Such blasphemy shant be tolerated. Do thine eyes not rest upon his most beautiful shell? If thou dareth to compare such a wonderful snail to a simple minded slug thou art nothing more than a heretic.
Snail man has instantly become my favorite edh channel. I love the way videos are presented and in a few videos ive learned a lot about edh even after playing it for many years.
I don't fully understand what a euro game is, but I feel like this analogy would have some teeth if I did. I can tell this is written with a specific "euro game" in mind, but what exactly I have no idea.
@@ToxicAtom It's a tabletop board game term for "puzzly, resource managing engine builder", named "euro" because its a game design ethos that originally came from europe. Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride are very simplified examples of those. Snail is referring to how in modern board games, these Euro games have trended toward focusing on just building Engines to make resources and reduce interaction with the other players. It's a very apt description of modern commander among newer, casual players, and I suspect that the reason those types of board games are popular are very similar to the reasons many of these new players like to play Commander this way.
@@Elysian-hl1gd Ah, that makes sense. I was under the impression it was a jab at specifically another card game. I have to agree, the sorta "hands-off" nature of Catan really turned me off on it despite people raving about how good it is.
Indeed. If a deck is complex and especially combo or control deck, it makes a huge difference on who is piloting the deck. Though I bet the players behind this video were good enough for the stats to be at least somewhat accurate since the meta was so contained.
I think I'll start doing this for my decks. Actually document how the deck finished in the pod, what it beat or lost to, and what (if anything) I really wanted for during that game. Does the deck need more lands? Does it need more draw? Does it want more ramp? It'll be better to have game data tracked than just vibe-checking it & goldfishing. Seems especially important for a hard-to-goldfish deck. A ramp deck can probably assess the reliability of its curve-outs, but a deck like the Sauron of Many Colors deck my buddy is working on will need data from opponents too.
I created a Sheets this year tracking all my decks with rudimentary stuff, mostly win/loss, land counts, and if I went first or not. So far it's been really eye opening, even if I've moved a bit away from playing Commander as much as I used to.
Sidenote: imo, this topic is interesting enough by itself that the "it devolved into an aggro nightmare" thumbnail is not really needed, and i kept waiting for that part of the story to happen. But I'm also not a RU-vidr, so maybe that's necessary, idk
This video reminded me a lot of how my old playgroup used to build decks for EDH for a while: - Random commander (with 1 mulligan) - 25€ Budget (minus the commander, plain basics are free) - no Sol Ring For playing we often used to put our decks on the table, and everybody picked one deck, regardless of who brought it. Some of the most fun I ever hadwith EDH
This sounds pretty similar to the restrictions my group had. Not random commanders necessarily, but mostly no popular commanders. Arahbo is the only one in our pool that cracks the top 200 commanders, and the rest are far less played than that.
I just find it funny and interesting that the 3 color combos you call out as "generic" end up being Izzet, Dimir and Simic (commonality BLUE). I tend to agree actually. I have at least seen SOME interesting/unique builds of Izzet and Dimir (but you have to give it a real try to avoid the "norm")... and Simic is SOOO hard to build in a way that doesn't just scream Simic-pile-go. No critique or issue. I just agree. And I LOVE the format you created. The meta, and keeping your play options open by rolling for decks. Just very cool. I will be looking to start up something similar. Thanks for the idea!
I'm personally a scrub with anything Blue mana, so when I made my Tanazir Quandrix deck, I leaned really hard into what Green lacks - Evasion. Since that deck got a lot of compliments at my LGS for that angle of construction, I'm slowly going to tinker with it
Simic is so boring to build, either I feel like my deck is just the most generic pile of good stuff, or I feel like my deck is incredibly underpowered because of the omission of said good stuff cards.
I built a mono-blue deck that seems to follow a similar philosophy as his deck, but without the competitive mindset. Grazillax, Illithid Scholar in the CZ, with a whole lot of evasive 1-2 drops, every Bident of Thassa effect in blue, plus Lab Man and Jace, Wielder of Mysteries. I've never killed anyone with the deck, yet it has a great winrate. Loads of fun to play
I loved hearing about these decks in a previous video, in fact I spent like a month theory crafting my own pool of decks I could try with my pods. I'm so glad to see this topic talked about more!
My playgroup has a budget format called "Commander Quarters", which is similar to this but a bit stricter, and without the randomness. Every card, including the commander, needs to be $0.25 or less. My deck for that (and currently only commander deck) is a Vrestin insect tribal deck. You'd be surprised what cards are under that price threshold - I was able to even put Arcane Signet in the deck!
I actually made a literal $20 cEDH deck before thanks to goblins being cheap and under 25cents for the most part. These days the deck has obviously gone up in price because of the plainswalkers and some cards have actually gotten more expensive, but when i made it literally cost me $20 USD and no i am not talking about ink for the printer like i am talking about actual cards Elfball is also a very cheap option not just Mono Red Goblin burn with a few Chandra plainswalkers sprinkled in after it rotated out of standard for Brawl thus i took a singleton 60 card deck and turned it into a singleton 100 card deck with not much changed needed just needed a few more goblins
If i may recommend; Azorius: Heliod, the Radiant Dawn Dimir: Araumi of the Dead Tide Rakdos: Chainer, Nightmare Adept Gruul: Ruric Thar, the Unbowed Selesnia: Shanna, Sisay's Legacy Orhov: Burakos, Party Leader // Folk Hero Izzet: Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain Golgari: Slimefoot, the Stowaway Boros: Zabaz, the Glimmerwasp Simic: Gretchen Titchwillow All these options should allow you to get plenty good representation of the colors while being fairly competitive on a budget. Just make sure Shanna is using creatures that have ETB draw a card and the rest of them should be self explanatory.
I fucking love playing against ruric thar, its so unapologetic. Even as a spellslinger player, what it does is it gives you a 'side quest' to doom blade the thing and take 6. You do have to be a little careful and always leave a 'way out' to not become a selective prison deck that locks only half the table
Some great recommendations for newer budget builds, especially as most of the decks are now in the $75 range. Certainly achieveable as a main deck but a little steep to get 10xx and keep as almost a board game box
I like this way of thinking to deckbuilding, rather than just what I want to achieve, make it "What sort of problems do I want my opponent to face" This is probably a way healthier way of thinking about deckbuilding in general, due to how this changes your mentality in terms of deckbuilding and playing. This is a way more cooperative mentality instead of just trying to show off what you want to do. You will also be less salty for losing, because the efforts are more cooperative. I think this is somewhat why I am glad to see people winning with my decks that I've built, turns out whats more fun than just winning, is having others solve your deck, because it means that my efforts crafting it and thoughts put into it really can be appreciated, its even better if they actually find playing it fun. It's certainly interesting that you guys had this sort of pod of decks that are all somewhat unique, played and probably studied by each member, so each new game of 4 will feel like an intense problem solving exercise
You keep on giving new and interesting ways to look at deck building, I really appreciate it Makes me realize how I look at deck buildings in retrospective and see where I do good or when I go wrong
Since finding this channel in the last few weeks, this channel has become one of my fav edh channels and I’m super considering giving the patreon bucks to
I'm going to study the EDH format in deep depth because of this video. I'm trying to "solve" the format by making a $100 deck that is as strong, yet resilient as possible. This video is a humungous stepping stone for me, thank you for pumping out the content that you do, it truly has made my week!
Word of advice you can make cEDH decks for as low as $20 USD without proxying, however they are not going to be as strong as the ones that do proxy even if they are pretty damn strong. The easiest ones to do are Goblin burn and Elfball considering the cards are so abundant and cheap especially green with ramp so ya could just do a Mono Green Mazes end type of thing to where you just ramp the win out and the commander could just be any generic 5c one though if Golos was not banned that would have been the best one for it
Have you thought about Oji? Blink is a very resilient archetype, and repeating blinks like thassa or conjurers closet are expensive. With oji you can just run every 1 mana draw spell and use those as your repeating blinks. I built it for 20 euros with uncommons only and while it lacked board strength (the thing that might be solved with a few good rares) it was very very hard to kill the deck or even remove anything
been having a ton of success with my ~$50 Lilah deck. Prowess allows for lots of protection spells while still posing a threat, and the plotting of good utility spells means youre never shy on removal or card draw. 80% wr so far against very strong decks
This is the first video of yours I have seen, and it was really informative. I think doing what you mentioned in the video is an excellent exercise in deck building, threat assessment, and understanding power levels. I might pitch the idea to my normal pod to see if it sparks their interest.
Me and my friends have challenged ourselves to build 25€ (I live in Europe) decks, with additional restriction of banning sol ring. It's fantastic, I highly recommend doing this. Initially we wanted to build one, but I ended up building three 25€ decks, one 15€ deck, and one 50€ deck, and it's GREAT. All but one of these decks are good enough for me to comfortably bring to a random table
My group never explicitly banned Sol Ring, but there was a kind of unspoken understanding that it shouldn't go in these decks. It's definitely a good choice if you're trying to reduce variance and get to see the decks perform in their purest form.
Yeah, they honestly should never have allowed sol ring in commander to begin with. The cat is now out of the bag, but turn 1 land sol ring arcane signet while other three players just play a tapland just sets you on rails to win
@@franslair2199I've stopped using sol ring personally, you can de the same, we don't need to have it banned, our decks can all be slightly worse, and then we'll just point at the sol ring player like "hey lets kill that one first"
I've been here since (almost) the start and you were instantly, and remain, my favorite Magic creator. Simple, clean and clearly presented information. This game is fucking complicated enough, I don't need fancy graphics in my videos. Thank you 🙏 keep up the great work, sir!
Im convinced due to the history and experience behind so many of these videos that snail knows something we dont about edh, I learn something new each vid 😄
One of the main theories I have when crafting mono black decks (and orzhov decks for that matter) is that lifegain is king. Life is a resource that if you can have enough of it, you can generally have enough turns to find answers for your opponents. Outside of commander damage, this theory has prevailed. Board Wipes + Lifegain + Repeat hand disruption has made it so that it is generally favorable to play against most EDH Decks. Playing the archenemy is also fun, because there is a set amount of fun in the game and I intend to have all of it.
In a competitive (philosophy, not cEDH) pod, you cannot survive long as archenemy, not more than a few turns, depending on boardstate and resources (barring a full stax-lock). It's too easy to disrupt your opponents, in decks that were built around it. I get that you like playing like that, but in a real pod, that's just not feasible.
I am so glad you mentioned Sygg, this was my most beloved commander about 10 years ago when I played EDH. Was mono black with effects that drained everybody's life and little tricks like Imp's Mischief. Ah memories!
This is a pretty cool project. The idea of creating a controlled pool of decks that are balanced against each other in a well maintained meta to be played in casual settings would be pretty cool to do in addition to standard casual play where players can focus on more creative deck ideas. I think having that kind of deck pool at the ready is also an amazing tool to use for teaching new players how to play in a game environment, whether Multiplayer FFA or 1v1, that standardizes deck power and board/game complexity.
You literally inspired my current pod's league of playing the same decks until they're where we want them for our Pod, and this gives me even more ideas. 😁
if there was ever a game to get analytic over. It would absolutely be magic. Every game is winnable when you sit down, and the decisions you make both pre game in deck building, and during the game with your plays, to even the post game analysis all contribute to the win. Having put a solid decade into magic, and intentionally playing to win both in standard and modern. Commander still persists as the most interesting and fun format for me. I wish I had a more focused playgroup in paper, but it is difficult to find people who have the deep game knowledge and budget to play the best stuff. Your videos have helped me tune in my spike to create fun and interactive games with all skill levels. Top notch content snail!
Start looking for an actual cEDH group near you... cEDH players have no issues with proxies, have incredibly deep knowledge of the game, build and play to win at all costs (barring bad sportsmanship), and are generally incredibly chill. cEDH is terriby fun, and removes a ton of the usual issues that you find in an EDH pod.
Great video it is! I do as well have a pool of decks, although in a range 190-390$ (mainly thanks to well timed purchases of cards, that were substantially cheaper). Decks are all mine, but played significant role in introducing, or even re-introducing frens to the rectangular cardboard autism. Those are mostly some sort of creature based decks, maybe midrange-like, but can mount pressure up quickly in case of demand for said pressure. And the top contender for creativity and diversity of the deck building is my “not yet 20 recipies of kimchi” - 3 Humans decks assembled and ready, +WH40000 Imperium deck + many Human partner commanders waiting. Yet, jokes aside, they all play notably differntly - yes, you do eventually want to amass big strike force, but they do it with different setup, different means to it, and even have varying emphasis on commander itself.
I've been trying to do the same thing with a budget of 30€ and all commanders coming from the plane of Ravnica. So far I've got: - Juri, Master of the Revue. While you sacrifice stuff for value the commander grows stronger, then you fling it to finish an opponent. There's also a couple of cards that grant him flying/unblockability. - Isperia the Inscrutable. it's azorius fliers with sort of a "toolbox" since the commander is a tutor. - Prime Speaker Vannifar. I'm not gonna lie, it's your list with like 4 or 5 cards swapped. I hate simic. - Karlov of the Ghost Council. It's lifegain control that plays very similar to your Kambal deck (although there's quite a difference in card choices). - Emmara, Soul of the Accord. It's a surprisingly fast token deck, I'm proud of how well this deck turned out. - Melek, Reforged Researcher. I could've built another fling deck but for the sake of diversity this one is a weird spell copy deck, you want to burn your opponents copying Truths or Consequences, Prisoner's Dilemma and Ensnared by the Mara. I haven't tested these yet because i wanted to finish them all first, but I'm unsure about the other four commanders (I don't want anything too complicated like the new Entrata and Izoni). Also I'm preoccupied about Karlov, it seems an unwinnable matchup for Juri. I'm willing to redo some of these but Juri is non-negotiable.
fascinating. I love the guild die to decide who plays what. Had a similar experience with my first commander deck: my group of friends (recently back from uni at the time) each built a deck around one of the shards of Alara. I at least still have mine (Prossh) and it's still one of my most powerful and fave decks.
I enjoy your videos. I have built the Rogues deck and nice to pull out knowing you will draw a ton of cards. I have also built Han's Xyris deck, it is fun and plays as the snowball effect as you have spoken about.
My playgroup plays what we call "the gentlemen's EDH" where any deck is not allowed to make infinite loops or use cards that have "win the game" in them, but everything else is fine power wise. I can safely say that there is no better MTG experience than playing EDH like this.
I really like this idea in place of building a cube. You can build it at whatever power level and budget you want to and make sure the decks are relatively balanced. I'm already getting ideas for a Chainer, Nightmare Adept reanimator deck and a Shabraz, the Skyshark cantrip deck.
I'm actually doing something very similar to this with a mono colored tribal deck for each color, plus an extra colorless Eldrazi deck. I first made the red Dragon deck when I was in high school, and I've been editing it with the general playgroup since then. Then I made a mono white Angel deck while I was a senior, which got the boost it needed to be on par with dragons when New Capenna gave it Giada. More recently I made a demons deck for black, which rounded out nicely when i was able to put the Ob Nixilus planeswalker in its command zone. The Green deck is a wurm tribal deck that relies on Baru from Dominaria United to make lots of tokens. There was already an eldrazi deck in the playgroup so I wanted to make mine unique (and didn't want to buy the expensive titans) so I put Liberator, Urza's battlethopter in the command zone. These 5 decks are all pretty close in power, but I've been struggling with the mono blue deck, which I decided to go with Slim Voda and make it a multi-tribe so now I'm just rounding out the rest of the deck.
I did similar thing in high school with friends, and the deck that won the most was Wrexial, the risen deep. Thing to note tho. We had no idea what "playing an interactive game" meant, so the removal was limited to sweepers and literally a few pointed ones.
I understand the dilemma. I've built so many decks during the pandemic and tested them out over and over replacing or severely editing decks that didn't fit interestingly enough into the pool. I still need to finish building the guilds, but I've got about 30 decks. Just built Boros, but not sure I like it and think I want to retune it. Great video and I love seeing your process.
I might actually propose this for my playgroup. Though I am definitely on the lower end in terms of card pools. In part because I started (effectively) this year and got a lot of support from a friend to enable it. But I am also interested in the format and there is at least one player who does have a few EDH decks. Though from the sound of it, we might end up with as many as eight people some days. Which will only make it more fun, and a little bit more frustrating, I imagine.
I once built a pool of guild based decks and also used the dice XD I made EDH decks using the guild kits (x2 for lands) and filled gaps with guild cards from Guilds of Ravnica/Ravnica Allegiance sets Was pretty fun :D
Me and my play group are having the same kind of experiece, after a couple of year of "High Power" proxy-fueled unhinged Commanders, we agreed on building 30 euros budget deck. We ended up with a super aggro pod, there is a Zada, a Wilson/Raised by Giants, a Krenko mob boss and a skullbriar, no game makes It past turn seven, so that we play double the games that we were used to. It's a really fun environment.
The budget really adds to the challenge, building 25 euros decks means that every 1 euro card is a tough decision in deckbuilding. You will have to play a lot of suboptimal more mana expensive stuff, so slower games. But removal is cheap, strong removal + bad wincons = interactive games
With my group, we also tried something similar with a 50 euro budget without having restrictions on commanders or combos. It ended up being a total mess with decks such as Selvala, Anje, Yuriko, and Kinnan becoming totally dominant and games getting very repetitive (everyone was trying to rush their combos as fast as possibile since there was no counterplay). The main issue was the lack of counterplay with this budget and the reliability of a few cheap but effective combos. We ended up going back to budgetless (we are proxy friendly) and split the power level of commanders, it allowed for way more variety in commanders and combos.
Oof i lost all duals and fetches and a lot of staples for legacy during a move and can't afford to replace them. Lol that move deck part intro brought back some bad memories xD
it feels so weird seeing a deck with "wins 40% of games" called dominating, a part of me will never get used to thinking in terms of "if wins are spread evenly across players that would be 25% cause there are 4 players so going past that is good"
I'd love to hear your thoughts on Competitive Pauper Commander, cPDH. I relate a lot to your videos, this desire to play strong competitive decks, but not feeling captivated by what cEDH has to offer as a format. cPDH is more standardized version of these $25 decks, and in a deck of all common cards everyone needs to be pulling their weight. I've fallen in love with it and it allows me to build and play these strong decks without needing to set arbitrary limits on budget (like in your Malcolm deck)
I did something similar, built the guilds all similar in power and tried to have them unique. Unfortunately, my group has now changed to people running extreme amounts of proxies and playing CEDH. My snapping point was a guy saying he only swapped out a few lands in his precon, so it should be on par with the other Fallout Precons. Smash cut to him having a set of fetch, dual lands, shock lands, etc.
Recently my pod decided to challenge ourselves by making decks that had tcg prices of $25 only. Not a cent higher was allowed. None of us have played cedh or anything but our decks power levels always seemed wonky. There ended up being two selesnya decks, one mono red deck, and a colorless deck. Let me just say that if your pod has a hard time keeping things fair, this is a great way to start. I’m not sure we’ve ever had as much fun as we did playing these goofy budget decks. Play budget!
I'm looking to actually playing Commander physically for once and I'd really love to make a monoblack pile of removal deck, I assume yours wasn't very expensive due to the context, so do you have that list anywhere? I want to get in physically but I don't want to break the bank. I was initially planning to make it a toshiro umizawa deck
Might take a look of these commanders to build cause my play group hates playing against my Breya combo Out of 40 games I have won 23 of which in its newest iteration (in total from first iteration to now is about 120 games with 40 wins) The combo I go for is Breya + marionette master able to burn someone for 11 damage at the cost of 2 artifacts Sub theme incase game plane goes wrong is a token go wide using brudi myr battlesphere Most games I win when I pull magister sphinx cause it’s “set players life to 10” ability that I threw in as a “lol probably never gonna pull it off”
Hey Salubrious! I have a question I'd be curious to know your thoughts on. How do you build tribal decks? I've tried several times to build different tribes and they always either just feel boring to me, too straight forward, or like they're not strong at all and I just pivot it into one of my more typical strats, shared animosity or impact Tremors usually. Am I just bad at brewing or is making a mid to mid-high power tribal deck that doesn't rely on the usual suspects that difficult?
In cases where I've built tribal decks, I decided on the tribe based on specific synergies with various cards and then constructed the deck around those, rather than just deciding to play a generic *insert tribe here* deck. For the cats deck of this pool, I noted that the commander buffs a single cat each turn and does so right from the start of the game, and based on this I decided to build an aggro/voltron-oriented cats deck rather than a more generic go-wide deck. To go along with this, I added equipments to help out that singular attacker, protection to keep that attacker alive, and draw that checks the power of one of my creatures since I know it's going to be a minimum of four due to the commander. For the rogues deck of this pool, the rogue-synergies were basically added after the core of the deck was figured out. I started out with evasive creatures and cards that do things when I hit opponents, and then it just so happened that adding rogue-tribal cards paired well with these since most of the creatures in the deck were rogues anyway, and the prowl mechanic works well with evasive creatures. I think the biggest pitfall people have with tribal decks is usually that the tribe *is* the deck. People build a zombies deck, or a slivers deck, or a goblins deck, and the deck doesn't have an identity outside of that tribe. In my opinion, more people should ask what playing tribal cards is doing for their gameplan, and then try to tune the gameplan of the deck to fit whatever strengths the tribal cards are offering them.
I have made a group of ten pauper decks with just about the same philosophy. I want every game to be a bit unexpected, and very dynamic. Although, I’m not sticking to a specific color combination with each deck. What I have found to be extremely surprising, is that the worst preforming decks are the ones that are the most played in the pauper metagame. For example “Dimir Terror” and “Caw Gates” each have equally mediocre win percentages; which just shows how much the metagame dictates the power of a deck.
I would love to form a pod like this, unfortunately my LGS doesnt really fit this vibe and I dont have a regular play group of my own. Considering setting up webcam to play some webcam magic with people in my region with more availabity than one day a week
Casual edh imo, should be mainly the home for cards that dont make 60 card formats. There’s no prize, there’s a huge card pool and legendary pool, and the games should last at least 7 turns (10-12 average). Combat should be the main wincon of most prevalent. If you have the best cards, play to combo off or win before turn 7, have multiple infinites, and play with more than 2 pieces of fast mana, then that is NOT Casual EDH…..its very simple. Outliers and exceptions dont make the rules; i dont wanna hear about “golos energy” and why he shouldn’t be banned….thats the lamest excuse in the book. Play a legendary not in the top 100 that is an automatic eye-roll or inherently too high power of a commander. Its fine to have a deck that pops off but always have at least 1 or more truly casual options.
