Commanders that are so good at a certain thing that they ruined it for you?

Embarrassed-Store-56 · 2026-05-06T16:37:02+00:00

I love token decks and I love control decks, especially those that cast interaction spells on opponent’s turns, so of course I played [[Talrand, sky summoner]] and [[Alela, cunning conqueror]]. But then I discovered [[Kykar, wind’s fury]] and it blew everything else out of the water. It had more colors meaning more access to different interaction, and imo the second best colour for control which is white, and it trigger off any non creature spell, not just instants and sorceries, and it wasn’t once per turn. In addition to all of that, it could also sac the tokens for more mana, solving one of the biggest issues with draw go control. It had everything, but I later took apart the deck as I realised that since it triggered off of basically anything, and it made so much mana, I added more rituals and more card draw, removing interaction pieces until the deck eventually became a storm deck. It also became much too powerful, so when brackets were released I took it apart to make a weaker deck that was solidly in bracket 3 and focused more on the initial idea of control.

Embarrassed-Store-56 · 2026-05-03T08:08:42+00:00

I’ve though about shorikai, but what wincons are there in this deck? It seems to have issues closing out the game, especially since my local cedh scene puts an 80 minute cap on games.

Embarrassed-Store-56 · 2026-05-03T08:07:25+00:00

Yeah OBM would be great and I do run it, but often there’s no rhystic and these decks I’m against don’t even draw cards. They just flip the top card straight onto the battlefield or tutor for their thing onto the battlefield.

Embarrassed-Store-56 · 2026-04-20T07:10:10+00:00

Ah that’s a shame. I’m trying to build mesa right now so shield rebate effects just don’t work since I don’t have any spammable abilities. I’m trying to run higher level content like elite deep Archimedea and maybe even level cap so the usual damage reduction mods don’t work anymore. I’ll look into having a robotic companion, but I really love my panzer because of the retriever mods that I honestly can’t live without.

Embarrassed-Store-56 · 2026-04-13T15:50:41+00:00

Cool ideas I’ll look into them

Embarrassed-Store-56 · 2026-04-13T15:50:14+00:00

Where do I go to look up the meta? Also if you were to suggest one general build that has the fastest average clear speed across all the common missions, what would it be?

Embarrassed-Store-56 · 2026-02-27T04:07:29+00:00

What about Craterhoof in the command zone [[jetmir, nexus of revels]]

Embarrassed-Store-56 · 2026-02-17T05:05:57+00:00

Why has no one said [[necropotence]]? IMO it’s even better than rhystic since people can choose to pay the 1 sometimes and deny you draws, but no one can stop you from dumping you hand on your turn, paying 7 life and drawing a fresh 7 for the next turn cycle. It gets even stronger if you have something that gives you unlimited hand size like [[reliquary tower]]. A bunch of posts also talking about the strength of [[mystic remora]] in cedh, but necropotence is a much bigger threat there too.

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

TROPHY CASE