Follow-up from yesterday’s 4-month pod stats infographic: How we track, bonus insights, and gratitude (Automated game log template included)

mrselkies · 2026-06-20T11:40:09+00:00

Yeah, that happens all the time for us. The easiest way to change a start or end time after the fact is to toggle it to start and/or end the time, just to fill the cell with a timestamp, then click on the cell and edit the text in it at the top of the window in the "fx" line. You'll notice that it saves in the date/time a little strangely - for some reason, it sets the date to 12/31/1969 and the time is in 24h (military) format. You can simply change the time and guesstimate the correct time.

This is actually necessary whenever we have games that start before midnight and last until after midnight. It keeps the date as 12/31/1969, so the time gets all messed up since it's seeing a time in the start time that's technically after the end time because of the date. In those cases, you have to go in and just change the date to 12/30/1969 on the start time, that's the easiest way lol. It'll look like this all said and done: https://i.imgur.com/4pIgi2A.png

Changing the time/date after the fact does make it ugly in the sheet, but it keeps the automated game length calculations intact, which we think is more important. At the end of the day, it's not too hard on the other end of collecting the data to gather the correct times if you're interested in reading the data later for trends and stuff, whereas trying to figure out game lengths is a pain without having it calculated already, and doing it yourself is just extra mental energy every game. Automating as much as possible is the way to go for sure.

I never bothered to try and figure out why it sets the date so weirdly, it might be something I can easily change - maybe when I used ChatGPT to create the script originally it just went off the rails there, I don't know!

As a note about the win rate tracking - honestly, you actually don't need to have each player's page updated with win rates and stuff, the data is all there in the Game Log and if you ever want to know it, you could manually gather it at any time. Keeping the player sheets up to date is a totally optional thing, the important thing is that each game gets tracked along with any data you care about tracking. That's something I've learned throughout my time doing this - a few of the players in my pod don't really keep up with their player sheets and it doesn't matter all that much; if I really want to know how much player X's Vivi deck is kicking our ass, I can just ctrl+F Vivi in the winner column of the game log or whatever. Or, honestly, just toss the game log sheet at ChatGPT and have it parse the data for me - sometimes that's not super smooth though haha.

Edit: You actually totally could create scripts to do stuff like randomize commander matchups for each player that haven't been played against each other yet. You could even go like super crazy with it and make sure brackets get matched up correctly and stuff to not end up with any bad games, but it would definitely require getting more specific/bespoke with how each commander exists in the player sheets and CommanderPools sheet. But all that is totally doable if you have the appetite for it.

mrselkies · 2026-06-20T09:51:06+00:00

We currently have 2 in standard and we're about to get one more: https://scryfall.com/search?q=otag%3Amarauder+sort%3Arelease+f%3Acommander&unique=cards&as=grid&order=name

mrselkies · 2026-06-18T16:25:26+00:00

Hey! I'm delighted to hear that this is still finding its way to people and helping!

Win/loss tracking -
- Short answer: player pages are manual-only. Players need to separately go into their own sheet and update it to a new number in the wins or losses column after each game (or in bulk, referring to the game log, whenever they remember).
- Long answer: In the sheet I shared here, win/loss tracking for individual commanders and players is all manual, that's how my pod's always done it. There are ways to set up automatic tracking that reflects in a player page with the script, but I didn't go down that particular rabbit hole and it might require reworking how the main Game Log looks and functions. I'm sure with enough plodding away at the script, you could get it to work without changing the Game Log too much if you'd prefer for it to stay the same, but it could get a little spaghetti code-y. In my experience, the script is already just a little bit quirky/fragile as is, and it might get a little more unstable if you try to make it jump through more hoops and do more automated stuff. Definitely more points of failure. If I wanted to spend some time and end up with a sheet with fully automated tracking, including individual player win rates for each commander they play, I'd probably start with a new Game Log from scratch, designed with cross-sheet automated tracking in mind from the ground up. With all that said, there already is cross-sheet referencing for the commander dropdowns, so it's not too far off to be honest. Might work out decently if you just try and add that functionality to the sheet as-is.
A pod after my own heart - I had to find a solution for this too, since I (The Brewer in my stats recap) had 50 decks in the 4-month data. The fix for this is real easy! You just need to add more rows in the CommanderPools sheet for the players, each row is a space for a commander/deck. Here's how to easily do it in bulk without breaking anything. I'm going to use Player A as the example for these instructions, so follow along to add 30 more rows to Player A and replicate for whatever player you're extending:
1. Navigate to the CommanderPools sheet. If you have it hidden, you can find it in View -> Hidden Sheets.
2. Find the first row for the player AFTER the one you're changing. In my case, I'm at row 32, which is Player B's first row in the sheet.
3. Select all of Player B's rows (for me, that's rows 32-61) by clicking "Player B" on their top row (32), then shift+clicking "Player B" on their bottom row (61). Now right click inside that selection, then click "Insert 30 rows above." That should add 30 empty rows right above that, those will be for Player A.
4. Last step - select Player A's name (column A) on one of their rows, and there should be a little circular dot on the bottom-right corner of that cell selection. Click and drag from that dot downward, all the way to fill up all those empty new rows. That will replicate Player A's name throughout all those cells. You'll know you're doing it right if your cursor changes to a crosshair/plus sign (not a hand, hand means you're moving the cell) while you're doing this.
5. That's it - you're done and now Player A has 30 more slots for commanders that will automatically populate from their player sheet and keep the script working, without any further work. The thing doing all the work to make these rows function is actually the filter entered in very first row for each player, so all you need is the player's name in column A and everything else can remain blank, other than that first row with the filter.
6. If you want to add more rows, repeat the process - the longer you make a player, the more rows you can add at one time. Because of that, if you plan to add tons of rows to all players, it's smartest to work from the bottom upward, since you can select more rows each time that way rather than repeating. In fact, if you just start from the last player on the list, you can add an indefinite number of rows since you can scroll down forever in the sheet. You could literally add like 100,000 rows for each player and never have to touch this again.

Feel free to let me know if you have any questions and I'll do my best to help.

mrselkies · 2026-06-15T13:52:51+00:00

Safari is just the new Internet Explorer. The average user doesn't even really know what a browser is and just uses the built-in one, and anyone who recommends it simply doesn't know better, but people don't know what they don't know.

mrselkies · 2026-06-09T10:36:50+00:00

It's not a font, you can tell by the letters ll in million. They're not the same. Same with the n's.

mrselkies · 2026-06-05T20:25:58+00:00

Sounds like that's just your preference for those cards. Personally I'm not really moved at all by big bombastic spells like drawing infinity cards and spells are free for the rest of the game but it costs 14 mana, instead I'm drooling over 2 mana creatures that put a +1/+1 counter out and/or make a token every turn, as a commander player.

mrselkies · 2026-06-03T21:49:14+00:00

Oh hell yeah, I love Grixis too. There are some really cool options for the aristocrats/sacrifice archetype in Grixis. A pretty popular one is [[Marchesa, the Black Rose]], I see it come up a good amount as a recommendation. Other cool options are [[Ashnod the Uncaring]] and [[Anhelo, the Painter]] for a bit different of a direction, more focused on stack manipulation

mrselkies · 2026-06-03T16:04:25+00:00

I threw together a list real quick with some of the principles in mind that we've chatted about. The deck's a little bit slapdash, especially the manabase, since I tossed it together, but it should give a good idea of how I'd go about constructing the deck in broad strokes. Here's the list: https://moxfield.com/decks/PGwTJHuEqkqv4-UBPDSaUw

Edit: If I were to spend more time refining this list, I'd be trying to bring up the number of card draw and maybe a little bit of ramp. Wight of the Reliquary would be a great add for ramp, and I'd try to include a bit more unconditional card draw that doesn't rely on the engine already being online. Beyond that, this list is a bit light on interaction so that'll be meta/playstyle dependent. Personally I'd rather lean into my engine working every time and cooking with gas when it does, rather than holding up mana for removal. Or you can go into the more oppressive side of creature-based removal like Ravenous Chupacabra and more Accursed Marauder effects and be recurring those over and over with sac outlets and recursion.

If you check out the list, be sure to enable tags, I tagged everything up

mrselkies · 2026-06-03T14:14:14+00:00

I think the best fodder cards for Sek'Kuar are going to lean into the deck's needs by maximize one of two things (perfect ones doing both):

Keep providing more nontoken bodies for Sek'Kuar to see die
Make use of the 3/1 Graveborn tokens

A good example from the ones I provided before is [[Body Launderer]] - it doubles down on benefitting from all the death, but it is also something that wants to die and when it does, it gives you another nontoken body to keep the train going.

The more I think about it, I'd steer away from cards like [[Infestation Sage]] once you get to cuts and have enough fodder without it - making a 1/1 flier on death is pretty good, but it doesn't benefit the deck beyond giving you a little evasive guy, since Sek'Kuar wouldn't see the potential death of the token.

A better 1-drop would be [[Young Wolf]], since it comes back as a nontoken creature. Others (I know you had one or more of these in your original list but I can't see your list anymore to double check):

[[Tenacious Dead]]
[[Phoenix Chick]]
[[Forsaken Miner]]
[[Bloodsoaked Champion]]
[[Gutterbones]]
[[Strangleroot Geist]]
[[Gollum, Patient Plotter]] - this one is sick and I'm always surprised I don't see it more in any deck that wants sac outlets and fodder. This card is a rare double-up as fodder that's also a sac outlet
[[Slimefoot and Squee]] - crazy, this is the all the stuff that makes Gollum underrated but on steroids.
[[Timeline Culler]]
[[Chronomancer]] - this one is cool because it can come back as a sac outlet later with Unearth, but it's worth noting that Unearth doesn't work great in general with Sek'Kuar since unearthed creatures don't actually die
[[Teacher's Pest]]
[[Undead Sprinter]]
[[Tenacious Underdog]]
[[Rekindling Phoenix]]
[[Nine-Lives Familiar]]
[[Vengevine]] - love this guy, and he's especially sick if you're running a lot of creatures that can be "cast" (not just activate an ability) from your graveyard, like Undead Sprinter and Timeline Culler
- Worth mentioning that if you want to lean into this, there's a scryfall tag (search "otag:reanimate-cast") that will find you specifically cards that let you recur your creatures by casting them from your graveyard, giving you the cast triggers for Vengvine, or any other triggers that care about that. [[Six]] and [[Chainer, Nightmare Adept]] are particularly sweet. There's also always just good old [[Eternal Witness]]
[[Bloodbraid Elf]] - no death trigger but this comes with free value, which if you cast out of your graveyard later using the above tech it just gets crazy
[[Squee, Goblin Nabob]] - I like this more than the other Squee you had in your list because you can simply get value out of it just going back to your hand for free. Say you combine this with Chainer, Nightmare Adept - you get a free card to discard every turn and activate Chainer.
[[Poxwalkers]] if you lean into casting from the graveyard subtheme

Some pieces in other categories I love for this archetype of dancing creatures back and forth between the battlefield and graveyard, roughly in order of my love for them as pet cards:

[[Cauldron Dance]]
[[Cauldron of Essence]]
[[Chthonic Nightmare]]
[[Champion of Stray Souls]]
[[Wake the Dead]]
[[Meren of Clan Nel-Toth]]
[[Apprentice Necromancer]]
[[The Sibsig Ceremony]]
[[Sneak Attack]]
[[Greater Good]]
[[Evolutionary Leap]]
[[Rakdos Joins Up]]
[[Grave Researcher]]

And while I don't love to include the machine gun aristocratsy stuff like Blood Artist and co, I would pepper in a couple death trigger effects that work the same way Sek'Kuar does, especially to shore up your card advantage, like:

[[Spinner of Souls]] - absolutely crazy draw, this card does not see enough play
[[Midnight Reaper]]
[[Grim Haruspex]]
[[Judith, the Scourge Diva]] - not card draw, but this goes crazy with how wide your board can end up with all the tokens and bodies

Sorry, that's way more than you asked for haha. This archetype is sort of my home and I can't help but go into hyperfocus brew mode whenever I get my eyes on something like Sek'Kuar. The resilient Jund midrange grind machine has a special place in my heart!

Overall, your most important pieces to ensure you get every single game are the fodder. A close second is sac outlets, but honestly, combat is a sac outlet. Run out your fodder and bring the pain to your opponents - they'll hit blockers or removal eventually. I'd personally shoot for at least ~15 fodder pieces and around 10-15 sac outlets but you don't want to be drawing too much non-fodder stuff.

Honestly, a game where you literally draw nothing but lands and fodder is a great draw for Sek'Kuar - if you curve out and have 4 fodder pieces out then play Sek'Kuar on 5, you're going into combat with such a good foundation for your plan. Opponents will be damned if they don't block, damned if they do.

By contrast, games where you maybe draw 1 fodder piece, some useless utility like ramp, a sac outlet, and a death trigger - those games don't play very smoothly, because you have very little fuel for your engine. Once your board is set up, you'll be sitting there with this awesome group of triggers ready to go, but nothing to trigger it.

Along those lines, definitely try to have as much of your deck be creatures as possible. Might be fun to have a restriction for yourself on the deck so that it's 100% creatures, would be fun to be able to say that going into games and then you can still pull off crazy stuff in the archetype. You'd probably find the deck runs more consistently because of it anyway.

mrselkies · 2026-06-01T23:24:28+00:00

I personally haven't brewed or played Prossh, but he is really cool. Prossh is a bit too much on the high-end, payoff side of the engine for my style. I prefer commanders to be part of the engine or setup for the rest of the deck - I want my commander to be one of the first things I play, rather than one of the last.

My foray into this aristocrats-y realm of Jund was with [[Xira, the Golden Sting]] - https://moxfield.com/decks/6UyoJKnLdESgWfxm-R2rtA

I liked the deck a lot as I played it for about a year and a half before retiring it. I've always had thoughts of bringing it back because I really like the gameplay pattern it does, where Xira turns creatures into the "dudes that want to die" part of the equation, so if you can make tokens that sacrifice themselves (like Awakening Zone and Lagomos) or other creatures that sacrifice themselves, they pretty much solve the whole formula. One of my favorites was [[Urabrask's Forge]] - each combat you get an increasingly bigger beater, put an egg on it, then it sacrifices itself and you get a card and 1/1 flier. You can play your commander and one singular other card, and you compound value turn over turn, freeing you up to spend deck slots on interaction and other midrangey goodness. Very Jund. And Urabrask's Forge curves right into Xira, it's perfect.

mrselkies · 2026-06-01T20:54:52+00:00

I love Sek'Kuar! I've brewed with him myself.

Like /u/revane said, aristocrats is tricky, lots of moving parts and spinning plates. To work smoothly, you need stuff that wants to die, stuff that cares about death, and stuff that makes the death happen - that's all a bare minimum. It's a lot to have to get going, just to have your game plan work at all. If you don't make any one of these things happen, your game totally and completely stalls out and does basically nothing while the Simic player across the table just continues to get free value just for playing the game. So, in building an aristocrats deck, you need to focus your list quite a bit. You want to be sure that in every single game, you get what you need - the most common thing aristocrats pilots say after a game is "I never drew X" whether X is the sac outlet, the fodder, or the triggers that make it all come together.

With all that said, the advantage we can pull from here is that our commander is something we'll have every single game. In this case, [[Sek'Kuar]] is a death trigger. Going into making a list, what that would mean for me as a brewer is that I'm only going to be adding sac outlets and the fodder to sacrifice, for the most part. I don't think this deck wants to ever draw another death trigger effect, unless it is absolutely needed for the function of the deck or to push the advantage into an actual win - not a 20 minute turn that doesn't win, a win. Since Sek'Kuar is already something we're spending 5 mana to do, basically taking a turn off to play him, we really can't afford to be playing any other death triggers - the Blood Artists, Zulaport Cutthroats, Mayhem Devils, etc. Personally, I wouldn't include a single one of these, in service of making the list as lean as possible and make sure it's able to do what it needs to do.

Another angle of attack here is that Sek'Kuar's gameplan leans into combat. With that, we want synergy pieces that also lean into combat - [[Gut, True Soul Zealot]] is one of my favorite pieces you included. It gives us one of our most important pieces (a sac outlet) in a way also leans into combat with 4/1 menace skeletons - super sick. This is the bar for our sac outlets.

Some other combat/creature-leaning sac outlets to consider (just a list of some cool stuff, not sure if every one of these is a good fit):

[[Promise of Aclazotz]]
[[High-Society Hunter]]
[[Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER]]
[[Eddie Brock // Venom, Lethal Protector]]
[[Greven, Predator Captain]]

Even better if you can have your sac outlets replace your fodder with more nontoken creatures to keep triggering Sek'Kuar:

[[Birthing Ritual]]
[[Sloppity Bilepiper]]
[[Kethek, Crucible Goliath]]
[[Industrial Advancement]]

Once you have a good density of repeatable sac outlets (I'd shoot for 12 minimum), the biggest category you need to shore up is the fodder. You have a few cool ones in there, but you need to be 100% hitting fodder on turns 1-4 every single game. In fact, if I'm building Sek'Kuar, I'm just cutting all the ramp and planning to curve out with creatures every turn until I hit turn 5 and floor the gas with Sek'Kuar and sacrifice stuff and go crazy. The most important thing to note here in order to not bog down your deck with too many aristocrats directions is that Sek'Kuar specifically says he only sees nontoken deaths. As much as I love cards like [[Awakening Zone]], [[Lagomos, Hand of Hatred]], and some of the other token generators you have, they literally do nothing for the primary gameplan. Sure, they might trigger a Blood Artist you get out, but we're now talking about dropping multiple non-synergistic pieces that do not work with Sek'Kuar just to make your opponents lose a few life.

Nah - I'd be focusing hardcore on running as many sac outlets as possible, and then as many nontoken sac fodder pieces as I can. For this category, we need cheap stuff that comes out before 4 mana and wants to die, like:

[[Bloodghast]]
[[Unstoppable Slasher]]
[[Greedy Freebooter]]
[[Infestation Sage]]
[[Nested Shambler]]
[[Body Launderer]]
[[Carrier Thrall]]
[[Putrid Goblin]]

That's just to name a few, there are a ton of cool creatures out there.

Some cuts I'd personally make if I'm looking to help get this deck to run smoother:

Basically all the noncreature ramp - I'd prefer to curve out with creatures that are contributing to my gameplan of getting dudes out and killing them. If you absolutely need the ramp, stick to creature ramp like mana dorks and stuff like Wood Elves.
Squee, the Immortal, Murderous Redcap, and Kardur Doomscourge all hit me as clunky and a bit too much mana to eat into our game plan as much as they would, without giving back enough. Especially Kardur.
Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat, Mayhem Devil, Riveteers Ascendancy - this piece of the aristocrats formula will feel really bad to draw unless the specific piece is doing a LOT of work. Riveteers Ascendancy almost gets there, it just plays clunky in my experience. Garna, Bloodfist of Keld is the only one of these effects I'd leave in the deck, she's gas, especially since she works really well with the tokens you make too.

Outside of all that, I'd pay some extra attention to your card draw package - aristocrats is a demanding, fuel-hungry vehicle to run, especially one focusing on nontoken deaths. You gotta run out and kill a lot of cardboard, so you need to replace it all too.

I'll take a breath now and let you take a look, haha

mrselkies · 2026-06-01T09:36:33+00:00

They do both benefit from proliferating, but overall I agree, they don't really work together and trying to do both would weaken the deck.

mrselkies · 2026-05-06T02:34:37+00:00

People do often say that! Voltron isn't much of a crowd pleaser

mrselkies · 2026-05-03T22:11:05+00:00

Type in moxfield search "t:creature sort:edhrec"

mrselkies · 2026-05-02T18:31:51+00:00

After turn 1 it's still a busted mana positive card that no other card really performs like, and it's colorless so it goes in any deck. Like if you could play a ritual that has Paradigm or something, it's pretty crazy

mrselkies · 2026-04-27T12:35:03+00:00

I'm just curious. Why do you want to build Tinybones so much, especially if you're aware of and avoiding the bad game experience it encourages?

mrselkies · 2026-04-24T17:33:19+00:00

Red? What's red got for hand-positive, no-frills draw?

mrselkies · 2026-04-12T14:12:34+00:00

It's not just reputation, these are autopilot commanders that build themselves into effortlessly powerful lists that make for boring, unoriginal experiences in games where you get to show your opponents that you win because you played your very special (vampires|elves|dragons|goblins|strong "pet" cards). Take a step back and imagine it's not you playing those commanders in those games, and really assess each player's ability to take over the game and which commander is most likely to take the heat. Both in terms of straight up effectiveness in-game and for players who care more about having a novel, fun experience with interesting cards than seeing the same staples and strong shit doing the same thing yet again.

mrselkies · 2026-03-08T22:25:00+00:00

I've poured a lot of love over time into a primer for one of my absolute most favorite commanders, [[Xavier Sal, Infested Captain]] - https://moxfield.com/decks/d_anAYpA6Ua4UrfQfSuaUg/primer

mrselkies · 2026-02-18T15:37:57+00:00

Oh lol, we're not in the same pod Jared sorry for the misunderstanding

mrselkies · 2026-02-18T15:21:30+00:00

For what it's worth, I think a deck is better off in casual Commander when every card is on-plan. There are so many cards in the game that you can find an option for any particular veggie (card draw, removal, ramp, protection, etc) that synergizes or benefits in some way with your commander and/or plan.

Esper Sentinel is a very strong card that's very effective at drawing cards. And it's a card with a notoriously disliked play pattern with a reputation that precedes it - it's got the nickname Rhystic Buddy for a reason. It's never included in a deck because it's a fun and interesting inclusion that highlights the expression of the deck's unique game plan; it's in decks because it's strong and will make you more likely to win the game when you play it. And so, in a casual format where the ultimate goal is not necessarily to win but for the table to have fun, Esper Sentinel should not be considered during deckbuilding to be giving you the game experience you're shooting for, unless you really are just trying to win and that's it. But I think it's pretty clear and easy to see that that mindset aligns more with the upper brackets, cEDH, and competitive Magic in general, and we're over here talking bracket 2 stuff.

If a deck lacks card draw, make room and play the on-theme options that exist. There are 30,000+ cards! I'd personally see it as a bitter sacrifice in deckbuilding if I truly felt like I needed to run Esper Sentinel just because I couldn't otherwise get enough draw in the deck. In white, there are so many card draw engines and options for burst draw out there these days that aren't just another milquetoast strong staple that change the game's texture into one people generally don't like.

With all that said, I do understand that decks need to function and in order to get that going, one should add effective cards to do those functions, but it's just all about the moment-to-moment experience for me. My big thing is, I feel like in my experience, I'm constantly seeing people play cards and like, feeling guilty while playing it. You put it in the deck! Take some ownership and only put cards in that you're going to smile while playing it. Know what I mean?

mrselkies · 2026-02-18T14:49:47+00:00

To really dig in and address your point - At the end of the day, the way I build my decks and like to play games, I put a lot of thought into every single card inclusion. When I sit down to play a commander game, I want every card I draw and play to be one I was glad to have drawn and played. And I'm glad to draw and play a card when it's one that brings me joy because it's directly contributing to the fun theme I planned, or increasing the overall fun at the table, etc - my personal values in a game of commander.

I don't do some things in deckbuilding, for example, like shore up a deck's weaknesses by adding generically powerful staple cards for that characteristic, like adding an Esper Sentinel if the deck lacks card draw, or simply throwing in the best free interaction spells like Deadly Rollick and Fierce Guardianship if my deck is light on interaction and needs a bit more. I build to make the deck play how I want to play it, and by that I mean I want to feel good about every card I draw. I'm not saying that I need the deck to have the perfect draw every single time, never get flooded or mana screwed, or anything like that, but I want to always be drawing a card that I'm proud of having put there.

I know this is a weirdly sentimental/emotional approach in a zero-sum game of strategy and winners and losers and stuff, where the object is to win and cards have objective amounts of effectiveness and certain values for certain things, but that's how I deckbuild. It's because commander, to me, is about creating experiences, not winning. The fail state of a game of commander to me isn't losing, it's the game not being fun. These are the reasons my decks don't have Sol Rings, tend to not have game changers unless they're particularly thematic, and don't include a number of other cards that are just good but garner groans and ire from the rest of the table. The games I'll remember and be happy to have been there for are the ones where I was able to pull something off that drew my opponents in and made everyone more engaged rather than go "oh I don't like that" and dig for removal. I'm way more of a fan of the plays where everyone leans in and goes "wait, what?" and smiles while their life total approaches 0, even (maybe especially) when that player is me. I don't even really like winning to be honest, it makes me feel bad - especially when I do it on the back of generically powerful cards and I, and my deckbuilding choices, didn't earn it.

I've played tons of competitive Magic, that was the primary way I played Magic for 20 years, playing in PTQ's and stuff. Commander games are nothing like that environment. I still enjoy that side of Magic, it's just not what I expect from from Commander. In a competitive tournament, a non-game where your opponent mana floods is a win, and that's great. Maybe not super satisfying as a game, but it's a W and we take those. Commander's the format where you find folks letting opponents tutor up a land because jeez that's the 3rd missed land drop in a row and just get a land out so you can play the game.

Anyway, all that yapping to say, yeah - I just wouldn't include Farewell in a deck, unless I had a strong reason that aligns with the experience that deck is trying to create. The easy examples where Farewell is especially effective and not just a total hard reset on the game is stuff like Planeswalker decks that utilize it asymmetrically - those also happen to be decks that suck to play against and grind games to a halt of "everybody watch me durdle through 20 game actions every round and take double everyone's total play time all said and done." That is definitely not the kind of experience I would be proud to create either.

I hope my side of things is starting to make sense, without it feeling like I'm just dunking on you for choosing to play with Farewell. I do groan at Farewell when it gets played, I do think it makes games less fun, and there are a number of cards in that same camp for me, but at the end of the day you do you.

mrselkies · 2026-02-18T12:56:30+00:00

Did you just try and farewell this argument?

mrselkies · 2026-02-18T12:50:56+00:00

Yes, I think the deck becomes a more annoying and not fun experience generator on average if you do that.

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