What are some of your biggest brew fails?

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Dunadain
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Post by Dunadain » 1 year ago

today I had the stupid idea to use all those backgrounds to have a "Commander Tribal" deck.

Basically, you'd steal all you're opponents commanders (I was going Sliver Overlord for five colors and an in CZ way to steal opponents' commanders), buff them with cards like Raised by Giants and Anara, Wolvid Familiar, and swing their commanders at themselves.

I'm sure a couple of you already noticed, but the background enchantments say "commander creatures you OWN" not CONTROL and you can't own your opponents commanders so bust it is.

The idea isn't completely dead, but without the backgrounds you don't really have a critical mass of cards and let's face it, the deck probably wouldn't be very fun to play against since people don't like having their commander stolen.

I'm just frustrated because I had like ~80% of the deck built before I noticed.

So I need y'all to make me feel better, have you ever gotten really excited about a new deck idea only to realize the deck won't work the way you thought?
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duducrash
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Post by duducrash » 1 year ago

don't let the dream die! get 2 partners that get up to 4c and cards that protect your commanders like Guardian Augmenter and smash face. I believe you!

my biggest build fail is Tazri, Beacon of Unity I built to play against precoms. It's pretty boring TBH. It won some games, but it feels like cards together

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TheAmericanSpirit
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Post by TheAmericanSpirit » 1 year ago

I built a Henzie deck earlier this year that just would not get off ground no matter how many times I revised it. I'm still not exactly sure what went wrong, but dang did I try.
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Dunadain
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Post by Dunadain » 1 year ago

duducrash wrote:
1 year ago
don't let the dream die! get 2 partners that get up to 4c and cards that protect your commanders like Guardian Augmenter and smash face. I believe you!
Maybe, I thought about that, but it's not as funny as dealing 21 commander damage to someone with their own commander.
All cards are bad if you try hard enough.

Important decks: Ebondeath, Dracolich, Emiel, The Blessed, Phelddagriff
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FetalTadpole
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Post by FetalTadpole » 1 year ago

I've had Noyan Dar, Roil Shaper built since he came out and the deck just wants to do too many things at once in colors that don't support it. You need lands because your creatures are your lands, but Azorius has no way to ramp directly, so you need to run artifact mana, but you also need to run counterspells and spells that destroy all nonland permanents, but you don't want to destroy Noyan Dar, because he's expensive and costs 7 to play again, but some of your lands are creatures so you don't want to tap them for mana...

Just way too many things going counter to each other. I keep the deck around, though, because the one in a hundred times you'll one shot someone with a 10/10 Inkmoth Nexus are totally worth it.

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pokken
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Post by pokken » 1 year ago

FetalTadpole wrote:
1 year ago
I've had Noyan Dar, Roil Shaper built since he came out and the deck just wants to do too many things at once in colors that don't support it. You need lands because your creatures are your lands, but Azorius has no way to ramp directly, so you need to run artifact mana, but you also need to run counterspells and spells that destroy all nonland permanents, but you don't want to destroy Noyan Dar, because he's expensive and costs 7 to play again, but some of your lands are creatures so you don't want to tap them for mana...

Just way too many things going counter to each other. I keep the deck around, though, because the one in a hundred times you'll one shot someone with a 10/10 Inkmoth Nexus are totally worth it.
Check out the cosmic intervention ramp package :). There is just about critical mass of white land ramp now with archaeomancers map, etc. my breena deck consistently out ramps most green decks.

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Lifeless
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Post by Lifeless » 1 year ago

Does it count if I made Arcum Dagsson and it was so miserable I played it once and then took it apart?

Most of my punted brews are UG for some reason. They are usually trying to do more than the standard UG "get some counters" shtick but they just never turn out the way I want them or the combos I choose fall flat in practice. A lot of my RW decks miss the mark too, although it's been a while and RW has a lot better card draw than it did the last time I tried. Maybe I've just convinced myself to fail one more time.

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PrimevalCommander
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Post by PrimevalCommander » 1 year ago

I built a Daretti, Scrap Savant artifact deck as a place to put all my fast mana just because putting them in a binder seemed wasteful. Put a bunch of top heavy bombs in with a bunch of fast mana and as many wheels as I thought I could manage. The mana curve went from 0-3 them jumped to 6-10 with little in between. So my opening hands would either be all ramp and no draw, or all bombs and no ramp. One in 5 or 6 games I would curve out perfectly, hit all my wheels on time, and snowball the table under a mountain of artifact mana and Eldrazi and Robots. But most of the time it was a crash and burn. I could have re-tooled it and dropped the curve, but instead I retired that deck to build a different type of mono-red deck. I was the deck I always looked at and thought "Meh, I'd rather play any other deck".

One of my most memorable wins was untapping after getting hit with Cyclonic Rift. I had plenty of mana artifacts in hand that got bounced and Paradox Engine was still legal. I "comboed out" from 4 lands and no other premanents to a table kill with mana rocks and P-engine. It was at that point that I realized Paradox Engine is an utterly busted card. I know... banned cards are strong...who knew? :)

I have a Mono Black Control Yawgmoth deck that is turning in the same direction as Daretti. Funny thing is, I only played maybe 3 games with it an lost all 3. But goldfishing it always plays out as a medium-speed combo Aristocrats deck with huge amounts of spot removal. Despite losing every game with it, I know if I should win, anyone playing creatures would likely have a bad time, so I leave it in the box and play other more proactive decks instead. I need to give it another chance and probably cut some of the combo pieces to slow it down a touch. I just don't play at a high enough power level for such a control-y deck.

edit to add: Back when I was more active in the game I was trying to field a deck for each 3 color combination. That plan had some winners and several losers. My first draft of was Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest equipment, and the blend of heavy equipment theme, lack of ramp, and Shu Yun's mana hungry ability made that deck fall flat on every outing. Also the lack of good white protection spells we have today had it falling into all of the traps a typical voltron deck experiences, but without my more developed understanding of mana curve, card draw, and theme balancing. Also it was back when we didn't have Wizards serving up signpost commanders for every archetype imaginable, so it was a work-with-what-you-got scenario back then.

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Crazy Monkey
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Post by Crazy Monkey » 1 year ago

The deck that comes to mind most as a failure was trying to make use of Flamekin Herald. It required Commander's Insignia and Myth Unbound so that Alena, Kessig Trapper could keep pace with her costs and play the entire deck. It was a horrible, time wasting 5 card combo and still didn't manage to orient any of the deck. I just couldn't find any thing interesting to focus on. That deck still bugs me.

The other deck that comes to mind is trying to figure out tribal lords with Volo, Itinerant Scholar as a revisit to lords voltron Mistform Ultimus. There's just so few tribes available in blue, volo didn't bring anything interesting.
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Post by Dragonlover » 1 year ago

Eruth, Tormented Prophet for me. Wanted a sort of prowess-tribal type thing, turned into yet another spellslinger deck who's turns would take forever and you'd have to track a bunch of different cast triggers.

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duducrash
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Post by duducrash » 1 year ago

Tatsunari, Toad Rider . When the card was previewed I mentioned on the unreleased card thread. I would build a really bad Tatsunari deck. I don't quite get the enchantments flavor but %$#% yeah a ninja and a frog I'm in.

I've been trying to build Tatsunari mutant ninja frogs for a while now and I can't take it off the ground. The idea is to mutate Keimi, so I get redudancy on the frog and more drain, but I just doesn't work for me.

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Post by NGPR » 1 year ago

Marchesa, the Black Rose is truly impossible to build. I love her, but she gets smoked by nearly every piece of interaction. I've tried building multiple people's exact deck lists and by turn 4 I already know that I've lost.

Also, any tempo outside of the five common boring lists flops miserably.

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Post by Sinis » 1 year ago

Most of my ideas fail/flop in the planning phase, but a few of them have actually been full on constructed and played only to flop then. Most of my stories involve misevaluating cards. I'll share some stinkers.

Shadrix Silverquill was fully constructed. My playgroup just does not play politics that way. We make deals, but if you are forced to pay at least one person, the value of your goods plummets. With Shadrix, it was only ever throwing the worst player off a bone, and the 'value' you get is just not good enough to justify the cost (and opportunity cost of taking Shadrix over some other Orzhov Commander of which there are plenty of good options).

Tajic, Blade of the Legion ended up fully made. It turns out that if your general is just a 2/2 indestructible and 7/7 (with no evasion) when you form battalion, it's just not impactful enough. I had magic xmas land thoughts about aggroing players out, but it just... never happened. Even with an extra attack step, it isn't actually lethal, and it turns out 2/2 indestructible is actually fairly destructible because of things like Massacre Wurm|NPH, and a handful of other cards.

Oskar, Rubbish Reclaimer seemed okay at first glance, but more and more, he just seems like a generic value thing with some oddball synergy for 'from graveyard' cards like Secrets of the Dead, or that it would just dovetail into a reanimator deck because you want to play a lot of draw-discard cards. It ended up never being built.

You cannot suspend Ith, High Arcanist from the command zone.

Shauku, Endbringer is just unable to police everyone's board in order to attack. Nonbo with Thornbite Staff, as well.

I actually made a thread seeking help about Adun Oakenshield|LEG right over here. The deck really struggled to do anything, and I had to starkly increase some of the power in the maindeck.

Years ago, I bought a Tetsuo Umezawa|LEG to play Tiny Leaders, and then everybody immediately stopped playing that format.

Halfdane|LEG doesn't copy game text. I misread the card, and thought that I could just clone other things I had, so I could have two-ofs, but it only copies power and toughness, which is a whole other kettle of fish.

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Post by 3drinks » 1 year ago

Putting Chrome Mox in a Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer deck with the rest of the fast mana.

"Nice artifact deck, dumbass."

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