Can someone explain why The Gitrog Monster is tier 1? sure he draws cards and fill your graveyard but he can easily be hated out by graveyard hate and such. Is there an infinite combo I'm not seeing?

He is hard to interact with due to one of the infinite combos uses state based action to win.

A great question, BelugaWhale217. Why is Gitrog so good?

Recently KCI got banned in modern, as it abused mana abilities and was not healthy for the format.

Gitrog is a deck that not only abuses mana abilities of Skirge Familiar , abuses rules such as the cleanup step discard outlet, but hoses most decks with it's consistent use of a small variety of fast paced win conditions that are usually counterproof and are resilient to most stax.

But Grafdigger's Cage ! You might be thinking. Or Rest in Peace ! Unfortunately, leyline of the void & cursed totem are the harshest pieces against this deck. But those that run them usually have them by the time Gitrog has the combo pieces ready (or the engine to find them) AND removal for the stax pieces.

I'd recommend reading a deck's primer before asking, as it's more detailed than most people will be.

I'm sure this has been brought up before at some point, but maybe Inalla, Archmage Ritualist deserved a place in tier 2 for her combo with Wanderwine Prophets . Sure, it takes a lot of mana, but with a god hand of fast mana, it can win the game on turn 1 without even having to cast Inalla. In fact, the deck literally never has to cast Inalla--prophets is literally a 1-card combo. Before you cry Force of Will , every combo deck in the format is weak to free countermagic.

Turn 1 wins are pretty rare in cEDH. Constantly threatening to win every turn after 1 is also pretty rare, frankly. There is literally not a single way for your opponents to get rid of Inalla apart from Mindslaver , and nobody ever does that, anyway (if you didn't know, you can choose where someone's commander goes if you're in control of their turn--that's basically the only way to permanently exile a commander, for instance).

Hey there, I've been play testing a Prime Speaker Vannifar Hulk cEDH deck. I find it relevant and consistent at turn 3. I think she could definitely make a spot in tier 1. I run her to an efficient spellseeker/body double to get summoner's pact and flash to hulk that way into the known Ezuri+Sage+4 free cost creatures. The deck can run it a bunch of different ways tho and when testing it against my shimmer zur and paradox sisay lists, it seems to be just as relevant/explosive.

Hi there, I've been playing this original jhoira list since it was spoiled. I have it tuned pretty well and have won multiple cedh tournaments with it. Please consider adding this deck to your list and let me know of any suggestions.

https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/10-04-18-jhoira-storm/?cb=1549143355

It would seem that Teysa Karlov would be a High power or competitive deck... guess more testing is needed?

Can someone please explain how Circu, Dimir Lobotomist is tier 2? I have literally seen him on worst commander options lists and I see no way his ability can work in a singleton format unless there are cards that change the names of other cards that I don't know about. Not sure if it is a joke or something, I can't find any decks on this site with him as the commander.

To my knowledge Circu is used as a sort of lantern control deck but I could be wrong.

DeathByDiddle

He's an Outlet for the Paradox Engine / Isochron Scepter / Dramatic Reversal combo package. Go infinite with this combo and you win the game. His upside is that you don't must to be mana positive. So you can do it with probably only a Sol Ring or Mana Crypt. The next upside is his potential with Lantern pieces and his strength in consistent cEDH meta's. Hit one Hermit Druid means you hit every Druid. Hit one players Brainstorm or Force of Will and no other opponent will cast them.

Sure. In regular EDH he's not strong. In a 100% and highly competitive cEDH meta he can be a blast and a lot of fun to play.

I have to say, this tier list is bad. Ishkanah, Grafwidow is nowhere near a high power level Commander, and to put the Spider Tribal Commander above Edgar Markov , Athreos, God of Passage and Skullbriar, the Walking Grave is absurd. Not saying those decks should be raised a tier, I'm just saying they should be ranked higher than a jank spider tribal commander. I also think there's a bias towards infinite mill combos, as Circu, Dimir Lobotomist , Oona, Queen of the Fae and Ambassador Laquatus are not at all comparable to Ghave, Guru of Spores , Narset, Enlightened Master and Prossh, Skyraider of Kher who go infinite in much faster and stronger ways. Varolz, the Scar-Striped is the biggest offender on this list. This is further noted by the deck examples, where the author seemingly pokes fun at Varolz, the Scar-Striped not being that great in cEDH but seems to have a personal bias towards the deck. If we're counting Protean Hulk combo decks as "competitive" there's plenty more worthy commanders to consider. Honestly, this list comes across like the author just put a few decks everyone knows is good at the top (Teferi Stax, Thrasios, ect.) then just based the rest of the list off of personal preference or whatever the local meta is where the author plays.

DeathByDiddle Circu has the most efficient scepter combo in the format and that means he has the potential of throwing out a very early kill. The commander doesn't provide card advantage but you can use his abilities and draw-limiting effects along with cheap mill rocks to create soft locks and to constantly filter the draws of yourself and others.

Here's an example build:

Brain Fart Stax

Commander / EDH Winterblast

SCORE: 28 | 24 COMMENTS | 2648 VIEWS | IN 15 FOLDERS

Brolamog_the_Infinite_Higher: Oona is very strong when built properly. Narset got a hell of a lot worse now that Partial Paris is gone, because all of her gameplan requires her to attack. Without Partial Paris to filter her opening draws, she's just nowhere near as good as she once was. Prossh took a hit because there are better options for Food Chain combo since his initial printing.

crstisalie Oh absolutely I agree, my point isn’t “X Commander should be Y tier” my point is that there’s inconsistency in this tier list. Oona is strong and I’m not trying to say infinite mill combos are bad, they’re just not what I would consider a viable cEDH strategy since so many other wincons are just better/more stable. However, even without partials and better Food Chain Commanders to say that Oona, Circu and Varolz are on the same level as Narset, Prossh, Yidris and Mizzix is insulting at worst and misleading at best

I dunno, my Oona list (which can be found on my profile page) is very strong. Average kill (realistically) is turn 3.5. She is a lot better than she is often given credit for. I don't know what your meta is like, but she hangs with the best decks in the format. No issues whatsoever.

From how the tiers are described now, the ones labeled at tier 1 (Maximum Power category) are simply the commanders that stand out as being consistently competitive, but the tier 2 commanders (Competitive category) can be, more or less, just as competitive as the commanders labeled tier 1. While I don't agree with all of their placements, for the most part it's pretty accurate.

This is just my understanding, though, based on how it's all structured.

Brolamog_the_Infinite_Higher

Bro.

Bro. Man we gotta talk.

You can't go disrespectin a hard workin girl like that. Dude like if you were a fae queen who always had to deal with random kingdom crap your subjects pull and the fact that you cant seem to get any welfare from WotC cause they hate Lorwyn like what kinda life would you be leadin. Look like sure you can go with your dragons, or your enlightened masters, or whatever you want but you know at the end of the day, what matters is you feed the fam. And infinite mill? It feeds the fam. Don't gotta be fancy. No glorious work that you need a PhD in stack theory just to show off. But you know what? Oona does it anyways. She gets up in the morning. Takes the hate from the haters. And goes to work anyways. Dude she cant even guarantee a promotion cause they replacing her with new technology and whatnot. All the bathrooms getting new sinks. Turns out there's better places to dump your colorless mana.

But you know what cant be replaced? Her hard workin no nonsense spirit. And I think its just not real nice bro to rail on her like that cause Dave and Glasscannon.deck might be more flashy when they go off.

And you know, she's definitely better than Prossh, Skyraider of Kher .

Know why?

She's blue.

Oh god AlwaysSleepy, that comment made my night LOL!

It's the same for oona as it is ishkana. The leading difference being that blue gives the best interaction&more resilient infinite mana lines, ishkana also gives you dudes to pod into finding your combos/interaction faster.

Varolz is the most consistent sac outlet in cEDH. If there's a cheaper one available in the cz - the deck would use it. Yes: hulk lines are fast. The fastest possible. It confused me too - the notion with circu, but try the playtest button on each of the decks, it'll give you a far better understanding of those you believe are unnecessarily higher in tier.

The most first thing that's considered when seeing a general for cEDH is what the card does. Tazri is so stromg because he finds your combo outlet. Najeela is a combo piece. Gitrog is a dumb engine & a combo piece. Further down the list you see: Ishkana - wins with infinite mana Oona - as above Circu - wins with storm count Brago - staxproof general who helps you to lock out the board & navigate around your own pieces with ease.

Like... the knowledge is out there. You just have to do some research.

This is probably a little embarrassing, but how does Tazri's tutor do anything useful, actually? Do you first play Conspiracy and then get Misthollow Griffin , or is there some other creature that combos with Food Chain (apart from the new squee) that's also an ally? I get that you can sink the infinite mana into her to make her and any other allies infinitely big, but iunno.

That's no argument against the competitiveness of the deck, by the way--I'm just curious.

@NoOneOfConsequence

As far as I know;

1) get infinite mana to cast creatures from FC

2) cast Tazri

3) Tazri trigger gets you Kalastria Healer

4) cast Kalastria Healer

5) sac Tazri to FC and return it to CZ

6) cast Tazri

7) KHealer trigger

Repeat steps 5-7 until everyone else is drained.

JohnnyCRO is on point with how Tazri works, he is there as your reliable gateway tutor to win. Misthollow Griffin can be interchangeable with Eternal Scourge and Squee, the Immortal to produce infinite mana with FC.

If Tazri isn't a she, then bob's my uncle.

I didn't know Eternal Scourge existed, actually. Also, yeah, that sounds about right, I guess. She could also just go get more allies for funzies, but you win already with Kalastria Healer .

why is prime speaker vannifar only high power o this list?

Winterblast Thanks for clearing that up, very interesting & informative. The tactic must be really new or tough to pull off based on how many decks are listed with him as commander on edhrec(currently 155). Maybe people are trying to keep it a secret so that it can be a surprise win out of nowhere. With how many people link to this list; I'm surprised there aren't more trying it.