I've recently started doing Magic livestreams, so I'm looking for card sleeves (both regular and perfect fit for double-sleeving) that work best on camera, making sure you can see the cards as easily as possible. This means they should have the least possible gloss and be as clear as possible, not getting in the way of the cards. Do you happen to have any experience with outer and inner sleeves that fit this criteria? Any suggestions would be appreciated!
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!
I'm running a weekly Commander livestream with three colleagues (think Game Knights, but live) and so far, I've just been playing the same decks I run in my regular games (mostly control, steal and graveyard shenanigans, the playstyles I love the most). However, I'm looking to build more decks that are specifically geared to make for fun and interesting viewing.
By that, I don't mean chaos decks for the lulz, but decks that elicit unique interactions, memorable moments and interesting twists around the table. For example, one of my colleagues built a deck with all the good Will of the Council and Council's Dilemma cards, constantly getting people to vote and bicker and try to influence each other. That was what got me to thinking about other decks that really create fun and unique dynamics. They should still be trying to win, but do it in a more unorthodox fashion. Other examples could be Queen Marchesa reliably bringing the Monarch mechanic into play every game, creating that power struggle. That's a bit of an obvious candidate, though (and usually built as rather straightforward stax/pillowfort), so I was wondering if you guys had any more weird or interesting ideas in that direction - if so, I'd love to hear them! All suggestions are appreciated
I'm looking to build an Orzhov Aristocrats deck and while the new Teysa Karlov looks really unique, I'm wondering whether she's actually better than the old Teysa, Orzhov Scion. Doubling death triggers can of course be really powerful, but I feel like she'll often just double stuff that would already be great anyway (clamping for four cards is obviously amazing, but you don't need that to push Skullclamp over the top). Furthermore, she only works if you already have a full machinery of pieces on the board (creatures to sac as plus a sac outlet plus cards like Grave Pact that profit from the sacrifice).
On the other hand, old Teysa does a bit more herself, being a sac outlet on her own. However, she also has restrictions due to each of her effects only working for one color. Having never seen her in action before, I always feared this might be a bit clunky.
What are your thoughts? Have you already played the old Teysa or experimented with the new one? Which do you think is the more powerful and more fun commander? I'd love to hear your opinions!
There's more effects like these, but those are my favorites because they all give value immediately (unlike Wrexial, for example, who needs to attack). Lazav, Dimir Mastermind might also be fun if you're constantly wheeling.
The easiest path for me would be to play up one thing that white already has: Its ramp. So far, they've really gone out of their way to make it so much worse than green. It's always conditional, it's often expensive and/or mana intensive, it frequently only gets plains and even then you sometimes get them onto the battlefield. To top ot off, there's very few cards that do it. I realize that green is meant to be best here, but I do feel this is an area where white could easily be improved without damaging the color pie too much. Give white an almost full Cultivate for example, just add one of the usual restrictions instead of all them: Either it's Cultivate only for Plains, or it's a full Cultivate that only works if someone has more lands. Personally, I'd prefer dropping the Plains restrictions because that limits deckbuilding and keep the "balance" restriction, because that's more unique. This way, you could take away one of White's two biggest weaknesses and even turn it into a new strength. I feel the mana issue is much easier to solve in color pie than the draw issue.
In a similiar vein, playing up White's recursion could help make it more resilient. It already does have some, but it needs more cards on the level of Sun Titan that are powerful without being too conditional.
Furthermore, I'm thinking some more land destruction effects that are more there to punish green players than just make the game miserable for everyone could help. Fall of the Thran is a good example of this: Let everyone keep some lands, but destroy the advantage of that green guy with 20 lands or the black player with a full sawmp + coffers suite.
Looking a bit further, I think White could also use a couple more powerful synergistic themes of its own. It's often good at limiting what others do through control and hatebears, but less good at creating explosive turns by itself. Token strategies are its best bet here, but they are vulnerable and slow. White needs something akin to what Daretti did for red: Open up a new powerful and very general theme that allows White to be more degenerate itself. I'm not sure what this might be though, as the large themes are all divvied up pretty well. Perhaps more enchantress cards?
Earthcraft is unfortunately a bit outside my budget, but I added the Demon and Dread Return - not sure how I even missed that. I'm also considering Nim Deathmantle.
I did consider more cards with Dredge, but my issue is that most of them aren't all that good outside of Dredge. I have the Golgari Grave-Troll and the Stinkweed Imp and also added Dakmor Salvage. Life from the Loam will be put in there as soon as I get one, too. Are there any other dredge cards you would have added?
After some rounds of playtesting, I'm very happy with the deck so far, but have made some changes. The primary goal was to bring down mana costs and add more cards with immediate effects (as opposed to longterm but easily disrupted effects like Deadbridge Chant):
This is my first attempt at a deck for Izoni, Thousand-Eyed - who appeals to me because she can do a lot of classic Golgari shenanigans without being quite as ubiquitous and quite as big a target on your head as Meren of Clan Nel Toth. The deck is one part sacrifice for value, one part Grave Pact control and one part recursion. It usually looks to win by bleeding the enemy to death, either through many cuts or by looping Gray Merchant of Asphodel or Kokusho, the Evening Star a few times.
Two things I'm still uncertain about:
- Do I need more backup token creators? If my grave gets exiled, Avenger of Zendikar and Abhorrent Overlord can still bring a token army to the field. But should I add some more like Tendershoot Dryad, or would that be superfluous beside Izoni herself?
- Do I need more self-mill? I have some of the usual staples, but perhaps some more wouldn't go amiss. However, I had trouble finding more self-mill cards that are actually good. Life from the Loam is the only obvious one I think I'm missing right now because I don't have it, but I may get it for the deck. Mesmeric Orb is also great at milling, but it doesn't grant any value besides that and mills the Karador player as well, so I'm on the fence about it.
Let me know what you think! I couldn't find many lists for this Commander yet, so I'm looking forward to your suggestions!
I'm currently looking for storage boxes for my collection and it seems most people use the white ones by BCW. While they're certainly functional, I'd love to find something just a little more snazzy on top of that. I considered getting a Holiday Gift Box or two for that purpose, but apparently those boxes really don't hold up in terms of quality. So I was hoping perhaps some of you might know of a product that stores cards safely while also looking decent on a shelf? Any suggestions are appreciated!
I want to like Arixmethes, but I feel that for all his unique design, they played it a bit too safe with him. The fact that he comes into play tapped and has no evasion neuters both his land and his creature form somewhat. I would have liked him a lot more if he entered untapped and had Islandwalk, but maybe that would in fact have made him too strong.
I'm surprised to see Tuvasa in the lead! I haven't seen nearly as much hype for her as for some other options like Yuriko, but maybe that's just because she's not all that flashy, but simply quietly gives an already popular deck type just the Commander it's been wanting.
Let's get some hard data, folks! Which of the new commanders excite you, and which ones are you building?
Me, I've already started on my Aminatou Esper Blink deck. I've always wanted to do a Blink deck, but all the obvious Commanders like Brago are so overdone that I always held off on it. Aminatou may not be quite as powerful as those, but having Esper colors and being a planeswalker, I feel she does bring something unique to the table that made me excited to build her.
I'm still mulling over Tawnos and Yennet. Both also fill niches I've been wanting for a long time: Tawnos is a multicolored Kurkesh and much more what I was hoping for in an Izzet artificer than Jhoira due to being more tricksy, but I'm not quite sure about win conditions yet. Yennet as well seems a much better topdeck matters commanders than quite a few previous choices like Intet, but I'm thinking Vaevictis might be even better.
Who needs top of the deck matters? When Aminatou, the Fateshifter was first spoiled, my first thought: Finally a dedicated Esper Blink Commander! She's certainly not as much of a blowout as Brago, but like him she can blink any type of permanent instead of just creatures, allowing her some interesting tricks with cards like Reality Acid and other planeswalkers. The two advantages she has over Brago are her ability to blink lands for Emeria Shepherd and of course the addition of black, adding some really sweet new ETB effects like Sepulchral Primordial into the mix.
This is my first draft of an Aminatou Blink deck, focussed around gaining value out of flickering powerful ETB creatures. Let me know what you think! One weakness is the mana curve, which is a tad high. Are there any cool ETB effects from creatures at 1, 2 or 3 mana I might have missed? There's plenty at higher costs, but I'd like to get a few more creatures out early to protect the commander and stark blinking things with her to profit off her low mana cost.
Bolas is cool, but I think I like Vaevictis even more. Sacrificing your own stuff for profit is not a downside in Jund, and Chaos Warping all your opponents with every attack is fanastic. One of the best Elder Dragons of all in my opinion.
I've recently started doing Magic livestreams, so I'm looking for card sleeves (both regular and perfect fit for double-sleeving) that work best on camera, making sure you can see the cards as easily as possible. This means they should have the least possible gloss and be as clear as possible, not getting in the way of the cards. Do you happen to have any experience with outer and inner sleeves that fit this criteria? Any suggestions would be appreciated!
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!
I'm running a weekly Commander livestream with three colleagues (think Game Knights, but live) and so far, I've just been playing the same decks I run in my regular games (mostly control, steal and graveyard shenanigans, the playstyles I love the most). However, I'm looking to build more decks that are specifically geared to make for fun and interesting viewing.
By that, I don't mean chaos decks for the lulz, but decks that elicit unique interactions, memorable moments and interesting twists around the table. For example, one of my colleagues built a deck with all the good Will of the Council and Council's Dilemma cards, constantly getting people to vote and bicker and try to influence each other. That was what got me to thinking about other decks that really create fun and unique dynamics. They should still be trying to win, but do it in a more unorthodox fashion. Other examples could be Queen Marchesa reliably bringing the Monarch mechanic into play every game, creating that power struggle. That's a bit of an obvious candidate, though (and usually built as rather straightforward stax/pillowfort), so I was wondering if you guys had any more weird or interesting ideas in that direction - if so, I'd love to hear them! All suggestions are appreciated
I'm looking to build an Orzhov Aristocrats deck and while the new Teysa Karlov looks really unique, I'm wondering whether she's actually better than the old Teysa, Orzhov Scion. Doubling death triggers can of course be really powerful, but I feel like she'll often just double stuff that would already be great anyway (clamping for four cards is obviously amazing, but you don't need that to push Skullclamp over the top). Furthermore, she only works if you already have a full machinery of pieces on the board (creatures to sac as plus a sac outlet plus cards like Grave Pact that profit from the sacrifice).
On the other hand, old Teysa does a bit more herself, being a sac outlet on her own. However, she also has restrictions due to each of her effects only working for one color. Having never seen her in action before, I always feared this might be a bit clunky.
What are your thoughts? Have you already played the old Teysa or experimented with the new one? Which do you think is the more powerful and more fun commander? I'd love to hear your opinions!
- Rise of the Dark Realms
- Sepulchral Primordial and Diluvian Primordial
- Spelltwine and Memory Plunder
- Animate Dead, Dance of the Dead and Necromancy
There's more effects like these, but those are my favorites because they all give value immediately (unlike Wrexial, for example, who needs to attack). Lazav, Dimir Mastermind might also be fun if you're constantly wheeling.
In a similiar vein, playing up White's recursion could help make it more resilient. It already does have some, but it needs more cards on the level of Sun Titan that are powerful without being too conditional.
Furthermore, I'm thinking some more land destruction effects that are more there to punish green players than just make the game miserable for everyone could help. Fall of the Thran is a good example of this: Let everyone keep some lands, but destroy the advantage of that green guy with 20 lands or the black player with a full sawmp + coffers suite.
Looking a bit further, I think White could also use a couple more powerful synergistic themes of its own. It's often good at limiting what others do through control and hatebears, but less good at creating explosive turns by itself. Token strategies are its best bet here, but they are vulnerable and slow. White needs something akin to what Daretti did for red: Open up a new powerful and very general theme that allows White to be more degenerate itself. I'm not sure what this might be though, as the large themes are all divvied up pretty well. Perhaps more enchantress cards?
Earthcraft is unfortunately a bit outside my budget, but I added the Demon and Dread Return - not sure how I even missed that. I'm also considering Nim Deathmantle.
I did consider more cards with Dredge, but my issue is that most of them aren't all that good outside of Dredge. I have the Golgari Grave-Troll and the Stinkweed Imp and also added Dakmor Salvage. Life from the Loam will be put in there as soon as I get one, too. Are there any other dredge cards you would have added?
After some rounds of playtesting, I'm very happy with the deck so far, but have made some changes. The primary goal was to bring down mana costs and add more cards with immediate effects (as opposed to longterm but easily disrupted effects like Deadbridge Chant):
-1 Agent of Erebos
-1 Archfiend of Depravity
-1 Blood Artist
-1 Deadbridge Chant
-1 Deathreap Ritual
-1 Elvish Rejuvenator
-1 Falkenrath Noble
-1 Massacre Wurm
-1 Merciless Executioner
-1 Miren, the Moaning Well
-1 Razaketh, the Foulblooded
-1 Regal Force
-1 Wake the Dead
-1 Woodfall Primus
-1 Journey to Eternity
+1 Bojuka Bog
+1 Dakmor Salvage
+1 Dawntreader Elk
+1 Demon of Dark Schemes
+1 Final Parting
+1 Havoc Demon
+1 Living Death
+1 Loaming Shaman
+1 Moriok Replica
+1 Night Incarnate
+1 See the Unwritten
+1 Spawning Pit
+1 Vraska, Relic Seeker
+1 Yavimaya Elder
+1 Dread Return
+1 Victimize
This is my first attempt at a deck for Izoni, Thousand-Eyed - who appeals to me because she can do a lot of classic Golgari shenanigans without being quite as ubiquitous and quite as big a target on your head as Meren of Clan Nel Toth. The deck is one part sacrifice for value, one part Grave Pact control and one part recursion. It usually looks to win by bleeding the enemy to death, either through many cuts or by looping Gray Merchant of Asphodel or Kokusho, the Evening Star a few times.
Two things I'm still uncertain about:
- Do I need more backup token creators? If my grave gets exiled, Avenger of Zendikar and Abhorrent Overlord can still bring a token army to the field. But should I add some more like Tendershoot Dryad, or would that be superfluous beside Izoni herself?
- Do I need more self-mill? I have some of the usual staples, but perhaps some more wouldn't go amiss. However, I had trouble finding more self-mill cards that are actually good. Life from the Loam is the only obvious one I think I'm missing right now because I don't have it, but I may get it for the deck. Mesmeric Orb is also great at milling, but it doesn't grant any value besides that and mills the Karador player as well, so I'm on the fence about it.
Let me know what you think! I couldn't find many lists for this Commander yet, so I'm looking forward to your suggestions!
1 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
1 Kokusho, the Evening Star
1 Poison-Tip Archer
1 Zulaport Cutthroat
Sacrifice Outlets
1 Altar of Dementia
1 Ashnod's Altar
1 Phyrexian Altar
1 Spawning Pit
1 Viscera Seer
1 Yahenni, Undying Partisan
Recursion
1 Dread Return
1 Eternal Witness
1 Living Death
1 Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
1 Phyrexian Delver
1 Phyrexian Reclamation
1 Rise of the Dark Realms
1 Victimize
Other Synergy
1 Abhorrent Overlord
1 Avenger of Zendikar
1 Golgari Grave-Troll
1 Stinkweed Imp
Draw
1 Corpse Augur
1 Evolutionary Leap
1 Grisly Salvage
1 Growing Rites of Itlimoc
1 Krav, the Unredeemed
1 Moriok Replica
1 Necropotence
1 See the Unwritten
1 Smothering Abomination
1 Vulturous Aven
Tutor
1 Birthing Pod
1 Eldritch Evolution
1 Final Parting
1 Jarad's Orders
1 Protean Hulk
1 Sidisi, Undead Vizier
Mana
1 Black Market
1 Dawntreader Elk
1 Farhaven Elf
1 Path of Discovery
1 Perilous Forays
1 Pitiless Plunderer
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Satyr Wayfinder
1 Sol Ring
1 Wood Elves
1 World Shaper
1 Yavimaya Elder
1 Attrition
1 Bane of Progress
1 Beast Within
1 Butcher of Malakir
1 Demon of Dark Schemes
1 Dictate of Erebos
1 Grave Pact
1 Havoc Demon
1 Loaming Shaman
1 Night Incarnate
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Vraska, Relic Seeker
Lands
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Command Tower
1 Crypt of Agadeem
1 Dakmor Salvage
1 Evolving Wilds
10 Forest
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Golgari Rot Farm
1 Grim Backwoods
1 High Market
1 Khalni Garden
1 Svogthos, the Restless Tomb
12 Swamp
1 Tainted Wood
1 Temple of the False God
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Westvale Abbey
I'm currently looking for storage boxes for my collection and it seems most people use the white ones by BCW. While they're certainly functional, I'd love to find something just a little more snazzy on top of that. I considered getting a Holiday Gift Box or two for that purpose, but apparently those boxes really don't hold up in terms of quality. So I was hoping perhaps some of you might know of a product that stores cards safely while also looking decent on a shelf? Any suggestions are appreciated!
I'm surprised to see Tuvasa in the lead! I haven't seen nearly as much hype for her as for some other options like Yuriko, but maybe that's just because she's not all that flashy, but simply quietly gives an already popular deck type just the Commander it's been wanting.
Me, I've already started on my Aminatou Esper Blink deck. I've always wanted to do a Blink deck, but all the obvious Commanders like Brago are so overdone that I always held off on it. Aminatou may not be quite as powerful as those, but having Esper colors and being a planeswalker, I feel she does bring something unique to the table that made me excited to build her.
I'm still mulling over Tawnos and Yennet. Both also fill niches I've been wanting for a long time: Tawnos is a multicolored Kurkesh and much more what I was hoping for in an Izzet artificer than Jhoira due to being more tricksy, but I'm not quite sure about win conditions yet. Yennet as well seems a much better topdeck matters commanders than quite a few previous choices like Intet, but I'm thinking Vaevictis might be even better.
What are you guys itching to build?
Who needs top of the deck matters? When Aminatou, the Fateshifter was first spoiled, my first thought: Finally a dedicated Esper Blink Commander! She's certainly not as much of a blowout as Brago, but like him she can blink any type of permanent instead of just creatures, allowing her some interesting tricks with cards like Reality Acid and other planeswalkers. The two advantages she has over Brago are her ability to blink lands for Emeria Shepherd and of course the addition of black, adding some really sweet new ETB effects like Sepulchral Primordial into the mix.
This is my first draft of an Aminatou Blink deck, focussed around gaining value out of flickering powerful ETB creatures. Let me know what you think! One weakness is the mana curve, which is a tad high. Are there any cool ETB effects from creatures at 1, 2 or 3 mana I might have missed? There's plenty at higher costs, but I'd like to get a few more creatures out early to protect the commander and stark blinking things with her to profit off her low mana cost.
1 Brago, King Eternal
1 Conjurer's Closet
1 Deadeye Navigator
1 Eerie Interlude
1 Ghostway
1 Kaya, Ghost Assassin
1 Mistmeadow Witch
1 Oath of Teferi
1 Venser, the Sojourner
//Other Utility
1 Deepglow Skate
1 Diluvian Primordial
1 Oath of Gideon
1 Panharmonicon
1 Rite of Replication
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Sepulchral Primordial
1 Sorin Markov
1 Stonehorn Dignitary
1 Temporal Mastery
//Draw
1 Baleful Strix
1 Cloudblazer
1 Demonlord Belzenlok
1 Ephara, God of the Polis
1 Gonti, Lord of Luxury
1 Mulldrifter
1 Mystic Remora
1 Oath of Jace
1 Sea Gate Oracle
1 Sphinx of Uthuun
1 Wall of Omens
//Tutor
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Rune-Scarred Demon
//Control
1 Act of Authority
1 Angel of Despair
1 Angel of Finality
1 Anguished Unmaking
1 Cataclysmic Gearhulk
1 Ixidron
1 Luminate Primordial
1 Oath of Liliana
1 Ob Nixilis Reignited
1 Parallax Wave
1 Reality Acid
1 Terminus
1 Tragic Arrogance
1 Azorius Signet
1 Dimir Signet
1 Gilded Lotus
1 Oreskos Explorer
1 Orzhov Signet
1 Pilgrim's Eye
1 Sol Ring
1 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Teferi, Temporal Archmage
1 Thran Dynamo
//Recursion
1 Archaeomancer
1 Emeria Shepherd
1 Entreat the Dead
1 Karmic Guide
1 Sun Titan
1 Torrential Gearhulk
//Lands
1 Adarkar Wastes
1 Arcane Sanctum
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Caves of Koilos
1 Command Tower
1 Drowned Catacomb
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Glacial Fortress
6 Island
1 Isolated Chapel
1 Maze of Ith
7 Plains
1 Reliquary Tower
6 Swamp
1 Temple of Deceit
1 Temple of Enlightenment
1 Temple of Silence
1 Temple of the False God
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Underground River
From Geek & Sundry.
Vaevictis looks freaking awesome and very breakable. If all the Elders are this good, I'm stoked!