I'm a yugioh player who just recently started playing magic because my friend told me a card called Voja was recently released and I could play a wolf deck. I've seen other people say tribal decks' biggest strength is getting new players into magic and it certainly checks out for me!
Recently theorycrafting a land tribal deck that’s 5 colors. Main goal is to animate your lands into creatures in whatever way possible, make them tough enough or indestructible, then use Najeela for info time combats killing your opponents with basic lands punching them in the face over and over. Jank tribal is always more fun than super supported tribal
if your going drop a surprise army on the field to swing, may i reccommend triumph of the horde, elesh norn grand cenobite, and nature's revolt. its an absolutely nefarious war crime. you turn everyone's lands into 2/2 creatures that are still lands. then you destroy all of them except yours with elesh norn -2/-2 to theirs and +2/+2 to yours right. now you give them infect. you'll either wipe them all out, or clear most their board since infect gives creatures -1/-1 counters instead of damage. and it's not like they can comeback from this either since you destroyed all your opponents lands...
The trouble is, a lot of the goober tribes don't really have the "volume" to work in a singleton format. For an example, there are six hundred and nine elf-typed cards in the game. If you want to "build an elf deck," you have all the options in the world. There are twenty-four Thrulls. Pare that down to seventeen, if you want to use either of the two commanders that are on-theme (Endric Sahr or Tevish Szat) since those guys are both mono-black. Pare that down to SIXTEEEN because for god's sake who wants to play with Derelor. Throw in a copy of Soul Exchange, Tourach's Gate, and Ebon Praetor, and there you go, all twenty cards in the game you can use for a monoblack highlander thrull tribal deck. Maybe you want to go with a B/W commander to get those other six thrulls in there though! Okay, now we're cooking, you can lean into the graveyard recursion and lifelink stuff those guys bring to the table. But then at this point, you're just playing Vampires or Clerics with way worse cards (fwiw, vampires have 415 typal cards.) Now in a 60-card, 4-of format, you can still make Thrulls work pretty well. They're definitely a D-tier tribe still, but at least you're not stuck with one dumb Necrite in your pile - you can have FOUR dumb necrites!
I like when tribe is not just alphobet soup, but has some mechanic that ties them together. Like hydras with +1/+1. Or like dinosaurs...were in the beginning. Yes, i'm still salty that they abandoned enrage, and turned dinos into another meatball tribal. Thats why fungus tribal with spore counters is my favorite
Same. I have a Thelon of Havenwood fungus counter deck that is honestly kind of terrible, since I’m not shelling out 70 bucks for a Doubling Season, or Coat of Arms, and the creatures themselves are somewhat slow at generating tokens, and vulnerable to board wipes, but the spore counter mechanic is just so fun. It’s a shame that they largely moved away from it in more recent sets, I would have loved to see some spore counter stuff in Caverns of Ixalan. Another great example of a tribe having mechanics that tie them together is Snakes from Kamigawa, which almost all had a neat sort of pseudo-deathtouch where if they dealt damage to a creature, you tap that creature, and it doesn’t untap during it’s controller’s next untap step, and a good chunk also had abilities to either generate green mana via damage, tapping, etc. I think overall the most consistent tribal mechanic aside from “elf taps for mana” “dragon can pay mana to pump its attack” and “Fungus produces saprolings” might actually be illusion tribal, where most of them have some version of “whenever this creature becomes the target of a spell of ability, sacrifice it” which is honestly such a flavor win.
there is still plenty of good enrage! I built Wayta as my second dinosaur deck as a home for all the enrage guys that got power crept out of my Gishath deck and it’s tons of fun, also better at flying under the radar
I have two Angel tribal decks that work completely different from eachother. One is graveyard recursion, flash speed, doesn’t give a shit about board wipes, very aggressive with removal. The other is super defensive, pillow fort, battle cruisers that are immune to spot removal and centers on soft locking out opponents. I call them the nice angels and the mean angels
An angel deck is easy enough to make unique. Just don't use Giada or (ESPECIALLY) Avacyn. Go for a 2-color angel like Sigarda or Feather. Both even have fun mechanics - Feather in particular is THE commander to pilot a Sunforger deck due to her ability to recycle instants.
@@WatcherCCG The two decks im reffering to are Sigarda Font of Blessings Selesnya Angel Tribal and Liesa Forgotten Archangel Orzov Angel Tribal. They work completely different, but Giada and Avacyn are must includes. Feather is kinda just a spell slinger deck though
I also love building interesting decks. I built a Kykar deck that transmutes into Grozoth every game to grab a pile of 9 mana spells (most of which are split cards or blasphemous act etc), but the deck is built around casting worldfire. I have suspend spells, Chandra damage emblems, other ways to win after worldfire goes off. I’m very proud of the deck and it feels unique to me. However, some people don’t like brewing as much and just want a solid consistent deck that leads to satisfying wins. Combo decks and be randomly useless or broken and win early depending on how you draw, or can do nothing the whole game and randomly win after the whole table let you live out of pity. Tribal decks are consistent and fair, and just lead to satisfying games where you can see what’s coming and play around it. They are also very flavorful and have a unique restriction. If you want to be hipster, you can always play random tribe overlooked tribe members or pick a less popular tribe, or just build around a certain ability common among the tribe instead of just go wide combat deck
The Kykar deck sounds like fun! But I don’t agree with tribal decks leading to satisfying games. In fact combat damage is not at all what I would consider when thinking about satisfying games at all. Tribal decks normally win when players lack board wipes and usually do nothing when they are present. Combos are fine and fun I don’t think that just cause someone won with a combo it is not a satisfying game
@@thetrinketmage Yea that's fine, but some people just want to play decks that make funny board states instead of playing combo decks, as there are combo decks in every format and cEDH is also a combo-based format. I find a lot of combos to be not that satisfying for the table especially if they are too fast or easy to assemble or win in an obvious or easy way. But of course if you are playing high power and trying to just win the game by any means combos are the most efficient way to do that. Most people know running more board wipes would help them win but getting board wiped every turn is just not fun IMO. But people want different things out of commander games so it's totally fine just understand that going to an LGS and showing up with a control deck that board wipes every turn and then randomly wins with a 2-card combo, most tables won't have fun. But it all depends on the group I guess.
To me building fun synergies around your commander and having it stick around for a while really emphasizes the unique selling points of commander, especially as a casual format. When I get board wiped 5 times in a row trying to play commander, I think, I might as well not build around this and just play broken main deck 2-card combos like thoracle consultation, etc. But I don't find that really interesting.
Great video. Very interesting hearing your take one this. I am the complete opposite. I started in onslaught so tribal decks feel like nostalgic magic to me. I wish tribal wars was the main format, and each tier was clearly defined with certain tribes moving up or down in tier levels as cards are printed. It would be pretty fun playing a tier two or three tribe against someone else who was running a similar power level.
@@thetrinketmage they are really fun. I personally really like thallids. It would take too much banning to work as a format. Aether vial is too good in merfolk or elves, but it isn't overpowered in an aurochs deck.
I think the best way to built a tribal deck without falling to EDH trap is to find a second mechanic in wich you can also invest. You want to build a mono blue wizard tribal? Sure, try to build it around artifact mechanics. An Elf deck? Could work well with a sacrifice engine. Also, what is fun with a tribal deck is to put in cards that do stuff other cards do but in their tribal flavor. For example, there are tons of boardwipes and counterspells now, so instead of going with the most obvious ones, put the ones with special effects that synergizes with your tribal mechanic. I have a Korlash mono black zombie deck, it is a tribal builded around swamping the board as fast as I can. I don't have tutors, only swamp ramps and most of my removals works around the number of swamps I have, the rest is filled with your typical zombies. It works, it's fun and it gives me two possible ways of building my board each game. Even though this video is meant to critic Tribal theme in general, we could put the same critics on other cards like boardwipes or counterspells. A friend of mine builded a mono white commander with all the boardwipes he could find. He was trolling us of course, but the point was to show how much playing against someone who answers whatever you do with removals is not fun, even if some of us didn't have a deck builded around creatures. Same with counterspell decks, you can have as many as you want, it won't be original because you basically doing the same thing over and over again. And worse, what you're doing is mostly refusing to engage with the game that the other players are trying to unfold, simply by not allowing them to play. I don't know, I think saying ''It's easy for me to beat them (tribal decks) because my control decks are full of boardwipes'' does not make your decks look more fun or original. You also seem to point your finger mostly on tribals that are meant to go face, wich is the most basic way to win in Magic. I get your point about lacking originality, but I think this is grasping the problem by the wrong end. Same as D&D, if a game lets you craft something in a sandbox-like, you should be able to do the most convoluted-combo-mindblowing thing or the most basic and simple build and both should work. Other comments said it before me, but EDH has been transformed into a powercreep comformity engine because WotC keeps pushing stronger and more powerful cards by each set that you have to get your hands on unless you don't care losing more and more often. Sure, each set tries to push a new gameplay, but more often it just reskins old ones and makes them simply better, wich in response turns a lot of previous cards who was fun and diverse now obsolete. For a new player, it is always easier to just look up to EDH, see what it suggests and comes around a deck with cards that match your taste and wallet. Even though I love to see new players coming to me with something suboptimal that they crafted themselves, I feel less bad seeing a new player coming to me with a deck he got from EDH than seeing a experience one doing the same. Because you can assume the first one wants to learn without feeling like he's not good enough to play MTG, while the second is more often just looking towards ''living a game experience'' that also provides an easy win.
My way of trying to be different with tribal was building a dual tribal deck. Use elves to ramp, draw cards, then summon their angelic overlords who will lead them to victory. It's certainly not the most unique deck out there, but it's kinda fun wondering which tribe I should name with cards like Metallic Mimic
I understand where this is coming from. I go to different game stores and I'll see the same decks builds; But I feel like that's more indicative of the state of the game in relation to EDHREC. It's a tool, but most people just use it to download decks. I'm relatively new to the game; but I started by going into Bulk bins and grabbing creatures that looked cool. I don't think people build decks with flavor or intention. My first commander build was built from a Draft box, I couldn't go over budget because the budget was the $100 I spent on the Box. The other issue is that people see your "durdley" deck and complain that it's not running optimized cards in the middle of the game. Dude I'm not going to check EDHREC every time a new set comes out. Everyone laughs in *sword of Feast and Famine* at Elfball until the Eldrazi with Annhilator 4 comes out. But I'm also the Hipster who wants Kithkin Tribal to get supported
I love building weird, uncommon tribal decks. Some of the ones I made, like Spiders and Myr, habe since recievef dedicated tribal commanders. Which, while it's nice to get support, it does mean decks are less unique. My Myr deck for example used Traxos as the commander and a win con, but now using anything other than Urtet is putting a handicap on your deck. Having no dedicated commanders means anything can work One of my favorite decks is technically tribal. It's a mixture of Kor Tribal and Equipment, using Nahiri, the Lithomancer as my commander. Balancing the two while building that deck, one I'm still refining, has taught me a lot about prioritizing cards.
I'm brewing up a five color tiamat deck, it certainly can poop a bunch of big dragons out. But it's ACTUAL goal is Gates baby, like 18 of them. Mazes end ftw
I can tell I noticed a huge difference I started to create Yargle and Multani 18/6 Voltron deck and boy oh boy the power. It's so different from playing a spirit tribal deck Millicent, Restless Revenant. When I play spirits I feel weak most of the times because I got hard time to block because of their low numbers usually around 1/1 - 1/2 - 2/2. Felt so great starting creating my Voltron deck after playing Token deck for quite some time.
I’m currently trying to build for Gishath but every deck I reference for inspiration seems to be going the route of “high dino density, smash face” without leaving much room for support to make up for the deck’s weaknesses. They also don’t tend to focus on the enrage mechanic which is something I love and that helps separate dinos from dragons (I’m trying to build my deck around this sub theme but I’m an amateur brewer). I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with the same-y vibe of tribal (except “go wide” tribes with anthems, those have never been interesting to me) but I do wish there was a bit to make individual tribes feel more unique. I also want to see some crazy tribal I’ve never seen or that doesn’t have as much support. I’m also not fond of tutors mainly because the people I know who run them seem to just use them to play the same small handful of cards every game and it’s boring. I’m not saying I’m completely against them, I also like playing toolbox style decks and they’re useful for that but the people I know don’t use them in this fashion.
Gishath is pretty simple. Fill it with the best dinos, white protection pieces, green ramp, red ramp/card draw. Then fill the rest of the space with creature buffs, particularly ones that let your creatures fight things. And there you have it, you're swinging every turn with huge damage and decent removal, protection on your key pieces and temporary ramp and draw with red
If you sort your EDHrec page by the theme, price, EDH you can see that tribals are even more homogenous by a tiny % because when you just go to the EDHrec for a specific from your browser homepage, it normally doesn’t list something under its theme. I’ve seen a lot of elf tribal pieces be used in completely different deck styles than tribal, but as soon as you slap which theme your under all of the sudden you’re looking at a list of 100%s to 60% of all cards in those decks for that commander. I feel like the convenience of EDHrec is the same reason why it’s making everyone’s decks so homogeneous in general
I have a neat spirit deck. It’s a basic Millicent and using some spirit lords, but I use some wacky spirits and really utilize the graveyard and the disturb mechanic so even removal and board wipes are ok cause it’s ahhh spooky spirits who come back from the graveyard, then tries to kill you through flyers
I'm super not debating that tribal can be boring, mostly because a lot of new players play it and a lot of those will go with whatever is good on edhrec. And I'm under no illusion that even if I'm running a couple of cool "secret tech cards" in my own ur-dragon deck (that without a doubt aren't all that secret) it still ends up being "big undercosted powerful flyers in the air with ridiculous attack triggers". But I do have a question about Ur-Dragon and boardwipes... Like I don't think I lose to boardwipes? I'm more or less lethal if I have three dragons out and don't need to commit more to the board, just because their synnergies are so strong. And I run like 10 haste-giving pieces in the deck exactly because I want to get those attack triggers right then and there and not have to wait a turn cycle. But half my dragons draw a ton of cards as well. There's so many card-advantage dragons nowadays. My real enemy is actually people stealing my fattest most useful dragon for big tempo swings and also they now have a big blocker in the air or using mob rule to either kill me with my own dragons or get me to single digit life totals. I can absolutely recover from boardwipes, but getting my Old Gnawbone or Ancient Copper Dragon stolen more or less negates my entire last turn plus it sets up my opponent to explode on their next turn.
As for tutors, I exclusively use them to find answers (usually removal) to something problematic to avoid frustration that the opponent has one card in play that negates my entire game plan. Never to assemble combos.
Made a blue-green pirate deck, im not sure what counts as tribal but they're ALL pirates and have cards that activate when a pirate enters the field A few tapping pirates, flying, a dash of +1/+1 counters i can adapt on the fly and a few mill+heals for emergency draws, it only needs 5 land but fully activates at 7-8. Its a monster denier like a cancel deck sure, but it doesnt remove all the pretty art from the board.
That's one thing I love about spirits. Please, board wipe! I've got at least 7 options to phase out all my shit, and if you do manage to push one through on me, I just get back a bunch of tokens that discount my commander
Big agree on going out of my way to differentiate my deck. It helps that I like the challenge of building ultrabudget decks and hunting around for 30 cent gems. Deckbuilding is a puzzle. Sometimes its nice to have resources that can function as an aswer key when I've got a problem I feel I've solved imperfectly, but I avoid EDHrec until after I've got a working build and tend to stay away from super obvious commanders which have one paragraph that is an engine and a second paragraph that is a payoff. Unless you're playing cEDH and trying to get to top 16 tables, there is very little at risk from trying to do your own thing, and even then there is a lot of equity in trying to figure out a better way to do something - its just that those lists vary on the order of 3 or 4 cards. Cards like the Ur-Dragon are probably the most boring design space that you, as a deckbuilder, can engage with, even if you got so craaaaazy with it and put in Shivan Dragon because its old.
That Rasaad yn Bashir reminds me of Phenax. : ) I’d hazard a guess that many Phenax decks share certain common creatures (that same Charix, for instance). That said, a creature only needs to have a lot of toughness to synergize with Phenax. Anything else that a creature brings to the table is extra: card draw, unblockability, hexproof… Necessary extra, yes, but a wide variety of it, too. Of course I have plenty of creatures that synergize with graveyard shenanigans and mill - but I also have several lots for curious experiments. I like to try out new cards. : D
Reason why i love my Eowyn human tribal deck. I have 3 main versions of this deck (human mid range/human tokens/human stax). Human is such a versatile tribe, with tons of options to build.
I kinda did the opposite - I got bored with the typical Meren deck, so I turned mine into zombie tribal. Also, as someone who plays some tribal decks, why do I hate tutors? They really just bug me when it turns into people running every tutor they can just to tutor up their combo, and I find that very boring.
Oh interesting! That’s a fun way to do zombies though using a non traditional commander! As for the tutor thing I recommend checking out my video on them see what you think
I just did a count and I play, or plan to play, 19 of the top 100 commanders. And of those 19, Ive only seen two of them run by other local players. Theres just a LOT of variety here, and I count myself fortunate for that
I play Sliver tribal, but my actual game plan is to set up a somewhat convoluted loop with the following cards: -The First Sliver -Morophon the Boundless -Hibernation Sliver -Darkheart Sliver For every two life paid I can keep bouncing The First Sliver and casting it from my hand for free, cascading each time I do so. Bonus points if I can keep it out and instead bounce any other 5 color Sliver lord to get the maximum cascade effect. Since the deck is packed full of Slivers ranging from 1cmc to 4cmc I can get a ton of them out pretty easily, then I can sacrifice the ones not required for the loop to gain three life per Sliver, then once I've cycled through all my Slivers in this manner, I can reset my deck by cracking Elixir of Immortality to keep cascading as many times as I need to to burn out my opponents with either Lavabelly Sliver or Sarkhan's Unsealing.
@thetrinketmage I don't have one typed up, but its going to go through a few changes anyway. Most of the Slivers in the deck are going to be serving utility purposes such as giving them haste, flying, the ability to tap for mana, etc. Then I run a suite of tutors and a few mana rocks to help get things out a little quicker. I've considered running Dormant Sliver in the deck, but I fear it'll actually just make me draw too many cards. The bulk of the deck however is just utility Slivers with cmc 4 or less, the Sliver lords that are WUBRG, and the tutors that can search out what you need like Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Signal The Clans, Eladamri's Call, Homing Sliver, etc. I've found there's not a ton of difference between running Overlord or First Sliver as the Commander, but either will do. And a lot of times once you assemble just a few pieces of the combo you'll end up cascading into the rest of it, or tutors to search them up.
My current tribal deck is enchantments, with Sithis, Harvest's Hand as the commander (obviously joking, but the deck is exclusively lands and enchantments, so I think it sorta counts). I recently took it apart, but I had a mono-blue wizard deck with Naban, Dean of Iteration as the commander. Wizard, ETB matters was a fun deck, and cheap (both mana and money-wise). Also, I completely agree with you, as a fellow control player. I will see decks where one person vomits a bunch of dragons or whatnot, and everyone else at the table is scared, and I usually have a moment of, "Wait, why is that scary- oh right, you all aren't running 10+ boardwipes, at least five of which are instant speed."
Ezuri, Renegade Leader decks, played carefully and without Eladamri on the board can regenerate their best elves they control to neutralize destruction wipes. Agree though that decks that are just about getting enough power on the board aided by type synergies and then winning with mass-buff/evasion/trample all out attacks can be kind of linear. Thus the EDHREC salt score for Craterhoof.
I'm a year late, so feel free to ignore me, but I hope the majority of people who don't like tutors are actually upset with tutors in casual/low power games, where they often make decks play the same over and over, instead of being used, like you said, to support a toolbox playstyle where your tutors are a skill testing way to either answer a threat, or progress your game plan.
Karrthus is my dragons commander and there are several games where I've never played Karrthus. He is just there for the haste. I enjoy the restriction of 3 color because it would become every other dragon deck out there. Also... Who needs lords when you can set everything on fire?
tribal decks are just fun to build though. i get the idea of it getting boring seeing the same 5 elfdecks everyday (i would know my brother runs 2elf decks and a goblin deck) but i just love the aestetic and theme of tribal decks.having someone like gisa controlling and commanding hordes of undead or something i built a few days aggo is a dragon/treasuretribal deck using Goddrick Cloaked Reveler as the commander. i love the feel of a transformed dragon lord commanding basic dragons and aasing wealth
I used to try and build unique decks too but I found I like playing simple tribal decks too. Simple strategies allow you to focus on the game. Just be sure run enough protection for those control players and kill them first
very much feeling the hipster urge as someone who was absolutely decimated to discover that three other people beat me to the punch on making a bant galadriel sliver deck,
28 cards the same is basically half the deck, as when you cut away the neccessary mana base who doesnt REALLY matter, as it is the question of budget and the usage of math, then you have a 60~ish card commander deck do 28 cards of that is more like half than a third
I reall don't agree for instance the mono green elf commanders you showed you said they shared 56 cards together 28 being lands which makes sense. So no they share 28 cards that can basically change how they play. The picture you shown has alot of green staples whether it be mana creatureslike llanowear elves orbirds of paradise ramp like kodamas reach and sol ring, destruction like beast within, protection like lightning grieves and heroic prevention, or wincons like craterhoof behemoth. I mean your looking at maybe 10- 12 staples in green that is in almost any deck with the color in it. Not only that but you chose two elf commanders that play somewhat similarly both in protecting elves and making an army strong or unblockable. But if you chose Marwyn the Nurterer as a commander you would have different ways to build your elf tribal either using elves to make your commander bigger, doing something with the counters, or making a elf army to use mana to cast big spells. You chose two commanders that play similarly. And the example of kodama west tree and vorinclex is BS. Both commanders do different things with said counters. Vorinclex doubles counters so you would put plainswalkers to use ultimate abiilities versus kodama also cares about aura and equipment as well as dealing damage to mana ramp. Its not a fair comparison at all.
I mean that's like comparing Lorcan warlock creator and Chainer Dementia Master they are roughly the same card except chained also buffs nightmares. They are both in mono black so they use sim8lar strategies as well as sharing black staples.
My example was BS? Huh both Kodama and vorinclex want you to play other creatures that get counters on them. It’s not like I picked a Voltron commander for one and go wide for the other. I do also realize that some of the cards shared between decks might be green staples but look at the 2 color examples we still see a massive disparity of cards from the counters decks to the elf decks. Yes it is possible to play an elf deck that is different and I did mention that, I talked about dragon decks that play differently and I am totally cool with those
ive had people get actively frustrated/confused why my scarab god deck isn't a zombie deck. like bro? theres more to life than seeing the word "zombie" on a card and ramming your deck with the same 40 zombie cards
Fundamentally I disagree with your argument that tutors ~= redundant copies. If 5 versions of thoracle and 5 versions of demonic consultation existed, no one would use all 10 in a decklist (at least on the merits of thoracle combo alone) to save on the mana required to combo. If you draw multiple of a tutor, you never have too much or too little of something, but rather exactly how much you want when you want it. For the good tutors like demonic tutor, vampiric tutor, etc., I find that versatility (and redundancy, if you’re playing with big power pieces like dockside, mana crypt, etc.) to be both game-warpingly powerful and responsible for repetitive play patterns, even when decks aren’t built to be able to abuse tutors very well. That being said, that’s my mid-power perspective on it. In high power I’d imagine tutoring out the ol’ dockside isn’t nearly as much of an issue.
I love my giant tribal deck im both super excited and not so excited for the return to lorwyn to drop super excited cause more support is always great and giants really need it but on the other hand I love the giant deck because of how unique it is I can do a large verity of things control burn big stompy but with more support dropping its plausible that they will be more popular meaning the deck loses its uniqueness
Funnily enough, humans turn out to be same-ish on the first glance - but my three Humans decks operate differently. Elves yes, are just plain Elves. Same for Zombies. No wonder, I play them rarely.
I honestly straight up disagree with the Scion of the Ur Dragon being more fun to play against than the Ur Dragon itself, it honestly just turns into dragon reanimator. Like Honestly basic Ur Dragon feels alot more stable to play against. Not having to constantly be concerned about getting rid of the graveyard like with scion.
I play minotaurs and that tribe is all about going big on attack, so leave myself open a lot but it's fun to me to swing with a a 2/3 but on swing it gets like +5/+0. Plus I get play the best artifact in the game didgeridoo. My friends say it boring I use the same minotaurs to win the game but minotaurs only have a couple Lords and only really one way to win unless your running changelings which I don't I consider that cheating lol.
Tribes got me into the game. I built a ur dragon deck that is different. I put my favorite dragons and has a ton of recurrsion because wipes end those decks. My main objective is to burn and i win 3v1s quite often and typically knock out control players quick😘
I basically always build decks towards a gimmick or a theme (whether its tribal or not). Like i have a mono white cat deck but its also my equipment deck. I have an elemental tribal deck that is specifically built around ETBs. I also have 2 tribal rat decks that play completely different and have almost no overlap and I am going to be building a third in BR with the Eldraine uncommon and its going to be a sacrifice deck, which is not something the others do at all. In response to the lords thing...thats kind of a narrow point of view. The +1/+1 is not the interesting thing about tribal support nor is it the thing that makes the decks hum. Its all the extra weirdo abilities those cards also tend to have or give. Dragons are the best because they just have a ton of support. Dragon support doesnt even give +x/+x more of the time. It gives keywords or other effects that trigger on cast or attack. Sure elves and goblins have a lot of old lords that just give +1/+1 but the bulk of tribal cards printed today are much more interesting than that....I also have also cut almost every tutor from every deck I own. Redundancy is not the same as fishing out the same best card in my deck every game. Also, the commander can make a big difference in how the game plays out. Ur Dragon, Myraim, and Zurgo and Ojutai all overlap red and blue but i assure you those decks do not feel the same.
You have 2 rat decks that don’t share any cards???? How?!?! As for the dragon thing at the end there I would argue those all feel very similar. They just play dragons and attack for the most part I don’t see much difference
@@thetrinketmage I have a mono black rat deck with....well I haven't decided who I actually want to be the commander yet. I keep swapping....honestly thinking I might end up with Lord Skitters because he's a doofus and his card isn't very good. But the deck is just basically 1 copy of every rat and the rat related cards (no relentless rats or rat colony). The other is the new Nashi and it's a relentless rats deck and then the rest of the deck is mostly just legends because Nashi also cares about them. Other than a few rat legends I happen to have duplicates of, there's little overlap. I also have a 60 card rat colony deck but that's not really in the conversation. (For the record I don't personally have a problem with the "it's against the spirit of Singleton" thing for tutors. I just 1. Prefer lower power decks with weirdo themes or gimmicks and 2. I just think it's really boring to go find the same key card every single time I play the deck) Honestly, it sounds to me like your issue is with creature based aggro decks, not tribal decks. Sure, in the end, all of those dragon decks want to beat face to win, but they pilot completely differently on a turn to turn basis. They feel different to play. I landed on Zurgo and Ojutai and it's a lot more fiddly and I have significantly less overall board presence than my friend's Ur-Dragon deck, but it's still dragon tribal.
Dinos are the worst tribe because they literally are all the same Naya piles. Funny considering there was just a Dino heavy set and all people put in their decks were the same pushed cards...so original.
Yeah, you're a bit of a hipster lol. I really just build decks I love. I do happen to love tribal decks. I have a Sliver, Dragon, Elf, Zombie, Vampire, Goblin and Ninja deck. I'm part of the problem. But I also play Scarecrow, Egg, and Party decks. I do have a suspend deck with Jhoira that uses Eldrazi, so that's a bit different in terms of Eldrazi tribal. These are only 11 out of 30+ decks. My slivers I turned into Sliver control and it's pretty fun to play. It actually gets to the point where board wipes don't work pretty often. My elves deck has also undergone a lot of work to become more control. As much flash as possible and ability to survive the board wipes. Cards like Viridian Revel propel it into massive card draw in the treasure meta and in general, I do try to put a unique spin on it. Every one of my tribal decks tends to undergo frequent shifts and rotations as I'm playing them and wanting to do different combos.
i feel like i can kinda get away with a few of the top100 commanders when no one else at the store plays them, or pilots them like me. e.g. Ive never run into another acrades player or sauron player at the store. It feels interesting to run Arcades when Im the only local who runs it, and thats taking into account the fact that Arcades decks are all about 95% card overlap with each other. Which makes kindred decks look pretty unique in comparison! I guess what Im trying to say is, you dont have to be different from everyone who's ever played magic. You only have to be different where you play. Thats a much smaller pool. There are probably people who have made the EXACT same video as this, but complaining about +1/+1 counter decks instead, or infect decks, etc. And a lot of it likely has to do with what they see a lot of locally. well anyway thats my 2 cents
To say Trinket, about your tutor comment i feel as if it was in truly bad faith, yes there are a million lords however the mana costs and effects are infinitely worst than just a 2 mana oh guess its over button. People hate combos simple as
I don’t appreciate you saying my argument is made in bad faith. I don’t have an agenda to push I make these for fun. Every thing I say is actually my opinion… with that out of the way you said you don’t like combos… ok? That’s not a tutor? If I tutor for a supreme verdict that’s not a combo it’s just a board wipe? If you don’t like combos don’t put them in your deck. If you have no combos in your deck then how do tutors win the game? They don’t instead they are just a really flexible utility card
@@thetrinketmage Same guy, if its not in bad faith my apologies however the comparison between lords and tutors is so incongrous its unfunny. I understand the hating consistency thing but the strength of a tutor vs demonic tutor is so massive. Also I do agree wit you that the popular tribes are annoying in fact dragons are my least favorite archetype to fight. That said they are far less annoying to players simply because not only are they "cool" in terms of art but also the act of paying 2 mana and going to get ANY card from a library is just boring guess. As for your if you don't like tutors thing ummmmm i don't have tutors in decks and I'm not the guy building my opponents decks. I didn't comment that to piss u off but I don't think the comparison is nearly in line. I feel hating them tho, plus i literally never comment unless i want ppls engagement up so I'm doing this a bit to help keep up the vids. I often disagree with u but ur content is solid.
I don’t hate consistency at all I really like tutors a lot. I play them in a lot of decks because I use a lot of hidden commanders in the 99 I only mentioned it in this video because I get a lot of flak for liking tutors often
I'm a yugioh player who just recently started playing magic because my friend told me a card called Voja was recently released and I could play a wolf deck. I've seen other people say tribal decks' biggest strength is getting new players into magic and it certainly checks out for me!
That's exactly what I thought years and years ago when the ur dragon precon was released.
Big dumb dragons? Sign me up!
Although Voja is stronger with Elves and a few changelings, I get it. Knights was my first deck and it was a great starting point.
@@nowhere_nothing thankfully Voja's so good I can win with just fluffy wolves and no stinky elves 😤
I'm getting my friend into Magic and she's having a lot of fun with Miirym right now
Recently theorycrafting a land tribal deck that’s 5 colors. Main goal is to animate your lands into creatures in whatever way possible, make them tough enough or indestructible, then use Najeela for info time combats killing your opponents with basic lands punching them in the face over and over. Jank tribal is always more fun than super supported tribal
if your going drop a surprise army on the field to swing, may i reccommend triumph of the horde, elesh norn grand cenobite, and nature's revolt. its an absolutely nefarious war crime. you turn everyone's lands into 2/2 creatures that are still lands. then you destroy all of them except yours with elesh norn -2/-2 to theirs and +2/+2 to yours right. now you give them infect. you'll either wipe them all out, or clear most their board since infect gives creatures -1/-1 counters instead of damage. and it's not like they can comeback from this either since you destroyed all your opponents lands...
The trouble is, a lot of the goober tribes don't really have the "volume" to work in a singleton format.
For an example, there are six hundred and nine elf-typed cards in the game. If you want to "build an elf deck," you have all the options in the world.
There are twenty-four Thrulls. Pare that down to seventeen, if you want to use either of the two commanders that are on-theme (Endric Sahr or Tevish Szat) since those guys are both mono-black. Pare that down to SIXTEEEN because for god's sake who wants to play with Derelor. Throw in a copy of Soul Exchange, Tourach's Gate, and Ebon Praetor, and there you go, all twenty cards in the game you can use for a monoblack highlander thrull tribal deck.
Maybe you want to go with a B/W commander to get those other six thrulls in there though! Okay, now we're cooking, you can lean into the graveyard recursion and lifelink stuff those guys bring to the table. But then at this point, you're just playing Vampires or Clerics with way worse cards (fwiw, vampires have 415 typal cards.)
Now in a 60-card, 4-of format, you can still make Thrulls work pretty well. They're definitely a D-tier tribe still, but at least you're not stuck with one dumb Necrite in your pile - you can have FOUR dumb necrites!
with the release of bloomburrow i can finally play rabbit tribal with "Cadira Caller of the small" as my commander
I like when tribe is not just alphobet soup, but has some mechanic that ties them together. Like hydras with +1/+1. Or like dinosaurs...were in the beginning. Yes, i'm still salty that they abandoned enrage, and turned dinos into another meatball tribal.
Thats why fungus tribal with spore counters is my favorite
Same. I have a Thelon of Havenwood fungus counter deck that is honestly kind of terrible, since I’m not shelling out 70 bucks for a Doubling Season, or Coat of Arms, and the creatures themselves are somewhat slow at generating tokens, and vulnerable to board wipes, but the spore counter mechanic is just so fun. It’s a shame that they largely moved away from it in more recent sets, I would have loved to see some spore counter stuff in Caverns of Ixalan.
Another great example of a tribe having mechanics that tie them together is Snakes from Kamigawa, which almost all had a neat sort of pseudo-deathtouch where if they dealt damage to a creature, you tap that creature, and it doesn’t untap during it’s controller’s next untap step, and a good chunk also had abilities to either generate green mana via damage, tapping, etc.
I think overall the most consistent tribal mechanic aside from “elf taps for mana” “dragon can pay mana to pump its attack” and “Fungus produces saprolings” might actually be illusion tribal, where most of them have some version of “whenever this creature becomes the target of a spell of ability, sacrifice it” which is honestly such a flavor win.
there is still plenty of good enrage! I built Wayta as my second dinosaur deck as a home for all the enrage guys that got power crept out of my Gishath deck and it’s tons of fun, also better at flying under the radar
My Fungus tribal is by far my favorite
I have two Angel tribal decks that work completely different from eachother.
One is graveyard recursion, flash speed, doesn’t give a shit about board wipes, very aggressive with removal.
The other is super defensive, pillow fort, battle cruisers that are immune to spot removal and centers on soft locking out opponents.
I call them the nice angels and the mean angels
Love the names! And I’m not saying you can’t make tribal decks that look different but it’s also very easy to make them look the same
An angel deck is easy enough to make unique. Just don't use Giada or (ESPECIALLY) Avacyn. Go for a 2-color angel like Sigarda or Feather. Both even have fun mechanics - Feather in particular is THE commander to pilot a Sunforger deck due to her ability to recycle instants.
@@WatcherCCG The two decks im reffering to are Sigarda Font of Blessings Selesnya Angel Tribal and Liesa Forgotten Archangel Orzov Angel Tribal. They work completely different, but Giada and Avacyn are must includes.
Feather is kinda just a spell slinger deck though
I also love building interesting decks. I built a Kykar deck that transmutes into Grozoth every game to grab a pile of 9 mana spells (most of which are split cards or blasphemous act etc), but the deck is built around casting worldfire. I have suspend spells, Chandra damage emblems, other ways to win after worldfire goes off. I’m very proud of the deck and it feels unique to me.
However, some people don’t like brewing as much and just want a solid consistent deck that leads to satisfying wins. Combo decks and be randomly useless or broken and win early depending on how you draw, or can do nothing the whole game and randomly win after the whole table let you live out of pity. Tribal decks are consistent and fair, and just lead to satisfying games where you can see what’s coming and play around it. They are also very flavorful and have a unique restriction. If you want to be hipster, you can always play random tribe overlooked tribe members or pick a less popular tribe, or just build around a certain ability common among the tribe instead of just go wide combat deck
The Kykar deck sounds like fun! But I don’t agree with tribal decks leading to satisfying games. In fact combat damage is not at all what I would consider when thinking about satisfying games at all. Tribal decks normally win when players lack board wipes and usually do nothing when they are present. Combos are fine and fun I don’t think that just cause someone won with a combo it is not a satisfying game
@@thetrinketmage Yea that's fine, but some people just want to play decks that make funny board states instead of playing combo decks, as there are combo decks in every format and cEDH is also a combo-based format. I find a lot of combos to be not that satisfying for the table especially if they are too fast or easy to assemble or win in an obvious or easy way. But of course if you are playing high power and trying to just win the game by any means combos are the most efficient way to do that.
Most people know running more board wipes would help them win but getting board wiped every turn is just not fun IMO. But people want different things out of commander games so it's totally fine just understand that going to an LGS and showing up with a control deck that board wipes every turn and then randomly wins with a 2-card combo, most tables won't have fun. But it all depends on the group I guess.
To me building fun synergies around your commander and having it stick around for a while really emphasizes the unique selling points of commander, especially as a casual format. When I get board wiped 5 times in a row trying to play commander, I think, I might as well not build around this and just play broken main deck 2-card combos like thoracle consultation, etc. But I don't find that really interesting.
Great video. Very interesting hearing your take one this. I am the complete opposite. I started in onslaught so tribal decks feel like nostalgic magic to me. I wish tribal wars was the main format, and each tier was clearly defined with certain tribes moving up or down in tier levels as cards are printed. It would be pretty fun playing a tier two or three tribe against someone else who was running a similar power level.
That would be a wild format… you should try out those tier 2 and 3 tribes though! Yo never know they might be decent!
@@thetrinketmage they are really fun. I personally really like thallids. It would take too much banning to work as a format. Aether vial is too good in merfolk or elves, but it isn't overpowered in an aurochs deck.
I think the best way to built a tribal deck without falling to EDH trap is to find a second mechanic in wich you can also invest. You want to build a mono blue wizard tribal? Sure, try to build it around artifact mechanics. An Elf deck? Could work well with a sacrifice engine. Also, what is fun with a tribal deck is to put in cards that do stuff other cards do but in their tribal flavor. For example, there are tons of boardwipes and counterspells now, so instead of going with the most obvious ones, put the ones with special effects that synergizes with your tribal mechanic. I have a Korlash mono black zombie deck, it is a tribal builded around swamping the board as fast as I can. I don't have tutors, only swamp ramps and most of my removals works around the number of swamps I have, the rest is filled with your typical zombies. It works, it's fun and it gives me two possible ways of building my board each game.
Even though this video is meant to critic Tribal theme in general, we could put the same critics on other cards like boardwipes or counterspells. A friend of mine builded a mono white commander with all the boardwipes he could find. He was trolling us of course, but the point was to show how much playing against someone who answers whatever you do with removals is not fun, even if some of us didn't have a deck builded around creatures. Same with counterspell decks, you can have as many as you want, it won't be original because you basically doing the same thing over and over again. And worse, what you're doing is mostly refusing to engage with the game that the other players are trying to unfold, simply by not allowing them to play. I don't know, I think saying ''It's easy for me to beat them (tribal decks) because my control decks are full of boardwipes'' does not make your decks look more fun or original.
You also seem to point your finger mostly on tribals that are meant to go face, wich is the most basic way to win in Magic. I get your point about lacking originality, but I think this is grasping the problem by the wrong end. Same as D&D, if a game lets you craft something in a sandbox-like, you should be able to do the most convoluted-combo-mindblowing thing or the most basic and simple build and both should work. Other comments said it before me, but EDH has been transformed into a powercreep comformity engine because WotC keeps pushing stronger and more powerful cards by each set that you have to get your hands on unless you don't care losing more and more often. Sure, each set tries to push a new gameplay, but more often it just reskins old ones and makes them simply better, wich in response turns a lot of previous cards who was fun and diverse now obsolete. For a new player, it is always easier to just look up to EDH, see what it suggests and comes around a deck with cards that match your taste and wallet. Even though I love to see new players coming to me with something suboptimal that they crafted themselves, I feel less bad seeing a new player coming to me with a deck he got from EDH than seeing a experience one doing the same. Because you can assume the first one wants to learn without feeling like he's not good enough to play MTG, while the second is more often just looking towards ''living a game experience'' that also provides an easy win.
My way of trying to be different with tribal was building a dual tribal deck. Use elves to ramp, draw cards, then summon their angelic overlords who will lead them to victory.
It's certainly not the most unique deck out there, but it's kinda fun wondering which tribe I should name with cards like Metallic Mimic
I understand where this is coming from. I go to different game stores and I'll see the same decks builds; But I feel like that's more indicative of the state of the game in relation to EDHREC. It's a tool, but most people just use it to download decks. I'm relatively new to the game; but I started by going into Bulk bins and grabbing creatures that looked cool. I don't think people build decks with flavor or intention. My first commander build was built from a Draft box, I couldn't go over budget because the budget was the $100 I spent on the Box. The other issue is that people see your "durdley" deck and complain that it's not running optimized cards in the middle of the game. Dude I'm not going to check EDHREC every time a new set comes out. Everyone laughs in *sword of Feast and Famine* at Elfball until the Eldrazi with Annhilator 4 comes out. But I'm also the Hipster who wants Kithkin Tribal to get supported
I’ve been thinking about making a separate video about EDHREC and it’s effects on the format
I love building weird, uncommon tribal decks. Some of the ones I made, like Spiders and Myr, habe since recievef dedicated tribal commanders. Which, while it's nice to get support, it does mean decks are less unique. My Myr deck for example used Traxos as the commander and a win con, but now using anything other than Urtet is putting a handicap on your deck. Having no dedicated commanders means anything can work
One of my favorite decks is technically tribal. It's a mixture of Kor Tribal and Equipment, using Nahiri, the Lithomancer as my commander. Balancing the two while building that deck, one I'm still refining, has taught me a lot about prioritizing cards.
I'm brewing up a five color tiamat deck, it certainly can poop a bunch of big dragons out. But it's ACTUAL goal is Gates baby, like 18 of them. Mazes end ftw
1:15 absolute gold there mate 🤣🍻
*laughs in thalid tribal*
I was born in the jank, you mearly adopted it.
I can tell I noticed a huge difference I started to create Yargle and Multani 18/6 Voltron deck and boy oh boy the power. It's so different from playing a spirit tribal deck Millicent, Restless Revenant. When I play spirits I feel weak most of the times because I got hard time to block because of their low numbers usually around 1/1 - 1/2 - 2/2. Felt so great starting creating my Voltron deck after playing Token deck for quite some time.
I’m currently trying to build for Gishath but every deck I reference for inspiration seems to be going the route of “high dino density, smash face” without leaving much room for support to make up for the deck’s weaknesses. They also don’t tend to focus on the enrage mechanic which is something I love and that helps separate dinos from dragons (I’m trying to build my deck around this sub theme but I’m an amateur brewer). I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with the same-y vibe of tribal (except “go wide” tribes with anthems, those have never been interesting to me) but I do wish there was a bit to make individual tribes feel more unique. I also want to see some crazy tribal I’ve never seen or that doesn’t have as much support.
I’m also not fond of tutors mainly because the people I know who run them seem to just use them to play the same small handful of cards every game and it’s boring. I’m not saying I’m completely against them, I also like playing toolbox style decks and they’re useful for that but the people I know don’t use them in this fashion.
Gishath is pretty simple. Fill it with the best dinos, white protection pieces, green ramp, red ramp/card draw. Then fill the rest of the space with creature buffs, particularly ones that let your creatures fight things. And there you have it, you're swinging every turn with huge damage and decent removal, protection on your key pieces and temporary ramp and draw with red
almost 20 years ago, my friend bought sliver precon and upgraded it little, and became unbeaten champion lol, we even wanted slivers banned as whole.
If you sort your EDHrec page by the theme, price, EDH you can see that tribals are even more homogenous by a tiny % because when you just go to the EDHrec for a specific from your browser homepage, it normally doesn’t list something under its theme. I’ve seen a lot of elf tribal pieces be used in completely different deck styles than tribal, but as soon as you slap which theme your under all of the sudden you’re looking at a list of 100%s to 60% of all cards in those decks for that commander. I feel like the convenience of EDHrec is the same reason why it’s making everyone’s decks so homogeneous in general
I have a neat spirit deck. It’s a basic Millicent and using some spirit lords, but I use some wacky spirits and really utilize the graveyard and the disturb mechanic so even removal and board wipes are ok cause it’s ahhh spooky spirits who come back from the graveyard, then tries to kill you through flyers
I'm super not debating that tribal can be boring, mostly because a lot of new players play it and a lot of those will go with whatever is good on edhrec. And I'm under no illusion that even if I'm running a couple of cool "secret tech cards" in my own ur-dragon deck (that without a doubt aren't all that secret) it still ends up being "big undercosted powerful flyers in the air with ridiculous attack triggers".
But I do have a question about Ur-Dragon and boardwipes... Like I don't think I lose to boardwipes? I'm more or less lethal if I have three dragons out and don't need to commit more to the board, just because their synnergies are so strong. And I run like 10 haste-giving pieces in the deck exactly because I want to get those attack triggers right then and there and not have to wait a turn cycle. But half my dragons draw a ton of cards as well. There's so many card-advantage dragons nowadays.
My real enemy is actually people stealing my fattest most useful dragon for big tempo swings and also they now have a big blocker in the air or using mob rule to either kill me with my own dragons or get me to single digit life totals. I can absolutely recover from boardwipes, but getting my Old Gnawbone or Ancient Copper Dragon stolen more or less negates my entire last turn plus it sets up my opponent to explode on their next turn.
As for tutors, I exclusively use them to find answers (usually removal) to something problematic to avoid frustration that the opponent has one card in play that negates my entire game plan. Never to assemble combos.
Made a blue-green pirate deck, im not sure what counts as tribal but they're ALL pirates and have cards that activate when a pirate enters the field
A few tapping pirates, flying, a dash of +1/+1 counters i can adapt on the fly and a few mill+heals for emergency draws, it only needs 5 land but fully activates at 7-8.
Its a monster denier like a cancel deck sure, but it doesnt remove all the pretty art from the board.
That's one thing I love about spirits. Please, board wipe! I've got at least 7 options to phase out all my shit, and if you do manage to push one through on me, I just get back a bunch of tokens that discount my commander
Big agree on going out of my way to differentiate my deck. It helps that I like the challenge of building ultrabudget decks and hunting around for 30 cent gems.
Deckbuilding is a puzzle. Sometimes its nice to have resources that can function as an aswer key when I've got a problem I feel I've solved imperfectly, but I avoid EDHrec until after I've got a working build and tend to stay away from super obvious commanders which have one paragraph that is an engine and a second paragraph that is a payoff.
Unless you're playing cEDH and trying to get to top 16 tables, there is very little at risk from trying to do your own thing, and even then there is a lot of equity in trying to figure out a better way to do something - its just that those lists vary on the order of 3 or 4 cards. Cards like the Ur-Dragon are probably the most boring design space that you, as a deckbuilder, can engage with, even if you got so craaaaazy with it and put in Shivan Dragon because its old.
That Rasaad yn Bashir reminds me of Phenax. : )
I’d hazard a guess that many Phenax decks share certain common creatures (that same Charix, for instance). That said, a creature only needs to have a lot of toughness to synergize with Phenax. Anything else that a creature brings to the table is extra: card draw, unblockability, hexproof… Necessary extra, yes, but a wide variety of it, too.
Of course I have plenty of creatures that synergize with graveyard shenanigans and mill - but I also have several lots for curious experiments. I like to try out new cards. : D
Reason why i love my Eowyn human tribal deck. I have 3 main versions of this deck (human mid range/human tokens/human stax). Human is such a versatile tribe, with tons of options to build.
My first and still most favorite deck is an Ur-Dragon slivers deck based around Morophon and maskwood nexus.
I saw that infamous second son reference and appreciate it
I kinda did the opposite - I got bored with the typical Meren deck, so I turned mine into zombie tribal.
Also, as someone who plays some tribal decks, why do I hate tutors? They really just bug me when it turns into people running every tutor they can just to tutor up their combo, and I find that very boring.
Oh interesting! That’s a fun way to do zombies though using a non traditional commander! As for the tutor thing I recommend checking out my video on them see what you think
I just did a count and I play, or plan to play, 19 of the top 100 commanders. And of those 19, Ive only seen two of them run by other local players. Theres just a LOT of variety here, and I count myself fortunate for that
I play Sliver tribal, but my actual game plan is to set up a somewhat convoluted loop with the following cards:
-The First Sliver
-Morophon the Boundless
-Hibernation Sliver
-Darkheart Sliver
For every two life paid I can keep bouncing The First Sliver and casting it from my hand for free, cascading each time I do so. Bonus points if I can keep it out and instead bounce any other 5 color Sliver lord to get the maximum cascade effect. Since the deck is packed full of Slivers ranging from 1cmc to 4cmc I can get a ton of them out pretty easily, then I can sacrifice the ones not required for the loop to gain three life per Sliver, then once I've cycled through all my Slivers in this manner, I can reset my deck by cracking Elixir of Immortality to keep cascading as many times as I need to to burn out my opponents with either Lavabelly Sliver or Sarkhan's Unsealing.
That’s pretty funny, you got a deck list?
@thetrinketmage I don't have one typed up, but its going to go through a few changes anyway. Most of the Slivers in the deck are going to be serving utility purposes such as giving them haste, flying, the ability to tap for mana, etc. Then I run a suite of tutors and a few mana rocks to help get things out a little quicker. I've considered running Dormant Sliver in the deck, but I fear it'll actually just make me draw too many cards. The bulk of the deck however is just utility Slivers with cmc 4 or less, the Sliver lords that are WUBRG, and the tutors that can search out what you need like Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Signal The Clans, Eladamri's Call, Homing Sliver, etc.
I've found there's not a ton of difference between running Overlord or First Sliver as the Commander, but either will do. And a lot of times once you assemble just a few pieces of the combo you'll end up cascading into the rest of it, or tutors to search them up.
The theme of My zur deck is not popular according to EDHREC... It is a reanimate deck
That’s the kind of deck building I love
My current tribal deck is enchantments, with Sithis, Harvest's Hand as the commander (obviously joking, but the deck is exclusively lands and enchantments, so I think it sorta counts). I recently took it apart, but I had a mono-blue wizard deck with Naban, Dean of Iteration as the commander. Wizard, ETB matters was a fun deck, and cheap (both mana and money-wise). Also, I completely agree with you, as a fellow control player. I will see decks where one person vomits a bunch of dragons or whatnot, and everyone else at the table is scared, and I usually have a moment of, "Wait, why is that scary- oh right, you all aren't running 10+ boardwipes, at least five of which are instant speed."
Ezuri, Renegade Leader decks, played carefully and without Eladamri on the board can regenerate their best elves they control to neutralize destruction wipes. Agree though that decks that are just about getting enough power on the board aided by type synergies and then winning with mass-buff/evasion/trample all out attacks can be kind of linear. Thus the EDHREC salt score for Craterhoof.
I agree elf decks can be strong but they are still really boring
yooo
what tool are you using to "diff" the decks like that ? I couldn't find one without going through weird hoops, I was about to build one lol
I'm a year late, so feel free to ignore me, but I hope the majority of people who don't like tutors are actually upset with tutors in casual/low power games, where they often make decks play the same over and over, instead of being used, like you said, to support a toolbox playstyle where your tutors are a skill testing way to either answer a threat, or progress your game plan.
Karrthus is my dragons commander and there are several games where I've never played Karrthus. He is just there for the haste. I enjoy the restriction of 3 color because it would become every other dragon deck out there. Also... Who needs lords when you can set everything on fire?
tribal decks are just fun to build though. i get the idea of it getting boring seeing the same 5 elfdecks everyday (i would know my brother runs 2elf decks and a goblin deck) but i just love the aestetic and theme of tribal decks.having someone like gisa controlling and commanding hordes of undead or something i built a few days aggo is a dragon/treasuretribal deck using Goddrick Cloaked Reveler as the commander. i love the feel of a transformed dragon lord commanding basic dragons and aasing wealth
Ganax+Haunted One>>>Other dragon tribal decks
Unique? Yes
Resistant to removal? Yes
Etb Abuse? Yes
Treasures? Yes
Aristocrats? Yes
What not to love?
My scion of the ur dragon runs as a combo/reanimator deck.
I used to try and build unique decks too but I found I like playing simple tribal decks too. Simple strategies allow you to focus on the game. Just be sure run enough protection for those control players and kill them first
Bird tribal lets goooooo with derevi
very much feeling the hipster urge as someone who was absolutely decimated to discover that three other people beat me to the punch on making a bant galadriel sliver deck,
28 cards the same is basically half the deck, as when you cut away the neccessary mana base who doesnt REALLY matter, as it is the question of budget and the usage of math, then you have a 60~ish card commander deck do 28 cards of that is more like half than a third
with Bloomburrow im sticking with my Raccoon tribal
I reall don't agree for instance the mono green elf commanders you showed you said they shared 56 cards together 28 being lands which makes sense. So no they share 28 cards that can basically change how they play. The picture you shown has alot of green staples whether it be mana creatureslike llanowear elves orbirds of paradise ramp like kodamas reach and sol ring, destruction like beast within, protection like lightning grieves and heroic prevention, or wincons like craterhoof behemoth. I mean your looking at maybe 10- 12 staples in green that is in almost any deck with the color in it. Not only that but you chose two elf commanders that play somewhat similarly both in protecting elves and making an army strong or unblockable. But if you chose Marwyn the Nurterer as a commander you would have different ways to build your elf tribal either using elves to make your commander bigger, doing something with the counters, or making a elf army to use mana to cast big spells. You chose two commanders that play similarly. And the example of kodama west tree and vorinclex is BS. Both commanders do different things with said counters. Vorinclex doubles counters so you would put plainswalkers to use ultimate abiilities versus kodama also cares about aura and equipment as well as dealing damage to mana ramp. Its not a fair comparison at all.
I mean that's like comparing Lorcan warlock creator and Chainer Dementia Master they are roughly the same card except chained also buffs nightmares. They are both in mono black so they use sim8lar strategies as well as sharing black staples.
My example was BS? Huh both Kodama and vorinclex want you to play other creatures that get counters on them. It’s not like I picked a Voltron commander for one and go wide for the other. I do also realize that some of the cards shared between decks might be green staples but look at the 2 color examples we still see a massive disparity of cards from the counters decks to the elf decks. Yes it is possible to play an elf deck that is different and I did mention that, I talked about dragon decks that play differently and I am totally cool with those
ive had people get actively frustrated/confused why my scarab god deck isn't a zombie deck. like bro? theres more to life than seeing the word "zombie" on a card and ramming your deck with the same 40 zombie cards
I’ve had the same exact experience
Fundamentally I disagree with your argument that tutors ~= redundant copies. If 5 versions of thoracle and 5 versions of demonic consultation existed, no one would use all 10 in a decklist (at least on the merits of thoracle combo alone) to save on the mana required to combo. If you draw multiple of a tutor, you never have too much or too little of something, but rather exactly how much you want when you want it. For the good tutors like demonic tutor, vampiric tutor, etc., I find that versatility (and redundancy, if you’re playing with big power pieces like dockside, mana crypt, etc.) to be both game-warpingly powerful and responsible for repetitive play patterns, even when decks aren’t built to be able to abuse tutors very well.
That being said, that’s my mid-power perspective on it. In high power I’d imagine tutoring out the ol’ dockside isn’t nearly as much of an issue.
I love weird trible. Like my second favorite deck is saytrs and 3rd is my dog deck
I love my giant tribal deck im both super excited and not so excited for the return to lorwyn to drop super excited cause more support is always great and giants really need it but on the other hand I love the giant deck because of how unique it is I can do a large verity of things control burn big stompy but with more support dropping its plausible that they will be more popular meaning the deck loses its uniqueness
Lol. I made the new rukaramelgfofdy biologist into rebel tribal
Got a moxfield link?
1 Rukarumel, Biologist
Main (99)
1 Avacyn's Pilgrim
1 Birds of Paradise
1 Ramosian Sergeant
1 Amrou Scout
1 Biomancer's Familiar
1 Blightspeaker
1 Bloom Tender
1 Corrosive Ooze
1 Dauthi Voidwalker
1 Defiant Falcon
1 Dire Fleet Daredevil
1 Fblthp, the Lost
1 Gilded Drake
1 Harmonic Prodigy
1 Phyrexian Revoker
1 Archon of Emeria
1 Banisher Priest
1 Big Game Hunter
1 Dualcaster Mage
1 Eternal Witness
1 Harmonic Sliver
1 Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero
1 Opposition Agent
1 Realmwalker
1 Springbloom Druid
1 Druid of Purification
1 Ramosian Commander
1 Ramosian Revivalist
1 Shalai, Voice of Plenty
1 Toxicrene
1 Venser, Shaper Savant
1 Voidmage Husher
1 Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines
1 Kenrith, the Returned King
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1 Lavinia of the Tenth
1 Mind Flayer
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Echoing Truth
1 Evolution Charm
1 Heroic Intervention
1 Crib Swap
1 Harrow
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Explore
1 Farseek
1 Cultivate
1 Distant Melody
1 Insurrection
1 Sol Ring
1 Arcane Signet
1 Illusionist's Bracers
1 Chromatic Lantern
1 Maskwood Nexus
1 Coat of Arms
1 Training Grounds
1 Survival of the Fittest
1 Sylvan Library
1 Bound in Silence
1 Descendants' Path
1 Rhystic Study
1 Mirari's Wake
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Cascade Bluffs
1 Cavern of Souls
1 City of Brass
1 Command Tower
1 Fetid Heath
1 Fire-Lit Thicket
1 Flooded Grove
6 Forest
1 Graven Cairns
3 Island
1 Mana Confluence
2 Mountain
1 Mystic Gate
3 Plains
1 Prismatic Vista
1 Rugged Prairie
1 Secluded Courtyard
1 Sunken Ruins
3 Swamp
1 Twilight Mire
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Wooded Bastion
1 Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth
Shared via TopDecked MTG
www.topdecked.com/decks/unnamed-deck/e0d006bc-5102-4586-8271-f678e44bf47b
It's purposely powered down when it comes to lands. It can be powered up just by fixing the mana base.
@@thetrinketmage forgot to tag you
Funnily enough, humans turn out to be same-ish on the first glance - but my three Humans decks operate differently. Elves yes, are just plain Elves. Same for Zombies. No wonder, I play them rarely.
I honestly straight up disagree with the Scion of the Ur Dragon being more fun to play against than the Ur Dragon itself, it honestly just turns into dragon reanimator. Like Honestly basic Ur Dragon feels alot more stable to play against. Not having to constantly be concerned about getting rid of the graveyard like with scion.
Nuh-uh!
I’ve been defeated! Time to delete my channel
@@thetrinketmage It's that easy!
I play minotaurs and that tribe is all about going big on attack, so leave myself open a lot but it's fun to me to swing with a a 2/3 but on swing it gets like +5/+0. Plus I get play the best artifact in the game didgeridoo. My friends say it boring I use the same minotaurs to win the game but minotaurs only have a couple Lords and only really one way to win unless your running changelings which I don't I consider that cheating lol.
Heyyyy
Those are some of the most fun decks to play especially for new people
Tribes got me into the game. I built a ur dragon deck that is different. I put my favorite dragons and has a ton of recurrsion because wipes end those decks. My main objective is to burn and i win 3v1s quite often and typically knock out control players quick😘
ZOMBIES THO
I basically always build decks towards a gimmick or a theme (whether its tribal or not). Like i have a mono white cat deck but its also my equipment deck. I have an elemental tribal deck that is specifically built around ETBs.
I also have 2 tribal rat decks that play completely different and have almost no overlap and I am going to be building a third in BR with the Eldraine uncommon and its going to be a sacrifice deck, which is not something the others do at all.
In response to the lords thing...thats kind of a narrow point of view. The +1/+1 is not the interesting thing about tribal support nor is it the thing that makes the decks hum. Its all the extra weirdo abilities those cards also tend to have or give. Dragons are the best because they just have a ton of support. Dragon support doesnt even give +x/+x more of the time. It gives keywords or other effects that trigger on cast or attack. Sure elves and goblins have a lot of old lords that just give +1/+1 but the bulk of tribal cards printed today are much more interesting than that....I also have also cut almost every tutor from every deck I own. Redundancy is not the same as fishing out the same best card in my deck every game.
Also, the commander can make a big difference in how the game plays out. Ur Dragon, Myraim, and Zurgo and Ojutai all overlap red and blue but i assure you those decks do not feel the same.
For what it's worth, I mean no hate. I just don't personally agree with much of anything you said.
That’s fine! I appreciate the comment and discussion anyway! I’m glad you shared your opinion even if it isn’t the same as mine!
You have 2 rat decks that don’t share any cards???? How?!?! As for the dragon thing at the end there I would argue those all feel very similar. They just play dragons and attack for the most part I don’t see much difference
@@thetrinketmage I have a mono black rat deck with....well I haven't decided who I actually want to be the commander yet. I keep swapping....honestly thinking I might end up with Lord Skitters because he's a doofus and his card isn't very good. But the deck is just basically 1 copy of every rat and the rat related cards (no relentless rats or rat colony).
The other is the new Nashi and it's a relentless rats deck and then the rest of the deck is mostly just legends because Nashi also cares about them. Other than a few rat legends I happen to have duplicates of, there's little overlap.
I also have a 60 card rat colony deck but that's not really in the conversation.
(For the record I don't personally have a problem with the "it's against the spirit of Singleton" thing for tutors. I just 1. Prefer lower power decks with weirdo themes or gimmicks and 2. I just think it's really boring to go find the same key card every single time I play the deck)
Honestly, it sounds to me like your issue is with creature based aggro decks, not tribal decks. Sure, in the end, all of those dragon decks want to beat face to win, but they pilot completely differently on a turn to turn basis. They feel different to play. I landed on Zurgo and Ojutai and it's a lot more fiddly and I have significantly less overall board presence than my friend's Ur-Dragon deck, but it's still dragon tribal.
So what you're saying is we should be playing board wipe tribal?
Not exactly my message but sure…
I got a few tribes, but they're probably my weaker decks, but pirates are funny.
Tribal aint the problem, EDHREC is
Youre a hipster or whatever 😉
Also stooooop giving away my toughness matters deck!
I enjoy my cat and elf tribal decks. 😅
Tutoring is good for the game.
Dinos are the worst tribe because they literally are all the same Naya piles. Funny considering there was just a Dino heavy set and all people put in their decks were the same pushed cards...so original.
Yeah, you're a bit of a hipster lol. I really just build decks I love. I do happen to love tribal decks. I have a Sliver, Dragon, Elf, Zombie, Vampire, Goblin and Ninja deck. I'm part of the problem. But I also play Scarecrow, Egg, and Party decks. I do have a suspend deck with Jhoira that uses Eldrazi, so that's a bit different in terms of Eldrazi tribal. These are only 11 out of 30+ decks. My slivers I turned into Sliver control and it's pretty fun to play. It actually gets to the point where board wipes don't work pretty often. My elves deck has also undergone a lot of work to become more control. As much flash as possible and ability to survive the board wipes. Cards like Viridian Revel propel it into massive card draw in the treasure meta and in general, I do try to put a unique spin on it. Every one of my tribal decks tends to undergo frequent shifts and rotations as I'm playing them and wanting to do different combos.
Spiting facts
i feel like i can kinda get away with a few of the top100 commanders when no one else at the store plays them, or pilots them like me. e.g. Ive never run into another acrades player or sauron player at the store. It feels interesting to run Arcades when Im the only local who runs it, and thats taking into account the fact that Arcades decks are all about 95% card overlap with each other. Which makes kindred decks look pretty unique in comparison!
I guess what Im trying to say is, you dont have to be different from everyone who's ever played magic. You only have to be different where you play. Thats a much smaller pool. There are probably people who have made the EXACT same video as this, but complaining about +1/+1 counter decks instead, or infect decks, etc. And a lot of it likely has to do with what they see a lot of locally.
well anyway thats my 2 cents
To say Trinket, about your tutor comment i feel as if it was in truly bad faith, yes there are a million lords however the mana costs and effects are infinitely worst than just a 2 mana oh guess its over button. People hate combos simple as
I don’t appreciate you saying my argument is made in bad faith. I don’t have an agenda to push I make these for fun. Every thing I say is actually my opinion… with that out of the way you said you don’t like combos… ok? That’s not a tutor? If I tutor for a supreme verdict that’s not a combo it’s just a board wipe? If you don’t like combos don’t put them in your deck. If you have no combos in your deck then how do tutors win the game? They don’t instead they are just a really flexible utility card
@@thetrinketmage Same guy, if its not in bad faith my apologies however the comparison between lords and tutors is so incongrous its unfunny. I understand the hating consistency thing but the strength of a tutor vs demonic tutor is so massive. Also I do agree wit you that the popular tribes are annoying in fact dragons are my least favorite archetype to fight. That said they are far less annoying to players simply because not only are they "cool" in terms of art but also the act of paying 2 mana and going to get ANY card from a library is just boring guess. As for your if you don't like tutors thing ummmmm i don't have tutors in decks and I'm not the guy building my opponents decks. I didn't comment that to piss u off but I don't think the comparison is nearly in line. I feel hating them tho, plus i literally never comment unless i want ppls engagement up so I'm doing this a bit to help keep up the vids. I often disagree with u but ur content is solid.
I don’t hate consistency at all I really like tutors a lot. I play them in a lot of decks because I use a lot of hidden commanders in the 99 I only mentioned it in this video because I get a lot of flak for liking tutors often
I also have no issue with combos either and thing that tutoring for them is totally fine my opinion is always play what you want