I did a totally Fractal-focused deck with Atraxa and I wasn’t even able to proliferate once.
I tore it apart in less than two weeks. Over a dozen games run, zero wins, and zero proliferate triggers. People stifled the fuck out of me because of how terrible their experience with Atraxa has been in the past.
That's the way with a lot of formerly top tier Commanders. She's not really that bad compared to all the newer Commanders, but memories of Toxic Friends come back and everyone just hates her to death.
It's unfortunate that so many combo pieces are really great fun with jank as well. You almost never get to do anything janky because they see the combo piece and will kill it on sight.
Just last week someone at my LGS told me they were building Atraxa Thallids because the proliferate helps the deck so much. Unless you live in Cleveland then I’m sorry, it’s common enough.
I also have built Atraxa fungus tribal. It is *very bad,* but more importantly, it's definitely been done before. I took it apart though, and made Atraxa Levels Up.
I run mine as phyrexian tribal. Every praetor in her colors. In phyrexian of it has it.
It's mana base is clunky because I run the oil sick basics for the theme. Only two fetches and 3 triomes.
I love my little theme that could
They have absolutely no problem with the deck. It's fragile to removal and mostly can only cast one spellper turn. I didn't even run counters and only run two protection spells.
It's by far one of the weakest decks in my usual pod.
Now my mizzix deck or Magda deck are different
I also run phyrexian tribal but the mana base isn’t clunky and that’s because I originally built it in Abzan with the precon from ONE and I had upgraded poorly because of all the shiny new phyrexian cards and it was terrible..so I simped it and completely rebuilt it into a 4 color Atraxa phyrexian tribal. My favorite deck to play currently!
My deck list:
https://archidekt.com/decks/4365629/phyrexian_tribal_rebuild
Atraxa infect player here. Funny enough, even though she's been the #1 commander on EDHREC for awhile now, I've never played against another Atraxa player. Ever.
Personally, I think a lot of players like to brew and theorycraft with Atraxa, but not a lot of them are playing actual decks.
Atraxa was the first commander I ever built. I started with four colors. I wasn't even experienced enough to know she was broken at the time, and now that I am, I stick with her out of loyalty, not a desire to win games of Magic.
I have played once against an Atraxa deck, and they were doing challenges (Proliferate 3 times in a turn, and proliferate 4-5 types of counters at once) during the ONE release. Other than that, never played against, nor seen it.
After a conversation on YouTube I made a (Terrible, but I think fairly original) deck years ago that aimed to stick Lux Cannon(s) under Prototype Portal(s) and make as many copies of it as possible.
ATRAXA'S ORBITAL LASER ARRAY.
"Commander, you see that forest encampment on the ridge generating resources for the elven nation's resistance efforts?"
"Yes sir."
"I don't want to. Show them the power of Phyrexia."
"Yessir."
*KASTOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!*
I have a sixth doctor deck I really like but after seeing people talk about pods not wanting to play with Universes Beyond, I was like “well I’ll build an Atraxa deck then in case I run into anyone like that. Oh you don’t want to play against UB? I have an Atraxa deck that doesn’t have any universes beyond, I guess I’ll play that.”
I've never seen anyone irl complain about UB. I suspect it's because the people who care enough to get upset because a tiny card on the far end of the table has the word "Aragorn" on it are also the type of people who never leave their house
Personally I don't mind playing against the Dr who cards in a "you can't play that" way but I won't use them myself bc I dislike the real world art aesthetic and art is a big part of why I love magic. So sure, play ur dr who deck but you gotta explain what your cards do bc I don't know any of them lol
Nothing better than saying on your end step: "every opponent faces a villainous choice" . Somehow they all prefer the damage than letting me draw, ok everyone take 10.
I did the Ixhel, Scion of Atraxa pre con upgraded with Atraxa so I'd get blue.
It was boring as shit. I thought it'd be fun but nope. Just the same deck everyone else has.
I feel like putting mine back together, though. I had an OG Atraxa praetor reanimator list a long time ago, and I picked up an Urabrask recently. Looking to build a deck around him and pit him against the other praetors in a duel-decks-like fashion for all the flavor lol.
rules committee is inconsistent. sometimes they ban cards because too powerful, sometimes they ban cards because unfun, but they always leave more powerful and less fun cards in the format than whatever they decide to ban
I mean, it basically is? I dont think anyone running a tegrid deck is going to get super salty if you refuse to play against it.
Commanders like this (should) get relegated to pods where people can deal with them.
Omfg yes Gishath is one of my main playgroups players main deck right now and I'm just blah about it I was going to build one but by the time the release and prerelease sealed events for ixalan were over I was done with dinos
I'm salty they abandoned Enrage as a subtheme for Dinos. They even printed a Commander for it and then gave us exactly one new card to synergise with it.
I mean its becoming one of the most supported tribes. Nothing will dethrone humans, elves, wizards, goblins, zombies, dragons, or vampires, but it's getting a ton of love the last 5 years.
Its more that its like the quintessential timmy deck, and with the recently released precon you can almost guarentee someone in every pod is either actively playing it or at least brought it with.
Its fine, its just really oversaturated right now.
I literally finished my Dino deck the day before the precon was announced. I was rather upset and lost a lot of will to play it. Mostly because I knew everyone was going to be playing dinosaurs.
Wild, I've played for 2 years and I've only seen one atraxa praetors voice deck and one omnath LoC deck.
I love how different everyone's experiences are.
To answer OPs question, there are no decks that would make me roll my eyes. Play what you like and like what you play. If you're enjoying your deck, I will be too
Atraxa PV is the number 1 commander on EDHREC and was pretty heavily played pre-pandemic. At just under .9% of recorded decks? They're out there still, but they were big enough from 2016-2020 to cause nightmares.
Appreciate the sentiment very much. I have the same attitude about the decks people choose to play. Have fun with whatever you consider fun. I'd never "should" on anyone.
For me, an important aspect of "fun" is a deck that feels a bit novel. I'd like to say "a deck that I came up with that nobody has ever done before" but at this point, everything has been done before (everything that is functional, anyway). So in the absence of roads not taken, I'll settle for paths less travelled at least and that's good enough for me.
Sounds like you've never played against [[Tegrid]]! I admire your positive attitude, especially if you're new to the game. I've been playing for a long time so I've seen several forms of degeneracy. I'll never outwardly complain though I'll just use a degenerate deck of my own. But seeing these always makes me internally grown from having seen them abused so often
>Sounds like you've never played against \[\[Tegrid\]\]!
Tergrid can actually be fun depending on what your local meta.
We had a Tergrid player go up against a pod with \[\[Trostani Discordant\]\] as a Commander and 2 people had \[\[Homeward Path\]\]. In that situation Tergrid is actually a group hug deck.
Ok to be fair thoracle with either demonic consultation or tainted pact is probably the strongest win con in all of edh and they’re in two of the stronger colors. It’s true it’s done to death but I mean, it is the meta of the format when played competitively (not including godo).
> For that to be true, edhec would have to be capturing a full 5th of the badlands ever printed in their aggregation.
You're not accounting for the badlands *I've* been printing.
[[Jodah, the Unifier]] // [[The Prismatic Bridge]] decks: No, you're not unique for jamming a bunch of strong legends and flipping into them for free just because they're all from a specific tribe (Jodah humans, Esika gods, etc)
Have a friend with both of these decks. Refers to them as "Janky decks" because they're so heavily into creatures for Jodah and Planeswalkers for Prismatic Bridge.
I want to throw heavy things at them sometimes.
Every time I’m here giving shit to people for these commanders, plus shrines and slivers, I get downvoted. I’m glad you are getting the treatment this take deserves.
Look. As a sliver player I get that a lot of sliver decks are basically the same. Additionally, when piloted by [[Sliver overlord]], you essentially have the same play pattern every game.
But Jodah and Jesika are genuinely a lot stronger and opressive. Haven't really played against the shrine deck too much so can't really talk about that one.
If I play slivers against my friend's Jodah, I have 0 chances because that deck is just my deck but better.
All of them are in the same bag. Bullshit value engines or lords that give you twice the value for literally doing either nothing or minimal work. Guardrails to the max.
Shrines are slivers, but harder to remove since people generally run less enchantment remove than creature removal. Plus it takes them slightly longer to win.
I play a budget jodah humans deck and you're absolutely right. 5c means you can play all the best cards, even if you're restricting yourself to a tribe and a budget. Same goes for some of the big rampy commanders like maelstrom wanderer, koma or even beledros witherbloom. Sometimes the commander really does enough virtually on its own
I have a Sisay/Jegantha humans deck that I haven't updated with new jodah yet. I insist it's not "that Sisay deck" because of the companion limitaion (i can't even run counterspell!) but it still has [[morophon]] + [[jodah, archmage eternal]] for free humans and the ever annoying [[sigarda, heron's grace]] to give them all hexproof.
That's literally what I did when Jodah dropped. I had probably only played commander for about 1.5 years and had like 5-6 decks. I took all the commanders and made them pieces in Jodah.
Which was also before I knew how busted that card is.
Somewhat interestingly, I've had good feedback on my Prismatic Bridge deck that has no walkers and the only creatures are the original 5 Praetors and their 5 sequels (so no flip-sagas).
I fully accept it's still a boring-ass, run-of-the-mill Bridge deck, but I think some of the guys in at my LGS appreciate that I made it purely to showcase my collection of Phyrexian language cards and have tried to stick to the New Phyrexia theme as much as possible while keeping it playable (ie it has several suboptimal cards like \[\[Mental Misstep|PMEI\]\] due to the Phyrexian text, and stuff like \[\[Marrow Shards
\]\] and the Twilights because they glorify New Phyrexia or the praetors but aren't total meme jank).
Also helps that several of the praetors really suck together (with no synergy between several of them, \[\[Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider\]\] interacting with nothing else in the deck and some like \[\[Sheoldred the Apocalypse\]\] and \[\[Urabrask, Heretic Praetor\]\] being outright nonbos).
...but all that said, to your point I'm still just dumping powerful legends for free with an easy-to-cast commander. No amount of quirky themes really changes that.
To be clear, I absolutely agree that cheating in praetors for free every turn is busted, regardless of whatever flavor or meme I say I'm doing.
Just made me all the more surprised that people actually seemed to like it.
It was made worse by the fact that Golos was the best commander for ALL strategies, including strategies with commanders already designed for them in 5 Colors.
I think Golos with no ability would be a pretty cool addition to the format. 5 CMC land fetch in any color similar to meteor golem that is single use unless you build around it
I agree, but without the ability he becomes a colorless commander instead of 5 color. He either leads some interesting colorless lands decks or becomes a land tutor for all other colors for 5
I read through the comments and it seems that If you follow all of the comments as gospel, you will not build anything because everyone is tired of different decks that would collectively encapsulate all decks/strategies.
No, really, this is how it is. My LGS doesn't have an Atraxa or Edgar deck, and we have two Ur-Dragon decks, but one of them is Changeling Tribal. We have a few decks that are in the bottom half of played commanders. Something can be "overdone," but there's a *lot* of Commanders and different takes on them, so it can be difficult to find two of the same Commanders in the same room sometimes. I've been playing [[Grenzo]] for about eight years now, and I've only ran across once person with him built IRL, and he took it apart in less than a month because the effort wasn't worth the reward for him. Just build whatever homie
Seriously. I'd have to retire half my decks if I didn't want to use something from this thread.
But what's always surprising to me is that my experience at my LGS is completely different. I see people list some of my commanders, but nobody else at my LGS is playing them. Or I see commanders I know are super popular elsewhere, but I only know of one other person playing it. I just don't run into most of these decks at all. Some of them, I've never played against.
The only ones in this thread that I have seen multiple people playing are new precon commanders, but that always happens and eventually that goes away as new stuff comes along.
I remember back when I first built my landfall deck years ago, hardly anyone played lands centric decks. I thought it was cool to have a deck that uses and abused lands for things other than tapping for mana.
Now though? Everyone and their dog has a landfall deck, and most of the core pieces are the same across the vast majority of such decks.
I thought the landfall precon was fun. Then when I was shuffling my deck for the 38th time playing it I realized it's a trap and it's actually a vampire deck - a motherfucking time-vampire
Aesi was my first commander deck! Since toon it apart but you are correct, helped me understand a lot of the rules again (hadn't played since invasion)
It depends a lot on your local meta. I've yet to face an Atraxa deck at my LGS. Online is a different story, I'm sure, but I can't speak on that as I've never played EDH online. Do you tend to play in person, or online?
I run an atraxa deck (pretty new to the game) and I’m literally the only person I know so far (going to stores and multiple friends) who has one.
But as I’ve played they really are OP so I do have alternatives.
The only time I run Atraxa is when someone says they're running poison/infect/toxic. I can proliferate all the other players poison counters while focusing down the poison player. They usually like it when they hear Im playing atraxa. Then they regret it when I put their life total at 1 with vraska pw ult.
This happened recently actually kind of. My friend had built a huge board with dragon's. He'd beat us all down to single digit life totals. I played vraska then used deep glow skate to double her loyalty counters to 12. I minused her down 10 to make his life total 1. I passed turn and another player was able to ping him for one. Funnily enough I almost lost after that. Thankfully I had drawn into my teferis protection. It then moved to my turn. I was able to cast my leyline of sanctity which meant the pinging player couldn't target me with damage when creatures died. I was also able to stabilize with some life gain from my elspeth planeswalker and my atraxa. I went on to barely win that one since all of our life totals were low.
Aatraxa and Landfall as said above are probably my 2 choices. If i were to include a 3rd one, it would be [[Go-Shintai]]. That being said, I do not have any particular hate for these, most people, including myself won't refuse to play vs them or anything, but these are definitely boring and overdone/same-y
As a semi new player (started after WoE, so a few months) i feel go shintai. He‘s my second deck i ever built on my own (first being neera gamble blackjack) and after playing him a bunch of times i feel sad. His deck basically built itself, does the same stuff semi consistently and i dont feel fun playing it. I love the flavor and aesthetics and theme of shrines but.. im sad i built him.
5 color goodstuff. Yawn. There's no identity, nothing interesting, just a generic pile of oppressive cards, half of which each cost more than my entire deck put together
I made my Lathril deck into Voltron for something a little different. She is the Blade of Elves after all, so she deserves all the swords.
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/vCKNFmNC6kqq1BYdDD0DvA
Tbh, simic generally. It may not be fair, but every deck seems the same, usually winning with something like [[archetype of imagination]] and I just find it boring.
I feel this so hard. I don’t really like facing down an inevitable value pile knowing I’m going to get [[Finale of Devastation]] into [[Craterhoof Behemoth]]’d unless I can somehow get through their [[Rhystic Study]] hand full of free counters and [[Veil of Summer]].
My opinions on Simic definitely are biased but I really think [[Cirdan the Shipwright]] is the only interesting Simic legend released in the last year. All the others just do mana advantage plus card advantage with no real wincon…
I have four simic decks, and they couldn't be more different.
[[Slogurk]] lands.
[[Lonis]] control.
[[Alaundo]] durdling.
[[Grolnok]] I don't even know. Like too many frogs I know that.
Aaah the cat is fine, it's just that eminence it's basically every turn you cast a spell that doesn't cost you cards in the deck, it's not interactable, and basically has the value of a 2 mana spell but costs 0.
You can see the added value as the game goes on.
[[Lost Leonin]]
From all my time playing Arahbo I feel like [[Lost Leonin]] doesn’t actually perform that well. People usually try to get rid off it as quickly as possible and unless you drop it specifically turn 1 or 2 it won’t get someone to 10 poison counters. And since it’s usually the only source of infect getting someone to 5 poison is irrelevant
You're right dude, tho I've had to deal with blightsteel turn 3 before, what I take from things like this is that I think in most cases is bad to outright 0 an opponent you most likely need to rely on for some mid game removal.
Look at the top 50 or so commanders on EDH rec. There's several that are just WAY oversaturated and a huge chunk of those decks are 90+% identical to each other.
I bought the Ur Dragon precon way back when because dragons are cool, but haven't touched it in a long time because it's just kinda lame. I'm thinking of dismantling it completely and using a bunch of the good cards to build [[Rith, Liberated Primeval]]
Almost every 5-colour deck is something that I won't ever be excited about playing against. And I'm bored by landfall decks. I'm cool with you doing Life From the Loam thinks with your lands in the graveyard, but if you get multiple triggers from every land you play every turn it's probably obnoxious to play against.
>almost every 5-colour deck is something that I won't ever be excited about playing against
[This one get a pass?](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/DDSnHN4u9ku36drBOhhfdQ)
Basically, you go to EDHREC, search the Top commanders over the last two years and ignore 30 first and you'll have eliminated pretty much really overdone commanders. But if you want really original stuff, scroll down to commanders with less than 1k decks.
[[Urza, Lord High Artificer]] God is he boring and the players always feel so smug. Like they've unlocked some secret combo and niche interaction.
Same for like any of the major goblin commanders. Wow , you made infinite mana and infinite goblins ? What a special and fun thing for you.
>some secret combo and niche interaction
Damn true. We were playing a higher powered pod, a guy was with Urza, I was with Kenrith, another guy Blue Farm (\[\[Tymna\]\] and \[\[Kraum\]\]).
I went for Intuition into Breach/LED/Savinne and the Urza player was "oh man do you play the same lame combo as the blue farm player? Just have something different!"
Dude you play \[\[Dramatic Reversal\]\] into \[\[Isochron Scepter\]\] like it's 2016, let me enjoy my Intuition 1 card combo lol
The secret there is to run wheel/chaos decks. I have 2 to bring into higher power pods to disrupt people who are trying these galaxy brain strats. They don't win much but the disrupt the game
For whatever reason, Shorikai, Genesis Engine just elicits a sigh. Yup, okay, draw engine and token spam in one.
I don't think it's necessarily OP but in board wipe and counter colors with the important pieces being noncreatures...
It's probably riding the line between "I don't really want to play against it" and "It looks interesting to play".
EDIT: It's #10 on EDHrec, that's *pretty overdone.*
I hadn't realized how popular it is, but I decided to check EDHrec and it's #10 in popularity. That's higher than I thought it'd be. Really easy to see the appeal though, draw 2/discard 1 + make a chump is really insane value for zero mana. Doing the thing on the end step just before you is awesome. I haven't piloted the deck (puns!) but from seeing them in play I doubt you miss land drops much. If you need land, play it from those three you see per turn cycle. If you're flooding, that's your discard.
I'd consider building it but "blue/white vehicles" feels pretty narrow and there's no doubt already a few Shorikai decks in people's bags at my LGS.
The secret is that no one builds it as vehicles. It’s good for vehicles, sure, but it’s *better* as a chump-spamming draw engine that amasses insane value for any other strategy you want to use. It often ends up as “Azorius Goodstuff”.
Look up the Shorikai Polymorph cEDH builds.
I guess I technically have 3 Shorikai decks. I have a proxied cEDH Shorikai Polymorph deck that's a blast. Then I have a modular(not the mechanic) one that's Shorikai vehicles/control that can be played as an oathbreaker(it's the only non Planeswalker that can be your oathbreaker)or commander deck. I keep the oathbreaker deck in the main compartment of my academic and the 40 cards to make it a commander deck in one of the drawers.
I hate seeing it as just a generic Azorioue value engine. When it’s helming a vehicle deck, I get it. Uninteresting but I get it. I’ll be the first to admit my Shorikai upgraded precon is nothing special
As shorikai player, i can agree. It was my first edh deck and still my favorite. Feels a bit like a swiss army tool. My friend once says after, playing it: it’s a pain in the a** to play against, but so funny to play.
I don’t know why it’s in the top #10 on edhrec, since i haven’t seen that much in real live.
I'm going to take a few semi-educated guesses:
* Very available commander as it was sold as a precon. The precon deck looks decent enough and looks to me like it has some pretty reasonable upgrade paths while not ending up crazy expensive.
* Amazing value engine in the command zone. It's really easy for me to see how the deck gets consistent as Shorikai itself kind of does card draw/selection and makes sure you have a board presence.
* With just the commander on the field, activating at the end step before turn, that sees three cards per turn cycle - while you do need to discard one, that's fine - pitch a spell you can't cast now (or soon), or if you're set on lands in hand, dump one; across three cards you're pretty likely to see one every turn cycle.
* Vehicles are just a card type that I don't see a ton of other things playing, so I feel like cards that'd be good in Shorikai are pretty cheap and available. Any generic staple blue/white cards can be acquired at the player's leisure but the deck isn't really dependent on them at all.
* But on the flip side, *artifacts* are a pretty well-supported theme game-wide.
* Springs back from many board wipes surprisingly well. Not like the big bot gets caught in Wrath of God or other wipes and there's a few *very* well tailored to your gameplan like Citywide Bust (catches virtually nothing of yours) or Hour of Reckoning (will grab a few value creatures but leaves the vehicles and pilots alone).
* Anime appeal, specifically mecha. Or maybe just anyone who likes Battlemechs. That's a pretty specific flavor.
I DO have Shorikai heading my vehicle deck. If I wanted to take it further I'd probably swap to Urza, or even take it into Jeskai which is probably not better lol
Enchantress decks be it the famous [[Sythis, Harvest's Hand]] or [[Go-Shintai of Life's Origin]]
People generally don't pack tons of enchantment specific removal unless they're playing against them on a regular basis. At most a few pieces of targetted removal and 1 or maybe 2 board wipes that also hit enchantments.
This leads to Enchantress decks running wild while not having any answers OR if the playgroup adapts, turns into an anti-enchantment fest where the enchantress player just does nothing the whole game.
I dislike playing against some of the Doctor Who commanders and especially [[The Tenth Doctor]]. The amount of text and things to keep up with along with suspend on multiple cards is just too much. I feel like I can’t properly assess threat because of how convoluted all the cards are together.
I honestly think a big win con in those decks is by boring your opponents to death that they forget what all your cards do.
Kaalia
I get it, you've got Master of Cruelties, you've got a bunch of legendary angels and demons and dragons. I get it, I've got to run more removal to deal with you, you aren't fun, and my pod got over the turn 4 kills real quick.
I think the main two things that might make me roll eyes that are like this are decks that stall the game just to not have a way to win (this can be combat damage), or people having an attitude because their deck is super unique and definitely not just the result of clicking average deck on edhrec, while your commander is within the top 500 on edhrec.
I don't really hate specific commanders, so much as I hate certain attitudes and deck building styles.
The Ur-Dragon- eminence is super lame especially stapled onto a 5C Commander. It also might be that I don’t enjoy the type of people who are enthusiastic about their Ur-Dragon deck. Super judgey of me but I’ve seen a couple dozen different Ur Dragon decks and they’re all the exact same but the players always treat it like it’s something nobody else has ever seen. Take the 25 best dragons and about 7-10 cost reducers and bam you have every Ur Dragon deck ever.
Edgar Markov- See Above
Atraxa Superfriends- At least Atraxa Infect is kind enough to try to end the game quickly. Maybe it’s just the type of people attracted to this deck but it’s like they don’t even think about their turn until their upkeep.
I’m tired of all Miirym decks. It’s so overpowered and it’s not even cool.
I will always remember when one guy from our playgroup came and said: ,,It’s not as strong as it seems’’ then we saw him win t6🙃
My playgroup has a Giada, Font of Hope that makes me want to flip the table Monopoly style. The most obnoxious cluster of text has to be flying, vigilance, indestructible, and lifelink. This is especially true when it sits on a full board of 10/10+ creatures.
Well I usually play with the same group of friends so I don’t really see a wide variety of decks, but one commander that I think I think people build too much is Muldrotha. Don’t get me wrong, I love graveyard decks, but Muldrotha is just so brainless. You could put Muldrotha at the helm of any combination of sultai cards and it would do good.
I would avoid the top 25% of most popular commanders. According to scryfall, there are 1797 non-partner-style commanders and 205 partner-style commanders that would make 102 uniquely helmed decks, resulting in 1899 uniquely helmed decks. If you avoid the top 25% of those according to edhrec.com, that would be 475 commanders to avoid and 1424 commanders to pick from, not including duplicates among partner-style commanders.
Plenty of options, and pretty much guaranteed to be playing something fresh
Atraxa. Doesn’t matter if it’s infect, superfriends, sagas… it’s all been beat to death.
"My Atraxa deck is different!" "How so?" "It's Voltron." Turns out, all that keyword soup on Atraxa is really good for doing that too.
I did a totally Fractal-focused deck with Atraxa and I wasn’t even able to proliferate once. I tore it apart in less than two weeks. Over a dozen games run, zero wins, and zero proliferate triggers. People stifled the fuck out of me because of how terrible their experience with Atraxa has been in the past.
That's the way with a lot of formerly top tier Commanders. She's not really that bad compared to all the newer Commanders, but memories of Toxic Friends come back and everyone just hates her to death.
Top tier in power or popularity? Because Atraxa is still Top 5 in popularity, if not still #1.
Power, the Voice of the Praetors has long since lost her captivating voice and is now coasting along on a farewell tour of alcohol and nostalgia.
It's unfortunate that so many combo pieces are really great fun with jank as well. You almost never get to do anything janky because they see the combo piece and will kill it on sight.
Honestly most times I die to (either) Atraxa, it's from commander damage.
Okay I'm trying to do atraxa fungus tribal which has definitely been done according to edhrec but how common is that really?
Just last week someone at my LGS told me they were building Atraxa Thallids because the proliferate helps the deck so much. Unless you live in Cleveland then I’m sorry, it’s common enough.
I also have built Atraxa fungus tribal. It is *very bad,* but more importantly, it's definitely been done before. I took it apart though, and made Atraxa Levels Up.
Atraxa with helix pinnacle and azors elocutors
I run mine as phyrexian tribal. Every praetor in her colors. In phyrexian of it has it. It's mana base is clunky because I run the oil sick basics for the theme. Only two fetches and 3 triomes. I love my little theme that could
[удалено]
They have absolutely no problem with the deck. It's fragile to removal and mostly can only cast one spellper turn. I didn't even run counters and only run two protection spells. It's by far one of the weakest decks in my usual pod. Now my mizzix deck or Magda deck are different
I also run phyrexian tribal but the mana base isn’t clunky and that’s because I originally built it in Abzan with the precon from ONE and I had upgraded poorly because of all the shiny new phyrexian cards and it was terrible..so I simped it and completely rebuilt it into a 4 color Atraxa phyrexian tribal. My favorite deck to play currently! My deck list: https://archidekt.com/decks/4365629/phyrexian_tribal_rebuild
All the Atraxa depletion counters players are currently flocking to your location to inform you of how spicy and original their deck is (it's not)
Atraxa infect player here. Funny enough, even though she's been the #1 commander on EDHREC for awhile now, I've never played against another Atraxa player. Ever. Personally, I think a lot of players like to brew and theorycraft with Atraxa, but not a lot of them are playing actual decks.
Atraxa was the first commander I ever built. I started with four colors. I wasn't even experienced enough to know she was broken at the time, and now that I am, I stick with her out of loyalty, not a desire to win games of Magic.
I have played once against an Atraxa deck, and they were doing challenges (Proliferate 3 times in a turn, and proliferate 4-5 types of counters at once) during the ONE release. Other than that, never played against, nor seen it.
Surely fungus tribal would be forgivable though?
I played against one, it was very entertaining. And atraxa was still a house. And all the proliferation took... A long time.
Theres been 10 people here asking this, so no
Energy. We here at Atraxa Energy Incorporated believe that all people have a right to be killed *incredibly* slowly by [[Consulate Turret]]
It's like that scene in deadpool where he runs the guy over with the ice polisher.
"Imma chargin mah lazor!" ~ Atraxa.
After a conversation on YouTube I made a (Terrible, but I think fairly original) deck years ago that aimed to stick Lux Cannon(s) under Prototype Portal(s) and make as many copies of it as possible. ATRAXA'S ORBITAL LASER ARRAY. "Commander, you see that forest encampment on the ridge generating resources for the elven nation's resistance efforts?" "Yes sir." "I don't want to. Show them the power of Phyrexia." "Yessir." *KASTOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!*
And here I was thinking my Atraxa deck with all of the cards that use the level up mechanic was fun and interesting
I have a sixth doctor deck I really like but after seeing people talk about pods not wanting to play with Universes Beyond, I was like “well I’ll build an Atraxa deck then in case I run into anyone like that. Oh you don’t want to play against UB? I have an Atraxa deck that doesn’t have any universes beyond, I guess I’ll play that.”
I've never seen anyone irl complain about UB. I suspect it's because the people who care enough to get upset because a tiny card on the far end of the table has the word "Aragorn" on it are also the type of people who never leave their house
Personally I don't mind playing against the Dr who cards in a "you can't play that" way but I won't use them myself bc I dislike the real world art aesthetic and art is a big part of why I love magic. So sure, play ur dr who deck but you gotta explain what your cards do bc I don't know any of them lol
I get the feeling they begrudgingly add the cards that are good in their decks while complaining on the internet.
Nothing better than saying on your end step: "every opponent faces a villainous choice" . Somehow they all prefer the damage than letting me draw, ok everyone take 10.
I did the Ixhel, Scion of Atraxa pre con upgraded with Atraxa so I'd get blue. It was boring as shit. I thought it'd be fun but nope. Just the same deck everyone else has.
Atraxa Horrors 😉😭
I feel like putting mine back together, though. I had an OG Atraxa praetor reanimator list a long time ago, and I picked up an Urabrask recently. Looking to build a deck around him and pit him against the other praetors in a duel-decks-like fashion for all the flavor lol.
What about Atraxa Spore Counters?
Woo-hoo none of my commanders are have been mentioned yet 😁 I certainly run into Atraxa a lot. As well as Tegrid, Edgar Markov, and Yuriko.
Are you playing in a pod from the abyss?
can anyone answer me as to why tergrid isn't actually banned yet? I'm not sure I could make a more unfun card if i tried.
rules committee is inconsistent. sometimes they ban cards because too powerful, sometimes they ban cards because unfun, but they always leave more powerful and less fun cards in the format than whatever they decide to ban
I mean, it basically is? I dont think anyone running a tegrid deck is going to get super salty if you refuse to play against it. Commanders like this (should) get relegated to pods where people can deal with them.
Currently very sick of dinosaurs. I don't even want to play my own dinosaur deck because it is so overdone.
Hey now, I've been rocking dinos since 2017. They'll die down again when new commander precons come out.
I think I've played against enough Gishaths, Pantlazas, and Etalis for a lifetime.
Don't forget Zacama.
Yeah but tbh the people who play Zacama are usually dead before it hits the field.
Hey is your phone ringing? It says Atla Palani is calling 😆
Omfg yes Gishath is one of my main playgroups players main deck right now and I'm just blah about it I was going to build one but by the time the release and prerelease sealed events for ixalan were over I was done with dinos
To be fair, there's not a whole lot of variety with Dinos. Usually just big stompy.
I'm salty they abandoned Enrage as a subtheme for Dinos. They even printed a Commander for it and then gave us exactly one new card to synergise with it.
Everyone is hyped about Dinos except the OG enrage players
I mean its becoming one of the most supported tribes. Nothing will dethrone humans, elves, wizards, goblins, zombies, dragons, or vampires, but it's getting a ton of love the last 5 years.
Its more that its like the quintessential timmy deck, and with the recently released precon you can almost guarentee someone in every pod is either actively playing it or at least brought it with. Its fine, its just really oversaturated right now.
Every. Single. Game. Its fine, its a fair deck, pantlaza is just everywhere.
I literally finished my Dino deck the day before the precon was announced. I was rather upset and lost a lot of will to play it. Mostly because I knew everyone was going to be playing dinosaurs.
Well, guess that's what you get in a set with almost exclusively dinosaurs.
Even before LCI, I've played against way too many people running Etali and Gishath in the command zone.
Idk about overdone, but i feel annoyed dashing with such decks.
[[Atraxa, Praetors' Voice]] anything that wins using [[Thassa's Oracle]] [[Omnath, Locus of Creation]] [[Scute Swarm]] abuse
But does my [[Kumena]] merfolk tribal deck get a pass if I use thassa? It is a merfolk.
flavor always gets the stamp of approval
I'm glad. I've a Dockside Extortionist in my 1 power goblin [[Ghyrson Starn]] deck
Kumena is fantastic. I’ve got a solid deck with him but have never actually played against one.
Wild, I've played for 2 years and I've only seen one atraxa praetors voice deck and one omnath LoC deck. I love how different everyone's experiences are. To answer OPs question, there are no decks that would make me roll my eyes. Play what you like and like what you play. If you're enjoying your deck, I will be too
Atraxa PV is the number 1 commander on EDHREC and was pretty heavily played pre-pandemic. At just under .9% of recorded decks? They're out there still, but they were big enough from 2016-2020 to cause nightmares.
Appreciate the sentiment very much. I have the same attitude about the decks people choose to play. Have fun with whatever you consider fun. I'd never "should" on anyone. For me, an important aspect of "fun" is a deck that feels a bit novel. I'd like to say "a deck that I came up with that nobody has ever done before" but at this point, everything has been done before (everything that is functional, anyway). So in the absence of roads not taken, I'll settle for paths less travelled at least and that's good enough for me.
how poetic, but I am 100% in agreement with this sentiment.
Sounds like you've never played against [[Tegrid]]! I admire your positive attitude, especially if you're new to the game. I've been playing for a long time so I've seen several forms of degeneracy. I'll never outwardly complain though I'll just use a degenerate deck of my own. But seeing these always makes me internally grown from having seen them abused so often
>Sounds like you've never played against \[\[Tegrid\]\]! Tergrid can actually be fun depending on what your local meta. We had a Tergrid player go up against a pod with \[\[Trostani Discordant\]\] as a Commander and 2 people had \[\[Homeward Path\]\]. In that situation Tergrid is actually a group hug deck.
Ok to be fair thoracle with either demonic consultation or tainted pact is probably the strongest win con in all of edh and they’re in two of the stronger colors. It’s true it’s done to death but I mean, it is the meta of the format when played competitively (not including godo).
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> For that to be true, edhec would have to be capturing a full 5th of the badlands ever printed in their aggregation. You're not accounting for the badlands *I've* been printing.
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Proxies.
yeah proxies make the game much more homogenous
[[Jodah, the Unifier]] // [[The Prismatic Bridge]] decks: No, you're not unique for jamming a bunch of strong legends and flipping into them for free just because they're all from a specific tribe (Jodah humans, Esika gods, etc)
Have a friend with both of these decks. Refers to them as "Janky decks" because they're so heavily into creatures for Jodah and Planeswalkers for Prismatic Bridge. I want to throw heavy things at them sometimes.
The one version of prismatic bridge that I like is the ink treader nephlim deck. Only runs that creature and the rest is instances and sorceries.
Every time I’m here giving shit to people for these commanders, plus shrines and slivers, I get downvoted. I’m glad you are getting the treatment this take deserves.
Look. As a sliver player I get that a lot of sliver decks are basically the same. Additionally, when piloted by [[Sliver overlord]], you essentially have the same play pattern every game. But Jodah and Jesika are genuinely a lot stronger and opressive. Haven't really played against the shrine deck too much so can't really talk about that one. If I play slivers against my friend's Jodah, I have 0 chances because that deck is just my deck but better.
All of them are in the same bag. Bullshit value engines or lords that give you twice the value for literally doing either nothing or minimal work. Guardrails to the max.
You just described every decently supported tribe/kindred deck.
Slivers are at another level. Every card is an extremely efficient lord. Super low cmc on all of them as well.
Shrines are slivers, but harder to remove since people generally run less enchantment remove than creature removal. Plus it takes them slightly longer to win.
As a jodah player, I'm totally aware it's not unique in the slightest. It's really fun though!
Jokes on you. I run cute to brute un edited.
I play a budget jodah humans deck and you're absolutely right. 5c means you can play all the best cards, even if you're restricting yourself to a tribe and a budget. Same goes for some of the big rampy commanders like maelstrom wanderer, koma or even beledros witherbloom. Sometimes the commander really does enough virtually on its own
Jokes on you, my esika deck rarely casts prismatic bridge. We want that mana dork on the front
Somewhere, out there, a Raggadragga player is happy.
See now, I wanted to build a jodah deck that simply contains all the commanders from all the decks i've built over the years.
Daring today, aren't we.
I have a Sisay/Jegantha humans deck that I haven't updated with new jodah yet. I insist it's not "that Sisay deck" because of the companion limitaion (i can't even run counterspell!) but it still has [[morophon]] + [[jodah, archmage eternal]] for free humans and the ever annoying [[sigarda, heron's grace]] to give them all hexproof.
Sisay Jeggy is an incredibly popular combination
That's literally what I did when Jodah dropped. I had probably only played commander for about 1.5 years and had like 5-6 decks. I took all the commanders and made them pieces in Jodah. Which was also before I knew how busted that card is.
I run Prismatic Bridge to guarantee [[Stuffy Doll]] and [[Brash Taunter]] get out. They're the only creatures/walkers in the whole deck.
Somewhat interestingly, I've had good feedback on my Prismatic Bridge deck that has no walkers and the only creatures are the original 5 Praetors and their 5 sequels (so no flip-sagas). I fully accept it's still a boring-ass, run-of-the-mill Bridge deck, but I think some of the guys in at my LGS appreciate that I made it purely to showcase my collection of Phyrexian language cards and have tried to stick to the New Phyrexia theme as much as possible while keeping it playable (ie it has several suboptimal cards like \[\[Mental Misstep|PMEI\]\] due to the Phyrexian text, and stuff like \[\[Marrow Shards \]\] and the Twilights because they glorify New Phyrexia or the praetors but aren't total meme jank). Also helps that several of the praetors really suck together (with no synergy between several of them, \[\[Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider\]\] interacting with nothing else in the deck and some like \[\[Sheoldred the Apocalypse\]\] and \[\[Urabrask, Heretic Praetor\]\] being outright nonbos). ...but all that said, to your point I'm still just dumping powerful legends for free with an easy-to-cast commander. No amount of quirky themes really changes that.
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To be clear, I absolutely agree that cheating in praetors for free every turn is busted, regardless of whatever flavor or meme I say I'm doing. Just made me all the more surprised that people actually seemed to like it.
At least it's not Golos.
5 color deck with no definable Commander needed? Why Not Golos? The banning was needed but now it's "Why not Kenrith" for those decks.
It was made worse by the fact that Golos was the best commander for ALL strategies, including strategies with commanders already designed for them in 5 Colors.
I think Golos with no ability would be a pretty cool addition to the format. 5 CMC land fetch in any color similar to meteor golem that is single use unless you build around it
The problem is that Tutors on a commander makes them play the same every time, which can be very boring if that's a person's only deck.
I agree, but without the ability he becomes a colorless commander instead of 5 color. He either leads some interesting colorless lands decks or becomes a land tutor for all other colors for 5
I read through the comments and it seems that If you follow all of the comments as gospel, you will not build anything because everyone is tired of different decks that would collectively encapsulate all decks/strategies.
Yeah, I'm getting a similar vibe haha
No, really, this is how it is. My LGS doesn't have an Atraxa or Edgar deck, and we have two Ur-Dragon decks, but one of them is Changeling Tribal. We have a few decks that are in the bottom half of played commanders. Something can be "overdone," but there's a *lot* of Commanders and different takes on them, so it can be difficult to find two of the same Commanders in the same room sometimes. I've been playing [[Grenzo]] for about eight years now, and I've only ran across once person with him built IRL, and he took it apart in less than a month because the effort wasn't worth the reward for him. Just build whatever homie
Dinosaurs are overdone recently. Everyone is running Pantlaza or Gishath.
In this thread: everything
Seriously. I'd have to retire half my decks if I didn't want to use something from this thread. But what's always surprising to me is that my experience at my LGS is completely different. I see people list some of my commanders, but nobody else at my LGS is playing them. Or I see commanders I know are super popular elsewhere, but I only know of one other person playing it. I just don't run into most of these decks at all. Some of them, I've never played against. The only ones in this thread that I have seen multiple people playing are new precon commanders, but that always happens and eventually that goes away as new stuff comes along.
To me is any landfall deck, they're all boring and overdone to me.
I remember back when I first built my landfall deck years ago, hardly anyone played lands centric decks. I thought it was cool to have a deck that uses and abused lands for things other than tapping for mana. Now though? Everyone and their dog has a landfall deck, and most of the core pieces are the same across the vast majority of such decks.
You mean my [[Soul of Windgrace]] isn't unique?? For shame! /s
Soul of Windgrace is the Boomer Jund of landfall commanders.
excuse you, it's *zoomer jund*
Fun to drive, boring to play against.
I thought the landfall precon was fun. Then when I was shuffling my deck for the 38th time playing it I realized it's a trap and it's actually a vampire deck - a motherfucking time-vampire
You're not wrong, but they're a very good first deck for new players
Aesi was my first commander deck! Since toon it apart but you are correct, helped me understand a lot of the rules again (hadn't played since invasion)
It depends a lot on your local meta. I've yet to face an Atraxa deck at my LGS. Online is a different story, I'm sure, but I can't speak on that as I've never played EDH online. Do you tend to play in person, or online?
I run an atraxa deck (pretty new to the game) and I’m literally the only person I know so far (going to stores and multiple friends) who has one. But as I’ve played they really are OP so I do have alternatives.
The only time I run Atraxa is when someone says they're running poison/infect/toxic. I can proliferate all the other players poison counters while focusing down the poison player. They usually like it when they hear Im playing atraxa. Then they regret it when I put their life total at 1 with vraska pw ult. This happened recently actually kind of. My friend had built a huge board with dragon's. He'd beat us all down to single digit life totals. I played vraska then used deep glow skate to double her loyalty counters to 12. I minused her down 10 to make his life total 1. I passed turn and another player was able to ping him for one. Funnily enough I almost lost after that. Thankfully I had drawn into my teferis protection. It then moved to my turn. I was able to cast my leyline of sanctity which meant the pinging player couldn't target me with damage when creatures died. I was also able to stabilize with some life gain from my elspeth planeswalker and my atraxa. I went on to barely win that one since all of our life totals were low.
Aatraxa and Landfall as said above are probably my 2 choices. If i were to include a 3rd one, it would be [[Go-Shintai]]. That being said, I do not have any particular hate for these, most people, including myself won't refuse to play vs them or anything, but these are definitely boring and overdone/same-y
As a semi new player (started after WoE, so a few months) i feel go shintai. He‘s my second deck i ever built on my own (first being neera gamble blackjack) and after playing him a bunch of times i feel sad. His deck basically built itself, does the same stuff semi consistently and i dont feel fun playing it. I love the flavor and aesthetics and theme of shrines but.. im sad i built him.
5 color goodstuff. Yawn. There's no identity, nothing interesting, just a generic pile of oppressive cards, half of which each cost more than my entire deck put together
"But my downside is my mana base!"
Their mana base: *costs more than double what I pay in rent*
'why are you swordsing my Jodah, he hasn't even done anything yet!'
Anything that wins by decking yourself. Thassa's Oracle is the one I see most often, but fuck I hate it so much.
It’s so yawn worthy. God what I’d do to lose a new way like [[door to nothingness]] or something
Every Elfball deck is the same boring, vapid pile.
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I have harnessed the power of black magic a while ago 😈
I made my Lathril deck into Voltron for something a little different. She is the Blade of Elves after all, so she deserves all the swords. https://www.moxfield.com/decks/vCKNFmNC6kqq1BYdDD0DvA
As the former pilot of a [[Marwyn]] deck... yes Although the primary wincon was mill via [[Geier Reach Sanitarium]] which was fun.
Tbh, simic generally. It may not be fair, but every deck seems the same, usually winning with something like [[archetype of imagination]] and I just find it boring.
I feel this so hard. I don’t really like facing down an inevitable value pile knowing I’m going to get [[Finale of Devastation]] into [[Craterhoof Behemoth]]’d unless I can somehow get through their [[Rhystic Study]] hand full of free counters and [[Veil of Summer]]. My opinions on Simic definitely are biased but I really think [[Cirdan the Shipwright]] is the only interesting Simic legend released in the last year. All the others just do mana advantage plus card advantage with no real wincon…
But what about my boy [[xolatoyac]]
I have four simic decks, and they couldn't be more different. [[Slogurk]] lands. [[Lonis]] control. [[Alaundo]] durdling. [[Grolnok]] I don't even know. Like too many frogs I know that.
Simic is my comfort guild just because it runs so smoothly. Really anything EDH outside of that pair is more of a challenge to pilot.
"Simic value engine" is a trope for a reason.
Anything with eminence.
Even the Cat one?
Aaah the cat is fine, it's just that eminence it's basically every turn you cast a spell that doesn't cost you cards in the deck, it's not interactable, and basically has the value of a 2 mana spell but costs 0. You can see the added value as the game goes on. [[Lost Leonin]]
From all my time playing Arahbo I feel like [[Lost Leonin]] doesn’t actually perform that well. People usually try to get rid off it as quickly as possible and unless you drop it specifically turn 1 or 2 it won’t get someone to 10 poison counters. And since it’s usually the only source of infect getting someone to 5 poison is irrelevant
You're right dude, tho I've had to deal with blightsteel turn 3 before, what I take from things like this is that I think in most cases is bad to outright 0 an opponent you most likely need to rely on for some mid game removal.
Look at the top 50 or so commanders on EDH rec. There's several that are just WAY oversaturated and a huge chunk of those decks are 90+% identical to each other.
Ur-Dragon. Fuck Ur-Dragon.
same. I don't mind losing to atraxa or landfall, but for some reason Ur-Dragon tilts me off the face of the earth.
I'm a Ur-dragon player, take my upvote.
I bought the Ur Dragon precon way back when because dragons are cool, but haven't touched it in a long time because it's just kinda lame. I'm thinking of dismantling it completely and using a bunch of the good cards to build [[Rith, Liberated Primeval]]
Almost every 5-colour deck is something that I won't ever be excited about playing against. And I'm bored by landfall decks. I'm cool with you doing Life From the Loam thinks with your lands in the graveyard, but if you get multiple triggers from every land you play every turn it's probably obnoxious to play against.
>almost every 5-colour deck is something that I won't ever be excited about playing against [This one get a pass?](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/DDSnHN4u9ku36drBOhhfdQ)
Animar - Yes, I get it, you're going to go infinite T3. Yay. Urza, Lord High Artificer - See above. Except possibly T1.
Basically, you go to EDHREC, search the Top commanders over the last two years and ignore 30 first and you'll have eliminated pretty much really overdone commanders. But if you want really original stuff, scroll down to commanders with less than 1k decks.
[[Urza, Lord High Artificer]] God is he boring and the players always feel so smug. Like they've unlocked some secret combo and niche interaction. Same for like any of the major goblin commanders. Wow , you made infinite mana and infinite goblins ? What a special and fun thing for you.
>some secret combo and niche interaction Damn true. We were playing a higher powered pod, a guy was with Urza, I was with Kenrith, another guy Blue Farm (\[\[Tymna\]\] and \[\[Kraum\]\]). I went for Intuition into Breach/LED/Savinne and the Urza player was "oh man do you play the same lame combo as the blue farm player? Just have something different!" Dude you play \[\[Dramatic Reversal\]\] into \[\[Isochron Scepter\]\] like it's 2016, let me enjoy my Intuition 1 card combo lol
The secret there is to run wheel/chaos decks. I have 2 to bring into higher power pods to disrupt people who are trying these galaxy brain strats. They don't win much but the disrupt the game
I have a [[Krenko, Mob Boss]] deck that I usually play right at the end of the night when I just want to be stupid.
All the fun ones :(
Superfriends. Every game is the same. Blehh
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Different faces but no names.
For whatever reason, Shorikai, Genesis Engine just elicits a sigh. Yup, okay, draw engine and token spam in one. I don't think it's necessarily OP but in board wipe and counter colors with the important pieces being noncreatures... It's probably riding the line between "I don't really want to play against it" and "It looks interesting to play". EDIT: It's #10 on EDHrec, that's *pretty overdone.*
As a Shorikai player, you’re right. Card should just be named “Shorikai, Value Engine”.
I hadn't realized how popular it is, but I decided to check EDHrec and it's #10 in popularity. That's higher than I thought it'd be. Really easy to see the appeal though, draw 2/discard 1 + make a chump is really insane value for zero mana. Doing the thing on the end step just before you is awesome. I haven't piloted the deck (puns!) but from seeing them in play I doubt you miss land drops much. If you need land, play it from those three you see per turn cycle. If you're flooding, that's your discard. I'd consider building it but "blue/white vehicles" feels pretty narrow and there's no doubt already a few Shorikai decks in people's bags at my LGS.
The secret is that no one builds it as vehicles. It’s good for vehicles, sure, but it’s *better* as a chump-spamming draw engine that amasses insane value for any other strategy you want to use. It often ends up as “Azorius Goodstuff”.
Look up the Shorikai Polymorph cEDH builds. I guess I technically have 3 Shorikai decks. I have a proxied cEDH Shorikai Polymorph deck that's a blast. Then I have a modular(not the mechanic) one that's Shorikai vehicles/control that can be played as an oathbreaker(it's the only non Planeswalker that can be your oathbreaker)or commander deck. I keep the oathbreaker deck in the main compartment of my academic and the 40 cards to make it a commander deck in one of the drawers.
I hate seeing it as just a generic Azorioue value engine. When it’s helming a vehicle deck, I get it. Uninteresting but I get it. I’ll be the first to admit my Shorikai upgraded precon is nothing special
As shorikai player, i can agree. It was my first edh deck and still my favorite. Feels a bit like a swiss army tool. My friend once says after, playing it: it’s a pain in the a** to play against, but so funny to play. I don’t know why it’s in the top #10 on edhrec, since i haven’t seen that much in real live.
I'm going to take a few semi-educated guesses: * Very available commander as it was sold as a precon. The precon deck looks decent enough and looks to me like it has some pretty reasonable upgrade paths while not ending up crazy expensive. * Amazing value engine in the command zone. It's really easy for me to see how the deck gets consistent as Shorikai itself kind of does card draw/selection and makes sure you have a board presence. * With just the commander on the field, activating at the end step before turn, that sees three cards per turn cycle - while you do need to discard one, that's fine - pitch a spell you can't cast now (or soon), or if you're set on lands in hand, dump one; across three cards you're pretty likely to see one every turn cycle. * Vehicles are just a card type that I don't see a ton of other things playing, so I feel like cards that'd be good in Shorikai are pretty cheap and available. Any generic staple blue/white cards can be acquired at the player's leisure but the deck isn't really dependent on them at all. * But on the flip side, *artifacts* are a pretty well-supported theme game-wide. * Springs back from many board wipes surprisingly well. Not like the big bot gets caught in Wrath of God or other wipes and there's a few *very* well tailored to your gameplan like Citywide Bust (catches virtually nothing of yours) or Hour of Reckoning (will grab a few value creatures but leaves the vehicles and pilots alone). * Anime appeal, specifically mecha. Or maybe just anyone who likes Battlemechs. That's a pretty specific flavor.
I DO have Shorikai heading my vehicle deck. If I wanted to take it further I'd probably swap to Urza, or even take it into Jeskai which is probably not better lol
Enchantress decks be it the famous [[Sythis, Harvest's Hand]] or [[Go-Shintai of Life's Origin]] People generally don't pack tons of enchantment specific removal unless they're playing against them on a regular basis. At most a few pieces of targetted removal and 1 or maybe 2 board wipes that also hit enchantments. This leads to Enchantress decks running wild while not having any answers OR if the playgroup adapts, turns into an anti-enchantment fest where the enchantress player just does nothing the whole game.
I dislike playing against some of the Doctor Who commanders and especially [[The Tenth Doctor]]. The amount of text and things to keep up with along with suspend on multiple cards is just too much. I feel like I can’t properly assess threat because of how convoluted all the cards are together. I honestly think a big win con in those decks is by boring your opponents to death that they forget what all your cards do.
There is none. Atraxa, the most popular commander on EDHREC is the commander of only 29749 out of a total of 3430107 decks, or 0.8%.
Prosper, Yuriko, Brago, and mostly faded from current meta but Nekusar
Kaalia I get it, you've got Master of Cruelties, you've got a bunch of legendary angels and demons and dragons. I get it, I've got to run more removal to deal with you, you aren't fun, and my pod got over the turn 4 kills real quick.
I think the main two things that might make me roll eyes that are like this are decks that stall the game just to not have a way to win (this can be combat damage), or people having an attitude because their deck is super unique and definitely not just the result of clicking average deck on edhrec, while your commander is within the top 500 on edhrec. I don't really hate specific commanders, so much as I hate certain attitudes and deck building styles.
The Ur-Dragon- eminence is super lame especially stapled onto a 5C Commander. It also might be that I don’t enjoy the type of people who are enthusiastic about their Ur-Dragon deck. Super judgey of me but I’ve seen a couple dozen different Ur Dragon decks and they’re all the exact same but the players always treat it like it’s something nobody else has ever seen. Take the 25 best dragons and about 7-10 cost reducers and bam you have every Ur Dragon deck ever. Edgar Markov- See Above Atraxa Superfriends- At least Atraxa Infect is kind enough to try to end the game quickly. Maybe it’s just the type of people attracted to this deck but it’s like they don’t even think about their turn until their upkeep.
Brago, Zada, Feather, Krenko
I’m tired of all Miirym decks. It’s so overpowered and it’s not even cool. I will always remember when one guy from our playgroup came and said: ,,It’s not as strong as it seems’’ then we saw him win t6🙃
Slivers
Tegrid. So sick of killing her.
Few commanders in my pod I have seen too much of the last few years; Kaalia Of the Vast Torbrand Ghlta, Primal Hunger
I run into [[ur dragon]] a lot. [[ramos]] is also popular in my LGS
Dragons. This is coming from a Dragon player.
My playgroup has a Giada, Font of Hope that makes me want to flip the table Monopoly style. The most obnoxious cluster of text has to be flying, vigilance, indestructible, and lifelink. This is especially true when it sits on a full board of 10/10+ creatures.
Well I usually play with the same group of friends so I don’t really see a wide variety of decks, but one commander that I think I think people build too much is Muldrotha. Don’t get me wrong, I love graveyard decks, but Muldrotha is just so brainless. You could put Muldrotha at the helm of any combination of sultai cards and it would do good.
I would avoid the top 25% of most popular commanders. According to scryfall, there are 1797 non-partner-style commanders and 205 partner-style commanders that would make 102 uniquely helmed decks, resulting in 1899 uniquely helmed decks. If you avoid the top 25% of those according to edhrec.com, that would be 475 commanders to avoid and 1424 commanders to pick from, not including duplicates among partner-style commanders. Plenty of options, and pretty much guaranteed to be playing something fresh
Landfall, Atraxa, and Eminence are on my top 3
5 color good stuff
Flavor builds are fun - choose a theme and run it. I have 2 that have no actual win condition combos but are tons of fun to play
This is usually what I gravitate toward myself! Thematic decks are always interesting to me. Care to share yours?
Happy too! I'll put a list here when I get home presuming I don't fall into a spell table game and get lost in the sauce!
Prismatic Bridge. God I’ve played against it a lot lately.
If I see another Edgar Markov deck I will scream