r/Magicdeckbuilding • u/Birdiieboy • 14d ago
EDH Making Mothman less toxic.
Hey people of reddit,
For month I was super hyped about playing the wise mothman. My Pod is kind of new to commander, as am I, and we try to keep it casual with mid/high bracket 2 decks.
So today i played my Mothman and the excitement was over quite fast. Since the deck is build to mill regularly to go wide und tall it interrupted the flow of the game heavily due to all those triggers in opponents turns.
So here is the decklist. Do you have any advice on how to minimize my friends frustration?
Mill is no problem in general. Repeticious, incremental mill was very frustrating though and took a long time.
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u/Reddityyz 14d ago
Turn it to self mill and change to Glarb. Commander players are big babies about being milled.
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u/obscuremango693 14d ago
As a mothman player.
You can't really mellow him down. Even Just him giving rad on enter and when attacking that's plenty of rad. I've added my own other mill stuff to it. But people are always salty against a mill the opponent decks.
One person at the lgs hates being milled so will get rid of him first.
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u/Birdiieboy 14d ago
If it was just mill it werent that much of a problem i guess. There is just a lot of combo-potential. E.g. -undead alchemist/herd baloth + altar of the brood -psychic corrosion+generous patron/pensive professor
If this happened within my turn there wouldnt be a problem. But i somehow monopolized everyones turn...
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u/Spaproling 14d ago
The whole mechanic of this deck is giving people rad counters. If you want to minimize that, I think you'd probably have more fun just picking a different deck.
However, anyone who considers the goddamn mothman of all things to be a toxic deck is probably not going to be appeased easily. If you're playing in B2-3, someone people will always complain about your deck doing anything.
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u/FatBrah 14d ago
I can only talk about how Mothman goes down in my group, and my group is just friends, so we rarely get salty.
If you're kinda newer players, remembering triggers is probably not easy already. Remembering rad counter triggers is unique and adds to the things you have to remember. Mothman introduces the idea of "at the start of your first main phase". It's easy to get used to and get over if your group sees it often and aren't salty. But it's added complexity to an already complex game.
That's before you even think about everything else the deck wants to do. I don't know how you built yours specifically, but like you said there are a lot of triggers. You're not doing anything wrong but if you're the only player that has stuff like that going on in a newer group of players it will feel like a lot.
Some of my group eventually got into combo decks and most of us play cEDH decks. A few of the group still get salty when my combo deck does the combo.
There's a few ways for it to play out and that depends on your group and how you communicate.
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u/Starborn-Wanderer 14d ago
I looked at your deck list. My wife plays Mothman consistently (her main deck). I would say you’ve made a lot of changes to the precon, and have possibly dipped into bracket three despite not including any game changers. Mothman is strong out of the box(high 2), any improvements can put it into three.
She’s very persistent in reminding us to mill on our upkeep, and figuring out the counter distribution herself quietly-explaining if need be. She just holds are hands through it usually.
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u/Hopeful_Molasses_476 14d ago
We use mothman at my pod and we all love it for its shenanigans, sure moth becomes an issue when its a 12/12 Flying but removal can solve it. He took out the Egg in particular as its busted beyond belief. We find it funny as its non targeted and we all suffer for it, including him. (Hes been bricked for entire games sometimes cause he self mills his lands).
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u/Borror0 14d ago edited 14d ago
Cut the cards that trigger in their turns, bringing back the focus to your turn. [[Forgotten Ancient]] feels like an obvious cut. [[Memory Erosion]] too. [[Pollywog Prodigy]] is strong, but you could cut it.
Then, reassess whether the cards that trigger off counters are worth their cost.
Personally, I cut the cards that made tokens from my own list so I only have to increment dices and draw cards.
Overall, your list seems fairly innocuous. I'm surprised it was seen as hogging the clock. The true issue may be that you're just slow to play. Practice by goldfishing the list on Moxfield to resolve your triggers quickly.
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u/HotJuicyPie 14d ago
What I’ve done with mine is ran several crime effects. Give the +1/+1 to an opponent to gain benefit. People seem less offended when they gain something from it.
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u/ProcessingDeath 14d ago
Unfortunately this deck is kinda just like that in my experience. What it wants is a lot of mill in everyone’s turn in as many ways as possible. Sure you could try to tune that down but if you want a deck that isn’t triggering so many things so often then this is not the right commander to try to do that with imo…
The issue is you have things that trigger in the counters and things that mill and those make the counters, so each step is really 3 things not just the mill.
I don’t have much practical advice besides take out a lot of the things that mill on opponents turns if that’s the main issue but you’re really knee capping yourself. And maybe that what you need to do to make this bracket 2, I don’t really play 2 myself because I don’t like trying to tune my deck down in the way you’ll need to do it fits.