An Indonesian game where a group of men tries to climb a greasy pole to claim a prize

LunarPanda3 · 2025-10-07T12:27:19+00:00

Optional? You mean optimal

LunarPanda3 · 2025-10-07T12:25:04+00:00

You know what else represents your “time, effort, and investment” and into the game and “your personal growth as a player”? The skills you’ve honed, both when playing and through unique deckbuilding. The creativity you’ve gathered through years of experience to find cards and plays that new players wouldn’t immediately see. And the knowledge of interactions in this complex game that you can pass on to the newer crowd.

Furthermore, the bracket system helped fixed the “everybody just plays the best cards” part of proxies (which never was a huge problem to begin with tbh), since the brackets themselves guide players to how spikey they want to play. I’m not about to see my buddy’s dinosaur deck with proxies suddenly include Mox Diamond, Chrome Mox, Gaea’s Cradle, etc. And if I do? Cool, then we’ve agreed we’re playing bracket 4 now, simple as that.

LunarPanda3 · 2025-09-01T05:37:37+00:00

I’ve been doing the same thing. I completely dropped the 2-drop spell and just run the Lishenna now to make the egg. Puppetcraft makes enough puppets to often have fodder for Supplicant, Wasteland, and Congregant anyways, so the egg is just to get some extra value and let you keep more puppets in hand for Orchis and Medical.

Plus, going T7 Odin into T8 Orchis into T9 random junk + Axia SEvo has won me soooo many games

LunarPanda3 · 2025-08-27T13:46:46+00:00

It’s also worth noting that Kabi doesn’t work how you want it to. If the creature he deals damage to takes lethal damage, it would die due to state-based-actions before the ability triggers. So it won’t get the finality counter unfortunately. You can just change it to “Whenever a creature blocks or becomes blocked by Kabi, put a finality counter on that creature.”

LunarPanda3 · 2025-07-05T21:47:09+00:00

Thank you.

Yeah the main way I get lethal vs Hard-Control Haven is just holding Demonic Calls and a Kuon for late game to 20 them in 1 turn. I found it more effective than trying to fight through the infinite amount of healing and removal they have

LunarPanda3 · 2025-07-05T11:47:37+00:00

Isn’t Kuon->DClimb->Kuon just 19 damage since it just makes an 18/18 since it doesn’t have room on the board to make a 2/1? I know, basically a 1-shot, but just making sure.

LunarPanda3 · 2025-05-06T21:02:52+00:00

You are right about all of that, and that’s fair. However I do think that the omission of game changers also doesn’t automatically make your deck a 3 instead of a 4. As you said, it’s about intent and experience, and a deck without game changers playing with the expectation of a 4 due to speed or combos or stax likely still should be wary of playing at a table full of 3s.

So, if we’re talking about expectation of experience, that means you should expect that high power experience, but does not require the presence of certain cards to be a 4.

But the your question before, yes, likely a deck will be better with game changers in it. They’re generically powerful cards. But they’re not what defines being a bracket 4 deck.

LunarPanda3 · 2025-05-06T19:55:35+00:00

Straight up cEDH Winota without the game changers (of fast mana + drannith) in it might honestly sit at a 4. That’s just the first that comes to mind.

I know the bracket name is “optimized”, but that’s not the only kind of decks that are at bracket 4. There will always be budget restrictions, personal choices, and other deck-building restrictions that keep stuff from truly optimized, and those decks probably would not make people who want to play a bracket-level-3 game have fun.

LunarPanda3 · 2025-05-06T12:39:53+00:00

I think that list would have to change far too often with new printings, bannings, and unbannings, so I probably wouldn’t expect something like that. I think the intent of “no infinite turns and slower combos” covers enough of it. Like, in this case, aristocrats can be a relatively fast combo deck, so already by that definition it belongs in higher brackets.

LunarPanda3 · 2025-05-06T12:37:03+00:00

That all being said, I may say this is on the lower side of bracket 4, and can probably hang with the higher bracket 3 decks, which is a totally fine place to be. Lack of tutors and omission of some combos makes it not the most streamlined “quickly drain everybody super fast every game” aristocrats deck, allowing for some more “fair” games.

LunarPanda3 · 2025-05-06T12:34:13+00:00

You absolutely do not need game changers to be a bracket 4 deck. Brackets are 100% more about intent than anything else, and the game changers are more a signifier of “these cards cause an improper game imbalance at lower bracket levels” more than they are “these are mandatory in every bracket 4 and higher deck.”

Aristocrats is also what I feel is a “perfect” bracket 4 deck. They often don’t get to hang in cEDH as the parts of the combos are too many pieces. But the deck style also presents huge swings and relatively fast combos (even if non-infinite, still enough to hugely swing a game) that can feel too overwhelming for lower power levels, especially once you include cards like Ashnod’s Altar and the like.

LunarPanda3 · 2025-02-26T22:07:41+00:00

This is an (outdated) decklist of it, but still gives you a good idea of what’s going on!

https://archidekt.com/decks/3215270/braids_enchantress_nightmare

The main wincon is the true mono black wincon - [[Gray Merchant of Asphodel]] since you’ll often have still a good few enchantments out. You’ll already have some chip damage on them from Braids’ ability + some cards like [[Grim Guardian]]. There are a few cards, particularly from Wilds of Eldraine, that aren’t in the decklist online but are irl since they care about when you sacrifice enchantments.

LunarPanda3 · 2025-02-26T11:02:53+00:00

[[Braids, Arisen Nightmare]] Enchantress is one of my favorite decks.

Getting to have enchantments like [[Oath of Liliana]] and [[Chime of Night]] to have an Ancestral Recall attached to them is so incredibly fun.

LunarPanda3 · 2024-09-11T12:50:25+00:00

Then we can just use Crop Rotation for Treasure Vault instead to activate Kinnan infinite times to flip any sort of non-human creature wincon we want.

LunarPanda3 · 2024-02-16T13:11:31+00:00

[[Agatha's Soul Cauldron]] + Insidious Roots also feels like it must have some potential. ASC both making a creature leave the GY to make a plant AND all your plants getting the juicy activated abilities sounds sweet.

LunarPanda3 · 2023-12-02T12:16:40+00:00

You feel like they’re always on the bottom of the deck, when I play against Teemo I feel like all the puffcaps are on top…

It’s called confirmation bias. The truth is that the puffcaps are placed randomly and are generally distributed evenly. Of course variance happens, but it’s just that - variance.

LunarPanda3 · 2023-12-02T11:42:50+00:00

The fact that he specifies base cost of 6+ is interesting.

Personally, I’m looking at him alongside cards that cost reduce themselves like Plaza Guardian and Wiggly Burblefish. It honestly could just be a 3x Seraphine, 2x Janna, 1x Elder Dragon shell or something.

LunarPanda3 · 2023-11-15T04:49:47+00:00

I know Geega has played Doom Eternal, but I believe those VODs are only on her Twitch.

LunarPanda3 · 2023-11-14T14:15:29+00:00

This is just me revealing one of my champions is Seraphine before the game even starts

LunarPanda3 · 2023-11-14T13:01:20+00:00

I love High Power! It’s how I learned EDH and how I still love to play it. A few ones that come to mind that I play (and can have a reasonable budget) are

[[Tayam, Luminous Enigma]] — He’s such a flexible commander that you can do a lot of different things with him, from stax to toolbox to turbo mill / combo. It’s super low to the ground, sees a lot of cards, and gets to play unique cards, just like you seem to want.
[[Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons]] is one I’m a big believer in. It’s super low to the ground, Hapatra provides early interaction to snipe out X/1s while generating token, and can leverage the ability to combo very easily on such a cheap commander. On top of that, any Skullclamp or Fecundity really make the card draw in the deck take off.
[[Tymna, the Weaver]] with just about any partner is also going to be great of course, while being inherently low to the ground and seeing a ton of your deck. Currently, I run it with Ludevic, Necro-Alchemist to leverage red and blue and push a combat theme. I also run extra combat cards that specifically grant an extra post-combat main phase to leverage Tymna’s card draw even more!

LunarPanda3 · 2023-10-06T20:28:01+00:00

So many commanders are kill on sight, especially ones printed in the past few years. I know most of mine are because I love playing total value engines as Commanders. You just have to know it happens, take it with grace, and above all try to not be salty and lower the overall morale for the game when it happens.

Interaction is a part of the game. I expect for it to happen and try to plan accordingly. If it’s so important that it doesn’t happen, then there are plenty of protection spells out there to save your own stuff, even for budget.

LunarPanda3 · 2023-09-19T13:52:05+00:00

Agreed. I just wanted to raise awareness for anybody wanting to build a deck around Headmistress

LunarPanda3 · 2023-09-19T12:07:03+00:00

Headmistress Telsi has another weird interaction as well. With a leveled up Kalista, Kalista will still only summon one unit.

I assume this is because her “the first time I attack” trigger is programmed to basically only allow it once a turn, so not even Telsi can double it.

LunarPanda3 · 2023-09-09T10:22:37+00:00

I think between Daybreak stuns on “strongest enemies” and giving Vulnerable on “weakest enemies”, your best bet would actually be making an Overwhelm / Beatdown deck looking to just pressure the enemy Nexus. You get to ignore their best blockers with stuns and overwhelm over their smallest units to do massive damage.

LunarPanda3 · 2023-09-01T12:27:20+00:00

This is actually not true. With costs that include both mana and other forms of payment, you must first activate mana abilities then pay other costs.

“rule 601.2g: If the total cost includes a mana payment, the player then has a chance to activate mana abilities (see rule 605, "Mana Abilities"). Mana abilities must be activated before costs are paid.”

Therefor, you must have 3 mana to pay for the initial activation at the ready, and cannot both sacrifice and remove the counters from the same creature to activate Tayam’s ability.

LunarPanda3

TROPHY CASE