These commanders are stuck... | Deck Driver 

At 8:00 regarding solving the purgatory problem, my solution was to play in pods with only purgatory commanders / fringe cEDH pods. The games in those pods are so insane and swingy, it's amazing. Just a couple of fellas slinging gas at each other, without recycling the same old combos and staples on repeat. I high recommend it to anyone on the fence about it - it combines the best of casual with the best of cEDH imo.

The solution is to bring a lot of different decks and play a lot of games, and not care about winning or losing so much. I think it's important to be honest about how powerful your deck is - especially in a casual pod - but I wouldn't want anyone to gimp their decks because someone else might be upset about a particular combo they're running; you'll end up creating a deck that tries to please everyone except yourself.

This is how my miirym deck is, my friends all run a little extra removal to make sure i dont get there

I normally refer to these types of commander as "fringe", but purgatory works too. As for solutions to the problem, the best ones I've found are tight budget restrictions and playing "bad" mana bases. For budget, it's not a guarantee, but there is a noticeable gap between budget decks and non-budget decks if you go low enough. For mana, using less efficient cards like bounce lands, tap lands, or even Gates can make your deck significantly slower, which can make up for the power the commander brings. For Gitrog in particular, you can run Gates as a valid strategy, since there are enough gate lands in any two-color combo with black now.

I run a Narset Power Ranger deck Superfriends and Vehicles (yeah, Neon Dynasty) And tell my pod there are no extra turn or extra combat cards. This deck is slow but dangerous if left alone. So IMO good for casual pods

My favorite purgatory commander is Eldrazi. And yes I mean all of them, whike the cascade one can be super OP, so can the titans. And colorless can go off. I get to play the deck once each week and so far has 100% win rate with my group so it ends up being a decent 1 off and then put away

Tatyova, windgrace, and any blink deck out there are the same too. I think any deck that can autopilot itself fits this category.

Gaddock Teeg also fits here really well. Too good for casual, but not really effective in cedh.

Gitrog player here. The deck has been struggling for the past few years, but I've been trying to get it back with just "good stuff". Now I even run Chain of Smog combo and it has been working. Probably not winning tournaments, but I hate it that I can't play it in casual :'v

my table is very pro proxies with some decks being all proxies so we often play in this purgatory style and it is super fun. I run a pretty high power Delney deck all the way down to a pretty jank Orshov Daxos the Returned deck and I get lots of fun out of these games no matter what

Purgatory is where I like to play, and I do have Gitrog as one of my commanders! :)

I think the problem is that you have 3 classifications, which you could say is based on the numbers for power level, but doesn't need to be. I don't know that these decks don't fit into High powered pods. But perhaps that's too restrictive of a term. Are there more than one kind of high powered deck? I do like that you try to build towards cEDH and play these decks there or with people who also play high power, but I think your proclivities are what creates Purgatory commanders. I've built Edgar, Krenko and The Ur-Dragon into more casual friendly decks. That's because my tendency is to use pet cards and jank that work, but deviate from the usual plan. I don't spend a ton on the mana base either. If a deck is performing too well, I tinker with it until it fits and you have the right Idea with how to solve your Purgatory commanders issues'. I personally think there needs to be more than just 2 or 3 categories for pods and that will honestly help people more succinctly find where they want to be playing.

I have a friend with a Yuriko deck that he solved by focusing all on ninjas and none on her big blast payoff. Its still really powerful, but it feels better than the originally cEDH deck he brought to our casual game

Narset has gotten quite a few good new toys with Dockside and Jeweled Lotus, but it's a niche deck for sure. I think it's better positioned than Gitrog for cEDH.

I sniped a cedh tourney with the frog and won a gaeas cradle like a week ago. Realistically the reason for this was because people had no idea what I was doing because its so off meta.

"Too good to have fun in casual but not good enough to win in the big leagues" is exactly how like 50% of fighting game players feel about themselves constantly, too good for the game to be fun with friends but only good enough to maybe go 1-2 at a decent tournament. Anyway, maybe something commander would benefit from would be like, a pokemon smogon type tier list to make several brackets of power rather than just casual and comp. Setting something like that up and getting people to agree to it is near impossible though, especially compared to the fact that pokemon is played online and most people do it through showdown which can record real statistics instead of just people claiming something is strong or overused.

Have you tried Ishkanah? It feels like it's another golgari purgatory commander. I've been cooking with spiders, and it plays very similar to the Gitrog or Mycotyrant. It's got a lot of self mill synergy, token spam, recursion, mana loops and win cons that seem to come up often enough. I've feel that I made a fairly strong deck out of a mediocre comander but it feels like its stuck at an 8 power no matter what goodstuff I slam into it.

Whats your favourite Golgari Commander to build on a budget (under 200€)? Thanks a lot

I wouldn't say it's in Purgatory, but Tivit Seller of secrets is so high power, I was looking for casual versions of him and I just couldn't find any. he is simple too effective, I wanted to just play a voting/council deck but the tricks and cards he synergizes with he just doesn't yell "Casual" in any sense. He is closing in on being in purgatory due to the fact he's being outsped by most other decks in CEDH, so I think he'll get to gitrog/Narset/edric eventually but he's so stuck.

I have played a lot against Gitrock cEDH deck and I think that it is a deck that can be a lot more explosive and threathening on very first turns of the game when list is pumped full of expensive lands like fetches, cradle, bazaar of baghdad, gemstone caverns, lake of the dead and even city of traitors. Also expensive fast mana like manacrypt, mox diamond and lions eye diamond are very threathening since once the frog drops to field its often lights out almost immiadetely. And to assemble the main combo of the deck you need discard outlet, dakmor salvage, eldrazi titan or two to shuffle the deck and many expensive tutor spells to find these cards consistently to assemble your doomsday device. So fully optimized list can cost 5-10k dollars unless you use forbidden printer technique to ease cost of your deck when playing with your friends.

Another option is to keep the 99 mostly in tact but switch to a less powerful commander. Joey of EDHRec talked about how much fun he had swapping Meren for Baba Lysaga.

People should classify their decks properly so these kinds of commanders can play on a similar level When you watch edh gameplays or play you can see the difference on the levels of the decks although most people would say "it's a 7" because a 0-10 scale is too limited for how complex the format can be

Is a $150 ur dragon deck with mostly gates as lands high power?

I don't view these commanders as inherently problematic. You just have to avoid the things that make them competitive: Usually high concentrations of combos, extra turn spells, fast mana and 0 cost interaction. Narset Burn is a great idea. You could also do artifacts, planeswalkers, equipment or aura voltron, Dragon's Approach, Tokens, and a host of other non-creature spell themes without it going overboard. I used to have a Gitrog Landfall/Graveyard Recursion deck back in the day, before Muldrotha entered the stage and took over the graveyard cabaret, and it was great fun, and I currently have an Edric Weenies deck that works great in high powered pods, by avoiding the extra turn spells nearly altogether, save for one thematic inclusion: Notorious throng, and instead running janky overrun effects as my wincons. Works a treat, and costs like 50 bucks, currently! And, of course, always bring a spectrum of differently powered decks to an EDH night, so you'll have options. There are so many good budget staples these days that money really isn't a valid excuse to powerplay lower powered pods. You can build very competent decks, with a big variety of commanders, for 15 dollars now. It's a great deck building challenge, besides, and it's so rewarding when you still have a decent chance of winning against decks that cost 10-20 times as much as yours, or more.

Tergrid is the quintessential purgatory commander

most popular commanders are in this awkward spot. It's also very easy to turbo charge a deck into that spot by force. Daxos staxos (the orzhov version), Galea machine gun, ghired conclave exile can all go nuts for example. Then there are 80% of izzet commanders, 80% of LOTR commanders who start in the awkward spot lol

Of my 40 smth decks, Brago, Gyruda, Tivit, Vadrik, Korvold, ObNix and Yidris are all purgatory imo. They either see fringe cEDH play(Brago, Yidris, Vadrik), or more and more regular cEDH play (Tivit, Korvold, ObNix, Gyruda). I try to balance them to a more higher power casual level though by not including the Moxen in the 99, only running synergy pieces rather than just generic good cards, and avoiding some too easy 2 card combos with the commander like AWBO and Time Sieve. My Korvold still abuses treasures, but does so while playing a ton of dragons for flavor. Gyruda is still clones, but does some silly stuff and isn't on Thoracle Consult. Vadrik is a storm list that can pop off but I pull some punches here and there. Yidris is a Timmy dream deck rather than a turbo one. Tivit is an artifact and blink and clone deck, without any combos. I have many mroe decks in the pipeline that I'll be getting in the next few months, and a good chunk of them are also going to be falling in this category. Even with budget restrictions, some of these are cracked commanders and will always be so. (I play cEDH as well, but more so the top 10 meta decks alongside some fringe cEDH. To see some of these at my pods make me happy ngl.)

I started playing MTG 4 months ago. and my first and still favorite deck is myrel (soldier tribal). Unfortunately not many people like to play against him, I don't know what to do?

I had the same problem with my Vaevictis Asmadi deck, it was dominating my Casual friends because i used alot edict effects, but it was unplayable in highpower games cause it was way too slow and my commander get hated out with alot of removals

Six years ago, Narset and Gitrog is in the top tier spots in multi cEDH. But as time goes by, the meta also changes. But still a powerful commanders nonetheless.

I usually get my decks stuck there, I know there is a CEDH build of Urza, however mine is not (still stuck in puragory though), similarly, poor Yawgmoth rarly gets to leave the box. I am currently brewing a deck, and as an "arbitrary" restriction, I decided to give it a companion, this way, I cannot possibly optimize it to purgatory, as I do not get to run most of them cards, this will hopefully help.

I feel like a lot of the commanders that are being printed now fall into that purgatory category. Perhaps over time this category will become the casual norm.

I’d say they make not make the cut in cedh and low power but high power for sure play them got funnily both of the commanders shown in my high power pods at my local and they do so well

Narset group hug would be such a fun deck

I have a tom bombadil deck that sorta runs into this problem lol, definitely not a cedh deck but due to the way you need to build it it’s very not casual friendly

the gitrog monster goes well with the underrealm lich

I built a good Gitrog deck that sits fine in casual. Zombie Infestation and Faith of the Devoted wincons with no combos or free land sacrifice. Still digs through fast but isn't overwhelmingly lethal

Nethroi. Very easy to make a mill yourself out and bring back your entire graveyard for 7 mana, which is a deal so good you can survive it being exiled, but when you have to worry about both graveyard hate any people saving counterspells *or* instant speed removal for moments when you have 7 mana a thing on board, and a full yard it's so easy to stop in it's track

How would you tackle Urdragon?

Something i wanna experiment with is narset being a sagas commander. She seems so cool, and sagas seem like a dope way to make her work

So basically the answer to a power level problem is a combination of clear communication, finding the right tables, and maybe people running more interaction? Kinda like how the majority of social problems in Commander are eventually solved?

Half of my decks probably fall in this category. Jodah, the Unifier, Sythis, Kinnan and Jetmir can totally stomp casual pods if left alone for two turns, even though I run no infinite combos in any of them, not even Kinnan's Basalt Monolith. Old Stickfingers is my only "cEDH" deck because it's a combo deck, but built only with budget cards, bar three £10 reanimation spells, because the commander tutors the wincon itself. Fast mana would significantly improve it for actual cEDH

Dakmor salvage existing is just disgusting. Gitrog is a high power commander. It's not really good enough to win in cedh so it gets moved down to just high power. However, I agree that Gitrog, narset, edgar, ur dragon. Everything you said I genuinely agree with. But that's where high power sits. Just pay against other cards like that. To me, that's what high power is

Jodah 5 colors legendary theme for sure is a purgatory comander , I humiliaty people in forfun, but is weak in cedh

No Life from the loam nor Dankmore salvage mentioned eh? Make use of Gaea's blessing, noxious revival, Salvage, and/or Reclaim. The Gitrog Monster is powerful, but it's a terrible commander deck in general because "you have to play it out" no matter what's going on. Only reason i have the commander deck (and attempt to keep it updated) is because way back when i couldn't get a Food Chain but i somehow got a Life from the Loam back when The Gitrog Monster was one of very few actual competitive decks that didn't touch blue. i noticed how easy anything with blue was to play so i wanted to challenge myself.

This always happens to me because I like big commanders like Maelstrom Wanderer or Etali.

I think more causal players should play in high power. It's really fun! I mostly play cEDH, but id love to play more high power.

Fyi causal is a type of system in digital signal processing. You want the term casual

The worst offender for me is Rocco cabaretti cater. The deck only needs the combo. Anything else needs to be mana. I built one around 30 euros for a challenge I suggested to a friend. I ended up building another deck because the deck wins consistently in turn 5 or 6 in goldfish and actually has many hands that can win at turn 4. It is not even that I am a crazy good deck builder. However starting the game with a tutor in the command zone is insane. But because the deck lacks blue it is not top tear while the more restrictive and colour intensive sisay is. The same goes for abdel Adrian. That one I am proud of the deck costs something less than 30 euros but it is a deck that only does one combo and other than removal spells every other card in the deck is meant to do that. However abdel Adrian still hasn't found success in cedh tables.

Smogon needs to get to work on a Commander OU.

Makes me think of Light-Paws

The only solution for purgatory commanders are, either building a wack super restrictive deck, or using the commander purely for value with a more mainstream cedh strategy.

Pog

As someone who also really likes Gitrog, I'm not huge on his "optimal" play pattern. Huge value, longish turns managing your triggers, or going infinite; don't get me wrong those are fun for the pilot but not the table and when the novelty of running away with the game wears off it's just not fun for anyone. Worst part is, even if you depower and avoid those plays and explain it to the table, you'll have people target you or play stronger decks because they don't trust you or your assessment. That's where Thalia and Gitrog come in. It can overlap with much of the same play pattern while not being as inherently powerful, can run Gitrog in the 99, adds a color for further options, and does more and different things such as slowing down opponents. This is also another reason why I'm still sore they didn't introduce another Mardu vampire commander in Crimson Vow, but I digress. As a tangent, I think people have wildly different ideas as to what "budget" means, as $200 far exceeds what budget means to most people I play with but would be phenomenal for cEDH. I believe an element of this are expensive lands that help the deck run smoothly but don't inherently make it stronger. I'd be curious what the budget of the deck would be if you excluded all non-utility lands.

Yea.. Yarok is my purgatory commander. My pod just refuses to play against it.

I think these are quite possibly just...high power. Not casual but not cedh, i feel its a rather simple line. Its quite literally as simple as play against other "purgatory" commanders and if you arent just warn the pod. If they dont like it go down to a different deck. My Rowan, Gishath, Feather, And Sarulf decks are all to good for casual but nowhere near cedh (rowan being the closest) so everyone either ramps up or targets tf out of me as they should. Guess it depends on the mentality of the players both you and the others. But i have found the line between Cedh, high power and casual rather easy to define most of the time. At least in my circles and even online over webgames.

Tergrid, yuriko, animar, voja, all feel like this category to me. Too strong for casual but can't really hang at a competitive level

Kinda sad that you didn't mention voja, which is not broken, just one of the many of those commanders and I personally find those ones just not fun, because the game is basically just a removal check test, not even a "where you use said removal", it is so linear, and that is from the guy that runs 20-32 renoval on my decks, so it is not even that I don't want to use more removal

You could savage ventmaw into agrravated assault p quick in ur just saying

To provide a suitable pod for these commanders, generally you need to stipulate that you are doing high power, no infinite combos and no instant win effects. In that kind of environment, you can see them a lot more. Though I'm not sure why you would want to. All of these commanders are miserable and they completely suck the joy out of EDH games whenever I see them appear at my table. If anything, they should be discouraged more.

I simple say "high power" that means "purgatory edh"

$200 is budget? Im over here trying to make decks on $50 or less. My first paper deck was $7

Well played a game that made others salyly because of purgatory cards. Cards that suck in cedh but are really good or too good in regular games

This is the issue I have with people not specifying what they mean by "casual deck". Like it's not cedh but it's an 8+ and will pubstomp anything less impactful

I can confirm that Narset is too strong for casual, and not strong enough for cedh

i fucking love Gitrog, and i always did and always will

You need Degenerate EDH I also really like Yuriko but people consider her too powerful for casual.

I don't think this is exclusive to just these cards. This seems to be where optimized edh decks end up. Not always going to be good enough for CEDH, but "too good" for casual. Budget really doesn't matter. If you build around your commander and intended to optimize, this is where you end up.

First good video you dropped, nice one fam

This is my Nekusar deck. :(

Only thing I would add is that these “purgatory commanders”, in addition to not being quite powerful enough to compete in cEDH, push strategies/game plans that are overall not good enough for cEDH. Take Voja, for example. It’s a stupidly cheap, overstated, self-protecting, repeatable, and permanent craterhoof effect in the command zone that also draws cards for some reason. It wants you to play elfball. In casual, it’s just too good. Everyone else skipping a turn trying to counter/kill Voja the turn it comes down is not fun for anyone. And you can’t race it. Elfball is known to be good at making a lot of mana and fast, and using creature draw engines to reload, so it’s not like they’re going to run out of gas any time soon. You almost need repeated board wipes to deal with it, which is absolute hell for every other creature based low to mid power strategy. Try and get it up to cedh, and suddenly the prevalence of free countermagic and the speed limitation of summoning sickness on mana dorks makes Voja much worse. It eats one hyper-efficient removal spell and its game is over. It feels like modern card design philosophy has created a third spectrum of power. There’s the casual spectrum, which includes all types of jank, most precons, typical commander decks on creature strategies, and themed but tuned decks. There’s competitive spectrum, which although tighter in range has tournament decks down to fringe playable strategies with unique engines and combos. And then there’s… ccedh? Competitive casual. It needs a lot of work and luck to try to hang with even the most fringe of cedh. It absolutely stomps any casual deck. They can only really play with each other. And they all fall in with the way you presented them in this video. Strong consistent game plan regardless of budget. If they hit the table and do their thing once you basically just win. If you like that type of commander, that’s great. I loved the atypical build suggestion. But I still think they are a blight on the landscape of the format. They represent (although accidental) so many feel bads and Pubstomping. Not every game needs to be a great one but commanders like Voja, Yuriko, Myrrim, Narset, Gitrog, the new Obeka, and more ensure that not-great games continue to become more common.

Wait, so you then changed the narrative from “not usable in CEDH” to “ISNT the best of the BEST in CEDH”. Like, which is it?

There are more and more tables playing high powered commander. Play high powered casual commander at high powered casual commander tables. End video

Atraxa 🤣

um dude gitrogs a monster in cedh its a pain in the ass to respond to he has the second highest win rate in my local card shop for cedh mind you out pods tourneys arnt wotc run and proxy friendly ive started running fringe cards to ans the deck like Extirpate, Sudden Spoiling ,Trickbind, ive even some guys run vats

Narset doesn't get off the ground that well in cedh she feels too slow or very easy to deal with especially because of her strategy she can't run that many counter spells and counter spells are literally the bane of her and stacks pieces that prevent cast from exile sadly she's just meh at most cedh table sad too cause I love her mother's day full art card

I love the video, but laugh every time "pretty low" is mentioned, and the reference is $200... My fellow dude, I would consider $40 budget friendly, and low. Anything after is extra and adds a lot to the cost. Amazing video though!

gitrog is absolutely strong enough for cEDH!

infs arent casual, extra turns arent casual, multi combat is as long as its not inf.