League of Supervillans
Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on July 2, 2023, 11:49 p.m. by Stardragon
I building a Grixis super friends deck with only villains And yes Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God is the commander of course he is. Now IDK if i should add the other bolas's or not on one hand the only being that bolas could see as an equal is himself... on the other he feel like those are poor imitations of him. Or they all just secheming against each other to fain each others power and the league gets no where.
So any great hidden gems of villains are welcome.
And Yay or Nay to extra bolas's.
How villainous do you want to get with this? Rakdos and Lazav are both very much sinister, destructive, monomaniacal beings, but they played a key part in taking down the Nephilim, Experiment Kraj, and Nicol Bolas (Rakdos got in on all three, Lazav missed the first two). On that note, Szadek, Lord of Secrets is pure villain.
Volrath the Fallen was one of the earliest arc villains. Yawgmoth, Thran Physician can fit in.
Oona and Maralen are at least antagonistic, but are they strictly villains? They mostly just acted against each other, trying to work around the Great Aurora.
TypicalTimmy says... #2
If you are making an eternal league of BBEGs, I feel like saturating the deck in variations of Bolas will only serve to detract from the overall theme of the deck.
I would suggest you set a hard limit to 1 iteration per baddie, and choose the one that makes the most sense for the deck. It doesn't need to be the "best" or "most powerful", but the one that makes the most sense. For example, Tezzeret has eight Planeswalker cards. As you build your deck, maybe you see card draw is lacking. Therefore, Tezzeret, Artifice Master and his 0 ability would be a prime choice. But, maybe you actually have plenty of draw and very limited ramp. That would mean Tezzeret the Schemer and his +1 are infinitely more useful.
So my suggestion, as someone who has build decks like this before, is this: Decide upfront how many representations you want. 10 is a nice starting choice, but this is also only 10% of the deck. That means the majority of the time, during the majority of your games, you'll only land 1 or 2 each. 12 gets up there, and 15 usually means you'll land 2 or 3 per game. But you don't want to overly saturate your deck and end up with a fist full of nothing, either.
So set a limit, maybe 15 cards. Then start by building the rest of the deck first. Get your removal, interactions, draw and protection out of the way.
Look to see what you have left, and of those 15 or whatever you've decided upon, use the best iteration of each baddie to fill in your gaps. For example, maybe you find that your interaction is slightly limited. Ob Nixilis, the Hate-Twisted gives you removal options. Partnered with Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God, this gives you a substantial amount of threat assessment.
Maybe however you have plenty of removal, but what you really struggle with is flyers. Hard to protect yourself and other Planeswalkers if someone can just fly straight over your defenses. Therefore, Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath is a prime choice with his ability to create 5/5 Demon tokens with flying.
As I said, build the deck first and use your baddies to fill in your gaps. ^_^
At least, as a Timmy, that's how I'd construct it. :D
July 3, 2023 12:23 a.m.