sonnet666 I appreciate your response. I'll start off by saying that mentioning the obvious tier 1s (Thrasios, Zur, Tazri) was really just for completeness' sake. In hindsight, it was just a waste of time to mention them and I regret bringing it up.

You're also completely right about Mairsil, I just straight-up didn't do any research on the way that deck was going at all. The Mirror-Mad Phantasm line is great in a Doomsday shell and it's the main draw for it. The Razaketh line is a little bit more questionable since it requires creatures in play and Grixis has few creatures it actually wants to run and it can only be uses once a turn, but turning your commander into Diabolic Intent isn't bad by any means. I still think that Kess and Jeleva are clearly superior Grixis commanders though since they can have 99 cards that are gas and not dilute their deck at all. It's similar to Teferi vs Arcum Dagsson. Teferi runs a couple of bad cards or cards that aren't good for reasons other than The Chain Veil combo (Thran Dynamo, Gilded Lotus, and The Chain Veil itself would be useless without the rules interaction that allows for the combo), but Arcum runs a lot more bad cards because it needs to have artifact creatures to sacrifice and most artifact creatures suck. There's less of a difference between Kess/Jeleva and Mairsil than there is between Teferi and Arcum Dagsson in terms of number of different cards in each deck, but the principle is that Mairsil requires more build-around cards than the other Grixis generals and it hurts him overall. Regardless, I apologize for my ignorance and I think that tier 2 can be a valid placement for now.

I forgot that Razaketh was your pet deck. I won't bother arguing with you about it then.

I disagree about Karador. It's true that he reduces his own cost, but only if creatures are in the graveyard, which there will probably be few unless someone has wiped or you have Survival of the Fittest/Fauna Shaman. In the latter case, you probably won't need Karador since you'll be able to tutor up Boonweaver Giant and a sac outlet (or whatever you're comboing with) relatively quickly anyway. It's true that he casts creatures from your graveyard, but only one per turn, so saying he effectively makes your graveyard your hand is a huge overexaggeration. Being able to cast creatures from the yard is also only useful if you have creatures in the yard, which is not too difficult to achieve but not always a common gamestate. Compare this to Tymna, who generates value at every stage of the game as long as you have creatures, and he looks much less favorable. The Abzan Boonweaver strategy has never really relied on the commander for anything but value, so the fact that Tymna can create more value more quickly than Karador speaks to her advantages and his weaknesses. If you won't put him in tier 3, consider at least moving him down to tier 2.5.

Everything I said about Teferi was in jest. In fact, I believe I even said later in my post that I was just joking around when I talked trash about Teferi. I don't post a lot on tappedout anymore so I don't blame people for not knowing, but I am a Teferi main and although I don't consider myself an expert, I know the deck pretty well. The Blood Pod matchup is probably Teferi's worst matchup (it's even worse than Ruric Thar, which is saying a lot), but it's not enough to keep him out of the top tiers.

Your suggestions for additions to Teferi are understandable but misguided. The primary reason that Paradox Engine and Dramatic Scepter aren't in Teferi is partially because the deck already has two and a half alternate win conditions - Rings of Brighthearth+Basalt Monolith is one, Power Artifact+Monolith is two, and Teferi+Stasis is almost a win condition - and doesn't need to dilute itself by running any more. All the cards I just mentioned are also good on their own - Monoliths for obvious reasons, Rings of Brighthearth for its ability to copy Teferi or Tezzeret's abilities, and Power Artifact for generating more mana while comboing with The Chain Veil. Neither Dramatic Reversal nor Isochron Scepter have utility on their own. Imprinting a Counterspell or a bounce spell on Isochron Scepter is a fine strategy in 1v1 (and I used to play Scepter Chant back in Mirrodin-era Extended, so I know how it feels), but it ultimately isn't good enough in the midgame to be worth running. Dramatic Reversal is effectively just a ritual and has very little utility outside of the combo. We already have access to a lot of good rituals, like Teferi for example, and we don't need another one that badly. Paradox Engine is too reliant on cards that are already in hand and costs 5 mana. Why would you tutor for a situationally relevant card that costs more to cast than The Chain Veil and is not a guaranteed combo? Furthermore, running these additional win conditions would require multiple cuts to either the manabase, card draw spells, counterspells, or bounce spells, which would weaken the deck in some other aspect. It's just not worth it to run these cards.

And just because Manifold Insights isn't as good as Lim-Dul's Vault doesn't mean it's trash. Being able to see 10 cards deep and getting 3 nonlands is a big deal, even if it's the three worst cards in that set. The fail state of Manifold Insights is either getting your 3 worst mana rocks or your 2 worst mana rocks and a counterspell that's not relevant (ex. Flusterstorm at a table full of creature-heavy decks). That's not great, but it's still 3 cards that will likely not be dead. The only major drawback to the card is its sorcery speed, which is unfortunate but ultimately not a dealbreaker. And obviously the card is unplayable with fewer than 3 opponents, but ideally that shouldn't happen.

Finally, do not under any circumstance go with a different decklist than what you have posted. Even though it does not match my personal list and I don't agree with every card choice in it (cough Expedition Map cough), the comprehensiveness of the primer section is encyclopedic, which makes it an excellent resource. It talks about primary combo lines, alternate lines, matchups, single card choices, and even budget alternatives. If you are already vaguely familiar with competitive EDH, you could become a somewhat competent Teferi player just by reading that primer and goldfishing a bit. Something drastic would need to happen in order for that primer to become irrelevant, on the scale of a major banning or maybe a change to the rules interaction between Teferi and The Chain Veil.

As far as Yidris goes, Jim has talked a lot on the discord about his deck and the gist of it is that Yidris is plan B. Plan A is jamming a turn 3 Ad Nauseam, which he aims to do as often as possible. That should give you an idea of how important Yidris actually is to the deck. His current list also still runs Mass Hysteria, so Concordant Crossroads could be a possible addition to improve it. I doubt Need for Speed would work well though, it overlaps with Rain of Filth too much and you'd rather sac your lands for mana than give your dorks haste in most circumstances.

I would argue that The Gitrog Monster can fight through counterspells more easily than Sidisi, Undead Vizier can because of cards like City of Solitude and Autumn's Veil, but you're right in that both decks are linear and somewhat fragile. Gitrog makes up for this by being able to clean up at really weird times, like their own cleanup step.

I think Tier 3 is solid for Atraxa. She has pubstomp written all over her, so it makes sense to put her in the pubstomp tier.

When I said that Dimir was a limited color identity, I meant in terms of what it can answer and how well it can answer it, specifically in regards to artifacts and enchantments. Black can't really interact with artifacts or enchantments at all, and blue only has bounce spells or counterspells. Hurkyl's Recall and other bounce spells are only temporary, and unless you can win the turn after a bounce through countermagic for sure, you will still be in danger of the problem card resolving the following turn again. Swan Song and other counterspells are reactive, which a combo deck really doesn't want to be. Compare this to Grixis, which has access to Vandalblast and By Force, or Esper, which has access to Disenchant and Detention Sphere (in Zur), or Sultai, which has access to every good card in the format, and Dimir looks worse by comparison.Even the creature removal isn't as diverse when it comes to wipes. Dimir only has Toxic Deluge while Esper has Supreme Verdict and Grixis has Rolling Earthquake and Fire Covenant. That's really the only weakness of the color identity, but it's not a trivial weakness and it does make Dimir combo worse than Esper/Grixis/Sultai/4 color combo.

As for your question on Baral, whether High Tide isn't strong or Baral is just bad, the answer is kind of both. Baral is a commander who gets outclassed by Jace in almost every way, and although he isn't weak by any means, Jace isn't outrageously strong to begin with.Jace can loot more consistently, can get more value in the midgame when cards have been binned, and can enable double Tide turns. Baral's cost reduction is nice, but that's about the only advantage he has over Jace. Blood Pod is also pretty brutal against Baral since all the win conditions either require Islands (making it weak to Choke) or artifacts (making it weak to Null Rod and Stony Silence).

Hey, how can you suggest a decklist for Inalla, Archmage Ritualist? :)

sonnet666

Sram requires most of the deck be bad cards - Lin just requires a small toolbox set to add a lot of value. I have played in a lot of cEDH games and have never seen Sram win, but my Lin list wins plenty. I've played in the r/competitiveedh Cockatrice games and Lin does in fact win (not more than 25%, but still wins), even against the decks you've listed as tier 1, piloted by the more well-known people (such as some of LabManiacs).

At the very least, Lin can pretty easily neutralize most decks attempting to turn creatures sideways, which is a huge majority of the decks you list at tier 3, while still being able to play the hatebears that slow down the higher tier combo decks.

Antec2005 if youre the one suggesting it, just tag the deck slug here or paste the url. We'll probably review and comment on it. If you need a decklist or template mine above should work as a starting place

i see you dont have a ramos deck up yet. i made a deck list for him that i feel is pretty strong. needs some work and i havent worked on much of a description yet. its basically cascade and counters with some dragon subthemes. ramos is a strong commander and could easily blow someone out with commander damage just from his own ramp ability casting 5 color spells. http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/ramos-like-them-big/

3InchMeatMonster, You have a.... lovely name.

This is a list mostly for discussing commanders in a cEDH context. Unfortunately, your Ramos deck has way too high of a mana curve to fit those kind of standards. In cEDH decks are expected to be able to win on turn five at the latest if they don't get disrupted. Most of the high mana spells you're running wouldn't even hit the board by that time.

Check out some of the other decklists in tiers 1 through 2.5 if you want to see what I mean.

chaosumbreon87 okay thank you!

What do you think about my deck?

Inalla, Archmage Ritualist http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/tricky-wizards-4tw-inalla-archmage-ritualist/

Few things about this list i dont like, while a majority of the t1 list is accurate, i feel as though youre missing some key commanders. Jace, vryn's prodigy and vendillion clique.

Jace vryn's prodigy : jace as of recently was just banned as to being too good 1v1, with a cheap 1U mana cost, you can sculpt your hand over 5 turns and then he flips over to create redundancy, whilst he may not be the best aggro commander (aside from the fact that he's blue, he doesn't have a bleeding edge with creatures), he is one of the best control commanders. Being able to drop him on turn 2 after mental misstep, force spike, spell pierce, annul, dispel, etc. And being able to create redundancy with the counterspells that occupy your graveyard, and providing damage reduction (provided the opponent has a creature on the field) to prolong the game, he also has a very unique toolbox of things such as his emblem, and the surplus amount of blue bounce spells ie. Unsummon, boomerang, capsize, cyclonic rift. You're already winning when you drop a jace on turn 2, let alone sculpt yoir hand to provide unsurpassable card advantage. Have i talked about blue's tendency for mass draw? Or extra turns? Extra turn spells are top notch in this deck and being able to get multiple extra turns because his loyalty is so built up because no one can touch him, can be a very big problem.

Vendillion clique : although not as good as Jace, he still prpvides the blue control shell but with a different approach, vendillion clique provides blue hand disruption with a lot of information. This theme recurs throughout the deck to the point of the player runs telepathy and counters everything that matters, while in 1v1 this effect is a lot more powerful, there is a surplis of synergies that are reachable in edh and with things such as; strionic resonator, panharmonicon, deadeye navigator, etc. You can essentially gut all opponents hands of everything. And whatever you couldnt get rid of, you counter. Being a 3 drop 3/1, it makes a 7 turn clock for either your opponents to scoop because they cant play anything due to your card advantage and information, or die to commander damage.

The issue with have is his lack of black tbh. He is a solid high tide deck, and can storm off with decent consistency, but without an expansive tutor package and no access to more solid creature removal (toxic deluge and friends) he can struggle against stax and tax, and can't rush to his finishes as quickly. Vendillion clique is not that good in multiplayer, at all. Again, their reach is limited due to being mono u, but they have another glaring weakness. Reactive counter Control in multiplayer requires a massive draw engine. Every time you counter a spell, you essentially go down 3 cards in advantage to stop one spell (you now have less cards in your hand against 3 players, instead of one. Damia sage of stone is the only reactive control deck I like, because she keeps your hand nice and fat. Mono u reactive control really isn't a good deck in multiplayer cedh. I'm not saying counterspells are bad, but counterspells.dec usually is.

Screptile I'd love to see those decks play at a table with three t1-2.5 decks. It'd be funny, because they are sounding very good with how you're talking about them, but I know they're not. The reality is JVP is a high tide commander, not control. You cannot win trying to play control against three combo decks that are a majority of t1-2. You just simply can't counter enough.

As for Clique, I feel as though she/he, whatever it is, (no knowledge of the lore behind the fae) most likely won't even come down before a game is already being won. Like I said earlier, sitting down with other decks that are ALL very threatening and powerful, you simply can't provide enough counter magic to three other people to do anything to stop them. Even if you do, you're going to win with a 7 turn clock to 1 of the 3 opponents? Ha. That's a joke in and of itself.

For example, just to show you, I was piloting the Thrasios/Tymna Doomtide deck played/created by one of the labmen yesterday against a Nath stax deck (that I built), a Keranos stax deck (Cameron of the labman piloted this on an episode and I fell in love with it, also my deck), a Paradoxical Arcum deck, and a Karametra Echantress with some prison aspects to it and my opening hand was 3 fetches, Mox Diamond, Mana Crypt, Imperial Seal, Vampiric Tutor, I'm on the play, play mana rocks cast seal (drew a flusterstorm) go get LED. turn 1 sol rings etc. from everyone else a bit of hand sculpting. Drew led, cast thrasios. turn 2 hand sculpting someone made every draw a card (some random kid that isn't included in my earlier listing as he's playing an AWFUL Nekusar deck) I respond with Vampiric Tutor, get Auriok Salvagers draw it, my turn draw land play salvagers, LED, response from the arcum player was force, i replied with a flusterstorm. Win.

You're going to tell me you can control me and two-four (my usual group) out of the game when we are all playing stax, combo, and prison decks? No. That's impossible. Literally. I think they're both fine where they are.

Hey all, I made my own variant of Inalla as promised. I found that she's generally best as a backup wincon or to gain additional value rather than a primary line for winning the game. My first draft of the list is here Alla Board the Wizard Express. I welcome any constructive criticism you have to offer and would like to have my deck considered for the tier list.

Screptile your mistake here is comparing duel commander ratings to multiplayer cEDH ratings. You simply can't do that. I also agree that the 2 commanders you brought up are fine where they are and are not tier 1 in a multiplayer environment, nevermind multi cEDH.

also, sonnet666 over here at half mast. Get a room you two :p

i make everyone half mast

...Aaand now I'm scarred for life.

Oooooo. Butt stuff.

I like Butt Stuff.

to get this back to a magic context, I'm here to give this City of Ass Ass Whuppin'

to get this back to a magic context, I'm here to give this City of Ass an Ass Whuppin' (hope this doesnt make a second POST request)

chaosumbreon87 its not that i lost the point of cedh... its the point of that i lost my train of thought, put in a bunch of filler cards, and was trying things out. I knew that my list wasnt nearly optimized at all, basically all i had was blue and green staples. I need to find a clear win con, and i know it should be generating a lot of mana but elfball isnt really the way i see it going. Im not sure how to do it otherwise though...

I mean I would read up on some primers for simic, that should give you some idea of a win con. Hell, maybe HT or hulk is the way to go. Maybe it was elfball all along. Who knows. All I'm stating is the constraints we all must follow. If you need help after that, that is what we are here for. Do not worry, not many decks get added first try points to nazahn.

Hey guyz, I was looking at the tier list and a strange idea popped in my head about a tier 5 commander... More precisely, Polukranos, World Eater. I mean, it will never be the best option for mono-green, but I was wondering if something was possible with him at the helm of a deck, and I started thinking about stax.

How would this be a stax commander? Well, we could break parity by having a lot of effects against lands (Winter Orb, Mana Web, Tsabo's Weband stuff). Our own mana dorks would start breaking parity. Since we are in green, we would have an easy time to get rid of oponents mana rocks, breaking parity even more. And with our commander, while generating a lot of mana from dorks, we could get rid of annoying opponents mana dorks, breaking parity even more.

I feel like it would also be good against a lot of hatebears (with the rise of BloodPod decks it could be relevant to remove them). It could be used to wipe them all, while generating a huge beater to lower the life totals of AdNaus/DD players. I mean, this is not the most competitive thing around, but I am pretty sure it could benefit from some brewing...

I was wondering if anyone had insights on this idea, if anyone already tried it? If you guyz had any suggestions?

thegigibeast I think the idea sounds interesting, would Polukranos be a board wipe in the command zone? I actually do have some of the cards for it and I might want to try doing a brew sometime. I think there's just a lack of tutors for the said cards in mono-green, which would be the only problem.

thegigibeast,

That sounds like something I would enjoy helping brew if you post a list to get started on. Hell, if you have a way to play it online I will help you playtest it so we can fine tune it even more. Mirror match or whatever you think is clever.

You would likely need a bunch of artifact hate to shut down mana rocks if you want to prevent them from doing much mana wise. Almost all non-green cEDH decks rely on mana rocks for acceleration so that would have to be a big part of the equation.

Has anyone else gotten to the point of reading lists online and seeing cards like Commander's Sphere and then just stopped reading the list?

So I found out today our local Deveri player today was cheating.In a 'casual format.' He got caught in Camera during a finals pod.

So I retract my "Deveri is broke statement." The guy would hide cards up his sleeve pregame and then dump them in to his lap whilst playing.

How many of us are Paper only players?

Lorderos23 actually no, I love finding "optimized" lists on TO and mtgsalvation and making them actually optimized. it literally cuts down the time needed for deckmaking by 1/2 and often gives me a proper direction to think when building a commander.

Im just going to shame and shun cheaters cause once you do it, your rep goes to 0 in the entire CITY, if not more, you play at.

Not too sure where I stand on polukranos but im currently a little preoccupied with the tier 3 commanders