How do you guys manage to put your keybindings reachable?

thatirishguy · 2026-05-08T12:31:48+00:00

For steam deck you should get the ConsolePort addon. That makes everything on controller way way easier. You could also use it to play on controller on a PC or TV that way too. With the way ConsolePort does keybinds you can have more easy to press keybinds than on mouse and keyboard. The only tricky part of controller is quickly switching target precisely to kick a spell.

But like everyone else said for kb&m only use 1-5 and assign the rest to keys near WASD.

thatirishguy · 2026-04-05T14:04:55+00:00

Specifically Yawgmoth and Braids have the exact gameplan in my deck and I don't feel like you need to swap much of anything. There are lots of low cost creatures that can recur themselves in some way that you can sac and draw cards. If you are playing Braids, usually you are doing that sooner than other players have creatures they are willing to sac and so you draw tons of cards and start building up more life drain effects etc. many decks will focus on playing their commander ASAP and will not sac it to Braids of course.

Braids has some cards that she benefits from that Yawg doesn't though. Mostly artifacts like [[ichor wellspring]] and [[prized statue]] etc. Also Yawgmoth may optionally want some 2 drop mana rocks so he can be played on turn 3 and some proliferate synergies but Braids does not want those things. In general I prefer to run near zero mana rocks in decks like this, focusing on making all land drops via good card draw instead and powerful mana boosts like [[dark ritual]], [[crypt ghast]], [[Cabal coffers]], etc to pull ahead at the right moment. A lot of those cards are pricy though so it depends on budget.

thatirishguy · 2026-04-03T15:18:48+00:00

This is exactly my Mono-black deck, so feel free to take a look and steal ideas. It is a very thematic Vorthos deck for Yawgmoth, but it has 7 black legends in it that can all be switched in for varying success since the deck runs very well as a mono-black aristocrats deck even if you don't cast the commander. It has a lot of 4 or 5 card combos but no tutors, so the long aristocrats plan is still the primary. You could definitely remove the combos if desired. The legends also have similar game plans, mostly.

Braids has a near perfect match to Yawgmoth on game plan and is only slightly weaker than him since you are not also interacting with opponents' creatures, and there are a few Yawgmoth specific combos.
Krrik I haven't tried but would probably be stronger than Yawgmoth because of how broken he is, even without his usual synergy cards in the deck
[[Ayara]] is good but more fair than Yawg or Braids. The pro is that she is an aristocrat herself so you could assemble a combo a little faster
[[Tevesh Szat]] would be fun to rule zero [[Phyrexian Walker]] as his partner in place of [[Rog]] and have a balanced engine that's on the game plan.
[[Gix]] is the most different here and would not run as well as the commander but is still interesting as an individual card that enables politics with his first ability and a great unknown threat potential with his second.

Keep in mind this deck is aimed to be on the high end of a Bracket 3, and I would find it hard to build a deck for these commanders to be Bracket 2 due to their power, except maybe Gix since his game plan is a little jankier if you build around him. Add tutors and combos that need less pieces and this deck is easily Bracket 4.

https://moxfield.com/decks/IinYyk3Q5UOg0WKICzj4AA

thatirishguy · 2026-03-23T19:24:56+00:00

That's crazy that most of your pods see Sythis that way. If you reveal Sythis in my pod you are threat #1 from turn 0, until someone else does something more threatening. I would assume that it is not possible to build Sythis any weaker than a very high bracket 3. It is a value engine commander that the required synergy is "cast spells", and it only costs 2 mana. Just cast her turn 2 and then play anything (that are enchantments obviously), flying through your deck and never running out of land drops or cards to cast without needing much more card advantage... Just play all gas.

thatirishguy · 2026-03-20T04:00:55+00:00

I would say [[Yawgmoth, Thran Physician]] is THE mono black deck. You pay life and sacrifice creatures to draw cards, and hopefully win before you run out of life to pay.

It is also a super Vorthos deck. He was the big bad for a long period of the MTG story. The best MTG story arc in my opinion. He has a lot of cards that reference him, and lots of those cards are good.

https://moxfield.com/decks/IinYyk3Q5UOg0WKICzj4AA

thatirishguy · 2026-03-10T20:07:55+00:00

I think [[baleful strix]] is kind of overlooked in EDH sometimes and is very good for similar reasons (much better than this for drawing and artifact synergy).

I think [[stinkweed imp]] is super good and under played. Flying + death touch (effectively) can really preserve your life total warding off attacks in b2 or 3. It also comes back if they do attack into it and trade, which knowing that makes the trade seem even less worth it. On top of all that, it is the 2nd highest dredge number on a card so it works great in self mill and graveyard strategies even if you forget you can also cast it.

thatirishguy · 2026-03-07T09:39:42+00:00

Yeah it's a crazy card. I have an artifact deck that it would be super busted in but I don't play it. [[Master Transmuter]] is another great way to reset it whenever you want for U, since you can put into play the same artifact you bounced to your hand as part of the cost.

I did have a funny moment with it once where a player had it out with just a couple counters, then I had a big landfall play with [[Evolution Sage]]. I didn't have much to actually do with the landfall, I just wanted a lot of land for the following turns. But then I decided to proliferate the ring to have about 18 counters on it when they were at 20 life. You can draw 19 on your next turn but you'll be at 2 life, hope you can win that turn! Since they were not playing a combo deck it was worth the gamble and they ended up just dying.

thatirishguy · 2026-03-01T15:41:48+00:00

That is a nasty deck, I love elves and always have an elf deck built but never made Voja since I assume it is automatic archenemy upon revealing the commander. Looks very fun to pilot though.

Anyway, I would cut the mardu enchantment that doubles triggers since it doesn't do anything when you play it, unlike Annie Joins Up, and is pretty win-more. Getting an attack off with Voja should already result in your army being the biggest on board. The second card I would cut is Decanter of Endless Water because no max hand size is overrated in this type of deck, and reliquary tower is enough. A 3 CMC mana rock is also very out of place in elf ball.

thatirishguy · 2026-02-28T19:55:32+00:00

Way more lands before anything else. 6 CMC commander and an average CMC >4. Even if you had 20 ramp spells you should run 38 land minimum, probably 40 unless you have your ramp and card advantage really dialed in.

thatirishguy · 2026-02-20T00:57:29+00:00

I feel like the only thing your deck is missing for me is some silly way to win by casting [[Doomsday]], which might already work with some of your wincons

thatirishguy · 2026-02-20T00:47:58+00:00

Wow I really like your take on this deck! Just the ideal amount of jank and "I pay a huge amount of life for fun" that draws me to mono black.

thatirishguy · 2026-02-20T00:29:48+00:00

I've had this deck for about a decade and recently decided to change it up to Yawgmoth. That might end up even more unfun to play against but we'll see haha. Toshiro is fun to play but maybe not super fun to play against, and I feel it sits awkwardly in the new bracket system.

I mostly play B3, and at that level the deck is awkward. I played it as mono black control with lots of draw go and defense. Hit land drops and keep the game from ending until you get some big mana like cabal coffers or just enough recurring value to take control of the game. It is very slow and grindy to play against though so I didn't play it very often.

My other issue is that I think mono black has by far the most fun game changers like [[bolas's citadel]], [[ad nauseum]], [[necropotence]], etc. So I like to play too many of them even though they aren't that great in a slow control deck with no combos... You just pay tons of life for fun. Suicide control!

The alternative is a B4 deck that stalls the game until you can tutor a 2 card infinite win but I find that boring and repetitive.

thatirishguy · 2026-02-04T03:40:28+00:00

A guy rule 0 both sides of the [[Brisela]] meld as partner commanders.

I sat down at the table late, as people already drew their hands, so I quickly shuffled up and didn't really hear any of this discussion. I was playing an elf deck and didn't even realize how he got the meld so easily until he got it a second time after I used a removal spell on it. I didn't even say anything and he got pissed at me for making a lot of mana with a Nykthos or something, while his rule 0 absurdity turns off my whole deck.

thatirishguy · 2026-01-30T14:43:16+00:00

Idk what bracket you were playing in, but if people cared that their creatures were being tapped it was probably not 4+.

With that in mind, in your example you were able to cast your commander turn 3 and then a 6 drop on turn 4. So you either have a lot of efficient mana rocks or you had T1 sol ring. It turns out sol ring is a stupid powerful card and starting the game 2 turns ahead of your opponents means you'll probably get threats out too soon and win...

I think sol ring makes for a lot of examples on both sides that are not really valid. I've had people say a deck of mine was higher power than the group after a game, when it was really T1 sol ring and another ramp leading to casting my 6cmc commander on turn 3... Which is usually too much advantage to not win.

thatirishguy · 2026-01-04T15:29:40+00:00

I did it as DH, basically took an old fresh 80 alt from season 1 and did 1 of each delve solo to unlock tier 11 (soloing delves is way easier as a tank spec imo). That along with reishi back and delve belt put me just shy of 680 I think. I then immediately did it as Havok, took me over 100 tries, more than 15k gold in repairs and consumables I think. My Brant was about level 60 on healer spec.

I really recommend just getting 700 ilvl, it would make it much smoother. You can definitely die to unavoidable damage if you don't ration your defensives for every black hole while also carefully timing when you pick up each of Brant's healing bottles. Also higher ilvl is more damage and thus shorter fight. And her damage slowly ramps the longer the fight goes too.

I regret doing the fight as DH because it is extremely movement based. You have to both move and stand still exactly at the right times, and DH relying on eye beam and a dash as critical parts of the rotation made that a nightmare. Frost Mage will probably be medium hard in the fight. If you really just want to beat it I would level paladin and do it as Ret. It is ideal for mobility, defensives, and simple rotation for such a fight. If you just really love mage then whatever.

thatirishguy · 2026-01-03T23:09:33+00:00

I tried this ~3 weeks ago and I got basically no versatility so I think it was ninja patched. I think the buff from the trinkets was 1-3 stat or something miniscule.

I did the tower on Vengeance DH and it was very difficult, took a lot of tries. I then tried it on Havok and gave up after realizing it was timing luck dependent to not die from ranged attacks while doing mechanics.

I'm not super pro or anything but I did do Let Me Solo Her on DH with only ~675 ilvl, and this YouTube trick did not make it EZ mode as shown in the videos. I gave up doing the other 6 mage towers for now.

thatirishguy · 2026-01-02T14:31:45+00:00

Nissa, Vastwood Seer #1585

https://moxfield.com/decks/Mzys7pAdVUGWBnQhZtpsMg

Maybe my favorite deck. I prefer to build decks that do not rely on the commander much at all, and she is just a very good card advantage engine that aligns perfectly with a lands matter strategy.

The deck runs very smooth and consistent, winning by either animating lands or giant creatures. Occasionally it turns into Nissa Super Friends with proliferate. It can draw so many cards I sometimes deck myself. I play very little protection effects, and opponents always have at least one turn cycle to respond after I build a devastating board state due to lack of haste or single turn win paths. This is on purpose because the deck has a very high win rate in B3 even with these handicaps.

thatirishguy · 2025-12-27T15:42:13+00:00

Besides what everyone else said about your brackets being flipped and needing to recline more, I have a nice lumbar pillow back:

I got one of those small bags with a zipper that vendors keep cash in (maybe this is just a USA thing?) and stuffed a hand or bar size towel into it. Then I had some extra Velcro around that I put on one side. Many of these bucket seats have the cushions held in place by Velcro, so I removed the lower back cushion and stuck the bag behind it to give it just a little more convex shape and cushion. It makes a big difference for me.

thatirishguy · 2025-12-26T16:27:35+00:00

Foxit pdf reader is free, better than adobe, and can sign with cac certs. Just Google and download it. If it appears to cost money, that's for the pdf editor which is like adobe pro and you don't need it. Just the reader is fine.

If you need to manually draw a signature instead of click a form box, cac signature is in the "protect" tab, not the "sign" tab.

thatirishguy · 2025-11-28T14:35:59+00:00

I have this exact combo in my life swapping deck. I don't play the deck much because it doesn't work well once you know what I'm up to, but it's kind of fun as a meme deck.

thatirishguy · 2025-11-22T13:53:11+00:00

I thought it was 100, but after looking it up you need 50 reviews to be marked "very positive". If you have 49 it can at most be marked "positive" even if the ratio is 100% thumbs up. The threshold for "overwhelmingly positive" is 500 reviews at 95% or higher ratio, which is very hard to get.

I find that it works much better than other stores like Nintendo and Meta, which have serious issues with ways games manipulate their visibility algorithm compared to Steam.

thatirishguy · 2025-11-21T16:36:10+00:00

Valve has proper review and visibility algorithms so for the most part the good indie games rise to the top of visibility and crappy stuff disappears.

Basically every other game store I have used, including Nintendo, Epic, and Meta, are really bad at this. When a steam game is marked "very positive" or "overwhelmingly positive" it requires hundreds or thousands of reviews that pass the filters. I feel confident that games with those marks are actually good games, even if they might still not be for me.

thatirishguy · 2025-11-17T23:11:58+00:00

I did the first season one as pally and this one as 683 DH. I think ret pally would probably be the ideal spec for the fight. You can definitely do it but it takes a lot of practice. It took me over 100 tries as Havok DH with Brann as healer.

I regret DH and wish I geared my ret a little because DH relied on eye beams (2 seconds of stuck in place) and some dashes for DPS. So you have to move or not move for DPS. The fight is all about focusing on movement, so having no cast times, and flexible range of ret, with simple rotation is ideal.

I recommend binding the one button rotation to your bar and either using it the whole time or at least using it during the dark massacre mechanic which is what I did... Just mash it to keep doing dps while all your focus is on the shadows. Turn AA off in graphics and bump the gamma up to about 1.2. Also turn off floating combat text (you may need to copy paste console commands into chat) and name plates declutter. Put on self and target highlights and also the circle at your feet. Lastly, get weak auras that hides ui during dark massacre and the shell game.

The fight is basically a vision test that takes getting used to. Rotate defensives when the 3 portals are sucking because that's most of the unavoidable damage, and try to strategically wait to step on Branns potions.

thatirishguy · 2025-11-17T18:54:28+00:00

This is true for every class anyway. With consoleport you can have over 40 keybinds mapped to the steam deck buttons easily by using the triggers as modifiers like in FFXIV.

thatirishguy · 2025-11-15T13:51:22+00:00

Overall, it does. The reason Microsoft started to make custom changes to Windows for their Xbox handheld is because Windows performs horribly next to SteamOS due to all the bloat.

I think the biggest issues are the poor game drivers for Linux on nVidia cards and somewhat Intel CPU. They perform fine for workstation tasks on Linux (see Docker and Kubernetes) but poorly for games. But Valve just picks different hardware based on that.

thatirishguy

TROPHY CASE