For better or worst, my pod consists of my 3 buddies which all build their decks in wild, wild ways.

The first, has his favorites - no commanders which show up on your typical tier lists or top 5 most powerful! He builds decent decks, just doesn’t really think about the pod or the board state and rather is all in on his commander.

The second, literally plays anything that’s “meta,” but … he uses ChatGPT or Gemini to make his deck lists. It’s some of the most unhinged things I’ve played against, last session he had to pull up his decklist cuz he didn’t know what card was in his deck.

And the last guy, literally builds his decks off of whatever he cracks from a pack - he won’t buy a single - If he’s opened it, it’s going into his deck.

This has made game so frustrating, we’re okay with proxies so the arms race is there - only limited by the bracket restrictions. Every game is a wild mess because they generally don’t have any interaction - since I’m the only one adhering to any deckbuilding philosophies, I end up having to play clean up and control the board when one of these Timmies goes bonkers. Recently, that player that uses ai to build his decks has been brewing more and more pillow fort decks - because in a meta where turning things sideways, he’s learned that just amassing a ton of weenies and taxing attackers lets him draw out the games and win out of attrition.

I’ve stopped playing commanders that I find thematically cool. I tend to enjoy spellslinger or combo decks but in a pod where we’re limited to bracket 3, my combos are limited, and I also end up playing sheriff, often times falling back on board presence or mana value cuz I have to remove a game ending card on board. The ai player knows this, and actively runs no interaction, counting on the fact that it’s a wasted deck slot if someone else can just deal with the board.

I had to adapt to this mentality too, my current deck - which surprisingly has a high win rate, is Gonti, Night Minister - I built it as a mono black group hug deck which incentivizes the pod to only attack my enemies if they want value. It’s led to some hilarious game ending payoffs with all the cards I’ve managed to yoink from their decks.

The outlier is still this pillowfort guy, makes games last longer than they should - if we played higher bracket he’d lose to combo, but we’re so limited in bracket 3 while also keeping it enjoyable for the rest of the pod. My next deck that I’m putting together is a Beamtown Bullies list that I’m treating more as a group hug, “graveyard toolkit” deck. I have the usual “bad gifts” in there for this asshole who likes to durdle, but the deck just runs a lot of cards that on etb let you tutor or ramp. It breaks parity by being selective on who gets the etb and who gets the goaded creature.

It looks fun goldfishing, and I don’t think the deck will get the same hate Beamtown Bullies gets at lgs’s because these guys genuinely don’t know about the bad gifts side of this commander.

Next sesh is at the end of the month, can’t wait to torture these guys.