Calling all Dicks and Douchebags!
Commander Deck Help forum
Posted on June 30, 2017, 10:39 a.m. by Wurmlover
before I start, let me state my meta at my LGS
2 Mizzix of the Izmagnus: burn/combo
1 Keranos, God of Storms: combo/burn for the most part
1 Gisela, Blade of Goldnight: voltron
1 Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord: crappy budget build for a new player
1 Omnath, Locus of Mana: ooga booga, me play forest. ooga booga, me play creature.
1 Riku of Two Reflections: Play Terastodon turn 4, blow up everyone's lands.
1 Prossh, Skyraider of Kher + Food Chain: This person is literally satan.
Keep those in mind while I explain my predicament. In order to balance my play group, I play brago stax. one problem, I only have a budget version with the most annoying piece being Lavinia of the Tenth . I don't run any actual stax artifacts. I've been trying to design a deck that would be able to keep 5 other combo heavy/aggro heavy decks at bay over the course of a game. its not working. I know you all are out there. What are the most dickish, douchey cards to use here against this meta to keep them under control? should I switch commanders?
the deck so far:
Stalin, King Eternal
Commander / EDH*
SCORE: 2 | 14 COMMENTS | 968 VIEWS
solarPULSAR, I already run both Ghostly Prison and Propaganda. in terms of attacking, I run Dissipation Field. story circle is fun though
June 30, 2017 12:13 p.m.
Winterblast says... #4
Wurmlover what you need is stuff that actually stops combo, not something against attacking creatures. I also think it will be hard to have Brago survive and deal dmg to get any value out of him. It might be tough for your budget but I'd suggest going rather creatureless in that meta and ditch brago for Grand Arbiter Augustin IV, Oloro, Ageless Ascetic or Sen Triplets.
Against food chain I suggest using AEther Barrier because the extra mana can't be paid with food chain mana so prossh can't go infinite. Overburden and Pendrell Mists also helps. Play Humility, Cursed Totem and Torpor Orb to disable most creature based strategies.
June 30, 2017 12:24 p.m.
Winterblast yeah scratch the idea of doing arbiter. anything remotely powerful enough is too expensive for what I can do. what do you think fits in the brago stax archetype that could help?
June 30, 2017 3:06 p.m.
Wurmlover I should have actually looked at your deck before I made suggestions. Thats my bad fam.
June 30, 2017 5:08 p.m.
speedreecer says... #8
Use bravo to bounce o-ring, banishing light cards so they creatures stay sick
June 30, 2017 5:36 p.m.
You have a lot of hateful creature competition rounding out 1/2 of those combos it looks like, some blue/red wait'n'hate crap, ooga-booga manaramp + creatures, you know what might be a budget friendly good commander in that meta? Karlov of the Ghost Council low cost, small potatos, I'm not sure that the blue counter heavies are going to want to blow their counterspells on that commander or all those low cmc lifegain setups, at that table they should have bigger fish to fry, he also becomes ridiculous creature control when you have multiple lifegain triggers, also he will be minimally effected by MLD once a couple of lifegain effects are online
otherwise, I've played a Captain Sisay deck that could give that meta a run for its money... Although the $$$ value of that deck has gone through the roof recently :(
June 30, 2017 11:21 p.m.
Steelspike says... #11
Me personally, I would add green and go Roon of the Hidden Realm or Derevi, Empyrial Tactician.
There's all kinds of budget options to make either one of those decks nasty.
Presence of Gond with Midnight Guard. More fun with Ivy Lane Denizen
Guilty Conscience + Phytohydra and Pollenbright Wings
or, you could have some real fun with Guilty Conscience and Stuffy Doll (goes infinite, but you must have a c-c-c-c-combo breaker, I prefer Sundial of the Infinite, Deadeye Navigator or some sac engine, or else some rules nazi will tell you it's a draw because the turn never ends, or some shit...)
Then there's always Odric, Lunarch Marshal or Edric, Spymaster of Trest to discourage them attacking you (sadly, Odric requires other creatures with keywords, but hey, Drogskol Reaver is still a thing...)
Plus, you could run your very own Terastodon with the inclusion of green. Also, Manglehorn, Prowling Serpopard, Acidic Slime, Fathom Mage + Inexorable Tide , not to mention Cryptolith Rite + Deadeye Navigator + Village Bell-Ringer , Murkfiend Liege, the list goes on and on...
July 1, 2017 12:09 a.m. Edited.
Winterblast says... #12
Steelspike the stuffy doll combo works because after the targeted opponent is killed, the doll won't deal any more dmg because the opponent leaves the game when state based effects are checked and the loop is broken.
July 1, 2017 1:41 a.m.
Steelspike says... #13
That's good to know, because the guy what told me that was very convincing. Plus, he's very rarely wrong on those kinds of rules problems.
Thank you. I'm going to tell him to Stuff it next time I run into him (see what I did there? Yes, yes. I know. I'm a super nerd... )
July 1, 2017 8:14 a.m.
Rule of Law, Arcane Laboratory, and Eidolon of Rhetoric seem mandatory. Curse of Exhaustion and Overwhelming Splendor from Hour of Devastation seem like possibilities, especially since you can blink them with Brago to select a new target. Stony Silence and Dovescape can be used if you get desperate to slow people down or lock them out, since you can get rid of them yourself later if you need them gone. There's also Pithing Needle and Phyrexian Revoker if there are any specific things you need to shut down, like Food Chain (which only Revoker turns off, but Needle is useful for other things that Revoker isn't). But take some of my suggestions with a grain of salt, as I don't play stax myself.
July 1, 2017 9:17 a.m.
@Winterblast - Something to note about Overburden, however, is that it has been errataed to apply only to non-token creatures. Still, I've had times playing against Prossh players with Overburden and even though I announced the proper rules text on cast, they seemed to be playing under the impression that it applied to their tokens as well.
They never asked to read the card again or made any over remarks about the card so I didn't bother making corrections. Hey, we were playing for a Tundra (which I now own, Huzzah!).
Anyway, I've played in a shop meta with a Prossh player who was a giant ass monkey. He called my friend a potato and told me I wasn't human. These things occurred as I rule-sharked people. Again, playing shop-level leagues for true duals is a terrible idea, but hey...
Anyway, I've noticed most shop level players are utter trash. No, really. People think they're knowledgeable about the format but they just aren't. The average player's awareness of the format is just piss poor. In a 30 man league. I might have to contend with 2 or 3 players who I consider to be remotely good and those guys often aren't even playing the best decks they could bring to tables.
I actually ran Extract just to hit some key combo pieces in my meta as I found that outside of the main combos, the decks these turds were running were so bad that I could easily control the board and finish on the back of my own deck. I didn't need to tech too hard vs these guys. My other odd choices were things like mainboard Erase, Tempest of Light, etc. because of stuff I was running into.
My point is that if you actually run a solid deck and you're seriously good at edh, you should honestly wreck people at shops.
Oh, and Wurmlover, the Arbiter deck listed on my profile can easily be made on a $300 budget. It's what I've run for a very long time.
July 1, 2017 10:31 a.m. Edited.
Winterblast says... #17
TheDevicer that's quite obvious because it says "creature card" and not just "creature". I'm not sure if we always played that card correctly though, because my copy is in French and no one actually looked up the oracle text. Could be that someone took back lands for tokens without asking if that effect applies for tokens as well...
I think our players here, except for the newer ones, are all sort of good at knowing rules and the oracle text of at least the cards they use in their deck. And if a complex situation requires discussion, there's always the internet to look up rules and card interactions.
July 1, 2017 10:52 a.m.
TheDevicer "Whenever a player puts a creature card into play" refers pretty clearly to nontoken creatures, I would say, with cards being defined as something off the battlefield.
July 1, 2017 10:53 a.m.
Sure, but the oracle version is way more intuitive for new players who have never seen the card before or similar wording somewhere else. Then there's also the new wording on creating tokens to consider. As veterans, all of this stuff makes sense to us, but mtg wording is actually darn hard to process for new players.
Edit: Holy shit, just re-read my first post. It's super misleading. Double check your posts, kids. Uhh, yeah. Sorry about that.
July 1, 2017 11:10 a.m. Edited.
Winterblast says... #20
If anyone played it wrongly it was not because of a misunderstanding but because it usually happens like that:
"Cast overburden, ok?"
"What's that again?"
"The thing that bounces your lands when you play a creature"
"Ah, ok"
And then no one cares to look it up because the card is in French and everyone thinks they know how it works anyway
I should probably tell our purphoros player next time that he doesn't suffer THAT much from overburden...with Norin the Wary under his control it still says "you lose the game" for him.
July 1, 2017 11:23 a.m.
TheDevicer, Extract would be really great for my meta, thanks!
July 1, 2017 1:31 p.m.
darklinglion398 says... #22
I didn't see anyone mention it but there is always the control combo in Sensei's Divining Top/Scroll Rack and Counterbalance if you really want to play control and anger some people.
July 1, 2017 9:57 p.m.
darklinglion398 says... #23
granted those pieces are fairly expensive, but they can be really annoying/broken in certain cases
July 1, 2017 10 p.m.
Wait, Wurmlover I'm confused. Is that decklist you linked what you're playing? Because you have a bunch of stax effects in there already, and a lot of them aren't that expensive if you needed to buy them. What's the issue here?
July 2, 2017 8:50 a.m.
sonnet666, the issue is I want the right stax pieces to keep those specific decks under control.
July 2, 2017 4:21 p.m.
sonnet666, the list I have posted is what I want the deck to be. the deck I run now is a $60 budget build.
July 2, 2017 4:27 p.m.
Wow! Uhhh, that's terrible. Still, I'm pretty confident we could improve your current $300 list while also dropping its price AND tailor it to do well vs the decks you mentioned above.
July 2, 2017 5:27 p.m.
Winterblast says... #28
You should also consider that the price listed on this page is always far too high...if you look for stuff on ebay or local sales platforms you get your stuff much cheaper. Even if you are not from europe I think the prices are still better than what is given here, if you buy from magiccardmarket.eu. I just bought a NM unlimited Timetwister for less than 600 euro including shipping costs, just saying...
I'm pretty sure you can get your deck for 2/3 of the price shown on this page.
July 2, 2017 5:43 p.m.
if you gett out a wall in the early game an opponent with a creature will decide to attack an opponent without a creature instead of you. just run tons of wraths' counter spells, and cards like Ghostly Prison or Howling Mine. basically make your opponents have better options to attack and run cards like Last Word to take care of combo players
July 3, 2017 12:47 a.m.
Winterblast says... #30
jonmaior unfortunately that only works in groups with bad threat assessment. If you are obviously building up a protective wall, people will rather try and destroy your stuff than simply ignore you and go for someone else. I've even gone as far as to remove Ghostly prison and propaganda from my decks and only use Ensnaring Bridge and Moat if I really want to stop attacks.
July 3, 2017 3:50 a.m.
I suggest making an infinite combo or some other combo that wins you the game and just run a bunch of cards that destroy attacking creatures, or other cards that would be a thorn in your opponents side if they targeted you (like Immolating Glare). Don't play anything to make you look like a threat. if you are down to half life and your opponents ar certain that you are not going to win and that their are bigger fish to fry, they will keep you alive as long as you can convince them that there is something you can do to help them take down the most dangerous player (like a Wrath of God), or that you will make it your mission to mess them up if they attack you because you have nothing to lose. then in 1 turn, out of nowhere you whip out your infinite turn combo and kill all of them. (that last part is deeply satisfying, trust me)
July 3, 2017 9:56 a.m.
Winterblast, my group already makes fun of me for having a deck that doesn't win, so I don't think they'll target me as long as the food chain player is alive. that said, if I'm a pain in the ass, I'm the first to die.
July 3, 2017 2:22 p.m.
darklinglion398 says... #33
while playing control, I personally really enjoy having a wide variety of options and safety measures. Cards that give you flash like Leyline of Anticipation and Vedalken Orrery are super handy as you can keep up safety nets you usually wouldn't have like instant speed Supreme Verdict or any other wrath cards. It also makes it super easy to play head games with the other people at your table even if you don't have anything. Also against aggro heavy/token decks, Crawlspace is super nice to have.
July 3, 2017 11:10 p.m.
Wolfrage76 says... #34
Have some fun and take their stuff while giving them poison apples like in Zedruu the Dickish (I was in the same boat kinda so I've been working on this one)
RedmundR2 says... #2
Sounds like you might want hatebear cards and global enchantments to slow the game down, or ways to punish people from attacking you. What about Ghostly Prison or Sphere of Safety or even a card like Hixus, Prison Warden? You can also try Mystic Barrier which can be ridiculously annoying. Also, Story Circle LOL
June 30, 2017 12:07 p.m.