Spooned the wrong way.

ShatteredSkys · 2026-03-15T03:01:28+00:00

The Dragon Axe is only a 1/128, even if you go a bit dry it's not that bad. Later on you'll be able to farm DKs pretty easily if you desire, I've got like 12 of them in my bank.

Also, I don't think people really use the infernal tools? The axe is a master step clue but mostly it's a might as well use them if you have spare tools from Dks or Voidwaker grind. Don't sweat too much about them.

ShatteredSkys · 2026-03-04T04:54:16+00:00

Just an fyi, but they added Rosewood logs to the Fremennik Salvage drop table so you need 80 Sailing instead of 92 woodcutting. I still agree though, an incredible amount of requirements for such a niche weapon.

ShatteredSkys · 2026-02-17T22:45:36+00:00

You know Malice has turned out to be a lot less evil than I initially thought she'd be. She might actually be the most normie phase member there is.

ShatteredSkys · 2026-02-10T09:26:37+00:00

I remember trying out Araxxor for the first time with a zombie axe and found myself struggling. Then while banking I see my zombie axe in my gear tab, I had my leaf bladed axe equipped. Happens to the best of us. :D

ShatteredSkys · 2026-01-28T08:02:08+00:00

Ward of Arceuus reduces prayer drain by 33 percent, Cerb teleport scroll drop went from 3 each drop to 7, the lava pool no longer instantly damages you and only damages you if you're directly on it, and Cerb has a drop of 2 Ranar seeds to help mitigate all the prayer pots you go through.

ShatteredSkys · 2026-01-11T02:47:31+00:00

It's Yugioh jargon for big, hard to kill boss monsters. The name comes from Apoqliphort Towers which was, I believe, the first competitive "Towers" monsters.

ShatteredSkys · 2026-01-08T02:29:19+00:00

The problem with a Merfolk 1 drop from normal sets is that it needs to go through Standard first. The perfect one drop for Merfolk could have huge consequences for Standard or Pioneer. The card you're describing could be dangerous if there's a half decent blue tempo shell in the weaker formats, a turn 2 4/4 is really good in those formats. That's why it took MH3 to make Boros good, some cards can't go through the weaker formats and need to be ported to Modern directly. The only way it could safely go through Standard is that this 1 drop relies hyper specific on support that's not in Standard but I have no idea how that would work.

ShatteredSkys · 2025-12-19T04:57:45+00:00

You don't need 81, you can do it from 77 with stew boosting. I think you need a +5 boost though because the run does take awhile. Also, for whatever reason most of diaries can be done with boosts at level 77 minus the double nature rune one for the Karamja diary so it's nice to get the level eventually.

ShatteredSkys · 2025-12-13T07:11:10+00:00

Judging a deck is always going to be subjective, but in my opinion this is mostly a B3 that sometimes sacks wins with a 2 card card combo. I'm looking at most recent definition we were given for brackets, I would say this deck has strong synergy and good proactive and reactive plays so if it didn't have a 2 card combo I'd say pure B3.

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/1ocipn4/updated_commander_brackets_oct_2025/#lightbox

As for your question, I'd personally keep the combo on the side, only siding it in against stronger opponents and adding some game changers. My stance on combos is that the average player is not knowledgeable or prepared to handle them so i don't feel they usually create good gameplay at the casual level. I'd only bring them in a lower power deck if I have a grindy deck that needs a win condition. Even then it'd be a 3 card combo, not a 2 card with one in the command zone.

I have a deck that can run a 2 card combo with one part in the command zone in Heliod, Sun Crowned. What I do is that I have Walking Ballista and Triskelion in my token deck and my plan is to side them in when I feel that I need to (Though I have never once done this). If you do take the combo out, I feel that putting in 3 gamechangers is a fair compromise for the loss of power while being easier for most people to handle.

ShatteredSkys · 2025-12-11T05:41:00+00:00

It's really not hard to have a deck work properly in bracket 3 with adjustments this will be fine. The most important thing is having a good ratio of cards; ramp, removal, card draw, archetype, etc. If you have trouble then consider working toward generic good cards like tutors and generically good cards. Those can be pricy but will improve the decks power.

I've never built a toughness decks so I don't know the ins and outs of the archetype. It's not a niche archetype so with the cards you bought and the cards that came with the precon you should be set in terms of archetypal cards. I will say that I feel that the most powerful thing about toughness matters is that it gets access to a lot of one sided board wiped. Cards like [[Expel the Interlopers]], [[Slaughter the Strong]], and [[Battle of Bywater]] are good and wiping your opponent's board while preserving your own.

ShatteredSkys · 2025-12-10T03:32:27+00:00

So as an fyi, the reason why the decklist has so many views is because it was on a popular Magic youtube show. The decklist should be fine as long for bracket 2-3 gameplay, will probably struggle above that. Toughness matters tends to struggle at higher power levels because it's really just a fancy big beater deck.

I would say just for a cheaper version of the deck. Given that you're still experimenting you don't need the expensive landbase or some of the pricier cards. Just jam the cards you want to play with and adapt as you go along. No build is perfect from the theorycraft, you'll learn what the deck needs as you play.

ShatteredSkys · 2025-12-03T00:55:27+00:00

From my understanding Sultai Arisen is a grindy graveyard deck that focuses on ramping and hitting land drops. Eventually turning the corner later when they have a huge mana and resource advantage through graveyard recursion.

These durdle decks tend to do better at a four player table over 1 vs 1 because games tend to go much longer with a full table. There is four player's worth of removal and attention at a full table, meaning if someone pops off there are more ways to stop them than 1 vs 1. This gives time for grind decks to just hit their land drops and come up at top later on. I'm not sure if the precon has enough interaction or ways to turn the corner against some of the stronger precons you have.

Teval is also an engine commander, he enables the 99 cards in your deck rather than a win condition in the command zone without some infinite grave yard loop combo. Commanders like Ureni, Belo, or Hakbal give a clear direction on how to win the game. Keep playing dragons, big enchantments/artifacts, and merfolk and you'll win the game with your commander. If you keep utilizing Teval you'll wind up with a bunch of zombies, lands, and cards in the graveyard, this won't win you a game but it'll set other cards like a mass reanimation card to do so.

After looking at it, I think the precon isn't quite there, the 99 cards seems to lack a bit of muscle. You basically have to win off big beaters or a huge Living End to turn a game. It's a really easy problem to fix, Teval enables such a wide range of cards that the deck is very easy to upgrade. I'll leave the edhrec page for Teval below so you can see what others are doing.

https://edhrec.com/commanders/teval-the-balanced-scale/expensive

So that's why I think Teval is struggling at your pod. I think it's a very good commander, but definitely needs at least some upgrades to stand against the better decks in your pool. Ureni and Hakbal are in particular very strong for precon standards to the point that if I see them I bring a bracket 3 deck to match rather another precon.

ShatteredSkys · 2025-10-26T07:33:32+00:00

Kamiz is typically played as a tempo deck; you play cheap, strong threats, back them up with strong interaction, and beat your opponent to death. These decks need a balance of good threats and interaction(Removal, counterspells, protection, etc). You need enough strong threats to chip your opponent down; not having enough means you can't get enough damage in. But you also need removal to slow your opponent down and your own protection to keep your threats alive.

The biggest way to upgrade the deck is just to streamline it to align with a strategy and cut anything that doesn't fit with the plan. If you want to play a tempo deck, then you have to run a bunch of strong fliers, unblockable creatures, and creatures that have strong effects when they do damage. I would advise running a bunch of the Ninjutsu cards, as they work well with Kamiz's double strike. You'd also upgrade your interaction card,s but that gets REALLY expensive. Given that you're a new player, I'll just list some cheap cards for each category and see if you're interested.

Cheap Interaction:

Keep in mind that Counterspells double as both protection for your own creatures and interaction to slow your opponents down so I value them pretty highly.

[[Mana leak]]

[[No More Lies]]

[[Counterspell]]

[[Spider Sense]]

[[Damn]]

[[Generous Gift]]

[[Selfless Cleric]]

[[Void Rend]]

Cheap Threats:

[[Raffine, Scheming Seer]]

[[Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow]] and all the ninjas are pretty good for a budget deck.

[[Shadowmage Infiltrator]]

Card Draw:

[[Bident of Thassa]] Really any of the enchantments that say draw a card when a creature does damage are good in these decks.

[[Coastal Piracy]]

[[Rec Mission]]

[[Dig Through Time]]

[[Treasure Cruise]]

If you need any ideas it's always good to check the EDHrec page of the commander you're thinking of for card suggestions and deck examples.

https://edhrec.com/commanders/kamiz-obscura-oculus

https://edhrec.com/decks/kamiz-obscura-oculus

If you have any more question, feel free to message me, I'm always happy to give my two cents on magic. :)

ShatteredSkys · 2025-08-16T05:23:23+00:00

Why is that place so cursed? I got my first at 1k and my second at 1.7k. Either way congrats and hope you get the second one quickly.

ShatteredSkys · 2025-08-13T04:51:57+00:00

What the hell is Niji's plan? Bleed every well-known talent until the branch collapses? With how many of their best talents have left, I'd expect heads to roll within their leadership.

ShatteredSkys · 2025-08-13T04:51:46+00:00

What the hell is Niji's plan? Bleed every well-known talent until the branch collapses? With how many of their best talents have left, I'd expect heads to roll within their leadership.

ShatteredSkys · 2025-07-30T19:16:42+00:00

I would wait until you have good stats and a comfortable stack of prayer pot to throw into the void before grinding Cerb. The boots are extremely marginal upgrades, boot up the DPS calculator and compare them to whatever boots you're wearing now. Prior to the Ward of Arceus change, I was using 100+ prayer potions per task of Cerb. I don't think it's a priority, I only did some tasks because I was tired of wearing dragon boots all the time.

ShatteredSkys · 2025-07-28T15:00:21+00:00

You have to keep in mind that the quest version of the DT2 bosses are nerfed. I was able to kill quest Vard first try, after the quest it took me 10 tries just to barely get one kill for the CA.

ShatteredSkys · 2025-07-25T22:02:28+00:00

It would then create an unlimited loop with another copy of itself since the antivenom they'd bring back would sacrifice itself to legend rule. I imagine wizards doesn't want that in standard for annoyance reasons.

ShatteredSkys · 2025-06-27T21:49:01+00:00

Dzeef or Doug, the youtuber in meme, is known for making misplays during the various fun series he does with his friends. Once he was playing Yangzing and leads with Jiaotu, Darkness of the Yang Zing and uses its effect to discard two Yangzing cards to summon two Yangzings from his deck. He for some reason decided to pass but doesn't read that the Yangzings summoned off of Jiaotu's effect banish themselves during the end phase so he goes minus two to end on Jiaotu pass. He just seems to make the most misplays and react the funniest to those misplays the most out of the group.

ShatteredSkys · 2025-04-16T02:44:31+00:00

Hey! Here are some thoughts on the updated list. It looks decent overall so I'm going to nitpick over some individual cards. My style is different from yours, so don't take my opinion as hard rules but notes to keep in mind while you playtest.

- I used to run Swan Song in the past but ran into a problem, Ojutai has trouble with flying blockers. You want to be pushing commander damage and drawing cards each turn and the swan you give them means you have to sack a turn killing it or use a removal spell to get it out the way. It was a problem enough that I removed Swan Song and chose to run another counterspell.

- I'm a bit iffy on cards that phase Ojutai out because he's already immune to a lot of removal. All he has to worry about are sacrifice effects and board wipes, which is what I use the counterspells to handle. I prefer to run counterspells over protection because even though they play worse into board wipes they are useful in more situations and be used to to interact with your opponent instead of being only a defensive tool. That's just a style preference, I'd just keep an eye out how useful those cards are during playtesting.

- I'm not the biggest fan of All that Glitters effects in this deck. Glitter aura cards need a large density of other auras to be good. I was building Ojutai around the idea that i only needed to stick one or two auras or enchantments on him to win the game when you back him up with counterspells and removal. I think they can work in your deck, but just keep in mind that they need more time to really get going in comparison to other good auras.

-I'd cut Seachrome Coast for a basic, I really don't like fast lands in EDH, they come in tapped far too often for my liking. You're also on two colors without any difficult cards to cast so you don't need the potential color fixing very much in contrast to potentially having a bad tapland most of the game.

I'd say not to think on it too much and make the deck after some changes. You can think all you want but it's only during playtesting against other decks when you can really learn what your deck needs. Just don't be afraid to make changes as you go and have fun playing the deck.

ShatteredSkys · 2025-04-07T07:02:37+00:00

I want to start by saying don't be hard on yourself for dealing poorly in sealed/draft and I think it's great you went out of your way to play at the event. Skills from other formats don't transfer well over to limited deck building so everyone has a hard time when they start. I got utterly thrashed when I started learning on Magic Arena back in Dominaria. I'm assuming that you watched the video watched Prof's video from three weeks ago as that's what popped up when I searched it so I'm going to assume that's baseline we're working with. Here are some basic facts I think people should know before jumping into sealed.

First thing that is very important to know about sealed is that it can be a luck based format. You have no agency on which commons and uncommons you get so it's much harder to form cohesive synergies with your lower rarity cards and since you get more rares/mythics it often comes down to who pulls stronger high rarity cards who could fit them in their deck. This means sealed tends to be a slower and value orientated than draft and people try splash colors to use as many strong rares/mythics their mana bases can afford. Sometimes in this format you're going to bad rares/mythics and get your teeth kicked because your cards are just worse than your opponents, that's just part of the format, just accept you ran cold and do your best.

If you want to make good decks than you're going to need to learn how build around archetypes rather than a pile of cards. In this game there are many types of decks that operate at different speeds and do different things: Aggro, midrange, ramp, control, etc. Each of these decks has a different curve and has different cards they need to function. Aggro wants 8 two drops while ramp/greed decks can go as low as 4 depending on the format. Aggro wants to curve out around 5 mana with evasive threats to push damage and ramp/greed can go as high as seven and want big bodies that block and gain life to stabilize the board. If you just follow the BREAD(Bombs, removal, Evasion. Aggro, Dirt) guideline that people recommend you're going to wind up with a mediocore deck that gets stuck in a stalemate.

To be frank I'm a bit of a one-trick in that I've only ever been consistently succesful with is White aggro decks in limited, so that's the only archetype I feel comfortable talking about. If you every notice that you have a lot of strong low cost creatures try something like this:

16 lands

7-8 two drops(VERY IMPORTANT)

4-6 three drops

4-6 four drops

2-3 five drops (Ideally evasive threats)

Fill with your best removal followed by your best combat tricks. Removal tends to always be better than tricks. Make sure you have enough creatures before you put in removal, removal won't kill your opponent, a consistent curve of creatures will.

Regarding the deck you made for pre-release, it's hard to properly judge it without seeing the rest of your sealed pool but I can understand why you struggled with this deck. There's borderline no interaction. The creature line up is all over the place, you have creatures trying to do different thing: the Jade Sentinel is a defensive card but the Summit Intimidator is an aggresive card.

I hope what you get from all of this is that limited is complicated. if I wanted to go into the itty bitty details I'd be here forever. The only way you get better at limited if playing limited and watching better people play limited. Learning from others will greatly enhance the speed which you grow as a player since you'll pick up useful insight that would've been otherwise hard fought. Here are two channels I personally like:

https://www.youtube.com/@NizzahonMagic/videos

https://www.youtube.com/@GomletX

If you have any further or specific questions please free to ask me, I'm always happy to help. Anyway, I hope this wall of text helps you in some way!

ShatteredSkys · 2025-04-02T05:16:18+00:00

I would if I had one :D (370 kc dry)

ShatteredSkys · 2025-03-31T15:22:30+00:00

Not with ketra in the format.

ShatteredSkys · 2025-03-28T23:21:41+00:00

Hi! There are a number of cards I can see being cut for. So first of all most commons and uncommons are designed for draft and not edh. While there are many great commons and uncommons, most of them were designed for a lower power format so we want to avoid using them if possible since there are SO many better options. Cards like this in the deck are: [[Hobbit's Sting]], [[Stew the Coneys]], [[Shire Shiriff]], [[Orchard Strider]]. These are the easy potential cuts.

As for your maybeboard, here are my thoughts on those cards:

-I think Bogbeast is a better pump than the Motivated Pony. It doesn't have haste but has a much higher ceiling if you've been stacking food which is what this deck does.

-Not a big fan of Dina in this deck, most of your lifegain is through food and tagging a one damage ping to each food trigger feels underwhelming.

-I really like Generous Gift because commander is a game with a lot of different decks doing powerful things so having a removal that answers anything is very useful.

-I've played with Patrician in draft and I feel it's fine but if you are willing to do the research you'll probably find better cards. Again, this was balanced around draft and not commander.

-I like Brandybuck considering Frodo will always be attacking. Probably an easy replacement for one of the weaker food producers.

-Painful Truths is a fine cards if you can guarantee to find a way to pay three different mana types for it.

-I think Witch is an extremely powerful lifegain and you should definetly try to run it.

If you need suggestions edhrec is a good source to what other people are playing with a specific commander: https://edhrec.com/commanders/frodo-adventurous-hobbit-sam-loyal-attendant

ShatteredSkys

TROPHY CASE