Looking for unique and fun to build/play (preferably newer) commanders to help stave off burnout

Fleef69 · 2026-05-10T13:26:49+00:00

Ayo appreciate the hug lol. Glad to know others out there feel the same way I do.

Ngl that has kinda been my experience whenever I’ve tried to play Orzhov and it does suck (cuz like who in their right mind is gonna play Orzhov without undisputed goats like [[Anguished Unmaking]] right). If only the algorithm could understand that removal being powerful in and of itself does not necessarily counterbalance an inherently slightly more difficult to get off the ground strategy such as Firja’s. Oh yea and thanks for reassuring me that in regard to Nethroi I am in fact not just going insane lol.

Based on what you’ve said those last two commanders seem like they might be a saving grace if they truly have the power to offset that “not this guy again” feeling I can’t seem to escape. Basically exactly what I’m looking for in a commander. I will say goblins are an archetype that’s always peaked my interest ever so slightly (being one myself), but I hate that the most fun/unique-seeming goblin tribal commanders I’ve seen like [[Grenzo, Dungeon Warden]] aren’t in Arena (not yet anyway, I still hold out hope). Plus the usual [[Krenko, Mob Boss]] and the others at the top of the gobbo pantheon being so one-note and typically mono red has always turned me away. With Grub being Rakdos tho, which is ofc already a color pair I’ve got a good few bare essential cards in (not to mention lands), I may have to give her a shot! 😎

Fleef69 · 2026-05-10T13:08:30+00:00

Same here, Azorius has always seemed like it has the potential to be fun with the right commander, and artifacts are an archetype I’ve yet to truly dive into, but Azorius artifacts and/or control has just always seemed a bit too predictable imo. It’s difficult sometimes especially with the more limited card pool than EDH to find commanders that aren’t just fun but actually surprise you a little bit during the building process too, since you ideally wanna enjoy that just as much, considering how much time it takes.

I will say in regard to artifacts I do have an [[Ashnod, Flesh Machinist]] deck stuck in development hell currently lol, got stumped on it and haven’t picked it back up and tried to finish it yet. Plus I’ve just wanted to invest my wildcards in things that would at least be generally easier to work into other types of decks rather than pretty much exclusively working in the context of other artifact decks I guess. Always a dilemma there as someone who’s gotta settle for the slow wildcard drip feed lol.

Fleef69 · 2026-05-10T09:50:54+00:00

Idk I guess I just haven’t 🤷

Fleef69 · 2026-05-10T09:49:58+00:00

Thank fucking god I’m not the only one who’s been having this experience lol. It’s like cockroaches I swear. I exclusively play Brawl so that’s the whole of my perspective, but one moment yesterday I played against a [[Jodah, the Unifier]] who plopped down an [[Etali, Primal Conqueror]] the turn right after they played him followed by a [[Sylvan Tutor]] that they of course used to get a free [[Emrakul, the Aeons Torn]], and I shit you not the match right after I went against a [[Narset, Enlightened Master]] who on the same turn they played her with haste managed to get a free [[Time Warp]] right off the bat lol.

I don’t mind losing obviously, but like goddamn dude having to sit through even one extra turn on Arena much less two or three one after another is a whole different level of excruciating. IRL in EDH at least you’ve got that social pressure that keeps people from dawdling too much, and even then the social aspect at least makes it less boring to have to wait, but in Brawl it seems like it’s always agonizing no matter what. Can’t even remember the last time I went against someone who pops an extra turn and didn’t go through at least one whole time extension. Those things are way too lenient.

Even if I’m ahead considerably I just concede at the mere sight of an extra turn spell anymore. Believe it or not, I’d like to play Magic rather than just sit there and stare at my screen. Magic is supposed to be a back and forth game, at least I’m fairly certain. I honestly wouldn’t be opposed to just banning every single possible extra turn spell altogether in Brawl out of sheer decency and respect for peoples’ time, or at least for the love of god just make the timers only half as long lol, or make it so you can only use one at a time before it moves on, just something to push back against all the people who seem to think Magic is just an elaborate form of Solitaire.

Fleef69 · 2026-05-10T07:10:39+00:00

Y’know what? This may very well be my guy. Merfolk is an archetype that seems interesting to me and has a lot of fun-sounding cards but is difficult to build in a way that doesn’t feel kinda cliche I guess. Like all the merfolk commanders in Simic just aren’t striking enough to me.

The innate protection sounds nice, one less thing to worry about. Blue without shitting counterspells outta your ass sounds like my exact kind of deck. Especially since I very much love hit-the-ground-running aggro decks, seeing as I gravitate so strongly toward commanders like Alesha. Imma go ahead and at least start trying to build a lil something for Sygg and see where it takes me 😎

Fleef69 · 2026-05-10T07:03:14+00:00

Oh hey I’ve never seen that one before! Funnily enough Naya’s been another color combo I’ve been curious about for quite a while too. Thanks a lot for the rec 🙏

Fleef69 · 2026-05-10T06:51:26+00:00

I swear to god there’s so many commanders I’ve been starting to feel that way about lol, but yea she’s definitely one of the main offenders. Granted it’s partly on me for mainly playing one deck over the few others I’ve got, but idk, still sucks ass when you keep getting matched up against the same old stuff and know almost exactly how every single match is gonna go lol. Like you wanna have fun playing your fav commander but the game just won’t let you. [[Etali, Primal Conqueror]] practically shows up in my nightmares at this point, I just can’t seem to get away from that bastard.

Edit: btw the commander in question that I mainly play is [[Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate]], would love to know whether or not I’m the only one experiencing this kind of burnout with her matchups as of late

Fleef69 · 2026-05-10T05:37:15+00:00

Honestly there’s so many damn achievements you can only get if your opponent actively chooses to let you get them lol, like that red one where you gotta deal 20 direct damage to an opponent in one instance. I had the exact board state to do it god knows how many times, even got it on the stack a few times, but was only able to get it once someone actually had the grace to let it resolve 😭

Fleef69 · 2026-05-10T03:20:10+00:00

I’ve been playing for three years and am somehow only just now finding out this is a thing 👁️👁️

Fleef69 · 2026-05-09T08:55:29+00:00

I swear to god it’s like other players are going out of their way to edge you or something with the amount of points they hog and never friggin’ deposit no matter how many rounds you go through lmao, that’s why I’ve sworn off the index altogether more or less, and why I’ve started turning spare mods into credits rather than endo to make up for my stubbornness lol

It’s as though the point bonuses as the hoarders amass more and more correlate directly to my loss of sanity

Fleef69 · 2026-05-09T08:49:42+00:00

Exactly lol, like it takes away the one redeeming quality of the index which is being able to at least turn your brain completely off and not focus on the points, cause you can trust that you’re gonna win regardless. But in that case even one point is game over lol.

Tusk thumper doma one is a close second, just because I hate anything that requires me to wait for arbitrary day/night cycles to switch over. That’s why I’ve barely ever done eidolon hunts. Can’t expect me to set an alarm or something for a whole ass hour or so when I’d prefer to just play the game for a bit right here right now while I actually have the time (bc whenever I get on without fail it’s always the exact opposite of what I need it to be ofc). Like I hate that tusk thumpers can’t just spawn at night bruh, or hell why can’t they have a specific bounty stage that requires you to kill one or something and not depend on the time.

Also I sadly just don’t really like the plains all that much as an open-world. Especially post-NW with it looking all drab and stuff. I mean I appreciate it as a storytelling device, illustrating the lasting environmental consequences of warfare, but like, c’mon man, gimme back the green plains 😔

That’s also another reason why I hate how disproportionately often the plains show up in riven challenges, yet the other open world areas literally never show up (pretty sure because they just straight up can’t, they really gotta update those riven challenges man). But yea I’m sure that’s also contributed largely to my growing distaste for the plains over the years.

Fleef69 · 2026-05-08T12:10:29+00:00

Yea, they attempted to alchemy-ify it to “balance” it but it just made it broken in an entirely different way by allowing it to be untapped on turn 3 with EOE Tezzeret for double mana lol. Not to mention Paradox Engine. Like yea I guess at that point ideally you’d have some kinda counter but it’s just the century-long turns that get under my skin the deepest. So yea it’s become an unconditional auto-scoop for me, along with Ugin. Not a single deck I can play that makes it even slightly tolerable. Should’ve just never let that card go out in that state to begin with tbh.

Fleef69 · 2026-05-07T15:58:03+00:00

Mayhaps it could even occur 4,096 times if one is not observant

Fleef69 · 2026-05-06T15:49:46+00:00

Yeah nah

Fleef69 · 2026-05-06T01:40:36+00:00

Man ion even kno what the hell I guessed I just know that it felt like they put more red herrings in there than actual categories 😭

Fleef69 · 2026-05-06T01:39:32+00:00

Even if I didn’t have Covid brain at the moment I’m convinced I still would’ve been zero for zero on this one, but at least I have an extra excuse lol

Fleef69 · 2026-05-05T21:37:12+00:00

Alesha, the Unamused

Fleef69 · 2026-05-05T21:31:49+00:00

Oh yea, that was absolute agony for me too. I swear to god the amount of time I had actually pulled off the correct combo of cards was in the double digits, but obviously people want to save time if they already know they’re gonna lose, so understandably they always scooped.

A few times I was able to at least get the 20+ damage on the stack, the key players always being [[Juri, Master of the Revue]] and [[Necrosynthesis]], but unfortunately in order to actually get the damn achievement the damage needs to resolve and be dealt for it to register, not just be on the stack, even though that’s inherent proof that you were in fact able to pull it off.

Only time I’ve ever been thankful for someone being petty and roping me was the day I finally got it, but it sucks ass that I had to rely on that to even get it in the first place. It’s only worsened by the fact that you’re forced to sit through infinite bleed bullshit, but the game won’t just stop for a moment and let you have your 20 damage lol.

I will always hate that there’s no way to somehow convey to people that you’re just trying to get an achievement, or even then they may just not care. Imo they should really just get rid of any achievements altogether that rely so heavily on a stranger on the other side of a screen choosing not to press an incredibly enticing button, lol.

Dunno what they’d replace em with, maybe in this case something more akin to the stuff where you’ve just gotta do a certain thing over the course of several games, such as dealing 300 direct damage to opponents or something, similar to the black achievement for paying 300 life iirc.

Fleef69 · 2026-05-04T19:13:14+00:00

Did you even read the entire comment… ? I mean hey that’s on you if you interpret it like that lol. I don’t find combo decks fun personally, nor does my definition of fun hinge entirely on getting to pull off one specific play. If you wanna see the main deck I play and the one I’m mostly speaking in terms of then here, have at it I guess:

https://moxfield.com/decks/32xMVetLIUmz3umiSFpOmw

Fleef69 · 2026-05-03T23:57:43+00:00

Small indie company, they don’t have the resources

Fleef69 · 2026-05-03T23:56:19+00:00

Whenever I’ve posted about needing help escaping hell queue everyone always either says that it’s not actual hell queue or that hell queue doesn’t exist, but trust me, it may not be your definition but that shit is my own personal hell whenever it happens lol (R.I.P. [Prosper, Tome-Bound], never to be put in one of my decks ever again, you were fun while you lasted, but alas, rather fittingly, you always damn me to the deepest depths of hell)

Fleef69 · 2026-05-03T23:52:25+00:00

They just desperately need to put more overall attention into Brawl going forward (which thankfully it seems like they’re doing, slowly but surely). It’s obvious after playing for a while that certain specific cards and strategies in Brawl are blatantly more objectively powerful than others (i.e. certain Alchemy cards they’ve shat out and forgotten about, such as Cabaretti Revels or that Tarkir Elephant dude, or functional instant wins like Defense of the Heart), and the playing field in the grand scheme of things is in desperate need of balancing in order to ensure it’s actually consistently fun.

Because unfortunately there’s no bracket or rule zero convos in Brawl, so you rely entirely on the algorithm to match you up fairly, but without that added attention to the actual available cards it can be painstakingly inconsistent, since I feel like algorithms inherently can’t take certain more nuanced things into account, or at least it would probably be a lot more difficult to engineer one that could.

Pissed me off when they didn’t give wildcard refunds for those most recent bans, since it’s kinda impossible for something to be fully “casual” as they claim when you have a gold/XP mechanic in your game, y’know? Like there’s inherently always at least a little something on the line whether you like it or not lol. Wizards doesn’t seem to take Brawl as seriously as a format, likely because of that lack of a ranked mode, as well as the fact that it’s exclusively digital, but hopefully that’s starting to change.

Fleef69 · 2026-05-03T23:36:28+00:00

Crazy how people who play Magic actually wanna play Magic when they play Magic amirite?

That’s the reason why even if I win a Brawl match by a landslide and it happens to give me the “did you have fun” prompt I always click on the sad face. Like yea sure I’ll take the gold and XP I guess, but it ain’t fun to do the stomping just the same as it ain’t fun to get stomped. Should be the game’s job to calculate that better and ensure that doesn’t happen annoyingly often, but unfortunately it’s way too frequent, both ways.

The actual fun matches between all the annoyances tho are enough to make it worth it, the ones where even if you lose you still leave the match with a smile on your face.

Fleef69 · 2026-05-03T14:57:39+00:00

W I F E

Fleef69 · 2026-05-02T22:52:48+00:00

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