A Guide to Toolbox Decks in EDH | How to Build a Toolbox Commander Deck
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ก.ย. 2024
- #mtg #spoilers #thetrinketmage #trinketmage
Shout out to Kaho, Minamo Historian as a mono blue toolbox deck that I forgot to include in this video!
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"It's only true for..."
Yes, thank you, exactly. We always have the power to design the deck so that Demonic Tutor is your flex card, not the 2nd copy of Tainted Pact or Thoracle. The end makes the deck linear, not the means.
I love playing Sunforger in Jeskai decks because there are a number of multicolor counterspells you can grab with it and really surprise people.
Sunforger in 3 color decks can be so fun! I played a list in mardu colors for a while it was very interesting to build
I've been watching you for a few months now and you've easily become my utmost favorite Commander theory content creator. I love your takes on the broader end of commander theory, and not making brain-dead clickbait content other creators make. You really know what you're talking about and give many well-thought examples of the point you're trying to make. Your editing makes digesting the content very simple and enjoyable to watch
Your video about not focusing/relying solely on your commander is still my favorite video to date, and a first thing that I think about whenever I start trying to brew any commander deck.
Thank you so much! Honestly I think that video is one of my best! I appreciate the kind words about my editing but I’m hoping it will look more professional soon! Stay tuned I’ve got more videos in the works!
I've recently been interested in more decks that break the serialized "made for commander do the thing" archetype, so this is really cool
Finally someone that points that tutors are just the means.
I love toolbox decks so much it's unreal.
I never knew how to explain my favorite kind of deck! This video is awesome!!!
In commander, all deck’s should be some level of toolbox. And you don’t need tutors for a toolbox deck to function properly, redundancy works as well.
I agree there are many non toolbox decks that seem to skimp out some crucial tools like removal and card draw
Any video featuring my favorite toolbox commander, Rocco, Cabaretti Caterer, gets a like.
Fun thing that my play group forgets is that Rocco triggers off of panharmonicon. Opens up a lot of fun combos. Rocco + Goblin Engineer is always fun if it's early.
I actually used him to secret commander upgrade my Norin the wary deck to Naya colors.
A more generalized toolbox approach may be worth a try as well.
Graveyard strategies can be toolbox as well. Meren, Muldrotha, or even good ol' Karador are all great since they have access to Green.
That’s true! Honestly didn’t think about that!
I was going to say the same thing! My Meren deck is a toolbox deck and even with all the tutoring, it has a few distinct and fun ways to win, and I never know which is going to happen that game. With a large graveyard and Syr Konrad, I have exiled my own graveyard to burn everyone down. I've used Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord to detonate a massive Lord of Extinction. And I've had Grey Merchant of Asphodel hit the field 3 times in a turn to drain everyone out!
But along the way, most of my tutoring is for answers to whatever problem the board is presenting, whether it's a creature, artifact/enchantment, or lots of creatures.
2:25 Temur sabertooth is a beast but Rocco really loves Wirewood Sumbiote. Temur and getting Rocco back is 9 mana and Wirewood is 4 mana and you even untaps a creature.
Edit: If you go and find Fierce empath next turn you can also bounce that one and use that as your new toolbox!
Got some brewers in the comments! And you are 100% right that wirewood is good here!
Run a instant/sorcery toolbox in a “shipwreck dowser tribal” deck: rummage to fill the yard then grab what you need from there with the ETBs. Only running 2 transmutes as tutors though - prefer having to think on my feet with whatever ive managed to mill
I love when someone says they are a toolbox deck, while I have a aven mind sensor/ position agent in hand.
Late to the party here. But this video got me thinking about other toolbox commanders we have available. I'm fairly new to mtg and edh, and stumbled upon Varragoth, Bloodsky Sire, while looking for cards on scryfall. Mono black does have its issues, but I can't stop thinking about him.
I've been dying to make a political deck, and he just checks all the boxes for me. Toolbox for what the situation calls for. Or I could use a tutor that can target any player, which is the perfect leverage.
Finally a name for the type of deck i like :)
Im playing general tazri + maskwood nexus (and mirror entity, some allys and some changelings for backup) but i think theres room for improvement
My toolbox deck is my sliver deck with sliver overlord. It is so versatile in what it can deal with. I can destory permanents, draw cards, win with combat damage, poison or burn. I can even take control of my opponents creatures. Also, I can recure most of it from the graveyard. I really like the deck for its versatility. (I don't play any infinite combos). Even though i do not tutor often (because of the mana cost) , being able to essentially get to anything if I invest the mana makes the deck quite interessting to play for me since it feels like there is always a way.
This is why I call my Karador deck The Junk Drawer. It's both a callback to Abzan's old moniker, and the fact that I'm basically pulling out my drawer and throwing whatever I grab at people. And I do this without ANY infinites OR tutors!
I'm glad you made this video. Toolbox decks are a blast to play. I play Sisay Weatherlight Captain to do 5C experience counters. Sunforger is an amazing toolbox piece as well.
A good thing I found my idea of a Kellan Sunforger alone before the video, so now I can still feel original despite you having suggesting it.
It will be my first toolbox commander deck, and the first deck I allow myself to run tutors. My first idea is to not have winning combos, but maybe only Deflecting palm effects, because I fear the combo wincon with a repeatable tutor will make the deck very boring to play.
I do not know yet, will see after I finish my Karador Reanimator
Good video, have a nice day
Sefris Esper reanimator is my toolbox deck of choice. Absolutely love bringing back creatures that deal with specific problems. It has some infinite venture and drain win cons sure, but can just reanimate a big fatty and go the combat route if needed. Great to be able to cater to your groups power level on the fly without pulling the deck apart. Definitely recommend!
I played a Magda tool box deck where I could stop just about everything with enough treasures When the deck goes off it’s absolutely amazing
For anyone looking to brew Rocco, I heavily suggest including Wirewood Symbiote. If you build your deck to always ramp on turn 2, then you can grab the Symbiote on turn 3 and immediately bounce Rocco back to hand. Considering it's a green deck and will be running mana dorks anyway, it's not a bad inclusion.
That being said, there's at least 2 toolbox commanders I want to build myself, one being OG Sisay themed around legends, meanwhile the other is new Sisay themed around Food.
New sissay as a food deck? Do you just search up all the food related legends? That seems fun!
@@thetrinketmage Yup. I love Food as a mechanic, and I eventually came to the conclusion that rather than brew so many Food decks, it'd be better to just build a 5c deck around the theme so it's easier to slot in new pieces as they get made. Sisay happened to fit the bill, since she can tutor up whichever legend is best for that situation, among other legends that go along with sacrificing permanents like Korvold.
My longest running EDH deck is a Momir big toolbox deck. It's almost 20 years old.
Sadly he's gotten a reputation as a sweaty cedh combo general, so most people I play don't let him hang around long enough to do his toolbox thing.
My other toolbox deck is Chainer dementia master focusing on the graveyard instead of library. Unfortunately similar to Momir people are to afraid of a combo win to let me use him as reliable recursion.
Zur the Enchanter + The Circle of Protection cycle = I'm a happy gal!
My Baby, Mimeoplasm, and my upgraded Henzie precon have become birthing pod toolboxes.
Before I type this out I just wanted to say, I really enjoy a lot of your content actually and your perspective has been amazing in approaching some of my new jankier decks and making sure they can contest with powerful strategies so keep up the good work!
But I wanted to get this out so maybe you can understand why people actually dislike tutors, cause I feel like tutors are fine in a vacuum. They seem like the best way to get answers to a current board state or, if you are running high power combos, a way to find the missing piece or protection spell.
But that as a whole is why I think so many people dislike tutors. In a singleton format people expect games to feel different. Yes the landfall deck will be ramping and playing lands, but what those lands will create or cause will be different most games. Tutors aren’t affected by the singleton format, they are the perfect card draw. They’re your board wipe, your graveyard hate, your value piece, your Ulamog late game or your best ramp piece early game.
Yes, you don’t tutor for the same thing every game, but when you would only realistically tutor for 7/100 cards in your deck in every given game it feels like it’s the same thing every game. Which is honestly more of a problem with the format having such strong answers or win cons than tutors being an issue.
To sum it up, the better you make a deck, the more powerful tutors get and the less variance your tutors have. It’s “No way I drew my wincon and have a protection piece this game, finally time to test this out” versus “Oh, they have a problematic artifact with protection, tutor for farewell and stop you without second thought”.
I really appreciate your comment. But how about this, I raise you they counter your farewell or they had a teferi’s pro. And it was a bait! Now what? Suddenly the game is very different than I fine farewell and get rid of that ever. Or what if their card was bait? The games will only feel the same if your opponents do nothing, if they don’t react, if they have no counter play ever! I’ve played so so many toolbox decks and every game where people actually play the game and do counter play are very different
@@thetrinketmageYou bring up a good point, and that is probably why with your higher power play group tool box decks are seen as just general fun, can’t disagree on that. Commander has so many metas and it’s cool to see what kind of power levels create certain decks, and I could just be too used to people at my LGS not running a good amount of interaction or the draw to get that interaction to handle a deck centered around being able to find answers reliably.
Do you have a channel with gameplay or a discord server to check out btw?
Getting some gameplay footage is a goal of mine but I don’t have any yet. I recorded some games but visually they looked so bad I couldn’t post it. As for a discord server not as of now but maybe one day!
You def got me and I’ve got an idea for one that’s an uncommon I really have been playing with the idea of lagamos
Lagamos is very good as a toolbox commander!
I have a toolbox, esper flash control deck with chromium as cmd, it is powerful and fun but I removed tutor and free spell to fit my table power level, there are times when I go I have the perfect counter for the board state, other time would just whiff and die. Either way, I would agree that it is indeed a fun playstyle to have!
Great showcase of toolbox commanders - shame it isn't a category on EDHREC for easy filtering. I was looking into making a Dragon deck, but like the toolbox idea so instead of going with the Ur Dragon I'll be going with Scion of the Ur-Dragon or Tiamat and stuffing my deck with utility on big lizard boys
I’m very happy to hear that! Honestly I think Scion is way cooler!
What toolbox lacks Black and Blue? With Rocco, Cabaretti Caterer you can only include Red, Green, and White cards. With Omnath, Locus of All as your commander, you have all five colors and get to draw an extra card at the start of each main phase of your turn. Or for a five-color commander who's a one-man toolbox himself, try Kenrith, the Returned King.
Those are both good options for toolbox commanders!
I always wanted a sunforger deck, and Salubrious Snail finally convinced me to convert my Izzet Vadrok storm deck into a Boros Vadrok storm deck with an infinite turns combo powered by Sunforger. I am also still deciding if I should include sunforger in my sans-black deck, but I still do not really know what I want to do with that deck.
Vedalken Aethermage, my beloved...
Great video!
Great comment!
If you include dockside into that list doesn’t it completely negate the whole point of the deck? Because the easiest way to “deal” with anything would be to tutor dockside, have infinite mana and win on the spot instead of tutoring an answer
Yes and no! One thing you will quickly learn playing a deck like this is that going all in for a win as soon as you can doesn’t work when people actually play removal. You need to be patient. Unless nobody plays removal
My problem with tutors is not making the game repetitive.
They are just expensive.
That is a totally different but valid issue! Personally I haven’t bought a vamp tutor yet because I really don’t want to spend that much on one
They can also be expensive on time-even when you know what card you're looking for before you activate the tutor, finding that card and shuffling can be time consuming
do you guys think its bad to build a deck on someone elses decklist or to look up a dekclist and only make slight tweaks? my deck i built for edh is not doing well and im frustrated and feel like maybe im too beginner to build something powerful enough
Funny coincidence I’m literally working on a video about this topic right now. Should be out tomorrow! Spoilers, don’t feel bad about it!
Consider mudrotha, shes an excellent and resiliant toolbox commander as uour pieces are easily reusable
I think I can’t really build decks cause I keep trying to shove small toolboxes in them..
I’ve done that many times…
Is Oswald good with this strat? Im not familiar that much on artifacts
For sure! When you have some artifacts in play of multiple mana values Oswald lets you get many different artifacts for many situations!
But just for a sec, bro you do not cease to be a fountain of hot takes. As a genuine question creator to creator, Are these genuine or not? Cuz its baffling to me lol.
Yes these are genuine, no I won’t stop!
While I understand that tutors are not always the same I feel like they remove a very core part of EDH and that is randomness, the 100 card singleton was made for that. I know some people run multiple of the same effect but most of the time why work a little different from each other like city on fire VS dictate of the twin gods VS Solphim. Personally I have way more fun when I am franticly digging for the card I need as I know it will only take one or two turns before they run away with the game and that feeling is something you can never get with a tutors. I just feels less fun Idk if that even matters to most people and I know its a hyper illogical argument but when ever I see a Demonic tutor I just groan as I know either some one if getting locked out of the game or that player will just win from hand, blue combos IN particular, most of the time will have protection and even with removal in hand it wont be able to stop it
If it’s not for you I totally understand I mean I feel the same way about elf ball decks with all their lords looking almost the same
what about henzie?!
Although he has toolbox in the name… he isn’t really a toolbox commander so he just looks cool as the background of the video
ha ngl, thats what drew me to this post! but i enjoyed learning about rocco and want to build him next
Its been quite some time sense I have commented here still fucx with your content btw. But in general I think the hate of toolbox commanders comes from the feeling that they have an answer for every problem and the fact that most toolbox commanders have 3+ colours. Take Kenrith for example or like Golos pre0ban, while these commanders aernt op (Free my boy Golos BTW) they are just the most aggravating value pile shlock that a player can come up with and in a game of chance it is easy to feel robbed of time when everything you can do is responded to via "Erm I tutor for my card that i had just to bend you over and blow your back out." in the most annoying voice imaginable. It also doesn't help that most toolbox abilities are instant speed so there is nothing you really can do about it seeing as black and blue are often always in said commanders identities so they get into a counter/removal war with you and when they loose they spend 1 mana to just like idk play reanimate or something.
Regardless of turoring, its just a mega feels bad for a lot of players when you just get out valued by the toolbox guy just touching himself mid game while touching his cards because toolbox decks OFTEN (but not always) take the longest turns known to man.
TLDR Mono Red Aggro for life all my homies hate value piles.
I agree golos should be unbanned btw maybe that could be its own video! But if you don’t like value piles then idk if commander is for you? I like aggro and all but edh players are all on value piles! Think about how many simic or gruul deck out there are just land value decks! It’s like the most common archetype. And for toolbox decks I think it’s neat when someone uses a weird niche card in the perfect way! It’s kinda fun
when i say value pile i mean archetypes such as X good stuff. Like if polled i would wager that the most hated colour combos would be the ones containing green blue ,just because they out value you by farting a little too hard.@@thetrinketmage
like idk its just a bit annoying not something thats gonna keep my enjoyment of the game down tho. I dont even think its the nature of the value pile per se just the length of turns said decks entail yk?
I feel like this is where good deckbuilding really needs to be a part of a commander player's ability. For example, if someone makes a Simic or Selesnya "value pile" where they just keep drawing cards on creature ETB's, blink creatures in play, or landfall triggers etc., they'll eventually power through and/or remove the usual "one-shot" answers a toolbox player can muster.
It's like the old saying, "jack of all trades, but maser of none" - The value piles are "masters" of drawing cards and accruing/retaining value, and can just power through the one-time answers that the toolbox(jack of all trades) decks have. Eventually, a dedicated value pile will run a toolbox deck out of their cards in-hand to deal with everyone else's threats.
TLDR: Commander players who hate tool box decks will need to learn how to build more focused and synergistic decks
I disagree at your arguments face. Building more synergistic decks doesn't solve the inherrent "feels bad" of playing against said decks. Playing against these toolbox and value pile decks is boring and rather unintuitive. Like im yet to fight a Rocco or a Razaketh deck and end my game thinking "Wow that was fun and very cool." Rather I and the people at the table instead say "Wow dont play that again and if you do just dont play with us."
PS Trinket just a general idea for a vid that u mentioned at the start of this exchange. Maybe you make a vid on the ban list as a whole cuz there are a whole lot of perspectives on it and it would be cool to see yours.
Ah yes, tutoring for stax pieces sure is a great play pattern
You've just listed salt inducing cards with a salt inducing commander.
This is why it's not recognized as an archetype. It's not fun to play against even if you enjoy playing it.
And this is from a person playing a Fae Sunforger deck, I rarely get to play it now.
Which commander is salt inducing? I feel like the ones I mentioned are very normal?
I think it’s not recognized cause people don’t think of decks in this way or it would be hard to sort on edhrec.
Why don’t you play your sunforger deck? You claim something is “”””unfun”””” but I really don’t buy it.
@thetrinketmage consider that people just find some things unfun and don't need an stat cited reason. Like I hate and refuse to play against many decks at my lgs simply because I just hate the commander's play patterns. Notably Aatraxa and Runo Stormkirk. Aatraxa is a common one, regardless of how you build her if you just play her with whatever counters the deck is just a snooze fest.
Runo however is like a player thing, I'm yet to fight a Runo player that doesn't cry like a child when I kill him first because I don't wanna be drowned by 50 bazillion sea monsters.
My point is that while these commanders aren't "strong" or "oppressive" from a statistical standpoint point I just hat them much like you don't like hug. It's boring and contrived .
I agree there are a lot of boring commanders. Like I can’t tell you how many UR dragon decks I’ve seen that are literally identical and do nothing interesting. But I won’t ever refuse to play with them or tell them they are being unfun. If they like dragons that’s ok! I don’t mind other people playing what makes them feel good even if I don’t like it
@thetrinketmage I feel as if subjecting yourself to that shows a lack of self respect for one's time tho. Like maybe it's just me but I always follow the doctrine of "There are more tables, and my time is irreplaceable. " why would I waist time playing a game I spend hundreds of dollars on not having fun? It isn't cost effective to play against decks you don't like and if other players don't like their deck before game start you can just collectively rule 0 them out. I don't know how many tergrid decks that has saved me from lol.
That’s a fair point but I don’t know if it’s them not respecting my time. Like I don’t want my time wasted, but it’s ok if other people pop off or win. I’m reminded of something a 40K TH-camr said once. “Remember when you roll really poorly for your opponent it’s a hype clutch moment” and that sort of applies here. When your opponent does have that big crazy turn and spends 10 min going off drawing their deck. Maybe their deck doesn’t do that often and I try to be happy for them that they got to do the exciting thing