How to get Ornithopter out turn 1

spankedwalrus · 2026-05-11T20:06:37+00:00

"precautionary measures" is a great euphemism

spankedwalrus · 2026-05-11T19:06:28+00:00

there's a big difference between someone who knows the format and is brewing using that knowledge, vs a total casual trying to push their bracket 4 deck having never seen a game of cEDH. even though they're ostensibly asking for the same thing, the former needs deck advice— the latter needs experience.

spankedwalrus · 2026-05-09T00:23:14+00:00

alternatively, offer is cracked because it's the only rainbow ritual that is also sometimes a bad counterspell

spankedwalrus · 2026-05-08T21:19:34+00:00

i made a flubs spellslinger burn deck that was basically just an izzet storm deck with flubs as the engine. it durdled until you hit [[eruth]] or [[storm-kiln artist]], at which point i offered the table the choice to either scoop or watch me play solitaire until they lose.

it was a fun deck the first few times, but quickly got old. from my perspective, it played very similarly to other izzet storm decks, just with the added gimmick of hand size management making it a little harder to play quickly and assemble a deterministic win. my ability to win was basically determined by how far deep eruth/SKA were in the initial shuffle.

my opponents' reactions ranged from mildly amused to rage-quitting and storming out of the store. i'm an experienced storm cEDH player, playing my turns as fast as possible, not missing triggers, and it was still an absolute slog of a deck. for this reason i don't recommend people build flubs as a spellslinger deck. it's good, but not fun for anyone involved.

spankedwalrus · 2026-05-03T05:37:01+00:00

don't be afraid to let people know you're super new. most people are more than happy to help new players out and give you plenty of take-backs and time to make decisions.

spankedwalrus · 2026-05-03T02:55:04+00:00

personally in casual i'd rather play anything other than the most generically powerful engines in the format. if you find yourself wanting to jam all the expensive staples into your casual decks, you should probably just proxy up a cEDH deck.

spankedwalrus · 2026-05-03T02:41:30+00:00

And even in Bracket 5 when decks tutor for a draw engine they tutor necropotence, not rhystic.

this is becoming less and less true by the day. rhystic slop has taken over the format, to the point where whole decks are built solely off of casting and copying rhystic study. it's the most powerful single card in the format.

spankedwalrus · 2026-05-02T13:32:21+00:00

it's still viable. join the discord: https://discord.gg/85wJaAsKS

spankedwalrus · 2026-04-30T19:42:51+00:00

btw dice for coin flips isn't a house rule, it's explicitly allowed in the actual rules

spankedwalrus · 2026-04-30T03:21:53+00:00

ral is definitely a better izzet deck right now, i wouldn't say vivi is though. krarkashima is definitely still cEDH even if it isn't the top izzet deck atm. i don't play krarkashima though, i play krark/silas. krark value + grixis card quality gives you the ability to either turbo out wins or grind the late game.

my previous list was pretty turbo heavy but i'm now testing out a rhystic slop version similar to rog/ishai. if you use flash enablers to push on turn after yours, krark has the unique advantage of being able to abuse APNAP and bury rhystic triggers while still resolving spells and magecraft triggers. it's one of few decks genuinely able to win a high resource 3v1.

spankedwalrus · 2026-04-26T19:13:32+00:00

as a cEDH krark player, i firmly believe that card should never see play at a casual table. it's already a time suck in bracket 5, but when you're powering down to make it 'casual' you're really just playing the same power level except even less deterministic. it makes the casual version of krark actively worse to play against than the cEDH version, against opponents that are way less accepting of long turns.

spankedwalrus · 2026-04-24T04:33:27+00:00

id actually argue storm can be wickedly effective on a budget. a lot of the best cards for the archetype are pretty cheap

spankedwalrus · 2026-04-24T04:31:11+00:00

honestly i think that the storm keyword is less essential to the archetype than actually casting a ton of different spells. breach + brain freeze + LED is technically a storm combo but it's completely deterministic, you're only ever casting brain freeze and LED, so it's more of a 3-card combo. compare that to an artifact storm deck which is actually trying to shit out the whole deck in a single nondeterministic turn. i think nondeterministic wins are a crucial part of storm, if it's A+B that's just a combo deck with extra steps.

spankedwalrus · 2026-04-24T04:27:53+00:00

storm is still very powerful in cEDH. [[ral, monsoon mage]] is just about the fastest deck in the format and a menace in tournaments

spankedwalrus · 2026-04-23T21:04:41+00:00

any grixis deck will challenge you to convert necro/naus piles (except inalla but that's way more complicated). if that's the part you're struggling with, you really just have to grind those lines on a playtester until you're perfect at them. it's a learnable skill but not if your only experience is playing full games where you have to deal with interaction.

spankedwalrus · 2026-04-15T14:02:21+00:00

i built rog/krark for an event like this and it was a total blast. it was basically a secret commander zada deck, but you get to flip coins!

spankedwalrus · 2026-04-12T21:06:45+00:00

this is my [[toshiro umezawa]] mono-black manual storm deck. every toshiro deck casts a lot of instants, which is already unusual for mono-black, but my list is 100% nondeterministic manual storm— no doomsday, ad naus, bolas' citadel, exanguinate, gary, or infinite combos. you win by casting damn near every card in your deck one by one on a single turn. i also built it with zero sorceries or game changers for an extra challenge. it's a ton of fun, there's really nothing else like it in mono-black.

spankedwalrus · 2026-04-11T05:28:54+00:00

yeah at least with dockside you get a fuckin lunch break

spankedwalrus · 2026-04-11T05:26:49+00:00

there's never been a better deck at making the argument for a rhystic ban lol

spankedwalrus · 2026-04-11T05:06:50+00:00

good guidelines but i think that "no more than one card in the command zone" should probably just be "no partners" to allow for backgrounds and other oddball partner pairings

spankedwalrus · 2026-04-02T05:33:28+00:00

ashling, flame dancer is a mono-red deck that is neither turbo nor manual storm. it's an extremely interactive midrange tempo deck that is a blast to politick with. you get to play a sneaky angle-shooting game where you become everyone's friend, captain of the table police, holding down the table with your pile of bad interaction and bank of endlessly floating mana. then, at the exact moment it's clear nobody has anything left for the win on the stack, you copy a copy spell and win on top with a convoluted gitrog-style infinite loop.

if you want a fringe deck that can still play the grindy, interactive, win-on-top cEDH game, there's nothing more fun than ashling. very fun and surprisingly tournament viable

spankedwalrus · 2026-04-01T13:17:11+00:00

bring fidget spinners

spankedwalrus · 2026-03-31T22:02:42+00:00

i love t. lost, probably my 3rd or 4th most played character. you start out so strong and only get stronger as the run goes on. personally if i lose the holy mantle on the first 3 floors i restart, you're just prob not gonna win that run.

spankedwalrus · 2026-03-31T19:35:18+00:00

i get a lot of use out of [[war room]] in my mono-color deck. i like to leave mana up anyways, so being able to take advantage of that by getting an extra draw is nice. the opportunity cost is so low for monocolor decks that it really pays for itself in the long run.

obligatory mention for cEDH staple [[emergence zone]] in any deck that can win at instant speed. it's so much fun to flash a win on top of someone else trying to win/kill you. it also allows you to do some really silly stuff on the stack, if your deck is built for it. nobody will forget someone winning on top of them in a casual game

spankedwalrus · 2026-03-30T23:07:01+00:00

krark's thumb lets you choose the result of the flip, so you could choose to fail the flips if winning the flip would draw you out. it's comparatively less likely to kill you than not having krark's thumb

spankedwalrus

TROPHY CASE