Your Deck is Lying to You | Commander | Magic: the Gathering 

Dude PLEASE turn this into a series and break down all of the "flavors of"!

I've actually had such a harsh lesson in this building my second ever deck. I really really love politics because to me, Commander rhymes a lot with board games. When browsing around for commanders to build, I stumbled upon one of the best mechanics for commander: Will of the Council. Soon, Tivit, Seller of Secrets was sleeved and ready to rock. It was full of voting matters cards, politics pieces like Secret Rendezvous and Scheming Symmetry, and a modest amount of artifact interaction. Gotta win somehow, right? Well, key word in that sentence is "was." Turned out that the goofy, low powered politics voting matters deck was an insane treasure/clue generator and most of the time it felt like i was piloting a real dictatorship than the democracy I had envisioned for the deck. That deck's now apart, but part of it lives on in my upgraded simic Galadriel precon from the LOTR set.

This is why goldfishing your deck is so important. If you go about your goldfishing and notice that your storm count goes crazy or that you’re only happy when your board is full of tokens, then that will help you learn more about your deck before you have to explain it to other people. Very excited to see the WotC part 2!

Hallar, the Firefletcher is one of my favorite decks because people don't know what to expect. "Oh kicker, cool... Wait I take how much damage?" It starts out slow but then you double Hallar's counters and kick two spells in a turn and suddenly you've dealt 13 to the whole table and are set up to finish off whoever's still standing.

I ran into this with the GB precon from Strixhaven. I upgraded it, played it once and noticed that really, I just wanted Dina Soul Steeper to combo off and end games. Then I loaned it to someone and after helping them pilot it, I realized that it wasn't a lifegain deck, it was a combo deck and the lifegain was just the catalyst for the combos. I wasn't disappointed with that realization, I liked the deck's play pattern more than I liked the idea of it being labeled a lifegain deck, but it is helpful to properly represent it to other players

The way you talk about your multiple graveyard strategies is the same approach I have withy enchantress decks. You can go tokenw, Voltron, combo, counters, etc.

Gavi has so much control/removal. So many cycling spells are counters or removal spells plus astral slide and astral drift, you end up with a ton of interaction.

Frick man that Joey’s Respect bit had me on the floor!

I've known this subconsciously for years, but never quite knew how to put it into words, and I think this is the perfect way to put it. Thank you

Additionally, Joey just put into words something I noticed in some of my decks and just didn’t really understand.

I think the big takeaway from this topic is to think about your deck's strategy, what engine you'll use to enact that strategy, and what role your commander has in driving that engine. You can use artifacts to storm off, but there are many more strategies to enact with artifacts, lots of ways to storm off, and a wealth of commanders that can do either or both. When you're putting a deck together, think about the way your themes will naturally progress towards winning. Are you denying resources? Murdering people with huge amounts of power on board? Racing towards a combo or alt wincon? Killing with commander damage? That part matters just as much as if your deck is an enchantress engine or a zombie kindred army.

This helped me realize that I really like storm and stompy decks, no matter the color. If I only look at the "true theme", I only have 5 unique themes, but with 3x that many decks

I recently built "The Master, Transcendent" and it gives off major Joey vibes. It's quickly become one of my favorite decks.

I used to have a muldrotha deck that I always referred to as "blue jund". It was always an incredibly slow attrition based playstyle intended to keep the board clear for Muldrotha to swing through for damage and the rest of the deck was in support of her. She was never reanimator and when I wanted to switch to that playstyle the attrition cards like Plaguecrafter and Haywire Mite come out for bombs like Koma and Emrakul, promised end, and I switched the commander to Sidisi, brood tyrant. One was a slow and grindy attrition playstyle and the other was classic reanimator explosive plays from the graveyard and recognizing which commander enabled which playstyle was really key to actually making those decks work

I’ve just accepted and leaned into my Sauron deck becoming a combo deck. I keep adding combos to it at the expense of its original theme

I find that I often build against the obvious secondary themes on purpose to make the deck more flavorful and interesting to me. This video helped me put that into words. Thanks!

Thumbnail made me chuckle. That is precisely my K&T deck. I often call it the "party deck" because it's got extra draw, ramp and multi-player shenanigans. It also has what I call "party's over mode" where I bust out the sunforger or forbid and start exercising veto power over the table.

I love these videos, they are always insightful, interesting and/or inspiring :)

I really enjoyed your Commander Showdown article series. It was always my favorite to read. This video is great, as something I've been noticing myself among my own decks.

You just made me realise how much I want a set based on The Legend of Zelda

As a lifelong Zelda player, I think it's ok that Joey hasn't played one. There's only a couple I would consider must plays.

Thanks for talking about this!

Thank you a ton for this video! This is exactly what I ran into with my Amalia Reanimator deck. On paper, it seemed like it would use the life gain to mill yourself into huge threats and that would be the game plan. In actuality, it was more of a full on life gain deck with a little bit of graveyard synergy; a reason why I shifted the strategy more to that.

Funny thing about graveyard decks being actually removal/control decks, I purposely built Taigam, Sidisi's Hand as a control deck with the idea of fending off attacks until I can mill out.

This video gave me some food for thought. I've been considering building a Lord Windgrace landfall deck and after watching this video I noticed that the edhreq average deck is actually more of a tokens deck with landfall as the engine, that'll definitely help me focus the deck better.

I've had this issue with my Council of Four deck; even though it runs a fair number of group hug cards it still ends games by making tokens almost as fast as Koma. I've started describing decks by both their theme and their win condition, like group hug tokens for the Council, or mutate voltron for Otrimi

A deck with a combo ≠ A deck that wants to combo

As someone who is really crazy about the Graveyard and is sick of paying command tax, Karador stuck out to me as really appealing. But when I put together the archetypal deck, I found a ton of aristocrats and incremental value pieces (things like Spore Frog so that I could fog once every round). I really wanted my 1 creature per turn to matter, so I took out the Spore Frog and Zulaport and swapped them for mana dorks and an Avacyn. I even made it an Umori companion deck for good measure. Now the deck is playing much more my speed-- dropping threat after threat and DEMANDING that it be answered, lest I win the game on the untap.

I get looks sometimes when I call my Henzie list a control one, but when I started it had like 18 removal effects. I love me a control deck so I had no problem leaning into it, and now I have one that puts a real clock on the game rather than board wiping into oblivion. It's great.

This is a fantastic take, and I’m personally a big fan of the different takes of the same deck archetype. I have three Landfall decks, one for each of the main ways you can play lands (although there is a good chance I build a fourth around the new desert deck). The first is a Gitrog Monster deck, normally known as a powerful combo deck, that I play as a graveyard utility deck that likes to use the synergies of lands entering and leaving the graveyard flood the board and ramp to massive damage spells. The second is a five color Gates deck that really cares about having a million lands in play, and plays as a controlly big mana deck with a powerful alternate win con. The third is an Amintatou Esper landfall deck that cares about landfall triggers and can be very controlling and sometimes combo out. They each play very different, even if they all have Field of the Dead.

Shadow wizard group hug gang leader Marchesa sounds like a fun idea

I kind of want to build Yuma, Proud Protector because I think the Desert theme is pretty cool, but I think its going to end up functionally the same as a traditional landfall deck.

Definitely didn't realize my Ashaya "landfall" deck had become an infinite mana combo deck, I just stumbled into so many combos that I didn't realize were in there

I felt this way recently while trying to build Mr. House. I was saying it was a dice roling deck, but in truth it was an artifact token/control deck. It made me think about what I wanted to achieve and how to get there

My second ever commander deck was Ruhan of the Fomori as a Giant deck. Except it really played like a voltron deck. I had Stonehewer Giant in the list so I added Sunforger and some other equipment, and it just became the case that it was often the better play to just cast Ruhan over and over and suit him up with something to give trample and win that way. Eventually I switched the commander for Kalmne and cut blue, but I've since gone back to Ruhan and just trimmed down the equipment subtheme so the deck plays like a Giant deck.

I'm currently building a Zabaz, The Glimmerwasp deck. Definitely not a modular or+1/+1 deck. It's a Boros Artifact/Lands theme focused around Urza's Saga. It's going to be really good and really bad at the same time lol.

This is what I learned about my Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh. Its current iteration focuses on Control to keep it burning.

"Tibor & Lumia" lied to me when i built it, it's a voltron boardwiper deck not a spellslinger wizard deck

My Shadrix deck I've managed to figure out a description of "political favors, tokens, voltron, control" Doesn't sound focused on paper, but it's pretty strong and quite fun

I actually had this sort of realization with a Pauper EDH deck I made. It's a Boros deck Built around Ash, Party Crasher and their Celebration ability. At first I thought it wanted to be a Token deck, but after an actual game with the deck I realized it wanted to lean more into a Votron strategy as well. And then that All That Glitters is a Common.

I had a similar experience with my Faldorn deck, but it was as I played more and more I realised that the deck was capable of very explosive turns, generating a lot of mana and casting tonnes of spells with cards like Jeska's will. Because of that I ended up adding more rituals and impact tremors type effects to turn it into a storm burn deck making many many wolves per turn

That's basically how my Aesi deck transformed. It was supposed to be a Sea Monsters deck, but every time I played Aesi, the Landfall synergies that I initially used for ramp just took over the deck.

Happened to me building a Nath deck. I wanted to build a discard deck but since my payoff was creating elves I put some tribal support. The result was that the deck just felt like a very powerful elves tribal.

I've begun describing my Faldorn deck as a Gruul Exile Storm deck in the last few months. Like yes, I'm capitalizing on the token creation with Parallel Lives and Impact Tremors effects, but the primary win is taking massive turns where I've cast a silly amount of spells from exile to make good on my pay offs.

No worries, Joey. Plenty of folks haven’t played Zelda either. Dun recall I’v properly playd it

I think in the same vein, people will describe an under-represented ability like madness or cycling and call it “jank”. Just cause an ability isn’t everywhere like counters doesn’t mean it’s jank.

Built Tetzin because I wanted an artifact deck with a unique spin. I got a storm deck with no real win condition

A bit late to the conversation, but I had a similar experience when I trying to upgrade the Necron Precon. At first glance I though the deck was a self-mill deck, as many of the cards in the deck had unearth abilities and the deck came with the Enchantment Out of the Tombs which is the dream of any deck which cares about self-mill. However, I quickly realized that because of the deck being in mono-black artifact recursion is almost non-existent, and the strategy of self-mill was hurting me more than it was helping.

I built a budget Kalamax, the Stormsire deck with a focus on combat trick instants. I put in plenty of cards with prowess to get in for sneaky damage out of nowhere. It always ended up playing as a voltron deck with Kalamax swinging for lethal out of nowhere with 3 or 4 stacked damage buffs. Not what I was looking to do, but the circumstances of the games always seemed to lead to that being the best play. I don't play it often anymore.

I had this happen in my mono white “flicker” deck. Flicker is as much a theme as saying “I run a counterspells themed deck”, while I run a very high density of flicker cards, theyre not actually that unique- basically i just have about 15-20 instants that say “choose one- counter someones spell by making it miss targeting, or, do a combo” the flicker part of my deck is just an enabler, but itd be no different than if i played a mono blue counterspells deck.

I’ve experienced this. I built a Queen Kayla Bun Kroog deck that was supposed to be self discard kind of wheel deck but it became a hate bears deck because those were the best cards to make sure I had a chance to do what I wanted to do. I still like it but I always have to ask if people are ok with me playing a stax deck now

My personal example of this: The first deck i ever built (2nd deck i owned) was a Roon of the Hidden Realm deck. I decided to build it because i knew Blink was a strategy/game action i particularly enjoyed. I was more inexperienced in Commander and Magic in general back then, and i didnt realize it would turn into such a Control deck (roon being able to blink not just MY creatures, plenty of ETBs being removal or bounce effects, etc) To this day i dont really mind. Its my favorite deck, in fact. But i noticed i'm able to recognize patterns like that now

for me it was not obvious when i started, but my zethi, arcane blademaster deck turned out to be more of a control deck, while i originally started with the idea of feather but in azorius. Still like it, but it does make it a bit of a different playstyle and also how people play against it.

My current favorite deck is Silas and Toggo. I thought I was building an artifact arisocrats deck, but surprise, it's actually a token deck.

I agree it's problem with oversimplification. It's like saying "I want to buy a car" and after being asked for more information replying "It has to have for wheels"

I've been utilizing some of this for a while now. Whenever I describe my Borborygmos Enraged deck I tell people it's a landfall control deck, and more recently with my Jhoira2 I tell people it's an artifact control deck, despite both of those decks containing non-deterministic 'combos'. Because the way both of them win is to wait out the right moment and bide their time with control tools until then.

My biggest hurdle with this was -unfortunately- right at the start of my time playing commander. A certain rakdos vampire rolled out and I was introduced to the idea of "madness" cards. ...It didn't take long to learn how Anje Falkenrath actually gets played. It took a lot of trying to make her work in a way where I was actually casting those madness spells, and over time I swapped to Olivia, Mobilized for War as a rakdos reanimator deck with a madness subtheme. If I'm chucking cards off a cliff, I want to be able to cast them anyway or get them back

Reminds me of this one time I played against someone playing Kenrith "Group Hug". He played quite a few group hug instants and sorceries, but after awhile, I looked at the table and saw he had lethal on whoever he decided to start swinging on due to Kenrith being able to give everything trample and steroids. The only reason he didn't start swinging was because he was honest to god trying to group hug, but at that point you're just wasting time. I flung 10 poison counters at his forehead cause I just wasn't dealing with his "vision" of what his deck was compared to what the actual board state was.

I had this issue when I had my Tom Bombadil Saga deck. I just wanted to have fun with saga's, but I didn't realize that so many saga's had control elements built into them. I found the play pattern tended to prevent other players from enjoying their decks, so I dismantled that deck.

This reminds me of my Ghave deck that I built with the intention of being a fungus/saproling tribal deck. But then as you play you realize you don’t care about any of the tribal synergies and all you’re really looking for is the token/counter doublers plus the mana sac outlet like phyrexian alter. So its a combo deck with a slight tribal flavor

When I bought the Wise Mothman deck I thought it was going to be mainly a mill deck because of the rad counters. But as I played the deck it turned out to focus more on +1/+1 counters. I wanted a deck that focused on milling more so I modified the deck to care more about milling and moved all of the +1/+1 matters cards to another deck that would benefit from it more.

I’m just here to point out Joey hasn’t played Zelda and that animation was literally the visual representation of the respect I had for Joey, end of message.

the most prominent example would be Estrid, the Masked, which i tried to make into a superfriendy bantchantment deck (since i love planeswalkers). the discovery was however that i unknowingly build a stax deck, that could not win quickly. the latter reason was the main reason i dissolved it, as i was slowly discovering that i am an big-stuff aggro-player (i was initially scared of the aggro-field since i hated playing winy aggro so much).

My Izzet Merfolk Deck did that a little. But not because of the commander necessarily because it has 2 different Commanders in it that I could have built the deck around. The problem was with the support cards. In order to build the deck around the strategy I wanted, I had to include some non Merfolk creatures because they had effects that Merfolk don't have but comboed well enough with my Commander, that the deck just functioned better than if it had been pure Merfolk Tribal. Also there just are not that many red/blue Merfolk and no mono red Merfolk at all.

I didn't build the new Marchesa as a control shell. I've been looking for a theft deck commander (nicking people's stuff from their decks) that wasn't Don Andres and I went that route with her, because she comes down early, is pretty innocuous and gives me card draw/selection on crimes.

The only one I've ever played was the original on a SNES back in the day. You are fine on that front.

played with precon decks to try to introduce some new friends to magic just so everything was somewhat on equal power levels, and the other experienced player picked the corrupting influence precon from phyrexia all will be one. he early told us that its a deck that works around the corruption mechanic and explained what the corruption mechanic did. i questioned if a poison counter deck would be the best choice because we were playing with new players, and he assured us that its not a poison counter deck. he never changed his stance on the deck even when he alone had infected us with 7-9 poison counters each.

I played against a Gorion deck last week, and it was exactly that. The big issue of that game was a recursion engine they found that allowed them to repeatably board wipe, which kept us creature based decks down, until I managed to take them down with chip damage.

I had issues labeling my Omnath, locus of creation deck and find myself calling it a triggers tribal deck. It had a landfall stage, a midrange stage and finally a triggers stage wich had a couple of accidental combos that i've cut. Now it can be aggro or even burn, is fun to play it.

Good chapter this one ! I once tryed to asemble an mono White Angel tribal deck focused on enchated removal with shorikai on the command zone , It just end Up being an overpowered boring token deck so i transformed It into a draw matters deck

Tried really hard to upgrade the Orzhov "growing threat" precon, but the slow game plan of hatching big eggie phyrexian babies just kept favoring board wipe tribal

2:31 i had auto-correct call him Gordon, and my playgroup has stuck with that 😂

Thought mishra artificer prodigy would be a unique fun commander like i had in 60 card format. To make his ability work though made the deck into a stax decks where I can play through the pieces while blanking lots of removal.

I feel like this is astonishingly common for me, to the point that I'm never confident giving my decks a label like this. From some of my earliest takes on Commander to even now where I put together a pile wanting it to do one thing, and it does something else completely. The deck that eventually became my favorite deck of all time is even like this; Ramos, Dragon Engine was originally meant to allow me to play red in Breed Lethality, with a dose of cascade to help Ramos accumulate counters more quickly... what it actually ended up turning into was this rube goldberg machine bean counter deck that was about moving +1/+1 counters into various spots to cause an exponential explosion of infinitely tall boys or things that could convert those counters into say... stealing my opponent's board or infinite turns or Simic Ascendency. This especially seems to happen when I would try mono-White and Boros stuff before the recent push to expand those color identity sets into something stronger. Teshar isn't this resilient little artifact reanimator deck, but rather it's a KCI combo deck. Firesong and Sunspeaker weren't a cool lifegain burn deck, but rather a hard boros control deck hellbent on keeping the board squeaky clean. Sram, senior edificer is a chereos deck. Heck, I still struggle to define wtf my Obeka, Brute Chronologist deck is. yeah, the mission statement is to cheat detrimental triggers, but like... it's kinda a Timewalk Sneak & Show thing I guess?

Yeah really nice vid! It some up what happen to me few months ago with my Breya deck that was supposed to be artifacts sac deck… but it was a beast monster as a treasure tokens deck… What happen i removed the "treasure" part of that deck and make it his own place with Kenrith adding green. To refocus Breya (nerfed) around the "real artifacts". Regularly I find out that Many of decks wincons is not the one it supposed to be… because of interactions or the way the game go.

my most recent struggle is to shift my muldrotha deck to sth more aggressive. i want a big creature aggro deck that plays with its graveyard. i am even fine with putting her in the 99 to achieve it, since i love muldrotha & can´t discard her. i am currently playing with some ideas like sea creatrues (which while checking the boxes does not speak with me). or commanders like Indominus Rex, Alpha, which screams aggro in sultai, are also in considerration. do you all have a piece of advice for me?

Ad breaks make me laugh sometimes. "If someone called that an artifact deck, u'd... get the new apple watch." 😹😹😹

I had this problem with two decks: Depala just wasn't strong enough in my pod with just vehicles, or just dwarves. Nowadays there's some kickass vehicles from Universes Beyond, and it ended up as a Red Dwarves in Spaceships list that is tricky to balance but very resilient to boardwipes. Additionally, I'm in this process with Othelm/Wernog Clues right now - I tried Evoke with Othelm, I tried abzan sacrifice control - but really, it wants to be a blink/tutor/graveyard leaving matters. Which is not what I want to play at all. I love trying to make suboptimal subthemes work though; trying to make Galea, Kindler of Hope work by being half token aura's, half Exalted where Knight tokens provide bonus voltron. It's a fun puzzle. Also Syr Gwyn is a Sunforger toolbox, not a voltron or a knights deck. End of.

Wanted Joey opinion on a commander I have had many troubles w. And after watching this. I feel it explains what the issue was. The commander is Anhelo, the Painter. Seems spellslinger in face. Had some good support in the precon box and from set itself.

I have a Jetmir deck and "its Jetmir" is a good description. However the deck also has a "go tall" subtheme by adding alternative wincons that grow out of control really quickly even without Jetmir. So while"its Jetmir" is a good description, it definitely is more of a general, low to the ground, aggro deck.

I run three Dimir Zombie decks that all have different end goals. Scarab God mills the table, Gisa and Geralf self mill and reanimates, Wilhelt goes wides and aggros.

I spent years trading everything for Slivers trying to build a Sliver Commander deck because I loved the idea of having a wide board with every ability known to man. In reality, my Slivers deck ended up a combo deck, using the commander Sliver Overlord with Training Grounds, Intruder Alarm or Mana Echoes to dump the whole hasty swarm into play in one turn. Tutoring out The First Sliver and Morophon essentially guaranteed I'd hit those combo pieces too.

I had this happen with my Bruna, Light of Alabaster deck. I had it in my head that this was a slower control-oriented voltron deck, and described it to other players as such..... I ended up feeling embarrassed when I ended games on turn 7 with a massive Kor Spiritdancer or Light-Paws!

It took playing Wayta about 4 times for me to realize it’s a Naya control deck… not “yay dinosaurs”. Sure, you use dinosaurs and enrage triggers are tons of fun to play around, but instant speed “I fight your commander with a cheap 6/6” is insanely useful and I end up spot removing tons of threats. Hell, I’ll always leave at least 3 mana up between turns to ensure I have a fight. Now I need to figure out a wincon xD

Edgar Markov - This is a combo deck. It still uses vampires, but there’s 9 cards (mostly artifact and enchantments) that interact with each other, where I want to get out at least 3 to the battlefield. Once that’s done, I flood the battlefield with vampires and swing out to alpha strike. Licia - I’ve always called this a “Life Swing” deck. I lose life to gain it back and boost my life to cash in for ramp and card advantage. Deck can win in several different ways but I didn’t include Sanguine Bond/Exquisite Blood. I’ve played it in an early version of Edgar Markov and it felt cheesy to win with it. My favorite wincon is Greven, Predator Captain. Queen Marchesa - This is aikido strategy that forces combat. It doesn’t use any goad or taxing pillow fort cards like Ghostly Prison. In fact, she wants to be attacked and the bigger the creature the better. She uses punishing deterrents like Marchesa’s Decree and Revenge of Ravens to dissuade go wide strategies. Instead of preventing damage she redirects it, usually to a Brash Taunter or Barbed Servitor. Kelsien - This is a creature control deck. I don’t use the normal equipment suite, instead employing a lot of different ways to modify his damage, not just Deathtouch. There’s also a lot of ways to untap him, which means he will quickly become a menace to the table. When you go to remove him, you’ll find he’s more illusive than he first appears. He can even make his own “prey” when people don’t want to play creatures anymore. Extus - This is my latest deck and it’s one card away from finalizing the deck list. This deck is by far my biggest enigma to explain. It’s built for the Extus side, which already makes it different than most others. There’s almost zero ramp (not even a Sol Ring due to how color intensive it is), but it does a ton of tutoring, card drawing, and copying to maximize his Magecraft ability. He’s protected by counter spells, change target spells, and a mixture of all 10 Swords of X and Y + Sanctuary Blade, which I can tutor for if there’s nothing interesting to copy. With Double Strike and Protection from all colors, commander damage can add up quickly, not to mention doubling the effects of the swords. If that’s not enough, there’s a couple spells and equipment that will do the job too. He’s kind of spell slinger, kind of copying, kind of Voltron, but in ways that somehow work together. Some of them even enhance Awaken the Blood Avatar side should my opponents find a way to send him back to the command zone. Now that I think about it, it’s probably my heaviest graveyard strategy deck too. I’ve goldfished several times and have been very happy with the potential results. I can’t wait to actually play him.

This is why when I introduce a deck I read the commander, explain the goal of the deck, and then how it wins. My kenrith deck for example is a group hug/ politics deck, my commanders abilities can help anyone willing to make an arrangement with me and most of the card provide a universal benefit, I want everyone to build up an impressive board so I can play willbender and use kenriths ability to put +1/+1 counters on creatures to steal someone's board and use that to end the table. Conversely I do have an infinite combo with the creature Composite Golem which I can sacrifice for one of each color of mana and reanimate it with kenriths ability and a cost reducer to get infinite mana and force everyone to draw from and empty library. far more useful a description than its a 7 politics/ group hug deck.

I built an Amalia, Benavies Aguirre Deck with Lurrus in the Companion Zone. It being low to the ground pursuits the plan of using the soul sister and other "whenever X happens, gain 1 life" cards to tick her up to dangerous numbers, but was always dependent on opponents actions. In fear they would remove her or Lurrus I built in more reanimation for them until I figgured how resilient the deck was to removal. I call it my little "skipjack". But the more dominant subtheme a opponent marked out to me was board wipe tribal, because I my deck was so good in rebuilding that I played board wipes just to screw up others *more* then me. And I know my commander can wipe a board, so why wasn't that obvious to me? All my cards say "whenever a player does X, gain 1 life", so the control over amalia wiping the board is only in my hand by 25%. So I tested around with less board wipes, more active playpatterns and ultimately reversing it to its former state with the boardwipes. But know I announce it as "doesn't matter who wipes the board, I'll come back" - lifegain deck. And figurred with amalia in the Command Zone everyone is expecting the board wipes anyway.

I miss my Toshiro deck. It was very difficult to do the thing without completely shutting down my friends. Still looking for a mono black deck that calls to me

When I build a deck with more than ~15 removal effects I typically consider them a major part of the deck, and I start to think of it as a Control deck, even if it has other aspects. My Meren deck btw has only 13 effects I count as Removal (I'm fairly generous), this is in part because I cut some of the edict creatures to make space for cards that actually fit the deck's theme as a combo deck. I guess what I'm saying is I had a similar experience, where too many games were nothing but recycling an edict dork until the opponent ran out of creatures and I nipped them to death with my paltry (but alive, ish) board. It wasn't fun or conducive to people play, so I shaved that aspect down, and I never put in the Dictate of Erebos/Grave Pact cards (other than Savra, who is fair), the effect just dominated play in a way that wasn't conducive to fun. I still do think of the deck as having a strong Control aspect, but it's not always game defining.

I have a Tuvasa deck that suffers from almost always winning via commander damage, even when i tried (and still try) to make the deck as different as possible from a voltron. The deck dont have a lot of auras, and i think it is more a enchantress deck than anything, but the voltron pattern is hard to avoid. This is bad bc i already have a pure voltron deck with Dragonlord Ojutai, and i like to prevent my decks gameplay from looking the same.

I had to consciously remove all Horn of Valhalla type cards from my Otharri deck to prevent it from becoming a voltron deck. I went for anthems instead.

Ha! This is funny because I'm working on a Muldrotha deck right now, potentially my first ever Sultai deck. I'm building it in a way that's not just another Muldrotha deck though. I have seen my fair share of many Muldrotha decks so I know it's a beaten path at this point, hence why I might be converting my Gyruda not-cEDH/no-Casual into a Muldrotha/Gyruda Companion deck. Limiting Muldrotha to only even cmc cards, with a blink+clone strategy is definitely challanging and I'm enjoying it a lot right now.

my plargg deck was originally supposed to just be a discard deck, but it kind of became a reanimator deck. its fine, but it wasnt my intention

Years and years ago I had an ink-treader nephilim deck, before partners or zada so it was the only 4 color creature in the game with a super unique ability. I built it to make small single target spells into haymakers. Turns out that deck was just a hard combo deck. After about 6 iterations I finally got it to stop combining people into the dirt, but instead I was making entire clone armies and the logistics were a nightmare so I took it apart.

I Had Toshiro removal deck! (From tomer on MTGGoldfish), When Asmodeus came out i swap the commander and tried to make a life swap deck with alot of removal to not get hit! He end up being a storm deck because alot of low removal cost and drawing 7 go nuts

I think it would be easier to think of it as category and theme instead of theme and sub theme. The category is "Graveyard" while the theme is "control through sacrifice triggers and recursion" To use a personal example, my Gyome deck is a token spam deck that ironically wins through control, tapping dow the opponents attackers in order too build up enough damage to win.

Yes, because of the kind of knights available, Jibari turned into a heavy removal deck.

Yeah, I wanted pirate tribal deck since Ixalan, and tried with Malcolm and Breeches. After fwe years of modifiyng it i gave up and took it apart, because all the time it leaned into combo, and at the piont when new pirate pre-cons showed up, I was so fed up with this topic I didn’t even try.

Marchesa, Dealer of Death is 1 of the most fun commander I’ve played. I built her as a throw back to pet cards of mine and stuff you would see in precons. I also limited myself to a £50 budget cause I knew it leans into control so so so well. And I decided to be careful with the amount of instant speed interaction I run to get my self to commit more and be proactive with it. I did this with goad effects like firkraag and blood thirsty-blade. I now have incentive to not kill every thing in sight and play like a rattlesanke instead.

I felt this very strongly with a Nevinyrral zombie deck I made. It was meant to be about creating gigantic zombie token hordes using his first triggered ability, which combos with a great many things that also synergise with zombies generally. Instead, it ended up becoming oddly controlly, and taking out removal wasn’t helping. It turns out that having the second ability give you access to a board reset all the time sets a high threshold for control play, and that I needed to run MORE removal so that I didn’t need to resort to the wipe like I did when he was usually my only answer.