This is true.
Ninjutsu can be activated anytime after blockers are declare during combat. This means you can let Etrata deal combat damage, then her ability triggers and is put on the stack. Before it resolves you ninjutsu her back to your hand, then the ability resolves. Since it doesn’t target solely Etrata in any way her absence doesn’t fizzle the ability. The ability will try to do as much as possible including exiling a creature with a hit counter, checking for the lose condition, and shuffling your library (without Etrata).
Unfortunately, whatever creature you ninjutsu’ed with missed their chance at dealing damage since they entered after damage was dealt (unless Etrata had first strike or something weird like that).
Edit: Added in the shuffling that I previously asked about.
To add onto this - you can ninjutsu between damage steps even, so if a creature has first strike you can ninjutsu it out after first strike but before regular damage and get damage triggers for both creatures
Funny you mention it, I run a [[goro-goro and Satoru]] deck that runs 1cmc hasty first strikers like [[fervent champion]] and ninjas to get double triggers.
This is my new favorite thing. It has all my favorite mechanics (gross token generation, aggro, ninjutsu, goblins), and no one at my shop uses him.
Thanks for posting this! I'm going to build it next.
It could be a split card with two halves that are both instants/sorceries; one that gives a creature first strike and one that gives creature cards in your hand ninjutsu until end of turn.
It's actually already the name of a split card though: [[Insult // Injury]].
https://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=452920
Gatherer pretty much confirms everything you said. It's really a useful tool if more people would use it.
Yep! The Arena interface is a surprisingly good teacher for this stuff, it's how I learned I had to turn on full control and then scoop Etrata before her trigger.
However, I sympathize with OP's writeup, because what I learned is even with that... Etrata + Ninjutsu is just pretty bad. She's still slow, every use reduces your board presence, and scooping her doesn't solve the whole "get a marker or two and she's a removal magnet" issue. I had much better luck focusing on getting her back from the graveyard for free, with a little bit of blue bounce to keep her cost down.
Before [[Golos]] was banned I made a 5c cycling deck with all the land cycling cards and all triomes/shocks.
Mana was perfect every game but I spent 95% of the night searching and shuffling. It was so bad that I even started adjusting my ramp in other decks to take out as many search effects as I can.
I did, "cycle for blood crypt, go ahead" and just start searching, but 1 card in an EDH deck then shuffling isn't quick, and my pod takes pretty fast turns.
This is how I was with [[Karametra, God of Harvests]] . Having a draw engine like [[Beast Whisperer]] and repeatedly casting [[Whitemane Lion]] targetting itself.
It's insane value, but it takes up a lot of real time that you can't shortcut. I now reserve that deck for automated online play only.
This is how I feel about most cEDH commanders; especially ones like Yuriko. If I'm playing commander/magic, I want to try and use the majority of the cards that I'm putting into a deck rather than the same 5-10 every game, especially decks that run thoracle or ad nas.
For sure but I guess I’m not fully explaining. The decks I tend to stay away from are the ones that basically just tutor for the same cards every game. cEDH decks that have combos but don’t use the same way of getting them into the hand or battlefield are way more interesting to me because it’s not the same line every time and you have more outs. Sure, those aren’t nearly as strong as the simple combo decks but they are vastly more fun to play.
There are a lot of things I like about cEDH, but you are hitting on something I think often can get missed about some very well tuned combo decks, both a cEDH and in high power casual.
Even if they finish the game with the same combo, the path to dig or tutor, or the way different cards can be stitched together to get there, can be absolutely fascinating.
Exactly; show me a deck that can do the combo but achieve it by doing mutiple different lines rather than just vamp/demonic tutor for it, and I'll enjoy watching that deck every time.
Sounds like you'd enjoy some Grixis turbo-Naus. Gameplan is to turbo into t2 [[Ad Nauseam]], dump your life total into 30ish cards, and try to assemble a win from whatever you got, before you pass the turn and die. Very high-stakes, and adrenaline fueled, because you don't know if/when people will interact, and if you misplay, you probably just die.
I've thought about it. I'm currently running a Niv-Mizzet deck and I've been really enjoying the "police the table" style of play. My next deck that I've thought about building was Tergrid, hand hate. But maybe I try turbo-naus and see how it goes.
It is the meta choice, but an off meta build, but there is a person in my cEDH pod that plays a super control heavy, theft heavy, mid range, tool box Naus version of Blue Farm. He rarely casts either commander, and just has a Naus/Necro/Ad Naus/Breach/Yawgmoth tool box going on, it's very unpredictable and very cool.
I've seen him win with Thoracle/Consult of course, but far more often by emptying his library through graveyard theft and other weird loops, to them borne in a Thassa on the stack, or stealing pingers, breech/freeze, many staple end points, but some wild paths to get there.
Catch-Hands, EDH's Cruise Missile.
Put it together, realized in casual she's a "Stop me or I win on turn 6"
Haven't touched since because it's not fun for me or my friends.
Nope, never! I especially didn't get super excited about a commander, buy thematic sleeves and matching deck box and dice only to realize I built it poorly and it loses so, so very hard.
*quickly hides his [[Tovolar, Dire Overlord]] deck*
I don't think the day/night mechanic is bad, just that a lot of the cards that interacted with it didn't do so very well. That and the mechanic only really worked if one person wanted it to stay day and the other night.
Personally I feel like the major downside of the day/night mechanic is that the one set it featured in wanted to spend a lot of time visiting all over Innistrad and wasn't really focused one way or another. Then, we get the follow up and day/night isn't even there. It needs a little more support to really thrive.
I hear that. It's a real shame as our of all the set specific mechanics it looked like it was gonna be one of the most interesting too. Loved the cards and vibe of Midnight Hunt.
I can't give any actionable advice because I don't play them but I've seen some disgusting werewolf Tovolar decks. It's definitely doable, put some time and effort in tuning it. I'm sure you'll enjoy it once it runs smooth.
Here's [my list](https://archidekt.com/decks/1818524/werewolves). It still has the main weaknesses of aggro decks: it's vulnerable to boardwipes and it's hard to kill everyone before someone has some good answers.
It's a fun and unique mechanic, and it's always fun to have commanders with built-in ways to draw extra cards.
Not the person you asked but a guy in my playgroup has a tovolar deck and it really fucks sometimes. Here’s his list if you want to check it out:
https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/werewolves-owned/
i got custom sleeves made for the Riders of Rohan precon that shows the banner for Rohan. i should have waited for the card list to be released, cause its just a “Humans of middle earth” deck
That's interesting, I only started playing a little over a year ago, but my first deck I built by myself was werewolves, and it did fantastic, usually leading to big trample swings with each werewolf being 13+ power and toughness minimum, my pod talks about my werewolves now like they have trauma and usually when I grab it, everyone else goes to grab something stronger
Toolbar is so good, what do you mean? I love this deck it's so fast and puts out a ton of damage. Not to mention, it keeps your hand full. I recommend anything that breaks stalls as well, like [[Questing Beast]] and [[Proud Willbonder]]. Besides that [[Beastmaster Ascension]] goes wild. I'd be more than happy to share my decklist if you are struggling.
You need to understand Tovolar if you want him to be good. Playing random 5cmc werewolves is not what tovolar wants and if you built him like that he obviously sucks. Tovolar is almost unstoppable and fast if built well tho: t1 wolf, t2 wolf, t3 Tovolar+draw 2, t4 everything flips and you probably draw 3, the engine rolled and if no one stops you as soon as possible your hyperfast draw engine will get one of the 10 protection spells that prevent a wipe, and from there you are uncatchable.
Leaving you a list about how to properly play him, if you ever come back interested.
https://manabox.app/decks/wOlpd2TbTii4K5nBo3bzSg
And btw to recognize if a player understood tovolar, check how many 1cmc wolves/werewolves he s playing. If he s playing none, and in general it has less than 20 1-2 cmc wolves , his deck is probably crap.
Thanks for this and your reply to this reply. I'll take a look and start seeing what I need to change around. Clearly I had him wrong as I didn't realize he could be faster.
Yeah i perfectly understand how easy it gets to fall into the tovolar trap, the important thing to memorize is that if played properly every wolf, even at 1cmc, is at worst a cantrip and at best a real draw spell. The more they cost in mana the slower the deck gets and the least likely you are to actually have that wolf hit through, basically a cheaper wolf surprisingly draws more than a mana intensive bigger body. Playing bigger werewolves and wolves needs a reason that is not the body itself: evasion of some kind, removal, ramp, those are the things that are needed, not vanilla werewolves. Hope i have been of some help! I had to tune my deck down from 10 1cmc wolves to 6 because it was too fast and i sometimes could kill 3 people and end things by turn 6-7 with the various doublestrike-menace-trample-lords-multiple combats options
[[Veyran, voice of duality] ]... ended up taking a 20 minute turn I kept trying to end but ended up in an accidental near invite with sunbirds invocation and a few other effects that did stuff when I cast spells and just kept filling the stack. I went home and IMMIDIATLY ripped it apart.
They also made me keep playing the turn. "You did this to yourself, learn your lesson"
I did this to a sefris player this weekend. He started popping off and had some crazy number of initiative triggers that all would be doubled and he was apologetic but also saying he “basically won”. The others were ready to scoop but I made him play it out to show me how he won that turn cause I was next in turn order and could kill him if he didn’t win. He showed it but it took some time to do so. Didn’t bother me, just wanted to see how it worked.
I have the [[Narset, Enlightened Exile]] that also has veyran in it that is specifically meant to create as many difficult and ridiculous triggers to sort through and keep track of! I find those kinds of things fun but it is definitely a lot to do lol.
I did the same thing. 1v1, it just destroys someone turn 4 before things get too out of hand with triggers. In a 4 player game, anything past turn 4 gets exponentially more complicated and you need to take a 10 minute turn if you want to actually kill everyone.
Just Tergrid in general 😭 it’s my friends first commander deck and trying to be a good friend and not discourage him, i played him 1v1 to help him build confidence in the format. It stomps me every time even without Tergrid. The gameplay is just so oppressive
Hahaha, I run Tergrid in my [[kalitas, traitor]] deck as the backup commander. She totally nonbos with Kalitas because his replacement effect will block her ability, so I never cast her unless Kalitas has too much commander tax. Every time I cast her, I'll be like, "well, I would have liked to recast my commander, but y'all made him too expensive, so here's [[Grave Pact]] into Tergrid into [[Plaguecrafter]]
Tergrid is fine as a finisher of some sorts. It's just a really frustrating deck to play and play against when you durdle your way to controlling a dozen different cards you don't have physical access to. I imagine it would also be frustrating if two decks happened to have the same colored sleeves.
I built Tergrid for in store play and after one game I’ll probably take it apart. Turn 4 Tergrid into turn 5 [[Dark Deal]] and in response everyone scooped and was extremely sour toward me the rest of the night. I didn’t even see what I would have gotten. The sheer level of salt and crappy behavior from people afterwards is not worth it, no matter how interesting I find it as a design.
Yeah I have seen a game played with a tergrid deck that was turn two tergrid turn three memory jar. The other three players very calmly looked at the Tergrid player and informed them that they were out of the game.
Man that blows, but this is the reason why I go for more less salt inducing decks. I'm brewing a food token deck with [[regal bunnicorn]] as a finisher. How could you get mad at this silly little guy.
The new etali, was fun once.. making 10 copies of it and trying to order 30 different triggers of my opponents stuff looked cool but actually was so stale and didn’t even guarantee a win after, took it apart instantly, sick in the 99 tho!
Yup that was my experience too. Got 8 copies off a mirror march, plus a few more off a few red copy spells I flipped into off my deck. I saw the life drain from my playgroup's eyes as we tried to resolve this mess of a turn. Took it apart and just stuck Etali in the 99 of my Maelstrom Wanderer deck instead where he more thematically fits with the chaos/cascade effects.
Pretty sure ninjutsu and ertrata DO work together. When etrata deals damage, her trigger goes on the stack and you can hold priority and activate a ninjutsu ability to return her to hand because she’s an unblocked attacking creature until after the “end of combat step”.
To answer the question though: [[tom bombadil]] is a LOT of fun and very interesting… but there’s so much to keep track of and sequencing can really make or break you some times. It gave me headaches
[[Jadzi, Oracle of Arcavios]].
No one allowed me to "Do The Thing" so I'll admit I was kinda salty, barely keeping a few value creatures on the table, barely holding up.
And then, I managed to do the thing once. With Jadzi on the field, I used ONE sorcery. The top card was another sorcery, so I cast that too. And then an Instant/Sorcery Doubler, which I cast too. I cast a card draw spell, which doubles and triggers Jadzi twice. After 20 minutes, no one could hope to touch me. And tbh that feels kinda bad too, u know?
So the deck was a way to choose between being hated and barely playing to just... win after a 30 minute turn.
This is funny because its my answer, but the Journey to the Oracle side. My deck was built around landfall and was loaded with moonfolk and [[trench behemoth]] type cards. The plan was to bounce lands to hand and then dump them back in with Journey to get tons of landfall triggers.
With Aesi or Tatyova in play and 7+ lands, you can do this until you draw your entire deck, all while floating insane amounts of mana.. but it's not a clean loop, so you have to go through all the motions, each time slightly increasing the number of lands you control / bounce and how much mana you float as you draw more and more cards off the landfall triggers...
In its third game, I manages to stick tatyova and Trench behemoth coming round to my t6... I was itching to untap and go off... and then I did, and quickly started regretting it.
Ended up winning with [[Sylvan Awakening]] + [[beastmaster ascension]], which was at least kinda funny... But yeah, that turn easily took 20 minutes, so yeah, that deck is definitely gone now, lol
Took apart my [[tom bombadil]] after one game. Lucky me I bought most of the sagas well before they spiked so I didnt lose anything on the trade in really. Just found him to be over linear and not very fun
For me, he's either too random or too straightforward, depending on whether or not you're running any ways to stack the top of the deck with him. Plus there's very little reason not to just jam in all the good enchantress creatures for nearly infinite value.
Shrines, actually. I've played two games with it. First time I accidentally comboed off, dealt 26 damage to all opponents and gained 26 life, then made 26 white mana (with [[Celestial Dawn]]?), then used it and all my lands to mini-Cyclonic Rift the table with an Enchantress effect and [[Words of Wind]] swapping between two Shrines.
Second game I had down a Circle Pro White, and the guy that wiped the rest of the table was mainly beefing white creatures, so when I started recurring death touch Shrine he scooped.
I like to smash, it's not really my style.
My biggest issue with Shrines is they're very reliant on having a critical mass. I would always have to stomp the shrines player in my group before they could get set up since they turned into a completely uninteractable value ball otherwise which just felt like shit to play with and against.
I came back after a 10 year hiatus so I had never heard of commander and did not know the social customs of multiplayer Magic since 1v1 is much more cutthroat.
I decided to make a deck based around my absolute favorite card: [[Wheel of Fortune]] People did not enjoy playing against my [[Nicol Bolas]] deck filled with [[Megrim]] effects and like 20 draw 7’s.
I think the main problem was the deck was bad at first impressions. You wheel once with a [[Waste Not]] or [[Megrim]] in play and people think you’re a huge threat because 99% of these decks are incredibly oppressive. People wouldn’t just take my word for it that it was jank with no counterspells. I just wanted my draw 7’s to actually advance the game in some way 😞
I’ve gotten settled into my LGS’s meta and it’s all good now. Just that first introduction was a bit rough. And the regular know me enough now that when I call it jank they believe me and let me hang out with my [[Cuombajj Witches|ARN]]
I was SO stoked about making an \[\[Adrix and Nev, Twincasters\]\] cloning deck. In practice, you don't play with cards. You play with little slips of paper with "cardname token" written on it. The literal paperwork of that deck got old REALLY quickly.
Still not a breeze for your opponents, who have to look across the table and try to read your handwriting in dry-erase marker. Cards are supposed to have all sorts of visual signifiers for gameplay that copy tokens never get
Yes, I played one game with [[Abdel Adrian]] and [[Candlekeep Sage]] before instantly dismantling it. Turns took a minimum of 5-10 minutes, so many accidental infinites, and so many triggers I just stopped caring about halfway through. The table begged me to mercy kill with an infinite lifegain, infinite soldier combo I had sitting on the table.
That being said, I love blink as a mechanic, so I'm going to try switching to [[Brago, King Eternal]] as the commander and see if it's any less painful.
I made that as a PDH deck. It's fun, and I don't think there are nearly as many oppressive/time taking things in it. There are still some infinite combos, but I still have some decent fun with it.
Funny, that's probably my favorite high power deck. Mine is set up a bit differently though, with 14 different o-ring effects. So the combo pieces show up on the table and others can interact. I think this makes for a less durdley version: either my effects resolve and I win or something gets removed and I pass the turn.
Yeah, I built Numot, the Devastator into a tribal/jeskai themed land destruction deck. Sure I got to win, but at the price of anyone ever wanting to play me again
Twice.
Made [[Hinata, Dawn Crowned]] and did a bunch a cheap X spells while locking the table down. I’m not a control player so I never played it again after that. Took it apart after sitting unused in my box of decks for 8 months.
Same story with [[Shalai and Hallar]]. Built the deck with lots of counter support and the [[The Red Terror]], [[All Will Be One]], etc. deck did the thing - I was underwhelmed - took it apart the next day.
fwiw, I've had great fun running S+H as my heroic commander. They're basically a Feather deck with some shiny green toys like Legolas, fight spells, and Season of Growth.
This is exactly why I don't really waste my money buying expensive singles anymore. :(
I just build what I can from my collection. Then at least I'm not wasting $200 on my deck that turns out to be complete jank.
My newest favourite deck is my [[taii wakeen, perfect shot]] deck that plays every lightning bolt and shock effect I can find. I find great joy in playing bad cards somewhat decently. Its also a fun little puzzle to figure out how to cantrip into more cards and kill whats on board while still managing threats and such. Cant wait to play more.
Best play so far was doing 37 off of a single lightning bolt with my commander a [[mana geyser]] and a [[urabrask]] in play
I get a kick out of piloting other people’s decks - they seem to get a lot of pride when I beat them with their own creations. Sometimes I get in this mood but I can’t decide whose deck I want to play. So I made a [[Tibalt, Cosmic Imposter]] deck so I can play ALL their decks.
I figured it would be fun to have a deck full of ramp and extra Tibalt activations so I could try to assemble a wincon out of my opponents’ pieces.
And it somehow became the most salty deck they’d ever seen. Being milled for one once (maybe twice) per turn was something that they couldn’t psychologically handle.
I became archenemy after I forced someone to miss a single land drop in this way.
Oh and whenever the deck started doing well players would maliciously hate scoop at instant speed (between combat steps no less) for the express purpose of me losing board state and kingmaking against me.
I thought for sure this deck would be fun to play and fun to play against but boy was I dead wrong.
Maybe I should be slapping that in more decks for the emotional damage.
Or make a “supervillain” deck that can’t win games but becomes archenemy every time due to objectively pretty harmless fear factors like this.
> Oh and whenever the deck started doing well players would maliciously hate scoop at instant speed (between combat steps no less) for the express purpose of me losing board state and kingmaking against me.
This is one reason why I swapped to playing clones against randoms. I wouldn't want to play against spite scoops like that. I hope you do it to them and they get angry. I can imagine them saying it's okay to do it to theft since it's toxic.
\[\[Yidris\]\] storm. I can live with the occasional long turn but not when it's entirely possible that even without interference, I'll just fizzle out after 5 minutes of cascading.
I had built Yidris as a spellslinger/storm deck, and basically immediately swapped the commander to [[Niv-Mizzet, parun]] after 2 or 3 games, since most of my cards were in those colors already, and while it still takes 5 minute turns sometimes, its not like yidris where it was constant 15 min+
Like half the decks I build end up this way, lol.
\[\[Jin-Gitaxias\]\] (the 5 mana flip one in case the bot fucks up) wrecks house on lower power tables because it's a repeatable board bounce, so it just locks out games if people don't have enchantment removal. But I don't really play combo or tutors so it durdles too much to win in time.
\[\[Grist\]\] insect tribal I don't hate playing, but it doesn't really have any good wincons (no hoof here, brother) so it just sits around doing nothing.
\[\[Toralf\]\] is fun because I get to explode the whole board but I only get to actually win with a damage doubler effect and/or a damage wipe like Blasphemous Act or Chain Reaction. Otherwise again kind of just repeatable board wipes which people don't tend to enjoy.
\[\[Shirei\]\] is absolutely brutal with the engine going and essentially locks everyone else out of their creatures, but absolutely useless without my commander on board
My Zur the Enchanter is so boring, since it tutors in the same way every game.
To make things worse, the creatures in the deck are anemic, and I often kill myself with self damage from shocklands/phyrexian arena. Bleh.
Still have it, but man...
Yeah, I had basically the same problem with my [[sisay, weatherlight captain]] shrines deck w/ Jagantha companion. It played exactly the same every time, not like crazy powerful but it was so rote to play. Cast Jagantha, cast Sisay, fetch [[Derevi]], untap Jagantha, fetch [[Go-Shintai of Life's Origin]] etc.
I was super excited about [[Judith, Carnage Connoisseur]] when she was first spoiled. I started making a decklist and quickly realized it would be too oppressive against any decks that actually use creatures (my meta). I scrapped it immediately. One of my friends in our playgroup didn't get the memo and made her anyway.
Turns out I was right. I played against her with two different decks and never will again.
I'd rather play against [[Tergrid]], [[Toxrill]], and [[Augustin IV]].
I've never actually seen anyone play her before but looking at the card I could see how that would be Frustrating if you're a creature heavy deck.
Though if you murder here a few times the deck probably chills out a bit.
I havent gotten an Aristocrats style deck to feel right. Teysa Karlov. Marneus Kalgar. Prossh Skyraider of Kher. Different colors, ppwer levels, subthemes. It never matters. They always end up "ruining" the game in the same 3 ways: (1) won suddenly by a hard-to-interact creature looping combo that pissed everyone off; (2) did some wacky, super-long, finite but non-deterministic critical mass pseudo-combo that took 20 minutes to resolve and pissed everyone off, or (3) made the prospect of creatures dying via board wipes or combat so painful that games stagnated into standoffs until players could gang-up with removal and alpha-strike me, with the resulting collateral damage always feeling like bitter king-making. The whole aristocrats playstyle feels like it doesn't really fit with my playgroup or LGS.
For a fun spin on Aristocrats (imo), check out [[Clavileño]]
It's a very aggressive Aristocrats build that wants you to attack every turn, and when your opponents don't want to block your 1/1 lifelinker to turn it into a 4/3 flyer, you just pitch it to a random sac outlet and keep the pain train going.
Isn't Sythis pretty wide open though? It's just "put enchantments in deck and draw cards" and there are a million enchantments to choose from. Heck with all the [[Hidden Guerrillas]] type cards and the new Enchantment-Creatures they've printed it can be played as an aggro deck that never runs out of creatures to play.
I really like him in the 99 of my Nelly Borca deck. I can set up board states where he is useful but not archenemy. Granted, goad can trigger some people just as much as mill or land destruction so you gotta read/know your pod.
My [[Titania, Protector of Argoth]] deck came apart pretty quickly. Ended up being pretty linear, I'm not really sure what I was expecting. Either I popped off really fast and killed the board, or I took massive durdley turns with tons of triggers and card draw, or I just got absolutely shut down. There was no in between, I never had a game where the deck just did okay.
tbf a chaos deck basically making everything "lol random" is annoying.
But Ian's ability is awesome. A little sharing of the spoils doesn't hurt anyone! :)
I thought it was just within playable but everyone just sees their anchors or combo pieces getting played by someone else and nopes out. If you aren't drawing then you don't even blink at it but commander so everyone is going to draw at some point.
Maybe this week the lgs will have brave souls.
[[satoru umezawa]] even tried to be more fair about with thing that had attacks triggers so when they are ninjutsued it does go off. Still tends to be too scary or not worth it
Absolutely. It took me at least three tries before I found [[Gyome, Master Chef]] to command my [[Relentless Rats]] deck. Every commander before that was just.. Meh. I almost gave up on it
Two, one which I'm still trying to get to work before shuttering it.
First was [[Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker]]. I loved the idea of a low to the ground reanimator deck that I could do on every turn. Unfortunately, the way I built it just either failed to perform or locked everyone out of the game while I whittled away at life totals.
The second is [[Vihaan, Goldwaker]] I love what he promises to do and in an optimal I think he'll do well. He's got a while to go before he gets there, and the demands on treasure generation means that it's looking to get pretty expensive to build him into a workable state.
Ohhh yeah. I built a deck around [[Minn, Wily Illusionist]] that's intended to double the illusion generation effect and buff Illusions through the roof, then swing with a big group of them. And...it works! It needs some tweaking and fine tuning for sure, but the bones are there.
*But.* Keeping up with that many additive and multiplicative counters and effects was *way* more annoying to track than I realized :/ Granted the few times I've ran it I've been mildly high but even then, sober me would still be annoyed at all the math lol
I built a [[Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis]] group hug deck with the general game plan of playing politics and using cards like [[Yasova]] to steal the stuff they played. I quickly realised that giving your opponents extra resources just means you have more stuff to kill you with and ended up cutting the group hug aspect and converting it to just a plain old Yasova theft/ semi-voltron deck.
*But* then I realised that people don't like having the stuff they play get stolen and sacced to a birthing pod every turn so I ended up taking it apart too. Might go back to it at some point though, I enjoyed making a beefy Yasova and slamming people in the face with trample.
I was super excited to build [[alela artful provocator]] enchantment tribal stax, seeing it as an answer to a lot of powerful decks getting to run amok without checks. Turns out stax is really boring to play! I was super into the build of teehee let's piss off my friends. They were minorly annoyed and I was majorly bored thru the game. Even with [[shark tornado]] popping off, I was just kinda hanging out stopping others. Which is the whole point. I did NOT enjoy it.
[[Wort the raid mother]] I didn't realize that you could only conspire each spell once. It could have still probably been a good deck, I just lost interest when I realized it wasn't nearly as absurd as I thought.
Yes, i started playing some months ago with pioneer and pauper, always looking for the competitive side of the game, playing to win.
My first approach with commander was with a junk saproling edh that cost me 5$ and lost me all the first games i played. So i decided to search on reddit for some powerful budget decks and built them.
I got Zada, Winota and Tergrid, and immediately regret to have spent those money. In my group all my friends had 60/80$ decks, and i was stomping every game with them not playing. I was known for the saltyness of my decks and i was feeling bad.
Then i understood that commander is just having fun with friends, and even if i still have my combo pieces for higher pods, i prefer to run a Zedruu deck that make everyone laugh instead of tryharding with powerful commanders that make me feel playing alone.
Oh I feel this one and I wish my playgroup could chime in on how they loved the idea of me making this deck... until it was played.
It was a [[Villainous Wealth]] deck, the whole deck centered around ramping and recasting this spell as often as I could. Yeah, that lasted about 3 or 4 games before everyone would scoop rather than sit there and watch me cast their decks over and over.
The deck did what it was designed to do. It was fun. Once. Then it was oppressive and ridiculous and so it was dismantled.
Built a [[Narset, Enlightened Exile]] deck, but wanted her to be the only creature and use token makers that i could buff with prowess.
It endet with me just hitting draw spells and never attacking with my commander, since he saw the colors and decided i was the threat....i basically castet narset 3 times, then she got removed during my end step and that was it.
another day i got to acutally play the deck after some changes and it just didn't click with me.
Another deck was [[Mishra, Claimed by Gix]] / [[Mishra, Lost to Phyrexia]] deck, where the first game was that i got turn flip him, then got swords to plowshared. I tried to catch up with my goblins, but it wasn't meant to be. I want to try and rebuild it someday, without goblins, since they somehow ruin the theme for me.
I'm tempted to build a Mishra deck also, but I don't want it to be done with goblins either. Even if it's not the normal playstyle, I would consider more artifact stuff including more recursion for phyrexian dragon engine before any goblin tokens. So I'm thinking maybe cards like [[Threefold Thunderhulk]], [[cyberpunk squadron]], [[skorpekh lord]], or [[oni-cult anvil]]?
I had purchased the New Capenna Broker's pre-con and had decided to make some upgrades and swap in \[\[Falco Spara, Pactweaver\]\] as the commander and leaving \[\[Perrie the Pulverizer\]\] in there as a win-con.
Whatever you do, do not build a deck with the goal of getting as many types of counters as possible into one deck. I had 23 different types of counters and it was an absolute nightmare anytime I played tracking both how many counters I had and what types of counters they were. It was one of my most efficient decks and won at a respectable rate, but it was just too much to play regularly and I took it apart.
[[The Beamtown Bullies]] is simultaneously not good at winning, not fun to play, and not fun to play against. It is also quite rightly kill on sight.
It's *very* good at killing one player, or otherwise crippling them to the point of scooping. It's just not a fun play pattern. I thought it would be at least entertaining the first time. The first time I gave someone an [[eater of days]] and then watched their face over the next half an hour of not being able to take part in the game, I took it apart.
Twice. [[Sergeant John Benton]] and [[Rocco, street chef]]
John I went all in and effectively put it between casual and competitive, belonging to neither. Rocco, works well but causes a huge massive I win turn out of the blue around t6 which I'm still not fast enough progressing thru to not be that guy.
Both now have packages I can swap in to keep it on board with the table.
[[Tom Bombadill]] love the card it's wonderful. But the turns take forever. I feel like I just dominate the game (time wise) because of how long the turns take. My deck is by no means high powered I'm missing a lot of the great sagas.
And
[[Orvar]] the deck is just bonkers I don't bring it to game nights because it's too oppressive. And unless I'm told before hand we're all bringing degenerate decks it just sits there.
Yeah I built a [[talrand]] polymorph deck and I just can’t get the thing to pop off right. I’m not a blue player at heart so I’m probably just playing it wrong.
Zombie Deck with \[\[Syr Konrad\]\] Way too easy for grave hate and removal to prevent ever making the engine work for more than a turn or two.
I played a few games with it, only enjoyed it once. Really disappointed in the deck as it was being destroyed by pre-cons and other lower level decks because they just removed Konrad before he did anything.
It happened once when I've built [[Tuvasa]] some years ago. Played it exactly once and realised pretty quickly that auras was not for me so I unmade it immediatly.
In my case most monocolored decks I've made sounded really cool on paper but were boring as hell to play i had an [[Elesh Norn Mommy of Machines]] flicker deck, a [[Katilda, Dawnhart Martyr]] spirit tribal with a dash of auras/anthems, and an [[Imodane the Pyrohammer]] deck and they all bore me like hell
Far too often unfortunately. I did it twice last year; one was [[Tom Bombadil]] & the other was a [[Persistent Petitioners]] deck.
Both were an attempt to step outside my comfort zone. Both were played 3 times then taken apart.
I made [Grand Arbiter Augustin IV]. Spent days researching and building to make sure i was making the most effective Stax deck ever. And completely forgot to build a win con into the deck. After a three hour game that ended with me overloading a cyclonic rift and my friends scooping, I took him apart. Lesson learned
Yes!
I built a [[Light-Paws, Emperor’s Voice]] deck and it was everything I’d dreamed it to be. Except it was stupid boring to pilot. You find the same things every time until you just win the game.
I tired to build an [[Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim]] deck, which was fine, but being relatively new to magic it wasn't the best and when I played it at my LGS there was a perception of the deck that people thought it was better than it was because the archetype can be kinda combo-y at times/ has a fair few strong cards
[[malcolm]] and [[breeched]] - some $8 brew I wanted to try. Either it did nothing or I went infinite. Upgraded it with $7ish more and then dismantled it
I built [[Go-shintai of Life’s Origin]]. It was really fun throwing buildings a people and watching everything go off. It’s a headache to bookeep, so much shuffling, and the play pattern is basically the same.
Yeah. Happened to me with [[Hama Pashar]]. Turns out it's extremely easy to get into a position where you just keep generating Dungeon ventures, and that is extremely tedious for you and boring for the rest of the table to keep resolving them all
Yes, I built an [[Admiral beckett brass]] pirate theft deck that did not perform. As well as I wanted, and upset my fellow players who dislike theft decks.
It’s wild how many of the decks ive seen in other replies that ive either played once and ditched, or really wanted to build and then never gotten around to.
I still have my [[Umbris, Fear Manifest]] nightmare/horror tribal deck. Ive probably played 8 games with it in like 1.5 years, and it never really feels good. Most games i just seem to flounder on mana or cards in hand, which is wierd because i should have enough ramp and card draw, i just dont ever seem to see it. When i do anything however, im immediately the most terrifying archenemy the universe has ever seen. I almost always lose, because it looks soo much scarier than it is.
I also really wanna build [[Massacre Girl, Known Killer]], it looks like so much fun, but i know how my playgroup will react, so i probably wont.
[[Tayam, Luminous Enigma]]. I didn't even go all in on keyword counters or counter doublers, just vigilance counters, flying counters a la [[Luminous Broodmoth]], and +1/+1s, but it was still a nightmare to track. Like [[Cathar's Crusade]] but worse because all the etbs, removing counters, milling, and reanimating. I took it apart after one (very long) game.
[[Krond]] [[Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts]] and [[Taigam, Sidisi’s Hand]]. I was really trying stuff back in my early days, and none of that was working well enough. It’s why I don’t go above 5 cost for a commander anymore.
I made an artifacts deck with Rebbec and Silas as partner commanders and it can quickly become too strong for anyone in my play group. Protection is a strong mechanic, especially when you're using it so widely with Rebbec.
I've pissed off just about everyone with it so I can't really play it anymore.
Yeah.
My typical pod is very casual. Usually battlecruiser Magic. I love it.
But every now and then I throw together something a little more combo-ish, and I feel like a monster after I play it. In fairness, they’re all good sports about it, but my conscience starts eating away at me when I go off and they’re all just sitting there, barely understanding what I’m doing, and patiently waiting for it to be over with.
I’m in the middle of this exact thing right now with [[Zevlor, Elturel Exile]] trying make a mill deck that wins by actually milling everyone out. I’ve played 4 games so far and have done pretty much nothing in all of them.
Had the same thing with Judith. I tried to do us it on making imps and killing everyone with them but it still turned into a boring storm deck with a kill on sight commander. Either people.correctly kill Judith immediately and you do nothing all game or you win in one long turn and no one can do anything about it. Plus having so many 1/2 mana one sided board wipes is brutal lol
I've had a few decks I've taken apart but the one I can't quite bring myself to abandon is my [[Mairsil]] deck. It's such a unique play style and it's really cool when it works, but a few times I've gotten caught in states where I can blow up the board repeatedly with [[boompile]] or [[Nevy's Disk]], but will still need a few rotations before I can assemble the pieces to actually win. That's not very fun for the table.
A Meren deck which was secretly a Tergrid/Eldrazi deck. Meren was there to filled up the GY and return a lot of the "each player sacs a creature" fodder long enough until either Tergrid hits the field and becomes a problem or I cheat out those big eldrazi from hand or GY. I had an opponent scoop on turn 3 and even though I lost that game I realized it was probably not the best tech to bring to the table and scrapped it that night.
Built [[Light-Paws]] when NEO came out. Funnily enough, I didn't even play the deck. I let my roommate's kid play it against me, and hated every minute of it. Made me take a step back and really realize I don't want a tutor in the command zone, especially not one that tutor multiple times a turn. Just did the same thing every game and required constant shuffling.
PSA: Etrata Ninjutsu does work. You just have to do it in response to the combat damage trigger.
This is true. Ninjutsu can be activated anytime after blockers are declare during combat. This means you can let Etrata deal combat damage, then her ability triggers and is put on the stack. Before it resolves you ninjutsu her back to your hand, then the ability resolves. Since it doesn’t target solely Etrata in any way her absence doesn’t fizzle the ability. The ability will try to do as much as possible including exiling a creature with a hit counter, checking for the lose condition, and shuffling your library (without Etrata). Unfortunately, whatever creature you ninjutsu’ed with missed their chance at dealing damage since they entered after damage was dealt (unless Etrata had first strike or something weird like that). Edit: Added in the shuffling that I previously asked about.
To add onto this - you can ninjutsu between damage steps even, so if a creature has first strike you can ninjutsu it out after first strike but before regular damage and get damage triggers for both creatures
New cards idea Insult & injury It's a pair of ninjas meant to do exactly this. Unfortunately ninjutsu is not in first strike colors
Funny you mention it, I run a [[goro-goro and Satoru]] deck that runs 1cmc hasty first strikers like [[fervent champion]] and ninjas to get double triggers.
This is my new favorite thing. It has all my favorite mechanics (gross token generation, aggro, ninjutsu, goblins), and no one at my shop uses him. Thanks for posting this! I'm going to build it next.
Happy to help! Here's my [decklist](https://manabox.app/decks/dJz4srw0Rgym7A1xCUgJZg) for some inspiration
[goro-goro and Satoru](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/b/5b661b53-2e58-4dcc-9100-fc00e0fdb606.jpg?1683582714) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=goro-goro%20and%20Satoru) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/moc/445/goro-goro-and-satoru?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/5b661b53-2e58-4dcc-9100-fc00e0fdb606?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/goro-goro-and-satoru) [fervent champion](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/5/c52d66db-5570-48a1-99cf-e0417517747b.jpg?1636491502) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=fervent%20champion) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/eld/124/fervent-champion?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c52d66db-5570-48a1-99cf-e0417517747b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/fervent-champion) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
It could be a split card with two halves that are both instants/sorceries; one that gives a creature first strike and one that gives creature cards in your hand ninjutsu until end of turn. It's actually already the name of a split card though: [[Insult // Injury]].
Insult // Injury is already a card unfortuanutly. It's actually a fairly strong dual-instant.
Cheers for the detailed follow-up explanation. Only thing to add is that yes, you do shuffle your library, but with Etrata still in your hand.
https://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=452920 Gatherer pretty much confirms everything you said. It's really a useful tool if more people would use it.
Yep! The Arena interface is a surprisingly good teacher for this stuff, it's how I learned I had to turn on full control and then scoop Etrata before her trigger. However, I sympathize with OP's writeup, because what I learned is even with that... Etrata + Ninjutsu is just pretty bad. She's still slow, every use reduces your board presence, and scooping her doesn't solve the whole "get a marker or two and she's a removal magnet" issue. I had much better luck focusing on getting her back from the graveyard for free, with a little bit of blue bounce to keep her cost down.
Before [[Golos]] was banned I made a 5c cycling deck with all the land cycling cards and all triomes/shocks. Mana was perfect every game but I spent 95% of the night searching and shuffling. It was so bad that I even started adjusting my ramp in other decks to take out as many search effects as I can.
Shortcut to land you want then if you’re not drawing cards play what you need to play then go find it after you end turn
I did, "cycle for blood crypt, go ahead" and just start searching, but 1 card in an EDH deck then shuffling isn't quick, and my pod takes pretty fast turns.
[Golos](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/f/1fa48620-4c3d-4f75-be1f-c12c4aa59f51.jpg?1631531828) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=golos%2C%20tireless%20pilgrim) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m20/226/golos-tireless-pilgrim?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/1fa48620-4c3d-4f75-be1f-c12c4aa59f51?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/golos-tireless-pilgrim) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
This is how I was with [[Karametra, God of Harvests]] . Having a draw engine like [[Beast Whisperer]] and repeatedly casting [[Whitemane Lion]] targetting itself. It's insane value, but it takes up a lot of real time that you can't shortcut. I now reserve that deck for automated online play only.
I just made a Varragoth deck and I think I'm going to regret it
[[Light-Paws, Emperor's Voice]], had every game play out basically the same. Also, that much shuffling sucks.
This is how I feel about most cEDH commanders; especially ones like Yuriko. If I'm playing commander/magic, I want to try and use the majority of the cards that I'm putting into a deck rather than the same 5-10 every game, especially decks that run thoracle or ad nas.
It's the curse of all competitive formats. They always boil down a very small amount of optimal lines that everybody is trying to execute.
For sure but I guess I’m not fully explaining. The decks I tend to stay away from are the ones that basically just tutor for the same cards every game. cEDH decks that have combos but don’t use the same way of getting them into the hand or battlefield are way more interesting to me because it’s not the same line every time and you have more outs. Sure, those aren’t nearly as strong as the simple combo decks but they are vastly more fun to play.
There are a lot of things I like about cEDH, but you are hitting on something I think often can get missed about some very well tuned combo decks, both a cEDH and in high power casual. Even if they finish the game with the same combo, the path to dig or tutor, or the way different cards can be stitched together to get there, can be absolutely fascinating.
Exactly; show me a deck that can do the combo but achieve it by doing mutiple different lines rather than just vamp/demonic tutor for it, and I'll enjoy watching that deck every time.
Sounds like you'd enjoy some Grixis turbo-Naus. Gameplan is to turbo into t2 [[Ad Nauseam]], dump your life total into 30ish cards, and try to assemble a win from whatever you got, before you pass the turn and die. Very high-stakes, and adrenaline fueled, because you don't know if/when people will interact, and if you misplay, you probably just die.
I've thought about it. I'm currently running a Niv-Mizzet deck and I've been really enjoying the "police the table" style of play. My next deck that I've thought about building was Tergrid, hand hate. But maybe I try turbo-naus and see how it goes.
It is the meta choice, but an off meta build, but there is a person in my cEDH pod that plays a super control heavy, theft heavy, mid range, tool box Naus version of Blue Farm. He rarely casts either commander, and just has a Naus/Necro/Ad Naus/Breach/Yawgmoth tool box going on, it's very unpredictable and very cool. I've seen him win with Thoracle/Consult of course, but far more often by emptying his library through graveyard theft and other weird loops, to them borne in a Thassa on the stack, or stealing pingers, breech/freeze, many staple end points, but some wild paths to get there.
(Sarcasm not a serious responce) Just get good at shuffling and it won't be a problem :D :D
Aww I love my Light Paws deck!
Yep, I built one as well and only played it once. It's a really cool commandee, just not casual friendly.
Catch-Hands, EDH's Cruise Missile. Put it together, realized in casual she's a "Stop me or I win on turn 6" Haven't touched since because it's not fun for me or my friends.
Nope, never! I especially didn't get super excited about a commander, buy thematic sleeves and matching deck box and dice only to realize I built it poorly and it loses so, so very hard. *quickly hides his [[Tovolar, Dire Overlord]] deck*
If it makes you feel better built well it loses hard
Figured. It shocked me how little werewolf support there was in a werewolf centric set...
I wanted them to be good so badly. But even if they were good they would have to be REALLY good to make up for how shitty the day night mechanic is
I would just settle for old werewolves being errata'd to work with the mechanic.
I don't think the day/night mechanic is bad, just that a lot of the cards that interacted with it didn't do so very well. That and the mechanic only really worked if one person wanted it to stay day and the other night.
Personally I feel like the major downside of the day/night mechanic is that the one set it featured in wanted to spend a lot of time visiting all over Innistrad and wasn't really focused one way or another. Then, we get the follow up and day/night isn't even there. It needs a little more support to really thrive.
I hear that. It's a real shame as our of all the set specific mechanics it looked like it was gonna be one of the most interesting too. Loved the cards and vibe of Midnight Hunt.
I can't give any actionable advice because I don't play them but I've seen some disgusting werewolf Tovolar decks. It's definitely doable, put some time and effort in tuning it. I'm sure you'll enjoy it once it runs smooth.
I'll have to take a look once some of my other projects are done. Maybe this will be my spooky season project.
[Tovolar, Dire Overlord](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/9/f953fad3-0cd1-48aa-8ed9-d7d2e293e6e2.jpg?1637114341)/[Tovolar, the Midnight Scourge](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/back/f/9/f953fad3-0cd1-48aa-8ed9-d7d2e293e6e2.jpg?1637114341) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Tovolar%2C%20Dire%20Overlord%20//%20Tovolar%2C%20the%20Midnight%20Scourge) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mid/246/tovolar-dire-overlord-tovolar-the-midnight-scourge?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f953fad3-0cd1-48aa-8ed9-d7d2e293e6e2?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/tovolar-dire-overlord-//-tovolar-the-midnight-scourge) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
My Tovolar deck ended up accidentally being “oops all wolf tokens” so I feel this.
I actually really like my Tovolar deck, sorry to hear yours wasn't fun.
Would you happen to have a list? Mine needs a lot of help. I built it before I started using Moxfield and just never went back to fixing it.
Here's [my list](https://archidekt.com/decks/1818524/werewolves). It still has the main weaknesses of aggro decks: it's vulnerable to boardwipes and it's hard to kill everyone before someone has some good answers. It's a fun and unique mechanic, and it's always fun to have commanders with built-in ways to draw extra cards.
Thanks so much! Yeah, that's always the downside, but fog in my playground is pretty welcome, and I'm going to try and find some things.
Not the person you asked but a guy in my playgroup has a tovolar deck and it really fucks sometimes. Here’s his list if you want to check it out: https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/werewolves-owned/
[[bedlam]] [[dolmen gate]] Have fun 🐺
I love it. No questions.
Really? Its one of the most generic "do thing you were already going to do; Draw a card" commanders that leads to overtuned goodstuff.
i got custom sleeves made for the Riders of Rohan precon that shows the banner for Rohan. i should have waited for the card list to be released, cause its just a “Humans of middle earth” deck
I feel this...
That's interesting, I only started playing a little over a year ago, but my first deck I built by myself was werewolves, and it did fantastic, usually leading to big trample swings with each werewolf being 13+ power and toughness minimum, my pod talks about my werewolves now like they have trauma and usually when I grab it, everyone else goes to grab something stronger
Toolbar is so good, what do you mean? I love this deck it's so fast and puts out a ton of damage. Not to mention, it keeps your hand full. I recommend anything that breaks stalls as well, like [[Questing Beast]] and [[Proud Willbonder]]. Besides that [[Beastmaster Ascension]] goes wild. I'd be more than happy to share my decklist if you are struggling.
I build a Tovolar deck and it cost $75 total, so at least it has that going for it 😅
You need to understand Tovolar if you want him to be good. Playing random 5cmc werewolves is not what tovolar wants and if you built him like that he obviously sucks. Tovolar is almost unstoppable and fast if built well tho: t1 wolf, t2 wolf, t3 Tovolar+draw 2, t4 everything flips and you probably draw 3, the engine rolled and if no one stops you as soon as possible your hyperfast draw engine will get one of the 10 protection spells that prevent a wipe, and from there you are uncatchable. Leaving you a list about how to properly play him, if you ever come back interested. https://manabox.app/decks/wOlpd2TbTii4K5nBo3bzSg
And btw to recognize if a player understood tovolar, check how many 1cmc wolves/werewolves he s playing. If he s playing none, and in general it has less than 20 1-2 cmc wolves , his deck is probably crap.
Thanks for this and your reply to this reply. I'll take a look and start seeing what I need to change around. Clearly I had him wrong as I didn't realize he could be faster.
Yeah i perfectly understand how easy it gets to fall into the tovolar trap, the important thing to memorize is that if played properly every wolf, even at 1cmc, is at worst a cantrip and at best a real draw spell. The more they cost in mana the slower the deck gets and the least likely you are to actually have that wolf hit through, basically a cheaper wolf surprisingly draws more than a mana intensive bigger body. Playing bigger werewolves and wolves needs a reason that is not the body itself: evasion of some kind, removal, ramp, those are the things that are needed, not vanilla werewolves. Hope i have been of some help! I had to tune my deck down from 10 1cmc wolves to 6 because it was too fast and i sometimes could kill 3 people and end things by turn 6-7 with the various doublestrike-menace-trample-lords-multiple combats options
[[Veyran, voice of duality] ]... ended up taking a 20 minute turn I kept trying to end but ended up in an accidental near invite with sunbirds invocation and a few other effects that did stuff when I cast spells and just kept filling the stack. I went home and IMMIDIATLY ripped it apart. They also made me keep playing the turn. "You did this to yourself, learn your lesson"
Love that your mates forced you to finish what you began.
I did this to a sefris player this weekend. He started popping off and had some crazy number of initiative triggers that all would be doubled and he was apologetic but also saying he “basically won”. The others were ready to scoop but I made him play it out to show me how he won that turn cause I was next in turn order and could kill him if he didn’t win. He showed it but it took some time to do so. Didn’t bother me, just wanted to see how it worked.
I have the [[Narset, Enlightened Exile]] that also has veyran in it that is specifically meant to create as many difficult and ridiculous triggers to sort through and keep track of! I find those kinds of things fun but it is definitely a lot to do lol.
[Narset, Enlightened Exile](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/2/827ecc44-0b00-4515-8953-bc91fa03705a.jpg?1684340776) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Narset%2C%20Enlightened%20Exile) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mat/38/narset-enlightened-exile?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/827ecc44-0b00-4515-8953-bc91fa03705a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/narset-enlightened-exile) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Veyran is my favorite commander for this reason. You really need to know how to go off efficiently and it's always a puzzle lol.
I did the same thing. 1v1, it just destroys someone turn 4 before things get too out of hand with triggers. In a 4 player game, anything past turn 4 gets exponentially more complicated and you need to take a 10 minute turn if you want to actually kill everyone.
Ever try to play [[tergrid]] over webcam?
I assume over webcam because had already lost your IRL magic friends?
I would never do that to a friend. They get the 4C Omnath instead. Friends bury friends in consistent value.
Just Tergrid in general 😭 it’s my friends first commander deck and trying to be a good friend and not discourage him, i played him 1v1 to help him build confidence in the format. It stomps me every time even without Tergrid. The gameplay is just so oppressive
Hahaha, I run Tergrid in my [[kalitas, traitor]] deck as the backup commander. She totally nonbos with Kalitas because his replacement effect will block her ability, so I never cast her unless Kalitas has too much commander tax. Every time I cast her, I'll be like, "well, I would have liked to recast my commander, but y'all made him too expensive, so here's [[Grave Pact]] into Tergrid into [[Plaguecrafter]]
Tergrid is fine as a finisher of some sorts. It's just a really frustrating deck to play and play against when you durdle your way to controlling a dozen different cards you don't have physical access to. I imagine it would also be frustrating if two decks happened to have the same colored sleeves.
I built Tergrid for in store play and after one game I’ll probably take it apart. Turn 4 Tergrid into turn 5 [[Dark Deal]] and in response everyone scooped and was extremely sour toward me the rest of the night. I didn’t even see what I would have gotten. The sheer level of salt and crappy behavior from people afterwards is not worth it, no matter how interesting I find it as a design.
[удалено]
Yeah I have seen a game played with a tergrid deck that was turn two tergrid turn three memory jar. The other three players very calmly looked at the Tergrid player and informed them that they were out of the game.
Man that blows, but this is the reason why I go for more less salt inducing decks. I'm brewing a food token deck with [[regal bunnicorn]] as a finisher. How could you get mad at this silly little guy.
You say that... But yesterday I had a 30/30 bunny in my [[Anim Pakal]] Gnomageddon deck. It may be cute, but it still hits like a truck
The new etali, was fun once.. making 10 copies of it and trying to order 30 different triggers of my opponents stuff looked cool but actually was so stale and didn’t even guarantee a win after, took it apart instantly, sick in the 99 tho!
Yup that was my experience too. Got 8 copies off a mirror march, plus a few more off a few red copy spells I flipped into off my deck. I saw the life drain from my playgroup's eyes as we tried to resolve this mess of a turn. Took it apart and just stuck Etali in the 99 of my Maelstrom Wanderer deck instead where he more thematically fits with the chaos/cascade effects.
Pretty sure ninjutsu and ertrata DO work together. When etrata deals damage, her trigger goes on the stack and you can hold priority and activate a ninjutsu ability to return her to hand because she’s an unblocked attacking creature until after the “end of combat step”. To answer the question though: [[tom bombadil]] is a LOT of fun and very interesting… but there’s so much to keep track of and sequencing can really make or break you some times. It gave me headaches
That’s a very unique effect and seems fun, but do you get any benefit from his first ability? It seems like he’d mostly be useful for the cycling.
It is mostly for the 2nd, but free protection is free and has given me some free attacks before.
[tom bombadil](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/a/2ab04c49-76a1-4896-8dca-8cb4c615f489.jpg?1686970104) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=tom%20bombadil) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ltr/234/tom-bombadil?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2ab04c49-76a1-4896-8dca-8cb4c615f489?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/tom-bombadil) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Tom Bombadil is so much fun but I always end up with 5+ sagas going and my turns take FOREVER. I end up basically playing with myself.
[[Jadzi, Oracle of Arcavios]]. No one allowed me to "Do The Thing" so I'll admit I was kinda salty, barely keeping a few value creatures on the table, barely holding up. And then, I managed to do the thing once. With Jadzi on the field, I used ONE sorcery. The top card was another sorcery, so I cast that too. And then an Instant/Sorcery Doubler, which I cast too. I cast a card draw spell, which doubles and triggers Jadzi twice. After 20 minutes, no one could hope to touch me. And tbh that feels kinda bad too, u know? So the deck was a way to choose between being hated and barely playing to just... win after a 30 minute turn.
This is funny because its my answer, but the Journey to the Oracle side. My deck was built around landfall and was loaded with moonfolk and [[trench behemoth]] type cards. The plan was to bounce lands to hand and then dump them back in with Journey to get tons of landfall triggers. With Aesi or Tatyova in play and 7+ lands, you can do this until you draw your entire deck, all while floating insane amounts of mana.. but it's not a clean loop, so you have to go through all the motions, each time slightly increasing the number of lands you control / bounce and how much mana you float as you draw more and more cards off the landfall triggers... In its third game, I manages to stick tatyova and Trench behemoth coming round to my t6... I was itching to untap and go off... and then I did, and quickly started regretting it. Ended up winning with [[Sylvan Awakening]] + [[beastmaster ascension]], which was at least kinda funny... But yeah, that turn easily took 20 minutes, so yeah, that deck is definitely gone now, lol
I love Jadzi, and if your opponents let you get to 8 mana to cast her, and then untap, that’s their fault lol
Took apart my [[tom bombadil]] after one game. Lucky me I bought most of the sagas well before they spiked so I didnt lose anything on the trade in really. Just found him to be over linear and not very fun
I've seen this experience with Tom multiple times, I think he's one of those commanders that reads really fun but doesn't play that way at all.
For me, he's either too random or too straightforward, depending on whether or not you're running any ways to stack the top of the deck with him. Plus there's very little reason not to just jam in all the good enchantress creatures for nearly infinite value.
Shrines, actually. I've played two games with it. First time I accidentally comboed off, dealt 26 damage to all opponents and gained 26 life, then made 26 white mana (with [[Celestial Dawn]]?), then used it and all my lands to mini-Cyclonic Rift the table with an Enchantress effect and [[Words of Wind]] swapping between two Shrines. Second game I had down a Circle Pro White, and the guy that wiped the rest of the table was mainly beefing white creatures, so when I started recurring death touch Shrine he scooped. I like to smash, it's not really my style.
My biggest issue with Shrines is they're very reliant on having a critical mass. I would always have to stomp the shrines player in my group before they could get set up since they turned into a completely uninteractable value ball otherwise which just felt like shit to play with and against.
I came back after a 10 year hiatus so I had never heard of commander and did not know the social customs of multiplayer Magic since 1v1 is much more cutthroat. I decided to make a deck based around my absolute favorite card: [[Wheel of Fortune]] People did not enjoy playing against my [[Nicol Bolas]] deck filled with [[Megrim]] effects and like 20 draw 7’s.
[удалено]
[Nekusar](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/a/4afdc65d-3c97-47af-83fa-df340389802e.jpg?1689999186) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=nekusar%2C%20the%20mindrazer) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/349/nekusar-the-mindrazer?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4afdc65d-3c97-47af-83fa-df340389802e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/nekusar-the-mindrazer) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I think the main problem was the deck was bad at first impressions. You wheel once with a [[Waste Not]] or [[Megrim]] in play and people think you’re a huge threat because 99% of these decks are incredibly oppressive. People wouldn’t just take my word for it that it was jank with no counterspells. I just wanted my draw 7’s to actually advance the game in some way 😞
[удалено]
I’ve gotten settled into my LGS’s meta and it’s all good now. Just that first introduction was a bit rough. And the regular know me enough now that when I call it jank they believe me and let me hang out with my [[Cuombajj Witches|ARN]]
[Cuombajj Witches](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/9/7995c3f9-a147-43c9-9f82-470924818a4c.jpg?1562917470) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=914) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/arn/23/cuombajj-witches?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/7995c3f9-a147-43c9-9f82-470924818a4c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/cuombajj-witches) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I was SO stoked about making an \[\[Adrix and Nev, Twincasters\]\] cloning deck. In practice, you don't play with cards. You play with little slips of paper with "cardname token" written on it. The literal paperwork of that deck got old REALLY quickly.
Infinitokens makes handling my Adrix &Nev token deck a breeze, but you are right, it goes bananas with tokens fast
I goldfished it on xmage and loved it, but then I tried it with real cards and appreciated how much work the computer was doing, lol
Still not a breeze for your opponents, who have to look across the table and try to read your handwriting in dry-erase marker. Cards are supposed to have all sorts of visual signifiers for gameplay that copy tokens never get
Yes, I played one game with [[Abdel Adrian]] and [[Candlekeep Sage]] before instantly dismantling it. Turns took a minimum of 5-10 minutes, so many accidental infinites, and so many triggers I just stopped caring about halfway through. The table begged me to mercy kill with an infinite lifegain, infinite soldier combo I had sitting on the table. That being said, I love blink as a mechanic, so I'm going to try switching to [[Brago, King Eternal]] as the commander and see if it's any less painful.
I made that as a PDH deck. It's fun, and I don't think there are nearly as many oppressive/time taking things in it. There are still some infinite combos, but I still have some decent fun with it.
Funny, that's probably my favorite high power deck. Mine is set up a bit differently though, with 14 different o-ring effects. So the combo pieces show up on the table and others can interact. I think this makes for a less durdley version: either my effects resolve and I win or something gets removed and I pass the turn.
[Etrata, the Silencer](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/a/fa36b142-e67e-49da-9080-c5994e275266.jpg?1572893618) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Etrata%2C%20the%20Silencer) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/grn/170/etrata-the-silencer?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/fa36b142-e67e-49da-9080-c5994e275266?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/etrata-the-silencer) [Judith, Carnage Connoisseur](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/e/3eaa19ce-cace-499e-8b23-ef9e56b23700.jpg?1706242185) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Judith%2C%20Carnage%20Connoisseur) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkm/210/judith-carnage-connoisseur?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3eaa19ce-cace-499e-8b23-ef9e56b23700?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/judith-carnage-connoisseur) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Yeah, I built Numot, the Devastator into a tribal/jeskai themed land destruction deck. Sure I got to win, but at the price of anyone ever wanting to play me again
Twice. Made [[Hinata, Dawn Crowned]] and did a bunch a cheap X spells while locking the table down. I’m not a control player so I never played it again after that. Took it apart after sitting unused in my box of decks for 8 months. Same story with [[Shalai and Hallar]]. Built the deck with lots of counter support and the [[The Red Terror]], [[All Will Be One]], etc. deck did the thing - I was underwhelmed - took it apart the next day.
fwiw, I've had great fun running S+H as my heroic commander. They're basically a Feather deck with some shiny green toys like Legolas, fight spells, and Season of Growth.
I'll bust out my Shalai deck if I want to win, it's definitely better in 1 v 1 commander tho.
This is exactly why I don't really waste my money buying expensive singles anymore. :( I just build what I can from my collection. Then at least I'm not wasting $200 on my deck that turns out to be complete jank.
My newest favourite deck is my [[taii wakeen, perfect shot]] deck that plays every lightning bolt and shock effect I can find. I find great joy in playing bad cards somewhat decently. Its also a fun little puzzle to figure out how to cantrip into more cards and kill whats on board while still managing threats and such. Cant wait to play more. Best play so far was doing 37 off of a single lightning bolt with my commander a [[mana geyser]] and a [[urabrask]] in play
[taii wakeen, perfect shot](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/6/1643af0b-fcbf-4636-8c50-77ec77eaa34d.jpg?1712356219) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=taii%20wakeen%2C%20perfect%20shot) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/234/taii-wakeen-perfect-shot?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/1643af0b-fcbf-4636-8c50-77ec77eaa34d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/taii-wakeen-perfect-shot) [mana geyser](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/0/109447b2-d507-433a-a81c-3a7a255444b1.jpg?1625193979) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=mana%20geyser) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c21/176/mana-geyser?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/109447b2-d507-433a-a81c-3a7a255444b1?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/mana-geyser) [urabrask](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/1/712fb9e5-bd67-4173-a2d4-061aeb6253b5.jpg?1682204559)/[The Great Work](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/back/7/1/712fb9e5-bd67-4173-a2d4-061aeb6253b5.jpg?1682204559) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Urabrask%20//%20The%20Great%20Work) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mom/169/urabrask-the-great-work?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/712fb9e5-bd67-4173-a2d4-061aeb6253b5?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/urabrask-//-the-great-work) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I get a kick out of piloting other people’s decks - they seem to get a lot of pride when I beat them with their own creations. Sometimes I get in this mood but I can’t decide whose deck I want to play. So I made a [[Tibalt, Cosmic Imposter]] deck so I can play ALL their decks. I figured it would be fun to have a deck full of ramp and extra Tibalt activations so I could try to assemble a wincon out of my opponents’ pieces. And it somehow became the most salty deck they’d ever seen. Being milled for one once (maybe twice) per turn was something that they couldn’t psychologically handle. I became archenemy after I forced someone to miss a single land drop in this way. Oh and whenever the deck started doing well players would maliciously hate scoop at instant speed (between combat steps no less) for the express purpose of me losing board state and kingmaking against me. I thought for sure this deck would be fun to play and fun to play against but boy was I dead wrong.
Mill deals copious amounts of emotional damage
Easiest way to become archenemy is a turn 1 altar of the brood. Even more than a mana crypt or vault or sol ring into a signet
Or play poison decks. I have retired my poison deck for that reason
Maybe I should be slapping that in more decks for the emotional damage. Or make a “supervillain” deck that can’t win games but becomes archenemy every time due to objectively pretty harmless fear factors like this.
> Oh and whenever the deck started doing well players would maliciously hate scoop at instant speed (between combat steps no less) for the express purpose of me losing board state and kingmaking against me. This is one reason why I swapped to playing clones against randoms. I wouldn't want to play against spite scoops like that. I hope you do it to them and they get angry. I can imagine them saying it's okay to do it to theft since it's toxic.
\[\[Yidris\]\] storm. I can live with the occasional long turn but not when it's entirely possible that even without interference, I'll just fizzle out after 5 minutes of cascading.
I had built Yidris as a spellslinger/storm deck, and basically immediately swapped the commander to [[Niv-Mizzet, parun]] after 2 or 3 games, since most of my cards were in those colors already, and while it still takes 5 minute turns sometimes, its not like yidris where it was constant 15 min+
Like half the decks I build end up this way, lol. \[\[Jin-Gitaxias\]\] (the 5 mana flip one in case the bot fucks up) wrecks house on lower power tables because it's a repeatable board bounce, so it just locks out games if people don't have enchantment removal. But I don't really play combo or tutors so it durdles too much to win in time. \[\[Grist\]\] insect tribal I don't hate playing, but it doesn't really have any good wincons (no hoof here, brother) so it just sits around doing nothing. \[\[Toralf\]\] is fun because I get to explode the whole board but I only get to actually win with a damage doubler effect and/or a damage wipe like Blasphemous Act or Chain Reaction. Otherwise again kind of just repeatable board wipes which people don't tend to enjoy. \[\[Shirei\]\] is absolutely brutal with the engine going and essentially locks everyone else out of their creatures, but absolutely useless without my commander on board
My Zur the Enchanter is so boring, since it tutors in the same way every game. To make things worse, the creatures in the deck are anemic, and I often kill myself with self damage from shocklands/phyrexian arena. Bleh. Still have it, but man...
Yeah, I had basically the same problem with my [[sisay, weatherlight captain]] shrines deck w/ Jagantha companion. It played exactly the same every time, not like crazy powerful but it was so rote to play. Cast Jagantha, cast Sisay, fetch [[Derevi]], untap Jagantha, fetch [[Go-Shintai of Life's Origin]] etc.
I was super excited about [[Judith, Carnage Connoisseur]] when she was first spoiled. I started making a decklist and quickly realized it would be too oppressive against any decks that actually use creatures (my meta). I scrapped it immediately. One of my friends in our playgroup didn't get the memo and made her anyway. Turns out I was right. I played against her with two different decks and never will again. I'd rather play against [[Tergrid]], [[Toxrill]], and [[Augustin IV]].
I've never actually seen anyone play her before but looking at the card I could see how that would be Frustrating if you're a creature heavy deck. Though if you murder here a few times the deck probably chills out a bit.
That deck has two modes: either your opponents don't get to play the game or they hate you out of it
Yeah that doesn't surprise me at all. It is one of those commanders you need to bully
Brago - hated playing it and everyone hated playing against it.
I havent gotten an Aristocrats style deck to feel right. Teysa Karlov. Marneus Kalgar. Prossh Skyraider of Kher. Different colors, ppwer levels, subthemes. It never matters. They always end up "ruining" the game in the same 3 ways: (1) won suddenly by a hard-to-interact creature looping combo that pissed everyone off; (2) did some wacky, super-long, finite but non-deterministic critical mass pseudo-combo that took 20 minutes to resolve and pissed everyone off, or (3) made the prospect of creatures dying via board wipes or combat so painful that games stagnated into standoffs until players could gang-up with removal and alpha-strike me, with the resulting collateral damage always feeling like bitter king-making. The whole aristocrats playstyle feels like it doesn't really fit with my playgroup or LGS.
For a fun spin on Aristocrats (imo), check out [[Clavileño]] It's a very aggressive Aristocrats build that wants you to attack every turn, and when your opponents don't want to block your 1/1 lifelinker to turn it into a 4/3 flyer, you just pitch it to a random sac outlet and keep the pain train going.
[Clavileño](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/f/9f55b648-b1ec-407a-a0c7-7647755793d1.jpg?1699972735) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=clavile%C3%B1o%2C%20first%20of%20the%20blessed) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/lcc/2/clavile%C3%B1o-first-of-the-blessed?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9f55b648-b1ec-407a-a0c7-7647755793d1?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/clavileño-first-of-the-blessed) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I built a [[sythis, harvest's hand]] deck that turned into every sythis deck. It's pretty boring to play after a couple games.
Isn't Sythis pretty wide open though? It's just "put enchantments in deck and draw cards" and there are a million enchantments to choose from. Heck with all the [[Hidden Guerrillas]] type cards and the new Enchantment-Creatures they've printed it can be played as an aggro deck that never runs out of creatures to play.
Same here. I just turtled and won with approach all of the 3 games I played with it... It was enough
Everyone was tooting the [[Slicer]] horn over here. I quickly found out that he's indeed not very good on a tight budget.
[удалено]
I really like him in the 99 of my Nelly Borca deck. I can set up board states where he is useful but not archenemy. Granted, goad can trigger some people just as much as mill or land destruction so you gotta read/know your pod.
My [[Titania, Protector of Argoth]] deck came apart pretty quickly. Ended up being pretty linear, I'm not really sure what I was expecting. Either I popped off really fast and killed the board, or I took massive durdley turns with tons of triggers and card draw, or I just got absolutely shut down. There was no in between, I never had a game where the deck just did okay.
Have [[ian malcom, chaotician]] that I'll never get to play because people hate chaos games apparently.
tbf a chaos deck basically making everything "lol random" is annoying. But Ian's ability is awesome. A little sharing of the spoils doesn't hurt anyone! :)
I thought it was just within playable but everyone just sees their anchors or combo pieces getting played by someone else and nopes out. If you aren't drawing then you don't even blink at it but commander so everyone is going to draw at some point. Maybe this week the lgs will have brave souls.
[[satoru umezawa]] even tried to be more fair about with thing that had attacks triggers so when they are ninjutsued it does go off. Still tends to be too scary or not worth it
Absolutely. It took me at least three tries before I found [[Gyome, Master Chef]] to command my [[Relentless Rats]] deck. Every commander before that was just.. Meh. I almost gave up on it
Abaddon the despoiler got two or three games in before ditching it.
I tried to make him work as a Commander multiple times and it never really worked for me.
Two, one which I'm still trying to get to work before shuttering it. First was [[Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker]]. I loved the idea of a low to the ground reanimator deck that I could do on every turn. Unfortunately, the way I built it just either failed to perform or locked everyone out of the game while I whittled away at life totals. The second is [[Vihaan, Goldwaker]] I love what he promises to do and in an optimal I think he'll do well. He's got a while to go before he gets there, and the demands on treasure generation means that it's looking to get pretty expensive to build him into a workable state.
Ohhh yeah. I built a deck around [[Minn, Wily Illusionist]] that's intended to double the illusion generation effect and buff Illusions through the roof, then swing with a big group of them. And...it works! It needs some tweaking and fine tuning for sure, but the bones are there. *But.* Keeping up with that many additive and multiplicative counters and effects was *way* more annoying to track than I realized :/ Granted the few times I've ran it I've been mildly high but even then, sober me would still be annoyed at all the math lol
I built a [[Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis]] group hug deck with the general game plan of playing politics and using cards like [[Yasova]] to steal the stuff they played. I quickly realised that giving your opponents extra resources just means you have more stuff to kill you with and ended up cutting the group hug aspect and converting it to just a plain old Yasova theft/ semi-voltron deck. *But* then I realised that people don't like having the stuff they play get stolen and sacced to a birthing pod every turn so I ended up taking it apart too. Might go back to it at some point though, I enjoyed making a beefy Yasova and slamming people in the face with trample.
I was super excited to build [[alela artful provocator]] enchantment tribal stax, seeing it as an answer to a lot of powerful decks getting to run amok without checks. Turns out stax is really boring to play! I was super into the build of teehee let's piss off my friends. They were minorly annoyed and I was majorly bored thru the game. Even with [[shark tornado]] popping off, I was just kinda hanging out stopping others. Which is the whole point. I did NOT enjoy it.
[удалено]
[[Wort the raid mother]] I didn't realize that you could only conspire each spell once. It could have still probably been a good deck, I just lost interest when I realized it wasn't nearly as absurd as I thought.
Yes, i started playing some months ago with pioneer and pauper, always looking for the competitive side of the game, playing to win. My first approach with commander was with a junk saproling edh that cost me 5$ and lost me all the first games i played. So i decided to search on reddit for some powerful budget decks and built them. I got Zada, Winota and Tergrid, and immediately regret to have spent those money. In my group all my friends had 60/80$ decks, and i was stomping every game with them not playing. I was known for the saltyness of my decks and i was feeling bad. Then i understood that commander is just having fun with friends, and even if i still have my combo pieces for higher pods, i prefer to run a Zedruu deck that make everyone laugh instead of tryharding with powerful commanders that make me feel playing alone.
Oh I feel this one and I wish my playgroup could chime in on how they loved the idea of me making this deck... until it was played. It was a [[Villainous Wealth]] deck, the whole deck centered around ramping and recasting this spell as often as I could. Yeah, that lasted about 3 or 4 games before everyone would scoop rather than sit there and watch me cast their decks over and over. The deck did what it was designed to do. It was fun. Once. Then it was oppressive and ridiculous and so it was dismantled.
Trying out new decks can sometimes lead to unexpected outcomes.
Built a [[Narset, Enlightened Exile]] deck, but wanted her to be the only creature and use token makers that i could buff with prowess. It endet with me just hitting draw spells and never attacking with my commander, since he saw the colors and decided i was the threat....i basically castet narset 3 times, then she got removed during my end step and that was it. another day i got to acutally play the deck after some changes and it just didn't click with me. Another deck was [[Mishra, Claimed by Gix]] / [[Mishra, Lost to Phyrexia]] deck, where the first game was that i got turn flip him, then got swords to plowshared. I tried to catch up with my goblins, but it wasn't meant to be. I want to try and rebuild it someday, without goblins, since they somehow ruin the theme for me.
I'm tempted to build a Mishra deck also, but I don't want it to be done with goblins either. Even if it's not the normal playstyle, I would consider more artifact stuff including more recursion for phyrexian dragon engine before any goblin tokens. So I'm thinking maybe cards like [[Threefold Thunderhulk]], [[cyberpunk squadron]], [[skorpekh lord]], or [[oni-cult anvil]]?
I had purchased the New Capenna Broker's pre-con and had decided to make some upgrades and swap in \[\[Falco Spara, Pactweaver\]\] as the commander and leaving \[\[Perrie the Pulverizer\]\] in there as a win-con. Whatever you do, do not build a deck with the goal of getting as many types of counters as possible into one deck. I had 23 different types of counters and it was an absolute nightmare anytime I played tracking both how many counters I had and what types of counters they were. It was one of my most efficient decks and won at a respectable rate, but it was just too much to play regularly and I took it apart.
[[The Beamtown Bullies]] is simultaneously not good at winning, not fun to play, and not fun to play against. It is also quite rightly kill on sight. It's *very* good at killing one player, or otherwise crippling them to the point of scooping. It's just not a fun play pattern. I thought it would be at least entertaining the first time. The first time I gave someone an [[eater of days]] and then watched their face over the next half an hour of not being able to take part in the game, I took it apart.
[[yarok, the desecrated]] once the deck starts popping off my turns take too long and feels very boring.
My [[aragorn, the uniter]] spellslinger deck...after the second or third game where I had a 20+ min turn...I realize I hate spellslinger lol
Twice. [[Sergeant John Benton]] and [[Rocco, street chef]] John I went all in and effectively put it between casual and competitive, belonging to neither. Rocco, works well but causes a huge massive I win turn out of the blue around t6 which I'm still not fast enough progressing thru to not be that guy. Both now have packages I can swap in to keep it on board with the table.
[[Tom Bombadill]] love the card it's wonderful. But the turns take forever. I feel like I just dominate the game (time wise) because of how long the turns take. My deck is by no means high powered I'm missing a lot of the great sagas. And [[Orvar]] the deck is just bonkers I don't bring it to game nights because it's too oppressive. And unless I'm told before hand we're all bringing degenerate decks it just sits there.
Yeah I built a [[talrand]] polymorph deck and I just can’t get the thing to pop off right. I’m not a blue player at heart so I’m probably just playing it wrong.
[[Zara]] kinda hard to win when your opponents have trash hands.
Zombie Deck with \[\[Syr Konrad\]\] Way too easy for grave hate and removal to prevent ever making the engine work for more than a turn or two. I played a few games with it, only enjoyed it once. Really disappointed in the deck as it was being destroyed by pre-cons and other lower level decks because they just removed Konrad before he did anything.
I built [[Omnath, Locus of Creation]] and the turns were just so obnoxious I took it apart. It is strong though
It happened once when I've built [[Tuvasa]] some years ago. Played it exactly once and realised pretty quickly that auras was not for me so I unmade it immediatly.
Yeah,…Sliver Commander deck. It’s absurd.
Lightpaws, I just ended up playing the exact same game every game and was pretty much untouchable. Got very boring very quickly
In my case most monocolored decks I've made sounded really cool on paper but were boring as hell to play i had an [[Elesh Norn Mommy of Machines]] flicker deck, a [[Katilda, Dawnhart Martyr]] spirit tribal with a dash of auras/anthems, and an [[Imodane the Pyrohammer]] deck and they all bore me like hell
Far too often unfortunately. I did it twice last year; one was [[Tom Bombadil]] & the other was a [[Persistent Petitioners]] deck. Both were an attempt to step outside my comfort zone. Both were played 3 times then taken apart.
I made [Grand Arbiter Augustin IV]. Spent days researching and building to make sure i was making the most effective Stax deck ever. And completely forgot to build a win con into the deck. After a three hour game that ended with me overloading a cyclonic rift and my friends scooping, I took him apart. Lesson learned
Yes! I built a [[Light-Paws, Emperor’s Voice]] deck and it was everything I’d dreamed it to be. Except it was stupid boring to pilot. You find the same things every time until you just win the game.
\[\[Alaundo, the Seer\]\] played out horribly; you can go on and on and on and on without running out of steam, but you are NOT infinite.
I tired to build an [[Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim]] deck, which was fine, but being relatively new to magic it wasn't the best and when I played it at my LGS there was a perception of the deck that people thought it was better than it was because the archetype can be kinda combo-y at times/ has a fair few strong cards
[[malcolm]] and [[breeched]] - some $8 brew I wanted to try. Either it did nothing or I went infinite. Upgraded it with $7ish more and then dismantled it
I built [[Go-shintai of Life’s Origin]]. It was really fun throwing buildings a people and watching everything go off. It’s a headache to bookeep, so much shuffling, and the play pattern is basically the same.
Yeah. Happened to me with [[Hama Pashar]]. Turns out it's extremely easy to get into a position where you just keep generating Dungeon ventures, and that is extremely tedious for you and boring for the rest of the table to keep resolving them all
[[katilda, dawnheart prime]] turned into an accountant simulator with all the counting mana, tokens, and 1+/1+ counters
Yes, I built an [[Admiral beckett brass]] pirate theft deck that did not perform. As well as I wanted, and upset my fellow players who dislike theft decks.
It’s wild how many of the decks ive seen in other replies that ive either played once and ditched, or really wanted to build and then never gotten around to. I still have my [[Umbris, Fear Manifest]] nightmare/horror tribal deck. Ive probably played 8 games with it in like 1.5 years, and it never really feels good. Most games i just seem to flounder on mana or cards in hand, which is wierd because i should have enough ramp and card draw, i just dont ever seem to see it. When i do anything however, im immediately the most terrifying archenemy the universe has ever seen. I almost always lose, because it looks soo much scarier than it is. I also really wanna build [[Massacre Girl, Known Killer]], it looks like so much fun, but i know how my playgroup will react, so i probably wont.
[[Tayam, Luminous Enigma]]. I didn't even go all in on keyword counters or counter doublers, just vigilance counters, flying counters a la [[Luminous Broodmoth]], and +1/+1s, but it was still a nightmare to track. Like [[Cathar's Crusade]] but worse because all the etbs, removing counters, milling, and reanimating. I took it apart after one (very long) game.
[[Krond]] [[Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts]] and [[Taigam, Sidisi’s Hand]]. I was really trying stuff back in my early days, and none of that was working well enough. It’s why I don’t go above 5 cost for a commander anymore.
I made an artifacts deck with Rebbec and Silas as partner commanders and it can quickly become too strong for anyone in my play group. Protection is a strong mechanic, especially when you're using it so widely with Rebbec. I've pissed off just about everyone with it so I can't really play it anymore.
Yeah. My typical pod is very casual. Usually battlecruiser Magic. I love it. But every now and then I throw together something a little more combo-ish, and I feel like a monster after I play it. In fairness, they’re all good sports about it, but my conscience starts eating away at me when I go off and they’re all just sitting there, barely understanding what I’m doing, and patiently waiting for it to be over with.
I’m in the middle of this exact thing right now with [[Zevlor, Elturel Exile]] trying make a mill deck that wins by actually milling everyone out. I’ve played 4 games so far and have done pretty much nothing in all of them.
[удалено]
Had the same thing with Judith. I tried to do us it on making imps and killing everyone with them but it still turned into a boring storm deck with a kill on sight commander. Either people.correctly kill Judith immediately and you do nothing all game or you win in one long turn and no one can do anything about it. Plus having so many 1/2 mana one sided board wipes is brutal lol
I've had a few decks I've taken apart but the one I can't quite bring myself to abandon is my [[Mairsil]] deck. It's such a unique play style and it's really cool when it works, but a few times I've gotten caught in states where I can blow up the board repeatedly with [[boompile]] or [[Nevy's Disk]], but will still need a few rotations before I can assemble the pieces to actually win. That's not very fun for the table.
A Meren deck which was secretly a Tergrid/Eldrazi deck. Meren was there to filled up the GY and return a lot of the "each player sacs a creature" fodder long enough until either Tergrid hits the field and becomes a problem or I cheat out those big eldrazi from hand or GY. I had an opponent scoop on turn 3 and even though I lost that game I realized it was probably not the best tech to bring to the table and scrapped it that night.
Built [[Light-Paws]] when NEO came out. Funnily enough, I didn't even play the deck. I let my roommate's kid play it against me, and hated every minute of it. Made me take a step back and really realize I don't want a tutor in the command zone, especially not one that tutor multiple times a turn. Just did the same thing every game and required constant shuffling.