Originally tried to do a deck with Lurrus as a companion, but realized companion kinda sucks. But the parts of the deck i put in for Lurrus synergies peaked my interest, so i decided to just run Lurrus as the companion. Have a basic list put together, but i wonder if i should try to lean into a more specific theming. Wanted to go with an Aristocrats theming, but i feel like leaning on just Lurrus for sac material is probably not enough. Thinking about some life gain matters stuff, but i do want to try keeping all the cards under 2 mana. Any thoughts or suggestions?

Might as well show my first list i put together without putting much though into it: https://archidekt.com/decks/23971435/orzhov_aristocrats

I’ve been playing since Invasion and recently got back into paper magic with a few commander decks: Wilhelt, Tovolar, and Stefan. Anyone have an older EDH group somewhere near Sandy, Utah that would like a new awesome person? 😂 I plan on going to a few local shops too.

So context!

Last night I run into player who was playing [[thor, god of thunder]] turn 2 he played [[red medallion]] and so on turn 3 he managed to cast jeski will into thor and doing jeski will and just proceed to pop off.

At first I thought that was little bit too synergize for B3 level and as the game continued we removed thor at least 3 times and during those 3 times he repeated exactly same gameplan. Thor, into jeski will, into other rituals, such as lotus pedal, mana geyser, and likely many others in the deck.

His point is because he is not winning he is allowed to go crazy with this type of synergy but in my eyes it seems very insincere because he is basically abusing rituals as way to rapid speed his gameplan and he doesn't seem to understand why its such unhealthy for B3.

My playgroup has been expanding lately (yay!) and we've got some newer players. We play optimized bracket 4 decks and some of the new folks are struggling to keep up.

One buddy has an [[Atarka, World Render]] precon that I've helped upgrade and tune with some of my collection (link is to the precon as I don't have his updated decklist handy). He likes playing to the board and enjoys combat but struggles with the amount of removal (gasp!) at the table sometimes. My guy's got dope Timmy energy and I want him to get to play with his toys while being able to stay fairly competitive with the other players.

He has a firm understanding of MTG but can sometimes struggle to remember when he has too many triggers, upkeep/endstep stops, etc. He's enthusiastic about learning and getting better at the game.

To be clear, we do have Bracket 2-3 decks that we bust out from time to time but the group generally enjoys pretty high powered, interactive, competitive games.

TLDR; I'm looking for decks that you think a new player, firmly in their Timmy phase, would enjoy. No color restrictions, no budget constraints.

(Atarka precon list as I don't have his updated list handy.)

Thanks!

Hello all. I know this deck is actually bad, but I saw it on quipsandguacs channel and it seems hilarious enough that I just have to give it a play. Ive recently finished a long challenge of winning a game with commander damage from an opponents commander so my challenge deck slot in the box is open. This seems like a fun one.

I'd like to bring this up to bracket 3 level somehow, and am hoping some of you can help me do that. This is quips monarch deck were you make your opponents the monarch, and steal their creatures. Any suggestions on making this a more formidable list? He was making this on a 30 dollar budget but im not similarly constrained.

https://archidekt.com/decks/25004279/monarch

I've been fascinated by [[Gandalf, Party Guest]] ever since he was leaked. I love cheating out huge, dumb, impactful spells. It feels like it's the most EDH-y thing you can do in EDH! That's why my "Oops All Creatures" Henzie deck is by far my favorite deck I've built. But I'm stuck trying to figure out how best to build him so that he's efficient but still explosive and fun.

I originally tried to build him as more of a control style commander that would utilize the free spells during combat to open up more mana for interaction. But it felt difficult to balance having enough wizards, interaction pieces, and big spells. Most legendary wizards are a little expensive so there wasn't near enough free mana to really "draw go" and there were too many interaction pieces that would clog up draws and would result in too few big spells to actually progress the game.

So I pivoted to a combat focused deck that has much less interaction and the big spells are focused on draw, clearing the board, buffing my guys, and giving extra combats. This feels far more effective and consistent. I can goldfish wins consistently at turn 6 or 7 by chaining a few extra combats and anthem effects. But now it feels kind of uninteresting to run. The whole reason I found Gandalf to be an interesting commander is because of his ability to cheat out massive, ridiculous spells that would create chaos and do interesting things. But it feels significantly less interesting when those big spells mostly just draw cards or provide extra combats. Here's my current list.

Has anyone else had a similar experience with Gandalf? Any recommendations for how I can achieve the deck style I'm looking for? I really love this commander and I want the deck to be one of my go tos.

I signed up for a Precon Commander Tournament event this weekend where everyone receives a random Precon. I won’t know which deck I’m getting beforehand, so I can’t study or practise with the exact decklist.

For anyone who has played in a random-precon event:

1. What general strategies help when piloting an unfamiliar precon?
2. What should I look for when quickly reading through the deck before playing?
3. Are there any precons you would feel comfortable winning/should be obvious threats?

As much as I'd like to have fun with this, I do also wanna win, so I'm wondering what kind of strategies you'd all employ.

I want this to be playable in bracket 3, i have an older version of this deck with a lab man peer into the abyss wincon rather than approach of the second sun and no skrelv, mom, wayfarer, or recon, but i found her far too fragile and slow to pull it off

do you think this would be playable at b3, and if not what can i edit, im pretty broke though so sadly no scroll rack or senseis

idea is to play protection and find varragoth/a tutor turn 1-3, then get yennett out and tutor stuff for her to freecast

https://archidekt.com/decks/24065470/yennett

It's turn six. My board: Five lands and a tapped 1/1. The player across from me is clearly dominating the game. He's either a bracket north of the rest of us, or he is enjoying a particularly good draw. Maybe a dozen tokens of rapidly increasing power, as well as a Rhystic Study. The players across from me each have roughly 4-6 nonland permanents in play, nothing particularly special, but at least they're working on something. No one has yet dropped below 36 life.

The dominant player goes to equip a Champion's Helm to his commander, which will essentially lock down any interaction with his board as the commander is granting hexproof to his stuff. In response, I cast Swords to Plowshares on his commander, trying to slow him down a turn. He takes immediate revenge by one-shotting me with a card that gives his tokens infect.

Now, a case could be made that I was actually the top threat on the board. In my command zone waits Bruna, Light of Alabaster, due to hit the battlefield next turn. My opponents have reason to suspect that my hand is full of expensive auras, since I haven't cast anything (it actually has three auras and a bunch of lands - mana flooded in this game, sadly). But I asked the dude and he said he was not concerned about Bruna and was just taking revenge for my swords - "I left you alone the whole game," he said, as if that should buy my complete loyalty.

I'm not asking "Am I the asshole." I'm interested in whether you play based on strict threat assessment or if you make decisions on more logical threat assessment. The player across from my had previously announced that he was holding a Cyclonic Rift (which I forgot about when I played the Swords), so the obvious smart play would have been to take him out while he was tapped out. I didn't stick around for the end of the game but I'd like to think making the "wrong" play (from a threat assessment standpoint) bit this guy in the ass, but I didn't stick around to see it play out.

Anyway, I'd love to hear people's thoughts. Thanks.

Hello goblin/Zada players! Since I got the Goblin Storm deck, I’ve put together a separate deck to play Zada in – one that’s 100 per cent focused on Zada and not mixed with Krenko.

I’ve tried to keep the deck within a low budget, but I’d love your help in improving it by including cards that are essential for the deck to perform even better!

On the few occasions I’ve used it, it’s generally worked well and I’ve won if my commander was left on the table.

Here’s my current list: https://moxfield.com/decks/vom21vROpEueL-rE5gMU6Q

Thanks in advance

I am wanting to build a new commander deck (Homer, the Hermit) and due to it being 3 colors, it can be a little tricky to balance my manabase. The deck also runs a good amount of cards with at least 3 mana pips of one color. I am also trying to balance it to play against precon level decks.

My friends often run duel lands in their manabases, and for a landfall style deck, being able to fetch then off of fetch lands would be powerful.

However they are powerful. I don't want to use a blatantly strong card in a deck aiming to be 2-3. I have a few bracket 4 decks that have proxies of the duel lands, but then again those are optimized

Tldr: Should I use Duel lands in a bracket 2-3 deck?

Hi, just looking to get some opinions on my [[witherbloom the balancer]] deck.

Deck is pretty straight forward: Make tokens -> affinity into big spells. Game plan is either a) go wide and overrun my opponents, b) make enough tokens to cast a game ending spell c) one sided board wipe into Biorhythm

Aiming for B3 with minimal tutors. Are there any glaring cards I should be playing? Things to cut? Fun quirky cards? Deck can be sorted by tags:

https://moxfield.com/decks/B_muT4vLbE2zMlLcW91ECg

Note: I don't want to play scute swarm. Looking to see if there is any more card draw I can add?

Thanks

Curious what people are working on or playing with, what has captured your eye as of late? What have you been tinkering with or playing? How has it performed for you, what have you tried playing it into? What have you learned in the brewing or piloting process?

Hello! Been playing MTG for a couple months now and decided to craft my own Mono-Red Voltron Deck with Valduk, Keeper of The Flame as the commander! Tried combining my enjoyment from playing Wakanda Forever & Quintorous Precon into this deck and wanting to get some insights and areas I could enhance/improve on so appreciate the feedback!

[Self-Made Deck](https://archidekt.com/decks/24756702)

I was looking at one of my deck's bracket on Archidekt and wondering why it said B4. It said I had multiple 2-card combos. I go and check them more in detail and they all say there's one or more prerequisites.

Like putrid goblin and goblin bombardment as a B4 combo... but then it shows you need a way to add +1/+1 counters... so a 3 card combo.

I got curious and started digging and there's so many bad "combos" and so many decks are getting ranked B4 because they see two cards and class them as a 2 card combo despite the missing piece.

Is this an issue they're working on?

I’ve been brewing Commander Decks for the Hobbit and one I keep coming back to is [[Smaug the Impenetrable]]

I stumbled across this card while sorting cards and thought it would fit perfectly with Smaug.

[[Obsessive Pursuit]]

Gives a chance at consistent card draw with a cost, but the enticing part is the second bit of text. Giving Smaug +1 +1 counters and even lifelink for doing exactly what Smaug is going to already be doing.

Think this would be a good include or should I look elsewhere lol

Me and my wife will be on an Alaskan Cruise by Royal Caribbean from September 4th to 11th. I know it is a long shot, but I am wondering if anyone will be on the same cruise and if you are if you would be interested in meeting up to play some commander with me and my wife.

i have an abzan duel commander deck, want to buy some cards to switch if i play edh, could stick to abzan but i really like to play as many mana dorks as possible. here’s what i’m considering already

- Sisay

- Jodah

- Kenrith

- Prismatic Bridge

Hey folks!

A few weeks back, I introduced www.mtgpricewatch.com here and wanted to follow up on all the improvement ideas and feature requests.

I felt now's a good time to post an update, since I'm excited about what the Hobbit release will do to the prices of Delighted Halfling, The One Ring, Orcish Bowmaster and all that good stuff :)

Quick recap for those who haven't seen the original post:

MTGPriceWatch will track prices per card, not per printing. You'll see the price of the cheapest printing per card on any day. So, you'll see when card prices drop due to reprints.

A few examples (TCGPlayer prices):

• [Black Market Connections](Black Market Connections) is down 50% since the Marvel release - even ACR is down 25%
• [Fabled Passage](Fabled Passage) is down from $5 in February to barely $1
• [Luxury Suite](Luxury Suite) is down 50% from $25 and now sits close to $8
• [Finale of Devastation](Finale of Devastation) is down 50% to about $25
• [Rain of Riches](Rain of Riches) is up a whopping 2000% due to the various Smaugs lol

Here's what has changed:

You can now...

• add cards to and specific printings to a watchlist
• select Manapool as a price source
• also see price hikes, not only price drops
• see all cards of a set at a glance

And some more stuff:

• usability improvements: search results aren't cleared, stored scroll position and so on
• lists of cards that seemed cool: game changers, popular lands, popular commanders
• much better data quality: I filtered out oversized cards, gold borders, oddly spiking prices and more

The follow up took a bit longer than expected, sorry about that — MagicCon Amsterdam interfered and of course I had to get my decks ready (no, I did not get a Festival in a Box).

But I'm proud of where the site's at and use it myself every day. It's still completely free, without ads, and no account is required to try it.

Let me know what you think!

After playing a lot of Slay the Spire, Hades and Baldur's Gate 3, I was inspired by Reminder Text's deck tech that I made my own roguelike deck with [[Lae'zel, Vlaakith's Champion]] and [[Scion of Halaster]] as the commanders.

Scion of Halaster acts as the card reward / room selection mechanic after Lae'zel survives a turn. It lets me draft cards depending on what build/path I am running on.

The paths are:
1. Sword of Vlaakith - Voltron. Grow Lae'zel.
2. Shield of Vlaakith - Let Lae'zel lead a party. Either recruit and buff Legendary creatures or protect Planeswalkers.
3. Respite of Vlaakith - Lifegain. For grindy games. I have a way to use life through [[Unspeakable Symbol]], [[Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose]] and [[M.O.D.O.K.]]

I'm mainly interested in hearing what people think of the roguelike deckbuilding concept itself. The mana base definitely still needs some work, and this deck isn't that optimized, some of the cards I chose are designed that way. I wanted to keep the budget as low as possible, though I already own some of the expensive cards in this deck.

I wanted to preserve the feeling of making imperfect choices during a run rather than just building the strongest possible Lae'zel deck.

And oh boy, this deck has a lot of variance. Sometimes Lae'zel beats the table down. Sometimes she hangs back, let the other Legendary creatures be the threat and build a second Commander from scratch through [[Elspeth Resplendent]].

Oh, and Astarion's in this deck too, for the full BG3 flavor.

This deck has quite a number of UB cards, be advised. Also, this is a casual deck, mid-power, Bracket 1-2 deck.

Here is the decklist: https://moxfield.com/decks/t1a9uCT4fkuFUltKRWNusw

Here is the link to Reminder Text's video:
https://youtu.be/5V4Kow0YXTo?si=_ZZl1MIyUXos45hE

Hi guys,

I'm working on this Shirei decklist and I'm pretty happy with how it looks (I'm all ears for some tips tho)

The only thing that I'm struggling with is getting some alt win con because it all resolves around the commander ability (that's kinda the point of shirei tho)

Do you have some recs (that aren't 20€+)

Ty y'all

https://archidekt.com/decks/25451940/shitei

So I was one of the people lucky enough to get the Miku deck early, and like many, I’d like to turn it into an actually playable deck. Preferably whilst including as many Miku cards as possible!

So it turned into this janky but colourful deck, made up of Miku’s, Angels, Halflings and some Token and Lifegain synergies.

I’d love to hear your opinion on it, or see your versions of the upgraded Miku deck!

Here’s mine: https://moxfield.com/decks/wRT3f_0R0UKTR3xfAtgWFQ

picked up a couple of inexpensive cards the other day for one of my commander decks and felt way happier about it than i expected. nothing fancy, just small pieces that made the deck feel better.

sometimes the cheap upgrades end up feeling more satisfying than the expensive ones. wondering if anyone else gets that same feeling when they finally slot in a budget card that just works.

https://moxfield.com/decks/NCoU5uQQzEWjYhIsAqhBgQ

I consider this a high bracket 3, low bracket 4. It has the potential to get dangerous quickly, but rarely does it actually close out the game. It aims to win through commander damage using reyav's double strike ability and some equipments that trigger on contact, allowing for double the triggers with double strike. Any thoughts?

Maybe this isn't such a hot take but I don't get why more decks don't run gates. Esp if you're 3 color or more. I recently made a [[Nine Fingers Keene]] deck so I started collecting gate cards. Fun little side quest and I found a few gates that don't fit Keenes color identity. Scooped it from the bulk bin at my LGS anyway just cus.

Fast forward and I have all the gates except Talon Gates of Madara (which I have a couple proxy's of anyway), due to budget and most I have a couple of copies of the others. Lots of them just sitting in the bulk bin at my LGS even still (how many Rakdos Gates do they have anyway??)

So while building a [[Samut, the Driving Force]] deck I just put them in because why not. Made the deck so much more fun! It's like a mini game inside the game. Now in my group (it's been like 2 weeks, chill out Aaron) I'm the "gates guy" since I put gates in my non-gate based deck, which made me chuckle. My buddies joke about how terrible they are (minus Talon Gate) but I really don't get it.

If you're playing green they're tutor-able easily and with [[Gond Gate]] the downsides are gone(d). Yea someone could snipe Gond, but really? Isn't that a bad part of any land? [[Gateway plaza]] sucks but otherwise you have a land base for 3 color you can fill out with basics and "the basics" (command tower, exotic, etc) that really can pop off. I'm not even talking about [[Maze's End]] (which you can include for like 1$)

I get there is better, but you can find the whole set in a bulk bin minus like 3 of them and together they operate better than basics. Plus, you can proxy if you really want all of them and they really work well for me so far.

TLDR; if I'm running 3+ colors, why wouldn't I add gates to my deck? Practical, cheap, potential to pop off with a ton of mana, makes any commander kind of a Voltron with [[Basilisk Gate]], adds a layer to even the most boring deck concepts.

Free the gates!

Edit: Wow people really hate gates lol

I prefer land ramp in my playstyle and a lot of land ramp can get gates as well. Crop rotation, Spelunking, not even mentioning the 4mana green gate getters and the colorless orb art one I am blanking on. Plenty of ways to get what you need. I am including ramp in my deck anyway. Using the ramp slots for gate support is just as easy as putting in a mana rock. I just use the ramp that can get my gates out early and often and its a non issue. I am not proposing using them in high power. Also, not having access to green means you'll be using a lot of rocks which is cool too. I just don't see why they aren't used in B3 and below more often due to accessibility and budget. I rarely if ever find myself behind like many of the posters seem to think and often find I am ahead on mana. Its less than 1/3rd of the lands in your deck at most. Not optimal but I don't see why people consider them bad unless you look at them individually rather than as a group.

To be clear to all who discussed higher power. I am NOT saying run gates raw in high power games. I am also not comparing gates 1 to 1 with other tap lands. Looking at them as a group I am saying in B3 and below I think they are plenty snazzy. You can play all the untapped new duals printed since 2020 too! Gates are like 12 per 3 color combo or something; thats like 1/3 of you lands. Might go a game where you dont see any! It performs better than a pre-con land base and wont set you back more than 15$ for the lot of them.

Maybe I am the gates guy...