@@DeleteKabal yeah that and there was a card I saw in another video a guy covered from the custom MTG subreddit using the dungeons and dragon forgotten realms set cards saying if you have a full party, have treasure, slayed a dragon, fully delved into a dungeon and some other stuff you win the game you beat dungeons and dragons. Like it’s a great card that wish was real would’ve been a cool alt win con
I have a deck that's not a Secret Tribal deck, but it is kind of a Surprise Tribal deck. It's a 5 color deck under Morophon and the majority of the creatures in the deck are changelings or clones, so all shapeshifters. The "trick" of the deck is that the core of the deck is only 90 cards. I have a second deck of around 50ish cards atm that is all tribal lords. Every time I play the deck I shuffle up the subdeck and deal out 10 random cards from it and shuffle those into the main deck. So I never know what kinds of tribes I'm playing until I draw them. For example I just shuffled it up as I'm writing this and my top three lords are Herald of Slaanesh; Unesh, Criosphinx Sovereign; and Shelob, Child of Ungoliant; so demon sphinx spiders. I built the deck so that I would have something that makes sure I get a very unique game every time I play it and it's goofy and fun and not super high powered so it's good for playing with some of my very casual friends.
That has to be one of the coolest decks I’ve ever heard of! As a lot of randomness and uniqueness, while also keeping the deck strong and not janky. I would love to see a deck list of this if you have one!
@@TopDecking101 I'm oldschool, I still use tappedout. It might be easiest to look for my user profile and then find the deck from there. My id on tappedout is sirstoic and the deck is called Oops all Tribals.
1:50 just to clarify, when a board wipe happens all creatures die at the same time. There is no “have one creature die last” However no matter what all creatures see all creatures die, then death triggers go on the stack, so it still works.❤
@@TopDecking101When multiple cards go to the graveyard at the same time - like from a board wipe- you do get to choose what order the cards are in when they all go to the graveyard at the same time if you are playing with any of the old cards that care about graveyard order, but that is a very rarely relevant interaction.
@@Aedi That isn't really a problem since what happens is that all creatures see each other leaving the battlefield at the same time. What you need to know is that each player based on turn order gets to stack their triggers and determine what order they resolve starting with the player whose turn it is.
Felix Five-Boots actually seems like such a cool ninja commander, I love that. A commander who isn't a monolith, who doesn't require their presence to Do The Thing, who only exists to serve as an amplifier that's ready to drop once the rest of your deck is already doing what it does. Great video, gave me a lot to think about when building my own decks!
The few green ninjas we got in Neon Dynasty are straight gas as well. Fang of Shigeki is a great starter, being a 1 drop 1/1 with deathtouch making an ideal attacker. Coiling Stalker can make our ninjas we want to stay on the board bigger when it connects via ninjutsu. Kappa Tech-Wrecker can be a problematic creature to block with its deathtouch counter or we can expend it when it connects to pop an artifact or enchantment that player controls. And Spring-Leaf Avenger is a big 6/5 body that also lets us get ninjas that were destroyed in combat back to our hand to ninjutsu later.
I use Saskia as a “secret tribal” commander for my Werewolf deck. It’s technically humans, but there are a few stax pieces to slow the opponents down and keep werewolves flipped. Winota is the “secret commander”, when the werewolves attack while flipped, it triggers Winota and pulls out the humans from the deck. I love ideas like this, nice video!
@@TopDecking101 The Day/Night mechanic is abysmal, so I usually have a rule 0 conversation about making it work, either having all werewolves use day/night or all of them use the old mechanic and ignore day/night completely lol
I built Saskia Dragon tribal deck years ago as a more aggressive option as compared to the 5c dragon commanders. It was a pretty fun battlecruiser deck
@@aaronconlinbro. You just don’t know how to play the game. What’s up with all you people just creating rules? There’s a reason the game has rules to begin with. Don’t need to make your own. Like. I saw someone say for their commander group. To avoid mana screwed. Everyone gets a small set aside pile of 3-4 lands you can draw from if you aren’t drawing lands You guys wouldn’t need extra rules to make your decks work. If you’d just build a competent deck to begin with.
This resonated with me. I have a Ziatora Dragon Tribal deck that runs dragons with death triggers, and dragons are naturally big enough that you get something out of sacrificing them with Ziatora and then use the treasures to cast more dragons, there are some dragon-treasure synergies but its also super flavorful!
That's so awesome. This is why I like secret tribal more than a normal tribal deck. You get to find and see so many cool synergies like yourself using the most popular tribe theme is a super unique way. Really amazing stuff!
Secret Tribal is honestly my favorite flavor of Tribal deck. I'm currently brewing a Zombie Tribal deck run by the Duskmourn Nashi to ball with the (un)surprisingly high number of Zombie-relevant enchantments and legends.
I built The Infamous Cruelclaw as a secret demon tribal deck. In true demon fashion, the deck run literally no interaction and is only gas. The worst possible flip off cruelclaw is a rakdos signet. There are a ton of game-warping demons that can be cheated in with cruelclaw and having a low cmc commander means I will actually have something to do in the early game (the decks average cmc is 6.4).
Shamans are my favorite tribe that haven't quite gotten the commander they need. I've always envisioned them serving a Dragon, plus they have a lot of death triggers and built-in sac effects, so I'd like Korvold to be at the helm. The problem is that Korvold, like Atla, scares people.
I play Marchesa The black rose as a secret vampire tribal deck. While I do have the play around the life gain cards/ignore the white wedge, it’s a fun deck that has some really solid function.
You could always just use Morophon for the commander. He was literally made to be the tribal commander for tribes without enough support… it can mitigate the high mana costs by reducing the colored costs, so large amounts of colorless mana lets you cast a lot of the creatures (which also combos with 3 cards to make them free to cast), it gives them all +1/+1 for some extra bulk, and counts as that type so tribal effects for your type will apply to him, like cavern of souls or urza’s incubator. It also gives you access to all 5 colors, allowing you to use every card in your type regardless of colors AND gives access to all aspects of the color pie. Green ramp and creature synergy, red aggro, blue counterspells and draw, white and black board control. You don’t have to die to board wipes because you can counter the with blue, protect your stuff with green/white, or recur them with black/green… You generally don’t see a lot of esper tribal decks because the aggressive board-centric style of tribal creature based decks with access to all the best control colors would be too powerful of a combination to be specifically designed for, with the exception of faeries which are more defensive/evasive than aggressive, but a 5 color tribal commander lets you play an aggressive tribe while having access to the best control pieces to support the creatures.
What a fantastic breakdown! Morophon is definitely the most 'optimal' commander for a secret tribal deck, personally I like to build a bit janker decks, but Morophon is a powerhouse that I can the appeal too. Once again, great breakdown!
I can defiantly see the connection. I really like his video and agree with him. A lot of players can become over reliant on their commanders abilities, and I think making a secret tribal deck helps show that the deck should function without the commander in play. Glad my point made it through all of my rambling!
My "secret tribal" is Thalia & Gitrog for Skeleton Tribal. Lets me ramp to play sillier expensive cards, making enemy things enter tapped makes it easier to connect with my skellingtons and white offers all the token doublers I could ever need
Great video The only thing that would stop me from using Atla as a commander in elephant tribal is that eggs aren't thematic with them but I could see a universe where Saskia has an army of elephants with some spot removal that has to do with crushing and size
I made a ragnar deck that is wizard tribal. Bant might not be the color combo that you think of but it's pretty good for tapping and untapping shenanigans
First video of yours I've seen, I love the concept and execution! This kind of deckbuilding video helps me break out of builders block and try new things. I look forward to seeing more of your videos in the future!
I have a Dryad Tribal deck helmed by Ellevere, Wild Court. Idk if I'd call it secret tribal, cause I'm very proud of it. Dryads and cards with dryad Aesthetic care about enchantments, and then I try to buff them with Ellevere and win off of Dryad's Forestwalk. I also have ways to make sure my opponents have forests.
That was genuinely a really great video. I love tribal and I love deck building, and while I've brewed a few low supported creatures before, I always think about what color scheme contains the best of them, and then just pick the best commander from that. Thinking about the strengths and weaknesses of the tribe itself is genius. This is probably the first thing that's got me excited for EDH in an old school, vanilla, having fun brewing decks way. Subscribed!
5:03 so ive been playing ninjas for a while and i realized rampant growth effects and especially cultivate don't work well with ninjas. Usually i want a 1 drop unblockable turn 1 so i can ninjutsu on turn 2. Keeping up that pressure each turn is crucial with ninjas while also building a board state. Felix usually ends game with a board state and ramping without putting creatures out can put me so far behind. I like talisman of dominance because i can still tap it for blue right away for a 1 drop unblockable. My favorite ways to ramp is mana rocks and treasures. Using prosperous thief, grim hireling, orochi soul reaver. Covert technician can be a decent ramp ninja if you run enough mana rocks and even some artifact lands
Felix Five Boots not only works for ninjas but it's also one of the best Specter tribal commander you can get. You lose 2 decent Specters but Sultai works far better than Grixis.
I took the Gonti precon, made it Ninja tribal, swapped to Archelos for a bit (so the ninjas come in untapped], then put Felix in the command zone. I was planning to build a separate Horror tribal deck for Felix, by taking the N'ghathrod deck from Baldur's Gate and adding green to the mix due to it being a combat damage oriented deck anyways, but I instead tossed ghathy himself and some of the better Horrors in (though i'm missing some nice green ones atm like Creakwood Liege) as a subtheme to the Ninjas. Maybe I'll get a Maskwood in there at some point but I've gotta get some new testing in now.
I just unintentionally made a secret dragon tribal deck with Elminster as the commander. I'm taking advantage of the high cmc dragons usually have to make a bunch of dragon tokens with Elminster
Samurai, especially original Kamigawa samurai. I was really pumped at first when Kamigawa Neon Dynasty came out because (a) they went back to my fave plane/block and (b) there were going to be more samurai cards. Unfortunately the return set version is completely at loggerheads with the OG Kamigawa samurai using Bushido instead of the newer version. I pretty much have to run all but Blue in order to make old samurai deck work, and even then I don't know if there's enough cards to make it work. (shrug)
From what I've seen on Edhrec Kalamax, the Stormsire would be a nice commander that synergy's with a wizard spell slinger deck. Being able to double your spells is really valuable in spell slinger, and having green would help your ramp issue. I think if you find yourself staling out and not getting anywhere, maybe lean into a storm strategy with grapeshot and other great cards that can win you the game off storming off.
I have a secret construct deck under liberator. The plan is to utilize doll house of horrors but rather that have a million of the tokens come out filling my board with cheap constructs. I haven't played it since the crypt ban but it has alot of famous constructs that in other decks people worry about like walking balista, hangarback walker, and triskelion but I use those just for numbers. It has all my fun bits
I play rogues tribal with ludevic and tymna because they give me all the colors I want and are great with small evasive creatures swinging over and over and they help draw me towards my wincons without having to play hardly any draw spells in the 99
I built a secret tribal deck out of Volo, guide to monster. Most of the time I saw people using him as a value commander and thought he was just a value commander myself until I read his ability. Once I found out that his ability triggers on the cast of a creature spell, I realized that I was able to make a tribe that I have always wanted to since I found out about the card since 1993. Shapeshifter, clone are shapeshifters when you cast them but are usually a copy of another creature when they are in play still enabling you to get more copies of other creatures and thing (clever impersonator). This deck has always taken people by surprise and is always fun to play.
It was building a vehicle tribal deck, but it was slow as balls. I didn't do a whole lot but I love the journey more than the destination. Currently I'm building a food tribal with Ygra and Bernard as the centers but alas not the commanders
I have a Felix deck that focuses on ninjutsu! Dropping him onto the field and having ninjas or something like Quietus Spike do their thing twice is hilarious, and his color identity lets you slot in a couple additional fun cards that work well with his gimmick (e.g. Cazur+Ukkima put in overtime in my 99) He’s quite budget friendly too; I have a lot of fun playing him, win or lose, with friends and at my local game store.
You don't "let creatures die before" other creatures in a board wipe. They all die simultaneously and any cards on the table see the other cards die and trigger accordingly.
Also to note, if you want to play "secret commanders" cards like rocco help add colors and tutor for your real commander. I build naya light paws with rocco; what will you build?
In my opinion, the best secret tribal commander is Morophon, The Boundless; WUBRG Shapeshifter with Changeling, making him literally able to be the commander of any tribal deck, plus a changeling tribal deck (all spells have Changeling) would just be great especially if you're playing against multiple opponents who are running Urza's Incubator and you are as well (but for yours you choose Shapeshifter to make it less likely to help out your opponents)
I tried to do the same with a -1/-1 counter deck its not a tribe but its a theme.. its 4 colours atm. But the problem usually with ideas like that they are never consistent enough
I defiantly get where you're coming from here. For more consistency I would recommend maybe taking some colors out and switching your commander to something like Massacre Girl, Known Killer, that way you can get a -1/-1 effect every game. Most -1/-1 cards are in black I believe, so you wouldn't lose that much synergy in the 99, and what you do have to take out can be used to add protection and side synergies like Maha and other cool effects. Just a thought though, hope this helped!
Currently rebuilding my gruul boar deck around the new Ghired with a bunch of token copy effects like Hate Mirage and Molten Echoes. Boars are a pretty weak tribe and Ghired is pretty strong if you go for the typical build, so this combination meets somewhere in the middle. I also have Midnight Guard in there to suddenly make 30-50 trillion wild hogs.
In my Orthion, hero of lavabrink monored deck i run goblins and giants tribal as a diversion. I use non combat damage as the main wincon with Toralf, god of fury + Chandra's Incinerator + Fiery emancipation
I’ve been planning on making either a incubate phyrexian or hurts deck with Byrke, Long War of the Law; as both types enter with +1/+1 counters, with Byrke acting as a doubling season
I would say since crocodiles are mostly in simic colors, plus a few black cards, I would say that the Pride of Hull Clade is a good commander for crocodiles, but if you wanted a secret commander Xolatoyac, the Smiling Flood is a good way to untap lands, ramp, and even untap your crocodiles to become blockers every turn. Hope this helped!
I actually use Atla for my Wurm deck. While wurms have some support, their commanders are only green, and there are some decent wurms with white or red in their colour identity. I do think I rely too heavily on Atla though, but I just like making eggs. Lol.
Atla is one of those commanders that can be easy to rely on heavily. From my experience, playing at newer pods Atla seems kinda mid power and not a heavy target for removal, then you pop off some egg tokens and the whole table realizes they need to get rid of her. Then when playing with friend pods they know to not let her live a turn cycle due to her power. Best thing to do is add in some white cards for protection or even equipment like swiftfoot boots or lighting greaves. These allow you to protect Atla early, and then mid to late game you can move them to one of your Wurms to swing in with haste and protect then. Atla is one of my favorites, I can see why you like to play her alot!
Oh I can definitely see that working out. Caesar is like a Mardu version of Marrow-Gnawer for you, which can really open up a lot of possibilities for some power. Would love to play against this!
@@TopDecking101 I think it’s about time I show off the build (have been gatekeeping😰) 😎🙏 really love red and white as an addition to rats as well it’s really clean especially since they love to die (tangled colony 👀)
That's true, shapeshifters are a nice filler piece for tribes with less support. Something like Ox tribal probably needs shapeshifters just to form a deck due to the low amount of Ox cards printed
Oh, there's a word for my "Yarok's Allies" deck? Cool. Most people run Yarok as a landfall deck, but when he was spoiled I immediately knew I'd found the right commander for the Ally deck I'd been trying to get to work. Tazri was ok but the deck didn't feel right; White provided some nice "generic Ally token" generation but I discovered early on that the real value was to be found in CLONES. Yarok provided the three colors I needed for the three basic wincons (Halimar Excavator, Hagra Diabolist, and Turntimber Ranger) and also the best colors for clones (blue), efficient card draw (black), and ramp. He's not absolutely essential to the game plan (so I don't feel TOO bad when he dies) but he definitely accelerates things; plus he's a great blocker, and I can give him a Viridian Longbow to turn him into repeatable removal. You've kinda made me want to go back and update that deck now :P
I built a deck I call "gummy wurms" because I use Brenard, Ginger Sculptor as my commander for Wurm Tribal. It's not perfect colors, but as long as it has green and white I'm happy. And most wurms have etb or dies triggers that really benefit from that second trigger when they become food. Board wipes are the biggest issue and getting a bunch of tokens after a wipe is great. I love when my worldspine dies, comes back as food with 3 5/5s then I sac for 3 life and 3 more 5/5s.
i play a secret goblin deck with my purphoros commander it's super fun, they go really well together and it's a nice way to limit the strength of the deck (cause an optimised purphoros deck can kill pretty fast, it's not cedh combo level but still)
I've been trying to figure out a way of making a Scarecrow tribal deck that doesn't use Reaper King, since I usually struggle with the early game of getting him out and sometimes end up with some feelsbad moments of I'm just blowing up stuff for the sake of blowing up stuff. I've seen that changelings help a lot with the creature type but I was hoping some people might be able to provide some guidance as to how I might go about an alternate Scarecrow deck commander.
Sorry for the long response time. This may not be fully helpful because i don't know what colors you were wanting you deck to be in, but I like 'Emry, Lurker of the Loch' after going over some scarecrow cards. Gives a good cost reduction to scarecrow cards, and even lets you bring them back from the graveyard. The new Duskmourn set released some great scarecrows in green, red, and black, so looking into a commander in Jund colors would be nice to be able to include those pieces. Coram, the Undertaker I can see as a total flavor win, acting as a insane farmer that has his army of scarecrows, and he plays into a nice reanimator theme with you scarecrows. I hope my recommendations helped, let me know if you found a good commander for your scarecrows!
I would recommend something like Goro-Goro and Saturo as a commander for assassin's. A lot of assassin cards want to deal combat damage to activate their abilities so GG and Saturo being able to give them haste is a nice effect to have in the command zone. And the upside of getting a 5/5 dragon every now and then is defiantly a plus. Hope this was helpful!
I'm tired of waiting for Wizards to actually design an interesting commander for angels, so I decided to choose Galadriel Light of Valinor to make an angel tribal deck, her ability to give triple green mana is useful to cast those expensive angels and buffing them with +1/+1 counters, which several angels have synergy with.
@TopDecking101 I think there's only four printed. And eratta has made them extinct. Which I think is a shame. I get combining hounds and dogs, but the Wumpus was a unique mtg original creature type. I think Kavu were saved just because there's a greater number of them. I forgot Kavu already have a commander. Maybe secret tribal, with a hidden commander, and Wumpus hidden within that? A Russian nesting doll deck... now I'm getting ideas for a crazy deck box. Lol
@TopDecking101 Okay, so I'm starting to get serious about making a deck. And I'm starting to see a few creature types that like the Wumpus, unique yet not unique enough. Thoctar, Thrinax, Baloth. They mostly fall into the larger umbrella creature type of beast. So maybe like niche beast tribal with a subtheme of high mana value matters. Because these are some thick boys. Ravos + Tana are the commanders I'm looking at so far. Ravos provides a buff and light recursion. But Tana... I'm not sure. She would make recovering from a boardwipe a bit easier. My apologies for being that guy who HAS to share his precious deck. But I haven't built a deck in about 5 years, and these seem like the unique little corner of tribal deck building that got me into commander to begin with.
I'm working on a "Cryptids" deck with things like the Mothman, gremlins, and chupacabras. I wanted it to be wubrg so I went with Rukarumel, Biologist as the commander; her sliver abilities do nothing, but the extra creature type ability can add some synergy to what is otherwise a totally disjointed spread of creatures.
I'm building an Otter tribal deck... i have chosen Alania as my commander just because "When you cast an Otter spell blabla", do you suggest using another one for my secret tribal? since well it is just isset and i don't really know how many things i can do
I think that Alania is a perfect option for a Otter Deck! I think the main thing I would say is Alania gives extremely good value for Otters in general, and taking them out for a secret tribal commander could be actually worse for the deck if not chosen correctly. If you are having fun with Alania then I would say to 100% stick with them as your commander, really hope this helped!
You said something about death triggers in reference to board wipes and atla. The eggs dont die "before" atla, they all die at the same time but atla is on the field when everything dies so you still get the triggers
i've been trying to make a wizard tribal deck work for a while but i find that most wizard commanders just increase the amount of stuff wizards are known for (countering spells, drawing cards, etc) but never actually progress the game in any way. do you have any recommendations? I'm thinking in temur colors since most wizards are in red and blue but usually struggle with getting big and ramping
I once made archer tribal with Jegantha at the helm. Archers started in red and then became selesnya over time and have the big Elk (who also has a tap ability) allowed me to play anything. Unfortunately as a tribe archers are mostly just about killing your opponents creatures so was unfun and I ended it... But now I'm thinking it's time to do Elk tribal. I wonder who I'll pick.
@@TopDecking101 I'm thinking Bounce or Blink in Bant because elk often have an ETB. Amareth the Lustrous seems nice card advantage, I've run Lagrella before but people hate playing against her because she takes their stuff too. Galadriel Light of Valinor could work as she is just utility on a stick. Chulane is just a massive target so no. Helga Skittish Seer may work too, as a third of all Elk creatures would trigger her.
I love playing Nethroi as a Vampire commander. Sure, there's absolutely no synergy with a combo commander like Nethroi. But sometimes I have no cards to play, but some lands on the board and a graveyard full of vampires. Yep, it is secretly a life drain deck and it's your fault for not killing me first! MWAHAHAHA
This how I usually make a secret tribal deck. Then, I go to moxfield or archidekt and put every creature type I want for my tribe in. So if I was building elephant tribal like in the video, I would put all of the elephant cards I wanted to play with in a new deck on one of those sites. Then from there, I see how many colors my elephants are in, so for elephants I would have green, white, and red elephants. Then I scroll through edhrecs commanders for the color identity I need, in this case Naya, until I found a commander that help me get around my creature types weakness, or boosted it's strength. Once I have a commander picked out, I will put them into the deck that has all of my creature types, and add in artifacts, enchantments, ramp, etc. like I would building a normal deck. Hope this clears everything up!
@@TopDecking101 Thank you! Very helpful! I know Trinket Mage and Snail are big fans of decks that don’t rely on commanders, but this video was very easy to follow. Just the act of picking the commander itself was left. Thank you again!
2 words: Zinnia Slivers 😎👌 i feel the 5 color Slivers make Slivers too combo-oriented instead of combat (besides maybe Hivelord) and i like Zinnia as a fake-Queen to go in that combat-orientation while still having the flooding of classic Slivers. Also, it puts a small limit on mana that Gemhide and Manaweft provide so im not leaning too heavily on them for ramp
@@TopDecking101 Bro You've let out the floodwaters, I'm already brewing Riku as a Temur variant (with spellslinger subtheme!), and maybe I'll do an Esper Raffine build, or Satoru Umezawa, or even a 4-color Aragorn! None of my foes shall see it coming. You can't stop me. drip drip from the tap don't slip
Sadly no, when showing my girlfriend the deck she had the idea of making a cat tribal deck with Saskia, so I ended up deleting the old elephant one I had with Saskia and Atla. It was louds of fun though, so I would highly recommend brewing one up yourself!
it wasn't for the purpose of being secret, but i have done this with my gargoyle deck because there isnt a legendary gargoyle. the most ironic thing is that you used elephants for your whole example and my commander for gargoyles is a loxodon/elephant
I made a token tribal deck and the commander isn’t even the creature type, but it can be. There’s also no creature in the deck that is the type unless you count shapeshifters/changeling.
Sadly I do not anymore, me and my girlfriend changed out elephants for a secret tribal cat deck with Saskia. A lot of the cards are the same so if you wanted to take a look all you would really have to do is switch out the cats for elephants.
peranally I only have a work in progress Saskia deck with a cat tribal theme that me and my girl friend are building. But a lot of the decks I mentioned here I found examples for on moxfield. Hope this helped!
Got a hamster tribal deck, there are only two cards in the game that make hamsters (technically three but two of those cards make the same legendary token )
I'm going to assume that you do not want Isshin as your commander here, but since a lot of samurai have the Bushido mechanic that activates on blocking or attacking, we probably want to focus on that route. Going defensive for the blocking trigger, we could have Queen Marchesa as the Emperor of your Samurai deck, and then defend her crown, the Monarch Token, while you accrue value over time. Going the attack route, from my video Saskia works well for combat damage, and another good commander for samruai could be, Kyodai, Soul of Kamigawa is a cool way to get all five colors and give one of your good samurai indestructible while it's in play. It looking like a bad ass acient dragon is also a flavor win! Hope this helped, let me know if you end up finding a commander you like for this deck!
May be a bit late here, but depending on what you're going for Inquisitor Greyfax can be a good Samurai commander. Gives +1/+0 and vigilance so your samurai can benefit from both blocking and being blocked. It even taps creatures you don't want to attack or block. Lots of reanimation, evasion or protection in esper colours, too so you can keep up a good defense and offense
Thank you for the suggestions. I like the Idea with marchesa, protecting the crown. But i think i'd miss Green here because i like Isao. Maybe i could go for the modify Route here because a lot samurai care for modified creatures. But i dont know who could fit here.. should be at least WRG I could more waive of Black, rather than Green. Saskia is good, but a little too aggro For the Inquisitor Greyfax i'm missing Green and red
Excuse you, having secretly hired an army of ninjas to fight for him is a very Felix thing to do
😂 Felix is such a goober
@@TopDecking101😂 see I made a Felix deck but I packed it with all the boots artifact equipment cards so he lives up to his name of having 5 boots
@@Rkguerra12 Probably not strategicly sound but definitely 10/10 flavour
@@Rkguerra12Rule zero a rule where getting all 5 boots equipped to Felix acts like Exodia winning you the game
@@DeleteKabal yeah that and there was a card I saw in another video a guy covered from the custom MTG subreddit using the dungeons and dragon forgotten realms set cards saying if you have a full party, have treasure, slayed a dragon, fully delved into a dungeon and some other stuff you win the game you beat dungeons and dragons. Like it’s a great card that wish was real would’ve been a cool alt win con
I have a deck that's not a Secret Tribal deck, but it is kind of a Surprise Tribal deck. It's a 5 color deck under Morophon and the majority of the creatures in the deck are changelings or clones, so all shapeshifters. The "trick" of the deck is that the core of the deck is only 90 cards. I have a second deck of around 50ish cards atm that is all tribal lords. Every time I play the deck I shuffle up the subdeck and deal out 10 random cards from it and shuffle those into the main deck. So I never know what kinds of tribes I'm playing until I draw them. For example I just shuffled it up as I'm writing this and my top three lords are Herald of Slaanesh; Unesh, Criosphinx Sovereign; and Shelob, Child of Ungoliant; so demon sphinx spiders. I built the deck so that I would have something that makes sure I get a very unique game every time I play it and it's goofy and fun and not super high powered so it's good for playing with some of my very casual friends.
That has to be one of the coolest decks I’ve ever heard of! As a lot of randomness and uniqueness, while also keeping the deck strong and not janky. I would love to see a deck list of this if you have one!
@@TopDecking101 I've tried to share it a few times now and youtube keeps deleting my comment, so I'm not sure how I would share the list...
@@greyborg3846 Is your deck list on moxfield or a site like that? If so, you can just send the name of your deck and I can look it up
@@TopDecking101 I'm oldschool, I still use tappedout. It might be easiest to look for my user profile and then find the deck from there. My id on tappedout is sirstoic and the deck is called Oops all Tribals.
please do so, I'm really interested aswell!:D
1:50 just to clarify, when a board wipe happens all creatures die at the same time. There is no “have one creature die last”
However no matter what all creatures see all creatures die, then death triggers go on the stack, so it still works.❤
Thank you for clarifying! Making me realize my play group has been playing death triggers wrong this whole time 💀
there are some specific situations where there can be a defined order to creatures dying, but those are definitely exceptions, not the rule.
@@TopDecking101When multiple cards go to the graveyard at the same time - like from a board wipe- you do get to choose what order the cards are in when they all go to the graveyard at the same time if you are playing with any of the old cards that care about graveyard order, but that is a very rarely relevant interaction.
@@Aedi That isn't really a problem since what happens is that all creatures see each other leaving the battlefield at the same time. What you need to know is that each player based on turn order gets to stack their triggers and determine what order they resolve starting with the player whose turn it is.
@@elliotbanbury6442 they still 'see each other die' tho so it still works the same way
Felix Five-Boots actually seems like such a cool ninja commander, I love that. A commander who isn't a monolith, who doesn't require their presence to Do The Thing, who only exists to serve as an amplifier that's ready to drop once the rest of your deck is already doing what it does.
Great video, gave me a lot to think about when building my own decks!
Thank you so much for the comment! I'm glad my video gave you some good info when making decks!
The few green ninjas we got in Neon Dynasty are straight gas as well. Fang of Shigeki is a great starter, being a 1 drop 1/1 with deathtouch making an ideal attacker. Coiling Stalker can make our ninjas we want to stay on the board bigger when it connects via ninjutsu. Kappa Tech-Wrecker can be a problematic creature to block with its deathtouch counter or we can expend it when it connects to pop an artifact or enchantment that player controls. And Spring-Leaf Avenger is a big 6/5 body that also lets us get ninjas that were destroyed in combat back to our hand to ninjutsu later.
I use Saskia as a “secret tribal” commander for my Werewolf deck. It’s technically humans, but there are a few stax pieces to slow the opponents down and keep werewolves flipped. Winota is the “secret commander”, when the werewolves attack while flipped, it triggers Winota and pulls out the humans from the deck. I love ideas like this, nice video!
Thank you so much! I have massive respect to you for being able to make a day/night cycle deck, but I’m sure Winota makes it all worth it!
@@TopDecking101 The Day/Night mechanic is abysmal, so I usually have a rule 0 conversation about making it work, either having all werewolves use day/night or all of them use the old mechanic and ignore day/night completely lol
I built Saskia Dragon tribal deck years ago as a more aggressive option as compared to the 5c dragon commanders. It was a pretty fun battlecruiser deck
That sounds like a really fun deck. Do you have a decklist anywhere?
@@aaronconlinbro. You just don’t know how to play the game. What’s up with all you people just creating rules?
There’s a reason the game has rules to begin with. Don’t need to make your own. Like. I saw someone say for their commander group. To avoid mana screwed. Everyone gets a small set aside pile of 3-4 lands you can draw from if you aren’t drawing lands
You guys wouldn’t need extra rules to make your decks work. If you’d just build a competent deck to begin with.
Literally *just* faced a Felix-Led ninja deck this past Friday. Prophetic.
This resonated with me. I have a Ziatora Dragon Tribal deck that runs dragons with death triggers, and dragons are naturally big enough that you get something out of sacrificing them with Ziatora and then use the treasures to cast more dragons, there are some dragon-treasure synergies but its also super flavorful!
That's so awesome. This is why I like secret tribal more than a normal tribal deck. You get to find and see so many cool synergies like yourself using the most popular tribe theme is a super unique way. Really amazing stuff!
This seems sickkkkk
I have an Atla Wurm tribal deck - it works so well and is a LOT of fun to play!
I'm glad! I have a Wurm deck I speed built after watching Dune 2, I might have to try out Atla and see if it works better than my current one!
I can't stress how up my alley the entire concept of "Secret tribal" is lol, I will definitely be making a deck like this!
Secret Tribal is honestly my favorite flavor of Tribal deck. I'm currently brewing a Zombie Tribal deck run by the Duskmourn Nashi to ball with the (un)surprisingly high number of Zombie-relevant enchantments and legends.
That's really amazing! What a great way to spice up a zombie deck!
This is one of the best videos I’ve seen in a long time. Thank you for sharing!
Wow, thank you! I really appreciate the support and kind words!
I'm really loving this been tinkering with the idea of Saskia angels and Breya Articifers as "secret" tribe commanders
I built The Infamous Cruelclaw as a secret demon tribal deck. In true demon fashion, the deck run literally no interaction and is only gas. The worst possible flip off cruelclaw is a rakdos signet. There are a ton of game-warping demons that can be cheated in with cruelclaw and having a low cmc commander means I will actually have something to do in the early game (the decks average cmc is 6.4).
The Infamous Cruelclaw looks so fun. I've only really seen the meme deck with 98 lands, but I want to check it out, seems like a good powerhouse
Thank you for this. I love Felix and making a silly secret tribal deck with him sounds like a blast. Imma have to cook with that now
I'm glad my video helped! I hope you have as fun with Felix as I did!
I love that elephant tribal is even optional now a days. Mtg has gotten really cool in some ways over the past 20 years.
Shamans are my favorite tribe that haven't quite gotten the commander they need. I've always envisioned them serving a Dragon, plus they have a lot of death triggers and built-in sac effects, so I'd like Korvold to be at the helm. The problem is that Korvold, like Atla, scares people.
Good video this is exactly how I build secret tribes. My favourite is my myojin tribal deck with Jodah as the commander to cast them for less.
Gotta love a good Jodah deck!
Phoenix. The couple choices we have don’t speak to me but I love Phoenix.
I play Marchesa The black rose as a secret vampire tribal deck. While I do have the play around the life gain cards/ignore the white wedge, it’s a fun deck that has some really solid function.
Marchesa the Black Rose is such a cool card, and I love the vampire concept you built with it!
currently playing Secret Skeletons with Lord Windgrace as the commander, and I like it a whole lot.
please elaborate more :D
@@damithougths2641 I've posted the link like 3 times and it keeps disappearing. I think it's being deleted because of the link.
You could always just use Morophon for the commander. He was literally made to be the tribal commander for tribes without enough support… it can mitigate the high mana costs by reducing the colored costs, so large amounts of colorless mana lets you cast a lot of the creatures (which also combos with 3 cards to make them free to cast), it gives them all +1/+1 for some extra bulk, and counts as that type so tribal effects for your type will apply to him, like cavern of souls or urza’s incubator. It also gives you access to all 5 colors, allowing you to use every card in your type regardless of colors AND gives access to all aspects of the color pie. Green ramp and creature synergy, red aggro, blue counterspells and draw, white and black board control. You don’t have to die to board wipes because you can counter the with blue, protect your stuff with green/white, or recur them with black/green… You generally don’t see a lot of esper tribal decks because the aggressive board-centric style of tribal creature based decks with access to all the best control colors would be too powerful of a combination to be specifically designed for, with the exception of faeries which are more defensive/evasive than aggressive, but a 5 color tribal commander lets you play an aggressive tribe while having access to the best control pieces to support the creatures.
What a fantastic breakdown! Morophon is definitely the most 'optimal' commander for a secret tribal deck, personally I like to build a bit janker decks, but Morophon is a powerhouse that I can the appeal too. Once again, great breakdown!
Very good video, very well done, very concise and articulate, 10/10
Thank you so much! I appreciate the kind words
This reminds me a lot of the Snail's "Trick to make a funky midrange deck" where the commander only exists to solve a problem of the deck at large
I can defiantly see the connection. I really like his video and agree with him. A lot of players can become over reliant on their commanders abilities, and I think making a secret tribal deck helps show that the deck should function without the commander in play. Glad my point made it through all of my rambling!
@@TopDecking101 Yeah! Glad I made the connection c:
My "secret tribal" is Thalia & Gitrog for Skeleton Tribal. Lets me ramp to play sillier expensive cards, making enemy things enter tapped makes it easier to connect with my skellingtons and white offers all the token doublers I could ever need
That's amazing, I've seen a lot of people asking for a skeleton secret tribal deck and Thalia and Gitrog are perfect for it!
Great video
The only thing that would stop me from using Atla as a commander in elephant tribal is that eggs aren't thematic with them but I could see a universe where Saskia has an army of elephants with some spot removal that has to do with crushing and size
I've seen this a lot, eggs as the main way to get elephants out is a flavor fail. Thank you so much for your comment though!
I made a ragnar deck that is wizard tribal. Bant might not be the color combo that you think of but it's pretty good for tapping and untapping shenanigans
First video of yours I've seen, I love the concept and execution! This kind of deckbuilding video helps me break out of builders block and try new things.
I look forward to seeing more of your videos in the future!
Thank you so much for the comment and kind words! It means a lot!
I have a Dryad Tribal deck helmed by Ellevere, Wild Court. Idk if I'd call it secret tribal, cause I'm very proud of it. Dryads and cards with dryad Aesthetic care about enchantments, and then I try to buff them with Ellevere and win off of Dryad's Forestwalk. I also have ways to make sure my opponents have forests.
That is definelty a deck I would love to play against. Would love to see a deck list if you have one for it
That was genuinely a really great video. I love tribal and I love deck building, and while I've brewed a few low supported creatures before, I always think about what color scheme contains the best of them, and then just pick the best commander from that. Thinking about the strengths and weaknesses of the tribe itself is genius.
This is probably the first thing that's got me excited for EDH in an old school, vanilla, having fun brewing decks way. Subscribed!
Glad you enjoyed it! I really appreciate the kind words!
5:03 so ive been playing ninjas for a while and i realized rampant growth effects and especially cultivate don't work well with ninjas. Usually i want a 1 drop unblockable turn 1 so i can ninjutsu on turn 2. Keeping up that pressure each turn is crucial with ninjas while also building a board state. Felix usually ends game with a board state and ramping without putting creatures out can put me so far behind. I like talisman of dominance because i can still tap it for blue right away for a 1 drop unblockable. My favorite ways to ramp is mana rocks and treasures. Using prosperous thief, grim hireling, orochi soul reaver. Covert technician can be a decent ramp ninja if you run enough mana rocks and even some artifact lands
Felix Five Boots not only works for ninjas but it's also one of the best Specter tribal commander you can get. You lose 2 decent Specters but Sultai works far better than Grixis.
Oh I didn’t even think about that. Felix would go crazy with specters, what a great find!
I took the Gonti precon, made it Ninja tribal, swapped to Archelos for a bit (so the ninjas come in untapped], then put Felix in the command zone. I was planning to build a separate Horror tribal deck for Felix, by taking the N'ghathrod deck from Baldur's Gate and adding green to the mix due to it being a combat damage oriented deck anyways, but I instead tossed ghathy himself and some of the better Horrors in (though i'm missing some nice green ones atm like Creakwood Liege) as a subtheme to the Ninjas. Maybe I'll get a Maskwood in there at some point but I've gotta get some new testing in now.
@@TrogdorbadYeah I have the Gonti Precon as well and the Felix is there with Satoru, a pile of dimir ninjas, and ramp. It's fun!
I just unintentionally made a secret dragon tribal deck with Elminster as the commander. I'm taking advantage of the high cmc dragons usually have to make a bunch of dragon tokens with Elminster
Samurai, especially original Kamigawa samurai. I was really pumped at first when Kamigawa Neon Dynasty came out because (a) they went back to my fave plane/block and (b) there were going to be more samurai cards. Unfortunately the return set version is completely at loggerheads with the OG Kamigawa samurai using Bushido instead of the newer version. I pretty much have to run all but Blue in order to make old samurai deck work, and even then I don't know if there's enough cards to make it work. (shrug)
From what I've seen on Edhrec Kalamax, the Stormsire would be a nice commander that synergy's with a wizard spell slinger deck. Being able to double your spells is really valuable in spell slinger, and having green would help your ramp issue. I think if you find yourself staling out and not getting anywhere, maybe lean into a storm strategy with grapeshot and other great cards that can win you the game off storming off.
I have a secret construct deck under liberator. The plan is to utilize doll house of horrors but rather that have a million of the tokens come out filling my board with cheap constructs. I haven't played it since the crypt ban but it has alot of famous constructs that in other decks people worry about like walking balista, hangarback walker, and triskelion but I use those just for numbers. It has all my fun bits
I play rogues tribal with ludevic and tymna because they give me all the colors I want and are great with small evasive creatures swinging over and over and they help draw me towards my wincons without having to play hardly any draw spells in the 99
That seems super powerful, would love to play against it!
One of my favorite tribal decks that kind of takes this concept into consideration is changling tribal. Usually I have Ur-dragon at the healm
I got a buddy who's building a Jam Jansen deck that's Minotaur tribal. Excited to see what he does with it
Minotaur Tribal sounds so much fun. Hopefully the deck plays as good as it sounds!
I built a secret tribal deck out of Volo, guide to monster. Most of the time I saw people using him as a value commander and thought he was just a value commander myself until I read his ability. Once I found out that his ability triggers on the cast of a creature spell, I realized that I was able to make a tribe that I have always wanted to since I found out about the card since 1993. Shapeshifter, clone are shapeshifters when you cast them but are usually a copy of another creature when they are in play still enabling you to get more copies of other creatures and thing (clever impersonator). This deck has always taken people by surprise and is always fun to play.
It was building a vehicle tribal deck, but it was slow as balls. I didn't do a whole lot but I love the journey more than the destination. Currently I'm building a food tribal with Ygra and Bernard as the centers but alas not the commanders
Been ruminating on this question in the background for some time now. Thanks for making this video!!
I have been wanting to run a phoenix tribal forever I think I may try this out for it.
Phoenix tribal sounds like an amazing deck idea, would love to see if you are able to make it work!
Oloro with horses. Suncrested Mare is a key component.
This may be the coolest Oloro concept I've heard of, well done!
@@TopDecking101 my goal is to gain life on everyone's turn since you get horses on any turn you gained life.
I have a Felix deck that focuses on ninjutsu! Dropping him onto the field and having ninjas or something like Quietus Spike do their thing twice is hilarious, and his color identity lets you slot in a couple additional fun cards that work well with his gimmick (e.g. Cazur+Ukkima put in overtime in my 99) He’s quite budget friendly too; I have a lot of fun playing him, win or lose, with friends and at my local game store.
I'm glad you found the same amount of fun in Felix as I did! Would love to see your deck list if you have one!
i wanna see a scarecrow or a hydra tribal deck
Ooooh a hydra deck would be nice to see!
You don't "let creatures die before" other creatures in a board wipe. They all die simultaneously and any cards on the table see the other cards die and trigger accordingly.
Literally this. My ears bled a little when he said that.
Also to note, if you want to play "secret commanders" cards like rocco help add colors and tutor for your real commander. I build naya light paws with rocco; what will you build?
Could you elaborate on Naya Light Paws, please?
What a fun way to make sure you get your 'real' commander. Great idea!
In my opinion, the best secret tribal commander is Morophon, The Boundless; WUBRG Shapeshifter with Changeling, making him literally able to be the commander of any tribal deck, plus a changeling tribal deck (all spells have Changeling) would just be great especially if you're playing against multiple opponents who are running Urza's Incubator and you are as well (but for yours you choose Shapeshifter to make it less likely to help out your opponents)
I tried to do the same with a -1/-1 counter deck its not a tribe but its a theme.. its 4 colours atm. But the problem usually with ideas like that they are never consistent enough
I defiantly get where you're coming from here. For more consistency I would recommend maybe taking some colors out and switching your commander to something like Massacre Girl, Known Killer, that way you can get a -1/-1 effect every game. Most -1/-1 cards are in black I believe, so you wouldn't lose that much synergy in the 99, and what you do have to take out can be used to add protection and side synergies like Maha and other cool effects. Just a thought though, hope this helped!
Raggradragga - Eldrazi is my favorite version of the secret tribal commander! Get those little dudes out and use them to pump out bigger boys!
I wonder what commanders would be good for Horses...
Currently rebuilding my gruul boar deck around the new Ghired with a bunch of token copy effects like Hate Mirage and Molten Echoes. Boars are a pretty weak tribe and Ghired is pretty strong if you go for the typical build, so this combination meets somewhere in the middle. I also have Midnight Guard in there to suddenly make 30-50 trillion wild hogs.
Gotta love me some boar tribal. Ghired looks like a perfect commander for it, I hope your deck is as fun as it sounds!
Gorgon deck here I work around it more pet cards to throw in
I recently played against a Baylen the Haymaker Eldrazi deck. Funniest shit I’ve ever seen.
In my Orthion, hero of lavabrink monored deck i run goblins and giants tribal as a diversion. I use non combat damage as the main wincon with Toralf, god of fury + Chandra's Incinerator + Fiery emancipation
Ooh now I like the sound of this. A secret win con in a secret tribal deck. Sounds like loads of fun to play!
One of my favorite decks ive built is omnath locus of mana being the commander of a tribal elf deck, super good mana sponge
I’ve been planning on making either a incubate phyrexian or hurts deck with Byrke, Long War of the Law; as both types enter with +1/+1 counters, with Byrke acting as a doubling season
Oooo that sounds amazing! I hope those decks work out for you!
I would build atla elephants just for the meme/joke that Wikipedia used to say that Asian elephants lay eggs
That's the best reasoning I've heard to build a deck around
I would love to do crocodiles but they don't have a lot of synergy together
I would say since crocodiles are mostly in simic colors, plus a few black cards, I would say that the Pride of Hull Clade is a good commander for crocodiles, but if you wanted a secret commander Xolatoyac, the Smiling Flood is a good way to untap lands, ramp, and even untap your crocodiles to become blockers every turn. Hope this helped!
@@TopDecking101 thnc
Great video. Short but packed lots of good examples. Really high quality production too. Nice!
Thank you so much for the support! I’m glad you enjoyed everything I put into it!
I actually use Atla for my Wurm deck. While wurms have some support, their commanders are only green, and there are some decent wurms with white or red in their colour identity. I do think I rely too heavily on Atla though, but I just like making eggs. Lol.
Atla is one of those commanders that can be easy to rely on heavily. From my experience, playing at newer pods Atla seems kinda mid power and not a heavy target for removal, then you pop off some egg tokens and the whole table realizes they need to get rid of her. Then when playing with friend pods they know to not let her live a turn cycle due to her power. Best thing to do is add in some white cards for protection or even equipment like swiftfoot boots or lighting greaves. These allow you to protect Atla early, and then mid to late game you can move them to one of your Wurms to swing in with haste and protect then. Atla is one of my favorites, I can see why you like to play her alot!
For a long time I used Caesar, Legion's Emperor as my secret 🤫 🐀 rat commander. He was surprisingly good 😮
Oh I can definitely see that working out. Caesar is like a Mardu version of Marrow-Gnawer for you, which can really open up a lot of possibilities for some power. Would love to play against this!
@@TopDecking101 I think it’s about time I show off the build (have been gatekeeping😰) 😎🙏 really love red and white as an addition to rats as well it’s really clean especially since they love to die (tangled colony 👀)
I really want to build a zubera deck ❤
Shapeshifters can be a good bandage to not having enough good creatures for a deck and Monophon gives you access to all five colors if you want 🤔
That's true, shapeshifters are a nice filler piece for tribes with less support. Something like Ox tribal probably needs shapeshifters just to form a deck due to the low amount of Ox cards printed
Oh, there's a word for my "Yarok's Allies" deck? Cool.
Most people run Yarok as a landfall deck, but when he was spoiled I immediately knew I'd found the right commander for the Ally deck I'd been trying to get to work. Tazri was ok but the deck didn't feel right; White provided some nice "generic Ally token" generation but I discovered early on that the real value was to be found in CLONES. Yarok provided the three colors I needed for the three basic wincons (Halimar Excavator, Hagra Diabolist, and Turntimber Ranger) and also the best colors for clones (blue), efficient card draw (black), and ramp. He's not absolutely essential to the game plan (so I don't feel TOO bad when he dies) but he definitely accelerates things; plus he's a great blocker, and I can give him a Viridian Longbow to turn him into repeatable removal.
You've kinda made me want to go back and update that deck now :P
I built a deck I call "gummy wurms" because I use Brenard, Ginger Sculptor as my commander for Wurm Tribal. It's not perfect colors, but as long as it has green and white I'm happy. And most wurms have etb or dies triggers that really benefit from that second trigger when they become food. Board wipes are the biggest issue and getting a bunch of tokens after a wipe is great. I love when my worldspine dies, comes back as food with 3 5/5s then I sac for 3 life and 3 more 5/5s.
i play a secret goblin deck with my purphoros commander it's super fun, they go really well together and it's a nice way to limit the strength of the deck (cause an optimised purphoros deck can kill pretty fast, it's not cedh combo level but still)
Oh I really like that, a nice way to limit your power level but keep the deck fun to pilot. What an awesome deck idea!
ok im a big fan of the Felix idea
One of my favorites from Thunder Junction. Gives Sultai a really cool combat damage trigger doubler.
I've been trying to figure out a way of making a Scarecrow tribal deck that doesn't use Reaper King, since I usually struggle with the early game of getting him out and sometimes end up with some feelsbad moments of I'm just blowing up stuff for the sake of blowing up stuff. I've seen that changelings help a lot with the creature type but I was hoping some people might be able to provide some guidance as to how I might go about an alternate Scarecrow deck commander.
Sorry for the long response time. This may not be fully helpful because i don't know what colors you were wanting you deck to be in, but I like 'Emry, Lurker of the Loch' after going over some scarecrow cards. Gives a good cost reduction to scarecrow cards, and even lets you bring them back from the graveyard. The new Duskmourn set released some great scarecrows in green, red, and black, so looking into a commander in Jund colors would be nice to be able to include those pieces. Coram, the Undertaker I can see as a total flavor win, acting as a insane farmer that has his army of scarecrows, and he plays into a nice reanimator theme with you scarecrows. I hope my recommendations helped, let me know if you found a good commander for your scarecrows!
@@TopDecking101 I just so happen to have a spare Coram from the MH3 Lhurgoyf commander so I might just try that out, appreciate the advice!
can you guys think of a secret commander for assassin tribal?
I would recommend something like Goro-Goro and Saturo as a commander for assassin's. A lot of assassin cards want to deal combat damage to activate their abilities so GG and Saturo being able to give them haste is a nice effect to have in the command zone. And the upside of getting a 5/5 dragon every now and then is defiantly a plus. Hope this was helpful!
I suppose a ninja could ooze along the rooftops, silent and unnoticed.
Hold up, say that one more time 📸
I'm tired of waiting for Wizards to actually design an interesting commander for angels, so I decided to choose Galadriel Light of Valinor to make an angel tribal deck, her ability to give triple green mana is useful to cast those expensive angels and buffing them with +1/+1 counters, which several angels have synergy with.
That's such a cool build! I really like Galadriel for her all around value, so really nice commander choice for Angels!
This will help a ton for when I make my *checks notes* Atog Tribal commander deck (with all 13 cards they have)
Off to build that Wumpus deck... oh crap!
But seriously, good advice. I might consider a Kavu Deck.
Thank you so much! And I need to see a Wumpus deck, would be amazing to see!
@TopDecking101 I think there's only four printed. And eratta has made them extinct. Which I think is a shame. I get combining hounds and dogs, but the Wumpus was a unique mtg original creature type. I think Kavu were saved just because there's a greater number of them.
I forgot Kavu already have a commander. Maybe secret tribal, with a hidden commander, and Wumpus hidden within that? A Russian nesting doll deck... now I'm getting ideas for a crazy deck box. Lol
@TopDecking101 Okay, so I'm starting to get serious about making a deck. And I'm starting to see a few creature types that like the Wumpus, unique yet not unique enough. Thoctar, Thrinax, Baloth. They mostly fall into the larger umbrella creature type of beast. So maybe like niche beast tribal with a subtheme of high mana value matters. Because these are some thick boys. Ravos + Tana are the commanders I'm looking at so far. Ravos provides a buff and light recursion. But Tana... I'm not sure. She would make recovering from a boardwipe a bit easier.
My apologies for being that guy who HAS to share his precious deck. But I haven't built a deck in about 5 years, and these seem like the unique little corner of tribal deck building that got me into commander to begin with.
I'm working on a "Cryptids" deck with things like the Mothman, gremlins, and chupacabras. I wanted it to be wubrg so I went with Rukarumel, Biologist as the commander; her sliver abilities do nothing, but the extra creature type ability can add some synergy to what is otherwise a totally disjointed spread of creatures.
I'm building an Otter tribal deck... i have chosen Alania as my commander just because "When you cast an Otter spell blabla", do you suggest using another one for my secret tribal? since well it is just isset and i don't really know how many things i can do
I think that Alania is a perfect option for a Otter Deck! I think the main thing I would say is Alania gives extremely good value for Otters in general, and taking them out for a secret tribal commander could be actually worse for the deck if not chosen correctly. If you are having fun with Alania then I would say to 100% stick with them as your commander, really hope this helped!
It's funny you chose Saskia as she is my secret tribal commander for my Saproling tribal deck 😂
You said something about death triggers in reference to board wipes and atla. The eggs dont die "before" atla, they all die at the same time but atla is on the field when everything dies so you still get the triggers
i've been trying to make a wizard tribal deck work for a while but i find that most wizard commanders just increase the amount of stuff wizards are known for (countering spells, drawing cards, etc) but never actually progress the game in any way. do you have any recommendations? I'm thinking in temur colors since most wizards are in red and blue but usually struggle with getting big and ramping
I once made archer tribal with Jegantha at the helm. Archers started in red and then became selesnya over time and have the big Elk (who also has a tap ability) allowed me to play anything.
Unfortunately as a tribe archers are mostly just about killing your opponents creatures so was unfun and I ended it... But now I'm thinking it's time to do Elk tribal. I wonder who I'll pick.
Elk Tribal sounds like a loud a fun, let me know if you find a good commander for them!
@@TopDecking101 I'm thinking Bounce or Blink in Bant because elk often have an ETB.
Amareth the Lustrous seems nice card advantage, I've run Lagrella before but people hate playing against her because she takes their stuff too.
Galadriel Light of Valinor could work as she is just utility on a stick. Chulane is just a massive target so no. Helga Skittish Seer may work too, as a third of all Elk creatures would trigger her.
I love playing Nethroi as a Vampire commander. Sure, there's absolutely no synergy with a combo commander like Nethroi. But sometimes I have no cards to play, but some lands on the board and a graveyard full of vampires. Yep, it is secretly a life drain deck and it's your fault for not killing me first! MWAHAHAHA
What a cool idea. I really like the idea of being able to play weaker tribes in commander
Thank you so much! Building around the weaker tribes is a cool way of making unique decks, and I’m glad you enjoyed my video on it!
How do you go about finding a commander in the first place? Using something like edhrec and scrolling through the desired colors until you find one?
This how I usually make a secret tribal deck. Then, I go to moxfield or archidekt and put every creature type I want for my tribe in. So if I was building elephant tribal like in the video, I would put all of the elephant cards I wanted to play with in a new deck on one of those sites. Then from there, I see how many colors my elephants are in, so for elephants I would have green, white, and red elephants. Then I scroll through edhrecs commanders for the color identity I need, in this case Naya, until I found a commander that help me get around my creature types weakness, or boosted it's strength. Once I have a commander picked out, I will put them into the deck that has all of my creature types, and add in artifacts, enchantments, ramp, etc. like I would building a normal deck. Hope this clears everything up!
@@TopDecking101 Thank you! Very helpful! I know Trinket Mage and Snail are big fans of decks that don’t rely on commanders, but this video was very easy to follow. Just the act of picking the commander itself was left. Thank you again!
This makes me want to find a group to play commander with so I can create a tribal horse deck
2 words: Zinnia Slivers 😎👌 i feel the 5 color Slivers make Slivers too combo-oriented instead of combat (besides maybe Hivelord) and i like Zinnia as a fake-Queen to go in that combat-orientation while still having the flooding of classic Slivers. Also, it puts a small limit on mana that Gemhide and Manaweft provide so im not leaning too heavily on them for ramp
I’ve given Sliver players a new way to build decks. What have I done 😭
This is evil and I love it
@@TopDecking101 Bro You've let out the floodwaters, I'm already brewing Riku as a Temur variant (with spellslinger subtheme!), and maybe I'll do an Esper Raffine build, or Satoru Umezawa, or even a 4-color Aragorn! None of my foes shall see it coming. You can't stop me.
drip drip from the tap don't slip
@@MortonFMurphy I'm a sick man. Sick for slivers.
do you have a deck list for the saskia lead Elephant deck?
Sadly no, when showing my girlfriend the deck she had the idea of making a cat tribal deck with Saskia, so I ended up deleting the old elephant one I had with Saskia and Atla. It was louds of fun though, so I would highly recommend brewing one up yourself!
Huh. I've never thought of it that way. Thanks!
I’ve got a secret tribal deck with Atraxa at the helm. Nobody expects her to be the mother of all Ooze.
it wasn't for the purpose of being secret, but i have done this with my gargoyle deck because there isnt a legendary gargoyle. the most ironic thing is that you used elephants for your whole example and my commander for gargoyles is a loxodon/elephant
Bahaha, that's awesome, Gargoyle tribal sounds like a blast to play!
I made a token tribal deck and the commander isn’t even the creature type, but it can be. There’s also no creature in the deck that is the type unless you count shapeshifters/changeling.
I've made an Attractions Deck with Gonti, Canny Acquisitor as the Commander. It isn't tribal but it's the same concept 😂
I have a pretty fun secret dragon tribal deck that’s focused around Kenrith…but it’s kenrith so any deck he’s in is probably good
I'm still trying to make a Goat deck...I've not come up with a commander yet, and its been abit, BUT THE SEARCH CONTINUES!!!
the real challenge is EYE DECK (aka changelings + eyes)
I SEE what you're trying to do here lol
seriously great video!
Thanks so much, that means a lot!
Ehurrrm it’s referred to as “kindred” now 🤓☝️
Do you have a list for Saskia or Atla Elephants? That sounds so wrong but so very beautiful and would like to build something along those lines.
Sadly I do not anymore, me and my girlfriend changed out elephants for a secret tribal cat deck with Saskia. A lot of the cards are the same so if you wanted to take a look all you would really have to do is switch out the cats for elephants.
Any Decklists?
peranally I only have a work in progress Saskia deck with a cat tribal theme that me and my girl friend are building. But a lot of the decks I mentioned here I found examples for on moxfield. Hope this helped!
Saskia wurms for life. Sussywurms are capable of some excellent things.
Got a hamster tribal deck, there are only two cards in the game that make hamsters (technically three but two of those cards make the same legendary token )
Hamster Tribal has be the coolest Tribal deck I’ve ever heard off! I need to see your deck list of that!
Can you do an example for samurai tribal pls??
I'm going to assume that you do not want Isshin as your commander here, but since a lot of samurai have the Bushido mechanic that activates on blocking or attacking, we probably want to focus on that route. Going defensive for the blocking trigger, we could have Queen Marchesa as the Emperor of your Samurai deck, and then defend her crown, the Monarch Token, while you accrue value over time. Going the attack route, from my video Saskia works well for combat damage, and another good commander for samruai could be, Kyodai, Soul of Kamigawa is a cool way to get all five colors and give one of your good samurai indestructible while it's in play. It looking like a bad ass acient dragon is also a flavor win! Hope this helped, let me know if you end up finding a commander you like for this deck!
May be a bit late here, but depending on what you're going for Inquisitor Greyfax can be a good Samurai commander. Gives +1/+0 and vigilance so your samurai can benefit from both blocking and being blocked. It even taps creatures you don't want to attack or block. Lots of reanimation, evasion or protection in esper colours, too so you can keep up a good defense and offense
Thank you for the suggestions.
I like the Idea with marchesa, protecting the crown. But i think i'd miss Green here because i like Isao.
Maybe i could go for the modify Route here because a lot samurai care for modified creatures. But i dont know who could fit here.. should be at least WRG
I could more waive of Black, rather than Green. Saskia is good, but a little too aggro
For the Inquisitor Greyfax i'm missing Green and red
@@TopDecking101Kyodai sounds like an amazing idea for this!