Topics

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Commander Deck Reviews / Vhal, Raised by Giants (EDH Background Commander Deck)

« on: November 15, 2023, 01:44:03 am »

I'm not totally happy with this one, and I'm probably going to change some things out quite soon when I get some Ixalan cards, but after weeks of trying to cut down a stack of like 400 cards into a deck, I finally made the hard cuts and spit it out. I VERY INTENTIONALLY left out much better cards in a lot of places, and kept some of them in the maybeboard. My local game group's power level does not require Ezuri's Predation in every deck, for instance. The original stack had a lot more counterspells and interaction. I just wanted to have fun. If I fail to have fun, I will bring back more of those things, but for now I had to get this thing out the door and make something I can play. If it proves to not be enough, I'll put my infinite mana combo enablers back in. lol

https://deckstats.net/decks/209945/3259227-vhal-raised-by-giants

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Commander Deck Reviews / Rocco's Street Party (EDH Exile-powered Food Token deck)

« on: August 11, 2023, 12:00:49 pm »

Rocco's really bringing the party to everyone this time. Not content to just cater for his gang, he's gone solo and aggressively caters to any party he can. The deck focuses on a combination of Exile, +1/+1 counter, and Food Token themes, with some splashes of Treasure tokens. The wide theming has led to some painful cuts, but I think the deck overall does some really cool things, especially getting value out of a good color combination of self-recasting Suspend cards(which cast from exile!), and lots of triggers that are sure to be a pain in the ass to keep track of. I'm really looking forward to my next game day with my friends. <3
https://deckstats.net/decks/209945/3014740-rocco-s-street-party

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Commander Deck Reviews / The Power of Friendship (EDH-Changeling Voltron)

« on: July 27, 2023, 08:06:59 pm »

I've gone for something of an unorthodox strategy with this deck. Considering the commander, Moritte of the Frost, I decided to focus heavily on her ability to become a copy of anything. The deck has an assortment of indestructible artifacts and lands, as well as ones that can become creatures. The majority of the rest of the strategy is lots of different tribal lords that all hit Changelings with different buffs. Seeing as the commander is a Changeling, she will naturally acquire these buffs. The essential idea at that point is to get in for commander damage as much as possible. A side strategy is to add more changelings to operate as basically copies of Moritte to be shock troopers or assassins.

https://deckstats.net/decks/209945/3039050-morritte-ambusher

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Commander Deck Reviews / Preston's Programmable Partners

« on: April 21, 2023, 05:41:59 am »

Hey, I'm back with Preston, the Vanisher. I made a concerted effort to try to work with modular creatures, I really did. I'll be honest they mostly bring the deck down, but the basic idea with them is that the Illusion tokens Preston makes still get the modular +1/+1 counters. Due to the token rules change that allows copy tokens to be two-sided and transformable now I took some advantage of that, and indeed shifted the deck's focus to some added lifegain value. Primarily this comes in the form of transforming Lone Rider, or activating Heliod, Sun Crowned, or making use of Aetherflux Reservoir, but really it's just nice to add extra life. I might try to work in some life spending options at some point, but that's not my focus at the moment.

Otherwise it's a lot of artifacts, creating powerstones, and lots of token generation. Wincons come in a number of flavors, including Cathars' Crusade, Hour of Reckoning, Karn, Living Legacy, Aetherflux Reservoir, swarms of Angel of Invention, or maybe even a couple enormous Arcbound Crusher or Arcbound Ravager pumped to the nines. I might try to sneak an Akroma's Memorial in here later.
https://deckstats.net/decks/209945/2998133-preston-the-modular

5

General Magic / A weird conundrum with a Legendary rule issue.

« on: April 15, 2023, 02:36:09 am »

So, I've got a Preston, The Vanisher deck with Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward in it. Now, obviously a token copy of Abdel created by Preston would fall under the Legend rule and all but one of them would have to be sacrificed. That's not in question. The problem is, how long do they exist simultaneously.

For instance, the Legend rule states that they both exist long enough for their ETB abilities to happen, but do you resolve those ETBs before the Legends are sacrificed down to 1?

The reason I ask, is because if state-based actions cause you to sacrifice the copy before the ETB on the stack resolves, Abdel would exile his target permanents, but he would die/leave play before the ability resolves, resulting in exiling those permanents without being able to get them back.

If the sacrifice happens after the ETB resolves, then it would be a near-instant blink of the permanents that he exiled, and indeed he would be able to exile the original Abdel as well, causing a potential infinite loop.

Thoughts? I've got a judge friend trying to figure it out, but additional input would be helpful.

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Commander Deck Reviews / Preston and his Prolific Powerstones

« on: April 13, 2023, 01:22:35 am »

Preston is a very powerful commander, and white as a color serves his theme very well. There are a lot of ways I could have built this deck that would have better suited the norm of play for him, but because of his power I didn't feel like it was necessary to go full tryhard, to instead have a little fun with it. That being said, I made two Preston decks, and this one is definitely a more serious one.

The primary themes are based around getting a lot of value out of creature tokens. There's various strategies for this, and various win conditions. It's a high risk that you could become a threat fairly easily/quickly while playing this, so I recommend taking it slow and pacing your play until you can comfortably leap out ahead. Utilize the natural evasion of the deck to protect your things, and try to find an angle to snowball.

A fun combo is with Eldrazi Displacer and Krark-Clan Ironworks if you have more powerstones than you really need. You could effectively get a blink off for each powerstone by tapping and then sacrificing them, or leaving them tapped between turns and ready to sacrifice if you need to blink things to protect them. Getting a swarm of Angel of Invention out to mass-buff your army is probably a game winning move if you can manage it.

https://deckstats.net/decks/209945/3001865-powerstone-preston

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Commander Deck Reviews / Mr. Orfeo Brings the Hits

« on: March 12, 2023, 02:42:15 pm »

The main concepts of this are in the deck description. Long story short though, the plan is to multiply the attack power of Ball Lightning-style creatures and slam haymakers into opponents one at a time.
https://deckstats.net/decks/209945/2664804-boulder-lightning

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Commander Deck Reviews / Boros Golem Tribal

« on: February 19, 2023, 05:42:30 pm »

Just what it says on the tin. I have a number of cards in the mail I plan to swap in, but this is the deck as it will debut among my friend group later today.
https://deckstats.net/decks/209945/2926692-golemongus

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Commander Deck Reviews / Another Ur-Dragon Deck (EDH)

« on: August 24, 2022, 11:58:08 pm »

I haven't looked up other Ur-Dragon decks, but I can't imagine they're too different except for maybe changeling decks with him as commander. I made the deck because my friend bought me an Ur-Dragon for my birthday, so I took all the things I already had, bought some more, and put together this deck. This included, at one point, a foil Onslaught Wooded Foothills that I was recently informed was like $1200... I have since replaced that with a proxy to store the other in safe keeping.

Regardless, here's the deck. No frills or surprises, I don't think.

https://deckstats.net/decks/209945/2688751-big-dragon-bangin-

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Deck Reviews / Bumper Crops (EDH, monogreen, Yedora)

« on: August 15, 2022, 04:36:54 am »

I'm pretty confident about this deck, and I've gotten a lot of likes on it already. There's a couple more edits I have planned but waiting on cards in the mail, like the colorless bounce land I can use to reclaim a flipped 'forest'. When things hit right, it feels really good. Some decent win-cons. More infinites than I was expecting when I built it. I keep almost adding a Phyrexian Altar, but I don't think it needs it with Ashnod's Altar and splash of graveyard return. All in all very happy with it, and the games I've played with it have felt really good. Lots of things happening on most turns. Easy to forget to tap your 'forests' after they come into play before morph-flipping them.

-The Warfox

https://deckstats.net/decks/209945/2662720-forests-of-blood

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Commander Deck Reviews / Ancient Relics (A Banding Commander deck.)

« on: July 31, 2022, 09:11:01 am »

I'll be taking this one out on the town this Sunday to see how it plays. Hoping the commander and abundant humans can handle the mana weaknesses, and otherwise I am going to do my best to do the Banding thing and see how it goes.

https://deckstats.net/decks/209945/2655606-ancient-relics

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Deck Reviews / Raffine, Conniving Queen

« on: July 16, 2022, 05:51:55 pm »

It's a Connive, Flying-tribal deck. Lots of discard and draw synergy. Been putting it together longer than I care to admit. Still have some cards in the mail I'm waiting on to maybe pop in like a Sol Ring, maybe a Swiftfoot Boots. I'm pretty happy with how it's looking.

-The Warfox
https://deckstats.net/decks/209945/2634997-scheming-with-raffine

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Deck Reviews / The Salamander King, and how to group hug him to death.

« on: July 16, 2022, 07:51:50 am »

This is not a serious deck. This is a jokey, roleplay-ish group hug kind of deck.

Gor Muldrak is a silly, ridiculous commander. There are optimal ways to use him. We will not be doing those here.
This deck is built around the idea of screwing with the board, ramping everyone, and getting them at each other's throats while you prepare to take advantage. Gor Muldrak puts lots of big, chonky 4/3s on the board, but more importantly as long as he's in play you and all your permanents are immune to those big Salamander boys. This leaves your opponents to be using them against each other. There's card draw, mana ramp, free permanent playing, and free mana aplenty in this deck for all players. The idea is to hit the gas harder than they can adapt to. Too many cards in hand makes them desperate to play them down to avoid discarding. This means it's a lot more likely their dangerous items hit the board, and that's when you steal their best stuff.

I roleplay when I play this deck. Gor Muldrak is a crazy conspiracy theorist character, convinced that the Amphin(Salamanders) have infiltrated society and are secretly undermining everything for their inevitable invasion. I will blabber on about the evil of Salamanders, and muse on one of the players being the Salamander King in disguise. I play mind games over whose side I am on, meddling with my interaction spells, but never fully punishing them. You'll note that none of my counterspells leave my opponents without at least a consolation prize. There's a lot of stuff like that. By the end of the game the most dangerous player gets declared the Salamander King, and I shift gears into trying to defeat them. I often fail, but I still have fun. I've had lots of silly shit happen with this deck, including one time stealing an opponent's commander with Modify Memory, and then using Hadana's Climb/Winged Temple of Orazca to one-shot them with their own now-flying commander for 22 damage.

It's a ton of fun. Lots of little interactions you can use to take advantage of the chaos, like getting extra upkeeps with Sphinx of the Second Sun and Paradox Haze, and then using things like Followed Footsteps and Progenitor Mimic with the only actual Salamander in the whole deck, Amphin Mutineer. The Mutineer can exile a ton of enemy creatures this way, turn them into more 4/3 Salamanders(that your commander makes you immune to!), and then you can do silly things like use Caller of the Hunt with Salamanders and Hadana's Climb to really whack people with a pumped up monster. Don't expect to win games, but do expect to have influence over who wins.

- The Warfox

https://deckstats.net/decks/209945/2634298-rise-of-the-salamander-king-gr

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Commander Deck Reviews / Rise of the Salamander King(Group Hug)

« on: July 16, 2022, 02:40:42 am »

This is not a serious deck. It's a jokey group hug deck I like to play with my friends. Most of what's in the deck is meant to totally screw with the flow of the game. Way too much card draw, way too much mana, free stuff being put on the board, etc. Every counterspell is chosen to not leave the person who got countered with nothing. They all give something for the trouble of countering their spell. The commander, Gor Muldrak, is a joke as well. When I play this deck, I play as if I am trying to root out the evil, vile 'Salamander King' by testing my opponents and trying to find out who is the most evil. Once the Salamander King is decided, the group hug ends and I focus all efforts into defeating whoever that player is. Sometimes I decide that I was the Salamander King all along.

It's all about having fun and disrupting everyone else's play style. I've made multiple players self-destruct because they couldn't keep up with all the card draw. It's great fun.


Rise of the Salamander King(Group Hug)

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Deck Reviews / The saltmaster, Alaundo; Suspend-heavy untap combo deck.

« on: July 11, 2022, 08:56:54 am »

This deck is very annoying to play against, and even kind of annoying to play. Alaundo the Seer has a pseudo-Suspend like ability that interacts curiously with Suspend cards. Every time you tap him, you draw a card, then put a card into exile with time counters equal to its mana value(don't do this to lands and 0 cost cards or they're lost forever!), and then he removes a time counter from all other cards you have in exile, including Suspended cards. So, while the non-Suspend cards he has in exile won't remove counters on your upkeep, all the suspended ones will.

Well, everything in this deck is about getting tons of value out of Suspended cards, cheating out expensive spells, and abusing the everloving heck out of Alaundo to tap him over and over and over, take advantage of that card draw, and have some hellishly long turns, and with some luck even use him on other peoples' turns too. My play group was SUPER salty about this deck so I've only gotten to play it once in the last two weeks, but even when they started dogpiling me and not letting me get Alaundo back out, I was so far ahead and had so many recurring-suspend cards working that I was able to still pull out a win.

-The Warfox

https://deckstats.net/decks/209945/2622444-suspend-alaundo