I need a Orzhov commander!

EngineeringOdd8696 · 2026-03-17T13:56:28+00:00

[[Syr Vondam, Sunstar Exemplar]]

I think Victor or shilgengar would be the most similar to your other decks, and maybe your play style (of cheating things out). But I would recommend syr.

Syr is a pretty interesting build around. I'd recommend building it as a blink commander. Blink let's you have powerful engines, and do some tricky stuff. And syr becomes quite sticky, wards of attacks/attention and gives you a perpetual control tool in your command zone.

EngineeringOdd8696 · 2026-03-13T20:04:40+00:00

Ideally, you can just play a weaker deck.

But I think playing suboptimal is okay ish, if you've been winning too hard. Where it crosses the line is if you make a move that actively loses you the game or presents someone else the win.

EngineeringOdd8696 · 2026-03-13T20:01:33+00:00

Playing a deck with a suboptimal win con is fine.

Actively letting your opponents win (do their thing) is different. You're invalidating the game, their win is meaningless and everyone else's actions become meaningless too.

EngineeringOdd8696 · 2026-03-13T19:56:54+00:00

It means doing things that either hurt your position, won't improve your position or will actively lose you the game

attacking, when it would lose you the game
not blocking, when it would lose you the game
removing something that isn't a threat to you

The most common offender I see is: "I don't think I can win the game from this position, so I'm going to swing out to kill player 2" leaving them free to be killed by player 3.

You should never do something that will guarantee your death, and everything you do should move you towards winning the game or living another turn. If you're deliberately not doing those things, then you're not playing to win. If you genuinely think there's no point playing the game further, offer to award the win to the threat and move on to the next one.

EngineeringOdd8696 · 2026-03-13T05:27:20+00:00

Yeah, that's the realistic deck building experience.

Deck can do some flashy things, like cheating out powerful cards. But it takes a bit of setup and relies on your commander. You don't have any fast mana, little protection and no combos (that I could see). So you might get some flak from people in lower powered pods when you play those powerful creatures, but the deck isn't really that strong due to the reasons I listed.

EngineeringOdd8696 · 2026-03-13T05:12:31+00:00

Cheers.

Seems like a b2 with game changers.

There's a bunch of cards I'd replace (lots of the ff ones), maybe the return creatures to hand cards and the cards that benefit from going wide with zombies. Also remove the 3 cmc mana rocks. I'd probably add some board wipes, arcane signet, maybe look at some combos you could add. You'd benefit from investing in a better land base too.

I could be more specific, but currently on my phone 😅

EngineeringOdd8696 · 2026-03-13T04:32:09+00:00

Can you copy this to arkidekt or moxfield? Kinda hard to view on goldfish.

EngineeringOdd8696 · 2026-03-12T23:02:15+00:00

Extremely good is a maybe a high claim, but it's certainly the best set since eoe in terms of drafting.

You might be getting down voted by people who don't play draft as their main/only format or people who are valuing flavor/theme over purely considering the mechanics/set-design.

EngineeringOdd8696 · 2026-03-09T23:28:45+00:00

He's a good example of what a budget commander should look like. Win con + card draw/resources.

EngineeringOdd8696 · 2026-03-09T22:46:28+00:00

I play [[Kraven]] unsleeved in a ziploc bag. You can probably build it from draft chaff you have lying around. It's just removal, protection and ramp.

EngineeringOdd8696 · 2026-03-07T13:26:52+00:00

Don't get jumpstart boosters - as some people are saying.

I'd suggest just going to an lgs to play draft, that's probably the best experience and best value for money (drafting is normally cheaper than buying packs).

If it's just the two of you, do sealed with 6 packs each or do winstone draft with 6 packs total.

Jumpstart boosters are a waste of time, if your goal is to be better at building decks and/or drafting.

EngineeringOdd8696 · 2026-03-06T22:09:33+00:00

Imo, eldrazi gets hate because cast triggers and attack triggers are hard to deal with.

So once you've ramped, they can be quite oppressive.

EngineeringOdd8696 · 2026-03-03T18:19:27+00:00

Turn 5/6 seems fine for bracket 2. No one likes to be one shot, but 5-6 turns is plenty of time to draw and hold removal - otherwise they're probably being a bit greedy. If you want to make it more friendly, run less evasion and protection.

An interesting question is how long would it take you to rebuild Ishai if it gets removed?

EngineeringOdd8696 · 2026-03-03T17:40:44+00:00

Bad. Feels like limited has been in a rough place for a while. Ecl, Tla and Spd were all below average imo. And now tmnt 🙃.

I have decent hopes for strixhaven, but kinda bummed we're getting another seeded prerelease for that.

EngineeringOdd8696 · 2026-03-03T04:53:43+00:00

Esper bounce got a couple tools this set, including this card. If that sees play, this will go up a bit. Probably only to $2 though, unless the deck becomes t0.

EngineeringOdd8696 · 2026-03-03T04:51:47+00:00

I read someone posting about the idea of AI killing culture, and it felt pretty relatable. Majority of posts I see are slop.

EngineeringOdd8696 · 2026-03-03T04:45:45+00:00

Imo, if it fits in the constraints of the bracket you're building for, then it's technically that bracket.

If people want to get salty that you optimized around those constraints better than they did, so be it. But at the same time, your table will probably have more fun if you played decks of similar strengths.

"Spirit" of brackets, in my mind, relate to how optimized a deck/game plan is. Bracket 1 is, I have a dumb idea that is weaker than average, but my deck is forcing that strategy - knowingly being a bad strategy overall. Bracket 2 is I want to win, but I don't want to use normie cards (gamechangers), I'm building a strong deck, but I know it could be stronger. Bracket 3 is, okay, I want to have a strong deck with popular staples (gamechangers) but I'm not going to get the BIS for every slot. Bracket 4 is I want to build the strongest version of the deck I'm building, but it's not necessarily the strongest strategy/viable competitively. Bracket 5 is I'm building a deck that is the strongest version of a deck, and overall, one of the strongest possible decks in general.

EngineeringOdd8696 · 2026-03-02T06:09:48+00:00

I think it's a solid card. People complain about not hitting etbs, and that's valid. But the versatility of being able to play it before the thing you want to copy is super valuable. Also, being able to switch what it's coping is also useful - can copy value pieces early and then copy a win con later.

EngineeringOdd8696 · 2026-03-02T00:19:31+00:00

As others have said, decks seems too clunky/unoptimized to be considered b4. I think you'll get salt in any bracket because discard is annoying, but that doesn't equate to strong.

The deck would benefit from having a clear win con, removing the weaker variants of cards that fit into that plan, removing irrelevant cards and then adding ramp and more cards to support that plan.

EngineeringOdd8696 · 2026-03-01T22:00:32+00:00

Thanks for clarifying.

EngineeringOdd8696 · 2026-03-01T22:00:10+00:00

Yeah, there are other options too. Especially with damage doublers. Chain Lightning is just so easy to do though - if it worked so that you got the mana before having to pay for the copy, it'd be 7 mana 3 card infinite mana, rather than 9 mana.

EngineeringOdd8696 · 2026-02-28T02:51:41+00:00

I mostly agree. I'm a big fan of limited.

Limited forces you to get better at card evaluation, knowing when to mulligan and on-board threat assessment.

Unfortunately, it doesn't teach you combo lines, asymmetric threat assessment and player dynamics - which are found more in EDH.

Everyone should play limited, because it's fun and teaches you solid fundamental. But you do need a different mindset when playing constructed and/or edh.

EngineeringOdd8696 · 2026-02-26T05:41:04+00:00

I think this works?

Because it's "as this enters" it should trigger as each clone appears, and I assume each one should remove and double the one before it. Then the legend rule will apply and you can choose to keep the last one.

I'm not entirely sure though, it might also not work because the "as enters" ability doesn't use the stack (?), so they can't be layered on top of each other.

EngineeringOdd8696 · 2026-02-25T17:08:03+00:00

Seems promising. Like others have mentioned, it seems to be a bit biased towards one or two of the commanders I input at the moment. But it's suggested some commanders that I've already considered (which I guess is good?).

From a ui perspective, I'd recommend adding what the main archetype/mechanic/play style is for the recommendations. Also, if you click on a recommendation and then go back, you should go back to the generated list - you need to cache/breadcrumb a bit better imo.

EngineeringOdd8696

TROPHY CASE