The Impossible Search for a "Fun" Combo Deck 

As someone who loves planning strange combo decks I've come to the realization that one of the key steps is to once the deck is almost done take the key combo cards put them off to the side and ask myself if the remaining pile is playable in its own right. By adjusting the rest of the deck to function without the combo you can end up with games where what you have in hand might be better if played in a way that isn't just racing to the combo. The result is decks that can do the cool thing but also play without it and even if they end games in a similar way most of the time, they take different paths to get there.

_"It's not impressive just because it works, it's impressive if we all ask to see it again"_ -Mauldhound

There's a phrase in the fighting game community, "The game doesn't end at character select." It's a way to get people off the hype of playing a low tier or a joke character. Picking the character doesn't make you special, being able to play them is what gets people excited for a character that normally gets passed over. This feels like a similar kind of situation. Building the deck in a unique or creative way is the character select, but how it actually plays out is what matters in the end and how people are going to remember it.

"The human brain gets a little wonky when it doesn't have enough structure for the given task at hand." This hit deep.

Once again snail hits it out of the park by describing ideas that resonate extremely well with my experience playing commander that I would never have thoroughly understood without him. Thank for all the good work.

Just wanted to say that I have built ( and upgraded out the wazoo ) the gerrard eggs deck you showcased not too long ago. It has been the most fun I've had putting thought and effort into a deck before, and it wouldn't have been possible without you. So thanks! I hope 🥚s get an honorable mention in this video

This kind of analysis reminds me a lot of a realisation I had a number of years ago about tabletop RPG (TTRPG) character creation. Generally, TTRPGs have the same two phase split between character creation and gameplay. You get some players who love to dig into books and optimise their build, while others are happy to look up a build online, and others still want to throw together something goofy or thematic. Then, once the character is made, you bring it to actual sessions of gameplay and it has to do something. A highly optimised character that does the same thing every time will, no matter how well it does it, tend to evoke a sense of "yup, character [X] doing character [X] things, next turn" within a session or two. As a player who very much enjoys spending time in phase 1, I found myself starting to build characters by thinking about what I wanted to be doing on any given turn in any given situation, rather than having some big distinctive "thing" that I'd optimised for. If the turn by turn behaviour wasn't going to be an interesting puzzle in its own right, then it probably wasn't going to be an interesting character to run. This shift improved my phase two experience immensely. A related realisation that applies to both MtG Commander and TTRPG character creation is that, when the constraints on phase one are loose enough, the primary opponent of phase one shifts from being other players to being the game designers. That is, the main sense of satisfaction shifts from competing against players to finding parts of the game design that feel almost like oversights: "take that game dev, I've found a way to exploit this thing that's probably more effective than the options you were thinking of when you created it". The shift from competing against the game designers to playing with other players in phase two can create a huge disconnect if you aren't conscious of it. Applying these observations to the video, I think Snail falls into the category of someone who really enjoys competing against the game designers in phase one, which is what creates the itch that continuously needs to be scratched. This requires identifying "loopholes" in the game design, finding interactions between cards that feel like they're better than they were designed to be, and feeling a sense of triumph when they're found and demonstrated to work. However, this fun doesn't port straight across to phase two, because you're not competing against abstract, distant game designers anymore, you're simultaneously competing and cooperating with other players to create a fun play space. If what your deck does on most turns doesn't make the play space fun on that turn, it hasn't contributed to the phase two goal. Consistent, flexible, and resilient decks tend to be the kinds of decks that can do something interesting on each turn, and thus they pretty consistently contribute to a fun play space. They have something to do, so they give opponents something to react to. They don't do the same thing every time, so opponents have to think about how to respond to them. They don't automatically fail to one kind of hate, so opponents can play the game without interaction against them feeling all or nothing. Each turn is interesting against a deck that can expect to do one of a variety of useful things on each turn. So, to conclude this wall of text, the main idea is that the fewer constraints a game has on its phase one, the more phase one becomes a game against the game developers rather than against players. Phase two is always with and against players though, so in a low constraint game there's a shift between phase one and phase two that needs to happen to consistently contribute to a fun phase two.

local snail learns that no matter how quirky your combo win is, it's still a combo win

When I built my first Commander deck (Xantcha, Sleeper Agent), I chose my commander and my cards based on this observation I made while watching some games in person and online: Players like to build up to their combo or web of fun synergies while they present themselves as more or less non-threatening. "Innocent", perhaps. I decided that my flavor of fun would be to try and disrupt this restrained "don't hurt me" dynamic by playing impactful, global Rakdos sorceries and enchantments while letting Xantcha's 3-mana 5/5 self pressure opponents early. Plus, when your opponent is making the decision of who Xantcha will attack, it makes it more difficult for that opponent to curry favor with the rest of the table. This created games where, even if I became the villain, players talked to each other more and used their resources in ways that they weren't used to, to stay alive under the effects of cards like Bedlam, Havoc Festival, Sire of Insanity, and Captive Audience. My second deck was Braids, Conjurer Adept. I loved the hypothetical win/win of either killing my opponents with a bunch of overwhelmingly mana-cheated behemoth creatures, or creating a chaotic table of accelerated combos, un-stuck mana-screwed starting hands, and other opposing 8-12 mana behemoths on turn 4. And that largely worked too, when Braids didn't get hated out early lmao. I've since built mostly "traditional" commander decks that seek to grind out advantage or perform some kind of combo or play pattern I simply find fun. But I wanted to relate the beginning of my Commander story here because I feel like I had the inverse journey in discovering fun in the format - I sought first to be the most interesting nuisance I could be given the types of games I'd seen, or in other words, I was focused on the overall game dynamic above all, so I didn't then run into the problem of my deck performing well but getting no reaction. Then I stopped thinking about being a sort of main character and began enjoying the expression in other players' decks and play patterns, even if they were creatively inferior :) Commander is a very expressive format, and it's fun to see other people have fun and decide to keep coming back for more. And you know what? Wizard tribal IS kind of cool. I mean, come on, *wizards* . Even if for now they're just winning with Vampires or Slivers, don't worry, that's a future brew god, they're just learning scrambled eggs first.

What works for me: change the goal of the combo. My favorite decks are also goofy combo decks, but they aren't game-winning combos the way the ones you describe are. In fact, they aren't really combos at all, in the traditional sense, even though I feel like a storm player cobbling together a fiddly series of cards to try and find a win. But it's not about winning. It's about doing The Ridiculous Thing. In my Hidetsugu & Kairi list, the ridiculous thing is setting up and casting multiple free 7+-mana spells in a turn. It's casting Decree Of Pain followed by Rise Of The Dark Realms at instant speed. It's casting Mnemonic Deluge for free, targeting my Breach The Multiverse, which will somehow reanimate my commander all three times. In my Flubbs, The Fool deck, it's seeing how many cards I can play in a turn. It's sequencing my draws, attacks, and activated abilities so that I can always get another card from Flubbs and keep going. Sure, eventually I'm going to win with Rampaging Baloth tokens, or by Retracing a Jaya's Immolating Inferno while I have 30 lands in play, but that's not the point. The point was that turn where I played the same Evolving Wilds from my graveyard five times. The Gerrard Eggs deck you posted a video about a while ago is a perfect example. The fun isn't that I had Quicksmith Genius and Psychosis Crawler (my own addition), it's that I found a way to keep casting an ever-more-expensive commander over and over and came out ahead on mana each time. When I'm going off with one of my decks, I don't care if I win. My favorite game that I played with Hidetsugu & Kairi was one where I did the Mnemonic Deluge / Breach The Multiverse sequence I described earlier, passed the turn with a board large enough to kill the entire table twice over next turn, and then the very next player had a Farewell. Suddenly I was left with no permanents and no graveyard and a library of 20 or so cards and no way to win, and I ended up dying to my own brainstorm trigger. I loved that game because I got to do my ridiculous thing, and was answered by the perfect card. The joy is in fiddling with my cardboard, rather than the moment where folks go "okay, you win. Go next?"

I like the 2 phase model of viewing trading card games, but for the longest time I’ve considered Snail’s two phase model as instead two separate games that players can choose to play. Some people love to just brew, and some people don’t mind netdecking or just picking up and playing like how someone may just jump into a playing card game or a board game. Thus, I’d argue that “succeeding” happens twice, which the Snail notes with their flicker tribal deck. They “succeeded” in making a fun budget deck on paper. And sometimes, you “succeed” in a commander game by having fun or winning or doing your thing. This means that not only will players’ goals going into a commander game may be very different, but even before the game starts, there is probably also going to be conflicting ideas regarding the game of deckbuilding, which is fundamental to being part of a social dynamic / game.

I would revise the main statement as "Combo deck building creativity does not translate into deck playing experience variety/creativity." The thing is, you can make all kinds of goofy combos, but if the gameplay boils down to "Gather resources (mana and draw), tutor up or dig deep enough for your combo pieces, play and protect combo pieces." your games are going to feel exactly the same to you and everyone else at the table no matter what creativity you had to put in to building a deck with unique combo pieces. You will get more variety and force yourself to be more creative with your gameplay lines in a deck with more cross synergies where you have to adapt your gameplay lines to what kinds of pieces you draw and how they work together. And crucially, interacting with the rest of the table severely multiplies the amount of variety in gameplay lines because you have to line up your cards with theirs instead of just doing your own thing (maybe countering a couple spells).

This is so besides the point but Changeling Hero and Changeling Titan are two more Fiend Hunger effects in GW

I play tempo/aggro-control, and I love to brew around not so popular Commanders. What I love is synergy, and that leaves a lot of room for "potential" wincons. The feeling that no matter what appears on board I can still play the game is what makes the game fun "for me", and each time I win in a different way with a deck makes me happy and proud of my brewing creative capacity and flexibility to adapt to any table as a player.

The full involvement of building a deck and then playing it is why limited magic (especially draft) will always be the king of magic for me that's impossible to replace. It's so much more rewarding for testing both deck building and playing than any other format.

I think the answer is easy. Have a combo that doesn’t quite win, but instead establish a board state that is likely to win, but possible for the opponents to overcome with significant ingenuity and effort. Maybe that’s the yugioh player speaking.

Really interesting concept to talk about. As someone who spends a TON of time trying to find unique and interesting cards to work with the themes of a deck, I find that a lot of the time people will still largely just notice the theme. My Saryth deck is one of my favorites that I have built, as the engines feel very unique and all centered around tapping and untapping lands, but when it gets going my opponents don’t see that I I have a lot of unique and interesting cards on the battlefield, they see that I have 20 mana on turn 6. It’s a matter of reshaping your expectations, while you might see the beautiful, intricate work of art you’ve put together, your opponents are just going to see another deck a lot of the time.

Your point about how a combo win is kind of boring even if the combo itself is interesting reminds me a little of playing a Jodah the Unifier brawl deck on Arena. I can have high ambitions for how the deck is going to function with Jodah and a board full of legendaries, but in practice my opponent is either going to shut it down when they have the chance or concede once they see what's happening. Most of the time the deck is just setting up to play Jodah, whose function largely boils down to "kill this or I will get a big board very fast".

I had the same problem with building the turtle gates deck. My solution to create a more satisfying play experience was to take out the tutors for a group hug draw package. The instant win combo pieces are still there, but having to hard draw into them with symmetrical draw engines makes for an element of unpredictability that I can play up in pregame discussion, basically making the table balance getting free resources with the threat of combo jumpscare. I was inspired by experiences with the Tempting Offer cycle of cards, and I feel like bringing a more comprehensive version of that minigame to the table does a lot to temper the relative anticlimax of a 1.5 card combo wincon.

I was thinking about commenting about feeling this way whenever I played "Omniscience" (fantasy of playing unlimited cards, reality is the table scoops) but that bit on "Consistency, Flexibility, Resilience" really hit home. It reminded me of a Innistrad/Return to Ravnica deck that I consider the most fun I ever had. It was a combo deck really, but it had so many game plans it could move towards, and so many ways to try and play, I never really codified the fun as because it was those three things, but it makes such clear sense to me now! Having pivots to fall back on so you never feel shut out of a game leaves you willing to slug out a losing match for hope of a comeback, and multiple avenues of attack left most games feeling fresh and fun. Was I winning with self mill? Better save removal for lab maniac. Was I instead milling you? Uh oh, you need to ration your card draws. Was I using the graveyard shenanigans to cheat out huge monsters? Now you need kill spells or bigger creatures! I haven't played MtG in a long while, but I'm going to remember those three pillars as advice to give friends now. Thank you for that.

I think this video does a great job of explaining my personal issue with combo stuff. It's the "oh, you got the combo? Want to play again?" thing. A combo, if no one has any way to disrupt it, is an end to the fun. For a while I couldn't really articulate this to my friends, but now I have a good way to so thanks! My distaste for combos bleeds into my deck construction, I have a hydra kindred beatdown that's all about building architecture so I can pump out crazy powerful hydras for cheap, and a Krenko mob boss goblin swarm deck. The hydras don't have infinite combos, or really any way to win other than making a big snake and hitting you with it. The goblins have a couple ways to make infinite goblins, but it's hard to pull off and I don't super like it. Anyway I'm remaking the hydras deck, and changing the commander and colors, and I'm following a lot of your videos and it's been really fun. I see what you mean by deck construction being a whole other part of the game. Instead of thinking of my commander as like "the guy in charge" (as I did with Vorinclex in the previous hydras deck) I'm thinking about it as a value engine, a reliable way for my deck to get its feet under it and start running faster. Animar is great for that, and your videos have me thinking about like... "what do I want this deck to do turn 3 and how do I make that happen?" The answer being that I want Animar out turn 2 if possible and I want to play a hydra on turn 3. This is rambly and awkward. Whatever, all this to say thank you for your videos. You've gotten an idiot like me to think critically about what she wants her deck to be doing when. My friends will rue the day they called my hydras slow when they fall victim to my well rounded and fast hydra nonsense.

This video feels extremely prescient to me seeing as I just built a PDH combo deck (intended for regular tables with some rule 0'ing) around Lilysplash Mentor. Part of what makes that deck fun for me is the moment-to-moment decision making, which is just as expressive as the win lines - being in pauper limits the freedom with which I can search my deck, and so far every game I learn a new sequencing option the deck has or find a new combo line I hadn't seen before. Hopefully it stays fun because of that!

Funny enough this is basically the inversion of a realization I had a while ago: As much as I enjoy building some of my best combo decks, ones that actually get the reaction I want out of the table at times as well... I have no fun playing them. I mean... not *no* fun, but... not remotely as much as I had building the deck or as much as I imagined having playing it. And the reason for that is consistent: Those decks are all so well constructed (and yes I do pride myself in that) that the moment you play them there are few choices left. Each turn I know exactly what to do for the best result. There is no thinking until I start comboing off and usually then drawing large amounts of cards at which point I actually need to review what I drew - and what is still in the deck. For all intents and purposes I probably could sit down a total beginner with a complex enough series of tree diagrams and they could play these decks. But I love thinking. And that's why I love building those decks. But I basically frontload 98% of it into building them. So playing them is very... "okay this, than that, after that...". I realized that even more after I recently build a deck around the new flip Tamiyo whose concept was very simple: Don't draw aggro. Built the entire deck in a way that makes you either seem like you aren't the threat, that opponents don't think they have actual threats on you (thanks to your Xyris video btw) or that the repercussions of hitting me are seemingly too severe to go for it. And I have the time of my life with this. I don't think I ever had this much fun playing a deck.

This video made me think about a similar realization I had about competitive pokemon. I've played singles on pokemon showdown in various different formats and alternate rulesets and always had a huge vendetta against stall teams. I hated that they felt uninteractive, and they didn't need to think beyond "switch into the relevant wall and click defensive moves" After a while, playing some of the rotating alternate formats, some of the most successful teams swung heavily in the other direction. Unga bunga braindead hyper offense games that were entirely decided by who blows out the other first. It was frustrating, and what I realized what I hated - uninteractive play - wasn't exclusive to defensive strategies. So I actually started to build my own stall team for said formats. I wanted to make people think. I wanted them to stop clicking the big stupid offense buttons and slow down. I wanted to feel like the game was on my terms. And once I did this, my whole world changed. The amount of teambuilding effort it takes to create an effective defensive shell - to shore up every weakpoint to prevent yourself from getting instantly broken and steamrolled, to make sure you're accounting for every possible explosive offensive threat, all at once, is actually really, really hard. And once I got into games, I realized I was that unthinking stall player that I used to hate. Just switch defensively, click hazards, click healing moves. And it finally hit me. Stall doesn't play the game in the game. Stall plays the game in the teambuilder. When you fight stall, you might just see the several huge dumb unkillable idiots swapping back and forth and living forever - and you don't see the dozens of games where a single teambuilding miscalculation just left you wide open to getting 6-0'd. It made me realize the innate skill it takes in getting a defensive build to even work in the first place, and gave me a lot of perspective on appreciating the craft that building a team takes as opposed to just fully judging skill based on active gameplay.

This verbalises a lot of my feelings around commander super duper well. I love slower, grinder decks where I feel challenged to pull out the win even when ahead, but my pod tends to get bored and frustrated as turns pass into the double digits mark. It's been a tricky point of tension to try and resolve, as it's difficult to find a middle ground between fast, concise win decks and slow, grindy piles of optimised weirdness.

You experience mirrored mine when I built my Gods tribal deck. I always wanted to build a deck with all the Theros Gods, and when the World Tree came out it actually made the deck viable. Activating the world tree would mean the deck won 98% of the time. And while I was super excited to search my deck and Slam all of my Secret Lair theros God cards on the table my friend group was just shuffling up and telling me to hurry and do the same. I was a little sad they didn't want to wait for me to show off my pretty cardboard lol. Which, in retrospect, made sense. The game was effectively over, I had won. And going through the effort to put them out was just gloating. A combo with is still a combo win

My fun combo deck is Experiment Kraj. I don't use any tutors, I win using a different combination of combo pieces each time. Something that taps for mana, something that taps for cards/spells that sink mana to draw cards, and something that can teach Kraj how to untap itself. I have close to 20 cards that could be involved in a game-winning combo, it's my job to put it together. Because it's all creature based it's easily telegraphed and I can't normally pop off in a single turn, and because it's slightly different each time it stops it from being boring. Sometimes I win with commander damage. Sometimes everyone draws their deck. Sometimes it's triskelion. It'd be real easy to throw a Lab Man in there too. Idk, I like it.

This one really resonated with me. So much appreciation for your videos!

One of my favorite interactions that occurred in a edh game I played at a lgs was in a losing state where I had a dinosaur tribal deck against a graveyard deck who's one top and another player. The winning player plays a card which brought creatures from everyone's graveyards to his board with an enchantment to double up on all the cards. One of those cards was however an unassuming Rampaging Ferocidon which I lost a while ago. He took over 70 damage and couldn't heal due to the Ferocidon's annoying abilities. Single handedly allowed me to get a win with a few big dinosaurs boosted with a Natural Growth.

I totally sympathize with this. So often, I will spend a ton of time making a clever deck on Moxfield and when I play it, it's never as fun. Usually it's a combo deck, and although I love the challenge of assembling a combo, especially an esoteric one ... in actual play it feels bad. It's like "oh, you got the two cards that let you win, ok". Worse is that a lot of these decks end up being storm decks, so it actually takes a long time for them to resolve the win. I really really like your notion of steeping in the win when you have a deck that wins slowly over a few turns. Then you actually have time to enjoy the win.. it doesnt feel like you pulled the wool over your opponents' eyes and snuck a motorcycle into the foot race... instead you worked to pull into a large lead into the race and see if anyone can stop you from crossing the finish line in a couple turns. It feels more earned. I do think deck building is a completely different part of the game, and it's one I enjoy a lot. There is, unfortunately, verry little payoff to that part if the deck you make isn't fun for the table. I have a lot of decks I have built that I have never played because I know they just won't be that fun to play against, even though they were a fun exercise to build.

I think the fun of combo level commander is the interaction wars it produces. My best memories are defending or stopping combo lines. If you do the work to protect your combo, it’ll do the work to win you the game.

Great video. I think it’s really important to get people thinking about the difference between “fun to build/think about” vs “fun to play/play against”.

That Fiend Hunter deck is an actual interesting combo thing, to me. Kudos.

I started playing many moons ago, and recently have boiled down to a single mono blue "oops, all clones!"/clone "tribal" Sakashima EDH deck. You'd be surprised how much fun you can have when your only plan is some mixture of whatever the other guys are doing. Every new pod results in a unique game. It is essentially self balancing in power level as well, never really stronger than strongest deck at the table.

You've explained this all so well. I love the deck building process, and have lots of fun getting excited about weird, interesting and funny combinations of cards. Then, when it comes to playing the decks, they sometimes feel completely flat and boring and it was hard to find the words to explain why this was the case. This video was really helpful in shaping my future deckbuilding for commander.

I have found to be true in my experience that the most fun cards are not the ones that win, but the ones that provide big advantage. For instance, I love Breach The Multiverse. It is a giant game-changing sorcery that is fun to resolve, but rarely results in immediate winning states. Compare this to other ramp payoffs like Eldrazi. You cast a huge Eldrazi, and you either get shut down by the table… or you just win. Same with Craterhoof Behemoth. It is much more entertaining to emphasize curve-toppers that intend a certain amount of game to continue after they resolve.

This might be your most important video so far., It is incredibly easy to fall into the "fun idea" trap considering the current Magic design.

I really like the point you make about building decks with certain "state of game" in mind, instead of specific steps to be taken in order to win. That way, each game becomes the "glorious" puzzle that you need to solve (to get you to certain game-state) instead of following a step-by-step guide (to get you to your game winning pieces).

I really enjoyed listening to the points made in this video.

Yeah, I’m gonna pull out all my insta- or infinia- win combos and see what happens. Thanks Snail!

As someone who loves to construct silly and/or inventive ways of winning the game (see: my Yedora list), a lot of the fun I experience playing them is watching the pieces of the Rube Goldberg machine I've built fall into place. In the end, yeah, it's a "oh, you got combo? cool, let's shuffle up," but the dopamine rush of everything falling into place is one that shouldn't be understated. That being said, I only usually run said combo decks once or twice a commander night.

You are the most jimmy magic player ive ever seen. Love the content keep up the good work!

Im glad you put into words how ive been feeling, i had to stop brewing decks for this reason and i feel like i have a deck for everything but combo

The most fun combo deck I've ever built is my Marneus Calgar Treasures-n'-Clues (n'-Food-n'-Other Artifact Tokens) deck. The cards are so high-synergy that I most often find myself *accidentally* comboing off, rather than going for a specific predetermined wincon. That makes it way more interesting, since my hand is now a puzzle that needs to be solved rather than a race to assemble 3 specific cards that win me the game.

I just built an Animar deck with about 30+ overlapping creature combos. Every game is a blast. I have no tutors. It’s just what kind of hand is this, is this puzzle leading toward play patterns and a wincon that feels relevant on this particular table. If so, I keep and see what happens. I’ve played the deck a dozen times, the novelty hasn’t worn off. Recently discovered a new combo I hadn’t even considered.

"Oh, you got the combo? ok" Is really just a perfect encapsulation of the feelings here. When you make Maze's End into an instawin, you're not really playing the Maze's End you see when you look at the card, you're not gathering up and protecting the janky lands as you make your way through the whole of Ravnica, you're just playing "the combo" and ending the game. You're losing the entire fantasy that makes you actually want to play the card in the first place. Maze's End could be anything else, by turning it into a combo, it really has just become "the combo" and stopped being Maze's End.

> Deckbuilding creativity is not rewarded in and of itself, in commander games. Good one! This is also why CEDH is actually a ton more fun than it sounds. A lot of new players expect it to be boring, all decks having a lot of 99 in common and similar wincons. However the truth is it's the clever plays, the swings in who's the threat, the counterspell wars, the arm's length stacks etc that make a game intense, memorable and crazy fun. What matters is the sequence of plays that led you to the win, not how you win. Yet another instance of the common trope "it's not the destination, it's the journey", and CEDH rarely fails to make absolutely fabulous ones.

Salubrious Snails are known to be gastropods with immense knowledge of Magic the Gathering. Their specialty is the "EDH" aka "Commander" format. They spend most of their time brewing decks and creating banger videos. Their average lifespan is still unknown. Would you like to rate this Wikipedia entry?

I love mazes end, its a wincon for my Kyanios and tiro deck its pretty much a control build that dumps its lands out and uses different type of land wincons with karoos.

I built something similar to your "Tribal Fiendhunter"-deck in the past with Abdel Adrian + Far Traveler, using vehicles (ideally ones that draw a card on ETB), cards like Springleaf Drum and lands like Survivor's Encampment to tap Abdel the turn he entered play so that he would leave play at end of turn, bringing everything else back, usually including Fiend Hunters/Oblivion Rings that could exile him again etc. The deck drew a ton of cards, created a lot of 1/1 soldier tokens and eventually won with Altar of the Brood or Herophant's Chalice once I got the loop going. I loved building the deck and piloting it was a fun puzzle - but the deck was overall too complicated to pilot and explain while also taking too long to win.

Salubrious Snail truly thinks too much. We appreciate you homie🙏

I love my ‘Vilis, Broker of blood’ deck. It revolves around Liches Mastery, a card I’ve never seen anyone else play or talk about, for good reason. The tension of burning down my life in a sometimes vain attempt to reach immortality is always a lot of fun. From there you can burn all your life into repay in kind bringing everyone but you to the grave, or Liches + sheoldred + aetherflux to draw your library gaining a bunch of life and kill opponents, or faith of the devoted + skirge familiar to drain your opponents out, or go full gamba using the 40 cards you have in hand on gix, Yawgmoth preator to cast most of an opponent’s library and go from there. There’s no true infinite combos in here but it’s probably close enough to count as my only combo deck

This video helped me come to a lot of realizations. And just grow as a magic player. Thank you.

The problem you're having is you're building combos with too few pieces and win cons. I did the exiling three things in a cycle combo, but I only let myself combo off if I have 3 different wincons so I can kill each player in a unique way. This turns the combo into a 6 card, instead of a 3 card, combo. I have several 5-7 card instant win combos that can do something before I get all the pieces. Also, combos that don't necessarily win, like they create infinite creatures, but not with haste, or they trigger a win on your upkeep, or something like that can be a lot more fun as well.

Healthiest, most wholesome Commander RU-vidr...

I had this exact thought too with my Niv Mizzet, Parun deck. It seemed like I was just diggibg for the combo at times, but when I was casting instants and sorceties it was genuinly fun. That's why I'm taking out the 2 other combo pieces aside from Curiousity: its just plain more fun to storm off with him.

I think an important distinction that I've come to feel is that, some decks are fun to theorycraft and deckbuild, but playing them is best left as a one off with friends, and then they should stay a solitaire deck, not brought out on an actual table. Because sometimes to do something really novel, you have to make a lot of sacrifices in various fashion, often times this means that it's either fringe and fragile, or consistent in a way that people will have to hate on you a lot everytime you do it. This is different from playing a deck that "has a combo in it" as when the combo thing you are trying to do, is a relatively small package, you could usually play a fairly back and forth deck before getting to the combo, the deck may not even always need the combo to win. The deck is a limited space, if you are doing some things like battle of wits, you are gonna be trying to making something really novel, that would require your entire deck to be built around this novel thing. Ofc this means that you are having to make a lot of sacrifices, and ofc, due to the nature of the deck itself, you are very much unlikely to take it out more than 5 times. In this case it's one time too many to bring it out more than once and shuffle everyone else's card into your own library - a huge pain for literally everyone involved to clean up afterwards, especially if you are not all using different sleeves. Would the deck be cool? Surely, it clearly speaks of your ability to deckbuild to make it work. Would it be fun to play against on the norm? Uh... probably not.

my go-to solution for this problem has always been building versatile value engine decks that eventually go nuclear once the value engine becomes efficient enough. feels like a combo win, but the actual combo win is 5-6 cards and reasonably called out, leaving plenty of room for counterplay but also not being so fragile that it breaks to disruption

4-5 piece combos with random cards you never see is my new favorite thing to do.

Maze’s End was actually the first deck I ever built, with Child of Alara as my commander. I have always found win cons to be a fun way of playing games, as I’m just a sucker for them and it’s almost like a mini game inside the actual game. I just got a thrill out of it to see if I could pull them off. That’s what hooked me on it! I’ve changed it to Garth, One-Eye now to offer my self other ways to win, but I still think it’s fun. And that’s what matters!

My first Commander deck was a 5C Golos gates (Maze's End) deck. Apparently Golos is banned, so I switched to Child of Alara. This "5C Control" deck teeters on a knife edge in early turns. The most memorable game I played was a five player game where the entire table was poised to kill me and be done once and for all with my board wipe shenanigans. One player seemed not to be following the plot, however, and elected to play his own board wipe as the rest of the table groaned and facepalmed. Needless to say, the game went on for a long time after that. People eventually left one by one until one last guy who angrily stuck around until 2am on a work night just to spite me. I exiled all his lands with Legacy Weapon before he was willing to concede. Interestingly this deck has one of the best win percentages of any deck I own. As noted in this video, one thing I learned to do is to avoid playing Maze's End early. Originally I had planned Amulet of Vigor but Spelunking also works quite well. This deck doesn't get much play time for obvious reasons but in the right play group and with the right timing people love how weird and irritating it is.

I find I struggle to build decks like the ones you describe in "the wonk phase" because I like the definitive nature of combo wins. I like to know that "if I resolve these cards in this order, I will win. if I don't, I will almost certainly lose" instead of "I am trying to achieve a certain state and then I...do something or another...then I win!". Relying on "do something" as my wincon is too vague for me.

a lot of people talk about issues with commander and i think you've really nailed something that is difficult to phrase otherwise i'm definitely a more power-oriented brewer so i apply some of that funny combo logic to trying to squeeze different versions of expected wincons in high power, and the reason i do THAT is because less people see that coming in a competitive game. but in a largely casual environment the novelty of an unusual combo does wear off after a few sessions. thank you for sharing your process though!! it provided me a lot of insight!

I do so much theorycrafting that even if money wasn't a concern, I'd never actually physically build 90% of the lists I put together. Which is great, because it allows me the freedom to explore ideas that are much more fun in theory than in practice. The challenge of "can I build a deck that can accomplish [X]?" is fun and interesting in its own right, and sometimes even moreso if you go into it with the understanding that you're never going to bring it to a table. There doesn't have to be a phase 2 to the game at all.

The most fun "combo" deck I've played is my Animar Cascade deck. Because it's cascade focused, you never quite know what you're going to get, and I don't run any (non-land) tutors to increase consistency. It can get out of hand pretty quickly though once animar is making things cheap, and cascade helps ramp up the cost-reduction quickly. Hullbreaker Horror lets you loop any two colorless cards infinitely, so that eventually you'll be able to hit an attack multiplier like Craterhoof and a haste enabler like Maelstrom Wanderer. Other cards also let you loop cast things or generate infinite mana, or draw masses of cards. It doesn't always go off super fast, and it can fizzle, but it's a fun deck to work through the "combo" with, because so many different cards all come together to further the "combo" in different ways. It also wins through attacking in many lines, so it can be interacted with. If you don't like high-power commander, I could see it not being for you, but it's not the toughest deck to fight - just kill animar once or twice, and suddenly it has to pay for all its lines like a normal rUG deck.

A friend of mine and I are a decent example of the different goals players have. We have around a 50/50 win/loss rate 1v1 against each other, but he remembers his losses more than I do because he cares about trying to win than I do. I mostly care about making the game interesting than anything else - I just happen to be decent at turning funny stuff into a win.

I have a two novelty decks and I've managed tk avoid feeling let down by either My most meme-y is All Chandras, main restriction is that it needs to run all Chandras and is helmed by the flipwalker, inconsistent, but fun burn that either flops hard or becomes unexpectedly deadly, does what I hoped of it I'm considering making an even stricter version where every card needs to be related to Chandra somehow (while still keeping this version as the one that is still good), even if I don't end up enjoying playing with it as much it will count as the capstone of my Chandra collection The other is a River Song combo deck, it plans to win by taking infinite turns using 2-4 other cards, redrawing the extra turn card, all while getting some value that makes the win certain so I can demonstrate the loop and finish The fact that I planned that I get to say "so that's the loop, anyone got a way to stop it?" at the end of the combo I think keeps me from that let down feeling, and maybe the fact that there's at least 2 dozen configurations for the combo thanks to redundancies and overlapping stuff probably help, sometimes the future space archeologist has a graveyard robot hand her spent time travel spells, sometimes a dracula character helps her dig for a time pirate that she gives fancy boots to repeatedly while a hungry god makes a swarm nearby These are both my wekest decks, but I definitely enjoy them still

I recently built a Kylox deck, and after a few games it did eventually do its "thing", comboing out. That final combo was a lot of "I think I have the win" and a lot of reading a giant handful of cards on the stack. I haven't played that deck since. From a deck-building standpoint, it's an incredibly fun and interesting commander, but it's as you describe here; ultimately a combo needs to be fast, and if it isn't other players aren't going to have a good time with it. Messy, solitaire turns that take ages and don't even guarantee a win create a bad experience. I also found that this deck didn't really do too much while leading up to its combo; it just sits there trying to get some value, and doesn't do much interacting with the rest of the board. ...so ultimately a fun deck needs to address these two problems, of how to win without being tedious, and how to exist outside that winning turn with some level of activity to stay engaged. Conversely, my Indoraptor deck is a blast; the goal of the deck is to hurt everyone, play the raptor, then poke it repeatedly. It isn't an instant-win even when the deck does what it's supposed to do, and just about every part of its plan does something to influence the state of the game.

I also built a Gate deck, but my commander was Omnath, Locus of Creation. Rather than focus on Maze's End, the deck ramps a ton of Gates into play and showcases payoff cards like Archway Angel and Gatebreaker Ram while using Omnath as a cash-back engine to cast more spells. I do run Scapeshift with Deserted Temple/Mazes End, but I also run Laboratory Maniac to win with Guild Summit and funny Warp World looping shenanigans to rebuy all the Gate etb procs. My most common win "combo" is to just resolve Crackling Perimeter, but the deck is very fun to pilot.

I had the similar experience - I am intensely amused by Radiate on an awakened Part the Waterveil. For each land you control, it becomes a 6/6 haste land and take an extra turn. But that's it. You probably win with 5-15 extra turns/creatures. So we're back to searching for that interesting game.

Random rant, I loved the idea of Radha giving you access to 4 mana land ramp cards, and ended up making my own list with Susan and the first doctor. I leaned all the way into the Battlecruiser thing and realized... I hate that play style 😂 I am glad you made this videos, because they had me really ask what I want out of my games. I am still unsure what I really love, but I seem to like being proactive or encouraging interaction while lying low, to then burst in with a big board or interruptible combo. I love approach of the second sun, and dragons, and equipments, and general Voltron stuff. I think I have learned this by making decks I didn't like though, and that made me not just happier with what I build, but I think nicer to play with. Even knowing that I love to see a storm deck go off, I build one or two and play test them by myself, because I ultimately just love the way the cards interact with each other, but I don't feel the need to show it off and play through interaction etcetera. I backseat a lot less, realizing that if I disagree with an inclusion in someone else's deck, that's my problem, and ultimately it's usually a taste based thing. That's all, not sure if that says anything beyond "hey, good videos, hope everyone else is getting as much value out of them as I am"

I built a $50 budget deck to play with new players, with Laughing Jasper Flint as the commander. It's a cool theft deck that's designed to play to the power of the table by primarily using threats stolen from my opponents either with Jasper's ability of a slew of reanimation spells. That just left the rest of the deck; there's some outlaw synergies from Thunder Junction, then I needed as much ramp as I could find to make sure I could cast all the cards I want with Jasper's effect. After that, since I don't want to run a lot of powerful threats of my own, I jammed the deck full of removal. The resulting pile is very cool and very fun to play, but not the most new player appropriate. I played it against a group of newer players and one player I knew isn't newer, but not great at the game either. The table was the fallout energy precon, the Tyranid precon, and the MH3 eldrazi precon. I completely ran away with the game, overwhelming the table with early stolen eldrazi while making sure that Ulalek could never stick, and putting down any other potential threat as needed. It was completely unfair and not remotely a close game, which has kind of been the pattern the deck follows. It tends to do really well, and tends to act on another deck's game plan better than they do, which doesn't feel great for new players. I still play it sometimes, but I've resigned to just having to play an unaltered precon in these sorts of games.

I had a Zedru deck that I really enjoyed, I would hand off the usual illusions/delusions life loss cards, handed off global things like howling mine, all while generating value. Used like 4 counterspells, one of which was time stop, and to slow people down I would hand them cards like the blue enchantment that makes a person's creatures neither take nor deal combat damage. I used removal in my deck, even running stuff like boomerang in case something went weird. Then one game I handed the blue enchantment to someone playing Naya... They then said "well, I guess I concede as I have no way of dealing with that card". It boggled my mind that people make decks with no interaction and expect to just goldfish their way through life... But I learned that IATA because I made people need to put certain cards, that I consider ubiquitous, in to their decks. It just sorta made me realize that even if I am doing something cool and kinda playing a bunch of group hug cards to go along with crappy Christmas gifts I give to everyone else, it was considered an unfun deck to play against... Most of it was based around a 2/4 goat, the rest required people to have any sort of versatile removal to make my bad gifts go away... But, as people had to run specific cards to beat me, my fun idea was no longer considered fun. I sorta don't know what "fun commander games" look like anymore, so this video was nice to see as it made me feel better that other people who have to do multiple weird things to win games also end up either not having fun, or being seen as "that guy" at the table.

I have an Arjun, The Shifting Flame combo deck thats looking to get out tefferis ageless insight and draw my deck to win with lab maniac. Despite this being the main combo, I've only won that way three times despite winning far more with the deck. Since arjun consistently draws a ton of cards the deck is packed full of different win conditions based off of drawing cards. Sphinxes tutalage can mill an opponent, Profts edictic memory can make Arjun a huge body, or ominous seas can let me go wide. By having so many different ways to win it's consistently been one of my favorite decks to play. I think that flexibility attribute you mentioned is one of the most important for me.

Man Everytime I watch one of your videos I get better words to describe my ideas about magic lol

On a note about your comment about "deckbuilding phases", in a competitive 60-card event, you have sideboarding, which is a form of minor deck construction, in between games, so it's still much more baked into the gameplay than EDH

Though it wasn't the point of the video you've reminded me to branch out my deck building and explore goofier ideas. There is alot of magic any individual player isn't playing, and probably should be.

I'm a big fan of silly and weird win cons and would suggest the best way to make a mazes end deck is to make it mono-colour, much harder but a fun puzzle to solve

Interestingly, this isn't the experience i've had with my heliod, warped eclipse deck. Functionally, it's a turn 5 combo deck, but the shape it takes the game is super unique, so people don't tend to mind as much

When I started playing commander, I adored combo. Heck, I even had a Breya deck that was literally just combo tribal. But years later, and with a penchant for building deck after deck for fun, I've found myself leaning away from straightforward combo decks, and more using combos as a secondary win condition for decks, a way to close out overly grindy and frustrating games.

If you find yourself wanting a different kind of deck building challenge, try Artisan. You can only use cards that have had a common or uncommon printing. The fun comes from having to look elsewhere for cards that rare and mythics usually take care of. I have built two artisan decks and they are two of my favorite decks and actually taught me how to look at deck building differently.

I can to the same conclusion in regards to turbo gates. I ran Windgrace as the commander which allowed me to get ahead and accelerate the gates plan without. However it has since pivoted into a necrobloom deck. From here gates are more of a complimentary win condition. The deck now focuses on hatebears style creatures to disrupt and get in for damage while gates loom in the background.

One of my favorite decks I've ever made and play constantly was a budget concept I thought would be a throwaway. Turns out, even if I'm losing or playing from behind, it's fun to play because it's always interacting in some way and occasionally pulls out a surprising win.

We have on player in our playgroup who shares your cravings for combination wincons, and whether he likes it or not, our 4-player commander games become a 3v1 arch-nemesis games. We typically lack the power/utility to interact, so our only counter play is kill as quickly as possible.

honestly the best decks you can build are decks with multiple things they do, if all you do is one combo every game you can just say "i have the combo, any response?" and if they say no you win, which is the most boring thing in the entire world

I like to play combo decks that doesn't work 100% of the times, the combo can fail sometimes, I think that this is fun, you never know if you gonna win or fizzle.

I have played exactly one game of MTG in my life (and probably won't play any more), but I have been getting into star wars unlimited and thats why youtube keeps recommending these videos to me. I resonated with this one; I used to play a lot of gwent and had the same problem. Spent a lot of time building combo decks, pulled the combo off two or three times, then lost interest in the deck. I still enjoyed the process overall, though

When you play combo, other players are an active detriment: these decks don't need other players to win, unlike aggro or control who win by eliminating other players. If they successfully prevent your combo, you now get to sit there utterly bored. In exchange for one cool combo, you give up on all of the other interesting mechanics and interactions in the game - which also forces other players to give up on all of the other interesting mechanics and interactions in the game. The difference between 60+15-card combo and 100-card combo is night and day. If you side in anti-combo hate in 1v1, your opponent assumes as much and plans around it, and that's the end of it. If you adjust your deck to shut down annoying infinite combos, your opponent will probably whine and caterwaul and bawl their eyes out about how you're "preventing their fun" in anything below CEDH. But they aren't wrong, and that's a fundamental problem of combo in a multiplayer, no-sideboard format.

My pet deck is a Yidris deck, and I find it super satisfying and fun to play because I designed it be a deck that takes a lot of game actions to win through either commander damage, combat damage, or burn. Because it can do all three, the deck becomes insulated from any one really good piece getting removed, but also doesn't just win by having a few pieces in place. A lot of people who have seen the deck assume it's just a chaotic cascade deck where I'm hoping I hit good stuff off my cascades, but in truth I have spent more time on that deck than my izzet spells storm or dimir zombie combo decks. The deck performs very well, typically becoming the table arch nemesis, but it never stops feeling fun to play because it isn't just one line to a winning combo. I've been having the same amount of fun with my Queza deck that mixes evasive creatures, conniving for card draw triggers and graveyard pay off, and crime synergies to form multiple paths that don't win until everyone hits 0. I think that's the main reason people are so contentious about alt win cons and infinate combos; it feels like it's robbing the table of all the cool moments that oculd have played out in the moments between the win and the rest of their life total.

I've been working on this exact same deck idea except I got there with hermit druid and reanimating that merfolk that brings back every land with with dread return's flash back and sacing that merfolk the same turn with a flashbacked cabal therapy. It ends result really was where no one really got invested in the games and no one would ever really want to play it anymore.

>If the story ended here >HOWEVER This is a MTG Video Essay!! I love it so much!!

I have recently converted to playing Discord, Lord of Disharmony almost exclusively. It's a deck both me and my players are always excited and curious to see play out. Win or lose, you never know what the deck is gonna do, it's fun. It is, however, the antithesis to deckbuilding.

creative combos are rewarded in slightly competitive settings, your threats become less predictable, but imo focusing on card interaction instead of game-ending combos is a better way to go. I think of wincons as a necessary evil, what truly defines a deck is how it generates advantage.

Maze's End has been a part of my Atogatog deck since I first built it. You have no idea how delighted I was when Gates got more support with Baldur's Gate. It's primarily there as mana fixing and utility to support my commander, but I just won a game with it this week with the Maze, so it's also not exactly a non-threat

I play in a friendly to noobs budget league that does not allows combos or to kill players before round 5 and this has lead me to enjoy pods more than in competitive setups where everyone is just rushing to get their combo, it builds fun situations and negotiations while your deck has to consider several ways to come up on top

I've never played a game of commander but I find the process of making a deck very entertaining, and I enjoy watching other people make decks with novel restrictions. My first attempt at making a deck was Doran, siege tower, the toughness matters treefolk which to me was an expression of irony and weirdness. By any standard that deck would be insanely underpowered, but it stands out in my mind. I'll never play it.

If a combo wins the game, players are going to just scoop to it when it goes off, and thus remove the "fun" from actually playing it out. If you want a fun combo, the combo has to progress you into winning, but not win the game on the spot. The more chances the opponents have to try to disrupt the combo, the less likely they will scoop to it and let you actually play it out. But at the same time, the more time you give your opponents to disrupt you, the weaker the combo becomes. That's why I like Norin the Warry as my Commander of choice. You can slap in Confusion in the Ranks and other Red Chaos effects to just cause havoc. You probably won't win all the time, but you are going to make an interesting game with your plays.

Something I've realized as an avid deckbuilder is that the decks that I play are decks that I first thought were fun to deckbuild. While most of the time the decks I like deckbuilding are probably ones I like playing, I can't help but wonder if maybe there are some decks I'd love to play but aren't appealing to deckbuild, and so I may never build them and thus never play them to learn that I like them. It's interesting to think that the sense of deckbuilding enjoyment can sometimes be at odds with, or even preemptively undermine, gameplay enjoyment, and learning to navigate that dynamic might be a key to improving both gameplay experience and deckbuilding satisfaction.

I would love to see you play/discuss cEDH primarily because of your analytical skills, and because I feel like you would have a blast with it

Kinda crazy how quickly this channel turned pseud