Suggestion for an EDH deck please
Commander Deck Help forum
Posted on July 17, 2018, 1:43 p.m. by SelenusMoo
Hi everyone,
I played MTG between 4th and Urza's, and picked it back up again last September. Now I play EDH every FNM at my LGS.
The people I play with are between casual and semi-competitive, and pods are usually between 3 and 5 players.
My first EDH deck was Uril (Voltron), then made monoblack Mikaeus (infinite combos), and then Sliver Overlord (tribal, combos) a few months later.
I now want to make a new deck, but can't decide. I seem to mostly be attracted to the combo archetype. I wrote up and got suggestions for a pretty decent mono-blue Arcum Dagsson deck with a bunch of infinite combos, but that felt too similar (albeit better) than Mikaus, plus I'm concerned the Arcum mono blue would end up like a deck that plays fairly similar to Mikaeus, and not get much joy out of that.. I also liked the look of Food Chain Tazri, but that also was a bit storm/combo orientated. Not to mention, I think it would potentially cause the more casual players to sigh and groan if I'm consistently winning t3/t4.
As such... Any suggestions? I'd probably like to avoid prison/stax as most players at the LGS deem it a bit anti-fun.
Happy to take questions / suggestions.
Many thanks everyone!
griffstick says... #4
Ok I will play the Devil's Advocate. I'll be the casual player. I'm more of a win by turn 6-9 type player. So I know the feeling of pulling out my mono green Multani, Maro-Sorcerer against 3 other strong decks like prosh and Edgar and animar.
So here's what I suggest. Play to a style the allows players to play. Build a deck that thrives on the late game. A deck that grinds out games.
Additionally. You might like Braids, Conjurer Adept this has blue since I think you seem to like blue but most importantly. Everyone will enjoy this style of game play. It also sounds like it would be fun and challenging for you to build around.
July 17, 2018 3:03 p.m.
DrukenReaps says... #5
I would caution against making anything so close to a new commander set coming out. With that out of the way here are my thoughts.
In His Belly is a deck I built recently that seems to be rather explosive. It doesn't do much early game but set up a large creature to eat Grothama, All-Devouring like Mossbridge Troll and you draw a quarter of your deck. Lay down Myojin of Life's Web and then half your hand and you should win there. If not that 10/8 is ready to come back and with a slight buff will 2 shot players out of the game.
Divine Decree I'm suggesting this one simply because it is my favorite deck and I designed it to work slowly while protecting itself. It doesn't really matter what my opponents bring to the field because Her Highness, Queen Marchesa, is bringing an answer. The variety of pillows in this deck seems to be able to hold off most strategies plus lifegain makes it really hard on the decks that do get around the pillows. Usually wins by a combo or by Revel in Riches but Manabarbs and Painful Quandary and friends sure do put a hurt on everyone. I get a lot of joy out of playing this deck because I don't have to answer every threat, "you played Phage the Untouchable?, that's cool. can you pay 8 mana to attack me?" is a scenario that comes up often.
Mistress of Poisons is likely the most competitive deck I've built which is why I stopped playing it. With some more tutors you could consistently combo off rather early. I had several games where I won turn 4. If anyone stops the combos they better hope they don't rely on creatures, even the indestructible ones will wither away rather quickly.
July 17, 2018 3:08 p.m.
FancyTuesday says... #6
If your meta is "casual to still not really competitive" and you're playing heavily combo-oriented decks that can instantly go infinite (Mikaeus, Food Chain) or reliably tutor up combo pieces then go infinite (Overlord, Dagsson) then yeah, you're gonna attract a lot of groans. You'll either need to find a more competitive group to play with or downshift your style in a pretty major way.
I don't know how to pull punches in a combo build. Combo isn't so much a power gradient as it is a true/false, once it's true you've won and with that being the goal the rest of the deck and the decisions you make during the game only ever point toward achieving the combo. I guess you could deliberately limit yourself to non-game winning combos that allow your opponents to answer, or combos that require more pieces and run fewer tutors, but then you're building a deck that's bad at what it's designed to do.
"Synergy" is often placed opposite "combo" as a deck building philosophy, but in practice it's more like "limited combo." A solid synergistic deck will have a lot of pieces that play off of and enhance each other, giving you ever increasing value for the cards you play, they just don't do so infinitely.
Take Mikaeus for example. You could Mike n Trike people out, two cards everyone dies the end. Alternatively you could have Mikaeus and Phyrexian Plaguelord then drop Gray Merchant of Asphodel, hit everyone for 14 and gain 42 life. That's a huge blow that only gets worse with other pieces; throw in a Grave Pact and you could sweep the board and deal an even 20 each. It's functionally a "combo" in how devastating it can be, but since it has a defined ceiling and requires a bit more setup to get that kind of impact casual players generally respond more favorably to the latter. I also play in a rather casual meta and find the synergy approach to be a lot of fun.
The pothole of synergy is making sure your strategy can actually win. This is the problem in many mass land-D and "chaos" oriented decks; they can set up board states that don't really "close out" the game, they just lock players out and make the game go on forever.
tl;dr: Play bad, Rube Goldberg-style combos or heavy synergy.
July 17, 2018 3:33 p.m.
Look into a +1/+1 counter synergy deck like Experiment Kraj, Vorel of the Hull Clade or Pir, Imaginative Rascal & Toothy, Imaginary Friend. It would be using a color you aren't using much currently (blue), a theme you haven't gotten to use yet (+1/+1 counters), and the combo potentials are endless (to satisfy your urge to combo win)..but also this sort of deck can easily be built at any power level to fit in with your play group too.
July 17, 2018 4:44 p.m.
Looks like the one thing you're missing is a storm-esqe archetype, look up selvala brostorm
July 17, 2018 5:34 p.m.
SelenusMoo says... #9
Thanks for all the suggestions. I've looked at Selvala Brostorm, Paradox Sisay, and Control Zur. Honestly, they all seem potentially too good for the several of the peeps I play with.
I mean Control Zur doesn't seem to bad, and would equalise the table especially by slowing down players with better decks.
I think I definitely need to stay away from cEDH tier lists (like Lerker's), and at the moment just getting ideas for commanders from this list: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/list-multiplayer-edh-generals-by-tier/
Potentially really good advice for me to wait until Commander 2018 is out, to see if anything comes up that might make me want to go "I really want that as a commander!".
July 17, 2018 6:03 p.m.
I'll go ahead and toss my hat in this ring. I also enjoy my combos, however, winning turn 3/4 always makes my playgroup hate me and also paints a large target on my back whenever I bring out the deck.
So I'm going to make some suggestions which will sound like blasphemy... That being said please hear me out and give me a chance to explain my point of view.
1: Slow down your decks:
Having turn 3/4 combos and win conditions are amazing, fun, and feel great... for the player playing them. I have found the majority of players in my LGS are not competitive and are more casual. Bringing a gun to a knife fight isn't exactly fun and from the onset decides the victor. People enjoy playing their decks, having to scoop and reshuffle every 10-15 minutes pisses them off and no one has fun.
2: Remove the Tutors:
Whoa Whoa Whoa there Tibus... you want me to REMOVE MY TUTORS?!?! How am I supposed to win????
Now now put down the torches and pitchforks and give me a moment to explain, part two will flow into part three.
Removing tutors requires you as the player to start to think about deck creation a bit more out of the box. Every card in your deck is an important piece to a larger puzzle and each piece as valuable as the next. I'll go over this more in part three.
Using your tutors you find yourself always nabbing those very few cards in your deck that allow you to make your combos function. Most decks wind up becoming a few win conditions with the in-between being just cards used to facilitate extracting those conditions to win. Which if that's all you are doing, at the end of the day EDH is no more than modern/vintage with a larger deck and a guaranteed card in your hand.
Remember your playgroup isn't hyper-competitive and thus you don't need to run competitive cards such as tutors. This goes back to the game being fun for everyone and not just a singular person. Sure you can have those tutors on the side and play them with a competitive playgroup but players with other playstyles aren't going to enjoy them much. (My playgroup has personally banned the use of most tutors with very few exceptions, we have found this sparked deck creativity to new heights and causes games to be longer and more enjoyable.) Please note your mileage may vary.
3: Build your decks so each card plays an important part:
In doing so this makes deckbuilding harder on the builder and facilitates creativity. This will be easier with the removal of tutors, instead of tutors just being (X, Y, Z) card in your hand they will be replaced with cards which provide just as much an impact as your win conditions. This makes your deck more resilient and less reliant on X, Y, Z pieces. This will help you feel more like "Ahh they exiled Ashnods Altar... no worry I've 48 other cards just as impactful left." Rather than "AHHH DUDE, You totally just destroyed my win condition I'm going to ruin every single one of your games from here on out."
Because your playgroup is less competitive and more casual this playstyle can blossom in this environment. You can make your deck run more combos and thus produces more gameplay for you, you do not necessarily need each combo to be a win condition but they can be a facilitation to winning. This also gives the casual players a chance to react and feels like they can engage in the game.
Another benefit is that semi-competitive players tend to become more competitive when a stronger player enters the scene. This will cause the semi-competitve players to upgrade their decks while the less competitive casual players slowly feel like they are getting pushed out and can no longer keep up with the power level of the game. In short the casual players will stick around to play with you guys.
In Summary TL;DR:
1: Slow down your decks. 2: Remove the tutors. 3: Make every card important.
July 17, 2018 8:04 p.m.
JoeNathan37 says... #11
Quick disclaimer, I’m definitely not a combo player so I don’t really know much on the subject, but I’ve seen a couple Mairsil, the Pretender decks that are pretty cool. The commander has lots of potential to grow since it only really cares about activated abilities and I personally think it’s a really fun card.
July 17, 2018 9:35 p.m.
freshdemon says... #12
In my experience control decks tend to scale well to a large array of powerlevels. Assuming you run control finishers like Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur or Chromium, the Mutable and not combos.
I played only control decks for like a year and was not disappointed. Now I've switched to play alot of Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest to target that one guy that always brings their competetive deck to the casual table.
Don't be that guy.
July 18, 2018 7:55 a.m.
I see most people are making suggestions that are aligned with your preference for combo decks; I may have misunderstood, but my impression is that you are rather looking for a deck that is not combo-based, but bring you enjoyment while keeping the level reasonable for a casual game store setting.
One of the decks I enjoy playing the most is Nekusar. Part of the challenge is that I am making my opponents draw tons of cards, which potentially feeds them responses to my mechanics. I have refrained from relying on counters in my build, so it remains exciting for me to try and have everyone Drawing Your Last Breath
An aggro deck can easily run out of breath in a multiplayer match, but I have found Edgar keeps giving back, even after multiple board wipes. The interactions between tribal cards are like mini combos that you have to carefully calculate to build up to alpha strikes and overwhelm your opponents. Enter The Partnership.
Hope you find something you like, let us know what ou have picked!
Homelessguy says... #2
A whole lotta nothing
It's combo, really fun to play with. it's not too competitive because it a hit or miss.
Pros • EDH Cheerios! • doesn't care about what your opponent are doing! • any turn you have your commander out is a turn you could win • multiple win conditions Cons • really easy to Run out of steam. • 8 minutes to 10 minute turns • 100% relying on your commander
July 17, 2018 2:41 p.m.