The most unique deck I've ever built is a "Plants vs Zombies" themed deck using the partner commanders 'Tormod the desecrator' and 'Kodama of the east tree'
@Damien Brandle As a Hydra Tribal Rosheen is better, because Gargos should be seen as a commander with "targeted spells matter" theme in mind. Mine started focusing more on Auras so I've incorporated Enchantress strategy for card draw and Instant speed targeted protection like Vines of Vastwood.
As a Gargos player, I totally agree with the strategy being used here especially the fight trigger. However, I pulled the plug and played Selvala as a commander for my Hydra tribe because it cost a lot less to cast, but I still have him in my 99.
Not budget but extremely powerful! (I have a similar problem watching this show sometimes. My decks are like my little pets and over the years I buy them all the pretty toys…)
@@emilysmith2965 hmmm... not budget? Did any of these cards spiked recently or it just regional price differences? I remember that back when I bought these cards the most expensive one was Vigor for like 10 BR bucks (currently about 2.50 US money). Also, I miss my Polukranos deck, it was my first commander deck, but I disassembled it to build Mazirek Insects, I bought some cool new stuff for Polukranos but I can't bring myself to tear down my insects deck haha
I always thought that Budoka Gardner was a fun and unique commander, essentially allowing you to make a deck where almost all of the cards in it are lands
@@wustenfuchsgaming1226 i mean you could still build the deck and when you meet up to play just ask if that woulf be ok. You would be surprised by how many people are curious about decks like this and let you play with it anyway
Love seeing these! I love decks that are built thinking "outside of the box". I myself have a Sliver Hivelord mutate deck, people always think that there's a sliver-tribal coming 🥴😅
oh my sweet lord, I just loved seeing Ixidor here. Onslaught was the first set I ever played with, and I vividly remember thinking Ixidor was a very cool character. HE HAD CREATED AN ANGEL!!! HE COULD SCULPT REALITIES!!!! A few weeks ago I was looking around to see if someone had a cool idea for an Ixidor commander deck, and now I want this manifest idea do be a thing SO BADLY
Mutates work really well with Gargos, cause you're casting a spell that targets a creature, so it will trigger it. I run Gargos in my mutate deck and it always works wonderfully as removal
Fun deck idea for people to steal if they're interested: Hakka, Whispering Raven Voltron. The best way for your voltron commander to not get removed is for them not to be on the board. You can use Lightning Graves and Swiftfoot Boots for haste of course, but blue gives you access to flash in cards like Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir (who himself has flash); Leyline of Anticipation; and even Thryx, the Sudden Storm (MDFC cards use the CMC of the front side of the card, so this works). You can use any equipment you want, but I find one hugely underrated voltron card is Hero's Blade, and here, I feel like it would be even more effective given that every time Hakka enters, it equips for free. That being said, maybe for whatever reason, you don't want Hakka to leave the battlefield. You can also run Sundial of the Infinite, Discontinuity, and Time Stop. Just end the turn with the trigger on the stack. As for evasion, Hakka has flying innately, but in case that's not enough Thassa, God of the Sea, on top of many other cards in blue, can give Hakka unblockable. Seems like it could be a fun deck.
Thank you for the ideas for Nylea and Gargos. I've been wanting to build mono-green artficats for a while so definitely will adapt your angle. Gargos I want to build on a budget and avoid going Hydra. This seems like the perfect commander!
I know blim is just terrible, but when I built him I threw in a bunch of spells that make me gain control of an opponent's creature, and then I pass them off to another player before the turn ends 😈😈. It never won, but it did make for some great fun.
Your atla palani build sounds amazing. If only i knew how to build a deck i could try to create this. Anyone got an decklist or tips on creating that deck?
I love playing and building decks with underrepresented abilities or tribes. I’m building a curse deck with Ardenn right now bc I can move curses around :D
Olivia Voldaren. I built an Olivia Voldaren deck that is designed to steal opponents creatures, then sacrifice them. I did build it around Vampire tribal, but you don't have to. In black, there are many creatures with a sacrifice ability. I even have Ashnod's Alter in it. The deck is a little pricey due to the fact that I have an older Sol Ring and an older Ashnod's Alter, because why not. At the time, Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet was $20. Now the deck doesn't seem much play because my friends will automatically target me whenever I pull her out.
I have been dying to make kataki interesting, this is great. Also I use a ton of manifesting in my kadenamorph deck while ixidor is in the 99, but idk how spicy that tech is
I like playing tergrid as a kind of group hug deck, everyone draws Then make everyone discard and now I have lots of stuff, only downside is I don't believe black has a wheel.
I love building decks that take commanders in an unconventional direction! I would love to see more episodes like this in the future. One of my favorit decks (though not exactly budget) is a Golos deck, that doesn't use Golos' activated ability at all, instead uses the tutor ability to be secretly an Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth "swamps matter" deck, taking advantage of all the old cards that care about swamps like Angry Mob, Roots of Life and Karma.
I have an adventure tribal deck with kenrith as my commander where I play every adventure as well as the support cards for adventures and things like kess, baral, niv mizzet, ral, etc. Although im now inspired to add boune cards to the deck so i can recast some of the better ones
I've been retooling a vehicle deck "wheel," deck around vadrok, apex of thunder, and the new ships/runes from kaldheim are just what it needed (fun fact, since runes can be put onto permanents, you can rune up a vehicle before you pilot it, then when it becomes a creature it gains the rune buff), vadrok and a few other key mutates bring back low to the ground vehicles, spells that create tokens to pilot, or wheel spells to refuel. Its like a voltron deck where the commander is the thing you're suiting things up with
I love trying to do any sort of crazy things. I found a Red pillow fort any creatures that attack better have protection from Red or be indestructible. Another is using phage's etb to kill the opponents instead of her attack.
My friend has an atla scrambled eggs deck! It's amazing and he tends to pull it out when others we are playing with are pubstomping or playing ridiculous decks. It has like a 90% win rate!
One of my favorite commanders that I never see is Stitcher Geralf. He was my first commander ever and I loved him so much even tho I made him with all the bargain bin garbage that I had.
Geralf is really good… he just needs cheap big things with huge drawbacks to be your mill… how about Lupine Prototype? A 5/5 for 2 that can’t attack or block unless somebody’s hellbent? Throw it in!
I have a super budget Xyris, the Writhing Storm Voltron deck, it costs under 40€. Mostly its pump combat tricks and a few equipments like Stoneforge Masterwork. The deck is brutal.
For atla palani, my build around her utilizes wheel of sun and moon along with a ton eggs, infinitely sac'ing them to get an arbitrarily large board. The mirror entity tech is really useful though, as it is another card I can use both as a sac outlet and as an egg itself, meaning I can use creature tutors to find wheel of sun and moon for the deck to work, such as academy rector.
I've done lots of unique ones. Some of my favorites are mono-red infect with Subira, a super convoluted changeling tribal deck with Morophon that gets infinite ETBs off a Cloudstone Curio or similar effect, and, above all, my Tajic, Legions Edge deck that tries to one shot everyone at once with Skirk Fire Marshal.
I read recently about using The Scarab God for a rogue tribal deck. Pretty much just get value off your low to the ground unblockables and then when they die, reanimate them into 4/4 unblockables. I thought that was a pretty neat take on TSG.
I use two cards mentioned in this in one of my more unique builds. I made Atla Palani Enrage with Kamahl Fist of Krosa as my finisher. The deck is full of cards that deal one damage to each creature (which kills eggs and triggers my enrage creatures) to then get Kamahl and destroy everyones lands.
Two wild decks I enjoy are Codie but it's a gates deck, fine land, find land find land win no one expects you to diabolic tutor for land xD And Secondly a tatsunari toad rider deck, but it focuses on mutate, make a kami mutate the frog now it's not a kami make another mutate them repeat. Then eventually you play a enchant enough for your enemies to die.
So most unique decks I’ve designed/built/played against… I’m currently building an Akroma+Sakashima Clones deck, I’ve built a Brudiclad Reanimator and designed Brudiclad Goblins, and probably one of the most unique decks I’ve played against was a Parley Selvala Mill list. I also built and played a lot of a deck I call Shirei Dies at the End, where everything has power >2 and toughness of 1, and the goal is to use Heartless Summoning to always instant kill everything and have it constantly come back every end step (I actually need a lifeline for that deck since I’ve read the errata text). Those are just a few. I’ve grown tired of playing only combo decks, but I am working on a Grist combo deck that uses Maskwood Nexus, The Chain Veil, and any of the 4 ‘Put any number of creatures from your graveyard on top of your library’ cards to win. It’s a pure value deck with a combo finish. However idk if this counts. My pet deck is always my Alesha who Summons Legends deck. Every card in the deck is Legendary. All the creatures have to be power 2 or less. It’s one of the funnest restrictions I’ve ever done, and it’s never a T1-2 deck. It’s always like T3.5. But it’s fun to play, and sometimes that’s all that matters. Love the content, and keep up with the silly decks! P.S. totally stealing Gargos’s Fight Club.
Braids, Conjuerer Adept: Unapologetic, take no prisoners, Blue Aggro. Roalesk, Apex Hybrid: a Mortal Kombat Deck that fights any creature that hits the board and eventually overwhelms you with blue prowess attacks and mid-game creatures that have suddenly become late-game level threats. Archelos, Lagoon Mystic: Slows you down while flooding the board with relentless attacks from green weenies (mostly frogs) and combat tricks (mostly deathtouch/indestructible/evasion), using oodles of fog effects for defense. I call it Turbofrog.
My personal "unique build" is Ukkima & Cazur as ninja tribal. I've never really enjoyed the ninja tribal build that Yuriko offers, you have to run a lot of small, evasive creatures (that don't do anything but enable Ninjutsu, thus kinda wasting deck space), but Yuriko wants big, expensive spells for the ability to best work... and after all that, it ends up playing pretty repetitively and gets boring quickly. It's efficient and strong, but just not interesting. Ukkima offers something different. You get an unblockable creature in the command zone to ensure you can use Ninjutsu every time, and you even get additional value from bouncing it with Ninjutsu. No need to waste space in the deck by including Flying Men, you can focus on way more interesting synergies. AND you get an additional color, and access to potential +1/+1 counter synergies with Cazur. There's even a little one-card voltron strategy with Ana Sanctuary, which makes Ukkima swing in as an unblockable 7/7. Most people know Ukkima & Cazur as a cEDH Food Chain list, but I personally just decided to go for "Ninja tribal, but also with Pir & Toothy style counter synergies", and it's fun as all hell.
My best unique example unfortunately isn't as unique as I would like it to be... ... ...but my Kazarov (Sengir Pureblood) brew does have some interesting surprises to keep it from fully leaning into using the commander as people would usually see it. I go for what I call a 'Plan B Approach.' Barrage of Boulders and Cosmotronic Wave get the +1/+1 counters going for the vampire dude, but those cards also combo with Pestilent Spirit, and it is quite entertaining to surprise your opponents with a board-wipe which only does 1 damage to creatures they control, but is sufficient when all of your instants and sorceries get deathtouch. Pestilence and Pyrohemia are really good (and quite obviously expected) on the Kazarov end of things, but I have to use some of those card slots to protect and reanimate my brew's key creatures and utilize creature damaging effects the opponents aren't able to anticipate as easily, such as instants and sorceries. Also, I do hate to omit such extremely effective cards from the deck, but there's some table meta's out there which require one to take certain measures to keep the aggro away from my resources and life total long enough to get the stuff necessary to protect my assets and game plan. ... Backlash, Traitor's Roar, and Delirium are a few entertaining spells to utilize when you need to keep your opponents off your back long enough to coax Kazarov's lazy butt off of the sofa, especially if the targeted creature has at least 10 power and infect or 9 power and you target it with Tainted Strike. Plus, even if Dry Spell, Famine, Slagstorm, and Volcanic Fallout wipe your dudes along with your opponents with the assistance of damage buffing from the likes of Furnace of Rath, Dictate of the Twin Gods, Fiery Emancipation, Embermaw Hellion, Jaya (Venerated Firemage), Jeska (Thrice Reborn), Torbran (Thane of Redfell), and Obosh (the Preypiercer), or the dastardly deathtouch effect of Pestilent Spirit, there's graveyard recursion like Garna (the Bloodflame), Nim Deathmantle, Grave Upheaval, The Eldest Reborn, Artisan of Kozilek, Undying Evil, Witch's Cottage, and Memorial to Folly to help you buy even more time. ... I don't have access to all of the damage buffers I mentioned, So the deck has to reroute some of its power to board wipers like In Garruk's Wake, Decree of Pain, and Massacre Girl. Lacking certain cards in my collection is somewhat of a blessing, since I get to witness other deck-brewing strategies I would have missed had I went for the most optimal and obvious build. Also, reanimating a Meteor Golem once in a while has its perks. Archetype of Finality is definitely on my shopping list. ... So, for late game and game closing shenanigans, I have Burning Anger, Grafted Exoskeleton, Tainted Strike, Command Beacon, Hellkite Courser, Silverclad Ferocidons, Brash Taunter, and Drakuseth (Maw of Flames). It also doesn't hurt to have Gorgon's Head, Gorgon Flail, Necrobite, and Void Beckoner for deathtouch shenanigans. Syr Konrad (the Grim) punishes your opponents for creature death, and Black Market helps you to capitalize on creature death, fueling Kazarov's timming ability and other resources. ... The deck is quite entertaining to pilot, and it is still getting new toys to play with.
My Rakdos, Lord of Riots deck is all about exiling from the top of the library. Once he gets going, especially with Experimental Frenzy, he churns through the deck casting eldritch horrors and robots, top first. Big hitters include Doom Whisperer, Conduit of Ruin (tutors to the top, not hand), Galvanic Relay, Tectonic Reformation to cycle unwanted lands away, and my favorite dorky sleeper card, Madblind Mountain. As long as you control two red permanents, you can use it to shuffle your library. And it’s fetchable! There’s conventional draw power in the deck too, but impulsive draw works well with the cost reduction. Plus, a card like Sire of Insanity becomes one-sided, forcing opponents to topdeck a boardwipe or die within three turns max. It’s miserable, but not for very long.
I personally use Gargos' second ability as a focus of the deck, but there are some cool hydras worth considering to utilize it's first ability: Hydra Omnivore - secondary voltron, which might end games on its own Some cool X-costed Hydras: Lifeblood Hydra - powerful lifegain and card draw ability, especially combined with Greater Good effects Steelbane Hydra - repeatable artifact and enchantment hate Voracious Hydra - incidental removal spell on a creature (especially useful on a creatures bigger than Gargos or with some form of Deathtouch/Wither)
I made a Rarity Clone/ETB deck that my playgroup regretted allowing. Make clones of Rarity with cards like Spark Double to bypass legendary rule. Everything g gets cost reduced everything gets protection from most colors if I can find my daughter's MLP toy, and we use a lot of ETB and bounce effects to abuse the cost reduction.
Ok so I have a Omnath locus of the roil commander deck that has only one elemental in the deck, being Omnath himself. Basically I play a ton of lands, put every single counter onto Omnath, give him unblockable or trample and kill with commander damage! I’ve literally gone from 0 +1/+1 counters to like 10 or 20 in one turn and then equipped him with Blackblade reforged to kill my last remaining opponent. Also who doesn’t love getting killed by a giant angry jelly bean?
I see my girl Atla in the thumbnail, that's a easy click for me. My Atla helmed dino/Enrage theme deck was the first deck I built 100% from scratch for EDH, and I still love playing it. It is so strong and can come out of nowhere. Nobody considers the guy sitting there making 0/1 eggs a threat until you have 5 or 6 of them and they all the sudden become a board of big stompy dinos with a slew of Enrage triggers.
I designed a Palladia Mors the Ruiner deck utilizing equipment and buffing spells to manipulate combat. Cards like Aurelia the Warleader, Master Warcraft, and Akroma Vision of Ixidor are some of the win cons. Basically, instead of Naya landfall and beats with Palladia, I used a different combat strategy instead.
I have 2 decks that I haven't seen anyone else do, I may be wrong but still. First one is a Tevesh Szat, Doom of Fools paired with Prismatic Piper (used for white) for a Thrull tribal deck. Then my second one is a Derevi, Empyrial Tactician doing artifact vehicle stuff
Not sure it's quite as off the wall as these, but I just couldn't get an Alesha Aristocrats build to work, since I've found it's pretty hard to get aristocrats to work great without one of a) cheap creature generation, b) sac outlet or c) death triggers in the command zone (ideally more than one of those), unless you have something that's such a force multiplier like Teysa's death-harmonicon effect, and one cheap reanimation per turn (assuming you draw yet another card that lets you get in profitable attacks with Alesha) just isn't enough, in my experience. But since I had the deck, and wanted to make something work with it, I found Mardu aggro infect works pretty well with her. Infect makes her "power 2 or less" restriction a lot less restricting, and lots of infect creatures are already power 2 or less. Add in some anthems, some ways to get damage through, ect, and I think she works better that way than with aristocrats. You just need to make sure you won't become archenemy the moment you reveal you're going the infect route, which is probably the trickiest part.
I built a celestial Kirin deck that only plays 4 and 1 cmc permanents and is packed with spirits of all the other cmcs up to 6. Kirin is 4cmc and tends to blow itself up unless you give it indestructible, which some players do. But I decided just to not add any 4cmc spirits. Now I can safely play 4cmc spells! Tokens win con cuz tokens can't be blown up with Kirin's ability.
My most unusual build is Siona, Captain of Pyleas. People usually build it as a Selesnya weenies deck using Gift of immortality, but I took it into a completely different direction by building a deck that tries to find Reins of the Vinesteed and Altar of Dementia. Reins has a triggered ability that makes it attach itself to a creature that shares a type with enchanted creature when that dies, so you cast Reins targeting a Soldier token created by Siona, make another Soldier, sacrifice the enchanted one to the Altar to mill someone for 3, return Reins from your graveyard and attach it to previously created Soldier, which creates another Soldier, and you probably see where this is going.. Nobody expects a Selsnya mill deck!
My favorite unorthodox deck was Glissa, The Traitor. Only one card wasn't a permanent, Primal Surge. Play the whole deck and win by infinite turns, mill, or combat damage 👍
I think I just made a budget deck never seen before; Malcolm and Kediss as Partner Commanders. Malcolm the flying pirate dealing damage then Kediss making the damage hit all opponents. It's a little janky right now but I am working on it.
A Morophon voltron where since it is all creature types, using creature type cost reducers like Gargos to make your commander free to cast (even if it dies a few times) then voltron it for a commander damage takedown. Also if you want to mess with your library and graveyard a lot, I built a deck with Morophon as if it were Red/Green that played more like a Blue/Black deck because nothing would stay dead including my instants and sorceries, and Morophon was only cast from my hand or deck after the first cast out of the command zone.
interesting idea with kataki as a teshar but not actually deck, getting value from saccing your artifacts whilst hosing everyone else. also fractured identitying codie? thats gross. the atla combo deck is impressive, but i like playing atla with precisely one creature. doesnt win immediately like your combo, but its hella consistent :D
I've built an alesha who smiles at death deck only using cards from before 8th edition and timeshifted cards as a gimmick, the main combo is a mountainwalking Combined with mystic compass and radiant dragoons for 5 health per turn, I also have graveyard recursion on etb as well as sac machines.
Sen triplets means everyone will hate you and attack you first. So instead of stax, build Sen Triplets basically like Selenia Dark angel, as life total swap tribal, with mirror universe, axis of mortality, reverse the sands, tree of perdition, tainted remedy, and so on.
Not sure if it's "unique" or not, but I built a deck around Raff Capashen, Ship's Mage where the entire deck can essentially be played at instant speed. It's not great, but it's fun
i have a "tribal elf" marwyn build, that uses altar of the brood, altar of dementia, and the ozolith, marwyn out, i vomit up a ton of elves, and altar of the brood mills everyone for each, then once that is dealt with, i sac all the elves and marwyn to altar of dementia to grind someone down further (usually to lethal by that point) and with Ozolith and all of the mana i made from marwyn, i just bring her back, go to combat and she is right back to where she was, sac again, and boom another player down. i havent gotten my hands on one yet, but Omnath also sits pretty in this setup. so yea, mono green mill... its one of my favorites.
I think my unique deck is niv mizzet goblins. Basically cast a ton of draw cards and token creation for goblins and flood the board and ping opposing creatures after thr battle phase to kill them
a thing you can do w/ morophon is play maskwood nexus which makes every crearure every creature type and than just play a bunch of powerful creatures with absolutely no synergy
I’ve made an obeka brute chronologist deck, where I had a bunch of in tappers and when someone did something I’d ask them to end their turn multiple times, and there are ways to infinitely untap her, so you have to ask each one, everytime, until they say yes
Atla Palani isn't all that unique, it's just an easier way to cheat out big creatures. I guess done a little different, but there are lots of legendaries do something a little different. I just don't see what dumb big creature did I put on top of my library to just free cast soon.
Really cool idea with the Atla Palani deck! But it seems like this deck dould become very booring after just a few games cause every game feels the same...
I have a Golgari deck that used kamahl and Eradicate to search through decks and destroy all a basic land type in someone's deck, I built this in response to their very mean deck, I am not normally a monster.
Well this may not sound unique and all that...but I have a 5 colored Sisay deck that the gimmick is that all the creatures are females and all legendaries. Besides that I got nothing big brained in mind.
Alright but what about morophon tribal tribal? You run multiple tribes but only the creatures of those tribes who cost exactly wubrg and then you have ways to flicker morophon to swap between tribes to cast all of the for free
I have an Atla Palani deck that is a landfall deck. Essentially I use atla to get the creatures with landfall abilities and I use the lands to power more plays. It's not great, but I like it.
Living end doesn't work with Codie. It has no mana cost and your looking for something with a mana cost less than. you are also unable to urza's saga a sol talisman for this same reason as a judge explained to me that it must state some type of mana cost to determine that it is lower.
