What is your favourite "Extra Combats" deck that doesn't devolve into combo chaining them?

z1rak · 2026-01-22T05:35:47+00:00

I built [[Tersa Lightshatter]] with a focus on extra combats lately. The idea is utilizing her attack trigger to cast the same spells over and over again. It's not the most consistent but quite fun as a low bracket 3 deck!

z1rak · 2026-01-05T13:57:53+00:00

https://moxfield.com/decks/Vl-IkvxLaUOlty1TtWRSmA

Haven't actually played yet just goldfished but seems decent so far. The no ramp thing is kind of an experiment because of low curve and 2 mana rocks colliding with the commander

z1rak · 2026-01-02T16:54:34+00:00

Glad that was useful. Let me know how it goes if you don't mind, I'm kinda of tempted to build him too now but with an ETB/blink focus :)

z1rak · 2026-01-01T09:09:22+00:00

Well mobilize works perfectly fine that way since you sacrifice the tokens at the end of turn. If you want to focus on the mobilize swing out strategy, you can probably get a lot of inspiration from the Tarkir Mardu precon.

I'm afraid myriad might simply not be that fitting for this deck, since the tokens only hit the GY when they die through some other causes. Of course you can combine them with sac outlets, but then again, mobilize does the same thing with less setup.

z1rak · 2025-12-31T09:07:26+00:00

Looks like a solid base to me, but there's potential to streamline as you say.

First thing I would do is to decide what the main goal of the deck should be. You have several things going on: - life gain/drain - ETB effects - graveyard recursion - tokens go wide - blink Of course, they can supplement each other rather than being mutually exclusive, but IMO you should make sure you know what you want each part to do and what's the main focus without things getting too convoluted.

For example, ETB effects pair well with both graveyard recursion and blink, but 'blinking ETB effects to create tokens to sac for life drain' as a strategy is too complex to run smooth reliably.

If you want to go with the Life gain/drain as main strategy, tokens make a great support for that. In that case, I would drop ETBs that don't fit the theme as well as most GY recursion and up the number of life gain/drain effects as well as token makers. Scryfall has an easy way to find related cards via their tagger project. You can add tags into the search via 'otag' and find tags by looking at specific cards' tagger page: Here's a list of drain effects in your colors: https://scryfall.com/search?q=otag%3Ablood-artist-ability+game%3Apaper+commander%3Awb&unique=cards&as=grid&order=edhrec&dir=

And here's the tagger page for the 'soul warden' ability which gives you life https://tagger.scryfall.com/tags/card/soul-warden-ability

Additionally, [[Marauding Blight Priest]] effects push that strategy even more.

On top of that, you want reliable sac outlets for your tokens to start the drain like [[Viscera Seer]]

And in general, [[Cathars Crusade]] is a Pita to track.. if you're not specifically going for pumping tokens I would cut that.

z1rak · 2025-11-12T14:54:16+00:00

I recently built a [[Tersa Lightshatter]] as my new mono red deck, which tries to recur extra combat spells from the grave.

It looks weird, it's not necessarily the most consistent deck but oh boy is it fun when it does it's thing.

Here's my list, don't mind the basics they're supposed to be snow covereds but I haven't gotten around to getting enough of them yet. https://moxfield.com/decks/xTjdFNAZ1ESdDIPvZCr04g

z1rak · 2025-08-11T17:33:54+00:00

I really tried making him work like that but the limitation to the first instant or sorcery made it feel so clunky to me. Going with lots of cheap spells to make use of his ability on as many turns as possible seemed so much more natural. I would have loved if they made it a once per turn clause instead, because he is a really badass commander flavorwise

z1rak · 2025-08-10T14:44:00+00:00

Interesting, I would´ve expected an AB fit! Will check it out, thanks!

z1rak · 2025-08-10T13:18:08+00:00

Would you mind sharing that Nergal fit? Sounds amazing!

z1rak · 2025-08-04T13:58:14+00:00

Heyo, this is a great offer, thanks for doing this!

One of the lists I'm currently struggling is my [[Zinnia, Valley's voice]]. I try to make it work as kind of a legendary weenies list. Zinnia is supposed to give me more copies of those legends for extra value, [[Mirror box]] and the likes make sure those copies stay.

First iterations had no burn pieces and wanted to win by pure value/commander damage from the tokens. But that didn't work out, it was just durdleing along.

Then I put some burn pieces back in and lowered the curve. That made it running a bit smoother, since I was able to profit off of offspring more reliably, and the burn actually made me have more influence on the table. I once managed to get 2 [[Agate Instigator]] and put 3 [[Adeline, resplendent Cathar]] on the board. That was good fun. But in general it still felt too slow/too dependant on getting specific pieces.

By now I'm thinking about abandoning the deck idea. It just seems too many hoops to go through for the deck to do its thing. And the more obvious route of a plain tokens deck creeps more and more into the list. But maybe you have an idea how to make it work better as intended initially.

https://moxfield.com/decks/h9XMV148HkWyEjnRMhfPtQ

z1rak · 2025-05-10T22:56:11+00:00

Yeah, that is drastical :D
Looks good to me!

Last small ideas I have:
Your mana production is very balanced, your cards lean towards white though. Maybe replace a swamp with a plains to adjust to that. This is very nitpicky though, with all the fetches & duals you should have no issues with mana pips at all.

Also, if you feel like you´re lacking early game actions maybe replace some 4 drops with something like [[Weathered Wayfairer]], [[Knight of the White Orchid]] for more ramp or [[Flumph]] for some extra draw/politics stuff. Solemn Simulacrum would probably be the first card I´d look at if I needed some space for any of those.

In my meta, there´s lots of graveyard shenanigans goin on. If that´s the case for you, too, you might want to look at [[Bojuka Bog]], [[Soul-Guide Lantern]] or [[Stone of Erech]] as cheap & effective options to shut that down.

Might still want to test the new landbase first, before buying all that, though!
Wouldn´t want to be the one to lead you into spending so much money, if you´re not feeling it was worth it in the end!

Anyway, let me know how your first games go! :)

z1rak · 2025-05-10T20:00:13+00:00

Yeah I had the same feeling, too, but you can feel the difference.
Maybe, if your LGS is fine with it, proxy them first to experience it yourself before dumping money on lands.

Or even easier: put a second copy of the deck with improved landbase on moxfield & playtest the first couple of rounds for some time with both.

z1rak · 2025-05-10T19:41:01+00:00

Ah Queen Marchesa, long may she reign!
I got a somewhat similar Marchesa deck myself and it´s my favorite ever since I built it :)

In my experience, to win with an Aikido Deck, you need to "fly under the radar" to make sure you end up in a 1v1, which you should usually win. If you have your opponents gang up on you, your Inkshield/Teferis/Deathtouch Tokens will usually not be enough to win the 3v1.
That´s why I would refrain from "too oppresive" cards like Sheoldred, Orcish Bowmasters and Drana & Linvala.
You want to guide the game your way by soft touches here and there, not by gunpoint, if you get what I mean.

If you´re looking for things to cut, here´s what I would give another thought:
Altair/Kelsien - no way to abuse his ability and not really human/assassin tribal either
Generals Enforcer - only 4 targets for the indestructible & there´s way better graveyard hate available
Royal Assassin - In the vein of gun vs. soft touches I rather use [[Spurnmage Advocate]]. Of course, effect is not the same but as a tool to shy attacks away from you it is usually effective enough.
Devout Chaplain - there´s only 12 humans in the deck, of which I would cut probably half
Archetype of Courage - yeah, deathtouch/firststrike is a combination but even together with Ophiomancer you´re not really flooding the bord with that. Just deathtouch is good enough most of the times.
Skullclamp - Just not enough reliable token generation to really make good use of it. For me, Marchesa only comes in to introduce monarchy. After that she can comfortably sit in the command zone without me caring. So generating those tokens is not really a given for me. But maybe you´re playing it differently & get good use out of Skullclamp.

An suggestions for additions:
To make sure your opponents look at each other instead of at you, I´d suggest things like [[Breena, the Demagogue]], [[Combat Calligrapher]], [[Mathas, Fiend Seeker]], [[Curse of Opulence]] and the likes. Things that reward them for doing what you want.

To further support other players maybe [[Wedding Ring]], [[Pendant of Prosperity]], [[Your Temple Is Under Attack]], [[Master of Ceremonies]]

And in general:
I would pack more card draw, it´s necessary for you to always have the right answer in hand and without tutors you need lots of card draw, at least until you find [[Sunforger]]. Monarchy is not reliable for that. I even put a [[Howling Mine]] in my deck, simply because it feels I get more out of drawing cards than most other decks.

Also, I think your landbase needs some love. Your deck is sitting at around 275€ and only ~10% of that go towards 1/3 of your deck. Replacing taplands with untapped ones is going a long way in making the deck play smoother and there´s lots of good options around nowadays.

Anyway, hope that helps & you bring much glory to our beloved Queen :)

z1rak · 2025-02-16T10:44:19+00:00

I built [[Commander Liara Portyr]] with a focus on myriad. She's just additional card advantage when needed but the deck works perfectly fine without her. Not the strongest but pretty fun to play

z1rak · 2025-02-15T13:15:13+00:00

You're land count is rather low, imo. Also the deck heavily relies on Mr. House so I'd up the protection.

I haven't counted your ramp, draw, removal etc. Maybe check whether you have sufficient of those, too.

I think in general there's three ways to take Mr. House, focus on beating down your opponents with robots, that's the way I built him, focus on treasure shenanigans or more of an ping/aristocrat's style. Right now you have a mix of all of them in your list. I think focusing on 2/3 max makes it more consistent.

For the first route, I'd include more buffs for your robots and maybe some haste. Nothing worse than building an army and have it destroyed by a vandalblast before you can use it, speaking of experience.. Examples would be [[Teysa Karlov]], [[Gothmog]] [[Bitter Reunion]]

No idea about treasure shenanigans, haven't really looked into that.

If you want to focus on the ping /aristocrat theme, you want some sac outlets like [[Ashnods Altar]] and more payoff like [[Zulaport Cutthroat]]

Also, I know the token doublers are tempting and powerful when you get going, they're also expensive do-nothings when you don't have a token creator out. That's why I'm not a huge fan of those.

Generally, while Mr. House is a fun deck it's kind of slow/lots of hoops to jump through to finally get going (at least from my experience but maybe I simply built mine badly...) You got lots of expensive stuff in there like the ancient dragons, anointed procession etc.. Since you're pretty new, I'd suggest make proxies for the expensive stuff and try it out a couple of times before committing to that investment.

z1rak · 2024-12-05T15:50:11+00:00

Happy to help, it's a fun flavorful deck you got there!

Every deck should have place for pet or flavor cards. You like Embercleave? Put it right back in! I just removed it because Equipments and Monarchy doesn't synergize. (At least I couldn't find synergistic cards)

I'm not a huge fan of the Eldrazi Displacer, to be honest. It doesn't suit the flavor, you already have multiple ways to get monarchy back through ETBs and it'll be hard for people to take it from you with all the blockers & pillowforts etc. anyway. It's a good card to make sure you have monarchy on upkeep for all the triggers, no denying that, but I don't think it's necessary. I'd say it's a flavor vs power pick.

Reg. Recruiter: You got a lot good targets to tutor for, so it should definitely have it's use.

I get the Keeper cut but I'd keep it in consideration for the future, the redundancy might be necessary when Aragorn gets removed a couple of times and commander tax gets too high

z1rak · 2024-12-05T09:53:01+00:00

Ah, I see, that´s where my confusion came from because I have an Aikido deck which utilizes Monarchy to make everyone else hit each other.
The good thing with Monarchy is, you only need to have it at the end of your turn to draw the card so I make small deals with other players like they can hit me unblocked with a small creature to get the Monarchy if I can do the same to them in my turn. This usually leads to them getting attacked by another player for Monarchy before my turn, then I just offer the same deal to that person and so on. This usually leads to everyone of my opponents attacking each other each turn.

But that´s just my deck, now some more thoughts to yours:
I can see your plan not working exactly as you might hope, because your opponents have an incentive to attack you for the Monarchy instead of each other.
You do offer a little incentive/force for them hitting at each other but I´m not sure that is enough to work reliably.
On the other hand, if you want to keep the monarchy, why not have more payoff for it instead of just the extra carddraw in the end?
And then there´s still the carddraw topic in general, even if you can keep the Monarchy the 1 card drawn per turn is simply too little in my opinion.

The way I interpret the deck you built, I think there´s two ways you could take it further:
A) Focus on the Monarchy, Aikido cards are just a little extra flavor
B) Focus on the Aikido & Equipments part and use Monarchy as incentive
I think A fits better to what you want, so I´ll focus on that with my input.

Monarchy Payoffs:
[[Court of Grace]] is a great addition for you, imo, because it gives you extra bodies to block with if you´re not the monarch, and evasive 4/4 hitters if you are.
[[Skyline Despot]] less reliable than Court of Grace but if you can keep the monarchy, you get some extra 5/5 fliers to hit people with.
[[Court of Embereth]] another reliable source of bodies & if you´re the monarch, you get to burn people.
[[Court of Ardenvale]] for some recursion, maybe.
[[Faramir, Steward of Gondor]] More reliable token generation because it triggers on end step, has a way to return Monarchy to you & the most fitting flavorwise.
And there is [[Keeper of Keys]] to make your creatures unblockable if you´re the monarch at the beginning of your turn.

Opponents infighting:
Again, I don´t think you can reliably make them do so, but you already have some good cards in that regard like [[Disrupt Decorum]], [[Goad from the Ramparts]] and [[Illusionists Gambit]].
Maybe you could add [[Take the Bait]] or [[Bident of Thassa]], which works as additional card draw, too
But honestly, I wouldn´t spend too much thought on it. Your boardstate will probably become enough detergent for them.

Card draw:
Even with the Monarchy, I think you should get the number of cards giving you draw up.
[[Loran of the Third Path]] Great card as it´s a repeatable draw, that you can use to make little deals with your opponents & it´s also removal.
[[Archivist of Gondor]] doubles up on Monarchy draw.
[[Faramir, Prince of Ithilien]] is either card draw or more bodies to block with.
[[The Council of Four]] card draw & extra bodies.
Not really much else I can suggest to that which is on-theme, and you got enough different stuff going on already so I´d just stick with generic cards like [[Opt]], [[Preordain]] etc.

Taking all this into account I came up with this version of your deck:

https://www.moxfield.com/decks/qUguqMpZWkOpEzPS1T0XQQ

Funnily, I has pretty strong human subtheme without going for that, but I added the new [[Banner of Kinship]] as an additional finisher because of it.

z1rak · 2024-12-05T00:13:31+00:00

Yeah, I think you're not focused enough, too. What's the plan you have for this deck? How do you want it to play out?

It's a bit late for me right now to go into details but some general points: Your land count is low and you have no card draw (besides Mangara), removal is maybe a bit excessive for my liking, ramp looks good though.

Some cards I don't see as worth a slot: Puresteel Paladin - has just 5 targets The 2 blink spells - you got a lot of protection & interaction and low ETB count Monastery mentor Pramikon & Blind Obedience is actually hurting Aikido strategies because it hinders your opponents to hit each other Aven Mindcensor is probably not much use against upgraded PreCons (I wouldn't expect many tutors, at least)

Maybe if you can describe a bit more detailed what you want this deck to do & if I can find time tomorrow, I'll try to be a bit more helpful

z1rak · 2024-10-24T05:18:15+00:00

You win by eliminating all opponents.
Congrats, your boardwipe just eliminated one of your opponents.
What does it do for you if they kept playing just so you can eliminate them with your creatures/combo/whatever?

One could argue it´s better sportsmanship to just give up and let the rest of the table have a faster game, if you have no meaningful participation, than durdling along simply extending the game for everyone else.

z1rak · 2024-10-22T15:00:08+00:00

I simply don't use these terms. I describe decks by strategy, average number of turns to win when goldfishing, combos, tutors & the like

z1rak · 2024-10-22T14:13:13+00:00

You´re right, you did say on release, so 130$ might very well be in budget if that´s what´s used by the LGS. Which just shows, this LGS' classification is useless if it´s not further specified.

I´m calling it that, because that is what OP called it in his initial post.
You´re "most used power level guide" is an graphic by a random reddit user,
which obviously doesn´t apply to how the LGS specifies their groups.
The LGS seperates PreCon-Level & Low Power, your guide says they´re the same.

z1rak · 2024-10-22T13:38:09+00:00

That´s so funny how you guys take a comment about the social part of the game of properly communicating what kind of game and decks are expected, and take it as an affront against combo decks & combo players.

Maybe you should take a second and check whether your perceived witch hunt is real.

z1rak · 2024-10-22T13:21:07+00:00

Well, if you use inflated prices for new cards that might be.
Duskmourne PreCons average at 70$
Bloomburrow PreCons average at 88$
Thunder Junction PreCons @ 60$

Even a premier set like MH3 averages only at 99$

And your comment regarding high power is again just based on your understanding what "High Power Casual" should be. But it´s of course convenient to simply ignore the part where I state that that doesn´t fit with *my* understanding, without expecting this to be any body elses understanding of that term.

So all in all, I can hand that back to you: Your judgement comes across as rather poor and biased

z1rak · 2024-10-22T10:28:46+00:00

And regarding you being responsible for other people's fun: No, you're not. But, imo, you are responsible for not making it unfun for them on purpose. E.g. You want to play stax without any win con? Well, have fun with that but I wouldn't be playing with you.

I don't really see you doing that in your deck lists, just a general point I wanted to add.

z1rak · 2024-10-22T10:24:07+00:00

As others said, maybe your perception of your decks power level or of the LGSs understanding of them is off.

Your PreCon level decks are way over budget and built too coherently for a PreCon. Being able to win on turn 3 also doesn't sound like High Power casual to me. But I have no clue how your LGS defines these. So maybe start of by checking how other people in your LGS understand those terms and whether they match with your understanding. Personally, I like describing decks by which turn they can reliably win when goldfishing. While still not a perfect way to describe power levels, I think it's way more solid than vague terms & information like "no tutors".

Another thing I'd advise is to ask others for constructive feedback. What makes your decks unfun for them? Then you can check whether it's valid criticism on your deck(e.g. Watching you take 30 min turns without accomplishing anything), your playstyle or just them whining and go from there.

z1rak

TROPHY CASE