Best Cards to Stay Alive | Commander Clash Podcast 109 

I love that during the intro Tomer waves to us, the audience, and Crim waves back to Tomer lol

Tomer, you actually killed me in a game while I was under Teferi,s Pro and you proliferated me to 10 poison with you Ixhel deck.

I side with Seth and Tomer on the board wipe discussion. I play 2 to 3. I have my draws to try to find them. If I lose, I lose, it's fine. It's maddening to play a game with a wipe every other turn.

You should do an episode where the audience submit to you under played cards and you talk about it (maybe let them explain in like, 180 characters or whatever).

Tbh 1 mana 1/1s with deathtouch like moss viper are really underrated for staving off early attacks

Richard: "don't play so much spot removal and counters, have a good board state." Me: "why didn't I think of that? I'll just tell my opponent not to interact with me."

I'm definitely in the camp of blockers as deterrents matters. The case I make (feel free to call it a cope case) is my pet card Wall of Frost. It exists only to block. It contributes nothing to advancing my deck's main strategy, it won't ever outright remove value from the table, and even in its one role it can be defeated by evasion. Despite every argument against it, though, my experience with it has been that nobody wants to impede their strategy when the choice presents itself and the alternative is just not being impeded; people don't ramp into their attack-for-value commanders and give them haste boots just to attack with them every other turn. At times it doesn't even matter that the 0/7 would die for it; if somebody's racing to get value and lower life before their threat is removed, the math of spending two turns just to get rid of one guy I don't need to win just isn't there. Sure, the tit-for-tat of people spot-removing each other's stuff still happens and there'll be a time when a board wipe is the answer, but through that process I'm avoiding losing my life and important pieces by not getting caught in the scuffles. If I end up ahead I'm the archenemy either way, but if I don't end up ahead the next best thing is to not be the one that's closest to being knocked out, and in the end that's what blockers do.

Taunt from the Rampart is the BEST NEW CARD and it goes into EVERY Red/White deck. The more people start losing to this card the more they will realize the strength of it.

Tomer, playing onboard value creatures isn't "blockers." Baleful striix, Solemn, and Wood Elves are where you want to be.

Hoping to see inkshield on here it's one of my favorite forms of protection because it also wins you the game if you use it right

Fun fact: you can still attack a player that has resolved a Teferi's Protection. They wont take any combat damage, but you still get to declare attackers and receive any bonuses that may provide you.

I love the cast but I would love more if I never had to hear them talk about Swords to Plowshares ever again 😂

I prefer Swords to Gifts, generally, because mana is so important. I like Gifts fine, but 1 mana is so much easier to fit into your curve than 3 mana.

Richard is the sole reason I started playing a couple land removals in every deck. Not MLD, just a few ways to get rid of Maze's, Gaea's Cradle/Growing Rites, etc. I have seen Richard completely control games with Maze and the rest of you are severely underestimating it. I usually use the lands that blow up non-basics.

Mill can get around Teferi’s Protection, especially if you can force each player to draw a card

Richard around 38:00 - "what about a creature that blocks and gives you some value? isn't that kinda a Ghostly Prison effect?" everyone else - "no, that's a blocker" Richard - *surprised pikachu face* :O

On the topic of ghostly prison and its kin, i think this episode has cemented a hot take in my mind. Ghostly prison is a burn spell. The value is less in the damage you prevent, and is much more in the damage other people take.

Inkshield isn't a fog, it's a win condition. I almost feel bad for running it because it's basically Insurrection. Someone builds a board, but you kill them for it. I have never not won after casting it.

If you aren't going to pay the 1 to prevent a card draw, you'll never pay the 2 to attack.

Tomer and Crim are so wrong on fog. Almost every time I have a fog in my hand it has lead to me winning the game. They are so good.

We now need a tier list for “fog” cards just to see Crim melt lol

I honestly think the thing that keeps be alive the most is definitely just not being the threat.

In the latest Commander Clash Episode S15E11 Richard has shown us at 01:18:00 how important spot removal is! It prevented an opponent from winning the game. I still do not get why he rates spot removal so low....nevertheless love your content! :) EDIT: But I want to give him credit for pointing out that fog-effects are worth considering. I was sceptical, tried it, and turns out somtimes they are life-saving as he argues :)

I have been saved by Trickbind countless times. I've saved the table from Basalt Monolith combo, Deadeye/Temur Sabertooth combo, Thoracle, and more so many times. The clause that they can't activate the abilities on the card again is super understated.

0:10 “we’re gonna rank them by categories, things like counterspells, like spot removal, like swords to plowshares.” Lol cards so good it got its own category!

"In my aggro decks I'd play like 9...You can't out aggro the board" If you're looking to sweeper your opponents out of the game, you're not playing an aggro deck.

Exile is extremely relevant with targeted removal, coupled with efficiency make things like Deadly Rollick, Path to Exile and Swords to Plowshares extremely good. Especially non CEDH where you have a lot of creature decks. Exile means I don’t have to deal with it anymore, for little to no mana.

I play Blessed Respite in basically all of my green decks these days. It's similar to Angelsong, except instead of having Cycling it has the added value of being a panic button against opposing graveyard shenanigans. It can also save your graveyard from being exiled if that's something you care about, and buys you a whole lot of time against mill. I find the card to be very rarely dead.

Authority of the consuls! It deters attacking, because their new stuff cant block, Also tons of lifegain. Its a bit of a half measure, but it really makes you able to hold your wrath for a while extra.

In Commander i would say swords is the most important removal, because of all the kill on sight commanders like niv.

Here are my two favorite removal spells: Mystic Subdual: I value the ability to turn off a broken commander at instant speed. This can often neuter a deck. Baleful Mastery: "Exile target creature. Draw a card." is how this reads to me. Every game has an archenemy. Every game has an underdog. It's the removal version of Hunted Horror (which I think is good).

Seth, the Rhystic Study only drew 20 cards because you wouldn't pay the one.

They're a little mana intensive, but I have a real soft spot for Time Stop cards. Functionally they won't often be better or even as good as a Cryptic Command, but those edge cases where it ruins a plan are great.

I’ll take Ophiomancer over Ghostly Prison every time lol

I FIGURED IT OUT! Richard is terrible at evaluating spot removal cards because he assumes everyone else plays like him and doesn't have "arch enemy" cards.

Fog is underrated I played final glory after killing two opponents and got fogged on the extra turn 😅

Tomer should host because he's actually aware of and cares about the format and structure of the podcasts

The people that complain about interactions, counter magic and sweepers are also the people aggressively dumping their entire hands onto the board in a mad dash to say "I win!" That's why to be good to them, and help teach them that magic is about more than having a good opening hand and dropping it onto the table, we punish them.

You can't compare swords to plowshares to an efficient Artefakt removal. Swords is good in every deck because there is not a Single deck without creatures. But there are decks without enchantments, or even without Artefakts, except maybe an Solring.

note: you can still get infinitely wheeled if you cast Teferis protection on someone elses turn. it does not protect your hand, GY or library.

1:17:09 Taunt From The Rampart is just insane tbh, lean back for a whole turn cycle and watch their creatures go berserk and kill everyone. Fun. It literally protects you from losing, since you are going to win on the spot 😂

isnt playerremoval the best protection (and removal)? if the opponent is ded, he cant harm anyone!

I really love Lightmine Field for this purpose. Really underrated card vs token heavy decks

Y'all love sweepers way to much. They don't let you win. Richard goes hard on advancing board state, except when it comes to blowing all your mana and letting your opponents deploy before you. Have 1-3 as a safety valve in case you need it. But usually you're losing out by being the one wrathing.

Pillowfort is great to get into a 1v1 and then getting second place most of the time

Shout out to Soul Shatter, my new favorite narrow removal spell

1B: Choose one: bounce target creature, or prevent all combat damage until end of turn. Print it, let's turn Crim to the dark side

Spot removal for creatures and counter spells when available is absolutely mandatory because every single commander is kill on sight, and sometimes even spot removal isn't enough because the combos are instant speed themselves.

53:00 Also bear in mind that a lot of the fogs are in green. Guess what green doesn't have much of. If you guessed wraths, good job, you've been paying attention.

If someone told me they ran 9 board wipes I would probably just play with them the one time lol

Richard’s ghostly prison argument fell on deaf ears. He literally wins most of his games because he has light pillow fort and is out of lethal range but not doing anything super scary until he wins. He’s playing like good defense vs gambling on a steal to go with a sports ball metaphor

Glacial chasm needs a ban. Its to easy to recur. Has no downside. And FORCES combo wins against it. For the user and the defender. It has almost no counters until cedh. "Just remove it and then team up and kill the player". Cool... I will give it indestructable, shroud, or hexproof, or recover it at instant speed. Curse of vitality or ravens is great at punishing go wide decks and usually forces commander damage wins.

STOP WHATABOUTING OTHER COLORED CARDS

Love seeing all the eyes on FaB and brightlights looks so amazing

come on.. Fog Meta babyyyyy.. I've recently become a believer in the fog meta. My LGS EDH Night has a fair amount of "one-shot by Commander", and the fog meta has saved me quite a few times.

You all Forgot about the Second best blocker behind Baleful Strix. Gonti, Lord of Luxury. Also Specifically to Richard : Have you ever tried Nadaar, Selfless Paladin? It seems like a card that specifically is built for you. He provides Value, gets in Small bits of Chip damage and can Block.

I removed Curse of Opulence from my Prismari deck because every time it went on an opponent, it would get the table to hit me instead of them. lol

I like how everybody is so down on fogs even though nobody has won a game against a constant mist player in commander clash history

On the fog conversation, I am old enough to have played Moment's Peace on Heartbeat combo, but most of the scenarios they are saying fogs are good, are just the perfect place that doesn't happen most of the time. And this idea that both of you have a big board and they attack you... this seems bad, it is usually bad, the game favours the blocking player, if we both have a big board, I shouldn't be attacking, as a rule of thumb. On a four player format, fog is even worse, because there are other two players turns before you go again. It is true that are some decks that cannot win against Constants Mists, but it is also true that a lot of decks just don't care, these seems counterintuitive with ther argument that "swords doesn't kill everything", so what is it? At least most people have a creature as a Commander, so you will have a target for swords.

I think at the top they should have had a discussion around whether you want to stay alive because halfway through this Seth defends his choices by saying he would rather die and start another game and several agreed with that. So the choice of staying alive is probably an important thing to consider before putting cards in your deck to achieve it.

I feel like analyzing removal/protection as single cards is incorrect. Eg, if you're playing a white deck that's light on removal because of synergies, playing swords + teferi's pro + generous gift covers a majority of situations. Then if you want to run the full suite of ten, you can fill out with other options/redundant effects (like lapse of certainty, reprieve, mana tithe lol).

The thing with infect is that it still deals damage, the damage is just in the form of poison counters instead of changing the life total. You will still need to stop damage prevention if you go pure infect, but as long as the teferi's pro player has poison counters you can always proliferate since it is targeting the counters, not the players

I disagree with not liking specific spot removal. Creatures are in almost every game, but Artifacts are definitely in every single game. In my playgroup at least 1-2 people on the table also always have a strong enchantment (while it may not be winning the game, it adds a lot of power to their board like parallel lives)

I agree that life gain is a B. It does nothing against any sort of infinite combo, and every deck has a way to negate it in the form of commander damage, but obviously this might not be applicable to all decks.

Legit, Bothersome Quasit has been amazing as the only goad card in decks that cast non-creature spells, which is a lot of them!! Can't believe how much value and free attacks you can get with it, and it's mega budget

Blue and red is kind of ignored in the spot removal discussion. Would be interested to hear opinions in these colors specifically. Obviously you have some options in red and blue has counter spells, but feels like there’s a discussion there.

Fog can be used at instant speed to prevent an opponent from alpha striking another opponent, thereby leaving the attacker who thought they had a kill completely open to a revenge death, and you buy yourself a temporary ally.

I killed a Teferi's Protection player with a Skullcrack in my Yoshimaru boros legends deck, its only ever happened 1 time but it was incredible

Maze of Ith is fantastic in life gain decks because stopping one creature helps with commander damage

Where would you put Stunning Reversal? It stops both combat damage as well as combos but does not stop infect/commander damage. But the one thing i love about it is draw 7 usually gives you a good chance of getting a card you need to get out of the bad situation

I think Nature's claim is just as, if not better, then swords when it comes to single target removal that's narrow It covers 2 types that tend to be win conditions. Stuff like KCI, Bolas citadel, miraris wake, Zendikar resurgent, fiery emancipation etc.

Fogs are amazing, i once soft locked my opponents by using constant mists with a unflipped thaumatic compass so 8 could keep sacing lands for buyback, then search up a new land for next tirn

They underrate Maze of Ith a little because they left out all the cool tricks and politics. Like the ability to protect other players against the archenemy or prevent a big creature from hitting them in return for a good favor. Maze can also be used to untap an opponents attacker after damaging someone else as a reward/incentive for attacking that player. Or it can be used to untap your own creature after it gets blocked or to untap it after damage in combat if not blocked like with Reconnaissance.

For blockers.... Silent Arbiter. Kept me in games for way longer than I should have been there.

I believe you can proliferate the final poison counter onto an opponent after Teferi’s Pro

Back in my day we used walls and COPs.

90+ minutes and no mention of Peacekeeper 🥺

Swords deals with indestructible creatures, creatures with regenerate, undying/persist creatures, creatures in a deck with recursion, etc. Generous Gift and Beast Within don’t.

Barrier breach can be used as multi target removal (especially against enchantment creatures) or card draw

Tomer, definitely pick up the original Invasion foil Rout drawn by Ron Spencer. Currently $29.99 for NM on Card Kingdom which I think is a good deal considering the age of the set.

Honestly I usually don't run a lot of board wipes. But in the one Mardu deck I built I had like 5-10 board wipes. I've casted 3-5 of them in one game, in which I was behind and there was a win on the way from the opponents and the board wipes saved the game. Also you guys ever fog against akroma's will? You cant cast board wipes at instant speed.

Fogs have saved my ass way more than most of these other cards. So I don’t get the hate on them in this. Craterhoof is a huge problem in my playgroup. I do like to run settle the wreckage and aetherize as well for these scenarios

i was playing my own frodo food deck the other night... we had three wraths.... and i popped offcreated a bunch of squirrel tokens.... had nadier nightbalde out and wrathed myself to kill the table :)

As someone with a firkraag half goad half dragons deck i can safely say people just hit you with every non goaded creature possible bc it makes them feel better to "choose" their own attacks

Solemnity + Delaying Shield + Phyrexian Unlife

Tef Pro doesn't help against mill either. Library is not protected as long as you aren't targeting the phased player.

Nesting Grounds plus Glacial Chasm

Don't play fog, but play one sided fogs, like comeuppance and riot control. Everyone else dies to the hoof but you're safe 😉

Why didn't you cover platinum Angel effects? Auto S-tier. Or Divine Intervention-- drawing isn't losing 🤣 on that topic would unbreakable loops count too?

I feel like they never focus on how deck construction determines which kinds of defensive spells are necessary, or how meta-dependent answers are. If you're in a meta where everyone is playing indestructible, removal that exiles, bounces, or sacrifices goes way up in priority. Tragic Arrogance, Toxic Deluge, Cyclonic Rift, etc.

I still don't really like beast within and and generous gift. Call me a scrub but it'd still rather play super cheap removal than a 3-mana spell with downside in exchange for the flexibility. That or, say, a reclamation sage. Instead of giving my oponent a 3/3 when I blow up their Rhystic Study, I can give myself a 2/1 to block, equip or use skullclamp on. I think I'd rather soften up my own gameplan by playing more "inflexible" removal with an upside (cheaper, extra stuff) in my deck than playing less universal removal with a downside.

I like Angel's grace for oracle combo.

How many 2 mana versatile removal spells are there?? There aren't even very many at 3 mana that fit that bill, I really hope they don't keep pushing removal, it can be an unfun archetype to lean hard into, depending on your meta. Removal is a good way to not lose, but it's power level dependent, lower power decks benefit immensely from heavy removal, while very powerful decks need stack interaction, mere removal won't cut the mustard in High Power. You still should run SOME removal, but if you run a ton of wipes you probably can run less, and if you run a ton of removal you probably won't need many wipes. Blue Buyback stuff is silly but I don't feel bad when I lose to it, it's usually resource intensive enough that they've earned their win. Counterspells are good cards, but there are decks where I don't want to hold up UU and will run worse options that are easier to cast, even eschew creature counters. I don't think I'd bother with Fierce Guardianship in decks that aren't at least an 8, it's just too finicky of a card and there are oodles of 1 mana counters that can do stuff too. It's a very good card, but Negate isn't necessarily going to save your bacon (I say this as I run various worse Negates in my Azorius deck lol). I think people sleep on Stronghold Machinist and Stronghold Biologist, both can do a surprising amount of work for a weenie. Repeatable effects are pretty strong. Ghostly Prison effects are decent in more Casual settings, but also in the odd higher power meta that still cares about aggro. These small effects can be useful, but it's hard to run enough of them to count on them in my experience, so they are kind of bad in practice. Also Voltron can just pay and kill you and lots of people like Voltron in my experience (even if it's not a great archetype). Wipes are good ways to delay the game, but you need a LOT of them if you are going to count on them, and I don't mean 10, I mean more like 25 if you actually need to be wiping every other turn to survive in your meta. Paradoxically, the more wipes you play the less valuable a given wipe becomes because people will play around you holding up wipes very quickly, while someone who runs only 3 wipes is more likely to be disrespected (people assume they have nothing when they have a wipe), so people will commit more vs if the player who runs +20 wipes has cards in hand. Wipes are a bit parasitic I guess, they go down in value as more people run them arguably, but they will also warp a meta if people are all running plenty so they aren't as parasitic as Richard's 'run no removal' strategy. Blockers are playable cards, but they feel like you're just throwing away wins when you run them. I have decks that definitely have designated blocker creatures, but not a ton of them because they have such low ceilings that they can be hard to justify if you're at all optimizing. That said, Baleful Strix is an amazing card, and people should look at it, it's a nightmare to swing into that with a lot of decks because people hate Indestructible because of stuff like Swords (but seriously, people run very little exile removal other than Swords, Rollick or Path, and there aren't many exile wipes). IMHO if people don't like to run blockers one of the best cards you can run is Rite of the Raging Storm, if there is one player who can't handle 5/1 Tramplers they are going to get very dead very quickly. Curse of Opulence is mediocre at keeping you alive, but in try-hard metas it's a much better card. If you throw an Opulence on a control player turn 1, and the other two decks are aggro you can count on that player getting completely wrecked. IMHO if you're temped to run something like this, just run Rite of the Raging Storm, that's a much better value piece that will kill the shit out of anyone who's not got blockers. Goad effects are good effects, but they are janky in that they require people to have creatures out, and that's not always a thing. It's a terrible at finishing games (they don't turn off btw, they have to attack you if they are goaded IIRC). These effects get a lot better if you care about death triggers (Kresh or Aristocrats or whatever), but if you're just goading the odd creature it becomes a bad way to stay alive in your deck because it doesn't do anything to hinder the best aggro deck, it just directs them away from you. If you don't have another plan to solve 1v1 Goad feels terrible IMHO, but if you're playing Goad effects vs decks that use utility creatures Goad becomes a LOT better, Goad is a great way to kill off people's weenies/dorks. I picked up a Ghoulish Impetus on a lark, we'll see if I regret it! Maze is terrible Richard, I can't believe anyone runs that turkey and I run FE Battery Lands (though semi-ironically run, they end up doing work often enough that I count them as a bad repeatable ritual). Glacial Chams is much better, but it needs to be Johnnied or it feels pretty 'meh' itself, and a good deck can probably get around the effect pretty easily. Richard, don't throw Skullcrack in to deal with damage prevention, use the Stomp adventure! Skullcrack isn't a 4/3 for 3 so it's a worse card. My personal strategy: Play enough bad cards that people feel bad about targeting you, practice your sad puppy eyes for best effect!

I personally hate board wipes unless it's one sided and you should have the decency to kill me. I've had my board wiped just cause someone couldn't do anything else and the game lasted another 2 hours because of it instead of 20 minutes.

Custom card idea: Field of Pozeys. Land (T): Goad target creature. Activate only during non-combat steps. Would this be busted? I wouldn’t want to actually see it, but the cast made it come to mind

Personally, I like glacial chasm to keep myself alive, because the only one who's allowed to kill me is myself

Ulamog is the best spot removal 😎

5:18 He is wrong about commander damage. If you have protection from everything you cannot take damage and therefore no commander damage would be dealt.

Seth's card should have been stunning reversal.

Propaganda effects are very mana efficient compared to wraithing a bunch or using spot removal