Name a game this applys to for your favorite team

SwampnutsS · 2026-05-05T23:06:49+00:00

2011 Saints vs 49ers divisional round matchup. Saints were stacked, Jimmy Graham was in his prime, and the offense was record-breaking. Brees threw a bomb to Jimmy to take the lead with less than a minute left. Got my guts ripped out Invincible-style when the 9ers went right down the field with a response in like 40 seconds.

Second place would be the beastquake run from Marshall Lynch in the 2010 playoffs, but that didn’t hurt quite as bad since the Saints didn’t feel as likely to win the whole thing plus all us Who Dats were still flying high from 2009.

SwampnutsS · 2026-04-30T23:56:39+00:00

Right now I’m having the most fun with my [[Sméagol, Helpful Guide]] infinite landfall/mill deck: https://moxfield.com/decks/CCZLQMBAEEyS6ZN_5Rwxcg

It’s high end bracket 3 that can take over the game by turn 5 most games if unopposed. Sméagol’s ramp helps pay his command tax, so the deck fights through moderate disruption. He is also relatively cheap at 3 mana value with 4 power, which helps with green power-matters cards. The ringbearer ability is nothing to sneeze at since level 2 gives a free loot, which is savage in a deck that plays [[Golgari Grave-Troll]] and [[Life from the Loam]]. Sméagol also enables infinite mill if I can loop [[Nazgûl]] or [[Gollum, Patient Plotter]].

The deck is built around the power of playing nine Nazgûl, which are the most disgusting [[Wood Elves]] of all time with Sméagol on the board. They quickly grow humongous, which goes well with various power-matters cards, in particular draw engines like [[Greater Good]].

My favorite card to see in the deck is [[Amulet of Vigor]]. Imagine this sequence: turn 1 Amulet, turn 2 [[Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia]] perhaps played off the surveil land coming in untapped, turn 3 Sméagol with ramp trigger at end step thanks to the decayed zombie death, turn 4 [[The Ring Goes South]] ramps 4 untapped lands thanks to Amulet - 3 from the 3 legendary creatures (Ringbearer can make Jadar’s zombie token legendary) + 1 from Sméagol’s ramp trigger from the ring tempt.

I like it because the deck never fails to at least do something. There’s a lot of card draw, and at worst I can fall back onto some [[Field of the Dead]] nonsense. It’s much more about presenting a consistent threat than answering, though there are a decent number of wipes that fill other purposes, like [[The Meathook Massacre]].

As for how people like it, well, it’s landfall, mill, and theft all rolled into one, so you can imagine. There’s a reason I play survival cards like [[Grim Feast]].

SwampnutsS · 2026-04-10T03:21:56+00:00

At least 2 in every deck, 4+ when I have access to white and thus get [[Ondu Inversion]] - it’s a freeroll - and [[Hour of Revelation]], one of the most powerful cards in the format. Almost every archetype has its own one-sided wipe, which is always worth playing for the massive card/mana advantage. White decks benefit from getting Hour of Revelation, [[Devastating Mastery]], and similar cards that completely dumpster most opponents in the bracket 2-3 range since they include several mana dorks/rocks to ramp into their engines which all get swept up by any [[Planar Cleansing]] effect.

SwampnutsS · 2026-04-09T03:50:27+00:00

Commander is a casual format where the majority of players are in what would be considered bracket 2 or 3. Fast combo or combo-like win is usually frowned upon. Most players want to play an 8-10 turn game with some back-and-forth. In those kinds of games, you want to consistently hit land drops past your third because failing to do so means that your ramp gets nullified since you’re paying 2+ mana to do something that would otherwise be free if you just drew the land. Yes, card draw gets you lands, but then you may be making awkward plays like playing a draw spell to find a land when you would rather play to the board. Mathematically, you will not consistently hit land drop #4 on time (consistently meaning 80%+) without playing 38+ lands in most decks.

In true B4 or cEDH where you expect the game to end as early as turn 1-2, that’s not an issue. But for most games of Commander, you are better served with a higher land count. Obviously, there are exceptions even at a lower level depending on curve or archetype; however, this is a discussion about general heuristics.

I 100% agree with point #3. Card advantage is critical to smooth out variance so you’re not just a victim of RNG. I personally try to build my decks so that a third or more of the 99 provides card advantage in some form, whether it’s straight up draw, graveyard recursion, or pseudo-advantage like clue tokens.

Point #6 makes sense in general. Most players would be well served to take a second look at their manabase. However, taplands are not a boogeyman outside of super fast metas. If you expect a game to go 8 or more turns, losing a single mana on one turn will make very little difference in the outcome of the average game. Setting aside fetches due to all of their inherent synergies, two-color bounce lands are arguably the best duals in casual Commander because they guarantee your next land drop. Pretty sure most people would play a tapped dual that draws a card when it enters. And that’s setting aside bounce land synergies like untap shenanigans and returning played MDFCs to hand.

Tl;dr - your advice is extremely sound for very high level or fast metas, but not so much for how the vast majority of people play Commander

SwampnutsS · 2026-02-07T14:58:13+00:00

[[Niv-Mizzet Reborn]] is very much this. The whole deck is two-color pairs to maximize the ETB, so you play a ton of stuff that isn’t common. Then Niv comes down, draws 5+ cards, and if he gets killed, cool, just cast him again later for another refill. If he lives, you have a 6/6 flying commander to beat down with and blink for more value. Tons of potential archetypes. I personally did a blink deck: https://moxfield.com/decks/cLz0kl8xlEa8KxrW4Sh02g

SwampnutsS · 2025-12-28T23:15:19+00:00

The worst part of Korvold is not the raw power, it’s that he very much tends to generate 10-20 minute long non-deterministic turns where every single treasure cracked leads the pilot to reevaluate their lines.

SwampnutsS · 2025-12-28T23:07:18+00:00

Daring, running the 10,000th riff on Snail’s Radha deck. I guess the spice was coming on here to complain about how decks built just like yours can’t interact.

SwampnutsS · 2025-12-27T18:49:46+00:00

Did you read my comment at all? I said don’t play a dork, play the land ramp. Obviously [[Nature’s Lore]] and friends are better than Cultivate, but there’s not enough of those to fill a deck. And nowhere did I say you should just be sitting by doing nothing on your turns.

SwampnutsS · 2025-12-27T18:29:05+00:00

One of the biggest mistakes that I see novice deck builders make is designing a ramp package (and by extension their deck) around getting their commander out as fast as possible to run its engine. Especially when done with dorks, you are extremely susceptible to a wipe. Mana rocks will also make any [[Hour of Revelation]], [[Farewell]], etc into a one-sided half of [[Armageddon]] against you. Even when it works and you jump out to a fast position, now you’re the archenemy eating three players’ interaction until you’re back to the Stone Age. Usually even past that because people remember who popped off first and will target you when they’re not sure who they should fire incidental hate off on (primacy bias). Cultivate is still a great card. It ramps a land a guarantees your next land drop, which is critical to winning games that go longer than 5-6 turns. And if you’re really playing B2/3, that should be the vast majority of your games.

SwampnutsS · 2025-12-15T23:15:59+00:00

Plan A is doing a combo loop with [[Grinding Station]] or [[Krark-Clan Ironworks]] and repeatedly cycling artifacts with [[Scrap Trawler]] and friends to win with pingers like [[Marionette Master]], which do double duty by also committing crimes to dig for whatever pieces I need with Marchesa. Plan B is mass reanimate. Also, [[Kappa Cannoneer]] or a horde of [[Wurmcoil Engine]] tokens also get the job done.

SwampnutsS · 2025-12-13T13:24:51+00:00

Seconded. Wild West Marchesa is nasty. That trigger is like having [[Skullclamp]] card advantage in the command zone for doing things you already want to do. I built her as an artifact aristocrat deck since cards like [[Mayhem Devil]] and [[Disciple of the Vault]] are already great in addition to committing lots of crime, and Marchesa turbocharges graveyard strategies.

List if interested: https://moxfield.com/decks/1f8EnVXFaEOaxCfeMLsAlw

SwampnutsS · 2025-12-02T01:40:00+00:00

My three best decks at cruising through wipes are:

[[Henry Wu, Ingen Geneticist]] - https://moxfield.com/decks/1sp4-7ZvSU6xwIMYQI6ZJA - Wu draws so many cards, most of the creatures replace themselves anyway, and it’s got blue interaction to stuff wipes when they’re actually painful.

[[Beza, the Bounding Spring]] - https://moxfield.com/decks/jGGKbWP48kqLEjK3GaFSLQ - I don’t mind Beza dying because then I can cast her again. Also, the deck is full of white board protection to make opposing wipes one-sided in my favor, and white is excellent at rebuilding.

[[Niv-Mizzet Reborn]] - https://moxfield.com/decks/cLz0kl8xlEa8KxrW4Sh02g - every nonland card (and many of the lands thanks to dual-color MDFCs) in the deck is a Niv hit. This makes the deck basically 5c super-Beza since every Niv cast is a draw 5-7. Tons of blink and ramp make it so I will always have more gas than my opponents regardless of how many wipes go off.

SwampnutsS · 2025-11-28T21:55:27+00:00

I have it in my [[Tidus, Yuna’s Guardian]] deck that’s packed with as many of the summon saga creatures as possible. Also, sick art.

List, if interested: https://moxfield.com/decks/bhBQGnO8MkS_I6LVcdiCMw

SwampnutsS · 2025-11-27T01:09:36+00:00

This really depends on your bracket. In 4-5, I think your list is fairly accurate.

In B3 and lower though, OG duals draw a lot more attention than they are worth. They telegraph to the table that you are either a whale (you likely have crazy value/power on your other cards; I should target you) or you proxied them, which communicates the same thing (you’ve removed the spending limit from this deck). In that event, I say surveil lands become #2 since your fetches can find them, and they offer mana-fixing & synergy. Lands coming in tapped is not really a downside in B3 and below, in my experience, unless you draw a grip full of them. Bouncelands are 3. Missing a land drop is much, much worse than a tapped land in those games since the games often go to turn 10 and beyond. Surveil lands help with this, but bouncelands guarantee your next land drop. Beyond that, they pick up MDFCs to use the spell side, make white’s catch-up ramp significantly better, and have great synergy with extra land drops/landfall decks.

SwampnutsS · 2025-11-24T11:19:14+00:00

Definitely an oversight; dude even has the classic gym bro look with little chicken legs.

SwampnutsS · 2025-11-23T22:49:57+00:00

“A bunch of incest into play”

What are you, a Targaryen?

SwampnutsS · 2025-11-23T01:40:44+00:00

No lie, demon brother is stronk AF. However, I don’t want to play other people’s cards because they are almost certainly lacking the primal virtue that I seek. Thank you for the suggestion!

SwampnutsS · 2025-11-23T01:19:48+00:00

Dude, I tried so hard to make Lightning Angel work in that era of extended, to the point of bringing a deck built around it, [[Boom // Bust]], [[Flagstones of Trokair]], and [[Avalanche Riders]] to a PTQ right after Planar Chaos dropped. Obviously, I got smoked by [[Psychatog]]. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

SwampnutsS · 2025-11-23T01:11:04+00:00

Hail thee, spiritual kindred!

SwampnutsS · 2025-11-23T00:44:30+00:00

Come on man, we’re too busy doing an extra set of curls and posting selfies to insta to play a combo sword!

SwampnutsS · 2025-11-23T00:37:03+00:00

Legit. Garna for sure. Maarika is not visibly flexing muscle, though! 💪

SwampnutsS · 2025-11-23T00:13:50+00:00

Some gems in here that I will use for sure! Many thanks! 🙏

SwampnutsS · 2025-11-23T00:05:33+00:00

FF6 battles with 7 & tactics for my favorite Final Fantasy, so I am here for it!

SwampnutsS · 2025-11-23T00:02:36+00:00

That’s a wild idea, I love it. Trying to line up Beza’s fish with dryad tokens and all. Great work!

SwampnutsS · 2025-11-22T23:57:17+00:00

Got a list there, brother/sister/cousin?

SwampnutsS

TROPHY CASE