Commanders that I Will Not Play With | Personal Playstyle | MTG 

For real, sounds like he doesn't like playing magic.

This does kind of low key showcase the direction that every strategy in Commander is hated on for Magic lol.

Maybe some Dimir decks, most of the ones I've seen are usually go Tutor > Demonic Consultation > Thassa's Oracle with a pact of negation and/or force of will if anyone tries to disrupt the combo so I much rather play vs tokens or board wipes ngl

@@dimitriid That's clearly cEDH. We're not talking about that. Only deck type Mitch didnt sh!t on was Phenax, God of Deception. or Mirko

not that there's anything WRONG with that! 😜 #mill4lyfe

How do they give voja ward 3 but Felix only ward 2... Felix you actually have to get in with your creatures voja you just have to have it sit their and attack I don't understand how voja is the same cmc yet has just more abilities slapped on for what reason ??

Exactly! I don't mind Voja at all, although I have no intention of playing it myself. I think it's the perfect example of what a genuine boss creature commander should be. High power, difficult to get rid of, and some form of resource/advantage generation. I genuine big scary creatur that gives off the energy of a final boss for a tribal strategy. It's just WAYY too cheap! I'd probably have given it 8 mana, most cause it's green, it can afford it. If it didn't have green, 7 would be fine, but a powercreeped card like this in green should be 8. 9 I think is a bit much, but 8 would suit it fine

I play voja in my pod just to keep up 😂 it doesn't feel op in that group when one has Kinnan

Voja isn’t even that bad. The deck folds to a board wipe or two. I’ve played against it multiple times w/ my casual decks and it’s never popped off in those games. Turns out Voja doesn’t do anything when you board wipe t4/t5 and take Voja + it’s dorks.

​@@dgreenlonghorn1 bad deckbuilding from the voja player. There are a million ways to protect your creatures in Naya. Heroic Intervention, Flawless Manouver, Clever Concealment, Boros Charm, Galadriels Dismissal, Teferis Protection, the list goes on. I agree that Voja isn't an issue in high power though and in cEDH it isn't even viable.

I agree! Been watching him from the beginning! But here lately all he does is complain about Wizards (which is sometimes warranted, but he does it all the time now), complain about every new set!, and complain literally about every card that looks fun! I just want him to focus on budget deck building! That’s what I fell in love with.

Same here, friend. 100 percent. There’s too many people who do this already. I’m only a few more away from unsubscribing, and I hate that.

I mean, he’s not wrong to complain. Magic is getting out of control. And it’s honestly stupid.

Then mention it and move on. Don’t focus 3/4 of videos on hating the game that we all came to see content on. Wizards is not watching his content, and they aren’t listening to us.

Maybe he lost so many times from these commanders to the point he got salty and feel the need to make this video, but reverse by saying why he won't play with these.

Bc white never wins overwhelmingly.. blue can absolutely wreck a game but white wins more fairly. Signed, A mardu player who plays a lot of white

As someone who religiously plays white, its more accurate to describe the color's biggest flaw being not able to close out games. Sure you have stax effects that stop your opponent, but its still going to take you precious turn cycles to get enough power to kill the table and thats not even mentioning the time your opponents get to out your things.

White is bad at running away with games, little combo potential, and it’s a jack of all trades which means it doesn’t really excel in anything in particular.

Mitch looks like the guy that would shout “get off my lawn!”

It's kind of like a train going to fast from a classic cartoon. Some of the cars are off and some are on, but its all going really fast.

I was gonna mention this. Lol just cause you can build judith as boardwipe tribal doesn't mean you have to. You can use single target damage spells and pooping out imp tokens

Sounds like your opponents weren't playing very well. Keep removing Judith or countering her and the deck just fizzles out. Have one myself and that beats me every time.

@@writingresearch I play her save. Wait until there is a bigger threat, let my opponents remove it and then play her with some backup in hand :D

​@@writingresearchI paid Judith as a boardwhip tribal and put a lot of black rescue spells for Judith. Made it near impossible to keep her off the board even without equipment on the board for her.

I only play three big board wipes in my Judith deck: Blasphemous Act, Structural Assault, and Star of Extinction. No 1-damage wipes, those are boring.

Ward 3 makes it nearly impossible to deal with. Green ramps into Voja early. You have to waste a whole turn bc a kill spell will cost between 4 to 6 mana. Ward 1 would have been fine.

​@@collectorsquad8222 but hexproof would be worse...

@@Robert-ln8ct Agreed, but you pretty much have to use a board wipe for Voja. It’s insane. 4 mana for a Swords or Path is crazy.

I think WOTC thought Ward was fixed Hexproof, and made it more common than they would have with hexproof.

Wish I could help you with a direction better, but a few months ago he did a deckbuilding video where he went through scryfall and picked all the cards out while showing how he does it. Unfortunately, it's just listed like any other build on the channel so difficult to find but it was this past year.

I actually built it, and there are exactly five equipments that are boots. I had to include them all. It was too perfect. Swiftfoot Zephyr Trailblazer Winged and Lavaspur

I got back into Magic with Strixhaven... comparing the Prizmari precon to Stella Lee's precon is fucking Coughing Baby vs Atomic bomb

Will note though: Gonti is pretty fun to play at least, but every other deck is looking so much stronger

​@Gallarhorn26 I love my gonti deck too. Modified it, and Kaito and tasha work well with it.

I mainly play upgraded precons as well. I decided to build 2 deck by myself recently (Ojer Axonil Burn and Karlach/Hardy Outlander Gruul Smash) and have been having fun with them. Probably my most fun commander from Outlaws rn is the Gonti precon. Love playing thief decks and this is the perfect version of that.

Additionally, you‘d have to bounce to hand or back to command zone and recast Emrakul to get the steal all creatured effect again. Madness also is useless in the command zone.

Stella bums me out, because it's wack in the 99, but as commander is basically pigeonholed into a really boring combo deck

Emrakul doesn't come back that easily. Madness is a cost that can only be paid when you discard Emrakul. That means you need it to be in your hand, and commanders are not in players' hand very often.

Very true, i built her as a traditional spellslinger deck and shes not even toxic to me. I built around the imps and target damage, She cost 5 so if she dies that 7/9 commander tax usually means she’s irrelevant. And she still requires setup to play since shes not doing anything the turn you cast her

I did something like that with Yuriko. Instead of building around stacking the top card for max damage, I built around her ability to ninjutsu in unblocked, get returned or sac'd, and repeat each turn. My opponent has very few ways to interact with or answer it.

Unironically, yes to shroud. Shroud is good but at least has the drawback of you not being able to target it either. It's something more interesting then hexproof or ward by a mile.

He isn't talking about these commanders because they were not released in 2024.

It doesn't do that, though. It steals only one player's creatures, which means in a 4 player game, two opponents aren't disadvantaged at all. It doesn't really make a difference which opponent controls the creatures if the same number of creatures are pointed at them. It just means the one player whose stuff is stolen is now far behind everyone else.

It also is a cast trigger with protection from spells, so how does removal deal with it?

@@shorewall the same way removal would get rid of a hexproof creature, if I had to guess.

That doesn’t sound fun to me. So you either don’t get a chance to play, or you’re guaranteed a win? Not my kinda game, but if you and your playgroup have fun more power to you!

@@jonahsalazar5108 it depends on the group for sure. However, it takes a few rounds of swinging with him, to be able to snowball. And that doesn't always connect! However he does cost 5 mana, and you aren't going to win before turn 8-10. I'd say that's pretty balanced!

@andytheindividual3862 I hear this rationale for why active-style Commanders should be trivial to remove, and always find myself thinking the same thing. Do the pilots playing U/W/B just think no one should play decks that synergize powerfully with having their Commander on the field? Pilots of reactive decks insist that any Commander that isn’t effortless to eliminate with Spot Removal is “broken” or “power creeped,” so if that’s the case, how is this idea of properly functioning EDH (According to Counter-Removal Pile pilots) different from these Commanders just not being played in the first place? It’s really not uncommon to run into 3 decks doing the 12 Spot Removal 5-8 Wipe Formula at once anymore, Yanno? If not Ward or Hexproof, what alternative is there to your 6 CMC Commander getting killed the instant it leaves the CZ every single time? I really dislike the answer I’ve found. (Shut off Interaction entirely with cards like City of Solitude, Hall of Gemstone, Defense Web), or drain the mana away from the reactive decks during combat with cards like Nature’s Will and its clones, then pop off in postcombat, but what else am I supposed to do? It seems to me that every game where enough Removal gets drawn to pull the teeth of active Commanders and wipe away every built-up board-state just bogs down into interminable Who Can Find More Card Draw and Rebuild Fast Enough to Kill the Reactives Ahead of Thoracle.

As a raffine and adrix and nev player i disagree with this statement

@@greystgermain542 I'm sure you would lol

Mine was Stella Lee lol, but I get not liking her…she does combo off very easily. Here‘s the 10 cards under a dollar Mitch was talking about! Mark of Mutiny, Dramatic Reversal, Shore Up, Refocus, Twitch, Twisted Fealty, Involuntary Employment, Bloody Betrayal (infinite blood tokens, which would need another payoff to win I suppose), Bond of Passion (expensive at 6 mana! But it is infinite life loss like Twisted Fealty!), and Hidden Strings.

@@EM10gamer Mine from Thunder Junction is Eriette but I definitely can see people finding stealing creatures to be a bit salty. I think with how specific she is it's not too crazy and I think it's a very neat way to design an auras commander in a way that's not Voltron. From Karlov Manner, Judith is my favorite commander. Sure, cheap kill spells turning into absolute nukes can be tilting in some cases, but she herself is a CMC 5 with no protection, she's totally fine imo

Also, not a commander, but my absolute favorite thing to come from Karlov Manner is Slime Against Humanity. So excited to be making this Ziatora Slime Fling deck with it!

@@EM10gamerIbought all 4 precons from Thunder Junction… and playing against Stella is a pain LOL… last games we played with the 4 unmodified precon took 2 hours….. half that time was the Stella player doing combos. While the other 3 were digging for an answer lol Turns take forever. Its a weird design in a precon set when the other 3 players have quick turns and just watch the stella player go off and take forever… all while counting the prowess and the storm count ….But I gotta admit its a great deck for a new player who wants a strong deck (althought its not rookie friendly to pilot)

@@dyldragon1 Ooh, slime against humanity fling sounds fun! Eriette I think was a cool design, but it is limited by the CMC of auras. There’s not a ton out there for creatures CMC 6 or greater, though you could always steal those another way.

Saying there is an answer is a round about way of saying "dies to removal"

@@gemkid85 I think you entirely misunderstand. It‘s not AN answer it‘s SEVERAL. Gitrog has to clear quite a few hurdles to even get the interaction Mitch was talking about.1.) You pay a lot of life to Wall of Blood if that‘s the route you‘re going to take, 2.) Gitrog actually has to DO combat damage to a PLAYER (can’t hit a planeswalker) 3.) you have to saddle the sacrifice target, meaning the saddle target has to be untapped, plus you’ll have to tap it, meaning you can’t swing with that massive creature 4.) even IF Gitrog can connect, you can interact with it or the sac target before it happens 5.) the sac target with massive power has to A.) be something you‘ve drawn or tutored for B.) Resolve C.) Stick around an entire turn cycle and be on the battlefield when to saddle then subsequently get sacrificed D.) Have massive power for something played on about T3-T4 AND E.) Cannot have too adverse of a negative effect BECAUSE it has to stick around to be sacrificed (look at Phyrexian Soulgorger for example, if you aren’t careful, you may have to sacrifice it before Gitrog ever hits the field). Also like, congrats if you can Natural Order to cheat out a Ghalta, Stampede Tyrant or Worldspine Wurm or something and sacrifice it to Gitrog on T4, but like…any green Deck can do that, any GOLGARI deck can do that, and at that point why you even bother with Gitrog when you can just like…win or something? You have a 15/15 Wurm or a couple of creatures backed by a 12/12 dino you could be attacking with. 6.) If none of that is enough, seriously think about it. What are you more scared of, this? Or Minsc and Boo? What about Kaalia of the Vast? Yuriko? Winota? Lathril? Here‘s the kicker, the all of these are cheaper to cast, not to mention Kaalia is just an attack trigger. Look at Voja, who DOES cost the same. It‘s more aggressive, doesn’t rely on a niche mechanic, doesn’t need to even meet the „combat damage to a player“ condition. I think Gitrog is good, don’t get me wrong, but like…I think many of Mitch‘s points about Gitrog (and also Vihaan for that matter) are just...bad. This goes beyond „Dies to Removal“, it‘s just a 6/5 for 5. It can do scary things, sure, but there are plenty of scary 5 drop commanders. Not to mention 4 or 5 drops in the 99. It‘s nice to see more aggressive Golgari commanders for a change that aren’t just graveyard this or that or death triggers on a stick.

Oh also hot take: but if you don’t like how people build a certain commander, how about…I dunno…building it differently?

And Pirates, since they introduced Treasures back in the original Ixalan block.

@@zacharyjoy8724 i can see it making sense with pirates.

Why Hinata?

@@happyboxes5176 The cost reduction will make the Ward less of a hassle.

Isn't Hinata nerfed by all the ward?

More generically, you could also play cards with the effect „This spell/spells you cast cannot be countered“

She‘s really fun! I personally like her as a storm commander or even kind of like a Jori En deck!

It‘s gotten better, but it still is kind of just the STAX color when you compare it to the other colors at a high level. The main issue it had for many years was lack of tutors and card advantage, but it’s getting there.

I play Voja, and it is trouble. My deck mostly consists of mana dork elves that help get him out early and buff him so fast most players don't have the mana to respond yet to a 9/9 on turn 3 or 4

Toxic deluge for 5. 😅

Voja has 2 main issues, it says EACH creature on the pump effect, and of course ward. The card draw, good stats, vigilance, and trample are sort of just insult to injury. It’s not very difficult at all to abuse it with changelings, extra combat steps, or heck, just run it like elf-ball. It’s like a craterhoof for 5 (but the buff is permanent) at that rate.

His group probably kicked him out 😆