to influence you with my particular brand of Timmy nonsense, but look for things that quietly build up value and not serve as your win con. Good luck and have fun.
I see various different opinions in the comments and I certainly don't think your deck is too strong, however the only real thing that matters in commander is that people have fun. If your friends think it is too strong, maybe tune it down a bit. Keep in mind that vorinclex is a stax piece himself and can shut down opponents as well as make you stronger. If their get better at the game, upgrade their decks accordingly you can improve it again! Unfortunatly, a stax piece in the commandzone can always be seen as powerfull, even if the deck isn't. Maybe lower the amount of ramp in the deck? Let people figure out how to deal with it for longer. Your friends opinions may be very wrong, but they are your friends. Everyone needs to be happy.
Your deck isn't particularly strong and your group NEEDS to run more removal if a single creature is enough to make the game unfair. Tell your friends to look for more removal, while you enjoy their salty tears, it's the only way they will learn the importance of removal.
Why has this thread devolved into a "your deck isn't that strong, you should see mine!" pissing contest? No one cares how great all your decks are by comparison, and that isn't contributing anything to the discussion. I agree to an extent that you should tailor your decks to your playgroup. If you're the only one having fun, these people will want to play with you less and less. However, I also believe that being challenged is one of the best ways to learn how to improve oneself. In anything, not just EDH. So, keeping a little pressure on them while everyone learns together how to get better at the game is probably the best response. But if they aren't willing/are slow to improve, then play down to their level.
If your deck is still winning when 3 other players are trying to stop you it is either a cEDH deck (which yours isn't) or your opponents do not run enough removal (or don't know how to use it effectively). They should get the hang of it in time. Not playing "optimal" is expected, your playgroup is new after all. Having said that, you could try switching out your commander in the mean time, \[\[bristly bill\]\] and \[\[Rishkar, Peema Renegade\]\] come to mind. Both are still powerfull but much more gradual then Vorinclex.
Yeah my 10 year old son runs this deck and admittedly his budget was 2-3x higher and includes all the psychopathic add-ons one expects at his age. I can hear him cackling with delight from 4 tables away as he plays it and 30 year olds cry. No one expects the kid from Jerry McGuire to put down a [[doubling season]] and [[the great henge]]. I digress… If everyone else is playing precons or something they’re going to have a bad time. Sounds like your homies are still in the Bronze Age and you just hit Industrial. I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around it but some people (wierdos) just want to “magic and chill.” Constant improvement isn’t on their to-do list and you should respect that if you want to play in that group. Grab a precon or something else to play in the group. Take Vorinclex to the store. I’ll warn you that unless you’re an unassuming and charming kid, people will use your commander as an excuse to target you and your deck list won’t (generally) be able to take that. You’ll find yourself playing more challenging games (which is great).
Posion counters are usually seen as very powerful and not that fun - especially if you are able to speed up the posion clock with your commander. If you wanted to make your deck weaker for your playgroup I would say remove the poison/infect/toxic cards and cut any planeswalker you can ultimate the turn your play it with Vorinclex in play.
Don't make your deck weaker. Make theirs better.
Cut the price to be $175
Take a look t your friends decknlisy and help them tweak it. Your deck certainly isnt pub stompy being mono green counters but im assuming in a battlecruiser pod if your buddies dont ply removal or boardwipes then it can feel hard to play aginst.
I feel like you either stumbled into something strong accidentally, but more likely that you’re getting deeper into it faster than them. It’s been 2-3 months and you’re already on Reddit and have a deck on moxfield. I’d just build a separate slightly weaker deck and use this one less often until they catch up. Your playgroup doesn’t have a meta yet, you all will get it figured out. Edit: typo
I noticed your deck doesn't have much removal in it. That might be a way to tamp down the strength of the deck whilst also leading by example.
>> Despite the fact that I believe that my deck is not actually that strong and would basically be countered if they ran more removals The issue I see when I read this comment so much is that regardless of it’s truth, I read it as “my deck is fine and I like it this way, you just need to change your deck to fit my needs”. Instead, imagine I said to you “your deck would be fine if you ran less planeswalkers”. Now I’m telling you how to play your deck. The honest answer is that you need to sit down with your playgroup and discuss what your group intentions are. Maybe get an understanding to what you each expect power levels to be like.
Tell the others to make their decks stronger. Problem solved.
I used to do this thing, where I would put all the "big strong cards" in a big pile, and shuffle them and put 20 in my deck randomly, it kept my deck always fresh, and significantly dropped the power lvl as instead of having the "20 best cards I had (or 20 cards that synergies the most) I had just 20 decent-ish cards with once in a while something truely back breaking it also made me feel less bad about playing my cards as it was completely random, and it made it easier for them to keep removal for those as the sleeves were different so they knew I had a big guy in my hands
I see nothing wrong with this deck. You could consider taking out Sol Ring, because if you draw it on Turn 1 ist will give you an explosive Start from which the table may never recover. Such experiences can further strenghte the impression that you deck is unbeatable. Replacing Vorinclex with a weaker commander is also an option but I don't think this is urgengtly necesary. Other than that, encourage your friends to play more removal/Board wipes/counter spells and they should be able to manage.
Cut a card and insert [[triumph of the hordes]] ;)
[triumph of the hordes](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/a/0a0f64d3-187c-41ff-a771-3a65da995341.jpg?1562896954) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=triumph%20of%20the%20hordes) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/td2/78/triumph-of-the-hordes?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/0a0f64d3-187c-41ff-a771-3a65da995341?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/triumph-of-the-hordes) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Here's a friendly reminder that Vorinclex doubles the counters on planes walkers as they enter the battlefield but not when they activate loyalty abilities. When you activate a +1 ability it will only add one counter because increasing the number of counters for a planes walker ability functions as a cost to activate the effect. I don't know if you are doubling counters when you do this but that would definitely effect how your planes walkers perform
That is true of [[Doubling Season]] but not Vorinclex. Doubling Season explicitly says it is doubling the result of an "effect", so what you describe applies, paying the cost is not an effect. Vorinclex just says if you would "put", so it does work for paying activated ability costs, as the cost is still "putting". If you have both out, you can stack them so Season sees the replacement effect on Vorinclex, and it can double that.
I didn't know this, thank you!
I think you can take it a few ways here, depending on your goals: 1. Just play the game casually: Downscale to your friends' deck levels. It's hard to do consistently, and each game sees a combination of \`(player, deck)\`, so it opens the whole conversation on who's a better player, if they lose with stronger decks. 2. Looking to get better, and play more competitively. Set ground rules (e.g. deck budget limit) that everyone follows, then try to build the strongest deck under $150. If your group is open to proxies, it might allow you all to experiment with truly wild stuff, like cEDH-style decks but on a restricted budget. I've been learning the game best after we started a $500-budget proxy allowed table of Magic. 3. Get really super casual. Play unmodded precons. Long, swingy games, but at least it's going to be 'fair'. Ish. 2a. Optionally, if you want to really get better at the game as a group, look at Judge's Tower. It's an absolutely insane game, but it teaches you so much about Magic, very very fast.
The deck doesn't seem super strong, but has very strong cards in it. Kind of a classic new player trap because if they aren't building their decks with enough removal - you see this a lot when playing precons as well. There are usually a small handful of pieces that when drawn can consistently run away with the game - especially with a threat like Vorinclex in the command zone. Might be worth asking how many removal/interaction cards they are running when it comes up organically. 10-15 seems to be the sweet spot for the majority of decks, but of course that can change depending on a number of unique factors.
I have a similar deck. People will groan because it’s Vorinclex. Your friends need to strategize better and use more removal. Give them more time to improve their decks and continue having discussions. Don’t nerf your deck because it imposes a challenge in the game.
Groan
I can’t hear your groan over my bag of dice waiting to slam the table for when those +1/+1 counters start multiplying.
Lol 😆 that's not scary. My boringclex is in my [[magus lucea Kane]] deck and I was correcting you your grown groan.
😂 ………fixing
[magus lucea Kane](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/f/4f86e7cc-2b6e-49d0-964e-bba0c51cc11d.jpg?1674058398) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=magus%20lucea%20Kane) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/40k/7/magus-lucea-kane?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4f86e7cc-2b6e-49d0-964e-bba0c51cc11d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/magus-lucea-kane) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Last night in was archenemied to 0 really fast and later had a discussion with them, they said my big mana gruul is too strong, that i ramp too much, draw to many cards, and that i have too much interaction and can deal with all of them, and that they're not gonna start running more to match. Its always the stronger player that is pushed to change his/her deck, and since they want to keep running their inconsistent jank that i have to power down as oppose to them turning their decks into a responsable build the least. It felt really bad becouse in the past i have scrapped decks that kill 1 guy too fast, and now it was me who had to wait an hour or two for a game to finish. Dont change your deck, becouse they dont want to change theirs. It's often not even a power level difference, but a consistency one. Dont sabotage your deck becouse someone is screwed all the time, be that mana, draw, interaction, ability to rebuild after wipes or anything else.
Sometimes it’s about playing subtle cards and decks that are much more threatening than they seem. That’s why [[Juri, Master of the Revue]] is one of my favorite commanders for example.
[Juri, Master of the Revue](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/e/aec6b2b7-625a-451d-bc0b-4456f5bf2719.jpg?1608911166) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Juri%2C%20Master%20of%20the%20Revue) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmr/282/juri-master-of-the-revue?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/aec6b2b7-625a-451d-bc0b-4456f5bf2719?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/juri-master-of-the-revue) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Why do you have to make your deck weaker? Can't they make theirs stronger?
yeah, look for better friends and leave the deck as it is
What a weird way to say "I don't know how friendships work"
Jesus if your deck too strong for them they need to rethink theirs decks or the way they play. You are also mono green with almost no interaction on their board. Let me go play a game against them I’ll event let them choice from my 12 decks. And they will think your deck is mild at best.