I'm in the camp of where I don't care if people play the really good commanders. My only problem is if they start making a fuss about their commander getting targeted. Like who in their right mind is going to look at you cast Gishath, and just not deal with it? "Oh I require set up and mana" my brother in christ, you and me both know you just need to hit to get your dinosaurs to get your deck going.
Gishath is just bad, It's so obvious what's going to happen. No one builds a midrangy dino deck where the gishath is just a value engine. Every time it gives you like 30 mana worth of cards
As much as the new Obeka is super interesting to me, I just KNOW every deck that people build with her is going to be taking 20 minute turns while they resolve 6 triggers per upkeep, 3 times per turn.
I immediately was super excited when i saw her and started brewing immediately. The problem is not that I would perceive having to take long turns or even stack multiple extra turns, but just that I wasn't able to make her fun. The version(s) that I was able to brew all turned out to be "too voltron" to be fun because to get the needed pay-off, I needed to get between 15-20 extra upkeeps. And that meant leaning very heavily into voltron strategies and that meant leaning very heavily into protection and that made the deck unfun (from my perspective) because either I work my butt of to get Becky out and protect and buff her so that she can swing at someone unblockable for 15+ damage and then I probably win (unless someone has a disenchant for my throne or something) or someone has a disenchant or fog or anything else that stops me and then I did all of that work for nothing. That is exciting, but also too "all-in" for my personal taste.
@@robertomacetti7069 I'm aware of the court-cycle and included it in my brew, but that's kinda what I mean: I either get a ton of upkeeps and win - or I mostly just flounder around. I'd personally love to have more cards like Dragonmaster Outcast or Skyline Despot, cards that pull me far ahead with even a decent amount of extra upkeeps without one-shotting everybody.
To a degree, I like seeing commanders with "Expectations". I'm newer to the game, so if I see a deck I know well/vaguely know its gameplan, I can focus on finding the "winning plays" for OTHER more fringe decks at the table. Lets me focus on learning more "new" stuff. Then again, I have shown up to an LGS and, totally by chance, ALL THREE OTHER PLAYERS PULLED OUT AN ATRAXA DECK and looked at ME expectantly while laughing about it. THAT was a wild yet awkward moment. (And 2 were infect so it was a very quick game.)
That's wild. Hope you enjoy the game. I find myself playing themes. It's very fun. Blink decks are fun also. Strong depending on the effects your attempting to multiply. But ehh just a few shoutouts. Take care good ser.
Lol i had a similar game where me and 2 other people all pulled out Ruric Thar decks, and the 4th guy had artifacts. That poor last guy got domed for 18 for playing a mana rock 😂
@@jacobreserved2144 nobody enjoys a game with an Infect deck. That's the point. If you run infect, you don't want other players to have fun. I'd scoop if someone plays a card with that, not because I'm sure I'll lose, but because I don't play against it on principle.
It doesn't bother me at all. I play some popular commanders and I play some not so popular commanders. One person's "boring" is another person's "fun and exciting". So no I don't sigh when I see a super popular commander on the other side of the table and I don't find it boring and start railing at the sky about the good old days. I will say I don't get to play as much as I used to so I'm just happy when anybody wants to play, no matter who they have in the command zone.
I can’t say I agree. I run a wilhelt deck but it’s a total bottom up build meaning the deck can function just fine without him but he does act as an accelerator. In a zombie tribal theme Mikeaus is one of the best card you can use IN THE 99 but is terrible as a commander. First, there are not many cards that use undying, second it’s a 6 mana commander and third it’s mono-black which to me, greatly limits the number of support cards I can use. Gisa and geralf just doesn’t do enough. Again such a build would be limited to just recursion synergy but how does that work if someone drops a black Leyline from their opening hand? You’re suggestions are terrible and basically you’re asking someone to build a deck that is easy to defeat aka the same Leyline card will shutdown mikeaus too. Sounds like what you are asking is to just build a creative, low power jank deck which is fine if you are in a pod of low power jank decks but otherwise expect to lose……A LOT and consistently losing bc your inconsistent theme deck lacks any powerful synergy or acceleration is just not fun. Thanks but no thanks!
I agree with that but ppl getting really fast gaslighted today by the precons or commanders. They dont getting very creative with there choise of card . OOh i got a Pantlaza, Sun-Favored so i getting good dino to up grade that is ok but uncreative alot of ppl dont looking for creative ways to lets say break there commander and the 2nd part is alot of ppl dont looking for a real to constract a deck they throwing good stufe and ooh that good but forgetting to get then a win con or getting to put more/ better ramp into it or dont putting any interaction into it and so on.
Quintorius is "Budget Friendly" until you have to spend $183.99 on a copy of Elephant Graveyard just to Regenerate Target Elephant. How else am I meant to protect my Boy
@@pokemaniac333 i know how to proxy i just think it's funny that the 200 dollar reserve list land that specifically regenerates elephants is a card that exists
It feels like this argument is a bit all over the place. You talk about generic value commanders and then in the next breath you talk about commanders that “build themselves” because they have a very specific niche. These are completely different. It feels like you are just saying “be hipster and don’t play the stuff that you see all over the place”. That’s a perfectly fine argument, but I feel like its mixed in with a potpourri of other arguments
Totally agree. It comes across as not liking the new age of commander design while also admonishing people for building the popular older commanders. I’m not sure what they’re suggesting you go and do then.
What trinket mage is getting at is generic value commanders just about always run the same cards in the colors they are in, they can't be very unique against someone who is playing the same commander. And with tribal or specific niche commanders every version of that commander will run 70 to 80% the same cards, both of these styles of decks lower the diversity of decks that are played. I have a Sliver Overlord toolbox deck and I have gone up against other sliver tribal decks, every sliver deck runs the best slivers and do the exact same thing but in different flavors. And Sliver Overlord is such a problem commander that it doesn't stay on the field very long. I also have a korvold fey cursed king lands matter deck, and I sacrifice lands and its my favorite deck but everyone known to keep korvold off the feild. I love both of those decks but they are predictable in their play style. I've been trying out lesser known and less generic value commanders and its spiced up my commander table to the point that its gotten my regular pod to build decks with these types of commanders and its gone from stale games where the match ups are memorized to a tug of war again.
Just because an argument has multiple points of persuasion doesn't mean it's a "potpourri". A lot of the most popular commanders are incredibly boring. Some are so generic and can be a value engine for good stuff. Others do so much, but in very specific situations. Either case can be very boring. I do plan to build Atraxa, but not infect or superfriends. The argument could be refined a little. It's a bit in process and I would say the video is not outright aimed at convincing people not to play certain commanders, but to raise awareness about an issue. The issue is that if your commander deck either wins big or loses big, it's probably boring. Either you do all the things because the commander is too easy to play and you happened to pop off. Or you got hated off the table because everyone sees that commander and knows it's usually good so they target you. That's not fun. If you're playing in a pod where everyone tends to play pretty even, then this argument may seem silly. But if you've played with random people, you've probably played very boring games, even if you try to have rule 0 convos.
@@SwedeRacerDC My deck wins big or loses big without that, but it's mostly because my playgroup tends to believe they want low power and then build high power decks, while I actually build low power and if I pop off then whatever I did ends up getting banned :|.
If drawing a lot of cards tickles your fancy, might I recommend Rielle the Everwise. Cathartic Reunion goes from discard 2 to draw 3 into discard 2 draw 5. Tolarian Winds turns into discard your hand and draw twice that many cards.
Remember to pair it up with like Paradox Haze Went all in on that once, drew like 50 cards in 2 turns and then killed myself on the 3rd, worth it because I also deleted someones library with a Neverending torment during it.
@@otterfire4712 Rielle is one of my most unassuming decks. Especially since I run a lot of cycling in it. Surprises even more when people discover Lab Man/Oracle isn't my wincon. lol
@@UniversalJuan Unfortunately, I kind of hit an impasse with Rielle and my usual playgroup. I had optimized the build to such a degree that anything short of some serious hard sacrifice effects to keep my commander off the board wouldn't be enough for Rielle to pop off and blow out my opponents. I've since taken a step back to try out other stuff so my enjoyment of her isn't completely tarnished. I'll revisit her at some point, it's hard to find a draw heavy commander who isn't somewhat reasonable with their drawing system.
One could argue that any commander that _does a thing_ builds itself. Kalamax wants exactly three things, being tapped, casting instances, and getting extra copies of said instances. There is not a whole lot of leeway in what goes into a Kalamax deck. Kenrith on the other hand, can go in a whole slew of directions. Want to build a degenerative infinite combo factory? Go for it. Want to play group hug? Absolutely down for it. 5 color reanimator deck? Kenny's got you covered. Generically good commanders offer flexibility on what sort of archetypes they can cover.
Problem is most versions will be the same cookie-cutter version, lik Atraxa is 80% of the time just superfriends. Kenrith is a special situation because he doesn't say what you're going to do, but I suspect most Kenrith decks are 5c value piles instead of focused shenanigans.
@Adrianovaz2007 there is no way 80% of atraxa is super friends. The idea of proliferate is too nebulous for the top commander of all time to be that railroaded.
my problem with atraxa is really her four keywords and four colors. ik she came in the four color product, but having witchmaw colors on a dude that says proliferate is bad news. i wouldn't mind atraxa decks being super friends, or infect, if atraxa couldn't kill literally anything
While you bring up valid points, I believe they are being made from a selfish point of view. "I'm tired of seeing X commander because I know what they are going to do. They are to common and every build is the same." Its understandable to be frustrated at seeing common decks and "staples", but you're not the one running them. You're not the one playing them because you find it fun. I understand the frustration of seeing commander being streamlined due to WotC is focusing on it as a format and over make products for it. But that's not what I feel is being argued here. Gishath got a good friend of mine into Magic when Ixalan came out cause "dinosaur stompy is fun". Atrexa broke me out of my "I only do beat down" deck design when she first came out, and ultimately lead me to explore wincons outside of damage. If you're enjoyment comes from using unique commanders and cards, more power to you. But others find enjoyment through other means, which is equally as valid as yours.
Maybe I’m being selfish but I want to stress I’m not upset at staples and I do commonly run them. I just said Atraxa being in 4 colors means you get access to all the staples so she ends up being the best commander for a large amount of themes
@@thetrinketmage Well I appreciate you clarifying that for me. And you're 100% allowed to be selfish and feel how you feel, it's your channel and you're just venting your frustrations/thoughts. I just wanted to make the point that everyone derives enjoyment from commander in their own ways. And although common commanders, they atleast serve as a good entry point for a chunk of the community for how easy they are to play/build around.
@@thetrinketmage You just want others to play they way you want them to play. You are either in connoisseur snobbery territory or wanna be dictator territory and both are bad and say nothing good about you as a person.
I'm gonna have to disagree. Popular commanders are popular because they're easy to build around since they have a linear focus. I would even argue Atraxa is a poor example because proliferate can go in so many directions. If there's a pod of Atraxa players one can do planeswalkers, one can do energy counters, one can do +1/+1, and one can do infect. Honestly if Atraxa was printed now it would probably have another line of abilities that supports the proliferate. I do miss old legendaries though. You had to go out of your way to find what cards worked with it and be a bit creative. New legendaries are more powerful due to powercreep and have more cards supporting it, but that's what happens when wizards releases a new set every month.
For atraxa I feel like they could accomplish the same thing without the keywords. The fact that the card also gives you incredible board presence and sustain outside of what the card does just puts it over the top as having no downside and I think that is uninteresting
@@thetrinketmage I understand that. The keywords are a bit much, but they borrow one from each color identity. From my experience Atraxa players also get hated out of the game they barely have the chance to do anything. 😂
This video didn't age well. "Wizards are starting to fix [the boring commander problem]". Wizards: Makes a set with 47 commanders, more than half of which primarily or exclusively draw you cards.
I'm gonna be honest, Atraxa is a really bad example for what you're describing. Without a board that can take advantage of her trigger, she's a 4/4 with keyword soup. While slightly broad, proliferate slots her into leading a few specific deck archetypes rather than goodstuff piles, which increases diversity in terms of one Atraxa deck versus another. She can lead either +1/+1 counters or superfriends, without outright telling the pilot to do so in her rules text. Compare this to the infamous similarity between Go-Shintai decks, a textbook case of the commander telling you exactly how to build it. The more modern "setup and payoff" commanders like Korvold, Chulane, and Prosper are significantly more egregious due to how little they ask of their pilot and how wide of a net they cast in terms of things they synergize with.
Yup, Atraxa is the most popular for a reason. You can literally have 6 or so different decks with her at the helm and they'd play and do different things. I gotta say though, I think Korvold is more of a power issue rather than a narrow issue. You can build an all Eldraine theme deck, landfall, food tokens , treasure theme etc. but he just so happens to be the enabler and the payoff.
she is more of a golos-tier problem, where she is good for a very large pool of themes, and thus becomes a generically good commander for a lot of stuff - but she for sure doenst build herself as much as shintai. i still absolutely despise her, especially with superfriends
I agree about Chulane & similar being basically setup & payoff stapled to 1 card from the command zone. Voja, Jaws of the Conclave might be THE most egregious example I've seen so far though - all it asks for (really) is that you have elves in your 99 and maybe some optional wolves. Voja will be down on 4 at the latest, possibly 3, and then is a repeated board-builder and card draw engine. If they'd kicked down the ward to 2 and maybe understatted it a bit (4/4 for 5 would probably be fine) it would have been playable. As it is now, it's just going to be a deck that wrecks casual decks while being too slow for cEDH.
@@51gunner I think this might be deliberate. We have had a lot of nicely designed, balanced and fun commanders, but there has also been at least one absolutely OP beast every set so far. i.E. we got a huge amount of "do it twice" commanders, and they obviously absolutely wreck shit
The moment Wizards started printing cards and sets for commander specifically, is when the format started to have some serious ingenuity issues. The fact you see more interesting commanders these days in not an effect of them fixing anything, it's just they spam products so often now, it's more likely to cause accidental success. That said, I 'd really prefer a slower pace over product fatigue we're seeing these days.
I made a Go-shintai deck, but I only run 2 shrines in it. The main idea of the deck is to use cards like "presence of the master," "cephalid shrine" and the black 2 mana one I can't remember the name of together with "Multani's Presence" to draw cards and get enchantment into the graveyard, until I find my zombie making enchantments so it goes from a self countering enchantment deck to a zombie tribal deck where i "resurrect" the enchantments too
Underrated comment. The first thing that came to mind about how to play GS not as a shrine deck was to abuse the enchantment recursion. You are most definitely in the 5-10% who got creative with the deck
What annoys me is like WOTC has made so many one dimensional linear commanders, that commander players just kind of look at who you're running, assume your entire archetype and then even if you explain "here's what my deck does" they all ignore it and just make up a version of it in their heads. I have a Numot the devastator deck that probably gets this the worst. It's like an aggro dragon angel tribal deck but every single person just goes "oh you must be running a mass land destruction theme thats not cool!!!!" "No man, it's dragon angel tribal, literally no other land destruction in it because I dont need it, I will maybe blow up 2 lands in an entire game because they're running away with a field of the dead or something" "Oh ok, EVERYONE HE'S MASS LAND DESTRUCTION TRIBAL, HIS GOAL IS TO BLOW UP ALL LANDS GET HIM"
I understand Atraxa may be cringe, but I did pull her, grand cenobite and elesh norn in my first ever three packs. Therefore I will run them and be lame!
The problem with build around commanders is similar to some of your initial examples; if they die too much then you just lose. A lot of people try to build decks that don’t necessarily need their commander to function.
I feel so called out right now as I have a Gishath and a The Ur-Dragon Deck. They are my two most favourite decks and the decks where some of my most valued cards go into. I understand that Gishath and Ur-Dragon are some of the biggest examples of a "boring" commander, and I understand that going into it and building the deck. I understand that some games I will do nothing where I either die before I cast my Commander or I get out my Commander and snowball the rest of the table. But the reason why I play them is not because they are popular but because dinosaurs and dragons were a big part of my childhood. That part resonates with me, and seeing the cool art and striking designs resonates with me. I love the idea of a giant dinosaur calling forth an army of dinosaurs upon damage. I love the randomness of it and seeing how many times I can get the trigger of and what I hit. I see every game of Gishath as a sort of mini game that can make each game exciting as of itself. I love the Ur-Dragon as the thought of flooding the board with big beautiful fire-breathing beasts and swinging in for big numbers. While this video has great points, I don’t think it is so black and white. People play Commanders for different reasons, and I think that is a good thing and why Commander as a format is so great. Why some people can play these Commanders for being good, I believe there are others who play these Commanders for reasons that aren't so obvious. Sorry for the wall of text. It's like 2.30am for me right now and felt like putting my opinion in.
I appreciate your wall of text! And I also agree a bit! It’s not so black and white! And I could go further into both sides of the argument though that would make the video very long. So I am mostly arguing for what I prefer, but it’s an opinion piece overall and I think your view is valid!
@thetrinketmage Oh yeah, of course. This sort of topic can go in so many different ways and directions that we will be here forever. I completely respect your views and opinions. They are completely fair. I can see why someone would want to play against commanders who aren't so recognisable. They want to see something fresh, something innovative. Something that actually takes deck building skill and not just a 70 card decklist and fill in the rest. For example, I have a Falco Spara Bird Tribal and a Sefeis dungeon deck that plays all the bad dungeon cards because I find that so fun.
The problem I have with commanders like Gishath is that a lot of them pretty much read 'If this resolves, you win the game'. So everyone else is playing Magic, swinging for damage here and there, building their engines, but commanders like that are like just bringing a gun to the table and saying, "Well, I'm going to count to [MANA COST] and when I get there, I'll aim this at one of you and pull the trigger." It tends to make games where we either need to rally to stop that or hold the proper counterspell/removal/etc to stop that, or we all just get fucking shot and aren't allowed to keep playing that game of Magic anymore. That all said, a pretty simple pre-game conversation about what kind of game people want to play can suss out if everyone's fine with it or not. It just generally isn't my jam.
On the subject of The Ur-Dragon, I've been considering replacing them with Rith, Liberated Primeval as my "Big Dumb Dragon Deck". While you lose access to Blue and Black, and don't get the Herald's Horn effect, you get both main colours for Dragons (Red and Green, in that order) which happen to already be the best for generating all the mana Dragons need, and your Commander only costs 5 mana and provides them with protection (Ward 2) which counteracts the hate Dragons seem to draw.
I'm new to the game. My first deck was the atarka precon. I've switched to ur dragon after 1 game. It's funny to me to see ur dragon be called "kill on sight". I frequently see ur dragon hit the board and resolve successfully without the game beeing over. Something like miirym on the other hand is way more explosive. I understand how ur dragon is "boring" as dragon tribal commander. On the other hand I don't think there is a more fun one. To have access to all dragons I have to play all colors. From those I feel ur dragon has the most consistent/fair impact on the game.
I'll defend the modern commanders "and then Atraxa does the thing for free" Yeah I don't see the problem with this. Not every card needs to be a greedy furnace that takes multiple value piece workers shoveling in "whenever you do X"s to scale the card's effect. A turn 1 bird just works. Phyrexian arena just works. Most of the cards in my deck just work. Some of my cards scale, but most of them have a set power level and that's okay. When someone builds an Atraxa deck, they can't just go "now how do I trigger the thing as much as possible?", they have to actually build around the ability of the card instead of scaling the card. In Atraxa's case, you have to get enough permanents with counters in play for the single proliferate to matter, instead of just triggering a hypothetical trigger-to-proliferate commander 20 times to win. I also don't agree that commanders that do the thing they ask for don't require any synergy from you. Korvold still scales with sac synergy, the goal of a Korvald deck is still to set up sac synergy. Korvold sacrificing something doesn't change that. Sans synergy, Korvold's built in sac outlet ability turns him from a card neutral flyer to a card neutral big flyer. Still stronger than if he didn't have it but the play pattern is similar enough. It also, again, incentivizes building around the actual ability instead of just scaling it, since it makes building around Korvold's power increase less risky. Prosper is a commander where you even more so want to build around the ability instead of scaling it. Without his built in impusle, Prosper decks would have to fit like 20 ways to impulse which sucks cause who wants to impulse sorcery into an impulse sorcery. It's much more fun to build around his output treaures than the input. Also experiment kraj is totally guilty of "doing the thing it asks for" You pretty much said it yourself, but the real problem is that the above commanders are really powerful, not just that they self-enable
How does Kraj self enable? He doesn’t create creatures with activated abilities. If you play 0 creatures in the deck it does almost nothing unless an opponent plays something.
Quintorius is my first and possibly only Boros commander, took me years to find one worth building. It is built around vehicles since he provides bodies to crew them, damage multipliers, creature tokens and polymorph effects. It also runs a ton of removal and interaction so functions well as a spell slinger however chaotic it ends up being.
@@sixzerotwoI agree with you in most cases, but I've come across a few really interesting Boros builds. Can I interest you a Boros control deck based off equipment you usually never see? Or a Boros planeswalker mutate deck?
@@joedoe7572 actually intresting decks. Nowadays i changed my decks and started to give a subtype or a roleplay theme. My mardu human deck is a cultist deck now or esper vampires
I feel like every time someone argues a popular commander or "builds itself" commander is boring, i feel like the immediate question is whether the deck is boring to play with, boring to build, or boring to play against, or if the complaint is just the commander is popular. I feel like if we're arguing the commander is boring to play with, then I feel these sort of videos work. If the argument is it's boring to build, then I also think there's merit there, though I think there's a bit of expectations on what the watcher of the video actually finds enjoyable out of the build process (sometimes I want yo find interesting cards that fits the theme, sometimes I find an interesting commander that I want to build around. Not everyone wants to dig around looking for a commander just to find something different). If the argument is a commander is boring to play against, then I feel like suggesting a different commander is questionable most of the time (are we sure the problem isn't lack of interaction?) And if we say "it's too popular, it too well known how to deal with it", then I feel we're underestimating the other rarer commanders too much and we're making questionable personal arguments to people who disagree with the idea wholesale For the record, i played with a proxy friendly group a while back, and I don't feel we ever was bored of just generally "build themselves" commanders. Often, it was either the commanders that were crazy strong or the decks that struggled to do anything after being stopped once. My main struggle with building Go-Shintai wasn't that it built itself, but that it just didn't have enough room to be consistent if you built the generic shrine deck, compared to another deck that built itself like Ur-Dragon or Isshin (or my old Wulfgar deck). And Go-Shintai just doesn't give enough room to do anything else
That’s the only argument this cock gobbler made. Literally is advocating for people playing new obeka and acting like it isn’t boring. It’s the most linear commander in recent years
I made the Atraxa Super friends, played it a few times. Didn't even use Atraxa most of the time. She was basically win-more. Dismantled it because it wasn't fun to play against. And if the whole table isn't having fun, why play? All you are going to do is make it so the whole table doesn't want to play with you.
My pet deck is the OG Chromium and whenever I go to a new game store I always bring it people always get their cracks in about him costing 8 mana and it’s not the most winning deck in the world but in the 100 or so games I’ve played since last year I’ve not seen anyone else do Esper Voltron so I’m always happy to show him off
Chromium is such a cool card in both versions of the card. I think it's really interesting that he has evasion and a keyword that makes it so you want the card blocked, the way I want to build it would be to try and give Chromium trample and lose flying/give my opponents creatures flying so i can get maximum value from the card
@@technodragon990 the way I did it is put in some equipment that takes away his flying and then added stuff that would want people to mass block him and the true cornerstone is Nemesis Mask it simply says “you will block me”
I'm currently trying to put together a very low-power build for an Ertha Jo deck once OTJ hits. Finding weird, neat interactions has been a ton of fun! Controlling 2 players with Mindslaver? Milling a ton with Keening Stone/Sands of Delirium? Burning a bunch with doubled Voldaren Thrillseeker effects? It's been a blast trying to put an idea together~
Animar is my favorite, and my oldest commander deck. I love him, and I love the deck, but I REALLY love budget commander. We have a budget league restricting every card to under $1. It's a ton of fun.
I use “Chef Wilson” (Wilson refined Grizzly + Master Chef background) and Marneus Calgar more than any other commander. Calgar because I’m huge into Warhammer and Chef Wilson because it’s a fun, low powered deck.
I used to agree that a deck that builds itself, because it's a popular commander/has a powerful heavily supported theme, is boring but this was coming from someone who enjoyed janky decks that do something unique and "fun". THAT was what I found enjoyable and interesting about commander but that doesn't mean every other player builds their decks like this because commander is a GAME for FUN and it's a matter of perspective. I hate blue combo decks, I think they are boring, I would never build one, but if someone plays one I won't hate them because they are playing a game and having fun and that's what they find interesting. When I deck build I scryfall the stupidest cards that aren't good and that's great, but Timmy goes to edhrec and gets the best dragons for his Ur dragon deck as he wants to play the game explosively while thinking less about deck building and that's great too.
Agreed! I’m all for people playing whatever you want! I’m never gonna refuse to play against anyone based on their commander alone, it’s just a preference that’s all!
Plays a commander that does something special for the deck: is the target of every opponent removal spell Plays a deck that can stand without the use of your commander: is ridiculed for playing a boring deck
I think people overstate the tribal necessities of Leori. The planeswalkers you want to put in a Leori deck are already mostly Jaces and Chandras and Teferis I've built two decks for her and one has the rule I can't put more than three of a planeswalker in it just to prove that she's not a planeswalker specific commander.
I have a Go-Shintai deck but I don't know how it could possibly be described as boring. It plays completely differently based on which shrines come out in the early game. Some games I'm pulling the red shrines and blasting players and creatures evey round for damage, sometimes I'm pulling the blue shrines and drawing tons of cards or milling players, other games I'm making tons of spirit tokens or super healing myself from the white shrines. Some of the best games I've had with my pod are with my Shrine deck.
I made a self mill zombie deck, my first self made commander deck. Mill the deck, mass graveyard pull, swing for lethal. Has a few actual combos and of course zombie synergy. Picked the commander after who ended up being Wilhelt. Bottom up decks are always creative
I used to run Gishath for dinosaurs but inevitably when they didn't print any more enrage dinos I split my deck into two, one is Wayta and the other Pantlaza. Pantlaza is also a pretty boring commander but she's much cheaper and enters the battlefield earlier than Gishath, and also gets you bunch of free dinosaurs just like Gishath. I do run both an old and new copy of Gishath in the 99 of both however. Enrage tribal dinos is very interesting because it's functionally Naya Control, which is not a color combo you expect you go against, until suddenly I have Trapjaw Tyrant and Pyrohemia on the board.
Funny you bring this up, because after my Gishath update with Lost Caverns, I found that I cut a lot of the Enrage Dinosaurs, like Trapjaw, Silverclad Ferocidons, and Polyraptor. While I enjoyed playing Gishath a ton, waiting for new Dinosaurs took the fun out of it for me (the deck felt like it was pretty stagnant and built itself), and now that the years have gone by and he's so popular, I find myself wanting something that isn't everybody holding removal against me. Decisions, decisions....
I agree that building around a weird uncommon commander is probably the most fun, and that's the reason I believe the format is so great. But the reason why I also run The Ur-Dragon on dragon tribal is simply the cool factor of having the actual progenitor of dragons at the helm. Flavor wise, it just makes too much sense. Another option would be Tiamat, but at that point, you're now building around 5 pieces you want to use to win rather than just big dragons. I know this doesn't take gameplay into consideration since you could just as easily just go wide with Miirym or Lathliss as your commander, but I think it's the reason why so many people just play Ur-Dragon. Besides Emminence just pulling enough weight without having to cast it at all.
@@thetrinketmage I'd argue that Atraxa ISN'T a generic value commander. Proliferating counters gives TONS of options. It just gets a bad rap because it often gets railroaded into being Superfriends (which are the practical definition of 'generic value').... or infect.>
Though comments are mixed, i think this is a fun conversation. Im still a newer player to MtG and i focused so much on fun and building a deck entirely tailored to myself, i refuse to not enjoy myself. I decided on a Breya vehicles deck themed around the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. I love that she was the exact 4 colors i needed to include all the NEO mechs and vehicles Disected the Buckle up precon, and used all the mechs specifically, added all the big mechs from NEO in general as well as Greasefang and his bike, added in cool constructs like Traxos and Clockwork Hydra, Sydri, Syr Konrad, and 3 specific warhammer 40k cards (Ghyrson Starn, Goliath Truck, and Thunderhawk Gunship). Nautiloid ship is also in there (one of my favvvv cards). Plus a teleportation circle in there among a few other cards that fit my personal theme that also may not be meta or common. This gave me a super super fun deck that lets me go for just about any playstyle and still have a great time. I can ping, i get to manually power up and shut down vehicles with or without pilots, i can bring back or send away vehicles, i have fun small creatures and big creatures, i got artifact synergies that will go on even if i get board wiped, no mana problems even not running a ton of lands, I dont need a ton of ramp at all, and i just get to have a blast. Plus i also get the chance to build up my mechatitan core for fun if i feel like it. Also added in monument to perfection which gets me lands out AND is another scary artifact that i get to force people to deal with or can use to bait as I really just use it to get lands I want while all the spheres im running cater to my deck in fun ways as well (mycosynth is my fav), and on the topic of phyrexian cards, Cephalopod Sentry can be huge when i have so many artifacts and vehichles to turn on and off. It can be an extra pilot, it can stop piloting and still come out huge, the list goes on and on. The only 2 cards im missing are The Reality Chip, and Lita but I'll eventually get a chance to buy them and fit them in. I think those 2 will be the cherries on top. Next idea is a robot themed dungeon deck
It doesn't bother me to play against a popular commander, built in the most popular way. However, I do find it much more interesting to see something unusual (whether that be the commander or the theme).
For a long time I intended to build Atraxa "all kinds of counters" but never got around to it. Now a bunch of the cards are going into Me, the Immortal instead.
A good way I've found to increase the variety of my decks is to completely cut out Made for Commander ™️ cards. It really helps you focus on interesting design spaces that are otherwise neglected. Some examples I have: -Ognis Treasures -Greasefang Vehicle Reanimator with a discard outlet subtheme -Nemata Saproling Aristocrats -Satsuki Saga Enchantress
My thoughts are this: I enjoy changing up my 99 cards often just for a different flow. So I aim for generic enough Commander strategies that allow me to swap cards on a regular basis without nerfing the power level of the deck. Recent Examples: Loot, the Key to Everything, Kellan the Kid, Jarad, Golgari Lich King.
@@liberty2087 Edgar isn’t that bad. I don’t think anyone I played has actually complained about him much. I get more complaints about my Xenagos extra combat deck.
I definitely had this issue with my Dimir Champion of Stray Souls deck. The commander was Zellix with Agent of the Iron Throne, so I was tempted to lean closer to more generic mill or aristocrat pieces. This weakened the original identity of the deck. Now I lean heavier into the sacrifice to reanimate cards. It may not be as strong as a more straightforward build, but has regained it's identity.
My favorite commander is Purphoros, Bronze Blooded. I'm just extremely fond of the simplicity of cheating big things, but the versatility of running threats that can blow things up and have instant speed shenanigans while being able to be a bit of a Timmy.
That’s a good example of a fun commander since he provides value by you jamming big things but there are other themes you can add to take extra advantage of his effect. Like blinking the creatures
@@thetrinketmageMhm! You can get a lot of lasting value with cards like cauldron of souls and Industrial advancement. I personally have a bit more of a recursion theme with Feldon and God-pharaoh's giftt
To answer your final question; the only issue I have with people playing powerful popular commanders is the frustration they have when said commander is targeted. If you do not have a way to protect your commander that your deck relies one to operate, then maybe we need to scrap it down and rebuild it.
Commanders and decks surrounding them are only boring if they stop opponents from playing magic or they encourage you to play solitaire while 3 other people get to watch. The Gitrogg Monster, Tom Bombadil, Derevi Empyrial Tactician, and Estrid the Masked come to mind.
I have an Estrid deck (lightly modified precon) and some games I don't even cast Estrid. But it's almost always a threat to win. Because enchantment removal is the least played type of removal. So dealing with a couple problem enchantments is tough, but a deck full of them is near impossible.
I'm watching this to emotionally recover from being taken out by Atraxa infect in 15 minutes after having waited to join the Pod for more than an hour.
Please tell me you also rule 0 banned Sol Ring? I have some of the most popular commander decks, but they're built off the wall, like Atraxa is Myojin tribal
No commander is a "I WIN" buttron. There are 3 other players with tons of cheap interaction. It is your rules, but I never understood that perspective, if someone plays a strong commander they usually get focused.
tbh, I had no idea Miirym was a popular commander when I started building a deck around her. I just liked temur, dragon decks, and token spam, and Miirym was an all-in-one package. I've built my deck around Panharmonicon, Miirym, Virtue of Knowledge, and blink cards to get so many tokens I have to use dice to keep track of how many I have. It's hilarious.
Commander is a format where there is usually no prize support. If atraxa is fun for them and the table, it's fine. Have fun. Don't let some faceless content creator, or a random comment, on youtube tell you "nuh uh!"
I enjoy playing popular commanders in the nonstandard ways. I have an Isshin deck that, instead of being legendary typal, wants to make as many tokens as possible. And I've been trying to figure out an Ur-Dragon Changeling deck that gets value from all sorts of typal effects. Just another way to spice up the most common commanders.
Played against Ur-changeling, it was great fun trying to unpack the gordian knot of lords that turned the vanilla changelings into terminators. It inspired me to build Shuriko as an actual voltron. Turns out an artifact that can turn into an 8/8 at will is pretty strong and hard to remove. Building known decks in unfamiliar ways is fun.
While of my commander decks include four of the top six most popular, I have built each of them in a way that isn't popular. Miirym is "only clones", Ur-Dragon is "tribal tribal", Isshin is "you sure you want to attack me?", and Atraxa is Myojin tribal. The rest of my decks use much less popular commanders
12:19 I too am nostalgic for the "old" type of commander cards that just happened to be in standard sets, back when we only got approximately 5 legendary creatures in each set. I think since about after C19 or something, WotC heavily started making cards in EVERY set and format that are specifically designed with Commander in mind. And I kind of dislike that, that's also why I am taking apart commander decks that I've built around these newer commanders. My main deck is Kaseto, Orochi Archimage , from the third pre-con set, back when they only printed like two cycles for commander per deck
5:00 I totally agree with that point I often play 1v1 commander with a few of my friends One of them plays a deck with Treebeard, Gracious Host as his commander (4 mana 0/5 Trample, ward 2) which gives as many +1/+1 counters as you gain life... and he creates two food tokens so it can easily become a 6/11 with trample ward 2 just because he exists I already had many matches against him where I control his commander 3/4 turns in a row since it's the only thing his deck can do and if I don't have anything to kill it on the spot, I'll die to commander damage or just ridiculous amounts of damage
I like when commander is actually most important piece of your gameplan. It really makes card feel that it's THE commander of that deck. As for generic value or predetermined theme commanders it's definitely very boring that everyone just puts same cards in those decks.
It's easy to enjoy the "boring commanders" cause they can feel fun and good to play. I have been watching your videos recently and I really like your approach to constructing commander decks. Trying to have a more unique approach to the deck while still highlighting the commander like you did for the tapped zombie video. c:
I like building a deck before giving it a commander. I've done it with Gonti and Ruhan. Gonti fits in flavor but not necessarily mechanically with their deck. Ruhan is just there for his colors.
my only commander decks are Ozbedat Ghost Council and Alesha. Most tables i sit down with have never seen either of them before. Ghost dads are mostly a life drain deck, but the commander fuels ETB effects and Revolt triggers, too! Alesha is reanimator combo kills mostly, but i run a handful of creature's that etb with counters to bypass her restrictions. They're both pet decks and very close to my heart, so I'm okay with them being a little more generic.
My EDH decks are rarely boring since I buy very few singles(good$tuff) and use whatever I crack at prerelease or set boosters. So, janky! But it makes decks with same colours/themes quite different from each other since so many are singletons in my collection and I have yet to blow a single deck apart. 20+ decks and counting. Also I rarely use any good$tuff I own as I feel they’re too game warping. Eg. I use 1 of 3 Smothering Tithe in Teysa because she started as the Guild kit and it was already there. Or Doubling Season collecting dust since Battlebond.
I love playing weird dudes. My favorite deck is a zombie tribal with Mouth of Sauron as the commander and a mix the amass lords that give zombie tokens keywords and the amass lords that give orcs keywords. There are also several mill zombies that help assist his etb and clones/blinks for more triggers. Then evasion for the giant Zombie Orc army
My favorite commander deck is Zirilan of the Claw, he's a 5 drop mono red commander themed around tutoring out dragons, but they exile at end of turn. I like making more copies, to make a very agressive but not very defensive dragons deck. Nothing really stays unless shenanigans like blink is involved. Its really fun to play. It can be hard to not use the same dragons as openers every time though.
I totally understand the boredom around the “Your commander predetermines 70 cards in your deck” type of deck, but the build variety of commanders like Atraxa or Meren are what make them so appealing.
A friend of mine wanted to build Quintorius lore master but with a unique twist on it, so instead of using instants and sorceries, they made it a boros saga deck. They put themselves into the grave yard and just provide a lot of value. It was a super cool boros enchantment/prison deck. I think that’s definition creative deck building
I'm an Ur-Dragon player, but I'm definitely a "commander first" builder. Most of the time I pick the commander I like and then try and build up something good for it. I also tend to mostly play tribals, cause it just feels comfy. Ur-Dragon is good cause I like it, and I like dragons in general, not cause it's viable or anything like that. Though admittedly I'm also super biased cause it was also the first precon I bought.
I totally understand your point, but I love my Korvold deck (even though it still is on playtesting) because my first deck was Vaevictis Asmadi, The Dire. It was basically a juund sacrifice deck that made a chaos warp to each player whenever he attacked. I loved the chaos it made in the table, but it lacked a lot of power. Korvold basically fits as the new commander for the deck, and I love so much that I can still play Vaevictis as my alternate commander, and he's there as my pet card because of how much I love him and the memories of my first games. I know Korvold is really powerful and very common in many tables, but I built him different and more focused on aristocrats than on treasures, which is the most-common theme. I think building famous (or infamous) commanders in a different way might be very fun! And I really don't mind a lot playing with famous commanders as long as the table hits the same power level. But you know, every deck is a 7 so...
The week before Obeka was announced, I finally caught with my podcasts up to the Doctor Who sets and heard about The Ninth Doctor and Clara Oswald getting triple upkeep triggers. While the upkeep payoffs are pretty similar for both, it's fun to see there's two different approaches for this theme now.
I definitely prefer legendary designs that have wiggle room, it lets you put more personality into your decks and make them feel like yours verses an EDH netdeck. I built wayta as a Boros Reckoner/Brash taunter deck, verses dinos. Add cards like Martyrdom and it’s basically uno reverse card tribal. So much fun, and it feels like my deck. Whereas my group has a Gishath and a Pantlaza, and they feel the exact same in practice even though one is a blink deck.
My favorite commander is Jeleva, Nephalia’s Scourge exclusively because her ability makes it so almost every game can play differently (access to the X cards off of EVERYONE’S decks, not just mine).
I love Jeleva, but I took her apart. She was one of my first, but I felt like she very much depended on being on the table. At least how I build her was that way. But there's easily been 10000 cards printed since I disassembled her LoL
The new Obeka is exactly what you're describing at 4:16. If you check EDHREC you'll see similar numbers to what you described with Go-Shintai but to a slightly smaller degree - still, the top 10 cards are mostly around 70% of decks. The core issue you're discussing in a broader sense is how unique the build is and the truth is that many of these decks can be built in unique ways but just usually aren't. This has been discussed since the first set of Commander precons were launched and people said those Commanders were 'boring' because WotC printed them specifically for the format so the decks just 'built themselves'... Just play what you like and don't be miserable to other players.
About a year ago, i wanted to build my first commander deck as a Jund artifact sac deck, and i'm glad i chose Ziatora instead of Korvold. Building around a commander that doesn't fuel itself, and doing that in a somewhat unusual way as well, was a lot more interesting than what i'd expect building Korvold would be like. Also, before i had my own commander deck i got to play with an Ur-Dragon deck that played a ton of shapeshifters and strong tutors or payoffs for niche tribes, so it's safe to say that even with a popular and powerful commander you can make a very unique deck that doesn't run away with the game.
So you want a commander. In the format commander. That can sit on the board for 4 plus turns. And not be good enough to either win the game or put you far ahead. Okay.... This just sounds like hipster brewer complains about easy decks. I love brewing. And I'm telling you right now. Most commander decks. At best. Are 40 card decks. Every deck needs ramp, draw, removal, and wipes. Yes, the farts can smell different coming from different decks. But they're still farts. If you want to suggest interesting ideas, go for it. But don't shit on people playing a commander that fits what they personally want their commander to be.
I feel like niv mizzet supreme is specific design done right. It values 2 color instant and sorceries by giving them jumpstart. The value the commander gets you is letting you turn cards in hand into spells you already cast, but there are so many 2 color instants and sorceries that each player has a lot of choice in what to put in the deck. The commander value engine gives you different types of value depending on what you put in your deck, and your win plan is also up to you.
Here is what I see with these commanders. It's not the commander that is the attraction, it is the deck you are specifically playing, that this commander just so happens to fit extremely well. Chulane was that specific case for me. I used to play a Selesnya spam that specifically made use of Torens (When casting creature, make a token), Defiler of faith (casting white permanent? Make token), and a bunch of small creatures that created value. Torens itself could have been the commander, but I lacked specifically land placement, as I would often get land stuck in my hand after all the resource my little guys would make, so chulane just did a thing I needed. I didn't even use blue, other than one or another draw spell and Omniscience.
yes my go-shintai was made really easy ,i build the deck as a joke from lol shrines and it became one of if not my best deck. my other top deck being Golgari lifegain with Ikra and Reyhan at the helm.
The problem with Go-Shintai is that there are not enough options. We'd not have 80% conformity if there was variety in what we could play. The same is true of energy decks, and until recently, saga decks. There just wasn't many commanders or a wide enough pool to avoid playing the same thing.
At this point I have had three different shrine decks. I run all the good shrines, good luck figuring out the bad one(s), and then different support packages that entierly change the way it plays. My first one was just general enchantment support, but I was bad at deck building so I scrapped it later on. Then I made control/stax, where I wanted to lock everyone else out of the game to win. Now I run a proactive, removal (ish) heavy deck with multiple MLDs, even one I can loop every other turn.
I think you're correct in saying that it's the nostalgia talking. Especially in the case of the Go-Shintai of Life's origin Commander. It's objectively the best card to turn the previously janky shrines into a deck that can win and be fun to play. Go Shintai filled a gap in Magic to give us an on-theme value piece with a color identity that allows us to make use of all the shrines in one deck. I don't see how that is "boring" or how anyone could have a problem with that. It's popular because it's cool and effective. I'm a fairly new player, and I only ever hear this argument from people who have been playing for a long time.
One thing I noticed with Modern Horizons 3 Commander is that Disa the Restless wants you to play Lhurgoyf permanent cards. However, there are only 13 of them total; including the brand new ones printed specifically for the deck. This incentivizes building a Maskwood Nexus deck where Lhurgoyfs aren't as important as an artifact from Kaldheim. I thought she'd be a fun deck to play around with but she's just boring because you either play the 12 lhurgoyf creatures and the kindred artifact or you're playing a Maskwood Nexus combo deck. So even the niche commanders they're printing now still aren't getting the required amount of support. I saw how good the previous Eldrazi precon was and thought they would have put more effort into making Lhurgoyfs work.
I have several of the commanders mentioned in here in the 99 of my Captain Sisay of the Weatherlight deck. It’s also a shrine deck, and I have Jegantha as my companion.
This is also play group specific. If everyone plays kill on sight commanders due to their innate power then playing a commander like the elephant doesn't work because you can't keep up while trying to build your engine. Counters and removal is rife in my play group so as soon as you have the engine going, something gets removed and you have to start again. If it's your commander that's the engine then it's low stake getting it into play and then having to recast it...
It's funny, I personally mainly like commanders that do a thing and also provide the way to do it. At least a way. Because so often my stuff gets blown up that I need my commander to be able to do SOMETHING on their own. Maybe it's a playgroup thing.
OTJ actually brought out some really cool commander options that break the norm. Building around outlaws or crimes is niche but multiple upkeeps ? Doubling combat damage triggers ? A first proper modal spell commander ? I'm all aboard. Plus the fact that some of these precon specific Commanders are getting main set prints is really cool to me
I remember before they errata'ed the Planeswalker rules. If you animated a walker and put counters on it, Experiment Kraj could just activate all the abilities infinitely.
Basically your issue is with power creep of just big generic value generation on cards, and not the commanders themselves. No one ever seems to want to acknowledge the fact that MTG is going through insane amounts of unchecked power creep, but will very frequently point out the symptoms of it as though they are wholly unrelated. The number of must have $40 cards being printed is insane right now.
I show up to commander night to see how many birds I can generate before the rest of the table gets concerned about it
1. the answer is 1 🤡
After 2 - 3 I start being concerned about your mental well being. jk^^
Unless you have haste, that number is infinite for me.
I'm in the camp of where I don't care if people play the really good commanders. My only problem is if they start making a fuss about their commander getting targeted. Like who in their right mind is going to look at you cast Gishath, and just not deal with it? "Oh I require set up and mana" my brother in christ, you and me both know you just need to hit to get your dinosaurs to get your deck going.
As someone who has a Gishath deck, this is so true. If you play a popular Commander you lose any right to complain if it gets countered or removed.
This is legit the exact problem I have.
"Why won't you let me resolve my commander?"
Gishath is just bad, It's so obvious what's going to happen. No one builds a midrangy dino deck where the gishath is just a value engine. Every time it gives you like 30 mana worth of cards
@@irou95 And this explains Gishath is bad how?
@@ProphecyPhrase Look at the mana cost, there is your answer
As much as the new Obeka is super interesting to me, I just KNOW every deck that people build with her is going to be taking 20 minute turns while they resolve 6 triggers per upkeep, 3 times per turn.
I saw her but shes geixis so she cant go in my suspend deck
I immediately was super excited when i saw her and started brewing immediately. The problem is not that I would perceive having to take long turns or even stack multiple extra turns, but just that I wasn't able to make her fun. The version(s) that I was able to brew all turned out to be "too voltron" to be fun because to get the needed pay-off, I needed to get between 15-20 extra upkeeps. And that meant leaning very heavily into voltron strategies and that meant leaning very heavily into protection and that made the deck unfun (from my perspective) because either I work my butt of to get Becky out and protect and buff her so that she can swing at someone unblockable for 15+ damage and then I probably win (unless someone has a disenchant for my throne or something) or someone has a disenchant or fog or anything else that stops me and then I did all of that work for nothing. That is exciting, but also too "all-in" for my personal taste.
There is an enchantment that mills every opponent for 10 on the upkeep, you can win on the spot with that if you feel like being fancy
@@robertomacetti7069 I'm aware of the court-cycle and included it in my brew, but that's kinda what I mean: I either get a ton of upkeeps and win - or I mostly just flounder around. I'd personally love to have more cards like Dragonmaster Outcast or Skyline Despot, cards that pull me far ahead with even a decent amount of extra upkeeps without one-shotting everybody.
@@Nr4747 very fair
To a degree, I like seeing commanders with "Expectations". I'm newer to the game, so if I see a deck I know well/vaguely know its gameplan, I can focus on finding the "winning plays" for OTHER more fringe decks at the table. Lets me focus on learning more "new" stuff. Then again, I have shown up to an LGS and, totally by chance, ALL THREE OTHER PLAYERS PULLED OUT AN ATRAXA DECK and looked at ME expectantly while laughing about it. THAT was a wild yet awkward moment. (And 2 were infect so it was a very quick game.)
That's wild. Hope you enjoy the game. I find myself playing themes. It's very fun. Blink decks are fun also. Strong depending on the effects your attempting to multiply. But ehh just a few shoutouts. Take care good ser.
Lol i had a similar game where me and 2 other people all pulled out Ruric Thar decks, and the 4th guy had artifacts. That poor last guy got domed for 18 for playing a mana rock 😂
@@jacobreserved2144 nobody enjoys a game with an Infect deck. That's the point.
If you run infect, you don't want other players to have fun.
I'd scoop if someone plays a card with that, not because I'm sure I'll lose, but because I don't play against it on principle.
@@NerobyrneWhy isn't Infect fun?
@@lum26akua28 because proliferate is extremely boring and has little counter play outside of blue
It doesn't bother me at all. I play some popular commanders and I play some not so popular commanders. One person's "boring" is another person's "fun and exciting". So no I don't sigh when I see a super popular commander on the other side of the table and I don't find it boring and start railing at the sky about the good old days. I will say I don't get to play as much as I used to so I'm just happy when anybody wants to play, no matter who they have in the command zone.
Wholeheartedly agree! I think Internet discourse has amplified this into more of a concern/ issue than it actually is for the majority of people.
I can’t say I agree. I run a wilhelt deck but it’s a total bottom up build meaning the deck can function just fine without him but he does act as an accelerator.
In a zombie tribal theme Mikeaus is one of the best card you can use IN THE 99 but is terrible as a commander.
First, there are not many cards that use undying, second it’s a 6 mana commander and third it’s mono-black which to me, greatly limits the number of support cards I can use.
Gisa and geralf just doesn’t do enough. Again such a build would be limited to just recursion synergy but how does that work if someone drops a black Leyline from their opening hand?
You’re suggestions are terrible and basically you’re asking someone to build a deck that is easy to defeat aka the same Leyline card will shutdown mikeaus too.
Sounds like what you are asking is to just build a creative, low power jank deck which is fine if you are in a pod of low power jank decks but otherwise expect to lose……A LOT and consistently losing bc your inconsistent theme deck lacks any powerful synergy or acceleration is just not fun.
Thanks but no thanks!
@@gtfawaynotnowWho are you responding to?
Gluntch for the... win?
I agree with that but ppl getting really fast gaslighted today by the precons or commanders. They dont getting very creative with there choise of card . OOh i got a Pantlaza, Sun-Favored so i getting good dino to up grade that is ok but uncreative alot of ppl dont looking for creative ways to lets say break there commander and the 2nd part is alot of ppl dont looking for a real to constract a deck they throwing good stufe and ooh that good but forgetting to get then a win con or getting to put more/ better ramp into it or dont putting any interaction into it and so on.
Quintorius is "Budget Friendly" until you have to spend $183.99 on a copy of Elephant Graveyard just to Regenerate Target Elephant. How else am I meant to protect my Boy
Lol
just use your printer and be happy
@@pokemaniac333 i know how to proxy i just think it's funny that the 200 dollar reserve list land that specifically regenerates elephants is a card that exists
I’ve gotten surprised by the Reserve List in this exact way multiple times. Welcome to the club. 🎉😂
isochron scepter and dawn charm. regenerate your elephant
I’m starting to get the feeling somebody here really likes Sunforger lol
I’m not addicted to brewing sunforger decks I can stop whenever I want!
Did you mean "Funforger" ?
I had an akiri Silas sunforger control deck and my friends made me dismantle it cause it was so annoying lol
@@zanderfus2723 That sounds intensely anti-fun, but in the best of ways, Sunforger wants Blue SO bad!
@mightyone3737 control isn't anti fun! It's anti fun if you don't do anything early game lol
It feels like this argument is a bit all over the place. You talk about generic value commanders and then in the next breath you talk about commanders that “build themselves” because they have a very specific niche. These are completely different. It feels like you are just saying “be hipster and don’t play the stuff that you see all over the place”. That’s a perfectly fine argument, but I feel like its mixed in with a potpourri of other arguments
Totally agree. It comes across as not liking the new age of commander design while also admonishing people for building the popular older commanders. I’m not sure what they’re suggesting you go and do then.
What trinket mage is getting at is generic value commanders just about always run the same cards in the colors they are in, they can't be very unique against someone who is playing the same commander. And with tribal or specific niche commanders every version of that commander will run 70 to 80% the same cards, both of these styles of decks lower the diversity of decks that are played. I have a Sliver Overlord toolbox deck and I have gone up against other sliver tribal decks, every sliver deck runs the best slivers and do the exact same thing but in different flavors. And Sliver Overlord is such a problem commander that it doesn't stay on the field very long. I also have a korvold fey cursed king lands matter deck, and I sacrifice lands and its my favorite deck but everyone known to keep korvold off the feild. I love both of those decks but they are predictable in their play style. I've been trying out lesser known and less generic value commanders and its spiced up my commander table to the point that its gotten my regular pod to build decks with these types of commanders and its gone from stale games where the match ups are memorized to a tug of war again.
Just because an argument has multiple points of persuasion doesn't mean it's a "potpourri". A lot of the most popular commanders are incredibly boring. Some are so generic and can be a value engine for good stuff. Others do so much, but in very specific situations. Either case can be very boring. I do plan to build Atraxa, but not infect or superfriends.
The argument could be refined a little. It's a bit in process and I would say the video is not outright aimed at convincing people not to play certain commanders, but to raise awareness about an issue.
The issue is that if your commander deck either wins big or loses big, it's probably boring. Either you do all the things because the commander is too easy to play and you happened to pop off. Or you got hated off the table because everyone sees that commander and knows it's usually good so they target you. That's not fun. If you're playing in a pod where everyone tends to play pretty even, then this argument may seem silly. But if you've played with random people, you've probably played very boring games, even if you try to have rule 0 convos.
Holy shyt look at the mythic rare level WoT 😂 The white knight just ETB'ed. Lmao
@@SwedeRacerDC My deck wins big or loses big without that, but it's mostly because my playgroup tends to believe they want low power and then build high power decks, while I actually build low power and if I pop off then whatever I did ends up getting banned :|.
This is all true but you fail to consider that when I resolve a Honden of Seeing Winds to draw 11 the happy chemicals in my brain enter overdrive
If drawing a lot of cards tickles your fancy, might I recommend Rielle the Everwise. Cathartic Reunion goes from discard 2 to draw 3 into discard 2 draw 5. Tolarian Winds turns into discard your hand and draw twice that many cards.
lmao my go shintai deck is one of my favourite when people realised i'm drawing a bunch of cards gaining a bunch of life
Remember to pair it up with like Paradox Haze
Went all in on that once, drew like 50 cards in 2 turns and then killed myself on the 3rd, worth it because I also deleted someones library with a Neverending torment during it.
@@otterfire4712 Rielle is one of my most unassuming decks. Especially since I run a lot of cycling in it. Surprises even more when people discover Lab Man/Oracle isn't my wincon. lol
@@UniversalJuan Unfortunately, I kind of hit an impasse with Rielle and my usual playgroup. I had optimized the build to such a degree that anything short of some serious hard sacrifice effects to keep my commander off the board wouldn't be enough for Rielle to pop off and blow out my opponents. I've since taken a step back to try out other stuff so my enjoyment of her isn't completely tarnished. I'll revisit her at some point, it's hard to find a draw heavy commander who isn't somewhat reasonable with their drawing system.
One could argue that any commander that _does a thing_ builds itself. Kalamax wants exactly three things, being tapped, casting instances, and getting extra copies of said instances. There is not a whole lot of leeway in what goes into a Kalamax deck. Kenrith on the other hand, can go in a whole slew of directions. Want to build a degenerative infinite combo factory? Go for it. Want to play group hug? Absolutely down for it. 5 color reanimator deck? Kenny's got you covered. Generically good commanders offer flexibility on what sort of archetypes they can cover.
He's the commander of my 5 color hat themed deck. Just look at his multiversal legends art. The man has quite the epic hat.
Problem is most versions will be the same cookie-cutter version, lik Atraxa is 80% of the time just superfriends. Kenrith is a special situation because he doesn't say what you're going to do, but I suspect most Kenrith decks are 5c value piles instead of focused shenanigans.
@Adrianovaz2007 there is no way 80% of atraxa is super friends. The idea of proliferate is too nebulous for the top commander of all time to be that railroaded.
@@Adrianovaz2007I thought it was 80% infect.
my problem with atraxa is really her four keywords and four colors. ik she came in the four color product, but having witchmaw colors on a dude that says proliferate is bad news. i wouldn't mind atraxa decks being super friends, or infect, if atraxa couldn't kill literally anything
While you bring up valid points, I believe they are being made from a selfish point of view.
"I'm tired of seeing X commander because I know what they are going to do. They are to common and every build is the same."
Its understandable to be frustrated at seeing common decks and "staples", but you're not the one running them. You're not the one playing them because you find it fun.
I understand the frustration of seeing commander being streamlined due to WotC is focusing on it as a format and over make products for it. But that's not what I feel is being argued here.
Gishath got a good friend of mine into Magic when Ixalan came out cause "dinosaur stompy is fun". Atrexa broke me out of my "I only do beat down" deck design when she first came out, and ultimately lead me to explore wincons outside of damage.
If you're enjoyment comes from using unique commanders and cards, more power to you. But others find enjoyment through other means, which is equally as valid as yours.
Maybe I’m being selfish but I want to stress I’m not upset at staples and I do commonly run them. I just said Atraxa being in 4 colors means you get access to all the staples so she ends up being the best commander for a large amount of themes
@@thetrinketmage Well I appreciate you clarifying that for me.
And you're 100% allowed to be selfish and feel how you feel, it's your channel and you're just venting your frustrations/thoughts.
I just wanted to make the point that everyone derives enjoyment from commander in their own ways. And although common commanders, they atleast serve as a good entry point for a chunk of the community for how easy they are to play/build around.
Generic Goodstuff are basically non-decks.@@thetrinketmage
@@thetrinketmage You just want others to play they way you want them to play. You are either in connoisseur snobbery territory or wanna be dictator territory and both are bad and say nothing good about you as a person.
@@james22022 No being selfish like this is a pretty anti-social behavior and shouldn't be allowed, it should be denigrated and cautioned against.
I'm gonna have to disagree. Popular commanders are popular because they're easy to build around since they have a linear focus. I would even argue Atraxa is a poor example because proliferate can go in so many directions. If there's a pod of Atraxa players one can do planeswalkers, one can do energy counters, one can do +1/+1, and one can do infect.
Honestly if Atraxa was printed now it would probably have another line of abilities that supports the proliferate.
I do miss old legendaries though. You had to go out of your way to find what cards worked with it and be a bit creative. New legendaries are more powerful due to powercreep and have more cards supporting it, but that's what happens when wizards releases a new set every month.
For atraxa I feel like they could accomplish the same thing without the keywords. The fact that the card also gives you incredible board presence and sustain outside of what the card does just puts it over the top as having no downside and I think that is uninteresting
@@thetrinketmage I understand that. The keywords are a bit much, but they borrow one from each color identity. From my experience Atraxa players also get hated out of the game they barely have the chance to do anything. 😂
This video didn't age well. "Wizards are starting to fix [the boring commander problem]". Wizards: Makes a set with 47 commanders, more than half of which primarily or exclusively draw you cards.
Haha yea spoilers were just starting and I was hopeful
I'm gonna be honest, Atraxa is a really bad example for what you're describing. Without a board that can take advantage of her trigger, she's a 4/4 with keyword soup. While slightly broad, proliferate slots her into leading a few specific deck archetypes rather than goodstuff piles, which increases diversity in terms of one Atraxa deck versus another. She can lead either +1/+1 counters or superfriends, without outright telling the pilot to do so in her rules text. Compare this to the infamous similarity between Go-Shintai decks, a textbook case of the commander telling you exactly how to build it.
The more modern "setup and payoff" commanders like Korvold, Chulane, and Prosper are significantly more egregious due to how little they ask of their pilot and how wide of a net they cast in terms of things they synergize with.
She can also do sagas and infect. If your into those sorts of things.
Yup, Atraxa is the most popular for a reason. You can literally have 6 or so different decks with her at the helm and they'd play and do different things. I gotta say though, I think Korvold is more of a power issue rather than a narrow issue. You can build an all Eldraine theme deck, landfall, food tokens , treasure theme etc. but he just so happens to be the enabler and the payoff.
she is more of a golos-tier problem, where she is good for a very large pool of themes, and thus becomes a generically good commander for a lot of stuff - but she for sure doenst build herself as much as shintai.
i still absolutely despise her, especially with superfriends
I agree about Chulane & similar being basically setup & payoff stapled to 1 card from the command zone. Voja, Jaws of the Conclave might be THE most egregious example I've seen so far though - all it asks for (really) is that you have elves in your 99 and maybe some optional wolves. Voja will be down on 4 at the latest, possibly 3, and then is a repeated board-builder and card draw engine.
If they'd kicked down the ward to 2 and maybe understatted it a bit (4/4 for 5 would probably be fine) it would have been playable. As it is now, it's just going to be a deck that wrecks casual decks while being too slow for cEDH.
@@51gunner I think this might be deliberate. We have had a lot of nicely designed, balanced and fun commanders, but there has also been at least one absolutely OP beast every set so far.
i.E. we got a huge amount of "do it twice" commanders, and they obviously absolutely wreck shit
No matter the commander you are fighting my 99.
That means you build good decks!
^ Absolutely unhinged things that Stax players say
"You are fighting my 99"
-dudes with 12 tutors in the deck, probably.
@@varsoonhks3211 1 tutor only. Lot's of removal tho.
@@varsoonhks3211 no wtax, my deck doesn't stop you from playing your deck but whether you keep things on the field is another question.
My favorite deck is a 4th crusade themed Baird Argivian Recruiter deck, the highlight is a "quest for the holy relic" and no legal targets for it.
That is a wild theme for a deck
Adding some sword to crusade with would fit there perfectly though, why not add one?
@@otsokarhu9695 Godsend would be perfect for flavor lol.
Jokes on you, i use Grist to make bugs
Hell yea I love bugs 🐛
A person of culture and taste I see. Glad there is another one out there.
Use zask to make even more bugs
The moment Wizards started printing cards and sets for commander specifically, is when the format started to have some serious ingenuity issues. The fact you see more interesting commanders these days in not an effect of them fixing anything, it's just they spam products so often now, it's more likely to cause accidental success. That said, I 'd really prefer a slower pace over product fatigue we're seeing these days.
I made a Go-shintai deck, but I only run 2 shrines in it. The main idea of the deck is to use cards like "presence of the master," "cephalid shrine" and the black 2 mana one I can't remember the name of together with "Multani's Presence" to draw cards and get enchantment into the graveyard, until I find my zombie making enchantments so it goes from a self countering enchantment deck to a zombie tribal deck where i "resurrect" the enchantments too
Underrated comment. The first thing that came to mind about how to play GS not as a shrine deck was to abuse the enchantment recursion. You are most definitely in the 5-10% who got creative with the deck
@greatbrandini3967 Thank you. It's a personal favorite deck of mine. I just can't play it too often cause the games usually go to around turn 20
What annoys me is like WOTC has made so many one dimensional linear commanders, that commander players just kind of look at who you're running, assume your entire archetype and then even if you explain "here's what my deck does" they all ignore it and just make up a version of it in their heads. I have a Numot the devastator deck that probably gets this the worst. It's like an aggro dragon angel tribal deck but every single person just goes "oh you must be running a mass land destruction theme thats not cool!!!!" "No man, it's dragon angel tribal, literally no other land destruction in it because I dont need it, I will maybe blow up 2 lands in an entire game because they're running away with a field of the dead or something"
"Oh ok, EVERYONE HE'S MASS LAND DESTRUCTION TRIBAL, HIS GOAL IS TO BLOW UP ALL LANDS GET HIM"
You'll take Pantlaza from cold dead hands!
Your damn right it was a pain to find that precon!
I understand Atraxa may be cringe, but I did pull her, grand cenobite and elesh norn in my first ever three packs. Therefore I will run them and be lame!
you didn't choose the trax life, the trax life chose you.
The problem with build around commanders is similar to some of your initial examples; if they die too much then you just lose. A lot of people try to build decks that don’t necessarily need their commander to function.
I feel so called out right now as I have a Gishath and a The Ur-Dragon Deck. They are my two most favourite decks and the decks where some of my most valued cards go into.
I understand that Gishath and Ur-Dragon are some of the biggest examples of a "boring" commander, and I understand that going into it and building the deck. I understand that some games I will do nothing where I either die before I cast my Commander or I get out my Commander and snowball the rest of the table. But the reason why I play them is not because they are popular but because dinosaurs and dragons were a big part of my childhood. That part resonates with me, and seeing the cool art and striking designs resonates with me.
I love the idea of a giant dinosaur calling forth an army of dinosaurs upon damage. I love the randomness of it and seeing how many times I can get the trigger of and what I hit. I see every game of Gishath as a sort of mini game that can make each game exciting as of itself. I love the Ur-Dragon as the thought of flooding the board with big beautiful fire-breathing beasts and swinging in for big numbers.
While this video has great points, I don’t think it is so black and white. People play Commanders for different reasons, and I think that is a good thing and why Commander as a format is so great. Why some people can play these Commanders for being good, I believe there are others who play these Commanders for reasons that aren't so obvious.
Sorry for the wall of text. It's like 2.30am for me right now and felt like putting my opinion in.
I appreciate your wall of text! And I also agree a bit! It’s not so black and white! And I could go further into both sides of the argument though that would make the video very long. So I am mostly arguing for what I prefer, but it’s an opinion piece overall and I think your view is valid!
@thetrinketmage Oh yeah, of course. This sort of topic can go in so many different ways and directions that we will be here forever. I completely respect your views and opinions. They are completely fair. I can see why someone would want to play against commanders who aren't so recognisable. They want to see something fresh, something innovative. Something that actually takes deck building skill and not just a 70 card decklist and fill in the rest. For example, I have a Falco Spara Bird Tribal and a Sefeis dungeon deck that plays all the bad dungeon cards because I find that so fun.
The problem I have with commanders like Gishath is that a lot of them pretty much read 'If this resolves, you win the game'.
So everyone else is playing Magic, swinging for damage here and there, building their engines, but commanders like that are like just bringing a gun to the table and saying, "Well, I'm going to count to [MANA COST] and when I get there, I'll aim this at one of you and pull the trigger." It tends to make games where we either need to rally to stop that or hold the proper counterspell/removal/etc to stop that, or we all just get fucking shot and aren't allowed to keep playing that game of Magic anymore.
That all said, a pretty simple pre-game conversation about what kind of game people want to play can suss out if everyone's fine with it or not. It just generally isn't my jam.
On the subject of The Ur-Dragon, I've been considering replacing them with Rith, Liberated Primeval as my "Big Dumb Dragon Deck".
While you lose access to Blue and Black, and don't get the Herald's Horn effect, you get both main colours for Dragons (Red and Green, in that order) which happen to already be the best for generating all the mana Dragons need, and your Commander only costs 5 mana and provides them with protection (Ward 2) which counteracts the hate Dragons seem to draw.
I'm new to the game. My first deck was the atarka precon. I've switched to ur dragon after 1 game.
It's funny to me to see ur dragon be called "kill on sight". I frequently see ur dragon hit the board and resolve successfully without the game beeing over. Something like miirym on the other hand is way more explosive.
I understand how ur dragon is "boring" as dragon tribal commander. On the other hand I don't think there is a more fun one. To have access to all dragons I have to play all colors. From those I feel ur dragon has the most consistent/fair impact on the game.
12:44 no i will sigh because eminence was a mistake and it almost ruined commander.
I'll defend the modern commanders
"and then Atraxa does the thing for free" Yeah I don't see the problem with this. Not every card needs to be a greedy furnace that takes multiple value piece workers shoveling in "whenever you do X"s to scale the card's effect. A turn 1 bird just works. Phyrexian arena just works. Most of the cards in my deck just work. Some of my cards scale, but most of them have a set power level and that's okay. When someone builds an Atraxa deck, they can't just go "now how do I trigger the thing as much as possible?", they have to actually build around the ability of the card instead of scaling the card. In Atraxa's case, you have to get enough permanents with counters in play for the single proliferate to matter, instead of just triggering a hypothetical trigger-to-proliferate commander 20 times to win.
I also don't agree that commanders that do the thing they ask for don't require any synergy from you. Korvold still scales with sac synergy, the goal of a Korvald deck is still to set up sac synergy. Korvold sacrificing something doesn't change that. Sans synergy, Korvold's built in sac outlet ability turns him from a card neutral flyer to a card neutral big flyer. Still stronger than if he didn't have it but the play pattern is similar enough. It also, again, incentivizes building around the actual ability instead of just scaling it, since it makes building around Korvold's power increase less risky. Prosper is a commander where you even more so want to build around the ability instead of scaling it. Without his built in impusle, Prosper decks would have to fit like 20 ways to impulse which sucks cause who wants to impulse sorcery into an impulse sorcery. It's much more fun to build around his output treaures than the input.
Also experiment kraj is totally guilty of "doing the thing it asks for" You pretty much said it yourself, but the real problem is that the above commanders are really powerful, not just that they self-enable
How does Kraj self enable? He doesn’t create creatures with activated abilities. If you play 0 creatures in the deck it does almost nothing unless an opponent plays something.
You got quintorius very wrong, he can also target planeswalkers, battles, artifacts or enchantments.
Quintorius is my first and possibly only Boros commander, took me years to find one worth building. It is built around vehicles since he provides bodies to crew them, damage multipliers, creature tokens and polymorph effects. It also runs a ton of removal and interaction so functions well as a spell slinger however chaotic it ends up being.
@@sixzerotwoI agree with you in most cases, but I've come across a few really interesting Boros builds. Can I interest you a Boros control deck based off equipment you usually never see? Or a Boros planeswalker mutate deck?
@@joedoe7572I am not sixzerotwo but I want to hear it!
@@joedoe7572 actually intresting decks. Nowadays i changed my decks and started to give a subtype or a roleplay theme. My mardu human deck is a cultist deck now or esper vampires
@@SandOfToru sorry, I just saw this now somehow. Which one do you want to know about? equipment control or planeswalker mutate?
I feel like every time someone argues a popular commander or "builds itself" commander is boring, i feel like the immediate question is whether the deck is boring to play with, boring to build, or boring to play against, or if the complaint is just the commander is popular.
I feel like if we're arguing the commander is boring to play with, then I feel these sort of videos work.
If the argument is it's boring to build, then I also think there's merit there, though I think there's a bit of expectations on what the watcher of the video actually finds enjoyable out of the build process (sometimes I want yo find interesting cards that fits the theme, sometimes I find an interesting commander that I want to build around. Not everyone wants to dig around looking for a commander just to find something different).
If the argument is a commander is boring to play against, then I feel like suggesting a different commander is questionable most of the time (are we sure the problem isn't lack of interaction?)
And if we say "it's too popular, it too well known how to deal with it", then I feel we're underestimating the other rarer commanders too much and we're making questionable personal arguments to people who disagree with the idea wholesale
For the record, i played with a proxy friendly group a while back, and I don't feel we ever was bored of just generally "build themselves" commanders. Often, it was either the commanders that were crazy strong or the decks that struggled to do anything after being stopped once. My main struggle with building Go-Shintai wasn't that it built itself, but that it just didn't have enough room to be consistent if you built the generic shrine deck, compared to another deck that built itself like Ur-Dragon or Isshin (or my old Wulfgar deck). And Go-Shintai just doesn't give enough room to do anything else
That’s the only argument this cock gobbler made. Literally is advocating for people playing new obeka and acting like it isn’t boring. It’s the most linear commander in recent years
I made the Atraxa Super friends, played it a few times. Didn't even use Atraxa most of the time. She was basically win-more.
Dismantled it because it wasn't fun to play against. And if the whole table isn't having fun, why play? All you are going to do is make it so the whole table doesn't want to play with you.
My pet deck is the OG Chromium and whenever I go to a new game store I always bring it people always get their cracks in about him costing 8 mana and it’s not the most winning deck in the world but in the 100 or so games I’ve played since last year I’ve not seen anyone else do Esper Voltron so I’m always happy to show him off
Chromium is such a cool card in both versions of the card. I think it's really interesting that he has evasion and a keyword that makes it so you want the card blocked, the way I want to build it would be to try and give Chromium trample and lose flying/give my opponents creatures flying so i can get maximum value from the card
@@technodragon990 the way I did it is put in some equipment that takes away his flying and then added stuff that would want people to mass block him and the true cornerstone is Nemesis Mask it simply says “you will block me”
I'm currently trying to put together a very low-power build for an Ertha Jo deck once OTJ hits. Finding weird, neat interactions has been a ton of fun!
Controlling 2 players with Mindslaver? Milling a ton with Keening Stone/Sands of Delirium? Burning a bunch with doubled Voldaren Thrillseeker effects? It's been a blast trying to put an idea together~
She looks so cool!
Animar is my favorite, and my oldest commander deck. I love him, and I love the deck, but I REALLY love budget commander. We have a budget league restricting every card to under $1. It's a ton of fun.
I use “Chef Wilson” (Wilson refined Grizzly + Master Chef background) and Marneus Calgar more than any other commander.
Calgar because I’m huge into Warhammer and Chef Wilson because it’s a fun, low powered deck.
I used to agree that a deck that builds itself, because it's a popular commander/has a powerful heavily supported theme, is boring but this was coming from someone who enjoyed janky decks that do something unique and "fun". THAT was what I found enjoyable and interesting about commander but that doesn't mean every other player builds their decks like this because commander is a GAME for FUN and it's a matter of perspective. I hate blue combo decks, I think they are boring, I would never build one, but if someone plays one I won't hate them because they are playing a game and having fun and that's what they find interesting. When I deck build I scryfall the stupidest cards that aren't good and that's great, but Timmy goes to edhrec and gets the best dragons for his Ur dragon deck as he wants to play the game explosively while thinking less about deck building and that's great too.
Agreed! I’m all for people playing whatever you want! I’m never gonna refuse to play against anyone based on their commander alone, it’s just a preference that’s all!
@@thetrinketmage Until you run into a rebel that loves Griselbrand😂
Plays a commander that does something special for the deck: is the target of every opponent removal spell
Plays a deck that can stand without the use of your commander: is ridiculed for playing a boring deck
I think people overstate the tribal necessities of Leori. The planeswalkers you want to put in a Leori deck are already mostly Jaces and Chandras and Teferis I've built two decks for her and one has the rule I can't put more than three of a planeswalker in it just to prove that she's not a planeswalker specific commander.
I have a Go-Shintai deck but I don't know how it could possibly be described as boring. It plays completely differently based on which shrines come out in the early game.
Some games I'm pulling the red shrines and blasting players and creatures evey round for damage, sometimes I'm pulling the blue shrines and drawing tons of cards or milling players, other games I'm making tons of spirit tokens or super healing myself from the white shrines.
Some of the best games I've had with my pod are with my Shrine deck.
Don't worry i won't build a wilhelt zombie deck......instead I'll make a Atraxa zombie deck. 😁
I appreciate the creativity
I made a self mill zombie deck, my first self made commander deck. Mill the deck, mass graveyard pull, swing for lethal. Has a few actual combos and of course zombie synergy. Picked the commander after who ended up being Wilhelt. Bottom up decks are always creative
I used to run Gishath for dinosaurs but inevitably when they didn't print any more enrage dinos I split my deck into two, one is Wayta and the other Pantlaza. Pantlaza is also a pretty boring commander but she's much cheaper and enters the battlefield earlier than Gishath, and also gets you bunch of free dinosaurs just like Gishath. I do run both an old and new copy of Gishath in the 99 of both however.
Enrage tribal dinos is very interesting because it's functionally Naya Control, which is not a color combo you expect you go against, until suddenly I have Trapjaw Tyrant and Pyrohemia on the board.
Funny you bring this up, because after my Gishath update with Lost Caverns, I found that I cut a lot of the Enrage Dinosaurs, like Trapjaw, Silverclad Ferocidons, and Polyraptor. While I enjoyed playing Gishath a ton, waiting for new Dinosaurs took the fun out of it for me (the deck felt like it was pretty stagnant and built itself), and now that the years have gone by and he's so popular, I find myself wanting something that isn't everybody holding removal against me. Decisions, decisions....
I have atraxa
I don't play her. My only blue mana source is arcane signet. Lol
She is just there to scare people. The deck is abzan kathril deck. Lol
That’s funny, my friend made a 4 color Kenrith deck without blue
I agree that building around a weird uncommon commander is probably the most fun, and that's the reason I believe the format is so great. But the reason why I also run The Ur-Dragon on dragon tribal is simply the cool factor of having the actual progenitor of dragons at the helm. Flavor wise, it just makes too much sense. Another option would be Tiamat, but at that point, you're now building around 5 pieces you want to use to win rather than just big dragons.
I know this doesn't take gameplay into consideration since you could just as easily just go wide with Miirym or Lathliss as your commander, but I think it's the reason why so many people just play Ur-Dragon. Besides Emminence just pulling enough weight without having to cast it at all.
Definitely agree! The art alone got me hooked the first time I saw it!
Love your guts to attack everyone. Keep it up!
Personally, I like playing against atraxa because you never know what direction they take it.
I think there are a lot of people who also keep away from the top commanders in agreement
@@thetrinketmage I'd argue that Atraxa ISN'T a generic value commander. Proliferating counters gives TONS of options. It just gets a bad rap because it often gets railroaded into being Superfriends (which are the practical definition of 'generic value').... or infect.>
@@zackkelley2940yeah, my Atraxa deck doesn't have an option on EDHREC. It's Myojin tribal
@@joedoe7572 I'm partial to charge counters myself.
Though comments are mixed, i think this is a fun conversation. Im still a newer player to MtG and i focused so much on fun and building a deck entirely tailored to myself, i refuse to not enjoy myself.
I decided on a Breya vehicles deck themed around the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. I love that she was the exact 4 colors i needed to include all the NEO mechs and vehicles
Disected the Buckle up precon, and used all the mechs specifically, added all the big mechs from NEO in general as well as Greasefang and his bike, added in cool constructs like Traxos and Clockwork Hydra, Sydri, Syr Konrad, and 3 specific warhammer 40k cards (Ghyrson Starn, Goliath Truck, and Thunderhawk Gunship). Nautiloid ship is also in there (one of my favvvv cards). Plus a teleportation circle in there among a few other cards that fit my personal theme that also may not be meta or common.
This gave me a super super fun deck that lets me go for just about any playstyle and still have a great time. I can ping, i get to manually power up and shut down vehicles with or without pilots, i can bring back or send away vehicles, i have fun small creatures and big creatures, i got artifact synergies that will go on even if i get board wiped, no mana problems even not running a ton of lands, I dont need a ton of ramp at all, and i just get to have a blast. Plus i also get the chance to build up my mechatitan core for fun if i feel like it.
Also added in monument to perfection which gets me lands out AND is another scary artifact that i get to force people to deal with or can use to bait as I really just use it to get lands I want while all the spheres im running cater to my deck in fun ways as well (mycosynth is my fav), and on the topic of phyrexian cards, Cephalopod Sentry can be huge when i have so many artifacts and vehichles to turn on and off. It can be an extra pilot, it can stop piloting and still come out huge, the list goes on and on.
The only 2 cards im missing are The Reality Chip, and Lita but I'll eventually get a chance to buy them and fit them in. I think those 2 will be the cherries on top.
Next idea is a robot themed dungeon deck
It doesn't bother me to play against a popular commander, built in the most popular way. However, I do find it much more interesting to see something unusual (whether that be the commander or the theme).
For a long time I intended to build Atraxa "all kinds of counters" but never got around to it. Now a bunch of the cards are going into Me, the Immortal instead.
A good way I've found to increase the variety of my decks is to completely cut out Made for Commander ™️ cards. It really helps you focus on interesting design spaces that are otherwise neglected. Some examples I have:
-Ognis Treasures
-Greasefang Vehicle Reanimator with a discard outlet subtheme
-Nemata Saproling Aristocrats
-Satsuki Saga Enchantress
My thoughts are this: I enjoy changing up my 99 cards often just for a different flow. So I aim for generic enough Commander strategies that allow me to swap cards on a regular basis without nerfing the power level of the deck. Recent Examples: Loot, the Key to Everything, Kellan the Kid, Jarad, Golgari Lich King.
No one can stop me from playing Edgar! 😤😤😤
They can stop playing with you. As they probably should.
@@liberty2087 Edgar isn’t that bad. I don’t think anyone I played has actually complained about him much. I get more complaints about my Xenagos extra combat deck.
I definitely had this issue with my Dimir Champion of Stray Souls deck. The commander was Zellix with Agent of the Iron Throne, so I was tempted to lean closer to more generic mill or aristocrat pieces. This weakened the original identity of the deck.
Now I lean heavier into the sacrifice to reanimate cards. It may not be as strong as a more straightforward build, but has regained it's identity.
My favorite commander is Purphoros, Bronze Blooded. I'm just extremely fond of the simplicity of cheating big things, but the versatility of running threats that can blow things up and have instant speed shenanigans while being able to be a bit of a Timmy.
That’s a good example of a fun commander since he provides value by you jamming big things but there are other themes you can add to take extra advantage of his effect. Like blinking the creatures
Godspeed, fellow red head.
@@thetrinketmageMhm! You can get a lot of lasting value with cards like cauldron of souls and Industrial advancement. I personally have a bit more of a recursion theme with Feldon and God-pharaoh's giftt
To answer your final question; the only issue I have with people playing powerful popular commanders is the frustration they have when said commander is targeted. If you do not have a way to protect your commander that your deck relies one to operate, then maybe we need to scrap it down and rebuild it.
Commanders and decks surrounding them are only boring if they stop opponents from playing magic or they encourage you to play solitaire while 3 other people get to watch. The Gitrogg Monster, Tom Bombadil, Derevi Empyrial Tactician, and Estrid the Masked come to mind.
I remember the last time I played derevi, i was winning and I was bored. Yargle/multani is my new best friend.
I have an Estrid deck (lightly modified precon) and some games I don't even cast Estrid. But it's almost always a threat to win. Because enchantment removal is the least played type of removal. So dealing with a couple problem enchantments is tough, but a deck full of them is near impossible.
I'm watching this to emotionally recover from being taken out by Atraxa infect in 15 minutes after having waited to join the Pod for more than an hour.
My playgroup has decided that any of the top 25 commanders are highly discouraged at our table because most of them are I WIN buttons.
Please tell me you also rule 0 banned Sol Ring?
I have some of the most popular commander decks, but they're built off the wall, like Atraxa is Myojin tribal
No commander is a "I WIN" buttron. There are 3 other players with tons of cheap interaction. It is your rules, but I never understood that perspective, if someone plays a strong commander they usually get focused.
tbh, I had no idea Miirym was a popular commander when I started building a deck around her. I just liked temur, dragon decks, and token spam, and Miirym was an all-in-one package. I've built my deck around Panharmonicon, Miirym, Virtue of Knowledge, and blink cards to get so many tokens I have to use dice to keep track of how many I have. It's hilarious.
Loving this comment section. Whine more Atraxa players
Framing all disagreement as whining is the motto for those uninterested in learning and growth
@@BingeThinker1814 Framing whining as constructive disagreement is the motto of those with poor critical thinking skills
@@WilliesBoatTours way to self report with that projection.
Hate us cus they ain't us
Commander is a format where there is usually no prize support. If atraxa is fun for them and the table, it's fine. Have fun. Don't let some faceless content creator, or a random comment, on youtube tell you "nuh uh!"
I enjoy playing popular commanders in the nonstandard ways. I have an Isshin deck that, instead of being legendary typal, wants to make as many tokens as possible. And I've been trying to figure out an Ur-Dragon Changeling deck that gets value from all sorts of typal effects. Just another way to spice up the most common commanders.
Played against Ur-changeling, it was great fun trying to unpack the gordian knot of lords that turned the vanilla changelings into terminators.
It inspired me to build Shuriko as an actual voltron. Turns out an artifact that can turn into an 8/8 at will is pretty strong and hard to remove.
Building known decks in unfamiliar ways is fun.
Pantlaza Gang sound off!
RAAAAAAAGH
While of my commander decks include four of the top six most popular, I have built each of them in a way that isn't popular. Miirym is "only clones", Ur-Dragon is "tribal tribal", Isshin is "you sure you want to attack me?", and Atraxa is Myojin tribal. The rest of my decks use much less popular commanders
No.
12:19 I too am nostalgic for the "old" type of commander cards that just happened to be in standard sets, back when we only got approximately 5 legendary creatures in each set. I think since about after C19 or something, WotC heavily started making cards in EVERY set and format that are specifically designed with Commander in mind. And I kind of dislike that, that's also why I am taking apart commander decks that I've built around these newer commanders.
My main deck is Kaseto, Orochi Archimage , from the third pre-con set, back when they only printed like two cycles for commander per deck
play jank have fun
5:00 I totally agree with that point
I often play 1v1 commander with a few of my friends
One of them plays a deck with Treebeard, Gracious Host as his commander (4 mana 0/5 Trample, ward 2) which gives as many +1/+1 counters as you gain life... and he creates two food tokens so it can easily become a 6/11 with trample ward 2 just because he exists
I already had many matches against him where I control his commander 3/4 turns in a row since it's the only thing his deck can do and if I don't have anything to kill it on the spot, I'll die to commander damage or just ridiculous amounts of damage
ill just play what i want thanks
Then do that, neckbeard
He did say that was fine
I like when commander is actually most important piece of your gameplan. It really makes card feel that it's THE commander of that deck.
As for generic value or predetermined theme commanders it's definitely very boring that everyone just puts same cards in those decks.
It's easy to enjoy the "boring commanders" cause they can feel fun and good to play. I have been watching your videos recently and I really like your approach to constructing commander decks. Trying to have a more unique approach to the deck while still highlighting the commander like you did for the tapped zombie video. c:
I like building a deck before giving it a commander. I've done it with Gonti and Ruhan. Gonti fits in flavor but not necessarily mechanically with their deck. Ruhan is just there for his colors.
my only commander decks are Ozbedat Ghost Council and Alesha. Most tables i sit down with have never seen either of them before. Ghost dads are mostly a life drain deck, but the commander fuels ETB effects and Revolt triggers, too! Alesha is reanimator combo kills mostly, but i run a handful of creature's that etb with counters to bypass her restrictions. They're both pet decks and very close to my heart, so I'm okay with them being a little more generic.
My EDH decks are rarely boring since I buy very few singles(good$tuff) and use whatever I crack at prerelease or set boosters. So, janky! But it makes decks with same colours/themes quite different from each other since so many are singletons in my collection and I have yet to blow a single deck apart. 20+ decks and counting. Also I rarely use any good$tuff I own as I feel they’re too game warping. Eg. I use 1 of 3 Smothering Tithe in Teysa because she started as the Guild kit and it was already there. Or Doubling Season collecting dust since Battlebond.
I love playing weird dudes. My favorite deck is a zombie tribal with Mouth of Sauron as the commander and a mix the amass lords that give zombie tokens keywords and the amass lords that give orcs keywords. There are also several mill zombies that help assist his etb and clones/blinks for more triggers. Then evasion for the giant Zombie Orc army
My favorite commander deck is Zirilan of the Claw, he's a 5 drop mono red commander themed around tutoring out dragons, but they exile at end of turn. I like making more copies, to make a very agressive but not very defensive dragons deck. Nothing really stays unless shenanigans like blink is involved. Its really fun to play. It can be hard to not use the same dragons as openers every time though.
I totally understand the boredom around the “Your commander predetermines 70 cards in your deck” type of deck, but the build variety of commanders like Atraxa or Meren are what make them so appealing.
A friend of mine wanted to build Quintorius lore master but with a unique twist on it, so instead of using instants and sorceries, they made it a boros saga deck. They put themselves into the grave yard and just provide a lot of value. It was a super cool boros enchantment/prison deck. I think that’s definition creative deck building
I'm an Ur-Dragon player, but I'm definitely a "commander first" builder. Most of the time I pick the commander I like and then try and build up something good for it. I also tend to mostly play tribals, cause it just feels comfy. Ur-Dragon is good cause I like it, and I like dragons in general, not cause it's viable or anything like that. Though admittedly I'm also super biased cause it was also the first precon I bought.
I totally understand your point, but I love my Korvold deck (even though it still is on playtesting) because my first deck was Vaevictis Asmadi, The Dire. It was basically a juund sacrifice deck that made a chaos warp to each player whenever he attacked. I loved the chaos it made in the table, but it lacked a lot of power. Korvold basically fits as the new commander for the deck, and I love so much that I can still play Vaevictis as my alternate commander, and he's there as my pet card because of how much I love him and the memories of my first games. I know Korvold is really powerful and very common in many tables, but I built him different and more focused on aristocrats than on treasures, which is the most-common theme.
I think building famous (or infamous) commanders in a different way might be very fun! And I really don't mind a lot playing with famous commanders as long as the table hits the same power level. But you know, every deck is a 7 so...
He didn’t have a point.
The week before Obeka was announced, I finally caught with my podcasts up to the Doctor Who sets and heard about The Ninth Doctor and Clara Oswald getting triple upkeep triggers. While the upkeep payoffs are pretty similar for both, it's fun to see there's two different approaches for this theme now.
Oh I forgot about that commander pairing
my favorite commander is the dimir alela that goads a creature when you connect with a faerie
I definitely prefer legendary designs that have wiggle room, it lets you put more personality into your decks and make them feel like yours verses an EDH netdeck.
I built wayta as a Boros Reckoner/Brash taunter deck, verses dinos. Add cards like Martyrdom and it’s basically uno reverse card tribal. So much fun, and it feels like my deck. Whereas my group has a Gishath and a Pantlaza, and they feel the exact same in practice even though one is a blink deck.
🤜🤛 that's exactly how I built my Wayta deck! Did you put all the en-kor's to l in yours too?
My favorite commander is Jeleva, Nephalia’s Scourge exclusively because her ability makes it so almost every game can play differently (access to the X cards off of EVERYONE’S decks, not just mine).
I love Jeleva, but I took her apart. She was one of my first, but I felt like she very much depended on being on the table. At least how I build her was that way. But there's easily been 10000 cards printed since I disassembled her LoL
The new Obeka is exactly what you're describing at 4:16. If you check EDHREC you'll see similar numbers to what you described with Go-Shintai but to a slightly smaller degree - still, the top 10 cards are mostly around 70% of decks.
The core issue you're discussing in a broader sense is how unique the build is and the truth is that many of these decks can be built in unique ways but just usually aren't. This has been discussed since the first set of Commander precons were launched and people said those Commanders were 'boring' because WotC printed them specifically for the format so the decks just 'built themselves'...
Just play what you like and don't be miserable to other players.
About a year ago, i wanted to build my first commander deck as a Jund artifact sac deck, and i'm glad i chose Ziatora instead of Korvold. Building around a commander that doesn't fuel itself, and doing that in a somewhat unusual way as well, was a lot more interesting than what i'd expect building Korvold would be like.
Also, before i had my own commander deck i got to play with an Ur-Dragon deck that played a ton of shapeshifters and strong tutors or payoffs for niche tribes, so it's safe to say that even with a popular and powerful commander you can make a very unique deck that doesn't run away with the game.
I know damn well my favorite commander (Isshin) is boring. But I'm poor so it's the only deck I own and it's fun to say "trigger trigger"
So you want a commander. In the format commander. That can sit on the board for 4 plus turns. And not be good enough to either win the game or put you far ahead. Okay....
This just sounds like hipster brewer complains about easy decks. I love brewing. And I'm telling you right now. Most commander decks. At best. Are 40 card decks. Every deck needs ramp, draw, removal, and wipes. Yes, the farts can smell different coming from different decks. But they're still farts.
If you want to suggest interesting ideas, go for it. But don't shit on people playing a commander that fits what they personally want their commander to be.
I feel like niv mizzet supreme is specific design done right. It values 2 color instant and sorceries by giving them jumpstart. The value the commander gets you is letting you turn cards in hand into spells you already cast, but there are so many 2 color instants and sorceries that each player has a lot of choice in what to put in the deck. The commander value engine gives you different types of value depending on what you put in your deck, and your win plan is also up to you.
Here is what I see with these commanders. It's not the commander that is the attraction, it is the deck you are specifically playing, that this commander just so happens to fit extremely well. Chulane was that specific case for me.
I used to play a Selesnya spam that specifically made use of Torens (When casting creature, make a token), Defiler of faith (casting white permanent? Make token), and a bunch of small creatures that created value. Torens itself could have been the commander, but I lacked specifically land placement, as I would often get land stuck in my hand after all the resource my little guys would make, so chulane just did a thing I needed. I didn't even use blue, other than one or another draw spell and Omniscience.
yes my go-shintai was made really easy ,i build the deck as a joke from lol shrines and it became one of if not my best deck. my other top deck being Golgari lifegain with Ikra and Reyhan at the helm.
The problem with Go-Shintai is that there are not enough options. We'd not have 80% conformity if there was variety in what we could play. The same is true of energy decks, and until recently, saga decks. There just wasn't many commanders or a wide enough pool to avoid playing the same thing.
This makes a lot of sense to me, my whole group has those snowball decks.
At this point I have had three different shrine decks.
I run all the good shrines, good luck figuring out the bad one(s), and then different support packages that entierly change the way it plays.
My first one was just general enchantment support, but I was bad at deck building so I scrapped it later on.
Then I made control/stax, where I wanted to lock everyone else out of the game to win.
Now I run a proactive, removal (ish) heavy deck with multiple MLDs, even one I can loop every other turn.
I think you're correct in saying that it's the nostalgia talking. Especially in the case of the Go-Shintai of Life's origin Commander. It's objectively the best card to turn the previously janky shrines into a deck that can win and be fun to play. Go Shintai filled a gap in Magic to give us an on-theme value piece with a color identity that allows us to make use of all the shrines in one deck. I don't see how that is "boring" or how anyone could have a problem with that. It's popular because it's cool and effective. I'm a fairly new player, and I only ever hear this argument from people who have been playing for a long time.
I love love love building weird unpopular commanders. I am running Zedruu, Abaddon, and Grimgrin and I'm having such a good time
One thing I noticed with Modern Horizons 3 Commander is that Disa the Restless wants you to play Lhurgoyf permanent cards. However, there are only 13 of them total; including the brand new ones printed specifically for the deck. This incentivizes building a Maskwood Nexus deck where Lhurgoyfs aren't as important as an artifact from Kaldheim. I thought she'd be a fun deck to play around with but she's just boring because you either play the 12 lhurgoyf creatures and the kindred artifact or you're playing a Maskwood Nexus combo deck. So even the niche commanders they're printing now still aren't getting the required amount of support. I saw how good the previous Eldrazi precon was and thought they would have put more effort into making Lhurgoyfs work.
I have several of the commanders mentioned in here in the 99 of my Captain Sisay of the Weatherlight deck. It’s also a shrine deck, and I have Jegantha as my companion.
This is also play group specific. If everyone plays kill on sight commanders due to their innate power then playing a commander like the elephant doesn't work because you can't keep up while trying to build your engine. Counters and removal is rife in my play group so as soon as you have the engine going, something gets removed and you have to start again. If it's your commander that's the engine then it's low stake getting it into play and then having to recast it...
It's funny, I personally mainly like commanders that do a thing and also provide the way to do it. At least a way. Because so often my stuff gets blown up that I need my commander to be able to do SOMETHING on their own. Maybe it's a playgroup thing.
OTJ actually brought out some really cool commander options that break the norm. Building around outlaws or crimes is niche but multiple upkeeps ? Doubling combat damage triggers ? A first proper modal spell commander ? I'm all aboard.
Plus the fact that some of these precon specific Commanders are getting main set prints is really cool to me
This is exactly why I like building monsters out of underrated commanders like circu and isperia. They never see me coming.
Currently building one of every commander. There are some commanders no one has ever played that are actually pretty interesting.
Like one commander deck for every legend? That’s insane
@@thetrinketmage yeah I'm going alphabetically. Earlier ones need tweaking but I'm almost to 1k on moxfield, in the O's. Working on Olivia Voldaren
@@kilroy1365Don't forget Nebuchadnezzar. He looks fun.
@@benjaminloyd6056 already have him built, and he is very fun
I remember before they errata'ed the Planeswalker rules. If you animated a walker and put counters on it, Experiment Kraj could just activate all the abilities infinitely.
Oh that’s true!
Really? Ouch.
Basically your issue is with power creep of just big generic value generation on cards, and not the commanders themselves. No one ever seems to want to acknowledge the fact that MTG is going through insane amounts of unchecked power creep, but will very frequently point out the symptoms of it as though they are wholly unrelated. The number of must have $40 cards being printed is insane right now.
Agreed that power creep is another issue here at play! Honestly that can be its own video because power creep goes beyond the scope of commander
Jokes on you Im rolling up to the table with Vial Smasher, a deck full of yee haws and a plan