Yeah I agree. EDHrec homogenizes the deck building process so much. Using scryfall has really expanded my deck building process. I almost fell out of love with magic because of over relying on EDHrec.
I've never heard someone say that building mono-colored is hard. I have heard people say that mono-colored can be...boring. It can be hard to find that creative spark with a mono-colored deck, because your card pool is more limited, and each color only tends to only want to do a few things (with exceptions, of course).
@@thomaspetrucka9173 some of the best mono color decks create restrictions that can really help a deck builder express their themes in super creative ways! As a player you just need to express your color's strengths and especially its weaknesses. I feel it lets me focus on the deck building vs the mana base and colors.
I did watch some of the video and looked at his white deck list; I also unsubbed lol. Sure it's easy to copy a bunch of cards from edhrec. And his white creatures deck has only 23 creatures ... and he boasts how easy it is and advises other people. If he hadn't boasted about "how easy it is" I wouldn't have cared. Also, that white deck costs $270 -- so a newbie would spend almost $300 when they don't know what they're doing? Bad advice.
I'm sorry you felt the need to unsubscribe. In no way was I trying to boast. This video is here to help newer players find an easy way to start building their own decks. There only 23 creatures because many of the creatures jump things back to hand, so you are casting them more than once. This video is a starting point, no an end all be all.
To be fair. I do think the commander choices were VERY streamlined. Sometimes it's hard to build a mono colour deck. I play a mono colour Seizan Perverter of truth deck. And I play the deck card draw punishment. But you can build group hug. Group slug. Discard theme. etc. you can't go fully in all directions either. The support isn't always there. So it's hard what to choose.
Absolutely. That’s the trouble I have with some decks… like Nekusar, I have a a few wheels (didn’t want it overwhelming/competitive) damage doublers, draw trigger cards, and some discard themed stuff. Pretty much most of the deck punished for drawing or discarding and runs wheels, and other cards that draws extra cards or discards people down to smaller hand size.
Great video! I acutely use those same for categories myself. I like to use another one as 'Synergy', which follows the main strategy and 'value' as different, but still good cards.
I have 4 Mono colored decks myself. White - Zeriam Golden Wing. Centered around the Tokens and using good white stuff for synergies. Black - Syvriss + Background Reanimator deck Blue - Detective Hauken - crazy random blue spells. The deck does nothing but plays different each time Red - Plargg and Nassari - Chaos light that exile theme. All pretty different and fun everything I play. Mono green has been hard to figure out since it feels all the same. My other three decks are Mardu, Nia, & Esper
Another thing I avoid like the plague is this "make a draft deck with 150 cards in it" process. FOR ME at least this leads to crap decks every single time. Instead I add cards carefully, one at a time, with tags indicating what function they fulfill within the deck, why they are there in a general sense (IE draw, graveyard, lifegain, sacrifice, creature, etc.). I never cut cards, or at least I never jam too many cards in and then try to cut. In fact, often what I will do is build a 30 card proto-deck, and playtest it. This will have the bare essence of the deck, it will validate the core M.O. of the deck. Then I will begin to add cards, carefully including additional ways to get the deck's core function to happen when I can't just count on drawing that one card. I can start introducing subthemes as well. Often I will start to find at this level, playtesting a 40, 50, 60, 80 card version that my original conception was 'not quite right' or at least that the deck 'wants' to go in a certain direction. Often the results are totally surprising! Also, fearlessly scrap stuff. If part of the deck isn't working, kill it. If the whole deck isn't working, won't gel, dump it into a "maybe later" folder and go do another try. In many cases I will have 4 or more versions of the same deck in Moxfield!
I have quite a few mono color decks. I like to get cards in you don't see all the time. A few I have- White : Light Paws voltron/enchantress Blue : Orvar clones Black : Ayara aristocrats/devotion Red : Zada tokens/pump spells Green : Rhonas the Indomitable fight/power matters Ojer Axonil is on my to do list.
White ramp goes pretty hard these days tbh. Depends on budget though of course because some of whites ramp gets pricey fast such as smothering tithe and archaeomancers map for example.
Lately been working on nylea keen eyed focusing on the idea of 4 mana indestructible cost reducer in the command zone with a mana sink if the game goes sideways. Specifically the play line of turn 2 ramp, turn 3 commander, turn 4 start playing beaters. It’s been so fun to get back to the basics and building a green stompy deck centered around 5- and 6-drop removal engines hitting the battlefield on turn 4 very consistently. I like the strategy of deck building around a few important categories but one thing I disagree with is the “value” category. I add a second deck specific category instead. Most decks I build aim at maximizing the the interaction between two mechanics. Having two “this deck’s mechanic” categories makes it very easy to ensure I will get the interaction consistently by balancing those two piles during building. Slightly more complex, but helps me from falling into the pit of generic value that doesn’t move the game along.
Calling it cookie cutter makes it seem like it’s “basic” and therefore I wouldn’t want to do it that way. In fairness when I first started this is what I did, but over time i just started to look for unique play styles and a commander that fits that idea.
@@blizzardcrow3051 im not calling out any particular part of the video. He just keeps calling it cookie cutter and by doing so, personally, it doesn’t appeal to my tastes as a deck builder. Thats it. Just voicing my opinion. And then im adding that despite my criticism of his verb-age I myself fell into that style of thinking for a good while as a beginner in edh.
Feels a bit too linear and generic to me. The decks built are functional but I think they wouldn't hold my interest for long. For many EDH players a playable deck is only the first step; the challenge is to take it further and make it non-linear (so that each game doesn't feel samey) or building it with their own unique takes.
I literally just started building mono coloured decks of each colour to be super strong but also budget and new player friendly in hopes of sharing the lists with my playgroup and maybe make a video about them. Great minds think alike 🎉
I like your category templates, I mainly use Archidekt and will typically replace draw with a more overarching Card Advantage where casting off the top deck is included, but really straight forward. I think you are over valuing edhrec in particular in terms of a tool, but overall I think your approach is solid.
I suggest edhrec due to its ease of use. It definitely doesn't always recommend the best stuff bc you can't trust other people to build good decks, but for the most part it will just have the good staples!
@@deckdriverMTG for sure, I think its pretty good for finding things specifically for a card, but generally their top commanders for X colors is more a note of what to likely avoid putting in the zone...((except for Kykar my beloved with which i promise everyone I am definitely just turning my tokens sideways please believe me))
Sorry if it's a dumb question, but I dont get the relation between your deckbuilding strategy and the decks being monocolored, I think that everything you mentioned still makes sense if you are building a non-monocolored deck
Because It's the standard of building EDH deck? The fact that the deck is mono color has no correlation. It's just how to build commander deck. Find a commander, then do those steps.
You made a white creature deck, where your commander cares specifically about casting creature spells and you included only 23 creatures? And a ton of non creature spells?
Actually, I've found that EDHREC is more like cosmic navel-gazing than anything else. All it shows you is the group think of Magic. At first I simplistically built a couple decks the way you are (not to insult your decks, they're fine, better than the ones I first made). But soon, when playing with people I game with, I discovered that EDHREC's 'synergy' score is basically crap advice. Yeah, it will list some cards that mostly make sense, but that doesn't mean these are the BEST cards to use, the most fun cards, etc. It just means they're the ones that every other poor slob who followed this "go to EDHREC and use what it tells you' process got the same card list! I have developed a different strategy. FIRST I come up with a concept for the sort of thing that I want to build. Like "A Saga Deck" and then I start taking notes, asking people, watching videos, etc. ANYTHING except going to EDHREC! This will produce a list of design elements, along with just leaning on my knowledge of the M:tG card base. Some commanders will come to light, cards, types of cards, good colors to try, etc. will all come to light. I just dump lists of cards into Moxfield in a 'deck' in the 'considering' bin, and then start working forward. At this point I may go to EDHREC and key in some commanders, or my theme, and see what else I've missed. Usually I'll find I've not considered some cards, or there are subthemes that I've neglected to think about. But starting with EDHREC just kinda guarantees you get a shlock deck that is like 9 billion others.
This video aims to show the first steps in building decks. Yes EDHREC can recommend some crazy stuff, but it's not a bad place to start, and refining from there can make decks unique overtime.
I always start with finding ramp, removal, and draw, not synergy pieces. And the first cards added are the synergistic ramp removal and draw. Then general ramp removal draw. Then that way when im getting synergy and value pieces i have to fight against and say, is this really better than my 3rd best general removal spell. My 2nd. Is it really better than a talisman. Keeps me honest Keeps the power level more moderate, and the deck more interesting.
Moxfield tags? Where is this option? I just use advanced search and manually add everything. Also, an additional step is to consider budget. As limitation creates creativity
I definitely love the budget restrictions, and have made videos in the past using a tight budget. There should be a button next to the commander on moxfield that say "enable tags" and that will separate all the cards from there.
Im working on 5 mono colored decks but on top of being mono colored they are also STRICT kindred Mono green hydras done Mono red dragons done Mono black demons playtest phase Mono blue sphinxes In progress Mono white angels in progress
![[UA] NAVI vs MOUZ | BO5 | IEM Rio 2024](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/CMBYk0cbGoA/mqdefault.jpg)
In case you were wondering why no mono black. Yahenni is the commander deck that completes the cycle. go watch that video on my channel next!
why is there no deck list for the decks?
Yeah I agree. EDHrec homogenizes the deck building process so much. Using scryfall has really expanded my deck building process. I almost fell out of love with magic because of over relying on EDHrec.
I've never heard someone say that building mono-colored is hard. I have heard people say that mono-colored can be...boring. It can be hard to find that creative spark with a mono-colored deck, because your card pool is more limited, and each color only tends to only want to do a few things (with exceptions, of course).
I think he is saying that building a useful mono color deck is difficult. To avoid the boringness
They are just mono colored for the sake of simplicity. I'm saying that deck building itself can be easy. The commander doesn't necessarily matter.
@@thomaspetrucka9173 some of the best mono color decks create restrictions that can really help a deck builder express their themes in super creative ways! As a player you just need to express your color's strengths and especially its weaknesses. I feel it lets me focus on the deck building vs the mana base and colors.
I have at least 15 mono color decks. No EDHrec, just pure mania
Here's a twist: 7 of them are green, and they're all unique
7 mono green decks is absolute perfection!
*opens video*
How to build a deck.
"Just copy everything from EDHrec"
*closes video*
I did watch some of the video and looked at his white deck list; I also unsubbed lol. Sure it's easy to copy a bunch of cards from edhrec. And his white creatures deck has only 23 creatures ... and he boasts how easy it is and advises other people. If he hadn't boasted about "how easy it is" I wouldn't have cared. Also, that white deck costs $270 -- so a newbie would spend almost $300 when they don't know what they're doing? Bad advice.
>can’t play Anointed Procession, too win more
>plays Cathar’s crusade
EDHREC is a good starting off point, I'm sorry if you disagree.
I'm sorry you felt the need to unsubscribe. In no way was I trying to boast. This video is here to help newer players find an easy way to start building their own decks. There only 23 creatures because many of the creatures jump things back to hand, so you are casting them more than once. This video is a starting point, no an end all be all.
@@punkypinko2965 bit of an overreaction ngl lmao
To be fair. I do think the commander choices were VERY streamlined. Sometimes it's hard to build a mono colour deck. I play a mono colour Seizan Perverter of truth deck. And I play the deck card draw punishment. But you can build group hug. Group slug. Discard theme. etc. you can't go fully in all directions either. The support isn't always there. So it's hard what to choose.
Absolutely. That’s the trouble I have with some decks… like Nekusar, I have a a few wheels (didn’t want it overwhelming/competitive) damage doublers, draw trigger cards, and some discard themed stuff. Pretty much most of the deck punished for drawing or discarding and runs wheels, and other cards that draws extra cards or discards people down to smaller hand size.
before I even watch the video I'm just happy to see oketra get listed. It's so fun doing self bouncing creatures to make 4/4s.
I switched my Oketra deck to a Rocco Secret Commander deck
Great video! I acutely use those same for categories myself. I like to use another one as 'Synergy', which follows the main strategy and 'value' as different, but still good cards.
I have 4 Mono colored decks myself.
White - Zeriam Golden Wing. Centered around the Tokens and using good white stuff for synergies.
Black - Syvriss + Background
Reanimator deck
Blue - Detective Hauken - crazy random blue spells. The deck does nothing but plays different each time
Red - Plargg and Nassari - Chaos light that exile theme.
All pretty different and fun everything I play. Mono green has been hard to figure out since it feels all the same.
My other three decks are Mardu, Nia, & Esper
Another thing I avoid like the plague is this "make a draft deck with 150 cards in it" process. FOR ME at least this leads to crap decks every single time. Instead I add cards carefully, one at a time, with tags indicating what function they fulfill within the deck, why they are there in a general sense (IE draw, graveyard, lifegain, sacrifice, creature, etc.). I never cut cards, or at least I never jam too many cards in and then try to cut. In fact, often what I will do is build a 30 card proto-deck, and playtest it. This will have the bare essence of the deck, it will validate the core M.O. of the deck. Then I will begin to add cards, carefully including additional ways to get the deck's core function to happen when I can't just count on drawing that one card. I can start introducing subthemes as well. Often I will start to find at this level, playtesting a 40, 50, 60, 80 card version that my original conception was 'not quite right' or at least that the deck 'wants' to go in a certain direction. Often the results are totally surprising! Also, fearlessly scrap stuff. If part of the deck isn't working, kill it. If the whole deck isn't working, won't gel, dump it into a "maybe later" folder and go do another try. In many cases I will have 4 or more versions of the same deck in Moxfield!
I have quite a few mono color decks. I like to get cards in you don't see all the time. A few I have-
White : Light Paws voltron/enchantress
Blue : Orvar clones
Black : Ayara aristocrats/devotion
Red : Zada tokens/pump spells
Green : Rhonas the Indomitable fight/power
matters
Ojer Axonil is on my to do list.
White ramp goes pretty hard these days tbh. Depends on budget though of course because some of whites ramp gets pricey fast such as smothering tithe and archaeomancers map for example.
Lately been working on nylea keen eyed focusing on the idea of 4 mana indestructible cost reducer in the command zone with a mana sink if the game goes sideways. Specifically the play line of turn 2 ramp, turn 3 commander, turn 4 start playing beaters. It’s been so fun to get back to the basics and building a green stompy deck centered around 5- and 6-drop removal engines hitting the battlefield on turn 4 very consistently.
I like the strategy of deck building around a few important categories but one thing I disagree with is the “value” category. I add a second deck specific category instead. Most decks I build aim at maximizing the the interaction between two mechanics. Having two “this deck’s mechanic” categories makes it very easy to ensure I will get the interaction consistently by balancing those two piles during building. Slightly more complex, but helps me from falling into the pit of generic value that doesn’t move the game along.
Calling it cookie cutter makes it seem like it’s “basic” and therefore I wouldn’t want to do it that way. In fairness when I first started this is what I did, but over time i just started to look for unique play styles and a commander that fits that idea.
I'm not sure this statement applies to that part of the video?
@@blizzardcrow3051 im not calling out any particular part of the video. He just keeps calling it cookie cutter and by doing so, personally, it doesn’t appeal to my tastes as a deck builder. Thats it. Just voicing my opinion. And then im adding that despite my criticism of his verb-age I myself fell into that style of thinking for a good while as a beginner in edh.
Feels a bit too linear and generic to me. The decks built are functional but I think they wouldn't hold my interest for long. For many EDH players a playable deck is only the first step; the challenge is to take it further and make it non-linear (so that each game doesn't feel samey) or building it with their own unique takes.
Totally can understand this. The goal of this video is to make something playable first in a strategy you enjoy, and refine from there
I got to this, so fast it literally said no views💀
I literally just started building mono coloured decks of each colour to be super strong but also budget and new player friendly in hopes of sharing the lists with my playgroup and maybe make a video about them. Great minds think alike 🎉
I'd be interested in seeing what you cook up!
People need to stop hating on mono color. Wish more players made more focused decks instead of their 3-5 color, no theme decks, no weakness decks
I like your category templates, I mainly use Archidekt and will typically replace draw with a more overarching Card Advantage where casting off the top deck is included, but really straight forward. I think you are over valuing edhrec in particular in terms of a tool, but overall I think your approach is solid.
I suggest edhrec due to its ease of use. It definitely doesn't always recommend the best stuff bc you can't trust other people to build good decks, but for the most part it will just have the good staples!
@@deckdriverMTG for sure, I think its pretty good for finding things specifically for a card, but generally their top commanders for X colors is more a note of what to likely avoid putting in the zone...((except for Kykar my beloved with which i promise everyone I am definitely just turning my tokens sideways please believe me))
Sorry if it's a dumb question, but I dont get the relation between your deckbuilding strategy and the decks being monocolored, I think that everything you mentioned still makes sense if you are building a non-monocolored deck
Because It's the standard of building EDH deck? The fact that the deck is mono color has no correlation.
It's just how to build commander deck. Find a commander, then do those steps.
They are simple decks, I made shorts about these decks previously so I decided to dedicate a full video to how I would personally build them
What would you recommend using for play testing?
Still moxfield, their engine is pretty great and simple to use
You made a white creature deck, where your commander cares specifically about casting creature spells and you included only 23 creatures? And a ton of non creature spells?
Could use some fine tuning, but because I included so many creatures that return to hand, you cast enough creature spells over the course of a game.
Actually, I've found that EDHREC is more like cosmic navel-gazing than anything else. All it shows you is the group think of Magic. At first I simplistically built a couple decks the way you are (not to insult your decks, they're fine, better than the ones I first made). But soon, when playing with people I game with, I discovered that EDHREC's 'synergy' score is basically crap advice. Yeah, it will list some cards that mostly make sense, but that doesn't mean these are the BEST cards to use, the most fun cards, etc. It just means they're the ones that every other poor slob who followed this "go to EDHREC and use what it tells you' process got the same card list!
I have developed a different strategy. FIRST I come up with a concept for the sort of thing that I want to build. Like "A Saga Deck" and then I start taking notes, asking people, watching videos, etc. ANYTHING except going to EDHREC! This will produce a list of design elements, along with just leaning on my knowledge of the M:tG card base. Some commanders will come to light, cards, types of cards, good colors to try, etc. will all come to light. I just dump lists of cards into Moxfield in a 'deck' in the 'considering' bin, and then start working forward. At this point I may go to EDHREC and key in some commanders, or my theme, and see what else I've missed. Usually I'll find I've not considered some cards, or there are subthemes that I've neglected to think about.
But starting with EDHREC just kinda guarantees you get a shlock deck that is like 9 billion others.
This video aims to show the first steps in building decks. Yes EDHREC can recommend some crazy stuff, but it's not a bad place to start, and refining from there can make decks unique overtime.
I always start with finding ramp, removal, and draw, not synergy pieces. And the first cards added are the synergistic ramp removal and draw. Then general ramp removal draw. Then that way when im getting synergy and value pieces i have to fight against and say, is this really better than my 3rd best general removal spell. My 2nd. Is it really better than a talisman. Keeps me honest
Keeps the power level more moderate, and the deck more interesting.
Do you have a video on how to create the tags in mox? So you''l what is missing in the deck. Thank you
Me who makes decks purely on theme regardless how bad it is: 😊
Game... plan...?
Moxfield tags? Where is this option? I just use advanced search and manually add everything.
Also, an additional step is to consider budget. As limitation creates creativity
I definitely love the budget restrictions, and have made videos in the past using a tight budget. There should be a button next to the commander on moxfield that say "enable tags" and that will separate all the cards from there.
Is there a particular reason why you don't use archidekt? Just wondering since it has a bit of an easier auto-tag system than moxfield imo.
I just enjoy moxfield more, a personal preference
How's everyones day been?
My day's been pretty great! How about yours?
you need to work on your ublock custom filters for edhrec
why exclude black ?
These go with my shorts I posted a while back. I made a full video about Yahenni
Im working on 5 mono colored decks but on top of being mono colored they are also STRICT kindred
Mono green hydras done
Mono red dragons done
Mono black demons playtest phase
Mono blue sphinxes In progress
Mono white angels in progress
Angels is fun. Sort of slow, but fun once the board is full of big angels. Using giada?
ooh, I like the idea of all of these - I was actually just starting to look into building a hydras deck for my brother
@@Jesse_The_Enchanter that is the starting point
@@BrennonA well for mono green hydras all there is for legends is polukranos and gargos vicious watcher
@@christophercombs7561 yeah Gargos was the one I was thinking
My people calm down, EDHREC is a totally valid site to start of your deck. Then after playing you can modify it game after game until it satisfy you!
That's what I'm saying! EDHREC has it's problems, yes, however it's easy to add cards to a new deck quickly. I have a video coming out about this soon