MTG Salvation

Why Play the Deck?
First things first, let's talk pros and cons. You will enjoy this deck if:

• You enjoy a deck that rewards your piloting skill. This build of TGM is more difficult to play than any other deck I’ve spent a significant amount of time with, and the deck is actually pretty bad until you have a decent amount of experience with it. Between complicated Doomsday lines, all-in risky plays where you “might just draw the combo” like Rain of Filth, and convoluted dredge chains, things get complicated quickly.
• You enjoy wonky combos. Our actual kill-con is very silly, but in my opinion is still elegant and the most compact way to play the deck.
• You think that your commander should be an integral part of the deck. Not only is The Gitrog Monster part of our only win-condition, it's also our most powerful engine for drawing cards and ramping. This deck leans hard on its commander.
• Your meta is full of midrange decks that will try and out-value you. When not disrupted, this deck will be ending games on turns three to five.

On the other hand, this deck might not be your cup of tea if:

• You are new to the format, or you are unwilling to put in the time to learn to play a deck properly. Again, the deck takes practice.
• You want a straight, stable line to victory. Many times, the best play is to risk it, when you have only a 70% chance of winning. If you're a conservative player, this deck will challenge your intuitions.
• You often play against tax effects, gravehate, and hatebears. These effects will be the bane of your existence.
• You don't enjoy explaining things to people who have never seen this combo. Our combo can get quite complicated when we are pushed for resources, and especially when Skirge Familiar has been exiled from the deck.
• Your playgroup doesn't allow proxies and you don't want to spend a lot of cash. Unfortunately, there is a huge power level difference between this deck with vs without Bazaar of Baghdad. Maxing out on fetchlands is also important, and you will want access to all the fast mana like Mox Diamond, Grim Monolith, and Lion's Eye Diamond.

What's the big deal with this frog dude anyway?
The most important thing that our commander does for us is provide us with a very clean and compact combo. With any discard outlet such as Wild Mongrel and with Dakmor Salvage in hand, we will be able to put two cards from our library into our graveyard. Combined with our commander's ability, as well as a Kozilek, Butcher of Truth anywhere in the deck, we will be able to draw our entire deck and win from there. This will be explained in detail below.

Froggy does more than combo, though. Making your fetchlands cantrip, Exploration on a stick, and having seriously insane interaction with Bazaar of Baghdad makes our commander a card advantage engine to be reckoned with. The card-drawing ability also turns our dredge cards into potential sources of card advantage. The upkeep trigger looks like a downside, but we'll be drawing so many cards that we'll be replacing our lands faster than they get sacrificed.



Strategy
Let's talk gameplay. The majority of the time you're playing, you will be searching for the fastest line to victory, so the most important thing for you to know is exactly how the combo works. With that in mind...
Finishing the Game
The only way this deck wins the game is with Dakmor combo. The combo requires our commander in play, Dakmor Salvage in hand, and a discard outlet such as Putrid Imp. We discard Dakmor, get a draw trigger, and dredge Dakmor back to our hand. We mill two cards, and if we hit a land, we get a draw trigger. We're now at the same position we were in the beginning of the loop, except that we've milled two cards and potentially put a draw trigger onto the stack.

We can repeat the loop, playing around Faerie Macabre and similar effects by discarding Dakmor before the “draw a card” trigger resolves. This ensures Gaea’s Blessing never has a chance to enter our hand. Eventually, we dredge into either Kozilek or Gaea's Blessing. At that point, we’ll have to let the shuffle resolve before continuing the combo - again, to play around instant-speed gravehate effects.
By continuing the loop, we will generate an arbitrarily large amount of “draw a card” triggers. From here, we will want to produce arbitrarily large amounts of black mana. We can proceed to allow some of our triggers to resolve, drawing our deck. Then we discard Kozilek, shuffle up, and draw our deck again. (If at this point we are disrupted by Faerie Macabre, we should be able to beat it with Noxious Revival. To ensure this is always an option, we’ll need to make sure never to discard the Kozilek while Blessing is in our hand and Noxious is not.) At this point, there should still be an arbitrarily large number of “draw a card” triggers on the stack.

We have now reached a point where we need to generate infinite black mana. At sorcery speed, this is as simple as putting Skirge Familiar in play, but at instant-speed we’ll need to do better. (For the sake of explanatory narrative, let’s assume Necromancy is in exile, meaning no instant-speed Skirge Familiar.) It’s as simple as casting Dark Ritual, discarding Kozilek, and drawing them back. By looping rituals like this, we can generate infinite black mana.

We can also loop cards at sorcery-speed without having infinite draw on the stack. This is actually our most simple kill method - looping Praetor’s Grasp. After we’ve generated infinite black mana, we can clear the stack of draw triggers by repeatedly discarding Kozilek and drawing it. Looping cards at sorcery speed is only slightly more convoluted. First, we cast Grasp. Then we cycle two lands, putting four “draw a card” triggers on the stack. Then we discard Kozilek, shuffling those four cards into our library, and draw them again! From here, we do something fun like infinitely reanimate our opponent’s Triskelion... or just loop it forever and steal every card in their deck.

Beating disruption
The combo is disrupted by any kill spell targeting our commander or our discard outlet, as well as by gravehate. However, it does have built-in protection. If our opponent casts a kill spell targeting our commander or our discard outlet, for each extra land in our hand (or any other cantrip), we can simply draw another card continue going off. This means if there are four lands in our hand, we can hypothetically beat four removal spells. This really shouldn’t ever happen though as our opponents will be removing the discard outlet in response to the frog, or vice versa.
As for gravehate, we have a few more tricks. If you're responding to something like Tormod's Crypt with the Dakmor salvage in the graveyard, the above trick works to pull it out of the graveyard. If the graveyard has some indispensable cards such as Kozilek, Riftsweeper or Necromancy, we always have the option to continue dredging in response to the exile until we hit another shuffle effect (either Koz or Blessing).

Since we’re playing two shuffle effects, there would need to be three cases of instant-speed graveyard exile, like a Scavenging Ooze with three open mana, to disrupt the combo. The first activation would exile our Kozilek, the second would exile the Blessing that hit the yard in response. But since the Blessing trigger resolves before the first Ooze activation, the Koz is still protected unless they have a third activation active. However, if the Blessing hits the yard first, this can occasionally put us in the awkward situation of having only Gaea’s Blessing as a shuffle effect. You can make infinite draw triggers easily without Koz in the deck, but once you draw your deck, you’ll be unable to put simply discard Blessing and get a shuffle, therefore clearing the stack. This potential problem introduces us to a new skill we will have to acquire!

Instant-speed Exile Protection
Very often, we will have to use cards in our exile zone to combo off. This commonly happens because one of our combo pieces is exiled. To do this, we will loop Riftsweeper at instant speed. First, it is important that we already have infinite draw triggers on the stack, and infinite black mana. (This can be achieved without Kozilek using the above methods.) At this point, we will discard Riftsweeper, and reanimate it with Necromancy. If Kozilek is in exile, it will have to be our first Riftsweeper target. Finally, we will sacrifice Riftsweeper to Culling the Weak, discard Koz, shuffle up, and draw the cards back, to be at the beginning of the loop!

This process can be repeated infinitely! Most commonly, it’s used to retrieve exiled combo pieces. If you’re feeling extra spicy, you can use it to return your opponcnts’ exiled combo pieces and win with those. More importantly, the loop can be used to produce infinite green mana at instant speed with Elvish Spirit Guide.

“But Razzliox! Why would you need to produce infinite green mana at instant speed? So far, every card you’ve talked about is black!” Glad you asked! Sometimes, we win the game outside of our main phase, meaning we can’t rely on looping Praetor’s Grasp. In such a scenario, we’ll need to take a few extra steps to kill our opponent.

Instant-speed Kill
After generating infinite black and green mana, and still with infinite draw triggers on the stack, we’re going to loop Rath’s Edge infinitely to kill all of or opponents. At this point, it’s usually easier to perform the combo with our commander off the board, so we’ll start off by Culling it.
So it’s just like the Riftsweeper loop: First we discard Arbor, then we Necromancy it and sacrifice it. Instead of sacrificing to Culling the Weak, however, we’re going to use Crop Rotation. With Rotation on the stack, we can discard Rath’s Edge and Kozilek, resolve Rotation, and tutor Rath’s Edge. Finally, we’ll re-draw our deck, discard Koz again, and re-draw Koz and Edge, which puts us back at the beginning of the loop.

How often do we actually win at instant speed? Outside of the cornercase of our opponent wheeling us into our combo piece, why would we be able to assemble it at instant speed? Well, it’s actually quite common - possibly more common than the main phase kill is the infamous cleanup phase kill. It’s easier to disrupt, but it has the advantage of being a one-card combo with our commander - no discard outlet needed.

Cleanup Step Kill
If we have more than seven cards at the end of our turn, we can use our cleanup step as our "discard outlet." Discarding Dakmor as our eighth card will produce a “draw a card” trigger, which causes priority to be passed around. We'll replace the draw by dredging Dakmor, and then if we dredge into a land, we'll draw another card. After the stack clears, we will receive another cleanup step and be forced to discard down to seven again. (Rule 514.3: "Normally, no player receives priority during the cleanup step, so no spells can be cast and no abilities can be activated. However, this rule is subject to the following exception. At this point, the game checks to see if any state-based actions would be performed and/or any triggered abilities are waiting to be put onto the stack, including those that trigger at the beginning of the next cleanup step. If so, those state-based actions are performed, then those triggered abilities are put on the stack, then the active player gets priority. Players may cast spells and activate abilities. Once the stack is empty and all players pass in succession, another cleanup step begins.")

By repeating this loop, we’re going to be drawing through our deck just like normal! The only problem is that we have to discard down to seven each iteration. What we need to do here is sculpt our hand - continue flipping through our deck until we have Necromancy and Skirge Familiar in our hand. (If we don’t have any open mana, we can filter to Elvish Spirit Guide, Crop Rotation, and Dark Ritual. Remember - between cleanup steps, your mana pool empties, so the Dark Ritual must be cast in the same phase as Necromancy!) Skirge Familiar produces infinite black mana, which turns into infinite green mana, and finally lethal through Rath’s Edge.

The problem with the cleanup phase is that it opens us up to gravehate and instant-speed removal. Without a discard outlet in play, a simple Faerie Macabre exiles our Salvage and we lose the game. While the cleanup phase is a powerful way to assemble the combo, it’s also very all-in. Thankfully, there are two other easy ways to assemble the combo.

Chaining Dredgers into Combo
A lot of the time, we won't have the land tutor for Dakmor, but we will have a discard outlet and Gitrog. Thankfully, we can almost always win with another dredge card, provided you have a cantrip. Let's say Stinkweed Imp is in the graveyard, with a Wild Mongrel in play. If we play our cantrip effect and dredge our imp, we're pretty darn likely to hit a land in our top five, netting another draw trigger. In response to the new draw trigger, we can discard the dredger again and continue the loop. Once we hit a bigger dredger, in this case Golgari Grave-Troll, we can dredge with that instead.

I ran a program to determine some probabilities about whether we are more likely to "whiff" (meaning not hit a land on our dredge) on all our dredge pieces - that is, Golgari Grave-Troll (dredge 6), Stinkweed Imp (dredge 5), and Life from the Loam (dredge 3). For the simulation, I assumed that there were 88 cards remaining in our library, 30 of which were lands (including one Dakmor Salvage). With no extra lands in our hand, dredging for 6 gives us a 58% chance, and dredging for 5 gives us a 43% percent chance. However, if we have just one land in our hand - meaning that one "whiff" is forgiven - our numbers boost to dredging 6 at 89%, and dredging 5 at 79%. Finally, if we have enough mana to cast Life from the Loam and get 3 free resets, we have a 75% chance of hitting Dakmor before we whiff!


Doomsday
What, more combo lines? Yes, more combo lines! Doomsday is traditionally used in Laboratory Maniac decks, and to my knowledge this is the first deck other than Grenzo, Dungeon Warden to use Doomsday in this format without blue! Doomsday is the easiest way to assemble our entire combo besides the cleanup phase kill.

You’ll want to know a few different lines. The first thing to realize is that we need five specific cards in the deck to win. To kill our opponents, we’ll need a discard outlet, Dakmor Salvage, Kozilek, a ritual effect we can loop to produce infinite black mana, and Praetor’s Grasp. Since Doomsday only searches for five cards, this means that our options will be extremely limited. However, we can fit one extra non-essential card into the pile if our discard outlet is Skirge Familiar, allowing us to eschew the ritual effect. With that in mind, our best piles are as follows:

Rain of Filth Pile
Rain of Filth
Skirge Familiar
Dakmor Salvage
Praetor’s Grasp
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
This is our go-to pile. It requires nothing other than 1B in pool and four lands (or one additional mana for each missing land). In this pile and in any other with Rain of Filth, it may be replaced by Squandered Resources for an additional green mana.

Rain of Filth Pile; Combo Card in Hand Variant
Rain of Filth
Putrid Imp
Dakmor Salvage
Praetor’s Grasp
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
This pile assumes you have some sort of ritual effect in your hand, but either Grasp or Koz can be in your hand instead (in which case you put Lotus Petal in the pile). It requires the one cantrip to open, one black mana, and two lands in play.

Lake of the Dead Pile
Lake of the Dead
Skirge Familiar
Dakmor Salvage
Praetor’s Grasp
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
This pile works like the Rain of Filth pile, except instead of casting Rain of Filth, you have to play Lake of the Dead and sacrifice swamps. That means it costs a low low low one generic mana, but you have to have a land drop open.

Lake of the Dead Pile; Combo Card in Hand Variant
Lake of the Dead
Putrid Imp
Dakmor Salvage
Praetor’s Grasp
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
The Lake Pile is open to the same modification as the Rain Pile. If you have a ritual effect (or Koz, or Grasp) in your hand when Doomsday resolves, you have no need for Skirge Familiar. All this line requires is one open land drop and two swamps, but it works with no mana in pool!

Three Cantrips Pile
Putrid Imp
Lotus Petal
Dakmor Salvage
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
Praetor’s Grasp
This pile requires one cantrip to open the pile, one cantrip to draw into Dakmor Salvage, and one cantrip to draw into Dakmor Salvage. Our third cantrip can be a land in hand, which we can then discard to Putrid Imp to draw Salvage. Regardless, we’ll have to find some way of putting a land into our graveyard so that looping Dakmor Salvage is actually card advantage.


Two Cantrips Pile
Putrid Imp
Dakmor Salvage
Lotus Petal
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
Praetor’s Grasp
The only difference between this pile and the first is the placing of Lotus Petal. By putting it under Dakmor Salvage, we eliminate the requirement for for a third cantrip, which we make up for by assuming we already have one black mana for Putrid Imp.

One Cantrip Pile
Barren Moor
Skirge Familiar
Dakmor Salvage
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
Praetor’s Grasp
After resolving Doomsday, six mana can often be hard to generate, but this is the only pile I have found that requires only one cantrip that works with no lands in play. It should be noted that Barren Moor may be replaced with Bazaar of Baghdad; doing so requires an open land drop and some cards in hand, but reduced the cost of the pile by one mana.

One Cantrip Pile; Combo Card in Hand Variant
Barren Moor
Dakmor Salvage
Putrid Imp
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
Praetor’s Grasp
This line assumes you have Lotus Petal or some similar effect in your hand, giving us a little more room in the pile. This pile’s mana constraints are dependent on what ritual it is. Assuming it is Petal, all that is needed is one black mana, because the Petal will pay to cycle Barren Moor. If it is a ritual effect, we will have to be conscious that we have enough mana to re-cast the ritual after beginning the Dakmor loop. In this pile as well, Barren Moor may be substituted with Bazaar of Baghdad.

Laboratory Maniac Pile
Barren Moor
Crop Rotation
Praetor’s Grasp
Lion’s Eye Diamond
Bazaar of Baghdad
This line is one of the most fun! It requires that one of your opponents has Laboratory Maniac in their library. Simply cycle Barren Moor to draw two cards, rotate a land away for Bazaar (drawing LED), use LED to cast Laboratory Maniac, and tap Bazaar! Unfortunately this requires five mana, so is only a hair less expensive than the One Cantrip pile, but hey, you never know!

Gameplay
Mulliganning and Opening Turns
When you’re looking at an opening hand, there are three things to evaluate. The first thing is determining how quickly your hand will be able to resolve a The Gitrog Monster. The second thing is determining how powerful your turns will be after that, assuming our Froggy friend sticks around. The third thing is identifying the presence or lack of a backup plan should he be removed.
In general, the formula is something like this. If we can cast Frog on turn two or three and you have land drops to follow it up, the hand is probably keepable. If we can cast Frog on turn four or five but you have some other business going on in case it gets countered, the hand is probably keepable. If we have Sylvan Library or Necropotence, the hand is probably keepable. Even if we just have some sort of land-sac engine - say an Exploration with Life from the Loam and a cycle land, for example - that’ll do.

The other thing to look out for in an opening hand is a quick Ad Nauseam. A hand with three lands, a Demonic Tutor, and a Dark Ritual is very attractive. We can tutor for Ad Naus on turn two, hold Ad Naus for your opponent's end step on turn three, and turn four, untap and probably win the game.

Midgame
Except for early Ad Naus games, we'll almost always want to jam Froggy into play. If this means tutoring Cavern of Souls over Bazaar of Baghdad, so be it - Bazaar's not that good without Frog anyway. After this, our main goal is to make sure we're taking full advantage of his abilities. Froggy is a Phyrexian Arena that makes your fetchalnds cantrip, your cycle lands draw 2, and your dredges now read "Any time you would draw a card, you may instead mill X and draw a card." All of this comes with an Exploration tacked on. Our focus at this point is going to be using mana efficiently and hitting all our land drops. Missing land drops, even our extra land drops, can really hurt when we're sacrificing a land every upkeep. We'll want to find some sort of way to make sure we continue hitting those land drops, ideally in the form of Crucible of Worlds or Life from the Loam.

Loam is significantly better thanks to its combo potential, since it makes dredging into Dakmor pretty easy. Loam also has an incredibly powerful synergy with the cycle lands, meaning we can dredge multiple times per turn. If we draw a discard outlet with Loam and Gitrog in play, we have a good chance of winning either that turn or the next by dredging into our combo. During this phase of the game, we should be filling our hand and ramping, and preparing for a combo turn.

If for some reason, we can't stick Gitrog in the early game, our best bet is Bazaar of Baghdad. Strictly speaking, Bazaar is not a draw engine, but it provides virtual card advantage and lets us discard dredgers. Since the deck plays so many cards that aren't terribly useful when you're not comboing, we'll occasionally be stuck with something like Gaea's Blessing or Riftsweeper. Bazaar converts these cards into live draws at a 2/3 ratio, drawing us into the ramp spells / rituals needed to recast our commander. Once we have Bazaar and Frog in play together, Bazaar does function as a card advantage engine.

Imagine the following scenario: We tap Bazaar of Baghdad with our commander in play. For our first draw, we dredge a Stinkweed Imp, and that hits a land, as well as flipping over Life from the Loam. For our second draw, we dredge Loam, and that hits a land too. Finally, we have to discard three cards, so we discard our two dredgers and, you guessed it, a land. Gitrog cares about whether the lands were put into the graveyard at the same time (not during the resolution of the same ability), so he'll trigger three times. Our first draws, however, will once again give us free dredges, since we just discarded our dredges to Bazaar!

On a turn we think might be the combo turn, we will probably want to sacrifice Bazaar to Gitrog in our upkeep. This is primarily to preserve your mana-tapping lands, whose full value cannot be realized until our main phase. Sometimes, we will be casting Loam on our combo turn, in which case we can replay the Bazaar to get two Bazaar activations on the same turn. There are lots of ways to get multiple Bazaar activations in one turn, including Petrified Field, Life from the Loam, or simply shuffling Bazaar back in with Kozilek and tutoring for it again.

Speaking of Life from the Loam, it is our second most important mid-game card (after Bazaar). Usually, it takes a few turns to set up the combo, but its power is undeniable. To get a Loam engine going, we're going to need a land that draws a card - meaning a cycle land, or (if you have Frog in play) any land that sacrifices itself, like Petrified Field or a fetchland. We'll use the drawland to dredge Loam so we are able to cast it multiple times in a turn. If we don't have Gitrog already, we need to put him in play. Dredging Loam will fill our grave and draw us a bunch of cards. At some point, we'll be able to either dredge into Bazaar and Loam it to play, or dredge directly into Dakmor.

As mentioned in the above supersection, Life from the Loam can also very easily dredge into Dakmor combo if you have the discard outlet. The more lands in your hand (meaning the more times you can cast Loam) the more sure it is that you won't whiff. Three lands gives a 75% certainty, and six lands gives you an impressive 98% certainty. If you have other dredgers, those numbers skyrocket.

Using Bazaar of Baghdad or Life from the Loam in conjunction with our commander is the easiest way to assemble an end-step kill. These engines also produce massive amounts of card advantage, virtually guaranteeing that we'll have the requisite eight cards in hand, allowing us to take multiple cleanup phases. However, sometimes we won't be able to close out the game before it goes long, usually due to hatebears. That requires us to enter the endgame.

Endgame
For a deck that spends most of its time worrying about the first six turns, we have a great late-game. Turns out, if we can stick Gitrog in play, he's a card advantage engine that won't quit. Really, our late-game looks a lot like our mid-game, so there's not much to say - we just keep building more and more resources. Make sure you don't get too much of your deck in the graveyard such that you can't combo, and keep playing lands and drawing cards. It sounds tricksy, but don't be afraid to Praetor's Grasp for an opponent's win-condition if for whatever reason you can't get combo online.

Don't forget about Strip Mine either. We rarely pull it out when we're in the mid-game, since we're still trying to win. In the end game, often we'll need to grind a few turns for advantage before pulling it out. With an Exploration effect or two running and a way to recur Strip Mine from the grave, we can destroy our opponents' manabases faster than they can rebuild them. This is often necessary when for some reason we can't stick Froggy.

Conclusion
Hopefully, this goes to show that Froggy is a new contender for top meta slot. I believe the deck is far more powerful than has been recognized, and I aim to change that. Now that you know the ins and outs of the coolest deck in the metagame... go build it!

www.5colorcombo.com/modern/2016/10/10/gitrog.html

I'm converting this into MTGS form and will put it in the OP.

Introduction

History

Before we begin, I'd like to talk a little bit about myself and my history in magic, and the deck's history. I started playing Magic when I was about seven, and EDH when I was about ten. My first EDH deck was a terrible, terrible Eron the Relentless deck, focusing on land-destruction. At the time I didn’t even really realize it was considered a dickish thing to do - I just had four or five LD spells and started working from there. It eventually evolved into a casual Heartless Hidetsugu deck which I began to really tune. Including ways to give Hidetsugu lifelink or other shenanigans was the beginning of my career as a brewer. After a couple years of stagnation, my meta started to really evolve as I made friends in early high school. It was the best deck in my meta when we first really started wanting to compete, though we were still unevolved compared to where we are today.

After it grew boring playing (and winning) with the same deck over and over, I designed a Kresh the Bloodbraided fatties deck. It wasn't as good as Heartless, but it was a lot of fun. After a long time, and mild success, I eventually sucked the red out of Kresh to force myself to diversify. Little did I know that I was on the way to my best deck in the format, Jarad. Jarad started as a quirky ramp deck. It was still fatties from its Kresh days, but now used more sorceries and ramp creatures to achieve it's goal. I used Crypt Ghast, Boundless Realms, and Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger to establish a large X spell, typically Exsanguinate or Genesis Wave. Jarad slowly became better than Heartless, which was still a top condender, though much less so than before.

Already I was familiar with graveplay, but it wasn't the main focus of the deck - combat damage was. When Sylvan Primordial was spoiled, I knew I had to use it. I switched over from a rampy build to a classical reanimator deck - with many reanimation spells and things like Entomb, I tried to reanimate SyPri and other fatties many times over. The "big three" of the deck were Vorinclex, SyPri, and It That Betrays - none of which I play now. As I introduced my playgroup to more competitive play, I faltered as the "lead player," and now was competing with opposing Sharuum the Hegemon decks and Roon of the Hidden Realm decks. Ironically enough, the banning of Sylvan Primordial helped the deck out a fair bit. It forced me to explore other options outside of classical reanimator, which brought me to the combo build I use today. Of course I've tweaked it a significant amount, but the core is the same. You'll see some remnants of my past builds - things like Rune-Scarred Demon and Greater Good hint of times past, though they still function well in this deck. While my meta is much more varied and diverse now, and our games are rarely identical, I like to think I'm still in the lead. My tournament reports are consistent with this.

Metagame

Today, my metagame is a constantly-evolving animal. Consistent foes include Sharuum the Hegemon with probably eight billion possible combos, Karador, Ghost Chieftain that can combo out quick or play a long game with lots of hatebears, Omnath, Locus of Mana stompy which preys upon the fact that many decks in our meta are weak to combat damage, Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge control with Enter the Infinite and opponents' Tooth and Nails as their prime win-condition, Purphoros, God of the Forge aggro which punishes every deck that takes advantage of its life total, and Yisan, Wanderer Bard toolbox which tutors entire combos by itself. All-in-all, our games end around turn four to eight. We're an especially control-based meta compared to other cutthroat metas, using the control to stop early-game combos.

The metagame has helped shape the deck by forcing it to be resilient enough to win after a control deck has stabilized, yet fast enough to race my more speedy opponents. We also have a lot of disruption. We're running, what, twelve pieces of spot removal, plus sweepers? Disrupting our opponents' early-game combos is as important as comboing off on our own. Finally, there are few other grave-based effects in our meta - of course there's the occasional Eternal Witness or whatever - because every deck has a solid amount of GY hate thanks to me and Sharuum.

To the top!

Why play this deck?

Likes and Dislikes

We'll start with the traditional "You might enjoy this deck if:"

• You like comboing out. Like the majority of EDH decks, our primary win-cons are all combos.
• You have a meta filled with Stax and control. Jarad does especially well against these archetypes.
• You enjoy winning. Yeah, I’ll say it - this is a powerful deck. If you’re building a new deck, and you like to win, I recommend you consider this deck.
• You like recursive gameplans. This doesn’t mean linear - it just means that you like to re-attempt the scary threat you tried to resolve two turn cycles ago.
• You have a budget. While my deck is budgetless, this deck doesn’t require anything super-expensive to work well. The only money cards you'll really need are Entomb and Survival of the Fittest.
• You enjoy skill-intensive decks. Jarad’s easy to learn and hard to master. The plethora of tutors or tutor-effects means that your options are always wide-open, and it’s often correct to not play the obvious choice.
• You enjoy proactive decks. We play lots of removal, but this deck cares very much about its board presence and forces other decks to answer you.

You won’t like playing this deck if:

• You think your general should be an integral part of the deck. Jarad as a deck doesn’t rely on Jarad as a card, though he’s important to our late-game action and to one of our main combos.
• You don’t have a very sharp understanding of the rules. Knowing that Necropotence creates a triggered ability in your discard step which allows you to Necromancy before your creature is exiled, or similarly complicated interaction, comes up frequently.
• You prefer working with the options provided by blue, red, or white.

Commander Comparisons

That question we started with can mean different things, though. Let’s say you want to play a Bxx graveyard deck. What edge does Jarad have over The Mimeoplasm? The biggest difference between me and Mimeo decks is that Mimeo decks are reanimator decks with a combo finisher (or sometimes Voltron), whereas I'm a midrange deck with a reanimator engine. Mimeo decks revolve around getting that Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur or similar early-game. Reanimating a fatty is certainly one of the more powerful things we can do, but we also take advantage of grindy games where each player spends a lot of time jostling for position. Blue really doesn't give us a lot of cards we want to play - some exceptions being Intuition, Pact of Negation, and some way to port Hermit Druid combo. We're much faster than classical Mimeo decks, and our Commander allows for more alternative game plans.

You can also compare Jarad to Karador, Ghost Chieftain. Why play him over Karador, then? Well, Karador only gives us a few options we don't already have. Iona, Shield of Emeria is a powerful creature I can't play due to a lack of White, but other than that there's not much cost. Karador plays a midrange deck supported by fast combo, same as us. There are a few utility options that aren't bad, but the mana base is a lot weaker, and our extra-mana-from-swamps package gets a lot worse. Again, Karador is a different deck. It relies more on smaller utility creatures. The other Junk reanimator commander, Teneb the Harvester, is also different. Where Karador focuses on smaller utility creatures, Teneb is a more classic "reanimator" deck similar to Mimeoplasm.

One more commander often compared to Jarad is Chainer, Dementia Master. Instead of adding a color and diversifying, Chainer stabilizes as a mono-black deck, the most traditional reanimator deck out there. Chainer decks often have ETB/LTB themes, repeatedly using and losing effects like Kokusho, the Evening Star, Solemn Simulacrum, and Rune-Scarred Demon. Chainer decks enjoy a longer, grindy game. Some of them are combo decks, while others win with more traditional wincons. However, the loss of Green is a serious detriment to the deck. Our ramp is obviously green-reliant, and a couple all-star cards (Survival of the Fittest and Greater Good) require Green. Finally, we of course can't fling Lord of Extinction or Phyrexian Devourer to Jarad when he's not our commander!

Finally, playing two colors allows us to focus on casting spells. We can't support three colors on a measly 31 lands, and certainly can't get away with any colorless ones if we do. Our low land-count means that we operate better than most in topdeck mode, especially since we can hardcast the fatties we draw thanks to the high-costed ramp spells in the deck. Mana screw definitely is something that happens, but the payoff is too great to not be greedy.

So, I've convinced you to play GB gravestuff. Of course, from here Jarad's not your only option. What makes Jarad better than, say, Glissa, the Traitor or Varolz, the Scar-Striped? Well, Glissa is a very different deck and ultimately hard to compare to Jarad. Glissa often takes advantage of her ability by repeatedly using things like Executioner's Capsule, Mindslaver, and Codex Shredder - it's the GB artifacts-stax deck. On the other hand, Varolz plays more similarly to Jarad, with a slight focus on enter-the-battlefield abilities, which he can re-use with his sacrifice clause. Ultimately, however, Jarad's fling ability and growing body synergize more with the all-out combo style of the deck.

One more important distinction between traditional graveyard decks and us is that when a player sits down to a table with The Mimeoplasm or Karador as their Commander, people groan and t1 Enlightened Tutor for Rest in Peace. People know these Commanders, brought fame due to their powerful abilities and their spot in the original Commander pre-constructed decks. Because of their popularity, the matchup is an easy pilot. The Karador player broadcasts his own gameplan. When we sit down with Jarad, everyone expects the Wall of Blood / Hatred / Mossbridge Troll shenanigans that the other lists play. (This is starting to change in recent years, in no small part due to this primer across multiple forums.)

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Gameplay

Game Progression

0) Before the game begins, sit down and look at the opponents. This is the most important step, and probably the hardest for newer players. Figure out which deck is most worrisome, and why. It sounds counterintuitive, but hopefully the table is filled with decks like Tasigur, the Golden Fang, Teferi, Temporal Archmage, or other stax and control decks. Why? These decks slow down the game and provide time for us to build our resources. Generally, Jarad is either the fastest or the most resilient deck playing, and we'll want to emphasize one of those in our gameplay - maybe even switch back and forth. Keep in mind - time is our friend. We’re a midrange deck, and we can thrive at any stage of the game, so don't be afraid of taking the game long. We mulligan rather conservatively, looking only for a playable gameplan, not necessarily a hard combo. Mulling this deck is actually a more difficult element of the deck, just because most players don't know how to work the internal synergy of the deck. You'll want to look two cards that work together well, even if they're not technically synergistic. This plan can be as aggressive as Entomb+Exhume for a turn-two Baleful Force, or as passive as playing Phyrexian Arena on turn three with disruption in hand and preparing for a long game.

1) Resource conversion - Some games can skip this step, but it's necessary if we're a bit slower. We start the game with an abundance of two resources - cards in hand, and life - and no other resources. Obviously, these cards in hand will run out as we cast them, so we should set ourselves up to keep a healthy amount of cards in hand while still playing to advance the board. Do this by putting a permanent into play which will maintain card advantage - Sylvan Library, Necropotence, and Graveborn Muse (plus Jarad eventually) are all powerful draw engines. From there, you'll want to start playing ramp spells to support an active midgame. If you can, reanimate a creature within the first two to four turns. Our primary early-game targets are Baleful Force or Void Winnower. Baleful Force is great if you're low and lands and need to draw some more. Void Winnower is better if we need disruption against storm or for some reason need to start dealing damage to our opponent quickly. Rune-Scarred Demon is our other common choice, since it can begin to assemble a combo with.Woodfall Primus is also a solid choice with a sac outlet - don't go for Mikeaus or Lord of Extinction, because they aren't good until mid to late game. Always be looking for a line that builds towards comboing out if there are no counterspell players and you think you can win the race.

2) After a few turns, we'll find our first combo. The easiest one to set up in the early-game is the Necrotic Ooze combo or reanimating and flinging Phyrexian Devourer. You'll want to attempt the combo as soon as possible, unless your opponent is telegraphing disruption. If they are, this just means that our opponents can't combo off and the game will go long. In this case, start playing more card-advantage engines and developing your board without being too greedy - keep up disruption yourself if you feel it's needed. You won't want to overextend your board, so keep resources in hand and wait until your opponent doesn't seem to have active disruption anymore, or we have combo redundancy (like two reanimates, or two separate combos) and enough mana to do win in one turn. Many games we win with our first combo, but often we are disrupted.

3) Continue playing to advance your board without letting your opponents combo off if you can stop them. We can play the long game as well as any other deck. Slowly building resources without letting while keeping up removal is a sure way to win a longer game. It's not even uncommon to spend our tutors on finding removal, especially if an opponent is in a position to combo out. If playing against decks like Arcum Dagsson or Azami, we play around counterspells and instead of resolving huge must-answer threats. If there's a combo sitting in your graveyard, keep in mind that every Reanimate in your deck is a win. Our life total is a weak point, so be careful here. We play a lot of cards that lose us life - fetchlands, Necropotence, Sylvan Library, and more - and sometimes a combo deck's plan C, being "turn my creatures sideways," works against us.

4) Eventually you'll draw into another win condition - we play lots. Either recycle your used-up combo pieces, find a new way to win, or take one of our many side-plans. Flinging and attacking with big creatures - especially Woodfall Primus and Lord of Extinction - wins more games than it seems like it would. You can also simply entwine a Tooth and Nail, or maybe even reanimate combo pieces in your opponents grave. This deck has a lot of resilience and plays better than many other decks when the game goes into topdeck mode, due to our low land count. Sometimes we can get there just with a Rune-Scarred Demon and a few combat steps. You want to close out the game as soon as you can, but don't be afraid to let it get grindy!

Winning the Game

Of course, it's easy for me to tell you to simply win at a certain step. But what's the best way to effectively end the game? Obviously, this will depend on what cards you already have in play and what's in your hand.

Our first win-con is very easy to assemble. All we need is Survival of the Fittest, *or* a Buried Alive and any reanimation spell. Grab Necrotic Ooze, Phyrexian Devourer, and Triskelion. If you're using Survival to set this up, make sure to grab Ooze last so you can cast it from hand. The exception is when we're playing around on-board gravehate. Here, we grab Ooze first, then use SotF to cycle the cards into the 'yard at instant speed, and continue to do so in response to gravehate (this requires a few creatures...). If we gets countered, we start digging for another reanimation spell - if we're using Survival, we can tutor up Phyrexian Delver to try again. Once Ooze is in play, we activate the zero ability on Devourer and get some counters, then remove them with Triskelion. Repeat until your opponents' life totals are 0. This is a good chunk of our wins, and our most consistent win-condition. If our opponents try to kill Ooze with, say, a Swords to Plowshares, we can kill them in response to that. If it's super late-game or an opponent has a lot of life, we might not be able to flip kill them with our library. If that's true, we can hold the Ooze in play and kill people who try to remove it or clone it or whatever in response. Eventually we can kill the table. Save Buried Alive for this. It wins games in one turn if we need to later on. Try not to actually cast the Buried Alive until the kill turn, or you're playing straight into countermagic and/or graveyard hate. You should go for this combo if you have little mana and want to combo out without playing into creature removal.

The next-easiest is also a one-card combo: Phyrexian Devourer (+ Jarad). We usually do this when there's a some graveyard hate in play, as it's the only combo that doesn't involve cards our GY. However, it is mana-intensive. We exile the top card of our library until Devourer is power 7. With the sacrifice trigger on the stack, we repeatedly use that ability to add to its power, then sacrifice to Jarad, draining the table for the combined CMC of my deck. If for whatever reason we can’t activate Jarad (Hinder, Pithing Needle, not enough mana) we can instead sacrifice Devourer to Greater Good to draw any other combo. This combo can also respond to creature kill by just... keep going, same as before. The exception is Krosan Grip or Sudden Death. It's also weak to Stifle effects - nobody wants to have half their library in exile and not win. You should go for this combo if you're confidant you can resolve the ability without Krosan Grip or Stifle effects getting in the way and you don't have access to Nooze combo, or when there's on-board gravehate.

Find Mikeaus. Find Triskelion. This is a pretty common combo, but for those who have never seen it, we use Triskelion to ping itself until it dies, and then undies, pointing extra counters at our opponents. Making sure to keep in mind that Triskelion is a 2/2 due to Mikeaus's power-and-toughness-boosting ability, we repeat this iteration until opponents' life totals hit 0. We can play around Krosan Grip by maintaining priority and removing all the counters at once, or we can play around Deglamer by holding an extra counter to respond to it, but we can't play around both. This combo is disrupted by instant speed GY exile or by creature removal, and is easily tutored by Jarad's Orders and a reanimate effect, or Tooth and Nail. Another way to land this combo is to sacrifice a Lord of Extinction or other large creatures to Greater Good and draw essentially your deck, pitching Mike, Trike, and Phyrexian Delver. Reanimate the Delver, then grab Mike with it. Sac the Delver to the sacrifice outlet and grab Mike. Sac it again, and when it undies, grab Trike. (This can also be done with the Woodfall combo below.) You should go for this combo when it's late-game enough that you can entwine a Tooth and Nail and you're confidant that the combo won't be disrupted.

With Mikeaus and Woodfall Primus, we can sacrifice Woodfall repeatedly to Greater Good (or a sac outlet of your choice) and destroy all noncreature permanents we don’t control. As this includes lands, this is usually met by concession from the rest of the table. We draw our deck and go from there - but a 1-sided mass land-destruction usually ends the game itself. One easy way to assemble this is using Pattern of Rebirth with either a sac outet, Mike, and a creature, or with a sac outlet and Primus. The reason it's better to go for this combo instead of the Triskelion combo here is that if Mike somehow gets removed, you still have a Primus with a +1/+1 counter and a fast sac outlet, which is better than a lone Triskelion. This combo is disrupted by instant speed GY exile, creature removal, or artifact/enchantment removal. You should go for this combo when you have the pieces for Mike+Trike, but happen to have a sac outlet in play.

Another common route to victory is to fling Lord of Extinction to Jarad with a bunch of cards in graveyards. You should go for this late-game, when graveyards are big, as it's a hard-to-disrupt combo and only requires one non-commander card.

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Synergies and Tactics

Synergies

We have a few gameplan-defining synergies. Obviously we have many gameplan-defining combos, but I talk more about that below. Usually, we will be tutoring for combos, as while synergies put us very ahead, combos simply end the game. That being said, occasionally we want to be more conservative, so I've included a few interactions that can define our plays for a couple of turns.

Perhaps most notable is the Greater Good line. This card, in play, warps the game. Not only does it generate a great deal of card advantage with Jarad and other value plays, it's part of a slowroll setup to a combo. A common line of play is to sacrifice Rune-Scarred Demon, draw six and discard three, and cast a reanimation spell on demon. Demon will go and tutor up another reanimation spell, and we can repeat this to fill our yard with creatures. Dread Return shines here. Lord of Extinction really shines here as a card-advantage engine.

Another Greater Good synergy is with Woodfall Primus. Here, we're going to try and get as many Primus triggers as we can get, and once the biggest problems have been dealt with, use them on mana sources. I typically won't hit sources of card draw except the very best ones, because it doesn't matter how many cards my opponent draws if he's got no lands! Our best friend here is Pattern of Rebirth for either powering out an early-game Primus or finding Mikeaus to finish them off once we have it.

Using Opponents' Graveyards

As many of our spells, such as the classic Reanimate, work with our opponents' graveyards, we want to keep an eye on them at all time. Keep in mind that you can use cards in your opponents' graves differently from the way they do. That Riku of Two Reflections deck may be playing Palinchron as a combo piece, but we're just reanimating it and floating mana so we have enough to entwine Tooth and Nail. (Seriously, I've done this a few times.) Keep track of important creatures in your opponents' graveyards, and make sure to weigh in the fact that not all of your spells work from your graveyard. That Rune-Scarred Demon in your yard might look juicy, but we can get that at a later point when we draw, say, Exhume, whereas we can't use that on the Consecrated Sphinx on the other side of the table.

Speaking of C-Sphinx, it is not uncommon for us to get into a TS war with another player. Named after the infamously banned Trade Secrets, this occurs when two players have a Consecrated Sphinx in play, and now have the option presented to them to draw their entire library should both players agree to. This is only sometimes a good choice. Generally speaking, if we are taking our next turn before they take their next turn, it is favorable to draw our deck, as we can probably combo out before they untap and kill us. Of course, the contrapositive of this statement is that generally it is unfavorable to trade your secrets when your opponent will take their turn before yours. Naturally, our opponent will be operating under similar logic, so rarely do players truly draw their deck. However, when we do, there are some points to keep in mind. First of all, we will have to play through every counterspell they have mana for. Know your opponents - know if they run Pact of Negation, Force of Will, and other cheap counterspells like Swan Song. If they do end up using a Pact, we might be able to kill them recurring a Woodfall Primus at to destroy their mana sources before they untap. Also, we can't get too greedy - leave a good ten cards left in your library so you don't get blown out by some random mill card.

The most useful card for interacting with opponents' graveyards is Necromancy, simply because you can do it in response to their interaction. If an opponent is trying to reanimate one of their own creatures, there's no reason to make them go through all that trouble! We'll do it for them, the gentleman that we are. Seriously, the card plays as a reanimation spell and incidental gravehate.

While we're on the subject of incidental gravehate, let's take a minute to talk about Deathrite Shaman. DRS serves a grand total of four whopping purposes in this deck. It's primary purpose, obviously, is to produce mana, and its secondary purpose is gravehate. After that, it's lifegain, and finally reach in the form of burn - not that we need much of that in a Jarad deck. Anyway, I want to talk about it specifically in the context of gravehate. The general rule of thumb is that we never want to not use the guy as long as there are targets available. At the player to your right's end step, we'll want to eat something, assuming the lil guy is untapped. What do we eat? Well, that depends. Typically we don't want to eat a bomby creature we'll be wanting to reanimate at some point, unless you're afraid of another player reanimating it. In other words, Azami's Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur can stay, but The Mimeoplasm's? Not so much. Anyway, generally we want to eat creatures first, as lifegain is more important than lifeloss, but if we don't want to eat a creature, don't hold back on eating spells. Speaking of which...

Using Your Life Total

Gee whiz, razzliox! Between Necropotence, fetchlands, Reanimate effects, Snuff Out, Baleful Force, Toxic Deluge, and half the other black cards in your deck, how do you manage to keep your life total high? Well, the short answer is that we don't. Our life total is a resource, and we use it as such. Playing black and hoping to end a EDH game at thirty life is like playing mono-green and hoping to end the game with six lands in play. It simply means you're not using your resources the best. So, how to properly allocate your life total as a resource? How greedy is too greedy? Ultimately, that depends on who you're playing against. If your pod looks something like Purphoros, God of the Forge, Maelstrom Wanderer, and Nekusar, the Mindrazer, then slamming turn two Necropotence probably isn't the best play. If that pod is closer to Azami, Lady of Scrolls, Sharuum the Hegemon, and Narset, Enlightened Master, go right ahead. In other words, the more combo-focused and less combat-focused our opponents are, the better we can smoothly eat up our life total. Watch out though! If you're in a regular playgroup, your opponents will eventually recognize how much damage you deal to yourself and capitalize on this by attacking you first with their random creatures. A couple combat steps later, you might be in for trouble if you haven't prepared.

I totally get that some of you are reading this and thinking about how your bud's Krenko, Mob Boss tokens deck and his brother's Animar, Soul of Elements fatties are gonna tear you to shreds. Never fear! With a little fine-tuning, you can make this deck as resilient to combat as you need it to be. A couple key cards you may want to include are Kokusho, the Evening Star or Exsanguinate. You could even go so far as to include Wurmcoil Engine. (Damn you Rules Committee, give me Griselbrand back!) If you're more inclined to take the tactical route than the deck-adaption route, like me, tutor up Lord of Extinction. Not only is Lord one of the most solid bodies in the format, you can also fling it to Jarad mid-game to incentivize your opponents to attack each other (they should be at low life totals).

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Decklist

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Card-by-Card

Lands
Bayou, Command Tower, Mana Confluence, City of Brass, Tarnished Citadel, Overgrown Tomb, Woodland Cemetery, Twilight Mire, Llanowar Wastes - Whatever. Duals are duals. I will say about Overgrown Tomb that the effect can be relevant not because you lose two life but because you alert your opponents that a spell is coming if you're trying to do end of turn shenanigans.
Dryad Arbor - Really only in the deck because we can t1 Green Sun's Zenith into it, which is pretty common. Earns its slot well.
Phyrexian Tower - Sac outlets are great. Tower can tap for a two mana, which is nice. I've been using it a lot lately in conjunction with Pattern of Rebirth.
Volrath's Stronghold - Makes my land toolbox slightly better and provides inevitability.
Strip Mine - Wins games, yo. Usually we play it to a blue source on the counterspell player's table, then move to next main phase so the floating mana goes away. Sometimes our opponent keeps a low-land hand in hopes to draw into more, because they have just enough for their early-game draw engine (Rhystic Study, Phyrexian Arena, whatever). This thing takes them out pretty early.
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth - Urborg makes fetchlands tap for mana which is pretty nice, because retaining the ability to crack a fetch at a later point can be pertinent.
Verdant Catacombs, Marsh Flats, Bloodstained Mire, Misty Rainforest, Wooded Foothills, Polluted Delta, Windswept Heath - Solid, of course. Shuffles away stuff for Scroll Rack, Sylvan Library, et cetera.
Bojuka Bog - I figured with Crop Rotation in the deck, it's indecent not to play at least one utility land. I may cut it at some point simply for basics or other utility lands.
Ancient Tomb - Don't think I need to explain this. Pretty strong card. The damage can be rough.
3x Forest, 4x Swamp - Might be changing this around, not sure what the right allocation is for this build.

Ramp / Mana
Mana Crypt - It's insane. The only thing I'd say is that we ought not to cast it until the turn we use it, to minimize damage.
Chrome Mox - Great for powering out those early-turn wins. Playing mana-positive spells also helps for when we draw lots of cards in one turn, like say with Greater Good.
Carpet of Flowers - If there's one Island in play, it's a Birds of Paradise with haste. If there are two, it's a colored Sol Ring. If there are three, it's a one-mana Gilded Lotus.
Sol Ring - No explanation needed.
Fyndhorn Elves, Llanowar Elves, Elvish Mystic - They're fine. Not much to say.
Elves of Deep Shadow - Better than the above, because they tap for the color we might not have.
Deathrite Shaman - It's ramp with fetchlands, and it's also grave hate. I'd probably not play it if you can't afford the fetchlands or nobody else in your playgroup plays them. Incidental lifegain is nice.
Birds of Paradise - Very nice.
Bloom Tender - Casting this on turn two makes my commander on turn three a ramp spell. It also can tap for another color if you reanimate an opponent's creature or something.
Priest of Titania - This is an interesting card. It curves well with Jarad (who is an elf) and counts all the elves in play, not just yours.
Scorned Villager - I've found that playing this on turn two will usually flip it on turn three. The werewolf mechanic works very interestingly in four-player games.
Wall of Roots - This plays very well with instant-speed stuff. You can cast a Phyrexian Devourer on your turn if you're short one mana, then fling on your opponent's upkeep.
Frontier Siege - Four mana a turn is pretty good.
Gilded Lotus - 5 for 3 is solid, especially when it comes in untapped. Gets around Armageddon effects I guess. It's in the deck to support the late-game big mana plan.

Fatties
Lord of Extinction - Typical in a Jarad build. Superb with Greater Good, it's Devourer #2. Also great with Hermit Druid, obviously.
Bane of Progress - This is one of our best tools against artifact decks. This card has saved me many times against Sharuum, Teferi, and other similar decks. It's one of the better Natural Order targets.
Massacre Wurm - This is mostly a meta choice. Wurm is great for killing dork-based mana bases and hatebears decks.
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed - Also a combo piece, but is fine for stuff like Phyrexian Delver or whatever. Nothing to joke about. The +1/+1 can be relevant, but the Undying makes the card.
Rune-Scarred Demon - Tutor on a stick. Superb. As mentioned above, the card often finds Greater Good.
Baleful Force - Pretty strong. Note that it triggers each upkeep, not just mine, so it's like half a Consecrated Sphinx. The life loss is pretty pertinent though.
Woodfall Primus - Combos with Mikeaus and blows stuff up fine. Powerful with Greater Good or other sac outlets.
Terastodon - T-Don is in the deck mostly for Natural Order. He can be real good if our opponents have a fast start. He also plays well with Greater Good - if you're trying to win that turn, you can blow up your own lands for extra power on board.
Void Winnower - A big hatebear. This guy is our number one tool against fast spell-based decks like storm. He's also a four-turn clock with pseudo-evasion.

Graveyard Fillers
Entomb - Really pulls the deck together. Don't forget this can grab Dread Return. One super-tech line if you have a Dread Return in yard already but only two creatures is to Entomb for Corpse Connoisseur and unearth it to find your fatty.
Hermit Druid - We don't play a bunch of basics. Fills grave fast and hits land drops. Unless we have a super early combo, Green Sun's at 2 or turn one Worldly Tutor usually hits this, otherwise it's Steve. It's not the combo piece used in a lot of other decks though. You want to be real careful activating this into gravehate as sometimes it dumps half my deck.
Survival of the Fittest - Ridiculous. Note that it can fill a graveyard just as well as Buried Alive if we have the green. A common play is tutor up fatty, discard fatty and tutor up Phyrexian Delver, Phyrexian Delver targeting fatty. Probably the best single card in our deck.
Buried Alive - Combo piece and general enabler.
Jarad's Orders - This is always a skill-intensive card to resolve. There are a few tricks you'll want to keep in mind. Bin a fatty and grab Phyrexian Devourer. Bin a Phyrexian Devourer and grab Necrotic Ooze, then fling to Jarad. Faeire Macabre is real good if there's another graveyard deck at the table.
Corpse Connoisseur - Having a flashbackable Entomb makes [card]Hermit Druid[/card significantly better.

Utility
Eternal Witness - Regrowth on a stick, it's great. Turns every one of my reanimation spells into Regrowth.
Natural Order - The go-to target is Terastodon. Other common targets include Bane of Progress, Lord of Extinction, or Woodfall Primus.
Mindslicer - We'll pretty much always have a sac outlet available, and if we don't, casting Jarad isn't too slow.
Crop Rotation - It's solid ramp to find Ancient Tomb or Phyrexian Tower, and it's instant-speed gravehate to find Bojuka Bog.
Faerie Macabre - Tutorable off Survival at instant speed. Currently in testing.

Removal
Nature's Claim - Good against storm and other fast combo decks. It can also gain me life in a pinch.
Beast Within - Versatile as hell, only costs 2G. The 3/3 hardly matters.
Krosan Grip - Uncounterable, best against Sharuum or Arcum but often used against others. Noteworthy that it kills Nev Disk or O-Stone without a crack in response, and also Tormond's Crypt and friends.
Putrefy - Versatile removal; typically hits powerful early game threat like Zur or whatever.
Toxic Deluge - Cheap sweeper. Sometimes I can cast it for a small amount and make my Baleful Force or whatever survive.
Snuff Out - Hard to play around, but it's painful that it only hits nonblack creatures. Still, quite potent.
Murderous Cut - Usually one mana. Exiling from your graveyard is a little counterintuitive in this deck, but one-mana unconditional creature removal is too good to pass up. Being instant-speed, you can cast it in response to your opponent trying to reanimate your own fatty.

C-c-c-combo pieces
Necrotic Ooze - I go into detail above. Inherits Hermit Druid, which is sometimes useful. Also inherits mana dorks, which is less useful. Note that it can be a Phyrexian Devourer either for the Triskelion combo or the Jarad combo. It also gets stuff from opponents' graveyards.
Phyrexian Devourer - Great with the aformentioned combos. When I'm desperate it feeds Greater Good.
Triskelion - Also part of two combos. Sometimes used as utility removal, either on stuff like Gaddock Teeg or that Illusion clone everyone's playing nowadays.

Tutors
Green Sun's Zenith - T1 into Dryad Arbor is a strong play. Pretty much *only* finds utility creatures until the late-game.
Vampiric Tutor - It's pretty good I guess. Not much to say.
Worldly Tutor - Read the card. Not much detail, except that the fact that it goes to the top is pretty good if we need it in our GY an we have a Hermit Druid.
Demonic Tutor - Usually find Buried Alive early game but obviously tutor for anything. Our best tutor.
Diabolic Intent - With all the dorks in the deck, it's almost always castable. And don't feel bad about the resource disadvantage - even sacrificing a Llanowar Elves to find Mana Crypt is ramp.
Praetor's Grasp - A really nice resource to have. Usually grabs Crypt, some stapley card I play myself, or Pact of Negation to protect a combo.
Pattern of Rebirth - This card is nutty. Half the time, it's a Baleful Force or whatever, and half the time it's the second part of some combo I'm assembling.
Tooth and Nail - Finds combo pieces, wins the game. We basically always entwine it. If you're playing around gravehate or removal or whatever, just grabbing Void Winnower + Baleful Force isn't bad.

Reanimation
Reanimate - Really really good. Hits opponents' graves.
Animate Dead - Straightforward card. Hits opponents' graves.
Dance of the Dead - It's basically an Animate Dead in this deck, but it sucks on Hermit Druid. Hits opponents' graves.
Necromancy - Pretty important card. The Flash thing is good, allows me to go infinite on other players' turns or have combat tricks. Sometimes I'll target a Woodfall Primus with flash and get two triggers. There's also a bit of synergy with Mikeaus. Hits opponents' graves.
Dread Return - Great card on the combo turn when mana is tight. Otherwise... meh.
Phyrexian Delver - Mostly playable because it's a creature, so it's more easily tutored. It's a little slow but still a solid pick.

Card Selection and Draw
Dark Confidant - In testing.
Sylvan Library - Very nice card, though unfortunately with all the other self-damage effects in the deck we can't overcommit. Because the card counts cards in your hand you've drawn this turn, there's some marginal synergy with Phyrexian Arena and similar effects.
Scroll Rack - It's ok. We can usually shuffle or mill away the useless top cards.
Ohran Viper - It's basically a Phyrexian Arena that comes with all the upsides of being a green creature. You can Green Sun's Zenith for it, it wears a Pattern of Rebirth and sacrifices to Natural Order, etc etc.
Necropotence - Either wins the game or does very little. BBB is rough. One fun play is when we have a significant amount of mana - Necro for our life total minus one. Go to end step, get cards. Cast removal on Necropotence. Discard step. In the next upkeep, combo out from our graveyard.
Phyrexian Arena - One of the slower draw engines, but it doesn't require additional input, which is good. Really gets there in a slower grindier game.
Greater Good - As the name suggests, it's greater than good. A true engine. Jarad gets pretty big over the course of the game, especially when we're discarding, so don't be afraid to go hard with Greater Good.
Graveborn Muse - We use this as a second Phyrexian Arena. Notably, Jarad along with Mike and Delver are Zombies.

To the top!

And that's all, folks! Thanks for reading.

To the top!

Hey guys! Just thought I'd make a post to announce that over on reddit, we're starting a Cockatrice league. You don't need a reddit account to sign up, but making one is quick and easy, and will let you participate in group discussions more. Here are the rules:

Quote from razzliox »

* Games will be organized twice a week, with the intention of having one organized mainly for the American players and one organized mainly for the Eurasian players - on Mondays around 8:30 PM EST, and one on Wednesday around 20:00 Greenwich Time. Players are free to participate in both games, but points will only be rewarded on one performance (whichever gives you more points).

* Players will be awarded one point per game they play, and two additional points for each game they win. Players will be awarded an additional point for sharing the winning decklist, provided they have not already won with that commander in that season. So, if I play Jarad and lose (1), play Jarad and win (3), share the list I won with (1), and play Jarad again and win (3), I'll have a total of eight points. If instead I play my last game with Sidisi and win, then I can share that list too and get an additional bonus point. The reason for this rule is twofold - to increase meta diversity by incentivizing not playing with the same deck all the time, and to increase internal growth by incentivizing sharing innovations and ideas with your league-mates.

* Games will be played in pods of 3 or 4, depending on the amount of players. To determine the number of pods, calculate the maximum number of four-player games that can be played, then take your remainder and turn each of those four-player games into a three-player game and assign the extra player to the remainder until it becomes a three-player game. For example, if 14 people show up, the maximum number of four-player games is three, with two remaining. So, one of those four-player games will have to turn into a three-player game, and the remaining three players will also play a three-player game. In the event that exactly five people show up, you will play a five-player game.

* Currently there are two season structures being debated. Structure One: Each season will last 8 weeks, meaning 8 games in each timezone. Players will receive points for what they play in those two months, and at the end of each season there will be a winner declared. Structure Two: Each season will last 4 weeks, but they will cascade into each other. In other words, at the end of February your point total will count the games you played in both February and January, in March your point total will count the games you played in February and March, et cetera. At the end of the season, there winner will be the player with the most points for the previous two months, and there will be an "honorable mention" for whoever got the most points within that one month. In case of a points-tie, the player with a higher win-percentage will be the winner.

* Games will be played via Cockatrice and organized via Discord. There is a link to our discord server in the sidebar [of the subreddit this was originally posted on] - the blue button that says "Text & Voice Chat."

For a full discussion, check out this reddit thread.

I actually wrote a full article on the subject.

http://www.5colorcombo.com/magic/edh/turning/creatures/sideways/2016/03/27/turning-creatures-sideways-edh.html

I recently posted an article on 5colorcombo.com about the ineffectiveness of points systems. I'm curious what the people in this thread think about the content.

Quote from Jusstice »

Following what gma said, I also think a working definition of what's a "competitive" deck would be helpful. And I would define it like this. Any deck that is NOT strictly inferior across all matchups and metas under game-theory optimal play to another deck is a competitive deck.

That definition might sound strict, but I think it's actually pretty broad.

An aggro deck might fit the definition, because maybe it's something like Surrak and the only answers opponents run are counters. Not an actual situation, but it's not a strictly inferior deck.

On the other hand, homarid tribal can be shown to have a strictly inferior matchup against all known decks than some other deck. Maybe some of these matchups are even, but if it does as well against some things but worse than an alternative against others, then that's a non-competitive deck.

This is all in the player's best judgment, of course. They might be mistaken about matchup percentages across the board. They'll also probably be unaware of all possibke alternatives, or even entire strategies. But anyone who is not deliberately playing a deck known to them to be inferior to another known deck can be said to be playing competitively.

Quote from CoBTyrannon »

The intention to play the best deck possible with the goal of winning.

I tend to think Tyrannon is on the right track. "Competitive" is not an attribute of a deck but rather an attribute of a player - it matches the intent of the deck rather than some characteristics inherent to a list. The Casual-Competitive divide can be thought of as a spectrum but in my view there are two distinct mindsets. The competitive mindset does not care at all about specific attributes of the game like flavor, speed, variance, etc. They care about one variable, the win percentage. Now, obviously this mindset can be applied at different stages. The majority of players we call "competitive" do not begin with the mindset - they choose an archetype or deck they think will be fun or interesting (possibly factoring in competitive viability - but still using other variables) and from there look to optimize it. You can also take a sub-par strategy and from there optimize it. But the fact remains that picking a sub-par strategy, even if there are no "strictly better" decks, is not a competitive decision. Optimizing that strategy is.

Quote from Jebus4054 »

What do you think of the idea of playing archenemy in competitive EDH. How much of a disadvantage do you think decks like Momir, which play entirely to the board, face by demonstrating their threat level essentially face up. On the other hand, do you think there is an opposite effect from commanders like Zur or Sisay who pose a substantial, but not specifically quantifiable threat? What about "random" examples like Narset or something less competitive like Muzzio, who pose an unknown threat? I think there's an interesting discussion there.

I don't think your examples necessarily fit well. Zur is a pretty quantifiable threat, Sisay even more so since you generally know what she's going to grab. Better examples of decks that play openly might be something like Jarad, Sharuum, et cetera. But I agree with the message you are sending - decks that build up advantage over time have are slightly disincentivized by the four-player nature of the game. If a deck that requires a couple turns of setup like Azami is setting up, then I know to disrupt and have counterplay. On the other hand, a deck that wins out of nowhere like Prossh doesn't give me the warning - end of turn Vampiric Tutor, cast Food Chain, win the game.

Quote from Darcykun »

With decks like Zur or Narset, which could be playing a non-optimal list, you still really have to assume they are the optimal list. Even if they are not playing an optimal list, the Commander itself is powerful enough that directing hate their way would not be incorrect.

When it comes to something "under the radar," that you can't quantify just by looking at it... first of all, it kind of depends on the situation you're playing in. If you don't know anything about the deck, but are working with the assumption that every deck at the table is built to be played competitively, you can still expect broken things from a deck regardless of whether they're running the optimal Commander or not. However, it's multiplayer, and we can't assume that we can deal with everything, so known threats probably always take priority over unknown threats, unless you know that you are strong against the known threat and have a good reason to believe the unknown is a strong counter to you.

I guess the logical next step is to ask if there is any benefit in playing something relatively unknown. I think we too quickly answer this question, "No!" from the competitive mindset that handicapping in any way automatically makes a deck not competitive. I think that's the conclusion the discussion will come to anyway, but maybe it's worth thinking about. I think there is undeniably some benefit to not being other players' priority #1, especially in a multiplayer situation, and certainly some benefit in not having your opponents know exactly how you are trying to win from the moment you turn your Commander over. I think that we've also come to the conclusion that there are good Commanders but there are also good archetypes, many of which don't need a specific Commander to function (even if some are better than others). So, some questions...
Are there any archetypes that rely on the Commander so little that the benefit of being an "unknown" threat might outweigh the benefit of playing the "strictly optimal" Commander?
Do people typically evaluate decks based on the Commander, or just the colors? If you saw, say, someone playing Thraximundar would you assume they were playing Grixis storm the same as if they were playing Jeleva? I think this is a big argument against unknown Commanders, because I will always see BUG or BG and think reanimator, and see Grixis and think storm. I guess if someone showed up with GW I might not know what to think, but...
To what extent are targets chosen at the beginning of a game? Do we have the luxury of going a turn cycle (or however long) to see who has the strongest start, or if you have a turn-one Thoughtseize will you always point it at the most obvious threat, based on the Commander? Things like targeted discard are proactive in this sense, and require some assumptions to be taken, but reactive cards like counterspells or spot removal more likely have their targets chosen based on in-the-moment threat assessment than prediction.

Is making threat assessment decisions based on Commanders correct? At some point, that's all the information you have, of course. But in a decidedly competitive situation, can you assume that all players are bringing roughly equivalent threats to the table? Do you target someone out of the gate because you feel their Commander is objectively the best at the table, because you have a hard time interacting with the archetype you assume they're playing, or are there other factors?

I will assume we are talking about tournaments against unknown foes and not playgroup play. There are a couple problems with this line of thought however. The first is that your target audience has to be other cEDH players. If I sit down at a table with Thraximundar vs Jeleva, the only people who would treat me differently would be people who know that Jeleva is often used for Storm decks, meaning people who read about EDH online, who are on average more committed than your typical opponent and more likely to be paying attention. If you're playing Thrax and your turn one is Mana Vault, I'm gonna keep an eye on you. If you always fetch blue, I'll know you're on High Tide. It's not hard to figure out and I will likely know by the time I have to keep up countermagic. Also, there isn't a terribly great advantage to my opponents not knowing that I'm doing a specific thing.

Hello Commander fans. This guide is written to assist would-be competitive EDH players. Very little has been written about EDH as a competitive format, and most of what has been written is about a specific deck or strategy. There are a few resources, many on this forum, for people new to the format and looking for advice, but unfortunately very little of it is written from a competitive standpoint.

Before I begin telling you about how to play EDH competitively, I'd like to say a few words about who I am and why you should listen to me. I'd also like to talk about why competitive EDH is attractive and what makes it unique from the rest of Magic.

My name is Leo, but on MTG forums I go by razzliox. I've been playing Magic for about eight years, and commander for about four. I've been playing commander seriously for about two years now. I've built much of the community over at /r/CompetitiveEDH, a community of over 4000 members that discusses the format from a competitive standpoint. There, I host weekly deck help threads that serve two purposes. First, obviously, they help users who come to me with problems in their decks. The second effect is that it familiarizes me (and anyone else who cares to flip through the threads) with just about every deck anybody could try to play. I also recently got invited to moderate the general EDH subreddit, /r/EDH, a community of over 20k. I'm also a member of the Primer Committee here on MTGSalvation, meaning I am one of the people who decides which threads we endorse as official primers here in the EDH section of the forum. I maintain one of my own primers, which can be found in my signature - a deck I created and popularized. I've also traveled to a few big tournaments to play in EDH side events for prizes. Needless to say, I know the format pretty well.

EDH is a social format. For many people, this means casual. These terms are not to be conflated. Social means that EDH is organized and structured around the playgroup. Casual means (or, at least in this context, implies) that winning is not prioritized by the players, but rather gameplay is. When asked why casual EDH is preferred to competitive, many people will talk about a "social contract," or say that specific limitations make the way a game plays out more "fun." This will not be argued against here, but do note that playing competitively is not necessarily incompatible with the concept of a social contract, so long as each person playing knows that all hands are off.

Why CEDH?

Let us discuss what it means to play competitively. To compete in any form means to attempt to attain a goal that is the inverse of the goals of other players. Therefore, to play competitively, the game must be zero-sum - for one player to win, his opponents must lose. Furthermore, the actual winning of the game must be the players' goal for him to be playing "competitively." A competitive player aims to make his opponents lose. Why is this an attractive mindset to play games like Magic? Well, personally, I like to make progress in my hobbies, and I like to have an objective way to track that progress. It's fun to sit around a table and play relaxed games, but if you play a lot of games, they start to get boring without a long-term goal. Thankfully, playing competitively gives us one - your win ratio. This way, I can make changes to my decks and have a concrete reason for whether it was a good or bad change. I won that last game because I added more gravehate. I lost the one before that because I didn't include enough answers. If your goal is something vague and arbitrary like "having interactive gameplay" or "having a satisfactory game," it's hard to measure your progress. As David Sirlin says in his great book, Playing to Win


Why, the casual will inevitably ask, do you play this format over others competitively? What makes multiplayer Commander more appealing than other formats, especially to a competitive player? Why not leave EDH to those who would rather durdle over hardcasting Eldrazi? Take your Stax lockdown packages and turn two wins to formats where it's appreciated, like French EDH, Vintage, and Legacy!

There are a few things about EDH that makes it attractive from a competitive standpoint. The first reason is that most people who play it don't. While this may seem counterintuitive, having few people who play the game competitively and many who don't means that the format is relatively unsolved. In other words, there may be many strategies that have yet to be discovered, and the existing strategies can be fine-tuned since they are often not polished. This gives significant space for brewers and fine-tuners, unlike a format like Legacy where all the work perfecting the lists is done by a small amount of people, and the winner of a tournament is decided not by who the most creative person was, but who played their deck the best. Granted, there are exceptions where a creative breakthrough can happen in a format like that, but rarely does that occur. On the flip side, in EDH, copying a decklist from the internet is likely to fail, where tuning a list to your own needs and even brewing one yourself is more likely to be successful.

EDH is a multiplayer format. There have been a few other formats that are multiplayer - Planechase, Conspiracy draft, Archenemy - but none have ever been as popular. Many say this is a reason to not look at EDH competitively, but I disagree. Collusion and other bad sportsmanship in politics does tend to complicate the game, and at high-level competition there would be have to be some sort of way to prevent that. However, if you're just playing with your buds and there are no prizes on the line, collusion is not something you will have to worry about. Politics is another thing that many people criticize in competitive games, but when you start playing high-level you will understand that politics rarely plays a role, and when it does it is generally to save the game. For example, a player may say "Give me the Force of Will and the blue card off the Fact or Fiction in one pile so I can counter his Tooth and Nail." Being multiplayer adds an entire level of complexity that many people do not understand the first time they play EDH. More on that later.

Competitive EDH has a wide selection of strategies. No other format in all of magic has the diversity and wide array of different tactics. No other format has as wide a playable card pool. While some EDH staples see lots of play in other eternal formats, like Entomb or High Tide, many are playable only in EDH. This is for a few reasons. First of all, EDH has a larger deck size and no redundancy. In Legacy, if you want to consistently have a reanimate effect, you can play four Reanimate and four Exhume. In EDH, a reanimator deck will be playing several sub-par cards that mimic the same effect, like Corpse Dance, Wake the Dead, and Dance of the Dead. This is also because EDH has more kinds of decks - fast combo, tempo, midrange, stax, and toolbox are all represented at the highest levels of play, as well as other decks that don't fit into any of these strategies. Obviously this means that the card pool will be larger.

EDH is easier to play on a budget than other eternal formats. There are some powerful decks that you can build for less than $100, if you skimp on some of the more expensive things like Mana Crypt and fetchlands. Even if you have all the cards for your deck, you will usually spend less than you will on a Legacy deck - you only need one of each fetch/dual in your colors. A 3-color or 5-color EDH deck that's fully tricked out will be 4 digits, sometimes north of 3k, but a 2-color or mono-color deck can often be completed for 500-800 USD (depending on what's in the deck of course). Personally, I advocate for the use of proxies outside of tournaments, but even without them EDH is generally less expensive than Legacy and of course Vintage. Often the vast majority of the money in a deck will be in relatively unimportant cards, like dual lands, Imperial Seal, Gaea's Cradle, Mishra's Workshop, etc.

Playgroups and Inbreeding
Unfortunately there are few competitive EDH players in the wild. You will stomp 90% of the players at your LGS, and casual players are unlikely to help you progress as a player. This means that it's important to have a playgroup - a group of players at approximately even levels of power that play against each other regularly. This has a few advantages. The first, obviously, is that a playgroup means playtesting. It's hard to find worthy opponents at random, and a playgroup gives you people to play with. They also are relatively static, so it's easier to track your progress as well as theirs. Playgroups have several different phenomena, most of which improve your play. Playgroups also mean you're playing against the same decks again and again, and you are likely to have ideas that will improve your friends' decks. Share them! Not only is it advantageous to both you and your friends in the short run (because you will have better decks if you share ideas), it is in your interest to play against powerful decks that challenge you and pressure you to improve your own deck. If you ever have more than a 50% winrate against your playgroup in four-man games, you're probably not doing enough to help your friends progress (or you're playing with people who don't want to progress, in which case you ought to find a better playgroup). If you don't have a regular playgroup, try Cockatrice.

Playgroups come at a cost, though - inbreeding. In game theory, this is often called donkeyspace. Inbreeding is when a player starts playing specific cards or strategies because they are good against strategies s/he faces often in the playgroup. For example, imagine two or three powerful decks in your playgroup start playing Laboratory Maniac strategies, and protect their Lab Man with an abundance of counterspells. You start playing Sudden Death to put a stop to their shenanigans. Sometimes inbreeding is that specific, and sometimes it is more general. For example, a dearth of fast combo decks will incentivize tempo and midrange decks, where a preponderance of them will incentivize control, stax, and even faster combo decks.

Inbreeding is not a bad thing. It is, by definition, suboptimal play. "Optimal" here is defined as least exploitable. You will sometimes want to play in a way that leaves you open to exploitation when you think that your suboptimal play won't be exploited - or at least that you'll get more out of exploiting others than you will lose from getting exploited. If the only way you find to get a leg up on the more powerful decks in your meta is to play answers that are specific to them, I wouldn't advise you not to. However, it's important to keep in mind that as you tune your deck to meet the demands of your playgroup, it's likely to worsen your deck against matchups you didn't tune against. You'll be kicking yourself for including Sudden Death when you get combo'd out by a creature with toughness five.

Dispelling Common Myths
In this section, I will discuss several common beliefs about Competitive EDH, what specifically is incorrect about them, and why I believe them to be false. I do this in the introduction because I believe it is important that the reader realizes that what CEDH looks like in practice is perhaps very different from what you have been told, or read online.

Every deck is secondary to Hermit Druid combo. For those not in the know, Hermit Druid combo is a five-color deck (sometimes it shows up in BUG) that focuses on putting its namesake card in play and activating it. Since the deck plays no basic lands, it will now combo out with all the pieces conveniently placed in its graveyard. (This is why the card is banned in Legacy.) This myth comes from the fact that Hermit Druid was once a terrifying behemoth, and probably the best deck in the format - back in 2010. Since then, the meta has evolved, and the format is no longer "fastest deck wins." Now, there are several other meaningful factors, and Hermit Druid is no longer the fastest deck. Generally it considered a second-tier deck among competitive players.

CEDH is just a race to see who combos first, with little to no disruption. This is a variant on the first myth, which couldn't be further from the truth. While there are many powerful combo decks that plan to race, the format is filled with different archetypes. Since the fast combo decks are weak to disruption, a meta filled with them will be wrecked by the first stax player who walks in. (Interestingly, the same players who complain about there being no disruption will often complain about how stax stops them from playing how they want to play.)

{X Deck} consistently goes off turn 2. No, it doesn't. To say a deck "consistently" does something means it does it in the majority of games - that when it isn't able to do that thing, it's surprising. There are a few decks that win on turn 2 occasionally, but none of them are good enough to do it consistently. The fastest deck in the format is probably Sidisi, Undead Vizier ANT or some other storm variant, which go off on turn three/four ON AVERAGE, turn 5 consistently (typically). If it were true that a certain deck could consistently go off turn 2, the format would be that deck and decks tailored to beat specifically it, with tonnes of cheap interaction like Swan Song, Mental Misstep, et cetera.

75% decks can keep up with Competitive EDH decks. For those unaware, the 75% philosophy is one spearheaded by Jason Alt, and the summary can be found here. In a nutshell, a 75% deck is designed to be able to keep up with competitive decks while not being so powerful that it completely steamrolls casual players. The problem is that, frankly, that's impossible. Imagine if I told you I wanted to build a Legacy deck that could play real games with other Legacy decks, while still not being so powerful that it steamrolls kitchen table players. Impossible, right? The power difference is simply too vast - if your deck can consistently play on a similar playing field as mine, it will wreck casual players. The 75% movement has some merit, but attempting to stand between competitive players and the more casual ones will just end up with a deck that can't really play well with either.

CEDH is not and cannot be fun. I get this one a lot. "Razzliox doesn't actually like playing - he just likes proving that he's better than people." The problem with this statement is that people are assuming that you can't have fun competing. People have fun playing competitive Standard, competitive Poker - some people just have a competitive spirit. Obviously, many people won't have fun playing EDH this way, but I certainly do as do my friends.

The Multiplayer nature of the format makes competition impossible. This is an understandable thought process. How can you crack down on collusion in a competitive format? Firstly, collusion isn't incentivized unless there are high prizes, and without them it's barely a problem. In a playgroup, if two players are colluding, that's just silly - we're obviously there to have fun, even if our idea of fun is different from what other EDH players think. Colluding isn't fun for anyone involved, and if it is, that's probably not somebody you want in your playgroup. Secondly, as someone who regularly does play commander for prizes, I can confirm that collusion isn't a serious problem and when it is, you can generally tell and inform a judge.

Hopefully by now you either embrace EDH as a competitive game or have stopped reading this thread. However, the intent of this post is not to convince you to play like I do, it's to show you how you can. In this section, I will discuss how to make progress as an EDH player over time. We will begin with deciding on a deck and a decklist, and then move on to how to tune your decklist to your specific playstyle and metagame. Then, I will discuss how to brew a new deck, and how to improve it over time.

Starting Off
The first step to playing Magic is, obviously, picking a deck. If you have no idea what kind of deck you want to play, and you haven't played much EDH competitively before, it can seem impossible to decide. However, once you have a few games under your belt, it will be much easier to decide. Here are the results to a poll about what is a tier one EDH deck (try sorting by "Most Popular" in the top right corner). Honestly anything on there with 1% of the votes is playable, but not all of it is established or great for a newer player, so try to pick something closer to the top. At this point the only way to really get a good feeling of what deck is good for you is based off your intuition. Think about what kind of games you've enjoyed in other formats, and what commanders seem interesting. You're not locking in anything, so don't worry about it too much.

There are a few criteria you should consider when selecting a deck. The first, obviously, is how the deck plays. If you're interested in long, grindy games about resource advantage, Brago stax is likely a better pick than Jeleva storm. The second criterion is your short-term budget - if you're looking to blow $500 on your first deck, and you're OK with eschewing the most expensive cards at first, you can pretty much build anything. On the other hand, if you only have $50, better stick with something cheap and mono-color. The third criterion is your long-term budget, or how much money you're willing to put into the deck once you finalize it. Many of us have unlimited long-term budgets, but if you don't ever want to have more than $500 in an EDH deck, stay away from anything with blue duals or you'll never completely finish the deck. You should also think about what cards you already have, and which cards for the deck can go in another deck you can build later, effectively reducing the cost of that later deck.

Once you've decided what deck you want to play, at least in the beginning, do some research on it. Read some literature on MTGSal and reddit about the deck, and look at lots of decklists wherever you can. Keep in mind that a lot of decklists are bad and untuned - try and stay away from anything that says stuff like "no combo." This is a good time to make sure that this deck is one you can actually pilot at this level - some decks, especially Doomsday or storm variants, require lots of technical play that is probably not good for newer players.

Take a well-respected decklist and proxy it out or put it on Cockatrice. /r/CompetitiveEDH meets on Cockatrice every Monday at 8:30 EST. After you play a few games, you'll have a better understanding of what EDH is like and what strategies will interest you. Repeat this process a few times until you have a good idea of what deck you want to start off with. Keep in mind you can start over at any point - maybe you play one game with Narset and decide it's not for you, or maybe you realize that when you research the deck. Either way, don't feel like you have to do a bunch of research just because you were initially interested in a deck.

Deck Creation
If you continue playing EDH at a competitive level, you will eventually have an idea for a potential deck you've never seen before. Unlike traditional formats, in EDH homebrews can be highly competitive. I currently own two EDH decks, both of which can compete in the highest echelons of play, and both of which I designed. As I've said, EDH is a largely unexplored format, and the majority of the decks that are considered A-Tier nowadays have been discovered within the past two or three years. Here I will describe the process of creating a powerful deck and tuning it to perfection.

Decks can be built one of two ways - top-down or bottom-up. Building a deck top-down means that you have one specific thing that you want the deck to do, generally a win-con. This thing should be powerful and the thing that your opponents will fear and play around. If you select to build your deck top-down, then your first draft of the deck should pose one question to every card you think about playing - "How does this card support my plan A?" That's not to say that every card you play needs to support one specific gameplan, but since that's the focal point of the deck, it is the most important thing to consider. The question "Should I play counterspells" is answered by asking how counterspells help achieve the one thing you want to do. Building a deck bottom-up is the inverse. First, figure out what kind of resource engine the deck will be able to play, what sort of answers, what natural synergies crop up and if there is a theme these synergies make possible. For bottom-up deckbuilding, you first decide whether or not you will play counterspells, then decide what win-condition counterspells support.

If you have an idea for a deck, you've likely already chosen whether you will be building bottom-up or top-down. If your idea is something like "Use Intuition to assemble a certain winning pile in mono-blue," you will be building top-down. If your idea is something like "Use the token-creating spells in Red and White to put lots of permanents on the board, then use stax effects like Tangle Wire to get mana advantage," you'll be building bottom-up. Either way, it's important to keep in mind that these two methods are two ways to achieve the same means - the optimal build of the deck will look the same either way. It's just a matter of getting there.

The first thing I do when brewing is do research on similar decks. If I'm building storm, I'll go take a look at what existing storm decks use as wincons, ramp, counterspells, et cetera. Generally, many of these ideas will translate well into the new deck. Don't be afraid to ask existing experts on a certain style of deck and how the general principles of that deck can be applied to the deck you're creating. Eventually, you'll move on to the tuning stage.

Tuning
Now that you've picked a deck, you'll want to move on to the tuning process. Tuning is finding different packages of cards that work - seeing if a High Tide engine works in your build, for example, or testing a graveyard subtheme. There are lots of resources online for tuning, but unfortunately there is no replacement for gameplay. There are two reasons, only one of which concerns us here - playtesting allows you to see your cards in action and how they interact with other cards. Mental Misstep is a classic example of a card that seems bad in theory, but is much better in practice. You don't realize how many important spells are one mana - High Tide, Reanimate, and even your opponents' counterspells. However, if your playgroup doesn't have many of these cards floating around, Mental Misstep shouldn't be in your deck. Similarly, if all the creature-based decks in your meta are black, Snuff Out will do less work than Murderous Cut.

As you play your first few games, you'll want to notice which strategies work for you and which don't. Even if it is a strategy that is theoretically sound, we don't want you playing it if it doesn't work for you. This is a common mistake that many EDH scrubs make - playing the theoretically good cards when it is safer to play simpler, more manageable cards. Cut the strategies that don't work for you - we can reintroduce them when you're a more experienced pilot. As for now, you need to focus on becoming comfortable with the basic themes of the deck.

At the same time, don't be afraid to try out your own ideas! Maybe hold off a few weeks until you really get the deck, but creativity is a resource - use it. I've been tuning my signature deck for a little bit over two years, and still I regularly make changes. Even if you take a very well-known and explored deck, there are bound to be ideas - good ideas - that haven't been tested yet. It usually doesn't work out, but the few times it does more than makes up for it.

Eventually, you'll move on to fine-tuning. Fine-tuning is different from "tuning" in a few ways. First of all, a deck in the fine-tuning stage can be described as "tuned." This is the final stage of a deck-building process, and as such it has to be pretty far along to get there. The primary difference, though, is that the fine-tuning process doesn't involve major changes in the deck package. You know what the deck is trying to do, and you know the most efficient ways to do that. Fine-tuning is simply testing the best cards to do certain things - mana rocks vs mana dorks vs ramp spells, Mystical Tutor vs Merchant Scroll, that kind of thing.

Your deck shouldn't ever be finished. Decklists are living documents. The format is unexplored enough that there's always more tech to test, and the meta is always shifting. I recommend always having a "flex slot" - a card in testing that will be cut. Always keep your eyes open for cards that are underperforming, whether it's because your standards have gone up or due to a meta shift. If you ever feel like your deck is stagnating, try a new card that requires a bit of a build-around package. For example, I recently put Natural Order in one of my decks, which forced me to switch over to a dorks-based ramp package. This kind of forced creativity will keep you moving forward.


On Piloting
Piloting a deck is a significantly different skill from deckbuilding. Deckbuilding rewards creativity, comprehensive knowledge of the format, card evaluation, the ability to think of corner-cases, and the ability to discern how often those corner-cases will occur. Deckbuilding is also a skill that is not necessary to play competitive EDH, though you will need it if you are ever to reach the highest echelons of play. While these abilities will not hurt your piloting skills, you will have to develop a different skillset to be able to use the tool you have crafted accurately. Piloting rewards threat evaluation, mathematical skill, attention to detail, mind games, pattern recognition, and many other skills.
One important skill to hone is seeing lines of play. A line of play is a particular sequence of actions that accomplishes a specific goal. An action in this context is any decision that you make, whether or not you're actually doing something. A line of play has no randomness - as soon as there is randomness, or as soon as you discover information, a new line must begin. The information can be the cards that you draw, the counterspell your opponent plays, or the result of a random action (like what card is selected by Deadbridge Chant). A line of play may be as simple as "Entomb Jin-Gitaxias, reanimate Jin-Gitaxias" or as complicated as chaining 40-50 spells in your hand to win with Tendrils of Agony. Something like "Enlightened Tutor for Sol Ring, cast Wheel of Fortune, cast Sol Ring" is one line of play despite the reveal of new information (the six cards you drew below the Sol Ring) because none of the discovered information is part of that line. On the other hand, "Cast Ad Nauseam and then win with whatever I draw" isn't a single line, since you don't know what you will be using, even if you're relatively certain that you will get whatever cards you need to win off Ad Naus. To evaluate lines of play, you need to isolate a few variables in your mind. There is a formula I use to determine which line is best, but it's not something you can really quantify. I generally make plays on my intuition, which works well for me, but for a newer player this will be harder. There are many questions you need to ask yourself when determining which line to take. Which line better advances my long-term prospects? In other words, if the game doesn't end any time soon, which line will put me in a position to grind value out of the long game? Which line gives me more resources and more potential future lines? Which line is better against disruption? Which line presents pressure to my opponents and threatens to win the game? Which line stops my opponents from killing me before I have a chance to kill them?

There are a few general guidelines. First of all, if you have a win in your hand and you're thinking about playing conservatively to skirt disruption, generally don't. There are three situations where it's correct to hold on to a win. The first is when you are relatively certain that you will be able to force through the combo in the next two turns. Maybe you need to wait for your Boseiju to untap, maybe you need to cast some ramp spells this turn so you can win next turn with counterspell backup... In this situation, it is generally better to save the win in your hand for when you can go off more safely. (Even in this situation, you should still try to win if you're afraid of another player winning before your next untap.) The second situation is when you are pretty certain someone can stop your win, and that your chances of getting that win through are increasing. The third situation is when your second line is also very powerful, but doesn't actually win the game there. You should play your second-most-threatening line, forcing your opponents to burn their disruption on that. Hopefully, either your opponents will burn their disruption on that and clear the way for your win the next turn, or they'll hold it, and you've resolved your threat.

Another thing you'll want to do that a lot of people don't realize is to do everything as late as possible. Nothing screams "tutor for your gravehate" like a main phase Entomb - do that stuff end of turn. Do all your instant-speed stuff right before your turn starts - instant-speed tutors, cracking fetchlands, Sensei's Divining Top activations... The reasons are twofold. Firstly, saving up extra mana bluffs disruption and generally denies your opponents information, which is good. Secondly, waiting until the last possible moment gives you more information about what your opponents did on their turns when you make your choice.

On Resource Parity
The distribution of resources in EDH is a different beast than in the rest of Magic. In 1v1 Magic, Card Advantage is a useful tool for measuring resoures. Not so in EDH. This is primarily due to the multiplayer nature of the format. Every in-game decision you make should ultimately be based on how that decision effects your likelihood of winning and losing that game. It shouldn't matter how the remaining likelihood is distributed - whether a particular player is likely to win or not. Therefore, for you to trade your one card for your opponent's one card, your opponent's card must decrease your chances of winning by more than the card in your hand increases them. In 1v1, we can ask a simple question - "does that card do more for my opponent than this card does for me?" That Stoneforge Mystic resolving helps my opponent exactly the same amount it hurts me - this is the nature of every two-player zero-sum game.

In two-player games, having a resource is generally identical to denying your opponent the same resource. Similarly, allowing your opponent a resource and receiving the same resource is generally a net-0 action - in other words, it doesn't effect who is likely to win. Of course, there are exceptions - letting ANT and Jund both draw fifteen cards is likely to work out well for the storm player, and many decks frequently want to trade one of their own lands (often Wasteland) for one of their opponents' lands, even when it only produces one mana. Notice, though, that these one-for-one trades are based on the idea of resource efficacy - ANT is able to do more with fifteen cards than Jund, and the Wasteland player is able to do more with fewer lands than the player getting Wasted.

In four-player games, this is not so. Me drawing a card and you drawing a card does not maintain card parity or generate resources equally, since now there are two players that have drawn a card and two players that haven't. To maintain parity, all players must draw a card. Similarly, if I use my Strip Mine on you, I'm now down a land and so are you, but the other two players are fine. In these examples, there must be a really good reason to Strip you, like you have a Gaea's Cradle. The general principle is that giving me more resources at the cost of one of my opponents having just as many additional resources is a good thing. In fact, sometimes I'll be satisfied even if my opponent has more resources, and their likelihood of winning increases even more than mine - as long as mine does in fact increase.

A good representation for that is the card Trade Secrets. This card is infamous in commander for being absolutely broken, and for good reason. It is rarely correct to not just draw your entire deck and allow your opponent to do the same thing. Your likelihood of winning is (on average) 25% - if you're the target of a TS, you're likely in a bad position, so probably less. However, if you draw your whole deck, that win percentage skyrockets! You're very unlikely to lose to any player other than the one drawing their deck, and even if they have, say, a 70% chance of winning that turn through all the disruption you just drew, you have a 30% chance of winning! That's more than you had before, so naturally you accept the trade and draw your library. (And likely lose.) Thankfully, Trade Secrets is now banned, though similar situations still arise when there are two Consecrated Sphinxs on the table.

Another good, and more currently applicable, illustration of this principal can be done with Tempt With Discovery. Since, as we said before, it is generally good to get resources, even if one of your opponents is getting the same resource. But if everyone takes the offer, I ramp four, where everyone else ramps one. If you start doing super scary stuff with your ramps, like finding Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth + Cabal Coffers or Bazaar of Baghdad or whatever, your opponents might not take the offer - but this is only because you are receiving so many additional resources that their likelihood of winning decreases.

This is often why you hear the claim that spot removal isn't good in Commander. This claim is untrue for two reasons. Spot removal is actually really good, and I think every deck should play at least one piece of spot removal. Why?

First of all, whenever your opponent tries to do something, it tends to fall into one of four categories - Priority 1, "must answer," Priority 2, "answer if convenient," Priority 3, "that's fine," and Priority 4, which is beneficial to you. Under Priority 1 falls cards that will win the game immediately (Tooth and Nail entwined, Doomsday) or threaten to take over the game if given enough time (Zur the Enchanter, Consecrated Sphinx). If you can picture the game progressing without the threat being removed but still its controller loses, it is not Priority 1. Unfortunately, Priority 1 objects come along often enough that you will want to get rid of one of the cards in your hand to disrupt it.

Second of all, so far we've only been looking at this from a resource parity perspective. My card (let's say Swords to Plowshares) costs me a card out of my hand, but only removes your one card (lets say Void Winnower) from one out of three opponents - effectively gets me only 1/3 of a card. This is effectively card disadvantage - I lose card parity. We can also look at this from a resource-efficiency perspective. Your card costed you 9 mana, assuming you casted it. Mine cost one. That means on my turn, I might have had ten extra mana that I spent developing my board, or ten mana I kept open to do other things. This is why some cards which provide card disadvantage are still powerful. For example, Force of Will. Not only is this negative resource parity - it's actually card disadvantage! You 1-for-2 yourself, but you get to tap out and develop your board while still keeping up disruption. (Also, few people expect a counterspell when you tap out.)

Politics, Empathy, and Collusion
This is one of the aspects of EDH that many players from other formats don't immediately understand. Politics has two aspects - the first is when one player uses another as a resource to take down a common threat, only in the context of the game. It's usually a one-time deal, a short alliance to overcome a threat. For example: "Untap my land with your Voyaging Satyr so I can kill his creature" or "Give me the Counterspell off my Tasigur activation so I can save us." The second is when a player purposefully makes plays that keep him off her opponents' radars. Since politics only shows up in EDH (and other multiplayer formats like Conspiracy draft), it's a relatively unexplored aspect of Magic. As such, there are a lot of things people think are "good politics" that really aren't. For example, I've seen people play decks that give all of their opponents resources (often called a Group Hug deck) to try and keep a low profile. What actually happens is that we'll use those resources to kill you (and each other) faster, without a second thought as to whether or not we should kill the player giving us resources. After all, you're giving our opponents resources too. What people don't really get is that politics is really a small part of EDH. Rarely if ever do people worry about making "enemies" at a competitive level. When you blow up my land, I understand that you did it because it was the right play, at least from your perspective. I'm not going to waste my resources trying to "get back at you," especially not when it impedes my chances of winning. Not even Wizards really understands politics.

A much larger aspect of multiplayer games is empathy. I don't mean feeling sorry for your opponents or commiserating with them. In game theory, empathy is the ability to put yourself in your opponents' shoes and making the correct play. If you know what your opponents will do in advance, it gives you a little bit of future-vision. For example, suppose you have a Wrath of God in your hand, as well as a Path to Exile. There's a Simic mage to your right with open mana and a Scavenging Ooze in play, a card that severely neuters your strategy. There are also many creatures on the battlefield that are shutting down our Simic friend and are low-impact on you. Even though it might be tempting to hold on to the Wrath so your opponents' creatures survive (since they aren't hurting you), the question you have to ask is - which is the Simic player less likely to counter? If they do have a counterspell, they're less likely to use it on a spell that actually gives them card advantage and only removes one of their resources, a card that barely builds their own boardstate and only shuts down one of their opponents. The Will of the Council mechanic from Conspiracy makes you think about empathy a little more explicitly - as stated in the article I linked to in the above paragraph, if you don't have a clue how your opponents will vote, you're doing it wrong.

Collusion is when two players have an understanding outside of the game that they will make plays that don't optimize their own chance of winning in order to help each other. Collusion is an entirely different beast from politics and empathy - collusion is cheating. Not in the technical sense, since you're not violating the rules of the game. However, colluding players are effectively playing a different game than their opponents, starting with an unfair advantage. This is the reason I don't think EDH will ever be a "serious tournament" format, or more accurately, the reason it can't and shouldn't be. (There are, after all, a myriad of reasons outside of collusion that stop EDH from being a tournament format in the real world.) The best way to deal with colluding players? Have a conversation about it, and if you're sure that they are in fact colluding yet they refuse to admit to it or stop... collude right back at them. In fact, collude at a specific one of them, and punish that player for colluding. After you and the other (non-colluding) player point all of their disruption at him for a game or two, he'll get that it is not in his best interest to collude, and that partnership will hopefully fall apart. If this doesn't work, stop playing with those players.

Until now, I've tried to imbue you with basic principles. In this section, I will talk specifically about high-level decks and how they function. This section will likely give you a good idea of what kind of deck you would like to build. It's important to note that because EDH is so unsolved, this part of the document is likely to become outdated, though I plan on updating it every once in awhile. You should also note that each local metagame looks very different, and each person who plays EDH has biases towards some decks and thinks they are better or worse than they really are. I am not immune to these biases, and I bet this section will be debated by high-level players more than any other. Let's start by discussing the different archetypes and how they interact. Keep in mind throughout this discussion that no deck is purely one kind or another - they are blends.

Control and Stax
Control and Stax decks try to stop you from doing your thing before eventually pulling out a win. Control does this primarily with removal, counterspells, gravehate, and other forms of traditional disruption. Stax decks do this primarily by attacking your resources - denying you mana, discarding your hand, and increasing the cost of your spells. Both archetypes use a little of each others' tactics, and stax-control hybrids are common. Stax decks are generally a little better, and are more common at high-level play. These decks don't want to be playing lots of dead combo pieces, so their wins take a long time to piece together. Sometimes, they don't play any true win-conditions at all, and rely on beating in with whatever utility creatures they have. These archetypes are typically very good against spellslinger and fast combo, but have poor matchups against slow combo and midrange. Some common decks that fall under these categories include Tasigur, the Golden Fang {thread}, Derevi, Empyrial Tactician {deck}, and Teferi, Temporal Archmage {deck}.

Spellslinger and Fast Combo
These decks try and go off before their opponents can stabilize. Spellslinger decks chain a bunch of spells together in the same turn, and typically the only interaction they play is to protect their combo - counterspells and targeted discard are both good in these decks. They often win via storm or with Doomsday. Fast Combo decks have one specific combo that they can play pretty quickly because it costs so little mana. On the other hand, often having such a fast combo comes at the price of late-game consistency. Both builds are jam-packed with tutors, rituals, and combo pieces. A fast deck will aim to win on turn 3-4, though in a real game with disruption, it's often a few turns slower than that. These decks are pretty good against slower decks that wait to take over the game, but often fold to disruption-heavy decks. Some examples include Prossh {deck}, Jeleva {deck}, and Zur the Enchanter {deck}.

Midrange
In classical Magic, a midrange deck is right between control and aggro, and often ramps into fatties, or at least medium-sized creatures like Siege Rhino. I use the word here to mean a deck that focuses on consistency, but many refer to these decks as "(slow) combo decks." These decks often have a graveyard subtheme, since that gives additional consistency. Midrange decks play whatever sort of game the situation asks for - they can fill the role of fast combo, control, or really anything the deck is built to do. Often, a midrange deck will play many combos and many ways to assemble them, so they can threaten to go off at any point, forcing the other players to always leave disruption up. Since disruption is often up, no other players can go off, and so the game continues to go long. Eventually, either there will be an opening to go off, or you have redundancy/protection for your combo. Midrange decks often play a lot of disruption themselves. Most midrange decks can go off in the first five turns, but that's not their primary gameplan. Midrange decks thrive against stax and control, but often have little to no stack control so lose to spellslinger and some fast combo decks, depending on how disruptable the combo is. Some common midrange decks include my own Jarad {deck}, Sharuum {deck}, and Animar {deck}.

Tempo
Tempo is one of the underplayed archetypes, but it's still represented at all levels of play. Tempo decks work towards keeping their opponents down on resources while slowly building their own, and focus on mana-efficiency and positive card parity. Tempo decks play lots of cards that in other decks might look like a "wasted slot" - a card that replaces itself but does little else - but that deck uses it very efficiently. Time Warp is a great example of this. Tempo decks also use counterspells to interact with other decks and to protect their own combos, but use them conservatively, only countering cards that put them in a losing position. Tempo decks have to pay more attention to things like mana curve, average mana cost, card advantage, etc. Some common tempo decks are Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind {deck} and Azami {deck}.

Toolbox
Toolbox decks in other formats are rare, but we've seen them from time to time. The Birthing Pod deck that was played in Modern (and Standard, before that) is the best example I can think of. These decks want to play lots of one-ofs, so their tutors have lots of possible targets. Toolbox decks in commander take advantage of the fact that it's a singleton format, and so any tutor has lots of targets. These decks play lots of niche creatures that are only good in specific situations, like Scavenging Ooze and Phyrexian Revoker. These decks are built to consistently be able to tutor creatures, either with their commander or with one of the many, many creature tutors they play. This way, they'll always have the answer they need in any situation. Toolbox decks use a variety of win-conditions, but usually combo out using creatures in their toolbox. High-tier toolbox decks include Yisan {deck}.


Outside of the Archetype Paradigm
Due to the unique nature of the format - that there's one card that every game will be in your "hand" - there are several decks that don't fit into any specific archetype. These decks are built around whatever relatively unique effect the Commander offers. There are commander-centric decks that are part of a specific archetype, but many of them are not. These decks play lots of terrible, terrible cards that are really good with their commander. Edric {deck} and Azusa {deck} are good examples.

Top Decks
In this section I will go over some common powerful decks. This is by no means a comprehensive list of high-tier decks. There are plenty of powerful decks that I haven't played very much against, which I won't cover. I am writing this November 2015, so this is a meta-snapshot. This section will become outdated quickly, but I plan on keeping this thread as a living document, so it will get updated every once in awhile. I will separate them by archetype, but as I said before, remember that no deck fits into exactly one archetype.

Spellslinger and Fast Combo
Stax
Midrange
Toolbox

Final Thoughts

Well, thanks for reading my eight billion words about my favorite format. As I mentioned before, I highly suggest you check out /r/CompetitiveEDH, a community with all the best EDH players I know. MTGS is great, but unfortunately it's hard to get good advice on a decklist since many of the members here play more casually. As you progress with your deck, definitely share your progress somewhere - there's no satisfaction like seeing other people replicate your decklist with success.

As you introduce the concepts of playing competitively with your playgroup, consider trying to teach your friends. There was a long period of time where I would help my playgroup tune their decks, since they weren't as in touch with the principles of the format. (That's still true for newer members.) Being the go-to guy for deck help will also help you better understand their decks, which will in turn help when you play against them.

I welcome comments and critique on this guide, including on grammar and presentation. I intend to keep this a living document so that it never becomes obsolete. I also intend to keep the thread attached to this live, and will be replying to comments or questions posted below. Again, thanks for reading.

-Razzberries

Quote from VashBismark »

Quote from razzliox »

Sure, you can "Play to Win" with a Timmy deck, but the fact that you're even using a Timmy deck flies in the face of the Play to Win philosophy. We are specifically in a metagaming discussion, and what I mean to say is that selecting Daretti or Aurelia isn't "metagaming" in that you didn't select them because they have good matchups against the decks that you expect. It's not like Aurelia is better against your meta than something typically considered tier one would be - maybe a specific tier one deck would perform poorly, but I suspect that there is a tier one deck that would perform exceptionally well. (Again, I am making assumptions about your meta and deck select choices and these assumptions may be incorrect.) I understand that, having chosen Aurelia, you can "Play to Win" from that point forward - find the best way to play Aurelia - and that is definitely a competitive things to do. As Jenesis mentioned, "honing suboptimal tactics" is still part of Playing to Win. It's just that, specifically in the context of metagaming, selecting a less-than-optimal deck doesn't become "playing to win" because it's a similar power level to your opponents.

How does using a Timmy deck fly in the face of Playing to Win? From your post, I think the incorrect assumption is that any deck that isn't in the list of tier-1 in this board is immediately a similar power level to my opponents, when in reality you should assume that every deck you select, even tier-1, in an established cEDH game is the same power level of your opponents. The best competitive games I've ever had are where people are pretty much equal and every decision is critical to your success - this is when skill outweighs anything else. A true competitive landscape/game should have moments when your on your turn and you realize you can not win, but still you keep the fight up and disrupt others, prolonging the inevitable but yet participating in an epic struggle. I've always had great pleasure in knowing I can completely stop the established leader in a game, but then will suffer the fate of other players because my efforts to kill will leave me completely vulnerable. As you may notice by my description, I don't play the infinite combo generic decks that just win, but I argue that just because I can't instantly win doesn't mean I don't Play to Win - I will Play to Win for as long as possible, but at some point you need to understand that you can't win, but can still effect the game and should continue to play it out. That is what competitive playing is.

Because it's a Timmy deck. It's not a Spike deck. That's why selecting that deck isn't playing to win (in the Deck Select "game"). However, I agree with you that you can still select a suboptimal or even bad deck and, from there, play to win. But, specifically in the context of metagaming as Playing to Win, selecting Daretti or Aurelia is not Playing to Win unless you select them specifically because you believe they will give you an edge. I think we're fundamentally in agreement here. My point was merely that in discussion we were having about playing "bad" decks (or decks typically not considered top-tier) because they do better in your meta than "good" decks (or decks typically considered top-tier) is still playing to win. Is the reason you selected these decks because they would perform better in your meta than something typically considered competitive? No? Then, specifically in the deck-select "game," you are not playing to win, though you may be playing to win in the deck-construction "game" and the actual game itself. Yes? Then my underlying assumption was incorrect.

Quote from Donald »

Now I would like to note that part of the reason we broke down our more competitive decks was because they were getting beat up. Our “non-competitive” decks were far more numerous and these “better” decks weren’t handling archenemy very well (especially considering our normal game size is 5-6 players). They were actually hurting our win percentages. So I would actually go so far as to say that if you were to play a tier 1 deck in my specific meta you aren’t playing to win, which I have definitely learned through experience.

Approaching the subject from an online standpoint makes a lot of sense, nobody cares about my meta but the 10 people in it. I can’t draw much from your meta either. Online is more of a wild west situation, on MTGO I could be up against a pile of draft garbage or a budgetless tier one deck (possibly in the same game!). This environment is much better for teaching threat assessment on the fly and the stronger decks will enjoy a better win percentage so you can track the progress of your deck more easily. I need to get back to work, maybe post more later.

I think the first paragraph in this quote is pretty interesting and worthy of discussion. I go to a weekly tournament every Saturday night and usually play my Jarad. I win more frequently than any other player, in fact I would say that the only other player there that keeps up with me is my friend's Teferi list. Over 75% of the time I get to the top table (which isn't much considering it's usually a 2-round tournament so I only have to win my first game to get there). I definitely get hated out a lot of the time, but usually I can overcome the hate simply because my deck is better. In my experience, playing a bad deck so as to not get hated out leads to less wins than playing a good deck and just accepting the archenemy. Obviously in your meta it's different. Now there may be different variables - perhaps the difference in power level is less in my meta (doubtful, I'm not that far ahead of the higher power level decks there) so it's not so hard for them to keep up with me. Perhaps your meta reacts more severely to a difference in power level, to the point where your opponents are making "bad" plays (from their perspective) just to screw you or to try and get you to switch your strategy (which you apparently did). I'm interested in the experience of other people - in general, would you say you win when playing with worse players repeatedly (until they know to gang up on you)?

I agree with your analysis in the second paragraph. This is why the article at the beginning of this thread has a bias towards online play. It's much harder for me to give advice towards your specific meta, and even if I could, it wouldn't be interesting for anybody else. Those kinds of things have to be addressed one-on-one. That said, I think the future of cEDH is paper play. I notice more and more stores having EDH events as the format grows naturally, and as the cEDH format grows online. Maybe the online growth causes more tournaments. Maybe it's the inverse. Either way, I do believe that in the coming years we'll see more people with paper decks that are "established," especially the more respected ones in casual communities.

Quote from Jusstice »

Quote from Jenesis »

This is the kind of discussion I think this thread needs more of. What weaknesses do you perceive as attackable in the currently perceived "top tier"? "Getting bad draws", for example, is probably something that can't be helped considering the structure of the format - even some Vintage decks frequently get bad opening draws.

I guess what I mean are those bad draws that happen because your deck gives you non-land cards that are irrelevant in the game situation that you arrive in when you deck fails to give you the tutors, action pieces, that you need to be the preeminent threat at the table. Basically, non-optimal for cases where it's on a non-optimal draw. For example, including cards like Recurring Insight (extreme example here) because the only excuse you can fathom for why you haven't won yet is because you haven't drawn enough of your deck. What your deck does after it doesn't draw enough threat cards should be tailored to the situation where you're behind, not where you have all the time in the world to catch up and goldfish your deck. Bias toward goldfishing faster, not interacting.

For a few really good examples for building out the non-threat portion of your deck, I think the Karador Boonweaver primer is one that does a great job of finding what slots can be transformed into relevant hate cards. Building with a mentality that you're always the fastest goldfish maybe would have put some small draw cards in there instead, but there's a lot of interaction there, and also great plans for putting it into play.

Yep, I generally agree with all of this. Specifically I disagree with your example and tend to think that Recurring Insight is the Consecrated Sphinx of instant/sorcery decks, but I agree with the analysis you provide. Currently I would say that there are a few types of cards that are good against the top tier in terms of hate. The first is tax effects like Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. These decks are good against spellslinger and even "fast combo" like Prossh. The second is gravehate, especially repeatable gravehate like Scavenging Ooze or Deathrite Shaman. Obviously these are good against Reanimator, but they're also good against spellslinger since they use their graveyard a fair amount (Yawgmoth's Will is a good example) and many fast combo builds that use their yard like Hermit Druid or Sidisi Ad Naus. Finally, artifact hate like Bane of Progress, Null Rod, or Kataki, War's Wage is very good. Most decks play artifact mana and you can build your deck with these cards in mind, omitting artifact ramp (besides the very best like Mana Crypt).

As soon as the number of lands in your library/hand/graveyard is more than half the number of nonlands, I do believe there is a maximum number of iterations. You are drawing at least one card per iteration, and can continue drawing at least one card per iteration by discarding the lands that you draw. Even if you are drawing all lands, you can cycle them with your discard outlet and turn them into nonlands. I haven't yet calculated the maximum (and such a calculation wouldn't be valuable since it changes depending on how many lands and cards are left in your deck, what's in your hand, et cetera). You can instantly draw cards and add lands to your library by discarding lands from your hand.

My dredge chains were simply "probability of dredging into Dakmor Salvage before fizzling." I do think at the least Grave-Troll should be in the list - it's so valuable with an engine like Bazaar of Baghdad. Speaking of, that card is insane - Tap it, dredge once (mill a land), dredge again (mill a land), discard (a land and two dredgers), draw 3 cards? (This DOES work since "draw 2" means "draw 1, then draw 1" and they are separate instances of zone-changing.)

Yes, you can only win at instant speed if you already have a black mana up. Unfortunately the black mana doesn't carry over through cleanup steps, so the deck needs Necromancy to be able to reanimate Skirge Familiar at instant-speed and win in one cleanup step. The list needs a little work.

I don't actually care at all about which Titan we use. Kozilek is less life off Ad Naus, so we went with that. Other than that, I generally agree with your criticisms.

edit: Link to Discussion, Link to Decklist

Random question - is the list on the front page your current build? Thanks!

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I want to make an angel edh deck and originally I was going to use sigarda, host of herons as my commander because green has a lot of mana ramp compared to other colors (in my opinion) and that would help me get my high cost angels out. But after looking through angel creatures, I found that there are some really good red/red and white Angels. I didn't know which one would be better because red doesn't have mana ramp like green does.

Hi all,

I just wanted to say an 80% win rate is nigh unattainable in two important ways, as has been pointed out numerous times by others on this forum. As a school teacher I just want to add that is clear that, mathematically speaking, winning 80% of games is statistically significant. To say tha you are doing so means that out of every 5 games you play, you are winning 4 of them. Which to me seems pointless.

If the chances of you losing are so small, why even play? Who would want to play such a deck? Also the number of card combinations that would make these repetitive win streaks would be especially significant. EVERY SINGLE DECK WOULD PLAY THEM IN ORDER TO COMPETE AT ALL. Sorry, it is just right there in the numbers, this happens in every thing people do. When one way becomes better nearly everyone changes to that method of training, preparation, and equipment to that method (SEE ALL SPORTS). Given that magic only releases X sets over time and Commander magic is a singleton format, nearly all the winning 80%+ decks would play the exact same cards in their deck, with a variance of somewhere between 4-7 cards tops.

You could argue that it is your skill that allows you to compete at such a high winning rate but then, again, either your sample size is too small or you are playing against robots that never improve. Every three games or so should result in at least a significant change in the politics of the game. Other players should be cooperatively trying to remove you from the game, simply in order to play.

Another important thing to know: skill does not always win. Whereas hard work nearly always wins. It is very unlikely that a person winning repeatedly against nearly all play groups would maintain a high level of focus (aka skill). It is also very likely that super skill player would earn a reputation and even strangers would know to "meta" against them. Thus the 80% win rate would fall like a bowling ball.

To argue that you play against random new opponents each day is, well, just not believable and I will leave it at that. Magic, especially commander is a small enough community that someone will be in the pod warning everyone else about you.

I would argue that I have played magic a while. I play in a fairly large magic community and have recently tailed off. For a while I was perhaps in the top five of the commander players in my area. After only a seven month hiatus I came back and have only won about 27%-30% of my games. This is due to a large variety of factors but simply put...my opponents were playing new card combos and ideas I had not seen before. I played the board and counted on removal but did not accurately appreciate the new blow outs or changes in politics that could result from some of the new cards.

I find it highly unlikely that any deck, no matter how good, could win anywhere near 80%+ of the time. Except for three decks that I have seen do it. Even then, they are far from 80%. They are 5 colour hermit druid combo (wins t 1-4 about 67% of the time). Even when table works together to fight it, we must have 0-2 mana cost counters or removal to play in response or we lose as early as turn 2 without hope.
I have also seen Azami beaten rather soundly by a variety of sources (notably "boil"/tsunami + boseiju, who shelters all + other blue hate cards) But simple decks can crush it like Ezuri or Krenko or poison/infect long before it resists.
Sultai - ramp + counter + extra turns (wins about 53% in my experience.) This is due mainly to out ramping and outdrawing opponents.
Derevi - counter plus stasis lock down. Sick deck, but can sometimes be defeated with a well timed pithing needle or similar card + return to dust or exile/tuck effect on lockdown pieces.

Anyway, I am just saying 80% win rate means 4 out of every 5 games. Think about it. Who do you know that has ever even come close? In order to statistically significant your sample size must be higher than ten games... What meta would not sideboard to crush the deck? Every magic community in the world would talk about a deck with a reliable 80% win rate...

I don't know how many of you guys have seen this thread but Razzliox has without a doubt the most definitive Jarad deck I've seen.
If you want to play reanimator but more combo based I'd definatly check it out Here





Also added on the front page basic strategies against other commanders.
Added pretty much anything that's a threat in my group plus a few others that don't see play over here (Kaalia, narset, Hermit druid)
If I'm missing someone please let me know