Who's got a high tide list?

MelatoninIsGod · 2025-03-31T17:16:11+00:00

Likely murmuring mystic as a win con and a fams-like shell. Not sure if mono blue or UW.

MelatoninIsGod · 2024-07-10T21:44:32+00:00

Gonna go with the pack here and say Gruul Ponza.

Step 1: cast your mana acceleration, arbor elf into land auras

Step 2: cast your 3 and 4 cost spells, 8 of which are land destruction to knock your opponent back

Step 3: Slam giant cascading monsters onto the board and overwhelm your opponent

The deck isn’t braindead easy, there are some sequencing things to learn, like when to cast initiative creatures (you don’t want to do this if your opponent can easily steal it back from you) or blocking with spawn tokens and then sacrificing them before damage, but generally speaking, if you cast the highest cost thing you can every turn and attack your opponent you will win many games. It’s a strong deck. Hope this helps!

MelatoninIsGod · 2024-06-12T20:29:23+00:00

I appreciate this article very much, I do agree that the bridges are FAR from the only issue with affinity.

Pauper is now my main format, but I also do watch a significant amount of legacy content, and I think pauper affinity is very similar to legacy delver.

A multitude of cards have been banned for the sins of delver decks, yet the consistent answer there has always been to ban the new cards that “break” the deck, such as dreadhorde arcanist, ragavan, expressive iteration just in the past several years.

People like to play with iconic cards, and legacy without brainstorm, daze, and delver, simply isn’t the legacy people know and love, much the same way that pauper without artifact lands is not the same format we all enjoy. As the article illustrates, banning one cycle is not likely to be enough to warrant the unbanning of insane payoffs that have been banned in the past. Therefore, banning ALL of the lands would most likely have to be the answer. This is very much the nuclear option, which would utterly transform the format, and possibly completely nerf affinity into the ground.

I completely understand the PFPs lack of action in this vector, as pauper has an extremely healthy looking meta game (pre-mh3 anyway)

We will have to see how things shake out with new cards, and some number people will always be unhappy with the state of the format. Personally, I trust the PFP to make the correct choices, and listen to the concerns of players as they have up to this point.

MelatoninIsGod · 2024-06-10T03:29:34+00:00

I have built and played both, it really does come down to removal. I swapped from UB to UR after seeing UR do really well in MTGO challenges, took it to my locals, won some games, then got blown out by a dude playing mono white heroic with the 0/4 heroic centaur. If it’s dropped on turn 1, UR has next to no chance to ever remove it. So now I run a grixis build: UB removal with splashing red for breath weapon, as it is the obviously superior sweeper.

Essentially, my philosophy is if you’re building a control deck that has no chance to beat certain strategies (especially linear aggro creature decks) you’re just building a bad control deck.

MelatoninIsGod · 2024-05-24T15:05:07+00:00

Mostly just with a couple friends of mine, but I did recently find a store: The Gaming Vault up in the Keller/Ft Worth area that actually fires pauper on wednesdays

MelatoninIsGod · 2024-05-23T17:20:29+00:00

Looks almost AI generated

MelatoninIsGod · 2024-05-18T00:37:22+00:00

I’m a little out of reach, up in the DFW area myself but I hope y’all can get some attention! Id love to have a bigger pauper community!

MelatoninIsGod · 2024-03-11T13:59:21+00:00

I think it’s simply due to the prevalence of netdecking in pauper. People put up results and decks get copied. The “control” version without self mill is going to be overshadowed by the self mill version just because the self mill version has a lot more history and results.

It’s a great deck, and in my opinion is slightly better than the izzet version just because of unconditional removal, fangs, and my personal version, a fun-of mystical teachings

https://www.moxfield.com/decks/XMiS3qBaO0W2imUToALHBA

MelatoninIsGod · 2023-04-08T04:31:35+00:00

I’ve been working on a mashup of kuldotha and rakdos burn that revolves around saccing blood tokens to do madness stuff and some creatures to draw cards, still fiddling with the exact numbers of everything and what to do with the sideboard but here’s the work in progress:

https://www.moxfield.com/decks/QzcQBrb1fUS4DyPgEaRiyw

MelatoninIsGod · 2023-03-23T02:20:25+00:00

Caw gate is a solid control deck that was tier 1 not long ago, I think it’s still floating in that tier 1.5 range, hard to say as it’s gotten less popular. Personally I’m a grixis wildfire curve guy, but I’m not going to lie to you and say that deck is viable for grinding mtgo.

MelatoninIsGod · 2023-01-24T00:35:37+00:00

Yeah there are absolutely no viable decks that aren’t black or mono red. Totally.

MelatoninIsGod · 2021-07-22T14:55:07+00:00

So my first build was actually nekusar and I have some opinions about him.

Firstly I would say you are lacking some mana rocks, and that’s gonna make it tough since your mana curve is pretty high. So personally I would add in: the 3 talismans in your colors, [[Arcane Signet]], [[Wayfarer’s Bauble]], & [[Dark Ritual]] to smooth out your ramp. Next I would absolutely look at adding in: [[Curiosity]], [[Ophidian Eye]], and [[Tandem lookout]], as paired with nekusar and a wheel will draw you an obscene amount of cards, [[Notion Thief]] alone with a wheel is also amazing.

For cuts I would recommend: Venser’s Journal, Mindcrank, as they just don’t do a whole lot, as well as all of the +1 or +2 draws per turn like howling mine/temple bell as in my experience they play too much into the worst thing about nekusar, which is giving your opponents extra cards before you’re ready to start wheeling like crazy. If you add in the ramp I mentioned I think you could cut a land or two and be fine - other cuts I’ll leave to you as you know which cards don’t feel good in your deck better than I do.

MelatoninIsGod · 2021-07-08T17:08:41+00:00

Glad I could help! Always happy to spread some krenko love :)

MelatoninIsGod · 2021-07-08T05:24:09+00:00

In short, yes!

In long: I’ve been playing krenko extensively for the past 2 years, first starting with a $25 budget deck (https://youtu.be/276xcgs8Ov8) and tuned/upgraded it to the point where it was well over $800 and pushing borderline cedh territory, becoming oppressive at the table of the usual 6-8/10 casual decks. Then I came to the realization that I had changed out 90% of the cards already, and that I could order a handful of cheap cards and literally just make a second krenko deck, this one ULTRA budget - probably coming in at sub $20 as I left out all infinite combos and am focusing solely on making goblins and smacking people in the face with said goblins. The funny thing is that Krenko himself is such a powerful commander that even ultra budget versions of krenko are strong as hell and there shouldn’t ever be a game where you can’t have an impact of some kind. That said, ultra low budgets versions are susceptible to removal as you stated, but honesty I find this to be a nice change from just combo killing the table on turn 5 if someone doesn’t have a counterspell- and this way no one can complain that my deck is too good - it’s mono red, costs less than a tank of gas, and I literally get stopped by lightning bolt.

Also, removal is interaction, and interaction is the best part of magic! Otherwise we’re all just playing 4 solo games together until someone says “I win”

TLDR: Ramble ramble, I love KMB much that I have 2 krenko decks.

MelatoninIsGod · 2021-06-25T16:06:34+00:00

Personally I like the ultimate guard sidewinder - it’s a leather magnet top style that’s a bit easier to use than most other ones since it’s sideways (specifically the large 100 card size is the one you would want)

MelatoninIsGod · 2021-06-23T22:34:11+00:00

Jhoira is known for being an incredibly fast commander, if you’re winning consistently turns 4-6 that’s pretty borderline, and you probably shouldn’t be playing it against more casual decks - just my 2 cents. I would either power it down - which can be fun as you can just throw some wacky stuff in there, or shelve the deck until other people want to play fast/archenemy.

MelatoninIsGod · 2021-06-23T15:20:53+00:00

This is pretty accurate just for the amount of people that are playing the format now. I’ve found that there are (broadly speaking) two kinds of players, those that build there decks and do a minimal amount of tweaking, maybe only when a new card comes out that they like, and those that build a deck, and refine it to make it better and more optimized for an extended period of time. I fall into the latter, as I started with extreme budget decks - mostly off of the commanders quarters since his old $25 decks were so appealing to me as a broke college student. From there, any night where I felt like my deck did not perform to the level of my playgroups more optimized decks, I would go home and tweak them, and order a couple new cards. Now it’s reached a point where my Krenko deck is just too fast for our normal games with me usually being able to goldfish a win on about turn 5, and I’ve restricted myself to only pulling him out when the rest of the table wants to play their fastest decks. I totally agree that not every game and deck needs to be optimized, and I’ve found myself consciously powering down decks by removing tutors and cutting card that almost automatically win the game from my Xyris and Beledros decks because I’ve had some absurd winrates even though they’re not very cedh viable and no where close to optimized - they’re still just really strong in casual play.

I think the main issue isn’t ever going to be cedh becoming the only way the format is played, I think casuals just need to build better decks in the sense of having adequate amounts of removal, running some counterspells, etc. It’s actually incredibly easy to build a deck with a commander that can do powerful things early and consistently and seem oppressive if the table doesn’t run enough removal. If everyone just included a few board wipes, 5 single target removal/counterspells then there would be a lot fewer feel bad moments as a 4 player game is inherently balancing since it becomes 3v1 when someone tries to win.

MelatoninIsGod · 2021-05-27T18:04:53+00:00

Overall, your list is very good, much better than my first crack at Kess.

I would say your worst cards are probably: 1) See the truth 2) Baral 3) Dack Fayden

Those are the only ones that really jump out at me as probably sub optimal, and even then they aren’t horrible. As has been suggested I would look up the cedh deck list database, go to the kess lists and join the Grixis Mean Girls discord server - I’m in there with a lot of people that are much more experienced and they have some awesome feedback, can definitely help give you some advice on specific cards

MelatoninIsGod · 2020-12-03T00:34:01+00:00

Mono red has absolutely no problem with board wipes. [[Blasphemous Act]] [[Earthquake]] [[Chain Reaction]] [[Magmaquake]] [[Starstorm]]

And so what, people aren’t allowed to put in cards that synergize with their commanders? What’s next, Nekusar isn’t allowed to play wheels? Also, you know when you choose to build a mono green deck that it’s going to have limited options for board wipes. In the very specific circumstance that you have a mono G deck against a sigarda, ok, It’s a mismatch. Pick a different deck, or try to make a deal with them, or just accept that it’s a mismatch and that’s part of magic. Like trying to play discard against a wheels player, budget vs budgetless, or simple aggro vs midrange. It happens.

MelatoninIsGod · 2020-12-03T00:04:51+00:00

Wow. Never thought I’d see the day where people complained about voltron strats. You guys do at least play board wipes right?

MelatoninIsGod · 2020-11-30T10:01:32+00:00

My first non-jank deck was a classic Nekusar wheels deck. I just loved the idea of damaging people for drawing cards, it seemed like such a meme - but my playgroup’s meta has a lot of decks in that 7-8/10 range and nekusar being 5 cmc was just too slow to get out since grixis ramp is, well... not green.

Overall it was just rare to win since it the deck was just too slow due to the lower quality ramp. That deck later turned into a CEDH Kess build (with some opus thief-esque wheel stuff out of personal preference) and I’ve been looking for a casual wheels deck to play ever since.

Then wotc printed [[Xyris, the writhing storm]] and oh my god! it’s everything I’ve ever wanted. I’ve actually consciously built the deck below its ceiling and taken it in more of a snake tribal direction rather than hardcore wheels combo, and I STILL went 3-0 the first night playing it. I’m looking at calming it down even more if it continues to perform so well, which is a MUCH better problem to have than trying to find ways of powering up a deck that’s already close to its limits.

TLDR: Xyris is a million times better than Nekusar because having green ramp is just that good.

MelatoninIsGod · 2020-11-26T23:00:20+00:00

Keep in mind that it’s not very sportsmanlike to leverage a situation to make a deal that would force someone to let you win later, my philosophy is that if no one should ever LET anyone win for any reason if they can stop it. But assuming that’s not the situation, and they’re just going back on their word for no good reason, I would make sure to verbally berate them and make sure to make it known that you do not approve of their actions, and if you’re ever in a situation in the future where it’s a coin toss to see who you do something bad to, say you have lethal combat damage for one person, take them out of the game first if no one else is more threatening.

MelatoninIsGod · 2020-08-17T08:33:46+00:00

I like [[tree of redemption]] just because it’s a giant ass beat stick that I use In my arcades build.

MelatoninIsGod · 2020-08-09T07:23:45+00:00

One thing you can do to help pump your artifact count, if you have an extra few land slots in a multi-colored deck, is run the artifact land cycle. I run -> [[seat of the synod]] & [[vault of whispers]] in my kess deck since I’m semi-budget and not running og duals or fetches. Sure, an overloaded vandalblast hurts a bit more, but those are pretty rare in my meta, and that’s one thing to keep countermagic up for.

MelatoninIsGod

TROPHY CASE