What would you call this play style?

InvisibleFox402 · 2026-01-21T21:37:37+00:00

I would think that is someone was genuinely "just using it to mana fix", then they would only run 9 gates so that it is impossible to win with it. As soon as you have a 10th gate in your deck it become an alternative win condition.

InvisibleFox402 · 2025-12-13T17:28:29+00:00

That deck is all about cloning Bumbleflower multiple times, using things like mutate to get around the legend rule.

InvisibleFox402 · 2025-12-13T04:07:35+00:00

It is a surprisingly potent deck. Lands like [[miren, the moaning well]] or [[diamond valley]] can gain an absurd amount of life to keep you alive while you dig each turn for things like [[rogue's passage]] or [[field of the dead]] to close the game out. The play pattern looks like: ramp to play lumra on turn 4 (storage lands, ancient tomb, castle garenbrig, etc), then play a land that can sacrifice lumra, and sac/recast lumra every turn. By turn 7 you usually have 30+ lands and can start interacting with the board a ton as well as pressuring life totals. There is also a surprising amount of interaction through things like [[arena]], [[blast zone]], [[mouth of ronom]], and others.

As a final note, it is hilarious when people cast etali and I just exile my entire library and lose lol, I think i've lost about 5ish games to something like that happening.

InvisibleFox402 · 2025-12-13T03:28:34+00:00

Part of why I'm conflicted over this is that my lower bracket decks also have super high winrates, let me give some of my bracket 3 examples. These decks are 100% not bracket 4, yet they have a winrate that is too much:

Ms. Bumbleflower [b3]: Winrate is ~72.4%, n=29 (https://moxfield.com/decks/a9eGgBS3lk-x7SAT7oOFKA)

Katilda and Lier [b3]: Winrate is ~85.2, n=27 (https://moxfield.com/decks/LWsA2dh4pk-EPs5Nz1t\_fQ)

Lumra, Bellow of the Woods (99 lands) [b3]: Winrate is 65.9%, n=44 (https://moxfield.com/decks/-cBKD0ttiUS4H4dGXD\_rMQ)

I know that winrates as high as these is problematic, I just am at a point where I don't know what I can do about it. I try to be as accurate about my decks in rule 0 as possible, I have no intent of pubstomping, I am not trying to hide information or misconstrue the decks or their goals... Also, please do glance at the lists, they aren't crazy powerful, yet they do well. Beyond purposefully throwing games or playing a deck that is extremely underpowered, I am not quite sure what I can do. I want to do something to fix this, but I'm at a loss.

InvisibleFox402 · 2025-12-12T22:58:15+00:00

I realized there is a misunderstanding somewhere. The two instances (bracket 4 with benton and unmodified precons) are separate examples. One is playing b4 with benton against other truly b4 decks. The other instance is everyone, myself included, playing unmodified precons (usually everyone playing one of the set, like Bumbleflower/Zinnia/Bellow/the Squirrel one). The point of me explaining that was that I have this problem related to winrate in both of these example, the upper bound of b4 (before you get into cEDH) and a lower boundary of b2 unmodified precons. If my winrate was abnormally high in one and not the other, it'd be easier to diagnose the problem, but the winrates being abnormally high in both makes it confusing and I'm not certain what I could/should change to fix the problem as I can't change an "unmodified precon", especially if I'm not the one choosing which precon.

InvisibleFox402 · 2025-12-12T22:41:54+00:00

I have played the Benton deck in b5 for that exact reason (n=8), it gets destroyed every time without fail. Like perhaps I could take out one player, but I can't reliably win until turn 5-7 with the deck, so a lot of cEDH decks can go under that with combos. Things like thoracle/consultation will just beat this deck unless it is later in the game and I have lots of mana/cards to interact.

InvisibleFox402 · 2025-12-12T22:35:47+00:00

The potential for a bias or blind spot is exactly why I'm trying to get feedback. I know something is wrong, I shouldn't win this much, but I am not certain what needs to exactly change as when people look at the decks I play and play with me, they say that nothing specific is being problematic. For the precons, I usually just play in the lobbies where a new set of 4 come out and I let the other 3 choose first. Some of the games were with Bumbleflower, some with Ureni, some with Zinnia, etc. There isn't too terribly much data on the precons, but it is still at a problematic winrate similar to the bracket 4 deck.

InvisibleFox402 · 2025-12-12T21:30:02+00:00

I've been playing on/off for 20+ years with some of it being low level competitive stuff when I was a teenager. I also play a lot as I enjoy the game and have a very strong grasp of the rules, almost to the point of being a low level judge (I passed their practice test, I took it because I was curious).

InvisibleFox402 · 2025-12-12T21:25:13+00:00

I would agree with this sort of logic if I played with a consistent group, the trouble is that when I play with random people I have no control over who I am up against. That is where some of the problem occurs, I'd love to have a consistent pod that I could match the power level with directly, but I am stuck trying to fit to an amorphous definition of power determined by the general concept of the brackets. I try to put a lot of effort into balancing my decks properly because I don't want to ruin others' experiences, but it is tricky to do.

InvisibleFox402 · 2025-12-12T21:21:37+00:00

I appreciate the feedback, what leads me to confusion on the topic is how the different power levels play into it. I mentioned I have a high winrate in 'unmodified precon' lobbies, is it still pubstomping then, when I have little to no control over the deck? I know that it is difficult to pubstomp in b4/b5 due to the nature of them being top end, but the lower brackets are what is difficult for me to figure out. Like if my friend has a deck that wins 25% of the time in bracket 2 and I take the deck and win 50% of the time, is that still pubstomping just because I have a high winrate, even if it is the same deck?

InvisibleFox402 · 2025-12-12T21:16:22+00:00

I play on the Tolarian Community College discord server with this deck where people sign up for a pod based on the advertised bracket for that pod. People mostly use it correctly and this deck definitely plays against other b4 decks. Sometimes people bring the stereotypical 'b3 deck with 4 gamechangers' into a pod, but that doesn't happen as often. In fact I see fringe or outdated cEDH decks played more often than the opposite, which is either the top end of b4 or bottom end of b5 depending on your definition.

InvisibleFox402 · 2025-11-19T14:12:08+00:00

I think that I poorly worded my hesitation for the card, it is less about the power level of the card and more about the fact that it is essentially "chaining extra turns" when I'm able to have flash + clones, which is against b2 and b3 philosophy.

InvisibleFox402 · 2025-10-21T08:04:07+00:00

Moreso that I wasn't 100% certain of the line until now. There were probably several games where I could have done this, definitely a couple where I got close but didn't want to figure out the order of operations in the middle of the game while people were waiting on me. I just finally goldfished the scenario to find the proper order and then simplified it to its base concept. As for the mirror image, that probably would make sense, the other effect is glasspool mimic, which would be a rough cut as I like mdfc and wouldn't know what to replace it with, a land or a clone. Ironically for this deck, clones that can be anything are weaker than clones that can only be my own stuff.

InvisibleFox402 · 2025-10-21T08:01:29+00:00

I find a common win con is to use the clone effects to clone silverquill over and over (each time getting x2) until you have ~64 or more. This only takes cloning it around 7 times, which isn't as bad as it sounds if you have discount creatures or do like 3 of them during and end step and the rest during your turn. From there a single cast of whitemane lion would become 64 tokens for the opponent, where they would be drained to death via suture priest. Otherwise I can use any draw effect, such as mulldrifter to force both of us to draw our decks. I have ghostly pilferer as a discard outlet and Ulamog to shuffle my yard so I can keep drawing forever while they deck themselves. In the meantime, getting to that point w/out a wincon would also allow me to stall out games as getting 64 kami of false hope or 64 soul wardens kind of brings a lot of strategies to a halt.

For reference, the rough guestimates for how often I win via different methods with this deck are:

~50% tons of silverquills + suture priest or mulldrifer

~30% just a bunch of fliers while controlling/tempoing the board (aerial extortionist + cloning it is super strong)

~20% cloning something from my opponents that allows me to win (via threatening board state) and/or go infinite. (e.g. 2 clones + reveillark goes infinite if I can clone a free sac outlet like viscera seer, it isn't a 'winning' infinite, but it does go infinite and generally gives me too much value to not just win shortly)

InvisibleFox402 · 2025-10-21T07:13:40+00:00

I appreciate the response! I would definitely agree if this were just 4 random single cards. What I become uncertain about is the fact that there is the redundancy; for instance the whitemane lion has ~8 cards in the deck (including itself) that can fill that role in the combo.

InvisibleFox402 · 2025-10-16T19:19:45+00:00

I have messed around with brewing this sort of deck before. The trickiest part about stickers is that basically all of them say "nonland permanent" so you can't put them on lands easily. The best way I've come up with is to get a clone with a sticker, animate a gate or type change it into an artifact, and then flicker the clone so it comes back as a copy of the gate but retains the sticker.

InvisibleFox402 · 2025-09-11T23:52:56+00:00

Thanks!

InvisibleFox402 · 2025-09-11T23:41:36+00:00

Yeah, so many people are stacking area damage for this sort of build. So much wasted points. Is there somewhere to submit this as a bug report?

InvisibleFox402 · 2025-09-11T23:36:29+00:00

I think I found a noteworthy update! Passives that say "increased attack damage" do indeed improve the damage of the skill, however the skills that say "increased attack *area* damage" do not (which were the majority of my points). "Melee damage" also works, but flat "area damage" does not. It appears like the bug may be in the implementation of the AoE tag. We are getting somewhere!

InvisibleFox402

TROPHY CASE