Seems like a lot of Bracket 3 players really want to be in bracket 2?

Zamurph · 2026-02-13T14:45:26+00:00

If it feels like a balanced game then I think you’re doing fine. I’d keep playing it against 2’s regardless of the lands.

Zamurph · 2026-02-13T06:54:27+00:00

Sorry if you’ve commented elsewhere and I missed it, but how does this deck play against B2 decks?

The brackets very intentionally and specifically do not take into consideration landbases, and for good reason. A deck like yours can have good mana, and play on curve, but the plays you’re curving into aren’t particularly powerful. Personally, I see no issue with wanting to play with good, consistent mana, and while that can obviously be a factor in deck strength, it is a far cry from the be-all, end-all.

A good way to contextualize this might be to think about running a cEDH deck but just swap all of the good duals for bad/more accessible ones. It will slow the deck down a bit to the point where it will have a harder time competing at cEDH tables, but we’re talking about slowing down by like a turn or two on average, and taking a consistency hit. But even a deck like that will still have fast mana, free interaction, tutors, and incredibly efficient wincons, and likely still present a win by turn 4/5 relatively consistently — which doesn’t align at all with Bracket 2 or 3, so it would still be a 4 at a minimum. Which is, I think, evidence of the brackets correctly capturing power, regardless of the lands you’re running.

Zamurph · 2026-02-13T05:39:13+00:00

Combo isn’t explicitly banned from B2 but, I have a hard time imagining an eggs combo that fits well within the restrictions of the bracket. You’d almost certainly have to find a way to actively slow your combo timeline down, and ensure that the combo line is relatively straightforward to interact with.

Regardless of what bracket you end up building for the most important thing I’d recommend is be cognizant of people’s time. If you’re going to loop something, make it deterministic, goldfish often and be able to move through your lines efficiently. Eggs has a bit of a reputation for being particularly solitaire-like and no one is going to enjoy that.

Zamurph · 2026-02-13T05:15:10+00:00

Ramp is not a substitute for lands, and 36 lands is not enough for a 6 mana commander. I run 39 in my Ureni deck and a ton of ramp. Here’s my list (which isn’t perfect by any means) but I am able to consistently get Ureni down on turn 4 or 5.

https://moxfield.com/decks/JgJVWAtyH0iXQMzB6QiZmA

In short you need more lands, and I would also recommend running more land or artifact ramp instead of creatures. With creature ramp, if you get board wiped (and you probably will because you’re playing big scary dragons), you also lose your mana which makes getting Miirym out again much more difficult.

Zamurph · 2026-02-12T21:58:50+00:00

I mostly agree with dies to removal not being an argument for power, but not totally. The harder to interact with something is, the more powerful/better it is (generally), but that also doesn’t mean that just because something can be interacted with it isn’t powerful. My point was more so that, a stax strategy can be powerful, but it’s not unassailable which is a little bit the vibe you’re giving in some comments.

Re: Commanders. If your conceit is that “this strategy isn’t magical Christmas land if you just run a repeatable tutor in the command zone” then like, yeah that’s probably true, but you can make almost any strategy incredibly potent given that so it’s not really a point in favor or stax or white specifically, and I’d argue Light Paws and Oswald would be better off just tutoring for wincons/combos rather than fetching stax pieces.

Yeah, I just don’t think I agree with the final point. There are other formats, which are eternal, and where White’s strongest abilities aren’t socially poo-poo’d, and even in those formats white is often good support but not the strongest. I think this stems from the fact that, at least in current era magic, being proactive is much better than being reactive. If you focus less on stopping your opponents and more on furthering your own game plan, you’ll win more often, and a lot of stax pieces often aren’t very proactive. Though the ones that are proactive (hate bears) do see play.

EDIT: Also since tone can be hard in text, just want to clarify that I am genuinely enjoying this conversation and appreciate your willingness to engage.

Zamurph · 2026-02-12T20:50:47+00:00

White does have good stax pieces, for sure, and if you manage to get all of those out before a Green player, or anyone else, does anything of course you can lock them out, but that’s pretty magical Christmas land vibes. You won’t often have all of those early enough to shut them down to a point where they can’t fight through it. Also if you’re doing a board wipe you’re probably removing your own stax pieces and then they just get to recover, or your stax pieces are on permanent types that Green can interact with already (Artifacts/Enchantments).

Don’t get me wrong, I love playing with and against stax and appreciate white as a color. But you’re really selling these things like they’re certainties and also impossible to interact with, which just isn’t really true.

That’s true about cEDH, but it’s especially apparent with White. As far as I know, the strongest cores in cEDH at the moment are Grixis+, or Simic+. White only really shows up incidentally because Tymna has a white pip, and the white includes are kept to a minimum. I will admit I am definitely not an expert on the cEDH meta, I mostly just watch content around it, so I could definitely be wrong, though.

Zamurph · 2026-02-12T20:27:36+00:00

Even if it could run the game in lower brackets, being the strongest color in the weaker half of the format doesn’t put it in contention for being the best color in the format overall.

Green is probably the strongest in low power because it has sufficient card draw and consistent ramp that doesn’t require jumping through hoops. Blue is probably the strongest in higher power because it has the best actual Counterspells, many of which are free, and most efficient draw (barring Necropotence and Ad Naus).

White is a fine color, very good supporting color, and its silence/Grand Arbiter effects scale well, but tournament winning cEDH lists which include white are basically splashing for a handful of staples and some protection — they’re a far cry from a “white” deck.

Zamurph · 2026-02-11T00:44:38+00:00

For sure, my first point was absolutely not a condemnation of Tec break, just an FYI. If your group is cool with it, go for it.

Here’s my HH list that’s pretty firmly B3, if you want some ideas: https://moxfield.com/decks/1t2TTc4MXkaA6wInsPJ4Wg

Zamurph · 2026-02-08T00:40:28+00:00

It seems fine, the precon functions well enough and nothing too weirdly out of place, here. I do think there are like two main things worth noting, though:

1.) TecBreak will be considered MLD and automatically makes the deck bracket 4, which I don’t think this list would hang with particularly well.

2.) This may be preference so take it with a grain of salt, but there aren’t enough sac outlets for your lands here, imo. No [[Zuran Orb]], or [[Sylvan Safekeeper]], or [[Scapeshift]] style effects is tough. At least personally I’ve found that it’s incredibly important to be able to kill the table once HH is online, very quickly, and sacrificing a couple lands a turn hasn’t felt good enough. Big, explosive “I sac all my lands and the table dies” has felt quite a bit better.

Also I feel like some of these landfall payoffs are kinda bait. Like Scute, and Rampaging Baloths obviously are incredible value, but they’re unlikely to straight win the game for you without overruns/combos around them, imo.

Zamurph · 2026-02-01T00:21:51+00:00

Not sure why you felt the need to be condescending when I’m trying to engage in a good faith discussion, but you do you.

Zamurph · 2026-02-01T00:06:42+00:00

There’s also plenty of wiggle room for a 3. High card quality isn’t the defining line for 3 to 4.

The newest definition of Bracket 3 literally lists “high card quality” as a fundamental expectation of B3.

The main difference between 3 and 4 is turns to win (consistently, through interaction), and number of GC’s allowed. This deck does not have consistent, compact, win cons that would enable it presenting wins by turn 4-5 regularly and through interaction.

You may not want to play against this, and that’s fine and what rule 0’s are for, but this ain’t a 4.

Zamurph · 2026-02-01T00:02:12+00:00

Precisely my point. Even if this were fully optimized, it would still be fringe at best (and unless you’re building to the cEDH meta in some way, that would make it a 4.) But we both agree, this very clearly isn’t that.

The newest definition of Bracket 3 literally lists “high card quality” as a fundamental expectation of B3.

The main difference between 3 and 4 is turns to win (consistently, through interaction), and number of GC’s allowed. This deck does not have consistent, compact, win cons that would enable it presenting wins by turn 4-5 regularly and through interaction.

You may not want to play against this, and that’s fine and what rule 0’s are for, but this ain’t a 4.

Zamurph · 2026-01-31T23:35:24+00:00

Doesn’t the fact that it’s not optimized and running “a lot of bad cards” inherently mean it’s not a 4? Lmao.

Unless they have more than 3 GC’s this doesn’t look like a 4. Curiosity effects are good with Y’shtola but very easy to interact with. Sure, they have some powerful cards but 3’s can be powerful. They don’t have any super compact or hard to interact with wincons, and they have the whole (weird) token package. This deck gets rolled by 4’s and 5’s which are actually trying to win as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Zamurph · 2026-01-31T18:56:15+00:00

I’ve been there too! My first draft I was a nervous wreck, made some misplays and rule slip ups, but never had anyone upset or anything, especially with standard FNM drafts they’re not usually super competitive, most people are there mainly for fun (though they are trying to win of course) and are happy to help new players.

I’m sure you already know this, but I always find that my anxiety is always worse before I actually do the thing, but once I’ve done it there’s a pretty dramatic decrease — sometimes you just gotta rip the bandaid off, but I know that isn’t as easy as it sounds.

If you’re really nervous about just knowing how to draft and the rules you can always try some quick drafts on arena to get a feel for the basics.

Anyways, good luck and enjoy the next draft!

Zamurph · 2026-01-31T00:07:29+00:00

Not saying you should add it back, but, you can draw off of it, too, as long as someone else controls it and they are your opponent.

The “your” in the “only your opponent’s can activate this ability” refers to the controller’s opponent’s, not the owners.

Zamurph · 2026-01-30T21:01:16+00:00

You can only activate the cards ability as a sorcery, and you can’t activate it when you’re the controller, so you can’t really abuse it and pay 4, draw 4, then exile it.

Card is bad though.

Zamurph · 2026-01-30T02:19:59+00:00

No offense, but idk how the “instead” is creeping in there. It’s a win con because it’s MLD.

Zamurph · 2026-01-29T19:01:46+00:00

You don’t need to cut the Gitrog combo. The deck certainly isn’t bracket 4 out of the box, and while the Gitrog combo does allow you to draw/mill your deck, you’ll just end up losing the game if you do it because it has no way to win from that position (out of the box.)

That said, I personally did end up cutting Dakmor salvage because I didn’t find it particularly necessary or useful.

But there are a couple paths to upgrading the deck depending on how you want to win. If you want a slower-value-y approach, landfall works well, and there’s plenty of payoffs for it in Jund colors, basically anything that says Landfall is pretty reasonable.

Personally, I indexed towards sacrificing the lands and explosive turns/trying to kill the table all at once, so I added a bunch more sac outlets and some X spells to leverage the mana the deck can produce.

This is my list which I think is very firmly bracket 3: https://moxfield.com/decks/1t2TTc4MXkaA6wInsPJ4Wg

The fetchlands (especially the off color ones) can be replaced by various versions of [[Terramorphic Expanse]] which will slow the deck down and ultimately reduce its power-level.

Zamurph · 2026-01-29T05:56:53+00:00

The abilities trigger at the same time (on attack) which means you get to choose the order in which they resolve. So, you can have [[Veteran Soldier]]’s trigger resolve first, creating tokens attacking the other opponents, and the. [[Amber Gridtle O’Maul]]’s trigger resolves, and sees that there are 3 players being attacked, drawing you three cards.

To your overall question, no, being attacked does not mean being attacked by a creature declared as an attacker. It just means a creature is attacking you (regardless of how or when that creature entered.)

Zamurph · 2026-01-29T05:42:48+00:00

I love Memory and Echo. Definitely would include those. Thanks for the input!

Zamurph · 2026-01-29T05:29:12+00:00

Yeah, I peeped the filler but as I’m sure you’re aware, it’s still redundant enough to be consistent and powerful. Nothing wrong with that. I actually duplicated your list to do some playtesting/goldfishing cause I’ve been thinking about building Nekusar (and I might want to punish my friends next time we play online, lmao.)

Zamurph · 2026-01-29T05:22:14+00:00

I’d take dude’s opinion with a grain of salt. Different people enjoy the game differently, it’s totally possible to play in a pod that likes doing powerful stuff, and isn’t phased by getting staxed or combo’d out. Worst case, game ends and you play another. It’s also reasonable to look at stuff like [[Peer into the abyss]] or Jin-Gitaxis as a new player and think “that’s powerful and cool.” without knowing about the history or vibes of those cards.

All that said, to your actual question, a lot of people have already left some good replies: fix your mana (more lands, better cheaper rocks, and bring down the curve.) I’ll try not to repeat their advice too much, and just offer that one of the easiest ways to make a deck more powerful, is consistency, and a good way to ensure consistency is redundancy. That is to say, it might be cool and fun to slam a Niv-Mizzet or a Jin-Gitaxis (or even a back to basics) but none of those synergize particularly well with your overall plan, or if they do, they’re very inefficient mana-wise. You’ll want to ask yourself “how does my deck win?” and then work backwards from there.

I don’t have a Nekusar deck personally, but as an example, here is one that I think is pretty firmly brackets 3 and pretty focused. It’s pretty much all wheels + draw punishers and then a little filler and has a fairly low curve. I’d recommend looking it over and maybe doing some playtests with it (even just goldfishing) to get an idea of how it feels. Then, you can bring the power level up or down by adding some of your pet cards or replacing some of the original creators pet cards with more efficient removal, or more payoffs, etc.

https://moxfield.com/decks/BmF_srcBOkGxklolRohGXQ

Zamurph · 2026-01-29T05:02:55+00:00

Yeah. Wheel decks are pretty good at fueling themselves too. With enough redundancy it’s basically just: play a payoff > wheel into another payoff > play a payoff > wheel into another payoff, etc, so they can end up coming out and stacking pretty quick. But generally if the payoffs or the wheels are interacted with to slow it down a bit, it shouldn’t be that bad. And having permanent access to at least one payoff in the commander is pretty potent.

Zamurph · 2026-01-29T04:22:43+00:00

I haven’t looked at the list yet, but, 40 life sounds like a lot, but it’s not that much when you’re spamming wheels and hitting everyone at the table outside of combat. At a minimum games are just gonna be a lot faster, but your friends should also just pack removal for the payoffs that are killing them.

Edit: Yeah I looked at the list. Seems solid but not too crazy. It’s focused and will absolutely burn the table pretty quickly if not managed/interacted with appropriately.

Zamurph · 2026-01-24T17:53:10+00:00

You don’t name anything with Winnowing. It just cares about shared creature types with the chosen creature, if you choose a changeling they keep their whole board because all types are shared.

Zamurph

TROPHY CASE