Full Commander Archetype Breakdown | Strengths, Weaknesses, Game Plans, and Must-Haves
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 ส.ค. 2024
- The list of Commander archetypes is long, but we've got a guide to the 20 most popular ones! We're going over their strengths, weaknesses, must-haves, and game plans!
Use our Tcgplayer affiliate link to buy cards:
bit.ly/NitpickingNerdsTCG
Buying Dragon Shield product in the United States? Use our affiliate link!
bit.ly/DragonShieldUSA
Buying Dragon Shield product in the EU? Use this affiliate link:
bit.ly/DragonShieldEU
Follow us on Moxfield!
www.moxfield.com/users/Nitpic...
Come join our Discord community!
/ discord
Consider Supporting us via Patreon!
www.patreon.com/user?u=15711695
Follow us on Twitter:
NitpickingNerds
Interested in sending us something? We have a PO Box! Use this address:
Joseph Maraschiello
Nitpicking Nerds
PO Box 139
North Tonawanda, NY 14120
USA
--OUR EQUIPMENT--
○Microphones: amzn.to/3wLlrcd
○Cloudlifter: amzn.to/3iZxZc3
○Beginner Microphone: amzn.to/3d0TghB
○Camera: amzn.to/2SQPuRa
○Lighting: amzn.to/3iZVQZe - เกม
Archetype timestamps:
2:15 - Aristocrats
4:34 - Landfall
6:32 - Lifegain
8:30 - Artifacts (on-board)
10:39 - Artifacts (reanimation)
12:18 - Equipment
14:42 - Voltron
16:58 - Enchantress
19:08 - Tokens
21:03 - Treasure
22:48 - Tribal
25:01 - +1/+1 Counters
28:12 - Superfriends
30:20 - Storm (Spellslinger)
32:49 - Group Hug
34:56 - Wheels
36:59 - Graveyard (creatures)
38:41 - Flicker
41:26 - Stax
44:00 - Control
*looks at list*
Wait... Is this roughly in order from most fun to play against to least in their opinion?
@@Kurayamiblack No.
20:16 for those wondering the Token phasing rule was updated in 2017 and the tokens now stay. There are still a lot of old rule discussions that frequently come up in google searches.
Talking about landfall without shouting out to field of the dead?!
The beezy classic, how could this happen? 😓
They show such restraint
It’s heresy
Beezys favorite landfall trigger isn't tireless tracker, Joe. I'm disappointed.
🙀🙀🙀
This is definitely a must watch for newer players. Very informative and condensed without unnecessary details. Great job guys!
exactly what I was looking for
@@SelfCheckout yeah, me as well
Excuse me, but you appear to have forgotten about STOMPY as an archetype. Not every deck that drops big beaters needs tribal synergy, and not every deck that wants spectacular sorcelating needs to chain rituals. Some of us just happen to like our spells like we like our romantic interests: BIG. I'm talking Cascade into Cascade into Cascade into You Done. I'm talking Ultimatums and Elder Dragons. Mayael don't want none unless you're 5 power, son! We keep lit the torch of the OG Spirit of the Format!
Stompy players, I see you, and remember we always have players in these streets.
This was a really informative video. I think this will be a very important resource for newer players to understand some of the core concepts of commander, which they will encounter or may even build around themselves. 10/10
Imo, group hug done right follows a similar pattern to how you described wheels.
1. They accelerate everyone into the late game but you build your deck to be the most likely to win the late game.
2. Alternatively, you can play cards that accelerate everyone, with the catch that they accelerate you more.
It’s my birthday today and I’m turning 18! I love your guy’s channel (it’s probably one of my most favourite channels on TH-cam) and I’ve been looking forward to being wished a happy birthday by y’all :)
My first fully built edh deck is an oloro control deck, the wincons are basically planeswalkers like teferi, ugin, emrakul or just looping infinite turns with kefnet + scroll rack + any extra turn spell. The deck also plays some number of anti creature stax pieces like tainted aether, spreading plague, etc, this is so that the deck no longer needs to play that many boardwipes and have rooms for other removals, counters or more card draw spells. The deck has been surprisingly effective so far, especially against creature decks, has been playing it for years and still loving it.
As a Landfall player I think you missed explaining the Archetype. In future, I would suggest recommending playing extra lands per turn and card draw. Also flying creatures is a known weakness against landfall decks.
A MUST VIDEO FOR NEW PLAYERS, they provide quality content as always 👍🏻 ...
I personally have:
1- Tibal: Arcades (Walls), Varina (Zombies), Kykar (Flying keyword), Zada (goblins/tokens), Yuriko (Ninjas), Kadeena (morph)
2- ETB/Blink: Yarok
3- Stax: Alela (pay extra mana to do anything to me or in general)
4- Artifacts: Osgir
5- Lifegains/Counters: Lathiel
6- Spellslinger: Kalamax
7- Enchantress/Voltron: Tuvasa
8- Graveyard/Reanimate: Obeka
Looking to built: Zaxara (control/token/counters), Zagras (control deathtouch), Goreclaw (Green Stompy), Orvar (control), Obosh (burn)
Honestly with how much Beezy has mentioned Karador over the years, idk about anyone else but I would love a video of him just talking about him and what cards would be good for him. Maybe even just a full deck video lol
@@goblinspy I know he has but I’d like to see him go on about it and just fan boy out on him. The way he likes his karador deck is very wholesome to me lol that and it would be nice for the more complex part of the deck
It's my birthday today. I was actually looking forward to you guys saying that.
Happy Burthday!!
just getting into commander, this was a really helpful video for me! Ive heard of all of these but needed them actually explained with examples
you guys are knocking it out of the park!
This channel just never stops dropping BANGER vids
Funnily enough I got my Teysa Karlov during 2021 for my first deck when I got back into MTG (I originally started out playing in old Theros but couldn't use my old deck for FNM), the Gideon the Oathsworn precon, not realizing she wasn't standard. After Theros Beyond Death dropped and I played at a pre release I fell off of Standard again because I realized how expensive it would be to continue playing and switched over to Commander, converting most of my Gideon deck to an Aristocrats deck using Teysa as my Commander, not even realizing she's one of the best Aristocrats Commanders. At the time I didn't even know the name for the strategy.
I think it is useful to how the archetypes fit into the play styles, agro/combo/control, and how they stack together.
For example zombie tribal is Tribal and Graveyard which can have some Self Mill, but it can also be Aristocrats and Tokens. I call mine Combo/Agro, but it is a mash-up of all those archetypes and i don't think there are many decks in commander that don't have some of that flexibility.
Most edh control decks seem to have elements of stax, superfriends decks tend to lean into those two archetypes as well to stay alive. I think some of the most unique decks are the ones that combine them in unusual ways.
Enchantress aristocrats stax was an interesting one i played against recently. Very controlling deck that tried to combo win but was holding the board back with prison effects and stax pieces.
Great video guys very informative and fun to watch.
I appreciate that you made this video. I tried searching deck types the other day but could only find 3. Aggro, Mid-Range and Control. But I didn't think to look up Archetypes. So now I don't have too! Lol
Agro mid-range and control are definitely deck types for sure, there's also tempo and Combo, these are more general terms while archetypes are more specific. For example, you could have an aristocrats deck that's focused on combo killing as quickly as possible or you can have one that's more focused on controlling the board with death triggers.
Another weakness for lifegain decks: voltron. It's always 20 commander damage to kill a player and they can't use lifegain to change that. That's how I killed a lifegain deck that got up to like 400 life. 23 commander damage in one hit and it was over.
For control, I play Michiko and just punish people for wanting to chip me. Then we use indestructible + hexproof angels, luminarch ascension, monarchy, initiative, and "win the game" stuff like Approach of the Second Sun.
21, not 20
If getting your doctorate in MTG was possible, I’d say you guys are Dr. Cherries and Professor Bezzy! I love the content you guys are doing. You’re getting better and better!
For Stax its worth mentioning that you can also run a Stax deck based on hatebear creatures with a commander like Winota. With those kinds of decks it is much faster at closing the game but a little weaker to board wipes.
Super helpful for every deck
Rites of flourishing works extremely well with Smugglers Share. You just draw a card on everyone’s turn and two on yours. Plus a pretty great chance at getting the treasures from Smugglers. Great for group hug decks
Your comment about Rest in Peace and Replenish is so true. I learned that a while ago. 😂
I swapped it out for Ground Seal. It is still a non-bo with Eternal Witness, but you as long as you run Seal of Cleansing or Primordium, you can blow up Ground Seal (this came up, like, two or three weeks ago).
Great video! It gave me a lot of ideas of decks id like to make
And also i feel so seen, graveyard is easily my favorite deck too
I love this longform style of video
personally when I deck build I like to either go really hard on one archetype to try and maximize its strengths or I'll balance 2 within a deck that play off each other's strengths and weaknesses
My best win with my Veyran deck was against an Izzet Wheel deck. I thanked the player for giving me all my cards so early
This channel gives me the impression that y’all just sat down one day and said to each other “let’s go nuts-to-butts, absolutely full send, hard spec into a channel about the game we love” from the research into magic, to the obvious effort you guys put into making unique and stylized content. F-ing chef’s kiss my fellows.
"Lands are protected by the social contract in commander, so you can't set this deck back to the Stone Age" _shifty eyes... sleeves up Armageddon_
first second of the video, beezy seems a little bit shocked by joes "WELCOME" 😂
I am a surprising welcoming
It’s my birthday video!
🥳
Personally, I enjoy playing Red-Black for sacrificing and recurring artifacts with Juri, Master of Revue as the commander. Examples for this deck are Resourceful Return, Scrap Mastery, Keskit, the Flesh Sculpture, mycosynth Wellspring, Oni-Cult Anvil, Disciple of the Vault, Slag Fiend, Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast, so on and so forth.
Anti-tribal card idea sounded pretty cool. To not make it a dead card it could be something like: as you cast this spell choose a creature type, creatures of the chosen type get either +X/+X or -X/-X until end of turn where X is equal to the number of creatures of the chosen type players control. Great tribal card that doubles as tribal hate in a pinch.
Plague Engineer is the closest thing we have. Could search it out in a creature toolbox deck and start cloning it to make a tribal deck 🥲
NEW NITPICKING NERDS VIDEO!
Umbris Voltron is great and overcomes a lot of weaknesses, blue Artifact fetch, menace/shadow, deadeye Navigator and other bounce effects, lots of fun
Damn no Infect? Could have made a cool bit about how it's actually really hard to win with and basically requires proliferate shenanigans to knock out 3 players
I mean the new most efficient infect strategy is blightsteal ninjutsu
No proliferate required
i have a slimefoot deck with infect. all you have to do is kill 10 spooling's when slimefoot has infect, and you win, because infect just cares about damage not specifically combat damage.
I have my deck teferi and friends which is a stenn paranoid parisian stax superfriends deck, built around slowing everyone down long enough for your planeswalkers to take over. also stasis plus teferi hero of dominaria is pretty good
I love playing Sidisi Ad Naus storm. Granted it’s cedh but it’s ability to win out of nowhere is insane.
I do agree that clones is a more niche archetype than, say, aristocrats or landfall, but I still cry in Brudiclad, Donal, Feldon, Inalla, Jaxis, Kiki-Jiki, Miirym, Orvar, Rhys, Riku and Scarab God.
And Brudiclad, Donal, Feldon, Inalla, Jaxis, Kiki-Jiki, Miirym, Orvar, Rhys, Riku and Scarab God (heh, am I funny yet?).
Super friends is one of my favorites
Lmao the contempt for group hug.
Moxfield mid-run ad time is going to be at 26:47
This is why I made erebos the commander of my lifegain deck. Inherent lifegain payoff on the commander itself and lots of graveyard value in monoblack
Vial smasher sakashima is my grixis control deck. Dealing damage while using one sided removal like cylonc rift, delayed blast fireball, toxic deluge to an extent and extinction event. WIn cons are extra turns and planeswalkers up ticking or just killing people with vial smasher triggers with removal and counter magic. Play cards like sygg, curiosity and ophidian eye to have card advantage and the damage scales as the game goes on because your casting more expensive spells.
That’s pretty meta.
Sounds like a really fun deck man!
Day 3 of asking you guys to get a European Cardmarket ref link so i can passively support you
Yes! Would love that
talking super friends/ flicker and no Aminatou, the fateshifter thats wild
Ive been running toski Voltron who is a 1/1 with indestructible and he has some card draw, it honestly works just bc he's so hard to get out of the game
Adding in Control right at the end felt weird. Without the other evergreen archetypes, such as aggro/combo/midrange/tempo, it felt too vague compared to the other archetypes.
In fact, I think the archetype least understood in edh is tempo. Sometimes it's referred to as a farm deck. But it's the deck that attempts to push its resource efficiency high. Draw extra cards, use your mana efficiently, etc. In CEDH, it's to push towards combos. But Jund Farm decks would be your more typical tempo strategy where you tempo out a board state, and swing the game in your favor with something like Selvala's Stampede or a medium sized Hoof to remove the most threatening player.
tempo is weak at casual edh because you cant make efficient plays in EDH. its simply not possible. The "opposing side" is drawing 3 cards per turn and has 3x the mana you have :D
@@ich3730 I find that argument very strange, because everyone is supposed to somehow come ahead of that "One vs Three" problem by the end of the day. A lot of the time I see games where everyone is keeping each other in check.
And that's where a tempo deck, with some smart play and sand bagging, actually thrives. It doesn't have to be super high power level for a deck running Ledger Shredder/Kraum/Esper Sentinel/Smothering Tithe/other similar incremental value cards to end up being ahead. Jund Farm decks run similar cards, but gain their main advantages through combat with cards like Shakedown Heavy/Grim Hireling/Prof Face Breaker. Usually along some forms of stax and mass removal too. I don't think you've lived until you've hit a Culling Ritual for 8+ mana.
Enlightened Tutor into Darksteel mutation for Erebos
My favorite aristocratics is extus/awaken the blood avatar.
I never play extus and only cast the awaken side, it’s so much fun.
For artifacts I’m currently running Galazeth. Artifact/spellslinger.
For voltron my top pick is bruna alabaster, that was my Al time favorite deck she takes care of the auras going to the grave. nowadays I am making killion.
Are you guys doing a deck tech for the Baldurs Gate precons?
When I hear Aristocrat deck, I think of Athreos, God of Passage with Shadowborne Apostles and some sweet Demons
How do you not think of Mondrak, Glory Dominus when it comes to token decks? Doubling tikens sounds like the best thing you can do in that style of deck.
I feel like Ur Dragon and Edgar Markov are the quintessential tribal commanders, and I guess an elf commander too.
they forgot the creature slinger and stompy, omg!!! It's ok, i don't care. You guys are awesome!!!!
There's also Stigma lasher vs Lifegain decks
Robe of Stars is an absolute house in my Galea voltron deck
Funfact
While not technically blink or flicker red can do something verry simmiliar with temporary clones using cards like kikijiki
you forgot weakness of lifegain is also voltron. and you forgot that tokens and aristocrats has some overlap.
My first thought for voltron was Targle
Whats the most must have card in a lanthril elf deck?
When I heard Chandra Tribal I felt seen.
Blindly guessing the location of the moxfield promo: 29:22
wow, no mention of rograkh son of rohgahh for voltron? Him partnered with ardenn is my favorite voltron deck.
Thanks guys for not failing to upload on my birthday. Definitely gave me a boost considering my wife gave me 3 baulders gate set booster boxes and i cant get myself to tell her its the worst set in recent history because she was so excited to give me them. Somehow only managed to get 1 of the new dragons and like 3 of the reprint lands. Barely covered the cost of one box.
I love that you guys acknowledge Stax as the most fun archetype.
It really is!
I also thought of Ruhan for voltron. I've always had this little voice in the back of my head saying that just suiting up a big creature and attacking an opponent at random would be very fun. But then the logical part of my brain realized that it's just not that strong, (also voltron's just never really interested me,) and so I never end up building it
If you go pick up the Galea precon, you’ll be well in your way to a solid voltron base
I love tribals. Currently have a Spirit, Demon, Vampire, Werewolf, Saproling, Elf, Squirrel, Zombie, Dragon, and Shrines tribal decks
Great to see a fellow tribal fan! I've got cats (& dogs!), wizards, vampires, dragons, angels, slivers, elves, elementals, zombies and snakes :)
@@charliemarlow647 nice! Next one I make is going to be sea creatures with Runo Stormkirk as the Commander
For enchantress, I like to turn my enchantments into creatures with opalescence then go sideways with a finale of devastation into craterhoof
Lmfao! I love it when decks have a specific theme but then go sideways with a win condition from an entirely different gameplay archetype and it actually synergizes 😆
Agent of treachery is nasty in my orvar deck
Everybody loves graveyard shenanigans 👍
Drago and Jesika is cracked for a voltron deck.
How bout a exile cards. I have atheist 1 in every deck with card searches to fine it, especially against indestructible and artifacts style decks, my son runs a scarecrow deck with darksteel forge and rails me with indestructible artifacts.
I know this is a year old but I hope they did see that they have an anti creature type card for the tribal
Sounds like you've not had great experience with group hug decks. They play by remaining innocuous, non-threatening, and gaining political advantage with players, helping them all with the resources they need to weaken each other. Then, once they're all shields down, the group hug deck can seize the opening to turn the tide in their favour. They're very similar to control and forced combat strategies, but play the politics dance in a different way.
I personally think they're very fun and interesting to play with and against, adding a new dynamic to the game.
Group Hug decks, in my experience, almost always fall into the niche of "I know your strategy now, so you aren't innocuous." Like it's a gimmick for a game or two, but once people understand that you're threatening to win, they either use your group hug to speed up their game plan and kill you, or they just outright kill you.
@@baconoftheark If you're that averse to a group hug / politics deck, you should mention that before playing so you don't have to play against it! I respect that you might not enjoy these decks, but please don't fall into the trap of calling out certain strategies as unskilled or ruining the game, as this only spreads negativity. Everyone has different opinions on what's fun in commander and anything is valid as long as people are happy :)
@@charliemarlow647 except control players.
@@nemohimself2580 😂
you forgot mill,infect,discard,chaos,pod and cheerios
With cards like Deep Gnome Terramancer, will Group Hug be more of a "viable" deck and less of a game ruining one when all the group hug cards end with you ahead? Like if you have a Smuggler's Share + Howling Mine you always draw on opponents turns or Terramancer + Veteran Explorer either gives you 2 lands if nobody searcher or 5 if they do putting you way ahead.
Deep gnome only triggers once each turn tho
@@valeriotosto1028 Whoops, forgot the once per turn.
“Sacrifice a creature colon” …like- just its colon? O . O
🤣
No burn? I know it's much harder to pull off in commander since you have 3 opponents and each has 40 life but there are still decks that can pull it off with beefy enough spells (Neheb comes to mind). Mill's also worth a mention, not an archetype that sees a *ton* of commander play due to the whole 100 card decks thing, but still
Also, to me, the most emblematic stax commander is not even Augustin, it's Gaddock Teeg. Because Augustin slows the game down, but you can still *sorta* play. Gaddock Teeg straight up says "oh, you're a Timmy? Well *sorry* Timmy, I guess you just don't *get* to play Magic today. Better luck next time." Though, I guess he's technically more of a hatebears commander than stax per se? Are the two different enough to draw a difference between them?
For tokens I love a cat dog Rin and Siri deck.
What's the commander on the right in the thumbnail
Missed land destruction wheres it at bruh
Moxfield is perfect in every way except having custom categories. Tags aren’t efficient at all
Should be time stamps for archetypes
For those that want to keep their friends, turn the video off at 41:26.
It's missing pillowfort. I play a deck that tries to make myself be untouchable with cards that give hexproof, protection, indestructible, cant loose the game etc.
If I see walking ballista in a landfall deck Imma be mad. (Not real mad, but that doesn't belong in there at all) what in the world does walking ballista have to do with landfall?
Usually run an aristocrat lifegain deck
My bday next Saturday. Just sayin.
wilhelt is my tribal aristocrats
needs update for infect. after the phyrexian precons i have at least 1 infect in my pod every other game... i hate my pod
Storm is one of the strongest archetypes lol. Most people just don’t know how to build the deck properly because they are trying to use guttersnipe and effects like that which isn’t as strong as it once was. I don’t even play cantrips in most of my storm decks.
I like Storm as a concept but when I built my deck I had to intentionally remove half my storm stuff and implant a secondary gameplay strat because I gave myself a migraine during testing trying to keep track of all the bs on the stack 😅
I had that migraine for 4 days btw
Looking forward to the "exile" archetype review a few months/years down the line when mtg solidifies it as graveyard 2.0 like yugioh has
"play from exile" definitely newest archtype
Little bit sad that Mill didn't make the list but I guess it's not really viable these days
Landfall: Can't you just fail to return a land and just return lands like Selesnya Sanctuary, Azorius Chancery, etc... as a loop? -Cultivator Colossus likes this.
Artifact: LOL my Akiri line slinger/ Tevesh szat deck is combination of Voltron/artifact reanimation. I put it on Moxfield, search Akiri and Tevesh. Not a lot of people use that combination but early heat with Akiri voltron and late game heat with Tevesh aristrocrat artifacts #Love
Tribal/token: Varina, Esper zombies is quite underrated
Tokens/Counters: Ghave, every set continues to add more options for this classic commander
Voltron: Try to pick a commander that is hard to deal with (hexproof, indestructibility, protection, etc...) I use Zetalpa
Flicker/Blink: Emiel, I enjoy how silly the deck can be. My Ninjutsu deck is ''like'' a flicker deck with Umezawa
Graveyard: Meren is my Waifu :p
I assume people would usually go Akiri + Silas for the Voltron/Artifact reanimation style.
@@AnExercisInThought Going the same 4 colours as Breya? I'd probably just play Breya. I originally was using Tymna with Akiri but ran out of gas sometimes. Tevesh for some reason is very good at picking up the slack and providing late game threats by: putting out tokens that can be equipped or sacrificed for cards and the possible threat of stealing all commanders, which can happen more often than you think :P
Does having your opponent disqualified for punching you in the throat count as a win condition?
Osgir equipment deck.
Timestamps would be nice 😅