Survival of the Fittest
Set Price Alerts

Combos Browse all Suggest

Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Highlander Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Planar Constructed Legal
Planechase Legal
Premodern Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Survival of the Fittest

Enchantment

, Discard a creature card: Search your library for a creature card, reveal that card, put it into your hand, then shuffle.

legendofa on The New Commander Brackets Beta

2 months ago

I've been struggling with this for a couple of my decklists recently, and I'm trying to summarize my thoughts here without starting a new thread. So this is semi-stream-of-thought, and I apologize if it gets a little rambly.

There are several criteria being tracked by the current bracket system, including resource generation, speed, reliability, and oppression, and possibly others.

Game changers: A combo like Demonic Consultation/Tainted Pact + Thassa's Oracle gets a key card on the game changers list, because it's fast and reliable, ending a match on turn 3-4. These are speed game changers. Other game changers generate resources just by playing the game, like Rhystic Study or Smothering Tithe. This group often also includes oppression, since a lot of them tax the opponent. Another group is cheap (1-2 mana) tutors, like Vampiric Tutor, Enlightened Tutor, or Survival of the Fittest, that increase a deck's reliability for very little opportunity cost. Most game changers can be sorted into one of these four categories. Ancient Tomb and Gaea's Cradle are speed and resource generation, Drannith Magistrate and Force of Will are oppression, and so on.

Bracket Guidelines: From Gavin Verhey's announcement article, here's what each of the brackets mean and expect. Important to note that the system is still in beta testing, so this is probably going to be different in the future.

  • Bracket 1: Decks with more focus on a gimmick than on winning. "Winning is not the primary goal here, as it's more about showing off something unusual you've made. Villains yelling in the art? Everything has the number four? Oops, all Horses? Those are all fair game!" This bracket doesn't allow extra turns, two-card infinite combos, mass land denial, or game changers, and restricts tutors.

  • Bracket 2: Decks that can win, but are not tightly focused, or slow to develop. "While Bracket 2 decks may not have every perfect card, they have the potential for big, splashy turns, strong engines, and are built in a way that works toward winning the game. While the game is unlikely to end out of nowhere and generally goes nine or more turns, you can expect big swings." This bracket doesn't allow any game changers, mass land denial, two-card infinite combos, or multiple extra turns in a row, and restricts tutors.

  • Bracket 3: Decks that are focused on winning efficiently, but are not optimized. "They are full of carefully selected cards, with work having gone into figuring out the best card for each slot. The games tend to be a little faster as well, ending a turn or two sooner than your Core (Bracket 2) decks." This bracket does not allow mass land denial or multiple extra turns in a row, and restricts game changers and two-card infinite combos, and allows tutors freely.

  • Bracket 4: Decks that are optimized for their strategy. "Bring out your strongest decks and cards... This is high-powered Commander, and games have the potential to end quickly. The focus here is on bringing the best version of the deck you want to play, but not one built around a tournament metagame." This bracket has no restrictions.

  • Bracket 5: Decks that expect to win at the most competitive levels. "There is care paid into following and paying attention to a metagame and tournament structure, and no sacrifices are made in deck building as you try to be the one to win the pod." This brackets has no restrictions.

Deck Analysis 1: The deck I've been struggling most with is Clear Waters. As I listed in another thread, it has an infinite turns combo (Wanderwine Prophets + Deeproot Pilgrimage + Merfolk Sovereign) and mass land denial (Opposition + Seedborn Muse, Quicksilver Fountain), and a selection of tutors to pull these together (Forerunner of the Heralds, Idyllic Tutor, Merrow Harbinger, Seahunter, and Sterling Grove). This should put it squarely into Bracket 4.

My concern is that it's neither high powered nor optimized. On the axes of speed, resource generation, reliability, and oppression, I would score it high on oppression, pretty good on reliability, and low on speed and resources generation. Looking at examples of other Bracket 4 decks around the internet, all four of those criteria need to be high in this bracket. The infinite turns combo is slow and easily removed, and the land denial is optional (Opposition can have other targets) or temporary (Quicksilver Fountain can remove its own effect).

It would be easy to simply add a big pile of game changers to improve all of these facets. Right now, it has one game changer in Grand Arbiter Augustin IV, and that one's not essential to the deck. That's not the direction I want to go with the deck, though--I want to keep it reasonably budget, and even adding the three least expensive of the game changers I'm considering would basically double the deck's cost.

I know that people in brackets under 4 want to be able to play their deck, and the infinite turns and land denial shut that down. These are clearly stated in the announcement article -"A single extra-turn spell can be fun and splashy. However, extra-turn spells take a ton of time away from other players and their ability to play the game and tend to be unfun when repeated."- that's why they're forced into brackets 4 and 5. But if a deck isn't able to compete against high power, optimized Bracket 4 decks, can it be considered Bracket 4?

Deck Analysis 2: Another deck that I've been struggling with is an enchantment deck, Do Not Mistake Peace For Passivity. The point of concern for this deck is land denial. Blood Moon is classic mass land denial, and the deck is designed to play around it with Abundant Growth, Fertile Ground, Prismatic Omen, and similar cards. It also has a combo that doesn't directly deny lands, but punishes their play and use: Manabarbs + Citadel of Pain. Otherwise, the deck fits all the criteria of a Bracket 2 deck--no game changers, no infinite combos, few tutors, and no extra turns.

This deck can be converted into a pure Bracket 2 deck without much effort by replacing Blood Moon and Manabarbs. But as it stands, a single card pushes the deck up two brackets, according to the guidelines. Again, I don't feel the deck is high powered or optimized, and would not be able to compete in a Bracket 4 match. It could probably survive in Bracket 3, since it's highly synergistic, but nothing any higher.

In this case, adding a bunch of game changers and power cards would somewhat dilute how the deck functions. A few, like Smothering Tithe or Trouble in Pairs, could slot in, but most others would be more gratuitous.

Conclusion: To quote the article again, "There's some wiggle room, and while playing against decks that are all inside your bracket is ideal, you can usually wiggle within one bracket away from you safely." "You should play where you think you belong based on the descriptions." All of this can be discussed in a Rule 0 talk. I strongly believe the brackets are intended to help this conversation, not replace it. As an example, for the Clear Waters deck, I would say that the deck is not optimized to Bracket 4, and I think it fits best into Bracket 3, but it's controlling and has a potential three-card infinite turns combo. I'm willing to announce when the combo is assembled and ready to start, to give everyone a turn cycle to react, and reduce the use of Opposition to creatures and artifacts.

I feel like the current setup is a little too restrictive of the kind of combo-control decks I like. I can have fun smashing big creatures into each other and outmaneuvering everyone else, but I will enjoy locking down the board and establishing my inevitability, and I'm having a harder time trying to find ways to do that in lower brackets. Some people have already offered me excellent feedback and suggestions that I'm taking into consideration, but I'd also like to see how people are responding to the bracket system so far.

For comparison, here's a few more of my decklists:

legendofa on Testing brackets with Merfolk combos

2 months ago

Rhystic Study, Smothering Tithe, Enlightened Tutor, Fierce Guardianship, Force of Will, Survival of the Fittest, Tundra, Tropical Island... Even without the lands, that's a few hundred dollars' worth of optimization to not change the bracket.

SaberTech on Commander bracket recommendation

2 months ago

I think that Citadel of Pain and Manabarbs are fine. I don't think that those are the sorts of things that WotC was thinking of when they say "mana denial". They don't really deny an opponent access to mana unless they have very little life, and unless one player has been picked on in particular all of your opponents should be seeing their life drop at roughly the same rate. People are still able to play the game, they just have to do so with more consideration regarding how they utilize their mana and life resources.

Blood Moon is a bit different in that some decks with a lot of nonbasic lands could find themselves unable to cast anything despite technically having access to mana, it's just not the right colour of mana that they need.

I'm not sure that I would classify your deck as a Stax deck. You don't have many effects that straight up deny particular actions or force opponents to pay more mana. I would consider it more of a "group slug" style of deck.

As for whether the bracket system has an implied budget restriction to it; Kind of I guess? What gives me pause is that there are plenty of good cards that are $5 or less, and it's possible to play a really expensive card in a deck that doesn't support it well so it only performs moderately at best (Survival of the Fittest is one such card that comes to mind). The bracket system is looking to organize decks and games by how they are expected to play out, so you could have a really expensive deck that has a ton of money put into its mana base but the spell selection is really unfocused and without a solid game plan so it could easily lose to a pre-con deck.

The jump from Bracket 2 to Bracket 3 is an awkward one though, I'll admit that. If another bracket was added to the chart, I would want one between those two. The power level of pre-con decks can vary pretty wildly but are generally not that great. Dump $50 worth of upgrades into a pre-con and it can feel like you are playing on a whole different level, but at the same time it probably won't feel up to par with what you could potentially face in Bracket 3.

plakjekaas on Game Changers & Brackets

3 months ago

The brackets are a tool to start the conversation about what you expect out of a game of commander. You expect everyone to maximize their deck and play removal for everything, that means you'd probably like to play around bracket 4.

There's people who don't want to bother with deckbuilding much, and just play precons out of the box, sounds like they would have a bad time at your table. They'd like to play against other 2s.

There's also a lot about intent, Survival of the Fittest is a card that's never intended for honest play. It's ideal to use for tutoring combo pieces and winning early and consistent. That's not a bracket 2, low 3 mindset.

And it's not always 3v1 in a four-player game, but for every player it will feel like 1v3. Yourself versus the others. There's no guarantee anyone is going to help you do your thing, but you can be sure everyone will try to stop you if you do something that looks dangerous. And because that goes for everyone, the table is never a team of 3 players against just the other 1 player unless you're playing the Archenemy game variant. It's every single player, on its own, versus the others at the table. That's what free-for-all means. No set teams, but you can form and break alliances a you see fit for the situations, with all their consequences taken for granted.

Now the Gamechanger card list is not exhaustive or final, but for the introduction of the concept it has been a short list with the most unfair or annoying or powerful offenders as a start.

Goldberserkerdragon on Game Changers & Brackets

3 months ago

It did inadvertently bc someone didn't like what I said, hence a counter argument arose. This wouldn't have carried on this long if the focus was about why are there even brackets and power levels at all when player experience is king, knowing your deck, cadences and nuances. Not necessarily if its 3 v 1 or 1 v1 or anything, that was more of a glaze over for how you are always going to have 3 opponents, THEREFORE no matter what "power level" your deck, you could win or you could lose. Its all random for the most part. We build decks to mitigate these variances but the natural construction of a deck plus shuffling and the prior all take effect.

Back to Drannith; is he a strong card that shuts the game down? Yes. Will there always be removal? No. Wil there always be a Drannith? No. Will there be removal then, probably.

One of the main reasons I made this post at all was bc someone at my lgs came and played with us, a usually "high powered" table as commander is naturally the strongest format with access to nearly any card. However, he claimed a Bracket 2/3 and plays Survival of the Fittest T3 and proceeded to win the next couple turns. Now, I did just mention a higher powered card yet that's not what won him the game. What won him the game was none of us seemed to have any removal for turn after turn. Reinstating how important removal is. Had we had it, he would have not won. At least not like that, that early. Also, dude lied... how do we trust anything until we simply see the deck? And just my own peculation about the new changes. Player level is a whole thing.

Guy wound up winning bc he knew the variances and cadences of the game well--and i was watching it. Told us he'd been playing since 2005. Go figure--proving my point it should almost always just be about player power and we should all just have that Rule-0.

SlangNTrees13 on Dionus? You Barely Know Us!

4 months ago

Hey, digging the deck. Few new good ones. Three Tree City, is a junior Cradle and Banner of Kinship is a 5 drop wincon with all the elves about. I also like War Roomfoil for some extra draw chances at very little downside. Survival of the Fittest if not out for budget.

SufferFromEDHD on Yosei Stasis

5 months ago

Karmic Guide is very special. Skullclamp is gravy with echo. This isn't a flicker deck so how can I get more gas out of it?

Loyal Retainers is for discard outlets like Survival of the Fittest. Sacrificing puts cards in the same place. I'm going to goldfish some more and get familiar with how Yosei moves around. Interesting suggestion.

Academy Rector ouch... Huge fail on my part. Running a mono white sacrifice deck and missing the quintessential sacrifice tutor.

Continuous artifacts + Blinkmoth Well is my new favorite synergy. Glad you are noticing that. Stumbled on it last year.

Any hate bears that I missed that fit the sacrifice theme?

capwner on Your Sass Is Grass! (Sasaya Combo) *Primer*

6 months ago

SufferFromEDHD Hmmm, how do I defend my Burnished Hart... I guess Skyshroud Claim is the closest competitor and that card is quite good because it acts like a ritual after flipping Sasaya. I think my reasoning with Burnished was that it feeds clamp and enables Survival of the Fittest. You make a good point though, the card has downsides and may be worth reconsideration. Masticore is a nice rec but I think not as efficient as O-stone for removal or Squall Line for burn. I think the other cards don't really fit the deck's gameplan quite as well as the creature tutors and tech land I have included. Though I do love Dust Bowl. Can't run em all!

I think Natural Order is more suited to a creature/stompy build, the only time I want to get my bombs out is when I'm already going off, and at that point the mana discount (primary advantage of NO) doesn't matter to me because I am already making gobs of mana. Before then I'm most likely to want to tutor for Yavimaya Elder, in which case NO is overcosted.

Load more
Have (1) Azdranax
Want (1) mflint