my marath +1/+1 counters and tokens deck (EDH / Commander)

In a sort of ship of theseus metaphor, this EDH deck is the first I ever built, although only a handful of cards from the original list are still included. Its evolution tells the story of my own journey as a player, and it will always be among my favourites.

Basilisk Collar, Snake Umbra, Rampant Growth, and Zhur-Taa Druid are all holdovers from when the deck had a different commander and a different strategy. It had been cobbled together from packs and duel decks I'd opened as a kid and was nominally a voltron deck built around putting auras and equipments on Palladia Mors the ruiner, but was more like a green white red "bad stuff" deck that couldn't do much of anything.

As I started to play more against human opponents I realized something needed to give and went to the LGS for some upgrades. I read the marath card and fell in love with its multifaceted mechanics and ability to scale as the game goes long. With the purchase of the last marath precon they had in stock, I was able to add format staples like sol ring, command tower, and harmonize to the deck.

Then, I discovered youtube deck techs and the EDHRec website and I got excited about the combo potential of marath. I immediately went out and bought just about every card that could go infinite with him and jammed them in, cards like Ivy lane denizen, hardened scales, and cryptic trilobite (my son) are holdovers from this era of the deck.

As I assembled similar combo wins again and again, and as I built other decks, I started to realize that both I and my regular playgroups seemed to have more fun when the games weren't quite so powerful. While the tension of feeling like any card your opponent might play could end the game on the spot if your interaction in hand doesn't line up well enough is thrilling, it can also be exhausting (as much as a card game can be) and it tended to homogenize our decks and streamline our in game decision paths. Swords to plowshares, path to exile, beast within and chaos warp will stay in the deck but a lot of the other removal options have had the freedom to become a little less efficient than what they used to be. It is refreshing to see hopeful initiate and thorn mammoth here, when they might not fit well into other decks.

Pretty much every card in here has a story. Assemble the legion being one of the first cards I ever thought was truly unbeatable as a kid, fall of the impostor being barely playable, yet one of the only ways to remove a bruna, light of alabaster if it has diplomatic immunity attached.
I remember trading for welcoming vampire and tocasia's welcome at different prerelease events, and the excitement of opening a foil heroic intervention from a pack. I remember wrestling with whether I should buy a secret lair when the pride one was announced and finally adding bearscape and mana confluence to the deck as a small nod to my own sexuality. Ian the Reckless, Rosie Cotton and Lae'zel Vlaakith's Champion are universes beyond cards which, like secret lairs, are a newer development in mtg design philosophy. These weird new cards contrast with weird old cards like Magmasaur, slumbering dragon, magus of the wheel, and wild growth to paint a picture of magic the gathering's design changes over time. Even the commander, among the first cards designed with the format in mind, helps to mark a big transition in design philosophy in this way.

This is my favourite deck. It is a distillation of my history with the game of magic the gathering. It is the first deck I have ever built and will be the last I disassemble. Although it is nearly unrecognizable in form from the deck it started out as, it will always be recognizable to me by its heart and its encapsulation of what magic means to me.