Can Gruul Control? | Patron deck breakdown #1 

Great video! I love it. I have a Erinis // Street urchin deck. I think i play in a bit of a higher power level. A few things The social thing is totally right in lower power levels, you can't bring this deck often. Now in my opinion you can get it to higher power level. Here are some of the critical cards you should use and the reasoning for them to push the deck higher: First the landfall payoff can use a strong upgrade, i know you think that it isn't much of a difference, i disagree. In my personal experience having the payoffs come in earlier changes the pressure of the game a lot. Now you need to choose if you are spending your removal on erinis or on that scute swarm that's gonna overwhelm you in two turns top. Besides the one you said i would note: Nesting dragon, Titania protector of argoth, retreat to valakuth, retreat to kazandu. You are playing gruul control, but gruul comes before control, the retreats allow for very fast clocks playing them on t4 after erinis can allow for t5 kills if unaswered, this will rarely happen since people will have answers but is pressure. Some of the things to remove that i have found to slow for this are the sarith gratwurm, scepter of celebration, the omnath, avenger of zendikar, jolene. The shavin of the cost of the payoff is huge because it allows to play the payoff early off and still have mana open for street urchin, which is a huge political tool to keep people from targeting you, now whoever try to remove something from you knows that at best you are taking something in return. Decree of anihilation: We are talking higher power level here, this decks is pretty solid at getting back from mld, with only your commander in play you can already break parity here if you cycle this. Obliterate could be an option too but i have cutted that one since breaking parity is harder. From the ashes: It's a softer form of mana disruption, but the important thing here is that the replacement lands come in untapped. This is huge, usually this is spell is basically free and gives you a bunch of landfall triggers Treasure nabber: This one is very solid for higher power levels, having it means your opponents aren't taping the mana rocks or that you are gonna get them and you aren't giving them back. Escape to the wilds: Imo, this one is of the best cards of the deck, ramping on top of giving you card advantage is huge Mina and deann: This does everything you want, extra landfalls on top of trample. Magmatic insight: this is a small thing but i found that my games with magmatic insagth t1 are vert powerful and is almost always good. Anger and brawn: Erinis really likes haste and really likes trample, this two give both and basically without mana investment. Mending of dominaria, world shaper, any return all lands from graveyard thing: We are already running a lot of discard trought filtering we already have a lot of lands that sacrifice themselfs, this are some of the cards that push the deck giving it the extra power it needs. At worst they push you insanely far in the mana department, at best they win you the game with landfall triggers Now regarding combos. The deck can run them, they aren't the best ever but they are solid, just don't run the dualcaster combos those aren't good in this deck. We need to run kodama's combos with bounce land those are solid and tutoreables on top with a crop rotation and lets say a worldy tutor or green sun zenith if you want to add tutors to it. Another couple of things i would add are some way to play lands from the graveyard(i personally like conduit of worlds) and nahiri's lithoforming. Nahiri's lithoforming on it's own can be a huge turn, if you can play them from the graveyard on top of it means that if you resolve it you win the game more or less The deck also can use other small tune up that imo go before the full fetchland suite. I for example would cut all tapped artifact lands. As you said the deck doesn't struggle that much generating fooder or getting land into the graveyard, you don't need to make a worst mana base for it, just basics are better. I have found the myriad creatures cute but they are not powerful enough imo. So, i think i'm done with the wall of text i could talk about this commander for hours. I hope the wall of text is helpful. The deck can perfom at higher power levels imo, but it does require tune up, the version given in the video is great though, the swap i propose are not for a medium power and will most likely make your group salty if you aren't playing at that power level. It's worth mentioning that this commander pair has won a couple of cedh tournaments (though those decklist fully dropped the land fall part and only kept the removal engine and won trough protean hulk) I'm done, i hope it's uselful =)

Commenting before having watched the full video. Erinis + Street Urchin is a top tier PAUPER commander deck due to how controlling it is. It’s super fun to play

I made $50 Erinis. I can, without a doubt say untapped fetches were a huge improvement. Erinis ramps on attack the turn it swings instead of the turn after. Second Erinis urchin defend planewalkers fairly well, so using the few that generates tokens on plus and runs games on its ult is pretty fantastic

I love how you described the table dynamics this deck ends up creating and why that means the deck should be played sparingly. Most people don’t think deeply about how it feels to play with or against their deck creations, but in a social game like EDH, it should be the most important question to answer when building/choosing a deck. It’s a really valuable exposition that bridges theory to application, and I hope you keep including such a description in all of your deck techs.

Kudos to the deck builder - Gruul and control don't often go together so it's refreshing when you see it happen. You also made valid points about the deck being too cut-throat for middle-power tables - it reminds me almost of Yawgmoth in that sense with creature removal in the command zone. Fascinating deck all in all, I was sleeping on CLB's release and I really should look into the Background cards.

Command Beacon is solid include in Erinis as it helps with keeping Erinis on the table and he can recur it with their ability. Honestly a lot of the points you made relate pretty hard to my time playing my own Erinis list. Erinis gets treated like a anti creature stax piece and get targeted very frequently forcing you to spend a lot of resources to keep them on the board

I appreciated the short touch on the concept of table archenemies in technically free-for-all games, because it's a table dynamic that I've noticed a couple of my own decks naturally slot into as well, but one that I think is exactly like you say -- different & enjoyable when it rears itself now and then, as opposed to crowding out the other players' desires and gameplans every game.

Ngl I've never seen this deck outside of pEDH. Was not expecting a regular deck tech when I clicked on the vid lol

The solution I have to the ramp vs Lands slots in my Erenis deck(it’s paired with scion and geared more towards landfall) is to run more lands that can tap for two mana, ie crystal vein, the masques depletion lands, and the fallen empires sac lands, which can both get Erenis out a turn early and are easy recursion targets for that first attack with him

You are the only mtg talking head worth listening to. No wasted words, and engaging. I'm sorry tolarian academy. You've been power crept.

As always, you take the holistic approach to deck analysis. I so appreciate your perspective, you ALWAYS bring up something I'd never considered.

In order to get better finisher, what about Tendershoot Dryad ? You get both ammunitions for Street Urchin and a big board for an overrun.

I really appreciate the time you spent to understand the deck and what it was trying to do and what each card was in the deck for. I also super respect the consideration of power levels and how heavy removal can feel in mid power tables. I feel like this kind of deck fits just fine in slightly higher power levels, where people run more removal and are more prepared to hold on to some of it to keep dangerous commanders off the field. ....which of course is then rough for this player, but if you go into it expecting that kind of hate, it's a lot easier to take. Just don't expect everyone to let your commander sit on the battlefield untouched.

As a fellow Erinis/street urchin player, definetly run a bunch of one MV dorks. It does make the deck less explosive, but not as much as the video tries to make, as you can just turn them into 1 mana murder later in the game. Also, after the first game, Erinis WILL become a removal magnet, so always pach a couple of protection spells.

very cool to see a community putting together synergistic decks that reflect how i think of your content! seems like a sweet series and will be watching for more

I love this guys content! thinking about trying to get into pauper commander and this deck got me feeling some sort of way

Wake up honey, new salubrious snail just dropped

Legolas's Quick Reflexes seems like a perfect inclusion in this deck. Not only is it the best single target protection spell, it also synergizes with the deathtouch, giving you a surprise removal spell if your opponent's think you're not able to play the enchantment this turn, either due to limited color access, counterspells at the ready, or limied mana reserves due to removal previously used already

I loved the format of this video! I've never seen this commander pairing and it was so cool to see unusual/ unknown decks! Keep up the good work snailbro and grats to the author of the deck!

One thing I appreciate about Erinis Street Urchin is how object a lesson it is at the difference between EDH and CEDH. The pairing smacks REALLY far above its weight class in EDH for such a small budget, and is so oppressive and rampy against most casual commander pods that it's easy to convince yourself that it could compete against CEDH decks if you just invest some extra money in it. But boy howdy does it not.

Note: Some of the new Junk Token cards from the Fallout set works wonders with this for generating sac outlets. Rose, Cutthroat Raider, in particular, causes you to go Mana-neutral when you chuck a Junk Token, and technically even helps color fix, although Green typically doesn't have an issue with this. It's better than if it wasn't there, though.

Such a great deck idea, and a very good deck breakdown too. Thanks Snaily!

Love your analysis. From a cEDH perspective, a few gruul commanders see some play as stax lists. Ruric Thar has a powerful stax effect and recently Etali, Primal Conquerer has both become more represented and has had some pretty good results. What those decks are running compared to this list is stax effects, so that would be my first thought for increasing the power level of the deck. There are some issues with just adding stax cards into this list though. Notably, it might just cause more social problems/force the deck to reach an even higher level of play, especially since stax effects are generally strongest against the combo-centric gameplay of cEDH (and maybe not so strong against decks that might just run efficient creatures and the like). I kind of like how erinis with street urchin can sacrifice stax pieces you don't want around anymore, but it'd definitely warp the way the deck plays, is built, and where it could be used.

Video like this remind me why this is already one of my favorite MTG channels. Thanks for another great video!

The weird thing about this deck is that it in a pod of friends this that know what it does, it’ll produce a game of chicken, where whoever drops their creatures first loses. Example, if this commander + background drops it should be removed from the table as everyone else’s commanders would be at risk of being pinged to death. And therefore no one wants to cast their creatures unless they have to. Or can outright run tons onto the field.

Very cool list, love the creativity of slots and themes

I played against this exact deck at an Lgs and holy shxt, against creature based strategies it is a nightmare.

Great video, hope to see more like this! unconventional and thought provoking!

Gruul fan here. I was looking for a new angle for Gruul since I have ran some of the ones I found interesting (Raggadragga, Ruric Thar). I am not a control enjoyer, but I will definitely take this one out for a spin.

This deck seems really fun and it's in one of my favourite pairings. I will definitely give this a go. Although my preferred commander for this archetype is Kaima the Fractured Calm, it's still a very interesting take!

Orcish Lumberjack mentioned! That card was sweet in my Lord Windgrace deck, so I assume it'd work well here in this similarly grindy landfall/land recursion list.

The feels bad for the opponents aspects of this deck apply to my gruul kicker burn deck with Halar, the Firefletcher. It's really a pile of janky kicker cards and some +1/+1 counter synergies, but it can burn out the table in one or two good turns seemingly out of nowhere. Unfortunately my friends don't find that as fun as I do...😂

I was wondering how this was so fierce at removal with one damage at a time. I was thinking where's the basilisk collar and other such things to give deathtouch? Of course, you always gotta read the cards all the way. The commander itself has it! That is really a neat deck and a really good commander pairing that I haven't seen yet.

Eyo i love you videos man. Just an old Greek philosopher talking about casual edh

Still some of the best discussion I see online about how “power level” plays out in commander games. As I continue to build a few too many commander decks and slowly decommission old ones, it’s helped me think about where I apportion scarce resources like expensive removal, draw and finisher staples. I’m playing the new Mothman precon unmodified a few times before I try the version I’ve already written up and put online, I’m feeling out where that deck should land and how explosive and nasty i want it. The Mothman draws a lot of attention to himself, and several low mana value pieces like Mesmeric Orb, Mindcrank, and Bloodchief's Ascension make him rapidly deadly. I'll probably work a little on the protection suite (is it time to run Asceticism for the first time in years) and make sure i have the card draw not to stall out.

Dryad Arbor feels like it could be a nice and spicy inclusion

Hi Salubrious! Cheers from Argentina. Love your vids 😊 Would you make a video about how to deal with saltiness/bitterness in EDH? Struggling with power levels in my pod Would like to hear your insight about it!!! Thanks again keepem coming!

I’m currently building a Zedruu deck and I’d love to see a similar type video on how I could change the thought process for how I build it. I play in upgraded precon tables most often and I feel the list I’m building is too mean a video covering a commander like this that can be made fair but not group hug would be a huge help. :)

The first issue mentioned with this deck is the reason I've not rebuilt my Savra, Queen of the Golgari deck I originally built with my university's gaming club's card pool. The "club meta" of only using cards donated to the club by members over decades meant that the decks were a janky mix of booster fodder and occasional power cards. That deck also created a sort of archenemy-kind of oppressive control scenario as long as I could keep her alive or happened to draw and successfully cast Grave Pact. I just can't see myself or my current playgroup enjoying playing with her around these days, even if I have fond memories of playing her back in the day.

Your thoughts near the end about the board wipe deck and this deck sound very similar to my Celestial Kirin deck.

I am an avid gruul control enjoyer and one of the other routes you can take is a heavy enchatnment/stax one with Klothys at the helm (for graveyard hate), with long forgotten color hosers (anarchy, omen of fire, lifeforce, blood moon) or obscure green and red enchantments (Revelation, Smoke), the philosophy is the same as with hatebear decks - one color hoser card is sub optimal or worthless, but when the whole deck is packed with them it actually works (eventually)

I've actually started running into the "firmly mid power but also miserable to play against when it's working" issue with Lucius. Decided to build him because he is very interesting and has few submissions on EDHRec, but at the middling power level where he fits in best, more mana efficient Doom Blade spam is either useless or dumpsters entire players. Very polarizing!

Seen this in action at even cedh tables, and Dockside is a hell of a card for this pairing, giving you both the fodder and the mana to kill everything

I know a guy who has played this to marginal success in cedh. He's praying on the grindy midrange meta and then hulking and stuff Further, scute swarm is really, really good with the commander. Morag is also just a solid engine. With the commander, it's a 1 card win con. An easy slot in instead of rampaging baloths

I love your videos man keep it up please!!

Wooo! Time to grab the popcorn.

I have recently built a mono-green self-mill version of Erinis (running it with Cloakwood Hermit). It didn't perform well, as it was a bit too slow and there was no removal to stop creatures from killing me. Now I want to try the gruul version

I’ll come back later with some more opinions, but in my opinion some consideration should be given to two things. 1. Ways to untap lands that ETB. (This might not work as well as in my Soul of Windgrace, a dedicated landfall deck) but untapped lands or generating a treasure off of lands ETBing is a very powerful effect that should be considered more often. Especially if you can run lands that sacrifice other lands. 2. More utility lands and graveyard recursion for those lands. I personally am a biased here because of Soul of Wind grace does the same except from any graveyard at the cost of things entering tapped. So I run a wide variety of lands that also function as utility lands. Lately I’ve been having fun with the discover lands from Ixalan, but the Sphere lands, or any other utility lands work great. I probably ought to get my hands on the mono color cycling lands, but if you can recur a powerful land over and over again by Sacrificing it, you can get quite a lot of value from that.

this commander // background pairing heavily makes me think of my King Macar, the Gold Cursed. except instead of deathtouch, king macar exiles and instead of bringing lands back, king macar creates gold. however, this build is really unique , and especially for its colour pairings. I have actually been thinking about building Erinis, but this brings me to the same issue that I have with building Dalakos, Crafter of Wonders. Erinis + Street Urchin would probably play in a very similar way to my King Macar deck (apart from King Macar having vehicles and more artifacts) and Dalakos would probably play in a very similar manner to my Kaseto, Orochi Archimage deck, which wants to play smaller creatures that have combat damage triggers

if you're going ramp heavy, especially with yavimaya cradle of growth, i like blanchwood armor + blackblade reforged. then it's just a matter of sticking one on a 1/1 and rishkars expertise/return of the wildspeaker/soul's majesty/last march of ents and draw 15+. then i'd play rude awakening to untap my lands and crackle with power everyone.

Another type of wincon is the land matters: valakut, field of the dead, dark depths, or a land combo (which i don't use only because of prices). I am playing erinis with relatively success without protection for it and with most of the 1 mana ramp (dorks+enchantments), but i am not using equipment to voltron the commander.

I build a similar list and played it a couple of time online with friends, it was indeed really oppressive

Cool deck, it doesn't have quite the mental image of Toggo and his gross cat Falthis hucking poisonous rocks from behind a wall, but it is the exact kind of rattlesnake deck I enjoy playing. You could take it in a lot of directions. You're generating a lot of permanents onto the board, so Warp World / Over the Top is going to be great. There's definitely potential for land destruction with Strip Mine/ Wasteland/ Shivan Harvest if you're in a particularly greedy four/five color meta. I think the best card to accelerate into Turn 2 Erinis that wasn't mentioned is Exploration rather than the fragile but humble Mana Dork.

who ever sent this, i REALLLLY like how he made it. love it

I wonder how miserable the mirror match would be

Scute swarm is at home in this deck since it creates fodder for sacking and therefore contributes to the game plan

I made this deck and played against my friends a while back. It was way too oppressive for our casual commander. It was like I sat there with a loaded gun. I changed street urchin to guild artisan and it’s one of my favorite decks

I think a great way to make the deck more powerful is to just use Tooth and Nail as a finisher. You can of course also add Craterhoof to make it even more deadly, but overall I've found it to be quite a satisfying way to win even without it. Something like Omnath + Avenger of Zendikar is already a pretty damn strong boardstate if you can add a couple of landfall triggers (especially if you run Anger, which I think would be a pretty easy include in the deck due to the large amount of sacrifice and discard outlets). I'm personally also a fan of Ogre Battledriver, since with Tooth and Nail you can buff all your Avenger of Zendikar tokens and give them haste at the same time.

reminds me of tyson scion or orzov where your commander just exiles all your opponents creatures on repeate, while triggering drain effects, my first deck i took apart because the gameplay look was pretty toxic xD, this one does look a lot more interesting though since gruul control is a pretty cool niche.

I have an erinis deck with Guild Artisan, very purposely not street urchin, because that powerful and efficient removal in the zone is too oppressive for the games I want to play. I learned my lesson from Kelsien

The problem with this channel is that it shows you how 90% of all the other fancy pantsy commander channels are garbage (no hate). We need more weekly videos ❤

The deck should run dryad arbor, it's a creature you can sacrifice and then immediately bring back with erinis

Seems like a good deck for Titania's Song

I'm really curious about that final point you made about the deck perhaps not being fun to play against. I don't think I've built an unfun deck yet (my decks all suck, so I rarely make a scene) but I've got a zombie deck I'm planning with Bladewing, Deathless Tyrant that requires a nice full graveyard and I thought... I can fill my graveyard by boardwiping a ton! But... everyone hates boardwipes, right? I have a Simic deck that basically needs to scoop by the 3rd boardwipe... but is there a way to go wipe heavy and still make for a fun game?

Two good additions to the deck could be Tibalt's Trickery (to deal with the removal that can't be mitigated by protection) and Fynn, the Fangbearer (turns one damage from Street Urchin into two poison counters).

Ey! This is actually the deck I just built. Gruul can definitely control

Hey great video! Always fun seeing Gruul do somethng different. I did notice the pronoun use for Erinis and figured, huh I thought she was a woman. Looked it up and they are apperantly nonbinary and use they/them. Which is cool to see some rep for :3

Have definitely run into the problem of decks that are too strong at the power level or table I’m currently at. Both mine and other players. I think it’s often the reason a game doesn’t have a satisfying ending.

I had a friend that played this deck with hijack effects. He would gain control of player 1's commander, sac said commander to kill player 2's commander. He ran like 10 of these effects. Felt pretty brutal to play against.

I'd be really interested in seeing you apply your approach to real Magic

Adventuring Gear pog

This is such a sick deck idea that I have not seen at my lgs. Gonna have to brew this up and win some games.

I like pairing Street Urchin with Jaheira than I focused on tokens like Treasure because the meme of the deck is: to throw Treasure (money) at all my problems and make it go away :P

Yes. I have an Alena and Halana deck (2 dif cards) and because it's mid tier and Halana kills creatures, I find I avoid playing it as it's not pleasant to play against. I actually think cards in command zone should damage players not creatures

it might even be debatable to cut Sol Ring if you're not running mana crypt / moxen either

I want to make Gruul undying now.

Could he have the dwarf or ojer, as their effects are instead deal +2 damage or 4 damage, so you could realistically win from pinging alone. Ojer specially, as if you buff him, you can win the game with 8 pings easily I also dont really see what conduit and some small pingers really achieve in this deck, more solid options like finale of devastation would be great instead to close out games.

Have you ever played asymmetrical board games like Dune or Root? There are certainty dynamics that I also see in commander, if you're playing with people that know each others decks. Table politics smoothest out the power imbalances between the players, because everyone knows who would win in solitaire and whose job it is to stop them. (usually #2s responsibility to stop #1, because if #3 or #4 did it then they would just leave the win to #2 and so on)

our pod kinda bullied a player to disassemble his kelsien deck for these exact reasons by constantly bitching about it to him. maybe it woulda been cool if he played it less often

thank you for the last section of the video, with the new judith rakdos commander coming in, we have a new batch of players that builds this "kill everything on sight" commander decks, that makes the experience miserable for me, since it quickly becomes a game where your commander needs to be uncastble, before we can actually try and play the game, build at your own risk, but expect lots of salt and to get justly targeted for the rest of the game.

If Frodo walked into Mordor with a gun.

Guh it's so annoying that replacing evolving wilds and other slow fetches with actual fetch lands costs hundreds of dollars. Budget decks getting to play a turn behind doesn't make non budget decks stronger in a cool/flashy way.

Yes

Isn’t this the competitive pauper commander deck?

Really neat deck

Commenting for algorithm

If Erinis triggered off dealing damage to a player rather than on attack this would be a cEDH deck

These commanders seem like they could lend themselves to a pretty fun Ponza deck, while MLD is frowned upon in some circles a Ruination and a Strip Mine could go a long way in this list.

I know a guy who has this deck and he’s an absolute tool. As is to be expected.

Absolute fantastic deck. Wouldn’t of done it any other way.

Sad no dryad arbor to sac

if Erinis is killed on sight 3 or 4 times, the deck doesnt seem like it does much. I love the idea and Im not hating on the concept. Just seems fragile.

Problem with the deck is that it's extremely good against slower, creature based midrange decks and literally defenseless against everything else. You either grief your opponent out of what they're doing or you just die to combo. I just don't see in which environment you can play this deck and have people have fun, even though it is a neat deck.

"Can be sacrificed in response to their damage triggers," Huh?

Oooh

This is a very cool deck. I think it would play pretty well into my LGS meta where the power level of the different decks at a table can vary wildly and this is deck does a lot of work to keep some of the big powerful creature decks in check while also not overrunning the table itself. It has a lot of political power as long as you have mana open and stuff to sac.

I have been looking for a gruul deck I want to play in edh. This looks fun.

Personally I’m a locus of rage kinda gruel player but this looks fun as hell too

Erinis Street Urchin is a legit cEDH deck iirc so it's very interesting seeing a more casual version

Over my commander career, I've built two creature removal commander decks and I've dismantled both of those decks because people hated playing against them and ultimately I was unsatisfied with them. Decks that hate creatures off the table lock decks that rely on combat out of the game, and yet this strategy doesn't stop the guy who's gonna tutor out an oracle consultation combo and win without a board state. It punishes people playing fair magic and gives people playing unfair magic an even higher win percentage.