I like to play with removals, most of my decks don't boost their own board but limitate enemy ones but now my question is, WHY PEOPLE CRY FOR A REMOVAL?!

I have to deal with people in bracket 3 saying "why did you destroy my mossborn hydra? Do you hate fun?!" NO DUDE, I DON'T WANT TO DIE, why people cry when I actually had to kill something too big to deal with? What 's your problem? I run 3 game changers like you, the other 96 cards if not pieces of combos (or illegal) they don't concern you! If you play bant (Green, blue, white) and don't play any Protections it's not my problem if i kill your big stompy creature, it's YOURS! Why people are so scared of interactions?! I hate combat I prefer other ways to interact, you punch me in the face, good, I will shoot at you, why people prefer a big stompy monster over a removal? One can kill YOU the can just kill your creature, dear god

Hey guys,

I am playing [[Elesh Norn,Grand Cenobite]] in my Dihada Reanimator Deck. Last game night i reanimated her by like turn 6 or 7. Fortunately she nearly wiped the whole board for me and one opponent wasn‘t even able to cast his commander anymore. To defend myself, she only got the protection from Dihada for one turn cycle. The rest of the game i had no other way to keep her safe.
Managed to win the game a few turns later through an overwhemling boardstate.

What do you think? Is her -2 / -2 on opponents creatures a stax element?
Personally I would call it soft stax if any.

I’m really struggling moving up from b2/3 to b4, I don’t like combos or pinging, or those “you win” kinda cards. I get they’re good but that’s just not fun for me. Been thinking about maybe a vultron commander to try, I found a Jin Sakai deck I’m going to print but want to build one of my own, maybe Tifa cause I’m typically a landfall guy. Any suggestions or recommendations on how to move up?

Hello everyone,

I’m Mark. I built a tool to spend less money on lands for commander decks without sacrificing casting reliability.

Link: https://confluencemtg.com

You paste in a decklist, it runs thousands of simulated games, and you get a casting reliability (what I call “castability”) percentage for your deck now versus what it'd be after the recommended changes, which can include both adding and swapping lands. It also tells you how much you'd save based on the price difference between the lands removed and added. A typical result raises castability and saves money.

The part I don't think other tools do is account for your card draw, ramp, and other things that affect your land drops and spell casting. It matches oracle text to categorize each spell, and you can recategorize by hand if it gets something wrong.

To get into the weeds, it scores a simulated game by how much mana the deck spent by the end of turn 8, then compares that score against the same deck with one land swapped for another. That isn't a perfect measure. It's pretty useless for cEDH, since 8 turns is more than games go at that power level. But for most casual decks (bracket 3/4 and below) it does the trick.

I built this for my own obsessive need to optimize, and because I didn't want to buy expensive lands for multiple decks. But I'm one person, and I'm positive there are still problems with it. I'd LOVE feedback, positive or negative. Bugs, bad recommendations, whatever. Tell me the UI sucks, I don't care. If you have ideas for improvements too. Comments here or the feedback button on the site both work.

It’s completely free. You don't need an account to use it.

TL;DR I made a free tool that improves your commander deck's land base and saves you money. Please give me your feedback!

I'm putting together a [[Karona, False God]] enchantress deck and I'm thinking about removing all artifact ramp in favor of creature/enchantment/sorcery based ramp. Would it be okay to run cards like [[Stony Silence]], [[Null Rod]], and [[Collector Ouphe]] since I wouldn't be using any artifact abilities in my deck? Would that piss everyone off since most people use artifacts? I'm not making a Stax deck but I have a few extra slots and these could shut down other decks which would increase my chance of winning.

TLDR : A B2 deck, played by a beginner or by an "expert", won’t feel the same at all, so how do you balance a diverse skilled playgroup?

In my group, we mostly play B2, and 80% of the players have only been playing for a year or less. Some are very dedicated, others play almost exclusively with preconstructed decks, some spend hours online to learn more, and so on... And among the rest, some are truly long-time players.

The “problem” is that the same deck, in the hands of different people, will perform very differently. One of our best players beats us very regularly because he plays very consistent decks and has a deep understanding of the game, even though he tries to hold back. Others think they have a weak, useless deck, but it performs very well when one of our best players plays it.
Is it acceptable in B2 to encourage people to improve their gameplay and their decks? Some people object because, in their view, that would amount to deck optimization, which goes beyond the scope of B2.

Same thing: what should we do when some players try to improve their decks to make them more stable and effective within the bracket’s limits, while others just play with whatever small bulk they have, or only flavorfull card but strong enough to not be B1 (like only LOTR cards and stuff ?)

Anyway, I hope I've managed to properly articulate the questions we have in our group

Everyone's been there. A deck pops off, and suddenly there are an unreasonable number of triggers on the stack. Maybe someone made a token copy of doubling season, maybe there is a [[Thousand Year Storm]] on the battlefield and they player is four rituals deep, maybe the black mage mostly milled out the blink player and cast [[Rise of the Dark Realms]].

Whatever reason, there is not a deterministic win on board, but resolving the turn will take an unreasonable amount of time. Do you tell them to play it out, or scoop and move on to the next game?

My own rule is if they have an extra turn, a board which can't be reasonably dealt with via a board wipe, or are playing blue and are willing to reveal multiple counter spells, I'm good to scoop it up, otherwise I'll play through.

[[Winter, Cynical Opportunist]] is unbelievably underrated.

I agree that out-of-the-box the precon is bad, especially when compared to [[Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls]]. Winter was even overshadowed by the alternative commander, [[Rendmaw, Creaking Nest]]. With few upgrades the deck was on track, and I kept playing it since then.

For those interested, I wrote a primer trying to showcase how cool a Winter deck can be — and how different it is from other graveyard commander staples like [[Meren of Clan Nel Toth]] and [[The Gitrog Monster]].

Here's a sneak peek:

Winter's text says:

"Delirium — At the beginning of your end step, you may exile any number of cards from your graveyard with four or more card types among them. If you do, put a permanent card from among them onto the battlefield with a finality counter on it."

As the saying goes "\simplicity is the ultimate sophistication*" and this is a very simple gameplan: put things on the graveyard, then bring them back to play; But the secret is in the execution: we need to keep filling the yard from turn 1, so when Winter hits the battlefield we can already warp the game in our favor when he triggers at the end of the turn. It's a Bottomless Pit of possibilities on what to choose to include in a Winter deck, but I have a soft spot for "unplayable" cards — [[Zendikar Resurgent]] is back on the menu!*

To recur permanents, we need to reach Delirium — or get "delulu", as I usually say — which means we must have at least four or more card types in the graveyard. We can become delulu faster by prioritising cards with multiple types, like [[Darkmoss Bridge]] and [[Dryad Arbor]], [[Millikin]] and [[Summon: Primal Odin]]. Kindred is also a card type, so [[Eyeblight's Ending]], [[Trystan's Command]] and [[Demonic Covenant]] are nice additions. Cool, niche details like these can make a deck unique. ✨

Some people are suspicious of Winter's power due to the "finality counter" on whatever was brought back to life — if that permanent would go to the graveyard, it gets exiled instead. However, as it's a counter, it can be moved (with [[Nesting Grounds]]) or bounced. Even if we don't remove the finality counter, often the value we get in return is worth the sacrifice. Remember we're recurring permanent cards "for free", so there isn't much of a downside, especially if the returned card has an ETB effect, like [[Vile Mutilator]] or [[The World Spell]].

This is one of my favorite — and powerful — builds and I hope this list can inspire you to do some graveyard shenanigans as well.

HOW DO YOU WIN?

🪦 OVERWHELMING BOARDSTATE

There are several ways to keep the board full. [[Colossal Grave-Reaver]] is the best example as it can put a creature into play whenever we mill one, but also cards like [[Grave Betrayal]], [[Welcome the Dead]] and [[Izoni, Center of the Web]] will give us a swarm of creatures. Add a finisher like [[Akroma's Memorial]] and it's game over. On the first few turns, Winter will do the heavy lifting by bringing things back, but on later turns we can simply cast the big mana cards.

🪦 "COMBO"

Combine [[Syr Konrad, the Grim]] and/or [[Dreadhound]] with [[Mindcrank]] and we have a non-deterministic infinite combo.

Both Knight and Dog (which looks like a horse to me) deal 1 damage to each opponent whenever a creature is milled. Mindcrank will see the damage and force each opponent to mill a card for each point of life lost — a loop is then established. Although rare, it's possible that no creatures will hit the graveyard. And this is the little excuse we tell our opponents before burning them down. 😇😈

Here's the link for the full list and primer: https://moxfield.com/decks/oCUeBnF8-0itUaTInF268g

If you played (and would like to try) with Winter, what's your experience with it? 🙂

Edit: for all the internet judges that think this was written by AI, I get it. It’s hard to tell nowadays what’s real or not. With that said I don’t use it to write primers and it would never substitute any kind of real writing, ever. Some people just like the use of the em dash ( — ). And some enjoy sharing stuff online, even for redditors.

Hey all
I’m very new to magic, and my lgs (that does not really sell tcg at all) recently got a few booster boxes in stock, one being Tarkir Dragonstorm the other is Edge of Eternities. I really like dragons, and I’m also a big space eldritch sci fi fan. Are there any powerful or cool cards in either set?
If starting from zero (which I kinda am, near zero) which would you buy?

Quick question that hopefully won't get me cooked. Why is Grand Arbiter a Game changer but both Urza and Kinnan aren't? Id rather have all my spells cost 1 more than those two. On its own Grand arbiter is just a Thalia and I don't see anyone complaining about Thalia. I'm not talking about the decks just the commanders, thanks.

I've got this issue where I find that any time one of my decks starts performing really well, I get incredibly bored of it. My pod mostly plays in mid to upper level bracket 3, and sometimes one of the decks I'll put together will go off. But then it always devolves into either taking endless solitaire turns, taxing the hell out of people, or just picking one person and suddenly they're dead.

I find more interactive games to be a lot more fun, so I don't really know how to make any commander better without making it unfun for myself or other people. Just for an example, I think the lamest powerful decks are +1/+1 counter decks. Tell me how many +1/+1 decks you've seen that are actually interesting to play again? "I play [[hardened scales]], [[branching evolution]], and more simic slop." It's the same deck every time. Same thing with Landfall and Impact Tremors.

The issue is that I'll try to build around interesting concepts, just to end up extremely underpowered at the table. I built a deck around Helix Pinnacle, cause it's a funny card, that deck has never won a game. Same thing for more niche commanders like [[Saint Traft and Rem Karolus]] or [[Insperia the Inscrutable]]. I can make the decks stronger by including hundred dollar cards or giving them generic value pieces, but that isn't interesting. You know?

Probably just a deck building skill issue, but I wanted to hear other people's input. How do you make a deck that can hang in upper level bracket without it becoming lame win after lame win.

I am a control player for both the love of the game and the necessity of it:

1) my favorite games are back and forths, holding people in check, always having a chance, until someone (ideally me if I played well) surges across the finish line to steal a win

2) my least favorite games are low interaction arms races to see who can top deck their win cons the fastest

3) the rest of my pod doesn't play too much removal, so I have to if I want 1 and 2 to be true!

But recently I've realized, in addition to the above points, I cannot stand facing all-or-nothing / kill on sight commanders. I HATE games where if you don't touch [[Y'shtola]] as soon as possible the card advantage snowballs, where if you don't somehow stop [[Kefka]] from doing that gross etb/attack trigger noone else gets to play, where if you don't kill [[Korvold]] before he draws 42 cards and curbstomps you noone else has a chance. I find these commanders irrationally frustrating to play against and find myself irrationally annoyed at how everything you want to do in the game is printed on the card.

So with the preamble out of the way, any removal heavy control decks that punish commander-centric gameplans? I have an [[Alela]] and [[Elminster]] list I already enjoy and I've considered going for a [[Liesa, Shroud of Dusk]] or a [[Vren, the Relentless]] build but want to hear community input on what might be a fun way to shut down these particular decks so the rest of us can play magic too

Hey r/EDH,

I’m working on a thematic Esper Artifact Reanimator deck and would love some feedback on tuning it up while keeping the flavor intact.

The deck runs [Y'shtola, Night's Blessed] as the official commander to provide a resilient Esper control shell, but the actual secret commander is [Golbez, Crystal Collector].

The Theme: Spice and Wolf. I need my decks to have a strong theme. For this one, I am framing Golbez as Kraft Lawrence (the traveling merchant collecting rare wares and antiquities) and Y'shtola as Holo (the wise, magical, wolf-goddess companion protecting the caravan). All the massive artifacts we reanimate represent the precious, highly sought-after goods the caravan is transporting.

Decklist: https://archidekt.com/decks/25533275/spice_and_wolf_esper_budget_yshtola_golbez

How the Deck Wins:

• Golbez Artillery: The primary goal is to tutor for Golbez early, hit the 8-artifact threshold on the board, and use his end-step trigger to repeatedly bounce massive, scaling artifacts from the graveyard to my hand to burn the table. I'm using "wares" that have * power scaling with artifacts, like [Mendicant Core, Guidelight], [Shambling Suit], and [Broodstar] for double-digit life loss.
• Y'shtola Attrition: Casting 3+ MV spells (like board wipes, heavy rocks like [Cultivator's Caravan], or interaction) drains the table for 2 and triggers her end-step card draw to keep my hand full.
• The Inevitability Clocks: [Mechanized Production], an unblockable [Kappa Cannoneer], and the Phyrexian mode of [Mirrodin Besieged] serve as backup win conditions if Golbez gets hated out.

My Deckbuilding Constraints:

1. Low Token Generation: I heavily dislike managing massive token boards in paper. I cut cards like Sharding Sphinx and Efficient Construction, only keeping Thopter Spy Network and Mirrodin Besieged because the mechanical draw/player removal is too good to pass up.
2. No "Fleshy/Spooky" Horrors: To keep the merchant caravan vibe, I cut mechanically good cards like Consuming Aberration and Soul of New Phyrexia. I want my graveyard payoffs to be actual mechanical wares, constructs, or protective spells - not zombies, demons, or Eldrazi.

What I'm Looking For:

• Less token generation: If you have any suggestions for cards I could replace my token-generating cards that generate tokens with so that I have less reliance on tokens, without losing deck synergy and strengths, I would love to hear some suggestions.
• Thematic Replacements: Are there any high-synergy Esper artifacts or removal spells that perfectly capture the feeling of a merchant's caravan or a magical companion protecting it?
• General Tuning: Does the mana curve look healthy enough to survive the early game while setting up the 8-artifact Golbez threshold?

Thanks in advance for the recommendations! First time building an Esper deck, and I thought I might as well share my creation and get a new pair of eyes on the deck.

Sharing a personal project in case it's useful to others here — a new, modern-looking interface for playing Commander against an AI, built on top of Forge's engine (so the full card pool and real rules, not a simplified clone).

Quick highlights:

• 🎴 All 33,000+ cards, 679 sets
• 🖱️ Drag & drop, curved combat arrows, animated table — no more 2004-era Swing windows
• 🗺️ A roguelite Adventure mode, tournaments, draft/sealed
• 🗣️ 10 languages, including translated card text
• 🆓 Completely free and offline, no account needed

https://dokkodolabs.itch.io/neo-forge feedback welcome, especially on anything that feels clunky.

Hi everyone,

I'm a new player (I've been playing since January) and this is my first time building a custom Commander deck.

Here is my decklist with Toph, The first metalbender as my commander. My main goal when I started was to Earthbend as much as possible and duplicate +1/+1 counters whenever I could.

To build this deck, I looked through the cards I already own, checked EDHREC for popular options, and used AI to get recommendations on Commander staples (like Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, dual lands, etc.).

I'd love some suggestions and feedback on whether I missed anything, if there are any essential cards I should add, and if the deck looks fun to play.

Also, I feel like I don't really have a clear win condition yet and I'm not sure what to include.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated, thanks in advance!

Hi, I’m fairly new to magic and have been trying to build my first deck from scratch with a voltron Anti-Venom deck. My friends play a pretty optimized bracket 3 bordering 4 so I’m trying to match that power without breaking the bank too much, say $350 budget at most.

I wanna have Venom be an unstoppable creature that once he’s online theres not much to stop him with.

Here is my deck so far
https://archidekt.com/decks/25864567/antivenom

Any help, suggestions, or advice would be appreciated in what to add/remove or what to tune on the deck to make it smoother.

Thanks!

I'm trying to build b3 [[yennett]] and i want to make her a creature stompy deck but every time i play her she feels way too slow and i end up just tutoring for a combo, none of my creatures ever feel worth casting and im not sure how i could speed the deck up enough to have a meaningful impact

how are people making 5cmc+ nongreen commanders work? is it a case of winning on the spot or do you have to run a lot more control?

https://moxfield.com/decks/1xugAUCQjnGtQFUL95CyzQ

heres the deck as it currently stands, i do eventually want to include better stompy creatures but truth be told im not sure its actually going to work

combos are labman/abyss/thought reflection or approach + some draw effect or tutor

Deck List: https://archidekt.com/decks/25793029

Been fiddling around with this deck list for the last couple of weeks, and need some help fine tuning it and polishing the game plan. My friends and I mostly play around bracket 2-3 territory, but I mostly play 1v1 with my partner who plays a heavily upgraded [[The Wise Mothman]] deck. Looking for some suggestions because I'm not so sure what to cut first, and what to add in it's place. However I've looked at adding [[Kess, Dissident Mage]]

A newbie here ; I have little to medium experience with the MTG commander and while I was playing with bumbleflower precon, one guy told me each time I put creature means I cast it and it is actually a spell and I find this a little bit broken and hard to believe especially with MS.bumbleflower text-box ( I was waiting for sorceries and instans to activate it's ability)

If this is actually true wouldn't this make the precon really broken for bracket 2 and it should be considered as low bracket 3 ?

Since brackets have been in beta, I’ve recorded a LARGE number of games. I don’t have every bit of pod matchup but I’ve tallied most of my pod’s games over the last year as well as general composition and have a crazy number of games. Embarrassingly large — I shouldn’t be outing myself.

Last year I played 658 games of commander and this year I’ve played about 120 games (rough estimate — I lost access to my spreadsheet). My number last year is majorly because at the time I worked for myself, was single, and had nights off and would go to different LGS’s every night or every other night when I want engaging in other hobbies — in total, I spent around 20 hours a week playing commander. I no-life’d a card game and became obsessive about playing catchup after an 11 year hiatus. Oops.

This year I’ve cut back. I no longer work for myself (not great), I started dating again (also not great), and I’ve just put time into my other hobbies more and other parts of my life. We should all touch grass from time-to-time.

EVEN STILL, I feel like I play an irregular amount of commander and when brackets were first announced I had my suspicions of the result it would have on the ecology of the casual side of the format. I felt like with MLD being moved into an exclusive high-power facet of the format, green cards majorly being untouched as game changers, and bracket 4 being majorly unrefined between its top and bottom ends that it would allow players to become more greedy and things that felt mean before would condition players to feel like they would subsequently feel more mean. And for the most part, all of these have been true. Maybe it’s confirmation bias but I’ll talk about it anyway.

Players are running less removal (from my anecdotal experience), 4 and 5 color decks are much more popular (also due in part to 4+ color identity legendaries being printed), and my personal records show that, archetypally, almost nobody plays control decks. Control wasn’t even popular when I got back into the game as far as commander goes but it is SCARCE. Even as far as talking to players about interaction, it’s not uncommon to hear things like “I have 2 pieces of targeted removal” or “I have one board wipe.”

People are just not equipped to deal with threats and therefore threat assessment matters even less until a ubiquitous threat announces itself — ergo; outside of outright taking someone out of the game, threat assessment is for people who are losing. I’m not advocating for that being the case but describing the casual mentality I’ve seen and why people lose ands why this expectation makes decks that aren’t “fair Magic” seem inappropriate for casual pods.

For this reason, I have had A LOT of success with combo decks. Not even combo decks but any deck that can end the game in a combo, it almost always goes uncontested. Not because combos decks are inherently better but when the brackets provide a safety in their language, people feel less compelled to play outs. Instead, the mentality is ‘against midrange decks I’ll win by just going bigger,’ and although that’s valid and is kind of the way green decks win by ethos, it’s an extremely limited scope to approach the format and is often ill-fitted for a number of decks to win concerning pod composition or turn order.

The other things brackets haven’t done a great job of, aside from giving an official capacity to make casual players feel safe within their unbalanced and irresponsible deck-building (this is fine if that’s what you sign up for, just adjust your expectations with strangers), is that it approaches turbo decks poorly in bracket 3 since the ethos of turbo decks doesn’t nearly fit into the qualifiers of bracket 3.

Turbo decks, in their function, sacrifice interaction, recursion, and utility in order to get their gameplay online ASAP. Although this is typically thought of as winning the game through a combo, it can a prison strategy (especially in bracket 4), elf ball, ramping into Ureni or Etali, and yes, combos as well.

For any Yu-Gi-Oh! players out there, this would be like if I’m playing Branded with a Last Warrior package to reliably turn 1 Last Warrior from Another Planet with a Mirrorjade and whatever else on board that I protect with Branded Opening. If the deck doesn’t do this turn 1, the premise of using slots to tech in Zombyra and Maryokutai with King of the Swamp are extremely deck. It can be fragile but that’s what turbo decks do, even in cEDH. They either go for the win and try to play through interaction or they bust and more than likely shuffle up for the next game. This is true including even with Rog-Si which is objectively like a top 3 tEDH deck.

So what’s the point of pointing my observations out over literally hundreds of games since brackets have been implemented? That players need to go beyond brackets to discuss rule zero. That seems so obvious but I think most pods just don’t. And that’s not a bad thing. If you are malleable and pretty accepting of things people play and feel like if something is wrong and you can discuss it after the fact without feeling that one bad game is a huge risk to your enjoyment for the night then sure, but if you are a person who is disposed to singular games being hugely important to you and tailoring your experience, you need to not only understand the ecology of commander as it is now BECAUSE of the bracket system but also what conversations you need to have and where you need to align your expectations given the understanding of how deck building has malformed in response to the lowest common denominator of player comforts in any given pod.

We should all try to be accommodating but that mentality needs to be shared with the entire table. If you have an intolerance to something else a player is doing you should firstly discuss it but secondly create a gamelan on how both players can be happy. This can be conceding that one game one player is allowed to play a thing then switch off, it can be you playing in the pod for a game or two before switching tables with somebody else (this isn’t difficult especially if people at LGSs are friends and know people), etc. You can disagree with the experience you want while still being agreeable. Not every instance of something you dislike has to be a Reddit post even if we all do have a guilty pleasure in reading commander IRL stories.

I’m not even going to touch on how terribly bracket 4 is at achieving what it’s meant to do because B4 is functionally useless unless you have 4 people who all have the exact same expectations. The highs and lows of the bracket and how it demarcates itself from bracket 3 leaves a weird space for certain decks to exist within the lower spaces of bracket 4 while being out of the realm of breaker 3. That deserves an entire conversation of its own but the short of it is that breaker 4 doesn’t function to facilitate deck diversity or “high power” commander since it is the only bracket where the very top and low end of decks can’t compete with each other in a healthy way.

Anyway, making a long post longer, what do you guys think of brackets? Do you still have rule zero discussion beyond brackets, do you find them more or less useful, what changes would you make, and how has commander changed since implementing them?

Thanks!

This is a no-brainer for B2. The expectation is turn nine, which is downright glacial. And more to the point, it's slower than most modern preconstructed decks can present lethal on at least one player. B2 isn't technically the precon bracket anymore, but it still seems like the target most precons are aiming for and this change would help bring expectations in line with reality.

In B3 this brings the fastest decks down from seven to six, or sometimes five with a good hand and a clear runaway. This still excludes genuine turbo decks, but letting combo run faster reinforces the importance of bringing good disruption and speeding up the bracket should give control less breathing room against aggressive decks.

B4 probably shouldn't have turn expectations anyway if the only thing separating it from cEDH is metagame. If there's going to be one, though, setting it at just three turns communicates that there's no holds barred here except for the absolutely best and fastest decks the community has brewed up.

Not entirely sure if I actually buy any of that, but talk me into it if you agree. Or talk me out of it, either way it seemed fun to discuss.

I've been playing Squirrel Girl pretty regularly since release. It's generally pretty fun, but difficult to win with. Depending on which pod I'm in, if the other players have a lot of interaction, I tend to lose almost exactly 1 turn from winning. And I get it, my wincon is easy to see from a mile away. The biggest hurdle is Haste. I do have [[Concordant Crossroads]], but it's 1 card in a hundred card deck, so I almost never see it. I also have [[Crashing Drawbridge]] but its haste utility is limited. I also have Craterhoof and the [[Scurry Oak]] + [[Ivy Lane Denizen]] combo. I have buffs like [[March of the World Ooze]] and the various Overrun effects.

So, how can I improve my play and or cards to add in order to up my win rate?

My pod is slowly but surely getting better at talking and understanding power level/brackets, and we talk about how our low level of interaction puts us closer to bracket 2 most games. The speed tends to be win by turn 8+. We’ve talked about testing our boundary by bringing decks that handle/have more interaction, and try to win or threaten to win sooner.

With that in mind, would love to hear thoughts, adjustments, tips of any kind! And what bracket you think it is ofc. No land base cuz we’re still fussing with cards on here. I have plenty of decent lands from lgs pulls and precons (too many Jeskai ones lately…) so don’t worry too much about tapped vs untapped lands when it comes to the speed part.

Ultimately for suggestions, I don’t wanna spend more than like $5 for any new cards. The more budget includes, the better I’ll feel; this hobby has too much of a hold on my wallet as is

Deck List:
https://moxfield.com/decks/NfNEJFYe3k-Txt6uEhYKnQ

Initial thoughts I have:
- Maybe too many pieces meant to protect? Maybe I should swap some stuff for proactive haste enabler buff spells? Counterspells and redirects are nice flexible but I’m starting to think…
- Not enough buff to make lots of tokens? There are a few buffing instants, but the only other buffs are doubling prowess stuff ([jeskai ascendency], [bria], and [Veyran]).
- Not sure if there is enough explosive nature for faster wins. Ramp package is kinda basic with [seething song], [battle hymn], and [storm-kiln artist] as the only potential explosions ([resonating lute] is also great but im seeing there’s not a lot of big spells that are specifically instants and sorceries)
- Is it good to have so many modular wincons? Or is it actually just unfocused and suffering from my adhd deck-building brain lol (big board with flying with [moonshaker cavalry] or [aven wind guide], pinging down with multiple [impact tremors] effects, especially if you can put a bunch down with [moonlit meditation] and say [agate instigator], or just plain unblockable/trampled commander damage)

Hi there, I have this bracket 3 [[Merieke Ri Berit]] deck that uses her and and a couple more light stax pieces as recurring removal to stall the game long enough for me to assemble a tap-untap infinite mana combo with [[Loreth of the Healing House]], [[Pemmin's Aura]] and a bounce land/lotus field. It normally keeps up just fine with other b3 decks, but I've had some games where i got a really lucky hand and was able to win with that combo on turn 4. Do you think it is fair for me to bring this deck to a b3 pod without any disclaimers? I know that b3 games theoretically shouldn't end before turn 6, but I feel like almost every deck that has an infinite combo can get a god hand and cast it on turn 3-5, not get interacted with and win. Should i include a disclaimer in the pregame convo? Should i announce it as "bracket 3.5"? Or am I okay with not saying anything? Would you get angry if i won with a combo on turn 4 in a bracket 3 pod with no prior disclaimers?

I'll just add that in this deck all the combo pieces are also great synergy pieces on their own, so i don't want to cut them. On the other hand, I really don't want to upgrade it to b4.

I'd love to hear some opinions.

Hi EDH reddit I have been trying to make a bracket 2 vorinclex deck because hes my favorite praetor and have been struggling to find a updated list thats still low bracket and im not very knowledgeable on kinda fun janky things to tech in (there are bracket 2 lists but they are all from like 5 years ago on moxfield and want to know what kind of updates could be made to those and still keep it lower power) to keep it bracket 2 i know of the general counter doublers my friends predominately play precons so i would like it to be around precon power level thanks fellow MTGers https://moxfield.com/decks/B9cIVFNCdUKR5At4vdfDVQ This is the list ive been looking at and it seems solid but it feels a little higher power but in general pretty solid and wanting to see if there new things to put in for others Edit: this is the list ive personally thrown together https://moxfield.com/decks/cK2j_VBme0-ibQ8HUIabfg but not sure what i should add to it to keep it bracket 2 https://scrycheck.com/deck/8262e08c616d0afaEdit: Ive gotten it to be higher bracket 2 now and dropped some of the other doublers and stronger cards from the list would like to see how it plays against precons to tweak from there Thanks everyone