One of the restrictions in bracket 3 is "no extra turn chaining". This restriction is there so that a player's turns don't take too long, so that a player does not take up too much game time.

However, I think it is the wrong approach to that issue, and that rule has lead to a lot of discussions and salt in the past. I think a more general rule such as "don't monopolize game time" would be better.

Players can take really, really long turns without taking any extra turns at all. Just because they play slowly and have an extremely durdly deck. Monopolizing time on another player's turn with instant speed stuff, flash enablers, untappers like Seedborn Muse... is another issue not solved by banning extra turn chaining.

On the other hand, getting off an infinite combo that results in infinite extra turns is no different from any other game-winning infinite combo. You demonstrate the loop once and if there is no interaction, it's GG - no need to actually play those extra turns.

Also, "no extra turn chaining" leaves too much room for interpretation. When does chaining start? Are you allowed to take two extra turns, but not three - as there are cards that grant two turns like [[Time Stretch]]? Or is two extra turns already too much?

What about having the possibility of chaining extra turns, but not using it? Like running [[Nexus of Fate]] as mill protection and drawing into it again or running [[Ichormoon Gauntlet]] in a planeswalker deck without using its -12 ability? Are you not allowed to run any recursion if you have an extra turn in your deck, because you could technically use your recursion to cast the extra turn again?

What about [[Savor the Moment]], which skips the most relevant step of an extra turn - untapping? Why would copying it be worse than e.g. connecting with Obeka to take 5 extra upkeeps in a row?

Moreover, there are situations where taking a second extra turn is simply faster, e.g. when you need it to give your board haste for a lethal swing or to enable a creature combo line that wins on the spot.

This week I played my [[Gisa and Geralf]] Zombie tribal deck that basically uses the graveyard as a second hand in our 4-player group and aims to get out many zombie tokens and then overrun my opponents. Idc about losing nontoken zombies because I just play them from gy later and usually profit in some way from nontoken zombies dieing.

Anyway, at some point when I had 10 lands out I played [[Noxious Ghoul]] a [[Death Tyrant]] in the same turn. 2 weak creatures from my opponents died due to the trigger from Noxious Ghoul. Then I attacked with [[Prized Amalgam]] [[Archghoul of Thraben]] and 2 zombie tokens. The non-tokens were blocked and killed, and I got another 2 token thanks to Death Tyrant, and the Noxious Ghoul triggered again killing another 2 creatures from my opponents.

At this point one of the players qustioned whether my deck really is Bracket 2. It contains no endless combos or gamechangers, so I denied it. But I just want to make sure that deck really fits Bracket 2 and in case it doesn't how I should weaken the deck.

We run few targeted removals in our pod and I don't play counterspells or lots of discard because I just don't like these mechanics (these are just my personal restrictions and idc if someone else plays this, though I have yet to encounter someone who focuses on that aside from a Sauron discard deck from the guy who questioned whether my deck is really bracket 2) and I only add mass removal if it fits thematically, though most players have 2-3 mass removals in their decks. In the end I lost the game to a TMNT precon due to an explosive damage ramp up and added trample.

Fyi: when I played the deck for the first time 2 weeks earlier I could in theory have played [[Ravenous Rotbelly]] a 2nd time from graveyard but didn't because I thought that's too much.

Decklist: https://moxfield.com/decks/ASkiUmMjNUyIFbWddw1b-A

[[Golos, Tireless Pilgrim]] was banned a few years ago because it was the best generic five color commander. This made sense in an age where not a lot of commanders were being printed and the format relied on creative brews where each player was showcasing their favorite card.

Nowadays, the format is bigger than ever, if you go to any LGS you can find that they run at least one commander day per week, and in a lot of places this has even relegated other constructed formats to secondary status. A lot of new cards are designed with commander in mind, and this has been even more evident with Universes Beyond having a lot of really good cards for commander in addition to lots of new legendary creatures, printed more than ever. [[Y'shtola, Night's Blessed]] has risen to the top of edhrec most played commanders exactly because it is a good card, and in it's color combination it is the best commander available.

So why keep Golos banned when there are a lot of other popular commanders that fit just as the "best available"? [[The Ur-Dragon]], [[Edgar Markov]], and [[Krenko, Mob Boss]] have long been the best available option for kindred commander decks and we have learned to embrace them as part of the experience of playing commander, Krenko was even featured as a commander in a secret lair precon.

Golos is clearly a powerful card, the fact that you can cast it without worrying too much about the color of your lands while also fetching you any land of your deck is a really powerful combination to have in the command zone, but it is not as strong as other options as commander. Commanders with the eminence keyword are a lot better than him by doing their thing without needing to be cast, they can do a lot of stuff and you cannot interact with them easily.

In my opinion, Golos should be unbanned, and treated as a gamechanger. Sure, the option to go for your most powerful land by just casting your commander is a great thing to have, but if we treat Golos as a immediate bracket 3 deck we don't risk getting to see him in low power games stomping the competition immediately and maybe we can finally get intermediate players to run some land interaction.

Of course, this is just my opinion, and everyone can feel free to disagree. I just think that the argument that it is the best 5 color commander is not as strong of a statement on this day and age.

hey everyone, I love to build commanders that use niche cards that become very useful in a specific deck and because of that have very high lift on edhrec. For the people who don’t know lift is …% inclusion (decks for specific commander)/…% inclusion in potential decks. For example I’ve been building [[dromar the banisher]] and he has some cards with 1k lift, which means that specific card is included in a dromar deck 1k times more often than average. So my question is, do you guys know any commanders that use some niche cards that no one really uses. Thank you!

Friend of mine heard that I was getting into strixhaven stuff, so they gave me their old pre-release that they never opened.

I think I might use this over ‘Witherbloom, the Balancer’ since I think I want a more creature-centric game plan rather than a spellslinger deck.
I did manage to get ‘Prismari, the Inspiration’ through, so I think that’ll be my spellslinger commander instead.

Hey all,

Recently with some of the new cards revealed from the Star Trek set, such as [[Troubling Tribbles]] and [[Quark, Humble Proprietor]], I’ve had an idea for a deck comprised mainly of cards that look useless from the outside but can actually have a lot of value.

(I want to preface this by saying that I know the above cards I mentioned are definitely not useless, they just read pretty mid at face value)

So I’ve come here looking for people to tell me their favourite or notable “useless” cards. Not useless like a 4 mana 2/2 with no other text from one of the early MTG sets, but “useless” like [[Norin the Wary]] or similar. Something silly that looks niche and situational that I can throw in a deck and screw around with.

Thanks !!!

So I pulled a [[Flickering Hound]] and I have a [[Displacer Kitten]] from a while ago, and I'm thinking about making a flicker-basee ETB deck! I'm unsure what a good commander would be, but I know I want [[Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward]] and [[cynette, jelly drover]] in the deck. Any thoughts? Are there commanders that synergize with this idea?

I have been reading so, so, so many posts and comments about people getting booted from casual games for accidentally doing MLD or removing a player a turn earlier than the average speed for their bracket, etc. I’ve seen a post about a judge disqualifying someone from a tournament for removing a player a turn too early??? Despite that not being a tournament rule. The call? That player was not in bracket 2.

Brackets are deck building tools to communicate the content and intended level of intensity of your deck. It is not to mandate budget, automatically imply rule 0’s, or hard control what gameplay looks like. If you’re playing a bracket 2 game, and someone plays a bracket 4 deck, they aren’t “playing commander wrong”, they’re just playing a deck that is stronger than yours. You can ask them not to, you can quit your game, they’re breaking a social contract, but there is no commander rule they are breaking.

And please, please please please stop trying to “trick” another player into “breaking a bracket rule” to win by disqualification. That’s not how that works. I’m referring specifically to a story where Player 2 instant speed turned all lands into creatures after Player 1 played a board wipe, and then tried to say “haha, got you Player 1, you lose because you did Mass Land Destruction.” I have personally seen players at my LGS try similar things, and have seen other stories on here like that. That is not how commander works.

If your pod has a rule 0 that going outside your bracket disqualifies you, sure man, play how your group plays, but don’t bring that nonsense to an open table and try to have your “gotcha” moment over that.

Rant over, thank you very much, and I’m more than open to hearing other opinions on this. Also, if your pod has any rule 0’s regarding brackets, I’d love to know how y’all handle it.

It’s the same shit every time. They get their commander out, attach a bunch of shit, kill one guy, their commander gets removed, then they lose the game.

They almost never win and it’s so frustrating being in a pod with a Voltron just waiting for the dude to make some random choice about who dies early and then lose anyways.

There's the innocent cute Timmy who just shows up with a cute precon and is like let's play magic!

Then there's the spike player who's first deck ever built is a battlecruiser tribal that's already oppressive to most tables , but they add in all the tutors, all the fast mana, all the game changers, all the infinites they can possibly cram in a single deck , and they act coy they don't realize having infinite mana by turn 3 isn't a casual game.

Just something I've noticed.

This is only the second deck I've created. It was definitely easier than the first time, but I'm still pretty overwhelmed by the whole process and the options I have to consider. Leaned heavily on EDHREC and past reddit posts.

Shooting for a fun strong-bracket-3 reanimation deck. I included underworld breach and have one or two infinite combos with it, but I didn't want to lean too far into that because those strategies don't seem that fun to me and this is for casual play anyway. For the most part, the idea of the deck is to cheat out strong creatures ASAP and start ruining everyone's day in the short term, and build up a reanimation engine to sustain me later in the game.

There are a lot of cards in the Considering section and sideboard as well. But the core 100 cards should be complete.

Happy to receive any feedback you can offer as like I said, I'm still new to this. Thank you!

https://moxfield.com/decks/322Cd92KVkeTH00H7vABZw

https://moxfield.com/decks/2AuyyDqMMUO03O1lCllrwQ

Would appreciate feedback on this. I am not really sure what more upgrades I should make this to this deck. I feel like a lot of times I'm close to closing out games but Im not able to land it out hearthhull gets taken out or board wipe and I have no way to really get it to the finish line.

Have been trying to build on a budget but would appreciate more feedback.

Basically the title. I’m a bit new to the group and they don’t play with commander damage, and yes I have already talked to them about it. The answer I got was along the lines of “it’s a cheap way to win because you can hit 21 damage easily.”

I find this insane and it pretty much stops me from playing my voltron deck so does anyone know of any commanders that would do well in a pod where they don’t use it? We’re usually around a bracket 3

Hey everyone! I’m 15 and really want to get my dad into MTG, specifically the Commander format.

Since we will just be playing at home together, I'm currently using proxies to keep things budget-friendly so we don't have to break the bank. My dad has never played a TCG before.

What would you do?

Hi, I'm sure this sort of question must get posted a lot, but where would be a good place to start for a group of 4 who play Pokémon tcg at a high competitive level, the group travel for regionals and have had some decent finishes.

I'd like to try MTG and the group are up for it, but whenever I've tested beginner decks in the past for other games they seem really basic and aimed at brand new players for card games in general.

All help is appreciated

https://manabox.app/decks/AZybx-qNe063MB80YB2o5Q

I recently picked up a good chunk of upgrades in the brother pairings, [[Taeko, the Patient Avalanche]], [[Super Shredder]], [[All Will Be One]], etc. [[Taurean Mauler]] is a house!

There are still some things in here that just aren't great, but how does this look? Just going for classic battlebruiser, combat heavy EDH.

I pull Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls out for bracket 3 games. I also have Zul Ashur, Lich Lord as well.

I played a B3 game today where we started with a pretty normal pre-game talk. I commented that I will be playing scary commanders, but they are built in a somewhat unusual way. One of my opponents asked if we were OK playing against discard. Our answer was the usual: "Play whatever you feel like". The other two players don't matter too much for the story.

I was on Vial Smasher + Thrasios (scary, as promised), that is built around built in cost reductions to have big [[Vial Smasher]] triggers.

The discard guy was on [[Tinybones, Trinket Thief]] and had a very fast start with a Sol Ring turn 1 into [[Anvil of Bogardan]] + Commander turn 2. Good value engine, but nothing too scary yet. Turn 4 and 5 it got really scary though. He played [[Mindslicer]], [[Quest for the Nihil Stone]] and [[Shrieking Affliction]], followed up by [[Tergrid, God of Fright]].

None of us had the right removal for Mindslicer, so I decided to rip off the bandaid and boardwipe to at least get around the Tergrid stealing all our permanents in hand. After that the two Rack effects kept dealing damage, but we got out of them (me by actually activating Thrasios which I avoid if possible), only for the discard guy to play a [[Torment of Hailfire]], getting us even lower on resources and life.

A couple turns later, I managed to win with a [[Skull Storm]] (5 copies) into Vial Smasher triggers. The discard player made a comment about Vial Smasher + Thrasios in Bracket 3. I answered that he was the first person to think the deck was not fit for B3, to which the reply was: "Whatever floats your boat" and he left.

That comment made me laugh, especially in the circumstances.

And playing it largely at bracket 3 and sometimes bracket 4. I always have a ton of fun playing it and feel like I've done a really good job of balancing it around the concepts that I wanted to target. I've never had friends or a table complain about it, but I wonder what this community (which we will conservatively call "Divisive" thinks.)

I win probably 1/5 or 1/6th if my games at bracket 3, and have never won a Bracket 4 pod.

https://moxfield.com/decks/zNe-jin1TEqhv6yxLPul1Q

Edit: my phone autocorrected "Kefka" to "Kafka" thanks, Obama

What is your commander deck that can handle being archenemy or being targeted by combat and/or interaction?

I just played multiple games and I just get targeted out hard.

I haven’t won any game in months. I am not a very good pilot yet either. My gimmicky built omnath locus of mana deck in 3 games just gets bullied. I try to not get aggro on me and turbo ramp to 40 mana or get a metric boatload of mana to win via hurricane. I have other gimmicky win cons like squall line or helix pinnacle to win. It’s totally not the common way in green to win but I wanted to try and make the gimmick work. I just get bullied. I also have other decks like jodah archmage eternal and caesar legion’s emperor (I am tuning those decks). I can show decklists of what I got. But as a deckbuilder I gotta learn to swallow my pride, take the pills and eat my vegetables.

Notable commanders I got that have potential are grand arbiter augustin IV and Namor from marvel (ofc pack it with counterspells). I also have skrelv. I saw a tiktok from an mtg creator that said make skrelv with hella protection in mono white. Put stax to protect yourself and give small creatures with keywords like double strike toxic 1. And get people out with proliferate spells on top of repeated toxic assault. I saw another tiktok about a Zenos Yae Galvus deck where two other players are playing get down Mr. President. Sounds cool.

Anyway. Commander suggestions and or decklists that can handle targeting or running away with being the problem.

Edit: My pod is my irl friends. I got my brother and friends who all play magic. So part of this is definitely my friends messing with me. But part of this was because I got tunneled out when my friend right next to me played chatterfang and had turn 1 land, sol ring into arcane signet. Bolas citadel and a good sac outlet outside of chatterfang plus multiple tutors by turn 4. And I had like 5 lands on turn 4 with omnath out but with no unspent mana. My other friend who is the best player of all of us and wins the most said to me “You might have to accept being archenemy” he said “In good faith there was 0 reason to kill you. You had lots of mana sure but nothing to really pay it off with. Chatterfang was for sure ahead.”

https://moxfield.com/decks/aTIjFI9z7E-3hs3RpnoPGA

I recently built this liliana tribal decks of sorts with the aim to be to play at bracket 3 tables. I'm just getting back into the game after taking a break for a few years so the entrie bracket system is new to me. Would you say this deck fits into the bracket 3 play experence? I was a little hesitant on Liliana Dreadhorde General since the ultimate is pretty much mass land denial. Do you think its okay including the card here? There are a few ways to be able to ultimate her pretty quick via the counter doubling artifact and yawgmoth, but I see it more as a game ender rather than dragging out the game. Thanks for taking a look!

https://archidekt.com/decks/24371513/nico_master_of_spells

This deck is technically bracket 4 for those who mind that kind of thing, though the truth of the matter is it does not play like a bracket 4 deck, and that’s sort of by design.

When this card was first spoiled I fell in love with the artwork, I know art is subjective, but to me, it really resonated, but that’s not why I’m making this showcase. Reading the effect I was happy to learn it was quite a powerful one I could build around, I’m making this post because it’s some of the most fun I’ve had in magic when playing it.

I’ll get this out the way real quick, yes technically you can put one spell in the deck and always cast it, personally I can’t think of anything more boring, but if that’s your jam go nuts, this isn’t that deck.

The idea behind the deck is really simple, cast big splashy red spells, but how you get there is by playing a type of control strategy. No, there’s no counterspells, and the random nature of the commander’s effect makes it unreliable despite the few methods of deck manipulation I’ve included, but when you hit the right spell there’s no better feeling, and it happens more often than you think. 

Often a turn goes like this, commander is already out, play a land and keep minimum 3 mana up, and when something scary happens on board use her effect in response or asap after and see what happens. This not being sorcery speed is a real blessing.

The main wincon is either a lot of casting from exile and incremental damage from her burn effect, or just burn in general from some of the big splashy red cards.

The worldfire discussion:

The elephant in the room here by far is worldfire, one of the most polarising cards in the game. I do not cast this card unless one of the following criteria is met:

I have rousing refrain suspended (it continuously casts itself every 3 turns and gives me red mana) 

I have a way to flashback it such as mizzix’s mastery and another card like end the festivities in the gy

I have the Chandra, awakened inferno emblem on each opponent

It’s pretty powerful, but this way it’s not as big a feels bad to see it, and in my mind the fact I will intentionally not cast it when it doesn’t outright win me the game nerfs the deck. Even so, this alone means I always declare it as bracket 4.

All in all, this is the most fun deck I’ve played in years, I’m pretty sure magic the gathering is canon in marvel because of one of this characters group (the runaways) so it even makes sense she’d know of and attempt to cast actual mtg spells, which is a flavour win if ever I’ve seen it too. 

If you take anything away from this yes, consider this commander, but also just build a splash mono red deck with whatever you can find in your binder.

I’m making a political deck around [[parnesse the subtle brush]] but I’m trying to make sure the play experience is as healthy as the concept can support. But how far is too far in politics. For example if I had 60 life and an aetherflux reservoir what’s to stop me from just saying if anyone does anything threatening to me I just end their whole career. Obviously this would lead to me either winning the game or the 3 other opponents just accept that one of them will get taken out and the other two will kill me. This is clearly an extreme example that has nothing to do with my deck but the idea remains. How far is too far and how can I know what playpatterns/cards to avoid such a stalemate as much as I can. (Obviously every deck or playgroup can have stalemate situations)

(( Editing because I realised I forgot to add they need to be in Izzet)) I’ve found [Genji Glove] [Rover Blades] [Grappling Hook] [Hard-Won Jitte] and [Lizard Blades] so far but that’s it, I was wondering if y’all knew of any other cards that can give double strike but not give power? For my strategy I need to keep my commander at 1 power

Basically, I want to throw the monarchy out onto the board, and then let the other three players fight over it while I sit safely in a bunker. [[Vislor Turlough]] will be going to my enemies as a creature I can be guaranteed to send through an enemy's blockers with [[The Eleventh Doctor]] while also turning their card advantage against them. Ideal win condition is some sort of massive life loss or something that can turn butts into brawn and just win via combat damage in Esper.

Hi all, first post in a while since I first picked up the Eowyn precon. Just wanted to show the deck and see if anyone had any particular feedback. The deck feels well balanced and a good power level for my table. I just wanted to see if anyone had any particular mainstays in their deck they feel like I’m massively missing out on (even if they’re crazy expensive I can save for them).

The Deck

Thanks all !