I have a deck called "The 101st Brigade." It's all the 101st cards I want to play that I think would be fun and interactive. It ends up being low power and fun to play with. I have so many pet cards that I want to play that I also have "The 102nd Brigade". I highly recommend having a 101st Brigade deck.
I built a whole Commander Cube around cards that I wish were good enough to make it into my Commander decks. Everyone gets to play something low-power with fun, commander-oriented cards.
When I looked at the video title, I was worried it was going to be a video telling me to take Sharktocrab out of my deck. I'm glad it was instead one telling me ways to keep my Shark Octopus Crab around because it makes me happy.
I'm gunna add in my 2 cents before I watch because I'm not able to have volume right now. I think this problem kind of goes hand-in-hand with the last couple videos I've seen from you guys: Why Deckbuilding Is Harder Now & The Pressure To Upgrade. I think fighting through all of the feelings in both of those videos and THEN trying to find room for your pet cards is immensely difficult.
Personally, never had a problem with using pet cards. I typically have a rule against "boring staples" which helps to find slots. Most times if I'm building decks, it's typically with the idea of pet cards in mind, and you bet if the deck has red and green and is even remotely creature based, it's going to have Ruric Thar. :)
I find this interesting. I agree with you. But I want to add something: pet cards are better in casual, because they don't fuck with your game plan there as much as they do on higher level tables. Drawing a Lurking Predators in a Big Creatures casual deck is amazing, but playing Lurking Predators in a Combo high power table is almost useless. Finding cards to play instead of staples is always fun and fills you with joy when you see them working in the right power level.
Honestly, this question kinda just shows Commander players are too focused on efficiency. What's the point of the format if not to play those cards you love?
I think efficiency is one of the only objective ways to improve a deck. So the discourse focuses on that. Having pet cards is subjective, but it is no less real and important for that.
There's always a lot of push/pull between doing what's fun, and doing what keeps you from losing. We wouldn't want to play no pet cards, but we also wouldn't want to lose a ton of games because that's no fun either. It's all about finding that balance in the middle.
The biggest reason a pet card would be hard to slot in ends up being the mindset the player has. If they find the game itself to be the most fun and who gives a flying fuck if you win or lose, you will always have room for the pet cards. If they have the mindset that winning is the only fun or important thing, well.......tournament play exists for a reason i guess.
Problem with that is it’s super easy to have multiple games where you play your pet card and it doesn’t do anything against everyone else’s amorphous ehdrec built value pile that blows you out of the water. And losing 12 times in a row BECAUSE of the presence of your own pet card is an easy way to fall out of love with that pet card.
(Even if winning is not your main goal, losing 100% of the time does not feel good to anyone. Lose enough times to a specific thing and you will come to resent it.)
it may be true if you have less than 99 pet cards... my problem is that for every deck I make, I have up to 120 cards to fit... I'll end up cutting too many stuff during deckbuilding.
@@TheGtDragoon I haven’t won a game of commander in years and don’t mind lol. I don’t play for that feeling - I play the experience of the game and making shenanigan memories with friends.
I'm fortunate that my favorite card in the entire game has a nice place in one of my decks. Share the Spoils is so much fun, and whenever I play it with people who have never seen it before, initially people are suspicious.. until I pass the turn and then explain "Ok, now you're able to play any of these four cards in addition to your hand, but you replace ones you play from your deck." By the time a turn cycle happens, usually everyone has played at least something from the exiled cards, even if it's just a land for someone who has been missing drops. My regular table likes it so much that someone I play with is tinkering with a list of a deck where they can effectively play it as well.
I actually built a Golgari- elves deck out of all the cards that didn't make into Lathril. Turns out # 101-200 are still pretty good, plus budget. But I normally try to go by function, so, I might rate a card I want to play as the "4th best counterspell" or "an additional tutor" or "haymaker" or something like that to define what role I want it to play, without disrupting the functionality of a new or old deck as a whole.
I want to ask for an episode topic: Thematically relevant cards vs Vegetables/Versatile cards. One of my biggest problems as a deckbuilder is I will, in almost any deck, opt for the thematically relevant cards that occupy the same slot as a vegetable or versatile cards. I run Don't Move in my Tap Matters deck even though I'm confident that Tragic Arrogance is what it really -should- be (it also runs Harvest Season instead of Kodama's Reach, but does run Cultivate; I'm growing a bit). Similarly, in To Block or Not to Block I ran Hunter's Insight as a main draw spell (because it fits the theme: something bad happens if you block, something bad happens if you don't) for the longest time instead of any Harmonize or Night's Whisper and that was holding it back. The short of the conversation is reliability versus "feels good" which is why this episode brings that struggle to mind. I would love to hear some discussion on it.
My biggest thing with pet cards is not so much that I want to win, but if you include all your pet cards you tend to not really do anything at all. Or at least that's my experience. So striking a balance with a deck full of cards you love but one that also functions is the part I find challenging.
14:28 when I deck build or even when I lay my cards out to make ads or cuts, I always have a pile of cards that may not do something within my deck necessarily, but they are cards that are just my favorite cards to play in that color because they do something that even on its own is pretty cool.
@@EDHRECast thanks it came about because my buddy who has been playing for 15 years would be helping me upgrade my decks when I first started a year ago and he kept trying to cut cards that were not optimal but I wanted them to stay 😂
One of the things that, IMO, has been bad for commander is many people going for optimization as far as power and not for fun. Cutting your pet cards because it leads to a stronger deck, or not putting them in a new deck for that same reason, makes the format worse overall.
I'm currently trying to "Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen" my existing Chatterfang deck, the Squirreled Away precon, and some Bloomburrow singles I just bought. 100 cards sounds like a lot, but sometimes, it really isn't!
Ugin the Spirit Dragon was my first mythic. I ran him in my first deck, Ephara Blink, for a decade before finally pulling him out a month ago. it made me sad but I did find him a home in my colourless Traxos deck.
Im literally in the process of building a monoblack deck thats got TONS of my just favorite characters and cool stuff in black even though I know the deck objectively is going to have a ton of weaknesses... it wont have the biggest creatures or be super fast or have answers for a lot of things but its gonna have a lot of death and a few ways to win that are straight forward like phage and vorpal sword (a couple fancier things too) I think you just gotta play the stuff that you think is fun and try to match up with people who do roughly the same...personally I kind of hate the generic "good card" piles sooooo many people trend toward. I DO NOT want to see your generic deck with generic cards we all see on youtube every single video.
On the point of what slots you prioritize to remove cards from for making room for a pet card: All of my card types are up for grabs when its time to swap something in. I'll typically swap something with something from its same card. What I avoid swapping are my 2 most efficient and my favorite card in that role. So I have generally 3 cards per category that are "safe" from swaps
I have to take issue with the Challenge the Stats on Psychosis Crawler in Mr. Foxglove. A Foxglove game takes place in 2-3 stages, depending on how you define them. First, you're building your board state, ramping, and handing out extra cards. Eventually, you play out Foxglove and start drawing a bunch of cards with his trigger while your opponents fight out out with each other (because you're helping them). Then comes "the flip," the turn you attack a player with fewer cards in hand than you and drop a bomb for free. That kicks off the "winning the game" stage. Psychosis Crawler works in a few ways, mostly in the first phase. You're drawing a lot of cards, so PC looks like a very slow clock on the table, but not one that scares the table too much (especially if you're not attacking with it). The important thing with regards to the challenge, though, is that PC is good in the first phase of the game, and you're *not* emptying your hand in this phase, because you're setting up your bombs for the second phase, so PC isn't going to kill itself.
@EDHRECast The funniest win I've ever gotten was when an opponent attacked another opponent for lethal with a token army, I mirrorweaved targeting curiosity crafter. The defending player lost to combat damage and the attacking player milled himself out with card draw from having 20+ curiosity crafter tokens connecting
Today I learnt that I can have tags in archidekt! Thank you so much! I always created new categories for to buy or to cut cards! Love it! Sadly I play mostly online and most players dont pull punches or go more fun and slow, so meta removal is needed in my decks
So many thoughts about this episode! I really feel where Joey is coming from in regards to not wanting to let the table down in terms of interaction. Some people play jank, some people drew badly, it feels like a shame to let folks down because I knowingly came unprepared. On top of that, I'm known to lend decks out to friends. It's an AWFUL feeling knowing half the table is limited to stop an archenemy because of me. I actually hit my limit on this last week and have started going through my too-many-decks to bump up the interaction and draw so I can really participate. One of the reasons I lend decks out is because I love to build. Early on I noticed I was building a lot of samey decks because I was leaning on the same tools in each color. Pulling back on interaction at least helped my decks feel more unique with pet cards. This was 6 years ago- the amount of playable-for-EDH removal is so much higher now, it's a lot easier to run sufficient removal without too much overlap. A third factor that I think is somewhat related is something I've started to call Playgroup whiplash. There was a period of time where I was spending large amounts of time with different playgroups. One was the group that taught me, one was a group of players I taught. Spending weeks with the new group to then spend a full weekend of EDH with the old crew gave me so much whiplash in terms of how to play. I'd change my decks, sit down, and have nothing to do because most of my hand was interaction. Then I'd change it up, go see the other group, and get easily stopped and not be as interactive there. It's one thing to have certain decks built for any playgroup but my trap is always wanting to play the new thing I've built :) Thanks for the episode and insights! Extremely helpful as I continue to overhaul
Yeah, not wanting to feel like you're not contributing to a game weighs on all of us, maybe more so because the three of us are content creators and folks are expecting a certain game experience. The playgroup whiplash thing is real as well. You see it from one LGS to another too. Thanks for the well-reasoned response protojman.
Waiting for a functional reprint of Illicit Auction. That card is a hoot every time I resolve it (someone once paid 36 life to keep their commander!), but 5 mana is just too much for a weird removal spell.
Re: situational cards like Thrilling Encore, these cards become a lot better if instead of only waiting to see if the situation arises and then reacting, you build strategically with the possibility of creating the situation and being able to take advantage of it. For example, in my Teysa, Orzhov Scion aristocrats deck, I am glad to cast Thrilling Encore to get all of the stuff if someone boardwipes, but that card is also sometimes a wincon, like when I sac a bunch of my stuff to make mana, get a bunch of death triggers and make a bunch of spirits, then bring it all back to get ETBs and possibly do it all over again. I am good with whichever way I end up using it, and as a result it is rarely ends up being dead in my hand. Holding up 5 mana just in case can feel very mana-inefficient, but when you have built to potentially use it proactively to win, that changes the calculus a lot. I use Galadriel’s Dismissal much the same way, it can be spot or board protection when the situation calls for that, but at least as often I use it to phase out someone’s board to prevent their alpha strike or open the way for my own.
Excellent episode and one I have a vested interest in. I have so many pets cards, and constantly shift my decks around because I don't feel like I find that perfect balance between power/efficiency and fun/pet cards. Like, my Urza, Prince of Kroog deck that runs the 4 Stations from Fifth Dawn despite them not really synergizing with the Commander. I have tweaked that deck so much to cram them in and have had mixed results, but half of the POINT of that deck was to finally use all of the weird Artifact engines I love so much. A constant struggle. The irony is that I fall in between both of these guys. I love brewing, and find fun in the ideas and tweaking and such, but I also LONG for a deck that feels COMPLETE, one that I can rely on to be fun and interesting without constant reworks between each week of gaming... It's a forever struggle, but maybe I'll get there with at least one deck, pet cards and all!
For me, I have had decks where I put the pet card in first, then find cards and a commander that work with it. It's been a great way to keep a pet card in the deck, while also working as a solid building inspiration trick.
I think those are theme decks~ I’m currently mostly playing with theme decks~~ usually focus around the commander… but people are starting to cut theme cards for ramp / removal / wipes / interactions / card draw.
@@PoYi-fi1zt a deck built around a pet card is in no way always going to be a theme deck, unless you consider every strategy to be a theme deck (ex: “the theme is slivers, guys” or “the theme is +1/+1 counters”)
Gerard's hourglass pendant has other synergies that it fits too. I have it in a Firja deck and it's a 1 mana way to cast a second spell in a turn just to trigger her ability, and the fact that there's a ton of permanents from big creatures to imposing artifacts this gets back is great with the 4 mana ability. Any deck that cares about legendary permanents and artifacts can pretty freely roll it, too, as a weird colorless expensive Faith's Reward
This is why I always advocate for a Commander sideboard!! Deck too powerful? Board in some pet cards. Deck not getting there? Board in more ramp and draw. Other people popping off? Board in a few more interaction pieces. 60 card formats solved this problem long ago!
I have two side boxes of "Pet" cards i keep for putting in whatever deck i play. I leave around half dozen open spots for those cards when i want to play a deck. Yes i do have enough cards in that set of boxes to build a entire deck and sometimes i do play that deck. Pet cards are what keep me playing the game at this point.
Two suggestions for the Patreon call out this episode Thank you for the subort, Andrew. We need more Bort license plates, repeat, we are out of Bort license plates.
I'm glad I solved the problem by introducing in my decks the "pet card" slot (99 cards + 1 commander + 1 pet card). It worked great 'till now, no one counts my cards, the odds aren't too skewed, and I almost never see the card anyway. Of course it would be fairer to disclose it before the start of the game, but someone saying "no it's 99 cards, 1 additional card is unacceptable" would put me in a bad mood.
I like one lesson I heard from the Professor that really made my thoughts came to words: "sometimes your win condition is not winning the game". I have decks tuned to win. No pet cards allowed. I have pet decks. Sometimes make a play is my wincon. I make it then I'm happy either I winnor nor. I even have a deck with a card with my name on it. I'm happy if I play it. I have another deck that's named "let's make it short". I win if the game is shorter than 30 mins whoever wins it. Those are full of pet cards. We call them meme decks. Having fun is the goal. Winning the game is just one way of having fun.
I’ll make this suggestion for a lot of the more veteran players who just have a bunch of pet cards or good staples that might be laying around from disassembling decks: build a cube or party box. It is the most fun and easy way to enjoy those pet cards and assemble fun times without any of the feelsbad of other things. My cube just got all of the new Brain Dead secret lair cards and you bet chaotic goo is in there even though he is terrible
Yeah, I makes sense that the rise in popularity of cube might stem at least a little from folks looking for homes for cool cards that have kinda gotten power crept out of EDH.
Built an entire deck to resolve Goblin Game and have it not be out of place. Ended with two deck lists for Myra the Magnificent. Myra's attractions are silly enough to justify the suboptimal fun cards while also allowing for an alternative list that resolves big nasty spells. The pet card does stick out because slashing life totals has nothing to do with myra's attractions but it is sufficiently silly to accent the rest of the decks plan.
My solution was Kenrith, The Pet Card deck. I play Channel Fireball, cruel entertainment, all the “each player draws” effects, forced fruition, mana flare, nyxbloom ancient, notion thief and a couple wheels, it’s just all the stupid fun combos I like, in one ridiculous deck
While there's better cards, it helps a lot that a deathtouch flyer is always gonna be pretty useful. Both the original and the DCI version have great art, too.
I think your take on how Mr. Foxglove refers to only 1 way in which he can be played. I think there are at least 3 ways he suggests play and Psychosis Crawler plays well in the dump and draw style or self wheel using the commander as the wheeler.
The pet card problem is more like the "staple" problem: Too many cards you must play because they're just that much better than others, even thematic cards. The solution to me is the following: Remove the 100 cards limit. I've done that for all my decks, and it made commander a lot more fun and diverse. The 100 cards limit is just useful to prevent everyone from playing Battle of Wits or tutors... just ban the enchantment card and limit tutors and go have fun! Besides... you sell more Katana sleeves!
(Dana here) One thing I've done is find some build rule to eliminate options. There's no temptation to run Smothering Tithe in this u/w deck where the rule is no enchantments, etc.
@@EDHRECast I love that idea too, though it does feel like downpowering your deck, while adding more cards doesn't, it just adds variation. Missing out on Sol Ring due to "no artifacts" feels bad, but having it in a pile of 250 doesn't really, just get more lucky early :)
Matt's hair game super strong. Pet cards that I run that aren't completely terrible in their decks: -Panglacial Wurm in Radha, Heir to Keld. The deck runs a ton of Explosive Veggies-like cards so, late game, I can cast Wurm while searching. I even cast him while searching for basics when my deck had no basics left in it! -Ifh-Biff Efreet. I opened one in 1994 and I run it (or a proxy of it) as anti-flier hate and as the jankiest alt wincon. -Bell Borca is my pet commander, since he's the only legendary Sergeant in the game.
Most people don't know this, but it's actually a wig! LIke NBC, EDHREC is a subsidiary of the Sheinhardt Wig Company, and we all get free hair pieces as part of our employment contracts.
I guess I’m blessed because I don’t have a pet card problem. When I make a deck I add in my favorite cards first, usually 5-10 range, and build the rest of the deck around that. Once I start playing the deck and my favorite cards are nonbos or just don’t have the impact I usually get from them, that’s when I’ll start cutting them for other things
I think that my general deck building process lends itself very well to ensuring.I include my pet cards. I always start with either the commander or the theme. From there, I add the cards that go with that commander or theme. Which often include a gaggle of pet cards. Then I start looking at how many slots are left for the staples. Lol Sometimes I love a card or card art so much and just find a deck that that card works in. Where that card would be on theme. An example would be my secret lair, wild mongrel leading me to build the Gitrogg Monster.
Regarding which cards to cut for a pet card... It is not like pet cards do nothing and serve no function. Sure they may be a lot less efficient in that function than plenty other cards, or have a lot of conditions on how they fulfill this function, but they fill that function still. So, cut the thing of the respective category (or the one that fits the most). Ruinous Intrusion is an artifact removal spell. Thrilling Encore can both count as a protection spell or as a wincon.
Food for thought, in my main deck Ive been brewing for a while now Ive decided to slot in Post The Enchanter as a pet card. And proceeded to realise that the deck Ive built actually uses him as a win con enabler
@@EDHRECast easily both! Its my Tymna & Kydele "card draw matters" deck. Defense of the heart puts Ancient Silver Dragon and Post on the field. Then Post puts Psychic corrosion on the field before the Dragons Combat Damage Trigger. And if I can draw into necrodominances the games over. Silver Dragon didnt win (m)alone, but he can say "I had some help"
Not sure about pet cards that you want to put into every deck. Those might not be that healthy. But for cards that aren't the best but you want them in 1 deck where they fit mechanically and thematically, you could use 1 or very few flex slots for which you (randomly) choose cards out of a group of cards before you use the deck to play one or more games. The idea is to use only very few slots for a whole bunch of cards that you want to play in the deck every once in a while and which else wouldn't fit into the deck.
Yeah, that can be a tricky thing to balance for sure. You wanna run pet stuff, but it also feels bad to feel like you're heavily outmatched because of it.
I added an Ice Age petcard Zuran Orb I have owned since I started playing in 1995 in my Vito lifegain deck. In the endgame I sacced all my lands and did like 18 dmg to the last opponent. I happened to be the wincon:) Petcards are so nice… and indeed, it’s your deck, you decide!.
Don't worry Dana, you can just cram a Rootpath Purifier into every deck you have that can run it. Not enough basics? Not anymore, ALL my lands are basics!
While I tinker a lot with decks and I choose cards not only based on their power, but budget, flavor, sinergy, like a card that goes from a 4 to a 7 in the deck instead of running the 8 staple, I think that we should be more chill about it, cause 3 or 4 cards ain't gonna change the deck enough to even notice I think with various sidegrades. You will remember your pet card every time you play it in a game tho. Keep the cards that spark joy XD
you CANNOT stop me from putting ‘wrong turn’ in decks. I will cut any nonland card that does not spark joy and throw it in EVERY TIME. the only limiting factor is I don’t own as many copies as I frankly should.
Super easy to fit pet cards in, thankfully i don't have a huge number but my self imposed 1 copy of any non-mana card in any of my edh decks leaves plenty of room since the staples don't suck up slots. I do wish there were a few more cool mana rocks but digging the ramos cycle out of my old bulk was nice, a few 3 mana more taps for any colour rocks with synergy would let me go down to just one arcane signet.
I do highly themed decks for the most part. So pet cards tend to only go where they make sense. Except for Dryad Arbor. She goes in every deck with Green.
My pet card is Thorn Elemental... tried cramming it in any deck with green. Finally just decided to make a mono-green deck that has a lot (if not all) of the creatures with its ability, such as Pride of Lions.
Definitely have second dinosaur decks and third and fourth Tovolar decks as trying to find homes for cards that didn't fit the primary theme. And does help to build the deck to strongly incorporate those pet cards.
That said, this challenge the stats was finally discordant with the podcast theme. That Psychosis Crawler? Totally a pet type card and a creature that deals damage on an atypical axis for Bant. Great card to add non-combat reach in those colors. A true rarity.
@@EDHRECast I was gifted a werewolf deck (Ulrich) then tuned it up with Tovolar and the new ones, but strived to keep it feeling werewolfy. But some wolves cared about being targets, so I built Tovolar/Zada. Then there was NOT A WOLF, loved the cards, so built a deck for them, and that's tokens. And been looking for a home for Bard Class and think I cracked the code, and well Tovolar is a fine base generic commander for such. XD Just 4 of my 32 decks so far.
I just built a chaos deck that has a lot of pet cards in it. The point of the deck is NOT to win but to have fun playing some crazy cards. Edit: @Joey in blue and or red looting/rummaging having those situational cards to discard if the situation does not happen is good to in order to draw more cards, at least that is what I use them for, if I get a chance to use them great, if not then I can discard them to draw something else 😉
Every green deck I go to design ends up with Gaea’s blessing as a matter of fact I’m actually pretty tempted to find two cards that don’t work in my current Ghave deck just for Gaea’s blessing and Mirri’s guile
I'm currently building a Thalia and the Gitrog Monster deck. Im going Human tribal/typal with it and I have a pet card in the deck I want to try because I built a 60 card casual deck around it is Ravenous Demon. Course need to run some sac synergies in the deck which I plan to. Also, want to play Westvale Abbey in the deck as well. Can't wait to finish building the deck and to try it out!
No room for Cruel Bargain, Demonic Bargain, or Reckoner's Bargain. Heck, Bargaining Table is colorless, you could run that too. None are expensive, either. You could say they're all . . . inexpensive.
As slow as it is, I try and jam Pontiff of Blight in as many decks as i'm able. And I built Hylda of the Icy Crown for the lone reason to have a deck I could shamelessly plug Icy Manipulator into.
Thrilling Encore can be great in a mill deck, that’s what I do and never had a feeling that’s it’s a dead card in hand because other then mill you also be using removal spells and this would be a Grixis deck like Lord Xander the Collector. 😎😎
This is the reason why I play Tutors. by playing 4 tutors in my decks i can get away with playing less Ramp/Draw/Removal, and then have more slots for other cards. Its the same principle of the "powerfull commander" conversation, but it applies to every deck (at least to every black deck witch is what i play)
Pet card really needs commitment to play them. I agree that pet cards are getting harder and harder keep in the deck. We are too spoiled by newer and more efficient cards with every new set release. I have a Havi, the All-Father deck and I'm constantly telling myself Raised by Giants has to stay, just cause he's Odin man, The Odin.
my pet card is Hot Soup that I run in my Risona Asari Commander where I equip Soup to Risona to make her unblockable so she generate her Indestructible counter to spread with Nesting Ground so I can safely send out boardwipes to the field without worrying about my stuffs
A pet card of mine is Nascent Metamorph. I love that card, but I always end up pulling it out. Its a very weird card, i like to say that it can scout a deck, its a clone, but really it just does completely random things and could die very easily. I have it in a strange mono blue Tetsuko deck right now, and Im not even sure it really works there, but it is a 1/1.
Avacyn, Angel of Hope is my pet card, and it's got a home as the win-condition of my Selesnya Angels deck headed by Sigarda, Font of Blessings. On the one hand it's sad to see her get countered or exiled every chance people get, but maybe i should just slow roll her a bit more and make some threats to force a Catch-22 - Hold up the answers and let me get greedy with other Angels? Or stop my current threats but leave me free to get Avacyn?
I try to avoid staples because of creativity and budget reasons so my decks have tons of less used cards, but I don’t think I have many pet cards because a lot of cards just change from deck to deck. I guess Tezzeret’s Gambit is one?
i usually just dedicate 1-2 slots to pet cards and i just make those slots not be able to be changed unless i'm swapping it out for another pet card. keeps the deck fun and interesting without slowing it down
If you're not playing to have fun and are only focused on squeezing out a win, why even bother with Commander? The whole format is already overloaded with all the combos and busted cards we never asked for. It really only works when people just approach it with the mindset of having a good time. Otherwise, there'd never have been need to create an entirely separate sub-format. So, if you're building your decks to skirt as close to cEDH as possible without fully committing... what’s the point?
Not quite sure I fully agree , with the Emiel examples. You still need a fair density of the effects you want to play? You put in Guardian of faith , and now you don’t need any more? Well? You still need to draw the thing ? With that logic , If I had a land that tapped for 20 mana , I wouldn’t need any other lands in the deck! 👍🏼
I usually keep 5-10 slots for cards that don't see play at all in my playgroup or "older" version that have been replaced with better effets. This is just for me to have fun playing games and making my decks less "copycats" of my other decks .. For example, do you put Craterhoof in almost all creatures decks !? I could play "Lure" or an effect like this just to see my opponents look at me and wonder : what the heck is this ? One card I love from Ice Age is "Ray of Command" and I put it in like 2-3 of my decks. Sometimes it's just to remove a creature my opponent has by borrowing it for a block when I'm attacked but sometimes, I steal the commander and kill a player with commander damage out of nowhere. Is it good or optimal ? Not at all. But the surprise effect is as good as the best response I could have places instead. My decks are really less effective but I never feel like playing the same thing over and over again. Nice podcast! :) Keep it up!
A thing I dont see being addressed is that there's are whole worlds in between "who cares about winning" & "i only care about winning sweatlords". Maybe a lot of people stuck in this dichotomy haven't experienced this, but there is such a thing as healthy, sporting competition between friends. There's one victor in this 4 player game and the game pieces are designed to enable the players to vie for victory. So you can totally be both torn between playing cards that have more sentimental value than actual mechanical value, AND not be an absolutely cutthroat, antisocial player. Everyone saying stuff like "just don't care at all about winning" and "the game is not *about* winning" - that may be your truth but I think most people fall in the middle somewhere between the two extemes
I have to imagine that this is a glitch or some kind of mistake, but I just went through 15 ad breaks... just thought I'd mention it. Otherwise a fantastic episode as per usual. Thank you guys!
Pet cards are usually special and uniqe, so shoving them in your decks can be a bad idea, so the best thing you can do is build a deck specifically for it
Play the card. Don't fall into the sad trope of what EDH has become, as you will tend to see everyone playing the same handful of cards over and over. If you're just concerned about winning play cEDH and be done with it.
Exactly; why cant ppl play either janky legends or themes, or if they like a stronger commander, make the 99 less optimal by using cards from your bulk, pet cards, or budget versions of similar effects. Casual edh is slowly becoming taboo and no one is even carrying a precon or jank option; usually all high power, proxies, and the same card pool….so damn lame and boring. Ive built over 200 commanders and i refuse to make everything optimized or copy others. wheres the fun in that, wheres the creativity in using the best possible option, and why do that in the only non competitive format?
I'm not sure I understand the objection to Psychosis Crawler in Foxglove decks. The commander seems designed around 2 things, catchup draw and cheating creatures into play. But for the cheating to work, you need to have more cards than the opponent you're attacking, so it would fit in a deck that has many ways to draw cards, which would synergize with Crawler. Not saying the card is perfect, but saying this deck is likely to be at 0 cards feels weird when the commander specifically is designed to always catch up to your opponents in cards
I have a deck called "The 101st Brigade." It's all the 101st cards I want to play that I think would be fun and interactive. It ends up being low power and fun to play with.
I have so many pet cards that I want to play that I also have "The 102nd Brigade". I highly recommend having a 101st Brigade deck.
Ha ha! I call these decks my "sink decks"
This is genius
This is a *terrific* idea
I built a whole Commander Cube around cards that I wish were good enough to make it into my Commander decks. Everyone gets to play something low-power with fun, commander-oriented cards.
you're a smart one. i like this.
When I looked at the video title, I was worried it was going to be a video telling me to take Sharktocrab out of my deck. I'm glad it was instead one telling me ways to keep my Shark Octopus Crab around because it makes me happy.
Alternative title was "Matt Convinces Joey to Play Silly/Fun Cards While Joey Has an Existential Crisis About What to Cut For Them"
@@EDHRECast Rolls right off the tongue!
I promise you all, life gets better when you cut solring for an extra pet card slot
But sol ring is a mana ramp slot, so wouldn't you just run a different mana ramp card instead? =/
Like descent into avernus? That’s one of my let cards, and it makes the game way faster for everyone!
Sol Ring would be way easier to cut if there wasn't so much nostalgia attached to that original Mark Tedin art.
Can confirm. Cutting fast mana and combos increased my enjoyment of the format tenfold!
@@Excaria If you run the right amount of land, you don't need the sol ring slot to have fun.
I'm gunna add in my 2 cents before I watch because I'm not able to have volume right now.
I think this problem kind of goes hand-in-hand with the last couple videos I've seen from you guys: Why Deckbuilding Is Harder Now & The Pressure To Upgrade.
I think fighting through all of the feelings in both of those videos and THEN trying to find room for your pet cards is immensely difficult.
We've absolutely been exploring different facets of a similar theme lately.
Personally, never had a problem with using pet cards. I typically have a rule against "boring staples" which helps to find slots. Most times if I'm building decks, it's typically with the idea of pet cards in mind, and you bet if the deck has red and green and is even remotely creature based, it's going to have Ruric Thar. :)
I find this interesting. I agree with you. But I want to add something: pet cards are better in casual, because they don't fuck with your game plan there as much as they do on higher level tables. Drawing a Lurking Predators in a Big Creatures casual deck is amazing, but playing Lurking Predators in a Combo high power table is almost useless.
Finding cards to play instead of staples is always fun and fills you with joy when you see them working in the right power level.
re: putting ruric thar in every deck reasonable, your username very much makes sense lol
Honestly, this question kinda just shows Commander players are too focused on efficiency. What's the point of the format if not to play those cards you love?
I think efficiency is one of the only objective ways to improve a deck. So the discourse focuses on that. Having pet cards is subjective, but it is no less real and important for that.
You are a bloody legend, Dragga
I find a lot of commander players play commander to take game actions. Like they want to have a magic the gathering tm experience.
Because literally everyone plays their rhystic and one rings and docksides so I have to keep up or lose.
There's always a lot of push/pull between doing what's fun, and doing what keeps you from losing. We wouldn't want to play no pet cards, but we also wouldn't want to lose a ton of games because that's no fun either. It's all about finding that balance in the middle.
The biggest reason a pet card would be hard to slot in ends up being the mindset the player has. If they find the game itself to be the most fun and who gives a flying fuck if you win or lose, you will always have room for the pet cards. If they have the mindset that winning is the only fun or important thing, well.......tournament play exists for a reason i guess.
Problem with that is it’s super easy to have multiple games where you play your pet card and it doesn’t do anything against everyone else’s amorphous ehdrec built value pile that blows you out of the water. And losing 12 times in a row BECAUSE of the presence of your own pet card is an easy way to fall out of love with that pet card.
(Even if winning is not your main goal, losing 100% of the time does not feel good to anyone. Lose enough times to a specific thing and you will come to resent it.)
it may be true if you have less than 99 pet cards... my problem is that for every deck I make, I have up to 120 cards to fit... I'll end up cutting too many stuff during deckbuilding.
@@TheGtDragoon I haven’t won a game of commander in years and don’t mind lol. I don’t play for that feeling - I play the experience of the game and making shenanigan memories with friends.
People who like winning always being vilified
I'm fortunate that my favorite card in the entire game has a nice place in one of my decks. Share the Spoils is so much fun, and whenever I play it with people who have never seen it before, initially people are suspicious.. until I pass the turn and then explain "Ok, now you're able to play any of these four cards in addition to your hand, but you replace ones you play from your deck." By the time a turn cycle happens, usually everyone has played at least something from the exiled cards, even if it's just a land for someone who has been missing drops. My regular table likes it so much that someone I play with is tinkering with a list of a deck where they can effectively play it as well.
I actually built a Golgari- elves deck out of all the cards that didn't make into Lathril. Turns out # 101-200 are still pretty good, plus budget. But I normally try to go by function, so, I might rate a card I want to play as the "4th best counterspell" or "an additional tutor" or "haymaker" or something like that to define what role I want it to play, without disrupting the functionality of a new or old deck as a whole.
Yeah given how deep the card pools are these days you definitely have room to dig way deeper and still be playing really good cards.
Best feeling when your pet card help wins the game!
Big agree!
I definitely went through a phase of deckbuilding where I had pet cards, like jamming Vicious Shadows into literally any deck with red.
I want to ask for an episode topic: Thematically relevant cards vs Vegetables/Versatile cards.
One of my biggest problems as a deckbuilder is I will, in almost any deck, opt for the thematically relevant cards that occupy the same slot as a vegetable or versatile cards. I run Don't Move in my Tap Matters deck even though I'm confident that Tragic Arrogance is what it really -should- be (it also runs Harvest Season instead of Kodama's Reach, but does run Cultivate; I'm growing a bit). Similarly, in To Block or Not to Block I ran Hunter's Insight as a main draw spell (because it fits the theme: something bad happens if you block, something bad happens if you don't) for the longest time instead of any Harmonize or Night's Whisper and that was holding it back. The short of the conversation is reliability versus "feels good" which is why this episode brings that struggle to mind. I would love to hear some discussion on it.
My biggest thing with pet cards is not so much that I want to win, but if you include all your pet cards you tend to not really do anything at all. Or at least that's my experience. So striking a balance with a deck full of cards you love but one that also functions is the part I find challenging.
Exactly!
14:28 when I deck build or even when I lay my cards out to make ads or cuts, I always have a pile of cards that may not do something within my deck necessarily, but they are cards that are just my favorite cards to play in that color because they do something that even on its own is pretty cool.
That sounds like a pretty solid system.
@@EDHRECast thanks it came about because my buddy who has been playing for 15 years would be helping me upgrade my decks when I first started a year ago and he kept trying to cut cards that were not optimal but I wanted them to stay 😂
Favorite pet card: Humble Defector. You will draw an UNREAL amount of cards if you politic well with it
It adds a lot of laughs to games too.
Thrilling Encore... be the person who wipes, and then reanimate.
Love me some pet cards! and I believe I heard the bestest pet Moose in the background
One of the things that, IMO, has been bad for commander is many people going for optimization as far as power and not for fun. Cutting your pet cards because it leads to a stronger deck, or not putting them in a new deck for that same reason, makes the format worse overall.
Pet card... Amateurs! I got whole pet decks, they're expensive jank and I love it!
I'm currently trying to "Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen" my existing Chatterfang deck, the Squirreled Away precon, and some Bloomburrow singles I just bought. 100 cards sounds like a lot, but sometimes, it really isn't!
Ugin the Spirit Dragon was my first mythic. I ran him in my first deck, Ephara Blink, for a decade before finally pulling him out a month ago. it made me sad but I did find him a home in my colourless Traxos deck.
MY MAN MATT IS GLOWING IN THIS ONE 🫀
Awww shucks.
Im literally in the process of building a monoblack deck thats got TONS of my just favorite characters and cool stuff in black even though I know the deck objectively is going to have a ton of weaknesses... it wont have the biggest creatures or be super fast or have answers for a lot of things but its gonna have a lot of death and a few ways to win that are straight forward like phage and vorpal sword (a couple fancier things too)
I think you just gotta play the stuff that you think is fun and try to match up with people who do roughly the same...personally I kind of hate the generic "good card" piles sooooo many people trend toward. I DO NOT want to see your generic deck with generic cards we all see on youtube every single video.
On the point of what slots you prioritize to remove cards from for making room for a pet card:
All of my card types are up for grabs when its time to swap something in. I'll typically swap something with something from its same card. What I avoid swapping are my 2 most efficient and my favorite card in that role. So I have generally 3 cards per category that are "safe" from swaps
I have to take issue with the Challenge the Stats on Psychosis Crawler in Mr. Foxglove. A Foxglove game takes place in 2-3 stages, depending on how you define them. First, you're building your board state, ramping, and handing out extra cards. Eventually, you play out Foxglove and start drawing a bunch of cards with his trigger while your opponents fight out out with each other (because you're helping them). Then comes "the flip," the turn you attack a player with fewer cards in hand than you and drop a bomb for free. That kicks off the "winning the game" stage.
Psychosis Crawler works in a few ways, mostly in the first phase. You're drawing a lot of cards, so PC looks like a very slow clock on the table, but not one that scares the table too much (especially if you're not attacking with it). The important thing with regards to the challenge, though, is that PC is good in the first phase of the game, and you're *not* emptying your hand in this phase, because you're setting up your bombs for the second phase, so PC isn't going to kill itself.
I'm not much for ads but Joey ain't lying, Katana sleeves are a complete game changer when it comes to shuffling commander decks
Right!?!? Legit just really great quality
But they are a gamble when you want to double sleeve
Just have some lower powered pet decks to play in lower powered pods
Having a good mix of powers is very much a good idea.
Every deck with blue white gets mirrorweave. No exceptions
Great pet card! Have any good Mirrorweave stories?
@EDHRECast The funniest win I've ever gotten was when an opponent attacked another opponent for lethal with a token army, I mirrorweaved targeting curiosity crafter. The defending player lost to combat damage and the attacking player milled himself out with card draw from having 20+ curiosity crafter tokens connecting
Today I learnt that I can have tags in archidekt! Thank you so much! I always created new categories for to buy or to cut cards! Love it!
Sadly I play mostly online and most players dont pull punches or go more fun and slow, so meta removal is needed in my decks
So many thoughts about this episode! I really feel where Joey is coming from in regards to not wanting to let the table down in terms of interaction. Some people play jank, some people drew badly, it feels like a shame to let folks down because I knowingly came unprepared. On top of that, I'm known to lend decks out to friends. It's an AWFUL feeling knowing half the table is limited to stop an archenemy because of me. I actually hit my limit on this last week and have started going through my too-many-decks to bump up the interaction and draw so I can really participate.
One of the reasons I lend decks out is because I love to build. Early on I noticed I was building a lot of samey decks because I was leaning on the same tools in each color. Pulling back on interaction at least helped my decks feel more unique with pet cards. This was 6 years ago- the amount of playable-for-EDH removal is so much higher now, it's a lot easier to run sufficient removal without too much overlap.
A third factor that I think is somewhat related is something I've started to call Playgroup whiplash. There was a period of time where I was spending large amounts of time with different playgroups. One was the group that taught me, one was a group of players I taught. Spending weeks with the new group to then spend a full weekend of EDH with the old crew gave me so much whiplash in terms of how to play. I'd change my decks, sit down, and have nothing to do because most of my hand was interaction. Then I'd change it up, go see the other group, and get easily stopped and not be as interactive there. It's one thing to have certain decks built for any playgroup but my trap is always wanting to play the new thing I've built :)
Thanks for the episode and insights! Extremely helpful as I continue to overhaul
Yeah, not wanting to feel like you're not contributing to a game weighs on all of us, maybe more so because the three of us are content creators and folks are expecting a certain game experience. The playgroup whiplash thing is real as well. You see it from one LGS to another too. Thanks for the well-reasoned response protojman.
Waiting for a functional reprint of Illicit Auction. That card is a hoot every time I resolve it (someone once paid 36 life to keep their commander!), but 5 mana is just too much for a weird removal spell.
Re: situational cards like Thrilling Encore, these cards become a lot better if instead of only waiting to see if the situation arises and then reacting, you build strategically with the possibility of creating the situation and being able to take advantage of it. For example, in my Teysa, Orzhov Scion aristocrats deck, I am glad to cast Thrilling Encore to get all of the stuff if someone boardwipes, but that card is also sometimes a wincon, like when I sac a bunch of my stuff to make mana, get a bunch of death triggers and make a bunch of spirits, then bring it all back to get ETBs and possibly do it all over again. I am good with whichever way I end up using it, and as a result it is rarely ends up being dead in my hand. Holding up 5 mana just in case can feel very mana-inefficient, but when you have built to potentially use it proactively to win, that changes the calculus a lot. I use Galadriel’s Dismissal much the same way, it can be spot or board protection when the situation calls for that, but at least as often I use it to phase out someone’s board to prevent their alpha strike or open the way for my own.
Excellent episode and one I have a vested interest in. I have so many pets cards, and constantly shift my decks around because I don't feel like I find that perfect balance between power/efficiency and fun/pet cards. Like, my Urza, Prince of Kroog deck that runs the 4 Stations from Fifth Dawn despite them not really synergizing with the Commander. I have tweaked that deck so much to cram them in and have had mixed results, but half of the POINT of that deck was to finally use all of the weird Artifact engines I love so much. A constant struggle.
The irony is that I fall in between both of these guys. I love brewing, and find fun in the ideas and tweaking and such, but I also LONG for a deck that feels COMPLETE, one that I can rely on to be fun and interesting without constant reworks between each week of gaming... It's a forever struggle, but maybe I'll get there with at least one deck, pet cards and all!
For me, I have had decks where I put the pet card in first, then find cards and a commander that work with it. It's been a great way to keep a pet card in the deck, while also working as a solid building inspiration trick.
I think those are theme decks~ I’m currently mostly playing with theme decks~~ usually focus around the commander… but people are starting to cut theme cards for ramp / removal / wipes / interactions / card draw.
@@PoYi-fi1zt a deck built around a pet card is in no way always going to be a theme deck, unless you consider every strategy to be a theme deck (ex: “the theme is slivers, guys” or “the theme is +1/+1 counters”)
Gerard's hourglass pendant has other synergies that it fits too. I have it in a Firja deck and it's a 1 mana way to cast a second spell in a turn just to trigger her ability, and the fact that there's a ton of permanents from big creatures to imposing artifacts this gets back is great with the 4 mana ability. Any deck that cares about legendary permanents and artifacts can pretty freely roll it, too, as a weird colorless expensive Faith's Reward
This is why I always advocate for a Commander sideboard!! Deck too powerful? Board in some pet cards. Deck not getting there? Board in more ramp and draw. Other people popping off? Board in a few more interaction pieces.
60 card formats solved this problem long ago!
I have two side boxes of "Pet" cards i keep for putting in whatever deck i play.
I leave around half dozen open spots for those cards when i want to play a deck.
Yes i do have enough cards in that set of boxes to build a entire deck and sometimes i do play that deck.
Pet cards are what keep me playing the game at this point.
Two suggestions for the Patreon call out this episode
Thank you for the subort, Andrew.
We need more Bort license plates, repeat, we are out of Bort license plates.
"Come along Bort."
Do not A. Bort your support.
@keeplatts108 my son is also named Bort
Came here for this... Missed opportunity on classic Simpsons bit
I'm glad I solved the problem by introducing in my decks the "pet card" slot (99 cards + 1 commander + 1 pet card).
It worked great 'till now, no one counts my cards, the odds aren't too skewed, and I almost never see the card anyway.
Of course it would be fairer to disclose it before the start of the game, but someone saying "no it's 99 cards, 1 additional card is unacceptable" would put me in a bad mood.
Replace that wincon with your favorite pet card!
I like one lesson I heard from the Professor that really made my thoughts came to words: "sometimes your win condition is not winning the game".
I have decks tuned to win. No pet cards allowed.
I have pet decks. Sometimes make a play is my wincon. I make it then I'm happy either I winnor nor.
I even have a deck with a card with my name on it. I'm happy if I play it. I have another deck that's named "let's make it short". I win if the game is shorter than 30 mins whoever wins it. Those are full of pet cards. We call them meme decks.
Having fun is the goal. Winning the game is just one way of having fun.
A diversity of decks is generally the way to go.
I’ll make this suggestion for a lot of the more veteran players who just have a bunch of pet cards or good staples that might be laying around from disassembling decks: build a cube or party box. It is the most fun and easy way to enjoy those pet cards and assemble fun times without any of the feelsbad of other things. My cube just got all of the new Brain Dead secret lair cards and you bet chaotic goo is in there even though he is terrible
Yeah, I makes sense that the rise in popularity of cube might stem at least a little from folks looking for homes for cool cards that have kinda gotten power crept out of EDH.
Built an entire deck to resolve Goblin Game and have it not be out of place.
Ended with two deck lists for Myra the Magnificent.
Myra's attractions are silly enough to justify the suboptimal fun cards while also allowing for an alternative list that resolves big nasty spells.
The pet card does stick out because slashing life totals has nothing to do with myra's attractions but it is sufficiently silly to accent the rest of the decks plan.
My solution was Kenrith, The Pet Card deck.
I play Channel Fireball, cruel entertainment, all the “each player draws” effects, forced fruition, mana flare, nyxbloom ancient, notion thief and a couple wheels, it’s just all the stupid fun combos I like, in one ridiculous deck
My pet card is vampire nighthawk. It got to the point where I'd had to cut it from every deck. As a result, I built a deck dedicated to it.
While there's better cards, it helps a lot that a deathtouch flyer is always gonna be pretty useful. Both the original and the DCI version have great art, too.
I think your take on how Mr. Foxglove refers to only 1 way in which he can be played. I think there are at least 3 ways he suggests play and Psychosis Crawler plays well in the dump and draw style or self wheel using the commander as the wheeler.
The pet card problem is more like the "staple" problem: Too many cards you must play because they're just that much better than others, even thematic cards.
The solution to me is the following: Remove the 100 cards limit. I've done that for all my decks, and it made commander a lot more fun and diverse. The 100 cards limit is just useful to prevent everyone from playing Battle of Wits or tutors... just ban the enchantment card and limit tutors and go have fun! Besides... you sell more Katana sleeves!
(Dana here) One thing I've done is find some build rule to eliminate options. There's no temptation to run Smothering Tithe in this u/w deck where the rule is no enchantments, etc.
@@EDHRECast I love that idea too, though it does feel like downpowering your deck, while adding more cards doesn't, it just adds variation. Missing out on Sol Ring due to "no artifacts" feels bad, but having it in a pile of 250 doesn't really, just get more lucky early :)
Matt's hair game super strong.
Pet cards that I run that aren't completely terrible in their decks:
-Panglacial Wurm in Radha, Heir to Keld. The deck runs a ton of Explosive Veggies-like cards so, late game, I can cast Wurm while searching. I even cast him while searching for basics when my deck had no basics left in it!
-Ifh-Biff Efreet. I opened one in 1994 and I run it (or a proxy of it) as anti-flier hate and as the jankiest alt wincon.
-Bell Borca is my pet commander, since he's the only legendary Sergeant in the game.
Most people don't know this, but it's actually a wig! LIke NBC, EDHREC is a subsidiary of the Sheinhardt Wig Company, and we all get free hair pieces as part of our employment contracts.
@@EDHRECastAny day is a good day for a 30 Rock reference
Nice video. I am interested in an episode dedicated to basic lands!
We've kicked around doing one talking about basic land art.
I guess I’m blessed because I don’t have a pet card problem. When I make a deck I add in my favorite cards first, usually 5-10 range, and build the rest of the deck around that. Once I start playing the deck and my favorite cards are nonbos or just don’t have the impact I usually get from them, that’s when I’ll start cutting them for other things
I think that my general deck building process lends itself very well to ensuring.I include my pet cards. I always start with either the commander or the theme. From there, I add the cards that go with that commander or theme. Which often include a gaggle of pet cards. Then I start looking at how many slots are left for the staples. Lol
Sometimes I love a card or card art so much and just find a deck that that card works in. Where that card would be on theme. An example would be my secret lair, wild mongrel leading me to build the Gitrogg Monster.
Yeah, the art on a card can really matter a lot too when it comes to making it one of your pet includes.
Regarding which cards to cut for a pet card... It is not like pet cards do nothing and serve no function. Sure they may be a lot less efficient in that function than plenty other cards, or have a lot of conditions on how they fulfill this function, but they fill that function still. So, cut the thing of the respective category (or the one that fits the most). Ruinous Intrusion is an artifact removal spell. Thrilling Encore can both count as a protection spell or as a wincon.
Food for thought, in my main deck Ive been brewing for a while now Ive decided to slot in Post The Enchanter as a pet card. And proceeded to realise that the deck Ive built actually uses him as a win con enabler
We can't tell if that's a Psycho move or a Rock Star move. Sunflower.
@@EDHRECast easily both! Its my Tymna & Kydele "card draw matters" deck.
Defense of the heart puts Ancient Silver Dragon and Post on the field. Then Post puts Psychic corrosion on the field before the Dragons Combat Damage Trigger. And if I can draw into necrodominances the games over. Silver Dragon didnt win (m)alone, but he can say "I had some help"
Not sure about pet cards that you want to put into every deck. Those might not be that healthy.
But for cards that aren't the best but you want them in 1 deck where they fit mechanically and thematically, you could use 1 or very few flex slots for which you (randomly) choose cards out of a group of cards before you use the deck to play one or more games. The idea is to use only very few slots for a whole bunch of cards that you want to play in the deck every once in a while and which else wouldn't fit into the deck.
I build my decks AROUND pet cards. And then I lose...
Yeah, that can be a tricky thing to balance for sure. You wanna run pet stuff, but it also feels bad to feel like you're heavily outmatched because of it.
I added an Ice Age petcard Zuran Orb I have owned since I started playing in 1995 in my Vito lifegain deck. In the endgame I sacced all my lands and did like 18 dmg to the last opponent. I happened to be the wincon:) Petcards are so nice… and indeed, it’s your deck, you decide!.
Don't worry Dana, you can just cram a Rootpath Purifier into every deck you have that can run it. Not enough basics? Not anymore, ALL my lands are basics!
Another week, another set of dad jokes.
Seven days without puns makes one weak! ;)
While I tinker a lot with decks and I choose cards not only based on their power, but budget, flavor, sinergy, like a card that goes from a 4 to a 7 in the deck instead of running the 8 staple, I think that we should be more chill about it, cause 3 or 4 cards ain't gonna change the deck enough to even notice I think with various sidegrades. You will remember your pet card every time you play it in a game tho.
Keep the cards that spark joy XD
My pet card is Bounty of the Luxa. Not sure why I just love the theme of the card. Always tough to include it over other better ramp/draw options
That card has great flavor.
you CANNOT stop me from putting ‘wrong turn’ in decks. I will cut any nonland card that does not spark joy and throw it in EVERY TIME. the only limiting factor is I don’t own as many copies as I frankly should.
Joey out here sipping from a mason jar like a G
Super easy to fit pet cards in, thankfully i don't have a huge number but my self imposed 1 copy of any non-mana card in any of my edh decks leaves plenty of room since the staples don't suck up slots.
I do wish there were a few more cool mana rocks but digging the ramos cycle out of my old bulk was nice, a few 3 mana more taps for any colour rocks with synergy would let me go down to just one arcane signet.
All the three mana rocks with upside we've gotten in the last few years help with giving us a few more options for cool rocks.
I do highly themed decks for the most part. So pet cards tend to only go where they make sense.
Except for Dryad Arbor. She goes in every deck with Green.
Do you run a Green Sun's Zenith so you can get it with X as 0?
@@EDHRECastNo, but now I’m going to start adding it for that reason.
My pet card is Thorn Elemental... tried cramming it in any deck with green. Finally just decided to make a mono-green deck that has a lot (if not all) of the creatures with its ability, such as Pride of Lions.
Thorn Elemental is a pretty great pet card, especially given how many bombs came from that set/block.
Definitely have second dinosaur decks and third and fourth Tovolar decks as trying to find homes for cards that didn't fit the primary theme. And does help to build the deck to strongly incorporate those pet cards.
That said, this challenge the stats was finally discordant with the podcast theme. That Psychosis Crawler? Totally a pet type card and a creature that deals damage on an atypical axis for Bant. Great card to add non-combat reach in those colors. A true rarity.
Multiple Tolvar decks is dedication!
@@EDHRECast I was gifted a werewolf deck (Ulrich) then tuned it up with Tovolar and the new ones, but strived to keep it feeling werewolfy. But some wolves cared about being targets, so I built Tovolar/Zada. Then there was NOT A WOLF, loved the cards, so built a deck for them, and that's tokens. And been looking for a home for Bard Class and think I cracked the code, and well Tovolar is a fine base generic commander for such. XD
Just 4 of my 32 decks so far.
I just built a chaos deck that has a lot of pet cards in it. The point of the deck is NOT to win but to have fun playing some crazy cards.
Edit: @Joey in blue and or red looting/rummaging having those situational cards to discard if the situation does not happen is good to in order to draw more cards, at least that is what I use them for, if I get a chance to use them great, if not then I can discard them to draw something else 😉
Every green deck I go to design ends up with Gaea’s blessing as a matter of fact I’m actually pretty tempted to find two cards that don’t work in my current Ghave deck just for Gaea’s blessing and Mirri’s guile
The answer is finding the commander where the petcard is the best card :)
I remember when I started building my first Commander deck. 100 cards was soooooo many! 😂
I'm currently building a Thalia and the Gitrog Monster deck. Im going Human tribal/typal with it and I have a pet card in the deck I want to try because I built a 60 card casual deck around it is Ravenous Demon. Course need to run some sac synergies in the deck which I plan to. Also, want to play Westvale Abbey in the deck as well. Can't wait to finish building the deck and to try it out!
I like running Dark Bargin and Moonlight Bargin in my black/ black + graveyard decks.
No room for Cruel Bargain, Demonic Bargain, or Reckoner's Bargain. Heck, Bargaining Table is colorless, you could run that too. None are expensive, either. You could say they're all . . . inexpensive.
I tend to build more from the ground up around cards I’m excited about like Matt.
Yep, when you do that you just kind of accidentally make room for pet cards.
As slow as it is, I try and jam Pontiff of Blight in as many decks as i'm able. And I built Hylda of the Icy Crown for the lone reason to have a deck I could shamelessly plug Icy Manipulator into.
Thrilling Encore can be great in a mill deck, that’s what I do and never had a feeling that’s it’s a dead card in hand because other then mill you also be using removal spells and this would be a Grixis deck like Lord Xander the Collector. 😎😎
This is the reason why I play Tutors. by playing 4 tutors in my decks i can get away with playing less Ramp/Draw/Removal, and then have more slots for other cards.
Its the same principle of the "powerfull commander" conversation, but it applies to every deck (at least to every black deck witch is what i play)
One of my pet cards is a tutor: Mangara's Tome.
Kind of the opposite of how we do it, but if it works for you that's all that matters.
@@EDHRECast I know Tutors have a "competitive" stigma attached to them, but I dont really play combos, unless they requiere 4+ cards.
Pet card really needs commitment to play them. I agree that pet cards are getting harder and harder keep in the deck. We are too spoiled by newer and more efficient cards with every new set release.
I have a Havi, the All-Father deck and I'm constantly telling myself Raised by Giants has to stay, just cause he's Odin man, The Odin.
my pet card is Hot Soup that I run in my Risona Asari Commander where I equip Soup to Risona to make her unblockable so she generate her Indestructible counter to spread with Nesting Ground so I can safely send out boardwipes to the field without worrying about my stuffs
Hot Soup is the kind of card we love to see pop up in a game.
The card that I put in every deck with WB is Ethereal Absolution. I probably won't cut it from the 4 decks it's in.
A pet card of mine is Nascent Metamorph. I love that card, but I always end up pulling it out. Its a very weird card, i like to say that it can scout a deck, its a clone, but really it just does completely random things and could die very easily. I have it in a strange mono blue Tetsuko deck right now, and Im not even sure it really works there, but it is a 1/1.
Avacyn, Angel of Hope is my pet card, and it's got a home as the win-condition of my Selesnya Angels deck headed by Sigarda, Font of Blessings.
On the one hand it's sad to see her get countered or exiled every chance people get, but maybe i should just slow roll her a bit more and make some threats to force a Catch-22 - Hold up the answers and let me get greedy with other Angels? Or stop my current threats but leave me free to get Avacyn?
I try to avoid staples because of creativity and budget reasons so my decks have tons of less used cards, but I don’t think I have many pet cards because a lot of cards just change from deck to deck.
I guess Tezzeret’s Gambit is one?
Tezzeret's Gambit is kind of the platonic ideal of a pet card.
@@EDHRECast Damn 😅
i usually just dedicate 1-2 slots to pet cards and i just make those slots not be able to be changed unless i'm swapping it out for another pet card. keeps the deck fun and interesting without slowing it down
(Dana here) That's kind of what I've wound up doing. At least for me that's the sweet spot.
@@EDHRECast yea that seems to be what works best for me as well. some decks get more, but 2 seems to be the best for me as far as a minimum.
If you're not playing to have fun and are only focused on squeezing out a win, why even bother with Commander? The whole format is already overloaded with all the combos and busted cards we never asked for. It really only works when people just approach it with the mindset of having a good time. Otherwise, there'd never have been need to create an entirely separate sub-format. So, if you're building your decks to skirt as close to cEDH as possible without fully committing... what’s the point?
Not quite sure I fully agree , with the Emiel examples. You still need a fair density of the effects you want to play?
You put in Guardian of faith , and now you don’t need any more? Well? You still need to draw the thing ? With that logic , If I had a land that tapped for 20 mana , I wouldn’t need any other lands in the deck! 👍🏼
I usually keep 5-10 slots for cards that don't see play at all in my playgroup or "older" version that have been replaced with better effets. This is just for me to have fun playing games and making my decks less "copycats" of my other decks .. For example, do you put Craterhoof in almost all creatures decks !? I could play "Lure" or an effect like this just to see my opponents look at me and wonder : what the heck is this ?
One card I love from Ice Age is "Ray of Command" and I put it in like 2-3 of my decks. Sometimes it's just to remove a creature my opponent has by borrowing it for a block when I'm attacked but sometimes, I steal the commander and kill a player with commander damage out of nowhere. Is it good or optimal ? Not at all. But the surprise effect is as good as the best response I could have places instead.
My decks are really less effective but I never feel like playing the same thing over and over again.
Nice podcast! :) Keep it up!
A thing I dont see being addressed is that there's are whole worlds in between "who cares about winning" & "i only care about winning sweatlords". Maybe a lot of people stuck in this dichotomy haven't experienced this, but there is such a thing as healthy, sporting competition between friends. There's one victor in this 4 player game and the game pieces are designed to enable the players to vie for victory. So you can totally be both torn between playing cards that have more sentimental value than actual mechanical value, AND not be an absolutely cutthroat, antisocial player. Everyone saying stuff like "just don't care at all about winning" and "the game is not *about* winning" - that may be your truth but I think most people fall in the middle somewhere between the two extemes
Listen all im saying is until stealing an opponent's commander with Role Reversal becomes not funny its going into every deck that can play it
If they don't want it stolen then they shouldn't have cast it for you!
Matt is your Abzan Hobbits list online somewhere? Can't find it on the EDHREC page with y'alls list!
There's no problem. They're my favorites. :)
Unfortunately if I put my pet card everywhere I wanted I'd have way too many mirage mirrors amongst my decks
You can be the "mirage mirror" guy
I don't see anything wrong with that!
so many bort license plates
I have to imagine that this is a glitch or some kind of mistake, but I just went through 15 ad breaks... just thought I'd mention it. Otherwise a fantastic episode as per usual. Thank you guys!
Pet cards are usually special and uniqe, so shoving them in your decks can be a bad idea, so the best thing you can do is build a deck specifically for it
Play the card. Don't fall into the sad trope of what EDH has become, as you will tend to see everyone playing the same handful of cards over and over. If you're just concerned about winning play cEDH and be done with it.
Exactly; why cant ppl play either janky legends or themes, or if they like a stronger commander, make the 99 less optimal by using cards from your bulk, pet cards, or budget versions of similar effects.
Casual edh is slowly becoming taboo and no one is even carrying a precon or jank option; usually all high power, proxies, and the same card pool….so damn lame and boring.
Ive built over 200 commanders and i refuse to make everything optimized or copy others. wheres the fun in that, wheres the creativity in using the best possible option, and why do that in the only non competitive format?
It's all about finding a balance for sure.
You'll know you've gotten old when you realize all your dad jokes have become granddad jokes 🤣
I'm not sure I understand the objection to Psychosis Crawler in Foxglove decks. The commander seems designed around 2 things, catchup draw and cheating creatures into play. But for the cheating to work, you need to have more cards than the opponent you're attacking, so it would fit in a deck that has many ways to draw cards, which would synergize with Crawler. Not saying the card is perfect, but saying this deck is likely to be at 0 cards feels weird when the commander specifically is designed to always catch up to your opponents in cards
My pet card is the counterspell Delay. The suspend makes all my opponents look at the dude who played a nuke but I just gave a timer to lol
It’s a fun and creative way to deal with something and also incentivize putting the spotlight on that player.
That's a really cool one! Puts a big spotlight on that player and that has a big effect, very clever :)
@@EDHRECast yeah also its more color friendly than Counterspell lol. I play it in my Kamiz flash deck XD
Tight grey shirt Joey strikes again. THis is such a well timed episode. I have too many pet cards now.
He didn't spend all that time in the gym to hide those pythons.
Joey, I am pleased that you decided to A-Bort your attempts to make a proper pun on the name of the featured supporter from Patreon.