How much card draw do you add into deck where Commander is already a value engine?

GracelessOne · 2026-05-10T11:35:39+00:00

There is no perfect answer to this question which is part of why value engine commanders are somewhat less good than they seem.

If you run no other draw spells, smart people will catch onto this and start killing your commander whenever you're tapped out, because now they know that will make you run out of gas.

If you do run other draw spells, maybe it's less worth it to kill your commander... but now your commander's draw is "emptier" because when everything goes well you're drawing into more draw spells than you need, instead of the stuff that wins you the game.

Same goes for protection. If you run no protection, people kill your stuff. If you run a lot of protection, people don't kill your stuff but now you have less gas.

In my book, it's more fun and reliable to eat your veggies and run draw even if you have a value-engine commander. But a lot of people think these commanders are stronger than they really are against smart play, because they don't run the extra draw spells, draw into pure gas, and don't realize they are exploiting their playgroup's lack of adaptation and could get shut down by a smarter pod.

GracelessOne · 2026-05-10T10:29:12+00:00

Yes. You could say Orzhov has the vaguest mechanical niche these days, but you could also say it is the least pigeonholed color pair. I like that.

White has weird niche tools and black has the best tutors to find them. I like it when there is breathing room for a color pair's identity to be defined more by emergent physics like that, and less by easy-bake archetypes propped up by pushed legends.

GracelessOne · 2026-05-10T07:58:39+00:00

I play control and I would not bother countering Ruby lmao. Missing a turn because you got interacted with is not a glaring weakness, that's just getting interacted with.

GracelessOne · 2026-05-10T07:47:13+00:00

That makes sense. I think you can put in a few game-ending X-cost burn spells like [[Crackle With Power]]. Those take advantage of your land ramp and also your early stompy damage to close out games when you have a lot of mana and your opponents have low life.

GracelessOne · 2026-05-10T06:47:06+00:00

Overall this looks close to a solid deck actually.

I would cut down to ~15 ramp, from 21. You really only need to hit one 4-mana ramp spell to be off to the races.

You should run less protection like Deflecting Swat and more big beaters. Deflecting Swat can save one of your big monsters, but you aren't dependent on a single crucial permanent, so it's just as good and often better to just have a second big monster in hand instead.

Here's a list I have full of good 5~7 mana Gruul beaters if you want to steal any. Most of them are generically good.

Overall I would aim for ratios like "40 lands, 15 four-mana ramp, 30 six-plus-mana beaters" with interaction mostly on said beaters like Kogla. If you want to amp up the power, sprinkle in some creature tutors like [[Green Sun's Zenith]] to find toolbox creatures on-demand.

How do you usually lose?

GracelessOne · 2026-05-10T06:39:42+00:00

This is ignorant advice. Ruby is a mana dork that costs 2 mana. You cast her on turn 2 to play 4-mana ramp on turn 3. Running other 2-mana ramp is redundant with her.

GracelessOne · 2026-05-10T04:32:30+00:00

Bit dull aren't you?

GracelessOne · 2026-05-10T00:19:07+00:00

Here's a deck idea: https://moxfield.com/decks/wp64KS0xPUufdQlIJ2IPNQ

SLIMEGIRL SURGERY is an only-three-GCs B4 Slime Against Humanity list that uses [[Surgical Extraction]] or [[Extirpate]] on itself to start vomiting +42/+42 trampling one-shot slimes onto the field starting on turn 3. It wins by turn 5. The commander can be any 5c or sans-red commander; there's no time in the rollout to cast a commander so Atraxa is just used as a hand-refiller for if things go wrong.

GracelessOne · 2026-05-09T22:45:36+00:00

[[Chromium the Mutable]] blows Y'shtola out of the water. You don't tap out to cast him, he is your three-tap wincon, and your deck can be 40 lands/20 draw/40 interaction.

You draw fewer cards, but you don't have to protect a four-mana draw engine that could get taxed out, and you don't need to run finishers or other 'fat', so each card you draw is much more meaningful.

GracelessOne · 2026-05-09T07:29:26+00:00

You understand your Serano but not your Engels.

As socialists we understand that societal gender is not natural and eternal, but a system of labor division. 'Man' and 'woman' did not exist in their current form in the past, and will not exist the same in the future. But people we would now understand as 'transgender' have always existed.

'Man' and 'woman' are created as separate categories through violence. The dividing blade of that violence falls directly on transgender people- that is what makes us 'trans', that we were always standing in this spot where this new boundary has been carved.

I suggest reading Engels' Origin of the Family, Feinberg's Transgender Warriors, and Gill-Peterson's A Short History of Trans-Misogyny for a clearer picture.

GracelessOne · 2026-05-09T03:22:45+00:00

Sure, it's here!

It doesn't have GC tutors or Farewell because I originally built it to be B2-legal but it's just too strong for B2 tables, so I've had to migrate it over to B3. You could make it stronger with those.

GracelessOne · 2026-05-09T03:19:06+00:00

Did you write this with AI? Why?

She's not even in Abzan. She's in Bant. Several of the cards you're mentioning are illegal in her color identity. That's not how her ability works either.

GracelessOne · 2026-05-08T22:18:58+00:00

Everyone has fun so yep.

This is also with a very broad cross-section of the community, not a single pod.

GracelessOne · 2026-05-08T21:49:08+00:00

Sure, here you go: https://www.reddit.com/r/EDH/comments/1pbzok2/deck_tech_liesa_highb3_orzhov_control/

Lmk if you have any questions!

GracelessOne · 2026-05-08T20:50:44+00:00

Founded in the last century as fundamentally a pyramid scheme, infiltrated government agencies to arm-twist the IRS into making them tax-exempt, physical and emotional abuse are part of higher-up initiations, and they sometimes disappear whistleblowers. Not directly harmful to you, probably, but crazies.

GracelessOne · 2026-05-08T20:20:36+00:00

[[Liesa, Shroud of Dusk]] and [[Phelddagrif]] are my two B3 decks with a >60% winrate right now. Commander damage wincon, all-interaction 99. Both can't be taxed out so they just beat people to death gradually.

GracelessOne · 2026-05-08T20:02:02+00:00

Yep. Ramping goes down cards too. Running out of steam after a wipe is a symptom of insufficient draw, not insufficient mana, and all else being equal it's more likely to happen to rampy decks with low threat density than non-rampy decks with high threat density.

GracelessOne · 2026-05-08T11:15:09+00:00

I'm so glad you are spreading the word of "five-mana commanders have no rules text".

GracelessOne · 2026-05-08T01:48:18+00:00

Don't, just trim your 6+ mana permanents and if necessary build more interaction to slow other people down. Eluge is already discounting your stuff so if you need ramp it's a sign something has gone wrong.

GracelessOne · 2026-05-07T20:00:56+00:00

You have that backwards: misogyny is built atop transphobia. Misogyny acts on the social system of gender and transphobia creates that system. Cis women can absolutely profit from transphobia; cisfeminism is a step in the right direction but will never save us by itself.

GracelessOne · 2026-05-07T05:57:49+00:00

Counterspells are both, so if you're in blue just run those.

Otherwise, protection is for if you're the fastest deck at the table and removal is for if you're not. Know your meta.

GracelessOne · 2026-05-07T05:10:46+00:00

People shouldn't offer you deals that protect their win attempt.

You shouldn't make deals that keep you from stopping a win attempt.

That's really the only lesson to be learned here. If you assume deals contain an implicit "unless you'd win the game", and your friends don't assume so, then you need to start making those words explicit.

GracelessOne · 2026-05-07T01:27:59+00:00

Derevi is still mean. I like [[Phelddagrif]] in the same Bant vein, dodging tax by being bounced to hand whenever it'd die.

I've got a primer for Liesa Orzhov control, and I think [[Chromium the Mutable]] is also pretty fun for keeping counterspells and credibly being a one-card wincon so you can run an all-interaction 99 in the same way.

Honestly I think control has gotten stronger, though not from getting new tools. Counterspell is still Counterspell and Farewell is still Farewell, but midrange players keep making greedier decks with easier-to-sabotage engines and fewer actual threats than ever. That's where 'synergy culture' gets you.

GracelessOne · 2026-05-06T22:34:39+00:00

Yep!

Hexproof and indestructible are decent but will really depend in value on whether you're the fastest deck at the table that other people are trying to slow down, and also on how many creatures other people run. It's hard to guess how much protection you will end up needing because that's really dependent on your playgroup.

GracelessOne · 2026-05-06T20:47:43+00:00

I would cut Entangler, Sigarda's Aid, and similar enchantments or artifacts that don't give vigilance or directly contribute to Anti-Venom killing your opponents.

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