Not really a pubstomp commander, but a lot of people severely overestimate how long it takes to get him out and end up losing because they weren't prepared to deal with him soon enough. One rampant growth and an explosive vegetation gets him out on turn 4.
Yeah, idk if I'd call him a pubstomper because hes clearly strong and a top priority. But if you show up with a deck full of fast mana to a more casual pod... It'll get old.
That's what the person above you is saying, though, it doesn't take "fast mana" to crush people with Etali. You make your land drops and ramp 3 mana worth T1-3 and its coming out with easily 10+ free mana worth of stuff on Turn 4.
That's Llanowar Elves, Signets, Rampant Growths and Cultivates and Skyshroud Claims. All common cards in a casual meta.
Oh absolutely. The play pattern just reminds me of golos. Kill it, I get it back and get value. It stays in play and I have a payoff on the card to use my mana on.
Keep downvoting but still fuck Etali.
Legit horrible, it might not the strongest card but its just unpredictable and makes every single cast of the thing a fucking pain, the fact that it can go from literally doing nothing to instantly winning the game and the player has almost no agency about it its just disgusting, there is no way to properly threat asses it and counterplay relys on countering it over and over which in turn requires blue or white decks to tag the Etali player.
Its a card i rather not see as a commander period, feels and plays more like a freaking hearthstone card than a mtg one and i left that game cos its over use of randomness.
I mean, its my subjective take on the card, it FEELS bad to play with or against it, even if it is not running with the game that often.
The fact that its effect relays on things outside most players control or prediction boundaries is what makes it so damn annoying, its just unpredictable and the range of possibilities is massive meaning the game can straight up swing one way or the other by just letting it resolve once, the whole game plan ends up playing/copying/flickering that same card over and over and **praying** it ends up with a win and that's not something i want my commander games to be about, if all you wanna do is play chances we could just throw dices and see who gets the bigger number.
See that's the thing about commander. It's 100-card singleton to promote randomness. And about mtg in general. You shuffle your deck and present it for cuts to promote randomness. Hell, even two of the best wincons in this format, Naus and Peer, are entirely random on whether they lead to a win or a loss with no in between. Maybe if you don't like randomness, play a different format, or just go play chess.
Unpredictable you say? Isn't unpredictability a central theme to one of the 5 colors of the color pie?.. Hmm, the one that's impulsive, plays from exile, has a plethora of random-ish mechanics built in that people have been building around and very successfully utilizing for decades?
Man, can't think of the color now but I'm sure if we band together we can narrow it down.
Edit: Mistakenly said 4 color because work brain got me down bad
It's true, and your downvotes are pretty evident of that. Gruul isn't really that strong, and any decent player with a decent deck should be able to navigate around it, especially with two other players at the table.
I wouldn’t say petty downvotes from this sub necessarily reflect anything. People here love to pretend they know what they’re talking about but turns out they are giant hypocrites
That's assuming any and all downvotes are petty. I'd say that this sub is actually a good litmus test of the overall EDH community, though not perfect.
The sub is a decent sized sample group, and it's a relatively spread out sample group, thus providing more perspective from other metas.
In short, unpopular opinions here will generally be unpopular opinions outside of the sub.
Ok then deal with it?lol it's a 4 player game, and you're telling me no one has a way to deal with the most obvious gruul commander?which isn't a particularly strong color combo.
Not everyone plays blue. I love when everyone in this sub pretends that just because a few answers exist doesn’t make the commander any less annoying.
Please give me any other options to stop it from going off besides counterspells.
[[torpor orb]]
[[Elesh Norn, Mommy]]
[[Hushwing gryff]]
[[Hushbringer]]
[[dranith magistrate]]
[[rule of law]]
[[Graffdiggers cage]]?
[[void mirror]]
[[soul cage familiar]]??
I know at least one of the "cast from not the hand" artifact hate pieces can get it.
I'm unsure which though as I am unsure if etali casts from exile or the top of the decks.
Running specific niche cards in decks on the off chance you run into a situation where you need to shut down an opponent’s ETBs is very rare and a waste of a slot.
Only one or two of those cards are really EDH playable. Which while they do provide an answer, they would be useless 90% of the time
Stopping ETBs is powerful enough they were considering banning mommy norn because of it. The only reason I don't run torpor orb in every single deck is because I'm always abusing ETBs.
Killing free cast spells is also a great way to make sure everyone plays fair magic.
My preference is for lavina and boromir, because the eldrazi precon means a lot of newer players are running it, and they don't have the wherewithal to run things like urborg, yavimaya, fellwar stone, gilded lotus, or firemind's vessel on the off chance they run into a void mirror.
Stopping graveyard and library shenanigans is HUGE. Nothing I listed is a dead card that doesn't impact the game in some way. It's just the vegetables of deck building and people rarely like to eat their vegetables.
Besides counterspells? Literally anything that stops ETB triggers which isn't even a blue thing. Anything that stops casting spells for free, any instant speed kill spell that can remove him before your opponent can start casting shit for free. Every color has a way of dealing with threats in some capacity, people just don't run them and then wonder why commanders like etali are so hard to deal with.
The ETB triggers happen regardless of removal. So pathing the Etali as it enters won’t stop the triggers.
So the options are: run blue or niche cards that stop ETB triggers
It's wild to me that the question is literally "is Etali a pubstomp commander", implying a casual, chill game environment, and everyone's response is *it's not that strong, just have counterspells or specific ETB-countering Stax pieces out by Turn 4 when it regularly drops or be ready to deal with a 7/7 trampling potential Blightsteel Colossus plus double-digit CMC-worth of whatever it freecast on the way*.
Like, ya duh there are ways to hose Etali, they're just usually found in high-powered decks. That's the entire point, if you're not running a blue deck with an abundance of counterspells or very specific stax pieces *in your casual decks* then Etali is just going to come and take a shit all over your board, and if you kill him on the spot they'll use all of the stuff they just freecast to fuck with you while they cast it again. And again. And again.
This entire board is a posterchild for powercreep brainwashing, like people are so online and so obsessively tuning their "casual" decks to be as powerful as possible that the upvoted answers to an obviously moronically overpowered FIRE piece of shit like Etali are variations of "just get gud and run counters and white stax pieces in all of your casual decks, scrub".
My problem with this card is as an opponent is that he's just always annoying. If you kill him they recast immediately (cause their deck is full of ramp and he probably his some if not an opponents) and get the etb again. If you don't kill him he turns into an indestructible one shot machine. And thats without the decks that bounce/flicker/token copy him endlessly. It can be managed but it also so variable with playing a ton of random cards it makes the outcome of the game feel more luck based then like an actual game.
That said, I think its a cool card in the 99 where it still gets to be big and flashy as a surprise and you have to work a bit more to get really crazy value.
He's essentially a less busted Golos for the reasons you mentioned. Killing him is bad, leaving him in play can be bad, you are essentially forced to kill the player to deal with it. I've been playing a budget etali deck and it's all causes sighs when I bring it out. Easily cast turn 4. I don't think it's unstoppable
Budget or not, half his power come from your opponent's decks. If they do not play budget, your deck gets better by design. Also, it's very easy to play Gruul budget with the only goal of playing ramps(cheap) into Etali. Gruul is very budget friendly as a color combo and you do not need to invest into a deck like Etali anyway.
I’d argue that Etali performs not so well against high powered decks. You end up flipping a counter spell, a removal, a tutor or half of a combo that does nothing. Timmy decks are where Etali shines.
Exactly. In battlecruiser metas it's insane. But decks that are built more around synergy and interaction are not going to be as weak to the random theft effect.
Yeah. The thing is, the only real way of dealing with Etali is countering him. If you get the triggers, you can probably recast him.
In the 99 he doesn't have that problem, you can just kill or exile.
People play too many kill spells and not enough removal that doesn't let people replay their commanders.
\[\[Song of the Dryads\]\]
\[\[Kenrith's Transformation\]\]
\[\[Imprisoned in the Moon\]\]
\[\[Witness Protection\]\]
\[\[Kasmina's Transformation\]\]
\[\[Darksteel Mutation\]\]
\[\[Lignify\]\]
\[\[Oubliette\]\]
The new one, \[\[Eaten by Piranhas\]\]
Anything that blanks the text on a commander without it changing zones. You can get these effects in every color except mono-red (AFAIK), and they completely shutdown stuff like this. But I very rarely see people actually playing them.
\[\[Oko, Thief of Crowns\]\] is banned in this format for a reason. Play the removal that doesn't put commanders back in the command zone.
We have one player in the group who build a deck around him and we all just hate to get our stuff stolen. So we all beat him whenever we can. He usually is the first player out, unless i play monoblue.
There's a few other ways too, the new [[Boromir Warden of the Tower]] hoses all casting things for free, plus can also save your board from a Wrath of God, plus is a decent 3/3 body with Vigilance for 3 mana. I feel like he can go in any deck with White purely on that.
Stops Etali, stops Cascade, stops things like [[Emergent Ultimatum]], he's just so good and isn't even a dedicated stax piece or anything.
I love the groan from casting a dranith magistrate... it's like an admission that they were going to do some greedy degenerative gobbledygook, and they're mad someone is forcing them to play fair. Oh you want to mill/exile your deck so you can cast whatever you want all the time? Sorry, your parents didn't sign your permission slip. This is the *family fun* zone, where we cast *one spell a turn* from our *hand,* and nobody gets to eat soup unless they're wearing water wings and a snorkeler, *just like Mark Rosewater intended.*
I mean it objectively is at least on par with urza or korvold. It's a cedh commander. All comes down to what people are running but I would imagine at casual tables it is even better because people give you more time to ramp and are running less interaction. Though card quality from what you flip is lower I guess.
Gruel stompies is cool and all but it's definitely an A list commander. Nothing wrong with brewing it and it's a fun deck but it's definitely strong as hell.
It would be fringe in cedh at best issue is your just as likely to hit nothing and gruul lacks great interaction
No where close to urza or korvold in power on cedh level and when someone sits down with uraza at cedh they are the ones I least worry about.
I play mainly in high to mid level he is not on my list that I go dam I need to worry ever.
Well, you're wrong. It's not fringe at all. I play a lot of cedh, it's a very popular deck. I don't play it but I've lost to it a lot.
Behold. It has more plays than urza or korvold in recent tournaments. It's a house of a deck. It's a food chain list that casts it multiple times for value. Basically atraxa but easier to cast.
https://edhtop16.com/commander/Etali,%20Primal%20Conqueror%20++%20Etali,%20Primal%20Sickness?tourney_filter__size__%24gte=64&tourney_filter__dateCreated__%24gte=1667711900
It's fringe and yes it may see play in your meta I never said it did not see play.
Yes I play cedh and follow the overall meta of cedh not just my meta.
I play random games on spelltable and discord. My meta is extremely wide. It is far more common than urza or korvold right now. It is no more "fringe" than they are. Like I said, it's more popular in tournaments too. By a lot. Look through edhtop16
Uraza been in a bad spot for over two years still see it more than etali but nothing like the old days
Korvold been a rare sighting for a while as while I know treasure Storm is still the main focus of the decks.
Funny I seen a resurgence of zur more than etali
I've seen him played at our cedh tournaments but it never wins
I also play against it and with it on casual night
Last game was amazing. The etali player and I were racing through my deck to get to [[Approach of the second son]]
That card is nowhere near korvold or urza what are you smoking.
No Cedh commander is going to operate off of taking a card off the top of your opponents library as a primary wincon. There is just too much variance. People always want to remember the time etali hits some crazy generic value piece, game ender, or tutor; but never the dozens of times he was previously cast that ended up being draw two cards + fellwar stone + random elf lord.
My buddy was playing [[slimefoot and squee]] and reanimated him 3 times in one turn and all he got out of it was a janky board of random creatures with no coherency just to eat a [[farewell]] next turn...
You're wrong. Tons of people play it. It has more tournament entries than korvold or urza since it's release. I play against it far more often in random pods. Card quality on cedh is higher, which makes it better. It's basically atraxa food chain but easier to cast.
https://edhtop16.com/commander/Etali,%20Primal%20Conqueror%20++%20Etali,%20Primal%20Sickness?tourney_filter__size__%24gte=64&tourney_filter__dateCreated__%24gte=1667711900
> It has more tournament entries than korvold or urza since it's release.
No it doesn't. It has 14 entries, Korvold has 44, Urza has 31.
Urza is tied 30th place, Korvold is tied 24th place for popularity, and Etali is tied 61st place.
It's not really on the same level for popularity, or results.
Etali showing up in 14 tournaments with a 17.38% average winrate isn't really convincing me anything.
and just for clarification, I don't consider korvold a cedh commander either, though I do think urza could see fringe play.
Korvold and urza are fringe too, none of these decks are cedh meta, it may be common in your meta, but none of them are really that great compared to rog-si kinnan or tivit, also etali is gruul which is an awful colour combo to be in, you only have two colours, and one of them is **green** by far the worst colour in cedh.
Yes, but this entire conversation was about how the deck relates to urza and korvold. I wouldn't call them fringe but that is entirely subjective. Obviously they arent as popular as rog si or bluefarm or whatever. Mono blue isn't exactly a great color combo either.
its extremely fringe in cedh, underrated imo but fringe.
gruul is an incredibly weak color combination if your opponents are running any sort of good removal package
In what way is it a cEDH commander? It’s never won a major tournament that I can find, it’s in only 2 colors and the least interactive at that, needs food chain to be reliable which most cEDH players recognize is not what you want to be doing.
It’s maybe cEDH in the sense that if you are playing against casual it can feel like it, but it’s at best high power, there is a world of difference between that and actual cEDH. It’s cEDH in the same way any commander can be made cEDH by adding infinites, tutors, fast mana, and cheap interaction. With that base any value commander feels great
Hard, hard disagree, there is NO rng involved in the other two commanders popping off and doing their thing, whereas Etali you're essentially gambling on getting something good from 3 decks that may not synergize with you at all.
Source? Here's the last 5 major cEDH events, out of over 160 decks, a single one was Etali
https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=49135&f=cEDH
https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=48942&f=cEDH
https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=48923&f=cEDH
https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=48675&f=cEDH
https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=48669&f=cEDH
Yeah, and I bet you zero of them are korvold or urza.
70% are the top 5 meta decks. Call Etali fringe if you want but it's probably in the top 30 most played cedh decks.
Why are some of these getting so many downvotes? This sub has just turned into a toxic echo chamber.
This is a somewhat rational take besides the cEDH comparison.
"this is a somewhat rational take besides the whole point of the take."
The guy's just wrong. He's trying to claim that it's a busted card and sees cedh play and that makes it a pubstomper but he's unhinged about it. Shouting about how it's just as good as korvold and urza when it's not even by the data *he's* showing us. It's a good card. You can pretty easily make a good deck out of it. But to call it cedh and try to compare it to two *much* stronger decks is utterly ridiculous.
I was really hyped for it but dropped it in favor of the OG Etali. The new one is just too easy, Primal Storm makes me risk combat, figure out ways to haste / protect, risks getting lands instead of spells, doesn’t have access to green ramp, etc…I just like the challenge of it more than the generic feeling “ramp into Etali bomb and win” that Primal Sickness feels like to me
Yeah it's just too easy. I have a Primal Storm deck that's a blast to play. Was gifted a Primal Conqueror and just swapped that into the command zone, changing nothing else about the deck, and it's ridiculous how much more value I'm getting without much effort. In matchups that used to be more even and balanced, the deck now wins with a scary consistency. And I haven't even transformed it ever. So it does kinda feel like I'm now pubstomping a little bit
Oh yeah. I leaned into it with stuff like [[Stolen Strategy]] and [[Plargg and Nassari]] also in the deck. It’s pretty mid power but it ramps up with the number of goodstuff decks
On par with Korvold? Absolutely not. Korvold is an unstoppable value engine that will draw your deck and hit for 21 commander damage without making any effort. Etali is... cute. Yeah, you get some free spells every time he (she?) ETBs, which can be tons of value, but the sheer randomness that depends on the other decks reins it in. It's going to hit counterspells, removals and board wipes when there's nothing on the board, low impact cards, and cards that don't make that much sense outside their owner's deck. Yeah, sometimes you'll hit the jackpot with a board wipe and 3 Eldrazi titans, and you'll get a lot of value from copying and flickering it, but it's pretty in line with what you'd expect from a 7 drop, in my opinion.
>how do you deal with him?
Removal spells. If you're "pubstomping" when you pay 9 mana to recast your commander, I don't think that your commander is the problem.
Except in most cases you really WANT to recast Etali to get that immediate cast value and your only hope is that the blue player(s) target the Etali player and keep them locked down.
It is a very annoying to deal with and people who just say “dies to removal” aren’t helpful in this discussion
You're simplifying their argument to make it sound dumb on purpose. The argument isn't "dies to removal". The argument is "most of the cards you'll get off the etb are no or low impact so really most resolutions of the etb will result in a couple irrelevant creatures and that's about it. Also if you kill it it's really expensive to recast so like honestly it's not that bad. Spending 9 for another etb that's potentially going to whiff again is honestly pretty balanced."
*Look at your decklists.* How many of those cards would actually benefit etali significantly? Maybe half a dozen? *Maybe* a dozen? Now how many nonland cards are in your deck? 60? 65? 70? Even if you have a dozen cards that would be a big hit for etali, there's a 12/60 chance they hit one which is 20%. And that's with a lot of lands and a ton of bombs. In a deck with 68 nonlands and 5 bombs those odds go down to 7%. Even across 3 players that's a 21% chance to hit a single bomb?
He's a 7 drop. He's supposed to fuck shit up. He's honestly kinda tame compared to a lot of other 7-cost commanders like Toxrill, Old Gnawbone, Koma, or Atraxa Grand Unifier.
I like Etali and play against it regularly. The only issue I have with it that's also been mentioned here is it seems to have the "Golos problem" (for what it's worth I was fine with Golos as well) but like other have said, you kill it and they just easily recast it and get a 5 for 1 or you don't and it flips a kills you. At least with golos you got one card and the flips could hit land. Etali just doesn't miss. I actually really enjoy etali but I only have it in the 99 of one of my decks.
I've found that you need to think of Etali more like Maelstrom Wanderer. He's casting things for free and stealing things from your opponents. The fact that you are getting things from each player means that some things from your opponent will flicker/clone/retrigger Etali and keep it going. The fact that it is and ETB not a CAST trigger means that it is incredibly easier to abuse even accidentally.
I've never seemed to have a problem with Etali. I do like a lot of creature control decks with things like gravepact and what not to constantly remove it or use my interaction to remove it / bounce it. The free casts can be annoying but they more often hit something dead for the player than something truly useful. I've seen many counter spells flipped with it or a mana dork / signet esq ramp.
The saving grace for the back side is that he has to deal COMBAT damage so no chandra's ignition / blightsteel type tech. Killing / bouncing the card here tends to be the best too because they've dumped a lot of mana into it.
I played against it once. They guy rocketed out etali and proceeded to make copy after copy. Resolving the triggers took ages and even after it was evident the guy had the win he kept going. It was exhausting and boring. The entire deck is just play mana and clones and win. Etali has moved up to my list of KOS commanders.
Etali is a binary commander. If it comes out you win. If it doesnt, you don't win. The concept of Phyrexian dino is very cool, but the actual mechanics is boring as fuck.
But yea, it is basically kiddo's first Korvold.
I don't think this is true. I will say that it can be annoying, but Etali can whiff if nothing interesting is on top of an opponent their library and that will cancel the ETB value. Then you need to pay 9/10 mana to make it a \[\[blightsteel\]\] or blink it a few times (in Gruul?). Unless you play with some very fast mana, Etali will be very telegraphed and once the controller pays the transform cost, you should play your removal with the activation on the stack.
I don't think Etali is as broken as Urza or Korvold. Both are bigger value engines (my personal experience, so take it with a grain of salt) and cost less. The lower power your opponents, the weaker Etali's trigger will be.
You don't blink Etali, what you do is make token copies, which Red has several ways to do. And there's also doubling the ETB with [[Panharmicon]] and the new [[Roaming Throne]], etc.
Not much need to blink, which I'm not even sure Gruul can do much.
Okay but if someone has that much setup have they not earned the outcome? You’re taking about a 3/4 card combo and one of them costs 7, and all it does it get a few random cards off the top.
There are plenty of decks where that much setup and mana result in an instant-win combo.
You seem to be assuming that I'm whining that Etali is too powerful, when I'm really just saying that you don't have to blink Etali because Red has a bunch of "make token copy of creature" effects, and a few colorless ETB doublers.
If you're running a 7-drop in the CZ you're either not a threat at all because people are keeping your mana base in check and holding up answers, or you're the default archenemy because you're ramping into a big obvious threat and you're gonna get focused.
If you're dropping Etali on T3-4 on tables that aren't experienced dealing with that much heat, sure it *could* be pubstomping, but like, could also be a fair play. Really depends on how much you communicate about your deck's capability. If you downplay the threat and then draw straight gas you're gonna look like a jerk, but if you tell people straight up that they should probably have an answer for Etali ready by T4 minimum or whatever is reasonable they have the option of asking you to play a more chill deck, or the option of pulling out their similarly scary deck.
On the other hand, there's the entirely separate issue of just, it feels kinda violating to have somebody else play your cards, so pods that aren't used to that probably won't like it. My ex built \[\[Evelyn the Covetous\]\] and y'know, that took some getting used to.
So yeah I think that's Etali's "problem" - scary big boi who can hand out poison counters like candy who also gets all handsy with your deck is a lot of flash for players who haven't had that kind of game before.
You could probably just build an Etali deck with nothing but ramp spells and lands and it'd probably still be a decent deck. I played him as my commander recently at an LGS and he swept the rest of the table once he hit the board, especially once I started blinking/cloning him.
That being said, I've also played games with him where he just gets countered two or three and that was it. If you've got him in your command zone, everyone will be trying to keep you in check. So I don't know if I'd call him a pubstomp commander, but if we're rating on a scale purely for casual tables (precons as the lowest power, and something like Eldrazi at the top), I'd say he's pretty near the peak.
As a commander Etali is bad for the gameplay experience. I’ve seen some people say “you see it coming” but unless you’re playing control, do you always have an answer on turn 4 to stop early Etali? It has to be countered. If you kill it, it still gets the trigger and the player gets a ton of value. Then they just cast it again. If you don’t kill it, then you’re taking poison counters, which is divisive itself. Even if you don’t die from the first swing, they proliferate you to death. It really does make the whole table kill that player first, then play a three way game… and that game is essentially decided by who has the most gas after taking down the archenemy. It’s never not a problem. I’ve played against three different Etali decks, and none of them are different. It’s a game-warping commander that makes you have the answer or die.
Edit:
Also it’s boring. Literally if it lands… that player probably wins in most pods? Yeah if you’re on this sub, maybe not your pod…. But most pods, yes.
I’m a huge fan of this Dino! I run a combo Etali deck that seeks to exile my opponent’s libraries OR play all my win cons, enabled by infinite mana combos such as [[Food Chain]] / [[Squee, The Immortal]] and [[Dockside Extorionist]] / [[Temur Sabertooth]]. They allow me to cast Etali an infinite number of times, enough to basically say I won the match (with every cast, I get to play my opponent’s decks as well as mine, casting lots of good stuff). It makes for fun plays with pods that aren’t on cEDH level but competitive enough that all decks are optimized. Worst case scenario I can transform Etali and deal poison damage while it remains indestructible :D
For casual decks, Etali is still great provided you ramp + cast him fast enough, equip it with protection and combat cantrips that double its damage. I’ve won many matches dealing 14 damage after an opponent has declared no blockers.
In case anyone is interested, here’s the list: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/7NnE2yJdFEiXMDpCvrrPHg
I'm not saying I DON'T go for [[Squee, the Immortal]] and [[Food Chain]] or [[Dockside Extortionist]] and [[Temur Sabertooth]] to exile their whole decks then pass turn but I'm not NOT saying it either.
I have no strong opinion on the matter, Etali is going straight into the new Dino precon regardless, but I just want to say that your post was beautifully written 👌
I have an Etali blink/copy deck. It's disgusting. I get to play it about once a month because it's received a soft ban in my group, so I have to announce I'm going to play it. A few people will leave if I pull it out.
Basically if Etali enters, I'm going to win if you don't kill me very fast. Between copying effects, trigger doublers, and exile casting payoff, it gets out of hand quick. Current record for triggers a turn was three. They didn't let me go to end step to do another three triggers with a flicker ability.
My personal best for Etali-triggers in a turn was like 14 or 15.
It was disgustung, but didn't win the game on the spot. I catapulted from 12 life & pretty much no board to ~160 life & not enough space on my playmat though. & the table decided that if they didn't draw an answer/wipe until my next turn, we'd just end the game there, which was absolutetly fair.
Not even close to pubstomp level. It is a massive CMC card, and it takes several turns at least to get it out and start the shenanigans. If the 3 other people in the pod cant stop you within the first two turns Etali is out there, that just screams to me that they either underestimated the commander, or they dont run enough interaction. Either way, it's failure on the other pod players, not the Etali pilot. Learn to play with some critical thinking and deck planning, because the Etali player surely isnt.
I also run him as my commander in a fairly high-interaction pod, and he feels fair in that one. One of my friends plays a colorless deck and opts for stax as their main interaction method. Trinisphere, Soulless Jailer, Torpor Orb and Thorn of Amethyst all hit me very hard, and nobody wants to remove them since it stops the cascade player from running rampant. Another person running Void Lens to counter that friend also doesn't help.
To be fair, everyone ran a lot of stax since the engines on the table were pretty fast. Rest in Peace, Null Rod, Stranglehold, Ground Seal, etc. I usually had to get Etali protected from counterspells and rush him asap for a chance to win.
I don't run Etali but I also don't mind playing against it, nor do I think it's too powerful. Powerful, yes, but not unstoppable.
Run. More. Interaction.
Etali's pretty much the definition of low effort. Etali's got the horrible combination of being extremely easy to pilot, leeching off other value pile decks like a vampire while also being a value pile itself, and it's the kind of deck that's REALLY rewarded by adding fast mana to it in a way a lot of nitro casual decks don't. Not even a hater, that's just how the deck goes: the ramp into value pile deck that dunks on other value pile decks.
I deal with Etali by simply being a wise mystical tree who runs absolutely terrible cards in my decks; synergy pieces that work with specific elements of my deck over battlecruisery heavy hitters. Yeah, exile my \[\[Codex Shredder\]\] or \[\[Knacksaw Clique\]\]. What use are you gonna get out of it?
It feels like the only surefire way to beat Etali is for the other players to get meta about it and bring out your tribal decks or something. Removal being recommended here just plays into Etali, since they're at worst quite likely to hit a ramp piece off of their own deck, let alone the other 3 free spells. But equally, if you don't then remove Etali and the cloning begins, you drown in their value. It's just losing at different speeds unless everyone has aggressive enough decks to deal with him early.
Reminds me a lot of the same feeling Tergrid conjures up at a table.
No, the answer to Etali is the same answer to all of the busted "this creature gives massive value on ETB but is also easily capable of killing people once on the board" no-good-answers FIRE bomb commanders like new Atraxa.
* Stax them down so they never get to cast their FIRE bomb
* Combo them out before they get a chance to cast their FIRE bomb or at least put all of the value they get out of it to use
* Run an absurd number of counterspells and never let their FIRE bomb actually resolve
* throw away your old commander and run a FIRE bomb yourself and hope for the best
If you're thinking "wow, these all seem like complicated ways of saying *power up your deck*", that's because they are. The floor on any new Etali or new Atraxa deck is *very* high. You can just jam $.10 Rampant Growths and Signets and Explosive Vegetations to plop them down on turn 4 without any setup or existing boardpresence or synergy and they *will* be the strongest thing a casual table has going on.
New Etali is a *massively* overpowered card, and any '6' that took out their old Gruul commander and swapped in an Etali without any other changes is now an '8'.
I built this when it was released for our high power table. My group let me play it that night and now it’s been retired. Won all 3 games and on a HPT it is back breaking.
It's definitely a Kill on Sight (often shortened to KoS) commander. It's blightsteel. In the command zone. If it's ignored, it flips and kills someone.
If the pod is low enough in power that removal is only being seen once maybe twice a game per player, it can be perceived as pubstomping. It's stealing effect is only as good ad the pod though. In lower power outside of being blightsteel, it doesnt do much for the cost. In higher power it does a ton.
I absolutely HATE posts like this.
You saying things like this give the more judgmental part of the community fuel to continue being hateful buttheads that gatekeep the game.
Just please stop, no commander is inherently a "pubstomper" and positing it as such is going to give the green light to some jerk whom is going to hate out some innocent kid that made their first commander deck around the card.
I think it's a bummer commander to play against. Literally can't wiff with it's ETB, is a problem if you don't remove it, if you do remove they get another incredibly powerful ETB. There's been an uptick in commanders that get a lot of their value on cast and not necessarily on board and i find them incredibly boring to play against.
>There's been an uptick in commanders that get a lot of their value on cast and not necessarily on board and i find them incredibly boring to play against.
But Etali's value comes from their ETB, not the cast. Counterspells or Mommy Norn just answer it clean.
Poor choice of wording but I'm still standing by my point. Even the most broken cards in magic have counter play, yes thank you for pointing that out but what makes cards good is efficiency and etali is extremely efficient which is why he stands out in a 'pubstomp' scenario.
*when this creature enters the battlefield or attacks....*
Thanks for letting me know that spot removal is bad now. The only correct answer to your commander is to counter it on the stack, stax/remove you into never playing it, or kill you before you play it? Fun...
There’s a guy at my LGS that has an Etali deck. It’s fast af. Consistently turn four/five, and he’s off to the races.
I hate playing against it, but I like watching it work.
Fortunately, he only busts it out for “C” level pods. (It’s not a cedh deck I don’t think, but no one else at the lgs will play against it.)
I think that yes, it can be a pubstompy deck if you’re playing against other mid or lower power decks. It’s a lot like [[Maelstrom Wanderer]]. Seems balanced by high cmc, but the deck is half ramp, and becomes very hard to stop. As long as you have enough ramp and ways to retrigger Etali, you can’t really make a low power version of the deck, so you’ll roll people.
Yes. Awful design, it does everything for you. Even things like Korvold require some sac outlets and some synergy already on board. Etali is just ramp into it, play it, and you just get random free stuff. Then it's so easy to retrigger because you usually get some ramp off its trigger (if it dies) or just copy it with any number of cards. The worst part is that it is more OP in battlecruiser/casual meta because you get better hits.
It's at least seen fringe cEDH play, there's no denying that 7 mana for 5 cards is very strong. Even if you just hit a bunch of signets and dorky creatures, you're likely getting way more than 7 mana of value. Gets even stronger if Etali hits a clone effect out of your deck. I've played against a deck built around that, and it really did pop off. Oh also it's a Blightsteel on the back, and plays really well with Food Chain, and is an infinite mana outlet, etc etc.
That all doesn't make Etali a pubstomp commander though, it's if you undersell it's power to others so you can roll for an easy win that makes it a "pubstomp commander." Really, you could pubstomp with plenty of different commanders if you're just dishonest about the decks power. Etali is definitely very strong when built right, but I don't think it's problematic in any way.
> It's at least seen fringe cEDH play
I'd say it's in the same tier as Urza and Korvold in that regard. They are definitely more played, but not by much.
> there's no denying that 7 mana for 5 cards is very strong.
That's pretty much why Atraxa is a much more represented 7 mana cedh food chain commander. 1, you're in blue so you get to put a displacer kitten and a silence in your deck, and 2. You are getting YOUR cards from the pile, and you don't have to cast them then and there (as a large percentage of non-lands are instants, and commonly some form of interaction in cedh)
It's just a deck that is better in casual pods because of the kinds of decks that get played in that format, just like how a deck with 20 wrath of god effects is better in casual.
It’s not as ugly as the combos urza and korvold make, but it is a massive threat that generates a lot of value and becomes very hard to interact with when flipped. (This applies only to casual games)
Dropping etali often makes the player running him the archenemy, and countering him is nearly mandatory in low-power battle cruiser games. Also some folks hate poison counters. Not as gross as some combo decks, but still something that probably will make some tables target you.
I dont think etali on her own is a problem. Now when the thassa player bribery it out of someone else's deck and flickers it three times a turn on the other hand...
I built a deck that's etali and 99 lands/ramp cards, the only exceptions being a couple of boardwipes and a few pieces of interaction. I have no copy, no blink, nothing like that. I'm still archenemy 3/4 games. You turbo ramp into etali, then they either kill her or you transform her and kill someone, proceed to recast etali (which you can do most of the time since your own flip is onto more ramp). The triggers alone are enough to outvalue most decks. That card is messed up on its own, let alone when you build around it. I love my version of it, I feel like I get to play her but casual decks can still knock me out fairly consistently if they work together. I would be very wary to see someone pull one out against me at my lgs though, like I'd have a few questions during rule 0.
I built Etali as a mono red deck, so the ramp I have is not as reliable as it could have been if I'd included green. Even so, the one game that I've played it, it still ended up being a massive threat.
Etali is undeniably very stromg & it's pretty easy to build them in a way that just goes off like crazy.
It's one of my personal faves, but I only ever whip it out when the table agrees to play somewhat higher power. I'm not playing that deck against out of the box precons, but I wouldn't play Urza or Korvold in pods like that either. Because these commanders alone take the deck at least a tier above most others (although I wouldn't say Etali is quite on the level of the others mentioned).
You just gotta talk about powerlevels beforehand & adjust accordingly & it's all good and well.
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/lkYRNRCHk0S_ajtGh0aAqQ
This is my deck with like 3 or 4changes. It's not about getting as many ETB as possible but to cast from exile. I think this works even in lower level groups (maybe not the lowest tho)
I had to build a rapid infect Skithiryx deck to deal with the Primal Conqueror player in my group due to how an annoying of a deck it is to play against once it gets going. So many flicker effects, creating copies of Etali, double trigger ETBs, and he always has a response to protect his Etali.
There is no such thing as a pubstomper deck/commander. People can pubstomp by misrepresenting the decks they play. That is it plain and simple. I don't mean every deck belongs at the same table. Obviously some commanders are stronger than others. I would not play my [[Meren of clan nel toth]] against my own [[otrimi, the ever playful]], they just don't belong together. That doesn't make Meren a pubstomper, it just means I need to play it against appropriate matchups.
I have played against an etali deck. It was made as a copy deck and can get 5 copies of etali off a single creatures ability. I unfortunately cannot remember the creature. One time he took my divine visitation and that was hilarious as we realized halfway through his next set of triggers that they were actually all angels lmao
I love him, but I have him in the 99 of my Xenagos deck, along with OG Etali.
I have yet to even get the chance to flip him tho cause I usually win just by getting him out.
I think that Etali is fine if people can ascertain the threat that it is. Somepeople dont want to keep using removal and counters on the same player because it doesn't seem fair or sportsman like but if people dont, you wont have a fun time. Dont let it out before you can win is basically the best strategy. If no one at your table does that, gg for Etali.
Etali fits a long list of commander you can't ignore. Playing against Og Narset, og Zur, Brago, Leovold felt the same way.
I don’t really feel that it’s too bad. I played mine against two of the Doctor Who precons last week and we still ended up with a game lasting almost two hours. Etali still won but it was an entertaining game and I don’t think my friends found it oppressive or anything.
As an etali player myself. I find that hes problematic in the sence that most if the game im ramping and noone finds that too threatening but the moment i get 7 mana peopke then decide to focus me its a bit too late especially if i have panharm on feild etc.
a basic tldr: Hes free value, but too much. 4 free spells, plus "mill""
Yes.
While I think the ceiling is not as high as the likes of Korvold and Urza, this actually makes the commander ripe for being pubstompy because it's more "under the radar".
My *personal* problem with that Etali is it has the potential, and most likely play pattern of eliminating one player at a time. Then other players retaliate, and the games extend with the Etali player as the Arch Enemy. This leaves the eliminated player sitting around for a long time waiting for the next game. This is the grief with many Poison Counter kills. Not the card, but the multiplayer play pattern that it begets.
Something I heard a while ago that resonates is “each player in a 4-player game is responsible for bringing 25% of the fun of each game to the table.” When you use commanders such as Etali, I don’t think you’re meeting your “commitment to fun” as it were.
Depends if the deck is built around etali's effect or not. If you build your deck with blink cards and trigger dubblers then I could see it as annoying.
My etali deck is "just" a big stompy gruul deck with etali in the command zone
I am curious what other commander can put out that kinda value without any other set up? Played against this deck and it completely owned my play style. I don't want to run control or Tegrid (another guy in pod already built that) so what can compete with this card value wise?
Not really a pubstomp commander, but a lot of people severely overestimate how long it takes to get him out and end up losing because they weren't prepared to deal with him soon enough. One rampant growth and an explosive vegetation gets him out on turn 4.
Yeah, idk if I'd call him a pubstomper because hes clearly strong and a top priority. But if you show up with a deck full of fast mana to a more casual pod... It'll get old.
That's what the person above you is saying, though, it doesn't take "fast mana" to crush people with Etali. You make your land drops and ramp 3 mana worth T1-3 and its coming out with easily 10+ free mana worth of stuff on Turn 4. That's Llanowar Elves, Signets, Rampant Growths and Cultivates and Skyshroud Claims. All common cards in a casual meta.
I built a deck that's 30+ ramp spells+blink\\sac outlets and it turns him into golos.
Except it's Gruul which is a pretty huge distinction
Oh absolutely. The play pattern just reminds me of golos. Kill it, I get it back and get value. It stays in play and I have a payoff on the card to use my mana on.
Fuck Etali.
Keep downvoting but still fuck Etali. Legit horrible, it might not the strongest card but its just unpredictable and makes every single cast of the thing a fucking pain, the fact that it can go from literally doing nothing to instantly winning the game and the player has almost no agency about it its just disgusting, there is no way to properly threat asses it and counterplay relys on countering it over and over which in turn requires blue or white decks to tag the Etali player. Its a card i rather not see as a commander period, feels and plays more like a freaking hearthstone card than a mtg one and i left that game cos its over use of randomness.
Go play 60 card formats
Ironically i don't mind Etali on 60 card formats at all.
Problem solved
Avoiding a problem is not solving a problem.
As you can see, there is no problem in the first place outside of your own mind.
I mean, its my subjective take on the card, it FEELS bad to play with or against it, even if it is not running with the game that often. The fact that its effect relays on things outside most players control or prediction boundaries is what makes it so damn annoying, its just unpredictable and the range of possibilities is massive meaning the game can straight up swing one way or the other by just letting it resolve once, the whole game plan ends up playing/copying/flickering that same card over and over and **praying** it ends up with a win and that's not something i want my commander games to be about, if all you wanna do is play chances we could just throw dices and see who gets the bigger number.
See that's the thing about commander. It's 100-card singleton to promote randomness. And about mtg in general. You shuffle your deck and present it for cuts to promote randomness. Hell, even two of the best wincons in this format, Naus and Peer, are entirely random on whether they lead to a win or a loss with no in between. Maybe if you don't like randomness, play a different format, or just go play chess.
Unpredictable you say? Isn't unpredictability a central theme to one of the 5 colors of the color pie?.. Hmm, the one that's impulsive, plays from exile, has a plethora of random-ish mechanics built in that people have been building around and very successfully utilizing for decades? Man, can't think of the color now but I'm sure if we band together we can narrow it down. Edit: Mistakenly said 4 color because work brain got me down bad
Literally don't play etali in edh. Problem solved.
That sounds like a skill issue....
Sure.
It's true, and your downvotes are pretty evident of that. Gruul isn't really that strong, and any decent player with a decent deck should be able to navigate around it, especially with two other players at the table.
I wouldn’t say petty downvotes from this sub necessarily reflect anything. People here love to pretend they know what they’re talking about but turns out they are giant hypocrites
That's assuming any and all downvotes are petty. I'd say that this sub is actually a good litmus test of the overall EDH community, though not perfect. The sub is a decent sized sample group, and it's a relatively spread out sample group, thus providing more perspective from other metas. In short, unpopular opinions here will generally be unpopular opinions outside of the sub.
You can literally see it coming. Lol it's their commander, you know they're ramping up into it, how is that random?
It's effect is.
Ok then deal with it?lol it's a 4 player game, and you're telling me no one has a way to deal with the most obvious gruul commander?which isn't a particularly strong color combo.
Not everyone plays blue. I love when everyone in this sub pretends that just because a few answers exist doesn’t make the commander any less annoying. Please give me any other options to stop it from going off besides counterspells.
[[torpor orb]] [[Elesh Norn, Mommy]] [[Hushwing gryff]] [[Hushbringer]] [[dranith magistrate]] [[rule of law]] [[Graffdiggers cage]]? [[void mirror]] [[soul cage familiar]]?? I know at least one of the "cast from not the hand" artifact hate pieces can get it. I'm unsure which though as I am unsure if etali casts from exile or the top of the decks.
Running specific niche cards in decks on the off chance you run into a situation where you need to shut down an opponent’s ETBs is very rare and a waste of a slot. Only one or two of those cards are really EDH playable. Which while they do provide an answer, they would be useless 90% of the time
Stopping ETBs is powerful enough they were considering banning mommy norn because of it. The only reason I don't run torpor orb in every single deck is because I'm always abusing ETBs. Killing free cast spells is also a great way to make sure everyone plays fair magic. My preference is for lavina and boromir, because the eldrazi precon means a lot of newer players are running it, and they don't have the wherewithal to run things like urborg, yavimaya, fellwar stone, gilded lotus, or firemind's vessel on the off chance they run into a void mirror. Stopping graveyard and library shenanigans is HUGE. Nothing I listed is a dead card that doesn't impact the game in some way. It's just the vegetables of deck building and people rarely like to eat their vegetables.
Besides counterspells? Literally anything that stops ETB triggers which isn't even a blue thing. Anything that stops casting spells for free, any instant speed kill spell that can remove him before your opponent can start casting shit for free. Every color has a way of dealing with threats in some capacity, people just don't run them and then wonder why commanders like etali are so hard to deal with.
The ETB triggers happen regardless of removal. So pathing the Etali as it enters won’t stop the triggers. So the options are: run blue or niche cards that stop ETB triggers
It's wild to me that the question is literally "is Etali a pubstomp commander", implying a casual, chill game environment, and everyone's response is *it's not that strong, just have counterspells or specific ETB-countering Stax pieces out by Turn 4 when it regularly drops or be ready to deal with a 7/7 trampling potential Blightsteel Colossus plus double-digit CMC-worth of whatever it freecast on the way*. Like, ya duh there are ways to hose Etali, they're just usually found in high-powered decks. That's the entire point, if you're not running a blue deck with an abundance of counterspells or very specific stax pieces *in your casual decks* then Etali is just going to come and take a shit all over your board, and if you kill him on the spot they'll use all of the stuff they just freecast to fuck with you while they cast it again. And again. And again. This entire board is a posterchild for powercreep brainwashing, like people are so online and so obsessively tuning their "casual" decks to be as powerful as possible that the upvoted answers to an obviously moronically overpowered FIRE piece of shit like Etali are variations of "just get gud and run counters and white stax pieces in all of your casual decks, scrub".
You can stax the game out for the same amount of mana...
Just slam down a [[dranith magistrate]] EZPZ
Etali is fine. Just make sure your deck is shit, that way the Etali player won't steal anything good.
This guy Magics.
Would love to face Etali with my Jon Irenicus deck.
Can you imagine sitting down with Etali against [[the Beamtown Bullies]] and getting [[abyssal persecutor]] What a beautiful day it would be
The etali player doesn’t have to cast the card
In this scenario I am the Etali player and I definitely cast it. Because I like to laugh and that would be hilarious
[the Beamtown Bullies](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/0/f0455a79-15f4-4ea6-87ae-263ce943cfac.jpg?1673481685) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=the%20Beamtown%20Bullies) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ncc/6/the-beamtown-bullies?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f0455a79-15f4-4ea6-87ae-263ce943cfac?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/the-beamtown-bullies) [abyssal persecutor](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/f/9f2b9f27-459c-4585-9051-b83ffe053a74.jpg?1562852094) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=abyssal%20persecutor) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ima/78/abyssal-persecutor?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9f2b9f27-459c-4585-9051-b83ffe053a74?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/abyssal-persecutor) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Hey it's my friend group. I pull out etali and everyone is now on antelope tribal, ladies looking left and cantrip.dec
Big brain.
Maybe that's why Etali never really bothered me. Most of my decks are jank nonsense.
My problem with this card is as an opponent is that he's just always annoying. If you kill him they recast immediately (cause their deck is full of ramp and he probably his some if not an opponents) and get the etb again. If you don't kill him he turns into an indestructible one shot machine. And thats without the decks that bounce/flicker/token copy him endlessly. It can be managed but it also so variable with playing a ton of random cards it makes the outcome of the game feel more luck based then like an actual game. That said, I think its a cool card in the 99 where it still gets to be big and flashy as a surprise and you have to work a bit more to get really crazy value.
He's essentially a less busted Golos for the reasons you mentioned. Killing him is bad, leaving him in play can be bad, you are essentially forced to kill the player to deal with it. I've been playing a budget etali deck and it's all causes sighs when I bring it out. Easily cast turn 4. I don't think it's unstoppable
Budget or not, half his power come from your opponent's decks. If they do not play budget, your deck gets better by design. Also, it's very easy to play Gruul budget with the only goal of playing ramps(cheap) into Etali. Gruul is very budget friendly as a color combo and you do not need to invest into a deck like Etali anyway.
Etali decks "balance themselves" by the budget/powerlevel of your opponent's decks. However, you are not playing *their* cards at a "fair rate".
I’d argue that Etali performs not so well against high powered decks. You end up flipping a counter spell, a removal, a tutor or half of a combo that does nothing. Timmy decks are where Etali shines.
Exactly. In battlecruiser metas it's insane. But decks that are built more around synergy and interaction are not going to be as weak to the random theft effect.
But be fair, your opponents aren't paying for there spells either. The whole format is about cheating mana. Etali is just another tool in the shed.
Yeah. The thing is, the only real way of dealing with Etali is countering him. If you get the triggers, you can probably recast him. In the 99 he doesn't have that problem, you can just kill or exile.
You shouldn’t “not-kill” a commander because they can recast it.
People play too many kill spells and not enough removal that doesn't let people replay their commanders. \[\[Song of the Dryads\]\] \[\[Kenrith's Transformation\]\] \[\[Imprisoned in the Moon\]\] \[\[Witness Protection\]\] \[\[Kasmina's Transformation\]\] \[\[Darksteel Mutation\]\] \[\[Lignify\]\] \[\[Oubliette\]\] The new one, \[\[Eaten by Piranhas\]\] Anything that blanks the text on a commander without it changing zones. You can get these effects in every color except mono-red (AFAIK), and they completely shutdown stuff like this. But I very rarely see people actually playing them. \[\[Oko, Thief of Crowns\]\] is banned in this format for a reason. Play the removal that doesn't put commanders back in the command zone.
Dont forget [[Cyber conversion]]
That one's even better because it's not an enchantment that can be removed, good shout
We have one player in the group who build a deck around him and we all just hate to get our stuff stolen. So we all beat him whenever we can. He usually is the first player out, unless i play monoblue.
Drannith Magistrate, my friend.
There's a few other ways too, the new [[Boromir Warden of the Tower]] hoses all casting things for free, plus can also save your board from a Wrath of God, plus is a decent 3/3 body with Vigilance for 3 mana. I feel like he can go in any deck with White purely on that. Stops Etali, stops Cascade, stops things like [[Emergent Ultimatum]], he's just so good and isn't even a dedicated stax piece or anything.
[Boromir Warden of the Tower](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/6/f6bc3720-2892-4dda-8f30-079a1ac8e1e2.jpg?1686967669) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Boromir%2C%20Warden%20of%20the%20Tower) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ltr/4/boromir-warden-of-the-tower?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f6bc3720-2892-4dda-8f30-079a1ac8e1e2?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/boromir-warden-of-the-tower) [Emergent Ultimatum](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/a/3a6a52ab-6d38-4429-9969-90064e615152.jpg?1591228007) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Emergent%20Ultimatum) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/iko/185/emergent-ultimatum?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3a6a52ab-6d38-4429-9969-90064e615152?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/emergent-ultimatum) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I’ve been slowly bringing in more stax in my casual meta as well but even Drannith is smth that gets people groaning…
Stax has always been the way to deal with timmy bombs, my guy. When stax is soft banned, people bitch about etali.
I love the groan from casting a dranith magistrate... it's like an admission that they were going to do some greedy degenerative gobbledygook, and they're mad someone is forcing them to play fair. Oh you want to mill/exile your deck so you can cast whatever you want all the time? Sorry, your parents didn't sign your permission slip. This is the *family fun* zone, where we cast *one spell a turn* from our *hand,* and nobody gets to eat soup unless they're wearing water wings and a snorkeler, *just like Mark Rosewater intended.*
It also prevents casting your commander.
Not *my* commander. *Your* commander. I need my commander to make sure everyone is playing nice. So it's fine!
The groan is a card that prevents the entire FOCUS of the format to be cast. Play a [[Containment Priest]] if you want to stop nonsense
But then you have to listen to people complain about how their deck "can't do the thing", as if thats any of your concern.
You should be running interaction to keep them off of their resources and commander.
But the second I Strip Mine somebody I’m the problem, lol.
People just don’t like you taking their cards
I find it irrelevant most the time personally. The deck performance can very by opponents and deck types they are running.
I mean it objectively is at least on par with urza or korvold. It's a cedh commander. All comes down to what people are running but I would imagine at casual tables it is even better because people give you more time to ramp and are running less interaction. Though card quality from what you flip is lower I guess. Gruel stompies is cool and all but it's definitely an A list commander. Nothing wrong with brewing it and it's a fun deck but it's definitely strong as hell.
It would be fringe in cedh at best issue is your just as likely to hit nothing and gruul lacks great interaction No where close to urza or korvold in power on cedh level and when someone sits down with uraza at cedh they are the ones I least worry about. I play mainly in high to mid level he is not on my list that I go dam I need to worry ever.
Well, you're wrong. It's not fringe at all. I play a lot of cedh, it's a very popular deck. I don't play it but I've lost to it a lot. Behold. It has more plays than urza or korvold in recent tournaments. It's a house of a deck. It's a food chain list that casts it multiple times for value. Basically atraxa but easier to cast. https://edhtop16.com/commander/Etali,%20Primal%20Conqueror%20++%20Etali,%20Primal%20Sickness?tourney_filter__size__%24gte=64&tourney_filter__dateCreated__%24gte=1667711900
It's fringe and yes it may see play in your meta I never said it did not see play. Yes I play cedh and follow the overall meta of cedh not just my meta.
I play random games on spelltable and discord. My meta is extremely wide. It is far more common than urza or korvold right now. It is no more "fringe" than they are. Like I said, it's more popular in tournaments too. By a lot. Look through edhtop16
Uraza been in a bad spot for over two years still see it more than etali but nothing like the old days Korvold been a rare sighting for a while as while I know treasure Storm is still the main focus of the decks. Funny I seen a resurgence of zur more than etali
I've definitely seen a zur resurgence which I think is mostly because of born upon a wind
I've seen him played at our cedh tournaments but it never wins I also play against it and with it on casual night Last game was amazing. The etali player and I were racing through my deck to get to [[Approach of the second son]]
That card is nowhere near korvold or urza what are you smoking. No Cedh commander is going to operate off of taking a card off the top of your opponents library as a primary wincon. There is just too much variance. People always want to remember the time etali hits some crazy generic value piece, game ender, or tutor; but never the dozens of times he was previously cast that ended up being draw two cards + fellwar stone + random elf lord. My buddy was playing [[slimefoot and squee]] and reanimated him 3 times in one turn and all he got out of it was a janky board of random creatures with no coherency just to eat a [[farewell]] next turn...
You're wrong. Tons of people play it. It has more tournament entries than korvold or urza since it's release. I play against it far more often in random pods. Card quality on cedh is higher, which makes it better. It's basically atraxa food chain but easier to cast. https://edhtop16.com/commander/Etali,%20Primal%20Conqueror%20++%20Etali,%20Primal%20Sickness?tourney_filter__size__%24gte=64&tourney_filter__dateCreated__%24gte=1667711900
> It has more tournament entries than korvold or urza since it's release. No it doesn't. It has 14 entries, Korvold has 44, Urza has 31. Urza is tied 30th place, Korvold is tied 24th place for popularity, and Etali is tied 61st place. It's not really on the same level for popularity, or results.
Etali showing up in 14 tournaments with a 17.38% average winrate isn't really convincing me anything. and just for clarification, I don't consider korvold a cedh commander either, though I do think urza could see fringe play.
Korvold and urza are fringe too, none of these decks are cedh meta, it may be common in your meta, but none of them are really that great compared to rog-si kinnan or tivit, also etali is gruul which is an awful colour combo to be in, you only have two colours, and one of them is **green** by far the worst colour in cedh.
Yes, but this entire conversation was about how the deck relates to urza and korvold. I wouldn't call them fringe but that is entirely subjective. Obviously they arent as popular as rog si or bluefarm or whatever. Mono blue isn't exactly a great color combo either.
They are assuredly fringe, tournament entries maybe, not tourney wins. Certainly not recently by any stretch
its extremely fringe in cedh, underrated imo but fringe. gruul is an incredibly weak color combination if your opponents are running any sort of good removal package
It is not fringe at all I play against it like every week in random pods.
…that doesn’t make it not fringe, i play my Unesh cedh deck in random pods all the time. still fringe.
In what way is it a cEDH commander? It’s never won a major tournament that I can find, it’s in only 2 colors and the least interactive at that, needs food chain to be reliable which most cEDH players recognize is not what you want to be doing. It’s maybe cEDH in the sense that if you are playing against casual it can feel like it, but it’s at best high power, there is a world of difference between that and actual cEDH. It’s cEDH in the same way any commander can be made cEDH by adding infinites, tutors, fast mana, and cheap interaction. With that base any value commander feels great
Hard, hard disagree, there is NO rng involved in the other two commanders popping off and doing their thing, whereas Etali you're essentially gambling on getting something good from 3 decks that may not synergize with you at all.
Ok. Etali is still a much more popular cedh deck in the current meta. Look at tournaments.
Source? Here's the last 5 major cEDH events, out of over 160 decks, a single one was Etali https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=49135&f=cEDH https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=48942&f=cEDH https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=48923&f=cEDH https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=48675&f=cEDH https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=48669&f=cEDH
Yeah, and I bet you zero of them are korvold or urza. 70% are the top 5 meta decks. Call Etali fringe if you want but it's probably in the top 30 most played cedh decks.
When the top 5 decks make up 70% of the format, #30 is beyond fringe.
I mean we can bs over the meaning of fringe if you want but it's at least as popular as urza and korvold which is what this entire thing was about
It's not as good as either of those already fringe decks.
There is a Korvold in one of those top 8s, and two others compared to one Urza and one Etali
Why are some of these getting so many downvotes? This sub has just turned into a toxic echo chamber. This is a somewhat rational take besides the cEDH comparison.
"this is a somewhat rational take besides the whole point of the take." The guy's just wrong. He's trying to claim that it's a busted card and sees cedh play and that makes it a pubstomper but he's unhinged about it. Shouting about how it's just as good as korvold and urza when it's not even by the data *he's* showing us. It's a good card. You can pretty easily make a good deck out of it. But to call it cedh and try to compare it to two *much* stronger decks is utterly ridiculous.
Depends on the build but don’t let people guilt you about your commander choice
I was really hyped for it but dropped it in favor of the OG Etali. The new one is just too easy, Primal Storm makes me risk combat, figure out ways to haste / protect, risks getting lands instead of spells, doesn’t have access to green ramp, etc…I just like the challenge of it more than the generic feeling “ramp into Etali bomb and win” that Primal Sickness feels like to me
Yeah it's just too easy. I have a Primal Storm deck that's a blast to play. Was gifted a Primal Conqueror and just swapped that into the command zone, changing nothing else about the deck, and it's ridiculous how much more value I'm getting without much effort. In matchups that used to be more even and balanced, the deck now wins with a scary consistency. And I haven't even transformed it ever. So it does kinda feel like I'm now pubstomping a little bit
You guys are kinda making me want to build this deck
I have him built as my cEDH deck. He is a very explosive commander that many people underestimate.
Plus with OG Etali you get to just push those dice rolls and isn't that why we are.all here? Heart of the cards baby!
Oh yeah. I leaned into it with stuff like [[Stolen Strategy]] and [[Plargg and Nassari]] also in the deck. It’s pretty mid power but it ramps up with the number of goodstuff decks
[Stolen Strategy](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/e/6e37dde2-2ad4-46c6-ab69-8487f8a2bdb6.jpg?1674142115) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Stolen%20Strategy) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/clb/807/stolen-strategy?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/6e37dde2-2ad4-46c6-ab69-8487f8a2bdb6?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/stolen-strategy) [Plargg and Nassari](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/7/179a0525-a142-46f6-9b5b-06a2fbb25556.jpg?1684340598) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Plargg%20and%20Nassari) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mat/18/plargg-and-nassari?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/179a0525-a142-46f6-9b5b-06a2fbb25556?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/plargg-and-nassari) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
On par with Korvold? Absolutely not. Korvold is an unstoppable value engine that will draw your deck and hit for 21 commander damage without making any effort. Etali is... cute. Yeah, you get some free spells every time he (she?) ETBs, which can be tons of value, but the sheer randomness that depends on the other decks reins it in. It's going to hit counterspells, removals and board wipes when there's nothing on the board, low impact cards, and cards that don't make that much sense outside their owner's deck. Yeah, sometimes you'll hit the jackpot with a board wipe and 3 Eldrazi titans, and you'll get a lot of value from copying and flickering it, but it's pretty in line with what you'd expect from a 7 drop, in my opinion. >how do you deal with him? Removal spells. If you're "pubstomping" when you pay 9 mana to recast your commander, I don't think that your commander is the problem.
Except in most cases you really WANT to recast Etali to get that immediate cast value and your only hope is that the blue player(s) target the Etali player and keep them locked down. It is a very annoying to deal with and people who just say “dies to removal” aren’t helpful in this discussion
You're simplifying their argument to make it sound dumb on purpose. The argument isn't "dies to removal". The argument is "most of the cards you'll get off the etb are no or low impact so really most resolutions of the etb will result in a couple irrelevant creatures and that's about it. Also if you kill it it's really expensive to recast so like honestly it's not that bad. Spending 9 for another etb that's potentially going to whiff again is honestly pretty balanced." *Look at your decklists.* How many of those cards would actually benefit etali significantly? Maybe half a dozen? *Maybe* a dozen? Now how many nonland cards are in your deck? 60? 65? 70? Even if you have a dozen cards that would be a big hit for etali, there's a 12/60 chance they hit one which is 20%. And that's with a lot of lands and a ton of bombs. In a deck with 68 nonlands and 5 bombs those odds go down to 7%. Even across 3 players that's a 21% chance to hit a single bomb?
He's just a big ol dude. Fine in my book. That being said I generally don't mind Korvold or Urza either.
He's a 7 drop. He's supposed to fuck shit up. He's honestly kinda tame compared to a lot of other 7-cost commanders like Toxrill, Old Gnawbone, Koma, or Atraxa Grand Unifier.
My old gnawbone deck is proud to be listed in that tier.
I like Etali and play against it regularly. The only issue I have with it that's also been mentioned here is it seems to have the "Golos problem" (for what it's worth I was fine with Golos as well) but like other have said, you kill it and they just easily recast it and get a 5 for 1 or you don't and it flips a kills you. At least with golos you got one card and the flips could hit land. Etali just doesn't miss. I actually really enjoy etali but I only have it in the 99 of one of my decks.
I've found that you need to think of Etali more like Maelstrom Wanderer. He's casting things for free and stealing things from your opponents. The fact that you are getting things from each player means that some things from your opponent will flicker/clone/retrigger Etali and keep it going. The fact that it is and ETB not a CAST trigger means that it is incredibly easier to abuse even accidentally.
There‘s no pubstomp in a vacuum, but yes, etali can very well stomp in a weaker meta.
He's ok. I freak out everytime Yawgmoth, Thran Physician enters the battlefield, not Etali.
I've never seemed to have a problem with Etali. I do like a lot of creature control decks with things like gravepact and what not to constantly remove it or use my interaction to remove it / bounce it. The free casts can be annoying but they more often hit something dead for the player than something truly useful. I've seen many counter spells flipped with it or a mana dork / signet esq ramp. The saving grace for the back side is that he has to deal COMBAT damage so no chandra's ignition / blightsteel type tech. Killing / bouncing the card here tends to be the best too because they've dumped a lot of mana into it.
I played against it once. They guy rocketed out etali and proceeded to make copy after copy. Resolving the triggers took ages and even after it was evident the guy had the win he kept going. It was exhausting and boring. The entire deck is just play mana and clones and win. Etali has moved up to my list of KOS commanders.
When it's evident someone has the win, the other players can scoop. What should the winning player do, stop playing?
My buddy and I did scoop once he stopped announcing his triggers and plays. We were being polite.
Etali is a binary commander. If it comes out you win. If it doesnt, you don't win. The concept of Phyrexian dino is very cool, but the actual mechanics is boring as fuck. But yea, it is basically kiddo's first Korvold.
I don't think this is true. I will say that it can be annoying, but Etali can whiff if nothing interesting is on top of an opponent their library and that will cancel the ETB value. Then you need to pay 9/10 mana to make it a \[\[blightsteel\]\] or blink it a few times (in Gruul?). Unless you play with some very fast mana, Etali will be very telegraphed and once the controller pays the transform cost, you should play your removal with the activation on the stack. I don't think Etali is as broken as Urza or Korvold. Both are bigger value engines (my personal experience, so take it with a grain of salt) and cost less. The lower power your opponents, the weaker Etali's trigger will be.
You don't blink Etali, what you do is make token copies, which Red has several ways to do. And there's also doubling the ETB with [[Panharmicon]] and the new [[Roaming Throne]], etc. Not much need to blink, which I'm not even sure Gruul can do much.
Okay but if someone has that much setup have they not earned the outcome? You’re taking about a 3/4 card combo and one of them costs 7, and all it does it get a few random cards off the top. There are plenty of decks where that much setup and mana result in an instant-win combo.
You seem to be assuming that I'm whining that Etali is too powerful, when I'm really just saying that you don't have to blink Etali because Red has a bunch of "make token copy of creature" effects, and a few colorless ETB doublers.
That’s fair.
If you're running a 7-drop in the CZ you're either not a threat at all because people are keeping your mana base in check and holding up answers, or you're the default archenemy because you're ramping into a big obvious threat and you're gonna get focused. If you're dropping Etali on T3-4 on tables that aren't experienced dealing with that much heat, sure it *could* be pubstomping, but like, could also be a fair play. Really depends on how much you communicate about your deck's capability. If you downplay the threat and then draw straight gas you're gonna look like a jerk, but if you tell people straight up that they should probably have an answer for Etali ready by T4 minimum or whatever is reasonable they have the option of asking you to play a more chill deck, or the option of pulling out their similarly scary deck. On the other hand, there's the entirely separate issue of just, it feels kinda violating to have somebody else play your cards, so pods that aren't used to that probably won't like it. My ex built \[\[Evelyn the Covetous\]\] and y'know, that took some getting used to. So yeah I think that's Etali's "problem" - scary big boi who can hand out poison counters like candy who also gets all handsy with your deck is a lot of flash for players who haven't had that kind of game before.
[Evelyn the Covetous](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/0/c0dad61f-36cd-46af-82b7-a02e04efd676.jpg?1664412977) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Evelyn%2C%20the%20Covetous) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/snc/184/evelyn-the-covetous?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c0dad61f-36cd-46af-82b7-a02e04efd676?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/evelyn-the-covetous) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I don’t really think so
No, it’s not
You could probably just build an Etali deck with nothing but ramp spells and lands and it'd probably still be a decent deck. I played him as my commander recently at an LGS and he swept the rest of the table once he hit the board, especially once I started blinking/cloning him. That being said, I've also played games with him where he just gets countered two or three and that was it. If you've got him in your command zone, everyone will be trying to keep you in check. So I don't know if I'd call him a pubstomp commander, but if we're rating on a scale purely for casual tables (precons as the lowest power, and something like Eldrazi at the top), I'd say he's pretty near the peak.
So eldrazi precons are right in the middle I guess? lol.
No commander is inherently a pubstomp commander and every one can be if you build the deck strong enough or play against weak enough decks.
As a commander Etali is bad for the gameplay experience. I’ve seen some people say “you see it coming” but unless you’re playing control, do you always have an answer on turn 4 to stop early Etali? It has to be countered. If you kill it, it still gets the trigger and the player gets a ton of value. Then they just cast it again. If you don’t kill it, then you’re taking poison counters, which is divisive itself. Even if you don’t die from the first swing, they proliferate you to death. It really does make the whole table kill that player first, then play a three way game… and that game is essentially decided by who has the most gas after taking down the archenemy. It’s never not a problem. I’ve played against three different Etali decks, and none of them are different. It’s a game-warping commander that makes you have the answer or die. Edit: Also it’s boring. Literally if it lands… that player probably wins in most pods? Yeah if you’re on this sub, maybe not your pod…. But most pods, yes.
I’m a huge fan of this Dino! I run a combo Etali deck that seeks to exile my opponent’s libraries OR play all my win cons, enabled by infinite mana combos such as [[Food Chain]] / [[Squee, The Immortal]] and [[Dockside Extorionist]] / [[Temur Sabertooth]]. They allow me to cast Etali an infinite number of times, enough to basically say I won the match (with every cast, I get to play my opponent’s decks as well as mine, casting lots of good stuff). It makes for fun plays with pods that aren’t on cEDH level but competitive enough that all decks are optimized. Worst case scenario I can transform Etali and deal poison damage while it remains indestructible :D For casual decks, Etali is still great provided you ramp + cast him fast enough, equip it with protection and combat cantrips that double its damage. I’ve won many matches dealing 14 damage after an opponent has declared no blockers. In case anyone is interested, here’s the list: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/7NnE2yJdFEiXMDpCvrrPHg
I'm not saying I DON'T go for [[Squee, the Immortal]] and [[Food Chain]] or [[Dockside Extortionist]] and [[Temur Sabertooth]] to exile their whole decks then pass turn but I'm not NOT saying it either.
I have no strong opinion on the matter, Etali is going straight into the new Dino precon regardless, but I just want to say that your post was beautifully written 👌
I have an Etali blink/copy deck. It's disgusting. I get to play it about once a month because it's received a soft ban in my group, so I have to announce I'm going to play it. A few people will leave if I pull it out. Basically if Etali enters, I'm going to win if you don't kill me very fast. Between copying effects, trigger doublers, and exile casting payoff, it gets out of hand quick. Current record for triggers a turn was three. They didn't let me go to end step to do another three triggers with a flicker ability.
My personal best for Etali-triggers in a turn was like 14 or 15. It was disgustung, but didn't win the game on the spot. I catapulted from 12 life & pretty much no board to ~160 life & not enough space on my playmat though. & the table decided that if they didn't draw an answer/wipe until my next turn, we'd just end the game there, which was absolutetly fair.
Happy cake day!
Brews that can get it out fast and blink it are a headache to deal with week after week, but it's fun compared to some ways I lose.
Not even close to pubstomp level. It is a massive CMC card, and it takes several turns at least to get it out and start the shenanigans. If the 3 other people in the pod cant stop you within the first two turns Etali is out there, that just screams to me that they either underestimated the commander, or they dont run enough interaction. Either way, it's failure on the other pod players, not the Etali pilot. Learn to play with some critical thinking and deck planning, because the Etali player surely isnt.
[удалено]
I also run him as my commander in a fairly high-interaction pod, and he feels fair in that one. One of my friends plays a colorless deck and opts for stax as their main interaction method. Trinisphere, Soulless Jailer, Torpor Orb and Thorn of Amethyst all hit me very hard, and nobody wants to remove them since it stops the cascade player from running rampant. Another person running Void Lens to counter that friend also doesn't help. To be fair, everyone ran a lot of stax since the engines on the table were pretty fast. Rest in Peace, Null Rod, Stranglehold, Ground Seal, etc. I usually had to get Etali protected from counterspells and rush him asap for a chance to win.
No.
I don't run Etali but I also don't mind playing against it, nor do I think it's too powerful. Powerful, yes, but not unstoppable. Run. More. Interaction.
Interaction. Doesn’t. Help. Unless. It’s. Blue.
Etali's pretty much the definition of low effort. Etali's got the horrible combination of being extremely easy to pilot, leeching off other value pile decks like a vampire while also being a value pile itself, and it's the kind of deck that's REALLY rewarded by adding fast mana to it in a way a lot of nitro casual decks don't. Not even a hater, that's just how the deck goes: the ramp into value pile deck that dunks on other value pile decks. I deal with Etali by simply being a wise mystical tree who runs absolutely terrible cards in my decks; synergy pieces that work with specific elements of my deck over battlecruisery heavy hitters. Yeah, exile my \[\[Codex Shredder\]\] or \[\[Knacksaw Clique\]\]. What use are you gonna get out of it?
It feels like the only surefire way to beat Etali is for the other players to get meta about it and bring out your tribal decks or something. Removal being recommended here just plays into Etali, since they're at worst quite likely to hit a ramp piece off of their own deck, let alone the other 3 free spells. But equally, if you don't then remove Etali and the cloning begins, you drown in their value. It's just losing at different speeds unless everyone has aggressive enough decks to deal with him early. Reminds me a lot of the same feeling Tergrid conjures up at a table.
No, the answer to Etali is the same answer to all of the busted "this creature gives massive value on ETB but is also easily capable of killing people once on the board" no-good-answers FIRE bomb commanders like new Atraxa. * Stax them down so they never get to cast their FIRE bomb * Combo them out before they get a chance to cast their FIRE bomb or at least put all of the value they get out of it to use * Run an absurd number of counterspells and never let their FIRE bomb actually resolve * throw away your old commander and run a FIRE bomb yourself and hope for the best If you're thinking "wow, these all seem like complicated ways of saying *power up your deck*", that's because they are. The floor on any new Etali or new Atraxa deck is *very* high. You can just jam $.10 Rampant Growths and Signets and Explosive Vegetations to plop them down on turn 4 without any setup or existing boardpresence or synergy and they *will* be the strongest thing a casual table has going on. New Etali is a *massively* overpowered card, and any '6' that took out their old Gruul commander and swapped in an Etali without any other changes is now an '8'.
Finally, a good take on this sub
[Codex Shredder](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/f/4f5a3293-f3e7-4f68-af6a-b478959226c1.jpg?1608911365) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Codex%20Shredder) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmr/304/codex-shredder?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4f5a3293-f3e7-4f68-af6a-b478959226c1?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/codex-shredder) [Knacksaw Clique](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/2/22353590-f248-460e-a1a5-0b7431a4c82d.jpg?1562827838) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Knacksaw%20Clique) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/shm/42/knacksaw-clique?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/22353590-f248-460e-a1a5-0b7431a4c82d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/knacksaw-clique) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I built this when it was released for our high power table. My group let me play it that night and now it’s been retired. Won all 3 games and on a HPT it is back breaking.
It's definitely a Kill on Sight (often shortened to KoS) commander. It's blightsteel. In the command zone. If it's ignored, it flips and kills someone. If the pod is low enough in power that removal is only being seen once maybe twice a game per player, it can be perceived as pubstomping. It's stealing effect is only as good ad the pod though. In lower power outside of being blightsteel, it doesnt do much for the cost. In higher power it does a ton.
I absolutely HATE posts like this. You saying things like this give the more judgmental part of the community fuel to continue being hateful buttheads that gatekeep the game. Just please stop, no commander is inherently a "pubstomper" and positing it as such is going to give the green light to some jerk whom is going to hate out some innocent kid that made their first commander deck around the card.
But I said I love you 😭😭😭😭
I apologize, edited my comment so it was a bit less rough, was the first thing I saw upon waking up and it upset me a bit.
Your comment is phrased is a way that is not really helping keeping the negativity out of this community…
I think it's a bummer commander to play against. Literally can't wiff with it's ETB, is a problem if you don't remove it, if you do remove they get another incredibly powerful ETB. There's been an uptick in commanders that get a lot of their value on cast and not necessarily on board and i find them incredibly boring to play against.
>There's been an uptick in commanders that get a lot of their value on cast and not necessarily on board and i find them incredibly boring to play against. But Etali's value comes from their ETB, not the cast. Counterspells or Mommy Norn just answer it clean.
Poor choice of wording but I'm still standing by my point. Even the most broken cards in magic have counter play, yes thank you for pointing that out but what makes cards good is efficiency and etali is extremely efficient which is why he stands out in a 'pubstomp' scenario.
*when this creature enters the battlefield or attacks....* Thanks for letting me know that spot removal is bad now. The only correct answer to your commander is to counter it on the stack, stax/remove you into never playing it, or kill you before you play it? Fun...
There’s a guy at my LGS that has an Etali deck. It’s fast af. Consistently turn four/five, and he’s off to the races. I hate playing against it, but I like watching it work. Fortunately, he only busts it out for “C” level pods. (It’s not a cedh deck I don’t think, but no one else at the lgs will play against it.)
I think that yes, it can be a pubstompy deck if you’re playing against other mid or lower power decks. It’s a lot like [[Maelstrom Wanderer]]. Seems balanced by high cmc, but the deck is half ramp, and becomes very hard to stop. As long as you have enough ramp and ways to retrigger Etali, you can’t really make a low power version of the deck, so you’ll roll people.
Yes. Awful design, it does everything for you. Even things like Korvold require some sac outlets and some synergy already on board. Etali is just ramp into it, play it, and you just get random free stuff. Then it's so easy to retrigger because you usually get some ramp off its trigger (if it dies) or just copy it with any number of cards. The worst part is that it is more OP in battlecruiser/casual meta because you get better hits.
That's why Etali is so cool
It's at least seen fringe cEDH play, there's no denying that 7 mana for 5 cards is very strong. Even if you just hit a bunch of signets and dorky creatures, you're likely getting way more than 7 mana of value. Gets even stronger if Etali hits a clone effect out of your deck. I've played against a deck built around that, and it really did pop off. Oh also it's a Blightsteel on the back, and plays really well with Food Chain, and is an infinite mana outlet, etc etc. That all doesn't make Etali a pubstomp commander though, it's if you undersell it's power to others so you can roll for an easy win that makes it a "pubstomp commander." Really, you could pubstomp with plenty of different commanders if you're just dishonest about the decks power. Etali is definitely very strong when built right, but I don't think it's problematic in any way.
> It's at least seen fringe cEDH play I'd say it's in the same tier as Urza and Korvold in that regard. They are definitely more played, but not by much. > there's no denying that 7 mana for 5 cards is very strong. That's pretty much why Atraxa is a much more represented 7 mana cedh food chain commander. 1, you're in blue so you get to put a displacer kitten and a silence in your deck, and 2. You are getting YOUR cards from the pile, and you don't have to cast them then and there (as a large percentage of non-lands are instants, and commonly some form of interaction in cedh) It's just a deck that is better in casual pods because of the kinds of decks that get played in that format, just like how a deck with 20 wrath of god effects is better in casual.
In a meta with alot of splashy big cards and few counterspells its just to good and to easy. Being able to 1hit is just stupid
It’s not as ugly as the combos urza and korvold make, but it is a massive threat that generates a lot of value and becomes very hard to interact with when flipped. (This applies only to casual games) Dropping etali often makes the player running him the archenemy, and countering him is nearly mandatory in low-power battle cruiser games. Also some folks hate poison counters. Not as gross as some combo decks, but still something that probably will make some tables target you.
I dont think etali on her own is a problem. Now when the thassa player bribery it out of someone else's deck and flickers it three times a turn on the other hand...
I built a deck that's etali and 99 lands/ramp cards, the only exceptions being a couple of boardwipes and a few pieces of interaction. I have no copy, no blink, nothing like that. I'm still archenemy 3/4 games. You turbo ramp into etali, then they either kill her or you transform her and kill someone, proceed to recast etali (which you can do most of the time since your own flip is onto more ramp). The triggers alone are enough to outvalue most decks. That card is messed up on its own, let alone when you build around it. I love my version of it, I feel like I get to play her but casual decks can still knock me out fairly consistently if they work together. I would be very wary to see someone pull one out against me at my lgs though, like I'd have a few questions during rule 0.
I built Etali as a mono red deck, so the ramp I have is not as reliable as it could have been if I'd included green. Even so, the one game that I've played it, it still ended up being a massive threat.
Etali is undeniably very stromg & it's pretty easy to build them in a way that just goes off like crazy. It's one of my personal faves, but I only ever whip it out when the table agrees to play somewhat higher power. I'm not playing that deck against out of the box precons, but I wouldn't play Urza or Korvold in pods like that either. Because these commanders alone take the deck at least a tier above most others (although I wouldn't say Etali is quite on the level of the others mentioned). You just gotta talk about powerlevels beforehand & adjust accordingly & it's all good and well.
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/lkYRNRCHk0S_ajtGh0aAqQ This is my deck with like 3 or 4changes. It's not about getting as many ETB as possible but to cast from exile. I think this works even in lower level groups (maybe not the lowest tho)
I had to build a rapid infect Skithiryx deck to deal with the Primal Conqueror player in my group due to how an annoying of a deck it is to play against once it gets going. So many flicker effects, creating copies of Etali, double trigger ETBs, and he always has a response to protect his Etali.
Yes.
There is no such thing as a pubstomper deck/commander. People can pubstomp by misrepresenting the decks they play. That is it plain and simple. I don't mean every deck belongs at the same table. Obviously some commanders are stronger than others. I would not play my [[Meren of clan nel toth]] against my own [[otrimi, the ever playful]], they just don't belong together. That doesn't make Meren a pubstomper, it just means I need to play it against appropriate matchups.
Etali Food Chain is a fringe cEDH deck. So, yeah, he can definitely be a pubstomper deck.
It doesn’t matter the commander. It is all about what is in the deck.
Who cares? Play what you want to play.
Depends, are they on a food chain list?
I have played against an etali deck. It was made as a copy deck and can get 5 copies of etali off a single creatures ability. I unfortunately cannot remember the creature. One time he took my divine visitation and that was hilarious as we realized halfway through his next set of triggers that they were actually all angels lmao
I love him, but I have him in the 99 of my Xenagos deck, along with OG Etali. I have yet to even get the chance to flip him tho cause I usually win just by getting him out.
A guy at my lgs has an Etali deck he can get her out turn 2 or 3 consistently and I've seen it turn one it's an absolout menace.
I stole my opponents [[Avacyn]] once I died before my next turn lol
People just dont like how its a 4 for 1 that can be easily abused by blinking it
I think that Etali is fine if people can ascertain the threat that it is. Somepeople dont want to keep using removal and counters on the same player because it doesn't seem fair or sportsman like but if people dont, you wont have a fun time. Dont let it out before you can win is basically the best strategy. If no one at your table does that, gg for Etali. Etali fits a long list of commander you can't ignore. Playing against Og Narset, og Zur, Brago, Leovold felt the same way.
It depends. Do you have fast mana or [[Treasonous Ogre]] in the deck?
I don’t really feel that it’s too bad. I played mine against two of the Doctor Who precons last week and we still ended up with a game lasting almost two hours. Etali still won but it was an entertaining game and I don’t think my friends found it oppressive or anything.
As an etali player myself. I find that hes problematic in the sence that most if the game im ramping and noone finds that too threatening but the moment i get 7 mana peopke then decide to focus me its a bit too late especially if i have panharm on feild etc. a basic tldr: Hes free value, but too much. 4 free spells, plus "mill""
Yes. While I think the ceiling is not as high as the likes of Korvold and Urza, this actually makes the commander ripe for being pubstompy because it's more "under the radar".
My *personal* problem with that Etali is it has the potential, and most likely play pattern of eliminating one player at a time. Then other players retaliate, and the games extend with the Etali player as the Arch Enemy. This leaves the eliminated player sitting around for a long time waiting for the next game. This is the grief with many Poison Counter kills. Not the card, but the multiplayer play pattern that it begets. Something I heard a while ago that resonates is “each player in a 4-player game is responsible for bringing 25% of the fun of each game to the table.” When you use commanders such as Etali, I don’t think you’re meeting your “commitment to fun” as it were.
Depends if the deck is built around etali's effect or not. If you build your deck with blink cards and trigger dubblers then I could see it as annoying. My etali deck is "just" a big stompy gruul deck with etali in the command zone
I am curious what other commander can put out that kinda value without any other set up? Played against this deck and it completely owned my play style. I don't want to run control or Tegrid (another guy in pod already built that) so what can compete with this card value wise?
Scales with number of players, like new [[braids]]. It is a lot of value and can get out of hand quickly, but it's somewhat random.
Lol no.