What is The Strongest Color in Casual EDH?
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- Опубліковано 7 лют 2025
- #mtg #thetrinketmage #trinketmage #magicthegathering
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Finally got around to putting my thoughts together after all the talk about green on the podcast! Let me know what you think!
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One of the biggest things about Magic to me is something Maldhound said once:
"Every color gets to cheat. But green is the only color that gets away with it."
There truly is a maldhound quote for everything
I know my homies Mald and Trinket got me when the goal is to hate on green
As usual
He spittin
So real, Mald is a quote treasure trove
This just ain't true.
Green is the only colour that constantly gets condemned for it.
But ofc Maldie is a blue player
Important to note green also has Colossal Dreadmaw
very important
And even the colossal dreadmask, turning other creatures into colossal dreadmaw! Madness!
Powercrept. Duskmourn has a 7/6 lizard with trample for 6 mana and has forestcycling 2
@@giantninja9173weak, colossal dreadmaw stomps. (This is a joke btw)
@@giantninja9173 lizard is nowhere as good as an dinosaur
I actually had a guy last Tuesday scoop on turn four because I destroyed one land of his that was producing two mana. He had 8 remaining mana per turn he could use. I had four. He was expecting to have another turn six swing out win and I dared to delay him for maybe a turn at best. Truly, I was the villain that day.
Good riddance! F ‘im.
I recall a game I was in, the player before me in turn order had been ramping for 2 turns at that point, meanwhile I had missed two land drops so far. He went to cast another ramp spell, one that came with some +1/+1 counters on his board, I drop a counter spell because I can interact: not a word spoken, he full board attacks me for 18.
Talk about salt.
Land destruction is always scummy
You cad! You fiend!
@@byronsmothers8064tbh if you’re gonna kill someone’s shit you should expect a crack back.
That line about most players staying in their bubble for six turns explains why players get salty at mono red slicer. He is the rare agro deck in Edh and it forces people to do something theyre not prepared to do
That’s why I love slicer!
Homie i am so tempted to build Alexios, Deimos of Kosmos and just go like turn two rock turn 3 commander turn 4 play and equip a sword of x and y on him.
But i don't know how fun it will be to face and my opponents tend to run very removal light.
@ I feel ya, I tend to run Slicer once, twice tops then move onto more miderangey decks, but that first time always gets em.
@@shenronsgoldfishAlexios is only powerful if your opponents don't know the trick 👍
@@shenronsgoldfish if you want your usual pods to add a little more efficient removal to their decks, building alexios might very well do it!
The long awaited "Why green is super busted" video that ttm had been hinting at in magic mirror.
I thought ttm released this a long time ago then I saw when it came out 😂
@@trialbyicecreamI think he released a video about ramp/lands decks being the most powerful, but I could be wrong. Might’ve just been a segment in a video about something else though.
I've noticed my LGS is significantly more varied in deck archetypes and power levels than other game stores and tends to have a very low amount of salt. I had a game recently where someone cast armageddon and everyone loved it, because they timed it at a certain point where it didn't shut everyone down and created an interesting board. The last game I played I had two praetors out and everyone was chill, they just properly recognize that I was the threat. It's amazing how much the quality of casual commander improves when you accept all the elements of magic instead of just cherry picking what you like and putting down what doesn't match that.
It's kinda the same at my LGS. Even people playing stax isn't met with salt, it's just met with players removing the pieces of stax that most disrupt them. Also, everyone has a lot of interaction. I never met irl the online stereotype of commander players complaining about removal or tutors
@@brodericksiz625 I've seen a fair few it's super lame lmao, really grinds the fun out of the experience. The worst I had was a player who could win with Approach of the Second Sun easily but just said "hmm no I'm having fun playing" - would have been fine if he wasn't so catastrophically ahead we had little-to-no chance of actually catching up. Needless to say when we focused him down he complained about the table being toxic and scooped lol
one time someone cast a Jokulhaups and it was so goddamn funny to reanimate Lumra, Bellow of the Woods off of Elspeth Conquers Death and just getting back with 20-some lands when every other player has, like, one
That's because you playing with normal people. Being chill have nothing to do with power level or board state.
I'd love to go to that LGS. I got called slurs once for blowing a single land
It was pretty funny when you said build a mono green deck with 40 forests then put up a picture of farseek
Gotta be a nice little hats-off to mtggoldfishs Richard, who hast cast a Farseek in his mono green deck before
@mofomiko yeah lol I was thinking the same, trinket mage has mentioned watching mtg goldfish before
I mean the reason green is so busted in casual commander is that it does what casual commander players want to do, which is play big dumb busted shit you can’t play in 20 life 1v1 formats. I think that green being good in EDH is a natural result of the format’s design, and really gives green a chance to shine in a way that it often does not in faster formats. The only real green in standard is beanstalk
I think the biggest issue with green ramp is that the best counters to it also destroy most other decks. If mass land destruction was actually more punishing to green decks i think it would be more acceptable but it usually sets the rest of the table back just as much. I really hope we see more cards like confounding conundrum which actually can slow down green ramp.
Accept if it's not an on curve or early Armageddon it's not a counter at all and will actually just make my late game better with crucible effects and such
I play a landfall deck online and an opponents confunding conundrum usually enables me even more, because usually the number of lands in my hand is my bottleneck and it allows me to reuse them.
Not to say that every Ramp Deck is a LandfallDeck... just something to keep in mind.
Litteraly "play more lands"
@@Phoenix8395 Conundrum is a bad version of the effect, which is the problem with it. It doesn't even do the main thing it should be helping with -- Fetchlands -- very well. Tunnel Ignus is an interesting take on the effect, but in commmander, 3 damage per ramp is negligeable.
The problem with MLD against mass land destruction is that, unless someone has a bunch of artifact-based mana or you are specifically prepared for it, the green player is actually the best prepared to rebuild with all the ramp spells!
An interesting phenomenon that happened in my pod is that it split very heavily in the middle between "Green Players" and "Blue Players". Not that one side only plays decks with green and the other only plays decks with blue in them, but more like the playstyle became noticeably different between the two halves.
One started just accepting that green is the strongest color and that if you play green you should go deep on all the unbeatable strategies TM explained here. Lot's of Return of the Wildspeakers, Rishkar's Expertise and Last March of the Ents to go around. Every deck on that side became a ramp machine that was trying to have 8 mana on turn 4, deploy a massive threat or one sided-wrath the board to be in a winning position immediately.
The other half started playing a lot more instant speed removal and counter magic, even in colors that do not have that many (Haven't seen in any other pod the volume of Tibalt's Trickery, Reprieve or Mana Tithes as I've seen in mine), and have focused much more on either a "nothing is sacred" control approach, where any big card draw or ramp spell is countered without question. The basic logic being that if the green player has no card draw engine they cannot really take over the game no matter how much mana they have, or a fast combo gameplan that punishes anyone who plays sorcery speed removal (like 90% ETB green removal) by setting up a fast combo win on turn 5 or 6, if not earlier.
The interesting clash of both playstyles kind of devolved in a weird meta where the green players are usually forced to play more removal and instant speed interaction, which green has much less than you would expect, mostly it being quirky fight spells; while the blue players have returned to classic combat, as the heavily grixis dominated meta that formed kind of had a lot of taxing on the player's life, meaning early combat became relevant again. In a weird way, nowadays it is common for my pod to play some weird tempo strategy on every deck as you will need efficient removal and cheap creatures one way or another to not die by stompy players focusing you or combo players winning faster than you can ramp to oblivion.
Exactly what I thought
I think people should treat ramp spells as much bigger threats than they currently do. a cultivate or similar is absolutely a valid counterspell target; it's an extra land on the turn it's played plus a guaranteed land drop next turn, which can genuinely make the difference between a green player struggling to find enough mana for their big creatures and stomping the whole table with said creatures.
I really want more confounding conundrum type cards that can actually deal with greens ramp without setting everyone else back
Split decision is great for that. Either the table decides to counter it, or you get the effect too.
@@andrewgreenwood9068 Unfortunately that card helps decks that care about lands entering. They need to give red tech that says “destroy target player’s lands” or “destroy X target lands.”
@@AgentMurphy286 there is actually a decent amount of targeted land destruction but they are either old expensive cards or cost like 4 mana. There is a card that makes players sack lands when they play a creature which I run in my vaultron decks in black but that's about it.
Cultivate is definately not a counterspell target. All the ETB draw might be, but cultivate definately not. You either cant CP a cultivate because its during the first few turns and you got no mana open since you also needed to ramp, get your commander out or build a board presence and later on, when players already have some mana up, Cultivate isnt threatening anymore and instead its better to negate a big beater, card draw or anything else
Not being punished for early ramping is why I think white catchup ramp is still extremely good even if it is slower
Gift of Estates 4 laif baybee
Claim Jumper was my instant favourite OTJ card 😅
I think you 100% start hitting the person who starts to turbo ramp, as someone who is an avid green player, my friend taught me to not be so greedy with Ramp, as he was a fast Boros deck, but blitzed down rapid fast when we first meet, definitely a lesson I learned
Not being punished for ramping is why green players win. Literally they invest their early game development for late game domination and people still will just attack haphazardly or at the most developed board state
Especially if you commit to cheating it with bouncelands and Lotus Field. Having less lands but equal mana production turns the "catch up" ramp into actual ramp
Green has three big weaknesses.
1. Terrible big creature removal. It can really get stuck in front of a huge blocker. (You are really understating blue's permanent removal. Cards like Expel from Orazca and Resculpt are cheap and amazing).
2. Folds to board wipes. Sure you keep the lands but lose both board and possibility of card draw. Heroic Intervention is >$10 and only one card.
3. The least sneaky color. Everyone can see and gang up on the obvious green threat.
I agree about Simic though.
Totally agree here. The issue downside of Green is it *has* to commit to the board before it gets any of its benefits. I've seen Green decks get blown out by casting Return of the Wildspeaker and someone instant speed removes the 10/10. Now their biggest creature is a 3/3, and 5 mana sorcery draw 3 is worse than basically every other color besides White.
Green card draw gets beat by you interacting with them. Sure, they've got Greater Good, but when you destroy the Greater Good, their only option to get value is to start sacrificing their creatures, essentially losing them board presence. If they cast the Gigantosaur to set up a big Rishkar's Expertise next turn, they get no cards off of it if you board wipe on your turn. Green has no card draw (besides Harmonize) that draws them cards when the board is empty. Blue gets a ton, Black has the life loss ones, Red can always impulse draw, and even White has Secret Rendezvous and Cut a Deal effects.
Almost no recursion too once you wipe they got all the mana nothing to sink it in
Found a Green player
@@Highstar7331 I play Red, actually
@@Highstar7331 Yep. It's why I see the flaws in it. Trinket Mage is high on "everyone should try my archetypes to see that they have weaknesses" but then still posts about his disliked archetype being OP.
Don't get me wrong. Green is a great color, but I wouldn't call it clearly better than the others. It has several major weaknesses, especially in mono color (or gruul).
Lands decks are genuinely cracked. The amount of times glacial casm has won me games simply because people don't run land destruction is unreal..
This. Glacial Chasm on its own is a problem in casual. Mixed with all the ways to bring it back in green makes it super resilient, too.
I try and make a point to put Volatile Fault and Demolition Field in every deck I can, I've seen enough land shenanigans pulled against me that I'm never unhappy to slot them in
@@Chilipotamus as a land player I'm more disappointed when there aren't any land destruction stuff
Yeah lands is definitely a high power strategy. If I know I’m playing against a glacial chasm deck I am 95% playing a deck that can combo win through that or spore frog
Legacy Lands is one of the Top Tournament decks of all time, it's amazing
Green rewards you for doing things you would want to be doing anyway.
This is why I like it
Exactly this.
That's why it feels so good to play, is also probably the most friendly for new players and has an amazing variety of playstyles (Big creatures, Poison, Counters, Landfall).
Green is literally the snowball color, you beat it by aggroing it out early and not letting them get insurmountable advantage. Make them take turns to interact instead of ramp. Green is definitely a great color but by no means overpowered lol
Except that, in commander, aggro decks are pretty few and far between, some decks like the OG Feather could get the job done, but you also have two additional opponents to worry about
@@tomdoetsch8603 the power creep this game has seen has made aggro in edh quite viable these days (I have multiple myself and even beat 2 green landfall decks with it literally today). Honestly, most players are just bad players that don’t understand proper threat assessment and where there deck fits in a game. This is something you learn in 1 on 1 but most commander players these days don’t have the lessons learned from a 1 on 1 format.
Green does well in casual because it rewards you for playing "normal" magic and is highly proactive. You play lands, set up your board, and start attacking people. In lower power pods where people don't invest much in the red zone or play cards for their own sake(value engines that just give value, removal that just removes, etc) green can dominate.
In reality, green mostly just snowballs. If you have big creatures, you deal lots of damage, draw cards, gain life, block, etc. However take a green player, even one with a lot of lands, and rob them of their hands and board, and they probably have the hardest time recovering(except for maybe red) unless their commander is a one-card engine. Most of the draw and removal is good, but worthless without a board.
It also being heavily proactive comes at the cost of being poorly reactive, and an emphasis on combat damage leaves itself vulnerable to anything that can deter attackers or win outside of combat.
I also want to add that MLD is not the answer. Yes green focuses on lands and might get hit hardest by it now, but they also have the best tools to mitigate it were it to become meta. Land recursion is big, green could easily diversify their ramp, and could also sandbag their ramp if they suspect a land wipe coming.
The real answer is to treat taking turns off to ramp like other formats and attack. At lower power that's not always necessary as jank decks and precons can't always capitalize on 10+ mana, but tuned decks should be considered a problem if allowed to set up. Getting people to play scrappier decks and attack green decks is the tricky part however.
One more thing, there is a point about lands being an "untouchable" resource but you have similar in terms of cards in hand. Yes, its arguably as much of a problem and green can pull it off too, but something worth considering too.
"Do we counter ramp? Should we be countering ramp? Wtf Green has protection? They draw how many cards? Turn 4 and your commander is already swinging for 16/16 and trample..." Rapid escalation of the green threat
Always counter an Open the Way
Braulios of Pheres Band
Might of Oaks
Blanchwood Armor
Turn four knock out from commander damage. Fastest I’ve ever done it. Could probably by turn 3 with free mana.
Tamiyo's safekeeping we love to see it
@@granite_4576 Well, not ALWAYS always... I once played an Open the Way and the blue player rightly didn't counter it... because he was winning the next turn anyway.
green and turn 4 swing with a 16/16 trample doesn't really goes together. That's way to fast for green. Other colors could do it (maybe with a other evasion then trample).
I feel like the reason those cards aren't considered salty is once you look at the reason why the saltiest cards are salty. Most, if not all, salty cards either significantly speed up the game for one player (One Ring, Rhystic Study, etc) or significantly delays the game (Winter Orb, Cyclonic Rift, etc). Most of the cards mentioned in the video take decent time to set up in a casual format where, while ramp is fast, it isn't as fast as cedh. I agree a lot of those cards are pretty nasty, but I could also see why generally they are considered fair.
People tend to be less salty about combat damage. It just seems more fair because you didn't stop anyone from doing their thing. You just did it better.
Great summary of why green is so strong. I knew it was but couldn’t have explained why as well as you did. Wonderful video!
in my experience in casual commander green is missing good instant speed interaction which exacerbates their weakness to combo. They have the opposite timing restriction to blue in that their good removals are all only available on their turn.
Commander players be like: "Mono green deck with turbo land ramp and artifact hate is fine"
"Mono white decks with catch-up ramp and Restore Balance, Urza's Sylex and Balancing act are unfun and go against the spirit of the format"
These statements are correct. Also, both those people will just switch to selesnya eventually and everything will be extra insufferable for everyone else.
@@jddelphinEDH players proving how insufferable they are continuously
Personally, I think the "mass land destruction is a counter to green" is a bad argument because green will either get their lands back from the graveyard or get more lands and it ends up punishing every other color more than green.
If a green deck gets stomped by mass land destruction they are just dead ; you dont destroy all lands and just sit there with nothing.
my local meta welcomed it openly back in 2013-2016ish (then i did other things with my life and got back in around 2020). Green could always have more lands than everyone else. but they had to use the ramp spells around other things through the game. because if you just rushed 6+ lands out and got wiped. you still need several turns to get back to being able to recover. but the other decks? they had rocks. they actually werent that phased and just kept making land drops each turn + having what rocks stuck.
Why did it work? The biggest advice to anyone who joined that meta was "40 lands is the baseline" games are clunky but you NEED to make your turnly land drops in what used to be 14ish turns per player games.
it works. people just dont want to change how they build or play already, as thats what theyve found to be the most fun.
So, a bit of feedback here: mass land destruction causes drawn out games. My group wanted to test out how annoying it was, and we just ended up having miserable games and we went back to not running MLD. I know a lot of people debate if it's fine or not to blow up lands, but the fact is it leads to miserable games for all colors, not just green.
Usually when u blow up lands then u win the game, i play windgrace MLD and it works fine. Now im changing my windgrace for thalia/gitrog hatebears with splash in land matters and its more anoying than just blow up the lands and win that turn
How many casual EDH decks run enough land recursion to get all of their lands back? Especially when out of mana?
MLD does sets the green player back, but not indefinitely. Sure they can ramp back, but their previous ramp has thinned their deck of lands while non-land resources are still on play.
Not advocating for MLD (unless you win right away), but in a deck that has it the plan is always to utilize it best and use it to either win immediately or build an overwheming advantage
On the topic of black discard spells, I agree that hand disruption is a cool and unique way that black can deal with stuff. The only problem is that hand disruption is genuinely awful against 3 opponents, especially when you mostly have to cast them blindly.
Zevlor is a pretty neat way to solve the hand disruption problem, but one legend doesn’t make a strategy “good” all of the sudden.
As someone who plays mono black, it really isn't a big deal to play against 3. You should know who to point your mind twist effects at and -when- win.
Counterspells have the same issue, though, and people still play those
The fact that people say, "Well you could just run the colorless removal instead," is pretty telling with regards to how bad relying on discard removal is. Black absolutely needs better enchantment removal than is offered by discard options.
@@itslexactually But Blue has built in options to deal with spells that resolve; Just bounce it and counter it next time, or send it to their library. Black, otoh, has very limited options for removing enchantments once they stick.
@@itslexactually Counterspells are universal answers to everything as long as you hold your mana up. They also massively shift tempo by making an opponent waste mana on their own turn. That’s why counters are played everywhere in Commander.
Hand disruption/Duress effects are preemptive, but you’d have to blindly guess the exact time when to fire them off for maximum effectiveness.
Green is at its best when people are dumb. When it is a 1v1 competitive format, the name of the game is kneecapping your opponent. Thus green ramp doesn't shine. What this boils down to is that average commander players aren't very good at threat assessment. I'd say they're significantly worse than the average player from large multiplayer kitchen table era for one main reason. Casual commander players seem to on average be much more allergic to the idea of just hitting someone. They also seem to be much more allergic to the idea of gang beating someone to zero. Obviously I've never done any wider study on this but this is the general mouth feel I get, having played in both time periods. We did have big green at kitchen table too but when they decided they were going to ramp into their new eldrazi toys, no one brushed it off. Everyone kept tabs on how many turns off he was from dropping Ulamog or Emrakul. This time measuring of threats feels much less widespread in commander.
Green has trouble with creature removal. Play more removal. Green needs to ramp because their creatures cost more, so the ratios are the same. Repeatable removal is the best like a Elspeth, Sun's Champion or an Intrepid Hero or something, not only shut down the green player with 5 8/8s, but also the black player with all the demons and late game threats.
Run Murder. Run O-Ring. Run Thoughtsieze. Run more removal in general.
Run discard effects and mill.
Run burn.
Run any interaction.
Why are you fighting the green player on their turf? Don't fight their creatures with your creatures.
Don't fight the black player expecting to keep your hand full.
Don't fight the blue player by dropping one good card, bait counters.
Don't fight red players and not expect to take fire to the face.
Don't fight white players and expect to be allowed to have a boardstate.
I'm so tired of people complaining that green is so broken in casual. Try harder.
they hated jesus, for he told them the truth
Jews in bible are black, unlike whoever Vatican installed since past century
Amen
@@ladykarma9320 Jews are black
@@benjaminwalker9369 Dude, what?
You don't say "amen" after things that should not happen, there's a reason the phrase usually comes after prayers.
🙏
i have to strongly disagree on the quality of removal from green, and dismissing the requirements for good green card draw as a net positive is wrong. removal gets you two for one, and if you don't have back up removal or draw after that interaction you are screwed.
green is strong, but casual commander has evolved a lot and is not that free to just ramp early and profit from that, i play mostly green and don't just crush every other color of deck by default. maybe it's that i play in a small pod that found a balance, but even with random people my most successful deck that ramps and plays big things is a tibalt, cosmic imposter deck. and i play and tune regularly a ghlata, primal hunger deck that does a lot of what you describe.
creatures are the most vulnerable type of permanent, and you get a lot of removal going your way because of the immediate pressure that you generate.
combos need to be embraced more by the casual folks, i pilot some combo decks that are not super consistent in comboing thanks to a lack of tutors, but can win "the honest way", and never got an unusual amount of complaints.
As a fellow Ghalta player I second this.
I'm always the first target because I'm first on board and players with combos or long lasting value in hand sit back and grind it out.
I'm not complaining because in my opinion there has to be at least one player who pushes the game forward on the board.
Otherwise it becomes really dull.
Yes, green is strong but the problem lies in the deckbuilding and amount of interaction of other peoples decks and their playstyle.
This, plus Blues On-Board interaction is severely underestimated here as well. We got to 1 mana destruction spells even a 2 mana EXILE, and a mass bounce is such a tempo swing, it cripples most decks after resolution.
On top of that Blue has all the Steal AND Copy spells, and maybe even extra Turns if you feel like it, all of which they easily and consistently draw into, because Blue just draws
Even IF mass land destruction were common, Green players would just go "Haha, Splendid Reclamation"
They can't play that without any lands 😂
@@yawg691 In case of MLD better keep some Dorks around for exactly this case. Otherwise, yeah. Bad times :D
I might be biased, but the answer might just be because "doing a lot of cool things" is how most people like to play casual edh. so when green does that, 1 - its not as salty, and 2 - that kind of is the entire casual edh format. for a lot of other colors, the cool things involve messing with another person's board, so that is less friendly than green's big buildup.
I don't think it's a fair comparison to put (very bad) black enchantment removal next to colorless generic removal, then put green ramp next to colorless ramp.
Signets and Talismans are thoroughly playable, and on par with green land ramp. Just more vulnerable, and something you need a mind to defend. Heavy artifact ramp for expensive decks is entirely doable. Green's edge on that front is not this huge gulf; people are just more comfortable putting a twenty card ramp package in a green deck than anything else.
The removal spells you're talking about are completely unplayable for most decks. If there's a turn to Rest In Peace and you're relying on getting to seven mana for Scour from Existence so your Shirei deck can exist, that's not "a little extra mana." That is, "So much mana that you have to skip one of the last turns of the game," unless you have some really hard ramp going on.
Maybe this is counter contrarian but i think black as the overcosted enchantment removal color is totally fine for edh. I think discard is a very poor substitute in edh for actual removal bc of the social format. Many put discard on a similar level to mld
But on your main points re green, i agree.
Agreed, discard doesnt scale well at all in multiplayer but I agree with TTM that in theory that's the better direction to take it
Part of the problem is if you run too many or too good discard effects it's just salty and not socially acceptable for edh, which then goes back to square 1
Saying B shouldn't be able to remove enchants from the board because they have discard is like saying U shouldn't have any board interaction because of counter-magic. Sounds reasonable in theory, until you actually play Magic and discover how important timing is.
Yeah I love to play mono black and the extremely budget discard/ hand control deck I build was not enjoyable for those who played with me to the extent that I took it apart. I try to avoid interactions where my game-plan is to prevent others from having fun
@@gs9444 Also, you actually can't use this as a removal plan, cos what about them topdecking an important enchant/artifact and playing it? Discard is (rightly) sorcery speed, and black doesn't get ways to play them with flash much.
So in longer games (for instance, all casual commander) black actually can't interact with critical enchants/artifacts by discard
There's also the fact that you don't know if an opponent has a threat in hand until it's played, with counterspells you see the threat and respond to it, same with removal, with discsrd you would have to be permanently attacking another player's hand for a threat that may not even be there
Last March must be uncounterable as in the movies, you did not see Sauron just "Counterspell that" , it cant be countered.
As I stated on the EDHRECast video recently, people need to start playing more aggressive commanders that can put pressure on people. Letting the green decks just ramp out like crazy just leads to free Ls. The problem is that the decks that can do this (Things like Kaalia or Sheoldred) get a ton of hate. The whole pod gets scared of being attacked. Being that aggro player at the table can mean you need to vocalize what you're doing and why. It also means you need good threat assessment for future turns. Kill the simic player first is a pretty good choice in general. We worry too much about knocking someone out early, but if that person was really there to socialize and be a part of the game, then understanding why they were knocked out first should be a pretty simple concept.
Commenting on what you said at 3:30...
Black's discard spells while good in a single-player format scales horribly against three opponents as you never know who you need to point it and unlike with counterspells it has to be done beforehand and once it's on the field it's there, not to mention Black still doesn't get artifact removal so it keeps that weakness.
As someone else mentioned in a different comment enchantment removal in Black was a recent change (if years ago can be said as recent) in the color pie due to how artifact removal was in three colors (White, Green, and Red) but enchantment removal was only in two (White and Green). With Red already being able to destroy artifacts and Blue's whole thing is that it doesn't really get removal in a traditional way and instead has to counterspell things - Black made the most sense as the third color that can remove enchantments especially since it was dead to TWO different types of permanents instead of only one (for Red it's Artifacts, Green has Creatures) is which also helps the argument for why it gets enchantment removal now.
Urza's glasses mate
I like green because I like nature, playing lands, and because triggering Landfall effects make my brains secrete the happy chemicals. Also, I feel that thematically and color-philosophy wise Green just synergizes so well with the other colors, even its "opposed" colors like Black and Blue.
Depending on the pod you're in, there's a good chance you're up against multiple green hyper ramp decks. In which case your only chance is to combo off or MLD (which will make you the arch-enemy). And even if you've somehow only got one green ramper, getting on the board quickly and doing lots of damage will make you the arch-enemy because the majority of casual commander players can't assess threat beyond what's on the board right now, and barely even then in my experience.
14:03 It's Green! Green gives you a lot of mana and cards! Like you were saying for the first 75% of the video! I figured it out!
They put destroy target enchantment in black because "destroy target artifact" was in three colors: red, white and green but for some reason "destroy target enchantment" was only in two: white and green. in theory they could have given destroy target enchantment to blue to mix things up
Yeah, black still doesn't have artifact removal, trinket mage is wrong there.
They should not have given it to blue, because counterspells are better than discard effects most of the time. Very few discard effects let *you* choose the card. Most let your opponent choose.
Black gets enchantment removal at worse rates than green and white (Naturalize and Disenchant are 2 mana instants with no downsides, Feed the Swarm is a 2 mana sorcery with a downside).
This is Trinket Mage misunderstanding that the color pie changes, and has changed ever since the beginning. Black already can't hit two card types, so letting it hit one of them is good balance and game design. Plus, Black is often considered one of the best removal colors, but it could really only hit creatures. So this fixes that
The thing about black in casual is that its card draw is bad compared to green or blue because its ability to burst isnt as good and its consistency is proportional to the amount of life youre paying. So where blue and white and green can draw consistently freely and blue and green can burst draw really easily, black is here paying mana and life for some that was supposed to be its niche.
Also the things that make it unique like discard and tutors (and combo) are heavily frowned upon in casual formats.
Part of the issue is players not knowing what a most other peoples decks are going to do. 'that player hasn't done anything yet, I don't need to worry about them yet' seems to be the general sentiment I see at gamestore tables. It makes decks that play from behind and just outscale everything in the late game way stronger because all of the aggro players that could have dealt enough damage to make the late game deck possible to be dealt with later catch all of the tables removal early.
Whats most annoying as the aggro player is knowing what the green ramp player is doing and focusing them down only to have the rest of the table use their removal on you. I tell them that the ramp player is gonna win but they dont listen and then surprise, surprise the ramp player wins.
Yeah, this has been my experience as a big green player. If I can soak the early aggro and politic some hate towards that player, I will almost always come out ahead because most of the interaction has been drained from my opponents hands.
In a format, where games are usually decided by combat, the color that has the best creatures per mana spent is going to have an advantage. In a format where games often evolve into attrition battles, the color that can create a surplus of both mana and cards is going to have an advantage. And in a format where people are rewarded for being able to deal with a diverse array of threats, the color that can remove any permanent type across its card pool without having to splash or play subpar cards is going to have an advantage.
But Green also gains the most from the general social contract in casual play. Or rather, it loses the least. Blue and Black have sacrifice effects, discard, mill, counterspells and combos, but those things are all widely discouraged to varying degrees in the format. White's stax effects draw the ire of their opponents almost as much as Red's powerful and punishing burn strategies. Even playing something as egregious as more than 10 pieces of removal in their deck can be seen as a tryhard. And land destruction? Even without the social stigma, the color that sneezes out three lands a turn, from the graveyard or otherwise is going to have a much easier time recovering from an Armageddon than any Esper or Grixis deck.
As if Green's monopoly on land ramp, access to strong card draw, and having the biggest creatures isn't bad enough, they also can answer most every card type, have some of the strongest permanent protection effects, and also can recur any card type to hand.
(I'm a bit salty that Heroic Intervention is Green and not White. Have we seen any other full board protection effects in green? I'm not sure we have.)
Also, while modern Regrowth effects tend to only target permanents, that doesn't change the fact that Regrowth and Eternal Witness are in the EDH card pool. Also, you probably want to recur permanents anyway.
My dislike of Green leads me to play more board wipes in my decks. They probably have plenty of cards to rebuild, but it at least buys me time to enact my own game plan.
There is some older green spell with "regenerate each creature you control", so it had a bit of board protection?
One effect I've become somewhat partial to are Grevious Wound style effects. Even a single hit with an early unstoppable slasher will make a scary stax/control deck or a massive greedy ramp pile deck suddenly sweat and agonize over every single point of health lost. I've sat at tables with people generating frankly absurd amounts of mana very quickly, or trying to both deny resources and douse hope with stax and/or control, styles that can feel unapproachable by normal modes of play, really struggle when their general lack of pressure lets someone slip in some sort of effect that brings them from 40 to 20. It's actually insane how claustrophobic it feels to be in a commander game with approximately the normal starting HP of basically any other format. Opponents who were previously looking inward hoping to top deck removal for a problem piece can suddenly begin to apply pressure with pretty much any creatures they have, and psychologically that feeling of damage being relevant to game state leads to much more damage being thrown at people. It warms my heart to see shy players actually learn to poke when 1-3 power instances of damage are more relevant.
Grievous Wound is an awesome card! Gonna have to get one now. For my Mogis MLD deck.
Your editing has noticeably improved! I’ve been watching for a while and seeing little jokes here and there is really neat to see.
I can't help but notice that you don't seem to draw a distinction between infinite loop combos and normal combos (you've said similar things in the past). Casual players don't forbid combos that win you the game on the spot. They just have a problem with combos where there is no limit to the value you can squeeze from them because they are among the strongest things you can do in the game. For example, you can enchant your commander with fallen ideal while reassembling skeleton and golgari germination are in play. If you sac the skeleton, then bring it back for two mana to get it and a token that can also be sac'd, you can loop that a finite amount of times and easily take someone out with commander damage. I've never had folks complain about that combo because it takes additional resources to pull off after the parts are assembled. I tend to get 7-14 turns before the match is over at this power level. However, there are numerous infinite loops you can do with the skeleton early on that would piss people off. Off the top of head queen ayara as commander, desecrated tomb, phyrexian alter, and reassembling skeleton would be too strong for casual players. Casual pods tend to want the match to last 40-70 minutes so that they get plenty of chances to play their pet cards.
Do you really not see players use single target land destruction in casual pods? This might be more what the play group at your lgs is like. I have to play casual matches in mtgo. There, seeing effects like demolition field is normal. I make sure to have both demolition field and field of ruin in most of my decks. Everyone understands how strong lands like field of the dead are, so its rare to get complaints about single target ld effects. I've also noticed that most of the precons I bought have at least a few effects that can target lands like generous gift or acidic slime. Since its part of most precons these days, I would think most players would be used to having lands taken out every now and then. The taboo isn't about land destruction in general. The taboo is concerning mana denial. It's the same reason winter orb is taboo.
“How can you lose if you’re constantly drawing 10 cards every time someone tries to remove one of your threats?” Well your threats are incredibly easy to remove via black, and white’s cheap creature spot removal and blue can just COUNTER everything. Using their measly 2 mana to you flush your 12 MANA down the drain, stopping you’re creatures from even hitting the battlefield, let alone drawing you cards.
Also yes big green stompy does in fact stomp the table
Your disdain for the new wave of pie breaking black enchantment removal warms my heart, Mage 💜
I can concur, Green can be absolutely busted in EDH. I built an Ojer Kaslem mono green deck, and all I have to do is ramp to Turbo out my Commander, make sure she makes contact with an opponent and then I'm getting a land and a giant creature for free. It's absurd. And it still has weaknesses of course, but unless the table teams up to stop me, it can steamroll.
I love being Green.
I run a Jetmir, Nexus of Revels deck and I truly believe it's as close to aggro as you can be in casual. Of course, I run a few land ramp spells and mana dorks and rocks, but that's only to power my token-making spells and the Jetmir. Aggro is such a good and fun archetype in EDH, it's great
BY FAR BY FAR! Let me tell you the jump from Rakdos to Jund is crazy!
I built a GW turbo ramp deck, green for ramp and big dudes, white for big dudes and protecting my board. It absolutely cleans up in casual pods.
I find that pillow fort effects like propaganda and ghostly prison are a great way to discourage a player from attacking me, even if they are green and ramped to the moon. I have lost count of the times I’ve heard, “I want to attack you, but I don’t want to pay for it”. I get a huge number of uninterrupted turns to draw into protection for my pillow fort pieces and my win cons. By the time my opponents realize that “paying the 2” is a good investment, I’m winning the game.
The fact you made it through this whole video without mentioning landfall is wild to me. My green red omnath stompy landfall deck absolutely obliterates whenever I bring it out (and whenever my friend Adam doesn't combo off lol)
The Zendikar period gave green some of its best power pieces
Speaking as a hyper casual scrub, i'd argue that green ramp piles with big creatures Aren't salty, while other colors generate way more salt among players, because green ramp piles don't stop their opponents from playing the game; this is a phrase i started using before i converted to Magic from YuGiOh, but the general vibe i mean is "a not-insignificant portion of your deck is dedicated to countering, negating, or controlling your opponent's deck, preventing them from playing their silly little strategy." Green of course has interaction, but casual players dont run it, they just wanna get their big guy out.
@@khirnera I am completely of the opposite opinion because for me that interaction is the game. I want removal to be flung readily at threats and engines while players seek to get their pieces ol line despite that.
@andrewgreenwood9068 and that's totally fair! People play the games both ways (and more) simultaneously, what fun we get from Magic is personal. While I'm sensitive to being countered to hell because of the abysmal state in which i had left yugioh, my general playstyle is more midrange
Finally somebody said it, green is good! Shit I've been saying for years! It took so much effort for mono W to compete and everytime when I do you hear the green player moan and cry about "oh man they printed a carddraw that isnt as good as guardian project" when (back in the day) we only have mentor of the meek, jesus
I think the biggest thing about green is that it's the best color at not *seeming* like a threat until suddenly they're in a game state that would make a yugioh player blush.
My issue with green stompy is when I play against board wipes, especially newer ones that don't explicitly destroy or damage creatures I just get set back, and I'm often unable to recover as what I'm doing (drawing cards and ramping) is seen as too scary for the table...which leads me to be taken out quite quickly
I mean..are they wrong?
@demosthenes995 No, but I don't have that problem as often with other colors and I prefer other colors removal as well
Yeah stuff like Farewell or Final Showdown side step pretty all of greens protections.
Exactly the reason I built mono-green Omnath a long time ago. After gaining some experience playing the format with more complicated ideas I was like "wait, this just simply Draws More Cards and Generates More Mana to play them than other decks." Omnath even gives you ready access to a big threat on board/wincon. It's simplistic but it just macros so much harder than most piles that it doesn't matter that I'm mid at the game.
One of the things I was thinking of was they should introduce Commander only land destruction isn't just a board wipe, something like destroy 2-5 lands or maybe something like "destroy all lands past X x 2" that way you can reign players back without completely ruining the game
The discussion really comes down to this:
The best blue/black can do is to COMBO.
Even red decks have to do something "combo" (Krenko makes goblins, storm decks just storm out).
Green is best at ramping with lands and playing big stuff, then it snowballs away with all that advantage.
Its best for casual, as thats exactly what you want to do ; then you add other colors as you see fit.
Ramping with lands heavily banks on people not playing any land destruction, and WotC does not print any playable land destruction AT ALL anymore, all the "permanent" removal also (in like 99%) says non-land permanent now ... they really push that problem hard.
Thing with land destruction is that what slows down a ramp deck takes a non-ramp deck out of the game. More stuff like Limited Resources might be interesting though (not as hard cap as limited resource though, may be something like "Players ant untap more lands per untap step than the number of lands the player with the least number of lands controlls"?)
More urza's sylex style cards, thats all i am gonna say on the side of dealing with green.
Aa for keeping green in check, as trinked mage said, the problem is less about regular ramp (rampant growth etc) and more about the extra landdrops and personally i belive the suite of 1 mana dorks and especially enchantments that no one seems to aknowledge as fast mana.
Greater Good + Phyrexian Dreadnaught is a crazy draw 12 combo.
Reins of Power vs a Green Stompy Deck is pretty fun. Really takes them by surprise.
I built a Mina & Denn deck inspired by yours but with my own twists. I don’t have an eye of ugin so I built around sanctum of ugin and graveyard land recursion to make a tutor loop for colorless cards, and added world breaker (because I hate the one ring) and blightsteel (became people at my LGS play turbo life gain. I’ve seen life totals in the hundreds.) because sanctum cares about 7 cost colorless cards.
I tried it out today. I had 11 lands out turn 5 and would have had 15 mana if I was allowed to untap turn 6. and died to commander damage because another player was playing gruul enchantress and correctly assessed that I was the biggest threat because I was ramping out twice as much land as everyone else.
When he hit me with lethal commander trample damage I showed him the Ulamog in my hand and he went
“see?! I’m not crazy! That was correct threat assessment.”
It was fun. It’s funner being the arch enemy when people correctly assess that you are the threat and don’t just get pub stomped.
If you play white, run Fall of the Thran. It messes with greens ramp strategy but also recoups lands straight to the Battlefield and evens the playing field for land count.
I realized this awhile back with how nuts green is when Kona came out in duskmourn. A ton of cheap ramp plus tappers, jam packed full of high powers matters draw, most high power synergy starts at 4 power which Kona is. Then because of the commander plus greens ton of mana you can flood the board with threats, its the deck i play when i feel like being the villain for the night at the table lol
I think you have summed up something i have been ranting about casual edh for months now. The only things i would include is just how ridiculous landfall is and how green, and its infinite ramping gets to abuse this mechanic for just doing the thing it wanted to do anyway.
On land ramp being locked behind Green: I want to raise a counter example. My white decks tend to ramp extremely well using fetch lands and white reanimation spells like Sevinne's Reclamation, Brought Back, Faith's Reward, Cosmic Intervention, Sun Titan, Second Sunrise... These are cards I often want to play anyway in White but with fetches, they double as very good ramp pieces.
The introduction of a crazy explosive omnath, locus of mana deck made the rest of us have to upgrade our decks. Playing around it made our playgroup operate at high power edh levels. Absurdly, the omnath deck cost only $30.
Ive had an idea for a bit of a build around Pantlaza which runs minimal dinosaurs, only the ones with interaction on bodies, but is largerly just land ramp spells. With some flicker effects you can easily hit your lower-mana ramp cards constantly, and then hit numbers fast and get the payoff with X spells you discover into your hand
When you were showing Rishkars and the others for card draw and you said "land ramp" I was so sure you are going to mention the card that gets you X land where X is your creatures power. I run that in my Minsc and Zangief deck. So good. Play big guy, go get all the basics out of your deck and put them into play. Not only do you have lots of mana, but you also thinned your deck and made your draws better. More efficient.
Edit: 16:00 It's true. Green is very strong. I have a Ruxa deck that I built for new players to learn on. It has 40 land. 15 get lands/Draw cards. And it was scaring people how song it was. Play Gigantosaurus and then draw 11 cards and cast a free 5 mana spell. Cast Traverse the Outlands and get 11 lands into play. People don't even bother killing your commander. You can easily recast it and pay all the taxes. And when you attack with your huge creature m you cast Hunter's Insight on it and draw so many cards you have to discard after casting a bunch.
Playing MLD against decks that ranp harder than you is a mistake. Ive never been the one who was disadvantaged from it when playing landfall
Thank goodness. I feel like I lose my mind when at the flgs i talk about how green has turned into a freak of a color and people look at me like I'm the crazy one.
If all you allow is the durdle the color that durdles the hardest is the strongest. The answer is to punish the durdle.
But how? My most aggressive deck (a low-to-the-ground Boros deck) is the only deck that I have both played a lot and yet never won a game with. If I focus one player down right at the start, it usually doesn't take long until I'm knocked out as well and then we both sit there for 1h+ while the remaining two players finish the match. And if I spread the damage around, I am suddenly an archenemy. A single aggro deck just cannot compete against three midrange decks with 40 life each
@@finnkoepke2250 The way to properly build aggro decks in commander is to think of them as psuedo-combo decks... only one of the combo pieces is your creatures. Aggro decks need strong finishers whether that's burn/reach, overrun effects, or a combo; and the deck should be built leading up to a late game. The creatures have to be more than damage -- they also have to be set up for an end game.
I'm glad I'm not alone on this. My LGS got me so salty with green, I made a storm targeted land destruction deck.
My pitch has always been that colorless should get the "you may play an additional land"effect.
Green still gets to search for lands and put them into play, but other colors can catch up by drawing more cards and playing the lands that way.
Obligatory "mass land destruction doesn't punish ramp" comment.
Decks with fewer lands and fewer ramp spells will have a much harder time recovering from an Armaggedon than a ramp deck. If you want to punish ramp by destroying lands, you have to only destroy lands of the ramping player, or else you'll actually put them ahead in the long term.
I recently changed my Volo guide to monsters deck from a Simic goodstuff deck to a 100% Lands/landfall synergy.
The old list was pretty blue heavy breaking parody and winning games with things like peregrin drake, hullbreaker horror and tidespout tyrant without even needing any typenof infinite combo, using spark double to effectively have 3 volos on board, enduring curiosity and ancient silver dragon and beast whisper effects to draw a ton of cards.
The deck was explosive and fun but I consistently had issued with being unable to protect Volo before I could pop off or the deck just folding to a board wipe before I can replenish cards in hand because it's so creature zoo heavy.
As a Landfall deck I cranked the list up to 43 land if you include Mdfc spells. I stuck every single fetch I own that could he played in the deck and stuck a massive ramp package in the deck and a lands pay off package to match.
The result is consistently being able to play Volo on turn 2-3 and immediately ramping off of say an arboreal grazer type effects so that even if Volo gets removed immediately I have ramped hard enough to be unaffected by commander tax or I just have so much mana and card advantage that Volo is no longer needed to win.
Yup, my Volo deck that I packed to the brim with ramp and draw is probably the one deck I have that will consistently be "the problem" every game I play with it.
Issue is winter orb combating green is that land comes in untapped. Normally if winter orb is in play, you can play a basic land, and untap 1 land which gives you 2 mana. If you can play 2 lands, you now have 3 mana while everyone else has 2 and while it’s only 1 extra mana, it is so impactful. A large 5-6 drop can be played a whole turn ahead of everyone else.
OH MY GOD, LIZARD MENTION.
Lizards are great. It's why Lizard is one of my favorite creature types.
My green focused Omnath, Locus of Creation deck is filled to the brim with ramp. It even contains mass land destruction, which is less problematic for it than it is for other decks. Ramp / landfall goes crazy in casual EDH
Made a very simple mono green stompy deck after some crazier concepts. Man it feels good to just play good stuff on curve.
My fave is turn 1 with Burgeoning with lots of lands and a couple ways to draw. Super juiced start for the first couple rounds
Every EDH player is a Timmy who secretly wants to be a Spike, but doesn't want to give up being a Timmy.
That's why no one gets mad at green.
Experiencing extreme deja vu about this video. Could have sworn I watched this exact video before
I've been messing around with a Glarb deck that runs all the extra land drop cards I can find and then just beats the table down by casting/reanimating big creatures. Green really can do some crazy stuff.
I think you’re 100% right about how strong green is, but I do think you underplayed how strong white is. White catchup ramp is actually super reliable these days. It’s not as good as green but it’s still very firmly above Red Blue and Black
I have many thoughts on this topic. To summarize: MLD is a great solution to the wrong problem, draw engines should be the primary target, and, for aggro, the difference between "fast enough to kill the ramp player early" and "fast enough that I need to stop them" is so fine that it's impractical.
Number one big thinky from me is that MLD is not the answer to ramp decks, which is what I'm gonna be calling the green or x/g decks you're discussing. I used to believe MLD was the way but it was pointed out to me multiple times that MLD is basically just stripping all the lands from everyone's hands. Sure, everyone else probably has mana rocks, but they probably didn't build their deck or resolve their mulligan expecting to run off 2 rocks, while the ramp player likely built ways to recur lands into their deck anyway. Plus, they just run more lands than everyone else and are therefore the most likely to rip them off the top. The other decks might get a turn or two of trying to build back with a very rocky mana base, but the ramp player will still catch them.
Instead, I think it's best to focus on the fact that ramp decks are typically extremely card hungry. They play lands, which costs cards, they play extra lands, which costs more cards, they play draw engines, which are typically initially card negative, then they slam big dumb idiots until you're pink mist, which are all card negative by themselves. If dealing with the lands themselves is the wrong idea, and you're already down a million cards by them time they're slamming idiots, the best thing to attack against a ramp deck must be the draw engine. Ramp decks aren't running Harmonize, Sign in Blood, or Read the Bones. There's no unconditional draw here. They're playing Guardian Project, the Great Henge, and Zendikar Resurgent. They're relying on those permanents to turn all their creatures into cantrips. If you blow up those draw engines before they can start the creature conveyor belt, they're stuck on the 2-3 creatures in their starting hand. That also means any future Return of the Wildspeaker or Regal Force is probably going to be limited to drawing 2-3 cards as well. Let them have all the mana in the world. It's fine as long as they don't have the cards to spend it on.
I've also been testing out how good it is to just punch them. To avoid burying the lede, it doesn't work too well. You're either not going to kill them before they gum up the board with threats, or *you'll* be deemed the threat and get sent to the shadow realm. I built a $15 Slicer, Hired Muscle deck. It would regularly win the game turn 5 or 6. At $15, it always folded to a single removal spell, but that also meant it was really easy for the table to stop me instead of using slicer to kill the ramp player. I tried to aggro a little slower with Karlach, Fury of Avernus / Popular Entertainer. It tries to just play on curve early, which means its early damage output is basically limited to whatever you can manage with a 1, 2, and 3 drop. The goad angle also gives it great play late if you're careful about how you spread damage around. Unfortunately, extra combats are scary, and without them, the deck lacks the power to drop the ramp player before they can stabilize. As far as I can tell, for aggro to work, you need a deck that's fast enough to kill a player turn 5 or 6, but not so fast that the other players get spooked, and with enough play into the late game that you don't just get out-valued. It might be possible, but I sure can't do it.
I've acted on this information by playing *even more* removal. I built azorius control with The Council of Four that runs 26 various pieces of interaction. I also built BUG goodstuff with Gonti Canny Acquisitor which runs basically every piece of interaction that's stapled to a good, cheap creature, supplemented with plenty of cheap, instant speed removal, and supported with many draw engines. It's effectively a ramp deck that curves out with creatures early instead of wasting time ramping. This gives it much more consistent pressure but a significantly lower top end.
I can’t fathom letting you ramp to a million mana without some early turn aggression. But I attack. Always. I’d prefer not to time walk myself on purpose.
All of what you said is why zimone, all questioning is low key OP. You deploy larger and larger threats for zero cost, that can be sacrificed for massive cards for literally zero drawback . It seems janky but the mathematical advantages can be overwhelming.
Been trying to figure out my Zopandrel infect deck for a while, thanks for the help
4:10 Hold on, if you are fine with Chaos Warp being a universal removal for Red because "It has the random twist that feels very red", then you should be fine with Feed The Swarm and Withering Torment, since they do the very black thing of making you pay life to have an effect you can fin in antother color.
If we take card draws being a core identity of blue as another example, do you consider that Night Whisper, Phyrexian Arena, Necropotence, Greed.... are "color pie breaks" since it gives black some sweet sweet card draw ? Especially since the rate is way better than withering torment.
Card draw is too general to be locked only to blue. Usually non-blue card draw is either bad for the price or comes with a downside (discarding, losing life, etc.)
Things like pongify (targeted destruction for blue) is too good, since blue's removal should come from bounce instead of straight up destruction. Pongify even only costs 1 for some reason.
I think mostly what we want to do is keep each color seeming like it's own thing. Pokemon has a problem where I can't tell what's special about all its types, but in Magic, the colors distinguish what each one does.
“If it’s already in play, then your counter spell is basically worthless” says the color that has more incidental bounce effects to force players to recast permanents.
Sure, you can bounce it and then Counter it, but now you've traded two pieces of interaction for one thing. Which is not optimal in attrition based games.
@ Again, this comes from the color with more incidental draw than any other color. Besides, counterspells are way more powerful than board removal in terms of actual elimination of the threat, it can be done in reaction to something drawn the turn it was played unlike the sorcery speed discard, which is most discard. It’s also the only reactive way to deal with non permanent spells. All this beside the fact that there are lots of bounce effects on creatures and blue has massive amounts of blink effects that are repeatable, so it isn’t even always eating cards.
Green in casual is definitely the best.
My main reason is because of land ramp as most people run random board wipes that hit artifacts. But not one runs land destruction.
Also green can jus spam big stompy guys which in casual usally slap
I've got a 5-color Niv-mizet jumpstart deck running over 50 lands, and the gimmick is the 2-color advetures can be cast from my graveyard, then cast from exile. It's super mana ineficient, so I just filled my deck with Xcost reveal top X and put all lands onto the battlefield and return all lands from your graveyard to the battlefield. My opponents are suprized when I get 20-30 lands in play, and if I was playing more effiecent threats, the deck would actually be a worry. I like the resilient gameplan though, so I don't think I'd change it up.
Last March of the Ents is an absurd magic card, yes... But it costs 8 mana. I get that green has ramp and I get that this being uncounterable protects it from the most efficient possible answers, sure, but like... It still costs 8 mana. Idk, after playing for so long in a format with cards like Insurrection, Rise of the Dark Realms, and Craterhoof, I'm kinda used to "I cast an 8-mana spell" being effectively synonymous with "I win the game"
Again, sure it can't be countered, I get that and I get why it makes this card so good, but also consider: this video is specifically about casual edh, where you aren't expecting to have to fight through 3 players' worth of the best blue countermagic in the game. Often there will only be one blue player at the table, if that. I have wanted to run Seedtime in a casual deck for years but have never been able to justify it because, having tried it multiple times, it has literally never once done anything other than rot in my hand. And that is a card that is specifically built to punish countermagic.
If the response is "your pod doesn't run enough countermagic" you're missing the point. Again, the focus of this video is casual edh, where not everyone is even trying to optimize for winrate. If they were, they'd be running more countermagic... But they'd also be playing Thoracle combo.
TL;DR: Last March of the Ents is an absurd magic card, but imo the "can't be countered" like doesn't make it significantly more absurd than any other 8-mana "I win the game now" card in the context of casual edh.
A great way for non green decks to have more mana is to use mana more efficiently instead of just getting more of it. My esper reanimator deck run almost no ramp but it is able to jam 6-10 mana creatures on board by turn 3-4 because its using its mana more efficiently by reanimating it's threats from the graveyard. My Aminatou enchantress deck is able to discount its game warping enchantments by a huge amount and then lock a less efficient deck out with pillowfort effects and control magic. Besides efficiently using mana most decks just need more interaction to deal with green stompy decks. Play more removal and interaction so you have it when you need it and have enough of it.
I run both a monogreen elfball and a green/white elfball. I know how crazy green ramp can get. I've had 30 mana on turn 6 before, not even going into Rhys throwing out several hundred tokens to feed Archdruid of Priest of Titania.
However, there are some combos that should not be ignored.
For Azorius (WB), Medomai is absolutely still a threat. Making him unblockable, with double strike, with multiple copies of him out due to something like vesuvan duplimacy or helm of hosts means you're getting 5+ free turns. Put a sakashima's student in there with a Mirror Box or Gallery and you've just extended it to a good 10+ free turns. Crystal Shard and a creature that can't be blocked means an infinite combo of free turns. The rest of the pod can only respond so many times before they're completely tapped out and you still have 6 or more turns of free damage to go.
In Izzet (RB), you have combos like dual Niv-Mizzets. With damage multiplication cards like Fiery Emancipation and City on Fire, you're out here dealing anywhere from 3 to 324 damage to each pod member per card you draw, and three of the four Nivs can pair up to make an infinite combo until the opponent is dead or you've drawn out. Or you can change the beat and put Laboratory Maniac in to intentionally draw yourself out to win.
9:30 - This is a truly bad faith argument and why I am so frustrated with this channel. "Green can do anything as long as it involves a creature." Well, black can do anything if you pay some life and/or a little extra mana, but you brush that aside like it is meaningless and why I call it bad faith; I could just flip your script to make the reverse argument, "Black is so great because it can do anything as long as you pay life - which is a resource that doesn't matter until you hit zero - while green is forced to use over-costed creatures."
There is a lot of bad faith in this video and implied in this video with subtle comments and jabs which outright say or imply that using good cards means you deck is cEDH and not normal casual EDH. he says it directly later at 13:08 when he gives an extremely narrow definition of casual EDH that exists only as a fantasy. Actual recordings of casual games all over this platform prove him wrong, but his audience laps it up.
Except paying life is a cost, having a massive ass creature that does an effect and draws you 4 cards isn’t a cost.
Which is something they address.
In the end this is a game and people have emotional opinions, and that's okay. Much of the perception of balance is dependent on personal experience and preference. You got one, they got one.
Me personally, I do feel that simic does get away with much, given that I played most in the Uro/Oko days and well, they are simic.
@@marcopspspsps- The difference is they state as a matter of fact that which is disproven by reality and the countless video examples alone of how casual EDH is actually played by real people.
Its not "you get rewarded for doing something you already want to be doing" its "your tools only turn on if you're already winning". It's the main reason green kind of sucks in 60 card, not because "people don't ramp in 60 card" or something.
@@ArCSelkie37 - You are aware that the green creatures cost more than 2 mana, right? Yes, life is a cost. Mana is a cost, and these creatures are not free to cast. Card advantage is real, and so is mana advantage. What you are paying to cast spells vs what the rest of us are paying.
His example of a 7GG creature was not compared equally to 6BB Decree of Pain because he argues in bad faith. He knows this game well enough to know true comparisons and choses intentionally poor ones because he knows what he is doing: manipulating you.
In cEDH you are usually playing 3-4 colors so you get most of the good cards. That’s why most cEDH lists have about 75% the same cards in them. I play Tymna Thrassios for instance. There are a few notable
Exceptions like Magda who is mono-red, but that’s because her ability is so busted.
Yeah, it doesn't really make sense to talk about "strongest colors" in cEDH. I think it's fair to say that blue/black is the strongest color pair (in no small part thanks to thoracle combo), but monocolor decks are just so commander-focused that it doesn't make sense to talk about them in isolation. Like, blue isn't busted because Urza makes every zero-drop artifact into mox sapphire.
That said, the answer is blue, because rhystic study.