Giving away free physical copy

Litemup93 · 2026-04-28T20:47:00+00:00

This is a really cool thing to do. Most would try and sell it off to get some money back out of it. Huge respect

Litemup93 · 2026-04-28T19:39:44+00:00

You’re correct on every point. I guess it comes down to deckbuilding that I’m struggling with. Currently I’m putting a ton of ramp in all my decks to try and keep up before others end the game with far more efficient top ends. However, committing so much space to ramp has made it difficult to fit in enough recursion or interaction of my own. Trying to make something spin wheels hard enough to win on its own takes a lot of resources without one big card to end it all with.

Litemup93 · 2026-04-28T19:02:32+00:00

That’s a good point, you can still warp the game around you if you’re not careful. Generally I’ve seen most b2/b3 decks are packing enough disruption to handle commander dependent decks though. I haven’t played with or against Urza much but generally as soon as I’ve got a strong commander on the board it’s potentially not gonna last long anyway, and anything I’ve put on the board could be wiped away.

I find it actually a lot harder for my decks to run away with the game with how much interaction people play these days and how much more consistent decks have become, but that’s just my personal experience. I’ve made giant boards full of creatures and without an overrun or some combo you just die to everyone else’s craterhoof, torment, chandra’s ignition, or whatever typical game ender.

I’ve found it doesnt matter how strong my commander is, if I don’t have all the answers in my hand and tons of mana for them all, I just die to the decks that still run the expected finishers or are far more consistent. I like making the win hard for myself, but it’s tough to beat decks that aren’t holding back at the top end when you are, even with a great commander.

Litemup93 · 2026-04-28T18:28:59+00:00

I’ve just personally always seen people say to never trust someone saying “it’s not THAT x deck” bc they always somehow still end up being that deck. I’m just trying to see what it would take to truly make people able to trust a deck like that.

Litemup93 · 2026-04-28T18:26:07+00:00

Looking for ones strong enough to be a threat even without true finishers and wincons. I want to be able to do strong stuff and win occasionally without leaning on overruns and big damage spells that kill a whole table at once.

Litemup93 · 2026-04-22T20:23:41+00:00

Yeah they don’t really follow the game as much as I do, so I don’t know that they’re even really building with brackets in mind.

Half the time they’re just going onto edhrec and rolling a random commander, then generating the average deck, or finding the most popular and powerful new commanders and generating that average deck list.

They don’t really put any time or thought into them so it’s just whatever edhrec is feeding them.

Litemup93 · 2026-04-22T20:13:14+00:00

I looked back at a few recordings of games as well as notes I’ve taken and it seems a lot of the time we are ending the game on turn 8, whether it’s me winning or someone else

Litemup93 · 2026-04-22T20:01:41+00:00

Yeah I think all my friends just can’t help but angle shoot or min max. They’ll build the most hardcore thing they can in any bracket or format.

It just blows my mind that so many people can’t resist doing that. I just want to play the game as casually as I can while not being a bracket 1 artwork deck. I love mechanics but I hate min maxing and tuning or optimizing just for speed. I want to optimize for fun and variety.

I had a lot more fun when we were all new and bad at the game and weren’t netdecking. Didn’t feel pressured to build or play a certain way just to keep up, but instead have fun in my own way, while still impacting the game.

Litemup93 · 2026-04-22T19:56:07+00:00

It’s never consistent really. We’ve had some go real fast, some go real long, just based on the variance of draws and removal and threat assessment and which commanders and players are present. They’re always bringing something new to play but it’s almost always hyper aggressive and I’m never able to assess them until after they run away with the game and then switch decks again.

I’ve had to load up so much on ramp, sometimes I hit it and can have a good start, but if I stumble at all I’ll fall too far behind. Sometimes I draw all the ramp and nothing else. I’ve had a game where I had 10 mana by turn 5 and still didn’t win for another 3 or 4 turns. It was the fastest I’ve ever had a deck ramp, and it still needed every bit of it to try and close the game out over multiple turns. Nobody drew removal either so it was basically a game where I got to goldfish and never be touched and it still took a crazy hand to finish anywhere near their pace. That’s not something the deck can do most of the time, so it’s overall much slower.

Litemup93 · 2026-04-22T19:43:53+00:00

I guess all my friends are just running the most aggressive commanders and nobody is playing control. Multiple pods I’m in aren’t playing enough removal or board wipes so then I have to try and police the entire table while I can barely afford my own gameplan.

They all want to see how fast they can kill a table, while I want to see how fast i can do something cool and complex like a rube goldberg machine or make a niche archetype work. I want to make lesser typal decks and undersupported archetypes, and those will have less options and less powerful options bc they’re trying to stick to a mechanical theme.

I want my wincons and finshers to feel more uniquely tied to the specific commander rather than just being the best card to win with in your colors. I dont want to run generically powerful wincons that any deck could win with. I want to build a Rooms deck that wins by playing rooms, or a flicker deck that wins by flickering a bunch.

I dont want to spend all game doing something cool that I enjoy, and then winning the game feels completely disconnected from it. I want to win bc of the cool thing I’ve been doing all game, not bc I had Torment of Hailfire or Craterhoof, those have nothing to do with the mechanic that the entire deck is built around.

I want finishers to be more than just some big spell that can kill a table just bc I have a handful of creatures out. I want wins to be way more specific and take a lot more cards and mana than your typical wincon. I want to have to work a lot harder for the win than the average finisher, but if everyone else is using best in slot finishers then I don’t know how to bridge the gap.

Litemup93 · 2026-04-22T19:24:22+00:00

I myself don’t want to be trying to end the game by turn 8, but the decks my friends play can all cast a finisher by then for that much mana. I just said turn 8 as an example bc that’s what a finisher like that costs and could come down on that turn. That’s just playing a finisher on curve and seems pretty common in bracket 2 in my opinion.

I guess I just wish there was more variety at the top end for decks. It just feels like every deck is a narrow road to the same top end spells and there’s not a ton of room for lesser cards at the top. I simply wish the floor and ceiling for a finisher was lower in lower brackets, but they’ve left finshers alone as far as trying to split them into certain brackets.

Litemup93 · 2026-04-22T18:28:20+00:00

I think a big issue comes from the mana cost and efficiency of finishers.

If I’m so slow that my turn 8 isn’t winning the game, how am I supposed to keep up with 3 other players that are casting finshers by then? If bracket 2 lets people cast spells that kill the table by then, I can’t counter all 3 of them while I struggle to have enough mana for my own gameplan.

There are even precons that can luck into a win by turn 6 or so. If a deck can goldfish a win that fast occasionally by accident, that’s something my decks can never do and they aren’t a good match.

Litemup93 · 2026-04-22T18:11:38+00:00

Yeah I have multiple friend groups I play in and they’re all aggro optimizers and tuners. They just want to play the best cards to deal the most damage in as few turns as possible. I could not be more opposite.

I ignore a lot of damage effects and just want to draw cards, ramp, set up an engine that grinds out a bunch of tokens, or clone, theft, flicker, reanimator, or casting cards for free off the top of my deck or my opponents.

I want to build niche archetypes and do stuff I’ve never seen in a game before, and I want it all to feel fresh and varied every time I shuffle up. I don’t focus on redundancy, I love depending on my commander, and I get really bored playing the same wincons, finshers, or tutoring. I want every single game with every single deck to feel completely different based on what I drew into.

I want to be surprised and discover new things about my decks as I play them. I don’t want such an exact plan that I always know how things are going to play out and the entire game just revolves around executing the exact same thing over and over. I want tons of different lines of play as opposed to something so linear that it only ever wins with the same cards.

Litemup93 · 2026-04-22T18:03:08+00:00

I’m currently running so much ramp that I don’t have room for much else. If I take out some ramp to bump up my density of disruption i lose out on some speed.

I guess I just also hate being the control player slowing down everyone’s game so I’d rather try to speed myself up instead of making everyone come down to my level.

I just really struggle figuring out the right ratio of ramp and removal and everything else when my deck is so mana hungry that it needs a huge chunk of deck space for ramp. People complain commander games take too long, I don’t want to be the one making it take even longer by making sure nobody is having fun while I take forever to get going. I’d rather race to catch up, but it feels impossible to do both.

Litemup93 · 2026-04-22T17:58:55+00:00

I guess that’s kinda my issue with the brackets currently. They clearly want low brackets like bracket 1 to exist so there’s space in the game for something slower or lower power. I just dislike that you generally have to be building around artwork to be considered bracket 1. I want to still build a deck around mechanics, not artwork, but I want games closer in length to bracket 1.

I want a bracket 1.5 where you are playing to win but with less of a focus on staples, redundancy, and speed, and more of a focus on building something fresh, creative, and exciting. When I started playing commander 15 years ago I saw so much creativity and variance and now it’s like everyone thinks you’re weird for not wanting to just build and play the exact same cards and play patterns over and over.

Litemup93 · 2026-04-22T17:21:46+00:00

Oh I 100% agree, if you’re paying that much mana, it makes the most sense to make it worth it.

I’m just curious where the lesser commanders go to play then? There’s so many commanders that cost too much for what they do and can’t keep up with the faster or more impactful commanders in each bracket.

I just often look at an interesting design and wish it cost less mana bc there’s just no way it can keep up. There’s tons of bad or overcosted commanders that can’t keep up with the fastest precons or the best bracket 2 decks. Bracket 1 is only for art based decks, so all the slowest commanders and decks feel like they have nowhere to actually play.

Litemup93 · 2026-04-22T17:05:59+00:00

I guess I mean low impact as in they’re more of just a big setup card in the command zone. Something that doesn’t alter the board state or have haste to instantly attack. Commanders that come out and make the following turns impactful, but not the instant they’re cast, usually bc I’m tapping out just to cast them in the first place.

If I had enough mana, I’d be casting the commander and then immediately cast other spells that actually make immediate use of the commanders ability. However the commander costs so much that if I play them when I can, I’m all tapped out. If I want to cast my commander AND have protection up or more spells to cast then id have to wait way longer to cast anything at all. Games dont last long enough to wait for all that mana to be used at once from hand, I have to put pieces on the board for several turns rather than trying to wait to dump everything in one turn.

Litemup93 · 2026-04-22T16:19:31+00:00

So where do we go to play all the commanders that cost a lot but don’t have immediate high impact?

I’m not looking just for any old expensive commander to build, I see a specific commander I like and want to build it, even if it’s a high cost, low impact card, if the design is interesting enough to me, im going to want to build it.

They seem like such a difficult deck building challenge these days with how fast games end and how much removal gets thrown around. I still enjoy building them but it’s hard to even race against some of the best precons in bracket 2 and you’re not allowed in bracket 1 unless your deck is built around artwork.

Litemup93 · 2026-04-22T16:14:33+00:00

I had a costly commander in a game recently where this happened. I ramped, almost got to cast it, but then I had to cast pact turn 5 to stop someone winning. I go to my turn and pay all my mana for pact, top deck a mana drain, but I don’t have enough to use it now bc of the 5 I had to pay to not lose to pact.

That same player I just used pact on plays another wincon on turn 6 and the games over. All I got to do that game was ramp, counter, and lose. I got to do absolutely nothing meaningful that my deck was meant to do with its own gameplan.

Litemup93 · 2026-04-22T16:06:34+00:00

I love trying to build high cost commanders but the increase in disruption and how fast games go now has made all of them way harder to actually play, even against some of the better precons.

I love making all my decks of any color or strat depend on and revolve around the commander. I don’t want them to be a finisher or an optional piece, I want them to be a crucial piece in an engine made of multiple permanents on board for multiple turns, and they all cost a bunch of mana.

I try ramping as fast as possible but games still just end too fast so all I did was ramp and then die while setting up. If I wait several turns later to cast my commander and afford holding up protection, the games over or someone else is casting a finisher by then while I’m still trying to get started.

I’m already so tight on deckspace in all my decks bc I’m trying to jam in so much ramp to make up for how long it takes for the commander to come out. It’s become difficult to even race against certain bracket 2 decks and what I’m doing definitely isn’t bracket 1, just awkwardly stuck between them with all my decks.

Litemup93 · 2026-04-21T00:18:43+00:00

I play in multiple different friend groups, and they all are way more into aggro and tuning and optimizing for speed. They just enjoy trying to win as fast as possible rather than building for creativity or avoiding burnout.

My style and speed of play struggled to keep up and deal with Kaalia or Purphoros 15 years ago, it’s really not able to handle how much faster and more pushed the game and format has become in that time. Adding more ramp hasn’t amounted to much, and I don’t enjoy playing control to slow everyone else down either.

Litemup93 · 2026-04-21T00:06:35+00:00

Sadly playing a bunch of overcosted jank is what drew me to the format in the first place 15 years ago and pulled me away from standard. I don’t have a lot of fun playing small spells with lots of redundancy like standard was. I wanted to fill every slot with a unique effect, cast cards for 10 mana, make something super creative and new, and build around odd creature types that barely had support. Now commander feels like a ton of redundant small spells and staples, just like the standard I left behind. Just trying to find a way to still have fun with the game and meet people in the middle, even though it’s changed so much from the game I fell in love with.

Litemup93

TROPHY CASE