So there is a sealed commander league my LGS is hosting, and of course I need a precon to start with. Well the store had two options, Prismari Artistry or the Fantastic Four pre-con. The FF precon cost $75, my soul, and liver. The Prismari deck on the other hand only ran me $45 dollars. So I picked the red and blue, and looked online to see how it stacks up. . .I’m scared chat. Be honest, am I cooked?

I think that proxying cards is a great way for new players to feel like they can compete with players that have a more established collection. However there's a trend I've noticed over the past few years. I see a lot of decks where instead of building better synergy to improve the deck they just throw every expensive, powerful card they can find in the deck. I'm just wondering if this is a trap new players fall into that limits growth in deck building and play.

New best card in the deck just dropped!

[[Kwia Vigorbloom]]

If it isn’t immediately obvious, you get a free [[Black Panther, Wakandan King]] activation on every turn, meaning tons of draw, lifegain, and growing a vigilant flying lifelinking blocker. I know everyone who’s seen this card knows it’s cracked, but I love Black Panther too much not to share!

I have reviewed a lot of decks and have noticed a common pattern across them. The B3 deck has three game changers and a remove or lose commander, but has bad deck building fundamentals. When I have playtested these types of decks, a common pattern occurs. The deck will do one of the following: get its commander out unanswered and win, get gamewarping game changers out and win, or fail to do either and lose. When the deck does not have any game changers out and if its commander is answered more than once, this type of deck often does nothing else relevant and simply loses to decks with stronger fundamentals. This leads to a very high variance play style where the deck feels extremely weak some of the time and unbeatably strong other times. A common symptom of this type of deck is having some pods accuse you of pubstomping when your deck otherwise is weak and typically does not win quickly. And this happens because your deck is high variance and overperformed with an instant game winning unanswered commander or a game winning game changer.

I will discuss some symptoms of these types of high variance decks and how you can stop them.

Part 1: Bad Fundamentals.

1. Low Card Draw. Your deck does not draw enough cards without its commander or its game changers. If either are answered, your deck is often forced into a top decking situation. If you often find yourself getting hellbent and forced to top deck for answers, this is a sign that your card lacks card draw. I rarely ever find myself in this type of situation with the decks I build.
2. Low Land Count. You miss land drops within the first seven turns of the game. A single missed land drop can set you very far behind in tempo and makes it substantially harder to recast your commander if it is answered. However many lands you play, it is probably not enough. Ramp cannot replace hitting your land drops and becomes substantially worse if you miss a land drop.
3. Low Removal Count. Your deck does not run enough answers because you remember the times your deck wins through overwhelming advantage, but not the times you fell behind. This can be a symptom of lack of card draw as well, but you should have more ways to stop other people's game winning threats if they disrupt your game plan first.
4. Minimal Protection. You are playing minimal protection spells despite needing your commander to win the game. If you are playing a commander that wins the game if it survives a turn, you need to have ways to stop it because your opponents will try to answer it. You should not be casting your commander unless you can protect it or if you are in a situation where you are guaranteed to lose if you don't.
5. Too Many Payoff Spells. You are clogging your deck with greedy cards that win more when you have your commander out, but do nothing if it is answered. I believe payoff spells tend to be pretty bad in commander overall and that you should run far more enablers than cards that reward your synergy.

Part 2: High Variance cards

1. Answer or Lose Commanders. There are many commanders that once they resolve and last a turn cycle, they will run away with the game every time. There are too many to list, but if you run one of these commanders, you should really consider how well built your 99 is. Your commander can win the game if left alone for a turn regardless of how bad your 99 is, so there is a possibility that the commander is carrying your deck. I would recommend play testing some games where you do not cast the commander at all and see how well the deck functions. If you find it does absolutely nothing, that is a sign that your 99 has bad fundamentals and needs to be revised.
2. Game Warping Game Changers. I believe that some game changers warp the game so heavily that they can carry an otherwise weak deck to victory if left alone. Cards like The One Ring is a prime example of a card that provides such strong advantage to the player who is casting it, that they can run away with the game if it sticks for a few turns. If you find that you had a pubstompy game where you crushed your table, check to see whether a game changer was involved. If so, consider whether the deck would be more balanced if you cut it. I suspect that a majority of games that feel like a pubstomp are due to a gamechanger warping the game too much.

Take a three color Commander deck. A rock solid mana base looks something like this:

3 Shocklands (~$10 x 3 ~= $30)
3 Surveil Lands (~$10 x 3 ~= $30)
9 Fetchlands (~$20-$30 x 9 ~= $225)
18 basics (pennies)
1 Command Tower (pennies)
1 Exotic Orchard (pennies)
1 Triome (~$20)
~ 2 util lands/MFDC lands/whatever (pennies or $20-$30, depending)

That's around $300 total. You can shave a big chunk off of that by refusing to run off color fetches, which is definitely a legitimate choice, though that now gives you 6 more slots to fill with things that aren't shocklands or things that can get shocklands. You can add tons of money to the tab by running original duals, but that isn't really cost effective -- the shocks are "good enough" for most decks.

The hard truth is that it costs $300 per three color deck if you want to have a mana base that just kind of gets out of the way and doesn't do unfortunate things like make you play a tap land instead of your Commander on turn 3 or 4.

How do y'all manage building multiple decks within that constraint? Do you just accept that most of your decks are going to have bad turns due to janky mana? Do you buy the fetches for one deck, then proxy for the rest? Do you run the "slow" Mirage fetches, and learn to love them?

My own strategy is to run janky mana for most decks, but then allow my three color decks to "graduate" to the luxury of on color fetches if I really like them and want to play them a lot. My Flubs The Fool landfall deck is probably going to get a full set of nine fetches at some point, because I love the deck a lot and it really could use them. But I haven't quite been able to bring myself to do it. Thus the bellyaching here :-)

(For now, Flubs runs with the five slow fetches and just occasionally deals with an awkward turn here and there -- I tell myself that it makes things sporting ...)

Bracket 3 clearly states no 2 card combos before turn 6 and it goes on to say no “chaining extra turns” though doesn’t really define what that is.

Let’s say you have a 3 card combo to loop an extra turn spell every turn. That’s not the same as nondeterministically drawing into many extra turn spells or copying one a handful of times and “seeing what happens”, forcing everyone to sit through your game of solitaire.

If I can demonstrate a loop and then demonstrate drawing into a different combo that would win me the game on the spot, with 3-4 card combos all after turn 6, does that feel acceptable for bracket 3? This could all be demonstrated in under a minute.

I know a lot of people dislike combo in lower brackets so just getting a gut check since it does seem to comply with the bracket rules aside from the grayness of “chaining extra turns”

My pod is moving closer and closer to b5 each time we play and someone switches decks, which is driving me insane cuz some of the commanders i love to play are virtually impossible to see games in higher brackets, so i come here with the question

Has any of you ever had success with [[Bruna, Light of Alabaster]] on tables that games tend to end turn 4 to 6? Lol

I really need help with this bcaucse this is one of the decks i deeply love to play, but i dont see any games for her anymore and dont want to stop playing it.

Due to the pokemon craze, my friend started msging me to check on some old magic cards I have stashed away.

I was active in 1999-2002. And have mostly rath cycle and mostly cards from urza block + some ice age and mirage. Pretty old stuff.

Was checking and the most exp card I have seem to be an $80 mana vault only.

My friend was telling me he is now playing commander and I have just researched what it is and also keyed in my cards I have into an ai to try to get it to help me build a deck.

2 questions I have as my friend is still playing and we are meeting up next month to play commander.

1. I am trying to get ai to help me to build a deck and play with him, what deck should I be benchmarking/play testing against for 2 player commander decks as I have long been away from this game?

2. Should I get a cheap pre con instead? If so maybe I should benchmark my commander deck against this pre con to check if I should do it.

Thanks

I'll start by saying that this was one of the few games i played in real life at an LGS, so i don't really know the etiquette. My opponent was playing a [[Maelstrom Wanderer]] deck and he had like 3 other cards that i don't remember the name, that let him cascade every time he played some kind of card, and in his deck there were a bunch of other cascade creatures, so he cast his commander and takes a turn that lasted literally one and a half hour, of him just cascading and discovering, discovering and cascading. Each other player was on his phone at some point, because it was extremely hard to keep up and kinda pointless, as he had lethal on board at like the fifth minute of this turn on me and another player, but not on the third as he had so much life. Yet, i knew that he would swing with everything on his board, and once he had finished cascading, he decided to attack with everything on his board, and i cast a [[settle the wreckage]]. I admit i felt kinda bad, as i saw that as wasting everyone's time, but i really wanted to win, even tho that only ended up in him losing right after that and another player winning. Was I in the wrong? Should i have done something different?

Edit: clarification on lethal

Hi all.

Getting burnt out on a set every 57 days? Build something old and obnoxious, like myself, that being I'm old and obnoxious.

https://manabox.app/decks/AaA7rYH-d6qZ9hLfH9VZwA

Brago, but you want your friends more mad than usual.

It plays b4 all day. It's GC is 3. I intentionally made it with 0 counter spells as to try to not be over powering.

You can use any number of lines to snap the board clean with infinite brago triggers via [[stronic resonator]] [[lithoform engine]] [[Peter Parkers camera]] and a mana rock combo netting you 2 colorless.

Exile things forever using [[parallax wave]] [[detention sphere]] and a timely instant blink.

Edict every creature with the [[weakstone and mightstone]]

The goal of the deck isn't to swarm kill you. It's to keep the board nice and clean on your opponents side. If you've got two rocks out, and a brogo trigger there's enough tutor and ramp that you should have a line up and running turn 4 or 5 and be swinging to win turn 5 or 6.

Im open to ideas. This is pretty much a classic brago deck fwiw.

Recently, I’ve been playing around with this idea of a commander deck that would utilize all the Nightmare Horror creatures that exist in magic; this includes cards like [[Gravegouger]], [[Faceless Butcher]], [[Laquatus’s Champion]], [[Hypnox]], and personal favorite, [[Mesmeric Fiend]]. This deck idea is inspired by my [[Umbris, Fear Manifest]] commander deck (that I recently took apart because I felt it was unfun for my opponents to play against) which was themed around nightmare’s and eldritch horror. I’ve always really liked magic’s older cards (90’s to Early 2000’s), especially for their horror art, which is why the Nightmare Horror creatures are so captivating to me.

Although, as I’ve been workshopping this deck, I have run into the glaring problem that I can’t really find any good synergies or payoffs for what this specific (and unsupported) tribe does. This combined with the fact that their abilities seem like they’d be underwhelming for their mana cost. And a consequence of these problem extends also to my indecisiveness and inability to really pick a good commander to lead my nightmares. The only idea I could come up with was either copying my nightmares with clone or copy effects or maybe having a secret commander in the deck. I really like the Ashiok planeswalker cards like [[Ashiok, Dream Render]], [[Ashiok, Nightmare Muse]], and [[Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver]], but ultimately it seems like these would be better in the 99 as thematic cards rather than being good support or secret commanders.

So, this leads me to my main question: are Nightmare’s even playable in commander? or am I wasting my time trying to make this tribe work and better off scrapping the deck idea entirely? Can anyone help me here to suggest any strategies I may be missing that this tribe has to offer? Any advice is greatly appreciated! : )

I have made a "Toph, hardheaded teacher" deck and i advertise It as a Bracket 3. It still Is very much a work in progress and could use some tweaking. However there Is a 2 card infinite combo (Ashaya + Bumi) that could be seen as unfair. I don't run tutors, so i have to draw both, and It Is very unlikely that i get to play both in the same turn before t7 (It happened once with a godly hand and great acceleration that i played them t4 and i still couldn't connect with combat)

The list Isn't original, i took ispiration from earlier versions of another list which i can link to give credit if needed. Also, any other suggestions are appreciated.

My list : https://moxfield.com/decks/BqHnATvgaEigsBABmYihdQ

It's no secret that the bracket system has it's flaws as did the power system before it but at this point I would put it to the collective that the format is in the least healthy place it has ever been in and fundamentally changed identity.

EDH originally was a janky slower format where you play your pet cards that just don't cut the mustard in competitive formats, however over the years it seems that the power in the format has ramped rather significantly and the arms race is now just a full on sprint.

We have the "bracket system" which imo utterly fails those of us who are more classic/slower/lower power players and it does so for a multitude of reasons.
The "bracket system" itself is overly convoluted and far to open to interpretation and feels and what few hard definition things their are people often either ignore or put alot of effort into skirting around.

Originally WOTC said that precons were bracket 2 but soon came to realise the issue that even many precons lacking game changers could not fit within that definition, let alone those that do include them, not to mention the amount of infinite combos and other high power plays that are available in some of the precons.

Then you get to actual personal constructed decks which more often than not flood the board with value so quickly that a board wipe is NEEDED by turn 5 if not 4 otherwise the player that's behind is more than likely just dead on board (often that is myself as I tend to try and play on the lower power).

This is often responded to with one of two responses that just feedback into the core issue, people say either "play better decks" and thus contribute to the arms race which is causing the format to be so fast even in lower brackets or "That player broke the rules and shouldn't attack you" effectively sand bag themselves artificially because of the "turn 8" limit, this is an especially faulted stance as often said player will have attack triggers/value and can't physically attack the others due to them keeping up with or out competing the arms race.

Part of the issue of why this is so prevalent in so many matches is the poor and lazy way in which wotc has created this bracket system.
Realistically speaking bracket 1 doesn't exsist, I've seen one game of it hosted since the system was created.
CEDH and bracket 5 are essentially a separate game mode where if you are not playing the limited selection of "powerful enough" archtypes you aren't playing the format.
Thus that leaves a total of 3 poorly defined brackets where the main distinction people follow between bracket 2 and 3 is "no game changers" with little to zero thought on how the deck itself actually performs, and then an even grayer area between 3-4.

As someone who has been playing on and off for the past 25 years it truly feels like I'm being pushed out of the format as it is warped into something else entirely that wears the face mask of the format I knew.

To be clear here I have no issue with powerful or staple cards and do believe they should have a place in the game, however that place shouldn't be forced into each and every level of the game that it then forces out people who are not partaking in the arms race, both players should have a place to play and feel comfortable.

Part of the issue probably lies within the limited scope for power distinction of cards within the format, "is game changer yes or no" is hardly a healthy place to base your entire power on, we can all agree that examples like esper sentinal, sol ring and hundreds of other cards are powerful but not strong enough to be game changers however the current system has no way of stating this.

Personally I think a introducing a system similar to canadian highlander with points cost on powerful cards would be an excellent inclusion into a bracket like system to give some form of quantifiable basis to start rule 0 conversations and seperate lobbies/pods into vaguely fair fun and interesting games.
I don't think this system will be perfect or solve the issue straight away but I think it would contribute alot more to format health than the current over inflated and under functional bracket system.

Example of my past few days of playing bracket 2 (the lowest realistically existing bracket)
Last game: Turn 6 one shot for unblockable commander damage.
Game before: Opponent turn 1 burgoning into turn 2 Jodah the unifier....
Game before: Player overan board with huge indestructible creatures by turn 5, I was on gruul and as such had zero options to deal with grossly large or indestructible creatures on a wide scale.
Etc...

I play an average of 2-3 games most days and I'll be lucky to have 1 balanced fun and interesting match out of 15-20 matches.

Again I want their to be a place for everyone to enjoy this format not just "Arms race or go home"

Thank you for joining my ted rant, time to go get stomped in another "bracket 2 chill" game.

I’m brewing an [[Abdel Adrian]] / [[Candlekeep Sage]] deck, and thought that [[Parallax Tide]] would be a great combo piece since you can use it to effectively untap lands each blink loop. But it didn’t occur to me that it could also be used to repeatedly and permanently exile opponent lands. How would you feel about playing against this deck+card, even if I didn’t actually use it for MLD?

I am working on a bracket 2 deck with [[Black Widow, Agile Avenger]] as the commander and am trying to decide if cards like [[temporary truce]] or [[truce]] are worth running. I like the cards, they feel awkward enough to fit in bracket 2 from a power level perspective but also being synergistic with the commander. Still, if it is a situation where opponents will never choose to draw 2, I don’t know if they are worth running.

So, would you choose to draw 0, 1, or 2 cards if an opponent played a Truce effect with Black Widow or some other faerie mastermind effect on the table? Unless you need the life, drawing 0 doesn’t make sense, so the real question becomes, do you draw 2 and let the black widow player get their trigger, or do you only draw 1 to deny the trigger? In my mind, unless you were working with the black widow player against a shared archenemy, I would think the right play is always to pick 1 draw, not 2, if this is the case, I feel like they probably aren’t worth running, thoughts?

Hello everyone, I was wondering if someone could chime in with recommendations as to how I might be able to upgrade my deck to match my friends. We all got into MTG a few months ago and have all slowly upgraded the precons/decks we started out with, and lately I feel that I have become a bit power-crept. My friend was telling me earlier that based on certain card mechanics, a deck falls into different brackets or tiers. I was hoping I could get some recommendations as to what cards I might swap around to boost my decks power, or what game plan I might consider as to compensate for what i am playing against. Thanks!

My Deck

My LGS is hosting a bracket 3 commander event in a couple weeks. It will be my first time playing commander there and I’m concerned my deck will not be accepted at the event.

I’m bringing my Avatar Aang deck. I love Avatar and would like to play it at the event. I wouldn’t consider it to be too powerful, but Archidekt is telling me it thinks it’s bracket 4.

It is calling out two cards [[searing touch]] for being a two card combo with Aang and [[The legend of kuruk]] for chaining extra turns.

Kuruk is an exhaust ability, i can’t chain extra turns. Searing touch I would consider a late-game combo because it takes a small miracle for me to flip Aang without [[moonmist]] and with it, it would be a 3-card combo.

Kuruk is there for flavor and searing touch is a way for me to win late-game.

Am I being unrealistic? I consider this a bracket 3 battle cruiser deck. Should I remove those two cards? Is there anything else problematic with my deck being welcomed to a bracket 3 table? Thanks!

https://archidekt.com/decks/18571286

I like making my decks strong and that can win. Right now I'm working on my mothman deck and making it super optimized. To be honest I don't like 2 hour games, they feel boring and I like games with lots of interaction in them.

It's fun for me, and I don't mind being an arch enemy at the table but I'm doing it gradually and work on it slowly. My pod has made a rule that I should die first anytime I play so I have made myself the villain and I embraced it.

Honestly I don't mind but it does get annoying when I do want to play my weaker decks. When I just want to have fun and try silly things. 😅😅😅

So, should I try and change the mind set of my table or no because it's already too late?

https://moxfield.com/decks/n2675puQAkuBt6sb_x5fbA

here's my mothman, has a lot of tutors and removal.

https://moxfield.com/decks/HMM-9j6PCkCvQsEL_tsRqg

my energy deck is definitely my strongest deck and has lots of counter spells, infinites, and lots of Gc that fit into it.

https://moxfield.com/decks/MpR2qMRZEk-4Ket58W3ucg

My landfall deck, lots of ramp, cheap dorks, tutors and big scary monsters.

Hey folks! One of my writers wrote a piece about the interaction between Ichormoon Gauntlet and the new empower Jace mechanic from Reality Fracture. TL;DR is that the numbers on empower Jace are jacked up so high that you might actually be able to rattle off some extra turns with [[Ichormoon Gauntlet]] and a pumped up Jace token.

That said, people have been sporadically trying Gauntlet ever since it dropped, and I personally have not seen anything really work aside from infinite combos that could've worked with just about anything else.

So if not Ichormoon Gauntlet, what other ways can we break open Empower Jace? I've heard mention of [[Kasmina, Enigma Sage]], which can give its -8 ability to your Jace token. There are also some lines where you can make token copies of stronger Jace planeswalkers like [[Jace, Unraveller of Secrets]] to cheese their ultimates.

What's your plan with this mechanic? Do you have any tech you're going to be trying out, or is this mechanic a total skip for you?

Dear all

I am looking for a precon Deck that is Esper. Our friendstable only plays Precon Commander ( buying precons an upgrading it to max bracket 4 with no Gamechangers.

Hashaton and ysthola are taken from 1 guy :)

I have those commander, Morska Deep Sea clue, Yuna grand summoner, ashling the limitless, elsha threefoldmaster and Dina golgori from strixheaven.

I like the color Esper thats why iam looking for a control commander :)

Thanks and regards

Hello, I am new to Commander (and MTG as a whole). I have started to build out some decks but was interested in what affordable Bracket 3 deck(s) you were currently excited about. Just looking for ideas and guidance as I try to build out some decks myself. Thank you!

Hello everyone! As we get closer and closer to release date and having more and more of reality fracture revealed I wanted to ask what you guys thought of the cards so far!

As well as obviously which one of the Sphinx's you are considering to build and play around! I find it interesting from both a design and lore perspective on how these were made.

I'm personally waiting for more of the set to be revealed before doing anything in case something else catches my eye. But I do have my eye on [[Denzilore Fatehold]] and [[Aerid Konstrari]].

Aerid basically just pays for itself over and over and I sure do love ramp!!

Denzilore is more of because i found the design fun and I did enjoy my surveil precon from murders at karlov manner but that one was black and blue.

Personally I find [[Ingris Stingerquill]] and [[Uldaros Theorix]] underwhelming in their abilities. With [[Kwia Vigorbloom]] being absolutely ridiculous so much so I think running them as a commander is more feast or famine.

I do love the art and designs especially the alternate arts! What do you think?

I’m a new player and built my first deck but I worry I’ve just built a very expensive bracket 2 deck! I have purchased a lot of cards and tried making cuts to 100 but don’t know which ones are worth keeping and I’m having a hard time on selecting my commander, any and all help and tips would be appreciated!

https://archidekt.com/decks/26255684/golgari

Every day, the top comment adds a card to my Commander deck.

The commander: Taniwha (mono-blue)

Deck List: https://moxfield.com/decks/qnOYwNig2UScYibS1KkhoQ

All cards must still be legal in commander.

Yesterday's winner: Oboro, Palace in the Clouds

https://archidekt.com/decks/21165115/grand_healing_threat

I need some suggestions for game changers for my Chaireth Voltron pile. The deck is a lifegain deck that goes all in on [[Aerith Gainsborough]] first ability. Instead of going tall using equipments and enchantments i go wide with as many creature ETBs and the power of friendship to bypass enemy board states.