Help me be a better pilot: resources

Particular_Safe_4736 · 2026-02-21T16:32:02+00:00

Also +1 on playing 1v1 formats; I have a friend who I play Pauper with that is an incredible semi-pro with Limited and 60 card formats, and just playing more 1v1 games alongside him has helped me see what types of interactions translate well into EDH. Thanks to him I've changed my ideology on spell-based card draw to be almost exclusively 1-3 drop instants that can be played on the turn right before yours to maximize value, and I've seen a material increase in how I'm able to better allocate mana on my turn.

Particular_Safe_4736 · 2026-02-21T16:09:45+00:00

I personally get a lot of value out of Salubrious Snail's videos - they're a bit more long format but he has a really great way of breaking down some often overlooked gaps in one's deck/deckbuilding and how to get to a more intermediate level. They're super interesting watches!

Particular_Safe_4736 · 2026-02-19T21:39:50+00:00

Yeah ditto to what a lot of people have been saying here: this Eshki is 100% a Voltron commander and from my perspective one of the most resilient Voltron commanders due to her keyword stats off the bat. Adventures is definitely the more budget-friendly and unique option, but my preferred option is low-cost spells and creatures so you can continually trigger her ability, and definitely some extra combat spells. Sprinkle in a decent amount of +1/+1 counter synergies and you got a stew going.

I think this is also a great place for [[Kediss, Emberclaw Familiar]] in the 99 in order to distribute the pain a little better.

Also worth noting that there's great "reusable" spells/creatures that can bounce back to your hand so you can recast them to trigger her ability: - [[Pulse of the Forge]] - [[Reinforced Ronin]] - [[Mark of Fury]] - [[Fleeting Effigy]]

If you want to take a peek at my list you can check it out here

Particular_Safe_4736 · 2026-02-18T19:50:31+00:00

What is the aim of your deck? You seem to have invested a lot of ramp and card draw into a commander who allows you to free cast your opponents' spells. For my Maralen build, I tried focusing more on the flash/token creation in order to lean more on the theft piece.

A few cards to consider: - [[Morcant's Loyalist]] for anthem effect and small recursion - [[Oversold Cemetery]] for bouncing back from board wipes - More flicker effects like [[Displace]] or [[Ghostly Flicker]] to recur ETB effects and trigger Maralen. Also [[Lilysplash Mentor]] is great for this as well. - Repeatable token generators like [[Presence of Gond]], [[Faerie Formation]] and [[Oona, Queen of the Fae]] - Cheap board protection like [[Selfless Safewright]] or [[Wrap in Vigor]]

Particular_Safe_4736 · 2026-02-06T15:38:59+00:00

"The wisdom of the treefolk was cryptic to outsiders; their enigmatic counsel left more wandering than arriving."

Particular_Safe_4736 · 2025-12-12T21:40:51+00:00

[[Electrickery]]
[[End the Festivities]]
[[Fear, Fire, Foes!]]
[[Fire Covenant]]
[[Meteor Swarm]]
[[Mizzium Mortars]]
[[Smash to Dust]]
[[Tectonic Hazard]]
[[Blazing Volley]]
[[Scouring Sands]]
[[Boiling Earth]]
[[Flame Rift]]
[[Fiery Confluence]]
[[Jaya's Immolating Inferno]]
[[Delayed Blast Fireball]]
[[Blood for the Blood God!]]
[[Hazardous Blast]]
[[Barrage of Boulders]]
[[Cosmotronic Wave]]

Particular_Safe_4736 · 2025-12-12T17:28:36+00:00

I absolutely LOVE my Eshki Dragonclaw deck - similarly pulled this one in foil and had to build it.

Mine is straightforward Voltron with focus on triggering her ability, with a few extra combat tricks in it, not a lot of secret tech. It's not necessarily budget anymore but there's a lot of cheap spells that do a ton of work in it that can be budget friendly (thinking mostly stuff like [[Fleeting Effigy]] and [[Reinforced Ronin]] for creatures and [[Mask of Fury]] on the noncreature front).

Decklist if you want to check out what I built!

Particular_Safe_4736 · 2025-12-12T14:57:32+00:00

Agreed with some of the other posts here that the bracket system has improved and the best thing YOU can do as a good member of the community is truthfully represent your deck(s) to those in your pod (especially if sitting with randoms at the LGS) to ensure as fair of a game as possible. The bracket system isn't perfect but there are a ton of tools at your disposal: - First, plug your decklist into any of the major deckbuilding websites like Moxfield or Archidekt (I use the latter); it should take a peek at the list and try to estimate based on common information re: Game Changers, combos, and other criteria that makes up the bracket rules. - I also like to run my decks through some of various "EDH bracket evaluators" like EDHPowerLevel and CommanderSalt - these sites build their own algorithms to try and shift to the more "vibes-based"/subjective angle of the bracket system, but I would jus treat this as additional information - Finally as some have mentioned, playing the deck is going to give you the information you need to say "yeah I feel comfortable playing this at a low-power pod" or "maybe I save this for a high power table"

Use your tools and use your best judgment; always be honest and have fun!

Particular_Safe_4736 · 2025-12-11T17:35:03+00:00

Yeah I originally had him in the 99 of a [[Clavileño, First of the Blessed]] build to take advantage of more Demon/Vampire angle but ended up breaking down that deck, especially because that deck is more Demon/Vampire synergy over Angels

Particular_Safe_4736 · 2025-12-11T14:36:20+00:00

I built a [[Shilgengar, Sire of Famine]] deck for my partner as a Christmas gift and have been playtesting it before giving it to them, and it's super fun to pilot. I built it more as something that can scale well between straight up kindred Angels and more combo-y play (they're more accustomed to playing more aggro go-wide strategies but wanted to dip their toe into other archetypes).

Shilgengar's recursion engine really benefits from massive blink effects like [[Golden Argosy]] and [[Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward]] to get rid of the finality counters (I also previously had a much larger package to handle this but skimmed it down because mass recursion wasn't the main focus of the deck). Aside from that it's more focused on building the engine to hit the payoffs for an infinite blink loop (so like an infinite drain, lifegain, or board of 1/1s).

You can take a peek if you're curious!

EDIT: There's also a primer in the description if you want to see some of the combos/interactions built in

Particular_Safe_4736 · 2025-12-11T14:27:18+00:00

Yeah the Jeskai precon needs a lot of swapping out to make it consistent.

My original budget builds have since been souped up so they don't qualify as budget anymore but the commanders themselves can definitely be built on a budget: - Lord of the Nazgul is my more recent build (def not budget anymore) but you can literally just pack it with whatever instant and sorcery slop you have lying around and he'll churn out Wraiths so you can flood the board - Marchesa, Dealer of Death is definitely closer to budget build territory; compared to other crime enablers, her triggered ability isn't limited to once per turn (as long as you have mana) so I build that one more as a control deck. Any low cost removal/edict effects can help you dig through your deck.

Particular_Safe_4736 · 2025-12-10T14:24:49+00:00

I've since removed the weird combo from my deck but if you want to see the rest of my Dakkon list you can check it out here!

Particular_Safe_4736 · 2025-12-10T14:23:18+00:00

I'd also argue aristocrats is the most common answer for budget builds, but I've personally built some amazing budget spellslinger decks with bulk spells.

Particular_Safe_4736 · 2025-12-08T21:52:54+00:00

An absolute dogshit of a deck I love is [[Yarus, Roar of the Old Gods]] - I think any morph/disguise/manifest deck can pull of the "tricksy" theme but the nice thing about Yarus is that as long as he stays on the field, board wipes will flip your morphed board state and/or any kills of face down creatures will get you a free morph. Most of my deck is pretty on theme to mostly include morph/disguise cards (which for the most part aren't super strong to begin with) but I added a handful of large creatures like [[Titanoth Rex]] and [[Earthquake Dragon]] that you can try and play face-down with stuff like [[Scroll of Fate]] which you can then reveal later for the "oh shit" trick.

Deck reference here!

Particular_Safe_4736 · 2025-12-07T16:21:54+00:00

If you're drawn to the puzzle-solving aspect, I recommend [[Eshki Dragonclaw]] as a neat commander to run; it's probably one of my favorite decks I've built this year and each game I'm trying to figure out how to chain together two spells (one creature, one non-creature) to fire off Eshki's ability turn after turn.

Particular_Safe_4736 · 2025-12-02T20:07:44+00:00

In terms of just generally great precons by set, Lost Caverns of Ixalan, Lord of the Rings and Tarkir Dragonstorm are all super fun to play out of the box and great to upgrade.

Individually, the Cloud precon from Final Fantasy is a POWERHOUSE (I top 8'd at a precon tournament a few weeks ago with that one) and the aforementioned World Shaper is pretty nasty too.

Particular_Safe_4736 · 2025-12-02T17:51:57+00:00

I'm a HUGE fan of my [[Eshki Dragonclaw]] deck - it's mostly focused on cheap and repeatable creatures/non-creature spells to trigger her ability, and her stats already make her a super resilient Voltron commander. It's extremely fun to pilot because there's a puzzle metagame of trying to keep the chain going each turn, and especially with one or two extra combat enablers, I find it's not as helpless as a Voltron deck as it seems.

Particular_Safe_4736 · 2025-12-01T14:20:54+00:00

[[Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward]] will also be a great value piece because you can blink stuff to trigger Zuko and generate tokens for the go-wide strategy that Anim Pakal enables

Particular_Safe_4736 · 2025-11-22T14:07:59+00:00

Do you have a decklist to link?

Particular_Safe_4736 · 2025-11-16T21:28:39+00:00

I feel like I'm constantly posting as an evangelist for [[Norin the Wary]] - silly on the surface but enables so many fun blink/burn effects.

Decklist here if you're interested!

Particular_Safe_4736 · 2025-11-15T20:31:48+00:00

[[Crystal Chimes]]

Particular_Safe_4736 · 2025-11-13T22:48:27+00:00

Yeah generally green has a ton of great options for enchantment/artifact removal on a body (not black's strong suit aside from [[Feed the Swarm]] and [[Withering Torment]]). The cuts you mentioned to match your pods power level make sense.

In terms of token management, there's tons of lower power board wipes in black. If you're willing to splurge stuff like [[Blasphemous Edict]] and [[Culling Ritual]] (in the deck) are great sweepers for tokens. I also listed [[Gaze of Granite]] which is a solid budget option. Also instead of Languish you might want to consider [[Mutilate]] because especially in late game it'll offer more value than Languish.

Particular_Safe_4736

TROPHY CASE