Our Commander Nightmares | EDHRECast 235 

My nightmare is getting salty, over anything, but especially over something that I realize was not a big deal later on after the game.

My nightmare scenario is when I say out loud to the table that I don’t have any counter spells in my deck and then I draw a counter spell

Nightmare scenario usually begins with me pulling off an epic play that gets an emotional response from 2 of the 3 other players. Then you notice old poker face sitting there waiting for you to pass priority...

Blood Moon when your commander is Arixmathies. Not a good time

I remember once, my friend was going off. I had something of a tool box deck, and I had a couple options to try to dig myself out, but I had to get lucky. I dug and searched and managed to cast a Teferi's Protection. As I'm sighing in relief, the friend says, "In response...."

Thank you for using my challenge!

Joey: Have you ever browsed in incognito mode? Me: What are you a cop?

Gotta say the upping the average videos need more people watching. I absolutely love that series and have picked up a couple of the budget lists you've done and they are head and shoulders above other deck lists on RU-vid or online.

I think the ability to identify that your deck is obnoxious is a real skill that certain players need to cultivate, and for what reasons, so that you can find players who are looking for a compatible experience by warning people that 'X deck is hostile to Y playstyles', if you don't realize your deck is going to salt people out you're just asking for bad experiences.

I once played a 7 hour long commander game (6pm-1am) because my friend was using Sunforger to tutor and cast Sorcery board wipes repeatedly and no one noticed 😑

So glad to see Zada in the challenge related to magecraft. I run it in my Extus deck and the absolute dreamteam is Zada, Leonin Lightcaster, and Sedgemoor Witch. when I get Traitor's clutch it is often game. I use things like Oriq Loremage to put the set pieces into my grave, Extus to bring them back (except Zada), and then use traitor's clutch (usually it's flashback) to just sweep things

That play of lots of 2/1 inklings with flying being countered with an equinumerous amount of 1/2 spiders with reach is so tasty

Dictate is one of those cards I stopped playing. It is very good and very strong. But not fun to play against.

My only nightmare scenario is playing with somebody who is toxic which unfortunately I've had to deal with and is by far the most nightmarish of nightmares

I've actually lived my nightmares. 8 people in a commander night that nobody wanted to split into pods despite half of them being high tuned optimized decks, not cedh, but as close as you can get, and the other half durdling around with janky fun builds that dont care about the game and just socialize, constantly split between not wanting to buy into the spikes and draw the ire of the casuals, and playing optimally so as not to let the spikes run away with the game, this entire episode really hit home

Matt: Whoever came up with that saying has never seen a card from strixhaven. The professor: I took that personally

Had a somewhat of a silver bullet experience this week. Me and another guy were getting pummeled by the other two opponents so we had formed a temporary alliance. I assured him that I could kill one player on my turn. I was playing new Sheoldred so on my turn I finally had enough mana to play Peer Into the Abyss (target player draws equal to half their life total and loses half their life). One of my opponents I knew had a counterspell in his hand because he had misplayed it earlier and we allowed him to take it back. So I targeted the other player. He cycled a land in response and drew a counterspell off the top. Next turn I was dead. Moment of victory or at least respite foiled!

Decided to bring out my first commander build Hapatra. Turn 2 guy tutors next turn drops Solemnity....I was surprised to hear another person at the table say "not cool" but I said it is just another layer to the puzzle. Hard to swallow but stayed in there destroyed it twice...

what our playgroup does for initiative is that we have one dungeon side up with different d6 for each player in the centre of the table for room tracking, and we have a second init side up which gets passed around to track who has the initiative. most of us have memorised what the dungeon is, but we also have spares if people need reminding. (the d6 gets placed on the rooms, also the die's number helps remember what room 1-5 they're in)

"finding a good 7" is my general house rule, as well as all of my friends. we hate when people get shut out of a game because of bad rng, but we're also very good at being able to tell when someone is bs'ing their way through it for a god hand.

My greatest fear is Matt or Dana not having a pun ready

Opening hands are definitely my playgroup's issue at times, so we just have it to where we start by drawing 10 cards and bottoming 3 for our opening hand, hoping everyone can play and reduces unneeded shuffling.

Speaking of the mirror match, I actually just played a game this week with one of my newest decks, Ivy, Gleeful Spellthief, and my friend decided this was when he was going to also pull out his Ivy deck for the Ivy vs. Ivy game we've been talking about for a bit. It was so much freaking fun with both of our decks just feeding into the other one and the inevitable betrayal when one of us had to bite the dust at the hands of the other Ivy. (It was me, and I wholly deserved it lol)

20:00 I was playing Tectonic Giant + Delina Wild-Mage incredibly wrong: Delina makes tokens that come into play tapped and attacking, Tectonic Giant does damage when it is declared an attacker. I was under an assumption (wrongly) the tokens that come into play attacking would also then perform the Giant's ability

I used to have a Zada deck, as well as Zada in my veyran deck. The problem with Zada is that she warps the entire game around her, and turns it into a game of solitaire. I found it to be very overwhelming, especially in veyran with the insane amount of triggers that were going off with her and veyran out. I ended up benching the zada deck and removing zada from veyran so me and my friends could have quicker and more enjoyable games.

My favorite silver bullet was when I cycled into a Wild Ricochet, that I used to redirect and copy a Blue Sun's Zenith for 86.

I am 3 minutes into the video. I want to make a prediction. Joey's nightmare is his graveyard getting exiled the turn or turn before he is about to pop off.

Sees the thumbnail. Sees Space Beleran listed. "Yep."

Speaking on making mistakes: One time my playgroup and I went through an entire game with Gale, Waterdeep Prodigy, and *all of us* missed the fact that Gale doesn't allow you to cheat mana costs. So my blue/black "big mana spells" deck completely dominated, and then the second game I went to play with it, I'm reading it to verify something and it hits me that I played all my test games + the last game completely wrong. We all had a laugh and I re-built the deck (and changed colors later) to make the deck work like it actually was supposed to.

My biggest nightmare is having the pregame and picking a deck to match the pod then drawing a god hand or finding they rated their lower power decks as 7-8s. My 8 has powerful cards, a good manabase and can win on turn 5-7, my 7 wins on turn 7-9 normally,

I love dungeons. To help when I play a deck with that, I bought the oversized dungeon cards which I place where all can see and place a bean in whatever room I'm in.

One of my greatest fears is when players in a pod have very different levels of understanding about threat assessment. Especially when I feel like I’m trying to get rid of the biggest threat permanent, but the owner of that permanent doesn’t feel like it’s a big threat or that removing it is justified.

I played a Planechase game where one player wasn't able to be attacked. The table forgot that for a turn, then I recalled it after a _giant_ attack with a lot of blocks and effects, I remembered the next turn and we collectively decided to just move on with the game instead of an awkward turn+ rewind. Great advice!

I've been advocating Painful Truths in Prosper for a while now. Good challenge.

My mtg childhood ended when someone told me Elebrus, the Binding Blade can't go in a Boros deck, because it has black in it's color identity... Totally get the whole fear of telling people things don't work

"Its so 1989 to use a Fax". Scoffs in US heathcare worker

Once we played 3 people sliver tribal decks. And it was a nightmare to follow what every sliver has :)

I was part of that Breya mirror with Olivia and honestly it wasn't nearly as bad as anyone expected it to be! It was definitely a meme idea from conception. But none of us are eager to repeat the experience 🤣

My top nightmare scenarios (We are in upgraded precon to higher power casual environment, no cEDH): 1) People making decisions based on emotions (mostly fear) rather than logical thinking and evaluating the current board state. Just a because a deck really exploded one or two times, doesn't mean it can consistently achieve this and has to be the threat all the time. 2) People complaining about almost every deck of every opponent to dislike it and starting the game with "Ah, this deck again." with a negative undertone. 3) People with tremendously high budget that are acting elitist and don't wan't to play against proxys unless "you own the real card at least once". Luckily, bullet point 3) has never been an issue and the first two nightmares only appear seldomly in my playgroups.

The mulligan rule on my house: draw 10, return 3. if still you need mulligan, then draw 10, return 4, then return 5, etc.

silver bullet: I once stifeld a liliana dreadhorde general ultimate. boy that felt good.

My worst nightmare is using Scheming Symmetry or Wishclaw Talisman in hopes of having an opponent tutor a boardwipe for me and them using it to combo off instead. It may not be the worst situation, and it's always funny when it actually happens, but it still gives me an anxiety spike for about a turn lol

@24:00 i played with the warhammer necron deck and had one of the ctahns on the field (the one who halves somones lifetotal on ETB if you cast it) and i was able to cast a sculpting steel (3mana enters as a copy of target artifact) And i was so happy that this interaction would work, but sadly the cthans arent artifact creatures like the rest of the deck.. This was a bit heartbreaking

Games that never end because everyone has answers to absolutely everything. It wasn’t unfun, but it is bedtime!

My greatest nightmare is an unexpected elesh norn/massacre wurm as I'm known for my token strategy. Lol

17:00 - I tend to concede too fast. I know my decks, and if I know my deck is locked out I'll give up, not considering someone else might be able to break the lock. On the other hand, last week I lost all my nonlands and was about to concede, and another player talked me out of it, saying I could probably make a comeback. So I played on, cast the last card from my hand - and he countered it!

Painful Truths in Jodah, Archmage Eternal and Fist of Suns can draw 5 and lose 5 for WUBRG instead.

No Dana? But I wanted to tell him about how many lands I play in my commander decks...

I played with a group that had a draw 10 and shuffle 3 back instead of mulligans which seemed to save a lot of time on mulligans.

I recall something being said where sticker kicker was legally distinct from basic kicker (and not just in the "everything is kicker" sense), so Hallar, etc al will not be affected,I don't think Edit: yeah, 702.33h from the comprehensive rules changes doc from 18/10/22, which I'm sure was published after this was taped

For lower-powered decks, our playgroup likes to draw 10 and shuffle in 3. We'd more often prefer players all have a decent hand to work with. Helps the game move along and ensure everyone has a strategy they can follow plan for. Also, if we do draw 7, we tend to allow players to look at the top card to determine if it's necessary to mull or not.

There Used to be a rule in EDH where if you ever tried to create any color of mana NOT in your commander’s color identity it would create colorless instead

I'm going to hard disagree on mirror matches being a nightmare. My two favourite games of all time were the result of mirror matches. The first was me playing high tide against my opponent playing solitude in a legacy tournament. (They're different flavours of the same deck). We both comboed off on top of the stack in my end step after about 10 turns of draw, discard, go. The other was a 5-player commander game where everybody else was playing reanimator. You haven't lived until diluvian primordial hits the field and you cast 4 reanimation spells at once.

"just draw again. Draw a good 7." Your opening hand can be the most crippling thing ever.

It's gotta be drawing a fifth land in a row

I've been playing Zada in my Veyron deck since I designed mine. It's one of my strongest decks and people love how unique it is.

Playing a deck you just built for the first time. It can bomb, do exactly what you had in mind, be absolutely dominating, or somewhere in between. Getting the power level right on a deck where you don’t know how it does against other decks can lead to some feel bads.

My nightmare is un sets becoming black border. Oh wait.

My edh nightmare is durdley value engine decks. I’ve played games where one persons turn is consistently 20+ mins and I honestly feel like I should just open a book or watch a RU-vid video. Stax and MLD at least can be fun (IMO) to try and crack or play around

Mine was: as we approached turn 4 in a casual (non cedh) game, someone completely discarded my whole hand. Being sightseeing for the rest of the game, hoping to be able to play 1 card on the draw…I was ready to scoop and just go home.

I've heard of four players running Urza, High Artificer (the Mono-blue abomination). They went to the time limit and every one survived...

14:05 considering the cultivate idea that you spoke about concerning being mana screwed in a casual game. It reminded me of what me and my playgroup has added as a casual rule to avoid the lose of agency in the game. Rule: “At the end of your turn if you missed a land drop on your turn and you have less than 5 lands on board you may search your library for a basic land and exile it. At the beginning of your draw step you must put the exiled land on top of your deck and then proceed to drawing for turn. We find that if someone misses 2 land drops within the first 5 turns of the game they start to fall very far behind. So we decided to add the rule that to rig the top of your deck to make sure you can hit that land drop at least the turn after you missed one. It works great for us!

I have a very different response to mirror matches in EDH. If someone brought to the table the same archetype that I spent a lot of time crafting around, I'm going to see them as a kindred spirit and root for the both of us. I convinced them to be Allied the first chance I get because a win for either of us is a win for me and the rest of the table is about to get very scared. Those are some very wacky, memorable games.

I like rootweaver druid a lot in my muldrotha, especially for that reason. Their is often a player behind on lands, so he/she chooses to get the lands, and than everybody takes the lands, because they don't won't to be left out. And I need a lot of lands, so everybody is happy. And when one player is really strong atm 3 other player get 2 lands as resources against him/her so it usually works aswell in that position. The only thing that doesn't really work is playing it as a win more card. So cool fun card, that takes of the player with a one or two land-hand, and is aswell worth it in other situations.

Mine is drawing over ten cards and still not improving my situation because I picked too much interaction and not enough win cons.

Actual thing that happened to me: spending 5 minutes explaining the rest of the table why maze of ith doesn't work when there is a questing beast. Nobody had read QB to the end and everybody kept screaming at everybody else My nightmare is cards with too many words

For sure, the rules interactions thing but I will always make sure the game is played by the rules. The other day, someone had played a Secluded Courtyard in a ninja deck with no other blue sources in play at the time. They thought ninjutsu wasn't an activated ability because a judge had told them it wasn't. However, I let them know that it was and even pulled up the rule regarding ninjutsu in the Comprehensive Rules. They didn't change their mind on their in-game decision though.

Only happened once, sat at a table with a newer player. He said he wasn’t trying to win super hard 🙄 later pulled of a huge storm with kalamax nuking the bored and all life totals. In response I destroyed something and he kept saying it didn’t matter…Accor to the judge it did. He kept arguing about it, so the table just conceded because he was a dink.

For the Merfolk Mirror match, save Lord of Atlantis for when you know you can eliminate the other Merfolk player that turn.

Dang. I I thought I was so clever and unique when I built my Veyran deck with Zada and the like with combat tricks to get away from the standard Zada and Veyran who were out of control powerful. If you do run Zada, a Goblin Matron is worthwhile for fetching up Zada, Krark, Electromancer, or Guttersnipe. Also, the new Vesuvan Duplimancy is incredible if you are targeting with combat tricks.

Man, my nephew is so excited to play Commander and Oathbreaker. He loves mono-white, and he loves his copy of The Wandering Emperor. It genuinely sucks to tell him he can’t play every card he wants to, like his cool mythic dragon that happens to have all five mana symbols in its text box…

My nightmare scenario is when I have lots of swamps and the opponent has no flying blockers.

My nightmare is specifically going up against a Ghostly Prison or a Propaganda while I'm playing a token rush like Lathril, Krenko or Myrel. Literally just locked out of doing anything to them and it sucks.

A couple notes on the power level discussion. 1. Power level is impossible to calculate in a bubble. I might run a Prossh deck that's as finely tuned and powerful as it could be, but is it a 10? There are other decks that are going to outclass it. It's a super powerful casual deck. What rating should it have? It's a 10/10 for Prossh decks. But what is it outside of that vacuum? 2. Decks that might have powerful cards in them but are not fine-tuned can still pop off. A deck might contian some highly synergistic cards and the player just might draw everything they need to curve out and combo off. But they don't have any way to protect the combo or they also have a bunch of jank in the deck. There are 99 cards in this singleton format. Not every game plays the same way. So someone sitting down with a new deck or if they've played the deck but it isn't finely tuned, they can't possibly provide an accurate rating out of 10. Sometimes it's a turn 4 combo win, most of the time it's a durdle for 15 turns and die to combat. Those decks are impossible to rate accurately.

My only thought about in-finish prior to this podcast was “I like the full art shock lands!” but you have now given me anxiety with all of this wicker picker sticker stuff

My baddest beats story was playing a Umbris deck while piloting my Uro deck. The guy started with Leyline of the Void, then when I nature's claimed it he played Ashiok, dream render, then when that was dealt with by another player he played Umbris and hit me, then a turn later ghostly flickered it on me again. I never got to escape Uro or do anything meaningful for over an hour and it was the least fun game I've ever played

Most embarrassing nonbo situation in recent years: I wake up one Friday morning with a deck idea. I make a rad boros *bird tribal* deck. I roll up to FNM so excited to play this deck. I pull it out to play with my buddies. Draw my first hand of cards. Play my first creature. Sudden realization that _phoenix creatures are not birds._ :|

Absolutely loved that painful truths tip with the treasures

In my play group I am the lone combat player in a field of combo players. Swinging with big creatures, swinging with a horde of creatures, swinging the same creature over and over, these are what I live for. Probably my favorite deck I play that does this is my Karlach, Fury of Avernus/Sword Coast Sailor deck, but let me tell you without Karlach the deck doesn’t do anything and thats why cards like Imprisoned in the Moon are my worst fear.

50:00 on the Theme of unset and onoffical comanders , my newest commander is Questing Phelddagrif its non legendary so offically it cannot be a commander and the first thing i do if i want to play it ask the table if they mind ( as of now no complains)

I completely understand the mirror match being a nightmare. The most infamous game I ever played was a three person EDH pod. All sliver decks. Many old slivers say "all slivers". Also, Coat of Arms is overrated. D:

I love teaming up with the other person when mirror matches happen. I'm just happy when ninjas or zombies win. I don't care if they were mine.

My nightmare is being the archenemy that still wins

Bringing an Orzov Aristocrat deck on a pod with 3 Animars...

among the UNeligible cards for competitive : i bought "Animate Library" and "Hot fix" those are magical!

Bending the rules to let people play cards the way they want to play them (rather than how they are legally played) is one of the biggest reasons I've avoided playing Commander.

12:15 This is probably what I like the least about the game knights show. Their opening hands aren't realistic. Everyone always has 7 cards, as if no one ever mulliganed more than once ever. But I think Josh revealed that they don't use the Mulligan rules on Game Knights because they want everyone to have a good time. So Jimmy being mana screwed is always his own fault. 😂 But I don't like this. I would prefer it to be more realistic where someone sometimes goes to 6 or 5 cards in hand. 16:45 I feel this way when all my wincons in my temur pirates deck have been dealt with. They killed my commander 4 times, meaning he cost a fortune to cast, meaning my main combo is locked out, they killed my Nivmizzet parun, they killed my duelcaster mage. my only out was to manually draw eternal witness or Finale of devastation or noxious revival and I wasn't gonna wait around for that so I asked to be put out of my misery so my time wasn't wasted. All this because I won on turn 3 the game before 😜 24:20 one of these cards for me was Akroma's memorial in my Raggadragga deck. I've had it in there forever and it's a nonbo, because Akroma's memorial gives the creatures a bunch of keywords and pro black and pro RED. Raggadragga is red, so he can no longer target any creature to give it +7/+7 which is why I had Akroma's memorial in there in the first place, so I took it out this week and replaced it with Spine of Ish Sah which goes infiite with a mana dort that taps for mana = to power, like Marwyn, you cast spine, target marwyn, she gets +7/+7 and untaps, you sac the spine and destroy target permanent and get spine back to you hand, you tap Marwyn, recast the spine, give marwyn another +7/+7 and sac it again, rinse repeat delete until all permanents are gone that belong to your opponents and then you go to combat and you win. Such a good combo :) 50:00 stickers are a no-go for me, I do not play with or against them.

When I run into a mirror match, we actually usually end up teaming up

Mirror matches become awesome when you're bringing elephant tribal to the table 🐘

Chaos. Chaos that generates a win is fine, but chaos for the sake of being chaotic kills me. Warp World, Eye of the Storm, Possibility Storm, etc. A stack that is near impossible to resolve drives me insane. Also, Dovescape. I hate Dovescape.

My recurring nightmare is being told my deck with no tutors and no infinite combo is cedh just because no card I play is jank crap.

For the next video can you make one one commanders who have the potential to become more powerful with better card support. I was thinking the new Hazezon, Shaper of Sand has the potential to be really good if we get more deserts.

My biggest nightmare was in a game where all three of my opponents didn’t know that infect was all damage that the creature would deal not just combat damage

Actually, mirror match aristocrats have to worry about all your opponents triggers triggering before you and two decks that focus on commander damage often actually do have to worry about getting one shot by the other deck if they take out a third party. Mark Rosewater wanted more people to play un-cards, but making a set more fiddly than Ikoria is not how to accomplish that goal.

i always thought that the monarch and initiative were really fun and cool and everyone loved it 😳

My nightmare situation is having the reputation for being the archenemy….and I’m playing a new deck and I’m mana screwed or not drawing anything for turn after turn….BUT still being kicked bc im normally “the problem”

I have a fair storm Wort the Raidmother deck. By fair, it is a glass cannon, thus has zero interaction, and it's on a $100 budget. Another handicap, I should be running 3-4 more lands. I like to explain that the deck plays entirely off of the topdeck, with perfect hands and draws it can do the thing turn 3, on average it's turn 7. It whiffs frequently, and I don't count those as the thing, so some turns are big and explosive, tons of tokens and treasures and cards drawn, but nothing to close out the game that turn. So my playgroup has enjoyed facing it because of these restrictions on it, and every one of my turns is like Krark the Thumbless.

about the opening hand, 90% behind it on 10% i ask how many lands you have and everything below 36 is a selfmade problem, so just swap some cards for basiclands and dont go below 36 (outside of cedh or close to cedh).

If I understand the rules for stickers they are removed if the card becomes private information so it goes into the hand, deck or somehow gets flipped face down

Think mine would be blanking on what one of my full art japanese cards was... lol