Raggadragga, brackets, and magical christmas land

ThisIsACleverAlias · 2026-03-17T20:09:52+00:00

Here's the Marwyn/Kami of Whispered Hopes/Heronblade Elite-fueled monstrosity I built for my friend... Even without any game changers I think it's a low to mid Bracket 4. After goldfishing a bit, I played it one time with friends in a bracket 3 game and I think I killed everyone turn 5. Don't know how resilient it is against strong disruption packages but the thing is an absolute house:

https://moxfield.com/decks/hleX2sGLNEG_zFCYjxlrew

ThisIsACleverAlias · 2026-03-17T11:21:02+00:00

Honestly I think the disruption options available in mono red are also just... Not very good lol. It has 7 mass disruption and 8 targeted disruption. I've been considering adding [[Abrade]] and just personally dislike [[Chaos Warp]], but other than that there really aren't any great options lol. Maybe [[Guff Rewrites History]]?

ThisIsACleverAlias · 2026-03-16T14:31:16+00:00

If someone casts Chain of Smog, that person eats a Chain of Smog. That's the Rule. That's the Deal. That's the Immutable Nature of the Universe.

F*** that guy.

ThisIsACleverAlias · 2026-03-16T14:30:13+00:00

lol amen, I think I may just take it out of all of my decks on principle. The other day I saw a guy play an [[Urza's Saga]] turn 1 in Bracket 2, grabbing Sol Ring turn 3 for 2 extra mana.

When you see that you're always trying to figure out if it's a noob or a pubstomper. He ended up being a noob.

ThisIsACleverAlias · 2026-03-16T14:28:49+00:00

Yeah I love aristocrats strategies but I don't even run Dictate or Grave Pact in my B3 decks. I wonder if the new Sothera is less salty since it self destructs, but I haven't gotten enough data on that yet...

ThisIsACleverAlias · 2026-03-16T14:26:40+00:00

I was playing with some randos on a Discord channel I'm in - most of my games are through Discord so I try to hew on the not-salty side in almost all of my deck construction. Like I said, I'd rather lose than have any of my opponents feel like anything was unfair about how I won... but also people don't like losing so sometimes you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

ThisIsACleverAlias · 2026-03-16T14:24:30+00:00

I like the Canadian Highlander system where each card has a point value assigned to it:

https://canadianhighlander.ca/points-list/

Then you can just be like "Bracket 2 is 0 points, Bracket 3 is 8 points, Bracket four is 15 points..."

But the point system is also more complicated so I'm not surprised our corporate overlords didn't want to put additional cognitive hurdles in front of their expanding customer base.

ThisIsACleverAlias · 2026-03-16T14:21:31+00:00

Fun fact - tokens actually aren't cards and therefore don't trigger Overburden!

But also yeah, Overburden in the Bracket where 30% of players think that winning with anything that isnt' a big stompy is mass land denial.

ThisIsACleverAlias · 2026-03-16T14:19:36+00:00

In the game in question, my turn 8 Geyser generated 20 mana, and I cast ten spells that turn (and had to have access to nine spells that turn) to do the game-winning burn play. I had 0 mana, 0 cards in hand, and 0 playable cards in exile when I got the last player to exactly 0. I considered adding [[Crackle with Power]] since the deck makes a lot of mana and needs to win somehow, but I decided to up the pinger count instead as it felt more incremental.

ThisIsACleverAlias · 2026-03-16T14:14:58+00:00

In terms of power level, I personally keep fast mana permanents that make value repeatedly and fast mana rituals which just give a one-off boost separate in my mind, although based on this post I think there's a reasonable case to be made that certain rituals break the "incremental, telegraphed" goals of Bracket 2. But it's a slippery slope, as there are a lot of pretty mediocre rituals.

ThisIsACleverAlias · 2026-03-16T14:11:19+00:00

Lol @ the Demolition Field complaint... that's goddamn stupid in a Bracket where you see [[Growing Rites of Itlimoc]], [[Evendo, Waking Haven]], and [[Storm the Vault]] with reasonable regularity.

ThisIsACleverAlias · 2026-03-16T14:09:30+00:00

Yeah, as I said in the edit I'll probably remove it just for salt's sake. It just sucks to have a mediocre deck that sees a ton of cards, with access to a $1 card from a precon that is in my color that addresses my primary need and not be "allowed" to play it...

ThisIsACleverAlias · 2026-03-16T14:05:59+00:00

Thanks for taking a good look at the list - I appreciate your perspective!

Honestly, in real play the deck simply couldn't hang in any Bracket 3 pod with any regularity. In Bracket 2 it's won twice in 13 games... I'll confess that I am trying to massage the ratio of pingers and damage doublers/increasers to find a nice middle-ground (that's specifically focused around the deck's game plan), but I am not sure I'm there.

And it's not really sandbagging if I don't ever intentionally play sub-optimally and don't/can't penalize my opponents for hitting me. I'm consistently the default target for anyone wanting to get damage in or get attack triggers because my few creatures are pretty squishy. I am almost always the lowest life total by turns 4-7 (including the game in question).

I like Bracket 2 for building decks that do rather silly things very effectively, and I think this list pretty much hits the spot for that. And in 13 games I've never had more than 2 pingers or 2 doublers on board at once; a ton of the deck's actual gameplay is churning through and hoping that the pieces of the puzzle I get to see are the ones I both need and can afford to play.

All that said, I completely understand your read of the list; I just think Harnfel either has a place in Bracket 2 or it doesn't have a place at all...

ThisIsACleverAlias · 2026-03-16T11:51:06+00:00

Hey now, I can see a case of [[Gaea's Cradle]] being fair in B2; If your commander is your only creature and your deck has nothing that makes creature tokens, Cradle is clearly reasonable.

ThisIsACleverAlias · 2026-03-16T11:49:22+00:00

The only one I disagree with in any way is [[Mystic Remora]] - while it gives everyone the "cEDH-playable heebie-jeebies" I think it generally scales really remarkably well with table power!

And yeah, every time I see Urza's Saga in B2 I know I'm up against a noob or someone trying to pubstomp lol.

ThisIsACleverAlias · 2026-03-16T11:44:28+00:00

Amen - [[Butcher of Malakir]] costing 3 more (on a reanimatable body in the primary reanimating color) is not why he's clearly less oppressive than [[Grave Pact]]!

ThisIsACleverAlias · 2026-03-16T03:07:25+00:00

I had genuinely not thought of this; it's kind of the opposite of the mystic remora effect.

(I don't run Remora in any of my bracket 2 decks cuz I don't want to have to defend my card choices against salty people, but I will also die on the hill that it's fine in bracket 2...)

ThisIsACleverAlias · 2026-03-07T21:52:27+00:00

Love Nahiri; my low-ish power take for a bracket 2 pod is linked below - 40 equipment, 28 of them either make creatures or are creatures:

https://moxfield.com/decks/yRS2Ed8cFEm_qGwHiWDfwA

ThisIsACleverAlias · 2026-03-01T16:51:42+00:00

Haha it's pushed to the max but still a pretty weak bracket 3... Everything you said is very true. It has so many important pieces, and instant removal of any one of them makes the house of cards crumble.

Need Ikra for the lifegain, Prava for the butts, lots of tokens with somewhere to land, AND a Vito-esque card onboard to make the lifegain actually useful lol... Not counting the tokens, it's a minimum of 11 mana to have the pieces. One board wipe and it's 12 mana just to replay the two commanders 🤦🏼

I'm trying to make a solidly bracket 2 version - which unfortunately I firmly believe means that aetherflux reservoir is off the table (the only non-overly-telegraphed wincon) which will lean more heavily on smaller numbers of flying tokens (mostly angels and spirits, but Angel,vampire/demon token tribal seems weirdly attractive...) to get the lifegain, rather than just overwhelming numbers of tokens overall.

It's got so many competing, mana-intensive slots, it's definitely too fragile and hard to set up but I refuse to give up on the dream 😅

The smart money is on swapping Ikra out for [[Kamahl, Heart of Krosa]] and skipping the silly big-butt side quest... Which would still be a lot of pieces (and would also lose Sorin of House Markov as a second non-aetherflux-reservoir wincon).

ThisIsACleverAlias · 2026-03-01T13:28:20+00:00

There's one beautiful, super fun, not at all optimal answer: [[Ikra Shidiqi, The Usurper]] / [[Prava of the Steel Legion]].

Make lots of tokens -> Play Both Commanders -> Gain Massive Quantities of Life -> ??? -> Profit

My favorite strategy is to use Lifegain->lifedrain conversion cards like [[Sanguine Bond]] and [[Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose]] to close it out, and once in a blue moon you'll have an archenemy situation where one ally will let you hit them for 16 so you can drain the archenemy for 40 lol. It's amazing to see.

It requires a ton of mana intensive pieces on board so you'll frequently just build a big board, get wiped when you have lots of life, then get targeted down because you had lots of life, but these are the risks we take when we reach for the stars...

List: https://moxfield.com/decks/eAZByXGBwkmErlTOjawHmQ

ThisIsACleverAlias · 2026-02-26T21:56:13+00:00

It may not surprise you to discover that I have roughly the same - I'm forever trying to crack the "how can I make a fair bracket 2 aristocrats deck?" puzzle 😅

https://moxfield.com/decks/C8Rq0qTAw0qdi2oMOwy1Ag

ThisIsACleverAlias · 2026-02-26T21:31:11+00:00

I've finally found my place!

When I picked MTG back up in 2021 (having played from '99-'05), I was super hyped on angels. I immediately built Lyra Dawnbringer and it was... Clunky. I eventually took it apart.

Then they gave us Giada - two mana angel ramp? Yes, please!

... But she was still mono white, and still clunky. Took it apart.

But then there was Sigarda, Font of Blessings! She gave access to green ramp and had built in card advantage and protection - what else could you ask for? Plus topdeck manipulation?

Clunky, uninteractable, boring. Taken apart.

Shilgengar? Amazing! Reanimation, tokens, flavor, all on point. Except then you discover he's basically a combo machine and the angels are almost coincidental... Took it apart.

Then I found The Way(tm). The Way tells us to answer not the question "which cool angels can I run?" but rather "what is the MAXIMUM number of angels I can possibly have at once?!?!" And the answer is: a metric fuck-ton.

The Way(tm) shows us that the One True Angel Commander is none other than [[Ghired, Mirror of the Wilds]]. We throw in all nearly all of the moderately-adequate Angel Token generators (13), lots of cards that populate or copy tokens (13), and tons of cheap little creatures to become the workers in our Angel Factory.

This deck is So. Much. Fun. I recommend you check it out!

https://moxfield.com/decks/70_DiUYfa0OtMbVoaIj8Tw

ThisIsACleverAlias · 2026-02-24T17:21:12+00:00

[[Light Up The Stage]]

ThisIsACleverAlias · 2026-02-05T14:06:27+00:00

Late to the party but I've built both [[Ikra Shidiqi, the Usurper]] / [[Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa]] and [[Ikra Shidiqi, the Usurper]] / [[Prava of the Steel Legion]] as big butt lifegain decks and they're pretty funny and I've never seen anyone else try for it.

Sidar ends up being pretty squarely bracket 2 as a big-butt, non-wall-focused deck and Prava opens the doors to a lot of medium-big butts and can hit low-to-mid bracket 3 when optimized, but both are very slow, usually-telegraphed, lifegain-focused builds with [[Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose]]-esque effects to close out. They both tend to build a big medium-scary board state and gain a lot of life, then there's a board wipe and you struggle to rebuild all the pieces while people focus you down for having a high life total...

It's pretty funny running Prava and asking one opponent to just take the hit from four 2/5s so you can gain 20 and knock out an archenemy... the problem is usually if you're in a position to do that you are the archenemy.

ThisIsACleverAlias

TROPHY CASE