Absolutely! Scared my friends when I could play multiple spells a turn due to my now "land heavy" decks. I am assisting them on their road to recovery as well.
That Halsin deck is COOKING!! Genuinely had no idea how i would even tackle this commander. I actually own both Halsin and Inspiring Leader, so I may build this deck thanks to this video!
@sd_does_stuff like snail said during viconia, all the winning decks were my favorites except for the viconia winner. I liked the orzhov astral slide shell on better because of how it used faceless one.
For Alora I built an act of treason kind of deck with "Dragon Cultist" background. It runs both steal until end of turn cards and low mana combat tricks to trigger background - create 4/4 flying tokens. Thanks to Alora's return trigger, act of treasons also acts as bounce spells - additional tax for opponents.
No disrespect to the winner, but that sounds infinitely more interesting and unique than a sneak attack Alora deck, which was already one of the most common strategies even before this challenge
That Halsin incubate idea is 10/10. I'm still trying to nail the direction that I want to go with my Imoen deck.... My poor Imoen deck has been waiting around for a rework for too long
My recommendation is to put stuff in to make your creatures unblockable so you can reliably take back initiative, as well as putting in as many "take the initiative" cards as possible. Lots of creatures that let you venture into the dungeon require that they hit someone, so making them unblockable helps with that as well. For your background I would suggest Dungeon Delver, but that would just give you blue, though it is the best color at making things unblockable it would undeniably limit your options. I run Imoen in the 98 for my own Dungeon Delver Deck and she puts in a lot of work keeping my hand filled when I do get her.
Shout out to the other six people who decided to doubly challenge their deck building by making their decks PEDH legal. We may not have won, but we vibed! Personal honorable mention to all the warriors who saw the opportunity to play any two color combo they wanted and decided to just go mono-color instead. Especially you, the one single person who made Mono-Green Halsin. You're a legend in my book...
Very happy to be one of the honorable mentions. Kinda wish there was a breakdown for all of these as an additional video/videos. I love seeing you analyzing the decks!
This one was so tough. Felt like I was on the verge of a couple fun ideas but couldn’t get there. Excited to see the results! Edit: HALSINCUBATE WAS REAL THE WHOLE TIME!!! I tried it in Golgari and couldn’t make it work. Exciting to see someone get there!
Thanks Snail and the community. I think videos and challenges like this push the community in a really positive direction of creativity and self expression.
Could not agree more, it's a lot of fun. I'm the only one in my group that is into this sort of challenge, it's awesome to interact w so many others who appreciate this aspect of mtg.
@laurenty6325 I know right! I was so mindblown when Snail broke decks down into 'decks who do a thing that isn't immediately winning' and 'decks who's thing is an immediate win'. I never conceptualized just how important it is when building decks that are fun to lose with so to speak.
It was very fun taking part in this challange, I like my silly Ellyn and Faceless One "what if I just shoved every background available in this?" deck a lot more than I expected, and I'd never have done it without this! Here's to more challanges in the future!
Love the series! Please do more of that "build decks around an unknown commander" :D The creativity of how to build around a certain commander from some of these folks is amazing
I'm really happy that one of the decks mentioned was a sneak attack deck, as that's what I had a lot of fun building for the challenge. I did an Amber Gruul deck with the same polymorph effects to find sneak attack (or Purphuros), but mostly used it to churn through hands efficiently, getting the most value off Amber's wheel. Instead of flicker, the deck used grave recursion to sling creatures over and over again, or to get back a destroyed sneak attack.
I built a Folk Hero Alora deck that utilized her return to hand to get cast triggers off repeatedly, including using small flash rogues to trigger folk hero on opponent's turns. As well as using a toolbox of removal, ramp and tutors that could also be repeated with Alora. But I didn't read the deadline correctly and didn't submit it on time, lol. Congrats to filthystaxplayer again, you did not disappoint once again. Polymorphing your background is so smart. Cool to see tavern brawler up there as well, out of all the backgrounds that is one I was not expecting to see, but it puts such a cool spin on the perfect route of cycling for viconia. Also, I saw and playtested that aura martyr's bond halsin deck before the contest was over. Glad it got some spotlight cause it is a great concept. Congrats to everyone!
I made the Azorius Twiddle storm deck for Ellyn Harbreeze, Busybody. I was really surprised and happy seeing my deck in the Honorable mentions and just glad that the other twiddle storm deck won in that category. Love the content as always! :D
I didn’t join in on the challenge, but I’ve wanted to build some lesser used background commanders for a while, so I joined in spirit. I’ve been working on an Amber O’Maul and Agent of the Shadow Thieves deck that focuses on cheap creatures that can be recurred easily (many of which are skeletons/phoenixes) to consistently have attackers for Amber to help me draw/discard more targets to reanimate. I’m including a sub theme of cards that trigger off of cards leaving the graveyard (Tormod, desecrated tomb, skeleton crew) to help leverage value into a meaningful threat.
If your goal is to be moving creatures in and out of grave might I suggest Tortured Existence if you aren't already running it. The ability to trigger things like Syr Konrad twice per black mana you spend is incredible. Another good one (especially if you are already running some Phoenixes) would be Syrix, who works exceptionally well with Tortured Existence.
I was excited about this challenge and built an Amber deck but I unfortunately was not clear on the submission deadline and didn't complete my deck until after it had closed. I still had fun - I built a cleric-based reanimator deck using Haunted One that started with a low curve of clerics to pressure life totals early and then play out on-board reanimation effects to bring back big demons and dragons that I use Amber's attack trigger to discard. I'm certain it would not have been as cohesive as the winning Amber deck but it's cool that I had a pretty similar concept.
Aw man, didn't know about this otherwise I could have showed off my Alora/Far Traveler brew. It's an azorius manifest/morph deck, using both the commander's downside and the background to either bounce or flicker face down cards for draw, ramp, and cheating things in.
I've been looking at backgrounds for a couple of months but never brew the deck itself, this great video could give me right push to finally do it. Incredible decks all around
I love watching these and seeing all the creativity people have. I enjoy the budget decks quite a bit since I could consider building one. The dwarf/cleric tribal looks so flavorful and was probably my favorite of the bunch.
Ah, missed my chance. I have an Alora Haunted One rogues deck with plenty of ways to tap and untap Alora repeatedly at instant speed. It's very sticky (unless mass exile) and the +2 for each tap can make seemingly underwhelming rogues incredibly scary. It's probably the deck I'm most proud of because it combines defense and offense in a very elegant way leading to interesting and explosive turns. Alora's ability comes in handy for prowl effects, removing the +1 counter after Undying on important creatures and just going for the win. Gollum is also a nice addition since despite not being a rogue, but being a halfling, can trigger Undying ETBs on a whim from the graveyard. Aetherborn Marauder is also a surprise after an incidental boardwipe.
While I'm probably not building any of the decks mentioned in the video, this is making me want to open up my baldurs gate binder and see what other backgrounds are worth revisiting. Cool ideas all around.
Wow! I just recently made a Halsin deck while looking through lower priced commanders, and didn’t know backgrounds could mix color identity (I guess I didn’t think through the fact that they were parts of your commander)! I went with a mono-green Cloakwood Hermit sac-monster theme to turn the squirrel generation into a rider on already beneficial choices. My favorite part of the deck is how the removal options all end up generating tokens, either with creatures like Elvish/Druid Lyrist, or with Pest Infestation generating upwards of 12 tokens. Very fun commander! … also didn’t realize they didn’t have to be creature tokens.
I did not know about the deckbuilding challenge. I was already playing Halsin wit the Clan Crafter Background. Incubate works really well, but the Urza Golems are just stronger.
I spent a while building an izzet alora deck based around passing creatures equipped with "whenever equiped creature attacks, create an attacking token" to trigger on other people's turns, before I realized creatures that would enter attacking on other player's turns don't enter attacking.
This is so cool, one of my favorite decks is my boros Ellyn + Street Urchin treasures deck, started out as a draft deck, and now is built as a treasure+burn brew!
As a fan of the Halsin card myself, I love seeing what others come up with! My version does have some incubate, but not to the degree that the winner had, and I quite like the winners version. Keep doing challenges like this in the future!
That Halsin deck is cool as hell. My thought upon hearing the challenge was Gruul treasures focused on instant speed actions, and I might still build it.
This was a fun video, and I would love to see more of this , what about a video on making a tribal vanilla deck, seeing a bunch of creatures with no effects winning a table would be hilarious
Here's an deckbuilding challenge idea: What about challenge people to make interesting and unique decks with the most popular commanders? Most of them are always just the same midrange value tribal anyway, I'd like to see people being creative with them for once. The 5 options for commanders could be the Top 1 of each color in EDHREC, something like that.
Alora seems fun in a budget traitor deck using cheap cards to borrow threats and bounce them to their owners hand instead of losing control of them in your end step
I built a somewhat upgraded version of the Viconia deck. Works way better than expected and is fun to play. For others who might want to build an upgraded version I suggest taking out the emerge and off-theme big creatures and some other so-so cards like for cards like: Living Death Palantir of Orthanc Zephyr Boots Sensei's Divining Top Sickening Shoal Kardur, Doomscourge Valki, God of Lies (mostly to strip early blockers out of opponent hands) Cut // Ribbons Doom Whisperer Vial Smasher the Fierce Animate Dead Cave-In Azra Oddsmaker Avatar of Woe
I didn’t see the prompt and didn’t submit anything. But I have a Halsin deck that I consider one of my top three most fun decks to play (out of about 30 that I own). It uses the background Feywild Trickster mainly for blue, but also to make some nasty 4/4 flying fairy bears. I made this into a clue deck. I create a bunch of clues and then turn them into bears. Then I sacrifice them after they smash. I get combat damage, second card drawn this turn synergies, and creatures dying synergies. Like I said, I have a lot of fun with it.
Of all these choices, Halsin was immediately the one I'd gravitate towards with creating something cool. For alot of the other ones, I could just take one look at them and just kinda know what I'd do with it. Alora? Ninjas with either a token black background for the colour or "Candlekeep Sage" if I wanted a background I'd actually get some use out of. Amber? Madness/Delve/Escape with probably cirminal past as my choice of background. Viconia? I'd probably do some ETB-stuff that I'd keep looping around, using Cultist of the Absolute as a way to make Viconia herself a threat while kickstarting the grave-dump. Ellyn? Okay, gonna have to be honest, I have no inspiration for this one, it kinda bores me to tears. With Halsin though? There's quite alot of fun and interesting things you could be doing there. One idea I got was like "Half-bears, Half-Elves" to create a deck, where both tribes are represented without messing with the synergy, using Folk Hero to give that sweet token-goodstuff. Another one was Eldrazi, using scions and spawns as 4/4 beaters early and then getting big dudes off the mana they turn into, probably with some red background. If it were up to me though, I'd have to go with a Simic list. The most interesting thing of course is to do non-creatures into creatures using this guy. Much as Overlord of the Hauntwoods presents the potential of "Lands into Bears", I think it's too soon for that and we'll have to wait for that one to become a reality. Clues would probably be the thing I'd focus on. You can pump those bastards out super quick, they're card draw and you like having them regardless if they're 4/4s or just tokens.
Cool decks! It's no surprise that a cycling deck made the list with your history 😅 It was a cool idea for the deck, but it is funny because you ate notorious for a deck that makes good use of cycling.
This is sweet. I've always been fascinated by the idea of making 5 different mono-colored 50 card decks that you can randomly decide between them and then put the commanders in the command zone. This would have been a good challenge to tackle that idea.
A buddy of mine built 5 versions of Wilson refined grizzly this way. The green core is the same from deck to deck and each background features a suite of cards in that color to complete each build.
Damn, i builted an amber haunted one deck just a week ago, i was looking to figure out how the deck would work and i turned out in the funniest shadowborn apostle deck i've ever played
The idea I had for this challenge was a Halsin deck with Veteran Soldier as the background, but i was honesty too lazy to sign up for the Discord server to submit it. Been looking forward to what people built for this!
Didn't win, but I will bask in the 7 seconds of us Alora/Cultist of the Absolute Voltron decks getting special attention in the description of deck themes (2:06). It was really fun jamming it in my local pods as a playtest before sending it in. As always the fun of playtesting, I realized I didn't read the text box quite closely enough (*after* committing to the Voltron plan) and had to hot remove Lightning Greaves. Still, I don't think I've ever played with a more consistent Voltron deck.
Imo, that is way more interesting and unique than Sneak Attack. I hit the hardest eye roll when he mentioned it was a sneak attack deck, as if that wasn't already the most popular archetype for her outside of maybe ninjas
@ While I do agree, it, quite frankly, comes down to preference. I personally dislike it because I'm not generally fond of "cheat out billion mana creature early" type decks due to the feels bad of drawing either only or none of the mega-cmc creatures. I also have a strong destain for "secret-commander" decks, seeing them as lackluster before and after the secret-commander is on the battlefield, so it folds to a single, well placed, removal spell. These two factors lead me to scoff at the idea of making Alora a Sneak Attack deck. Snail clearly has no qualms with either archetype, one of his favorite decks being his Sharum Slide deck; a deck that is also fits in with both architypes mentioned. Still, I greatly enjoyed the deck in an archetype I don't play often, so I feel no worse for the experiance.
That halsin deck is so interesting, i thought about doing a eldrazi build of him but i never considered incubate. Didn't even realize you could do any token and not just a creature token
I hope i won! Will update Edit: I feel implied in the conversation but not mentioned but i still feel proud. I had a dimir ninjas list, and was unfortunately the second to post a dimir ninjas list. I thought i was incredibly well tuned and cohesive so i figured being second wasnt that bad but eh
I wish I'd known about this! I've had an Amber Gristle + Veteran Soldier deck brewing in my head for literal years now but no real reason to put it together and finish the list since it'd be far below the power level of my pods. Veteran Soldier lets you guarantee drawing as many cards as you have opponents each time you attack, so most of the rest of the deck is reanimator... in Boros!
I loved building for this challenge, and while I didn't win, I've gained a new favourite deck with it, which is in a completely different direction from my usual decks. So thank you for hosting these, it gives me a great excuse to build more!
I'm surprised more people didn't look at an Azorius Squad deck with Alora. Look to repeatedly haste out your non-token squad creature with crashing drawbridge or some haste equipment to get the Alora trigger and return it to hand, keeping the value from all the token copies
A friend of mine who isn't in the discord runs a crazy mono blue Clone tribal Alora/Shameless Charlatan deck that uses Alora to recycle clone card. I had wanted to submit it for him but he didn't have it made on moxfield and wasn't able to get it to me until after the deadline. I don't think its as clever/creative as the Alora/Guild Artisan deck but I'm curious what others would think of it. It's not an incredibly well built deck but its use of the commander is clever and its simple game plan of winning by playing 5 copies of the best card at the table at any given time lets it do its thing at pretty much any given power level even if it doesn't win often.
Those were some sick decks. I really am enjoying the series. After the first one I decided to get and upgrade the Eomer God Pharaoh's Gift deck and upgrade it. It's been a blast. For the next episode may I suggest misleading MOMs? By that I mean the challenge would be to build a deck around a legendary pseudopair from the March of Machines set, and build a theme that isn't obvious and straightforward, but complementary and surprising. For example I am trying to brew Borborygmos and Fblthp right now, which has a triggered ability that discards lands and a triggered ability to put him in the library. I decided this would be the perfect commander for temur werewolves instead of all that. I also recently built Zimone and Dina infect and it has quickly become one of my favorite brews. You could take the same idea and use Nyx gods or something up to you! Keep it up
I had a creature steal alora deck using popular entertainer that would steal creatures, attack, then bounce them to opponent hands which I've tried but never polished. Wish i had the time to submit that take on the commander. I felt it was the nicest way to do board steal because it never dies and just bounces.
For a deckbuilding idea, maybe you could do something where you take an especially popular commander and try to do something different with it? Like say you take atraxa and make a stun counters deck, or a shield counter deck.
Though it was with blue animate artifact effects and not Halsin, I had a similar deck that utilized the fact that incubator tokens enter with a ton of +1/+1 counters. Super funny on turn 4 to smack in with an 8/8 or 9/9 creature.
I may not have won or been picked as an honorable mention, but this was a super fun activity nonetheless. Congrats to everyone who won! That Halsin deck absolutely deserves the spot over mine, and I hope there will be more deckbuilding challenges in the future :]
I was thinking about what other building challenges you could do, and personally, the tarkir dragonlords or the strixhaven dragons look the best, they are all massively flavourful and can be interesting build arounds
I love the Halsin deck, honestly, the only thing I would try to sneak into the 99 is Greater Good because, for one, I absolutely love that card, but also because it synergizes well with the gameplan of being able to generate lots of 4/4 and up creatures relatively cheaply.
I'd love to see a deckbuilding challenge for the M19 Elder Dragons. I run Vaevictis Asmadi, The Dire myself, though it's a pretty standard one that I've been building up since it first released.
I noticed that there were no decks on Edhrec for Ellyn and Hardy Outlander, but I didn't manage to finish my deck in time for submission. I wanted to use Opalescence to make Hardy Outlander a creature, then play Raised By Giants to overwrite Opalescence's power toughness modification, attack with Ellyn and Hardy Outlander to have them share the Hardy Outlander buff with each other making them both 20/20's. Add any +1 for lethal. I just wanna beat people up with my past.
You should make a video about how to penetrate value engine midrange. It's by far the most dominant deck archetype in casual, and the stax/control approaches that typically work to prevent those greedy decks are frowned upon and typically not very fun. What are some fun ways to counter simic players putting 5 lands out, putting 10 counters on all their creatures and drawing 15 cards per turn? Thanks!
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
Hi snail I'm happy to report that I'm playing more lands. Thank you for starting me on this journey of recovery 🙏
same!
Can confirm my win rate and overall consistency and joy playing the game has gone way up since playing more lands
Absolutely! Scared my friends when I could play multiple spells a turn due to my now "land heavy" decks. I am assisting them on their road to recovery as well.
Coming from the competitive magic side, always brings me joy to see people making better deckbuilding decisions, Snail you are truly the goat
happy to report I'm not 🤪🤪🤪👅👅👅👅
I submitted the Spell-less Spellslinger deck. Love the shoutout. It was a ton of fun building and discussing these decks in your discord.
What a cool deck!
I'd love to see this deck. I have no idea how spell less spell slinger would work
I saw your deck posted right after mine. I thought for sure it was going to win. A+ for creativity.
Is the lost posted to the discord? I'm curious abt this list, sounds really fun!
@@Kaiju_Tea_Party It was an adventure deck, using alora to bounce them back to hand to replay
That Halsin deck is COOKING!! Genuinely had no idea how i would even tackle this commander.
I actually own both Halsin and Inspiring Leader, so I may build this deck thanks to this video!
The idea of Halsin commanding an army of machine/flesh monstrocity bears will never not be funny to me
Using the Background as a way to ensure that you always have a way to generate artifacts by way of Polymorph is an incredible play pattern
Very fun to go through the decks with you always!!!! I also love baldur's gate so this one was extra fun to look through
What was your favorite deck that didnt make the cut
@sd_does_stuff like snail said during viconia, all the winning decks were my favorites except for the viconia winner. I liked the orzhov astral slide shell on better because of how it used faceless one.
@@33elk Aww. Thanks for saying my Amber deck in particular was your favorite!
For Alora I built an act of treason kind of deck with "Dragon Cultist" background. It runs both steal until end of turn cards and low mana combat tricks to trigger background - create 4/4 flying tokens. Thanks to Alora's return trigger, act of treasons also acts as bounce spells - additional tax for opponents.
No disrespect to the winner, but that sounds infinitely more interesting and unique than a sneak attack Alora deck, which was already one of the most common strategies even before this challenge
@@mooninites755Thank you very much for kind words
That Halsin incubate idea is 10/10. I'm still trying to nail the direction that I want to go with my Imoen deck.... My poor Imoen deck has been waiting around for a rework for too long
My recommendation is to put stuff in to make your creatures unblockable so you can reliably take back initiative, as well as putting in as many "take the initiative" cards as possible. Lots of creatures that let you venture into the dungeon require that they hit someone, so making them unblockable helps with that as well. For your background I would suggest Dungeon Delver, but that would just give you blue, though it is the best color at making things unblockable it would undeniably limit your options. I run Imoen in the 98 for my own Dungeon Delver Deck and she puts in a lot of work keeping my hand filled when I do get her.
Shout out to the other six people who decided to doubly challenge their deck building by making their decks PEDH legal. We may not have won, but we vibed!
Personal honorable mention to all the warriors who saw the opportunity to play any two color combo they wanted and decided to just go mono-color instead.
Especially you, the one single person who made Mono-Green Halsin. You're a legend in my book...
what is PEDH?
Victory for the Amber Jank! I had a lot of fun making this deck!
Very happy to be one of the honorable mentions. Kinda wish there was a breakdown for all of these as an additional video/videos. I love seeing you analyzing the decks!
This one was so tough. Felt like I was on the verge of a couple fun ideas but couldn’t get there. Excited to see the results!
Edit: HALSINCUBATE WAS REAL THE WHOLE TIME!!! I tried it in Golgari and couldn’t make it work. Exciting to see someone get there!
I can never tell when watching these if my deck building is lacking or if you are just the best hype person around.
Thanks Snail and the community. I think videos and challenges like this push the community in a really positive direction of creativity and self expression.
Could not agree more, it's a lot of fun. I'm the only one in my group that is into this sort of challenge, it's awesome to interact w so many others who appreciate this aspect of mtg.
@laurenty6325 I know right! I was so mindblown when Snail broke decks down into 'decks who do a thing that isn't immediately winning' and 'decks who's thing is an immediate win'. I never conceptualized just how important it is when building decks that are fun to lose with so to speak.
That Viconia deck is downright impressive, what a fun direction to take two cards that seemingly have little to no synergy
i don't even really play magic anymore but i want to get back into deckbuilding. do you do these challenges every month?
More like every 2-3 months is what I'm shooting for at the moment
It was very fun taking part in this challange, I like my silly Ellyn and Faceless One "what if I just shoved every background available in this?" deck a lot more than I expected, and I'd never have done it without this!
Here's to more challanges in the future!
I’m happy to report that all of my commander decks are now 50% Lands and 50% Interaction 🙏
Love the series! Please do more of that "build decks around an unknown commander" :D
The creativity of how to build around a certain commander from some of these folks is amazing
Yes, please do more of these. I didn't finish mine in time to submit, but I had a lot of fun working on it. I'd love to be able to give it another go.
I'm really happy that one of the decks mentioned was a sneak attack deck, as that's what I had a lot of fun building for the challenge. I did an Amber Gruul deck with the same polymorph effects to find sneak attack (or Purphuros), but mostly used it to churn through hands efficiently, getting the most value off Amber's wheel. Instead of flicker, the deck used grave recursion to sling creatures over and over again, or to get back a destroyed sneak attack.
This was a lot of fun, and thank you for walking us through your selection process.
I look forward to the next round!
Sunder the Gateway is insanely underrated
I built a Folk Hero Alora deck that utilized her return to hand to get cast triggers off repeatedly, including using small flash rogues to trigger folk hero on opponent's turns. As well as using a toolbox of removal, ramp and tutors that could also be repeated with Alora. But I didn't read the deadline correctly and didn't submit it on time, lol.
Congrats to filthystaxplayer again, you did not disappoint once again. Polymorphing your background is so smart. Cool to see tavern brawler up there as well, out of all the backgrounds that is one I was not expecting to see, but it puts such a cool spin on the perfect route of cycling for viconia.
Also, I saw and playtested that aura martyr's bond halsin deck before the contest was over. Glad it got some spotlight cause it is a great concept.
Congrats to everyone!
I made the Azorius Twiddle storm deck for Ellyn Harbreeze, Busybody. I was really surprised and happy seeing my deck in the Honorable mentions and just glad that the other twiddle storm deck won in that category. Love the content as always! :D
The deck whose price assumed it won is hilarious
Thanks!
Mom I'm on Snail TV!! thank you so much for the honorable mention 😊 (mine was Amber's pump-tron deck).
I didn’t join in on the challenge, but I’ve wanted to build some lesser used background commanders for a while, so I joined in spirit. I’ve been working on an Amber O’Maul and Agent of the Shadow Thieves deck that focuses on cheap creatures that can be recurred easily (many of which are skeletons/phoenixes) to consistently have attackers for Amber to help me draw/discard more targets to reanimate. I’m including a sub theme of cards that trigger off of cards leaving the graveyard (Tormod, desecrated tomb, skeleton crew) to help leverage value into a meaningful threat.
If your goal is to be moving creatures in and out of grave might I suggest Tortured Existence if you aren't already running it. The ability to trigger things like Syr Konrad twice per black mana you spend is incredible. Another good one (especially if you are already running some Phoenixes) would be Syrix, who works exceptionally well with Tortured Existence.
Less then 1 minute after release. I HAVE BEEN CHOSEN!
I was excited about this challenge and built an Amber deck but I unfortunately was not clear on the submission deadline and didn't complete my deck until after it had closed. I still had fun - I built a cleric-based reanimator deck using Haunted One that started with a low curve of clerics to pressure life totals early and then play out on-board reanimation effects to bring back big demons and dragons that I use Amber's attack trigger to discard.
I'm certain it would not have been as cohesive as the winning Amber deck but it's cool that I had a pretty similar concept.
hey, could you put your decklist online? Your deck seems pretty nice!
Great video! Great deck ideas!
You could even make a 20min video on each commander, referencing a few of the distinct ideas presented for each
Aw man, didn't know about this otherwise I could have showed off my Alora/Far Traveler brew. It's an azorius manifest/morph deck, using both the commander's downside and the background to either bounce or flicker face down cards for draw, ramp, and cheating things in.
I've been looking at backgrounds for a couple of months but never brew the deck itself, this great video could give me right push to finally do it. Incredible decks all around
I love watching these and seeing all the creativity people have. I enjoy the budget decks quite a bit since I could consider building one. The dwarf/cleric tribal looks so flavorful and was probably my favorite of the bunch.
The Viconia deck is begging for Palantir of Orthanc imo but looks super fun as is
Good shout. Topdeck manipulation and big damage.
Congrats to all the winners!
I'm happy to be one of the honourable mentions. I had a blast building and refining my deck
Ah, missed my chance. I have an Alora Haunted One rogues deck with plenty of ways to tap and untap Alora repeatedly at instant speed. It's very sticky (unless mass exile) and the +2 for each tap can make seemingly underwhelming rogues incredibly scary. It's probably the deck I'm most proud of because it combines defense and offense in a very elegant way leading to interesting and explosive turns.
Alora's ability comes in handy for prowl effects, removing the +1 counter after Undying on important creatures and just going for the win. Gollum is also a nice addition since despite not being a rogue, but being a halfling, can trigger Undying ETBs on a whim from the graveyard. Aetherborn Marauder is also a surprise after an incidental boardwipe.
I would love to see a decklist. Your deck premise sounds super cool
Gratz to the winners! Really cool decks, I think I have a lot to learn in deckbuilding!
Love these challenges and the creativity that comes out of it
While I'm probably not building any of the decks mentioned in the video, this is making me want to open up my baldurs gate binder and see what other backgrounds are worth revisiting. Cool ideas all around.
These decks were so cool!! Much respect to all submissions!
Wow! I just recently made a Halsin deck while looking through lower priced commanders, and didn’t know backgrounds could mix color identity (I guess I didn’t think through the fact that they were parts of your commander)! I went with a mono-green Cloakwood Hermit sac-monster theme to turn the squirrel generation into a rider on already beneficial choices. My favorite part of the deck is how the removal options all end up generating tokens, either with creatures like Elvish/Druid Lyrist, or with Pest Infestation generating upwards of 12 tokens. Very fun commander!
… also didn’t realize they didn’t have to be creature tokens.
I did not know about the deckbuilding challenge. I was already playing Halsin wit the Clan Crafter Background. Incubate works really well, but the Urza Golems are just stronger.
That Halsin Incubator deck is so cool!!!
I spent a while building an izzet alora deck based around passing creatures equipped with "whenever equiped creature attacks, create an attacking token" to trigger on other people's turns, before I realized creatures that would enter attacking on other player's turns don't enter attacking.
This is so cool, one of my favorite decks is my boros Ellyn + Street Urchin treasures deck, started out as a draft deck, and now is built as a treasure+burn brew!
As a fan of the Halsin card myself, I love seeing what others come up with! My version does have some incubate, but not to the degree that the winner had, and I quite like the winners version. Keep doing challenges like this in the future!
That's pretty neat. 3 of those commander's I've been brewing for some time, I love the backgrounds mechanic so much
That Halsin deck is cool as hell. My thought upon hearing the challenge was Gruul treasures focused on instant speed actions, and I might still build it.
This was a fun video, and I would love to see more of this , what about a video on making a tribal vanilla deck, seeing a bunch of creatures with no effects winning a table would be hilarious
Here's an deckbuilding challenge idea:
What about challenge people to make interesting and unique decks with the most popular commanders? Most of them are always just the same midrange value tribal anyway, I'd like to see people being creative with them for once.
The 5 options for commanders could be the Top 1 of each color in EDHREC, something like that.
I don't know if snail is participating but tricket mage and a few others are doing just that with atraxa!
I love the background mechanic, such a unique deck building space
Alora seems fun in a budget traitor deck using cheap cards to borrow threats and bounce them to their owners hand instead of losing control of them in your end step
That was actually one of the runner up decks its just we liked the polymorph lines of the one sneak attack deck the most!
I built a somewhat upgraded version of the Viconia deck. Works way better than expected and is fun to play. For others who might want to build an upgraded version I suggest taking out the emerge and off-theme big creatures and some other so-so cards like for cards like:
Living Death
Palantir of Orthanc
Zephyr Boots
Sensei's Divining Top
Sickening Shoal
Kardur, Doomscourge
Valki, God of Lies (mostly to strip early blockers out of opponent hands)
Cut // Ribbons
Doom Whisperer
Vial Smasher the Fierce
Animate Dead
Cave-In
Azra Oddsmaker
Avatar of Woe
I didn’t see the prompt and didn’t submit anything. But I have a Halsin deck that I consider one of my top three most fun decks to play (out of about 30 that I own). It uses the background Feywild Trickster mainly for blue, but also to make some nasty 4/4 flying fairy bears.
I made this into a clue deck. I create a bunch of clues and then turn them into bears. Then I sacrifice them after they smash. I get combat damage, second card drawn this turn synergies, and creatures dying synergies. Like I said, I have a lot of fun with it.
I Love the DnD Sets.
So much Room for Creativity and flavorful Mechanics.
I was tinkering with a Viconia artifact creatures deck using clan crafter. Couldn't get it feeling quite right. I love that someone else did modular!
😮 Every single time you talked about each deck I slapped my forehead and thought "Of course! I should have thought of that!"
I love the Halsin deck! It is so clever. Quite frankly, all these decks are really clever. Great job, everyone!
incubate is a mechanic i have a massive soft spot for. Love the synergy with halsin!
Of all these choices, Halsin was immediately the one I'd gravitate towards with creating something cool. For alot of the other ones, I could just take one look at them and just kinda know what I'd do with it. Alora? Ninjas with either a token black background for the colour or "Candlekeep Sage" if I wanted a background I'd actually get some use out of. Amber? Madness/Delve/Escape with probably cirminal past as my choice of background. Viconia? I'd probably do some ETB-stuff that I'd keep looping around, using Cultist of the Absolute as a way to make Viconia herself a threat while kickstarting the grave-dump. Ellyn? Okay, gonna have to be honest, I have no inspiration for this one, it kinda bores me to tears.
With Halsin though? There's quite alot of fun and interesting things you could be doing there. One idea I got was like "Half-bears, Half-Elves" to create a deck, where both tribes are represented without messing with the synergy, using Folk Hero to give that sweet token-goodstuff. Another one was Eldrazi, using scions and spawns as 4/4 beaters early and then getting big dudes off the mana they turn into, probably with some red background. If it were up to me though, I'd have to go with a Simic list. The most interesting thing of course is to do non-creatures into creatures using this guy. Much as Overlord of the Hauntwoods presents the potential of "Lands into Bears", I think it's too soon for that and we'll have to wait for that one to become a reality. Clues would probably be the thing I'd focus on. You can pump those bastards out super quick, they're card draw and you like having them regardless if they're 4/4s or just tokens.
I’d love to see more of this, great ideas from all
Cool decks! It's no surprise that a cycling deck made the list with your history 😅 It was a cool idea for the deck, but it is funny because you ate notorious for a deck that makes good use of cycling.
This is sweet. I've always been fascinated by the idea of making 5 different mono-colored 50 card decks that you can randomly decide between them and then put the commanders in the command zone. This would have been a good challenge to tackle that idea.
A buddy of mine built 5 versions of Wilson refined grizzly this way. The green core is the same from deck to deck and each background features a suite of cards in that color to complete each build.
Damn, i builted an amber haunted one deck just a week ago, i was looking to figure out how the deck would work and i turned out in the funniest shadowborn apostle deck i've ever played
All of these decks sound awesome! Great job everyone!
The idea I had for this challenge was a Halsin deck with Veteran Soldier as the background, but i was honesty too lazy to sign up for the Discord server to submit it. Been looking forward to what people built for this!
Happy because the deck who won for Halsin had the same mechanic of mine but was more well built! challenge was really fun, thanks snail!!
Didn't win, but I will bask in the 7 seconds of us Alora/Cultist of the Absolute Voltron decks getting special attention in the description of deck themes (2:06). It was really fun jamming it in my local pods as a playtest before sending it in. As always the fun of playtesting, I realized I didn't read the text box quite closely enough (*after* committing to the Voltron plan) and had to hot remove Lightning Greaves. Still, I don't think I've ever played with a more consistent Voltron deck.
Imo, that is way more interesting and unique than Sneak Attack. I hit the hardest eye roll when he mentioned it was a sneak attack deck, as if that wasn't already the most popular archetype for her outside of maybe ninjas
@@mooninites755I know right? Sneak attack seems so obvious.
@ While I do agree, it, quite frankly, comes down to preference. I personally dislike it because I'm not generally fond of "cheat out billion mana creature early" type decks due to the feels bad of drawing either only or none of the mega-cmc creatures. I also have a strong destain for "secret-commander" decks, seeing them as lackluster before and after the secret-commander is on the battlefield, so it folds to a single, well placed, removal spell. These two factors lead me to scoff at the idea of making Alora a Sneak Attack deck. Snail clearly has no qualms with either archetype, one of his favorite decks being his Sharum Slide deck; a deck that is also fits in with both architypes mentioned. Still, I greatly enjoyed the deck in an archetype I don't play often, so I feel no worse for the experiance.
@ Out of curiosity, did you add any Legerdemain type effects to the deck? I had found those the most fun to play with.
I'm so sad I missed this challenge! I love this concept!
I would love to see the next deckbuilding challenger be focused around either four or five colour commander decks in some way!
This was awesome! I’ll make sure to hop in on the next one!
"A garbage bag of human teeth."
That is a reference to and a fan of The Magnus Archives.
That Halsin deck looks cool; I was thinking of building a Selesnya deck & tokens was a natural theme for it, but this is a nice spin on that.
That halsin deck is so interesting, i thought about doing a eldrazi build of him but i never considered incubate. Didn't even realize you could do any token and not just a creature token
Remove one time sneak attack and the deck fall down
I tried making an Amber-Haunted One deck around goblin tribal lol. I hope to make a much more cohesive strategy for the next challenge. Cant wait!!
I hope i won! Will update
Edit:
I feel implied in the conversation but not mentioned but i still feel proud.
I had a dimir ninjas list, and was unfortunately the second to post a dimir ninjas list. I thought i was incredibly well tuned and cohesive so i figured being second wasnt that bad but eh
Cool decks, cool challenge format!
All the love in the world for the Jokulhaups player! Good use of that card is great :D
I wish I'd known about this! I've had an Amber Gristle + Veteran Soldier deck brewing in my head for literal years now but no real reason to put it together and finish the list since it'd be far below the power level of my pods. Veteran Soldier lets you guarantee drawing as many cards as you have opponents each time you attack, so most of the rest of the deck is reanimator... in Boros!
I loved building for this challenge, and while I didn't win, I've gained a new favourite deck with it, which is in a completely different direction from my usual decks.
So thank you for hosting these, it gives me a great excuse to build more!
I'm surprised more people didn't look at an Azorius Squad deck with Alora. Look to repeatedly haste out your non-token squad creature with crashing drawbridge or some haste equipment to get the Alora trigger and return it to hand, keeping the value from all the token copies
A friend of mine who isn't in the discord runs a crazy mono blue Clone tribal Alora/Shameless Charlatan deck that uses Alora to recycle clone card. I had wanted to submit it for him but he didn't have it made on moxfield and wasn't able to get it to me until after the deadline. I don't think its as clever/creative as the Alora/Guild Artisan deck but I'm curious what others would think of it. It's not an incredibly well built deck but its use of the commander is clever and its simple game plan of winning by playing 5 copies of the best card at the table at any given time lets it do its thing at pretty much any given power level even if it doesn't win often.
That dwarf cleric deck looks so sick! Might have to build it :3
So sad I didn't know about this! I have had an Ellyn + Haunted one deck for ages and it's my baby! It's so good and fun!
Didnt win but had a lot of fun cooking up the ellyn deck and got me the inspiration I needed to make a different deck! These were super cool!
Unrelated to the video but your voice and presentation style remind me a little of the boston math tutorial video guy, very nostalgic
Those were some sick decks. I really am enjoying the series. After the first one I decided to get and upgrade the Eomer God Pharaoh's Gift deck and upgrade it. It's been a blast.
For the next episode may I suggest misleading MOMs? By that I mean the challenge would be to build a deck around a legendary pseudopair from the March of Machines set, and build a theme that isn't obvious and straightforward, but complementary and surprising. For example I am trying to brew Borborygmos and Fblthp right now, which has a triggered ability that discards lands and a triggered ability to put him in the library. I decided this would be the perfect commander for temur werewolves instead of all that. I also recently built Zimone and Dina infect and it has quickly become one of my favorite brews. You could take the same idea and use Nyx gods or something up to you! Keep it up
Another fun cycle to brew in an unexpected way would be transforming Planeswalkers IMO
I had a creature steal alora deck using popular entertainer that would steal creatures, attack, then bounce them to opponent hands which I've tried but never polished. Wish i had the time to submit that take on the commander. I felt it was the nicest way to do board steal because it never dies and just bounces.
Damn, didnt get up there this time. Maybe next challenge. Still very happy with the modular Amber deck I came up with for this
I think the Ellyn goblin combo deck I saw was p neat
For a deckbuilding idea, maybe you could do something where you take an especially popular commander and try to do something different with it? Like say you take atraxa and make a stun counters deck, or a shield counter deck.
Though it was with blue animate artifact effects and not Halsin, I had a similar deck that utilized the fact that incubator tokens enter with a ton of +1/+1 counters. Super funny on turn 4 to smack in with an 8/8 or 9/9 creature.
I may not have won or been picked as an honorable mention, but this was a super fun activity nonetheless.
Congrats to everyone who won! That Halsin deck absolutely deserves the spot over mine, and I hope there will be more deckbuilding challenges in the future :]
Brewing challenge prompt: entire deck must contain only cards w 5+ mana value.
I was thinking about what other building challenges you could do, and personally, the tarkir dragonlords or the strixhaven dragons look the best, they are all massively flavourful and can be interesting build arounds
I love the Halsin deck, honestly, the only thing I would try to sneak into the 99 is Greater Good because, for one, I absolutely love that card, but also because it synergizes well with the gameplan of being able to generate lots of 4/4 and up creatures relatively cheaply.
I'd love to see a deckbuilding challenge for the M19 Elder Dragons. I run Vaevictis Asmadi, The Dire myself, though it's a pretty standard one that I've been building up since it first released.
I noticed that there were no decks on Edhrec for Ellyn and Hardy Outlander, but I didn't manage to finish my deck in time for submission.
I wanted to use Opalescence to make Hardy Outlander a creature, then play Raised By Giants to overwrite Opalescence's power toughness modification, attack with Ellyn and Hardy Outlander to have them share the Hardy Outlander buff with each other making them both 20/20's. Add any +1 for lethal.
I just wanna beat people up with my past.
You should make a video about how to penetrate value engine midrange. It's by far the most dominant deck archetype in casual, and the stax/control approaches that typically work to prevent those greedy decks are frowned upon and typically not very fun. What are some fun ways to counter simic players putting 5 lands out, putting 10 counters on all their creatures and drawing 15 cards per turn? Thanks!