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I think you also need some kind of goal for the deck overall. Our play group recently decided to break up our play with four different categories to play each week. We have Precon week, Fun week, High Power week, and Salt week. It has worked out great. Everybody comes with the right deck and mind set for the games. It has also given us some deck building restrictions depending on what week we want that deck to fit in. We also work together to figure out what week a deck fits in. We have played games in fun week and had to ask a player to upgrade a deck to a different week. It gives everydeck a time to shine.
My group makes a game out of deck building. We all agree to a set of restrictions and budget to build a deck around that. We've done stuff like $100 to build a 3 color deck but the rest of the table each picks one of the colors, $80 to build the scariest deck you can think of, and $150 tribe that doesn't have enough "proper" support for commander.
My playgroup always brings an unmodified precon each game night in case we want to slow it down a bit.. but aside from this it can be difficult to get everyone in your group to build / buy decks at different levels because they don't have the same ability to spend as some of the other players. Personally, my group doesn't use proxies (which would alleviate the above issue) but we tend to lean towards - if you own a copy then you could proxy it in another deck but if you don't own at least one then you can't play it. Our power levels vary a bit from deck to deck because a couple of us tend to brew more thematic or memeish decks and the other two tend to build more towards highly synergistic and efficient decks. We still have fun though, which is the main thing.
@@MetaLibanez1 Your absolutely right all that matters is everyone is having fun. We have someone in our play group that likes to talk more than play haha. He does minimal things in the game but just loves hanging out. I met my play group when I was in high school and we still play together most weeks and I am 37.
Of the "3 Pillars" they talked about, a lot of more experienced players (like the EDHREC guys) will likely not focus much on "Functionality" aspect because their decks already function. Experienced deckbuilders can have a deck that more or less works before they play their first game with it. Functionality is most important for newer builders or just working out the kinks in a newer deck. Your pet deck that you've refined for 4 years doesnt need anything else to function, but there's always more room for fun and flavor.
I usually reserve judgement. But the company admitted to using surge pricing for therapy...I mean, they might help a few people, but its so shady. I understand the guys may not have control as to who the sponsors are ( management decisions).
@@BassGr00ve They also sell ALL data you give, this means more than just your personal info, but anything about bulimia, PTSD, eating disorders, whatever, is ALSO being sold as data.
Consumer products aimed at children circumvent issues with their adult counterparts. They benefit from their consumers inabilities and reasoning capabilities, on top of the fact 2 people make 2 more - it's infinite evil.
Yuuuuuuup, although you can't blame the edhrec folks since the company's outward appearance is positive despite how shady and awful it is. While real therapy is generally good, unlicensed individuals giving advice in a predatory manner under a company with terrible staff treatment is not. Hope they see your comment.
Calling out the fact that losing by being blown out in some cool way being fun is so true for me too! I love it when an opponent puts together some amazing devastating closer.
One of my favourite losses was from an opponent stealing my turn with Emerakul. He used my own stuff against me in such creative and unconventional ways, that I wasn't even mad, just impressed.
Helping my friend further his commander journey has shown me how difficult explaining optimization levels can be. My friend is finally getting into commander after playing kitchen table magic with me as kids in the 00's and arena over the past few years. It's hard to approach topics like this because it's hard to explain what makes a good composition of cards vs not and how to improve his decks without prescribing a cookie-cutter solutions or templates that may take away his feeling of creativity. Vids like this help for sure. Glad y'all keep on pumping out such great content and tackling some actually tough questions, the edhrec team is a huge asset to the community!
For me, I optimize experientially with the idea that I need to operate within a certain social optimization threshold. And that social optimization means sacrificing functional optimization: I cut tutors, fast mana artifacts outside of sol ring, stax pieces, and 2 card combos. It makes some decks difficult to build, because certain archetypes just have a very difficult time functioning in that green zone
My favorite counterspell ever is counterlash. I play it in my sea creature deck that has a ridiculous curve. It’s so much fun and I go out of my way to hold the mana up to cast it.
You guys always seem to know when to post a video about the exact thing I need help with on my decks haha. I have been tweaking my Bartoleme deck and recently made some adjustments to the number of lands based on the average CMC cost. Now I just think I need more draw
I'm an advocate for being conscientious about what sort of experience any given card/deck you have brings to the table. A related point to the topic I find interesting is when optimizing a deck fundamentally changes it vs just making it a better version of itself. An example of this that comes to mind is with The First Sliver where the most optimized way to play that commander is as a Food Chain combo deck that doesn't care about slivers at all, but if someone says they want to take their sliver kindred deck to the max, that's most certainly not what they have in mind.
Another example is the new commander Baylen, from bloomburrow, the average player would not expect their token matters payoff commander to be a kiki-birthing pod commander, or a breach deck Theyre expecting big x spells paired with critical mass mana generation
Love the discussion, The way I’ve always viewed upgrading my decks is if I want to make them “faster” or “better”, I view it as if I want to make my deck faster I usually upgrade things that make getting my deck to do its thing like mana bases and curve and efficiency, but I want to make it better I will usually add cards that work better in the strategy or synergize with what I’m already doing. I think the combination of making a deck both faster and better is where the cEDH line is
Talking lifelink for Imskir, my mind immediately went to Whip of Erebos. I was so disappointed to not see it mentioned. You don't have to worry about equipping it, and it can recur those chonky artifact creatures to toss again.
I feel like this podcast focuses so much on the first pillar, which is fair. That's the environment. But I really, really enjoyed this episode. The nuance, the focus, the ability to share this so people who look at me with blank looks on their faces when I describe this concerpt is wonderful.
Today I played a game with my Jodah deck against my casual playgroup and I just realized what it became. By changing my strategy to protect Jodah at all costs, the deck no longer runs any of the creatures I liked when I originally built it - instead, it became basically a monstrosity that not-quite-so-slowly locks everyone out of the game by ignoring removal entirely. I basically ran over a table of four people who were EXPLICITLY PLAYING TOGETHER AGAINST ME and, most of the time, it wasn't even fun (other than one or two plays). Happy to see a video approaching this kind of situation, because, honestly, by optimizing it as much as I could, I made a deck that I don't even want to play anymore - and none of my friends want to play against.
@@Cybertech134 oh, absolutely. The point was not that they teamed up against me, but that the deck I was playing became something that I did not have as much fun as I had when it was less functionally optimized.
@@rodrigonarvaes7032 i took jodah apart and reworked it to be niv mizzet guildpact with jegantha companion...i still have jodah in the deck. But i dont draw so much attention with jodah n the command zone.
my group just discussed the favorite board wipes thing. of course being an absolute lover of burn, they were not surprised hearing that worldfire gets to be my favorite. theres little things as satisfying to me and awkward to some others as seeing worldfire go off and it doesnt end the game on the spot, but knowing if i had 1 other card it would have
I run a Spirit World/transformation theme in my Satoru Umezawa deck, and one of my favourite board wipe options in there is Curse of the Swine. Not only will my creatures transform, so will yours!
I typically like to find a balance between fun and functionality. But as you were saying a lot of the times you can be the table hero for having just the right card to take care of the archenemy.
I never run tutors, I purposely hamstring manabases (also makes things cheaper tbh) and it lets me power up the actual decks themselves without seeming oppressive alot of the time. Most EDH decks are actually pretty good, its that consistency that usually leads to eye rolling from the table I've found.
A sort of happy accident I had recently was in building a WUBRG deck with the restriction of zero mono colored spells. It left me open to using more unique cards rather than the each colors auto-includes. (I did discover that there are actually a lot of fun two color mana dorks, for example.)
I think one categorial addition to a deck that nearly always improves it is interaction, usually removal. I see this a lot casually. People will run maybe 6 cards, usually split between spot removal and board wipes. I advocate alwasy for kicking those numbers up. A lot of these cards can be modal, but I alwasy like tunning 8-10 purely removal cards and 4-5 modal options where removal is a section. It represented such an improvement in my decks. Sure, I had to maybe scale the theme back, but it makes for longer games where everyone gets to see more of their deck in play and curve out to their higher level spells. I think that often it ends being the samey sorts of spells across decks, but I also find that over time you develop a collection of removal options that end up being achetype staples rather than all decks staples. Also, dont run Warped Landscape. Run Promising Vein, same thing but obly 1 mana to fetch.
I use OG Jin and Sphinx of the Second Sun in my Talrand Proteus Staff deck as the only 'hits' for the Staff. The deck is designed to take over a game on the spot because you're not just drawing the 7, you're trying to pick the 8 and get to untap before you go to your end step, meaning you can hold up tons of interaction to deal with stuff. I use this in High Power and cEDH games, neither pod is especially likely to have a pre-existing board that I can't deal with. Oh, I also have Dramatic Scepter fwiw, but it's fairly tedious to try to have Flash for your artifacts right away, and it's much easier to just Sunder everyone if they didn't warrant interaction. I think just adding Jin to the deck (and not loading it with 1 mana counters for example) and playing against people who play timmy creatures would go incredibly badly, so I think I can see how our experiences might vary. Not going to lie, last time I flew with decks I used one of those over the shoulder things (it's not a purse, courier bag? it lies flat and is just thick enough for a deck box, I think mine is a Tilley brand?), and I loaded it with as many decks as I could fit, because that thing was literally going to be with me the whole flight, it turns out you can actually fit quite a few in there (I don't know if it's half my EDH decks? The real problem is sneaking some 1v1 decks in, in case people have casual decks, though I'd love to see if any of my old Legacy decks could actually survive vs present day BS, I feel like Erebos's Titan has been slightly power crept (but Indestructible is still Indestructible and your Destroy removal can eat it!). I had no issues, even with security, so that was nice, I think it helped that the whole bag was filled with related supplies and wasn't very big. It's also able to be securely closed, better than most backpacks. I think I'd have a hard time convincing myself to bring non-proxy decks in my carry on, let alone a checked bag, I've never had issues but while I don't spend all that much on decks, many would be pretty hard to replace (especially with the same cards, lots of obscure stuff snuck in at this point). Oh, and the bag is easily small enough to fit in the 'purse' area on a plane, so you don't have to let them out of your reach, which is an asset IMHO. I think Mask of Griselbrand is an incredible card, I have it in two decks atm, I love it in Kresh because Kresh gets killed sometimes, but if he's too big and will deck me I don't have to draw, and the static abilities are still sweet in that list.
So this might be a long one and a little controversial, but I actually don’t see it as 3 axes, I see it as 4. And the way I visualize it is in two sets of two axes, each covering different topics. On one “graph”, we have experiential improvements: as the guys said, one axis is your own experience, and one is your opponents’ experience. These intersect like a 2D coordinate system and the adjustment made will fall into one of the four quadrants: better for you/worse for the table, better for the table/worse for you, better for everyone, worse for everyone. I see the other graph as mana value optimization vs what I call “intra-deck” synergy. Intra-deck synergy helps you “do the thing” your deck wants to do, more often. As an example, my Goreclaw deck. I run over 90% creatures with 4+ power since that’s what Goreclaw wants. Adios, Return of the Wildspeaker, hello Garruk’s Uprising! Why have an instant speed burst draw when every creature I play will draw me a card? Including one the turn Uprising hits the table!
Awesome episode I think that for me there is: first I think about me and how I enjoy to playing, then there is the deck building and making it strong and then I think about the table. But the order changes depending on the context. Meaning that I love my pet cards and I love when my deck performs but I dislike when the table can't play or can't perform. I can have boardwipes when the situation is tough but I wont win because of a boardwipe. I also dislike stax but sometimes it is necessary because WotC made cards too broken and easy combos. I have to assess the situation everytime sorry if it is confusing, MTG is action-reaction everytime (and I dont even play blue that often xD)
When I first make the deck initially I focus on 3 I don't want to make a deck that is super shitty to play against. Then I focus on 2 what is the fun thing "I" can do with this deck. Once the deck has been made and I play it I almost always upgrade for 1 because I'm looking to make it function better. That will also make me have a better time playing the deck if it doesn't just flop around failing. And sometimes that might end up counter to the play experience of others because I don't want to feel like I don't have options to deal with other people's decks and sometimes that means putting in hate cards or tech cards and those can suck for others to play into. But after I get stomped by a graveyard deck and realize I have no GY hate or destroyed by artifacts or lands I often focus on how to shore up those weaknesses that I missed when I was deck building.
TBH, I don't know much about CEDH. It would be a cool PODCAST TOPIC TO GO THROUGH THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN EXTREMELY HIGH-POWERED EDH AND CEDH. That would help me a lot. My Hot take fitting to the topic of this video, is namely, that the endpath is probably not CEDH. Afaik CEDH is a completely different game with a completely different cardpool to consider. If I would play cards like Pact of Negation, Flusterstorm or Force of Will in my EDH-deck without completely adapting the deck to CEDH, it would probably be worse in my playgroup than f.e. Pongify and Resculpt. What I want to say is, that you cannot make changes to a "normal" commander deck in the direction of a CEDH-deck while only changing a hand full of cards. In my mind the endpath is a buffed high powered EDH-deck where extremely powerful (and generic) cards like Cyclonic Rift and Demonic Tutor are played and where every deck has multiple ways to win the game and plan to do so in the "early" turns, but what words can be used to differentiate this from CEDH? What would you say? *Edit: Another example: If I swap out just an Arcane Signet in a precon for a Lotus Petal, it is worse now, right? But as far as my informations go, Lotus Petal is a CEDH card while Arcane Signet isnt.
The one deck I use Cathars’ Crusade only keeps it because it’s not typically putting more than 3 or 4 creatures on board in a single turn. It gets to be a little bit much to keep track of beyond that.
18:13 that’s how I felt about Zndrsplt and Ooakun. When they were first spoiled, I was at a wedding. I went to the bathroom and ordered every coin flip card there was. Everyone loved my deck. Not many people ran it. When Wizards released it as a secret lair, all of a sudden it didn’t feel unique anymore
What matt said about expression is edh for me. I'm totally fine losing every game as long as my deck does the thing. I upgrade a deck when my deck is stalling out too much on its own or the thing it's trying to do isn't happening often enough. If thats happens it's time to cut a couple of pet/flavor cards for optimized versions and make sure the decks goal is focused enough.
A nebulous sounding topic, but one I was asking myself right now. I want my next deck to be Ms Bumbleflower, but just looking at the deck has a sort of mismatched theme that making it better in what I would normally do doesn't feel like it is what would be what this deck would actually do better than another. I haven't watched most of the episode yet, but I think that I am going to make Bumbleflower mostly giving other players draw, just everyone if possible. I might edge out on unlimited hand sizes, or some benefits of more cards. But I think that will be the fun thing. It will totally fall apart if someone is playing a punishing for drawing.
My playgroup is more than 4 people , usually 5-6 and rare occasions 7-8. We don’t worry about killing players early because the first 2 players to die will hop into another game while the other game ends. It works well when someone ends up doing nothing and dies to value bops or someone’s deck pops off but only is able to kill one player
As Dana mentioned in the back half cards do not exist in a vacuum. Game knights covered that idea viewing cards in the context of being ahead, behind or even and how well that card functions in each of those circumstances.
Round number matters! If I’m doing something oppressive on turn 3, that’s a problem. If I’m doing something oppressive on turn 9, that is generally fine. Each playgroup needs to figure out where they draw that line though.
Backing up Dana’s point on the Crab deck and unique ideas, I was planning on building a Modal Tribal deck, inspired by Joey’s Commander Commander deck, led by Gnostro Voice of the Crag, where every nonland card had to be modal. But like a month after I had the idea they spoiled Riku of Many Paths, which killed all my interest in the idea. Now it wasn’t a cool and unique idea, but one with a dedicated commander and play path.
Asterions Thirst has won me the game every time in upkeep Obeka. It's almost a second "Hatred" in the command zone and doesn't even show up on EDHRec, lol.
Question! How do you find these kinds of fun and interesting cards? EDHREC is great at building decks, but it's inherently difficult to find these unique, less frequently used cards. Any advice?
It wasnt't a precon in itself but I was playing ninjas with Vela the Nightclad and Sygg River Cutthroat before they printed Yuriko in the Aminatou precon. They didn't even need to print the precon, just the commander that they went way overboard with in my opinion.
In my group we have a deck named, "a jerk deck for jerks." We only play these decks if we agree to play it because it isn't a nice deck for anyone. We never play them often, but when we do, it is always interesting to see who can be a bigger jerk.
I'm curious and have a question. Since you consider the FUNction of your decks and the cards in it; Have you considered adding a fun-score to EDHREC? (as you've done with salt-score). I know I would love that.
They have talked about a hypothetical "Sugar" score, and it seems much harder to quantify, from what they have said in the past. Also, it doesnt generate as many clicks, thats a guess of my own. Lol
@@RobThePrincess Yea, I get that, but the outline in this video seems pretty clear to me. So having people rate cards on a scale accroding to how entertaining they are to play and how entertaining they are to have played against you seems both useful and pretty straight forward. That being said, there's likely something that I'm missing, since they find it hard to quantify.
I disassembled my Hylda deck because the only optimization that made sense for it led to a play line that was going to be too oppressive for our pod and not fun to play or play against. Which was very disappointing because I really enjoyed the idea of running her when she was announced. (When theme and design make Winter Orb an obvious and automatic upgrade choice, I knew I wouldn't have friends to play with much longer, lol)
@Blacklodge_Willy absolutely fair question. I wouldn't have played it if I had kept the deck, but that's the type of play line I saw my preferred playstyle going with her, and it didn't lend itself to being optimized to my liking and still maintain its ability to be a fun play experience for everyone. So it was easier for me to break it. I may revisit her in the future though. I just think she's neat. Lol
I'm with Dana mostly, I don't want to be the archenemy. Here's a scenario for me... I play The Wise Mothman, and while Mesmeric Orb is a card I would avoid because of how it affects other players (milling them by the tons), it functionally can turn my commander into an alpha striker, and serves as a soft win-con on its own. It's a card that socially I don't want, but can't seem to live without because of its flavor and synergy, and it's relatively easy to interact with if opponents care that much.
It gets very hard to downgrade a deck to make it less of a target if your commander is itself scary. When you can't undersell your commander at all but still want to play less powerful, more fun cards along with it, try to keep at least your interaction the closest to optimal you can manage. On the other hand, if you've successfully established yourself as the underdog, then the "best" category to keep at a higher level is card advantage. Lessons learned the hard way.
I tend to upgrade based off of how i experience it, so heres acouple of my favs and how i do One of my most favorite decks to play is my crab equipment mill voltron deck, its bad, oh god its so bad, but its the most funny thing to play. No sticks (except black blade reforged) only shields, the crabs defend, the crabs defend, but most importantly, the crabs defend, the way i "upgrade" it is finding better card draw and ramp, it needs to function before i can make dumb jokes Food clues and treasures, that ome just need a more efficient win con cause it feels great to play, the deck gaslights you into a great time because you always have something to do, even if all youre doing is the 3 cups game with food clues abd treasures 5 color angels, flavor flavor flavor, if i can swap something out for a more flavorful opion,i will, except the manabase and other veggies, but with the angels that keep coming out, some of those holes get filled on their own
I think it’s cool that we’ve gotten new support for Energy in Commander, but I’m a little disappointed that there are so many Green and Black Energy cards and still no Green/Black Energy Commander not named Atraxa.
Took apart Korvold to allow other players to have a turn. Meanwhile people in my playgroup playing Dina Soul Steeper with exquisite blood in the 99. Trying to help them see the light.
I tune for speed, improved version, or response in context with my playgroup. I nearly never play against any other meta, and I want to stay at a level where I can get some pet cards or cute jank in my decks without worrying about compromising for the most optimized level.
Pretty sure my precon has a better win rate than my scary Jodah, the Unifier deck because the former draws little attention while the latter draws all of it.
I like to say fun cards have "Ward Fun". People will leave you alone more if your trying to do something neat or enjoyable. Warpworld No, Mass Hysteria Yes.
I have a Horobi, Death's Wail list that I adore. However, I have had to do two big modifications to the deck over time. One is to give it a nice zombie package/subtheme that allows me to close out the game because the old version just blew everything up and then it was a grind for me to "*get there*". The second was actually changing *HOW* I play the deck. I used to play Horobi and then just blow up everything, and then someone would kill her and rebuild and I would get (understandably) hard targeted. It was a negative feedback cycle that left everyone feeling bad. Now, I play Horobi and instead of the sledgehammer approach, I am much more surgical. It feels more fair, it draws less heat my way, it overall becomes a better experience for everyone, and Horobi tends to stick around for a little while too! In the end, it actually made the deck perform better and even win a bit more often. But I think changing how a deck is played can also really change how it is optimized as well. Yes, I changed the actually deck itself too, but when I changed the way I played it, and the overall goal of the deck? It went from groans when I played it to "Oh hell yeah, Horobi is so cool!"
Not entirely true You see in cEDH If your synergy package makes you run worse cards, it needs to be exponentially better paired, than the ad naus decks cards have to be in a vacuum And, usually the ad naus decks cards, in a vacuum, arent just not exponentially worse, but are in a vacuum, without high synergy, better than synergy strategies
You guys know the thing with spatial binding happens where it's only in 241 decks because EDHRec is an echo chamber and so many of it's users just opens up theirs commander pages and add all the recommended.
And don't get me wrong I love EDHREC I use it all the time, but just to finish my decks. If you are looking to brew something unique go with your own plan.
I strongly disagree. Functionally better is not always leading to cedh. Because function is dictated by 2 things: Your cards and your intentions. Let's take my Alesha Aristocrats deck. It grew from a different Alesha reanimator/combat trick kinda list and I thought "Well, Alesha is kinda good for aristocrats as all their creatures suck anyways so I can reanimate them for 2 mana and if they get blocked...well who cares?" In it's current overall shape this deck exists now for roughly 8ish years and I have been constantly changing and optimizing. And yes, while this deck would actually benefit from more fast mana especially Moxen...that's just not really in my budget right now. I deliberately tho do not play any infinite combos. That's why I recently banished Reassembling Skeleton from this list because I wanted to include Warren Soultrader who makes all of my creatures better (when they die). Because combo just doesn't really fit the deck strategy and identity. I would cut cards that make the aristocrat strategy strong (high density of functionally redudant effects/card types) for tutors to find my combo pieces. The entire deck plan of "Play cheap creatures early then transition into a value based atrition plan once my opponents can comfortably block." would be derailed into "find asap "When creature dies get mana" so the pirate, the soultrader or phyrexian altar, creature that can self-reanimate and a payoff that pings/drains for a creature dieing" This would make the deck faster, yes. Stronger, yes. And make my commander irrelevant freeing up that slot. But it would also change the deck entirely. So in order to make my deck better and have it keep it's identity I have to make choices that inevitably lead to a cedh unviable list. The best version of this deck slaps, and my deck right now is really strong, but it's not cedh and can't compete in those pods. By design.
I have to say, my favorite playstyle is that of Icarus: do a dumb/powerful thing. Become the threat. Get focused by the table. Go down having impacting the game.
Pushing the social aspect of the game is important, but this whole thing of Grave Pact being bad because it can lock people out (sure, it can, but so can a lot of things, and that can lead to that game ending and you play another) and it can shut down voltron and other strategies that run fewer creatures is getting really tired. Those effects are part of black’s arsenal to help deal with resource proliferation and to keep the most reliable repeatable source of damage (creatures) in check, and coddling some strategies rather than expecting those playing them to build taking into account their deck’s weaknesses kind of messes with the balances between different strategies and colors. In the meta I play in, some of the more powerful decks are voltron equipment builds, and things like Grave Pact are among the best ways to keep in check indestructible commanders with high ward scores or/and hexproof and unblockability. Some of the new Assassin’s Creed cards encourage and strengthen those builds, so I expect them to get more prominent, especially as content creators like EDHRec and the CZ keep vilifying the best strategy against them.
F tutors and F obvious two card combos. Those create a deck piloting experience that wants to play the same every time. Not my idea of fun. I like the randomness of a 99 card deck. If you want top optimization play cedh or any other 60 card format.
Each week you use the patreon shoutout to somehow poke a little fun at the persons name. The ULTIMATE dad joke comes up in todays patreon's name and you completely bypass it!
@5:05 "If you're not playing cEDH, your deck is not TRULY optimized." According to WHO? Commander is truly three overlapping formats, distinguished by card selection: * Casual Commander - No: stax, infinite combos, land destruction. Budget-friendly, no proxies. * Pay-to-Win Commander - Casual plus pay-to-win cards > $25. Proxies require permission. * Competitive EDH (cEDH) - Play-to-win, nothing legal excluded. Proxies taken for granted. Prominent promoters of Pay-to-Win Commander are WotC, online card dealers, and corporate-sponsored RUclipsrs.
Pushing the social aspect of the game is important, but this whole thing of Grave Pact being bad because it can lock people out (sure, it can, but so can a lot of things, and that can lead to that game ending and you play another) and it can shut down voltron and other strategies that run fewer creatures is getting really tired. Those effects are part of black’s arsenal to help deal with resource proliferation and to keep the most reliable repeatable source of damage (creatures) in check, and coddling some strategies rather than expecting those playing them to build taking into account their deck’s weaknesses kind of messes with the balances between different strategies and colors. In the meta I play in, some of the more powerful decks are voltron equipment builds, and things like Grave Pact are among the best ways to keep in check indestructible commanders with high ward scores or/and hexproof and unblockability. Some of the new Assassin’s Creed cards encourage and strengthen those builds, so I expect them to get more prominent, especially as content creators like EDHRec and the CZ keep vilifying the best strategy against them.
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Kudos for actually listening to the audience instead of taking the extra money by a corrupt company. Love the content.
T@@DoctorDoorknobsForever
I think you also need some kind of goal for the deck overall. Our play group recently decided to break up our play with four different categories to play each week. We have Precon week, Fun week, High Power week, and Salt week. It has worked out great. Everybody comes with the right deck and mind set for the games. It has also given us some deck building restrictions depending on what week we want that deck to fit in. We also work together to figure out what week a deck fits in. We have played games in fun week and had to ask a player to upgrade a deck to a different week. It gives everydeck a time to shine.
My group makes a game out of deck building. We all agree to a set of restrictions and budget to build a deck around that. We've done stuff like $100 to build a 3 color deck but the rest of the table each picks one of the colors, $80 to build the scariest deck you can think of, and $150 tribe that doesn't have enough
"proper" support for commander.
My playgroup always brings an unmodified precon each game night in case we want to slow it down a bit.. but aside from this it can be difficult to get everyone in your group to build / buy decks at different levels because they don't have the same ability to spend as some of the other players. Personally, my group doesn't use proxies (which would alleviate the above issue) but we tend to lean towards - if you own a copy then you could proxy it in another deck but if you don't own at least one then you can't play it.
Our power levels vary a bit from deck to deck because a couple of us tend to brew more thematic or memeish decks and the other two tend to build more towards highly synergistic and efficient decks.
We still have fun though, which is the main thing.
@@MetaLibanez1 Your absolutely right all that matters is everyone is having fun. We have someone in our play group that likes to talk more than play haha. He does minimal things in the game but just loves hanging out. I met my play group when I was in high school and we still play together most weeks and I am 37.
Someone give Joey a hug. Last time he smiled in the thumbnail was episode 221!
😂
Of the "3 Pillars" they talked about, a lot of more experienced players (like the EDHREC guys) will likely not focus much on "Functionality" aspect because their decks already function. Experienced deckbuilders can have a deck that more or less works before they play their first game with it. Functionality is most important for newer builders or just working out the kinks in a newer deck. Your pet deck that you've refined for 4 years doesnt need anything else to function, but there's always more room for fun and flavor.
I did a no card over $1 deck building challenge around Imskir and can confirm mask of grisselbrand smacks. Great challenge Matt.
FYI BetterHelp is a horrible company that doesn't treat its staff or patients right.
I usually reserve judgement. But the company admitted to using surge pricing for therapy...I mean, they might help a few people, but its so shady. I understand the guys may not have control as to who the sponsors are ( management decisions).
@@BassGr00ve They also sell ALL data you give, this means more than just your personal info, but anything about bulimia, PTSD, eating disorders, whatever, is ALSO being sold as data.
Consumer products aimed at children circumvent issues with their adult counterparts. They benefit from their consumers inabilities and reasoning capabilities, on top of the fact 2 people make 2 more - it's infinite evil.
Yuuuuuuup, although you can't blame the edhrec folks since the company's outward appearance is positive despite how shady and awful it is. While real therapy is generally good, unlicensed individuals giving advice in a predatory manner under a company with terrible staff treatment is not. Hope they see your comment.
They already know and have said they have a legally binding contract for the time being...
Calling out the fact that losing by being blown out in some cool way being fun is so true for me too! I love it when an opponent puts together some amazing devastating closer.
One of my favourite losses was from an opponent stealing my turn with Emerakul. He used my own stuff against me in such creative and unconventional ways, that I wasn't even mad, just impressed.
Helping my friend further his commander journey has shown me how difficult explaining optimization levels can be. My friend is finally getting into commander after playing kitchen table magic with me as kids in the 00's and arena over the past few years. It's hard to approach topics like this because it's hard to explain what makes a good composition of cards vs not and how to improve his decks without prescribing a cookie-cutter solutions or templates that may take away his feeling of creativity. Vids like this help for sure.
Glad y'all keep on pumping out such great content and tackling some actually tough questions, the edhrec team is a huge asset to the community!
For me, I optimize experientially with the idea that I need to operate within a certain social optimization threshold. And that social optimization means sacrificing functional optimization: I cut tutors, fast mana artifacts outside of sol ring, stax pieces, and 2 card combos.
It makes some decks difficult to build, because certain archetypes just have a very difficult time functioning in that green zone
My favorite counterspell ever is counterlash. I play it in my sea creature deck that has a ridiculous curve. It’s so much fun and I go out of my way to hold the mana up to cast it.
You guys always seem to know when to post a video about the exact thing I need help with on my decks haha. I have been tweaking my Bartoleme deck and recently made some adjustments to the number of lands based on the average CMC cost. Now I just think I need more draw
I'm an advocate for being conscientious about what sort of experience any given card/deck you have brings to the table.
A related point to the topic I find interesting is when optimizing a deck fundamentally changes it vs just making it a better version of itself. An example of this that comes to mind is with The First Sliver where the most optimized way to play that commander is as a Food Chain combo deck that doesn't care about slivers at all, but if someone says they want to take their sliver kindred deck to the max, that's most certainly not what they have in mind.
Another example is the new commander Baylen, from bloomburrow, the average player would not expect their token matters payoff commander to be a kiki-birthing pod commander, or a breach deck
Theyre expecting big x spells paired with critical mass mana generation
Yo, 6 add breaks in 30 minutes is nuts.
I like the 3 levels of facial hair:
Full beard, mustache, full shade
It's for the three basic archetypes of man: mage, rogue, and warrior.
Love the discussion, The way I’ve always viewed upgrading my decks is if I want to make them “faster” or “better”, I view it as if I want to make my deck faster I usually upgrade things that make getting my deck to do its thing like mana bases and curve and efficiency, but I want to make it better I will usually add cards that work better in the strategy or synergize with what I’m already doing. I think the combination of making a deck both faster and better is where the cEDH line is
Talking lifelink for Imskir, my mind immediately went to Whip of Erebos.
I was so disappointed to not see it mentioned.
You don't have to worry about equipping it, and it can recur those chonky artifact creatures to toss again.
yeah, mask is 6 total mana for effect, vs 4 mana, for all your creatures, plus bonus recursion if needed. Criminally underrated.
I feel like this podcast focuses so much on the first pillar, which is fair. That's the environment. But I really, really enjoyed this episode. The nuance, the focus, the ability to share this so people who look at me with blank looks on their faces when I describe this concerpt is wonderful.
Today I played a game with my Jodah deck against my casual playgroup and I just realized what it became. By changing my strategy to protect Jodah at all costs, the deck no longer runs any of the creatures I liked when I originally built it - instead, it became basically a monstrosity that not-quite-so-slowly locks everyone out of the game by ignoring removal entirely. I basically ran over a table of four people who were EXPLICITLY PLAYING TOGETHER AGAINST ME and, most of the time, it wasn't even fun (other than one or two plays). Happy to see a video approaching this kind of situation, because, honestly, by optimizing it as much as I could, I made a deck that I don't even want to play anymore - and none of my friends want to play against.
To be fair, nobody actually ever wants to play against Jodah. If you're playing him, you're asking to be teamed up against.
@@Cybertech134 oh, absolutely. The point was not that they teamed up against me, but that the deck I was playing became something that I did not have as much fun as I had when it was less functionally optimized.
@@rodrigonarvaes7032 i took jodah apart and reworked it to be niv mizzet guildpact with jegantha companion...i still have jodah in the deck. But i dont draw so much attention with jodah n the command zone.
@@ClarkAfterDark1111 I think I am gonna try either that or Shanid at some point. Thanks for the suggestion!
Awesome episode, I definitely lean towards my pods experience and thankfully they do to.
my group just discussed the favorite board wipes thing. of course being an absolute lover of burn, they were not surprised hearing that worldfire gets to be my favorite. theres little things as satisfying to me and awkward to some others as seeing worldfire go off and it doesnt end the game on the spot, but knowing if i had 1 other card it would have
I run a Spirit World/transformation theme in my Satoru Umezawa deck, and one of my favourite board wipe options in there is Curse of the Swine. Not only will my creatures transform, so will yours!
I typically like to find a balance between fun and functionality. But as you were saying a lot of the times you can be the table hero for having just the right card to take care of the archenemy.
I never run tutors, I purposely hamstring manabases (also makes things cheaper tbh) and it lets me power up the actual decks themselves without seeming oppressive alot of the time. Most EDH decks are actually pretty good, its that consistency that usually leads to eye rolling from the table I've found.
A sort of happy accident I had recently was in building a WUBRG deck with the restriction of zero mono colored spells. It left me open to using more unique cards rather than the each colors auto-includes. (I did discover that there are actually a lot of fun two color mana dorks, for example.)
I think one categorial addition to a deck that nearly always improves it is interaction, usually removal. I see this a lot casually. People will run maybe 6 cards, usually split between spot removal and board wipes. I advocate alwasy for kicking those numbers up. A lot of these cards can be modal, but I alwasy like tunning 8-10 purely removal cards and 4-5 modal options where removal is a section. It represented such an improvement in my decks. Sure, I had to maybe scale the theme back, but it makes for longer games where everyone gets to see more of their deck in play and curve out to their higher level spells. I think that often it ends being the samey sorts of spells across decks, but I also find that over time you develop a collection of removal options that end up being achetype staples rather than all decks staples.
Also, dont run Warped Landscape. Run Promising Vein, same thing but obly 1 mana to fetch.
I use OG Jin and Sphinx of the Second Sun in my Talrand Proteus Staff deck as the only 'hits' for the Staff. The deck is designed to take over a game on the spot because you're not just drawing the 7, you're trying to pick the 8 and get to untap before you go to your end step, meaning you can hold up tons of interaction to deal with stuff. I use this in High Power and cEDH games, neither pod is especially likely to have a pre-existing board that I can't deal with. Oh, I also have Dramatic Scepter fwiw, but it's fairly tedious to try to have Flash for your artifacts right away, and it's much easier to just Sunder everyone if they didn't warrant interaction. I think just adding Jin to the deck (and not loading it with 1 mana counters for example) and playing against people who play timmy creatures would go incredibly badly, so I think I can see how our experiences might vary.
Not going to lie, last time I flew with decks I used one of those over the shoulder things (it's not a purse, courier bag? it lies flat and is just thick enough for a deck box, I think mine is a Tilley brand?), and I loaded it with as many decks as I could fit, because that thing was literally going to be with me the whole flight, it turns out you can actually fit quite a few in there (I don't know if it's half my EDH decks? The real problem is sneaking some 1v1 decks in, in case people have casual decks, though I'd love to see if any of my old Legacy decks could actually survive vs present day BS, I feel like Erebos's Titan has been slightly power crept (but Indestructible is still Indestructible and your Destroy removal can eat it!). I had no issues, even with security, so that was nice, I think it helped that the whole bag was filled with related supplies and wasn't very big. It's also able to be securely closed, better than most backpacks. I think I'd have a hard time convincing myself to bring non-proxy decks in my carry on, let alone a checked bag, I've never had issues but while I don't spend all that much on decks, many would be pretty hard to replace (especially with the same cards, lots of obscure stuff snuck in at this point). Oh, and the bag is easily small enough to fit in the 'purse' area on a plane, so you don't have to let them out of your reach, which is an asset IMHO.
I think Mask of Griselbrand is an incredible card, I have it in two decks atm, I love it in Kresh because Kresh gets killed sometimes, but if he's too big and will deck me I don't have to draw, and the static abilities are still sweet in that list.
So this might be a long one and a little controversial, but I actually don’t see it as 3 axes, I see it as 4. And the way I visualize it is in two sets of two axes, each covering different topics.
On one “graph”, we have experiential improvements: as the guys said, one axis is your own experience, and one is your opponents’ experience. These intersect like a 2D coordinate system and the adjustment made will fall into one of the four quadrants: better for you/worse for the table, better for the table/worse for you, better for everyone, worse for everyone.
I see the other graph as mana value optimization vs what I call “intra-deck” synergy. Intra-deck synergy helps you “do the thing” your deck wants to do, more often. As an example, my Goreclaw deck. I run over 90% creatures with 4+ power since that’s what Goreclaw wants. Adios, Return of the Wildspeaker, hello Garruk’s Uprising! Why have an instant speed burst draw when every creature I play will draw me a card? Including one the turn Uprising hits the table!
Awesome episode
I think that for me there is: first I think about me and how I enjoy to playing, then there is the deck building and making it strong and then I think about the table. But the order changes depending on the context.
Meaning that I love my pet cards and I love when my deck performs but I dislike when the table can't play or can't perform. I can have boardwipes when the situation is tough but I wont win because of a boardwipe. I also dislike stax but sometimes it is necessary because WotC made cards too broken and easy combos. I have to assess the situation everytime
sorry if it is confusing, MTG is action-reaction everytime (and I dont even play blue that often xD)
When I first make the deck initially I focus on 3 I don't want to make a deck that is super shitty to play against. Then I focus on 2 what is the fun thing "I" can do with this deck. Once the deck has been made and I play it I almost always upgrade for 1 because I'm looking to make it function better. That will also make me have a better time playing the deck if it doesn't just flop around failing. And sometimes that might end up counter to the play experience of others because I don't want to feel like I don't have options to deal with other people's decks and sometimes that means putting in hate cards or tech cards and those can suck for others to play into. But after I get stomped by a graveyard deck and realize I have no GY hate or destroyed by artifacts or lands I often focus on how to shore up those weaknesses that I missed when I was deck building.
TBH, I don't know much about CEDH. It would be a cool PODCAST TOPIC TO GO THROUGH THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN EXTREMELY HIGH-POWERED EDH AND CEDH.
That would help me a lot. My Hot take fitting to the topic of this video, is namely, that the endpath is probably not CEDH.
Afaik CEDH is a completely different game with a completely different cardpool to consider.
If I would play cards like Pact of Negation, Flusterstorm or Force of Will in my EDH-deck without completely adapting the deck to CEDH, it would probably be worse in my playgroup than f.e. Pongify and Resculpt.
What I want to say is, that you cannot make changes to a "normal" commander deck in the direction of a CEDH-deck while only changing a hand full of cards.
In my mind the endpath is a buffed high powered EDH-deck where extremely powerful (and generic) cards like Cyclonic Rift and Demonic Tutor are played
and where every deck has multiple ways to win the game and plan to do so in the "early" turns, but what words can be used to differentiate this from CEDH?
What would you say?
*Edit: Another example: If I swap out just an Arcane Signet in a precon for a Lotus Petal, it is worse now, right? But as far as my informations go, Lotus Petal is a CEDH card while Arcane Signet isnt.
4: Aesthetically Better
Amazing episode! We need more concepts and vocabulary to talk about making decks "better".
The one deck I use Cathars’ Crusade only keeps it because it’s not typically putting more than 3 or 4 creatures on board in a single turn. It gets to be a little bit much to keep track of beyond that.
18:13 that’s how I felt about Zndrsplt and Ooakun. When they were first spoiled, I was at a wedding. I went to the bathroom and ordered every coin flip card there was.
Everyone loved my deck. Not many people ran it. When Wizards released it as a secret lair, all of a sudden it didn’t feel unique anymore
What matt said about expression is edh for me.
I'm totally fine losing every game as long as my deck does the thing.
I upgrade a deck when my deck is stalling out too much on its own or the thing it's trying to do isn't happening often enough.
If thats happens it's time to cut a couple of pet/flavor cards for optimized versions and make sure the decks goal is focused enough.
A nebulous sounding topic, but one I was asking myself right now. I want my next deck to be Ms Bumbleflower, but just looking at the deck has a sort of mismatched theme that making it better in what I would normally do doesn't feel like it is what would be what this deck would actually do better than another.
I haven't watched most of the episode yet, but I think that I am going to make Bumbleflower mostly giving other players draw, just everyone if possible. I might edge out on unlimited hand sizes, or some benefits of more cards. But I think that will be the fun thing. It will totally fall apart if someone is playing a punishing for drawing.
I like the equalizer comparison. Maybe an idea to add the social (sugar) score next to the salt score?
My playgroup is more than 4 people , usually 5-6 and rare occasions 7-8. We don’t worry about killing players early because the first 2 players to die will hop into another game while the other game ends. It works well when someone ends up doing nothing and dies to value bops or someone’s deck pops off but only is able to kill one player
As Dana mentioned in the back half cards do not exist in a vacuum. Game knights covered that idea viewing cards in the context of being ahead, behind or even and how well that card functions in each of those circumstances.
Round number matters! If I’m doing something oppressive on turn 3, that’s a problem. If I’m doing something oppressive on turn 9, that is generally fine. Each playgroup needs to figure out where they draw that line though.
Backing up Dana’s point on the Crab deck and unique ideas, I was planning on building a Modal Tribal deck, inspired by Joey’s Commander Commander deck, led by Gnostro Voice of the Crag, where every nonland card had to be modal. But like a month after I had the idea they spoiled Riku of Many Paths, which killed all my interest in the idea. Now it wasn’t a cool and unique idea, but one with a dedicated commander and play path.
Asterions Thirst has won me the game every time in upkeep Obeka. It's almost a second "Hatred" in the command zone and doesn't even show up on EDHRec, lol.
Optimized means 2 things to me:
1. Am I actively playing or not
2. Do I get excited about the cards I see most of the time
Question! How do you find these kinds of fun and interesting cards? EDHREC is great at building decks, but it's inherently difficult to find these unique, less frequently used cards. Any advice?
It wasnt't a precon in itself but I was playing ninjas with Vela the Nightclad and Sygg River Cutthroat before they printed Yuriko in the Aminatou precon. They didn't even need to print the precon, just the commander that they went way overboard with in my opinion.
In my group we have a deck named, "a jerk deck for jerks." We only play these decks if we agree to play it because it isn't a nice deck for anyone. We never play them often, but when we do, it is always interesting to see who can be a bigger jerk.
Did y'all get them at the jerk store?
@@davwad2 No. They were made in a factory. A jerk factory.
Tidal barracuda is my silly fun card.
I'm curious and have a question.
Since you consider the FUNction of your decks and the cards in it;
Have you considered adding a fun-score to EDHREC? (as you've done with salt-score).
I know I would love that.
They have talked about a hypothetical "Sugar" score, and it seems much harder to quantify, from what they have said in the past.
Also, it doesnt generate as many clicks, thats a guess of my own. Lol
@@RobThePrincess Yea, I get that, but the outline in this video seems pretty clear to me. So having people rate cards on a scale accroding to how entertaining they are to play and how entertaining they are to have played against you seems both useful and pretty straight forward.
That being said, there's likely something that I'm missing, since they find it hard to quantify.
What happened to upping the average and precon recon?
I disassembled my Hylda deck because the only optimization that made sense for it led to a play line that was going to be too oppressive for our pod and not fun to play or play against. Which was very disappointing because I really enjoyed the idea of running her when she was announced.
(When theme and design make Winter Orb an obvious and automatic upgrade choice, I knew I wouldn't have friends to play with much longer, lol)
But why not just not run that card? Hylda especially does just fine without it.
@Blacklodge_Willy absolutely fair question. I wouldn't have played it if I had kept the deck, but that's the type of play line I saw my preferred playstyle going with her, and it didn't lend itself to being optimized to my liking and still maintain its ability to be a fun play experience for everyone. So it was easier for me to break it.
I may revisit her in the future though. I just think she's neat. Lol
I'm with Dana mostly, I don't want to be the archenemy. Here's a scenario for me... I play The Wise Mothman, and while Mesmeric Orb is a card I would avoid because of how it affects other players (milling them by the tons), it functionally can turn my commander into an alpha striker, and serves as a soft win-con on its own. It's a card that socially I don't want, but can't seem to live without because of its flavor and synergy, and it's relatively easy to interact with if opponents care that much.
Dispatch is a one mana white that does the same thing if you control 3 artifacts which depending on the desk is super easy
It gets very hard to downgrade a deck to make it less of a target if your commander is itself scary. When you can't undersell your commander at all but still want to play less powerful, more fun cards along with it, try to keep at least your interaction the closest to optimal you can manage. On the other hand, if you've successfully established yourself as the underdog, then the "best" category to keep at a higher level is card advantage. Lessons learned the hard way.
I tend to upgrade based off of how i experience it, so heres acouple of my favs and how i do
One of my most favorite decks to play is my crab equipment mill voltron deck, its bad, oh god its so bad, but its the most funny thing to play. No sticks (except black blade reforged) only shields, the crabs defend, the crabs defend, but most importantly, the crabs defend, the way i "upgrade" it is finding better card draw and ramp, it needs to function before i can make dumb jokes
Food clues and treasures, that ome just need a more efficient win con cause it feels great to play, the deck gaslights you into a great time because you always have something to do, even if all youre doing is the 3 cups game with food clues abd treasures
5 color angels, flavor flavor flavor, if i can swap something out for a more flavorful opion,i will, except the manabase and other veggies, but with the angels that keep coming out, some of those holes get filled on their own
I think it’s cool that we’ve gotten new support for Energy in Commander, but I’m a little disappointed that there are so many Green and Black Energy cards and still no Green/Black Energy Commander not named Atraxa.
Took apart Korvold to allow other players to have a turn. Meanwhile people in my playgroup playing Dina Soul Steeper with exquisite blood in the 99. Trying to help them see the light.
Loxodon warhammer would also be a great addition to that imskir deck
Fumigate in my new Sorin deck or Liesa is chefs kiss.
Easy question. A deck is better when the person playing it is happier with it
I tune for speed, improved version, or response in context with my playgroup. I nearly never play against any other meta, and I want to stay at a level where I can get some pet cards or cute jank in my decks without worrying about compromising for the most optimized level.
Pretty sure my precon has a better win rate than my scary Jodah, the Unifier deck because the former draws little attention while the latter draws all of it.
Putting in one of your pet cards
I like to say fun cards have "Ward Fun". People will leave you alone more if your trying to do something neat or enjoyable. Warpworld No, Mass Hysteria Yes.
Spatial Binding MY GOD
I have a Horobi, Death's Wail list that I adore. However, I have had to do two big modifications to the deck over time.
One is to give it a nice zombie package/subtheme that allows me to close out the game because the old version just blew everything up and then it was a grind for me to "*get there*".
The second was actually changing *HOW* I play the deck. I used to play Horobi and then just blow up everything, and then someone would kill her and rebuild and I would get (understandably) hard targeted. It was a negative feedback cycle that left everyone feeling bad. Now, I play Horobi and instead of the sledgehammer approach, I am much more surgical. It feels more fair, it draws less heat my way, it overall becomes a better experience for everyone, and Horobi tends to stick around for a little while too! In the end, it actually made the deck perform better and even win a bit more often.
But I think changing how a deck is played can also really change how it is optimized as well. Yes, I changed the actually deck itself too, but when I changed the way I played it, and the overall goal of the deck? It went from groans when I played it to "Oh hell yeah, Horobi is so cool!"
Exchange swords/path for Contraband Livestock in half the decks you run them
Flavour; commander isnt about winning so all answers that involve that concept are invalid.
Can you please consider not using betterhelp as a sponsor anymore?
Contractual obligations supersede concerns
why?
Because it’s a contract.
I literally just joined off their sponsorship... Is there something bad or wrong with them I should know about?
@@Donny-Gthey treat staff and clients poorly, they also sell *all* data collected including very sensitive information
Matt's mustache makes him look like he turns off his body cam.
Joey trying to play cheatDH to get a soda, I see how it is
What makes a deck better? Synergy! If the cards make each other more powerful then you will over power a deck with less synergy.
Not entirely true
You see in cEDH
If your synergy package makes you run worse cards, it needs to be exponentially better paired, than the ad naus decks cards have to be in a vacuum
And, usually the ad naus decks cards, in a vacuum, arent just not exponentially worse, but are in a vacuum, without high synergy, better than synergy strategies
Tortoirous! That pun was Tortoirous!
Tortoise gets feet wet in world of turtle decks and realizes it’s not their bowl of lettuce
If you’re friends hate it you’re moving in the right direction lol
I thought Matt's turtle joke was TERRAble one
I have an extremely spicy Phasing hate deck, that runs spatial binding. It's a house tbh.
You guys know the thing with spatial binding happens where it's only in 241 decks because EDHRec is an echo chamber and so many of it's users just opens up theirs commander pages and add all the recommended.
And don't get me wrong I love EDHREC I use it all the time, but just to finish my decks. If you are looking to brew something unique go with your own plan.
Did joey just get an unchallenged challenge the stats segue in 2024???
I strongly disagree. Functionally better is not always leading to cedh. Because function is dictated by 2 things: Your cards and your intentions.
Let's take my Alesha Aristocrats deck. It grew from a different Alesha reanimator/combat trick kinda list and I thought "Well, Alesha is kinda good for aristocrats as all their creatures suck anyways so I can reanimate them for 2 mana and if they get blocked...well who cares?"
In it's current overall shape this deck exists now for roughly 8ish years and I have been constantly changing and optimizing. And yes, while this deck would actually benefit from more fast mana especially Moxen...that's just not really in my budget right now.
I deliberately tho do not play any infinite combos. That's why I recently banished Reassembling Skeleton from this list because I wanted to include Warren Soultrader who makes all of my creatures better (when they die).
Because combo just doesn't really fit the deck strategy and identity. I would cut cards that make the aristocrat strategy strong (high density of functionally redudant effects/card types) for tutors to find my combo pieces.
The entire deck plan of "Play cheap creatures early then transition into a value based atrition plan once my opponents can comfortably block." would be derailed into "find asap "When creature dies get mana" so the pirate, the soultrader or phyrexian altar, creature that can self-reanimate and a payoff that pings/drains for a creature dieing"
This would make the deck faster, yes. Stronger, yes. And make my commander irrelevant freeing up that slot. But it would also change the deck entirely.
So in order to make my deck better and have it keep it's identity I have to make choices that inevitably lead to a cedh unviable list.
The best version of this deck slaps, and my deck right now is really strong, but it's not cedh and can't compete in those pods. By design.
Officer Matt!
I have to say, my favorite playstyle is that of Icarus: do a dumb/powerful thing. Become the threat. Get focused by the table. Go down having impacting the game.
Pushing the social aspect of the game is important, but this whole thing of Grave Pact being bad because it can lock people out (sure, it can, but so can a lot of things, and that can lead to that game ending and you play another) and it can shut down voltron and other strategies that run fewer creatures is getting really tired. Those effects are part of black’s arsenal to help deal with resource proliferation and to keep the most reliable repeatable source of damage (creatures) in check, and coddling some strategies rather than expecting those playing them to build taking into account their deck’s weaknesses kind of messes with the balances between different strategies and colors. In the meta I play in, some of the more powerful decks are voltron equipment builds, and things like Grave Pact are among the best ways to keep in check indestructible commanders with high ward scores or/and hexproof and unblockability. Some of the new Assassin’s Creed cards encourage and strengthen those builds, so I expect them to get more prominent, especially as content creators like EDHRec and the CZ keep vilifying the best strategy against them.
What if edhrec had an equalizer view? 🙃
F tutors and F obvious two card combos. Those create a deck piloting experience that wants to play the same every time. Not my idea of fun. I like the randomness of a 99 card deck. If you want top optimization play cedh or any other 60 card format.
Islands
Each week you use the patreon shoutout to somehow poke a little fun at the persons name. The ULTIMATE dad joke comes up in todays patreon's name and you completely bypass it!
I'm just interested in Making my deck to increase it's salt score.
Tldr "Efficiency"
GameFreakSA callout woo! Michael is the best builder on the internet!
betterhelp sponsorship, minus twenty respect points
"If your deck isn't cEDH it isn't optimized" I don't think this podcast has taken any linear algebra classes
I believe the percise wording was "not truly optimized". Big difference there.
@5:05 "If you're not playing cEDH, your deck is not TRULY optimized."
According to WHO? Commander is truly three overlapping formats, distinguished by card selection:
* Casual Commander - No: stax, infinite combos, land destruction. Budget-friendly, no proxies.
* Pay-to-Win Commander - Casual plus pay-to-win cards > $25. Proxies require permission.
* Competitive EDH (cEDH) - Play-to-win, nothing legal excluded. Proxies taken for granted.
Prominent promoters of Pay-to-Win Commander are WotC, online card dealers, and corporate-sponsored RUclipsrs.
I absolutely HATE the "Dad jokes"
Sorry?
@@mathimus55 Apology accepted.
Also Better Help is SUPER scammy wtf, why are you shilling for a terrible company.
Pushing the social aspect of the game is important, but this whole thing of Grave Pact being bad because it can lock people out (sure, it can, but so can a lot of things, and that can lead to that game ending and you play another) and it can shut down voltron and other strategies that run fewer creatures is getting really tired. Those effects are part of black’s arsenal to help deal with resource proliferation and to keep the most reliable repeatable source of damage (creatures) in check, and coddling some strategies rather than expecting those playing them to build taking into account their deck’s weaknesses kind of messes with the balances between different strategies and colors. In the meta I play in, some of the more powerful decks are voltron equipment builds, and things like Grave Pact are among the best ways to keep in check indestructible commanders with high ward scores or/and hexproof and unblockability. Some of the new Assassin’s Creed cards encourage and strengthen those builds, so I expect them to get more prominent, especially as content creators like EDHRec and the CZ keep vilifying the best strategy against them.