What I love most is if you played long enough you cycle back to the trap style of deck building because its more fun playing like a derp then playing the same cards again and again.
seriously, I started building just theme decks because I was physically sick of spreading cards out of my commander decks and seeing the same 20 staples in every single one
Yes, I can't believe how homogenous commander has become in the past couple of years. I've probably seen smothering tithe more often then not in the past 10 games and considering not everyone is running white that's pretty tiresome.
trying to make something function best it can within a limited availability from a theme is also much more fun than loading a deck up with the standard ramp removal and top 20 superstar cards for your available colors. I've found it especially fun in pauper where I just tried to make griffon tribal and the strongest card for cheap is griffon rider who is near identical to the kargan dragon rider he gave as an example but +2/+2 and flying instead of just flying.
do you guys have a list you like, or any tips for building/inclusions? Been trying to make myr tribal work (both 60 card and edh), but it just feels so lacking
@@zachingram04 I found some cheap Brudiclad decks on EDHRec that I liked, and then started building out from there. The deck is mostly focused on treasure and token generation to go super wide for Brudiclad. throw in an urza's incubator, dross scorpion, academy manufacturer, and transmutation font and you can get pretty silly
@@zachingram04Bro, affinity is the biggest problem of the Pauper right now, and it's filled of Myr. In 60 cards format artifact and Myrs walks together, always in a problematic way
Tribal decks are my favorites to build. It gives me a reason to play a whole lot of cards I don't look at normally, and it gives me a cohesive strategy to focus on without forcing me into anything. For example, Angels do a lot of cool things. I can focus in the lifegain aspect, or I can play +1/+1 counters, or I can do some silly stuff playing off the top of my deck, or a flicker style, or all of the above, or none! So many interesting paths inside a restriction to a creature type. I love tribal decks.
@@Colton-wz5sh Individual angels are able to do any of those things, and a lot of others besides. Angels as a whole don't focus on any of those things. And that's kind of the point of the whole video. You can't just shout "ANGELS!!!" and have a cohesive deck simply appear out of nothingness. You have to actually look at what the cards do and decide on a direction to take them. I have a very ineffective Rhys the Redeemed Selesnya deck that has this problem -- it has a ton of token generators and ways of globally buffing them. But it has a hideous mana curve and basically no ramp. With green as a color identity. (Nevermind the whole "Oh god it's Rhys kill it now" thing other players do that immediately hates me off the board.)
Amusingly, Slivers (Tribal McGees) are mostly immune to this issue. So long as you arent picking a sliver with an actively bad effect, its really hard to go wrong with a pick.
@@yusheitslv100 Eh, there ARE slivers that are arguably bad to run, you just have to go looking. Plague Sliver used to be alright (???) because Lifelink wasnt a keyword ability, so it could stack. You could ping yourself for 1 damage and get 2 life from it. Nowadays, the only reason to have it is when playing against sliver decks.
@@egoalter1276 When Lifelink was first key-worded, it actually acted the same as before, being a triggered ability. In the 2010s rules update, this was given a massive rework. Lifelink no longer used the stack like a triggered ability, instead happening at the exact same time as damage. At the same time, rule 702.15f was created: Multiple instances of lifelink on the same object are redundant. Strangely enough, Essence Sliver wasn't given the Lifelink errata, and still acts like old Lifelink. Fun stuff.
@@sicklysweetdenouement I feel like pre keyword lifelink creatures ought to use the old wording and mechanics then. Like cockatrice technically has deathtouch, but it also works if it has zero power, so they didnt just erata it to deathtouch unless its fighting a wall.
I've helped a few newer players make tribal decks, and I always ask "what does the tribe do". Most tribes, certainly all the ones with over 100 cards, have some sort of mechanical identity. Sometimes the identity is strict. Nearly every spider has reach, and most have a bigger toughness. Sometimes its tied to a mechanic, like ninjas with ninjitsu. Sometimes its broader and harder to pin down. Insects occupy a niche space in magic design in that they are used to fill gaps, and cover a wide mechanical range, but if you look at all of them, you see recurring themes of token generation, counter manipulation, and graveyard interaction (which makes sense as they tend to fill gaps mostly in green and black cards). Once a player has figured out what the tribe is good at, it can become easier to nail down a specific gameplan for the deck. My grist deck wants to get a critical mass of bugs out, either with her + ability or by casting other token producers, then win on an overrun effect. A ninja deck wants to run cheap evasive creatures and bounce spells, to repeatedly trigger ninjitsu effects and out value the opponent while disrupting their board. If a tribe has multiple specialties, or is very big and broad (like humans, elves, and vampires), a player may need to narrow it down further. On the biggest tribes, its possible to combine a keyword or mechanic with the tribe, ie "an eternalize zombie deck" or "+1/+1 counter humans"
Yeah, my Ur-Dragon deck focuses on Dragons with 4+ power so it goes well with cards like Temur's Ascendancy, Garruk's Uprising and Greater Good (at least +1 on each sacrifice). I'm also thinking about adding cards like Hunter's Insight, because on the base level it might give me 4 cards for 3 mana.
A kamigawa samurai/human soldier deck is really fun with the goad and Bushido mechanics. Goad is kind of bad as a taunt mechanic, but it's also pretty unique and most decks don't have a specific answer to it.
The wonderful thing about slivers is slivers are wonderful things their bodies are made out of sinew they've got muscles on top of their wings they're hasted, trample, shroud, and shadow plus, one, one, one, one, one, but the most wonderful thing about slivers is there... is more than one!
The segment on why Acolyte of Baphamut is so bad in Myriim made me realize that Henzie would go hard as a dragon tribal commander, and Acolyte of Baphamut would be genuinely scary in there.
I think I saw someone on a commander video (commander at home or shuffle up and play, probably) use toolbox with the ancient dragon cycle. They sacrificed the black reanimate dragon to kethek, crucible Goliath and “cascaded” into a 6 drop while also pulling 14 mana worth of creature from their graveyard earlier in the turn. I immediately added kethek to my toolbox deck but I don’t have the budget for dragons like that
Just run heartless summoning instead. Its two mana, reduces all your creatures not just the first dragon, and the -1/-1 is negligible for your big dargons
I'm very glad the first commander deck I built was around Karumonix, the rat king. The card tells you everything you need to care about: rats and poison. I tried building some other tribal decks after that one and they all felt underwhelming in comparison. In hindsight, this is because all the other tribal decks had no other central gameplan aside from just played creatures from that tribe. I accidentally bypassed this entire issue with the first deck I built, by simply picking an easy commander to build around. This allowed me to build a surprisingly competent deck despite having no experience with the game.
Rat tribal also has a big up on others because you can play 32 Rat Colony cards and beef up all your rats while Karumonix gives them all toxic. Its kinda cheating imo, but its legal.
I started with Goblins and no tribe has ever been as satisfying as taking out 3 people at full life in a single move. Skirk Fire Marshal and Loxodon Warhammer just outshines everything. Except squirrels. That's been fun because it doesn't have enough support yet to actually be more than a fun choice.
Your videos are consistently the best casual EDH videos on RUclips. I mostly play cEDH but I've been building casual decks lately. The way you think about the game feels closer to the cEDH mindset. You are thorough, critical and think optimally. I often have trouble thinking with a casual mindset. Your videos are nice because they bridge the gap between the two.
I don't think he has a very casual mindset at all. He's way too concerned with optimisation for my tastes. His know-all attitude also comes off as haughty, like he's graciously teaching the plebs how to play better...
@@uandubh5087 Fair, although the people who are happy playing casually and keeping their decks the way they are probably aren't going on RUclips to actively find advice. So if they do happen to find advice videos like this, they probably won't care anyway.
@@uandubh5087For context, my girlfriend and I both normally play cEDH. The games I played before this didn't really have this casual mindset thing. No one plays chess saying, "but what if my opponent feels bad that I keep winning?" I'm saying I struggle to think casually. I struggle to figure out what is and isn't okay. The reason I prefer cutthroat games is because everybody knows that the nastiness is supposed to stay on the table and you should stay friendly above the table. What limitations can I apply to my decks and still have them feel fun and interesting for me and my opponents? Well, what makes a game fun and interesting for me? I think I've narrowed that down; I need a chance to win the game, I need a deck that is resilient and can get back in the fight if it gets disrupted, and I need a deck that isn't going to bore me to tears. In terms of game philosophy, I think Snail has the right idea. I think Snail's videos focus nicely on building a strong game plan with reasonable limitations. I also think he's providing pretty good advice if you want to win games at different power levels. You can tell that he had a culture shock when he stopped playing in his highly competitive budget pod. They seemed to be extremely interactive decks with solid construction and a well defined meta game. I don't think he's wrong for feeling this way or for continuing to focus on solid deck building principles. It's natural to tune and look for ways to win. It's actually the point of the game.
@@uandubh5087 he has put time and effort into optimizing the edh deck building process, something many players have a hard time doing. He conveys concepts and ideas to help deck builders remove the 'feels bad' from their decks and experience. You get what you want out of videos. If you get a holier than thou from it, that's you. If you learn from the videos, that's what you get. Caring about making things run better is not the same as hardcore optimization.
I felled pray to this trap as well. My first commander deck was warhammer chaos precon. I really loved the idea of Be'lakor and just playing demon tribal. The issue however, with just looking at edhrec and the list of demons in those colors... there isn't really a cohesive thing demons do best. A lot of them do different stuff. So i just stuffed my deck with the best ones and it felt okay. Then after reevaluating them. I noticed that the most cohesive things demons got going for them is, they're typically 6 mana for a 6/6 flyer with trample with some sort of effect. Most of said effects are typically "sacrafice a creature or, whenever a creature dies" Most of them care about either punishing for getting a cheaper demon out (or the really bad ones that are like 7cmc and still punish you). I started to see a more cohesive line. Find ways to cheat out or reduce the cost of demons as much as possible. Then put in ways to just hurt my opponents as fast as possible. Like my last game I hade with it. I had a mana rock, some lands, and Hidetsugu and Kairi with a Doom Whisperer. Well one of my opponents decided to board wipe. In response, i dug with Doom Whisperer till I hit Living Death. Well once the board wip resolved. The Hidetsugu and Kairi triggered from the board wipe, i dinged one of my opponents for 5, and then i got my board back, with also getting like 8 demons back from my graveyard. Its a really fun deck.
That end saying "it works for mechanics as well" clicked on my mind to explain why my gorion deck and my niv mizzet reborn didn't work. To the first I just slapped like only 7 nonland non adventure cards and on the second I literally only used 2 color good random cards and there was no way to go over the top, meanwhile my niv guildpact had a much more coherent gameplan by slamming enchantments so that my 2 color count can keep high even after board wipes and most common sources of removal
gorion is a stinker because while lucky clover is an insane card, in singleton adventures are really slow and awful. in 1v1 you can burn people out with BCG and clover, meanwhile in edh you cant even use bcg in gorion. how do you lose with niv drawing 5 cards an etb? hes also a 6/6 just hit them with niv. Theres also a ton of 2c counters to draw the game out that all that 2c value pays off. niv is a format all star and I think you just put a lot of goodstuff in there as opposed to thinking about how you win by drawing 5 cards a turn.
Built a Gorion deck for my personal EDH mentor and he routinely beats my ass with it. Archmage Emeritus and Vega the Watcher draw tons of cards. Meticulous Excavation lets you return permanents to hand so you can recast their adventures. Cunning Evasion does this for blocked creatures. Effectively has a Champion of Lambholt that is also an adventure, I forget the name, I just call it “an otter you can’t refuse.” Has one or two flavorful return from graveyard to hand spells, and has all three virtues in WUG, and to top it off, a really fun way to win is Candlekeep Inspiration. Wilds of Eldraine definitely made Gorion less of a stinker and not all adventure cards are in the deck just because they’re adventures, but in a deck like that, basically every creature is also a sorcery or instant so there’s always answers to tons of board states, you just have to be able to return them to hand, so cards like familiar’s ruse and run away together are also good ideas. In Bloomburrow there’s more support for returning things to hand with the frogs I believe, but blue has tons of ways of returning things to hand, and green has ways of getting things out of the gy. And so long as you can “cast instant/sorcery” from your (or any) gy, you can cast the adventure, but not if the card says “target” as the card is technically a creature in the gy. Anyway…I hope you think about rebuilding Gorion. He’s fun to lose to, in my experience.
As a Myrel Soldier Tribal enjoyer, I feel very attacked! Please continue to do so, I've learned and still am learning a lot with your ideas, videos and help
I get mono-blue zombies, but what are you adding green for? Is it mill recursion? Tokens? What does Simic tighten up for zombies over Sultai? I'm a much more black-oriented zombie player, so you've got me curious. Why not Izzet or Azorius zombies? Simic elves would probably perform similarly to Simic zombies, but more aggressively. At least it isn't Gruul or Selesnya zombies 😂.
Dang...I just finished building my second ever commander deck, a budget Tatyova landfall deck. And I am SO called out by that last part of the video. Oh well :P I can always update my deck after playing it some. Thank you for your videos! They are all super helpful as I enter MTG/commander :)
My monthly commander game that was supposed to be last week got postponed until this week, and ive been hyperfocusing on tuning my first pre-con deck into something focused and your videos have been amazing! I sent it to my playgroup too as theres a newer player in the group along with 2 more experienced players Keep up the good work!
Great video! A lot of the things you mentioned resonate with me. I have a Ziatora "dragon tribal" deck. I wanted to play Jund and Dragons but Karrthus seemed to simple/linear. I ended up choosing ziatora because "hey, dragons are naturally big so I can just fling them with Ziatora and deal extra damage while using the treasures to cast more dragons" and while it essentially does that, during the deck building process I added cards that care about treasures (Lich-knights conquest, malevolent witchkite, etc), dragons that care about dying (Kamigawa dragons) and even a combo that cares about treasures (Inferno of Star Mounts + Cranial Plating) and while I was expecting a really janky experience, the deck turned out to be an absolute blast to pilot and one of my most cohesive, consistent and resilient decks. I've won a couple of times with the combo but I've also got wins with the classic big dragon smash gameplan, and I believe that this experience is kinda similar to what you said about your rogues deck. Even though I already started with the idea of leaning into dragons, during the deckbuilding process I found a concept/idea and built the dragons around it, taking out some of the more generic dragons to include others that care a little bit more about the gameplan I found along the way.
I appreciate you pointing out the similar trap towards keywords or mechanics at the end of the video. I made my girlfriend a budget Olivia, Crimson Bride deck a few years back, just grabbed an average, cheap deck list off EDHRec and sent it through Card Kingdom, ended up around 60 bucks or something. They ended up giving us a discard deck utilizing blood tokens, and it isn't exactly something she gels with, she wants to take it into a slightly different direction. It needed a lot of upgrades anyway, less or better mana rocks, better lands, that kind of thing. Right now we're looking at the infinite combo with Port Razer. There's bound to be some other cool stuff to utilize with Olivia, maybe constantly repeating ETB or death triggers. Either way I know we're gonna have fun upgrading it!
The thumbnail for this video fits me and my most recent deck I built on impulse with cards I had laying around. I paired Acolyte with Ganax, only to be informed during one of my games with the deck that the background only has effect if the creature component of the deck is out itself, thus Ganax STILL costs 5 total mana irregardless. I still have other cost reducing outlets, as well as a few pieces of ramp, but sitting there doing nothing because I don't have the mana to for 4 turns really throws salt into the wound. I'll probably pull it out again and play it in a week or so once the initial burn of the revelation subsides so I can make appropriate adjustments in a week or so. Finding out your deck doesn't work like you thought really sucks, especially when your deck building experience is good enough to not overlook such a glaring detail as that.
I have one deck that's more or less an incidental tribal deck. My commander is "Elrond, Master of Healing", and I built the deck around getting additional benefits out of scrying. And as there are a lot of elves that let you scry, it naturally developed into some sort of pseudo elf tribal. But that means I can use "Path of Ancestry", so I don't mind. The main mechanics of the deck are 1) scrying 2) putting a lot of +1/+1 counters on creatures 3) trample It's simple, but it works surprisingly well.
This was a lesson I learned the hard way a long time ago, but it’s still important to remember that for a deck to work it needs to have a direct focus on what is being achieved.
this may have been the wakeup call i needed at the exact right time! been trying to throw together a deck around the new Shilgengar and it felt very disjointed despite having a whopping 33 angels
Tribal/Themed decks are usually just the most fun for me. I kinda just enjoy having consistent theme even if there aren't many cards to help it. I remember back when I was too poor to buy new cards, I got some help to make a deathtouch spider deck that could actually keep up with the newly released dragons because spiders tend to have reach. Because of the nature of these cards I could both attack and defend despite my strongest being like a 4/4 vigilance reach spider while the others had like a full paragraph on 5/5 to 8/8 dragons.
Excellent video. I almost exclusively builds tribal because I just like the thematic flavor they bring. Its what drew me to the game in the first place. The single best piece of deck building advice I’ve heard is basically what you state in this video - what is the GOAL of the deck, or more specifically, what “thing” is it trying to do more than just have cards of a particular tribe. That rule has helped me streamline my decks and trim off the fat SO much. All That said, theme still does triumph over optimal cards sometimes. Mostly regarding creatures, but still. What can I say, I like my angel deck to feel like it was given to me by the heavens, or my Kraken deck from the depths 😅
Technically minded players: "Tribal is only as good as the core stragedy of that tribe." Me: **Playing my Jank as hell Golgari Snake tribal with Deathtouch theme for the roleplay.**
@@ImrahilToChaos It's called a rhetorical question: One not intended to be answered as if it was a question but rather to illustrate something (usually a point) in a way a non-interrogative sentence can't.
I've been trying to put together a Dimir Assassin deck. But it does the things that Dimir seems to like to do, being draw cards and recur from the Graveyard. So when I see Sneaky Snacker, or Ledger Shredder, or Sivitri, the Dragon Master allowing me to tutor either Ancient Silver or Brass, I slip them in since they either help what I am trying to do or give me a little reward for doing what I am already doing. And it doesn't hurt that I have multiple cards that allow me to turn my non-Assassins into Assassins anyway. I'm still new to this game. I came over from Yu-Gi-Oh. I played that game for about two decades. And that game taught me the advantages of outside synergy within certain archetypes. I lost count of how many Gravekeeper variant decks I built and played over the years. Splashing some curveballs into your deck should be part of the fun of building and playing it. It makes the deck yours.
I once had a discussion with another player why i would prefer Sight of the Scalelords or Unnatural Growth over Crucible of fire or Door of Destinies in my Atarka, World Render Deck. But Unnatural Growth turns my commander into a one-attack-kill creature and Sight of the Scalelords let's me attack with everything i have and still keep a blockers up (and let's be honest, how many dragons you wanna attack with don't have at least 4 thoughness?) I also had a bunch of card in the deck that let me cheat out dragons, so the Door of Destinies doesn't help too much either.
I've been playing Magic for little over a year now, and I've been running a Lathril Elf Tribal deck as my main EDH deck, and a lot of tips in this video I've learned firsthand through a lot of trial and error. This video is going to be a big help to creating my Wizard deck, so thanks!
This thinking was huge for me. My only commander deck is an Umbris, Fear Manifest deck, and blindly following EDHrec led me down just playing a bunch of Horror and Nightmare creatures which, in practice, didn’t offer much or were too expensive. After combing through them, jamming some cheaper utility creatures instead of just bombs, adding generic removal and board wipes which still further my gameplan by exiling the creatures, and some draw spells, the deck got way better. This not only made the deck better overall, but my bombs like Oblivion Sower also still had things to do after being played rather than me sitting there with way too much mana to work with. It resulted in more fun for me, and I was able to catch up to other players who similarly kept improving their decks along with me. It’s still a Horror Tribal deck for sure, but a much better and more fun version of it.
I run an Black/White Vampire deck that builds around life stealing, with lots of triggers to either a) give me life, b) cause an opponent to lose some life, and c) do both at once, or make one trigger the other. Basically, any time anything happens, I siphon your life to myself. It can even build infinite loops of life draining or insta-drain any HP total to 0 at once. Very on theme with the vamps, but it means I have to cut lots of other vampires that I own that are really fun, but don't further the theme. To the point where I now run a second Vampire deck, Black/White/Red, that focuses more on building the army and buffing it.
Ahaha, you and I did pretty much exactly the same thing with regard to U/B Sygg. Starting with evasive creatures, damage triggers, and interaction, then realizing “oh hey this IS a lot of rogues, it’s worth putting some of the best rogue payoff cards in here.” Easily one of my favorite decks and maybe my most successful in terms of fun, flavor, and power (I made a heavier control version with Yuriko ninjas, but my playgroup hated it, with good reason).
Exellent points all around and very good leassons for newer players looking to take that one extra step. However i would like to add that diciple of Behamut is probably in a lot of Miirym decks because they were released in the same set so people that opened a lot of that set are likely to have both cards
Another banger! A lot of my decks have started with “I’m doing X tribe/mechanic” and then I figured out from there what I was actually doing with it. Scarab God is only a zombie deck in that I want a bunch of zombie bodies in play at my upkeep to drain opponents out, it likes the tribe’s wide tokens and recursion but doesn’t much care for the sacrifice effects. It needs lots of mana to repeatedly activate Scarab God in the late game, and the two strongest payoff creatures are sphinxes. Eowyn has an unreasonable number of words on her, but they say clearly “keep playing humans, have a lot of them, win by attacking.” Because humans are such a wide type especially with 3 colors to work with, that precon/commander is good for inviting players to ask what a particular human is doing that helps the game plan. It had me seeking out evasive humans, more aggression boosters on human ETB like the ones already in the precon, and even the odd knight tribal boost, since Eowyn is a knight who makes two nights per turn if your engine is running. Having her at 5 mana is a little clunky and requires some thought about what the curve leading up to her looks like, especially whether you can put a human into play right after her the turn she drops, immediately netting 4 power worth of haste attackers along with a card if you had 2 other humans already. The 5 power with first strike makes Eowyn reasonably safe to attack but prompts you to see if you can give her flying or trample (and you can, Wingcaster and Archetype of Aggression are both cheap humans, what a tribe!). A good tribal precon or tribal payoff legendary creature is one that actively suggests what you’re specifically doing with the tribe. Hakbal is okay on that front, very clunky at first for a new player, but if they stick it out it can help them learn about card selection, counter payoffs, and ideally game tempo. The precon comes with some cards I usually wouldn’t run in Simic like mana rocks, but they make specific sense given the deck structure, and you can just happily explore them to graveyard when you see them late. The pool of commander-playable merfolk is adequate but a little shallow, the new green ones from that precon are very flavorful and highly welcome. Yarok turned into "use doubled triggers to draw my deck and Thoracle," I think I might scrap it for another landfall deck and cannibalize its land base for Mothman. I really can't improve its power on this game plan without leaning toward cEDH and this is not really a competitive-level plan, popping the synergy pieces is much too easy and adding protection stalls the engine out when I've tried. RIP Yarok, one of my first decks back to the game in 2020. Everyone should build a "double triggers from doing your thing" commander once, just to go through this process you've described of focusing it.
This is a really good video. I want to add that there's also the balancing act between having a set gameplan and getting to play different and interesting combinations in every match. A deck having more facets to its identity is great, but it can also be made too specific, planned out and rigid. That's the consistency trap; it's effective but it runs counter to the randomized nature of the game.
It's funny how when I built my merfolk deck one of the first things I took out were the lords. The ones that just pump stats are overkill since the commander explores and there are many other ways to make my creatures big. It's still in the works, but it'll get there soon!
I used your “Corsair’s of Chronology” to make my spirits tribal deck play out similar. Love the content, but yes - you need a “focus” for your tribal deck.
The Crucible of Dragons argument is the "Cards that win VS Cards that win MORE" trap that, while it's be cool to have a board of boosted dragons, on the flip side, when that's the only card on our side it's not gonna help us ACTUALLY win Very good point great video especially for newer players!
@@zacharybecker8228 lol, is it truly a gishath deck if you don't wiff atleast two? Or more like me 🤣 I've finally fixed its averages by adding in more discover and a cascade enchantment that allow him to try to cycle some of the lands off the top before he goes in swinging 😁
@@lloydearhart6337 The problem is you're just as likely to discover/cascade the only dinosaur that was on top away. You don't know in advance what's on top, so you don't know what you're throwing out. Topdeck fixing is mostly a blue thing unfortunately, but at the very least green and white have access to some solid scry effects. There's also worldly tutor, but that's not a budget option.
@@Felixr2 True True! I haven't encountered that as a problem yet in my testing games with a friend, but I agree fixing the top of the deck is the best way to guarantee hitting the dinos I want. Congregation at Dawn is a great green white more budget option I've liked to use to align my heavy hitters to the top. Lately though I've enjoyed Descendants' Path as a scry alternative that puts it on the field if I hit a dino or puts away anything else I may have top decked. I'm absolutely loving the results of Bigger on the Inside and the Cascades I've thrown in there 🤩, cause even if I do send Zacama away to the bottom of the deck, I can hit a ramp spell to deck thin some lands, or some valuable enchantment that assist my dinos going forward. The downside is I can hit a board wipe earlier then I'd like but luckily that hasn't occurred much... yet. 😁
This is why I sort of fell in love with my vehicles deck back before Neon Dynasty. While there are cards that specifically buff vehicles, they all have a inherent ability to be evasive, and a lot of my deck tries to even the tides with sweepers that vehicles are naturally resilient towards. And back then, there wasn't enough vehicle specific tribal (technically they're an artifact type, not a creature type, oh well) support to allow an individual to cram every single vehicle referencing word and form a coherent deck. So I had to be creative with the game plan, and Sydri sure as hell gave me that creativity.
I'm having so much fun with my Varina Zombie tribal deck. It's probably the first time I've done what you talk about in the video. I wanted to lean into the "back from the dead" vibe and added tons of looting effects and about 4 mass reanimation spells. In practice, this means that every game has a sudden zombie breakout or witching hour where the board is flooded with 5+ high value zombies. It started as a way to overcome board wipes and ended up also being a source of card and mana advantage, since Varina allows me to easily put high cmc zombies in there while also digging for a 5-6 cmc mass reanimation spell!
What's that color combo name you use for the third one? "a sligh deck in the ... color identity" ca at 00:13. noborhold? is there more of these, sounds like some mtg history I don't know yet :)
It is really garbled, but closed captions identifies it as "Lorehold", which the symbol shown in the segment matches. It also makes sense since it shares the Boros color identity. In the off-chance you're not familiar, Lorehold is the red-white "College of Archaeomancy" in the Strixhaven University from Strixhaven set.
With Bloomburrow coming out, I am building a Grolnok - Frog tribal deck. Until now, I didn't have enough good Frogs in blue and green and I lamented the lack of black mana - no gitrog monster, yargle, yargle and multani, etc. This is genuinely very helpful. Thanks.
This has been my tribal deckbuilding journey with Goblins! They were my first commander build, and the deck has gone from goodstuff red goblins under Krenko, to Rakdos sacrifice goblins under Wort, and now a streamlined core of goblins and more tokens, sacrifice, and sac triggers for a fully realized Jund aggro deck under Prossh.
yeah, I started building around "prowess" and wanted to work with combat tricks... so then "magecraft" appeared in my deck, I added Zada to copy the ever loving heck out of my spells and get tons of draw, then I found "Emerge Unscathed" which is protection, but triggers all that prowess, makes it unblockable to a certain color, and has rebound (protection during their turn, evasion during mine) - and then I ended up with a Boros Prowess/Aggro list that was... interesting, feels like snorting white powder and slamming down your opponent's health bar, works great. feels great. good deck.
Sounds similar to Snail's Xyris combat tricks deck. Turn the flying snake sideways at the guy who asks for free card draw, then slam 1 to 3 combat tricks to draw yourself back up to 7 and pass with a small snake token army.
I noticed this a while ago, and started including some additional theme in every tribal deck, whatever I felt those creatures were best at doing. In extreme cases, I even included creatures that didnt fit the tribe, just because they contributed so much to the other mechanic. Insects and clerics are very good at sacrificing themselves or each other, and then either triggering some effect when they die, or coming back from the dead, so I made those have an aristocrats theme. The quality of my tribal decks has much improved since then. Ironically, splitting the focus of the deck makes it more focused, somehow
I've gone somewhat similar path with mine. My Phoenix kindred deck has a side-theme of recursion - the creatures are not the only thing that keep coming back. Since the kindred honestly doesn't have that many high power cards I've just accepted it is very much style over substance kind of deck though, so there are underpowered cards like Hammer of Bogardan in it just because they're reusable.
My Krenko deck is obviously tribal goblins and I built it to be good for new players. I simply looked at my cards and included every single card with the word “goblin” on it, then filled the rest with random bulk, and it does REALLY well at the table I play at.
I'm working on an upgraded pantlaza dinosaur tribal deck. The focus is on dinosaurs, but also on ramp through the discover mechanic. Relying on the high toughness and power of dinosaurs to get more ramp through discover. It needs some more tinkering, but the landbase is getting better and tribal cards more specific and honed
Thanks for doing a video on tribal decks! I use almost exclusively tribal decks, as I am a newer player and find it easier to focus my cars search (initially), as you say in the video. Keep up the good work!
Good advice! I should remember it when searching for cards to put in decks I want to build or update. I'll also start adding (game:paper) to my Scryfall searches to filter out irrelevant or redundant results.
"Slivers are..." Everything, everywhere, all at once? Definitely a pain in the butt and my first real commander deck. I love them and they pulled me into the game. That being said, I'm sure this video will be good, because I have had to refine my tribal decks over the "deck-ade" or so since I built that sliver deck.
I learned a good chunk of this through building a cheap-as-dirt Miirym early in my commander adventures. The good news is that she's good with practically any dragon. But protecting your commander and not overextending are a start. And those win-more cards? I remember peeling back each in favor of one of those other things. The rogue example is how Urtet evolved over time from "lots of little guys that get big" to "zany win-con roulette". I started with gates because budget mana, learned of Maze's End, then Helix Pinnacle, Simic Ascendancy, later the Millenium calendar... they work really well with otherwise awkward win-cons, and slamming in five means I'll usually see one during play.
“There aren’t that many cards that produce dragon tokens besides Miirym” Lathliss, Dragon Queen, Utvara Hellkite, Decent of the Dragons, Ancient Gold Dragon, and Vishna, Shivan Queen have entered the Chat
My Myriam, Sentinel Wurm deck was absolutely a "go wide" deck, to the point where I had to dismantle it because it turned into a runaway as long as I could prevent board wipes.
Great example of this, with my Mr. House deck I started out by just adding everything that rolls dice, but slowly realized that just as important are effects like thousand moon smithy and steel overseer that actually take advantage of the artifacts in making. Cause yeah, rolling dice to make tokens is a lot of fun, but You've gotta have as reason for making those tokens or else you're just putting out more paper to put away.
Always liked Tribal decks honestly. They're good for newer players and have a lot to them when you really get into them. Started out my EDH life building a Sidar Jabari of Zhalfir Knights deck, and I'm still refining it and playing it even now. I just love how they tend to power curve more the longer a game lasts, since I love longer games and think EDH is at its best in that kind of environment, when your table isn't playing quick game-winning combos to explode everyone else or something. It's the bread and butter of the EDH experience, and I love how they ground the experience a lot.
One thing I'd add is that in many tribal decks, place priority on tribe members who do the other things you need the deck to do. Wakening Sun's Avatar is a Dinosaur AND a board wipe. Civic Wayfinder is an Elf AND it gets you a land. These sorts of creatures help squeeze more value out of your 99.
My personal favorite way to build tribal is the opposite of how it's normally done. I run a commander that produces tokens of a certain tribe, and then run a ton of lords and other synergy for that creature type, along with any staple level powerful tribe members that might not have synergy otherwise. This normally works put to me having about 10-15 tribal cards in my deck, freeing up the rest of the space for removal, card draw, ramp, and anything else to keep my gameplan moving smoothly. Because I always have access to lots of tribe members off my commander, each of those lords individually feel much more powerful, and it still absolutely feels like a deck built around a specific creature type even though most of my deck is gameplay lubrication.
Great vid as always Snail! I got in a funny argument with a buddy of mine about whether or not my Izzet Giants deck (60 card kitchen table) was a mid-range or a control deck. It runs no counterspells and is mostly comprised of medium cost giants (3-5 mana mostly), some removal (Squash,), and is built to overpower the table with efficiency. Cyclone Summoner is a one sided board bounce, and I think running that he wants to call it "control" but I think my deck falls under more of a midrange category.
I'm just glad this wasn't like when I saw someone try to argue that tribal decks are bad because removal exists, then eventually their argument degraded to "what if your opponents have every answer in the world and you have nothing" when people pointed out how absurd that initial statement was. Also I think a lot of people are too afraid to play off-tribe cards within their tribal decks, even when they provide an incredible amount of support. There's something to be said for going all-in on one type, but there's no reason to ignore powerful pieces simply because they have a mismatched creature type. Also yeah edhrec can be a travesty at times - the amount of cards suggested for Yasova Dragonclaw that people are clearly playing because they (understandably) think it works with her ability but in reality all they do is make her stronger is astounding, and those cards just keep getting used because of edhrec.
This almost perfectly describes how my Korvold deck evolved. It started out as the standard "Treasure tokens"-tribal, but eventually I moved more towards a "death = value" build around permanents that replace themselves (ex. Primal Druid) or have strong ETBs but drawbacks if they stick around (Demonic Lore). The power level of the deck dropped, but I was actually winning more often since I wasn't immediately Archenemy as much could fly under the radar longer to pull an "oops I win"-turn. It also meant Korvold didn't HAVE to be in play for the deck to function at all anymore (which also meant if Opponents did spend removal on him, it more often just meant they didn't have removal for the cards I'd actually win with).
Some thoughts A long time ago, a man decided to build a Brago, King Eternal deck, playing many cards with the words "When this creature enters the battlefield" He never won a game with it, so he took it apart. Recently, when he was looking to rebuild the deck, he noticed how many two mana artifacts that drew a card it ran. He chose to also include Tribute Mage, a card that would allow him to find Strionic Resonator and a Grim Monolith he had in his collection (Or alternatively a pair of signets). With Brago this would form an infinite combo to search up every two cost draw or mana artifact in the deck (About 40 to choose from), and with a two cost etb-draw artifact, draw his whole deck until finding a Laboratory Maniac and casting a draw artifact to win the game. This concept turned into a deck that he has won multiple games with, with alternate gameplans including blinking Agents of Treachery to steal opposing permanents, possibly ALL opposing permanents, and 2/4 Flying beatdown This person is me. I built this deck a few months back because our pod lacked a single combo deck, and I, the resident control, storm, and Anim Pakal player, took the task upon myself with the goal of messing up at least a few games. It's also really fun to me that the combo is so risky, with a correctly timed Murder turning the "I win" into an "I lose" At its core, though, the deck is still a blinky value control deck. Edit from the day after: Last night, my friend brought out a Krenko deck that he said was brand-new. I reminded him that he's had a Krenko, Mob Boss deck for years, but we sat down and played the game. He had a turbo-stax Krenko build, knowing that Static Orb only needs to untap Krenko, but opponents need multiple permanents to untap, and Smokestacks can sac random goblin tokens while opponents hopefully lose real permanents. There was also Skirk Prospector, to float mana into a Jokulhaups or Obliterate, and Goblin Trashmaster to disrupt opposing artifacts and destroy stax pieces that had outlived their usefulness. Pretty awesome deck to be honest
I found a lot of this out while constructing and playtesting my Derevi Birds deck. The first pass at it had a lot of birds in it that were high-cost (4+ CMC) but didn't really do anything or otherwise had extremely niche effects. When I was revising it, I tried to lower the mana curve and incorporate more card draw so that I could more easily build a critical mass on board and swing with a large number of evasive, pseudo-vigilant creatures.
I get exactly what you mean. I run a Nath of the Gilt-leaf pile and it works in a similar way. The elf tokens are a payoff of the commander’s primary ability. Any sort of elf tribal support is included with the dependency of Nath in mind. It’s nice when you only include the essential support because you’re adding to support your win condition itself not just “elf commander, elf cards.” I’ll add that my newest favorite deck is a Caesar, Legions Emperor pile and I LOVE finding niche soldier support thats too good not to include.
If you're not playing EDH with a tribal deck, I have a full set of Engineered Plagues that would like to talk to you about your car's extended warranty.
i would argue that tribal decks are by far the best type of game mode, because it mostly ignores all the boring minmaxing mechanics as well as being far cheaper in general
I fall in the "experienced player trapped in tribal." Been playing for a long time and I cannot get away from tribes. I agree with everything you've said in this video. I wanted to share one of my decks. My Gishath deck focuses on getting out dinosaurs, yes. But those dinosaurs will almost always have trample. The deck evolved from just throwing out dinosaurs, to having a sub theme of dinosaurs with trample. I also started adding more protection spells to protect Gishath. The other deck I want to talk about is my newest deck; Karlach/Cloakwood Hermit. Unlike my first deck mentioned, this deck was birthed from my want to have a squirrel deck, but not wanting to go with the normal squirrel commanders and my newly found crush on Karlach. The cards might not be the best in Karlach but it's something.
My first attempt as a new player to make a “spicy” deck happened when I opened the card xenograft (which lets you choose a creature type for all your creatures to gain) and thinking of making a temur elf deck that turned the elves into dragons to use with crucible of fire. It ended how you would guess. Many losses and a little bit of learning.
I once made (and still have) an Alela, Artful Provocateur deck that's more of a spiritual tribal than a literal one like Wilhelt or the upcoming Miiyrim. Because Alela makes Faerie tokens on every Enchantment and Artifact, I usually see some kind of artifact / enchantment matters style deck whenever I look for examples. Looking to tighten my deck's focus, and to give it a bit more character and identity, I built an _anthem_ tribal deck. Basically, the more anthems I cast, the more faeries I get, and the bigger those faeries get, too. It's almost like I'm playing Slivers, as the more things I play, the better all my stuff on board gets. Because the anthems matter more than the tokens as individuals, I can often land a big hitter like Coat of Arms and buff my non-sick tokens and remove an entire player from the equation out of nowhere, something you don't usually see out of Esper. Granted, this deck isn't a terribly serious one. It's more on the level of my reanimator deck, Ognis Haste, or Jinnie Fae token spam, which is closer to how I like to play anyway. While I do have some combo decks (Wilhelt, Chulane, arguably Siona if you count Shielded by Faith and Tef Pro as a janky sort of combo), I don't like to run these compared to decks that don't have specific "only play this card when you're ready to end the game... because if anything goes wrong, you're screwed" cards. (Chulane less so because he has both Thoracle _and_ Second Sun as wincons.) It feels more satisfying to contribute to the endgame than to suddenly steal the W after an entire game of weeping in a corner.
One thing I had to learn making tribal decks was that they don't always have to be completely built around using only creatures of that type. Sometimes, a generic strategy just happens to enable the right creature type and they become a win condition of the deck out of convenience more than anything. One of my favourite "tribal" decks I've made was one that is barely even tribal. My Sidisi, Brood Tyrant deck is something I originally built as a janky, general "Graveyard goodstuff" deck with a descent dredge engine that just didn't go anywhere meaningful. When I wound up gutting that and a heavily modified Gisa & Geralf precon to make a Meren of Clan Nel Toth deck, I looked at the leftovers of those 2 decks and frankensteined them together. Using the mill and some of that GY value to enable Sidisi and combined it with the copious amounts of zombie token synergies from the Gisa/Geralf brew, I wound up with an odd mishmash of dredge and go-wide keyword soup. I call it barely a zombie deck, because while they are the primary wincon, they're enabled by just about everything that isn't a zombie. Of the 37 creatures in that deck, only about 14 are actual zombies. The primary way I make zombies in that deck is by making tokens through triggering Sidisi one mill at a time alongside some more explosive token generators like Army of the Damned.
I'm preparing myself to get lectured on tribal decks edit after watching: this video spoke to me even more than your other videos. mostly because my Kaseto snake tribal deck is my main deck. from watching your videos and those from The Trinket Mage (especially those about aggro. the prof did a video on that as well recently) the deck has gone through some pretty big changes. right now the game plan is as follows. 1. play small deathtouch creatures and kill players early by infect with Fynn, the Fangbearer 2. voltron is always a safe kill with kaseto. 3. if the game is slowed down i can control the board pretty well with Willbreaker and Dismiss into Dream
Great video! I love tribal decks, my first edh deck ever was werewolf deck, and the second was a krakens deck. All the point you brought are solid and common mistakes i see on people building tribal decks. A thing i would add that is important is to check if the tribal cards aren't just worse than normal cards. I have seen quite a few faeries deck recently since they got a precon and one thing i have noted over and over again is people running tribal interaction that is strictly worse than generic interaction. Oh i see you are running a BX spell for -x/-x with a slight buff if you are running a faerie... or you could just run bitter triumph, infernal grasp, pongify, or any of the efficient removal in those colors. Same with counters and other things.
As someone who typically plays a lot of tribal decks and has slowly started to realize why some work better than others, you really hit it on the head. My zombie deck with a lot of sacrifice payoffs functions much better than my pirates deck with no real strategy aside from "ooh pirates". This really hit me on the head when I completely underestimated how good a tap/untap merfolk deck would be (and proceeded to power it down so it wouldn't feel so oppressive), while my spirits deck that I've been tinkering with for over a year now really doesn't have anything going for it because I can't really find a good cohesive strategy that I enjoy playing that works with the spirit tribal aspect of it. I think a big appeal of doing tribal is the ease of deck building, but it should be more focused on the abilities of the tribe rather than the sheer amount of creatures you can throw into a deck. Merfolk like doing tricksy simic stuff, so doing tap untap synergy works really well. Zombies want to do sacrifice and graveyard stuff, so building around that works. Throwing a bunch of "synergistic" lords together and expecting a deck to work isn't really gonna produce a good deck, and I really think you hit the nail on the head with your video.
Can confirm, Hakbal precon goes crazy with a few upgrades. Sucks that he keeps getting mind controlled by one guy at my table. that Ixalan Vampire precon, and my loaner Esper Dungeons precon both have ways to steal one of my creatures, and a 13/13 Hakbal with no protection is a common victim.
To kinda expand more on the Miiryam deck--as well as tribal as a whole--is my Tiamat Deck. When I've had my friends play the deck, I've often told them "The goal is not to win with the Dragon cards in the deck or hand,--its to win with what you reveal with Tiamat." The Core concept of my dragon tribal deck is to get Ramp and get Tiamat out with a very specific mana base, then usually by the time you get her out, you can usually cast every dragon that you revealed and pretty much every other dragon card in the deck. And with other enablers like Mirram, and Thrakkus the Butcher, make your board presence very hard to deal with, while the Mana Rock Dragon orbs make it so that your dragons are cheaper or come in with bonuses like card draw, haste or +1/+1 counters. To this day, I've never once seen someone at my games _ever_ get salty over my "Tiamat Rising" deck, because its designed to be fun for everyone at the table. You're not losing because its an optimized EDH rec beast that wins on turn 4 or sooner. Your losing because there's a bunch of big fuck-off dragons that are just smacking you down for 540+ damage. Sure its optimized--but in a way where the deck is like a puzzle, and once you have all the pieces do you see where the fun can be had. Plus--if I may toot my own horn--the funny thing about the deck is not _One single card_ in that deck was ever bought as a single, including Tiamat herself which funnily enough was the _First_ ever magic card I unpacked--everything from miiryam, the Thrakkus, to the Ur-dragon, was a dragon I unpacked. Simply put--with any deck--the identity you want and colors matter for make your deck and tribe distinct. Are you swinging wide with a million tokens to nickel and dime your opponent? Or do you only have a small group of them that absolutely _Pummel_ your opponent? Or do you want some funky shit to happen?
Tribal decks are actually a great spot for beginners because it's so easy to build/play them linearly, but you won't win many games doing so. And so the beginner goes back to the drawing board to figure out why their deck isn't performing. I went through this with both my Zombies and Vampires decks, and now they are highly focused. Zombies focuses on filling the graveyard and doing mass reanimation, as well as a token theme and symmetrical sacrifice. Only the best lords make the cut (and even some of them get cut). I can shrug off removal and board wipes, as I'll get card advantage through mass reanimation. Vampires swapped from a cheap go-wide deck to a more value focused slower deck, as it would often kill one player, then stall out. Now all the value cards let me keep up the aggro, and draw into removal for opponents' threats.
"Don't throw in cards just because they fit [insert theme here]" while having the rules text of Anje, who famously runs just about every Madness card so that they can have a 50-60 card EDH deck
I recently built an anti tribal tribal deck with Cyber Controller. It has enough artifact creature support to make his “manifests” formidable and useful. But most of the deck is 25% rock ramp / cheapifiers, and 25% ‘unsummon’ ilk cards to keep playing him above the curve no matter what turn of the game were all on. The whole thing runs unlike any tribal I’ve built, but it is so satisfying to steal all my opponents creatures.
"Rite of the Dragoncaller", "Dragonmaster Outcast", "Lathliss, Dragon Queen", etc all great cards that synergize with "Crucible of Fire", and that's just to name a few from the most recent set lol. "Crucible of Fire" is an amazing card in a dragon tribal deck, it's ridiculous to claim otherwise.
Exactly. My most powerful tribal deck of all time, Varina Zombies, only actually ran maybe 20 zombie creatures at the top end. They were just really good zombies that fit into a specific win condition, and played towards the same end, rather than just being "powerful zombies." It wasn't a midrange deck, it was a combo deck.
You have hit the nail on the head as to why I'm not a fan of tribal deck, why I'm having such a hard time being my Peter Capaldi deck and why I like voltron so much. I don't like the way that tribal lays out a theme for you because I kinda tunnel vision into the tribe part and don't know what else to do with it to make it a consistent deck, and if I do know then it is probably too obvious for my dumb Johnny brain to want to try building it in the first place (things like Lathril). Capaldi has the "cast from elsewhere" thing and the cards that do that are all so different I'm having a hard time finding a consistent theme I can work with that will tie everything together. It's got me tunnel visioned on certain cool ways of using the demonstrate, so it is harder for me to figure how to build using those ways while also even being able to utilize the demonstrate consistently at all. Voltron avoids all this confusion. Make your guy big. Protect him. Profit. That's it, nice and simple. Obviously not quite, but you get what I mean.
I’ll add that sometimes you can be running a tribal/good stuff pile that seems unfocused but actually works when you dive deeper into the deck. This comes when your “glue” is just being off color. Most zombie decks run black so go mono-blue or Azorius and that inherently makes it more interesting and successful, the same applies to things like jund cats, mono black elves, etc. I rarely run on-color tribal decks these days if off-color is a realistic non-changeling reliant option. It makes the deck more interesting to run because you’re showing people cards that they won’t normally see.
I currently run two tribes as the core of decks, wizards and soldiers. The wizard deck is an old favourite built around Azami, Lady of Scrolls and the core gameplan consists of playing utility wizards who gain added function out of Azami turning them into carddraw, and from there I focus on protecting myself to draw through my deck and win with Laboratory Maniac, Jace, Wielder of Mysteries, maybe a Thassa's Oracle, but have done so a few times with Triskaidekaphile as well. The soldiers are much more straightforward and the direction I decided to take with my Caesar, Legion's Emperor. The deck is all about flooding the board with disposable creatures with the tribal synergies serving to buff those I swing with and Caesar sits there as a reward for swinging every turn.
![INSANE 5 Fossil Gyarados EX Deck Is STUPIDLY STRONG!!! [Pokemon TCG Pocket]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/VhaaenNkK2I/mqdefault.jpg)
What I love most is if you played long enough you cycle back to the trap style of deck building because its more fun playing like a derp then playing the same cards again and again.
seriously, I started building just theme decks because I was physically sick of spreading cards out of my commander decks and seeing the same 20 staples in every single one
Me cutting dockside for ancient copper dragon:
Yes, I can't believe how homogenous commander has become in the past couple of years. I've probably seen smothering tithe more often then not in the past 10 games and considering not everyone is running white that's pretty tiresome.
@@eewweeppkkmy condolences. playing on a budget solves this issue.
trying to make something function best it can within a limited availability from a theme is also much more fun than loading a deck up with the standard ramp removal and top 20 superstar cards for your available colors. I've found it especially fun in pauper where I just tried to make griffon tribal and the strongest card for cheap is griffon rider who is near identical to the kargan dragon rider he gave as an example but +2/+2 and flying instead of just flying.
"The Sligh region of France." I'm dead.
My commiserations.
I want to report this as awesome
"This is merely sparkling Boros."
I swear you could show someone a mono-red all 1 drop deck and they'd give you a "well, ackshuallee it's not Sligh EXACTLY..."
If it looks like boros, tastes like boros, and smells like boros, it's boros 😅
me: oh boy! I sure am glad I just ordered a myr tribal deck! Can't wait to play it :)
Snail: *drops video*
At least you're playing the best tribe magic has ever released :)
do you guys have a list you like, or any tips for building/inclusions? Been trying to make myr tribal work (both 60 card and edh), but it just feels so lacking
@@zachingram04Myr battlesphere. A card so good WotC puts it in 50% of their precons 😂
@@zachingram04 I found some cheap Brudiclad decks on EDHRec that I liked, and then started building out from there. The deck is mostly focused on treasure and token generation to go super wide for Brudiclad. throw in an urza's incubator, dross scorpion, academy manufacturer, and transmutation font and you can get pretty silly
@@zachingram04Bro, affinity is the biggest problem of the Pauper right now, and it's filled of Myr. In 60 cards format artifact and Myrs walks together, always in a problematic way
Boros man clicks on video. Boros man sees his archetype mentioned at 0:07. Boros man happy.
Finally the representation we deserve
Always was Selesnya. Then Zirda set my heart ablaze
the gastropod gifteth
the term gastropod gives me Hearthstone flashbacks
And the gastropod taketh away
Tribal decks are my favorites to build. It gives me a reason to play a whole lot of cards I don't look at normally, and it gives me a cohesive strategy to focus on without forcing me into anything. For example, Angels do a lot of cool things. I can focus in the lifegain aspect, or I can play +1/+1 counters, or I can do some silly stuff playing off the top of my deck, or a flicker style, or all of the above, or none! So many interesting paths inside a restriction to a creature type. I love tribal decks.
For me, coming from Yugioh and Digimon, it was the only theme/archetype that made sense/was the most clear cut.
Angels don’t innately have ANY of those strategies
@@Colton-wz5sh Individual angels are able to do any of those things, and a lot of others besides. Angels as a whole don't focus on any of those things. And that's kind of the point of the whole video. You can't just shout "ANGELS!!!" and have a cohesive deck simply appear out of nothingness. You have to actually look at what the cards do and decide on a direction to take them. I have a very ineffective Rhys the Redeemed Selesnya deck that has this problem -- it has a ton of token generators and ways of globally buffing them. But it has a hideous mana curve and basically no ramp. With green as a color identity. (Nevermind the whole "Oh god it's Rhys kill it now" thing other players do that immediately hates me off the board.)
@@yusheitslv100 And you also remember stuff like Gravekeeper's Cannonholder to have learned this lesson.
@@HeraldOfOpera who?
Amusingly, Slivers (Tribal McGees) are mostly immune to this issue. So long as you arent picking a sliver with an actively bad effect, its really hard to go wrong with a pick.
It's the one tribe where every card with the word "Sliver" somewhere on it is meant to work in a Sliver tribal deck. (Makes sense in lore.)
@@yusheitslv100 Eh, there ARE slivers that are arguably bad to run, you just have to go looking. Plague Sliver used to be alright (???) because Lifelink wasnt a keyword ability, so it could stack. You could ping yourself for 1 damage and get 2 life from it.
Nowadays, the only reason to have it is when playing against sliver decks.
Errataing old cards with similar but functionally different mechanics to keywords doesnt happen, from what I've seen so far. How did this come to be?
@@egoalter1276 When Lifelink was first key-worded, it actually acted the same as before, being a triggered ability. In the 2010s rules update, this was given a massive rework. Lifelink no longer used the stack like a triggered ability, instead happening at the exact same time as damage. At the same time, rule 702.15f was created: Multiple instances of lifelink on the same object are redundant.
Strangely enough, Essence Sliver wasn't given the Lifelink errata, and still acts like old Lifelink. Fun stuff.
@@sicklysweetdenouement I feel like pre keyword lifelink creatures ought to use the old wording and mechanics then. Like cockatrice technically has deathtouch, but it also works if it has zero power, so they didnt just erata it to deathtouch unless its fighting a wall.
I've helped a few newer players make tribal decks, and I always ask "what does the tribe do". Most tribes, certainly all the ones with over 100 cards, have some sort of mechanical identity. Sometimes the identity is strict. Nearly every spider has reach, and most have a bigger toughness. Sometimes its tied to a mechanic, like ninjas with ninjitsu. Sometimes its broader and harder to pin down. Insects occupy a niche space in magic design in that they are used to fill gaps, and cover a wide mechanical range, but if you look at all of them, you see recurring themes of token generation, counter manipulation, and graveyard interaction (which makes sense as they tend to fill gaps mostly in green and black cards).
Once a player has figured out what the tribe is good at, it can become easier to nail down a specific gameplan for the deck. My grist deck wants to get a critical mass of bugs out, either with her + ability or by casting other token producers, then win on an overrun effect. A ninja deck wants to run cheap evasive creatures and bounce spells, to repeatedly trigger ninjitsu effects and out value the opponent while disrupting their board. If a tribe has multiple specialties, or is very big and broad (like humans, elves, and vampires), a player may need to narrow it down further. On the biggest tribes, its possible to combine a keyword or mechanic with the tribe, ie "an eternalize zombie deck" or "+1/+1 counter humans"
Yeah, my Ur-Dragon deck focuses on Dragons with 4+ power so it goes well with cards like Temur's Ascendancy, Garruk's Uprising and Greater Good (at least +1 on each sacrifice).
I'm also thinking about adding cards like Hunter's Insight, because on the base level it might give me 4 cards for 3 mana.
And then there's Scarecrows. XD
Slivers just wanna have fun 🥰
A kamigawa samurai/human soldier deck is really fun with the goad and Bushido mechanics. Goad is kind of bad as a taunt mechanic, but it's also pretty unique and most decks don't have a specific answer to it.
Slivers are evil and slivers are sly; and if you get eaten, then no one will cry.
I swear that's flavour text I've read... on a goblin card? Hmmmm. I don't wanna look this up lol.
Remembering this (😂); thank you, gods I hate Slivers but running them was an education.
Slivers are fun.
FOR RHE HIVE!!!
The wonderful thing about slivers
is slivers are wonderful things
their bodies are made out of sinew
they've got muscles on top of their wings
they're hasted, trample, shroud, and shadow
plus, one,
one, one,
one, one,
but the most wonderful thing about slivers is
there...
is more than one!
The segment on why Acolyte of Baphamut is so bad in Myriim made me realize that Henzie would go hard as a dragon tribal commander, and Acolyte of Baphamut would be genuinely scary in there.
henzie dragons is something that I wanna see now
I think I saw someone on a commander video (commander at home or shuffle up and play, probably) use toolbox with the ancient dragon cycle. They sacrificed the black reanimate dragon to kethek, crucible Goliath and “cascaded” into a 6 drop while also pulling 14 mana worth of creature from their graveyard earlier in the turn. I immediately added kethek to my toolbox deck but I don’t have the budget for dragons like that
@@profdouglas1392Proxy them.
Sounds amazing @@profdouglas1392
Just run heartless summoning instead. Its two mana, reduces all your creatures not just the first dragon, and the -1/-1 is negligible for your big dargons
I don’t even call them tribal, I just say “theme decks” because I knowingly sacrificed power for style. And I’d do it again.
I'm very glad the first commander deck I built was around Karumonix, the rat king. The card tells you everything you need to care about: rats and poison. I tried building some other tribal decks after that one and they all felt underwhelming in comparison. In hindsight, this is because all the other tribal decks had no other central gameplan aside from just played creatures from that tribe. I accidentally bypassed this entire issue with the first deck I built, by simply picking an easy commander to build around. This allowed me to build a surprisingly competent deck despite having no experience with the game.
I use Karumonix in a standard rats deck and he's awesome, maybe I'll build him as a commander...
Rat tribal also has a big up on others because you can play 32 Rat Colony cards and beef up all your rats while Karumonix gives them all toxic. Its kinda cheating imo, but its legal.
@@erikschwartz1214 Guys what about Totentantz
I started with Goblins and no tribe has ever been as satisfying as taking out 3 people at full life in a single move. Skirk Fire Marshal and Loxodon Warhammer just outshines everything. Except squirrels. That's been fun because it doesn't have enough support yet to actually be more than a fun choice.
your first deck? lol neeeewb
Your videos are consistently the best casual EDH videos on RUclips. I mostly play cEDH but I've been building casual decks lately. The way you think about the game feels closer to the cEDH mindset. You are thorough, critical and think optimally. I often have trouble thinking with a casual mindset. Your videos are nice because they bridge the gap between the two.
I don't think he has a very casual mindset at all. He's way too concerned with optimisation for my tastes. His know-all attitude also comes off as haughty, like he's graciously teaching the plebs how to play better...
@@uandubh5087 Fair, although the people who are happy playing casually and keeping their decks the way they are probably aren't going on RUclips to actively find advice. So if they do happen to find advice videos like this, they probably won't care anyway.
@@uandubh5087It seems like a stretch to call him "way too concerned with optimization" for saying "have a gameplan"
@@uandubh5087For context, my girlfriend and I both normally play cEDH. The games I played before this didn't really have this casual mindset thing. No one plays chess saying, "but what if my opponent feels bad that I keep winning?"
I'm saying I struggle to think casually. I struggle to figure out what is and isn't okay. The reason I prefer cutthroat games is because everybody knows that the nastiness is supposed to stay on the table and you should stay friendly above the table.
What limitations can I apply to my decks and still have them feel fun and interesting for me and my opponents? Well, what makes a game fun and interesting for me? I think I've narrowed that down; I need a chance to win the game, I need a deck that is resilient and can get back in the fight if it gets disrupted, and I need a deck that isn't going to bore me to tears.
In terms of game philosophy, I think Snail has the right idea. I think Snail's videos focus nicely on building a strong game plan with reasonable limitations. I also think he's providing pretty good advice if you want to win games at different power levels. You can tell that he had a culture shock when he stopped playing in his highly competitive budget pod. They seemed to be extremely interactive decks with solid construction and a well defined meta game.
I don't think he's wrong for feeling this way or for continuing to focus on solid deck building principles. It's natural to tune and look for ways to win. It's actually the point of the game.
@@uandubh5087 he has put time and effort into optimizing the edh deck building process, something many players have a hard time doing. He conveys concepts and ideas to help deck builders remove the 'feels bad' from their decks and experience.
You get what you want out of videos. If you get a holier than thou from it, that's you.
If you learn from the videos, that's what you get.
Caring about making things run better is not the same as hardcore optimization.
I felled pray to this trap as well. My first commander deck was warhammer chaos precon. I really loved the idea of Be'lakor and just playing demon tribal. The issue however, with just looking at edhrec and the list of demons in those colors... there isn't really a cohesive thing demons do best. A lot of them do different stuff. So i just stuffed my deck with the best ones and it felt okay. Then after reevaluating them. I noticed that the most cohesive things demons got going for them is, they're typically 6 mana for a 6/6 flyer with trample with some sort of effect. Most of said effects are typically "sacrafice a creature or, whenever a creature dies" Most of them care about either punishing for getting a cheaper demon out (or the really bad ones that are like 7cmc and still punish you). I started to see a more cohesive line. Find ways to cheat out or reduce the cost of demons as much as possible. Then put in ways to just hurt my opponents as fast as possible. Like my last game I hade with it. I had a mana rock, some lands, and Hidetsugu and Kairi with a Doom Whisperer. Well one of my opponents decided to board wipe. In response, i dug with Doom Whisperer till I hit Living Death. Well once the board wip resolved. The Hidetsugu and Kairi triggered from the board wipe, i dinged one of my opponents for 5, and then i got my board back, with also getting like 8 demons back from my graveyard. Its a really fun deck.
That end saying "it works for mechanics as well" clicked on my mind to explain why my gorion deck and my niv mizzet reborn didn't work. To the first I just slapped like only 7 nonland non adventure cards and on the second I literally only used 2 color good random cards and there was no way to go over the top, meanwhile my niv guildpact had a much more coherent gameplan by slamming enchantments so that my 2 color count can keep high even after board wipes and most common sources of removal
gorion is a stinker because while lucky clover is an insane card, in singleton adventures are really slow and awful. in 1v1 you can burn people out with BCG and clover, meanwhile in edh you cant even use bcg in gorion.
how do you lose with niv drawing 5 cards an etb? hes also a 6/6 just hit them with niv. Theres also a ton of 2c counters to draw the game out that all that 2c value pays off. niv is a format all star and I think you just put a lot of goodstuff in there as opposed to thinking about how you win by drawing 5 cards a turn.
Built a Gorion deck for my personal EDH mentor and he routinely beats my ass with it. Archmage Emeritus and Vega the Watcher draw tons of cards. Meticulous Excavation lets you return permanents to hand so you can recast their adventures. Cunning Evasion does this for blocked creatures. Effectively has a Champion of Lambholt that is also an adventure, I forget the name, I just call it “an otter you can’t refuse.” Has one or two flavorful return from graveyard to hand spells, and has all three virtues in WUG, and to top it off, a really fun way to win is Candlekeep Inspiration. Wilds of Eldraine definitely made Gorion less of a stinker and not all adventure cards are in the deck just because they’re adventures, but in a deck like that, basically every creature is also a sorcery or instant so there’s always answers to tons of board states, you just have to be able to return them to hand, so cards like familiar’s ruse and run away together are also good ideas. In Bloomburrow there’s more support for returning things to hand with the frogs I believe, but blue has tons of ways of returning things to hand, and green has ways of getting things out of the gy. And so long as you can “cast instant/sorcery” from your (or any) gy, you can cast the adventure, but not if the card says “target” as the card is technically a creature in the gy. Anyway…I hope you think about rebuilding Gorion. He’s fun to lose to, in my experience.
Snail woke up today and chose violence.
I want a podcast length episode of just hearing you ramble on about magic. Don't need the edits
As a Myrel Soldier Tribal enjoyer, I feel very attacked!
Please continue to do so, I've learned and still am learning a lot with your ideas, videos and help
See I avoid the trap by double trapping myself first. For example, *Simic Zombies*. One of my favorite decks still.
simic zombies holdon what?
We need the list!!
@@ry7hymIt’s simic, enough said.
I get mono-blue zombies, but what are you adding green for? Is it mill recursion? Tokens? What does Simic tighten up for zombies over Sultai? I'm a much more black-oriented zombie player, so you've got me curious. Why not Izzet or Azorius zombies? Simic elves would probably perform similarly to Simic zombies, but more aggressively. At least it isn't Gruul or Selesnya zombies 😂.
@@collinbeal Ghoultree.
No, but it's clear the point is to avoid black to keep it lower powered, and more interesting.
Dang...I just finished building my second ever commander deck, a budget Tatyova landfall deck. And I am SO called out by that last part of the video. Oh well :P I can always update my deck after playing it some. Thank you for your videos! They are all super helpful as I enter MTG/commander :)
My monthly commander game that was supposed to be last week got postponed until this week, and ive been hyperfocusing on tuning my first pre-con deck into something focused and your videos have been amazing! I sent it to my playgroup too as theres a newer player in the group along with 2 more experienced players
Keep up the good work!
Great video! A lot of the things you mentioned resonate with me. I have a Ziatora "dragon tribal" deck. I wanted to play Jund and Dragons but Karrthus seemed to simple/linear. I ended up choosing ziatora because "hey, dragons are naturally big so I can just fling them with Ziatora and deal extra damage while using the treasures to cast more dragons" and while it essentially does that, during the deck building process I added cards that care about treasures (Lich-knights conquest, malevolent witchkite, etc), dragons that care about dying (Kamigawa dragons) and even a combo that cares about treasures (Inferno of Star Mounts + Cranial Plating) and while I was expecting a really janky experience, the deck turned out to be an absolute blast to pilot and one of my most cohesive, consistent and resilient decks. I've won a couple of times with the combo but I've also got wins with the classic big dragon smash gameplan, and I believe that this experience is kinda similar to what you said about your rogues deck. Even though I already started with the idea of leaning into dragons, during the deckbuilding process I found a concept/idea and built the dragons around it, taking out some of the more generic dragons to include others that care a little bit more about the gameplan I found along the way.
My Ziatora deck is Elementals tribal Primal Surge
I appreciate you pointing out the similar trap towards keywords or mechanics at the end of the video. I made my girlfriend a budget Olivia, Crimson Bride deck a few years back, just grabbed an average, cheap deck list off EDHRec and sent it through Card Kingdom, ended up around 60 bucks or something. They ended up giving us a discard deck utilizing blood tokens, and it isn't exactly something she gels with, she wants to take it into a slightly different direction. It needed a lot of upgrades anyway, less or better mana rocks, better lands, that kind of thing. Right now we're looking at the infinite combo with Port Razer. There's bound to be some other cool stuff to utilize with Olivia, maybe constantly repeating ETB or death triggers. Either way I know we're gonna have fun upgrading it!
1:22 Mark Rosewater (a MTG designer) called this concept "piggybacking" and even wrote an article about it.
The thumbnail for this video fits me and my most recent deck I built on impulse with cards I had laying around. I paired Acolyte with Ganax, only to be informed during one of my games with the deck that the background only has effect if the creature component of the deck is out itself, thus Ganax STILL costs 5 total mana irregardless. I still have other cost reducing outlets, as well as a few pieces of ramp, but sitting there doing nothing because I don't have the mana to for 4 turns really throws salt into the wound. I'll probably pull it out again and play it in a week or so once the initial burn of the revelation subsides so I can make appropriate adjustments in a week or so. Finding out your deck doesn't work like you thought really sucks, especially when your deck building experience is good enough to not overlook such a glaring detail as that.
I have one deck that's more or less an incidental tribal deck. My commander is "Elrond, Master of Healing", and I built the deck around getting additional benefits out of scrying. And as there are a lot of elves that let you scry, it naturally developed into some sort of pseudo elf tribal. But that means I can use "Path of Ancestry", so I don't mind.
The main mechanics of the deck are 1) scrying 2) putting a lot of +1/+1 counters on creatures 3) trample
It's simple, but it works surprisingly well.
Babe, wake up, the Snail is here to enlighten us again
Totally agree. Dino tribal was my first deck and it’s still a blast for its simplicity and ease of use.
I like having it to lend to new players too
This was a lesson I learned the hard way a long time ago, but it’s still important to remember that for a deck to work it needs to have a direct focus on what is being achieved.
this may have been the wakeup call i needed at the exact right time! been trying to throw together a deck around the new Shilgengar and it felt very disjointed despite having a whopping 33 angels
Tribal/Themed decks are usually just the most fun for me. I kinda just enjoy having consistent theme even if there aren't many cards to help it. I remember back when I was too poor to buy new cards, I got some help to make a deathtouch spider deck that could actually keep up with the newly released dragons because spiders tend to have reach. Because of the nature of these cards I could both attack and defend despite my strongest being like a 4/4 vigilance reach spider while the others had like a full paragraph on 5/5 to 8/8 dragons.
This is something I’ve been thinking parts of for a while and struggled to communicate. It is so cool to see it well articulated. Great work
Excellent video. I almost exclusively builds tribal because I just like the thematic flavor they bring. Its what drew me to the game in the first place. The single best piece of deck building advice I’ve heard is basically what you state in this video - what is the GOAL of the deck, or more specifically, what “thing” is it trying to do more than just have cards of a particular tribe. That rule has helped me streamline my decks and trim off the fat SO much.
All That said, theme still does triumph over optimal cards sometimes. Mostly regarding creatures, but still. What can I say, I like my angel deck to feel like it was given to me by the heavens, or my Kraken deck from the depths 😅
Technically minded players: "Tribal is only as good as the core stragedy of that tribe."
Me: **Playing my Jank as hell Golgari Snake tribal with Deathtouch theme for the roleplay.**
Is it a typal deck? Or just a Snake-theme deck?
@@ceulgai2817 Typal.
@@Mister-Thirteen Incorrect
@@ceulgai2817 Why did you even ask if you were going to backhandedly respond? My god, some people on the internet need a slap.
@@ImrahilToChaos It's called a rhetorical question: One not intended to be answered as if it was a question but rather to illustrate something (usually a point) in a way a non-interrogative sentence can't.
I've been trying to put together a Dimir Assassin deck. But it does the things that Dimir seems to like to do, being draw cards and recur from the Graveyard. So when I see Sneaky Snacker, or Ledger Shredder, or Sivitri, the Dragon Master allowing me to tutor either Ancient Silver or Brass, I slip them in since they either help what I am trying to do or give me a little reward for doing what I am already doing. And it doesn't hurt that I have multiple cards that allow me to turn my non-Assassins into Assassins anyway.
I'm still new to this game. I came over from Yu-Gi-Oh. I played that game for about two decades. And that game taught me the advantages of outside synergy within certain archetypes. I lost count of how many Gravekeeper variant decks I built and played over the years. Splashing some curveballs into your deck should be part of the fun of building and playing it. It makes the deck yours.
The way i describe Midrange is something like "Each card you play is a threat to the opponent. And likely spending all your mana on 1 card each turn."
I once had a discussion with another player why i would prefer Sight of the Scalelords or Unnatural Growth over Crucible of fire or Door of Destinies in my Atarka, World Render Deck.
But Unnatural Growth turns my commander into a one-attack-kill creature and Sight of the Scalelords let's me attack with everything i have and still keep a blockers up (and let's be honest, how many dragons you wanna attack with don't have at least 4 thoughness?)
I also had a bunch of card in the deck that let me cheat out dragons, so the Door of Destinies doesn't help too much either.
I've been playing Magic for little over a year now, and I've been running a Lathril Elf Tribal deck as my main EDH deck, and a lot of tips in this video I've learned firsthand through a lot of trial and error. This video is going to be a big help to creating my Wizard deck, so thanks!
This thinking was huge for me. My only commander deck is an Umbris, Fear Manifest deck, and blindly following EDHrec led me down just playing a bunch of Horror and Nightmare creatures which, in practice, didn’t offer much or were too expensive. After combing through them, jamming some cheaper utility creatures instead of just bombs, adding generic removal and board wipes which still further my gameplan by exiling the creatures, and some draw spells, the deck got way better. This not only made the deck better overall, but my bombs like Oblivion Sower also still had things to do after being played rather than me sitting there with way too much mana to work with. It resulted in more fun for me, and I was able to catch up to other players who similarly kept improving their decks along with me.
It’s still a Horror Tribal deck for sure, but a much better and more fun version of it.
I thought it was a manifest + fear commander deck for a second before I looked up that commander 😂
EDHRec is garbage.
Do you have a decklist? I really like Umbris but my deck doesn't perform too well.
No offense, but Umbris Nightmares Tribal > Umbris Horrors Tribal
Umbris is peak “fun for me” haha
I run an Black/White Vampire deck that builds around life stealing, with lots of triggers to either a) give me life, b) cause an opponent to lose some life, and c) do both at once, or make one trigger the other. Basically, any time anything happens, I siphon your life to myself. It can even build infinite loops of life draining or insta-drain any HP total to 0 at once.
Very on theme with the vamps, but it means I have to cut lots of other vampires that I own that are really fun, but don't further the theme. To the point where I now run a second Vampire deck, Black/White/Red, that focuses more on building the army and buffing it.
Ahaha, you and I did pretty much exactly the same thing with regard to U/B Sygg. Starting with evasive creatures, damage triggers, and interaction, then realizing “oh hey this IS a lot of rogues, it’s worth putting some of the best rogue payoff cards in here.” Easily one of my favorite decks and maybe my most successful in terms of fun, flavor, and power (I made a heavier control version with Yuriko ninjas, but my playgroup hated it, with good reason).
Exellent points all around and very good leassons for newer players looking to take that one extra step. However i would like to add that diciple of Behamut is probably in a lot of Miirym decks because they were released in the same set so people that opened a lot of that set are likely to have both cards
Another banger! A lot of my decks have started with “I’m doing X tribe/mechanic” and then I figured out from there what I was actually doing with it. Scarab God is only a zombie deck in that I want a bunch of zombie bodies in play at my upkeep to drain opponents out, it likes the tribe’s wide tokens and recursion but doesn’t much care for the sacrifice effects. It needs lots of mana to repeatedly activate Scarab God in the late game, and the two strongest payoff creatures are sphinxes.
Eowyn has an unreasonable number of words on her, but they say clearly “keep playing humans, have a lot of them, win by attacking.” Because humans are such a wide type especially with 3 colors to work with, that precon/commander is good for inviting players to ask what a particular human is doing that helps the game plan. It had me seeking out evasive humans, more aggression boosters on human ETB like the ones already in the precon, and even the odd knight tribal boost, since Eowyn is a knight who makes two nights per turn if your engine is running. Having her at 5 mana is a little clunky and requires some thought about what the curve leading up to her looks like, especially whether you can put a human into play right after her the turn she drops, immediately netting 4 power worth of haste attackers along with a card if you had 2 other humans already. The 5 power with first strike makes Eowyn reasonably safe to attack but prompts you to see if you can give her flying or trample (and you can, Wingcaster and Archetype of Aggression are both cheap humans, what a tribe!). A good tribal precon or tribal payoff legendary creature is one that actively suggests what you’re specifically doing with the tribe. Hakbal is okay on that front, very clunky at first for a new player, but if they stick it out it can help them learn about card selection, counter payoffs, and ideally game tempo. The precon comes with some cards I usually wouldn’t run in Simic like mana rocks, but they make specific sense given the deck structure, and you can just happily explore them to graveyard when you see them late. The pool of commander-playable merfolk is adequate but a little shallow, the new green ones from that precon are very flavorful and highly welcome.
Yarok turned into "use doubled triggers to draw my deck and Thoracle," I think I might scrap it for another landfall deck and cannibalize its land base for Mothman. I really can't improve its power on this game plan without leaning toward cEDH and this is not really a competitive-level plan, popping the synergy pieces is much too easy and adding protection stalls the engine out when I've tried. RIP Yarok, one of my first decks back to the game in 2020. Everyone should build a "double triggers from doing your thing" commander once, just to go through this process you've described of focusing it.
This is a really good video. I want to add that there's also the balancing act between having a set gameplan and getting to play different and interesting combinations in every match. A deck having more facets to its identity is great, but it can also be made too specific, planned out and rigid.
That's the consistency trap; it's effective but it runs counter to the randomized nature of the game.
It's funny how when I built my merfolk deck one of the first things I took out were the lords. The ones that just pump stats are overkill since the commander explores and there are many other ways to make my creatures big. It's still in the works, but it'll get there soon!
I used your “Corsair’s of Chronology” to make my spirits tribal deck play out similar. Love the content, but yes - you need a “focus” for your tribal deck.
The Crucible of Dragons argument is the "Cards that win VS Cards that win MORE" trap that, while it's be cool to have a board of boosted dragons, on the flip side, when that's the only card on our side it's not gonna help us ACTUALLY win
Very good point great video especially for newer players!
Whew, pulled up my Dino deck to follow along and make sure I was on track 😄
that's what I'm gonna do tomorrow as well with my commander deck😂
ill still wiff a whole gishath trigger
@@zacharybecker8228 lol, is it truly a gishath deck if you don't wiff atleast two? Or more like me 🤣 I've finally fixed its averages by adding in more discover and a cascade enchantment that allow him to try to cycle some of the lands off the top before he goes in swinging 😁
@@lloydearhart6337 The problem is you're just as likely to discover/cascade the only dinosaur that was on top away. You don't know in advance what's on top, so you don't know what you're throwing out. Topdeck fixing is mostly a blue thing unfortunately, but at the very least green and white have access to some solid scry effects. There's also worldly tutor, but that's not a budget option.
@@Felixr2 True True! I haven't encountered that as a problem yet in my testing games with a friend, but I agree fixing the top of the deck is the best way to guarantee hitting the dinos I want. Congregation at Dawn is a great green white more budget option I've liked to use to align my heavy hitters to the top. Lately though I've enjoyed Descendants' Path as a scry alternative that puts it on the field if I hit a dino or puts away anything else I may have top decked. I'm absolutely loving the results of Bigger on the Inside and the Cascades I've thrown in there 🤩, cause even if I do send Zacama away to the bottom of the deck, I can hit a ramp spell to deck thin some lands, or some valuable enchantment that assist my dinos going forward. The downside is I can hit a board wipe earlier then I'd like but luckily that hasn't occurred much... yet. 😁
This is why I sort of fell in love with my vehicles deck back before Neon Dynasty. While there are cards that specifically buff vehicles, they all have a inherent ability to be evasive, and a lot of my deck tries to even the tides with sweepers that vehicles are naturally resilient towards. And back then, there wasn't enough vehicle specific tribal (technically they're an artifact type, not a creature type, oh well) support to allow an individual to cram every single vehicle referencing word and form a coherent deck. So I had to be creative with the game plan, and Sydri sure as hell gave me that creativity.
I'm having so much fun with my Varina Zombie tribal deck. It's probably the first time I've done what you talk about in the video. I wanted to lean into the "back from the dead" vibe and added tons of looting effects and about 4 mass reanimation spells.
In practice, this means that every game has a sudden zombie breakout or witching hour where the board is flooded with 5+ high value zombies.
It started as a way to overcome board wipes and ended up also being a source of card and mana advantage, since Varina allows me to easily put high cmc zombies in there while also digging for a 5-6 cmc mass reanimation spell!
What's that color combo name you use for the third one? "a sligh deck in the ... color identity" ca at 00:13. noborhold? is there more of these, sounds like some mtg history I don't know yet :)
mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Lorehold
It is really garbled, but closed captions identifies it as "Lorehold", which the symbol shown in the segment matches. It also makes sense since it shares the Boros color identity.
In the off-chance you're not familiar, Lorehold is the red-white "College of Archaeomancy" in the Strixhaven University from Strixhaven set.
@@JushakF ooh thanks!
With Bloomburrow coming out, I am building a Grolnok - Frog tribal deck. Until now, I didn't have enough good Frogs in blue and green and I lamented the lack of black mana - no gitrog monster, yargle, yargle and multani, etc.
This is genuinely very helpful. Thanks.
This has been my tribal deckbuilding journey with Goblins! They were my first commander build, and the deck has gone from goodstuff red goblins under Krenko, to Rakdos sacrifice goblins under Wort, and now a streamlined core of goblins and more tokens, sacrifice, and sac triggers for a fully realized Jund aggro deck under Prossh.
I don't even play magic anymore, but watch you religiously
yeah, I started building around "prowess" and wanted to work with combat tricks... so then "magecraft" appeared in my deck, I added Zada to copy the ever loving heck out of my spells and get tons of draw, then I found "Emerge Unscathed" which is protection, but triggers all that prowess, makes it unblockable to a certain color, and has rebound (protection during their turn, evasion during mine) - and then I ended up with a Boros Prowess/Aggro list that was... interesting, feels like snorting white powder and slamming down your opponent's health bar, works great. feels great. good deck.
Sounds similar to Snail's Xyris combat tricks deck. Turn the flying snake sideways at the guy who asks for free card draw, then slam 1 to 3 combat tricks to draw yourself back up to 7 and pass with a small snake token army.
I noticed this a while ago, and started including some additional theme in every tribal deck, whatever I felt those creatures were best at doing. In extreme cases, I even included creatures that didnt fit the tribe, just because they contributed so much to the other mechanic. Insects and clerics are very good at sacrificing themselves or each other, and then either triggering some effect when they die, or coming back from the dead, so I made those have an aristocrats theme. The quality of my tribal decks has much improved since then. Ironically, splitting the focus of the deck makes it more focused, somehow
I've gone somewhat similar path with mine. My Phoenix kindred deck has a side-theme of recursion - the creatures are not the only thing that keep coming back. Since the kindred honestly doesn't have that many high power cards I've just accepted it is very much style over substance kind of deck though, so there are underpowered cards like Hammer of Bogardan in it just because they're reusable.
My Krenko deck is obviously tribal goblins and I built it to be good for new players. I simply looked at my cards and included every single card with the word “goblin” on it, then filled the rest with random bulk, and it does REALLY well at the table I play at.
I'm working on an upgraded pantlaza dinosaur tribal deck. The focus is on dinosaurs, but also on ramp through the discover mechanic. Relying on the high toughness and power of dinosaurs to get more ramp through discover. It needs some more tinkering, but the landbase is getting better and tribal cards more specific and honed
Thanks for doing a video on tribal decks! I use almost exclusively tribal decks, as I am a newer player and find it easier to focus my cars search (initially), as you say in the video. Keep up the good work!
Good advice! I should remember it when searching for cards to put in decks I want to build or update.
I'll also start adding (game:paper) to my Scryfall searches to filter out irrelevant or redundant results.
"Slivers are..." Everything, everywhere, all at once? Definitely a pain in the butt and my first real commander deck. I love them and they pulled me into the game. That being said, I'm sure this video will be good, because I have had to refine my tribal decks over the "deck-ade" or so since I built that sliver deck.
excellent video, a good remainder of what kind of traps you should avoid.
I learned a good chunk of this through building a cheap-as-dirt Miirym early in my commander adventures. The good news is that she's good with practically any dragon. But protecting your commander and not overextending are a start. And those win-more cards? I remember peeling back each in favor of one of those other things.
The rogue example is how Urtet evolved over time from "lots of little guys that get big" to "zany win-con roulette". I started with gates because budget mana, learned of Maze's End, then Helix Pinnacle, Simic Ascendancy, later the Millenium calendar... they work really well with otherwise awkward win-cons, and slamming in five means I'll usually see one during play.
My Miirym deck is funnily enough a combo-burn deck. The the most hilarous thing is that I built it that way by complete accident😅
That happened to me. Terror of the Peaks and Scourge of Valkas go crazy with Ganax.
@@Digital_Butterfly EXACTLY!
@@TheSteve_1992 Toss in a Dragonborn champion and oops I'm spellslinger now
“There aren’t that many cards that produce dragon tokens besides Miirym”
Lathliss, Dragon Queen, Utvara Hellkite, Decent of the Dragons, Ancient Gold Dragon, and Vishna, Shivan Queen have entered the Chat
My Myriam, Sentinel Wurm deck was absolutely a "go wide" deck, to the point where I had to dismantle it because it turned into a runaway as long as I could prevent board wipes.
Great example of this, with my Mr. House deck I started out by just adding everything that rolls dice, but slowly realized that just as important are effects like thousand moon smithy and steel overseer that actually take advantage of the artifacts in making. Cause yeah, rolling dice to make tokens is a lot of fun, but You've gotta have as reason for making those tokens or else you're just putting out more paper to put away.
Always liked Tribal decks honestly. They're good for newer players and have a lot to them when you really get into them. Started out my EDH life building a Sidar Jabari of Zhalfir Knights deck, and I'm still refining it and playing it even now. I just love how they tend to power curve more the longer a game lasts, since I love longer games and think EDH is at its best in that kind of environment, when your table isn't playing quick game-winning combos to explode everyone else or something. It's the bread and butter of the EDH experience, and I love how they ground the experience a lot.
That Acolyte comparison was brilliant, I totally would have put that in any dragon tribal running green without thinking for a second.
One thing I'd add is that in many tribal decks, place priority on tribe members who do the other things you need the deck to do. Wakening Sun's Avatar is a Dinosaur AND a board wipe. Civic Wayfinder is an Elf AND it gets you a land. These sorts of creatures help squeeze more value out of your 99.
My personal favorite way to build tribal is the opposite of how it's normally done. I run a commander that produces tokens of a certain tribe, and then run a ton of lords and other synergy for that creature type, along with any staple level powerful tribe members that might not have synergy otherwise. This normally works put to me having about 10-15 tribal cards in my deck, freeing up the rest of the space for removal, card draw, ramp, and anything else to keep my gameplan moving smoothly.
Because I always have access to lots of tribe members off my commander, each of those lords individually feel much more powerful, and it still absolutely feels like a deck built around a specific creature type even though most of my deck is gameplay lubrication.
I’m guessing you play Edgar Markov? :^)
Great vid as always Snail! I got in a funny argument with a buddy of mine about whether or not my Izzet Giants deck (60 card kitchen table) was a mid-range or a control deck. It runs no counterspells and is mostly comprised of medium cost giants (3-5 mana mostly), some removal (Squash,), and is built to overpower the table with efficiency. Cyclone Summoner is a one sided board bounce, and I think running that he wants to call it "control" but I think my deck falls under more of a midrange category.
I'm just glad this wasn't like when I saw someone try to argue that tribal decks are bad because removal exists, then eventually their argument degraded to "what if your opponents have every answer in the world and you have nothing" when people pointed out how absurd that initial statement was.
Also I think a lot of people are too afraid to play off-tribe cards within their tribal decks, even when they provide an incredible amount of support. There's something to be said for going all-in on one type, but there's no reason to ignore powerful pieces simply because they have a mismatched creature type.
Also yeah edhrec can be a travesty at times - the amount of cards suggested for Yasova Dragonclaw that people are clearly playing because they (understandably) think it works with her ability but in reality all they do is make her stronger is astounding, and those cards just keep getting used because of edhrec.
This almost perfectly describes how my Korvold deck evolved. It started out as the standard "Treasure tokens"-tribal, but eventually I moved more towards a "death = value" build around permanents that replace themselves (ex. Primal Druid) or have strong ETBs but drawbacks if they stick around (Demonic Lore). The power level of the deck dropped, but I was actually winning more often since I wasn't immediately Archenemy as much could fly under the radar longer to pull an "oops I win"-turn. It also meant Korvold didn't HAVE to be in play for the deck to function at all anymore (which also meant if Opponents did spend removal on him, it more often just meant they didn't have removal for the cards I'd actually win with).
Some thoughts
A long time ago, a man decided to build a Brago, King Eternal deck, playing many cards with the words "When this creature enters the battlefield"
He never won a game with it, so he took it apart.
Recently, when he was looking to rebuild the deck, he noticed how many two mana artifacts that drew a card it ran. He chose to also include Tribute Mage, a card that would allow him to find Strionic Resonator and a Grim Monolith he had in his collection (Or alternatively a pair of signets). With Brago this would form an infinite combo to search up every two cost draw or mana artifact in the deck (About 40 to choose from), and with a two cost etb-draw artifact, draw his whole deck until finding a Laboratory Maniac and casting a draw artifact to win the game.
This concept turned into a deck that he has won multiple games with, with alternate gameplans including blinking Agents of Treachery to steal opposing permanents, possibly ALL opposing permanents, and 2/4 Flying beatdown
This person is me. I built this deck a few months back because our pod lacked a single combo deck, and I, the resident control, storm, and Anim Pakal player, took the task upon myself with the goal of messing up at least a few games.
It's also really fun to me that the combo is so risky, with a correctly timed Murder turning the "I win" into an "I lose"
At its core, though, the deck is still a blinky value control deck.
Edit from the day after: Last night, my friend brought out a Krenko deck that he said was brand-new. I reminded him that he's had a Krenko, Mob Boss deck for years, but we sat down and played the game. He had a turbo-stax Krenko build, knowing that Static Orb only needs to untap Krenko, but opponents need multiple permanents to untap, and Smokestacks can sac random goblin tokens while opponents hopefully lose real permanents. There was also Skirk Prospector, to float mana into a Jokulhaups or Obliterate, and Goblin Trashmaster to disrupt opposing artifacts and destroy stax pieces that had outlived their usefulness. Pretty awesome deck to be honest
I found a lot of this out while constructing and playtesting my Derevi Birds deck. The first pass at it had a lot of birds in it that were high-cost (4+ CMC) but didn't really do anything or otherwise had extremely niche effects. When I was revising it, I tried to lower the mana curve and incorporate more card draw so that I could more easily build a critical mass on board and swing with a large number of evasive, pseudo-vigilant creatures.
I get exactly what you mean. I run a Nath of the Gilt-leaf pile and it works in a similar way. The elf tokens are a payoff of the commander’s primary ability. Any sort of elf tribal support is included with the dependency of Nath in mind. It’s nice when you only include the essential support because you’re adding to support your win condition itself not just “elf commander, elf cards.”
I’ll add that my newest favorite deck is a Caesar, Legions Emperor pile and I LOVE finding niche soldier support thats too good not to include.
If you're not playing EDH with a tribal deck, I have a full set of Engineered Plagues that would like to talk to you about your car's extended warranty.
i would argue that tribal decks are by far the best type of game mode, because it mostly ignores all the boring minmaxing mechanics as well as being far cheaper in general
I fall in the "experienced player trapped in tribal." Been playing for a long time and I cannot get away from tribes. I agree with everything you've said in this video.
I wanted to share one of my decks. My Gishath deck focuses on getting out dinosaurs, yes. But those dinosaurs will almost always have trample. The deck evolved from just throwing out dinosaurs, to having a sub theme of dinosaurs with trample. I also started adding more protection spells to protect Gishath.
The other deck I want to talk about is my newest deck; Karlach/Cloakwood Hermit. Unlike my first deck mentioned, this deck was birthed from my want to have a squirrel deck, but not wanting to go with the normal squirrel commanders and my newly found crush on Karlach. The cards might not be the best in Karlach but it's something.
My first attempt as a new player to make a “spicy” deck happened when I opened the card xenograft (which lets you choose a creature type for all your creatures to gain) and thinking of making a temur elf deck that turned the elves into dragons to use with crucible of fire. It ended how you would guess. Many losses and a little bit of learning.
I once made (and still have) an Alela, Artful Provocateur deck that's more of a spiritual tribal than a literal one like Wilhelt or the upcoming Miiyrim. Because Alela makes Faerie tokens on every Enchantment and Artifact, I usually see some kind of artifact / enchantment matters style deck whenever I look for examples. Looking to tighten my deck's focus, and to give it a bit more character and identity, I built an _anthem_ tribal deck. Basically, the more anthems I cast, the more faeries I get, and the bigger those faeries get, too. It's almost like I'm playing Slivers, as the more things I play, the better all my stuff on board gets. Because the anthems matter more than the tokens as individuals, I can often land a big hitter like Coat of Arms and buff my non-sick tokens and remove an entire player from the equation out of nowhere, something you don't usually see out of Esper.
Granted, this deck isn't a terribly serious one. It's more on the level of my reanimator deck, Ognis Haste, or Jinnie Fae token spam, which is closer to how I like to play anyway. While I do have some combo decks (Wilhelt, Chulane, arguably Siona if you count Shielded by Faith and Tef Pro as a janky sort of combo), I don't like to run these compared to decks that don't have specific "only play this card when you're ready to end the game... because if anything goes wrong, you're screwed" cards. (Chulane less so because he has both Thoracle _and_ Second Sun as wincons.) It feels more satisfying to contribute to the endgame than to suddenly steal the W after an entire game of weeping in a corner.
I am new to commander/mtg. 2 of my 3 decks are tribal. Thank you so much for this!
One thing I had to learn making tribal decks was that they don't always have to be completely built around using only creatures of that type. Sometimes, a generic strategy just happens to enable the right creature type and they become a win condition of the deck out of convenience more than anything. One of my favourite "tribal" decks I've made was one that is barely even tribal. My Sidisi, Brood Tyrant deck is something I originally built as a janky, general "Graveyard goodstuff" deck with a descent dredge engine that just didn't go anywhere meaningful. When I wound up gutting that and a heavily modified Gisa & Geralf precon to make a Meren of Clan Nel Toth deck, I looked at the leftovers of those 2 decks and frankensteined them together. Using the mill and some of that GY value to enable Sidisi and combined it with the copious amounts of zombie token synergies from the Gisa/Geralf brew, I wound up with an odd mishmash of dredge and go-wide keyword soup. I call it barely a zombie deck, because while they are the primary wincon, they're enabled by just about everything that isn't a zombie. Of the 37 creatures in that deck, only about 14 are actual zombies. The primary way I make zombies in that deck is by making tokens through triggering Sidisi one mill at a time alongside some more explosive token generators like Army of the Damned.
I'm preparing myself to get lectured on tribal decks
edit after watching: this video spoke to me even more than your other videos. mostly because my Kaseto snake tribal deck is my main deck.
from watching your videos and those from The Trinket Mage (especially those about aggro. the prof did a video on that as well recently) the deck has gone through some pretty big changes.
right now the game plan is as follows.
1. play small deathtouch creatures and kill players early by infect with Fynn, the Fangbearer
2. voltron is always a safe kill with kaseto.
3. if the game is slowed down i can control the board pretty well with Willbreaker and Dismiss into Dream
Great video!
I love tribal decks, my first edh deck ever was werewolf deck, and the second was a krakens deck.
All the point you brought are solid and common mistakes i see on people building tribal decks. A thing i would add that is important is to check if the tribal cards aren't just worse than normal cards. I have seen quite a few faeries deck recently since they got a precon and one thing i have noted over and over again is people running tribal interaction that is strictly worse than generic interaction. Oh i see you are running a BX spell for -x/-x with a slight buff if you are running a faerie... or you could just run bitter triumph, infernal grasp, pongify, or any of the efficient removal in those colors. Same with counters and other things.
This is the best edh content on this platform.
As someone who typically plays a lot of tribal decks and has slowly started to realize why some work better than others, you really hit it on the head. My zombie deck with a lot of sacrifice payoffs functions much better than my pirates deck with no real strategy aside from "ooh pirates". This really hit me on the head when I completely underestimated how good a tap/untap merfolk deck would be (and proceeded to power it down so it wouldn't feel so oppressive), while my spirits deck that I've been tinkering with for over a year now really doesn't have anything going for it because I can't really find a good cohesive strategy that I enjoy playing that works with the spirit tribal aspect of it. I think a big appeal of doing tribal is the ease of deck building, but it should be more focused on the abilities of the tribe rather than the sheer amount of creatures you can throw into a deck. Merfolk like doing tricksy simic stuff, so doing tap untap synergy works really well. Zombies want to do sacrifice and graveyard stuff, so building around that works. Throwing a bunch of "synergistic" lords together and expecting a deck to work isn't really gonna produce a good deck, and I really think you hit the nail on the head with your video.
Can confirm, Hakbal precon goes crazy with a few upgrades. Sucks that he keeps getting mind controlled by one guy at my table.
that Ixalan Vampire precon, and my loaner Esper Dungeons precon both have ways to steal one of my creatures, and a 13/13 Hakbal with no protection is a common victim.
Really well thought out video. Thanks!
Each of your videos makes me to a better player than I before was
Ngl when “the sligh region of France” came up, I almost choked on my tea.
To kinda expand more on the Miiryam deck--as well as tribal as a whole--is my Tiamat Deck.
When I've had my friends play the deck, I've often told them "The goal is not to win with the Dragon cards in the deck or hand,--its to win with what you reveal with Tiamat."
The Core concept of my dragon tribal deck is to get Ramp and get Tiamat out with a very specific mana base, then usually by the time you get her out, you can usually cast every dragon that you revealed and pretty much every other dragon card in the deck. And with other enablers like Mirram, and Thrakkus the Butcher, make your board presence very hard to deal with, while the Mana Rock Dragon orbs make it so that your dragons are cheaper or come in with bonuses like card draw, haste or +1/+1 counters.
To this day, I've never once seen someone at my games _ever_ get salty over my "Tiamat Rising" deck, because its designed to be fun for everyone at the table. You're not losing because its an optimized EDH rec beast that wins on turn 4 or sooner. Your losing because there's a bunch of big fuck-off dragons that are just smacking you down for 540+ damage. Sure its optimized--but in a way where the deck is like a puzzle, and once you have all the pieces do you see where the fun can be had.
Plus--if I may toot my own horn--the funny thing about the deck is not _One single card_ in that deck was ever bought as a single, including Tiamat herself which funnily enough was the _First_ ever magic card I unpacked--everything from miiryam, the Thrakkus, to the Ur-dragon, was a dragon I unpacked.
Simply put--with any deck--the identity you want and colors matter for make your deck and tribe distinct. Are you swinging wide with a million tokens to nickel and dime your opponent? Or do you only have a small group of them that absolutely _Pummel_ your opponent? Or do you want some funky shit to happen?
Tribal decks are actually a great spot for beginners because it's so easy to build/play them linearly, but you won't win many games doing so. And so the beginner goes back to the drawing board to figure out why their deck isn't performing. I went through this with both my Zombies and Vampires decks, and now they are highly focused.
Zombies focuses on filling the graveyard and doing mass reanimation, as well as a token theme and symmetrical sacrifice. Only the best lords make the cut (and even some of them get cut). I can shrug off removal and board wipes, as I'll get card advantage through mass reanimation.
Vampires swapped from a cheap go-wide deck to a more value focused slower deck, as it would often kill one player, then stall out. Now all the value cards let me keep up the aggro, and draw into removal for opponents' threats.
"Don't throw in cards just because they fit [insert theme here]" while having the rules text of Anje, who famously runs just about every Madness card so that they can have a 50-60 card EDH deck
I recently built an anti tribal tribal deck with Cyber Controller. It has enough artifact creature support to make his “manifests” formidable and useful. But most of the deck is 25% rock ramp / cheapifiers, and 25% ‘unsummon’ ilk cards to keep playing him above the curve no matter what turn of the game were all on. The whole thing runs unlike any tribal I’ve built, but it is so satisfying to steal all my opponents creatures.
"Rite of the Dragoncaller", "Dragonmaster Outcast", "Lathliss, Dragon Queen", etc all great cards that synergize with "Crucible of Fire", and that's just to name a few from the most recent set lol. "Crucible of Fire" is an amazing card in a dragon tribal deck, it's ridiculous to claim otherwise.
Exactly. My most powerful tribal deck of all time, Varina Zombies, only actually ran maybe 20 zombie creatures at the top end. They were just really good zombies that fit into a specific win condition, and played towards the same end, rather than just being "powerful zombies." It wasn't a midrange deck, it was a combo deck.
You have hit the nail on the head as to why I'm not a fan of tribal deck, why I'm having such a hard time being my Peter Capaldi deck and why I like voltron so much.
I don't like the way that tribal lays out a theme for you because I kinda tunnel vision into the tribe part and don't know what else to do with it to make it a consistent deck, and if I do know then it is probably too obvious for my dumb Johnny brain to want to try building it in the first place (things like Lathril).
Capaldi has the "cast from elsewhere" thing and the cards that do that are all so different I'm having a hard time finding a consistent theme I can work with that will tie everything together. It's got me tunnel visioned on certain cool ways of using the demonstrate, so it is harder for me to figure how to build using those ways while also even being able to utilize the demonstrate consistently at all.
Voltron avoids all this confusion. Make your guy big. Protect him. Profit. That's it, nice and simple. Obviously not quite, but you get what I mean.
I’ll add that sometimes you can be running a tribal/good stuff pile that seems unfocused but actually works when you dive deeper into the deck. This comes when your “glue” is just being off color. Most zombie decks run black so go mono-blue or Azorius and that inherently makes it more interesting and successful, the same applies to things like jund cats, mono black elves, etc.
I rarely run on-color tribal decks these days if off-color is a realistic non-changeling reliant option. It makes the deck more interesting to run because you’re showing people cards that they won’t normally see.
I currently run two tribes as the core of decks, wizards and soldiers.
The wizard deck is an old favourite built around Azami, Lady of Scrolls and the core gameplan consists of playing utility wizards who gain added function out of Azami turning them into carddraw, and from there I focus on protecting myself to draw through my deck and win with Laboratory Maniac, Jace, Wielder of Mysteries, maybe a Thassa's Oracle, but have done so a few times with Triskaidekaphile as well.
The soldiers are much more straightforward and the direction I decided to take with my Caesar, Legion's Emperor. The deck is all about flooding the board with disposable creatures with the tribal synergies serving to buff those I swing with and Caesar sits there as a reward for swinging every turn.