Do the Strongest Commanders of Yesterday Hold Up?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.พ. 2025
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Elk, snail, and Trinket mage in one day man im so blessed
Facts
theyre in a group chat
Accidental
@@33elk Lol nice!!
@@33elkcap as fuck
Can confirm, Prossh still wrecks you. Had a run-in with that commander recently and yeah. He's kinda just hard to deal with unless you've got industrial strength removal on-hand. Jarad is someone fun enough, that I considered running him as a Rat-Colony commander, mostly because I feel like Rat Colony decks have a major risk of becoming quite drab in mono-black, so putting just a touch of green could give it some funky grave stuff to mess with. Scion of the Ur Dragon was a complete surprise though. I guess as my eyes glazed over it, my mind just jumped to like "Oh, pay 2, tutor a dragon or whatever" and never double-checked to be like "Hang on. Is this like the most goated tribal toolbox commander?" I'm definitely keeping my eyes on that one for the future, might be alot of fun.
As the local prossh player. I totally endorse any hate suggestion on table, because 9/10 times, it is the threat
Scion has my heart, my first ever edh deck, upgraded it over the course of multiple years, played the deck for like ten, sold it a couple years ago to fund a trip with a girl I was in love with. Some great memories have been made with the deck, met my lifetime friends while playing him, the guy has been with me through ups and downs. Would never play it again since the deck has completely saturated my need for five colour decks, but I will never forget the fun I had with him. I still have a foil copy from time spiral that has been gifted to me by my friends on my birthday, it's framed in my bedroom.
Wow I'm surprised someone else mentions Jarad and Lord of Extinction! I play both as an incredibly resilient wincon in my Old Stickfingers deck.
Jarad if great. He's onin the 99 of my elfpod and Skullbriar deck as a way to push out wins.
Me too. He can win games on spot as soon as he hits the grave and you have some reanimation for lord of extinction or enough mana to just cast and sac. stickfingers multiple times. Very fun and strong card.
I have it in my Muldrotha deck! I particularly like chaining a victimize into the two cards and generally winning on the spot for 6 mana
ME TOO 🙏
This inspired me to bring back my Prossh. Jund is coming back, baby!
jund is scary and can rebuild combos out of exile. sssshhhhhh
Jeleva is such a fun commander. Booth her and Goro-Goro and Satoru (ironically) are what really got me interested in commander.
They got old. People know about them and any decks that helm them outside of cedh are usually targeted out first. My LGS has a wall of the "Most wanted" commanders to show the biggest threats in the format. Not like they are banned or anything, but people will just go "Looks like we got one of the most wanted" at our table so everyone knows the commander itself is a threat its helpful for new players to know something is a threat even if they haven't seen it before. To me its really cool to just see the wall more from the view as like a timetable of the past of the format is really cool.
Brago got basically powercrept by Yorion and Abdel. Maybe in a stax approved environment it might be different but in a casual environment without stax, those two are better options. Yorion can infinitely get triggers on each turn and Abdel can combo easily. Both can protect their board from wipes at instant speed.
Brago is absolutely stronger than Yorion. Abdel is busted though because it extremely easily infinitely combos.
Yes! This is the way I crafted my Scion of the Ur-Dragon deck! A neat tool belt of dragons paired with reanimation.
Prossh is still insane. I have a Prossh deck I've been tinkering with over the years and he's crazy.
Nobody mentioned Animar? I've seen so many war crimes comited by him that I can't believe if somebody tells me his animar list is fun and casual
I still play Animar and...yeah, he's still very strong. Especially since we got the Tyranids edh deck a while back and we've more creature protection than ever.
Animar can be built in so many ways though, I saw him helm the tyranids precon, saw him helm a morph deck too
I actually just built a Scion toolbox/reanimator list in the last month. It's one of the most fun decks I've built or played in years.
Without watching: Jarad is THE win con in my Ol’ Stickfingers Deck and I would have it no other way.
So the answer for that card is a resounding yes. What a monster of a finisher
Do people remember Rafiq like he used to bbe what feels like THE voltron dude but is just not there anymore
Nowadays I use him to layer the exalted effects on vehicles. As a Vehicle commander he is FUN!
Uril Miststalker too. I wanted to build Uril Miststalker recently but someone pointed out to me that honestly Voja is just strictly better than him even helming the same deck, and that's just depressing.
So my though on Narset is that she does hold up casually, but not in her classic "let's try to take infinite turns" form. She is, however, a victim of her own reputation.
It's worth noting that her only restriction is that she can't case creatures, so you can keep her card quality high, and have spells you'd love to draw into normally. Casting haste Narset and flipping into Rhystic study, monologue tax, interaction + a land is not at all unheard of and is an incredible value move that usually wins you the game. You can even make her more stax-y with Winter or static orb, since she will play most of what you want for her-she's a much less limited commander than people think.
Often my two biggest problems using her is that she too small to just attack in, as you mentioned. But second people are so paranoid about her that they will nuke the game rather than give her the chance to attack.
Yeah. I once built an enchantress deck with her as commander (pretty much every deck i build is enchantress) and she is really good at letting you use cards with really fun effects that are just too expensive for most decks that don't ramp a ton.
Narset, Enlightened Master just top 4’d another Cedh tournament just this last week giving it 3 top 4s this month. Currently she has the highest conversion rate for Cedh tourneys at 39%. Turn 2 is still quite viable and turn 1 is still possible (albeit very rare) and you have the breach line as well now meaning lions eye diamond gives us speed early and is a win con late. The deck has adapted.
@@bboyle28222 I'm not going to hold myself out here as an cedh master, but she has such a high conversion rate because no one plays her.
I really don't think the recent 2 wins is enough to say she's adapted.
Yeah, Narset is an awful build-around in casual commander, but a great commander for a jeskai deck with a non-commander centric gameplan. Having the option to draw 4 + cheat mana in your command zone when you're running out of gas is a lifesaver and your card quality stays high when you're not wasting slots to enhance and give extra combats to your 3/2.
If you are looking for creatures for narset, try adventure cards. IIRC, you can cast the adventure part of the card as a non-creature spell and then cast the creature from exile later. Otherwise, squee the immortal doesn't mind being in exile.
Heya Trinket Mage! I've been loving your content a lot, binging them pretty much any chance I get! In one of your videos you mention your patreon and that there's an option to get some personal 1 on 1 deck brewing help.
Sadly I have social anxiety and find it hard to commit to such bits like community discords but I'm really trying to find the strength to patreonize you for just that!
Keep going at it! keep shopping for baubles and slinging those spells buddy!
Honestly watching the videos is enough support not need to apologize about the patreon. Though the 1 on 1 deck help perk has been scrapped since it was too time consuming
@@thetrinketmage Aww that's a shame but I understand!
Thanks for letting me know however! Glad to be a part of your audience :)
I know its not a huge change, but I love the thumbnail on this video :)
The powerhouses when I was new to EDH, at the local LGS were: Brago, Numot, Maren, Zurgo helmsmasher, Ghave, Scion of the Ur-Dragon, Kaalia, Narset, Phenax, Atarka world breaker, Uril, Skithiryx, Atraxa, Aurelia, Rakdos lord of Riots, Grenzo dungeon warden, Derevi, Grand Arbiter Augustin, Prosh, Intet the dreamer, Doran, Sen Triplets, Rafiq of the many.
Those are the ones I can remember.
Back then I played:
Mayael the anima (with the power 5 or greater beasts tribal from shards of alara)
Kruphix god of horizons (before his prophet got banned. They were insane together) as a hydra deck.
Sigarda host of herons. (Enchantress
Baru, Fist of Krosa (landfall)
Merieke Ri Berit (theft, sacrifice)
Jarad is endlessly interesting to me as a Commander. I’ve thought about building him for some time because he’s just very solid at all the stuff he wants you to do.
With Brago specifically, I think the issue is that he's not the best for that strategy in those colors anymore. Especially because he's slow needing to deal combat damage specifically to a player as well. So it's also mainly once per turn which slows him even more compared to a lot of other blink decks.
I built Jarad about 3-4 years ago as a purposely weak deck to play against new players. Its supposed to teach them how the graveyard can be a very good tool, and your creatures dying can be a good thing.
So its very funny to see him here.
Brago was my first "real" commander deck, I still have fond memories with him
I would say I agree with everything. This might be a bit of a weird take, but this is one of the benefits of power creep. Things that used to be powerful start to trickle down leading to new cards entering power levels they weren’t in before and while that might not be everyone’s cup of tea, I think it’s quite interesting. This is a similar thing to what happens in Pokémon, eventually strong Pokémon get pushed out of higher tears and carve themselves a more interesting niche in a lower tier.
Scion is definitely cedh viable - someone at my local cedh group plays it. The main wincon is marvin -> both niv mizzets to win, or just reanimate one of them, or use curiosity
Yep, so many of them combo really easily. If anything their fall from popularity might be because they are too strong since people generally frown on infinite combos.
Brago might see a resurgence since they made him into a Miku.
Commander as a legacy style format where every card printed basically is playable. Every Commander will get better over time add new cards are printed. But that doesn't necessarily mean they'll keep up with the power creep of newer commanders. So even though they're stronger than they were they're weaker than what's now available
Narset just got top 4 at a decently large cedh event in Colorado last wknd
Yes but that’s a 1 off I don’t think the deck actually has legs
I'm a relatively newer player and play a Jarad deck that i absolutely adore
I use it on the 99
I use it on the 99
Apart from the internet being hyped for new cardboard, most of the top commanders have some kind of card advantage printed on them. Naturally people are drawn to more powerful cards as they can get the win with a lot less jumping through flaming hoops. This pushes others in their pods to try and catch up in this undeclared arms race.
In my play group, there are people using new flashy commanders however most of those decks tend to change as the play style tends to be monotonous. And because we write a games report afterwards, in the style of boxing matches, newer easy mode commanders tend to be roasted often .
I've been playing against a friend's scion of ur-dragon deck, the aspect of boom you are dead is still there, especially when they keep printing more and more stupid dragons, it's basically you either remove it or someone ends up dead 😅
I like karlach, not cedh, but still. By picking a background It's like running Aurelia the warleader in any two color combo, that includes red, you want. Izzet, rakdos, gruul, boros. She doesn't even have to attack, unlike Aurelia, and she grants first strike to all your creatures when they swing.
I especially like playing her in gruul, with raised by Giants as her background, when you have five mana she comes out and you go for two combats, if you're on curve next turn she's becoming a 10/10 with that first strike, running incredibly well in both go tall and go wide strats.
You can run her in Rakdos with Criminal past, fill your grave and watch her grow massive as you goad the board, give her infect with tainted strike then knockout a couple players in a turn.
For recent picks, both recent Zimones will probably end up being contenders. Doubling counters will find a home, and an unlimited landfall effect to manifest adds up fast
Just want to clarify that morbid opportunist doesn’t work that way, it can draw a max of one card per turn due to the stipulation of only triggering to draw one card once per turn.
Right but 4 a turn cycle
NGL, you inspired me to brew around Jarad.
Yeva is legit, but people don't pay much attention to her. If she can stick Seedborn Muse she gets to live the banned Prophet of Kruphix dream.
Narset Voltron! It was my first real good deck, run the modal counterspells for protection and use off of narset hits. You don’t have to run as many lame extra turn spells, and you get to hit all sorts of fun stuff that doesn’t say “i get to play more magic than you.”
Marath and Ghave comboing with everything, but where the deck is still synergistic without a combo win.
Can confirm, our sweaty friend shits all over our playgroup's slightly upgraded precons with a giga broken meta brago deck and none of us have any fun when he plays it.
Narset top 4ed 3 separate 60+ player Cedh events within the past month. She’s still viable
Facts
Would you do a Video on PreDH? i absolutely adore that format.
I think one of my strongest, older commanders would definitely be Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest. So many cards have come out that just put him over the top, and there are so many token creators now, token doublers, creature death machine gun enablers, etc. I only pull him out occasionally, and typically, if he isn't killed right away, I'll run over tables fast. The other thing he is good for is shutting down other people's game plans. If they know sacrificing their creatures for their game plan is going to buff my entire board, they either shutdown (rarely) or just really help me out.
My newest, strongest commander is definitely my Kambal, Profiteering Mayor deck.
Gotta throw my girl Marath, Will of the Wild in here; same set as Prossh, and has 100% gotten way stronger as all the +1 counter shenanigans has continued to grow. Super easy to go infinite with her too, very much a 'with a ham sandwich' commander, even in casual
Scion of the ur dragon was my first deck. I love it so much and toolbox decks are my favorite because of it
On the other side of the deck build spectrum, I have a narset deck that I made cuz I liked the card and didn't know it was mass hated haha
Lathil with untap effects still go hard.
Personally one scary commander I love is rakdos, Lord of Riots
Narset was my second ever commander deck. As much as I agree with you, she still holds a dear place in my heart. I will say she got much stronger with more “copy the next instant/sorcery spell” cards so you get more chances to hit again. And with more cheap counters/ protection spells its even harder to stop her…. Let me cope
I still have my old Prossh deck and even today, that deck turns heads (despite running ONLY basic lands) - side note, I have recently started “nerfing” my decks by replacing good lands with basic instead of cutting the “good fun stuff” and I have been LOVING how that nerfs a powerful deck without losing the fun cards.
I've lost every game I've ever played against Narset, even as recently as this month, because nobody else at the table takes it seriously when I say "they're going to take infinite turns". And then they do. Who could have guessed!? And I can't have my removal all the time unless that's the only thing in my deck.
Jarad is great in the 99 because of the self recursion. My friend has a Ziatora deck and with nettlecyst people just die
I use prossh as my commander for a devor/Mass sac dragon deck and its super fun and flavourful! Maybe not the Best but it is fun as hell
Dang, I wanted to hear about Oona, queen of the Far
Jeleva is incredibly fun. But be careful, a lot of casual pods will overvalue the fact that she "mills" everyone and target you even if you don't get any strong hits from the ETB.
I think a lot of people overlook Jeleva because she also came out at the same time that Kess and Inalla were the scariest things that grixis was doing. So it never felt like she was the top pick for some of these color combos like narset and prosh
My friend build a Narset deck as a Gumball deck (every card is .25c or less) with no creatures. It's not explosive like normal Narset decks but always have heavy hitters despite the budget.
prossh is still my all time favorite jund commander. i just run kobold tribal and jund good stuff. dont even run the food chain unless im feelijg spicy. great time. highly reccomend
Prossh runs my Kobold/ Kher tribal deck. I love running vintage cards with him. Feels like you’re playing a massive homage to the entire game. Some don’t have synergy but it’s fun to play all the Kher baddies with Prossh at the helm like he’s the true lord he’s supposed to be
Trinket mage who would make the best graveyard hate commander?
new god from aether drift probably
Honestly, Narset got straight up powercrept by Storm, not only is she evasive but makes use of extra combat effects, plus her effect is way more bonkers and basically allows you to win instantly if she connects.
Narset has hexproof which is huge. You have to have protection for storm in hand else she gets pathed instantly, and Narset mainly fears boardwipes.
Honestly, while there has been power creep in cards, that does not really impact whether a card holds up today. Commander is the one format where playgroups don't need to follow power creep (outside of cEDH). For casual commander, the scary commanders of the past remain in the set of the scary commanders today. I am going to respect the Scion of the Ur Dragon voltron deck or the Brago control deck.
Powercreep in removal has mostly been backfilling slots of a given power level. Farewell goes in the decks that would run Cyclonic Rift (if they could) but the decks that chose to be at River's Rebuke or Austere Command instead would now have Devastating Mastery as a comparable alternative. As we gained more options at our desired power, we removed outliers that were above (Cyclonic Rift) or below (Chain Reaction) where we wanted our deck to be. (same thing goes for ramp and card advantage)
I miss the days of Uril, Zur, Rafiq & Sharuum being the boogeymen.
Yes
Zur is still an absolute beast
I've built a pretty normal prossh deck, which was still way too powerful for my casual playgroup and got disassembled pretty quickly. Effects like Purphoros and Agate Instigator hit like a truck, Dictate of Erebos is pure misery, and players can't even effectively remove Prossh because that just gives you more token fodder.
Jarad seems pretty fun though, might give that a go. I've been looking to build another golgari graveyard deck besides my now 9 year old Meren deck.
I remember playing Jarad in standard back in 2014 before I basically stopped playing mtg for a straight up decade (got back into it in 2024 so ya)
Been debating on turning my old 2014 standard decks into modern decks, edh or not.
Man, so funny my first two commander decks were/are Brago and Jarad, I still play Brago and its my strongest deck, continually tuning, like you said every time a good new azorius ETB or flicker effect gets printed I want to give it a run. Jarad on the other hand just slowly crept into disuse and eventually dismantled, I still think the idea of 1 shotting the whole table by flinging a huge monster is a funny novelty but it got a bit more boring compared to the control/combo THROUGH combat game plan that Brago continues to bring.
JELEVA MENTIONED
My Jeleva theft women only deck has been my strongest deck for so long and no one has ever seen the card
Jarad was my first deck and still is my favorite after all these years.
Ditto
I actually played against a Scion of the Ur-Dragon deck for a while. The guy had run it as an Ur-Dragon deck, but he wanted to get more use out of the Ancient Gold Dragon and friends so he changed the entire deck up to focus on that instead. It's a really cool deck, and was a lot more fun both for him and for the rest of the table than the generic good stuff pile the first version of the deck was.
Personally, I don't think Narset is too strong for casual Commander (actually, the second Commander deck I ever built was a really bad Narset deck). However, you still kind of need to just stop Narset from ever activating her ability, because that pseudo-infinite chain can still just happen on the first attack, so as a form of survival, you just can't let her ability resolve. And I do mean this as a pure survival thing. No salt to Narset, it's just what you gotta do, like when you face a Krenko deck.
if people were more creative with narset and didn't put dead cards/bad cards in their deck, then they wouldn't have the need for these feast or famine type plays. like for example, if they did narset, enlightened master and planeswalkers, then if narset dies, you can just cast the planeswalkers in hand and do regular super friends. idk, the fact that it's only noncreature spells that are cast for free gives so much creativity that is just spoiled with "what if I put all my chips on extra turns and combats".
sure, extra turns might be the best thing to cast for free, but I feel like the extra step in thinking is: what cards do you want to cast often?
there's enough instants, sorceries artifacts and enchantments in blue and red to do clone tribal
or do artifact synergy and make it a way to get more artifacts on the board for combos
we can even focus on white cards and do enchantment shenanigans and do token generation so that you don't have creatures in the deck.
this is just me spit balling ideas, and I'm not saying that the trinket mage is wrong in his way of thinking, but I do think if you stop playing extra combat spells and do spells that can actually affect the board even if it wasn't cast for free, narset would be WAY better.
i got told my werewolf tribal deck is too strong only because it can actually aggro out the table so the heck is power level anyway
No one mentioned glissa the traitor. Which surprise me because kaan mentioned her in a podcast as one of his helm for his bauble tribal. She olds up.
Also, is it me or narset is just storm force of nature?
The stuff that gets more enablers will definitely get stronger, but things that are totally powercrept will lose their luster. Kaalia will always keep getting new sick cards to cheat out!
Narset is actually the best it just top 4 3 tournaments this month
I see one from January but I don’t see any of these other results. And I think that’s one goated player tbh
@ Facts my bad
1 in February
2 in January
I play Jarad, and my boy is still holding on strong
I’m still getting used to the fact that the Time Spiral block isn’t “new.” 😂
I'm consistently blow away whenever I see Breya still in the top 50. As a long time artifact player I think she's vastly outclassed by other artifact commanders in terms of power. I think her main draw at this point is being the only 4 color artifact commander.
I think if you play Narset as a plain, ol' spellslinger/storm commander and abstain from extra turn spells (but not extra combat spells), you *might* have normal games with her.
Try using her as a Superfriends commander...
I think a better option for this would be the newer Narset, the one that recasts spells depending on her power.
My main commanders are Prossh, Brenard, Volo, AtogAtog, and Cromat.
Saw someone play oloro today it was fun
back in my day Teferi and memnarch were my area's boogymen
Prosh and morbid opportunist are not “a lot” of card draw.
It’s draw one card even if you sac 10 dudes lol.
Long time that I don't see a Jeleva deck. Back in time I've always wanted to build one for me cause the card is just too cool. But I never actually build one because she was too popular and I love underrated/underplayed cards, especially cards with less then 500 decks in EDH. But I think that I will try to build something with her now that she is not that popular and most of the player base (new players) doesent even know her
Prossh and Narset are the only ones who can hold their ground at the higher levels these days.
To be frank, I think we're at the point where even recentish Boogeyman commanders like korvold just aren't that big of a problem anymore, because average players decks are catching up to them in power.
This is not however to say that korvie is by any means bad, because that would be a moronic take.
For prossh and friends, this happened long ago, but just like with korvie, that doesn't make them bad. They can still be a serious problem if you point at the copyright year on the card and laugh.
Prossh still really powerful, yes he is not Korbold but at the same time that is a plus because most people don't understand that with just one sacrifice engine you can easily become the archenemy
scion is also less scary than myrim
I often find it uninteresting when commanders give you an enabler for their payoff.
Isn't Scion of the Ur-Dragon's ability only usable once per turn? Or am I missing some timing shenanigans?
EDIT: Thank you for the answers. I figured I was missing something with timing and holding priority. This makes a lot more sense now and I plan on taking this info into my next rebuild for my own Scion deck.
You have to hold priority on the first activation, activate it again to find moltensteel, activate moltensteel's ability 6 times, and then let the first activation resolve to find Skithiryx
Timing shenanigans mainly, I run a scion of the ur dragon deck and holding priority while activating the ability allows you to activate multiple time so long as scion is still scion. Really helps to flood out your graveyard for massive living death effects.
Prossh will Rick roll most casual tables
I run Narset superfriends. And I vehemently disagree.
Narset being the boogeyman has long since faded in people’s minds as power creep has happened.
In my experience, Narset’s real power is the mana advantage she grants. And with a Superfriends build, even if Narset gets removed a few times, you can still hard cast planeswalkers.
I haven’t lost with the deck in 5 years and I play it about once every two months.
narset goes crazy
Tergrid is no longer even close to boogeyman scary anymore. Like she's very strong but, so many value engines can outrace the stax or win just or remove the 5 mana mono color commander to starve the deck. It's still strong but, not nearly as OP as people think.
Narset can also lose by whiffing 8 turns in. Horrid play pattern for opponents
Where is my Omnath, locus of creation?
YESSS JELEVA!
prosh all day I've seen players have the ability to wipe the pod and not know.
Prossh video 2 mins ago? Lets goooooooooooo
I have a Jarad deck. Jarad wins games
trinket mage, what is your favorite legendary creature from ikoria?
No Zur?
Zurs still basically "what if you could run Necropotence as your commander?"
I actually like prosh better than korvold, kirvold is a sac payoff while prosh is a sac outlet
korvold is also a sac outlet just not an infinite one
Korvold needs to attack to sac I wouldn't consider it a sac outlet since you can't do it at instant or sorcery speed
Brago is a disgusting deck, you can also play the new gearhulk in him!
Lol different flavored edh deck building video
Guilty!