Post-Modern Horizons set review, this episode's coincidental comments include 1) Bear Tribal 2) 'Shenanigans' involving the graveyard 3) trying to pronounce "ouphe"
i've never played a game of commander, never watched a podcast before, never went on patreon either. Now i'm doing all three cause of this channel, even building my own Rishkar deck to start playing
I feel so proud. Welcome to the most awesomest format! (yes, "awesomest" is now a word. I make up words sometimes...) Also we really appreciate the patreon support. You rock!!!
Aaron Payne I don't want this to sound negative in any way to this channel. I usually stream TH-cam while working, with my screen off. Google stopped that. You can only stream with the screen off if you pay for TH-cam red now. So I'd like to support them but there is just too much TH-cam content and I went from streaming 8-10 hours a day to 2-3 videos a week. I don't want to say it's not worth it but I would have to pay google as well to make it more worth it : (
Aaron Payne they have all of these episodes as a podcast as well so you can stream those on your phone or probably computer with the screen off too maybe (all free as well)
I immediately got the Angel tune the moment you started humming it. You can't begin to comprehend the scale of my obsession. The song, by the way, is Sanctuary by Darling Violetta. Oh my God I am dying because of this.
Would like to mention something in relation to the Mana-curve that i find very relevant, and has been a learning moment for me personally in regards to just building decks in general ... When you laid out your mana curve in regards to CMC, go through the cards 'again', and arrange the cards in regards to 'The most likely moment you want to play the card' (or expect to want to cast it). Say f/e a board-wipe at 4 mana, do you want to play that at turn 4 ? Well maybe if everybody starts playing lower drops, but more then likely you will want to play it turn 7 or 8, when people have established a board and the more impactful creatures start to come out of the woodworks (right?) This 'new curve' is the actual mana-curve of your deck, and from this you can also evaluate the low drops, 'Do these still make an impact if I play them later, the more 'yes' that is, the better it is for commander (as pointed out in the show), but obviously you play them as you can to make use of mana. And this 'new curve' also shows you that while you lower your curve you still have a lot of things to do on those later turns. Like card draw, Targeted Removal, Board wipes, Cards with X mana symbol in them with high upside the higher X is (and you place those somewhere you'd most likely want to play them for X, earlier is 'meh' but at least i do something, later is obviously better) ... and i think that with this curve you'd be much happier in regards to your late game impact options.
I love that you guys are covering this topic because I feel like so many people don't have a good understanding of the concept, and like the (fantastic) Commander's Brew guys, are laboring under the misapprehension that it makes you a degenerate spike to build your deck well. It's a huge perception problem in the EDH community that just because you play well, and build your decks well, you are perceived as being an abusively powerful player, when really the people who think that are often just not exposed to truly Spikey players. Also, Josh you said that many players aren't as excited about their 1, 2, 3 drops and I think that's probably totally true unfortunately. For me, they're some of my most exciting cards. I ALWAYS love playing Orcish Lumberjack! You guys should do a series of Top 10 1-3 drops in each color combo, that would be a huge service to the community.
It's funny because I'm like you. I love my 1-2-3 drops. I think the more you build your decks while considering your mana curve the more proud you are of all the cool and impactful low cmc spells you've "discovered" and therefore the more you look forward to playing them! I like your idea for a show topic. Will definitely put it on the to-do list.
I think you massively misunderstand the Commanders Brew guys. Their perspective seems, quite obviously, to be based on having a meta that is casual and most importantly accessible. Nobody can deny that usually lower cmc costs equate to higher dollar value decks. Making an excellent low budget deck takes as much skill in deckbuilding and play as making a super-spikey super- competitive super-expensive deck. Unfortunately, magic is a game where you can pay to win to a large degree. I absolutely hate it when a super-spikey player joins my budget EDH meta wipes us out on turn 3/4 and then turns around and says we need to improve our deckbuilding and become "better" players. These people are ignorant of the way we are playing this game: casual, fun and affordable.
Aiden Don I disagree massively that this is a mana curve issue. It's almost always a Tutor and Combo issue. Totally different things (and I'm not knocking the combo/competitive players - do what you find fun). Building your deck to be efficient and worry about mana curve has nothing to do with budget. Look at the card Ben literally called out: Orcish Lumberjack. It's $.25!
To the listeners? My biggest level-up in deckbuilding was preparing for the Amonkhet pre-release and release weekend (in which i sucked hard anyway), and playing limited in general. Deckbuilding is a half of the limited gameplay, and you can't just think about it for as long as you need to, look on the web for tips and so on, like you do every time in constructed. Adjusting the curve is crucial, and so is evaluating cards for what they really are. And when I heard of the "quadrant theory" a whole new world opened in front of me. I believe it's the same thing in edh, a much slower constructed format, where some cards get to shine because of their versatility, or the fact that they are good at every stage of the game.
A recent level-up moment for me involved changing my focus to commanders with low cmc that can be easily recurred if needed. Not only does Edric fit the bill, but he has a built-in, card-draw engine that allows myself and others to draw cards, as long as Edric remains on the battlefield, and he encourages my opponents to attack each other, instead of me.
watching this for the first time in 2020, well commander 2017 didnt give you Bear Tribal, but it finally came in 2019 great job CommandCast! Its amazing to see how the show has evolved, i feel like starwars and im going back and watching the prequels again and its amazing, the help and wisdom is timeless!
So glad you mentioned (multi)kicker spells, I love a lot of these guys in my decks because they give me stuff to do pretty much no matter what. I think it was Commander's Brew that put the idea of having a variety of stuff to do with all your mana that turned me on to looking at these things.
Good luck playing Animar on turn 2 after turn 1 fyndhorn elves! ;) You guys are awesome. This episode was enlightening and I'm now re-thinking my Alesha build, cutting some cmc3 stuff and adding stronger four drops.
You guys are awesome. You really help the format out and get more people into it. Something I wish you would talk about is the "official" rules of commander and how people are supposed to have their own meta in each group.
My weekend commander playgroup has a league where there's a healthy mix of both competitive and casual and I get a lot of help from those who've been playing magic since way back in the early days. Then there's you guys, the Professor, and Wedge from the Mana Source to help me gain a better understanding of the game and the mechanics.
I've always kept low cmc's in mind when making individual decisions, but this video puts my decks all in a new light and inspires me to edit them all to lower cmc's across the board. I have a lot of five drop commanders like Mazirek, Samut, Keranos
To the listeners: I literally just built my first deck (ordered like 50 cards from Card Kingdom - they should arrive soon!) with Sigarda, Heron's Grace as the commander. The main idea I had to keep reminding myself of is that redundancy is important - it's not enough to have just one card with an effect because chances are I won't see it in every game. So I made sure that for key effects I had 2 or 3 similar cards that did the same thing. Watching old episodes was super helpful along the way, so thanks so much for all you do! I am sure I will be continuing to make tweaks as I start to play it.
This is exactly what I needed. I am definitely guilty of wanting to many high cost spells. I am going to take the challenge with 2 of my decks for sure. Thank you guys, making us better magic players with each video. My "To the Listeners" answer: I haven't been playing for long at all, not even a year, so I am still learning some basics. So my biggest level up has to be when I realized I wasn't putting enough land and other mana sources in my decks. I will never forget the night I sat down with my first deck and removed all these cool spells just to add more land. That was hard but now that deck is really good and I never have problems with drawing land.
Hey @jfwong and @JoshLeeKwai my biggest level up moment when building my commander decks is when I realized, with help from a good friend, to always start with what ramp packages I will play in the deck after I choose the commander. It is fun to play big spells or sweet synergistic comboes, but you can't play those if you don't have the mana.
I recently started building a edh deck around kefnet and this helped me a lot. I originally put a lot of high costed draw spells, mill or counter with big bonuses at the top of the curve. I changed this to go more with low cost counters and I feel like this will be significantly better play wise. I also feel that this deck will be crazy fun because I'm building more control with some land bounce and card draw bonuses. Great episode guys
Creatures with undying still hit the graveyard, so Deathrite Shaman may exile Ballista when it's sacced after the first use. 700.4. The term dies means “is put into a graveyard from the battlefield.” 702.92a Undying is a triggered ability. “Undying” means “When this permanent is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, if it had no +1/+1 counters on it, return it to the battlefield under its owner’s control with a +1/+1 counter on it.”
ichik umer glad someone pointed this out, shaman has two toughness so Ballista can't kill it without going to the graveyard first or having a 4th card. Shaman exiles it in response to the undying trigger.
Hey guys, love your show. This is the single most important issue for creating powerful commander decks! Especially with the new mulligan rule. Keep up the good work, i have ordered a ton of cards from Card Kingdom with your endorsement.
Would like to mention that 'Lightning bolt' actually does get better in Commander if people do what you advocate they do in this exact episode ... because lowering the curve means more targets for Lightning bolt ;)
Your show helped me with the idea of ramp. Now I include at lest 10-12 ramp spells (sometimes more :) ) in my EDH decks and it helps me ta actually play the game! Thnx guys!
Relatively new to mtg and fell in love with Commander. I've tweeked a mono green deck I bought but now I'm trying my hand at building from scratch using the three colours I'm less familiar with, BUR, you guys have helped a lot in my building.
I've definitely noticed a deck I put together recently did not care as much about mana curve with the exception of hate that I catch. That is Kaalia of the Vast edh
Learning the power of Mana Dorks in certain decks completely changed the way I build decks now. This has led me to being able to drop my 5 CMC tri-color commander on turn 3 consistently and I can't imagine going back!
Two things that changed how I made decks are: concern around ramp and card draw. Someone told me once, "One of the strongest sentences that can be on a cards is 'draw a card'". So I took ramp and card draw to heart and built a Sram equipment deck with a Sun Titan and Evolving Wilds for mono-white repeatable ramp.
Most interesting episode in a while. I have also recently been reconsidering the curve in some of my decks and using more mana dorks compared to ramping growths effects. I'll definitely keep this in minds when tuning my decks. Cheers!
Another piece of advice is taking out big CMC spells for repeatable or activate-able stuff. For example, Heliod is actually a great card in a control deck. You can hold up answers like counter spells or removal, but have something you can sink your mana into if you don't need to use your answers yet. And you still do something with that mana.
I appreciate this upload, I've only been playing magic for about a year now and mana curve is something that I still somewhat struggle with. I am always making minor changes to my home brewed commander decks and I definitely need more mana ramp
Loving the video so far. Am a short time fan but have watched hours of your videos over the last few weeks. Love the show and please keep up the amazing quality content
For me, the biggest improvement in my deck building of late is working on adding in more removal/answers. I enjoy having synergistic and thematic builds, which lead to me often sacrificing interaction cards. One of the ways I'm trying to improve this is by having put together a deck that is more heavy on the control aspect than a theme, helping me to adapt to this playstyle and using this to improve my deckbuilding. Other then that when switching out cards for curve purposes, I always note down which cards went out and which I added on a small list. During games I occasionally refer to this list when I draw a card, just to see whether or not I would have rather drawn the taken out card instead.
Nice video! You guys are always so helpful and informative. Love Game Knights, love these podcasts, pretty much everything you guys do is awesome! I think the biggest thing that has helped in my commander deck building is determining whether or not a spell has a significant enough impact in the particular strategy that I'm going for. When I first started playing commander, I was just pretty much putting all my rares in one deck lol But now I know that it takes so much more than that. Obviously, when you first get into the format, all you want to do is pick a commander that's in your favorite colors and just pile all your rares into one big deck. Trust me, it's very tempting, but not the way you'll have fun or even catch a win. Like you guys said, discipline is key! You want to see what your commander actually does, outline your main strategy, then start doing some research on cards (rares and non rares alike lol) that add synergy and impact the game in your favor, while benefiting the whole strategy of your general.
To the listeners: Using the staple binders method mentioned in one of the previous episodes has made my deckbuilding insanely efficient. Owning one of each fetch/shock land makes starting a new deck so much more affordable. I'm building a 5 color deck and saved around $400 on just the land base.
To the listeners: Definitely adding more cantrip, scry and card draw variant spells into my decks. Noticed a huge increase in the value of my plays in early turns or just being able to tuck those late game lands without having to reduce the amount that's in the deck. All about getting that value boiii
I need to work on the mana on my deck, I have a little 1 mana cards equal amounts 2, 3 and 4 cmc cards and then it drops dramatically at 5 and six then increases at 7.
Very informative episode. I have often struggled in the past with mana curves for my deck, but this video has helped my perspective on it. I will apply these ideas to my deck building in the future. :) Also congrats on 50k subscribers! Are you doing anything to celebrate on the channel?
Managing a curve is real difficult when you're running a Scion of the Ur-Dragon tribal deck. All the good ones are above 5CMC! 3-5 spells with CMC 6 or greater is rough, because with my deck, it's 20 cards, 17 of which are dragons. What can I do? (Luckily, our old group still plays with the partial mulligans so that those old decks still work well).
To the listeners: this was very recent and what I did was focussed my atraxa deck which was previously spread over +1/+1 counters, infect and superfriends for budget reasons to just +1/+1 counters. It has resulted in the deck playing much better, as where planeswalkers which usually were targeted and killed straight away once were in my hand and library, cards which work with the deck now are.
Honestly, the curve counter on TappedOut is one of my favorite parts of the site. I love seeing the odds of having a drop of a certain number throughout the game. Also gives me an idea of what to cut when new stuff comes out, which is really good for me since I find new, cool stuff all the time. Personally, I like having my deck curve out around 4-5-6, and have a card or two at 8-9-10-11.
To the listeners: I built a zombie deck and took it to an EDH game night at my local. I lost more games than I one and one of the things someone at the shop pointed out to me was that my deck 'doesn't have many ways to interact with others'. Since then I've upped my removal and it's greatly improved my deck :)
I got the booster box, fat pack, and both planswalker decks for $145 + $10 shipped!! Also got consecrated sphinx and 2x Gideon of the trials in my packs!
This is a very good and helpful episode. I always tend to clutter my decks with expensive stuff, and think "yeah, this curve sucks, but it's commander!" ... I will have to go through all of them again and improve them a lot. Same thing with card draw and ramp, I tend to run awesome spells but fail to cast them way too often :O.
Maelstrom Wanderer is a good example of this as the curve stops at 8, which is the big man himself and the double cascade means tempo is a reduced issue if Wanderer gets countered
Great podcast, but I do have a recommendation. You should talk more about the impact of ramp on your curve. You did touch on it with Rishkar but I think you should build on it in a future podcast. This would be especially great in a podcast about commanders that favor weird CMCs like Arcum Dagsson, Kaalia, Jhoira, and Damia.
SiusBleach I completely agree! I've played reanimator decks before and the curve was all over the place because I was cheating big stuff into play with lower cmc spells.
question ( need help ): do big creatures early matter? I mean if they don't win you the game? Like playing aggro in cmd is hard cause you can take out one player, but then the rest of the players have setup their game to just win and you become less effective as the game goes on, right...so unless the big creatures bring some sort of value late game, I tend to cut them for cards with more impact late. I play Meren and am finding that seldom use her XP to the max. I'll bring back a sporefrog any time. Now I'm thinking perhaps an annialator eldrazi, or something else huge may be good, but really I'd rather bring back something that could copy meren's ability or somehow get more than just 1 card back out the gy.
Basically any big creature that matters in the late game CAN decimate the early game (the problem is it can draw a lot of hate, like their Blightsteel example). You definitely want some good late game for Meren. Something like It That Betrays is a great card for the deck. You just need to make sure you have a consistent way to either ramp to it or get it into your graveyard and reanimate it with Meren.
Fun fact... Over the weekend, myself and my play group were talking about what was going to be the next tribe that'd get a push from WotC... We figured that it was going to be BEAR TRIBAL!!! Then you made that comment... *mind blown*
my biggest commander deck building level up was moving away from building decks ENTIRELY around the commander. Often the cards that compliment your boss become completely dead without them. I began to build decks around a certain mechanic that functions with or without my commander. That way the decks stand on there own. If anyone reads this and you often struggle to find which cards to cut.... cut the cards that ONLY work with your commander first. Like Jimmy says, if you dont miss it in gameplay/testing then it probably wasnt great to begin with.
Level up Question: been playing commander for 5 years, recently have been moving towards cutting crazy powerful cards like doubling season, (that make you public enemy number one or seem to win on the spot) into cards like Duelist's Heritage which make games more interactive, nothing better than seeing people interacting with spells or politics . Overall I win less games, but fun for everyone seems to increase :)
That's a good way to put it, it is stubborn. I was told to carry your opinions I a box and listen to others, and if you like theirs take your old beliefs, throw it out and replace it with the new one. It's literally how we grow as a person
About the counterspell thing, when i was the only person not playing blue in the game and i didnt get to play magic because most of my spells got countered or bounced or removed in a way, and playing my olivia deck and not really being able to interact with that game was frustrating.
I think the best way to demonstrate someone is not using their mana efficiently every turn is the "invisible helix pinnacle" exercise. any time it reaches their end step, tap their untapped lands, and put it into a "helix pinnacle" on their side of the board. at the end of the game, show them the charge counters on their pinnacle. this is especially effective in a multiplayer game, where more times than not the player that wins has the fewest charge counters on their pinnacle. thoughts?
Hey guys, GREAT video, it's a topic that players both casual and 75%ers alike can definitely learn alot from :). To the listeners: So my latest Level Up moment both had me proud and my playgroup rather annoyed lol. I was playing my Melek, Izzet Paragon list (which I don't consider a competitive or even semi-competitive deck simply due to the nature of how fragile storm can be) and my playgroup was kind of forced to watch in awe as I began to storm off by casting multiple spells and holding priority to then cast another spell in response, I did this until my storm count was high enough to kill everybody with the Ignite Memories in my hand, then I proceeded to cast my Ignite Memories and hold priority once again so that I could respond to it with Wipe Away so that the Split Second on Wipe Away would prevent anyone from casting a counterspell to stop my win condition from resolving. It's such a simple little interaction but, it definitely makes ya feel smart :)
A big upside to lowering your curve that I don't think you guys mentioned is that it allows you to maybe cut a land or two. Over a longer game this effectively lets you see more actual cards instead of useless lands. That's the exact sort of marginal advantage you don't really think about that still wins you plenty of games.
Mad Love and Respect guys. I love the show and the insight, I do however want to point out that Freyhorn doesn't help play animar on turn 2 unless the land you dropped was a Shock, Dual, Command tower, etc. Color Fixing needs to be considered for ramp to play on curve. Birds (as you stated) and Nobel Hierarch should be the dorks you consider... not a green that gives you green.
Definitely not I'm just trying to help :) Making sure that a newer player doesn't put in Lawnmower elves, Freyhorn and a bunch of basics and hope to play a tricolor General on curve. You guys did an amazing job on a cast about Fixing vs Ramp so if they listen to your casts they wouldn't be confused anyway :)
Something to note when comparing casting 1 6cmc spell to 2 3cmc spells is that the 2 3cmc spells cost 2 cards, so you need a card advantage engine to compensate, otherwise you're losing 1 card per turn (counting the +1 in card advantage in the draw step) and will eventually run out of gas.
This channel is right at that perfect "curve" if you will, between competitive and intermediate/fun play. You guys play at a high level without being "spike" decks.
Nice topic. Since you mentioned it for the first time in some other video I also went in the direction of lowering the curve in some of my decks... but there are still exceptions (is what you also said at one point in the video I think) depending on the commander you run ;) I have a {WG} Selvala, Explorer Returned deck. The Ideal play is to get her out on turn 1 or 2 if the starting hand allows it. Even if I get her out only on turn 3, trun 4 i will be having up to 8 mana, with that i can crank out a Elesh Norn early or piss everybody off with Vorinclex or even better flavour wise is playing Selvala's Stampede ^^ In short, in Selvala my curve is pretty much rising towards the higher mana cost ;)
As a 20 year vet of casual play, I can say deck building comes down to certain steps. The first is to have an idea of what you want your deck to do. Whether it is a mechanic or a specific card or combo you want to build around. The second step is to get a good idea of what has synergy with that mechanic, card, or combo. You should incorporate at least two of three concepts, draw, mana ramp, and/or control. Often you will find you will have enough card choices to build two or three decks within those limitations, choose those with the most positive effects that have good synergy, and always favor a card with a lower mana cost when choosing between two cards with similar effects. It is of course more complex than that, but that is really the meat of it.
Ya the replacement of Partial-Paris to Vancouver mulligan seriously affected some of my EDH decks (in particular my Grixis-Chaos deck, where I ran 30lands and would mulligan away all non-lands or non-mana production cards in my opening hand in order to have an opening hand of 4 or 5 lands)
Josh! So whats the average mana curve for typical EDH deck from 1 to 7? Still don't have the basic idea... is it similar to limited mana curve? Same proportions? Same %?
Also, I find spellshapers to be fantastic early-game plays which are relevant all game long. Mageta the Lion... Avenger en-Dal... Deepwood Elder... Devout Witness... Hammer Mage... Overtaker... Waterfront Bouncer. Dawnstrider for life!
I'm glad Josh said he doesn't play his commander always. I was worried because I've noticed I've still had strong games without even playing commander. Not that my commander doesn't help me pop off 😂
random question time: I use a 2 mana spell that has overload on turn 2. Later on in the game I cast Past in Flames to give said 2 mana spell flashback. My question is, when flashing back a card that has an overload cost on it, would I be able to cast it as it's overload cost?
This episode ~could have~ convinced me to finally take out Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter from my Atraxa deck. It's so expensive and if I have it in hand, more often than not I'd rather have another card instead. But every time I want to take it out, I think it has so much potential. XD
a friend of mine plays bear tribal with adaptive automaton, door of destinies, and some old green enchantment that pumps creatures with no abilities. then he runs fight as removal and overruns for win conditions
My biggest level up moment was me taking out kozilek the great distortion and narset the transcendent in my creature heavy brago deck. I added in mistmeadow witch and slithermuse. definitely my best decision because I can hit more than seven cards if I target the nekusar player or the group huggers.
Don't play spells in an order to maximize mana usage, play what's most useful in your current situation in an order that maximizes the effects, while considering what the opponent(s) might do ahead in time. Sometimes holding back, timing and patience is key.
Oh my, this is the thing I was thinking about a lot recently! Definetly, there is problem of certain CMC slot overflow, for my decks I noticed it being 3/4, and in one special case, 6. Unfortunately, after some research, I came to conclusion that I simply don't own a lot of cheap CMC cards that fill the role of curve solidifiers, like 1 mana instant speed top-deck tutors. So, the question is: Should I focus on getting my hands on as many of those utility curve spell as possible or there may be more...budget alternatives?
"Bear tribal. You heard it here first."
Well, looks like you called it
Post-Modern Horizons set review, this episode's coincidental comments include
1) Bear Tribal
2) 'Shenanigans' involving the graveyard
3) trying to pronounce "ouphe"
Ayula laughing :)
i've never played a game of commander, never watched a podcast before, never went on patreon either. Now i'm doing all three cause of this channel, even building my own Rishkar deck to start playing
I feel so proud. Welcome to the most awesomest format! (yes, "awesomest" is now a word. I make up words sometimes...) Also we really appreciate the patreon support. You rock!!!
Woo green players!
yeah i've already watched it maybe 3-4 times, though i'm going for more elves in the deck to make max use of metallic mimic and elf tribal stuff
Once you are into it, take a commander with blue in it for you next deck. You can thank me later :)
Anyone want to do Changeling tribal with me?
My most recent level up moment? A buddy of mine recommended a podcast called "The Command Zone".
#BestAnswerYet
I would love it if they uploaded more commander games. But I know its a big amount of work to produce those videos. Still would be great.
halti91 Agreed. Especially with Craig playing Infect ^_^
Just gonna plug it for them for those looking at this comment - support their patreon to make it easier for them to make those videos more often
They will i'm sure considering how popular Game Knights is, but they obviously take forever to make and it isn't like they have a film crew.
Aaron Payne
I don't want this to sound negative in any way to this channel. I usually stream TH-cam while working, with my screen off. Google stopped that. You can only stream with the screen off if you pay for TH-cam red now. So I'd like to support them but there is just too much TH-cam content and I went from streaming 8-10 hours a day to 2-3 videos a week. I don't want to say it's not worth it but I would have to pay google as well to make it more worth it : (
Aaron Payne they have all of these episodes as a podcast as well so you can stream those on your phone or probably computer with the screen off too maybe (all free as well)
"if your commander is breya birds of paradise isn't as good"
Well yeah.
It's green.
I thought it was blue, hehe.
I immediately got the Angel tune the moment you started humming it. You can't begin to comprehend the scale of my obsession. The song, by the way, is Sanctuary by Darling Violetta.
Oh my God I am dying because of this.
Would like to mention something in relation to the Mana-curve that i find very relevant, and has been a learning moment for me personally in regards to just building decks in general ...
When you laid out your mana curve in regards to CMC, go through the cards 'again', and arrange the cards in regards to 'The most likely moment you want to play the card' (or expect to want to cast it). Say f/e a board-wipe at 4 mana, do you want to play that at turn 4 ? Well maybe if everybody starts playing lower drops, but more then likely you will want to play it turn 7 or 8, when people have established a board and the more impactful creatures start to come out of the woodworks (right?)
This 'new curve' is the actual mana-curve of your deck, and from this you can also evaluate the low drops, 'Do these still make an impact if I play them later, the more 'yes' that is, the better it is for commander (as pointed out in the show), but obviously you play them as you can to make use of mana. And this 'new curve' also shows you that while you lower your curve you still have a lot of things to do on those later turns. Like card draw, Targeted Removal, Board wipes, Cards with X mana symbol in them with high upside the higher X is (and you place those somewhere you'd most likely want to play them for X, earlier is 'meh' but at least i do something, later is obviously better) ... and i think that with this curve you'd be much happier in regards to your late game impact options.
I love that you guys are covering this topic because I feel like so many people don't have a good understanding of the concept, and like the (fantastic) Commander's Brew guys, are laboring under the misapprehension that it makes you a degenerate spike to build your deck well. It's a huge perception problem in the EDH community that just because you play well, and build your decks well, you are perceived as being an abusively powerful player, when really the people who think that are often just not exposed to truly Spikey players.
Also, Josh you said that many players aren't as excited about their 1, 2, 3 drops and I think that's probably totally true unfortunately. For me, they're some of my most exciting cards. I ALWAYS love playing Orcish Lumberjack! You guys should do a series of Top 10 1-3 drops in each color combo, that would be a huge service to the community.
It's funny because I'm like you. I love my 1-2-3 drops. I think the more you build your decks while considering your mana curve the more proud you are of all the cool and impactful low cmc spells you've "discovered" and therefore the more you look forward to playing them! I like your idea for a show topic. Will definitely put it on the to-do list.
Orcish Lumberjack is great. He's like an axe wielding Sol Ring.
imaginarymatter he's better in some cases
I think you massively misunderstand the Commanders Brew guys. Their perspective seems, quite obviously, to be based on having a meta that is casual and most importantly accessible. Nobody can deny that usually lower cmc costs equate to higher dollar value decks. Making an excellent low budget deck takes as much skill in deckbuilding and play as making a super-spikey super- competitive super-expensive deck. Unfortunately, magic is a game where you can pay to win to a large degree. I absolutely hate it when a super-spikey player joins my budget EDH meta wipes us out on turn 3/4 and then turns around and says we need to improve our deckbuilding and become "better" players. These people are ignorant of the way we are playing this game: casual, fun and affordable.
Aiden Don I disagree massively that this is a mana curve issue. It's almost always a Tutor and Combo issue. Totally different things (and I'm not knocking the combo/competitive players - do what you find fun). Building your deck to be efficient and worry about mana curve has nothing to do with budget. Look at the card Ben literally called out: Orcish Lumberjack. It's $.25!
33:00 little did you know the might of Bear Force 1
and if I recall it Won the game too lol
To the listeners? My biggest level-up in deckbuilding was preparing for the Amonkhet pre-release and release weekend (in which i sucked hard anyway), and playing limited in general. Deckbuilding is a half of the limited gameplay, and you can't just think about it for as long as you need to, look on the web for tips and so on, like you do every time in constructed. Adjusting the curve is crucial, and so is evaluating cards for what they really are. And when I heard of the "quadrant theory" a whole new world opened in front of me. I believe it's the same thing in edh, a much slower constructed format, where some cards get to shine because of their versatility, or the fact that they are good at every stage of the game.
A recent level-up moment for me involved changing my focus to commanders with low cmc that can be easily recurred if needed. Not only does Edric fit the bill, but he has a built-in, card-draw engine that allows myself and others to draw cards, as long as Edric remains on the battlefield, and he encourages my opponents to attack each other, instead of me.
Great video guys. Mana curve is one of those concepts that no matter how experienced you are, it's always good to get pointers or brush up on.
I was at the Magic Castle last week. Really cool to get a Magic shout out for a Magic shout out. Best of Luck at the Audition.
Spoiler alert. He aced the audition. Woo hoo!
Yay! I am a Magician who plays MTG as well. Plan to audition later this year! Love your Podcast BTW.
The Twisted Visionary That's freakin' awesome! Good luck and let us know how you do.
watching this for the first time in 2020, well commander 2017 didnt give you Bear Tribal, but it finally came in 2019 great job CommandCast! Its amazing to see how the show has evolved, i feel like starwars and im going back and watching the prequels again and its amazing, the help and wisdom is timeless!
So glad you mentioned (multi)kicker spells, I love a lot of these guys in my decks because they give me stuff to do pretty much no matter what. I think it was Commander's Brew that put the idea of having a variety of stuff to do with all your mana that turned me on to looking at these things.
Good luck playing Animar on turn 2 after turn 1 fyndhorn elves! ;) You guys are awesome. This episode was enlightening and I'm now re-thinking my Alesha build, cutting some cmc3 stuff and adding stronger four drops.
You guys are awesome. You really help the format out and get more people into it. Something I wish you would talk about is the "official" rules of commander and how people are supposed to have their own meta in each group.
Thank you guys so much! Now all my decks run perfectly!
My weekend commander playgroup has a league where there's a healthy mix of both competitive and casual and I get a lot of help from those who've been playing magic since way back in the early days. Then there's you guys, the Professor, and Wedge from the Mana Source to help me gain a better understanding of the game and the mechanics.
I've always kept low cmc's in mind when making individual decisions, but this video puts my decks all in a new light and inspires me to edit them all to lower cmc's across the board. I have a lot of five drop commanders like Mazirek, Samut, Keranos
To the listeners: I literally just built my first deck (ordered like 50 cards from Card Kingdom - they should arrive soon!) with Sigarda, Heron's Grace as the commander. The main idea I had to keep reminding myself of is that redundancy is important - it's not enough to have just one card with an effect because chances are I won't see it in every game. So I made sure that for key effects I had 2 or 3 similar cards that did the same thing. Watching old episodes was super helpful along the way, so thanks so much for all you do! I am sure I will be continuing to make tweaks as I start to play it.
That's awesome to hear. Thanks for using Card Kingdom and supporting the show. Let us know how the deck plays out!
This is exactly what I needed. I am definitely guilty of wanting to many high cost spells. I am going to take the challenge with 2 of my decks for sure. Thank you guys, making us better magic players with each video. My "To the Listeners" answer: I haven't been playing for long at all, not even a year, so I am still learning some basics. So my biggest level up has to be when I realized I wasn't putting enough land and other mana sources in my decks. I will never forget the night I sat down with my first deck and removed all these cool spells just to add more land. That was hard but now that deck is really good and I never have problems with drawing land.
Hey @jfwong and @JoshLeeKwai my biggest level up moment when building my commander decks is when I realized, with help from a good friend, to always start with what ramp packages I will play in the deck after I choose the commander. It is fun to play big spells or sweet synergistic comboes, but you can't play those if you don't have the mana.
I recently started building a edh deck around kefnet and this helped me a lot. I originally put a lot of high costed draw spells, mill or counter with big bonuses at the top of the curve. I changed this to go more with low cost counters and I feel like this will be significantly better play wise. I also feel that this deck will be crazy fun because I'm building more control with some land bounce and card draw bonuses. Great episode guys
Creatures with undying still hit the graveyard, so Deathrite Shaman may exile Ballista when it's sacced after the first use.
700.4. The term dies means “is put into a graveyard from the battlefield.”
702.92a Undying is a triggered ability. “Undying” means “When this permanent is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, if it had no +1/+1 counters on it, return it to the battlefield under its owner’s control with a +1/+1 counter on it.”
Yeah sorry I wasn't clear here. The trick is they can often kill the shaman first with the ballista.
ichik umer glad someone pointed this out, shaman has two toughness so Ballista can't kill it without going to the graveyard first or having a 4th card. Shaman exiles it in response to the undying trigger.
Hey guys, love your show. This is the single most important issue for creating powerful commander decks! Especially with the new mulligan rule. Keep up the good work, i have ordered a ton of cards from Card Kingdom with your endorsement.
Would like to mention that 'Lightning bolt' actually does get better in Commander if people do what you advocate they do in this exact episode ... because lowering the curve means more targets for Lightning bolt ;)
Your show helped me with the idea of ramp. Now I include at lest 10-12 ramp spells (sometimes more :) ) in my EDH decks and it helps me ta actually play the game! Thnx guys!
Relatively new to mtg and fell in love with Commander. I've tweeked a mono green deck I bought but now I'm trying my hand at building from scratch using the three colours I'm less familiar with, BUR, you guys have helped a lot in my building.
I've definitely noticed a deck I put together recently did not care as much about mana curve with the exception of hate that I catch. That is Kaalia of the Vast edh
Learning the power of Mana Dorks in certain decks completely changed the way I build decks now. This has led me to being able to drop my 5 CMC tri-color commander on turn 3 consistently and I can't imagine going back!
Two things that changed how I made decks are: concern around ramp and card draw. Someone told me once, "One of the strongest sentences that can be on a cards is 'draw a card'". So I took ramp and card draw to heart and built a Sram equipment deck with a Sun Titan and Evolving Wilds for mono-white repeatable ramp.
Just bought cards off of card kingdom for my commander decks and I have to say I love that website now. Will for sure shop again.
52:09 - Was a great point Jimmy, good video on the whole guys keep it up!
This episode helped me so much building my first deck
Same here.
Most interesting episode in a while. I have also recently been reconsidering the curve in some of my decks and using more mana dorks compared to ramping growths effects. I'll definitely keep this in minds when tuning my decks. Cheers!
Another piece of advice is taking out big CMC spells for repeatable or activate-able stuff. For example, Heliod is actually a great card in a control deck. You can hold up answers like counter spells or removal, but have something you can sink your mana into if you don't need to use your answers yet. And you still do something with that mana.
I appreciate this upload, I've only been playing magic for about a year now and mana curve is something that I still somewhat struggle with. I am always making minor changes to my home brewed commander decks and I definitely need more mana ramp
Loving the video so far. Am a short time fan but have watched hours of your videos over the last few weeks. Love the show and please keep up the amazing quality content
For me, the biggest improvement in my deck building of late is working on adding in more removal/answers. I enjoy having synergistic and thematic builds, which lead to me often sacrificing interaction cards. One of the ways I'm trying to improve this is by having put together a deck that is more heavy on the control aspect than a theme, helping me to adapt to this playstyle and using this to improve my deckbuilding.
Other then that when switching out cards for curve purposes, I always note down which cards went out and which I added on a small list. During games I occasionally refer to this list when I draw a card, just to see whether or not I would have rather drawn the taken out card instead.
You guys are awesome! This really helped me better understand my mana curve. Thanks for the tips, guys.
Nice video! You guys are always so helpful and informative. Love Game Knights, love these podcasts, pretty much everything you guys do is awesome! I think the biggest thing that has helped in my commander deck building is determining whether or not a spell has a significant enough impact in the particular strategy that I'm going for. When I first started playing commander, I was just pretty much putting all my rares in one deck lol But now I know that it takes so much more than that. Obviously, when you first get into the format, all you want to do is pick a commander that's in your favorite colors and just pile all your rares into one big deck. Trust me, it's very tempting, but not the way you'll have fun or even catch a win. Like you guys said, discipline is key! You want to see what your commander actually does, outline your main strategy, then start doing some research on cards (rares and non rares alike lol) that add synergy and impact the game in your favor, while benefiting the whole strategy of your general.
Michio Einstein Sounds like a great deck building level up! Very glad you enjoy the show and thanks for sharing!
Show Starts 5:06
Jamie Sydney ty
Mvp
Didn't think about adding the notes bit to the Card Kingdom order. Will do that in the future!
To the listeners: Using the staple binders method mentioned in one of the previous episodes has made my deckbuilding insanely efficient. Owning one of each fetch/shock land makes starting a new deck so much more affordable. I'm building a 5 color deck and saved around $400 on just the land base.
think you could link it, unable to find a video tagged with any of the keywords
Thank you guys!!! Damn. Wish I heard this podcast/video months ago instead of just brewing and going nuts on how to build
To the listeners: Definitely adding more cantrip, scry and card draw variant spells into my decks. Noticed a huge increase in the value of my plays in early turns or just being able to tuck those late game lands without having to reduce the amount that's in the deck.
All about getting that value boiii
I have a solution to not using all of your mana each turn. Play Kruphix as your commander.
Blade TB I do. He's a bro and I love him. Simic for life
You guys keep coming up with new and interesting topics every time! You're both my Angles! ;)
I need to work on the mana on my deck, I have a little 1 mana cards equal amounts 2, 3 and 4 cmc cards and then it drops dramatically at 5 and six then increases at 7.
Min 33, Bear Tribal Commander. You already knew this was coming!
Very informative episode. I have often struggled in the past with mana curves for my deck, but this video has helped my perspective on it. I will apply these ideas to my deck building in the future. :) Also congrats on 50k subscribers! Are you doing anything to celebrate on the channel?
Managing a curve is real difficult when you're running a Scion of the Ur-Dragon tribal deck. All the good ones are above 5CMC! 3-5 spells with CMC 6 or greater is rough, because with my deck, it's 20 cards, 17 of which are dragons. What can I do? (Luckily, our old group still plays with the partial mulligans so that those old decks still work well).
To the listeners: this was very recent and what I did was focussed my atraxa deck which was previously spread over +1/+1 counters, infect and superfriends for budget reasons to just +1/+1 counters. It has resulted in the deck playing much better, as where planeswalkers which usually were targeted and killed straight away once were in my hand and library, cards which work with the deck now are.
Honestly, the curve counter on TappedOut is one of my favorite parts of the site. I love seeing the odds of having a drop of a certain number throughout the game. Also gives me an idea of what to cut when new stuff comes out, which is really good for me since I find new, cool stuff all the time.
Personally, I like having my deck curve out around 4-5-6, and have a card or two at 8-9-10-11.
To the listeners: I built a zombie deck and took it to an EDH game night at my local. I lost more games than I one and one of the things someone at the shop pointed out to me was that my deck 'doesn't have many ways to interact with others'. Since then I've upped my removal and it's greatly improved my deck :)
I got the booster box, fat pack, and both planswalker decks for $145 + $10 shipped!! Also got consecrated sphinx and 2x Gideon of the trials in my packs!
Aaron Payne Now that is what we calling running hot! Gratz!
This is a very good and helpful episode.
I always tend to clutter my decks with expensive stuff, and think "yeah, this curve sucks, but it's commander!" ...
I will have to go through all of them again and improve them a lot.
Same thing with card draw and ramp, I tend to run awesome spells but fail to cast them way too often :O.
Maelstrom Wanderer is a good example of this as the curve stops at 8, which is the big man himself and the double cascade means tempo is a reduced issue if Wanderer gets countered
Great podcast, but I do have a recommendation. You should talk more about the impact of ramp on your curve. You did touch on it with Rishkar but I think you should build on it in a future podcast.
This would be especially great in a podcast about commanders that favor weird CMCs like Arcum Dagsson, Kaalia, Jhoira, and Damia.
SiusBleach I completely agree! I've played reanimator decks before and the curve was all over the place because I was cheating big stuff into play with lower cmc spells.
question ( need help ): do big creatures early matter? I mean if they don't win you the game? Like playing aggro in cmd is hard cause you can take out one player, but then the rest of the players have setup their game to just win and you become less effective as the game goes on, right...so unless the big creatures bring some sort of value late game, I tend to cut them for cards with more impact late. I play Meren and am finding that seldom use her XP to the max. I'll bring back a sporefrog any time. Now I'm thinking perhaps an annialator eldrazi, or something else huge may be good, but really I'd rather bring back something that could copy meren's ability or somehow get more than just 1 card back out the gy.
Basically any big creature that matters in the late game CAN decimate the early game (the problem is it can draw a lot of hate, like their Blightsteel example). You definitely want some good late game for Meren. Something like It That Betrays is a great card for the deck. You just need to make sure you have a consistent way to either ramp to it or get it into your graveyard and reanimate it with Meren.
Fun fact... Over the weekend, myself and my play group were talking about what was going to be the next tribe that'd get a push from WotC... We figured that it was going to be BEAR TRIBAL!!! Then you made that comment... *mind blown*
Congrats on 50K! You guys have exploded recently.
I love that you guys used animar as an example, hes my favorite commander!
32:59 And now, we've seen "Bear Force One" win an episode of Game Knights
my biggest commander deck building level up was moving away from building decks ENTIRELY around the commander. Often the cards that compliment your boss become completely dead without them. I began to build decks around a certain mechanic that functions with or without my commander. That way the decks stand on there own. If anyone reads this and you often struggle to find which cards to cut.... cut the cards that ONLY work with your commander first. Like Jimmy says, if you dont miss it in gameplay/testing then it probably wasnt great to begin with.
Arrested Development reference at the end was great
Level up Question: been playing commander for 5 years, recently have been moving towards cutting crazy powerful cards like doubling season, (that make you public enemy number one or seem to win on the spot) into cards like Duelist's Heritage which make games more interactive, nothing better than seeing people interacting with spells or politics .
Overall I win less games, but fun for everyone seems to increase :)
Should the mana curve look different for something like a Jhoira deck?
That's a good way to put it, it is stubborn. I was told to carry your opinions I a box and listen to others, and if you like theirs take your old beliefs, throw it out and replace it with the new one. It's literally how we grow as a person
About the counterspell thing, when i was the only person not playing blue in the game and i didnt get to play magic because most of my spells got countered or bounced or removed in a way, and playing my olivia deck and not really being able to interact with that game was frustrating.
Please do more deck doctors. I miss the insights from those videos. :(
I think the best way to demonstrate someone is not using their mana efficiently every turn is the "invisible helix pinnacle" exercise. any time it reaches their end step, tap their untapped lands, and put it into a "helix pinnacle" on their side of the board. at the end of the game, show them the charge counters on their pinnacle. this is especially effective in a multiplayer game, where more times than not the player that wins has the fewest charge counters on their pinnacle.
thoughts?
Hey guys, GREAT video, it's a topic that players both casual and 75%ers alike can definitely learn alot from :).
To the listeners: So my latest Level Up moment both had me proud and my playgroup rather annoyed lol. I was playing my Melek, Izzet Paragon list (which I don't consider a competitive or even semi-competitive deck simply due to the nature of how fragile storm can be) and my playgroup was kind of forced to watch in awe as I began to storm off by casting multiple spells and holding priority to then cast another spell in response, I did this until my storm count was high enough to kill everybody with the Ignite Memories in my hand, then I proceeded to cast my Ignite Memories and hold priority once again so that I could respond to it with Wipe Away so that the Split Second on Wipe Away would prevent anyone from casting a counterspell to stop my win condition from resolving. It's such a simple little interaction but, it definitely makes ya feel smart :)
A big upside to lowering your curve that I don't think you guys mentioned is that it allows you to maybe cut a land or two. Over a longer game this effectively lets you see more actual cards instead of useless lands. That's the exact sort of marginal advantage you don't really think about that still wins you plenty of games.
Mad Love and Respect guys. I love the show and the insight, I do however want to point out that Freyhorn doesn't help play animar on turn 2 unless the land you dropped was a Shock, Dual, Command tower, etc. Color Fixing needs to be considered for ramp to play on curve. Birds (as you stated) and Nobel Hierarch should be the dorks you consider... not a green that gives you green.
It's a good point. Between Shocks, Duals and Fetches it's not hard to pull off though.
Definitely not I'm just trying to help :) Making sure that a newer player doesn't put in Lawnmower elves, Freyhorn and a bunch of basics and hope to play a tricolor General on curve. You guys did an amazing job on a cast about Fixing vs Ramp so if they listen to your casts they wouldn't be confused anyway :)
Something to note when comparing casting 1 6cmc spell to 2 3cmc spells is that the 2 3cmc spells cost 2 cards, so you need a card advantage engine to compensate, otherwise you're losing 1 card per turn (counting the +1 in card advantage in the draw step) and will eventually run out of gas.
the ultimate on jace is a mill effect, so if you play a mill deck, you will want to ult him.
This channel is right at that perfect "curve" if you will, between competitive and intermediate/fun play. You guys play at a high level without being "spike" decks.
Nice topic. Since you mentioned it for the first time in some other video I also went in the direction of lowering the curve in some of my decks... but there are still exceptions (is what you also said at one point in the video I think) depending on the commander you run ;)
I have a {WG} Selvala, Explorer Returned deck. The Ideal play is to get her out on turn 1 or 2 if the starting hand allows it. Even if I get her out only on turn 3, trun 4 i will be having up to 8 mana, with that i can crank out a Elesh Norn early or piss everybody off with Vorinclex or even better flavour wise is playing Selvala's Stampede ^^
In short, in Selvala my curve is pretty much rising towards the higher mana cost ;)
What are you talking about? I've got my curve; Sol Ring, Signet, Chromatic Lantern, Thran Dynamo, Gilded Lotus ;)
As a 20 year vet of casual play, I can say deck building comes down to certain steps. The first is to have an idea of what you want your deck to do. Whether it is a mechanic or a specific card or combo you want to build around. The second step is to get a good idea of what has synergy with that mechanic, card, or combo. You should incorporate at least two of three concepts, draw, mana ramp, and/or control. Often you will find you will have enough card choices to build two or three decks within those limitations, choose those with the most positive effects that have good synergy, and always favor a card with a lower mana cost when choosing between two cards with similar effects.
It is of course more complex than that, but that is really the meat of it.
Ya the replacement of Partial-Paris to Vancouver mulligan seriously affected some of my EDH decks (in particular my Grixis-Chaos deck, where I ran 30lands and would mulligan away all non-lands or non-mana production cards in my opening hand in order to have an opening hand of 4 or 5 lands)
You guys are awesome! Great content as usual! Even though I already employ these ideas, I still love hearing you guys talk about it :D
Not first :-(
Josh Lee Kwai how do you think you would build around Temmet?
Josh Lee Kwai It's okay, you're first in our hearts.
L
Are you guys going to SDCC 2017?
Josh! So whats the average mana curve for typical EDH deck from 1 to 7?
Still don't have the basic idea... is it similar to limited mana curve? Same proportions? Same %?
Also, I find spellshapers to be fantastic early-game plays which are relevant all game long. Mageta the Lion... Avenger en-Dal... Deepwood Elder... Devout Witness... Hammer Mage... Overtaker... Waterfront Bouncer. Dawnstrider for life!
Playing Kruphix really gives you a sense of the amount of mana you waste normally over the course of a commander game, its staggering.
I'm glad Josh said he doesn't play his commander always. I was worried because I've noticed I've still had strong games without even playing commander. Not that my commander doesn't help me pop off 😂
I think this is probably the issue my Lazav deck has. I run a lot of clones and copy effects so my curve is pretty heavily built into the 4-5 drops.
Reach Through Mist, Peer Through Depths, and Sift Through Sands are a melded spell.
random question time: I use a 2 mana spell that has overload on turn 2. Later on in the game I cast Past in Flames to give said 2 mana spell flashback. My question is, when flashing back a card that has an overload cost on it, would I be able to cast it as it's overload cost?
TWFXTwinK no. You cannot activate a spell's ability with flashback or any other alternate cost effects. Sorry.
and they just so happen to be talking about my commander a lot :D (Animar)
Any thoughts on the mana curve for higher-cmc tribal decks, e.g. mono red dragons?
This episode ~could have~ convinced me to finally take out Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter from my Atraxa deck. It's so expensive and if I have it in hand, more often than not I'd rather have another card instead. But every time I want to take it out, I think it has so much potential. XD
Got a Scavenging Ooze to 19/19 in one game. That creature was the win-con from that game as they were not able to remove it properly
a friend of mine plays bear tribal with adaptive automaton, door of destinies, and some old green enchantment that pumps creatures with no abilities. then he runs fight as removal and overruns for win conditions
My biggest level up moment was me taking out kozilek the great distortion and narset the transcendent in my creature heavy brago deck. I added in mistmeadow witch and slithermuse. definitely my best decision because I can hit more than seven cards if I target the nekusar player or the group huggers.
Can you guys make a series playing planechase plz I want to see it more
Don't play spells in an order to maximize mana usage, play what's most useful in your current situation in an order that maximizes the effects, while considering what the opponent(s) might do ahead in time. Sometimes holding back, timing and patience is key.
Oh my, this is the thing I was thinking about a lot recently!
Definetly, there is problem of certain CMC slot overflow, for my decks I noticed it being 3/4, and in one special case, 6.
Unfortunately, after some research, I came to conclusion that I simply don't own a lot of cheap CMC cards that fill the role of curve solidifiers, like 1 mana instant speed top-deck tutors.
So, the question is: Should I focus on getting my hands on as many of those utility curve spell as possible or there may be more...budget alternatives?