Is Gonti Confused or am I Confused? 

I'd be very interested to see a "Your 3 Color Mana Base Sucks, Here's Why" video.

Void Attendant is secretly becoming one of the funniest and least suspected silver bullets as the game develops. I've been playing with it for over a year now. The number of impulse draw effects keep increasing, with more and more ways the game uses the exile zone. Take plot for example: Void Attendant counters all plot cards. Void attendant, counters Prosper tome bound, opposition agent, void walker, every single adventure spell and so on. It won't always have a chance to shine, but when it does, it is like an on board repeatable 2 mana counterspell. The mana banking has been auxiliary in my uses. The repeatable effect itself is worth it in those match ups. Besides, who is gonna spend removal on an uncommon minotaur (3 mana 2/3) from oath of the gatewatch?

Something notable about Drana (and by extension cards such as Gurmag Swiftwing and Weeping Angel) is that they trigger Gonti seperately from other combat damage due to first strike! If there are some mediocre flyers, those two might be worth slotting in.

"Also, you're welcome for the 2 minute adjustment period, all ye lurkers in the night." 😬

"Oblivion Sour" The *best* face puckering candy this side of the multiverse!

I quite enjoy the analysis, great insights! I now also hope to build a separate felix five boots deck because he's great and hillarious and I love slimes

I would like to commend you on how much you're opening our brains to logic in deck building, it's a game changer. Not all of what I've heard you say is new to me, but you say it in a way that just clicks. thank you!

This is the first video of yours I come across and I love your style and well thought out and explained insights. Gonna lurk in your previous content for a while and wait patiently for that manabase video. I need it for a 5color deck in particular which is giving me trouble.

Gonti reminds me of Ixhel, Scion of Atraxa in the sense that they both steal the top card of your opponents' libraries for doing X thing.

This is a great video. You have the best analysis of the underlying mechanics of casual Commander out there.

great video, keep up the good work I liked the recommendations and analysis.

Great video! I would love to see this is as a series, reviewing and tuning older precons too

Video idea: "A Defense of Monocolored Commanders" - artificially restricted card choice can be liberating in terms of analysis paralysis and lead to more fun choices/"pet" slots - the color pie has opened up since 12-15 years ago, pretty much every color has some version of everything you need to build a solid deck, even if the strength varies - even with a fairly competitive version of your Commander, fewer colors gets habitually underestimated due to perceived lower power/flexibility and the fact that your mana base will have many basics - similiar to above, building on a budget is so much easier

this was pretty helpful for me to get how to improve my own deck and also see how stealing decks should work if i choose to build one. i’d love to see this same type of video for the most wanted precon, since that’s what i bought

Love your content sir. Discussing this new sweet commander is just icing on the cake

I really like your deck analysis. I wish you would do this for every precon.

The original Gonti was my very first commander, so I can't wait to build this one! Dimir Infiltrator seems like a really good fit in the deck, as an evasive 2 drop that give access to a nice toolbox of cheap spells (Heroic Intervention, or its budget alternative, Golgari Charm, look like cool targets to add in the deck)

Mana base video?! Yay! I’m always down to know how to make a good mana base!

I like that you playtested the precon before upgrading. That's something I'd like to do and see other content creators do

Now etali, there’s a theft commander! With chaos wand it’s pure chaos

Homeward Path is now a staple land for me because of how much theft now goes on. If I wanted to feel robbed I'd just buy a collector booster.

I think in terms of a raw "Theft Matters" commander, Tasha is more what this deck wants to be. I also find it very funny that they started off building this as "Villainous Wealth.dek" and forgot to make a commander that actually synergizes with Villainous Wealth. Also, here's a fun fact: There are exactly 2 theft-cast spells that require Green at all (as of time of writing), and neither of them synergize with Gonti, as both of their theft-cast effects avoid mana cost. There is no functional reason for Gonti to be green other than "3 colors > 2 colors cuz commander"

Being able to watch your videos is always a treasure (token)

Here's my observation: Don't forget that Wotc design their precon with 2 commanders in mind. The cards you point out having no synergy with gonti: it's often because they have synergy with the secondary commander Felix.

Good video! Here's a couple of creatures I like, that I've gotten for the deck Hypnotic Siren - Early evasive creature that becomes a mind control lategame Lantern Bearer - Same deal, buff a creature from the grave Dauthi Voidwalker - Obvious reasons, expensive card, but synergizes well Mosswood Dreadknight - Not as evasive as other picks, but damn this fella is persistent. You can keep bringing him back and drawing cards through all kinds of removal Glissa Sunslayer - Again, not that evasive, but certainly not a fun creature to block, lots of upside I've tried to maintain a lot of the thief cards, but you make some solid points about that. I even added one, the Diary of River Song, because that card is very zany and leads to great moments. Maybe I should cut down on them, I'm not quite sure how to balance it out. Because I am playing the deck cause I like theft, but the lack of focus is unfortunate

I got the Grand Larceny deck on a whim to spend an afternoon playing with my friends, all of us with a Thunder Junction precon. We had a good time, but the deck seemed so unfocused that I didn't really like it more than just for the experience of playing it against the other precons. I had a mind to not touch the deck again for a while, until I saw this video. Since all the upgrades are cheap and/or I already had the cards sitting around, it was a worthwhile upgrade, and I tried it out again today. This deck did fairly well in each game, having played 4 games and winning 1, doing meaningful things every game. I do yearn for the alternate universe where you made this video about the "big theft spells" aspect of the deck instead, but regardless, fantastic video.

Your precon analysis is always incredible! I still really wish you would do Quick Draw too though. I was really curious to see if you would choose to build it without infinite combos since you have said you don't usually like for some cards in a deck to be so much better than others.

One thing I've learned from my Pako and Haldan deck that I feel like you almost got to with this guide was the ability for you to play your opponents lands. You mentioned wayward swordtooth, but some of the best ramp cards for the deck are azusa lost but seeking, exploration, explore (this and pako/haldan are probably the two bwst decks to run explore in the format), and even Druid Class since it gives you some incidental lifegain to offset the hate you'll be drawing.

I also like that design a lot and its very nice the it evolved from non creature spells to full blown anything.

Excellent video, as usual. My takeaway is that we need a video on “fun/chaos” cards like Chaos Wand, Villainous Wealth, Possibility Storm, Glimpse of Tomorrow, etc.

I played one game and I knew there was something wrong with it. Thanks for pointing tis out.

For a more theft-focused deck I tried adding lots of those blue cards that put permanents on the top of their owners' library. It works really well when you're up against people that like to run big scary things, because they quickly become your own big scary things.

Now that you've done this stealy deck I'd love to see your take on a Tibalt, Cosmic Imposter deck!

Wow! I just got the precon the other day and I think I pinpointed and swapped out exactly all those ones you listed as iffy except Thieving Spelljacker xD I'm still relatively new, so I don't really have evasive creatures in my collection, so I just added some more ramp and draw. Added a couple extra board wipes too since I can rebuild off my exiled cards if things get hairy.

I ended up building my Admiral Becket Brass deck similar, focusing less on theft and more on pirates with evasion and ways to give my pirates evasion. Plus a lot of pirates end up having theft mechanics built in. I'm still mulling over how to improve it, I am thinking of adding some counter spells to offer protection. I also have revels in riches there as an alternate win con, though I wouldn't say I rely on it. I found this video insightful though since it's similar to my current pirate conundrum.

Super interesting you should do these for the other precons!

I just want to jump in on the defense of Extract Brain - this card is super cool as a political card. If player X has removal but can't afford it, you can use extract brain for 3 mana with their consent to play that spell for them.

For theft I like brainstealer dragon allot, it deals damage to your opponent whenever you cast a spell they own And if you play white then happily ever after is fun(I would recommend playing blue as well for the ability to change the color of cards)

Great analysis! This was sorta my suspicion about the deck. A friend of mine who’s new to the game preordered it after seeing how hard the LCI Pirate precon (a secret theft deck just because of how many pirates have really efficient theft abilities) goes, and I was concerned he would be disappointed. I’m gonna throw him some cheap evasive creatures and encourage him to replace the clunkier theft abilities that don’t synergize with Gonti with them. I do think Thieving Skydiver is a fair include since it’s a cheap flyer at base, and the kicker usually steals a mana rock to make it a ramp piece also. Gonti wants those things anyway.

I had a super similar process when I was refining the Mind Flayarrrrrrrrs precon. The commander, Captain N'gathrod improves Horror evasion and makes players mill on damage from horrors, and then you can put in play a creature or artifact once per turn. The deck comes with a lot of standard "player mills x cards" cards that really seemed redundant. I ended up cutting pretty much all of them to lean into combat damage, and payoffs for opponents having full graveyards

So far from playing with the deck my favorite additions have been Memory Lapse and adding more enchant hate as feed the swarm and trygon predator didn't feel enough, though the latter is because a lot of decks in my area are token based so parallel lives and similar effects have been the main way games were taken away.

I feel an important detail that’s been overlooked is what decks it’s designed to fight against, and the answer is three decks that focus on ramp, treasures, and cheap rewards spells, which all fill in for what this deck is missing.

I got the pirate precon from Caverns of Ixalan for Christmas. Not thrilled with the face commander(blind mill and finality counters), I'll admit when tweaked the deck could have some huge plays. Still, the games varied wildly and pirates in general seemed to be trying to do too many things at once: disruption, treasures, evasion, agression, theft, etc to add reanimation to the mix. Don Andres seems to better lean into the general themes and out of the handful of games I've had so far it works well. He's not an engine or wincon, but provides value and synergy. Big downsides with theft mentioned here are hitting non-bombs, but this is mitigated by even durdly creatures being much more useful with +2/+2, deathtouch, and menace. The deathtouch and menace goes along with the agression and evasion themes, and being pirates means that keeping most of the pirate synergy pieces is worthwhile. The treasures function similar to Gonti, providing twice the mana value but only for half of spells while synergizing with pirates again. I mention all this because when this precon was revealed it made me reconsider my newly made Don Andres deck. Villainous Wealth is a fun card and green for ramp is welcome, but I had misgivings that green would be on theme enough. I think my concern was warranted as pointed out the deck probably runs better as an evasive combat deck rather than a theft deck. I think red naturally provides a lot more options for theft(IE Etali), and there arent enough other synergy pieces to have a cohesive game plan I think.

My thought process was incredibly similar, and I ended up making a large amount of the substitutions as yourself without seeing the video 😅 though now that i have, I almost think it would be better with Felix at the helm

oblivion sower is one of the strongest cards in the deck, people who are not liking it havent read it correctly - it does NOT say that you put lands exiled with it so you are putting all lands exiled from that player (often times 10+)

As someone working on a don andres deck right now I needed the insight of having a backup plan besides "yarr harr fiddley de" because while don helps he's also not guaranteed to stick around so I'm now trying to focus a bit less on full stealing and more on having my own gameplan to make my opponents go home in a soup can. I think maybe leaning more into pirate synergy and more draw would help because in my mind when I was first building the deck I kinda thought "why would I need draw if I'm taking stuff from my opponents and putting it into exile for myself?" I think I'm going to cut some of the more expensive and slower cards like brainstealer dragon for more pirate synergy pieces. I believe I have a solid countermagic package to ensure that stuff I don't want resolving will usually not resolve but relying on my opponents for real threats on board doesn't work if I'm in a pod that isn't playing battlecruiser magic. Anyway, love your vids man and keep up the good work

The moment I saw the deck I thought of a lands sub theme maybe, but definitely as many evasive creatures as yuriko. Also you could play ninja tribals. Also I wanted to be build a deck around villainous wealth and clones and gonti feels better than muldrotha. Also the clones solves the lack of synergy problem.

Oblivion Sower has insane synergy with the commander and with a lot of other theft effects that exile enemy lands but can't necessarily play them all.

Thanks for the video! I’m not buying the precon but I am going to build the commander.

This is my favorite precon they've ever made. I wish there was a little more interaction for when I'm not playing against other pre-cons, but otherwise it runs very well and stealing lands is huge. I won by countering then stealing rise of the dark realms in my last game. Always feels powerful.

I like how it's 5min30s in and I hear "Ok that's what I like about this precon", and there's still 11min left on the video.

Caps at 6 per turn right? If you hit 3 first strikes and 3 normal damage. I’ve run drana liberator in this deck and thought that’s how it works?

Theft in general tends to be kind of bad. I've built 3 commanders so far that regularly steal. Haldan/Pako, The Master Transcendent, and Ixhel. I've found that in H/P and Ixhel, stealing cards is mostly just good for hitting land drops. I pretty rarely want to cast cards from other decks. My initial list of The Master Transcendent had a lot opponent mill effects, but after tuning it, I've cut most of those effects and I mostly self-mill and steal creatures from opponents only as a backup plan if my self-mills miss. My concern with Gonti-beats is that it just isn't much of a payoff. Getting a 1 mana discount probably isn't enough to make you actually want to cast most of your opponent's deck. Additionally, you'll want to hit the players with the highest density of creatures, to propel your creature based strategy forward. Those are also the hardest players to attack as they will be the ones with blockers with keywords and stat lines. But the players you'll actually want to kill are the ones with pillowforts and boardwipes, and those will also be the ones that you'll not want cards from.I also think Gonti will draw a huge amount of threat while being not good. You won't win games hitting people with 1/1 shadows creatures. You will make them want to kill you by attacking them every turn and stealing their cards though.

I built a cedh version of this guy and its really fun

I do think most commander precons are open for exploring several aspects of a few gameplans, letting players expand on it while still being playable. Though again that is a charitable way of saying the decks are often not very focused. But I don't entirely mind.

I actually went a slightly different route than more thief or more damage dealers. I went more discounts more mana. Cards like 'Nature's Will', 'The Immortal Sun', 'Thada Adel Acquisitor (to yoink everyone's sol ring lol), 'Vhal Candlekeep Reasearcher', 'Hoarding Broodlord', and a few others all help with having mana to be able to cast a bunch of the cards you end up stealing from opponents. I have literally just straight up highjacked other decks win-con combos and used them to beat that player. I am completely in love with this deck because you never know what's gonna happen. Every game plays out completely differently because your opponents decks change your deck. The complete randomness that can happen keeps the deck fresh and interesting rather than playing the exact same strategy or going for the same combos every game like some other decks/commanders generally do.

My local shop has a pre con league and you can add up to 10 dollar’s worth of cards I added the new Vraska it help with mana and is cheap especially for this deck

Went against the new gonti deck at my LGS in casual commander night. They stole a lot of stuff, but really only ended up annoying the table to the point where everyone decided to start a new game. Its weaknesses really become apparent when you're stealing like, tribal payoffs or artifact-matters cards from your opponents.

the only real way I was thinking of changing the deck was to make it archenemy style where I am just the bad guy that steals everything but this gives the deck a better course.

The mana base is pretty good!

Funny enough, just saw this after trying to help someone improve the deck. When I read the commander, I was like, "oh. This ability is really good if you lean into evasive creatures with some potential payoffs for combat damage"

The stolen spells max at six because of first strike/double strike.

wake up! the snail is teaching us how to play more magic per magic

One note: the max amount of cards stolen is actually 6, provided you have some creatures with first strike/double strike

Based for keeping Mind's Dilation in the upgrade...

Predators' Hour seems highly efficient if you have enough small evasive creatures in your deck. Yes, it's a "win-more" card because it "only" works if you already have an evasive board and it "only" doubles-up on what Gonti already provides but it only costs 2 mana, grants your entire board menace (which can be highly relevant since some of your evasive creatures might "only" have flying) and can let you keep going if Gonti gets removed but you still have the rest of your board.

Bad filters is a disservice to the odyssey lands. They do a better job of fixing mana than the Lorwyn/Shadowmoor filters cos they produce mana colors that your existing lands won't.

What are the payoffs for doing this in Sultai? Like, I love theft from library as a concept. But Grixis seems better at it; besides the pirate guy, you can run Rakdos things like Decadent Dragon and Jasper Flint, you've got red so you can play Etali(s), and red also means treasure which helps a great deal no matter what you want to cast. You've still got all the blue and/or black stuff available to you, which is the bulk of the theft cards. Mardu is also interesting because, while Boros doesn't steal much, it does bring payoffs for playing from exile. The green here is ramping or cost reducing, and some payoffs for dealing combat damage... but not like, game ending payoffs. Mostly just to make Gonti work as an engine, which leads to... I mean, again, I love theft decks, I love the puzzle of figuring what (if anything) I can do with what I've stolen. But as you point out there's gotta be an end-game and Gonti is not that, Gonti is the engine. Annoying because I want some cards from this deck but I don't really want to play with Gonti - Felix does seem like a better direction to go with.

Trouble in Pairs kills me.

Im curious what Snail's thoughts on Don Andres are.

Sword of Feast and Famine/SeedbornMuse with Kruphix God/Horizon Stone would fix any late game mana problems right

I will say, cunning rhetoric he's been strangely powerful in my prosper theft commander deck. But to be fair, that commander is already a good blocker in his own right, and by the time big boards are built up, I will already have one myself due to the inate big mana theme of the deck.

this deck felt like they were indeed cramming three things into one: steal your stuff, evasive creatures and big mana. I think this commander can be built in all three styles and still find success but it will require heavy modifications.

I honestly feel really validated by this video. I have a don Andres deck that I really like, and this deck being released kinda irked me. andres is - in my opinion - a better theft commander, even if it doesnt do it itself. theres lots of theft effects in red, and also, the free stuff problem with gonti (where having cards that cast stuff for free doesnt benefit from one of the abilities) is mitigated by don andres as it gives you payoff for that stuff (2 tapped treasures for noncreature and a buff of +2/+2, menace, deathtouch and being a pirate for creatures) I think that literally the only reason grand larceny is sultai colors is so they could include villainous wealth, which is a good card that doesnt fit at all with the actual commander.

2:08 Doesn't double strike (or attacking the same player with a first striker and a normal attacker) double this cap to 6?

Is it a theft deck or is a combat damage trigger deck? Felix five-boots is insane

Kinda suprised it took three iterations of the same card to make it good Monologue tax->smuggler’s share->trouble in pairs

I get the reasoning behind cutting Oblivion Sower, but playing Sower after someone Bojuka Bogged a big juicy graveyard is beyond hilarious. (I actually did that in a pod with all the OTJ precons).

With first strike and double strike you can actually steal 6 cards per turn (but not very efficiently)

I went a similar route with the small evasive guys and swinging face, but i swapped over to the alternate commander Felix cause i'm just not too big a fan of theft personally. Went more of an equipments based route with a Swords package and a couple of other utility equipments. It looks so fun, can't wait to get my hands on the cards for it and run it

Yeah it's sower, like sowing seeds. To rhyme with a rower. Like one who rows boats. It isn't pronounced like sour.

My only real issue with new Gonti is that for 5 mana, he doesn’t have a keyword and really relies on having things with evasion or things that give evasion/trample. If he had Deathtouch like his old form or Menace I think he’d feel a lot better, like obviously you want the little evasion dudes but him not having something built in that lets himself run in and steal something feels off.

should have comparison with Don Andres deck

I prefer no theft. I will neither like nor dislike this video. Good day.

Wow

bad filters? I do prefer signet lands over filters for three colors as they actually provide missing colors

7:50 I wonder how a green deck can fix the curve issue....

I bought this deck to loot to build up my pirates deck

Hypnotic Specter is still a decently mana priced evasive and disruptive creature after all these years. Double black in cost though.

First ! just opened youtube

I got the most wanted deck, apparently the least popular deck by far, hopefully I can make it interesting and fun!

Doubling down on requests for color base theory

they clearly made this deck sultai colored mainly so they could include Villainous Wealth in it, and yet the theft payoffs don't synergize with it...

Reservoir kraken

It seems like their decision to add a third color made them take the color pips seriously, over the two-color deck where they thought they could get away with a heap of colorless utility.

The deck looks to be a more awkward version of the Obscura deck, especially when taking modifications into account.

How about a Nature's Will with all the evasion?

both?

3:27 thank you. I use card tags on moxfield as part of my design process to explain what it is my deck is doing since its a singleton format I need to show what groups of cards are doing. I hate not seeing card tags on other decks because I get confused and have to parse out what roles cards are playing or what's going on. I value card tags highly in commander a deck that is one hundred one ofs I need direction. Pioneer more clear when you are only playing twelve to thirteen cards.

Personally I'd add some trampling green stompers. The might not technically be as good as evasive creatures for this context, but I like the idea of justifying the green in this deck this way.