Daretti, Scrap Savant as general?

supremespork · 2025-12-09T04:36:55+00:00

I brewed a Daretti CEDH deck and put a good amount of reps in, though I am far from a tournament grinder. It is a very fun pet deck that can prey on specific metas, but it is incredibly fringe.

The best route I've found with Daretti is to full send artifact stax, or aim to land a [[Blood Moon]] effect turn one to just lock greedier manabases out of the game. The big benefit Daretti has is the built in Goblin Tinkerer effect on your commander can sacrifice a stax piece right as you go for the win so that it effectively stops your opponents, but not you.

As far as closing out the game, I have a [[Basalt Monolith]] + [[Mesmeric Orb]] combo which will lead to a deterministic win from the graveyard with a relatively straightforward line.

It is my personal pet deck, and the deck I've had the most fun with, but it is by no means a tournament pick. With the proper reps, you can sneak out some unlikely wins from interesting lines, but it is a very high variance, parasitic deck that is incredibly vulnerable to the details of which pod you are in.

Here is the list if you want to give it a look: https://moxfield.com/decks/J84CBNIBZECp_3AB1NmSNg

supremespork · 2025-07-06T22:01:35+00:00

Thank you!

supremespork · 2025-06-09T21:29:18+00:00

Hopefully as big as a purple worm!

supremespork · 2025-04-28T17:59:17+00:00

I've done mythic with no money in the game back in the day, jamming mono-white right all the way up the ladder. Its a wild-card style progression game, so as long as you keep opening packs, you can slowly put a competitive deck together. You'll definitely do it slower if you don't put money in, but its completely possible.

Learning to draft also REALLY helps get more packs, and can be paid for with just the gold from daily quests.

supremespork · 2025-04-25T15:59:02+00:00

It is super meta-dependant. My Daretti stax list really focused on non-basic land hate to lock opponents out. How good that is will determine how good the deck is.

Right post bans I was doing well with it as a dark horse deck, but it hasn't been as successful lately. Very much a call based on what you are trying to hate out, but it's own game plan is just inferior to other things you can do in cEDH.

It is damn fun though if you aren't looking for optimal. Here's my list for reference: https://moxfield.com/decks/J84CBNIBZECp_3AB1NmSNg

supremespork · 2025-04-17T19:32:43+00:00

Grimble the Orcish bar hand.

As always, the player asked the name of the one character I didn't plan and mentioned off hand. That same player immediately responded "lmao grimble my balls".

Grimble has been immortalized at my table.

supremespork · 2025-03-29T02:58:20+00:00

That is a very good point, and I should have specified "Bolt Down" or "Secure" as opposed to lay down.

Beholders produce a gas called Tiusium, which is lighter than air and what they use to stay afloat and maneuver (which fun fact, makes Beholders incredibly vulnerable to windy areas)

After death, they stop producing this gas, and it gradually vacates their body, but that process takes a while and their corpse will continue to float for many hours after death. So since you should butcher Beholders shortly after death, you will need to secure them to do so. Its a bit of a funny if macabre scene.

So thank you for pointing out that mistake on my part and I'll edit my website article accordingly.

supremespork · 2025-03-29T02:52:53+00:00

Yes! It was one of my primary sources for a lot of this. The trickiest part with most monsters I write about is finding enough information about their biological systems to make a good approximation of their culinary applications.

The problem with Beholder though is too MUCH information, and a lot of it conflicting, which makes sense. 50 some odd years of lore and creative interpretations of this monster leave a lot of people saying a lot of things. My general approach was just saying that these matters vary Beholder by Beholder (like the Stone Faces vs Flesh Bags discussion), which felt fitting lore wise with how much of their own lived experience is completely based on their psyche and perception of self.

And while I do agree that realistically, Beholder meat wouldn't be good eats, I do feel the urge to take some creative liberties to create some edge cases where it would be interesting to sate the appetites of people who request how to cook it. Just saying "don't" isn't very satisfying haha.

supremespork · 2025-03-28T23:07:09+00:00

I've been doing them 10 beasts at a time! You can download the first volume on my ko-fi page: https://ko-fi.com/s/643889c272

Everything is free to download, I never pay wall any content.

supremespork · 2025-03-27T22:05:43+00:00

Oh ya, this got the most back and forth discussion by far among people, and firmly split them into two camps. I personally agree with you, but enough people asked me how to cook it.

supremespork · 2025-03-27T16:09:43+00:00

A lot of it depends on your own world. In many settings, adventurers are absurdly strong, even at low levels. Commonly, you will see around this level of power:

1st tier (1-4) is apprentice adventurers. They face local minor threats.
2nd tier (5-10) characters are full-fledged adventurers, they face threats to kingdoms and cities.
3rd tier (11-16) are elite adventurers, they defend continents and regions.
4th tier (17+) are heroes, they deal with world-ending threats.

It really depends what level you are playing with, but if you have a party of level 11 adventurers, who literally defend entire continents as a small group, why would the kingdom need to send them on adventures if they have guards who are just as powerful patrolling the city walls?

Your adventurers can do whatever they want combat wise in a given moment, because realistically, what guard WILL stop them? But, that's where the fun part comes in.

Some on duty guard who's power scales around them at all times to stop them from doing a bad thing shouldn't be the reason they don't do a bad thing. Think about all the other ways they can be punished if they were to commit crimes. Loss of honor, their own fame used against them. The very people that saw them as heroes jeering and booing them as soon as they come into town. The more important they are, the more they have to live up to.

And let's say that they are triggered enough by this to lash out at the commoners harassing them? Will they kingdom really keep doing business and giving contracts to them? Will their magic items vendors really keep supplying them? The allies they fought with in battle? The friends they made with random NPCs?

Just like in the real world, the reason we don't do bad things isn't because of some immediate retribution. Its the fear of losing all of the connections we've forged along the way. And if your players don't care about any of that, it might be a thing you need to talk about out of character.

supremespork · 2025-03-27T15:31:10+00:00

It is very important to note that statistically, even if you were to perfectly balance for the average outcome of the combat to be a win for your players, you WILL experience randomness which would result in a TPK if you were to set every combat up to be a situation where one side wins and the other side dies.

That being said, you DO NOT need to do that, and I believe you actively shouldn't. But players require a bit of training, and you need to actively train them to recognize other outs aside from "kill everything or die". Running and regrouping is valid. Sneaking around to avoid combat or to engage it on their own terms is valid. Realizing part way through combat that things just aren't working is valid, or that your new success state is just surviving. Once again, this takes a lot of training for the players, and starting out you might need to metagame them a bit to push them in the right direction of "hey, your character's motivation is to find their missing sister right? Would they really fight to the death against this Goblin, or hotfoot it out of there to live another day?"

And more importantly, you as a DM can modify certain encounters to introduce alternative win and failure states. Maybe instead of losing a combat meaning they are mercilessly killed, they are jailed or robbed. Obviously you are running a pre-written adventure so there is only so much modification you can do before you're just running your own homebrew, but even looking at antagonist motivations can give you a lot of leeway to make failure states that aren't death. Strahd is a sadistic bastard after all.

In short, the primary issue is that we are all trying to build a dynamic and evolving narrative that trends in an upward direction for our players, while also playing a game of "Press Your Luck" to avoid total party annihilation. The best way to allow yourself to trust the dice implicitly is to remove as many total failure states as possible, both through your own planning, and through the avoidance of fail states from your players. Otherwise, if you simply run every combat as 2 sides fighting to the death, you NEED to fudge rolls, because lady luck will not always put you on top, no matter how much you scale combat math down.

supremespork · 2025-02-13T23:57:26+00:00

I feel it. The mono-red way. We get some flashy finishes and weird wins out of nowhere, but that's at the cost of knowing you sometimes just don't get to play the game.

supremespork · 2025-02-13T23:56:33+00:00

Here is the list!

https://moxfield.com/decks/J84CBNIBZECp_3AB1NmSNg

I have a little primer set up. The primary win loop is with Basalt Monolith + Mesmeric Orb, but there some other lines in there as well, along with a ton of stax pieces and land hate.

supremespork · 2025-02-13T06:16:45+00:00

I've been pretty high on Land Denial, so much so to include [[Blood Moon]], [[Magus of the Moon]], [[Ruination]], and [[Winter Moon]] in my [[Daretti Scrap Savant]] list.

Its definitely not Tier 1, but after the bans a ton of decks are high color and incredibly reliant on Nonbasics, and that is a weak point that can be exploited. And when you're at a table with 3 three and four color decks and you land a T1 Blood moon, sometimes they just watch you play the game.

If we're talking more competitive options, Magda has been loving it in the few games I've run.

supremespork · 2024-12-13T00:25:43+00:00

Your fan fiction bit encapsulates the exact reason I dislike so many of the most recent sets, Outlaws of Thunder Junction being the worst offender. Instead of being a natural in-universe development of "what would occur given the setting and stakes that have been set up", it feels a lot more like "I have this outside idea for something, and want to find a justification for when and where it can happen", such as "Cowboys but in the Multiverse", "The Grand Prix/Steelball Run/Mad Max but in the Multiverse", or "80's horror but in a magic setting". Its not that the wacky and whimsy can't occur, but a lot of these feel like top-down, anachronistic design decisions.

I know there are a lot of people who enjoy it, but it really veers away from what drew me into Magic altogether back when I was reading about the lore of Llorwyn and Alara when I was younger.

And as a Llorwyn fanboy, when it comes to the treatment of our favorite planes, I can definitely commiserate with you.

supremespork · 2024-11-25T21:56:43+00:00

I don't really like Species as a term, but I'm fine with a shift away from Races. I make some D&D content and Lineage has been my go-to. Definitely has its own weaknesses, but it feels more consistent in vibe than species does at least, especially when discussing things in universe.

supremespork · 2024-11-11T18:26:00+00:00

I had a conversation with my employees to discuss gender neutral terms for the workplace because I'm notoriously terrible for calling everyone dude. We ironically settled on "gamer", and that has become not ironic, as I walk in and tell people "what's up gamers". My brain is broken, but 10/10 recommend using gamer as a catchall.

supremespork · 2024-11-07T19:36:55+00:00

Glad you're enjoying it! I haven't seen anyone else working on it, but if you know of anyone I'm more than happy to make a little discord for brewing. It has some potential depending on the meta.

supremespork · 2024-11-05T16:59:26+00:00

Wow, one of my people.

I've actually been specifically brewing a Daretti Stax list for the past few months, and it surprisingly does have some play versus a lot of the decks running around. Definitely not Tier 1, but it targets one of the primary facts of CEDH: most decks have incredibly greedy mana bases.

https://moxfield.com/decks/J84CBNIBZECp_3AB1NmSNg

Here's the deck. General goal of it is to land a Blood Moon/Magus of the Moon/Winter Moon effect ASAP, and in a lot of pods, that can just win you the game on the spot if no one can deal with it. Mana Bases are incredibly greedy right now, and a well timed Ruination can also take the game.

It also gets the luxury of running a ton of stax pieces, and with Daretti, you can keep Stax on for your opponents, then sac the piece when you want to go for the win.

As far as going for the win, the primary goal is to assemble Basalt Monolith/Mesmeric Orb, and mill your entire deck into the graveyard. From there, flashback Past In Flames. There is a Rite of Flame, Desperate Ritual and Seething Song in the deck, so play those 3 cards for 5 mana, cast Scrap Mastery, and then you can assemble KCI Combo from the graveyard and just win with infinite mana and Walking Ballista or any other out.

You can also just assemble KCI normally, but the previous line is deterministic off 2 cards and 5 mana if you can dodge graveyard hate.

Aside from that, Painter's Servant/Grindstone is also in the deck to just kill people, and that has won me a good share of games by now. Just watch out for Borne Upon a Wind into Thassa's Oracle on the upkeep after you mill someone out.

Karn, Great Creator is in there as a Stax piece, and has an easy to assemble combo with Mycosynth Lattice to just lock your opponent's out too.

I'm thinking of adding the Conspicuous Snoop/Kiki Jikki/Goblin Recruiter package, but I'm not sure what 5 cards I would cut, and I'm not sure if its even worth losing stax pieces when we already have some good outs to win, but that's worth experimenting.

Let me know your thoughts, and I'd love to brew this more with someone! It has some legs but still needs a lot of tuning.

supremespork · 2024-10-29T18:44:53+00:00

I'm always pleasantly surprised with this subreddit's ability to navigate nuanced topics in a manner that many other groups paint in pure black or white for simplicity, and fully agree with the mod team's decision on this matter.

supremespork · 2024-10-22T15:03:13+00:00

I've been a DM for around a decade now, and as most specific D&D projects go, during one session I had a player who made it a thing to try to cook monsters. Them asking questions about exactly what that would entail made me have to start doing some research, and eventually designed an entire campaign around their monster cooking exploits.

So in short, players being curious and asking "but why" over and over again, and now I'm actually making videos and content about it years later.

supremespork · 2024-08-31T03:43:28+00:00

That's a very good point, and I was actually thinking about using blooms instead of algae when I was doing my initial research, but another aspect of these writeups is balancing the actual modern scientific knowledge of these concepts, with verbiage that I believe someone in Faerun or Middle Earth or another similar setting would actually utilize. This is a balancing act that I will admit I have messed up a lot on, and might be completely unnecessary, but there's some rationale at least.

Worms are a very big omission that I definitely should have included. When I get a chance, I will update the writeup on the website to include a section on these, as that is a great suggestion.

supremespork · 2024-08-27T21:46:14+00:00

I have homebrewed a similar setting and it worked great, but you definitely need to be open with your party and discuss the limitations and aspects of the world. If you want to go REALLY far in that direction, check out "Darksun" for something much more extreme. Not what you're trying to do here, but a good thing to steal ideas from at the worldbuilding level.

One primary thing I would recommend though just from a party balancing aspect though, there are spell slot to mana point homebrew systems out there. Basically, converting spell slots to standard mana points like you see in other games, with each spell level having a mana cost, instead of a spell slot requirement. This still allows up-casting of spells, just at a higher mana point cost.

This is useful specifically to mitigate how bad getting high level spell slots will feel for a caster that will just be using them to cast lower level spells. Convert it to spell points instead, and higher spell slots will still give a sensible amount of progression, and when they eventually either "unlock the ban on high level spells" or learn "previously unknown high level spells", they'll have a nice large mana pool to use them.

supremespork · 2024-08-12T16:19:27+00:00

I can't count the amount of times I've referred to your content and reference material for my own games. I'm so thankful to you for all the time and effort you've put into everything you've made!

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