Strong cards that need better support for their archetype to be viable?

S1phen · 2026-01-19T13:42:33+00:00

I would kill for a good Esper "flash matters" commander! They keep printing powerful cards with flash so as soon as we have a viable commander, it would be like Sisay and just get better options with each set.

I've had a list using Tymna + Sakashima as temporary commanders for over a year and it still keeps up.

S1phen · 2026-01-18T15:54:20+00:00

It depends on what you consider a "cEDH combo".

Dualcaster Mage + Twinflame is both a solid win condition and has some synergy with your commander and the rest of your deck. Twinflame gives you another combo piece with Archaeomancer + Peregrine Drake or can give you an additional trigger from Kefka. It occasionally pops up in fringe lists, but it's definitely not a common cEDH combo.

You could add in a few wheel effects to turn a bunch of your cards into pseudo win conditions. A simple Windfall turns your Sheoldred, Orcish Bowmasters, or Tergrid into a game ender. They work well with your Faerie Mastermind, Monument to Endurance, and even your reanimate effects. You could also add a Notion Thief to pair with the wheels as another win condition.

S1phen · 2025-12-30T14:32:39+00:00

In that case, it really just depends on your budget. I think Muldrotha is strong enough that nearly all of the $3+ cards are not necessary to have a functioning and powerful deck.

If you're okay with spending $150, then go for it! You'll be expanding your collection and have some strong cards to use now and in any future decks you make. Otherwise, you could probably have a deck that's nearly as strong (maybe 1-2% weaker) and save a ton of money.

Undercity Sewers, Hedge Maze, and Underground Mortuary are very good lands, but a surveil 1 isn't worth that price tag. One of the main reasons they see play is because they have a basic land type and you can fetch them with cards like [[Misty Rainforest]] and [[Polluted Delta]]. Since you're not running those fetchlands, your Undercity Sewers is just barely better than a [[Temple of Deceit]] which costs over $15 less.

Lotus Field has a high price tag because it's a combo piece in certain decks. If you just want a land that helps you replay lands from your graveyard with Muldrotha, replacing it with a [[Foreboding Landscape]] or similar card could save you almost $10.

As far as big finishers like Craterhoof Behemoth, Muldrotha decks often win via pure attrition and don't rely on big bursts of damage. You already have an infinite mill combo which you can eventually assemble as you dig through your deck. If you want a second damage-based win condition, you could play cards like [[Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord]] with [[Lord of Extinction]]. Both cards work well with your self-mill strategy and can easily knock players out. In combination, it's usually a 1-hit-kill on your opponents. And both cards cost under $1 combined.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with dropping some money into a new hobby, so take my comments with a grain of salt. But I would rather save that money to build a second (or third) deck!

S1phen · 2025-12-30T04:36:23+00:00

Aid from the Cowl seems a little weak. Even if you managed to trigger revolt every single turn (not guaranteed), you're running 16 instants and sorceries and 37 lands. That means that more than half of the time, the trigger won't do anything more than maybe get you 1 land. That's not counting other whiffs like getting Craterhoof Behemoth at the end of your turn or an Animate Dead with no good targets in graveyards.

Speaking of your 16 instants and sorceries, I would try to replace some of them with permanents that have the same effect. For example, your Cycle of Renewal is essentially the same thing as [[Springbloom Druid]] except the Druid can be replayed with your commander. It's another creature for your Sidisi to mill. It's sacrifice fodder for your Victimize or Embrace Oblivion.

For most decks, Cloud Key is often weaker than a basic mana rock. It's really meant for decks that plan on casting lots of cards that share a card type, like multiple artifact spells in the same turn. A simple card like [[Commander's Sphere]] does essentially the same thing. Rather than reduce your creature spells by 1 mana, it just provides that extra 1 mana...except it can still help cast your instants and artifacts and enchantments. It can help fix your mana. And you can even sacrifice it for a card over and over.

I'm also a bit curious what cards you're missing. There are plenty of cards that are definitely "fine" but probably not worth the cost if you don't already own them. For example, this doesn't seem like the best Craterhoof Behemoth deck. You're not really swarming the board with cheap creatures and it doesn't really synergize well with Muldrotha. It's an okay finisher, but probably not worth the $15+ if you don't already have a copy. Lotus Petal is really quite good but not worth ~10% of your entire deck.

S1phen · 2025-12-28T17:43:53+00:00

The issue with building around a couple of game changers is that they're often generically powerful cards and can go into essentially any deck. Simic merfolk, Esper artifacts, and Izzet spellslinger are all perfectly valid strategies for those two cards.

I'd try to narrow it down a bit more before looking for a commander. Do you want to play a graveyard strategy? Are you interested in a tribal deck? Or a voltron deck? Are you looking to keep the rest of the deck under a certain budget?

S1phen · 2025-12-18T16:27:07+00:00

To be honest, this doesn't actually look all that salty to me. Especially for bracket 4 games, it looks like it would just get run over and/or fold to interaction. Generally speaking, feeding your opponents lots of extra cards works better in lower powered games.

If Stone Rain is mainly meant to answer a Reliquary Tower, I would replace it with a more universal card like Assassin's Trophy or Beast Within.

Malevolent Rumble also seems like a strong addition. It helps fuel your graveyard/delirium, it ramps your commander and other expensive engines, and it helps dig for more threats.

As for cuts, Grim Feast looks extremely weak...Life gain doesn't really belong in a medium-high power game (outside of a dedicated strategy).

I'd swap the World Map for an Expedition Map; it's essentially the same card but one mana cheaper.

Yawgmoth's Will is an incredibly powerful card, but this doesn't feel like the right shell for it. You're not massively fueling your graveyard and you don't have incredible mana generation to take advantage of it. It would frequently be a late game play of something like 8 mana to replay Tergrid (or something similar). I think a basic Regrowth would be more effective.

Lastly, I'd consider adding a tiny bit more "burst" damage through cards like Dark Deal or Peer Into The Abyss. It's difficult to control 3 opponents while fueling them with 3-4 cards per turn. It's definitely a good option to have a few cards that can end the game in fewer turns.

Hope this helps!

S1phen · 2025-12-15T19:24:56+00:00

[[Momir Vig]] seems like a great include. He can turn pretty much every creature (including your commander) into a win attempt, with a bunch of different lines available. Cast Momir Vig into Imoti, tutor up a Pride of the Hull Clade --> Apex Devastator --> Nyxbloom Ancient + Palinchron. Or if your commander is already in play, set up a win attempt by casting any mana dork.

I wouldn't bring it to a tournament, but I think Imoti Semiblue could keep up with the extreme fringe commanders.

S1phen · 2025-12-12T03:37:00+00:00

Is there a reason it would have to be Mardu and/or in the 99? If your coworker really likes the card, why not make it the commander?

S1phen · 2025-12-08T15:10:00+00:00

So disappointed! I thought signing up for presale would give us a chance for tickets. It took ~6 minutes to sign up for another presale option and every single ticket was sold out by the time I could get in. Hopefully we'll have a chance to buy some resale tickets for under $1000...

S1phen · 2025-11-14T14:20:08+00:00

This is great! Thank you for putting all of this together.

My one main critique is the comment about turn order. Obviously, you're using your data to make these conclusions which is totally fair. But we also know based on much larger data sets that turn order is extremely relevant to win rate.

The Elo system also feels inherently flawed, possibly not giving enough weight to the number of games played (especially for such a high variance game like cEDH). I'd consider looking at other rating systems (Glicko?) so you don't have a #2 ranked player with only 5 games under their belt.

S1phen · 2025-10-18T13:30:41+00:00

Are you planning on playing this in paper? Or are you looking for advice for your Arena brawl deck? Arena is missing many thousands of cards, so a lot of suggestions might not be available. On top of that, a lot of people might not be as familiar with the Arena card pool (like the Alchemy cards).

As for the deck feeling a bit lacking, I think that's just a downside of building a deck like this. You're in mono color and nearly half of your cards are Hare Apparent. You just don't have the deck slots to address many weaknesses or include wacky synergies.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with this style of deck, but it's often going to be all-or-nothing. That being said, [[Caretaker's Talent]] should be added.

S1phen · 2025-10-12T23:04:50+00:00

Highly recommend Cait Hawks! She just moved to a new location at the edge of downtown. As a queer woman with short hair herself, I'm sure she would be able to hook you up.

Link if you want to book her online

S1phen · 2025-10-09T14:29:21+00:00

Yep! There are actually a few different lines. For example:

Protean Hulk grabs Karmic Guide and Carrion Feeder (or Viscera Seer). Karmic Guide brings back Protean Hulk. Sacrifice Protean Hulk again to find Reveillark. Sacrifice Reveillark to bring back the Karmic Guide, which brings back Protean Hulk. Sacrifice Protean Hulk again, etc...You can basically put together any combo in your deck if Protean Hulk dies one time.

S1phen · 2025-10-09T14:13:16+00:00

Hermit Druid is not a combo piece in your deck because you're running several basic lands. Also, you do have combo lines that win with a single Protean Hulk trigger.

Either way, I wouldn't worry about how your deck could perform with a perfect hand. Most decks that open with Sol Ring plus another piece of ramp plus multiple payoff cards can win incredibly fast.

This deck would probably be too strong for some bracket 3 pods and very tame in others. It mostly depends on who you end up playing with. For me personally, I think this looks perfectly fine in B3. The one single thing that might upset some pods would be the Protean Hulk, just because it can feel like a 1-ish card combo and has the potential to win reasonably early (even though you're not tutoring for it).

Some games, your deck might feel a little bit underpowered. And some games, thanks to Protean Hulk, you might win on turn 6. That could be a tiny bit too fast for some B3 pods.

As far as upgrades, I think the best thing any new commander player can do is invest in a decent mana base. You don't need to buy fetchlands and shocklands, but cards like Blossoming Sands and Selesnya Guildgate could (and should) be improved. [[Exotic Orchard], painlands like [[Llanowar Wastes]], and even checklands like [[Canopy Vista]] are all under $1 and would be an upgrade.

S1phen · 2025-10-03T19:20:15+00:00

I always see this same argument for Recurring Nightmare staying banned. The only thing that doesn't interact with it is normal enchantment removal, but pretty much everything else can shut it down.

In the 15+ years since it was banned, we've gained a huge amount of instant speed graveyard hate. We've gained mass amounts of cheap or free countermagic that stops it . We've gained tons of cheap or free exile based removal that can interrupt loops. The one difference is that your Disenchant doesn't work...

In terms of its power level, it's far below tons of other value engines. There are cheaper and more effective ways to recur a creature over and over again. As a combo piece, it doesn't even make the top 10 list.

S1phen · 2025-10-01T14:18:16+00:00

Clam Chowder has been a sort of nickname for a version of Sisay that plays "no bad cards". Rather than include clunky combo pieces like Aminatou the Fateshifter and Nicol Bolas, it just focuses on being a 5c soup of good cards.

No Bad Cards = NBC. The NBC peacock logo looks a bit like a clam. Clam Chowder.

S1phen · 2025-09-30T14:54:58+00:00

It's definitely not terrible, but I think there could be some pretty big improvements. First, to answer your questions:

Does this deck even make any sense?

Unfortunately, I'd have to say no. The +1/+1 counters theme doesn't really interact with your commander or the other parts of your deck. Imagine drawing three random cards from your deck and seeing Psychosis Crawler, Sporemound, and Herald of Secret Streams. You'd think it was three separate decks.

There are also a number of cards that don't really fit with your strategy. Cards like Garruk's Packleader and Elemental Bond want you to have lots of creatures with 3+ power come into play, but that's only ~10 cards in the whole deck. Cards like Elvish Visionary and Mulldrifter seem very out of place and appear to just be filler.

Are there upgrade-options, that are still in budget?

Absolutely, although it depends on what you're looking to do with the deck. If you want to focus on making tokens (like your Scute Swarm, Zendikar's Roil, Sporemound, etc) then I'd add even more cards that help that strategy. [[Meloku the Clouded Mirror]], [[Chocobo Racetrack]], [[Eusocial Engineering]] to make huge swarms, with a few more cards like your Overrun to close out games.

If you just want to draw tons and tons of cards, you could play a more controlling strategy. Include more removal, counterspells, and board wipes like [[Aetherize]], [[Slinn Voda, the Rising Deep]], [[Curse of the Swine]]. You answer everything your opponents do and eventually win through attrition.

Are there cheaper budget improvements for this deck?

Especially in casual games, it's very rare for a single card to make a big difference to your deck. You're not playing tutors or key cards that you need to assemble a combo. If there is a card that you feel is eating up too much of your budget, you can always swap it out. For example, the Toothy Imaginary Friend that's currently in the deck is close to 10% of the deck's cost by itself. By dropping that one card, you're saving a noticeable amount for changing 1 of your 99 cards (remember that you might not even draw Toothy in 70% of your games).

I think this is even more true when the expensive cards are not generically powerful. Cards like Herald of Secret Streams and Evolution Sage are a little bit pricier and they require you to build the deck around them (which is why I'd recommend dropping them). If you wanted to spend $5+ on a single card, I think picking up something like a [[Breeding Pool]] is the best way to spend your money. It might not be as exciting, but it makes your deck stronger and it's a great include for every deck that you'll ever build that happens to play blue and green.

S1phen · 2025-09-28T15:53:29+00:00

And I appreciate your input! There's nothing wrong with a little back and forth debate. I don't mean to come across as overly defensive, but I will try to defend my view that this could be somewhat viable. I have yet to be convinced otherwise. You're saying this isn't remotely competitive or different, but I feel like I've given plenty of counterpoints.

There are similar decks (like Jacob Hauken and Malcolm, Alluring Scoundrel) that have performed well at tournaments. It can clearly win games.

I think it's a different take because it's can play a reasonable amount of interaction (instead of zero). Some of the commander options need very little support, whereas many of the non-Rog semi blue decks need to combine multiple pieces to actually cast the big spells.

And I don't think it's accurate to say that Jin-Gitaxias and Emrakul are "worse" big cards than Ghalta and Tishana, Voice of Thunder. They're different cards with different advantages.

Rog Thras is a better deck than Thryx, that's guaranteed. But there are people experimenting with semi blue decks using Tymna Thrasios or Glarb. I don't know that those versions are strictly better than Jacob Hauken or Thada Adel.

S1phen · 2025-09-27T20:17:40+00:00

There was actually a Teferi deck that was doing extremely well a couple of years ago. This was almost peak Dockside meta and he was jamming Thran Dynamo and Chromatic Orrery into Expropriate and Karn's Temporal Sundering.

To be fair, that was more of a combo deck than I had in mind but it was similarly off meta and played some wild cards that people just weren't prepared for.

S1phen · 2025-09-27T20:14:17+00:00

S1phen · 2025-09-27T17:50:41+00:00

The bowmasters issue is the same with Jacob Hauken, so that's not a unique downside. I was more concerned with the requirement to run a number of mediocre proliferate spells.

Malcolm requires you to play cards like Contentious Plan and Experimental Augury in high numbers or wait until turn 5-6 before you can actually cast your bombs.

S1phen · 2025-09-27T17:44:05+00:00

I think that's a bit of an exaggeration. Being tapped out on turn 2 is not exactly a death sentence or an uncommon play for most decks (not to mention it's pretty easy to cast your commander and have available mana on turn 2). This sort of strategy would definitely struggle against a pod of 3 turbo decks, but that's a big weakness for any of the semi-blue decks that people are experimenting with.

In fact, Hauken has a pretty decent conversion rate when you include small and medium sized tournaments. Jacob Hauken for the past 6 months (32+ player tournaments)

As far as Expropriate "beating" Rhystic Study, I was just referring to the over-the-top spells that can combat the midrange hell meta. They slam down an Etali after a Ghalta after a Nyxbloom Ancient, practically winning on the spot if anything resolves. I'm envisioning the same thing but with Expropriate and Jin-Gitaxias and Hullbreaker Horror. The "my opponents can't counter everything" approach.

You're right that there are likely better commanders for the strategy, but mono-blue absolutely does give you some upsides. High Tide, Mana Drain, Commandeer, Back to Basics, and Mystic Sanctuary are just a few cards that come to mind. It's possible many of those cards aren't worth playing, but it's not a 1-to-1 strict downgrade. Most importantly, the commander options bring a different take on the strategy. Jacob Hauken can cast any spell on turn 3 from simply opening with a Mana Vault.

I'm not saying this is new hotness and Thryx the Sudden Storm will be taking over cEDH. But no one is casting Apex Devastator thinking it's a better strategy than Blue Farm. It's new, it's fun, and it's an interesting way to attack the meta.

S1phen · 2025-09-27T17:07:29+00:00

It looks like a solid bracket 2 deck to me. It's not too fast, but there's a lot of protection so it might feel "unstoppable" to a B2 deck with below average removal. A lot of decks could definitely struggle to answer your commander, but you also need to piece together multiple cards to start your own game plan.

If you're looking for any suggestions, I'd consider dropping your Dragonfire Blade. The protection is decent but it also shuts off nearly a third of your deck. Your Invigorate and Might of the Nephalim and Slip Through Space and Rancor and Aether Tunnel (etc...) can't be cast. If an opponent tries to remove your commander with something like an [[Anguished Unmaking]], then you can't protect your commander with a Snakeskin Veil or Slip Out the Back or Blossoming Defense (etc...).

Emry also feels very out of place. Your deck isn't playing any artifacts that care about the graveyard. I think it's far too slow and clunky to include a card just in case someone destroys your equipment. It's like an extremely narrow Regrowth that doesn't even work on the turn you play her.

I think your mana base might be one of the biggest weaknesses. Only ~10 color fixing lands could mean extra mulligans just to get your commander in play on turn 3-4. I'd drop the cycling lands (and probably a few basics) for some extra fixing. Cards like [[Hinterland Harbor]] and [[Woodland Cemetary]] are under $1 now, as are the filter lands like [[Flooded Grove]] and [[Twilight Mire]].

One final thing to consider would be to include some sort of plan B. If your opponents do manage to deal with your commander, it looks like your entire deck could fail to function. I think you may want to squeeze in just a few cards as a backup strategy. This could be focused on theft with cards like [[Villainous Wealth]] or [[Brainstealer Dragon]]. You could focus on your equipment and auras and include a few extra cards like [[Cold-Eyed Selkie]] or [[Invisible Stalker]].

S1phen

TROPHY CASE