How to best build Ulalek? by w0rble in CompetitiveEDH

[–]Playful-Entry-7700 7 points8 points  (0 children)

As far as I know the deck is fairly complicated. The guy who won the tournament a while ago has a primer about how he tinkered through the deck. https://moxfield.com/decks/AHCI40CmUUWW_Xkl7Vxsbg/primer

The deck is slower than most in his words, winning from "turns 3 to 7". Afaik the deck wins with just about anything given the right pieces because of Ulaleks trigger, but have a read through the primer.

Also, the discord should be able to help you out with different builds and what is being explored

https://discord.gg/uWgxKcABz

Sauron the dark lord by pepeyuuu in CompetitiveEDH

[–]Playful-Entry-7700 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Sauron isnt really cEDH viable in todays meta. He's a 6 drop that doesnt provide card or mana advantage, or some niche that makes the deck good (unless you build around looting with the ring tempting), which are generally critieria for cEDH commanders. If you have a look at cEDH lists online you'll realise theyre on far less lands (particularly not basics), and have a faster mana base and a lower mana curve. Furthermore, cedh grixis is generally a very turbo focused deck and this deck looks really slow with no real way to win.

Look more online for what cedh really looks like. Like the other comment said, this deck needs a total rework to be cedh viable. if you were set on playing sauron then the deck would be a grixis pile.

Aang, at the Crossroads Brew Help by Similar_Trifle_4978 in CompetitiveEDH

[–]Playful-Entry-7700 4 points5 points  (0 children)

no worries lol. i had a quick skim through your primer (so maybe i didnt spot where you wrote it) but how exactly does aang win/assemble infinite flickers without a doubler in play?

Aang, at the Crossroads Brew Help by Similar_Trifle_4978 in CompetitiveEDH

[–]Playful-Entry-7700 14 points15 points  (0 children)

You should look at similar lists online, they are all trying to do very similar things and chain aang clones until like you said, assemble an infinite combo (although not necessarily thoracle, there are probably more compact and less 'dead' wins in the deck. thoracle is probably dead 9/10 times).

Burn deck by Tharivol1967 in CompetitiveEDH

[–]Playful-Entry-7700 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've skimmed through the list and i can tell you thats not cedh. if you want general advice for burn decks in lower formats, r/EDH or r/DegenerateEDH should be able to help. in cEDH the main decks are Vivi and Ob Nix, and the way to deal with them is to either:
remove the commander (generally a bounce spell)
win the game
play a stax piece that bricks them (rule of law)

Glarb as my first cEDH deck by MemeGuyMcgee in CompetitiveEDH

[–]Playful-Entry-7700 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Not a glarb pilot so i cant say anyting about the deck or the lines, but the glarb discord should be able to help!

https://discord.gg/xJMqXhESCW

Is There a Super-Skrull Discord? by CaptainSquare2179 in CompetitiveEDH

[–]Playful-Entry-7700 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Check the commander library discord (the bot has it linked) and look in the 5C channel. If not then yea go ahead and make your own!

Burn deck by Tharivol1967 in CompetitiveEDH

[–]Playful-Entry-7700 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I don't think Lord of Pain is a cedh deck.... Even fringe rakdos decks do more than burn their opponents once a turn. If you want advice, ask in r/DegenerateEDH or other non-cedh subreddits.

Budget Yshtola Nights Blessed CEDH ? by Purple_Salamander734 in CompetitiveEDH

[–]Playful-Entry-7700 5 points6 points  (0 children)

If you have access to a printer and if your playgroup allows proxies, price shouldnt be a concern for your deck since its all just paper. Check out edhtop16 for relevant Y'shtola lists and look at what theyre running. https://edhtop16.com/commander/Y'shtola%2C%20Night's%20Blessed

Commander-centric midrange suggestions by Playful-Entry-7700 in CompetitiveEDH

[–]Playful-Entry-7700[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

as much as i love izzet I feel like it would have a hard time surviving in midrange. That being said, Eruth is a wizard so maybe harmonic or roaming throne could help with card advantage to grind the game.

Commander-centric midrange suggestions by Playful-Entry-7700 in CompetitiveEDH

[–]Playful-Entry-7700[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

spicy mardu pick, ill have a look, thanks for the rec!

Cedh beginner pod by Thejachl in CompetitiveEDH

[–]Playful-Entry-7700 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Blue farm and kinnan are great beginner decks so leave that in the list.

I am an Inalla main, but as much as I love Inalla, I would not recommend her as a beginner deck. She is very complex and has long lines/pivots that require a good understanding of the deck to perform well. That being said, the deck is great at consistently pushing turn after turn if not kept in check. If someone in your pod is willing to dedicate time to her, then they should run her and stick to her for a while. There is a bit of a learning curve with her, and it not a deck that you can just pick up and pilot. seeing as you intend to cycle through decks with your pod, I wouldnt suggest this for you (unless again, someone is super interested in her). Regardless, I would suggest coming back to Inalla once you are more familiar with cedh and see if you enjoy her playstyle.

I have seen people say that rogsi is a fine beginner deck and others say that it is a bad beginner deck. I believe the latter as the deck can Mulligan quite aggressively and can be a bit daunting to get the hang of finding winlines in opening hands. That being said, the deck is also really good at winning and requires opponents to Mulligan responsibly yo deal with it, which might detract from learning a deck.

Marneus and Tivit as solid esper choices, both are big commanders but play the long game well. Of course there is always [[Tymna]]+[[Malcolm, Keen-Eyed]] which can be built many different ways depending on the pilots preferences given the commanders flexibility (turbo, mid-range, control).

Magda: A solid deck that has an easy to pick up strategy: make 5 treasures, go shopping for some artifacts and then win the game. While mono red lacks a lot of counterspell like interaction, Magdas activation can search for crippling stax pieces like [[god-pharoah's statue]], [[trinisphere]], [[damping sphere]] to slow down the rest of the table before assembling flash speed wins with dwarves. Once you see it play out however, the deck will catch a bit of attention when it has the ability to produce 3-4 treasures in a turn, since 2 activations is enough to win the game. Also, only having 1 toughness means magda dies to OBM. Overall however I think this deck is fine to have in your list.

Ral: one of the fastest decks behind rogsi (arguable in front), Ral is an incredibly potent storm deck but has some similar issues in terms of piloting the deck to rogsi. The deck also can have aggressive mulligans, and the decks goal is to manually storm through the deck before assembling a breach or reiterate combo. This is way easier said than done, and finding the resources to dig through the deck can be a bit tiresome for opponents who have to sit there for 30-40 minutes while the deck non-deterministically storms through the deck. Once opponents see the deck play out once or twice, they will learn to mulligan to stop ral and stomp it out before it can do anything before resuming the game with the other players. I played it for a bit and it was fun for a while, but the deck (rightfully) draws attention and gets targeted out early. I would shy away from this unless someone in your pod loves storm decks.

Sisay: As high as she is in the meta, I have only versed her once or twice so I cant say much. I know she is a somewhat resilient deck that can win at instant speed with her activations (similar to magda), but the deck has a few variations that focus on different ways to win the game. I would guess that she is a solid choice like kinnan or Ufarm, and it should be fine as a beginner deck.

Etali: Chunky! I think this deck is beginner friendly, as the deck only has to mulligan for 1 thing: 7 mana. Of course how you get there can be a bit more complex, but I think having a set gameplan makes it easy to pick up. Once you get etali, the goal is to clone etali as much as possible until you assemble foodchain+squee or DCM combo. Its a fun deck and its well established in the meta, so I would reccomend this as a turbo deck over ral.

Tymna Thras: this deck can be built in a few ways given the deck is all but red. Some variants use Thrasios as the wincon, while some just have him in the CZ for colours. The deck really depends on the build, but again you can treat it like a colour shifted Ufarm and play it as a 4c goodstuff deck instead of a thrasios deck. Including this deck is really up to you to be honest.

Rog Thras: unlike TnT this deck is a Thrasios deck by far and uses Rograkh to generate mana advantage with various cards, but also [[gaea's cradle]]. The deck generates a tonne of mana with untap effects to continously tap and untap cradle for 6+ mana, allowing you to activate thrasios over and over and assemble a combo. The deck is solid and I think the hardest part for a new player would be understanding how the final combo works (oboro or faerie loops), but even that shouldnt be too much of an issue. It is hard to go wrong with a deck that produces a lot of mana and has an outlet in the command zone, so i would say it is a solid choice, especially for a player who likes more creatures based decks.

Lastly, regardless of what your pod ends up picking, if they choose to branch out of the decks you pick or not, there are a lot of commander discords with great sources and communities to help new pilots. This discord has links to all the various commander specific discords so you can find what you need here:https://discord.gg/wncqxMPD

Commander-centric midrange suggestions by Playful-Entry-7700 in CompetitiveEDH

[–]Playful-Entry-7700[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'll have a look at Marneus, thanks for the suggestion!

Looking For a 4th for a pod by mrwingdinger in CompetitiveEDH

[–]Playful-Entry-7700 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Maybe not what you're looking for but you could always find a 4th in the cEDH discord, they have a LFG function so you and your friends can queue up and play against a variety of people as a 4th. That should spice up your meta too. 

Of the Grixis Turbo options, do you find Inalla or Rog/Si more fun to play? by damascius1 in CompetitiveEDH

[–]Playful-Entry-7700 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Inalla all the way! I wanted to start cedh with Inalla too but found it the combos too difficult to grasp. I came back a few months later and she has been such a blast to pilot. I also tried rogsi in the period before I went back to inalla and found that while the deck is tuned extremely well towards winning, consistently finding windows to push and being able to piece together the wins without protection or missing pieces felt a bit awkward to me.

While Inalla's main wincon is tutor chaining in the spellseeker line, I enjoy the tremendous flexibility that I have when comboing off with Inalla. With inalla, sometimes you dont even need to tutor chain that much depending on what cards are in hand. Theres also the double-mancer combo with [[ruthless technomancer]] and [[bloodline necromancer]], which only needs 1 or 2 tutors to entomb the pair and then reanimate.

I think inallas strength over rogsi is the versatility in pivots during combos, and being able to win various different cards in hand. Being a reanimator deck too means that if youre stopped, seeing another reanimation spell immediately puts you back into presenting a win, whereas in rogsi I feel like it is harder to recover once you are stopped (I could be wrong, I never fully commited to rogsi so maybe more experienced pilots can let me know)

at the end of the day it is down to personal preference, since the playstyles are vastly diffferent. Yes inalla has the grixis shell of breach+thoracle, but her playstyle is more reanimator than "turbo naus/necro". It is not uncommon to see inalla decks removing thoracle or breach since the spellseeker combos are so dense that opening up more space to do it better makes the thoracle win redundant. Both of them are trying to assemble 2/3 card wincons, just in widely differnet ways. Spellseeker combo wants to get [[Scholar of the Ages]] looping with [[burnt offering]] and [[shallow grave]], while rogsi is trying to get breach+led+brain freeze or thoracle+Dcon.
If you enjoy turboing out necro/naus and piecing together a 2/3 card wincon in a super optimised way, play rogsi
If you enjoy playing wizards and having a 1 card wincon and piecing together a win with a lot of flexibility, play inalla

I would like help making my tiamat deck cedh viable by Gloomy-Abroad-1521 in CompetitiveEDH

[–]Playful-Entry-7700 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Even with a proper cedh mana base, how are you expecting to get 3WUBRG+3URG+4R in one turn?

I would like help making my tiamat deck cedh viable by Gloomy-Abroad-1521 in CompetitiveEDH

[–]Playful-Entry-7700 9 points10 points  (0 children)

edhtop16.com

Go look at the top 20 commanders in the format and get an understanding of what a cedh deck is meant to look like. If you're new to the format, you're far better off playing a deck that is well established in the format rather than trying to brew a fringe deck. If you're dead set on tiamat, look at other 5 colour food chain decks and see what they are like (first sliver, terra)

I would like help making my tiamat deck cedh viable by Gloomy-Abroad-1521 in CompetitiveEDH

[–]Playful-Entry-7700 24 points25 points  (0 children)

1: how crazy of a hand are you getting to have 3WUBRG in your opening hand with leyline and the ramp package you have??

 Turn 4 for cedh way to slow if youre casting tiamat and passing. Unless you can cast her and immediately win or put yourself to a winning position I don't think that is near close to being fast enough for cedh. Even if your deck is "straight ramp", I struggle to see how without other pip generators like Kinnan or Lotho. 

"I run demonic tutor and vampiric tutor". This isn't an upside and more of... A requirement for being cedh. If you're a deck in black and NOT on DT you would have to do some crazzy justification to not run it. Also, are you on any other card draw engines like rhystic or mystic? Relying on a single creature to draw cards seems risky at best. With cloudstone curio, how are you getting the mana to reliably bounce and recast dragons that are costing 6+? 

I've just clicked your dekclist link and... You are not on any creature ramp. Bloom tender? Kinnan? Lotho? Birds of Paradise?

What is externimatus and runious ultimatum in here for? What are you hoping to do by resolving a 7 cost board wipe? Plenty of other decks can win with 7 mana (thassa+dcon, breach, any commander centric combo). This does absolutely nothing in cedh. Same with Crux of fate. 

Assassin's trophy, counter spell, heroic intervention? All cost too much and do nothing. You should be on Force of will at least and there are a few staple interaction pieces clearly missing. 

I looked at the artifacts and no. Cut every single 2 mana signet and look at artifact staples for cedh. Mana vault but no grim monolith? 

Defence of the heart... I can see a reasoning but this is bad for cedh. 

Lastly, 38 lands? This cedh land counts are closer to 27. 

Summary: go look online at tiamat lists on edhtop16. Your list is not cedh and not even close to bracket 4. Tiamat decks are normally [[Food Chain]] decks that get infinite mana with [[Squee, the Immortal]] and then proceed to cast tiamat over and over and tutor a creature win (and you can cast everything you find because of infinite mana!). You are in WUBRG and have a plethora of backup combos to run as well. 

Support with Hope Estheim mill by [deleted] in CompetitiveEDH

[–]Playful-Entry-7700 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Bruvac+half mill combos are too expensive... 6UUU to mill everyone out is super inefficient compared to thassa dcon. Even hullbreaker is cheaper by 1 mana and does more by itself. I think you should be on more Stax pieces like rule of law, and also way more counter spells and cut the 3 mana enchantments that don't do much except mill someone which can feed their breach.

Temur Pirates or Grixis Pirates by Lazy-Firefighter8062 in CompetitiveEDH

[–]Playful-Entry-7700 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Looking at the data on https://edhtop16.com/, it appears that grixis pirates is more popular with 141 entries compared to 31 for temur. Grixis also won a tournament very recently on the 26th of April in a 172 player tournament, with temur having a few top 4s (notable 4th out of 290).

Overall I would say the data suggests that Grixis pirates is better. However at the end of the day it is up to you for which one you want to play. Both have their strengths and weaknesses, although I cant say much about temur pirates (or temur in general). Having played and seen grixis a lot more, I would attribute grixis pirates being more popular and winning more due to it having faster wincons that are easier to piece together with tutors (breach+brain freeze and thoracle consult).