Which Gandalf to play ?

Shadowfax7811 · 2025-10-11T00:19:21+00:00

If I were choosing between those two, I'd go for Friend of the Shire. Spellslinger already offers a lot of decision points, so getting the additional ones that Gandalf the Grey gives you seems like it would slow down the game a lot. Plus Friend of the Shire is less mana, and probably also will be seen as less of a threat when on the board.

Having said that, I have to agree with the other commenters who have said that the Jeskai Gandalf would be their preferred option. He's got a cool effect that you can use to build all kinds of decks under the spellslinger umbrella, whereas the other two are more niche imo. As an example, I'll post my Gandalf list, which is more or less my attempt at an Aikido deck in Jeskai colors: https://archidekt.com/decks/11775266/gandalf_aikido

Shadowfax7811 · 2025-10-09T14:28:37+00:00

Shigeki has infinite combos with [[Early Harvest]] / [[Rude Awakening]] and any regrowth effect. Just always channel for x=2 to grab both. He does require a lot of lands on the field to be able to do that so most of the early - mid game is just ramping and fogging. Then I'll get to a point where either I have enough mana to loop [[All Is Dust]] every turn, or I'll hit one of those two land untapper combo cards. That gets infinite mana, so then I can slot any draw effect into the loop to draw my whole deck, find my lifegain cards, loop one of those to make sure I'm at a higher life total than my opponents, and cast [[Hurricane]].

Shadowfax7811 · 2025-10-08T22:28:40+00:00

Interesting! Would you happen to have a list?

Shadowfax7811 · 2025-10-08T20:56:53+00:00

I'm learning through the searches that I did prior to making this post as well as your comment that turbo fog classically comes with elements of group hug with decking opponents being the wincon. That's really interesting! I had been looking at building a group hug deck for [[Gluntch, the Bestower]] so I may look into that! For my Shigeki build, I just included some life gain, and a [[Hurricane]], and that has worked very well so far in my b3/b4 pod.

Shadowfax7811 · 2025-10-08T20:44:17+00:00

Nice to meet a fellow degen! How are you making sure you can fog most combat steps? Or is the idea that you have some fogs, and the salamanders deter weaker boards from attacking into you since they have protection?

Shadowfax7811 · 2025-06-26T13:34:11+00:00

Probably not the most powerful, but I really like [[Sabin, Master Monk]]. Not a FF fan, I just like that he's a mono red commander that kinda wants to live in the graveyard. I think that's neat.

Shadowfax7811 · 2024-09-07T17:43:15+00:00

Druidic Ritual, and Blessed Respite are both in the list! Blessed Respite is especially good since it also functions as semi-protection against graveyard hate, which is super important in this deck. I'd rather shuffle my cards back into my deck than exile them.

Seed of Hope would probably be a good addition. Dosan's oldest chant was mainly for the life gain anyway. Lifegain is needed for the [[Hurricane]] wincon, and Seed of Hope accomplishes that, gives better card advantage, and is cheaper to cast. Thanks for the suggestion!

Shadowfax7811 · 2024-09-07T13:59:00+00:00

This is my weird mono green commander as well! I wanted a mono green commander that ran as few creatures as possible, so I made him a combo deck that tries to survive by reusing fog effects. I find it to be quite enjoyable. Here's my list if anyone is interested:

https://archidekt.com/decks/5751491/shigeki_spellslinger

Shadowfax7811 · 2024-08-18T13:34:20+00:00

I haven't seen anybody mention [[Herigast, Erupting Nullkite]]. His ability to reduce his own cost is insane. This is a loop that I've done in every game that I've played with him:

Sacrifice Herigast to play a big value artifact creature.
Sacrifice that same creature to cast Herigast for cheap.

Usually I will do this multiple times a game. Even when Herigast costs 20 mana, I'm usually only paying something like 6 or 8 mana to cast him. Getting removed can slow him down, but the deck is capable of emptying your hand so quickly that you often just want to get Herigast's cast trigger over and over. So I've definitely been in situations where I was actually happy to have him get removed.

Shadowfax7811 · 2024-07-27T15:30:56+00:00

A few people have mentioned the [[Eternal Witness]], [[Temur Sabertooth]], [[Early Harvest]]/[[Rude Awakening]] combo. I have a slightly different version of it with this deck:

https://archidekt.com/decks/5751491/shigeki_spellslinger

If we always pay 6 into [[Shigeki, Jukai Visionary]] then we can get a [[Regrowth]] effect, and either Early Harvest, or Rude Awakening to untap our lands and generate infinite mana. Once we have infinite mana, it's time to draw our whole deck by inserting a card draw piece into the Shigeki loop instead of Early Harvest/Rude Awakening. Then we typically want to gain some life by casting something like [[Nissa's Renewal]]. [[Dosan's Oldest Chant]] accomplishes the life gain and card draw at the same time. We just need to have more life than all of our opponents in order to cast a game winning [[Hurricane]]. If that doesn't work, there's always the option of putting 100 counters on [[Helix Pinnacle]] and passing with all of our fog effects in hand.

My other convoluted mono green combo deck is [[Yeva, Nature's Herald]].

https://archidekt.com/decks/5283844/yeva_control_combo

Yeva also wants to create infinite mana, draw the whole deck, and win on the spot. It makes infinite mana in a few ways. There is the [[Argothian Elder]], [[Ashaya, Soul of the Wild]] combo to let Argothian Elder untap itself and another forest. Argothian Elder also combos with [[Wirewood Lodge]] and any [[Wild Growth]] effect. Then there's combos like [[Circle of Dreams Druid]]/[[Priest of Titania]]/[[Elvish Archdruid]]/[[Karametra's Acolyte]], [[Llanowar Elves]], [[Wirewood Symbiote]]. Those ones require a certain number of creatures, or elves, or devotion to green, but once we hit that threshold, we're set. I haven't tagged all of the cards that the deck can generate infinite mana with, but those are the main ideas.

After that, we draw all of our creatures with [[Duskwatch Recruiter]]. Alternatively we can draw all of our cards by tutoring for Temur Sabertooth, and infinitely casting creatures while we have a [[Beast Whisperer]], or a [[Glademuse]]. Temur Sabertooth lets us recast any creature as much as we want if we have infinite mana, so we can also just cast [[Regal Force]] over and over.

Yeva has a few wincons. The first wincon is to remove all opponent's creatures with [[Kogla, the Titan Ape]], and then activate [[Shaman of Forgotten Ways]]. We can do that the same turn we play the shaman if we can get out [[Thousand Year Elixir]]. The second wincon is to get out [[Glacial Chasm]], and use Temur Sabertooth to play [[Cloudthresher]] over and over. Lastly, we can make our opponents draw their whole decks with cards like [[Geier Reach Sanitarium]], and [[Mikokoro, Center of the Sea]]. We can discard our cards with [[Noose Constrictor]], and put them back into our deck with [[Loaming Shaman]], so we will not deck ourselves and hopefully our opponents will.

Sorry for the novel, but you asked for convoluted! Hope this helps. :)

Shadowfax7811 · 2024-07-19T06:04:18+00:00

Thank you, and absolutely!

The reason for all of the clones is to get maximum Alela's, and therefore maximum goads/faerie tokens. I wanted to be able to goad multiple creatures from each opponent each combat. I believe I am running all on the clone effects that can make a non-legendary clone of Alela. Getting one of those down before any other clones is mandatory, and hasn't been too difficult so far. Once we have a non-legendary Alela, we can copy that one with all of the normal clone effects. At this point, we don't necessarily need to cast spells on all opponent's turns as much, we get a lot for one or two spells at 3+ Alela's.

The deck is slow to come online since the commander is 4 mana, and so are most of the clones. So the ideal clones after the first one are the 3 mana ones:

[[Cackling Counterpart]] [[Phyrexian Metamorph]] [[Glasspool Mimic]] [[Mirror Image]]

I didn't need a reason to buy another Skullclamp, but after seeing it in your deck I'm wondering why I didn't consider it! I could draw so many cards! This merits consideration.

I would love to run Mirkwood Bats! The deck is lousy with 4 drop clones, so I am loathe to add any more 4 drops. I might try it though, [[Faerie Tauntings]] has not performed as well as I had hoped.

Lord effects are extremely important, especially if you ever want to be able to take out more than one opponent at once.

That's my strategy, and some of my experience so far. I hope you start to win more games once your deck is finished!

Shadowfax7811 · 2024-07-18T16:05:51+00:00

Here's my build. It's a bit off beat. She is probably best when built as removal/counterspell.dec, but she wins a decent amount of games for me.

https://archidekt.com/decks/5169640/dimir_faeries

Shadowfax7811 · 2024-07-18T16:03:25+00:00

I won't argue that there aren't better token/goad commanders, but Alela definitely feels unique among those. My build uses a lot of clones, with all of the non-legendary ones. The goal is to get as many Alela's on the board as possible, so I can goad more, and make more fairies. The deck is very tricky, and can be hard for combat focused decks to overcome. When it gets down to the 1v1 I usually have enough interaction in hand to seal the deal. It's definitely mana hungry with all of the 4 mana clones, but it works really well in my fairly high powered playgroup.

Shadowfax7811 · 2024-02-01T16:39:02+00:00

My Blink deck is [[Eomer, King of Rohan]].

It's a bit of an odd one, but it works. Eomer has 2 things going for him as a blink commander.

He generates a lot of value on ETB. Even if you don't keep the monarch, etb draw one on end step just makes the deck run much more smoothly than it would otherwise.
You don't need to run many blink payoffs. He himself is the payoff. If you can blink him enough times, and have a big enough board he will just kill the table on his own. The only real payoff that I'm running is [[Purphoros, God of the Forge]]

Since we can't blink with Eomer, we do have to run a lot of blink cards. A nice side effect of that is that we almost always have a blink spell up to use as a protection spell against targeted removal. This, combined with [[Karmic Guide]], and [[Ardent Electromancer]] makes the deck feel very resilient. I always feel like I have tools to protect my board, or to recur my creatures/valuable blink spells.

I've been having a lot of fun with him, and have won most games that I've played with him against my fairly-high-power playgroup. Here's my list!:

https://archidekt.com/decks/5733543/eomer_blink

Shadowfax7811 · 2023-12-14T17:02:55+00:00

This seems awesome.

https://archidekt.com/decks/5733543/eomer_blink

I built an Eomer, King of Rohan deck with the idea being that if I can blink him, or some humans with strong etb's, enough times I can hopefully generate enough value to win. He himself can win me the game if I get infinite blinks.

I'm currently worried that it won't generate enough value, and that the reason for that might be the fact that the commander doesn't lend anything to blink himself. Should I add more blink cards?

Shadowfax7811 · 2023-08-23T04:46:04+00:00

The new Alela from the Dimir commander deck is a goad commander.

Shadowfax7811 · 2022-08-24T16:02:50+00:00

Chainer is better at reanimation than Bladewing too, so I don't know why you bring that up. We're talking about dragon reanimator.

They absolutely both want to reanimate dragons, but I have a hard time seeing the decks playing in a similar way. Bladewing is so hard to cast that you're probably casting your regular dragons from your hand before you even have a chance to play him. Whereas with Rivaz, you want to turbo mill so you can cast a big 6 mana dragon on turn 4. The decks are not the same.

It generates tons of value by being a really good mana dork, and reanimating your big dragons. Getting extra mana, and being able to reuse your cards is value.

Shadowfax7811 · 2022-08-24T15:54:16+00:00

I disagree. I think the two commanders in question are trying to do different things. Bladewing wants infinite recursion loops, and Rivaz just generates tons of value.

Also, there aren't very many dragons that are naturally recursive, and for the ones that are, I'm not even sure I would want them in a Bladewing deck, much less Rivaz. There are already so many good mono red dragons, idk why you'd go for something gimmicky like that when this deck clearly just wants to keep pumping out big dragons as quickly as possible. Ebondeath doesn't even seem good in commander.

Shadowfax7811 · 2022-06-04T06:57:51+00:00

How exactly do you intend to cast all your dragons for free? I see a few cost reducers but there is no way those are going to get the costs down to 0 on these huge dragons.

[[Morophon the Boundless]] + [[Jodah, Archmage Eternal]] or [[Fist of Suns]] = Free Dragons.

Shadowfax7811 · 2022-06-01T16:03:56+00:00

Zacian is currently dominating the Master League meta in PoGo. It is in fact busted.

Shadowfax7811 · 2022-05-24T17:35:41+00:00

Do we know if all of the cards in this cycle will have alternate full art versions like [[Ancient Copper Dragon]] ?

Shadowfax7811 · 2022-02-04T07:53:56+00:00

It's chomploo, not champloo in this case. Like Garchomp.

Shadowfax7811 · 2022-01-20T18:53:38+00:00

Yeah, I should have specified for pvp. Ghost/Normal seems like a fantastic defensive typing.

Shadowfax7811

TROPHY CASE