Crim and Richard are almost answering different questions here: Crim is ranking based on the deck archetypes present in each colour pair, while Richard is focused on the best staples that each pair can play. Neither of those is necessarily the wrong approach, but it led to pretty incompatible lists between the two of them.
what i heard is: orzhov is kinda mid, it just has the best removal, and second best ramp, and it does literally everything, best protection, really good card advantage and it has combo potential, and it . . .
Richard mentions that black isn't adding anything to Golgari. I'd say that black shores up some of green's biggest weaknesses, and green shores up some of black's greatest weaknesses. Green, great for ramp. Black awful for ramp except for coffers or mana doublers like Nirkana Revenant. Good thing Crop Rotation and such exists to find that coffers/urborg. Green, great for artifact/enchantment removal. Black awful for artifact/enchantment removal. Black, great for creature removal/boardwipes. Green awful for creature removal (yes fight spells exist, but it can fizzle on the stack if the creature fighting is removed in response, so it's not unconditional). Green and Black are both great at draw (which unlike White/Green for ramp where one wants you behind another wants you ahead), actually complements each other well, because you get great options for drawing a mass amount of cards, or drawing the best card amongst the top X cards of the library (milling the rest), or tutoring the best thing in your deck through generic black tutors or creature tutors via green, along with having the best generic selection in the graveyard as a second hand. No other color combination is better at consistently getting one card into play from the 99 whether deck/hand/graveyard on a more consistent game-to-game basis. Even considering its weakness to graveyard removal, the most common graveyard control is enchantments/artifacts, which green is able to answer. The primary thing "holding back" Golgari is the sameyness of the decks, like Izzet being primarily spellslingery and caring more about the spells in the 99. Some Golgari decks will be more drain focused (Dina, Soul Steeper), or more lands focused (Gitrog Monster), or reanimator (Meren of Clan Nel Toth), so outside of Elfball tribal, the cards generally just wants stuff dying/sacrificing/graveyard in some way. So it can feel dull when trying to theorycraft a new golgari deck since primarily the function and cards will be similar.
I do think an important thing to mention is that Izzet is the colour of storm, which is also notable in terms of powerful decks. I feel like spellslinger is a very generic term. Spell copying, storm, and prowess are all unified under spellslinger, but end up looking VERY different.
For these videos can we PLEASE get the missing members ratings. I would love to hear phils opinions on this even if its just a short note with a grading.
They talk about not being able to play catch up ramp as a downside in selesnya? That’s the whole point! You play all green ramp and then play good white removal and wipes, maybe some of the green artifact/enchantment removal.
I'd love to see a color revenge arc episode where each player takes the color combo they think got disrespected the most and show how busted those color combos are.
Hot take?: I thknk black's biggest benefit to removal in multicolour decks is the access to multicolour spells (like Anguished Unmaking or Assassin's Trophy), not the actual mono black cards. The only things it really brings to the table are Oubliette and edicts. White has better sweepers and its single target hits anything (plus easier exile removal), along with Darksteel Mutation as a second Oubliette. Blue keeps things off the stack and outpaces black on creature removal with Rapid Hybridization effects. Imprisoned in the Moon is another Oubliette backup. Bounce effects handle anything that hits the board in a pinch Red is the only place black removal can shine, because red removal is just so bad (except for artifacts), though neither hit enchanments anywhere near satisfactorily. Green matches white with artifact and enchantment removal, and the Golgari spells are just more flexible kill spells.
Every time I hear someone say you can't "play" cards I wanna tear my hair out. Using the idea that it's a social contract yadda yadda to say you can't play an archetype completely counteracts the idea from EDH being a social format in the first place. Talk to the people you play with. My playgroup is open to just about anything because we express what we want to play and we like to play powerful magic. Then, if I take that deck to the shop I just ask and 9 times out of 10 people are super chill with it. Believe it or not, most people are chill with playing some strong commander/against archetypes you are quick to villainize. It's social so just... be social about it and stop assuming lol.
Lol who looks at Selesnya and just thinks "redundant ramp?" Its clear y'all dont play the colors often if thats all you think the color pair is about. White protection goes hard on some big green stompy creatures, counter abuse can make your wide board of tokens suddenly a gathered army, rather than a mass of chump blockers. I love playing against people like this at my LGS, keep underestimating my board while y'all sling spells at eachother thinking I'm missing my win con 😂
Simic has plenty good removal options besides counter spells: Cyber conversion Reality shift Beast within Song of the dryads Imprisoned in the moon Amphibian downpour (insane card) Kenriths transformation The list goes on
Can confirm Crim's stance on Hylda. If the Hylda player resolves an Opposition, Junk Winder, or Court Street Denizen you will never have a combat step again. My wife's Hylda deck now gets focused down at our LGS if any player in the pod has seen her play it before.
Orzhov can do reanimator, aristocrats, life gain, control, blink, voltron, tokens, and life swap! With great commander options for each! And the best removal, plus card draw. Easily top tier right?
I like Orzhov. My first commander was an Orzhov one (Breena the demagogue) and I developed those two colors hard during my time with magic. I will never put it below A and Im willing to be wrong on this, but thats my hill to die on.
I feel like any artifact deck is hurt by not having access to Open the Vaults and Brilliant Restoration in white, amongst some nice synergy pieces white has. Azorius feels more artifact synergy to me overall.
@@emtee2925 Ah, but blue/red has all the untappers, still has access to effects like Goblin Welder, Trash for Treasure, and gets access to things like Whir of Invention, Sai Master Thopterist, and all the blue artifact synergies as well. Having the artifact pingers like Reckless Fireweaver and the primary colour of treasure creation doesn't hurt either. It just sounds like you want more recursion. Which means you're a big baby that can't handle having his toys broken. It's okay, sometimes your toys break, you just go fetch newer, bigger, and better toys to break yourself. (I am not serious, I do not think you are a big baby, I am just making a funny.)
Why do they keep saying that losing White's catch up ramp is a bad thing whenever you pair it with green? You don't have to put in catch up ramp cards in your deck. You can just ramp like normal and that's 10x better. Just don't put it in catch up ramp cards. You made space for your gameplan and cut down easily to 100
It's wild that they talk up white as one of the most potent colors in commander yet misunderstand it on such a fundamental level. "All it does is enchant, ramp, and go wide with small creatures" like what? White has a great suite of protection and removal that green typically lacks.
@@jackalvonstone250 I mean, most commander players fall into a similar trap of only playing the colors they're most familiar with, so I can excuse some bad takes here and there, but it's very clear that nobody on the podcast has made/played a Selesnya deck in a while if that's the general opinion they reached. Green and white got a suite of great cards in Foundations as well. Oh well, I'll happily be underestimated at pretty much every LGS table I sit down at, let the rest of the players have a pissing match and waste removal while they ignore my rapidly growing board
Of all the caps richard has said, him claiming red has good ramp is the biggest cap of them all. Could've been in thunder junction because that's a ten gallon hat level cap 🤠😂
I think red is generally slept on in commander because aggro is a weaker archetype in commander (mostly for arbitrary social contract reasons), but putting that aside they are seriously discounting the strength of damage doublers, theft, treasures, and extra combats.
Richard: "Simic isn't S tier because it lacks single target interaction." Also Richard: "Don't play swords to Plowshares." I can tell you, Richard, that my days have not taking you seriously have definitely come to a middle.
I find it’s very difficult to make izzet decks that aren’t completely broken at casual tables. Even with a $50 budget I feel like my izzet decks I test just win on turn 5 or earlier. I feel like you have to go out of your way to build an izzet deck that isn’t broken
That quick draw precon is so indictive of this. It's busted out of the box. Izzet is my favorite color pair but I can't justify playing it because it always feels like pub stomping
Izzet feels broken in casual games because it wins mostly from hand and a 1-2 good board pieces. In games where people run enough stack interaction, it can be picked apart at key moments, just like other pairs. But yes, for a budget in less competitive groups, it overperforms. Clash meta seems to be mostly board and not much combo or storm, so sweepers do it. Izzet generally doesn't care too much if the creatures are wiped, often enough it's happy.
Yeah, I built a deck around Stella Lee, purposely loaded it with mid tier spells to try and not shit on my group, but she is just wildly explosive even if you're not using meta spells. Izzet is definitely one of the most potent color pairs, no doubt.
As an Izzet lover, I've had success just... not including anything broken. You're going to draw a ton of cards and have the potential to combo off, unless you choose build the deck such that you don't. If you play a heap of value creatures and magecraft-style synergies but don't include an infinite-bait commander like Niv, or Niv, or Niv, or Stella, you can play a pretty low-mid power game behind Izzet. Sure you're building "suboptimally" but so is everyone else unless you're at a cEDH table.
Its hard to compare color combos. I would say that it needs two different discussions. One for average play and one for competitive play. The crew keep bringing up top tier commanders in this episode when these commanders are usually a strange exception to how the color pairing usually functions.
Kinda wild how a few years ago Boros was like the worst color combo. Before T-pro and farewell, and smothering tithe. Good commanders have come along too it used to be Aurelia and like nothing else.
I need to watch more commander clash and evaluate their meta choices (and staple cards) apparently, because their evaluations continue to feel alien to me.
I think the new "so good its bad" theory in commander clash crew is "if you die first because the entire team had to group on you it sucks". If the entire table has to group up to respond to something, then its a threat. its a major threat. and if something doesn't succeed after the entire table teams up against it, that doesn't mean its bad. I'd say that's pretty understandable.
I think Orzhov is a bit slept on because it's more of a reactive color pairing than a proactive one. The wins typically are not as splashy as a lot of other pairings either.
Richard every commander clash: the green player is ramping to the moon. Look how much mana they have! Richard on the podcast: simic you won't always have 10x mana
I would like to see some commander games that explore different archetypes for color combinations. Azorius blink, flash, spirits, control, for example!
"The Dimir Disruptor/Mill package..." Sure,if people want to play against that. I'd love to play with Crim but his decks are really unfun and controlly, so I'd need to build either a super fast combo deck or a massive ramp deck to get ahead of him in the first 2-4 turns.
Thinking of boros as just the aggro guild is very dated thinking. Boros has diversified a lot since strixhaven and can do quite a lot of interesting things between things like quintorius, osgir, Balloon Man, etc. Also, the idea that boros breach is laughable to me, as it is easily one of the strongest things I can do in my quintorius, Field Historian graveyard deck. Boros golgari is real!
In my experience, the colour pair which ends up winning tends to be Azorius. They aren't the splashiest, but they go a long ways into the game by slipping under with card draw, stax and longevity.
Two of my decks with the best win% happen to be Azorius (Elminster and Urza, Prince of Kroog). I wouldn't say they are my most powerful decks by any means, but one thing they both have in common is that they tend to look pretty innocent during the early game and then suddenly explode onto the board with dozens of tokens. By the time people catch on and realize I'm a threat I can usually fight their attempts at wiping the board with countermagics. Some other color combinations might have more raw power than Azorius does, but I think many Azorius strategies are pretty good at maybe flying under the radar a little bit and looking less dangerous than they actually are.
My rankings 1- Simic 2- Golgari 3- Azorius 4- Selesnya 5- Dimir 6- Orzhov 7- Izzet 8- Boros 9- Gruul 10- Rakdos Red is a great color 1 v 1 but is objectively the worst color in Commander. No surprise that its color pairs make up my bottom 4. You could flip-flop Golgari and Azorius, and/or Dimir and Orzhov on my list if you want and I wouldn’t be mad about it
idk what's up with the crew, in my experience dimir decks roll the table 80% of the times. I have a Marvo deck which lost 1 game out of 8 since I built it... Show dimir respect
Black is one of if not the strongest color in Magic in general. However, Richard is right about its place in casual commander. The best parts of black dont apply, for example: tutors, hand disruption, targeted removal, reanimation (specifically a big threat early), and niche disruptions like surgical extraction. All great in competitive 60 card, but weak in casual commander.
I agree more with Crim on Dimir being higher, I would at least put it at B given how much I've seen very solid 'self' mill along with recursion that they can protect thanks to blue, at a table not ready to deal with it they very often take over the game with the combo and mana cheating they get with protected reanimation. I've had more than my share of experience seeing it happen and doing that Also find it strange no one mentioned how good Selesnya is at going wide and boosting mana with things like Mirari's Wake
Black have ramp - its treasure ramp. Its even better and better each "day". We have Warren Soultrader, Pitiless Plunderer, Grim Hireling, Rev, Tithe Extractor or Revel in Riches. On top of that we have cards like Black Market Connections and Ruthless Technomancer... On top of all that black have "mana doublers" like Crypt Ghast and Nirkana Revenant. If you want more "burst" mana You ahve all the rituals (Dark Riutal, Cabal Ritual or culling the weak). With all of that we still have cards like Cabal Coffers or Pyrexian Tower... On top of that why Black was never "praised" by heaving BEST Tutors... this is why Black is so strong. You can Tutor for the best ramp card in yours deck , for the best answer etc. - you dont need 4-5 of the same type... you can play 1-2 best of each , and then 4-5 super tutors... Last but not least - I dont get why green ramp is so overhyper here :) Decks become faster and faster... it looks like Goldfhish do not "punish" green players for do "nothing" for 3-4 turns... they need to play more agrro and tempo decks ;P Its not that hard to make "token" "ping" "burn" deck that will kill EVERYONE in turn 5 or 6... easly and with 4 lands in play... (and it dont need fast mana...).
On Simic: Richard: but neither colour has good spot removal! Everyone else: lists good blue spot removal Richard: yeah but that's spot removal and spot removal sucks! .. you just can't argue with takes like these man.. I sometimes really struggle to understand wtf Richard is thinking with his arguments.
He never mentions spot removal, he says interaction. Blue and green are the worst sweeper colors with the one exception being cyc rift, which still dosen't permanently remove stuff. not saying i agree with him but the rest of the cast mentioned spot removal when he just mentions interaction, and spot removal can never be the whole of you're interaction. Seth's argument about counterspells is a much better answer to Richards concerns but it got a little disconnected from the whole argument.
This podcast made me really happy hearing white talked about as a top tier color and the threat it is. Hopefully Wizards can shift focus and start to improve red
I feel like Richard rates decks or colors on how easily he can put 80 staples into it then put 19 other cards that work with the commander. Not every white deck needs TPro and farewell, same way you don't put force of will into every blue deck.
I find it very interesting how differently people in casual rank color combos/ colors themslevs vs cedh players. For example best to worst color Casual(according to them) green,white,blue,black,red Cedh blue,black,red,white,green
I had a problem with aesi deck "Oh, soon i wiil draw last 20 cards in my library in 1 or 2 turns and i can`t win with a combo or smth" so i just put Jace, wieleder of mysteries and now i have casual thassa`s oracle
izzet doesnt have ramp but it plays so low to the ground and has alot of burst of temporary mana that with mana rocks and generic mana ramp you dont notice.
Mono-color > Dual-color > Tri-color > not playing magic > Five-color > having a bad day > Four-color EDIT: also, Simic is so strong that Phil intentionally depowers his decks on clash CONSTANTLY so he won't blow out the table and feel like he's cheating... like come on lol
My favorite deck is Oona and it is quite strong even. BUT I made it mono black. Black and Blue both want to have primarily their type of basic lands which interacts badly with each other. it was literally better for me to make the deck mono colored.
2 часа назад
Izzet only has broken commanders. I'd rank it at least A. Treasure, artifacts, card draw, counterspells, big damage that comes out of nowhere. Storm and spellslinger are crazy good archetypes. Niv-mizzet, Locust God, ghyrson starn, etc.
I mean this is a good tier list for content creators. I play edh 2 days a week 6 hours each time, play in a normal group and with plenty of randoms. The format is based around popping off and hiding your win until the very end. Richard and seth decks almost always would just suck in every game i play because slow consistant value engines dont do well. And we all play like 8 board wipes a deck minimum.
Selesnya in A? On paper it looks good. Ramp, tokens, counters, but altogether it requires so much setup. There’s a lot of dead cards if everything isn’t going well. Most WG commanders are lackluster too. Pretty far reach if we’re using a Doctor Who commander to represent it.
At some point i had 5 gruul-decks and they all did the big smashy thing with exception of omnath locus of rage which was more a combo style deck. Nowadays i took all apart except 2 because my playgroup was so scared of me playing gruul, that i almost always got targeted down first 😂. I personally can't resonate with the mediocre rating, gruul hits hard, fast and can take over the game in no time
Hot take is that black sucs. Removal is not what it used to be. I actualy like blue removal better as wierd as that sounds. The only thing saving it are its mdfcs. It doesn't do anything great outside of reanimaton. I don't play tutors because I think they are not fun in casual though and I think black ramp is bad outside of monoB.
My rankings with bias against Boros and Selesnya. Due mostly lack of play without the commander. S - Simic A - Azorius B - Golgari, Izzet, Gruul, Selesnya, Rakdos C - Orzhov, Dimir, Boros
I have a Council of Four deck, it's not taxes, I'm just giving everyone cards! sure, I control the board all the time and it's sometimes absurd but I give my opponents the illusion they have power so it's alright.
Crim and Richard are almost answering different questions here: Crim is ranking based on the deck archetypes present in each colour pair, while Richard is focused on the best staples that each pair can play. Neither of those is necessarily the wrong approach, but it led to pretty incompatible lists between the two of them.
I feel like Crim was basically the only one regularly talking about actual gold cards rather than two mono colors mashed together.
what i heard is: orzhov is kinda mid, it just has the best removal, and second best ramp, and it does literally everything, best protection, really good card advantage and it has combo potential, and it . . .
Good cards, weak synergies.
The problem is how do you win or do something interesting with all that
They didn’t even bring up graveyard lol
Life gain + life drain with vampires and angels is pretty nasty IMHO.
Richard mentions that black isn't adding anything to Golgari. I'd say that black shores up some of green's biggest weaknesses, and green shores up some of black's greatest weaknesses.
Green, great for ramp. Black awful for ramp except for coffers or mana doublers like Nirkana Revenant. Good thing Crop Rotation and such exists to find that coffers/urborg.
Green, great for artifact/enchantment removal. Black awful for artifact/enchantment removal.
Black, great for creature removal/boardwipes. Green awful for creature removal (yes fight spells exist, but it can fizzle on the stack if the creature fighting is removed in response, so it's not unconditional).
Green and Black are both great at draw (which unlike White/Green for ramp where one wants you behind another wants you ahead), actually complements each other well, because you get great options for drawing a mass amount of cards, or drawing the best card amongst the top X cards of the library (milling the rest), or tutoring the best thing in your deck through generic black tutors or creature tutors via green, along with having the best generic selection in the graveyard as a second hand. No other color combination is better at consistently getting one card into play from the 99 whether deck/hand/graveyard on a more consistent game-to-game basis.
Even considering its weakness to graveyard removal, the most common graveyard control is enchantments/artifacts, which green is able to answer. The primary thing "holding back" Golgari is the sameyness of the decks, like Izzet being primarily spellslingery and caring more about the spells in the 99. Some Golgari decks will be more drain focused (Dina, Soul Steeper), or more lands focused (Gitrog Monster), or reanimator (Meren of Clan Nel Toth), so outside of Elfball tribal, the cards generally just wants stuff dying/sacrificing/graveyard in some way. So it can feel dull when trying to theorycraft a new golgari deck since primarily the function and cards will be similar.
I do think an important thing to mention is that Izzet is the colour of storm, which is also notable in terms of powerful decks. I feel like spellslinger is a very generic term. Spell copying, storm, and prowess are all unified under spellslinger, but end up looking VERY different.
For these videos can we PLEASE get the missing members ratings. I would love to hear phils opinions on this even if its just a short note with a grading.
Seth saying that blue is one of the worst colors for card draw is certainly one of the takes of all time.
They talk about not being able to play catch up ramp as a downside in selesnya? That’s the whole point! You play all green ramp and then play good white removal and wipes, maybe some of the green artifact/enchantment removal.
Crim fighting for Dimir's life against three C's is hilarious 😂
No comment of the week 😭
Let's make this the top comment for shame inducing purposes.
They all sucked that's why. People need to leave better comments.
Ain't no way the week they pick to not do a comment was the week I got the most likes
They did say why not like 5 minutes in lol, due to scheduling
They literally Farewelled the comment of the week.
I'd love to see a color revenge arc episode where each player takes the color combo they think got disrespected the most and show how busted those color combos are.
Hot take?: I thknk black's biggest benefit to removal in multicolour decks is the access to multicolour spells (like Anguished Unmaking or Assassin's Trophy), not the actual mono black cards. The only things it really brings to the table are Oubliette and edicts.
White has better sweepers and its single target hits anything (plus easier exile removal), along with Darksteel Mutation as a second Oubliette.
Blue keeps things off the stack and outpaces black on creature removal with Rapid Hybridization effects. Imprisoned in the Moon is another Oubliette backup. Bounce effects handle anything that hits the board in a pinch
Red is the only place black removal can shine, because red removal is just so bad (except for artifacts), though neither hit enchanments anywhere near satisfactorily.
Green matches white with artifact and enchantment removal, and the Golgari spells are just more flexible kill spells.
Every time I hear someone say you can't "play" cards I wanna tear my hair out. Using the idea that it's a social contract yadda yadda to say you can't play an archetype completely counteracts the idea from EDH being a social format in the first place. Talk to the people you play with. My playgroup is open to just about anything because we express what we want to play and we like to play powerful magic. Then, if I take that deck to the shop I just ask and 9 times out of 10 people are super chill with it. Believe it or not, most people are chill with playing some strong commander/against archetypes you are quick to villainize. It's social so just... be social about it and stop assuming lol.
Lol who looks at Selesnya and just thinks "redundant ramp?" Its clear y'all dont play the colors often if thats all you think the color pair is about. White protection goes hard on some big green stompy creatures, counter abuse can make your wide board of tokens suddenly a gathered army, rather than a mass of chump blockers. I love playing against people like this at my LGS, keep underestimating my board while y'all sling spells at eachother thinking I'm missing my win con 😂
It’s going to be interesting to see how their opinions have changed in the last few years now that Boros for example actually has card draw.
So we get Tri-Color Shards Tiers next week?
Simic has plenty good removal options besides counter spells:
Cyber conversion
Reality shift
Beast within
Song of the dryads
Imprisoned in the moon
Amphibian downpour (insane card)
Kenriths transformation
The list goes on
As an Abzan enjoyer, this ranking went a lot better than I thought it would.
I agree, it went better than expected, but I think Golgari should've been in S tier as well.
Can confirm Crim's stance on Hylda. If the Hylda player resolves an Opposition, Junk Winder, or Court Street Denizen you will never have a combat step again. My wife's Hylda deck now gets focused down at our LGS if any player in the pod has seen her play it before.
Orzhov can do reanimator, aristocrats, life gain, control, blink, voltron, tokens, and life swap! With great commander options for each! And the best removal, plus card draw. Easily top tier right?
It can even do theft if your Commander is Athreos the Shroud-Veiled
I like Orzhov. My first commander was an Orzhov one (Breena the demagogue) and I developed those two colors hard during my time with magic. I will never put it below A and Im willing to be wrong on this, but thats my hill to die on.
I can't believe the guy that loves artifacts is so medium on Izzet as a color. The only color combo that can run a legal version of Tolarian Academy.
I feel like any artifact deck is hurt by not having access to Open the Vaults and Brilliant Restoration in white, amongst some nice synergy pieces white has. Azorius feels more artifact synergy to me overall.
@@emtee2925 Ah, but blue/red has all the untappers, still has access to effects like Goblin Welder, Trash for Treasure, and gets access to things like Whir of Invention, Sai Master Thopterist, and all the blue artifact synergies as well. Having the artifact pingers like Reckless Fireweaver and the primary colour of treasure creation doesn't hurt either. It just sounds like you want more recursion. Which means you're a big baby that can't handle having his toys broken. It's okay, sometimes your toys break, you just go fetch newer, bigger, and better toys to break yourself.
(I am not serious, I do not think you are a big baby, I am just making a funny.)
A good reminder that "best two-card color combination" is subjective and very much dependant on how much you like that colour.
And what cards they allow to be played.
Richard on Simic: You won’t actually have double your opponents mana.
Richard on Dimir: By endgame you’ll have 6 mana while the Simic player has 20.
That's because everyone's playing colors that can actually ramp, unless you're playing Demir, Izzet, or Rakdos.
Preparing to lower the volume for when Crim starts screaming about simic.
Boros is best at land destruction 😂 that's a s for me❤
Why do they keep saying that losing White's catch up ramp is a bad thing whenever you pair it with green? You don't have to put in catch up ramp cards in your deck. You can just ramp like normal and that's 10x better. Just don't put it in catch up ramp cards. You made space for your gameplan and cut down easily to 100
It's wild that they talk up white as one of the most potent colors in commander yet misunderstand it on such a fundamental level. "All it does is enchant, ramp, and go wide with small creatures" like what? White has a great suite of protection and removal that green typically lacks.
@@ChilipotamusI'm a big fan of the podcast, but sometimes they just get lost in the sauce
@@jackalvonstone250 I mean, most commander players fall into a similar trap of only playing the colors they're most familiar with, so I can excuse some bad takes here and there, but it's very clear that nobody on the podcast has made/played a Selesnya deck in a while if that's the general opinion they reached. Green and white got a suite of great cards in Foundations as well. Oh well, I'll happily be underestimated at pretty much every LGS table I sit down at, let the rest of the players have a pissing match and waste removal while they ignore my rapidly growing board
Of all the caps richard has said, him claiming red has good ramp is the biggest cap of them all. Could've been in thunder junction because that's a ten gallon hat level cap 🤠😂
Treasure is ramp, and red has some of the best treasure options. I play a mono-red pirates deck that goes nuts on treasure and aggro.
I think red is generally slept on in commander because aggro is a weaker archetype in commander (mostly for arbitrary social contract reasons), but putting that aside they are seriously discounting the strength of damage doublers, theft, treasures, and extra combats.
Giving Selesnya an A but everytime Phil plays tokens and +1/+1 counters everybody has to join up to beat him and most of the time it doesn't work
Richard: "Simic isn't S tier because it lacks single target interaction."
Also Richard: "Don't play swords to Plowshares."
I can tell you, Richard, that my days have not taking you seriously have definitely come to a middle.
Ah yes the Richard special, Azorious, the color combo so good it's bad
It feels good to see people saying gruul is bad, I’ve had people get mad at the colors
I find it’s very difficult to make izzet decks that aren’t completely broken at casual tables. Even with a $50 budget I feel like my izzet decks I test just win on turn 5 or earlier. I feel like you have to go out of your way to build an izzet deck that isn’t broken
Completely agree, otherwise izzet would be my favorite.
That quick draw precon is so indictive of this. It's busted out of the box. Izzet is my favorite color pair but I can't justify playing it because it always feels like pub stomping
Izzet feels broken in casual games because it wins mostly from hand and a 1-2 good board pieces. In games where people run enough stack interaction, it can be picked apart at key moments, just like other pairs. But yes, for a budget in less competitive groups, it overperforms.
Clash meta seems to be mostly board and not much combo or storm, so sweepers do it. Izzet generally doesn't care too much if the creatures are wiped, often enough it's happy.
Yeah, I built a deck around Stella Lee, purposely loaded it with mid tier spells to try and not shit on my group, but she is just wildly explosive even if you're not using meta spells. Izzet is definitely one of the most potent color pairs, no doubt.
As an Izzet lover, I've had success just... not including anything broken. You're going to draw a ton of cards and have the potential to combo off, unless you choose build the deck such that you don't.
If you play a heap of value creatures and magecraft-style synergies but don't include an infinite-bait commander like Niv, or Niv, or Niv, or Stella, you can play a pretty low-mid power game behind Izzet. Sure you're building "suboptimally" but so is everyone else unless you're at a cEDH table.
Azorius is my favorite color. I have 4 decks: Bird tribal, Genku Blink, Pippin "threats" and Plagon Foundations only. ❤️
Boros has moved up in the world.
Nelly Borca, carrying the color combo on her back.
Winota?
I think you mispelled "Bruenor Battlehammer" there.
Its hard to compare color combos. I would say that it needs two different discussions. One for average play and one for competitive play. The crew keep bringing up top tier commanders in this episode when these commanders are usually a strange exception to how the color pairing usually functions.
They discussed in the episode that they aren't talking competitive play. None of the commanders brought up, save maybe yuriko, are cedh playables.
Orzhov at heart. Dimir at the table
Go Dimir!
Give in to your true self become the esper player you were destined to be.
Finally the words of love Ephara derserves! My best and favourite Deck!!!!❤❤❤
Kinda wild how a few years ago Boros was like the worst color combo. Before T-pro and farewell, and smothering tithe. Good commanders have come along too it used to be Aurelia and like nothing else.
I need to watch more commander clash and evaluate their meta choices (and staple cards) apparently, because their evaluations continue to feel alien to me.
I think the new "so good its bad" theory in commander clash crew is "if you die first because the entire team had to group on you it sucks". If the entire table has to group up to respond to something, then its a threat. its a major threat. and if something doesn't succeed after the entire table teams up against it, that doesn't mean its bad. I'd say that's pretty understandable.
I already know this is going to make me mad
I think Orzhov is a bit slept on because it's more of a reactive color pairing than a proactive one. The wins typically are not as splashy as a lot of other pairings either.
Richard every commander clash: the green player is ramping to the moon. Look how much mana they have!
Richard on the podcast: simic you won't always have 10x mana
I would like to see some commander games that explore different archetypes for color combinations. Azorius blink, flash, spirits, control, for example!
45 minutes until Farewell was mentioned, must a be a record
"The Dimir Disruptor/Mill package..."
Sure,if people want to play against that. I'd love to play with Crim but his decks are really unfun and controlly, so I'd need to build either a super fast combo deck or a massive ramp deck to get ahead of him in the first 2-4 turns.
Thinking of boros as just the aggro guild is very dated thinking. Boros has diversified a lot since strixhaven and can do quite a lot of interesting things between things like quintorius, osgir, Balloon Man, etc.
Also, the idea that boros breach is laughable to me, as it is easily one of the strongest things I can do in my quintorius, Field Historian graveyard deck. Boros golgari is real!
In my experience, the colour pair which ends up winning tends to be Azorius. They aren't the splashiest, but they go a long ways into the game by slipping under with card draw, stax and longevity.
Two of my decks with the best win% happen to be Azorius (Elminster and Urza, Prince of Kroog). I wouldn't say they are my most powerful decks by any means, but one thing they both have in common is that they tend to look pretty innocent during the early game and then suddenly explode onto the board with dozens of tokens. By the time people catch on and realize I'm a threat I can usually fight their attempts at wiping the board with countermagics. Some other color combinations might have more raw power than Azorius does, but I think many Azorius strategies are pretty good at maybe flying under the radar a little bit and looking less dangerous than they actually are.
My favorite color combo is Selsenya. My favorite commander for her is cadria caller of the small.
ez, here's my order (based on fun, not power, and IMO):
1 Orzhov
2 Golgari
3 Selesnya
4 Rakdos
5 Boros
6 Gruul
7 Simic
8 Izzet
9 Azorius
10 Dimir
Only control/blink for Azorius, Seth? PLAGON FISH BUTTS
Ignore the fact that blinking plagon is good
Simic is the best because of Doppelgang. You can make a ton of anything including what other colors are doing.
My rankings
1- Simic
2- Golgari
3- Azorius
4- Selesnya
5- Dimir
6- Orzhov
7- Izzet
8- Boros
9- Gruul
10- Rakdos
Red is a great color 1 v 1 but is objectively the worst color in Commander. No surprise that its color pairs make up my bottom 4.
You could flip-flop Golgari and Azorius, and/or Dimir and Orzhov on my list if you want and I wouldn’t be mad about it
I would put Boros lower but I can mostly agree with this. Think its a pretty decent list.
Hot take, white and green are only strong when you have money. Once budget gets involved, black and red becomes stronger than what they describe.
I think if you ignore "social contract" every color combo has the potential for A tier, with simic maybe being S tier from shear value.
idk what's up with the crew, in my experience dimir decks roll the table 80% of the times. I have a Marvo deck which lost 1 game out of 8 since I built it... Show dimir respect
Black is one of if not the strongest color in Magic in general. However, Richard is right about its place in casual commander. The best parts of black dont apply, for example: tutors, hand disruption, targeted removal, reanimation (specifically a big threat early), and niche disruptions like surgical extraction. All great in competitive 60 card, but weak in casual commander.
I agree more with Crim on Dimir being higher, I would at least put it at B given how much I've seen very solid 'self' mill along with recursion that they can protect thanks to blue, at a table not ready to deal with it they very often take over the game with the combo and mana cheating they get with protected reanimation. I've had more than my share of experience seeing it happen and doing that
Also find it strange no one mentioned how good Selesnya is at going wide and boosting mana with things like Mirari's Wake
Black have ramp - its treasure ramp. Its even better and better each "day". We have Warren Soultrader, Pitiless Plunderer, Grim Hireling, Rev, Tithe Extractor or Revel in Riches. On top of that we have cards like Black Market Connections and Ruthless Technomancer... On top of all that black have "mana doublers" like Crypt Ghast and Nirkana Revenant. If you want more "burst" mana You ahve all the rituals (Dark Riutal, Cabal Ritual or culling the weak). With all of that we still have cards like Cabal Coffers or Pyrexian Tower...
On top of that why Black was never "praised" by heaving BEST Tutors... this is why Black is so strong. You can Tutor for the best ramp card in yours deck , for the best answer etc. - you dont need 4-5 of the same type... you can play 1-2 best of each , and then 4-5 super tutors...
Last but not least - I dont get why green ramp is so overhyper here :) Decks become faster and faster... it looks like Goldfhish do not "punish" green players for do "nothing" for 3-4 turns... they need to play more agrro and tempo decks ;P Its not that hard to make "token" "ping" "burn" deck that will kill EVERYONE in turn 5 or 6... easly and with 4 lands in play... (and it dont need fast mana...).
On Simic:
Richard: but neither colour has good spot removal!
Everyone else: lists good blue spot removal
Richard: yeah but that's spot removal and spot removal sucks!
.. you just can't argue with takes like these man.. I sometimes really struggle to understand wtf Richard is thinking with his arguments.
He never mentions spot removal, he says interaction. Blue and green are the worst sweeper colors with the one exception being cyc rift, which still dosen't permanently remove stuff. not saying i agree with him but the rest of the cast mentioned spot removal when he just mentions interaction, and spot removal can never be the whole of you're interaction. Seth's argument about counterspells is a much better answer to Richards concerns but it got a little disconnected from the whole argument.
Honestly the more I hear his reasoning and thought process, the more I think he just is a really bad player.
@@bloodex91 if you think he's a bad player, boy, are you gonna be surprised when you see an actual bad player
Simic the color combo that says "hay play a land draw a card and draw a card play and extra land" on 90 percent of its stuff
Izzet artifacts is soooo good. Y'all crazy. Orzhov is a B, Golgari is S, Boros is C
This podcast made me really happy hearing white talked about as a top tier color and the threat it is. Hopefully Wizards can shift focus and start to improve red
I feel like Richard rates decks or colors on how easily he can put 80 staples into it then put 19 other cards that work with the commander. Not every white deck needs TPro and farewell, same way you don't put force of will into every blue deck.
Richard: “Don’t play spot removal in Commander.”
Also Richard: “These colors lack good interaction and removal. Rank it lower!”
Richard hating Black confused me at first but then I remembered he doesn't believe in removal.
Damage doubling is so good! Boros guild simp here.
You forget Orzhov has Ratadrabik of Urborg with a bunch of creatures that use the ring tempts you effect
Unironically if I wanted to mill someone out I’d just play simic. None of this dimir/izzet nonsense. (Also white is very strong)
I mostly agree but for me its,
S- Simic>Golgari
A- Azorius>Selesnya>
B- Orzhov>Rakdos>Izzet
C- Boros>Gruul>Dimir
I find it very interesting how differently people in casual rank color combos/ colors themslevs vs cedh players.
For example best to worst color
Casual(according to them) green,white,blue,black,red
Cedh blue,black,red,white,green
Simple trick to rank them. What color are you les happy to see when you don’t know the player and or are unfamiliar with the commander. ;)
I had a problem with aesi deck "Oh, soon i wiil draw last 20 cards in my library in 1 or 2 turns and i can`t win with a combo or smth" so i just put Jace, wieleder of mysteries and now i have casual thassa`s oracle
izzet doesnt have ramp but it plays so low to the ground and has alot of burst of temporary mana that with mana rocks and generic mana ramp you dont notice.
Mono-color > Dual-color > Tri-color > not playing magic > Five-color > having a bad day > Four-color
EDIT: also, Simic is so strong that Phil intentionally depowers his decks on clash CONSTANTLY so he won't blow out the table and feel like he's cheating... like come on lol
Four-color > No-color
most based comment ever written
Alternate Title: Two-Color Combination Ramp Tier List
My favorite deck is Oona and it is quite strong even. BUT I made it mono black. Black and Blue both want to have primarily their type of basic lands which interacts badly with each other. it was literally better for me to make the deck mono colored.
Izzet only has broken commanders. I'd rank it at least A. Treasure, artifacts, card draw, counterspells, big damage that comes out of nowhere. Storm and spellslinger are crazy good archetypes. Niv-mizzet, Locust God, ghyrson starn, etc.
Selesnya is the best color combination without a doubt
Way more on Crim's page than anyome else here. Almost 1 to 1 with his rankings.
I play Spirits and Flyers in UW and it absolutely kicks ass in my POD. For once, Seth is so dead wrong!
I mean this is a good tier list for content creators. I play edh 2 days a week 6 hours each time, play in a normal group and with plenty of randoms. The format is based around popping off and hiding your win until the very end. Richard and seth decks almost always would just suck in every game i play because slow consistant value engines dont do well. And we all play like 8 board wipes a deck minimum.
Putting gruul at C is insane.
I want to show this video to someone in like 2016 just to see them being in disbelief that white is so strong
Selesnya in A? On paper it looks good. Ramp, tokens, counters, but altogether it requires so much setup. There’s a lot of dead cards if everything isn’t going well. Most WG commanders are lackluster too. Pretty far reach if we’re using a Doctor Who commander to represent it.
I wonder how different this tier list would look if there was budget considerations (
At some point i had 5 gruul-decks and they all did the big smashy thing with exception of omnath locus of rage which was more a combo style deck. Nowadays i took all apart except 2 because my playgroup was so scared of me playing gruul, that i almost always got targeted down first 😂. I personally can't resonate with the mediocre rating, gruul hits hard, fast and can take over the game in no time
Y'all talked about Orzhov archetypes without talking about reanimator? Wiiiiiiild.
Hot take is that black sucs. Removal is not what it used to be. I actualy like blue removal better as wierd as that sounds. The only thing saving it are its mdfcs. It doesn't do anything great outside of reanimaton. I don't play tutors because I think they are not fun in casual though and I think black ramp is bad outside of monoB.
The problem with white is that it only doesn’t suck if you buy the overpriced staples (teferis protection, smothering tithe, etc.)
Selesnya Elves is still one of the strongest tribal decks in commander.
Oh boy, hope they rank my favorite color pair highly!
Gruul:
also, are you gonna do a 3 color combination tier list?
Orzhov: average
Black: medium
We fuqed up hard from the start this week
My rankings with bias against Boros and Selesnya. Due mostly lack of play without the commander.
S - Simic
A - Azorius
B - Golgari, Izzet, Gruul, Selesnya, Rakdos
C - Orzhov, Dimir, Boros
I have a Council of Four deck, it's not taxes, I'm just giving everyone cards! sure, I control the board all the time and it's sometimes absurd but I give my opponents the illusion they have power so it's alright.
Red White is Lorehold wtf are you talking about?
classic crim being right, also could've just done a 1-10 and taken the group average as opposed to just ignoring differing views