Or letting your opponent win because what they're doing is just legitimately awesome and it more fun to watch them pop off than anything your deck was planning.
"You are putting wincons in your decks, what are you a TRYHARD ?" -Me before playing a game that lasted four hours because nobody had any way to end the game
@@Kryptnyt My Ur-Dragon Deck kind of specifically is supposed to make games short and sweet. Like just kill a player or two if they don't have an answer to a couple hasty flying haymakers. Like if I ramp into a 6 mana dragon turn 4 and put greaves on it, then follow up with an Atarker Worlder Render turn 5, someone is probably dying. But also I really have not much of any interaction/rattlesnake and am just likely to die early as well. So I guess a bit of a glass cannon build without outright playing infinite-combo-tutor nonsense. The hope is, that it leads to shorter games. -> kill a fool who kept a poor hand and thinks they can fly under the radar. Then probably get killed by the other players, because they happen to play magic too.
@@PaulSzkibik I feel that building/using a deck for to run down the least prepared player at the table early is a bit of a dick move, but I am absolutely here for this overt villainy. Someone's gotta be the bad guy, to push the game forward.
I think the problem is also thinking of win conditions as cards, instead of you know win CONDITIONS. Thinking less of "this card wins me the game" and more "this game state wins me the game" and focusing on generating the game state will allow you to focus your deck on creating the game state that you need.
The issue with non-com wincons is your options when playing against them are to remove that player as fast as possible since they can win out of nowhere, or play blue. It needs the right opponents otherwise it’s an imbalanced game in either state. Playing a good back and forth match with everyone until someone pops off Torment of Hailfire and just wins invariably sucks unless everyone goes into it knowing that’s what that deck is capable of and you do some archenemy/control match-ups. Playing around uninteractable “I just win” cards in every game in a casual format is a nonstarter. But yeah, whining about opponents building decks that actually do something is tradition. My deck doing stuff though? Perfectly fair.
I've found that a few of the people I play commander with don't like to play against "high power decks"...which is conveniently whatever is beating them at the time, because they made a horribly unfocused deck full of cards that only work if their opponent is made out of straw. They also think a deck being able to pop off explosively is too powerful. Unless they do it of course, then it's funny and fair
I'm largely a cedh player (as well as competitive 1v1), but I've really been enjoying watching your videos despite their casual focus. It's a power level I've been struggling to move into, and have friends who exclusively play, so being able to explain concepts and winconditions to those friends (and to myself in how they need to change for casual) is genuinely amazing. Keep up the good work. You're one of the best edh content creators right now.
My advice to get into casual EDH: Make your first deck a midrange, value-engine deck without any tutors or combos - and stay away from overpowered (casual) commanders like Korvold, Narset, Gitrog etc. You can easily tune your deck up or down, depending on your playgroup, with that starting point. I made the jump from competitive 60 card-formats (Standard and mostly Modern) to Commander over time 10-8 years ago and deliberately made my first deck a value-heavy Karametra deck. Worked really well and wasn't overpowering because Green lacked good card draw back then.
Precons are a great starting point with how strong and generally focused they are nowadays, and typically lacking tutors/infinites. Tutors and infinities providing a direct line of victory is the easiest way to break yourself out of a casual power level
I like to look at cEDH and Casual like this: if you think of Magic players as "car guys," cEDH would be the guys who drag race with souped up machines and casual would be the guys with the dank vintage 50s Cadillac or w/e. cEDH is all power and speed and having high-end timing and reactions, where I think casual shines best when there's something unique and interesting about what you build. It doesn't have to be memes and jank all the time (even though that can be fun sometimes), but you can still be doing something flavorful or using some card that sees almost zero play to kill people and creating those WTF moments that can make games memorable. DON'T start with a precon either. You sound like you're an experienced magic player, build something you're gonna LOVE to play for the memes, the double-takes, the flavor, and the satisfaction that you get from putting together a unique list and then watching it do its thing.
I like this answer. A precon will get you to play commander, a fun brew you thought of that includes cards that you're personally interested in will help you love commander.@@HighlandersWorkshop
@@HighlandersWorkshop solid analogy and advice! I’m about six months into MTG altogether and haven’t bought a precon yet. 4 decks built from the ground up: Tovolar being my first Six being my favorite Most recent - “A Nightmare in Florida” 😂😂. Florida themed starts with 1/1 deathtouch snakes and insects then ramps into late game threats like Toxrill . It’s helmed by Cazur (Florida man) and Ukkima (his nightmarish Florida doggo)
Removal spells being viewed as cards that buy you time to win is the reason fog is busted. It's in the same category and actually saves you at the last second when a removal spell should have been cast earlier in the game to slow an opponent down. When they're already craterhoofing, only fog will save you. Plus it makes the blue player have to have it before you do.
Fog's usefulness goes down as the power of the pod goes up. Fog is going to do basically nothing in a very high--cedh level pods where as removal is kinda the opposite.
@@bruvaroni well I was talking about commander not cedh. Different formats. Different rulesets. Fog's power level is definitely tied to the wincons. Midrange decks that just want some removal should play fog as well is my point.
Yes ! Fog effects are so much underrated ! I just lost my last game to an Arachnogenesis, it was the last card in my opponent's hand, nothing on board. One friend in my pod even started running "damages can't be prevented" effects in his deck
as somebody who enjoys playing casual magic / building themed decks instead of competitive ones, you’ve helped me so much with building casual decks that can still hold their own against sweatier players. thank you :)
This is why Win-more cards are important in my opinion. All my decks are built with a defence strategy against the win-cons existence. Craterhoof? I keep Ghostly Prison effects so I can’t get overun. Defensive board wipes, fog, etc But I have no defence against the win-mores such as winning the game if you have 20 or more creatures, because those cards are so out of left field. Furthermore, the use of win-mores can turn parity into a winning situation. I played a match against someone’s dragon deck with a dragon deck of my own. We were about even in board state, but he had Crucible of Fire out. While I had some 4/4 flyer out that I used my slot for instead. Well, he could freely attack me with all his creatures, which either forces me to trade and lose due to a single dragon being a 10 damage spell, or sacrifice my entire board to him. Likewise in another match it was MY Crucible of Fire that saved me from a life or death moment against a Toxrill player. So don’t underestimate some of these “janky” cards. Win-mores are counter meta and become stronger the less players build their decks with its existence in mind.
Yeah, I've won with epic struggle before. I was running Cadira, Caller of the Small. I'd just keep a big board of clues and food and treasures and such, recast Cadira after a board wipe, Lightning Greaves her up and swing in to make a couple dozen bunnies, then the table scrambles to wipe the board again, and we go around again. The best part was that I eventually started my turn with 37 little bunny rabbits and we decided that the rest of the table just succumbed to how adorable they were and renamed Epic Struggle as Epic Cuteness.
I always find your videos to be some of the most thoughtful. So much of MtG content recycles video concepts, but you somehow find a way to offer useful and unique advice that I have not heard elsewhere a hundred times. Kudos! 😊
As someone coming from YuGiOh, this quality of content is refreshing and insightful. Being thorough in your deckbuilding process and questioning “What can X card do in X situation” is one of the best skills you can develop. Determining how a card can gel within a decks core engine versus a card that wins off a top deck or a card that just wins-more in advantageous positions will take your deck building to the next level. I am still a newbie and still have opportunities to learn and improve. Thanks for the awesome analysis. I’m glad that the algorithm put me on your content when it did. This level of content and comprehension goes beyond just MTG. Time to review and re-analyze my Sauron deck!
As a fellow Yugioh player, it's absolutely ridiculous how there's such a lack of resources or people actually willing to teach deck building. All we have are decklists but no one really goes into detail as to WHY you need certain cards, just that you need them. MBT tried once with Mathmech and nothing since. And when this problem is brought up I've seen some of the dumbest arguments AGAINST it
Honestly youre one of the best out of the box content creators for EDH you got my patreon support. SO many content creators just talk about just the surface level parts of edh, the synergies that work how cards interact etc they may touch into things card card effect density but its all this general "rule of thumb" logic. Sometimes you dont need 3 boardwipes because command zone says its so. The idea of cutting the chaff and doubling down on what you are looking for is what more people need to hear. Really thinking about your card choices is crazy concept.
14:45 - this example of removal opening the path was a lightbulb moment for me when I was still playing standard and just figuring out that mono red/aggro/rdw is a perpetual character in constructed formats. Lightning bolt isn't just for the face, its most devastating application is removing the blocker you were depending on to protect you from the little angry red guys.
With some set up though and maths, a lightning bolt can indeed be a very scary spell to take to the face. Stack the right enchantments on the field and its goes from 3 damage to 3(3+2)x2 damage. (Pyromancer's Gauntlet, Fiery Emancipation, and Furnace of Wrath if you're curious). Depends on the kind of burn deck whether thats viable though, but its cool seeing whats possible
@@justicebrown1077It would actually be (3x3x2)+2, because the player being affected (or controller of the object being affected, but that's not relevant for this situation) gets to choose in which order the replacement effects are applied. Fun thing is, (3x3x2)+2 is exactly 20 damage.
On the topic of Combo: I found that if you're doing a very consistent gameplan throughout your deck and have like 50 cards all contributing to 1 thing, chances are that some random combinations of those 50 cards just so happen to go infinite. Without you even planning for it.
I have an Arjun the Shifting Flame deck like this. Not infinite, but I'll not infrequently start my last turn before death, draw a few cards, hit something and go "Huh, never mind. I think I win."
Yes. I merged the MH3 Creative Energy precon with the Fallout Science! Precon. Several unexpected infinite combos just kind of happened when all the cards had the same theme.
This is why I love to play shorikai vehicles with 10 board wipes. Great removal that works well with the nature of vehicles, consistent draws into that removal, and a constant stream of pilots to use as chump blockers and to turn on the vehicles
Key points: - Focus is key. Don't run too many themes and hope to salvage it with a few decicated "wincon" cards. - Removal as tempo. When your deck gets to a place where playing the cards clearly propels you to a win, the next step is to make sure your opponents stumble on the way there so that you win before they do. - Video (and perhaps the channel) are mostly for more novice builders looking to get their lists into a more workable state. Be mindful of the limitations of the advice but also recognize they are superb tips for the target audience.
Completely agree. I tend to categorize "wincons" in my decks as "Papercuts" and "Finishers." Papercuts attempt to convert small interactions into incremental steps towards winning. Purphoros is a perfect example of this (at least, in decks that don't *completely* vomit everything onto the board like Krenko). An important thing to note is that Papercuts become more effective as you stack them, and lessen the gap needed for Finishers to actually win the game, and, can thus, even turn non-Finishers into Finishers (returning to the Purphoros + Krenko example). Finishers are pretty self-explanatory. The important distinction between them and Papercuts is that they can bridge the gap from a relatively neutral boardstate to a win before opponents can react appropriately. However, as mentioned, Papercuts can fill this role when stacked together effectively. Sometimes opponents just can't react to taking 5 damage per spell they cast. What's important here is that Finishers tend to be better into a sub-optimal boardstate, and are harder to react to. Aka, Craterhoof go brrr.
This is a great way of phrasing it, though when I built a deck around the idea I called it "Nickel and Dime". Stack a Kambal, Vito, and Painful Quandary and games end quickly
I consider wincons anything that causes the opponent to go f this game I'm out and they just leave the venue, not even taking their cards with them... like Mycosynth Lattice+Karn or Stony Silence and Null Rod.. toss in Strict Proctor to make sure no abilities will occur... make sure that the board is wiped beforehand with a farewell.
See, what you described is why playtesting against actual opponents is so important. When you put together a deck, it all sounds good and cohesive. It's only when you play with it in an actual game do you see what typically happens and what your deck achieves or struggles with. Then from there, you can build off of it, and refine what it really needs. Great video!
The best example of this, I believe, was when I was building my first aristocrats deck and was told to create a "healthy ecosystem" with enough prey (sac fodder), not too many predators (sac outlets), and only the best scavengers (cards that benefit from other creatures dying). If you don't have enough prey, the ecosystem fails, and that one concept stopped me from just stuffing my deck with carrion feeders and blood artists and made sure I focused first on recurable creatures, token generators, and creatures with good dies triggers, etc. I built up the pret side of my deck and was then able to add enough free sac outlets and aristocrat effects to keep the population in check.
Recently made a Bontu deck. The gameplan is simple, play guys that do literally anything at all when they die, it doesn’t matter what they do, genuinely, as long as we can windmill slam as many of them as possible before turn 5. On turn 5, slam Bontu, God Eternal, and sacrifice literally all of your guys, no questions asked, to pick up roughly 4-7 cards on average and get some random stabilizing effects like forced discards and token creation. And hey, look at that! You picked up 4 cards to slam down for the next Bontu after he himself is sacrificed for value. Does the deck win? Yes, through pure, degenerate grind, and no other means. It’s a deck that is systematically designed to get you into the headspace of thinking sacrificing 3 lands for 3 cards is an acceptable deal, and that tucking your commander into your deck will surely have no negative consequences. And it works. It tends to impact games (or, in my terms, play more of the game) than a pile beelining for an actual wincon. Aimless acquiring value at any and all costs can be more fun than winning the game, because winning the game is easy, but playing the game for longer is fun.
Seriously the best EDH content on the internet - i play casual and cEDH and always find myself rererencing your videos and ideas when talking about decks with people ❤
Been playing MtG since 9th edition and EDH since 2007. The quality/value of removal vs the ever increasing value of casting things worth removing has grown wildly out of balance in the last 5+ years. "Everything" is an Avengers level threat, that I find myself limiting my removal vs the way I built decks in the past and just add more gas. "The best removal is player removal."
I think the weirdest thing about casual EDH is that sometimes, I am actually more keen on seeing what the other guy wants to do than simply just running away with the game, I want to see the cool thing they are trying to pull off instead of shutting them down. In a way this changed a lot on how I built my decks, I put way more removals, wraths and counterspells before, but often felt like I didn't really want to use them. It is interesting how I've shifted my removal targets more on things that stops me from winning (Like a stax piece) than the average spooky things.
I have absolutely needed your perspective on this game. You have really analyzed this game, and you’ve opened my eyes to whole new horizons of deck building. Thank you for sharing!
I LOVE this video essay, especially the point at the end about Combos. Any combo you put in your deck, that your opponents know about, is automatically a threat no matter what the board state is. It adds weight to unknown cards in hand, and makes you a bigger target: so putting random, clunky combos into a deck just because they’re in your colors does not make it better, it will usually make it worse, because it will naturally bump that deck into a higher tier of deck that it isn’t prepared to handle consistently.
I want to thank you for all the help these videos have given me! A friend of mine recommended your ramp video to me a few weeks back, and watching these videos have helped me really consider my deck building and my goals a lot more. I often picked cards as I saw them for synergies I saw and ended up with very unfocused decks, like you mentioned here with input. Now, I've become a lot more goal oriented, and been considering the flow and consistency of what my deck can get done. I didn't worry about it too much before with the idea I wanted to "keep my power level low", but I was definitely just making a deck that popped off big like 20% of the time, and the other 80% I just ran out of gas quickly. I still have a long way to go, but now I understand what I need to learn, and I really appreciate it.
Incredibly well thought out video as always. I really enjoy the way these videos are explained and how deep you go into the concepts and theories of the topic.
2:19 putting Karametra's Acolyte in a "doesn't win the game" pile leads into my own piece of advice: The most consistent deck is one where cards are productive by themselves, but game-winning when combined. My Kogla deck runs Karametra's Acolyte for mana and Lightning Greaves for protection. Both cards are independently good. But if you have the Acolyte and the Greaves together, they give infinite mana and infinite ETBs. The entire deck is full of midrange goodstuff with this type of explosive synergy. Draw, untap, mana, and token generation that can trigger naturally by themselves or infinitely with a few other synergy pieces. The list and primer are on TappedOut as "King Kong Combo" if you want to compare its philosophy to your own decks. In summary, every card I put in my deck gets two separate evaluations: first, is it good on its own? Second, is it even better when paired with other cards in the list? Keeping track of both possibilities is how you create in-built win cons.
This video is very helpful! I struggle with this as a symptom of being an arena player turned paper edh player. Creators like LVD are incredible resources to learn from (and my rules knowledge are best in the pod!), but it's a 2 player game versus a 3-4+ player game. Risk-managing 3 other players in an perfect all-things-considered manner is so so much harder. My comfort commander is Eight-and-a-Half-Tails helming a greedy etb pile without tutors, and while playing archenemy behind an Emeria, the Sky Ruin can be very fun, the games go on for years. I'm working on an Animar list right now to get more comfortable with presenting a threatening boardstate and actually trying to go for wins.
This makes me want to go and reexamine some old EDH decks. Cool video, really excellent insights re: "you're not playing midrange, you're playing bad combo".
Braid of Fire+Stony Silence+Mycosynth Lattice, is my wincon... When my opponent can't play the game, I win. But I just have to wait until I draw my burn spells. There's enough fun cards in Red with Flash. Such as Dictate of the Twin Gods... Which let's me win twice as fast. Embercleave is cute as well, trust me no one likes being locked out of the game, And with Eivor Battle-Ready as the Commander... and a lot of more fun Boros cards, either I pressure them into a loss, or they get locked out of the game. I can take my time to win against them all or just run over them with crazy combos such as Cadric+Duke Ulder Ravengard+Gisela Blade of Goldnight... To guarantee that you will instantly kill all opponents who can't block...
That video was immensely informative and crystalized lots of concepts and ideas and feelings that I have had as a casual player but haven't been able to characterize, or fully understand given lack of time to dedicate to analysis etc. 10/10 video amazing job.
Just want to start by saying I really enjoy your videos snail, even as a veteran player you bring up thoughtful ideas and present them in a clear concise manner. Now for a TL;DR about mid-range and general synergy. I play a few decent mid range decks and generally find other people trying to play similar things unsuccessfully are woefully lacking in proper interaction. The number one comment I hear my opponents making in regards to my decks are "let's see if he has an answer" which is exactly where I want to be in a game. If someone is trying to guess what's in my hand they might delay their plan a turn giving me an advantage or allowing me to catch up when I genuinely have nothing. (This is still possible outside blue.) Some people have too broad a range of removal spells, but not enough that focuses on what exactly shuts their win condition down or it hurts them as much as their opponent. Explained this to a friend recently who is playing aristocrats for the first time. Ideally the goal isn't to have an answer to everything (unless you're playing control) but to always have an answer to what stops you. Board wipes in a creature heavy deck don't make a lot of sense except as a last resort and yet people using the "average deck" on EDHRec will have two or three. Things like Austere Command or Farewell rank high on my list of what is acceptable merely for being modal and saying "I need this effect now." Then there's the lack of protection from opponents which for me usually consists of a flicker, phase, or indestructible spell depending on my colors and often more than a couple. Those spells can also provide added benefits beyond their main purpose though, like running Ghostway in Tazri Allies for example will also win a game. I think you're spot on with your input/output concept and cards lacking synergy, so kudos for explaining it in a way that might make sense to people. A highly synergistic deck will perform just about every time and they don't necessarily have to be expensive if everything works toward the same goal. Sometimes the best win con is consistency and not a specific card at all, though that won't stop me from having one infinite in every deck just for good measure.
Great advice here! I listened to a recent episode of command zone talking about individual cards influencing power level and I nearly ripped my hair out. This was the opposite experience.
This was a very useful video for my Treebeard lifegain voltron deck, the way I've built it it just puts all the eggs in the basket that is treebeard and, while I do have some protection, it makes it really obvious what my threat is and even if I take out one person it's hard to take down the whole table! I guess we could say that the input of life gain is competent but the output isn't strong enough to win games on its own. I'll definetely start running more lifegain payoffs and just more threats which are good on their own but also help me diversify how I end games
Just subscribed, I’ve been really enjoying your deckbuilding takes. Gonna rant about a couple of my own decks that your “focused output” point made me think of. In 2020 I got back into Magic and built my first commander decks since 2012. The strongest, unsurprisingly, were Kinnan and Yarok. They’re both ridiculous value commanders, and at first I just built both to do as many big, cool things as possible. Over time, I leaned Kinnan into high-power stompy, loading up on all the big Timmy creatures I could fit as a payoff for the ridiculous mana ramp. With 45 creatures to ensure Kinnan never misses and a bunch of rocks so some of my ramp survives a board wipe, there isn’t much room for countermagic or protection, and my creatures have to do most of the removal. I’ve been back and forth on having infinite mana pieces in the deck since it’s so easy to and I have a Basalt Monolith I’m not otherwise using. I’m conscious of the game time I take up just throwing silly beaters on the field, and try to move efficiently and be able to close. The deck doesn’t need my one Craterhoof but God-Eternal Rhonas and End Raze Forerunners are plenty to finish. The only human in the 99 is Archetype of Imagination to get over the top.
Yarok started out on a similar plan, use his huge value to make big board states and swing out. Once I got the mana curve under control, it could do that, but the deck was no longer filled with beefy creatures to recur or cast with my big mana. The deck WAS unreasonably good at drawing cards, since I just kept throwing every “something ETBs, draw a card” trigger in there for Yarok to double. In one game I hard cast Omniscience, drew my entire deck with draw triggers and played everything out, but had no source of haste and someone wiped the board the next turn and I died. I decided that deck needed more payoffs for its actual focused output, tons of card draw. I added a Concordant Crossroads to solve the “drew my whole deck but need to swing” problem, and an Emergent Ultimatum. Ultimatum can get me either Omniscience or Peregrine Drake and Deadeye Navigator, and I decided this would be my one deck where I include a Thoracle to win off draw alone. Also added a Psychosis Crawler to drain my opponents out with just the draw, and Ob-Nixilis the Fallen and Retreat to Hagra to drain them with my landfalls. Rather than make room for any kind of countermagic to ensure that win, I’ve left some ways to still win with combat, like Scute Swarm, Avenger of Zendikar, and Champion of Lambholt to get everyone through. I only pull it out for the right tables, but it’s fun going about as deep into combo play as I’m willing to. Other than ultimatum I don’t run tutors, just keep drawing and something will work out.
I think one of the best versions of this discussion is something I picked up from from one of ‘Tolarian Community College’s old deck building videos. Esentually it goes like this: 1) What do you want to be doing in the first 1-4 turns of the game? 2) How do you want to end the game?/What does your late game plan look like? 3) What are you doing to get from point A to point B? As an example Agro/RDW decks answers these with “1)I want to be beat face, 2)what lategame? 3)guess I should put in some extra/fast damage to make sure there isn’t a lategame.” As long as these three questions are kept in mind, then, while your deck mind need further tuning, it will probably have a solid gameplan, with a reasonable chance of winning against similar decks.
I think "win condition" is a simple way to refer to the biggest threat in a deck. It's not that it's necessary to win, but it'll sure help out if it's around.
This is the reason why so many people hate Stax decks and Mass Land Destruction decks. It's not that they can't win, they can, but it's going to take hours(st least that's how most versions go). Tax my every breath, destroy every land, but please, do it smartly, and build your deck in such a way that you can actually take advantage of what you're doing.
A general rule I make for myself when building a deck is that I need to goldfish it first to make sure I know how it functions, and I need to be able to hit an absolutely overwhelming boardstate/wincon by turn 8 at the latest otherwise I don't declare the deck as functional. It's harder with some deck builds because of interaction needs, but if you can make reasonable and realistic estimates you can get an idea of how it should flow.
Edit: Finsihed the video and I can definitely say I like the way you took this, to be much more about not focusing on individual cards as win conditions, but instead to make more coherent decks where all cards contribute towards a more unified goal :) I do think that this process you're describing is also helped by viewing cards as threats&answers of varying types and degrees, as moving away from the binary labels like "wincon" and more towards a sliding scale is generally a more useful way to analyze things. Overall a great video that definitely got me thinking! Just 2-3 minutes into the video and I felt like attempting to take a stab at a solid definition of a wincon card in a way that's more ambiguous/flexible, I hope: If we start to categorize cards as proactive or reactive cards (threats and answers) then the wincon card of a given game is the threat that your opponent didn't have a good enough answer for. Any threat /can/ be a wincon, but some threats are much more easily answered than others. Aiming to have threats that are difficult to answer is ideal. Whether this means "varying your threats to require different answers hoping to go through enough until you find one your opponent couldn't plan or draw into an answer for", or "playing enough threats that require a singular answer until you exhaust your opponent's copies of that answer" is up for grabs. Of course, not all proactive threats need to be chosen for their ability to win the game. Many threats are just about the threat of setting up an advantageous board state - one which will increase the odds of landing one of your bigger more serious threats later in the game. These smaller early-game proactive threats like tempo creatures and mana dorks are still proactive, and there are answers that exist, but missing the answer doesn't win the game most of the time, so they're not reliable wincons on their own. TLDR, A wincon is a proactive threatening card that A) requires one of a limited number of answers from an opponent to prevent it from getting good value, and B) is strong enough when unanswered to reliably win the game (or at least, lead to the knocking out of one of the opponents) in the event it actually goes off without response. A better wincon has fewer (or more niche) potential answers for it's part A, and more consistency/impact in part B. There's a sliding scale of weaker wincons which fall short by varying amounts on one or both of those metrics.
I cannot stress how big of a deal removal is. every deck needs SOME, my ur-dragon deck is a very good example of this. the deck teeters between aggro and midrange and i have 2 playgroups 1 local card shop where max removal slots is 2 target 1 board wipe and ur dragon is nearly un beatable because after we all ramp turn 1-3 i ramp once or twice more turn 4 and then just keep playing unanswered threat after unanswered threat and nobody can stop me 2 my place with friends where removal is more plentiful and my deck is incredibly mid, like 20% winrate at best, i still get to do my thing and have fun but my opponents have no trouble handling 1-3 dragons a turn and my commander cannot last a single turn rotation (he is 9 mana and frankly should not because one good turn with him on the board is ruff)
Seeing the missy cards reminded me of some of my own plans to make a missy deck focusing around morphs. It's been a little bit since I've really gotten into it, but I decided to lean into missy's ability to do one of my favorite things: morph recursion. In my Kadena deck, it's only a few cards that allow me to easily and cheaply bounce morphs back to my hand several times and recast them for free, but with missy I leaned more into red morphs, with things like skirk alarmist to flip a card in exchange for sacrificing it at turn end, or cards that just sacrifice themselves already after morphing. It's still in progress and it's been a couple months since I've done anything much with magic in general, but the focus was more towards cyberman specific synergies and morph stuff, and ways to sacrifice to reuse morphs than general artifact things.
Excellent content. I disagree with replacing Crucible Of Fire with a Dragon in a Tribal deck, because COF will survive most board wipes and continue to add value... unlike a dead Dragon.
You talked about creating parity and breaking parity, and the concept of win-more cards, and these are very useful ways to think about evaluating cards. The Limited Resources podcast, by Marshall and LSV, like to use 'quadrant theory', which is just a fancy name for 4 categories of board state: developing, parity, behind, winning. Also a very useful tool in my experience
A recurring issue I have is seeing a card and going "wow! this would be so powerful in one of my decks! it does exactly what i need when i do something my deck is already focusing on!" but when i sit down and really look at it, i realize the relationship is backwards - the card helps me with the setup parts of my game plan only when i'm already executing the "win" part of it. For example, Seer of Stolen Sight in Muldrotha. My deck already focuses on sacrificing creatures, and the Seer puts things into my graveyard when I do, which is where I want my cards to be! Great! Except, by the time I'm sacrificing creatures in the quantity neccessary for Seer to be meaningful, I've already established all the game pieces I need to win, so the Seer doesn't really do anything other than generate useless game actions.
The parity thing is why it’s so important for players, regardless of format, to play some amount of limited (draft, sealed, or cube). The Limited Resources podcast quadrant theory literally has Parity as one of the four categories. You want more cards that are good when you’re building, behind, or at parity. When you’re already ahead, any card drawn is a good one. Except for objectively bad cards like One With Nothing. But when you’re behind specific cards will let you claw back in, and at parity, a handful will help you break it. By playing more limited, you understand the natural flow of games and deck building better. Commander games all have similar phases (building, back and forth on who is ahead, and parity), but games are slower than limited so it’s harder to gauge.
This video actually reminds me a lot of your mana base video and budget staples video. One of the issues is that once you reach a certain power level, everything becomes effectively the same (ie. both setup and wincon). Cards like Sol Ring, Dockside, Ad Nauseum, Rhystic Study etc. will effectively set up and break parity either instantly (or within a turn cycle) which make them very attractive to include in any deck. Also, as you mentioned, winning the game is a great way of preventing your opponents from winning the game.
12:05 this is where I love removal that plays into your game plan. Rielle the Everwise lets you draw when you discard one or more cards in one instance. So when you discard two cards for Cathartic Reunion, you immediately draw two with Rielle before you draw the three from Cathartic Reunion. With this I can turn cards like Rites of Ruin, Nahiri's Wrath, and Turbulent Dreams into powerful removal that cycles several less useful cards (in the current game state) on the side. It's also why I love Daretti, Scrap Savant's +2, it trades less than ideal cards in for potentially better cards or cards that push me towards using the discarded cards later when they're more impactful.
I have two decks Ganax+Acolyte of Bahamut: Dragon Engine. Built around Dragon synergies with the ability to either swing or burn out depending on the board state. Either Dragon beatdown or etb burnout. Sivriss+Feywild Visitor: Zombie Decisions. Built around using Sivriss to fill the yard and drain off opponents seeing big threats they don't want me to have. Zombies are a convenient tribe for reanimation and sac fodder. It ends up being Zombie Beatdown. Both decks can be focused still but I am having fun since it matches power levels with the rest of the pod.
new video after opening the server! for me the points made at 8:38 (ending at 10:40) and at 18:22 (endiing at 19:28) as well as the short tangent for combos are the best for understanding the concept, which is that i could think of putting cratehoof behemot in my 99s, but first i need to think about which cards i want to cast first that will have an impact on the board alone and receive the benefits of the overrun buff at the same time
Do you have any thoughts on thievery based decks? I enjoy playing that style of deck, but a deck whose game plan is primarily stealing everyone's toys can't have the consistency you describe by default. Would be interesting to see what you'd consider important in that paradigm.
this vid was super helpful for me trying to build a deck for a new format my local card shop is trying. It's called precon plus. You take any precon(not secret lair) and can exchange any 20 cards in it for different cards. At first, I tried finding the closest precon that adheres to combo(Breya) and throwing in tutors and infinities. But with only 20 cards, the deck was super inconsistent. That's when I decided to take a step back and look at what the deck is trying to do and focus on what the precons were made to do. So I decided to switch to the "Exit from exile" precon and have the 20 cards focus on what the deck was made for. After the changes I went to my tourney and quickly realized something. My deck lacked tools to close out games and some of the cards I switched out weren't the optimized picks. So I would draw dead cards included in the precon that were too specific/niche and I could build a board states but would constantly run into situations where I can't break the parity. At first I thought that I should pick cards to remove based on a mana curve/cards that have absolutely nothing to do with the main game plan. But upon seeing your vid, I realized my mana curve was already pretty good as I already put in mana ramp. The other cards I took out while okay, contributed to my game plan for the deck way more than the other niche/speicific cards that were based on mana curve. Not only that, but to look at my game plan as a whole as my win con instead of just a few select cards.
While originally written for head-to-head tournament magic, "The danger of cool things" article from long ago is a good description of the win-more problem. Also I'd love to see you tackle how tempo vs. value in deck design are a zero sum game, what it looks like when done well and what it looks like when done poorly. Also what those terms mean in multiplayer vs. head-to-head.
When adding or cutting cards, I always try to ask myself "does this card help me win?" Card draw helps me win because it allows me to have more potential answers and threats to play. A jank interaction that only works if I have three specific cards AND my opponent leaves me alone might help me win the game, but if each individual part of that interaction doesn't then they'll be dead in my hand most of time. Interaction is something I'll always prefer over a combo piece because interaction is always useful to have in your hand. I've never been in a game and thought "ugh, I wish I didn't have this counterspell or boadwipe in my hand" but I've definitely thought that about 9 cmc jank that has won me exactly 2 games ever. Interaction is like insurance. You pray you won't need it but when you do need it, you'll be glad you have it.
On the concept of "card that's meh 2/3 of the time but incredible that other 1/3," my Yasova deck has plenty of ways to win that all still play within the concept of what the deck wants to do in general, but one of the very first cards I put in specifically because I wanted it as a wincon was Insurrection. The very first game I played with her, it did exactly what it was there for - the Silas/Akiri deck had a massive boardstate with Rebecc protecting the entire thing who was definitely set to win the game until I dropped Insurrection and stole everything and killed everyone at the same time, even after they tried to sacrifice as much of their board as possible. The card only truly functions when at least one opponent also has a large boardstate, but being that the deck cares about theft and then making those stolen creatures die or cease to exist, it certainly still has a function if there's just a few scary things on the field that all need to go away
There are some cards that their presence/activation can universally be called a winning condition. Many planeswalker ultimates, the cycle of saga preators (those are almost all one sided boardwipes or give you and unstoppable board). There’s more literal ones like rising of the second son or that one creature that says “you win if you have exactly 13 cards in hand”. Basically one sided board wipes tend to be situations that are difficult if not impossible to recover from
Winds of Abandon is one of my favorite board wipes lately. It's such a back breaking card that breaks parity and lets you push through damage. The mana you're giving your opponents I've found rarely matters if you're deploying it at a time where you can kill 1-2 players.
I've been struggling to find a fitting wincon on my Yasova Dragonclaw deck, its a deck about stealing my opponents creatures and sacrificing them for value. It sometimes leads to soft locks my opponents and leads to long games...
I had a real bizarre wincon that was only able to flourish because of other people's board states. It was there i realized that was how i wanted to play the game. I wanted to set up my board so that other people's mistakes would greatly benefit me. The mistake here was playing a sheoldred [og] while i had only my commander (Mishra, Eminent One) and a Simulacrum Synthesizer. The next turn i force sac my commander and played lithoform engine and started copying SS. The constructs were tokens and ignore the forced sac ability which surprisingly allowed me to balloon out of control with the power level. Another time i nearly had another wincon because someone played Phyrexian Censor, so I drop a Spine of Ish Sah. With most players limited to one spell a turn, i could easily control the board by blowing up 1-2 permanents per turn.
I am a couple months late, but the "Breaking of Parity" is one of the reasons I think Planeswalkers can be under-rated in EDH, In a board stall where nobody can really swing without leaving themselves open for a counter attack having a Planeswalker that is accruing value every turn is a great way to force people into acting. I've Ulted Sharkhan Unbroken (The Temur One) a couple of times over the years just because "I have 3 6/6 Flying Dragons, untapped lands and have an extra card each turn." basically kept the other 3 players from going into the red zone to kill him effectively. I am not saying put like 10 Random planeswalkers in your deck, but one to three that go along with your decks already existing plan, I've even had a game where the other 3 players had a discussion on how Dangerous Elliwick Tumblestrum was because she was going to Emblem next turn and if I had exactly Nadaar, Selfless Paladin in hand I would complete Mad Mage because I was two rooms off it.
You have annunciated a lot of my thoughts on EDH that i hadn't yet put to words here, you also made me realize that I a bit worse than I thought, as I love to use combos. in every deck and that is, in my words "easy mode"
A “win condition” is the condition required to win the game, not the plays facilitating that condition. Forcing opponent to draw with no cards in their library, bringing their life total to zero, giving them 10 poison counters, and using otherwise stated card text to create the win condition. That last part is referring to text that says you outright win, or outright lose, not a the emergent plays being made. So the plays being made aren’t also the win condition, they are a set of plays working towards a specific win condition.
I'm not an EDH player (yet?, I have a few ideas), but I am getting into deckbuilding nonetheless. So these videos are all extremely interesting because many of the same principles still apply. In fact, I followed some of these thoughts while building my Depths Deck this weekend. It wants to get out Leviathans, Kraken, Serpents and Octopuses that are often fairly big, so a core concern was my Mana Base. With a problem. Most of it is blue, but there are some Green and even three Black symbols on my cards. My (probably) bad solution to this was to throw in some tap Lands, Artifacts that give me any Color Mana and Enchantments that give me extra Mana. Given this, another important aspect emerged: Controlling what I draw and when it lands on the board. Luckily, this idea came about because I had two Legendary cards that interacted with these Types, so I had a start, but needed more to compensate them not appearing. This introduced more (pseudo-)Scry as well, helping me with my Curve. After this, the question became "How do I win?" I get big creatures and more of them, but I still need some time. I added a few cards for this purpose, but I will likely need more protection and removal.
I've been running into this issue with my Armix/Rebbec deck. Deck definitely plays a more midpoint between Midrange and Control (Rebbec gives all Artifacts Protection from things with their mana values while the end state is to either whittle away at life totals with a bunch of effectively unblockable Artifacts or suit Armix up with equipment and get big life swings) but there's no clean "closers." Part of the issue is I'm building on a budget and the other is the glaring flaw of "If Rebbec gets removed, my deck doesn't function." Ive remedied the first by adding ways to make Rebbec an Artifact (Liquidmetal, Biotransference, Transmogrist), but I run into the issue of "I need to keep blockers up because my pod realizes I'm the threat." Any insight on what I'm "doing wrong?"
@@xeper9458 I had that in mind, but because I don't own Greaves/Boots and they're currently "out of budget" (Bills > Cardboard Crack), hence the using "unusual approaches" to keep Rebbec alive (Currently have Liquidmetal Coating, Biotransference, Resurrection Orb, but planning to acquire Torque and Ashnod's Transmogrist). Yes, these are "less efficient" answers, but it's using my collection/cheap purchases.
I think the concept of a wincon is pretty easy to understand intuitively. At least the way I define it for myself. Any "wincon" i have in a deck is just a card that can take an average board state and let me win suddenly. In my Lazav, the Multifarious deck, my wincons are things like wall of blood, wake thrasher, Skithiryx, because those cards take me from attacking as a 2/2 or 3/2 for some value to "if you don't stop me, I'll win this turn"
Removal has an extra dimension in that some removal generates card advantage while most does not. Removal is amazing when it is a side effect of a main game plan. Thats why you should never default to "the best" removal spells. Mystic snake is a good example. Its a counterspell AND puts a body on the field. If your deck cares about bodies, thats a million times better than a more mana efficiënt counterspell
RE: inconsistent combo decks. For example: in my Arcades deck, if I plan on beating people with giant walls (Aggro) but keep them in CMC/MV range of 1-3 to keep flow of cards AND I've decided to fully utilize mana from Axebane Guardian and/or Overgrown Battlement by adding cards like Staff of Domination, alongside already existing big mana payoffs, does this make my deck worse combo deck or more consistent midrange one?
my muldrotha deck is just control, the aim is to abuse permanent based control pieces such as the seals to maintain parity until i can win via either painful quandry, stormtide leviathan/torrent elemental or lab man myself. it took ages for me to decide on power appropriate finishers, i could just run thoracle but that wouldnt be fun for anyone. so instead im using a couple slow and steady wincons that allow me to win the game if i can keep the board under control
I like the inputs and outputs analogy. That's how I think about it too. Basically, setup and payoff. What do I need to do early and mid game, so that I can do X mid game and late game to win?
I'd say that my deck is an interesting one, where it's game plan is big guy hit hard, somehow mixed with control. The idea is this, I control the game until I can reach the point where my commander, Melek, Reforged Researcher, can be used to win the game. This is generally either by making Melek unblockable, giving him trample, or simply buring everyone for a ton with Chandra's ignition. Also, to clarify what Melek does, his power and toughness is equal to 2 times the number of instants and sorceries in the graveyard. He also makes my first insant or sorcery each turn 3 mana cheaper. Ideally I'll use a ton of draw power and mill to get a ton of cards into the graveyard to make Melek huge, then use one of two cards to give my instants and sorceries flashback in the graveyard. It's fun, but it can be hit or miss. Most of the time my only creature is Melek, in which he can discourage swinging in to me because attacking into the 20/20 creature isn't ideal, but he can still only block one thing at a time, not to mention any flying creatures can easily get past him. Another issue surrounding him is that he has no protection, meaning that the deck relies on either drawing swiftfoot boots, or keeping it's many counterspells active. The other thing is that the deck probably should have more targeted removal. Having that would be very useful for keeping myself alive. Also, while omniscience is cool, making spells fro, your hand free is very irrelevant in the deck that does a lot of mana cheating, so I'm likely going to remove that. Legitimately, the most useful omniscience has been was when it got milled by Orthanc and burned my opponent for 10. It's the sort of thing where if it comes up then it's cool, but in most situations I'll either never reach the point where I can use it, or using it wouldn't actually be all that helpful.
When your plan involves hardcasting Jin-Gitaxias he is actually pretty hard to remove because you can put him on the field when your opponents don’t expect to deal with it. While I only casted him in my opponent’s turn twice the whole table surrendered the moment I flashed him in.
I'm cool with decks that get super out of hand with synergy if they go unchecked, but I cannot stand infinite combos...that's just lame in my opinion. I want to see a deck crafted so well that each card played adds substantially to their win con but when someone can just say "I play this card and then this card and then I win unless you counter one of these cards". That's boring and not actually impressive either. What's most impressive and most fun to play against to me, is a deck that has so many options to defeat me and so many ways of avoiding what I'm about to do that their deck is like a language: it has an answer and a phrase for every circumstance of the game more or less. And look, infinite combo win cons CAN be ok but it's tricky...like I'm totally ok with an infinite combo used against a Sliver's deck player maybe or something. Or, let's put it another way, if 2 players have super casual decks and one player lies about their deck's power for the LOLZ and then tries to destroy the board, I'm fine if the 4th player packs a sneaky infinite win combo and says "Yeah, it's nice that you said your deck is a 6 when it's a 9 an all but, take this infinite damage to the eyes, nose, mouth and ears, kthanks". In other words, infinite combos are a massive sigh of relief in games that are clearly stupid or unfair where one player is playing some absolute bullshit CEDH deck against your "normal" Commander decks and is trying to be cheeky and a smart-ass. Comeuppance, in other words. Also, the way I avoid "parity" problems with my Azorius colors/Soldiers tribal deck is by using...well 1. My commander Harbin who can make all my creatures have flying if I attack with 5 or more soldiers (including him). 2. Halo Fountain...alt win con where I need 15 creatures to win with it's ability 3. Strixhaven Stadium to get through high health pool/lifegain decks/infinite lifegain decks and so on. For straight up "I'm going to deal lots of combat damage to you now" cards I just use the tried and true..uh...True Conviction and the sneaky but incredibly, unbelievably unknown "Starlight Spectactular". In a token deck it's just insane because Starlight Spectactular takes IDK 10 1/1 tokens and blows their damage up into lethal for at least two players. It gives +1/1 to each creature you have attacking for EACH OTHER creature you have attack behind it "in line" and you "line up" your creatures in whatever order you want in order. So in short, you have 10 1/1 tokens, you have to "line them up" from 1 to 10. Each creature gets +1/1 for each creature that attacks after it in order except for the 1st attacking creature. So....you would have 10 dmg for the 10 tokens, but then with the enchantment....1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9 which you can assign to any of your attacking creatures. So total damage you could spread around to the table from just these 10 1/1s would be....54 damage. And that's JUST if these creatures were ONLY 1/1 tokens. If you already have a Lord card of some kind that gives 1/1 or...my commander Harbin, Vanguard Aviator which does the same. But as is true of my own soldiers deck, imagine that instead of 10 1/1s they're a mixture of 2 power, 3 power or 4 power soldiers THEN you add the extra damage. The damage can get insane and no one expects Starlight Spectacular because probably so few know it even exists. 4 mana for such a powerful enchantment!
Since you've brought up Gavi and her blandness/lack of focus multiple times now, I would love to see you build a consistent and competitive Gavi deck! Personally I also have a Gavi deck of my own, but I do agree that some of the card choices in EDHREC for example are quite strange, so seeing what you come up with would be both inspiring and entertaining.
I play a Naya good stuff deck that it's lead by Zacama. While the deck seems to be mostly unfocused from a quick look from an outsider, it does a very good job of accomplishing my 2 goals. 1. The overwhelming value of nearly every card in the deck makes it difficult for opponents to break parity with me before I drop Zacama and ruin their board, then the same value can be used to finish off my opponents in a timely manner. 2. Each and every card I play is satisfying to me for some reason or another. These valuable pieces might not contribute much in total, but I feel good playing them, and having fun is winning at a game, period.
Sometimes letting your opponent win to shave two hours off the game is a wincon.
This comment is severely underrated 😂😂😂
I can get behind this
Or letting your opponent win because what they're doing is just legitimately awesome and it more fun to watch them pop off than anything your deck was planning.
Way too real, had someone farewell my entire board causing a game to go on for 4 hours last week when i had lethal.
"You are putting wincons in your decks, what are you a TRYHARD ?"
-Me before playing a game that lasted four hours because nobody had any way to end the game
I do like me some games where I'm able to stop people from winning and create a 6 hour game where there wasn't one before
@@Kryptnyt My Ur-Dragon Deck kind of specifically is supposed to make games short and sweet. Like just kill a player or two if they don't have an answer to a couple hasty flying haymakers. Like if I ramp into a 6 mana dragon turn 4 and put greaves on it, then follow up with an Atarker Worlder Render turn 5, someone is probably dying. But also I really have not much of any interaction/rattlesnake and am just likely to die early as well. So I guess a bit of a glass cannon build without outright playing infinite-combo-tutor nonsense. The hope is, that it leads to shorter games. -> kill a fool who kept a poor hand and thinks they can fly under the radar. Then probably get killed by the other players, because they happen to play magic too.
Sounds like your deck was a 7 🙃
wincons? I just wheel my hand twice every turn to buff Rielle the Super-Granny
@@PaulSzkibik I feel that building/using a deck for to run down the least prepared player at the table early is a bit of a dick move, but I am absolutely here for this overt villainy. Someone's gotta be the bad guy, to push the game forward.
I think the problem is also thinking of win conditions as cards, instead of you know win CONDITIONS. Thinking less of "this card wins me the game" and more "this game state wins me the game" and focusing on generating the game state will allow you to focus your deck on creating the game state that you need.
Thank you! I always found it stupid to call individual cards win "conditions" for this very reason.
Damn. Put into words what I’ve been struggling to conceptualize in my head. Thanks 🙏🏼
Exactly. I don’t even play edh and this is how I build my decks, this is how you get away from that unfocused or inconsistency issue with your deck
@uandubh5087 maybe once it was like this but by now games are won by single cards
@@feritperliare2890 Which cards do you mean that win by themselves?
The boys really dislike it when I play with non-combat wincons. When I did build a combat focused deck, they also complained.
The issue with non-com wincons is your options when playing against them are to remove that player as fast as possible since they can win out of nowhere, or play blue. It needs the right opponents otherwise it’s an imbalanced game in either state. Playing a good back and forth match with everyone until someone pops off Torment of Hailfire and just wins invariably sucks unless everyone goes into it knowing that’s what that deck is capable of and you do some archenemy/control match-ups. Playing around uninteractable “I just win” cards in every game in a casual format is a nonstarter.
But yeah, whining about opponents building decks that actually do something is tradition. My deck doing stuff though? Perfectly fair.
They're probably complaining on how easy/quick you win the game, it's about power level
The mind of a commander player...
I built a muxis deck because of the same thing. Then they cry when I get muxis out turn two and swing for 40 😂
I've found that a few of the people I play commander with don't like to play against "high power decks"...which is conveniently whatever is beating them at the time, because they made a horribly unfocused deck full of cards that only work if their opponent is made out of straw. They also think a deck being able to pop off explosively is too powerful. Unless they do it of course, then it's funny and fair
I'm largely a cedh player (as well as competitive 1v1), but I've really been enjoying watching your videos despite their casual focus. It's a power level I've been struggling to move into, and have friends who exclusively play, so being able to explain concepts and winconditions to those friends (and to myself in how they need to change for casual) is genuinely amazing.
Keep up the good work. You're one of the best edh content creators right now.
My advice to get into casual EDH: Make your first deck a midrange, value-engine deck without any tutors or combos - and stay away from overpowered (casual) commanders like Korvold, Narset, Gitrog etc. You can easily tune your deck up or down, depending on your playgroup, with that starting point. I made the jump from competitive 60 card-formats (Standard and mostly Modern) to Commander over time 10-8 years ago and deliberately made my first deck a value-heavy Karametra deck. Worked really well and wasn't overpowering because Green lacked good card draw back then.
Precons are a great starting point with how strong and generally focused they are nowadays, and typically lacking tutors/infinites. Tutors and infinities providing a direct line of victory is the easiest way to break yourself out of a casual power level
I like to look at cEDH and Casual like this: if you think of Magic players as "car guys," cEDH would be the guys who drag race with souped up machines and casual would be the guys with the dank vintage 50s Cadillac or w/e. cEDH is all power and speed and having high-end timing and reactions, where I think casual shines best when there's something unique and interesting about what you build. It doesn't have to be memes and jank all the time (even though that can be fun sometimes), but you can still be doing something flavorful or using some card that sees almost zero play to kill people and creating those WTF moments that can make games memorable.
DON'T start with a precon either. You sound like you're an experienced magic player, build something you're gonna LOVE to play for the memes, the double-takes, the flavor, and the satisfaction that you get from putting together a unique list and then watching it do its thing.
I like this answer. A precon will get you to play commander, a fun brew you thought of that includes cards that you're personally interested in will help you love commander.@@HighlandersWorkshop
@@HighlandersWorkshop solid analogy and advice!
I’m about six months into MTG altogether and haven’t bought a precon yet. 4 decks built from the ground up:
Tovolar being my first
Six being my favorite
Most recent - “A Nightmare in Florida” 😂😂. Florida themed starts with 1/1 deathtouch snakes and insects then ramps into late game threats like Toxrill . It’s helmed by Cazur (Florida man) and Ukkima (his nightmarish Florida doggo)
Removal spells being viewed as cards that buy you time to win is the reason fog is busted. It's in the same category and actually saves you at the last second when a removal spell should have been cast earlier in the game to slow an opponent down. When they're already craterhoofing, only fog will save you. Plus it makes the blue player have to have it before you do.
Fog's usefulness goes down as the power of the pod goes up. Fog is going to do basically nothing in a very high--cedh level pods where as removal is kinda the opposite.
@@bruvaroni well I was talking about commander not cedh. Different formats. Different rulesets. Fog's power level is definitely tied to the wincons. Midrange decks that just want some removal should play fog as well is my point.
@@josephpayton7522 Technically speaking, it is the exact same ruleset :p
@@the_r4ts you got me there. I was just poking the bear.
Yes ! Fog effects are so much underrated ! I just lost my last game to an Arachnogenesis, it was the last card in my opponent's hand, nothing on board. One friend in my pod even started running "damages can't be prevented" effects in his deck
as somebody who enjoys playing casual magic / building themed decks instead of competitive ones, you’ve helped me so much with building casual decks that can still hold their own against sweatier players. thank you :)
This is why Win-more cards are important in my opinion. All my decks are built with a defence strategy against the win-cons existence.
Craterhoof? I keep Ghostly Prison effects so I can’t get overun. Defensive board wipes, fog, etc
But I have no defence against the win-mores such as winning the game if you have 20 or more creatures, because those cards are so out of left field.
Furthermore, the use of win-mores can turn parity into a winning situation. I played a match against someone’s dragon deck with a dragon deck of my own. We were about even in board state, but he had Crucible of Fire out. While I had some 4/4 flyer out that I used my slot for instead. Well, he could freely attack me with all his creatures, which either forces me to trade and lose due to a single dragon being a 10 damage spell, or sacrifice my entire board to him.
Likewise in another match it was MY Crucible of Fire that saved me from a life or death moment against a Toxrill player.
So don’t underestimate some of these “janky” cards. Win-mores are counter meta and become stronger the less players build their decks with its existence in mind.
Yeah, I've won with epic struggle before. I was running Cadira, Caller of the Small. I'd just keep a big board of clues and food and treasures and such, recast Cadira after a board wipe, Lightning Greaves her up and swing in to make a couple dozen bunnies, then the table scrambles to wipe the board again, and we go around again. The best part was that I eventually started my turn with 37 little bunny rabbits and we decided that the rest of the table just succumbed to how adorable they were and renamed Epic Struggle as Epic Cuteness.
@@jaredwonnacott9732Epic Snuggle
@@jaredwonnacott9732ah yes the very cute and bloodthirsty, dinosaur shredding unending horde of fluffy terrors
This is exactly the kind of sweaty content ive been looking for, most content doesnt go this deep
I always find your videos to be some of the most thoughtful. So much of MtG content recycles video concepts, but you somehow find a way to offer useful and unique advice that I have not heard elsewhere a hundred times. Kudos! 😊
"PLAYER REMOVAL IS NOT AN OPTION"
as a player who only plays with 3+ players ever-this hits deep
As someone coming from YuGiOh, this quality of content is refreshing and insightful. Being thorough in your deckbuilding process and questioning “What can X card do in X situation” is one of the best skills you can develop. Determining how a card can gel within a decks core engine versus a card that wins off a top deck or a card that just wins-more in advantageous positions will take your deck building to the next level. I am still a newbie and still have opportunities to learn and improve. Thanks for the awesome analysis. I’m glad that the algorithm put me on your content when it did. This level of content and comprehension goes beyond just MTG. Time to review and re-analyze my Sauron deck!
As a fellow Yugioh player, it's absolutely ridiculous how there's such a lack of resources or people actually willing to teach deck building. All we have are decklists but no one really goes into detail as to WHY you need certain cards, just that you need them.
MBT tried once with Mathmech and nothing since.
And when this problem is brought up I've seen some of the dumbest arguments AGAINST it
Honestly youre one of the best out of the box content creators for EDH you got my patreon support.
SO many content creators just talk about just the surface level parts of edh, the synergies that work how cards interact etc they may touch into things card card effect density but its all this general "rule of thumb" logic. Sometimes you dont need 3 boardwipes because command zone says its so. The idea of cutting the chaff and doubling down on what you are looking for is what more people need to hear. Really thinking about your card choices is crazy concept.
+1! This feels really freeing vs. the conventional wisdom out there.
14:45 - this example of removal opening the path was a lightbulb moment for me when I was still playing standard and just figuring out that mono red/aggro/rdw is a perpetual character in constructed formats. Lightning bolt isn't just for the face, its most devastating application is removing the blocker you were depending on to protect you from the little angry red guys.
With some set up though and maths, a lightning bolt can indeed be a very scary spell to take to the face. Stack the right enchantments on the field and its goes from 3 damage to 3(3+2)x2 damage. (Pyromancer's Gauntlet, Fiery Emancipation, and Furnace of Wrath if you're curious). Depends on the kind of burn deck whether thats viable though, but its cool seeing whats possible
@@justicebrown1077It would actually be (3x3x2)+2, because the player being affected (or controller of the object being affected, but that's not relevant for this situation) gets to choose in which order the replacement effects are applied. Fun thing is, (3x3x2)+2 is exactly 20 damage.
Yeah, removing a blocker almost always allows you to do more than 3 extra damage if you get a turn or two of swinging in.
On the topic of Combo: I found that if you're doing a very consistent gameplan throughout your deck and have like 50 cards all contributing to 1 thing, chances are that some random combinations of those 50 cards just so happen to go infinite. Without you even planning for it.
I have an Arjun the Shifting Flame deck like this. Not infinite, but I'll not infrequently start my last turn before death, draw a few cards, hit something and go "Huh, never mind. I think I win."
Like how Animar... can casually just accidentally have 100 or more infinites by simply playing cards that go in an Animat deck.
Yes. I merged the MH3 Creative Energy precon with the Fallout Science! Precon. Several unexpected infinite combos just kind of happened when all the cards had the same theme.
This is why I love to play shorikai vehicles with 10 board wipes. Great removal that works well with the nature of vehicles, consistent draws into that removal, and a constant stream of pilots to use as chump blockers and to turn on the vehicles
Key points:
- Focus is key. Don't run too many themes and hope to salvage it with a few decicated "wincon" cards.
- Removal as tempo. When your deck gets to a place where playing the cards clearly propels you to a win, the next step is to make sure your opponents stumble on the way there so that you win before they do.
- Video (and perhaps the channel) are mostly for more novice builders looking to get their lists into a more workable state. Be mindful of the limitations of the advice but also recognize they are superb tips for the target audience.
Completely agree. I tend to categorize "wincons" in my decks as "Papercuts" and "Finishers."
Papercuts attempt to convert small interactions into incremental steps towards winning. Purphoros is a perfect example of this (at least, in decks that don't *completely* vomit everything onto the board like Krenko). An important thing to note is that Papercuts become more effective as you stack them, and lessen the gap needed for Finishers to actually win the game, and, can thus, even turn non-Finishers into Finishers (returning to the Purphoros + Krenko example).
Finishers are pretty self-explanatory. The important distinction between them and Papercuts is that they can bridge the gap from a relatively neutral boardstate to a win before opponents can react appropriately. However, as mentioned, Papercuts can fill this role when stacked together effectively. Sometimes opponents just can't react to taking 5 damage per spell they cast. What's important here is that Finishers tend to be better into a sub-optimal boardstate, and are harder to react to. Aka, Craterhoof go brrr.
This is a great way of phrasing it, though when I built a deck around the idea I called it "Nickel and Dime". Stack a Kambal, Vito, and Painful Quandary and games end quickly
I consider wincons anything that causes the opponent to go f this game I'm out and they just leave the venue, not even taking their cards with them... like Mycosynth Lattice+Karn or Stony Silence and Null Rod.. toss in Strict Proctor to make sure no abilities will occur... make sure that the board is wiped beforehand with a farewell.
See, what you described is why playtesting against actual opponents is so important. When you put together a deck, it all sounds good and cohesive. It's only when you play with it in an actual game do you see what typically happens and what your deck achieves or struggles with. Then from there, you can build off of it, and refine what it really needs. Great video!
The best example of this, I believe, was when I was building my first aristocrats deck and was told to create a "healthy ecosystem" with enough prey (sac fodder), not too many predators (sac outlets), and only the best scavengers (cards that benefit from other creatures dying). If you don't have enough prey, the ecosystem fails, and that one concept stopped me from just stuffing my deck with carrion feeders and blood artists and made sure I focused first on recurable creatures, token generators, and creatures with good dies triggers, etc. I built up the pret side of my deck and was then able to add enough free sac outlets and aristocrat effects to keep the population in check.
Recently made a Bontu deck. The gameplan is simple, play guys that do literally anything at all when they die, it doesn’t matter what they do, genuinely, as long as we can windmill slam as many of them as possible before turn 5.
On turn 5, slam Bontu, God Eternal, and sacrifice literally all of your guys, no questions asked, to pick up roughly 4-7 cards on average and get some random stabilizing effects like forced discards and token creation. And hey, look at that! You picked up 4 cards to slam down for the next Bontu after he himself is sacrificed for value.
Does the deck win? Yes, through pure, degenerate grind, and no other means. It’s a deck that is systematically designed to get you into the headspace of thinking sacrificing 3 lands for 3 cards is an acceptable deal, and that tucking your commander into your deck will surely have no negative consequences.
And it works. It tends to impact games (or, in my terms, play more of the game) than a pile beelining for an actual wincon.
Aimless acquiring value at any and all costs can be more fun than winning the game, because winning the game is easy, but playing the game for longer is fun.
Seriously the best EDH content on the internet - i play casual and cEDH and always find myself rererencing your videos and ideas when talking about decks with people ❤
Been playing MtG since 9th edition and EDH since 2007. The quality/value of removal vs the ever increasing value of casting things worth removing has grown wildly out of balance in the last 5+ years.
"Everything" is an Avengers level threat, that I find myself limiting my removal vs the way I built decks in the past and just add more gas. "The best removal is player removal."
I think the weirdest thing about casual EDH is that sometimes, I am actually more keen on seeing what the other guy wants to do than simply just running away with the game, I want to see the cool thing they are trying to pull off instead of shutting them down. In a way this changed a lot on how I built my decks, I put way more removals, wraths and counterspells before, but often felt like I didn't really want to use them. It is interesting how I've shifted my removal targets more on things that stops me from winning (Like a stax piece) than the average spooky things.
I have absolutely needed your perspective on this game. You have really analyzed this game, and you’ve opened my eyes to whole new horizons of deck building. Thank you for sharing!
I LOVE this video essay, especially the point at the end about Combos. Any combo you put in your deck, that your opponents know about, is automatically a threat no matter what the board state is. It adds weight to unknown cards in hand, and makes you a bigger target: so putting random, clunky combos into a deck just because they’re in your colors does not make it better, it will usually make it worse, because it will naturally bump that deck into a higher tier of deck that it isn’t prepared to handle consistently.
Thanks Snail God, I'm glad I get to watch your EDH centric Magic videos, as it's a niche that's pretty lacking on TH-cam as of yet.
Best EDH content on the website IMO. Thank you for putting so much effort into these videos snailman :)
I want to thank you for all the help these videos have given me! A friend of mine recommended your ramp video to me a few weeks back, and watching these videos have helped me really consider my deck building and my goals a lot more. I often picked cards as I saw them for synergies I saw and ended up with very unfocused decks, like you mentioned here with input. Now, I've become a lot more goal oriented, and been considering the flow and consistency of what my deck can get done. I didn't worry about it too much before with the idea I wanted to "keep my power level low", but I was definitely just making a deck that popped off big like 20% of the time, and the other 80% I just ran out of gas quickly. I still have a long way to go, but now I understand what I need to learn, and I really appreciate it.
Incredibly well thought out video as always. I really enjoy the way these videos are explained and how deep you go into the concepts and theories of the topic.
2:19 putting Karametra's Acolyte in a "doesn't win the game" pile leads into my own piece of advice:
The most consistent deck is one where cards are productive by themselves, but game-winning when combined. My Kogla deck runs Karametra's Acolyte for mana and Lightning Greaves for protection. Both cards are independently good. But if you have the Acolyte and the Greaves together, they give infinite mana and infinite ETBs. The entire deck is full of midrange goodstuff with this type of explosive synergy. Draw, untap, mana, and token generation that can trigger naturally by themselves or infinitely with a few other synergy pieces. The list and primer are on TappedOut as "King Kong Combo" if you want to compare its philosophy to your own decks.
In summary, every card I put in my deck gets two separate evaluations: first, is it good on its own? Second, is it even better when paired with other cards in the list? Keeping track of both possibilities is how you create in-built win cons.
This video is very helpful! I struggle with this as a symptom of being an arena player turned paper edh player. Creators like LVD are incredible resources to learn from (and my rules knowledge are best in the pod!), but it's a 2 player game versus a 3-4+ player game. Risk-managing 3 other players in an perfect all-things-considered manner is so so much harder.
My comfort commander is Eight-and-a-Half-Tails helming a greedy etb pile without tutors, and while playing archenemy behind an Emeria, the Sky Ruin can be very fun, the games go on for years. I'm working on an Animar list right now to get more comfortable with presenting a threatening boardstate and actually trying to go for wins.
Also suffer the same problem, having problems on playing against 3 players instead of 1
Instructions unclear, I have now brewed up a Wincon Tribal deck.
This makes me want to go and reexamine some old EDH decks. Cool video, really excellent insights re: "you're not playing midrange, you're playing bad combo".
Braid of Fire+Stony Silence+Mycosynth Lattice, is my wincon... When my opponent can't play the game, I win. But I just have to wait until I draw my burn spells. There's enough fun cards in Red with Flash. Such as Dictate of the Twin Gods... Which let's me win twice as fast. Embercleave is cute as well, trust me no one likes being locked out of the game, And with Eivor Battle-Ready as the Commander... and a lot of more fun Boros cards, either I pressure them into a loss, or they get locked out of the game. I can take my time to win against them all or just run over them with crazy combos such as Cadric+Duke Ulder Ravengard+Gisela Blade of Goldnight... To guarantee that you will instantly kill all opponents who can't block...
That video was immensely informative and crystalized lots of concepts and ideas and feelings that I have had as a casual player but haven't been able to characterize, or fully understand given lack of time to dedicate to analysis etc. 10/10 video amazing job.
Just want to start by saying I really enjoy your videos snail, even as a veteran player you bring up thoughtful ideas and present them in a clear concise manner. Now for a TL;DR about mid-range and general synergy.
I play a few decent mid range decks and generally find other people trying to play similar things unsuccessfully are woefully lacking in proper interaction. The number one comment I hear my opponents making in regards to my decks are "let's see if he has an answer" which is exactly where I want to be in a game. If someone is trying to guess what's in my hand they might delay their plan a turn giving me an advantage or allowing me to catch up when I genuinely have nothing. (This is still possible outside blue.)
Some people have too broad a range of removal spells, but not enough that focuses on what exactly shuts their win condition down or it hurts them as much as their opponent. Explained this to a friend recently who is playing aristocrats for the first time. Ideally the goal isn't to have an answer to everything (unless you're playing control) but to always have an answer to what stops you. Board wipes in a creature heavy deck don't make a lot of sense except as a last resort and yet people using the "average deck" on EDHRec will have two or three. Things like Austere Command or Farewell rank high on my list of what is acceptable merely for being modal and saying "I need this effect now." Then there's the lack of protection from opponents which for me usually consists of a flicker, phase, or indestructible spell depending on my colors and often more than a couple. Those spells can also provide added benefits beyond their main purpose though, like running Ghostway in Tazri Allies for example will also win a game.
I think you're spot on with your input/output concept and cards lacking synergy, so kudos for explaining it in a way that might make sense to people. A highly synergistic deck will perform just about every time and they don't necessarily have to be expensive if everything works toward the same goal. Sometimes the best win con is consistency and not a specific card at all, though that won't stop me from having one infinite in every deck just for good measure.
Good video! Not a regular watcher but I'm dropping a like because of how concise and well spoken you are
Great advice here! I listened to a recent episode of command zone talking about individual cards influencing power level and I nearly ripped my hair out. This was the opposite experience.
Yeah, they aren't great at the theory side of things. Amazing, polished, high production value actual play videos, though 👍
single cards do change a deck's power level. snail made a video on it too - "the problem with budget cards"
The win con in commander is when your friends ban your deck because your turns take too long and your smug aura mocks them
Remember kids, midrange decks need a questing beast, because everyone else who knows you play midrange will preboard fogs against you.
Having 13 cards in hand at the beginning if your upkeep with triskadekaphile in play is a wincon 1:49
This was a very useful video for my Treebeard lifegain voltron deck, the way I've built it it just puts all the eggs in the basket that is treebeard and, while I do have some protection, it makes it really obvious what my threat is and even if I take out one person it's hard to take down the whole table!
I guess we could say that the input of life gain is competent but the output isn't strong enough to win games on its own. I'll definetely start running more lifegain payoffs and just more threats which are good on their own but also help me diversify how I end games
Great video. Tangent to the point but Gavi built around prision with approach of the second sun is rather effective.
"EDH player cant stop making midrange do-all-do-nothing slow af decks that are just a pain to play against"
I like your takes. Very solid thought lines for casual. Which is how I view comnander
Just subscribed, I’ve been really enjoying your deckbuilding takes. Gonna rant about a couple of my own decks that your “focused output” point made me think of.
In 2020 I got back into Magic and built my first commander decks since 2012. The strongest, unsurprisingly, were Kinnan and Yarok. They’re both ridiculous value commanders, and at first I just built both to do as many big, cool things as possible. Over time, I leaned Kinnan into high-power stompy, loading up on all the big Timmy creatures I could fit as a payoff for the ridiculous mana ramp. With 45 creatures to ensure Kinnan never misses and a bunch of rocks so some of my ramp survives a board wipe, there isn’t much room for countermagic or protection, and my creatures have to do most of the removal. I’ve been back and forth on having infinite mana pieces in the deck since it’s so easy to and I have a Basalt Monolith I’m not otherwise using. I’m conscious of the game time I take up just throwing silly beaters on the field, and try to move efficiently and be able to close. The deck doesn’t need my one Craterhoof but God-Eternal Rhonas and End Raze Forerunners are plenty to finish. The only human in the 99 is Archetype of Imagination to get over the top.
Yarok started out on a similar plan, use his huge value to make big board states and swing out. Once I got the mana curve under control, it could do that, but the deck was no longer filled with beefy creatures to recur or cast with my big mana. The deck WAS unreasonably good at drawing cards, since I just kept throwing every “something ETBs, draw a card” trigger in there for Yarok to double. In one game I hard cast Omniscience, drew my entire deck with draw triggers and played everything out, but had no source of haste and someone wiped the board the next turn and I died. I decided that deck needed more payoffs for its actual focused output, tons of card draw. I added a Concordant Crossroads to solve the “drew my whole deck but need to swing” problem, and an Emergent Ultimatum. Ultimatum can get me either Omniscience or Peregrine Drake and Deadeye Navigator, and I decided this would be my one deck where I include a Thoracle to win off draw alone. Also added a Psychosis Crawler to drain my opponents out with just the draw, and Ob-Nixilis the Fallen and Retreat to Hagra to drain them with my landfalls. Rather than make room for any kind of countermagic to ensure that win, I’ve left some ways to still win with combat, like Scute Swarm, Avenger of Zendikar, and Champion of Lambholt to get everyone through. I only pull it out for the right tables, but it’s fun going about as deep into combo play as I’m willing to. Other than ultimatum I don’t run tutors, just keep drawing and something will work out.
I think one of the best versions of this discussion is something I picked up from from one of ‘Tolarian Community College’s old deck building videos. Esentually it goes like this:
1) What do you want to be doing in the first 1-4 turns of the game?
2) How do you want to end the game?/What does your late game plan look like?
3) What are you doing to get from point A to point B?
As an example Agro/RDW decks answers these with “1)I want to be beat face, 2)what lategame? 3)guess I should put in some extra/fast damage to make sure there isn’t a lategame.”
As long as these three questions are kept in mind, then, while your deck mind need further tuning, it will probably have a solid gameplan, with a reasonable chance of winning against similar decks.
I think "win condition" is a simple way to refer to the biggest threat in a deck. It's not that it's necessary to win, but it'll sure help out if it's around.
This is the reason why so many people hate Stax decks and Mass Land Destruction decks. It's not that they can't win, they can, but it's going to take hours(st least that's how most versions go). Tax my every breath, destroy every land, but please, do it smartly, and build your deck in such a way that you can actually take advantage of what you're doing.
A general rule I make for myself when building a deck is that I need to goldfish it first to make sure I know how it functions, and I need to be able to hit an absolutely overwhelming boardstate/wincon by turn 8 at the latest otherwise I don't declare the deck as functional. It's harder with some deck builds because of interaction needs, but if you can make reasonable and realistic estimates you can get an idea of how it should flow.
Edit: Finsihed the video and I can definitely say I like the way you took this, to be much more about not focusing on individual cards as win conditions, but instead to make more coherent decks where all cards contribute towards a more unified goal :) I do think that this process you're describing is also helped by viewing cards as threats&answers of varying types and degrees, as moving away from the binary labels like "wincon" and more towards a sliding scale is generally a more useful way to analyze things. Overall a great video that definitely got me thinking!
Just 2-3 minutes into the video and I felt like attempting to take a stab at a solid definition of a wincon card in a way that's more ambiguous/flexible, I hope:
If we start to categorize cards as proactive or reactive cards (threats and answers) then the wincon card of a given game is the threat that your opponent didn't have a good enough answer for. Any threat /can/ be a wincon, but some threats are much more easily answered than others. Aiming to have threats that are difficult to answer is ideal. Whether this means "varying your threats to require different answers hoping to go through enough until you find one your opponent couldn't plan or draw into an answer for", or "playing enough threats that require a singular answer until you exhaust your opponent's copies of that answer" is up for grabs.
Of course, not all proactive threats need to be chosen for their ability to win the game. Many threats are just about the threat of setting up an advantageous board state - one which will increase the odds of landing one of your bigger more serious threats later in the game. These smaller early-game proactive threats like tempo creatures and mana dorks are still proactive, and there are answers that exist, but missing the answer doesn't win the game most of the time, so they're not reliable wincons on their own.
TLDR, A wincon is a proactive threatening card that A) requires one of a limited number of answers from an opponent to prevent it from getting good value, and B) is strong enough when unanswered to reliably win the game (or at least, lead to the knocking out of one of the opponents) in the event it actually goes off without response. A better wincon has fewer (or more niche) potential answers for it's part A, and more consistency/impact in part B. There's a sliding scale of weaker wincons which fall short by varying amounts on one or both of those metrics.
I cannot stress how big of a deal removal is. every deck needs SOME, my ur-dragon deck is a very good example of this. the deck teeters between aggro and midrange and i have 2 playgroups
1 local card shop where max removal slots is 2 target 1 board wipe and ur dragon is nearly un beatable because after we all ramp turn 1-3 i ramp once or twice more turn 4 and then just keep playing unanswered threat after unanswered threat and nobody can stop me
2 my place with friends where removal is more plentiful and my deck is incredibly mid, like 20% winrate at best, i still get to do my thing and have fun but my opponents have no trouble handling 1-3 dragons a turn and my commander cannot last a single turn rotation (he is 9 mana and frankly should not because one good turn with him on the board is ruff)
Seeing the missy cards reminded me of some of my own plans to make a missy deck focusing around morphs. It's been a little bit since I've really gotten into it, but I decided to lean into missy's ability to do one of my favorite things: morph recursion. In my Kadena deck, it's only a few cards that allow me to easily and cheaply bounce morphs back to my hand several times and recast them for free, but with missy I leaned more into red morphs, with things like skirk alarmist to flip a card in exchange for sacrificing it at turn end, or cards that just sacrifice themselves already after morphing. It's still in progress and it's been a couple months since I've done anything much with magic in general, but the focus was more towards cyberman specific synergies and morph stuff, and ways to sacrifice to reuse morphs than general artifact things.
Excellent content.
I disagree with replacing Crucible Of Fire with a Dragon in a Tribal deck, because COF will survive most board wipes and continue to add value... unlike a dead Dragon.
Another excellent video as always.
You talked about creating parity and breaking parity, and the concept of win-more cards, and these are very useful ways to think about evaluating cards. The Limited Resources podcast, by Marshall and LSV, like to use 'quadrant theory', which is just a fancy name for 4 categories of board state: developing, parity, behind, winning. Also a very useful tool in my experience
I love your detailed and unique pov on this game!
A recurring issue I have is seeing a card and going "wow! this would be so powerful in one of my decks! it does exactly what i need when i do something my deck is already focusing on!" but when i sit down and really look at it, i realize the relationship is backwards - the card helps me with the setup parts of my game plan only when i'm already executing the "win" part of it.
For example, Seer of Stolen Sight in Muldrotha. My deck already focuses on sacrificing creatures, and the Seer puts things into my graveyard when I do, which is where I want my cards to be! Great! Except, by the time I'm sacrificing creatures in the quantity neccessary for Seer to be meaningful, I've already established all the game pieces I need to win, so the Seer doesn't really do anything other than generate useless game actions.
The name "Snail's Guide to Winning an EDH Game" got me expecting the slowest win condition possible
The parity thing is why it’s so important for players, regardless of format, to play some amount of limited (draft, sealed, or cube). The Limited Resources podcast quadrant theory literally has Parity as one of the four categories.
You want more cards that are good when you’re building, behind, or at parity.
When you’re already ahead, any card drawn is a good one. Except for objectively bad cards like One With Nothing.
But when you’re behind specific cards will let you claw back in, and at parity, a handful will help you break it.
By playing more limited, you understand the natural flow of games and deck building better. Commander games all have similar phases (building, back and forth on who is ahead, and parity), but games are slower than limited so it’s harder to gauge.
This video actually reminds me a lot of your mana base video and budget staples video. One of the issues is that once you reach a certain power level, everything becomes effectively the same (ie. both setup and wincon). Cards like Sol Ring, Dockside, Ad Nauseum, Rhystic Study etc. will effectively set up and break parity either instantly (or within a turn cycle) which make them very attractive to include in any deck. Also, as you mentioned, winning the game is a great way of preventing your opponents from winning the game.
12:05 this is where I love removal that plays into your game plan. Rielle the Everwise lets you draw when you discard one or more cards in one instance. So when you discard two cards for Cathartic Reunion, you immediately draw two with Rielle before you draw the three from Cathartic Reunion. With this I can turn cards like Rites of Ruin, Nahiri's Wrath, and Turbulent Dreams into powerful removal that cycles several less useful cards (in the current game state) on the side.
It's also why I love Daretti, Scrap Savant's +2, it trades less than ideal cards in for potentially better cards or cards that push me towards using the discarded cards later when they're more impactful.
I have two decks
Ganax+Acolyte of Bahamut: Dragon Engine. Built around Dragon synergies with the ability to either swing or burn out depending on the board state. Either Dragon beatdown or etb burnout.
Sivriss+Feywild Visitor: Zombie Decisions. Built around using Sivriss to fill the yard and drain off opponents seeing big threats they don't want me to have. Zombies are a convenient tribe for reanimation and sac fodder. It ends up being Zombie Beatdown.
Both decks can be focused still but I am having fun since it matches power levels with the rest of the pod.
... I read the first one and was like "wait, when did they make a bahamut robot? I thought the only named Dragon Engine card card was Ramos."
new video after opening the server!
for me the points made at 8:38 (ending at 10:40) and at 18:22 (endiing at 19:28) as well as the short tangent for combos are the best for understanding the concept, which is that i could think of putting cratehoof behemot in my 99s, but first i need to think about which cards i want to cast first that will have an impact on the board alone and receive the benefits of the overrun buff at the same time
Do you have any thoughts on thievery based decks? I enjoy playing that style of deck, but a deck whose game plan is primarily stealing everyone's toys can't have the consistency you describe by default. Would be interesting to see what you'd consider important in that paradigm.
this vid was super helpful for me trying to build a deck for a new format my local card shop is trying. It's called precon plus. You take any precon(not secret lair) and can exchange any 20 cards in it for different cards. At first, I tried finding the closest precon that adheres to combo(Breya) and throwing in tutors and infinities. But with only 20 cards, the deck was super inconsistent.
That's when I decided to take a step back and look at what the deck is trying to do and focus on what the precons were made to do. So I decided to switch to the "Exit from exile" precon and have the 20 cards focus on what the deck was made for. After the changes I went to my tourney and quickly realized something. My deck lacked tools to close out games and some of the cards I switched out weren't the optimized picks. So I would draw dead cards included in the precon that were too specific/niche and I could build a board states but would constantly run into situations where I can't break the parity. At first I thought that I should pick cards to remove based on a mana curve/cards that have absolutely nothing to do with the main game plan. But upon seeing your vid, I realized my mana curve was already pretty good as I already put in mana ramp. The other cards I took out while okay, contributed to my game plan for the deck way more than the other niche/speicific cards that were based on mana curve.
Not only that, but to look at my game plan as a whole as my win con instead of just a few select cards.
Absolutely LOVING your content. Amazingly articulated and very entertaining.
While originally written for head-to-head tournament magic, "The danger of cool things" article from long ago is a good description of the win-more problem. Also I'd love to see you tackle how tempo vs. value in deck design are a zero sum game, what it looks like when done well and what it looks like when done poorly. Also what those terms mean in multiplayer vs. head-to-head.
Thank you for this excellent essay!
When adding or cutting cards, I always try to ask myself "does this card help me win?" Card draw helps me win because it allows me to have more potential answers and threats to play. A jank interaction that only works if I have three specific cards AND my opponent leaves me alone might help me win the game, but if each individual part of that interaction doesn't then they'll be dead in my hand most of time. Interaction is something I'll always prefer over a combo piece because interaction is always useful to have in your hand. I've never been in a game and thought "ugh, I wish I didn't have this counterspell or boadwipe in my hand" but I've definitely thought that about 9 cmc jank that has won me exactly 2 games ever. Interaction is like insurance. You pray you won't need it but when you do need it, you'll be glad you have it.
The tip I’ve heard is “always be closing”
Every card in your deck should further your game plan or disrupt your opponent’s.
On the concept of "card that's meh 2/3 of the time but incredible that other 1/3," my Yasova deck has plenty of ways to win that all still play within the concept of what the deck wants to do in general, but one of the very first cards I put in specifically because I wanted it as a wincon was Insurrection. The very first game I played with her, it did exactly what it was there for - the Silas/Akiri deck had a massive boardstate with Rebecc protecting the entire thing who was definitely set to win the game until I dropped Insurrection and stole everything and killed everyone at the same time, even after they tried to sacrifice as much of their board as possible.
The card only truly functions when at least one opponent also has a large boardstate, but being that the deck cares about theft and then making those stolen creatures die or cease to exist, it certainly still has a function if there's just a few scary things on the field that all need to go away
There are some cards that their presence/activation can universally be called a winning condition. Many planeswalker ultimates, the cycle of saga preators (those are almost all one sided boardwipes or give you and unstoppable board). There’s more literal ones like rising of the second son or that one creature that says “you win if you have exactly 13 cards in hand”. Basically one sided board wipes tend to be situations that are difficult if not impossible to recover from
Winds of Abandon is one of my favorite board wipes lately. It's such a back breaking card that breaks parity and lets you push through damage. The mana you're giving your opponents I've found rarely matters if you're deploying it at a time where you can kill 1-2 players.
I've been struggling to find a fitting wincon on my Yasova Dragonclaw deck, its a deck about stealing my opponents creatures and sacrificing them for value. It sometimes leads to soft locks my opponents and leads to long games...
I had a real bizarre wincon that was only able to flourish because of other people's board states. It was there i realized that was how i wanted to play the game. I wanted to set up my board so that other people's mistakes would greatly benefit me.
The mistake here was playing a sheoldred [og] while i had only my commander (Mishra, Eminent One) and a Simulacrum Synthesizer. The next turn i force sac my commander and played lithoform engine and started copying SS. The constructs were tokens and ignore the forced sac ability which surprisingly allowed me to balloon out of control with the power level.
Another time i nearly had another wincon because someone played Phyrexian Censor, so I drop a Spine of Ish Sah. With most players limited to one spell a turn, i could easily control the board by blowing up 1-2 permanents per turn.
I am a couple months late, but the "Breaking of Parity" is one of the reasons I think Planeswalkers can be under-rated in EDH, In a board stall where nobody can really swing without leaving themselves open for a counter attack having a Planeswalker that is accruing value every turn is a great way to force people into acting. I've Ulted Sharkhan Unbroken (The Temur One) a couple of times over the years just because "I have 3 6/6 Flying Dragons, untapped lands and have an extra card each turn." basically kept the other 3 players from going into the red zone to kill him effectively.
I am not saying put like 10 Random planeswalkers in your deck, but one to three that go along with your decks already existing plan, I've even had a game where the other 3 players had a discussion on how Dangerous Elliwick Tumblestrum was because she was going to Emblem next turn and if I had exactly Nadaar, Selfless Paladin in hand I would complete Mad Mage because I was two rooms off it.
0:11 me as an 8 year old learning magic and loving my mono green hydra devotion deck (it was bad)
You have annunciated a lot of my thoughts on EDH that i hadn't yet put to words here, you also made me realize that I a bit worse than I thought, as I love to use combos. in every deck and that is, in my words "easy mode"
Maaaaaan I love this channel ❤
I clicked on this video expecting a funny meme and instead I got a mtg theory lecture, and I loved it
A “win condition” is the condition required to win the game, not the plays facilitating that condition. Forcing opponent to draw with no cards in their library, bringing their life total to zero, giving them 10 poison counters, and using otherwise stated card text to create the win condition. That last part is referring to text that says you outright win, or outright lose, not a the emergent plays being made.
So the plays being made aren’t also the win condition, they are a set of plays working towards a specific win condition.
I'm not an EDH player (yet?, I have a few ideas), but I am getting into deckbuilding nonetheless. So these videos are all extremely interesting because many of the same principles still apply. In fact, I followed some of these thoughts while building my Depths Deck this weekend. It wants to get out Leviathans, Kraken, Serpents and Octopuses that are often fairly big, so a core concern was my Mana Base. With a problem. Most of it is blue, but there are some Green and even three Black symbols on my cards. My (probably) bad solution to this was to throw in some tap Lands, Artifacts that give me any Color Mana and Enchantments that give me extra Mana. Given this, another important aspect emerged: Controlling what I draw and when it lands on the board. Luckily, this idea came about because I had two Legendary cards that interacted with these Types, so I had a start, but needed more to compensate them not appearing. This introduced more (pseudo-)Scry as well, helping me with my Curve. After this, the question became "How do I win?" I get big creatures and more of them, but I still need some time. I added a few cards for this purpose, but I will likely need more protection and removal.
I've been running into this issue with my Armix/Rebbec deck. Deck definitely plays a more midpoint between Midrange and Control (Rebbec gives all Artifacts Protection from things with their mana values while the end state is to either whittle away at life totals with a bunch of effectively unblockable Artifacts or suit Armix up with equipment and get big life swings) but there's no clean "closers." Part of the issue is I'm building on a budget and the other is the glaring flaw of "If Rebbec gets removed, my deck doesn't function." Ive remedied the first by adding ways to make Rebbec an Artifact (Liquidmetal, Biotransference, Transmogrist), but I run into the issue of "I need to keep blockers up because my pod realizes I'm the threat." Any insight on what I'm "doing wrong?"
For starters your gonna need to put some protection equipment and some instant speed protection spells since you're in white
@@xeper9458 I had that in mind, but because I don't own Greaves/Boots and they're currently "out of budget" (Bills > Cardboard Crack), hence the using "unusual approaches" to keep Rebbec alive (Currently have Liquidmetal Coating, Biotransference, Resurrection Orb, but planning to acquire Torque and Ashnod's Transmogrist). Yes, these are "less efficient" answers, but it's using my collection/cheap purchases.
Removal spells are card disadvantage, but it's not common to see people actually talk about that. Excellent introduction to EDH game theory
Dear diary, today I added "Proceed to Operation Beef" to my vocabulary.
I think the concept of a wincon is pretty easy to understand intuitively. At least the way I define it for myself.
Any "wincon" i have in a deck is just a card that can take an average board state and let me win suddenly.
In my Lazav, the Multifarious deck, my wincons are things like wall of blood, wake thrasher, Skithiryx, because those cards take me from attacking as a 2/2 or 3/2 for some value to "if you don't stop me, I'll win this turn"
Removal has an extra dimension in that some removal generates card advantage while most does not. Removal is amazing when it is a side effect of a main game plan. Thats why you should never default to "the best" removal spells. Mystic snake is a good example. Its a counterspell AND puts a body on the field. If your deck cares about bodies, thats a million times better than a more mana efficiënt counterspell
my favorite new channel
RE: inconsistent combo decks. For example: in my Arcades deck, if I plan on beating people with giant walls (Aggro) but keep them in CMC/MV range of 1-3 to keep flow of cards AND I've decided to fully utilize mana from Axebane Guardian and/or Overgrown Battlement by adding cards like Staff of Domination, alongside already existing big mana payoffs, does this make my deck worse combo deck or more consistent midrange one?
my muldrotha deck is just control, the aim is to abuse permanent based control pieces such as the seals to maintain parity until i can win via either painful quandry, stormtide leviathan/torrent elemental or lab man myself. it took ages for me to decide on power appropriate finishers, i could just run thoracle but that wouldnt be fun for anyone. so instead im using a couple slow and steady wincons that allow me to win the game if i can keep the board under control
I like the inputs and outputs analogy. That's how I think about it too. Basically, setup and payoff. What do I need to do early and mid game, so that I can do X mid game and late game to win?
I'd say that my deck is an interesting one, where it's game plan is big guy hit hard, somehow mixed with control.
The idea is this, I control the game until I can reach the point where my commander, Melek, Reforged Researcher, can be used to win the game.
This is generally either by making Melek unblockable, giving him trample, or simply buring everyone for a ton with Chandra's ignition.
Also, to clarify what Melek does, his power and toughness is equal to 2 times the number of instants and sorceries in the graveyard. He also makes my first insant or sorcery each turn 3 mana cheaper.
Ideally I'll use a ton of draw power and mill to get a ton of cards into the graveyard to make Melek huge, then use one of two cards to give my instants and sorceries flashback in the graveyard.
It's fun, but it can be hit or miss. Most of the time my only creature is Melek, in which he can discourage swinging in to me because attacking into the 20/20 creature isn't ideal, but he can still only block one thing at a time, not to mention any flying creatures can easily get past him. Another issue surrounding him is that he has no protection, meaning that the deck relies on either drawing swiftfoot boots, or keeping it's many counterspells active.
The other thing is that the deck probably should have more targeted removal. Having that would be very useful for keeping myself alive. Also, while omniscience is cool, making spells fro, your hand free is very irrelevant in the deck that does a lot of mana cheating, so I'm likely going to remove that.
Legitimately, the most useful omniscience has been was when it got milled by Orthanc and burned my opponent for 10. It's the sort of thing where if it comes up then it's cool, but in most situations I'll either never reach the point where I can use it, or using it wouldn't actually be all that helpful.
When your plan involves hardcasting Jin-Gitaxias he is actually pretty hard to remove because you can put him on the field when your opponents don’t expect to deal with it. While I only casted him in my opponent’s turn twice the whole table surrendered the moment I flashed him in.
I still have an AEtherling in my mono blue commander deck
I'm cool with decks that get super out of hand with synergy if they go unchecked, but I cannot stand infinite combos...that's just lame in my opinion. I want to see a deck crafted so well that each card played adds substantially to their win con but when someone can just say "I play this card and then this card and then I win unless you counter one of these cards". That's boring and not actually impressive either. What's most impressive and most fun to play against to me, is a deck that has so many options to defeat me and so many ways of avoiding what I'm about to do that their deck is like a language: it has an answer and a phrase for every circumstance of the game more or less. And look, infinite combo win cons CAN be ok but it's tricky...like I'm totally ok with an infinite combo used against a Sliver's deck player maybe or something. Or, let's put it another way, if 2 players have super casual decks and one player lies about their deck's power for the LOLZ and then tries to destroy the board, I'm fine if the 4th player packs a sneaky infinite win combo and says "Yeah, it's nice that you said your deck is a 6 when it's a 9 an all but, take this infinite damage to the eyes, nose, mouth and ears, kthanks". In other words, infinite combos are a massive sigh of relief in games that are clearly stupid or unfair where one player is playing some absolute bullshit CEDH deck against your "normal" Commander decks and is trying to be cheeky and a smart-ass. Comeuppance, in other words.
Also, the way I avoid "parity" problems with my Azorius colors/Soldiers tribal deck is by using...well 1. My commander Harbin who can make all my creatures have flying if I attack with 5 or more soldiers (including him). 2. Halo Fountain...alt win con where I need 15 creatures to win with it's ability 3. Strixhaven Stadium to get through high health pool/lifegain decks/infinite lifegain decks and so on.
For straight up "I'm going to deal lots of combat damage to you now" cards I just use the tried and true..uh...True Conviction and the sneaky but incredibly, unbelievably unknown "Starlight Spectactular". In a token deck it's just insane because Starlight Spectactular takes IDK 10 1/1 tokens and blows their damage up into lethal for at least two players. It gives +1/1 to each creature you have attacking for EACH OTHER creature you have attack behind it "in line" and you "line up" your creatures in whatever order you want in order. So in short, you have 10 1/1 tokens, you have to "line them up" from 1 to 10. Each creature gets +1/1 for each creature that attacks after it in order except for the 1st attacking creature. So....you would have 10 dmg for the 10 tokens, but then with the enchantment....1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9 which you can assign to any of your attacking creatures. So total damage you could spread around to the table from just these 10 1/1s would be....54 damage. And that's JUST if these creatures were ONLY 1/1 tokens. If you already have a Lord card of some kind that gives 1/1 or...my commander Harbin, Vanguard Aviator which does the same. But as is true of my own soldiers deck, imagine that instead of 10 1/1s they're a mixture of 2 power, 3 power or 4 power soldiers THEN you add the extra damage. The damage can get insane and no one expects Starlight Spectacular because probably so few know it even exists. 4 mana for such a powerful enchantment!
Since you've brought up Gavi and her blandness/lack of focus multiple times now, I would love to see you build a consistent and competitive Gavi deck! Personally I also have a Gavi deck of my own, but I do agree that some of the card choices in EDHREC for example are quite strange, so seeing what you come up with would be both inspiring and entertaining.
My win-con is either a single trample creature with unbelievable power, or 10 trillion little dude. Can you geuss what colour I play?
Azorius
I play a Naya good stuff deck that it's lead by Zacama. While the deck seems to be mostly unfocused from a quick look from an outsider, it does a very good job of accomplishing my 2 goals.
1. The overwhelming value of nearly every card in the deck makes it difficult for opponents to break parity with me before I drop Zacama and ruin their board, then the same value can be used to finish off my opponents in a timely manner.
2. Each and every card I play is satisfying to me for some reason or another. These valuable pieces might not contribute much in total, but I feel good playing them, and having fun is winning at a game, period.