i have already had a few clever commander players in the comments giving me some neat ideas of how to build around these commanders. that's what i love about this format. it's like the entire communities collective mind power comes to bear on solving a problem.
Speaking of Brothers Yamazaki, I'm still mad that the two Yamazaki sisters we got in Neon Dynasty also weren't partner commanders. Sure, you can rule 0 it, but the fact that Wizards made two more Yamazaki siblings and still decided they wouldn't get partner is criminal.
@@kaipographyexactly, they were cousins fighting in opposite sides. However given that the set was really into playing both enchantments and artifacts at the same time it's a big ol' shame.
Nebuchadnezzar can make an opponent discard all the basic lands of the same name in their hand. Usually these cards say "name a nonland card". This one doesn't. Not bad against mono coloured decks.
I have a Nebuchadnezzar Booby Trap deck and it does alright. Most games I don’t really use Nebuchadnezzar, but if I see someone draw something bad for me (usually artifact sweepers) from the top of their library I might try to snipe it out of their hand. Not a “good” commander by any means, but the deck has seen an oddly high amount of wins for the amount of jank being pulled off. Building around Nebuchadnezzar kinda sucks, but he does make for an interesting problem solver commander
4:10 I used to have an Alexi, Zephyr Mage deck that revolved around using Wheel effects. The discard cost doesn't matter because right after filling an opponents hand, I activated Jace's Archivist or ripped off a Windfall. Even Teferi's Puzzlebox is great because it puts all those creatures on the bottom of their library. I also used Yavimaya and Lifeforce in the deck to reward myself with a lot of life if all I was doing was bouncing. The way I closed out games, aside from just finishing people off with combat damage, was a ton of universal draw (like Prosperity or Font of Mythos) with Black Vise effects to whittle people down after filling their hands (and I obviously had a Labratory Maniac in there). Forcing everybody to draw a ton of cards also made the Wheeling even juicier. But there just weren't enough of the various effects I was relying on in mono blue and the deck was wildly inconsistent. I would either get some big turns and run the table or fizzle out while everybody ganged up on me. It was just too flashy and made me a target every time I pulled it out.
@@immortalgamer3960 There's only five that are playable in that context since two of them are counterspells. It's nice when you have them in hand, but it's not something that I found to be reliable.
@@VegtamTheWonderer Well, you could still activate at instant speed, which you're probably going to do anyway. Still, there are far fewer than I'd thought.
My "Old man Neb" is one of a few decks that I pull out when I feel like being the Archenemy. Lots of cards like Urzas Glasses and telepathy that let me see your hand, and a ton of discard effects. And if I am feeling evil, I start naming lands. Edit: I have since moved him into my Crosis discard deck.
With Iwamori of the Open fist, you just gotta convince everyone to wait until they have a legendary creature in hand before you cast him. And then never cast him.
I've heard of a small subset of players who essentially play "vintage EDH", where all the cards have to come from old sets. I'll bet that's where most of those vanilla commander decks get their numbers.
I played during the release of homeland and empire... the cards to me were so beautiful. I would love wizards to "redeem" those sets. Way more then some of the universes beyond stuff in the pipeline.
I actually have thought about building a Hivis deck (Yes I have a friend who's obsessed with Dragon tribal), the ways I've thought of to use him is using Maskwood nexus and harmless offering, mono red really likes recycling artifacts and has a lot of chaos cards that let you switch control of things, there's even a couple that give dragons to your opponents. Also the steal and sack for value seems like it'd be interesting.
Oooh Akuta. He's a really funny guy actually, I tried to build him once. He works very well with stickers and also distended mindbender. I might try to have a go at him again, I'm sure it's doable.
On Arashi. There is Pixie Queen and Flying Carpet to give your opponents creatures flying. Looking at Edhrec people seem to build Anti-flying tribal. Which seems like a fun, casual build i could see myself doing. Fliers are everywhere at least in my playgroup
My NEBUCHADNEZZAR deck slaps! Its a ‘tap abilities’ deck, centered around cards like vizier of tumbling sands, and does freed from the reel combos. infinite untap, infinite mana, infinite discard - and I can assemble these combos consistently. My combo payoffs: - infinite mikokoro activations or Grier reach + elixir of immortality to draw my opponents out - infinite Nephalia Drownyard activations to mill my opponents - infinite Thoughtcutter Agent activations to drain my opponents - infinite Havengul Laboratory activations to make infinite clues, and then draw my deck to find any of the other pieces. Most of these payoffs are on lands too, which is always safe and useful. Tolaria West and expedition map tech. I can also snag lotus field, and Tolaria can get astral cornucopia too, which are both anchors to the infinite mana combo. But sadly, combo decks are typically fragile, and if my combo gets shut down i’ll have to resort to backup plans. I use a handful of reanimator cards to recur my opponents creatures (maybe I just had an opponent discard a juicy creature with my Nebuchadnezzar activation?). Or maybe I just get back that combo piece you destroyed. Cards like ancient brass dragon or havengul lich can be very helpful. I have bounce spells to get permanents into my opponents hands for them to discard (which I know is a lot of hoops to go through, but they say it’s about the joy in the journey, not the destination) I have windfall and loot effects to aid in the discard. Fun strat that I’ve pulled off 3 times now: you draw about 9 cards with arcanis the omnipotent, sea gate restoration drawing 15 more cards, windfall to have everyone discard and draw 30, activate elixir of immortality shuffling gy into deck, activate jace’s archivist to have everyone windfall again, maybe untap and do it one more time? And boom. I just drew everyone out. It’s actually a really fun deck. It doesn’t lean to heavily on the commander, so I suppose it’s more of a method 2 commander. When I do find myself activating him it usually gets a few chuckles at the table, especially if it’s one of those ‘we got an archenemy friends, how can we take them down’ situations. Is there a better commander for this deck? Rona or Vohar would certainly do a better job (they’re in the 99). However, with thoughtcutter agent, telepathy, and other peek effects in the deck, I had to go with theme over power. What are your thoughts? I’d love to crush you with it some day 😎
For Alexi Zephyr Mage, you could build it around value ETB triggers on your creatures with a small wheel subtheme to act as removal for your opponents. Cast/evoke your creatures such as mulldrifter to make up for the discard cost then bounce it while the sacrifice trigger is on the stack. Or cast a wheel effect then bounce creatures your opponents control in response to the wheel. Is it a great gameplan? No. Could it work? Maybe.
This feels like it would get you removed first since you would essentially be controlling the hole board. It a grate idea tho, would be effective against any creature deck or decks that use creatures for other shinanigans
So I had a thought for Alexi, Zephyr Mage. If you look at her ability at face value, yes, it's bad. But, what is the ability doing? Bouncing stuff back to people's hands. What happens when you bounce stuff back to people's hands? Their hands fill up. I like to build decks that don't require my commander to function. So in that spirit, you build a bounce deck and keep people's hands full and punish them for it with cards like Skullcage, Viseling, Iron Maiden, and Black Vise. Then play copy cards like Phyrexian Metamorph and Mirrormade to copy those cards to increase the damage they take. To ensure they don't cast many spells, play Arcane Laboratory. If you want to take it step further and really make sure they aren't casting many spells, play Embargo and Rising Waters. Back all this up with counter magic of course. My only wish was that there was some way to give your opponents no maximum hand size to really increase the damage and more ways to get value from discarding cards beyond things like Drake Haven, Mystic Redaction, or Currency Converter/Bag of Holding. Not sure if this would work or not but I think it's a cool direction to take her at least.
This is interesting. There are actually ways to give your opponents no maximum hand size in blue. Folio of Fancies and Anvil of Bogardan come to mind. There may be more; you should build this deck!
Bravo! Creative decks like that are my favorite! I tried a similar concept using wheels in mono-red, but it didn't really have a way to keep the cards in the hands of my opponents. You make mono-blue sound promising, though!
Autumn Willow damage redirect matters can get pretty nutty. I faced off against it once and it made attacking that player pointless since the damage was just dispersed among the player's creatures.
Honestly I’ve thought about building an Alexi deck for years. You can play a lot of flash and use her as a rattlesnake, and late game can use it as a mini cyc rift and tempo out your opponents.
I actually have a Brothers Yamazaki deck. It is rule 0'd of course to have two copies of Brothers Yamazaki as partners in the command zone. The deck has a couple of themes, first and foremost is the fact that I have two commanders, so the deck is filled with cards that have to do with my commander(s) specifically such as Flamekin Herald, Campfire, Kediss, Skyfire Phoenix, Guild Artisan, Tyrant's Familiar, Deflecting Swat, etc, etc. Then the secondary theme is simply a Voltron strategy with lots of Equipment such as Commander's Plate, Hero's Blade, Brass Knuckles, Blood-Forged Battle-Axe, etc. The third subtheme has to do with doubling things, though this is a very bare bones theme which includes Warrior's Oath, Savage Beating, Twinferno, Lizard Blades, Sculpting Steel, Reverberate, Mirage Mirror, etc. Now, I suppose most of these themes don't really have anything to do with the mechanics of the Brothers Yamazaki per se. The commander theme works with any set of partner commanders, the Voltron theme works with any combat-y commander, and the doubling theme only has a flavour connection, but it is still a pretty good and really fun Brothers Yamazaki that fits thematically and actually does make use of them being your commanders specifically.
Rashida Scalebane is actually a really fun commander to build around! I’ve put together a deck which focuses on playing my own dragons which I will use rashidas ability on to get that life gain. Then I have a bunch of recursion but more interestingly a lot of things that give my dragons indestructible. Rashidas ability can still target creatures with indestructible they just don’t destroy them, however the life gain does still happen! Obviously it’s not that powerful, but i wanted a mono white deck, and liked the idea of a dragon deck but didn’t want to use one of the super busted commanders. Also liked the challenge of building a commander with I think 32 decks on edhrec haha
Akuta, Born of Ashes I feel has a lot of potential since you only need to cast it once from the command zone and its own effect allows it to keep coming back. It would certainly love the Background cards. Your deck could run plenty of draw along with cards to remove your max hand size, some discard effects to try and keep opponents hand size below yours, then run the Background cards like Cultist of the Absolute and Haunted One to buff Akuta to make it a formidable boss to take down
I feel like with stang you'd want something that triggers when creatures enter and/or leave the battlefield since everytime you blink stang you get two enters and exits triggers
Rashida doesn't say it's an opponent's dragon. If you want to sacrifice (ish) your own dragon for life. Kill your own Ao? Or Yosei? But yeah, terrible.
It’s not too powerful, but any life gain Commander has enough potential payoffs to be playable and dangerous because they can just win out of nowhere. M Is there better ? Absolutely. Not the point when you are playing these obscure Commanders.
@@edhdeckbuilding I wonder if you did Maskwood Nexus and then had Rhox Faithmender/Alhammaret’s Archive, etc along with payoffs like Nykthos Paragon and Aetherfluc Reservoir. It’s an expensive mana deck, but could be interesting to have a mono white sacrifice deck with some lifegain
Ive been tinkering with Brothers Yamazaki for a while. Weve gotten a lot more clone effects in red which makes it more viable. Delina Wild Mage and Mirror March can get a few tokens out at a time as well. The hard part is getting around the legend rule but we’ve gotten a few more artifact tutors in red recently which helps. Really good payoff, its just hard to get to that point.
The best thing I can think of to do with Daughter of Autumn requires cards that don't even exist- specifically, if there was any kind of "stuffy doll" effect or other "you want this creature to take damage" type of effect on an equipment or aura. But I couldn't find anything like that, at least not in white or green. That squirrel aura you mentioned and Ward of Piety were about it. *ETA:* For Rashida, I almost wonder if there's a way to fix it so YOU'RE running a Dragon deck (Not easy in monowhite, of course) and then get death triggers so you're getting value for nuking your own dragons? This doesn't fix Hivis, though, since taking control of your own creatures is pointless (Even if monored dragons is much more usable)
I contemplated running rashida in my kyodai spirit dragon "abuse legend rule for death triggers" deck but at 5 mana there are just wayyyyy beter sac outlets i just count justify it.
I was of that opinion of alexi (and the other cards in that cycle) but please, dont overlook them! Alexi (whos built in protection is kinda like chulane, tho comparing the two puts a bad taste in my mouth xd) works so well with mana doublers, leaves the battlefield, any flashback/unearth/madness/jumpstart/retrace, you could do ETBs but i think torpor orb pairs nice with her here. It keeps our opponents from getting value off our bounces and doesnt stop LTBS and other yard mechanics. Slap haste on her and its just perma bounce. there is that one barrin bounce tribal piece. Because youre targetting so many creatures per mana, you can put dismiss into dream in there and all of a sudden you have an instant speed onesided board wipe. Or maybe instead/alongside the torpor orb type cards you run the ETB untap their mana in lands and do the fairest soft combo for a bajillion mana. At base, you have a 1 mana way to put cards in your hand in your yard in the zone, so you could use that 7 mana reanimator artifact (and any other blue reanimate adjacent effects) to have a very janky but still doable mono blue ‘reanimator’
While the OG Stangg was truly terrible, they released a fixed version that you could build around effectively. It copied all auras and equipment attached to the original to the copy.
Me and a friend brewed an Ishi-Ishi deck where the concept is to donate it and then play spirits to deal damage to your self and then have effects like blood hound in the deck for pay offs
Most of my decks have “underwhelming commanders” as well as a budget of $100 (only few exceptions; Cost doesn’t include foil or variant upgrades) Sauron-lotr precon Omnath locus of rage Edgar Markov Szadek lord of secrets Egon god of death Kresh the bloodbraided Koma world eater Tariel reckoner of souls Rakdos lord of riots Purphoros god of forge Melira the living cure Raffine scheming seer Ezuri claw of progress Progenitus
I once built iwamori of the open fist as a joke commander. We all built a deck and we randomly chose who got to play each other's decks. The catch is that we didnt know what each other's commander was other than the mana cost. I was just hoping for some nonsense to happen where we got a couple of creatures in for free. Its still a 4 mana 5/5 trampler. At least thats what i told myself to justify building it.
Alexi seems like a fun commander to cheat card effects like Evoking or an upkeep/endstep trigger to sac or a similar negative effect. If I didn't have a Mono Blue deck I enjoyed, she actually looks interesting. Mana cost of her is the only big issue.
a friend of mine builded a og torsten deck and was done right a week before the new one came out, and the most funny thing was he, build it with all sac outlets like greater good and so on. It's basically all you want to do with the new version xD
Nebuchchadnezzer would be ok against relentless rats, shadowborn apostle, slime against humanity, etc. Decks. There's better tech for it, but I'm just thinking of best possible scenario, which isn't completely terrible.
I have a Iwamori of the Open Fist deck and it’s voltron but it’s an instant and sorcery spellslinger one-punch man deck. I use all of the giant growth type cards and play with a lot of stuff that cares about instants and sorceries. I also use a lot of fight cards to bait my opponents into dropping their creatures so they can get punched out. Unfortunately because it’s voltron it’s a little boring but baiting out creatures to remove and doing spellslinger in mono-green is kinda fun.
I see a lot of people talking about brothers yamizaki Ive thought of the clone idea but ive talked with my playgroup to rule zero them having "you may have any number in your deck" Havent put it together yet but i think its a fun way to make them into essentially a rat colony
I have Nebuchadnezzar on a deck idea list, because i thought there may be quite a few things like telepathy, where players play with hand revealed. I dont think it would be good.. but funny.
I bulit the Stangg deck involving making copies of him with red copy spells and mirror box making tons if him and swinging it was fun and tier 2 or 3 but fun
Yknow where Iwamori is great tho? Pauper commander where only commons are legal 😂 I built him in a pod like that and just smashed face with combat tricks and protection spells
Cast Yosei, attack, tap Rashida to sacrifice your own dragon, stax an opponent AND gain 5 life. C-C-C-COMBO!!! 😂 You can even sacrifice Yosei AFTER dealing combat damage! WOW!!! 😂😂😂
@35:33 Ishi-Ishi, Akki Crackshot Yeah, this card is a fringe card hating on a fringe strategy. I guess it can get an incidental 3 damage against green players that play Kodama's Reach, but that's about it.
@edhdeckbuilding thinking about maskwood nexus and now i want to give all my opponents it just to see them go "why did you do this. What did you build?" Love seeing people trying to figure out what a deck does as they are playing against it. Not sure on colors but anti tipal tipal?
Nebuchadnezzar is actually *decent* if your deck runs the Isochron Scepter + Dramatic Reversal combo. This makes all your opponents discard their hand. There are ofcourse dimir commanders that outright wins you the game with IsoRev, but those don't have RFK art.
I actually think rashida scalebane can be an interesting build around for a monowhite dragons deck if im reading the card right It doesnt say opponents creature and you can have a sub-theme of mono white life gain/reanimator Possibly even give your dragons indestructible because they dont actually have to enter the graveyard im pretty sure
@edhdeckbuilding I'm actually inspired to make this deck, idk how possible it is but I'm gonna give it a shot because it sounds like a lot of fun and I've been searching for a unique monowhite deck idea and you helped me find it That's why I love your videos
I'm not the best at rulings but could Akuta infinitely revive itself as long as you have swamps? Maybe you could have a sac outlet and keep sacking it for some kind of combo that wins the game that turn?
@edhdeckbuilding Yeah? She's chilling in the command zone until you're playing against a enchantment deck i guess! But sure I got your point. Any opinion on addding companions just for the color fixing without ever playing them?
I have ishi-ishi in my krenko deck. Its only pinged someone once when they played a kodamas reach😂 pretty useless card but i love the rock looking goblins art
@ yes starters, them playing enough creatures… Red has plenty of ways to move around artifacts around zones… but getting that ONE artifact into play and on your opponents field in a timely fashion before they win… 🤷🏻 fun and clever but not ideal. I like the daughter of autumn idea with pariah kind of effects but definitely dicey… requires them to attack/block you… maybe they keep you around til your the last one and don’t have a choice but attack or block them? 🤷🏻🤷🏻 wishful thinking I suppose.
I have a hiviss deck that uses hunted dragon + various donate and exhange control effect to give my opponents dragons/maskwood nexus and play politics. Its really bad 😂
Hey demo cool video i have a daughter of autumn deck banding tribal and most creatures with banding are white so its funny to f up combat in a weird way plus its a bad commander so it doesnt make you a target😂😂
@@Twime. sadly there are a total of 7 madness cards in mono blue and some of them are situational and overcosted so you'll need to keep mana up for an offchance to use that 4 madness cost counterspell so this commander would just sit there most of the time. not saying it cant be viable, but it adds to demo's point is that there's a lot to do to just make it moderately acceptable, only to make yourself a target
i have already had a few clever commander players in the comments giving me some neat ideas of how to build around these commanders. that's what i love about this format. it's like the entire communities collective mind power comes to bear on solving a problem.
Speaking of Brothers Yamazaki, I'm still mad that the two Yamazaki sisters we got in Neon Dynasty also weren't partner commanders. Sure, you can rule 0 it, but the fact that Wizards made two more Yamazaki siblings and still decided they wouldn't get partner is criminal.
Lore wise the sisters split ideologically iirc which is why they wouldn’t be partnered. But yeah still unfortunate
@@kaipographyexactly, they were cousins fighting in opposite sides. However given that the set was really into playing both enchantments and artifacts at the same time it's a big ol' shame.
I’ve actually seen these commanders out in the wild. Rule 0 partner. I think it’s a super sweet deck
wasn't a commander set, why would they give partner to standard set creatures
@ "wasn't a commander set" lmao every set is a commander set.
Nebuchadnezzar can make an opponent discard all the basic lands of the same name in their hand.
Usually these cards say "name a nonland card".
This one doesn't.
Not bad against mono coloured decks.
My friend has a Daughter of Autumn deck with only Homelands and Fallen Empire cards in it.
I have a Nebuchadnezzar Booby Trap deck and it does alright. Most games I don’t really use Nebuchadnezzar, but if I see someone draw something bad for me (usually artifact sweepers) from the top of their library I might try to snipe it out of their hand. Not a “good” commander by any means, but the deck has seen an oddly high amount of wins for the amount of jank being pulled off.
Building around Nebuchadnezzar kinda sucks, but he does make for an interesting problem solver commander
i actually came up with something. i will be revising this video soon.
Rashida plus a white dragons deck plus recursion and indestructibility granters. Jank but feasible.
4:10 I used to have an Alexi, Zephyr Mage deck that revolved around using Wheel effects. The discard cost doesn't matter because right after filling an opponents hand, I activated Jace's Archivist or ripped off a Windfall. Even Teferi's Puzzlebox is great because it puts all those creatures on the bottom of their library. I also used Yavimaya and Lifeforce in the deck to reward myself with a lot of life if all I was doing was bouncing.
The way I closed out games, aside from just finishing people off with combat damage, was a ton of universal draw (like Prosperity or Font of Mythos) with Black Vise effects to whittle people down after filling their hands (and I obviously had a Labratory Maniac in there). Forcing everybody to draw a ton of cards also made the Wheeling even juicier.
But there just weren't enough of the various effects I was relying on in mono blue and the deck was wildly inconsistent. I would either get some big turns and run the table or fizzle out while everybody ganged up on me. It was just too flashy and made me a target every time I pulled it out.
There's also a reasonable number of blue madness cards to reduce the hit you take in discard from it.
@@immortalgamer3960 There's only five that are playable in that context since two of them are counterspells. It's nice when you have them in hand, but it's not something that I found to be reliable.
@@VegtamTheWonderer Well, you could still activate at instant speed, which you're probably going to do anyway. Still, there are far fewer than I'd thought.
My "Old man Neb" is one of a few decks that I pull out when I feel like being the Archenemy. Lots of cards like Urzas Glasses and telepathy that let me see your hand, and a ton of discard effects. And if I am feeling evil, I start naming lands.
Edit: I have since moved him into my Crosis discard deck.
Isochron scepter would be a way of repeatedly casting those changeling spells.
Came to say the same thing.
With Iwamori of the Open fist, you just gotta convince everyone to wait until they have a legendary creature in hand before you cast him.
And then never cast him.
😂 That's evil!
I've heard of a small subset of players who essentially play "vintage EDH", where all the cards have to come from old sets. I'll bet that's where most of those vanilla commander decks get their numbers.
What about an Alexi ninjitsu deck where you can bounce your own ninjas back for value? It will be shit, of course, but at least It sounds interesting
I always wished they made like a “return to homelands/fallen empires” and revisit the notoriously bad sets/blocks
I played during the release of homeland and empire... the cards to me were so beautiful. I would love wizards to "redeem" those sets. Way more then some of the universes beyond stuff in the pipeline.
I actually have thought about building a Hivis deck (Yes I have a friend who's obsessed with Dragon tribal), the ways I've thought of to use him is using Maskwood nexus and harmless offering, mono red really likes recycling artifacts and has a lot of chaos cards that let you switch control of things, there's even a couple that give dragons to your opponents. Also the steal and sack for value seems like it'd be interesting.
Oooh Akuta. He's a really funny guy actually, I tried to build him once. He works very well with stickers and also distended mindbender. I might try to have a go at him again, I'm sure it's doable.
On Arashi. There is Pixie Queen and Flying Carpet to give your opponents creatures flying. Looking at Edhrec people seem to build Anti-flying tribal. Which seems like a fun, casual build i could see myself doing. Fliers are everywhere at least in my playgroup
My NEBUCHADNEZZAR deck slaps!
Its a ‘tap abilities’ deck, centered around cards like vizier of tumbling sands, and does freed from the reel combos. infinite untap, infinite mana, infinite discard - and I can assemble these combos consistently.
My combo payoffs:
- infinite mikokoro activations or Grier reach + elixir of immortality to draw my opponents out
- infinite Nephalia Drownyard activations to mill my opponents
- infinite Thoughtcutter Agent activations to drain my opponents
- infinite Havengul Laboratory activations to make infinite clues, and then draw my deck to find any of the other pieces.
Most of these payoffs are on lands too, which is always safe and useful. Tolaria West and expedition map tech. I can also snag lotus field, and Tolaria can get astral cornucopia too, which are both anchors to the infinite mana combo.
But sadly, combo decks are typically fragile, and if my combo gets shut down i’ll have to resort to backup plans.
I use a handful of reanimator cards to recur my opponents creatures (maybe I just had an opponent discard a juicy creature with my Nebuchadnezzar activation?). Or maybe I just get back that combo piece you destroyed. Cards like ancient brass dragon or havengul lich can be very helpful.
I have bounce spells to get permanents into my opponents hands for them to discard (which I know is a lot of hoops to go through, but they say it’s about the joy in the journey, not the destination)
I have windfall and loot effects to aid in the discard. Fun strat that I’ve pulled off 3 times now: you draw about 9 cards with arcanis the omnipotent, sea gate restoration drawing 15 more cards, windfall to have everyone discard and draw 30, activate elixir of immortality shuffling gy into deck, activate jace’s archivist to have everyone windfall again, maybe untap and do it one more time? And boom. I just drew everyone out.
It’s actually a really fun deck. It doesn’t lean to heavily on the commander, so I suppose it’s more of a method 2 commander. When I do find myself activating him it usually gets a few chuckles at the table, especially if it’s one of those ‘we got an archenemy friends, how can we take them down’ situations.
Is there a better commander for this deck? Rona or Vohar would certainly do a better job (they’re in the 99). However, with thoughtcutter agent, telepathy, and other peek effects in the deck, I had to go with theme over power.
What are your thoughts? I’d love to crush you with it some day 😎
For Alexi Zephyr Mage, you could build it around value ETB triggers on your creatures with a small wheel subtheme to act as removal for your opponents.
Cast/evoke your creatures such as mulldrifter to make up for the discard cost then bounce it while the sacrifice trigger is on the stack. Or cast a wheel effect then bounce creatures your opponents control in response to the wheel. Is it a great gameplan? No. Could it work? Maybe.
The evoke idea is interesting, but with Mulldrifter/Nulldrifter, you’re just discarding the cards you drew.
I think Madness cards would be the best, or artifacts that want to go to the yard to get back out
This feels like it would get you removed first since you would essentially be controlling the hole board. It a grate idea tho, would be effective against any creature deck or decks that use creatures for other shinanigans
So I had a thought for Alexi, Zephyr Mage. If you look at her ability at face value, yes, it's bad. But, what is the ability doing? Bouncing stuff back to people's hands. What happens when you bounce stuff back to people's hands? Their hands fill up.
I like to build decks that don't require my commander to function. So in that spirit, you build a bounce deck and keep people's hands full and punish them for it with cards like Skullcage, Viseling, Iron Maiden, and Black Vise. Then play copy cards like Phyrexian Metamorph and Mirrormade to copy those cards to increase the damage they take. To ensure they don't cast many spells, play Arcane Laboratory. If you want to take it step further and really make sure they aren't casting many spells, play Embargo and Rising Waters. Back all this up with counter magic of course.
My only wish was that there was some way to give your opponents no maximum hand size to really increase the damage and more ways to get value from discarding cards beyond things like Drake Haven, Mystic Redaction, or Currency Converter/Bag of Holding.
Not sure if this would work or not but I think it's a cool direction to take her at least.
Anvil of baghvan (likely spelled that last word wrong) makes people skip their discard phase, so essentially it does give people no max hand size
This is interesting. There are actually ways to give your opponents no maximum hand size in blue. Folio of Fancies and Anvil of Bogardan come to mind. There may be more; you should build this deck!
Oh man, thank you for those guys. I completely missed them.
This is actually a super neat idea for a deck. Good job!
Bravo! Creative decks like that are my favorite!
I tried a similar concept using wheels in mono-red, but it didn't really have a way to keep the cards in the hands of my opponents. You make mono-blue sound promising, though!
Autumn Willow damage redirect matters can get pretty nutty. I faced off against it once and it made attacking that player pointless since the damage was just dispersed among the player's creatures.
they must have had a tone of white mana open.
@@edhdeckbuilding Yeah, they also had General's Kabuto so it made it really hard to get any damage through.
Honestly I’ve thought about building an Alexi deck for years. You can play a lot of flash and use her as a rattlesnake, and late game can use it as a mini cyc rift and tempo out your opponents.
The 7 mana mana dork is my favorite lmao!!!!!!!!!!!
I actually have a Brothers Yamazaki deck. It is rule 0'd of course to have two copies of Brothers Yamazaki as partners in the command zone. The deck has a couple of themes, first and foremost is the fact that I have two commanders, so the deck is filled with cards that have to do with my commander(s) specifically such as Flamekin Herald, Campfire, Kediss, Skyfire Phoenix, Guild Artisan, Tyrant's Familiar, Deflecting Swat, etc, etc.
Then the secondary theme is simply a Voltron strategy with lots of Equipment such as Commander's Plate, Hero's Blade, Brass Knuckles, Blood-Forged Battle-Axe, etc.
The third subtheme has to do with doubling things, though this is a very bare bones theme which includes Warrior's Oath, Savage Beating, Twinferno, Lizard Blades, Sculpting Steel, Reverberate, Mirage Mirror, etc.
Now, I suppose most of these themes don't really have anything to do with the mechanics of the Brothers Yamazaki per se. The commander theme works with any set of partner commanders, the Voltron theme works with any combat-y commander, and the doubling theme only has a flavour connection, but it is still a pretty good and really fun Brothers Yamazaki that fits thematically and actually does make use of them being your commanders specifically.
Rashida Scalebane is actually a really fun commander to build around! I’ve put together a deck which focuses on playing my own dragons which I will use rashidas ability on to get that life gain. Then I have a bunch of recursion but more interestingly a lot of things that give my dragons indestructible. Rashidas ability can still target creatures with indestructible they just don’t destroy them, however the life gain does still happen! Obviously it’s not that powerful, but i wanted a mono white deck, and liked the idea of a dragon deck but didn’t want to use one of the super busted commanders. Also liked the challenge of building a commander with I think 32 decks on edhrec haha
You leave Nebuchadnezzar alone!
Akuta, Born of Ashes I feel has a lot of potential since you only need to cast it once from the command zone and its own effect allows it to keep coming back. It would certainly love the Background cards. Your deck could run plenty of draw along with cards to remove your max hand size, some discard effects to try and keep opponents hand size below yours, then run the Background cards like Cultist of the Absolute and Haunted One to buff Akuta to make it a formidable boss to take down
I feel like with stang you'd want something that triggers when creatures enter and/or leave the battlefield since everytime you blink stang you get two enters and exits triggers
Ive built over 250 different commanders and have not built any of these…..although that RKF art is so damn good that i would make him a commmander.
Rashida doesn't say it's an opponent's dragon. If you want to sacrifice (ish) your own dragon for life. Kill your own Ao? Or Yosei? But yeah, terrible.
It’s not too powerful, but any life gain Commander has enough potential payoffs to be playable and dangerous because they can just win out of nowhere. M
Is there better ? Absolutely. Not the point when you are playing these obscure Commanders.
that's actually a neat idea. the only issue is that dragons are expensive. you'll have to pay like 6 mana just to gain 5 or 6 life.
@@edhdeckbuilding I wonder if you did Maskwood Nexus and then had Rhox Faithmender/Alhammaret’s Archive, etc along with payoffs like Nykthos Paragon and Aetherfluc Reservoir. It’s an expensive mana deck, but could be interesting to have a mono white sacrifice deck with some lifegain
I feel like an Akuta landfall deck could be interesting where the Swamp sac is actually a benefit
Ive been tinkering with Brothers Yamazaki for a while. Weve gotten a lot more clone effects in red which makes it more viable. Delina Wild Mage and Mirror March can get a few tokens out at a time as well. The hard part is getting around the legend rule but we’ve gotten a few more artifact tutors in red recently which helps. Really good payoff, its just hard to get to that point.
Helm of the host, calamity, Orthion. Lots to do there
Irini Sengir was aimed at circles of protection. Not an issue today.
The best thing I can think of to do with Daughter of Autumn requires cards that don't even exist- specifically, if there was any kind of "stuffy doll" effect or other "you want this creature to take damage" type of effect on an equipment or aura.
But I couldn't find anything like that, at least not in white or green. That squirrel aura you mentioned and Ward of Piety were about it.
*ETA:* For Rashida, I almost wonder if there's a way to fix it so YOU'RE running a Dragon deck (Not easy in monowhite, of course) and then get death triggers so you're getting value for nuking your own dragons?
This doesn't fix Hivis, though, since taking control of your own creatures is pointless (Even if monored dragons is much more usable)
Pariah kind of does this. But needs a ton of set up
I contemplated running rashida in my kyodai spirit dragon "abuse legend rule for death triggers" deck but at 5 mana there are just wayyyyy beter sac outlets i just count justify it.
I was of that opinion of alexi (and the other cards in that cycle) but please, dont overlook them! Alexi (whos built in protection is kinda like chulane, tho comparing the two puts a bad taste in my mouth xd) works so well with mana doublers, leaves the battlefield, any flashback/unearth/madness/jumpstart/retrace, you could do ETBs but i think torpor orb pairs nice with her here. It keeps our opponents from getting value off our bounces and doesnt stop LTBS and other yard mechanics. Slap haste on her and its just perma bounce. there is that one barrin bounce tribal piece. Because youre targetting so many creatures per mana, you can put dismiss into dream in there and all of a sudden you have an instant speed onesided board wipe. Or maybe instead/alongside the torpor orb type cards you run the ETB untap their mana in lands and do the fairest soft combo for a bajillion mana. At base, you have a 1 mana way to put cards in your hand in your yard in the zone, so you could use that 7 mana reanimator artifact (and any other blue reanimate adjacent effects) to have a very janky but still doable mono blue ‘reanimator’
While the OG Stangg was truly terrible, they released a fixed version that you could build around effectively. It copied all auras and equipment attached to the original to the copy.
Me and a friend brewed an Ishi-Ishi deck where the concept is to donate it and then play spirits to deal damage to your self and then have effects like blood hound in the deck for pay offs
Thank you for inspiring me! Now making an Alexi energy counter deck.
There has got to be a better monoblack commander than veldrane with just swampwalk for urborg, the yavimaya is such a stretch
Most of my decks have “underwhelming commanders” as well as a budget of $100 (only few exceptions; Cost doesn’t include foil or variant upgrades)
Sauron-lotr precon
Omnath locus of rage
Edgar Markov
Szadek lord of secrets
Egon god of death
Kresh the bloodbraided
Koma world eater
Tariel reckoner of souls
Rakdos lord of riots
Purphoros god of forge
Melira the living cure
Raffine scheming seer
Ezuri claw of progress
Progenitus
I once built iwamori of the open fist as a joke commander. We all built a deck and we randomly chose who got to play each other's decks. The catch is that we didnt know what each other's commander was other than the mana cost. I was just hoping for some nonsense to happen where we got a couple of creatures in for free. Its still a 4 mana 5/5 trampler. At least thats what i told myself to justify building it.
lets get this guy to 60k guys..lets go
Alexi seems like a fun commander to cheat card effects like Evoking or an upkeep/endstep trigger to sac or a similar negative effect.
If I didn't have a Mono Blue deck I enjoyed, she actually looks interesting. Mana cost of her is the only big issue.
shout out to my fave "hard commander" Nael, Avizoa Aeronaut nothing like playing Domain in Simic 🤣🤣
just made this deck. it's actually not that bad since there's so many ways to give all basic land types in green.
imagine building an irini sengir deck just because your friend has a sythis deck and you hate playing against it
The Akuta with the New Leyline Axe and Dark Rit may have something.
The Grandeur ones are VERY hard to make it work. I managed to make one Korlash deck. But man. thats janky!
Kodamas Reach is a popular arcane spell. But that's all I can think of haha
a friend of mine builded a og torsten deck and was done right a week before the new one came out, and the most funny thing was he, build it with all sac outlets like greater good and so on. It's basically all you want to do with the new version xD
Nebuchchadnezzer would be ok against relentless rats, shadowborn apostle, slime against humanity, etc. Decks. There's better tech for it, but I'm just thinking of best possible scenario, which isn't completely terrible.
I have a Iwamori of the Open Fist deck and it’s voltron but it’s an instant and sorcery spellslinger one-punch man deck. I use all of the giant growth type cards and play with a lot of stuff that cares about instants and sorceries. I also use a lot of fight cards to bait my opponents into dropping their creatures so they can get punched out. Unfortunately because it’s voltron it’s a little boring but baiting out creatures to remove and doing spellslinger in mono-green is kinda fun.
Little reminder Kodamas Reach is an arcane spell
Rashida can be built around destroying your own dragons.
Scalebane in a dragon tribal + large sum lifegain deck would be fun, since white has a few recursive dragons
I built Rashida as a life gain dragon tribal deck, eating my own dragons to gain life and get payoffs that way :)
I see a lot of people talking about brothers yamizaki
Ive thought of the clone idea but ive talked with my playgroup to rule zero them having "you may have any number in your deck"
Havent put it together yet but i think its a fun way to make them into essentially a rat colony
I have Nebuchadnezzar on a deck idea list, because i thought there may be quite a few things like telepathy, where players play with hand revealed. I dont think it would be good.. but funny.
Yeah, but that artwork on iwamori looks so cool it kinde makes me wanna build a deck around it...
harmless offering your ragavan and hope they play spirit spells from your deck
Your mom plays spirit spells from your deck. 😂
Nebbechanezzer is a beast mode deck
Alexi seems to me like an etb commander, play good blue etb effects and payoffs return them to you hand to reuse the etbs and to protect them
Kodamas reach is an arcane heheh
got em!
I made a nebuchadnezzar deck where I looked at the opponents hand and untapped and discarded the whole thing
I bulit the Stangg deck involving making copies of him with red copy spells and mirror box making tons if him and swinging it was fun and tier 2 or 3 but fun
Yknow where Iwamori is great tho? Pauper commander where only commons are legal 😂 I built him in a pod like that and just smashed face with combat tricks and protection spells
Cast Yosei, attack, tap Rashida to sacrifice your own dragon, stax an opponent AND gain 5 life. C-C-C-COMBO!!! 😂
You can even sacrifice Yosei AFTER dealing combat damage! WOW!!! 😂😂😂
@35:33 Ishi-Ishi, Akki Crackshot
Yeah, this card is a fringe card hating on a fringe strategy. I guess it can get an incidental 3 damage against green players that play Kodama's Reach, but that's about it.
Arashi can be used in stuffy doll type deck. Its still not great since you need to give your creature flying
Senu, Keen-Eyed Protector is eather on this list or the most interesting build around
You could harmless offering a maskwood nexus for ishi?
neat idea. but once again, as soon as it gets removed your deck does nothing.
@edhdeckbuilding thinking about maskwood nexus and now i want to give all my opponents it just to see them go "why did you do this. What did you build?" Love seeing people trying to figure out what a deck does as they are playing against it. Not sure on colors but anti tipal tipal?
Nebuchadnezzar is actually *decent* if your deck runs the Isochron Scepter + Dramatic Reversal combo. This makes all your opponents discard their hand. There are ofcourse dimir commanders that outright wins you the game with IsoRev, but those don't have RFK art.
i think "equip legendary" stangg deck could be fun
I actually think rashida scalebane can be an interesting build around for a monowhite dragons deck if im reading the card right
It doesnt say opponents creature and you can have a sub-theme of mono white life gain/reanimator
Possibly even give your dragons indestructible because they dont actually have to enter the graveyard im pretty sure
destroy your own creatures? that's a super funny build.
@edhdeckbuilding I'm actually inspired to make this deck, idk how possible it is but I'm gonna give it a shot because it sounds like a lot of fun and I've been searching for a unique monowhite deck idea and you helped me find it
That's why I love your videos
Sharkey Tyrant of the Shire seems very difficult
it sure is: th-cam.com/video/9atAugh4_hA/w-d-xo.html
I'm not the best at rulings but could Akuta infinitely revive itself as long as you have swamps? Maybe you could have a sac outlet and keep sacking it for some kind of combo that wins the game that turn?
Its a trigger at the beginning of the upkeep so unless you had multiple upkeeps you only get it once.
@Thisstuffagain thanks for the clarification!
For Irini Sengir, what if we put get her keruga or Gyruda as her companion and to add some colors and play stax/hatebears?
but then irini isn't your commander.
@edhdeckbuilding Yeah? She's chilling in the command zone until you're playing against a enchantment deck i guess!
But sure I got your point. Any opinion on addding companions just for the color fixing without ever playing them?
@@-F2b8- no what i mean is those companions aren't the right colors. that can't be paired with irni
@@edhdeckbuilding Oh i didn't get that, thanks!
Alexi=Madness Emrakul
I have ishi-ishi in my krenko deck. Its only pinged someone once when they played a kodamas reach😂 pretty useless card but i love the rock looking goblins art
Ishi might work if you could donate a maskwood nexus to an opponent. Be jank and dumb, but could work lol
Did he misspeak, or is there an actual way to tutor for Yavimaya in a mono black deck? Isn't that considered a green permanent?
Lands are considered colorless unless there is a mana symbol on it. Yavimaya does not have a mana identity
@Twime. oh, interesting. Thanks for the information.
Lands are colorless and without the mana symbol it isnt considered for color identity
this is why i have urborg in my selesnya deck.
@edhdeckbuilding Ahhh okay.
How did Phage not even get an honorable mention?
because there's a ton to build around. i mean your commander just ends people. that's pretty good.
Ishi-ishi choirs work if you bazaar trader a maskwood nexus… be funny and niche
that's not the worst idea i've ever heard, but you're relying on alot of things to go right.
@ yes starters, them playing enough creatures…
Red has plenty of ways to move around artifacts around zones… but getting that ONE artifact into play and on your opponents field in a timely fashion before they win… 🤷🏻 fun and clever but not ideal.
I like the daughter of autumn idea with pariah kind of effects but definitely dicey… requires them to attack/block you… maybe they keep you around til your the last one and don’t have a choice but attack or block them? 🤷🏻🤷🏻 wishful thinking I suppose.
Iwamori looks decent for a Pauper EDH commander.
I have a hiviss deck that uses hunted dragon + various donate and exhange control effect to give my opponents dragons/maskwood nexus and play politics. Its really bad 😂
Yeah OG staang kinda stinks. Staang echo warrior is bonkers though
Hey demo cool video i have a daughter of autumn deck banding tribal and most creatures with banding are white so its funny to f up combat in a weird way plus its a bad commander so it doesnt make you a target😂😂
yeah banding, good idea. banding is also underrated in the format. got a video coming out about it.
😌😌😌
Alexi Madness?
What I thought too!
@@Twime. sadly there are a total of 7 madness cards in mono blue and some of them are situational and overcosted so you'll need to keep mana up for an offchance to use that 4 madness cost counterspell so this commander would just sit there most of the time. not saying it cant be viable, but it adds to demo's point is that there's a lot to do to just make it moderately acceptable, only to make yourself a target
so the more i thought about alexi, the more i realized there actually is a gameplan there that works.
@@edhdeckbuilding still a ton of work for as you said, a small pay off
@@uhfrank Containment Construct from Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty could go a long way for this - and it's pretty easy to tutor up.