Hitting the nail on the head right here. Like talk about archetypes and synergy plays rather than Three Visits, Farewell, and T-Pro being the most important cards in the format and if you can't play those then your deck is just hot garbage.
100% agree that Crim was only one accounting for 2 color cards NOT counting the potential commanders themselves (whether they are used as the commander or as a backup effect). There are several pairs where their 2 color cards vastly increase their potential but Idk how much that would change their overall ranking. If anything I think it'd make most of the C's into B's and Izzet low A.
Crim and Richard are almost answering different questions here: Crim is ranking based on the deck archetypes present in each colour pair, while Richard is focused on the best staples that each pair can play. Neither of those is necessarily the wrong approach, but it led to pretty incompatible lists between the two of them.
I'm with Crim. Judging color pairs should include commander synergies, archetype support, and gold cards. Judging based entirely on staples would imply that every deck is only a 'good stuff' pile.
@MakeVarahHappen Yeah, when you build a bunch of decks over a short period of time things tend to get standardized. To be fair, I think that Richard and Tomer build decks that way. They take a framework and build it out to fit the theme. Seth seems like he builds a goofy deck first and then trys to stuff the 'good stuff' in the gaps. Crim's decks all look like he had a plan going in and, like Seth, put in as much support as he could fit it.
I'd love to see a color revenge arc episode where each player takes the color combo they think got disrespected the most and show how busted those color combos are.
what i heard is: orzhov is kinda mid, it just has the best removal, and second best ramp, and it does literally everything, best protection, really good card advantage and it has combo potential, and it . . .
Richard mentions that black isn't adding anything to Golgari. I'd say that black shores up some of green's biggest weaknesses, and green shores up some of black's greatest weaknesses. Green, great for ramp. Black awful for ramp except for coffers or mana doublers like Nirkana Revenant. Good thing Crop Rotation and such exists to find that coffers/urborg. Green, great for artifact/enchantment removal. Black awful for artifact/enchantment removal. Black, great for creature removal/boardwipes. Green awful for creature removal (yes fight spells exist, but it can fizzle on the stack if the creature fighting is removed in response, so it's not unconditional). Green and Black are both great at draw (which unlike White/Green for ramp where one wants you behind another wants you ahead), actually complements each other well, because you get great options for drawing a mass amount of cards, or drawing the best card amongst the top X cards of the library (milling the rest), or tutoring the best thing in your deck through generic black tutors or creature tutors via green, along with having the best generic selection in the graveyard as a second hand. No other color combination is better at consistently getting one card into play from the 99 whether deck/hand/graveyard on a more consistent game-to-game basis. Even considering its weakness to graveyard removal, the most common graveyard control is enchantments/artifacts, which green is able to answer. The primary thing "holding back" Golgari is the sameyness of the decks, like Izzet being primarily spellslingery and caring more about the spells in the 99. Some Golgari decks will be more drain focused (Dina, Soul Steeper), or more lands focused (Gitrog Monster), or reanimator (Meren of Clan Nel Toth), so outside of Elfball tribal, the cards generally just wants stuff dying/sacrificing/graveyard in some way. So it can feel dull when trying to theorycraft a new golgari deck since primarily the function and cards will be similar.
Golgari is better than Simic in my opinion. You get the best ramp (green) and the best draw (black) while making use of everything. Green allows black to efficiently kill enchantments and artifacts. Black allows green to do something worthwhile with all the mana by providing endless ways to kill, draw and resurrect things. You also get hands down the best lands-synergies, because you can run both Yavimaya and Urborg in an on-color deck.
Richard: "Simic isn't S tier because it lacks single target interaction." Also Richard: "Don't play swords to Plowshares." I can tell you, Richard, that my days of not taking you seriously have definitely come to a middle.
For these videos can we PLEASE get the missing members ratings. I would love to hear phils opinions on this even if its just a short note with a grading.
If you genuinely stack up mono blue to all the other mono colors it has legitimately been outshined, as far as casual commander goes. If I am playing a mono white, mono black, or mono green deck, I assure you on average I am drawing more cards than my mono blue friend. The only exception is mono red, of course. And once you pair any two of those three colors I mentioned together, forget it. Magic is at a point where blue genuinely needs help from the other colors to draw ludicrous cards and actually keep up. Usually when people think of blue having insane card draw they are thinking of Simic, Izzet, or some NON-mono-blue option. I'm not saying you CAN'T get insane card draw in mono blue of course, I'm just saying it isn't nearly as consistent as the others. All the colors other than red can stand completely on their own for insane card draw.
@godlyMike127 you are smoking some good shit. Green is the only one even close to blue and green is conditional. If your behind in green with an empty board you aren't drawing anything. Blue can blast huge x draw spells, double draws, and draw multiple cards for cheaper with no restrictions better than any other color. Plus rhystic study & con sphinx are insane.
@@Jrizzle7426 It isn't 2018 anymore. Card advantage is just stapled to so many already good cards nowadays that you don't need to run many pure card draw spells when everything replaces itself. Rhystic Study is obv good, but past that you need to be in simic to take advantage of the huge pure card draw spells
@OuterCraft I have 2 mono blue commanders and I draw insane cards. Jin gitaxis progress tyrant and braids. Jin it's easy to draw nutty cards. Braids relies on the good ol stuff from back in the day, but it works very well. Brainstorm, braingeyser, stroke of genius plus all the combat draw stuff like bident of thassa etc. It's still king of card draw in mono colors. Blue has the value stuff too. Drawing for casting instants and sorcereries is becoming a fairly common effect and blue plays alot of said card types.
@@scottb5928 I categorize card draw/advantage and rank them like this (in order of strongest to weakest). 1. Ultra Staples (Rhystic Study, Mystic Remora, Trouble in Pairs, etc.) This is referring to cards you can just windmill slam into any deck. 2. Synergy (drawing cards by doing what the deck does like with Tatyova) 3. Burst card draw. Usually 3 mana=3 cards like Painful Truths or Secrets of the Golden City but other stuff could count like Stinging Study. Often card for card. 4. "Technically" card advantage. Often synergy but not necessarily. Like Village Rites is technically a 2 for 2 but the sac could generate more advantage or Eternal Witness which doesn't draw and only gets you 1 card. 5. Mass card draw. I consider it the worst because you're usually only getting away with it in Simic/Simic style decks. But yeah. Draw a ton of cards at once like 7+. Also makes you a target if you can't immediately back it up. If you compile what each color is capable of consistently and has good options for, you end up with Blue actually being very good. Blue kinda lacks synergy card draw but not by a lot. It lacks in the "technically" card advantage category quite a bit. But it's actually phenomenal in the other 3. Even having the greater sum of ultra staples. Also seriously don't underestimate burst card draw. It's extremely good. My Mono Blue Octavia deck never even comes close to starving for cards. Like having 5 cards in hand at 1 time is low for that deck. Edit: Just adding that Blue is the best at card selection for card draw. Cards like Dig Through Time and Narset, Parter of Veils. A sizable amount of these card selection card draw spells aren't great, but there are some true bangers.
Hot take?: I thknk black's biggest benefit to removal in multicolour decks is the access to multicolour spells (like Anguished Unmaking or Assassin's Trophy), not the actual mono black cards. The only things it really brings to the table are Oubliette and edicts. White has better sweepers and its single target hits anything (plus easier exile removal), along with Darksteel Mutation as a second Oubliette. Blue keeps things off the stack and outpaces black on creature removal with Rapid Hybridization effects. Imprisoned in the Moon is another Oubliette backup. Bounce effects handle anything that hits the board in a pinch Red is the only place black removal can shine, because red removal is just so bad (except for artifacts), though neither hit enchanments anywhere near satisfactorily. Green matches white with artifact and enchantment removal, and the Golgari spells are just more flexible kill spells.
I always feel like if you have a pairing with Black, Black always becomes the support color. But on it's own in mono-color, Black is the strongest individual color. Black can do everything every other color can do, but you have to pay life. The problem is that all the black ramp only makes Black mana and the really good cards (like Necropotence or Meathook) are *heavy* in Black symbols.
I feel like Selesnya gets the same kind of bad rap that Golgari does. White and Black can accomplish pretty much exactly the same things for Green that the other color can. I’m not saying that Golgari isn’t the stronger Identity, but many of the same strengths and shoring up of weaknesses apply as much to Selesnya as they do to Golgari.
I do think an important thing to mention is that Izzet is the colour of storm, which is also notable in terms of powerful decks. I feel like spellslinger is a very generic term. Spell copying, storm, and prowess are all unified under spellslinger, but end up looking VERY different.
Does the card need to say storm to be considered storm? Everything I play against an izzet "spellslinger" deck, it always turns into a game of when can they cast 10 spells in a turn. Prowess, spellslinger, storm: they all mechanically boil down to playing a billion spells in a turn. The only difference, in my experience, is what is killing you.
@@danielsniff6405 The payoffs that lead to a deck killing you matter significantly when it comes to differentiating them, because they have different counterplay altogether. Dealing with guttersnipes, firebrand archers, and damage doublers is different from dealing with Monastery mentor tokens. They inherently link to other strategies. They may use some of the same few spells, but the deck’s identity comes from what they use to finish the game, not the cantrips alone, otherwise every green deck would be considered a “lands” deck if built optimally.
Storm bumps Izzet right above Azorious but if we don't count storm it still has very powerful artifact decks so it should honestly be at least above Golgari imo
I think they excluded any archetypes that are not consider casual. Cause we can also talk about how dimir is good at infinite combo, gruul at land destruction, or Azorius at stax.
They talk about not being able to play catch up ramp as a downside in selesnya? That’s the whole point! You play all green ramp and then play good white removal and wipes, maybe some of the green artifact/enchantment removal.
I think it's a valid reason. Besides enchantress decks and the few OP staple white cards, what else does white get to offer that other color pairs with green don't? Golgari has the whole graveyard as an extra playing field. Gruul has haste which is really valuable for big scary green creatures.
Why do they keep saying that losing White's catch up ramp is a bad thing whenever you pair it with green? You don't have to put in catch up ramp cards in your deck. You can just ramp like normal and that's 10x better. Just don't put it in catch up ramp cards. You made space for your gameplan and cut down easily to 100
It's wild that they talk up white as one of the most potent colors in commander yet misunderstand it on such a fundamental level. "All it does is enchant, ramp, and go wide with small creatures" like what? White has a great suite of protection and removal that green typically lacks.
@@jackalvonstone250 I mean, most commander players fall into a similar trap of only playing the colors they're most familiar with, so I can excuse some bad takes here and there, but it's very clear that nobody on the podcast has made/played a Selesnya deck in a while if that's the general opinion they reached. Green and white got a suite of great cards in Foundations as well. Oh well, I'll happily be underestimated at pretty much every LGS table I sit down at, let the rest of the players have a pissing match and waste removal while they ignore my rapidly growing board
I think red is generally slept on in commander because aggro is a weaker archetype in commander (mostly for arbitrary social contract reasons), but putting that aside they are seriously discounting the strength of damage doublers, theft, treasures, and extra combats.
Every time I hear someone say you can't "play" cards I wanna tear my hair out. Using the idea that it's a social contract yadda yadda to say you can't play an archetype completely counteracts the idea from EDH being a social format in the first place. Talk to the people you play with. My playgroup is open to just about anything because we express what we want to play and we like to play powerful magic. Then, if I take that deck to the shop I just ask and 9 times out of 10 people are super chill with it. Believe it or not, most people are chill with playing some strong commander/against archetypes you are quick to villainize. It's social so just... be social about it and stop assuming lol.
I can agree to some extent, but I would argue that most people are definitly not chill with some archetypes like storm, extra turn, land destruction, heavy stax, etc. in a casual set up. The social aspect also imply that you have to respect certain social etiquette. People value their time, and how much they get to do stuff during that time. I have a hard time to believe that 90% of people are just chill with you monopolizing the game and their time with those archetypes, specially since they lack answers because those specific archetypes are not typically use in the casual sphere.
I feel like any artifact deck is hurt by not having access to Open the Vaults and Brilliant Restoration in white, amongst some nice synergy pieces white has. Azorius feels more artifact synergy to me overall.
@@emtee2925 Ah, but blue/red has all the untappers, still has access to effects like Goblin Welder, Trash for Treasure, and gets access to things like Whir of Invention, Sai Master Thopterist, and all the blue artifact synergies as well. Having the artifact pingers like Reckless Fireweaver and the primary colour of treasure creation doesn't hurt either. It just sounds like you want more recursion. Which means you're a big baby that can't handle having his toys broken. It's okay, sometimes your toys break, you just go fetch newer, bigger, and better toys to break yourself. (I am not serious, I do not think you are a big baby, I am just making a funny.)
Orzhov can do reanimator, aristocrats, life gain, control, blink, voltron, tokens, and life swap! With great commander options for each! And the best removal, plus card draw. Easily top tier right?
I like Orzhov. My first commander was an Orzhov one (Breena the demagogue) and I developed those two colors hard during my time with magic. I will never put it below A and Im willing to be wrong on this, but thats my hill to die on.
I need to watch more commander clash and evaluate their meta choices (and staple cards) apparently, because their evaluations continue to feel alien to me.
Simic has plenty good removal options besides counter spells: Cyber conversion Reality shift Beast within Song of the dryads Imprisoned in the moon Amphibian downpour (insane card) Kenriths transformation The list goes on
I find it’s very difficult to make izzet decks that aren’t completely broken at casual tables. Even with a $50 budget I feel like my izzet decks I test just win on turn 5 or earlier. I feel like you have to go out of your way to build an izzet deck that isn’t broken
That quick draw precon is so indictive of this. It's busted out of the box. Izzet is my favorite color pair but I can't justify playing it because it always feels like pub stomping
Izzet feels broken in casual games because it wins mostly from hand and a 1-2 good board pieces. In games where people run enough stack interaction, it can be picked apart at key moments, just like other pairs. But yes, for a budget in less competitive groups, it overperforms. Clash meta seems to be mostly board and not much combo or storm, so sweepers do it. Izzet generally doesn't care too much if the creatures are wiped, often enough it's happy.
Yeah, I built a deck around Stella Lee, purposely loaded it with mid tier spells to try and not shit on my group, but she is just wildly explosive even if you're not using meta spells. Izzet is definitely one of the most potent color pairs, no doubt.
As an Izzet lover, I've had success just... not including anything broken. You're going to draw a ton of cards and have the potential to combo off, unless you choose build the deck such that you don't. If you play a heap of value creatures and magecraft-style synergies but don't include an infinite-bait commander like Niv, or Niv, or Niv, or Stella, you can play a pretty low-mid power game behind Izzet. Sure you're building "suboptimally" but so is everyone else unless you're at a cEDH table.
Can confirm Crim's stance on Hylda. If the Hylda player resolves an Opposition, Junk Winder, or Court Street Denizen you will never have a combat step again. My wife's Hylda deck now gets focused down at our LGS if any player in the pod has seen her play it before.
I think the disparity of opinions on Dimir is a differerence in playstyle. The Goldfish crew plays more of a big splashy game with high ramp and very light interaction. Crim (and my friend group) play more of a high interaction game and dimir is super strong in that.
Of all the caps richard has said, him claiming red has good ramp is the biggest cap of them all. Could've been in thunder junction because that's a ten gallon hat level cap 🤠😂
31:30 Red ramp has more than two ramp cards. It has Ancient Copper Goldspan Dragon, Alchemist Talent, Professional facebreaker, Urbrask, Birgi, Stormkiln Artist, Crime Novelist, Chandra, Runaway steamkin, Magda, Cavern-Hoard Dragon, Reaver Cleaver, Neheb, and Curse of Opulence. Tell me ones i missed.
Lol who looks at Selesnya and just thinks "redundant ramp?" Its clear y'all dont play the colors often if thats all you think the color pair is about. White protection goes hard on some big green stompy creatures, counter abuse can make your wide board of tokens suddenly a gathered army, rather than a mass of chump blockers. I love playing against people like this at my LGS, keep underestimating my board while y'all sling spells at eachother thinking I'm missing my win con 😂
On Simic: Richard: but neither colour has good spot removal! Everyone else: lists good blue spot removal Richard: yeah but that's spot removal and spot removal sucks! .. you just can't argue with takes like these man.. I sometimes really struggle to understand wtf Richard is thinking with his arguments.
He never mentions spot removal, he says interaction. Blue and green are the worst sweeper colors with the one exception being cyc rift, which still dosen't permanently remove stuff. not saying i agree with him but the rest of the cast mentioned spot removal when he just mentions interaction, and spot removal can never be the whole of you're interaction. Seth's argument about counterspells is a much better answer to Richards concerns but it got a little disconnected from the whole argument.
Its hard to compare color combos. I would say that it needs two different discussions. One for average play and one for competitive play. The crew keep bringing up top tier commanders in this episode when these commanders are usually a strange exception to how the color pairing usually functions.
Hot Take: Simic is A Tier, if not B Tier. Not because it isn't powerful, but because it's boring as sin and none of the Simic commanders are doing anything unique beyond Merfolk Typal. Power isn't everything in commander.
I think some got wrong how similar Izzet decks are. Everyone agreed that Boros has many ways of being aggro but it is ultimately aggro, citing equipment, extra combats, etc. In the same way, you can have a variety of Izzet Spellslinger subarchetypes. Storm, burn, extra turns, spell copy, combo. Izzet also has many cost reducers for spells and artifacts which should contribute to the ramp argument
My problem with Dimir has always been the Commander selection. So many Dimir legends are dedicated to some random and inefficient graveyard or mill strategies. Only very recently has the selection gotten better.
I find it very interesting how differently people in casual rank color combos/ colors themslevs vs cedh players. For example best to worst color Casual(according to them) green,white,blue,black,red Cedh blue,black,red,white,green
Series suggestion. Commander Clash: Each person makes a deck of each color pair. They can play the deck whenever throughout the season. After the season tally up which color pair has the most wins
I can largely get behind the rankings. I do think Crim was right and diversity should have been more highly weighted. White does bring a lot to the table with removal, wipes, protection and depending on the archetype card draw. Mono white draw isn’t great but it synergies with certain types azororios you get to blink your weenie little creatures that enter draw a card at a much better rate than blue. Plus now they have a bunch of make a token draw a card for selesnya token as well as enchantress effects. I don’t value the catch up ramp as much. Boros probably should be C it just only has equipment and aggro. I agree with Richard that Izzet feels low but I think it’s just a lack of diversity. The only two archetypes it has is spell slinger and artifacts which are both broken styles. So when you see an Izzet deck it feels broken even though you end up seeing a lot less of them.
idk what's up with the crew, in my experience dimir decks roll the table 80% of the times. I have a Marvo deck which lost 1 game out of 8 since I built it... Show dimir respect
Mono-color > Dual-color > Tri-color > not playing magic > Five-color > having a bad day > Four-color EDIT: also, Simic is so strong that Phil intentionally depowers his decks on clash CONSTANTLY so he won't blow out the table and feel like he's cheating... like come on lol
In a world of rock paper scissor color battles everything dies to counterspell. Teferis pro and farewell both fall to counterspell. Sweepers fall to counterspell. The lesson-run more counterspells for protection and interaction.
Agree with Crim 100%. The color pairs are more than just the components that make them up, they're about the archetypes and commanders. Dimir has a lot of awesome and unique commanders that do loads of different things, whereas Simic is basically just "what flavor of card draw and ramp would you like?". Diversity is a strength in EDH.
In my experience, the colour pair which ends up winning tends to be Azorius. They aren't the splashiest, but they go a long ways into the game by slipping under with card draw, stax and longevity.
Two of my decks with the best win% happen to be Azorius (Elminster and Urza, Prince of Kroog). I wouldn't say they are my most powerful decks by any means, but one thing they both have in common is that they tend to look pretty innocent during the early game and then suddenly explode onto the board with dozens of tokens. By the time people catch on and realize I'm a threat I can usually fight their attempts at wiping the board with countermagics. Some other color combinations might have more raw power than Azorius does, but I think many Azorius strategies are pretty good at maybe flying under the radar a little bit and looking less dangerous than they actually are.
Kinda wild how a few years ago Boros was like the worst color combo. Before T-pro and farewell, and smothering tithe. Good commanders have come along too it used to be Aurelia and like nothing else.
Y'all should make an episode of Commander Clash where you play the combo you argued for the most and no ban list so it's a more realistic game experience.
People have to stop sleeping on Gruul! I think it is the most diverse color combo (excluding grixis and 5c, of course) as far as archetypes you can play. Like creatures? It's got commander for typal decks, token decks, weenies, big stompy hasty beaters, voltron, "abilities matter", "power matters", "exile matters", "oops all creatures", extra combats, fight club, counters, and hatebears. Like enchantments? Bello and Wildsear are interesting decks. Like artifacts? Roxanne, Meria, Jolene, and even Svella are great. It goes without saying that it's got great land and landfall-based commanders like Omnath. Like spellslinger decks? Wort, the Raidmother and the Howling Abomination are cool takes. Like equipment and auras? Chishiro and Stangg.
For the next tier list i'd love to hear your reasoning per person before going to the actual rankings. That way it might be easier to understand eachothers standpoint.
As a N'gathrod deck owner I have to side with Crim here I would say it's top of B bottom of A. it's great at stealing stuff, great at flashing stuff in, great at mill, good at graveyard recursion. It has big stompy monsters, and low to the ground creatures with good effects. it had some of the best card draw thanks to blue. it does lack ramp which is hard but I just supplement that with artifacts or fetch lands, I agree with most of the rest of the rankings.
I think Orzhov is a bit slept on because it's more of a reactive color pairing than a proactive one. The wins typically are not as splashy as a lot of other pairings either.
I feel like dimir's best cards are also cards that a lot of people don't like to play against in casual commander. Every time I theory craft a dimir deck I end up being like "people are going to hate me if I play this deck." And I'm not talking about counterspells as much as creature sac engines and discard and stealing things.
They should do a commander game where each player picks the 2-color combination they think is best. Let's see which color combination is the strongest!
I think the new "so good its bad" theory in commander clash crew is "if you die first because the entire team had to group on you it sucks". If the entire table has to group up to respond to something, then its a threat. its a major threat. and if something doesn't succeed after the entire table teams up against it, that doesn't mean its bad. I'd say that's pretty understandable.
Next time you do one of these ranking videos it would be nice to have an odd number so the "data" skews a bit more. I would love to hear Phil's opinion on this one!
I think Golgari is lowkey the 2nd best guild. Lands is arguably the most busted strategy and Golgari is 2nd best at it, black offers amazing removal mass reanimation tutors and card draw similar to blue, and as Crim points out you have all these different avenues that sinergise with each other (self mill works with reanimation wich works with sacrifice etc)
My rankings would be S: Simic, Golgari A: Selesnya, Azorius, Izzet B: Rakdos, Orzhov, Gruul, Boros C: Dimir S- kill on sight before they win the game A- they will probably win the game if I don't keep instant speed interaction B- deal with them later, probably a wrath or two will put them out of the game C- can ignore them the whole game
S-Simic A-Orzhov/Golgari/Rakdos B -Izzet/Azorius/Dimir/Boros/Selesnya C-Gruul A lot of this is based on the goldcards and commander is that pair, blaanced with stables. I thinkGruul commanders are just bad in general, and their strats are done better in other colors.
I would like to see some commander games that explore different archetypes for color combinations. Azorius blink, flash, spirits, control, for example!
I feel like Richard rates decks or colors on how easily he can put 80 staples into it then put 19 other cards that work with the commander. Not every white deck needs TPro and farewell, same way you don't put force of will into every blue deck.
"The Dimir Disruptor/Mill package..." Sure,if people want to play against that. I'd love to play with Crim but his decks are really unfun and controlly, so I'd need to build either a super fast combo deck or a massive ramp deck to get ahead of him in the first 2-4 turns.
You guys have got to play a no staples week so you can see these colors how they really are. This seems to be more of a "which mono colors have the best staples"
I feel Crim on this one Dimir is powerful, we have hand disruption, counter-magic, removal, and we don’t need to ramp (although there’s artifact ramp so..) we can cheat things into play and steal other player’s permanents! Dimir is at least B/C Tier!
Thinking of boros as just the aggro guild is very dated thinking. Boros has diversified a lot since strixhaven and can do quite a lot of interesting things between things like quintorius, osgir, Balloon Man, etc. Also, the idea that boros breach is laughable to me, as it is easily one of the strongest things I can do in my quintorius, Field Historian graveyard deck. Boros golgari is real!
Black is one of if not the strongest color in Magic in general. However, Richard is right about its place in casual commander. The best parts of black dont apply, for example: tutors, hand disruption, targeted removal, reanimation (specifically a big threat early), and niche disruptions like surgical extraction. All great in competitive 60 card, but weak in casual commander.
I agree more with Crim on Dimir being higher, I would at least put it at B given how much I've seen very solid 'self' mill along with recursion that they can protect thanks to blue, at a table not ready to deal with it they very often take over the game with the combo and mana cheating they get with protected reanimation. I've had more than my share of experience seeing it happen and doing that Also find it strange no one mentioned how good Selesnya is at going wide and boosting mana with things like Mirari's Wake
Black have ramp - its treasure ramp. Its even better and better each "day". We have Warren Soultrader, Pitiless Plunderer, Grim Hireling, Rev, Tithe Extractor or Revel in Riches. On top of that we have cards like Black Market Connections and Ruthless Technomancer... On top of all that black have "mana doublers" like Crypt Ghast and Nirkana Revenant. If you want more "burst" mana You ahve all the rituals (Dark Riutal, Cabal Ritual or culling the weak). With all of that we still have cards like Cabal Coffers or Pyrexian Tower... On top of that why Black was never "praised" by heaving BEST Tutors... this is why Black is so strong. You can Tutor for the best ramp card in yours deck , for the best answer etc. - you dont need 4-5 of the same type... you can play 1-2 best of each , and then 4-5 super tutors... Last but not least - I dont get why green ramp is so overhyper here :) Decks become faster and faster... it looks like Goldfhish do not "punish" green players for do "nothing" for 3-4 turns... they need to play more agrro and tempo decks ;P Its not that hard to make "token" "ping" "burn" deck that will kill EVERYONE in turn 5 or 6... easly and with 4 lands in play... (and it dont need fast mana...).
I'm a huge white believer and, I don't know if thematically, it's my favorite, but I have like 3 boros decks, and I love the diversity it can bring : aggro tokens with Arabella, steal&sac with the Jolly Balloon Man, Politics with Nelly Borca... I could play boros for each play-style and I love it.
My rankings 1- Simic 2- Golgari 3- Azorius 4- Selesnya 5- Dimir 6- Orzhov 7- Izzet 8- Boros 9- Gruul 10- Rakdos Red is a great color 1 v 1 but is objectively the worst color in Commander. No surprise that its color pairs make up my bottom 4. You could flip-flop Golgari and Azorius, and/or Dimir and Orzhov on my list if you want and I wouldn’t be mad about it
I find it insane tbh how low you all rank artifacts as ramp and how highly you rank interaction. My Wilhelt deck is one of the strongest in my 6 man pod. i don't often interact with my opponents and i don't rely on the 3 counter spells to save me. It reanimates, or sacs my board to kill you on the stack, and it only needs 2 turns above 5 mana to do it. I have watched a lot of your games and idk if i have ever seen any of you cast a vandalblast in the last two years, let alone a disenchant, maybe a bane of progress out of non budget commander Tomer but thats about it. This was a bias ramp list in my opinion, or what to do with your ramp. I wish Phil was here. Its crazy that i find the simic player the least bias of your crew, but at least he is willing to play devils advocate most times. This podcast was a dismal echo chamber from a group that relies on staples way to often and assumes every deck has no budget or theme. WHO EVEN PAYS RETAIL FOR THEIR SPELLS?
I feel like Crim was basically the only one regularly talking about actual gold cards rather than two mono colors mashed together.
Hitting the nail on the head right here. Like talk about archetypes and synergy plays rather than Three Visits, Farewell, and T-Pro being the most important cards in the format and if you can't play those then your deck is just hot garbage.
100% agree that Crim was only one accounting for 2 color cards NOT counting the potential commanders themselves (whether they are used as the commander or as a backup effect). There are several pairs where their 2 color cards vastly increase their potential but Idk how much that would change their overall ranking. If anything I think it'd make most of the C's into B's and Izzet low A.
Crim and Richard are almost answering different questions here: Crim is ranking based on the deck archetypes present in each colour pair, while Richard is focused on the best staples that each pair can play. Neither of those is necessarily the wrong approach, but it led to pretty incompatible lists between the two of them.
I'm with Crim.
Judging color pairs should include commander synergies, archetype support, and gold cards. Judging based entirely on staples would imply that every deck is only a 'good stuff' pile.
That's how they build decks apparently.
@MakeVarahHappen Yeah, when you build a bunch of decks over a short period of time things tend to get standardized.
To be fair, I think that Richard and Tomer build decks that way. They take a framework and build it out to fit the theme. Seth seems like he builds a goofy deck first and then trys to stuff the 'good stuff' in the gaps. Crim's decks all look like he had a plan going in and, like Seth, put in as much support as he could fit it.
I'd love to see a color revenge arc episode where each player takes the color combo they think got disrespected the most and show how busted those color combos are.
+1
This is a really good idea
what i heard is: orzhov is kinda mid, it just has the best removal, and second best ramp, and it does literally everything, best protection, really good card advantage and it has combo potential, and it . . .
Good cards, weak synergies.
The problem is how do you win or do something interesting with all that
They didn’t even bring up graveyard lol
Life gain + life drain with vampires and angels is pretty nasty IMHO.
@@DustyRoberson Yeah, Aristocrats is always powerful and Orzhov does it quite well.
Richard mentions that black isn't adding anything to Golgari. I'd say that black shores up some of green's biggest weaknesses, and green shores up some of black's greatest weaknesses.
Green, great for ramp. Black awful for ramp except for coffers or mana doublers like Nirkana Revenant. Good thing Crop Rotation and such exists to find that coffers/urborg.
Green, great for artifact/enchantment removal. Black awful for artifact/enchantment removal.
Black, great for creature removal/boardwipes. Green awful for creature removal (yes fight spells exist, but it can fizzle on the stack if the creature fighting is removed in response, so it's not unconditional).
Green and Black are both great at draw (which unlike White/Green for ramp where one wants you behind another wants you ahead), actually complements each other well, because you get great options for drawing a mass amount of cards, or drawing the best card amongst the top X cards of the library (milling the rest), or tutoring the best thing in your deck through generic black tutors or creature tutors via green, along with having the best generic selection in the graveyard as a second hand. No other color combination is better at consistently getting one card into play from the 99 whether deck/hand/graveyard on a more consistent game-to-game basis.
Even considering its weakness to graveyard removal, the most common graveyard control is enchantments/artifacts, which green is able to answer. The primary thing "holding back" Golgari is the sameyness of the decks, like Izzet being primarily spellslingery and caring more about the spells in the 99. Some Golgari decks will be more drain focused (Dina, Soul Steeper), or more lands focused (Gitrog Monster), or reanimator (Meren of Clan Nel Toth), so outside of Elfball tribal, the cards generally just wants stuff dying/sacrificing/graveyard in some way. So it can feel dull when trying to theorycraft a new golgari deck since primarily the function and cards will be similar.
Golgari is better than Simic in my opinion.
You get the best ramp (green) and the best draw (black) while making use of everything. Green allows black to efficiently kill enchantments and artifacts. Black allows green to do something worthwhile with all the mana by providing endless ways to kill, draw and resurrect things.
You also get hands down the best lands-synergies, because you can run both Yavimaya and Urborg in an on-color deck.
Crim fighting for Dimir's life against three C's is hilarious 😂
Richard: "Simic isn't S tier because it lacks single target interaction."
Also Richard: "Don't play swords to Plowshares."
I can tell you, Richard, that my days of not taking you seriously have definitely come to a middle.
For these videos can we PLEASE get the missing members ratings. I would love to hear phils opinions on this even if its just a short note with a grading.
No comment of the week 😭
Let's make this the top comment for shame inducing purposes.
They all sucked that's why. People need to leave better comments.
Ain't no way the week they pick to not do a comment was the week I got the most likes
They did say why not like 5 minutes in lol, due to scheduling
They literally Farewelled the comment of the week.
Seth saying that blue is one of the worst colors for card draw is certainly one of the takes of all time.
If you genuinely stack up mono blue to all the other mono colors it has legitimately been outshined, as far as casual commander goes. If I am playing a mono white, mono black, or mono green deck, I assure you on average I am drawing more cards than my mono blue friend. The only exception is mono red, of course. And once you pair any two of those three colors I mentioned together, forget it. Magic is at a point where blue genuinely needs help from the other colors to draw ludicrous cards and actually keep up. Usually when people think of blue having insane card draw they are thinking of Simic, Izzet, or some NON-mono-blue option. I'm not saying you CAN'T get insane card draw in mono blue of course, I'm just saying it isn't nearly as consistent as the others. All the colors other than red can stand completely on their own for insane card draw.
@godlyMike127 you are smoking some good shit. Green is the only one even close to blue and green is conditional. If your behind in green with an empty board you aren't drawing anything. Blue can blast huge x draw spells, double draws, and draw multiple cards for cheaper with no restrictions better than any other color. Plus rhystic study & con sphinx are insane.
@@Jrizzle7426 It isn't 2018 anymore. Card advantage is just stapled to so many already good cards nowadays that you don't need to run many pure card draw spells when everything replaces itself. Rhystic Study is obv good, but past that you need to be in simic to take advantage of the huge pure card draw spells
@OuterCraft I have 2 mono blue commanders and I draw insane cards. Jin gitaxis progress tyrant and braids. Jin it's easy to draw nutty cards. Braids relies on the good ol stuff from back in the day, but it works very well. Brainstorm, braingeyser, stroke of genius plus all the combat draw stuff like bident of thassa etc. It's still king of card draw in mono colors. Blue has the value stuff too. Drawing for casting instants and sorcereries is becoming a fairly common effect and blue plays alot of said card types.
@@scottb5928 I categorize card draw/advantage and rank them like this (in order of strongest to weakest).
1. Ultra Staples (Rhystic Study, Mystic Remora, Trouble in Pairs, etc.) This is referring to cards you can just windmill slam into any deck.
2. Synergy (drawing cards by doing what the deck does like with Tatyova)
3. Burst card draw. Usually 3 mana=3 cards like Painful Truths or Secrets of the Golden City but other stuff could count like Stinging Study. Often card for card.
4. "Technically" card advantage. Often synergy but not necessarily. Like Village Rites is technically a 2 for 2 but the sac could generate more advantage or Eternal Witness which doesn't draw and only gets you 1 card.
5. Mass card draw. I consider it the worst because you're usually only getting away with it in Simic/Simic style decks. But yeah. Draw a ton of cards at once like 7+. Also makes you a target if you can't immediately back it up.
If you compile what each color is capable of consistently and has good options for, you end up with Blue actually being very good. Blue kinda lacks synergy card draw but not by a lot. It lacks in the "technically" card advantage category quite a bit. But it's actually phenomenal in the other 3. Even having the greater sum of ultra staples. Also seriously don't underestimate burst card draw. It's extremely good. My Mono Blue Octavia deck never even comes close to starving for cards. Like having 5 cards in hand at 1 time is low for that deck.
Edit: Just adding that Blue is the best at card selection for card draw. Cards like Dig Through Time and Narset, Parter of Veils. A sizable amount of these card selection card draw spells aren't great, but there are some true bangers.
So we get Tri-Color Shards Tiers next week?
At that point it becomes just soup. Not much to add.
Hot take?: I thknk black's biggest benefit to removal in multicolour decks is the access to multicolour spells (like Anguished Unmaking or Assassin's Trophy), not the actual mono black cards. The only things it really brings to the table are Oubliette and edicts.
White has better sweepers and its single target hits anything (plus easier exile removal), along with Darksteel Mutation as a second Oubliette.
Blue keeps things off the stack and outpaces black on creature removal with Rapid Hybridization effects. Imprisoned in the Moon is another Oubliette backup. Bounce effects handle anything that hits the board in a pinch
Red is the only place black removal can shine, because red removal is just so bad (except for artifacts), though neither hit enchanments anywhere near satisfactorily.
Green matches white with artifact and enchantment removal, and the Golgari spells are just more flexible kill spells.
I always feel like if you have a pairing with Black, Black always becomes the support color. But on it's own in mono-color, Black is the strongest individual color. Black can do everything every other color can do, but you have to pay life.
The problem is that all the black ramp only makes Black mana and the really good cards (like Necropotence or Meathook) are *heavy* in Black symbols.
It’s going to be interesting to see how their opinions have changed in the last few years now that Boros for example actually has card draw.
As an Abzan enjoyer, this ranking went a lot better than I thought it would.
I agree, it went better than expected, but I think Golgari should've been in S tier as well.
I feel like Selesnya gets the same kind of bad rap that Golgari does.
White and Black can accomplish pretty much exactly the same things for Green that the other color can.
I’m not saying that Golgari isn’t the stronger Identity, but many of the same strengths and shoring up of weaknesses apply as much to Selesnya as they do to Golgari.
I do think an important thing to mention is that Izzet is the colour of storm, which is also notable in terms of powerful decks. I feel like spellslinger is a very generic term. Spell copying, storm, and prowess are all unified under spellslinger, but end up looking VERY different.
I think this went ignored. If Spellslinger is one archetype, Aggro is also one archetype, even if that includes equipment, extra combats, etc.
Does the card need to say storm to be considered storm? Everything I play against an izzet "spellslinger" deck, it always turns into a game of when can they cast 10 spells in a turn. Prowess, spellslinger, storm: they all mechanically boil down to playing a billion spells in a turn. The only difference, in my experience, is what is killing you.
@@danielsniff6405 The payoffs that lead to a deck killing you matter significantly when it comes to differentiating them, because they have different counterplay altogether. Dealing with guttersnipes, firebrand archers, and damage doublers is different from dealing with Monastery mentor tokens. They inherently link to other strategies. They may use some of the same few spells, but the deck’s identity comes from what they use to finish the game, not the cantrips alone, otherwise every green deck would be considered a “lands” deck if built optimally.
Storm bumps Izzet right above Azorious but if we don't count storm it still has very powerful artifact decks so it should honestly be at least above Golgari imo
I think they excluded any archetypes that are not consider casual. Cause we can also talk about how dimir is good at infinite combo, gruul at land destruction, or Azorius at stax.
They talk about not being able to play catch up ramp as a downside in selesnya? That’s the whole point! You play all green ramp and then play good white removal and wipes, maybe some of the green artifact/enchantment removal.
I think it's a valid reason. Besides enchantress decks and the few OP staple white cards, what else does white get to offer that other color pairs with green don't? Golgari has the whole graveyard as an extra playing field. Gruul has haste which is really valuable for big scary green creatures.
Why do they keep saying that losing White's catch up ramp is a bad thing whenever you pair it with green? You don't have to put in catch up ramp cards in your deck. You can just ramp like normal and that's 10x better. Just don't put it in catch up ramp cards. You made space for your gameplan and cut down easily to 100
It's wild that they talk up white as one of the most potent colors in commander yet misunderstand it on such a fundamental level. "All it does is enchant, ramp, and go wide with small creatures" like what? White has a great suite of protection and removal that green typically lacks.
@@ChilipotamusI'm a big fan of the podcast, but sometimes they just get lost in the sauce
@@jackalvonstone250 I mean, most commander players fall into a similar trap of only playing the colors they're most familiar with, so I can excuse some bad takes here and there, but it's very clear that nobody on the podcast has made/played a Selesnya deck in a while if that's the general opinion they reached. Green and white got a suite of great cards in Foundations as well. Oh well, I'll happily be underestimated at pretty much every LGS table I sit down at, let the rest of the players have a pissing match and waste removal while they ignore my rapidly growing board
I think red is generally slept on in commander because aggro is a weaker archetype in commander (mostly for arbitrary social contract reasons), but putting that aside they are seriously discounting the strength of damage doublers, theft, treasures, and extra combats.
Red can be very good, but it does have to work harder and is more inconsistent than the other colors imo
Every time I hear someone say you can't "play" cards I wanna tear my hair out. Using the idea that it's a social contract yadda yadda to say you can't play an archetype completely counteracts the idea from EDH being a social format in the first place. Talk to the people you play with. My playgroup is open to just about anything because we express what we want to play and we like to play powerful magic. Then, if I take that deck to the shop I just ask and 9 times out of 10 people are super chill with it. Believe it or not, most people are chill with playing some strong commander/against archetypes you are quick to villainize. It's social so just... be social about it and stop assuming lol.
I can agree to some extent, but I would argue that most people are definitly not chill with some archetypes like storm, extra turn, land destruction, heavy stax, etc. in a casual set up. The social aspect also imply that you have to respect certain social etiquette. People value their time, and how much they get to do stuff during that time. I have a hard time to believe that 90% of people are just chill with you monopolizing the game and their time with those archetypes, specially since they lack answers because those specific archetypes are not typically use in the casual sphere.
A good reminder that "best two-card color combination" is subjective and very much dependant on how much you like that colour.
And what cards they allow to be played.
I can't believe the guy that loves artifacts is so medium on Izzet as a color. The only color combo that can run a legal version of Tolarian Academy.
I feel like any artifact deck is hurt by not having access to Open the Vaults and Brilliant Restoration in white, amongst some nice synergy pieces white has. Azorius feels more artifact synergy to me overall.
@@emtee2925 Ah, but blue/red has all the untappers, still has access to effects like Goblin Welder, Trash for Treasure, and gets access to things like Whir of Invention, Sai Master Thopterist, and all the blue artifact synergies as well. Having the artifact pingers like Reckless Fireweaver and the primary colour of treasure creation doesn't hurt either. It just sounds like you want more recursion. Which means you're a big baby that can't handle having his toys broken. It's okay, sometimes your toys break, you just go fetch newer, bigger, and better toys to break yourself.
(I am not serious, I do not think you are a big baby, I am just making a funny.)
Orzhov can do reanimator, aristocrats, life gain, control, blink, voltron, tokens, and life swap! With great commander options for each! And the best removal, plus card draw. Easily top tier right?
It can even do theft if your Commander is Athreos the Shroud-Veiled
I like Orzhov. My first commander was an Orzhov one (Breena the demagogue) and I developed those two colors hard during my time with magic. I will never put it below A and Im willing to be wrong on this, but thats my hill to die on.
Not as strong as Simic but I do think it's at least better than Golgari and Selesnya.
I actually think Orzhov is the best Reanimator color.
I need to watch more commander clash and evaluate their meta choices (and staple cards) apparently, because their evaluations continue to feel alien to me.
I feel exactly the same😅
Simic has plenty good removal options besides counter spells:
Cyber conversion
Reality shift
Beast within
Song of the dryads
Imprisoned in the moon
Amphibian downpour (insane card)
Kenriths transformation
The list goes on
I find it’s very difficult to make izzet decks that aren’t completely broken at casual tables. Even with a $50 budget I feel like my izzet decks I test just win on turn 5 or earlier. I feel like you have to go out of your way to build an izzet deck that isn’t broken
Completely agree, otherwise izzet would be my favorite.
That quick draw precon is so indictive of this. It's busted out of the box. Izzet is my favorite color pair but I can't justify playing it because it always feels like pub stomping
Izzet feels broken in casual games because it wins mostly from hand and a 1-2 good board pieces. In games where people run enough stack interaction, it can be picked apart at key moments, just like other pairs. But yes, for a budget in less competitive groups, it overperforms.
Clash meta seems to be mostly board and not much combo or storm, so sweepers do it. Izzet generally doesn't care too much if the creatures are wiped, often enough it's happy.
Yeah, I built a deck around Stella Lee, purposely loaded it with mid tier spells to try and not shit on my group, but she is just wildly explosive even if you're not using meta spells. Izzet is definitely one of the most potent color pairs, no doubt.
As an Izzet lover, I've had success just... not including anything broken. You're going to draw a ton of cards and have the potential to combo off, unless you choose build the deck such that you don't.
If you play a heap of value creatures and magecraft-style synergies but don't include an infinite-bait commander like Niv, or Niv, or Niv, or Stella, you can play a pretty low-mid power game behind Izzet. Sure you're building "suboptimally" but so is everyone else unless you're at a cEDH table.
Can confirm Crim's stance on Hylda. If the Hylda player resolves an Opposition, Junk Winder, or Court Street Denizen you will never have a combat step again. My wife's Hylda deck now gets focused down at our LGS if any player in the pod has seen her play it before.
I think the disparity of opinions on Dimir is a differerence in playstyle. The Goldfish crew plays more of a big splashy game with high ramp and very light interaction. Crim (and my friend group) play more of a high interaction game and dimir is super strong in that.
Of all the caps richard has said, him claiming red has good ramp is the biggest cap of them all. Could've been in thunder junction because that's a ten gallon hat level cap 🤠😂
Treasure is ramp, and red has some of the best treasure options. I play a mono-red pirates deck that goes nuts on treasure and aggro.
31:30 Red ramp has more than two ramp cards. It has Ancient Copper Goldspan Dragon, Alchemist Talent, Professional facebreaker, Urbrask, Birgi, Stormkiln Artist, Crime Novelist, Chandra, Runaway steamkin, Magda, Cavern-Hoard Dragon, Reaver Cleaver, Neheb, and Curse of Opulence.
Tell me ones i missed.
I think if you ignore "social contract" every color combo has the potential for A tier, with simic maybe being S tier from shear value.
Boros has moved up in the world.
Nelly Borca, carrying the color combo on her back.
Winota?
I think you mispelled "Bruenor Battlehammer" there.
Lol who looks at Selesnya and just thinks "redundant ramp?" Its clear y'all dont play the colors often if thats all you think the color pair is about. White protection goes hard on some big green stompy creatures, counter abuse can make your wide board of tokens suddenly a gathered army, rather than a mass of chump blockers. I love playing against people like this at my LGS, keep underestimating my board while y'all sling spells at eachother thinking I'm missing my win con 😂
On Simic:
Richard: but neither colour has good spot removal!
Everyone else: lists good blue spot removal
Richard: yeah but that's spot removal and spot removal sucks!
.. you just can't argue with takes like these man.. I sometimes really struggle to understand wtf Richard is thinking with his arguments.
He never mentions spot removal, he says interaction. Blue and green are the worst sweeper colors with the one exception being cyc rift, which still dosen't permanently remove stuff. not saying i agree with him but the rest of the cast mentioned spot removal when he just mentions interaction, and spot removal can never be the whole of you're interaction. Seth's argument about counterspells is a much better answer to Richards concerns but it got a little disconnected from the whole argument.
Honestly the more I hear his reasoning and thought process, the more I think he just is a really bad player.
@@bloodex91 if you think he's a bad player, boy, are you gonna be surprised when you see an actual bad player
Richard on Simic: You won’t actually have double your opponents mana.
Richard on Dimir: By endgame you’ll have 6 mana while the Simic player has 20.
That's because everyone's playing colors that can actually ramp, unless you're playing Demir, Izzet, or Rakdos.
Definitely a normal Richard take 😂
Its hard to compare color combos. I would say that it needs two different discussions. One for average play and one for competitive play. The crew keep bringing up top tier commanders in this episode when these commanders are usually a strange exception to how the color pairing usually functions.
They discussed in the episode that they aren't talking competitive play. None of the commanders brought up, save maybe yuriko, are cedh playables.
Grading a color combo by only the best $20+ cards feels a little out of touch with how the color combos actually play out at casual tables
Hot Take: Simic is A Tier, if not B Tier.
Not because it isn't powerful, but because it's boring as sin and none of the Simic commanders are doing anything unique beyond Merfolk Typal. Power isn't everything in commander.
Sounds about right, imo
Giving Selesnya an A but everytime Phil plays tokens and +1/+1 counters everybody has to join up to beat him and most of the time it doesn't work
Alternate Title: Two-Color Combination Ramp Tier List
I already know this is going to make me mad
Richard: We're going to rank the guilds based on POWER
Crim: Proceeds to rank the guilds based on DIVERSITY for 60+ mins
Orzhov at heart. Dimir at the table
Go Dimir!
Give in to your true self become the esper player you were destined to be.
Richard hating Black confused me at first but then I remembered he doesn't believe in removal.
Boros is best at land destruction 😂 that's a s for me❤
I think some got wrong how similar Izzet decks are. Everyone agreed that Boros has many ways of being aggro but it is ultimately aggro, citing equipment, extra combats, etc. In the same way, you can have a variety of Izzet Spellslinger subarchetypes. Storm, burn, extra turns, spell copy, combo. Izzet also has many cost reducers for spells and artifacts which should contribute to the ramp argument
I think Dimir is by far the most flexible combination it isn’t the best at anything and is terrible at ramping but is great in everything else.
My problem with Dimir has always been the Commander selection. So many Dimir legends are dedicated to some random and inefficient graveyard or mill strategies. Only very recently has the selection gotten better.
I’d easily argue that dimir actually has the most variety of all color parings
Ah yes the Richard special, Azorious, the color combo so good it's bad
Simple trick to rank them. What color are you les happy to see when you don’t know the player and or are unfamiliar with the commander. ;)
I find it very interesting how differently people in casual rank color combos/ colors themslevs vs cedh players.
For example best to worst color
Casual(according to them) green,white,blue,black,red
Cedh blue,black,red,white,green
Series suggestion.
Commander Clash:
Each person makes a deck of each color pair. They can play the deck whenever throughout the season.
After the season tally up which color pair has the most wins
I can largely get behind the rankings. I do think Crim was right and diversity should have been more highly weighted. White does bring a lot to the table with removal, wipes, protection and depending on the archetype card draw. Mono white draw isn’t great but it synergies with certain types azororios you get to blink your weenie little creatures that enter draw a card at a much better rate than blue. Plus now they have a bunch of make a token draw a card for selesnya token as well as enchantress effects. I don’t value the catch up ramp as much. Boros probably should be C it just only has equipment and aggro. I agree with Richard that Izzet feels low but I think it’s just a lack of diversity. The only two archetypes it has is spell slinger and artifacts which are both broken styles. So when you see an Izzet deck it feels broken even though you end up seeing a lot less of them.
idk what's up with the crew, in my experience dimir decks roll the table 80% of the times. I have a Marvo deck which lost 1 game out of 8 since I built it... Show dimir respect
It feels good to see people saying gruul is bad, I’ve had people get mad at the colors
Mono-color > Dual-color > Tri-color > not playing magic > Five-color > having a bad day > Four-color
EDIT: also, Simic is so strong that Phil intentionally depowers his decks on clash CONSTANTLY so he won't blow out the table and feel like he's cheating... like come on lol
Four-color > No-color
most based comment ever written
Preparing to lower the volume for when Crim starts screaming about simic.
We are going to make this list strictly about power.
Well aristocrats and spellslinger are very good but thats boring
Azorius is my favorite color. I have 4 decks: Bird tribal, Genku Blink, Pippin "threats" and Plagon Foundations only. ❤️
In a world of rock paper scissor color battles everything dies to counterspell. Teferis pro and farewell both fall to counterspell. Sweepers fall to counterspell. The lesson-run more counterspells for protection and interaction.
Agree with Crim 100%. The color pairs are more than just the components that make them up, they're about the archetypes and commanders. Dimir has a lot of awesome and unique commanders that do loads of different things, whereas Simic is basically just "what flavor of card draw and ramp would you like?". Diversity is a strength in EDH.
In my experience, the colour pair which ends up winning tends to be Azorius. They aren't the splashiest, but they go a long ways into the game by slipping under with card draw, stax and longevity.
Two of my decks with the best win% happen to be Azorius (Elminster and Urza, Prince of Kroog). I wouldn't say they are my most powerful decks by any means, but one thing they both have in common is that they tend to look pretty innocent during the early game and then suddenly explode onto the board with dozens of tokens. By the time people catch on and realize I'm a threat I can usually fight their attempts at wiping the board with countermagics. Some other color combinations might have more raw power than Azorius does, but I think many Azorius strategies are pretty good at maybe flying under the radar a little bit and looking less dangerous than they actually are.
Kinda wild how a few years ago Boros was like the worst color combo. Before T-pro and farewell, and smothering tithe. Good commanders have come along too it used to be Aurelia and like nothing else.
Y'all should make an episode of Commander Clash where you play the combo you argued for the most and no ban list so it's a more realistic game experience.
Finally the words of love Ephara derserves! My best and favourite Deck!!!!❤❤❤
People have to stop sleeping on Gruul! I think it is the most diverse color combo (excluding grixis and 5c, of course) as far as archetypes you can play. Like creatures? It's got commander for typal decks, token decks, weenies, big stompy hasty beaters, voltron, "abilities matter", "power matters", "exile matters", "oops all creatures", extra combats, fight club, counters, and hatebears. Like enchantments? Bello and Wildsear are interesting decks. Like artifacts? Roxanne, Meria, Jolene, and even Svella are great. It goes without saying that it's got great land and landfall-based commanders like Omnath. Like spellslinger decks? Wort, the Raidmother and the Howling Abomination are cool takes. Like equipment and auras? Chishiro and Stangg.
Id love to see a commander clash where they make two color decks where every card is two color
For the next tier list i'd love to hear your reasoning per person before going to the actual rankings. That way it might be easier to understand eachothers standpoint.
I love having Crim on these pods, gives a voice to everyone with an incorrect opinion out there! 😜
As a N'gathrod deck owner I have to side with Crim here I would say it's top of B bottom of A. it's great at stealing stuff, great at flashing stuff in, great at mill, good at graveyard recursion. It has big stompy monsters, and low to the ground creatures with good effects. it had some of the best card draw thanks to blue. it does lack ramp which is hard but I just supplement that with artifacts or fetch lands, I agree with most of the rest of the rankings.
I think Orzhov is a bit slept on because it's more of a reactive color pairing than a proactive one. The wins typically are not as splashy as a lot of other pairings either.
I feel like dimir's best cards are also cards that a lot of people don't like to play against in casual commander. Every time I theory craft a dimir deck I end up being like "people are going to hate me if I play this deck." And I'm not talking about counterspells as much as creature sac engines and discard and stealing things.
They should do a commander game where each player picks the 2-color combination they think is best. Let's see which color combination is the strongest!
I think the new "so good its bad" theory in commander clash crew is "if you die first because the entire team had to group on you it sucks". If the entire table has to group up to respond to something, then its a threat. its a major threat. and if something doesn't succeed after the entire table teams up against it, that doesn't mean its bad. I'd say that's pretty understandable.
Next time you do one of these ranking videos it would be nice to have an odd number so the "data" skews a bit more. I would love to hear Phil's opinion on this one!
45 minutes until Farewell was mentioned, must a be a record
I think Golgari is lowkey the 2nd best guild. Lands is arguably the most busted strategy and Golgari is 2nd best at it, black offers amazing removal mass reanimation tutors and card draw similar to blue, and as Crim points out you have all these different avenues that sinergise with each other (self mill works with reanimation wich works with sacrifice etc)
My rankings would be
S: Simic, Golgari
A: Selesnya, Azorius, Izzet
B: Rakdos, Orzhov, Gruul, Boros
C: Dimir
S- kill on sight before they win the game
A- they will probably win the game if I don't keep instant speed interaction
B- deal with them later, probably a wrath or two will put them out of the game
C- can ignore them the whole game
S-Simic
A-Orzhov/Golgari/Rakdos
B -Izzet/Azorius/Dimir/Boros/Selesnya
C-Gruul
A lot of this is based on the goldcards and commander is that pair, blaanced with stables. I thinkGruul commanders are just bad in general, and their strats are done better in other colors.
So much of the commander clash meta is completely skewed because they don't have a combo player at the table
Part of their meta is building for content and combo can be kinda boring to watch
Not even like, cedh tier combos. Just a good old fashioned Dark Ritual into Entomb + Reanimate would smash most of what selesnya is up to.
Combo players are zzzzzzzz
I would like to see some commander games that explore different archetypes for color combinations. Azorius blink, flash, spirits, control, for example!
I feel like Richard rates decks or colors on how easily he can put 80 staples into it then put 19 other cards that work with the commander. Not every white deck needs TPro and farewell, same way you don't put force of will into every blue deck.
"The Dimir Disruptor/Mill package..."
Sure,if people want to play against that. I'd love to play with Crim but his decks are really unfun and controlly, so I'd need to build either a super fast combo deck or a massive ramp deck to get ahead of him in the first 2-4 turns.
Simic is the best because of Doppelgang. You can make a ton of anything including what other colors are doing.
Crim do you think Ramp is the most busted thing in commander or do you think Dimir is good? Pick one
You guys have got to play a no staples week so you can see these colors how they really are. This seems to be more of a "which mono colors have the best staples"
I feel Crim on this one Dimir is powerful, we have hand disruption, counter-magic, removal, and we don’t need to ramp (although there’s artifact ramp so..) we can cheat things into play and steal other player’s permanents! Dimir is at least B/C Tier!
Hot take, white and green are only strong when you have money. Once budget gets involved, black and red becomes stronger than what they describe.
interestingly, whenever I bring gruul Xenagos at my playgroup I am immediately the archenemy
Only control/blink for Azorius, Seth? PLAGON FISH BUTTS
Ignore the fact that blinking plagon is good
Thinking of boros as just the aggro guild is very dated thinking. Boros has diversified a lot since strixhaven and can do quite a lot of interesting things between things like quintorius, osgir, Balloon Man, etc.
Also, the idea that boros breach is laughable to me, as it is easily one of the strongest things I can do in my quintorius, Field Historian graveyard deck. Boros golgari is real!
Black is one of if not the strongest color in Magic in general. However, Richard is right about its place in casual commander. The best parts of black dont apply, for example: tutors, hand disruption, targeted removal, reanimation (specifically a big threat early), and niche disruptions like surgical extraction. All great in competitive 60 card, but weak in casual commander.
Richard: “Don’t play spot removal in Commander.”
Also Richard: “These colors lack good interaction and removal. Rank it lower!”
I agree more with Crim on Dimir being higher, I would at least put it at B given how much I've seen very solid 'self' mill along with recursion that they can protect thanks to blue, at a table not ready to deal with it they very often take over the game with the combo and mana cheating they get with protected reanimation. I've had more than my share of experience seeing it happen and doing that
Also find it strange no one mentioned how good Selesnya is at going wide and boosting mana with things like Mirari's Wake
Black have ramp - its treasure ramp. Its even better and better each "day". We have Warren Soultrader, Pitiless Plunderer, Grim Hireling, Rev, Tithe Extractor or Revel in Riches. On top of that we have cards like Black Market Connections and Ruthless Technomancer... On top of all that black have "mana doublers" like Crypt Ghast and Nirkana Revenant. If you want more "burst" mana You ahve all the rituals (Dark Riutal, Cabal Ritual or culling the weak). With all of that we still have cards like Cabal Coffers or Pyrexian Tower...
On top of that why Black was never "praised" by heaving BEST Tutors... this is why Black is so strong. You can Tutor for the best ramp card in yours deck , for the best answer etc. - you dont need 4-5 of the same type... you can play 1-2 best of each , and then 4-5 super tutors...
Last but not least - I dont get why green ramp is so overhyper here :) Decks become faster and faster... it looks like Goldfhish do not "punish" green players for do "nothing" for 3-4 turns... they need to play more agrro and tempo decks ;P Its not that hard to make "token" "ping" "burn" deck that will kill EVERYONE in turn 5 or 6... easly and with 4 lands in play... (and it dont need fast mana...).
I'm a huge white believer and, I don't know if thematically, it's my favorite, but I have like 3 boros decks, and I love the diversity it can bring : aggro tokens with Arabella, steal&sac with the Jolly Balloon Man, Politics with Nelly Borca... I could play boros for each play-style and I love it.
The level of dimir hate is ABSURD. Talion still recks both casual and competitive
My rankings
1- Simic
2- Golgari
3- Azorius
4- Selesnya
5- Dimir
6- Orzhov
7- Izzet
8- Boros
9- Gruul
10- Rakdos
Red is a great color 1 v 1 but is objectively the worst color in Commander. No surprise that its color pairs make up my bottom 4.
You could flip-flop Golgari and Azorius, and/or Dimir and Orzhov on my list if you want and I wouldn’t be mad about it
I find it insane tbh how low you all rank artifacts as ramp and how highly you rank interaction. My Wilhelt deck is one of the strongest in my 6 man pod. i don't often interact with my opponents and i don't rely on the 3 counter spells to save me. It reanimates, or sacs my board to kill you on the stack, and it only needs 2 turns above 5 mana to do it. I have watched a lot of your games and idk if i have ever seen any of you cast a vandalblast in the last two years, let alone a disenchant, maybe a bane of progress out of non budget commander Tomer but thats about it. This was a bias ramp list in my opinion, or what to do with your ramp. I wish Phil was here. Its crazy that i find the simic player the least bias of your crew, but at least he is willing to play devils advocate most times. This podcast was a dismal echo chamber from a group that relies on staples way to often and assumes every deck has no budget or theme. WHO EVEN PAYS RETAIL FOR THEIR SPELLS?
ez, here's my order (based on fun, not power, and IMO):
1 Orzhov
2 Golgari
3 Selesnya
4 Rakdos
5 Boros
6 Gruul
7 Simic
8 Izzet
9 Azorius
10 Dimir
Simic the color combo that says "hay play a land draw a card and draw a card play and extra land" on 90 percent of its stuff