#mtg #thetrinketmage #trinketmage Patreon: / thetrinketmage I think these simic piles are the closest thing I see to pubstomping! Channel Art by Beevuu: Insta: / beevuu Twitter: / beevuu All Music By: / @massobeats
Biggest problem with land destruction is it's either destroy all of them for 4 mana or destroy one land for 4 mana. We need more cards like Keldon Firebombers and Wildfire.
I run Shivan Harvest in a few decks. The look on some players faces when I turn 3 blow up the forest they grabbed with natures lore is great. Then we go round and round about how green can remove my rocks with ease but I’m not allowed to remove the forest they ramp into. I call BS. Fair is fair. And Magic… is decidedly not fair. This doesn’t always work though and I only do this when I know I’m playing a heavy ramp deck that my ability to interact with is limited.
Land destruction isn't a good answer to land decks, imo. For Mass Land Destruction it's like challenging Usain Bolt to a 100M dash and being able to reset the race. You're not winning that race unless you go through the long and tedious process of wearing him down, by constantly resetting. Targeted land destruction doesn't work because you need to have a critical mass of cards, at which point you aren't even really playing your deck, you're just running a hate deck to something that isn't even 100% guaranteed to be at the table.
As an aggro player, I just wanna note that the reason we "spread the love" is usually not out of incompetence, it's because we are usually playing *casual* commander, so we want to make sure our friends still get a chance to play the game lol. (Also sometimes to avoid becoming the archenemy until we pop off)
I feel this heavily. I want to turn my dinos sideways and get attack triggers or just hit for big numbers. I don't necessarily want to end someone's game immediately who I just met at a casual commander night table
also prevents the whole "oh man why is this guy just bullying me". Most commander aggro players really do have the ability to just thanos snap someone out of existence. We just choose not to do this because well..whats the point of shuffling up if youre just gonna curb stomp someone into dust before it gets fun
I will say, I dont agree here because you are playing your strat wrong. If you refuse to be agro with an aggro deck you took time to build, dont play aggro. Its counter to the deck, the strat and how you win. Each archtype is what it is. And to build aggro and play grouphug is basically saying, Hey guys i wanna hit yall but im not really here to win. Might as well be a none player or worse a kingmaker. Anyways, thats my personal opinion from decades of experience.
Then you shouldn't allow Evan to play. Respecting other people, their time, and their enjoyment is paramount in any game. Evan sounds like a bad friend and bad person
I actually love it when someone else has Confounding Conundrum because it essentially ensures I’ll have a land in hand in case I don’t already have one or a ramp spell to get more. A secret traitor card that benefits me
I’ve been looking for other ways to punish these filthy rampers. Opposition Agent, Aven Mindcensor, Price of Progress, Rest in Peace, Planar Void are auto includes in the decks that support the colors. Ankh of Mishra and Tunnel Ignus are being tested now! If these infants will claim foul for interacting with their lands, we’ll just have to be more creative about it.
Run Glacial Chasm or Field of the Dead in a deck or two. It helps people understand that some lands (like Gaia's Cradle or Cabal Coffers) are scary and valid targets for single use single target removal. (Just avoid MLD because ramp decks win that game) On the other hand if all they are doing is playing basics, then you might be better off racing them (artifact ramp is faster than land ramp) or racing them (video talks about aggro, but group slug with Ankh of Mishra is scary too) or racing them (a control deck sets up a stronger endgame sooner than a ramp deck does).
I'd recommend confounding conundrum as a pretty decent pick to stop ramping. Getting all those lands searched up is a lot less good when your opponents can't even put them into play, and they go to hand instead. It also shuts off fetchlands almost entirely, at least if they crank them the same turn they play them. It's also an uneven effect, not affecting how you can ramp using lands.
Be extremely careful with confounding conundrum. It is good against land ramp but bad against land fall. The former cares about mana volume from lands. The latter cares about land ETB triggers. I have played both. The only time I saw confounding conundrum was against my sultai landfall deck. My opponent's confounding conundrum made my landfall deck win 1 turn earlier than it would have because I didn't run out of land to put into play. (Honestly if it were a symmetric effect, I would be runningconfounding conundrum in my Landfall deck) If a Lotus Cobra or Azusa is in play, don't play confounding conundrum. If the opponent is getting ready to play boundless realms, play confounding conundrum.
This is not always something that a video will help with but more so through experience playing your meta. What I've learned through countless games no matter what pod I'm in is that card draw wins games. If you see something giving a player a considerable amount of card advantage you should probably get rid of it i.e. rhystic study lol or something like beast whisperer that will accrue value over time in a creature deck but not necessarily cards that say it only triggers once on that person's turn or once each turn like most white card draw for example Welcoming Vampire. Those aren't as bad. Card draw spells you want to counter are like Peer Into The Abyss or an X spell that draws and that they've sinked a considerable amount of mana into.
Before watching this I was like "it has to be lands," so I obviously agree. Balance in casual Commander is interesting though and ultimately makes rule zero that much more important for people looking for a specific game experience. Which is awkward and/or time consuming with random people at an LGS, but you get what you put into it.
To be fair, it's also about being able to assess the other players at the table. I always give newer players more leeway that the players who know what they are doing. I find it's less important to figure out "what" is being played than it is to figure out "who" is playing. I like to talk shit about Simic players but it's all bark. The truth is that I'm long past the point of caring about whether or not I actually win in any given game.
@@erikchumbley3014 That's true, it's up to the more experienced players to gauge the "power levels" of the pod's decks, especially against people new to the game. If someone is just starting out, I'd rather they get to do something cool and have fun, than have myself play an oppressive deck that'll win.
I'm not sure how counter culture "Lands decks are super strong" really is. They're pretty objectively insanely powerful simply because commander tends to just be a race to 8 mana and nothing gets to 8 mana faster than a lands deck.
everything thats hard to interact is strong. imo landfall is up on powerfull themes, but i think of aristocrats, spellslinger, flicker as the stronger once (btw thats just those that came up on spot). - aristocrats strait up needs gravehate cause you cant get rid of it thanks to free instantspeed repedable sac outlets and loopholes to repeat something that does value over and over. - spellslingers mostly cares if you have blue in your colors if not you have to push the lifetotals to 0 somehow cause other ways to interact are too slow and weak. - flicker combines two of the hardest interactable effects: spells and etb. every removal means you need at least twice that much or its completely useless. but maybe im thinking of whats the most strongest way to play those themes and that way its out of casual commander^^.
One thing your should also consider against landfall is tutor hate. if they can't search for their lands, they become a lot less powerful. In general, I feel that EDH NEEDS more tutor hate that's available early and playable in every color.
I recently made a land deck that also is packed with board wipes and indestructible creatues for wincons. That adds another nasty layer on top of an already powerful strategy.
Spellslinger/storm decks are really strong in casual commander too, if you go with something like vadrik and people run so little removal and even less counterspells, you can abuse the stack to win easily
Magic has a ton of permanents capable of repeatedly destroying every kind of permanent with the notable exception of lands (ok, and Planeswalkers if you don't count damage). There are barely over a dozen cards that have repeatable land-destruction effects, many of which require you to sacrifice your own lands to activate. I wonder what it would look like if we had more stuff like Dwarven Miner or Helldozer.
As an avid Aesi player, I can speak from experience that you DO NOT want, under any circumstances, to go into topdeck mode. As soon as your group knows what your deck is capable of, they'll target the one heel the deck has: Its reliance/dependence on having the commander on the battlefield at all times. Aesi will eat continuous removal, and you need to be ready to defend it. Otherwise, you'll end up with a 10+ Aesi in the command zone, an empty hand, and a board full of nothing but lands, which do shockingly little by themselves :D
Something that came up in the most recent Command Zone: Basically nobody counterspells ramp in general, and I think that may be a mistake here. Obviously you want to counter Scapeshift or Shape the Earth, but I think even if you can disrupt the early Cultivate or Rampant Growth, you might be able to buy some time to work out a more permanent solution. I could be wrong, though...
@@mr.wafflesrz1137 Granted you can't counter the entire deck. But, to pick on the two Simic "play lands and get free stuff" commanders you used as examples, if you counter an early Cultivate, you're delaying Tatyova or Aesi from hitting the field by a turn, right? And if you counter it late game, you're denying them a 3-mana ramp 2, draw 2, and gain 2 (for Tatyova). So early game, you're delaying their engine. And late game, you're keeping them from drawing more gas (as you said, their entire deck is gas). Those both seem like valuable plays to me, but I also don't usually play control, so I freely admit I may be missing perspective here. If you don't counter ramp, what do you counter? Colossus and Scute, then hope someone has an instant or board wipe for Avenger?
i have an aesi deck that dominates pretty hard, so i only bring it out when i know theres a good challenge. i can confirm that the weakest moment for a deck like this is the turn i play my commander or the turn after. i usually have about 2 cards in hand and a couple turns of killing aesi or one well timed counterspell could let someone pull ahead of the deck
The excuse for mass land destruction is well justified. The problem is that it drags the entire game. Its not "punishing" the landfall player, it's punishing the entire table because of the landfall player. There's no win/win situation here.
The lands/ramp player might have the means to recover from it faster, too. My Simic Greed Engine deck I'm working on has 46 lands + a couple MDFCs. If I'm not totally empty-handed I can probably claw back up from 0 lands; after all, I already built up from 0 lands to start the game, I have the tools to do it again. I can lose ten lands from my deck and probably have as many lands left in there as other players started the game with. This isn't even considering decks that plan to recur lands; Undergrowth Reconnaissance is 1GG for perpetual ramp if you've got fetches in the deck. Doesn't even have to be expensive fetches, the New Capenna ones like Brokers Hideout are fantastic. If land-wiped, fine; I'll be coming back from it faster than basically anyone else. Nor does it consider that Heroic Intervention is a pretty common include in green.
Thats the problem with Winter Orb and those Hard-Stax things. Most of them dont come out as a Wincon, it comes out early and drags the game infinitely until everyone collapses. My main problem with it is that everyone I know that plays EDH with me is an adult with a specific timeframe and limited time. If we're gonna spend an hour looking to the table and waiting for the draw, then its time wasted, precious time that might not be back anytime soon. Respect other people's time and commitment, if its not a tournament don't just stop the play entirely. If you make a Mass LD, END THE GAME after it. Fast. Do it while you're winning as a mean to secure the game, not slow me down.
I often play Commander with just one of my friends, and my Eriette deck honestly kinda slaps. I may be able to mimic America, with the amount of weapons I deal, but I can also mimic German beaurocracy by slowing everything down to snails pace. At least in 1v1s. I sadly couldn't test the deck that much with 3-4 players.
I lead a local playgroup and we had mass land destruction hard banned as a house rule for the longest time We started seeing more landfall decks pop up and decided to undo that rule
Cant deny it; i have built my 4c Omnath about 5 different ways, obviously all involving landfall to some degree, and each one has been able to constantly threaten the board. My current iteration has no landfall cards beside Omnath itself, and it still does its job 🥳
@@xaropevic7918 yeah mate, Omnath is so fun to try different things with, lifegain is one i havent ventured down yet but that rabbit hole would be a fun descent for sure. Angels in an Omnath build is my style 👍 Originally mine was just generic landfall, as I had never played with the archetype before. Too many triggers for me though. The most fun I had with that deck was cloning Omnath, playing and cracking a fetch and having 8 mana and +8 life, so i rebuilt around that mana ability; clone Omnath and/or copy its triggered effect and cast big Timmy spells. But then i realised i really liked hitting that 3rd land drop with many Omnaths. So i decided to remove all the Timmy cards and went to a more damage focused build. Focused hard on hitting exactly 3 land drops every turn, included damage doublers/triplers and man, that deck was fire 🔥 but when you put a 2-turn clock on everyone, you get smashed. So my latest iteration is trying to make that same Omnath a threat during the combat phase, both aggressively and defensively. Few different things I'm trialling, am thinking Voltron with less focus on the 3rd land drop. But keep all the clone, trigger copy effects and extra damage spells for the extra 8mana every turn and extra combat damage. Or maybe I remove the clones and go full aggro? 🤷♂️
I used to play against a Kruphix deck often, and the only way to beat it was a monoblue mill deck or an artifact combo deck such as Breya or Memnarch, and only if you could ramp out faster. I despise Simic.
In my experience value commanders are still the strongest in casual. Being able to cast large spells at a discounted price (Jodah, Elminster, etc.) Or just cascading/discovering (new Jodah or Dino commander) into free cards is extremely powerful and you dont even have to consistently do it the entire game to win. It usually only takes 1 or 2 turns where your board state is just that much better than any else you should be able to win from there.
Lands don't make a deck sweaty... they just give you ability to cast spells. The spells you include, are up to you. Someone can play mana crypt on turn one and not be a problem. Not everyone is looking for combos, stax, etc.
I like these topics. The place I go runs “causal” tournaments where games are timed up to 45 minutes. Because it’s a tournament setting many people being high power decks meant to win turn 4, or 5. I personally don’t like magic that way as I spent 1 hour of my life just to establish a rule zero with a group. :/ I play Cedh, and power 7 - 8, but I have a few upgraded pre cons.
@@thetrinketmage I would like this topic as I’m brand new to causal tournament format. I tried my first one this month. I’m curious to hear what decks you would bring if your goal was to win. Btw, money is a huge factor since proxies aren’t allowed unless you can own the card. My non-proxy decks are too slow to win in that format. :0
@@BobJones-bg4ui casual tournaments is just a super dumb idea for commander. There's too much variance and not enough clarity. What counts as casual? Just anything that isn't in the cEDH database? There are absolutely cEDH decks that aren't in that database. Slicer is super strong and was a cEDH commander for a bit but isn't currently on the list. There's a really nasty Malcolm, keen eyed navigator/ kediss, emberclaw familiar polymorph deck that's not currently on the list but has been in the past. The line between casual and competitive is so blurry there's almost no point.
@@andrewb378 Here are the rules my store follows. It’s 3 dollar entrance fee. I personally think it’s okayish as it’s a way for everyone to play and know each other. But, I’m am limited to what I can build. “1 ticket given out for matching the colour of the week, participating and each game won. Three 50-Minute games are played each week. Remaining tickets will be split with those who have the most wins. We follow the Regular MTG Commander Ban list without wish boards. If a Player Goes Infinite in the first 25-Minutes, they will represent it and then remove themselves. They still score a win but the remaining players will continue playing for a secondary winner. Commander Tie Breakers: When time is called finish the current turn rotation then compare breakers. 1. Highest Life Total 2. Most Permanents Controlled 3. Highest amount payed to cast a commander (including Commander Tax) 4. Most Commander Damage dealt during the game. (with a single commander not a pair) 5. Most Damage or Life Loss dealt by a single player to an oponent's Life Total in a single turn.”
@@BobJones-bg4ui so I don’t participate in casual tournaments on principle. I really don’t like tournaments that just add weird rules. In my opinion just play cEDH if you want to run a tournament! But if I had to go to a “casual” tournament I would bring a landfall deck
Flicker is even better, i run a brago deck with cards like venser, shaper servant and agent of treachery etc and get more etbs with cards like panharmonicon, teleportation circle, etc. the whole deck just puts everything back into your hand including your lands faster than you can play them. The only issue is being an arch enemy
In our gaming club the landfall decks mostly win the games. I don't have one, but I already updated my commander decks to counter such landfall decks a bit, mostly with graveyard hate cards. However I am not a very experienced magic player, I played a lot in the 90s and started again since last year. Oh boy, there were so many things happening since then in Magic! :P
I think the most powerful deck in the casual (or competitive for that matter) format is a blue combo deck. Usually in casual multiple people aren't going to have enough removal to get through your counterspells, and you'll usually be the first one winning so you don't have to compete with others for speed either. Granted, this definitely has a chance to pass the casual border quite quickly depending on the speed of your combos and the amount of tutors/counterspells you run. You could make a very casual budget list of Kinnan or Tymna/Kraum and it would still be immensely powerful if you chose to just include a few combos and enough counterspells and tutors for consistency and protection.
I don't agree simply because you're fighting off removal from 3 players while lands decks generally just dodge removal entirely. They get most of their value through the most difficult to interact with permanents (enchantments and lands) while most of their big bombs eat removal that doesn't really slow them down in a meaningful way. I think psychology plays a big aspect in this too because people in casual don't want to "be too mean" to any one player. If one person's (relatively meaningless) creatures keep getting removed by everyone at the table, they'll be less likely to target them with a piece of removal that hits their lands/enchantments that could actually hurt them in a meaningful way.
@@andrewb378 I have found that if you're winning by turn 4-5 with an efficient combo, most people at a casual table are not going to be able to hold up enough removal to eat through your 2+ counterspells. Again, a lot of people might argue that it's not casual, but that's another can of worms. Lands decks are just as susceptible against removal and counterspells as any other deck, and if you deny their card advantage pieces completely, they have a hard time coming back. They still need cards other than lands to win. I would a hundred times over rather play against a high-power Windgrace deck than even a middling power level Kinnan combo deck, which even at like a 50 dollar budget could kill you T3 and still hold up interaction.
@@moijemei634 You don't have to be playing cEDH to win T4, that is easy even with a casual budget deck if you build combos. The only important part is that every other deck in the table is capable of dealing with it or performing similar feats.
I played with a group that, if an effect would destroy or affect a Land, it wouldn't apply. Last game I played with them I just casted a thicc Death Cloud, destroyed everything, concieded and left
MLD doesn’t even work against Land decks, land decks are powerful because they’re the best resource card in the game with outstanding utility and synergy. It’s very likely a Lands Deck has mass land recursion, and also ways to be benefited from the situation above the other players.
Most favorite deck I had was Mogis, God of Slaughter. Not strong at all and was group slug. Ran Ahnk of Misrha, Zozu, Manabarbs. Absolutely shut down the landfall deck at the table. Best feeling ever.
100% agree. I have a cEDH Aesi deck in paper (it started as high-power) and my win rate in high power was like 50% which is insane, and mind my playgroup has strong high power decks, not your average timmy EDH experience. In simic we fold to aggro: we lack good boardwipes besides cyclonic. Gy hate is annoying as well. I see someone casting rest in peace I counter it on the spot
How is your agro deck agressive enough if you had removals and graveyard effects in it? Btw. I do agree with everything you said about the casual meta.
I have something to ask, the last saturday I played a commander Casual game against other three oponents. I was playing a Fynn, The Fangbearer's budget deck (25€) while one of the other players was using a dragon deck with the Ur dragon as his commander. He said that he have just used this deck (280€) on a Competitive Commander budget tournament. He started bad with low mana so I started attacking him in turn two with Fynn on the battlefield (he get two poison counters), then he (starting turn 3) just throw a enchantment that let his creatures have haste, so in my turn I destroyed that and attacked him with one creature and another player with another. He got angry and said that he will focus me so in turn 4 I finished him. With that he yelled and me and stormed out of the table. The match was really fast, we finished in turn 6 (I finished another player at turn 5 and the last one finished me at 6). Was it a bad move for my part to focus him? Is it ok to play that type of decks (Fynn) on Commander Casual?
To my experience A good super friend deck with interaction and wrath is so brutal to unprepared decks At my play groupe they even want me to take my prismatic bridge super friend because it's a basic auto loose because of the absurd quantity of interaction and exponential value the deck can propose But when i play it I see that then don't have removal for the bridge and they attack enough my pw So maybe it's not the best archetype But against inexperienced player it's crushing
ETB I'd say is the strongest in casual. The number of combos that are in ETB you don't even need to be built around ETB to win with it. And because there's so little hate for it its so easy for it to accrue value. I think Landfall is strong, but it requires more set up. You need to have a landfall card to trigger off of the lands you pull. Although Landfall is Technically ETB, I'm more referring to ETB artifacts or creatures. Primarily creatures. If I asked you to name 10 really strong creatures with ETB triggers you could probably name me 20 without struggling. Heck, You could probably name me 10 ETB combos without needing to look them up they're so common. I only have 1 deck now since I sold my old cards. But when I had them of my 10 decks I had 8 of them had ETB win cons. Edit: No sorry, 9 had them. My storm deck's commander was an ETB win con.
You failed to mention the true best counterplay, canceling ETBs. Land decks are ETB triggers in disguise, almost all the value is canceled by a Torpor Orb type card.
I do think reanimator/aristocrats has a decent claim to most powerful theme, due to a factor you mentioned (players not running a lot of graveyard hate) as well as, imo, the reanimator/aristocrat support cards getting much better for their mana cost compared to other archetypes. Cards like Rise of the Witch King go ridiculously hard
I don't disagree per se that landfall is a powerful theme, but I like to offer big mana as something that may rival landfall in terms of being the most powerful theme. While landfall decks seek to accumulate value over time with triggers and win through that value big mana is more about casting big spells long before your opponents are ready to handle the threats being played. Against a landfall deck this would probably be the kind of deck that would try to put big creatures into play that can kill the landfall player before the landfall player stabilizes and wins through sheer value. An example of such a deck would actually be my Imoti, Celebrant of Bounty deck. A lot of the early game is spent on ramp and small creatures that both serve as blockers and removal. As your mana base gets bigger and bigger you end up regularly casting 7-mana and 8-mana drops that either ramp even more (or even make you able to cast your big spells for free like Omniscience), let you draw tons of cards (between 6 and 12), take extra turns or serve as asymmetric stax pieces (like the Phyrexian Praetors). You then finish the game off by casting a mana-intensive combination of cards (like Blightsteel Colossus+Swiftfoot Boots+Blade of Selves) that wins the game on the spot. Sadly enough, I think that while your solution helps beat landfall decks it doesn't really help against big mana decks. If you play a big mana deck you are the archenemy the moment your opponents realize that you have a bigger mana base than they do. The deck I built is more than prepared to handle these situations in part because of the fact that the card draw is high-quality at the cost of being mana intensive on top of the large amount of mana you have anyway, making it easy to rebuild after your board is destroyed.
If we’re playing a *CASUAL* game and you run up a deck with land destruction as it’s main theme *without* telling me… I’m throwing hands, you deserve what you get.
Rolling a die to determine who to attack or arbitrarily attacking everyone to "share the love" are two easy ways to get on my shit list in casual games. If you really can't be bothered to make a decision, just attack the player who went first! Make decisions and own up to them, it's what makes the game fun to play! So yes, hard agree. Get feet on the ground and try to pressure the value deck however you can!
i would argue that, because most of the salty cards that you showed at the start are "land hate", most of them would be found all in the same deck, instead of just one. sometimes a new player or an unkind player will play a copy or two, but that's not the point since you talked about shadowbans. the phrase "if you can't beat them, join them" can be true since ramping in green is the best, but i see this video as "if you can't beat green, try playing red with more burn and burn-synergystic cards"
There are definitely some red decks that can outrun a simic landfall deck. There have been some *insane* red commanders printed recently. Ojer Axonil, Imodane, and Solphim just from the last year. Go back a couple more to 2020 and you get Magda, Slicer, and Laelia as well. I still think landfall is the strongest archetype. Everyone is threatened by these super fast burn decks so you're gonna get hit with a lot of removal from the non-landfall player. One removal spell just makes the race against the landfall deck pretty pointless.
Farewell is one card, also at sorcery speed. It’s not the same as holding up a scavenging ooze. As a lands deck I can play around farewell. Also farewell is only in white
Cradle is just an example of a land that is powerful and you might want to destroy. But the same can be said about cabal coffers, glacial chasm, or field of the dead. I just picked it as the example cause I assume most people would agree the card is strong.
Proxy-friendliness is also becoming more widespread. Most of the people I know running Cradle don't have a legit copy, so you may come across it regardless depending on your rule zero conversations
It shows severe problems with ingame mechanics if the only viable solution is... "defeat them before it happens". Best solution would be to lower this ridiculous overcharged 40 lp.
Sometimes it can’t be helped: many Magic the gathering players are terrible at threat assessing their own decks, to the point where they could be pubstomping a table with a much higher power deck, and still complain about getting targeted for removal. I know a Kinnan cEDH player at my LGS who plays Tatyova as his “casual” deck, and he throws a fit when people kill Tatyova on sight or rush him down quickly, whining “I haven’t done anything yet, I’m not a threat!” It’s either malicious incompetence, or he’s treating us like morons, like he thinks we can’t connect the dots on what happens when you leave a ramping Simic Player alone… Many Control players do this, too, and they seriously need to stop. It’s disingenuous to play a late game strategy, not have a plan for early game, and expect people not to run you into the ground before you start popping off.
I disagree that landfall decks are the best decks in casual commander. you even proved it yourself, its pure matchup dependent. maybe landfall is the least punished archetype due to general rule 0 things but thats not an indicator that these decks are exceptionally powerfull under these conditions. The "best" decks for winning, which i think you wanted to refer to, are probably decks which go under the radar, and win suddenly and unexpected in a non tilting way. Especially if these are doibg it with two card combos. Like Prossh and Devilish Valet or Belakor and Rite of Replikation or Henzie Decks. If build the right way, these decks will usually not become targeted by everyone immidiately and will eventually come to the point of bombing people.
Interesting premise. But casual commander is incredibly varied. However, lands decks are very resilient and consistent, especially when you use good land cards. So no matter what casual consists of, and what people are playing at a casual table, the lack of land removal tends to make those decks very successful. I just played my Lord Windgrace deck against Light-Paws, Lovisa Coldeyes and Ezuri mono-green elves. Nearly got wiped out, but an Obscuring Haze helped my Windgrace ultimate and by that point, we were down to two people left. It has just been tuned without spending a whole lot of money.
Tracking what is powerful in casual EDH is pretty silly, since most decks are bad and built without much though. The cards are bad, the piloting is bad and the game also tends to lack the seriousness needed to track complicated boardstates, so there is a lot of backtracking and nonsense like that. If your only goal is to win, sure, play land ramp decks vs bad players. If your goal is to play good magic with commander ruleset, just play cEDH.
You lost me at combo gets your creatures removed and aggro doesn't. I find its a whole lot easier to not get your stuff removed setting up to combo than it is to do the same with aggressive creatures. Also why I'd 100% say combo is the answer to landfall.
If you play a combo I would 100% need to remove your cards or I lose. If you play aggro and just tell me you are going to attack the landfall deck then I’m 100% not going to use removal on you
@@thetrinketmage I mean that sounds reasonable and all, but in practice I find that its very hard to convince people that you should be allowed to keep aggressive threats, people tunnel vision on them so much. My recent favorite example, I have an adeline, another player has a thousand-year storm. Player 3 removes my adeline and my other meaningful creature. Ask if I could keep them to kill that other person, then you just remove them next turn. Won't budge. Thousand-year storm player proceeds to mnemonic deluge a time stretch and take 18 extra turns. My adeline had power and toughness that you could readily calculate, so the other guy decided to remove it, and the thousand-year storm required thinking about some things that don't have clear analogs to life totals (number of cards drawn, play patterns so far). This is especially true if the combo player is responsible about what permanents they play. Imagine that player just played out thousand-year storm, ritual, mnemonic deluge on the same turn, and the only thing I could try to argue with is the fact that he had been drawing an absurd number of cards. Or if it was a much more compact combo rather than just storming off, and it just took like 2 cards from the hand and like 7, 8 mana.
I mean bro if you have a lands theme deck in your playgroup then if you're not playing land hate because of the "etiquette" you're just being an idiot. If the person playing lands complain about land removal then just tell them to drop the cards in their deck that interact with your deck And you don't even need removal, just play manabarbs, zo-zu, polluted bonds
People will cry and complain that they are being targeted unfairly by aggro strategy. You would be surprised at how quickly 3players can be defeated with a proper aggro deck and no taboo-itized player removal. Everyone lately wants to divide damage evenly so there is minimal salt but this is the very reason landfall is so strong. It's annoying to say the least. What's worse still is the complaint of "player targeting" when everyone knows exactly what BS is sitting in the command zone. But they want to be fair in combat. The real problem is if I start lasering down the hidden threat- I become the archenemy. Losing is taboo. Experience means nothing when friendly play divides proper threat assessment. And that makes the game itself more annoying and unenjoyable regardless. What we get is games that drag on. I am not against the long game, it doesn't bother me but I see the speedy players looking at clocks and squirming. If everything is just going to be taboo what is the right answer at that point? Noob and average players can't handle non-cedh yet moderately high competitive decks. My only thought and my favorite deck is simply designed for boardstate equalization. I can handle being archenemy and I guess I will be kingmaker too. Trust that I try to play fairly and spread damage evenly but these taboos that allow gamestate abuse are becoming quite unacceptable. In the endgame all I really want to do is secretly team up with whoever put up the good fight and didn't take advantage of the social contract. Whether that matters or not to those who think everything is actually fair- have I got some salt inducing surprises for you should we ever meet on the battlefield . End of Line.
At the end of the day, it just comes down to "people want to play their decks" and be it stax, agro, MLD, etc the reason they are so unpopular is because people they keep people from being able to play the game; I don't mean to say you should let them play unimpeded(though some act that way) but there's a difference between removing threatening targets and repeatedly board wiping for example. If agro tries to win before people can stabilize and start to run their deck, that's when people get upset.
@@MCC17011 play whatever. Hard learned knowledge is better than ease learned assumption. If cedh destroys casual that's only because rule zero is a myth.
The problem with Land Destruction, Winter Orb and the likes is, in most scenarios, its not a wincon. It just drags the game down, it becomes a slugfest of Commander Hell where no one is doing anything. I've got no infinite time to spend doing infinite nothings until someone finally draws enough lands AGAIN. The same goes for winter orb. Most decks I see using it are Urza-Types artifact stax and hard board controllers, but they never WIN fast enough. Okay, you made your combo and get to play almost alone. END THE GAME NOW. If you're making me watch 30 minutes of nothing except "yeah, I untap the only land I can" while you got tons of counters and is waiting for your combo, I'm gonna get out and not play against it never again. Magic is a competitive game YES, and Commander is a format that has a Winner. Winning isnt bad, but wasting my time definitely is for me.
How would there be a most powerful theme in casual commander? That just sounds like you are ignoring the social aspect of people choosing decks of comparable power. No, landfall is not the best deck in casual. At high power casual commander, artifact ramp (more efficient/less resilient than land ramp) and combo wins have Blue or Black having all the advantages you described here, and they have a faster win con. On the other hand high power casual commander also has aggro decks like Voja. Sure landfall decks also exist, but they win with Lab Man rather than with landfall. On the other hand if we do consider the social aspect and talk about more mid power casual commander, then there isn't a most powerful theme. There is a give and take between control, ramp, aggro, and combo. You give good advice for the aggro strategy. I would also mention that control decks are scary to landfall. Landfall decks take time off setting up their value. Control decks take time off setting up their control enhancers. While the landfall deck sets up, a Blue/White blink deck can setup to dismantle the board every turn.
