High-Mana Commanders | EDHRECast 308
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- Опубліковано 21 бер 2024
- When your commander costs a ton of mana, how does that change the way your brew or the way you play?
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Jeweled lotus actually does make sense in these decks. It doesn't mean you have to cast the commander as soon as you can. But if you have 5 lands in play and your commander costs 7, then you can use jeweled lotus to cast your and leave mana up for a protection spell.
Several things that need to be considered when playing any commander.
- Mana cost (obviously)
- pip requirements 1WUBRG is entirely different from 7.
- hidden taxes (my Frodo Sauron's bane is really a six mana commander that requires at least 1 one white and three black)
- color identity (green means mana cost is artificially reduced
- self protection (Miirym, Sauron)
- Game plan (can you wait)
- game warping abilities (child of Alara)
- is the commander key to your gameplan.
As someone from Croatia, the very second I heard the name of the artist that's gonna be representing Croatia in Eurovision this year (Baby Lasagna) I got reminded of Joey's deck!
I have also veered more towards Tamiko safekeeping over lightning greaves. With lightning greaves, there is also the factor where people will remove your commander in response to equip even if you aren’t the biggest threat at the moment because they won’t get another easy chance. Where if you aren’t presenting an on table protection, they are more likely to threat assess without that
Also being unable to target your own commander to protect it from board wipe effects that get around the shroud
If a Commander is 5+ mana, it should serve as either a payoff for the deck’s strategy or a VERY strong value engine that has to be answered. The data from Joey’s game tracking last year shows that the average game lasts 9 turns. So if your 5+ CMC Commander is a setup piece, you have 4 turns (less than HALF of the projected game length) to squeeze value out of it so these higher CMC Commanders become more questionable with time unless they are a massive payoff.
You're doing calculation on a too small sample size. Joey's playgroup average game lasts 9 turns and even if he plays exclusively with random people that's still too little to be considered as evidence. TLDR: build your deck based on your playgroup and stop stressing out for things you can't even calculate.
a 5+ mana commander doenst have to be anything but fucking fun
Judith is 5 cmc, with treasures I typically get her out turn 3-4. Since she can trigger on even a 1 mana instant (technically the free ones too, as long as they are cast), I can usually have an immediate impact on the board.
I find 6 cmc, or just having too many pips, tends to be the limiting factor. It's a fun build around though.
Enter: my aesi deck
Wow. Aesi. How do you do it /S
On the topic of protection, I find it that people tend to lower their guard around non-blue decks since everyone is usually on the lookout for counters, but cards like darkness or gods willing can still take someone by surprise.
I love my 6 mana commander Astarion, the Decadent. I don’t need him on the board to win but when he is on the board I can do so much. Are there better commanders? Yes but I don’t care.
Now Judith, Carnage Connoisseur is a 5 mana commander who doesn’t work without her so I have to have a loooot of protection in play for her.
My big boy is kaervek the merciless and i run all the big mana rocks. I usually end up casting him a few times as he's a removal magnet, but if he's left alone for any length of time he's bringing havoc to the table. I always feel like I've done something even if i don't end up winning.
As a Maelstorm wanderer enjoyer I have high expectations for this episode.
I think the Wanderer is awesome because it is always a 3 x 1. Some times you get something that you don't want to cast, like a boardwipe (even if you only have two on the deck, this happens a lot), but usually you cast two spells that are cool or useful. And you want him to die to recast it sometimes
In response to Joey's Challenge the Stats, I can absolutely confirm that Ruinous Ultimatum is absurdly good. Probably my crowing achievement with it was to cast it when I had Syr Konrad the Grim on the field. It just WRECKED my opponents.
the problem with Ruinous Ultimatum is less the mana cost and more the coloured pips, which are kinda hard to hit in a non- green aligned deck. I looked at this card and decided to play Mythos of Snapdax instead, for instance, which is also all coloured pps, but only 4 in total
Fun fact about the whole "Ward is great protection" deal...
I was once playing my Kiora, Sovereign of the Deep deck and i had her out with Leyline Immersion, meaning it had an effective Ward 5. My friend across the table still removed her as soon as he was able xD
Same deal with Voja. People are so angry they cant just kill it with Swords for 1 mana but they have to spend four mana for it! 1 more than a generous gift or beast within....
As a Gishath player, I LOVE Heartbeat of Spring
That's awesome your play group sounds fun
I will be adding it to my gishath deck!
Love your website and channel. Thank you ❤
5+ mana is expensive to me for a Commander. That's the point where if the commander dies I start consider if the commander is worth recasting since it's such a tempo loss in the late game.
Definitely worth it for a few commanders. I've been playing a Niv-Mizzet, Parun deck lately and usually the strategy is to protect him once he's on the field, rather than try and recast him.
I have a hard time sleeping from time to time and listening to this podcast always helps relax me. It’s nice to just sit quietly and imagine I’m apart of the conversations lol
If your commander cost 5+mana, run more sweepers. For example, in my Syr Gwyn, hero of Ashvale deck, casting a board wipe then casting my commander leads to being more likely to get attacks in and gain value. The same is true for my gishath deck.
agreed, surprised it wasn't mentioned
i LOVE high cost commanders (especially with all of the spells where commander mana value matters)! i have awaken the blood avatar, olivia crimson bride, and kodama + tevesh szat partners for casual, and both tivit and atraxa for cedh!
Absolutely agree with Joey on the ramp discussion. I have an Avacyn ramp deck that plays off the white catch up ramp theme by using lands like Lotus Field and Scorched Ruins to set me "behind" my opponents and the change I noticed in building it was the value of ramp cards that ramp more than one or two mana like Gilded Lotus. White card advantage is still the worst in the game despite all the strides forward so having a single draw push me from 5 mana to 8 mana to cast my commander is huge.
and then land tax, gift of estates, Weathered Wayfarer, scholar of new horizons, ... :D
I put Return from the Wilds into my Zimone and Dina deck.
It fits two slots in the deck, ramp and a 1/1 body to sac for draw. Great card.
I wish we would get more big Mana Value creatures with crazy abilities, but we keep gettimg so many 3 Mana Value Commanders with insane abilities and people don't like having to recast already expensive Commander.
It pains me to see people dismissing cool creatures because they're "too expensive". Half my commanders are still above cc4, but it seems that these days even cc4 is on the upper end of things. Not a 2-3 mana value piece? Get out of the way. Sure you can still play the big haymakers with friends, but attitude around them in EDH channels are getting worse and worse.
Highlight the cool 6-8 mana pieces!
@@LisaSantikaOnggrid Thankfully my LGSs are still very battle cruiser style decks. Big and fun plays, not hyper tuned decks.
@@LisaSantikaOnggrid the truth is ... grinding is fun, but velocity is the key in competition (racing towards the winning pays you for ... you know, winning)
In Ovika, I obviously run lots of ramp: Mana Vault, Grim Monolith, Sol Ring, Ruby/Sapphire Medallions, etc. I also run all the red rituals and It's also the only deck where I run Force of Will.
Atraxa Grand Unifier, which I run as Praetor Kindred, is easily one of my favourite decks. The gameplan is simple, Realmbreaker Tree and GET ALL THE PRAETORS OUT!!!
Favorite high cost commander is definitely Gishath. I have been playing it since it was first printed. The deck simply counts to 8 then stomps from there.
I run Atraxa Grand Unifier as basically Oops All Bombs.
The mana curve looks funny, but once I get to the right point it punches hard.
My Etali deck is actually in the spot where people don't really want to remove it.
This is a great discussion but one thing that I didnt catch if you talked about it was commanders that have a kicker cost that you can choose to play with said kicker cost which can make them a higher mana value commander, this fits in with your hidden cost that you were speaking of at the end of the episode.
Josu Voss is a commander that I use for a mono black zombie deck.
This is the first commander deck that I built and Josu Voss was not the original commander but the deck was always mono black. I rebuilt the deck 4 times into its current configuration where the deck functions without him just fine BUT it is nice to have a commander such as him in the command zone as a viable wincon because those tokens he makes can give you a big enough swing to knock folks out late game and often I do not bother casting him unless I can pay the kicker cost also.
Edit: This is also a deck that I regularly win with even in higher power level pods than my regular pod.
Here's a good example of the whole "low mana, but you're holding off until you have more mana before casting it": Zevlor, Elturel Exile. Sure, he only costs 4 mana, and he has haste, but his ability also costs 2 mana to activate ON TOP of whatever spell you're looking to copy with his ability, which could be anywhere from 1-3 mana, if not more.
Great topic, and one I greatly appreciated. I have been working on my Millicent, Restless Revenant deck for so long. People keep saying she’s easy to cast regularly, and it has never felt like that for me 😂 this episode gave me some inspiration for that deck, so thanks!
I have a friend who worked on a Millicent deck for a long time, and once he got used to the idea of running lots of cheap (often bad) spirits and casting Millicent as early as possible so you can get swinging and generate tokens, that's when the deck really took off. She's very sticky.
@@samcates5308 that makes sense, I definitely noticed that in my tinkering. I may need to consider her being in the 99, because I don’t wanna play with cards I don’t enjoy. I appreciate your feedback!
It's like Edgar markov, use all the cheap and bad creatures to plus in the long run. One day I'll rebuild her and keep tinkering with it again
I play Kogla with cantrips and fogs. Late game Kogla is a great value piece that fights, destroys artifacts and enchantments, and bounces Druid of Purification and Eternal witness for control and fogs.
My discovery is that high mana commander decks struggle with consistency, and so needs to have more incidental card draw/ cantrips to avoid non-games.
I love the Return from the Wilds challenge. I run it in my Merry and Pippin Food deck. Sometimes getting the Food token and a 1/1 attacker is even better than ramping!
Gishath!! I loaded it up with ramp, then I some stuff to give protection.
High-mana commanders start at seven mana. I know this is markedly higher than the numbers stated here, but I think you'll find that if you start talking about this topic starting at five-drop commanders, then you've basically got to assign a whole new tier of high-mana considerations once you're talking about seven-drop commanders. Most of the drawbacks and considerations that apply to seven drop commanders pretty much keep going at eight, nine, ten, and even beyond that (although pretty everything past ten either comes with built-in cost reduction, is an Eldrazi titan, or is mega-jank anyway). Yeah, some of my decks with nine-drop commanders have gotten stuck without being able to deploy the commander in the spot where a seven-drop commander would have come down, but most of the time both are planning to ramp and to set up a lot before casting the commander is even a consideration. Six-drop commanders can be deployed reliably without too much special preparation, especially at low-power tables. Often, a six-drop commander isn't even at the top end of the curve in its own deck. I'd say that when it comes to how one builds and plays with a commander, the considerations hit a kind of inflection point between six and seven. Not universal, but pretty close to it, really.
It might actually be worth discussing this as a three-tier system, with everything below five being the "cheap" commanders, five and six being the "medium" commanders, and seven or higher being "expensive." It's a bit granular given how in reality there are so many nuances with commander abilities, ramp, cost-reducers, protection, build-around vs. more generic commanders, and so on. But I suspect this model would hold up often enough to be useful.
Speaking of high mana commanders and ramp in every deck I play with green in it I use the card “into the north” it is essentially another farseek in the deck if you put snow duels in your deck or a rampant growth if you put snow basics
I use return from the wilds in my Mazerik, Kraul Deathpriest deck since it can give me a food token which i can sacrifice later to trigger Mazerik later if i need a quick anthem, or another body which can hold those counters
Very simple answer for me when it comes to building a deck. I consider my commander high-cost at 5 CMC. With that kind of csrd being central to a deck strategy, having to wait to turn 5 to hard cast it in a game that should be seeing things be absolutely out of control by turn 7 or 8 is a handicap that must be planned for. When I build a deck, if it is left unmolested, it should be coming to life and operating by turn 4 at the latest. In order to do that with a 5 cost or higher commander, I need to plan to ramp to that much mana just that much faster. It helps create the consistency I want.
My first deck was Maelstrom Wanderer and since I always wanted to cast it as fast as possible but I didn't want to go ramp on cascade too often it was tricky to balance ramp. My rule sort of became that if a ramp card didn't get me 2 additional mana I didn't play it in that deck. It had to cover commander tax essentially. Ran about 8-10 of these 2 mana ramp spells.
I run Jeweled Lotus in Koma, Cosmos Serpent and Xyris, the Writhing Storm. It’s seemed to work out pretty well each time.
Return from the Wilds seems great in Chatterfang!
I am quite surprised about those ramp numbers. I mean it has to work for you. After 4 yrs of playing commander on a superextensive basis I build my decks starting with 37 lands and 13 ramp spells and it works so great. My high-mana cost commanders Etali and Ovika both run 23 and 18 ramp spells respectively.
As the draw spells got more and more efficient over the last years, and the best ramp spells still being the same (Natures Lore and Three Visits for example) I found myself running even more ramp being the key for maximum value.
Strongest consideration for me once a commander is 6+ mv is that the 4 mana ramp that produces 2 becomes very valuable for concentrating stronger ramp into fewer cards, while still being useful. Basically the 3 mv and less ramp is around the same, maybe a bit less, but an expensive commander earns some stronger multi-mana ramp.
I have 3 commanders that are 6. Kodama of the East Tree (who usually is getting cloned and my hand is getting vomited out when I cast it because it's partnered with Sakashima), Muldrotha, who usually I'm playing and casting a Kaya's ghostform from my bin or I can skirt tax in various ways, or Ramos, who IS accutely vulnerable, and usually I'm playing Ramos on a turn where I can cast him, cast something to get counters on him, and maybe get another 10 mana
i needed this episode/talk some months ago (and it's not a problem!) but then i feel like this was mostly "just a quick talk (in a 45 minutes youtube video)". i noticed i'm "afraid" to have an high mana commander, but then if the answers to make the deck better as a whole is 1. more ramp 2. more specialised ramp 3. more protection, then i already knew that.
i think there could be a conversation to have even better statistically optimised ramp depending on low commander mana values and what the decks wants to do (the "mana rock vs mana dork" argument and the "why am i putting a 2 cmc ramp spell in my deck 2 cmc commander deck" argument), but then when you go past 6 cmc and you're in green all the high mana ramp is good
My favorite point was about big mana commanders feel extra slow if you don’t want to do start doing things until after the commander is down. That was my problem with locust god.
As opposed to commanders where you can set up before they come down.
I'd argue you should play locus god, when your ready to wheel or draw a bunch in response to removal....
@@drew-id Not sure what point you are making. That further emphasizes how slow it is because you need even more mana before you start doing anything.
Gotta weigh in. I think that taking just the mana value gives poor insights as to how expensive it is. The type of commander factors in as well. And colors. 5 MV but mono green isn’t that big a deal. But 5 in red white black is more complicated. And does your commander need to tap or attack? 5 MV commander that can’t do anything until a turn after you’ve played it makes such a big difference. You -can- have haste enablers, but it’s not guaranteed to be there.
That return from the wilds is like a modular cultivate, I dig it
I've definitely been struggling with my Beledros Witherbloom brew. Mostly it's tricky to balance getting the ramp for the commander and the lifegain/aristocrat cards being low cost while still having things to take advantage of my commander.
I rarely build commanders over 4cmc and honestly 4 is usually pushing it. I run Angus Mackenzie as my main commander & right now, my current favorite is Acererak Mono-B Dungeons. I guess it comes from the playgroup I started playing in that didn't focus too much on the commander but just used them as an extension. I am slowly learning that building around a commander isn't that bad.
I agree with a lot of things said here. Ive played Syr Konrad and Beledros and both of those (for me) felt very high. Syr Konrad i felt was slow and durdly, not really something that you can just play and get value from right away, or would play as a land, pass, land, pass and didnt hsve much going into it.
Beledros having an upkeep trigger to make some pests to chump block and keep your life total as more of a resource vs a way to live was also something i considered. Beledros you can also cast and basically just "Time Warp" yourself with 10 life to now keep playing spells. The number of times id play Beledros, pay 10 and play another 7 mana worth of spells was very high
But at that point like it was said you are either ramping like crazy to get your commander online or at least have access to them sooner was big! You wanted to protect it cause going from 7 mana to 9 mana was a lot and sometimes you just died in-between. I will say to play up what others noted about games lasting between 9-12 turns, i dont think thats too far fetched. Ive had plenty of games where i play my commander and the game ends in a few more rotations, whether its a "your a threat #PlayerRemoval" or they just can't let you have your commander.
I also agree though 5 mana is that "ugh" moment where things DO feel like its getting pricy (mana wise) to play a thing while others have already gotten their gameplan online. Part of that may be playgroup, but the idea of "i can recast my commander 4 times as many times asi can this other one, cause this one costs 2 mana vs 5-6"
I'm building Nezahal, Primal Tide next month, which makes this discussion very relevant for me. In this day and age, the projected game length of an average Commander game has decreased in the wake of faster gameplans. This means that there is a lot of pressure on high mana value Commanders to be A: Able to have an immediate impact on the board, and/or B: able to protect itself with little investment. Both is the most useful combination, of course, and should be backed by a deck with enough good ramp options to make it have relevance in any given game.
Another perfect example of a high mana value Commander that can pass the test is Koma, Cosmos Serpent. It protects itself, generates value pretty much immediately (and without any additional set-up) and is in a color combination that is more than capable of getting to the point of playing him at a reasonable time.
Youre in blue, you have it easy. Do tempo plays, just counter theyre omega value machines until its time to cast nezahal and restock.
Also we dont talk about Koma, one should never
@@mofomiko Well, I do still think it says a lot that I have to confine myself to ultra control to protect my big Commander investment. Nezahal is very good at keeping the wheel running, though. I do probably have it easier than White, however. But Red and Black have Rituals. I have High Tide, and... Yup, that's it.
Honestly shocked when you introduced Dana with a line about The Master from Fallout and The Master from Dr Who, and then there wasn't a joke about Double Masters
I had to really think about it, but I don't really use a commander above four except Kresh the Bloodbraided, and that deck has a lot of recycling to dodge taxes. Any other one usually has a way to make it cheaper, like Nahiri, or dummy ramp in Shelob. Now, when I first started making decks, it was different: Oona and Nekuzar, neither of which exist anymore. Taking that long to play "the thing" really stuck with me and really influenced my choices. Notably, I have a lot of starts to decks with 6 or 7 drops, but those never seem to get past the idea stages. Megatron and Optimus are the big standouts in that regard at the moment.
Baby Lasagna is a dude from my country that was a "wildcard pick" that turned out to be better than the rest of Eurovision candidates. I was like "where did I hear that stupid name before 😂
I honestly find Ramp very mathematical. I have a 3 cmc commander in Henzie and I want to play it on turn 2 so I can try catch people unaware on turn 3.
So I know having 13 ramp pieces that allow a turn 3 blitz means if I Mulligan I will be very likely to get what I need.
Opponent: I can't seem to consistently cast my 5 color commander. Need more ramp!
Me: *laughs in Ulamog*
I generally laugh in Zhulodok, who in turn laughs in Kozilek, and then we laugh together about Ulamog, and Kozilek, and Ulamog, and Emrakul...
Tbf titan decks are usually warped around ramp to an extreme degree. They're just not functional otherwise.
Me: laughs in vampire tokens with Edgar Markov
I also have an Ovika deck, I run over 20 mana rocks in it. It's essentially all ramp and draw
Klauth, Unrivaled Ancient is my most expensive Comm, but you get a hasty, flying 4/4 that says to the rest of the table "kill this before it attacks or I'm about to start doing silly things." It does typically want at least one other Big creature before that first swing though. But casting Kindred Discovery during your combat after landing a 7 mana hasted commander starts to get a bit crazy.
Just to challenge the Challange the stats - I think that Kaya's Wrath has a perfect function in Dihada. It is in the end a Planeswalker in the command zone. You want effective wraths in as high numbers as possible to keep Dihada tickin up.
Was just thinking about putting Return from the Wilds into my Kyler deck...
If you have a six-plus mana commander, it probably needs to do at least one of these, and ideally two. It has to potentially end the game the turn you play it, or be a strong value generator with built-in protection, or incorporate some kind of board state reset. The last is particularly helpful, since while cards that can win the game are great when your engine is up they are weaker plays when it is not.
The few high mana commanders I run tend to be ones that either help give the deck a kickstart when it's already kind of doing its thing (Tiamat for example to rebuild my hand) or ones that I want to have a ton of setup for and then use the commander to just swing value (Myrkul with a board full of utility creatures and a sac outlet). I also tend to find that high cost commanders work well when taking a bottom up approach to deck building (essentially building more around a theme or mechanic rather than specifically around the commander) since the deck can still function even if the commander is removed a few times.
I love the point about bottom-up building. My Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts list is a controlly reanimator deck with lots of board wipes and one-card value engines like Palantir of Orthanc. It definitely doesn't need Teysa on the field to win, but she still plays a key role by discouraging attacks and putting opponents on a (slow) commander damage clock
My current decks are all 3 mana commanders (Mycotyrant, Slogurk, and Alesha) because anything above 4 needs to be outrageously powerful in my opinion. EDH is still the format for the big toys that don't have other places but there are so many archetypes being pushed into more and more efficient places and it's hard to pass up strictly more efficient cards for most players.
My 8 mana commander has a built in cost reduction, so her primary function is to be cheated out and sacrificed into 8 black pips to use for bigger spells. Really proud of that deck, it's one of my favourites to play.
Hogaak is my favorite commander and he is 7 mana. But he's actually free. He's usually out by turn 2 or 3. From there I leverage him into mana and card draw. Using commander damage to present a permanent threat and a wide boardstate to handle those hogaak hasn't latched onto and over run the table if they can't kill hogaak a handful of times.
My most expensive commanders are God-Eternal Oketra at 3WW, Samut at 3RG, Anikthea at 2BRW, and Gahiji at 2RGW. I decided against angry Omnath because of his cost and put him into Mina and Denn instead. I’ll drop Gahiji as early as possible, but the others like to have something ready to cash in for value, so an extra mana or a cost reducer (or a gy, for Anikthea) really makes a difference.
As someone who loves cedh I have to point out that etali primal conquerer is routinely top16ing. Also atraxa and tivit are commanders that consistently see play for almost a year now.
Finally tymna kraum is the best deck in the format and kenrith is consistently top 10 for over 2 years now.
This is an environment that straight up has turn 1 and turn 2 wins.
I think it’s mostly silly, but the Jeweled Lotus might be good with those decks where you are waiting to play the commander to make sure you have mana to do things in the same turn. You can have the 3 mana you save for casting other things
In my 5+ mana comander decks I tend to put a lot of cheap ramp into them, and cheaper less impactful "lieutenant" or "lightning rod" cards to either keep the game plan going or eat premium removal spells that could be pointed at my commander. My chorus of the conclave deck has both lieutenants and lightning rods with victory envoy and anafenza kin tree spirit as backups for cotc and glistner elf and veridian corrupter as lightning rods (cause infection is scary to people)
Bigger mana commander means it'll be strong enough that you can use excess Ramp and in turn more powerful cards in the rest of the deck because you'll have the mana for big cards. You can play more wraths in that style of deck to shut down the tempo decks and then take over too
So I just looked at all of my decks to see which ones are the high-mana commanders, and how I deal with that personally. Here's what I've got:
Volo, Itinerant Scholar w/ Master Chef: Yes, both are technically 3 mana, but you need both in play for the deck to function, so it's artifically 6 mana across two turns (usually Master Chef first, Volo second). For an added bonus, I'm running Keruga as my Companion, so I don't have the liberty to use things like Sol Ring, Jeweled Lotus, etc. to help get them out faster.
Darigaaz Reincarnated: Between the usual ramp suite, mana rocks, and cost reducers, I'm usually able to get my army of dragons out relatively easily, especially with a bunch of effects that let me cheat them out (Sunbird's Invocation, Industrial Advancement, etc.).
Sephara, Sky's Blade: She's artifically high mana due in part of her alternate casting cost (W and tap 4 Flying creatures), which is easily met with low-cost creatures and tokens.
Beluna Grandsquall: Technically 3 mana, but artifically 8 if you use her Adventure side first, which thankfully is an Instant so you can use it at the end of the player's turn before yours.
A good example of that "commander costs more than it looks" is Zedruu. I typically want to wait until I have 7 mana before casting Zedruu, that way I have mana to either protect them or donate something
Magic and Eurovision, what an excellent combo.
Something I’ve noticed from watching people struggle against Voja recently, is that a lot of people absolutely *do not* seem to have a game plan for necessary interaction that’s unexpectedly expensive early and mid-game.
Many Control pilots seem so habituated to popping threatening bodies as nothing more than a slight mana-tax on their actual turn, that being confronted with needing to essentially sacrifice a turn to removing an opponent’s Commander throws off their entire tempo for a couple of turns, minimum.
I don’t know if this is just my local environment, but 4-mana boardwipes haven’t been seeing nearly as much play as the more difficult-to-answer 5-6 CMC boardwipes.
Is that something that happens elsewhere? Wrath having been nearly subsumed by the likes of Farewell/Austere Command? Damnation seems to be the exception that proves the rule around here. (Well, the Azorius Can’t Be Countered wipe, too.)
My Omnath, Locus of Rage has 63 lands. All in on the elementals. Everything else just allows you to find or play more land.
I have a hogaak/umori deck that does great without any rocks or instant/sorcery ramp because he has a cost reduction built in and umori lets me get my other creatures out even faster, my ramp is self mill and the payoff is a 8/8 and ton of reanimate/aristocrat synergies
The first commander I built was Fynn the fangbearer. I see a cost of four and I’m like “oh you’re balling out here” hahah
I credit my 3rd deck, Licia, Sanguine Tribune (8 MV) as to what got me to change how I built my decks. She’s not a popular commander because she was difficult to crack. She’s not as good as Edgar Markov for vampire decks and lifegain is irrelevant unless you find a way to weaponize it. There are certain maxims that I design by now thanks to this 8 mana commander.
The inspiration was actually due to misreading the card. Instead of “Tribune,” I read it as “Tribute.” I wanted to get her out as cheap as possible, as early as possible, preferably pre-combat, and then sacrifice her for value. Doing this has a couple of benefits. Firstly, her MV along with her +1/+1 counter ability, means that I’ll get maximum value regardless of when the spell or ability cares about MV, power, or toughness. Secondly, I don’t have to worry about protecting her if I’m willing to sacrifice her myself. She is an engine all to herself, she just needs fuel. Lastly, since it doesn’t come off as a Voltron deck, I actually seem to be less of a threat.
The first problem I ran into is that most lifegain spells are inefficient. Healing Salve is a 3:1 (life to mana) ratio. I needed to find spells that were more like a 5:1 ratio or I might as well be spending the mana to cast her directly and since I was adamant about doing this pre-combat, normal spells like Serra Ascendant would not suffice. It also gets you too much heat. The solution lay in an old card from the game’s inception, Simulacrum. For 1B, I could direct damage taken to her, and gain life. It’s a scalable spell, meaning the more damage I take, the more I gain back. While this doesn’t get me ahead on life, the life gained still counts. Other spells like Children of Korlis and Tainted Sigil have the same kind of healing and are scalable as well. Having a number of 5:1 or scalable healing spells meant that I could get Licia out and actually recast her multiple times a turn so long as I had the colored mana to do so. Thankfully there’s options to cheat on those as well like K’rrik and Treasonous Ogre, which also feed into the life loss. Now that I can get her out cheap, I can use spells like Sacrifice and Burnt Offering to sacrifice her for full value, essentially ramping. It’s not as straightforward as putting a land into play, but it was repeatable, sometimes multiple times in the same turn.
This back and forth “life swing” affected every other part of the remaining deck building. I found effects that cause me to gain and lose life simultaneously as well as cards that benefit from the life loss side, such as Greven, Predator Captain, who actually has become the main wincon of the deck. Even the manabase leaned into self flagellation using pain lands, Odyssey mono pain lands, and Tarnished Citadel. These were lands no one would ever think to put into a deck. Life truly became a resource.
Subsequent decks, all Mardu btw, does similar things. I went back and revamped Edgar Markov, my first deck, into a wildly different version than I’ve ever seen. Queen Marchesa has artifact ramp and benefits from being the monarch, which people are hesitant to try and take. Kelsien doesn’t really ramp so much as he keeps the board clear. My latest deck, Extus doesn’t really ramp at all save from the swords of x and y which are primarily there for the protection.
Long story short, don’t try to play Mardu like you would a Simic deck. You are not going to have the land ramp green has. You’re also not going to have “draw a card” stapled to seemingly even blue deck has access to. I don’t use a ton of staples because being generically good isn’t enough. You have to double or triple those effects.
Me and my friends started commander by buying the eldraine brawl deck, I got korvold, one got chulane, and the other got sir gwyn, when I tell you this poor guy has tried making sir gwyn work for YEARS! Every game we play it makes it obvious that it not only was the worse of the bunch but just extremely under leveled which sucks because I think if it was cheaper and maybe just had one of the two abilities it has, it would actually be fun
My first deck was Brudiclad, and I think he is okay, despite being 6 mana. Typically, you want your board state to be full of tokens/copies before you play him, so you'll have the mana for it by the time you need him.
wall of blood is a fantastic card to do all sorts of janky things with, especially fling effects.
I could not agree more with Dana about the protection spells! :)
Id like to see a follow up video on decks with a big target commander. Even if a commander is cheap they quickly get expensive if they're eating every removal from 3 other players.
Commander is so fast now, running a 6 mana commander seems dangerous. I have a Sauron, The Dark Lord deck and if I don't get any mana acceleration, I am usually deeply on the defensive by time he comes out. The game pieces that would turn him into the value-engine have already been destroyed or minimized by that time. Xanathar is practically unplayable because he doesnt add immediate value when he appears. I remember Zevlor being called this "S-tier commander". It takes 6 mana to get him out and use him and I am playing everything but him to stay alive. In my view, 6 mana is now a 'win more' type commander where its the deck that is doing the real work.
Joey’s Eligeth deck actually still functions OK without Eligeth because all those Scry spells are still filtering through the deck, and many have “draw (a card, two cards, three cards…)” attached to them.
My Ovika deck runs 21 mana rocks, that doesn't include Sculpting Steel, and also a Wayfarer's Bauble and Helm of Awakening.
44:02 Zethi arcane blade master (chun-li) is secretly a 5-6 mana commander you need to be able to kick her, and probably have up some protection
My Highest mana cost commander? Easily my Iname as one spirit tribal deck, twelve mana in Golgari colours. The whole deck relies on finding non basic lands and cheating the commander into my hand from the command zone... It runs a bunch of big beater spirit creatures and removal. I have a few high cost commanders tbh, Piru the volatile, Shauku end bringer and Tibalt cosmic imposter... The list goes on! XD
I run a Emrakul, the promised end deck where my main goal is to cast Emrakul, take someone's turn, make it a turn that devastates them, then have a big flying trample 13/13 that is hard to remove with everyone going for instant speed removal these days. I ramp hard, its an expensive deck as I am trying to play it at higher power levels, but I average a turn 5 emrakul and I can in theory have it out on turn 1. I feel it only works because once Emrakul hits the board no one typically want to remove it at sorcery speed because I will likely just cast it again next turn and get the take your turn effect so I started removing protection from the deck. I think you really have to consider what you are doing, how you are doing it when you play a commander with that large of a cost. Gold fishing helps, I do want to slam down emrakul ASAP because people are not likely to be able to counter both the cast trigger and Emrakul so I'm getting one pay off either way, and I learned through gold fishing (and tracking it) that if I don't start with 2+ pieces of ramp in hand I'm not likely to cast it before turn 6 unless i get lucky draws. and that some of my stronger hands look like hand that might feel weaker in a normal deck.
Large mana commander work well with intentionality. Does the deck win without Emrakul? It can with other big colourless spells. but the goal is emrakul, and I don't care if she is in the command zone or not so go head and remove her. I pick up the strongest player on the board and beat you with them then leave you both damaged so i can do it again or come in with the 13/13
My own approach to high cost commanders, pretty straight forward approach, is they need to either do something on etb/ltb or be a game ending threat. My typical go to for high cost has been OG Kozzy xD Kinda doing all the things. A friend uses a lot of mana doubling with Zacama, typically coming down and destroying everything it can xD
I'm trying a new deck theory: Kwain deck with a bunch of 7 drops and no ramp. The plan is to just hit my land drops each turn, and then wrath all non-land permanents (which is why I don't have mana rocks). Then as I put down 7 drops on average my opponent's average drop is weaker.
I would also say that a "high cost" also comes with the pips. 3U feels cheaper than WURG
If we're talking 5 cost commanders and how strong they can be, look no further than one of the most recent commanders. "Voja Jaws of the Conclave" is such a pushed commander that it is insane to me how that thing got printed.
My highest mana is Mishra, eminent one. Was struggling getting him out fast but after listening to this, gave me different perspective for sure.
I only run 1 commander above 4 CMC without green, Syr Gwyn. The deck functions perfectly fine without her but whenever it is time to cast her, somebody is about to die!
4 cmc does feel like the "ideal" range. Gives you a little time to set up first and is low enough that recasting it once or twice is feaseable.
Below 4 mana I only run "value engine" commanders that I to want to bring out asap.
In my playgroup I would say we tend to play 10 plus turns but rarely over 15 turns
That being said I would consider 5 or more mana to be a high costed commander tempo wise.
I have a Gavi cycling deck and that deck gets going way slower than my other decks with lower costed commanders.
If you play a deck with a higher costed commander then your commander should not be central to your deck working but it could include the wincon because you will want that wincon late game rather than early game such as a commander that is central to the engine of the deck working. I play mostly 4 mana commanders and I have one deck with a 3 mana commander which is fine in my playgroup that tends to play around power level 5-6 decks I would say (with power level 3-5 being an unmodified precon depending on which era of precons you are thinking of the precons of last year to this year are pretty dang good out of the box definetly 5-6 power level I would say).
Edit: Yes I know Gavi is the engine of that deck she cost what she cost and I have to accept a slower started tempo with that deck there is not another cycling commander like her lol
I've being playing Commander since '21, at first with proxies and physical since '22. My higher mc commanders where a proxy Nekusar (Joey's list on channel, love it!) which i'm starting to build physical (mc: 5), Omnath locus of creation (mc: 4) and Atraxa preators' voice (mc: 4).
For each of them i have my thoughts. Nekusar blewed a game at turn 6 whithout casting him, got cast Omnath by 18/20 mana just because his etb. Atraxa is more complicated, she's a good blocker 🤣
An insightful episode while I'm building Zacama as a polar opposite to Indoraptor.
My most expensive commander is nethroi in an aristocrats deck. Works out to feeling like im running a game-winning sorcery as a commander
If the deck isn't super commander centric I like the 9-10 pieces of ramp ballpark, then with decks that really are built around having the commander in play Im agreeing with Joey on running close to 14-15 pieces of ramp.
Graaz, unstoppable juggernaut cost 8. My whole strategy is setup, then when graaz comes down, go for the win. Plus I’m running so much ramp I get him out super quickly most of the time
It can work but you have to run far more ramp than you think
HEY I'M #420 LET'S GO. Thanks for all you guys do for this MTG COMMUNITY 👍