The Most Overplayed Cards in Commander | Which EDH Cards See More Play Than They Should on EDHREC? 

Had the video on mute since I’m winding down for the night but thanks for all these new card recommendations. Excited to put them in all my decks

Man i've watched enough of MTG goldfish with Richard playing the heck out of secret rendez-vous to win me over. The card is actually great. Few things, how often is EDH 1v1v1v1 versus it being 3v1. Normally someone is always ahead and you need to draw answers to solve the problem. In that case you can just make the person who drew the other cards play their answer to the board before you do. In this case scenario you have 6 chances to draw removal to the problem. Second, you get to choose who gets to draw. You can just pick the person who is struggling and there is always someone struggling. Thirdly, you make an ally for basically the rest of the game. Like when someone draws you three cards, what wouldn't you do for that. Lastly, its THREE mana for THREE cards in hand. what other cards does that? The card needs to be played politically to be good, but when you take into consideration how allies work the math checks out theoretically.

A few of these are cEDH staples, which is definitely inflating the percentages here. Dark Ritual, for example, is an absolute staple of black cEDH decks- every single black deck in that format has a Ritual in it. Same goes for Pyroblast/REB, even for decks that also have access to blue. When almost every deck is blue, those cards are just broken.

People play spark double, to copy their commanders. The Card doubles any value-engine you Commander might provide. In that regard its better then Sakashima. (Because of the counter, and a possibility to copy a planeswalker/commander, like estrid or saheeli) Nobody cares about Legendary-Rule thing Sakahima provides. Thats a very-specific thing for a very specific deck Plus, the Spark is cheaper AND much older.

Bro sheoldred literally triggers on the start of each opponents turn and then keeps going. It’s pretty alright

40:06 I will always use reliquary tower in my decks if cyclonic rift is still legal. If someone casts it on my endstep and I have to discard to hand size with my board reset, it hurts

9:35 gotta argue here. Brainstorm is excellent for "whenever you draw a card" triggers as well. There's a lot of things you can do with it strategy wise to keep your hand moving too. Like tuck some slow or ineffective cards before you fetch, and things like that. It's an underated card in my opinion. Not saying it can't be replaced in a lot of decks, but it has some not necessarily obvious synergies with a lot of abilities that don't necessarily care about the top. Like dredge decks can make sure those two dredges weren't good casts next turn. Maybe you're a surveil deck that needs to get something in your hand into the graveyard, but you have no discard. It doesn't feel bad as a isochron imprint either. So maybe it's not the best play in every slot, but 29% makes a lot of sense to me for the above reasoning.

The last time you guys brought up arcane denial, you indicated that being 1 card behind 1 player is better than being 1 card behind 2 other players, which is what normally results from spot removal. Secret Rendezvous seems to run on similar math in my mind, leaving you one card behind another player but ending with you two cards ahead of 2 other players. I get that an instant speed answer for 2 mana is very different from sorcery speed card flow for 3 mana but the math seems somewhat comparable on paper. Where am I going wrong here?

Merciless Eviction is awesome. You’ll never convince me otherwise. It always answers everything you need it to to stall out the player in the lead, and you don’t bust your own board to do it. Playing Superfriends? Great. Artifacts? Enchantress? Phenomenal. It’s worse than Austere command and Farewell, but far better than other destroy features. It has never failed me when casting it.

Brainstorm is way more valuable the higher power level you play. It's not a trap, it's be a better player. You can manipulate your draws in response to a wheel, set up your own wheels, you can dig deeper for a counterspell, you can of course throw away unneeded cards for better cards early on when fetching, give you information and card selection... Brainstorm is beyond good, it just needs to be used well when it's being used to see value. Also, rituals are combo pieces. They are there to cheat out mana to keep you casting earlier than you're supposed to.

REB and Pyroblast are great against Cyclonic Rift, Rhystic Study, most countermagic and there is many great Commanders that play blue. imo The opportunity cost is quite small for all the times these red instants shine like a star.

Brainstorm is fantastic in the early game, and still useful in the later game, setting up your draws, and helping you stay on curve. I run it in Capt Jhoira

I have beef with the o ring, removal spell and combo piece all rolled into one is sooooo good. Banishing light is def awful since you have to target other people's stuff and you can't do the cheeky sac in response to exile forever. Y'all have the commander takes I agree with the most! Edit: oh dang lmao my deck is a ghen deck, paused to make the comment and got sooooooooo burned lmao

Magus of the wheel works well in my Rionya deck. It's useful for the turn I go off or sometimes as a group hug card when an opponent is mana screwed.

Comparing spark double to a clone isn’t really accurate because it’s really just; 4 mana make a second copy of your commander that isn’t legendary. A copy of your commander can be ridiculously powerful. that being said I think people do jam it into decks without really thinking

While I did disagree with a couple of the cards on your list, I do think something a lot of people don't understand when deckbuilding is the concept of opportunity cost. The idea that, just because you saw something do good doesn't mean that is the average performance of that card is good. And even when it is good, there is quite possibly something that would make a better use of that slot in your deck. Not even just the opportunity cost of the slot it self but also the cost of drawing the card vs any other card in your deck. Many of people will cite situations where a card outperformed its average while missing incremental quality out of other cards. I remember this being a large talking point in the argument of nature's claim over krosan grip. Players will often miss all the times when that mana efficiency will help them out, in places where they are quitely hindered by grip. Simply because they remember the times they got the big blowout with grip and not the many other times it was just slightly a pain in the ass to hold up, or simply chose not to hold it up. I was quite a sport stat nerd for much of my youth, and something this always reminds me of is the WAR stat commonly used in baseball. It stands for Wins Above Replacement, and is one of the overarching stats that can most effectively represent the usefulness of a player. The idea being that, should you replace a league average player with someone else, how many more/less games would you win on average. That is how I try to evaluate cards in my mind. Looking at any given card I want to put in my deck, on average, how much better will this perform than any other card I would replace it for *on average*. This includes the time it sits in my hand with no targets, or I don't have the mana to cast it. And in a way, this kind of evaluation can be extended out to metrics other than just competitiveness. One could even consider, 'how much more fun will this card give me on average than the cards I would be replacing it with'. Essentially, consider everything that card will do. The highs, the lows, the most often and least often uses.

Nah, Secret rendezvous is super good. When you're talking about multi-player format and the table needs to find an answer to someone about to win, you and another player getting to dig down for 6 is so good. And that's without talking about its synergies with smothering tithe.

you really don't understand why people play mana tithe. its not about power its about countering someones spell with mana tithe they will never mentally recover from this.

Brainstorm is a powerhouse in Niv-Mizzet and it is like the top 20 most played commander.

MTG Goldfish did a big episode on white card draw and went on about how good secret rendezvous performs. It made me tempted to try it out. The idea is for you it is a good rate, and you make an ally or help out the person losing.

Grave Titan does great work in my Ayara deck where really all I care about it's repeated value in the form of black creature ETBs. I Alongside Bitterblossom, Dreadhorde Invasion, Jadar, and the new Gisa are just a taste of my "token swarm each rotation" package...and the Ayara pings really add up

Sometimes you guys nail it but sometimes you guys really undervalue good cards imo. Secretary rendezvous is a mono white and boros staple, alongside oblation, gift of estates, etc. To me broken cards that see play in cedh don’t justify calling it a staple; its a cedh card. Staples are basic lands, 2 drops rocks, creatures, etc. Mana crypt and force of will are not staples. Idk what your average deck price is but when most decks i play are $100 - $200 range then most of the higher end cards dont make the lists and dont need to tbh. Reliquary tower is a land so it has no downside even without synergy, brainstorm is 1 mana dig through 3 cards, sheoldread is literally removal and reanimate in one card, and so on. Mana tithe is one of the few counters in white and in higher power level does work, although rebuff the wicked is my favorite one.

I am in complete disagreement on Mana Tithe, especially early game, you can counter someone's mana rock or draw engine and slow down commanders that benefit off of those

I have sheoldred in my korvold deck as a power down.

as a clone, spasrk double is very unique, there are 3 or 4 clones that clone legendary things, it is one of them. Sakashima of a 1000 faces is special, he lets every clone do it, but if they blow him up, you lose everything. Spark double is played alot for a reason

Sheoldred was my first love- er, commander. I have used her to great effect with a ramp-heavy deck, and my opponents are never happy to see her. I still tweak her deck as I learn more about deck building and new cards are released. That Jeweled Lotus I pulled from a pack doesn't hurt either...

As a person who loves cantrips and drawings cards, there will never be a blue deck where I don’t play brainstorm.

Sheoldred... Now THAT is a card that sounds good the first time you read it. And then you stick it in a deck. And then you play you that deck 100 times and actually use Sheoldred about twice... And then you realize it's not as effective as it's text box wants you to believe.

Brainstorm is one of the best magic cards ever printed. Every deck should be playing it. every deck should be playing as many fetches and tutors as they can (if we ignore budget and power level concerns)

The problem with cards like Fracture (and why it's a bad card) is that the card always asks more of you (harder to cast compared to Disenchant) but only sometimes gives you more (on the rare case where you kill a planeswalker with it).

Nevinyrial's Disk is good because it is an artifact you can recur. If you have artifact synergies I think it can be quite strong, even though it does destroy your own artifacts. I do agree that it is probably overplayed though

"Dark ritual is not good in commander" Me who saw my opponent: >play land >play dark ritual >play jeweled lotus >gitrog turn one >played second land >cracked it for bayou >drew off gitrog before grabbing dual >played rain of filth >sac first land for black >draws >imperial sealed a dakmoor salvage >puts it on top of library >cracked second land for black >draws the dakmor >plays putrid imp with last mana >draws through entire deck using dakmor plus discard outlet >wins Wasn't even mad, he payed well over a thousand dollars for that win. He deserved it. Plus it just meant we got to play another game that night. But yeah, rituals are always good when you got a degenerate/combo centric commander.

I play both Brainstorm and Spark Double in my Pir and Toothy deck... I feel like I'm being roasted, although at the same time I know both cards have synergy in the deck.

It was literally my dog, cosmo’s birthday when this aired lol. Thanks for including him lol!

So for decks that want elixir of immortality, it's real good in magda. What's important for her is getting your combo pieces back into your library if they get interrupted. It's also easy to search with her if you need that effect, I believe even the cedh version plays it

What is wrong with brainstorm and fetchlands? That seems quite powerful to me.

On MTG Goldfish podcast, they did an episode about white card draw and convinced me Secret Rendezvous is a pretty good card in multiplayer and in mono white

Watching these list videos made very clear to me, the value and playability of a card heavily depends on your playing environment/group, your budget and your approach to deckbuilding. I made EDH decks with whatever i had around from the last 10-15 years mega casual drafting, and i'm a greedy builder. So i'd never switch Merciless Conviction out. In my group ppl run so many repeatable value engines that "destroy" basically means "delay for 1 turn" and playing smothering tithe basically means "1 person has to spend 3 mana somehow sometime to kill it". When you're up against Meren, Sigarda, Host of Herons voltron or soon to be atraxa superfriends ALL THE TIME, you start to see cards in a different light.

you don't have to metagame to expect a blue player at the table. when taking into consideration that you don't see every card every game and red will loot/rummage/exile a good portion of cards, REB and pyroblast are rarely bad. people play hate cards/silverbullets for less frequent occasions.

Just moved from Arena to paper a couple weeks ago, and you guys have quickly become one of my fav mtg channels =] thanks for the great videos

Mana Tilth - love this card, I catch my opponent nearly all the time - as they hold those 7 lands to rift or counter these "cast without mana cost" spells and they are usually tapped out, awesome feeling to just have that 1 white open - it's a fun card for me and just for 1 mana :) oh yeah, go ahead and use that extra mana to cast your commander for the 3rd time... oh no, oh no no no :)

dark ritual is an all star in any 3 mana mono black commander. can be thought of as a 1 mana jeweled lotus which im not trying to sounf trolly but definetly should be a point

Idk man. I feel like you’re not considering a lot of these are just “fun cards to play” in casual groups. Feels too focused on “more optimal thinking” versus just playing stuff cuz it’s fun.

I run sheoldred in my meren deck because at some point meren Costs like 14 mana, and sheoldred can stand in for her as well as reanimate her from the graveyard. But that's the only use I've found for that card

It's funny how on Secret Rendezvous the opinions clash sooo much. I see it rated between F and S (probably both exaggerated simply because others disagree so heavily) by different content creators and the most funny thing is, one of the advocates for it that resonates most with me is Richard from MTG Goldfish. And he has the highest win % on their show, constantly playing white ramp, bad card draw and is just constantly outmanouvering his playgroup by political play, often being "the underdog" on the table despite of his record to be the most "winning" player. I think it goes to show that card that put your opponents ahead CAN be useful if you alter your playstyle towards them and Secret Rendezvous might be one of those. If you believe that being the threat and pushing that advantage you gained over the line is your best way to victory hell no you don't wanna play this. If you believe that coasting by and being part of the majority alliance against the "archenemy" is your best way to victory, heck yes that card is amazing. Richard argued the following: If by playing this I get 3 new cards and somebody I aligned (or use this to align) myself with draws 3 cards to use against another player that is ahead of both of us, it creates a scenario where this card is essentially your "alliance" being 5 cards up on the other 2 opponents. Sometimes, he also said, it even makes the player you gave the cards to as being perceived as the new threat. Additionally the perception of Secret Rendezvous being a bad card often leads to reactions that diminish the threat of the person having played it, leading to a perfect storm of where someone is happy to assist you, another player is sad he got left out and salty at the player who received "free" stuff and the actual current threat who is the person those ressources are most often used against. I know, none of this makes sense if everyone goes "wait a minute, he just gave me free stuff, now I can punish him" but to be really honest, that is kind of a more CEDH/spikey mentality, that a lot of players do not follow in EDH games. To close of, I def. understand why from your perspective the card is overplayed. You subscribe to the mentality of being your own agent and doing everything you can to win your game by your own means. So, the card is actually terrible. But I believe that taking playstyles into consideration (not in a hypeothetical discussion about power lvl of cards but in applying those discussions to deckbuilding and gameplay) is valid and a good thing to do. It just so happens that Secret Rendezvous perfectly puts those ideologies against each other!

I run Sheoldree in my WUB dungeon deck. I agree it’s mostly cool factor but it puts in work with Sefris. Though I do also run 3 fresh bag variants. The deck is straight jank. I put every card in WUB that delves in it.

My Mairsil deck loves Nevynirral’s Disk and Magus of the Wheel. Threat of activation, they call it. Elixir of Immortality is great for when you get that infinite draw combo and you don’t want to die due to an empty library (And you can’t afford nor want to play Thassa’s Oracle).

It feels like you guys didn't take into account that a ton of these card (Slime, Titan, Brainstorm, O-ring, etc.) appear in precons and so anyone who uploaded a precon list or slightly modified list is skewing the numbers a lot. Every precon card shows up at way higher rate on EDHREC than they're actually being played.

Not to be argumentative, but Planeswalkers aren't as uncommon as you guys think in competitive meta. Namely, Tevesh Szat, who's one of the best competitive commanders. Love the channel, though!

If you have a way to sacrifice oring its a 3 mana exile anything thats not a land. if you sacrifice it with the exile on the stack the 2nd trigger goes off first and then it just gets removed with bonus of whatever you sacced it too. That's why its played so much.

First! I love the Amber gets her own name plate. Thank you for supporting Birthdays.

I also run sheldred in my teneb deck, its more something to cheat in to make opponents choose if they want to hit her or teneb, or it forces them to boardwipe which when I can reanimate from any graveyard is fine. She's not great but she has places where she works. But teneb is also just a grindy low mid range deck

Edhrec only counts the decks from the last 2 years, in regards to the relic of the past argument.

I think grave titan's biggest problem is that commander is a format with 3+ opponents with 40 life each when it was designed for 1 opponent with 20 health. Reanimating a grave titan on turn 2 in cube or a 1v1 format will win games. Commander is where combat means you need to chew through 120+ life. This is why it sucks.

I think Secret Rendezvous is one of the best white card-draw cards, all the others are conditional. Also a strong political card. I play it in two color decks

I'm so confused on the red counter blue spell cards.... using 2 slots for red instant speed interaction to protect your game ending bombs from blue counter spells seems worth only using 2 slots out of 99

I love me some big flash lightning rods like Sheoldred! It draws the removal right into it providing pseudo protection for more important pieces. Oh, and on the off chance she sticks around for a bit! Granted I only run her where she synergies. Like in Negan where I run all the edicts 😬

May be biased here from playing so much 60 card MTG, but Brainstorm is so good. Shuffle effects, hand protection, dig for answer, instant/cantrip, etc... If playing mono blue, for me it is a no brain auto-include. As for Aetherize, you just did a video about the difference in the game when you power down your decks from a 7-9 to 5-7 and how much combat comes into play at that level, especially when infinite combo is gone. In light of that, don't you understand its value after that for only 6% of blue decks. Honestly surprised it isn't used more.

I have a few super-budget (~$15 total) 2-3 color creature-heavy tribal decks and Unclaimed Territory has overperformed every time because it's one of if not the only multi-colored land that enters untapped in those decks.

Spark Double in general isn’t the best, but it’s fantastic in Marchesa the Dusk Rose, entering with the counter on it each time is a huge gain, can sacrifice it each players turn.

Elixir of immortality is in my tame Narset deck to over saturate my library with non lands! I have a really great experience with that card. Very cool effect!

So I disagree with you guys about brain storm. Brainstorm is a very versatile card. Here's why Brainstorm is so good. 1. It's instant speed, you can cast this and get to see the top 3 cards, whenever you want. 2. It only costs 1 mana. 3. Unlike other cantrips where you look at the top three or 4 and choose one, if all 3 cards are good, you get to keep all of those cards and put 2 that were already in your hand back on top, Brainstorm is also very good with fetchlands and shuffle effects, which happen a lot in commander. 4. Brainstorm is "draw three cards" so anything that triggers when you "draw a card" triggers off of Brainstorm. 5. In conclusion you're wrong about Brainstorm guys.

Aetherize has saved me when facing infinite creatures when a combo an opponent controls went off and it was a one-sided board wipe since they were mainly tokens. It's been very good in my games.

Secret Rendez-Vous is great with Hive Mind

I disagree with your take on brainstorm, obviously in Locust God it's really good but that's because it cares about draws. But even in any blue deck it gives you information. It allows you to dig deeper for an answer also allows you to respond to wheels and keep 2 of your best cards in hand. There are so many good use cases for it in all stages of the game.

What decks are you playing that are tribal and so color intensive you can't afford a sometimes colorless land? Are you not playing ancient tomb in tribal deck? Unclaimed territory is a solid card

I am 100% here for acknowledging pets' birthdays. This is the content the world needs.

you guys did a good job evaluating somewhat popular cards that shouldn't see much as play as they do with this and gave me good reasons why i shouldn't play oblivion ring lol which i play a lot, but i don't think in this video you really covered the worse offenders very well, like i don't think any of the top 10 most played edh cards are here except commander's sphere and arguably atm the top 10 non land ones in order according to the number of decks that they are via the list table on edhrec: sol ring, arcane signet, swiftfoot boots, lighting graves, swords to plowshares, cultivate, counterspell, beast within, mind stone and fellwar stone with ring and signet being in more than a 1 million decks each.

I definitely agree about Sheoldred. The only deck I used to play her in was my Ayara deck. But I found Witch of the Moors works much better.

What people think the want is Brainstorm, but what they really need is Ponder. Also I have a Mardu combo deck that has 6 counterspells in it so there is a deck that uses Mana Tithe.

I strictly disagree with the spark double. I play it in every deck with blue in it, especially in Marchesa and Orvar Imbiss an awesome card. It is basically a copy of your commander, so if your deck revolves around it play it

Richard from mtg goldfish would have a lot of words to say about secret rendez vous being on this list…

R.E.B. and pyroblast can be a dead card in that one game where no one has blue. But its a beast otherwise. Not only it protects me when I'm trying to combo off, it instantly kills any blue creature for one mana. This Kills the hell out of an Animar, for example

I think you guys are a little off the mark with Brainstorm. Is it as effective as it is in 1v1? No, of course not. But really, it's less about card replacement and more about card manipulation. If you have two cards in your hand that you might need within the next couple turns, but can't use just yet, and you have the Mana to draw 3 and put those two back... Then you've added 3 cards worth of information to your hand, and you've been able to optimize your next two draws based on what you'll need and when. That's the absolute worse scenario with Brainstorm. And it's for 1 mana. If you've got a fetch land, you can flush two cards away once you've done your draw three. Ponder, Preordain and Brainstorm are the 3 heavy hitters that cost 1 blue and allow you to draw a card, get information about 3 cards from the top of your deck, and manipulate when and which of the cards will hit your hand. They are not always game breakers. But it's about manipulating your deck and when you'll get which cards. And that kind of control of your top decks can be a big deal in sequencing your early turns in a commander deck. I'm one of those people that always puts those three cantrips in my blue-friendly decks, because I've found that the little edge you gain from controlling and being aware of the top of your library is well worth the 1 blue mana, particularly in the early turns when you're trying to craft a board presence and plan out your steps to victory.

Think you guys missed the most important part of field of ruin. It's not an optional shuffle effect, so you can use it to disrupt topdeck tutors or other topdeck shenanigans. Opponents won't usually expect it so people rarely play around it, and it's hard to interact with since it's an activated ability. Sure it's narrow and won't be relevant every game, but that's standard for utility lands. When it works you are often stopping a tutor for a win con or a tutor for an answer to your win con, which is a way bigger potential upside than most utility lands offer. As a bonus it can even help fix, not a huge deal but it makes it an easier include in multicolor decks where utility lands are generally harder to slot in.

To the Spark Double/ Sakashima point, War of the Spark is one of the well received and loved sets of recent memory with a high print run and strong presence in multiple formats. I tis also in the rare slot so it was more accessible as many people got them from opening packs or from draft events. Sakashima on the other hand was from Commander legends and is a Mythic which lowers its accessibility and from opening packs and I don't think many places have commander draft events.

You go on about how terrible Carpet of Flowers is by saying you had one island in play the whole game, but... that's two mana per turn from a one mana enchantment, and that's pretty good rate. It's only bad if none of your opponents have any islands at all, which is actually kinda uncommon.

Dark Ritual is nuts to ramp into Bolas’s Citadel then go crazy from the top of your deck or to cheat a haymaker out in early. Its good at throwing you instant resources for combo pieces that could take two turns to get out otherwise. Them two extra Black pips can be so valuable

I fail to see the hate for Brainstorm. It's a 1-mana cantrip at instant speed; and even if you "brainstorm lock" yourself, those were cards that you would be naturally drawing anyways . So for 1 mana, you can effectively draw a card and look at the top 2 cards of your deck (And this is the floor).

Spark Double is in all the decks with blue and their command has any sort of trigger that your entire deck runs around. . . which is a non insignificant number of commands that have blue in them

Just started the video but I want to mention how both of you have often praised cards like Kenrith's Transformation and yet hate Oblivion Ring, both of which have the issue of the thing comes back if the enchantment leave play. Thoughts?

Acidic Slime has been thrown into pre-cons for ages which is probably why its percentages are a bit high.

Wow, whats wrong with spending 1 mana (at instant speed) to dig 3 cards deep into your deck? I find lands, find answers, I find more card draw. If you so happen to play it in a deck with fetches it gets even better. Anyone else not on team Brainstorm?

I think the big reason why people play the ooze is for the deathtouch body. It leaves it open for a 2 for 1… that being said I remove it from all the precons for anything more efficient. I don’t like running non multi target removal for over 3 or so mana. I guess also they like to put it in precons so that probably influences the numbers.

I use elixir of immortality in my scion of the ur dragon deck since he puts the dragons in my gy and turns into a copy of them i need a way to get them back into the deck for subsequent activation's. but outside of that one weird deck that needs to both use its gy and also be able to add the cards in the gy back to the deck i got no idea where it goes.

Dark ritual is at %17 probably because it’s in every k’rrik deck because it’s pay 2 life get 3 black mana. According to edhrec k’rrik is the #1 mono black commander

field of ruin is another land card thats sac for particular reasons and less for sac to get land out, but its notable as well that the lands brought out arent tapped when they come into play. early on in edh i would use this to deny a player a multi-land or similar effect

The problem I see with everyone claiming Brainstorm is a bad card because you're not getting rid of the next 2 cards is that it seems they are all reading the card wrong. It IS NOT look at the top three and draw one of them, IT IS draw three cards and put back any two which includes cards already in your hand. You can literally keep all of the cards you just drew and put back ones you don't need YET or don't have the mama for YET. The "you can't shuffle away the ones you don't want" argument seems pointless because if you didn't want to draw them at all why would you even have them in your deck? I don't see how drawing three cards, then putting back the two cards in my hand I'm not ready to play YET is a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination. ...but maybe it's just me.

brainstorm is also good if you have lots of cards that trigger off of drawing a card, like alhammaret’s archive or niv-mizzet. spark double is a great backup in sakashima clone decks. i wanna have as many vial smasher clones as possible in my deck, and spark double lets me get one even if sakashima has been kept off the table.

Brainstorm is easily an auto include in any deck that has a modicum of synergy. The floor is strictly better than cycling for 1.

The first day you wish happy birthday to the pets, and it's my dog's third birthday :,)

I play all the blue cards and they feel pretty good whaha. Probably depends on the meta too. I think aetherize is super good in dealing with an arch enemy. It also allows you to protect yourself with a mass bounce effect that actually gets favour with the other 2 players

The most important part about Secret Rendezvous you're forgetting is that table politics and what I call "Munchkin-ing" is a very real thing and can be important in making sure your strategy is allowed to resolve. Good will is also a resource.

Resolving a Nev's Disk in my Raff Capashen deck is one of the most evil feelings ever hahaha

In fairness Not only is dark ritual great, but cabal ritual and culling the weak are great as well in that high level almost cedh borderline, youre going to hit one of them early on MOST of the time which you can use to immediately tutor for a full combo plus another ritual to cast said combo if your opening hand allows it

Mana tithe saved me a bunch of times but hey to each their own

The spark double argument is absurd. People use it to copy their commander much like they would anyways with sakashima. People will then clone their spark double copying their commander. This is exactly like sakashima partner decks where additional clones copy Sakashima copying the other commander.

You are dead wrong on spark double. You can play sakashima and spark double for strategies that want to copy commander

I play Dark Ritual in my Gisa monoblack deck. It can be useful sometimes but I agree that spending a card (or having a dead card late game) for 3 mana can be kinda poop. However, I'm on a budget and I'm wondering which ramp card can replace it. Any ideas guys ?

K'rrik likes Dark Ritual. It's free in most cases, and can power out insane things. T1 Bolas's Citadel is pretty damn good.