MTG Salvation

A glass cannon deck is a deck that fires off to win, but then falls apart if it's main strategy is disrupted too much. Are these decks viable or at least fun whenever they're designed?

Viable, yes. Fun, not particularly. Fun is of course subjective, but when your deck has one wincon and the deck is built around trying to achieve it there isn't much replay value and opponents will tire of it, IMO.

Yes they work very well . I personally love these decks . However you can typically sacrifice a very small amount of consistency for a tiny but of resiliency IE using grapeshot along side tendrils is typically a very good idea in storm.

I find a few things to be true.

1. glass cannons are repetitive, take from that what you will.
2. this a 3v1 game if that cannon is too effective post the first time someone else plays against it.
3. in a familiar playground, the whole deck must revolve around said glass cannon to ensure its success.
4. Yes they work very well if you can feed the beast of the deck adequately and you are doing something suitably powerful.

I don't tend to like them. They're fun the first few times, like I had a Melek storm deck not long after Melek got spoiled in DGM. It's fun to go off, blow up stuff, win...then a second time it's fun, but the fun tends to diminish rapidly with each time you play it. They tend to be very straightforwards and each game ends up being the same. In hyper-competitive metas, one well-timed Force of Will or what have you will completely nuke you, while in less competitive metas, you'll either stomp or get stomped...there's never a real "close call" kind of game with them.

Glass cannons can be very effective. Unfortunately, they boring very quickly because they tend to do the exact same thing every game. I had a Scion of the Ur-Dragon deck that killed off a player every turn if it survived long enough for me to untap by transforming into skittles, moltensteel dragon, dragon tyrant, etc combined with things like Might of Oaks, Phyresis, Tainted Strike, and Hatred. I took it apart though because it got old. Everyone knew the game was over if I protected my commander for 1 turn.

well, glass cannon decks are probably quite geared around protecting itself from disruption, since it's glass-ness leads it to be easily disrupted. i'm assuming it can be quite uninteractive.

I had a Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon deck that was pretty "all-in"/"glass cannon," and it worked pretty well. I enjoyed piloting it, as well, although I'm pretty hellbent on playing the table all vs. me so it fit my style.

This is totally off topic but I see that decathkmight avatar abd have felt some wc3 nostalgia hit me up in for games ;). On topic I feel most glass cannon decks build that way because it's simply more efficient that way . Storm
Is my favorite archetype and at times you feel very glassy.

If you are looking for a very resilient deck that can also be considered "glass cannon", I would check out omnath. That dude is insane, protect him with flash abilities and/or hexproof buffs and he can just one shot people all day long.

Go all-in if you have to. I made my Sharuum deck like that by taking all but 7 removal spells. Verdict and Toxic Deluge are too much of table cops.
In a heads up game, Jin got reanimate four times in total, fun game.
I got him out on turn 2, it got killed, reanimate again. Not bad for one black, and 10 life - black draw 7!

Viable? Absolutely

Fun? In small doses

If you have a large collection of decks to choose from when you go play (for ex. I bring 9 to my gaming sessions) then by all means included a cannon or two in the mix. But if you only have a few EDH decks together I wouldn't include a cannon in the mix. Just gets too stale too fast when played repeatedly, both for you and your opponents.

It depends on the deck. I have a friend who built a Melek deck centered around Dragonstorm. It takes a long time for him to set up and go off, but when he does, he usually outright kills one person and puts himself in a very good position to kill a second person. The game isn't just over, though, necessarily, because some well-timed disruption can prevent him from being able to kill multiple people in a turn, so the table often has a chance to wrath the dragons away. Also, in a four player game, he usually can only kill two of his three opponents in one go even under the best circumstances, so the fourth player has a chance to come back if they're still in the game. In my opinion, that deck is a glass cannon strategy but is also fun and interactive because it doesn't just win on the spot when it goes off. If you're going to build a glass cannon deck like that, it's good to hit that sweet spot between powerful and fun or your playgroup will get sick of it really quick.

Fun and boring are very subjective. Generally speaking, glass cannon decks tend to be very focused on their gameplan, but not very resilient.

I say try building a deck that has one major wincon, but then secondary win cons. Like Thromok the Insatiable token Swarm. If they stop thromok from coming out, overrun them with tokens.

All-in is how I build my decks now. I hate policing the table. I would rather just win fast, or get my grind win on. Rick Ross style, yo.