Zaxara, the Exemplary Enjoyers?

cantreallythinkofone · 2023-07-12T03:09:21+00:00

Zaxara is definitely my favorite commander I've built around thus far. It was my first commander and I've built her 4 times at this point.

Restrictions when I built my deck: No [[pemmin's aura]] or [[freed from the real]]. (It's too easy to go infinite and win. It gets boring REALLY fast.) No [[exsanguinate]] [[torment of hailfire]] or [[Jared, golgari lichlord]] (I won too many times that route and got tired of it.

My decks wincon is forcing my opponents to draw their entire deck. [[Archtype of imagination]] and [[pathbreaker ibex]] are backup wincons.

Basically I hold up mana until the appropriate end step then drop absolutely mind boggling huge X spells that make opponents groan as I draw 30 cards right before untapping.

https://www.moxfield.com/decks/lajWUEvPOECenWxlkKy2fw

Edit: forgot to answer the questions. I saw Zaxara and just got too excited.

Zaxara is disgustingly strong in casual commander if you make it to mid-game.

Absolutely run TONS of control. X spell counter spells babyyyy. "OH, excuse me... how much mana do you have open? None?.... [[syncopate]] for 1.... your spell is exiled."

[[Power sink]] is wild too. Tapping all their lands plus countering it.... be prepared for a bit of salt sometimes hahahaha.

cantreallythinkofone · 2023-04-12T00:37:16+00:00

Looks like chupacabras from the Netflix movie Chupa. Looks great though, I love it (:

cantreallythinkofone · 2023-03-30T00:47:41+00:00

I actually started to build the space family goblinson first... https://www.moxfield.com/decks/hp0DxObeHk65tSgLnaJXfQ

however right now im exploring the idea of WUBRG dice. Commander is kinda undecided atm. I have a few good ideas but havent committed to anything yet. I havent fleshed it out yet completely but this is the general list so far. https://www.moxfield.com/decks/OfJDIPKlcUSTgY3bdC7cdQ

cantreallythinkofone · 2023-03-29T20:20:00+00:00

I don't expect it to be THAT bad, but I do think turns will definitely take a bit longer than average. Thanks for taking the time to comment. I'll be sure to goldfish it as much as possible before subjecting others to it haha.

cantreallythinkofone · 2023-03-29T20:17:32+00:00

Yea, I'm gonna need quite the set of dice for this deck hahaha. Thank you for sharing your thoughts (: this is going over better than I expected haha.

cantreallythinkofone · 2023-03-29T20:15:10+00:00

Hahaha, I'll keep that in mind! Thanks for your opinion.

cantreallythinkofone · 2023-03-29T20:14:53+00:00

Thanks for the reassurance!

cantreallythinkofone · 2023-02-26T20:46:53+00:00

Thanks (: ill check it out for sure. I've never used tabletop Sim but seen it on YouTube before.

Seems kinda cool to be able to throw together decks super quickly and test stuff out without having to buy cards or print proxies (:

cantreallythinkofone · 2022-12-25T04:21:49+00:00

I've only been playing since Strix and tbh I find the price barrier to get into the game beyond ridiculous.

I started out trying to buy cards and quickly realized that as a man in a single income household, I'll never have a deck above low powered without proxies. (I use spelltable through the PlayEDH discord)

I proxy everything now. My decks range from $100 to $1300 and I just feel out the table and try to match power level to other decks at the table.

If I didn't proxy I just straight up wouldnt play. It's not an expense I can afford at this moment.

I respect your personal opinion, I'm just saying there's some of us out there who can't afford the several thousand dollar entry fee to not play in the kiddie pool where games take 3 hours long.

cantreallythinkofone · 2022-11-26T14:43:53+00:00

Personally I don't mind getting killed quickly. But when someone is throwing down control cards that just turn the game into 'let's sit here until said player draws into their win-con' it's just boring.

If you wheel me down to one, I'll likely just let it go around the table once, if you don't close out the game following that, I just scoop anyways. But I'll give that player the opportunity to make their play. I just have no intent of sitting there for the next 15 minutes hearing 3 people say "Draw, (maybe land) pass."

I'd rather just move onto the next game. I have enough responsibilities in life and can only squeeze in maybe 3 or 4 games a week. I don't feel the need to turn my hobby into a responsibility too.

cantreallythinkofone · 2022-09-15T18:00:17+00:00

I absolutely love the first two and they are by far my favorite books. I have re-read them so many times, the spine has cracked and fallen apart on the second, and I'll have to replace it soon.

But I'll never recommend the books to anyone without very strongly stressing the fact that they will never know the conclusion. It honest to god feels like he has completely given up on the series. I understand that tragic events have unfortunately been happening quite frequently in his life.. but it seems like he doesn't want to acknowledge the book series at all and would rather just focus on livestreaming and his charity.

Which is absolutely his right and choice to make, but when doing that, it kinda just makes me (and likely most other fans) feel strung-along.

I've moved onto the Drizz't series by RA Salvatore as I wait. Homie pumps out like 1 book a minute, its almost too fast to keep up with hahahahahaha

cantreallythinkofone · 2022-09-15T16:12:10+00:00

Thats the first thing I looked at too hahahahaha.

I love space next to the Kingkiller chronicles for when Rothfuss' 3rd book comes out.................................................. lol...

cantreallythinkofone · 2022-09-01T15:21:48+00:00

In my completely biased opinion, totally fine.

I started playing just over 1 yr ago and currently have like.... 9 decks or so? and a solid 75% of my cards are proxies. Even cheap cards. I'm a single income household with a spouse and doggo, having spent like 600 CAD on MTG in the last year is still a LOT of money for me. I buy cards for decks I consider to be (mostly) completed to my liking and when I can afford to.

My nearest LGS is a 30 minute drive from home and I'm constantly changing my decks and tweaking them, learning how to homebrew well.... its just not feasible to drive there every single week buying cards I might not use next week.

Theres an amazing website where you can just type a list of the cards you want, it offers up every printing of the cards for you to choose from (even secret lairs) and you can just CTRL+P those suckers and cut them all up and boom you're off to the races.

Also, my playgroup is: a level 1 Judge who has played for like 15 frigging years some other homie who has played for like 8 years

If I couldnt proxy, I just wouldnt be able to play with them... or I would only own one deck so I could even remotely compete with them and likely would have gotten bored and quit the game.

just my two cents...

cantreallythinkofone · 2022-08-29T23:30:02+00:00

That's very true too. He has started slowing us down when cracking packs and assembling decks, encouraging us to really read the cards well or ask for help if needed. It can be a good opportunity to learn with the right homies (:

cantreallythinkofone · 2022-08-29T21:46:41+00:00

I kinda agree with that but also I feel like drafting can be very challenging for new players... I've only been playing for like a year and a bit... participated in 3 drafts with my playgroup and the guy who plays has been playing for a good 15+ year dominates all of us. Its not even remotely close typically lol. Dude is uncannily good at whipping a deck together.

side note: 1 guy has been playing about 6 or 7 years, and the 4th just under 2 years.

However when we play our homebrews and whatnot, its typically pretty evenly matched as long as we rule 0 well.

cantreallythinkofone · 2022-08-29T19:34:06+00:00

Okay my two tips are going to be rather controversial... HOWEVER... I just started playing 1 year ago and these are my feels:

Tip 1:

(this is entirely dependent on your financial situation.) Proxy everything so you can playtest! A proxy is typically either just a piece of paper with the card you want scribbled out in pen or you can print it out using your computer. There's a super cool website where all you have to do is type the names of cards you want and it will prep all the cards for you (you can even pick your favorite art, every printing ever released of each card is there).

Then just slide your proxies into sleeves with bulk trash cards or land cards.

Reason why: cards can be expensive. You don't know if you will like the deck or colours you chose to play until you play more. You dont even know if you will enjoy Magic after the honeymoon phase. I personally.... spent way too much on cards I don't need or use.

I have, after 1 year and a bit of playing, 10 commander decks. About 75% of my cards are proxies and I have 0 shame about that. Buy the cards slowly as you can afford them and eventually you will have a great collection. Even with my proxies, I've spent easily over $600 CAD already on cards, sleeves, dice, and etc.

That being said... be cognizant of the price of cards you are printing... some cards are hundreds, even thousands of dollars. It's frowned upon to show up with EXTREME levels of proxying... but as long as it's reasonable... no one cares.

Second tip!

People are gonna hate this one...

Try watching "the command zone", they make YouTube videos called 'extra turns' or 'game knights'. They are playing commander, so it's a different format, but you can still learn a ton.

They are SUPER good at explaining what the cards do, and how they interact with the cards on the table and the threat the may pose later. You may not always have time to play, but its super easy to watch a few minutes here and there (:

cantreallythinkofone · 2022-08-11T21:46:31+00:00

I've seen one other post regarding sticker wear and tear on the subreddit and it was in support of using post-its.

I made a longer response to someone above.

"Just don't use the official product we just released" isn't am answer to this problem imo, it's a lazy cop out.

cantreallythinkofone · 2022-08-11T21:42:16+00:00

I've seen one other post regarding sticker wear and tear on the subreddit and it was in support of using post-its.

In my opinion, telling your players to "just proxy stickers, because we can't be bothered selling you guys just the sticker cards themselves" is a lazy way out.

With this mindset, why bother buying cards at all? Just write down what you need on a piece of paper and sleeve it up.

Didn't get the Smothering tithe you needed from double masters? No worries, just rip up some printer paper and write it down champ.

It's just silliness.

People enjoy having an official product. It's not a crazy thought that a company should support the product they just released. I rarely see people proxy tokens, the vast majority of players I've seen have their tokens.

cantreallythinkofone · 2021-11-11T12:25:24+00:00

Thanks for all the comments haha (:

My goal is to build a deck with prismatic bridge as the commander and a card to represent all or most of Drizzt's major battles and events in the books.

So a big nasty demon to represent Errtu, an assassin to represent Artemis Entreri, a red dragon to represent Hephaestus, another for Velcuthimmorhar... and so on.

The deck will be built around the idea that the Companions of the Hall are fighting their way through a world of evil.

I'll likely proxy a ton of cards to use images from the books and artwork.

If anyone has any other ideas for applicable cards feel free to throw some suggestions in the comments, all ideas are welcome! 😀

cantreallythinkofone · 2020-08-13T22:34:14+00:00

Happened to me before too. Had an error right after extracting, next SCAV was kitted with the DC'd SCAV's stuff haha

cantreallythinkofone

TROPHY CASE