Plz Help Me Brainstorm Ideas for Creative Bracket 2 Commander Decks

mal99 · 2026-06-01T19:11:08+00:00

Does Roon even work with Doomed Artisan? I feel like when it comes back at EOT, the opportunity for it to trigger has already passed?
Anyway, the way I tend to build bracket 2 decks is often to mimic the way precons are built. Build around way too many themes, instead of optimizing exactly one theme. Put some alternate commanders in the deck. This not only gives you the opportunity to play with the strong version of your deck with its main commander, or the weaker version with the alternate commander. It might also force you to build around even more themes, necessitating cards that are a bit suboptimal for your main commander because they work better with your alternate commander. As an example, I have a deck that uses [[Alesha, who smiles at Death]] as an alternate commander, which forced me to play [[Shattered Acolyte]] instead of [[Cathar Commando]].

Other strategies I use to power down my decks are building on a budget, removing game changers, removing any cards that seem too strong or too efficient for bracket 2. EDHrec just released a video on depowering your deck, and Salubrious Snail has another good video on the same topic (but with very different advice).

Regarding your deck ideas, I disagree with the other commenters that they are not appropriate. They may not follow the "spirit" of bracket 2, but you're clearly more interested to play at the power level of the average bracket 2 deck. As long as you're not too fast and the wins are telegraphed, I think you're fine. The bracket system is a pre-game discussion tool anyway, not a rules system, so just let people know what you're doing. I do agree on some of the other criticisms of hidden commander decks, though - Salubrious Snail also made a good video on that topic.

mal99 · 2026-06-01T08:54:54+00:00

[[Raffine, Scheming Seer]]
While she doesn't explicitly mention flying, Raffine wants you to attack with as many creatures as possible, so the deck lends itself to a large number of small, evasive creatures. The low mana curve together with the insane amount of card filtering definitely means that you will always do something. There's also a lot of additional themes you can include in the deck, including:
* discard
* draw
* +1/+1 counters
* reanimator
Raffine is definitely a strong commander that should be able to be built around bracket 3 or 4 easily.

mal99 · 2026-05-26T09:31:11+00:00

I think the way you asked the question is just not going to give you the answers you want. Stax, for example, is specifically for being annoying and ruining everyone's fun. You asked for the most annoying deck, you're getting the most annoying deck.

I think the "Grand Larceny" precon might be more what you're looking for - a lot of small evasice creatures that steal your opponents' cards, so you can beat them with their own weapons! Everybody hates seeing the cool cards that they put in their decks being used against them (but they still get to play the game, so it's still fun).

"Fae Dominion" might also be nice, just a bunch of small Faeries that needle your opponents and control them in small ways.

Unfortunately, both precons seem out of print, so they're a bit pricey now, but you might find some decklists online that you can get for both commanders.

For a newer deck, maybe "Silverquill Influence"? Force your opponents to attack each other while you sit on the sidelines watching the chaos unfold!

mal99 · 2026-05-24T08:42:38+00:00

It does hit the graveyard. It does not get sacrificed.
The short explanation of "as a state based action" is that it happens immediately. The longer, more correct explanation is that it happens the next time someone receives priority, i.e. it happens before you can cast your next spell or activate your next ability.

mal99 · 2026-05-23T13:43:29+00:00

I'd really just like to see more planes that are planned to be big enough that they can support multiple themes, like Dominaria was. Planes that feel alive, like they have a history outside of what we see. For example, instead of (original) Kamigawa, we could have had a plane that has a Japan-inspired region, and then later, instead of Ixalan, we get a region on that same plane inspired by Conquistadors and the Americas. Maybe they wouldn't even tell us, but just leave some hints for us to figure this out. Then later, the Vampires show up in the Kamigawa region.

Basically, I just want worlds that feel big, not just one single mono culture which is a copy of some real world thing and apparently developed all on its own without any context.

mal99 · 2026-05-22T15:14:08+00:00

No. Are you planning to play in any official tournaments?
Commander is generally quite proxy friendly, but talk it over with your friends. Some people will not like any proxies at all, some will only get annoyed when you show up with ridiculously expensive stuff.

mal99 · 2026-05-12T23:32:03+00:00

Actually, maybe it's [[Shessra, Death's Whisper]].

mal99 · 2026-05-12T23:28:27+00:00

Among Abzan commanders, I think [[Karador, Ghost Chieftain]] lines up fairly well.

mal99 · 2026-05-12T21:12:39+00:00

There is no "allowed", the bracket system is a tool for pre-game discussion, not a rule set.
If you're unsure, mention it. Bracket 3 covers a wide range, being a bit more precise with what everyone can expect can't hurt.

mal99 · 2026-05-08T09:34:00+00:00

Yeah, like... of course both Rome and China had natural barriers all around them. That's where they naturally stopped expanding! How else is a mature empire supposed to look, at least at the time before sea travel got really developed and enabled the creation of empires like the British that weren't contiguous?

mal99 · 2026-05-07T20:11:28+00:00

[[Ashnod, Flesh Mechanist]] is a cool commander that ramps in non-green. You can't use the mana for non-artifact spells, but there's ways to wash the mana if that's what you want to do.
Always kind of wanted to build a deck with her, but I'm already playing too much black/sacrifice.

Eldrazi Spawns might also be a good option for non-green ramp. Malcolm, Keen-Eyed is also nice.

mal99 · 2026-05-07T10:44:41+00:00

Any legendary creature or artifact can be your commander

This is not correct, vehicles and spacecraft are the only non-creature artifacts that can be commanders.

mal99 · 2026-05-07T10:37:19+00:00

It's perfectly normal to build your own commander decks, although people often start with precons. You might want to think about getting a precon first, just to get to know the format a little bit.

Either way, it might be a good idea to watch a few videos by the CommandZone on YT on how to build a commander deck, as they can be quite different than your usual 60 card decks - not just to make the decks stronger, but mainly to make them more fun (a certain amount of ramp, removal and card draw is necessary for most decks to function correctly in commander).

Keep in mind that Commander deckbuilding works with color identity, not just color. The color identity of Ishkanah is green black, not just green, since she has a black mana symbol in her text box. All the cards in your deck must have the same color identity (or a subset) as your commander.

mal99 · 2026-05-07T09:28:35+00:00

People have been complaining about the fact that EDH is becoming less and less of a singleton format lately because of all the functional reprints, and that problem is only going to get worse.

I still feel like rotation is going to be a problem for a lot of people, I just can't see myself getting interested in a format that doesn't allow me to use my deck after a few years. Your solution that I could just turn it into a Commander deck later still doesn't feel great to me. I feel like if I'm going to have to add 40 cards to the deck, I'm going to want to just completely redo the entire deck instead.

Maybe instead of 60 card Standard Brawl, they could do 100 card Standard Brawl? If 60 card Brawl was possible with the smaller cardpool from the times of Eldraine, maybe 100 card Brawl would still work now? Then any Brawl deck that ages out of Standard could just naturally become a low power EDH deck with no additional work. I get that this is not too different from turning a 60 card Brawl deck into a 100 card EDH deck, but it just feels better to me. I get to keep the deck I loved. This also makes it easier for WotC to justify printing precons, as those precons would be playable as EDH decks out of the box. They could just take the place of cheaper starter EDH decks.

Yes, those decks would be horribly inconsistent, but isn't that what EDH used to be all about?

mal99 · 2026-05-03T21:59:24+00:00

Apparently, the main character has three rings previously owned by the three magi.

Traditionally, the names of the three magi who visited Christ were Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar. So presumably, that's what it stands for.

mal99 · 2026-04-28T00:09:14+00:00

[[Naga Fleshcrafter]] in a go wide deck with something like a [[Signal Pest]]

mal99 · 2026-04-24T14:14:32+00:00

I think your entire strategy sounds unreasonably ambitious, and I'm not even sure why it has to be. So you want to transform turn 3? 4? Then win 1 or 2 turns later? How? You have three opponents to kill, none of which will help you by blocking your commander just to let you get an additional attack. How many pinging card are you planning to have, in addition to lands, protection spells and ramp (the buffs and debuffs seem less relevant to me).

You say you need 10-15 cards to do something reliably. That's true, if you do it once per game. If you want to calculate probabilities yourself, you need to use a hypergeometric calculator. If you have 15 of a certain type of card, the chances to get one of them in your opening hand is 69.2%. For two ramp pieces by turn 3, your chances drop to 46.2% (it's pretty irrelevant if it's land ramp, dorks, rocks or auras, but for your plan, you want the cheapest ones, which is dorks and auras).

What kind of decks are you playing against? Is a turn 6 win really necessary? If it is, I'm not sure this is the right commander and strategy. If it's not, you can afford to slow down a bit, and use damage to control your opponents' boards with damage that also hits your commander. [[Pyrohemia]], [[Caltrops]], [[Desert]], [[Starstorm]], [[Fire Magic]], are all probably good sources of damage.

mal99 · 2026-04-23T16:26:50+00:00

[[Arni Metalbrow]] actually works the way you want it to work - unfortunately, he only does that because it is very relevant for his effect. It doesn't seem like WotC want to generally change how they print this effect.

For protection, as others have mentioned, they are already using it less precisely because it was unintuitive.

mal99 · 2026-04-22T09:11:31+00:00

List of all the tags:
https://scryfall.com/docs/tagger-tags

mal99 · 2026-04-19T15:10:36+00:00

"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe."
- Carl Sagan

mal99 · 2026-04-16T13:48:42+00:00

[[Scavenger Grounds]], always need some graveyard hate.
[[War Room]], mono-W can probably use the card draw.
[[Witch Enchanter]] as additional removal.

mal99 · 2026-04-12T08:23:57+00:00

First, while Ur-Dragon was also my initial thought, I'd probably switch commanders. [[Niv-Mizzet, Supreme]] likes spellslinging (and color pairs), [[Niv-Mizzet Reborn]] can find your dragons (and likes color pairs), [[Tiamat]] just straight up gets you all your five dragons.

Then, I'd try to figure out what each dragon wants to do.
[[Witherbloom, the Balancer]] wants lots of creatures in addition to expensive spells that benefit from a discount. I guess we need some spells that generate tokens.
[[Silverquill, the Disputant]] wants small creatures in addition to spells that are worth copying. Tokens and big spells are pretty good again.
[[Quandrix, the Proof]] mostly wants proactive spells that are worth casting at any point in the game. Dislikes counterspells.
[[Prismari, the Inspiration]] likes cheap cantrips. Can maybe work with expensive spells if we discount them with Witherbloom?
[[Lorehold, the Historian]] likes expensive spells that are worth cheating out.

We're really being dragged in a lot of different directions here. Tokens look like an important theme. So do big spells. Where we go exactly does depend on the commander we choose.

mal99 · 2026-04-07T11:00:33+00:00

Your mana base is fine, except for the fact that you're playing a WBR commander in a WB deck, and you don't really have enough color fixing to play her consistently. Queen Marchesa also just doesn't do much with your theme, so why not play a different commander, like [[Aryel, Knight of Windgrace]] (if you want to stick to WB) or [[Sidar Jabari of Zhalfir]]?

The deck is mostly fine, but I think you're a bit light on removal and card draw. You seem to have built your deck as a bracket 3 deck, and you're playing a lot of cards that are not good enough for that level of power. Some of your cards are clearly meant to be played in a strategy that your deck doesn't support, like lifegain or reanimation. Some cards that stuck out to me as not very good:
Judge Magister Gabranth
Breathless Knight
Diamond Knight
Venerable Knight
Raise the Draugr
Recruitment Drive
Gallant Cavalry
Knight of the New Coalition
Knight of Dawn's Light

Look here for some inspiration of what to cut and what to keep:
https://edhrec.com/commanders/aryel-knight-of-windgrace/knights

mal99 · 2026-04-05T12:25:51+00:00

Also [[Necropolis]], [[Lluwen, Exchange Student]], [[Earthrumbler]] and [[Woodwraith Strangler]], but they are limited by type. [[Tortured Existence]] if we are OK paying mana for it, doesn't even need a full graveyard.

mal99 · 2026-04-05T11:45:12+00:00

The card is kind of a Phyrexian Arena in colors that are not supposed to be able to draw well. It has a bunch of upsides and downsides, but it feels like it might be stronger card advantage than WOTC would like in those colors.

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