MTGNexus

What *IS* the community build-a-deck? Inspired by a subject on the MTG Nexus commander forums, ths project takes a randomly determined legend (and partner, or background, if the random button falls on an applicable legend) where we work together on the deckbuild process. For the sake of historical reference, each finished deck will be archived here on my Moxfield. Then There are some rules involved, though;

- I will start the deck with a randomly determined legendary creature or legendary planeswalker that can be a commander. In the event of pulling a partner, I will randomly determine what it's paired with from all the available partners pool. I may reroll the random commander in some cases, because no one wants to see a full build for such all-stars as Tobias Andrion or Lord Magnus, of course.
- Next, users will be limited to one suggestion a day (24hrs, to prevent posting at 11pm and then at 12:15am). Users must provide some sort of reasoning to the choice. I'm not saying you need to submit a forty page dissertation, but you should have more forethought than shouting a card name into the thread, or else what's the point?
- Each poster after will vote yay or nay on the card suggested, preferably with some sort of write up defending their vote. Once the card reaches three yay votes, it will be added to the deck, but if it reaches three nay votes first, it will be removed from consideration. Users cannot vote on their own cards...for obvious reasons.
- When you make your daily suggestions, don't forget to weigh in on the cards currently on the table! There's nothing worse than cards hanging in limbo for days because no one else comments. Cards left in limbo in this way for two days will see myself making an executive decision, in the spirit of keeping things moving.
- This aim is about communication and cohesion, if you don't agree with a direction or card choices, SPEAK UP, and let's talk it over. Preferably with more than a one sentence quip. If we can't communicate effectively, this project will fail every time.
- Let's aim for a "75% mid to high" power level. We all know the upper ends of cDH are an incredibly small, "solved" card pool, and building to such a pinnacle will lead to some very same-ish decks. That flies directly in the face of this exercise we're doing, no?
- How cool would it be if some number of us actually took these decks and brought them into their paper world? Let's try to leave the Reserve List stuff out, as well as keep the spell selections to ~$30 and mana lands to ~$9. Occasionally you will see price "spike" cards break this for really synergistic interactions (such as Inkmoth Nexus in the first deck with Livaan, Cultist of Tiamat). These price numbers are not set in stone however, just a general guideline to stick close to.
- Each finished deck will go on to my Moxfield to live forever as "@mtgnexus Community Deck Project {deck number}" for reference point. - I reserve the right to amend these guidelines as we go, should questions arise.

Without further ado, the commander randomly determined for v2.0;

Well folks.................you can tell me how exactly we're supposed to build this thing.

Big booty fliers?

Low-ish MV flying that can somehow capitalize on topdeck manipulation makes sense. Geralf, Visionary Stitcher or Runo Stromkirk // Krothuss, Lord of the Deep as a sub-theme direction?

With Commanders at these higher MV, I'll guess that suggestion of Sol Ring is a boring given.

I think that big booties are not strictly necesary if we can go wide and take advantage of lifegain triggers. There are several cards that would drain each opponent on lifegain and also some creatures that will get counters on lifegain.

Runo really looks like he would be comfortable with these two.

I vote yes to Geralf, Visionary Stitcher solely because I like having repeatable sac outlets around. No verdict on Runo Stromkirk // Krothuss, Lord of the Deep

I also vote yes to Sol Ring just to get that out of the way.

Hope of Ghirapur might be useful. Low CMC flyer with a useful ability and we can recur it pretty easy in these colours.

Lord of the Void is my first offering. Beefy flier that triggers both our commanders and flips Runo if he ends up in here.

Personally, if I was building this, I'd be looking for attacking/combat damage trigger stuff, since we want to be getting in the red zone anyway. Sadly my existing deck on that theme uses morphs, which are lacking in fliers.

As for votes, I'll yay Sol Ring. I'm ambivalent on the Hope, but that's cause I personally haven't seen it do much in commander, so no vote either way on that.

If I read the post correctly Runo and Geralf are not the posters pick for the day.

Dragonlover

I feel like before we start just suggesting cards, we need to settle on a direction to take it. That way we don't end up like Livaan last time.

I'm seeing topdeck matters, I'm seeing lifegain triggers and thus, life as a resource. Man, that U card really isn't very good, is it? At least it gives access to wonder|jud though? I don't think large butts really matter here, you're just trying to gain some life to funnel into [effect].

Can we utilize a companion?

Well, our companion options are Keruga, the Macrosage, Umori, the Collector or Gyruda, Doom of Depths. Umori would force us into playing only creatures. Keruga, maybe? But is it worth it?

As for deck direction, I feel like going wide with small fliers is a viable choice. Stuff like Baleful Strix, Ice-Fang Coatl and Trygon Predator. Maybe some of the better ninjas to sneak through since most of our creatures are going to be evasive anyway?

Going wide with flyers for sure, with a sub theme of lifegain, perhaps with stuff like Ageless Entity? And if we're gaining so much life, Damnable Pact-ish stuff could be really good. I also want to know one thing: like @duducrash suggested in the previous thread, should we get the unsexy ramp and fixing stuff out of the way first?

I'm torn. I think we can utilize Keruga just fine as a big Sultai draw spell, but most the ramp I want to use - into the north, three visits, sol ring - are sub 3 mv. Which also denies the aforementioned ice-fang coatl and baleful strix. Is it really just trading one flavour of draw for another?

I think Garuda does have some legs here, though we lose sol ring, efficient cantrips, the aforementioned trygon predator, and any chance of swords.

I don't think Umori has any legs.

3drinks wrote: ↑

1 year ago

I don't think Umori has any legs.

Yeah, I dont think it does either. He is more of a formless goo

We could put the archetype up for voting? We pick some strategies and live it up for a set ammount of time (12, 24 hours?) and the one that has more yays at the end of the day is the route we follow?

For example

keruga companion
Big butt attackers
Low curve aggro build

And maybe a subtheme?

Scry matters
Lifegain

And so on

Siani is so bad god damm. I think we could go a Demon/Self Mill/Reanimator type of combination. Demons has big booty and they fly.

If we going to use Geralf i would vote for Unhallowed Phalanx in that type of deck

RedCheese wrote: ↑

1 year ago

Siani is so bad god damm. I think we could go a Demon/Self Mill/Reanimator type of combination. Demons has big booty and they fly.

If we going to use Geralf i would vote for Unhallowed Phalanx in that type of deck

I got a sneaky suspicion that playing cards like this that are only good with the commander, are not going to be good enough. It's like playing Grizzled Leotau in Doran - what happens when you don't have the big tree on board?

Alright alright alright. Well, for starters, I think we should resolve the companion question, and I'm suspecting we don't want to run one because our options look to be Umori, meh, or Keruga, who takes the deck straight to casual town. With a more powerful commander I think adding companion is a good idea, but with this pairing I think we might want to stay away from depowering the deck further.

I agree with some of what has been said, and I think where we might want to be is with the go wide fliers strategy. I'm thinking cheap and useful fliers such as, Birds of Paradise, Maraleaf Pixie, Thief of Sanity, the aforementioned Baleful Strix, etc etc. Just bois who do something useful on their own, and can attack to trigger both our commanders. Although, I guess in hindsight BoP doesn't trigger Ikra, but it still ramps I guess.

As threedrinks just said, I think we want to play fliers, but not just fliers that are basically just big fatties with not many effects. Since both our commanders are expensive, I think we want cheap and useful fliers that can allow us to go wide quickly while ramping or cantripping.

That I think naturally leads into playing cards such as, Winged Portent, Guardian Project Reconnaissance Mission, since our main goal is to connect with fliers.

Just my two cents.

I like the idea of low curve aggro deck. a lot. I specifically dislike the idea of high toughness creatures because the only payoff we have is lifegain. It's much, much less powerfull than Doran, the Siege Tower and that would still not be super powerfull.


Yay to Hope of Ghirapur
Yay to sol Ring

I'll hold my vote on Lord of the Void . It is cool enough to be a curve topper I guess, but I'm not sold neough to spend a high money slot on the card.

My pick for today is Siren Stormtamer . It does double dutty. It is an evasive attacker and also offer us protection

EDIT : Also, sultai is the Ninja colors. Since we are looking to attack with evasive threats, if a ninja is good enough to be run, this is the place IMO

Ikra Shidiqi, the Usurper is the card to build around, IMO, which means big butts, evasion, synergy, and good stuff. Siani, Eye of the Storm is just a Snapping Drake. It provides access to U, which is nice, but that's about it.

I also vote for low mv flyers.
Ikra Shidiqi, IMO, is pretty bad to build around and is really only giving us access to Black and Green. In a pinch you slam it and gain 5-10 life off your flyers.

Siani is not good either, but scry is decent in 75% builds and if you have flyers turns 1-3 you can get a pretty good card flow by dropping this on turn 4.

I like the Ninja idea quite a bit, but we are not making them evasive with a general. I think if we have 10 or more ETB creatures (like Baleful Strix), then it could be worth adding 3-5 ninjas.

I love a scry subtheme but I am pretty sure there are no payoff cards that would make sense in commander. If anything, Cellar Door is good with scry.

Will wait on people to agree to the theme before I start voting or suggesting cards.

Man, I hate Sultai, cause it's like getting easy mode Simic but here's some universal tutours and hard removal. At least we have junk commanders to make it mildly interesting. Hmm, what can Sultai do that procs off combat damage? What about Dark Simic Fish? Feels like I'm at the bottom of the barrel. Hmm, we can set up our top deck and self mill? Seems a reasonable Search for Azcanta // Azcanta, the Sunken Ruin deck.

Sultai skies does seem to be the prevailing winning strat, though it doesn't feel "exciting" to me? Oh, boy, another deck that rushes out Edric/Bident to draw a bunch of cards! Maybe I'm being pessimistic, we'll see.

I'm still trying to reason through some plan or strategy, because there's not really a great reason for the flying subtheme unless the deck also capitalized on the topdeck manipulation that it provides. Maybe keep the low MV evasion to trigger many instances of life gain, then a mostly black deck to grind down life totals similar to Dina, Soul Steeper? I think that Geralf, Visionary Stitcher fits, and suggests some zombie tribal with...Skullbriar, the Walking Grave? Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord? I guess there aren't really any impressive green zombies outside the command zone. Maybe not a zombie tribal subtheme.

I do think that a plan built around Ikra, with just some reasonable enablers for Siani (Wonder) probably makes the most sense. Basically Ikra+blue.

EDIT: I do kind of like the ninja subtheme idea.

3drinks wrote: ↑

1 year ago

Sultai skies does seem to be the prevailing winning strat, though it doesn't feel "exciting" to me? Oh, boy, another deck that rushes out Edric/Bident to draw a bunch of cards! Maybe I'm being pessimistic, we'll see.

Maybe a recursion-skies strategy could be an interesting enough twist on skies to make it exciting? Though I think a deathtouch theme would be more fun.

First, I hate this combination. Second, I hated the last one but it grew on me, so...

1. How many in-color, worthwhile lifegain payoffs are there?
2. It looks like we're in flying, so blue and black will be handling most of that I suppose.
3. If a major part of our plan is connecting with flyers and scrying with Siani, Eye of the Storm, wouldn't it be cool to run the good (though few) miracles we have available?
4. And if we're scrying so much, let's add cards that let us use that, like Lurking Predators.

So, here's what I'm thinking:

Flyin' Scryin' Lifegainin' Topdeck Abuse

Also, can everyone use card tags, please? I don't know what every single card does.

I found something. We're set up for a pretty okay Sanguine Bond deck and there's a few additional copies of that effect for redundancy. Does that mean we're gonna shoehorn Exquisite Blood too?

RxPhantom wrote: ↑

1 year ago

First, I hate this combination. Second, I hated the last one but it grew on me, so...

The dread on my face when Ikra was the first legend the random button stopped on. Then when I hit #59 on the RNG to find our little snapping drake, man this sentence hit me all too real.

I almost suggested that we should just give up on making this a "real" deck, and just run a bunch of GB 4/4's with vigilance and then give them flying to uh, fulfill an ancient test question, for the memes lol.