The Most Broken Commanders | Commander Clash Podcast 155 

1:00:06 Richard’s improving! He went a whole hour without mentioning Farewell, but just barely!

Alexios can also be chump blocked, but the opponents need to make a pact that they assign all damage to the chump blockers, so that none of the damage gets through to the players.

I feel like one of the things about Golos's land fetch ability that wasn't mentioned is that it made him a better commander for some archetypes than anything built for them. The example that I always think of is that I played against more than one person who used him as the commander for their mono-black decks, because he tutors whichever of Coffers / Urborg you don't have, and if you don't have either you can sac him and replay him to fetch up the other. Sure, you could have Eladamri as your elf commander, or you could have someone that gets you Cradle on turn 3 every game. Granted that was back before non-basic ramp was as prevalent as it is now, but that's more a statement of how egregious Golos was at the time.

Richard says every chance he can that single target removal is bad. Najeela comes up, and he says "you just fire a swords on it". He doesn't play swords and doesn't encourage people to play single target removal. I will grant that he mentioned fogs which also hurt Najeela's plan but fogs have been around for forever and I've only seen the ones I use, except for Teferi's.

Just realizing now, Nadu is just a power crept portion of Leovold’s second ability pretty much 😂😂😂

I'm just realizing Alexios saying "can't attack owner" instead of "goad" is a crazy difference

Nadu has singlehandedly caused a shift towards a faster cedh metagame. Its easier to just win underneath a nadus setup turn, rather than erase their progress

Interesting to see Richard say these mono red commanders are like stax. When in reality it's just mono red aggro. Which is a normal archetype that exists in every format other than EDH.

in regards to Leovold, Tomer said it perfectly once before by changing it to say: "Each opponent can't draw more than one card if caused by a spell or ability controlled by that opponent." Wizards could print cards that hate on extra card draw and not worry about wheels. Crim is right in saying we need something to hate on Nadu style cards....

They kind of forget that Najeela is a 5 color commander that can and will defend itself with counters and cast a Thoracle-Consultation on second main after your fog.

Surprised to see no Voja. Did we forget already?

Seeing all the busted commanders makes my stock on oubliette increase even more

Kinnan deserves a place on this list. So strong it made simic viable in cedh for years lol

Nadu reminds me of paradox engine where one player is doing stuff for a very long turn and everyone else is deciding whether or not to just scoop out of boredom.

In regards to the question of why the super-powerful commanders are so popular: I think a big part of it is that if you're trying out brewing for the first time, there's a hundred Ur Dragon decklists out there you can review and tweak to your tastes. For jank commanders you *really* need to know what you're doing to make a halfway decent deck because there's just not as much info out there about how to do it. As a person who is not a great brewer, I always want to play around with oddball decks but sometimes I just don't know where to start.

Capitoline Triad feels very out of place here. I understand Seth had some crazy games with it, but it's very limited and pretty one dimensional being colorless. I don't the think it's anywhere near the same power level as the rest of what was discussed.

Oh Richard, I've seen Najeela win on turn 3 too many times to say it isnt good anymore.

With Alexios, if your opponnet blocks with a 1/1 for example can you just assign all the dmg to the 1/1 instead of the player?

Clash's experience with Slicer/Alexios is so poisoned by their refusal to play single-target removal. I've played Slicer with many different groups (and at events), and it's been a good time. Richard just saying "well they can just play it again." Yeah, maybe twice, but when Slicer costs 9+/11+ mana for a relatively small body at that point in the game, that ain't cutting it. You don't need to go hard on single-target removal, just save it for stuff that counts. Slicer even gets hit by artifact hate, which they also don't play enough of.

The real broken commander was the misplays we made along the way

goldsabertooth recently won a cedh tournament with nadu. there was also a tournament with 3 nadu in the finals pod, it’s absolutely playable

On the other MTGGoldfish podcast that released on the other channel today, the guys talked about how EDH could turn into Modern in that Wotc will keep printing more and more powercrept cards into the format. But this list gives me hope, ironically enough. We've already had plenty of way-too-powerful cards in EDH, and it's the "build for fun, not power" or "build the deck that will get you invited back" rules of thumb that have kept the format fun for the most part, we need to keep that energy going and not succumb to powercreep for the sake of it

Nadu is definitely Cedh viable. It was 1% off beating the all time highest Top 16 conversation percentage in its first month with a relatively large meta share in those tournaments. There is something to say about it being new as an advantage, but this deck has been so hyped and spoiled that everyone knew this was coming, knew the strategy (tbh it's not a complex play pattern, pretty telegraphed), and still got rolled. I'd say there's an equal chance that the deck will just get more refined and stronger.

Richard why are you hating on your birds now. They’re your people. Embrace the birds.

I like how in this day and age commanders like Chulane don’t even get a mention in any of these podcasts even though those commanders can be so stupid

I built a "casual Korvold", played it three times, transformed it into Slimefoot and Squee. The same happened with Winota, who turned into Eowyn. But I stand by my "warriors, no infinite attacks" Archaeon/Najeela.

Your best chance at casual Korvold deck is a different jund deck with Korvold in the 99. It's still the one card you'd search for first

I saw a short from Maria Bartholdi saying that Nadu shoulda just had the quotations moved so that the ability rlly does only trigger twice and i truly believe an errata of that would save several formats

Here’s an idea: Eminence but it sets your deck BACK. “All your creatures cost one more mana to cast” or “non-basic lands you control don’t untap during your untap step.” Let’s make some real garbo build around commanders.

Our playgroup have integrity, no one gonna build Nadu or even put it in a deck. It's a miserable card that shouldn't exist.

How do you have an entire conversation on Leovold and not even mention Teferi's Puzzle Box as the biggest issue?

One of my worst experiences ever was I was in a casual pod and a new guy had just joined it turn mana crypt mountain cast slicer convert it turn 2 cast commanders plate equip it turn 3 someone was dead and everyone else had 1 hit to go

Even without wheels levold stops people from drawing extra cards which is extremely powerful, not fun to play against, and also makes him harder to remove because you can’t really draw into removal effectively

Leovold is legal in legacy, BTW, Richard

1:06:31 waiting for Tomer to show up with Izzet Otters in a few weeks and spellsling lol.

With the Alexios section, I started wondering, “isn’t this just what strong aggro needs?” I completely understand that having a fast clock can suck in a casual game of commander, but the thesis of aggro is quick, efficient aggression. Waiting until the late game to give everyone a shot is not aggros strong suit and 120 life is a LOT to carve through fairly. It seems like the decks that can do it (Slicer, Alexios, Winota, Najeela, etc.) are touted as unfun for how quickly they can pressure life totals. What’s the balance for aggro to be good, fun, and still feel like aggro?

Finally, and thank you Richard: “We really need emblem removal!” With Crims hand in his face.

I play Rograkh Yoshimaru. the main plan is definitely Yoshi but I have killed people with Rograkh thanks to ozolith counters and a gaggle of jittes. The free body with good aggressive keywords is sweet and u get the added bonus of killing someone with your 0 mana 0/1

To Seth's point about emblems being restricted to Planeswalkers; Praetor's Council effectively gives an emblem that says, "You no maximum hand size." I'm surprised that it didn't get an errata when Elspeth Knight Errant did.

To be fair, wheels cause more problems than Leovold or Hullbreacher do without them. They all create very unfun play patterns.

Interesting to see Crimm bring up the idea that if you give people the opportunity, they'll play a broken card in a fair way. Im the opposite. Give people a powerful and cheap commander that is meant to be played with wheels, then I think it's realistic to expect that play pattern consistently.

When leovold is built right no one gets a card after turn 3 but leovold, Crim you have no idea what your talking about and you haven't built it correctly to the reason it was banned. I was a leovold player before it was banned. Teferi's puzzle box makes sure your opponents don't have a single card in hand not even first they draw each turn. That is super easy to tutor for with say fabricate.

I've never had that much trouble with Yuriko. I feel like you just spot remove her after the ninjitsu. Most of the unblockable creatures don't have haste. So they need to spend 1 turn casting that, then another turn attacking with that to ninjitus it in. So once she is removed it takes 2 turns for her to attack again. Plus since she damages all players everyone is just going to attack that player.

Point of order you can chump Alexios. Trample damage does not have to be assigned to the defending player. You can put all of it on the 0/1 blocker.

"It throws a few roadblocks in there." I'm reminded of that Doonesbury strip where Uncle Duke was at the Great Wall of China: "Imagine you're the Huns, you're100-0 and you come across this, instant loss, you just feel terrible." Leo is just so good, he's probably been power crept at this point but geez Crim, geez. You'd need to ban Wheels at the very least.

I actually think Nadu will be self regulated out of casual edh because it’s such a pariah. It’s the same reason Thassa’s Oracle or Demonic Consultation aren’t banned. They have self regulated to only cedh decks.

An episode in which I completely agree with Richard. I never thought the day would come

important thing to note about alexios: the other players can work together to mitigate its deadliness. because of the trample rules people can choose to assign all damage to a chump blocker with nothing trampling over

Damn Richard, $500 is your floor? You can do a lot with a $50-100 budget deck

Hey, A fun local rule I have with my play group is that "all uncommon legendaries have partner with other uncommon legendaries" It's a pretty cool rule and I wanted to suggest it for a flavour clash episode

Dang this is a topic I'd really like to hear Tomer's take on.

Derevi, Empyrial Tactician. Seth, in another recent video, asked if there was a bird other than Nadu that was impactful in MTG, and in Commander, i posit that there is. Another card for the list that breaks parity on Commander Tax, but with less timing restrictions. Having built 3 different archetypes using this commander (token gen, bird tribal, and CEDH stax/combo), i can say that even the most casual of builds with Derevi at the helm can be quite egregious. Thank you all for the content and entertainment.

Eminence would be a dope mechanic if it only started triggering from the command zone after it was cast. Creates a cool little mini-game of trying to get the commander out. Could even change it to 'enters the battlefield from the command zone' to combo it with the small handful of cards, like the hellkite, that pull them out for a turn.

I built the most non-serious meme-y korvold deck when it came out. My buddy picked up Chulane. Even from the first play, I knew Korvold was a problem. That deck was too good to be fun jank because you just have a loaded gun in the command zone

Yall got to remember Alexios having trample makes it easier to chump if you coordinate with the table. Just put all the damage on the chump blocker.

Here is a quick recap of the episode: Seth - "Yeah this commander is really busted" Richard - "Totally agree" Crim - "Ok sure, but..." Love the pod guys! Hope to counterpell Crim into oblivion one day haha

This needs a part 2 and a part 3! Great episode and commentary but it didn’t even scratch the surface on these types of commanders. Krenko, Jodah, Esika, Orvar, Kaalia, Nekusar, Prosper, Atraxa, Baral, Sythis, and Sisay are worth mentioning just to name a few.

One theory about the most played commanders you guys overlooked relates to Crim’s point. People build these decks, then play them once or twice - and never play them again (Yuriko, Ur Dragon, etc). The issue is EDHRec is just a database. It doesn’t mean people are currently playing those commanders, but they’re still in the database since “everyone has a Yuriko or Ur Dragon deck” or did once.

Something tells me that the Triad was supposed to be a planeswalker(to reflect its in-universe power) and then Wizards remembered that planeswalkers are unplayable in commander

I love seeing the autogenerated chapter titles on Spotify, it called the Ur Dragon “Turd Reagan”

The answer to Alexios is to understand how Trample works. As the attacker, YOU decide how damage is allocated. Want to trample over? Ok. Want to allocate everything to the creature and not trample over? Now you're getting it 😉

Rograkh and Reyhan is how I played him casually for a while. Good ol' Jund graveyard+counters.

1:07:01 - Another absolutely based take from Seth. Truly one of the best minds in the format.

i miss using rafellos to consistently cast 6 mana spells on turn 3. I also used to play a golos commander deck whose commander was actually field of the dead and that deck was constant shenanigans.

When Korvold was first printed, treasures weren't an evergreen mechanic. Now it is really broken.

Omnath giving you a card and immediately refunding his casting cost while he gives you a life cushion and slowly whittles your opponents is somewhere in the top 20 along with the constant deck searching.

Actually the last game I played vs Korvold, it wasn't a super optimized list, and it *still* almost won on the turn korvold came down. They had enough to sacrifice to dig through 85% of the deck, and it turned out food chain was in the bottom 10. They decided to take the L and not kill anyone with commander damage, since they were out of lands, but it was still oppressive to play against, since everyone had to hold up removal and interaction just in case he'd go off.

Leovolds text box says "Your opponents get to watch you play Magic for 45 minutes." Nadus text box says "Your opponents get to watch you play Magic for 45 minutes, whilst you wonder how Leovold is considered worse than this somehow."

Najeela's tokens and doppelganger is the meanest thought I've had in awhile

A way that you can interact with the Eminence effects is with Tevesh Szat. He can put the commanders under your control.

I usually find myself agreeing with you Crim, but dude, really....unban Leovold. That's just nuts. There is a huge difference between two card combos that just end a game and you move on to the next game and the crap Leovold pulls. Leovold doesn't end the game, it just says I'm the only one allowed to play magic.

Guys, the Ur-Dragon isn't popular cuz its powerful. It's popular because its the ultimate Timmy card. It lets you play with every dragon in MTG history and it has a cool explosive effect when it hits the board.

(commenting at 8:44 into the video) Standing up for Leovold is just...come on. The thing is, its even worse than the way it was painted. You can completely delete people's hands if you get them to draw a card before the wheel. -**Teferi's Puzzle Box** - You have to do your normal draw, and then it has you do it's triggered effect and consequently no one can draw anymore cards besides you for the rest of the game, but the game isn't over. -**Temple Bell** - Combo with any wheel to completely remove everyone's hands -**Wheel and Deal or any flash speed enabling for the sorcery wheels** - during someone's Draw step (since they have to draw their card before anything else can happen) and now they don't have a hand for turn -Im sure there's more, but this is just off the top of my head The big issue is the insane redundancy with locking out players in a way where they can't even interact even if they had an answer in their deck, and now everyone either scoops or watches you durdle. And on top of all that, Crim's talking about it "stopping nonsense" when it actually enables you to be more nonsensical than anyone by spamming all the symmetrical draw cards but only you get the value out of it (Howling Mine, Font of Mythos, Horn of Greed, Dictate of Kruphix, etc) drawing you into your protection and answers to anyone who may possibly top deck a response. It's miserable 150%.

I’ve long had an idea for how to fix Eminence. Just format all Eminence abilities as “You get X of something” where X is the amount of times you’ve cast your commander. That way, you’ll have to cast your commander at least once to get the minimum amount of the effect, and you’ll always be incentivized to re-cast it in order to ratchet up the Eminence effect.

For once Richard makes a solid argument for not running swords to plowshares as the default auto-include. While that consideration is niche for Alexios, we can finally agree with his point.

I built nadu and realized very quickly that this is a cedh commander only

Also nadu has for sure been ballin out in cedh too

Crim is possibly the wisest clasher. Fewer banned cards, the format is self correcting. Its casual, not competitive. People can change their decks to be cEDH if they want to play Urza and Nadu loops.

48:53 Richard hits it on the nail. I literally saw this play out yesterday. Dude game into the LGS and wanted a good powerful deck for around 100€. He got recommended a few things and ended up with elfs because he likes elfs. At the end I asked him that it could be a bit overwhelming if his friends decks aren't the same power Level. He said that's why he is getting the deck. He only had the OtJ precon and they had an Eldrazi and Dragon deck and it wasn't keeping up. It seemed extremely foreign to me as in my regular group of 8 people we got 2 Eldrazi decks and one dragon deck among all people and all are owned by the same person

Alexios can be chumped if the attacker is willing to put all their damage into the chumping creature. Just a tip in case you face off against one.

I know that Humility gets mentioned as a potential answer largely as a joke, but I still wanna mention a few huge problems I have with Humility as a an "answer" for busted commanders. 1) That card always does so much collateral damage. I don't wanna shut down a casual player's precon or wolf tribal in order to deal with dumb designs like Korvold or Nadu. Not to mention, it's pretty difficult to get any kind of creature centric strategy of your own to work through humility either. 2) Humility is only available in white. It's probably the least played color in EDH so not very many decks even have it as an option. 3) It's a notoriously complicated card in terms of the rules. Again, something I'd rather not expose any potential casuals to. 4) Not sure if you guys have been checking, but Humility is kinda getting up there in price. It's a reserved list card and it's creeping up towards 50-60 dollars. 5) The way I often see Humility working is that it drags the game out until the problem commander - the one that Humility was supposed to answer - draws their disenchant or boomerang or whatever to get rid off Humility and then proceeds to win the game immediately. So the outcome remains the same, but it just takes longer to get there.

Agree on Mana Crypt vs. Ancient Tomb. For one, Tomb only puts you up one mana, which is way more fair. The format is full of those. Further, having that on turn 1 isn't as powerful because you can only cast a colorless spell with it. On turn 2, you can cast a single pip spell, which does limit your options as well. You can't accelerate out any multicolor commander with just Ancient Tomb as a result before Turn 3. And being up one mana on turn 3 is par for the format. Mana Crypt lets you cast a 2X spell on turn 1, a 2XY spell on turn 2, etc. Waaaaaaay more powerful. Further, Tomb really scales down with the power of your deck because the 2 damage every turn really adds up in combat metas. Mana Crypt is 1.5 per turn but sometimes it's even less when you get lucky. You may get to tap it 3 times before you take damage (25% of the time in fact!), whereas Tomb will always cost you 6 life for 3 taps.

On the point of mana crypt vs ancient tomb, costing a land drop is a huge difference. Its the same difference between the basic lands and the moxen (from a gameplay perspective anyway).

I have no idea who flopped an artifact deck with an Urza at the helm in front of Crim, but it seems like they really botched it. Unlike Nadu, Urza gets deterministic quickly and obviously. Also "play more stax" _and_ "ban Urza" is a weird take.

Oubliette, Song of the Dryads, Imprisoned in the Moon are relatively easy ways to deal with Eminence.

Would love to see a follow up where you guys go through every banned card and talk about if it should be banned

With things like alexios and slicer i feel like: if you got people that can tap foreign permanents its way less a problem but those are very rare in commander there are plenty of cards for that that are not color dependant.

I put Najeela from the Warhammer secret lair (Archaeon the Everchosen) as the commander of a nostalgia-inspired 40k theme deck I built. It only got played a few times before being shelved, as it kept face-rolling tables mostly on the strength of Najeela. She's stupid strong, though probably not banworthy, and you're seriously underestimating her. But so did I when I thought the Archaeon was the solution for my theme deck's commander/color issue. The deck mashed together the Imperium and Chaos 40k precons to make something themed vaguely Astartes typal with Chaos and Inquisition side themes, to represent the renegade chapter I used to play that tried to fight Chaos by using Chaos (ends terribly!). Literally only cards from those two precons, plus Archaeon and the loxodon warhammer from the secret lair, and a forest from the Tyranid deck. I avoided demons, the the deity-aligned Chaos legions, Imperial Guardsman, and Knights/Titans as much as possible, trying to maximize flavorful choices over everything else. The first game I played with it, I played an early-ish Marneus Calgar into Najeela. Turns out a lot of Astartes are Warriors, tokens included. The game immediately went from me being an early threat to full 3v1, but she rolled over the whole table anyway. I did have a couple timely pieces of protection, one to save my board and one to save Najeela, so it's not like they didn't try to remove her. Then she rolled the table the next time I pulled her out. I've tried a couple games treating her as if ahe didn't have each of her two abilities, and I won one of those as well. This was more or less a trimmed precon, with an incredibly narrow card pool. But you're in 5C, so a less restricted deck will always have access to the best offense and defense. The argument to play removal I think she's got a stronger top end than Winota, but I don't think either are banworthy. Just play to your local group's power level, and pass on her unless you really know what you're getting yourself into.

I think richard makes a good point that the unfortunate truth is everyone wants to have a strong deck because in most other games that's just what you do! So all the most popular commanders are super strong, but once you actually get some reps playing the game you realize the strongest commanders are strong because they're very good at doing the same thing every game, which isn't very fun, nor is steamrolling your friends.

I've been subscribed to this channel and watching for about a year now. I just now realized that Crim's hair is Dimir colored.

I think that commander NEEDS a mono-red go-fast deck or two. Slicer is certainly one of the best options, and it does warp the game. That’s the whole point, it punishes durdully decks that don’t take relevant game actions until after a board wipe. Then the red playing either runs out of gas and the table stabilizes (and the red player looses) or the red deck wins. It changes a four player midrange/control matchup into a midrange/aggro face off. And the nasty slow mono blue decks that just draw cards and only interact when the absolutely have too are finally called into account. (It’s me, I’m the mono-blue player, and good, fast mono red decks do out damage me.)

Nadu is not so bad. You just save your interaction for the nantuko, scute swarm, field of the dead and the artifacts. If they don’t have a board or an enabler the deck does nothing it turns into a pile of bad cards. As long as you bring something to the table that can hang and you play interaction then you should be fine

Playing more Mystic Subdual and Utter Insignificance keeps scary commanders from getting out of control.

Yes Richard, nadu is at cedh level and has already made top 4 at a few tournaments

I remember Edric. The extra turns playstyle is hmmm what's the word...

This week we're swapping "dies to farewell" for "stopped by humility"

Nadu IS a CEDH commander. Infamously it was 3 of the top 4 of a cedh tournament

I will make and defend the claim that the most broken commanders are Aesi, Chulane, and Animar. Why is because they (and this is common among UG commanders) simply reward the player for taking game actions. You dont have to *do* anything to your decklist to have the full effect of Aesi, it just ramps and draws (without loops like Shuko for Nadu) Animar and Chulane are similar. Playing creatures? Great work! I'll clarify that these aren't the most "powerful" commanders, but they are broken because warp the structure of the game from "build a deck that does a thing" to "build a deck that does anything"

I am surprised not to see Winota on this list. She just explodes so fast and doesnt even have to attack herself

I had the Yuriko experience Crim was talking about with my Kinnan Bonder Prodigy deck. When you're new to the game, having a really powerful deck sounds cool, but it takes a few games where "ope and i get infinite mana and i play my deck and i win" happens every time by turn 5 to realize oh maybe its not just about winning maybe its way better if we have a nice 8-10 turn game where everyone gets to do their thing and the winner doesnt matter so much.