@zizthesin Flavorwise it actually makes sense. The Tarrasque isn't even close to the strongest creature in DnD, it's just a giant chunk of hitpoints and defensive features really. Even in lore, compared to an Eldrazi titan, the tarrasque is just a giant dumb mole.
I really struggle seeing how there were fops as a whole. Like so many of my favorite commanders (like anhelo, parnesse, beamtown bullies, jolene, and vazi all come from just two of the decks. IMO the maestros and riveteer decks were among the best precons to date
@@francescognerre2408 Yeah they definitely werent all flops. The counters and the esper attacks decks were pretty whatever, but Jinny Fey, Anhelo, and Henzie are all staple level commanders. I have two of those decks as pet decks and see them played all the time. Anhelo is straight up one of the best, if not the best grixis spellslinger commanders to date. 3 mana copy a spell every turn out of the command zone is insane for virtually no setup. Definitely werent flops.
I think their flop-ness comes down to how they played unmodified, to Matt's point. The individual cards are straight up bangers. Heck they're impressive enough that Shivam and Wheeler did an episode at MC Chicago about it.
Man, Odric was such a disappointment. I always thought he should've taken keywords from opponent's creatures. Sucking the strenghts of the opponents' monsters and giving them to your team.
The line that defines Preston Garvey for me is "Another settlement needs our help!" The fact that him taking actions is what makes settlements feels perfect to me.
Yeah, Preston's ability feels like it would always be connected to what they decided settlements were. That decision turned out to be auras, I guess how how they took auras on creatures are character perks. He is pretty flavourful in the idea of a vigilance like effect to creatures with auras, or have them able to do their resource thing.
Ooh ooh I've got an answer to the end question of an example of a commander that I thought would be disappointing: Will Scion, of Peace. I'm a necromancer by trade in this game. I love reanimation and losing life for cards. So, I wasn't super enthusiastic when my friend group started having budget weeks and they wanted me to branch out to other play styles besides sacc my creatures, bringing them back, and milling myself. So I built a Will. Which is a commander in both my least favorite color combination and a strategy I generally think is a joke. Will blew all my expectations, Will is an incredible outlet to cast enormous secure the wastes and stroke of genius effects. When casting spells of that magnitude, I have to be extremely careful of drawing the ire of the table and dying to a well timed massacre wurm or Sheoldred. $30 for a deck I've had an incredible time with, but it does its job too well. My friends want to ban the deck. Help me!
Mine would be Gavi, Nest Warden. I wanted so much to love her. I’ve built her several times, each time I play it, am disappointed and take it apart. This was an interesting episode, thanks guys!
Ooh boy, I went through so many iterations and dumped more money than I should have to change her, before I accepted the fact how much I downright hated to play her. The token payoff is boring and even moreso weak, plus her cycle reduction makes Cycling alot less fun
I picked up the cards later and turned it into Garth, One Eye. Basically a flicker deck with Astral Slide/Drift and Cycling as the enablers. A bit Jank, but so much more fun and enjoyable
If you really like Feldon's flavour, I don't think you can be disappointed that his newer version does something completely different. Like, at the time the new card depicts him, his wife was alive and he had no reason to do anything related to bringing people back from death. The flavour of him crawling around a dangerous glacier in search of knowledge is actually quite neatly translated in this new card, in my opinion.
33:30 I think a lot of people are disappointed with ghimbal, not because there are hoops to jump but because the deck it was in was just extremely lackluster. It was one of the more interesting commanders to come out of that commander set but that deck. Ooof.
The deck was disappointing, I'll give you that. Gimbal... wasn't much better though. What he asks you to do IS interesting. What he actually DOES with that is... a lot of nothing. A SINGLE vanilla creature on endstep and the reward for having more differently named artifact tokens is... a SLIGHTLY bigger vanilla creature. His other ability is ALSO rather dull. Trample is certainly nice to have but Temur already has TONS of ways to give all your creatures trample. Even just having him make x 1/1 gremlins instead of a single x/x gremlin would have been a vast improvement.
My most disappointed legend was Kyodai from Kamigawa Neon Dynasty. I've been playing since og Kamigawa and I am into the lore of that particular plane (yea, I was a huge weeb back then). So when O-kagachi came out as a 5c spirit, it didn't actually do anything as a 5c spirit commander, much like how Ulrich was for werewolf. Fast forward to Neon Dynasty, Kyodai could have been the perfect 5c spirit commander but instead I felt that I was given another Ulrich 2.0. As for Feldon, there is an explanation on why the Third Path & the Ronom Excavator are so disconnected. The Third Path version was after he went on a journey of learning "resurrection" spells from masters of various colours. He wanted to bring Loran back from the dead. **That story was on the Magic Story Archive. Ronom Excavator was like the pre-Loran's-death version.
To be pedantic on Gerard: The wave of equipment commanders came out *after* him. Prior to him though, the vast majority of Boros was indeed combat-centric, with Feather and Firesong and Sunspeaker being standouts that broke the mold.
Gerrard was such a big disappointment partly because this wasn't the first time this had happened *to this character* . His original card from Apocalypse was...well, it was a monowhite legend designed in 1999. Do the math.
I played Commander a couple of months ago for the first time in about two years, and someone brought a slightly upgraded Kitt Kanto deck, and with the other decks in our pod it was pretty fun. Someone had a theft deck, so he was stealing stuff from the rest of us while Kitt was making us fight amongst ourselves. It ended up being pretty wild and fun.
New Cappena was such a fire set! Like how y’all treat Baldur’s Gate is how I felt for NC. It had awesome cards and great flavor and I love the aesthetic! But yeah, generally those precons didn’t feel super good. Though I think it’s because magic has such a problem with storytelling and lore. Characters like Avacyn were so pivotal that a ton of cards referenced her looked at the effect of her absence, or Gisa and Geralf who were built up over the course of their respective block
if you want a couple of Boros legends that actually might have some interesting builds around them, Thunder Junction came out with both Taii Wakeen and Ertha Jo, Frontier Mentor.
I'm building an Ertha deck with Tail as a second hidden commander (I want to duplicate Mother of Runes / damage prevention / damage dealers), despite the theme "I turn every ping into a fireball" is crushing In Ertha, "Humble Defector" paired with something like "Gilraen" is hilarious
No legendary creature has disappointed me more than Sengir, the Dark Baron from Commander Legends. Mono black with Partner that....gains you life when someone loses the game? Let's forget the fact that mono black is known for looping Kokusho and Grey Merchant, or going big with Torment of Hailfire and Exsanguinate. Black is really good at killing everyone at once, which makes his headlining ability a gargantuan "win more" condition that rarely comes in helpful. But OMG you can do voltron to one-shot someone and gain like 30 life! Great! Now I can super kill one player, get my commander instantly removed, and just durdle around with an extra high life total! I honestly don't know what the design process looked like to result in Sengir, the Dark Baron being the best design they could conceive. I know some legends are meant to be duds constructed for the draft environment, but this is Baron freaking fracking Sengir. This underwhelming text box should have been stapled to a rando new character to preserve the draft environment so they could make Sengir, the Dark Baron an interesting and unique commander worthy of his place in MTG lore.
Sengir's honestly pretty legit. One edict makes him a 10/10. I can see how he might not be as evocative as he deserves, but in terms of power I think he's pretty dang good. And you might think they'll just kill him after that edict 'cause a 10/10 flying commander is scary (especially since it can become an 18/18 real easy), but if a commander's worthy of removal then it's hardly weak!
Honestly, Sengir's lifegain thing is mostly a balancer rather than boon. It literally says "kill Sengir's player first, or get others low first before killing them". Flavorwise it does also make sense: he's a big flyer that tries to kill with commander damage and as a famous vampire obviously this means after beating someone you drain them of life.
the trick with Sengir is that, and mind you this is NOT OPTIMAL, you one-shot someone while having a Sanguine Bond effect out. Kill one person, EoT gain enough life to kill another person. That kind of thing
When I started playing commander I thought I was a Golgari/Sultai player. I then build a budget-ish (still not cheap!) Winota cedh deck. I kind of fell in love with Boros. Now branching out to Jeskai and feeling that out. And I quite like the idea of Esper as well. funny how I found most fun in what apparently is the least diverse build around commanders. :p
People cooled off on Smuggler's Share BEFORE Trouble in Pairs came out. They realized it would be ok at drawing you cards (your opponents drawing 2+ cards happens fairly often) and terrible at making treasures (your opponents having 2+ lands enter tends to be rather rare outside of green decks going very heavy on ramp or landfall shenanigans).
Odric absolutely is the right example to showcase disappointment. As a huge Innastrad/Odric fan myself.. he could have been a really cool new take but instead they just warped his ability into something boring. So sad. And I get both your thoughts and critiques on Boros but for me I feel like other colour combos can be just as guilty as being samey they just might hide it better. Top 6 Simic commanders on EDHREC - Kinnan - value engine Aesi - value engine Hakbal - merfolk value engine Ivy - unique simic queen Volo - value engine Adrix - value engine.. You get me? 😅
Ivy exactly fits the mold because the core identity of Simic decks is, frankly, getting more thing per thing, getting rewarded for things you would already be doing. Volo gets more creature per creature, Ivy gets more aura per aura, Tatyova gets more land per land, Imoti gets more spell per spell. And i love them. Eaisly my favorite color pair.
@@franslair2199 true, Ivy is still value. I guess you might see more card variation in some of these simic decks compared to boros good stuff / equipment. But either way the point is still made yeah.
I was super disappointed that the Mysterious Stranger wasn't made into a legendary creature. How much fun would have been to build a deck that just let him flash in for one turn, auto kill something, then return to the command zone. Felt that was such a missed oppurtunity.
The Eleventh Doctor works with Amy Pond (like in the show). Together, they have 3 colors (she adds red), and she is both small enough to be affected by his ability, and removes time counters on combat damage. The Doctors are the most powerful half of the team, but they do get a whole other card to assist their plan. It's like looking at 2/3's of a card to judge the Doctor with no Companion.
My experience with Volo was amazing. I built my Volo commander deck without any help. I just searched my collection for all sorts of different creatures types, and jammed them in. It turned out very fun to pilot. But I will say, once I wanted to upgrade it, it was fairly easy to do so. Just jam in all the wild etbs like Hoof and Gilded Drake. I leaned heavily toward token creation at the beginning too. I put in creatures like Falcon Abomination and Precursor Golem. After tuning, I dropped a lot of those. I have had to reel it back some tho because it dominates kitchen table Magic. Getting two is always better than one. So, I agree with being a lil disappointed in how it turned out, but I still love the deck because I have dialed it back. Volo will always be one of my favorite commanders.
I think Joey subtly landed on why Gimbal was disappointing, and that's because the tinker time precon is one of the worst that we've gotten in a long time, even among a famously lackluster set like the March of the Machine batch.
Just coming here from the thumbnail. My first casual 60 card beginner deck was all around the odric from Shadows over Innistrad, and his final card is the single card that i would remove from existence if given the choice. I'd rather have no more odrics ever if i could just forget Odric, Blood-Cursed ever existed
I was personally disappointed with Anikthea from the commander masters precons. I’ve been hoping for an abzan enchantress commander for ages, because Myrkul didn’t feel right and the rest of the abzan creatures had a more fitting theme elsewhere. Then we get advertised an Abzan enchantress commander, but after seeing her it just feels a lot like Myrkul where you exile your own things from the graveyard to create token copies of them. The good thing to come out of it is I built an enchantress list with Tayam instead and it turned into a neat toolbox commander with an interesting set of restrictions.
I feel the same way and felt offended at the notion of paying $80 US for that deck. At $30 I would have been interested. Also Anikthea feels generic for how interesting she could have been.
The extra hit was also that the deck was not that full of the enchantress staples, and then less than a month later an enchantress precon comes out with slightly MORE staple cards for less than half the price, and that does a more unusual thing. Without the Ellivere deck it would have been merely disappointing, but that just shut her down in the audience's perception.
I get your point and I think price was the biggest issue with her. I got the pre-con within 2 weeks of release for 45 because everyone was so hot on eldrazi and slivers. I find her mechanic very fun and different from a normal enchantress because of the addition of black. My deck is 1/3 fill the graveyard, 1/3 enchantment staples and the rest is high CMC enchantments to recur from the graveyard. Throw some populate in the deck and ways to trigger anikthea more than once a turn by blinking and it gets out of hand so quickly.
I felt this way too. I bought the precon and was soooo disappointed in how it played. I recently saw it being played on MTGMuddstah and wow, I was surprised at how differently it played. I found a few flicker/graveyard enchantments and rebuilt it with maybe only a handful of the cards from the precon and it pops off every time I play it. It’s so wildly different and fun, I love it!
I can't disagree more. Anikthea is a very fun and unique commander capable of supporting real oddball strategies of endlessly looping and copying sagas to flood the board with tokens and clear the opponents' boards out of theirs. The precon is overpriced but so are all the CMM decks.
For me it's Tegwyll, Duke of Splendor because he's not really a fairie commander. His card says faerie a bunch of times in the rules text but it's about faeries dying instead of doing tricksy faerie things. Faeries aren't really built for aristocrat decks -- it faeries are dying after all that makes Spellstutter Sprite weaker (also how was she not included in the 99 of that faerie precon?). What Tegwyll really is is a Bitterblossom deck. Alela, Cunning Conqueror is a much better faerie commander from a mechanics perspective and she's a Flash commander.
Tegwyll feels alright as a Commander from my limited experience. I can see why people would feel disappointed though. I like that it is a lord effect in the Command Zone and that it helps replenish your hand from wrath effects, but in blue and black it's not too hard to sustain a full hand most of the time anyways. I just have it in the 99 in my Alela, Artful Provocateur deck these days.
So like, as a white player, you cannot say Feather Radiant Arbiter is ok while Ivy Gleeful Spellthief exists. The strategy and effect is exactly the same, “cast stuff to voltron up one of your creatures and hit the other players”. Except that Ivy is less mana, Ivy can copy mutate spells, Ivy gets the copy for FREE, AND Ivy can steal your opponent’s buffs. To be clear I love Ivy and think she’s great, but when you have a card that is sooo similar and who’s previous versions have been so fascinating and powerful and who’s art so goes so hard, you can’t look at this and tell me it isn’t disappointing.
Ivy and Feather are quite different though in that Ivy only ever copies the spell one time, while with Feather you can copy it several times provided you have the mana. Feather is more geared towards going wide as opposed to Ivy's voltron's stuff. Personally, I am quite glad that we got this Feather version, as I really really disliked the first one.
Honestly, the problem? White enchantments - If you didn't have to pay, Feather would turn every Pacifism, every Luminous bonds into basically board wipes. People complain after the 3rd boardwipe in a game of commander, imagine how unfun it would be when half the enchantments in one of the decks turn into boardwipes
My biggest disappointment was a Phenax, God of Deception mill deck. It was full of weird old cards that otherwise didn't fit in almost anything - some huge toughness creatures that let you throw out a massive blocker & then mill a ton of cards on end-step, and some combos with jank cards like Intruder Alarm or Eater of the Dead. I'd even run some reanimator shenanigans to exploit opponents' graveyards as a plan B. Sometimes it'd just straight-up win or knock a player straight out of the game. Bruvac on board + kicked Maddening Cacophony was an immediate win, barring any interaction. Bruvac + an Unearthed Teresian Mindbreaker would take a single player out, almost irrespective of their board state. Getting Sheoldred out & flipping her to the True Scriptures over and over was nearly a lock on the game if I could keep a counterspell in hand. It was capable of some brutal wins. Other times it'd just spin its wheels or get pieces all out of order for where you'd want them. A Ruin Crab on turn 1 is going to put in a scary amount of work as you just hit land drops & do a little ramping. A Ruin Crab on turn 6 feels more like a dead draw. Reanimator cards feel dead in hand when there's just nothing in my yard, and I only had a few things worth reanimating. Self-mill could end up throwing reanimator in the bin. I always joked that the deck was super consistent: I'd come in first because I got my engine on and won, or I'd come in second because I'd be so irrelevant that I'd get targeted last. I ended up selling a few of its pieces after the Wise Mothman created some mill hype, especially expensive cards that I thought were not actually great. Mind Grind might be okay if you get infinite mana somehow, but it's awful if you're limited to finite amounts of mana.
I personally really like Kamiz and alongside with Henzie is one of my favorite commanders. Kamiz can be build in many, many different ways and is a great enabler for decks that want to hit face by either making creatures unblockable or giving double strike on already evasive creatures.
Same. My build is very plus 1 counter focused with some of those breena style cards that give you counters and your opponents stuff too. But alo looking at a more evil transformation build to infect if the table wants to be more cutthroat
@@PositiveBlackSoul Mine is going for a bit of a resurrection/getting the connive stuff back subtheme - Ghost of Ramirez DePietro, Archpriest of Shadows, that sort of thing. Interesting to see the ways this commander can go.
I still love my Go-Shintai of Life's Origin deck and I feel like Ghen does have a niche because it's so incentivized to get it's value from the bin. I feel like I'm reanimating enchantments for WUBRG in my Go-Shintai deck out of desperation if i even am doing that. I think if I'm disappointed by anything in recent memory, it's Atraxa, Grand Unifier. 4 color is a truly untapped well of potential still, and a chance to define these pairings by the color they lack, rather than the colors they have. the original Atraxa was a card that suffered from that sort of clip-on design of just being a wall of keywords, but I think the proliferate was something that gave her so much reach to take the deck in so many different directions. Grand Unifier is the best reanimation target or flicker target money can buy you. that's it. the ultimate phyrexian achievement is a 7 mana draw 7 with a big body and keyword soup. like... my mind goes to a design where she ETBs and steals permanents with oil counters on them and then at each end step each of those stolen permanents loses and oil counter and they die if they have 0 or something. play with her having something akin to a treason effect and maybe have a reason to futz with the oil counter thing, but... instead she's just good stuff. :S
I have both a dissapointment and a happy suprise: One of my dissapointments in recent memory was trying a different take on Muldrotha. I have played with it for a while and wanted to try making it into a more interesting version asi was getting bored with the similar games, but nothing seemed to stick. The commander is surprisingly restrictive when you get down to building it, and it is also very vulnerable. My (so far) greatest surprise was building Caparocti Sunborn, specifically as a go-wide midrange equipment deck. The amount of card and mana advantage that commander provides is highly underrated, and very consistent!
I personally love the new Feather, I made a deck around it based around spreading Auras, with some giant Angel problems. It's my Power Rangers and I think the commander is probably the most fun version of itself
13:30 - wow, I've never seen those cards before... they're very different from what Boros is usually doing, but they're so BAD for what Boros is usually doing or needs. One's all payoff for high-CMC spells in the notoriously-struggles-to-ramp red/white pair (and not even an impressive payoff?) and the other's a reward for already winning the game. Cool.
For me, it was the UG Lord of the Rings precon, in particular with Galadriel. Would have loved an in-universe version of Beast Whisperer, a voting commander that actually did something good (maybe like Tivit, but Elves/Food as opposed to Treasures/Clues?). The deck, while decent, noticeably was out-performed by the other three.
My biggest disappointment so far was Riku of Two Reflections. The idea of copying and cloning was awesome, Temur is awesome but it was just to mana heavy. However I will revisit him and already got some ideas how to tweak him.
To me the Gimbal issue is it's hard to find any underlying synergy to tie the deck together. The token generators have to be making a motley of stuff, so the only way to consistently benefit from them is to trigger gimbal or just have generic artifact token synergies. In the end it becomes a +1/+1 counters beatdown deck via token generation, and the overruns & combat tricks youd want to use to finish games have nothing to do with the token generators. Gimbal is also a bit hard to cast, and if you don't have him out your board just looks like a yard sale because he's the core payoff for everything you go into the game expecting to do.
By far my most disappointing commander was Jared Carthalion. I ordered it when it was first spoiled, largely just because it's a Jared Commander, and I'd already built Jared Carthalion, True Heir and Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord. However, I saw, from the abolities that we were making Kavu tokens and focusing on multicolored cards. Where Kavu have, traditionally been all about changing colors and land types and interacting with things of different colors, I was super pumped for this awesome color-changing, landtype matters, Kavu tribal deck. Then they spoiled the rest of the deck list... Another disappointment was Rocco, Cabaretti Caterer. At first, I was really excited, because I had a secret commamder deck with Skirk Fire Marshal, and putting a tutor into the command zone, while giving me access to green seemed just too perfect. I built it, but then it seemed like I'd just copied my other Naya deck, and lost most of the identity that made my Tajic, Legion's Edge build awesome. I ended up just combining the two, with Jared Carthalion, True Heir at the head, but Skirk Fire Marshal got the axe, ending its run as a pet card of mine since it came out way back in Onslaught.
I am a fan of Gor Muldrak, Amphinologist. During the 32 deck challenge I had built Eruth (and Grand Calculatron) for card draw. I had a spellslinger Kenrith and Lord Windgrace for big mana plays. I also planned on a 4 color +1/+1 counters deck, so when I got to Simic I wanted a different experience. Gor seems like a group hug deck, but is surprisingly political and as your Salamanders have protection from other Salamander, it is hard to swing into you. I really thought it would be a meme deck, but having played it recently I realize I underestimated the build.
I built a great Gerard, Weatherlight Hero deck. The issue was that it was not fun to play against. It turbo'd into Obliterate with artifact ramp. Apparently, other players don't like that.
Tom Bombadil is just Go Shintai for sagas. He builds himself and kind of invalidates all other saga decks because he's WUBRG. The new Gonti is also dissapointing because he's so close to being good.
@user-tc9fn9ux2u too high mana cost. Especially in Mono white these days. I'm not a fan of anything over 4 drops. And Myrel got me back Into the game, I'm up to 6 decks now
Saruman of the Many colors was my biggest disappointment of recent memory. I love the character and the Esper colors, but his text was so convoluted that I had trouble keeping it straight. I’d spend more time explaining it to my opponents than anything else during games so finally I just took it apart and built mono blue Saruman
That card looks super cool to play with a neat pattern, but SO unpredictable to build around. I had sketched a deck list out and it looked neat but vulnerable to getting completely run over by, like, a Cragplate Baloth at any time. The dream of milling out someone's awesome spell by casting your awesome spell, then casting theirs for free sounds super cool, but looking at like cantrip into big spell into praying to the heart of the cards that you hit something worthwhile... I feel like he'd fall on his face often. Also, wanting some mill effects just to stock the yards & hope seems fair but then further dilutes what's going on. And I agree, just the WORST card to understand. Bonus points if you get the acid trip bonus art that's illegible in addition to the horrid templating.
My only complaint with Go-Shintai of Life's Origin is that it was quickly categorized as "kill on sight" commander by my playgroup. Not super high power level one, just "either it dies or it randomly wins the game, so don't let it stick, ever". Didn't help that one of the few times I played it I realized mid-turn I can just win, AFTER one of the other players had already realized it and was just waiting for me to catch on. It's usually the other way around.
Zethi, Arcane Blademaster(Chun-li) is a commander I was disappointed with. I was hoping she would play similar to feather and she really didnt. Turns out she is a lot slower than feather. Kasla of the broken halo was another one I was disappointed with. She is so weird to build around and I was never able to find the balance of spells with convoke and ways to have creatures. I wanted a whole convoke deck but it requires so many creatures
Thanks for the mention in Challenge the Stats, and thank you for calling out Volo for being a disappointment! Even after adding Keruga for more deck restriction he just plays out like a parody of Simic Good Stuff .deck
I really like my Nevinyrral deck, since it's fun to play the table villain and it's a very good deck at specifically making an infinite horde of zombie tokens and daring the whole table to find a way to kill you before they die. When building the deck, I had treated the disk text as an afterthought. But as I played it, the fact that late-gamer I have a potent boardwipe in the command zone became so impactful. Over time, it became very obvious that since zombo decks excel at sac outlets and reanimation, it was just very easy to decide that if a board state didn't suit me, I could simply reset it. The only solution for it was to make the non-commander synergies better to make me cast him less, and to hold the Nevwipe not as an active tool but as a threat since it can be fired at instant speed in response to an attack.
Henzie is an excellent aristocrats and/or persist combo commander. And Falco Spara makes for an excellent source of card draw in the command zone for Elf-Ball type decks with a very low mana curve and easy access to +1/+1 counters and blue to help keep creatures available on the top of the library. The precons may have been grindy and decks like Anhelo can be very removal heavy when tuned. But Henze and Falco don't have to be grindy if built right.
For me it's firesong and sunspeaker. 6 mana is just way too much. These days it'd be a firesong card and a sunspeaker card that cost 3 mana, each have one ability and they have partner with
Looking at Kitt Kanto, it seems like it would be great at a table where someone was going aggro or had a voltron deck that hadn't found protection yet. Looking at the New Capenna decks it doesn't look like it has a great matchup there, with maybe Henzie or the Obscura deck being the best options to goad. I haven't played the deck, but the objective seems to be to go wide, politic while directing your opponents biggest threats, and when it's down to 2 or three players you have an army, and you can buff your biggest threat and grant trample. I don't know that it sounds like compelling gameplay, but I understand the goal.
Its wild to me that Matt thinks the New Capenna commanders were bad. They're some of my favorite precons to play and Anhelo, Kamiz, and Phabine are all decks I ended up building!
Absolutely insane take, yeah. Just the Jund deck has Henzie (one of the most popular commanders period) and Ognis who is super cool and Beamtown Bullies that has a completely different and unique strategy.
I actually find a lot of the face commanders of the New Capenna precons really interesting. Kitt Kanto is a really fun and relatively fair take on the goad mechanic that doesn't just (semi-)permanently goad the whole table - she also enables some neat tap/untap shenenigans and token strategies, which is very powerful and fitting with 2 important Cabaretti story elements: Halo Fountain and Jetmir. Anhelo is pretty self-explainatory, but I also actually like Perry as a different take on counters. Parnesse can make for a really fun political commander that makes you work for your bonus and isn't solving her own equation.
Can you do a mechanics that disappoint episode? I know I’ve was trying to build Jasmine Boreal of the Seven and it got announced that Karlov Manor was gonna have a morph variant which got me excited. But it turned out the mechanic was a complete nonbo with Jasmine and I got hardly any new cards in the pool, if any.
Absolutley adore Mizzix, Replica Rider... in theory. I've found that I kinda bounce of most izzet commanders and that sucks because it's flavorwise my favorite guild. It just kinda feels like it always end up with either "and then I combo and win" or "and then I take a 15minute turn and pass". I try to be very concious about having ways to end games, so I put in a 3 card combo that ends the game, thinking "if games go long, I might get this - but the deck is also filled with impulse draw and losing one piece turns it off so it shouldn't be a combo win every game". It wasn't every game, but 6/8 games I palyed I won using that combo before I quit playing that deck.
I guess for most of the SNC commander decks, Wizards was trying to persuade players to build in a more political way so that more 'win-win' interactions are to be expected in a game. That's why you are seeing strange cards like Kitt Kanto, Vazi and Parnesse.
Jamie McCrimmon as a companion to the 11th Doctor actually works. You make Jamie unblockable prior to casting a large affinity artifact spell which will boost him. He is still unblockable but is like a 12/12 and counts as commander damage.
I fully agree that Gimbal and Feather are actually really cool Decks, that you can build in different very good directions like Impetus Voltron or Hidden Brudiclad. The card that however disappointed me alot was Saheeli the Gifted. All Decks I have built and seen with her end up being all feast or famine. Explosive turn 5/6 kills or a few copters into a concede. She wants you to build around her in a certain way, but that way is also incredibly prone to being stormy or bricky so it encourages you to lean into the consistent bauble-like artifacts at which point why aren't you playing Johira Weatherlight Captain?
I think things like Nevinyrral are fine. If something's iconic, it should probably hearken back to that iconic thing. It'd be like a Lotus card not making mana, or a Mox costing more than 0, or a Goyf not caring about stuff in the graveyard.
Tried doing Optimus Prime at one point because I am a huge fan of Transformers and he just ... didn't really work? Maybe I brewed him wrong but his core mechanic is bolster with the secondary being if he dies in robot mode he comes back in vehicle. I looked at it and thought hey, bolster gives +1/+1 counters, so I'll do that but the issue was actually making use of the counters because bolster is very limited in how you apply said counters. Other way of doing it I thought of would be voltron and just have the bolster passively to beef up support creatures and give evasion but since his resurrection puts him in vehicle mode he is only a creature during your turn so it doesn't play well with auras or equipment and to get him back to robot mode you need to deal combat damage with a creature he bolstered off his attack trigger. Basically Prime is a card I would run in the 99 of a deck that has access to him but not as a commander, which feels weird for the leader of an entire faction. If anyone made a Prime deck that works I would love to hear about it.
One thing that I think REALLY holds Optimus back is that the number of creatures you WANT to put counters on is fairly low? You want smaller creatures so you can bolster them when you play Optimus on the Vehicle side, but stuff like Krenko 2.0 where that seems like a shoe-in for boosting his power is an actual non-bo unless you hold back on swinging! They are slowly trickling out more WUR cards that care about counters but white only has ONE hardened scales effect with Lae'zel so it just doesn't scale as well. Also, downside of having smaller creatures you want to bolster multiple times is that you can't play your other small creatures if you want to go tall! You nailed it on the head with regards to the pilot lacking control due to bolster's intricacies. I am patiently waiting for when I can give the deck another shot but Optimus and Flamewar are two transformer decks that I have just not been to nail down in a satisfactory manner!
I hit on the idea of using infect creatures with Optimus. Most of them are small to start, and you're in the colors of extra combats, heavy evasion, and proliferation. Just between Blighted Agent and anything you target with Mother of Runes or Skrelv, you're getting something through. I don't even think Optimus shows up under Infect on EDHRec, so you know not many people are thinking it. I have joked to myself that I'd have to get the SG version for it to make sense, though, which is why I haven't put more thought into it.
@@march4232 I kind of tried to do a slightly wide thing with proliferate to make things bigger and just use prime to get the initial counter on them. Artifact creatures with modular are good for that same reason seeing as they start with counters and you can move them to another when they die. Looking at Prime though, part of my problem might have been that in testing I only did 1v1 stuff with a friend and misread his robot mode effect. It isn't a bolster 1 during your end step like Atraxa's proliferate - it is each end step, meaning the more players there are the more bolsters you get out between turns. So a four player game you swing with him in robot mode and bolster 2, get him converted and as long as he isn't killed by your next turn you have bolstered 1 another 4 times. So I guess the idea is to play at bigger tables, swing with Prime and let him sit in robot mode during your opponent's turns, then when it rotates back around to you sac or destroy him and make sure your board has haste or a way of giving him haste to full cycle and build another creature tall. Had the thought of maybe applying shroud to other low-toughness support creatures but that wouldn't work because bolster doesn't target. Maybe should look into effects that allow you to force the toughness of supports up and the things you want to be swinging with down?
I love Kitt Kanto and the Caberetti deck, but maybe that's just me lmao Y'all hit most of the commanders I'd have put on the list. I'd probably say that Tiana, Ship's Caretaker from Dominaria was probably my biggest disappointment. Had trouble making it work and it didn't resonate with me. Ended up feeling like another low-powered Boros equipment deck.
I can't speak on the New Capenna precons, but I put Kitt Kanto at the head of the Marisi goad deck I already had. It's actually pretty fun and effective, building a wider board letting you better able to control combat without risking your board. It's a lot like the recent Nelly Borka precon, but replace the pillowfort cards with token makers, which protect you just as well while also building towards an actual win condition.
Elas Il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim is one that stood out to me. I see it as the now defacto orzhov aristocrats deck and pushed a bunch of older orzhpv commanders that are doing aristocraty things out of the spotlight. I think it was decently received by the community, but it didn't make the landing to me.
Interesting - Elas is currently leading my Orzov Aristos deck almost by default as none of the other commanders I've tried have clicked (mostly newer commanders, like the LCoI Vamps.) I want to try the new OTJ guys soon.
the new feather would have been fine if it says pay 1 instead of 2. cause two more mana is a huge task! esp if the things you copy arent gain that mana back.
Your issue with Preston Garvey mirrors my issue with Frank Horrigan, also from the Fallout stuff. In the games, Frank Horrigan is the final boss of Fallout 2, and his whole thing is that he's a super durable monster thanks to all the experiments that were rub on him. So, the "indestructible as long as he attacked" makes sense, but why does he have proliferate?
Akim, the soaring wind was the most disappointing legend for me in recent years, why do i only get 1 extra bird when i make tokens!? And its not even a big bird! Just a 1/1! Ugh angry
Amazing episode, yet again! If I may make a suggestion for another topic, I would absolutely be thrille about an episode focusing on flavor fails and/or wins
I... think... I was disappointed with Moira Brown from the Fallout set, expecting to get some kind of benefit from my creatures getting auras or counters. I was expecting to be disappointed by the WHOLE Battle for Baldur's Gate set, but BOY HOWDY was I wrong. The choose a background legends solved so many problems and helped make decks from my bulk rares and bulk legends.
I feel like Matt's standards for cards/what he wants power level to be is so far off from mine that its hard for me to really get the opinions stated. Like Gimbal, I saw it and went "wow that's a lot of work for a mediocre token, I see the complaint" and he's just like.. "the work is worth it because the payoff is so high". And then we get to like, "people are used to easy value in temur".. yeah tbh most generic value commanders give you more than that token is worth, regardless of color combination.
About the new Capenna Precon decks I think that Kros defense Contractor is probably the best representation of what the Broker want to do in the Story (basicly what they do is they make people sign contracts for the protection of the Broker then the Agent makes the person forget about the contract and later they basicly mind control the contractor into doing stuff) so he is fun but I have to agree that a lot of them aren´t that good
Whoever is commanding my Aristocrats deck. The DECK is fine, but settling on a commander has been a problem. It started as Esper under Queza... didn't feel good. I cut the blue and went to Teysa... and she was my big disappointment. I know people love her but they deck never clicked with her in charge at all. She's still in the 99 but not up front any more. I've tried the three main vampires from LCoI and it hasn't felt right either. For now Elas il-Kor is the commander but I haven't played the deck in weeks to see how I'm feeling about it. One of my son's friends is just completely down with the deck though. If it didn't have so much expensive stuff in it I'd just give it to them.
I tend to look at underwhelming/disappointing commanders as a challenge. A lot of people build their decks around the commanders when sometimes, the deck could/should work independent of the commander. It can make for some interesting games where people underestimate you and you can fly under the radar until you pop off.
I was wrecking with Gerrard, even made a custom playmat for him. There were so many infinite playlines with him. I could probably make an even better version of him now, thanks to stuff like Magda
9:41 Velomachus Lorehold was a disappointment for me because Lorehold was supposed to be like a historian tomb raider. And he felt like a boros spell slinger
I remember being VASTLY disappointed by the Raven Man. We have a necromancer, one of the most famous ones in all of Magic lore, manipulating another of the most famous necromancers in Magic lore. What do we get? Worse Tinybones. That does nothing of what we'd expect of a necromancer manipulating a necromancer!
11th doctor is actually one of my favorite cards. It pairs with amy pond, which is thematic. She is a 2/2 that helps take time counters off things. I get him by himself being seen as very meh though!
Kalemne is one of my favorite commanders of the past who I still use. I understand it's a repeat of most boros themes but you can say that about most commanders of the same colors. She's just not busted which makes her unpopular.
I would love to hear more about Matt’s take on new Feather. The internet is full of people saying the same thing. I want to build her but feel like there isn’t a lot of guidance to go off of.
I was really hyped for The Alexandrite, but then I played the deck and it just created a bunch of triggers that ended the same way. It did powerful stuff, but it wasn't entertaining and it gave way to only very little interaction (except for the ONE combat where your dudes have doublestrike, flying and lifelink and you clean up the board). I got a little overwhelmed by my Nine-Finger Keene as well, but maybe I built her wrong.
I have a gimbal deck I really enjoyed building and the issue with him is even well tuned he is still just slow and always feels 2 turns behind the table. I only bring him out at pre-con power level decks and when compared to the knight deck from the same set gimbal out of the box doesn't stand a chance. The only way I've ever won with gimbal is from cyberdrive awaken or rise and shine which is kinda lame considering gimbal and his ability have nothing to do with that win.
Maybe there’s a lore/story reason why she’s on Thunder Junction rather than ruling on Fiora, but pending that story being told, Marchesa, Dealer of Death just feels like a character-flavor failure. It’s a cool enough card, but it feels like it should belong to a character other than Marchesa. Like, add 1 generic mana and flying and it could be an interesting new version of Kess.
Bought the Gimbal Precon because I loved an artifact theme in temur plus being so unique. It turned out to be too clunky as a commander so I simply switched with Rashmi & Ragavan and now it goes so much better.
For me they are a little older all the five color Sliver that just give all the slivers a strong mechanic, where as queen and overlord were unique and added a lot to sliver. But when they have five color just add strong mechanics, they could to have just had an expensive two or three color do that and they could to have add some amazing traits to the five color that didn’t share before
Marneus Calgar, Is not amazing in his own Deck and best thing is generating cards from tokens. Which is both not very space marine like and makes him more of a combo commander in a deck that wants to be tempo control. (Maybe if the draw affect happened when Astartes entered the battle field) Inquisitor Greyfax Feels almost a good commander. Just add Menace for the commander. This would be very flavorful and allow the vigilance part of her kit to really feel good. I would also like if she could tap any permanent instead of just creatures as some time the ability is useless against some opponents and would occasionally allow for some sneaky plays against some artifacts.
I can't help mentionning Voja. She was such a miss of a great tribal commanders turned into an easy powerhouse. I've been quite disappointed about the Balrog(s) from LOTR as well.
Gimbal is not a disappointment because it's not a value engine. It's because it doesn't even come CLOSE to synergizing with energy, OR do the gremlin thing of artifact destruction! It was a return to a beloved plain without thinking about what people would want to DO with it!
Can't speak for the others, but the Esper Capenna precon was fucking bonkers. I swapped out the commander for Tivit, since I basically just bought the deck for him. Went from "Lets vote for the opposite of what he votes for heh-heh." To "What do I need to vote for to end the game faster?" real quick :33. My biggest disappointment that comes to mind is prolly Preston. Was super excited and even picked up the single on release day, then realized I could toss 60 random white cards in the deck and still have like 4 infinites. For the opposite, really wasn't a fan of the WUBRG Omnath messing up the pattern with phyrexian mana plus the whole "Fuck it, lets compleat General Jarkeld and Uncle Istvan, it's not like it's supposed to be a sacred honor that only the most devoted followers of Yawgmoth could hope to someday achieve." But since two of my other friends have Omnath decks and the 3 and 4 color ones weren't doing it for me, decided to try him with Jeggy W, and it's actually been really fun. Badically just jammed in any three color cards I thought were neat.
Actually along the lines of disappointments that ended up good, could do a video on what I call the Precon effect. I think people already use the term for something else, so might need a new name, but point is when you have a creature like Felisa, Fang of Silverquill that are terrible in the deck they come in, so you kinda write them off. But then you build a deck around them and you're like "Oh, this is actually really good."
An interesting video... when you got to talking about Self-Solving commanders... I wish more people felt the same way you and myself did... but I still regularly see people play Self-solving commanders because they don't care about playing the game, they just want easy wins and... it's so tiring...
Parnesse isn't that bad. She gives you and all your permanents "Ward - Pay 4 life". They should have probably put that on there instead of the full text, but also, Ward was pretty new at the time.
I too was disappointed with Eleventh. However, Eleventh is especially good at suspending creature spells (because suspend gives them haste) but also Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, Aeon Chronicler, and big spells in general that can be sped up with the time travel mechanic.
The thing is, 11 does few things that 10 can't do better (or, if you're sticking with the whole "from hand" thing, OG Jhoira). 11 needs a companion to even do time travel, where 10 can do both suspend and time travel. That said, Eleven was by no means the biggest Doctor Who disappointment for me. That absolutely has to go to Rory Williams. What in the ever-loving blazes is that card? One of the biggest memetic badasses of modern Who, and he gets this wimpy little two-mana card that doesn't even land properly the first time you cast it. I get that they had to rein in the power level, because he's essentially a third commander if you play Amy as a companion, but this was erring on the side of caution too much.
To be fair to the 11th Doctor, he's gotta be paired with Amy Pond as his partner. He make her unblockable and she take time counters off the cards he puts on suspend. Plus Amy brings out Rory so it's almost like having 3 creatures in the command zone. I wouldn't run them as the commander but they have there place in the 10th Doctor's 99
I feel so sad with gimball, I have an artifact copy/token deck and I long thought that gimball might be the commander to finally fit the deck, but gimbal is just too weak. Best case scenario its turn 4 you have ramped and you by some miracle have 3 different artifact tokens, now you play gimball and your reward is making a 4/4. Then on your next turn gimball is probably dead cause its a 5 cost commander with no protection and even if it does survive or you do protect it you might get 1 small 8 damage total attack and just get another token which is lets say a 6/6 then you have to pray again to avoid all boardwipes to maybe make another slightly bigger token next turn while you have 8 or so tokens lying around. Those tokens lying around also can't be used via the common sacrifice ability cause then you would lose the bonus to future gremlins. Sure cards like doubling season could go crazy but casting a 5 drop and then another 5 drop is hard even if it optimally might get you 2 10/10. It nearly requires your commander or the doubling season to live a whole round, and then another round since the token are created at end step and so can only attack next turn. All these sitations feel bad even though they are already the times when the commander is working. For me the commander could be 2 mana less or create tokens with haste at combat start. Just really sad. Probably fun for a few playgroups, but in my playgroup even the lower power rounds would crush gimball without a chance.
