Before I can speak to any specific card choices I have a lot of questions about the meta you play in. I am seeing cards like Past in Flames and Slate of Ancestry and I'm wondering how you have enough time to ever really get value out of them. Granted I do play in a particularly stormy meta so my Marath list has been tuned super low to the ground, even so though the average pacing I am seeing in this list seems like many cEDH decks can steal the win before you get going.

Here is mine, it is a lot more hatebear and Marath combo but I think if we compare notes there may be some benefit on both sides.

Marath Says No

Commander / EDH Kaleo42

SCORE: 2 | 10 COMMENTS | 722 VIEWS | IN 1 FOLDER

Hi, Kaleo42. Thanks for posting your comments. I've already answered the question about why I don't (and won't) run stax pieces here (see previous comments). My list is a dedicated combo list, not a hatebear list, which means that it plays very differently than yours. This is pretty much a storm list, so any comments should be made with that in mind. Otherwise, it would be much like asking why the owner of a tuned grixis storm list is not running Null Rod, Blood Moon, etc. That wouldn't make sense, would it? I can understand how you find it hard to believe that PiF and Slate are playable cards because in a hatebear list like yours, I would never run them. They are playable hre because the deck can very easily produce a degenerate amount of mana. There are videos showing how the deck works and they should give you a rough idea how it differs from your hatebears list.

Hey dude! I LOVE your deck and I'm gonna build it (slowly but surely). I was thinking if we could use a Priest of Titania. We run 8 elves and she could help the ramp!

I've not considered running it before but it's an interesting suggestion. Let's say we decide to add it to our list. What could we remove then? My intuition is that we should probably remove one of the mono-G dorks but the problem is that when we do that, we lose synergy with PTitania itself. It's a bit slower than the mono-G dorks, too, (does not enable t2 marath,) and if we were to be reasonable, I think the expected value of its ability is just slightly higher than G because our cmdr does not generate elves. So, it would have to be something other than the mono-G dorks but right now, I'm not sure what that would be. Can you make the case for removing a particular card?

Well, to be fair I don't like many cards in this build. Less liked are Slate of Ancestry (too slow and board reliant), Past in flames (when we have enough mana to use it, we usually have already won), Rude Awakening (seems unnecessary. We need a BIG board in order to make Cradle generate enough mana to make it worth to untap everything paying 5), 2 planeswalkers (again, I don't really like costly ramp that depends on other things), Knight of the reliquary (I never used it tbh. Call it luck, be he's way too slow and usually a better tutor comes first), Oracle of Mul daya - exploration (we don't run enough lands to make them shine). I have doubts on the 2 draw spells based on our board and the 2 token generator creature (I think that marath is enough and his costs is lower the first 2 times).

The problem I faced was: what to put in all those slots? I didn't have much time for testing, so I only tried one solution: stax/hatebears. I made the error to post the list on cEDH on reddit and got torn apart by people telling me "just go blood pod"...maybe they were right, because that wasn't the Marath I love.

Then the next question? Which is the Marath I love? I'd love to play a fast combo deck that, if needed can stop and manage the board while assembling a safe victory. I know he can!

I hope you take no offense in my critics! I really love what you're doing for this horny dude and I wanna help as much as I can to obtain a tuned list!

If you wanna laugh, i'll post the list I came up with: https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/marath-goes-to-competitive-copy/?cat=custom&sort=

Updated link, sorry

https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/marath-goes-to-competitive-take-one/?cat=custom&sort=

No offense taken. I think there are many ways to build around Marath, as there are many ways to build around other flexible generals, and honestly, I would usually agree that the hatebears strategy is probably best suited for an all-competitive table than this one. However, the hatebears list is not an original idea at all--there are dozens of Marath hatebears lists out there and in my opinion, those are all pretty boring lists to play. I like this list because it's storm without U and B. How cool is that?

As you might know, competitive EDH is not about playing the best list that there is; otherwise, we would all be playing some iteration of flash hulk, hermit druid, ad nauseam, tymna-thrasios list. The way I like to play is to play whatever general and strategy I feel like and make it as competitive as possible. This is my take on a dedicated Marath combo/storm list. There's no debate about it. It's just my opinion how it should be.

To help tune this list, you can't only criticize it. You have to propose alternatives to whatever you feel is not optimal. That's how you help push it forward and tune it. Saying that something is bad is not helping. A constructive comment points out alternatives to one or more cards that will help the deck achieve its goal, whatever that might be--that is, suggestions are made with context in mind.

Hey! I've been researching some Marath decks. I'm a Ghave player, normally but have taken a new liking to Marath. I also believe Marath can be higher tiered, and here is my attempt at it if you'd take a look? Marath Flourishing Hulk It's aimed to win via infinite damage with Marath. Ghave and Marath pkay very similarly, only issue being Marath needs counter doubles like you said.

Anyways. I enjoyed reading your primer and looking st your inclusions. I dig it