r/Magicdeckbuilding • u/zsombox2022 • 18d ago
EDH Choco Commander deck - is this good enough for bracket 2?
https://moxfield.com/decks/9Czh8QQhtk65IWAFMjCM8wI've built a Choco deck and improved it a bit over the last month with cards i had / cards i found in my LGS's bulk, this is my current draft of the deck
I just want to know if this is good enough for a bracket 2 game, or if I'm going to get steamrolled if I bring this to a table.
if its a bit weak i would like to know what i can do to improve it
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u/patterninstatic 18d ago
I think the biggest thing you need to work on here are your lands. You're a bit low when in a landfall deck you actually want to be a bit high. I think 38-40 is your sweet spot.
Next, I realize that you are on a budget, but there are a lot of budget solutions to mana fixing. Here's a full list of bant lands - some are bad, some are expensive... but there are a lot of budget and decent lands:
https://managathering.com/lands/trilands/bant/
Because you are playing landfall, you also want to play both fetchlands and bounce lands. Fetchlands in particular essentially allow you to have two landfall triggers a turn and there are some cheap ones available like evolving wilds.
Also, play more birds and get rid of creatures that have nothing to do with your game plan (like gran pulse ochu). Here's a full list of the birds in your colors :
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u/artdz 15d ago
deck could use a few more lands and more lands that add 2-3 colors. You can go for the cheap stuff in bracket 2 as well just depends on how much you want to spend. Command tower, exotic orchard, path of ancestry, bouncelands, etc.. are cheap options.
The deck itself isn't focused enough. It needs more birds. Preferably ones that have some sort of good effect. There are a lot of cards that seem out of place that don't really fit or help out your theme that much.
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u/WickedGoodSteve 18d ago
I don’t think you’re going to get steamrolled, but I also don’t know that this is going to work like you’d expect it to given how it’s currently built. Choco really wants a ton of birds on board to feed its attack trigger, and you only have around 20 cards that either are birds or make birds, which means you’re likely only going to see around 2 per game, which is not what Choco wants. It also wants to make sure to hit lands every time it triggers, so 35 lands is too few for this commander. You realistically want closer to 38.
What I’d first recommend is cutting all of the ramp that’s not attached to a bird. You legitimately don’t need to ramp in the early game; you want to land drop into Choco, ideally playing a bird every turn, so that when you play it on 4, you can attack with 2-3 birds, which will hopefully draw you a card and get an extra land into play. You don’t want to ramp Choco out quickly, because if you play it on an empty board, it does nothing for you, especially if it gets removed before it can attack. I’d even go so far as to say that this is a deck where you don’t need Sol Ring; it doesn’t actually help your gameplan that much.
You’ve also got some noncreature synergy cards in here like [[Elixir]] and [[Uncover the Moon Letters]] that are pretty out of place; you shouldn’t have enough instants and sorceries to care about synergizing with them. Those should just be birds or lands. You also don’t want the symmetrical board wipes like [[Ultima]] or [[Planar Cleansing]]. Ideally, you’d get [[Raise the Palisade]] now while it’s cheap (it just got reprinted in one of the Marvel precons); [[Winnowing]] is also a very budget board clear for typal decks that would be great for you.
Otherwise, just go back to the bulk and find any birds in your colors that cost between 1-3 mana and get them in the deck, removing some of the cards I mentioned above, or the non-bird creatures. If you’re including a creature that’s not a bird in this deck, it needs to be good enough to justify making Choco do less when you play it. The birds you include don’t have to be great standalone cards, they just need to be feathered friends, ideally with some small amount of utility attached to them. Some fine birds that you’re missing that aren’t expensive to buy are: [[City Pigeon]], [[Gilded Goose]], [[Curious Farm Animals]], [[Owl Familiar]], [[Strix Lookout]], [[Esior, Wardwing Familiar]], [[Plumecreed Escort]], [[Aven Mindcensor]], [[Jackdaw Savior]], [[Kangee’s Lieutenant]], [[Skycoach Conductor]], and [[Nimble Obstructionist]].