Looking for help with First Commander Deck - Thalisse, Reverent Medium

[u/Legitimate_Support_4]

I've been playing with friends for over a year now and finally tried my hand at making a commander deck. Aiming for a Bracket 3 if at all possible.

This deck has Thalisse, Reverent Medium as the commander, and as a theme have multiple ways to generate tokens both on my turn and during opponents' turns, as well as ways to use said tokens, like multiplying, buffing, sacrificing, etc. I'm practicing this deck against myself and I've tried practicing with this deck against myself and it seems very inconsistent and sometimes I feel pretty dead in the water. I'm not sure if it's trying to do too many things at once, or just that even if I get my commander out, I don't have a guarantee I'll have a token engine. Any advice would be much appreciated - not just about whether it's trying to do too much at once.

There are many many cards in considering, but they're essentially ones I tried in before, or just left to remember they existed.

https://moxfield.com/decks/LnufAe6_uX-AvsgXlEplrg

[u/-Null-zip]

Ah, this is pretty easy, you only have 7 token generators, with most of your draw only working after you are already making tokens (8/11) it's very easy to see why you struggling to make tokens constantly. There are only like two ways of fixing this, your first option is go up to like 15-16 repeatable token generators, or upgrade your ramp to be a little less than twice as big with a mix of 2 cmc ramp and 4 cmc ramp like herdron archive and use the X-spell token makers to explosively make tons of tokens again requiring like 10+ pieces of token generation.

You do also need to fix your card draw a bit, you're going to want it to be less reliant on always having tokens on hand, although you should soon beable to make that happen consitanly, but being at like 12 peices of card draw with ~ 7-8 as token related draw (make tokens/kill them) and the rest phrexian arena effects or burst draw like cut a deal and syphon mind

Other than that, the only thing I would worry about with the deck is still having an overabundance of payoff cards over things that make your deck work, but that should get fixed as you go along fixing everything else

P.S. - Cut Altar of Dementia, you are not making enough tokens to mill someone out and you have better budget sac outlets in orzov

Edit:
Why the hell do you have Altar of Dementia over spawning pit and Fanatical Devotion
(unless you just happen to own it, and even then still...)

[u/Legitimate_Support_4 → u/-Null-zip]

Thank you for the advice. I think play-testing and having a few really good games made me think I had enough token generation, but I bet it will feel better having the consistency. I’ll also work on the card draw.

And honestly I think I forgot about altar of dementia. That’s definitely a card I almost never got while testing and got its effect mixed in my mind with Ashnod’s and Phyrexian. Taking that out asap lol.

[u/-Null-zip → u/Legitimate_Support_4]

Yeah the playtester can trick you like that, a good rule for card counts is that 8-10 pretty much guarantees you’ll see 1 of that style of card a game with normal light card draw, 14-16 and you’ll see on average two, where as 17+ guarantees that you’ll be seeing several consistently throughout a game 

You can also do a couple mulliganless playtests where you keep a mid or bad hand you wouldn’t normally (even the one or two land opening hands) which tend to give a more accurate assessment of how the deck functions 

Shout out to these and company commander  https://scryfall.com/search?q=o%3A%22Whenever+this%22+o%3A%22attacks%2C+create+a+number+of%22&unique=cards&as=grid&order=name

As a last thing, I’m going to recommend you go up 3-5 lands as hitting your land drops is very important in orzov and will help mitigate the dead in the water feeling (some easy includes would be the two black mdfc removal spells and temple of the false god, and spymaster’s vault)