Oh yes! It makes decks feel so much more unique if you are not running the same staples in every one of them. I have a Imoti + Keruga Companion deck in which almost every big spell has some sort of bounce, fight or reclamation sage type effect. It feels like im just ramping and timmy casting big creatures but i also control the board while doing so. And my newest First doctor + Susan Foreman deck is focused around sagas which got so much support that i don't need to run a single dedicated removal spell in there.
@@swampybwoy I mean, only if you didn't actually listen. A lot of commander players just don't think that hard about their decks, so these videos provide the tools for that kind of player to actually get why they might be losing or not having fun, and then improve. It's a lot of gentle prodding that you should probably try to genuinely participate in the games you play, and the means to do so. It gets into why you might make deck building decisions and the context for the heuristics players are often given without any additional explanations. Consider how many players go "I chose the big crab for my big leader guy, so I picked all the little crabs for my deck, and then some cards with crabs in the little picture, and, Hey, why is my deck bad??" When a lot of players have run so far astray from the competitive roots of the game, getting into the reasons you make deck building decisions really is reconnecting with the game design philosophies of the thing they're trying to play.
So much more valuable than deck techs. MTG RU-vid can feel quite stale, Snail's rapid rise is a clear indicator that most people know how to build around a commander: they just need more guidance on the higher level design and decision making.
tbh he's just saying obvious stuff in a neat and organized way. There are just a LOT of bad or inexperienced players, and there are just as many players who overestimate their skill level. In other words, if no one in the room is saying what needs to be said, no matter how simple it is, the one guy who says it will sound revolutionary. Also - You just dont hear this content too often because algorithm trends disproportionately favor constant new content. Thats why most channels, no matter how unique they start out as, end up inevtiably reducing their content to just spoiler talk, mtg news talk, and general rants about the state of the game. This channel is one of the few that doesnt do that (or just gameplay footage, the other style of lukewarm mtg content) My hope is that SS keeps up with this kind of content because no one else is really doing videos like this.
I love redirect effects. Hosed a guy constantly that refused to play against counterspells, but ran tons of edicts. I hope he learned that people countering his removal is a better option.
I love it in my ob nixilis deck, it has become even a bit infamous so much so that now whenever I have 1 red mana and ob out everyone is scared I might bolt bend an important spell lmao
@@binch6291 the new red flare redirect from modern horizons 3 is really cool too and is under $2 right now sac a non token red creature and cast it for free. Say someone goes to swords your commander respond with saccing your commander since it's being removed anyway and say "cool I'm swording your commander too" 😆
Originally my script for this video included another couple hundred words of convoluted vegetable analogies but I ended up cutting them out. I'm glad some people see the vision!
When I clicked onto this video, looking for ways to feel better about more removal in my Kestia Enchantress deck, I was kinda shocked to find myself already making these decisions. I tend to run mostly enchantment-based removal, so my removal spells also cantrip and sometimes even come attached with a free ancestral recall. That was the whole idea with the deck to begin with though (How do I make Auras happen and not feel sad about getting 2 or 3 or 4-for-1'd?), but I've never thought about this for other types of decks. It seemed like a natural conclusion to make for the removal in Enchantress to me, but not elsewhere. I wonder if that just means Enchantress is inherently easy to spice up and season, or if I've always had this kind of idea of how removal works? It's definitely odd.
When I help friends with their decks around this topic, I make sure to replace "control" and "removal" with "interaction" cards and it works so well! It's exactly what we need more of for more interesting dynamic games.
I also really like removal that does other things along with removing, Binding the Old Gods (The 2BG Saga from Kaldhiem) is a really great removal spell because the second chapter snags you a land.
I love thematic removal, like my frog tribal has multiple cards that turn people's creatures into 1/1 frogs with no abilities, and my enchantress deck runs grasp of fate and might be one of my favorite enchantments, my voja deck run werefox bodyguard in my voja deck that synergies really well
my biggest thing is always trying to figure out which removal is the best (i don’t have deadly rollick money either), as well as how situational is too situational when it comes to removal. i also try to consider how i can be creative with removal without defaulting to the most played, best-in-slot cards all the time (which sometimes can’t be helped). i’m still playing with preconstructed decks, but i’m trying to build my own completely original deck (once i come up with a good enough idea), so videos like this are helpful for getting the pieces together.
It's been best for me to think about what my deck can and can't deal with, I play a heavy ramp deck with card draw that wants to explode one turn and win or kill someone, I run less removal and more board protection because of that. I run removal like ezuri's predation cause I get value from it that I can turn into a win even with a bad board state.
There are always cheap options. Often, the most expensive options (like Deadly Rollick) are only marginally better than the next best thing. In the case of Deadly Rollick, Dismember is often just as good. It can 1 mana as needed, and can kill an indestructible creature up to a X/5. Or Baleful Mastery, you can pay 4, or you can pay 1B to exile a creature or planeswalker if you're willing to let an opponent draw a card. Also, don't be so put off by even something as simple as Doom Blade. There' a reason it's iconic: it's good. Go For The Throat, Infernal Grasp, Power Word Kill are all equally good options with some small restrictions.
Yes please! All my Spellslinger decks suffer from the fact they take too long to get the commander out and rolling, and I would love some advice on how to pace games so I can still have explosive turns, 10 turns into the game
@@Punkmationyou should try ghyrson starn, he’s 1, a blue, and a red, and when you ping any target for 1 he does 2 more to it. It plays VERY low to the ground with an average cmc of 2 or less and can get started very quickly as you just need a creature that pings opponents when you cast instants and sorcs and you can run a lot of cantrips to trigger them over and over. Running more cantrips also inherently makes the consistency very high and digs through the deck very easily. My casual starn deck can typically win turn 6-7 assuming I’m not hard targeted. Also just running cheap ping spells can wipe boards usually with just 2 cards.
@@Retr0Sk1ll thank you! But I already play him :D that was my first deck, and indeed does not suffer from a late start. But that’s a ping deck, and I’m looking to play a storm or X spells deck
Having "removal engines" is a MAJOR key for mid-power. Going 1-for-1 with stuff like swords is useful when you need to answer a threat immediately, but often midpower games feature not one, but a wide range of large bastards that might need answering. In my Yorion build Aerial Extortionist does triple duty as a reasonable flier, repeatable removal, and card advantage engine. The new Ethersworn Adjudicator looked like an unexciting mythic at first, but in a deck with Training Ground effects has been a chunky flier that can snipe multiple targets per turn. At higher power levels counterspells and the 'staple' removal spells are a given, but that hidden factor of decks generally being leaner means those removal packages can often get much worse at dealing with the multitude of big, stupid threats flying around a lower power levels. If you're the only person packing that removal suite you're going to exhaust your hand before the 3 others taking turns tapping out to play giant idiots on curve run out of giant idiots.
Do you ever find players get salty when your removal engine basically stops them from playing the game entirely though? I'm kinda on the fence with these since grave pact type effects are where my mind goes when I hear removal engine and I know that those effects aren't well liked.
@@matta6639 I personally don't run repeatable edict effects in casual decks because I'm not a fan of the experience they create at the table and because they draw an inordinate amount of hate. I played with a guy who ran the Rishadan sac guy cycle in a flicker deck, and I told him I recommended cutting them because in low amounts they are not very good, as holding up 1 or 2 mana isn't that hard and you can eventually just remove them, but they will piss everyone off. However, in high amounts they basically start functioning like repeatable stone rains, which will ABSOLUTELY draw hate and can create uninteresting nongames if you can't win quickly enough after devastating people's mana bases. He did not cut them and got beat the fuck up one game after making 1 guy sac 1 land. If you want to live like that, go with God, but think about it this way. Card A will give you a 50/50 to win the game if you untap with it and Card B will just improve your position. Card A is better, but your opponents will let you resolve and keep Card B.
there are some really interesting and strange removal options. Sometimes it's a creature, and most times it's a sorcery. Players don't normally play with aura's, but when someone does there's a board wipe that only hits creatures that are not enchanted with an aura.
I like removal that also advances your gameplan. For example, a card like Lethal Scheme can removed an opposing creature while looting up to 4(!) cards; while Astarion's Thirst is removal that also buffs your commander. A commander like Herigast, Erupting Nullkite can utilize threaten effects to steal opponent's creatures and sacrifice them to the deck's emerge costs.
Dude, your videos are top tier. Your deckbuilding advice has helped me blend in with the random pile of card/adjusted preconstructed/admittedly tryhard decks of my pod. 😂 I used to always be surprised with my decks when they worked, and whine when I fell behind. (I can be a sore loser. 😅) But knowing how to build a consistent deck has allowed me to be a lot more confident with how I interact at the table. All thanks to you!
My first edh deck was a slower deck with a lot of cheap removal spells. After only a few games I pretty much never got attacked because people knew their stuff was at risk of dying it it went after me. The threat of removal alone allowed me to comfortably get into the late game where my deck shined.
It would be cool if there was a list somewhere that had removal spells that are beneficial to different deck types. The section about those kinds of spells really got me searching for something like that.
Scryfall advanced search is probably your best bet to find removal with specific costs, type, or text. For example, you could find some removal engines by searching for cards with oracle text containing "whenever", "destroy", and "target".
Devastate is a fun card but as a warning for those who don"t know, you need ALL possible targets to be available in order to cast it. So if no one happens to have an enchantment or the only enchantment is yours it can be a bit awkward. Casualtys of war does not have this problem
Just wait for the power creeping to give us a 2 or 3 color Murmuring Mystic legendary that can also exile your instants to make tokens or cast them again. Or both. Free army builder that says "run all the removal. And use it twice."
@@CameronSMooreThe issue is there’s still real opportunity cost to casting removal as it requires mana to hold up at instant speed or for the case of board wipes will tend to many instances of you wiping and getting to rebuild last. In these scenarios, the players that efficiently ramped and managed to get cards in hand through synergistic board building will have an upper hand again.
@@CameronSMoore for awhile absolutely, but eventually in most games 3 people will be able to assemble enough resources that you can't stop all of them and since you've been doing less in order to stop other people it usually means you haven't amassed as many resources. There is just a limit to how much policing one person can do.
@@CameronSMoorenot if you run out of resources going 1-1 with problematic single permanents and then getting outvalued by the other two players at the table. and if you can keep up with resources that easily, you're probably winning the game anyways. the idea the original commentor is getting at, i think, is that an entire table full of decks with robust removal suites helps to curb situations where one player gets ahead, since the other three players can trade 1-1 and run the problematic player out of resources. but if just one person is running removal, or even if the other players at the table see that you're playing removal so they decide to hold onto theirs, you just wind up running yourself out of resources. i think the way to cut the gordian knot with this is that you need removal *and* ways of applying pressure. people tend to play more defensively when their life total gets closer to 0 than 40.
But not 100%... because I only have so many removal options... if I am the only one playing the police of the table, when I actually NEED the removal options, they're not there for me. If people don't have removal, but know you do, they'll send all their threats at you and say "deal with it or be KOed." In order to realistically deal with every threat at the table, I have to assume each player has at least 5-12 threats... meaning I need between 15 (at bare minimum) and 36 (at max) removal pieces to deal with them. Because the multi removal is good... if each player has an equivalent "threat" on board... usually my Vraska's fall hits one player's big creature, then for the rest, I get a mana dork, a used up ETB creature, a creature someone WANTS to die, or a token...
IMO, the most compelling reasons to run removal are... - It gives you more turns to play out your own cool synergies by slowing down opponents who would end the game too soon. - It keeps opponents honest in their deckbuilding, ensuring they keep protection cards and challenges them to form contingency plans. - It ensures that the player who got luckiest with land drops doesn't automatically win: instead, player skill (when to use removal, who to use it on) and the extra layer of randomization (drawing removal or not) helps to curve the playing field towards a more even matchup.
As a player who is consistently a high priority target at the table, I advocate that higher removal options in decks is how to help suppress threatening players and is how I often win my games. Being able to address a problematic card is vital to winning games. You're delusional if you think that you can always pull off your strategy faster than your opponents and that they won't stop you from doing so. Your opponents aren't at the table to watch you win, they're at the table to play and win too.
For me, multi-use cards can fix this issue for the most part. For example, instead of using beast within, use archdruid's charm. It can remove almost anything like beast within, but it can also tutor up creatures and lands. Shadowspear is another example since it can bolster your creatures while removing indestructable and hexproof. There's tons of cards like that, and they dramatically reduce the feels bad of adding interaction. They do tend to run for multiple times the cost of pure removal, however. Imo, proxy all day baby.
This is why I love Kalamax. Doubling the value of most of your cards (and then just making them all a healthy combination of ramp, draw, and removal) as a baseline does amazing things. It makes it even better when you can hold all of it up and consistently play on opponents' turns, making it much easier to react to threats and provided there's no threat that you need to deal with, go back to ramping and drawing.
Kalamax is the only Dinosaur I i kept myself away from, since it always feels like he makes the game so easy lol. But yeah, he is a blast as long as the table is appropriately aware of its power level and can match it.
You make it sound like its gas vs utility, but we all know rule zero existing means that a buncha people just refuse to deck build competently. And I'm not talking about the newbies to the game as a whole, or people who are struggling with figuring out the decent 8th, 9th, 10th, and ect. options due to the highlander ruleset
8:40 is probably **the most** important point. Before slotting in removal you need to know what the gameplan of the deck is and what major obstacles could come up. There's one aspect that is usually never mentioned or even considered for any kind of beat-down deck (go-wide, voltron, etc.) and that is stax. Stax will slow down your table, resulting in slower board development on your opponents side which also means there are less blockers, or other problematic pieces that require your removal. By running the right pieces of stax, you can remove a couple pieces of removal. And this is especially beneficial when your stax pieces are also creatures that can attack. Going through 120 life points even with synergistic effects takes time and requires continuous board development from your side. For example, in a Boros beatdown deck you can run all sorts of "rule of law" effects because your (non cEDH) ramp is very limited and you probably will only be able to play 1 spell at a time anyways. If you happen to get a treasure engine it's still fine because this allows you to hold up interaction on top of playing a creature a turn so it's really not a downside for you but it might cripple a lot of other decks and that gives you time to lower everyone's life points.
Nha man i will just play my [Avacyn, Archetype of Endurance, Solitary Confinement] line, thanks. If you want me to play removal print another 8 versions of Grasp of Fates and i will consider it. As long it is 1 for 1 and no added benefit, i will pass. If they printed a removal that forced the other 2 players not to attack you on their next turn. "Hey look i got rid of the problem, maybe you can be decent human beings..."
Great advice. I particularly like the idea of having a card serve multiple roles. The card I use that way is Settle the Wreckage which some unfortunate amount of the time I send at opponents and survive feeling dirty inside, but a more wholesome amount of the time I use it as the incredible ramp spell that it desperately wants to be. After damage at the end of combat step of course.
Great video! Totally agree I tend to be more on the "Removal can't keep up with overpowered cards/decks", but the line of thought this video explains is just high quality
Druid of purification is one of the most underrated multi-removal options. It consistently eliminates the 3-4 scariest artifacts and enchantments at the table. (That you don’t own) all for 3 and a green.
Ill dedicate 8 spots to instant speed interaction and try to find jankier versions of it in the theme I'm looking for if it exists. Ye the deck will be better if its 12-16+ removal slots but considering most of my fun comes out of actually building towards a theme starting every list with 70 cards already dedicated just makes me want to not even finish the brew.
Hex: "Finally, my time to shine!" Seriously though, two recent cards I love are Requisition Raid(spree, destroy artifact, enchantment, and/or put +1/+1 on your creatures) in a counters deck and Collective Resistance to do similar(single target heroic intervention instead of counters) in my mono green Goreclaw deck. They hit the sweet spots of being cheap(4 mana for all modes), allow you to hit more than one target, and pull double duty filling a particular niche or synergy within the deck.
This video dies to doomblade (Jokes aside, I'm a big believer in multi-targeted vegetables, if your opponent can't stick their key combo pieces they're less likely to win)
If your playgroup is not cool with stax, I think you need to be careful about the inclusion of 'Removal Engines'. If you're running something like Retribution of the Ancients in a +1/+1 counter deck, where it can become trivially easy to activate it more than once per turn, it can feel pretty close to "opponents can't cast creature spells". Aura Shards may as well say "opponents' enchantments and artifacts have Vanishing 1". Royal Assassin is less staxy but still has the potential to be oppressive if you can untap him. Trygon Predator is probably the safest as he can just be blocked or removed, and he's capped at 1 trigger per turn without extra combats. A player's removal engine tolerance will likely vary depending on what deck they're playing and general temperament, but my feeling is that even just being able to trigger/activate them 2-3 times per turn cycle is enough to quickly approach stax status.
In my Jenny Flint & Madame Vastra investigators deck, the commanders are half the creature removal i need on their own, but my creature-specific removal consists mostly of "target creature you control deals damage" and Fight cards, with one of them (Ulvenwald Tracker) being a permanent that can repeatedly instigate Fights, and this plays beautifully into the engine of the commanders, but because this type of removal is so specific, and because protection and combat tricks combined with "Madame Vastra must be blocked if able." is functionally also creature removal, i only run 4 of these cards (with Decisive Denial doubling as a counterspell) out of 19 Removal cards in the deck. (Only 6 counterspells because they're good, but i want my opponents to play more removal and feel like it matters.)
I run a Maelstrom Wanderer deck and while it's mostly a big mana beatdown, it also runs (nearly) every modal counterspell I can grab. It just seems to fit into the deck to occasionally cascade into a Cryptic Command and have it be an expensive copy of Drag Under.
Okay, after watching the video, I want to say that the insightful expression of including removal was both eloquent and useful; the video was concise, but hearty; well done.
Hey! I never comment, but I Loved the Radha deck so much that I played it a lot and put my own spin on it. I threw in 2 wastes and turned it into a 7 mana colorless matters deck. I still kept the koglas and the cascaders! It's quickly becoming my favorite deck.
Nice! That sounds like a fun spin on the deck. Breaker of Creation certainly makes that tempting, I've found myself wanting lifegain and hoo boy is that card a lot of lifegain when I have 15+ lands in play
Personal opinion: More Single targeted Removal is nice and good and people should be running more. Yes. It gives opportunity to create more memorable and unique experiences throughout the game and help making it enjoyable However no to running more general boardwipes. Boardwipes reset boardstates. It pretty much takes away the incentive to build complex decks with options to fish out stuff as an answer. Same goes for the opponent. Boardwipes pretty much only generate single sided "poof everything's gone" without actually playing strategic
Why would I run anything BUT removal? I have 99 card slots and 1 win con. So if I run my 38 Lands, I'm left with 66 cards to split between removal and card draw.
Be careful with some of the removal engines. a lot of people don’t realize that if there is a valid target you must target it, even if it’s your own permenant. After you destroy your opponents stuff you might start being forced to destroy your own.
Another removal engine for any deck running a self-mill package is life form the loam and channel lands. I'm sure its nothing new to some players, but for those who don't know: after you self mill life from the loam and a channel land or two you can dredge it back to your hand (allowing you to mill more), and cast it returning the channel lands (and maybe a fetch if you don't have 3 in the grave yet) you have to your hand. From there simply use the channel lands and regrab the life from the loam with dredge again. Nearly all of them are rather impactful in what they can do (outside of the red one). Green can act as removal at the cost of giving the opp a land when you do. White can serve as a combat trick to make it hard to justify blocking or attacking you without a 1/1 being able to trade an opponents 5/5. Blue serves as a repeatable efficiently costed bounce spell that can be used on tokens, high costed cards, or even as a way to reset a buffed creature with lots of +1/+1 counters. And the black one serves as a creature regrowth and even more mill! Assuming you have the extra draw to compensate for the loss of draw from life from the loam's dredge, repeating these serves as a good way to spend extra mana each turn; almost like a mana sink It being an engine that will turn itself online once you just mill the right cards is also really big bonus, meaning it has little to no setup outside of milling yourself, which the deck was probably doing anyways. And it only costs a single nonland slot in the deck (and you may probably already be running Life from the Loam for the dredge anyways), and a few utility land slots.
my biggest issue with 1for1 removal isn't the opportunity cost of the deck space, it's the card disadvantage of actually casting the removal spell. Especially as games go longer and more and more threats are interacted with, the greedy players who let others use their removal often come out ahead.
I’ll be perfectly honest, I go a bit out of my way to make Removal feel as veggies-like as possible for my opponents. I love doing stuff like Eerie Interlude on a board that includes Eternal Witness, so that after my board’s dodged the Wipe, I get the Eerie Interlude back to do it again. Making an opponent struggle to answer a board state that may require 2 pieces of Spot Removal to get what they want from the wipe can inculcate in one’s opponent a feeling that, “All I’m doing is policing Player X, leaving Y & Z to run amok.” Nudging people back into feeling like they’ve got to eat the veggies raw also helps accomplish goals like making Boardwipe Tribal feel horrible to play. I’m all for a 14-16 Interaction Minimum, but yeah, I’ll go out of my way to prevent any new Saviors of the Pod from being born. Excalibur can stay in the Stone. It’s all good advice, people. Please don’t take it. ;)
My dislike for removal comes from the fact that it rarely matches my deck theme. If I want to play a garbage pile of wolves, my removal is generally going to be limited to fight spells, and the majority of fight spells are 2-3 mana just to fight something, if not 4 mana for something like Dogpile. Which is fine on paper until I remember that the LGS guys run "7"s and my style is OG EDH between 2-5. Usually it takes a B deck for me to put in actual removal because then I get things like Drown in Ichor to go with my Wither deck, or a Grixis pile of varying quality of spellslinger removal because my D&D Warlock was that good at killing stuff, and it's funny to have Hex resolve.
If anything, I've got the opposite problem. I "learned" to play EDH via some of the old principles of "X removals, Y draw, Z ramp..." patterns, meaning I'm always going into a deck knowing I'm gonna' have a ton of removal. If anything, I don't think _ten_ removal is enough. 90% of games end in combos. If you want to stand a chance, you need to be able to interact with those combos. The problem is that, of a little over the 60 cards I have budgeted for spells (excluding the Commander), it often means I don't have a ton of actual deck to play with. Usually only about 20 tops after I "pay my taxes" (analogous to your terminology of "vegetables"). And what's more, because I assume everybody else builds decks the way I do, I assume there's a ton of removal out there ready to snipe me the moment I get off the ground. Anticipating this, I staple in protection pieces like Lightning Greaves, Tef Pro, Deflecting Swat and Heroic Intervention as carelessly as I would run a Sol Ring. It's just what you do. I like to joke that, even when I'm _not_ playing Esper, I'm _still_ playing Esper because I always need a response to everything. Instead, more recently, I've been making decks that curb the amount of removal I run. Instead of building decks to _solve_ problems, I build decks to _be_ problems, notably Raffine reanimator and Jinnie Fay token upgrader. The aim of those is to generate so much value that you can play through the disruption and bounce back reliably. In fact, my latest deck is a Livaan / Raised by Giants deck (it's come to my attention that the original plan of Miirym is far too obvious) that aims to land fatal commander damage like an RKO via purposefully expensive spellslinger pieces and power-doubling combat tricks. I run under ten targeted removal, which is a big deal for me, instead opting for more engine pieces in a deck that is particularly hungry for in-engine shenanigans. My late game curve is basically a straight line.
So I have a Vraska the Silencer deck on the way, and that's the first deck in a long time where I felt I needed just a heinous amount of removal in various forms (for those in the cheap seats, ANY time a non-token creature dies, I can spend 1 and steal it as a treasure). Not running a lot of board wipes (only running 1 in Culling Ritual) because my game plan is to pick and choose my kills for value rather than "Hey, Greg over there has a spooky board, so probably should kill everything." Plus, since whatever I kill can just be a treasure with upside (etb, mana dorks, static effects), they're actually somewhat resistant to common board wipes. Additionally, there's a Deathtouch subtheme (as well as the design restriction of "I have to use every Vraska Planeswalker and every card that mentions Vraska in the name or rules text") meaning I have 11 "traditional" single target removals (able to snipe key targets) as well as the option to go flexible with either my Planeswalkers or my Creatures doubling as Removal
This is why I saw Invoke Despair coming as the powerhouse it was until its banning in Standard. It's multi-removal with wide card-type coverage stapled to your card-advantage for either your midrange or control deck. It was just a matter of there being a heavily-black deck worth playing, and it was obviously going to be multiple layers of that triple-chocolate cake on its own. I've been aware of this concept all the way back since the beginning of my time in the format because Prophetic Bolt and Eternal Witness was a standout removal & draw engine anongst the jank of the Riku of Two Reflections precon. It was one of the best things you could do with the deck. Also as far as the tempo involved, obviously that combination with the extra copying was very mana-hungry, but E-Wit alone earlier in the game recurred your ramp, while Prophetic Bolt alone in the midgame dealt with something and dug towards more lands and ramp, and towards the E-Wit. Adding a Crystal Shard was the first thing I did, which allowed you to loop this combo in the ultra-lategame, dumping all of your mana every turn to kill things, regrow a card, draw cards, and make a blocker. (Yes, extremely mana-hungry. The power-level and total card-pool of the format was so much lower back then unless you were playing Zur Doomsday/Voltron or Arcum Dagson or Sharuum infinite combo.)
This is why I think Molten Collapse is slept on. At worst its a Dreadbore. At best (as in cracking a treasure in Rakdos or cracking a fetch, not hard), it does that and removes a surprising amount of one-drops on the table, like Sol Ring or Root Maze, etc. I’m listening to some of your video guides to help me wean off the cedh mindset and get back into high power casual, it seems Ive lost my touch over time when it comes to deckbuilding. Hopefully your philosophies can help me smooth out my Balrog deck I’ve been working on Also I was working on a Sharuum list to include Sphinx of the Revelation mainly, I’d love to see your list for ideas. I didn’t see very many strong or worthwhile esper cycling cards outside of Angel of the Ruins, so insight would be helpful
I started running more removal. I liked it. I started running so much removal that I moved to monoblack 1B removal tribal. Im now ostracized for being "unfun" for "interacting too much". Do not play removal.
This video is making me heavily consider taking (yet) another look at my Aesi deck. It's still doing fine ofc, Aesi landfall does in fact go brrr. But I've bent it in a control direction to help temper the rampant "What's an interaction" style that my playgroup has, and find myself running out of answers pretty quickly when I have to try to police multiple people. I wasn't even aware of that Simic flier, but it's definitely going onto my buy list immediately! To be clear, the other veteran player at the table is glad I have this deck, even as literally every counterspell and about half the removal went his way. I'm mostly trying to show the newer players by example why interactions are a good thing, actually.
My group use a lot of pure removal (mostly because at least three of us are/used to be Modern players). I really like cards with several uses. Even if not always great, and usually pretty expensive for what they do. The Charms are pretty nice. Especially Abzan Charm. Card draw and removal in one card? What's not to like! Great video as usual.
you can put as many removal spells/ counter spells you want. The problem will appear in turn 5-8. The conclusions: Not targetable creatures are immune to this and there are a lot. Not enough draw. Creatures with 'When you cast this spell' are the threat. Artifacts are troublesome or impossible to be removed. Graveyard decks usually don't care if you put more cards in their graveyard. In conclusion: Run a balance of removal spells and actual spells. Single removals will work on the big and cost effective targets for a counter turn and mass removals will work to set back your opponent who spent his turn just dropping creatures.
This is something i’ve found really works in practice, for example probably my favorite deck is ramos (who gets counters and makes mana based on number of colours in a spell) and I run a ridiculous number of removal spells, about 20 (granted lots are things like charms), but they are all bad 2-3 pip removal spells. Despite this, it never feels bad to get removal because it’s helping me in other ways. I can remove whatever I want and it still does stuff.
I tend to play a lot of recursion so creature with ETB is an ideal removal. That said it has two disadvantages that force me to play single target single use removal- first is sorcery speed basically in most cases. Thus a few instants is healthy. Second is somebody playing Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines or TorporOrb which require instant removal otherwise quite a lot from my deck just doesn’t work. Advantages of this are the fact that I can quickly go ahead and destroy about 6 key permanents per turn while keeping up a small army of big creatures up for attack or defence. It is a comfy way to play.
What I desire are the spot removal of 60 card formats. But between the three opponents, frequent hexproof, ward and recent value engines like Pantlaza or Voja; I have elected to increase my mass removal instead. 4-5 effects that blow up the board, and ir feels neccesary.
I'm so incredibly against removal, except with my Niv-Mizzet Paragon deck - giving all my two colour spells jumpstart, I load up the deck with all the modular cards, and it's such a fun blaster. It makes for better games too
Running more removal is not "against" your own deck strategy, these players would be wrong. Removal opens safe SPACE on the board for your stuff .... so you need it ! It's like bug repelent!!!
I've never had a problem with running enough removal, though the kind of removal varies deck to deck. But I've always seen deck building as a matter of ratios, so making sure that whether my interaction is single target, boardwipes, or the engines you talked about, its always been about hitting a target. I will say, going in with an idea of how many of each "type" of card already makes it easier fitting everything, grabbing extra of everything and slimming everything down. Though my mixture of adhd and spreadsheeting is perhaps not for everyone, lol, especially considering Ive never really used scryfall or edhrec
I had a whole comment typed out 50 seconds in then pressed play and realized I was responding to a video this wasn't going to be. Has commander timmyism really gotten so bad that you have to convince people to play BOARDWIPES now?
Just to add to this, apply this to other ‘vegetables’ too. I always run graveyard hate in my decks, and it’s never bojuka bog. Try and run synergistic pieces of hate, or failing that ones that draw cards (I love soul-guide lantern for this, but nihil spellbombbis good too)
Hey! I like your thoughts about alot of your decks you make videos of. I need your thoughts on a jeskai control commander with Hinata. How many removals/drawspells/creatures do you recommend? I don't want to get too attached to Hinatas reduction bonus, but over all a board control deck where the big X spells are only a bonus feature. Could you give some pointers? :)
Remember that you need removal but if you add too much removal then all your deck does is remove other players' targets and can't actually perform the strategy you are trying to peform. If you are not playing control, removal is a form of control and you must concede that you need to surrender some of this removal in order to actually find the cards for ypur strategy. Again, if your deck is full of removal then that's ALL you can do. Removal doesn't win the game. Also bear in mind that decks filled with removal and do nothing else are the worst decks to play against. There is no win con. Neither player is playing the game. Neither player is having fun. You need removal but you also need to leave ample space to find your other cards. It's a fine line when you're deck tuning. When you get right down to the tightened deck list you might wish you could add more removal but you just cant cos you'll lose frequency of finding your combo pieces or setups or payoffs, and not finding these pieces causes you to lose more often than not finding the removal exactly when you need it. Finally, some decks don't need exactly removal. I have some mill decks that are tempo-focused, so they are mono blue running 0 removal. Counters, bounces and things that cripple creature targets (like Trapped in the Ice or Witness Protection). So there are ways to play with pseudo-removal and no solid removal at all.
It always baffles me, how more kitchen table EDH players often times will complain about an infinite variety of decks, yet refuse to simply play interaction and when someone plays interaction for their stuff, they'll complain about that as well. They'll complain about someone playing a solitaire type deck instead of playing interaction, yet will complain when someone interacts with their solitaire strategy. I hope this video reaches a lot of people. Maybe you should make a video about how to play around interaction next (baiting counterspells, not over-extending to the board against boardwipes, playing creature- or artifact-based ramp against land destruction etc. and of course understanding, that every strategy will always have a weakness, even their own strategy).
I'd say removal is a balancing act. Too little removal and it becomes a race to see which player pops off first. Too much removal and you end up with slogs for games where as soon as someone starts to get set up, a board clear happens and sets everything back to square 1. For my money, I like a few, very effective, one sided mass removal spells, and a couple flexible options for target removal. I typically don't like to run Aura shards, just because it can be really oppressive against some strategies. An artifact or enchantress deck doesn't really get to play the game against an aura shards, and that ends up not being very fun. For my money, tragic arrogance is my favorite removal spell. It gets around a lot of forms of protection, and massively jumps you ahead since you can choose what you get to keep. Winds of abandon is also amazing, and can even flex into spot removal if needed. Plus, sometimes ramping everyone a bunch leads to some funny shenanigans. Red has some fun stuff like cathartic pyre that can act as spot removal or card selection as needed. Gimli's reckless might is actually a really sweet engine too. Blue has the infamous cyclonic rift, and a few other choice options like aether gale, spectral deluge, and ixidron. For green, my favorite is kenrith's transformation, since it can replace it's self, and lock a commander in play. Green has some surprisingly decent spot removal, but engines and mass removal aren't really it's strength. You're probably better off just beating down and killing your opponents. You can run ulvenwald tracker, but it doesn't usually stick around long. Black has some really decent board clears, some of which you can build around to make even more effective, such as extinction event, toxic deluge, and nightmare unmaking. It also has some strong effects around edicts, by either looping etb edict creatures like merciless executioner and fleshbag marauder, or by using things like dictate of erebos. These can be a little oppressive though depending on how quickly and efficiently your deck can abuse them.
for the first idea, more dense removal, I feel like these really strongly contribute to a sense of hopelessness at the table that's not very enjoyable. Especially 2. When I was new to EDH, I went through a whole phase of "why don't people play these old commanders? They seem pretty neat!" and 2 of them were Brago and Meren. These are probably the most hated decks I've ever made. The idea of slowly reality aciding away anything useful, or getting 3 plaguecrafters off in the same turn with meren, just makes people totally disinterested in continuing to play the game. And for the other part of removal that hits a lot, I feel like you do some random removing that just sets people back to the point where they might not be able to make any decent plays for awhile, especially for the cards that have land/artifact as one of the targets.
I really love the way you share the experience you've learnt during your deck building in a nice approachable way where people can understand the decisions behind it and not just I've added this card. After watching multiple of your videos I think of your opinion really highly and was wondering if you could help me out. I am looking for a very specific play experience. I want to build a casual toolbox-like commander where it can find answers for multiple situations but doesn't finish through combat damage or an infite combo but doesn't keep the game too long and opressive to play against. Would you have any suggestions how to achieve this ir maybe some commander suggestions?
I don't like running 1-card removal engines because while they're super powerful, people get very scared of them. And ironically they either immediately catch a removal spell or get me hit for 20 before a 2nd activation
Id love to play a sufficient amount of removal. my issue is, I cant find enough good interaction for most of my decks. Most removal costs 3 or more and that is a ton of mana to hold up in today's fast-paced, 5-mana-commanders-are-too-slow environments. and a lot of popular removal pieces are sorcery speed. Then of course I'm stuck in pods where I'm the only one even trying to run removal, so I always feel like i'm playing a 1-vs-3 game.
Removal is intrinsically defensive. Which means when you run allot of it you'r betting that your endgame will be stronger then that of your opponent. Removals purpose is to allow you to survive long enough to get to that endgame. You'r goal in any deck always to approach your decks win conditions in the fastest way possible. What makes it helpful rather then an even stall. Is the it usually cost's less to play then the threats it removes. I recently found Bitter Triumph to be exceptional for any decks which can reinanimate. Sence placing a high value cards into graveyard can be the quickest route to your win condition with those decks. While also removing a threat from the board. Idealy you cast your final threat when the oppent has just ran out off cards to draw.
I've been told I should "run more removal" after a very unlucky game where I drew no removal in 5 turns despite being a "Removal Tribal" with 32 removal cards. Don't give advice like "run more removal" unless you have seen the deck list.
I like to think of removal as answers, you want answer slots. For example if i'm playing Sigarda Host of Herons as my commander, I need to assume that counter spells would be the disruption therefore I need a certain amount of answers to ensure that safe cast, so things like Cavern of Souls, destiny spinner etc now become a part of the deck. Since targeted removal is pointless against hexproof next I need to worry about boardwipes, so flickerform indestructable engines etc become paramount. As far as the removal multi removal is the way to go, also I'd say you want aggressive answers for things your deck doesn't run a ton of. If you are an enchantment based deck and you can slide in some destroy all artifacts go for it, people react less aggressively to all effects, singling out stuff with removal makes players feel hated on. Cards like windgrace's judgement will draw less ire in many cases than a swords to plowshares
Generally speaking, a deck needs 2 types of removal spells: First are the efficient, single target removal spells for what I call "surgical strikes". These will usually remain in your hand until you spot a crucial piece on the table that needs to go ASAP. Then we have the nuclear strikes, spells that send the entire table back to square 1. These are better when you have fallen behind on board and have little to nothing to use. I prefer to include cards that hit every nonland permanent with those. To be honest, removal engines aren't my cup of tea because they tend to create miserable board states. Cards like Dictate of Erebos and Grave Pact are extremely powerful but they end up annihilating the table and make everyone hate you. There is no strictly right or wrong way to play your removal spells but, if you try to hold back and take out only what's bound to take over the game within the next couple of turns, you will not only find that you are wasting less cards, you will also see that the table will be much more lenient with your plays.
My mind is always boggled by the subset of casual EDH players that have determined that interferring with anything on their opponent's board is "rude" and only serves to "slow down the game". If that's how you want to play, why don't you determine games by just laying out your opening hands and seeing who has the best one? Interaction is key to MTG's design because sitting and watching someone else take a lengthy turn is boring when you aren't holding a counterspell in your hand.
“A lot of Edh discourse exists around the concept of removal, and more specifically around the question of whether people should be running more of it.” “The answer is yes.” (end of video) 😎
One of my favorite Removal spells is Hex, which destroys 6 target creatures. Not up to 6, though, so you must be careful. *For when killing five just isn't enough.*
I look at counter/Removal like this Brake the game down to its basics In most games you're goal is to remove a card your enemy controls with one of yours, preferable while you keep yours But in a game as dynamic as MTG that's not always going to be the case. This is mostly with creature spells So the way i look at it, when i cast a counter/kill spell i know deep down if it dosent have an activated ability that will save it it will always be a 1 for 1 trade If u have draw power your hand should always look better then your enemy
Removal engines are great, but if they are too efficient at what they do, they can completely lock people out of playing their game, which can lead to very *un*interactive games, rather than interactive games. Some cards just push certain card types or strategies too far out of the game, like the aura shards you mentioned can completely shut down artifact or enchantment based strategies, but also cards like gravepact can make voltron decks or strategies revolving around a handful of powerful creatures completely shut down. If you're playing in a meta where the players are okay with such hard lockdown pieces, then by all means, go ahead, but most metas (in my experience) are not ready for that level of disruption.
Just play Reaper King and everything you play is removal. Problem solved. Lol. Seriously, I do play a fun RK deck, but in general, I try to make removal make the most sense within the deck
One show in particular where players demonstrate a lack of removal? game knights on command zone. in one example, a player put over 20 copies of rat colony into her graveyard and no one individual was prepared. The threat assessment was absolute rubbish as well. I would be lucky to get away with that at all in any game I've ever been in.
