I Challenged My Community to Deckbuild with Some of the Least Popular Commanders

[@AdamantiumJelo]

I am obligated to mention Yomiji Who Bars the Way has my favorite flavor text in magic "As I died, I rejoiced. I would see my family again. But then I woke up back on the battlefield. Back in Kamigawa. Back in hell." -Kenzo the Hardhearted

[@yangerdanger7744]

i love the absolute brutality of the kami war, every other card be like "war is hell"

[@LeandroGravito]

Yomiji got "commander of the day" in edh rec today, the impact of this kind of content has is incredible. Awesome use of underrated cards, awesome for the game, absolute cinema!

[@thejunecooperative]

Holy shit you're right

[@Sc0ttJC]

Holy cow! Please do this again! Each of these decks were so inspiring and reminded me why I love Commander

[@gavinbowers137]

I didn't think it was possible to make a strong deck with Yomiji until I realized that it puts the card into your hand immediately. I assumed it would be at end of turn

[@Digital_Butterfly]

Goes to show the amount of faith people have in old kamigawa cards

[@ericwolf9664]

If the majority of old kamigawa didn't mandate that you casted stuff from your hand to do cool stuff, I think the set would have been better received. Also if all its splice spells didn't mandate you had the specifically splice it onto arcane spells

[@CubemasterXD]

real fans remember the 26s version

[@MicahCohan]

I had to do something, then came back to an error code, and, whoopsie daisies, it doesn't exist anymore.

[@specialk5523]

I was there.

[@josiahjenkinson4534]

Brutal 😂

[@TeethMeat-jm8ou]

Ok I was kinda confused. Wasn't just me.

[@healdrop9313]

I spent so much time confused; tried to replay it like 10 times, since it said it was still 20min on the thumbnail the whole time.

[@spiritdoesart]

More challenges like this would be awesome! It could be interesting to do a round with only uncommon commanders, as I find those are usually thrown to the wayside in favor of "better" options despite there being some very fun, if not necessarily incredibly powerful, options when it comes to uncommon legendaries.

[@GerBessa]

Since most of those are draft signposts, what should be done with those doesn't leave much room. You do the thing or you don't...

[@IGOTASHOTGUN1]

PDH episode PDH episode!!! Uncommon commanders + Commons in the 99

[@my_dude_5742]

My favorite uncommon commander is Killian Ink Duelist, a bulk from strixhaven. Not only is he a 10 cent card and came in every other pack, but he's a super op Voltron commander, being a two mana orzhov 2/2 with menace and lifelink, and he also gives a discount of 2 colorless for any spell you cast that targets a creature (ie auras and spot removal). You wouldn't believe the amount of time I've played him and people don't even really read the card. Then on turn 3 I drop three 3 mana auras and swing on them for 15 damage and gain 15 lives lmao

[@Tuss36]

Uncommon commanders are great! I feel they tend to give that old-school feel many folks miss. Some are powerhouses of course, but overall they fit that sort of "how do I make this work" feel that other, higher rarity commanders often answer for you.

[@Alphadog2064]

3:40 Teferi, the well known artifact focused planeswalker

[@GerBessa]

Tefeiri is the well known user of the Chain Veil.

[@Evoleo]

LMAO how did I miss this, I even play this exact card in my azorius vehicles deck

[@TheAmazingCornman]

I can't believe Teferi would just. betray his own flesh like that.

[@ideshatred6295]

this was such a cool concept! You definitely should do more of these!

[@lucamachadomendonca3676]

Not trying to downplay the deckbuilding prowess of the Yomiji deck, but that yomiji deck is the go to strategy people usually deckbuildnarlund, and I think something more outside the box should win. But that peacock deck was genius, very creative use of both the card's ability. Not in a million years I would think of modular lmao

[@lucamachadomendonca3676]

Usually deckbuild around him*

[@lightworker2956]

@@lucamachadomendonca3676 If you want to correct yourself, you can just edit your post, via the three vertical dots on the right.

[@ModelOfAModernMajor]

Yeah, that Senator Peacock deck was so slick that it gave me chills!

[@lucamachadomendonca3676]

I use youtube web on brave (because the adblock) and i can't edit my comments. No need to be snarky about it

[@andyharrisonharper]

@@ModelOfAModernMajor i literally just ordered the peacock deck, its the artifact deck i was looking for

[@theunease5541]

Great contest, excited for more. I think the format you did for this contest is pretty good. 5 commanders in a color identity with a powerful and/or interesting effect that have few decks to their name. Repeat that for all the different color identities. I.E a commander for each of the allied color pairs etc. Forcing everyone to make their version of a specific commander stand out while keeping it a consistent functioning deck seems to lead to really cool decks. There are SO many commanders that are underrepresented too, and it is cool to see them at all as well.

[@33elk]

I enjoyed looking at these decks a ton! Especially the Yomiji and Shizuko finalists! ... I have deja vu..

[@spencerj.6342]

If you do more deckbuilding challenges like this, I'd 100% participate. This is awesome

[@theunease5541]

I built a Jason Bright deck a while back that has the same game plan, Modular beat down, as the winning Peacock deck. I was considering tweaking it to work a bit better with peacock and submitting it, but couldn't find the motivation to do it in time. I saw filthystaxplayer's list after submissions closed and was glad the same concept I did managed to get in there. Really cool to see that it won. I playtested it a bit. It's a great deck and I'm for sure gonna steal a few things for my deck. Congrats filthystaxplayer, well deserved!

[@Closer2Zero]

This contact absolutely be called top Chef because of the amount of cooking that’s been going on

[@faerievandal]

This video inspired me to finally make a deck with meria, scholar of antiquity, a commander i've always liked but felt was too generic to be engaging, as a GPG reanimator deck based on lockfin's list

[@RafaDBF]

I'd love for this to be a recurring thing, finding the jankiest commanders and trying to make them work (you could even do a version yourself to compare your thought process with others). I'd love for the next installment to be any amount of creatures from the Legends set. Ever since I've seen Axelrod Gunnarson I've fallen in love with trying to make that work!

[@maxruff875]

Glad to see the shoutout to Blinky Yomiji and his pal Phelia! Fantastic work and undertaking. It was a lot of fun to see the community come together and get so excited, and I'm excited to see more in the future. You've earned yourself a moments rest because I feel the next challenege will be even more people!

[@jacobturner2598]

OMG thank you for telling more people about Yomji!!!!! its my favourite deck I've built and it always gets a laugh before going infnite and smacking the table

[@Lockfin]

So cool to be featured :) -Lockfin

[@fenrirsreign]

Good work mate

[@gabrielemarogna9444]

Yomiji: "there is no commander like it!" Meanwhile Teshar hangs out in a corner, angrily

[@EmbeJuicemazzopazzo]

that Egon build was my favourite of the bunch. Such a simple yet fun idea

[@maxdamon3365]

great video! you really shine a light on the versatility of the commander format

[@lucasandumadas8386]

these are so fun! i’d love to see more in the future, maybe taking a look at underutilized commander + background pairings or other deckbuilding stipulations like needing to include a certain card, or have an unreasonably high or low number of lands and still work, or something like that

[@andreww479]

I used to have Yomiji as a Creature Combo about 5 years ago, it was a really fun deck in concept at the time but it suffered from not having decent legends at the time and the legends that were around were mostly stax pieces that would draw a lot of hate before I could set anything up or just random cards that didnt do much outside of combos, one of the better pieces in the deck for example was Sensei Golden Tail since there was only 3 legends at one mana when i built the deck so it needed to play golden tail with oketra monument to have a non stax legend that would let me play the 1 mana legend combos. Its really cool seeing some new tech for the deck, especialy as an artifact combo deck since its a lot of different lines, the kci lines with Throne of Eldraine and Irencrag are really cool. Ive always wanted to revisit the deck since Commander has exploded since I built it and theres a bunch of new legends that would make the deck better. Really cool to see

[@ajaxender12]

In regards to that first deck, when you discuss all the support cards and overlapping roles: that's why I like Archidekt, because of the Categories - Multiple view. It takes time to set-up the right roles for the deck - crucially, if you get these wrong or over-emphasize something, you can go off the rails quite fast - and to tag every card, but it's worth it for the insight, and you start to see how some cards may not be the 'best' cards in their colors, but they just quietly do a bit of everything you need and should never be cut.

[@bartolomeotucci4653]

Absolutely love the modular deck. Rly charming deck. Gg to the the creator

[@laurenhutchinson4194]

Looking forward to the next challenge and the creativity shown. Good stuff!

[@loganusher591]

Love it! Just as a suggestion for the next challenge, I know you said in your tribal video that those decks can often be a bit of a trap but great for new players; I primarily play tribal decks with less supported creatures (My first deck was rats with marrowgnawer, I have a Crabs/Initiative deck with Rasaad that I love, and am currently tinkering with a Bag of Rattlesnakes deck on the new Aphelia), I would be interested to see if more folks could build beginner friendly decks around less than popular tribes!

[@cleanaccount9991]

This is such a cool concept! Would love to do another one. Some fun commanders I think could be fun might be iname death aspect, Arwen weaver of hope, and that one red guy from ice age

[@bewarebear22]

I’ve had a Yomiiji in my binder for ages and always wanted to do something with it, it never got around to it. Now I’ve got some great ideas!

[@destroyander]

Spellslinger Voltron Egon has been a favorite of my roster. This version looks just as sweet! Great video and decks all around!

[@superiorsoy]

Spellslinger voltron Egon - you can't just drop that and not share a deck list!

[@tdot8280]

Shizuko is one of the most nuts green commander i know. It may ramp the enemy, but you can specialize the deck around it for NASTY cmc7 bodys in T3. I like these videos around underdog commander. Give us more of that! :D

[@Telomerase9]

These are so amazing. Please do more of these challenges

[@ObsoletePixel]

I'd love to see a similar challenge regarding more popular commanders with dimensions you think often go missed by the broader playerbase, would be a cool exercise to encourage players to keep an eye out for interesting interactions or synergies hiding in plain sight

[@LookADistarction]

Yomiji Who Bars the Way is my favorite!

[@BlocksterPlant]

Love this vid would love to see more deck building challenges in the future. An idea for the next one could be like something with unpopular partner pairings

[@leadluigi]

Yomiji's flavor text might be top 10 in the game tho

[@TimPoultney]

Absolutely great content -- kudos to the builders, even those who weren't featured. Restrictions breed Creativity. Definitely do this again soon -- two colour legendaries next time? Though that's going to become a very Beyond heavy category even if you remove partners and backgrounds from the selection process.

[@grantmurdock7385]

I've had two decks I've noodled with that never really took off. Omarthis used the arcbound nonsense, and Inquisitor Grayfax for clue malarky. Never did it occur to me to sandwich those together under Senator Peacock! That's super rad.

[@willemboele2079]

sadly i was too lazy and 2 days too late with my deck submission, altough it probably wouldn't have won. i built egon with a mix of graveyard leave synnergies to wittle opponents down with tokens and life loss, to later finish them off with good cost-power/toughness creatures like egon himself. i hope you do more challenges of this style in the future! brainstorming with 5 underused commanders really gets me going

[@liammarkey6933]

Ok let me just say, as an intermediate player who is a bit braindead when it comes to deckbuilding, I thoroughly enjoy your videos and they've got me thinking about deckbuilding more

[@iryanmadayana1904]

That Egon deck reminds me a lot of my Rhonas deck, except instead of trying really hard to compress all the deck's wants and needs into creatures that have 4+ attack, this one tries to compress them into cards that also incidentally put stuff in your graveyard!

[@Azeria]

1:40 four options and they’re _all_ universes beyond? oof.

[@pascalsimioli6777]

They're also all magic cards, what a coincidence!

[@flower4750]

not likely to get a universes within reprint for any of them either, since none of them were secret lairs. that's just the way things are going 😔

[@Azeria]

@@pascalsimioli6777 I fear you think you made a salient point here and yet you absolutely didn’t even come close.

[@redhoodproductions292]

​@Azeria what point were YOU trying to make then?

[@nhlindblom]

I would love to see more challenges like this, this was awesome

[@kovala]

Great idea for a video series! Hope to see more.

[@genzo454]

5:39 "No more hugs, Will."

[@xaeoxic7328]

I brewed up and have tested a little bit a Calamity, galloping inferno modular creature deck. A few alternate win cons such as triskelion and walking ballista. It's pretty strong tho. If you start with a mod 6 or 4 creature and attack with it with calamity calamity creates the clones and sacrifices them. When sacrifices and dying, they transfer their counters to another artifact creature (sometimes a creature which can be a counter holder or the original modular creature.). If you continue to feed them to modular creatures the counters are relatively safe since they just move to another if the creature is destroyed. It was fun, but I got distracted with other project decks. I have an all ice Hylda monarch tapping deck. I'm proxying some special art for cards that had set that was a bit of a stretch such as verity circle, minister of impediments, and illusionist bracers. I wanted the cards to be either snowy in the background, seem cold or frosty, or have it in the name. It's very very good, but not perfect. It will be perfect with the special art.

[@peterbush3270]

Alephzero is one of the primary contributors for my favorite Cedh deck, orvar, so it is both unsurprising and awesome to hear their name here, definitely not surprising they built a weird combo deck with a weird commander.

[@YourPalJamieEllis]

Some of y'all are genius mad scientists holy shit

[@thelastdankbender4353]

Absolute chad and chadette brewers. What a cool community

[@saoirsehall7588]

I loved this event! I hope to see more of this in the future

[@deltismalvae]

Those all sound like awesome decks that i would love to play with or against. I wish i was creative enough to have come up with something interesting, but I'll be sure to at least give an attempt next time you do one of these.

[@sstankfish]

One of my favorite decks I've made is Firja Instant Tribal. I've struggled finding the balance of every part of the deck I need/want and have recently decided that I want to push the deck toward a Voltron style gameplan. Originally it was much more controlling until I could get the prime targets in hand or in the yard to reanimated, but now it just wants to churn through the deck as fast as possible, protecting Firja all along the way. Will edit this comment once I have a solid deck list made. It will be limited to the cards I own, though. I'm not buying cards lately haha

[@zacharia4061]

5:49 XD YES SIR, we play this game for the fun and holy shit is that not hysterical.

[@snoozbuster]

I have a friend with that green commander. Always a wild game when everyone's mana is amped up like that

[@deuceblack2720]

I love this format, would be super cool to do it again for dual-color identities, etc (definitely not all at once, but maybe "green dual identities" all at once or something)

[@Soullord222]

Me and some friends are building some 10€ commander decks. Mainly because we started frequenting a new lgs with lower power, but with great atmosphere. The 10€ budget has been very limiting but has also been breeding a lot of creativity and cards that would not see the light of day otherwise.

[@Elfarcher73]

As someone who has a Bilbo Retired Burglar deck built around God Pharaohs Gift that Eomer deck is giving me some ideas. I might switch over but the blue is pretty fun for the filling graveyard stuff. I think people ignore UR Bilbo because abzan bilbo took all the spotlight and nobody really wants to know what the ring tempting you does but an unblockable treasure maker that can loot on attacks easily is really solid.

[@andariel654789]

I want more of this kind of content, with the prevalence of universes beyond on EDHREC it's hard for me to find interesting but rarely seen commanders for my decks.

[@ArninoStorm]

I love brewing with weird unpopular cards it's so fun!

[@noctrineshowdown]

Id like to comment on the Achidekt comment at the end! Moxfield also supports scyfall search within your own decks via the highlighter option, and to my understanding, Achidekt doesn't support regex or global tags. Primers also are SOOO much higher quality with dropdown support instead of just a wall of text available. I've had a lot of good success with moxfield 0/

[@swampybwoy]

Ah yes, Teferi, betrayer of flesh. My favourite planeswalker

[@astrogamer4482]

I know you don"t really do that sort of content, but it would be cool to see a commander game with all four decks going against each other!

[@agentkhaine2204]

My submission didn’t win? RIGGED! Just kidding. Seeing what people built was fun. Hope there’s more deck competitions in the future!

[@yoshiyoshi9496]

I was gonna build a yomji deck where you bounce enemy legends as much as possible and try to keep them there for a bowling mine finish, like some sort of weird worse crescent moon Jami deck. Sadly I could find the time to finish it, very fun to see what other people got up to tho!

[@SuperSmashBroBrawls]

I currently run a Yomiji deck and he's slept on for sure

[@openBalop]

woohoohoo i've been waiting for this video man awesome

[@manguy4238]

love all of this except the price tag, maybe next challenge can involve a reasonable budget :)

[@chrunkchollective8614]

salubrious snail saved my life

[@juanpunchhombre551]

Idea for next challenge My local group is returning to EDH roots in a unique way. Rather than build around the 6 cost dragons, we build around any ravnica guild leader and keep the tcg budget under $50. I built an Aurelia the law above goad deck, and my friends built a rakdos patron of chaos group slug, an izoni thousand eyed aristocrats deck, and a trostani selesnyas voice control deck. I think the rules could be tweaked to require the commander to also have 6+ mana cost to make it even more reminiscent of EDH.

[@MinMaxist]

For future commanders, it could be fun to provide partner commanders combinations that don't see much play!

[@MrNeelneel]

I’m commenting again on this repost to request this becomes a series. I love this. Random commander specific challenges followed by deck dissection.

[@Ktjnn]

Yomiji is one of those Commanders I like to make vague threats to my playgroup about building. Yomiji, Flagstones of Trokair, and Dust Bowl would make people cry

[@Morghast]

Doing the good work and shaking up the stagnated Commander acene

[@tasteedonut2819]

Lol this is the commander of the day on EDHREC

[@SpinjelloLane]

Yomiji has the best flavor text in the game

[@jacobe9131]

That yomiji deck is INSANE

[@isiahsmith673]

ahhhh man. I wish I wouldve seen this before I would've loved to of been a part.

[@milespaskel4776]

Yomiji is without a doubt my favorite kamigawa legend. All Hail the eternal battlefiend.

[@montgomerymontgomery1216]

Three cards for your consideration: "Arcee, Sharpshooter" "Lazav, Familiar Stranger" "Tawnos, Urza's Apprentice"

[@hijjak97]

20:07 start of the video

[@SnailLover512]

Snail is the best magic KZbinr on the internet

[@TheBiggyJMan]

I sat and thought for way too long for how to build a deck for this challenge. Alas. My indecision was too much

[@spic9h592]

Shizuko is the kind of deck that would like to play blood clock/umbilicus if those cards weren't hopelessly outpaced nowadays.

[@ssebastiuss]

For Yomiji I played hope of ghirapur in my pia's revolution explorer deck on competetive event and you appraently cannot sac hope of ghirapur without it dealing combat damage to a player (even thuogh the text formatting seems like you could) it was confirmed by level 3 judge who spent some time oracling as well to his surprise as you've shown it being example of self sac.

[@ModelOfAModernMajor]

You are correct about being unable to activate its ability without meeting the condition. The real benefit is in saccing it to outlets where it goes mana positive, mana neutral with an additional cast/ETB/dies trigger on board. It's also common to attack, deal combat damage, activate to silence, move to second main phase, then combo.

[@Goonwild5299]

The legend rule places it into the graveyard, does not cause a die effect.

[@yoshiyoshi9496]

Also for what it’s worth if you were to do another one of these, I would totally be interested

[@vassanguis]

I've built Egon before! It was just a reanimator deck with the usual targets, but having a one-mana miller with card draw in the command zone was actually really good (at least at the time it was good). Throne of Death was always underrated. Edit: Zzzzz just a pretty slow Voltron deck. Egon is capable of so much more, but some people can't look past it as a 6/6.

[@deucemoose7852]

Haha well I didn't make a deck directly for this challenge, but I did add yomiji to my commander cube in the hopes of allowing someone to draft essentially that exact winning deck

[@Adamantbby]

This video is my official introduction to the legend rule counting as dying. I really assumed since it isn't sacrificing it wouldn't be dying either. I get that its dying because its mechanically identical to dying, but why isnt it also mechanically identical to sacrificing

[@ChrisThe1]

Off the top of my head: Yomiji + Mox Opal / Amber + KCI / Arcbound Ravager

[@ivernedit]

I wanted to build yomiji just off his flavor text.

[@SmilingJack100]

RE: Eomer, I thought it says the ability only triggers once a turn, is that only on that card, so the other versions can do that?

[@gybisss]

yeah, the copies created by myriad see each other dying and trigger the abilities, and on each new combat the newly created copies are the source of the trigger, not the original original card

[@Charbroild]

Yeah the ability is tied to that specific permanent. Copies may have the same name and everything but are still different permanents.

[@SmilingJack100]

@@Charbroild Fascinating!

[@perrinsilveira6759]

I don't know if this has been done already, but if not I am interested in if anybody has built any genericless mana decks? Might be a fun challenge if there are enough cards, especially if there is enough for monocolor decks. I almost sat down and brewed the monocolor green or black ones, but haven't gotten to it just yet.

[@jonarbuckle3445]

You mentioned the archidect search bar on the podcast too, does nobody realize that moxfield also has that same feature it's just called "highlight"?

[@Diamior]

(posting before watching) i wish i could participate, but i had no time this week. the red one felt inspiring. i wan't wait to see what y'all brewed

[@Diamior]

I was not dissapointed. Cool stuffs. i like that modular deck... i would have never though of that.

[@RaptieFeathers]

I love Shizuko as a commander for Snake Kindred decks :D

[@davestier6247]

Quick question, if you were to have Senator Peacock and Academy Manufactor out and were to make an artifact token, say one that Urza makes, would that token which is now also a clue from senator trigger the manufactor?

[@lucamachadomendonca3676]

It would only become a clue when hitting the battlefield, so it would no interact with academy manufactor

[@davestier6247]

@@lucamachadomendonca3676 thank you

[@hollowoat]

can’t believe you didn’t talk about land destruction yomiji. seemed like everyone was brewing it

[@jonstokes1832]

Please do a parnesse subtle brush video!! It’s awesome and can go infinite really easily if it gives an opponent a copy of herself