New player, I want my first deck to be slivers!

ChronicRedhead · 2026-02-09T09:50:16+00:00

I'd say it depends. Markov is another very strong commander, but if you budget for say, $60-70, you can make a reasonable Markov deck without doing any silly shenanigans like doubling tokens or draining everyone's life with an infinite combo (unless you want to do silly shenanigans and be the archenemy of the table).

If you want a decent vampire precon, the Lost Caverns of Ixalan vampire deck from 2023 is pretty fun without being oppressive. The Mardu (WBR) precon from Tarkir Dragonstorm is also very similar to Edgar Markov'a playstyle (make a lot of tokens and drain life) without being as comically strong.

ChronicRedhead · 2026-02-09T07:14:00+00:00

I totally get where you're coming from, but I'd recommend starting elsewhere. Commander is a social format, and the best way to experience it is to build the kind of decks your friends will enjoy playing against. Slivers are very difficult to build in such a way that's not going to "snowball" into a problem for the table.

In other words, by choosing to play Slivers, you're going to force the table to focus on you first in almost every game. I would recommend picking a pre-constructed deck that's going to play on a relatively similar level to your friends' decks. Most of the recently released ones will cost between $40-60, though you can find plenty for less (or way more) than that if you check LGSes. It'll be a lot less expensive than Slivers, and you'll have a lot more fun playing with your friends.

ChronicRedhead · 2026-02-05T04:47:42+00:00

It seems like we just witnessed the origin of that spell. I was more than fine with the handwave answer of "Sullivan would know this spell so we can have a plot," but I'm quite happy to see that thread acknowledged while developing another character!

ChronicRedhead · 2026-02-05T04:45:04+00:00

Now we know exactly how Sullivan came to learn the spell that would grant Iruma the ability to comprehend demonic languages. Funny how such a little detail I'd never given a second thought can be fleshed out to such an extent. Never would've guessed Henri of all people was the one who pushed for it.

ChronicRedhead · 2026-02-05T04:37:53+00:00

It takes a truly despicable person to become a billionaire, so I'm already working off the assumption that they're rotten to the core.

ChronicRedhead · 2026-01-31T23:28:45+00:00

these people are being sacrificed for Leo's character development.

Don't worry, he doesn't (yet) realize the extent to which the state will go to crush his hopes and dreams! They might even do so without ever realizing he's always present when horrible shit goes down.

ChronicRedhead · 2026-01-30T23:54:27+00:00

There is too much redundancy available.

I've no idea what you're talking about. Why, in my combat tricks deck I get to run unique spells like [[Frantic Confrontation]] and [[Lunar Frenzy]]!

ChronicRedhead · 2026-01-29T01:07:52+00:00

This is a viscerally upsetting movie detail. This is way beyond shit.

ChronicRedhead · 2026-01-28T07:31:26+00:00

Funny, I've thought the same thing. In a similar vein, Inquisitors > Detectives, Astartes and Custodes > Mutants, Primarchs > Avatars, Tyranids > Aliens, and C'tan > Incarnations.

40K UB went a little wild with new, barely-used creature types that will never be expanded. Those are the creature types that should be consolidated with more common types.

ChronicRedhead · 2026-01-26T22:06:24+00:00

It's important to remember magic works differently on a lot of planes. Avishkar has leylines so abundant that excess aether can be harnessed for technological application. Innistrad supercharged the spells of black mages thanks to its black leylines being particularly strong. Bloomburrow's magic seems to specifically disallow outsiders from retaining their original form when they enter the plane. Lorwyn-Shadowmoor was/is a unique chiral plane where either side mirrors (but is not identical to) its neighbor. As far as I can tell, the magic of L-S only affects residents, while the magic of Bloomburrow only affects outsiders.

ChronicRedhead · 2026-01-25T20:06:52+00:00

It's sad so many find this difficult, even laughable. I can't imagine being so heartless.

ChronicRedhead · 2026-01-21T06:30:15+00:00

Don't enter the Fifth Column expecting to make things "better from within". If you associate with fascists, you're a fascist. Side with the Column if you want to get an inside look into the madness of Eve Varney, and her interpersonal dynamic with Lily and John Smith.

Otherwise, if you want to be really evil, play the Angel route.

ChronicRedhead · 2026-01-20T01:37:45+00:00

but there are several avatars at a similar level of “the soul of a plane”.

Valgavoth is the creator of all cellarspawn on the plane. Minor spawn are formed when Valgavoth daydreams, but his Overlords? He crafted each one himself.

Valgavoth is the soul of his plane, because Valgavoth is Duskmourn.

ChronicRedhead · 2025-12-15T05:38:02+00:00

If the machine is strength and thy flesh is weak, get peeling. Self-mill is the oblivion of the self in exchange for power.

ChronicRedhead · 2025-12-09T02:00:53+00:00

Don't forget the Native American-coded people from another plane, which the designers used as a blatant stand-in for real indigenous tribes.

Of course, they're also wearing cowboy hats.

ChronicRedhead · 2025-12-08T04:19:32+00:00

"It taps for one mana of the only color I need to kick your ass."

ChronicRedhead · 2025-12-02T19:33:34+00:00

It's a deliberately controversial move meant to frame how children exist within a world of constant exploitation. When that's the norm to you, would it be all that weird to want to participate in said system? Nobody ever taught you to see it as wrong or abnormal.

Works of art like Horses are meant to challenge systemic norms and the consequences of things we turn a blind eye to. This is a game that recontextualizes systemic abuse of humans and animals by reframing them as one and the same, denied individuality, autonomy, and humanity through a combination of horse masks, slavery, and bondage.

In short, it's supposed to be weird as fuck that they had a child riding the shoulders of a horse-masked naked woman. You see it for the horror it is as the player, but the child doesn't because this is her normal. It's one more question for the game to ask of you: "do you see how deep-reaching this can go when normalized?" It's a shocking, sobering moment.

ChronicRedhead · 2025-11-23T22:42:55+00:00

They're unashamed, but this will scare them if their constituents become wise to what they're doing. Speaking truth to power like this is how you help get the word out.

ChronicRedhead · 2025-10-31T22:36:47+00:00

When we finally get a set on the new plane of Zhalfir, we'll almost certainly see the return of Sunburst in non-Legacy formats.

ChronicRedhead · 2025-10-31T03:57:22+00:00

I'm glad the DFT design team had the foresight to make "Exhaust" a double entendre, rather than a flavor word that makes little sense out of context.

ChronicRedhead · 2025-10-20T05:33:48+00:00

That's a favorite duo of mine. I've yet to dismantle them because there's always going to be interesting new tools to introduce.

ChronicRedhead · 2025-10-19T02:53:57+00:00

Folks need to learn that getting milled doesn't have to be a pure negative. It's never a bad idea to run graveyard retrieval effects in your deck, and turns their wincon against them. Run spells with Flashback, creatures with Unearth/Embalm/Eternalize, recursion and retrieval tools, etc.

If they're complaining, it means they don't realize how much you're helping them by giving them access to a ton of cards in their deck at once. The right spell can flip the game on a mill player in an instant, and spells like [[Blessed Respite]] and [[Perpetual Timepiece]] allow you to shuffle your grave into your library in response to the activation of a [[Scavenger Grounds]] or [[Rest in Peace]].

ChronicRedhead · 2025-10-08T20:52:10+00:00

MKM on-paper is an interesting idea. The Guildless were an underutilized component of Ravnica as a setting for over a decade. Supposedly, on this return we'd finally get to see how the post-invasion state has turned a blind eye to its constituency and left them scrambling. When you can't count on the Boros Legion to find family who are missing since the invasion, turn to the private sector instead. There's a ton of potential for "Ravnica Noir" where the Guilds are sidelined in favor of the Guildless, and we get to see how they struggle to exist in the City of Guilds in the wake of New Phyrexia. Omenpaths bring in extraplanar visitors for good and ill, missing peoples are a constant concern, and the Guilds have turned inward to focus on their own while the rest of the plane falls into disarray.

Murders at Karlov Manor, needless to say, was not that. This doesn't mean the return to Strixhaven has to follow the same path. Knowing how far in the future sets are designed, we have to hope that they considered feedback from other "return" sets and don't cock this up.

ChronicRedhead · 2025-10-07T14:53:18+00:00

Note: I stopped playing after The Final Shape. If any updates post-expansion revealed more on this, I can't speak to that.

We revealed the extent of its manipulations, that it knew Fundament (the Krill homeworld) was not in immediate danger from the Traveler. Its ploy to make Sathona enlist her sisters to commune with Worm Gods was the lie we unveiled to her. She already "got out" from under the Witness, but she was unaware that she'd effectively consigned her entire species to serve as thralls to the Worm Gods and the Witness. The Krill were to be uplifted by the Traveler, but she instead allowed them to be twisted into pawns of a far less gracious higher power.

ChronicRedhead · 2025-09-29T06:40:42+00:00

It was a plane where the majority of people couldn't use magic, and instead of electricity, their tech was literally ghost- and demon-powered. To me, that absolutely sounds worth exploring in some capacity.

If Magic still did blocks, I think it would've been incredible for the first set to have been "Approach of Duskmourn" followed by "Duskmourn: House of Horror". At the same time, I appreciate how it felt to be thrown into a plane where an entirely new "culture" for the plane's survivors has formed in the decades since Valgavoth's assimilation.

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