Really not sure about this one (The Council of Four)

[AlltheTokens]

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.

[ERMTD]

Hey there,

After building the Galea deck, I also had the same thoughts and built a separate deck with him at the helm. I have now a semi-modular deck where I switch between him and Galea at the helm (switching a lot of cards actually) and I am quite happy, because the only thing tying both decks is the knights theme, but they play completely different.
Here is the decklist:
https://deckstats.net/decks/187019/3510588-the-council-of-four-knights/de

I tried him two times out. He is actually great and way more powerful than I thought. His strength lies on the types of cards you use (like Kami of the Crescent Moon and Howling Mine) that nobody really likes to blow up because of value and that he himself is mostly not a target, even if the deck goes out of hand. The reason for this is that he is a 0/8, so not really a attacking threat by himself. The second reason is that the opponents are mostly responsible if he churns out knights or draws you cards. The fairer the opponents play, the less powerful he becomes.


Cheers!

[AlltheTokens]

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.

[ERMTD]

That is a shame regarding your playgroup, but they will also grow and think differently over the years. I mean, with this deck you are just drawing more cards when everyone else is drawing more cards, which does not make you the main target necessarily. Plus you play also cards that do give them card advantage too, so it is not a very black or white thing with this commander. Another thing: maybe your playgroup has to be introduced to group hug commanders, at least from what you wrote.

[AlltheTokens]

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.

[anjinsan]

Your deck isn't designed to win, but left alone, it will win? 

I'd say that Council of Four are actually quite a strong commander, owing to them drawing you piles of cards whilst also popping out handy knights. 5 mana is a lot, of course, but it's justified. As an 8-toughness blocker they're also great on the defence (or use one of those toughness-is-damage cards and Commander-damage voltron people to death?). If your playgroup have realised that they need to murder you ASAP when running such a deck... well, they're correct. They'll have realised that at some point you'll just assemble a combo, drop an Approach, etc etc. If they're going directly for you and no bothering to remove your engine, though, you ought to be able to protect yourself with fogs, pillowforts, or stuff like Aetherize.

Consider just having Co4 and Kami of the Crescent Moon out. Now everyone else draws one extra card per turn, but you draw five! I feel like you ought to be able to find a way to win with that. Personally, I wouldn't lean into group hug much - just one of these effects and you're laughing.

They don't really dictate a particular direction or wincon for the deck beyond that. The tokens are nice and could be part of your wincon, and of course if you're drawing +5 cards a turn then you can abandon bothering with making a deck anyone actually wants to play and go for Approach of the Second Sun. On the other hand, when you're drawing that many cards you could use them to fuel whatever actually-interesting thing you fancy.

[AlltheTokens]

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.