If your deck has over 25ish~ creatures then it would be worth including. If you can afford it, then you should run it. If your deck is more creature based (azuri for example), then good lord you should absolutely run it.
Think of the temple of the false god argument. Some people don't like temple of the false god because it is too whimsical in early games, or your deck may never need 5x lands. Similarly Maze of Ith also doesn't tap for mana unless you have some enabler like Urborg out, and cabal coffers in a two-color deck without that Urborg out also sucks. If you are willing to run something like those, then there shouldn't be any harm in running Cradle.
seize the day is pretty good with Godo, netting you a few more combat swings.
sword of feast and famine is really good when you have instant speed spells in your deck, and can get a little crazy when you have something like winding canyons to help flash stuff out mid-combat.
If you end up reliably giving Godo first-strike or evasion (like from akroma's memorial), then inquisitor's flail is an absolute beast, acting like another damage-doubler that you may have more influence over.
Sometimes you just need a deck that doesn't take much effort to pilot.
When multi-player table nights go long and 4:00AM creeps by, and I start to loose brainpower due to lack of sleep and/or too alcohol, and I just know that I wouldn't be able to run a control or combo deck correctly, this comes out.
I usually have access to a good-stuff mono-red deck, but after seeing the artwork of that impostorRorix Bladewing printed in eternal masters, I felt that the actual pit-fighting Rorix from Onslaught deserved his own dedicated deck;
I've ran Rorix as a selectable general from a pile of random mono-red legendaries in previous mono-red good-stuff decks, but this is the first time I'm trying mono-red dragon tribal since I tried zirilan of the claw a few years ago.
Rorix is pretty bland in terms of abilities. Nothing too elaborate here, so the deck follows with his simplicity; mana, dragons, some damage enhancement, ground-burn, and generic mono-red good stuff spells. 12x rocks + 3x mana-doublers means that half of this deck is mana. The rocks are tuned to be more ritual-like so I can hold them back if I see dragonstorm in the first few turns.
After running it for a little over three weeks now the deck has had its silly-quick voltron win's and can land scary dragon's fast, but as expected it fails to attritiony grave pacty, blinky bane of progressy, and grindy aura of silencey style of decks.
Sweet list, I like that focused take. I didn't even think about the creature-rocks or awaken spells working for Ith either
I actually ended up cutting Wake Thrasher after initial evaluation since I thought it would just be blocked forever. If Clockwork Vorrac or Mikaeus, the Lunarch survived for a turn after doing the Ith dance then we are living the dream, but surviving for a turn is a lot to ask for.
I think my initial goal was a bit too ambitious. By removing a block of combos (in your case the pingers), it does make for a much more stable and reliable deck.
I think the weakest part of this is still the 7cmc general w/o protection. I wish there were more room for boots or a better control package to keep him safe. If suspend would work from the command zone this would be so much easier to make into a threatening deck since you would be able to protect him the turn he comes in (and he would have haste). Silly rules.
IMO the only real option for making a deck functional in competitive 1v1 and multiplayer means you will be running some sort of quick combo.
The consistently strong non-combo decks I see in multiplayer tables are all long-game attrition decks, which don't fair too well in competitive 1v1 early games (in my own experience).
The best blended deck that I'm running currently is rakdos the defiler. The deck has a few generic creature-based black/red combo's (kiki+mogg+ooze/kiki+zealous/dualcaster+twinflame or heatshimmer/worldgorger combo). It runs like a midrange aggro deck, but with a pile of card selection + draw, lots of removal, and a few combat tricks for rakdos.
In multi-player he is usually just a defender. In 1v1 he may come out when I want to test the waters for spot removal. If the opponent can kill one of my creature-based combo's, he may be vulnerable to temur battle rage'd or uncaged fury'd rakdos.
A legitimately 1v1 rakdos deck should have more hand disruption to make sure he can get in, and a more multiplayer based rakdos deck should have less cantripy card selection nonsense and better recursion, but by sacrificing a little bit of each the deck runs decent enough in 1v1 and multiplayer.
So ya, find a few generic combo's that can fit in to a generic shell with a general that can either put up lots of defensive measures, or has easy access to global wipes.
I did this in an older deck here, but I never got around to finishing it with the more expensive time warp effects. Something like that could easily be updated with newer cards and be made much better, especially if you choose to take out the infinite turns and pile of control/counters.
That deck is a pile of generic good-stuff dragons, and was never designed to do this. It's a mono-red deck with only dragon's as the creature type, and is classically known as my "slow" deck. Yet just because I happened to have mana crypt and sol ring in the deck it was able to end a game far quicker than it ever should have.
If you know the combo you want to play, you can build the deck to run for the combo, but degrade the quality of combo-enabling effects (draw/tutor/ramp/duplicate combo parts). This isn't really the best of ideas, since you will constantly realize how close you were to a combo-win due to poor card quality, but it works against financially strained opponents. Swapping demonic tutor for increasing ambition, grim monolith for worn powerstone, etc.
Alternatively you could lower the number of those cards, so you see the enablers less frequent. Add more generic good-stuff fluff like creatures, defensive spells, or removal. Add more interaction to the combo deck so you can participate in the game in different ways. Something amusing like praetor's grasp/grab the reins/bribery/rite of replication/etc, that can act as pretty good utility that works outside of your combo.
I think the major issue card(s) are just tempt with discovery and collective voyage, since it alters the game-state far worse than the others, and in an unpredictable way. It is too dangerous without knowing the lands-to-fetch or the cards in the players hands that are about to untap with the free mana. These are really the only ones unfamiliar players should be educated about and be made more familiar with.
Tempt with Vengeance is pretty clutch depending on what the deck is capable of doing (is there a purphoros, god of the forge already out, can the guy overrun/craterhoof/etc). This one is pretty easy to politic people into not accepting the offer.
Tempt with Reflections is actually one I don't mind running in a deck full of utility creatures. The only issue is that it may be a dead card if you only have threats out, but casting it on a solemn simulacrum will almost always get you multiple solemns. The small ramp doesn't look threatening enough, and the opponents are really tempted to want a solemn on their side too. The deck obviously runs blue, so you are more likely to be able to bounce the gifted tokens. If the tempting offer isn't accepted, then we just have a bland sorcery speed 4-cmc token clone version of fated infatuation/cackling counterpart, which isn't at all bad.
When she and her bro first came out, I was on the fence of which one to playtest, but ended up going with Stitcher.
Since her ability only costs 1-b she benefits from untap-antics better than Geralf (not having to rely on training grounds), but you sadly do loose access to intruder alarm.
The rest of her deck would need some generic good-stuff black creatures for you to start the chain. graveborn muse, sepulchral primordial, disciple of bolas, and other good value critters that you don't mind killing.
It is in my theoretical Ith, High Arcanist combo decklist since one of the possible combos in the deck is milling myself out to lab man. The deck has multiple looters built in and emeria shepherd so it seems ideal.
Perhaps in an Oloro necrologia reanimator deck full of basic lands?
I've gotten a few turn-2 and many turn-3 win's with my worldgorger dragon deck. My deck is not even tuned for the combo 100%, and instead has a pile of rakdos watermark flavor cards added for playing it w/o going for the combo.
The combo is old and well known, and very delicate to run. If an opponent has timely removal/bounce then your board is exiled and you might as well scoop.
This is my current list, which is a slow pimp-in-progress. Again it is not at all optimized 100%. I've slapped quite a few rakdos-theme cards in there to calm it down for my metas. But that hasn't stopped this deck from pulling a few turn-2 win's out of its arse, and turn-3 is a fairly common. The issue is just how easy it is to disrupt the combo. It only takes a single removal or bounce spell to remove you from the game
edit; The most frequent turn-1 wins I have, or I've seen, are when someone has an absolute nut draw and start, somehow ending up with 5+ mana on turn-1 before anyone else has a land in play. If the deck is known to draw back to a full hand fast somehow, wreck others resources, or secure a victory shortly after, then the game is essentially already over. A turn-1 exploration followed by sol ring into signet is an average example. A while ago I opened with a turn-1 ancient tomb + mana crypt into solemn simulacrum, then turn-2 cast + equip sword of feast and famine, untaped after combat and tried to cast sword of fire and ice. My buddy was already shuffling his cards up.
I am essentially exactly what you described hating, but without the outwardly displayed attitude. From running Sivitri Scarzam for the colors to maintaining rakka mar as preference over kiki, I am that hipster.
While I respect everyone's choice to play what they want, it is my choice to play what I enjoy.
Internally although, I can't help but feel the annoyance of seeing the "cookie-cutter" generals so frequently. Seeing the same small percent of legendary creatures being played by multiple friends over the years gets very dull. The worst part is the awkwardness when you can make legitimately optimal suggestions for your friends deck who just built Maelstrom/Zur/Karador/Roon/Meren/Riku/Narset/Derevi/Prosh/Mimeo/etc for the first time, since you have seen that particular general/deck perform better from previous friends decks. Eventually you end up playing against your previous friends deck with a new pilot.
This annoyance most likely comes from the amount of time I've played this game/format, but it isn't something that I can just ignore. I keep it inside and don't try to dissuade people from their generals.
Using forums and the power of the interwebz for research seems ideal, but I also feel that it has gone too far. When there are metric-driven statistical lists like this and this, top-card lists, etc, that nudge people into playing one of these top-X common commanders, it brings on a pretty dull feeling of repetition.
There is nearly 640x legendary creatures for people to actually work with. Many are garbage, but many very playable legendaries are neglected due to this lack of knowing they exist, or what players are exposed to, or what they are recommended to play.
I like it in my competitively designed decks, but I refuse to run it in any muli-player deck.
I'm unhappy that they are now available for the more casual tables.
There is an obvious power-swing from someone who is willing to spend or trade for high-value high-impact cards like mana crypt. Before this eternal masters printing there was a clear difference of who would be more likely to have something like a mana crypt in their deck or not after seeing who you are playing against. It made evaluating which deck to play at a multi-player table fairly easy to match deck strengths.
Mana Crypt creates very explosive starts, and one of the most common complaints at casual tables is someone with an excessively sol ring related explosive start. With it being only legal in commander, its price will most likely fall, and many...many more people will run it.
This seemed like a nice thing to reprint for this format, but now I'm thinking it was a bad idea. There will now be more players having access to more frequent explosive starts, due to a relatively smaller price-threshold that their friends may not be able to muster.
The higher rate of 1-sided explosive starts will cause either the arms-race sort of scenario, or just more frustration.
Think of the temple of the false god argument. Some people don't like temple of the false god because it is too whimsical in early games, or your deck may never need 5x lands. Similarly Maze of Ith also doesn't tap for mana unless you have some enabler like Urborg out, and cabal coffers in a two-color deck without that Urborg out also sucks. If you are willing to run something like those, then there shouldn't be any harm in running Cradle.
sword of feast and famine is really good when you have instant speed spells in your deck, and can get a little crazy when you have something like winding canyons to help flash stuff out mid-combat.
If you end up reliably giving Godo first-strike or evasion (like from akroma's memorial), then inquisitor's flail is an absolute beast, acting like another damage-doubler that you may have more influence over.
When multi-player table nights go long and 4:00AM creeps by, and I start to loose brainpower due to lack of sleep and/or too alcohol, and I just know that I wouldn't be able to run a control or combo deck correctly, this comes out.
I usually have access to a good-stuff mono-red deck, but after seeing the artwork of that impostor Rorix Bladewing printed in eternal masters, I felt that the actual pit-fighting Rorix from Onslaught deserved his own dedicated deck;
1x Rorix Bladewing
Creature (16)
1x Balefire Dragon
1x Bogardan Hellkite
1x Dragon Mage
1x Flameblast Dragon
1x Hellkite Charger
1x Hellkite Tyrant
1x Hoard-Smelter Dragon
1x Knollspine Dragon
1x Ryusei, the Falling Star
1x Scourge of Kher Ridges
1x Scourge of the Throne
1x Spawn of Thraxes
1x Steel Hellkite
1x Thunder Dragon
1x Tyrant's Familiar
1x Utvara Hellkite
Instant (9)
1x Commune with Lava
1x Grab the Reins
1x Magmaquake
1x Reiterate
1x Sarkhan's Triumph
1x Savage Beating
1x Starstorm
1x Temur Battle Rage
1x Word of Seizing
1x All Is Dust
1x Anger of the Gods
1x Dragonstorm
1x Earthquake
1x Flamebreak
1x Mizzium Mortars
1x Ruination
1x Seize the Day
1x Slagstorm
Enchantment (8)
1x Crucible of Fire
1x Dictate of the Twin Gods
1x Dragon Tempest
1x Fervor
1x Fiery Mantle
1x Furnace of Rath
1x Gratuitous Violence
1x Outpost Siege
Planeswalker (2)
1x Chandra, Pyromaster
1x Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker
Artifact (18)
1x Basalt Monolith
1x Caged Sun
1x Coalition Relic
1x Expedition Map
1x Fire Diamond
1x Gauntlet of Might
1x Gauntlet of Power
1x Gilded Lotus
1x Grim Monolith
1x Journeyer's Kite
1x Mana Crypt
1x Mana Vault
1x Mind Stone
1x Sol Ring
1x Staff of Nin
1x Thran Dynamo
1x Wayfarer's Bauble
1x Worn Powerstone
1x Ancient Tomb
32x Mountain
1x Myriad Landscape
1x Temple of the False God
1x Thawing Glaciers
1x Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
1x Claws of Valakut
1x Dragon Breath
1x Gamble
1x Granite Grip
1x Insurrection
1x Rage Reflection
1x Sword of the Animist
1x Terrain Generator
1x Wheel of Fortune
I've ran Rorix as a selectable general from a pile of random mono-red legendaries in previous mono-red good-stuff decks, but this is the first time I'm trying mono-red dragon tribal since I tried zirilan of the claw a few years ago.
Rorix is pretty bland in terms of abilities. Nothing too elaborate here, so the deck follows with his simplicity; mana, dragons, some damage enhancement, ground-burn, and generic mono-red good stuff spells. 12x rocks + 3x mana-doublers means that half of this deck is mana. The rocks are tuned to be more ritual-like so I can hold them back if I see dragonstorm in the first few turns.
After running it for a little over three weeks now the deck has had its silly-quick voltron win's and can land scary dragon's fast, but as expected it fails to attritiony grave pacty, blinky bane of progressy, and grindy aura of silencey style of decks.
I actually ended up cutting Wake Thrasher after initial evaluation since I thought it would just be blocked forever. If Clockwork Vorrac or Mikaeus, the Lunarch survived for a turn after doing the Ith dance then we are living the dream, but surviving for a turn is a lot to ask for.
I would still suggest adding mangara of corondor tho, just too nasty
I think my initial goal was a bit too ambitious. By removing a block of combos (in your case the pingers), it does make for a much more stable and reliable deck.
I think the weakest part of this is still the 7cmc general w/o protection. I wish there were more room for boots or a better control package to keep him safe. If suspend would work from the command zone this would be so much easier to make into a threatening deck since you would be able to protect him the turn he comes in (and he would have haste). Silly rules.
The consistently strong non-combo decks I see in multiplayer tables are all long-game attrition decks, which don't fair too well in competitive 1v1 early games (in my own experience).
The best blended deck that I'm running currently is rakdos the defiler. The deck has a few generic creature-based black/red combo's (kiki+mogg+ooze/kiki+zealous/dualcaster+twinflame or heatshimmer/worldgorger combo). It runs like a midrange aggro deck, but with a pile of card selection + draw, lots of removal, and a few combat tricks for rakdos.
In multi-player he is usually just a defender. In 1v1 he may come out when I want to test the waters for spot removal. If the opponent can kill one of my creature-based combo's, he may be vulnerable to temur battle rage'd or uncaged fury'd rakdos.
A legitimately 1v1 rakdos deck should have more hand disruption to make sure he can get in, and a more multiplayer based rakdos deck should have less cantripy card selection nonsense and better recursion, but by sacrificing a little bit of each the deck runs decent enough in 1v1 and multiplayer.
So ya, find a few generic combo's that can fit in to a generic shell with a general that can either put up lots of defensive measures, or has easy access to global wipes.
You know what helps a Jhoira deck remove suspend counters better than spells like Jhoira's Timebug? Time Warps. Why play fury charm/clock spinning/time crafting when you could add an untap+explore by just playing time warps
I did this in an older deck here, but I never got around to finishing it with the more expensive time warp effects. Something like that could easily be updated with newer cards and be made much better, especially if you choose to take out the infinite turns and pile of control/counters.
If you are going 1v1 then the discard spell variants like thoughtseize/distress/hymn to tourach go with her theme.
She can be bent into a repeated hymn to tourach pretty easily with minamo, school at water's edge/thousand-year elixir/magewright's stone, which can be obnoxiously devastating in deck with a pile of tempo-bounce spells. If you have more creature-tap effects you can add more copy effects like puppet strings/umbral mantle/illusionist's bracers, and if you add planeswalkers then rings of brighthearth works with her too.
That deck is a pile of generic good-stuff dragons, and was never designed to do this. It's a mono-red deck with only dragon's as the creature type, and is classically known as my "slow" deck. Yet just because I happened to have mana crypt and sol ring in the deck it was able to end a game far quicker than it ever should have.
Alternatively you could lower the number of those cards, so you see the enablers less frequent. Add more generic good-stuff fluff like creatures, defensive spells, or removal. Add more interaction to the combo deck so you can participate in the game in different ways. Something amusing like praetor's grasp/grab the reins/bribery/rite of replication/etc, that can act as pretty good utility that works outside of your combo.
Tempt with Vengeance is pretty clutch depending on what the deck is capable of doing (is there a purphoros, god of the forge already out, can the guy overrun/craterhoof/etc). This one is pretty easy to politic people into not accepting the offer.
Tempt with Reflections is actually one I don't mind running in a deck full of utility creatures. The only issue is that it may be a dead card if you only have threats out, but casting it on a solemn simulacrum will almost always get you multiple solemns. The small ramp doesn't look threatening enough, and the opponents are really tempted to want a solemn on their side too. The deck obviously runs blue, so you are more likely to be able to bounce the gifted tokens. If the tempting offer isn't accepted, then we just have a bland sorcery speed 4-cmc token clone version of fated infatuation/cackling counterpart, which isn't at all bad.
Since her ability only costs 1-b she benefits from untap-antics better than Geralf (not having to rely on training grounds), but you sadly do loose access to intruder alarm.
To play her fairly you would most likely want puppet strings/thousand-year elixir/magewright's stone/umbral mantle/illusionist's bracers/rings of brighthearth.
Toss in the team victory enablers like eldrazi monument and akroma's memorial along with the generic mana-doublers for +1/+1 effects via caged sun/gauntlet of power and you have a pretty strait forward deck.
Toss in thornbite staff and sac' outlets (ashnod's altar/phyrexian altar) and you start nudging closer to infinite token creation.
The rest of her deck would need some generic good-stuff black creatures for you to start the chain. graveborn muse, sepulchral primordial, disciple of bolas, and other good value critters that you don't mind killing.
Perhaps in an Oloro necrologia reanimator deck full of basic lands?
The combo is old and well known, and very delicate to run. If an opponent has timely removal/bounce then your board is exiled and you might as well scoop.
It works by getting worldgorger dragon in the graveyard somehow (quick & easy via entomb, but there are so many draw+discard effects like faithless looting/wild guess/tormenting voice, synergistic tutors like demonic collusion, and a sweet game-ending hand-sculpting interaction of insidious dreams with tutoring reforge the soul on top, that the deck can go of just silly fast. Slower yet you could just buried alive or corpse connoisseur.
With the dragon in the yard you just need a win-con and necromancy/dance of the dead/animate dead. The quickest ways to win are via lands (piranha marsh/stensia bloodhall/shivan gorge). Other victory conditions could be staff of nin/warstorm surge/comet storm/etc. If another creature got in the yard then you can just break the combo and use infinite mana to do whatever you want at sorcery speed (hence lyzolda, the blood witch as the commander).
This is my current list, which is a slow pimp-in-progress. Again it is not at all optimized 100%. I've slapped quite a few rakdos-theme cards in there to calm it down for my metas. But that hasn't stopped this deck from pulling a few turn-2 win's out of its arse, and turn-3 is a fairly common. The issue is just how easy it is to disrupt the combo. It only takes a single removal or bounce spell to remove you from the game
edit; The most frequent turn-1 wins I have, or I've seen, are when someone has an absolute nut draw and start, somehow ending up with 5+ mana on turn-1 before anyone else has a land in play. If the deck is known to draw back to a full hand fast somehow, wreck others resources, or secure a victory shortly after, then the game is essentially already over. A turn-1 exploration followed by sol ring into signet is an average example. A while ago I opened with a turn-1 ancient tomb + mana crypt into solemn simulacrum, then turn-2 cast + equip sword of feast and famine, untaped after combat and tried to cast sword of fire and ice. My buddy was already shuffling his cards up.
While I respect everyone's choice to play what they want, it is my choice to play what I enjoy.
Internally although, I can't help but feel the annoyance of seeing the "cookie-cutter" generals so frequently. Seeing the same small percent of legendary creatures being played by multiple friends over the years gets very dull. The worst part is the awkwardness when you can make legitimately optimal suggestions for your friends deck who just built Maelstrom/Zur/Karador/Roon/Meren/Riku/Narset/Derevi/Prosh/Mimeo/etc for the first time, since you have seen that particular general/deck perform better from previous friends decks. Eventually you end up playing against your previous friends deck with a new pilot.
This annoyance most likely comes from the amount of time I've played this game/format, but it isn't something that I can just ignore. I keep it inside and don't try to dissuade people from their generals.
Using forums and the power of the interwebz for research seems ideal, but I also feel that it has gone too far. When there are metric-driven statistical lists like this and this, top-card lists, etc, that nudge people into playing one of these top-X common commanders, it brings on a pretty dull feeling of repetition.
There is nearly 640x legendary creatures for people to actually work with. Many are garbage, but many very playable legendaries are neglected due to this lack of knowing they exist, or what players are exposed to, or what they are recommended to play.
I'm unhappy that they are now available for the more casual tables.
There is an obvious power-swing from someone who is willing to spend or trade for high-value high-impact cards like mana crypt. Before this eternal masters printing there was a clear difference of who would be more likely to have something like a mana crypt in their deck or not after seeing who you are playing against. It made evaluating which deck to play at a multi-player table fairly easy to match deck strengths.
Mana Crypt creates very explosive starts, and one of the most common complaints at casual tables is someone with an excessively sol ring related explosive start. With it being only legal in commander, its price will most likely fall, and many...many more people will run it.
This seemed like a nice thing to reprint for this format, but now I'm thinking it was a bad idea. There will now be more players having access to more frequent explosive starts, due to a relatively smaller price-threshold that their friends may not be able to muster.
The higher rate of 1-sided explosive starts will cause either the arms-race sort of scenario, or just more frustration.