Gyome Food deck

[Tanuki Tales]

Hello everyone, I'm brand new to MTG Nexus and still trying to get the hang of how posting here works. WizardMN was kind enough to offer to help me with this thread if I mentioned him, which I'm not exactly sure how to do. I'll try @WizardMN...oh, it shortcutted the at symbol into a tag to mention him. Alright. Anyways, with that out of the way:

So, I got into Commander back when Strixhaven was the current block. I had been out of Magic the Gathering for years after falling out of love with Modern, but a friend turned me into Commander and resparked my love of the game. I had gotten and played some precons before trying to make my own deck from scratch. I don't remember how I came across him, but Gyome, Master Chef was instantly my guy. I built a deck around him back before there was most of the Food archetype support we enjoy today and back before I understood things like having a proper amount of ramp, proper amount of interaction pieces, making sure my mana base was balanced, etc.

Now that I'm six decks deep, I've decided I wanted to look back to my roots and revamp my Gyome deck into something I'd play now with my better understanding of the game. Just to give some context on the type of decks I run, I own a Wilhelt Zombie Tribal deck, a Sythis Enchantment deck, a slightly upgraded Anhelo pre-con deck (actually had several pieces for that one on hand to upgrade it), a Jhoira Artifact deck (it solitaries so hard ;w;), a Henzie deck and a Smeagol landfall/aristocrats/mill deck.

I'll be honest that I'm probably, and usually do, go overboard when building my decks. I like to optimize and make my decks the best they can be within my price range, as that's just in my nature, but it doesn't matter exactly what I play with my pod, it's overkill. They believe that I'm better at the game than them and have lost in the past when they blindly handed me precons that I had no clue how to play. I do my best to teach them where they can improve or make better tactical decisions, I remind them of triggers and at least one of them lets me build decks for them (whom I'll be making a $250 Aesi landfall deck this weekend for). I share this as context that my pod is not super competitive or high tuned, so I don't need the deck to be something that can trade blows with cEDH decks. They also enjoy the decks I make and like seeing them run and specifically don't want me to pull my punches or tune myself down to more their level.

The Trudge Cafe

DecklistCMCManaPricesChartsDraw 7

Commander

1 Gyome, Master Chef

Creatures

1 Academy Manufactor

1 Beast Whisperer

1 Birds of Paradise

1 Braids, Arisen Nightmare

1 Cankerbloom

1 Cauldron Familiar

1 Chatterfang, Squirrel General

1 Elvish Mystic

1 Eternal Witness

1 Experimental Confectioner

1 Feasting Hobbit

1 Fleshbag Marauder

1 Fyndhorn Elves

1 Gilded Goose

1 Gluttonous Troll

1 God-Eternal Bontu

1 Greta, Sweettooth Scourge

1 Haywire Mite

1 Herald of Anguish

1 Jaheira, Friend of the Forest

1 Llanowar Elves

1 Marionette Master

1 Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest

1 Mirkwood Bats

1 Motivated Pony

1 Nadier's Nightblade

1 Peregrin Took

1 Pippin, Warden of Isengard

1 Provisions Merchant

1 Rapacious Guest

1 Ravenous Chupacabra

1 Sakura-Tribe Elder

1 Savvy Hunter

1 Solemn Simulacrum

1 Syr Ginger, the Meal Ender

1 Tireless Provisioner

1 Tough Cookie

1 Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose

1 Witch of the Moors

Sorceries

1 Annihilating Glare

1 Ezuri's Predation

1 Feed the Swarm

1 Lich-Knight's Conquest

1 Nature's Lore

1 Reprocess

1 Three Visits

1 Toxic Deluge

Instants

1 Assassin's Trophy

1 Baleful Mastery

1 Beast Within

1 Nature's Claim

1 Return of the Wildspeaker

1 Tear Asunder

Artifacts

1 Arcane Signet

1 Idol of Oblivion

1 Inspiring Statuary

1 Sol Ring

1 Trading Post

1 Witch's Oven

Enchantments

1 Fae Offering

1 Killer Service

1 Night of the Sweet's Revenge

1 Utopia Sprawl

1 Wild Growth

Lands

1 Blighted Woodland

1 Bojuka Bog

1 Command Tower

1 Evolving Wilds

1 Exotic Orchard

14 Forest

1 Golgari Rot Farm

1 Llanowar Wastes

10 Swamp

1 Tainted Wood

1 Terramorphic Expanse

1 The Shire

1 Twilight Mire

Approximate Total Cost:

Thanks in advanced for any help and/or feedback!

[WizardMN]

If you want the deck header to match your decks colors, you can just do this in the deck tag:

[deck="The Trudge Cafe" style="Golgari" view="list" shadow="2" order="fixed"]

This gets you this:

The Trudge Cafe

DecklistCMCManaPricesChartsDraw 7

Commander

1 Gyome, Master Chef

Approximate Total Cost:

Notice that the "style" tag can use Magic colors and color nicknames. Of course, if you just want it to be green, that is fine too

Also, you misspelled Windgrace's Judgment.

As to the deck, I like most of the list but it seems like you only have 34 lands which seems remarkably low. I do see you are leaning mostly on creatures for your ramp which isn't bad (though not something I personally like) but I might suggest at least adding in either (or both) Kodama's Reach or Cultivate. Yes, they are three mana, but they ramp and ensure you have a land drop for next turn or even the current turn if you've missed one. I do think that Bloom Tender might be a better creature ramp than at least one of your other creatures.

Maybe Doubling Season makes sense here? Reprocess could be a good draw option.

I think the main thing I might be missing is how you are getting a lot of use out of Gyome's ability. Cauldron Familiar is a decent option, but I don't see many ways to really get a lot of tokens out of Gyome each turn. Since he only cares about nontokens entering, it becomes more difficult to figure out. Maybe some Undying or Persist options? Mikaeus, the Unhallowed would fit there. I am sure there are some better ways of doing it but that is what first came to mind.

[Tanuki Tales]

If you want the deck header to match your decks colors, you can just do this in the deck tag:

[deck="The Trudge Cafe" style="Golgari" view="list" shadow="2" order="fixed"]

This gets you this:

The Trudge Cafe

DecklistCMCManaPricesChartsDraw 7

Commander

1 Gyome, Master Chef

Approximate Total Cost:

Notice that the "style" tag can use Magic colors and color nicknames. Of course, if you just want it to be green, that is fine too

Thanks. Like I told you, no clue how most of this site works. xD

Also, you misspelled Windgrace's Judgment.

Thank you.

As to the deck, I like most of the list but it seems like you only have 34 lands which seems remarkably low. I do see you are leaning mostly on creatures for your ramp which isn't bad (though not something I personally like) but I might suggest at least adding in either (or both) Kodama's Reach or Cultivate. Yes, they are three mana, but they ramp and ensure you have a land drop for next turn or even the current turn if you've missed one. I do think that Bloom Tender might be a better creature ramp than at least one of your other creatures.

One of my earlier lists of this ran 36 lands instead of 34, but at least one person who helped me prior to coming to this site ran 35 and the average decks on eDHrec were running 33. If the land curve is really that low, I could always drop the Bargain spells for two more lands; they're not absolutely necessary and were more thematic additions.

The mana dorks just seemed to play the ramp faster in the early turns for the deck, while serving as chump blockers, sacrifice fodder and bodies to ping off Gyome once a more stable land presence was gotten in later turns. This might have been a bad habit I picked up from the Henzie discord players who tended to build their decks more toward cEDH play though.

I had thought about Bloom Tender, but she didn't seem as valuable in a 2 color deck as she does in 3 to 5 color decks, since she's limited to making 2 mana in this deck per tap. She's an expensive card, so I'd only want her in if I was 100% sure on her value to the deck. If I wanted a higher CMC dork, I would be thinking about maybe one of the more expensive CMC ones who scale their mana output to their power, since this deck runs some +1/+1 options in it.

Maybe Doubling Season makes sense here? Reprocess could be a good draw option.

Doubling Season is outside my price range (I'm trying to repurpose cards I have and not break the bank too much getting new ones). Reprocess is a thought, but then I'd probably go for Malevolent Witchkite...oh, that's neat. When you do the card tag it has a search feature! Erm, sorry; I was saying: I'd probably go for the Witchkite since it's another body that pings off Gyome.

I think the main thing I might be missing is how you are getting a lot of use out of Gyome's ability. Cauldron Familiar is a decent option, but I don't see many ways to really get a lot of tokens out of Gyome each turn. Since he only cares about nontokens entering, it becomes more difficult to figure out. Maybe some Undying or Persist options? Mikaeus, the Unhallowed would fit there. I am sure there are some better ways of doing it but that is what first came to mind.

Well, I began to rebuild this with a kind of Henzie mindset, where I went full blown creature heavy. So while there aren't many constantly cycling options, the deck is predominantly creatures. I could add in Mikky or maybe something like First Responder if you feel I'd be losing out without constant recursion of creatures. But then again, even when I originally made this deck, I thought of Gyome as more a utility piece to the overall synergy of the deck than a necessary engine for it to work and run.

[WizardMN]

If you play the deck and 34 is often enough, then I say go for it. I know everyone has their own ideas but you can probably play it as is and tweak the land count as you go if you feel you need to.

That is a good point on Bloom Tender. I was figuring that it would normally be 2 mana so it might be worth ramping that little bit more. Though, with all the +1/+1 counters floating around, Selvala, Heart of the Wilds might be a good option for really explosive mana production. Of course, now you are getting to a 3 mana dork instead of 1 mana dorks which has its own tradeoffs.

I forgot about the Witchkite but I do feel that type of effects works reasonably well in this deck for some bulk card draw. 6 mana might be too much though so I can see skipping it entirely and trying to stick with some of your other options for card draw as you do have some repeatable options already.

Yeah, if you aren't looking to maximize Gyome I wouldn't try to change much. As I mentioned, I really like the look of this deck and some of the synergies that exist. It would be tough to dilute too much of that if your idea is to simply have Gyome as a utility piece. I don't think First Responder is the way to go as it only gets things back from the field so you can recast them later which I think sets you back too much without much of a gain.

[Tanuki Tales]

If you play the deck and 34 is often enough, then I say go for it. I know everyone has their own ideas but you can probably play it as is and tweak the land count as you go if you feel you need to.

That is a good point on Bloom Tender. I was figuring that it would normally be 2 mana so it might be worth ramping that little bit more. Though, with all the +1/+1 counters floating around, Selvala, Heart of the Wilds might be a good option for really explosive mana production. Of course, now you are getting to a 3 mana dork instead of 1 mana dorks which has its own tradeoffs.

I forgot about the Witchkite but I do feel that type of effects works reasonably well in this deck for some bulk card draw. 6 mana might be too much though so I can see skipping it entirely and trying to stick with some of your other options for card draw as you do have some repeatable options already.

Yeah, if you aren't looking to maximize Gyome I wouldn't try to change much. As I mentioned, I really like the look of this deck and some of the synergies that exist. It would be tough to dilute too much of that if your idea is to simply have Gyome as a utility piece. I don't think First Responder is the way to go as it only gets things back from the field so you can recast them later which I think sets you back too much without much of a gain.

My current thought process would be to switch Rowan's for Reprocess, Back for Seconds for another land and maybe Arbor Elf for Kami of Whispered Hopes. Because, honestly, if I was going for a three mana dork, I wouldn't go for Selvala. Not only is she an expensive card $$-wise, but since this isn't a stompy deck by default, she might just end up being more of a value engine for my opponents than me.

Edit: Maybe even switch Arcane Signet for a land. I wanted to switch Arcane Signet for creature based ramp, but didn't like what options I had left.

[Tanuki Tales]

Alright, made some changes.

Removed
Arbor Elf
Back for Seconds
Elves of Deep Shadow
Rowan's Grim Search
Windgrace's Judgment

Added
Exotic Orchard
Reprocess
Solemn Simulacrum
Utopia Sprawl
Wild Growth

Made some of the switches I mentioned earlier. I've never been a fan of Arbor or Deep Shadow dorks, so decided to put in some enchantment ramp to cover my bases. So I wasn't losing out entirely on creature numbers, switched an expensive removal (think I have enough removal anyways) for some more creature ramp.