I've played kitchen table magic for many years now. I started playing during the original Mirrodin block (specifically around the release of Darksteel), where I built a ridiculous 80-card Elf deck, an equally bad Samurai/Barbarian deck, and a super janky Dragon deck. Needless to say, these were some pretty bad decks haha.

I then played off and on again for a while, visiting Kamigawa and Ravnica the first time, then finally quitting at Time Spiral (The joys of High School). I picked it back up again with Return to Ravnica, but only stuck around until the beginning of Theros.

I finally came back full-time with Shadows over Innistrad and Eldritch Moon and playing since then.

As far as formats, I've played a little bit of Standard: from Eldritch Moon, through Kaladesh, then stopped after Hour of Devastation. I'll play a pre-release event every now and then, but since the release of Commander 2016 and my fateful encounter with Atraxa, Praetors' Voicefoil, I've been a Commander/EDH-focused player, and I don't plan on looking back!

I usually like to play Optimized and/or High Powered decks, ranging from 6-9 on the Power Level charts. I haven't really tried to enter the cEDH realms.

My primary two playstyles are Vorthos (Lore/Story inspired) or anything with Counters (+1/+1, ability, Keywords, Proliferation, etc).

There are so many fantastic stories or worlds that I like to explore. My first two commander decks, Atraxa, Angel of New Phyrexia [Infect Primer] and Eldritch Captain of the Deep [Lovecraftian Primer], exemplify the Vorthos philosophy of focusing on story or lore elements over inherently powerful cards. I love being able to tell or represent a story with MtG cards, whether it's an MTG original world like New Phyrexia/Ikoria, or an existing world/mythos like those of H.P. Lovecraft.

Current Decks in Rotation

The first commander deck I ever bought, and my gold standard against which I judge all cards and commanders. Whenever a new set comes out, my first thought is how will it work with Atraxa, Praetors' Voice. This deck shows an homage to the corruption of Mirrodin, the first plane I ever visited, and was the first EDH deck I ever bought and built. This deck focuses on the glory of Phyrexia: Infect/Toxic with a subtheme of +1/+1 Counters.

A rebuild of the first commander deck I made from scratch. Originally helmed by Lazav, Dimir Mastermind, this deck focuses on Milling out our opponents and Horrors, but it is also a Vorthos-styled deck based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft, specifically his Cthulhu Mythos stories.

This deck harkens back to my early kitchen-top deck that I built, except it's actually playable. This deck is very straightforward. Ramp, Play Dragons, Turn them Sideways, ???, Profit!

One of the first cards I ever got when I was drafting as a kid was Glissa Sunseeker. When I came back to playing MTG and saw that she had become corrupted, I was initially saddened by her fate, but that didn't last very long. She is an excellent value/combo engine piece. Green isn't well known for Artifacts, so she represents a fairly unique take on the artifact deck style. She has multiple infinite combos that can loop and quickly knock out all my opponents.

What drew me to this initially was the artwork. I'm a huge fan of Seb McKinnon's artwork, and this artwork just drew me in. Ironically, the limited amount of lore about her made me even more interested in her haha. This deck aims to use/abuse Blinking permanents for tons of value, including a slew of Planeswalkers.

Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths is one of my favorite planes we've visited. I was working through my Wildlife Ecology Masters degree when this set was released, so it holds an especially special place in my heart. This deck wants to get targeted creatures with great keywords into the graveyard to boost Kathril, Aspect Warperfoil to a one-hit KO monster.

Another commander from Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths. I had originally bought the Kalamax, the Stormsire precon for the face commander, but when I saw this Snake Leviathan, I was hooked. He looks to generate tons of Snake tokens through Wheels, then we can win through either combat damage or Impact Tremors-esque effects.

I've tried for years to get my wife to play MTG with me, and this was the result of one such attempt. I wanted to make a low-power Humans deck that would be easy to play. When that didn't work, I decided to power it up a little to be more on par with my other decks. This deck seeks to play out tons of Humans, power them up with Anthem effects and additional keywords, and then swing out for the win. Has a few backup combo loops in case things get too tough for us.

Originally, this was an Etali, Primal Storm deck, that focused on attacking and manipulating the top of our deck to get free spells. I then switched over to Isshin, and refocused the deck to prioritize Attack Trigger effects and Token generation, while still including Etali.

My first attempt at a primarily Spellslinger-style deck. This deck focuses on multi-targeted or spells, to use/abuse Hinata's ability to reduce the cost of spells for each target. are the colors I'm most comfortable with, so this was challenging.


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Followers

Balaam__

Specialties

Commander / EDH - Counters, Commander / EDH - Infect, Commander / EDH - Primer, Commander / EDH - Vorthos

MTG Decks

Kathril, Nightmare of Indatha [Keyword Primer]

Commander / EDH UltimateRoxas40

SCORE: 36 | 10 COMMENTS | 4681 VIEWS | IN 21 FOLDERS

Atraxa, Angel of New Phyrexia [Infect Primer]

Commander / EDH UltimateRoxas40

SCORE: 41 | 13 COMMENTS | 5656 VIEWS | IN 16 FOLDERS

Xyris, the Endless Ouroboros [Wheel Primer]

Commander / EDH UltimateRoxas40

SCORE: 26 | 11 COMMENTS | 3021 VIEWS | IN 10 FOLDERS

The Harvesttide Festival [Human Primer]

Commander / EDH UltimateRoxas40

SCORE: 36 | 6 COMMENTS | 2462 VIEWS | IN 19 FOLDERS

Aminatou, Fateshifter Insidious [Blink Primer]

Commander / EDH UltimateRoxas40

SCORE: 7 | 661 VIEWS | IN 5 FOLDERS

Eldritch Captain of the Deep [Lovecraftian Primer]

Commander / EDH UltimateRoxas40

SCORE: 133 | 23 COMMENTS | 10862 VIEWS | IN 79 FOLDERS

Reign of the Dragon God [Dragon Primer]

Commander / EDH UltimateRoxas40

SCORE: 13 | 3 COMMENTS | 1127 VIEWS | IN 6 FOLDERS

Isshin, Dual Wielding the Heavens [Combat Primer]

Commander / EDH* UltimateRoxas40

SCORE: 8 | 4 COMMENTS | 976 VIEWS | IN 4 FOLDERS

Finished Decks 18
Prototype Decks 7
Drafts 0
Playing since Darksteel
Points 395
Avg. deck rating 25.07
T/O Rank 36
Helper Rank 22
Favorite formats Commander / EDH
Suppressed formats Standard, Historic, Pioneer, Modern, Pauper, Legacy, Vintage, Leviathan, Premodern, Oldschool 93/94, Limited, Pre-release, Planechase, Archenemy, Vanguard, Block Constructed, Arena, Casual, Unformat, Quest Magic
Cards suggested / good suggestions 38 / 15
Joined 7 years