Just a simple PSA. Voltron is one of my favorite archetypes to play in commander and I’ve even built a few weird versions of it like Voltron Veyran. But if you put all your eggs onto one creature, people are gonna remove that creature. So be prepared.

Just the other day I had a player become insanely salty and spend all of his removal on me for an entire game since I removed his commander twice, saying I completely prevented him from playing the game. His commander was [[Kotis, the Fangbearer]]. If Kotis hits someone for enough damage, especially with a [[Roaming Throne]], in play that’s insane value. So I’ll remove it. And you as Voltron players should be prepared for the same! Keep your commanders under Shroud, Hexproof, Ward, anything you’ve got! It’s the only way to make sure it gets through and beats people bloody.

Last week, EDHREC’s redesign went live with a new look and new features, and we asked for your feedback. Since then, our dev team has been hard at work fixing and changing a few things. Our newest changelog offers an indepth look at these changes alongside some bugfixes and more on what’s to come!

We want to make sure to keep communication open. Use our official our feedback form to submit your thoughts!

And, if you experience a bug please do submit a bug report. In particular, if you are experiencing performance issues with the site in any way, we would like as much detail from you as possible as it is the primary item on our docket. That means device, browser, firmware, etc.

For those of you who offered us feedback and pointed out bugs, our team thanks you!

I have a high-power Bracket 3 mono-blue deck (I am him. I swear, my pod needs it), and I have one slot left for a Game Changer. I'm torn between Rhystic Study and The One Ring.

In a vacuum, I think Rhystic Study is the stronger card. It can potentially draw you more cards over the course of the game while also taxing your opponents' resources.

However, in my experience, Bracket 3 games tend to be slower, with players casting fewer spells per turn than they would in higher brackets. Rhystic Study also tends to paint a huge target on your back, sometimes making you the archenemy almost immediately.

The One Ring, on the other hand, feels like it offers more value in this environment. It lets you draw cards while keeping a lower profile, and its protection can help you survive the kind of combat-heavy games that seem more common at lower brackets.

So, while I think Rhystic Study is objectively stronger in a vacuum, I'm wondering if The One Ring is actually the better choice for this particular meta.

What would you guys run, and why?

Hello, I was reminiscing about my previous decks and commanders.

I will note my examples here:

[[Feldon of the Third Path]] - too step of an investment, missing black or other color, super cool flavor, outclassed by tempo, slow

[[Osgir the Reconstructor]] - my replacement for Feldon, suffering from the same problems he had

Theft decks - way too much keeping note of boardstates for little reward, makes players salty, nightmare with sleeves and online play

Discard - fun only for the owner if lower power level and bracket

Tribal five color - always the same core, with little wiggle room, limited despite being in five colors, changelings provide boost but make already flavourless 5 colors even more flavourless

Group hug - unfair game dynamics, requires good knowledge, if played bad it kingmakes, super unfun to play against and group slug ironically isn't

Eldrazi, slivers, [[Winota]] - super cool on paper, snowballs hard, falls off even harder, removal check

[[Haakon, Stromgald Scourge]] - can't be cast normally, its good as an engine but horrible as a commander

[[Godo, Bandit Warlord]] - linear if not the most linear deck to exist, one counterspell destroys him

What is a commander or archetypes you play or played that fundamentally lacks something crucial (restrictions, reasonable mana value, proper color support, metagame position) or simply forces game patterns that are too linear or plain boring?"

I’ve got a hankering for a hunkering. A Naya commander. A naya build so cool it gives me ideas, or maybe I just copy your list. Everything is fair game. Partners. +1 counters. Infinites. Blink. Agro. Artifacts. Any bracket. Give me inspo 🫡

Let’s go!

Please

https://archidekt.com/decks/16913370

[[K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth]]

I have this Krrik deck with a Final Fantasy Villains subtheme that I like a lot.

I don't have a lot of decks and would like to have a viable 2nd commander in the deck I could swap him from time to time. (it doesn't need to be FF)

The thing is, I run 34 lands very comfortably with that commander, so I'd need someone that could run with that condition.

I saw [[Gonti, Night Minister]] that can make Treasures, maybe something like this?

It would change the game vibe.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

EDH is best.

With that said, I’m sure your pod will enjoy a curated Battle Box (link to explain what a battle box is) to switch it up a little!

I deconstructed a couple of my old EDH decks that had some cross synergy and created a Battle Box for a 4 player pod that is ready to play, tons of synergy and hidden commanders.

The box includes 160 cards, with everyone drawing from one shared nonland deck, a shared graveyard (optional) and a separate land pile. Players start with 4 cards, and you choose one land per turn from your own land pile (2 of each color basic).

For my box, the central theme is artifacts and overlapping synergies: ETB effects, flicker, sacrifice, death triggers, recursion, Treasures, artifact creatures and tokens. There’s also plenty of traditional creature combat, interaction, and bigger finishers. Creating your own design constraints balances the box and is a fun deck building puzzle!

My goal isn’t to make every game play the same way or force players into rigid archetypes. I built a self-contained environment where cards have individual value but reward creative combinations, leading to different board states and paths to victory.

Here is my list:

https://moxfield.com/decks/0vafASTlX3KJU_vykFKHTg

My friends and I have all decided to run a budget league of $50 decks to get away from how staple heavy our recent games have been. We also just wanted to get back to that true bracket 2 spirit of a bunch of decks playing suboptimal cards to try and make an optimal strategy.

How has your experience been with running a specific pod of budget decks against each other? I’m actually quite excited for a “meta” to develop within our own meta, especially as more narrow tech is far more playable in a known environment (and a lot cheaper too)!

Hello everyone!

I’m looking to get back into Sultai after playing a bit too much Esper lately, and I’m currently torn between [[Glarb, Calamity’s Augur]], [[Teval, the Balanced Scale]], and [[Muldrotha, the Gravetide]]. I figured I’d ask for your input!

Here are my thoughts on each commander so far:

Muldrotha

• Pros: Lets me recur a wide variety of permanents without having to rely on dedicated reanimation spells like Reanimate.
• Cons: Six mana is a pretty steep cost, especially if she gets removed a couple of times.

Glarb

• Pros: Card advantage in the command zone, and he looks awesome.
• Cons: Doesn’t really offer any direct payoff for reanimating things.

Teval

• Pros: Seems to trigger off pretty much everything I want to do, making him a great engine for generating value.
• Cons: The self-mill makes me a little nervous. I’m worried about milling cards I’d rather keep in my hand or draw naturally.

I’m aiming for a Bracket 3 deck, as that’s what my playgroup plays most often. My main game plan is to reanimate plenty of creatures and other permanents while gradually outvaluing my opponents. Landfall would be a secondary theme that complements the overall strategy rather than being the main focus.

Ideally, I want the deck to feel like a steadily growing engine: generating value turn after turn, building momentum, and eventually overwhelming my opponents with recurring threats and resources. Resilience against removal is also important to me, so I want to be able to recover and keep going even when my opponents try to disrupt my game plan.

I’m not looking to build a dedicated combo deck, though. I’d much rather win through incremental value, recursion, and board presence than rely on assembling a specific combo.

Which of these three commanders would you recommend for this kind of strategy? Does the choice make a significant difference, or could all three support this game plan equally well? I’d especially appreciate hearing about your experiences with these commanders and any potential pitfalls I might be overlooking.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

Greetings,
Wontax

I have had Carth the Lion deck ever since his first printing, always loved playing him. He solves the biggest issue for superfriends decks in edh. You get value from walkers dying.

With reality fracture I added 10 new cards: the two garruks, all on colour way enchantments, [vraska's final mercy], overwrite the multiverse, rewrite regrets, arcane amphisbaena and sanctum lurker. The synergy with Jace tokens is through the roof. Empower jace 2 to draw a card and look for a walker in top 7 feels so good. Without a question my favourite deck to play.

Here is the decklist, any suggestions and opinions are welcome! Share your own favourite carth lists please!

https://moxfield.com/decks/kub7HSQ4iEmsxptxTdfPwg

https://moxfield.com/decks/RSoylO5R-EW1_n9k76tJ4A

Agora estou montando uma lista para [[Zaxara, the Exemplary]] (faço proxy dos terrenos, sou parcial sobre isso). Minha ideia central era focar o X grande apenas nos feitiços e instants, como [[Exsanguinate] e [[Torment of Hailfire]]. Mas na prática acho entediante, [[Finale of Devastation]] + [[Herald of Secret Streams]] foi um finalizador de jogos mais divertido. A questão é que prefiro migrar para castar mais criaturas com X e queria novas ideias para minha lista. O deck é obrigatoriamente B3, e não quero fazer uso de mana infinita com os encantamentos aura.

Been looking at card draw for my gruul lands deck and considering some/all 2 mana discard a card, draw 2 cards spells. Seems like good filtering card draw especially when I know I will always discard an extra land. Opinion? Are these still playable and worth it? How many is too many?

Hello everyone,

I'm currently trying to find a mono black commander to play, but having a really hard time finding an option for almost a year. So I was hoping to get some recommendations here. The main reason is that I'd like to find a home for the mono black manabase I built up - snow-covered swamps, Cabal Coffers, Cabal Stronghold, Urborg Tomb of Yawgmoth, Crypt Ghast, Exteaplanar Lens, etc. Initially I had a Chainer, Master of Dementia deck, but ultimately disassembled the deck as the play pattern proved too linear with looping Kokusho, the Evening Star or Gray Merchant of Asphodel proving to be the strictly superior lines.

However, even after looking around, I didn't find anything that appeals to me. What I would exclude:

- Aristocrats: that's something I'd prefer in multicolor.

- Graveyard/Reanimator: graveyard strategies already commonly feature among my decks, such as my Muldrotha reanimator or a Simic deck that tries to lock down the table by looping counterspells and other interaction.

- Discard and other oppressive strategies: my pod is only slowly moving towards more powerful decks, precons are still reasonably common. My tendency towards interaction and control strategies already presents a significant challenge for my friends, so I am already holding back here.

I'm also not overly keen on tribal strategies, but not inherently averse. What I've considered so far, but kept finding reasons against playing it:

- Ayara, Widow of the Realm: I was thinking of running her as a mono black commander deck, but ultimately moved away from it. Fling strategy feels a bit dead end and not very synergistic. And on her back side, she just reanimates things again.

- Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor: in general this felt like an interesting choice to me. However, running small evasive creatures feels too similar to my Yuriko or upgraded Kamiz decks.

- Lim-Dul, the Necromancer: here the thought was to build a deck that runs a lot of spot removal and then steals the opposing creatures. Here it felt like it is a lot of small pieces that need to come together to get going, and honestly I could just play Gisa, Glorious Resurrector or Gisa, Hellraiser instead.

In general what I enjoy are non-linear play patterns, synergy, engines, and triggers. It's fun to me to have complicated board states, things that trigger off each other, and so on. For example, piloting Ms. Bumbleflower when something happened almost every time I cast something was really fun. Maybe you have a recommendation for me that I missed?

I'm looking to complete decks in each color pairing except 4 color. I don't really care for 4 color decks. I'm currently missing 4.

Mono Blue

Simic

Jund

Bant

The only one I've got an idea on what i want to do is Watcher in the Water for mono blue. but I'd like to hear other options.

I would like to hear about decks that are off the beaten path for the color pairing, but if you've got one that you just love, tell me about it anyway.

don't worry about budget, im not racing out to build all 4 right away, and i'll pare it down to my budget anyway.

So I leave it up to you now, tell me about your favorite deck in those 4 colors! Showcase your deck!

EDIT:

I thought maybe i'd include commanders I already have for an idea of what I play now. Decklists available!

Esper: Alela, Artful Provocateur

Abzan: Frodo & Sam

Naya: Gishath

Jeskai: Inspirit

Temur: Maelstrom Wanderer & Xyris

Sultai: Muldrotha

Mardu: Queen Marchesa

Grixis: Sauron & Tetsuo Imperial Champion

Selesnya: Arahbo

Orzhov: Athreos, God of Passage

Dimir: N'gharthrod

Boros: Eivor, Battle Ready

Golgari: Hapatra

Izzet: Mizzix

Rakdos: Prosper

Azorius: Ranar

Gruul: Xenagos

Colorless: Karn

WUBRG: Najeela

White: Darien, King of Kjeldor

Black: Drana, Liberator & Marrow-Gnawer

Red: Krenko

Green: Ezuri

I first got the Wretched Ranks precon and didn’t realize the backside of the deck holder insert had punchout tokens in it until I noticed in the others and by that time I had already tossed the insert. I know Tramplesaurus has tokens that aren’t +1/+1 so I’m just curious if there were any deck specific tokens in the Wretched Ranks box.

Thanks in advance to those who answer!

I’m new to magic and deck building. I’ve been told this is a kill on sight commander. Any suggestions or ideas or is my deck good where it’s at?! During playing tests I didn’t lose a game and one game I had a one land hand on accident.

Games were played on edhlab against randoms

https://moxfield.com/decks/9mmcWO_zeUSc2TziBKvvwQ

I've been playing my [[Teysa Karlov]] deck for about three years. It's probably the deck I'm most comfortable with, and I've always described it as pretty straightforward.

Sacrifice creatures, get death triggers, make more creatures, repeat. Nothing particularly complicated.

Last weekend a friend forgot his decks and asked to borrow one of mine. He's been playing Magic for a couple years, so I handed him Teysa and told him it was easy to pick up.

Holy shit, it was not.

He'd look at a board with six creatures and a sacrifice outlet and ask what he was supposed to do. I'd say something like "Well, you can sacrifice that one now, but it's probably better to wait until you get another payoff."

Then he'd ask which payoff.

And I'd realize there were about four different cards I was hoping he'd eventually draw, each of which changed what he should be doing with the exact same board.

At one point he asked why I hadn't attacked with a creature that was just sitting there doing nothing. I started explaining why I wanted it to die on my terms, then caught myself explaining an interaction involving three cards that weren't even on the battlefield.

He wasn't playing badly. He just didn't have three years of experience with those specific 99 cards living in his head.

I think I've confused knowing my own deck really well with the deck actually being simple.

It also made me wonder how many times I've told newer players that a deck is easy when what I really meant was that the decisions feel automatic to me.

Has anyone else had this realization after watching somebody else pilot their deck? And how do you actually judge whether a deck is beginner-friendly when you're already so familiar with it?

[[Krile Baldesion]] is a cool little commander. She cares about mana value and harmony between your creatures and non creatures. She is "The little Guy" deck to me.

I was playing her in high bracket 2. The game plan was to make a lot of little creatures on the board, do a little bit of table control to slow the table down because our deck is not fast, and then buff the board. We accrue value with some mill pieces or just using krile to recover lost pieces.

The deck is mostly mana value 1 and 2, and has only a couple of cards that don't have a 2 mana value or less side to it,

I'm trying to bring it into bracket 3 with this list. I liked the idea of having a backup combo, because the swing out strategy isn't that strong. Perhaps if that doesn't work, I can try to switch game plans on the fly.

So I added [[Nomads En-Kor]] and [[Cephalid Illusionist]]. Together, these two can mill your entire deck. Usually that's finished with a thassa's oracle to win. But here I'm using [[Fblthp, impossibly lost]]. If i don't draw it, the combo will mill it to the graveyard. I can then summon my commander, play a 2 mana non creature spell, grab Fblthp, and play him. Then I'll need a creature already on the field and to swing. [[Artful Dodge]] can help connect. Altogether that's 10 mana across 5 cards (2 can be milled, 1 is my commander). So it needs to draw 2 of them at least and connect with combat damage

I goldfished 5 times. I got the combo 0 times. Twice, I had 50 damage on board at turn 7 (and like barely any damage before that). The other 3 times I had middling damage by then

So I want to ask for feedback. How to improve the deck for bracket 3. Card choices etc. If the combo plan will help. If the combo is appropriate (reddit was aggressively saying it's not bracket 3 appropriate. I asked only one of my friends in the pod so far and he said it'd be sweet to play that)

Please let me know your thoughts!

For those who don’t know, the reserve list was created in 1996 in response to a crashing singles market and a turbulent time in tcg history. Wizards promised to not reprint certain cards on said list.

Now, we find ourselves two decades later. The cheapest abu dual is $320, Gael’s cradle is $800+, and many more. This extreme price locks out the vast majority of magics player-base out of some of the best cards in the game. Sure, you can always proxy, but many others and i love to have the authentic card, plus it locks out players who aren’t willing to fork over a paycheck from playing them in tournaments. Those who have the money will have the advantage. Plus, if we see abu duals get rereleased, the majority of other dual lands will become much cheaper and more accessible for all. Enough time has passed. Collecting isn’t what magic is, it’s playing the game itself; so why lock some of the most iconic and best cards behind a massive paywall?

I’m building a [[parnesse the subtle brush]] commander deck that heavily relies on politics to stay alive long enough to win a slow control game. It uses [[firebrand archer]] effects which I call spell burn effects and intentionally avoids versions that do 2 or more damage because they are too quick. But would you make deals with someone who’s evenly dealing damage to everyone or at what point should I expect that I won’t be able to make deals with anyone? And in general how do you evaluate slow wincons throughout a game in your playgroups?

Hey yall, I have put a lot of work and $$$ inti my lathril deck but I feel like it really missing something, I’m curious about wether or not I should take out removal for more ramp spells or draw spells i’m kind of lost on what too use my spells for outside of the more obvious, any and all help would be so appreciated, mostly looking for card suggestions here’s my archidekt https://archidekt.com/decks/27601191/lathril I still plan on adding dionus, revitalizing repast, and alpha status, thank yall <3

How to force players to lose the life with starseer mentor

In my deck, I have [[starseer mentor]] Starseer mentor says "at the beginning of your end step if you gained life this turn, target player loses 3 life unless they sacrifice a nonland permanent or discard a card."

So my opponent is given choice of damage, discard, or saccing a permanent. Problem is, they almost always choose to avoid the damage. In the 30 or so games I've played with him, only 3 of the times did they choose to take damage.

I want to force them to take the damage. My commander is [[firja, judge of valor]] so it's black and white. Anyone know how to make this possible? I'm not worried about budget, if there's a card I want, I'll save up for it.

Deck list:

https://moxfield.com/decks/cvkzXVJLx0qFco2_IMwayA