My favorite surprise card is whipping out a fungal behemoth in my Ezuri, Claw of Progress deck. Nobody seems to expect it. Looking at EDHREC, it doesn’t even show up in Ezuri decks. I find that a little odd, since it’s one of my favorite finishers. Maybe it could be a challenge the stats
Hey, Aaron here. That card is DEFINITELY on the testing list and was on my radar immediately after it was spoiled but I'm still trying to figure out how to work it in.
You guys are great. I watch/listen to alot of podcast like alot of people do these days and y'all are just so good and professional. Great job keep going i look forward to future content and thank you.
I think Phenax is SUCH a kitchen table commander that there are a lot of decklists being played that arent being uploaded to a decklist website. You might even see a significant element of this with all commanders. If the person is knowingly posting decklists, they also are probably looking online for ways to win, which usually means infinite combos.
I find it amusing that all the other color commanders lead you into playing combos because that is just the most optimal way to make use of that commander's abilities, but then there are several blue commanders that don't have any direct synergies with either combo piece... Blue players just love counter magic and combos and eating glue.
I think they just need combos in general because otherwise they wouldn't win. Infinite mana, untaps, etc are needed to be able to win through mill. It's just such a hard strategy in commander.
So being the pro-necromancer that he is Joey is one of the 11% running Cephalid Coliseum in Mimeoplasm right? Wait, why isn't every sultai graveyard deck running one?
My favorite two combo decks I have built are saheeli and the locust god. They each have some really nifty combos in them and backup plans for each kind of combo that is in them. I'm still so proud of what I created!
Just click on the TCGPlayer card prices beneath the cards on EDHREC and it'll take you right there! CardKingdom has a specific affiliate link, but TCGPlayer you can just click the prices right through the site. Also, thank you for supporting the show!
For Dana’s challenge the stats I think he missed a key part of the text. The copied World at War will not do anything because World at War only gives an additional combat phase and main after the “first postcombat main phase”.
Joey raised this concern too, but the Gatherer rules back Dana up: 6/15/2010 "Multiple World at War effects are cumulative, as long as they’re cast early enough. The first one modifies the turn structure to this: beginning phase, precombat main phase, combat phase, postcombat main phase, [new combat phase], [new postcombat main phase], ending phase. Each subsequent one inserts another combat phase and main phase into the turn after the original postcombat main phase and before the newest combat phase."
If you check the Gatherer entry for World at War it does work. In the future though I'll try to reference the Gatherer rules, etc. when it's a situation like this where the wording on the card makes things not entirely clear.
Awesome! Thank you for the clarification. I ran into some debates at my own table with the card. Love the effort you put into the work you do. You are my favorite edh podcast for a reason.
How do you see how many decks of each commander include combos and for a given commander what combos are ran within that deck? The info on the Combos page does not help with this. This would be very useful & interesting for deck building
The Urza player, about to combo off: The one guy with counterspells: "Are you sure about that?" The one guy with vandalblast: *holding back smug grin* The one guy who's about to take control of the Urza: "Mine? Yes."
My Chainer, Dementia Master Aristocrats deck is going to love Sengir, the Dark Baron, it doesn't need to partner with anything but I have the ability to one-shot players in that deck
Animar + Cloudstone Curio(Tutorable with Trophy Mage) combos are real. Morph/Cloud of Faeries+Oblivion Sower is funny. Nuke their Library. Old Ulamog nukes their board. And you can win just by playing Imperial Recruiter, while a little complicated and costs some life, but you end up netting mana with Haru-Onna, Kiri-Onna and Peregrine Drake.
Also, how many of these are actually played with the aim of combining off? Maybe we should look at the number of combos that don't include the commander?
@@r0flcats I don't know with how many people you play, and I won't speculate on that, because then I'd exercise the same inductive reasoning that you're trying to qualify. All I'm saying is that the commander meta as a whole is bigger than the confines of our respective playgroups, and I'm sorry that clashes with your personal experience.
Hey yall would love to hear if this combo works. Wandering fumarole that izzet manland can switch its power and tuff for 0. With an elemental lord out does using his ability make him grow infinitely? Its a 1 4 but a lord makes it 2 5 when you switch it becomes a 6 3 then a 7 4 and so on. Is that how that works?
Mill is pretty nasty in EDH, even if you don't mill them to death, since it's a singleton format. It's not like 4 of formats, where until all copies of a card are gone, or all the cards are gone, mill isn't a huge deal arguably, but in EDH you can hit a key card very easily. Mill is among my least favorite match-ups for my higher tier decks.
@@JuQmadrid personally I'm running birthing pod and my favorite pet cards for the win.... ashnod's alter + ___= triskelion damage for the counters win. Or doubling tokens + ____= the combat win. Or Mirkwood bats + ____=sacrifice/ drain win...
I think these numbers are all so high because there is a big difference between a deck having a combo in it and being a combo deck. Almost all my decks have 1 infinite combo floating around, but I don't expect to play them with any sort of frequency. My swingy Regna/Krav tokens/lifegain deck is not a combo deck just because I run the exquisite blood/sanguine bond combo. I feel like "combo decks" should only be those that intend to win with their combo(s) the majority of the time. These should be decks that practically can't win if a combo doesn't happen. If you limit entries using that definition, I think things like urza and breya will float to the top like we all expected.
First episode I've watched and I love it so far! I had a very strange Ghoulcaller Gisa combo last night that drew out my opponents in mono black? I'm still confused.
Infinite combo wins are one of the most boring ways to win in magic. I'm surprised that others actually enjoy winning with infinite combos. I actually wonder if all of these combos mentioned in the video are all infinite combos or combos that only give you something to increase your advantage, would be interested to know.
I'd like to challenge the stats of the video I feel that more popular commanders gain more combos because of the play testing time. With them having more combos they gain more weight percentage when checking the stats Also it's easy to accidentally have a combo in my stonebrow deck I have both Savage ventmaw and aggravated assault and I didn't know it
I almost forgot how much I hate Saffi until you brought her up. Years ago, we had someone local who played her, and every single game, he'd tutor up Survival of the Fittest, Reveillark, Karmic Guide, etc. for a combo. Every. Single. Game. It was so boring watching him play solitaire, and even removal was only a mild disruption because the deck had so much redundancy and recursion.
You need to account for people uploading more combo decks than casual decks. If someone's slamming a casual dimir good stuff deck in paper but not uploading it online, it's not going to be calculated in the stats.
@@mickeysmagic89 yeah true, idk how you'd go about it either, a good example is the first sliver, the cedh brew has literally 0 slivers in the 99 it's just a mana outlet for food chain combos that gives you acces to all 5 colours so you can run the best interaction with a consultation-fish back up plan. For some commander there's like a smooth increasing of power into cedh, for others there's lile 0 overlap between "normal" builds and the cedh one save sol ring.
Usually if you do something like filter out decks running Mox Diamond it does a good job filtering them out for curiosity sake, but I'm not sure we'd be comfortable using that metric for stats. Still, that's what I usually do if I want to exclude cEDH decks from some stat pool.
37:25 Me too Joey. I always associate Breya with Breya decks too.
Golos is the first commander that I've seen that looks like just a generic default commander. He could just be the commander of every precon.
This comment aged rather hysterically
GOOD GUY MATT, plays selesnya!!! Such a wholesome being!
Me too, I play Gaddock Teeg
Snails hahaha, the dark side of selesnya
My favorite surprise card is whipping out a fungal behemoth in my Ezuri, Claw of Progress deck. Nobody seems to expect it. Looking at EDHREC, it doesn’t even show up in Ezuri decks. I find that a little odd, since it’s one of my favorite finishers. Maybe it could be a challenge the stats
Hey, Aaron here. That card is DEFINITELY on the testing list and was on my radar immediately after it was spoiled but I'm still trying to figure out how to work it in.
Goblin combo is my jam. Krenko can usually pull out a win on turn 5 if I get enough pieces. It's fragile but oh so fun
This is my favorite deck to play
You guys are great. I watch/listen to alot of podcast like alot of people do these days and y'all are just so good and professional. Great job keep going i look forward to future content and thank you.
I think Phenax is SUCH a kitchen table commander that there are a lot of decklists being played that arent being uploaded to a decklist website. You might even see a significant element of this with all commanders. If the person is knowingly posting decklists, they also are probably looking online for ways to win, which usually means infinite combos.
Haven't built Mowu yet...now's the time for a Mowu combo deck.
Korvold + Mortuary + Blood Pet = Combo win perfectness
As an abzan commander player (karador) Its almost like matt and joey are the angel and devil on my shoulders
I find it amusing that all the other color commanders lead you into playing combos because that is just the most optimal way to make use of that commander's abilities, but then there are several blue commanders that don't have any direct synergies with either combo piece... Blue players just love counter magic and combos and eating glue.
Watch it buddy. Not every blue player likes counter magic and combos.
@@ryanarntz5098 It's true. There's 1% that play Azorius fliers
ah, how dare they play to the colors strengths
I'd wager the mill decks are so high because they need combo as alternate win conditions if the mill strategy fails.
I think they just need combos in general because otherwise they wouldn't win. Infinite mana, untaps, etc are needed to be able to win through mill. It's just such a hard strategy in commander.
My Oona has no problems winning thru combat. 😎
I honestly thought that Ghave would be would be no. 5 or higher.
How many Ghave decks are not playing sleeves that it's not 100% of decks containing a combo?
Hey, I'm glad you found my challenge the stats about Reliquary Tower and Thought Vessel in Meren useful! :) keep up the amazing work!
No Ghave?
Hey Mat'Selesnya, I got mugged by six dwarves yesterday.
Not happy.
So being the pro-necromancer that he is Joey is one of the 11% running Cephalid Coliseum in Mimeoplasm right? Wait, why isn't every sultai graveyard deck running one?
I am responsible for submitting a lot of those Selenia combos
My favorite two combo decks I have built are saheeli and the locust god. They each have some really nifty combos in them and backup plans for each kind of combo that is in them. I'm still so proud of what I created!
My Urza deck alone has more than 82 combos
Great vid 👍
Kinda surprised good old gitrog wasn’t on the list
Please post your TCGPlayer affiliate link. I can't find it on EDHREC to support you.
Just click on the TCGPlayer card prices beneath the cards on EDHREC and it'll take you right there! CardKingdom has a specific affiliate link, but TCGPlayer you can just click the prices right through the site. Also, thank you for supporting the show!
I'm glad to say that before I watched this, I already ran Ghostly Pilferer in my Tetsuko deck. Glad I can challenge the stats
For Dana’s challenge the stats I think he missed a key part of the text. The copied World at War will not do anything because World at War only gives an additional combat phase and main after the “first postcombat main phase”.
That's also what I was going to say !
Joey raised this concern too, but the Gatherer rules back Dana up: 6/15/2010 "Multiple World at War effects are cumulative, as long as they’re cast early enough. The first one modifies the turn structure to this: beginning phase, precombat main phase, combat phase, postcombat main phase, [new combat phase], [new postcombat main phase], ending phase. Each subsequent one inserts another combat phase and main phase into the turn after the original postcombat main phase and before the newest combat phase."
If you check the Gatherer entry for World at War it does work. In the future though I'll try to reference the Gatherer rules, etc. when it's a situation like this where the wording on the card makes things not entirely clear.
Thank you! Love your guys’ work. Ran into something similar when I was running a Narset list with it. I appreciate the quick and thoughtful response.
Awesome! Thank you for the clarification. I ran into some debates at my own table with the card. Love the effort you put into the work you do. You are my favorite edh podcast for a reason.
How do you see how many decks of each commander include combos and for a given commander what combos are ran within that deck? The info on the Combos page does not help with this. This would be very useful & interesting for deck building
41:53 You don't need to swing with an infinitely powered Animar to win. You need a Walking Ballista and go pew pew.
I'm surprised to see Tayam not comboing a lot. Tayam combos as easily as Ghave does. Ashnod's Altar + anything with Undying or Persist is infinite.
The Urza player, about to combo off:
The one guy with counterspells:
"Are you sure about that?"
The one guy with vandalblast:
*holding back smug grin*
The one guy who's about to take control of the Urza:
"Mine? Yes."
Marath is my combo commander of choice. I have a cheat sheet with like 40+ different combos, half of which are infinite in some manner.
My Chainer, Dementia Master Aristocrats deck is going to love Sengir, the Dark Baron, it doesn't need to partner with anything but I have the ability to one-shot players in that deck
Animar + Cloudstone Curio(Tutorable with Trophy Mage) combos are real. Morph/Cloud of Faeries+Oblivion Sower is funny. Nuke their Library. Old Ulamog nukes their board. And you can win just by playing Imperial Recruiter, while a little complicated and costs some life, but you end up netting mana with Haru-Onna, Kiri-Onna and Peregrine Drake.
Isn’t there a problem with copying world at war because it specified it only happened after the first post-combat main phase?
Advertising for your website?
I'm surprised any other commanders besides Ghave were mentioned at all
Mowu rocks. He's the first mono green commander I've built since I started playing. :)
I thought it was weird Prossh didn't make the list, but I realized EDHrec doesn't have Prossh+Food Chain listed as a combo
Also, how many of these are actually played with the aim of combining off? Maybe we should look at the number of combos that don't include the commander?
Can not believe this data. Where is Aminatou, the Fateshifter? Every deck run Felidar Guardian/Spark Double + Altar of the Brood/Corpse Knight....
They said it's based on %, not raw #. "Just because players can combo doesn't mean they are."
@@colatownbikes the problem here is I never saw a single Aminatou deck without a combo
@@r0flcats exact this
@@r0flcats I don't know with how many people you play, and I won't speculate on that, because then I'd exercise the same inductive reasoning that you're trying to qualify. All I'm saying is that the commander meta as a whole is bigger than the confines of our respective playgroups, and I'm sorry that clashes with your personal experience.
Hey yall would love to hear if this combo works. Wandering fumarole that izzet manland can switch its power and tuff for 0. With an elemental lord out does using his ability make him grow infinitely? Its a 1 4 but a lord makes it 2 5 when you switch it becomes a 6 3 then a 7 4 and so on. Is that how that works?
"We get everyone from CAG members to Command Zone editors" sooooooo... Josh. You just get Josh. Neat
Your analysis of the EDH format and meta is amazing, but it does pale in comparison to the dad jokes indeed.
I was certain Godo, bandit warlord was going to be on that list
I was really expecting to see kalamax on here
What exactly constituents a combo?
And btw..
Mawu+ooze garden+ivy lane denizens=a lot of ooze tokens
I didn't realize Dana was such a Thrasios fanatic.
can't believe Garna isn't even top 20. she even leaves your pieces in hand to protect them.
How is Emry not in the Top 10??
I'm genuinely upset that combo themed Tayam decks aren't as widespread as they could be
Mill is pretty nasty in EDH, even if you don't mill them to death, since it's a singleton format. It's not like 4 of formats, where until all copies of a card are gone, or all the cards are gone, mill isn't a huge deal arguably, but in EDH you can hit a key card very easily. Mill is among my least favorite match-ups for my higher tier decks.
Starts with the best commander
I really expected Ghave to make the list.
Seriously, how do you build a Ghave deck without combos?
Play the stock precon from 2011?
@@jamesoakley9333 that had litttle to no synergy, almost as good as playing Ghave with 99 basic lands.
@@JuQmadrid it answers the question for the OP... 👍🤣
@@JuQmadrid personally I'm running birthing pod and my favorite pet cards for the win.... ashnod's alter + ___= triskelion damage for the counters win. Or doubling tokens + ____= the combat win. Or Mirkwood bats + ____=sacrifice/ drain win...
I think these numbers are all so high because there is a big difference between a deck having a combo in it and being a combo deck. Almost all my decks have 1 infinite combo floating around, but I don't expect to play them with any sort of frequency. My swingy Regna/Krav tokens/lifegain deck is not a combo deck just because I run the exquisite blood/sanguine bond combo. I feel like "combo decks" should only be those that intend to win with their combo(s) the majority of the time. These should be decks that practically can't win if a combo doesn't happen. If you limit entries using that definition, I think things like urza and breya will float to the top like we all expected.
I want to talk about Breya too.
I’m surprised Kenny isn’t even in the top 20. You just slip and go infinite with that card.
It's me, I'm the 23% that plays Urza without combos
Same, brother. I have an Urza Voltron deck.
First episode I've watched and I love it so far! I had a very strange Ghoulcaller Gisa combo last night that drew out my opponents in mono black? I'm still confused.
Bruvac and Fleet Swallower. Mill an entire deck in a single swing. Combo solved.
Bruvac is part of the BLUE MAN GROUP you think? Cause he's always blue
Infinite combo wins are one of the most boring ways to win in magic. I'm surprised that others actually enjoy winning with infinite combos. I actually wonder if all of these combos mentioned in the video are all infinite combos or combos that only give you something to increase your advantage, would be interested to know.
Y'all forgot the most obvious Bruvac combo. Traumatize should be in every Bruvac deck.
Skip the ads 4:20
But then you also skip the bad jokes
@@adkirsch tbh there is some value in the jokes but ads are ads
not first but still here.
I'd like to challenge the stats of the video
I feel that more popular commanders gain more combos because of the play testing time. With them having more combos they gain more weight percentage when checking the stats
Also it's easy to accidentally have a combo in my stonebrow deck I have both Savage ventmaw and aggravated assault and I didn't know it
Time to make an infinite combo mowu deck.
Maybe we're seeing a lot of mill because of how miserable it is to mill folks fair and square.
no godo?!?!??
No love for my boi Kraj.
40 different pairs with 40 new partners? Math doesnt check out.
40 that partner with Thrasios.... 40 times 1........yes.....40!
I almost forgot how much I hate Saffi until you brought her up. Years ago, we had someone local who played her, and every single game, he'd tutor up Survival of the Fittest, Reveillark, Karmic Guide, etc. for a combo. Every. Single. Game. It was so boring watching him play solitaire, and even removal was only a mild disruption because the deck had so much redundancy and recursion.
WHAT??? WHERE IS GODO?
Ya Godo should be #1 96% of Godo decks are running Helm of the Host for a combo. Also I am surprised Prossh isnt here.
You need to account for people uploading more combo decks than casual decks. If someone's slamming a casual dimir good stuff deck in paper but not uploading it online, it's not going to be calculated in the stats.
I'm pretty sure if you guys could somehow separate cedh data it would be very enlightening
Idk how anyone would go about that. CEDH isn’t its own format, but more of a unified mindset within EDH
@@mickeysmagic89 yeah true, idk how you'd go about it either, a good example is the first sliver, the cedh brew has literally 0 slivers in the 99 it's just a mana outlet for food chain combos that gives you acces to all 5 colours so you can run the best interaction with a consultation-fish back up plan. For some commander there's like a smooth increasing of power into cedh, for others there's lile 0 overlap between "normal" builds and the cedh one save sol ring.
Usually if you do something like filter out decks running Mox Diamond it does a good job filtering them out for curiosity sake, but I'm not sure we'd be comfortable using that metric for stats. Still, that's what I usually do if I want to exclude cEDH decks from some stat pool.
First
Kinnan is just a super dumb design, wouldn't mind it band or unmade
Please stop saying "Combo-tastic".