Hot Takes, But We're Not Sure | Commander Clash Podcast 146 

Richard, the problem was not "You are playing 5 basics", it was "You are playing 5 basics in MONO-BLACK".

* Someone suggests any competent strategy * Seth and Richard: But what if your opponents exclusively target you instead of literally any other threat?

I feel like I just watched the Commander Clash metagame shift about three times in the course of one podcast.

Also I'm super on Tomer's side when he says we need to put some fear in the hearts of people who play no basics in their ramp-heavy nonsense.

Richard: cut shocklands so that ALL your lands come in tapped.

Wait until Richard realizes that mass goad meta is even more lucrative than the fog meta.

I know I am about to hear Richard say some of the most outlandish things

richard: "you cant fit shocks into your manabase!!!" also richard: runs temple of the false god, myriad landscape, and reliquary tower

To be fair, threatening someone (Crim) with “We’ll kill you first because of X” doesn’t really work if you just try to kill them first all the time anyways. They’re used to it

So glad there’s going to be another podcast where everyone is absolutely correct and no one is incorrect

Richard: I'm going to cut shocklands, but I'm playing temple of the false god in a 3 colors deck!!!

Richard never fails to be the "what if!" Person in the group.

Omg, Crim to Richard “You are so high!” Agreed! You’re tripping, I knew this was going to be the hot take too! Lol

I was really happy to hear seth’s idea of trying to build less staple focused decks. The thing that i think is important to think of when going down a less staple focused deck is that staples make deck building easier and faster. If we all know the best blue card draw card is rhystic, and staples are how a deck is made, then rhystic makes it into the deck instantly, meaning there is less cards ro go find. With less staples, synergy pieces are what make up the powerlevel difference, but it takes more time and creativity to find them. However, with more creativity and time comes a way more interesting deck that feels incredibly unique for you and the table to play into

You can't tell me with a straight face you have NO ROOM for basic/fixing lands when HALF you manabase is utility lands.

How is this episode any different than your regular episodes, richard is always hot taking 😂

On the pet card thing: Cards don't always exist on a linear scale. Take Austere Command versus Farewell as an example: You can make use of the selective creature modes to your benefit. Sure, Austere Command doesn't hit graveyards, so you might have to shift your answers around to accommodate the change. It isn't a better/worse scenario here, if you make use of Austere Command's advantages. You don't say that a swiss army knife is better than any of the individual tools it contains, because the real tools are better at their job.

"I need to play 6 wraths to keep up with phil alone" We're so close, we're so close to getting him to just play efficient targeted removal, he's almost there.

You want more card variety to force you to play trippy Wrath of God? Play a singleton season. Which is to say, with the exception of basics and Relentless Rats-effects, you get one copy of each card to last you the entire season. You get one deck with Farewell.

You guys need to play a season with LD on the table to truly test it! Also “Wave of Vitriol” is very low key good!

One day Richard will realize that his go-to argument "You will just die if you play an indestructible artifact land, I will kill you!" unfortunately falls appart in practice, as every game in every LGS on the globe has a Phil at the table with 5000 permanents and a must kill commander that take all the priority away from any armageddom player.

I love hearing Richard skim over the fact that the ruination wrecked him in a monocolor deck hahaha. It's not like they're saying 9 basics will save you, but in monocolor 9 is low. Anyway, to put some points on Richard I do agree that Shocks are not as necessary as they once were even if he's maybe going a bit far

"A 9/9 trample trumps any 2-drop" - Richard Blood Artist would like to have a word with you...

I 100% agree with seth. Commander has gotten too spiky, and its more fun when you play not optimal commander.

Love Seth’s take, making worse decks is great. I feel like I always have one to five cards in every deck that are not optimal but add both flavor and fun to every game experience.

Richard with the casual assumption that clearly you'd run a full set of off color fetches, there's more out of touch than just the utility land greed.

Hot Take, but not sure: The concept of :"well if you play this 'card' we will gang up on you" is very underestimating the power of a 4player format. If you focus on one player, usually 1 or 2 out of the rest of the table should have progressed their game plan so you rarely actually just get that one 'hated' player, and not lose from another "out of the blue". So I believe Crim Armageddon-ing should not be consider that bad from his side either. You can call that we should target him but advance some of your game plan too, otherwise you are going to lose from Phil

How did they just let 5 bounce lands go through. I'm a bounceland advocate but thats such a clunky mana base

Richard, you’re really suggesting to play Temple of the False god in your 5 bounce land Lotus Field deck? Overall I think you’re really underrating the power of lands coming into play untapped so you can play your spells on curve.

Richard wants people to play Burnished Hart, tons of tapped lands, and run no interaction lmao I’d love it if all my opponents follow this advice!

Richard, I need to preach to you, since you tend to be open-minded about cards: Banefire is the truth! All these red decks produce so much mana, and since wizard keeps printing colorless ramp, you can easily Banefire x15 someone on a dime. Go gruul, and you can ramp into your Banefire, and hold up your fogs to deal with the clapback (not required, but its easy mode). The uncounterable clause is also huge, as it stops control players (Crim) shenanigans. My playgroup keeps making fun of me, yet they're the ones dying to it. You won't regret it!!

I'm so happy to hear Seth talk about building worse decks and Tomer talking about themed decks. That's exactly how I like to play Commander. I really like leaning into themes with my decks. A lot of decks can have fun, themed removal, board wipes, and value engines. I think a decent amount of the problems the crew have had recently is because they're too concerned about making an optimized deck. For instance, their concerns about lands that are too good. I would never play Field of the Dead outside of a dedicated landfall deck. Sure it will be amazing there, but if you build that way, you don't need to be concerned about every 2+ color deck running it.

As a connoisseur of rampless tempo in commander, I am ready for yall to show the masses (and Richard) what they've been missing.

Phil is needed for these episodes, I would like to hear his point of view.

If the whole table wants to sit there ramping twelve times, wrathing every other turn, and not progressing the game, then I'd argue Armageddon and decree of annihilation can't be blamed for the game going forever. Land destruction 2024!!!!

I play the low-ramp/efficient curve playstyle. You NEED a lot of card velocity to make these decks work. If your commander doesn't draw cards I would run 15+ cards that provide some kind of card advantage. The way you split it is you need ~5 of Night's Whisper type cards that draw unconditionally/efficiently and then 5-7 cards that draw a lot because they synergise with your strategy (think Coastal Piracy, Midnight Reaper or Beast Whisperer). As for the ramp in these decks I tend to run 3-7 of effects like Heraldic Banner or Cursed Mirror that do something I want and also produce mana as a side effect. The number of these will depend on what your game plan and mana curve is. The plan shouldn't be to play these before turn 4 so the effect needs to be at least on rate like with Heraldic Banner being a 3 mana anthem. These mostly help you consistently double spell/keep up interaction. With this combination you should be able to consistently double spell past turn 4 and apply pressure to the table. I also suggest mostly running one-sided boardwipes since the total mana investment in your boardstate is higher than a regular deck

I gave up asking but Tomer is right this season needs a stats episode!!!

"Don't be alarmed if I become a Boros mage." YESSSSS JOIN US CRIM! THE LEGION CALLS!

I think cutting the shocks is certainly interesting, maybe a little cute, but also I'm side eyeing this a bit when those mdfcs are right there

The most overlooked and underrated comment Richard made was “i would need an abacus to determine how many times we have fetched a survey land”

I think it’s time the crew had a “no staples” game. Collectively build a list of 100 or so cards that no-one is allowed to play. Or maybe give everyone a budget that’s based on how often the card is played rather than its dollar cost.

10:55 I'm with Seth. Ppaying off color fetches is WeirdChamp. Idk why the rules committee allowed it

Sounds like the crew should adopt a new rule next season where you can only play a copy of a card once per season.

Crim should run Urza's Sylex, you can blink it as a planeswalker tutor to get Karn to hand, then Karn can pull it out of exile after you use it.

seth/crim "were gonna test out decks with no ramp" "how are you gonna have a deck with no draw!??" -richard.

It's funny how Richard presents all the arguments for running spot removal with his "no wraths" hot take, while still believing spot removal is bad.

I love that this conversation basically boiled down to half the people saying, "Im asjusting my interaction to better deal with the meta" and the other half saying "I'm going to change the meta to better deal with the interaction".

Richard coping so hard right out the gate that he put Yavimaya in his Jeskai deck just to make his a point.

For the love of Heliod, Richard, Surveil lands ETB TAPPED. THIS IS A NOT INSUBSTANTIAL DRAWBACK. Surveil is a nice perk, but it's not anywhere near as relevant as entering untapped on demand, and for only 2 life (in a 40 life format!). I happen to use ETB tapped lands fairly often, but the more competitive a list the more I like entering untapped when possible, missing a key spell can be mean you're effectively timewalked, since what you can do sucks or isn't impactful enough compared to what you could have done that turn with a Shock. Also, you literally mention Bounce lands, Bounce lands love Shocks because they can enter untapped if you're desperate! Do you know how painful it is to bounce an ETB tapped sucker land?! Gah! I do support running more Basics, Basics are very good cards in many ways, most importantly THEY ENTER UNTAPPED. Anyways, I would say if you're not in Green and/or you don't use Fetches then I'd definitely not bother with Shocks, they're pretty expensive for what they do if you have to draw into them fairly. I have Myriad Landscape in a huge range of decks, it's such a big upside when you're desperate for mana, but it's also true that probably 1/3 of the time it's an ETB tapped Waste? Still, I run into enough games where my land shaving ways catch up to me, and I short pretty badly, Myriad can usually finish fixing your mana by the time you can use it. Thank goodness for the wise words of Crim, guiding the channel back to reality... Surveil lands are not as good as Shocks in the overwhelming majority of decks in terms of raw power. I actually have a 'keep my land count down' theme in a deck, and even in that deck, I don't think I'd run Surveyor's Scope, it's just too demanding to be down 2 lands to multiple opponents. I mean if everyone in your pod is on mono-Green it's probably a good call? Playing some bad cards can add a ton of spice to a deck, but it's also able to add a lot of excitement to your deck, bad cards often do weird things, or do them in unusual ways, that's why they're bad, so I think Seth is right and people should run some cards that 'seem bad'. I like to have a roleplay reason for my bad cards, this compounds the excitement and can make for very memorable games. Also, Wrath of God isn't a bad card, it's not 'the best Wrath', but it's one of the absolute best purely creatures Wraths all things accounted for. 'Roles need to be filled' is a decent maxim to remember when building a deck, you need to run enough removal to get by, but some of that removal can be pretty bad and still 'fill the role'. It's like how a construction crew can support a guy who sucks at his job but keeps people's morale up, but it can't be made up only of such people and function, some of your roles can be filled by Hurl Through Hell type jank and you'll even have an edge in niche situations. Not going to lie, I think my Richard-est deck is a Selesnya Tokens/Counters deck, and I don't think it bothers with Wraths because it always should be ahead or it's going to lose regardless of a Wrath or 2. My 5C Sisay is a 'Phil' type deck, it's a lot of fun but it cut most of the interaction (it runs 1 counter and 3 true removal spells) to make space for the OG 11 Shrines, in case I play against a pod of lower power decks, but technically the deck can actually compete with 8s, even with 11 profoundly bad cards. I have decks that I'd enjoy watching you guys play, mostly my pod of Legends beaters, but it's 5 decks so you'd either have to skip a deck or play in person with 5. I'm trying to work out some alternate rule so people can form official teams (which costs resources), but everyone would start out hostile. Psst, Crim, resolve a Rite of the Raging Storm before you Armageddon maybe? Extra nice with a 'must attack' effect if you can swing it. Also, maybe take a look at my boys, Dwarven Miner and Dwarven Blastminer, resolving one vs a deck that is low on removal might cost them the game! Red is a colour I used to hate, but I'm warming up to it, it's got some good cards if you dig deep, but it's not as intuitive as say Black or Green (I know people say Simic is the easy button, but Golgari is the ACTUAL easy button, you can even reanimate your stuff if necessary, much more effectively than Simic, and Golgari is probably as good at putting cards in hand if you want that).

I like how this episode was ostensibly about experimental ideas, but the bulk of it was mostly about how meta shifts occur. It reminded me of an old Eternal Glory podcast about "The Midrange Wars," which is, imo, really what commander has been dealing with for a long time. If the format becomes about value, then decks warp to just pile on more value and lose spots for the efficient interaction and what not you need to beat aggro, or the specific hate pieces against combo, etc. Plus, the "Vintage Cube" problem where yeah you could play mono red, but why would you when you could be slinging Black Lotuses and Time Walks, etc. But we don't really analyze commander through a meta lense in the same way. So these conversations get framed as power level, optimization, and so on. So, take all of that, add a sprinkling of nostalgia and a scoop of witty banter, and you get this.

Bounce lands being picked over Shock Lands? And you were UNSURE if this was a hot take?

I really wish to see all thishigh talk by Richard an Seth claiming that they are going to focus the LD player out of the game played out. They play the most greediest of them all with no single target removal and no early game creatures to aggro or defend with. Its much more likely they die first too a more aggressive deck or having to farewell and then loose their landbase to a ruination. I still think the best thing is to normalise Land Destruction and focussing a player out of the game so people have to start playing more defensive tools instead of only greed.

Something I wish I saw more from the Goldfish crew is more non combat wincons. Things like burn, cool combos (my personal favorite is Tasha’s Hideous Laughter copied a bunch) even hard locks. This isn’t to say we never see these things (Crim’s been playing burn a lot), but I feel like commander games in the wild end in a variety of ways. Hell I have a dragon deck that often wins with something like Sarkhan the Mad, which is basically a 20 damage burn spell late game. Cause this is (in my mind at least) the answer to this weird fog meta Richard and Seth are constantly talking about, just do something that doesn’t end in a couple of 5/5’s running into your opponents

What I love about Wrath of God: when it saves the day, it's the best feeling ever for all the table, and we will remember it. Farewell will always save the day, but it brings no joy and no one will remember it. Thats why I love casual commander, the stories the fun and the surprise. You'e not suppose to care that much about winning or losing. Does your deck creates fun memorries? More WOG, less Farewell.

Clash decks are built in isolation for the week whereas most commander players I know have 10+ decks on the go at once. If you want to build less optimised decks assume you don't pull apart last week's deck for the staple cards.

can we just agree that tomer has the best takes here?

Unless it is a landfall deck, I hate running bounce lands. They never feel good to me.

Richard out here making decks like he’s a kid who just grabbed a bunch of random cards out of a bulk bin and called it a deck.

“Everyone is playing the Richard meta” was the hottest of hot takes

You guys absolutely nailed it. If people stop playing commander interactively, and all it becomes is ramp/card draw. Then it is absolutely fair to curve out and drop the Armageddon.

Cutting shocks and keeping off color Yavimaya and temple of the false god is absolutely insane 💀

I’m pretty much at the point that there are only two reasons to play bounce lands: Landfall and getting MDFCs back to your hand. But I would never run the colorless ones outside of landfall.

Here’s my hot take, utility lands are mostly garbage. We’ve already established that in Modern magic you almost never run out of cards, so you always have good ways to spend your mana, and I honestly can’t remember the last time I activated a land’s ability. I think most decks would just run better if they replaced almost all of their utility lands with basics, except for maybe a few of the most important.

To Crim's point. I don't think I know someone who, knowing a deck has MLD, would not ramp as hard as they can do get ahead in the game. I don't ever see a green player ramping, later in the game. They've spent all their ramp typically. I've played games with MLD and the green player doesn't just rebuild instantly. They might have a ramp spell or two, but almost their entire ramp package has already been used. I'll also say that typically the person who uses MLD has a winning board state. If it's used without a winning board state it's just bad and boring. I really don't get why commander players are so against it. I don't play it because I'm not built around it. But I"ve played against a suspend decks with major MLD in them and its a great win con. No reason to be salty about it because they win. The game doesn't just stall and get boring. They win we shuffle and play again.

5:35 Richard runs all available bounce lands in a Jeskai deck? He’s running Yavimaya in a Jeskai deck (I realize you can, as it has no color identity)? He’s running Lotus Field in a Jeskai deck? That’s insane. Even having Myriad Landscape in a Jeskai deck is a little odd (but certainly justifiable on a budget).

While I am on board with running 9 basics in tri color if you have ramp that digs them out (cultivate, kodama's, land tax, sword of the animist, etc) I do disagree with dropping the shocks. I would rather drop the off-color fetches unless there are landfall / land recycling going on in the deck.

Seth is absolutely right on the overrating of Surveil lands. Richard had been so opposed to them, so against them during spoiler season that I almost went back on my free time to watch Commander Clsh episodes again just to count up the amount of times someone could have played a tapped land without hurting the events of their turn because it was many, many times.

Seth: I’m trying to get used to not always running the fanciest new, optimal card in every slot. Seth, 25 minutes later: I’m cutting Mind Stone for Ragavan

"you don't need shocks! What could you possibly cut!?" Richard there's like 5 lands you could cut from that list.

Would you all consider doing a precon league where you play a few time adding some limited number of cards too swap each week? It could even be as little as 3 total sessions and could help with the power creep concerns while remaining competitive with the group.

The problem with going down wraths is that it’s really meta-dependent. Richard is probably right in that it would help you win more in specifically Commander Clash, because everyone just ramps and draws and commits less to the board. He says you can’t Armageddon because it’s not socially acceptable, but I’ve played in many groups that find stuff like Farewell even *less* acceptable than MLD. If everyone listened to Richard and played like the Goldfish crew does, no wraths and eight fogs makes sense. However, I don’t think their meta is actually representative of how most people play, in that most people are going more in the honest creature route that doesn’t rely on single huge combo turns so much as sustained value and multiple combats. It’s possible my meta is the odd one out here, but I can count many times where a wrath saved my butt and Dress Down would’ve been totally useless

So Richard yells at the crew DURING the podcast, and the team yells at Richard afterwards. Solid.

Seth has absolutely sold me on Mind's Eye. Time to bust out the ol' playset.

honestly the best way to understand each others view points is to live through it, build each other decks that are quintessentially you

Ok. So my hot take is: "To not kill fun in MTG you need to put some restrictions, on entire table. The most logical ones are butgetary constrains." There are do many fun ways to play this game, but with unlimited budget and deck full of staples, you shut yourself in the same meta forever.

I've actually done the "constructed deckbuilding" with my Torbran deck and I've actually won a couple of games. If the card can't deal damage (and is not a land), it's not in the deck, so all my ramp and card draw are stuff like Magda, Generous Plunderer, Captain Lannery Storm, Rose Cutthroat Raider, etc., which is great since the deck is at its best when it curves cards that deal damage into the commander. There is generally someone who has a scarier board (or deck) than just a couple of bulk rares from standard, so they eat the removal while you just help murder the archenemy, but in reality you are killing everyone else equally with "deal 1-2 damage to each opponent" effects and by swinging at other players "for value".

I dont understand this "Min/Max" mana base these guys have going on. Been playing commander for a long time and honestly a mix of slow lands, pain lands, shocks, check lands, horizon lands, battlebond lands, and most importantly BASICS make very consistent mana bases. Don't need fetches or a bunch of utility lands. Fetches for higher powered landfall decks, utility for niche commander payoffs like kessig wolfrun make more sense than throwing that kinda noise in every multicolored deck. I've never seen what they promote out in the wild, so it really does ring true when Seth frequently asks "is this just an us thing?".

Something interesting y'all could do is introduce a full season of budget decks. Set a budget at the start of the season, every deck has to fit within that budget, and see how it affects your deck building and the group's power level.

Phil was probably smiling ear to ear listening to this episode

Turn 1: serra ascendant, turn 2: Another tempo creature, Turn 3: Boromir, Turn 4: Armaggedon

"There are never enough basics to get rid of ruination"- Richard, 7th of May 2024 Please help him 😂 is he feeling okay?

Honestly I think Richard is kinda cooking with the mana base, but there's no way Myraid Landscape is the play. Plus, I think you gotta have Demolition Field and Scavenger Grounds in every deck

Right out the gate, Richard is hard at work in the kitchen, cooking up a storm😅

halfway through and really loving the vibe on this episode

Richard, if you're playing five bouncelands and a lotus field, I would suggest not adding Temple of the False God. I'd actually suggest Thawing Glaciers in its place, because it becomes much better with that many bouncelands. You can activate glaciers and then bounce it with the bounceland, because it was going to bounce itself anyways. It actually speeds both cards up a little bit. Also tempted to say a manabase like this benefits a lot from Exploration effects, and suffers a bit without them.

Using bounce lands to activate White's catchup ramp is a great strategy...now explain how and why Temple of the False God is in that manabase! Richard, that list you showed would be infinitely better if you took out the off-color Yavimaya, Temple of the False God, and Reliquary Tower for your 3 on color Shocklands.

Seth mentioned Akul. That is a good example of a deck that doesn't need traditional mana rocks. If you spend turn 2 ramping and you play Akul on turn 3 you just risk running him into removal without no payoff. Instead you want to curve into him by playing expendable sacrifice fodder on turns 1-3 then on turn 4 you can play Akul and sneak attack in a bomb.

I think you should legitimately just be playing settle the wreckage XD Like in every deck, and all of the equivalent cards like comeuppance and spider fog and ink shield etc. The problem with fogs is if you actually let them do whatever without interacting with them, they can just attack into your fogs until you run out. What you need is to play cards where if they guess wrong and attack into you they get demolished. Then people learn to be nervous about attacking into you, and *that's* what buys you the time where no-one is attacking you while you can do whatever.

I'm happy to hear Seth wants to build less optimized decks, my main gripe with Clash for awhile is how every game is high power. There's usually multiple rungs to every card category you want to run, you don't always have to run the most optimal option in every slot, every time.

In my opinion, people play too little interaction that can cope with multiple targets. In fact, board-wipe is most often needed to kill the 3-4 targets that are the worst - the rest is "relatively ok" (of course not always, but often). That's why now I try to play 1-2 board wipes, and more interaction that can cope with several goals. Cards such as Fire Covenant, Unexplained Absence, Mystic Confluence and the new V.A.T.S. This kinde of interaction that can get rid of several targets is, in my opinion, very underestimated. Now I try to play 2-3 pieces of cheap interaction (0 to 2 mana), 2-3 pieces of very universal interaction (one that can deal with anything like Anguished Unmaking), 2-3 pieces of muli-target interaction ( just like V.A.T.S.) and 1-2 pieces Board Wipe. In addition, I try to play with more cards that protect my things (if there is a chance, at least 2-3 pieces, and preferably 4-5... and I like FOGs as well, but the more expensive ones that give us something "extra" ). Plus i always have 2+ lands that can be use as interaction / board wipe (Mount Doom FTW!!!).

I love this podcast so much so many differing ideas I can’t get enough

- Insight is broken and, if you're in blue, you should be playing it. - Dream Tides isn't broken, but you need to justify *not* running it. - Play Mystic Subdual - Lion Sash and Scavenging Ooze are S-tier graveyard hate. - Tamiyo, Field Researcher is one of the best planeswalkers in the format.

For Seth, salubrious snail has a great video on pet cards. And to me one of the most important things in edh is matched power levels so you could consider doing more themed or budget episodes for clash

If you ever want to feel like nothing is playable in commander, listen to this podcast lol.

I give Richard a lot of crap but I respect him a lot for being a good sport about the crap he gets. Also I like the leading take - Shocks aren't overrated but Richard's hypothetical mana base is really solid. 9 Basics is a good number for a 3 color deck.

I’ve been binging these podcasts and commander clashes and now I am somehow convinced to run fogs instead of wraths.

So glad we've smoothly transitioned from fog meta to ruination meta

Sorry, Richard I agree with Seth swapping the off-color fetches for shocks in your proposed mana base. If you need an untapped land that can make a specific color in a 3-color deck, you need shocks to let off-color fetches get that color. Without shocks, they can only get one color of mana untapped. Unless you really need the shuffle effects, replacing the off-color fetches with shocks just makes that mana base better.

I've always thought that if you can't purposefully build your decks worse then you should incorporate more themes or challenges in order to do so. That's what makes alphabet soup week, or budget week so fun. The challenge of finding the BEST (possible) card for your restriction is underrated. Tomer has it figured out on this one with why he builds all of his deck budget themed. The FOMO on broken cards is a struggle for most commander tables imo

“How do we go back?” - Commander cube How do we solve the lands problem - Commander cube How do we fit pet cards? - Commander cube. Time to build a cube guys!