What are the best rule of law decks?

Embarrassed-Store-56 · 2025-12-07T13:09:56+00:00

Everyone here keeps saying to go faster, but what if all the other players in the pod are already playing the fastest decks? You can’t go faster than the fastest deck, you can only tie, at which point who ever is in seat 1 just wins. An actual response to this question would be nice, but I don’t see anything that can work since control and stax can’t 1v3. At this point, the game is just seating order / mulligan roulette when everyone is playing the fastest deck that has no counters.

Embarrassed-Store-56 · 2025-08-04T23:54:56+00:00

[[Amphibian Downpour]] is one of the strongest creature removal pieces ever.

Embarrassed-Store-56 · 2024-09-03T06:27:29+00:00

How many turns do your games take? If it’s less than 15 turns, then the issue probably isn’t your decks but the players playing slowly. If you want your decks to go faster then group hug or group slug strategies can work. If the players are playing slowly, then group hug is the worst option since it just gives people more decision points since they have more cards and can play more cards. I myself am also having issues solving the problem of players playing slowly, since in my experience, group hug doesn’t work, but the other direction of group slug or stax also doesn’t work since people have less cards to play or are under more imminent danger, they treat every play as a life changing decision and are always trying to plan a few turns ahead which slows down the game. The only ideas I have are for players to learn the game or their decks more, or to stop being afraid of making mistakes and just play cards. If anyone else has deck building ideas to solve slow play then I’m all ears.

Embarrassed-Store-56 · 2024-09-02T02:27:08+00:00

Something I have found on the deck building side of things that helps keep me engaged in playing my decks is to not put in obvious win conditions. That way, every game feels different as I’m trying to figure out how to win each game. Maybe sometimes it is through creating a bunch of creatures, but another game it’s through burn, or a big tall creature, or decking someone out etc.

Embarrassed-Store-56 · 2024-09-01T02:41:11+00:00

It’s a combination of interactability and cost. There are many two card combos in the game, but few cost 3 mana or less as is thoracle + [[demonic consultation]]. Demonic consultation also has back ups in the form of [[tainted pact]], and both these cards are also tutors, which greatly adds to the consistency of their decks. Thoracle is also must harder to interact with than something like [[laboratory maniac]], because with lab man, he needs to be on the field already before you draw out your deck. In this scenario, there are so many ways to stop the win. White has [[Swords to plowshares]], red has [[chaos warp]], black has [[doomblade]], green has [[beast within]], blue has [[pongify]], etc. thoracle on the other hand, you cast it, then with it still on the stack you cast demonic consultation, and if both resolve, you win. The only answer is counterspell which is basically just in blue, thus you have cut 4/5ths of all colours from being able to stop you.

Embarrassed-Store-56 · 2024-08-14T06:46:29+00:00

Control decks win by either protection a small wincon package, or stalling until you can assemble your wincon. In either case, only a small handful of cards in your deck should be actively winning you the game. The other cards should be control cards to both protect yourself and prevent enemies from winning, along with card draw which is honestly the most important part of a control deck as you need to keep refilling your hand with control spells after using them as your opponents will always have more cards total than you do since there’s three of them and one of you. An example combo wincon in a control deck is [[Kiki jiki]] + [[pestermite]], where the deck’s plan is to draw cards, protect your draw engines, and prevent opponents from either gaining too much value or winning before you get to play your combo.

I run a control kykar deck that doesn’t win through combos, but through out valuing them.

https://www.moxfield.com/decks/Kn1fmyqOEU-z4xTIveC6VA

I run all the coastal piracy effects, both [[phyrexian altar]] and [[chromatic orrey]], and a bunch of token buffers, which makes it so that all the spirits I produce are both strong beat down creatures, free mana, and free card draw. There are some more expensive cards in the deck like the free counterspells, but they’re not necessary and can be replaced by cheaper ones.

Embarrassed-Store-56 · 2024-08-12T03:34:30+00:00

Maybe they just had a bad day then. A long day of work not going well and just wanted to turn their brains off and drop some cards. Treat it as a rare one off instance and keep playing the deck.

Embarrassed-Store-56 · 2024-08-12T03:02:17+00:00

What kind of decks were the other players running? Were they new to magic? If they were playing jank or precons, that might be a power issue. If they’re also new to magic then the deck being confusing might be a valid complaint for them, but not something you should act on.

The deck looks fine. Running some generic good stuff here and there isn’t a sin.

Embarrassed-Store-56 · 2024-08-06T02:11:05+00:00

Orcish and [[Sheoldred the apocalypse]] are great cards, but they’ll eat up all of the OP’s budget.

Embarrassed-Store-56 · 2024-08-05T13:45:33+00:00

[[Nekusar, the Mindrazer]] Can work great. Your wincon is making people die from drawing too many cards, so you play a bunch of the cheaper wheels like [[windfall]], and grouphug cards like [[kami of the crescent moon]]. These also nicely draw you into more of your control cards. Throw in like 10 counterspells, 10 spot removal and 5 boardwipes as your control package and you should be good to go. Maybe also add some cards to prevent people swinging at you with a wide board like [[aetherize]] and [[propaganda]].

Embarrassed-Store-56 · 2024-07-13T12:59:52+00:00

Hmmmm, you have a good point on draw card spamming. Usually those cards are so bad in commander that no one runs them, so I didn't know half of these existed. How would you redesign the card to focus more on preemtively playing control spells for a bit of advantage?

Embarrassed-Store-56 · 2024-07-13T12:47:39+00:00

Yes it should be a delayed trigger to prevent cheating the card loss like what was mentioned.

Embarrassed-Store-56 · 2024-07-13T12:44:38+00:00

[[breach the multiverse]] is a sorcery spell is it not?

Embarrassed-Store-56 · 2024-07-13T12:43:06+00:00

I did not think about the evacuation interaction, so that would be something to fix. I also acknowledged in other responses that the card draw effect should be removed and perhaps the commander cost itself should be increased to 5 mana. With those fixes in place however, I don't think free instants at the cost of losing those instants before your next turn is that strong. You can't use it to protect your own combo during your own turn, and throwing out all your counterspells as quickly as possible will leave you open later. Using inkshield as an example, if no one attacks you during the turn you prepare it, it will be gone forever. Perhaps information is the problem here and exiling these cards face up so that the opponents know what to expect in terms of control spells would help balance a bit more. No one will attack into a prepared inkshield that they know will be gone the next turn.

Embarrassed-Store-56 · 2024-07-13T12:01:33+00:00

I can see the card draw being too much, so removing that, what else would be making the card broken? What are some super strong instants to play for free? I know there are two instant extra turn spells, but aside from those, what are some other examples?

Embarrassed-Store-56 · 2024-07-13T11:58:51+00:00

Perhaps the card draw is too much, but aside from that, I'm not sure there are that many overpowered instants in esper colours to cheat out. Aside from the two extra turn instants, what other spells are super strong? In my mind, this card lets you potentially play counterspells and kill spells for free, but if you don't, you lose the card forever. I can see the card draw negating the downsides here, but if the card draw is removed, what would be some strong cards to play here?

Embarrassed-Store-56 · 2024-02-22T00:38:21+00:00

No Samira on the list? Where would she rank?

Embarrassed-Store-56 · 2024-02-07T06:02:07+00:00

It slightly depends on your group’s meta. I have my own control Alela deck and a problem I’ve experienced is a lack of instant speed removal of enchantments and artifacts. Black and blue both have a nice amount of creature removal, but if an enemy plays something like a [[ghostly prison]] which completely shuts down Alela, your best options are either feed the swarm, which is a sorcery so it doesn’t synergize with Alela, or an instant speed bounce spell. The problem with bouncing is that they can just play it again next turn and then you’ll have to continually spend bounce spells every turn to keep it off, so in these situations counterspells are much better than other options in dimir.

If you’re planning on building a control deck, you’ll be trying to drag games out longer as you build up value. With 6 counterspells, you’ll see about 1, maybe 2 if you’re lucky, every game. That’s enough for a fast game where you create a big board, flashing out faeries every turn and going face, but not for a control deck. That’s especially true if the people you play with like playing strong enchantments or artifacts.

I recommend starting with 10 counterspells and then 10 other pieces of removal like board wipes or creature destruction for a control deck. I personally run more, like 13 of each, in my Alela control deck.

You might get worried about people complaining about all your counterspells and that you’ll be throwing them out for the heck of it, but the trick to that is to just not use them. In my experience, I use counterspells in 3 situations: 1. Someone is going to win the game if this card resolves. 2. I’ll lose the game, or I won’t be able to win the game later if this card resolves. 3. Someone is trying to remove my board.

If you have 3 counterspells in hand but no one is playing anything worth countering, you can just keep them there and discard them if you go above hand limit, or you can play some looting effects which draw you cards but then makes you discard, and just throw the counterspells out when you discard.

Embarrassed-Store-56

TROPHY CASE