To shortly introduce myself, I've been playing Magic since Odyssey. As time went on and less and less of my friends kept up with playing the game I slowly found myself with a ton of cards I used to cherish and no one to play with. I used to enjoy standard until the grind and cost wore me down. Sometime in 2010-2011 I heard about Elder Dragon Highlander and the emerging "Commander" format. It seemed like a perfect place to use my old cards and enjoy the game the way I used to. I still had the problem of having friends that just weren't keeping up anymore and not following the new cards and new decks. So that's when the idea hit me: build my own meta, use my own cards and design my own "fun". It isn't easy, there are some balancing issues of course, but it is a great way to loan decks to my buddies to use while we drink and enjoy the game without any of the unnecessary expense on behalf of people who aren't into it as much as I am. Its also rewarding to see people find interactions and combos I hadn't considered before. With a varying degree of play styles and ability it's always fun to get hands on decks.
An important thing to me is that every deck tries to deal with things differently. Magic is a very vast game so trying to disperse the myriad of options amongst the decks is something I'm always on the lookout for. So I will attemp to break that down here:
Answers: Counter spells. This deck has few ways to interact with threats already in play.
We have a league format now, no one can use the same deck more than once and at the end we vote and discuss meta adjustments. We always write down what worked well, which cards you were holding and didn't play, which cards weren't powerful enough and which ones were too strong. The decks are then balanced the following week. The purpose of this thread is just to gather feedback, maybe some have experience crafting their own meta. Maybe there is a glaring weakness or something I should be considering. As it stands now 2 decks are similar (Roon and Anafenza) and 1 deck just underpowered for sure (Cromat) and one is very very powerful (Prossh). But any suggestions for maybe a deck to add, remove, ect ect. Thanks in advance.
This change was to give the ultimate blowout card for Prossh to a deck in the Meta. It doesn't destroy a creature like Crosis's Charm does, but does destroy an Artifact just the same. This is a trump card for the ages that is highly playable even if Prossh isn't around.
- Lavaclaw Reaches + Graven Cairns
- Volrath's Stronghold + Sunken Ruins Stronghold made it into Anafenza, it needed it quite a bit more. The Man Lands always kinda felt like a "just cause" inclusion, never had any particular reason to include them. Since Reanimator requires a ton of mana to hard cast creatures to play around Containment Priest or some anti-graveyard strategy, I included all of the Filter lands just so the fixing would be right. This is always open for a change however because the deck can also double as a discard deck.
Ooze joins our friends in Abzan Hatebears as it is more fitting thematically. Death and Taxes started as Maverick, and the deck is a combination of old Pod decks and Death and Taxes. Stonecloaker can let me re-use creatures with EtB effects AND doubles as Graveyard hate. Scavenging Ooze is good for a Toolbox deck though.
Upon further analysis it wasn't exactly fair to completely blank 2 Win Conditions in 5RRRInsurrection from Prossh and 7BBRise of the Dark Realms from Sedris vs. Nekusar. It was a lazy to just not have to try other things before being able to have an uncounterable hoser that took care of it. I should be casting Anafenza, the Foremost instead.
Pridemage is already in my Roon Toolbox, and it isn't a hatebear. The Exalted Trigger doesn't actually come up that often and Scavenging Ooze is a hatebear. Plain and simple.
1. Are any of the decks really aggro?
2. What does the balance seem to be between controlly decks and aggressive and combo style decks?
3. How different are the play styles of the decks?
I am sure I will think of more, but for now, those are what I would look at. Additionally, I would look at trying to keep the power levels as close as possible even if that means you have to make a couple of decks worse because close games are much more fun.
Also, an issue that I have seen people run into in these type endeavors (some of my friends and I have tried to make duel deck type things before) and even the actual wizards released dusk decks, is that card draw can be severely underrated. If you notice that the blue decks are consistently winning even though all the cards seem around the same power level, it's because they are drawing more cards and thus overcoming the power level similarities. I know that seems like super simple card advantage stuff and it may have unintentionally sounded patronizing, but I have almost never seen a duel deck match up favor the non blue deck. So be careful how much agavantage you give them
I think this is a great idea actually.
I have a few questions though.
1. Are any of the decks really aggro?
I wouldn't say there is a very straight forward Aggro deck. There was one at one point a mono-white make tokens and hit stuff deck. It proved to be rather boring to a majority of the players because it had a difficult time interacting and influencing games. It gradually morphed into mono-white Linvala, Keeper of Silence Hatebears deck, and then Anafenza the Foremost hatebears list. The Sedris deck is pretty aggro, but it's got cool choices and some resiliency. The Sedris deck is usually the most fun to watch being played, because most people interpret it very differently.
2. What does the balance seem to be between controlly decks and aggressive and combo style decks?
Its important for me that each deck be able to switch modes pretty reasonably. Most decks need most answers to each other deck, and ways to punish those decks. Since the meta is closed, it's kinda up to me and the others to find that balance. If a card is getting too degenerate (which luckily hasn't happened yet) we can create reasonable solutions to those problems. The Roon deck for a long time had no effective way to hate a graveyard with Flavor (we could have run Rest in Peace but that's not creative). So keeping with the idea that Roon deck cares about creatures Scavenging Ooze and Angel of Finality were introduced with some counter spells Mystic Snake and Voidslime. This allowed the Roon deck to compete in areas it was weak without nerfing Sedris to death.
3. How different are the play styles of the decks?
The playstyles of the decks are a limited resource I happen to be running out of. I've tried to do more archetypal stuff like a Reanimator deck, Value Creature Deck, Hatebears, and Stax. I even invented (or discovered) 2 new Archtypes in Modal and Punisher. I guess all I'm really needing is a Voltron or Swarm deck. Each deck has some sort of combo, I've found it best to not include "all-in" combo decks because I find they stunt the creativity. Each deck running blue would then need Force of Will, and those are in my Legacy Merfolk deck (which I don't feel like breaking up to help the meta defeate a degenerate deck that I've created).
As I said before, it's important for all decks to be able to switch gears. Some sacrifices to "all-in" type of deck strategies are necessary. Which is why I don't have a Narset, Kaalia or Zur deck. Roon/Anafenza/Sedris/ect has to be able to combo off as well as it's able to play control or become aggressive. Also having too powerful a deck causes that deck to be hated out (see: Oloro). To actually answer the question: the decks have variance in the cards available to them, the play styles are varied enough - but not too much - from each other.
All of the decks may suffer a bit from my creative tendencies to push things a the way I want to see: I tend to build 3-color mana based identically, I build decks that reward threat assessment and I don't particularly care for big, splashy, high CMC spells and creatures. I'm sorta spikey. I want efficient threats and super powerfully broken cards as much as possible. And to be fair: blue is in 71% of the decks, it's a huge favorite (as well as black) to be in a winning deck.
I am sure I will think of more, but for now, those are what I would look at. Additionally, I would look at trying to keep the power levels as close as possible even if that means you have to make a couple of decks worse because close games are much more fun.
Also, an issue that I have seen people run into in these type endeavors (some of my friends and I have tried to make duel deck type things before) and even the actual wizards released dusk decks, is that card draw can be severely underrated. If you notice that the blue decks are consistently winning even though all the cards seem around the same power level, it's because they are drawing more cards and thus overcoming the power level similarities. I know that seems like super simple card advantage stuff and it may have unintentionally sounded patronizing, but I have almost never seen a duel deck match up favor the non blue deck. So be careful how much agavantage you give them
Card advantage is something we've been keeping an eye on. Tutors too. So far, hasn't been a problem. It could be in the future, and these decks are being played by very capable, very good Magic players who understand the fundamentals. If something is powerful it's been priced accordingly, I try not to repeat cards in any decks, and I try to give them all a drawback or a philosophy to follow. Which is why Birthing Pod isn't in Roon, Roon isn't a Birthing Pod deck, but is in Anafenza (more black of a deck). So far so good, but thank you for the encouragement and recommendations.
I should get around to building a Voltron commander, but I don't want anything too all-in or too oppressive. Preferably Naya too, as that would make the mana count slightly more even.
= 4 = 5 = 5 = 3 = 3
well theres uril the miststalker but he gets hated on a bit
naya gets you stuff like sunforger
and voltron decks don't relay function as not all in since the point is to pile on commander damage asap
5c voltron i recommend scion most of the time 1 shots people open mana turns in to hexproof
iv been doing this for years! since my playgroup dont buy any cards
i have over 50+ decks with diverse powerlevels but i dont really keep it balanced. i just build ideas i like
i have all the color combinations, and i think almost all the archtypes (voltron/pillowfort/control/combo/midrange/aggro/slug/hug/stax/police/hug/tempo/non commander based decks/toolbox/out of the box/whatver keeps the pool fun! sure there are some that are hated /targeted out, but i try to have back up plans/defenses for everything
the hardest thing is to keep note /writing down the decklists/updates (write them down now that they're a handful!) it's a huge chore..
If i wasnt that bored to write them all down i'd also try EDH CUBE with all my cards because one of the most fun things in magic is deck building and playing versus unknown decks which doesnt happen here
have fun!
oh horde/archenemy /planechase and other variants are great for night magic
What exactly do you mean by punisher deck? If you mean group slug, then that is a fairly well known archetype in edh. Also, I've seen a few modal style decks.
And I really only want to address one comment as your response was quite long and I'm not completely awake yet. You mentioned that you make sure each deck has a lot of answers to all of the other decks. I might try to instead make sure they all had a smaller number of broader answers to engender swingier games. When everyone can answer everything, it just becomes an hour or two of looking at a blank board until someone is able to finally keep a threat and kill everyone. Whereas if there are fewer but broader answers, there will be swingier plays with a board wipe getting drawn just in time etc.
They don't all have answers 1 for 1. It's more of the broader answers you're talking about - but making sure they're available to decks is my goal. The games do run long, swingier games are difficult to manage properly IMO. Having a deck lose through no fault of its own is a scenario I'm not totally sold on happening. Not to say it's not possible, maybe slowly I'll start to introduce broader answers cards and remove some of the narrow hate cards.
Also, the Punisher style deck I was referring to was just "opponents may pay ____ to prevent ____". It's kind of different from group slug, which I've never heard of until now. But I am interested in checking out the archtype of tighten and strengthen my Mogis deck!
If you've seen Modal lists I'd love to see them as well. I'm always looking for new ways to improve the deck, even dropping some colors if necessary. I unfortunately haven't seen any. My saying I "invented" 2 new deck styles is more me saying I created from scratch 2 new deck styles I have not seen until I brewed them myself. I somehow knew that of the lengthy passage I wrote that somehow that line would come back to haunt me.
Choosing words carefully as I can is not my strong suit. And I do not labor under the delusion that jamming Modal spells together into a deck makes me some kind of genius. I thought it would be fun and I went for it.
iv been doing this for years! since my playgroup dont buy any cards
i have over 50+ decks with diverse powerlevels but i dont really keep it balanced. i just build ideas i like
i have all the color combinations, and i think almost all the archtypes (voltron/pillowfort/control/combo/midrange/aggro/slug/hug/stax/police/hug/tempo/non commander based decks/toolbox/out of the box/whatver keeps the pool fun! sure there are some that are hated /targeted out, but i try to have back up plans/defenses for everything
the hardest thing is to keep note /writing down the decklists/updates (write them down now that they're a handful!) it's a huge chore..
If i wasnt that bored to write them all down i'd also try EDH CUBE with all my cards because one of the most fun things in magic is deck building and playing versus unknown decks which doesnt happen here
have fun!
oh horde/archenemy /planechase and other variants are great for night magic
Sounds like fun (and expensive). I'm trying to keep the Meta narrow so that I can have many powerful decks with the minimal overlap. I've noticed sometimes creatures are too good to be excluded, and others they have very capable replacements. But trying to extrapolate the number of creatures/spells from repeating over 50 decks! Jeez. Kudos to you.
I really like your idea. However, do you find that that your Anafenza deck hoses your Sedris deck too efficiently. Due to Anafenza herself?
Anafenza has a target on her from Prossh and Child of Alara also. Sedris has some removal and can hardcast some things to make Anafenza have to block. They work well against one another.
Haha no I am not a troll, currently in finals, and not able to respond. I played magic a long time ago and got back in to it therefore, I decided to sign up, so I could learn more and ask question to more experienced players. If my comment seemed out of place, I apologize, and I didn't notice how old the thread was.
I found your thread when I was looking at your Anafenza primer (it was in your signature). I read your description on the meta and really like the idea. It really lets you try to find a balance with power between each deck. The current problem with my friends is the power level between decks seem to be getting more unbalanced (some people can afford better cards). I also like the fact you are trying to limit playing the same cards which got me interested.
Well if you've got a problem with certain decks in your play group running rampant you've got 2 real choices: 1) get as good as them, and faster or 2) meta game to beat them specifically. If they cant play their things they're more inclined to look elsewhere. That's what meta gaming is for. Since the luxury is on me to figure out what's allowed and what isn't - I can essentially hand out certain goodies and their antithesis to decks in order to manage it. It isn't perfect but it's the closest approximation to a "healthy" meta that I've been theorycrafting for at least 4 years. It's also ever changing, like recently I've been handing Roon polymorph effects (Lignify, Pongify, ect) in favor of generic removal because I think the deck plays better when the pilot cares about giving their opponents creatures that trade with their own. Aligning incentives is important. Over time Sedris has cared more about actually casting things and attacking with them.
That is the hardest part overall is issuing proper incentives to get the decks to play in such a way that their weaknesses are meaningful as well as strengths. It's a project to just apply some economic theories to see how players respond to an ever changing game state with the tools at their disposal. I suppose it'd be easier to just build all the top tier cEDH decks and go at it, but games tend to be more dynamic this way - even if the market doesn't respond to Keynesian economics the way I'd suppose.
Thank you for sharing your insights. I really appreciate your response. If you don't mind I will be borrowing your idea for creating my own Meta. My goal is trying to create an environment where the game is based more on skill (obviously, chance is involved) but I want the game to be less about the cost of cards.
Also are you adjusting the Meta by yourself? Have you enlisted the help of those that have piloted each of the decks in your Meta? Also, where is a good place to start when you recognize a problem? Or is there a process you follow when you make your adjustments?
Also are you adjusting the Meta by yourself? Have you enlisted the help of those that have piloted each of the decks in your Meta? Also, where is a good place to start when you recognize a problem? Or is there a process you follow when you make your adjustments?
Meta adjustments are done out of new cards being printed, availability and needs. Mostly just new cards. Some of the adjustments are done out of desire to shake things up or increase/decrease power level based on feedback. Zedruu and Child of Alara are not curated by me, but instead their respective authors. All other adjustments are done by me using those suggestions.
How often do you play with those friends that aren't keeping up in comparison to your playing with other groups that are keeping up? Personally I have a similar plan like yours (except my suite contains 8 decks and while I do consciously keep a balance of color and color pairings like you do, I also made a conscious effort to diversify deck colors - there are 2 Mono-Color Decks, 2 Dual-Color, 3 Tri-Color and a Five-Color), but because I play more often at my LGS with up-to-date people, I focus more on powering each and every of them up rather than balance. While that sounds bad on the surface, when each and every deck passes a certain threshold of power, the gap between them naturally becomes smaller anyway. Admittedly I don't play a lot with the friends that don't catch up (mainly because we also have a cube and there's only so much time when we meet up for games) so I don't really have much time to playtest between decks in an actual scenario.
About 2-3 games per month. I don't play out like I used to, and very infrequently even go to my LGS besides to pick up some essentials and chat Magic. I used to play a lot of MTGO, but that's fallen off too.
It makes sense if you've got an outlet for playing your decks against other motivated players each pushing yourselves. My group just doesn't keep up, and that's fine as long as we get to play. Making the decks as powerful as possible is certainly a goal of mine, but I like using different cards - I only want 1 copy of any non-basic across all 6 decks. That is a tall order, but Magic has 10,000 cards so it is obtainable. Some care has to be given to avoid overlapping strategies. I've also got some less skilled players, lots of alcohol and distractions around.
I find the idea of a personally curated meta fascinating! Tell me, is there a reason that you have exactly six decks? How large is your playgroup usually? And if you have some "less skilled players" as you say yourself, how would you rank your decks in order of complexity?
Thank you for your interest. My playgroup consists of exactly 4 players. Ranging from 2 Very Good players, 1 Good-Alright player and another who doesn't play anything but EDH but plays infrequently (requires hand holding from time to time).
I have 6 decks because, I dunno. I just happened to have everything for Child of Alara, spent like $30 putting Zedruu together (had most of it). I built Sedris and Roon about the aame time, my next project was mono-W that turned into WBG. So how do I go about evening the colors? Build Jund and Jeskai.
The Prossh deck admittedly screwed a lot of things up. It's a deck that really warps everything around it because it's so Commander focused and you always have access to it. No other deck is so dependant on 1 single thing, and thus are not as explosive or able to recover. Roon is just flat out bad, I've piloted it enough times and the other good players can't make it happen either. The incrimental value engine is just too easy to disrupt and not impactful enough.
I've considered either turning Prossh into gromgrom's Xira Arien Lands.dec, but Prossh is a fun deck despite its ease of winning, and Gromgrom abandoned the archetype. So I've turned to crowd-sourcing Bant Enchantress - with extremely mixed results. So the Meta is in a bit of a crisis, worst comes to worst I imagine no one will play Roon anymore.
In terms of difficulty I would say:
Easy - Prossh
Medium - Sedris / Child of Alara
Difficult - Anafenza / Zedruu
Bad - Roon
Zedruu requires a lot of sequencing and looking ahead and planning and the usual control threat assessment skills.
Anafenza is strong but lacks a serious haymaker or any way to protect its life total.
Sedris is really strong and doesn't need Sedris, its just easily hated upon and from time to time can't get it done, but it's easy to understand and pilot.
I find Child of Alara to be a bit gimmicky, but can win and can with Dark Depths. The Child itself works against the deck from time to time.
A gentleman named Matt Morgan kinda, sorta, did the same thing only with 2-color decks. I like some stuff and not others, and I think 10-decks is too many.
Yeah I'm currently deciding if I should even do Enchantress with Bant. Seems too similar to the Zedruu Voltron deck (they both care about enchantments) and basic Goodstuff.dek with enchantments. But i noticed when Aura Thief doesnt blow out Zedruu, infact it helps, so that was cool. And it does steal problematic enchantments against the decks i was concerned about. It also Ramps differently than other decks, by using enchant land doublers in place of mana dorks/mana rocks. I'm always on the lookout for little things like that, little things that show how many different angles the game can be played.
Ive dedicated a significant amount of time to Anafenza’s Hatebears to throw in the towel on it, and it is a fun deck on the "fair" end of the spectrum. I'm not in love with Prossh whatsoever, but I do want a mathy token deck - and he is that.
I've built my own meta, but not with EDH decks (I did the five monocolors for Star thang), and balancing them is part of my fun, so I appreciate the effort put into your project.
I'll dig into your individual decklists to see if I can make any suggestions. If not, I will just follow along.
Cheers!
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If in the area, check out Gamers N Geeks and Mini War Games in Mobile, Alabama and Underhill's Games in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.
Krichaiushii on PucaTrade.
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
An important thing to me is that every deck tries to deal with things differently. Magic is a very vast game so trying to disperse the myriad of options amongst the decks is something I'm always on the lookout for. So I will attemp to break that down here:
Meta Participants
UBR Sedris vs. Nekusar RBU (Reanimator/Discard)
BRG PROSSHDAQ GRB (Tokens)
GWU Ishai and Kydele Enchantress UWG (Enchantress)
[Primer] WBG Anafenza, the Hate Bear GBW (Hate/Tax)
RWU Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest UWR (Spellslinger)
We have a league format now, no one can use the same deck more than once and at the end we vote and discuss meta adjustments. We always write down what worked well, which cards you were holding and didn't play, which cards weren't powerful enough and which ones were too strong. The decks are then balanced the following week. The purpose of this thread is just to gather feedback, maybe some have experience crafting their own meta. Maybe there is a glaring weakness or something I should be considering. As it stands now 2 decks are similar (Roon and Anafenza) and 1 deck just underpowered for sure (Cromat) and one is very very powerful (Prossh). But any suggestions for maybe a deck to add, remove, ect ect. Thanks in advance.
Meta Adjustments
9/27/15
- - Crosis's Charm + Rakdos Charm
This change was to give the ultimate blowout card for Prossh to a deck in the Meta. It doesn't destroy a creature like Crosis's Charm does, but does destroy an Artifact just the same. This is a trump card for the ages that is highly playable even if Prossh isn't around.
- - Creeping Tar Pit + Cascade Bluffs
- Lavaclaw Reaches + Graven Cairns
- - Scavenging Ooze + Stonecloaker
Ooze joins our friends in Abzan Hatebears as it is more fitting thematically. Death and Taxes started as Maverick, and the deck is a combination of old Pod decks and Death and Taxes. Stonecloaker can let me re-use creatures with EtB effects AND doubles as Graveyard hate. Scavenging Ooze is good for a Toolbox deck though.
- - Homeward Path +Volrath's Stronghold
Upon further analysis it wasn't exactly fair to completely blank 2 Win Conditions in 5RRR Insurrection from Prossh and 7BB Rise of the Dark Realms from Sedris vs. Nekusar. It was a lazy to just not have to try other things before being able to have an uncounterable hoser that took care of it. I should be casting Anafenza, the Foremost instead.
- - Qasali Pridemage +Scavenging Ooze
Pridemage is already in my Roon Toolbox, and it isn't a hatebear. The Exalted Trigger doesn't actually come up that often and Scavenging Ooze is a hatebear. Plain and simple.
UBR Sedris vs. Nekusar RBU
- Volrath's Stronghold + Sunken Ruins
Stronghold made it into Anafenza, it needed it quite a bit more. The Man Lands always kinda felt like a "just cause" inclusion, never had any particular reason to include them. Since Reanimator requires a ton of mana to hard cast creatures to play around Containment Priest or some anti-graveyard strategy, I included all of the Filter lands just so the fixing would be right. This is always open for a change however because the deck can also double as a discard deck.
GWU Roon of the Hidden Realm UWG
WBG Anafenza, the Hate Bear GBW
Mana Count
= 3 = 3 = 3 = 3 = 3
= 2 = 1
= 1 = 2
= 2 = 2
= 1 = 1
= 2 = 1
I have a few questions though.
1. Are any of the decks really aggro?
2. What does the balance seem to be between controlly decks and aggressive and combo style decks?
3. How different are the play styles of the decks?
I am sure I will think of more, but for now, those are what I would look at. Additionally, I would look at trying to keep the power levels as close as possible even if that means you have to make a couple of decks worse because close games are much more fun.
Also, an issue that I have seen people run into in these type endeavors (some of my friends and I have tried to make duel deck type things before) and even the actual wizards released dusk decks, is that card draw can be severely underrated. If you notice that the blue decks are consistently winning even though all the cards seem around the same power level, it's because they are drawing more cards and thus overcoming the power level similarities. I know that seems like super simple card advantage stuff and it may have unintentionally sounded patronizing, but I have almost never seen a duel deck match up favor the non blue deck. So be careful how much agavantage you give them
Marath, Will of the Wild Tokens!! / Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund Dragons! / Muzzio, Visionary Architect / Brago, King Eternal / Daretti, Scrap Savant / Narset, Enlightened Master / Alesha, Who Smiles at Death / Bruna, Light of Alabaster / Marchesa, the Black Rose / Iroas, God of Victory / Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury / Omnath, Locus of rage / Titania, Protector of Argoth / Kozilek, the Great Distortion
Modern
Elves / Titanshift / Merfolk
I wouldn't say there is a very straight forward Aggro deck. There was one at one point a mono-white make tokens and hit stuff deck. It proved to be rather boring to a majority of the players because it had a difficult time interacting and influencing games. It gradually morphed into mono-white Linvala, Keeper of Silence Hatebears deck, and then Anafenza the Foremost hatebears list. The Sedris deck is pretty aggro, but it's got cool choices and some resiliency. The Sedris deck is usually the most fun to watch being played, because most people interpret it very differently.
Its important for me that each deck be able to switch modes pretty reasonably. Most decks need most answers to each other deck, and ways to punish those decks. Since the meta is closed, it's kinda up to me and the others to find that balance. If a card is getting too degenerate (which luckily hasn't happened yet) we can create reasonable solutions to those problems. The Roon deck for a long time had no effective way to hate a graveyard with Flavor (we could have run Rest in Peace but that's not creative). So keeping with the idea that Roon deck cares about creatures Scavenging Ooze and Angel of Finality were introduced with some counter spells Mystic Snake and Voidslime. This allowed the Roon deck to compete in areas it was weak without nerfing Sedris to death.
The playstyles of the decks are a limited resource I happen to be running out of. I've tried to do more archetypal stuff like a Reanimator deck, Value Creature Deck, Hatebears, and Stax. I even invented (or discovered) 2 new Archtypes in Modal and Punisher. I guess all I'm really needing is a Voltron or Swarm deck. Each deck has some sort of combo, I've found it best to not include "all-in" combo decks because I find they stunt the creativity. Each deck running blue would then need Force of Will, and those are in my Legacy Merfolk deck (which I don't feel like breaking up to help the meta defeate a degenerate deck that I've created).
As I said before, it's important for all decks to be able to switch gears. Some sacrifices to "all-in" type of deck strategies are necessary. Which is why I don't have a Narset, Kaalia or Zur deck. Roon/Anafenza/Sedris/ect has to be able to combo off as well as it's able to play control or become aggressive. Also having too powerful a deck causes that deck to be hated out (see: Oloro). To actually answer the question: the decks have variance in the cards available to them, the play styles are varied enough - but not too much - from each other.
All of the decks may suffer a bit from my creative tendencies to push things a the way I want to see: I tend to build 3-color mana based identically, I build decks that reward threat assessment and I don't particularly care for big, splashy, high CMC spells and creatures. I'm sorta spikey. I want efficient threats and super powerfully broken cards as much as possible. And to be fair: blue is in 71% of the decks, it's a huge favorite (as well as black) to be in a winning deck.
Card advantage is something we've been keeping an eye on. Tutors too. So far, hasn't been a problem. It could be in the future, and these decks are being played by very capable, very good Magic players who understand the fundamentals. If something is powerful it's been priced accordingly, I try not to repeat cards in any decks, and I try to give them all a drawback or a philosophy to follow. Which is why Birthing Pod isn't in Roon, Roon isn't a Birthing Pod deck, but is in Anafenza (more black of a deck). So far so good, but thank you for the encouragement and recommendations.
I should get around to building a Voltron commander, but I don't want anything too all-in or too oppressive. Preferably Naya too, as that would make the mana count slightly more even.
= 4 = 5 = 5 = 3 = 3
naya gets you stuff like sunforger
and voltron decks don't relay function as not all in since the point is to pile on commander damage asap
5c voltron i recommend scion most of the time 1 shots people open mana turns in to hexproof
i have over 50+ decks with diverse powerlevels but i dont really keep it balanced. i just build ideas i like
i have all the color combinations, and i think almost all the archtypes (voltron/pillowfort/control/combo/midrange/aggro/slug/hug/stax/police/hug/tempo/non commander based decks/toolbox/out of the box/whatver keeps the pool fun! sure there are some that are hated /targeted out, but i try to have back up plans/defenses for everything
the hardest thing is to keep note /writing down the decklists/updates (write them down now that they're a handful!) it's a huge chore..
If i wasnt that bored to write them all down i'd also try EDH CUBE with all my cards because one of the most fun things in magic is deck building and playing versus unknown decks which doesnt happen here
have fun!
oh horde/archenemy /planechase and other variants are great for night magic
Δε φοβάμαι τίποτα...
Είμαι Άνεργος.
Grimstringer on Cockatrice, add me if you wanna
And I really only want to address one comment as your response was quite long and I'm not completely awake yet. You mentioned that you make sure each deck has a lot of answers to all of the other decks. I might try to instead make sure they all had a smaller number of broader answers to engender swingier games. When everyone can answer everything, it just becomes an hour or two of looking at a blank board until someone is able to finally keep a threat and kill everyone. Whereas if there are fewer but broader answers, there will be swingier plays with a board wipe getting drawn just in time etc.
Marath, Will of the Wild Tokens!! / Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund Dragons! / Muzzio, Visionary Architect / Brago, King Eternal / Daretti, Scrap Savant / Narset, Enlightened Master / Alesha, Who Smiles at Death / Bruna, Light of Alabaster / Marchesa, the Black Rose / Iroas, God of Victory / Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury / Omnath, Locus of rage / Titania, Protector of Argoth / Kozilek, the Great Distortion
Modern
Elves / Titanshift / Merfolk
Also, the Punisher style deck I was referring to was just "opponents may pay ____ to prevent ____". It's kind of different from group slug, which I've never heard of until now. But I am interested in checking out the archtype of tighten and strengthen my Mogis deck!
If you've seen Modal lists I'd love to see them as well. I'm always looking for new ways to improve the deck, even dropping some colors if necessary. I unfortunately haven't seen any. My saying I "invented" 2 new deck styles is more me saying I created from scratch 2 new deck styles I have not seen until I brewed them myself. I somehow knew that of the lengthy passage I wrote that somehow that line would come back to haunt me.
Choosing words carefully as I can is not my strong suit. And I do not labor under the delusion that jamming Modal spells together into a deck makes me some kind of genius. I thought it would be fun and I went for it.
Sounds like fun (and expensive). I'm trying to keep the Meta narrow so that I can have many powerful decks with the minimal overlap. I've noticed sometimes creatures are too good to be excluded, and others they have very capable replacements. But trying to extrapolate the number of creatures/spells from repeating over 50 decks! Jeez. Kudos to you.
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
Anafenza has a target on her from Prossh and Child of Alara also. Sedris has some removal and can hardcast some things to make Anafenza have to block. They work well against one another.
so he didn't really care for the answer? Here I was anticipating interest in my meta project. Oh well.
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
I found your thread when I was looking at your Anafenza primer (it was in your signature). I read your description on the meta and really like the idea. It really lets you try to find a balance with power between each deck. The current problem with my friends is the power level between decks seem to be getting more unbalanced (some people can afford better cards). I also like the fact you are trying to limit playing the same cards which got me interested.
Thank you for your response!
That is the hardest part overall is issuing proper incentives to get the decks to play in such a way that their weaknesses are meaningful as well as strengths. It's a project to just apply some economic theories to see how players respond to an ever changing game state with the tools at their disposal. I suppose it'd be easier to just build all the top tier cEDH decks and go at it, but games tend to be more dynamic this way - even if the market doesn't respond to Keynesian economics the way I'd suppose.
Also are you adjusting the Meta by yourself? Have you enlisted the help of those that have piloted each of the decks in your Meta? Also, where is a good place to start when you recognize a problem? Or is there a process you follow when you make your adjustments?
Meta adjustments are done out of new cards being printed, availability and needs. Mostly just new cards. Some of the adjustments are done out of desire to shake things up or increase/decrease power level based on feedback. Zedruu and Child of Alara are not curated by me, but instead their respective authors. All other adjustments are done by me using those suggestions.
It makes sense if you've got an outlet for playing your decks against other motivated players each pushing yourselves. My group just doesn't keep up, and that's fine as long as we get to play. Making the decks as powerful as possible is certainly a goal of mine, but I like using different cards - I only want 1 copy of any non-basic across all 6 decks. That is a tall order, but Magic has 10,000 cards so it is obtainable. Some care has to be given to avoid overlapping strategies. I've also got some less skilled players, lots of alcohol and distractions around.
Thank you for your interest. My playgroup consists of exactly 4 players. Ranging from 2 Very Good players, 1 Good-Alright player and another who doesn't play anything but EDH but plays infrequently (requires hand holding from time to time).
I have 6 decks because, I dunno. I just happened to have everything for Child of Alara, spent like $30 putting Zedruu together (had most of it). I built Sedris and Roon about the aame time, my next project was mono-W that turned into WBG. So how do I go about evening the colors? Build Jund and Jeskai.
The Prossh deck admittedly screwed a lot of things up. It's a deck that really warps everything around it because it's so Commander focused and you always have access to it. No other deck is so dependant on 1 single thing, and thus are not as explosive or able to recover. Roon is just flat out bad, I've piloted it enough times and the other good players can't make it happen either. The incrimental value engine is just too easy to disrupt and not impactful enough.
I've considered either turning Prossh into gromgrom's Xira Arien Lands.dec, but Prossh is a fun deck despite its ease of winning, and Gromgrom abandoned the archetype. So I've turned to crowd-sourcing Bant Enchantress - with extremely mixed results. So the Meta is in a bit of a crisis, worst comes to worst I imagine no one will play Roon anymore.
In terms of difficulty I would say:
Easy - Prossh
Medium - Sedris / Child of Alara
Difficult - Anafenza / Zedruu
Bad - Roon
Zedruu requires a lot of sequencing and looking ahead and planning and the usual control threat assessment skills.
Anafenza is strong but lacks a serious haymaker or any way to protect its life total.
Sedris is really strong and doesn't need Sedris, its just easily hated upon and from time to time can't get it done, but it's easy to understand and pilot.
I find Child of Alara to be a bit gimmicky, but can win and can with Dark Depths. The Child itself works against the deck from time to time.
Ive dedicated a significant amount of time to Anafenza’s Hatebears to throw in the towel on it, and it is a fun deck on the "fair" end of the spectrum. I'm not in love with Prossh whatsoever, but I do want a mathy token deck - and he is that.
I'll dig into your individual decklists to see if I can make any suggestions. If not, I will just follow along.
Cheers!
Krichaiushii on PucaTrade.