Tomer, you need to remove a letter from your name so that every name on the current crew is four letters long. I vote for Tome, but Omer is also a spice choice.
I'm 41 years old so you guys are the youngens! I just got back into Magic again and am really enjoying it. I also really enjoy your podcasts too. Thanks for the great content 👍
Just wanted to take a min and appreciate what Tomer brings to this podcast, beyond the behind scenes stuff I really enjoy his personality and attitude towards the game.
Jadar is so good. A consistent source of tokens makes him a pretty fun demon tribal deck. Demon of Catastrophes, Dreadfeast Demon, and even a good ol Lord of the Pit are very fun with Jadar.
It’s also a great commander for mono black stax. A lot of the mono black stax pieces need sac fodder to keep around like Contamination so a stax deck isn’t too far of a stretch.
Arcanis was actually my 3rd ever commander! i paired him with twiddle effects, reshuffle my graveyard cards and sphinx's tutelage type wincons. it was awesome when it went off!
I have a Dong Zhou deck and it great fun, dishing huge amounts of damage out of nowhere. Radiant Performer is a hilarious new include that lets you Dong every single creature opponents control.
One of my favorite archetypes in commander is mono black aristocrats. And I have jahdar as the commander because it's a two drop that gives you something to sac every turn
I think it's okay if your payoffs are less permanent. With commanders that have more of a payoff you can draw into anything and you're good to go, if you're not saccing the zombie you're not doing anything.
A common theme at my longest standing edh meta is that we all have at least one deck that has an alternate 6cmc casual commander, typically a random 6cmc dragon. This particular table we've been playing together for nearly a decade, so communication is never a problem. Sometimes we play powerful new junk, sometimes we pull out a 6cmc commander to pilot a deck that's not built around a commander. Makes for very relaxed and enjoyable games. From this trend and how rarely I build decks focused around a commander, the majority of my decks have an alt 6cmc legendary to pull out. Rayne clones turns to Kiaga, exava chaos turns to Malfegor, Henrika voltron turns to Visara the Dreadful, Tetsuo combo turns to Crosis, Rakka Mar untap token shenanigans turns into Kamahl Pit Fighter, and so on.
My underrated guy is Erebos God of the Dead. Seems generic as hell at a glance but he has a lot of great synergies with really specific cards. Pestilence, Withering Wisps, Bolas's Citadel, Oppression, Words if Waste. Card advantage on a stick in the Command Zone is cool, preventing lifegain is constantly becoming more useful and being indestructible makes him really resilient. I've had a lot of success running him for a long time and putting three generic abilities all on the same card actually makes him pretty unique.
I love Volrath! I built him a few months ago, and he is so fun. You get to play with giant black creatures that you would almost never play anywhere else. Very happy Tomer included him here!
Still not sure how good jadar is in the command zone. But I def appreciate him in the 99 of anhelo. The consistent stream of casualty fodder is awesome
yo my boi Rith made it to your list, I have that deck for ten years now and my play grope knows to take it seriously. no card in the entire game can make more tokens than them, especially since they count the tokens they make as green permanents, its really easy to get to the triple digits with them if you don't just win before that.
My personal favorites are Bladewing the Risen, Wrexial the Risen Deep, and Reveka Wizard Savant I love the ability to play decks others rarely see and show off a deck that makes others go "Wait, what? It does what?"
Great Episode guys! And now after watching this and loving unique Commanders, I want to build like 4 new decks hahaha Also Idea for the next Podcast: Top 10 Commander recommendations for a First time Build! Could judge them on budget, easily upgrades, fun to play, easy to understand and how they hold their own 🍻
Love all of these! I also love the discussion around Arcanis - if it were made today, it would be 4 mana, have flash, have uncounterable, and have "discard a card and this creature phases out until end of turn"...because blue
Selenia is easily my favorite build ever. I saw it on Tomer's budget commander articles and knew my playgroup would be supremely annoyed. Years later they still bring up the game where I did absolutely nothing for the first 10 turns while they played "real magic" then I pulled off an 11-mana combo which killed all 3 of them. My son has taken up the life-loss mantle as his favorite strategy. It's definitely a rush when you pull it off.
Kogla is one of my Favs, I ran a monogreen human tribal for a while with him at the helm, and figuring out how human tribal in green works was really fun (pre inistrad selesnya precon)
Out of my super-jank Commanders, the standout is probably Sunastian Falconer, who actually does something generally useful (he's a 5 mana 4/4 Sol Ring that's not an artifact). Pavel Maliki is a very good Commander in some ways, but mostly because the card really is a build around if you ever want to win, but Firebreathing is a deceptively good ability for a Commander to have, he can easily 3 shot people with normal resources, you just need to control the board or give him evasion, and Rakdos can achieve that fairly well. The deck is pretty janky, but it's a viable deck at a table full of 6s, and you can probably sit down with 7s (maybe 8s if you draw well and people ignore you until you start playing stupid spells every turn, you might play an early 8 drop), but it's got enough wipes/removal that you probably need to mention at least the Boiling Sea and Omen of Fire, due to the preponderance of big clunky spells the deck does not like Blue decks very much and wants to cripple their U mana and then eliminate them proactively. I feel like it's a nice asset to a deck if almost nobody you play against has ever played against your Commander, regardless of how much they've played, max out your hipster cred. I used to have a fun (and very random as it was just random cards I had in Rakdos) Tsabo Tavoc deck, 7 mana is a lot of mana, but her abilities are insanely strong in a Commander game, you just need to give her Vigilance somehow. She can kill any of the Praetors afaik, and has protection from them, how did she lose again?? Also, ~50 decks on EDHREC, so people would be unprepared. I'd shout out Multani, Maro-Sorcerer, but it's over 260 decks on EDHREC, so it does see play. Multani is a huge build around, but if you want to have the biggest creature on the board usually, Multani is the deck you're looking for, especially if you want people to not know your Commander existed in a lot of cases. Shroud is a fun ability, Hexproof would make Multani too easy to win off of, Shroud means you need anthems. I think Kogla is probably a better choice if you really, really want to be able to disenchant a lot, Kogla is almost a value engine by itself, but I think he's better in the 99 of a deck that already runs Trample anthems (like Multani, where I run Kogla). I feel like if you actually play Celestial Kirin and intend to blow up everyone's lands you can expect to get hated out of a lot of games once people are 'on to you', but I bet it's a cool option if you actually use it to wipe stuff. Kalitas is pretty strong, but it's also pretty 1 dimensional. I could see people building it and taking it apart after a dozen or so games after getting bored of it, it's mono-black 'creatures need to die' tribal. While that's a good archetype, I feel like you'd want another colour to add more interesting things you can do, Black has some cool/crazy cards too, but most of the really interesting ones are ancient and expensive, so if you want to move past just 'all of the wipes/edicts/removal', you can. Volrath is awesome, I've had his OG card since high school. It was sneaky good with all my reanimation support, I even had Strands of Night, go figure. Strands is an instant speed effect afaik, so you can reanimate a shuffle titan with it before it leaves the yard, so that's actually a really powerful interaction. I have no idea how everyone still sleeps on Strands, it's such a stupid card to get out, if people can't answer it and you've got a few good creatures to reanimate, people are going to have a bad time. Selenia is cool as a 'life matters' Commander, I've had a copy since I bought one of a guy, haven't really used it but it's always there, waiting. I've had incredibly good results from Axis of Mortality in a jank deck, switching life totals is a powerful ability, is there enough ways to do it though, or do you need to run tons of tutors/transmute to find them? Arcanis would have Ward or Hexproof, be smaller and draw 2 cards instead. It'd actually be good because it'd be much lower to the ground, maybe 3 mana, with the drawback of the card being that you're stuck in mono-U. Also, while drawing 3 cards for no mana or life is insanely good, it's also only 3 cards from a 99 card singleton deck, lets not get carried away here, you're nowhere near guaranteed to win, 3 cards can easily be 3 lands. Arcanis is a playable Commander I'd argue, but it's worse than something like Talrand in most situations, trying to play Aranis when you can actually protect him means having 7 mana generally, if not 8 or 9, which is a ton of mana to play (and protect) your Commander. Also, huge honking/glowing point, it's a tap ability so you can't use it without Haste right away, and I'd often spend a removal spell to cost someone the ability to draw 3, and recasting Arcanis is brutal. Rith is probably a great example of a Commander I'd go out of my way to be friendly towards, it has some power without being busted, so you get a useful ally that you can probably eliminate at your leisure. I traded away my Rith ages ago, for Yugioh cards of all things. Rith is probably the best choice for a Commander of that cycle, maybe not the strongest but that ability can get nuts very quickly. Ertai is very unpleasant to play against I'd wager, countering via an ability is really, really powerful. There are many decent (and many not) in Esper, but there are also much stronger Commanders to pick from, including multiple better Enchantment oriented Commanders (and none of them are fun to play against really, Zur and Alela are both hyper-annoying decks), so I'm not shocked Esper Ertai isn't played much. Isperia seems reasonably underrated, but it is a tutor deck, so there are lots of pods that will get varyingly salty. That is a sweet interaction with Double Strike though, too bad you usually want Red for that kind of action.
Kalitas is the first deck I ever build from scratch… it’s one of my favorites. Plus you can play Hellfire and it’s not totally garbage haha. Love this pick Crim
It’s a bit under 950 decks, but I do think Adeliz the Cinder Wind is underrated and is one of the most fun commanders I’ve played when playing a little more casual.
Adeliz has been my favorite commander deck forever. I adore the character, and she’s so fun to play. I’ve built it as sort of a “fair” storm deck where I’m storming into… haze of rage lol. Her haste is so underrated for sometimes just getting her out and powering her up enough to just knock someone out in an emergency.
I will always and forever simp for Jareth, Leonine Titan. Yes, he costs 6 mana and is mono white; however, his ability to give himself protection from any color for a W not only is an incredible tool for protecting himself, but it's also invaluable in making sure he can get through blockers to deal commander damage - both very important things to bestow upon your Voltron commander. Being in white means he's arguably in the best single color for a Voltron build and he has access to even more tools to protect himself (his +7/+7 for blocking also makes him a hilarious blocker). You can even build him with some cat tribal to not only have more creatures on the board but to also pump him up further via Lord effects.
I love Jadar. But I definitely feel the “choose your favorite mono-black aristocrat” thing. I use Sarevok//Scion of Halaster but I just like the archetype.
I solemnity decree of silenced my playgroup once three years ago and you better believe they haven't stopped bringing it up since (I haven't even played the deck again) etch yourself into your opponents memories with stax
"Haktos, the Unscarred" & "Yargle, Glutton of Urborg" are underrated decks I enjoy using & have even won games with...Lol CLASH ON! *Thanks for the Content* !
I had a Kalitas back when it was printed in Oath. Back then I didn't play commander but even as a new player I knew it was a very strong card. Sad I have it no longer
My underrated commander is Licia, Sanguine Tribune. A lot of people just assume she’s a life gain commander or they try life swap, which is too cute to be a viable strategy. Yes, she benefits from gaining life, but also loses you life, which is a strategy that you can take advantage of using cards like Greven, Predator Captain and Vilis, Broker of Blood. Built right, you’ll never pay commander tax to cast her, meaning you can never actually be rid of her. Just make sure you pack exile removal for any Stigma Lashers out there.
I know it isn’t as underrated as the ones mentioned, but damn, I love Gale, Waterdeep Prodigy. His access to backgrounds makes him unique, and balancing instants and sorceries evenly is a fun deckbuilding challenge!
I used to have a dagger-burn style Rith deck! It always confused the hell out of my opponents, right up until someone finally re-read what Rith does, and realized I was about to make 30 saprolings for 3 mana...
@20:06 - I've built Kalitas as well, and in the 'lets shove all the symmetrical stax pieces' way. So with cards like Smokestack, The Abyss, Kuon, or Symmetrical Sac effects you easily break parity on the sacrifice effects from generating the bodies. Cards like pestilence as well also keep decks that go wide in check, as well as being able to just burn people out come late game.
Anytime this topic comes up, my go to is always Ukkima, Stalking Shadow. It's voltron that does drain and gain on LTB. If someone removes my commander, they take the damage. It also works well with Unnatural Stamina effects and of course blink/flicker.
the way to make them interesting was by making the mana fixing more difficult for more than one color, so by making less appealing multicolored decks. But now is so easy to play even pentacolored decks that theres no reason to play with less colors. They would need to ban all cards that fetch for lands for monocolored decks y to return or taxing more multicolored estrategies.
Changing the commander tax to "pay 1 additional for each color of your identity each time your commander was put on the Command Zone" could punish heavily the 4c and 5c decks.
The only problem about Vathi il-Dal it's that with the introduction of the concept of base power and toughness it got reworded into "target creature BASE power or toughness becomes 1", so all the +×/+× shenanigans get him
I am one of the 300 Kogla deck owners! I love that deck! Green Human tribal goooo! Also, Arcanis could EASILY be 4 mana value. It would have to be 1UUU. What people forget is that pips always make the casting harder and always translates to more powerful cards!, we are just flooded with so many good mana producing cards now that we forget that!
on the off chance this gets seen, I have a pitch for an art tribal commander clash. recently started working on a table deck and so I suggest tables vs chairs vs doors vs cups they all have a similarly low card count.
Seth one of my favorite commanders to go back to is the first one i ever built a deck around Numot, the Devastator colors of America Red, White, Blue a total of 6 mana to cast 3 and RWU that reads "Whenever Numot, the Devastator deals combat damage to a player, you may pay 2R. If you do, destroy up to two target lands." now you don't have to destroy their lands you can destroy any lands but he has to do combat damage first though sadly just because of its land destruct ability which is a may people will target you first just for having it. A sad reality for sure for those that wants to play a cool 6 drop 6/6 Dragon. I am making a new deck for him to call home however sadly i am going into his ability and making it a Prison lockdown a competitive Prison Lockdown at that designed by turn 2 to lock everyone out of the game and to win via Hellkite Tyrant you know his alt wincon of 20 or more artifacts you win the game and in competitive oh boy artifacts galore. I would also have stuff to beat their face in such as Hellkite Igniter
Kogla is honestly insane as a commander haven't updated him in a bit but he is essentially a combo commander that controls the board and can potentially just overrun people
Dont worry Seth and crim! As we speak I am planning several Dragon decks with the Primeval Dragons, and Elder Dragons! One idea I have is making a Tiamat commander deck and putting all 5 Invasion Dragons, the og Elder Dragons, and the 5 Planar Chaos Dragons in the deck to search out.
Liara Portyr is bonkers because it reduces the cost of every spell you cast from exile, not just the ones exiled with her ability, so if you can chain a Reckles Impulse, Jeska's Will or Ignite the Future you'll be able to cast a looot of stuff. It's deffinitely not the most powerful RW commander, but I think that it's the best one if you don't want to build around a specific archetype
crim's idea of removal tribal is one i use, but with kothophed, soul hoarder. play all of the "super edicts" and load up on more removal. then give kothophed lifelink to survive and kill with commander damage.
I made a Rootha, Mercurial Artist deck that is basically competative. Not quite high tier, need more money for that, but it is savage. Can win out of no where. Goal is basically a one turn burn everyone out. Copy a crackle with power or Jaya's immolating inferno a few times.
One of my favourite commanders right now is Nath of the Gilt Leaf. He can be a strong discard deck, but he’s also just a strong Golgari midrange style good stuff deck that gets value from people overextending and drawing too many cards. People also play a lot of looting and wheel type cards and he punishes that play style very well Not one everyone is gonna like but I’ve been enjoying him a lot
arcanis literally has protection for 4 mana to bounce it to your hand. it plays pretty well if it survives a turn or you slam boots or greaves on it. it can take over a game if you can untap it some how.
I think the double faced commanders from strixhaven and Kaldheim (outside of esika) are underrated. Lisette, the backside of Valentin, is an off color lifegain commander who can do insane work but I've never seen anyone use it
Iname Death Aspect - mass reanimator (A guy named Evergreen was playing it competitively 10 years ago on cockatrice) Seton Krosan Hero - elfball Jinnie Fay - Treasure Cadira - Tokens Ambassador Laquatus - Scepter Combo Ken Burning Brawl - Combat Storm Velomachus - Fast mana, extra combats and land destruction Katilda - Twiddle Human Stax Abdel/agent of the iron throne - Worldgorger loops Kurkesh, Onnake Ancient - Artifacts combo Those are my go too super strong hipster decks, most of them are high powered or fringe cedh playable
34:05 I threw together a Kogla build a couple weeks ago just for fun but there arent enough humans with good ETBs so I took it apart. Most of them are about +1 counters which I didnt want.
Oh, I just noticed that I have yet another deck for Crim to pilot. We may not have the best performance with Chaos wand, Crim, but this time we'll show everyone how to HAVE FUN.
One I didnt see here is patron of the orochi. Really fun for snake tribal or landfall shenanigans plus there's less than like 300 decks on edhrec.(though a lot of them have been created since return to kamigawa so it's def on an uptick)
I think Arcanis stays at 6 (MAYBE could go to 5?) but adds Flash for 2022 standard. Seth nailed it when he said "4 and a half" mana. I don't know if that's the right dividing point, but there is going to be a breaking point somewhere where one mana less is too strong but one mana up feels a little too weak.
Most of these commanders make me feel bad, because they don't really deserve to be that badly underrepresented. If wizards printed a 0 mana instant with split-second and hexproof from abilities that said "You win the game," it would overnight become the most popular card on EDHrec despite (hopefully) being seen as the absolute definition of unfun. Most of these cards don't have strictly-better versions of themselves floating around, but they run afoul of the "I must always built the most efficient decks in the most efficient of ways" philosophy that seems like it should be antithetical to a casual format. As for an underrated one I like, Malfegor. You build the deck to operate well while hellbent, and throw in plenty of "each player discards their hand" cards - Malfegor just becomes a utility to get yourself empty-handed.
Crim picked the perfect commander with Ertai, the Corrupted! I have a list that I put together for him that basically locks players out from playing their commanders. Lol
Tomer, you need to remove a letter from your name so that every name on the current crew is four letters long. I vote for Tome, but Omer is also a spice choice.
Needs to be Tome so it’s just one syllable
Omer is my favorite
Take out the E. Tomr
Richard would have to go by Dick when he’s on the podcast
can we change the order? cause I vote for "mort" if we can
I'm 41 years old so you guys are the youngens! I just got back into Magic again and am really enjoying it. I also really enjoy your podcasts too. Thanks for the great content 👍
Just wanted to take a min and appreciate what Tomer brings to this podcast, beyond the behind scenes stuff I really enjoy his personality and attitude towards the game.
I built a Kogla, the Titan Ape deck on a whim when he came out. Super underrated, super fun to hit people with the giant monkey
Also mono green is nasty
Selenia was also errata’ed to include the phyrexian creature type, which is getting more synergies over the next four sets.
1:10:22 Tomer groaning “Just kill me please....” as his face distorts into a black void was amazing 😂
Jadar is so good. A consistent source of tokens makes him a pretty fun demon tribal deck. Demon of Catastrophes, Dreadfeast Demon, and even a good ol Lord of the Pit are very fun with Jadar.
It’s also a great commander for mono black stax. A lot of the mono black stax pieces need sac fodder to keep around like Contamination so a stax deck isn’t too far of a stretch.
And he’s 2 mana. He always comes back.
Breeding Pit costs 4 with a 2 mana upkeep cost and it produces worse creatures
Arcanis was actually my 3rd ever commander! i paired him with twiddle effects, reshuffle my graveyard cards and sphinx's tutelage type wincons. it was awesome when it went off!
Etrata has also been an underrated commander as of late, especially with her new upgrades over the last few sets
I’ve got an Etrata deck. Very excited for the new assassin win con in Dominaria
If Dong Zhou wasn't an expensive portal three kingdoms card, I'd have built that deck already. If not only for the name.
Just print a proxy! I can’t imagine anyone giving you a hard time about that.
Dongs are expensive, what can I say.
This card is famous in our playgroup… it always wins! And the endless puns don’t hurt
I have a Dong Zhou deck and it great fun, dishing huge amounts of damage out of nowhere. Radiant Performer is a hilarious new include that lets you Dong every single creature opponents control.
Dong in Zhou face
One of my favorite archetypes in commander is mono black aristocrats. And I have jahdar as the commander because it's a two drop that gives you something to sac every turn
I think it's okay if your payoffs are less permanent. With commanders that have more of a payoff you can draw into anything and you're good to go, if you're not saccing the zombie you're not doing anything.
Arcanis is my first EDH deck and its still a blast to pilot. Free spells really help. Nice to see the big Wizard getting some love.
Arcanis is my stealth mono blue Voltron Commander. No one expects lethal Commander damage from Arcanis.
A common theme at my longest standing edh meta is that we all have at least one deck that has an alternate 6cmc casual commander, typically a random 6cmc dragon.
This particular table we've been playing together for nearly a decade, so communication is never a problem. Sometimes we play powerful new junk, sometimes we pull out a 6cmc commander to pilot a deck that's not built around a commander. Makes for very relaxed and enjoyable games.
From this trend and how rarely I build decks focused around a commander, the majority of my decks have an alt 6cmc legendary to pull out. Rayne clones turns to Kiaga, exava chaos turns to Malfegor, Henrika voltron turns to Visara the Dreadful, Tetsuo combo turns to Crosis, Rakka Mar untap token shenanigans turns into Kamahl Pit Fighter, and so on.
My underrated guy is Erebos God of the Dead. Seems generic as hell at a glance but he has a lot of great synergies with really specific cards. Pestilence, Withering Wisps, Bolas's Citadel, Oppression, Words if Waste. Card advantage on a stick in the Command Zone is cool, preventing lifegain is constantly becoming more useful and being indestructible makes him really resilient. I've had a lot of success running him for a long time and putting three generic abilities all on the same card actually makes him pretty unique.
Lifegain hate is something that you really miss when is relevent. And also helps the games go faster
@@fernandotanigushi8310
Absolutely!
And it's really satisfying to remind people when they try to hahaha
I want to see you guys play more of these obscure commanders they are tons of fun, and seeing different cards is great to see.
Seth loves his combo piece in the Commander zone
I love Volrath! I built him a few months ago, and he is so fun. You get to play with giant black creatures that you would almost never play anywhere else. Very happy Tomer included him here!
Still not sure how good jadar is in the command zone. But I def appreciate him in the 99 of anhelo. The consistent stream of casualty fodder is awesome
Rith is one of my favorite commanders and the 2nd deck I built ever. Happy to see Rith mentioned!
yo my boi Rith made it to your list, I have that deck for ten years now and my play grope knows to take it seriously. no card in the entire game can make more tokens than them, especially since they count the tokens they make as green permanents, its really easy to get to the triple digits with them if you don't just win before that.
My personal favorites are Bladewing the Risen, Wrexial the Risen Deep, and Reveka Wizard Savant
I love the ability to play decks others rarely see and show off a deck that makes others go "Wait, what? It does what?"
Wrexial is so so sweet!
Great Episode guys! And now after watching this and loving unique Commanders, I want to build like 4 new decks hahaha
Also Idea for the next Podcast: Top 10 Commander recommendations for a First time Build!
Could judge them on budget, easily upgrades, fun to play, easy to understand and how they hold their own 🍻
Love all of these! I also love the discussion around Arcanis - if it were made today, it would be 4 mana, have flash, have uncounterable, and have "discard a card and this creature phases out until end of turn"...because blue
I went out and got a foil Darigaaz the Igniter for my jund deck. Love it. Not good but I love it
I would love to see Crim pilot another Kalitas deck to showcase it more, I feel like we didn't quite get to see enough
Selenia is easily my favorite build ever. I saw it on Tomer's budget commander articles and knew my playgroup would be supremely annoyed. Years later they still bring up the game where I did absolutely nothing for the first 10 turns while they played "real magic" then I pulled off an 11-mana combo which killed all 3 of them. My son has taken up the life-loss mantle as his favorite strategy. It's definitely a rush when you pull it off.
Kogla is one of my Favs, I ran a monogreen human tribal for a while with him at the helm, and figuring out how human tribal in green works was really fun (pre inistrad selesnya precon)
Crim coming in when Tomer was talking about love and looking confused is everything.
Seth reppin' the Ween and NMH, love to see it. Rotate between pieces of your collection on a podcast-by-podcast basis!
Ween?
Out of my super-jank Commanders, the standout is probably Sunastian Falconer, who actually does something generally useful (he's a 5 mana 4/4 Sol Ring that's not an artifact). Pavel Maliki is a very good Commander in some ways, but mostly because the card really is a build around if you ever want to win, but Firebreathing is a deceptively good ability for a Commander to have, he can easily 3 shot people with normal resources, you just need to control the board or give him evasion, and Rakdos can achieve that fairly well. The deck is pretty janky, but it's a viable deck at a table full of 6s, and you can probably sit down with 7s (maybe 8s if you draw well and people ignore you until you start playing stupid spells every turn, you might play an early 8 drop), but it's got enough wipes/removal that you probably need to mention at least the Boiling Sea and Omen of Fire, due to the preponderance of big clunky spells the deck does not like Blue decks very much and wants to cripple their U mana and then eliminate them proactively. I feel like it's a nice asset to a deck if almost nobody you play against has ever played against your Commander, regardless of how much they've played, max out your hipster cred. I used to have a fun (and very random as it was just random cards I had in Rakdos) Tsabo Tavoc deck, 7 mana is a lot of mana, but her abilities are insanely strong in a Commander game, you just need to give her Vigilance somehow. She can kill any of the Praetors afaik, and has protection from them, how did she lose again?? Also, ~50 decks on EDHREC, so people would be unprepared.
I'd shout out Multani, Maro-Sorcerer, but it's over 260 decks on EDHREC, so it does see play. Multani is a huge build around, but if you want to have the biggest creature on the board usually, Multani is the deck you're looking for, especially if you want people to not know your Commander existed in a lot of cases. Shroud is a fun ability, Hexproof would make Multani too easy to win off of, Shroud means you need anthems. I think Kogla is probably a better choice if you really, really want to be able to disenchant a lot, Kogla is almost a value engine by itself, but I think he's better in the 99 of a deck that already runs Trample anthems (like Multani, where I run Kogla).
I feel like if you actually play Celestial Kirin and intend to blow up everyone's lands you can expect to get hated out of a lot of games once people are 'on to you', but I bet it's a cool option if you actually use it to wipe stuff.
Kalitas is pretty strong, but it's also pretty 1 dimensional. I could see people building it and taking it apart after a dozen or so games after getting bored of it, it's mono-black 'creatures need to die' tribal. While that's a good archetype, I feel like you'd want another colour to add more interesting things you can do, Black has some cool/crazy cards too, but most of the really interesting ones are ancient and expensive, so if you want to move past just 'all of the wipes/edicts/removal', you can.
Volrath is awesome, I've had his OG card since high school. It was sneaky good with all my reanimation support, I even had Strands of Night, go figure. Strands is an instant speed effect afaik, so you can reanimate a shuffle titan with it before it leaves the yard, so that's actually a really powerful interaction. I have no idea how everyone still sleeps on Strands, it's such a stupid card to get out, if people can't answer it and you've got a few good creatures to reanimate, people are going to have a bad time.
Selenia is cool as a 'life matters' Commander, I've had a copy since I bought one of a guy, haven't really used it but it's always there, waiting. I've had incredibly good results from Axis of Mortality in a jank deck, switching life totals is a powerful ability, is there enough ways to do it though, or do you need to run tons of tutors/transmute to find them?
Arcanis would have Ward or Hexproof, be smaller and draw 2 cards instead. It'd actually be good because it'd be much lower to the ground, maybe 3 mana, with the drawback of the card being that you're stuck in mono-U. Also, while drawing 3 cards for no mana or life is insanely good, it's also only 3 cards from a 99 card singleton deck, lets not get carried away here, you're nowhere near guaranteed to win, 3 cards can easily be 3 lands. Arcanis is a playable Commander I'd argue, but it's worse than something like Talrand in most situations, trying to play Aranis when you can actually protect him means having 7 mana generally, if not 8 or 9, which is a ton of mana to play (and protect) your Commander. Also, huge honking/glowing point, it's a tap ability so you can't use it without Haste right away, and I'd often spend a removal spell to cost someone the ability to draw 3, and recasting Arcanis is brutal.
Rith is probably a great example of a Commander I'd go out of my way to be friendly towards, it has some power without being busted, so you get a useful ally that you can probably eliminate at your leisure. I traded away my Rith ages ago, for Yugioh cards of all things. Rith is probably the best choice for a Commander of that cycle, maybe not the strongest but that ability can get nuts very quickly.
Ertai is very unpleasant to play against I'd wager, countering via an ability is really, really powerful. There are many decent (and many not) in Esper, but there are also much stronger Commanders to pick from, including multiple better Enchantment oriented Commanders (and none of them are fun to play against really, Zur and Alela are both hyper-annoying decks), so I'm not shocked Esper Ertai isn't played much.
Isperia seems reasonably underrated, but it is a tutor deck, so there are lots of pods that will get varyingly salty. That is a sweet interaction with Double Strike though, too bad you usually want Red for that kind of action.
Kalitas is the first deck I ever build from scratch… it’s one of my favorites. Plus you can play Hellfire and it’s not totally garbage haha. Love this pick Crim
Same here, but like they said it just became a black good stuff commander whom I never had to cast since everything in the 99 was doing all the work.
It’s a bit under 950 decks, but I do think Adeliz the Cinder Wind is underrated and is one of the most fun commanders I’ve played when playing a little more casual.
Adeliz has been my favorite commander deck forever. I adore the character, and she’s so fun to play. I’ve built it as sort of a “fair” storm deck where I’m storming into… haze of rage lol. Her haste is so underrated for sometimes just getting her out and powering her up enough to just knock someone out in an emergency.
I will always and forever simp for Jareth, Leonine Titan. Yes, he costs 6 mana and is mono white; however, his ability to give himself protection from any color for a W not only is an incredible tool for protecting himself, but it's also invaluable in making sure he can get through blockers to deal commander damage - both very important things to bestow upon your Voltron commander. Being in white means he's arguably in the best single color for a Voltron build and he has access to even more tools to protect himself (his +7/+7 for blocking also makes him a hilarious blocker). You can even build him with some cat tribal to not only have more creatures on the board but to also pump him up further via Lord effects.
So, I built Bell Borca, and one thing that I loved to do with it was blinking things, since blinking exiles it's a pretty good tool
Love the mention of Vhati il-Dal. I jus went off to point -X/-1 in all other directions
I love Jadar. But I definitely feel the “choose your favorite mono-black aristocrat” thing. I use Sarevok//Scion of Halaster but I just like the archetype.
I solemnity decree of silenced my playgroup once three years ago and you better believe they haven't stopped bringing it up since (I haven't even played the deck again) etch yourself into your opponents memories with stax
"Haktos, the Unscarred" & "Yargle, Glutton of Urborg" are underrated decks I enjoy using & have even won games with...Lol
CLASH ON!
*Thanks for the Content* !
Zur's weirding is a pet card of mine that would fit well in isperia!
I had a Kalitas back when it was printed in Oath. Back then I didn't play commander but even as a new player I knew it was a very strong card. Sad I have it no longer
I built a Jadar deck immediately. It's awesome. Everyone in the playgroup likes it, as well.
Definitely gonna build an Elder Dragon some time, and Selenia too, she's so awesome!
My underrated commander is Licia, Sanguine Tribune. A lot of people just assume she’s a life gain commander or they try life swap, which is too cute to be a viable strategy. Yes, she benefits from gaining life, but also loses you life, which is a strategy that you can take advantage of using cards like Greven, Predator Captain and Vilis, Broker of Blood. Built right, you’ll never pay commander tax to cast her, meaning you can never actually be rid of her. Just make sure you pack exile removal for any Stigma Lashers out there.
I know it isn’t as underrated as the ones mentioned, but damn, I love Gale, Waterdeep Prodigy. His access to backgrounds makes him unique, and balancing instants and sorceries evenly is a fun deckbuilding challenge!
I used to have a dagger-burn style Rith deck! It always confused the hell out of my opponents, right up until someone finally re-read what Rith does, and realized I was about to make 30 saprolings for 3 mana...
I loved all the creatures from the Arcanis block. Silvos is a Timmy staple.
Wasn’t even part of the commander shout outs but my girl Laelia was brought up and called good (in a super specific format) so I’m happy
Rith was my 1st commander back in like 2010
So happy my boy Ertai got a shoutout. I’m surprised he doesn’t have more decks as well
@20:06 - I've built Kalitas as well, and in the 'lets shove all the symmetrical stax pieces' way. So with cards like Smokestack, The Abyss, Kuon, or Symmetrical Sac effects you easily break parity on the sacrifice effects from generating the bodies. Cards like pestilence as well also keep decks that go wide in check, as well as being able to just burn people out come late game.
Anytime this topic comes up, my go to is always Ukkima, Stalking Shadow. It's voltron that does drain and gain on LTB. If someone removes my commander, they take the damage. It also works well with Unnatural Stamina effects and of course blink/flicker.
You guys should do an episode on scary versus not scary commanders, and how to substitute an unassuming commander in your deck that has a scary one.
A theme for future episodes: "Monocolored decks are getting extinct?" or "What WotC needs to do to make monocolored deck more interesting?"
the way to make them interesting was by making the mana fixing more difficult for more than one color, so by making less appealing multicolored decks. But now is so easy to play even pentacolored decks that theres no reason to play with less colors. They would need to ban all cards that fetch for lands for monocolored decks y
to return or taxing more multicolored estrategies.
Changing the commander tax to "pay 1 additional for each color of your identity each time your commander was put on the Command Zone" could punish heavily the 4c and 5c decks.
The only problem about Vathi il-Dal it's that with the introduction of the concept of base power and toughness it got reworded into "target creature BASE power or toughness becomes 1", so all the +×/+× shenanigans get him
One of my favorite decks i own is my blind seer color hate deck. It does things no other deck does and plays so many unique cards
I love Arcanis! definitely flies under the radar!
I am one of the 300 Kogla deck owners! I love that deck! Green Human tribal goooo!
Also, Arcanis could EASILY be 4 mana value. It would have to be 1UUU. What people forget is that pips always make the casting harder and always translates to more powerful cards!, we are just flooded with so many good mana producing cards now that we forget that!
on the off chance this gets seen, I have a pitch for an art tribal commander clash.
recently started working on a table deck and so I suggest tables vs chairs vs doors vs cups
they all have a similarly low card count.
Seth one of my favorite commanders to go back to is the first one i ever built a deck around Numot, the Devastator colors of America Red, White, Blue a total of 6 mana to cast 3 and RWU that reads "Whenever Numot, the Devastator deals combat damage to a player, you may pay 2R. If you do, destroy up to two target lands." now you don't have to destroy their lands you can destroy any lands but he has to do combat damage first though sadly just because of its land destruct ability which is a may people will target you first just for having it. A sad reality for sure for those that wants to play a cool 6 drop 6/6 Dragon. I am making a new deck for him to call home however sadly i am going into his ability and making it a Prison lockdown a competitive Prison Lockdown at that designed by turn 2 to lock everyone out of the game and to win via Hellkite Tyrant you know his alt wincon of 20 or more artifacts you win the game and in competitive oh boy artifacts galore. I would also have stuff to beat their face in such as Hellkite Igniter
Isperia, my girl! You were done such an injustice by the wicked Vraska!
Watching this video makes wish for an Elder Dragon Week for commander clash 🙏
Kogla is honestly insane as a commander haven't updated him in a bit but he is essentially a combo commander that controls the board and can potentially just overrun people
“Most of our listeners are also old”
I feel very called out and I’m a millennial 😂😂😂
I love your underrated cards and underrated commander videos please do more for the podcast
I love my Nemata, Grove Guardian deck! Super underrated whenever I bring it out, and its great to ramp hard and make a million saprolings.
Dont worry Seth and crim! As we speak I am planning several Dragon decks with the Primeval Dragons, and Elder Dragons! One idea I have is making a Tiamat commander deck and putting all 5 Invasion Dragons, the og Elder Dragons, and the 5 Planar Chaos Dragons in the deck to search out.
Liara Portyr is bonkers because it reduces the cost of every spell you cast from exile, not just the ones exiled with her ability, so if you can chain a Reckles Impulse, Jeska's Will or Ignite the Future you'll be able to cast a looot of stuff. It's deffinitely not the most powerful RW commander, but I think that it's the best one if you don't want to build around a specific archetype
crim's idea of removal tribal is one i use, but with kothophed, soul hoarder. play all of the "super edicts" and load up on more removal. then give kothophed lifelink to survive and kill with commander damage.
I made a Rootha, Mercurial Artist deck that is basically competative. Not quite high tier, need more money for that, but it is savage. Can win out of no where. Goal is basically a one turn burn everyone out. Copy a crackle with power or Jaya's immolating inferno a few times.
The video description is from ramp week. I wanna see the 4th row!
Now I want a oldschool 6-drop dragon week. :D
One of my favourite commanders right now is Nath of the Gilt Leaf. He can be a strong discard deck, but he’s also just a strong Golgari midrange style good stuff deck that gets value from people overextending and drawing too many cards. People also play a lot of looting and wheel type cards and he punishes that play style very well
Not one everyone is gonna like but I’ve been enjoying him a lot
Honestly, this just feels like a bunch of decks that you would've seen a decade ago.
"Most of our listeners are also old so we're cool"
That hurts Seth... it's true, but it hurts.
Isperia with crystal shard to bounce stuff mwah chefs kiss
arcanis literally has protection for 4 mana to bounce it to your hand. it plays pretty well if it survives a turn or you slam boots or greaves on it. it can take over a game if you can untap it some how.
Loved this! More of this plz!
From Hong Kong, can confirm crim replies more to my messages than any other goldfish person 😂😂
I had just finished my own Volrath the Fallen deck when this episode came out 😆
Kogla is sweet and I built him a while ago. He's very fun and "monogreen control" is fun.
I think the double faced commanders from strixhaven and Kaldheim (outside of esika) are underrated. Lisette, the backside of Valentin, is an off color lifegain commander who can do insane work but I've never seen anyone use it
Iname Death Aspect - mass reanimator (A guy named Evergreen was playing it competitively 10 years ago on cockatrice)
Seton Krosan Hero - elfball
Jinnie Fay - Treasure
Cadira - Tokens
Ambassador Laquatus - Scepter Combo
Ken Burning Brawl - Combat Storm
Velomachus - Fast mana, extra combats and land destruction
Katilda - Twiddle Human Stax
Abdel/agent of the iron throne - Worldgorger loops
Kurkesh, Onnake Ancient - Artifacts combo
Those are my go too super strong hipster decks, most of them are high powered or fringe cedh playable
ah, I remember that old Iname deck. I still think that commander is so underrated.
34:05 I threw together a Kogla build a couple weeks ago just for fun but there arent enough humans with good ETBs so I took it apart. Most of them are about +1 counters which I didnt want.
Oh, I just noticed that I have yet another deck for Crim to pilot. We may not have the best performance with Chaos wand, Crim, but this time we'll show everyone how to HAVE FUN.
I was laughing out loud when you compared Seth to that TikTok.
Altho I wept at the prosper hate.
Fun discussion, guys. :)
One I didnt see here is patron of the orochi. Really fun for snake tribal or landfall shenanigans plus there's less than like 300 decks on edhrec.(though a lot of them have been created since return to kamigawa so it's def on an uptick)
I recently built a proxy Vhati deck for a friend to try out and we found that it was a little bit toxic but I still think it's a very cool effect
I swear the goldfish crew built a quarter of the decklist of Jadar XD
As a Bell Borca player and as a Magic-playing sergeant, I approve.
I think Arcanis stays at 6 (MAYBE could go to 5?) but adds Flash for 2022 standard. Seth nailed it when he said "4 and a half" mana. I don't know if that's the right dividing point, but there is going to be a breaking point somewhere where one mana less is too strong but one mana up feels a little too weak.
Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief is a very fun mono black commander removal and voltron on the same card
Most of these commanders make me feel bad, because they don't really deserve to be that badly underrepresented.
If wizards printed a 0 mana instant with split-second and hexproof from abilities that said "You win the game," it would overnight become the most popular card on EDHrec despite (hopefully) being seen as the absolute definition of unfun. Most of these cards don't have strictly-better versions of themselves floating around, but they run afoul of the "I must always built the most efficient decks in the most efficient of ways" philosophy that seems like it should be antithetical to a casual format.
As for an underrated one I like, Malfegor. You build the deck to operate well while hellbent, and throw in plenty of "each player discards their hand" cards - Malfegor just becomes a utility to get yourself empty-handed.
No Marton Stromgald??? He’s like a mono red crater hoof
For the Arcanis question: Same casting cost, same abilities, same P/T, add Flash.
Crim picked the perfect commander with Ertai, the Corrupted! I have a list that I put together for him that basically locks players out from playing their commanders. Lol
Actually made a cletus deck thanks to this podcast
My favorite is Thelon of Havenwood. Nothing jankier than Fungus tribal, Saproling tokens, and spore counters
Just when I thought I couldn't love Seth more than I already did, he puts a Neutral Milk Hotel vinyl on his shelf... God, I love this record.
In 2022 arcanis at 4 mana would be a slow but reusable harmonize. You have to untap or give it haste so lower floor but higher ceiling