Need cEDH perspectives on Xander

[DirkGently]

After building Mike a Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded deck a few months back, Jon has expressed some interest in having me build a cEDH deck for him. I told him I'm not really a cEDH builder and that he could pretty easily get a cEDH decklist online, but he doesn't want to for whatever reason. So I suggested a few commanders but he didn't seem to bite. Last night, though, he handed me a Lord Xander, the Collector and said he wanted me to build him a cEDH deck around it.

I should probably add some context here - as I've complained about elsewhere, the cEDH/commander line has gotten pretty blurry, and the vast majority of people who profess to play cEDH are not playing anything close to a tiered list. Lots of 8s and 9s, very few 10s. The primary place Jon wants to play this deck is at one of our LGSs which has a for-prizes commander night, which also (idiotically) separates the tables by self-reported power level. As you can imagine, the incentive to underestimate one's power level is pretty high and it sounds like there's a lot of pubstomping nonsense thanks to this structure. Though tbf I'm getting this information second-hand as they play on Fridays and Fridays is draft night for me (at a different store).

Anyway, initially I was receptive to Xander - he's got a reasonably gnarly etb and death trigger, and granted he's kinda pricey but that never stopped my Kaervek the Merciless from coming out reasonably quickly. Sounds like the perfect deck for one of my favorite underrated gems, Corpse Dance. Time to drown them in triggers. But the more I think about it, the more concerned I am that Xander might just not be cEDH material, perhaps even in the faux-cEDH environment that Jon will be playing the deck in. My big concerns are:

-Seven is a lot of mana. With a good ramp package, it can be gotten in a reasonable time frame, but it involves a lot of tapping out and a lot of deck slots for ramp that may not be very useful in the late game. Plus if he eats a STP the turn he enters, the whole machine grinds to a halt.

-He's a very blunt weapon. He can blow up/discard a lot of stuff, but never the most important stuff. The fact that he rounds down is especially worrying. Knocking out 1/2 or 3/4 of an elf army is a decent job, but he's not much for disrupting combos or hitting priority targets.

-Both of those things come together to create a real problem for deck space, I think. To get him out in a timely manner, I'd want ~20 pieces of ramp. To get corpse dance reliably, I'd want ~10 tutors. Since he can't disrupt combos effectively, I'd want ~20 pieces of disruption. And ofc I wouldn't want to skimp on lands either. So the deck is starting to get pretty full, and we still don't really have anything approximating a reasonable wincon yet, nor decent draw. I find myself looking at Xander in the context of this prospective deck and think "what exactly is the POINT of this card? You don't actually do anything I care about!"

I'm sure I could build a passable deck around Xander, possibly using him a smaller piece of the puzzle rather than the centerpiece. But I have a hard time imagining that the deck will get beyond about an 8, unless I basically just ignore the commander. Maybe that will be acceptable to Jon, idk how married to Xander he is, but if I'm going to spend hundreds of dollars of his money, I think he should have reasonable expectations of how this deck is going to perform, and I think it's likely to be mid/low power level within the context of the LGS cEDH pods, at best.

But I want to get some outside opinions from actual cEDH players - I know cEDH can be a fairly wacky animal that puts emphasis on things in a very different way than regular commander (case in point, the number of commanders that are high-tier just because they win the game once you have infinite mana off Food Chain or whatever, like Ukkima, Stalking Shadow). So is there some angle I might be missing here that might allow Xander to be a halfway-decent cEDH commander? Or should I try to push Jon somewhere else?

[Dunadain]

I agree that it doesn't really touch upon cEDH. As someone that actually plays cEDH, if I had to show up to a cEDH table with Xander, it would probably be storm or Doomsday as those are pretty commander agnostic strategies.

Sorry, wish I could give you some insight, but I largely agree with your analysis. Ask him how he feels about Tivit, Seller of Secrets. Tivit is much better both as a clone/reanimate spam, and as a combo deck with Time Sieve.

Tbh, though, sounds like they aren't really even playing the upper echelons of cEDH, so maybe Xander would do something.

IDK, the fact that the abilities only hit one opponent at a time makes it pretty mediocre in my eyes.

Edit: should probably make the disclaimer that I haven't played a game of cEDH is three months.

Edit 2: also, don't let him buty a decked out cEDH deck until he's played a couple games, or at least gold fished, with proxies first. cEDH is way too expensive lol.

[toctheyounger]

Yeah, second Tivit. Easy value, doesn't go too quick, nice midrange grind build with a good variety of A+B combos. Xander just isn't there.

If he's stuck on Grixis, Evelyn and Cormela are both viable, or there's Rog/Si, Sauron, or if he's really, really brave, Inalla. Would not recommend Inalla for a new initiate though, it's a very complex build.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Hard agree with Dunadain. Let him sling some rounds with proxies first to see if he even enjoys the format. Then if he enjoys it, tell him to play a real competitive format.

[Dunadain]

Hard agree with Dunadain. Let him sling some rounds with proxies first to see if he even enjoys the format. Then if he enjoys it, tell him to play a real competitive format.

I'm never gonna change the prevailing attitude towards cEDH, especially in this form, but please don't imply that I agree with your attitude towards it.

cEDH is a great format.

[Dunharrow]

maybe xander can be in the 99?
i would not build it, not before managing expectations
Want the best xander deck? Sure. Want a cedh deck? Sure. Just not helmed by Xander.

[toctheyounger]

cEDH is a great format.

Agreed, it's just as valid as any other competitive format.

Honestly dirk, based on what you've told us of this guy I don't think he's really up to cEDH; sounds like he's out of his depth in terms of advanced strategy. Just saying. If he really wants a 'does what it says on the tin' linear cEDH build to try out, I'd maybe say Godo Helm would be worth suggesting for him as an entry point. Or maybe a Jetmir, Nexus of Revels stax deck, idk.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Hard agree with Dunadain. Let him sling some rounds with proxies first to see if he even enjoys the format. Then if he enjoys it, tell him to play a real competitive format.

I'm never gonna change the prevailing attitude towards cEDH, especially in this form, but please don't imply that I agree with your attitude towards it.

cEDH is a great format.

Sorry, didn't mean to. That last sentence was my personal bias shining through.

[Dunadain]

Hard agree with Dunadain. Let him sling some rounds with proxies first to see if he even enjoys the format. Then if he enjoys it, tell him to play a real competitive format.

I'm never gonna change the prevailing attitude towards cEDH, especially in this form, but please don't imply that I agree with your attitude towards it.

cEDH is a great format.

Sorry, didn't mean to. That last sentence was my personal bias shining through.

That's fair enough, and rereading my post I definitely came off to confrontational. LOL

Play whatever you like guys.

[DirkGently]

Thanks a lot for the perspectives. I've relayed the info to him. As I see it, his options are either go ahead and build it as an 8/10 deck, build it as a reasonably cEDH deck that never casts the commander, or pick something else. I'll see if he's more receptive to suggestions.

To clarify for @Dunadain and @TheAmericanSpirit, the plan would be to build the deck from my own collection, let him play it, potentially do some tweaks, and then buy the cards when he's happy with it. (He's said his budget is something like $300-$500 so it's not going to be fully kitted out by any stretch - at least he's already got a mana crypt) That said, from my POV, the time is nearly as big of a sunk cost as the money since a three-color deck will probably take at least ~8 hours for me to build. So I definitely want him to be satisfied the first time around.

@TheAmericanSpirit @toctheyounger I've gotten him to draft/sealed a couple times but it doesn't seem like it's stuck. The problem with competitive formats is that you need to actually be good at the game lol. He's graduated from a D- player up to a C+ player, but a standard tournament is still going to be discouraging lol. He'd get rolled in a "proper" cEDH environment too, but in faux-cEDH I think he's got a chance just by having a stronger deck.

[duducrash]

Grixis is overall really strong in cEDH, so I guess yo can be competitive no matter who is at the realm, but I think that as you alluded, its a fine high power commander, but not viable in cEDH

What does he like about Xander?

[DirkGently]

So I actually misunderstood what he wanted - while he has floated the idea of me building a cEDH deck in the past, that's not what he's looking for with Xander.

As I mentioned, it sounds like the store he's playing at is having pubstomping problems due to the structure. They play a powerful deck at a low-power table for prizes, then switch to an appropriate deck for that latter games that don't have prizes on the line, What he wants is a deck that can screw target player as badly as possible, basically. So I think Xander should be perfectly capable of that much. It may be a bit of a boon that he isn't really cEDH so he doesn't become a pubstomper himself. Just run a bunch of interaction, a bit of ramp but probably not too much, and some corpse dance shenanigans seems decent for that purpose. He probably won't be up against true cEDH opponents anyway, so hopefully his limited interaction decisions won't be too much of a hindrance lol.

[darrenhabib]

If the aim is to stop a single player then I think a counterspell deck would be good enough and running on a budget of $300-$500 you could just build a mono-blue deck to save on expensive multicolored lands. Baral, Chief of Compliance would be my pick.

If he wants it to be interesting and varied to play then that's a different story. My concern is that after spending money on any deck that aims to stop a single player, you'll eventually want to also win with it, while trying to keep the power level around where you want to remain within the group of players you were trying to protect in the first place.

[duducrash]

They play a powerful deck at a low-power table for prizes, then switch to an appropriate deck for that latter games that don't have prizes on the line

Thats why I believe if a store wants to prize support to casual commander, it should be random. If they have to compete for the cards, of course they will play to win. It's the stores fault imho

[DirkGently]

@darrenhabib I don't think a multicolor manabase will be a big deal. Obviously I'm not going to include fetches and shocks, but I'm confident I can build a good-enough manabase on the cheap. Jon is used to a mostly-basic jank manabase so this can only be an improvement.

Relying on counterspells seems dicey since he's not great at identifying crucial targets. Xander is pretty simple, just point the mean ability at the mean player. Obviously he'll need some removal and counters as a last line of defense, but I think Xander is an okay choice in the CZ. Anyway, it's what he wants.

@duducrash I agree with that, which is partly why I don't play there (other reasons include: they have some dumb league rule nonsense where you get points of certain achievements, and they primarily play on Fridays).

[FetalTadpole]

If the sole aim of a deck is to stop a single "overpowered" player and not try to win itself, isn't that kingmaking? Isn't that not trying one's hardest to win the game? Doesn't that invalidate the win of whoever ends up winning? Doesn't that go against everything Dirk stands for? Should he really be the one making this deck?

[DirkGently]

@FetalTadpole I'm just building the deck, how Jon plays it is his business. A deck loaded with targeted control tools is very much within my wheelhouse, of course, and is a very viable way to win the game.

And if you're sitting down against 2 casual decks and a cEDH deck, it would be difficult to overcommit on targeting the cEDH deck. That's not kingmaking, that's just assessing threats (and I am personally very hesitant to use the term "kingmaking" unless someone's explicit goal is to help another player win).

[benjameenbear]

All of these assessments are very accurate and I have little to add. Tivit is one of the top-performing cEDH lists right now and it wouldn't be too hard to tweak it down to be an 8/10 power level. Displacer Kitten and Time Sieve are the two most important cards in that list IMO and the rest of it is your choice of removal, ramp, card draw, and interaction. I could easily see a 8/10 high-level build of Tivit that plays 34-35 lands with efficient counterspells and still perform well even against cEDH tables.

Lord Xander, the Collector is definitely a card that can trigger negative politics for your friend @DirkGently. Is he comfortable navigating those table politics on top of the rest of a strategy? Depending on the maturity of the player, losing half their resources could definitely build resentment for the targeted player that might results in a more difficult game.

[DirkGently]

@benjameenbear It's what he wants to do. I don't think he's planning to single out a random person, but more like single out the pubstomper and stomp them back. Afaik he doesn't care too much if he wins doing this either.

It's not what I would build, but I haven't played in the environment he has, and he was pretty adamant about the commander. I tried suggesting commanders to him for ages and he had no interest in any of them. At a certain point, I don't see much point in trying to change his mind.

The deck is built btw. Not sure if I'll post it. It's probably at least decent though I really don't like Xander very much.

[Moxnix]

You don't need anything special to target someone out or kingmake just a pauper pile of disenchant counerspell and doomblade is good enough most the time. cheap draw engines cheap removal cheap counters duress /hymn / stone rain effects etc.I also kind of like "head games" as a kill condition in giving another player a god hand.