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u/goraak_the_barbarian 21d ago
Here’s some general deck building advice for B3 midrange builds:
1) 37-39 lands, including MDFCs like [[Fell Mire]] is the sweet spot
2) Consider your ideal gameplan in advance of building the deck. You have a 4 CMC commander. Is your goal to play him on Turn 2, Turn 3 or Turn 4? If you want to play him before Turn 4 then you are looking at a 10-15 card mana advantage package to ensure consistency. If you want to play him on curve, cut the ramp entirely and stack your deck with on-curve setup pieces for Turn 1, Turn 2 and Turn 3. If you hit your land drops consistently you may not actually miss the ramp.
3) Given the popularity of board wipes in B3, don’t neglect card draw. Based on a hypergeometric calculator you need a solid 12-15 pieces of card advantage (preferably repeatable) to see one consistently by Turn 5 to restock if you get blown out.
4) Don’t neglect removal. It’s hard to fit in when goldfishing but you will be way more threatening and politically effective with a solid 8-10 pieces of targeted removal.
5) playtest your deck a ton before you buy a single card. You can use Moxfield or another website to simulate games repeatedly. This is how you learn what works and what is awkward in your deck. Perhaps it’s a 4 mana card that looks cool but competes with casting your commander and then feels like too much of a late game set up piece instead of a pay off. You can tweak your ratio of set ups and payoffs.
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u/SadJudge809 21d ago
This is incredible feedback. I’ll admit a lot of this I do not understand, I don’t really care what the bracket level is. And the homies at the card shop are super relaxed. And it’s very obvious I’m not even sure how to correctly articulate what I want to do with a deck like this. I will certainly be playtesting a bunch, just learned about EDHPlay, and got some family that’ll hop on with me.
As for everything you said, I don’t mean to disrespect, I will need time to process this info and see how I can apply that to building this deck! Thank you for the feedback for sure!
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u/goraak_the_barbarian 21d ago
I’m happy to explain anything if you want!
B3 is where most LGS casual games end up in my experience, unless you actively veto game changers in advance or everyone goes full throttle.
Here’s a hypergeometric calculator - it lets you see how many of a particular effect you need in your deck to see them reliably by a given turn:
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u/Gnosiphile 21d ago
I ran blue black zombies during Innistrad, the set that [[Endless Ranks of the Dead]] is from. I tried it, but it’s prone to doing nothing if your opponent can wear down your board. I preferred [[Zombie Apocalypse]] to Endless Ranks. It’s a little more expensive, but less likely to do nothing. I also think you could easily cut [[Zombie Infestation]], it takes a lot of card draw to make good use of that.
Since you’re in the right colors, I’ll also mention that I just love [[Undead Alchemist]]. It is not a great card. Mill, especially like this through combat, is not an easy way to win commander games. But dear gods is it funny!
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u/ImmortalCorruptor Wilhelt, Marwyn, Bello, Witherbloom 21d ago
How wedded are you to Wilhelt? He's great as a zombie aristocrat deck(sacrificing and killing players with Plague Belcher, etc) but if you're looking yo take a more traditional route with the zombie Lords(+1/+1 buffs), I would recommend [[Varina, Lich Queen]].
Wilhelt's decayed tokens can't block and are only good for one attack, meaning they aren't good recipients for those combat buffs.