This is such a good video for every commander that uses finality counters. I had the exact same thoughts with Mirko, Obsessive Theorist, which is very similar to Winter.
So true. You're better off adding counter spells to protect your beefy reanimation targets. Some amount of this effect is still good, though. Mirko benefits from those cards that turn finality counters into +1/+1 counters and Soul Diviner has a special place I'm my heart
Unless you're using the creature in a combo, finality counters mean nothing. If you're a reanimator deck you'll always have enough creatures to bring back.
@Scienceboy0 that's a good point! The density of threats is really important for any reanimator deck. Cards like hexavus are just really silly, and I love them.
I have found that removing finality counters to help looping Archaomancer, Treefold Thunderhulk or Agent of Treachery is paramount to the deck. If your things with finality counters get removed, Mirko is in shambles. I run Fain, Nesting Grounds, Power Conduit and looads of flicker effects to keep removing the counters and repeating massive etb effects. If anyone is interested I can share the list.
Archidekt's categories helps a lot with this. You can see both what you're trying to do and how hard you're trying to do it so you can evaluate things better
Some great tips in this video, a lot of mistakes I've made myself that I've iterated upon with my decks too. But I honestly just wanted to mention the same enthusiasm you have for Winter here - I purchased the deck at Duskmourn prerelease thinking the face commander was a bit better than people online had been saying he was, and if it ended up being a bust I would try and build around Rendmaw instead. The precon out of the box came with a lot of weird antisynergetic cards, but I was interested enough in upgrading it and giving it another go or two. Two months later, I seriously can't get enough of the deck, and that's coming from someone who doesn't even play that many graveyard-based commander decks. The deck is a blast and I'm still upgrading it to this day - I'm happy to see others who have given the commander a chance and see how fun it is too!!!
The finality counter is exciting because it keeps the player from falling back on repeated game actions with the same targets (while still being a strong effect), adding depth to game play
This is a great reminder for all of us to K.I.S.S. Anikthea had the same issue, and yet I’ve found that living with it instead of fighting it makes the deck better. In Winter’s case, I think you could get away with original Melira and maybe one other “creatures can’t have counters” card, which would have the added bonus of nerfing +1/+1 counters decks. YMMV.
I got cheeky with Anikthea by using things like Omen of Erebos or Eerie Ultimatum. The thing is, though, is that I wasn’t just using them as contingencies for my enchantments, but rather, to give me a way to bring back my card draw pieces. Particularly, cards like Mesa Enchantress can’t be affected by Anikthea’s ability, so these cards were mainly useful for making sure I had access to card draw. Omens being an enchantments with a way to put itself in the gy and EU bringing back all my cards, including cards like lands that I’ve discarded, makes them worth the slot.
Love listening to your channel in the morning while i work. I play and tinker with cube mostly, but I have found that videos like this are equally applicable to that format when considering what archetypes and card slots I need to care about. I have also found myself in trapped by red herrings tons of times when a new cool card gets spoiled, and never had a word or phrase for it until now ❤ Love the content and have applied yalls ideas to both my few edh decks and my most recent commander cube project- look forward to more!
I started down that path originally with Winter. I stopped adding them and kept Nesting Grounds as the only way I have to interact as a cute way to hit an opponent's creature.
Great video! I wish I'd had this advice years ago, when I was building my worst deck ever and it relied on red herring synergies like this. Definitely gonna keep this on hand when I'm giving advice to new players.
bruh its insane how true everything in this video is. I probably would pick him up much sooner if he would be a demon or smth but after picking him up i gotta say: This guy is absolute madness. I love this commander so much. Can't wait to make a proxy tho where he looks cooler ngl xD
I originally put quite a number of creatures that trigger when I cast Instants and Sorceries in my Bria/Prowess deck. You know what that does? it makes tracking the triggers 10x harder. Prowess triggers on an artifact spell but then that doesn’t, but it also has Prowess from Bria, and then there’s four Stormsplitters which have seen three different numbers of noncreature spells, oh and then this thing cares about storm count… it’s a nightmare. If a program was keeping track, sure, but in paper it’s not a fun experience for me or the rest of the pod. I took as many of those out as I could and guess what? it still works just fine, and is way easier to play.
@@rajchua1342 guessing if I link the comment will be filtered so it’s on my Archidekt, username’s Azeria, it’s called ‘Otters & Opportunities’. It still needs a bit more playtesting before I’m totally happy with it and it is aimed at mid-power, it plays well with modern pre-cons, especially slightly upgraded ones.
When i bought this as my first precon i was SO confused why i wasn’t seeing anything about this deck being amazing! The way you can adapt to pretty much any gameplan is awesome
I can back up that Flubs experience, my first draft had a bunch of madness cards but they very quickly ended up on the cutting room floor. I ended up focusing more on casting from anywhere but my hand. Plot, foretell, and "Future Sight" effects worked much better.
Really cool episode. Building different focused deck instead of trying to put all ideas in one is definitely a great advice. Having a Winter deck myself, I am already excited to look into your list!
I had a very similar sort of journey with my relatively new Shilgengar list. In fact, I also initially overdid it with the counter removal synergies. The current version has a small package, but the cards included do other things that serve more important purposes. The other, and I dare say more impactful, red herring of the list though was that I started off with *WAY* too many angels in the deck. Turns out I'm also not alone in this. EDHREC for Shilgengar is more or less angel kindred. But it turns out, the deck played in a way that: 1) It is pretty simple to get to the 6 blood tokens you need, and you really don't need much more than that. Certainly you don't need as many as you have with a whole deck of angels. 2) You kind of only need to do "The Thing" with Shilgengar once, maybe twice, in any given game. It is an explosive effect, and you will get a massive clump of ETB effects that can sometimes win you the game outright, or provide such a huge momentum swing to put you well on your way. And so....When doing "The Thing", you get significantly more of an impact from *Vampire* typal interactions than you do with anything else. When I converted the deck to be much more vampire focused (with a smattering of angels that just happened to work well in the deck), I noticed I didn't even care about the finality counters because I was bringing back SO MUCH and it has such a huge immediate impact on the game.
I also bought the winter precon and have a Zaffai deck and I kinda agree on both. The cool thing about Winter is that he serves as a full package, both fills the graveyard and allows you. I still need to find some cool things to reanimate. And with Zaffai i also think that focusing on the 5 mana spells and churning those elementals before doing a Surge to victory is really effective. Don't do much storm in the deck but i like Demonstrate cards since they give you 2 triggers (Creative technique gives 3 or 4 if you're lucky).
This is good advise for new and old players alike. I personally love trying to fit 3 to 4 themes into a deck and hone it into 1 or 2 as I play and get real reps in with it. For me and my group, this allows me to check how each strategy plays and what I really want to get out of a commander while also letting me power creep up the other players decks. But I love tinkering and the puzzle involved. When I'm done tinkering with a deck, I'm done playing that deck. It's a completed puzzle that goes in a display case.
Glad to see Winter getting some love, one of my favorite decks I've built this year. I too fell away from removing counters, but one that survived was Hexavus, it enters as a 6/6 and it turns counters on other things into +1/+1 counters on him and makes for a great flying beater, plus is 2 types itself. It filled all the roles i could ask for
I have similar thoughts to commanders like Arcades, the Strategist. I was really excited about building Arcades because I love defensive decks. Walls and blocking, yeah, that's my jam! Unfortunately, the stuff that made me better at blocking was often the wrong call in Arcades. What Arcades really wanted was a way to defend it's self from removal, since it quickly became a problem and got hated. So the blocking synergy cards ended up becoming blink cards, to protect pieces and draw cards in the process. Unfortunately, what I ended up with was just an aggro deck that used defenders as beaters, which wasn't actually what I wanted. The much better defensive deck I found was Rigo, Streetwise Mentor. You could run a bunch of 1 mana 0/4's and just fool around swinging for 0, and not making enemies. The shield counter disincentives people from removing him since he usually isn't the most threatening thing on the field, and can safely get blown up once. Best of all, he doesn't tell you to swing out with everything every turn. For full value, you only need to swing with 3 things, meaning you can leave defenders back. Also, drawing 3 cards a turn means you can pretty easily hit your land drops and keep a full hand. It just goes to show that sometimes, a commander that looks like it's trying to do the strategy you want, might not always be the right pick, and it can be important to focus on what your deck is actually doing, versus what you want it to be doing.
The timing of these videos is always crazy, I literally ran into this problem brewing Rendmaw yesterday. Ended up going in so many different directions that I had to start over from scratch LOL
Convergent evolution is a hell of a thing. Awhile back I too concluded that "describe the deck in one sentence" is a good deck building strategy. Especially for me since I'm vulnerable to these types of red herrings. Some of my elevator pitches for decks Dina, Doul Steeper "my gain is your pain" Gisa, the Hellraiser "be gay, do crimes" Doran, Siege Tower "the trees go to war" Omnath, Locus of Rage "landfall go brrr" Imotekh, the Stormlord "you can't keep a good Necron down" Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs "I'm king (monarch) of the hill"
Winter was my favorite Duskmourn commander and I went through this exact same process before I ended up with only nesting grounds as a counter remover in my list. I found more often than not if you put down a big artifact or enchantment early enough opponents cant really deal with it so the finality counter isnt a huge issue. I also think Planes walkers are mostly a trap for winter, outside of grist for the multiple card types because any planeswalker worth reanimating is gonna be so scary your opponents will normally all aggro it out before you get back to your turn to be able to use it.
I appreciate this video a lot! Our brief exchange on bluesky really helped me start to put things in perspective, and I think keeping things simple and straightforward is the best way to proceed with Winter upgrades.
I think Glissa sunslayer is still a solid include in this deck simply because she's versitile in her effects, 1 she's first strike+ deathtouch amazing blocker later in the game or if you have to be defensive, she's card draw, and she's enchantment removal she ALSO just so happens to be able to remove counters if you so choose.
Flubs has always looked like a foretell deck to me. You play it as an ability and can cast it whenever you want at sorcery speed later. Have cards in hand? Foretell each available one, then play your spells. Your later turns the foretell cards are essentially giving you a free draw for casting spells for free doing what flubs already wants to do. The fblthp works in those colors and you could maybe run some storm cards. The storm count won't be super duper high, but it would be enough to get value from the token ones.
Downside of foretell is there are only 30 foretell cards in those colors, and most of them aren't really worth it. I've found casting from exile to be much stronger and reliable. Birgi/Horn, Eruth, and Loot are all amazing with Flubs. Throw in Doc Aurlock to make everything cheap and let your friends go get snacks while you play half the deck
What a great reminder- I'm building Jund Delirium with Xira, the Golden Sting and while it *looks* like you can maybe throw some Insect synergies into the deck as well, I think the deck is better-served without them. Here's the elevator pitch: I mill myself and create never-ending waves of creatures. Thanks, Joey!
As far as removing counters, I would only bother running 2 things: Nesting Grounds because you can put the counters on someone else's stuff, and Aether Snap because it's a niche sweeper that tackles one of the weaknesses I see a lot with reanimator decks- struggling to deal with go-wide strategies. Are there better picks for that sweeper spot? Almost undoubtedly! Despite that, it still significantly alters the boardstate. Many decks these days favor +1/+1 counters over "end of turn" pumps outside of win conditions. The incidental value is nothing to scoff at.
This video reminds me of how I came to the conclusion of my favorite deck. Mono black Chainer was constantly mana starved, always needing more black mana, and I was hitting a limit with things like Nirkana and Crypt Ghast. Then I realized the potential by putting Soldevi Adnate into the deck, and thus put in every effect that kills creatures for mana. And since I milled like mad, I could easily slot in most of the Bloodghast cards, cheap things to throw into mana that I could keep using. Now, the deck is fairly high tuned, it knows what it wants to do and does it well, but still takes a bit since my only tutor effect is Diabolic, leaning into the sac theme, it still gives other decks the chance to play. Overall, a fun game plan!
I learned a similar lesson while I was building my retired Tom Bombadil deck. Because sagas have a lot of ways to interacting with them and its 5 colors allow the complete commander card pool. You can add counters with effects like proliferate, reset them with blink, subtract the counters, run historic-matters cards, run enchantress cards, animate the enchantments, etc etc ad nauseum. There were too many options to include and have a critical mass of sagas.
When I originally built Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin, I wanted to put in goblin synergies. But the actual elevator pitch is "Get Krenko on the field and attacking as quickly as possible while pumping his power."
Talking about the elevator pitch concept reminded me of something I've had to discover the hard way. It is possible to split focus on 2 themes in a deck. The drawback is that you usually can't justify running cards that heavily rely on either theme- you just don't have the support for it. You might end up having to focus on value pieces in each theme and often need very specific effects for your win conditions. For reference, the deck I'm thinking of regarding this lesson is my Marath, Will of the Wild modified creature deck. The goal was to not prioritize counters, auras, or equipment over any of the others, and it's a near impossibility. In its current state, the deck has a lot of cards that overlap those themes, like Tarian's Soulcleaver, Kellen Fae-Blooded, and Ordeal of Nylea.
Funnily enough, i'm in a somewhat similar spot with Zoraline, Cosmos Caller and counter removers in that deck. a lot of that deck is held together by synergy and engine pieces that care about gaining and losing life, and So things like Thrull Parasite and Hex parasite end up having that extra benefit of being able to cause life gain or life loss triggers in addition to their synergies. reanimation also just being a kicker cost on Zoraline means that fthere is less barrier to entry to get the value. also, because I'm getting lower mana value stuff (lunar convocation, soul sisters, doofy bat clerics), I feel that the repeated reanimation is a far more impactful.
I love this video, especially with Zaffai, which is my main deck. It is alot to consider in how im building it up. I currently did move away from the 5 chase in favor of the 10 chase. But im going to look at how it plays going forward with this in mind! Thanks for the video!
My first instance of the “elevator pitch” was actually my most recent deck, Legolas Master Archer” I wanted to play a bunch of fight and green “burn” spells to take advantage and try and trigger legolas’s abilities at the same time. It led to really fun and interactive deck experience that beats face. It barely touches the counter synergy i could have, boiling down to essentially just hardened scales and stocking the pantry, focusing more on keeping Legolas alive so they can accumulate counters and snipe troublesome creatures
Fantastic point. Most of my decks are unfocused because I WANT a little bit of everything. In Winter : flashback, encore, unearth,... But it doesn't work out. Mimeoplasm is such a headache to build as well. Heartless act is cool in Winter though. And colossification was my jankiest pet card 😅
Yeah synergies are great, and then you get too far gone and your deck's game plan is weakened by too much fluff and not having a solid base. I had similar issues with making my energy deck after Modern horizons 3. Using cards to attempt to max out my energy generation, some of which were really weak on their own and horrible top decks. This led to having too few payoffs for all that energy becoming a very painful lesson.
Literally the same issue. Was building an energy deck with the precon commander and switched it to a more etb and energy focus with aggro being the main focus, then shifting to burn to finish the game out.
I recently went too far in the other direction and cut too many synergies for independently strong cards that didn't work with the rest of the deck, and ended up bricking too often
When I made my first deck with Jori En as a commander it was a (mediocre) spellslinger list. I felt like I was way too open for attacks because of the low creature count. Now I run token makers and complement cantrips with cheap interaction since Jori En replaces the interactions that don't draw cards, so the deck has a super fluid "cantrip, draw, interaction, draw for Jori En" wich allows me to fly under the radar and play a tempo spellslinger with multiple ways to finish the game
It also took me playing Winter's ore con deck to take a second look at all the finality counter cards I had been writing off in edh deck building. I'm not really one for reanimator decks anyway but I suddenly sae the appeal of finality counters in it. Reminds me of when I got more comfortable exiling in red. I was more of a fan of red draw than the exile and play until eot. End of NEXT turn sure but eot never seemed like enough time. Then I realized, if I need a card now I'm not gonna lose sleep over whatever else doesn't get played. If it leads to the win in looking for, or an out I need, then it works.
Plebian: Winter has a drawback, the finality counter! Nesting Grounds: Winter has an upside, a finality counter to give to your opponent's value piece before you banish it to the shadow realm! I will admit, I ran into the same Red Herring with Winter like you did. I did wind up keeping Nesting Grounds and Power Conduit in my 99 though. NG is the better of the 2, but can really only be used on your turn, whereas PC can be used at any time once it's out as it's not affected by summoning sickness. In the end I wound up with what I call Golgari Goodstuffs: I can go wide with various token creators that are also viable threats (Rampaging Baloth, Grave Titan) or double as self mill (crawling sensation, crawling infestation), as well as stuff to make my guys bigger and trample like Overrun, Overwhelming Stampede, Demolisher Spawn, etc... But also generally scary threats like Sheoldred Whispering One and Quilled Greatwurm. Toss in a healthy amount of the good old three R's of green-black: reanimation, removal and recursion and you've got a solid decklist. It might not be CEDH, but it's plenty powerful.
I think I want to defend some of these red hearing strategies. With winter as an example you can still run counter removal but I think it requires a bit more build around than just adding the counter removal. On top of the counter removal you would need to run permanents that want there counters removed, that way your cards that just remove counters has utility beyond just removing the finality counters. This can make a deck feel three dimensional and really give the deck an identity that's unique to your deck
I learned something similar with Admiral Brass, Unsinkable. People tend to reccomend a bunch of those type of effects to get rid of the finality counter. I tried some, but they have one main problem: those cards aren't pirates in my pirates deck. So I just run Nesting Grounds, and nothing more.
I know that apprehension you had towards Winter, but Tormod and Kodama made me embrace graveyard self-hate a good while ago. Though in my case the means and ends are backwards, with reanimation being mostly incidental. Also, while I certainly could let Zaffai conjure an army of elementals, that's not nearly as fun as watching my opponents play russian roulette after I give him infect.
I have four different 5-color Commander decks that all play completely differently: Marina Vendrell - Rooms, Dungeons, and Gates. Play some D&D while Exploring a Spooky House. Ulalek, Fused Atrocity - Colorless Eldrazi. Every card is colorless, but it's not just mindless ramp into Titans. Karona, False God - The Town Bike, everyone gets a ride. You will interact with this game whether you want to or not. Kyodai, Soul of Kamigawa - A Formal Complaint Against the Color Identity Rule in Commander. This is a mono-White deck that does mono-White things. All the decklists are on Archidekt, though I don't think UA-cam will let me link them here.
I agree fully with your idea that chasing Zaffai’s 10 mana slot is unnecessary and a red herring. However, it’s very fun to build a deck based around that and try to get those big mana spells going. It’s so fun!
I have a Rona, Herald of Invasion deck. She’s Dimir and taps to loot. I have her as very direct reanimation deck, but so many people keep trying to recommend legendaries to play to take advantage of her untap or pingers to use her flip side. Don’t get me wrong, I have spells that will trigger those effect, but they’re also great cards with my main strategy.
That definitely happened to me before. If I am unsure how impactful a synergy is, I normally test it out with one or two cards in the deck, and if, after a couple of months, the card hasn't proven its worth, I swap it out for something else. Apart from that, I normally try to lean into one or two specific themes to make sure the cards (mostly) synergize with each other.
I got the precon cheap and ive been tinkering with Winter a lot! Haven't had a chance to play it yet thought. For finality characters i just have Nesting Grounds, i like that its a land and Winter can pull it out from the yard.
I have a Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis deck. It is a landfall control deck that helps opponents out occasionally. My elevator pitch for the deck is "A grouphug deck that can actually win :)". Peaks peoples interest, but also causes them to not mess with me a lot because they want to see what the deck does, which makes them lose the game often x)
My mono red Karlach Deck was about extra combats, but after many games and many changes to the deck list now the pitch would be "It's a combat focused storm deck, without storm payoffs." Its a good example for trying to focus on one theme while there are more effective ones right there.
For me it was Vorinclex from the Kaldhiem set. I heard about all the synergy that he has with Planeswalkers, but found that making a stompy hydra deck was a lot more fun
I run Winter in my The Master, Transcendent deck and it’s easily the most powerful card for the deck for the year. Reanimating an Intruder Alarm and then reanimating every creature that was milled that turn and every creature that gets milled there after is pretty good.
Your Winter example is great. Before I even realized there was a precon delirium deck, I had started building my own... but as I own the precon now, too... I own EVERY single delirium card in black/green.... why? Have as many different card types that can build off the delirium... it might get milled or go to graveyard... but at least as many of them as I can can also kick off great delirium things, too 😅. I went all in in one concept...
Gotta be honest, when Joey was talking about removing finality counters, I thought of Thief of Blood. Realistically it would only be good if the board if full of your reanimated creatures so I doubt it's a reasonable card to put in the deck, but it's still fun to think about.
When ive chased a red herring in my decks i pull those whole plans out, of they're 10+ cards, and use that as a core to.a new deck, examples, my chorus of the conclave +1/+1 counter deck had a wurm sub theme thats now a seperate deck, my Queen matchessa used to be tomens, aritocrats, life gain, the life gain got pulled to make my ayli eternal pilgram deck, my adaliez wizard/storm deck is going to become 3 decks, all with adelize at the head, with a wizard typal, storm, and a spell slinger pinger deck. My fav elevator pitch for a deck is my Greta, Sweettooth Scourge food-clues-treasures deck "so, its the deck that gaslights you into having a good time" because you Always have something you can do, may not be powetful but you constantly are doing something
I have this running game theory, I call it “the Graph of Value” on the x axis we have… well X, as in X spells, mana cost, whatever. On the Y axis we have modality; “choose one” spells, spells that do different stuff, that kind of thing. For example, if we wanted to compare a spell like Starstorm to Burn down the house, we can see that if both cast for 5 mana, by being a fixed value burndown the house gets you the same amount of damage as mana spent, 1:1, but while starstorm you get a worse rate, you get the ability to pump it, higher, or better yet you can activate a different mode and cycle it. Meanwhile, the modal option for Burn down the House is you can actually cast it to make some pingers and blockers. How this is all relevant is, you need need need to look at every card in your deck as having both X and Y value. You cant exclusively play spells that solely synergize with one thing, even if that one thing is really really appealing. Unless a spell is so so so powerful that its X is often a game winning effect, (i think the finale spells, torment of hailfires, mass manipulations, etc) that its worth solely investing in as a meatball, you gotta be able to diversify. If you really want to “cook”, the best chefs learn how to make multiple dishes with the same ingredients.
Im running into this exact problem with Black Panther. Of course, the way people initially find to play this deck is Animating your lands and doubling counters by moving them between land creatures with Inkeepers, Doubling Season, or Primal Vigor active. Doing so WOULD give you increasingly an higher healthpool and a potentially unblockable 512/512 or something ridiculous like that, but in doing so you've spent more mana than its worth and drew out your entire library. I feel that Token Generation and smaller land creatures that feel less threatening like Blinkmoth Nexus are a much better way to play because you get to choose at instant speed which of your Soldier tokens are going to get a touchdown on the enemy's healthbar and don't have to worry about your lands getting board wiped in the next Wrath of God, or worse, the next Farewell.
Angel of Suffering is so much fun to play in Winter to fill the grave! My main strategy with Winter is to fill the grave and do a mass recursion with a Gary entering. So satisfy!
I also cut the death tyrant from my Wilhelt deck and replaced it with more aristocrats support. The elevator pitch for that deck would be, "but what if it's zombies... And aristocrats?"
I built a Dogmeat deck and it was really difficult because there wasn't a clear path on how to build it. I was considering several strategies until I decided to make it a graveyard that capitalizes on ETB triggers. It is not a powerful deck by any means, but I managed to make it play smoothly. And contrary to most of my decks it is not commander centric, Dogmeats produces me a graveyard early but after that I'll probably leave him chilling in the graveyard when he attracts a removal.
Sometimes, making a deck that does something like this on purpose is also quite fun, like my Asmoranomardicaistinaculdacar "force-feed my stuffy dolls"-deck.
I ran into something similar making a Zada, Hedron Grinder deck. I was concerned about the lack of good spot removal in mono red, & I felt like a genius running effects like liquimetal coating to turn everything into artifacts I could blow up. I still run a couple, but too many wound up just slowing down the deck's goal of making goblins & drawing cards.
raises hand . as a winter , cynical opportunist user as my main deck i do think he is suuuper slept on ! a good chunk of people at my gameshop keep suggesting to swap him with a different mill golgari commander but like !!! no one else is doing it like him !!!! its so cool !
Funnily enough, Death Toll and Miracle Worker both lead me to making my first two actual graveyard decks, Miracle Worker with Master of Keys after finding out how mind numbingly broken an optimized Aminatou was, putting down Fear of Sleep Paralysis on turn four is quite literally insane. I'd love to see your thoughts on a Master of Keys deck tho, Mr. Resident EDHREC Graveyard Man. I think the X cost makes him a little stand-offish, as you really want to treat him like a 6 mana commander for that juicy mill on etb, but overall I love him for the interesting fusion enchantress and reanimation archetypes that he is. He's also my official Rooms commander, running enough to pull off the Central Elevator wincon once or twice. He's the night shift janitor and he's here to clean up the house.
I had this problem with Zirilan of the claw, so much was devoted to keeping my dragons to hang around but I don't need that. I just need some dragons with powerful ETB and its only going to take a couple of dragons to win the game so I don't have to use thier abilities over and over. I shifted over to making the most of the one activation of my commander rather than amassing dragons, ability doubling, clones and uptapping him. He is 5 mana with a 3 mana activation he wont get more than one chance to shine. Although I still have some cards like Conjurer's Closet, Tel jed Stylus and some utility lands (high market, endless sands) that will prevent my dragons getting exiled.
The example I will submit to you is in my Galea Kindler of Hope deck. It's been suggested that I run the card soothsaying because I care so much about manipulating the top of my library. The problem is that you already get to look at the top card, so you have to pay 2 or more to get any effect.
I have an Eisenhorn deck, the main win con, aside from just damage, is Time Sieve, but I run zero tutors to make it less consistent, then deck also cares about drawing cards. I also am thinking of putting Winter in my Izoni Thousand-Eyed deck, but I need more testing if it wants to stay
With decks like Winter, the unearth Mishra, Anikthea and rare Sauron etc, people dont want to let go of their cards. But learning to let go just makes the decks better lol
I have something similar happen with me trying to build bright-palm. I want to make copies of bright palm so I csn get multiple attack triggers, but that means more "clone/copy" effects and more valuable cards to be copied and less cards that are Synergistic with having their counters doubled.
“Why protect them?..Just make more”- Krenko, Mob Boss
As a krenko player I approve
Yeaaah Boss! 😊 What is this catapult Boss? Uuuu... Aaaaa! 😮
Commander: Rendmaw.
Game plan: Make Birds.
Pitch: I make birds. Kakaw.
The Rendmaw birds can get out of hand so quickly
.... BIRD UP
Commander: Zurgo helmsmasher
Game plan: smash healms
Pitch: I M GOING TO SMASH YOUR HEALM!!!!
Hell yeah! Rendmaw is the first deck I’ve ever built and I’m super proud of it. It sucks, but it’s funny and that’s all that matters
Rendmaw with Hazel in 99... MY birds make mana YOUR birds smack face.
This is such a good video for every commander that uses finality counters. I had the exact same thoughts with Mirko, Obsessive Theorist, which is very similar to Winter.
So true. You're better off adding counter spells to protect your beefy reanimation targets. Some amount of this effect is still good, though. Mirko benefits from those cards that turn finality counters into +1/+1 counters and Soul Diviner has a special place I'm my heart
Unless you're using the creature in a combo, finality counters mean nothing. If you're a reanimator deck you'll always have enough creatures to bring back.
@Scienceboy0 that's a good point! The density of threats is really important for any reanimator deck. Cards like hexavus are just really silly, and I love them.
I have found that removing finality counters to help looping Archaomancer, Treefold Thunderhulk or Agent of Treachery is paramount to the deck. If your things with finality counters get removed, Mirko is in shambles.
I run Fain, Nesting Grounds, Power Conduit and looads of flicker effects to keep removing the counters and repeating massive etb effects.
If anyone is interested I can share the list.
Thanks for this. I was trying to make overly convoluted ways to reanimate creatures in my "Ever Changing 'Dane" deck and this helped me root it out.
Archidekt's categories helps a lot with this. You can see both what you're trying to do and how hard you're trying to do it so you can evaluate things better
Heck yeah, love this! Archidekt categories are one of our favorites ways to sort decklists
Some great tips in this video, a lot of mistakes I've made myself that I've iterated upon with my decks too. But I honestly just wanted to mention the same enthusiasm you have for Winter here - I purchased the deck at Duskmourn prerelease thinking the face commander was a bit better than people online had been saying he was, and if it ended up being a bust I would try and build around Rendmaw instead. The precon out of the box came with a lot of weird antisynergetic cards, but I was interested enough in upgrading it and giving it another go or two. Two months later, I seriously can't get enough of the deck, and that's coming from someone who doesn't even play that many graveyard-based commander decks. The deck is a blast and I'm still upgrading it to this day - I'm happy to see others who have given the commander a chance and see how fun it is too!!!
The finality counter is exciting because it keeps the player from falling back on repeated game actions with the same targets (while still being a strong effect), adding depth to game play
This is a great reminder for all of us to K.I.S.S.
Anikthea had the same issue, and yet I’ve found that living with it instead of fighting it makes the deck better.
In Winter’s case, I think you could get away with original Melira and maybe one other “creatures can’t have counters” card, which would have the added bonus of nerfing +1/+1 counters decks. YMMV.
What's K.I.S.S., and what were you doing with Anikthea?
@ Keep it simple. The second “s” is an old Army term of endearment.
@@AxillaryPower2 it's "Keep it simple stupid"
I got cheeky with Anikthea by using things like Omen of Erebos or Eerie Ultimatum. The thing is, though, is that I wasn’t just using them as contingencies for my enchantments, but rather, to give me a way to bring back my card draw pieces. Particularly, cards like Mesa Enchantress can’t be affected by Anikthea’s ability, so these cards were mainly useful for making sure I had access to card draw. Omens being an enchantments with a way to put itself in the gy and EU bringing back all my cards, including cards like lands that I’ve discarded, makes them worth the slot.
Joey built a graveyard deck who would’ve seen that coming 😂
Love listening to your channel in the morning while i work. I play and tinker with cube mostly, but I have found that videos like this are equally applicable to that format when considering what archetypes and card slots I need to care about. I have also found myself in trapped by red herrings tons of times when a new cool card gets spoiled, and never had a word or phrase for it until now ❤
Love the content and have applied yalls ideas to both my few edh decks and my most recent commander cube project- look forward to more!
I started down that path originally with Winter. I stopped adding them and kept Nesting Grounds as the only way I have to interact as a cute way to hit an opponent's creature.
Great video! I wish I'd had this advice years ago, when I was building my worst deck ever and it relied on red herring synergies like this. Definitely gonna keep this on hand when I'm giving advice to new players.
bruh its insane how true everything in this video is. I probably would pick him up much sooner if he would be a demon or smth but after picking him up i gotta say: This guy is absolute madness. I love this commander so much. Can't wait to make a proxy tho where he looks cooler ngl xD
I originally put quite a number of creatures that trigger when I cast Instants and Sorceries in my Bria/Prowess deck. You know what that does? it makes tracking the triggers 10x harder. Prowess triggers on an artifact spell but then that doesn’t, but it also has Prowess from Bria, and then there’s four Stormsplitters which have seen three different numbers of noncreature spells, oh and then this thing cares about storm count… it’s a nightmare. If a program was keeping track, sure, but in paper it’s not a fun experience for me or the rest of the pod. I took as many of those out as I could and guess what? it still works just fine, and is way easier to play.
I'd love to see your decklist!
@@rajchua1342 guessing if I link the comment will be filtered so it’s on my Archidekt, username’s Azeria, it’s called ‘Otters & Opportunities’.
It still needs a bit more playtesting before I’m totally happy with it and it is aimed at mid-power, it plays well with modern pre-cons, especially slightly upgraded ones.
When i bought this as my first precon i was SO confused why i wasn’t seeing anything about this deck being amazing! The way you can adapt to pretty much any gameplan is awesome
I can back up that Flubs experience, my first draft had a bunch of madness cards but they very quickly ended up on the cutting room floor. I ended up focusing more on casting from anywhere but my hand. Plot, foretell, and "Future Sight" effects worked much better.
"I feed a pirate rocks and shoot him out of a cannon" -Toggo, Goblin Weaponsmith & Dargo, the Shipwrecker
Really cool episode. Building different focused deck instead of trying to put all ideas in one is definitely a great advice.
Having a Winter deck myself, I am already excited to look into your list!
I had a very similar sort of journey with my relatively new Shilgengar list. In fact, I also initially overdid it with the counter removal synergies. The current version has a small package, but the cards included do other things that serve more important purposes.
The other, and I dare say more impactful, red herring of the list though was that I started off with *WAY* too many angels in the deck. Turns out I'm also not alone in this. EDHREC for Shilgengar is more or less angel kindred. But it turns out, the deck played in a way that:
1) It is pretty simple to get to the 6 blood tokens you need, and you really don't need much more than that. Certainly you don't need as many as you have with a whole deck of angels.
2) You kind of only need to do "The Thing" with Shilgengar once, maybe twice, in any given game. It is an explosive effect, and you will get a massive clump of ETB effects that can sometimes win you the game outright, or provide such a huge momentum swing to put you well on your way. And so....When doing "The Thing", you get significantly more of an impact from *Vampire* typal interactions than you do with anything else.
When I converted the deck to be much more vampire focused (with a smattering of angels that just happened to work well in the deck), I noticed I didn't even care about the finality counters because I was bringing back SO MUCH and it has such a huge immediate impact on the game.
one if the best topics you have covered in a year great job! 👍🏻
Yay! Thank you!
I also bought the winter precon and have a Zaffai deck and I kinda agree on both. The cool thing about Winter is that he serves as a full package, both fills the graveyard and allows you. I still need to find some cool things to reanimate. And with Zaffai i also think that focusing on the 5 mana spells and churning those elementals before doing a Surge to victory is really effective. Don't do much storm in the deck but i like Demonstrate cards since they give you 2 triggers (Creative technique gives 3 or 4 if you're lucky).
This is good advise for new and old players alike.
I personally love trying to fit 3 to 4 themes into a deck and hone it into 1 or 2 as I play and get real reps in with it.
For me and my group, this allows me to check how each strategy plays and what I really want to get out of a commander while also letting me power creep up the other players decks.
But I love tinkering and the puzzle involved. When I'm done tinkering with a deck, I'm done playing that deck. It's a completed puzzle that goes in a display case.
Glad to see Winter getting some love, one of my favorite decks I've built this year. I too fell away from removing counters, but one that survived was Hexavus, it enters as a 6/6 and it turns counters on other things into +1/+1 counters on him and makes for a great flying beater, plus is 2 types itself. It filled all the roles i could ask for
I have similar thoughts to commanders like Arcades, the Strategist. I was really excited about building Arcades because I love defensive decks. Walls and blocking, yeah, that's my jam! Unfortunately, the stuff that made me better at blocking was often the wrong call in Arcades. What Arcades really wanted was a way to defend it's self from removal, since it quickly became a problem and got hated. So the blocking synergy cards ended up becoming blink cards, to protect pieces and draw cards in the process. Unfortunately, what I ended up with was just an aggro deck that used defenders as beaters, which wasn't actually what I wanted. The much better defensive deck I found was Rigo, Streetwise Mentor. You could run a bunch of 1 mana 0/4's and just fool around swinging for 0, and not making enemies. The shield counter disincentives people from removing him since he usually isn't the most threatening thing on the field, and can safely get blown up once. Best of all, he doesn't tell you to swing out with everything every turn. For full value, you only need to swing with 3 things, meaning you can leave defenders back. Also, drawing 3 cards a turn means you can pretty easily hit your land drops and keep a full hand. It just goes to show that sometimes, a commander that looks like it's trying to do the strategy you want, might not always be the right pick, and it can be important to focus on what your deck is actually doing, versus what you want it to be doing.
The timing of these videos is always crazy, I literally ran into this problem brewing Rendmaw yesterday. Ended up going in so many different directions that I had to start over from scratch LOL
Removing counters cards is a classic example of a "win more" card
Convergent evolution is a hell of a thing. Awhile back I too concluded that "describe the deck in one sentence" is a good deck building strategy. Especially for me since I'm vulnerable to these types of red herrings.
Some of my elevator pitches for decks
Dina, Doul Steeper "my gain is your pain"
Gisa, the Hellraiser "be gay, do crimes"
Doran, Siege Tower "the trees go to war"
Omnath, Locus of Rage "landfall go brrr"
Imotekh, the Stormlord "you can't keep a good Necron down"
Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs "I'm king (monarch) of the hill"
Winter was my favorite Duskmourn commander and I went through this exact same process before I ended up with only nesting grounds as a counter remover in my list. I found more often than not if you put down a big artifact or enchantment early enough opponents cant really deal with it so the finality counter isnt a huge issue. I also think Planes walkers are mostly a trap for winter, outside of grist for the multiple card types because any planeswalker worth reanimating is gonna be so scary your opponents will normally all aggro it out before you get back to your turn to be able to use it.
Joey, you look a Swol as JLK in this cover photo. Well done
I appreciate this video a lot! Our brief exchange on bluesky really helped me start to put things in perspective, and I think keeping things simple and straightforward is the best way to proceed with Winter upgrades.
My Thalisse elevator pitch:
“Make tokens, turn them sideways.”
I think Glissa sunslayer is still a solid include in this deck simply because she's versitile in her effects, 1 she's first strike+ deathtouch amazing blocker later in the game or if you have to be defensive, she's card draw, and she's enchantment removal she ALSO just so happens to be able to remove counters if you so choose.
Esika/Prismatic Bridge Pitch: "Surprise, it's Progenitus and only Progenitus!!"
Flubs has always looked like a foretell deck to me. You play it as an ability and can cast it whenever you want at sorcery speed later. Have cards in hand? Foretell each available one, then play your spells. Your later turns the foretell cards are essentially giving you a free draw for casting spells for free doing what flubs already wants to do. The fblthp works in those colors and you could maybe run some storm cards. The storm count won't be super duper high, but it would be enough to get value from the token ones.
Downside of foretell is there are only 30 foretell cards in those colors, and most of them aren't really worth it. I've found casting from exile to be much stronger and reliable. Birgi/Horn, Eruth, and Loot are all amazing with Flubs. Throw in Doc Aurlock to make everything cheap and let your friends go get snacks while you play half the deck
Fantastic insights as always. It’s too easy to start going down those interesting paths and create a mess of spaghetti in your deck!
What a great reminder- I'm building Jund Delirium with Xira, the Golden Sting and while it *looks* like you can maybe throw some Insect synergies into the deck as well, I think the deck is better-served without them. Here's the elevator pitch: I mill myself and create never-ending waves of creatures. Thanks, Joey!
As far as removing counters, I would only bother running 2 things: Nesting Grounds because you can put the counters on someone else's stuff, and Aether Snap because it's a niche sweeper that tackles one of the weaknesses I see a lot with reanimator decks- struggling to deal with go-wide strategies. Are there better picks for that sweeper spot? Almost undoubtedly! Despite that, it still significantly alters the boardstate. Many decks these days favor +1/+1 counters over "end of turn" pumps outside of win conditions. The incidental value is nothing to scoff at.
This video reminds me of how I came to the conclusion of my favorite deck. Mono black Chainer was constantly mana starved, always needing more black mana, and I was hitting a limit with things like Nirkana and Crypt Ghast. Then I realized the potential by putting Soldevi Adnate into the deck, and thus put in every effect that kills creatures for mana. And since I milled like mad, I could easily slot in most of the Bloodghast cards, cheap things to throw into mana that I could keep using. Now, the deck is fairly high tuned, it knows what it wants to do and does it well, but still takes a bit since my only tutor effect is Diabolic, leaning into the sac theme, it still gives other decks the chance to play. Overall, a fun game plan!
I'm building monoblack Chainer too and I'm taking notes!
I learned a similar lesson while I was building my retired Tom Bombadil deck.
Because sagas have a lot of ways to interacting with them and its 5 colors allow the complete commander card pool.
You can add counters with effects like proliferate, reset them with blink, subtract the counters, run historic-matters cards, run enchantress cards, animate the enchantments, etc etc ad nauseum. There were too many options to include and have a critical mass of sagas.
One of my favourites:
Wernog and Cecily try to uncover the mystery that unfolds in Innistrad
When I originally built Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin, I wanted to put in goblin synergies. But the actual elevator pitch is "Get Krenko on the field and attacking as quickly as possible while pumping his power."
Talking about the elevator pitch concept reminded me of something I've had to discover the hard way. It is possible to split focus on 2 themes in a deck. The drawback is that you usually can't justify running cards that heavily rely on either theme- you just don't have the support for it. You might end up having to focus on value pieces in each theme and often need very specific effects for your win conditions.
For reference, the deck I'm thinking of regarding this lesson is my Marath, Will of the Wild modified creature deck. The goal was to not prioritize counters, auras, or equipment over any of the others, and it's a near impossibility. In its current state, the deck has a lot of cards that overlap those themes, like Tarian's Soulcleaver, Kellen Fae-Blooded, and Ordeal of Nylea.
So cool that you made this video. I also love my Winter Deck,it is soooo much fu
Funnily enough, i'm in a somewhat similar spot with Zoraline, Cosmos Caller and counter removers in that deck. a lot of that deck is held together by synergy and engine pieces that care about gaining and losing life, and So things like Thrull Parasite and Hex parasite end up having that extra benefit of being able to cause life gain or life loss triggers in addition to their synergies. reanimation also just being a kicker cost on Zoraline means that fthere is less barrier to entry to get the value. also, because I'm getting lower mana value stuff (lunar convocation, soul sisters, doofy bat clerics), I feel that the repeated reanimation is a far more impactful.
I love this video, especially with Zaffai, which is my main deck. It is alot to consider in how im building it up. I currently did move away from the 5 chase in favor of the 10 chase. But im going to look at how it plays going forward with this in mind! Thanks for the video!
Elevator pitch: “my deck does what joey says it does”
lol I used your Baby Lasagna, Shorikai, and Tovolar deck lists and I love them
Where can I find the Tovolar list?
My first instance of the “elevator pitch” was actually my most recent deck, Legolas Master Archer” I wanted to play a bunch of fight and green “burn” spells to take advantage and try and trigger legolas’s abilities at the same time. It led to really fun and interactive deck experience that beats face. It barely touches the counter synergy i could have, boiling down to essentially just hardened scales and stocking the pantry, focusing more on keeping Legolas alive so they can accumulate counters and snipe troublesome creatures
Fantastic point. Most of my decks are unfocused because I WANT a little bit of everything. In Winter : flashback, encore, unearth,... But it doesn't work out. Mimeoplasm is such a headache to build as well. Heartless act is cool in Winter though. And colossification was my jankiest pet card 😅
Yeah synergies are great, and then you get too far gone and your deck's game plan is weakened by too much fluff and not having a solid base. I had similar issues with making my energy deck after Modern horizons 3. Using cards to attempt to max out my energy generation, some of which were really weak on their own and horrible top decks. This led to having too few payoffs for all that energy becoming a very painful lesson.
Literally the same issue. Was building an energy deck with the precon commander and switched it to a more etb and energy focus with aggro being the main focus, then shifting to burn to finish the game out.
I recently went too far in the other direction and cut too many synergies for independently strong cards that didn't work with the rest of the deck, and ended up bricking too often
When I made my first deck with Jori En as a commander it was a (mediocre) spellslinger list. I felt like I was way too open for attacks because of the low creature count. Now I run token makers and complement cantrips with cheap interaction since Jori En replaces the interactions that don't draw cards, so the deck has a super fluid "cantrip, draw, interaction, draw for Jori En" wich allows me to fly under the radar and play a tempo spellslinger with multiple ways to finish the game
It also took me playing Winter's ore con deck to take a second look at all the finality counter cards I had been writing off in edh deck building. I'm not really one for reanimator decks anyway but I suddenly sae the appeal of finality counters in it.
Reminds me of when I got more comfortable exiling in red. I was more of a fan of red draw than the exile and play until eot. End of NEXT turn sure but eot never seemed like enough time. Then I realized, if I need a card now I'm not gonna lose sleep over whatever else doesn't get played. If it leads to the win in looking for, or an out I need, then it works.
Plebian: Winter has a drawback, the finality counter!
Nesting Grounds: Winter has an upside, a finality counter to give to your opponent's value piece before you banish it to the shadow realm!
I will admit, I ran into the same Red Herring with Winter like you did. I did wind up keeping Nesting Grounds and Power Conduit in my 99 though. NG is the better of the 2, but can really only be used on your turn, whereas PC can be used at any time once it's out as it's not affected by summoning sickness.
In the end I wound up with what I call Golgari Goodstuffs: I can go wide with various token creators that are also viable threats (Rampaging Baloth, Grave Titan) or double as self mill (crawling sensation, crawling infestation), as well as stuff to make my guys bigger and trample like Overrun, Overwhelming Stampede, Demolisher Spawn, etc... But also generally scary threats like Sheoldred Whispering One and Quilled Greatwurm. Toss in a healthy amount of the good old three R's of green-black: reanimation, removal and recursion and you've got a solid decklist. It might not be CEDH, but it's plenty powerful.
This is my favorite precon. So much fun to play
I'd recommend slippery bogbonder and put all the finality counters on one thing you dont mind losing.
I adore Winter as a commander. The art is amazing, and the effect is never what people expect it to be.
Now I want to brew Winter. Thanks a lot, Joey
I think I want to defend some of these red hearing strategies. With winter as an example you can still run counter removal but I think it requires a bit more build around than just adding the counter removal. On top of the counter removal you would need to run permanents that want there counters removed, that way your cards that just remove counters has utility beyond just removing the finality counters. This can make a deck feel three dimensional and really give the deck an identity that's unique to your deck
I learned something similar with Admiral Brass, Unsinkable. People tend to reccomend a bunch of those type of effects to get rid of the finality counter. I tried some, but they have one main problem: those cards aren't pirates in my pirates deck. So I just run Nesting Grounds, and nothing more.
I know that apprehension you had towards Winter, but Tormod and Kodama made me embrace graveyard self-hate a good while ago. Though in my case the means and ends are backwards, with reanimation being mostly incidental.
Also, while I certainly could let Zaffai conjure an army of elementals, that's not nearly as fun as watching my opponents play russian roulette after I give him infect.
I have four different 5-color Commander decks that all play completely differently:
Marina Vendrell - Rooms, Dungeons, and Gates. Play some D&D while Exploring a Spooky House.
Ulalek, Fused Atrocity - Colorless Eldrazi. Every card is colorless, but it's not just mindless ramp into Titans.
Karona, False God - The Town Bike, everyone gets a ride. You will interact with this game whether you want to or not.
Kyodai, Soul of Kamigawa - A Formal Complaint Against the Color Identity Rule in Commander. This is a mono-White deck that does mono-White things.
All the decklists are on Archidekt, though I don't think UA-cam will let me link them here.
This makes me want to tinker with my Ghyrson Starn deck. Elevator pitch? "I wanna ping everything and everyone for one but actually three."
I agree fully with your idea that chasing Zaffai’s 10 mana slot is unnecessary and a red herring. However, it’s very fun to build a deck based around that and try to get those big mana spells going. It’s so fun!
I have a Rona, Herald of Invasion deck. She’s Dimir and taps to loot. I have her as very direct reanimation deck, but so many people keep trying to recommend legendaries to play to take advantage of her untap or pingers to use her flip side. Don’t get me wrong, I have spells that will trigger those effect, but they’re also great cards with my main strategy.
Another good example!
That definitely happened to me before. If I am unsure how impactful a synergy is, I normally test it out with one or two cards in the deck, and if, after a couple of months, the card hasn't proven its worth, I swap it out for something else. Apart from that, I normally try to lean into one or two specific themes to make sure the cards (mostly) synergize with each other.
I got the precon cheap and ive been tinkering with Winter a lot! Haven't had a chance to play it yet thought.
For finality characters i just have Nesting Grounds, i like that its a land and Winter can pull it out from the yard.
I run Winter in my Disa goyf deck, and every time I cast it I have a blast!
I have a Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis deck. It is a landfall control deck that helps opponents out occasionally. My elevator pitch for the deck is "A grouphug deck that can actually win :)". Peaks peoples interest, but also causes them to not mess with me a lot because they want to see what the deck does, which makes them lose the game often x)
My mono red Karlach Deck was about extra combats, but after many games and many changes to the deck list now the pitch would be "It's a combat focused storm deck, without storm payoffs." Its a good example for trying to focus on one theme while there are more effective ones right there.
For me it was Vorinclex from the Kaldhiem set. I heard about all the synergy that he has with Planeswalkers, but found that making a stompy hydra deck was a lot more fun
I run Winter in my The Master, Transcendent deck and it’s easily the most powerful card for the deck for the year. Reanimating an Intruder Alarm and then reanimating every creature that was milled that turn and every creature that gets milled there after is pretty good.
"Pump then cast big X-spells"
For Vadrik, Astral Archmage
Your Winter example is great. Before I even realized there was a precon delirium deck, I had started building my own... but as I own the precon now, too... I own EVERY single delirium card in black/green.... why? Have as many different card types that can build off the delirium... it might get milled or go to graveyard... but at least as many of them as I can can also kick off great delirium things, too 😅. I went all in in one concept...
Gotta be honest, when Joey was talking about removing finality counters, I thought of Thief of Blood. Realistically it would only be good if the board if full of your reanimated creatures so I doubt it's a reasonable card to put in the deck, but it's still fun to think about.
Winter sounds like a fun commander and a fun addition for Baba Lysaga... The idea of brewing up cards live is so funny
This made me rethink my Mirko deck
When ive chased a red herring in my decks i pull those whole plans out, of they're 10+ cards, and use that as a core to.a new deck, examples, my chorus of the conclave +1/+1 counter deck had a wurm sub theme thats now a seperate deck, my Queen matchessa used to be tomens, aritocrats, life gain, the life gain got pulled to make my ayli eternal pilgram deck, my adaliez wizard/storm deck is going to become 3 decks, all with adelize at the head, with a wizard typal, storm, and a spell slinger pinger deck.
My fav elevator pitch for a deck is my Greta, Sweettooth Scourge food-clues-treasures deck "so, its the deck that gaslights you into having a good time" because you Always have something you can do, may not be powetful but you constantly are doing something
I have this running game theory, I call it “the Graph of Value” on the x axis we have… well X, as in X spells, mana cost, whatever. On the Y axis we have modality; “choose one” spells, spells that do different stuff, that kind of thing. For example, if we wanted to compare a spell like Starstorm to Burn down the house, we can see that if both cast for 5 mana, by being a fixed value burndown the house gets you the same amount of damage as mana spent, 1:1, but while starstorm you get a worse rate, you get the ability to pump it, higher, or better yet you can activate a different mode and cycle it. Meanwhile, the modal option for Burn down the House is you can actually cast it to make some pingers and blockers.
How this is all relevant is, you need need need to look at every card in your deck as having both X and Y value. You cant exclusively play spells that solely synergize with one thing, even if that one thing is really really appealing. Unless a spell is so so so powerful that its X is often a game winning effect, (i think the finale spells, torment of hailfires, mass manipulations, etc) that its worth solely investing in as a meatball, you gotta be able to diversify.
If you really want to “cook”, the best chefs learn how to make multiple dishes with the same ingredients.
Im running into this exact problem with Black Panther. Of course, the way people initially find to play this deck is Animating your lands and doubling counters by moving them between land creatures with Inkeepers, Doubling Season, or Primal Vigor active. Doing so WOULD give you increasingly an higher healthpool and a potentially unblockable 512/512 or something ridiculous like that, but in doing so you've spent more mana than its worth and drew out your entire library. I feel that Token Generation and smaller land creatures that feel less threatening like Blinkmoth Nexus are a much better way to play because you get to choose at instant speed which of your Soldier tokens are going to get a touchdown on the enemy's healthbar and don't have to worry about your lands getting board wiped in the next Wrath of God, or worse, the next Farewell.
Angel of Suffering is so much fun to play in Winter to fill the grave! My main strategy with Winter is to fill the grave and do a mass recursion with a Gary entering. So satisfy!
I also cut the death tyrant from my Wilhelt deck and replaced it with more aristocrats support.
The elevator pitch for that deck would be, "but what if it's zombies... And aristocrats?"
Nesting Grounds is cool because its just a land slot but I also like Heartless Act because it can also just be removal.
RB Chainer’s elevator pitch:
Red black putting creature into play from the graveyard.
My elevator pitch for most of my decks is usually, "Can I metagame this jank [insert random words] to win maybe once before taking it apart?"
I built a Dogmeat deck and it was really difficult because there wasn't a clear path on how to build it. I was considering several strategies until I decided to make it a graveyard that capitalizes on ETB triggers. It is not a powerful deck by any means, but I managed to make it play smoothly. And contrary to most of my decks it is not commander centric, Dogmeats produces me a graveyard early but after that I'll probably leave him chilling in the graveyard when he attracts a removal.
Sometimes, making a deck that does something like this on purpose is also quite fun, like my Asmoranomardicaistinaculdacar "force-feed my stuffy dolls"-deck.
I ran into something similar making a Zada, Hedron Grinder deck. I was concerned about the lack of good spot removal in mono red, & I felt like a genius running effects like liquimetal coating to turn everything into artifacts I could blow up. I still run a couple, but too many wound up just slowing down the deck's goal of making goblins & drawing cards.
raises hand . as a winter , cynical opportunist user as my main deck i do think he is suuuper slept on ! a good chunk of people at my gameshop keep suggesting to swap him with a different mill golgari commander but like !!! no one else is doing it like him !!!! its so cool !
Funnily enough, Death Toll and Miracle Worker both lead me to making my first two actual graveyard decks, Miracle Worker with Master of Keys after finding out how mind numbingly broken an optimized Aminatou was, putting down Fear of Sleep Paralysis on turn four is quite literally insane. I'd love to see your thoughts on a Master of Keys deck tho, Mr. Resident EDHREC Graveyard Man. I think the X cost makes him a little stand-offish, as you really want to treat him like a 6 mana commander for that juicy mill on etb, but overall I love him for the interesting fusion enchantress and reanimation archetypes that he is. He's also my official Rooms commander, running enough to pull off the Central Elevator wincon once or twice. He's the night shift janitor and he's here to clean up the house.
Have you thought about Destined // Lead? Works like a You Look Upon the Tarrasque but is two card typed in the graveyard.
I had this problem with Zirilan of the claw, so much was devoted to keeping my dragons to hang around but I don't need that. I just need some dragons with powerful ETB and its only going to take a couple of dragons to win the game so I don't have to use thier abilities over and over. I shifted over to making the most of the one activation of my commander rather than amassing dragons, ability doubling, clones and uptapping him. He is 5 mana with a 3 mana activation he wont get more than one chance to shine. Although I still have some cards like Conjurer's Closet, Tel jed Stylus and some utility lands (high market, endless sands) that will prevent my dragons getting exiled.
The example I will submit to you is in my Galea Kindler of Hope deck. It's been suggested that I run the card soothsaying because I care so much about manipulating the top of my library. The problem is that you already get to look at the top card, so you have to pay 2 or more to get any effect.
I have an Eisenhorn deck, the main win con, aside from just damage, is Time Sieve, but I run zero tutors to make it less consistent, then deck also cares about drawing cards. I also am thinking of putting Winter in my Izoni Thousand-Eyed deck, but I need more testing if it wants to stay
With decks like Winter, the unearth Mishra, Anikthea and rare Sauron etc, people dont want to let go of their cards. But learning to let go just makes the decks better lol
I also have Precon Winter and I keep him base power as people are more likely to let him through for his attack trigger if just 2 damage
Can we get a video on your winter deck? I'd love to see some more about it
2:41 SANDWURM CONVERGENCE MENTIONED RAAHHHHH
I have something similar happen with me trying to build bright-palm. I want to make copies of bright palm so I csn get multiple attack triggers, but that means more "clone/copy" effects and more valuable cards to be copied and less cards that are Synergistic with having their counters doubled.
4:30 I'd like to make a correction here. The deck is actually Black-Green instead of Red.☝️🤓
I've had this issue with Faldorn. It has taken forever to get it to the point where it is streamlined and does the thing
I had this with the Marvo deck I made last week, trying to do too much topdecking when really I just needed to up the average cmc 😂