Malcolm/Breeches | Jon Irenicus | Zevlor | Abdel/Candlekeep | EDH/Commander Gameplay #15

[@TheBrothersWarEDH]

Cool to see everyone's opinions on the question of the day! Stay tuned for more in the coming episodes 😎

[@waynetriba3281]

Was looking for a Zevlor gameplay video and found this awesome game with one of my favorite commanders Abdel Adrian and Candlekeep Sage combo. Appreciated the after game comments as well. My play group detests my list but even 3v1, I still make magic happen. Will be checking out more vids. Thanks

[@TheBrothersWarEDH]

Thank you very much! What’s funny is Chris’s abdel candle keep was a 100 dollar budget. Hope you keep getting wins

[@Wrokzor]

at 27:00 jon should've been sacrificed to the plague reaver end step trigger, since both jons and plaguereavers ability go on the stack at the same time. otherwise, good game. :)

[@TheBrothersWarEDH]

Good catch!! Thank you

[@JGigs]

Absolutely loving the growth im seeing, in numbers and in quality of the content... love you guys, yall are killing it and also ryan absolutely shave it right now

[@christopherchapman5299]

You da man! I’m glad you think so bro

[@ryan56ify]

Thank you. I shaved last night and had a thought to do so…but ended up cleaning it up instead.

[@moocowp4970]

Wow, so many people in the comments section giving wildly incorrect/bad answers to the land question. The answer, according to Frank Karsten, is 38-41 depending on the CMC of the commander you are running, and then the number of mana rocks also depends on your commander CMC too. Obviously it's not a solid rule to apply to EVERY deck, but people answering below 35 is kinda crazy unless their deck is loaded full of MDFCs or land cyclers (Frank has another article going over how many lands to cut depending on how many of those you run too btw). I'll trust Frank to be better equipped than me, so that's how I'm currently trying to build my decks (I don't follow his formula exactly, but I try to get close to it if possible).

[@TheBrothersWarEDH]

Thanks for the comment, yea it really depends on what your deck wants to do, curve etc. there isn’t really a one size fits all. I think there is a resurgence in decks with more lands me personally I’ve added more lands to the decks I have

[@drewgarth1530]

Most of my decks have 33 or 34 lands. I think the fewest lands I have in a deck is 32 with a pretty low curve. Always trying to run at least 10 sources of ramp

[@InResponseEDH]

Cool channel fellas. Definitely had to sub and help y'all reach 250. As far as the Question. The lowest amount of Lands I run is 31 in Galazeth Prismari and 40 in my Lord Windgrace deck. The rest fall in the 33-35 range

[@TheBrothersWarEDH]

Thank you and welcome!

[@tysanthecreator]

this was dope! I hope to see more of Malcolm n Breeches it seem strong and cheap. I run 34 lands and 10 ramp spells

[@moocowp4970]

Btw, Jon Irenicus should have been sacrificed to the plague reaver in turn 8, even though Jon gifted it away it would have had the trigger on the stack to sacrifice all of the creatures. Good game though!

[@TheBrothersWarEDH]

Thanks for the watch! Irenicus is a wacky card

[@joshwilliams1861]

My man asked us a question and then didn’t even answer! But 35 as a starting point

[@christopherchapman5299]

😂 Like I mentioned in the intro, that’s a tough one to answer objectively and I don’t use a template to start. It requires me to look at a lot of the variables like color count, mana value, strategy, card advantage engines, speed, power level, etc. to get a bigger picture of about how many I need. I guess if there was going to be a general answer I’d go with around 34 and start there but I usually end up going lower. Great question and thank you for bringing that up bro!

[@arthurbonner8542]

38 lands for me, I hate mulligans and even with 38 I still don't have enough. I'm always amazed when people play less then 36. That is insane to me

[@aeboy337]

This is the correct answer. I would say I start with 37, and then go up or down dependent on deck type, curve, and all that stuff. Most people are just WAAAY too greedy and see lists online that do it so they assume it is right.

[@nerdlabmtg]

Most people say 34 but I usually run 32. I think with the amount of viable ramp that it’s better to get your commander or engine going earlier. You need to have sufficient card draw as well to get into those lands. My decks run consistently on 32.

[@christopherchapman5299]

Those card advantage engines are very important!

[@henrylum6755]

As a standard and a preference for myself and not considering anyone else I run 35-36 with my mid power decks and also if it is not an archetype like elves where I run 32 lands. For higher power where I run more fast mana and tutors I am in the range of 30-32 lands. Within the lands category as well I feel it is important to mention I count MDFC as lands. So some decks might show 34 with 2 MDFC I still consider that a count of 36. Also in a lands matter deck I change the count to anywhere around 38-40 as those are the engine. The color pairing to an extent sometimes influences the count by 1 or 2. I prefer deck thinning ramp from green x decks as opposed to artifact ramp in colors without the access to green. Although I realize fetches in all colors as off colored fetches do play into this equation if I choose to play them as in certain cases I choose to not do so.

[@CorZ1lla]

I aim for 36 with 4ish mdfc for a total of 40, I tend to run quite a few utilities too. Peeps don't play enough lands, read Bennie Smiths articles.

[@johnnytwothumbes]

I always start with 36 and go from there depending on the curve and strategy. Least amount of lands I have is 32 because it's mono-green and I run a good amount of mana dorks.

[@alexjodlauk]

Hey, it was an awesome game for sure. But I think the Abdel Adrian loop actually doesn't work like that. You might want to check it for yourself again as well. With my understanding the ability from Abdel with "exile [...] until he leaves [...]" will create a so called "one-shot effect". This will return the exiled cards to the battlefield actually before Abdel himself while resolving the essence Flux. no State-based actions and triggers will be checked in between, but when Abdel is returned to the battlefield the ability of Abdel provided by Candlekeep Sage will still draw you a card in each iteration of the loop. Again, with my understanding the interaction should work like that but you might wanna verify it yourself again. This would still lead to him having a bunch of tokens but surely not infinite. :)

[@christopherchapman5299]

You are correct but this will still result in an infinite loop and to stop drawing you would exile the Candlekeep to the command zone instead of under Abdel. Therefore resulting in infinite creature tokens without decking yourself out

[@alexjodlauk]

Right, I didn't even thought about that. Than it surely works :)

[@lukeswan9042]

40 lands cuz I hate math.

[@joshwilliams1861]

Also, you better fix the power level rating for Abdel/Candlekeep

[@christopherchapman5299]

Abdel/Candlekeep definitely fits perfectly into the 6 slot. With an inefficient mana base/card quality due to the budget I used of $100 I’m unable to run many staples such as Rhystic/Rift/all the free counters/fast mana/land base to be any higher

[@joshwilliams1861]

That deck is a 10 and you know it!

[@christopherchapman5299]

@@joshwilliams1861 Yes sir 😂

[@nerdlabmtg]

@@joshwilliams1861 It is for sure a 10 but it has a weakness. Turns out if you drop Hippos on his face with a Suture priest out then it will kill him.

[@adrianmetz3013]

I always start with 35 lands and about 10 pieces of standard ramp depending the curve and I'll adjust it from there. My lowest land count right now is about 33-34 I think

[@christopherchapman5299]

We didn’t plan to match colors in our intro 😂

[@ryan56ify]

I was literally going to comment this but you beat me to it..

[@stormgrad]

First time watcher, could the Jon Irenicus player not have activated the litoform engine to copy the "Offer you Can't Refuse" Targeting the essence flux again

[@TheBrothersWarEDH]

Hello, Ryan here. Didn’t play in the game but if he casted the offer and had the mana to copy it with lithoform you are correct!!

[@sethaustin8041]

"and win the game"

[@reccaman]

I wouldnt have the qotd be something you won't answer. I get the idea of "we can guide/influence a reponse," but it comes across (to me) a way of trying to game engagement, while being fake to yourself and others. Sucks that this was the first time seeing a video of yours but I'm always willing to see if there is more than, "we think we are interesting, so let's put that online," when most/if not all people are kinda boring.

[@TheBrothersWarEDH]

Thank you for the feedback, I know in the episodes after this we provide our answers for the qotd and for this one we for sure could have provided a real answer the land count.

[@andriybasyuk5674]

Where do you get the power level of the decks? Do you just estimate their power levels?

[@TheBrothersWarEDH]

We used to use a power level chart but we have since denounced that. We now just try to ask how quickly can we get to our gameplan and present a win by what turn. It’s not the best thing but it’s helped us more than relying on numbers.

[@andriybasyuk5674]

@@TheBrothersWarEDH yeah powerlevel charts would be difficult to make right. You can easily track the power level of each card individually, but much harder to evaluate all the deck synergies the card would have. I like your way definitely. Also more fun to play against other decks similar in power.

[@scottricks1676]

35-38 imo. In a none ramp heavy deck! Any less imo and your asking for a opening hand with less than 2

[@scottricks1676]

One take away, I found the voice auto a bit low to hear. Had you guys in my pocket grocery shopping :)

[@TheBrothersWarEDH]

@@scottricks1676 thank you for the comment! We have been working on audio for a little while trying to find the right balance

[@HarryDean-v1w]

Not a fan of the background music but otherwise loved the rest of the vid

[@TheBrothersWarEDH]

Noted thanks for watching

[@tomjueris9972]

pl 5 and rhystic study wtf

[@TheBrothersWarEDH]

Old video and old chart but we always overshot the chart at times lol.