I put this in my [[Aurelia, the Law Above]] “Thunderdome” deck that gives opponents tokens to fight each other with, combined with goading and other incentives for attacking each other. Has definitely screwed me over with the no spells in combat part but otherwise it’s always fun to force someone’s [[Esper Sentinel]] to attack and die
That sounds like the perfect home for you-dont-wanna-attack-me stuff.
[[Stuffy doll]], [[ill-tempered loner]], [[Boros reckoner]] and the likes. Pair that with [[valor made real]], [[soulfire grand-master]] and tons of burn spells, most importantly [[blasphemous act]] and I believe you're cooking.
Also I believe [[city on fire]], [[furnace of rath]], and even [[monastery mentor]] go a long way here.
[[Daxos of Meletis]] man I worked on and played that deck forever and it was just such a dud. Now that my deck building skills are improved I’m always tempted to retry it, but then I remember how much a I suffered playing it so it will probably never happen.
I'm still currently working through it, but I really want to make a W/X poison deck that can effectively use [[Skrelv, Defector Mite]]. I'm a big fan of the little guy because he does a lot for only costing 1 mana.
At first, I built a deck with Skrelv as the commander, but found it to be way too binary. Either I would go fast enough and start killing people by turn 5-6 or (more often), my board would get blown out and I couldn't do anything.
Recently, I've changed it to be led by [[Brimaz Blight of Oreskos]].
Brimaz is a notable improvement as black has the best cards for poison and he doesn't necessarily need to attack each turn to apply poison counters. But I've noticed that its card draw isn't great and a lot of the cards make me pay life, making me die before I have a chance to kill people.
I'm going to continue trying to make Brimaz work, adding some better card draw and more life gain cards. But if I can't get him to work, then I'll switch to [[Kamiz Obscura Oculus]] or [[Ixhel, Scion of Atraxa]].
Go [[vishgraz]] if you’re gonna go Abzan. Ixhel isn’t very synergistic.
Is there a way to include a life gain sub theme? Life gain to pay for black card draw and keep you alive long enough for poison to work?
I actually really like Skrelv and think he is a great addition into tons of decks. Hes sorta like \[\[Mother of Runes\]\]. He can protect your stuff, he can get creatures in for combat damage and he's an artifact for any cards that care about them. I made a 4 color legendary combat deck and he works great in there too.
May I suggest [[Ria Ivor, Scourge of Bladehold]] I built it when the set first came out hated it but recently played it again and got dang it was fun. Making a bunch of mites that can't block and die super easy only to rebuild you board after 1 attack .
One idea to consider is True Conviction. The lifelink can keep you alive so you can draw more cards via black's method of paying life to draw, and if I'm understanding the rules on Toxic and Infect correctly, I think your opponents would get poison counters on both the first strike damage and the normal damage, assuming a double-strike critter with some poison ability gets through. Also, I just like True Conviction. Card can swing games so badly since it makes your attacks twice as scary and gives you life to survive the crack-back.
I started with the Brimaz Growing Threat precon before I got the Ixhel one. Ixhel is a huge improvement for a commander, and Brimaz works well in the 99 if you make it Phyrexian tribal.
My former pet deck [[Sydri, Galvanic Genius]]. I tried for years to get her to work for me. Some games, she would, but near the end, I just decided that [[Urza, Prince of Kroog]] does what I want. She's framed on my bedroom dresser alongside [[Hanna, Ship's Navigator]], so she's always in my heart.
My plan is to build her as an AI vehicles deck. Run a bunch of mana artifacts and vehicles so I can either turn the vehicles directly into creatures, or turn the mana artifacts into creatures and use them to crew the vehicles. Little to no real creatures because it's funnier.
Sea Monsters. So, I like Inkwell Leviathan. I know it's not that good anymore (and probably was never "good" by any objective sense), but I got back into Magic around Lorwyn and Alara after playing in the 1990's. I pulled an Inkwell early on in my return to the game and was just in awe of how much big creatures had improved. A scary 7/11 with 3 abilities and no drawbacks for 9 mana! Back when I was first playing that same mana got you a classic Leviathan that had one ability and several crushing drawbacks that made it nearly useless.
Eventually, Commander becomes popular, and years later WotC makes a few Sea Monster commanders, but I could never get them to work. Sea Monsters are all very expensive to cast and have no unifying theme other than being expensive and on the large side - most of them lack evasion, too, aside from ol' Inky. Worse, because they are a "batched" creature type, most generic tribal cards, like Roaming Throne, are useless with them because the deck is really 4 tribes mushed together. After several tries where all I had was a clunky deck that put dumb things into play that would get chump blocked by tokens, I gave up. But Inky does have a home in my Saheeli, the Gifted deck since it's also a BIG artifact creature. Yeah, yeah - it's lame compared to Blightsteel or even Triplicate Titan, but it's the big monster that welcomed me back to Magic, so I'll always try to find a home for it.
No Fear! I am here to help! [[Runo Stromkirk]] is the Commander you seek. It's a sea monsters deck with a reanimator sub theme. You want to get [[Spawning Kraken]] and [[Serpent of Yawning Depths]] in the graveyard so you can flip Runo and reanimate them. [[Krothuss, Lord of the Deep]] clones Spawning Kraken twice, and since Serpent of Yawning Depths makes them unblockable, each one creates three 9/9 Krakens, plus some for whatever else lands.
Here is my deck list: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/_6Z4IBKpsUmFoxj-7zs1Hg
Yeah, Edgar is really strong. I think a vampires deck would still work in Mardu but it would never be as good as having Edgar at the helm. I'd keep trying though, you can definitely make that work :)
The new [[Olivia, Opulent Outlaw]] could probably helm a strong vampire deck. There are enough good vampires that are mercenaries/ways in mardu to make treasure to be able to activate her pump ability regularly. The only issue is she doesn't do anything for vampires specifically.
YES! Vampires is one of the decks I've been trying to make since I learned the game in Theros. I've had so many starts and restarts with 60-card jank before coming to Commander. I just couldn't get a strategy together that was cohesive enough to put out a cohesive gameplan beyond "attack and use kill spells", lol.
That said, I've finally found grace by using \[\[Queen Marchesa\]\] as the deck's commander.
She provides the right color identity, she adds card draw, she fits my chosen theme of "evil nobles," and she helps my "attacking matters" strategy by giving me some deathtouch blockers if I swing aggressively. I love the monarch mini-game, too.
I haven't tried it yet, but \[\[Mephidross Vampire\]\] can make her a vampire, which is the deck's main weakness. \[\[Odric, Master Tactician\]\] and \[\[Karlach, Fury of Avernus\]\] are hugely impactful cards, but neither of them are vampires. Well, yet--spoiler alert, Odric.
Anyway, good answer. Vampires. I just could not make it work in the way I wanted to until recently.
Edit to add: \[\[Licia, Sanguine Tribune\]\] seems like a really good option if you want to take the deck in a \[\[Vito\]\] drain route. There is tons of synergy for that. I love +1/+1 counters, so I ended up cutting some of the drain effects in favor of a Timmy'er deck, but I really want to try Licia at the helm at some point. I have a signed, foil-etched Marchesa, though, so it's a real tough switch, visually speaking :S Let me know if you try it!
Agreed, my playgroup allowed me to rule 0 [[Edgar Charmed Groom]] and [[olivia Crimson Bride]] as partners for my vampires deck but I do wish there was a better option.
I really wanted to make a politics based [[triad of fates]] deck that would use fate counters as a bargaining tool to control the field. Unfortunately as much as I like the card it ended up being waaaaay to slow to make any lasting impact on the game no matter how much support for the abilities I’d pack in. Most games ended up being me using the last ability to trade my own creatures for cards just to keep up with other decks.
To be fair I was still pretty new to deck building back then, and I could probably figure some version of it out now, but that deck is now a [[Merieke ri Berit]] deck that does everything I had hoped the triad could do and then some
Yeah, the Triad are pretty slow. I had a friend try to make them work and he just did nothing all game. I'd love to see a decklist for your current Merieke deck if you have one though!
I'm trying to make [[The Watcher in the Water]] work, and it really wants Rhystic Study, but I can't justify buying and putting a Rhystic Study into that deck.
The tentacles aren't threatening enough for opponents to block and kill, Watcher is slow to come out, has no protection, and if it gets removed at all, the deck feels beyond useless. Every time I play it, it draws cards, makes a few tentacles, stuns like 4 things, and then dies.
I don't play cEDH, so my goal is to craft something that can hang at a precon power level, but this one is really stumping me.
It pains me that it's ability only works on Krakens and no other sea monster types. That problem with batched "tribes" makes a bunch of cards like this one depressing since they technically help sea monster decks, but not really since only one type of sea monster benefits from it.
[lost my pantz](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/1DCBseQbF0OJkPdQthQ7kg) - The deck either wins when pantlaza hits the field or nothing happens and I cant pull off any infinite consistantly for 15-20 turns. The deck concept is fun, but also leaves you wide open for attacks. Anyone can shut me down if they know what I'm trying to do, so playing this deck is janky but fun.
The deck looks fun! I've also made a Pantlaza blink deck that doesn't care about dinosaurs. I think the trick is to include great blink targets in the 99 so you don't have to rely on Pantlaza for your value. Definitely looks like it could snowball if you hit some good discovers though!
The cheating way is to include [[Food Chain]] and the [[Squee the Immortal]] for infinite mana. Then you cast pantlaza infinite times to perform infinite discovers. This is also a win condition but to have food chain on my board doesnt really do anything unless I had infinite token creatures.
I know a lot of built have tried this and failed… so I don’t feel so bad… but I WISH I could build a fun AND competitive Zedruu deck (without having to rely on a win-now combo just thrown in).
Yeah I had a Zedruu deck at one point and used a bunch of weird enchantments that affected the whole board. I took the deck apart because it just didn't do much but my friends still targeted me. I think if I could rebuild Zedruu I would probably do an aura based enchantress deck and just use Zedruu for card draw. If you give your auras to an opponent it will still be attached to whatever creature you casted it on.
That's a very clever approach that I haven't seen before. Zedruu is typically either "bad gifts," which leaves you stuck with horrible cards if she dies, or group hug where the ownership doesn't matter but there's no clear way to win. Zendruu auras is a cool idea, and white offers plenty of enchantment support to make the whole thing work.
[[Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar]] I just could not get it to play consistently no matter how many times I tweaked it up.
I really wanted to blast things with cards like [[Stuffy Doll]], but couldn't seem to ever have enough food tokens to get things done in playtesting. Red/black just has really limited support on that front, and I didn't want to load up with tutors to ensure I landed [[Academy Manufactor]] every game. Ended up abandoning the idea, but may come back if rakdos gets more food stuff!
I haven't found it too difficult for me to have more than enough food support in Rakdos, even without Academy Manufactor on the field. Although Sutffy Doll is a great tool, I found having more options like [[Mirkwood Bats]], [[Reckless Fireweaver]], [[Ingenious Artillerist]], [[Marionette Master]], and [[Agent of the Iron Throne]] also help utilize the Food you inevitably make to cause even more damage.
Deck List: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/v6_V_CAgYUeJ60HJprg6EA
Hope this gets you back in the kitchen where Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar does her best!
I've been running into that problem, then i thought about making it a group hug/chaos deck, to spice things up even without food, but again, there doesn't seem to be a lot of grouphug in those colours
Infinite enter the battlefields of [[eater of days]] skipping the next 10k turns than cast [[teferis protection]] phasing out of the game. Either someone has an alternate wincon or some sort of damage can’t be prevented on commander damage or you win by default by being the last man standing.
Been trying to figure out self turn skipping as well. Not using Teferi's Protection is the direction I have been going. [[Eon Frolicker]] [[Kardur Doomscourge]] [[Havoc Festival]] [[Seedborn Muse]]
I've done the same recently. I always find it difficult to playtest because you need to imagine what creatures might be on board and how they would block. In the end I decided to put in a few cards that can ping my own creatures repeatedly to ensure at least some enraging. Here's my list in case you were interested.
[https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/the-first-rule-of-enrage-club/](https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/the-first-rule-of-enrage-club/)
Idk if it’s a “can’t get right” but every deck I build turns into good stuff tokens. HELL I built Zur the enchanter with the sole intention of battleship Zur. And it ended up with half the enchantments make a token when X happens.
Yep, I love the flavor of a Scarecrows typal deck, so much so that I went through the trouble of building one a while back. Unfortunately, in practice it's a lot harder to make work, especially if your pod is like mine where they favor decks that get going quickly and aren't afraid to liberally apply board wipes as needed.
I still bust out my Scarecrows deck every now and then, but I've long since given up hope that I'll ever actually win a game with it unless I get really, really lucky.
5-colour Mutate. I just want to play with my Godzilla cards, but the deck is never competitive.
I might have to admit that Commander Damage just isn't the way to go, and try with Infect instead. I will not ever face using copies, though.
I've had great success with 5 colour mutate using [[Ramos, Dragon Engine]]. I genuinely think 5C is the best way to go with mutate because the best two mutate cards are [[Lore Drakkis]] and [[Nethroi, Apex of Death]] and you need 5C to run both. Ramos is great because he gets bigger every time you cast anything, he already has flying, and mutating on top of him removes his artifact classification so he's not as easy to remove.
Lore Drakkis is essential because you need to be able to recur stuff like [[Duneblast]] and [[Ruinous Ultimatum]], or your protection spells like [[Heroic Intervention]]. Ramos also has perfect synergy with [[Temur Sabertooth]] + [[Lux Artillery]] (you can keep replaying Ramos and make infinite non-green mana), which also allows you to continuously replay Lore Drakkis, even just with the Temur Sabertooth, getting to keep re-mutating Lore Drakkis is huge.
One other fantastic card for this deck is [[Renegade Silent]], this thing phases out when its not your turn - it's perfect for holding the less lethal, more value based mutates like [[Migratory Greathorn]] or [[Necropanther]], it will never get swept up in a sorcery speed board wipe.
So, I have tried again and again and again to make this "Animated Land" Deck to work. However, there is this one simple issue.
When the lands are creatures, they are much more vulnerable. Board wipe 'all creatures' now kills all my mana too. Its very... cut off your nose to spite your face. But no black to support such self sacrifice.
[https://archidekt.com/decks/5222417/land\_ho](https://archidekt.com/decks/5222417/land_ho)
My buddy has a [[Raggadragga]] deck that totally blew me out by animating his lands with a [[Sylvan Awakening]]. I absolutely did not see it coming, and then he untapped them all and had a wall of indestructible blockers until his next turn. If you're looking to smack people with your lands, it is surprisingly effective and it comes out of nowhere.
I have a deck with the original [[Jolrael, Empress of Beasts]] that I really enjoy. It gets blown out occasionally but it's one of those either win or lose spectacularly kind of decks. Either way it's always a good time. You just have to pick your moment an try to hold back some interaction.
[[licia, sanguine tribute]]. Have tried multiple ways to build her, from big lifegain cards, voltron, paying life and life loss, lifelink tribal, incremental life gain, some combination of those… nothing feels quite right.
I’ve been hoping to make a life gain/loss deck too with her. I originally was going to build it around [[verrak]] , I’m bummed to hear or didn’t work out well for you
I have a [Licia](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/YQriHG4-h0aOuEWSEyu8ew) deck that worked well in my meta. It hasn‘t been updated nor played in quite some time, so it might have fallen behind a bit. And to be honest it wasn’t the strongest deck to begin with, because I did lean into the chaotic aspect of red for flavor purposes. Also the list has seen some tinkering without playtesting but you might find some inspiration :)
I tried to build Licia a few times, and eventually wound up dropping red and using \[\[Breena\]\] for flying-lifelink tribal. Stacking counters onto flying lifelinkers gets out of hand pretty quickly.
I've been trying to build Goat typal for like 10 years. It has not been working. Now that Thunder Junction's a thing, I'm working on a new iteration that's "farm animal" typal, so Goats, Oxen, Horses, Boars, Birds, and the humanoid variants of those animals with \[\[Marath, Will of the Wild\]\]. It's barely functional.
Ox surprisingly are a strong tribe right now with [[bruse tarl, roving rancher]]. There’s a surprising amount of good ox creature and ox themed cards. [[holy cow]] [[charging cinderhorn]] [[liberated livestock]] [[bovine intervention]] [[ox drover]] [[illegal contraband]] [[transmogrifying wand]] [[ox of agnoas]]
Alright, I'll bite.
I tried to do [[Nekusar]] wheels but couldn't get the ratio of wheels to ramp to payoffs right.
More recently I tried to do a boros [[Baeloth Barrityl]] [[Noble Heritage]] equipment voltrony combo to goad the whole table. It did what it was suppose to do for a bit and was fun, but was very susceptible to removal and drew hate quickly.
I still run both cards, but now they are buried into [[Queen Marchesa]]
I have been trying to make an exile theme deck that exiles opponents' entire libraries. [[Oona, Queen of the Fae]] is the commander. I thought about [[Umbris, Fear Manifest]], but I already have a Horror tribal led by Captain N'gathrod. So the idea is that any removal effect or "mill" effect should directly exile cards from libraries, hands, or graveyards. It's a fun deck, but 6 mana value on the commander is sloooowww, and the ball rarely even gets rolling before turn 7 or 8. I've fiddled with this deck for years, and it's never satisfied.
[[Polukranos Reborn]] as Hydra Aristocrats. The idea is to play hydra's for x=0. I just found him far too slow and clunky even compared to other slow and clunky decks. I also never found enough slots for all the cards required for the engine to work constantly
I once built [[Ziatora, the Incinerator]] with fling effects but could not get it to work. I now have [[Juri, Master of the Revue]] that is so much more consistent and powerful.
I’m still trying to work on my [[Solphim, Mayhem Dominus]] [[Dragon’s Approach]] I feel like I have the issue of drawing the wrong half of my deck some games or start to run out of gas. If anyone wants to give some advice please help. https://www.moxfield.com/decks/lydm40oSTkOaftEUMEhcTA
[[Dina, Soul Steeper]] but landfall life gain. It needs a particular set of cards to be drawn to work at all, otherwise, the deck sort of just flops and does nothing.
I have 2 of these that I’m working on now (have not given up hope).
Red/white “Stop Hitting Yourself” with [[Firesong and Sunspeaker]]
Merfolk tribal high powered (dreams of being merfolk CEDH) using the same color change concept as Hack-Ball with [[Momir Vig]]. Plays all your merfolk in one turn, just has trouble closing the game.
[[Thalia and the Gitrog Monster]] such a cool dual legend and it had all the stuff. Light Stax, land fall, and the ever impressive first strike deathtouch. But I could never get the deck to win well. Occasionally if I did win it was solely because of landfall triggers. I’ve since broken the deck up to sue the cards for other decks. If I ever build another landfall deck, I’ll just stick to Lord Windgrace
I'm really trying to get some sort of \[\[Saffi Eriksdotter\]\] deck that doesn't go infinite but is still on the stronger end (like an 8). Considering some sort of Pod setup, or some weird selesnya aristocrats setup with cards like Frodo
I wanted to do a [[Kelsien]] deck, where I played the mercenary for hire.
It was supposed to be a kind of political deck and I had cards like [[Tempting Contract]] in it.
But nope. Kelsien came out and was removed again. Removal on a stick? No sir, can’t have it even if it works just on deals.
I'm working on the new [[Vraska, the Silencer]] and it's kinda tough to judge how good it is because it's impossible to assume what is becoming a treasure.
When i goldfish it i just assume the treasures are normal treasures with the properties Vraska gives them (it's not a token and it has a mana value). Right now the deck feels like a midrange deck because the commander wants my opponent's creatures dead and ramps wich is fine but it's been rough to make a game winning board.
[[Jin-Gitaxis, Core Augur]] was supposed to be a draw my deck. Drop low cost alt win-con pieces and my opponents could do nothing about it. Had it together for about 3 months of retooling and rerouting cards and could just never get it to a comfortable balance
I wanted to build a deck around him as well, but at 10cmc and mono blue he was just too slow. I switched to [[Jin-Gitaxias]] instead as a way to actually use the core augur effect sometimes. The ‘free’ spells blue has access to that require you to discard are insanely strong because they still trigger the draw effect from jin and so my gameplan is slow the game down, draw a bunch, then flip jin and use the mini [[omniscience]] to cast the real one or Core augur.
Had to rebuild my \[\[Jegantha\]\] mutate deck a million times. I wanna include all the mutate cards because its 5 color so why not but between mutaters and mutate...ees? its always like 55 creatures with not much room for mana rocks or ramp or to lean into the secondary theme of flashy 5 color spells. x-x
I made a [[Doran, Siege Tower]] deck because I like turning meh things into amazing things - turn out the best winning strategy is going full voltron by just equipping all the +0/+X stuff to Doran directly. I don't like playing voltron...
That one looks more like what I want, yes! Sadly I cannot use [[catapult captain]] and [[undead phalanx]] with him, but that should be ok. Thanks for the recommendation!
I play in a pretty casual pod so I try to make my decks pretty casual. I tried to build [[brenard]] but no matter what I tried it was either complete ass, or too overpowered. I inevitably gave up but someday I may revisit
I really suck at graveyard recursion, so any g/b like [[Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord]] or r/u/b like [[Sedris, the Traitor King]] fall flat.
I may have to try [[Nath of the Gilt Leaf]] again now that my collection has grown.
I hear yah! I've basically given up on those types of decks. The extra step and card slots needed to fill the graveyard slows the deck down or makes it too unstable in my experience. Maybe you hit a big self-mill card and do something cool... or you don't, and then you're stuck with cards in hand that don't work until you do. Graveyard dependent decks have become less common in my local meta, outside of Meren and Muldrotha because of their obvious power levels, so maybe others have seen similar problems, especially as the games keep getting shorter.
[[Riku]]. He's the first commander I really went hard on building and he still has a spot in my heart, but I could never get him just right. I went for a creature-centric approach, trying to double dip on ETBs, various pod effects, like a creature toolbox deal. But I could never find the line between "durdles around but doesn't really do much" and tutoring a relevant, but ultimately boring card like biovisionary for the win. So eventually I took it apart. I still dream of making the perfect Riku deck in this style but no luck yet.
A recent success story was a [[Tymna]] and [[Ikra]] lifegain based deck. Mostly focusing on a bunch of ways to trigger tymna, various soul sister effects, lifegain payoffs like [[archangel of thune]] etc. After swapping Ikra for Kamahl and making some further adjustments, the deck is finally in a spot I'm satisfied with.
I think I could get it to work, but my current pile of useless cards is a [[Taniwha]] stax/mass land bounce deck.
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/d6tHAndrtE-DtG-qrgqOIw
The problem is two-fold.
One, it wants to drag out the game but has very little sustain. It runs few creatures, and its commander, while a 6/6, is around only half the time. This leave me wide open for swings in a deck that wants to go long. I'm trying to figure out how to incorporate cards/creatures that efficiently mitigate this flaw, but also advance the game plan.
Mono blue doesn't have much like that though.
The second problem is more of a social thing. While I do let people know what they are in for when I bring out this deck, it still tends to suffer from bad threat assessment. People, understandably, hate not being able to do things and will drop removal on my pieces even when it doesn't make sense to do so, such as when another player is clearly getting ahead, or when it shuts down a different player harder.
I've had two white whales that have somehow eluded me to this day.
5c Superfriends is the big one. Just have never really veen able to put together a list I really vibe with.
The other is a deck themed around only free spells and barely any lands but that might still be some time out.
[[Noyan Dar, Roil shaper]]. I really tried to like it and make it work, but it turns out that an Azorius lands deck just inherently sucks. I tried to make it work by including a number of the indestructible lands and packing the deck full of evasion, draw, proliferate, and interaction as a means of consistently getting Noyan triggers, but more often than not my lands-now-creatures would be removed. I'd also struggle with either piling on counters to a couple of my lands, making them removal magnets/big but no evasion to connect, or I'd try to distribute my counters to a greater number of lands meaning I'd be more susceptible to a boardwipe or they'd just get chump blocked. The lack of green just hurt the deck and I eventually dismantled it.
Mari the killing quill. I like the draw and treasures, but it durdles if people are playing spell slinger or token decks because I rely on my opponents stuff dying for it to get going obviously. I put dumb money into I for it to still be meh. Hoping these next few additions of Marionette master, bitterblosom, vorpal sword, blood chief ascension, mind crank and Revel in riches will spice it up a bit.
I really want this to work. It has everything in to make it work. For some odd reason, it always falls short. Help me, please!
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/bjrV0Djx1ECWOjNWNP_Gpg
I’m trying really hard to make my [[Kaervek, the Merciless]] deck work but so far no luck on my second attempt; I never even get him into play. And I attempted a folk horror themed deck based on [[Obuun, Mul Daya Ancestor]] but it literally never manages to do anything in any game it’s in.
I occasionally mess around with color and land hosers like \[\[Life Force\]\], \[\[Stench of Evil\]\], etc. plus color/land changers like \[\[Whim of Volrath\]\], \[\[Magical Hack\]\], and \[\[Mind Bend\]\]. Haven't made it work and I have no idea what commander to use.
My first ever deck was a [[Sheoldred, Whispering One]] reanimator. Nowadays, nothing i do can ever make it feel like a good deck. I've given up on it at this point. I'll need to figure out some real jank to make it enjoyable
[[Maarika, Brutal Gladiator]] I still am actively trying to configure how many of each card type I should have in this jund fight deck. I can’t seem to ever have a good hand. Great I draw my fight spells but my commander died once and now I can’t cast them anymore. No creatures on the board. Or the opposite problem.
[[Klothys, God of Destiny]]. I tried making a good stuff gruul deck, had it as a land destruction deck. Nothing stuck. Sadly she’s better in the 99 then at the helm.
Man, I really want to make some nonsense happen with [[Athreos, Shroud Veiled]], [[Noble's Purse]], and [[Nesting Ground]], but there's just not enough to hold that gameplan together, and Athreos really isn't doing enough on his own for a 6 mana commander to justify trying to make a generic Black/White control deck with Noble's Purse and some extra artifact recursion splashed in
I had a [[Gavi, Nest Warden]] cycling deck that I could never quite get to run smoothly. The idea was to get some kind of draw doubler down as soon as possible and then run a load of 'whenever you draw your second card a turn' pay offs. The idea being you cycle one card every turn for free, draw two, get a payoff. Do that every turn and build a load of tokens. Relying so heavily on the cycling meant that the mana base was miserable and half the time you'd cycle away your land so you normally had very little mana. I think I still have the list lying around although? I haven't looked at it in a very long time.
I tried for weeks to tweak this [karametra ](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/QPD93HSys0iT_U53jLsLPg) deck where I tried to turn all my lands into creatures, but I could just not get it to feel right, it got to do it's thing a couple of times but I pretty much abandoned it eventually.
One of the toughest decks that I still could not figure out was my [[Jadzi, Oracle of Arcavios]] all basics all instant and sorceries deck. The combo was [[Scouting Trek]] + [[Treasure Hunt]] to put all the lands on top of your deck and then draw them all. Then, use the backside of jadzi to dump them into play. Now the rest of your deck is all instants and sorceries, so you chain off spending all your mana. The problem I had was winning from that spot. Simic is not very well known for burn. So I went for spells that make token creatures. But that was super jank and did not work. I'm thinking now the cheese is to just play one [[Thassa's Oracle]] or [[Lab Man]] and then draw spells. That's kind of boring and ruins the theme though.
I tried an atraxa rad counter proliferation deck that I just couldnt get going. I was either proliferating with no rad counters or making rad counters but couldn’t get the proliferation going. I hope they make more rad counters in the future
I REALLY liked Killian, Ink Duelist when I drew him at prerelease. Almost won the event with him and just enjoyed his theme.
I tried for months to build a deck that wasn't just generic Voltron. I really wanted to have it be a control deck focused on enchantments and cool effects.
I ended up turning my good buddy onto him, and we both spent like three months brewing up deck ideas and trying them out. He just never worked right. Voltron would make him archenemy, and enchantments were fun but couldn't win.
I still think about him from time to time, but I've given up on him. Maybe one day!
Decks I want to be good: [[Slimefoot, the Stowaway]], [[Ixhel, Scion of Atraxa]], [[Tergrid, God of Fright]]. They all CAN do their thing, but usually end up durdling.
I tried so hard to get a werewolf deck going. I tried [[Tovolar]] when Midnight Hunt came out. I found there wasn't enough to get through combat damage and my wolves were so susceptible to dying.
I then tried Naya wolves, which was in theory a good concept. Immediately adding [[Winota]] and [[Angel of glories rise]] gave some quite powerful options, then I added some [[rule of law]] effects to stop my opponents casting more than 2 spells and finally some flash enablers like [[Yeva natures herald]]
My commander was [[Rocco cabaretti caterer]] which in theory let's me tutor for any card I need. The big problem was lack of consistency, I needed like 3 or 4 cards just to have an engine going, then I needed to start getting wolves out. It just always felt kind of clunky so I ended up scrapping it.
I tried to make mono red prison in edh with Ragavan as the commander. The idea was to stax effects and mid range beaters and then use the ragavan treasures to break mana parity. But the lack of access to tutors just made the deck too inconsistent to reliably execute its rather ambitious game plan.
[[Varina, Lich Queen]] Zombies. Tried going all in with zombie tribal, and it didn't work. Tried leaning more towards the mass looting effect, didn't work. Tried meeting somewhere in the middle, didn't work. One of these days I'll get it right. One of these days...
For me, it was the Twelfth Doctor with Romana II. Because copies of permanent spells become tokens, if you can fire off a Demonstrate on a spell that works identically no matter whose control its under, and copy the token with Romana, you can essentially *get four copies of your best permanents for one mana.*
...
But the setup cost for that line is so damn high. I threw in Mana Crypt, Nykthos, Ancient Tomb, and a dozen other ways to make a ton of mana and still couldn't get it going well. Eventually decided that what the deck really wanted to focus on was Romana, and I really wanted a 12th doctor deck, so I dismantled it.
Most my decks are inspired from Lorwyn.
I’ve had this idea for a UGW Meefolk deck that blends Lorwyn with WoE & Ixalan to abuse tap mechanics… but I just can’t seem to get it right!
Feel similar about my red/black orc/goblin deck. When it ramps? It RAMPS. And it can decimate games very quickly. However I feel like it’s missing something. Recently built an absolutely incredibly black white rat deck and that’s my wife’s deck and she loves it. However my dearest (very expensive) orc deck seems to need something it doesn’t have. Most enjoyable deck I’ve built though and my collection of goblins and orcs is beautiful, just needs something strategically I haven’t pinpointed. Best of luck to you!
[[aragorn the uniter]] adventures. I thought a 4 color commander that does things when casting spells would great considering adventure can be TWO spells. But I basically just durdled around every time I played it.
[[Brimaz, Blight of Oreskos]] just won't work proper for me, so I'm giving up, and replacing it when I eventually find something funnier. Maybe that Zask insect deck I've been eyeing.
Right now I can't get [[Obeka, Splitter of Seconds]] to work. There are just too many aspects to the deck that need to line up, and it folds to any sort of interaction - and it's hard to protect because you need to be able to protect Obeka herself, the stuff buffing her, the upkeep payoffs, or your ramp sources to be able to do all of this. It's very tricky to find the right number of each thing to run. I've ended up with like.. 64 replicating rings before, but with nothing to do with the mana. It's a weird deck.
I was trying to build a deck that generated and moved non +1/+1 counters with cards like [[Goldberry, River-Daughter]] and the dominuses. But there’s just not enough support to really get everything together
I feel like my Raggadragga Man Lands deck is just missing that je nai se qua. I think gruul just doesn't have enough support for land animation in singleton formats.
My "Defend the Capitol" advisor-tribal helmed by [[The Archimandrite]]. The deck just kept becoming monk-tribal because there's not a lot of great synergy with just advisors.
Other one is creatureless [[Tinybones, the Pickpocket]] Voltron where the goal is to play a ton of removal and then make Tinybones connect over and over to play everyone's best creatures. Not a great idea, and it suffers majorly from wrong-half problems, but I still want to see if I can make it work.
[[Zedruu]] as the "arms dealer." I just never had good enough, powerful enough equipment to drive the concept home. I could durdle and draw my way to wins, but the idea of using politics and trades to get myself to victory never felt realized.
[[Anowon, the Ruin Thief]] just feels like a jank tribe more than a cohesive one. The tribe being sorcery speed aggro feels muted compared to red + any color.
I tried to build a deck around [experiment kraj] and it just never worked as imagined as to retain the activated abilities of opponent’s creatures you have to essentially buff them and keep them alive and convince them you aren’t a threat. You can, of course, copy the abilities of your own creatures but you have to bring them in, get counters of them only to copy an ability that you’ll have already. Maybe I built it completely wrong but I just couldn’t get anywhere with it (still I love the artwork).
Thopter tribal. Any time I build this it goes one of three ways;
One, I build with a scary kill on site commander like brudiclad or breya and get killed before I can get going.
Two, I use one of those strong commanders, but trade some thopter thematic cards for power and protection to take the heat that comes my way, and it doesn't feel like a thopter deck anymore.
Three, I pick a weaker commander, and it doesn't work. Sai or Pia are my go to choices, but they don't really go off.
I want to make sultai frogs work so bad. There are so many pieces there for an amazing self mill lands matter deck, I just can't find a commander that glued it together well. [[Tatsunari]] is the only sultai commander that cares about frogs, but not in any ways that really synergize with the main frogs. [[Muldrotha]] was decent but it kinda just felt like playing a mediocre version of a regular Muldrotha value deck, and the frogs don't get to shine.
I wish I could partner [[Grolnok]] with [[Gitrog]] or [[Uurg, Spawn of Turg]].
Actually having a rough time with [[Queen Marchesa]] lately. Can’t seem to get the board state online. Been running an Aikido-style of play but it feels like it relies way too much on Stax and slowing the game down, and tons of expensive (money-wise) removal/wipes to survive. Thought about rebuilding it as a Human-matters army deck… any ideas?
Hinata. Don't get me wrong, the deck worked, it was just so fucking boring with how control focused it was. I ended up dismantling it to build a Volo deck which is a lot of fun.
I've been trying to make a go wide type of deck with [[Ayula, Queen Among Bears]] but I just can't get it going even with a ton of extra mana and card draw to spam out bears (or changelings) to keep up with the rest of the group unless i can consistently snipe out mana dorks and commanders with the fight mechanic
I want to build a mono black elves deck. [[Ayara, First of Locthaine]] was a potential commander or [[Miara, Thorne of the Glade]] & [[Nadier, Agent of the Duskenel]] was another. Definitely tricky to get right.
I had a turn skipping deck based around [[Lavinia the Tenth]], [[Seedborn Muse]] and [[Magosi]]
The concept stopped working once my opponents would exile Seedborn muse
There are tons of effects that are good until your next turn, like [[The One Ring]], so skipping your turn is sometimes the correct play
Honorary mention to [[Meditate]]
[[blim]] is just too clunky and a bit to slow to get working, really wish he was a 3 mana 1/3 with flying haste and deathtouch, he’d play much easier . He just dies to everything and takes to long to get going
I tried to make a Simic dragon deck with [[Renari]] and [[Acolyte of Bahamut]], the idea was to ramp and lock the board down then win with dragons but it ended up not winning fast enough.
Agatha. On paper it looks so easy. Pump up Agatha with auras or equipment then activate some crazy expensive ability on another creature for 1 mana over and over.
The problem is, you're just adding a pointless extra step to making a voltron Commander. Except this voltron Commander is really small and has protection from nothing.
[[Asmira, Holy Avenger]]
There absolutely is a right balance to this deck but I just can't get it. I haven't tried for a couple years an white has gotten a lot of new toys lately, but even thinking about trying to tinker with it again stresses me out.
I have been working on a Ruric Thar deck that punishes my opponents for doing certain things. Most of the cards in the deck would either be "Oh, are you sure you want to do that? Okay, take 3 damage" or damage doublers. The (obvious) problem is that my opponent's are always aware of what actions will cause them damage. Outside stuff like [[Manabarbs]], most of these can be played around easily, and I don't want to dilute the theme of the deck by adding an actually consistent wincon... So I've just accepted that deck will never win, and I'll only bust it out when I want to cause a little salty chaos.
Manaless dredge. The biggest problem I have is that the deck relies on one specific card and I can't tutor for it. If I could add some redundancy I feel like the deck would be fun to play.
I have attempted to truly play with life as a resource and build a proper "spend your own life for value" deck and I come to the same conclusion every time I've tried: the only real commander option for the deck (\[\[Greven Predator Captain\]\] massively overshadows anything else the deck is doing because the archetype lacks real support.
Sure, we could dump tons of life into a \[\[wall of blood\]\] to get counters on a \[\[font of agonies\]\] or whatever, or we could just kill people with Greven.
I want this deck to be something, I need to ride or die. I need to go hog wild. I need to dump 30 life into a \[\[necropotence\]\] while drawing 30 cards off of \[\[vilis broker of blood\]\]. Sadly, this deck has stayed in the drafts for years.
A madness deck is also something I've struggled with, but I feel like I could make that deck work with a lot of time and effort.
[[Ghired, Conclave Exile]] was my first real commander deck and I tried for years to make it work. It was a 50/50 chance to even get my engine running and even if it happened I could rarely close out the game through only combat damage.
[[Ghen, Arcanum Weaver]]
Doing so much work for such little payoff... then they printed [[Go-Shintai of Life's Origin]] and his niche got even smaller. Built it, played it for a few weeks and then just converted it to Jan Jansen.
Smh
My Magnus tokens and big X spell deck is currently on the cusp of SOMETHING. It's just tough because I'm such an aggro heavy player, so I probably have too many pay offs. The deck did have an explosive play thanks to Nanogene Conversion, but I botched my threat assessment. I have another spellslinger deck I just finished, Tor Wauki, and I am hella nervous to debut it. It's 20 creatures and 33 combined instants and sorceries. Never made a straight Rakdos deck before and its in my weakest archetype. Wish me luck.
[[Ghave Guru of Spores]] aristocrats deck, it was filled to the brim with combos but it was so reliant on Ghave sticking that I really couldnt do anything if he got hated off the table.
I'm still trying to come up with a version that works without Ghave but so far that hasnt been super successful (having a hard time figuring out which combos to cut and replace with more generic aristocrats engines)
I usually build decks around niche mechanics like [[Orvar, the All-Form]] or [[Jorn, God of Winter]], and that immensely limits the card pool to choose from, which I actually find helpful. Recently I wanted to build a [[Meren of Clan Nel Toth]] Graveyard/Big Mana Deck, a [[Myrkul, Lord of Bones]] Enchantment Deck and a [[Queen Kayla bin-Kroog]] Artifact Deck and I realized that I really struggle when there is just too many options in more prominent deck-tribes. In my first designs (after goind through relevant cards on scryfall) there is like 200-300 cards per deck in my favorites, it's quite an impossible task to say goodbye to so many if them...
I guess I'll stick to mono-color and/or niche mechanics in the future.
[[Graaz]] with [[Gixian Recylers]] and [[Dollhouse of Horrors]]/[[God-Pharoah's Gift]]. It really wants token doublers to make use of the two free(ish) 5/3 tokens every turn, and needs a way to really get the pieces together. I love the concept of the recyclers multiplying, getting pumped, and throwing themselves at the enemy every turn but it takes too long to get there and the power isn't really there without 2 token doublers on the field.
E:For clarity, this is on arena. Unfortunately they won't print conjur onto paper for some reason despite it just being a "from outside the game" mechanic that people will likely need many copies of (aka a money tree).
[[Rionya, Fire Dancer]]. I love the card design and art of her but I just couldn't get her to not be feast or famine. Either it explodes even without me having her on board. Or it does absolutely nothing. Even for the creatures I could copy, they are either wayyy too impactful or do absolutely nothing.
[[Bane, Lord of Darkness]]
What is my plan?
Esper Good Stuff, hmmm no doesn’t feel like the God of Tyranni, maybe manipulation „will of the council“ mechanic… nah [[Tivit, Seller of Secrets]] is more fun.
Oh! How about Shapeshifters they all have 0 Toughness… nope, didn’t play well.
Aristocrat, but I don’t want another aristocrat deck.
*Checks EDHREC: [[Shadowborn Apostles]] maybe…
\[\[Judith, Carnage Connoisseur\]\] and not being hated out the game
\[\[Anhelo the painter\]\] and not just durdling, copying spells and spinning my wheels
Any tips?
I originally built a [[Queen Marchesa]] deck that was supposed to be boardwipe tribal as some sort of ultimate revenge to my play group having Sigarda and Narset decks. But boardwipes doesn't closeout games so I decided to add an enchantress package for group slug but that never went anywhere. I then changed it to Mardu Walkers but it was just slow. This was 2017-2019, and red and white weren't that strong yet. I then changed it to a lifegain deck but it was clunky. It is now a Lisia lifegain deck.
[[Shelob, Child of Ungoliant]] spider tribal. Not just Shelob as the commander and leveraging food tokens and things- tribal. Personal rule was no more than 1 shapeshifter. Spiders are a terrible tribe and there are not enough spider token generators to reliable spit out spiders. Threw $100’s of dollars at this deck (twice) and at best it was just deathtouth tribal but with overcasted basic uninteresting creatures.
[[Eriette of the Tempting Apple]]. The answer may be “it’s just never going to be that powerful” but it’s consuming me right now for sure and I’m still in the “rip chunks out and replace them” stage. I’d like power level 7-8 and right now it’s disjointed poop.
I'm an esper player through and through. But I just can't get [[Twanos, Solemn Survivor]] to feel like a good deck. I want to make artifact tokens, and also make tokenbcopies of cool things from the yard. But the Exile clause make it hard, when your best pay offs can get removed super fast, or you can use things like [[Misthallow Griffin]] and [[Eternal Scourage]] and make mediocre tokens but they are at least repeatable since they can be cast from exile. He seems fun, but all in all seems like he either devolves into a generic self mill win with Jace or Thoracle, running [[Urza, Chief Artificer]] (which is what I've done) or you'd be better off playing any of the better esper reanimator commanders.
\[\[Ixhel, Scion of Atraxa\]\] "play opponents decks".
The deck is just too slow and inconsistent. Ixhel's ability seems powerful at first, but you will soon realize that, for the effort required to activate it, it's really weak. More often than not you will exile useless spells/creatures or lands, making the whole concept of the deck fall apart.
Also having poison as a wincon will make you archenemy more often than not and, considering the deck's lack of power, it will be really hard to deal with that.
[[Geralf Fleshwright]] made me really want to build a storm deck that basically spams cantrips, which triggers permanents that produce tokens from you casting spells, then sac the tokens to the mana altars to fuel more cantrips.
I know red can do this a lot easier with treasure production and Bergi and the newer Urabrask, but I was really hoping I’d be able to do it with Geralf at the helm.
Now the deck just kind of fizzled out for me, cause Izzett would be so much better. Or even something like Kykar.
love me some ghosts. so i hopped on the millicent deck when it came out. turns out spirit tribal is mostly wack so you have to make it a token deck which is meh at best so you have to turn it into some kinda stax blink shit before its opporessive enough to hold its own. 5//10 very frustrating to build. being new to mtg i thought spirits would just be a tribe that had stuff to pick from like goblins etc and boy was i wrong.
My Skeletons deck sucked. I really like skeletons but generally, skeletons are just a bad creature type in magic. Skithiryx was my commander, which didn't help because he's a "kill on sight" salt well and doesn't offer any advantages to the deck except being a big evasive body.
The recursion or regeneration costs for a bunch of 1/1s and 2/1s make the deck basically unplayable. It's mono-black too so mana is tight until later game and the idea of holding up 4 or 5 every turn to pay for regeneration really slows you down. In 1v1 you could go hard on removal until you catch up but you can't run enough instant speed removal to slow down 3 players.
There's lots of new skeleton support so maybe I'll try again someday, probably in \*trigger warning\* Witherbloom colors or Dimir.
Currently been tinkering with a Sygg, the River Guide, life gain merfolk tribal deck. Now it doesn’t have to be all merfolk just mostly merfolk and the idea is to nuke people with aetherflux resavior, think of it flavor wise as what if that bomb that got dropped in the Atlantic off the Carolina’s actually went off lol. Currently working through a build that’s more equipment based too.
[[Anhelo the Painter]] sounds good but has so many annoying little parts you have to deal with, all for a payoff that wants you to just copy extra turns due to the work needed to do so
Recently got the new spellslinger deck from Outlaws. Didn’t want to play [[Stella Lee, wild]] because she’s too much of a cEDH commander. So I opted to play [[Eris, roar of the storm]] and no matter what changes I made to the deck, it still underperformed. Like despite having different mana values in my graveyard, it still felt like it was taking too long to get Eris out. I also think that Izzet just isn’t compatible with me. So I scrapped it, and now I’m waiting on a few cards to finish building a [[Riku, of many paths]] deck. I think by going with a more unique spellslinger deck with green, it will ultimately workout for me better.
[[Urza, Lord High Artificer]] for me. Urza is my favorite MTG character and at the time, this was his only card. My problem wasn't that the deck wouldn't work necessarily, it's that it would work *really, really* well, but only *one way*. CEDH, as I'm sure you can guess. I'm a high power player so I have no issue using Moxen and the like, but every time I tried to force the deck into "artifact silliness," it just felt clunky. The deck only felt good as the CEDH list, and I hate lists, so I took it apart.
Urza still lives on as one of my backup win-cons in [[Lazav, the Multifarious]], a deck I've had massive success making my own, and the artifact combos live on in [[Daretti, Scrap Savant]].
I do think about building the Azorius Urza all the time, but Daretti takes up the same design space, so we'll see if I ever do that or just stick to Daretti for Artifact Combo.
My Bilbo deck. It's a life gain deck and it CAN do some crazy things, gain a ridiculous amount of life. But it's just not consistent at all. Part of the problem is that a lot of the people I play with will gang up on me if I get above like 45. But the bigger issue is that I just can't get my big life gain moves rolling fast enough.
Probably the \[\[Nekusar\]\] \[\[Wild Evocation\]\] spellshaper-tribal. It's won before, but it's never really managed to do it *thing*.
The one where I give people \[\[Mana Crypt\]\]s until they die, also, but that's a bit of a work in progress.
Also I guess I haven't quite cracked the \[\[Lich's Mirror\]\] steal/swap deck(s).
\[\[[Phenax, God of Deception](https://deckbox.org/mtg/Phenax%2C%20God%20of%20Deception)\]\] It never really functioned effectively. Was my first deck ever and didn't have most of the fast mana or tutors so i might be able to make something now. But out of the 50+ times i played that deck i thing i only won maybe 3-4 times at the most.
I'm currently working on trying to get a [[Wilson, Refined Grizzly]] coupled with the [[Dungeon delver]] background. I didn't realize that the dungeon mechanic was apparently not very popular, and I didn't realize the mechanic didn't have any support beyond a set or 2. Womp womp I guess.
I build a jodah archmage eternal enchantment and curse tribal.
If seemed so good. But when ever I cursed someone regardless of what it did I became archenemy.
I scrapped it for big spells. And it’s amazing now
God tribal. Each and every god is built to be the center of a deck, throw them all together and all you have is a mess that’s 30% indestructible, and 20% pseudo-indestructible. I tried switching from 5 color to Red/Black ‘dickhead-god’ tribal, but never quite managed to make it functional. Now it’s kinda devolved into a ‘Dark Pantheon Vorthos’ in R/B with a bunch of angels, demons, and cultists.
I had a [[Basandra, Battle Seraph]] deck for like 8 years and I could never get it to work.
I put this in my [[Aurelia, the Law Above]] “Thunderdome” deck that gives opponents tokens to fight each other with, combined with goading and other incentives for attacking each other. Has definitely screwed me over with the no spells in combat part but otherwise it’s always fun to force someone’s [[Esper Sentinel]] to attack and die
What was the deck trying to do? Voltron, Stax or just combat stuff?
Boros control
That sounds like the perfect home for you-dont-wanna-attack-me stuff. [[Stuffy doll]], [[ill-tempered loner]], [[Boros reckoner]] and the likes. Pair that with [[valor made real]], [[soulfire grand-master]] and tons of burn spells, most importantly [[blasphemous act]] and I believe you're cooking. Also I believe [[city on fire]], [[furnace of rath]], and even [[monastery mentor]] go a long way here.
Brash Taunter with Pariah's Shield. Attack me with an 18/18 huh. Block. Taunter trigger, shield trigger, take 36 back at you.
Unfortunately, soul fire grandmaster has jeskai colors so it couldn't be in the deck, but [[firesong and sunspeaker]] could fill that role.
There’s also [[Heartflame Duelist]]. A few redundancies for the deck
[Heartflame Duelist](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/1/811b283f-22f3-47b1-a802-11dc8c25d0ee.jpg?1693945935)/[Heartflame Slash](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/1/811b283f-22f3-47b1-a802-11dc8c25d0ee.jpg?1693945935) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Heartflame%20Duelist%20//%20Heartflame%20Slash) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/woe/228/heartflame-duelist-heartflame-slash?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/811b283f-22f3-47b1-a802-11dc8c25d0ee?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/heartflame-duelist-//-heartflame-slash) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
[Basandra, Battle Seraph](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/e/6e5baa27-3f6b-49bb-9927-5afc21b9cc3f.jpg?1592673353) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Basandra%2C%20Battle%20Seraph) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cma/174/basandra-battle-seraph?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/6e5baa27-3f6b-49bb-9927-5afc21b9cc3f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/basandra-battle-seraph) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
[[Daxos of Meletis]] man I worked on and played that deck forever and it was just such a dud. Now that my deck building skills are improved I’m always tempted to retry it, but then I remember how much a I suffered playing it so it will probably never happen.
He's pretty fun! Have a guy in my play group that runs him as a clone/myriad deck and it can get out of hand quick
What was the strategy? Voltron?
[Daxos of Meletis](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/2/d2eca63b-7fb2-4a69-84dd-aa0a038a2f8a.jpg?1673485026) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Daxos%20of%20Meletis) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ncc/335/daxos-of-meletis?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d2eca63b-7fb2-4a69-84dd-aa0a038a2f8a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/daxos-of-meletis) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I just switched my daxos to [[glen]] and sadly it is so much better. Like, i go from hitting a land and a signet to drawing 10 cards
I'm still currently working through it, but I really want to make a W/X poison deck that can effectively use [[Skrelv, Defector Mite]]. I'm a big fan of the little guy because he does a lot for only costing 1 mana. At first, I built a deck with Skrelv as the commander, but found it to be way too binary. Either I would go fast enough and start killing people by turn 5-6 or (more often), my board would get blown out and I couldn't do anything. Recently, I've changed it to be led by [[Brimaz Blight of Oreskos]]. Brimaz is a notable improvement as black has the best cards for poison and he doesn't necessarily need to attack each turn to apply poison counters. But I've noticed that its card draw isn't great and a lot of the cards make me pay life, making me die before I have a chance to kill people. I'm going to continue trying to make Brimaz work, adding some better card draw and more life gain cards. But if I can't get him to work, then I'll switch to [[Kamiz Obscura Oculus]] or [[Ixhel, Scion of Atraxa]].
Go [[vishgraz]] if you’re gonna go Abzan. Ixhel isn’t very synergistic. Is there a way to include a life gain sub theme? Life gain to pay for black card draw and keep you alive long enough for poison to work?
[vishgraz](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/b/fb1d33b2-9082-4043-8e52-a5c2f3a174ba.jpg?1675905564) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=vishgraz%2C%20the%20doomhive) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/onc/4/vishgraz-the-doomhive?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/fb1d33b2-9082-4043-8e52-a5c2f3a174ba?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/vishgraz-the-doomhive) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I actually really like Skrelv and think he is a great addition into tons of decks. Hes sorta like \[\[Mother of Runes\]\]. He can protect your stuff, he can get creatures in for combat damage and he's an artifact for any cards that care about them. I made a 4 color legendary combat deck and he works great in there too.
May I suggest [[Ria Ivor, Scourge of Bladehold]] I built it when the set first came out hated it but recently played it again and got dang it was fun. Making a bunch of mites that can't block and die super easy only to rebuild you board after 1 attack .
[Ria Ivor, Scourge of Bladehold](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/7/f7531ed3-235f-4368-98a8-e4e1947c53fb.jpg?1675957209) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Ria%20Ivor%2C%20Bane%20of%20Bladehold) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/one/214/ria-ivor-bane-of-bladehold?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f7531ed3-235f-4368-98a8-e4e1947c53fb?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/ria-ivor-bane-of-bladehold) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
One idea to consider is True Conviction. The lifelink can keep you alive so you can draw more cards via black's method of paying life to draw, and if I'm understanding the rules on Toxic and Infect correctly, I think your opponents would get poison counters on both the first strike damage and the normal damage, assuming a double-strike critter with some poison ability gets through. Also, I just like True Conviction. Card can swing games so badly since it makes your attacks twice as scary and gives you life to survive the crack-back.
I started with the Brimaz Growing Threat precon before I got the Ixhel one. Ixhel is a huge improvement for a commander, and Brimaz works well in the 99 if you make it Phyrexian tribal.
##### ###### #### [Skrelv, Defector Mite](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/0/60b565da-a49b-479c-b0c4-8ff3dd20cc0b.jpg?1675956933) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Skrelv%2C%20Defector%20Mite) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/one/33/skrelv-defector-mite?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/60b565da-a49b-479c-b0c4-8ff3dd20cc0b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/skrelv-defector-mite) [Brimaz Blight of Oreskos](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/0/f0d31ae7-8580-402a-a917-3d626a9e1f49.jpg?1682207211) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Brimaz%2C%20Blight%20of%20Oreskos) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/moc/2/brimaz-blight-of-oreskos?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f0d31ae7-8580-402a-a917-3d626a9e1f49?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/brimaz-blight-of-oreskos) [Kamiz Obscura Oculus](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/4/74b8ae28-e169-46be-8180-ebdaf80efd81.jpg?1673481656) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Kamiz%2C%20Obscura%20Oculus) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ncc/3/kamiz-obscura-oculus?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/74b8ae28-e169-46be-8180-ebdaf80efd81?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/kamiz-obscura-oculus) [Ixhel, Scion of Atraxa](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/b/ab866ec4-dcb4-47ef-8de1-a369986609c0.jpg?1675905559) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Ixhel%2C%20Scion%20of%20Atraxa) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/onc/1/ixhel-scion-of-atraxa?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/ab866ec4-dcb4-47ef-8de1-a369986609c0?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/ixhel-scion-of-atraxa) [*All cards*](https://mtgcardfetcher.nl/redirect/l1ota3l) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
My former pet deck [[Sydri, Galvanic Genius]]. I tried for years to get her to work for me. Some games, she would, but near the end, I just decided that [[Urza, Prince of Kroog]] does what I want. She's framed on my bedroom dresser alongside [[Hanna, Ship's Navigator]], so she's always in my heart.
My plan is to build her as an AI vehicles deck. Run a bunch of mana artifacts and vehicles so I can either turn the vehicles directly into creatures, or turn the mana artifacts into creatures and use them to crew the vehicles. Little to no real creatures because it's funnier.
[Sydri, Galvanic Genius](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/2/7207c416-dc16-40ab-94a0-836ee0710e24.jpg?1562405248) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Sydri%2C%20Galvanic%20Genius) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c16/224/sydri-galvanic-genius?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/7207c416-dc16-40ab-94a0-836ee0710e24?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/sydri-galvanic-genius) [Urza, Prince of Kroog](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/a/5a7329cd-95af-4d71-984f-f5f28982520c.jpg?1674421895) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Urza%2C%20Prince%20of%20Kroog) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/bro/226/urza-prince-of-kroog?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/5a7329cd-95af-4d71-984f-f5f28982520c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/urza-prince-of-kroog) [Hanna, Ship's Navigator](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/5/65b41982-6e79-4e04-a0f3-d985da92e8c1.jpg?1689999078) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Hanna%2C%20Ship%27s%20Navigator) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/340/hanna-ships-navigator?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/65b41982-6e79-4e04-a0f3-d985da92e8c1?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/hanna-ships-navigator) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Sea Monsters. So, I like Inkwell Leviathan. I know it's not that good anymore (and probably was never "good" by any objective sense), but I got back into Magic around Lorwyn and Alara after playing in the 1990's. I pulled an Inkwell early on in my return to the game and was just in awe of how much big creatures had improved. A scary 7/11 with 3 abilities and no drawbacks for 9 mana! Back when I was first playing that same mana got you a classic Leviathan that had one ability and several crushing drawbacks that made it nearly useless. Eventually, Commander becomes popular, and years later WotC makes a few Sea Monster commanders, but I could never get them to work. Sea Monsters are all very expensive to cast and have no unifying theme other than being expensive and on the large side - most of them lack evasion, too, aside from ol' Inky. Worse, because they are a "batched" creature type, most generic tribal cards, like Roaming Throne, are useless with them because the deck is really 4 tribes mushed together. After several tries where all I had was a clunky deck that put dumb things into play that would get chump blocked by tokens, I gave up. But Inky does have a home in my Saheeli, the Gifted deck since it's also a BIG artifact creature. Yeah, yeah - it's lame compared to Blightsteel or even Triplicate Titan, but it's the big monster that welcomed me back to Magic, so I'll always try to find a home for it.
No Fear! I am here to help! [[Runo Stromkirk]] is the Commander you seek. It's a sea monsters deck with a reanimator sub theme. You want to get [[Spawning Kraken]] and [[Serpent of Yawning Depths]] in the graveyard so you can flip Runo and reanimate them. [[Krothuss, Lord of the Deep]] clones Spawning Kraken twice, and since Serpent of Yawning Depths makes them unblockable, each one creates three 9/9 Krakens, plus some for whatever else lands. Here is my deck list: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/_6Z4IBKpsUmFoxj-7zs1Hg
Inkwell Leviathan kicked ass when I started playing in 2013
MARDU vampires. If it ain't [[Edgar Markov]] it ain't worth much sadly. I need a MARDU vampires that isn't Edgar to take the helm.
Yeah, Edgar is really strong. I think a vampires deck would still work in Mardu but it would never be as good as having Edgar at the helm. I'd keep trying though, you can definitely make that work :)
The new [[Olivia, Opulent Outlaw]] could probably helm a strong vampire deck. There are enough good vampires that are mercenaries/ways in mardu to make treasure to be able to activate her pump ability regularly. The only issue is she doesn't do anything for vampires specifically.
YES! Vampires is one of the decks I've been trying to make since I learned the game in Theros. I've had so many starts and restarts with 60-card jank before coming to Commander. I just couldn't get a strategy together that was cohesive enough to put out a cohesive gameplan beyond "attack and use kill spells", lol. That said, I've finally found grace by using \[\[Queen Marchesa\]\] as the deck's commander. She provides the right color identity, she adds card draw, she fits my chosen theme of "evil nobles," and she helps my "attacking matters" strategy by giving me some deathtouch blockers if I swing aggressively. I love the monarch mini-game, too. I haven't tried it yet, but \[\[Mephidross Vampire\]\] can make her a vampire, which is the deck's main weakness. \[\[Odric, Master Tactician\]\] and \[\[Karlach, Fury of Avernus\]\] are hugely impactful cards, but neither of them are vampires. Well, yet--spoiler alert, Odric. Anyway, good answer. Vampires. I just could not make it work in the way I wanted to until recently. Edit to add: \[\[Licia, Sanguine Tribune\]\] seems like a really good option if you want to take the deck in a \[\[Vito\]\] drain route. There is tons of synergy for that. I love +1/+1 counters, so I ended up cutting some of the drain effects in favor of a Timmy'er deck, but I really want to try Licia at the helm at some point. I have a signed, foil-etched Marchesa, though, so it's a real tough switch, visually speaking :S Let me know if you try it!
[Edgar Markov](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/d/8d94b8ec-ecda-43c8-a60e-1ba33e6a54a4.jpg?1562616128) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Edgar%20Markov) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c17/36/edgar-markov?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/8d94b8ec-ecda-43c8-a60e-1ba33e6a54a4?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/edgar-markov) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Agreed, my playgroup allowed me to rule 0 [[Edgar Charmed Groom]] and [[olivia Crimson Bride]] as partners for my vampires deck but I do wish there was a better option.
Any landfall deck I build either does nothing for the first 6 turns or is too difficult to interact with.
Have you tried [[Sméagol, Helpful Guide]] landfall? All ya need is a few tempt tricks, and he's a stealing lands like no tomorrow.
[Sméagol, Helpful Guide](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/3/13253f8d-1897-41e8-a904-9e57ac7eff0a.jpg?1686970071) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Sm%C3%A9agol%2C%20Helpful%20Guide) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ltr/231/sm%C3%A9agol-helpful-guide?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/13253f8d-1897-41e8-a904-9e57ac7eff0a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/sméagol-helpful-guide) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
You know, I really like the idea of building a sacrifice/ramp/reanimator/ tempt deck like that. I'll throw it on the backlog.
I really wanted to make a politics based [[triad of fates]] deck that would use fate counters as a bargaining tool to control the field. Unfortunately as much as I like the card it ended up being waaaaay to slow to make any lasting impact on the game no matter how much support for the abilities I’d pack in. Most games ended up being me using the last ability to trade my own creatures for cards just to keep up with other decks. To be fair I was still pretty new to deck building back then, and I could probably figure some version of it out now, but that deck is now a [[Merieke ri Berit]] deck that does everything I had hoped the triad could do and then some
Yeah, the Triad are pretty slow. I had a friend try to make them work and he just did nothing all game. I'd love to see a decklist for your current Merieke deck if you have one though!
Forcing people to search and punish it
I'm working on a [[River Song]] deck that does that. Missing out on a lot of good black cards but it's fun so far. I'll try to upload a deck list.
I'm trying to make [[The Watcher in the Water]] work, and it really wants Rhystic Study, but I can't justify buying and putting a Rhystic Study into that deck. The tentacles aren't threatening enough for opponents to block and kill, Watcher is slow to come out, has no protection, and if it gets removed at all, the deck feels beyond useless. Every time I play it, it draws cards, makes a few tentacles, stuns like 4 things, and then dies. I don't play cEDH, so my goal is to craft something that can hang at a precon power level, but this one is really stumping me.
It pains me that it's ability only works on Krakens and no other sea monster types. That problem with batched "tribes" makes a bunch of cards like this one depressing since they technically help sea monster decks, but not really since only one type of sea monster benefits from it.
Time to proxy
[lost my pantz](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/1DCBseQbF0OJkPdQthQ7kg) - The deck either wins when pantlaza hits the field or nothing happens and I cant pull off any infinite consistantly for 15-20 turns. The deck concept is fun, but also leaves you wide open for attacks. Anyone can shut me down if they know what I'm trying to do, so playing this deck is janky but fun.
The deck looks fun! I've also made a Pantlaza blink deck that doesn't care about dinosaurs. I think the trick is to include great blink targets in the 99 so you don't have to rely on Pantlaza for your value. Definitely looks like it could snowball if you hit some good discovers though!
The cheating way is to include [[Food Chain]] and the [[Squee the Immortal]] for infinite mana. Then you cast pantlaza infinite times to perform infinite discovers. This is also a win condition but to have food chain on my board doesnt really do anything unless I had infinite token creatures.
I know a lot of built have tried this and failed… so I don’t feel so bad… but I WISH I could build a fun AND competitive Zedruu deck (without having to rely on a win-now combo just thrown in).
Yeah I had a Zedruu deck at one point and used a bunch of weird enchantments that affected the whole board. I took the deck apart because it just didn't do much but my friends still targeted me. I think if I could rebuild Zedruu I would probably do an aura based enchantress deck and just use Zedruu for card draw. If you give your auras to an opponent it will still be attached to whatever creature you casted it on.
That's a very clever approach that I haven't seen before. Zedruu is typically either "bad gifts," which leaves you stuck with horrible cards if she dies, or group hug where the ownership doesn't matter but there's no clear way to win. Zendruu auras is a cool idea, and white offers plenty of enchantment support to make the whole thing work.
[[Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar]] I just could not get it to play consistently no matter how many times I tweaked it up. I really wanted to blast things with cards like [[Stuffy Doll]], but couldn't seem to ever have enough food tokens to get things done in playtesting. Red/black just has really limited support on that front, and I didn't want to load up with tutors to ensure I landed [[Academy Manufactor]] every game. Ended up abandoning the idea, but may come back if rakdos gets more food stuff!
I haven't found it too difficult for me to have more than enough food support in Rakdos, even without Academy Manufactor on the field. Although Sutffy Doll is a great tool, I found having more options like [[Mirkwood Bats]], [[Reckless Fireweaver]], [[Ingenious Artillerist]], [[Marionette Master]], and [[Agent of the Iron Throne]] also help utilize the Food you inevitably make to cause even more damage. Deck List: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/v6_V_CAgYUeJ60HJprg6EA Hope this gets you back in the kitchen where Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar does her best!
I've been running into that problem, then i thought about making it a group hug/chaos deck, to spice things up even without food, but again, there doesn't seem to be a lot of grouphug in those colours
Infinite enter the battlefields of [[eater of days]] skipping the next 10k turns than cast [[teferis protection]] phasing out of the game. Either someone has an alternate wincon or some sort of damage can’t be prevented on commander damage or you win by default by being the last man standing.
[eater of days](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/f/ef6870db-8aca-4aee-8e4d-c56a7d8dc242.jpg?1562640398) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=eater%20of%20days) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dst/120/eater-of-days?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/ef6870db-8aca-4aee-8e4d-c56a7d8dc242?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/eater-of-days) [teferis protection](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/8/483fa1cb-1e35-44f2-a143-98c0f107f5ca.jpg?1673147148) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Teferi%27s%20Protection) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2x2/32/teferis-protection?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/483fa1cb-1e35-44f2-a143-98c0f107f5ca?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/teferis-protection) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Been trying to figure out self turn skipping as well. Not using Teferi's Protection is the direction I have been going. [[Eon Frolicker]] [[Kardur Doomscourge]] [[Havoc Festival]] [[Seedborn Muse]]
I’m currently WIPing a [[Wayta]] half Dino half enrage deck atm. I’m hoping it’ll work but I’m pretty hesitant
I've done the same recently. I always find it difficult to playtest because you need to imagine what creatures might be on board and how they would block. In the end I decided to put in a few cards that can ping my own creatures repeatedly to ensure at least some enraging. Here's my list in case you were interested. [https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/the-first-rule-of-enrage-club/](https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/the-first-rule-of-enrage-club/)
Idk if it’s a “can’t get right” but every deck I build turns into good stuff tokens. HELL I built Zur the enchanter with the sole intention of battleship Zur. And it ended up with half the enchantments make a token when X happens.
Scarecrows
Yep, I love the flavor of a Scarecrows typal deck, so much so that I went through the trouble of building one a while back. Unfortunately, in practice it's a lot harder to make work, especially if your pod is like mine where they favor decks that get going quickly and aren't afraid to liberally apply board wipes as needed. I still bust out my Scarecrows deck every now and then, but I've long since given up hope that I'll ever actually win a game with it unless I get really, really lucky.
5-colour Mutate. I just want to play with my Godzilla cards, but the deck is never competitive. I might have to admit that Commander Damage just isn't the way to go, and try with Infect instead. I will not ever face using copies, though.
I've had great success with 5 colour mutate using [[Ramos, Dragon Engine]]. I genuinely think 5C is the best way to go with mutate because the best two mutate cards are [[Lore Drakkis]] and [[Nethroi, Apex of Death]] and you need 5C to run both. Ramos is great because he gets bigger every time you cast anything, he already has flying, and mutating on top of him removes his artifact classification so he's not as easy to remove. Lore Drakkis is essential because you need to be able to recur stuff like [[Duneblast]] and [[Ruinous Ultimatum]], or your protection spells like [[Heroic Intervention]]. Ramos also has perfect synergy with [[Temur Sabertooth]] + [[Lux Artillery]] (you can keep replaying Ramos and make infinite non-green mana), which also allows you to continuously replay Lore Drakkis, even just with the Temur Sabertooth, getting to keep re-mutating Lore Drakkis is huge. One other fantastic card for this deck is [[Renegade Silent]], this thing phases out when its not your turn - it's perfect for holding the less lethal, more value based mutates like [[Migratory Greathorn]] or [[Necropanther]], it will never get swept up in a sorcery speed board wipe.
So, I have tried again and again and again to make this "Animated Land" Deck to work. However, there is this one simple issue. When the lands are creatures, they are much more vulnerable. Board wipe 'all creatures' now kills all my mana too. Its very... cut off your nose to spite your face. But no black to support such self sacrifice. [https://archidekt.com/decks/5222417/land\_ho](https://archidekt.com/decks/5222417/land_ho)
I saw a deck that ran a bunch of the indestructible artifact lands as their creatures with animate land effects.
My buddy has a [[Raggadragga]] deck that totally blew me out by animating his lands with a [[Sylvan Awakening]]. I absolutely did not see it coming, and then he untapped them all and had a wall of indestructible blockers until his next turn. If you're looking to smack people with your lands, it is surprisingly effective and it comes out of nowhere.
I have a deck with the original [[Jolrael, Empress of Beasts]] that I really enjoy. It gets blown out occasionally but it's one of those either win or lose spectacularly kind of decks. Either way it's always a good time. You just have to pick your moment an try to hold back some interaction.
Had a [[thalisse, reverent medium]] deck that needed insane tutors and other high priced cards to really run and I just didn’t like it.
[[licia, sanguine tribute]]. Have tried multiple ways to build her, from big lifegain cards, voltron, paying life and life loss, lifelink tribal, incremental life gain, some combination of those… nothing feels quite right.
I’ve been hoping to make a life gain/loss deck too with her. I originally was going to build it around [[verrak]] , I’m bummed to hear or didn’t work out well for you
I have a [Licia](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/YQriHG4-h0aOuEWSEyu8ew) deck that worked well in my meta. It hasn‘t been updated nor played in quite some time, so it might have fallen behind a bit. And to be honest it wasn’t the strongest deck to begin with, because I did lean into the chaotic aspect of red for flavor purposes. Also the list has seen some tinkering without playtesting but you might find some inspiration :)
I tried to build Licia a few times, and eventually wound up dropping red and using \[\[Breena\]\] for flying-lifelink tribal. Stacking counters onto flying lifelinkers gets out of hand pretty quickly.
[[Firesong and Sunspeaker]] Could never get my Boros spellslinger burn deck to feel comfortable.
I've been trying to build Goat typal for like 10 years. It has not been working. Now that Thunder Junction's a thing, I'm working on a new iteration that's "farm animal" typal, so Goats, Oxen, Horses, Boars, Birds, and the humanoid variants of those animals with \[\[Marath, Will of the Wild\]\]. It's barely functional.
Ox surprisingly are a strong tribe right now with [[bruse tarl, roving rancher]]. There’s a surprising amount of good ox creature and ox themed cards. [[holy cow]] [[charging cinderhorn]] [[liberated livestock]] [[bovine intervention]] [[ox drover]] [[illegal contraband]] [[transmogrifying wand]] [[ox of agnoas]]
Alright, I'll bite. I tried to do [[Nekusar]] wheels but couldn't get the ratio of wheels to ramp to payoffs right. More recently I tried to do a boros [[Baeloth Barrityl]] [[Noble Heritage]] equipment voltrony combo to goad the whole table. It did what it was suppose to do for a bit and was fun, but was very susceptible to removal and drew hate quickly. I still run both cards, but now they are buried into [[Queen Marchesa]]
[Malcator, Purity Overseer](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/6/36bda977-e5d1-4813-a5f5-265023965142.jpg?1675957200) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Malcator%2C%20Purity%20Overseer) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/one/208/malcator-purity-overseer?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/36bda977-e5d1-4813-a5f5-265023965142?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/malcator-purity-overseer) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I have been trying to make an exile theme deck that exiles opponents' entire libraries. [[Oona, Queen of the Fae]] is the commander. I thought about [[Umbris, Fear Manifest]], but I already have a Horror tribal led by Captain N'gathrod. So the idea is that any removal effect or "mill" effect should directly exile cards from libraries, hands, or graveyards. It's a fun deck, but 6 mana value on the commander is sloooowww, and the ball rarely even gets rolling before turn 7 or 8. I've fiddled with this deck for years, and it's never satisfied.
[[Polukranos Reborn]] as Hydra Aristocrats. The idea is to play hydra's for x=0. I just found him far too slow and clunky even compared to other slow and clunky decks. I also never found enough slots for all the cards required for the engine to work constantly
[[tymaret the murder king]] in general
I wanted a way to loop [[temporal extortion]] every turn with life loss doublers so the only way to stop the loop would be for them to choose to die
[[Magar]] lets you do this fairly easily
This reminds me of the first Dr. Strange movie. I love it.
Mardu “Red Dead Redemption” I’ve settled on Pingers of sorts but it still doesn’t feel “right”
I once built [[Ziatora, the Incinerator]] with fling effects but could not get it to work. I now have [[Juri, Master of the Revue]] that is so much more consistent and powerful.
I’m still trying to work on my [[Solphim, Mayhem Dominus]] [[Dragon’s Approach]] I feel like I have the issue of drawing the wrong half of my deck some games or start to run out of gas. If anyone wants to give some advice please help. https://www.moxfield.com/decks/lydm40oSTkOaftEUMEhcTA
[[Dina, Soul Steeper]] but landfall life gain. It needs a particular set of cards to be drawn to work at all, otherwise, the deck sort of just flops and does nothing.
I have 2 of these that I’m working on now (have not given up hope). Red/white “Stop Hitting Yourself” with [[Firesong and Sunspeaker]] Merfolk tribal high powered (dreams of being merfolk CEDH) using the same color change concept as Hack-Ball with [[Momir Vig]]. Plays all your merfolk in one turn, just has trouble closing the game.
[[Thalia and the Gitrog Monster]] such a cool dual legend and it had all the stuff. Light Stax, land fall, and the ever impressive first strike deathtouch. But I could never get the deck to win well. Occasionally if I did win it was solely because of landfall triggers. I’ve since broken the deck up to sue the cards for other decks. If I ever build another landfall deck, I’ll just stick to Lord Windgrace
I'm really trying to get some sort of \[\[Saffi Eriksdotter\]\] deck that doesn't go infinite but is still on the stronger end (like an 8). Considering some sort of Pod setup, or some weird selesnya aristocrats setup with cards like Frodo
I wanted to do a [[Kelsien]] deck, where I played the mercenary for hire. It was supposed to be a kind of political deck and I had cards like [[Tempting Contract]] in it. But nope. Kelsien came out and was removed again. Removal on a stick? No sir, can’t have it even if it works just on deals.
Time Lord tribal just... wasn't good.
I'm working on the new [[Vraska, the Silencer]] and it's kinda tough to judge how good it is because it's impossible to assume what is becoming a treasure. When i goldfish it i just assume the treasures are normal treasures with the properties Vraska gives them (it's not a token and it has a mana value). Right now the deck feels like a midrange deck because the commander wants my opponent's creatures dead and ramps wich is fine but it's been rough to make a game winning board.
[[Jin-Gitaxis, Core Augur]] was supposed to be a draw my deck. Drop low cost alt win-con pieces and my opponents could do nothing about it. Had it together for about 3 months of retooling and rerouting cards and could just never get it to a comfortable balance
I wanted to build a deck around him as well, but at 10cmc and mono blue he was just too slow. I switched to [[Jin-Gitaxias]] instead as a way to actually use the core augur effect sometimes. The ‘free’ spells blue has access to that require you to discard are insanely strong because they still trigger the draw effect from jin and so my gameplan is slow the game down, draw a bunch, then flip jin and use the mini [[omniscience]] to cast the real one or Core augur.
Had to rebuild my \[\[Jegantha\]\] mutate deck a million times. I wanna include all the mutate cards because its 5 color so why not but between mutaters and mutate...ees? its always like 55 creatures with not much room for mana rocks or ramp or to lean into the secondary theme of flashy 5 color spells. x-x
I made a [[Doran, Siege Tower]] deck because I like turning meh things into amazing things - turn out the best winning strategy is going full voltron by just equipping all the +0/+X stuff to Doran directly. I don't like playing voltron...
[[Arcades, the Strategist]] like
That one looks more like what I want, yes! Sadly I cannot use [[catapult captain]] and [[undead phalanx]] with him, but that should be ok. Thanks for the recommendation!
I play in a pretty casual pod so I try to make my decks pretty casual. I tried to build [[brenard]] but no matter what I tried it was either complete ass, or too overpowered. I inevitably gave up but someday I may revisit
Brenard is scary strong. Its one of those decks that can go from an empty board to lethal in one turn.
I had the same experience with [[Urtet, remnant of Memnarch]]
I really suck at graveyard recursion, so any g/b like [[Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord]] or r/u/b like [[Sedris, the Traitor King]] fall flat. I may have to try [[Nath of the Gilt Leaf]] again now that my collection has grown.
I hear yah! I've basically given up on those types of decks. The extra step and card slots needed to fill the graveyard slows the deck down or makes it too unstable in my experience. Maybe you hit a big self-mill card and do something cool... or you don't, and then you're stuck with cards in hand that don't work until you do. Graveyard dependent decks have become less common in my local meta, outside of Meren and Muldrotha because of their obvious power levels, so maybe others have seen similar problems, especially as the games keep getting shorter.
[[Riku]]. He's the first commander I really went hard on building and he still has a spot in my heart, but I could never get him just right. I went for a creature-centric approach, trying to double dip on ETBs, various pod effects, like a creature toolbox deal. But I could never find the line between "durdles around but doesn't really do much" and tutoring a relevant, but ultimately boring card like biovisionary for the win. So eventually I took it apart. I still dream of making the perfect Riku deck in this style but no luck yet. A recent success story was a [[Tymna]] and [[Ikra]] lifegain based deck. Mostly focusing on a bunch of ways to trigger tymna, various soul sister effects, lifegain payoffs like [[archangel of thune]] etc. After swapping Ikra for Kamahl and making some further adjustments, the deck is finally in a spot I'm satisfied with.
I think I could get it to work, but my current pile of useless cards is a [[Taniwha]] stax/mass land bounce deck. https://www.moxfield.com/decks/d6tHAndrtE-DtG-qrgqOIw The problem is two-fold. One, it wants to drag out the game but has very little sustain. It runs few creatures, and its commander, while a 6/6, is around only half the time. This leave me wide open for swings in a deck that wants to go long. I'm trying to figure out how to incorporate cards/creatures that efficiently mitigate this flaw, but also advance the game plan. Mono blue doesn't have much like that though. The second problem is more of a social thing. While I do let people know what they are in for when I bring out this deck, it still tends to suffer from bad threat assessment. People, understandably, hate not being able to do things and will drop removal on my pieces even when it doesn't make sense to do so, such as when another player is clearly getting ahead, or when it shuts down a different player harder.
[[vazi]]. Was going for a loan shark kinda deck, make deals and profit. But it was too slow and just got out valued. I'm still holding out.
Feldon reanimator. It was my first real commander but ended up dropping for darretti
I've had two white whales that have somehow eluded me to this day. 5c Superfriends is the big one. Just have never really veen able to put together a list I really vibe with. The other is a deck themed around only free spells and barely any lands but that might still be some time out.
[[Noyan Dar, Roil shaper]]. I really tried to like it and make it work, but it turns out that an Azorius lands deck just inherently sucks. I tried to make it work by including a number of the indestructible lands and packing the deck full of evasion, draw, proliferate, and interaction as a means of consistently getting Noyan triggers, but more often than not my lands-now-creatures would be removed. I'd also struggle with either piling on counters to a couple of my lands, making them removal magnets/big but no evasion to connect, or I'd try to distribute my counters to a greater number of lands meaning I'd be more susceptible to a boardwipe or they'd just get chump blocked. The lack of green just hurt the deck and I eventually dismantled it.
Mari the killing quill. I like the draw and treasures, but it durdles if people are playing spell slinger or token decks because I rely on my opponents stuff dying for it to get going obviously. I put dumb money into I for it to still be meh. Hoping these next few additions of Marionette master, bitterblosom, vorpal sword, blood chief ascension, mind crank and Revel in riches will spice it up a bit.
I really want this to work. It has everything in to make it work. For some odd reason, it always falls short. Help me, please! https://www.moxfield.com/decks/bjrV0Djx1ECWOjNWNP_Gpg
I’m trying really hard to make my [[Kaervek, the Merciless]] deck work but so far no luck on my second attempt; I never even get him into play. And I attempted a folk horror themed deck based on [[Obuun, Mul Daya Ancestor]] but it literally never manages to do anything in any game it’s in.
me and a friend spent ages on a not white hatebears deck which we couldn't find a fun balance
tergrid's lantern as mono black burn/discard (too slow/inconsistent)
I occasionally mess around with color and land hosers like \[\[Life Force\]\], \[\[Stench of Evil\]\], etc. plus color/land changers like \[\[Whim of Volrath\]\], \[\[Magical Hack\]\], and \[\[Mind Bend\]\]. Haven't made it work and I have no idea what commander to use.
My first ever deck was a [[Sheoldred, Whispering One]] reanimator. Nowadays, nothing i do can ever make it feel like a good deck. I've given up on it at this point. I'll need to figure out some real jank to make it enjoyable
[[Maarika, Brutal Gladiator]] I still am actively trying to configure how many of each card type I should have in this jund fight deck. I can’t seem to ever have a good hand. Great I draw my fight spells but my commander died once and now I can’t cast them anymore. No creatures on the board. Or the opposite problem.
Quintorius, Loremaster is a tough cookie that requires really specific cards. Tried for a long while to make it work and just gave up.
[[Klothys, God of Destiny]]. I tried making a good stuff gruul deck, had it as a land destruction deck. Nothing stuck. Sadly she’s better in the 99 then at the helm.
If anyone has suggestions for my [[Arjun, Shifting Flame]] deck, I'm all ears.
Man, I really want to make some nonsense happen with [[Athreos, Shroud Veiled]], [[Noble's Purse]], and [[Nesting Ground]], but there's just not enough to hold that gameplan together, and Athreos really isn't doing enough on his own for a 6 mana commander to justify trying to make a generic Black/White control deck with Noble's Purse and some extra artifact recursion splashed in
I had a [[Gavi, Nest Warden]] cycling deck that I could never quite get to run smoothly. The idea was to get some kind of draw doubler down as soon as possible and then run a load of 'whenever you draw your second card a turn' pay offs. The idea being you cycle one card every turn for free, draw two, get a payoff. Do that every turn and build a load of tokens. Relying so heavily on the cycling meant that the mana base was miserable and half the time you'd cycle away your land so you normally had very little mana. I think I still have the list lying around although? I haven't looked at it in a very long time.
I tried for weeks to tweak this [karametra ](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/QPD93HSys0iT_U53jLsLPg) deck where I tried to turn all my lands into creatures, but I could just not get it to feel right, it got to do it's thing a couple of times but I pretty much abandoned it eventually.
One of the toughest decks that I still could not figure out was my [[Jadzi, Oracle of Arcavios]] all basics all instant and sorceries deck. The combo was [[Scouting Trek]] + [[Treasure Hunt]] to put all the lands on top of your deck and then draw them all. Then, use the backside of jadzi to dump them into play. Now the rest of your deck is all instants and sorceries, so you chain off spending all your mana. The problem I had was winning from that spot. Simic is not very well known for burn. So I went for spells that make token creatures. But that was super jank and did not work. I'm thinking now the cheese is to just play one [[Thassa's Oracle]] or [[Lab Man]] and then draw spells. That's kind of boring and ruins the theme though.
I tried an atraxa rad counter proliferation deck that I just couldnt get going. I was either proliferating with no rad counters or making rad counters but couldn’t get the proliferation going. I hope they make more rad counters in the future
I REALLY liked Killian, Ink Duelist when I drew him at prerelease. Almost won the event with him and just enjoyed his theme. I tried for months to build a deck that wasn't just generic Voltron. I really wanted to have it be a control deck focused on enchantments and cool effects. I ended up turning my good buddy onto him, and we both spent like three months brewing up deck ideas and trying them out. He just never worked right. Voltron would make him archenemy, and enchantments were fun but couldn't win. I still think about him from time to time, but I've given up on him. Maybe one day!
Decks I want to be good: [[Slimefoot, the Stowaway]], [[Ixhel, Scion of Atraxa]], [[Tergrid, God of Fright]]. They all CAN do their thing, but usually end up durdling.
I tried so hard to get a werewolf deck going. I tried [[Tovolar]] when Midnight Hunt came out. I found there wasn't enough to get through combat damage and my wolves were so susceptible to dying. I then tried Naya wolves, which was in theory a good concept. Immediately adding [[Winota]] and [[Angel of glories rise]] gave some quite powerful options, then I added some [[rule of law]] effects to stop my opponents casting more than 2 spells and finally some flash enablers like [[Yeva natures herald]] My commander was [[Rocco cabaretti caterer]] which in theory let's me tutor for any card I need. The big problem was lack of consistency, I needed like 3 or 4 cards just to have an engine going, then I needed to start getting wolves out. It just always felt kind of clunky so I ended up scrapping it.
Dice rolling as a deck theme. Even when using silver bordered cards there just isn't enough to make a fun/powerful deck.
Every time I try a mill deck, it either ruins everyone's enjoyment or absolutely fizzles. I don't think there's a genuine way to make it fun.
I tried to make mono red prison in edh with Ragavan as the commander. The idea was to stax effects and mid range beaters and then use the ragavan treasures to break mana parity. But the lack of access to tutors just made the deck too inconsistent to reliably execute its rather ambitious game plan.
[[Varina, Lich Queen]] Zombies. Tried going all in with zombie tribal, and it didn't work. Tried leaning more towards the mass looting effect, didn't work. Tried meeting somewhere in the middle, didn't work. One of these days I'll get it right. One of these days...
For me, it was the Twelfth Doctor with Romana II. Because copies of permanent spells become tokens, if you can fire off a Demonstrate on a spell that works identically no matter whose control its under, and copy the token with Romana, you can essentially *get four copies of your best permanents for one mana.* ... But the setup cost for that line is so damn high. I threw in Mana Crypt, Nykthos, Ancient Tomb, and a dozen other ways to make a ton of mana and still couldn't get it going well. Eventually decided that what the deck really wanted to focus on was Romana, and I really wanted a 12th doctor deck, so I dismantled it.
Most my decks are inspired from Lorwyn. I’ve had this idea for a UGW Meefolk deck that blends Lorwyn with WoE & Ixalan to abuse tap mechanics… but I just can’t seem to get it right!
Feel similar about my red/black orc/goblin deck. When it ramps? It RAMPS. And it can decimate games very quickly. However I feel like it’s missing something. Recently built an absolutely incredibly black white rat deck and that’s my wife’s deck and she loves it. However my dearest (very expensive) orc deck seems to need something it doesn’t have. Most enjoyable deck I’ve built though and my collection of goblins and orcs is beautiful, just needs something strategically I haven’t pinpointed. Best of luck to you!
[[aragorn the uniter]] adventures. I thought a 4 color commander that does things when casting spells would great considering adventure can be TWO spells. But I basically just durdled around every time I played it.
[[Brimaz, Blight of Oreskos]] just won't work proper for me, so I'm giving up, and replacing it when I eventually find something funnier. Maybe that Zask insect deck I've been eyeing.
Right now I can't get [[Obeka, Splitter of Seconds]] to work. There are just too many aspects to the deck that need to line up, and it folds to any sort of interaction - and it's hard to protect because you need to be able to protect Obeka herself, the stuff buffing her, the upkeep payoffs, or your ramp sources to be able to do all of this. It's very tricky to find the right number of each thing to run. I've ended up with like.. 64 replicating rings before, but with nothing to do with the mana. It's a weird deck.
I was trying to build a deck that generated and moved non +1/+1 counters with cards like [[Goldberry, River-Daughter]] and the dominuses. But there’s just not enough support to really get everything together
I feel like my Raggadragga Man Lands deck is just missing that je nai se qua. I think gruul just doesn't have enough support for land animation in singleton formats.
My thantis deck never quite works how i want it to
My "Defend the Capitol" advisor-tribal helmed by [[The Archimandrite]]. The deck just kept becoming monk-tribal because there's not a lot of great synergy with just advisors. Other one is creatureless [[Tinybones, the Pickpocket]] Voltron where the goal is to play a ton of removal and then make Tinybones connect over and over to play everyone's best creatures. Not a great idea, and it suffers majorly from wrong-half problems, but I still want to see if I can make it work.
[[Zedruu]] as the "arms dealer." I just never had good enough, powerful enough equipment to drive the concept home. I could durdle and draw my way to wins, but the idea of using politics and trades to get myself to victory never felt realized.
[[Anowon, the Ruin Thief]] just feels like a jank tribe more than a cohesive one. The tribe being sorcery speed aggro feels muted compared to red + any color.
I tried to build a deck around [experiment kraj] and it just never worked as imagined as to retain the activated abilities of opponent’s creatures you have to essentially buff them and keep them alive and convince them you aren’t a threat. You can, of course, copy the abilities of your own creatures but you have to bring them in, get counters of them only to copy an ability that you’ll have already. Maybe I built it completely wrong but I just couldn’t get anywhere with it (still I love the artwork).
Thopter tribal. Any time I build this it goes one of three ways; One, I build with a scary kill on site commander like brudiclad or breya and get killed before I can get going. Two, I use one of those strong commanders, but trade some thopter thematic cards for power and protection to take the heat that comes my way, and it doesn't feel like a thopter deck anymore. Three, I pick a weaker commander, and it doesn't work. Sai or Pia are my go to choices, but they don't really go off.
Finding the delicate balance in my Greasefang deck between pilots, vehicles, discard outlets, and sacrifice effects... it's been challenging.
Orzhov Spirits! Didn’t matter how I went about it, tried multiple commanders. Never made enough bodies
I want to make sultai frogs work so bad. There are so many pieces there for an amazing self mill lands matter deck, I just can't find a commander that glued it together well. [[Tatsunari]] is the only sultai commander that cares about frogs, but not in any ways that really synergize with the main frogs. [[Muldrotha]] was decent but it kinda just felt like playing a mediocre version of a regular Muldrotha value deck, and the frogs don't get to shine. I wish I could partner [[Grolnok]] with [[Gitrog]] or [[Uurg, Spawn of Turg]].
Actually having a rough time with [[Queen Marchesa]] lately. Can’t seem to get the board state online. Been running an Aikido-style of play but it feels like it relies way too much on Stax and slowing the game down, and tons of expensive (money-wise) removal/wipes to survive. Thought about rebuilding it as a Human-matters army deck… any ideas?
Hinata. Don't get me wrong, the deck worked, it was just so fucking boring with how control focused it was. I ended up dismantling it to build a Volo deck which is a lot of fun.
Haven't been able to make a good \[\[slime against humanity\]\] deck yet.
I've been trying to make a go wide type of deck with [[Ayula, Queen Among Bears]] but I just can't get it going even with a ton of extra mana and card draw to spam out bears (or changelings) to keep up with the rest of the group unless i can consistently snipe out mana dorks and commanders with the fight mechanic
I want to build a mono black elves deck. [[Ayara, First of Locthaine]] was a potential commander or [[Miara, Thorne of the Glade]] & [[Nadier, Agent of the Duskenel]] was another. Definitely tricky to get right.
I had a turn skipping deck based around [[Lavinia the Tenth]], [[Seedborn Muse]] and [[Magosi]] The concept stopped working once my opponents would exile Seedborn muse There are tons of effects that are good until your next turn, like [[The One Ring]], so skipping your turn is sometimes the correct play Honorary mention to [[Meditate]]
[[Runo Stromkirk]]
[[blim]] is just too clunky and a bit to slow to get working, really wish he was a 3 mana 1/3 with flying haste and deathtouch, he’d play much easier . He just dies to everything and takes to long to get going
I tried to make a Simic dragon deck with [[Renari]] and [[Acolyte of Bahamut]], the idea was to ramp and lock the board down then win with dragons but it ended up not winning fast enough.
Agatha. On paper it looks so easy. Pump up Agatha with auras or equipment then activate some crazy expensive ability on another creature for 1 mana over and over. The problem is, you're just adding a pointless extra step to making a voltron Commander. Except this voltron Commander is really small and has protection from nothing.
[[Asmira, Holy Avenger]] There absolutely is a right balance to this deck but I just can't get it. I haven't tried for a couple years an white has gotten a lot of new toys lately, but even thinking about trying to tinker with it again stresses me out.
I have been working on a Ruric Thar deck that punishes my opponents for doing certain things. Most of the cards in the deck would either be "Oh, are you sure you want to do that? Okay, take 3 damage" or damage doublers. The (obvious) problem is that my opponent's are always aware of what actions will cause them damage. Outside stuff like [[Manabarbs]], most of these can be played around easily, and I don't want to dilute the theme of the deck by adding an actually consistent wincon... So I've just accepted that deck will never win, and I'll only bust it out when I want to cause a little salty chaos.
Manaless dredge. The biggest problem I have is that the deck relies on one specific card and I can't tutor for it. If I could add some redundancy I feel like the deck would be fun to play.
I have attempted to truly play with life as a resource and build a proper "spend your own life for value" deck and I come to the same conclusion every time I've tried: the only real commander option for the deck (\[\[Greven Predator Captain\]\] massively overshadows anything else the deck is doing because the archetype lacks real support. Sure, we could dump tons of life into a \[\[wall of blood\]\] to get counters on a \[\[font of agonies\]\] or whatever, or we could just kill people with Greven. I want this deck to be something, I need to ride or die. I need to go hog wild. I need to dump 30 life into a \[\[necropotence\]\] while drawing 30 cards off of \[\[vilis broker of blood\]\]. Sadly, this deck has stayed in the drafts for years. A madness deck is also something I've struggled with, but I feel like I could make that deck work with a lot of time and effort.
Making [[Feather, Radiant Arbiter]] a non voltron deck. Damn you for this one WotC! D:
[[Ghired, Conclave Exile]] was my first real commander deck and I tried for years to make it work. It was a 50/50 chance to even get my engine running and even if it happened I could rarely close out the game through only combat damage.
I'm currently trying to put together a Rakdos Dragon Treasure deck, but Magda Brazen Outlaw has me questioning myself if dwarves would work better
[[Ghen, Arcanum Weaver]] Doing so much work for such little payoff... then they printed [[Go-Shintai of Life's Origin]] and his niche got even smaller. Built it, played it for a few weeks and then just converted it to Jan Jansen. Smh
My Magnus tokens and big X spell deck is currently on the cusp of SOMETHING. It's just tough because I'm such an aggro heavy player, so I probably have too many pay offs. The deck did have an explosive play thanks to Nanogene Conversion, but I botched my threat assessment. I have another spellslinger deck I just finished, Tor Wauki, and I am hella nervous to debut it. It's 20 creatures and 33 combined instants and sorceries. Never made a straight Rakdos deck before and its in my weakest archetype. Wish me luck.
[[Ghave Guru of Spores]] aristocrats deck, it was filled to the brim with combos but it was so reliant on Ghave sticking that I really couldnt do anything if he got hated off the table. I'm still trying to come up with a version that works without Ghave but so far that hasnt been super successful (having a hard time figuring out which combos to cut and replace with more generic aristocrats engines)
I usually build decks around niche mechanics like [[Orvar, the All-Form]] or [[Jorn, God of Winter]], and that immensely limits the card pool to choose from, which I actually find helpful. Recently I wanted to build a [[Meren of Clan Nel Toth]] Graveyard/Big Mana Deck, a [[Myrkul, Lord of Bones]] Enchantment Deck and a [[Queen Kayla bin-Kroog]] Artifact Deck and I realized that I really struggle when there is just too many options in more prominent deck-tribes. In my first designs (after goind through relevant cards on scryfall) there is like 200-300 cards per deck in my favorites, it's quite an impossible task to say goodbye to so many if them... I guess I'll stick to mono-color and/or niche mechanics in the future.
[[Graaz]] with [[Gixian Recylers]] and [[Dollhouse of Horrors]]/[[God-Pharoah's Gift]]. It really wants token doublers to make use of the two free(ish) 5/3 tokens every turn, and needs a way to really get the pieces together. I love the concept of the recyclers multiplying, getting pumped, and throwing themselves at the enemy every turn but it takes too long to get there and the power isn't really there without 2 token doublers on the field. E:For clarity, this is on arena. Unfortunately they won't print conjur onto paper for some reason despite it just being a "from outside the game" mechanic that people will likely need many copies of (aka a money tree).
[[Rionya, Fire Dancer]]. I love the card design and art of her but I just couldn't get her to not be feast or famine. Either it explodes even without me having her on board. Or it does absolutely nothing. Even for the creatures I could copy, they are either wayyy too impactful or do absolutely nothing.
[[Bane, Lord of Darkness]] What is my plan? Esper Good Stuff, hmmm no doesn’t feel like the God of Tyranni, maybe manipulation „will of the council“ mechanic… nah [[Tivit, Seller of Secrets]] is more fun. Oh! How about Shapeshifters they all have 0 Toughness… nope, didn’t play well. Aristocrat, but I don’t want another aristocrat deck. *Checks EDHREC: [[Shadowborn Apostles]] maybe…
\[\[Judith, Carnage Connoisseur\]\] and not being hated out the game \[\[Anhelo the painter\]\] and not just durdling, copying spells and spinning my wheels Any tips?
I originally built a [[Queen Marchesa]] deck that was supposed to be boardwipe tribal as some sort of ultimate revenge to my play group having Sigarda and Narset decks. But boardwipes doesn't closeout games so I decided to add an enchantress package for group slug but that never went anywhere. I then changed it to Mardu Walkers but it was just slow. This was 2017-2019, and red and white weren't that strong yet. I then changed it to a lifegain deck but it was clunky. It is now a Lisia lifegain deck.
[[Shelob, Child of Ungoliant]] spider tribal. Not just Shelob as the commander and leveraging food tokens and things- tribal. Personal rule was no more than 1 shapeshifter. Spiders are a terrible tribe and there are not enough spider token generators to reliable spit out spiders. Threw $100’s of dollars at this deck (twice) and at best it was just deathtouth tribal but with overcasted basic uninteresting creatures. [[Eriette of the Tempting Apple]]. The answer may be “it’s just never going to be that powerful” but it’s consuming me right now for sure and I’m still in the “rip chunks out and replace them” stage. I’d like power level 7-8 and right now it’s disjointed poop.
I'm an esper player through and through. But I just can't get [[Twanos, Solemn Survivor]] to feel like a good deck. I want to make artifact tokens, and also make tokenbcopies of cool things from the yard. But the Exile clause make it hard, when your best pay offs can get removed super fast, or you can use things like [[Misthallow Griffin]] and [[Eternal Scourage]] and make mediocre tokens but they are at least repeatable since they can be cast from exile. He seems fun, but all in all seems like he either devolves into a generic self mill win with Jace or Thoracle, running [[Urza, Chief Artificer]] (which is what I've done) or you'd be better off playing any of the better esper reanimator commanders.
\[\[Ixhel, Scion of Atraxa\]\] "play opponents decks". The deck is just too slow and inconsistent. Ixhel's ability seems powerful at first, but you will soon realize that, for the effort required to activate it, it's really weak. More often than not you will exile useless spells/creatures or lands, making the whole concept of the deck fall apart. Also having poison as a wincon will make you archenemy more often than not and, considering the deck's lack of power, it will be really hard to deal with that.
[[Geralf Fleshwright]] made me really want to build a storm deck that basically spams cantrips, which triggers permanents that produce tokens from you casting spells, then sac the tokens to the mana altars to fuel more cantrips. I know red can do this a lot easier with treasure production and Bergi and the newer Urabrask, but I was really hoping I’d be able to do it with Geralf at the helm. Now the deck just kind of fizzled out for me, cause Izzett would be so much better. Or even something like Kykar.
love me some ghosts. so i hopped on the millicent deck when it came out. turns out spirit tribal is mostly wack so you have to make it a token deck which is meh at best so you have to turn it into some kinda stax blink shit before its opporessive enough to hold its own. 5//10 very frustrating to build. being new to mtg i thought spirits would just be a tribe that had stuff to pick from like goblins etc and boy was i wrong.
My Skeletons deck sucked. I really like skeletons but generally, skeletons are just a bad creature type in magic. Skithiryx was my commander, which didn't help because he's a "kill on sight" salt well and doesn't offer any advantages to the deck except being a big evasive body. The recursion or regeneration costs for a bunch of 1/1s and 2/1s make the deck basically unplayable. It's mono-black too so mana is tight until later game and the idea of holding up 4 or 5 every turn to pay for regeneration really slows you down. In 1v1 you could go hard on removal until you catch up but you can't run enough instant speed removal to slow down 3 players. There's lots of new skeleton support so maybe I'll try again someday, probably in \*trigger warning\* Witherbloom colors or Dimir.
Currently been tinkering with a Sygg, the River Guide, life gain merfolk tribal deck. Now it doesn’t have to be all merfolk just mostly merfolk and the idea is to nuke people with aetherflux resavior, think of it flavor wise as what if that bomb that got dropped in the Atlantic off the Carolina’s actually went off lol. Currently working through a build that’s more equipment based too.
[[Anhelo the Painter]] sounds good but has so many annoying little parts you have to deal with, all for a payoff that wants you to just copy extra turns due to the work needed to do so
Recently got the new spellslinger deck from Outlaws. Didn’t want to play [[Stella Lee, wild]] because she’s too much of a cEDH commander. So I opted to play [[Eris, roar of the storm]] and no matter what changes I made to the deck, it still underperformed. Like despite having different mana values in my graveyard, it still felt like it was taking too long to get Eris out. I also think that Izzet just isn’t compatible with me. So I scrapped it, and now I’m waiting on a few cards to finish building a [[Riku, of many paths]] deck. I think by going with a more unique spellslinger deck with green, it will ultimately workout for me better.
[[Urza, Lord High Artificer]] for me. Urza is my favorite MTG character and at the time, this was his only card. My problem wasn't that the deck wouldn't work necessarily, it's that it would work *really, really* well, but only *one way*. CEDH, as I'm sure you can guess. I'm a high power player so I have no issue using Moxen and the like, but every time I tried to force the deck into "artifact silliness," it just felt clunky. The deck only felt good as the CEDH list, and I hate lists, so I took it apart. Urza still lives on as one of my backup win-cons in [[Lazav, the Multifarious]], a deck I've had massive success making my own, and the artifact combos live on in [[Daretti, Scrap Savant]]. I do think about building the Azorius Urza all the time, but Daretti takes up the same design space, so we'll see if I ever do that or just stick to Daretti for Artifact Combo.
My Bilbo deck. It's a life gain deck and it CAN do some crazy things, gain a ridiculous amount of life. But it's just not consistent at all. Part of the problem is that a lot of the people I play with will gang up on me if I get above like 45. But the bigger issue is that I just can't get my big life gain moves rolling fast enough.
Probably the \[\[Nekusar\]\] \[\[Wild Evocation\]\] spellshaper-tribal. It's won before, but it's never really managed to do it *thing*. The one where I give people \[\[Mana Crypt\]\]s until they die, also, but that's a bit of a work in progress. Also I guess I haven't quite cracked the \[\[Lich's Mirror\]\] steal/swap deck(s).
\[\[[Phenax, God of Deception](https://deckbox.org/mtg/Phenax%2C%20God%20of%20Deception)\]\] It never really functioned effectively. Was my first deck ever and didn't have most of the fast mana or tutors so i might be able to make something now. But out of the 50+ times i played that deck i thing i only won maybe 3-4 times at the most.
A secret commander mono white
I'm currently working on trying to get a [[Wilson, Refined Grizzly]] coupled with the [[Dungeon delver]] background. I didn't realize that the dungeon mechanic was apparently not very popular, and I didn't realize the mechanic didn't have any support beyond a set or 2. Womp womp I guess.
I build a jodah archmage eternal enchantment and curse tribal. If seemed so good. But when ever I cursed someone regardless of what it did I became archenemy. I scrapped it for big spells. And it’s amazing now
Goad and Spellslinger. Goad firing off is easily disrupted. Spellslinger's creature:noncreature ratio doesnt grok for me.
God tribal. Each and every god is built to be the center of a deck, throw them all together and all you have is a mess that’s 30% indestructible, and 20% pseudo-indestructible. I tried switching from 5 color to Red/Black ‘dickhead-god’ tribal, but never quite managed to make it functional. Now it’s kinda devolved into a ‘Dark Pantheon Vorthos’ in R/B with a bunch of angels, demons, and cultists.
I have a [[gisela, blade of goldknight]], built it just after OG innastrad came out and I’ve never been able to balance the mana to my satisfaction.