To answer the titular question: Commander is effectively a chaotic jumble of simultaneous 1v1s, so it stands to reason that knowing how to navigate a simple 1v1 is key to understanding commander on a fundamentals basis.
In my opinion, Limited is the best way to play Magic, and the most true to the original intent for the game. Even someone with a million dollars of cards still has to open packs to find out what random cards they can squeeze into a Limited deck. It brings back feelings of trading cards as a kid, or kitchen tabling the contents of your Fat Pack. It's raw and honest Magic. Each word matters, and even combat is deep and interesting.
I agree. This is also what makes cube such a beautiful experience. Everyone has access to the same card pool so money is removed as a factor entirely. Hate a card? Remove it from the cube. Love a card? Add more like it. It’s wonderful. It also solves for all the design mistakes coming from the absolutely frantic pace of power creep we have seen since 2019.
@@NightOfCrystals Cube is possibly the best way to play. Unfortunately, it is very group dependent. You have to have an appropriately sized play group for it, and have someone who manages a Cube in that group. I barely find a Commander pod, let alone a Cube draft pod.
54:00 The commander that popped into my mind for "Self Enabling" and "Uninspired" was Hakbal, the Surging Soul. Simic has long had a hard time having a unique identity, and Merfolk used to be its fun alter-ego, until Hakbal. Hakbal's first ability is so interesting and powerful, putting Merfolk into graveyard territory with +1/+1 counters and even land shenanigans. But his second line of text is so bland and generic that it ruins the whole thing. Technically it just makes the card and deck better, but I would far prefer an ability that does anything with the graveyard or counters rather than the land-draw BS that every other Simic commander has. It doesn't dare to be different.
Being more known for an archetype than any specific commander is really pretty similar to the ‘Modern Jund deck’ kind of player when you think about it, like the individual cards aren’t really the reason they like that deck, it’s the overall gameplan. I think playing on some kind of digital client helped me more than anything, because there’s so much nuance you can learn with Arena or MTGO or whatever about timing and the stack and triggers when a piece of software is stopping you and asking you and showing it to you. A lot of that is shortcut in paper and it makes it easy to mess up or just not know something is possible. I talked to someone the other day who didn’t know that a trample creature with double strike would hit face on the second swing, and I thought about it, I only know that because I’ve played cards like Khenra Spellspear and Monstrous Rage hundreds of times in Standard on Arena.
Playing other formats teaches you the value of mana curves -- a concept that makes commander decks better but is almost entirely neglected in deck building.
Honestly, I think this is a bad take. If your curve is really high and your deck never does anything because your hand is always filled with high CMC bombs and you can't figure out "maybe I need to be building my deck on a curve", you're probably just not very observant.
@@lracseroom8286I think the default way of commander deck building is in categories, like, 10 removal spells, 15 ramp spells, etc. Talking about cutting super top heavy cards is common, but most people don’t consider the differences between rampant growth, cultivate, and explosive vegetation in their green decks.
@@lracseroom8286 Building around mana curves is much, much more than average mana values. It effects things like ramp (many decks run ramp when they shouldn't or run the wrong mana value of ramp), the modality of spells, interaction, play patterns, land count, etc.
@@lracseroom8286 this is just what commander does to magic players. it’s not the real game so they never learn the fundamentals. commander lets players get away with the worst habits that normal 1v1 formats would never let you play with.
Just wanted to say that Standard is honestly the best format in Magic right now and has been for the past year and a half. It's currently a brewer's paradise and there's a ton of space to play in it even at a budget level!
30:00 One of my best friends has a -tribal- typal deck for almost every color combination. If he's playing Magic, you can guarantee that it's based around some kind of creature type. Meanwhile, I have never been able to build a typal deck that I am happy with lol
@@Cybertech134 not really. In yugioh you can play cards like that on turn 1 with little downside or counter play which makes it not very fun. In mtg a card like ensnaring bridge has a restriction and cost
way to encapuslate my feelings perfectly. i really like those grindier games and when a lot of people start with commander they don't really see that a lot and kinda grow to dislike it. but those edge cases and eeking out value, removing key pieces is what i like about commander when it turns grindy. great vid ^-^
Question Zone: What is a card, mechanic or experience that you love in Limited, but you can't seem to translate it into Commander? My answer would be bad dual lands. I love Limited environments with the life gain lands, or Guildgates, or Evolving Wilds, because playing colors/splashing becomes much more viable. However, in Commander, those cards are just "bad" and don't feel good. Another example would be off-color includes or roundabout lands. For instance, including a cycling card that you won't cast just because it can cycle. Or playing Windswept Heath in your UB Reanimator deck in Cube because you have a Breeding Pool and a Bayou.
@@InsomniaticVampire Well, if you do Gates it isn't bad duals anymore, it is a wincon/synergy. I just mean when you play tapped duals in Limited and you like it with no additional help.
@ethanglaeser9239 i get where you're coming from now. There's really no reason in EDH to ever play certain cards like lifegain lands unless they fit into the theme you're going for. But in limited, you're forced to work with what you've got.
Standard right now is up there with pauper. It’s one of the best formats and has tons of brewing potential and is very easy to get into. Highly recommend current standard.
I enjoyed that Commander Baumi video too. Super interesting dive in the space on how specific legendaries corresponding to certain players and that sort of comes out of the original versions of the legend rule.
5 packs of 9 cards for 4 players... I'll have to force some of my playgroup to try that. For 1v1 cube, I tried some draft design i saw on Reddit... it was 8 packs of 10 cards for 2 I believe, with the draft going pick1 -> pick2burn1 -> p1b1 -> p1b3 -> next pack. it was interesting and fun, worth a try if you play enough Duel Cube
QUESTION ZONE: Is there a method that you all use when you change out/replace lands in your deck. I recently pulled an Otawara Soaring City and wanted to buy an Urza's saga for my Elmar and Harglide partner artifact deck, and need help deciding what to cut.
Step Zero: always consider cutting a nonland. Part of what stops your decks from being too thin is just recognizing that land cards are important cards - especially a utility land that has an aspect of acting like a spell. A lot of the time, especially in a monocolor deck, you can just cut a basic, but it does help your decision process to say “is the worst nonland card in my deck, cuttable for this very strong land?”
I started playing in the 90s and played a lot of variants. Most of the variants were multiplayer/team based ones like two headed giant, attack left defend right, emperor and prismatic, each if those can be played with any deck building restrictions that you want and usually people just played whatever casual brew they fealt like. We did play pauper and 60 card singleton quite a bit, and I often made brew your own type 2 where I picked two blocks and a core set to build from. We didn't play a lot of variants that changed the fundamental rules of the game though. If people have some time and 4 players and want to do a cube draft, you could make it so that after the draft you play 3 games of two headed giant with each combination of teams.
PLEASE give standard a try! The format has been super fun the last couple years. Room to brew if you know how to sideboard and how to combat the current best decks. Standard is relatively cheap and rotates less often than it used to and LGSs have been having cool promos to give away for playing
I’m a Tinybones defender, partially because I love him, but also because that second ability is so bad that it is basically just there as a “in case of extreme mana flood break glass” button
As someone coming back to the game and wanting to try commander for the first time. I get the commander that powers itself attraction. I’ve heard universes beyond has brought a lot of new players in and seeing a commander that is really easy to build or feeds itself is alluring. I saw Aesi, Tyrant of the Gyre straight and went “ohh I know exactly how to build that deck and landfall seems fun but not super complicated, that can be my first deck to learn how this works”. I’ve been running tatyova on arena instead and can see how a player would think “this does crazy stuff” when all I did was type landfall into scryfall, added fetch lands, cultivate like cards, some counters, and some utility cards an I feel like I’m off to the races even if it’s kinda a very basic landfall deck. The first time you get Mossborn Hydra over like 50 power it feels wild.
I posted this on the snail video, but wanted to leave it here as well as a format people could try that could help improve their knowledge and skill in a unique way like Commander: CANADIAN HIGHLANDER Highlander is 100 card singleton, like commander, but has no ban list. Instead they have a point system where every deck gets 10 points and the most powerful or overused cards in all of Magic's history have an assigned point value. The biggest change though beyond just no commander or color restrictions for deckbuilding is that the format is played 1v1 with 20 life. I'm a huge fan, and I've started teaching some of my dedicated EDH players the format as well and found that a lot of them re-evaluate both deckbuilding and game action decisions after playing games of Highlander. The lower life total does just what you say it does: forcing people to consider much more carefully the board state, aggression, and resource management. The 100 card singleton means that the card selection also has to be specific in the same way that EDH is, but with the added note that you won't be involved in a much more drawn out slugfest or "setup pass" games as you would be in commander. Because there's no ban list or deckbuilding restriction, card selection is about efficiency and synergy more than anything else and a lot more care goes into determining if something deserves a slot in the deck. Is the format for everyone? Probably not, but nothing is. But if you want to broaden your knowledge base and try out a more competitive environment, while applying some of the thoughts and lessons from this video, give Canadian Highlander a shot! canadianhighlander.ca/
being the only one in my group who played a significant amount of 60 cards magic (god bless you pauper), i definitely notice me having a completely different approach to both deck building and gameplay, which leads me to having a way higher winrate than i should consistently becoming the archenemy with a werewolf tribal is definitely something i did not anticipate #notbragging commander players who rarely dabble in other format generally lack the knowledge of -making cuts -playing a grindier game -interacting with opponents which leads to poor decision making and subsequent losses despite presenting more powerful decks than your opponents
Was wondering what you guys think of "any number of x card" decks. Im interested in trying to make a hare apparent deck work where each of the bunnies are a proxy drawn by a different friend of mine. Curious if you guys ever dabbled in this kind of deck
What phoenixes does that red dandan deck use? I actually made a red dandan deck with the same premise, but it uses sunstreak phoenix, the one with day/night mechanics, since it requires players to manage their mana and spells per turn, or risk giving their opponent the opportunity to recur phoenixes
Etali is better than infect because it puts poison counters in addition to the normal damage, so it is almost the best of both (infect and toxic) worlds.
It’s a shame they didn’t talk about Canadian Highlander. I think that as a sort of “sister format” to Commander a lot can be learned from deck building. Especially since you aren’t building around a commander.
Question Zone: If you had to choose a commander out of any of the Inninstrad angels out of Avacyn, Gisela, Bruna, Sigarda, and Liesa, which would you choose and why?
Question Zone: Maybe unanswerable question, but how do I decide on what deck I actually put together? I feel like I'm perpetually brewing but very rarely do my decks make it to paper, even if I'm currently looking to put a deck together in paper. I feel like by the time a deck is ready to be put together, I've already moved on to the next idea I'm brewing. How do you guys decide what decks to actually build?
Question Zone: against newer players, would you rather play a weaker deck optimally, or a strong deck suboptimally? I''ve currently got a bunch of friends start playing and I still find myself wanting to hold back to not just steamroll a given game. But it feels so unfullfilling holding back a boardwipe or not maximising attacks when I play with them.
Resident token player here, if i am at a table there is about a 90% chance i play a token deck. It may vary in how i get there based on things like color but likely i will just make a wide board or die trying.
the other thing about baylen, is that not only is making tokens not a hoop, it is probably the main and strongest strategy of casual edh, cuz how else are you gonna deal with 120 life other than token spam, whether they be creature, treasure, blood, clue, food, map, land, etc. tokens.
i also love "horde". thats an archenermie gamemode where everyone plays against an selfplaying deck, thats too strong for one alone. so its a teamplay and that makes it different to all other gamemodes^^. im just shocked that this mode, see close to no play anymore cause it cant be more casual then that.
No single format is able to provide a "complete" Magic experience. Finding your lane is great, but taking regular detours will probably be beneficial both in honing your skills as in alleviating the pressure from your preferred format, whether you're primarily seeking competitiveness or unpretentious fun.
Question Zone: Why is land destruction perceived so poorly? Please abridge for the video, but these are my thoughts on the topic. It's a good finisher for aggro decks, and most of the time when it's used properly it's GG just like if someone made 60 tokens. I personally don't understand the argument that all it does is make the game longer, since it should only do that when someone is playing it porely or someone's playing around it in a weird way. Some land destruction decks can be very grindy, like a Mystra boardwipe landwipe burn deck (please bring that up, I want to know what you think of it) but there are other card types that have the same pitfalls, like discard decks for grind or boardwipes for improper use.
Also to touch on the point Elk has on statting to play cube, it's been more difficult for me to find 3 people to play Commander with the way I enjoy than it has been getting 7 other magic/TCG players to draft my Duel Masters cube. Go make a cube!
This new tiny bones has been a tech piece I’m trying in rack standard. You can use it as a value piece allowing you to have an avg cmc of 2.1 running hella removal to fight red and white early. Highest cost card is Lilliana because everything else is too slow. With utility lands and new tiny bones you’re never really worried about the late game
QUESTION ZONE: I’m cutting my very first proxy cube (Vintage from MTGO) as I listen, do you have suggestions for something smaller that’s a bit more bomby than a pauper cube but without the extra high power of vintage? I’ll build my own but it won’t be ready soon since I’m a perfectionist at hearth 😅
Question Zone: Have any of you played commander/multiplayer cube? I think commander cube is quite different from standard commander, what do you think?
I started with commander(and cedh) in 2014. In last 3 years I've been (Re)learning a lot from Vintage and Legacy. I would even play Legacy/Vintage coming from commander. no politics no mutli player/board tracking
I started with MtG in 4th edition, but starter playing seriously (format and competitive) in 10th Ed. + Time Spiral standard (I was playing standard when the first planeswalkers came into existance in Lorwyn). I migrated to Extended when they changed the Standard rotation to be quicker after just having finished building a deck that rotated almost entirely out with the change. I started playing EDH about 6 months before the first Commander precons released. Have played competitive Modern from the beginning and took a break around the time Modern Horizons wrecked the format, and I was a Judge until around that time as well. Since modern horizons, I quit magic for a while and now I am only playing medium-to-high-power casual commander. For alternative formats, I enjoy Momir Basic in MTGO! There are so many important lessons (mainly on efficient deckbuilding) that you can learn by playing competitive formats, especially if you play on a particularly cutthroat meta. I never enjoyed playing the meta decks and always brought my own brews, and I had to constantly iterate on them to make sure they could keep up with Tron and Infect and Splinter Twin back in the day, which led to some pretty interesting and extremely consistent or inevitable brews. These concepts carry over to my EDH deckbuilding where I think of the effects and themes I want to have, and try to figure out the right number of copies for redundancy etc., and alternative wincons for when my main game plan doesn't work for some reason
1:01:10 I think these kinds of commanders that don't do everything and/or do something somewhat unqiue still get printed fairly often. there's just a lot of legendaries nowadays and these commanders are way less popular and poweful. Ex: Riku of Many Paths g
self-enabling Commander aka Simic Commanders, because enabling it is doing something extremely generic like playing lands or drawing cards and the payoff is usually playing lands or drawing cards the self-suck engine lmao
I've done 60 card everything goes, draft and sealed before I quit magic. I came back to socialize through commander. I play magic because it is accessible, but I don't really love the game itself. To me commander works because it is a singleton multiplayer format and I would only try a format that does something similar.
You could do a follow up as well, about all the bad heuristics 1v1 players often take with them to multiplayer? Rebell had a video talking a bit about it, but I know I have heaps of shortcuts in my brain that are amazing for 1v1 but are just horrible in multiplayer, even simple stuff like 'kill on sight' stuff where I don't wait and see if someone else will spend THEIR removal. Baylen manages to combine 'Tokens BS' with almost completely free ramp AND card draw, because apparently the lesson WotC learned from Prosper was that the card just wasn't pushed enough??? Seriously, how much coke are they snorting in head office?? I hate cards that are this hard to play wrong with the passion of a thousand suns, Magic was SUPPOSED to be HARD to play, it was SUPPOSED to be a status symbol that you could figure out how to play a game this labyrinthine, and what does WotC do? Print a card that turns your tokens into ramp AND card draw AND COUNTERS. Because Doubling Season really needed more decks??? This kind of thing isn't healthy for the game, but it makes WotC a lot of money because a large contingent of the Magic community is all too eager to despoils the commons. Eventually this kind of thing can kill games, like you guys I have almost no interest in Modern, it's living proof of why Legacy level decks NEEDED FoW to keep the greediest decks in check. FoN doesn't cut it, and Modern has been effectively a cesspit since MH2 came out, with it's essentially unanswerable free Evoke spells that invalidated both go tall strategies AND go wide, as well as combo and graveyard lists, almost everything BUT decks built around those stupid Evoke creatures was unplayable trash overnight. Remember when Tarmogoyf was a chase card?? Yikes. I knew it'd get power crept eventually, but WOW that was both quick and thorough, by Eldraine it was on the way out, MH2 eviscerated it.
Question Zone - Sorry if I’m late to the party on this, but why the hell do you have 100 Ragnar decks on your Moxfield page??? Edit: Oh YOU have all 100 decks listed in EDHRec for him. You funny fella.
I'm watching this episode and I keep imagining someone teaching a new player how to play Magic in 2024 but they don't get taught about Commander, instead they get taught Magic on Limited and Constructed. Just the most Frieren ass training.
The main reason stopped playing modern is i found it incredibly boring. "Oh cool, it's another infinite combo on turn 3, that's game. Cool" isn't fun. I actually want to play the deck I put so much effort into building.
✨️QUESTION ZONE✨️ How do you guys feel about targeted land removal? I've been told that it's necessary, so all of my decks carry two ways to deal with a problematic land. The opportunity cost feels pretty low (generous gift instead of stroke of midnight, demolition field and sundering eruption instead of basics?
I would play draft/sealed over Commander every day of the week if it wasn't for two things: 1. Constantly playing Limited costs a lot of money. 2. Stores don't run Limited events that aren't Prereleases. If I could go to my LGS on Saturday nights and Cube draft or Phantom draft for free, I wouldn't play Commander anymore.
Best way to play limited in my experience is to buy a booster box yourself and get a group togather, on the condition you keep everything. A box will carry 36 packs, enough for a full twelve man pod or two seperate draft sessions among 6 people. Cube is also a thing that exists.
@@CatManThree I do have a collection of 25 unique packs so I can set up a Chaos draft soon. : ) Yeah Cube is a thing, but I don't have one and I haven't come across someone who does. I might make one someday, but I haven't yet decided to take the task on. It sounds fun, but also hard.
Baylen not good? He's card draw/fast mana enabler in the zone.... any spell that makes 6-9 tokens is fast mana/draw.....not to mention crazy board prreesence....
Trinket and Elk not really having played other official formats regularly really shows here. No offense intended but the discussion was really limited by this fact.
I saw the title, and immediately knew Elk would pop off the moment someone said “cube”. Love it.
I LOVE CUBE!!!
ain't anybody's fault cube is objectively the best format
Just noticed that snail moves. Lol
To answer the titular question: Commander is effectively a chaotic jumble of simultaneous 1v1s, so it stands to reason that knowing how to navigate a simple 1v1 is key to understanding commander on a fundamentals basis.
I mostly listen to this podcast while doing something else and I love that every time I look at the screen Snail 🐌 is somewhere else 😂.
In my opinion, Limited is the best way to play Magic, and the most true to the original intent for the game. Even someone with a million dollars of cards still has to open packs to find out what random cards they can squeeze into a Limited deck. It brings back feelings of trading cards as a kid, or kitchen tabling the contents of your Fat Pack. It's raw and honest Magic. Each word matters, and even combat is deep and interesting.
Pretty sure draft itself predates the existence of the game itself, as it was always used for playtesting in the 90s even before alpha.
I agree. This is also what makes cube such a beautiful experience. Everyone has access to the same card pool so money is removed as a factor entirely. Hate a card? Remove it from the cube. Love a card? Add more like it. It’s wonderful. It also solves for all the design mistakes coming from the absolutely frantic pace of power creep we have seen since 2019.
@@NightOfCrystals Cube is possibly the best way to play. Unfortunately, it is very group dependent. You have to have an appropriately sized play group for it, and have someone who manages a Cube in that group. I barely find a Commander pod, let alone a Cube draft pod.
54:00 The commander that popped into my mind for "Self Enabling" and "Uninspired" was Hakbal, the Surging Soul. Simic has long had a hard time having a unique identity, and Merfolk used to be its fun alter-ego, until Hakbal.
Hakbal's first ability is so interesting and powerful, putting Merfolk into graveyard territory with +1/+1 counters and even land shenanigans. But his second line of text is so bland and generic that it ruins the whole thing. Technically it just makes the card and deck better, but I would far prefer an ability that does anything with the graveyard or counters rather than the land-draw BS that every other Simic commander has. It doesn't dare to be different.
Being more known for an archetype than any specific commander is really pretty similar to the ‘Modern Jund deck’ kind of player when you think about it, like the individual cards aren’t really the reason they like that deck, it’s the overall gameplan.
I think playing on some kind of digital client helped me more than anything, because there’s so much nuance you can learn with Arena or MTGO or whatever about timing and the stack and triggers when a piece of software is stopping you and asking you and showing it to you. A lot of that is shortcut in paper and it makes it easy to mess up or just not know something is possible. I talked to someone the other day who didn’t know that a trample creature with double strike would hit face on the second swing, and I thought about it, I only know that because I’ve played cards like Khenra Spellspear and Monstrous Rage hundreds of times in Standard on Arena.
Man, I got called out with my Baylen deck, and I’m the one that asked the question!
Thank you all, and your answers were awesome to hear.
Playing other formats teaches you the value of mana curves -- a concept that makes commander decks better but is almost entirely neglected in deck building.
Yeah, I still can't teach myself to pay attention to curves.
Honestly, I think this is a bad take. If your curve is really high and your deck never does anything because your hand is always filled with high CMC bombs and you can't figure out "maybe I need to be building my deck on a curve", you're probably just not very observant.
@@lracseroom8286I think the default way of commander deck building is in categories, like, 10 removal spells, 15 ramp spells, etc. Talking about cutting super top heavy cards is common, but most people don’t consider the differences between rampant growth, cultivate, and explosive vegetation in their green decks.
@@lracseroom8286 Building around mana curves is much, much more than average mana values. It effects things like ramp (many decks run ramp when they shouldn't or run the wrong mana value of ramp), the modality of spells, interaction, play patterns, land count, etc.
@@lracseroom8286 this is just what commander does to magic players. it’s not the real game so they never learn the fundamentals. commander lets players get away with the worst habits that normal 1v1 formats would never let you play with.
Elk's Hello gets cuter every episode
It's genuinely so good, it makes me so happy 😁
Play boosters have hurt draft and sealed a bit but I feel that Duskmourn and Foundations limited have both been an absolute blast
I live in Rochester and got jumpscared by elk mentioning the draft
Just wanted to say that Standard is honestly the best format in Magic right now and has been for the past year and a half. It's currently a brewer's paradise and there's a ton of space to play in it even at a budget level!
Brewing in standard isn't as fun as commander. It's honestly kinda miserable trying to pull off cool things in standard
Check out Legenvd. He's always onto a new brew and he's a seriously good player.
30:00 One of my best friends has a -tribal- typal deck for almost every color combination. If he's playing Magic, you can guarantee that it's based around some kind of creature type. Meanwhile, I have never been able to build a typal deck that I am happy with lol
Trinket Mage starting off as a Yugioh player is making a lot of things about him click into place.
What does that mean…
Nothing bad, I just think the way you look at power levels and building decks reminds me of what the people I play Yugioh with do.
Guaranteed he would think "Mystic Mine is soooo cool."
@@Cybertech134 not really. In yugioh you can play cards like that on turn 1 with little downside or counter play which makes it not very fun. In mtg a card like ensnaring bridge has a restriction and cost
@@playapiano666 ohhhhhh
I love mental magic. We started playing it in 1998. And we were taught it was singleton. So we only played it with that rule.
way to encapuslate my feelings perfectly. i really like those grindier games and when a lot of people start with commander they don't really see that a lot and kinda grow to dislike it. but those edge cases and eeking out value, removing key pieces is what i like about commander when it turns grindy. great vid ^-^
I love those tight, grindy games, but sadly a lot of people I've played want to play uninterrupted fast and loose.
Will forever bother me that 3/3 elks antlers are 2/2s
1:01:09 Shattergang Brothers! My first deck, and still my favorite. I will never grow tired of wiping my opponents' boards clean.
Man, you guys made me feel old as fuck. Back when I first started, MTG was just MTG, no other formats hahaha
What about type 1 and 2 though?
Question Zone: What is a card, mechanic or experience that you love in Limited, but you can't seem to translate it into Commander?
My answer would be bad dual lands. I love Limited environments with the life gain lands, or Guildgates, or Evolving Wilds, because playing colors/splashing becomes much more viable. However, in Commander, those cards are just "bad" and don't feel good.
Another example would be off-color includes or roundabout lands. For instance, including a cycling card that you won't cast just because it can cycle. Or playing Windswept Heath in your UB Reanimator deck in Cube because you have a Breeding Pool and a Bayou.
I have seen someone tackle the bad duals. It was an entire deck filled with tapped lands. I think it might have been 5 color gates.
@@InsomniaticVampire Well, if you do Gates it isn't bad duals anymore, it is a wincon/synergy. I just mean when you play tapped duals in Limited and you like it with no additional help.
@ethanglaeser9239 i get where you're coming from now. There's really no reason in EDH to ever play certain cards like lifegain lands unless they fit into the theme you're going for. But in limited, you're forced to work with what you've got.
@@InsomniaticVampire Exactly. In Commander you turn trash into treasure. In Limited you just make your trash better than their trash.
Standard right now is up there with pauper. It’s one of the best formats and has tons of brewing potential and is very easy to get into. Highly recommend current standard.
The concerned Elk look cracked me up.
I enjoyed that Commander Baumi video too. Super interesting dive in the space on how specific legendaries corresponding to certain players and that sort of comes out of the original versions of the legend rule.
Question Zone: How do you navigate individual skill discrepancies at a table? Is this even an issue?
I watch all LSV cube drafts and Oh boy! he's got some incredible insights. I honestly think I get a little better just by listening to him.
5 packs of 9 cards for 4 players... I'll have to force some of my playgroup to try that. For 1v1 cube, I tried some draft design i saw on Reddit... it was 8 packs of 10 cards for 2 I believe, with the draft going pick1 -> pick2burn1 -> p1b1 -> p1b3 -> next pack. it was interesting and fun, worth a try if you play enough Duel Cube
QUESTION ZONE: Is there a method that you all use when you change out/replace lands in your deck. I recently pulled an Otawara Soaring City and wanted to buy an Urza's saga for my Elmar and Harglide partner artifact deck, and need help deciding what to cut.
Step Zero: always consider cutting a nonland. Part of what stops your decks from being too thin is just recognizing that land cards are important cards - especially a utility land that has an aspect of acting like a spell.
A lot of the time, especially in a monocolor deck, you can just cut a basic, but it does help your decision process to say “is the worst nonland card in my deck, cuttable for this very strong land?”
27:10 Im cooking dinner and look over to see snail on top of trinket mage :)
Thunderous Wrath DanDan is so fun, first one to resolve four of these wins
4 PERSON 5 PACKS 9 CARD CUBE IS PEAK WE GOT TO DO THAT WITH A 270 CARD CUBE A FRIEND AND I MADE RECENTLY IT IS SO GOOD
20:40 the good old “using a combat trick as removal in your aggro deck” never gets old in Limited, and EDH doesn’t really replicate this.
I LOVE REMOVAL IN DRAFT. Snail I'm so with you I can't resist orzhov sometimes strictly because there's just so much premium removal.
I started playing in the 90s and played a lot of variants. Most of the variants were multiplayer/team based ones like two headed giant, attack left defend right, emperor and prismatic, each if those can be played with any deck building restrictions that you want and usually people just played whatever casual brew they fealt like. We did play pauper and 60 card singleton quite a bit, and I often made brew your own type 2 where I picked two blocks and a core set to build from. We didn't play a lot of variants that changed the fundamental rules of the game though. If people have some time and 4 players and want to do a cube draft, you could make it so that after the draft you play 3 games of two headed giant with each combination of teams.
PLEASE give standard a try! The format has been super fun the last couple years. Room to brew if you know how to sideboard and how to combat the current best decks. Standard is relatively cheap and rotates less often than it used to and LGSs have been having cool promos to give away for playing
I’m a Tinybones defender, partially because I love him, but also because that second ability is so bad that it is basically just there as a “in case of extreme mana flood break glass” button
If you have a list or link for the red phoenix dandan I'd appreciate it. I've been trying to brew a red version of bandana for awhile
Question Zone: *standing over Alex as he sleeps and whispers* How do you like your eggs?
Elk is cubing out
As someone coming back to the game and wanting to try commander for the first time. I get the commander that powers itself attraction.
I’ve heard universes beyond has brought a lot of new players in and seeing a commander that is really easy to build or feeds itself is alluring. I saw Aesi, Tyrant of the Gyre straight and went “ohh I know exactly how to build that deck and landfall seems fun but not super complicated, that can be my first deck to learn how this works”. I’ve been running tatyova on arena instead and can see how a player would think “this does crazy stuff” when all I did was type landfall into scryfall, added fetch lands, cultivate like cards, some counters, and some utility cards an I feel like I’m off to the races even if it’s kinda a very basic landfall deck.
The first time you get Mossborn Hydra over like 50 power it feels wild.
Con saying he’s played so much Mental Magic actually explains a ton
new elk picture is nice
Would love a link to the mono G dandan list 👀
As someone who plays Slimefoot and Squee, the deck definitely needs to run a saproling package to survive interaction.
I don't yet know the voices of all three. It would be nice to have some visual way of seeing who is currently talking.
I posted this on the snail video, but wanted to leave it here as well as a format people could try that could help improve their knowledge and skill in a unique way like Commander: CANADIAN HIGHLANDER
Highlander is 100 card singleton, like commander, but has no ban list. Instead they have a point system where every deck gets 10 points and the most powerful or overused cards in all of Magic's history have an assigned point value. The biggest change though beyond just no commander or color restrictions for deckbuilding is that the format is played 1v1 with 20 life. I'm a huge fan, and I've started teaching some of my dedicated EDH players the format as well and found that a lot of them re-evaluate both deckbuilding and game action decisions after playing games of Highlander.
The lower life total does just what you say it does: forcing people to consider much more carefully the board state, aggression, and resource management. The 100 card singleton means that the card selection also has to be specific in the same way that EDH is, but with the added note that you won't be involved in a much more drawn out slugfest or "setup pass" games as you would be in commander. Because there's no ban list or deckbuilding restriction, card selection is about efficiency and synergy more than anything else and a lot more care goes into determining if something deserves a slot in the deck.
Is the format for everyone? Probably not, but nothing is. But if you want to broaden your knowledge base and try out a more competitive environment, while applying some of the thoughts and lessons from this video, give Canadian Highlander a shot! canadianhighlander.ca/
Nice, I liked your other vid with this dude! Idk how many you have lol but I just found him the other day 😊
Can you link that mono-green Dandan deck in the description? Also all lands Dandan when
being the only one in my group who played a significant amount of 60 cards magic (god bless you pauper), i definitely notice me having a completely different approach to both deck building and gameplay, which leads me to having a way higher winrate than i should
consistently becoming the archenemy with a werewolf tribal is definitely something i did not anticipate #notbragging
commander players who rarely dabble in other format generally lack the knowledge of
-making cuts
-playing a grindier game
-interacting with opponents
which leads to poor decision making and subsequent losses despite presenting more powerful decks than your opponents
Was wondering what you guys think of "any number of x card" decks. Im interested in trying to make a hare apparent deck work where each of the bunnies are a proxy drawn by a different friend of mine. Curious if you guys ever dabbled in this kind of deck
Could you share the Mono green Dandan list mencioned in the episode?
What phoenixes does that red dandan deck use? I actually made a red dandan deck with the same premise, but it uses sunstreak phoenix, the one with day/night mechanics, since it requires players to manage their mana and spells per turn, or risk giving their opponent the opportunity to recur phoenixes
Etali is better than infect because it puts poison counters in addition to the normal damage, so it is almost the best of both (infect and toxic) worlds.
It’s a shame they didn’t talk about Canadian Highlander. I think that as a sort of “sister format” to Commander a lot can be learned from deck building. Especially since you aren’t building around a commander.
Question Zone: If you had to choose a commander out of any of the Inninstrad angels out of Avacyn, Gisela, Bruna, Sigarda, and Liesa, which would you choose and why?
I’m in the process of making a Dandan style format with Gary Clone. It will probably be kinda funny
Question Zone: What is your favourite wedge/clan from Tarkir and what is a commander you recommend in that colour identity?
Question Zone: Maybe unanswerable question, but how do I decide on what deck I actually put together? I feel like I'm perpetually brewing but very rarely do my decks make it to paper, even if I'm currently looking to put a deck together in paper. I feel like by the time a deck is ready to be put together, I've already moved on to the next idea I'm brewing. How do you guys decide what decks to actually build?
Question Zone: against newer players, would you rather play a weaker deck optimally, or a strong deck suboptimally? I''ve currently got a bunch of friends start playing and I still find myself wanting to hold back to not just steamroll a given game. But it feels so unfullfilling holding back a boardwipe or not maximising attacks when I play with them.
Resident token player here, if i am at a table there is about a 90% chance i play a token deck. It may vary in how i get there based on things like color but likely i will just make a wide board or die trying.
Question Zone: What do you think are the most resilient themes/commanders to build a deck around
the other thing about baylen, is that not only is making tokens not a hoop, it is probably the main and strongest strategy of casual edh, cuz how else are you gonna deal with 120 life other than token spam, whether they be creature, treasure, blood, clue, food, map, land, etc. tokens.
Omfg yes! Khan is so right about old modern//pre horizon modern like... There were so many viable decks and everyone specialized in THEIR DECK.
I feel like I need to build a Sedris deck now.
actually when you made the short on mormir vig, i ended up building him. I keep building toolbox decks, i have like 4 i can't help it...
i also love "horde".
thats an archenermie gamemode where everyone plays against an selfplaying deck, thats too strong for one alone.
so its a teamplay and that makes it different to all other gamemodes^^.
im just shocked that this mode, see close to no play anymore cause it cant be more casual then that.
I actually have a blue red miracles Dandan deck using thunderous wrath!!
No single format is able to provide a "complete" Magic experience. Finding your lane is great, but taking regular detours will probably be beneficial both in honing your skills as in alleviating the pressure from your preferred format, whether you're primarily seeking competitiveness or unpretentious fun.
dont call me out for never finishing decks!
Question Zone: Why is land destruction perceived so poorly?
Please abridge for the video, but these are my thoughts on the topic.
It's a good finisher for aggro decks, and most of the time when it's used properly it's GG just like if someone made 60 tokens. I personally don't understand the argument that all it does is make the game longer, since it should only do that when someone is playing it porely or someone's playing around it in a weird way. Some land destruction decks can be very grindy, like a Mystra boardwipe landwipe burn deck (please bring that up, I want to know what you think of it) but there are other card types that have the same pitfalls, like discard decks for grind or boardwipes for improper use.
Wow didn't expect to see Sedris, I'm literally goldfishing my prEDH Sedris deck right now
Also to touch on the point Elk has on statting to play cube, it's been more difficult for me to find 3 people to play Commander with the way I enjoy than it has been getting 7 other magic/TCG players to draft my Duel Masters cube. Go make a cube!
Cube con is popping off
This new tiny bones has been a tech piece I’m trying in rack standard. You can use it as a value piece allowing you to have an avg cmc of 2.1 running hella removal to fight red and white early. Highest cost card is Lilliana because everything else is too slow. With utility lands and new tiny bones you’re never really worried about the late game
Where is the green Dandan list?
What are your guys favorite places to watch Magic gameplay. Especially 60 card if you know of some good channels
ASPIRING SPIKE MY GOAT
BOSH N ROLL !!
North 100 Showdown, Resleevables Tournament Edition, and Mengu's Workshop!
Strictlybettermtg, Jim Davis
ThrabenU for legacy. Maybe not the most skillfull content but good variety of decks and sometimes other eternal formats.
QUESTION ZONE: I’m cutting my very first proxy cube (Vintage from MTGO) as I listen, do you have suggestions for something smaller that’s a bit more bomby than a pauper cube but without the extra high power of vintage?
I’ll build my own but it won’t be ready soon since I’m a perfectionist at hearth 😅
Question Zone: what is your least favorite deck type to play against? For example, mine is infinite combo.
Question Zone: Got any Commander red flags?
Question Zone: Have any of you played commander/multiplayer cube? I think commander cube is quite different from standard commander, what do you think?
Elk plays a lot of commander cube but I have never tried it
Lol I have a dandan based around Flailing Soldier cuz I love that guy
I started with commander(and cedh) in 2014.
In last 3 years I've been (Re)learning a lot from Vintage and Legacy.
I would even play Legacy/Vintage coming from commander. no politics no mutli player/board tracking
Most people dont jump into vintage or legacy out of commander lol
Before watching, did Premodern get mentioned?
No it didn’t I don’t think any of us play it
@thetrinketmage Give it a try! its great.
Designs I'm tired of seeing are Future Sight effects and trigger doublers. They've done so many, it feels lazy
I started with MtG in 4th edition, but starter playing seriously (format and competitive) in 10th Ed. + Time Spiral standard (I was playing standard when the first planeswalkers came into existance in Lorwyn). I migrated to Extended when they changed the Standard rotation to be quicker after just having finished building a deck that rotated almost entirely out with the change. I started playing EDH about 6 months before the first Commander precons released. Have played competitive Modern from the beginning and took a break around the time Modern Horizons wrecked the format, and I was a Judge until around that time as well. Since modern horizons, I quit magic for a while and now I am only playing medium-to-high-power casual commander. For alternative formats, I enjoy Momir Basic in MTGO!
There are so many important lessons (mainly on efficient deckbuilding) that you can learn by playing competitive formats, especially if you play on a particularly cutthroat meta. I never enjoyed playing the meta decks and always brought my own brews, and I had to constantly iterate on them to make sure they could keep up with Tron and Infect and Splinter Twin back in the day, which led to some pretty interesting and extremely consistent or inevitable brews. These concepts carry over to my EDH deckbuilding where I think of the effects and themes I want to have, and try to figure out the right number of copies for redundancy etc., and alternative wincons for when my main game plan doesn't work for some reason
1:01:10 I think these kinds of commanders that don't do everything and/or do something somewhat unqiue still get printed fairly often. there's just a lot of legendaries nowadays and these commanders are way less popular and poweful. Ex: Riku of Many Paths g
self-enabling Commander aka Simic Commanders, because enabling it is doing something extremely generic like playing lands or drawing cards and the payoff is usually playing lands or drawing cards
the self-suck engine lmao
I've done 60 card everything goes, draft and sealed before I quit magic. I came back to socialize through commander. I play magic because it is accessible, but I don't really love the game itself. To me commander works because it is a singleton multiplayer format and I would only try a format that does something similar.
You could do a follow up as well, about all the bad heuristics 1v1 players often take with them to multiplayer? Rebell had a video talking a bit about it, but I know I have heaps of shortcuts in my brain that are amazing for 1v1 but are just horrible in multiplayer, even simple stuff like 'kill on sight' stuff where I don't wait and see if someone else will spend THEIR removal.
Baylen manages to combine 'Tokens BS' with almost completely free ramp AND card draw, because apparently the lesson WotC learned from Prosper was that the card just wasn't pushed enough??? Seriously, how much coke are they snorting in head office?? I hate cards that are this hard to play wrong with the passion of a thousand suns, Magic was SUPPOSED to be HARD to play, it was SUPPOSED to be a status symbol that you could figure out how to play a game this labyrinthine, and what does WotC do? Print a card that turns your tokens into ramp AND card draw AND COUNTERS. Because Doubling Season really needed more decks??? This kind of thing isn't healthy for the game, but it makes WotC a lot of money because a large contingent of the Magic community is all too eager to despoils the commons. Eventually this kind of thing can kill games, like you guys I have almost no interest in Modern, it's living proof of why Legacy level decks NEEDED FoW to keep the greediest decks in check. FoN doesn't cut it, and Modern has been effectively a cesspit since MH2 came out, with it's essentially unanswerable free Evoke spells that invalidated both go tall strategies AND go wide, as well as combo and graveyard lists, almost everything BUT decks built around those stupid Evoke creatures was unplayable trash overnight. Remember when Tarmogoyf was a chase card?? Yikes. I knew it'd get power crept eventually, but WOW that was both quick and thorough, by Eldraine it was on the way out, MH2 eviscerated it.
Question Zone - Sorry if I’m late to the party on this, but why the hell do you have 100 Ragnar decks on your Moxfield page???
Edit: Oh YOU have all 100 decks listed in EDHRec for him. You funny fella.
I'm watching this episode and I keep imagining someone teaching a new player how to play Magic in 2024 but they don't get taught about Commander, instead they get taught Magic on Limited and Constructed. Just the most Frieren ass training.
The main reason stopped playing modern is i found it incredibly boring. "Oh cool, it's another infinite combo on turn 3, that's game. Cool" isn't fun. I actually want to play the deck I put so much effort into building.
What is the creature in your Mono-green Dan-dan list? And why is it Gorilla pack?
It’s rusted slasher
✨️QUESTION ZONE✨️
How do you guys feel about targeted land removal?
I've been told that it's necessary, so all of my decks carry two ways to deal with a problematic land. The opportunity cost feels pretty low (generous gift instead of stroke of midnight, demolition field and sundering eruption instead of basics?
I would play draft/sealed over Commander every day of the week if it wasn't for two things:
1. Constantly playing Limited costs a lot of money.
2. Stores don't run Limited events that aren't Prereleases.
If I could go to my LGS on Saturday nights and Cube draft or Phantom draft for free, I wouldn't play Commander anymore.
Best way to play limited in my experience is to buy a booster box yourself and get a group togather, on the condition you keep everything. A box will carry 36 packs, enough for a full twelve man pod or two seperate draft sessions among 6 people.
Cube is also a thing that exists.
@@CatManThree I do have a collection of 25 unique packs so I can set up a Chaos draft soon. : )
Yeah Cube is a thing, but I don't have one and I haven't come across someone who does. I might make one someday, but I haven't yet decided to take the task on. It sounds fun, but also hard.
Old Captain America: No, I don't think I will.
Baylen not good? He's card draw/fast mana enabler in the zone.... any spell that makes 6-9 tokens is fast mana/draw.....not to mention crazy board prreesence....
Not good design, baylen is a plenty *strong* card but that’s not what is being discussed
yes, of course. if anything, playing commander makes you worse.
Trinket and Elk not really having played other official formats regularly really shows here. No offense intended but the discussion was really limited by this fact.
Weak Clap
Is Elk still being combative in the comments section?