Messages

1

General Magic / Re: Rules Question; Everything Counters

« on: May 30, 2024, 12:36:48 am »

Don’t forget creature - Brushwagg!

2

General Magic / Scavenger Hunt

« on: May 29, 2024, 06:46:08 pm »

Can anyone find me a card that would get higher than +5/+5 from Embiggen.

I have found a few that have 5 types.  Inkmoth Nexus is a Land Artifact Creature Phyrexian Blinkmoth.  Calix, Guided by Fate is Legendary Enchantment Creature Human Druid.  Seton's Scout is a Creature Centaur Druid Scout Archer.

3

Commander Deck Reviews / Re: Really not sure about this one (The Council of Four)

« on: May 19, 2024, 05:48:30 pm »

The reason I say the group hug deck isn't designed to win is it does crazy things, but not until turn 15 or so.  Most of the time it had ramped the rest of the table into even more insane things by then.  It only goes off if everyone else is ignoring it and there are at least 2 heavy control decks slowing the rest of the table down.  Against the Horde, it makes everyone else's decks pop off 2 or 3 turns sooner than they normally would and makes everyone just smile at the insanity as we mulch the horde.

You pretty much said all the things about Council of Four that were going through my head as I built the deck.  I put in three effects that give extra cards to everyone on their turn.  I figure three gives me a good chance to have one on the field by the time I cast my commander, but not so many that I have a hand full of them.  I only want one on the field at a time after all. 

I have enough decks that use commander damage as a win con, so I decided not to go for that here, but it wouldn't be too hard to build.  One of the reasons I wanted to build this commander as soon as I realized it existed was that it looked like you could build a huge number of different shells around it, and the card draw could help almost anything work. 

I decided to go with tokens as a theme.  The idea of winning because of horsemanship of all things was too temping to pass up, thus the Herald of Hoofbeats, Moonshaker Cavalry gives me an overrun effect.  A bunch of tokens enables Halo Fountain and Strixhaven Stadium as win cons.  Approach of the Second Sun and Triskaidekaphile are things that I love watching everyone scramble to stop.  My original plan involved running a lot more low cost spells to trigger token generation, but I just kept finding things that were higher cost that sounded too fun to pass up.  The deck is weaker because of this lack of focus, but I think it will be more fun to play this way.

As I am posting this, I now have a lifegain focused Co4 deck running through my head.  I might post another decklist that will never see paper just for fun.

4

Commander Deck Reviews / Re: A Horse and his Kobold (Keleth/Rograkh)

« on: May 14, 2024, 05:52:47 pm »

Tested this on Tabletop Simulator.  One on one so not a good test.  Realized the landbase needed tweaking, must have really been in a hurry when I posted the "finished" version.  The deck won the test game by resolving a Plea for Guidance turn 5 grabbing Enduring Renewal and impact tremors (goblin bombardment was already on the field).  My opponent didn't have anything to stop it so he scooped at the end of his turn 6.  Even without the combo, he would have needed good draws to not die to commander damage on turn 8 or 9.

5

Commander Deck Reviews / Re: Really not sure about this one (The Council of Four)

« on: May 14, 2024, 05:04:41 pm »

The problem is I have already introduced them to group hug, but I am an evil deckbuilder.  My group hug deck isn't designed to win, it is designed to power up the rest of the table when we play Horde Magic.  The problem is, if you leave my group hug deck alone it gets Chain Veil, Teferi, Tesseret, draws as many cards as it wants, generates the mana to cast them all, creates tokens with Garruk, psyclonic rifts, takes an extra turn, then kills everyone, all with counterspell support.  They expect all my decks to do things like this.

6

Commander Deck Reviews / Re: Really not sure about this one (The Council of Four)

« on: May 14, 2024, 05:46:19 am »

If I decide to actually build this it will not be soon.  There are too many cards I would need to order to build it the way I want and I am trying to cut back on how much I am spending on MTG.  The other thing is that the people in my playgroup have watched enough youtube videos to know that anytime someone is drawing a lot of cards, that person should be murdered asap.  I keep telling them they should run more targeted removal, but they still tend to solve things by removing me instead.  Of course, that wouldn't really be any different than any other deck I play.

7

Commander Deck Reviews / Really not sure about this one (The Council of Four)

« on: May 12, 2024, 07:43:30 pm »

While looking at ERMTD's Galea deck I saw a card I had never noticed before.  The Council of Four doesn't look that strong, but it looks like it might be fun.  I ended up building a casual deck that is a little bit all over the place, but sometimes you just want to have some silly fun.

https://deckstats.net/decks/26164/3516752-azorious-tokens?lng=en

The deck hopefully draws a lot of cards and makes enough tokens to be a threat, while also throwing alt wincons at the wall till something sticks.

8

Commander Deck Reviews / Re: How do YOU guys build commander decks?

« on: May 11, 2024, 07:30:34 pm »

My decks usually start with some crazy idea that I want to pull off, or just a commander with abilities that amuse me.  If I am starting from an idea, I find a commander that gives me the colors I need and either has synergy with the idea, can give card advantage to find the idea, or is a solid threat without much build around to force my opponents to answer it instead of the idea.  If I am starting from a commander that amuses me I add in a few cards that work with whatever the commander is doing.  Then, in either case, I try to find at least one other way for the deck to win that doesn't require the commander or the silly idea.

I start at 40 lands.  I know this is more than most people here use as a base, but I hate not hitting my lands and I tend to play green, which thins the lands out anyway.  Next I usually add in ramp.  If my commander wants a lot of creatures I focus on creature based ramp.  If I am in green I use the green land ramp that I love.  If I don't have green I tend to go for mana rocks.  In the late stages of deck building I will look back at how much ramp I have and adjust the number of lands down.  I am usually willing to replace a land with a spell for every two pieces of ramp I include, but I do not often drop below 34 lands even in ramp heavy decks (most of my ramp heavy decks have some reason to want more lands anyway).

Now I add in "interaction"  These are a grouping of cards that allow me to slow down my opponents in one form or another.  Counterspells and bounce in blue, burn and copy effects in red,  green doesn't have a lot but the few it does have are very good.  White has Exile effects and in recent years has color pie breaking spells that do all the same things green can do. (note: this makes white a very strong "splash" color now).  Black likes to kill creatures, but doesn't have too much other interaction.

Now I try to find a way to get some card draw in there.  I think I focus on this less that most people, and the few times I have gone all in on it I have made decks that no one enjoys playing with.  I end up taking long turns that don't do much.

At this point I am usually over 100 cards and have to cut things.  I start with adjusting the lands down as I mentioned above.  Then I look at the spells and pick things to cut, usually focusing on the highest casting cost things first.

9

Commander Deck Reviews / Re: Looking for some help regarding my Galea deck

« on: May 08, 2024, 03:26:24 pm »

I don’t think this deck goes quite wide enough for a symmetrical card like Coat of Arms, one opponent with a dedicated token deck and it is gameover there.  The Reality Chip is the Legendary Jellyfish referenced by Dactylartha.

10

Commander Discussion / The “worst” deck you ever built

« on: May 06, 2024, 03:19:30 pm »

Let’s have some fun.  Everyone post a deck.  The criteria here is that the deck had to be bad, but not because it lost games.  The decks need to be bad because everyone at the table hated them, including the person playing them.

Here is my submission
https://deckstats.net/decks/26164/2941377-scryrampscry

This monstrosity won games.  I think it won everytime I played it.  But it took forever to do it.  Spending 5 minutes at the end of each opponent’s turn 3 or 4 to set up then taking a 20 minute turn to slowly empty your library for a Thassa’s Oracle win is boring

11

Commander Discussion / Re: Cheating in artifacts with Transmutation Font

« on: May 06, 2024, 02:55:24 pm »

At 5 toughness it is more likely to be destroyed by artifact removal anyway, so I would say the difference it stickiness is negligible.  If I was building a deck around the effect I would play both for redundancy.  I would maybe have Arcum Dagsson in the deck, and he can search the font but not the forgemaster.

12

Commander Discussion / Re: Cheating in artifacts with Transmutation Font

« on: May 05, 2024, 02:35:49 pm »

If you are going full on cheese I would build something with a lot of things that can search the transmutation font and a few things that investigate and make treasure tokens.  Once I had the font I would use it to grab Academy Manufactor to make sure you can easily get 3 different tokens.  then Rings of Brighthearth to double the next search.  Then Basalt Monolith and the Staff of Domination to produce infinite colorless mana and draw your deck.  Any number of things could just win you the game at that point.

13

Commander Deck Reviews / A Horse and his Kobold (Keleth/Rograkh)

« on: May 04, 2024, 08:43:46 pm »

https://deckstats.net/decks/26164/3507081-a-horse-and-his-kobold/en

Poor Rograkh is such a little guy.  How can he ever hope to stand up to his father?  Maybe his new horse will help him endure.

The early strategy with this deck is simple.  Play Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh turn one, maybe alongside some one drop.  Play Keleth, Sunmane Familiar turn two and swing with Rograkh.  There should always be at least one opponent who doesn't have 2 creatures to block, so you should get a counter on Rograkh without risking him.  He will get bigger every turn, hopefully surviving being blocked because of his growing power and first strike.  The low mana cost of both commanders means that recasting them a couple of times when they get removed isn't too much of a burden.

The mid/late game strategy is silly and janky.  It revolves around an old forgotten card called Enduring Renewal.  Enduring Renewal will return Rograkh to hand every time he dies, allowing us to recast him for 0.  Combine this with Goblin Bombardment and we have recursive damage.  Combine with Purphoros, God of the Forge /  Impact Tremors / Warleader's Call and one of the Altars to also deal recursive damage.  One of the Altars can also enable a game ending Comet Storm or Fireball.

14

Commander Deck Reviews / Krenko's Suicide Squad

« on: May 02, 2024, 02:11:32 am »

https://deckstats.net/decks/26164/368337-edh-krenko-s-suicide-squad/en

This is continuing my current kick of making tweaks to my older decks.  This one requires story time, so forgive me for being a little long winded.

I fell in love with making tokens almost as soon as I started playing EDH.  One of the first commanders I built was Rhys, The Redeemed.  Frankly, the deck was TERRIBLE.  It had no interaction.  It didn't ramp enough to to ever activated Rhys' expensive second ability.  It was all over the place on the types of tokens it made.  The first version didn't even have any overrun effects, although that at least a friend educated me on in short order.
Then I made a Ghave, Guru of Spores deck.  I literally just went through cards and threw in anything that looked like it might have synergy with Ghave.  I accidentally included 27 recursive combos.  The problem was the deck didn't win even if it went functionally infinite.  There was always a cyclonic rift, or a Wrath of God, or something else that killed all my tokens before I could swing.
I wasn't getting it as far as deck design went.  Then I saw Krenko.  Math played out in my head.  I knew it would be epic, but I still didn't understand how to make it work.  I though mono-red couldn't do most the things I wanted to do.
Then I was playing at a local shop and someone sat down with a Rakdos deck.  I think the commander was Exava, Rakdos Blood Witch.  I saw the glory that is copy spell effects, redirect effects, Red Elemental Blast.  Then he played Blood Moon and shut down my friend Tom's very strong Izzet deck.  I realized that red HAD answers.  It still wasn't enough.
Then I saw what might still be my favorite card of all time.  Goblin Bombardment.  I finally realized that Tokens don't have to swing to win.
Armed with this understanding, I found more ways to avoid going to combat.  Purphoros, God of the Forge and Impact Tremors found their place in the deck.  Then I realized that red doesn't really search very well, so redundancy is vital.  I found other effects, less efficient, but still usable.  I put a deck together and started playing.  After a few weeks and more than a few wins, I circled back around.  Not needing the combat step is nice, but the combat step is still there.  I should at least try to use it.  Now came mass haste enablers.  At the same time I was finding cards that let me untap Krenko to make even more bodies.  I realized as I went that Krenko's exponential growth didn't actually require very many goblins on the field to get started.  I cut the goblins that didn't have a useful ability.  This is the first deck I built that I was actually proud of.  The first deck I considered "strong".  It became the deck that my friend Tom wanted to test HIS decks against.
Over the years I have not made too many tweaks to the deck, but every once in a while I see a card that I work in.

I am not really asking for advice this time.  I was just updating the decklist and wanted to talk about it a bit.  Feel free to offer any opinions or advice anyway.  There is no such thing as a perfect deck, and there are always things I miss.

15

Deck Comments / Re: EDH Krenko's Suicide Squad - Comments

« on: May 02, 2024, 12:52:01 am »

Made a few tweaks to the first deck I ever built that I consider "strong"  The fact that I still play it after all these years shows how much I love my boy Krenko.

Revision 7

Added/removed cards:
-1 Dragon Fodder
-1 Nim Deathmantle
-1 Panharmonicon
-1 Temple of the False God
+1 Battle Cry Goblin
+1 Dockside Extortionist
+1 Pashalik Mons
+1 War Room