New Year, New Deck
Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on Jan. 5, 2026, 12:37 p.m. by clayperce
Welcome to 2026! What's everyone working on?
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I picked up Ellie, Brick Master + Joel, Resolute Survivor over the holidays ... with any luck, they'll be my (first) New Deck for 2026.
theNeroTurtle says... #3
Personally, I think that Universes Beyond has totally destroyed the MTG brand. I have been playing since Tempest. We had things like the Dauthi. Now, they are just relying on videogames and pop culture to print cards. so sad... Literally, we have Jeff Goldblum cards. Wow, just wow.
As for currently building - I play in a competitive pod. I am trying to come up with a cute theme deck for my wife to play. I started an angel build, but the CMC is way too high on all of that. Having scrapped that, she wants a raccoon deck, but that tribe is terrible. Goofing with a squirrel build right now, though I am not happy with how it is going.
January 7, 2026 3:06 p.m.
seshiro_of_the_orochi -
Yeah, Hansk would be absolutely perfect in the deck. I unfortunately normally play in an ultra-budget pod, so it won't fit there. But if I like the deck as much as I hope to, I'll be putting together a less-budget version to play vs random folks, and it'll have a place in that deck for sure!
Nothing from Avatar caught my eye, but yeah, it'll be super-interesting to see which of your new decks carry on!
I have a good friend who plays Beluna Grandsquall and he'd probably want to decide the "factually best giant" issue on the table! :-D
But I agree, Vivid is going to be very VERY cool. As for Lorwyn, I find myself surprisingly interested in the Jund Precon (decklist, from WotC) ... not so much for upgrading, but just to have a "raw" precon to run when the situation warrants.
Good luck (and good skill!) in 2026!
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theNeroTurtle -
Lol ... I mean, I'm honestly seriously sorry you hate the Universes Beyond products, but I've been playing since Revised and I couldn't disagree more. But we can maybe try to change each other's minds in some other thread. As for this one, I really just wanted to see what folks were working on :-)
I'm also honestly sorry the Angel deck didn't work out for you/your wife. But yeah, making Raccoons work seems like a REALLY rough time; yikes! If Squirrels ends up falling flat, maybe Otters? Seems like there might be a competitive UR deck somewhere in there. Incidentally, though she wouldn't have been remotely competitive, I spent most of Bloomburrow thinking I should build Alania, Divergent Storm, for her flavor text alone :-D.
There are lots of competitive Artifact decks of course, so leaning into Myr might be an option?
Minsc & Boo, Timeless Heroes could seriously be an option as well ... I know they look on the surface like a Bracket 1 deck, but I honestly think they could be pushed all the way up into Bracket 4.
Good luck (and good skill) on your quest, and throughout 2026!
January 7, 2026 4:14 p.m.
(Ha, figured out how to tag tokens)
theNeroTurtle -
For the Mrs: Boo
seshiro_of_the_orochi says... #2
Ooh, nice. Better get yourself Hansk, Slayer Zealot to go into that.
Avatar: The last Airbender did quite a lot to my gauntlet. I had just managed to finally get down to eight decks, and now, after Avatar hit, I built Koh, the Face Stealer, Iroh, Grand Lotus, Wan Shi Tong, Librarian, Toph, Hardheaded Teacher and Diaochan, Artful Beauty. I'll see which one of these will stick. Looking at what we've seen from Lorwyn so far, I propably won't build a commander from the set, but I'm really pumped for the giant support, as with the officially spoiled vivid ability word, Kinaios and Tiro of Meletis actually managed to become the factually best giant commander.
January 5, 2026 11:40 p.m.