When Theme Decks Become "Goodstuff" | Commander | Magic: the Gathering 

6:41 Okay, but when Aang goes into the avatar state after finding Monk Gyatso's body in the Eastern Air Temple, is that not Cyclonic Rift? Flavor win if you ask me.

I made a “snakes on a plane” deck with Xyris, the writhing storm. Essentially, he makes snakes, and I play a few other snakes, to crew vehicles. I took out all of the wheel effects, combo pieces, etc., and people still kill them on sight. But honestly, I’ve also won enough with it that I see why. It’s a super fun and stupid deck that also happens to do well.

On MTGO there was a format called "Tribal Wars" where the one restriction was that one-third of your deck has to be the same creature type. It was a simple-enough restriction but still made the decks feel thematic. I apply that same standard to my own theme decks in EDH, and I also let people know before playing that "1/3rd of the deck are " so there's that expectation that there will be some "non-theme" cards but the majority are themed cards and lands.

Thanks for addressing this. I have an elephant tribal deck that my son is always harping on me to upgrade. But to upgrade it, I would have to take out some of the bad elephant creatures, or cards with an elephant in the art work and I just won’t do that. Granted, there are support cards in it that don’t have an elephant on them, but it’s at a minimum to make the deck playable in the play groups it sees time. And I believe that’s the key here. Playing these decks in the appropriate groups to make sure everyone has a fun play experience. Heck, that’s an episode in and of itself.

It could also that since powerful goodstuff cards tend to also be expensive commodities that people have few if any copies of, they might choose to include those cards in the decks they love most. Like a beloved pet deck.

I play a Kenrith gates/landfall deck that I forced the gates theme a lot harder than I maybe should have. The theme is forced by only being able to fetch for gates, the only non-basics I run are gates, maze’s end, command tower, and the world tree, and I typically don’t even cast Kenrith. Even with those restrictions I still get the “Oh you’re just playing a super powerful commander for its value” even when people have played against the deck in the past. Some people will never be happy with how you build your decks unless you’re handing them wins.

I made a Lathril deck with a theme where I used the elves to convoke out giant beaters like impervious greatwurm or Mossbridge troll. I like to think of it like the elves bowing down to summon these ancient powerful gods from the deep forest. Called it "The old Gods" , one of my more fun decks to pilot.

The big indicator to go with "Good Stuff" was, in my personal experience, a surroundings/playgroup moment for sure. Basically someone that you play with decently a lot, or even your own self, decides to press the nuke button, showcasing an increase in deck power that make other decks weak and unable to perform on the same level. This requires the rest to play catch up, sacrificing their deck's thematic integrity in turn to produce at a similar level as the reasoning behind the push to use "Good Stuff". Sometimes it's a sting towards the player and becomes a bit more cookie cutter, but other times it's giving the fire power to push for the theme to produce better and more consistently. In my personal experience, someone decided to buy a prebuilt +$200 Zacama deck and we still played $20-$40 precons at the time. It was rough, even in an archenemy setting at the table, but we all broke down and realized that our decks couldn't cut it cosistently, so we started not just getting thematic upgrades, but getting "Good Stuff" as well as an "Aha!" to the Zacama deck. It's definitely turned into most of our decks including "Good Stuff" and becoming must haves when building, unless we makes builds purposefully not including them. It's a bit of a slippery slope, but it's entirely a subjective build inclusion when playing!

It's pretty hard to draw lines. One person's casual inclusion is another person's boogyman card. I think it's just as important to teach people tolerance of other's quirks as it is to teach sensitivity. Also, putting a couple of good stuff cards into a theme deck is not only fine, it should be expected. Precon power level is about the lowest that the overwhelming majority of tables play at. And precon powerlevel is pretty high these days. Boosting a joke deck's power level to that of a precon is a good move in my opinion.

A themed deck doesn't really have to completely and utterly chain itself to said theme. My Ayula, Queen Among Bears deck is very much themed around bears, and I'll routinely hunt down cool cards with bears in the art (i.e. Fade from History, or the LotR version of Beast Within). However, I still enjoy adding cards that I find to be generally good (i.e. Vigor, Toski, the green Ozolith) and then I simply retroactively add those to the worldbuilding/myth I envisioned for the deck at the time of its inception.

This video said a lot of things I'd been thinking for a while. For me, it wasn't a Charix crab deck, it was an Archelos Turtles deck. But no matter what, the turtles were always the worst cards in my hand, and never contributed to closing the game. My solution has essentially been that the theme in my theme decks has to contribute to my gameplan. I can't make a meme-y turtles deck if those turtles aren't pulling their weight. My current favorite deck is also a theme deck, but the theme is a tribute to my friendship with my best friend, and many of its cards aren't included because they're (necessarily) very good, but because they represent those memories. But those theme cards aren't totally divorced from a more focused strategy, and definitely help out. If I were to summarize it, I'd say that the deck's strategy comes first, and then I go looking for on-theme alternatives to the cards in that more focused version of the list. But when I pull it out at game night, I don't say "it's a theme deck." It's still emphasizing the strategy the commander promotes. Instead, it's probably better described as a "subtheme deck," if I wanted to represent it that way. Very well-said. Great video! 😁

All hail Charix, King among Crabs! I started building him as a meme obscure sea creature deck, but he’s morphed into a sword wielding, chariot riding, one shot kill, voltron powerhouse. My pod loves to see him, just not swinging their direction. There are a few instant speed swap power and toughness spells that exist and they are always hilarious to pull off.

Yes! I always go for flavor and theme over staples in my tribal decks! I wouldn't play silly tribes if I didn't want to have fun playing them with odd cards

Love my Charix, True Lord of the Rings deck. He is the one crab to rule all in my heart. This deck is capable against the good stuff and a genuine joy to pilot. It was definitely a difficult task weighing many of the "Good stuff" cards I could/should include but ultimately I always thought about how I wanted to win and built accordingly. Running it against Eldrazi, Slivers, and the like of just powerhouses of decks did highlight some blaring weaknesses that the deck has like 1 or 2 cards to maybe slap a small bandage over, but I fully intend on keeping the deck as is power level wise as I can manage to sneak out a surprise win 1 of 5 ish games. Plus the group I play with gives the deck so much praise for its surprising strength. Also love being told "it should not work as well as it does given the theme". This keeps me building and brewing.

Thank you for this video Joey. It definitely cast some light on an issue that I have with one of my " theme decks". The ultimate point of the deck is to create an engine that breaks acorn catapult and turns it into an infinite damage, combo. The issue with the deck is the construction of the combo is incredibly difficult to accomplish. The commander of the deck is Kenrith. The unfortunate play pattern of the deck is to use incredibly efficient ramp and a highly tuned mana base to put me a head-on resources and fix my colors quickly. The next drawback is that the deck pulls no punches on tutoring. The interaction is also efficient, however I don't run an enormous amount of interaction, my personal playstyle is usually put your head down and try and get the win, ignore your opponents as much as possible. I'm not sure if there's a solution or more appropriate way to build my deck, however your discussion on the topic does have me interested in putting the deck face up on the table and really seeing if I can nail down a less spiky play pattern to accomplish the ultimate goal. As an afterthought I do have to explain, my local play group is either highly enfranchised players with multiple decks typically in the upper range of power, or as that is the case with part of our play group proxy cards are welcomed and encouraged. It's not so much playing this deck with my local play group that creates an issue as they are familiar with the overall play pattern of this deck. Mostly the issue arises when I'm playing in unfamiliar groups, where players recognize how quickly I am putting myself ahead on resources and how often I am casting spells to tutor for combo pieces. I am often exchanging life for mana resources and dealing a great deal of damage to myself in the process and not really creating a creature board state for potentially blocking. The biggest downfall of the deck is crumpling very hard to a table of players hellbent at sending every combat step at me. A totally reasonable reaction I might add

I think this was a great summary of the topic. I try to build most of my decks this way with a tight restriction. My opinion is it leads to interesting deck building by not playing the staples and when one of those staples happens to fit, even. I like looking to flavour text and art for typal decks. A personal example is an elephant typal deck playing teferi's protection and generous gift. Due to the nature of commander being self correcting is that if you are learning hard into a theme that usually buy political favour allowing more time to develop your game plan.

I like your thought process, interesting video, really resonates with how I struggle to build decks.

This hits pretty close with a recent deck I built, trying to do Gorex, the zombie turtle and doing a sort of monoblack "zoo" deck with a bunch of undead animals. Putting in an Ophiomancer definitely fit the reptile theme, but now I'm looking at a spare Skullclamp wondering if it's too strong to put in. Wondering how it'd affect the budget, the theme, the power, just that one card is giving me such a headache. Strong points in the video are definitely going to help.

THANK YOU SIR! I have been searching for a good not blue deck and you commander commander deck is brilliant! It is the last color combination of commander decks that I do not have yet.

I think one of my most off the wall theme decks is my Parnesse, the subtle brush deck that I describe as "Decision Paralysis", every card gives the opponent a choice for what happens (e.g., Captive audience, Dwarven driller, Prince of Thralls, Wand of Ith). When building I did have to carve out a caveat that mana rocks were exempt from the rule, since grixis is bad at ramp and many of the theme cards are expensive. I do have a fair amount of good stuff in the deck like Torment of hailfire, Rhystic study, and Temporal Extortion since they do technically give the opponent a choice, and with potential do nothing cards like Dash hopes and Rhystic Tutor in it I think the power level isn't too high. I do describe the deck as a stacks deck when introducing it since that's the bulk of the theme cards.

Clean and efficient takedown of that chatter! In reference to the video, I have two decks that I can think of that are opposite ends of the spectrum. My arixmethes sea monsters deck has some added good stuff while my grixis good stuff deck eventually had a Sonic theme attached to it. While I will say their origins are intact, both have fun cards that need some amount of good stuff in order to "do the thing". I've found my happy middle, but am always on the lookout for thematic cards to replace the good stuff.

My most recent and favorite themed deck has been my “welcome to Innistrad” deck. It’s built with cards only from the Innistrad blocks and lore. I was able to make it 5C because the mtg universe versions of the Stanger Things SL are characters from Innistrad.

My Lulu/Cultist of the Absolute deck is a tribute to Doro and her ‘80s metal band Warlock. Non-basic lands are venues, Cultivator’s Caravan is the tour bus. Krav is the demon mentioned in “Metal Tango”, while the Krav/Regna partnership is an “Unholy Love”. 1/1 tokens are the fans (her “forever warriors”). There are cards that represent songs or even specific lyrics-“I Rule the Ruins”, “Touch of Evil”, “Burn the Witches”, “All We Are”, and more. Introducing Battle Angels of Tyr as the “promoters” never fails to get a laugh. There are some powerful staples-Land Tax, Smothering Tithe, Esper Sentinel (gotta get paid, right?) and Anointed Procession all come to mind-but because so many of the typical “deck building template” rules were sacrificed to the theme, those staples don’t overshadow the point of the deck. The deck has never won in its half dozen or so appearances, but it’s been fun. It’s like staying up late for Headbangers Ball all over again. 😂

@4:08 absolutely killed me 🤣🤣🤣 "I play... WISHCOIN CRAB!" 😂😂😂

The most underated topic ever! Glad that you take it up. I'm still tuning my darklord sauron with 9 nazgul into a useful & high powered yet also meaningful; last December I got fed up with all the loses with the deck that I implant 2 combos into them. yesterday I overhauled them all into useful villainous sauron (what if sauron got a small help by abaddon and davros)

I feel like the horseshoe crab combo is a win, I think finding combos with synergy with your theme is pretty cool! Now craterhoof in ur theme thats different, but abusin a funny lil crab dood is dope

As a person who flips the script on decks packed with power cards (goodstuff as you call it), I will tell you the secret to making a "bad" deck, at the very least, make an impact, is low-cost removal. You don't run the risk of overtaking the game with power cards, but you buy enough time in the game to do something else impactful, but on theme. For example, in my "jank" Rafiq deck that seeks out Urborg and utilizes many of the cards that punish people based on swamp count, I run Wash Away, Natural State, Unsummon, etc to disrupt explosive early turns, in order to buy the time necessary to eventually do that cast Karma and pass, "You guys each die on your upkeep because of your now high land count." (I've done this twice so far), or swing with a 25/25 Angry Mob for lethal damage with the assistance of Rafiq's double-strike buff. The deck in question is named "Karma's a Bitch" and rightfully so, as I will say that every single time I cast Karma when it will kill someone in the rotation.

I have an "X-Men The Animated Series" theme deck around Melek, Izzet Paragon as Gambit. The goal is to fling burn spells from the top of the deck, but I also want the other X-Men to show up even though pure spellslinger would probably be more powerful. Sometimes mechanics and flavor align (Nivix Cyclops and Arclight Phoenix). Sometimes the flavor wins out over function (Rusted Slasher, an artifact creature with regenerate, is...not good, but its so perfect and you can't have an X-Men team without Wolverine). But the themed creatures are only 10% of the deck, so the vibes of the non-creature spells have to be immaculate. Burn spells, impulse draw, storm spells, Gamble, anything that has me throwing cards around and causing mayhem. And of course, every spell with Gambit in the name, especially the bad ones. People don't mind getting Mind's Desired for 12 when they also see me flub the 3rd flip on Fiery Gambit. A full commitment to the bit is integral to success. If someone asks me if its a Storm deck, I gotta put on my worst Cajun accent and say "Non, mon ami, this is a GAMBIT deck."

As a loyal crabs player, I use Chulane as the commander. Some people when I pull that out think I'm going full-on value engine whenever I play it. However, the only reason I use Chulane is because it gets me all the colors other crabs fall in. Yes, it does have a few cards to help it out, but it's not all the goodstuff cards. But it's always fun to get to play Scuttlegator or Sharktocrab.

I include power cards that fit the theme of my deck (Mana Crypt in my coin flip deck). Beyond that, I follow the generalized 12 ramp 12 removal method, whether on theme or off.

I made a Rasaad deck with a crab theme! It's a toughness matters Voltron deck and it's silly and fun and actually has performed pretty well in the online group I play in!

Funny story about Taunt from the Ramparts, I was watching a pod at my local game store and one of the players was running the Rohan deck. He cast this spell...while two of his opponents each had a Wandering Archaic on the field. He could not pay the tax, so three versions of this spell were put on the stack and resolved. When I realized what this meant for the fourth player and voiced it to the table, we all had a very good laugh.

If you make custom proxies for theme decks, it helps buy-in a lot!

I totally get Joey’s point, I made a rock deck for Stella where all my manalith tokens were hand samples from the field, and every card was a dinosaur or rock related. I also have a morph deck that has cyc rift, overwhelming stampede and end raze forerunners. I think some weaker themes stuggle to find ways to win, so some staples are fine for closing games if the alternative is equally egregious (ie pickle lock is my on other win condition, morphs aren’t that strong on their own)

So funny thing, really. My friend decided to make a theme deck. The theme was that he based it around our group's Pathfinder game (which admittedly was inspired by MTG and Ravnica so there was an easy "in" for the deck, but it gets kinda crazy) and would have ALL of the creatures and spells based on characters, both PC and NPC, and events from the campaign. The commander is Rem Karolus, so he's restricted to 2 colors... AND he managed to get a card to fit every party member AND a bunch of important NPCs! One of the cards he runs is firesong and sunspeaker, and their PF game actually featured two twin Minotaur clerics from the Boros faction! And even all of the Earthquake spells were able to reference different events form the campaign! AND IT WINS GAMES! The cards that best fit the references turned out to be exactly what his deck wanted for synergy! It's absolutely mental lol.

I'm getting into MTG and really like the Vishgraz commader style. Toxic+summon mites. Got inspired to make a "Starship Troopers Bug" theme. I know the mites can't block but a horde of bug with Toxic sounded fun. Now do I have a bunch of token doublers/triple? Yes. Some wasn't cheap but managed to trade for some of em at my LGS. Adding in a bunch of cards that generate mites is the goal. Do I expect to win? No, especially when the table figures out what I'm doing but once again. A horde of bugs to attack ala Starship Troopers just seemed great for a theme. (Helps that Vishgraz is a big bug lad)

This video really speaks to me since most of my decks try to adhere to a theme. I've been gathering cards for a Ninja Turtles deck that I'm too scarred to start building. Turtles, Weapons, Ninjas, Mutants.....way too many directions to go in for one deck.

I've got more than a few strict meme/theme decks under my belt! It's always a phenomenal challenge and helps sate my endless appetite for deckbuilding. Some of my faves: - All Alliterative with Bell Borca, Spectral Sergeant - One-Word Only with Progenitus - Pirates and Sea Monsters with Admiral Beckett Brass & Gyruda, Doom of Depths

This is prophetic timing, I just got back from a EDH game night and had some interesting thoughts on HOW I build decks. For example, tonight I debuted my "Tribal Foundation" deck, where I have a 50 card core of Tribal support and mana fixing. The other 50 cards ends up being modular, taking in 50 cards of whatever tribe I choose. It, in theory, lets me set up any tribe I want in much less time....but I find that a lot of the generic all purpose tribal support like Door of Destinies and Steely Resolve aren't as driving on the actual THEME of a tribe than say, Merrow Commerce or Catapult Master. So a lot of the deck felt like good stuff and I honestly ran out of room for a LOT of the more weird and fun stuff I could have run if the colors and scope were more specific... In my other decks, I almost ALWAYS have a deckbuilding start of "What/how much ramp, what removal, how do I draw cards, how do I protect my stuff, how can I stop my opponent's combos" and so very often the answers to those are very "Goodstuff" cards. I always want removal for all sorts of things, so I put in Path to Exile and Krosan Grip. Protection is usually Heroic Intervention, card is Rhystic Study, etc. And when those key things are the FIRST thing I build....they get filled faster. Between staples that grow from 10...to 20...to 30 or 40, plus 30+ lands...suddenly the actual UNIQUE cards of my deck is barely a quarter of it! So, like you did allude to, I think a lot of it comes from intention. Most decks should have answers, if anything I find that EDH players play less answers than they should, but it is one thing to shore up your established support with some winners and another for you to default to a best of list with a splash of a theme as an after thought. But I do adore the jank, it is my favorite things to explore in ANY game, the weird and what if, the curious combinations and elaborate setups. And I think you got it right, if a deck finishes a game like you'd expect, if the engine driving it is as you expect, than I think it is a success. A unicorn deck can save it's butt with a Teferi's Protection or a Path to Exile, but I would love to see it win at the charge of a glittering horde not a combo kill from non-unicorn stuff. But that is why it is ALWAYS good to discuss with your pod the way you want to play the game, as anything can be fine if everyone is on the same page.

As a generally new commander player I’ve had this become my major problem. I love theme decks but it becomes so hard when you want it to be able to be fun and powerful without those money cards

This reminded me when I first started playing Commander. I built a Merieke Ri Berit voting matters deck. The deck lasted a week before I took it apart

I had to force myself lately, when creating my Najeela, the Blade-Blossom deck. I built it by containing 36 lands and 62 Warrior-creatures and two creatures that become Warriors when entering the battlefield (Roaming Throna and Titan of Littjara). I'm still pondering whether I take the last two out and go all Warriors.

This happened with my Gargos hydra deck. It slowly became a green good stuff deck. This video has given me the motivation to revamp it to strictly hydra tribal. I'll make another green deck to use the stuff taken out.

I do have a Crabs deck! It's crabs plus "return to hand" removal effects.

To add to this, I run a fallout only deck, with Atraxa at the helm. (Getting a custom proxy of it). To consider, is I got few board wipe options, but one of them is Farewell.

I tend to pick out a handful of cards on theme, a handful of cards that are *mechanicaly* on theme (i.e. good synergies) and then a handful of card draw & interaction. Bonus points if I can start blurring the lines between the categories.

Charix crab tribal was actually the first deck I ever built! Since crabs will instinctively hold onto anything they can pinch, giving the big crab a few pieces of equipment was easy to justify. It's not an absolute power house or anything, but it gets by fine at the less sweaty tables - even if it's full of non-meta picks. Sure, Rhystic Study and Cyclonic Rift are nice, but I have Witch's Oven and Lembas so I can have crab rangoons and endless breadsticks.

Hey my Old Age Mutate Ninja Turtle deck with Archelos does pretty much as you described Joey. 😊 The deck actually synegizes kinda well because you can use the ninjas to reuse the mutate creatures and mutate onto the non-human ninjas or Archelos. Plus you have a wide variety of abilities because of the support thags been printed for both themes. Archelos being a stax piece himself makes him a big target though. I resonate a lot with this topic because I love building unique decks. I usually dont include staple cards and try to find other cards that work well and fit the theme I'm going for.

I built a phyrexian theme deck where everything had to make sense for a phyrexian to have. It’s harder to make a true thematic deck than it may seem

I think the best themed deck that I have is my simic dnd character deck. its all archer (and kinda snake) kindred, with almost no card draw, no counters and SOME of the good ramp. but everything besides the green ramp and ezuris predation is thematic towards my character and the things that she wore or killed in her time as an adventurer. there are some great named dnd spells from both dnd sets. i like it, and i love the story behind all the equipment behind it. the biggest bomb is Koma, but it applies to something that she faced, albeit at 17th level, but still. im even getting aesthetically themed lands, that im excited to put in the deck. if you have a beloved dnd character, i give you a challenge to make it a commander deck.

Thank you, you’ve given me plenty of things to think about. I don’t get to play often, so I tend to cram “good stuff” into every deck, and it feels off to me. And as a Glorious Combat player, Taunt from the Rampart SLAPS.

My only "theme" deck is my Mirko Vosk and the theme is "Dracula's Castle" from the Castlevania games. The great thing about that theme is that it all the "good stuff" cards still make sense because I try to make them match up with a monster or moment from the games, even the "good stuff" cards. And the one time anyone asked why is had something like Omniscience in the deck, i just had to reply "I''m freaking DRACULA, that's why!". Also its a mill-deck :)

There's a "YOU FELL FOR MY TRAP CARD" Sultai morph/foretell/manifest deck that I'm brewing up, it looks reaaaalllly fun, I think this video has inspired me to take out some staples for more on theme stuff.

I'm working on building my first deck (I'm a new player) around the commander Inga and Eska, and I specifically had hoped to visually create a colorful deck. Thus far in my research, it's going to be quite the challenge. If I can't accomplish my "rainbow theme" with Inga and Eska though, I'm okay with attempting it with a different deck down the line.

I don't typically build a deck around a theme perse. I usually build around one of three things: a mechanic, a tribal, or a specific commander. I do have a friend though that plays an ocean themed mono blue deck where the majority of cards are, in fact, themed around ocean creatures or at least have some connotation with water.

Man, I know this feeling hard. When I got the Buckle Up precon I was super excited to play a mecha deck, do some Gundam LARPing. Now Shorikai is my commander and Intruder Alarm and Lab Maniac and Lab Jace are my wincons.

with the time deck, i feel like a one of nexus of fate or beacon of tomorrows where you come across it every now and then but never search for them then that really fits the flavour to me, but maybe not for yourself

I agree with the video, only thing I'd like to add is that the bad feels are coming quite a bit from feeling misled and that that can also be avoided through clearer communication. Rather than leaving it at "This is a crabs deck" add that "it's still running heavy hitters of Blue though so it's definitely not all jank." I think that getting on the same page about decks and powerlevels is a key part of playing (especially with people you don't know), and rather than vague numerics "this is an 8/10" I feel it's worth doing a super brief rundown of "this Turtles deck is go wide deck with big combat finishers but I have some alternate wincons" or "This is my Santa christmas theme deck but the core is Elf-ball with artifacts as the presents"

Thank you for this my group was trying to get me to deck out my unicorn deck, and it just did not feel right to do.

I have a few themed decks and like you mentioned in the video the amount of good stuff in the deck kinda depends on the theme. My roman legion themed deck is restrictive down to the art but some good stuff cards fit in there like Ruinous Ultimatum which is a rain of arrows on a battlefield. However, the commander is Licia Sanguine Tribunal who I never cast because there's no life gain support. (Thank goodness for the fallout set coming soon) No one's ever given me side eye for good stuff and I love bringing that deck out for newer players or low power pods but at the end of the day it's just a deck that's inefficient at making 1/1 tokens

I run a fairly fun Monoblue Landfall deck with no counterspells in it. The funniest part is watching all fellas face's waiting for a counterspell that never comes. And yet that deck somehow manages to be resilient and reactive as hell.

I've been through this with my General Tazri Ally deck...after a LONG journey, multiple rebuilds and giving up... the key is to just be self-aware. If you're supporting the jank/niche with strong cards. Just say that at rule 0 and play your strong, themed deck 🤷

LOL! Sounds like a recent certain Commander game I saw online where the theme was Un Set, but only a couple of the players stuck to the actual spirit of the build.

I've had to deal with part of this myself recently. I made a Glissa, Herald of Predation, Phyrexians deck with only cards from Phyrexia: All will ,be One, and March of the Machines. It's got good variety and support just from those two sets, but one card I always go back and forth on because it's not a Phyrexian, but it's in MOM (technically) and works with both the commander and theme so well: Fynn, the Fangbearer. Helps win in a way the deck already tries to, is from the sets I specified, it's just not the right creature type... It's the only exception in the deck, so I can justify it to myself, and I do make it's presence known at the start of a game (One non-phyrexian you need to watch out for,) but I understand if people don't see it that way.

You made me want to revisit my sethron deck which often gets stomped on

I feel this I wanted to make a chef deck and have a bunch of cheif and food cards, one of these cards was food coma. its a 4 cmc card that exiles another card, I wanted to play it so bad but every time i have had it in hand I just wanted it to be a path to exile or swords. its hard to balance flavour cards and good stuff especially at an lgs where power level varies and while your deck is really flavourfull and thematic there shoving there 20/20 up ur ass while u sit there with a card u cant play.

I have a taxes theme deck with Liessa as my commander, it is a pretty strong for a theme deck creature dies you loose life, cast more spells I get treasure, and you loose life. The whole game plan is about my opponents actions either making them loose a little something or give me a small benefit. I prefer to do themes around an interesting game plan.

there is no issue with a theme deck having staples in it - unicorn craterhoof is hilarious. (craterHOOF, get it? covered in horns, too.) they probably did that because they were told their deck needed a wincon

I personally have a vial smasher and sakashima deck. It is my brothers Yamazaki clone deck and people are often thrown off by the commanders. I play a bunch of tutors in my list to find the brothers Yamazaki and if I have them I use the other tutors to find clones or a mirror box. I always state clearly that I intend to win with only the brothers and what my intentions are with this deck. Which is cloning the brothers. I just found that grixis is a nice color pair for this and I rarely play vial smasher.

I have a Kaalia of the Vast deck that is all heaven and hell themed (mostly because lands) It's good too. Lots of wrath effects lol

i was building a sauron amass deck, but i need a sac outlet on the theme, in the colection there was fewer cards that fit want i need, but i found a old card called culling the week, and is perfect, sauron in the books use slave force in mordor and he want to slave all the meedle earth, it was perfect.

Yeah, similarly i want to build a Derevi Commander Commander, like yours. Unfortunetly, Derevi is good stuff

I made a Chatterfang deck, all I knew is that I put every squirrel related card I had and could get on my budget and then filled the rest with stuff that made tokens, some stuff that had sac payoffs and the generic removal and draw cards I had I included a single combo that made infinite squirrels but didn't even need Chatterfang It was in a game with a friend I noticed a different infinite combo where a lot of the parts had redundancies, later I learned of another, then as I cracked tutors I added them, cutting on some of the weaker stuff Now the deck is mostly a token spam deck that either uses them to find a combo or an overrun effect, I also don't call it my "all squirrel" deck anymore I do have a second copy of Chatterfang and have been considering making a second one where I take the theme much further and stick to it, just make enough squirrels and make them big enough to take on the Eldrazi like I intended to when I started the deck

Another way to consider thinking about a theme that is not working, consider expanding it to something that will. You will still be able to scratch the fun theme itch while actually playing. Instead of making it a crab deck for example, go with a "creatures of the sea" deck. This could move into Kraken, Leviathan, Serpents, etc

I had a transformation theme deck. It used planeswalkers to make creature tokens and then I'd polymorph them into big creatures. My restriction was only use cool creatures I would want to transform into. So like dragons, dinosaurs, and sphinxs. But I did use draw spells like Mystic Remora, Rhystic Study and Silvan Library. I wouldn't hold it against anyone who used draw spells to help get a strange theme going. Card advantage isn't baked into every theme

You have a theme that lacks support, so you combine it with a second theme. You have crabs, so you do mill as the second theme and work with the high toughness to pull it off.

I made a TMNT deck but based it on a combination of Ninjutsu and Mutate, so I wasn't focusing hard on who is who and more around the ninjas and mutate theme overall

I have an Olivia, Crimson Bride deck where my limitation is all the creatures must be legendary vampires (more because I hate exiling my own cards rather than wanting any particular theme). In its creation I ended up including several combos in part because I'm a combo player more often than not and also because the cards just fit the deck. Breath of Fury was a very purposeful inclusion as a sub-theme in the deck is multiple combats. Though by pure accident I included both Blood Tribute and Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose. With a kicked Tribute target player dies. I did manage not to include those two specific enchantments xD Though they fit vampires they came up far too often for a long while... Folks likely know the ones, I forget the names off the top of my head.

The first Commander Deck I made is a Faerie tribal themed deck that turned into a combo loop deck that can go infinite.

I remember playing against someone’s “elden ring” deck that was a najeela deck for which they simply made custom reskins for every normal najeela card

For me the only time I've been happy with theme decks is when they have satisfying wincons. If I can't figure this out I usually move on to the next idea.

I'm currently working on a Codie deck themed around the Strixhaven Mystical Archives set of reprint cards, and right now I've had to dip into "generally good big spells" to fill out the list, but I'm really hoping I can come back from that and find better, more flavorful spells to replace those cards.

Had a Yasova Temur Theme deck with almost all the cards from the Tarkir Block. it gets destroyed everytime. Now its a good stuff deck.

but what if the theme is goodstuff

I have a coin flip deck that is one of my favorite to pilot, originally I built it to just be straight gambling w/ coin flips and dice rolls but I hit the omniscience trigger on Yusri like 2 or 3 times and my normal playgroup started playing much higher power decks or purposely targeting me when I was playing it. So I transformed the deck to make it less gamble and more good stuff so, in the end, it was my playgroup’s reaction that made me power up my deck with “good stuff”.

I have only been able to play one of my theme decks once due to a Blood Moon being in the deck. (Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom deck with Kaervek the Merciless as Ganondorf.) The deck is flavorful, but I never want to play it when one or more of my opponents have three or more colors to avoid interfering with their color fixing. The ideal win condition is to play the Blood Moon followed by a card that returns multiple creatures from the graveyard to the battlefield, hopefully with haste. I think this is once again a topic where honest communication prior to starting the game will go a long way towards avoiding those feel-bad situations.

I have a Gishath dino deck, that only has either Dinososaurs, cards that interact specifically with dinosaurs.. or maybe fringe has dino in art :)

3:18 Playing a crab deck is a punchline...for your opponents

Don't know if it counts as a theme, but I once made a "roulette" deck with Esika. The theme was basically "good stuff". I'd have the base deck, with fixing and draw and ramp. Then, I'd have a separate pile of 70+ creatures. They could range anywhere from Avacyn to frenzied saddlebrute. It was super fun, because you'd never know what you'd get, but because of the nature of the cards just being good, it would still win a decent bit of games. I ended up taking it apart though, as it lost its spark...

I have a Sakashima and Kodama clone deck but I was worried I wouldn't have enough good stuff to clone. I let people know ahead of time I run a lot of stronger creatures like craterhoof and consecrated sphinx but I also run a lot of ways to bounce clones and other good creatures back to my hand to get value out of their ETBs. It's kinda a mix of simic good stuff plus a bunch of clones.

I ran into this when i was making my “urza and karn’s excellent adventure” deck. If the title doesn’t give it away, it is a deck based around seeing karn and urza at different point in the timeline. So obviously i needed all the urzas and karns i could fit in the deck. After putting it together it became apparent it would be an artifact deck. After looking through the deck I realized i had thrown in loads of phyrexians. That just didn’t jive with my idea of urza. So despite many of the phyrexian cards being really good, i cut them in favpr of the theme.

Im seen tribal decks have so many good stuff cards like delighted halflings and birds of paradis.

Yeah NGL, my Dino theme deck was a meme till 2022. New Etali alone tipped it with a few upgrades and now it’s just the best casual deck I own. I’d say it even broke into high power now.

I have an unesh Sphinx tribal deck that was supposed to just snowball and win with cool combat damage triggers. I found out really fast that almost every table will counter, kill, and destroy every meaningful card I play. I ended up running free counter magic, fast mana, mystic Remora, etc. I basically was hated out to the point where I had to power creep it to the point where it wasn't that thematic.

Fun Fact: I’ve also heard “GoodStuff” used to describe teams in Pokémon as well.

Ever since I saw Jimmy Wong play Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar I have been trying to make it work. The sensible brewer would probably make it a reanimator deck but I was determined to make Asmo pivotal to winning. What I came up with was Brash Taunter/Stuffy doll + damage doublers like Solphim/Furnace of Rath/Dictate of the Twin Gods and tried to assemble a board state where I can surprise someone with 24 damage out of nowhere. It's still incredibly jank and really the only "power cards" I could add would be Demonic/Vampiric tutors to make the deck more consistent. I don't know if it will ever win a commander game but a lot of the madness cards and food generators are attached to creature removal so I'm usually pretty involved in most games. I've thought about adding hugs cards like howling mine to try to curry additional favor politically but the chances of surviving to a 1v1 and blowing them up with my combo still seem like a pipe dream. I usually fights fair at precon level so even though most everyone in my group doesn't play jank they're ok with me busting it out when we do a precon round.

Thank you wotc for making cards for commander.

I run Blasphemous Act and Wrathful Raptors in my Dinosaur Theme Deck because every dinosaur story should end with an asteroid impact.

I just put crashing drawbridge into my sea creatures deck. I tried really hard to keep everything themed, but that was one that I just felt like I kind of needed and there wasn’t really another option for my dimir Runo Stromkirk deck. Unfortunately, lightning greaves don’t work with the commander’s ability. Not that boots make any sense for a sea creatures deck either… Also, I’m fully aware that Crashing Drawbridge isn’t good stuff. Just wanted to share a recent issue I ran into when making a themed deck and avoiding throwing good stuff in it.

Such a mood this entire video, I mostly got trapped playing brawl due to a mix of social anxiety and lack of funds, and it happens there a lot there too... nearly every deck that can run the boring easy cards do... and it makes me sad... I wills ay, the accidental powerhouse is neat too, I made a 5 color Transformation Deck, every single transforming card I could find I put into it, mostly the ones from the Phyrexian set, the one exception being the commander... Jengatha was the only 5 color commander I felt fit for the ridiculousness and... it actually did far better then I expected it to, despite the only consistency in the deck being that nearly ever card transforms xD