I think people underestimate the advantages of playing the game from a different angle, or with an intentional restriction. There's an elegance to simplicity.
You'll only ever be able to do that once. Or once per play group. Once people learn you could just kill them easily with commander damage when they thought you where trying to help them out they're probably not going to take the bait again.
@@toolittletoolate You could make a deal with them. As in: "I will not butt it this turn, if you let it through" or even "I promise not to kill you this turn" and then dealing only 20 commander damage (:
@@toolittletoolate I do have a variant of this deck (Xyris with Combat Buffs, not a Xyris wheel deck) since like 2021 or smth, and it works and has been since then. People do want to have cards, and people are willing to risk some damage for cards
In the world of Magic, having someone build a spite deck after a disagreement you've had with them is the highest compliment one can receive. Also, Jack seems pretty cool
@@fairygoodmuller8065 ooooh, yeah the Reaper King is a spicy card. I take it he went the changeling tribal route due to there not being a ton of scarecrow support?
One of my friends tells me I play mtg wrong. For context, I played sparingly in my youth but was never quite as hooked on the game as other tcgs like yugioh and stuff until the unfinity set came out and I loved the space carnival esthetic as well as the art style of the alt cards. So I make commander decks using the eternal legal commanders from that set and try my damndest to break them or make them good, my friend hates it but I'm gonna keep going till I have one for every eternal legal legendary in the set. Like toy maker/ liquid metal combos using Captian Rex Nebula as the medium.
The "infinite resources" perception is so fun to leverage I have a Yorion blink deck, and just leaving 3 mana open with 5 cards in hand sends opponents into a tailspin "This removal is useless, he has a flicker or a counterspell" is a phrase I've heard too many times to count
@@Aigis31 I had written a whole reply but it seems like it got deleted because it had a link to the decklist Sadge It is my first deck ever I've built, I've tinkered it a lot, it's my baby at this point. I don't have a lot of the expensive cards that I'd ultimately like to put in (talking things like fetches or Solitude) because I'd like to build it in paper at some point. I basically play it as a heavy control deck, I run a TON of card draw and interaction/removal; the best way I've found to play is sort of hang back at the start and then take down the first person to pop off, taking advantage of the time you're gonna get left alone since you're helping taking down the threat. By the time you have a set board with Yorion in play it's very hard to interact with you in a successful way. The idea is that single target flickers on Yorion turn into boardwide blinks, which is doubly useful as both a lot of value and protection from interaction, including boardwipes (because stuff comes back on endstep, the boardwipe will miss everything but yorion himself), eventually even your own wipes. Yorion can blink any nonland permanent, particularly your mana rocks, which allows you to tap out but still retain mana for following turns. I generally win through sheer attrition (exhausting their resource through reusing etb removals) and the implied eventual Yorion beatdown, up to looping Agent of Treachery to chain steal their best permanents, but I do have 2 infinites that I get to use reasonably often. Peregrine drake+Archaeomancer+Ghostly Flicker+any ETB draw Preston the Vanisher+Felidar Guardian+Any land+any ETB draw+ a way to flicker the Guardian once to start the loop These get me both infinite mana and infinite draws, with the payoff being Blue sun's Zenith (to deck everyone else) I like them because all the cards are individually quite useful (the worst is Zenith, which can still be quite useful if I get a bit stranded to refill) The deck is built for consistency and resiliency, it may not be extremely powerful but I will get to meaningfully be part of the game basically every time. It's also quite resilient, a decent amount of redundancy and some recursion, with high amounts of card draw, means it's hard to put me down for good (plus as I said once setup I'm very hard to actually remove in the first place) I also like that I'm not too reliant on my commander, which is why I went for Yorion over something like Brago; in fact, I have won quite a few games before casting Yorion once, since it's manly there to pull double duty as a big value turn and pseudo protection/multiplier for my blink cards. I've been eyeing some cards to swap out, mainly tech cards that I've found not useful, but unfortunately I don't get to play this deck as much as I'd like to (commander players LOATHE control so I try to mix it up) Unfortunately I can't post a link to the list it seems. If you want I can just comment the whole decklist here, I guess?
No fear, make them have the answer. If they do have the flicker/counterspell, the card is a brick anyway outside of niche situations where you're using your hand to discard for value. If they don't, it wasn't useless. If you wait because you're scared and are waiting for them to make a mistake, that gives the opponent time to draw the card that you were worried they had.
LOL three people in a pod, just politic with those three to force all the cards out of your hand. Out of 5 cards, the possibility of you having enough interaction and open mana to respond to three different forms of removal/interaction is minimal.
or just audacious go after the strong one when no one volunteers. What are they gonna do? block it when you obviously have some kind of combat jank in your face?
Since the deck was so cheap, and I had most of the cards already, I threw this one together and played a few games with some friends. Man, this deck is super fun and can easily knock out opponents. You always have something to do, and people love drawing those cards. Thanks Hans for proving your friends wrong and making a super awesome deck.
I'm an old player who's coming back to mtg and I don't want to spend a bunch of money of it just for the fun of playing some games. This deck seems really fun to play and even better cheap! Could u share the card list by any chance?
What's also kind of crazy to think about is how Xyris makes the worst buffs playable. Instant buffs are inherently balanced around the idea that they're one-time use. As a result, on a single turn basis, a buff generally provides more stats per mana spent than equipment or enchantments. On most creatures, a buff is an inherent card disadvantage unless using that buff lets you destroy one or more other creatures (eg., combat trick). In commander, this is further exacerbated by the fact that there are triple the amount of cards in play from an opponent. Xyris turns a 1-mana +3/+3 into "draw three cards". Feather already sees a ton of play turning buffs from -1 to 0 in card advantage. Xyris turns cheap buffs into straight up card draw advantage, while also making snake tokens. And the cherry on top? Apparently, your friend has managed to make his opponents *happy* that Xyris is smacking them.
The sheer audacity of tricking someone into protecting your commander who's halfway to killing them is amazing. Being happy about it is one thing, I'll take the cards for 3 damage two or three times happily. But spending cards to protect it, when I'm one hit from dying to commander damage (assuming they have 2 buff spells)? Insane.
It reminds me of my friend's Lathiel deck, which turns lifegain into 1/1 counters. An unplayable card that only gains you five life for one mana now gives a creature five counters for one mana. Some of the best commanders are the ones that make bad cards good.
@@LibertyMonk Sure, you're spending a card to protect it... but that's because you'll get to draw cards next time Xyris attacks you, so when you really think about it isn't that negate just a delayed two-mana draw-five? (NOTE: Hand size doesn't matter if you lose to commander damage.)
You start out by not buffing it. 3 damage doesn't worry anyone, and 3 cards? Wow, you might be their best friend! And all you're doing really is making a finite number of 1/1s, and drawing some cards to do that more. Later on, you discover that snakes are actually not anyone's friend.
Woah, wild to see the best creepypasta content creator in a mtg comment section. I agree with you, this commander is so cool. I played him with a bunch of wheel effects so I would make maximum snake bois.
There's something poetic about how after convincing a friend that you're actually helping them by smashing their face in with your commander to draw a bunch of cards... that the table then fills up with snakes.
You absolute gigachad even provided the deck list. Never would've thought about buff spells in a Xyris deck, but in retrospect, it makes a lot of sense.
Fascinating. I really ought to learn this stuff more intensely in order to incorporate these lessons into my own playing, but it's a lot to wrap my head around
The core tenets are: 1: Don't use power unless you're willing to be "the threat" or "the archenemy". 2: Silver linings (without going all the way to group hug) are a major political tool in FFA formats. 3: Make the deck predictable, so people don't remember that one time you got lucky. Performing the same way every time lulls them into false security. 4: Seriously, check your curve, your mana base, and card selection. These boring things are the easiest way to make a deck stronger without anyone noticing.
I really, really appreciate this video. I have a group slug deck with a 100% win rate for many of the same reasons this Xyris deck is successful. By and large, its primary mechanic is managing player perceptions about how threatening it is, and I purposefully have avoided cards that are too 'agro' and would bring unwanted attention to how good the deck can be. As is, it almost never comes across as unfair, which makes it rare for people to target it out of spite. I'm not even sure if the people in my playgroup realize it has a 100% win rate. It flies so far below the radar most don't give it any deference, save for one person. One person in my playgroup is completely aware of how dangerous the deck is, and has tried to get me to upgrade it on occasion with the hope that a couple new tricks will make everyone else realize how threatening it is. Even with this awareness, though, he still falls victim to the same traps of 'in the moment' decision making that allows it to remain effective. The best part about having one person realize it is when they try to explain all these concepts to others in the playgroup they sound like a lunatic shilling conspiracy theories. Super easy to deflect and counter by saying he's trying to distract from his own board. Thanks again for making this video.
I love the Ezuri-Kyler scale. It perfectly explains what I enjoy about my 5C dungeon deck: it's slow, but the value is ongoing. The featured deck is also a perfect example of an important Commander principle: the best ways to win are 1) make a deck so good that 3 opponents trying their best can't possibly beat you (i.e., lie about power level) or 2) incrementally build value so that you're still ahead when the dust clears. Great stuff.
Our playgroup has a very similar dynamic with Gor Muldrak, piloted by my friend. This deck probably wins 60-70% of its games because none of its abilities are particularly spicy or noteworthy and it hands out free 4/3 blocking/attacking fodder. Why worry about the player whose creatures can change the creature type of another creature, when someone else has buffed merfolk tokens everywhere. The game usually ends up at a point where they have sailed through to the final two players before everyone realises they were probably set to win for the last 2 or 3 turns.
Ok, your breakdown at 2:30 just broke my mind. I just got back into Magic after not playing for like 20 years so Commander is new and deck building has changed significantly. The fact that it's a *100* card deck means that your hand is almost 10% of the deck which means it should be roughly composed of those percentages you have shown. This perspective on deck building just clicked in my mind and has helped a TON. Now to figure out how to find the cards I want to do what I want. "Back in the day" you just memorized what every single card did and went from there. There's too many now to catch up in a reasonable amount of time me thinks.
I love Xyris, they are my baby. I have a deck more built around the snake tokens, and when I heard the "Does anyone want to draw some cards" line I laughed, cause I say that all the time
I even spice it up mine with a bit of all-player ramp and tutors, as there are several win cons in the deck that just suddenly throw out wins after a Wheel effect (Impact Tremors, Purphuros, Devlish Valet) so I tell the group "Ok, I'm going to give you all the card draw and ramp your deck needs, if you can't beat me by the time I assemble a handful of pieces then idk it's kind of your fault."
I made a similar deck with Commader John Benton from Dr Who who has essentially the same mechanic, except it's selesnia, the commander is only 3 mana, and he has haste (!!) and trample (!!!!). The deck is almost entirely buff spells (usually also with protection of some kind), fight spells, and cards that let you dump more lands on the field as you quickly end up having massive fistfulls of cards. People will let you hit them all the time, as you can political to people and say "I'm gonna hit you for 7 so we each get 7, sounds good?" and they just...let you do it. People actively try to keep you alive because they want to draw. ...then you have the spell that when you hit a player you hit every other player, and you have 30 pump spells in hand and 20 lands on the field. They try to kill Benton but you protect him, they try again and you just protect him AGAIN. If they did manage to kill him before you have already ramped out of control and the madlad has HASTE so you get instant value the second he drops. And next thing I knew I hit a player for over 200 damage, which killed the whole board before my draw 200 would resolve and mill me out. It's only downside is it's one trick, so if people are smart they'll kill the commander on sight. But they won't, because they want cards. I've played this deck several times, often with the same group, and they still let you hit them early because they want that draw. It's just too tempting. Fun as hell deck, dirt cheap (under $50), and allows for fun politicing while still having a real chance to win the game against more expensive decks.
The precon xyris comes in is that expensive because of deflecting swat that’s the whole price of the deck happens to be a really great card in the xyris deck so if you wanna play both cards it might be worth investing but not if your building the deck on a budget
I built this deck and now it's my go to deck. It's so stupidly fun. I've upgraded it a bit, but specifically trying to maintain the "teehee oopsie" win factor. Thank you Snail and Hans!
I too have a Xyris deck, but I barely use the commander to draw cards. I call my deck the fun police because it helps struggling players and tries to keep degenerate decks in check with lots of counterspells and removal. I usually just help everyone draw cards and do their thing without being *too* threatening, then cast an overrun with 20-30 snakes and clear the table. My opponents get max 1 round to go from "this dude is helping me do my thing and stopping the Krenko player from killing me" to "hey, he has a lot of snakes, that's a problem" This is an interesting alternative take and I might see how it works in my pod, which is maybe a bit higher power than the deck you outlined.
That also sounds like a solid way to go with Xyris. Hans' version is definitely not wildly strong in the interaction department before turn 5-6, so it probably doesn't work so good if you're trying to play the "no, stop, don't do that" role with some faster decks.
Buff spells were really important in Standard for a while. Heroic was a playable deck in 2014, and cards like Defiant Strike were incredibly important to winning with the deck. Hell, that entire deck I took out of the bulk bin and won both standard tournaments and took games mercilessly in modern.
Fascinating stuff, and just what the doctor ordered, for me. I just scared my table shitless with a basic/cheap animar deck last weekend, and I was kind of discouraged when I realized I just built a really strong deck on accident. This week I've been looking for a way to build a pretty mid-deck next and this really strikes me as a winner in that category. I really appreciate how fleshed out your information is here. 😊
My recommendation with strong cmdrs is put a limitation in place that hinders them. Jodah the unified is my deck but all the legends in the deck must either. Create tokens based on power or are planeswalkers
Not related to the content of the video, but xyris has been my favorite commander for a while. There are so many different ways to take the deck that span the entire power range without sacrificing fun at any of the levels. My current version is a mill deck that relies on psychic corrosion/altar of the brood and something like prosperity.
Decks that make for a more fun and interesting game across the table are quickly becoming my favorite category of deck. I'm currently building Kros, Defense Contractor. He'd be a great subject for a video!
I have bought and played this exact decklist in my lower powered pod (one of our players has a precon and a precon with 50$ worth of upgrades as his only decks). It's my favorite deck ro play and one of the top decks in the pod. Great stuff
4:17 This in yugioh we call the Honest effect! There is a monster card called Honest you can discard whenever a monster you own with the Light attribute is fighting, and it lets your monster gain as much attack power as the monster it is fighting, effectively turning even the most horrendously outmached fight into a winning one. As players grew wiser, a saying crystalized: "Always assume your opponent has an Honest in their hand" I wanted to mention it because that fear of interacting with the buff decks monsters really reminded me of this interaction in yugioh
@@Sillimant_ Honest isn't getting negated in the damage step by most cards. Especially as modern Yugioh has been slowly shying away from activation negation. But you do probably pop the card before Battle, or MP2.
@@Sillimant_It's still very relevant for Edison format, easily the second most popular way to play the game. Honest has been good for a solid 5-10 years of YGO history, and it's relevant in tonnes of other formats as well.
I love your channel. I’ve been off and on magic for quite some time but now I’m sticking with it for good. I like how you approach topics for new players and veterans. Great content. Hope to see this channel have 100k subscribers
this is (I think) the only video of yours that I've rewatched multiple times. The way that you talk about the psychology around the deck really interests me and it gets me thinking about my own weird deck and how it works. I have a hydra kindred deck with Vorinclex Monstrous Raider as the commander. I don't really know why but it wins most of its games despite being really unbalanced and I think it's similar to the Xyris deck. My playgroup knows that it's a threat, but they still think of it as the threat it was a turn or two ago. A lot of my cards are seemingly innocuous "infrastructure" that doesn't really do anything until I pay 2 green and suddently have a 16/16 hydra on the board. I want to make a video like this one about it and dig into how it works. Anyway, good video and it gets me thinking. 10/10
This deck reminds me of a decklist I made around Kharn, the Betrayer, from the 40k Universes Beyond release. Kharn's entire gimmick is that he MUST attack and block at every opportunity, and if he would be dealt damage, he just doesn't take that damage, but instead you hand him off to another player. When you lose control of Kharn, you draw three cards! He's entirely built around a variety of enchantments and equipment that do things when the equipped/enchanted creature deals damage, but specifically AVOIDS cards that GIVE Kharn that ability. Things like Captain's Claws, for example. This means that no matter who controls Kharn, you always get some value out of it. But also, people don't necessarily want to kill it off, because the value it gains is usually fairly minor, and in exchange people are tossing Kharn around the table and drawing a bunch of cards. It's a fun time! Lists like this really feel like what the Commander format was made for, just some weird jank that everyone can have fun with.
This was very well thought out! It is very smart to have the deck be low budget and unassuming like you said, not having the tower land etc. Thats so cool! My first instinct is to try to add power and make it do more better. But the advantage of just being a guy with some lands and a full hand very clearly leads to more won games. I'm so surprised and loved this. (small story) in a budget tournament I went to with some friends, one friend built Xyris deck (not this way but) and to this day remains the only budget deck thats been kept together after the tournament due to how fun and "friendly" it is to play.
It's very nice to see a MTG analysis video that looks at the human element of the game and not exclusively the mechanistic side. My mates and I really notice this human side really makes a difference. Those who keep game finishers in their hands often get away with murder!
I’ve build a Xyris Deck, and I can tell you for a certainty it’s one of the funniest decks I have ever played. I go for normal wheels and such, but I never thought of Buff Spells as an option 🤔
Yes! Xyris is my favourite deck. I play it more group huggy. Enchantments that allow everyone to draw an extra card each turn, get everything set up so people draw a bunch of extra cards each turn and then play out Xyris, creating 2-3 snakes per opponent's turn, and having a hand of protection for Xyris too.
First time on your channel. Great video, great analysis on a not so common deck. Keep it up. Subbed. Ps.: i will probably build the deck myself to try it. I would be curious what the would look like with a little more budget thrown in to it.
For anyone interested, doing Keskit, the Flesh Sculptor with Ich-Tekik, Salvage Splicer or doing Prava of the Steel Legion with Nadier, Agent of the Duskenel make for really powerful budget builds for anyone interested in something "powerful" and "budget" but not touching blue.
BTW i felt convinced by you to reproduce the deck, so I had to ultimately pay, more than what he likely spent (about 70 total but for someone who only just got back into after decades I consider it worth it)but i felt happy to go for this one as my first one i bought pieces for building. I just hope it works in my own casual commander setting :P Any tips would help but im getting most from this video alone :)
The only reason it's able to get away with attacking repeatedly is because it plays with casual players desires to draw cards especially to dig out of bad hands which casual players tend to end up getting semi regularly
I play cEDH, where attacking with a 5 mana commander which draws cards is totally normal. Removal is finite, it needs to be pointed at things which *directly* win the game.
I built a Xyris deck, but I advertise mine as ‘Temur Nekusar’ it’s far more wheel heavy with a bunch of go wide pay offs such as Shared Animosity, Cryptolith Rite, or Impact Tremors. This take on the deck is also super cool, I enjoy seeing buff spells get used, I’ve got tons rolling around in my bulk boxes.
I pulled this off with a Marchesa deck many years ago. It was about $30-$40 bucks and just ran a lot of steal and sac outlets. People seemed to focus on the price of my deck and deem it not a threat, or see some of my low-end creatures and not worry about me.
Excellent video. I bought and upgraded the "Silverquill Statement" precon from Strixhaven, and it honestly plays similarly. Drawing your opponents cards is massively advantageous in Commander, and I can win despite being completely up-front with my win-con: "I'm going to use Breena triggers to draw cards and build an army of fliers to beat you all down. Make use of the Breena triggers yourself if you'd like; my game plan is the same either way."
I've been tinkering with my own version of this deck list for a while, and have managed to overcome *some* of the weaknesses illustrated. Board wipes can't generally be evaded by most protection spells, except when they can. Cards that Blink or Phase out your commander/board, which are prevalent enough on the decks low budget, in addition to just having counter spells, often provides sufficient coverage.
I did it. I made Xyris, and I fell in love. No, I didn't use the deck list from this video. I went scavenging through my bulk. It's a surprisingly high number of these cards in red/green bulk. I liked it from day 1, and now it's almost my strongest deck. So much so, that I built another version, that fits in a 20€ budget, with no cards over 1€. Somehow it's even more fun, when you occasionally have to discard 17. I watched this video 6 months ago, and found my favorite commander. Thanks Alex!
This reminds me of the all-artifacts-and-burn deck I made for my playgroup back in college. It would give everyone at the table HEAPS of drawcards every turn and generally help specific players if they needed it... while building an odd but ultimately unassuming mana base. That would suddenly go infinite in any one of 5 ways and comet storm the table for infinite damage.
Great video🎉 Your summary reminded me of the nelly precon, wich I enjoy playing a lot. Some of your points might come in handy in its future development
I made this deck and had a ton of fun with it. After a few months, I reworked it to make it my own with the inclusion of wheel like effects and burn pieces like molten gatekeeper, impact tremors, and god of the forge. This has led to a two pronged strategy: strategy 1, commander damage with buffs, which you can use to draw into your more important value pieces. Strategy 2, usually coming on the heels of strategy 1, while Xyris is sitting on board, acting as free card draw for everyone at the table, drop down a burn piece and wheel, causing everyone to draw 7+ cards, creating 21+ creatures, and dealing that much damage to everyone around you. My biggest mistake, which I continue to make, is pulling this stunt before I can afford to finish the game with it. When everyone else is sitting at 10-13 health while you're at a solid 30, you go from being the group-huggy card dealer to archnemesis number 1 real fast.
Using lots of combat tricks makes your opponent second guess any attacks you make. "You're swinging your 1/1 at me when you see I've got a 5/5 on the board? You've got 2 green open... I'll eat it...."
Built this deck with a few upgrades and it does not disappoint. 3/3 games won “mind you one of the players was playing his sheldrod deck”. I’m used to being arch enemy so it’s weird players are teaming up with me so adamantly to get cards. My friend played his kalia deck and would let me swing through just to get more cards. The snakes are super key to the plan I’m like yeah I have 25 snakes and no one really bats an eye.
I've had a similar experience with my Sheoldred, the Apocalypse Commander deck. I don't run heaps of wheels like some decks for her do, but I have the usual stuff like Howling Mine. One game I had out Sheoldred and the Court of Ambition. I didn't keep the Monarch status, but that was ok. Between regular draws and the Court's discard or lose 3 life, everyone lost life gradually. Eventually someone pointed out that they were all on low-teens in life and that I was still in high 30's. Sometimes a more subtle approach works really well.
For anyone wanting to build this deck, you might want to check out sergeant John Benton first. He has the same passive of "you and your opponent draw cards equal to damage this creature dealt". He is a selesnya commander instead of temur and he doesn't have flying but he has trample and haste. Also he doesn't create tokens when opponents draw but he makes up for it by costing 3 instead of 5 mana. So you can go for the same gameplan but faster. With turn one ramp, you can get him out turn 2 and start drawing. Also white has a lot of interesting multi use spells that both buff amd protect a creature. Also you can use some board wipes like promise loyalty if an opponent build to much of a board state with the cards you gave them.
this is the type of deck i would love to see tuned up and piloted at a cedh table. going all in on the commander like that is super super risky and currently probably a bit too vulnerable to be good but there’s a vision
Oh, tell me he runs Magnus the Red. So when he gets 3+ snakes all of his instant and sorceries are free. Edit: Looking at the decklist, I saw so many more creatures than expected. I thought it would only be creatures that make him untargetable by opponents, make stuff cheaper or some recursion like the reshuffle Gy into deck and Gaea's Blessing. If I build this, I would have to use Elvish Fury and Tangarth's Rage (not sure if right card) since they are buyback pump spells. Go big or go home, right? Yes, most of my decks are voltron. Lol I might even put an Ivory Tower in so I can laugh as people try to scale my Tower with all the snakes in the way. Maybe only have 5 creatures in the deck. Like you pointed out. Creatures are weak and get removed too easily.
I run a Xyris deck too! It's also my playgroups "strongest deck" with an almost complete cedh Najeela at the table as well. The deck has become a super villain at the table and is usually the focus if ever played. When we went to the con it did great at every competitive table. He's very slept on. My deck is a wheel deck though.
This is pretty funny. My friend group did a budget challenge with a random commander. My friend Hana got Xyris. She'd never heard of the commander, but went away and made her deck... and Christ, the deck she made. Basically every Howling Mine synonym to make everyone draw anything from 3 to 15 cards a turn, meanwhile accumulating snakes and using Springleaf Drum effects to turn those snakes into any spell she wants. As the local chaos player, EVERYONE at my LGS is fearful of the power of Xyris now. Nobody underestimates the snake spewer.
On the no hand size thing being a sign of how the deck works, and it being a bit of a problem for the deck, I think just having Thought Vessel is a good idea. I don't know about you guys, but if I see a Thought Vessel, I never assume it's to be a part of the plan. I always think of it as just a colorless mana that is "Just in case I get some big draw." I run one in a couple decks just because I can potentially have like 10 cards, but it's never the goal to have that. The only time I worry about hand size is if Reliquary Tower comes out, since lands are a bit harder to get rid of, so I assume they really want it around. I figure even a few turns of slightly larger hands to play with is worth having it on your board until you draw 20 cards and the others realize the problem. Since discarding to 7 is already kind of accounted for it's not a big deal to lose Thought Vessel, and by then you are hopefully in a good enough spot that you don't need those cards anyways. Maybe that's just me though.
Xyris is one of my favorite commanders, personally I run him as a wheel deck, it's really funny printing out dozens of snakes with a single wheel spell with stuff like doubling season on the board
Note to self: if I'm ever losing to a deck in my playgroup make a video essay on why that deck is the threat.
If a friend of mine did a video essay on a deck I made I would consider it the best compliment I ever got, win rate be damned
I mean, if it’s an interesting social topic, yeah?
my play group hates my angel deck, they sadly never made an essay about it
Even if just for learning how to play better against your friends new deck, not a bad idea!
I think people underestimate the advantages of playing the game from a different angle, or with an intentional restriction. There's an elegance to simplicity.
"Who wants to draw cards? Oh you do? Okay, draw 21"
You'll only ever be able to do that once. Or once per play group. Once people learn you could just kill them easily with commander damage when they thought you where trying to help them out they're probably not going to take the bait again.
@@toolittletoolate You could make a deal with them. As in: "I will not butt it this turn, if you let it through" or even "I promise not to kill you this turn" and then dealing only 20 commander damage (:
i mean ultimately they are just playing a xyris deck as intended. the ability is literally printed on the card.
@@toolittletoolate I do have a variant of this deck (Xyris with Combat Buffs, not a Xyris wheel deck) since like 2021 or smth, and it works and has been since then. People do want to have cards, and people are willing to risk some damage for cards
@@edhdeckbuilding All abilities are printed on cards.
In the world of Magic, having someone build a spite deck after a disagreement you've had with them is the highest compliment one can receive.
Also, Jack seems pretty cool
lol, my friend built the reaper king just for me after i strip-locked him XD i love him
@@fairygoodmuller8065 ooooh, yeah the Reaper King is a spicy card. I take it he went the changeling tribal route due to there not being a ton of scarecrow support?
ehhhhhhh. maybe if you're friends with the player. we have a douchebag guy who does spite decks. i'm his current target and it's nothing but annoying
Jack IS awesome even though Hans is getting all the credit here 😊
One of my friends tells me I play mtg wrong. For context, I played sparingly in my youth but was never quite as hooked on the game as other tcgs like yugioh and stuff until the unfinity set came out and I loved the space carnival esthetic as well as the art style of the alt cards. So I make commander decks using the eternal legal commanders from that set and try my damndest to break them or make them good, my friend hates it but I'm gonna keep going till I have one for every eternal legal legendary in the set.
Like toy maker/ liquid metal combos using Captian Rex Nebula as the medium.
The "infinite resources" perception is so fun to leverage
I have a Yorion blink deck, and just leaving 3 mana open with 5 cards in hand sends opponents into a tailspin
"This removal is useless, he has a flicker or a counterspell" is a phrase I've heard too many times to count
Ooh Yorion sounds fun. Do you have a deck list I could view?
@@Aigis31 I had written a whole reply but it seems like it got deleted because it had a link to the decklist Sadge
It is my first deck ever I've built, I've tinkered it a lot, it's my baby at this point.
I don't have a lot of the expensive cards that I'd ultimately like to put in (talking things like fetches or Solitude) because I'd like to build it in paper at some point.
I basically play it as a heavy control deck, I run a TON of card draw and interaction/removal; the best way I've found to play is sort of hang back at the start and then take down the first person to pop off, taking advantage of the time you're gonna get left alone since you're helping taking down the threat. By the time you have a set board with Yorion in play it's very hard to interact with you in a successful way.
The idea is that single target flickers on Yorion turn into boardwide blinks, which is doubly useful as both a lot of value and protection from interaction, including boardwipes (because stuff comes back on endstep, the boardwipe will miss everything but yorion himself), eventually even your own wipes.
Yorion can blink any nonland permanent, particularly your mana rocks, which allows you to tap out but still retain mana for following turns.
I generally win through sheer attrition (exhausting their resource through reusing etb removals) and the implied eventual Yorion beatdown, up to looping Agent of Treachery to chain steal their best permanents, but I do have 2 infinites that I get to use reasonably often.
Peregrine drake+Archaeomancer+Ghostly Flicker+any ETB draw
Preston the Vanisher+Felidar Guardian+Any land+any ETB draw+ a way to flicker the Guardian once to start the loop
These get me both infinite mana and infinite draws, with the payoff being Blue sun's Zenith (to deck everyone else)
I like them because all the cards are individually quite useful (the worst is Zenith, which can still be quite useful if I get a bit stranded to refill)
The deck is built for consistency and resiliency, it may not be extremely powerful but I will get to meaningfully be part of the game basically every time. It's also quite resilient, a decent amount of redundancy and some recursion, with high amounts of card draw, means it's hard to put me down for good (plus as I said once setup I'm very hard to actually remove in the first place)
I also like that I'm not too reliant on my commander, which is why I went for Yorion over something like Brago; in fact, I have won quite a few games before casting Yorion once, since it's manly there to pull double duty as a big value turn and pseudo protection/multiplier for my blink cards.
I've been eyeing some cards to swap out, mainly tech cards that I've found not useful, but unfortunately I don't get to play this deck as much as I'd like to (commander players LOATHE control so I try to mix it up)
Unfortunately I can't post a link to the list it seems. If you want I can just comment the whole decklist here, I guess?
@@Aigis31 Maybe you can find it like this, on deckstats the code is 236714/3149471
No fear, make them have the answer. If they do have the flicker/counterspell, the card is a brick anyway outside of niche situations where you're using your hand to discard for value. If they don't, it wasn't useless. If you wait because you're scared and are waiting for them to make a mistake, that gives the opponent time to draw the card that you were worried they had.
LOL three people in a pod, just politic with those three to force all the cards out of your hand. Out of 5 cards, the possibility of you having enough interaction and open mana to respond to three different forms of removal/interaction is minimal.
"Who wants some cards?"
menacingly stares at the weakest player at the table.
"YOU want some cards."
me \(^_^)/
or just audacious go after the strong one when no one volunteers. What are they gonna do? block it when you obviously have some kind of combat jank in your face?
@@HellecticMojoalways go for the strong ones
Call an ambulance, call an ambulance
*Uses Twenty-toed toad*
But not for me.
Since the deck was so cheap, and I had most of the cards already, I threw this one together and played a few games with some friends. Man, this deck is super fun and can easily knock out opponents. You always have something to do, and people love drawing those cards. Thanks Hans for proving your friends wrong and making a super awesome deck.
Do u recommend me to build it im 13 , love magic and wanna make my own deck as I have been surviving of precons for way too long 😂
I'm an old player who's coming back to mtg and I don't want to spend a bunch of money of it just for the fun of playing some games.
This deck seems really fun to play and even better cheap!
Could u share the card list by any chance?
@@glaucoruzzetti9630 its in the description of the video
@@partykrew666 yeah thanks man, I noticed this morning, I'm honestly feeling so stupid 😅
@@humasabih5733 oh for sure! It’s a lot of fun to play and is easy on the wallet. Give it a go. It’ll be a fast favorite!
What's also kind of crazy to think about is how Xyris makes the worst buffs playable.
Instant buffs are inherently balanced around the idea that they're one-time use. As a result, on a single turn basis, a buff generally provides more stats per mana spent than equipment or enchantments. On most creatures, a buff is an inherent card disadvantage unless using that buff lets you destroy one or more other creatures (eg., combat trick). In commander, this is further exacerbated by the fact that there are triple the amount of cards in play from an opponent.
Xyris turns a 1-mana +3/+3 into "draw three cards". Feather already sees a ton of play turning buffs from -1 to 0 in card advantage. Xyris turns cheap buffs into straight up card draw advantage, while also making snake tokens.
And the cherry on top? Apparently, your friend has managed to make his opponents *happy* that Xyris is smacking them.
The sheer audacity of tricking someone into protecting your commander who's halfway to killing them is amazing. Being happy about it is one thing, I'll take the cards for 3 damage two or three times happily. But spending cards to protect it, when I'm one hit from dying to commander damage (assuming they have 2 buff spells)? Insane.
"Instant buffs are inherently balanced around the idea that they're one-time use." *laughs in Feather, The Redeemed*
It reminds me of my friend's Lathiel deck, which turns lifegain into 1/1 counters. An unplayable card that only gains you five life for one mana now gives a creature five counters for one mana. Some of the best commanders are the ones that make bad cards good.
@@LibertyMonk Sure, you're spending a card to protect it... but that's because you'll get to draw cards next time Xyris attacks you, so when you really think about it isn't that negate just a delayed two-mana draw-five?
(NOTE: Hand size doesn't matter if you lose to commander damage.)
You start out by not buffing it. 3 damage doesn't worry anyone, and 3 cards? Wow, you might be their best friend! And all you're doing really is making a finite number of 1/1s, and drawing some cards to do that more.
Later on, you discover that snakes are actually not anyone's friend.
“He went for Temur colors…”
And that’s how we knew it could only be a product on utmost evil. Nothing good comes of giving the Simic red mana.
Nothing good comes of giving the Gruul Clans blue mana.
lol!
Nothing good comes of giving the Izzet green mana.
Because ferocious!!1
or giving the gruul blue mana
I adore when decks use underrated mechanics
And the most important mechanic of all: social interaction with the other players.
Woah, wild to see the best creepypasta content creator in a mtg comment section. I agree with you, this commander is so cool. I played him with a bunch of wheel effects so I would make maximum snake bois.
It's why I love my scry landfall deck. Scry cards are cheap as hell and makes for an incredibly consistent deck
Bro didn’t you groom minors ☠️
Your videos got me through covid mate, cheers
There's something poetic about how after convincing a friend that you're actually helping them by smashing their face in with your commander to draw a bunch of cards... that the table then fills up with snakes.
You absolute gigachad even provided the deck list. Never would've thought about buff spells in a Xyris deck, but in retrospect, it makes a lot of sense.
Could you post the deck list? I couldn’t find a link.
@@edwardcomerford2452discription
Fascinating. I really ought to learn this stuff more intensely in order to incorporate these lessons into my own playing, but it's a lot to wrap my head around
The core tenets are:
1: Don't use power unless you're willing to be "the threat" or "the archenemy".
2: Silver linings (without going all the way to group hug) are a major political tool in FFA formats.
3: Make the deck predictable, so people don't remember that one time you got lucky. Performing the same way every time lulls them into false security.
4: Seriously, check your curve, your mana base, and card selection. These boring things are the easiest way to make a deck stronger without anyone noticing.
I really, really appreciate this video.
I have a group slug deck with a 100% win rate for many of the same reasons this Xyris deck is successful. By and large, its primary mechanic is managing player perceptions about how threatening it is, and I purposefully have avoided cards that are too 'agro' and would bring unwanted attention to how good the deck can be. As is, it almost never comes across as unfair, which makes it rare for people to target it out of spite.
I'm not even sure if the people in my playgroup realize it has a 100% win rate. It flies so far below the radar most don't give it any deference, save for one person. One person in my playgroup is completely aware of how dangerous the deck is, and has tried to get me to upgrade it on occasion with the hope that a couple new tricks will make everyone else realize how threatening it is. Even with this awareness, though, he still falls victim to the same traps of 'in the moment' decision making that allows it to remain effective.
The best part about having one person realize it is when they try to explain all these concepts to others in the playgroup they sound like a lunatic shilling conspiracy theories. Super easy to deflect and counter by saying he's trying to distract from his own board.
Thanks again for making this video.
I want to see your list!
Agreed, I want to see that deck list!
Also very curious about this list, I love group thug and highly political decks.
What’s the deck list??
What is the deck list?
I love the Ezuri-Kyler scale. It perfectly explains what I enjoy about my 5C dungeon deck: it's slow, but the value is ongoing.
The featured deck is also a perfect example of an important Commander principle: the best ways to win are 1) make a deck so good that 3 opponents trying their best can't possibly beat you (i.e., lie about power level) or 2) incrementally build value so that you're still ahead when the dust clears. Great stuff.
The concept of "Velocity" is very helpful in describing HOW a deck plays. Thank you for conceptualizing this.
This video released just before the premiere of my Xyris group hug deck. I Hope no on catches on to my snake building empire.
Welcome to the dark side
nice, it was probably my next deck as well! would you mind sharing yours? :)
Our playgroup has a very similar dynamic with Gor Muldrak, piloted by my friend. This deck probably wins 60-70% of its games because none of its abilities are particularly spicy or noteworthy and it hands out free 4/3 blocking/attacking fodder. Why worry about the player whose creatures can change the creature type of another creature, when someone else has buffed merfolk tokens everywhere. The game usually ends up at a point where they have sailed through to the final two players before everyone realises they were probably set to win for the last 2 or 3 turns.
dude, I needed to google that name, wtf, this is such cool card, and your frined is a true mvp!
"Can i attack with a giant dinosaur? Nope, there is a danger noodle!"
I've always wanted to build this deck.
Seeing how cheap it could be made makes me a lot more enthusiastic about doing that
Ok, your breakdown at 2:30 just broke my mind. I just got back into Magic after not playing for like 20 years so Commander is new and deck building has changed significantly. The fact that it's a *100* card deck means that your hand is almost 10% of the deck which means it should be roughly composed of those percentages you have shown. This perspective on deck building just clicked in my mind and has helped a TON. Now to figure out how to find the cards I want to do what I want. "Back in the day" you just memorized what every single card did and went from there. There's too many now to catch up in a reasonable amount of time me thinks.
7 is almost 10% of 99? It's barely 7%.
I love Xyris, they are my baby. I have a deck more built around the snake tokens, and when I heard the "Does anyone want to draw some cards" line I laughed, cause I say that all the time
I play Xyris, and I’m beginning to think it’s a universal phrase for us
Indeed. Forced Fruition is also a beast in there
Helm of the host plus mystic reflection. Swing wkth xyris
I even spice it up mine with a bit of all-player ramp and tutors, as there are several win cons in the deck that just suddenly throw out wins after a Wheel effect (Impact Tremors, Purphuros, Devlish Valet) so I tell the group "Ok, I'm going to give you all the card draw and ramp your deck needs, if you can't beat me by the time I assemble a handful of pieces then idk it's kind of your fault."
Xyris players assemble! I run mine with a strong politics theme :D
I made a similar deck with Commader John Benton from Dr Who who has essentially the same mechanic, except it's selesnia, the commander is only 3 mana, and he has haste (!!) and trample (!!!!).
The deck is almost entirely buff spells (usually also with protection of some kind), fight spells, and cards that let you dump more lands on the field as you quickly end up having massive fistfulls of cards.
People will let you hit them all the time, as you can political to people and say "I'm gonna hit you for 7 so we each get 7, sounds good?" and they just...let you do it. People actively try to keep you alive because they want to draw.
...then you have the spell that when you hit a player you hit every other player, and you have 30 pump spells in hand and 20 lands on the field. They try to kill Benton but you protect him, they try again and you just protect him AGAIN. If they did manage to kill him before you have already ramped out of control and the madlad has HASTE so you get instant value the second he drops. And next thing I knew I hit a player for over 200 damage, which killed the whole board before my draw 200 would resolve and mill me out.
It's only downside is it's one trick, so if people are smart they'll kill the commander on sight. But they won't, because they want cards. I've played this deck several times, often with the same group, and they still let you hit them early because they want that draw. It's just too tempting.
Fun as hell deck, dirt cheap (under $50), and allows for fun politicing while still having a real chance to win the game against more expensive decks.
Deck list please
Plz do more in depth deck analysis videos like this. It was I really interesting watch
Deck is now like $50-60, lol
fuuuuuhhhhhh.....
@@NSixtyFour just buy singles. its still 30 dollars
proxy it.
I don't know where do you check for prices but this deck it's still supercheap
The precon xyris comes in is that expensive because of deflecting swat that’s the whole price of the deck happens to be a really great card in the xyris deck so if you wanna play both cards it might be worth investing but not if your building the deck on a budget
fantastic! i wish more people would talk about the dynamics of a deck rather then the cards in it.
I built this deck and now it's my go to deck. It's so stupidly fun. I've upgraded it a bit, but specifically trying to maintain the "teehee oopsie" win factor.
Thank you Snail and Hans!
I too have a Xyris deck, but I barely use the commander to draw cards. I call my deck the fun police because it helps struggling players and tries to keep degenerate decks in check with lots of counterspells and removal. I usually just help everyone draw cards and do their thing without being *too* threatening, then cast an overrun with 20-30 snakes and clear the table. My opponents get max 1 round to go from "this dude is helping me do my thing and stopping the Krenko player from killing me" to "hey, he has a lot of snakes, that's a problem"
This is an interesting alternative take and I might see how it works in my pod, which is maybe a bit higher power than the deck you outlined.
That also sounds like a solid way to go with Xyris. Hans' version is definitely not wildly strong in the interaction department before turn 5-6, so it probably doesn't work so good if you're trying to play the "no, stop, don't do that" role with some faster decks.
Similar to how grismold can get. Giving free tokens with caveat of take care of them
Buff spells were really important in Standard for a while. Heroic was a playable deck in 2014, and cards like Defiant Strike were incredibly important to winning with the deck. Hell, that entire deck I took out of the bulk bin and won both standard tournaments and took games mercilessly in modern.
You can also play it in pioneer where it just got second place at the ProTour
@@ColossaldreadmawOP Niw, certainly. Pioneer didn't exist at the time, though.
@@ColossaldreadmawOP Slick-shot showoff + soul-scar, got second place? yea, magecraft/prowess has been popping off the last 4 years.
My best date was $20
Was it a mtg game?
You guys are going on dates? :o
Well $20 is $20
awww
Why date a 20$ bill though
Thanks for this video. This just inspired a possible strat change in a deck I'm building for a "special rules" tournament my playgroup does.
PLEASE MAKE MORE VIDEOS!! I love your takes and I love your voice.
I did not expect this video to be as good as it was. Great job, subscribed!
Fascinating stuff, and just what the doctor ordered, for me. I just scared my table shitless with a basic/cheap animar deck last weekend, and I was kind of discouraged when I realized I just built a really strong deck on accident.
This week I've been looking for a way to build a pretty mid-deck next and this really strikes me as a winner in that category.
I really appreciate how fleshed out your information is here. 😊
Do you have a decklist for the animar deck?
My recommendation with strong cmdrs is put a limitation in place that hinders them. Jodah the unified is my deck but all the legends in the deck must either. Create tokens based on power or are planeswalkers
Not related to the content of the video, but xyris has been my favorite commander for a while. There are so many different ways to take the deck that span the entire power range without sacrificing fun at any of the levels. My current version is a mill deck that relies on psychic corrosion/altar of the brood and something like prosperity.
This is how it felt winning with my unsleeved volo bulk deck, nobody expects the double paladin of predation toxic win.
oh god, i love my volo deck. how many copys of blightsteel collossus do i want? yes, all of them.
People KNOW Volo needs to be removed, but he's not a problem; until he is. XD
I am making 10 cheap decks in the coming months to help level up my pod's diversity, and you just convinced me this should one of them. Looks fun!
This channel is rapidly becoming my favorite
Decks that make for a more fun and interesting game across the table are quickly becoming my favorite category of deck. I'm currently building Kros, Defense Contractor. He'd be a great subject for a video!
The one I run is a go wide version of the deck with the tokens called "snakes on a plain"
Lol I named mine Neville Flynn's Worst Nightmare. Guess where he's from and who he's played by? 😂
Their argument could be heard across the parking lot.
I love that I have to pay more in shipping than the deck is worth...
I have bought and played this exact decklist in my lower powered pod (one of our players has a precon and a precon with 50$ worth of upgrades as his only decks). It's my favorite deck ro play and one of the top decks in the pod. Great stuff
4:17 This in yugioh we call the Honest effect!
There is a monster card called Honest you can discard whenever a monster you own with the Light attribute is fighting, and it lets your monster gain as much attack power as the monster it is fighting, effectively turning even the most horrendously outmached fight into a winning one.
As players grew wiser, a saying crystalized: "Always assume your opponent has an Honest in their hand"
I wanted to mention it because that fear of interacting with the buff decks monsters really reminded me of this interaction in yugioh
Things have changed now. You're either getting your shit popped or honest gets negated
@@Sillimant_ Honest isn't getting negated in the damage step by most cards. Especially as modern Yugioh has been slowly shying away from activation negation.
But you do probably pop the card before Battle, or MP2.
@@Sillimant_It's still very relevant for Edison format, easily the second most popular way to play the game. Honest has been good for a solid 5-10 years of YGO history, and it's relevant in tonnes of other formats as well.
I love your channel. I’ve been off and on magic for quite some time but now I’m sticking with it for good. I like how you approach topics for new players and veterans. Great content. Hope to see this channel have 100k subscribers
I like this deck. So its mine now. None of my friends have seen this video probably so im going to be a smart unique lil guy now
this is (I think) the only video of yours that I've rewatched multiple times. The way that you talk about the psychology around the deck really interests me and it gets me thinking about my own weird deck and how it works. I have a hydra kindred deck with Vorinclex Monstrous Raider as the commander. I don't really know why but it wins most of its games despite being really unbalanced and I think it's similar to the Xyris deck. My playgroup knows that it's a threat, but they still think of it as the threat it was a turn or two ago. A lot of my cards are seemingly innocuous "infrastructure" that doesn't really do anything until I pay 2 green and suddently have a 16/16 hydra on the board. I want to make a video like this one about it and dig into how it works.
Anyway, good video and it gets me thinking. 10/10
I'd be interested
wow. i absolutely love these kind of deep dive into a dech/archetype
This deck reminds me of a decklist I made around Kharn, the Betrayer, from the 40k Universes Beyond release. Kharn's entire gimmick is that he MUST attack and block at every opportunity, and if he would be dealt damage, he just doesn't take that damage, but instead you hand him off to another player. When you lose control of Kharn, you draw three cards! He's entirely built around a variety of enchantments and equipment that do things when the equipped/enchanted creature deals damage, but specifically AVOIDS cards that GIVE Kharn that ability. Things like Captain's Claws, for example. This means that no matter who controls Kharn, you always get some value out of it. But also, people don't necessarily want to kill it off, because the value it gains is usually fairly minor, and in exchange people are tossing Kharn around the table and drawing a bunch of cards.
It's a fun time! Lists like this really feel like what the Commander format was made for, just some weird jank that everyone can have fun with.
this deck WAS $20, now its $66.
This was very well thought out! It is very smart to have the deck be low budget and unassuming like you said, not having the tower land etc. Thats so cool! My first instinct is to try to add power and make it do more better. But the advantage of just being a guy with some lands and a full hand very clearly leads to more won games. I'm so surprised and loved this. (small story) in a budget tournament I went to with some friends, one friend built Xyris deck (not this way but) and to this day remains the only budget deck thats been kept together after the tournament due to how fun and "friendly" it is to play.
putting Zada in would be insane with the ability to make so many snakes
Omg, thank you
I have a Zada deck and that was exactly my thought upon seeing a beautiful array of fifteen tokens in that example
Thank you for making the only EDH content I enjoy anymore!
I do this with Simic. Ivy, gleeful spellthief is really good with buff spells. Maybe not the same effect as "snake good" but it does very well
It's very nice to see a MTG analysis video that looks at the human element of the game and not exclusively the mechanistic side. My mates and I really notice this human side really makes a difference. Those who keep game finishers in their hands often get away with murder!
I’ve build a Xyris Deck, and I can tell you for a certainty it’s one of the funniest decks I have ever played. I go for normal wheels and such, but I never thought of Buff Spells as an option 🤔
Purphoros go brr
Yes! Xyris is my favourite deck. I play it more group huggy. Enchantments that allow everyone to draw an extra card each turn, get everything set up so people draw a bunch of extra cards each turn and then play out Xyris, creating 2-3 snakes per opponent's turn, and having a hand of protection for Xyris too.
Man this deck idea is so cool to me. Also I love your videos, easily my favorite magic youtuber, keep up the great work!
I won my first Friday night magic with a budget selesnya aura deck… love seeing the budget boys win
First time on your channel. Great video, great analysis on a not so common deck. Keep it up. Subbed.
Ps.: i will probably build the deck myself to try it. I would be curious what the would look like with a little more budget thrown in to it.
This was well made and brilliant to listen to. The analysis is deep and accurate. I truly enjoyed this video
For anyone interested, doing Keskit, the Flesh Sculptor with Ich-Tekik, Salvage Splicer or doing Prava of the Steel Legion with Nadier, Agent of the Duskenel make for really powerful budget builds for anyone interested in something "powerful" and "budget" but not touching blue.
this is the best example of "its not the deck, its the pilot"
very fun deck! I have a Sergeant John Benton deck which is the same idea but in selesnya, it’s so fun to pilot
I am planning to make a Sergeant John deck as well, hoping to fly under the radar!
BTW i felt convinced by you to reproduce the deck, so I had to ultimately pay, more than what he likely spent (about 70 total but for someone who only just got back into after decades I consider it worth it)but i felt happy to go for this one as my first one i bought pieces for building. I just hope it works in my own casual commander setting :P Any tips would help but im getting most from this video alone :)
A dude is allowed to untap a 5 mana commander and allowed to repeatably attack.
"wHy Is ThIs DeCk WiNnInG?!"
The only reason it's able to get away with attacking repeatedly is because it plays with casual players desires to draw cards especially to dig out of bad hands which casual players tend to end up getting semi regularly
I play cEDH, where attacking with a 5 mana commander which draws cards is totally normal.
Removal is finite, it needs to be pointed at things which *directly* win the game.
@@Naren25because in cedh you win through playing thoracle, so commander damage doesn't matter
@@franslair2199 Wrong and wrong. 2/10, must try harder
@@Naren25 yeah except for the fact that it's correct.
Great demonstration of Game Theory strategy of winning as cooperating, being forgiving, etc.
Great video!
there is no Temur. Only Wet Gruul
(this video is a feather, the redeemed deck tech under a temur disguise) Great video! Love seeing good threat assessment.
This is one of the smartest videos I've seen on any topic
Very good video. Finally someone actually analyzing a deck - and it's even budget!
I actually love this video - It's an amazing deck (well done your Timmy friend) and you break it down in a very entertaining way
I built a Xyris deck, but I advertise mine as ‘Temur Nekusar’ it’s far more wheel heavy with a bunch of go wide pay offs such as Shared Animosity, Cryptolith Rite, or Impact Tremors.
This take on the deck is also super cool, I enjoy seeing buff spells get used, I’ve got tons rolling around in my bulk boxes.
I pulled this off with a Marchesa deck many years ago. It was about $30-$40 bucks and just ran a lot of steal and sac outlets. People seemed to focus on the price of my deck and deem it not a threat, or see some of my low-end creatures and not worry about me.
The discussion about the deck being unassuming is a big point. My most successful edh commander was one that was not a threat, until it won.
Excellent video. I bought and upgraded the "Silverquill Statement" precon from Strixhaven, and it honestly plays similarly. Drawing your opponents cards is massively advantageous in Commander, and I can win despite being completely up-front with my win-con: "I'm going to use Breena triggers to draw cards and build an army of fliers to beat you all down. Make use of the Breena triggers yourself if you'd like; my game plan is the same either way."
I've been tinkering with my own version of this deck list for a while, and have managed to overcome *some* of the weaknesses illustrated.
Board wipes can't generally be evaded by most protection spells, except when they can. Cards that Blink or Phase out your commander/board, which are prevalent enough on the decks low budget, in addition to just having counter spells, often provides sufficient coverage.
I did it. I made Xyris, and I fell in love. No, I didn't use the deck list from this video. I went scavenging through my bulk. It's a surprisingly high number of these cards in red/green bulk.
I liked it from day 1, and now it's almost my strongest deck. So much so, that I built another version, that fits in a 20€ budget, with no cards over 1€. Somehow it's even more fun, when you occasionally have to discard 17.
I watched this video 6 months ago, and found my favorite commander. Thanks Alex!
This reminds me of the all-artifacts-and-burn deck I made for my playgroup back in college. It would give everyone at the table HEAPS of drawcards every turn and generally help specific players if they needed it... while building an odd but ultimately unassuming mana base. That would suddenly go infinite in any one of 5 ways and comet storm the table for infinite damage.
Great video🎉
Your summary reminded me of the nelly precon, wich I enjoy playing a lot. Some of your points might come in handy in its future development
I made this deck and had a ton of fun with it. After a few months, I reworked it to make it my own with the inclusion of wheel like effects and burn pieces like molten gatekeeper, impact tremors, and god of the forge. This has led to a two pronged strategy: strategy 1, commander damage with buffs, which you can use to draw into your more important value pieces. Strategy 2, usually coming on the heels of strategy 1, while Xyris is sitting on board, acting as free card draw for everyone at the table, drop down a burn piece and wheel, causing everyone to draw 7+ cards, creating 21+ creatures, and dealing that much damage to everyone around you.
My biggest mistake, which I continue to make, is pulling this stunt before I can afford to finish the game with it. When everyone else is sitting at 10-13 health while you're at a solid 30, you go from being the group-huggy card dealer to archnemesis number 1 real fast.
Using lots of combat tricks makes your opponent second guess any attacks you make.
"You're swinging your 1/1 at me when you see I've got a 5/5 on the board? You've got 2 green open... I'll eat it...."
Man I love this, I usually only play "high power" EDH but this is convincing me to build something different.
Built this deck with a few upgrades and it does not disappoint. 3/3 games won “mind you one of the players was playing his sheldrod deck”. I’m used to being arch enemy so it’s weird players are teaming up with me so adamantly to get cards. My friend played his kalia deck and would let me swing through just to get more cards. The snakes are super key to the plan I’m like yeah I have 25 snakes and no one really bats an eye.
100% recommend super cheap and really fun.
@@bryangelnett6237can I get your deck list ? Looking to build it but not sure how the deck will play against stronger decks
I like the idea of this deck and might try it out in my play group. this video was fun to watch.
I've had a similar experience with my Sheoldred, the Apocalypse Commander deck.
I don't run heaps of wheels like some decks for her do, but I have the usual stuff like Howling Mine.
One game I had out Sheoldred and the Court of Ambition. I didn't keep the Monarch status, but that was ok. Between regular draws and the Court's discard or lose 3 life, everyone lost life gradually. Eventually someone pointed out that they were all on low-teens in life and that I was still in high 30's.
Sometimes a more subtle approach works really well.
Did I immediately go buy every card I didn’t have to build this? Yes. Yes I did
I am really interested how does this deck perform against strong decks, tell me did you have fun with it :D
@@veraha4706 still waiting to get some of the cards in the mail but will report back when I get to play it
@@veraha4706 I’ve only played it twice so far but it’s been very solid. No wins, but I’m a problem.
@@ryanfournier9522any wins with the deck? 😅
@@veraha4706 haha no but to be fair I’ve only played it twice. I made 3 new bloomburrow decks need to get it back out!
I adore this video, and honestly it sounds almost exactly like something i would play! I might give it a try
For anyone wanting to build this deck, you might want to check out sergeant John Benton first. He has the same passive of "you and your opponent draw cards equal to damage this creature dealt". He is a selesnya commander instead of temur and he doesn't have flying but he has trample and haste. Also he doesn't create tokens when opponents draw but he makes up for it by costing 3 instead of 5 mana.
So you can go for the same gameplan but faster. With turn one ramp, you can get him out turn 2 and start drawing. Also white has a lot of interesting multi use spells that both buff amd protect a creature. Also you can use some board wipes like promise loyalty if an opponent build to much of a board state with the cards you gave them.
this is the type of deck i would love to see tuned up and piloted at a cedh table. going all in on the commander like that is super super risky and currently probably a bit too vulnerable to be good but there’s a vision
This has been my favorite commander recently
Oh, tell me he runs Magnus the Red. So when he gets 3+ snakes all of his instant and sorceries are free.
Edit: Looking at the decklist, I saw so many more creatures than expected. I thought it would only be creatures that make him untargetable by opponents, make stuff cheaper or some recursion like the reshuffle Gy into deck and Gaea's Blessing. If I build this, I would have to use Elvish Fury and Tangarth's Rage (not sure if right card) since they are buyback pump spells.
Go big or go home, right?
Yes, most of my decks are voltron. Lol
I might even put an Ivory Tower in so I can laugh as people try to scale my Tower with all the snakes in the way.
Maybe only have 5 creatures in the deck. Like you pointed out. Creatures are weak and get removed too easily.
Very cool, I appreciate your thoughts and philosophy on commander. Thanks Snail!!!
You don't know fear until you're staring down 161 Hexproof snakes and your opponent has infinite handsize and is holding half their deck.
I built this deck because of this video and it is now my favorite deck. Thank you
I am a Xyris pilot for years and never looked back since switching over from Locust God. You tell it like it is with small beans syndrome.
I run a Xyris deck too! It's also my playgroups "strongest deck" with an almost complete cedh Najeela at the table as well. The deck has become a super villain at the table and is usually the focus if ever played. When we went to the con it did great at every competitive table. He's very slept on. My deck is a wheel deck though.
I've been toying with a similar idea, but focused on RG under Neyrith (or however its spelled). This method makes me smile. Thanks for the video!
This is pretty funny.
My friend group did a budget challenge with a random commander. My friend Hana got Xyris. She'd never heard of the commander, but went away and made her deck... and Christ, the deck she made. Basically every Howling Mine synonym to make everyone draw anything from 3 to 15 cards a turn, meanwhile accumulating snakes and using Springleaf Drum effects to turn those snakes into any spell she wants.
As the local chaos player, EVERYONE at my LGS is fearful of the power of Xyris now. Nobody underestimates the snake spewer.
On the no hand size thing being a sign of how the deck works, and it being a bit of a problem for the deck, I think just having Thought Vessel is a good idea. I don't know about you guys, but if I see a Thought Vessel, I never assume it's to be a part of the plan. I always think of it as just a colorless mana that is "Just in case I get some big draw."
I run one in a couple decks just because I can potentially have like 10 cards, but it's never the goal to have that. The only time I worry about hand size is if Reliquary Tower comes out, since lands are a bit harder to get rid of, so I assume they really want it around. I figure even a few turns of slightly larger hands to play with is worth having it on your board until you draw 20 cards and the others realize the problem. Since discarding to 7 is already kind of accounted for it's not a big deal to lose Thought Vessel, and by then you are hopefully in a good enough spot that you don't need those cards anyways.
Maybe that's just me though.
Xyris is one of my favorite commanders, personally I run him as a wheel deck, it's really funny printing out dozens of snakes with a single wheel spell with stuff like doubling season on the board