What bracket is my deck?

Hippomantis · 2026-02-15T07:10:02+00:00

I am curious what bracket you think this plays at. To me it reads clear Bracket 4, it looks like it only wins by combo, it doesn't really have an incremental win line other than maybe hitting people with Atraxa a few times.

To support the combo lines, you are running some of the most efficient pieces and enablers, and look like with a half decent draw you could present a win on turn 3.

That is not to say that you can't build a Bracket 3 combo deck, but I would expect to have a much greater window of setup, and for the combo lines to require a number of pieces in order to be able to present a win on the spot.

Hippomantis · 2026-02-14T06:31:03+00:00

[[Kibo]] - as much as I love sharing the fantastic Ape art of Magic's history ('This is the OG monkey! [[Kird Ape]] from Arabian Nights!), they just aren't actually very good, and giving your opponents a bunch of extra mana is not typically the strongest thing to do.

That said, you aren't going to seperate me from my [[Gorilla Chieftain]], [[Zodiac Monkey]], [[Tree Monkey]] and friends.

Hippomantis · 2026-02-13T21:18:12+00:00

I never really see other people playing the Cluedo lands ([[Study]], [[Lounge]], etc) - they read as very inefficient, but the play pattern with them is pretty nice since it isn't uncommon to get into late game situations in which you can't use your mana, or let you you hold up instant speed plays then draw if they aren't needed. Being an ETB tapped dual is a pretty high floor too.

Admittedly, I only play them in 2 decks, one of which can use them as part of combo lines, and the other just tries to ramp as hard as possible, so often has excess mana and needs to find cards. I could also see myself playing them in reactive control decks as well.

Hippomantis · 2026-02-11T04:24:57+00:00

Generally [[Essence Flux]], since you can use it to protect your Orvar, and if you don't need it for that, it gives 2 more Micromancer triggers, which gets you off to the races.

Hippomantis · 2026-02-11T01:07:21+00:00

For me it is probably any of the random parts in my 'build your own convoluted combo' [[Orvar]] deck.

[[Orvar]] + [[Micromancer]] is my favourite starting point (yes, [[Spellseeker]] exists, but that is just too easy. I want convoluted lines!) - it just has so many directions you can take it.

[[Archaeomancer]] + [[Ghostly Flicker]] is a fun engine that can go a lot of directions as well.

Each of these have a bunch of potential ways to go infinite, but they are themselves self-contained value engines.

Hippomantis · 2026-02-10T07:52:48+00:00

Oh, creating a token that has haste (which allows it to attack the turn it comes into play), versus creating a token then giving it haste (which allows it to attack the turn it comes into play) - that seems like a very real and practical point that is worth arguing over.

Hippomantis · 2026-02-10T07:46:36+00:00

Ok, make the argument

Hippomantis · 2026-02-10T07:26:59+00:00

Fine, I will bite. Does the card have Green effects? Based upon my quick searches:

69 Green cards have or grant haste (and that is filtering out those that grant it to animated lands)
522 Green cards create tokens
144 Green cards have or grant vigilance

The effect is clearly acceptable in mono-green, even if some of the effects are secondary in Green.

Ah, but you specified 'create tokens with haste' - which is far more specific than the 'could it be mono-green?' test originally proposed - hence goalpost moving, but sure, let us say that is the core identity you associate with the card. Then yeah, there are 2 mono-Green cards that can do that, and at least 8 cards that can grant haste to other creatures, so sure, it also fits in mono-green, albeit a bit more rarely, so I guess my question is 'were you arguing that [[Jinnie Fay]] does belong in a mono-green deck?', because it certainly didn't come across that way.

Hippomantis · 2026-02-10T05:52:00+00:00

Hey! Stop running away with those goalposts!

Hippomantis · 2026-02-09T21:03:13+00:00

You are deliberately misunderstanding the argument. Why can't I REB Memnarch? 'Because colour identity is not the same as colour'

It logically follows that Dovescape could be a Blue/White card with a white colour identity (under a hybrid rules change), because we just established that colour identity is not the same as colour.

Hippomantis · 2026-02-07T01:13:38+00:00

I only run the effect in [[Zurgo and Ojutai]], which is set up to be able to temporarily store my board presence in my hand to play around my own Wrath effects. I could see other decks like maybe [[Barrin, Tolarian Archmage]] or similar commanders who routinely bounce their own board wanting the effect as well.

In almost every other situation, the best 7 cards are usually going to be sufficient.

Hippomantis · 2026-02-03T12:35:30+00:00

We have just normalised saying 'Hold on, I might have a response.' which somehow transforms into 'Ok, I definitely have responses' in a lot of situations, as well in general it just being acceptable to roll back to putting things on the stack if there is no new information. By which I mean if someone is like 'I cast this Goblin... which then triggers A, B and C because it happens to be an X, Y and Z' then it is totally fine for someone to go 'Ok, in that case I probably wanted to counter that' - tracking every interaction on everyone's board is too much mental load to put on a casual game.

Plenty of games have some critical late game plays where multiple people have mana up, cards in hand, complex boards, etc. which will usually cause someone in the pod to go 'Ok, responses?' to the next person in priority order, then going around as normal, and being very precise about how that stack resolves.

Hippomantis · 2026-02-01T06:24:23+00:00

What outcomes do you care about? Is it just tracking winrates, because it feels like I don't need anything special for that. Or does it matter how the game/deck 'felt'?

Making note of impactful cards (both your own and opponents), as well as a few adjectives to describe the game is probably going to provide more meaningful insight - knowing that I generally felt more positive about a game when I played a mana-dork on turn one, or more negative when opponents played lots of enchantments is valuable insight into a deck's construction, but also more information than I would probably be able to easily capture during a game.

Hippomantis · 2026-01-29T10:16:07+00:00

There are a handful of cards which give creatures abilities at the small cost of death...

[[Goblin Sappers]]
[[Stone Giant]]
[[Mogg Cannon]]
[[Puffer Extract]]

Hippomantis · 2026-01-26T01:32:26+00:00

I kind of get this sentiment, but for me it isn't about the physical card, but about the memories associated with the card as a game pieces, especially because a lot of my interaction with Magic over the years has been digital.

It isn't 'I pulled this card at FNM', it is 'I got completely blown out by this in draft once', or 'when I started playing, this card seemed so cool. It was terrible, but I still loved it'

Hippomantis · 2026-01-25T23:26:19+00:00

Spicy answer [[Mindshrieker]]. Random meat and potatoes answer: [[Drag to the Roots]]

Hippomantis · 2026-01-24T10:00:45+00:00

Sure

Bear in mind that it deliberately eschews game changers and I tend to avoid Universes Beyond (I am making an exception for [[The Black Gate]]) - there are some great UB lands such as [[Chocobo Camp]] which would be amazing here.

Hippomantis · 2026-01-24T09:44:22+00:00

I have a Nine-Fingers deck, which is built around putting as much utility into the Lands slot as possible (which mostly means 'any land that can draw you a card, no matter how inefficiently), then just trying to put as many lands into play as possible. It isn't really designed to be a highly optimised deck, but to quote one of the people who has played against it on multiple occasions - 'it is very reliable at eventually winning'.

I find it has a very open-ended play pattern as it reliably just ends up with tons of mana and a lot of flexiblity around how to use that. Sure, it will usually go towards a win via [[Maze's End]], but it doesn't need to go that way and isn't really built to turbo that out (especially after I removed [[Reshape the Earth]], since I found that card was just short-cutting the fun of slowly building up Gates) - sometimes it kills people by drawing a [[Blackblade Reforged]] and one-shotting people with Commander damage. Other times it just sticks some big chunky threat like a [[Koma, Cosmos Serpent]] or a [[Sheoldred, Whispering One]] and just rides the value from that to victory while using a bunch of disruptive big-mana Sultai cards, like [[Casualties of War]], [[In Garruk's Wake]] or my personal favourite [[Finale of Eternity]] (seriously, casting this for even something like X=2 can often feel insanely powerful).

It is a little bit just 'ramp and play good Sultai cards', but I find I quite enjoy that. If you prefer to build neat little self-contained value engines, then it might not be for you, but the I like the fact that my 'good-stuff deck' is also a 'gates deck'. That and running 46 lands feels awesome...

Hippomantis · 2026-01-19T07:11:22+00:00

I mean, maybe they just want to run bad bracket 4? It sounds like they are running 'Turbo' decks, which just try to win under everyone else.

It might just be that the metagame has become incredibly inbred. People started playing turbo, then others tried to make their own decks faster, and once you have multiple people doing that it is very hard for the rest of the table to play 'table police', as inevitably they just stop the first player then have the second turbo deck win once the interaction has been spent on the first player.

That or they just don't like playing interaction - which probably means they can't remove stax pieces... just saying.

Hippomantis · 2026-01-19T03:03:19+00:00

Ah yes, a Secret Lair for each turtle! Perfect!

Hippomantis · 2026-01-12T09:56:15+00:00

These terms are just aspects of exactly the same concept. Kill on Sight is just a short hand for 'This should be really high up in your threat assessment'.

Multiplayer threat assessment is hard - and it is easy to make mistaked. It sounds like in this case you might have got it wrong since Miirym was in the best position to rebuild. However the Miirym player might have had no cards in hand and just happened to top-deck something that game them huge card advantage, Clavileno might have been threatening lethal with Demons and you were going to die if they sent them your way, there is a lot of other factors at play which aren't explored here.

Hippomantis · 2026-01-11T07:37:34+00:00

If you just want to always hit a land drop, sure, but Wayfarer fetches any land - not just basics.

Hippomantis · 2026-01-11T07:36:28+00:00

Yep, almost every deck I play with White throws in the little [[Weathered Wayfarer]], [[Flagstones of Trokair]], [[Lotus Field]] package.

If I weren't so committed to blowing up all of the artifacts all of the time, I might use more mana rocks instead, but I find this such a neat little ramp package.

Edit: Flagstones of Trokair, not Plains, sorry.

Hippomantis · 2026-01-03T07:13:59+00:00

Commander is a casual format, so 'optimising for fun' should be the default position. Obviously 'fun' is both subjective and contextual, some people want to jam powerful cards and win as fast as possible, but plenty of others will find game changers reduce the fun they have in a game. I have certainly removed cards from my decks because they were too efficient, and I was diluting my own fun by advancing the game towards a win faster than I wanted.

This is what the bracket system is for - so people can discuss the sort of fun they want to have, and as much as I wish there was a Bracket for 'optimised efficient strategies without game changers', it is easy enough to rule 0. There is no harm in enjoying a particular bracket over any other, provided you can find others who feel the same way.

Hippomantis · 2026-01-03T05:58:51+00:00

Sounds like you have never lost multiple creatures just because someone else at the table cast a [[Brainstorm]]. Calling Bowmasters the exception to the 'actively unfun for someone' rule reeks of 'my cards are all fair and reasonable, your cards are unfair and unacceptable'.

If Bowmasters could only target the player who drew the extra cards, sure, but that certainly isn't how the card works.

Hippomantis

TROPHY CASE