This kind of toolbox-style deck is my absolute dream but I have no idea how to even remotely begin constructing one. What a gorgeous deck, I'm sure no two games are the same.
An easier way to approach a deck like this if you’re inexperienced is by trying out a birthing pod toolbox deck. The goal is to have a good curve of creatures that all provide some value on etb. For example getting a shriekmaw to remove something or a mulldrifter to draw cards. That way you can always tutor up an answer using the permanents on your boar. I have a cool mimeoplams deck that functions this way:)
If you really wanna make a toolbox deck, and don't mind me giving unsollicited advice: - Make a primer. This type of deck is the most Johny it can be, there's no synergy really like Tribal, a primer is worth much more than a deck list. Make a flowchart if it's quicker but either will do a lot for you. - Have specific packages. The video explained it well tbh. In your primer, it's nice to know what to tutor for. - Know beforehand how to resolve cards. I'll use Realms Uncharted in my Lands as an example here: I tend to get Inventor's Fair, Echoing Deeps, Field of the Dead and Vasuva at early game, so I can either have 2 Fields in play or go search for Crucible always. Petrified Field goes for Cesuva if I REALLY NEED either of the effects and I can swap Fair for a Buried Ruin if Crucible got milled or destroyed. Knowing your plays will cut down drastically on your tutoring time, the same way knowing your packages do. - Making a deck list is still not a bad idea. To get an overview of every card and where they fit, at the cost of legibility, you can tick "Categories (multiple)" in Archidekt and add every tutor, package, synergy etc. that you can think of to every card as seperate categories. This will create a lot of clutter but is the only way to keep somewhat of an oversight. To end on a foreword (I'm a rebel): These decks are EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE compared to other decks. Usually either the staples or the most unique cards are pricey, and you really need to dip in the unique cards. Also, it is alright to drop whole drafts of decks and start over adding the same cards to a seperate deck (like a 2.0) because that's the easiest way to make sure you know your lines and which cards belong together. These decks may cost 10 times your expected budget, 10 times as long to build and may leave you with 10 drafts at the end.
Toolbox decks are really fun, you just have to start with a concept you love, due to it taking a long ass time to refine. I recomend finding a gamestate or "destination" you want your deck to reach, for this sharuum deck its having slide, oversold, and a grip full of cyclers n etbs. But that can be anything.
The easiest toolbox imho is Syr Gwyn, Hero of Ashvale + Sunforger. A mardu toolbox with a cornucopia of instants that, once you have both main cards in play, can tutor up any answer. Like Boros Charm, or Path to Exile, or Crackling Doom and Kolaghan's Command; even Arcbond onto your Palisade Giant for an infinite loop finisher. There's even white counterspells you can fetch with SF. The trick while playing is the timing of plays and knowing when to react and when to let the table simmer. Because the main prio is to find and protect Sunforger, it's relatively easy to get into for a toolkit (and relatively cheap, too). It's been a while since I played that deck. I should call her...
This deck legitimately gives me envy, I was so happy when you gave me the chance to go through it with you when you were looking to update it. edit 21:58 Pharika reference???
I recently stumbled upon your channel and after watching a bunch of videos I'm almost able to planeswalk. Awesome thought provoking content and great advice. Thank you!
This made me realise what a banger set Onslaught was for enchantments. Aside from Slide and Cemetary, there's Gratuitous Violence, Aggravated Assault, Mana Echoes, Future Sight, Death Match, Enchanter's Presence, Elvish Guidance...
Man these are my favorite kinds of commander decks. They make each game feel like a roguelike, where you work with what you got and react to the game as best you can given the cards at your disposal. I want to speak the deck building process a tad, since I think I built my third deck in a similar way. After tens of failed builds on archideckt, I compiled a long list of cards I wanted to play with. I stared at them for an hour or two and tried to figure out how many of them I could fit into the same deck. All of the cards pulled along different synergy axes, but the points of cohesion coalesced around 10 or so cards. It felt like I was discovering the deck, unearthing synergies that directed card and commander choices. The process was so intensive that I haven't successfully put another deck together since. It's so much work to find flavor that divine, but after I found it my standards for decks rose to match it.
I kind of want to try this with Pantlaza, Sun-Favored. Hear me out. Non-land cycling cards generally have a mana value >4 while the support pieces have a mana value
One of my favorite decks! I recently bought my list of the concept, I took your list, made some upgrades such as adding Escape Protocal as extra redundency. Lots of minor card upgrades as well, such as Monstrosity of the lake, etc. Thank you for sharing your amazing list, It's been one of my favorite decks for the longest time! I'm intrigued to see what changes you've made since then! Edit: I'll definitely be taking some of your card choices, I didn't even think about transmute before you mentioned it! Great deck and great concept 👍
@ It's not too different, some changes but mostly the same. (Overall I'd say his list is better than mine, mostly due to the inclusion of some nice tech cards such as Perplex)
It's so cool to hear you talk about a deck your proud of. Finding a main synergy and going from there is such a rewarding process. A deck I am trying to this with right now is Shrines without Go-Shintai. What I came up with is a Jodah, the Unifier brew that uses Jegantha as a companion. The Crux of the deck is that every legendary spell in the deck that isn't a shrine has a mana value of 5 so that they can only cascade into a Shrine. What resulted from this is a diverse set of value legend spells that hold me over until I amass enough Shrines to win through them. What is great about the shrines mainly coming from the top of my library is that I don't get to pick what shrine appears which has made games very diverse. The deck is still in a pretty early stage but I can't wait to iterate and improve it with more testing.
i gotta say, this is one of the best and most comprehensive deck techs I’ve ever seen. You explain almost every permutation of how the deck plays. It makes me want to build it, great video!
@23:06 "building an elaborate and meticulous synergy machine requires restrained above all" It really feels like you are my deckbuilding therapist, pinpointing exactly why so many of my decks fall apart 😅
The way you described having to find ways to pull together different themes by finding and developing points of connectivity reminded me a lot of building a cube (which I'm in the process of). Draft environments can get pretty boring if cards only fit into one archetype, so a big part of building a cube is finding cards that bridge multiple themes and strategies.
Almost 6 months ago I saw your original video of the list, it caught my attention and I tested it online, I absolutely fell in love with the deck and I built it, it's by far my favourite deck and a couple weeks ago I upgraded it with the updates you gave it, it's so so much fun, so I have to sincerely thank you
Very happy to see you speak more about the building/update process for this deck, as it has been something I’ve tried to emulate to varying degrees of success since building it card-for-card in paper to play for myself. In addition to being the standard by which I just all of my other synergy pile decks, it has probably become one of my most played decks and definitely my favorite. Excellent work as always!
Seems cool. I came to the conclusion I didn't like tutors for the reasons you stated, but in this sort of deck tutors make sense and seem reasonable. I think the take away is if you aren't running a combo and your win con or engine cards have few alternatives tutors make sense, especially if the toolbox elements are varied enough.
Each and every one of your videos leaves me with so much to think about with my own decks, and I typically end up changing or completely remaking certain commanders with the new advice in mind each time. As a player new to deck building, I find these videos endlessly insightful and helpful. Thank you!
I love this deck, and it was part of the inspiration for my own toolbox deck that is still super difficult but rewarding for me to play. I play a graveyard-centric toolbox deck helmed by Tasigur, the Golden Fang. It has recursion in the command zone, but it requires an opponent to pick a card for me making it political, and rather than trying to keep my graveyard empty to force them to pick the best card, i use it as a way to forge alliances by having people agree with what the problem is and dealing with it. Then I use recursion in the 99 to return my wincons. Its taking time for me to learn my lines for all the tutors especially the graveyard tutors like gravebreaker lamia, but I'm slowly improving at it and trying to reduce long turns
I also play Tasigur but mostly as a way to play a gy deck that focuses on all card types instead of just the typical creature focused self-mill decks. Did you find any ways to use tasigut mana efficently (except for training grounds and that 2 mana adapt dude)? I often find it hard to use his ability until it's turn 10 or later since 4 mana isn't as cheap as I would like to be haha
@User_N8 it is still quite difficult, one card I use for that purpose is wilderness reclamation letting me untap an extra time, this is often one of my tutor targets. One of the best ways to use it is as a way to ensure you don't waste mana while holding up instant speed interaction. Rewind is a pretty fun option here, because it costs the same amount of mana for you to counter something, so if you don't need to counter anything you can just use the ability, and even if you do counter something it untaps the lands you need to use his ability anyway
I love tasigur as a toolbox, its a shame all the lists are derived from his cedh golden era and completely ignore his activated ability. I'm also guilty of this but even then he's such a fun rewarding commander
@ Yeah Reclamation is nice, I didn't build tutors into my deck yet though. Rewind is actually a nice call, I only played that in a spell slinger so far, but it does make sense in tasigur. thanks!
I’ve had a cycling toolbox deck in my edh arsenal for a long time. It’s gone through many different iterations but has always been my favorite deck! It’s currently helmed by Atraxa Grand Unifier lol. I’m glad to see someone giving this kind of archetype some love!
I'm happy to see this video, yesterday I decided that I'm building a Archelos deck with a different main goal but very similar in "I want to do this dumb thing that requires these 3 specific cards and I'll dam get there one day" sorta thing going on. Seeing yours and it being just one color different is going to really help.
One of the coolest decks I've seen in a while. Feels like an old school deck from the wild west days, something I aspire to every time I brew a deck. Excellent work!
Your first video mentioning the cycling Sharuum deck inspired me to make a Yore-Tiller Nephilim cycling deck. It tries to win by either good etb value or by extra combat loops that sac and revive creatures for as much etb as you need. Its part of a pod of 5 nephilim decks I’m making that are designed to fight each other so no one gets upset about an illegal commander cuz everyone would have one. One of my favorite things the deck can do is because Seize the Day can target an opponent’s creature, if Ink-Treader Nephilim is on the board you can get a bunch of combats and if you can give Yore-Tiller vigilance you basically grab your whole graveyard.
21:51 This was me two days ago, I've been eyeing Insidious Roots and a few similar cards for a while and and thinking of building around a "stuff leaves your GY" deck. Hopefully you'll share if you build one, as while I've been browsing Scryfall finding a bunch of interesting cards I have undoubtedly missed some unique and niche cards along the way.
Hello! The first time I saw this deck, when you first talked about it in the Cycling Precon video, I thought it was genius: it is the brilliant idea I would have liked to have myself but that I just could not find. I wanted to create a cycling deck for quite some time after seeing one of my friends pop off with his Sefris deck, constantly reanimating creatures in an endless loop of infinite value through dungeon rooms. Everytime I try to create a deck based on some idea I have, even taking into account pieces of advice you yourself gave in your videos, I end up demoralized seeing as my creation doesn't actually work in a real game of Magic, either because it is a really frail sand castle or because in practice the pieces just don't play out as well as expected. Some months ago, knowing I didn't want to build another deck to then just dismember it two weeks after, I ended up building my own version of your Radha Veggies deck, changing some pieces here and there and changing the commander to Ruby, Daring Tracker just because I like her more: not surprisingly, the deck works really well and it is very fun to actually play a deck that finally functions properly and that makes me fell like I'm actually playing the game, having a real chance at winning instead of sitting there watching others beat each other to death while I die from collateral damage. I ended up trying to build my own version of this deck too, opting for green instead of blue and focusing on closing the game through an high count of toxic tokens thanks to Vishgraz, the Doomhive as the commander. I haven't actually tried the deck yet since I'm waiting for my card shipment, but I just can't shrug off the idea that my version will perform poorly compared to yours, and again feeling like my creations just don't work and that i'm just not as good at building decks as I thought I would be. Another idea i'm trying to work on is the card Epic Experiment, but I can't seem to even be able to pick a commander for it because I can already see problems the deck could and will have and I just end up stuck with no solutions for them. Maybe I just don't put in enough time into refining my creations, but every game something different seems to go wrong, so it could just be variance or it could actually be a real flaw. I would love to play your exact list to be able to experience all this intricate set of decisions and play patterns, but I already know that I would feel disappointed because I wish I had this idea first. Seeing a well built deck work is fascinating, but experiencing your own crafted deck is the best, and I just don't get that feeling as often as I would like to. I'm sorry for this bible of a message, some of this is me venting about my failures, but I'm really passionate about this format and I wish to become a better deckbuilder myself. I really appreciate your insights and all the different perspectives you give in your videos, I learnt a lot and wish to learn even more. Bye!
MTG Snail person, I love this. I've been struggling to figure out both a Slide deck, and an effective cycling deck. Started with Sedris, which is okay, but it shifted from cycling to more generic graveyard stuff. I saw this, and went and built Breya Slide, using a lot of Sharum slide as a base, and cutting things away for the red. So, sincerely, thank you; I now have one of my favorite decks, based on the hard work you did.
I'm a big fan of 1999-2003 era MTG. It's after the design team had a bit of experience under its belt, but it still has a healthy heaping of early MTG zest.
Now that I have a large amount of magic cards memorized, I have a bad habit of drifting off and thinking of new deck ideas or old deck rebuilds when I watch Snail videos. I think it’s because most of your ideas immediately lead me to thinking about how I can apply it to an idea I’m working on, or make me reconsider a significant amount of cards in my decks. And then once I’m done watching the video, I turn off brain and build a new mill deck. (I have 5)
That also sounds like the addiction of MTG. The game just gives you endless possibilities because the amount of cards and the allure of hunting for old cards to synergize with new commanders. lol just my personal opinion.
This is exactly how my Child of Alara deck stand out in my collection: the oldest deck, with way more focus on Synergy and turors: sacrifice outlets that aren't nonland permanents (greater gargadon), reanimation, creatures with ETD/dies triggers, draw+discard effects to get creatures in my graveyard, cards that steal my opponents creatures for a turn (to deal damage and then sacrifice to an outlet) and creatures that are tutors (such as protean hulk). It needs at least the first 3 of the above to work, so there are a lot of tutors, including land search because it's 5 colours and high mana value.
I think COA is a great 5 color commander. Auto board wipe but you can build your own loop or synergy bc of all 5 colors. Green is a great way to get started in the early turns to tutor lands to get COA operational.
Love that commander group slug with Crows! It’s definitely unique IMO. Just the aspect of goading creatures and a bunch of them throws off players tremendously.
I've been an avid slide player for years now. And it is interesting to see where you took it. Mine is a zur deck built more generally around stifles and quality wizard etbs, with much less emphasis on the grave and no artifact synergy. One card I've been trying with that (as far as I know) only 1 other person has spotted is micromancer. You can actually run a really competent suite of removal, counterspells, tutors, boardwipes, carddraw etc. Only with instants/sorceries that cost 1 (e.g the spree cards, swords to ploughshares, multiple choice, consign to memory). This makes micromancer a solid value wizard that can offer high versatility, while being searchable off wizardcycling. I'm a huge believer in the potential of micromancer in slide, and I cannot find other people online discussing it. Consign to memory is extra nasty as it can stifle the slide triggers so you have yet another way to keep things in exile. One sequence that is so strong I'm surprised you didn't mention is step through ---> archeomancer. Archeomancer then recurs step through, step through cycle slides archeo, archeo gets step back, etc. Etc. Uncounterable, repeatable low cost tutoring for any wizard in deck? All off the back of slide in play + step through in hand? Nuts.
I working on my Zur Cycling deck for over 7 months now and I’m absolutely in love with it. I skipped the artifact route you went and included more stable draw engines to keep the cycling triggers up and running - also I adore Gary, so he’s my finisher 🫶. Since you mentioned board control is a thing you want to take a closer look again , I really love out of time in this deck: 3 mana enchantment that phases out all creatures for X turncycles, where X is the number of creatures in play. So It hits the criteria of beeing an enchantment and 3cmc
This deck looks so fun but I need to know, have you tried Runaway Boulder? It has a lot of cool interactions like with Waterlogged Teachings and can be flickered with Escape Protocol. Plus it’s great at being reanimated by sharuum since you can cycle it to flicker sharuum to immediately return it to play. It’s also just a really funny card, Pauper Tron uses it as a tutor target for Mystical Teachings that you can Ghostly Flicker.
I recently had a very similar journey. I spent at least a month thinking about nothing but astral slide in a Rasputin, dream weaver deck, by blinking Rasputin I essentially had unlimited colorless mana, this led to a need for a completely unreasonable number of cycling cards and I managed to find room for 29 whole cards with cycling. building in the same sort of transmute tutor chains became a main part of the deck as well. It's so fun to build around a card in the 99 that's more difficult to remove, and accidentally giving yourself toolbox like options is a beautiful balance
While I've never really thought of it as being much like a control deck before, it's kind of crazy how much of this video applies to my favorite deck, in terms of both play patterns and the deckbuilding process. It's a reanimator toolbox piloted by Nethroi and Umori, and I've been steadily tuning it pretty much nonstop over the better part of four years now. Your videos have actually helped shape that process a decent amount, so I was a little surprised to see so many of these similarities here when you consider this deck to be the one least like those you normally build. It does make sense in a way, though, as the amount of time and effort required to really effectively assemble and maintain a deck like this would make it pretty difficult to have more than one of these going at a time, at least in my experience. Shoutout Cataclysmic Gearhulk 🥂
Thanks for this video! It's given me new energy to work on a deck focused on combining ephara, god of the polis and norin the wary for consistent and difficult to interrupt card draws and etbs
I had some sort of similar process with my Greven Predator Captain. You have most of the same offenders when it comes to losing life and sacrificing but then I thought beyond what comes next, like discarding from hand size, thus adding a reanimator package. Since you get a burst of card draw the turn it attacks, things like Fury of the Horde or even Fury allows you reduce hand size. All that can be nice, but people do play removal (at least, should have), so I try to protect it with things that deflect targets (Deflecting Swat, Bolt Bend), and so on, you begin to construct your deck little by little. Putting some genuine thought into your building process is really satisfying in the end.
Your comment about having restraint when deck building is a very solid and important point to consider. I recently put together a decklist for Rev, with creatures that can go through unblocked, other ways to get opponents cards off their library and play them instead of being restricted to casting, and ways to generate tokens and a good array of other cards that will help with mana fixing. After my friend looked at it, he then starts talking about wanting to put in cards that force opponents creatures to block his. When i asked why he woukd want that, his reply was that he wanted to make use of the death touch ability that Rev gives to target attacking creature. I feel like this personal example is a good way to illustrate that people sometimes focus too much on synergy and maximizing what your commander, or other possible themes in the deck, as a whole that the deck auffers feom it. Rev giving your creature deathtouch isn't an abilty to build around, it's there as a soft way for you to get more hits off her main ability of playing other people's cards and creating treasures. And I think that's an important distinction to keep in mind when looking at cards. Sometimes, you can maximize every single aspect of that card in your deck when playing it, and sometimes a card is a lot more useful to the deck as a whole when you only focus on utilizing part of whst the card does to your overall theme.
I recently got into magic and built a spellslinger Grixis deck with Kess, Dissident Mage as my commander. This video has inspired me to upgrade that deck, to make it even more complex and synergistic. Really really excellent video, was originally drawn to this game because of how simple my friend’s decks seemed and myself wanting to maximize the convoluted-ness of a deck.
I always wondered why this deck seemed so cool to me in particular whenever you talked about it. After hearing you describe the most common lines, I now realize my Inalla deck was basically built off the same piecemeal tutoring value engine control philosophy. I think yours is cooler though.
This is exactly how my Zur, The Enchanter/Inquisitor Greyfax (lower tier ver) American Police deck works. 1 - Value through board state creatures and auras 2 - Suppressing opponents through same auras, and 3 - Stay alive through Lifelink. The fact that I'm 7 months into MTG and I've got to this point, solely going to my LGS and LOOKING at cards in a multicolor box that were on discount that "looked aesthetically cool" I ended up making a deck that has won 1 v 2s, 1v1s and haven't seen a solid loss in 1v4 (commander proper). That's esper for ya
Having played Zur for nearly two decades now, I can say that toolbox is, by far, my favorite kind of deck. Something I've started doing recently to help with decision making around the tight slots is importing lists into Obsidian to create proper visualizations of the various connections and points of synergy between cards. It's a bit time consuming, but can be pretty helpful - especially in early deckbuilding (and as an added bonus, the graph view is just really satisfying to look at).
Hey! Fantastic spin on the slide deck. Ive had my ”Zur, the cycler” deck since 2018. Its my favourite deck ever and the web of synergies is so reletable. I’ve built my deck as cycling reanimator since Zur can find 1 of the 3 reanimation enchants to animate cycling creatures or other big Etbs.
17:09 very well said. I think what most players don't realize is that the problem of the decks/archetypes they hate is not the tutor, but often the thing the tutor is used for. That's why rule zero is so important: something like "no infinite combos" is a very understandable limitation for a casual table, without the need to remove tutors from the equation. Tutors can be fun, if the deck is fun, and having them in an otherwise janky deck can really make the difference imo.
I find it interesting that you feel worse about running generic tutors when I feel worse about running narrow ones. I really don't have a problem with tutors in general, but when I put in a narrow tutor, it usually is put in with the idea of fetching up one card in particular. It feels more like copies 2-4 if that specific card. If you are tutoring out the same thing every time, I feel like that is more against the spirit of the format as opposed to the flexibility alloted with broader tutor which allows for more diverse tutor targets which can create more unique experiences from game to game.
I pretty much never take someone else decklist. And I did maybe a hundred commander decks by now. But this one really makes me want to do it. It looks so fun and unique. Props.
man, i'm kind of envious of this deck, and your ability to assemble it. Astral Slide always seemed like such a cool card to build around but i could never find a way to build around it for the life of me. I might netdeck this for a few games. I'm not particularly confident in my deckbuilding abilities but i figure learning to pilot this ought to at least make me a better player.
Since Ikoria, building a deck around astral slide has become way easier. I do acknowledge this version is quite a masterpiece and the idea of playing the black enchantment and sharum as the commander is quite original.
This video is oddly specific, but exactly what i needed to see. I recently built a cyclying/etb deck, but i kept the commander from the precon. My problem is that it does not feel focused, never even thought of having an etb commander or swapping colors. Very helpful!
Looks fun. I've been running Zur the Enchanter Astral Slide for ages, and it's one of my favorite decks to play. He puts the tutor right in the command zone. Over the years, we've gotten more copy enchantments, and now I can get 5 Astral Slides plus an Escape Protocol in play for a total of 6 blinks per cycle. It lets me retrigger my own ETBs, but it also lets me pseudo-Fog or even perma-Exile my opponents' creatures with Sundial of the Infinite.
Loved this video. I'm constantly brewing decks (have 30ish built, have taken apart at least that many by now as well), and I've started to get bored with some decks before I finish the list on moxfield. But I have one deck I've been struuuuugling with getting right and this is encouraging me to keep working at it-and to consider adding some tutors despite my general dislike of them; I really liked seeing what they enabled for you. Funny enough, I've been thinking about an Esper artifact creature blink deck basically forever, too, but my plans were much more generic than the awesome deck you have.
I love that exact feeling of deranged excitement of tutor chaining! In Brago recruiter of the guard represents basically any card in the deck sooner or later. Here's a favorite of mine. Recruiter of the guard for spellseeker Spellseeker for swan song Swing with brago Recruiter of the guard for tribute mage Spellseeker for dramatic reversal Tribute mage for isochron scepter Isochron imprinting dramatic rev It can all happen really fast with enough rocks, or be spread out over the course of many turns. And if it's slow, there's always the option to pick up soulherder as a backup Brago. Drogskol captain or mom to cement oneself onto the board. It has so many options!
I had a zur slide, but it wasn't very fun and was super linear, seeing this one made me want to use this deck, so I changed the list a little and I'm having a lot of fun :)
This deck tech is insane. Since I saw the card Astral Drift I wanted to make a Cycle deck. I think I'll pick up your list and see what I can do with it. Thanks !
Long ago before Morphon came out I had a silly changelings deck that changed commanders here and there. Maskwood nexus and power creep kinda pushed out the point of having a lot of mostly vanilla changelings. I eventually decided to try to bring deck back. I used Kyodai as commander for all 5 colors then decided that to embrace Maskwood Nexus/mirror entity as my wincon and to make everything changelings. Kyodai, Soul Of Kami ended up protecting these important pieces then I had the task of finding the best lords along with keeping a low cmc, protecting board state, finding my key pieces, and leaning into a creature heavy focused deck. Oh man, it took some time, long searching and hard cuts but I landed on a deck that really suprises my opponents and plays a lot of fun interesting effects. Pretty proud of it. I have another Kyodai deck so its fun to see people's reaction when i switch to another deck with same commander. Enjoyed your video and method.
I built a similar deck for a 15 bucks budget league, and it is both super fun and pretty taxing to play. The amount of decisions you have in any given game is completely insane. I love it
Have you considered running Teferi's Ageless Insight? Turning each cycling card into a draw two, discard one would help rip through your deck. With Fluctuator, it seems like it would be incredibly valuable.
Transmute really is without a doubt my favorite mechanic. Imprint is probably second for me but man transmute does so much for your deck. A flicker deck is really the one CC deck archetype that I've yet to give a go myself but this deck looks like a blast.
A great deck idea, I have just realized my obeka blink deck had a similar thought process. It is a mix of thief, sneak attack and blink. It is still janky but at leat I'm having fun
Glad to see this video! picked up your decklist a week ago, and it is definitely my playstyle and will put some more time into it. I am trying to figure out my own unique pet card to play around that I can build something unique from, might be a while till i find it since you already got astral slide covered and I love this card
This is so incredibly cool. I keep tinkering with Adun Oakenshield, since I have a copy. It's all goofy cycling, channel, and evoke cards with a really aggressive ramp package. A combination of recursion to hand and to the battlefield effects makes it tick: re-using really specific effects provides the toolbox to keep threats at bay, and the late game is a non-stop deluge of beefy creatures. Astral Slide rules, but I've been having a ball trying to do without. The commander might not be efficient, but he's good enough at what the deck wants to do once I've ramped, and it's my favorite deck to yap about. Terisare's Devastation is something that didn't click, though. I'm going to slip it into my current maybe pile, because it plays so well with the theme. Love to see it.
This deck sounds like a mashup of my two favorite constructed decks, Astral Slide and Esper Teachings, and as such I'm going to make it my entire playgroup's problem.
This deck makes me so happy. The first deck I ever built entirely from the ground up was a Sharuum deck with Danse of the Manse and God-Pharaoh's Gift.
Before I ever saw your first video on your Cycling deck I ended up building my own Naya Cycling deck. During my deck building process I've ended up following a similar journey in how I've build the deck. I've recently gone back to rebuild the deck to try a different feel to it and I've ended up on a CMC > 3 deck with the goal to cascade into either Astral Drift, Astral Slide, or Enlightened Tutor due to the large amounts of enchantments I have in the deck. It's probably my Favorite deck and one I've had around since I built it a few years ago.
I don't know if this might be a neat include in your deck or not, but the 4 mana blue enchantment Dreams of the Dead is a neat reanimation enchantment for esper decks. It can only revive black and white creatures, and it gives whatever it reanimates a cumulitive upkeep cost of 2 mana that exiles the creature if it isn't paid, but your astral slide and escape route flicker effects can offset that since those cumulative upkeep costs go away if the revived creature gets flickered.
I always wanted to build a unique deck like this... but just am not that creative. Good at research... but just can't find anything cool for myself. Your ability to build something so cool is inspiring.
You are the only commander creator I enjoy watching. I do not play the format anymore, but love hearing how to tackle this format. Do you assist fans with building decks? I have a dream commander deck that focuses on story telling and not winning. It's commanders are Silvar and Trynn. The idea is that humans gather in fear as the plane they live in is terrifying. They struggle for control against their gods and vampire oligarchs. The story ends with a glorious gathering of humans which unit to destroy their fear, or succumb to it as they are all consumed by their greedy overlords.
Commie Commander here, Oversold Cemetery is so overlook in commander. I pretty much ran it all the time in my black decks on principal. It always gets me value.
This reminds me of a couple decks I built last year. The first one is Yoshimaru/Francisco with a lurrus companion, but because I don't play CEDH I leaned into some of the more casual themes present, so the deck turned into a really strange the legends +1/+1 counter aristocrats aggro deck, and honestly I'm still not quite sure how it works. The other one started by looking at the card insidious roots, and wanting to build a deck that takes advantage of every part of the card. I ended up building Tormod/Reyhan. Self mill is a pretty well established archetype, but it was really weird to build the deck to have as many instances of cards leaving the graveyard as possible, and of course this means dredge and Hogaak are even better than usual. But then there's the +1/+1 counter theme, an overlap consisting mostly of Reyhan, Voralz, and Thran Vigil.
I love cycling, esp the LOTR land cycling dudes. Fantastic in my Karador deck, or really any mass reanimator or Landfall shell. I've also been messing with them in any Keruga Companion brew I'm on, just to stay active in those early turns.
Half this decklist is my Sydri deck, right down to Filigree Angel and Magister Sphinx, but I just have Conjurer's Closet for them instead of Slide. Awesome deck!
After watching this video, I went through onslaught block and found 3 cards that inspired me to make a deck, there was a surprising amount of cards in there that are interesting and fun
My dream deck is one that no matter what is happening you have a plan. Like Batman and the Justice League. It’s not about winning, it’s about making your opponents know that it was hopeless the entire time.
I love this kind of decks 99 deeply interconnected pieces that do stuffs I did the same (although admittedly to a much lesser degree) with my werewolf tribal -Went Naya because rule of laws help me keep the puppies on the backside -you know, werewolves are humans on the front and non humans on the back... Winota! -i run Rocco as my commander and a decent number of elves that happen to help my creature based strategy... Voja And so on I kept adding pieces and now is this mismatched pile of humans werewolves wolves and elves that is actually really great at being an aggro deck in commander Oh and I run primal surge because why not so picking my interactions was a challenge too
My difficult brew has been Clement the Worrywort frog blink typal. Frogs generally come in 2 flavors; frogs that want to grow via counters, and frogs that have ETBs, usually putting a counter on another creature. You'd think this would set the play pattern up pretty clearly, play some low curve frogs that have etb supports like Sunshower Druid early, play clement, play bigger frogs that want to grow like Twenty-Toed Toad, then bounce the smaller stuff and repeat. The problem is since Clement only let's you bounce creatures with lesser mana value the curve of the deck is super difficult to balance, especially since frogs aren't a well represented creature type. I could always add in creatures of different types to help round things out better, but then it feels like I'm betraying the theme of the deck. I feel like I have so many of the puzzle pieces, I'm just missing a few so having trouble fitting them together
This kind of toolbox-style deck is my absolute dream but I have no idea how to even remotely begin constructing one. What a gorgeous deck, I'm sure no two games are the same.
An easier way to approach a deck like this if you’re inexperienced is by trying out a birthing pod toolbox deck. The goal is to have a good curve of creatures that all provide some value on etb. For example getting a shriekmaw to remove something or a mulldrifter to draw cards. That way you can always tutor up an answer using the permanents on your boar. I have a cool mimeoplams deck that functions this way:)
If you really wanna make a toolbox deck, and don't mind me giving unsollicited advice:
- Make a primer. This type of deck is the most Johny it can be, there's no synergy really like Tribal, a primer is worth much more than a deck list. Make a flowchart if it's quicker but either will do a lot for you.
- Have specific packages. The video explained it well tbh. In your primer, it's nice to know what to tutor for.
- Know beforehand how to resolve cards. I'll use Realms Uncharted in my Lands as an example here: I tend to get Inventor's Fair, Echoing Deeps, Field of the Dead and Vasuva at early game, so I can either have 2 Fields in play or go search for Crucible always. Petrified Field goes for Cesuva if I REALLY NEED either of the effects and I can swap Fair for a Buried Ruin if Crucible got milled or destroyed. Knowing your plays will cut down drastically on your tutoring time, the same way knowing your packages do.
- Making a deck list is still not a bad idea. To get an overview of every card and where they fit, at the cost of legibility, you can tick "Categories (multiple)" in Archidekt and add every tutor, package, synergy etc. that you can think of to every card as seperate categories. This will create a lot of clutter but is the only way to keep somewhat of an oversight.
To end on a foreword (I'm a rebel):
These decks are EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE compared to other decks. Usually either the staples or the most unique cards are pricey, and you really need to dip in the unique cards. Also, it is alright to drop whole drafts of decks and start over adding the same cards to a seperate deck (like a 2.0) because that's the easiest way to make sure you know your lines and which cards belong together. These decks may cost 10 times your expected budget, 10 times as long to build and may leave you with 10 drafts at the end.
Toolbox decks are really fun, you just have to start with a concept you love, due to it taking a long ass time to refine. I recomend finding a gamestate or "destination" you want your deck to reach, for this sharuum deck its having slide, oversold, and a grip full of cyclers n etbs. But that can be anything.
The easiest toolbox imho is Syr Gwyn, Hero of Ashvale + Sunforger. A mardu toolbox with a cornucopia of instants that, once you have both main cards in play, can tutor up any answer. Like Boros Charm, or Path to Exile, or Crackling Doom and Kolaghan's Command; even Arcbond onto your Palisade Giant for an infinite loop finisher. There's even white counterspells you can fetch with SF.
The trick while playing is the timing of plays and knowing when to react and when to let the table simmer. Because the main prio is to find and protect Sunforger, it's relatively easy to get into for a toolkit (and relatively cheap, too).
It's been a while since I played that deck. I should call her...
@@definitelynotteunbirthing pod is a nice introduction. It’s straightforward and for inexperienced players it tells you what to get.
Ur literally a snail, how can you build things?
Very slowly.
@@imaginarymatter Instructions unclear, ate the cardboard.
He went to school, be nice to Snail
See, but this snail is salubrious, healthier than the ordinary snail
With their mind
This deck legitimately gives me envy, I was so happy when you gave me the chance to go through it with you when you were looking to update it.
edit 21:58 Pharika reference???
I recently stumbled upon your channel and after watching a bunch of videos I'm almost able to planeswalk. Awesome thought provoking content and great advice. Thank you!
I hear the Upcoming Ghirapur grand prix's top prize is final spark you need to start planeswalking
This made me realise what a banger set Onslaught was for enchantments. Aside from Slide and Cemetary, there's Gratuitous Violence, Aggravated Assault, Mana Echoes, Future Sight, Death Match, Enchanter's Presence, Elvish Guidance...
I loved the color coded highlighting of synergistic effects you did @2:49. Keep up the great work, another excellent video!
I can't wait to crush this deck in a game >:)
please make a video out of it if you do ;)
livestream this game please, it would be a blast!
Evil trinket mage be like
If you do, you have to do it with Tawnos. Show who's the best trinket mage user
How can you crush the deck if you're literally in the deck?
Man these are my favorite kinds of commander decks. They make each game feel like a roguelike, where you work with what you got and react to the game as best you can given the cards at your disposal.
I want to speak the deck building process a tad, since I think I built my third deck in a similar way. After tens of failed builds on archideckt, I compiled a long list of cards I wanted to play with. I stared at them for an hour or two and tried to figure out how many of them I could fit into the same deck. All of the cards pulled along different synergy axes, but the points of cohesion coalesced around 10 or so cards. It felt like I was discovering the deck, unearthing synergies that directed card and commander choices. The process was so intensive that I haven't successfully put another deck together since. It's so much work to find flavor that divine, but after I found it my standards for decks rose to match it.
So!! what’s the decklist 🤩
I kind of want to try this with Pantlaza, Sun-Favored. Hear me out. Non-land cycling cards generally have a mana value >4 while the support pieces have a mana value
24:25 Wait a minute, you are not a snail????!!
One of my favorite decks! I recently bought my list of the concept, I took your list, made some upgrades such as adding Escape Protocal as extra redundency. Lots of minor card upgrades as well, such as Monstrosity of the lake, etc. Thank you for sharing your amazing list, It's been one of my favorite decks for the longest time! I'm intrigued to see what changes you've made since then!
Edit: I'll definitely be taking some of your card choices, I didn't even think about transmute before you mentioned it! Great deck and great concept 👍
Can you share your list?
You must have had his old list -- there's a new one updated 10 Dec 2024 that includes Monstrosity of the Lake, Escape Protocol, etc
@ It's not too different, some changes but mostly the same. (Overall I'd say his list is better than mine, mostly due to the inclusion of some nice tech cards such as Perplex)
It's so cool to hear you talk about a deck your proud of. Finding a main synergy and going from there is such a rewarding process.
A deck I am trying to this with right now is Shrines without Go-Shintai. What I came up with is a Jodah, the Unifier brew that uses Jegantha as a companion. The Crux of the deck is that every legendary spell in the deck that isn't a shrine has a mana value of 5 so that they can only cascade into a Shrine. What resulted from this is a diverse set of value legend spells that hold me over until I amass enough Shrines to win through them. What is great about the shrines mainly coming from the top of my library is that I don't get to pick what shrine appears which has made games very diverse.
The deck is still in a pretty early stage but I can't wait to iterate and improve it with more testing.
This sounds awesome, do you have a list you could share?
i gotta say, this is one of the best and most comprehensive deck techs I’ve ever seen. You explain almost every permutation of how the deck plays. It makes me want to build it, great video!
@23:06 "building an elaborate and meticulous synergy machine requires restrained above all" It really feels like you are my deckbuilding therapist, pinpointing exactly why so many of my decks fall apart 😅
The way you described having to find ways to pull together different themes by finding and developing points of connectivity reminded me a lot of building a cube (which I'm in the process of). Draft environments can get pretty boring if cards only fit into one archetype, so a big part of building a cube is finding cards that bridge multiple themes and strategies.
Almost 6 months ago I saw your original video of the list, it caught my attention and I tested it online, I absolutely fell in love with the deck and I built it, it's by far my favourite deck and a couple weeks ago I upgraded it with the updates you gave it, it's so so much fun, so I have to sincerely thank you
Very happy to see you speak more about the building/update process for this deck, as it has been something I’ve tried to emulate to varying degrees of success since building it card-for-card in paper to play for myself.
In addition to being the standard by which I just all of my other synergy pile decks, it has probably become one of my most played decks and definitely my favorite. Excellent work as always!
Seems cool. I came to the conclusion I didn't like tutors for the reasons you stated, but in this sort of deck tutors make sense and seem reasonable.
I think the take away is if you aren't running a combo and your win con or engine cards have few alternatives tutors make sense, especially if the toolbox elements are varied enough.
Each and every one of your videos leaves me with so much to think about with my own decks, and I typically end up changing or completely remaking certain commanders with the new advice in mind each time. As a player new to deck building, I find these videos endlessly insightful and helpful. Thank you!
I love this deck, and it was part of the inspiration for my own toolbox deck that is still super difficult but rewarding for me to play. I play a graveyard-centric toolbox deck helmed by Tasigur, the Golden Fang. It has recursion in the command zone, but it requires an opponent to pick a card for me making it political, and rather than trying to keep my graveyard empty to force them to pick the best card, i use it as a way to forge alliances by having people agree with what the problem is and dealing with it. Then I use recursion in the 99 to return my wincons. Its taking time for me to learn my lines for all the tutors especially the graveyard tutors like gravebreaker lamia, but I'm slowly improving at it and trying to reduce long turns
I also play Tasigur but mostly as a way to play a gy deck that focuses on all card types instead of just the typical creature focused self-mill decks. Did you find any ways to use tasigut mana efficently (except for training grounds and that 2 mana adapt dude)? I often find it hard to use his ability until it's turn 10 or later since 4 mana isn't as cheap as I would like to be haha
@User_N8 it is still quite difficult, one card I use for that purpose is wilderness reclamation letting me untap an extra time, this is often one of my tutor targets. One of the best ways to use it is as a way to ensure you don't waste mana while holding up instant speed interaction. Rewind is a pretty fun option here, because it costs the same amount of mana for you to counter something, so if you don't need to counter anything you can just use the ability, and even if you do counter something it untaps the lands you need to use his ability anyway
I love tasigur as a toolbox, its a shame all the lists are derived from his cedh golden era and completely ignore his activated ability. I'm also guilty of this but even then he's such a fun rewarding commander
@ Yeah Reclamation is nice, I didn't build tutors into my deck yet though. Rewind is actually a nice call, I only played that in a spell slinger so far, but it does make sense in tasigur. thanks!
That sounds like a really interesting toolbox list I’ve never seen before. Would you be willing to share your list?
I remember seeing this deck while browsing your archidekt and bring floored by it's elegance. Glad to hear your thoughts on it directly!
I’ve had a cycling toolbox deck in my edh arsenal for a long time. It’s gone through many different iterations but has always been my favorite deck! It’s currently helmed by Atraxa Grand Unifier lol. I’m glad to see someone giving this kind of archetype some love!
What were the previous iterations? AGU is powerful and fun and Must Be Countered upon Casting lol
If commander deckbuilding were an art form, your work would be in the Louvre.
I'm happy to see this video, yesterday I decided that I'm building a Archelos deck with a different main goal but very similar in "I want to do this dumb thing that requires these 3 specific cards and I'll dam get there one day" sorta thing going on. Seeing yours and it being just one color different is going to really help.
One of the coolest decks I've seen in a while. Feels like an old school deck from the wild west days, something I aspire to every time I brew a deck. Excellent work!
Every time I watch your videos I am in awe of your deckbuilding. The decks you showcase in your videos are artful.
Your first video mentioning the cycling Sharuum deck inspired me to make a Yore-Tiller Nephilim cycling deck. It tries to win by either good etb value or by extra combat loops that sac and revive creatures for as much etb as you need. Its part of a pod of 5 nephilim decks I’m making that are designed to fight each other so no one gets upset about an illegal commander cuz everyone would have one. One of my favorite things the deck can do is because Seize the Day can target an opponent’s creature, if Ink-Treader Nephilim is on the board you can get a bunch of combats and if you can give Yore-Tiller vigilance you basically grab your whole graveyard.
21:51 This was me two days ago, I've been eyeing Insidious Roots and a few similar cards for a while and and thinking of building around a "stuff leaves your GY" deck. Hopefully you'll share if you build one, as while I've been browsing Scryfall finding a bunch of interesting cards I have undoubtedly missed some unique and niche cards along the way.
Hello!
The first time I saw this deck, when you first talked about it in the Cycling Precon video, I thought it was genius: it is the brilliant idea I would have liked to have myself but that I just could not find. I wanted to create a cycling deck for quite some time after seeing one of my friends pop off with his Sefris deck, constantly reanimating creatures in an endless loop of infinite value through dungeon rooms. Everytime I try to create a deck based on some idea I have, even taking into account pieces of advice you yourself gave in your videos, I end up demoralized seeing as my creation doesn't actually work in a real game of Magic, either because it is a really frail sand castle or because in practice the pieces just don't play out as well as expected.
Some months ago, knowing I didn't want to build another deck to then just dismember it two weeks after, I ended up building my own version of your Radha Veggies deck, changing some pieces here and there and changing the commander to Ruby, Daring Tracker just because I like her more: not surprisingly, the deck works really well and it is very fun to actually play a deck that finally functions properly and that makes me fell like I'm actually playing the game, having a real chance at winning instead of sitting there watching others beat each other to death while I die from collateral damage.
I ended up trying to build my own version of this deck too, opting for green instead of blue and focusing on closing the game through an high count of toxic tokens thanks to Vishgraz, the Doomhive as the commander. I haven't actually tried the deck yet since I'm waiting for my card shipment, but I just can't shrug off the idea that my version will perform poorly compared to yours, and again feeling like my creations just don't work and that i'm just not as good at building decks as I thought I would be.
Another idea i'm trying to work on is the card Epic Experiment, but I can't seem to even be able to pick a commander for it because I can already see problems the deck could and will have and I just end up stuck with no solutions for them.
Maybe I just don't put in enough time into refining my creations, but every game something different seems to go wrong, so it could just be variance or it could actually be a real flaw.
I would love to play your exact list to be able to experience all this intricate set of decisions and play patterns, but I already know that I would feel disappointed because I wish I had this idea first. Seeing a well built deck work is fascinating, but experiencing your own crafted deck is the best, and I just don't get that feeling as often as I would like to.
I'm sorry for this bible of a message, some of this is me venting about my failures, but I'm really passionate about this format and I wish to become a better deckbuilder myself.
I really appreciate your insights and all the different perspectives you give in your videos, I learnt a lot and wish to learn even more.
Bye!
MTG Snail person, I love this. I've been struggling to figure out both a Slide deck, and an effective cycling deck. Started with Sedris, which is okay, but it shifted from cycling to more generic graveyard stuff. I saw this, and went and built Breya Slide, using a lot of Sharum slide as a base, and cutting things away for the red. So, sincerely, thank you; I now have one of my favorite decks, based on the hard work you did.
I love that this whole deck came about because of Onslaught. I swear I discover a new interesting card from that set every time I look at it.
I'm a big fan of 1999-2003 era MTG. It's after the design team had a bit of experience under its belt, but it still has a healthy heaping of early MTG zest.
Now that I have a large amount of magic cards memorized, I have a bad habit of drifting off and thinking of new deck ideas or old deck rebuilds when I watch Snail videos.
I think it’s because most of your ideas immediately lead me to thinking about how I can apply it to an idea I’m working on, or make me reconsider a significant amount of cards in my decks.
And then once I’m done watching the video, I turn off brain and build a new mill deck. (I have 5)
That also sounds like the addiction of MTG. The game just gives you endless possibilities because the amount of cards and the allure of hunting for old cards to synergize with new commanders. lol just my personal opinion.
This is exactly how my Child of Alara deck stand out in my collection: the oldest deck, with way more focus on Synergy and turors: sacrifice outlets that aren't nonland permanents (greater gargadon), reanimation, creatures with ETD/dies triggers, draw+discard effects to get creatures in my graveyard, cards that steal my opponents creatures for a turn (to deal damage and then sacrifice to an outlet) and creatures that are tutors (such as protean hulk). It needs at least the first 3 of the above to work, so there are a lot of tutors, including land search because it's 5 colours and high mana value.
I think COA is a great 5 color commander. Auto board wipe but you can build your own loop or synergy bc of all 5 colors. Green is a great way to get started in the early turns to tutor lands to get COA operational.
This is exactly the video I needed for my artifact creature aristocrat/grqveyard Rendmaw deck
Love that commander group slug with Crows! It’s definitely unique IMO. Just the aspect of goading creatures and a bunch of them throws off players tremendously.
I've been an avid slide player for years now. And it is interesting to see where you took it. Mine is a zur deck built more generally around stifles and quality wizard etbs, with much less emphasis on the grave and no artifact synergy. One card I've been trying with that (as far as I know) only 1 other person has spotted is micromancer. You can actually run a really competent suite of removal, counterspells, tutors, boardwipes, carddraw etc. Only with instants/sorceries that cost 1 (e.g the spree cards, swords to ploughshares, multiple choice, consign to memory). This makes micromancer a solid value wizard that can offer high versatility, while being searchable off wizardcycling. I'm a huge believer in the potential of micromancer in slide, and I cannot find other people online discussing it. Consign to memory is extra nasty as it can stifle the slide triggers so you have yet another way to keep things in exile.
One sequence that is so strong I'm surprised you didn't mention is step through ---> archeomancer. Archeomancer then recurs step through, step through cycle slides archeo, archeo gets step back, etc. Etc. Uncounterable, repeatable low cost tutoring for any wizard in deck? All off the back of slide in play + step through in hand? Nuts.
Spellseeker is a better version of Micromancer, but if the deck is built towards Micro the redundancy can be nice
I working on my Zur Cycling deck for over 7 months now and I’m absolutely in love with it. I skipped the artifact route you went and included more stable draw engines to keep the cycling triggers up and running - also I adore Gary, so he’s my finisher 🫶.
Since you mentioned board control is a thing you want to take a closer look again , I really love out of time in this deck: 3 mana enchantment that phases out all creatures for X turncycles, where X is the number of creatures in play. So It hits the criteria of beeing an enchantment and 3cmc
This deck looks so fun but I need to know, have you tried Runaway Boulder? It has a lot of cool interactions like with Waterlogged Teachings and can be flickered with Escape Protocol. Plus it’s great at being reanimated by sharuum since you can cycle it to flicker sharuum to immediately return it to play.
It’s also just a really funny card, Pauper Tron uses it as a tutor target for Mystical Teachings that you can Ghostly Flicker.
That's an interesting card, I haven't tried it before but I could see it slotting in decently. Might have to give it a try at some point.
I recently had a very similar journey. I spent at least a month thinking about nothing but astral slide in a Rasputin, dream weaver deck, by blinking Rasputin I essentially had unlimited colorless mana, this led to a need for a completely unreasonable number of cycling cards and I managed to find room for 29 whole cards with cycling. building in the same sort of transmute tutor chains became a main part of the deck as well. It's so fun to build around a card in the 99 that's more difficult to remove, and accidentally giving yourself toolbox like options is a beautiful balance
While I've never really thought of it as being much like a control deck before, it's kind of crazy how much of this video applies to my favorite deck, in terms of both play patterns and the deckbuilding process. It's a reanimator toolbox piloted by Nethroi and Umori, and I've been steadily tuning it pretty much nonstop over the better part of four years now. Your videos have actually helped shape that process a decent amount, so I was a little surprised to see so many of these similarities here when you consider this deck to be the one least like those you normally build. It does make sense in a way, though, as the amount of time and effort required to really effectively assemble and maintain a deck like this would make it pretty difficult to have more than one of these going at a time, at least in my experience. Shoutout Cataclysmic Gearhulk 🥂
Thanks for this video! It's given me new energy to work on a deck focused on combining ephara, god of the polis and norin the wary for consistent and difficult to interrupt card draws and etbs
I had some sort of similar process with my Greven Predator Captain.
You have most of the same offenders when it comes to losing life and sacrificing but then I thought beyond what comes next, like discarding from hand size, thus adding a reanimator package. Since you get a burst of card draw the turn it attacks, things like Fury of the Horde or even Fury allows you reduce hand size.
All that can be nice, but people do play removal (at least, should have), so I try to protect it with things that deflect targets (Deflecting Swat, Bolt Bend), and so on, you begin to construct your deck little by little. Putting some genuine thought into your building process is really satisfying in the end.
"You need to be able to resist the urge to add card's to your deck based off of a single idealized situation in your brain"
Your comment about having restraint when deck building is a very solid and important point to consider. I recently put together a decklist for Rev, with creatures that can go through unblocked, other ways to get opponents cards off their library and play them instead of being restricted to casting, and ways to generate tokens and a good array of other cards that will help with mana fixing. After my friend looked at it, he then starts talking about wanting to put in cards that force opponents creatures to block his. When i asked why he woukd want that, his reply was that he wanted to make use of the death touch ability that Rev gives to target attacking creature.
I feel like this personal example is a good way to illustrate that people sometimes focus too much on synergy and maximizing what your commander, or other possible themes in the deck, as a whole that the deck auffers feom it. Rev giving your creature deathtouch isn't an abilty to build around, it's there as a soft way for you to get more hits off her main ability of playing other people's cards and creating treasures. And I think that's an important distinction to keep in mind when looking at cards. Sometimes, you can maximize every single aspect of that card in your deck when playing it, and sometimes a card is a lot more useful to the deck as a whole when you only focus on utilizing part of whst the card does to your overall theme.
I recently got into magic and built a spellslinger Grixis deck with Kess, Dissident Mage as my commander. This video has inspired me to upgrade that deck, to make it even more complex and synergistic. Really really excellent video, was originally drawn to this game because of how simple my friend’s decks seemed and myself wanting to maximize the convoluted-ness of a deck.
I always wondered why this deck seemed so cool to me in particular whenever you talked about it. After hearing you describe the most common lines, I now realize my Inalla deck was basically built off the same piecemeal tutoring value engine control philosophy. I think yours is cooler though.
This is exactly how my Zur, The Enchanter/Inquisitor Greyfax (lower tier ver) American Police deck works.
1 - Value through board state creatures and auras
2 - Suppressing opponents through same auras, and
3 - Stay alive through Lifelink.
The fact that I'm 7 months into MTG and I've got to this point, solely going to my LGS and LOOKING at cards in a multicolor box that were on discount that "looked aesthetically cool" I ended up making a deck that has won 1 v 2s, 1v1s and haven't seen a solid loss in 1v4 (commander proper). That's esper for ya
Having played Zur for nearly two decades now, I can say that toolbox is, by far, my favorite kind of deck.
Something I've started doing recently to help with decision making around the tight slots is importing lists into Obsidian to create proper visualizations of the various connections and points of synergy between cards. It's a bit time consuming, but can be pretty helpful - especially in early deckbuilding (and as an added bonus, the graph view is just really satisfying to look at).
You have given me inspiration for a very particular commander deck. One that always has an answer for anything.
Hey! Fantastic spin on the slide deck. Ive had my ”Zur, the cycler” deck since 2018. Its my favourite deck ever and the web of synergies is so reletable. I’ve built my deck as cycling reanimator since Zur can find 1 of the 3 reanimation enchants to animate cycling creatures or other big Etbs.
17:09 very well said. I think what most players don't realize is that the problem of the decks/archetypes they hate is not the tutor, but often the thing the tutor is used for. That's why rule zero is so important: something like "no infinite combos" is a very understandable limitation for a casual table, without the need to remove tutors from the equation. Tutors can be fun, if the deck is fun, and having them in an otherwise janky deck can really make the difference imo.
I find it interesting that you feel worse about running generic tutors when I feel worse about running narrow ones. I really don't have a problem with tutors in general, but when I put in a narrow tutor, it usually is put in with the idea of fetching up one card in particular. It feels more like copies 2-4 if that specific card. If you are tutoring out the same thing every time, I feel like that is more against the spirit of the format as opposed to the flexibility alloted with broader tutor which allows for more diverse tutor targets which can create more unique experiences from game to game.
I pretty much never take someone else decklist. And I did maybe a hundred commander decks by now. But this one really makes me want to do it. It looks so fun and unique. Props.
this genuinely made me envious its so magnificient. inspired me to build my staxy toolbox mayael deck
man, i'm kind of envious of this deck, and your ability to assemble it. Astral Slide always seemed like such a cool card to build around but i could never find a way to build around it for the life of me.
I might netdeck this for a few games. I'm not particularly confident in my deckbuilding abilities but i figure learning to pilot this ought to at least make me a better player.
Since Ikoria, building a deck around astral slide has become way easier. I do acknowledge this version is quite a masterpiece and the idea of playing the black enchantment and sharum as the commander is quite original.
Congratulations, your one Omniscience away from having a Yu-Gi-Oh-Deck
Don't insult him like that 💀
This video is oddly specific, but exactly what i needed to see. I recently built a cyclying/etb deck, but i kept the commander from the precon. My problem is that it does not feel focused, never even thought of having an etb commander or swapping colors. Very helpful!
Looks fun. I've been running Zur the Enchanter Astral Slide for ages, and it's one of my favorite decks to play. He puts the tutor right in the command zone. Over the years, we've gotten more copy enchantments, and now I can get 5 Astral Slides plus an Escape Protocol in play for a total of 6 blinks per cycle. It lets me retrigger my own ETBs, but it also lets me pseudo-Fog or even perma-Exile my opponents' creatures with Sundial of the Infinite.
Loved this video. I'm constantly brewing decks (have 30ish built, have taken apart at least that many by now as well), and I've started to get bored with some decks before I finish the list on moxfield. But I have one deck I've been struuuuugling with getting right and this is encouraging me to keep working at it-and to consider adding some tutors despite my general dislike of them; I really liked seeing what they enabled for you.
Funny enough, I've been thinking about an Esper artifact creature blink deck basically forever, too, but my plans were much more generic than the awesome deck you have.
I don't think I'm the only one that's going to say this, but this deck is a masterpiece and should never be taken apart.
I love that exact feeling of deranged excitement of tutor chaining! In Brago recruiter of the guard represents basically any card in the deck sooner or later. Here's a favorite of mine.
Recruiter of the guard for spellseeker
Spellseeker for swan song
Swing with brago
Recruiter of the guard for tribute mage
Spellseeker for dramatic reversal
Tribute mage for isochron scepter
Isochron imprinting dramatic rev
It can all happen really fast with enough rocks, or be spread out over the course of many turns. And if it's slow, there's always the option to pick up soulherder as a backup Brago. Drogskol captain or mom to cement oneself onto the board. It has so many options!
I had a zur slide, but it wasn't very fun and was super linear, seeing this one made me want to use this deck, so I changed the list a little and I'm having a lot of fun :)
This deck tech is insane. Since I saw the card Astral Drift I wanted to make a Cycle deck. I think I'll pick up your list and see what I can do with it. Thanks !
I feel 'EDH goes against the spirit of EDH' sums up the EDH-community quite nicely
Long ago before Morphon came out I had a silly changelings deck that changed commanders here and there. Maskwood nexus and power creep kinda pushed out the point of having a lot of mostly vanilla changelings. I eventually decided to try to bring deck back. I used Kyodai as commander for all 5 colors then decided that to embrace Maskwood Nexus/mirror entity as my wincon and to make everything changelings. Kyodai, Soul Of Kami ended up protecting these important pieces then I had the task of finding the best lords along with keeping a low cmc, protecting board state, finding my key pieces, and leaning into a creature heavy focused deck. Oh man, it took some time, long searching and hard cuts but I landed on a deck that really suprises my opponents and plays a lot of fun interesting effects. Pretty proud of it. I have another Kyodai deck so its fun to see people's reaction when i switch to another deck with same commander. Enjoyed your video and method.
I built a similar deck for a 15 bucks budget league, and it is both super fun and pretty taxing to play. The amount of decisions you have in any given game is completely insane.
I love it
Finished watching the video and dude you need to build a cube trust.
Have you considered running Teferi's Ageless Insight? Turning each cycling card into a draw two, discard one would help rip through your deck. With Fluctuator, it seems like it would be incredibly valuable.
What a cool decklist!! Excellent stuff!
Transmute really is without a doubt my favorite mechanic. Imprint is probably second for me but man transmute does so much for your deck. A flicker deck is really the one CC deck archetype that I've yet to give a go myself but this deck looks like a blast.
A great deck idea, I have just realized my obeka blink deck had a similar thought process. It is a mix of thief, sneak attack and blink. It is still janky but at leat I'm having fun
Glad to see this video! picked up your decklist a week ago, and it is definitely my playstyle and will put some more time into it. I am trying to figure out my own unique pet card to play around that I can build something unique from, might be a while till i find it since you already got astral slide covered and I love this card
This is so incredibly cool. I keep tinkering with Adun Oakenshield, since I have a copy. It's all goofy cycling, channel, and evoke cards with a really aggressive ramp package. A combination of recursion to hand and to the battlefield effects makes it tick: re-using really specific effects provides the toolbox to keep threats at bay, and the late game is a non-stop deluge of beefy creatures.
Astral Slide rules, but I've been having a ball trying to do without. The commander might not be efficient, but he's good enough at what the deck wants to do once I've ramped, and it's my favorite deck to yap about.
Terisare's Devastation is something that didn't click, though. I'm going to slip it into my current maybe pile, because it plays so well with the theme. Love to see it.
I’d love to build a cube in this way, It would be super fun to have this conversation every time you draft
TRANSMUTE MENTIONED!!!!!
congrats u have just convinced a jaded grumpy ex-player sick of synergy piles to brew a new deck
Oh you'd ADORE my Sefris deck that resolves around Ratadrabik.
sounds cool, could you share?
@joshuabishop2728 ty for asking, could you give me some time to update the mozfield list? Been a while since I keep putting new swaps on paper
babe, wake up, the snail of salubriousness has made a video
Me who just wants to make a hydra deck with monstrous onslaught for the funny one shot.
This deck sounds like a mashup of my two favorite constructed decks, Astral Slide and Esper Teachings, and as such I'm going to make it my entire playgroup's problem.
This deck makes me so happy. The first deck I ever built entirely from the ground up was a Sharuum deck with Danse of the Manse and God-Pharaoh's Gift.
Before I ever saw your first video on your Cycling deck I ended up building my own Naya Cycling deck. During my deck building process I've ended up following a similar journey in how I've build the deck. I've recently gone back to rebuild the deck to try a different feel to it and I've ended up on a CMC > 3 deck with the goal to cascade into either Astral Drift, Astral Slide, or Enlightened Tutor due to the large amounts of enchantments I have in the deck. It's probably my Favorite deck and one I've had around since I built it a few years ago.
I was brewing this archetype while going through your deck earlier today, wth.
I love how you put this deck together
I don't know if this might be a neat include in your deck or not, but the 4 mana blue enchantment Dreams of the Dead is a neat reanimation enchantment for esper decks. It can only revive black and white creatures, and it gives whatever it reanimates a cumulitive upkeep cost of 2 mana that exiles the creature if it isn't paid, but your astral slide and escape route flicker effects can offset that since those cumulative upkeep costs go away if the revived creature gets flickered.
I built a Teneb deck with a similar midset like 5 years ago, and I still love the deck to bits
I always wanted to build a unique deck like this... but just am not that creative. Good at research... but just can't find anything cool for myself. Your ability to build something so cool is inspiring.
would love to see you play this and all of your amazing builds someday
You are the only commander creator I enjoy watching. I do not play the format anymore, but love hearing how to tackle this format. Do you assist fans with building decks? I have a dream commander deck that focuses on story telling and not winning. It's commanders are Silvar and Trynn. The idea is that humans gather in fear as the plane they live in is terrifying. They struggle for control against their gods and vampire oligarchs. The story ends with a glorious gathering of humans which unit to destroy their fear, or succumb to it as they are all consumed by their greedy overlords.
Commie Commander here,
Oversold Cemetery is so overlook in commander. I pretty much ran it all the time in my black decks on principal. It always gets me value.
While not being a style of deck I imagine myself building, it looks pretty cool to play. The combination of synergies look awesome too
0:52 You know what else is MASSIVE
Jungle
This reminds me of a couple decks I built last year. The first one is Yoshimaru/Francisco with a lurrus companion, but because I don't play CEDH I leaned into some of the more casual themes present, so the deck turned into a really strange the legends +1/+1 counter aristocrats aggro deck, and honestly I'm still not quite sure how it works. The other one started by looking at the card insidious roots, and wanting to build a deck that takes advantage of every part of the card. I ended up building Tormod/Reyhan. Self mill is a pretty well established archetype, but it was really weird to build the deck to have as many instances of cards leaving the graveyard as possible, and of course this means dredge and Hogaak are even better than usual. But then there's the +1/+1 counter theme, an overlap consisting mostly of Reyhan, Voralz, and Thran Vigil.
I love cycling, esp the LOTR land cycling dudes. Fantastic in my Karador deck, or really any mass reanimator or Landfall shell. I've also been messing with them in any Keruga Companion brew I'm on, just to stay active in those early turns.
Literally four hours ago I was wanting to try and make an Esper cycling deck... this will be my inspiration.
Half this decklist is my Sydri deck, right down to Filigree Angel and Magister Sphinx, but I just have Conjurer's Closet for them instead of Slide. Awesome deck!
After watching this video, I went through onslaught block and found 3 cards that inspired me to make a deck, there was a surprising amount of cards in there that are interesting and fun
1999 to 2003 is a great era of MTG, there are a whole lot of gems in there
My dream deck is one that no matter what is happening you have a plan. Like Batman and the Justice League.
It’s not about winning, it’s about making your opponents know that it was hopeless the entire time.
This deck is a great example of all that is goofy and awesome about commander
I love this kind of decks
99 deeply interconnected pieces that do stuffs
I did the same (although admittedly to a much lesser degree) with my werewolf tribal
-Went Naya because rule of laws help me keep the puppies on the backside
-you know, werewolves are humans on the front and non humans on the back... Winota!
-i run Rocco as my commander and a decent number of elves that happen to help my creature based strategy... Voja
And so on I kept adding pieces and now is this mismatched pile of humans werewolves wolves and elves that is actually really great at being an aggro deck in commander
Oh and I run primal surge because why not so picking my interactions was a challenge too
My difficult brew has been Clement the Worrywort frog blink typal. Frogs generally come in 2 flavors; frogs that want to grow via counters, and frogs that have ETBs, usually putting a counter on another creature. You'd think this would set the play pattern up pretty clearly, play some low curve frogs that have etb supports like Sunshower Druid early, play clement, play bigger frogs that want to grow like Twenty-Toed Toad, then bounce the smaller stuff and repeat. The problem is since Clement only let's you bounce creatures with lesser mana value the curve of the deck is super difficult to balance, especially since frogs aren't a well represented creature type. I could always add in creatures of different types to help round things out better, but then it feels like I'm betraying the theme of the deck. I feel like I have so many of the puzzle pieces, I'm just missing a few so having trouble fitting them together