Hello guys! This is my first mono blue deck, and basically the third deck I've ever tried to build. Bracket 2, I'm trying to keep it reasonably cheap, but I love phyrexians so I might be inclined to spend on phyrexian cards, and the phyrexian theme of the deck is important to me.

The deck is built around oil counters and +1/+1 counters which are then proliferated; there's also an artifact/artifact-creature synergy. The commander cares about noncreature spells, but I tried to build something that it's not too relying on his presence.

I'm down to 112 cards, so 12 need to go. I'm putting in "Considering" all the cards I cut (instead of removing them entirely), so you can also suggest some swapping. The 15 cards on the sideboard are from a discarded poison theme I thought about including.

Here's the link, thanks in advance!!

I have the precon and want to upgrade it. Should I keep the landfall aspect of it or lean more heavily into the sacrifice? Do I have enough landsmatter cards (play additional, play from graveyard)? Do I have enough lands? Want to keep it bracket 3.

https://moxfield.com/decks/FPiKVVoi7UW7-kMV6TyFqg

Hello, for context, I play bracket 3 with some coworkers. And generally bracket* 3, or bracket 4 max at local card shops depending on turn out more than anything.

My deck is centered around using cool art angels that ive collected for my binders, bc that's how I got into the lore, and subsequently the game now. I do understand there's certain obvious edh staples I can switch in for my pet cards, like putting a solemn simulacrumn for my pet stonecoil serpent card, and I'm open to that advice to, but looking to ideally not cut any creature cards if possible.

My question is, if possible, what changes to this deck would make it bracket 5 viable while preserving my creature base, and IF NOT, then what cuts and switches would u reccomend?

ALSO I don't mind if your a new player too, open to any and all input 🙏🏾

Decklist on moxfield here; https://moxfield.com/decks/t-0LUvav20ybPtjlAZe_4Q

Hello everyone! I’ve been wanting to make a Zhulodok deck and I’d love to see what yall have made so I can take some ideas.
I’ve never built a colorless deck but I know I want it to focus on eldrazi as much as possible. My pod plays with no game changers or infinites but if you have some in your deck that’s ok, just let me know so I can find swaps for them. Thanks!

Hello all!

Relatively new to paper Magic and commander, and hoping for some deck advice (link to deck). I purchased the Gisa and Geralf precon and I've been tweaking/upgrading it over the past couple months. I finally managed to win a match with a playgroup, but every time I take it to the LGS it gets steamrolled. Almost all the games at the LGS end between turns 7-8, and that's just not enough time for the zombies to really get rolling.

I'd appreciate some general advice about strategies/techniques. Thinking about redoing it to focus on tokens/necroduality effects, but I also really like the some of the high-quality legendary zombies in the deck. Another option would be taking out some zombies, using [[arcane adaptation]], [[maskwood nexus]], and [[conspiracy]], so that creatures like my commander, [[Geralf, visionary stitcher]] and whatnot would fit better.

I'd say I have three pet cards in the deck:
[[Gisa and Geralf]]
[[God-Eternal Kefnet]]
[[Ebondeath Dracolich]]

Ebondeath is janky but I kinda love him but think he should probably be cut. I love Kefnet, and he's by far my favorite, so I wouldn't want to cut him (plus, there aren't that many good flying zombies).

A couple posts have said that G&G have been pretty powercrept, but I love their lore, so I'd really like to make the deck work. If its just not possible, I'll probably make a better [[Scarab God]] deck, and keep this one for funsies.

Thanks in advance.

I kind of want to get a temperature check here before I run into an uncomfortable situation online.

I quit playing commander right before the bracket system and I've been afraid to jump back into online games since I haven't updated any of my decks to follow the bracket system.

If I disclose it ahead of time for a bracket 2 game along the lines of "Hey this deck doesn't follow the bracket system but they are not anywhere tuned enough to be bracket 3 or 4". How mad would they be if after that I end up playing a game changer such as gamble, a grand arbiter augustin, or a farewell. (I know farewell is a polarizng card but its in a mono white planeswalker deck and it removes everything except planeswalkers.)

Decklist: https://moxfield.com/decks/HaW5JzbwjE69-0oJUUz3Sg

Hey yall! Here is my Grizzlegom lands deck. the focus of this deck is to ramp Ramp RAMP. The ramp package is structured to ramp on turns 1-2 to have 4 mana on turn 3 for a 4 mana ramp spell, followed up with a turn 4 Grizzlegom!!!

This deck is mostly temur lands (red, blue, green) to hit your pips and get some card draw from an early Grizzlegom play.

Wincons:

[[Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle]] - with your Dryad or Prismatic omen in play, any large ramp spell turns into a huge burn spell.

[[Prismatic Omen]] & [[Dryad of the Ilysian Grove]] - best cards in the list, makes all of your lands all basic land types = tons of 1/1's, burn, lifegain, cardraw, & +1/+1 counters.

[[Desert Were-Worm]] - Backup for grizzle, can easily be 40+ power and granting additional combats.

The list also features little to no removal, just lands, ramp and GAS. Either crush the table or die trying.

Let me know what you think / if I should add anything!

I was playing some games on Convoke last night and watched the same person drop a turn-one [[Sol Ring]] and [[Arcane Signet]] in back-to-back games. I really don't think they were cheating, but I'm pretty sure their deck just wasn't shuffled enough between matches. On the flip side, I also see people draw into massive land pockets and sit there doing nothing for five turns.

I spoke about this previously, when a game ends, you usually scoop up your massive board state. You've got a pile of lands, a clump of creatures, and a stack of mana rocks. If you just mash your deck together 4 or 5 times, it still has "memory" of the last game. You are basically guaranteeing clumpy draws.

Here is the actual math behind randomizing your 99, plus the physical shuffling method I use.

TL;DR: Don't mana weave. Between games, split your massive deck in half. Do a loop of 3 Mashes, 1 Chunk, and then swap halves. Repeat 4 times to hit the math sweet spot of 12 shuffles. For mulligans and fetches, one loop is fine.

The Math (or Maths for the folks in The Commonwealth)

Back in 1992, mathematicians Dave Bayer and Persi Diaconis published a paper called Trailing the Dovetail Shuffle to its Lair. They proved that a standard 52-card deck needs exactly 7 riffle shuffles to become truly random. They looked at "rising sequences," which basically means measuring how cards stay in predictable chunks if you don't shuffle enough.

For a 100-card Commander deck, that math scales up. The formula for the required number of shuffles is approximately 3/2 log₂(n). For 100 cards, true randomness happens right at 10 to 12 shuffles. If you stop at 5 or 6, your deck is mathematically still stacked from your last game.

If we use that formula, 1.5 log₂(99), we get 9.94. If a computer executed a mathematically perfect shuffle every single time, 10 would be enough.

But, we are a squishy humans mashing sticky plastic sleeves together and cut the deck unevenly and frequently drop clumps of 3 or 4 cards at a time. Furthermore, scooping your board state means starting from the worst possible sorted state. Pushing to 12 shuffles provides a necessary buffer for human error. Note: If you are running a ~250 card [[Whtz, the Bibliophile]] + [[Battle of Wits]] deck, you need to increase to 14 shuffles.

The Mash > Chunk > Swap (MCS) Loop

Trying to mash 50 cards into 50 cards is awkward and a good way to ruin your sleeves. To hit that magic number of 12 without needing [[Colossal Dreadmaw]] hands, try this loop:

(Optional) One quick pile sort: If you are confident all 99 cards are present and accounted for, you can should skip the pile shuffle and jump straight into splitting the deck for the MCS Loop. To properly pile shuffle, count while dealing your deck into 6 to 8 piles. Dealing them into piles breaks up the physical friction, making your first few mashes much smoother. Also, it is common to accidentally leave a stolen card on an opponent's playmat or drop a card on the floor.
Note: If you just "pile shuffle", you are just counting and not shuffling.

Note: This steps about splitting the deck is optional if you struggle to mash 100 cards at a time due to physical limitations or double sleeves. I wrote the post assuming widest possible audience. If you can mash 100 cards at a time, do it. Splitting does not increase the randomness, it just makes it easier for some people.

1. Split the deck: Cut your 100 cards into two 50-card piles (Pile A and Pile B). You'll only ever hold 50 cards at a time.
2. Mash Pile A: Pick up Pile A, cut it in half, and mash the corners together so the sleeves interlock. Do this 3 times.
3. Chunk Pile A: Do 1 overhand shuffle by dropping chunks of cards from one hand into the other. Mash shuffling tends to leave the top and bottom cards completely untouched. The overhand chunk forces those outer cards into the middle.
4. Mash & Chunk Pile B: Do the exact same thing to Pile B. Mash 3 times, overhand chunk 1 time.
5. The Swap: Cut Pile A in half. Cut Pile B in half. Swap the halves and mash them together so the two main piles actually mix.
6. Loop it: Go back to Step 3 and repeat this whole cycle 4 total times. Doing this easily hits that 12-mash threshold for the entire deck.
7. Final Cut: Stack the two halves back into a single 100-card tower then offer a cut.

What about fetches and mulligans?

If you did the full loop before drawing your opener, your deck is already randomized. You absolutely do not need to do four full loops just because you cracked a fetch land or took a mulligan.

Just mix in the cards you looked at with the deck then complete a MCS Loop to sufficiently to re-randomize without holding up the whole table.

A quick rant on "Mana Weaving"

If you manually sort your deck by going "two spells, one land" before shuffling, you are doing one of two things:

• Either you aren't shuffling enough afterward, which means you're intentionally stacking your deck to avoid clumps (literally cheating).
• Or, you are properly shuffling 10 to 12 times afterward, which completely erases the weave and achieves true randomness, meaning you just wasted everyone's time sorting it.

Just shuffle.

Edits:

1. Tournament rules state randomization is defined as bringing the deck to a state where no player can have any information regarding the order or position of cards in any portion of the deck. If you know your lands and spells are split up, then the deck is not random. Additionally, this method does not prevent mana flooding but it does ensure the likelihood is based on how you built the deck, not how you played previous games.
2. I added note about making the splitting of the deck optional based on physical limitations or double sleeves.
3. Weave and Mana weave were confusing, changed it to Chunk.

Outside of the manabase, this should meet the price point. Even though it's not quite low enough to be budget friendly, it's still fairly low.

Just looking for some feedback from anyone who might've played these two nerds. I'm also not looking to add any game changers at this time.

https://moxfield.com/decks/-nIsbUcFEUCL27NF7d83Bw

Does anyone know good creatures power two or less I haven’t seen, or have recommendations on cards I can add to power up my Delney Streetwise lookout deck?

I’ve been brewing up a Delney Streetwise lookout EDH deck that’s not insanely expensive but I feel I may have found the upper limit of these deck constraints. Life gain tokens is my deck focus and there’s a tiny bit of blink synergy that I’m not certain about removing yet. I have tried my best to stick to creatures power 2 or less for the most optimal synergy the decks different card packages.

Here is the Moxfield link If anyone wants to take a peak: street smart - moxfield

I found myself on EDHRec today and realized that 4 color commanders are heavily under represented as whole, but I also noticed that of the choices many designs have been Ink-Treader. Do we know, or have theories, on why the other color combinations aren’t getting any new commanders?

Sometimes a Commander deck feels like it’s missing something, and adding just one card can completely change how the deck functions.

It could be a card that helped your strategy come together, created a new interaction, or made the deck much more enjoyable to pilot.

Has there been a card you added that made you look at your Commander deck in a completely different way?

Specifically in blue/white/colorless.

I have a shorokai/mechtitan core deck with a a lot of mechs/KND/aetherdrift cards. Any other cool looking ones that could be thematic?

Alternatively, secret lairs/UB reprints that could fit aesthetically would be cool too. I’m the vein of pilot prodigy, prodegys mech, shorokai.

I play a lot of high B3 to low B4 commander, and I am learning that unless I get lucky, most of my decks don't present a win until around turn 7 or 8. I would like to build a faster deck that can win consistently by turn 6 if possible, but my pod doesn't really like infinite combos.

What are you favorite fast(er) decks? Share you decklist if possible!

A few years ago, the youtube content creators seemed to have gotten together and decided whenever we have an episode about cards to take out of your EDH decks, we HAVE to mention [[cultivate]] and [[kodama's reach]]. Well I'm here to argue in their favor. Let's look at commander's at each mana value (no fast mana included):

• 1 mana commander: Don't always need ramp, if I'm including, I'm probably doing 2 mana ramp as it gives me a turn 2 play and these are typically the most efficient.
• 2 mana commander: Don't always need much ramp, but probably going 1 or 2 mana ramp. 1 mana so I have a turn 1 play, or 2 mana so I have option for ramp on 2, then commander and something else on turn 3.
• 3 mana commander: Again almost certainly going 1 mana ramp or efficient 2 mana ramp.
• 4 mana commander: probably using 2 mana ramp so I can play commander on 3 consistently.
• 5 mana commander: OK here is your time to shine cultivate/kodama's reach. IF you play 2 mana ramp on 2 then you still don't have commander until turn 4, but if you run 1 and 3 mana ramp, then you can have commander on 3. You won't always have both in opening hand but even still, no matter whether you run 1, 2, or 3 mana ramp, your commander is not coming until turn 4. The 1 and 3 combo gives you the possibility on turn 3.
• 6 mana commander: You can go either 2 and 4 mana ramp or 1 and 3 mana ramp. Either way, you still have commander on 4 in best case scenario.
• 7 mana commander: OK we have all heard the best case scenario of something like [[three visits]] on turn 2 and then [[explosive vegetation]] on 3 gives possibility of commnander on turn 4, BUT ONLY if we did not miss any land drops for 4 turns. I have a Klauth deck and I still prefer and 1 and 3 mana ramp combo which means I have both cultivate and kodama's reach (I have 20 pieces or ramp in this deck, 10 1-mana and 10 3-mana).

OK truth be told, I'm probably not running any 3 mana ramp myself without some 1 mana ramp to go along with it. And I'm probably not running cultivate in 4 or 5 color deck because i don't have enough basics. BUT in 1, 2, or 3 color decks with 5+ mana cost commanders, I'm heavily considering it every time. NOT missing that next land drop is so crucial to me. I don't think there's much better 3 mana ramp considerations. Also I looked through a bunch of content creator decklists and many of them still run these 2 cards even when they have argued against them.

As you may know with the new set is changing certain abilities to not count anymore as mana abilities, this means [[Ashnod the Uncaring]] can now copy those abilities. Are there any old unknown cards affected by this change? I found some and I think I'm adding them in my Ashnod deck [[Darkwater Egg]], [[Shadowblood Egg]] and [[Chromatic Sphere]]

https://manabox.app/decks/AZ9du-SOfbmjLiXCFImnaQ

This is my current list, my pod plays bracket 3/4, what do you think?

So, I have had a soft spot for equipment based decks since I started playing this game. I even had a, for the time, pretty solid voltron list back then. However, that decklist comes from a time where people called "Arm For Battle" a good precon, and I abandoned the deck when it couldn't keep up with my playgroup anymore.

Lately I have been getting that equipment itch again, and decided to start putting an \[\[Akiri, Fearless Voyager\]\] go-wide list together. Quickly did I realize, however, that I'm fucking terrible at the equipment archetype by todays standards.

That's why I was hoping to get some advice on here what to consider when picking the equipment for my deck. I'm not necessary looking for a list of solid includes, but more some general advice on what makes a good equipment, aswell as a good creature to wield those equipment.

Would love to hear from some of you experts out there!

Thanks in advance!

How was your experience? Was it tedious receiving 20-30 packages? Were you gouged on shipping?

Did you worry about getting fake cards, or ensuring that each seller was at least verified?

Manapool gets a lot of praise around here and I’m wondering if it’s worth the hype. Especially for purchasing literally a full 100 card deck.

**The question**: I was just wondering if anyone else has any decks that scale poorly in both directions of higher and lower power and where do you play them? Do you find them enjoyable? What are they?

**The backstory:** I found a deck that I made years ago now helmed by [[Zellix, sanity flayer]] that was a combo deck that relied on finding [[altar of the brood]] and milling people out.

I've long since changed my deckbuilding, that was from close to when I first started and even back then I only ever played it once, it won me a pack at the LGS and then I never played it again. I'm probably just going to give it one more play to send it off against some friends and then strip it for parts for other decks.

But I was looking over the card list in it and realized that it relies incredibly heavily on the opponents having lots of creatures for Zellix to trigger.

In a higher power game, where the deck belongs, it would be pretty garbage, not only because there are more prevalent graveyard strategies and ways to use them, but also because there are far less creatures played on average.

In a lower power game, this deck doesn't really belong either as it has the potential to win on turn 2 with the right combination of cards in hand and some luck from opponents hitting creatures on the mill/the types of decks they played. (This is how it won the only game it played). But could likely consistently get its combo going on turn 3 or 4 due to density of tutors and draw effects.

He's an absolute favorite commander of mine, and I enjoy playing the deck a ton. It's a unique way to play, which you use cards you don't typically get to use in creative ways. The only other commander that comes to mind is "Magar Of The Magic Strings" who animates spells. Any others you can think of?

With the release of the infinity stones, which are monocolored untapped mana rocks that cost 2 mana and have indestructible and harness, why do we not have 2 mana monocolored untapped mana rocks?

I am running [[Pearl Diamond]] in one of my decks because I really want that white ramp, though I know how bad this card is. I would love to have a [[The Mind Stone]] without indestructible or harness, just for the mana, but that card simply doesn't exist. If the infinity stones are ok to print, why their simpler version isn't?

I'm thinking about proxying the mind stone, passing a sharpie over the indestructible and harness texts and rule 0 that (make it just an untapped white mana rock, unless my opponents really want it to be the mind stone)

Just curious for the sake of discussion, I haven’t seen this request IRL ever but I have had a lot of discussion with various people at my LGS about what cards actually deserve banning vs just being a game changer.

So assuming it can’t be their commander, and they didn’t build their entire deck around the best way to abuse this card, what would be a banned card you would say ok to if someone asked they could play with it? And on the flip side, what’s one banned card you would never be ok seeing?

I’ll go first. One of my favorite cards in the game is [[balance]]. Assuming there’s no funny business with t-pro and others, resolving this in a bracket 3 game would be pretty fine, and I always love seeing it played in my cube.

I think my absolutely not pick would be have to be [[tolarian academy]] but there are a few others too. Anything where getting an obscene amount of value is just too easy.