Im trying to build some decks to help start a playgroup near me but I am struggling with themes for some of the decks. I would like to know what you would expect from a colour combination before you find out who the commander is. With any luck I can make decks that are interesting but play in a way that people would broadly expect from that combination to help out the newer people.
For example: someone says that they play an Esper deck my expectation will be that the deck is artifact based and probably combo orientated.
If you could post for any or several of the following it would be immensely helpful: Boros, Rakdos, Grixis, Mardu, Abzan and Sultai.
Thanks.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
EDH BRGKresh the BloodbraidedBRG, A box of lands and ideas.
Modern: RG Titanshift. A deck made of cards too stupid for EDH.
Retired: Lots. More than I feel you should suffer through or I should type out.
Boros — Boros is associated with ceaseless aggression to me. Sometimes it has an artifact based flavor, relying heavily upon equipment, but Boros certainly embodies aggro strategies. Rakdos — Mogis, God of Slaughter embodies Rakdos for me. Lots of punisher cards and generally being a pain in everyone's sides with things like Havoc Festival and Furnace of Rath. Grixis — Grixis decks tend to come in a lot of flavors, Nekusar and Marchesa being the most prominent. They tend to be controlling. Mardu — This color combo lacks a strong identity to me, but Kaalia, Alesha, and Zurgo encourage aggressive decks, often with lots of creatures. Very similar to Boros as a color combo. Another identity is the political one embodied by Queen Marchesa. Abzan — Attrition strategies using creature tokens and +1/+1 counters embody Abzan best to me. Abzan decks tend to recycle creatures more than most colors, lending themselves to reanimator strategies as well. Sultai — Most Sultai decks I encounter tend to be midrange goodstuff decks, though they do often heavily rely upon their graveyard. Of all the color combos, Sultai is the most likely color to play a dredge-based strategy.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WUBRGMr. Bones' Wild RideGRBUW Trap your friends in an endless game with this 23-card combo!
Boros is aggro and combat step, usually with some equipment, simply because there aren't really any commanders in that color that let you do something else.
Rakdos is dangerously powerful but quick to play out. Aforementioned Havoc Festival, Rakdos, Lord of Riots eldrazi, and Sire of Insanity all come to mind. For some reason I don't see these colors employ a lot of black's impressive card draw.
Grixis is usually control or graveyard-based. These colors have a lot of "build-around" commanders with a very specific strategy like Sedris, the Traitor King or the aforementioned Nekusar, and they also have a lot of "set-and-forget" win condition commanders that just do their own thing independently of the deck like Thraximundar, Jeleva, or Nicol Bolas. In the latter case they tend to be control and graveyard-based value.
Mardu decks, as mentioned, are usually pretty similar to Boros although with less focus on equipment. They tend to try to end the game quickly before they run out of gas like Rakdos, and I would say Queen Marchesa is the exception.
Abzan is very much graveyard-based, since its colors are the three most graveyard-oriented. I don't usually see Abzan decks based off of +1/+1 counters work very well unless it's a pretty casual meta, but they can get some huge creatures if you leave them alone. They also have very efficient 2-to-3 CMC creatures like Voice and Grand Abolisher, so they might try that with low-CMC creature enablers like Tethmos High Priest and Immortal Servitude.
Sultai is graveyard-based value. It works very similarly to Grixis control in my experience. They also have some seriously OP commanders like Mimeoplasm, Tasigur, and Leovold.
Bant decks tend toward midrangey goodstuff; whether that goodstuff is focused on Blinking, Voltron, or going wide with tokens and counters and going nuts with Doubling Season depends on who is leading the team (Roon of the Hidden Realm, Rafiq of the Many, or Jenara, Asura of War). Derevi can do all of those things but also enables more controlling, Stax-type builds; that's the strongest thing to do in Bant but not what I think of when I think of the color combo.
Naya is all about ramping to fatties or hordes, whether that fatty is their commander (Marath, Will of the Wild, Rith, the Awakener, Gahiji, Honored One) or an enabler (Mayael the Anima). They are slow early but generate tons of resources and combos that eventually summon either a horde of tokens or an overwhelming monstrosity. Whether they go wide or go tall, they always want to win with crushing combat damage.
Temur is probably the most identity-less. "Naya at instant speed" and being all about raw value is the only uniting theme between Animar, Soul of Elements, Riku of Two Reflections, Intet, the Dreamer, Surrak Dragonclaw, and Maelstrom Wanderer - all of those cards get better if you have a solid curve of spells that generate card advantage and value or that have tons of flexibility. I tend to have expectations based more on the Commander than the color combo here. Yasova Dragonclaw does something all together different from that value game, though.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Sufferer of EDHD
Commander - Currently Playing: RCRDaretti: Superfriends Forever RCR WGBDoran: Ent-mootWBG GGGMultani: Group Bear HugGGG GB(B/G)The Gitrog Monster: Dredgefall DurdleGB(B/G) RGWGahiji, the Honored Group Hug MonsterRGW UB(U/B)Yuriko, Ninja Trinket AggroUB(U/B) WUBRGAtogatog: Assembling a OHKOWUBRG
Mardu — This color combo lacks a strong identity to me, but Kaalia, Alesha, and Zurgo encourage aggressive decks, often with lots of creatures. Very similar to Boros as a color combo. Another identity is the political one embodied by Queen Marchesa. Abzan — Attrition strategies using creature tokens and +1/+1 counters embody Abzan best to me. Abzan decks tend to recycle creatures more than most colors, lending themselves to reanimator strategies as well. Sultai — Most Sultai decks I encounter tend to be midrange goodstuff decks, though they do often heavily rely upon their graveyard. Of all the color combos, Sultai is the most likely color to play a dredge-based strategy.
These three are the ones im having most trouble with honestly. Perhaps its due in part to them not being developed enough yet to really have an identity? Abzan in particular just seems quite strong but boring and Sultai being pretty much goodstuff as you mentioned.
Go five color and do everything. Also pick Cromat and do everything with the general too.
Reading its abilities has influenced the decks of the same colour by quite a bit and was not something that I had considered before. Ive been looking to make 5 colour so this was interesting.
Any further help would be appreciated on any of those listed in first post.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
EDH BRGKresh the BloodbraidedBRG, A box of lands and ideas.
Modern: RG Titanshift. A deck made of cards too stupid for EDH.
Retired: Lots. More than I feel you should suffer through or I should type out.
These three are the ones im having most trouble with honestly. Perhaps its due in part to them not being developed enough yet to really have an identity? Abzan in particular just seems quite strong but boring and Sultai being pretty much goodstuff as you mentioned.
To be fair though, the more colors there are, the more strategies there usually are, which makes it harder for it to have cohesive identity. Also, they have less Commanders (especially if almost all of them are goodstuff, especially in Sultai and Temur), which isn't really helping, because it forces a mishmash of strategies.
I daresay among the 5 Wedge colors, Abzan has the strongest "cohesion" in the form of Reanimator (Teneb and Karador), since Ghave and Doran, while still popular choices, don't seem to represent that much, at least to me. Second will probably be Mardu, mainly because it draws from Boros and Queen Marchessa, while different hasn't really revolutionized the color combination.
Sultai and Temur already scream goodstuff (and/or combo) and Jeskai could more or less be replaced by "Narset".
Yeah, with Mardu I definitely expect to be facing a ton of removal, both spot and mass removal. I also expect to be faced with unrelenting combat-step pressure despite the boardwipes, either because they keep bringing things back from the grave immediately after wrathing, or because their own creatures survive the wrath through indestructibility or regeneration.
If you look at the commanders Mardu has: Oros, Tariel, and Zurgo all play into this main strategy of "Kill Everything and then Still Have Good Attackers." Marchesa and Kaalia are build-arounds that have only marginal reasons for actually being Mardu.
For Abzan, I immediately think reanimator. Only Karador and Teneb are directly reanimator generals (Though Anafenza is surprisingly good in this role too), but these are the three colours that are strongest with graveyard interactions, and none of the two-colour combinations really get reanimation as their primary theme (arguably Golgari, I guess, but they have a lot of other stuff going on too). You can't say that all, or even most, Abzan decks are going to be graveyard decks, but that's definitely the theme I would use to introduce Abzan to a new player.
Sultai is the trickiest one. If it were me, honestly, I would consider making the Sultai deck a non-synergistic good-stuff deck under Damia. There's a reason these are known as the good-stuff colours, after all. And, while good stuff may not be a satisfying theme, there's a certain honesty in showing that a deck just crammed full of the best cards is 1. Still kind of fun, and 2. Not grossly overpowered. I guess the alternative theme for Sultai is creature-based combo.
WU: I guess I associate Azorius with slowing the game down. You have a lot of counterspells, damage prevention, and Propaganda effects. UB: Mill. Okay, that one was too easy. (Seriously, there aren't a lot of non-mill commanders.) BR: Okay, this one struck me as "the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind", because red gets a lot of "damage to all creatures and players" cards and black is always willing to pay life. RG: This one has an odd identity. I guess I think of it as "bigger than GW or RW, more aggressive than GU". GW: Tokens. Not as aggressive as RW, more likely to use tokens as a resource. These are also the core colors of the enchantress deck, with a third color usually added. WB: Lifegain. UR: Instants and sorceries. BG: Graveyard-based strategies. RW: Attack! Attack! Attack! GU: Fatties and lots of card draw.
Three-color GWU: Midrangey, blink effects. WUB: Very controllish. Artifacts aren't entirely necessary, but you will be in a control or combo deck. UBR: I guess I think of this one as instants and sorceries more than anything.
[mana]rbg[/maan]: Sacrifice for fun and profit. RGW: Lots of creatures. WBG: Abzan actually is the most identity-less, I guess because these are the colors with the most recursion, the most creatures, and the most tokens (and lifegain). I guess I think of them as "make resources, use resources". URW: Artifacts. BGU: Reanimator. RWB: Another difficult one. I really want to say horde. Really with a lot of these three-color ones, they follow different rules. GUR: Fatties. Lots of fatties.
4-color WUBR: Artifacts. UBRG: Free spells. BRGW: Aggro. RGWU: I'm going in a different direction and saying landfall. GWUB: I still think of these colors as enchantress.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
Thanks for all the replies. Hadn't even thought about 4c as I see them as entirely reliant on their commander choice similar to 5c. Provisionally for Boros and Rakdos I'm going to go with Tajic, Blade of the Legion primarily for some aggressive tokens and Mogis, God of Slaughter with double damage and hand attack however with Ahmonket just around the corner who knows what we might get.
Having racked my brain for a bit what do you think of the following for Mardu: taking mostly Boros and Orzhov for an aggressive token/ tax theme? The major negative of the idea is that I feel Mardu should be almost mono boardwipe then kill everyone anyway which obviously is difficult when trying to produce a lot of tokens.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
EDH BRGKresh the BloodbraidedBRG, A box of lands and ideas.
Modern: RG Titanshift. A deck made of cards too stupid for EDH.
Retired: Lots. More than I feel you should suffer through or I should type out.
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Im trying to build some decks to help start a playgroup near me but I am struggling with themes for some of the decks. I would like to know what you would expect from a colour combination before you find out who the commander is. With any luck I can make decks that are interesting but play in a way that people would broadly expect from that combination to help out the newer people.
For example: someone says that they play an Esper deck my expectation will be that the deck is artifact based and probably combo orientated.
If you could post for any or several of the following it would be immensely helpful: Boros, Rakdos, Grixis, Mardu, Abzan and Sultai.
Thanks.
BRGKresh the BloodbraidedBRG, A box of lands and ideas.
Modern:
RG Titanshift. A deck made of cards too stupid for EDH.
Retired: Lots. More than I feel you should suffer through or I should type out.
Rakdos — Mogis, God of Slaughter embodies Rakdos for me. Lots of punisher cards and generally being a pain in everyone's sides with things like Havoc Festival and Furnace of Rath.
Grixis — Grixis decks tend to come in a lot of flavors, Nekusar and Marchesa being the most prominent. They tend to be controlling.
Mardu — This color combo lacks a strong identity to me, but Kaalia, Alesha, and Zurgo encourage aggressive decks, often with lots of creatures. Very similar to Boros as a color combo. Another identity is the political one embodied by Queen Marchesa.
Abzan — Attrition strategies using creature tokens and +1/+1 counters embody Abzan best to me. Abzan decks tend to recycle creatures more than most colors, lending themselves to reanimator strategies as well.
Sultai — Most Sultai decks I encounter tend to be midrange goodstuff decks, though they do often heavily rely upon their graveyard. Of all the color combos, Sultai is the most likely color to play a dredge-based strategy.
Trap your friends in an endless game with this 23-card combo!
Rakdos is dangerously powerful but quick to play out. Aforementioned Havoc Festival, Rakdos, Lord of Riots eldrazi, and Sire of Insanity all come to mind. For some reason I don't see these colors employ a lot of black's impressive card draw.
Grixis is usually control or graveyard-based. These colors have a lot of "build-around" commanders with a very specific strategy like Sedris, the Traitor King or the aforementioned Nekusar, and they also have a lot of "set-and-forget" win condition commanders that just do their own thing independently of the deck like Thraximundar, Jeleva, or Nicol Bolas. In the latter case they tend to be control and graveyard-based value.
Mardu decks, as mentioned, are usually pretty similar to Boros although with less focus on equipment. They tend to try to end the game quickly before they run out of gas like Rakdos, and I would say Queen Marchesa is the exception.
Abzan is very much graveyard-based, since its colors are the three most graveyard-oriented. I don't usually see Abzan decks based off of +1/+1 counters work very well unless it's a pretty casual meta, but they can get some huge creatures if you leave them alone. They also have very efficient 2-to-3 CMC creatures like Voice and Grand Abolisher, so they might try that with low-CMC creature enablers like Tethmos High Priest and Immortal Servitude.
Sultai is graveyard-based value. It works very similarly to Grixis control in my experience. They also have some seriously OP commanders like Mimeoplasm, Tasigur, and Leovold.
- Rabid Wombat
Jund decks are typically all about sacrifice for fun and profit, with a strong curve topped by hasty backbreakers. They play a balanced game, eeking out value in a war of attrition, before dropping haymakers that kill people out of nowhere. Prossh, Skyraider of Kher, Sek'kuar, Deathkeeper, and Kresh the Bloodbraided all exemplify this playstyle and are pretty strong commanders (alongside their "usual suspects" - Grave Pact, Dictate of Erebos, Skullclamp, Reassembling Skeleton, Ashnod's Altar, etc). Shattergang Brothers also are all about those sacs but are a little more controlling.
Naya is all about ramping to fatties or hordes, whether that fatty is their commander (Marath, Will of the Wild, Rith, the Awakener, Gahiji, Honored One) or an enabler (Mayael the Anima). They are slow early but generate tons of resources and combos that eventually summon either a horde of tokens or an overwhelming monstrosity. Whether they go wide or go tall, they always want to win with crushing combat damage.
Temur is probably the most identity-less. "Naya at instant speed" and being all about raw value is the only uniting theme between Animar, Soul of Elements, Riku of Two Reflections, Intet, the Dreamer, Surrak Dragonclaw, and Maelstrom Wanderer - all of those cards get better if you have a solid curve of spells that generate card advantage and value or that have tons of flexibility. I tend to have expectations based more on the Commander than the color combo here. Yasova Dragonclaw does something all together different from that value game, though.
RCRDaretti: Superfriends Forever RCR
WGBDoran: Ent-mootWBG
GGGMultani: Group Bear HugGGG
GB(B/G)The Gitrog Monster: Dredgefall DurdleGB(B/G)
RGWGahiji, the Honored Group Hug MonsterRGW
UB(U/B)Yuriko, Ninja Trinket AggroUB(U/B)
WUBRGAtogatog: Assembling a OHKOWUBRG
These three are the ones im having most trouble with honestly. Perhaps its due in part to them not being developed enough yet to really have an identity? Abzan in particular just seems quite strong but boring and Sultai being pretty much goodstuff as you mentioned.
Reading its abilities has influenced the decks of the same colour by quite a bit and was not something that I had considered before. Ive been looking to make 5 colour so this was interesting.
Any further help would be appreciated on any of those listed in first post.
BRGKresh the BloodbraidedBRG, A box of lands and ideas.
Modern:
RG Titanshift. A deck made of cards too stupid for EDH.
Retired: Lots. More than I feel you should suffer through or I should type out.
To be fair though, the more colors there are, the more strategies there usually are, which makes it harder for it to have cohesive identity. Also, they have less Commanders (especially if almost all of them are goodstuff, especially in Sultai and Temur), which isn't really helping, because it forces a mishmash of strategies.
I daresay among the 5 Wedge colors, Abzan has the strongest "cohesion" in the form of Reanimator (Teneb and Karador), since Ghave and Doran, while still popular choices, don't seem to represent that much, at least to me. Second will probably be Mardu, mainly because it draws from Boros and Queen Marchessa, while different hasn't really revolutionized the color combination.
Sultai and Temur already scream goodstuff (and/or combo) and Jeskai could more or less be replaced by "Narset".
Rakdos - Deals a lot of damage
Grixis - Combo or Zombie tribal
Mardu - Removal, GY interaction
Abzan and Sultai - Goodstuff
UGR Wanderer
UGB Tasigur Control
URB Jeleva Storm
RW Gisela Control
Credit to DolZero for this awesome sig!
If you look at the commanders Mardu has: Oros, Tariel, and Zurgo all play into this main strategy of "Kill Everything and then Still Have Good Attackers." Marchesa and Kaalia are build-arounds that have only marginal reasons for actually being Mardu.
For Abzan, I immediately think reanimator. Only Karador and Teneb are directly reanimator generals (Though Anafenza is surprisingly good in this role too), but these are the three colours that are strongest with graveyard interactions, and none of the two-colour combinations really get reanimation as their primary theme (arguably Golgari, I guess, but they have a lot of other stuff going on too). You can't say that all, or even most, Abzan decks are going to be graveyard decks, but that's definitely the theme I would use to introduce Abzan to a new player.
Sultai is the trickiest one. If it were me, honestly, I would consider making the Sultai deck a non-synergistic good-stuff deck under Damia. There's a reason these are known as the good-stuff colours, after all. And, while good stuff may not be a satisfying theme, there's a certain honesty in showing that a deck just crammed full of the best cards is 1. Still kind of fun, and 2. Not grossly overpowered. I guess the alternative theme for Sultai is creature-based combo.
RCRDaretti: Superfriends Forever RCR
WGBDoran: Ent-mootWBG
GGGMultani: Group Bear HugGGG
GB(B/G)The Gitrog Monster: Dredgefall DurdleGB(B/G)
RGWGahiji, the Honored Group Hug MonsterRGW
UB(U/B)Yuriko, Ninja Trinket AggroUB(U/B)
WUBRGAtogatog: Assembling a OHKOWUBRG
WU: I guess I associate Azorius with slowing the game down. You have a lot of counterspells, damage prevention, and Propaganda effects.
UB: Mill. Okay, that one was too easy. (Seriously, there aren't a lot of non-mill commanders.)
BR: Okay, this one struck me as "the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind", because red gets a lot of "damage to all creatures and players" cards and black is always willing to pay life.
RG: This one has an odd identity. I guess I think of it as "bigger than GW or RW, more aggressive than GU".
GW: Tokens. Not as aggressive as RW, more likely to use tokens as a resource. These are also the core colors of the enchantress deck, with a third color usually added.
WB: Lifegain.
UR: Instants and sorceries.
BG: Graveyard-based strategies.
RW: Attack! Attack! Attack!
GU: Fatties and lots of card draw.
Three-color
GWU: Midrangey, blink effects.
WUB: Very controllish. Artifacts aren't entirely necessary, but you will be in a control or combo deck.
UBR: I guess I think of this one as instants and sorceries more than anything.
[mana]rbg[/maan]: Sacrifice for fun and profit.
RGW: Lots of creatures.
WBG: Abzan actually is the most identity-less, I guess because these are the colors with the most recursion, the most creatures, and the most tokens (and lifegain). I guess I think of them as "make resources, use resources".
URW: Artifacts.
BGU: Reanimator.
RWB: Another difficult one. I really want to say horde. Really with a lot of these three-color ones, they follow different rules.
GUR: Fatties. Lots of fatties.
4-color
WUBR: Artifacts.
UBRG: Free spells.
BRGW: Aggro.
RGWU: I'm going in a different direction and saying landfall.
GWUB: I still think of these colors as enchantress.
On phasing:
Having racked my brain for a bit what do you think of the following for Mardu: taking mostly Boros and Orzhov for an aggressive token/ tax theme? The major negative of the idea is that I feel Mardu should be almost mono boardwipe then kill everyone anyway which obviously is difficult when trying to produce a lot of tokens.
BRGKresh the BloodbraidedBRG, A box of lands and ideas.
Modern:
RG Titanshift. A deck made of cards too stupid for EDH.
Retired: Lots. More than I feel you should suffer through or I should type out.