HELP ME BECAUSE I WANT TO PLAY CMDR
Commander Deck Help forum
Posted on June 22, 2018, 2:56 p.m. by Eldrazi_Moon
So.... My brother made a curse deck in commander with almost no creatures with its main purpose being hate and preventing any player from doing anything. I tried to explain to him that people don't build decks like this because no one will want to play with them in two player and everyone will target them in multiplayer. I'm really annoyed because after playing with it for the first time I feel like I just wasted 40 minutes of my life. Commander is my favorite format and I really do want to play, but, I don't no anyone who would willingly play with someone running that deck. What should I do. by the way the deck is
five color fun
Commander / EDH*
SCORE: 1 | 49 VIEWS
No one owes you anything. When you're sitting down to play commander, don't assume you're going to play commander. It's as simple as that. You don't have authority on what is acceptable to play in EDH. Your brother's free to play whatever he wants in EDH. Similarly, you're not obligated to play with him if doing so makes you feel miserable.
I took a look at the deck. It's pretty clear your brother has began exploring what's powerful in EDH and is on track to improve his decks, but that deck is still not very good, especially considering its budget. I took a look at your Aurelia deck. It's pretty terrible in comparison. You could look to improve that deck and murder your brother quickly. That's one way to deal with powerful or annoying decks. Usually it's not hard to get other people on board with killing someone running a powerful deck in a group. Playing 1v3 in commander is practically impossible.
Alternatively, talk to your bro after you think about what specifically about his deck is making the experience miserable for you. There should exist some kind of middle ground where your bro can still play his curses and you get to enjoy the game as well. Maybe that's not running armageddons or something?
One thing I really urge you to do is roll with the punches a bit. One of the best things about EDH is that players have so much room to explore the game and do whatever they want. Part of that involves very powerful strategies. You should try to build decks with answering degenerate stuff in mind. Maybe your Aurelia deck should run a Tempest of Light vs your brother?
June 22, 2018 3:15 p.m.
I fully agree with TheDevicer's post. Talk with your brother about the issues you see, as well as buff your own deck. I'm sure you can find some middle ground.
In addition to the suggestions above, Teferi's Protection is a strong card in your colours, and has the added benefit of removing all auras attached to you.
Alternatively, you could run different colours. You'll surely want White and/or Green for enchantment removal, but Blue has some fun options, particularly in 1v1. Counterspells are fairly solid, and you can always run Redirect so your brother ends up cursing himself.
June 22, 2018 3:41 p.m.
pillowmint says... #6
Looking at that decklist, I can imagine why you haven't enjoyed playing against it; Armageddon, Iona, and Jokulhaups in particular are notoriously unfun cards. But it so happens that this format has loads of decks and commanders that many people hate; for some the devil is Breya, or Derevi, or Zur, or Atraxa, or Nekusar, or... My point is you can't entirely avoid the decks you're not wild about, so it's smart to build your own decks accordingly. Without knowing anything about what you were playing in that game (games?), I'm going to hazard a guess that you weren't running nearly as many removal spells, answers, and/or generally disruptive cards as he; perhaps it's up to you to step up your game.
If you flat-out refuse to keep playing against that deck, just tell him so. If he can't bring himself to make something else (doesn't necessarily need to dismantle the existing one, even), well, guess he doesn't get to play Magic. However, I assure you the deck has weaknesses (in fact I doubt strangers at a local game store are going to have a problem if he pulls out this deck for a game with them), and if you're willing to sink a bit, perhaps, closer to his level, let us proceed.
From reading his decklist, here are some cards and strategies I recommend, things that would be strong against it for whatever reason, without getting into anything that narrowly hoses this one deck and isn't worth having otherwise:
-Stranglehold Can completely shut down Curse of Misfortunes, Zur, Academy Rector, and all those tutors, but on top of that it ruins fetchlands and anything else that aims to get a land card from the library. Other search-hate cards are fine too, like Aven Mindcensor or Ob Nixilis, Unshackled, but Stranglehold is efficient and absolutely brutal.
-Grave Pact, Dictate of Erebos, and similar effects Since he's playing so few creatures, these sorts of triggered sacrifice abilities can easily leave him with none at all for long stretches of the game.
-Aura Shards If you're playing tokens, elves, or really anything features green and white and lots of creatures, this card is just bonkers, and a deck like five color fun (FCF) especially will really struggle when it's out.
-Cards with "You have hexproof/shroud" passive abilities (Ivory Mask, Leyline of Sanctity, Aegis of the Gods, and others) If he can't curse you, that doesn't mean he can't win, but he will certainly be drawing some downright useless cards.
-Nonbasic land hate (e.g. Ruination, Blood Moon, Contamination) This is the path you take if you want him to experience the negative feelings you felt when playing against FCF.
-Win conditions that don't involve attacking with creatures A lot of FCF is specifically anti-creature, particularly among the enchantments. So one pretty straightforward way to adjust to the matchup is simply not to rely on creatures for too much. Combos might not have an easy time with this, since he's running lots of counterspells and open-ended removal, but you could get pretty far with a deck loaded with planeswalkers, or with instants and sorceries, for instance.
-Just race him For all its prestigious dual lands, FCF doesn't look like a fast deck at all; most of the win conditions are extremely expensive (Progenitus, Door to Nothingness, Iona...), and it doesn't look like he tries to cheat them out without paying, e.g. via Omniscience or Show and Tell. I bet if you play something really fast, Azusa or Yidris or what have you, he simply won't often be able to get off the ground in many games.
-Spread his attention around the table You described a 1v1 game, but from the sound of it you do play multiplayer free-for-all Commander (or want to, at any rate). One big downside to the whole Curse thing is that a given curse only hurts one player, putting the curser at an inherent card disadvantage when there's more than one opponent. So if you two are in, say, a four-player FFA game, just make a friend and get your bro to spread his resources thin.
-Put more removal in your decks, especially open-ended spot removal Board wipes get lots of attention in EDH, but spot removal is just as important. Chaos Warp, Beast Within, Song of the Dryads, Anguished Unmaking, all those sorts of spells are really stellar in general, and there are some very efficient cards that are limited to destroying artifacts and enchantments, some of which you should probably also be playing: Krosan Grip, Reclamation Sage/Acidic Slime, Nature's Claim, and my pet removal spells Deglamer and Unravel the Aether.
-Go as heavy as you like with recursion and general graveyard strategies I noticed that FCF does not contain a single card that exiles things from opponents' graveyards. In fact, other than Crucible of Worlds, there's also nothing he can do to get back a card from his own GY. What does this mean? You can go balls to the wall with Meren, Karador, Muldrotha, whichever GY-heavy deck you like, without fear of losing the graveyard as a resource. Also, while mill is not a reliable wincon in this format, feel free to run some incidental mill and discard pieces; if his Overwhelming Splendor gets discarded, say, then that card and the whole line of play it represents are lost to him for good.
I hope some of this is helpful or at least interesting.
June 22, 2018 3:49 p.m.
One tiny addendum to pillowmint's post. Your having Hexproof/Shroud does not mean "he can't curse you." If your brother has Zur on the field, he is allowed to fetch and attach curses to you even if you do have Shroud/Hexproof.
Not saying those cards will not help against his deck, but neutering Zur is something you should consider when building your removal package.
June 22, 2018 4:09 p.m.
pillowmint says... #10
cdkime, I completely forgot that's how auras work; thanks for setting it straight. Presence of the Master should do what I said "you have hexproof" effects did. But it's rather narrow, YMMV.
June 22, 2018 7:32 p.m.
FancyTuesday says... #11
pillowmint about knocks this out of the park. I'll try not to repeat too many points.
TheDevicer is also right, if a bit shrewd. The answers to the question of "what should I do?" are many, but all of them are things you do, not things your brother doesn't. Improve your decks, build to counter his strategies, use diplomacy against an unpopular deck and get others to help punish strategies that are unwelcome in your meta.
I've looked at your Aurelia deck and it looks like many casual/first decks; lot of effects that are really powerful under ideal conditions, almost no disruption (only 1 disenchant in the deck), and not enough land. If you like I can go on at length and maybe help improve the deck, but there's a problem.
The sad truth is that Aurelia is just outmatched here. is about as bad a color combo as you can get in EDH and there's not a lot you can do about that. Your commander has a powerful ability and there are many cards that play off it, it's a lot of fun when things work but if you're going up against $1000+ control you're really punching up. Even if you build to hate this one deck you'll likely end up on the bad end of the stick more often than not.
Rebuilding is still a viable option, I just don't think it's your best one in this case. If you do rebuild I would go with high tempo aggro and go heavy on cheap disruption. Boros cannot go long game against a deck like that.
Alternatively, I would build Karador, Ghost Chieftain. I have no doubt that Karador could wipe the floor with your brother's deck and do so relatively cheaply. Even if your brother goes heavy on graveyard hate Karador has the right colors and tools to mulch his strategy completely.
June 22, 2018 11:28 p.m. Edited.
jordybear2002 says... #12
Ok so basically you have heard EVERYTHING at this point about what to do. I just want to see if I can be of any help by giving tips of how to deal with not playing against it. 1. Just confront your brother. I have been making decks recently and talk to my brother and tell him my ideas of how to win and he says, "You know your just asking to be the target right?". And for me I like to go all out when I just brew a deck for fun and sometimes I get ideas from brewing to actually make a new deck IRL not online. But anyway, I think just telling him and asking him to hold back on playing that deck might help. 2. Don't play with him. If you brother isn't super stubborn then maybe by not playing with him will get him to see that he needs to tone down playing that deck a little and gete him to see that just because he has a "powerful" deck that not everyone wants to play with him. Sorry about the run on sentence and I will explain the "" around powerful in just a minute. But anyway on to my next one. 3. His deck really isn't powerful as it would be in multiplayer than it is in 1v1. Curses focus on one player only or reward other players for attacking somebody. So if you tell people "Hey attack this guy and my curse will reward you!" Then once that person is dead the curses are no more useful unless he has graveyard hate. And then he has to focus on another player and some people will just react and want to kill him quicker. 4. I know I said I would talk about how to deal with it out of game but here you go. Make a enchantment hate deck just for when he plays his deck. If nothing works by talking him out of it then just fight it in game the best you can. So I think I have covered basically what everyone else has said among all the comments brought together. Hopefully this helps and good luck and may the card draw ever be in your favor!
DespairFaction says... #2
1v1 commander is not a great format. Its too unbalanced with too much element of chance to be fun. Find yourself a new playgroup, or build a deck that is mostly enchantment removal, discard, and mindslaver effects and I bet that he'll switch to a different deck. Also just explaining that you don't want to play against that deck and taking a hard stance on it, should work.
June 22, 2018 3 p.m.