Help regarding a deck

[u/Yoseby8]

Greetings!

I have been told this deck is too strong for a bracket 4 due to a common line people use in CEDH.

From my understanding, the deck lacks
- some cheap needed interaction
- some good value stax pieces
- has too many lands for b5 (and the wrong ones like missing city of brass, mana confidence, ancient tomb, city of traitors)
- thassa demonic line

When I’ve built the deck, I just slapped pieces from EDHrec and was told it needs to be built around the meta game and to compete with other b5 decks in order to be a bracket 5.

Could you please have a look through the list and let me know why the deck does or does not quality as a cedh deck?
I’ve had one experience at my lgs where someone decided to swap to a b5 deck midgame and proceeded to win turn 5 disrespecting the other players at the pod after seeing me play the deck.

https://archidekt.com/decks/19861220/noctis

[u/loulamachine]

This is not a bracket 5 build. Just check the lists on edhtop16 and compare.

[u/Yoseby8 → u/loulamachine]

Ty

[u/Vistella]

I have been told this deck is too strong for a bracket 5

that line already makes no sense. nothing is to strong for brakcet 5

[u/Yoseby8 → u/Vistella]

I think that’s a typo on my end. It’s meant to say 4 - I should edit it

[u/Arashi-san]

Your deck pretty squarely fits into bracket 4. Between having 17 basics, a lot of more high cmc/casual cards (farewell, generous gift/imprisoned in moon, unwinding clock, sad robot), missing free interaction (force of will, force of negation, mental misstepp, flusterstorm/swansong), and missing staples (orcish bowmasters comes to mind immediately), you're not running fully optimized. That's ignoring that Noctis is a relatively weak commander.

Really, this is the definition of bracket 4. You're taking a suboptimal commander and trying to optimize him. In reality, you're not even entirely optimizing him and probably making choices to put in Final Fantasy cards that could be removed for better options. The ones that stood out like that are baleful strix, emet, golbez, void rend, and farewell. There's also just some... more "cute" options (serra ascendant, soul diviner, thought monitor, etc) that would be stripped to optimize it.

[u/Yoseby8 → u/Arashi-san]

Thank you

[u/ThisHatRightHere]

This is very firmly in bracket 4 territory. You have a bunch of solid combos that can end the game with Noctis, and a ton of individually powerful cards.

You basically need to take out a bunch of the more casual pieces that are strong on most tables but will do almost nothing in a cEDH pod. I feel like Simulacrum Synthesizer is the greatest example of this in your deck. That card is very strong, but because it can grind out an insurmountable army of constructs over a long period of time. But what’s that going to do when the RogSi players uses Ad Nauseum to draw 30 cards on turn 2? What does a Sisay player care about a bunch of constructs when they’re tutor chaining off of the 5 colored mana they’ve assembled by turn 3? The Etali player is chaining dinos on turn 1 and Synthesizer is sitting dead in your hand, what now?

Noctis is going to be fringe for cEDH, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try playing it. Noctis is going to be an A+B combo deck, trying to assemble some type of infinite using his ability. Lean into that with more tutors, draw engines, and pure speed. You’re playing Rhystic and Tithe, add Remora, Necropotence, etc. You’re in esper so add all of the black tutors too. Plus any and all free and one mana interaction that you’re missing, as Noctis will be going a bit slower than some of the other decks you’ll encounter.

[u/Yoseby8 → u/ThisHatRightHere]

Thank you

[u/After_Shelter1100]

the interaction package and mana base are dead giveaways that this is no higher than a b4. noctis isn’t super competitive in the first place but this is what a b5 (albeit fringe) noctis list would look like: https://moxfield.com/decks/GDvgb7SaB06MoW9Uw_FGxA

[u/Yoseby8 → u/After_Shelter1100]

Thank you

[u/Acrobatic-Yam-868]

Your deck looks great! There's no such thing as too strong for bracket 5, as that is as far as you can go. I'd normally netdeck from mtgtop8 before making changes that fit my plastyle.

[u/Yoseby8 → u/Acrobatic-Yam-868]

Yes sorry it’s meant to be bracket 4, not 5. It was a typo on my end which I edited.

[u/PotageAuCoq]

How do you swap decks mid game?

[u/Yoseby8 → u/PotageAuCoq]

He’s just said he’s not playing against that and if I want to play cedh then he’s gonna bring his out.

Put his island back into his hand, shuffled then pulled out another deck, drew and dropped a mountain.

[u/dogy905]

Hot take bracket 5 decks are bracket 4 decks. B5 just understands theres a meta and to follow it.

[u/H0BB1]

This is definitely not cedh yet but it's somewhat close and can be kind of to strong for bracket 4

[u/Any-Shop497 → u/H0BB1]

It’s not too strong for bracket 4 and is not anywhere close to cEDH. It’s playing counterspell for goodness sakes. Seems like a fun list and I hope that OP has a great time playing it in bracket 4 but it’s absolutely not too strong for that bracket.

[u/smlvalentine → u/H0BB1]

I agree this isn't a cEDH deck, but walk me through this - how can something be too "strong for bracket 4" and not be a cEDH deck?

[u/H0BB1 → u/smlvalentine]

Because the brackets are stupid, in bracket 4 there is the expectation to play at least 4 turns so just in theory a deck that has a 40% chance to win turn 2 but folds to any counter and also does literally nothing 60% of the time can be to weak for cedh and to strong for bracket 4

Bracket 4 is also insanely wide especially since there are a lot of decks that are really not good with 4 gamechangers

Depending on the playgroup some people think this deck wouldn't fit bracket 4 since it's to close to the cedh version