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

I wanted [[Gandalf, Party Guest]] to feel like an actual Wizard party, so I built around legendary Wizards and included all 10 Jeskai-legal versions of Gandalf. It’s a Bracket 3 spellslinger deck with zero Game Changers that builds up its Wizard count, cheats out increasingly ridiculous instants and sorceries, and finishes through explosive combat turns.

I leaned into flavor without wanting the deck to feel weak or unfocused. I’d love to hear what everyone thinks and what spell you would be most excited to cast for free with Gandalf.

[Decklist on Moxfield](https://moxfield.com/decks/K90JyPq-kEW6CBX8RnNJ8w)

Give a chipper cutaway interview for any random play. "Pablo just dropped an arcane signet on turn two, he can already add any color of mana he wants AND accelerate to bigger cards earlier!"

Deploy this one responsibly, it's a fine line between funny and grating

Not sure how to explain this, but how much do you consider when putting in cards if they fit the overall theme or aesthetic or "vibe" of the deck? Like for example, from the Command Zone today, one has a classic Dakkon Blackblade deck where he tries to put in RKF art to fit the overall aesthetic. Which I think is really cool. And then it was suggested to put in cards like H.E.R.B.I.E. (a futuristic flying robot) and Peter Parker's Camera. Which are fine cards but they don't seem to fit at all the theme or aesthetic of the deck.

So how do you like build decks? Is it all just about power and synergy, or do you consider the flavor and theme as well?

Yeah, pretty much the title. It doesn’t matter if it’s old or new, for 2026 power level standards, some cards just don’t quite work. if you could, which card would you change and how? (This can be for either powering up an underpowered card or the other way around).

I'm not talking about the standard use case of getting a creature back after it got Path'd. I'm talking removing an imprinted card, something blinked until the end of turn, or a Prosper'd spell.

[[Pull from Eternity]] is such a unique niche effect that I keep finding new uses for.

I love playing decks that are difficult or tedious to pilot. I like having many triggers to keep track of, or needing to pay attention to the stack, or needing to remember complicated combos, or anything like that. My favourite two decks right now are [[Abdel Adrien, Ward of Gorion]] with [[Candlekeep Sage]] and [Inalla, Archmage Ritualist]]. The "problem" is that I play with players who tend to take shorter turns and play simpler/easier to pilot decks, so I always feel bad taking a bit longer to play than everyone else. To be clear, I goldfish my decks religiously, and know exactly what my cards do and am not that person taking 45 minutes to finish my turn because I need to remember what my deck does. My table is also generally very chill with me saying something to the effect of "I'm going to give you the gist of this combo and skip to the end" and everyone just verifies that they agree that my turn resolved correctly. That said, I still just feel a little uncomfortable taking so long to finish my turns against decks that just don't. I just finished building [[Nymris, oona's trickster]] and I think this will be a great fit for me, but I am looking for more recommendations. I really like Dimir and Azorius but am open to anything really. I'd also just like to hear everyone's opinion on this situation because I am sure it happens all the time. Also we mostly play in high bracket 3 so trying to avoid commanders like Inalla that are difficult to limit in power. Alt win-cons, combos, 3 card infinites (or telegraphed 2 card infinites), and stax are all accepted and fine at my table. Nobody has asked me to switch decks, I would just like to be able to take shorter turns without sacrificing the part of the game I enjoy, which is making complicated decisions or playing with obscure rules interactions.

Other than [[Concentrated Sphinx]], what ideas do you have? Specifically 6 CMC. I'm thinking about some good 6 CMC creatures to neoform / birthing pod a 5CMC Sultai Commander into. I'm looking for fun includes, and I know all of you on here know more than me!

Heya everyone,

Wanted to share a buddy's [[Golbez, Crystal Collector]] deck:

https://easygoinggaming.com/commander/how-to-build-a-golbez-crystal-collector-deck-final-fantasy-mtg/

Golbez is a 1/4 Human Wizard for Black and Blue that cares about collecting artifacts and using them to fuel graveyard-based war crimes. He's got two abilities:

• Whenever an artifact you control enters, surveil 1. This doesn't care if the artifact is a token or not, gives you great card selection, and helps fuel his second ability.
• At the beginning of your end step, if you control 4 or more artifacts, return target creature card from your graveyard to your hand. Then if you control 8 or more artifacts, each opponent loses life equal to that card's power.

One of the biggest a-ha moments when putting this deck together was the realization that creatures with power equal to * (star) - based on some other condition - retain that power even in the graveyard. For example, [[Consuming Aberration]] - which has power equal to the number of cards in your opponent's graveyards; and [[Master of Etherium]] which has power equal to the number of artifacts you control.

The other nice synergy with the deck is cycling creatures with big power - think [[Drownyard Lurker]] or [[Marauding Brinefang]]. While you're in that Golbez mid-game of between 4 and 8 artifacts, you can keep getting these creatures back on end step to re-cycle them for continuous value. Plus, once you have 8 artifacts, they burn for their power too!

Playing against this deck does feel a bit like playing Starcraft 1 when someone launches a nuke at you. Now you know it's coming, you have a brief amount of time to do something about it, and if you can't - boom!

In some cases, Golbez can wipe out your whole life total with 1 trigger.

Being that Golbez only has a mana value of 2, plus the artifacts-and-graveyard synergies, gives you plenty of cards to choose from when customizing the deck. You can play discard strategies, reanimator, when-cards-leave-your-graveyard effects, and more.

Any Final Fantasy fans out there try this guy out? What are your pet cards in the deck?

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 really like it when these threads come up and I haven't seen one in a while, so I figure I'll be the one to start.

Basically, what underplayed or unknown cards have been impressing you lately? They can be new or old, just things that people may not be aware of.

(This is mostly for B2 and B3)

1) [[Necklace of Girion]] it's only in Hobbit collector packs I believe, until that co-op thing comes out later, but holy moly what a dumb card. Play anything and get a counter in monoG is just silly, and it taps for mana.

2) [[Tenuous Truce]] this is a fun one where you basically bond yourself to an opponent, as you both draw a card at their end step as long as neither one of you attacks the other. I have never had the opponent attack me on their first turn with it.

This isn't exactly a rant, but I've been thinking about this game and its aftermath since yesterday and I still don't quite know how to feel about it.

I was playing online in a bracket 3 room, four people at the table and strong decks all around. Premium and free interaction, staples, game changers, game threatening to end turn 6 and 7, the works. Great, close game up to that point.

My turn comes around, I am at 6 life points and I am dead to a stiff breeze so I need to play to every out I could have. I have no graveyard, barely any hand, everytime I cast a spell I lose life to [[Mastermind Plum]], the landfall player got [[Glacial Chasm]] out and at that point I have only one card in my deck that could go through it.

I play it out and manage to pull it off. Get lifegain, mana production, card draw online. I run no infinites, and besides I have to get through the Chasm, so I have to dig through my deck one card at a time in order to find what I need. It felt like riding the lightning, but it took 30 minutes.

From my perspective it was amazing, one of the best comebacks I have ever pulled off, but as the turn dragged on I felt the other players' dissatisfaction grow and by the end of the turn, when I showed the actual win, they just logged out of the room.

Of course you don't expect people to cheer you on cartoonishly when you beat them against the odds, and it was their decision to not concede and look through every trigger and action (I agree with doing so), but after playing some of the best magic I have played in a while I feel somewhat guilty for doing so.

I don't usually take so long to perform my pop-off turns, like five minutes, but in this particular case I had to go through every action because I intentionally built this deck without infinite loops and I am starting to think that doing so made me somewhat less pleasant as a podmate than actually having stronger / simpler combos would make me.

I want to be a person people enjoy playing against, and this whole thing has been sitting heavy with me for the last day.

What is your experience with being in a similar position, or being on the other side of it? Did it change your approach to deck building, or whether you would consider conceding rather than forcing the table to sit through your non-deterministic solitaire turn?

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!

Recently my friends agreed there are no take backs, you swing into death touch thats on you. The other night friend tried destroying my commander with ward 3. He cast the spell and couldn't pay the ward cost. Then began the bitching and complaining, he wouldn't have cast it if he had known (I read the card to them before we started) he then changed targets to my mana dork. I told him id let it slide this time but in arena or anywhere else that spell would go right in the trash. He argued on arena it won't even allow him to target something with ward if he cant pay. Is this true? Do you allow target changes for wards that cant be paid?

Heeeeello everyone!
I would like some suggestions of Commanders to my wife start playing.
The Idea is a simple deck to learn but also if the try to make her play goes wrong, continue being a Nice deck for me.
What I was thinking by far:
- Deck with Green or White (not selesnya)
- Two Colors (Simple mana base)
- Kinda Cute or Girl Commanders like Faries, Yuna, or some pets
- Not be too linear like creatures beatdown, but avoiding to many triggers.

If you want more details, I'll be happy to awnser!

Thank you all in advance!

I know it's a game changer for a reason, but man its crazy to drop on a table when everyone's gotten these massive creatures out. I've won my last 3 games running [[Hearthhull, the Worldseed]] by being able to bring out [[Glacial Chasm]] on key turns while I'm maybe missing a combo piece and someone has gathered their infinite combats or accrued multiple 20/20 bodies. Getting to The One Ring on turn 4, Glacial Chasm turn 5, and win turn 6 was crazy in a 5-man pod.

My buddy played this card in his [[The Necrobloom]] and I can really only get around it if I have a [[Strip Mine]] or "destroy/exile target permanent" cards which is rare.

I got to drop all 3 game changers the last 3 games. [[The One Ring]] to survive a round, then [[Crop Rotation]] into Glacial Chasm to stave off the 30-odd damage aimed at my face.

My game winning turn was playing [[Tannuk, Memorial Ensign]] and [[Exploration]] while I had [[Azusa, Lost but Seeking]] and [[Crucible of Worlds]] and managed to station Hearthhull to 8. The fetchland I had effectively dealt 4 damage being landfall, hearthhull, and landfall off the land fetched. I had 5 land drops from 1 for turn, 2 from Azusa, 1 from Exploration, and 1 from Hearthhull. 20 damage to the table cleared out everyones remaining life totals. I had my [[Squandard Resources]] countered in an earlier turn and [[Sylvan Safekeeper]] countered on the turn i went for game. I also got wheeled out of having [[Famished Worldsire]] at the start of my turn after having played [[Awaken the Woods]] the previous turn.

Obviously life loss gets around it, and that's something I try to use against my friends Necrobloom deck. But after losing every game with Hearthhull (understandably being the target once its stationed 8) to winning the last 4 games with it in a row after adding The One Ring and Glacial Chasm as my game changers instead of [[Jeska's Will]]. I ended up putting Jeska's Will back in and only use the deck at B4 tables anymore. Also added proxies of the OG duals which was neat but didnt really serve a purpose (yet) other than being fetchable targets.

Hearthhull, the Worldseed

[[Toph, Earthbending Master]] will get replaced with [[Toph, Hardheaded Teacher]] eventually. I ordered a [[Rain of Filth]] but not sure if I'll slot it in. The deck originally started out as a B3 all EoE and Unfinity themed deck with other spaceships and random landfall effects.. but after learning about Squandered Resources, Sylvan Safekeeper, Constant Mists, and the power of the One Ring and Glacial Chasm, its a powerhouse now.

This was my first deck I made. It’s a mono black deck. I really enjoyed it but didn’t always do the best. it’s time I start trying to upgrade and fix it. I already added some fixes but also am at 106 cards now. Any help would be greatly appreciated! (Additions, cuts, combos, themes, etc.) also open to changing the commander (that keeps the same theme) but I do love shredder lol

https://manabox.app/decks/AaBVdejfezGMLYR9-hq28A

I love going to EDHRec when I'm trying to decide on inclusions for my new decks. However, I'd like to see MORE cards than the roughly 30 or so the website shares from each category.

Usually I will go up top to the "decks" tab and individually click on decks that have been submitted. This is fine and all but requires looking through entire decklists separately.

Is there a way to "expand" or see beyone the ~30 so top rated cards in each EDHRec category?

Well the question is pretty simple, I want to build a Tamiyo Inquisitive Student // Tamiyo Seasoned Scholar, high bracket (3~ limit 4), but I dont know how to win?

What are the way for her to win, even after you draw half your library?

I need help on this one x)

Hello!

I've always wanted to make a skeleton deck, but a lot of options at the moment are...not great.

So! Instead I've built a rule 0 deck for Throne of the Grim Captain because I find him a lot more interesting than other options!

Here is the decklist in question.

If anyone can offer any suggestions or improvements, i.e. better creatures to put in, that would be greatly appreciated! Its built around flipping into the Grim Captain and then slamming face really.

Budget is whatever, I'm just after something fun and as decent as it can be.

Hey r/EDH, some friends and I made this tool for Canadian TCG players and collectors to make it easier to find the cards you're looking for at the lowest possible prices. It handles the basics like singles and sealed product search but also includes some other features we believe are really useful:

• Multi-search: Paste and search for a deck-list of up to 150 cards, pick the store that has a subset of the list and the search results automatically refresh to the remaining cards. Keep your orders to the fewest stores possible, saving on shipping and still finding the best card prices
• Collection: Keep track of your collection so you never accidentally buy a card you already own. Can import from Archidekt, Manabox or any CSV, as well as export to CSV.
• Wish-lists: Save a list to share with others or open directly into a multi-search, useful for tracking prices across groups of cards or of a specific deck-list
• Save on duties & cross-border fees: We aggregate our pricing data across 190+ Canadian stores so you can be sure to save on duties or cross-border costs

Free to use (always): https://www.tcgmarketplace.ca

We would love any feedback you may have, especially around the multi-search flow or any features you'd like to see added.

Edit (9/1/2026 5:17PM EST):

For shop owners: We received some inquiries from shops wanting to get their inventory added to the website. If this is something you’re interested in, please send me a DM here on Reddit and I’ll help you through the process of getting onboarded.

Newer player here. I’ve just gotten into the idea of experimenting with some decks that use partner commanders. I really want to run a deck with some uncommon / lesser used or seen partners.

I’ve already brewed up a [[Akiri, Line-Slinger]] deck with [[Bruse Tarl, Boorish Herder]] as a partner. Essentially Bruse gives Akiri double strike & lifelink and Akiri plays as an equipment / artifact voltron.

I’m pretty happy with this pairing as there are only 123 decks on edhrec that use this commander pairing. Have any of you found any other interesting commander partnering that don’t see much play together? I don’t want the same usual pairings that others run, looking for something fun and unique that you’ve found

So I had a game where a player could end the game with aetherflux reservoir. However, I had krosan grip in my hand. Without priority, I needed them to target someone else first.

Now instead of properly playing out the activations, they say: “Now I target all of you with aetherflux reservoir.” the other players say “I have no responses, gg”

I ask them how they order the triggers. they say they target me first because I obviously have a response if I asked.

How do you handle situations like this? By enforcing the rules, im forced to reveal information. They cheated, but theres not really a default way to “take it back” since they gained information from the cheating and that can’t be reversed.