To be fair, you can have a tier one deck that consistently loses in a tier 3 meta due to the arch enemy status. Most of the game will be 3 v 1 until someone else becomes a bigger threat. With a tier one deck, players kind of know what to expect. They know where to slow them down. Someone is playing a HD 5-color deck, okay I'm going for Blood Moon. Someone has Karador, Ghost Chieftain, be ready with graveyard hate and instant speed exile or instant speed artifact/enchantment removal. It suddenly becomes a game where when a bomb hits the table it won't stay. I maybe over simplifying it, but hopefully my point is clear

I don't know about you guys but if someone is playing a commander that is considered to be in a weaker tier, I am more relaxed about their turns. I may not know the importance of some of their cards until it is to late. Weak tier generals may run a strong deck but the commander may even act as a decoy.

And to be fair, all of magic is a social format. You are playing with other people. Edh, to most is considered casual.

Also Lilbrudder is right. Prohibiting comments on commanders you run will lead to stagnation. It should be allowed. If anything, no one knows a deck better expect the pilot.

Somewhat off-topic, but it looks like we have our first truly playable card out of ELM. I'm of course talking about Eldritch Evolution.

It has a place in just about every deck that already runs Birthing Pod plus a few miscellaneous others. It will likely find a permanent home in Animar, Derevi, and especially Meren/Karador, among many, many others.

Thoughts?

I would add this card in a heartbeat to any graveyard matters deck. It makes creature based infinite combos so much easier to assemble. Being able to skip up two cc or down gives alot of flexibility. Too bad it has an exile clause.

I'm going to be adding this to Yisan and Sidisi, both of which love this.

Sacrifice Greenwarden of Murasa and go get Craterhoof and use the Greenwarden's dies trigger to get something else like E-Witness back? Yes please.

A put into play tutor that works for Gaddock Teeg

Yea, Eldritch Evolution is looking to be nuts in any green based creature combo deck. Think it's gonna be fantastic in my Saffi Eriksdotter deck. Not sure if Azusa wants it... but it's probably going to be hard for that card to be bad.

The new Craterhoof seems very strong, too. Generally going to be worse than Hoof on balance, but gives redundancy and the Overrun effect can't be countered.

I'll also add I'm still not a fan of lifting the ban on discussing personal commanders. It's inevitably going to lead to more bias than rational discussion.

yavimaya_eldred: To be honest, the ban seems a bit pointless as there is really no wat to enforce it. If somebody wants to talk about about commander XYZ that they run, they'll still talk about it, ban or not.

Might as well get the ball rolling with some preliminary discussion on [Ishkanah, Grafwidow]. (http://www.magicspoiler.com/mtg-spoiler/ishkanah-grafwidow/)

My immediate thoughts: On its own, or helming a GB spider tribal decks, it's awful. However, it provides a sink for infinite black mana. It feels lower Tier 3 in terms of power.

Might as well get the ball rolling with some preliminary discussion on Ishkanah, Grafwidow

My immediate thoughts: On its own, or helming a GB spider tribal decks, it's awful. However, it provides a sink for infinite black mana. It feels lower Tier 3 in terms of power.

Seems like the right tier for it. It appears pretty straight-forward: you play this as your commander to have a win condition you don't have to tutor for when you get infinite mana.

Tier 3 is too generous. There are plenty of infinite mana sinks in Tier 4 that are better than it, namely Ambassador Laquatus. I say Ishkanah belings in Tier 4.

If sliver overlord is in a lower tier due to the deck it "usually" pilots (sliver tribal) then the spider belongs in tier 4. No one who's looking at this guy isn't thinking about tribal spiders.

All I know is which janky tribal deck I'm pulling out in casual metas. I'm sadly all for tier 4 on the spider.

My dreams have come true! Innistrad is the best!

Ambassador Laquatus = Mono- and a useless ability until you have infinite mana.

Ishkanah, Grafwidow = /, free blockers you can boost with generic tribal effects, free bodies you can sac to black's outlets, and an abusable ETB effect.

Put it in T3.

Ohthenoises = "Usually" and "more suited for" are different. I looked at it and thought infinite mana sink. We don't have to downgrade commanders because they're being used by people who don't know how to play. If we did, Narset would be in T3. Should we demote her just because most players don't go the infinite turns route?

sonnet666 But most people DO go the infinite turns/MLD route with narset.... In fact whenever I meet someone with a Narset deck they invariably say "I could have done turns/MLD but I don't feel like being that much of a spike/dick/prick/dink/etc". (meaning people are aware of the optimized list/theory) So that example doesn't exactly hold water.

You and I see an infinite mana sink because we are in this thread and we think like spikes. Most people who want to build G/B will pick Meren if they are a spike anyways, if they are building this spider they aren't going to be building the most tuned, optimal G/B deck they can simply because it's not Meren.

If they pick the spider they are GOING to be building a spider deck 9 times out of 10.

Going back to my example of Overlord, I have an Overlord deck. It's tribal. However I run the deck as a toolbox combo deck similar to how Yisan operates. I tutor out Queen, Gemhide, Blur, and a way to make her ability cost 1 (Or Mana Echoes because lulz). However, at the end of the day it's still a tribal slivers deck and thus less optimized than a Queen combo deck. (I just prefer it for the toolbox). Point is that certain decks are almost ALWAYS a specific strategy and the spider is one of those commanders.

Im not saying that the spider isn't good or anything, it's amazing for that type of deck, however it's GOING to me a spider tribal deck 90% of the time.

Most experienced commander players are going to run the 5 or so spiders that are playable in EDH plus Conspiracy.

Your argument to me seems to be, "Most people are going to build a bad deck, therefore we should rank the card lower." How does that make sense? Why should we overlook a card's potential based on people who think Penumbra Spider is good in EDH?

I'm not saying we should overlook it.

What I'm saying is if we have certain commanders ranked lower due to their typical builds we shouldn't break from that tradition.

The spider lends itself to tribal so that's what a vast majority of people will build.

This is bigger than a giant spider: why is there a disconnect in expectations for people looking at the list? Namely, why are some commanders representative of the most optimized deck for them while others are representative of the most common/obvious deck for them, especially when there exists a better deck for them. What's the problem?! And more importantly, how do we fix this?

Coming back from a vacation, going to work on a fix for the description of this list. I'd put the spider in upper tier 4 or lower tier 3.

Aaaaand the discussion was once again derailed into semantics about judging criteria. Wonderful. Thanks guys!

Because it's still an issue. Believe it or not, issues don't go away if you just ignore them.

uummm.....

I dont even know why we're thinking on running non-token spiders in Ishkanah, Grafwidow

I mean, black tutors, Conjurer's Closet, Illusionist's Bracers Strionic Resonator, Cloudstone Curio, Phyrexian Altar, Ashnod's Altar, and the rest of the deck filled to the brim with graveyard interaction, value , and spot removal?

Two questions/pieces of my personal advice:

• Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord: Why is he Tier 2? Although I do have a soft spot for him, I don't understand why he is better then Sliver Overlord and Kruphix, God of Horizons.

• Kozilek, the Great Distortion: My friend has a Kozilek commander deck and it works wonders even in multiplayer. That player can normally cast Kozilek turn 3-4 with an empty hand, immediately restocking and proceeding to bulldoze whoever did not set up their board to perfection. I do concede he is definitly not Tier 1-2 quality, but I think that he should at least be Tier 3.