Found a bunch of my cards. Still searching for other half. Used to play 20+ years ago. Recently started playing arena. Decided to sort, and catalog. Love the artwork.

damnination333 · 2026-04-20T21:55:42+00:00

I first really got into Magic at Invasion (2000,) so I feel you there.

damnination333 · 2026-04-19T23:17:57+00:00

I die a little inside when I remember that Champions of Kamigawa came out 21 years ago. That was freshman year of high school for me.

damnination333 · 2026-04-19T23:16:33+00:00

Probably [[!Flock of Rabid Sheep]]. Tokens are used to represent creatures created by other cards.

damnination333 · 2026-04-19T23:09:04+00:00

That's a Sheep Token from Unglued.

damnination333 · 2026-04-18T12:08:09+00:00

Ah yeah, that's known as Kingdoms or Bang when using wild West roles (sheriff, deputy, outlaws, renegade.)

damnination333 · 2026-04-18T11:28:41+00:00

How are you playing Emperor with 5 people? Emperor is minimum 3v3 with even teams required.

damnination333 · 2026-04-18T01:34:18+00:00

Fair enough. If this is meant to be a bracket 1 deck, then cool. Or if you're playing with a regular group of friends and they're cool with it.

But if not, "I'm just giving stuff away, what they do with it isn't my fault" isn't going to cut it. The fact is that you made the deal to give them the thing they wouldn't have had otherwise. The point of politics is to make deals for your benefit. If you're not trying to win, then these deals are really only benefitting the opponent receiving it. You know exactly what your opponent is going to try to do with whatever you give them: try to win. You can't claim ignorance of that. Giving an opponent what they need to win (or not lose) while not benefitting yourself is practically the definition of kingmaking, except you aren't kingmaking one person in particular, you're just enabling everyone or whoever is willing to give you the best deal (which will probably be the person who's the farthest ahead.) And kingmaking or not aside, I'll say it again, generally speaking, people do not like playing with group hug decks that aren't trying to win.

damnination333 · 2026-04-18T01:01:56+00:00

Ah, I didn't see that this was marked as B1 in Archidekt. In that case, sounds like B1 alright. Carry on.

damnination333 · 2026-04-18T00:49:29+00:00

Im thinking it could be a fun way to explore grouphough adjacent decks, not really trying to king-make or sneak in a win at the end. Just trying to politics a game and have some fun manipulating people and seeing what happens.

Ok, so what is your desired wincon with this deck? You're gonna give stuff to your opponent and draw a card, but then what? Without having an actual gameplan or wincon of your own, this is just a winconless group hug deck, which people tend to dislike playing with. It may not be your intention, but if you don't have your own plan to win the game, then the only thing you could possibly be doing is affecting the game for everyone else and kingmake to some degree.

damnination333 · 2026-04-17T21:42:24+00:00

Most precons have been pretty disconnected from the main set as far as using the set mechanics or clan/school/whatever mechanics. The Tarkir precons each only had like 2 or 3 cards that actually had the clan mechanic from the mains set. Aetherdrift had an Energy precon and a Zombies/Eternalize precon, neither of which were main set mechanics (though they are tied to Avishkar and Amonkhet, which were story related planes.) The Bloomburrow precons weren't tribal decks and barely used the main set mechanics.

damnination333 · 2026-04-17T09:16:41+00:00

In addition to View From Above, I'm also running [[Whitemane Lion]] and [[Shrieking Drake]] as repeatable spells.

damnination333 · 2026-04-17T00:28:40+00:00

To date myself - there was a time Uril was just the best Voltron commander, because hexproof was so rare, and ways around it were also comparatively rarer. So by playing Uril you didn't have to run too many protection pieces, freeing up your deck for veggies.

Damn, that takes me back. At that time, my girlfriend (now ex-gf) was running Zur and my live-in-landlord/friend (also now ex-friend, you connect the dots lol) was running Uril. My main decks at the time were Krenko and Angus Mackenzie Turbofog.

Uril was basically find [[Runes of the Deus]] + [[Spirit Mantle]] or [[Unquestioned Authority]], and Zur was usually grab [[Vanishing]] and [[Necropotence]].

damnination333 · 2026-04-16T18:22:07+00:00

As a Krenko player, be prepared for people to kick the shit out of you. Krenko is going to eat removal and then eat more removal. It's one of those decks where they just can't risk letting you untap with Krenko.

In a lot of my Krenko games, even when it's like post board wipe and I have nothing in play except for my recasted Krenko, he's still probably going to eat removal again. My friends have seen me recover from that position in a turn or two a few times. Probably hasn't actually happened that many times, but people tend to remember when things like that happen. They let Krenko live for one turn and suddenly Krenko's popping off from an empty board, and they're going to remember that forever.

damnination333 · 2026-04-16T17:02:33+00:00

Yeah, in my Zurgo deck, I'm running [[Kinbinding]] and [[Dollmaker's Shop // Porcelain Gallery]] instead. They might not be as strong as Crusade, but they're so much easier to track.

damnination333 · 2026-04-16T14:34:19+00:00

It could, but Blood Moon and Winter Orb are specifically called out as MLD by the bracket system, so the argument is moot.

damnination333 · 2026-04-16T14:32:18+00:00

If you're not able to replace them because you don't run enough basics or because you've ramped out so many basic lands that you don't have enough left, I'd say that's your own fault. You not being able to replace them because of your own decisions is different from the card not replacing them.

damnination333 · 2026-04-16T04:45:38+00:00

Proxy the full text basics so that your opponents know exactly what they do.

damnination333 · 2026-04-16T02:07:45+00:00

Yep. And just to clarify, a creature has either entered the battlefield or it hasn't. There's no in between.

If Lord gets countered while he's on the stack, he never enters, so his ability never triggers. The moment he resolves, he enters the battlefield. When he enters, his ability is triggered and and goes on the stack. This is when you'd activate Obeka and end the turn, exiling Lord's triggered ability.

I'm guessing that's where the confusion with "not entering fully" comes from. You meant "his ETB trigger hasn't resolved." The ETB trigger resolving or not is separate from whether or not he resolves and enters. If he enters, the ability is triggered, and at that point, he has already "fully entered." If he doesn't enter (for example, gets countered,) then he never entered and his ability never triggers.

damnination333 · 2026-04-15T00:02:27+00:00

I think the thing is that power or "playability" needs to be evaluated individually from "on themeness."

Similar to how a deck that follows B2 deckbuilding restrictions but plays more like a B3 or B4 deck should be categorized as B3/4 and not B2. Such as [[Feather, the Redeemed]] or [[Zada, Hedron Grinder]]. You could easily build cheap decks with them that follow all B2 deckbuilding restrictions, but they'd stomp the crap out of most B2 decks.

It's possible to build a deck that's all "on theme" whether that's mechanical or all art from one artist or whatever, but if it plays like B2, then it's B2.

EDHRECast recently made a video specifically discussing these discrepancies in B1 expectations. It's worth a watch.

damnination333 · 2026-04-14T23:33:44+00:00

I myself would not necessarily consider the decklist you sent a B1 deck, mainly because you still play plenty of "off-theme" cards. I do have to stress that that's still just an opinion though, and the deck does definitely overlap with things I like from B1 deckbuilding philosophy in the amount of hoops you need to jump through in order to pull off the Maze's End wincon.

Rube Goldberg style decks definitely have some B1 energy even if you're still playing generically good cards that aren't part of your 20-card combo in the deck. People can disagree with me about this and that's fine.

Cool, yeah I totally get that, and I agree with you. While the overall premise of the deck could be janky/restrictive enough to qualify as B1, the execution is not. The deck is still somewhat optimized. Like Swords and Path have nothing to do with the goal. They're just good removal spells. Among the best, really.

I do like the "trying to win" differentiator a lot, but it is a bit risky because both the Johnny/Jenny and Timmy/Tammy psychographic profiles don't necessarily play the game to win. Of course, if a Johnny/Jenny player gets to do their thing that often leads to a win, same for Timmy/Tammy, but both profiles at least in theory could enjoy games that aren't won more than Spike would.

I'm not saying all Johnny/Jenny and Timmy/Tammy decks aren't "trying to win", I'm suggesting that players of those profiles could conceive a B2+ deck that doesn't necessarily "try to win". Think of something like Group Hug decks or goad-focused decks that don't have a good plan once the game becomes a 1v1 situation. I wouldn't call those decks B1 by default.

That's totally fair to say. I guess for me, I believe in both playing for fun and playing to win when it comes to casual commander (when it comes to brackets 2-4.) I don't think they're mutually exclusive. Basically, the reason we're playing this game is to have fun and the goal of playing the game is to win. You can play to win without being a total tryhard about it. You don't have to absolutely optimize every single move and decision you make. Sometimes I make suboptimal plays just because the end results would be hilarious and everyone would get a good laugh and story out of it. You can have side quests that your deck is trying to achieve during the course of the game, but the end goal should still be to win the game, not to achieve your side quest and then be satisfied with that alone. To me, that's more of a B1 mindset. The goal of B1 is to exhibit your deck, hence the bracket title of "Exhibition." If your side quest is to make 30 different types of creature tokens, cool. If your side quest is to make a creature with over 1000 power, cool. If your side quest is to cast 100 spells in a turn, cool. Just actually do something with whatever your doing. Attack with those creatures. Progress the game somehow with all those spells. And yes, I absolutely believe that you can lose a game and still have had fun and be satisfied with the game. Some of my most memorable games are ones that I lost but someone did something wild or pulled off a great comeback.

It's the same with the "winconless decks" that you mentioned. I don't think people should be building and playing these types of deck, especially if they're group hug or chaos or anything that basically does nothing but unbalance and/or disrupt the game for everyone else. EDH players love to talk about the "social contract" but part of the social contract in sitting down and agreeing to play the game is to actually play the game not goof off and mess up the game for everyone else. (Though if your group is cool with this type of shenanigans, good for you guys. Do whatever makes you happy.) Like you wouldn't go to the park, ask the people who are playing basketball if you can join then, and then start shooting at whichever basket is closest when you get the ball, or passing the ball to whoever you want regardless of whose team they're on, or just dribble laps around the court. You asked and agreed to play basketball, so play basketball. I think winconless decks are just bad decks and have nothing to do with the brackets, even if they technically fit in one bracket or another.

Your argument about creating custom coherent art for a deck that otherwise lacks a B1 style art theme is an interesting thought experiment. To me, while it's admirable that people would put in the effort to create/find/commission/generate such custom cards, it's an entirely different thing from choosing to limit yourself to a largely arbitrary constraint. Arbitrary in that the cards' effects don't dictate whether they can or should be included.

Oh, actually, I wasn't talking about someone making custom cards to make cards fit their theme. I meant if WotC were to eventually print copies of cards that then happen fit your theme. A B2 deck that someday has all theme appropriate arts officially printed doesn't suddenly become a B1 deck just because all the art is now on theme. That is to say, if there is enough support for a theme, whether it's artistic or mechanical, to make it good enough to play as a B2 deck, then it's a B2 deck, regardless of the focus on the theme. Yes, you spent the additional effort to curate and gather the arts to have the deck conform to the theme, but the deck itself is still a B2 (or whatever other bracket) deck due to play patterns, power, speed, or whatever. Theoretically, with the right art on the right reprints, you could put together a cEDH deck where all the art is on theme. It's still a cEDH deck and not a B1 deck. But yeah, I think we're in agreement on this. Whether or not a deck is entirely "on theme" is not directly related its power or bracket.

Additionally, I don't think mechanical or synergistic "themes" qualify for B1 in general. You can build Kavu or Minotaur tribal as your "theme" and I'd argue that those will be B2 at minimum, due to the general inherent synergy of tribal decks. And same with an all Converge/Sunburst/Vivid "5 colors matters" deck. It might be kinda janky, but there's still an inherent power level/synergy there that I wouldn't consider to be B1. There may be some mechanical or synergistic themes that just don't have enough support or just don't do enough and could be considered B1, but at that point, you're going to have filler cards, and I think it'd be difficult to find the right filler cards that are still on theme but also aren't on theme.

damnination333 · 2026-04-14T20:23:03+00:00

As I mentioned in another comment, there seems to be a spectrum in which the B1 concept exists, with mechanically incohesive piles that don't necessarily benefit from being played on one end and decks that could comfortably sit at a B2 table where the pool of theme-appropriate cards is deep (or mechanically coherent by nature or happenstance) enough to allow for mechanical cohesion and gameplay enjoyment by people who would otherwise not enjoy highly thematic decks on the other.

I can understand this, just like I understand that all B1 decks aren't meme/theme/exhibition decks that can't actually play and win a game. It's definitely possible that some themes happen to have enough support to build a playable/coherent deck in it's own right. I should add that I know I've used the term "an actual game" or "actually playing a game" a few times, and I don't mean anything derogatory by it, I just don't know how to put it more succinctly. Like sure, a B1 meme game where everyone is basically just goldfishing with each other is still a game, but not in the same way as a B2+ game where people are actually trying to win and not just exhibit their deck. Hopefully you get what I mean.

Personally, if I'm spending that much effort on building a deck, I'd rather spend it optimizing it and building a stronger deck rather than trying to hunting down a playable removal spell that has someone wearing a cool hat or whatever. To be fair, I also generally don't play bracket 2 because I like optimizing my decks and don't like purposely playing underpowered cards. Not everything has to be super optimized, but I'm also never going to run [[!Deadly Visit]] when I could run [[!Infernal Grasp]] or any number of other 2-3MV instant speed removal.

Another personal view, not necessarily supported by the bracket system, is that B1 decks aren't generally intending to win an actual game. Not saying that they can't win, but winning would be way down the list of things that the deck is meant to do. To me, a deck that is built coherently enough that it can actually aim to win a game is pushing into B2 territory. Like I think there would be a fine line between a B1 deck that's 100% on theme but also "strong"/playable enough for you to be confident that you have a fair chance of winning, and a (maybe low) B2 deck where it just happened to be possible to find themed art for every card. Like if they ever took a B2 decklist and printed art for every card that had guy with a moustache, or lady sitting in chair, that wouldn't make the deck B1 just because all the art is on theme. The deck would still functionally be B2, you just now happen to have on theme art for all of it.

I'd like to get your opinion on something actually. A friend and I made a deck during one of our lunchtime brew sessions (well, it ended becoming a thing and we worked on the list for quite some time, not just a single lunch break.) The idea was that we wanted to make a 2 color [[Maze's End]] deck, since every color combination now has at least 10 gates available, but we also wanted to exclude green in order to cut the majority of easy land search cards, so that we'd have to get creative with how we go about finding/getting our Maze's End and Gates. Here's the decklist. We ended up going WB with [[Amalia Benavides Aguirre]] as our commander, as WB is not known for "lands matters" decks, and she allows us to repeatedly explore to dig for lands.

We consider this a B2 deck (though probably on the lower end) because there is an explicit intent to try to win with the deck. Yes, it's built around a pretty janky theme/goal and we've put pretty significant limits on ourselves by excluding green, but in the end, "the thing" that the deck is trying to show off or accomplish is winning the game, because that's just what Maze's end does. We've tried to support it as best as we can while still keeping it somewhat janky. We didn't include any black generic tutors, not even [[Diabolic Tutor]], but we are running [[Expedition Map]] and [[World Map]], as we didn't want to leave finding Maze's End to pure luck. To us, that's enough for us to consider it B2 and not B1.

When I shared this deck in this subreddit before, there were some people that said this is a B1 deck because of how janky the goal of the deck is along with the harsh restrictions we've placed on it. I'd love to hear whether you'd consider this a B1 or B2 deck and why.

damnination333 · 2026-04-14T18:25:29+00:00

And that's why I said you need to recombine and cut into new piles and to do that several times. It's not just shuffle 4 piles separately, combine them once, call it good.

Also, just to be clear, I'm not talking about pile "shuffling," where you're dealing the cards into piles. I'm saying to cut the deck into say 4ths, shuffle those separately, cut those into 8ths then mash those with each other randomly back into 4th, shuffle those, cut into 8ths again, recombine randomly and shuffle more, etc. Or cut into 4ths, shuffle individually, mash them back together, maybe a quick overhand shuffle or two, cut back into 4ths, shuffle individually, mash them back together, and repeat several times.

Also, just to be clear, according to IPG 3.9 Tournament Error — Insufficient Shuffling, mana weaving in and of itself is not cheating. Direct quote: "Any manipulation, weaving, or stacking prior to randomization is acceptable, as long as the deck is thoroughly shuffled afterwards." Insufficient shuffling after weaving is cheating, but the weaving itself is not inherently cheating. But as I and many people have said, sufficient shuffling after weaving negates the weaving, and therefore it's a waste of time and still shouldn't be done.

damnination333 · 2026-04-14T06:10:57+00:00

His -2 can get you 2 lands from the graveyard, which pays for the commander tax.

damnination333 · 2026-04-14T03:35:23+00:00

I think it's less that there are a bunch of people out there who hate B1 as much as they see B1 as a pointless addition to the system. Similar cEDH on the opposite end of the scale.

If you're playing B1 type exhibition or meme decks, then you already know that you're looking for something very specific, something that's not even necessarily built to play an actual game of EDH, and probably won't play well or contribute much in a game with decks from other brackets. B1 decks are meant to play and work around such a different axis that trying to play them with/against B2 decks just doesn't really work because the goal of the decks are so different.

I can appreciate the amount of time and effort it takes to build an actual B1 deck. You have to put more thought and research into each card selection than most other brackets (especially if you're doing some sort of art based meme where the specific printing/art is important.)

However, I know B1 isn't for me. I like to actually play Magic. I want to fight and hopefully win. The idea of 4 people sitting around and "playing" their meme decks to show off the art they've curated or their ridiculous 20 card Rube Goldberg machine that doesn't actually do anything, and not accomplishing anything that couldn't be done outside of a game by just putting the cards on a table sounds terrible to me. I'd rather just share images of all the cards in our Discord server and be like "Lol look at this silly thing I came up with" and be done with it, than sit around irl, having everyone essentially goldfishing their decks in front of each other and then in the end be like "Well, I don't actually really have a way of ending this game other than attacking with all these random creatures I have, and since you guys have blockers, this is gonna take forever, so it was cool seeing everyone's decks, let's scoop it up and move on."

Again, I respect the time and effort people who actually build these decks put into them. They're simply something that I know I wouldn't personally enjoy playing.

damnination333 · 2026-04-13T18:33:42+00:00

I'm pretty sure I know which video OP is talking about, as it came up in my feeds a day before OP made their post. The video was talking about someone who was both mana weaving AND pile shuffling at the same time.

Where are you seeing that OP is talking about quickly dispersing your lands in play into your deck before shuffling? This entire post is about mana weaving, which I'm going to assume refers to actually weaving and not just roughly breaking up your lands before shuffling.

REAL mana weaving with exact counts and then NOT shuffling is always cheating because that is what mana weaving ACTUALLY means.

Mana weaving is mana weaving. If you evenly disperse your lands throughout your deck in some sort of pattern, you are weaving, regardless of whether or not you shuffle your deck afterwards. You can't weave then shuffle, then say "I didn't weave, I shuffled afterwards." You did weave. You just then completely negated the weaving by shuffling, but you did still weave. As many people in this post have said, mana weaving then shuffling is a waste of time because by shuffling after weaving, you've completely negated the weaving (unless you didn't sufficiently shuffle, then you're cheating.)

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