@@thetrinketmage I mean ... when you're new you're faced with overwhelming amount of cards and concepts and strategies etc. So the Edhrec is a lifesaver to get started. Step 2 for me was learning those concepts and then Scryfall syntax, which is amazing. Currently I'm combining Edhrec and Scryfall. Not sure if there's a Step 3
I really like digging scryfall for obscure cards that work perfect in my decks, but you have to know your deck well enough to know what you’re looking for
This is what I do to great results. First time I dropped Roots of Life after playing an Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth in a Trelasarra deck, I turned every head at the table, lol!
I recently surprised someone in my playgroup because I showed him some very specific cards he was looking for, creatures with dragons in the art that aren't dragons. He had no idea you could search for art I'm sure there are plenty of things I haven't seen yet
The high granularity you can get once you know their search syntax is so useful. I basically append -Is:funny and -in:unf to every single search at this point.
My main issue with netdecking is that it often leaves you with a deck full of synergies and combos you may not fully understand. I had a friend that printed a Heliod, Sun Crowned deck and loved it but had no clue what Walking Ballista was doing in the list. He tried to play Heliod like a voltron deck by stacking the counters on him and just attacking with a large, indestructible body that got chump blocked every turn. He got frustrated with the deck and blamed it partially on "weird cards that didn't fit the theme" like Walking Ballista. There's nothing wrong with drawing the wealth of human knowledge at your fingertips, but when you don't figure it out on your own you may not understand why people are running certain cards in their decks. When I told him Walking Ballista sets up an infinite combo that can win the game on the spot, he was floored.
For me edhrec is really good for checking blind spots, see if I've missed a major card, mechanic or deckbuilding angle for a particular commander. Most of the time that is indeed the case, which is why edhrec is just so good. But too often edhrec is filled with a bunch of win-more cards and boring staples (but at least those are often indicated by low or even negative synergy scores). The biggest danger of the "average deck" or when putting all the top recommended cards in your deck is that the commander has more than one way to play it. E.g. Atraxa can be poison, energy, +1/+1, -1/-1, superfriends etc but not all of it at the same time and now you just have a mess of a deck. I mean sure, if I do superfriends and am running doubling season etc. I might as well play a couple of creatures with counters on them, but I'm not going to put ozolith or anything in there because now I'm just dilluting what the deck is trying to do. Case in point: If you click on average deck for atraxa, you'll get poison/infect creatures paired with doubling season and deepglow skate and it's a complete nonbo because the latter two cards won't double up counters on players. But because it's the average deck, a lot of new players (or eternal scrubby netdeckers) will assume doubling season MUST double up infect counters because "why else would it be in the deck?" which probably leads to quite a lot of feel bads.
There’s an insufferable netdecker at my LGS, builds the top list of the durdliest commanders, but doesn’t know or understand the lines which leads to the longest, most pointless turns. I have never seen someone go infinite with Ashaya or soft lock the board with Chun-Li so many times and still manage to lose the game. EDHREC is at its most valuable digging up old jank, or stumbling into someone’s bondage themed Queen Marchesa deck. (Hint: Soul Collector)
I tend to use EDHRec for proportions of spells more than anything else... I too find so many decks simply boring. I considered how to avoid this and implemented what I call the "jank tithe." At least 10% of all the nonbasic land cards in my personal decks need to see play in 10% or less of decks on the EDHRec page. Frequently, the cards I'm putting in are just nostalgic, fun, old, or weird. It just makes for better games, but I'm always staying competitive. It also helps to spice up EDHRec.
Agreed on the idea of only picking unpopular cards, but proportion of spells doesn't look that great imo, the average player run less lands than they should've (check out channel fireball's article to know how many you should run, because most run 30-33 on any of them, which is a bad idea for medium-high curve decks and also run way too few removal, which edhrec is unfavorable against, as people play different removal more often than different synergy pieces, and due to that, removal is ranked lower and there is even less than the average deck, looping itself out
My original thought was "meh, who cares?", but you do make a very valid point about playing the most common cards, uploading it to a site, then EDHRec taking that data. I never really thought about that because I rarely ever upload my decklists to sites. I do tend to use EDHRec to look up cards for commanders that I may not have thought of or known about, but I've run into a very similar issue recently - staples. I've been wanting to build a dragon deck, since I have a bunch of dragons just sitting in my binder, and decided on Rith, Liberated Primeval. While scrolling through EDHRec to find what cards may work good with him, well, I ran into a lot of the same stuff that every deck has (Beast Within, Swords to Plowshares, Farseek, Cultivate, etc). It basically turned into sifting through the staples to find more commander/theme specific cards. I do almost exclusively use the "Themes" filter now. A great example is my Meren deck. Meren has over 12k decks, which isn't really helpful. That said, filtering on the "Zombie" theme (which is what I'm building), you get 30 decks. I think it was maybe 12 when I first looked into it. That has a lot better recommendations without a lot of the bloat.
Yeah, it creates this effect where the *least* played "most played card" (for creatures in Krenko, it's "Imperial Recruiter" at 16%) becomes vastly overrepresented, and any creatures that are just as synergistic or relevant but *didn't* make the cut-off, trail behind. What's the next most popular Krenko creature after Imperial Recruiter? EDHRec suppresses that (provided you don't have filters applied), ensuring that more decks slot in Imperial Recruiter. More decks get made with that data, the gap between Imperial Recruiter and the rest of the relevant Krenko creatures widens.
Forget it if you are on the EDHREC page for a precon commander, a majority of the top cards come from people reposting the base precon. The filter section is great for specific strategies though. Building Atraxa Level Up or Energy is very, very different from the usual infect, +1/+1, or super friends builds. I can’t tell you how many times I will see another Obeka deck play a little bit of everything, Sneak Attacking big threats in, taking extra turns but being unable to capitalize on it because all their creatures were ETB focused, Myriad creatures without untap outlets for Obeka, Goryo’s Vengences and Footsteps of the Goryo but without Reanimate and Animate Dead, and random theft cards thrown in, all culminating into a hodgepodge without good focus, it’s all skim from EDHREC. I’m sure there are plenty of other decks just like that. I’m never satisfied with a craft until I’ve found that one unique card from the depths of Skryfall. Did you guys know that Fraying Line can act as a 4 cmc exile creature boardwipe in any deck?
I feel that precon bit. I was trying to overhaul my upgraded chishiro precon into something that's actually good, so i went to edhrec and all i saw was cards i had already cut cuz they came in the precon and i didn't like them in the deck
This has done a great job of explaining to me why I have such a hard time finding appropriate draw and removal for all my decks. I start on scryfall for the deck theme, then I go to EDHrec to find fun includes, and then I'm trying to cut 35 cards from the list because I didn't figure out where I was going to put the cards that actually make the deck function. Or I don't even know what those cards are, because they never wandered into my options.
I started the game only a couple years ago, and learning not to hit Average Deck on edhrec was the turning point where I started to enjoy the game. It's still a useful tool, but it's no substitute for crafting what you actually want to play
I’m glad someone explained this before I took a microphone and said it myself. It is very normal, and very encouraged, to netdeck first. Someone already has done a Mogis Minotaur tribal deck, no need to reinvent the wheel there. The problem becomes when someone takes the netdeck “as gospel”, i.e. “that shouldn’t go there cause it’s less synergy on blah blah blah”. It’s those moments that I try to embody the Ted Lasso meme “You can do whatever you like!” 😅 Solid video, 10/10
I do think any net decking isn't creative, but as you said, that's not bad necessarily either. But yes, there is bad net decking where you just build a pile of generic popular stuff with a tool that doesn't really tell you what goes together and why. The data is limited though it can still be helpful. On the other hand, you can try and be creative and build a bad deck.
As regards netdecking in competitive formats: It's not "wrong", but it does fall into many of the same pitfalls that netdecking for edh does. If you asked me whether I'd rather play against a tournament full of people who'd properly brewed & tested a bunch of tier 2 or even tier 3 decks, or play against a bunch of people who'd just netdecked a bunch of event winning decks....... I'd choose to play against the netdeckers any day of the week. Not because it would be a better tournament (it wouldn't), but because my chances of victory would skyrocket. Just like with commander you can't just take a deck off the shelf and expect to play it well right away. You need to get reps in with the deck to learn its nuances. You need to understand why particular cards have been chosen, whether or not alternative choices are available, & if you should consider using those alternative choices. I like the car analogy..... so after buying the Porsche, you need to learn how to drive it properly before taking it to a racetrack. You also need to consider any modifications that you may want to have done in order that the car better suits your driving style. If you're taking a net-deck, and taking the time to learn it (and most likely making some tweaks & changes along the way) then as far as I'm concerned you're not really netdecking any more. If you're just ripping a list of the internet & taking it to an event, then you're not something that the majority of competent players need to worry about.
Pretty much. Please use your netdeck that you just put together and haven't even practiced prior to the tournament. My 5C homebrew will rip apart the Zoo Leyline deck that you just ripped from a list. I know EXACTLY how to beat you; but you don't have a clue about what my deck even does. 😂
The problem with EDHREC is that is an aggregate site, so it gets data from all decklists. So sometimes you see some non-optional or just anti-synergy cards in there. Hell look at Atraxa because of all the ways you can play her, her EDHREC page is all over the place. Hell I run a Sixth Doctor and Romana II deck(326 decks, two are mine lol) and I see Roaming Throne as a card in some, despite the card not working at all with Sixth Doctor.
For adding the spice I always like to try and find a way to copy something, copy an opponents trigger, spell, ability etc. The new(ish) return the favour spree card has been the start of so many great moments in games (like copying an etali trigger). The new red Flare of duplication is also neat for this type of effect if a deck can run it. You never know how copying something not in your decks main theme or colours will work out with your cards! (also an easy way to copy spells that aren't in your budget too)
My favorite commander deck I built was a Kinnan deck, and it's because I got the card out of a box when Ikoria first came out and I built the deck with what I had, and I really wish that I could recreate that kind of organic growth to a deck that I did with my Kinnan deck
Idc about netdecking. The MOST annoying thing for me is someone who doesnt know what they're playing, and just mindlessly searches for cards. Before you even pick up your library to search you should know what you're grabbing, Before you even untap your land you should know what you're playing. I'd rather play against a control/mill cedh deck with a competent owner than play against a complete clone of a tournament winning deck behind the hands of someone who couldnt even tell me how many lands are in the deck.
One thing I find annoying is a deck that is just 100% staples with zero game plan. Now there's nothing wrong with goodstuff but this takes it waaaaay too far. Usually this is a self-solving issue since the deck does piss all
@williamdrum9899 "ill demonic tutor for a sol ring, cast it, tap, and cast a fellwar stone, tapping it for one blue, casting brainstorm, draw three, ill put a signet and swan song back on top, keeping a Rhystic study in my hand."
I'm sometimes guilty of this; but mostly because I have a rather extensive collection, play maybe once a month, and cycle between playing 15 different decks. Almost every month I rip a deck apart and build a new one...so when I'm playing a deck I haven't played in a while and I tutor looking for answers, I forget what's in the deck.
In a weird way, I just learned this lesson in real time like a week ago. And if I'm just wrong lol please feel free to tell me. I'm a newer player, and I built a Tom Bombadil deck not too long ago. I'd had Tom for a while, but didn't like my card pool available to start a build without having to buy too many new cards, plus I couldn't figure out a good wincon beyond, "idk, he's basically unkillable". Fast forward to the assassin's creed set, my buddy gives me a pack since he knew I wasn't planning on buying into the set. I get one card that immediately convinced me to start the build around Tom; Excalibur, Sword of Eden. Incidentally I actually got a pretty good saga for it in the pack, for 7 cards, got really lucky lol but I digress. Anyway, I build the deck with what I have, with the plan to keep working on it over time. When I get ready to go hunt for my first round of upgrades, I check EDHrec, and after finding some good sagas to upgrade to, I search out Excalibur, and find it's apparently got negative synergy, and is rated about on par with swiftboots for a commander you want to be hexproof already lol. Now, am I crazy? Because I've cast that card for free (fyi it's casting cost reduces from 12 for the cmc of each historic card on your field, Tom is 5, and two other sagas made the other 7), only had to pay for the equip cost, then had a 14/4 hexproof indestructible commander that has won me the game. Now seriously, am I crazy? Is that not synergy? Lol
I like this video, but I do have to point out one thing... Einstein was definitely one of the physicists that actively disproved Newton's laws of gravity :)
I debated changing the example to my field which is finance but I didn’t think anyone would know who they are. So I decided it was funnier if I just said I don’t know about physics
I think the more accurate way of phrasing the Einstein bit was that he built upon *Maxwell's* equations, to just refer to newton instead of Maxwell is like saying the hybrid mana legends from New Capenna were based on the original legends from the, well, legends set, sure you needed legends to create what that supertype of creatures are but more relevantly, it was the advent of hybrid mana that allowed for those creatures in New Capenna to have such unique mana costs.
You know it’s funny that this popped up. I’ve watched a few of your videos and they’re good! I was playing my Totentanz rat tribal that I pretty much just net-decked the other day and wondered why it didn’t really do much of anything. I’ve changed things over the last few months but it’s mostly just what I’ve seen online. And this video pretty much explains it, it’s just a pile of cards that “sort of” do rat things. This video has really helped me look at my deck building differently! Nice job mate 💪🤙
My spice is adding cards that give massive value when they hit the field, like trumpeting carnosaur, chimil if carnosaur is already in the deck, ways to blink the carnosaur. I think discover is a widely underutilised mechanic and it's massively powerful.
I normally just netdeck from a deckbuilding site like moxfield, makes a good starting point. I've done it a few times, makes tinkering with the deck a lot easier when there's a solid foundation already
100% after with you. It is the best defined video about that topic, nothing to add. Putting the extra steps in deckbuilding makes a deck your own and this makes it unique even if there exists another one. I need challenges for decks, because I can't decide on one - so if you have one, please tell me :)
I have been brewing up a 5 color goad deck with all the impetus cards! That could be pretty fun! You can play an enchantress sub theme and maybe play a Kaima the fractured calm hidden commander if you want to be really spicy
4:13 This is what I did with my favourite Pauper Deck I built, Ephem Mono White Aggro. I'd been playing Pauper for months so I got used to the meta and knew about what I needed for most decks. I didn't have the best winrate, obviously, but even though it wasn't a meta deck, I had a pretty decent win rate regardless. Facing the Lotleth deck and watching it fold to a single Epheramte on the mainboard Dawnbringer was very funny and happened more than you'd think (Hence why I had it there against both that and for Caw Gates to help against Journey to Nowhere which is just amazing removal in Pauper). It was a deck I built for fun during that bit where MTGO crashed for a few days so we got about a week of free master pass and I wanted to use it while I had it.
When I discovered EDHRec, I thought it was awesome, but even I never used it to craft a deck comepletely out of the 90/80/70/60% of top cards used. Like "sure" who wouldn't want to add a Farewell into every White Deck imaginable? But when I was making my first and second EDH decks, the only time I was browsing EDHRec was just to see what people were putting in. My Tolsimir Wolfblood Deck was under 300 decks, so I THOUGHT i was get a HUGE bonus knowing what the other 300 decks were... They were all just "Mono White/Green" Good Stuff, in which I turned to YT to look for more creative ideas and the Most Creative at the time was to put ALL the Multi W/G Creatures to maximize Tolsimir's Anthems, I love it way more than adding all the "Mono White and Mono Green" cards that I stricted my Deck to purely White AND Green, not White OR Green.
The thing that never crossed my mind with EDHRec is the feedback loop it creates. Such a great point. I’m professionally a software engineer, and that is something that creates a data problem. It’s not on EDHREC itself, but the limitations of the tool. While it has done a lot of great things for making deck building more accessible, it has become so large that it creates a feedback loop and leads to decks that play the same in a format where that isn’t as needed.
Have you ever thought about discussing methods of going about deckbuilding? I'm personally a really big fan of the 8x8 method (choose 8 things you want your deck to do, dedicate 8 cards to each thing, then 35 lands + commander) as a starting point and then tuning from there! I'm also glad you pointed out the "don't pick the most popular commander in a theme" thing. I'm actually writing a script right now for a video about how the Infect Commanders are some of the worst commanders for an infect strategy!
Sometimes, a commander’s page Top Cards and High Synergy Cards are filled with goodstuff, and that’s just useless information. Yes, I know that Counterspell and Swords to Plowshares are good. Is this really what this deck wants to do the most? I hope not.
I totally agree with your video. Nevertheless I have a Krenko, Mob Boss Deck were nearly all creatures are Goblin Lords or these so-called Synergy Pieces, simply because they are often times the best goblins you can find. However I still play my normal Removal Suite, Card-Draw with Skullclamp and others. Furthermore I included cards like Brightstone Ritual, Battle Hymn, ans Skirk Prospector as a way to produce a ton of Mana and finish everyon of with Crackle with Power as an alternative Win Con. I can also win by simply overruning my opponents or by sacrificing all my Goblins to cards like Goblin Bombardment.
@@thetrinketmageYeah it's relatively good balanced. I just wanted to point out, that for tribes like Goblins or Zombies, you often come to situations were the list might look like you only picked the best cards from EDHRec when the tribe itself is so overloaded with these synergy cards, that building it in a balanced way leads to playing these Lords, since they help the deck in a tremendous way. Still you need to look out for the "vegetables" of your deck like Ramp, Removal (even though I like to play a bit less removal than most as a personal preference) and Card-Draw. My first draws of the deck were suboptimal, simply because it lacked Card-Draw. I still feel that the Mono-Red Card-Draw I play, e.g. Thrill of Possibility and others, is somewhat lacking. The Ramp is also still somewhat problematic. I know I still need to play more Ramp but I'm at an interpasse what to take out for this. But I'm not a big fan of playing Vanquisher's Banner for the Card-Draw potential, because I don't think it fits the direction of making use of the Tokens and Krenko's Ability I want to go. So I'm still looking for better options. If you're interested you can find my current list here: www.moxfield.com/decks/V3J1wlSyEEauzMAA7ZixtQ.
@@thetrinketmageThis seems like a good addition to the deck. I will definitely try it out and see how it works out. With all my Tokens being somewhat around 3/3 or 4/4 the double strike could finish out the Game quicker and it removes the blockers.
@@christophknorr4635 In monored, you card advantage will mostly be impulsive draw. In Commander, card advantage is probably the most important thing if you want to win. I wouldn't really consider something like Thrill of Possibility or Cathartic Reunion, because you are even on cards after playing it. For your deck, I would recommend Connecting the Dots, Demand Answers is a strictly better Thrill of Possibility and Inspired Tinkering, which feels like a 2 mana draw three. Also, there is always The One Ring... that card is kinda busted in EDH I would definitely cut Bloodmark Mentor and some of the Thrill of Possibility effects. Also Vulshok Factory doesn't seem great to me Hope this helps!
My favorite way to build a commander deck is to find a really weird partner combo and just roll with it. My favorite example is probably my Tormod + Alana oops all phoenixes deck. It’s super fun to play and it can always maintain a board state thanks to being able to bounce back from board wipes super quickly. Finding weird niches is always super fun to do, and will lead to much more interesting games then “I tap krenko I win”
whenever i bust out my mutate theme deck with surgeon general commander, the silver border mutate commander, everyone is always in love with it because they see a ton of synergies and cards they never saw before and im constantly asked to to read my cards because it isnt the same pile of slop everyone else is running. People at my game store had no idea kobolds even existed until they played against me which i found crazy.
I feel like something missing from a lot of sites where people post decks is commentary. I've seen a lot of decks where they are posted without any context. I think it's important to know what this deck sees as a threat and how it wants to use some of its kit. It's really helpful when you are making substitutions to a deck you found online. If there is a big creature that gives draw does the deck want the card for the big creature or for the draw, if I have to replace it would a small creature with the same amount of draw be more helpful than a big creature with less draw. Do you burn a resource to get your commander out asap or do you wait and save it for later. I find that to be the most useful element of looking at other people's decks is what their plans are. That often helps me come up with my own plans. When I just see a list I can guess (and generally I might be right) but it's hard to know what the deck wants to do.
I value the advice for not getting sucked into the EDHRec vortex, but I still think most people who use the term "net decking" are the same type of snobs who would scoff at someone buying clothes from a department store instead of a boutique or a thrift store. The same type of people who would never buy what's on tap and only drink craft beers. They think they're better than everyone else because *they* don't just follow the crowd. They were playing Atraxa *before* she got popular.... 🙄
You make a lot of excellent points! I've been playing magic for over a year now and have fallen into the net-decking trap. EDHREC has been the father of many of my decks due to my lack of familiarity with Magic's long history of cards and It was after my 8th deck that I began to wonder, "Is this the right way to do it?" This video really helped me answer that question and I really just have to say, thank you. Absolutley loved the vid, keep it up :)
I don't have the time, skill, or money to build my own decks. IF you refuse to play against net deckers then you won't play me. but with that said, I do adapt the decks with time.
EDHREC is a repository for tones of information, but to make good use of it, you need to understand what that information means and how it got their. For example, understanding the potential for feedback loops and looking beyond just the inclusion percentage.
"Folds to one board wipe" is precisely how I'd describe a lot of games I've been in, but being totally incapable of dealing with one (1) hatebear or stax piece is another common issue these decks have. When I got back into EDH I built an ultrabudget azorius pile with some varied interaction, soft stax like blind obedience, and a few board wipes. I had to stop playing the deck into blind pods because so many tables could not handle a gamestate that wasn't getting to spend all of your mana every turn and casting your commander on curve. A lot of decks literally scoop to getting their commander Out of Timed. How do 3 players in all 5 colors not have 1 disenchant effect between them? EDHrec is a marvelous tool to see what the most obvious synergies are before you hit the books on scryfall, but it is WORTHLESS for giving people the actual scaffolding needed to create a deck with a curve that has a gameplan with and without its commander, as well as the requisite interaction to protect its pieces or fight for a dominant board position.
The biggest issue i have with netdecking beyond it's just boring to be able to guess the whole deck the moment you see their first landrop. It also makes you predictable, people can tech for you. But it also doesn't teach you how to build decks. If you never failed building a deck you don't learn what to do right or wrong so if your netdeck is not working out for you, well you just spent a few hundred bucks on something you don't know how to fix or change until someone else does it for you.
I think netdecking can be good if you're struggling to find a base to start on. I personally like to try to build on more unorthodox fashions with certain Commanders by utilizing their abilities in a way that maybe someone hasn't thought of. I run a Dromar the Banisher deck where the whole theme is weird colourlace cards so I can constantly cyc Rift the board and not my own. Most decks I've seen of that nature utilize the fact that you're rifting your own board too with leaves/enters the battlefield effects
I let random pet cards or strategies completely influence my deck building strategies, sometimes it works sometimes not so much. When hoarding broodlord was announced I wanted it to work with prosper so bad I added young pyromancer and sedgemoor witch to make tokens in the early game to power out the broodlord easily when i got there. Right now the deck has a heavy discard theme with inti, conspiracy theorist, veronica dissident scribe, and some card draw discard outlets like sieze the spoils. Some of my favorite pet card adds being call the bloodline and dying to serve.
Building your own decks was the fun of magic not copying a deck built by someone else, sure some guidance is alright but at the end of the day the whole point is the journey you go through to improve as a player and the thoughts and strategies you work out for yourself to improve as a player even if you just play kitchen table with friends it’s ok, the whole point it to make something your own and be proud of what you achieved through your own hard work
Hau Tou looks like he would be amazing with Doors of Durin thanks for the card recommendation. Onto the topic, yeah while I don't like net decking personally since I enjoy the deck brewing and testing. Using other people decks can be a good tool to test your deck. I might see a deck on game knights or some other youtube channel and might use one of their decks when play testing. Or once I built the deck and tested it until I think it is on a good level might look at deck profiles other people use. Though we might have different strategies or they might thought of a useful card that I didn't. I mean to spice up some of my decks while play testing is trying the commander as a voltron style deck for example Anzrag, the Quake-Mole or Umbris, Fear Manifest. In my play testing I found Umbris got really big on it's own pretty easily so giving it evasion and protection made sense compared to the tribal version. Same went for Anzrag, it was pointless to block him unless you can trade so giving him first strike or double strike made him more dangerous and green has a lot of protection spells. So getting out other big creatures out to swing with him felt slow and pointless. That and Wrecking Ogre's bloodrush is an instant knock out combo out of nowhere.
There's a Krenko mob boss decklist I'm building, but I wanna replace a couple cards. The decklist has Ragavan in it, and I don't want him because he's kinda unfun. I don't know what to replace him with, though. I might add a bit more removal
I dont play mtg, but this is a universal concept in trading card games and coming from yugioh it pretty interesting. Netdecking in yygiih id the standard. Its very difficult for the average player to build a new deck from scratch because of how specific wording matters and how every deck has to have something to end on or some sort of combo on turn one. Even still, everything in this video still stands true for yugioh. Netdecking is a starting line, not the finish.
Yo I couldn't agree more but (don't take too much offense plz i mean no evil) isn't this video the same thing as netdecking? Most (maindly edh) YT'ers i know post the exact same video...
I think you'd have a point if he said to himself, "What video should I make? Hmmm ... let me go look and see what popular videos others made ..." I'm guessing he didn't do that?
@@punkypinko2965 hard to confirm or deny, just like netdeckers. When I just got into EDH (I was terrible at deckbuilding), I wanted to make up decks without help. But still when I entered the decklist, I found out at least half of it was on the top of edhrec too.
I don’t take offense at all! I’m posting my thoughts online and criticism is welcome. But no I have not seen any other videos about this from any other channels. I assumed other people have talked about this but I didn’t think much of it. Do you have a channel in mind that has covered the topic?
I really only watch Salubrious snail, TCC, Pleasant Kenobi, and goldfish and I don’t recall anything about net decking. I also didn’t go looking for it either. I just share my ideas with friends I don’t look at what other channels do
Amen. The feedback loop this process creates leads to uncreative decks and ultimately uncreative players. And it can be very frustrating for new players who hit the wall where their lazily curated piles don't just solve the complicated problems that show up in random games.
I just built a mindskinner mill control deck that works really well and I think that’s because I did a lot of the stuff you talked about and I did that just by having spent the last few years building decks
I don't mind net decking from an individuals deck, specifically if the person included an interview or explanation. The main point is I begin understanding what the purpose of the inclusion is and what synergies it lends itself too. I've gone through 3 different outdated sultai Sidisi deck lists and made decisions about what I wanted to do. I chose some core cards, but completely changed the deck over time. Using other people's templates helped me to understand the importance of replacement effects in the strategy and I currently use completely different combos and win cons than I started out with. Tldr - learn why a card is in a list and how to use it before adding the card.
Short answer: Yes Long answer: Yes, because to some degree it's hard not to. Some synergies are just that obvious. Some people do feel that netdecking is generally bad for a game (and I'm one of them) but it's more of a frustration towards a larger problem TCGs have in general, where creativity is "punished" not by any individual or group in particular but the overall card pool interacting with itself.
I'm not good at making decks on my own 💀 I use a combination of edh rec, mtg goldfish and commander spellbok to make my decks. On edh I find my commander and look at the decks specifically then I plug them into commander spellbook to see what it's missing to have some kind of combo that's not too high power. This helps me a lot to make a decent ok deck just to enjoy with friends. If a card is WAY too expensive I'll look up good replacement options and that will always shift the deck a bit too.
I did this I did dargo tevish where I pretty much had too build it all from hand cause there was no decks that were doing super similar things basically I trubo out dargo on turn 2 and do some agro stuff and then I finish the game by doing some aristocrat things by sacrificing my board too deal dmg or using tevish too consistently outdraw everyone or my favorite play is too sac my entire board then cast blasphemous act and then fallow it up with a 1 mana dargo its also a 50 dollar budget deck so i was insanely restriceted and really had too balance how many cards i was using too push out dargo vs everything else
The reasons this effects happens because people are a bit lazy. There ia always creativity even with looking at the most common cards. If you just do top 50 cards for a commander. The deck probably wont function the way you expect. But human lazieness is bot something we can fix. But you do give a good point about new pkayers. Edh rec cast has mentioned this in their cast about the precon effect in the stats amd how yo mitigate the atatistcs bias that goes on by what youve said in the beginning. Good video I rarely use edh rec. But will look from time to time to see if I missed anything
It’s unfortunate because I feel the need to net deck, I usually just upgrade precons using EDH rec and friend recommendations but when I try to make it myself I get stomped on by the rest of the pods that are net decking.
Im currently brweing up a Mr. Orfeo Warrior tribal deck and holy crap, the amount of power matters and tribal staples make it very easy to have a jund goodstuff deck. Im trying not to, and finding synergistic card draw and removal in a less supported theme can be tough
I hate netdecking. Looking at these suggestions for common themes and to find high synergy cards is good, but don't copy 1 for 1 every card that's boring as hell
I know alot of people that use edhrec and I don't know anyone that just "picks the most common cards" everyone looks at cards that are played and makes their own version , same with cedh posts when I make cedh decks of the strongest and most popular commanders I find 4 or 5 tournament lists and hand pick the cards that make it my style and I don't consider either "net decking" net decking should be considered buying an exact list offline of someone else if you add your input at all its your own build and using other people's builds to see cards you might not know from history because you didn't play st a certain point or haven't seen new cards that came out shouldn't be seen as a negative
I'm pretty skeptical of these claims. Looking at edhrec for krenko, card draw and removal is featured pretty heavily. I'm willing to bet many edhrec pages have more of that than people (+salubrioussnail) recently seem to be thinking. This is on top of the fact that it's not really clear at all how 1-1 decks in the wild irl are with edhrec pages, it's a separate question, but a very emperical one. I'm genuinely curious though, what would a non-boring krenko deck look like to you, provided that it had appropriate amounts of removal and draw?
Well if a deck had a reasonable amount of removal and card draw the deck is now more fun cause your deck doesn’t lose after one blast act and you can play the game. For me reasonable amount of removal and card draw is at the 10+ mark depending on the deck and I don’t often see that at the top of edhrec often and I don’t see that in decks people play for sure
On average, players who complain about netdecking are worse than those who netdeck. There are many reasons for this. They're better self-discovered than shared.
I mean i use edhrec but just for recommendations or to find cards ive never before. If i dont like a card or it doesnt fit my playstyle i dont care if its in 100% of decks that commander uses. And i certainty dont let edhrec tell me what commander i should use lol. Ive absolutely torn apart decks because i didnt find them fun. Winning in casual is a consolation prize. If i can do something big and dumb im happy. (The great aurora, master of waves + mystic reflections)
My main issue with netdecking is that it kinda destroys one of the main ways of expression TCG's have. You're not facing your opponent's deck, your facing a deck some third party made on the internet. Which basically means that you can't even try to make your own deck without taking on the entire internet simultaneously. And that just kinda ruins the fun.
Netdecking is fine... if you're ALL playing with something netdecked. I like seeing the silly shit people come up with on their own, so personally i dont netdeck at all. Im making a deck that people don't want to play against, but its also 40% jank ...
You contradicted yourself in this video, if someone goes to EDHREC and makes a deck with only EDHREC cards it's the same as going to MTG Goldfish and copying that. One has to learn how to play the commander first and than change cards out as they see fix. Some commanders are just One-dimensional no matter how you play them.
In the past I definitely fell into this trap, and I'd like to think I've gotten out of it a bit. I would add all the coolest cards I saw and then cut down from there, which always ended up with no removal or protection. Now I start from the other end and only give myself 50 cards to work with, because you're always going to need about half of your deck to be lands, ramp, draw, and interaction. Having a much tighter restriction on the cards that are actually on theme makes me think a lot harder about what to include, and cuts down on time too
That's not a netdecking problem, really. That's an annoyance with the data collection methods for EDHRec being flawed, but you're putting the onus onto players, rather than the people responsible for researching. Those copied lists will always be in working and slowly tinkered with from there, as they test them. People shouldn't even be expected to play their own original decks. Personally, I reckon asking people to play original lists, and decks made without outside assistance to be really weird rule 0 conditions to play under. I'd never disqualify someone from playing at a pod because the list was netdecked. I mean, plenty of people play precons without changing anything.
I just dont do it. Heck, i dont search anything up. A casual format does not need a meta Game would be way more fun if more people just played with what they owned instead of going online and buying decks of cards they dont own so they can follow a meta. Just play a precon and stop trying to be ”cutting edge“ with the way you rub other players noses in their losses
On another note, there's nothing more boring in a game to me, that all the other players echochambering the phrase “yeah. I pulled this off edhrec“ I roll my eyes because I know that means it's gonna be very standard trash and nothing special. It's an infinite wincon deck, with a sol ring in it, and it does some minor technique that just leads to them searching for a wincon. They're all the same. It's sooooo boring to listen to them discuss them because each players says the same thing. I'm the only one who ever actually has something to say about my decks construction where I'm not just blowing smoke up my own ass talking about expensive cards I slipped into it. I mention what ISN'T in my deck, and i talk about how I'm not playing all of the other expected cards for whatever my commander is. When I pull out a gluntch deck, and they all say OH LOOK GROUP HUG DECK And I go ha no, just the commander is. The rest of the deck only cares about me.
9:30 are you really not lazy if you netdeck modern lists? What's the difference? I consider boring playing against the same atraxa infect deck over and over the same way that I consider boring playing against the same rakdos scam deck over and over.
The difference is intention. In modern I am expecting you to play the most powerful deck you can come up with and you are using every tool you have to your advantage. Including the knowledge of other players. In casual commander I assume you are trying to have fun and make a cool deck. Though in edh you also build on the knowledge of others just to a smaller degree. Like we know 35-37 lands is a reasonable amount. That’s building on prior knowledge
Let me clarify: Durr edh rec makes every deck boring because those decks are bad and uninteresting. One of two solutions, copy a deck 1:1 so that your deck at least works and in all likelihood will be more interesting than the edhrec default deck. How’s that?
@@thetrinketmage I've seen people's decklists on Reddit. Its pretty much power 9 versions of EDH Rec decks. Esper Sentinel isn't finding its way out of a white deck unless you will yourself out of not playing it. The most interesting decks I've seen are ones made by casual players who use Scryfall to search for odd synergies. But you dont find "Decklists" that way.
Simple advice fren. Stop playing Commander. It heavily relies on staples to the point there's no reason not to netdeck. As casual as commander players claim they are, the format is anathema to kitchen table magic at this point. If you want some wacky kitchen table hijinks do a fallen empires draft or something fun and goofy like that.
Commander doesn't not rely on nearly the same staples as modern or legacy when you consider it being singleton and 100 cards leads to alot more variation.
it's funny that alot of magic players today probably don't know what netdecking is because it's basically the main way to play magic now.
I feel like people don’t consider grabbing the top of edhrec net decking cause it’s very normal for a lot of players for sure!
@@thetrinketmage I mean ... when you're new you're faced with overwhelming amount of cards and concepts and strategies etc. So the Edhrec is a lifesaver to get started. Step 2 for me was learning those concepts and then Scryfall syntax, which is amazing. Currently I'm combining Edhrec and Scryfall. Not sure if there's a Step 3
I really like digging scryfall for obscure cards that work perfect in my decks, but you have to know your deck well enough to know what you’re looking for
I’m really thinking about making a video about scryfall and how to find cards!
This is what I do to great results. First time I dropped Roots of Life after playing an Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth in a Trelasarra deck, I turned every head at the table, lol!
I recently surprised someone in my playgroup because I showed him some very specific cards he was looking for, creatures with dragons in the art that aren't dragons. He had no idea you could search for art
I'm sure there are plenty of things I haven't seen yet
The high granularity you can get once you know their search syntax is so useful. I basically append -Is:funny and -in:unf to every single search at this point.
My main issue with netdecking is that it often leaves you with a deck full of synergies and combos you may not fully understand. I had a friend that printed a Heliod, Sun Crowned deck and loved it but had no clue what Walking Ballista was doing in the list. He tried to play Heliod like a voltron deck by stacking the counters on him and just attacking with a large, indestructible body that got chump blocked every turn. He got frustrated with the deck and blamed it partially on "weird cards that didn't fit the theme" like Walking Ballista. There's nothing wrong with drawing the wealth of human knowledge at your fingertips, but when you don't figure it out on your own you may not understand why people are running certain cards in their decks. When I told him Walking Ballista sets up an infinite combo that can win the game on the spot, he was floored.
For me edhrec is really good for checking blind spots, see if I've missed a major card, mechanic or deckbuilding angle for a particular commander. Most of the time that is indeed the case, which is why edhrec is just so good. But too often edhrec is filled with a bunch of win-more cards and boring staples (but at least those are often indicated by low or even negative synergy scores).
The biggest danger of the "average deck" or when putting all the top recommended cards in your deck is that the commander has more than one way to play it. E.g. Atraxa can be poison, energy, +1/+1, -1/-1, superfriends etc but not all of it at the same time and now you just have a mess of a deck. I mean sure, if I do superfriends and am running doubling season etc. I might as well play a couple of creatures with counters on them, but I'm not going to put ozolith or anything in there because now I'm just dilluting what the deck is trying to do.
Case in point:
If you click on average deck for atraxa, you'll get poison/infect creatures paired with doubling season and deepglow skate and it's a complete nonbo because the latter two cards won't double up counters on players. But because it's the average deck, a lot of new players (or eternal scrubby netdeckers) will assume doubling season MUST double up infect counters because "why else would it be in the deck?" which probably leads to quite a lot of feel bads.
There’s an insufferable netdecker at my LGS, builds the top list of the durdliest commanders, but doesn’t know or understand the lines which leads to the longest, most pointless turns. I have never seen someone go infinite with Ashaya or soft lock the board with Chun-Li so many times and still manage to lose the game.
EDHREC is at its most valuable digging up old jank, or stumbling into someone’s bondage themed Queen Marchesa deck. (Hint: Soul Collector)
I tend to use EDHRec for proportions of spells more than anything else...
I too find so many decks simply boring. I considered how to avoid this and implemented what I call the "jank tithe." At least 10% of all the nonbasic land cards in my personal decks need to see play in 10% or less of decks on the EDHRec page. Frequently, the cards I'm putting in are just nostalgic, fun, old, or weird. It just makes for better games, but I'm always staying competitive. It also helps to spice up EDHRec.
I like that jank tithe! That’s a fun idea
Agreed on the idea of only picking unpopular cards, but proportion of spells doesn't look that great imo, the average player run less lands than they should've (check out channel fireball's article to know how many you should run, because most run 30-33 on any of them, which is a bad idea for medium-high curve decks and also run way too few removal, which edhrec is unfavorable against, as people play different removal more often than different synergy pieces, and due to that, removal is ranked lower and there is even less than the average deck, looping itself out
My original thought was "meh, who cares?", but you do make a very valid point about playing the most common cards, uploading it to a site, then EDHRec taking that data. I never really thought about that because I rarely ever upload my decklists to sites. I do tend to use EDHRec to look up cards for commanders that I may not have thought of or known about, but I've run into a very similar issue recently - staples. I've been wanting to build a dragon deck, since I have a bunch of dragons just sitting in my binder, and decided on Rith, Liberated Primeval. While scrolling through EDHRec to find what cards may work good with him, well, I ran into a lot of the same stuff that every deck has (Beast Within, Swords to Plowshares, Farseek, Cultivate, etc). It basically turned into sifting through the staples to find more commander/theme specific cards. I do almost exclusively use the "Themes" filter now. A great example is my Meren deck. Meren has over 12k decks, which isn't really helpful. That said, filtering on the "Zombie" theme (which is what I'm building), you get 30 decks. I think it was maybe 12 when I first looked into it. That has a lot better recommendations without a lot of the bloat.
Yeah, it creates this effect where the *least* played "most played card" (for creatures in Krenko, it's "Imperial Recruiter" at 16%) becomes vastly overrepresented, and any creatures that are just as synergistic or relevant but *didn't* make the cut-off, trail behind. What's the next most popular Krenko creature after Imperial Recruiter? EDHRec suppresses that (provided you don't have filters applied), ensuring that more decks slot in Imperial Recruiter. More decks get made with that data, the gap between Imperial Recruiter and the rest of the relevant Krenko creatures widens.
Forget it if you are on the EDHREC page for a precon commander, a majority of the top cards come from people reposting the base precon. The filter section is great for specific strategies though. Building Atraxa Level Up or Energy is very, very different from the usual infect, +1/+1, or super friends builds.
I can’t tell you how many times I will see another Obeka deck play a little bit of everything, Sneak Attacking big threats in, taking extra turns but being unable to capitalize on it because all their creatures were ETB focused, Myriad creatures without untap outlets for Obeka, Goryo’s Vengences and Footsteps of the Goryo but without Reanimate and Animate Dead, and random theft cards thrown in, all culminating into a hodgepodge without good focus, it’s all skim from EDHREC. I’m sure there are plenty of other decks just like that.
I’m never satisfied with a craft until I’ve found that one unique card from the depths of Skryfall. Did you guys know that Fraying Line can act as a 4 cmc exile creature boardwipe in any deck?
Atraxa energy sounds really fun
I feel that precon bit. I was trying to overhaul my upgraded chishiro precon into something that's actually good, so i went to edhrec and all i saw was cards i had already cut cuz they came in the precon and i didn't like them in the deck
This has done a great job of explaining to me why I have such a hard time finding appropriate draw and removal for all my decks. I start on scryfall for the deck theme, then I go to EDHrec to find fun includes, and then I'm trying to cut 35 cards from the list because I didn't figure out where I was going to put the cards that actually make the deck function. Or I don't even know what those cards are, because they never wandered into my options.
I started the game only a couple years ago, and learning not to hit Average Deck on edhrec was the turning point where I started to enjoy the game. It's still a useful tool, but it's no substitute for crafting what you actually want to play
I’m glad someone explained this before I took a microphone and said it myself. It is very normal, and very encouraged, to netdeck first. Someone already has done a Mogis Minotaur tribal deck, no need to reinvent the wheel there. The problem becomes when someone takes the netdeck “as gospel”, i.e. “that shouldn’t go there cause it’s less synergy on blah blah blah”. It’s those moments that I try to embody the Ted Lasso meme “You can do whatever you like!” 😅
Solid video, 10/10
I do think any net decking isn't creative, but as you said, that's not bad necessarily either. But yes, there is bad net decking where you just build a pile of generic popular stuff with a tool that doesn't really tell you what goes together and why. The data is limited though it can still be helpful. On the other hand, you can try and be creative and build a bad deck.
As regards netdecking in competitive formats:
It's not "wrong", but it does fall into many of the same pitfalls that netdecking for edh does. If you asked me whether I'd rather play against a tournament full of people who'd properly brewed & tested a bunch of tier 2 or even tier 3 decks, or play against a bunch of people who'd just netdecked a bunch of event winning decks....... I'd choose to play against the netdeckers any day of the week. Not because it would be a better tournament (it wouldn't), but because my chances of victory would skyrocket.
Just like with commander you can't just take a deck off the shelf and expect to play it well right away. You need to get reps in with the deck to learn its nuances. You need to understand why particular cards have been chosen, whether or not alternative choices are available, & if you should consider using those alternative choices.
I like the car analogy..... so after buying the Porsche, you need to learn how to drive it properly before taking it to a racetrack. You also need to consider any modifications that you may want to have done in order that the car better suits your driving style.
If you're taking a net-deck, and taking the time to learn it (and most likely making some tweaks & changes along the way) then as far as I'm concerned you're not really netdecking any more.
If you're just ripping a list of the internet & taking it to an event, then you're not something that the majority of competent players need to worry about.
Pretty much. Please use your netdeck that you just put together and haven't even practiced prior to the tournament. My 5C homebrew will rip apart the Zoo Leyline deck that you just ripped from a list. I know EXACTLY how to beat you; but you don't have a clue about what my deck even does. 😂
The problem with EDHREC is that is an aggregate site, so it gets data from all decklists. So sometimes you see some non-optional or just anti-synergy cards in there. Hell look at Atraxa because of all the ways you can play her, her EDHREC page is all over the place.
Hell I run a Sixth Doctor and Romana II deck(326 decks, two are mine lol) and I see Roaming Throne as a card in some, despite the card not working at all with Sixth Doctor.
Yup just like how you can find myriad landscape in decks with Kozilek and roaming throne with Go-Shintai of life’s origin
For adding the spice I always like to try and find a way to copy something, copy an opponents trigger, spell, ability etc. The new(ish) return the favour spree card has been the start of so many great moments in games (like copying an etali trigger). The new red Flare of duplication is also neat for this type of effect if a deck can run it. You never know how copying something not in your decks main theme or colours will work out with your cards! (also an easy way to copy spells that aren't in your budget too)
My favorite commander deck I built was a Kinnan deck, and it's because I got the card out of a box when Ikoria first came out and I built the deck with what I had, and I really wish that I could recreate that kind of organic growth to a deck that I did with my Kinnan deck
Idc about netdecking. The MOST annoying thing for me is someone who doesnt know what they're playing, and just mindlessly searches for cards. Before you even pick up your library to search you should know what you're grabbing, Before you even untap your land you should know what you're playing.
I'd rather play against a control/mill cedh deck with a competent owner than play against a complete clone of a tournament winning deck behind the hands of someone who couldnt even tell me how many lands are in the deck.
One thing I find annoying is a deck that is just 100% staples with zero game plan. Now there's nothing wrong with goodstuff but this takes it waaaaay too far. Usually this is a self-solving issue since the deck does piss all
@williamdrum9899 "ill demonic tutor for a sol ring, cast it, tap, and cast a fellwar stone, tapping it for one blue, casting brainstorm, draw three, ill put a signet and swan song back on top, keeping a Rhystic study in my hand."
I'm sometimes guilty of this; but mostly because I have a rather extensive collection, play maybe once a month, and cycle between playing 15 different decks. Almost every month I rip a deck apart and build a new one...so when I'm playing a deck I haven't played in a while and I tutor looking for answers, I forget what's in the deck.
In a weird way, I just learned this lesson in real time like a week ago. And if I'm just wrong lol please feel free to tell me. I'm a newer player, and I built a Tom Bombadil deck not too long ago. I'd had Tom for a while, but didn't like my card pool available to start a build without having to buy too many new cards, plus I couldn't figure out a good wincon beyond, "idk, he's basically unkillable". Fast forward to the assassin's creed set, my buddy gives me a pack since he knew I wasn't planning on buying into the set. I get one card that immediately convinced me to start the build around Tom; Excalibur, Sword of Eden. Incidentally I actually got a pretty good saga for it in the pack, for 7 cards, got really lucky lol but I digress. Anyway, I build the deck with what I have, with the plan to keep working on it over time. When I get ready to go hunt for my first round of upgrades, I check EDHrec, and after finding some good sagas to upgrade to, I search out Excalibur, and find it's apparently got negative synergy, and is rated about on par with swiftboots for a commander you want to be hexproof already lol. Now, am I crazy? Because I've cast that card for free (fyi it's casting cost reduces from 12 for the cmc of each historic card on your field, Tom is 5, and two other sagas made the other 7), only had to pay for the equip cost, then had a 14/4 hexproof indestructible commander that has won me the game. Now seriously, am I crazy? Is that not synergy? Lol
I like this video, but I do have to point out one thing... Einstein was definitely one of the physicists that actively disproved Newton's laws of gravity :)
I debated changing the example to my field which is finance but I didn’t think anyone would know who they are. So I decided it was funnier if I just said I don’t know about physics
"Disproved" is a bit much. Expanded upon, refined, maybe.
@@NoTengoIdeaGuey Pfff fair enough, just not necessarily the best analogy
How’d you get a start in finance? Thats actually a huge interest of mine but all I have is military experience and sales.
I think the more accurate way of phrasing the Einstein bit was that he built upon *Maxwell's* equations, to just refer to newton instead of Maxwell is like saying the hybrid mana legends from New Capenna were based on the original legends from the, well, legends set, sure you needed legends to create what that supertype of creatures are but more relevantly, it was the advent of hybrid mana that allowed for those creatures in New Capenna to have such unique mana costs.
Lol "that's not how knowledge works?" 😂
100%
You know it’s funny that this popped up. I’ve watched a few of your videos and they’re good! I was playing my Totentanz rat tribal that I pretty much just net-decked the other day and wondered why it didn’t really do much of anything. I’ve changed things over the last few months but it’s mostly just what I’ve seen online. And this video pretty much explains it, it’s just a pile of cards that “sort of” do rat things. This video has really helped me look at my deck building differently! Nice job mate 💪🤙
Glad to hear it! My goal is to improve everyone’s deck building!
I'm glad more people are bringing this problem to light. This feedback loop can stifle creativity
I look up net decks when i want to find synergies with a commander i want to play because I sadly do not have every magic card memorized 😢
There is nothing wrong with that!
My spice is adding cards that give massive value when they hit the field, like trumpeting carnosaur, chimil if carnosaur is already in the deck, ways to blink the carnosaur. I think discover is a widely underutilised mechanic and it's massively powerful.
I normally just netdeck from a deckbuilding site like moxfield, makes a good starting point. I've done it a few times, makes tinkering with the deck a lot easier when there's a solid foundation already
100% after with you. It is the best defined video about that topic, nothing to add. Putting the extra steps in deckbuilding makes a deck your own and this makes it unique even if there exists another one.
I need challenges for decks, because I can't decide on one - so if you have one, please tell me :)
Mono black enchantments with Braids
That’s a fun idea!
I have been brewing up a 5 color goad deck with all the impetus cards! That could be pretty fun! You can play an enchantress sub theme and maybe play a Kaima the fractured calm hidden commander if you want to be really spicy
Nice ideas!
4:13 This is what I did with my favourite Pauper Deck I built, Ephem Mono White Aggro.
I'd been playing Pauper for months so I got used to the meta and knew about what I needed for most decks. I didn't have the best winrate, obviously, but even though it wasn't a meta deck, I had a pretty decent win rate regardless. Facing the Lotleth deck and watching it fold to a single Epheramte on the mainboard Dawnbringer was very funny and happened more than you'd think (Hence why I had it there against both that and for Caw Gates to help against Journey to Nowhere which is just amazing removal in Pauper).
It was a deck I built for fun during that bit where MTGO crashed for a few days so we got about a week of free master pass and I wanted to use it while I had it.
When I discovered EDHRec, I thought it was awesome, but even I never used it to craft a deck comepletely out of the 90/80/70/60% of top cards used. Like "sure" who wouldn't want to add a Farewell into every White Deck imaginable? But when I was making my first and second EDH decks, the only time I was browsing EDHRec was just to see what people were putting in. My Tolsimir Wolfblood Deck was under 300 decks, so I THOUGHT i was get a HUGE bonus knowing what the other 300 decks were... They were all just "Mono White/Green" Good Stuff, in which I turned to YT to look for more creative ideas and the Most Creative at the time was to put ALL the Multi W/G Creatures to maximize Tolsimir's Anthems, I love it way more than adding all the "Mono White and Mono Green" cards that I stricted my Deck to purely White AND Green, not White OR Green.
The thing that never crossed my mind with EDHRec is the feedback loop it creates. Such a great point.
I’m professionally a software engineer, and that is something that creates a data problem. It’s not on EDHREC itself, but the limitations of the tool. While it has done a lot of great things for making deck building more accessible, it has become so large that it creates a feedback loop and leads to decks that play the same in a format where that isn’t as needed.
Have you ever thought about discussing methods of going about deckbuilding? I'm personally a really big fan of the 8x8 method (choose 8 things you want your deck to do, dedicate 8 cards to each thing, then 35 lands + commander) as a starting point and then tuning from there!
I'm also glad you pointed out the "don't pick the most popular commander in a theme" thing. I'm actually writing a script right now for a video about how the Infect Commanders are some of the worst commanders for an infect strategy!
My recent how to design a commander deck does that! Check it out
Sometimes, a commander’s page Top Cards and High Synergy Cards are filled with goodstuff, and that’s just useless information.
Yes, I know that Counterspell and Swords to Plowshares are good. Is this really what this deck wants to do the most? I hope not.
I totally agree with your video. Nevertheless I have a Krenko, Mob Boss Deck were nearly all creatures are Goblin Lords or these so-called Synergy Pieces, simply because they are often times the best goblins you can find. However I still play my normal Removal Suite, Card-Draw with Skullclamp and others. Furthermore I included cards like Brightstone Ritual, Battle Hymn, ans Skirk Prospector as a way to produce a ton of Mana and finish everyon of with Crackle with Power as an alternative Win Con. I can also win by simply overruning my opponents or by sacrificing all my Goblins to cards like Goblin Bombardment.
You should have synergy cards like those it's just you can't be all synergy cards! I bet your deck is more balanced than most!
@@thetrinketmageYeah it's relatively good balanced. I just wanted to point out, that for tribes like Goblins or Zombies, you often come to situations were the list might look like you only picked the best cards from EDHRec when the tribe itself is so overloaded with these synergy cards, that building it in a balanced way leads to playing these Lords, since they help the deck in a tremendous way.
Still you need to look out for the "vegetables" of your deck like Ramp, Removal (even though I like to play a bit less removal than most as a personal preference) and Card-Draw. My first draws of the deck were suboptimal, simply because it lacked Card-Draw. I still feel that the Mono-Red Card-Draw I play, e.g. Thrill of Possibility and others, is somewhat lacking. The Ramp is also still somewhat problematic. I know I still need to play more Ramp but I'm at an interpasse what to take out for this.
But I'm not a big fan of playing Vanquisher's Banner for the Card-Draw potential, because I don't think it fits the direction of making use of the Tokens and Krenko's Ability I want to go. So I'm still looking for better options. If you're interested you can find my current list here: www.moxfield.com/decks/V3J1wlSyEEauzMAA7ZixtQ.
@@christophknorr4635 have you considered spectacular showdown? It’s kinda like a board wipe that also buffs your tokens it can be really good!
@@thetrinketmageThis seems like a good addition to the deck. I will definitely try it out and see how it works out. With all my Tokens being somewhat around 3/3 or 4/4 the double strike could finish out the Game quicker and it removes the blockers.
@@christophknorr4635 In monored, you card advantage will mostly be impulsive draw. In Commander, card advantage is probably the most important thing if you want to win. I wouldn't really consider something like Thrill of Possibility or Cathartic Reunion, because you are even on cards after playing it. For your deck, I would recommend Connecting the Dots, Demand Answers is a strictly better Thrill of Possibility and Inspired Tinkering, which feels like a 2 mana draw three.
Also, there is always The One Ring... that card is kinda busted in EDH
I would definitely cut Bloodmark Mentor and some of the Thrill of Possibility effects. Also Vulshok Factory doesn't seem great to me
Hope this helps!
My favorite way to build a commander deck is to find a really weird partner combo and just roll with it. My favorite example is probably my Tormod + Alana oops all phoenixes deck. It’s super fun to play and it can always maintain a board state thanks to being able to bounce back from board wipes super quickly. Finding weird niches is always super fun to do, and will lead to much more interesting games then “I tap krenko I win”
whenever i bust out my mutate theme deck with surgeon general commander, the silver border mutate commander, everyone is always in love with it because they see a ton of synergies and cards they never saw before and im constantly asked to to read my cards because it isnt the same pile of slop everyone else is running. People at my game store had no idea kobolds even existed until they played against me which i found crazy.
I feel like something missing from a lot of sites where people post decks is commentary. I've seen a lot of decks where they are posted without any context. I think it's important to know what this deck sees as a threat and how it wants to use some of its kit. It's really helpful when you are making substitutions to a deck you found online. If there is a big creature that gives draw does the deck want the card for the big creature or for the draw, if I have to replace it would a small creature with the same amount of draw be more helpful than a big creature with less draw. Do you burn a resource to get your commander out asap or do you wait and save it for later. I find that to be the most useful element of looking at other people's decks is what their plans are. That often helps me come up with my own plans. When I just see a list I can guess (and generally I might be right) but it's hard to know what the deck wants to do.
I value the advice for not getting sucked into the EDHRec vortex, but I still think most people who use the term "net decking" are the same type of snobs who would scoff at someone buying clothes from a department store instead of a boutique or a thrift store. The same type of people who would never buy what's on tap and only drink craft beers. They think they're better than everyone else because *they* don't just follow the crowd. They were playing Atraxa *before* she got popular.... 🙄
You make a lot of excellent points! I've been playing magic for over a year now and have fallen into the net-decking trap. EDHREC has been the father of many of my decks due to my lack of familiarity with Magic's long history of cards and It was after my 8th deck that I began to wonder, "Is this the right way to do it?" This video really helped me answer that question and I really just have to say, thank you.
Absolutley loved the vid, keep it up :)
I don't have the time, skill, or money to build my own decks. IF you refuse to play against net deckers then you won't play me.
but with that said, I do adapt the decks with time.
EDHREC is a repository for tones of information, but to make good use of it, you need to understand what that information means and how it got their. For example, understanding the potential for feedback loops and looking beyond just the inclusion percentage.
ive always built decks in every format using draft chaff and have been very confused when my friends spend 200$ or more per deck while i spend 20$ max
"Folds to one board wipe" is precisely how I'd describe a lot of games I've been in, but being totally incapable of dealing with one (1) hatebear or stax piece is another common issue these decks have.
When I got back into EDH I built an ultrabudget azorius pile with some varied interaction, soft stax like blind obedience, and a few board wipes. I had to stop playing the deck into blind pods because so many tables could not handle a gamestate that wasn't getting to spend all of your mana every turn and casting your commander on curve.
A lot of decks literally scoop to getting their commander Out of Timed. How do 3 players in all 5 colors not have 1 disenchant effect between them?
EDHrec is a marvelous tool to see what the most obvious synergies are before you hit the books on scryfall, but it is WORTHLESS for giving people the actual scaffolding needed to create a deck with a curve that has a gameplan with and without its commander, as well as the requisite interaction to protect its pieces or fight for a dominant board position.
The biggest issue i have with netdecking beyond it's just boring to be able to guess the whole deck the moment you see their first landrop. It also makes you predictable, people can tech for you. But it also doesn't teach you how to build decks. If you never failed building a deck you don't learn what to do right or wrong so if your netdeck is not working out for you, well you just spent a few hundred bucks on something you don't know how to fix or change until someone else does it for you.
I think netdecking can be good if you're struggling to find a base to start on. I personally like to try to build on more unorthodox fashions with certain Commanders by utilizing their abilities in a way that maybe someone hasn't thought of. I run a Dromar the Banisher deck where the whole theme is weird colourlace cards so I can constantly cyc Rift the board and not my own. Most decks I've seen of that nature utilize the fact that you're rifting your own board too with leaves/enters the battlefield effects
I've made Beluna as my favorite commander deck and ive been having a blast slowly getting it just the way I want it.
I let random pet cards or strategies completely influence my deck building strategies, sometimes it works sometimes not so much.
When hoarding broodlord was announced I wanted it to work with prosper so bad I added young pyromancer and sedgemoor witch to make tokens in the early game to power out the broodlord easily when i got there.
Right now the deck has a heavy discard theme with inti, conspiracy theorist, veronica dissident scribe, and some card draw discard outlets like sieze the spoils.
Some of my favorite pet card adds being call the bloodline and dying to serve.
Building your own decks was the fun of magic not copying a deck built by someone else, sure some guidance is alright but at the end of the day the whole point is the journey you go through to improve as a player and the thoughts and strategies you work out for yourself to improve as a player even if you just play kitchen table with friends it’s ok, the whole point it to make something your own and be proud of what you achieved through your own hard work
Bet you "played atraxa before it was cool" too. Nothing wrong with netdecking, getting a feel for it, and changing it on preference
Hau Tou looks like he would be amazing with Doors of Durin thanks for the card recommendation.
Onto the topic, yeah while I don't like net decking personally since I enjoy the deck brewing and testing. Using other people decks can be a good tool to test your deck. I might see a deck on game knights or some other youtube channel and might use one of their decks when play testing. Or once I built the deck and tested it until I think it is on a good level might look at deck profiles other people use. Though we might have different strategies or they might thought of a useful card that I didn't.
I mean to spice up some of my decks while play testing is trying the commander as a voltron style deck for example Anzrag, the Quake-Mole or Umbris, Fear Manifest. In my play testing I found Umbris got really big on it's own pretty easily so giving it evasion and protection made sense compared to the tribal version. Same went for Anzrag, it was pointless to block him unless you can trade so giving him first strike or double strike made him more dangerous and green has a lot of protection spells. So getting out other big creatures out to swing with him felt slow and pointless. That and Wrecking Ogre's bloodrush is an instant knock out combo out of nowhere.
There's a Krenko mob boss decklist I'm building, but I wanna replace a couple cards. The decklist has Ragavan in it, and I don't want him because he's kinda unfun. I don't know what to replace him with, though. I might add a bit more removal
I dont play mtg, but this is a universal concept in trading card games and coming from yugioh it pretty interesting. Netdecking in yygiih id the standard. Its very difficult for the average player to build a new deck from scratch because of how specific wording matters and how every deck has to have something to end on or some sort of combo on turn one. Even still, everything in this video still stands true for yugioh. Netdecking is a starting line, not the finish.
Yo I couldn't agree more but (don't take too much offense plz i mean no evil) isn't this video the same thing as netdecking? Most (maindly edh) YT'ers i know post the exact same video...
I think you'd have a point if he said to himself, "What video should I make? Hmmm ... let me go look and see what popular videos others made ..." I'm guessing he didn't do that?
@@punkypinko2965 hard to confirm or deny, just like netdeckers. When I just got into EDH (I was terrible at deckbuilding), I wanted to make up decks without help. But still when I entered the decklist, I found out at least half of it was on the top of edhrec too.
@@MCRWV-bk1wf Yeah me too. I like just searching for cards and seeing what I come across in order to get ideas.
I don’t take offense at all! I’m posting my thoughts online and criticism is welcome. But no I have not seen any other videos about this from any other channels. I assumed other people have talked about this but I didn’t think much of it. Do you have a channel in mind that has covered the topic?
I really only watch Salubrious snail, TCC, Pleasant Kenobi, and goldfish and I don’t recall anything about net decking. I also didn’t go looking for it either. I just share my ideas with friends I don’t look at what other channels do
Amen. The feedback loop this process creates leads to uncreative decks and ultimately uncreative players. And it can be very frustrating for new players who hit the wall where their lazily curated piles don't just solve the complicated problems that show up in random games.
I just built a mindskinner mill control deck that works really well and I think that’s because I did a lot of the stuff you talked about and I did that just by having spent the last few years building decks
If I'm making a tribal deck I will go to Scryfall and search that creature type in the colors I want and just... dig. Sometimes you find a gem.
I don't mind net decking from an individuals deck, specifically if the person included an interview or explanation. The main point is I begin understanding what the purpose of the inclusion is and what synergies it lends itself too. I've gone through 3 different outdated sultai Sidisi deck lists and made decisions about what I wanted to do. I chose some core cards, but completely changed the deck over time. Using other people's templates helped me to understand the importance of replacement effects in the strategy and I currently use completely different combos and win cons than I started out with.
Tldr - learn why a card is in a list and how to use it before adding the card.
Short answer: Yes
Long answer: Yes, because to some degree it's hard not to. Some synergies are just that obvious. Some people do feel that netdecking is generally bad for a game (and I'm one of them) but it's more of a frustration towards a larger problem TCGs have in general, where creativity is "punished" not by any individual or group in particular but the overall card pool interacting with itself.
I'm not good at making decks on my own 💀 I use a combination of edh rec, mtg goldfish and commander spellbok to make my decks. On edh I find my commander and look at the decks specifically then I plug them into commander spellbook to see what it's missing to have some kind of combo that's not too high power. This helps me a lot to make a decent ok deck just to enjoy with friends. If a card is WAY too expensive I'll look up good replacement options and that will always shift the deck a bit too.
I did this I did dargo tevish where I pretty much had too build it all from hand cause there was no decks that were doing super similar things basically I trubo out dargo on turn 2 and do some agro stuff and then I finish the game by doing some aristocrat things by sacrificing my board too deal dmg or using tevish too consistently outdraw everyone or my favorite play is too sac my entire board then cast blasphemous act and then fallow it up with a 1 mana dargo its also a 50 dollar budget deck so i was insanely restriceted and really had too balance how many cards i was using too push out dargo vs everything else
The reasons this effects happens because people are a bit lazy. There ia always creativity even with looking at the most common cards. If you just do top 50 cards for a commander. The deck probably wont function the way you expect. But human lazieness is bot something we can fix.
But you do give a good point about new pkayers. Edh rec cast has mentioned this in their cast about the precon effect in the stats amd how yo mitigate the atatistcs bias that goes on by what youve said in the beginning.
Good video
I rarely use edh rec. But will look from time to time to see if I missed anything
Bruh some people don’t care about brewing and just want to play 😂
It’s unfortunate because I feel the need to net deck, I usually just upgrade precons using EDH rec and friend recommendations but when I try to make it myself I get stomped on by the rest of the pods that are net decking.
Im currently brweing up a Mr. Orfeo Warrior tribal deck and holy crap, the amount of power matters and tribal staples make it very easy to have a jund goodstuff deck. Im trying not to, and finding synergistic card draw and removal in a less supported theme can be tough
I might need to make a video about good stuff decks and how they are a trap
I hate netdecking. Looking at these suggestions for common themes and to find high synergy cards is good, but don't copy 1 for 1 every card that's boring as hell
I use a combination of EDHREC and Tomer's guide from mtggoldfish on how to construct what i think would be a fun and functional deck
"Elder Dragon Highlander Recommendations"
To be fair, Of The top 10 cards on edh rec for any commander usually slap.
If u are doing something because 90% of people are doing it then u aren't thinking u are sheeping. Sheep don't win.
Don't sheep
I know alot of people that use edhrec and I don't know anyone that just "picks the most common cards" everyone looks at cards that are played and makes their own version , same with cedh posts when I make cedh decks of the strongest and most popular commanders I find 4 or 5 tournament lists and hand pick the cards that make it my style and I don't consider either "net decking" net decking should be considered buying an exact list offline of someone else if you add your input at all its your own build and using other people's builds to see cards you might not know from history because you didn't play st a certain point or haven't seen new cards that came out shouldn't be seen as a negative
I'm pretty skeptical of these claims. Looking at edhrec for krenko, card draw and removal is featured pretty heavily. I'm willing to bet many edhrec pages have more of that than people (+salubrioussnail) recently seem to be thinking. This is on top of the fact that it's not really clear at all how 1-1 decks in the wild irl are with edhrec pages, it's a separate question, but a very emperical one. I'm genuinely curious though, what would a non-boring krenko deck look like to you, provided that it had appropriate amounts of removal and draw?
Well if a deck had a reasonable amount of removal and card draw the deck is now more fun cause your deck doesn’t lose after one blast act and you can play the game. For me reasonable amount of removal and card draw is at the 10+ mark depending on the deck and I don’t often see that at the top of edhrec often and I don’t see that in decks people play for sure
On average, players who complain about netdecking are worse than those who netdeck.
There are many reasons for this. They're better self-discovered than shared.
I mean i use edhrec but just for recommendations or to find cards ive never before. If i dont like a card or it doesnt fit my playstyle i dont care if its in 100% of decks that commander uses. And i certainty dont let edhrec tell me what commander i should use lol. Ive absolutely torn apart decks because i didnt find them fun. Winning in casual is a consolation prize. If i can do something big and dumb im happy. (The great aurora, master of waves + mystic reflections)
I only check edhrec after I have played the deck a couple times.
4:45
*cough*DesolatorMagic*cough*
I’m not familiar with him, what am I missing
@@thetrinketmage He always complained about Netdecking in his videos back in the day
You can’t come up with a strategy and just research or search cards on your own? I guess i actually enjoy figuring out this stuff on my own…
i used EDHrec for cards that might look good in my new commander decks. i do not net deck.
"Net"decking is so nineties coded
thanks dunkey
No problem
My main issue with netdecking is that it kinda destroys one of the main ways of expression TCG's have. You're not facing your opponent's deck, your facing a deck some third party made on the internet. Which basically means that you can't even try to make your own deck without taking on the entire internet simultaneously. And that just kinda ruins the fun.
Netdecking is fine... if you're ALL playing with something netdecked.
I like seeing the silly shit people come up with on their own, so personally i dont netdeck at all.
Im making a deck that people don't want to play against, but its also 40% jank ...
You contradicted yourself in this video, if someone goes to EDHREC and makes a deck with only EDHREC cards it's the same as going to MTG Goldfish and copying that. One has to learn how to play the commander first and than change cards out as they see fix. Some commanders are just One-dimensional no matter how you play them.
Its not THAT hard to deckbuild in modern.
Even during the T0 metagems it aint THAT bad.
In the past I definitely fell into this trap, and I'd like to think I've gotten out of it a bit. I would add all the coolest cards I saw and then cut down from there, which always ended up with no removal or protection.
Now I start from the other end and only give myself 50 cards to work with, because you're always going to need about half of your deck to be lands, ramp, draw, and interaction. Having a much tighter restriction on the cards that are actually on theme makes me think a lot harder about what to include, and cuts down on time too
That's not a netdecking problem, really.
That's an annoyance with the data collection methods for EDHRec being flawed, but you're putting the onus onto players, rather than the people responsible for researching.
Those copied lists will always be in working and slowly tinkered with from there, as they test them.
People shouldn't even be expected to play their own original decks. Personally, I reckon asking people to play original lists, and decks made without outside assistance to be really weird rule 0 conditions to play under. I'd never disqualify someone from playing at a pod because the list was netdecked. I mean, plenty of people play precons without changing anything.
so, in short, Skill issue
I just dont do it.
Heck, i dont search anything up.
A casual format does not need a meta
Game would be way more fun if more people just played with what they owned instead of going online and buying decks of cards they dont own so they can follow a meta.
Just play a precon and stop trying to be ”cutting edge“ with the way you rub other players noses in their losses
On another note, there's nothing more boring in a game to me, that all the other players echochambering the phrase “yeah. I pulled this off edhrec“
I roll my eyes because I know that means it's gonna be very standard trash and nothing special.
It's an infinite wincon deck, with a sol ring in it, and it does some minor technique that just leads to them searching for a wincon.
They're all the same. It's sooooo boring to listen to them discuss them because each players says the same thing.
I'm the only one who ever actually has something to say about my decks construction where I'm not just blowing smoke up my own ass talking about expensive cards I slipped into it.
I mention what ISN'T in my deck, and i talk about how I'm not playing all of the other expected cards for whatever my commander is.
When I pull out a gluntch deck, and they all say OH LOOK GROUP HUG DECK
And I go ha no, just the commander is. The rest of the deck only cares about me.
9:30 are you really not lazy if you netdeck modern lists? What's the difference? I consider boring playing against the same atraxa infect deck over and over the same way that I consider boring playing against the same rakdos scam deck over and over.
The difference is intention. In modern I am expecting you to play the most powerful deck you can come up with and you are using every tool you have to your advantage. Including the knowledge of other players. In casual commander I assume you are trying to have fun and make a cool deck. Though in edh you also build on the knowledge of others just to a smaller degree. Like we know 35-37 lands is a reasonable amount. That’s building on prior knowledge
He literally spent half the video explaining it
@@ezraezra666 the vast majority of viewers do not watch a video all the way it’s very likely this person watched half and wrote a comment and left
I don't mind them playing with netdecks, as long as they don't mind me playing with ante
Not sure about that one mate
“DURRR EDH REC MAKES EVERY DECK PLAY THE SAME! 🤪”
Solution: COPY someone else’s deck 1:1.
Jesus Christ.
Let me clarify: Durr edh rec makes every deck boring because those decks are bad and uninteresting.
One of two solutions, copy a deck 1:1 so that your deck at least works and in all likelihood will be more interesting than the edhrec default deck.
How’s that?
@@thetrinketmage I've seen people's decklists on Reddit. Its pretty much power 9 versions of EDH Rec decks.
Esper Sentinel isn't finding its way out of a white deck unless you will yourself out of not playing it.
The most interesting decks I've seen are ones made by casual players who use Scryfall to search for odd synergies. But you dont find "Decklists" that way.
Sooooo boring, lazy people.
Simple advice fren. Stop playing Commander. It heavily relies on staples to the point there's no reason not to netdeck. As casual as commander players claim they are, the format is anathema to kitchen table magic at this point.
If you want some wacky kitchen table hijinks do a fallen empires draft or something fun and goofy like that.
I don’t know if “quit commander” is a solutions here. Also how much does a fallen empires draft cost?
Commander doesn't not rely on nearly the same staples as modern or legacy when you consider it being singleton and 100 cards leads to alot more variation.