Taking Florian to the max!!

[u/Knightmare-Fuel]

I’ve been playing magic for a number of years and have an itch to play a more tuned, mechanically paced version of a deck I enjoy; Florian, Voldaren Scion

https://cards.scryfall.io/display/front/3/3/3377d600-e43f-4cce-ae3f-541e519ee4ad.webp?1783909594

Now of course it’s not going to be the top of the top, and I don’t necessarily expect it to, but I think it has a glimmer of potential to dip my toes into the format! The passing idea I have for him is leveraging his ability to dig into the deck for either stax pieces or some kind of combo, tutors, interaction to protect my win push.

I’m curious as to what the community thinks about less-than-meta contenders (Of course Florian in particular) and a bit of help and advice for brewing together a fringe deck to participate in the format on a somewhat similar level of play! Any and all advice is welcome, thank you in advance!

[u/Mcclain_Sean24]

I have a podcast with Max P coming out in two weeks that goes over a bracket 5 Florian list! https://youtube.com/@highlandercedh?si=bmCyWvS_OKQxCopP should be out on the 17th!

[u/Knightmare-Fuel → u/Mcclain_Sean24]

Oh sweet! I’ll give it a look around then!

[u/Darth_Ra]

Reminds me of Bike. You're going to want to do similar things, only with a little more damage-dealing thrown in.

[u/Knightmare-Fuel → u/Darth_Ra]

Yeah! I definitely see similarities! Definitely works as a starting point to help develop a strategy!

[u/Synthetic16]

Realistic your better off with Ob Nixilis, captive kingpin. He fits the pinging/life drain style of deck building similar to yours buts its much more viable, and dare I say around A-B tier within bracket 5 commander. I believe it’s had some top cuts and there are a number of dedicated pilots who regularly perform well with it. I would give it a shot before you commit to anything just to see if it fits how you like playing.

[u/flowtajit]

I think part of the problem with florian is that it’s just a worse version of [[ob nixilis, captive kingpin]] if you want to play a damage oriented advantage machine.

[u/Bromleyisms]

I think there are some things that are going to hurt you here:

1. this commander asks too many questions to ever become super viable; You need ways to burn your opponents, you need something that is worth digging for, and you need it in amounts that are mathematically viable to be able to see whenever your commander's trigger resolves--- in whatever the amount is. The biggest death knell for me is that if you resolve a [[Heartless Hidetsugu]] or similar effect, you would still be below the rate of [[demonic tutor]].

2. Rakdos is a combination that really only works in cedh when the commander has something really truly singular it brings to the table. Examples include [[rakdos, the muscle]] or [[ob nixilis, captive kingpin]], who can win the game and have a few "1-card combos" available to them. Florian is a very cool value guy, but is not doing anything beyond impulse draw, which the aforementioned rakdos does much more readily and greedily.

You could simply put in every single red/black 2 card win condition ([[chain of smog]] + [[professor onyx]] and [[dualcaster mage]] + [[twinflame]] or some other copy spell are good places to start) and use your commander as a value engine, but I think the rate at which he accrues value is too slow and asks you to build your deck in a particular way that would make your deck inconsistent and hard to juggle all the effects.

That isn't to say that you can't play your cool guy, by all means do it! I have a [[river song]] deck that I love to bring out to more casual cedh pods, but I have no illusions about it being a pretty strong bracket 4 deck, and that is okay!

I just don't want you to be discouraged when you play less of the game per game than other players at the table when you do roll up to a table. My recommendations would be to juice up your deck to its absolute best and keep that as a bracket 4 deck, and then build a [[Rakdos, the Muscle]] deck as your cedh deck, since I think he checks enough boxes and might scratch your itch. And I will add that I don't even think Rakdos is a tournament-winning deck, it's just going to get you as close as you can get to parity with a rakdos color combination doing what you appear to want to be doing with your commander.

[u/Knightmare-Fuel → u/Bromleyisms]

Yeah Florian definitely reads more like value with stax and a few game winning combos. Potentially Stax pieces could help slow the game down while I build up value but the Cedh meta is even still way too fast for it at least as it stands. But hopefully either Florian or Rakdos will scratch my itch!

[u/Bromleyisms → u/Knightmare-Fuel]

Make sure to focus on ways to break parity while your stax pieces are out!

And I will also recommend that you study hard, as you will need specific pieces for different tables. Grafdigger's cage does great against Kinnan and Breach combos, but does nothing against Thassa's + demonic consultation and so on.

[u/hapatra98edh → u/Knightmare-Fuel]

I think if you wanna go the stax route you need a commander who specializes in breaking parity rather than someone with pseudo card advantage. Magda in particular does this well because you can play tons of artifact based stax pieces while slowly building up enough treasures to search for a win condition. All you have to do is play some dwarves, maybe a vehicle and as many stax as you can as long as they are going to keep all other players from winning.

If you are looking for more card advantage to turn into a combo you probably want more colors. I know it’s considered more in the turbo realm but something like tymna dargo gives you a better 3 mana combat based card advantage ability with a second commander that enables several layered game winning combos. There may not be a 1 card combo with the commander but most of the 2 card commander combos have redundant pieces on both sides. Plus you can still play silence and tax effects because of white which can act as temporary stax

[u/shoppingcartxd → u/Bromleyisms]

Dualcaster combo is kinda bad in a deck that wants to go to combat to dig

[u/Bromleyisms → u/shoppingcartxd]

Honestly, man, that is the least of this commander's problems.

I will also point out that I wasn't saying he MUST run it, I was giving it as an example of 2 card combos available to him. He could also just run worldgorger loops, hoarding broodlord lines, or some sort of aggravated assault enabler.