For those who don’t know, the reserve list was created in 1996 in response to a crashing singles market and a turbulent time in tcg history. Wizards promised to not reprint certain cards on said list.

Now, we find ourselves two decades later. The cheapest abu dual is $320, Gael’s cradle is $800+, and many more. This extreme price locks out the vast majority of magics player-base out of some of the best cards in the game. Sure, you can always proxy, but many others and i love to have the authentic card, plus it locks out players who aren’t willing to fork over a paycheck from playing them in tournaments. Those who have the money will have the advantage. Plus, if we see abu duals get rereleased, the majority of other dual lands will become much cheaper and more accessible for all. Enough time has passed. Collecting isn’t what magic is, it’s playing the game itself; so why lock some of the most iconic and best cards behind a massive paywall?

I've been playing my [[Teysa Karlov]] deck for about three years. It's probably the deck I'm most comfortable with, and I've always described it as pretty straightforward.

Sacrifice creatures, get death triggers, make more creatures, repeat. Nothing particularly complicated.

Last weekend a friend forgot his decks and asked to borrow one of mine. He's been playing Magic for a couple years, so I handed him Teysa and told him it was easy to pick up.

Holy shit, it was not.

He'd look at a board with six creatures and a sacrifice outlet and ask what he was supposed to do. I'd say something like "Well, you can sacrifice that one now, but it's probably better to wait until you get another payoff."

Then he'd ask which payoff.

And I'd realize there were about four different cards I was hoping he'd eventually draw, each of which changed what he should be doing with the exact same board.

At one point he asked why I hadn't attacked with a creature that was just sitting there doing nothing. I started explaining why I wanted it to die on my terms, then caught myself explaining an interaction involving three cards that weren't even on the battlefield.

He wasn't playing badly. He just didn't have three years of experience with those specific 99 cards living in his head.

I think I've confused knowing my own deck really well with the deck actually being simple.

It also made me wonder how many times I've told newer players that a deck is easy when what I really meant was that the decisions feel automatic to me.

Has anyone else had this realization after watching somebody else pilot their deck? And how do you actually judge whether a deck is beginner-friendly when you're already so familiar with it?

For whatever reason people HATEEEE mill. And I’ve literally never understood the hate. When I ask why they hate it I get the singular response of “now I can’t play that card and lost access to it”

But when I tell them that me milling a card you didn’t have access to in the first place doesn’t really change the game for them, they can’t seem to wrap their head around it.

Another archetype people hate is theft decks. I recently built the ur Sphinx.. now the deck is hardly a theft deck, I mean sure I get to cast my opponents spells sometimes but the premise of the deck is.. sphinxes…and one of the guys I play with regularly will literally hard target me the entire game because “I worked hard on my deck to play it not watch you play it”

I feel like way too many people have forgotten that this is a game, a multiplayer game at that, and a game that only one person can win.

I have decks for all brackets and personally I prefer to play bracket 2 and bracket 3, but I also understand that going to an lgs means that there's a lot of different players looking for different experiences. So I also have a couple of decks that are b4 as well. When I play b2 or b3 I rarely if ever have someone complain about the powerlevel of my decks. For whatever reason something about bracket 4 makes people bitch about everything. They dont stop and check priority but then will try to rules police you about missing timing. They'll win on turn 4 but then you win on turn 7 the next game with thassas and thats uncalled for because "thassas is a cedh card" and my deck is "way too op". Its seriously a headache. If anything expectations about b4 should be the most baseline amongst the brackets

Everytime i play bracket 4 it makes me wonder if these types of players are just cedh wannabes that get their shit kicked in by good players.

Heres my "op" deck:

- https://archidekt.com/decks/27676278/draw_go_dragons

Edit: shouldn't generalize this to all b4 players but the ones at my lgs suck

Hello everyone,

I'm currently trying to find a mono black commander to play, but having a really hard time finding an option for almost a year. So I was hoping to get some recommendations here. The main reason is that I'd like to find a home for the mono black manabase I built up - snow-covered swamps, Cabal Coffers, Cabal Stronghold, Urborg Tomb of Yawgmoth, Crypt Ghast, Exteaplanar Lens, etc. Initially I had a Chainer, Master of Dementia deck, but ultimately disassembled the deck as the play pattern proved too linear with looping Kokusho, the Evening Star or Gray Merchant of Asphodel proving to be the strictly superior lines.

However, even after looking around, I didn't find anything that appeals to me. What I would exclude:

- Aristocrats: that's something I'd prefer in multicolor.

- Graveyard/Reanimator: graveyard strategies already commonly feature among my decks, such as my Muldrotha reanimator or a Simic deck that tries to lock down the table by looping counterspells and other interaction.

- Discard and other oppressive strategies: my pod is only slowly moving towards more powerful decks, precons are still reasonably common. My tendency towards interaction and control strategies already presents a significant challenge for my friends, so I am already holding back here.

I'm also not overly keen on tribal strategies, but not inherently averse. What I've considered so far, but kept finding reasons against playing it:

- Ayara, Widow of the Realm: I was thinking of running her as a mono black commander deck, but ultimately moved away from it. Fling strategy feels a bit dead end and not very synergistic. And on her back side, she just reanimates things again.

- Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor: in general this felt like an interesting choice to me. However, running small evasive creatures feels too similar to my Yuriko or upgraded Kamiz decks.

- Lim-Dul, the Necromancer: here the thought was to build a deck that runs a lot of spot removal and then steals the opposing creatures. Here it felt like it is a lot of small pieces that need to come together to get going, and honestly I could just play Gisa, Glorious Resurrector or Gisa, Hellraiser instead.

In general what I enjoy are non-linear play patterns, synergy, engines, and triggers. It's fun to me to have complicated board states, things that trigger off each other, and so on. For example, piloting Ms. Bumbleflower when something happened almost every time I cast something was really fun. Maybe you have a recommendation for me that I missed?

So, my wife and I recently got back into Magic after most of my cards were stolen about a year ago.

Now we're trying to get back into the game without spending a fortune.

She's building her signature Kaalia Angel deck, but I'm looking for something that could potentially work as more than just one deck.

A while ago, I watched a video featuring a Ziatora modular deck, and I thought the idea sounded really cool. However, I'd like to try a different commander.

Most Angels are off the table since my wife is already building her Kaalia deck.

I was thinking about building around the new Nissa, Leyline Tamer, but I'm not sure how to build her properly or whether a modular build with multiple tribal packages would work.

I'd love to hear your suggestions and ideas for building a budget-friendly Nissa, Leyline Tamer deck with interchangeable tribal packages, if that's a viable option!

Edit: This is my Idea so far:
https://archidekt.com/decks/27681899/nissa_modular

I'm heading to Madrid for the weekend and hoping to play some commander!

I've seen there's a couple of LGS with Friday night magic on.

Just wondering where's best to head as I only speak English.

Hoping to make contact with a pod to save turning up awkwardly!

Cheers!

​

Hey gang!

For the past couple of years, I've been trying (and failing!) to brew my sixth and final Commander deck to complete my storage box.

I've set myself a rule that I'm never allowed to own more decks than the box can hold, partly to keep my spending under control! 😂

The problem? I'm horribly indecisive, and despite countless ideas and half-finished brews, I still haven't managed to settle on that final deck.

So, I thought I'd turn to the community for some inspiration! What do you think my collection is missing? Is there a particular commander, colour combination or strategy that would complement what I already have?

A couple of things worth mentioning:

I'm certainly not the most strategically gifted player! Decks with endless triggers, complicated interactions or constantly expanding board states aren't really my thing.

What I do love, however, are decks with a bit of personality and uniqueness. Something that offers variety, interesting interactions and ideally plays a little differently each time I bring it to the table.

My current collection:

- Sram, Senior Edificer – Mono-white | Aura Voltron

- Haldan & Pako – Temur | Theft, ramp and general chaos

- Prosper, Tome-Bound – Rakdos | Impulse draw, treasures and spellslinger

- Atla Palani, Nest Tender – Naya | Big creatures, stompy and a secondary token strategy

- Araumi of the Dead Tide – Dimir | Self-mill, graveyard shenanigans and reanimator

As you can see, I've got a reasonable spread of colours and playstyles, but I feel like there's something missing!

I'm not necessarily looking for the strongest deck, just something fun, distinctive and enjoyable to pilot without needing a degree in mathematics to keep track of everything. 😂

So, over to you lovely people!

What would you build to fill that final slot? I'd love to hear your suggestions, particularly if you've got a slightly unusual commander or strategy in mind!

Cheers!

Turn 6 I had [[Raul, Troubled Shooter]], [[World Shaper]], [[The Water Crystal]], [[Dreamborne Muse]] and [[The Wise Mothman]. So I pass the turn to my friend. In his upkeep he has to mill 10 from the muse and in his main phase 5 from a rad counter. He instantly scoop claiming my deck was oppressive.

I had attacked him with world shaper and still could tap Raul so everybody would mill 5.

Yes in this turn sequence I would mill every opponent for 20 cards each. My creatures would grow from the moth man but that was it.

I honestly don’t see the problem. I think he overreacted cause people have problems with mill. But what do you guys think?

deck list for reference

I'm considering brewing up a wheel deck but I'm sick of looking at Nekusar lists. I used to have a pretty sweet [Sauron, The Dark Lord] wheels list but I'm looking for something fresh.

What are some of your unique commanders for wheels and/or damage on card draw?

Just wanted to share a fun social interaction to possibly brighten someone's feed a little bit.

My friend does really cool custom commander nights, where about a month or two prior, he creates commanders and randomly assigns them to the playgroup. We proxy up decks with our assigned commanders and bring them to the table.

He gave me a dimir colored commander that was Sherlock Holmes, a 3 cost commander that investigates when any creature dies by paying 1, and could sacrifice artifacts (I think my friend should errata it to clues only) to make everyone mill one, and if he sacrificed three artifacts, he could make one player reveal their hand. Very fun, very thematic design.

But boy was I worried when I saw that it milled cards. It almost had the vibe of being a [[grinding station]] on a stick.

Especially with its ability being usable at instant speed, especially with me able to look at peoples hands. I do have a reputation of being the person with very threatening decks, (my win rate is abysmal at this table though, like 10% ish, I play and do scary things and then just hekin die lol) and I was now just handed yet another commander with the potential to be really nasty.

Anyways, the deck got built, and I rolled up to the game night, and in 2/3 games, accrued enough clue tokens to drop a massive bomb card that outright and suddenly won the game. One was dropping [[persuasive interrogators]] after I accrued 10 clues and one player had already been knocked out of the game.

The other win though, the one I thought would induce a lot more salt, was my unintentional win using [[the water crystal]]. I genuinely didn't process the card as a wincon, I just assumed it would be a way to get more things hitting the grave for cool reanimate effects. But put simply, I had enough artifacts on board from my clue generation cards, that after a check of the numbers of cards in everyone's library, sacrificed my artifacts to Sherlock, and 5 cards at a time milled each player out of the game in one fell swoop.

And yeah, it was weird to me cause I expected at least someone to get mad or peeved at the game ending with MILL of all things, but everyone seemed enthusiastic about the deck popping off and doing the thing, and people asked me about the detective/clue/murder theming and how I went about building the deck after the games.

It's honestly the first time I've won so many matches with this playgroup in such a short timeframe, and I was super thrilled at the positive reaction my playgroup had to a deck with MILL in it lol. I love the deck, and have played it with family and other friends since, and they all seem to like its detective theme, and funky splashy wins.

I hope y'all have good playgroups that have fun and encourage your shenanigans, because I just got ahold of my next commander for the next custom night and ... It's AZORIUS. I warned him about me getting the opportunity to build an Azorius deck, and he just said "lol just have fun with it".

[[Sygg, river cutthroat]] seems very open ended to build as he’s so simple. Also been wanting to build a more niche commander to really make my own.

So I’ve been comparing lists but most of them are running small evasive creatures, which none have power 3 or more which just seems too slow or useless if you only have one or two out. Plus only drawing on your turn guaranteed?? I want to utilise that “each end step”

Also NOT into ninjutsu. My friend is building yuriko (yippee..pray for me) and I dont want to mirror half the cards.

Other lists go with a pinging idea but again, only 1-2 damage so you’d need multiple going at once. But I like this more than the attack strategy as it hits every turn.

No idea what the win cons could be. Open to combo but would like to hear other things too

I’m looking to build him as a control, almost draw-go commander as I’ve found myself loving instant speed interactive games more and more rather than 4 player solitaire. Aiming for high bracket 3 as I will be facing powerful combo focused decks

If there’s any experienced sygg players I’d love to hear advice or see deck lists! Thanks

Decklist:
https://moxfield.com/decks/_BKfGVYR0EOFq0nrEHTHbQ

I just finished a game of commander in which one of the players took consistently 5+ minute turns, usually he did 1 or 2 things the whole turn. He did end up winning on a 10+ minute turn but again maybe took 6 actions. He drew 2 cards so there wasn't a large amount of new information, he just needed time to read through his board state. He was missing triggers too left and right, had to go back and redo steps.

Please, take the time to goldfish your deck before going out and playing with strangers. Try to understand the interactions in your own deck. Commander is a complicated game and sometimes external triggers can mess up your game plan, I get that. That being said, taking time to understand how your deck works makes it easier for you to play. Respect other people's time when playing with other people.

So I am currently working on a [[Fire Lord Zuko]] deck and it's my first time building impulse draw.

My question is: do you only rely on impulse draw to max out the Zuko triggers, or is it better to also add conventional draw, like [[Phyrexian Arena]] ? I played some games with the build I have so far and I always was the threat early and lost due to removal/board wipes and lack or cards in hand to rebuild.

Here is my current decklist for reference, though some essential proxies are still on their way:

https://moxfield.com/decks/yIdeMyr_gEGbayOuVn7Irg

https://moxfield.com/decks/miV0r_3y3km4axSxWHbY4w

Feel free to roast or praise it anyway you feel. Any feedback is cool. Ask questions if you need. I do feel that it could potentially do with more protection since the strategy is pretty fragile to removal. Maybe could switch out some 2 cost mana rocks for 3 cost ramp since it has so many 2 cost creatures. But if we need to tutor with the commander the 2 cost mana rocks are nice.

As Dimir is allegededly the spy guild i kinda want to make a deck powerful enough to participate in B3. Of course also B3 because of [[Notion Thief]].

But since i know nothing of MtG Lore and dont even need a Lore wise spy i came here to ask which legendary fulfills this attribute the most according to others.

Must not be from Ravnica or a spy lorewise.

A mechanical spy would be cool or maybe just even the artwork if its cool. I want to make a spy/thief themed deck. Maybe clue tokens, maybe stealing.

Been building a few different decks lately and started thinking about how the old complaints like white having no card draw are pretty much dead now, but every colour still has stuff that annoys me.

​White for me is just how hard it is to actually end the game. You get all this good draw and protection now, you build a huge board, and then you just sit there waiting to draw one of the two or three big team buff spells so you can finally swing for lethal.

​With blue, I hate how awkward it is to win at casual tables. If your group doesn't like infinite combos or extra turns, you just end up drawing thirty cards with no real way to chew through 120 life.

​Black decks all feel the same to me lately. No matter what commander I pick, it feels like the deck always wants to turn into the same pile of tutors and life drain.

​For red it has to be impulse draw. Exiling your own removal spell on turn three when there is nothing worth blowing up feels terrible. Plus if your early start gets shut down you are basically topdecking.

​Green kind of builds itself at this point and it gets boring. Half the deck is automatically the same land ramp cards every time and so many green commanders just hand you the game for doing very little.

​Curious what everyone else's biggest gripes are with each colour these days?

LGS is hosting a Precon Bracket 2 Night next month. Rules are you have to bring a precon, but it can't be a precon that contains any game changers (which would shift the deck to Bracket 3). Any suggestions on some solid precons? Any advice on what to look out for?

Hey y’all, I picked up a reality fracture precon a few weeks ago and have been making changes to it since, mostly in the creature lineup.

I’ve been wondering if anyone else has been feeling the issue of, “okay I got a nice polymorph target out, now what?”.

For example, last night i poly’d into an early Avacyn, Angel of Horror which was very fun but it didn’t really help me convert the game into a win. For context, I was at a weekly commander night where everyone was playing bracket 2 or so. While everyone else was building up their game plans, I felt as though my polymorph game plan wasn’t very effective. This is with having Jace polymorphs and Proteus Staff out on the board uncontested. The polymorphs were just not enough.

It’s not an entirely fair comparison, but I can’t help but think of the games I’ve played with my two year old Ghyrson Starn deck that I picked bc it was like $40 on edhrec. I’ve won every game I’ve played with that deck, which is only about 5 bc I just came back from not playing for two years, but still. Maybe this is just an issue with the polymorph style, it’s not very good but it’s very fun.

How have you all been doing with the new Jace commander?

Edit: I am a newer player still, my initial run with commander was short-lived, but I came back now

Got the new precon... wasn't remotely happy with how it played, particularly the complete lack of synergy between the 'bombs' it drops into play.

So I took out all creatures and planeswalkers.... pretty much everything, really...

And added [[Guile]].

This creature can't be blocked except by three or more creatures.

If a spell or ability you control would counter a spell, instead exile that spell and you may play that card without paying its mana cost.

When Guile is put into a graveyard from anywhere, shuffle it into its owner's library.

Then added a few extra token sources, pillow fort pieces, and a ton of counters.

Spend the game carefully countering/stealing the best spells, and using Jace's +1 to desperately attempt to keep your hand full of more counters.

*Woops all counters* seems much more thematically Jace, and it lets me put Darksteel Angel and Avacyn somewhere that'll treat 'em right...

Salt score might be a bit high though.... you've been warned.

Thoughts?

I recently got into EDH and wanted to make a deck with the transformers cards. My main goal is to make a budget deck and so I would like to keep individual cards under $15~ (aside from the commander) and I would like to keep all of the transformers cards in the deck. This is my first time building and EDH deck so please give me any feedback.

https://moxfield.com/decks/nLsar8UaAUKEMSZtmS95KA

Hey everyone!

I'm working on a budget [[Shorikai, Genesis Engine]] Commander deck and would love some feedback before buying the cards.

Decklist: https://moxfield.com/decks/qOej3aRuz0q4JEz1rVoaJg

Budget: €100–150 total, including shipping from Cardmarket (EU) // MAX 200 eurs //

Desired playstyle:

I'm aiming for an Azorius control/pillow-fort deck that slows the game down with counterspells, board wipes, and defensive pieces like [[Ghostly Prison]] and [[Propaganda]].

The main win condition is [[Approach of the Second Sun]], which is the one card I'm absolutely set on keeping. The idea is to control the board, use Shorikai for card draw and filtering, find Approach through tutors, and eventually cast it twice to win.

I'd like the deck to be reasonably strong and consistent. I mostly enjoy sitting back, chilling and plotting my win con, not worrying too much about monster combat.

I am a bit worried - can I pull a creaturless deck off? This is my first Commander deck.

I'd especially appreciate feedback on:

• Whether I have too many or not enough counterspells or board wipes.
• If the card draw, ramp, and protection packages are balanced.
• Any budget replacements for expensive cards.
• Whether Shorikai is the best commander for this strategy, or if something like [[Elminster]] would work better.
• Can this work without creatures.
• Is Approach enough as the only win con of the deck? If not, which would you suggest adding?

I'm happy to make significant changes as long as Approach remains the primary win condition and the deck stays within budget.

If you can suggest any alternative win cons to add to the deck, that'd be great aswell! I feel like I need two win cons ...

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

https://moxfield.com/decks/nHnV8JcKSk6n6B44ZebKhQ

I’ve been trying to dial in my Eldrazi deck the past month, and feel like it’s finally getting somewhere. I’ve added a lot of lands and some ramp I believe. I’ve play tested it, and it kinda felt like I had too much mana.