MTG Salvation

Hello MTG Salvation community,

I stumbled upon this website a few days ago in my search for more information about EDH. I am hoping to build an Estrid deck but need some advice and help.

Context: I started playing Magic when 3rd edition packs were 2-3 bucks and UL packs were like 5-6 but because I was in 5th grade, I never ponied up the cash for UL. I quit Magic when I began college about 15 years ago and regrettably sold my collection to pay my deposit for student living. A week ago, I went to a buddy's house and he was playing magic which immediately stuck a nostalgia cord for me. As I watched them play, I became so curious about "planes walkers" and this new format -- Commander. Well, I am hooked and I have spent the last few days searching the internet for my first commander to build. I should also mention many of these ideas came from previous posts about Estrid. The Lands Matter build by Darren? seems awesome, but a few really pricey pieces price me out of it.

Constraints: I literally own about 8 cards. As I do not have a card base to build from and play test all of this is theory-craft I suppose. Also, I am not looking to build a finely tuned Estrid deck, my budget and potential play group wont allow or require me to build and ultra competitive deck.

Why Estrid: I have always played some form of Stasis control deck i.e. Turbo Black vise stasis decks. I enjoy the control aspect of Magic. As I have researched, I also seem drawn to Stax / Pillow / Tax decks. I know these decks don’t make friends but I love to pilot them. Estrid allows me to play all of these themes and from what I can tell, fairly successfully. I really have liked the draw engine idea that enchantress encourages so that is why I have settled on Estrid.

Preliminary plan for the deck:
Early game: ramp with 7-10 Land Auras to gain card and mana advantage while placing some pillow fort cards to protect early game from agro decks.

Midgame: abuse Estrid’s +2 and hope to combine her -1 / +2 through The Chain Veil or Oath of Teferi to protect permanents, get around lock pieces, make removing Estrid hard and enable board wipes. All while cranking through the enchantress draw engine to find combo pieces / win cons. I love the idea of using 1 Simic Guildmage to abuse her -1.

Planned win cons: Aura Thief and Enchanted Evening, Starfield of Nyx, Sigil of the Empty Throne, Omniscience and Laboratory Maniac

Alt Win cons: Sometimes I know we lose pieces of our combos, so I plan to have a few voltron(I think that’s what the idea is called) creatures with some built in evasion Auras / effects that overlap with other themes. Cards like Whitewater Naiads

Help: I feel like I am trying to do too much. There feels like so much synergistic opportunities I cant evaluate which cards to cut. Also, without owning the cards, I can’t play test. One of the guys playing the night I feel back in love with Magic mentioned this idea of 8x8 -- creating 8 themes to build commander around and to shoot to have 8 cards in each. Lands make up the rest. I don’t know if that is sound reasoning but here are my 8 categories and the rationale:

Ramp via land auras (allows for less lands, drives draw engine, abuses estrids +2)

Wincons

Removal (3-4 boards 3-4 targeted)

Pillow / Lock Pieces (interacts with draw engine, slows people down, estrid allows me to get around stasis, only run 4 artifacts so I can run some hate – it seems many edh decks are driven by mana rocks?)

Protection (protect my permanents and voltron creatures)

Tutors / Recursion

Synergy / Utility

Voltron Creatures / Auras (alt win cons)

[x, y] x = how many current cards there are, y = how many I want to get to vie cutting



Cards needed to cut: 24

Are there cards that should be auto add that I have missed? I know there are some infinite combos with The Chain Veil but I am not sure how to "break the loop." Everything I have read about talks about breaking the loop.


Thanks in advanced for your help!

Just seeing the list out like this has helped a bit.

First Cuts:
- Rayne, Academy Chancellor - only situational draw, should have enough other pieces to drive engine, the penalty of targeting my permenants isn't heavy enough to deter, especially if I have another draw piece on the board.
- Swords to Plowshares - Have alot of removal that has synergy with draw engine
- Seal of Cleansing - Deck has too much spot removal, other cards are better / more versatile
- Prison Term - See Above
- Stasis Snare - See Above
- Overwhelming Splendor - Have other ways to win, high CC
- Market Festival - Have too many land auras, high CC
- Shielded by Faith - I feel like auras are secondary to what I am trying to do, they are an alt win con but the deck has to many, I don't want it to be clunky. I added it to protect my draw enchantress(s) but with 8-9 draw enablers, losing one wont hurt so protecting 1 seems to be wasteful?
- Gift of Immortality - Harder to cut than shield, offers recursion, but need to trim numbers


Added:
- Supreme Verdict - one of the decks I will play against is a token Assemble the Legions and Aurelia, The Warleader So I felt like another creature based board wipe that can't be counter is good.

Hi, welcome to the forums, and indeed back to Magic.

Pretty much the reason that you're so many cards over, is exactly what you've said you are trying to do too many things unfortunately. Trying to split your build between pillow fort AND stax AND creatures with auras AND draw good stuff AND control removal AND combo.

The hardest part about playing creature auras is making sure you consistently have targets for them, otherwise they become stuck in your hand.
Playing them on your entrantresses is pretty mediocre, as you're not really looking to attack with them as they are 0/2 type creatures to start with.
So you need to make sure you have a good threshold of creature targets. Sure you have Sun Titan and Bruna, Light of Alabaster, but actually getting Auras onto them would be much later in the game, so you might just be holding onto 3 auras in your hand waiting for a relevant creature to play them onto.
You just have to be wary of high risk. high reward as well with creature auras. Putting an Ancestral Mask on a Cold-Eyed Selkie can either take over a game, or just as likely get removed for a two-for-one.
That's why the most popular commanders for auras are the hexproof ones Sigarda, Host of Herons and Uril, the Miststalker.

I personally think that if you're looking to beef up creatures with auras, then you could take out the pillow fort and look to be protecting yourself (if necessary) with creatures. This will allow you to have enough creatures to make sure you have targets for your auras.
-OR-
You don't play creature themed auras at all, and simply go for control with pillow fort.

But my suggestion is that because you've said "play group wont allow or require me to build and ultra competitive deck.", I would try and get the creatures with auras as a theme, because you'll get more respect from the play group if you're looking to also win via combat. If your build is just stax and pillow fort, then you might find that you're the arch-enemy before games even start when you turn up in subsequent weeks. You have to understand that commander as a multiplayer game, is a lot about politics and perception. If you're the guy that just drags games out to over half an hour longer each time, then you'll be first to be picked on.


You should definitely included a Stony Silence, you can pick up a Modern Masters version for $8.

Just watch out that with Enchanted Evening making lands enchantments and Starfield of Nyx making enchantments creatures, that your lands will be instantly be removed as they are 0/0.

With the The Chain Veil you can can get infinite activation's if you put an Aura on The Chain Veil with Estrid [-1] and then you also are able to get at least 4 from other cards which have Auras on them, so realistically lands with enchantments on them like Wild Growth, etc.
Now it must be noted that, sure you can get infinite loyalty on Estrid, but actually this might not do anything as far as winning on the spot. It obviously sets you up nicely as you can ultimate her many times during the game to get back all your enchantments if they are removed.
Plus unless opponents have specific removal for planeswalker, they won't be able to kill her via attacking with creatures for as long as you have done that combo.
If you were able to produce more than 4 mana off untapping enchanted sources, then you can get infinite mana, which will potentially lead to a victory at the time.
The other obvious thing you might want to do if looking for some sort of The Chain Veil win, is to actually play more planeswalkers. So you can build them up to powerful ultimates in the same turn you are using Estrid to go infinite.
There are a lot of premium planeswalkers in Bant, but I'll list some of the ones that would fit your deck best I think, and they are maily based off their ultimates being able to close the game;
Dovin Baan - the [-7] fits your theme perfectly
Narset Transcendent - the [-9] normally makes opponents concede on the spot.
Venser, the Sojourner - the [-8] is hard for your opponents to beat if the game goes much longer.

Hey Darren, I really appreciate the time you put into your response. It makes a ton of sense. I just need to determine the direction I want to go.

I love the draw engine of enchantress and I love the idea of abusing Estrid's +2. I feel like there are other commanders that run auras better, as you helped me to see. Well I am stuck, I will have to do some more research and try to figure out what to do.

I know I haven't said much in this post, I just wanted to thank you for the thoughtful reply.

After talking to a friend who is sort of my magic mentor, he suggested maybe a token deck with some big spending cards with the copious amounts of mana I will be generating end game. I know this deck is clearly missing Doubling Season . It is just so expensive. I am running the other two doublers and with Copy Enchantment and Estrid's Invocation I can still make boat loads of tokens. With Enchanted Evening and Privileged Position , my tokens should be pretty hard to remove once that protection is in place.

I need to cut out 20 cards. I plan to cut at least a few planeswalkers. Which would you folks suggest that I cut? Am I still trying to do too much? Maybe I can cut the pillow section down significantly.




Thoughts?

Thanks in Advanced

Removed:

- Dueling Grounds because it negatively interacts with token theme
- Mystical Tutor few cards to grab, other than maybe wargate or cyclonic rift(which I am cutting), wargate is better
- Cyclonic rift expensive to buy, might be a bit overpowered for my group and words of wind does similar thing

More Cuts

Enchanted Evening - I removed aura thief and will rely on other win cons, it has negative interaction with sterling grove and privileged position.
Heavenly Blademaster - not running many creature auras not enough value

More cuts:

Eidolon of Countless Battles More of a Voltron card. Doesn't interact with tokens.
Elemental Resonance Should have enough mana with estrid's +2 and chain veil's abuse
Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury almost all of my tokens will be white, her +1 won't make many green creatures making the ult less than stellar
Ajani, Caller of the Pride have better and cheaper ways to create tokens
Dovin Baan really like his ult but removed my lock pieces to be more player friendly for my playgroups so makes sense to remove him.

I am starting to get a better vision for the deck. I really want my win cons to be planeswalker ultimates that I can pull off in 1-2 turns with chain and oath.

I feel like I am going crazy. Everytime I sit down to research building this deck I find another direction. I really love the idea of estrid superfriends abusing Chain Veil. So here is my latest build.




I need to cut 10 cards. Are their glaring omissions? I wanted to run Walking Ballista but cut it because I feel like I have so many ways to win and I am trying to be on a budget. It just feels wrong to build a deck thats not fairly optimal...

any thoughts? I could use some help for sure!

Well you're still too spread between ideas.

Remember that Elephant Grass, Ghostly Prison, Propaganda do not protect against attacks against your planeswalkers.

An important aspect of playing any game of Magic is to understand the reality of actually being able to cast all the cards you draw.
Are you actually able to play out all your cards?

If you look in terms of card advantage, there is lots of incremental draw in your deck. The enchantresses and most of the planeswalker represent an extra card each turn, for each one.
So although it's tempting to put in big draw cards like Blue Sun's Zenith and Sphinx Revelation, the actual reality is that you're always going to have more cards to spend mana on, than you do mana.
Decks need to be balanced out more with big mana cards like, Mirari's Wake, Mana Reflection, Zendikar Resurgent, once you think you can go for huge mana sinks.


Herald of the Pantheon looks better on paper than it actually is. Providing cost reduction is fine, but there are better cards for this; Sunscape Familiar to name one. It literally will reduce the cost of more cards in your deck than Herald, and life gain is very weak.

So you have 9 auras in the deck, all enchant lands, except the Bear Umbra. So Umbra Mystic and Simic Guildmage are looking pretty bad at the moment. Totem armor to lands, but no land destruction? The thing is that even if you get Strip Mine on one of your enchant lands, you still lose the enchant aura itself, so are still set back, so it's not like an amazing strategy against opponents incidental land removal.
Then the Simic Guildmage is doing very little, other than again moving an enchant land in response to land removal, but 9/10 an opponent will find a moment where you are tapped out to actually remove the land.

Squirrel Nest looks very slow in your deck. Tapping a land each turn for a 1/1 rather than mana!! Normally Squirrel Nest is comboed with Earthcraft for infinite 1/1s, but you don't have this. It's just not where you want to be at.

Thanks again Darren for your comments.

I will cut herald, that is great advice.

I understand how pillowfort doesnt protect PW. Is it better to cut the pillowfort pieces and just run more tokens? Or small creatures?

Squirrel nest was added because I thought with a tokened chain veil I could make squirrel nest go infinite? Play chain, -1 estrid on chain, use chain, use estrids +2 over and over, which would allow me to tap and untap the land enchanted with squirrel. Even if I could't use the mana, it would just empty? I might be misunderstanding the mechanics. I still am relearning the game.

Simic is is there more so to protect my PWs and estrid herself. Move token masks to her. Is that a bad idea? I guess it doesnt prevent her from dying due to damage? Just destroy effects?

So maybe I should of started with this at the beginning.

I already own the following cards:



This is why I chose Bant/sel. I have most of the pillowfort pieces, some protection pieces and the most expensive enchantress so it made sense budget wise to build estrid. Clearly, planeswalkers don't really fit this. Maybe Tuvasa the Sunlit? Pillowfort / blue control until I have voltron Tuva swing? Any recommendations for an EDH deck that involves an enchantress pillowfort theme? Anyone please feel free to add your thoughts or advice.

Thanks again!

I was just making sure that you knew how those pillow fort cards worked. I'm not saying they are directly bad as cards to play, but just wanted you to be mindful that they wouldn't help you in the way you probably mostly want them to when you play out your planeswalkers.

Now the thing is that planeswalkers are really fun cards. You've come back into the game, and by all means your intuition to play the new card type is not without justification. Having a plethora of options within planeswalker abilities is actually a good feeling and powerful to boot. Plus you do get a lot of bang for dollar (power for $$) in my opinion.
I guess The Chain Veil is $16 and then Fabricate is $3.5, so you're investing a bit more for the planeswalker theme there.

The deck looks really solid, you are only 8 cards over as you listed Estrid's Invocation and Call the Gatewatch twice.

Squirrel Nest would go infinite with The Chain Veil, so it does have that, but I still think it's a little weak, being that you can do a lot of powerful things once you go infinite with The Chain Veil, namely other planeswalkers.

So cutting is fairly easy, I could see removing;
Blue Sun's Zenith
Squirrel Nest
Herald of the Pantheon
Umbra Mystic
Simic Guildmage
Laboratory Maniac - $$ expensive, and honestly a dead draw unless you are already in a winning position.
Open The Vaults - a backup to Estrids [-7], but I find these cards are hard to use unless you actually setup them up, which your deck is not constructed for.
Hurricane - is a bit situational.

---

You could absolutely go Tuvasa the Sunlit, but that is a completely different take, and would require starting from scratch in approach.
Each commander has their pros and cons.
I do think the Estrid deck looks great, so feel 100% confident in it.

Here is where I settled:





I cut a few big spenders and as I play the deck some I can easily add them and cut others. As I said at the beginning, I play in a fairly casual setting. In striving to optimize the list I lost track of the budget lol. The cuts included: Aura Shards and Wargate . Both are clearly great and have amazing synergy with the deck, but it reduced the cost of acquisition buy like 15%. I have a few tutors to get needed pieces and Words of Wind can fill aura shards spot (slightly).

I added Dueling Grounds and Silent Arbiter as a weak way to protect my PW. If you can only target 1 per turn it buys me time to set up for others?? That is the thought process anyway.

Because tokens are just an afterthought in the deck, should I run more Wrath of God cards? That seems like the best way to protect my PW. Just wrath every other turn? o.O

Thoughts? Thanks, I feel like I am getting close to buying the needed cards.

More creature removal for planeswalker decks is always a good idea.

You are probably going to buy the ADAPTIVE ENCHANTMENT deck so it does come with some stuff.

• Estrid, the Masked
  
• Eidolon of Blossoms
  
• Tuvasa the Sunlit
  
• Ajani's Chosen
  
• Sol Ring
  
• Estrid's Invocation
  
• Sigil of the Empty Throne
  
• Bear Umbra
  
• Enchantress's Presence
  
• Dawn's Reflection
  
• Fertile Ground
  
• Overgrowth
  
• Wild Growth

-------

• Martial Coup
  
• Phyrexian Rebirth
  
• Winds of Rath

-------

• Azorius Chancery
  
• Blossoming Sands
  
• Command Tower
  
• Evolving Wilds
  
• Krosan Verge
  
• Meandering River
  
• Seaside Citadel
  
• Selesnya Sanctuary
  
• Simic Growth Chamber
  
• Terramorphic Expanse
  
• Thornwood Falls
  
• Tranquil Cove
  
• Tranquil Expanse
  
• Woodland Stream

Your lands could do with a few changes;
Add
Azorius Chancery - in ADAPTIVE ENCHANTMENT
Selesnya Sanctuary - in ADAPTIVE ENCHANTMENT
Simic Growth Chamber - in ADAPTIVE ENCHANTMENT
Treva's Ruins $1.07
Sungrass Prairie $0.90
Nimbus Maze $1.60
Port Town $1.13
Prairie Stream $1.95
Canopy Vista $2.20
Fortified Village $0.98
Scattered Groves $1.83
Temple of Plenty $2.04
Temple of Mystery $1.49

Remove
Painted Bluffs
Reliquary Tower
Rogue's Passage
Shimmering Grotto
Remove any of the tapped lands and/or basics, doesn't really matter but you can get straight upgraded coming into play tapped lands (or mitigate being tapped), for spending an extra $15.

The Prairie Stream and Canopy Vista are particularly good with Krosan Verge plus can come into play untapped once a couple of basics in play.

The double lands, Azorius Chancery, Selesnya Sanctuary, Simic Growth Chamber work well with Burgeoning, plus they do make sure that you hit lands drops. Returning a land does mean that in the following turns you will have another land to play out.

Thanks again Darren for the quality feedback. I stepped away from the deck over the holiday and revisited it last night. I've actually cut to 99 and I am curious which card the community would suggest adding back in (or a new one I have not considered)




This List is 100, but I've been thinking about cutting Blind Obedience? I don't think I can go below 34 Lands correct? Even with 8-10 ramp pieces, that seems inconsistent to go to 31-33?

Cards that I want to try to add in that have been cut :

Energy Flux
Wargate

Thnoughts?

Thanks in advance