Like when I'm playing with three veterans last night and I'm only on my 5th Commander deck but I suddenly become the threat with Yarok. Dudes, you just played against me twice, you all made me irrelevant the whole time, but oh, no, not Yarok. They can't help it, it's irrational, they know I'm not great at building decks OR playing them, but suddenly they all forgot. When you're sitting there going off with your little tricks it generates a similar irrationality. Like, do they think I'm some sneak who gets off playing dumb just to bring out the nuts and embarrass them?
Once you find the right pod, it can be ok. I have found that it helps to try and initiate an open dialogue about what's going on, like saying "ok, I'm probably going to be a problem on my next turn." or "Please help me. What is the best thing to remove right now?" People still get it wrong on occasion, and it's sort of a prisoner's dilemma--where it only takes one person to topple the scales...but with my pod, it works! And really well too. At least, it keeps me from feeling butthurt all the time. 😂
I thought I'd never see you admitting, that not having a wincon can be a problem. Edit: My Feldon of the Third Path deck had a realy long losing streak. I started to play it in every game, until I won once. Then I made changes to the deck after this intense period of testing and put way more rituals into the deck (it is much more mana hungry than I had anticipated). Winrate is normal since then. :)
I also have a deck where I'm eliminated 1st 80% of games. It's a dimir Rogue mill deck. If there is anything people hate more than durdling, it's mill lol.
That's when you build a combo deck who's end goal is infinite mill. Kurkhesh with a couple of Keys, Mana Rocks, and Pyxis of Pandemonium should do the trick.
@@otterfire4712 I have another deck with mill combos. This one deserves that knock out rate, cause while it isn't super strong, the goal is watching people despair from milling 1-6 cards at a time over and over.
I feel like with decks like this you kinda have to actively be winning and not durdling. By nature the deck wants to take many game actions and that draws a lot of attention like you said, so you may as well be doing it to present win attempts.
This is pretty much where I found myself with Ghave... I didn't build him for combos because I was more into all the other fun I could have with him but my turns would just be so durdly and packed with micro-plays that often didn't advance my board state in a meaningful way that I ended up shelving him.
Teshar is still one of my favorite decks I've made. I did something a little different in that i used equipment instead of artifact creatures. its a great way to pump up the little creatures and if one dies it just equip all the equipment with another creature. lots of angel creators equipment in the deck too. it's a great toolbox deck too with all the little utilitarian creatures. maybe pull teshar out again and try a new angle cuz he is such a good open ended commander.
Teshar, is my favorite deck by far, I was so surprised to see this video, if anything I feel my deck wins too much and I've had to nerf it more than once. I built it much as you said half legendary half artifact and at first it was all value engine, but I tuned it continuously for months and now it does everything I want to be doing in a commander game and I win by combat don't like to play combo
You have a list I can check out? Though I’m not against combo, I’ve found I don’t love it being the point of the deck so having combat to fall back on sounds nice
I've found the Timey-Wimey precon from Doctor Who is the same way. It's a bit of a ticking bomb where a lot of things sort of forecast themselves, so it's easy to think it's the problem. I still sort of get this way whenever I'm across from I'm across from an Izzet deck. 😅 All it took was seeing Jhoira storm off ONCE.
Reminds me of my Yorion deck in which I have a bunch of little things that does something at the end of each turn flickering some up and down. One player was drawing 15 cards in their turn and doing it based on their commanders damage. Another player was making tokens and tapping them to draw cards to the tune of 9 per turn. I was drawing 2 cards gaining 3 life on each players end step meaning 8 cards and gaining 12 life a round and was targeted by everyone else to be taken out first.
I once made a Xanathar Guild Kingpin deck I adored because I made it specifically to spite a friend in our playgroup who we all didn't really like. I filled it with Removal, Theft cards and all the mean stuff I could think of, but ultimately I took it apart because when I pulled it out, it caused my other friends to pull out their cEDH decks, even though it was far from cEDH (No infinite combo's or Thorracle win). It was a fun powertrip controlly deck but I ultimately took it apart because it was just never fun to play it when people knew about it and could anticipate it.
My Maelstrom Wanderer deck is like this. Super powerful commander that is literally there for the colors and haste. The cascade never really works out because it's a janky tims deck. All the prodigal sorcerer effects and untapped effects. So much fun, but people get threatened and turns can take awhile lol
I can relate. I'm changing my Lathril deck and I learned to change my play style/method. I would be playing all these cheap elves, who really didn't do that much, but would immediately become a target -- for good reason -- as soon as I got to 7 or 8 elves, each player would take turns attacking me because I was almost to 10 elves (besides Lathril). I learned to not just dump my hand and put a lot of elves on the battlefield. I had to hold back until the right moment. I also don't play Lathril on turn 3 or 4, there's no point with her being a target for several turns before being an actual threat. That definitely helped. And now I'm refactoring my deck and we'll see how it goes. My plan is to get to 5 elves and then play Lathril -- still not a threat right because I have only 5 elves, not 10? Then next turn play something like Elven Ambush or Elvish Promenade that creates an elf for each elf I control to jump right to 10 then tap Lathril and all my other elves. Something else I learned: Lathril can tap elves that just entered the battlefield, even though they have summoning sickness, they're not tapping themselves, Lathril is tapping them so it works.
Sounds like bad threat assessment when you're watching the deck durdle. My friend has a Teshar deck and there have been times when he has won the game and not noticed until I pointed it out. I respect Teshar decks enough to assume they are intending to win, not durdle. He's a combo commander, so hard to see him outside of comboing.
I feel like this with my 5 color mutate deck, though adding Rotpriest gives me more of a backup wincon it's kind of become a gates deck where I just try dump as many lands in play as possible.
I have a Cadira, Caller of the Small deck which makes little 1/1 bunnies. When it gets going I end up with lots of triggers to keep up with but they are all just more 1/1 critters. I'm frequently targeted because I'm doing so much on my turn. But when they don't pay any attention, they accidentally find themselves buried under hundreds of bunnies. It's kind of funny.
I understand what you're talking about, but it went the other way lol My buddy was running Muldrotha when it first came out. One turn, he did a whole bunch of stuff but barely advanced his board state, the other 2 players were all like "omg we're dead" (we weren't close) and they scooped.......but yeah, they clearly thought he was gonna smash
Makes me think of my mono black Vito deck, lots of gain 1 life effects allowing me to ping others with Vito... 1 dmg per hit is a death by a thousand cut, yet I always end up the target even if there are combo decks, craterhooves elf decks and stuff that are a thousand time more dangerous XD
There's a Rocco + Norin as secret commander deck that I've theorycrafted and I haven't built it (probably never will now) just because it wastes too much time. It can put like 20+ different things on the stack on each other player's turn. It's absolute torture just playtesting it on cardforge. It has crazy high-roll potential (Like doing 40 damage 16 times to any target per each player's turn just from ETBs) but I know I'd never get to that point when everyone knows that I'm the one making the game take 5 hours. I don't want to put myself OR others through that...
Threat assessment is a huge issue. Whenever my old play group would continuously target me for no reason, I would break out my Kiki-Jiki deck (a 9 at the time) and accept that they would target me and win on T3 or 4.
From my experience with artifact, this screams artifact combo, running things like Scrap Trawler, Metalwork Colossus, and artifact creatures with etb and death effects to repeat and dig through the deck till you hit a combo piece to take advantage of your mass of artifacts generated. I never built him as I've shifted away from combo towards more value based stuff that doesn't end on a combo.
My Gisa the Hellraiser deck is like the complete opposite of your teshar deck but also reinforces the same claims. The deck is more or less set up 2-4 “crime cards” (like relic of progenitus) and then drop Gisa and takenover the table with zombie tokens by making 2 per turn. The deck hasn’t lost yet because nobody realizes how quickly 6 power of zombies can snowball when you get them every end step. And the deck kind of sucks to play with because once you’ve set your crimes up you just stop playing magic and sandbag for a board wipe. so my joke is the goal of the deck “is to NOT play magic”
Now I’m having reservations about making my Wheel of Sun and Moon deck, where I use Eternal Horizons to remove all lands from my deck, the rest of my library is cycling 2 cards, have Fluctuator and Wheel out, and Boom: your deck is now a hamster wheel. Maximum durdling.
@@thelunchlady8276 Well you’ve got infinite draw triggers, infinite discard triggers, so anything goes! Can add some colors to achieve funny wins: Ominous Seas for infinite 8/8’s, Psychosis Crawler, Feast of Sanity, Mystic Redaction, etc.
I have a deck like this. It's a Boros "steal stuff" deck, and it gets hated out first EVERY game. But I don't care because I think it's fun and clever. 😅
I had the opposite effect with my mono-green Morph Yedora deck. My creature morphs face up, they block or attack, someone removes it, comes back flipped over, repeat the process. I kept winning and it made games boring and tense.
Speaking of colors , I have hard time finding or getting into anything with color green. Is it just me or is it play style I can’t get into. Can you do video about this discussion or have you ever had this problem, thanks
I built grist insect tribal was close thing ever have fun but never won also , tried and borrowed other commanders with green in mana combinations. Should I just admit green just will never be in my life 😅😅😅
@PrimetimeSports20 No problem with green whatsoever. You get lands by playing them and ramping, play large things, then use those large things to draw cards and turn them sideways, but I'm also a Temur mage at heart, so any combination of Green, Blue, and Red just makes me happy.
Green just my problem, idk if I haven’t found right playstlye with green or just commander with the color in it. I’m just hoping/looking for some kind of criticism or pointers help me over come it
I have a bant Shanna life gain deck that never wins cause I become the target real quick. People don't like it when you gain 12 life and draw 5+ extra card a turn, who knew. Plus they usually think it's some kind of an infinite turns deck but I built it as a "value" life gain deck not with extra turns
Would love to watch a video about your thoughts on politicking in commander. I think it makes for some great games/moments. Sometimes a deal is better than removal if you can make the threat look another way for a turn
Doesn't sound like he plays with people with decent threat assessment. So I can only imagine politics focused strats would be abysmal from his perspective lol
I have fallen victim to both this commander and doing a lot of "nothing" game actions which makes you a target (commander physcology). Player wasnt doing anything and then in one turn got a few key peices out and completely locked down the game (first time playing against this comander and player). Going back to your point, I have found this true with most artifcat decks where you are recurring or using more than one permanent, doing a bunch of stuff, and you end up with an extra token or something. I have found being quick/smooth with how you pilot deckas well as playing with people with calibrated threat assessment, helps.
In my case, the games where I lost, is when I kept the bad hand. I'm usually arch enemy. We all play strong. So people Target me even if I'm behind, or have no threats on board. people still kill me first😂 ..... .... As they should😈 I don't get salty about it. Because I know it was my fault.
