Commander/EDH Deck Talk

[AdmiralMemo]

I thought "straight-up mana fixing" was sufficient.

[Prospero101]

BLARGH.

Is my response.

[korvys]

Blood Celebrant (if you don't care about life)
Nomadic Elf (which is just a bigger, more expensive Orochi Leafcaller)

[Phosphatide]

Trying to think of good ways to spend that free mana from Braid of Fire before it washes away after the upkeep ends, but I can't think of any. Was hoping it would work on Aggravated Assault but hooray sorcery speed activations.

[AdmiralMemo]

Blood Celebrant (if you don't care about life)
Nomadic Elf (which is just a bigger, more expensive Orochi Leafcaller)

Hunh. I missed those in my huge search somehow.

Trying to think of good ways to spend that free mana from Braid of Fire before it washes away after the upkeep ends, but I can't think of any. Was hoping it would work on Aggravated Assault but hooray sorcery speed activations.

You can put it in a mana storage thing somehow. I was looking for some, but the only one I found was Iceberg, and it looks like it really sucks. I'm going looking for more mana storage.

Edit: Some limited storage options are:
White Mana Battery
Blue Mana Battery
Black Mana Battery
Red Mana Battery
Green Mana Battery
(All only 2 at a time)

Calciform Pools
Dreadship Reef
Molten Slagheap
Fungal Reaches
Saltcrusted Steppe
Jeweled Amulet
Kyren Toy
(All only 1 at a time)

Ice Cauldron
(really janky)

And I'm a derp, since I forgot Gemstone Array saves half your mana, so you can store it that way. After the search, it seems the only unlimited options of saving your mana at instant speed are Gemstone Array and Iceberg.

[Phosphatide]

Gemstone Array might be the answer, as it's the only one I can find so far that actually lets you pour in more than one mana into it for later. And I guess Iceberg too, but at least Gemstone Array lets you be more open with colors. Or something.

[Lurkon]

Trying to think of good ways to spend that free mana from Braid of Fire before it washes away after the upkeep ends, but I can't think of any. Was hoping it would work on Aggravated Assault but hooray sorcery speed activations.

You can give creatures flash with something like Yeva, Nature's Herald, and then cast a Hydra, if you've got a green up. You could do what I assume Braid of Fire was meant to power and cast something like Comet Storm, Volcanic Geyser, or Aurelia's Fury. You can use it with something like Crimson Hellkite (Awesome), Cinder Elemental, ANY creature with Firebreathing (I know pumping a creature during your upkeep is weird, but it's better than not using the mana, right?), or you can find a neat artifact. While 10 mana is pretty steep, once it is down, Aladdin's Lamp is kind of powerful with Braid of Fire. You could activate a Chimeric Coils or Chimeric Staff. There are obviously more options, but I'm not sure what you are looking for.

[asteriskreaper]

so what all i miss lately?

[Del]

Omnath? Who says pools need to empty :3

[ZePancakes]

Use Upwelling? Stockpile all the mana?

[tamaness]

I love having Upwelling+Seedborn Muse on board. 'Tis delicious.

[ElFuzzy]

So I got worldslayer to go off whilst equipped to a 1/1 thopter token. Luckily darksteel sentinel was in play, so he got to hold it while i regained board control with my myr. To top it all off I won via door to nothingness for the final kill. Fun morning.

[ZePancakes]

I want to make a deck, namely "This is why we can't have nice things" but torn whether to go Jund or Grixis. I'm leaning towards Grixis so I can take artifacts as well and spells like Control Magic and what not.

Thraximundar sounds like the most synergistic Commander.

But I believing this style of deck would cop a lot of flak. My question is, "Is it worth building?"

[tamaness]

In the right group, used sparingly, I think it'd probably be a lot of fun.

Also, that deck needs Mindslaver.

[Phosphatide]

You have to be really careful about making decks that focus on taking other players' stuff, as many of them are coming into a game expecting to play and actually use their stuff. A friend of mine scooped in response to Memnarch getting played, deeming it an unfun card, and he was very much in a good stable position as a mono-blue player using blue!Braids as his commander. He just didn't want to deal with that card.

Speaking of which, you should put Memnarch in your deck.

[ZePancakes]

Best feeling, when they have Memnarch and stealing it with Master Thief.

I'd be running every gain control till EOT card, blue allows for indefinite control, black lets me profit heavily from their cards. I was torn for Jund because I'd use that Orc/Goblin/whatever (Deathkeeper) legend that gives me creatures from stealing sac'ing. I'd be running the Hellkite for artifact stealing/alt win con.

Homeward Path is the biggest blow out to this style deck. Do many run it?

[tamaness]

Nobody in my meta runs Homeward Path.

Oh, put in It That Betrays, as well. Get all the things they sac.

[MowDownJoe]

So, since I pulled a Karametra at my pre-release (and a Xenagos, which I traded for a Deathrite Shaman and a Joraga Warcaller), I thought I'd cobble together a very rampy EDH deck with her as the general. Had my first game with it at FNM between rounds. Actually managed to draw Emeria and fetch up 7 Plains, with Magus of the Disk in my graveyard.
I became an immediate target once that happened and died. Oh, well. Was enjoyable.

[tamaness]

yeah, ramping harder than anyone is a good way to draw ire. I recommend sticking collective voyage, tempt with discovery, rites of flourishing, and new frontiers in - just to keep the peace. Just be careful ramping your opponents into multiple activations of mana dump abilities.

[WickedBoy6]

Okay, long post incoming, so please, bear with me:

I'm finally getting my Bosh Commander underway, and the following cards have been added:

COMMANDER (1)
Bosh, Iron Golem

CREATURES (5)
Arcbound Ravager
Darksteel Colossus
Duplicant
Guardian of the Ages
Myr Retriever

ARTIFACTS (7)
Darksteel Forge
Hammer of Purphoros
Howling Mine
Quicksilver Amulet
Ring of Three Wishes
Sol Ring
Serrated Arows

However, I'm seeing a possible flaw in my plan. I originally chose Bosh because he had a good ability, but I could also abuse red lands - read: Mountains - and possible red cards. Problem is, I'm seeing that I don't need mountains, as a lot of red-mana-producers I can use are awesome enough. So, I could use some help.

I have a list of lands that could go well in an Artifact Commander deck, and I now mana is probably the last spot I should worry about, but it's probably also the easiest to fill out in an all-artifact Commander. If anyone can give me opinions, I would really appreciate it.

Arena
Blasted Landscape
Blinkmoth Nexus
Cathedral of War
Cloudpost
Darksteel Citadel
Dread Statuary
Dwarven Hold
Gargoyle Castle
Githu Encampment
Glimmerpost
Gods' Eye, Gate to the Reikai
Great Furnace
Inkmoth Nexus
Island of Wak-Wak
Keldon Megaliths
Kher Keep
Maze of Ith
Mishra's Factory
Mishra's Workshop
Mutavault
Petrified Field
Reliquary Tower
Rogue's Passage
Sheltered Valley
Smoldering Spires
Stalking Stones
Strip Min
Teetering Peaks
Temple of the False God
Thespian's Stage
Urza's Factory
Urza's Mine
Urza's Power Plant
Urza's Tower
Vesuva
Wasteland
Zoetic Cavern

[Firbozz]

I'm planning on doing something similar to zepancakes, though I'm going to lean mine more towards "take this game and just mess with it" with cards like whims of the fates and warp world. My goal is to make my deck disruptive enough that people will want to target it, even though it won't be designed to win.

[Myrph]

I suspect I'm going to regret this decision, but having traded in my entire set of old Pokemon cards, I've accrued £35 worth of credit at my local gaming shop, I've decided its about time I took the plunge and attempted a janky ish commander deck.

I'm fully aware that without silly money to throw at it I'm probably going to be shooting myself in the foot and will resultingly never reach the lofty heights of actually being competitive, but I figured that since they didn't want me spending it all on sealed product (which is fair, really, better to use it for singles, spend more genuine money on sealed to support the shop), and I'm not particularly into standard at the moment, I'd thumb through the singles and pull out some stuff that sounded fun to throw together a hundred card singleton with.

My current plan is to run Orzhov stylee, W/B spirity/lifegainy, extort combo with Vizkopa Guildmage causing shenanigans with Sanguine Bond, and using Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts as my commander, since I've already got one of her. Combining the stuff I picked up in the shop, with the stuff I've managed to scrape from my current collection, I've amassed ~120 potential candidates for the deck, with a dozen or so vaguely useful looking lands/mana fixing cards. I'll probably edit this later with a handy link to a full list of what i've got, so watch this space I guess.


I suppose, what I'm looking for from you kind folks, is some advice on whether I should abandon this now, as its a futile endeavor without stupid money cards in the deck, or failing that, some pointers on the sorts of cards that provide value and the sorts of things to steer clear of.

[Kapol]

One of the nice things about commander is, unless you're in a competitive environment, you don't need crazy money cards to build a solid commander deck. Another benefit is that commander decks can continue to build and grow as you develop them. So it might not be great at first, but playing with it will let you know what you need and what can be changed.

That said, I'd highly recommend picking up the W/U/B commander deck. If I'm not mistaken, it's a pretty life-gain heavy deck (the commander pretty much assures getting 2 life every turn). It also provides an excellent starting point as a commander deck, especially if this is your first deck. It has a lot of strong commander cards (Sol Ring, Temple of the False God, Swiftfoot Boots, etc).

[Del]

I ran an Oloro deck for a couple weeks. I will see if I can find my decklist, or at least list some key cards for you to consider over the next couple days.

[Myrph]

Hmmm, currently I have approximately 0 cash spending monies, and not much store credit left, so I think that commander deck is a little too expensive for me right now.

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/orzhov-lifegain-spirits/

That's pretty much the list of what I've identified thus far as being potentially viable in my deck. Obviously some of it is probably not appropriate for the format and can be culled quickly, and some of it I included more because it sounded hilarious/awesome, rather than actual value, but as I said, not really familiar with the subtleties of the format, so some advice would be awesome.