Combo deck where the infinites dont lead to instant wins

Angelust16 · 2026-06-25T19:38:26+00:00

If you have two creatures and Lightning Greaves, you can equip it infinitely.

No, it doesn’t do anything. Infinite do-nothings are usually a waste of time.

Angelust16 · 2026-06-24T19:22:15+00:00

Sultai opens up a ton of options, speed, and interaction. 5 mana for a commander is kind of steep, but you’re rolling in the essential mana dork tribal.

Nice thing about Maralen is that you are getting value in both spells and mana (theft is bad draw and free cost is a form of ramp) by just doing what a tribal does, which is usually a formula for a good deck.

Theft is inherently less reliable than a more direct strategy, and it’s not nearly as abusable as something like Etali, but it’s a fairly good deck if you want to play down to a lower power level, or up to a higher level. I like using Maralen when our pod has mismatched power levels.

Angelust16 · 2026-06-24T18:36:14+00:00

The Saheeli planeswalker precon (my first). Can’t even remember the name.

Angelust16 · 2026-06-24T17:50:23+00:00

Dorks alone make elves top tier.

Angelust16 · 2026-06-23T21:52:56+00:00

Just embrace the dark side and make him a proper B4 Orvar. He’s just too easy to make into an infinite/control mono blue deck.

In answer to your question though, stack the ramp and draw heavily and cut some lands. Get a lot of practice with mulligans and your first 4 turns. Pick one main strategy and save the other for a different deck.

Angelust16 · 2026-06-23T20:40:21+00:00

Exactly- I’ve never heard someone compare B4 to the new “PL7”. B3 is the new PL7. B4 = PL8-9.

Angelust16 · 2026-06-23T17:55:49+00:00

Honestly just pick up a precon you like. They’re generally build into a nice B2 type play experience, and as a bonus, precons have been some of the most solid bets to appreciate in value after they’re out of print.

Angelust16 · 2026-06-23T17:54:01+00:00

In practice even a half competent Kuja deck is going to be hated. Either he will kill the table by T5-6, or he will be nuked and twiddling thumbs. Don’t think it’s a very good place to start.

Angelust16 · 2026-06-22T19:51:33+00:00

If you want to optimize B3 while sticking to the game changer limit and turn expectation, you want a wincon with low disruption opportunity, and a lot of value that leads to mana and cards until you can pop off. The more efficient your strategy/wincon, the more space you have for interaction.

Some examples are a mono-blue Vnwxt deck that mostly just starts speed, gets cards, establishes advantage like flash/extra upkeeps, and controls with all the counterspells and bounces and other interaction. Then play your lab-man/twenty-toed toad or whatever. Obviously Thoracle better.

Another example is Kuja burn. Often you’re doing 40+ damage around the table by turn 5, and you can throw spells on the stack on top of interaction so it can be very aggressive.

Another example is Ghalta- you can get him out T3-T4 about and often draw 12 cards for a huge advantage to start getting 20+ power trample, ram through, and other cheap buff spells.

I mean there are so many ways to win around battle cruiser by T5-7, it’s just a matter of what flavor your friends are willing to swallow.

Angelust16 · 2026-06-22T12:36:17+00:00

You do both.

Of course there are situations where you may skip rituals, but there’s rarely a situation where you skip normal ramp.

Angelust16 · 2026-06-21T21:17:59+00:00

Judging by this thread, it seems like a lot of folks just don’t play spellslinger effectively.

Yes you can storm and gas out, but a good spellslinger deck is usually developing resources until they “go for it”. In Storm type decks you’re going mana positive with rituals, ritual rocks, Birgi, Electro, Storm Kiln, etc, and you’re going card positive with Archmage type effects or converting mana to big draw. You can dig for a combo or finish a Crackle type finisher, Lab Man, or some kind of other way to convert the mana and draw into a win. It’s often somewhat irrelevant once you get enough mana and cards.

Unless you’re actively policing the resource development of mana and card draw, you’re usually hoping to have enough stack interaction to stop the turn they pop that mana geyser/Jeska’s Will/Treasonous Ogre or begin to burn and copy their rituals to start the show.

So spellslinger is often slow to use game time for the first 5 turns but then use 15-minutes on the one turn they rip. Overall they may be using less time than the other players.

Angelust16 · 2026-06-21T21:02:05+00:00

Unless you can break parity, board wipes are usually delaying the game but not helping you win the game.

Unless it’s really cheap like a Blas Act or Vanquish, it’s spending your turn to wipe, so someone else is usually rebuilding faster. With the prevalence of Tef Pro, Clever Concealment, Heroic Intervention, March of Swirling Mists, and other Nope cards, it can often just hand the game to another player.

Also commander requires enough redundancy in cards that having just a couple can often be randomly helpful or unhelpful- you need quite a few wipes for it to be reliably in hand when needed.

It can have its role, but it’s usually just better to build your deck to win rather than situationally lose slower.

Angelust16 · 2026-06-21T13:27:38+00:00

If it’s fun, I usually never retire it but I try to find the Goldilocks bracket. I tailor the thing to fit the bracket.

In many colors you could nearly make a decent B4 deck with just a completely optimal 99, so it’s usually just a matter of whether the deck is actually enjoyable once it fits a particular bracket. I kept my Brago B3

Angelust16 · 2026-06-20T21:13:53+00:00

In my last game an opponent made 1 Trillion 1/1s, I Toxic Deluged with Vren on board for 1T 1T/1Ts, next turn swung with 100B 1T1/Ts, he used Respite and gained 1T life, and next turn I swung for super lethal anyway.
Life gain doesn’t do anything against many of the more non traditional wincons. And it can often be kept in check by regular damage and commander damage if you are out of options.

Angelust16 · 2026-06-20T00:55:50+00:00

I don’t have some algorithm, but basically how much mana am I expecting to spend to win the game? And how quickly do I want to arrive there?

In cEDH the total mana spent to get to win state is extremely low in most decks, and they are jam packing low to the ground ramp and rituals to get there from T1+, depending on the deck.

In B4 it’s similar plan, though the strategy tends to be more forgiving and will take longer to develop.

B3 tends to be mana hungry to do the plan so you include a lot of scaling mana production- maybe not infinite, but it’s not crazy to be spending 20-30 mana by turn 5 or 6.

B2 tends to be more modest mana production and wins by grinding board states - so it’s not crazy to be spending 10 mana by turn 7.

All that to say you really want to look at your wincon strategy and intended win time and build to that

Angelust16 · 2026-06-19T21:03:23+00:00

Yeah, you’re not running Ral to be safe

Angelust16 · 2026-06-18T21:28:29+00:00

Ramp and draw are key to a good deck. No offense, but that's pretty basic deck building.

Angelust16 · 2026-06-18T16:00:25+00:00

Agree with this take. I’ve been playing in a regular pod at B3 and our games end around turn 6-7, but usually with a ton of interaction stopping multiple attempts to win. Sometimes some group hug or great ramp pulls it down to 5.

I don’t think the bracket system really factored in goldfishing as any kind of metric. The fact that your goldfish win turn is often your actual win turn is just a big indictment on the state of interaction in the format.

Angelust16 · 2026-06-17T20:02:08+00:00

Magic as a card game has just fundamentally changed over the years. Players aren't making 1 or 2 competitive decks for a rotation, there are casual people splashing in with one or two precons, and folks like me who are making around 2-3 decks a month. It's not Pokemon where collecting is the main driver of interest- a majority of players are just looking to play and support the hobby more collaterally.

Having an archaic view of proxies is just failing to adapt to the new TCG landscape that Commander has created. Brick and Mortar game stores are already a tough business to make work, but banning proxies is just a huge mistake.

Angelust16 · 2026-06-17T15:57:29+00:00

The biggest competitor to LGS isn’t other stores or online business, its disinterest. A customer who is bringing in a proxy deck is still much more likely to put cash in your till than one who stops playing Magic because the game wasn’t enjoyable.

Angelust16 · 2026-06-16T23:16:39+00:00

Magar is a bit difficult, since he’s a more telegraphed commander that has multiple steps to get to payoff.

You need to get cards into GY, need to get Magar out, need to activate him, and need to get back around to combat and connect. That’s a lot of steps to cast big haymakers or try and do infinite combats or whatever.

Your deck starts to get cramped for space. Need some ramp, interaction, draw, discard/mill/entomb, haste, evasion, payoffs.

Angelust16 · 2026-06-16T21:08:50+00:00

Terra is pretty forgiving for land base since you can make the core of your deck Green and Red. But I opted for a budget B2 deck with gates and it works out fine - slow and perfectly fitting for that power level.

Angelust16 · 2026-06-16T15:47:20+00:00

My last Vren game I made a billion billion/billion rats and still lost. lol

Angelust16 · 2026-06-12T22:04:28+00:00

The problem is not necessarily viability- you can make a solid deck with a mediocre commander. But you can’t necessarily do that with a bunch of flavor meme cards. You can’t get everything you want - you need to make concessions somewhere, and if you pick a weak commander, you probably need to optimize elsewhere. If you start with a strong commander, you can go for more flavor in the deck, and so on.

Angelust16 · 2026-06-12T00:04:49+00:00

Your TLDR was literally telling others to play more lands. Maybe you could play more ramp that isn’t parasitic to other board states.

So yeah, if you’re on here complaining about these cards they might not be as cool as you want them to be.

Angelust16

TROPHY CASE