It's another one of those threads! But I do have something specific I'm looking for, so here are my criteria:
1. I'd like to build a new deck or two from among these few color combinations: URW, BGU, UBR, UB, or UR. I really like decks with definitely Blue, but I want a deck with black alongside the blue in it in particular since I have no decks with that color in it right now.
2. I'm wanting to build a deck that doesn't use combat to win. Infinite combos are fine, but I'd prefer if it doesn't *have* to use them, and that the cards involved in said combos can be used for other purposes in a game - versatility. If it works out, a deck that doesn't go infinite but just generates tons of value or advantage until it wins would be great too. I don't want to have to win with 'win more' type cards, though, as I consider them generally mana innefficient and too easily disrupted. The deck needs to be able to scale to handle multiplayer games of up to 6 people.
3. Things I like to and want to be doing: Stealing/copying opponent's cards, self-mill/graveyard strategy, life gain/life drain subtheme would be neat, playing spells for free and recurring things would be great too. I'm thinking cards like Torrential Gearhulk and Baral's Expertise, among others.
4. I don't want to absolutely rely on my commander. If it gets countered or dies, I'd like to be able to recur it from the graveyard instead of paying commander tax. It needs to be a helpful commander that doesn't force me to spend way too much mana to do something some other more efficient card could do on its own, or force me into a single straight-forward strategy. I want to be able to play the deck differently (asymetrically) depending on the state of the game and not have to go very heavy into any particular theme, so I don't get bored with it.
5. I like synergy a lot. I want to avoid antisynergy. Say my deck ends up highly reliant on artifacts or enchantments - I don't want to cast something like Bane of Progress and destroy my own growth, unless if somehow it's really to my advantage and I can get back my own permanents I just destroyed with ease. In general, strong and immediate 'put into play' recursion would be great.
6. Efficiency. I don't want to win fast, but I need to be able to get ahead - no slow or overcosted ramp, and I'd prefer ramp that survives or can come back easily after being removed and immediately help me cast other spells before my next turn after being recurred. I would like to draw out the game a bit. Of principle concern, I need to contend with a few pretty fast decks, and aggro is very popular in my playgroup right now. There's elf/druid tribal slamming down craterhoof behemoth and killing everyone on turn 4-5, an Elzrazi deck, a few other highly consistent and threatening aggro decks, and a couple chaotic crazy decks that warp the entire game. The board is likely to get wiped more than once by other players and graveyard hate is being used too. I need a control-based strategy that feels comfortable in that kind of environment.
All those criteria considered, does anyone have any suggestions?
The no-combat thing is a harsh limitation for some of these combinations. Also, several of them don't scale too well, read; may be too oppressive for strictly casual tables.
[[Kess, Dissident Mage]] seems like it would hit a lot of your marks. You can really build it to the power level you want (anything from casual jank to tier 1 competitive), it almost always wins outside of combat (through various means from big x-spells to [[Aetherflux Reservoir]]), it has a heavy self mill / graveyard theme, and while kess is nice the deck can work without her. Focusing on graveyard + instants and sorceries gives the deck a lot of synergy which is nice (funner than grixis good stuff imho). Worth a look maybe?
I've been playing Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge lately. Basic goal is to just recast the commander over and over. Basic control shell with a bunch of mana rocks, Wheels, Naban and Panharmonicon, and a bunch of bounce and boardwipes. Goal is to mill via exile. It tends to do very bad things to combo decks while being super casual. Just recently threw in Lab Maniac just cause it seemed appropriate, but Jeleva just ends up exiling him.
I've got an older version of the deck in my sig. Just haven't gotten around to resurrecting the thread.
Alright, I'm not actually recommending this, but a lot of your points feel like they match my Grimgrin deck, so I wanted to do some comparisons.
1) UB. You said you preferred it to be the core, which was why I thought Grimgrin fit in paricular for a comparison case.
2) No combat. Okay, fine my Grimgrin's casual goal is amass as many 2/2 Zombie tokens as possible (I collect those and had to use them somewhere) and theoretically you could just run all of them in combat, but let's face it's unrealistic primary plan. The actual plan is get as many of them as possible out at once and use Shepherd of Rot to win. But like all creature-reliant strategies, it's easily disrupted (but then again I'm in quite a fierce meta, almost anything can be disrupted anyway).
3) Oh boy, flavor-wise theft/clones are the theme of the deck (zombies are the functional half). I run thebigthree in the deck and even in the cases where there's nothing of value elsewhere to copy, Zombies is the one tribe that amplifies itself a whole more when multiplied. I generally resort my theft plans to be more of my answers to what the color combination has trouble answering past counters/bouncing though, using cards like Aura Thief for enchantments, since space gets tight once you squeeze zombies into the whole lot. As for drain, it's a side-theme at best (as mentioned, lack of space) that falls into the likes of Bontu's Monument and Gary. I do run Plague Belcher and Vengeful Dead and with Exquisite Blood you could turn it to drain, but I'd say the enchantment is too much of a trouble magnet for me to bother. I usually just run zombies into players/things with Whip of Erebos for lifegain separately.
4) Grimgrin is a sac outlet. Not the only one of course, but it's always more reassuring to have one in the Command Zone when relying on creature/token-based strategies. Zombie tribal recursion means it's often tempting to put him into the graveyard, but sometimes Rooftop Storm makes it preferable to just pay the tax only instead.
5) Well, I do have my sacrifice outlets to subvert anti-synergies from wipes (because cheaper wipes are almost always two-sided), but if one doesn't want to, we're in the colors of Cyclonic Rift, Plague Wind and In Garruk's Wake.
6) Here is where it digresses. UB alone isn't exactly the fastest of colors (you're going to need all the 2-mana rocks you can find basically for the color combination) and cheap mass removal as mentioned, isn't one-sided (but it'll hurt them more than you if they're aggro-fast anyway). Honestly, if you have elfball, ramp-eldrazi and chaos-crazy decks on the same table, it'll be nigh difficult to stay stabilized between all of them even with the tools packed into the decks since there's no guarantee you'll get to them in the correct phases... especially if you're the only answer on the board. You'll basically need to draw into early mass removal to cripple the elf decks early on and load up on counterspells to deal with the likes of ramping and chaos cards.
Just based on the digression on 6) alone I'd think one of those competitive Tasigur decks would work out better though. I'm no expert on the commander so I won't be recommending anything in particular (you can go find the Tasigur threads via the database instead), but I've witnessed variations of the decks in action myself that it feels like the correct choice here.
I suppose I might also consider Esper colors, WUB. I'm not sure what I'm going to settle on. Kess, Dissident Mage and Muldrotha, the Gravetide are arguably pretty good, but I rather expect that the problem I'm going to have with them is they get wiped and then they're not worth it to recast, or otherwise cost way too much to recur whatever it is in my graveyard I want to recur, since I expect when I cast either, I'm going to want to cast something from my graveyard sometime before my next turn or else lose the general immediately as a casualty of boardwipes. What I really need to figure out is what to do to enable things in these colors if it means casting big expensive spells to manage. I'm probably going to need ways to stall until I have mana and do it in such a way as that my opponents' decks don't immediately recover the next turn, or make my spells free in various ways, or generate infinite mana. Otherwise I'm just going to die to the aggro decks before I've even begun to get set up.
Regarding boardwipes: I have and intend to use the good ones, which are usually 3-5 mana and not often 6, few others worth it higher than 7 with the exception of cards like Cyclonic Rift and Blasphemous Act.
Zedruu - not a chance in my meta, not efficient enough and will die before I ever get cards. Fun in theory, though.
Tsaigur - I'm not sure I understand why he's good. He exiles cards from your graveyard that you might actually want if you want to cast him for a low cost, and his activated ability gives opponents a choice, which obviously will never be the best one for me if they can pick the worst card to give me from my graveyard for the current situation.
Damia - Tried it once, built it really solid, always ate removal before I ever got card advantage off of it, no luck.
Inalla - Seems strong, but I don't really want to build wizard tribal. Too linear and limiting.
Mairsil - Maybe. I'm not sure what to make of this commander, in the slightest.
Jeleva - I could consider it. It scales up as I chuck it at the aggro decks and they kill it. Seems potentially mana hungry, and limits me to a heavily non-permanent deck. Tricky, not sure if this is viable, as opposed to Narset, but Narset is something another one of my friends already built and it's too linear and boring to me to want to build. The problem is, when it dies, everything I exiled goes away, and while my deck might have ideal cards to cast for free, my opponent's decks are no guarantee for anything helpful and it makes everyone want to target me even if I don't exile anything they care about that much.
Dralnu - I don't really understand how to build this commander ideally. The first ability always worried me, is there something advantageous about it? The second ability seems good, except the deck needs a haste enabler.
Mizzix - Considered building it once but I decided it was too fragile as a deck.
Others I've considered and my thoughts: Sharuum the Hegemon - Tried it once, but it was too boring. The Mimeoplasm - someone in my group already built it. Don't want to be a copycat. Also a bit too linear for me. The Locust God - Doesn't do anything special my Maelstrom Wanderer deck doesn't already do better because it has green. Nekusar, the Mindrazer - built it once, too boring, and someone in my group already has it built at the moment anyway Thraximundar - combat oriented and mana hungry, also kind of just demands zombie tribal to be at its best, so I decided against it Sedris, the Traitor King - maybe, but it is mana hungry and I'd be better off playing Muldrotha Dragonlord Silumgar - Been considering it, but I don't feel like it's that great to build under even if the rest of the deck has nothing to do with what the general does. Phenax, God of Deception - Interesting possibilities, but I just wish it could use green. Oona, Queen of the Fae - Really interesting general that I could build in numerous ways, but man is it mana hungry and does it draw attention due to exiling cards. Vela the Night-Clad - Built it once, meta changed, no longer remotely viable. Jhoira of the Ghitu - There is no way this would work in my meta because people do assess threats properly, never going to try it even though I like the possibilities.
I am just really indecisive, I guess. Can't seem to narrow down what it is I'm looking for, but I'd like to hope maybe I'm just overlooking the viability and possibilities with various commanders in these colors.
Things I like to and want to be doing: Stealing/copying opponent's cards, self-mill/graveyard strategy, life gain/life drain subtheme would be neat
In my opinion, The Scarab God would be the perfect commander for you. It's resilient because it's very hard to kill and can use another player's graveyard if yours happens to get exiled. This also makes it versatile and hits your marks of stealing opponent's cards and using a graveyard strategy at the same time. You will often win through whatever win conditions your enemies happen to bring along, ensuring each game is different. It doesn't gain life, but it sure as hell can drain your opponents for a lot. And while it's often played as zombie tribal, you don't need to go down that route. You can also use amazing value creatures like Sepulchral Primordial, Diluvian Primordial and Sphinx of Uthuun. Then maybe pack a few really good zombie generators like Army of the Damned or Grave Titan to drain your opponents out. Feel free to have a look at my decklist if that sounds fun to you!
Check out the Jeskai blink deck from my sig. It is a classic flicker control deck, and wins with Purphoros, God of the Forge and co. while constantly blinking guys for value.
Riku of Two Reflections - Copy, then copy again | Shattergang Brothers - Token Sac&Recur | Gahiji, Honored One - Multiple attack steps | Karametra, God of Harvests - Landfall, Creaturefall, Shroud | Ruhan of the Fomori - Stop hitting yourself | Zurgo Helmsmasher - Equipment&Wraths | Crosis, the Purger - Dragon Tribal Reanimator | Derevi, Empyrial Tactician - No stax, just tap and untap fun | Anafenza, the Foremost - Enduring Ideal Enchantress | Sharuum, the Hegemon - Sphinx Tribal Control | Noyan Dar - Spellslinger | The Mimeoplasm - Counterpalooza
Lists can be found here.
Still convinced the guy on Beseech the Queen is wearing a Mitra-type hat. Wake up sheeple!
Check out the Jeskai blink deck from my sig. It controls the game, blinks dudes for value and all the while wins through incremental damage from Purphoros, God of the Forge and company without attacking once.
Riku of Two Reflections - Copy, then copy again | Shattergang Brothers - Token Sac&Recur | Gahiji, Honored One - Multiple attack steps | Karametra, God of Harvests - Landfall, Creaturefall, Shroud | Ruhan of the Fomori - Stop hitting yourself | Zurgo Helmsmasher - Equipment&Wraths | Crosis, the Purger - Dragon Tribal Reanimator | Derevi, Empyrial Tactician - No stax, just tap and untap fun | Anafenza, the Foremost - Enduring Ideal Enchantress | Sharuum, the Hegemon - Sphinx Tribal Control | Noyan Dar - Spellslinger | The Mimeoplasm - Counterpalooza
Lists can be found here.
Still convinced the guy on Beseech the Queen is wearing a Mitra-type hat. Wake up sheeple!
I'm going to put in a vote for Dralnu, Lich Lord. jennCertainty runs a really nice primer list for Dralnu that my own list is closely modelled on, budget allowing. For obvious reasons Dralnu avoids combat, but the deck is pretty devastating regardless. Don't be put off by his first ability, his second ability far outweighs it, and the deck is lots of fun. Aside from that, the deck hits most of the points you're after; it can combo but doesn't have to, doesn't rely on commander, has life gain/bleed, copy, graveyard synergies, isn't anti- synergy, and it's pretty efficient.
Thank you for all the suggestions. At this time, I am thinking I might actually rebuild Nekusar. For one, because it would be really funny to play a game with two Nekusar decks, if my friend obliges to that silliness at least once, and because I can feasibly see building it significantly different (and better in a strategic sense) from what I did the first time, now having much more experience with the game than I did when I first built it. Not only that but it would create a nice environment for the newer players in my group because the card advantage could actually give them a better chance to beat the rest of us experienced players, so it's a socially positive deck to play. The risk is over-enabling the other experienced players, but I think I know what tools to pack to keep them under control.
Isn't Nekusar frequently cited as one of the most hated generals to play against? Maybe less so since some other powerhouses have come along, but I don't think constantly wheeling them and inflicting massive and rapid amounts of damage against which combat can't defend is all that much of a nice experience for new players. Not saying you shouldn't build Nekusar since he fits quite a few of your other criteria, but I don't think being nice to new players is something he does well. I'd rather go with Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis for that.
Yeah, after coming up with a new WIP build of Nekusar again, I don't like it anyway. Sure, it's offensively strong, filled with synergies, but not much else going for it. Would expectedly lose easily to a tiny bit of pressure. In order for it to have a chance at winning, it needs to have so many ways to damage people it can't be shut down, but then that leaves no room for control or ways to protect itself, and trying to do any sort of control when I'm giving everyone tempo through cards is kind of backwards. Bleh. I might just have to wait to see what Commander 2019 brings and hope something really catches my eye. I can't seem to find that political/offensive/defensive balance I want.
As for wheeling @Zordrath, the plan, ideally, would be to do some upkeep/end step damage with regular card draw, and save the wheels for the turn where I kill everyone at once, but not before.
1. I'd like to build a new deck or two from among these few color combinations: URW, BGU, UBR, UB, or UR. I really like decks with definitely Blue, but I want a deck with black alongside the blue in it in particular since I have no decks with that color in it right now.
2. I'm wanting to build a deck that doesn't use combat to win. Infinite combos are fine, but I'd prefer if it doesn't *have* to use them, and that the cards involved in said combos can be used for other purposes in a game - versatility. If it works out, a deck that doesn't go infinite but just generates tons of value or advantage until it wins would be great too. I don't want to have to win with 'win more' type cards, though, as I consider them generally mana innefficient and too easily disrupted. The deck needs to be able to scale to handle multiplayer games of up to 6 people.
3. Things I like to and want to be doing: Stealing/copying opponent's cards, self-mill/graveyard strategy, life gain/life drain subtheme would be neat, playing spells for free and recurring things would be great too. I'm thinking cards like Torrential Gearhulk and Baral's Expertise, among others.
4. I don't want to absolutely rely on my commander. If it gets countered or dies, I'd like to be able to recur it from the graveyard instead of paying commander tax. It needs to be a helpful commander that doesn't force me to spend way too much mana to do something some other more efficient card could do on its own, or force me into a single straight-forward strategy. I want to be able to play the deck differently (asymetrically) depending on the state of the game and not have to go very heavy into any particular theme, so I don't get bored with it.
5. I like synergy a lot. I want to avoid antisynergy. Say my deck ends up highly reliant on artifacts or enchantments - I don't want to cast something like Bane of Progress and destroy my own growth, unless if somehow it's really to my advantage and I can get back my own permanents I just destroyed with ease. In general, strong and immediate 'put into play' recursion would be great.
6. Efficiency. I don't want to win fast, but I need to be able to get ahead - no slow or overcosted ramp, and I'd prefer ramp that survives or can come back easily after being removed and immediately help me cast other spells before my next turn after being recurred. I would like to draw out the game a bit. Of principle concern, I need to contend with a few pretty fast decks, and aggro is very popular in my playgroup right now. There's elf/druid tribal slamming down craterhoof behemoth and killing everyone on turn 4-5, an Elzrazi deck, a few other highly consistent and threatening aggro decks, and a couple chaotic crazy decks that warp the entire game. The board is likely to get wiped more than once by other players and graveyard hate is being used too. I need a control-based strategy that feels comfortable in that kind of environment.
All those criteria considered, does anyone have any suggestions?
URW - Zedruu the Greathearted
BGU - Tasigur, the Golden Fang, Damia, Sage of Stone or Muldrotha, the Gravetide
UBR - Kess, Dissident Mage, Inalla, Archmage Ritualist or Mairsil, the Pretender
UB - Dralnu, Lich Lord
UR - Mizzix of the Izmagnus
The no-combat thing is a harsh limitation for some of these combinations. Also, several of them don't scale too well, read; may be too oppressive for strictly casual tables.
I've got an older version of the deck in my sig. Just haven't gotten around to resurrecting the thread.
WBG Karador, Ghost Chieftain
B Toshiro Umezawa
BG Pharika, God of Affliction - Necromancy and Politics
WWW The Church of Heliod
WBR Zurgo, Helmsmasher
RG Wort, the Raidmother
UBR Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge
UG Vorel of the Hull Clade
1) UB. You said you preferred it to be the core, which was why I thought Grimgrin fit in paricular for a comparison case.
2) No combat. Okay, fine my Grimgrin's casual goal is amass as many 2/2 Zombie tokens as possible (I collect those and had to use them somewhere) and theoretically you could just run all of them in combat, but let's face it's unrealistic primary plan. The actual plan is get as many of them as possible out at once and use Shepherd of Rot to win. But like all creature-reliant strategies, it's easily disrupted (but then again I'm in quite a fierce meta, almost anything can be disrupted anyway).
3) Oh boy, flavor-wise theft/clones are the theme of the deck (zombies are the functional half). I run the big three in the deck and even in the cases where there's nothing of value elsewhere to copy, Zombies is the one tribe that amplifies itself a whole more when multiplied. I generally resort my theft plans to be more of my answers to what the color combination has trouble answering past counters/bouncing though, using cards like Aura Thief for enchantments, since space gets tight once you squeeze zombies into the whole lot. As for drain, it's a side-theme at best (as mentioned, lack of space) that falls into the likes of Bontu's Monument and Gary. I do run Plague Belcher and Vengeful Dead and with Exquisite Blood you could turn it to drain, but I'd say the enchantment is too much of a trouble magnet for me to bother. I usually just run zombies into players/things with Whip of Erebos for lifegain separately.
4) Grimgrin is a sac outlet. Not the only one of course, but it's always more reassuring to have one in the Command Zone when relying on creature/token-based strategies. Zombie tribal recursion means it's often tempting to put him into the graveyard, but sometimes Rooftop Storm makes it preferable to just pay the tax only instead.
5) Well, I do have my sacrifice outlets to subvert anti-synergies from wipes (because cheaper wipes are almost always two-sided), but if one doesn't want to, we're in the colors of Cyclonic Rift, Plague Wind and In Garruk's Wake.
6) Here is where it digresses. UB alone isn't exactly the fastest of colors (you're going to need all the 2-mana rocks you can find basically for the color combination) and cheap mass removal as mentioned, isn't one-sided (but it'll hurt them more than you if they're aggro-fast anyway). Honestly, if you have elfball, ramp-eldrazi and chaos-crazy decks on the same table, it'll be nigh difficult to stay stabilized between all of them even with the tools packed into the decks since there's no guarantee you'll get to them in the correct phases... especially if you're the only answer on the board. You'll basically need to draw into early mass removal to cripple the elf decks early on and load up on counterspells to deal with the likes of ramping and chaos cards.
Just based on the digression on 6) alone I'd think one of those competitive Tasigur decks would work out better though. I'm no expert on the commander so I won't be recommending anything in particular (you can go find the Tasigur threads via the database instead), but I've witnessed variations of the decks in action myself that it feels like the correct choice here.
Regarding boardwipes: I have and intend to use the good ones, which are usually 3-5 mana and not often 6, few others worth it higher than 7 with the exception of cards like Cyclonic Rift and Blasphemous Act.
Zedruu - not a chance in my meta, not efficient enough and will die before I ever get cards. Fun in theory, though.
Tsaigur - I'm not sure I understand why he's good. He exiles cards from your graveyard that you might actually want if you want to cast him for a low cost, and his activated ability gives opponents a choice, which obviously will never be the best one for me if they can pick the worst card to give me from my graveyard for the current situation.
Damia - Tried it once, built it really solid, always ate removal before I ever got card advantage off of it, no luck.
Inalla - Seems strong, but I don't really want to build wizard tribal. Too linear and limiting.
Mairsil - Maybe. I'm not sure what to make of this commander, in the slightest.
Jeleva - I could consider it. It scales up as I chuck it at the aggro decks and they kill it. Seems potentially mana hungry, and limits me to a heavily non-permanent deck. Tricky, not sure if this is viable, as opposed to Narset, but Narset is something another one of my friends already built and it's too linear and boring to me to want to build. The problem is, when it dies, everything I exiled goes away, and while my deck might have ideal cards to cast for free, my opponent's decks are no guarantee for anything helpful and it makes everyone want to target me even if I don't exile anything they care about that much.
Dralnu - I don't really understand how to build this commander ideally. The first ability always worried me, is there something advantageous about it? The second ability seems good, except the deck needs a haste enabler.
Mizzix - Considered building it once but I decided it was too fragile as a deck.
Others I've considered and my thoughts:
Sharuum the Hegemon - Tried it once, but it was too boring.
The Mimeoplasm - someone in my group already built it. Don't want to be a copycat. Also a bit too linear for me.
The Locust God - Doesn't do anything special my Maelstrom Wanderer deck doesn't already do better because it has green.
Nekusar, the Mindrazer - built it once, too boring, and someone in my group already has it built at the moment anyway
Thraximundar - combat oriented and mana hungry, also kind of just demands zombie tribal to be at its best, so I decided against it
Sedris, the Traitor King - maybe, but it is mana hungry and I'd be better off playing Muldrotha
Dragonlord Silumgar - Been considering it, but I don't feel like it's that great to build under even if the rest of the deck has nothing to do with what the general does.
Phenax, God of Deception - Interesting possibilities, but I just wish it could use green.
Oona, Queen of the Fae - Really interesting general that I could build in numerous ways, but man is it mana hungry and does it draw attention due to exiling cards.
Vela the Night-Clad - Built it once, meta changed, no longer remotely viable.
Jhoira of the Ghitu - There is no way this would work in my meta because people do assess threats properly, never going to try it even though I like the possibilities.
I am just really indecisive, I guess. Can't seem to narrow down what it is I'm looking for, but I'd like to hope maybe I'm just overlooking the viability and possibilities with various commanders in these colors.
In my opinion, The Scarab God would be the perfect commander for you. It's resilient because it's very hard to kill and can use another player's graveyard if yours happens to get exiled. This also makes it versatile and hits your marks of stealing opponent's cards and using a graveyard strategy at the same time. You will often win through whatever win conditions your enemies happen to bring along, ensuring each game is different. It doesn't gain life, but it sure as hell can drain your opponents for a lot. And while it's often played as zombie tribal, you don't need to go down that route. You can also use amazing value creatures like Sepulchral Primordial, Diluvian Primordial and Sphinx of Uthuun. Then maybe pack a few really good zombie generators like Army of the Damned or Grave Titan to drain your opponents out. Feel free to have a look at my decklist if that sounds fun to you!
Tamanoa - Welcome to the Jungle
Lists can be found here.
Tamanoa - Welcome to the Jungle
Lists can be found here.
As for wheeling @Zordrath, the plan, ideally, would be to do some upkeep/end step damage with regular card draw, and save the wheels for the turn where I kill everyone at once, but not before.