MTG Salvation

I'm really attached to 5 color generals, because they let you have the best of each color. I got Reaper King deck, based on scarecrows and changelings, but I want to make a new 5-color deck.

So, I would like to hear your opinions and decisions on 5 color generals. Which one to choose, and mainly, why to choose him.

Child of Alara
Progenitus
Karona, False God
Sliver Queen Sliver Overlord Sliver Legion
Scion of the Ur-Dragon
Horde of Notions
Reaper King
Atogatog
Cromat

THX for your answers.

I already have progenitus and Karona,

so ill pass those

I'd Choose Child, because it's a freaking giant baby !! With nuts ability,
then it's Reaper king, JUST WOW. Vindicate? SCARECROW KING? IT'S HARVEST TIME


scion is very good,but boring. the rest are meh

Reaper King is easily my fav. 5-color commander. But I'd probably just play it as BUG colors with tons of clones to blow up everyones stuff. If I had to choose a second, I'd go with child.

It doesn't matter what 5 color general you use. They all end up being a good stuff deck or a random tribal deck in which case you either the most applicable commander or Cromat.

That said Reaper King is the coolest - 3.75 color whatever I feel like is the best deck of all time.

Child of Alara: Boardwipes on a stick. It's easy to assemble a lock and wipe the board each turn if you need to. Appropriate for control and land-based strategies.
Progenitus: Your mana better be really good. Dies to Wrath of God.
Karona, False God: Best three-colour general for tokens or tribal beatdown. Also a chaos/pillow fort card. Her drawback is huge but you can mitigate it by protecting yourself from attacks or killing the table the turn you cast her.
Sliver Legion: Sliver beats. For Sliver players who want a more casual, variable deck than Overlord
Sliver Overlord: The go-to Sliver general.
Sliver Queen: This general enables a ton of different combos. If you like infinite creatures this is the guy for you.
Scion of the Ur-Dragon: Good for dragon reanimator strategies or one-shotting people with general damage by chaining usages of his ability.
Horde of Notions: Elemental tribal I guess??? The reanimation ability's cost is really high. But 5/5 haste/vigilance/trample is a good start if you want a five-color voltron general who's less combo-ish than Scion.
Reaper King: Can be cast with any color of mana or only colorless mana, so he's suitable for strategies where you're not paying all five colors but still want access to all mana for whatever reason (casting opponents' spells, bringers, etc.) Good for control or blink decks, vindicates on a stick. IMO the "full tribal" build is boring but there's a lot you can do with this guy.
Atogatog / Cromat: These cards telegraph "I'm never going to cast my general." If you're running a fast combo deck, you should be running Atogatog, because he's the coolest

Cromat is my homeboy, I love using him!

I'd go with Progenitus. Why? Because Hydras are my favorite tribe, and his art is sweet.

If I was ever going to make a 5c deck it would be Scion of the Ur-Dragon with very few dragons but instead Conspiracy and other fun things like that.

Atogatog. Don't be weak.

I have Progenitus and have considered a lot of them for the spot, mainly because he really isn't used too much.

Having the ability to use a 10/10 protection from everything commander is just nice in the late game. Chances are, the wraths are all used up, the game has come down to everyone at low health, and casting him for the first time, you can start doing some serious damage. I just think it is extremely useful to have that kind of firepower in every game, guaranteed.

Quote from Wildfire393

Horde of Notions - Elemental tribal, which can get you repeated removal, card draw, or tokens. Also a decent beatdown creature in its own right with haste and trample.

Don't forget the king of Obnoxious Elemental Effects

Karona gets my first vote, much fun and flavor to be had.

Child gets second, out of utility.

Sliver Queen gets 3rd. Barring everything else, she's a 7/7 for 5 with "2: Make a dude"

Child of alara is my fav that I've played. You can go sort of a goodstuff route, or (my preference) a lockdown route that blows up the board every turn after 4 or so and grinds out slow wins with general damage (usually off corpse dance). Although be warned that most people I've played it against ask me to switch decks afterwards

I enjoyed Child of Alara as a general because it allowed be get back into the game if I got behind (go go sac lands!)

Not the best by any means and the deck has been taken apart since it wasn't doing much but Child allowed me to claw back into contention more than once since I ran a 5 colour control deck, I didn't mind wiping the board most of the time

Cromat's fun. The rest aren't 'cept for the tribal ones, but then you have to build a tribal deck.

Atogatog is more variable than it looks, so I'll pick that one. Second is Karona, then Horde in third.

If you want an obscenely fun, deviously consistent and surprisingly good 5c goodstuff aggro, look no better than Horde of Notions.

People are overlooking the biggest feature he has: He's a 5/5 Haste Trample Vigilance with the ability to kill people if ignored, or eat removal for your other fatties. He's useful later when you have elementals in your graveyard sure, but he's also awesome just for face-punching people.

TL-DR He's not elemental tribal, he's face-puncher supreme!

Check out my decklist in my sig, you'll love it if you enjoy fat things beating your squishy opponents into a fine, gory mush.

Atogatog, because I love Conspiracy and Xenograft Effects.

What do you mean by chaining Scion of the Ur-Dragon's ability? I thought if you use his activated ability a second time in a turn he just becomes another copy, it doesn't stack the power and toughness of the previous copy. Am I missing something here?

Quote from jayr

Child of Alara: Boardwipes on a stick. It's easy to assemble a lock and wipe the board each turn if you need to. Appropriate for control and land-based strategies.
Progenitus: Your mana better be really good. Dies to Wrath of God.
Karona, False God: Best three-colour general for tokens or tribal beatdown. Also a chaos/pillow fort card. Her drawback is huge but you can mitigate it by protecting yourself from attacks or killing the table the turn you cast her.
Sliver Legion: Sliver beats. For Sliver players who want a more casual, variable deck than Overlord
Sliver Overlord: The go-to Sliver general.
Sliver Queen: This general enables a ton of different combos. If you like infinite creatures this is the guy for you.
Scion of the Ur-Dragon: Good for dragon reanimator strategies or one-shotting people with general damage by chaining usages of his ability.
Horde of Notions: Elemental tribal I guess??? The reanimation ability's cost is really high. But 5/5 haste/vigilance/trample is a good start if you want a five-color voltron general who's less combo-ish than Scion.
Reaper King: Can be cast with any color of mana or only colorless mana, so he's suitable for strategies where you're not paying all five colors but still want access to all mana for whatever reason (casting opponents' spells, bringers, etc.) Good for control or blink decks, vindicates on a stick. IMO the "full tribal" build is boring but there's a lot you can do with this guy.
Atogatog / Cromat: These cards telegraph "I'm never going to cast my general." If you're running a fast combo deck, you should be running Atogatog, because he's the coolest

Quote from PHC

What do you mean by chaining Scion of the Ur-Dragon's ability? I thought if you use his activated ability a second time in a turn he just becomes another copy, it doesn't stack the power and toughness of the previous copy. Am I missing something here?

after his ability resolves, he stops being scion and becomes whatever dragon you picked (unless you ftf). Then he doesn't have his scion ability and can't become a different dragon until eot.

However, you can activate the ability a second time before the first one resolves, and potentially get some benefit from him briefly being dragon X before ultimately becoming dragon Y for the rest of the turn. For a brief time, both activations of his ability are both on the stack (aka stacked on top of each other).

Classic combo being moltensteel dragon and skithiryx, the blight dragon. When the second activation resolves, make him moltensteel dragon, pay 12 life to give him +6/+0. Then when the first activation resolves, make him skittles, and he's a 10/4 flying infect until eot, which will 1-shot anyone without removal or a flying/reach blocker.

Reaper King, or Scion of the Ur-Dragon are my fav. The Reaperking is like an any color combo general because you could literally build a mono colored or colorless deck with him as the general and still be able to cast him. Scion because it's been on my list of decks to build.

That dragons combo sounds actually quite good. Mainy with Skittles.

In Horde of Notions are you running some elementals? Or just have him like general so you can use every color?

Child of Alara looks quite good, maybe I'll try him.

Quote from Ph03niX

That dragons combo sounds actually quite good. Mainy with Skittles.

In Horde of Notions are you running some elementals? Or just have him like general so you can use every color?

Child of Alara looks quite good, maybe I'll try him.

Dragons is powerful, but there are 2 main downsides in my mind.

1) Even if you're not, many people will assume you're running Combo-HD (Hermit Druid) and wreck you from T1. Not fair, but true. I've done it myself before, because if you ignore the HD player you lose in an outrageous fashion.

2) If you're not running HD, you're still able to 1 shot people out of no-where, so people will kill your general ASAP every chance they get.

Because he's so effective at finding and swinging with big dragons, Scion attracts a LOT of hate. He broadcasts your intentions and it hurts a LOT if he gets tucked. I feel that as far as swinging in for a win, Horde is a better choice, simply because he's more generic and less affected by tuck while still leading to incredible plays.

In my horde I do run some elementals. I'm by no means tribal, but Hordes ability isn't irrelevant either. I run:

• Spark Trooper
  
• Crib Swap
  
• Fertilid
  
• Maelstrom Wanderer
  
• Bane of Progress

I've never felt like I needed more elementals than this TBH. Maelstrom Wanderer is probably my favorite, given that you can get 2 more cards whenever you have the mana and a sac outlet.

You can look at my thread in my sig to get a better description for my card choices. Feel free to leave a comment or question in the thread.

I've got mad respect for Child of Alara. Child's ability is extremely powerful and scary, but the fact is that her and horde are near opposites. Horde wants to establish a board position and beat face, while Child wants to have little-to-no board position and mostly do things with instants and sorceries.

Either deck can be extremely powerful in it's own right, so ask yourself what you want to do more? Have a huge baby with C4 on his./her/its chest threaten the board while you lob fireballs at your opponents or have a literal maelstrom of face-pain and anus-fire beat your enemies to death with Vorinclex, Avacyn and other huge fatties at it's back?

You can hardly choose wrong. Obviously I chose Horde for his extremely fun and powerful face-beating, but Child is by no means a bad choice.

Check out my horde list. Check out some Child lists. Make your choice and enjoy having the power of every color in your grasp.