[Brainstorm] New Deck Ideas

[grimoiredark]

Good day to you all!

For starters, thank you to everyone here! I regretfully am very bad at commenting and interacting with people, yet you all are extremely welcoming and knowledgeable with questions I've had in the past. For that, I'm extreme sorry and hope to change that going forward!

With that said, is there anyone here who sometimes struggle with deck building? In the sense of having a strategy you want to use, but never know which commander or colors to take it in? That is currently my dilemma as I'm in the process of reconstructing some older decks and still have a bit of my collection to make more. As someone who always wants to use all the cards they can, I wanted to look to you all for advice or suggestions with some new decks. To give you an idea, here are what my current decks are:

Keep:

Aminatou, the Fateshifter Reanimator - My personal favorite deck and one I've had for a bit since she was released. A combination of cheating big creatures and ETBs along with a few planeswalkers shenanigans (big thank you for darrenhabib for their help with this one!).

Breya, Etherium Shaper Artifact - Originally a token deck, I opted to fill it with a lot of my favorite artifact synergy cards like Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas or Blightsteel Colossus. This one has a bunch of planeswalkers in it!

Teysa Karlov Aristocrats - Building off of Teysa 1.0, it takes out the combos for more death doubling Shenanigans. Plus, I love the art on the new Teysa :D

Krark, the Thumbless and Sakashima of a Thousand Faces Spellslinger - Becoming a new favorite as this is a version of storm I can get behind. It always bugged me that I wanted a spellslinger deck, but wanted it to be more interactive rather than a game of solitaire. These commanders add a lot of chaos and imo fun as anything can happen!

Mathas, Fiend Seeker Politics - Newest deck and more excited to build. Using a combination of some counter synergy from old and new Silverquil cards, the deck works to keep people off you until you can take over the game or get a surprise win! Plus, it allows me to use my favorite enchantments of Captive Audience and Overwhelming Splendor.

On the fence:

Muldrotha, the Gravetide Toolbox - A deck I've been on and off about since I love both her concept and power. My issue is typically the deck feels a bit stale as while you'll always have an answer to a lot of things, but it isn't super exciting. Would still like a toolbox deck but maybe not this one?

Beyond these, I was thinking of recreating my Omnath, Locus of Mana deck for some big mana shenanigans but have had that deck for years.

Based on these decks listed, would anyone have suggestions of decks to try building for some diversity? Sorry for the long post and thank you for any insight you all can provide. You are all amazing!!! :D

[EonAon]

Hamza, Guardian of Arashin or Shalai, Voice of Plenty for some good old fashioned +1/+1 counter beats to just realx and just aggro the table with the fun upside of a few random infinite win combos depending on how you build.

Maybe Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose in a sucks to be you vampire deck?

[FoxHybrid]

One theme that you don't seem to have a deck for-except for Omnath- is voltron. One simple deck to build for a voltron deck is Feather, the Redeemed. I might recommend that you check out @Rumpy5897's primer for a good example of a Feather deck. If you want to build your own voltron, you might want to check out the Commander Replay Podcast's Everything Voltron episode for some interesting insight on the strategy. Hope this helps.

[TheGildedGoose]

Unless you absolutely hate playing fun police, I would recommend a control deck, probably blue-based. Properly built and played, you won't contain the table, but you'll do just enough refereeing to survive until the endgame where you're advantaged to win. I would recommend Kess, Dissident Mage, Tasigur, the Golden Fang, Elsha of the Infinite, or Phelddagrif (see this thread), depending on your color preferences.

[grimoiredark]

Hamza, Guardian of Arashin or Shalai, Voice of Plenty for some good old fashioned +1/+1 counter beats to just realx and just aggro the table with the fun upside of a few random infinite win combos depending on how you build.

Maybe Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose in a sucks to be you vampire deck?

Oh yea! I forgot about the elephant! That's definitely a possibility and heck, maybe even Animar, Soul of Elements (tho they might be two completely different decks.

One theme that you don't seem to have a deck for-except for Omnath- is voltron. One simple deck to build for a voltron deck is Feather, the Redeemed. I might recommend that you check out @Rumpy5897's primer for a good example of a Feather deck. If you want to build your own voltron, you might want to check out the Commander Replay Podcast's Everything Voltron episode for some interesting insight on the strategy. Hope this helps.

Unless you absolutely hate playing fun police, I would recommend a control deck, probably blue-based. Properly built and played, you won't contain the table, but you'll do just enough refereeing to survive until the endgame where you're advantaged to win. I would recommend Kess, Dissident Mage, Tasigur, the Golden Fang, Elsha of the Infinite, or Phelddagrif (see this thread), depending on your color preferences.

Funny enough, I had a Geist of Saint Traft control voltron deck since I love the card. Reason is got dismantled is that two high value cards got stolen from it which killed the deck for me. Plus, he isn't a great voltron commander either lol

Both of those strats are sometimes I didn't think about 🤔 control especially. How does Tasigar normally play?

[materpillar]

You don't have anything attack damage related. You should build some large timmy thing. I personally enjoy Velomachus Lorehold and Gishath, Sun's Avatar quite a lot for my face smashing desires.

[Ruiner]

You don't really have an aggro focused deck. Maybe consider Abomination of Llanowar tribal elves It comes out swinging fast and aggressively. The deck goes simultaneously wide and threatens commander damage kills. Link to my list is in my signature if you are interested.

Some sort of equipment or aura based Voltron deck would be a good thing to try out also.

[toctheyounger]

I'd recommend a control deck, and if possible, avoid blue to make things a bit more challenging for yourself (and more fun for your opponents too - no one likes blue draw-go counters). I've currently got two in Bruna, the Fading Light and Tayam, Luminous Enigma, but it's a broad enough archetype that there's plenty of scope for other commanders if you see another you like.

[TheGildedGoose]

How does Tasigar normally play?

Tasigur control is very political due to the nature of his ability. If there's a problematic spell or permanent, you can ask another player to give you back an answer in order to solve the problem. Typically, you'll open with a few turns of draw, go, and ramping a little bit. In the mid game, when things start getting spicy, you'll have to learn to balance letting things happen as opposed to stopping them. The deck is almost entirely instant speed answers, so you can react to things at the last possible second. You have to be very good at threat assessment and have a fundamental grasp of how your opponents are going to be playing, but the deck is very rewarding to play.

How you win is up to you. Since Tasigur wins with infinite mana it's easy to just generate that and use him to draw your deck where winning from there is academic. If you want to be more fair, you can use him as a finisher if you can maneuver the game into being 1v1 where you can easily overwhelm your opponent with card advantage and remove all of their threats. A 4/5 body isn't impressive but if your remaining opponent can't stick any creatures in play then the 6 turns it takes to knock them out via commander damage is trivial. There are plenty of other win cons in those colors, but personally, I like having very compact and lean win conditions where most, if not all, of the pieces are viable on their own, and I like playing powerful cards. To that end, I play the Dramatic Reversal and Isochron Scepter infinite mana combo, adding in infinite turns with Seasons Past, Demonic Tutor, and Time Warp and the ability to generate 13 mana.

Here's my list.

[grimoiredark]

How does Tasigar normally play?

Tasigur control is very political due to the nature of his ability. If there's a problematic spell or permanent, you can ask another player to give you back an answer in order to solve the problem. Typically, you'll open with a few turns of draw, go, and ramping a little bit. In the mid game, when things start getting spicy, you'll have to learn to balance letting things happen as opposed to stopping them. The deck is almost entirely instant speed answers, so you can react to things at the last possible second. You have to be very good at threat assessment and have a fundamental grasp of how your opponents are going to be playing, but the deck is very rewarding to play.

How you win is up to you. Since Tasigur wins with infinite mana it's easy to just generate that and use him to draw your deck where winning from there is academic. If you want to be more fair, you can use him as a finisher if you can maneuver the game into being 1v1 where you can easily overwhelm your opponent with card advantage and remove all of their threats. A 4/5 body isn't impressive but if your remaining opponent can't stick any creatures in play then the 6 turns it takes to knock them out via commander damage is trivial. There are plenty of other win cons in those colors, but personally, I like having very compact and lean win conditions where most, if not all, of the pieces are viable on their own, and I like playing powerful cards. To that end, I play the Dramatic Reversal and Isochron Scepter infinite mana combo, adding in infinite turns with Seasons Past, Demonic Tutor, and Time Warp and the ability to generate 13 mana.

Here's my list.

Interesting! You have the best of every world along with a way to recur all your spells with a bit of finagling and politics. I've ran a lands matter version of him in the past (wasn't a fan), but this is a cool angle to take thank you!!!

Are there any other control commanders anyone can suggest? After watching the podcast (which is a good suggestion. Love it!), Omnath 1.0 seems like a good way to go for aggro with some variation on what I normally put in it.