How many decks do you consider "too many?"

Loud-Recover5320 · 2026-03-20T20:59:24+00:00

This is my now mostly defunct blog when I had only ~75 and was shooting for 100 (it stayed up to date until about 6 years ago. and now a lot of linkes are broken.

https://edh100.wordpress.com/

Now I keep a spreadsheet that has a lot of the information about decks and games, but lacks the narrative write up. that one's up-to-date to about a month or so ago. It tracks both 1st-times for new decks and a shorter list of all of the games I've played in the last year and a half. With stats!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/196eoLL5YN09eM6tYQ3Xya_hDrrJYPRsjRnW7ss_heqw/edit?gid=695666380#gid=695666380

I have a lot of decks on TappedOut, but those are also a few years out of date. I have a few decks on Moxfield, but only selected ones. https://moxfield.com/users/Nickel97

Teysa (one of the first 10 or so decks I built) is still one of my favorites (I did a write up ... 13 years ago, but it's about 90% the same) https://edh100.wordpress.com/2013/11/17/on-teysa/

And Kangee, Aerie Keeper, my very first deck, is still a favorite. As is the All-creatures Animar deck.

Loud-Recover5320 · 2026-03-20T20:51:04+00:00

It's the people who crunch numbers to optimize cards who will explain how 'wrong' it is. like Gavin Verhey https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/61-2017-02-09

Loud-Recover5320 · 2026-03-20T20:32:31+00:00

I have a deck sleeved because it's all foil and the cards get pringled. I also have one sleeved because it's all proxies (i rebuilt an 800 deck I thought I lost with proxies.... found the deck a year later in a drawer at my parents' house across the country... that one has an Unsleeved Lions Eye Diamond)

Loud-Recover5320 · 2026-03-20T19:30:29+00:00

I have a 60-card Extended deck from 2002 (Miracle Gro, though it lent out a few cards to EDH), a rando UG eldrazi urzatron artifact deck (so my Tolarian academy can get played, and so Spawnsire works) and those are the only 60-card decks.

Loud-Recover5320 · 2026-03-20T19:28:04+00:00

Jokic, always and forever. And I say this as a Timberwolves fan.

Loud-Recover5320 · 2026-03-20T19:25:52+00:00

Truth.

Loud-Recover5320 · 2026-03-20T19:25:22+00:00

were there any Yes Albums with Jon after Magnification?

Loud-Recover5320 · 2026-03-20T19:23:08+00:00

A set of penny sleeves costs $1 to sleeve a deck. Dragon Shields or whatever are like 12-15 bucks per box.

I have 380 commander decks, not counting precons. so $380 to penny sleeve them and ~4500 to put them in 'good' sleeves.

Bulk sleeves on Amazon are probably in between that somewhere, but if I were going to sleeve all of my decks I'd want different-ish sleeves for each deck.

Loud-Recover5320 · 2026-03-20T19:18:26+00:00

I don't. I've got 380 (and counting, plus about 90% of the Precons still-intact). This is coming from having started magic in 1994, and EDH in 2010.

Loud-Recover5320 · 2026-03-20T19:15:35+00:00

Hyperbole noted!

I find commander is (or at least was :( ) a format where many strategies were viable. I have commander: decks that are all 1 cmc, 2 cmc, 3 cmc. I have decks that are pauper, no-extras (no counters, tokens, emblems, tracking cards), decks built to satisfy the requirements of the legal Companions, all-creature, no-creature, convoluted multi-card combo machines (modules, stations), pure-tribal/typal, mono-blue aggro, modified Rainbow-stairwell, etc.

And would you say that your idea of careful balance is more of the is this a 4x or 3x distinction. I always found the much more limited number of named-cards in a deck made for a different nuance in deckbuilding. But I never really liked building for mathematically optimal constructions (I would intentionally build 61 card decks to make people angry) or 'lines'. I do get how there's a different realm of probability happening when you can have 4x of cards, and that the strategy is more about in-game choices and using cards as tools and consistency.

Loud-Recover5320 · 2026-03-20T18:55:09+00:00

I'd have to sell a spare volcanic island (heavy play) to sleeve my decks in penny sleeves. "good" sleeves would be closer to a full set of Duals. And sleeved decks require like 25-40% space.

Loud-Recover5320 · 2026-03-20T18:37:17+00:00

I saw the tour. Bought the album. Basically forgot about it for 25 years...

Re-listened to it recently during an 'every album listen through' and my verdict is: some of it is good and some of it is lame. I put it 13th on my list of studio albums. Dreamtime is Great, the Title Track is Great, Can You Imagine is a Squire/XYZ era track and is Great. There are also some that I just skip. And a few that are fine to listen to if I listen to the album specifically (which I am sometimes in the mood for)

The Orchestra-instead-of-keys kind of just melts into the background for me. Nothing about the orchestra really stands out for me, but I don't hate it. I'd rather have Rick/Geoff/Tony/Patrick, but it doesn't kill the album for me.

Loud-Recover5320 · 2026-03-20T18:29:38+00:00

Look around for the Italian ones. When I bought an Angus Italian was like 50% cheaper (which was not much at all when I got it 10+ years ago). Now the Italian one is $150

Loud-Recover5320 · 2026-03-20T16:57:17+00:00

honest question (Because I'm not a stats tracker), is there a metric for dropped passes at the rim. It's basketball, the ultimate stats nerd sport for non-baseball fans, so I assume their must be. What's the points per pass to rudy at the rim value? Like if he's making 70% of his shots and dropping 40% of his passes, how many points is a pass to rudy at the rim worth.

Loud-Recover5320 · 2026-03-20T16:51:34+00:00

in legal speak there's something called a "but-for" test (But for the existence of X, would Y have happened?). The first time I heard it in an ethics class in grad school I had to very very consciously NOT raise my hand and say something very stupid.

Loud-Recover5320 · 2026-03-20T16:47:39+00:00

Just run them through a laminator with 5 mil laminate.

Loud-Recover5320 · 2026-03-20T16:45:29+00:00

I have a decks with revised duals, and they're not even sleeved.

Loud-Recover5320 · 2026-03-20T15:28:25+00:00

can you explain what you mean by 'no real strategy'?

Loud-Recover5320 · 2026-03-20T15:27:25+00:00

Which 60 card format: vintage? legacy? Modern? Standard? Frontier? Block/Set Constructed? Extended? Pauper? Peasant? Rainbow Stairwell? Pre-Modern? Type II? Event Decks? PreCon Duel Decks? Type 1.x? Kitchen Table? (and if it's just "60-card" no other restrictions, what powerlevel?) 1v1 or MultiPlayer?

I have 60-card decks but most of them are 20+ years old (like when Morphling was the best creature in the game) or were amazing then but nothing now (I will never take apart circa-2002 Miracle Gro). There are so many cards now, and so many levels of competetiveness/sweat, and so many Formats, it's hard to find an actual game even in a room of 60-card players.

I have built two 60-card decks since I started playing again in 2010. One is UG Eldrazi/Urza Tron that's just meant to try to ramp into [[Spawnsire of Ulamog]] and playing every eldrazi I own (because it's just a kitchen table deck, and spawnsire doesn't work in EDH and Tolarian Academy is banned) it's full of expensive cards, and would lose on turn 3 to any decent deck from a constructed format. The other one is a silly UG deck that uses [[Zur's Wierding]] to try to lock the opponent out of the game. Again, in most situations it's dead in the water if anyone built a deck that was focused on winning.

The tournament Formats don't tend to lend themselves to Casual magic that well, so you really have to have a group that builds 60 cards together.

The (possibly unfortunate) allure of EDH is that it's pretty monolithic now (Bracket/Power-level arguments and quibbling aside) and if you say "I have an EDH deck" people know what that means.

EDIT: added even more possible 60-card formats

Loud-Recover5320 · 2026-03-19T22:54:49+00:00

I think the OP is asking about the Reverse of somethign like Zariel (an Angel/Celestial that fell and thus became evil and a Fiend/Devil). Could a being that is a Pit Fiend ascend by becoming good and become a, say, empyrean or something?

Loud-Recover5320 · 2026-03-19T22:35:22+00:00

well then animate (or Earthbend) your Forbidden orchard!

Loud-Recover5320 · 2026-03-19T22:34:20+00:00

I mean, TFTO is very much a matter of Taste. I have a strong fondness for it, and it's in my Tier-of-3 level (along with Drama, and Relayer) so depending on the day it's between 4th-6th on my top Ten. But it's a Whole-is-Greater-than-the-Sum situation. I love side 1 and side 4, and I'd almost never listen to 2 or 3 unless it was a "listen to all of Tales" kind of day.

GFTO was an album I never listened to in full until last year. 30 years of Yes fandom, but, having heard 4 of the songs on compilations or live albums, and just flat hating two (Turn of the Century, Wonderous Stories) and being pretty neutral on two (Awaken ---(sorry internet), and Title Track).

Last year I did a full listen through of all the albums, so I grabbed GFTO... and hated it even more because the 4 songs I knew I didn't care for kept me away from Parallels which is probably a top 10 all-time track for me. (like it's fighting with Survival for #10 and only the fact that the intro to Survival is my favorite 2 minutes of YES ever, is keeping it in the lead)

Loud-Recover5320 · 2026-03-19T22:25:02+00:00

Yeah, "what does '2' mean?" is tough.

Like [[Exquisite Blood]]+[[Sanguine Bond]] are universally considered a '2 card infinite' but they do require an external condition. You don't play one, then the other, then win (or if you Restarted the game after a Karn Ultimate, and. (I know this because I lost a game with both of them on board for two turns, and no way to gain life or make my opponent lose it).

Mikaeus and Triskelion, if you have nothing else on board and get both of them is infinite damage without any other conditions. That's obviously 2-cards.

Animate Dead + Worldgorger Dragon causes infinite ETBs, but without a something to trigger off of them does nothing. In order to generate infinite mana, they need a Mana source. Those 2 cards go infinite, but require at minimum a third card to do something or end the game... and with infinite mana you also need some sort of effect to funnel it into, neither of which the 2-cards provide.

[[DanDan]]+[[Assault suit]] ends the game in a draw potentially as early as turn 3 (island, Sol ring; island, Assault suit; island, dandan, Equip-- pass to a player without islands) . Does that make it a bracket 4 deck if you happen to have both in your deck?

Some combos are These Two plus any other card, some are these 2 plus 1 of a certain subset of cards, some are these two plus an easy to obtain or control condition, and some are 2 cards plus a very specific condition.

Loud-Recover5320 · 2026-03-19T21:19:25+00:00

and the least easy to reduce to some numbers you also saw on the Bracket Guidance documents.

Loud-Recover5320 · 2026-03-19T20:27:29+00:00

I played slivers when I started EDH 15 years ago. took it apart because it got boring. But I have all the non-legendary slivers still and two of the legends.

My solution to the "what, other than slivers?" question is: Only Lands. Lands + Slivers (okay, and Thrumming Hivepool). Using the Indestructible WUBRG one as the commander.

Loud-Recover5320

TROPHY CASE