Burningnomad wrote: ↑11 months ago
So are all your other decks more conventional compared to zedruu? I'm mainly asking because looking at your deck and making my own version and stuff was/is a super fun time deck building. Is there any mentality or generalized goal you keep to keep other decks also fresh? Also besides zedruu who are your top 2 or 3 commanders out of pure curiosity.
I personally try to make my decks as less conventional as possible.
I used to run a Phelddagrif 4-card combos with many different combos and flavor (like running and using in combos both
Words of Wilding,
Words of Wind and
Words of Worship), but it ended up just having about a bunch of different variations of combos with either
Crystalline Crawler,
Intruder Alarm or
Naru Meha, so I recently just remade it into a no-combo Hippo factory lifegain and I am very happy with it (there were a few other fun combos in it, f.e.
Kiora's Follower+
Maze of Ith+
Darksteel Garrison+
Vanish into Memory to draw my deck). I also had a Jund deck also on Zedruu's spirit (tried many different commanders on the helm, from
Lord Windgrace to
Soul of Windgrace to
Adun Oakenshield), but I took it down in the end. The deck wanted to just discard lands and play
Life from the Loam again and that was VERY time consuming for the table. This was NOT fun. (Some great combos in that deck though, like
Shenanigans+
Bone Miser+
Skirge Familiar+
Creeping Renaissance or.
False Cure+
Decaying Soil+
Skyshroud Cutter+
Ashnod's Altar).
The 11 decks I currently own are (from oldest to newest):
1. Zedruu 4-cards Puzzlebox, which is my own version of the deck based on tstorm's one ofc. It is my favorite deck and I dont see anything taking it off the top.
2.
Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis Egglands, a deck that wants to massively sacrifice all its lands and then massively recur them for value. I recently took out all landfall effects from it to make it spicier. It was inspired from the "Zedruu Lands" version that was briefly talked about in this thread as well. Even without landfall effects, it has some combos, due to
Mystic Sanctuary loops.
3.
Phelddagrif Hippo factory lifegain, a deck that wants to gift as many hippos as possible to gain value from it (no combos!) from
Soul Warden effects, lifegain triggers, things like
Sunstrike Legionnaire, manipulating the amount on creatures on the battlefield for things lik
Oath of Druids or
Defense of the Heart, etc. My 4th favorite deck right now.
4.
Blex, Vexing Pest // Search for Blex Dredge. I only use the backside to fill my hand and gy. The deck's whole strategy is Step 1: Put all the library in the gy. Step 2. Cast a
Praetor's Counsel/
Harness Infinity. Step 3. Cast a
Skirge Familiar/
Cadaverous Bloom and use the billion mana to win somehow (
Tortured Existence+
Syr Konrad, the Grim is my prefered method)
5.
Lord of Tresserhorn Zomblins. Zombies and Goblins. And ways to combine both races. There are combos like
Skirk Prospector+
Liliana, Untouched by Death+
Arcane Adaptation+whatever etb/ltb effect.
6.
Dakkon Blackblade control. Basically a deck that has the most cards I feel nostalgia with from my earliest magic years (around the Merquadian Masques era). It haas cards like
Spectral Lynx,
Blinding Angel, etc.
7.
Gluntch, the Bestower controlled Hug. Based on the concept of "every nonland card should give something to my opponents". My second favorite deck after Zedruu. Can be very political if I want to. Extremely fun, everyone loves it. Everyone questions why I give to their creatures all counters from
Forgotten Ancient and then hit their heads realizing I have a
Generous Patron in play.
Eureka might be my favorite card of all time. Favorite moment, when an opponent played an
Angel's Grace, but could not stop the draw from
Divine Intervention.
8.
Minsc, Beloved Ranger Aristocrats. A casual version of the cEDH Minsc deck, without the combos and the
Protean Hulk. Still, many different lines and very fun in general.
9.
Sliver Queen Enchantress. The deck has 0 "draw a card when you play an enchantment" effects, because I hate them. It also has 0 slivers apart from Queen herself and 0 infinite combos. But it has a bunch of weird enchantments that can result in very funny scenarios. Including
Nefarious Lich+
Transcendence+lose life effects like
Unspeakable Symbol. My third favorite deck behind Zedruu and Gluntch
I also own a
Hans Eriksson beatdown and a
Cosima, God of the Voyage // The Omenkeel vehicles, but nowdays I consider these decks more my wife's than my own.
In general, I found out that 12 decks is the max I can have. After that, I end up not playing decks that I really want to play with. If I get to not play a deck for a long time, for me it is a sign that I do not enjoy it that much any more and it is time for it to change. This is why I try not to play strategies with a single focus that push a mechanic to the Xth degree, but rather having many different pieces that interact with each other, creating a different playing experience each time. For me this is the way to always have fun with my decks and rarely get bored with them. Ofc all decks need to have distinct strategies from one another. Also creativity matters a lot.