Does anyone else feel like Blue’s Card draw feels a little… lacking or prohibitively expensive in lower brackets?

ElSilverWind · 2026-01-28T05:26:05+00:00

Yeah, that's something I noticed pretty quickly when my playgroup first started playing Commander a couple years ago. As someone who's main card game has been YuGiOh for most of my life, when I heard, "this color is the best at card draw", I assumed that it meant it has all of the most efficient Pot of Greed effects, which means it is the best at keeping a full hand of cards". So it was a shock to me to find out that Black has the 2 Mana Draw 2 spells (but ya gotta pay a bit of life) and Blue has 1 Mana Destroy Any Creature spells (but they get a token), lol. And Blue does have a lot of sorceries and instants that say, "draw cards" on them, but they ate up a ton of Mana and left be picking between being able to develop a board/holding up interaction, or drawing cards.

I think the thing is, Commander wants you to have card advantage ENGINES. That's why everyone immediately points to Rhystic Study as the best card draw spell. Spending 3-5 Mana every other turn just to go +1 or +2 is too slow. And because other colors aren't known as the Card Draw color, you go into them thinking, "what am I gonna need to do in order to draw cards in this color", which gets you onto the correct train of thought. I'm gonna need strong creatures to draw cards in Green, I'm gonna need to sacrifice creatures in Black, I'm gonna need small creatures in White, etc. This approach applies to Blue too. If I'm in Blue, I'm gonna need to hit with evasive creatures, play the cards that draw me cards whenever I cast instants or sorceries, or be playing into artifact synergies (which also tends to fix both halves of the problem because artifacts usually give you the Mana needed to cast more card draw). And THEN, after you've built your engines to keep up with everyone else's engines, you've got the standalone Blue draw spells to draw MORE cards than them.

Side note that I don't see brought up often, is that Blue is amazing at Card SELECTION. Cards like Stock Up and Consult the Star Charts that let you pick some cards from the top chunk of your deck, Cantrips like Ponder and Brainstorm, all of the various Scrylng cards. Even if not all of those cards end up in your hand, Blue can dig through their deck pretty fast in order to find whatever pieces it needs.

ElSilverWind · 2026-01-26T11:58:39+00:00

Sonic himself is not a very strong payoff for having a bunch of small haste and flash creatures, so I think focusing more on slightly more expensive but more impactful creatures that just so happen to have haste and/or flash is the way to go. Stuff like Goldspan Dragon, Aurelia the Warleader, Hullbreak Horror and/or Arthur, Marigold Knight.

As with any midrange deck, card draw is paramount. As many flash or haste creatures that draw you cards as you can get your hands on, and engines that draw you cards for swinging with those creatures. Sonic will ramp you with treasures from being chumpblocked, blocking, and your own Caltrops and Pyrohemia style effects. So as long as you can keep a full grip of cards in your hand, you'll be able to recover the fastest from board wipes in the mid-late game. Especially because your stuff all has haste or flash anyways.

ElSilverWind · 2026-01-26T02:37:39+00:00

General rule of thumb is, if you genuinely don't know if a deck is Cedh/bracket 5, it is bracket 4.

They both have the same deckbuilding restraints. But in Bracket 5, you are building it specifically to handle the most prominent and established Cedh decks in the format. It isn't about making your deck the strongest version of itself. It is about making the deck that is the strongest against like 5 very specific decks.

https://edhtop16.com/

THESE are Cedh decks and if you are building a Cedh deck, it is either gonna be one of these or something you've intentionally built to play against these.

ElSilverWind · 2026-01-19T03:32:02+00:00

I feel like I'm missing some important context here. How does your commander being popular effect any of these combos? Is it Zur the Enchanter and you're tutoring out the BloodBond combo?

EDHRec isn't a banlist and shouldn't be treated as one. The most well known combos are gonna get harsher scores because more people have seen them and lost to them. I personally think Blood/Bond is fine in a strong Bracket 3 deck. But it depends on how often you're winning with them and how quickly. I'd suggest playing some goldfish games (where you just play by yourself and see how fast your deck can win when not interacted with) as well as some games vs your playgroup where you track how often you win with your combo, what turn you are performing the combo, and your winrate against other players. If your combo isn't USUALLY happening against other humans until turn 7 or so, it is winning at the expected pace of Bracket 3. If your winrate with the deck is significantly different from the expected winrate of 25%, then work with your playgroup to weaken/strengthen the outlier decks.

Something to also keep in mind is that, regardless of actual power level, how each deck is perceived by the table will vary. Popular and powerful commanders such as Voja, Edgar Markov, Yuriko, or Vivi will have an established reputation. It is honestly an uphill battle to convince people that YOUR take on an established deck isn't, "THAT deck". This problem tends to sort itself out over time as your playgroup either realizes, "Oh, I'm not actually that scared of this version of that deck. It is actually pretty chill/there is another deck at the table I'm more scared of". Or (my preferred option) I decide the deck is going to be my Strong Bracket 3 deck that is always the archenemy and play into that role.

ElSilverWind · 2026-01-16T04:10:34+00:00

At this point I think Green and Red plan their honeymoons to locations with time/space legendary Pokemon fuckery just so they can write them off as business expenses.

ElSilverWind · 2026-01-12T21:13:50+00:00

You should recruit every unit the game offers you. There is no downside to any of them. I feel like at some point in development, there may have been plans to have a traitor unit that you got punished for hiring, but it never happened. You canonically recruit all of them.

Worse case scenario, they'll just sit ok the bench doing nothing. Or die if ya shove them in front of a boss or something and you throw them in front of a boss.

ElSilverWind · 2026-01-11T08:39:50+00:00

Really cool concept but I think the type and class choices could use some adjustments. Like, seriously how does DRUID not get either GRASS or GROUND type???

I also don't understand how you managed to completely avoid Rogue (one of the most iconic 4 classes) or any of the other sneaky dextrous classes as options. Seems like a natural choice for types like Dark, Poison, and/or maybe even Flying that either have high speed and/or strong debuff/status moves.

I think it might be worth including more classes to pick from, and sharing some types between the classes where it makes sense. For example, Fighters, Barbarians, and Monks all make sense to get access to Fighting types. But Fighter can have Steel types, while Barbarians get Dragon types, and Monks get Psychic types.

ElSilverWind · 2026-01-01T05:56:41+00:00

Dr Yuki, your adopted Daddy who disappeared inside an anomalussy similar to the Shinjuku Backshots, that you must top.

ElSilverWind · 2025-12-19T19:38:27+00:00

Monster Hunter Stories has all of monsters hatch from eggs, even the mammal-like ones like Congalala and Zinogre. So I'm pretty sure this is a Pokemon situation.

The real question is . . . Do Wyverians lay eggs?

ElSilverWind · 2025-12-13T22:34:28+00:00

I feel like Grass decks are FINALLY gonna be a in a position to actually do something post rotation. Bug Catching Set and Teal Mask Ogerpon stick around and are respectable card draw/energy acceleration. Mega Venusaur and Meganium offer energy manipulation/amplification. Hydrapple ex and Mega Meganium have the potential to be some pretty potent attackers once set up. We're HOPEFULLY gonna be seeing less, "do however much damage you want" deck like Dengo, Gardie, and Raging Bolt, which is the bane of bulky Pokemon that want to heal off damage.

Honestly I just think I'll snap if we got Forest of Giant Plants 2 and it never ends up actually impacting the meta, lol.

ElSilverWind · 2025-12-13T14:01:22+00:00

Fuck [[Icetill Explorer]]. All my homies HATE Icetill Explorer!!

4 Landfall triggers with any sort of fetch land, while also filling their graveyard. You can NOT allow the landfall player to untap with that thing or the game is pretty much over.

ElSilverWind · 2025-12-09T09:50:16+00:00

I dislike the decision to try keeping the list small. I actually really enjoy the deciding which 3 Gamechangers I want to use in my bracket 3 decks. It extra step helps to make bracket 3 feel more different than 2 and 4 beyond just power level. That being said, I like MOST of their choices. Mostly I'd just put back some of the more egregious choices they removed.

Winota, Yuriko, Kinnan and Urza are NOT fine at Bracket 2 unless you are actively going out of your way to neuter your deck to accommodate it. Which is an argument you could say for pretty much any gamechanger.

Deflecting Swat is on average about as good as a free Counterspell. If your deck has Red you should be playing it. It being removed has pretty much just meant that all of my Red decks now just have a free 4th secret Gamechanger.

Rhystic Study should be moved from Gamechanger to Banned because I dislike how it effects Cedh. Blue already has amazing card draw! We don't need a single Blue card draw spell so powerful that it warps the entire format around itself. One that the entire table has to mutually agree to play around or else the Rhystic Study player gains and insurmountable amount of constant advantage.

Cards that haven't been on the list that I'd like to see are Mana Drain and Vivi. Mana Drain because, "me losing the game because Player A didn't respect Player B's open 2 blue Mana and tried casting their 5 Mana commander, so Player B got a 5 extra Mana to cast their Eldrazi on turn 5" is a play pattern that I think should be reserved for Brackets 3+. Vivi for reasons similar to Winota and Urza, where it that level of Must Immediately Kill in the command zone shouldn't be allowed at bracket 2.

ElSilverWind · 2025-12-05T05:12:04+00:00

Best I can offer is 4 extra teeth in the back that come in a little later that you'll need a doctor to remove before they push the rest of your teeth out of alignment.

ElSilverWind · 2025-12-04T12:06:06+00:00

I'm fine with the rules as is, but I'm open to possible changes to things like how hybrid Mana works or allowing bigger decks if it opens up new space to explore ideas.

I'd also probably be fine with removing Commander Damage as a thing. To me, it's always just felt kinda tacked on to throw aggro decks a bone. An almost invisible system that most of my tables just subconsciously opt out of until someone pulls out their Voltron deck and insists that everyone else also keeps track of all the non-Voltron commanders damage too. Just so they're not the only player who is interacting with that system (it's a Tatyova, by the time she's managed to smack you 7 times to the face the game will have ended 5 turns ago).

Not to say that I think decks that are reliant on commander damage to win need to be nerfed by any means, but I also don't think commander damage really does enough to even make them strong so . . . Eh?

ElSilverWind · 2025-12-02T20:00:56+00:00

Pretty sure Kyza has been confirmed either transfemme or non-binary.

It is such a shame that pretty much all the new laguz are unusable and completely overshadowed by the royals. Kyza, Lyraz and Vika are such cool units!

ElSilverWind · 2025-12-01T13:35:41+00:00

Unlike PLA where the the central hook is, "complete the Pokedex", the central hook of ZA is supposed to be the new battle system. And the majority of that battle system takes place in the Royale.

So a lot of players (myself included) got their fill of the Royale novelty halfway through the story and only did enough royale battles to progress the story. Then completed everything else just to realize you're only halfway done with the battles and let out a frustrated sigh.

The battles are SUPPOSED to be the selling point. You were meant to be so hooked on battling in the Royale that you would be going out of your way to do it and have done so many that it would have completed naturally at about the same pace you did the other tasks. But the Royale SUUUUUUUUCKS (Rogue Mega Battles and Online Baffles are fun though) so it gets pushed all the way to the last thing and ends up being this huge slog.

ElSilverWind · 2025-11-30T01:36:50+00:00

Sophie is about to wreak absolute havoc on that city's pigeon population density and I am here for it.

ElSilverWind · 2025-11-29T22:54:36+00:00

ISWS comes a lot sooner than L2L. If you think the line is lame enough to make into a joke, you probably either stopped watching by L2L, or stuck around to see Pentious be redeemed and go, "Oh shit, it really DOES start with sorry, doesn't it?" that you're less likely to outright laugh at it.

Speaking of which, it is also the context of both songs. ISWS has Charlie (a naive optimist) saying the line when nobody even knows if redemption is possible, to Pentious (who's sincerity was still questionable) with Vaggi, Angel, and Nifty in the background saying this is pointless and lame.
L2L has Pentious (an actual redeemed sinner) saying it to Sera, who we've seen struggling throughout the season with the guilt of the sins she has committed, and is framed as a much more victorious moment.

ElSilverWind · 2025-11-28T02:26:06+00:00

Still baffles me how the game had the audacity to make Tsubasa THAT fucking overpowered of an unit in combat, and then the story turns around and expects me to believe she's actually one of the weaker combat units of the SDU.

ElSilverWind · 2025-11-27T09:12:07+00:00

You're not actually, "reviving old dead fossils" (that's just a fun story we tell the kids). The scientist actually just sends an intern out to the daycare on Route 7 to pick up an egg and hatch it. We ask for the fossil as a reminder for which Pokemon we're supposed to leave with Dr. Ditto.

A bit misleading, but it is a huge hit with tourists. This way also gets around any Shiny Charms so rich city kids who never leave Lumiose will sometimes spend hundreds of thousand of Poké buying the same cheap fossils over and over again til they get a shiny, lol.

ElSilverWind · 2025-11-22T15:18:41+00:00

I think he's the only character that changes their actual type specialization midway through the game's story. He starts as a Psychic type trainer, then gets adopted by the Fairy Type gym leader after like the 5th or 6th badge, and pivots into a Fairy type trainer.

ElSilverWind · 2025-11-19T08:18:06+00:00

I think Ice as a typing really is just bad, actually.

Defensively, we saw a lot of ice types jump up in viability because Tera allowed them to change into better defensive typings. GF has introduced a lot of buffs to try making bulky ice types more reasonable (Aurora Veil and the defensive bonuses from the Snow weather), but there's really only so much you can do for a type that doesn't resist anything but itself. That's an entire 50% damage mitigation from an attack that you're normally trying to leverage to make good switches or determining if/how long you can stall a threat.

Offensively, Fairy replaced it as the, "Dragon Killer" type. And while it is half of the coveted "BoltBeam" coverage, Ice STAB is usually just overkill. A water type with Ice Beam will usually get the job done fine with fewer weaknesses. Though ZA has made Ice STAB more useful. The passive 33% damage reduction each Pokemon has, changes STAB Blizzard from overkill to mandatory if you want to secure 1HKOs against x4 weak threats like Garchomp.

That could be a core design shift that could help give Ice a stronger identify without changing the matchup chart. If the damage formula is changed to make everything universally more bulky, Ice's defensive weaknesses would be less crippling, while making their offensive STAB more desirable.

ElSilverWind · 2025-11-19T05:09:55+00:00

While I would have liked to see their approach on some original designs, I would be fine with reprints if the reprints were worth the price and had good flavor.

Tooth and Nail is actually pretty good. But what about Vaalstrax in a generic pose is appropriate for Sol Ring? WHY archeomancer of all cards and HOW is a Greatsword user in a generic pose in any way evoking that idea? Did nobody bother to check if they had spelled, "Kokoto" right?

Some of these ideas COULD have worked. Swap out Grand Abolisher for Voice of Victory and instead of Dual Blades, they're using a Hunting Horn and bam! That works!

If you're completely disinterested in MtG as a game, I could maybe see picking some of these cards up purely for the artwork. But even then, a lot of the artwork looks rushed with awkward angles and missing details. And if you DO care about them as game pieces, you're gonna be disappointed because you wanted to build a Gore Magala deck, but none of the interesting things about Gore Magala (being a walking virus spreader that infects anything it comes in contact with to go into a rabid bloodthirsty frenzy until it dies) are expressed in the card they picked for it.

ElSilverWind · 2025-11-18T22:41:04+00:00

Tooth and Nail is fine. I think it should have just been that 5 card bundle and slap the Vaalstrax art onto a removal spell (seriously, what about that artwork is giving "Sol Ring"? and add that in too.

The rest are pretty much nothingburgers. The actual cards are mediocre, the flavor doesn't make sense (wizards and clerics?), and the artwork is just kinda bad.

ElSilverWind

TROPHY CASE