I made this deck and ended up taking it apart because either miirym was countered/removed/killed so many times I couldn’t cast from commander zone or I ran away with the game.. I love miirym and dragons, but also.. ouch.. hate be real and I get it but.. ouch..
@9807036 I made a path to the world tree big dragon deck and it's pretty fun. Granted people also kill the enchantment every chance they get and I don't blame them
@@9807036 I had to take like 8 creatures that were less impactful out and add counterspells to help protect against removal and Farewell. Farewell should be banned. Its just TOO much for 6 mana
Richard, please realise not every deck is a Richard deck. It’s OK. Not every deck will fit your playstyle, but please don’t try to half bake a deck into it. Lathril is plenty fast, if you build around her ability and play it on curve. Indeed, if you don’t do that you’ll be too slow. If you play cards like Syphon Mind you won’t have a critical mass of elves to leverage. This is actually a great matchup for the deck. Just get Lathril down on turn 3, give her evasion and hit once or twice, turn 5/6 you have a small army and you overrun. Poison Tip Archer if premium wipe protection. You will easily take out one or two slower opponents who can’t block a wide board like Dragons. OK rant over, guess I’ve gotten beat down by elves a few times too many lol
richard learning that the way to build a deck is to acknowledge its weaknesses and try to build around them rather than just not playing them at all. elf ball folds to wraths but you build around it by playing cards that counter wraths or draw you massive amount of cards to make the wraths not as bad.
He said it's better than LOTR, and Seth said GOT has more action than LOTR - the show that famously had the first several major battles happen OFF SCREEN, until the end of Season 2, and is mostly a show about people sitting in rooms, talking politics lol. Wild, wild takes.
Richard!!! You need to play cards that benefit you if your elves die (like drawing cards, draining your opponents life etc), if you don’t the deck falls apart after the first boardwipe 😂 Also playing all the elves that put lands on the battlefield is really good
Richard is the SpongeBob crying child meme. Richard: I don't wanna play aggro elfball Parent: Then why did you pick it?? Seriously, I'm 10 minutes into the video, and I've lost count of how many times he's complained about his chosen archtype
I did exactly this the first time (and second, and third) I played the Caesar deck from the Fallout set. I was all in on the idea, and it was just awful.
Richard and Seth act like we haven't seen elf ball decks win multiple times in commander clash. Tomer crushed the table last time he played a Naya elves deck.
@@Cursedsama Remember. He says that a land ramp deck comes back faster than others yet he now says that a mana dork deck cannot recover faster after a creature wipe.
Seth was clearly a big threat and Richard ought to be happy to see a big threat removed from the table. But it can be tricky when you foresee death by dragons or death by poison and no play options look likely to lead to escape.
The first hour of lotr has more action than all of season 2 of House of the Dragon. As many hot takes as Richard has, the lotr slander by these guys is by far the wildest to me 😂
Aside from Farewell, which was a design mistake, you can definitely survive boardwipes in elfball. You have black, run Golgari Charm! And there are so many other things that you should include, for example Heroic Intervention, Resuscitate, Wrap in Vigor, Soul of New Phyrexia, Wail of the Nim, Living Death, Patriarch's Bidding, Haunting Voyage, Thrilling Encore... And my favourite: Kamahl, Fist of Krosa holding back some mana as a threat. _Whoever wipes loses their lands._
Richard let elves down this week... this is what we get from someone who thinks cartographers hawk is good. So many ways to punish your opponents for removing your creatures in black like nadiers nightblade, meat hook, elderfang venom, poison tip archer. Not to mention all the spells that can regenerate your creatures or of course heroic intervention. Or dump out dorks that count number of elves you control for exponential mana for any of the draining black spells or x target pump for lethal. Sorry I am just a very passionate elf player and I felt like Lathril was done dirty for thinking all elves are good for is ramping into Crater Hoof
Hawk, siphon mind, dowsing dagger - all of these cards can so some work...in specific decks. You can't just jam them in anything. I actually like how Richard has his own ideas about how to play, but voicing thoughts (complaints abound in this video) about being correct while being objectively wrong is an interesting combination!
@@SWAT6809brother man! You right, you right. Still valid that Richard had his Toski back by his lands (which is a rules violation) and you can see there's a cut/dissolve on his camera where he moves it up to it's proper place immediately after. I suspect he had it there to differentiate it from his attackers the turn previous and not, you know, literally cheating. Wether the Toski dies or not is completely irrelevant to that point, which was made in jest anyway. Have a nice day random internet commenter!
As a former elves player, you don’t just yeet your mana elves on board unless you have some form of follow up. Slow roll it a bit so you don’t get hosed by interaction.
Having 9 basic forests and no swamps was also really confusing. He complained about needing color fixing constantly in the second game, but he did it to himself, lol.
On turn 4, I would’ve swung the plague myr at Richard. His only blocker is toski, who would actually die to the -1/-1 counter that infect would give it. I think that trade is worth risking, and then he’s poisoned.
That Richard deck list is certainly one of the elf decks of all time. It's... technically an elf deck. No mass graveyard recursion, no token doublers, no solitaire elf cards... Rhonas Monument and an Emerald Medallion are DISGUSTING in elf ball.
Thank you! Gotta be one of the worst elf ball decks I've ever seen. It's like he copypasted a elf list then took out like 15 cards to make it less explosive and more fragile to put in more Richard cards. Then proceeds to shit on the archetype the whole time, infuriating.
Surprise ending! I expected Tomer to do the table in one in that second game. My personal favorite commander deck right now is my Kenrith deck (which used to be Reaver King) that's basically a bunch of value cards. I used to run a conspiracy to give the various things like Horde of Notions, and Lin Sivvi ways to do weird grindy things. But traded it out for an extended art Survival of the Fittest an artist friend from Prague sent me. The deck has morphed quite a lot over the last decade or so.
Richard’s trauma response to board wipes is the most frustrating thing about this channel. I love everything else, aside from ‘what is the point of doing anything early game, it’ll get wiped’. Nonsense.
Amazing content as always Goldfish Friends, I am so grateful for all the content. I laying here with 3 hours sleep (cancer issues) and looked out the corner of my eye and was like “why is Phil lifting weights?” He was using his fan to cool off lol :)
My favourite commander is my first one: Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma. Mono green stompy. Casting cost reduction by 2 is pretty crazy, plus a mini overrun effect every time it attacks. Pretty simple and fun, still works well against many decks.
Here to say: I went from not really watching since MTGO is so slow to being a diehard fan over the last season in paper. Every friday is a treat now. I love this show, and it is by far the best commander content on youtube. Thanks for making it!
I have a Miirym deck that is exclusively cards from D&D sets (AFR/AFC/CLB) . Its slow to start due to the lack of ramp options, but even draft chaff dragons become broken when they are all buy-one-get-one free with Mirrym on the field.
i really don't think any of them besides tomer get what real people play in their commander decks. a casual commander pod is lucky if they have like 6 board wipes combined and doesn't run enough draws/tutors to find them consistently bc most people are just playing with cards they've naturally picked up and not the 40 expensive staples that you can jam into every single deck, especially if they're new players who can't pay $1k for a deck of cards. in fact, most casual pods complain about board wipes unless it's literally saving them at the last second, and there aren't even that many good cheap wipes outside of white. And in this environment elves really do shine, bc when every deck is trying to be a snowball value train elves just go faster.
1:07:15 My favourite commander deck is Muldrotha Jank, such as "mutate onto Manlands", Emerge pile, "Bring Your Father to Work-day" (Multani-tron), or building around Thespian's Stage as the primary wincon (Urza's Saga, but also Song of the Dryads/Imprisoned in the Moon to "steal" creatures you turned into lands). Just a perfectly open-ended commander that gives so much room for shenanigans, and my favourite card The Eldest Reborn is pretty solid in Muldrotha to boot! Heck yeah.
My perferred Elfball is Tyvar the Bellicose at the wheel, play every single efficient elf manadork and they grow absolutely huge very quickly, run all the green protection spells, seedborn muse effects, and get some black reanimation spells and/or black X finisher spells and you have a deck that's pretty fast, can easily run less than 35 lands, and is resilient to board wipes. It's also fun to run with his two planeswalkers because the untap abilities really let you get huge mana ramp value and/or you get to attack after tapping them for mana.
In my exp, mana dorks are bad in casual. They die to a light breeze. 32 (+2) lands is just asking for non-games. There are also a handful of cards that require to have some sort of board state or they do nothing. I have a Lathril deck and quickly found out it's not an "elf" deck, it's a "Lathril" deck. Most strategies and cards center around Lathril. Cards mainly focus on getting Lathril on board, having ways to connect with Lathril (trample/unblockable), protecting Lathril, and card draw (b/c duh). Token doublers also became useless cards. If Lathril stays alive and connects, making tokens is super easy. Unless you can finish the game that turn, having too many elves out just paints yourself as a threat (when you may not be) b/c they fear Lathril's activated ability (gain 10 life, they lose 10 life).
@@tanvirrahman7339 I think of Lathril herself as the combo-kill elf deck. You build it around her. If you want degenerate elf ball Marwyn will always be my go to. You guys have fun playing commander, I'm playing Solitaire over here.
@@tanvirrahman7339 My first Marwyn deck I built it where it couldn't "easily" go infinite. So I used the instant and sorcery creature untaps, artifacts to untap, and the return to hand untap X. My group actually really like to play that deck because it's a good way to teach game actions. And obviously I have the degenerate version that can just draw the deck.
I feel like Richard purposefully made his deck bad so he could complain all game. How the hell do you run eflball and play slower than two dragon decks. Incredibly scuffed mana base and decklist. Not a single basic swamp is crazy.
Richard not understanding lathril is kinda super annoying to listen to. If you don't play your 3 mana commander on turn 3 it's gonna be hard. Also when you understand your deck folds to wraths obviously you will build around it with stuff like poisen-tipped archer
For the basics argument, I usually add an amount of waste equal to the land count I want, then cut the deck to size, and finally do the mana base, so no basics problem
I think a more fun version of this theme would be building the commanders "wrong". Like Lathril Voltron (using effects that give +1/+1 for each creature to buff Lathril's power), Atraxa artifacts (charge counters go brr), etc.
On this week of "Punt or Bluff?" we're the cool kids now. Will Phil bring all the boys to the yard or will Tomer just play kiki-combo again? Tune-in to find out!
I tried Lathriel elf ball... and I agree with Richard; it feels good to have tons of elves... until a board wipe, and it's so hard to recover. I switched to the land drop elf ramp because of that.
Lathril is one of my higher powered decks, and you can go waaaay faster than what Richard was doing. Also he seemed to come in with the preconceived notion that you just build a board and get Wrath'ed off. If you over commit and don't have a reload that's the situation, but yeah, he doesn't seem to have the right build/mindset for it.
Phil's dreamtide whale should've triggered on Seth's turn at 28:27. Lathliss was the second card on Seth's turn which would've given him his tenth infect counter
Craterhoof not doing enough damage is maddening when it happens to you. Last time at my LGS I only had 5 creatures so I kept it in my hand and passed the turn, only to get mind controlled by Emrakul. It's fine I think, and then I draw Saw in Half for turn.
I thought the comments bashing the elves deck were over the top so I checked out the deck list and it really is just that bad. Has Richard never actually seen someone play Lathril before? I’m by no means the biggest elf fanboy but he absolutely built this thing to job.
Why is Richard running so few basics in a two color deck? Seems like a lot of these non-basic lands are not worth more than a healthy amount of basic lands. Also why is everyone obsessed with these surveil lands? Just because you can fetch them doesn't make entering tapped any better. At least triomes tap for 3 different colors.
Had to do the math. Seth had 2 nontoken dragons enter and 2 copy dragons enter. Both Lathliss see the 2 nontokens and make 2 5/5 dragons each. That is 8 dragons entering, raising the total number of dragons on field when the first Dragon Tempest trigger goes off 12 dragons. With 8 triggers, that leaves Tomer at -8 and Phil at -15. A fantastic reward and accidental win. 🤣🤣
(Only saw game one so afar) I thought without Crim there'd be no one to help balance out Richard's massive blinders for Seth, but Tomer's on it. Good job Tomer! (Now that I've seen game 2). He even mentions how he could have let Seth die and won, but he's so used to saving Seth that he fogged for him again!
He needed to cast the card to get the elves, but as he stated it should have been after damage. Seemed like just a play error, probably the most forgivable of the insane "errors, hot takes, and madness" these games had
@@Alternative-Works True, it was already his plan, and it's not as simple to always see that line with a casual mindset. It just really feels like it's part of the pattern with it coming right after game one.
As for how people build Atraxa, Seth, more than half the time it ends up as more of a generic control shell than as a strict proliferate/infect deck. But the other 3 commander builds are pretty spot-on.
My favorite/pet deck is Extus//Awaken the blood avatar mostly just making tokens and casting awaken the blood avatar as many times as possible to murder people
Richard, Elves of Deep Shadow is only the best mana dork ever if you use the art from The Dark, she's so dreamy! There's a foil of it out there too fwiw.
Does Richard even enjoy playing Magic? He just constantly complains about how people play or the deck he's playing. It's a game man, try to have fun for once.
Hey Seth, your Arena of Glory should have come into play untapped. It requires you to control a mountain in order to do so, and you played Ziatora's Proving Ground on T1, which is a mountain.
Decklists: www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/we-play-the-most-popular-commanders-of-all-time-commander-clash-s17-e1
Is there a reason you guys shy away from the battle bond lands?
I miss my UrDragon deck. Might have to grab it again
Tomer saying that the hobbit is way better than LotR really hurt my soul.
I immediately came down here to make this comment exactly.
The first one was pretty decent but the rest of the series was so damn rough
It’s an easier read tbf
@@CreateWorldsmakes sense since it’s written for children, instead of LotR, which was written for adults.
I really like these guys content, but often when they start talking about movies I die a bit inside.😶
"The most popular version of Miirym, which is just... cards I have laying around..."
Tomer, keeping it real.
I made this deck and ended up taking it apart because either miirym was countered/removed/killed so many times I couldn’t cast from commander zone or I ran away with the game.. I love miirym and dragons, but also.. ouch.. hate be real and I get it but.. ouch..
@9807036 I made a path to the world tree big dragon deck and it's pretty fun. Granted people also kill the enchantment every chance they get and I don't blame them
@@9807036 there’s a ton of other dragon commanders. If you’re gonna play the most broken one printed, don’t complain about people interacting with it
@@9807036 I had to take like 8 creatures that were less impactful out and add counterspells to help protect against removal and Farewell. Farewell should be banned. Its just TOO much for 6 mana
Richard, please realise not every deck is a Richard deck. It’s OK. Not every deck will fit your playstyle, but please don’t try to half bake a deck into it.
Lathril is plenty fast, if you build around her ability and play it on curve. Indeed, if you don’t do that you’ll be too slow. If you play cards like Syphon Mind you won’t have a critical mass of elves to leverage.
This is actually a great matchup for the deck. Just get Lathril down on turn 3, give her evasion and hit once or twice, turn 5/6 you have a small army and you overrun. Poison Tip Archer if premium wipe protection. You will easily take out one or two slower opponents who can’t block a wide board like Dragons.
OK rant over, guess I’ve gotten beat down by elves a few times too many lol
richard learning that the way to build a deck is to acknowledge its weaknesses and try to build around them rather than just not playing them at all. elf ball folds to wraths but you build around it by playing cards that counter wraths or draw you massive amount of cards to make the wraths not as bad.
Fun fact for Richard, playing your commander is card advantage
Phil being a super villain in the thumbnail is all I ever needed
I didn't even notice until i saw the comment lmao, philainous as hell
Agreed🤣🤣
Did Tomer say The Hobbit is a better movie series than Lord of the Rings, or did I mishear something? If he did, I might cut all my basics...
He said it's better than LOTR, and Seth said GOT has more action than LOTR - the show that famously had the first several major battles happen OFF SCREEN, until the end of Season 2, and is mostly a show about people sitting in rooms, talking politics lol. Wild, wild takes.
I'm sure he was referring to the books.
@@imaginarymatterhe refers to The Hobbit as a “trilogy,” so I’m pretty sure he’s referring to the movies.
Yeah, no more basics for me. Heresy.
Tomer is cancelled now. Bring back Crim
Richard!!! You need to play cards that benefit you if your elves die (like drawing cards, draining your opponents life etc), if you don’t the deck falls apart after the first boardwipe 😂
Also playing all the elves that put lands on the battlefield is really good
Richard is the SpongeBob crying child meme.
Richard: I don't wanna play aggro elfball
Parent: Then why did you pick it??
Seriously, I'm 10 minutes into the video, and I've lost count of how many times he's complained about his chosen archtype
A person playing a deck they hate and complain about will build it subpar and play it bad. They do not care about it enough to be serious.
I did exactly this the first time (and second, and third) I played the Caesar deck from the Fallout set.
I was all in on the idea, and it was just awful.
He has exactly one method of playing Commander these days. If it's not that exact style, he seems to see it as subpar.
@@ethanbrownell4247 elf ball in commander is objectively shit though
Seth is correct, "casual" players frequently run little to no interaction. Elves get away with it when there is no removal.
Phil in this thumbnail is so good - Absolute Chad
Heroic intervention is so bad! Gets board wiped by blasphemous act 1 minute later.
yeah for the group every existent Board Wipe is a Farewell
Richard and Seth act like we haven't seen elf ball decks win multiple times in commander clash. Tomer crushed the table last time he played a Naya elves deck.
What kind elf ball is he talking about that is out after 1 wrath? Most of them I see just regrow equally fast again lol
@@Cursedsama The kind that Richard was playing, if he had just gone on edhrec and copy pasted, his deck would have been better that's how bad it is
@@Cursedsama Remember. He says that a land ramp deck comes back faster than others yet he now says that a mana dork deck cannot recover faster after a creature wipe.
Link for the Naya elves deck?
@stefanscutilus1087 season 12 e14. There other times, elfball has run over the table, but this one comes to mind because it's so lopsided.
Richard saving Seth just so he could get killed by him was quite the move.
Twice
Seth was clearly a big threat and Richard ought to be happy to see a big threat removed from the table. But it can be tricky when you foresee death by dragons or death by poison and no play options look likely to lead to escape.
The first hour of lotr has more action than all of season 2 of House of the Dragon. As many hot takes as Richard has, the lotr slander by these guys is by far the wildest to me 😂
"It's also signed! By Brian Kibler, my boyfriend-"
-Tomer
It's whiny Richard special XD
Aside from Farewell, which was a design mistake, you can definitely survive boardwipes in elfball. You have black, run Golgari Charm! And there are so many other things that you should include, for example Heroic Intervention, Resuscitate, Wrap in Vigor, Soul of New Phyrexia, Wail of the Nim, Living Death, Patriarch's Bidding, Haunting Voyage, Thrilling Encore...
And my favourite: Kamahl, Fist of Krosa holding back some mana as a threat. _Whoever wipes loses their lands._
Not to mention og Ezuri (the best elf ball commander) can regenerate your elves
@@skykur It's too bad that as we've seen so many times that regeratation isn't nearly good enough for protection.
@@zacharyroach7947 it would have been good against all the wraths used in these 2 games. No mechanic is perfect, that’s why magic is great.
Right, but it’s Richard, so the argument is that everyone always has Farewell at all times (even if they’re not running white 😂)
@@zacharyroach7947 regeneration is like the ward of hexproof. It has more situations where it does not work, yet many times it still pays off.
Phil only doesn’t like poison cause it means he can’t durdle cause he kills the opponents too quick 😂
I've learned to never judge a deck off of one game like Richard does in the first game. Lathril is insane
basic lands to richard: "well well well how the turntables"
Seth saying the LOTR movies lack action hurts my soul considering the Battle of Helms Deep is the greatest fantasy battle ever out to film.
Not to mention, the Rohirrim arrinving at Pelenor fields is one of the most epic moments ever.
Put another dollar in the "Seth is completely wrong due to willful ignorance" jar.
my favorite play of the game is when Richard wasn't able to fetch a swamp becuase these guys hate basic lands.
Richard has so many bad takes on commander.
Richard complaining constantly about the mana dorks while fyndhorn elves already paid for itself is hilarious.
Arbor elf according to him "untaps a basic forest" so he had to play 9 of them. The takes in this video were Wild.
Richard let elves down this week... this is what we get from someone who thinks cartographers hawk is good. So many ways to punish your opponents for removing your creatures in black like nadiers nightblade, meat hook, elderfang venom, poison tip archer. Not to mention all the spells that can regenerate your creatures or of course heroic intervention. Or dump out dorks that count number of elves you control for exponential mana for any of the draining black spells or x target pump for lethal. Sorry I am just a very passionate elf player and I felt like Lathril was done dirty for thinking all elves are good for is ramping into Crater Hoof
Hawk, siphon mind, dowsing dagger - all of these cards can so some work...in specific decks. You can't just jam them in anything. I actually like how Richard has his own ideas about how to play, but voicing thoughts (complaints abound in this video) about being correct while being objectively wrong is an interesting combination!
Richard always criticizes land decisions in decks and always feels behind in mana at this table
I see you Richard, asking "No attacks with the Plague Myr?" while hiding your untapped Toski back by your lands...
toski would die when blocking wdym
@@SWAT6809 The big squirrel is indestructible my guy.
@@steadfastideal the -1-1 counters that infect deals as combat damage get around indestructible "my guy"
@@SWAT6809brother man! You right, you right. Still valid that Richard had his Toski back by his lands (which is a rules violation) and you can see there's a cut/dissolve on his camera where he moves it up to it's proper place immediately after. I suspect he had it there to differentiate it from his attackers the turn previous and not, you know, literally cheating. Wether the Toski dies or not is completely irrelevant to that point, which was made in jest anyway. Have a nice day random internet commenter!
Richard calling out the two bouncelands from Phil was hilarious
0:08 What are Commaders? LOL
Commanders are legendary creatures in the Commander format for mtg
As a former elves player, you don’t just yeet your mana elves on board unless you have some form of follow up. Slow roll it a bit so you don’t get hosed by interaction.
Richard was banking on someone playing urborg, don't lie 😂
Having 9 basic forests and no swamps was also really confusing. He complained about needing color fixing constantly in the second game, but he did it to himself, lol.
On turn 4, I would’ve swung the plague myr at Richard. His only blocker is toski, who would actually die to the -1/-1 counter that infect would give it. I think that trade is worth risking, and then he’s poisoned.
It pained me that Tomer was able to play a Yavimaya with no fear of Richard having Forestwalk.
Phil thumbnail game on point as alwaays
Phil just exudes the threatening aura even when he plays pillowfort
Big ramp into pillowfort is threatening.
That Richard deck list is certainly one of the elf decks of all time. It's... technically an elf deck. No mass graveyard recursion, no token doublers, no solitaire elf cards... Rhonas Monument and an Emerald Medallion are DISGUSTING in elf ball.
I'll say it. Skill issue.
Thank you! Gotta be one of the worst elf ball decks I've ever seen. It's like he copypasted a elf list then took out like 15 cards to make it less explosive and more fragile to put in more Richard cards. Then proceeds to shit on the archetype the whole time, infuriating.
He played Living Death, which is mass reanimation. Otherwise, agreed.
@@Lucarioguild7 Sounds like something he would do. He is just obnoxious
Surprise ending! I expected Tomer to do the table in one in that second game.
My personal favorite commander deck right now is my Kenrith deck (which used to be Reaver King) that's basically a bunch of value cards. I used to run a conspiracy to give the various things like Horde of Notions, and Lin Sivvi ways to do weird grindy things. But traded it out for an extended art Survival of the Fittest an artist friend from Prague sent me. The deck has morphed quite a lot over the last decade or so.
Phil’s face in the thumbnail has me dead 😭😭
I laugh everytime Richard says dork is unplayable because I remember that I took out every land ramp for dork ramp.
zero guardian projects in sight lmao
Mana Dorks at cmc 1 are a great way to get going. You can still play land ramp and ways to refill your hand.
@@rossmcbeath4997 the ones I play is only cmc 2 and 3 but they all are also combo pieces.
I’ve never heard someone complain about his deck more than Richard in this episode
the key to playing Elfball is to have heroic intervention type effects, not to give up on the entire concept of aggro
Tomer gets punished for helping Phil when Seth was *for sure* gonna do exactly what he did.
Richard’s trauma response to board wipes is the most frustrating thing about this channel. I love everything else, aside from ‘what is the point of doing anything early game, it’ll get wiped’. Nonsense.
Amazing content as always Goldfish Friends, I am so grateful for all the content.
I laying here with 3 hours sleep (cancer issues) and looked out the corner of my eye and was like “why is Phil lifting weights?” He was using his fan to cool off lol :)
Phil your expression in the thumbnail has me deceased. 😂😂
🎶
It's the elf ball life, for us.
It's the elf ball life, for us!
Instead of land ramp, we get dorks.
Instead of winning, we get wrathed!
🎶
32:02 I see, Phil is in hell with me in this blazing European summer
My favourite commander is my first one: Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma. Mono green stompy. Casting cost reduction by 2 is pretty crazy, plus a mini overrun effect every time it attacks. Pretty simple and fun, still works well against many decks.
Here to say: I went from not really watching since MTGO is so slow to being a diehard fan over the last season in paper. Every friday is a treat now. I love this show, and it is by far the best commander content on youtube. Thanks for making it!
I have a Miirym deck that is exclusively cards from D&D sets (AFR/AFC/CLB) . Its slow to start due to the lack of ramp options, but even draft chaff dragons become broken when they are all buy-one-get-one free with Mirrym on the field.
Phil's poses in the thumbnails are always on point
Nice swords to plowshares you have there Phil 👌
🙏
i really don't think any of them besides tomer get what real people play in their commander decks. a casual commander pod is lucky if they have like 6 board wipes combined and doesn't run enough draws/tutors to find them consistently bc most people are just playing with cards they've naturally picked up and not the 40 expensive staples that you can jam into every single deck, especially if they're new players who can't pay $1k for a deck of cards. in fact, most casual pods complain about board wipes unless it's literally saving them at the last second, and there aren't even that many good cheap wipes outside of white.
And in this environment elves really do shine, bc when every deck is trying to be a snowball value train elves just go faster.
Glad we got multiple games. When I saw that there was both an Ur-Dragon deck and a Miirym deck I thought the game would drag on.
1:07:15 My favourite commander deck is Muldrotha Jank, such as "mutate onto Manlands", Emerge pile, "Bring Your Father to Work-day" (Multani-tron), or building around Thespian's Stage as the primary wincon (Urza's Saga, but also Song of the Dryads/Imprisoned in the Moon to "steal" creatures you turned into lands). Just a perfectly open-ended commander that gives so much room for shenanigans, and my favourite card The Eldest Reborn is pretty solid in Muldrotha to boot! Heck yeah.
My perferred Elfball is Tyvar the Bellicose at the wheel, play every single efficient elf manadork and they grow absolutely huge very quickly, run all the green protection spells, seedborn muse effects, and get some black reanimation spells and/or black X finisher spells and you have a deck that's pretty fast, can easily run less than 35 lands, and is resilient to board wipes. It's also fun to run with his two planeswalkers because the untap abilities really let you get huge mana ramp value and/or you get to attack after tapping them for mana.
Tomer, didn't you watch the stats episode? You gotta kill Richard!
Gasp! Crim, woe to us all, the lack of edicts will haunt us forever
What a good first episode of the season!
In my exp, mana dorks are bad in casual. They die to a light breeze.
32 (+2) lands is just asking for non-games.
There are also a handful of cards that require to have some sort of board state or they do nothing.
I have a Lathril deck and quickly found out it's not an "elf" deck, it's a "Lathril" deck. Most strategies and cards center around Lathril. Cards mainly focus on getting Lathril on board, having ways to connect with Lathril (trample/unblockable), protecting Lathril, and card draw (b/c duh).
Token doublers also became useless cards. If Lathril stays alive and connects, making tokens is super easy.
Unless you can finish the game that turn, having too many elves out just paints yourself as a threat (when you may not be) b/c they fear Lathril's activated ability (gain 10 life, they lose 10 life).
@@tanvirrahman7339
I think of Lathril herself as the combo-kill elf deck. You build it around her. If you want degenerate elf ball Marwyn will always be my go to.
You guys have fun playing commander, I'm playing Solitaire over here.
@@BlakeBelladonnaTucAndRoll I use Umbral Mantle and Staff of Domination with dorks that make a lot of mana. What do you use?
@@tanvirrahman7339
My first Marwyn deck I built it where it couldn't "easily" go infinite. So I used the instant and sorcery creature untaps, artifacts to untap, and the return to hand untap X.
My group actually really like to play that deck because it's a good way to teach game actions. And obviously I have the degenerate version that can just draw the deck.
I feel like Richard purposefully made his deck bad so he could complain all game. How the hell do you run eflball and play slower than two dragon decks. Incredibly scuffed mana base and decklist. Not a single basic swamp is crazy.
Love to see Tomer back (although I already miss Crim’s interaction and trolling)
I gasped at 8:02… those lands are stunning 🤩
Phil: "Full disclosure: I don't enjoy this" (as he fails to contain his giggles)
That first game was absolutely how games at my LGS goes
Richard not understanding lathril is kinda super annoying to listen to. If you don't play your 3 mana commander on turn 3 it's gonna be hard. Also when you understand your deck folds to wraths obviously you will build around it with stuff like poisen-tipped archer
This video is proof that I’ve never been wrong targeting the dragon player
For the basics argument, I usually add an amount of waste equal to the land count I want, then cut the deck to size, and finally do the mana base, so no basics problem
That swords art is awesome i might have to pick up a copy
I think a more fun version of this theme would be building the commanders "wrong". Like Lathril Voltron (using effects that give +1/+1 for each creature to buff Lathril's power), Atraxa artifacts (charge counters go brr), etc.
I am very surprised Phil didn't offer the Plague Myr for Richard's Toski and just simply passed the turn. That seems like a win-win to me.
On this week of "Punt or Bluff?" we're the cool kids now. Will Phil bring all the boys to the yard or will Tomer just play kiki-combo again? Tune-in to find out!
I tried Lathriel elf ball... and I agree with Richard; it feels good to have tons of elves... until a board wipe, and it's so hard to recover. I switched to the land drop elf ramp because of that.
I better be seeing a toxrill😂😂
Edit: Atraxa is close enough ig…
Lathril is one of my higher powered decks, and you can go waaaay faster than what Richard was doing. Also he seemed to come in with the preconceived notion that you just build a board and get Wrath'ed off. If you over commit and don't have a reload that's the situation, but yeah, he doesn't seem to have the right build/mindset for it.
CLASH ON!!!!
Phil's dreamtide whale should've triggered on Seth's turn at 28:27. Lathliss was the second card on Seth's turn which would've given him his tenth infect counter
I knew Phil was a good guy when he dropped invasion forest foil 349.
Craterhoof not doing enough damage is maddening when it happens to you. Last time at my LGS I only had 5 creatures so I kept it in my hand and passed the turn, only to get mind controlled by Emrakul. It's fine I think, and then I draw Saw in Half for turn.
The classic Richard saves Seth to stop someone else from winning and then Seth wins.
it was seth or phil who was winning for sure
@masterjbt True but Phil wasn't proliferating Richards poison counters. If Richard allows Phil to kill Seth, he would have got one more turn at least.
He saves Seth twice when he should have done it 0 times
I thought the comments bashing the elves deck were over the top so I checked out the deck list and it really is just that bad. Has Richard never actually seen someone play Lathril before? I’m by no means the biggest elf fanboy but he absolutely built this thing to job.
@4:15 fun fact: the first spell seth ever cast on commander clash was a plague myr
12:30 phil not attacking into Toski with the plague myr. Richard is never blocking in a million years.
Probably forgot that infect is not the same as toxic (I did too)
@@hurrdurrrderp he just don’t got that dawg in him. Us aggro players are a dying breed
Why is Richard running so few basics in a two color deck? Seems like a lot of these non-basic lands are not worth more than a healthy amount of basic lands. Also why is everyone obsessed with these surveil lands? Just because you can fetch them doesn't make entering tapped any better. At least triomes tap for 3 different colors.
Had to do the math.
Seth had 2 nontoken dragons enter and 2 copy dragons enter.
Both Lathliss see the 2 nontokens and make 2 5/5 dragons each.
That is 8 dragons entering, raising the total number of dragons on field when the first Dragon Tempest trigger goes off 12 dragons.
With 8 triggers, that leaves Tomer at -8 and Phil at -15.
A fantastic reward and accidental win. 🤣🤣
(Only saw game one so afar) I thought without Crim there'd be no one to help balance out Richard's massive blinders for Seth, but Tomer's on it. Good job Tomer!
(Now that I've seen game 2). He even mentions how he could have let Seth die and won, but he's so used to saving Seth that he fogged for him again!
He needed to cast the card to get the elves, but as he stated it should have been after damage. Seemed like just a play error, probably the most forgivable of the insane "errors, hot takes, and madness" these games had
@@Alternative-Works True, it was already his plan, and it's not as simple to always see that line with a casual mindset. It just really feels like it's part of the pattern with it coming right after game one.
As for how people build Atraxa, Seth, more than half the time it ends up as more of a generic control shell than as a strict proliferate/infect deck. But the other 3 commander builds are pretty spot-on.
if elves replace all your fogs with board protection. wrap in vigor, heroic intervention etc.
My favorite/pet deck is Extus//Awaken the blood avatar mostly just making tokens and casting awaken the blood avatar as many times as possible to murder people
Best clash on so far!
Richard, Elves of Deep Shadow is only the best mana dork ever if you use the art from The Dark, she's so dreamy! There's a foil of it out there too fwiw.
Richard simply doesn't understand how to play elfball so he plays it badly and says it's bad
Does Richard even enjoy playing Magic? He just constantly complains about how people play or the deck he's playing. It's a game man, try to have fun for once.
Hey Seth, your Arena of Glory should have come into play untapped. It requires you to control a mountain in order to do so, and you played Ziatora's Proving Ground on T1, which is a mountain.
Oops, good call.
i feel richards nerd rage when seth is talking about lotr, I would lose friends over that conversation
At 29:10, shouldn't Seth have been dead since the Dreamtide Whale can proliferate him up to 10 poison?
I am kin with Richard birds is one of my favorite decks especially now that I have Kastral at the helm
Arbor elf untaps any forest, that's what Seth taught us for years playing ponza in modern
I think Seth accidentally put the whiff pile from his Open the Way back on top of his library lol
He shuffled with the two fetch lands when he untapped so he probably just shuffled those cards back towards the top