The Impossible Search for a "Fun" Combo Deck

[@qazaq25]

As someone who loves planning strange combo decks I've come to the realization that one of the key steps is to once the deck is almost done take the key combo cards put them off to the side and ask myself if the remaining pile is playable in its own right. By adjusting the rest of the deck to function without the combo you can end up with games where what you have in hand might be better if played in a way that isn't just racing to the combo. The result is decks that can do the cool thing but also play without it and even if they end games in a similar way most of the time, they take different paths to get there.

[@Quezell]

It's exactly this IMO combo decks are, when constructed carefully and intelligently, fairly effective COMPETITIVE shells as they achieve a quick victory as efficiently as possible but all in combo decks despite often being strong (at least depending on the format and combo of choice anyway) are EXTREMELY repetitive both for the pilot and the other players in the game due to the extremely hyper focused linear strategy. Those types of decks very much have a "win or lose in deck selection" problem where either your opponent can interact with your combo and if they have the answer you lose or they can't and you consistently win before they can find agency in the game. Designing the deck to skew away from the combo and play a more broad strategy that utilizes the combo as a primary or secondary win condition not only adds more points of interaction for your opponent and creates more diverse gameplay for the pilot but it also smooths the matchup tables out and reduces the fragility of your deck at large. It's also why competitive EDH decks tend to main board some tutorable combo pieces that barely take up any card slots and also why those types of approaches to combo tend to be more powerful as they match the explosive power of more dedicated combo shells but completely lack the fragility issues and are capable of playing more attrition based games even without leaning on the combo if it gets disrupted somehow.

[@ausiidnd]

This is exactly the approach I took with my Neheb burn list, there are a few strong combos and two cards that can generate infinite mana/combats, but the rest of the deck is fully playable on its own with plenty of creatures and interaction and a few whacky cards for variance (Radiate, Thieves Auction, etc.)

[@DABATTLESUIT]

This is why I love me some creature combos!

[@selkokieli843]

I made a dragonstorm themed big spells value cascade stormy pile that can go off to play the entire deck by casting many spells like aminatou's augury or the 10 mana creature with 4x cascade that lead to other big free spells. There are minimal tutors and going off is always up to what each spell happens to hit. It's high variance, reliant on permanents and ends up with some dragons as a plan b if it doesn't fully go off. It's fairly interactable for most decks and quite epic when it goes off on lucky hits. I'd like to think it's a fun combo deck but need to gauge more reactions 😂😅

[@MTG_Creative_Combos]

Always Have A Backup Plan ;)

[@Thomas-vn6cr]

_"It's not impressive just because it works, it's impressive if we all ask to see it again"_ -Mauldhound

[@salubrioussnail]

A wise man for sure

[@Shimatzu95]

I have to remember that quote.

[@Shawn-f3x]

I have a hard time even imagining an EDH deck I could build that others would want to see again. I suppose the closest I’ve come since starting EDH 6+ months ago is the Drizz’t Do’Urden deck I forever have in development, but that’s *still* just cheating creatures out to knock them off for advantage. People are just bored by win-by-combat, but I’m *beyond* and likely will forever remain burnt on Control, and hardcore Combo has all the problems *you* are encountering, due to the many, many years I played what amounts to Legacy now. I love EDH because no one except a couple jerks are demanding I try to win the game in 3 turns here, and I can meander through different combat permutations. (I’m really fascinated by Luminous Broodmoth ATM, ditto w/ Abzan Falconer and Guide of Souls for the spend-three) at present. I just wonder if people are enduring my gameplay rather than enjoying any part of it.

[@devanbrowne8706]

What video is that line from?

[@Shimatzu95]

@@Shawn-f3x i would much rather loose to regular old combat damage than people trying to weasle out a infinite combo in mid power games

[@gulliblegallade8624]

There's a phrase in the fighting game community, "The game doesn't end at character select." It's a way to get people off the hype of playing a low tier or a joke character. Picking the character doesn't make you special, being able to play them is what gets people excited for a character that normally gets passed over. This feels like a similar kind of situation. Building the deck in a unique or creative way is the character select, but how it actually plays out is what matters in the end and how people are going to remember it.

[@AlluMan96]

Kinda, although getting lost in the deckbuilding is quite a bit more understandable. At the end of the day, a fighting game character select is only interesting the first time as you scroll through the cast, evaluating their vibes and drip while your opponent might regail you with some lore or experiences fighting some characters. After that, it's just a menu, the means of getting into the actual game. Deckbuilding in contrast is just as much a part of the game as the main game itself, because your individual choices are so much more meaningful. You can get quite absorbed in the problem-solving of deck-construction, so much so that some people outright prefer the deckbuilding to actually playing.

[@bird8592]

​@@AlluMan96 There are plenty of lab monsters and combo fiends who dont care so much about playing but optimising combos and situations to the characters or games limits. It's where you get all these "highest damage" combos, yeah sure but how practical is it in a real match? Alot of it is just as situational as most combos in magic, but pulling it off in a real match is the dream. That's the deck building part of fighting games imo.

[@AlluMan96]

@@bird8592 I can definitely agree with that.

[@LembarHeals]

Skill doesnt really apply to a combo deck the same way it does to a fighting game though. Playing cards and tapping them in the right order isnt hard. Im always excited to watch a pro combo off in a fighting game because precise inputs/skill are required and theres a chance they mess up. in magic tho once ive seen a combo once it gets kinda boring to sit through, and the combos that have a chance to fail are usually the longest ones :(

[@AbsurdAsparagus]

this is forgetting that deck building is like building your own fighting game charater. wait that sounds like a cool concept for a card game.

[@kdeath555]

"If a man writes her a few sonnets, he loves her. If he writes her 300 sonnets, he loves sonnets." Sometimes you gotta deckbuild for the love of the game.

[@Freezingfist1]

"The human brain gets a little wonky when it doesn't have enough structure for the given task at hand." This hit deep.

[@ryanmuller9497]

This kind of analysis reminds me a lot of a realisation I had a number of years ago about tabletop RPG (TTRPG) character creation. Generally, TTRPGs have the same two phase split between character creation and gameplay. You get some players who love to dig into books and optimise their build, while others are happy to look up a build online, and others still want to throw together something goofy or thematic. Then, once the character is made, you bring it to actual sessions of gameplay and it has to do something. A highly optimised character that does the same thing every time will, no matter how well it does it, tend to evoke a sense of "yup, character [X] doing character [X] things, next turn" within a session or two. As a player who very much enjoys spending time in phase 1, I found myself starting to build characters by thinking about what I wanted to be doing on any given turn in any given situation, rather than having some big distinctive "thing" that I'd optimised for. If the turn by turn behaviour wasn't going to be an interesting puzzle in its own right, then it probably wasn't going to be an interesting character to run. This shift improved my phase two experience immensely. A related realisation that applies to both MtG Commander and TTRPG character creation is that, when the constraints on phase one are loose enough, the primary opponent of phase one shifts from being other players to being the game designers. That is, the main sense of satisfaction shifts from competing against players to finding parts of the game design that feel almost like oversights: "take that game dev, I've found a way to exploit this thing that's probably more effective than the options you were thinking of when you created it". The shift from competing against the game designers to playing with other players in phase two can create a huge disconnect if you aren't conscious of it. Applying these observations to the video, I think Snail falls into the category of someone who really enjoys competing against the game designers in phase one, which is what creates the itch that continuously needs to be scratched. This requires identifying "loopholes" in the game design, finding interactions between cards that feel like they're better than they were designed to be, and feeling a sense of triumph when they're found and demonstrated to work. However, this fun doesn't port straight across to phase two, because you're not competing against abstract, distant game designers anymore, you're simultaneously competing and cooperating with other players to create a fun play space. If what your deck does on most turns doesn't make the play space fun on that turn, it hasn't contributed to the phase two goal. Consistent, flexible, and resilient decks tend to be the kinds of decks that can do something interesting on each turn, and thus they pretty consistently contribute to a fun play space. They have something to do, so they give opponents something to react to. They don't do the same thing every time, so opponents have to think about how to respond to them. They don't automatically fail to one kind of hate, so opponents can play the game without interaction against them feeling all or nothing. Each turn is interesting against a deck that can expect to do one of a variety of useful things on each turn. So, to conclude this wall of text, the main idea is that the fewer constraints a game has on its phase one, the more phase one becomes a game against the game developers rather than against players. Phase two is always with and against players though, so in a low constraint game there's a shift between phase one and phase two that needs to happen to consistently contribute to a fun phase two.

[@kylewalek]

Well said

[@Donny-G]

Very long post and very well put - thanks for sharing :)

[@Aphidae]

Once again snail hits it out of the park by describing ideas that resonate extremely well with my experience playing commander that I would never have thoroughly understood without him. Thank for all the good work.

[@horrorspirit]

++

[@Bsweet117]

Why are we still pretending like commander players are real magic players?

[@PaulGaither]

@@Bsweet117 - Because they are the majority of players now. Especially when WotC killed high level play and is trying to kill the LGS. Flopping paper cards in tournaments is now... dead.

[@Bsweet117]

@@PaulGaither there are more cockroaches than humans. But we don't pretend that cockroaches are people

[@PaulGaither]

@@Bsweet117 - You have more subs than reason to care about you, but we don't pretend you are an anime girl, so get muted.

[@FlaminGinga]

Just wanted to say that I have built ( and upgraded out the wazoo ) the gerrard eggs deck you showcased not too long ago. It has been the most fun I've had putting thought and effort into a deck before, and it wouldn't have been possible without you. So thanks! I hope 🥚s get an honorable mention in this video

[@crap1521]

I actually built a xyris deck after watching his video on it, it's super fun! it's a very strange deck in that until you get to 5 mana you're losing HARD and the deck is terrible but the second you get xyris out it get incredibly strong

[@fairygoodmuller8065]

His video on greedy radha cascade inspired me to build a version using Susan Foreman and the War Doctor, which has since been swapped for the Tenth Doctor but OMG is it such a fun deck to play for me. i love the consistency that comes with the cascade->vegetables plan, and just how resilient it is after the first 4 turns. it's also made me a better player for knowing how many resources to commit to the board, and how much to keep back to rebuild after a boardwipe. it's quite funny how some games go like angry omnath with 5 elementals and an avenger of zendikar, oh you boardwiped? ok, plays scute swarm, land ramp gets to 24 scute swarms, then flash in sweet gum recluse to give them all 3 +1/+1 counters, with another backup plan in hand waiting...

[@dinkumthinkum7763]

Would you be willing to share your list?

[@the_r4ts]

I would also like the list, please >.> I tried upgrading it myself, but it is an archetype with which I am entirely unfamiliar

[@dhalden93]

@@crap1521 My play group definitely has feelings about "buffs by hans"... Was definitely the best budget commander deck I've ever played, and I've continued to play/adjust it to make it a little more my own (though it will always be 'buffs by hans' to my play group). More than anything I think the ability to interact on everyone's turn is one that people still feel conflicted about. I think it plays a lot to the social element of the game in a way that means play patterns don't get stale. Also, I've added an additional element to it where I don't tell people how much they're going to get hit for so it's somewhat "press your luck" style, of deciding if you think you can take a free hit off of it, or if you think I have enough buffs to make end you on the spot. People still ask "I'm not gonna take more than like 3 damage, right?" and the group answer is "it's buffs". This works for my play group, who skew newer to the game. I don't know if other groups would have a dynamic that would make this work. It definitely only works if you're interested in what I have to offer, so it's almost a "group hug" style deck. And otherwise I just lose before turn 5. But even with this dynamic, it's my favorite deck to pilot while playing with others cause I can have a big impact on the game even if I don't win. And it protects itself pretty well to win. More to the point of the video: this does make me think that the important piece of a combo is some way to play to the social element of the game. Like, in the way that rhystic study is a problem because it's a tragedy of the commons, I wonder if there's a way to build a combo deck that asks people to want a common resource, and combo's off on people overusing that resource. I don't like this in rhystic study because it's a tax, but I do wonder if there's another alternative for this.

[@temporaltomato3021]

When I built my first Commander deck (Xantcha, Sleeper Agent), I chose my commander and my cards based on this observation I made while watching some games in person and online: Players like to build up to their combo or web of fun synergies while they present themselves as more or less non-threatening. "Innocent", perhaps. I decided that my flavor of fun would be to try and disrupt this restrained "don't hurt me" dynamic by playing impactful, global Rakdos sorceries and enchantments while letting Xantcha's 3-mana 5/5 self pressure opponents early. Plus, when your opponent is making the decision of who Xantcha will attack, it makes it more difficult for that opponent to curry favor with the rest of the table. This created games where, even if I became the villain, players talked to each other more and used their resources in ways that they weren't used to, to stay alive under the effects of cards like Bedlam, Havoc Festival, Sire of Insanity, and Captive Audience. My second deck was Braids, Conjurer Adept. I loved the hypothetical win/win of either killing my opponents with a bunch of overwhelmingly mana-cheated behemoth creatures, or creating a chaotic table of accelerated combos, un-stuck mana-screwed starting hands, and other opposing 8-12 mana behemoths on turn 4. And that largely worked too, when Braids didn't get hated out early lmao. I've since built mostly "traditional" commander decks that seek to grind out advantage or perform some kind of combo or play pattern I simply find fun. But I wanted to relate the beginning of my Commander story here because I feel like I had the inverse journey in discovering fun in the format - I sought first to be the most interesting nuisance I could be given the types of games I'd seen, or in other words, I was focused on the overall game dynamic above all, so I didn't then run into the problem of my deck performing well but getting no reaction. Then I stopped thinking about being a sort of main character and began enjoying the expression in other players' decks and play patterns, even if they were creatively inferior :) Commander is a very expressive format, and it's fun to see other people have fun and decide to keep coming back for more. And you know what? Wizard tribal IS kind of cool. I mean, come on, *wizards* . Even if for now they're just winning with Vampires or Slivers, don't worry, that's a future brew god, they're just learning scrambled eggs first.

[@thomaspetrucka9173]

😂 That's amazing! I appreciate that there IS an expressive format like this, because people's journeys through it go all over, and not just from one power level to another. And that is some journey. 😂

[@sethb3090]

That's kind of why I enjoy my Grand Warlord Radha deck. It's designed to attack early, often, hard, and convert that attacking into slamming haymakers. I'm not going to be the smol bean, I'm going to be classically Gruul and make math into your problem, and I'm going to make you solve it on the fly.

[@LordZanba]

I have nothing much to add, but this was a great comment. I believe it may have given me a new perspective when considering what deck to build.

[@tarawright4339]

What works for me: change the goal of the combo. My favorite decks are also goofy combo decks, but they aren't game-winning combos the way the ones you describe are. In fact, they aren't really combos at all, in the traditional sense, even though I feel like a storm player cobbling together a fiddly series of cards to try and find a win. But it's not about winning. It's about doing The Ridiculous Thing. In my Hidetsugu & Kairi list, the ridiculous thing is setting up and casting multiple free 7+-mana spells in a turn. It's casting Decree Of Pain followed by Rise Of The Dark Realms at instant speed. It's casting Mnemonic Deluge for free, targeting my Breach The Multiverse, which will somehow reanimate my commander all three times. In my Flubbs, The Fool deck, it's seeing how many cards I can play in a turn. It's sequencing my draws, attacks, and activated abilities so that I can always get another card from Flubbs and keep going. Sure, eventually I'm going to win with Rampaging Baloth tokens, or by Retracing a Jaya's Immolating Inferno while I have 30 lands in play, but that's not the point. The point was that turn where I played the same Evolving Wilds from my graveyard five times. The Gerrard Eggs deck you posted a video about a while ago is a perfect example. The fun isn't that I had Quicksmith Genius and Psychosis Crawler (my own addition), it's that I found a way to keep casting an ever-more-expensive commander over and over and came out ahead on mana each time. When I'm going off with one of my decks, I don't care if I win. My favorite game that I played with Hidetsugu & Kairi was one where I did the Mnemonic Deluge / Breach The Multiverse sequence I described earlier, passed the turn with a board large enough to kill the entire table twice over next turn, and then the very next player had a Farewell. Suddenly I was left with no permanents and no graveyard and a library of 20 or so cards and no way to win, and I ended up dying to my own brainstorm trigger. I loved that game because I got to do my ridiculous thing, and was answered by the perfect card. The joy is in fiddling with my cardboard, rather than the moment where folks go "okay, you win. Go next?"

[@thomaspetrucka9173]

I so appreciate this attitude. You couldn't think this way in a competitive pod--and it's exactly why I love to play as well. I think the trick is making your big splash move towards a win at an answerable pace, and without being too much of a burden on time or complexity. "Fiddling with my cardboard" captures the idea well, even if it sounds like a rather eccentric euphemism. 😂

[@jonpiest4648]

Maximum hard same. I could build Illuna as a one-off polymorph deck into Omniscience and have a combo deck that wins on the spot... or I could polymorph into Eye of the Storm and have a chaos deck. Which is more memorable, the times your opponents scooped cuz they had no way out? Or the game where the Eye took 75 minutes to resolve because 5 unplanned infinite combos were happening simultaneously?

[@Blacklodge_Willy]

Wouldn't most players consider that durdling or "playing with yourself" in most of those scenarios?

[@2424Lars]

This is the exact mindset I have too, Commander, and magic in general, is about building fun decks that do fun things, and not about winning. I have fun if my deck does the fun things I designed it to do, and I genuinely don't care who wins at the table, I just want the game to last as long as possible so everybody has the most time to do the fun things they want to do. I remember a recent game where I managed to get an early Avenger of Zendikar on board and started going wild durdling with landfall triggers, the other two players eventually managed to deal with my board and kill me, but I still had an absolute blast!

[@tarawright4339]

@@Blacklodge_Willy oh, yes. The durdle is the point. Live for the durdle. Love the durdle. Play the durdle turn at a reasonable pace so the other players don't feel like you're wasting *too much* of their time

[@EthanMiyai]

I like the 2 phase model of viewing trading card games, but for the longest time I’ve considered Snail’s two phase model as instead two separate games that players can choose to play. Some people love to just brew, and some people don’t mind netdecking or just picking up and playing like how someone may just jump into a playing card game or a board game. Thus, I’d argue that “succeeding” happens twice, which the Snail notes with their flicker tribal deck. They “succeeded” in making a fun budget deck on paper. And sometimes, you “succeed” in a commander game by having fun or winning or doing your thing. This means that not only will players’ goals going into a commander game may be very different, but even before the game starts, there is probably also going to be conflicting ideas regarding the game of deckbuilding, which is fundamental to being part of a social dynamic / game.

[@knife1406]

local snail learns that no matter how quirky your combo win is, it's still a combo win

[@silbernerritter5834]

Alternate wincons aren't combo. Would you call infect combo?

[@sethb3090]

​@@silbernerritter5834Scapeshift Maze's End is absolutely a combo win

[@silbernerritter5834]

@@sethb3090 it's not. It's accelerating into an alternate wincon, not a combo. The wincon itself is just triggered earlier. An interaction doesn't necessarily have to be a combo just because it wins. By your logic, going wide with tokens and playing a craterhoof behemoth, then attacking would be a combo, when it's not.

[@sethclark3223]

I think there is a preconceived notion here, in which you assume combo means a+b=immediately winning the game (thassa + demonic consultation). Combo actually means a combination of cards are put together to produce a powerful effect - creating something much more than the sum of their parts.​@silbernerritter5834 this is a combo.

[@silbernerritter5834]

@@sethclark3223 except in this case, you guys are calling a "combo" just accelerating into an alternate wincon. Would you call proliferating 9 times after a vraska's fall a combo? Circuitous Route is as much of a "combo" card as Shapeshift is when talking about Maze's end. This is a synergy, not a combo.

[@orpheos9]

I would revise the main statement as "Combo deck building creativity does not translate into deck playing experience variety/creativity." The thing is, you can make all kinds of goofy combos, but if the gameplay boils down to "Gather resources (mana and draw), tutor up or dig deep enough for your combo pieces, play and protect combo pieces." your games are going to feel exactly the same to you and everyone else at the table no matter what creativity you had to put in to building a deck with unique combo pieces. You will get more variety and force yourself to be more creative with your gameplay lines in a deck with more cross synergies where you have to adapt your gameplay lines to what kinds of pieces you draw and how they work together. And crucially, interacting with the rest of the table severely multiplies the amount of variety in gameplay lines because you have to line up your cards with theirs instead of just doing your own thing (maybe countering a couple spells).

[@PasDeMD]

"You will get more variety and force yourself to be more creative with your gameplay lines in a deck with more cross synergies where you have to adapt your gameplay lines to what kinds of pieces you draw and how they work together." This is a great point and something I personally want to work on more. There's lots of ways you can build decks in commander and a lot of those ways, even if they're not strictly "solitaire," end up being on that solitaire end of things, where you're mostly just trying to "do your thing" in a relatively rote way, with limited interaction with others. This is true even in decks that don't combo--one could just be amassing lots of creatures (that don't otherwise do anything) to then go for a big swing. But what's "fun and interactive" more than just the first few times you play a deck are flexibility, interaction, and synergy.

[@pedrodarosamello64]

It doesn't matter if your combo is something as efficient as Oracle + draw spell, or some goffy combo with old cards, as long as the game boils down to "I put these 2-3 cards together so I win" it is going to be all the same.

[@thomaspetrucka9173]

Dang. You said that very well! Combo does tend to leave a lot of room for cards that are not strictly necessary for a win, and it is so easy to fill those spots with more value-generators rather than niche support pieces and contingencies. Maybe that's the problem Snail is experiencing more than an inherent problem with combo as an archetype. Start your own channel. It sounds like you have some good insights to share!

[@salubrioussnail]

This is true. Some forms of creativity are more rewarded than others, my Sharuum Slide deck is one I spent a ton of time tuning awhile back and that one is a blast. I would modify my original statement to say that deckbuilding creativity isn't rewarded if it only shows up in how a deck wins.

[@souleater4242564kodd]

@@salubrioussnail idk if you can talk about creativity when you mention decks with tutors, the objective least creative choice to add to a deck

[@SSolemn]

I play tempo/aggro-control, and I love to brew around not so popular Commanders. What I love is synergy, and that leaves a lot of room for "potential" wincons. The feeling that no matter what appears on board I can still play the game is what makes the game fun "for me", and each time I win in a different way with a deck makes me happy and proud of my brewing creative capacity and flexibility to adapt to any table as a player.

[@bryanwebster7027]

This is so besides the point but Changeling Hero and Changeling Titan are two more Fiend Hunger effects in GW

[@salubrioussnail]

True! I totally missed those.

[@deyna8]

The full involvement of building a deck and then playing it is why limited magic (especially draft) will always be the king of magic for me that's impossible to replace. It's so much more rewarding for testing both deck building and playing than any other format.

[@marthsinclair3796]

I had the same problem with building the turtle gates deck. My solution to create a more satisfying play experience was to take out the tutors for a group hug draw package. The instant win combo pieces are still there, but having to hard draw into them with symmetrical draw engines makes for an element of unpredictability that I can play up in pregame discussion, basically making the table balance getting free resources with the threat of combo jumpscare. I was inspired by experiences with the Tempting Offer cycle of cards, and I feel like bringing a more comprehensive version of that minigame to the table does a lot to temper the relative anticlimax of a 1.5 card combo wincon.

[@aaronmiller1009]

Really interesting concept to talk about. As someone who spends a TON of time trying to find unique and interesting cards to work with the themes of a deck, I find that a lot of the time people will still largely just notice the theme. My Saryth deck is one of my favorites that I have built, as the engines feel very unique and all centered around tapping and untapping lands, but when it gets going my opponents don’t see that I I have a lot of unique and interesting cards on the battlefield, they see that I have 20 mana on turn 6. It’s a matter of reshaping your expectations, while you might see the beautiful, intricate work of art you’ve put together, your opponents are just going to see another deck a lot of the time.

[@ianhutchinson2283]

Your point about how a combo win is kind of boring even if the combo itself is interesting reminds me a little of playing a Jodah the Unifier brawl deck on Arena. I can have high ambitions for how the deck is going to function with Jodah and a board full of legendaries, but in practice my opponent is either going to shut it down when they have the chance or concede once they see what's happening. Most of the time the deck is just setting up to play Jodah, whose function largely boils down to "kill this or I will get a big board very fast".

[@FilmscoreMetaler]

I don't play Brawl but my deck has enough versatility to deal with stuff even without Jodah though he's admittedly the ultimate finisher. But there's other really strong combos like General's Enforcer + Rem Karolus or Tajic. Often I can at least stall the game until I get Jodah out. It's not so good vs. aggro/burn though.

[@silbernerritter5834]

People concede on arena at the first sight of losing, or even at the first sight of control decks or decks that take a lot of time. One of my friends said that back when Yorion was standard legal, some users used bots with Yorion and only removal to farm the daily wins because some people would just scoop it up when they saw Yorion as a companion, not wanting to spend 30+ minutes on a grindy match just to get the daily games done.

[@temporaltomato3021]

People are going to concede early on Arena mostly just because it's a 1v1 game, and with no real personal interaction between players. You'd have to build something really special for opponents to stick around and be amused by your deck.

[@roguebarbarian9133]

For me, I’ll concede 30 seconds after it becomes clear that I’ve lost the game. That potentially gives them the satisfaction of dealing the killing blow, but also means that I’m not obligated to sit through a 10-minute combo.

[@sereenafarren3927]

This verbalises a lot of my feelings around commander super duper well. I love slower, grinder decks where I feel challenged to pull out the win even when ahead, but my pod tends to get bored and frustrated as turns pass into the double digits mark. It's been a tricky point of tension to try and resolve, as it's difficult to find a middle ground between fast, concise win decks and slow, grindy piles of optimised weirdness.

[@Bsweet117]

I'm not gonna sit here and pretend that Commander players have legitimate feelings.

[@bartoffer]

When you play combo, other players are an active detriment: these decks don't need other players to win, unlike aggro or control who win by eliminating other players. If they successfully prevent your combo, you now get to sit there utterly bored. In exchange for one cool combo, you give up on all of the other interesting mechanics and interactions in the game - which also forces other players to give up on all of the other interesting mechanics and interactions in the game. The difference between 60+15-card combo and 100-card combo is night and day. If you side in anti-combo hate in 1v1, your opponent assumes as much and plans around it, and that's the end of it. If you adjust your deck to shut down annoying infinite combos, your opponent will probably whine and caterwaul and bawl their eyes out about how you're "preventing their fun" in anything below CEDH. But they aren't wrong, and that's a fundamental problem of combo in a multiplayer, no-sideboard format.

[@filthystaxplayer7197]

This video feels extremely prescient to me seeing as I just built a PDH combo deck (intended for regular tables with some rule 0'ing) around Lilysplash Mentor. Part of what makes that deck fun for me is the moment-to-moment decision making, which is just as expressive as the win lines - being in pauper limits the freedom with which I can search my deck, and so far every game I learn a new sequencing option the deck has or find a new combo line I hadn't seen before. Hopefully it stays fun because of that!

[@GodzillaFreak]

I think the answer is easy. Have a combo that doesn’t quite win, but instead establish a board state that is likely to win, but possible for the opponents to overcome with significant ingenuity and effort. Maybe that’s the yugioh player speaking.

[@Scotterbotter331]

Nope that's the answer, but combo lovers simply can't resist ruining the game for everyone else 🤷🏼‍♂️

[@wchenful]

@@Scotterbotter331 I think the issue is players who perceive that combo is "ruining" the game. Just means that your playgroup doesn't mesh in terms of values.

[@noivern1380]

@@Scotterbotter331 somebody’s gotta end the game

[@Scotterbotter331]

@wchenful sort of true in general but not for my group because they agree with me. The endgame of the format is not winmaxxing. Anyone who plays enough will come to agree with my perspective. No board game company would produce a 4 player game with these degenerate combos that immediately end the game. A fun replayable experience would not include infinites without everyone opting in (cedh is the right place to do this) Also Noivern, the game can very easily be ended. Replace your combos with "win more" cards and go over your opponents. It works and games are actually fun and dynamic and interactable, like a multi-player game should be.

[@wchenful]

@@Scotterbotter331 I can immediately debunk your theory. The fact that these so-called "degenerate combos" exist and have not been banned is already evidence that they are an intentional part of the game design and format. Cards like Thassa's Oracle literally contain the phrase "you win the game" on the rules text - indicating that instant wins are a deliberate choice in the game's design. I would argue that this definition of "fun, replayable experience" is part of a cultural phenomenon that has been perpetuated by a small number of influencers. There are lots of artificial social etiquettes that are pushed in the name of fun > no stax, no land destruction, no combos, no fast mana, no free counters, no fast wins, durdle is good - but not too much durdle ... just enough so that people don't feel threatened but you don't eat up too much play time etc. In the end, its just a form of fun policing (which is fine for a personal playgroup) but weird to assert as a fact.

[@doctorleftwizard8931]

This one really resonated with me. So much appreciation for your videos!

[@EnermatrixMusic]

You've explained this all so well. I love the deck building process, and have lots of fun getting excited about weird, interesting and funny combinations of cards. Then, when it comes to playing the decks, they sometimes feel completely flat and boring and it was hard to find the words to explain why this was the case. This video was really helpful in shaping my future deckbuilding for commander.

[@benanding]

I started playing many moons ago, and recently have boiled down to a single mono blue "oops, all clones!"/clone "tribal" Sakashima EDH deck. You'd be surprised how much fun you can have when your only plan is some mixture of whatever the other guys are doing. Every new pod results in a unique game. It is essentially self balancing in power level as well, never really stronger than strongest deck at the table.

[@RegisJim]

Man, the self balancing aspect sounds so cool, your deck should be similarly strong against both cedh and CrawWurm.dec, what a clever idea! I really dislike clones ever since a buddy of mine always killed me with a cloned Serra Angel, but this deck looks sweet.

[@benanding]

@@RegisJim Haha, the perils of revised! Your Serra Angel gets cloned or control magic'ed. Which gives me an idea... but I have a feeling "Oops all Control Magics!" wouldn't fly nearly as well with tables as clones. "That's OUR cards."

[@Filip-uo2sq]

I really like the point you make about building decks with certain "state of game" in mind, instead of specific steps to be taken in order to win. That way, each game becomes the "glorious" puzzle that you need to solve (to get you to certain game-state) instead of following a step-by-step guide (to get you to your game winning pieces).

[@kylewalek]

I was thinking about commenting about feeling this way whenever I played "Omniscience" (fantasy of playing unlimited cards, reality is the table scoops) but that bit on "Consistency, Flexibility, Resilience" really hit home. It reminded me of a Innistrad/Return to Ravnica deck that I consider the most fun I ever had. It was a combo deck really, but it had so many game plans it could move towards, and so many ways to try and play, I never really codified the fun as because it was those three things, but it makes such clear sense to me now! Having pivots to fall back on so you never feel shut out of a game leaves you willing to slug out a losing match for hope of a comeback, and multiple avenues of attack left most games feeling fresh and fun. Was I winning with self mill? Better save removal for lab maniac. Was I instead milling you? Uh oh, you need to ration your card draws. Was I using the graveyard shenanigans to cheat out huge monsters? Now you need kill spells or bigger creatures! I haven't played MtG in a long while, but I'm going to remember those three pillars as advice to give friends now. Thank you for that.

[@darebrained]

Funny enough this is basically the inversion of a realization I had a while ago: As much as I enjoy building some of my best combo decks, ones that actually get the reaction I want out of the table at times as well... I have no fun playing them. I mean... not *no* fun, but... not remotely as much as I had building the deck or as much as I imagined having playing it. And the reason for that is consistent: Those decks are all so well constructed (and yes I do pride myself in that) that the moment you play them there are few choices left. Each turn I know exactly what to do for the best result. There is no thinking until I start comboing off and usually then drawing large amounts of cards at which point I actually need to review what I drew - and what is still in the deck. For all intents and purposes I probably could sit down a total beginner with a complex enough series of tree diagrams and they could play these decks. But I love thinking. And that's why I love building those decks. But I basically frontload 98% of it into building them. So playing them is very... "okay this, than that, after that...". I realized that even more after I recently build a deck around the new flip Tamiyo whose concept was very simple: Don't draw aggro. Built the entire deck in a way that makes you either seem like you aren't the threat, that opponents don't think they have actual threats on you (thanks to your Xyris video btw) or that the repercussions of hitting me are seemingly too severe to go for it. And I have the time of my life with this. I don't think I ever had this much fun playing a deck.

[@SSolemn]

I create "hoops" to jump in half of my decks to not default into my comfort "archetype", and to make the brewing and playing of the deck more dificult. That is how my old Alela now just have 2 Sorceries & 1 Instant (me being a "spellslinger/tempo/control" player) and still winning a lot with her. It forces me to think out of the box while playing, using an enchantment suit as a toolbox to control the table while hiting everyone with a swarm of big flying faeries...

[@apocayliptic]

you got the tamiyo deck list anywhere?

[@ethanglaeser9239]

I have found to be true in my experience that the most fun cards are not the ones that win, but the ones that provide big advantage. For instance, I love Breach The Multiverse. It is a giant game-changing sorcery that is fun to resolve, but rarely results in immediate winning states. Compare this to other ramp payoffs like Eldrazi. You cast a huge Eldrazi, and you either get shut down by the table… or you just win. Same with Craterhoof Behemoth. It is much more entertaining to emphasize curve-toppers that intend a certain amount of game to continue after they resolve.

[@ozirus3344]

I think the fun of combo level commander is the interaction wars it produces. My best memories are defending or stopping combo lines. If you do the work to protect your combo, it’ll do the work to win you the game.

[@DandiVODs]

This video helped me come to a lot of realizations. And just grow as a magic player. Thank you.

[@JCintheBCC]

The first time I played Commander, I had not played MTG in a decade. I played fairly seriously in college... and then nothing. My neighbor lent me a deck to play with his friends. It was a BGU token-sacrificing deck to siphon life from other players... except they all knew the deck better than I did. So they just killed, exiled, destroyed, or countered every piece I needed to actually sacrifice the tokens I was making. But I just kept making the tokens every turn. One turn after someone said "so long as one of us has a counterspell, he can't win the game" I won the game. It turns out no one at the table had an answer for getting attacked by 172 2/2 squirrels with trample (each). Doubling tokens is good with or without the sac pieces.

[@roku6918]

a lot of people talk about issues with commander and i think you've really nailed something that is difficult to phrase otherwise i'm definitely a more power-oriented brewer so i apply some of that funny combo logic to trying to squeeze different versions of expected wincons in high power, and the reason i do THAT is because less people see that coming in a competitive game. but in a largely casual environment the novelty of an unusual combo does wear off after a few sessions. thank you for sharing your process though!! it provided me a lot of insight!

[@NateFinch]

I totally sympathize with this. So often, I will spend a ton of time making a clever deck on Moxfield and when I play it, it's never as fun. Usually it's a combo deck, and although I love the challenge of assembling a combo, especially an esoteric one ... in actual play it feels bad. It's like "oh, you got the two cards that let you win, ok". Worse is that a lot of these decks end up being storm decks, so it actually takes a long time for them to resolve the win. I really really like your notion of steeping in the win when you have a deck that wins slowly over a few turns. Then you actually have time to enjoy the win.. it doesnt feel like you pulled the wool over your opponents' eyes and snuck a motorcycle into the foot race... instead you worked to pull into a large lead into the race and see if anyone can stop you from crossing the finish line in a couple turns. It feels more earned. I do think deck building is a completely different part of the game, and it's one I enjoy a lot. There is, unfortunately, verry little payoff to that part if the deck you make isn't fun for the table. I have a lot of decks I have built that I have never played because I know they just won't be that fun to play against, even though they were a fun exercise to build.

[@veginito9927]

I love mazes end, its a wincon for my Kyanios and tiro deck its pretty much a control build that dumps its lands out and uses different type of land wincons with karoos.

[@certanmike]

I use it in my ur dragon deck and it once got me a win

[@haikuheroism6495]

I think this video does a great job of explaining my personal issue with combo stuff. It's the "oh, you got the combo? Want to play again?" thing. A combo, if no one has any way to disrupt it, is an end to the fun. For a while I couldn't really articulate this to my friends, but now I have a good way to so thanks! My distaste for combos bleeds into my deck construction, I have a hydra kindred beatdown that's all about building architecture so I can pump out crazy powerful hydras for cheap, and a Krenko mob boss goblin swarm deck. The hydras don't have infinite combos, or really any way to win other than making a big snake and hitting you with it. The goblins have a couple ways to make infinite goblins, but it's hard to pull off and I don't super like it. Anyway I'm remaking the hydras deck, and changing the commander and colors, and I'm following a lot of your videos and it's been really fun. I see what you mean by deck construction being a whole other part of the game. Instead of thinking of my commander as like "the guy in charge" (as I did with Vorinclex in the previous hydras deck) I'm thinking about it as a value engine, a reliable way for my deck to get its feet under it and start running faster. Animar is great for that, and your videos have me thinking about like... "what do I want this deck to do turn 3 and how do I make that happen?" The answer being that I want Animar out turn 2 if possible and I want to play a hydra on turn 3. This is rambly and awkward. Whatever, all this to say thank you for your videos. You've gotten an idiot like me to think critically about what she wants her deck to be doing when. My friends will rue the day they called my hydras slow when they fall victim to my well rounded and fast hydra nonsense.

[@lambdalandis]

Great video. I think it’s really important to get people thinking about the difference between “fun to build/think about” vs “fun to play/play against”.

[@ketchumall8243]

You experience mirrored mine when I built my Gods tribal deck. I always wanted to build a deck with all the Theros Gods, and when the World Tree came out it actually made the deck viable. Activating the world tree would mean the deck won 98% of the time. And while I was super excited to search my deck and Slam all of my Secret Lair theros God cards on the table my friend group was just shuffling up and telling me to hurry and do the same. I was a little sad they didn't want to wait for me to show off my pretty cardboard lol. Which, in retrospect, made sense. The game was effectively over, I had won. And going through the effort to put them out was just gloating. A combo with is still a combo win

[@jordantigner289]

I love my ‘Vilis, Broker of blood’ deck. It revolves around Liches Mastery, a card I’ve never seen anyone else play or talk about, for good reason. The tension of burning down my life in a sometimes vain attempt to reach immortality is always a lot of fun. From there you can burn all your life into repay in kind bringing everyone but you to the grave, or Liches + sheoldred + aetherflux to draw your library gaining a bunch of life and kill opponents, or faith of the devoted + skirge familiar to drain your opponents out, or go full gamba using the 40 cards you have in hand on gix, Yawgmoth preator to cast most of an opponent’s library and go from there. There’s no true infinite combos in here but it’s probably close enough to count as my only combo deck

[@Aarclannius2021]

I really enjoyed listening to the points made in this video.

[@TheLuckySpades]

I have a two novelty decks and I've managed tk avoid feeling let down by either My most meme-y is All Chandras, main restriction is that it needs to run all Chandras and is helmed by the flipwalker, inconsistent, but fun burn that either flops hard or becomes unexpectedly deadly, does what I hoped of it I'm considering making an even stricter version where every card needs to be related to Chandra somehow (while still keeping this version as the one that is still good), even if I don't end up enjoying playing with it as much it will count as the capstone of my Chandra collection The other is a River Song combo deck, it plans to win by taking infinite turns using 2-4 other cards, redrawing the extra turn card, all while getting some value that makes the win certain so I can demonstrate the loop and finish The fact that I planned that I get to say "so that's the loop, anyone got a way to stop it?" at the end of the combo I think keeps me from that let down feeling, and maybe the fact that there's at least 2 dozen configurations for the combo thanks to redundancies and overlapping stuff probably help, sometimes the future space archeologist has a graveyard robot hand her spent time travel spells, sometimes a dracula character helps her dig for a time pirate that she gives fancy boots to repeatedly while a hungry god makes a swarm nearby These are both my wekest decks, but I definitely enjoy them still

[@adrianj8370]

Im glad you put into words how ive been feeling, i had to stop brewing decks for this reason and i feel like i have a deck for everything but combo

[@Nr4747]

I built something similar to your "Tribal Fiendhunter"-deck in the past with Abdel Adrian + Far Traveler, using vehicles (ideally ones that draw a card on ETB), cards like Springleaf Drum and lands like Survivor's Encampment to tap Abdel the turn he entered play so that he would leave play at end of turn, bringing everything else back, usually including Fiend Hunters/Oblivion Rings that could exile him again etc. The deck drew a ton of cards, created a lot of 1/1 soldier tokens and eventually won with Altar of the Brood or Herophant's Chalice once I got the loop going. I loved building the deck and piloting it was a fun puzzle - but the deck was overall too complicated to pilot and explain while also taking too long to win.

[@Carwinley]

The most memorable part of any EDH game I've ever played is when one of my friends cast Wish and proceeded to play a Basic Plains from the pile of Basic Lands because he was on 3 Lands on something like Turn 7. There simply isn't any way for "Jeremy's deck did the thing he built it to do" to compete with that when it comes to memorability, especially when 'the thing he built it to do' is either some convoluted string of "X lets me do Y" or just "This happens an infinite number of times, I win."

[@DesignatedHealer]

One of my favorite decks I've ever made and play constantly was a budget concept I thought would be a throwaway. Turns out, even if I'm losing or playing from behind, it's fun to play because it's always interacting in some way and occasionally pulls out a surprising win.

[@FrozenSpector]

Yeah, I’m gonna pull out all my insta- or infinia- win combos and see what happens. Thanks Snail!

[@milo-bk6np]

You are the most jimmy magic player ive ever seen. Love the content keep up the good work!

[@thesxex]

my go-to solution for this problem has always been building versatile value engine decks that eventually go nuclear once the value engine becomes efficient enough. feels like a combo win, but the actual combo win is 5-6 cards and reasonably called out, leaving plenty of room for counterplay but also not being so fragile that it breaks to disruption

[@deanc3623]

I had this exact thought too with my Niv Mizzet, Parun deck. It seemed like I was just diggibg for the combo at times, but when I was casting instants and sorceties it was genuinly fun. That's why I'm taking out the 2 other combo pieces aside from Curiousity: its just plain more fun to storm off with him.

[@exypnosaurus5079]

One of my favorite interactions that occurred in a edh game I played at a lgs was in a losing state where I had a dinosaur tribal deck against a graveyard deck who's one top and another player. The winning player plays a card which brought creatures from everyone's graveyards to his board with an enchantment to double up on all the cards. One of those cards was however an unassuming Rampaging Ferocidon which I lost a while ago. He took over 70 damage and couldn't heal due to the Ferocidon's annoying abilities. Single handedly allowed me to get a win with a few big dinosaurs boosted with a Natural Growth.

[@deejayf69]

Salubrious Snails are known to be gastropods with immense knowledge of Magic the Gathering. Their specialty is the "EDH" aka "Commander" format. They spend most of their time brewing decks and creating banger videos. Their average lifespan is still unknown. Would you like to rate this Wikipedia entry?

[@ethansisbarro136]

Great video! This inspired me to build my own fiend Hunter tribal deck, but with a different commander: Cayth, Famed Mechanist. Rather than go all in on the combo, it can be a beatdown shell that just so happens to contain the combo, giving me flexibility of game plans. Moreover, fabricate and Cayth’s ability give me small decisions throughout the game that provide a wider variety of games. Cayth being a combo piece with the fiend hunters provides consistency, as does adding blue, which allows me to include clones in the combo.

[@__E__]

> Deckbuilding creativity is not rewarded in and of itself, in commander games. Good one! This is also why CEDH is actually a ton more fun than it sounds. A lot of new players expect it to be boring, all decks having a lot of 99 in common and similar wincons. However the truth is it's the clever plays, the swings in who's the threat, the counterspell wars, the arm's length stacks etc that make a game intense, memorable and crazy fun. What matters is the sequence of plays that led you to the win, not how you win. Yet another instance of the common trope "it's not the destination, it's the journey", and CEDH rarely fails to make absolutely fabulous ones.

[@RyanEglitis]

The most fun "combo" deck I've played is my Animar Cascade deck. Because it's cascade focused, you never quite know what you're going to get, and I don't run any (non-land) tutors to increase consistency. It can get out of hand pretty quickly though once animar is making things cheap, and cascade helps ramp up the cost-reduction quickly. Hullbreaker Horror lets you loop any two colorless cards infinitely, so that eventually you'll be able to hit an attack multiplier like Craterhoof and a haste enabler like Maelstrom Wanderer. Other cards also let you loop cast things or generate infinite mana, or draw masses of cards. It doesn't always go off super fast, and it can fizzle, but it's a fun deck to work through the "combo" with, because so many different cards all come together to further the "combo" in different ways. It also wins through attacking in many lines, so it can be interacted with. If you don't like high-power commander, I could see it not being for you, but it's not the toughest deck to fight - just kill animar once or twice, and suddenly it has to pay for all its lines like a normal rUG deck.

[@hiby753]

Great things to consider while deck building, thanks!

[@serradelahorne8289]

That Fiend Hunter deck is an actual interesting combo thing, to me. Kudos.

[@jamesc.7216]

I have been playing MTG off and on since it came out and playing EDH since it was introduced. I feel for you because I have made many, many decks that don't give the desired game feel as you described here. Some of my most powerful decks get sidelined or disassembled because of this. I have had much more actual fun playing my stupid Asmor food deck than other drastically more powerful decks. I have decks that will body the whole table regardless of being the arch-enemy that I never use but I will play my derp cycling deck almost every game even though it rarely does anything meaningful and never wins. I feel that, just like me, you and the rest of us (including WoTC) are trying build a deck that provides the game feel we want but are using the metrics of deck construction. I would be more than happy to play against a deck that works through a game plan to achieve victory. A + B combos just tend to not be very satisfying to play against (WoTC struggles with this idea alot).

[@adamxue6096]

I think an important distinction that I've come to feel is that, some decks are fun to theorycraft and deckbuild, but playing them is best left as a one off with friends, and then they should stay a solitaire deck, not brought out on an actual table. Because sometimes to do something really novel, you have to make a lot of sacrifices in various fashion, often times this means that it's either fringe and fragile, or consistent in a way that people will have to hate on you a lot everytime you do it. This is different from playing a deck that "has a combo in it" as when the combo thing you are trying to do, is a relatively small package, you could usually play a fairly back and forth deck before getting to the combo, the deck may not even always need the combo to win. The deck is a limited space, if you are doing some things like battle of wits, you are gonna be trying to making something really novel, that would require your entire deck to be built around this novel thing. Ofc this means that you are having to make a lot of sacrifices, and ofc, due to the nature of the deck itself, you are very much unlikely to take it out more than 5 times. In this case it's one time too many to bring it out more than once and shuffle everyone else's card into your own library - a huge pain for literally everyone involved to clean up afterwards, especially if you are not all using different sleeves. Would the deck be cool? Surely, it clearly speaks of your ability to deckbuild to make it work. Would it be fun to play against on the norm? Uh... probably not.

[@voreenthusiast3638]

Nothing is more satisfying than pulling off an Ikki-Ikki Crackshot combo with bazaar Trader. It only happens once in a blue moon but it’s awesome

[@madeofmandrake1748]

My fun combo deck is Experiment Kraj. I don't use any tutors, I win using a different combination of combo pieces each time. Something that taps for mana, something that taps for cards/spells that sink mana to draw cards, and something that can teach Kraj how to untap itself. I have close to 20 cards that could be involved in a game-winning combo, it's my job to put it together. Because it's all creature based it's easily telegraphed and I can't normally pop off in a single turn, and because it's slightly different each time it stops it from being boring. Sometimes I win with commander damage. Sometimes everyone draws their deck. Sometimes it's triskelion. It'd be real easy to throw a Lab Man in there too. Idk, I like it.

[@Tur713]

Maze's End has been a part of my Atogatog deck since I first built it. You have no idea how delighted I was when Gates got more support with Baldur's Gate. It's primarily there as mana fixing and utility to support my commander, but I just won a game with it this week with the Maze, so it's also not exactly a non-threat

[@maidenless_tarnished]

If you find yourself wanting a different kind of deck building challenge, try Artisan. You can only use cards that have had a common or uncommon printing. The fun comes from having to look elsewhere for cards that rare and mythics usually take care of. I have built two artisan decks and they are two of my favorite decks and actually taught me how to look at deck building differently.

[@OracleCura]

I recently built a Kylox deck, and after a few games it did eventually do its "thing", comboing out. That final combo was a lot of "I think I have the win" and a lot of reading a giant handful of cards on the stack. I haven't played that deck since. From a deck-building standpoint, it's an incredibly fun and interesting commander, but it's as you describe here; ultimately a combo needs to be fast, and if it isn't other players aren't going to have a good time with it. Messy, solitaire turns that take ages and don't even guarantee a win create a bad experience. I also found that this deck didn't really do too much while leading up to its combo; it just sits there trying to get some value, and doesn't do much interacting with the rest of the board. ...so ultimately a fun deck needs to address these two problems, of how to win without being tedious, and how to exist outside that winning turn with some level of activity to stay engaged. Conversely, my Indoraptor deck is a blast; the goal of the deck is to hurt everyone, play the raptor, then poke it repeatedly. It isn't an instant-win even when the deck does what it's supposed to do, and just about every part of its plan does something to influence the state of the game.

[@nilsjonsson4446]

Great and insightful video as usual. Impressive quality really

[@pedrodarosamello64]

It doesn't matter if your combo is something as efficient as Oracle + another spell, or some goffy combo with old cards, as long as the game boils down to "I put these 2-3 cards together so I win" it is going to be all the same. Everyone saw it already a million times and just wants to go next game hoping the end of that one will be more memorable.

[@dixel2047]

Man Everytime I watch one of your videos I get better words to describe my ideas about magic lol

[@jaredwonnacott9732]

The problem you're having is you're building combos with too few pieces and win cons. I did the exiling three things in a cycle combo, but I only let myself combo off if I have 3 different wincons so I can kill each player in a unique way. This turns the combo into a 6 card, instead of a 3 card, combo. I have several 5-7 card instant win combos that can do something before I get all the pieces. Also, combos that don't necessarily win, like they create infinite creatures, but not with haste, or they trigger a win on your upkeep, or something like that can be a lot more fun as well.

[@St33ldancer]

When I started playing commander, I adored combo. Heck, I even had a Breya deck that was literally just combo tribal. But years later, and with a penchant for building deck after deck for fun, I've found myself leaning away from straightforward combo decks, and more using combos as a secondary win condition for decks, a way to close out overly grindy and frustrating games.

[@Ajb92]

The most fun combo deck I've ever built is my Marneus Calgar Treasures-n'-Clues (n'-Food-n'-Other Artifact Tokens) deck. The cards are so high-synergy that I most often find myself *accidentally* comboing off, rather than going for a specific predetermined wincon. That makes it way more interesting, since my hand is now a puzzle that needs to be solved rather than a race to assemble 3 specific cards that win me the game.

[@mateuszsikora6380]

This might be your most important video so far., It is incredibly easy to fall into the "fun idea" trap considering the current Magic design.

[@funa2865]

Though it wasn't the point of the video you've reminded me to branch out my deck building and explore goofier ideas. There is alot of magic any individual player isn't playing, and probably should be.

[@sunbro7853]

I also made a fiend hunter loops deck but I used Abdel Adrian and Master Chef. It runs the slower flicker creatures though with a bunch of value cards to create a slow infinite loop that makes an army. The primary wincon is attacking which ensures one needs to participate throughout the game to keep the position they’ve acheieved since it’s a snowball kind of deck.

[@mykeycuento5576]

Healthiest, most wholesome Commander KZbinr...

[@MFeyBlizzard]

Finally someone else usong archidekt, i love archidekt SO MUCH

[@TheHobbyExpert]

Salubrious Snail truly thinks too much. We appreciate you homie🙏

[@AseAPS]

So, I think winning on combo is a lot of fun! I have a few casual combo decks and several cEDH combo decks. They truly are a ton of fun to play with. That said, if people don't make you fight for the combo win it can feel anticlimactic. Actually, sometimes it's worse and people are legitimately mad at you. One of the reasons I really like cEDH and high power so much is because of the texture and nuance involved in navigating to a win. Honestly, your list of shared elements amongst the decks that you like are pretty similar to my criteria for casual decks. I need the ability to win or a game plan, I need the deck to be resilient, and I need the deck to be complex enough that I won't get bored.

[@averydenman6276]

For me, the combo deck I've made that most successfully broke out of this loop was a Codie, Vociferous Codex spellslinger deck. I'd actually not even intended it to be a combo deck at first, the deckbuilding goal I'd chosen for myself was to make a "chaos" style deck where most of the chaotic effects only affected myself (to avoid warp world type table groans). After actually playing it a few times however, the commander tended to ensure large value swings and potent combos, meaning it played much more like a combo deck. Going back to deckbuilding, I tried retooling it in this combo direction and ended up with a fun end point: the deck has around 5 potent combo win conditions (maze's end, second sun, emergent ultimatum, infinite turns, jadzi storm), but it's extremely hard to steer the deck in any particular direction once the chaos starts up, and so a fun deckbuilding challenge for me also became a fun play challenge recognizing when the deck presents an opportunity to win vs when I need to try and stall and keep looking for an opening. It's still a deck I don't want to break out too often though, since part of the fun is just bringing it out to see how it goes off and most of my friends know to shoot the book on sight now. It's probably my favorite deck I've made though, and I think it pretty successfully broke the combo slump I was in.

[@magica3526]

Interestingly, this isn't the experience i've had with my heliod, warped eclipse deck. Functionally, it's a turn 5 combo deck, but the shape it takes the game is super unique, so people don't tend to mind as much

[@renisnyanbinary]

As someone who loves to construct silly and/or inventive ways of winning the game (see: my Yedora list), a lot of the fun I experience playing them is watching the pieces of the Rube Goldberg machine I've built fall into place. In the end, yeah, it's a "oh, you got combo? cool, let's shuffle up," but the dopamine rush of everything falling into place is one that shouldn't be understated. That being said, I only usually run said combo decks once or twice a commander night.

[@SpongeCakeJ]

Maze’s End was actually the first deck I ever built, with Child of Alara as my commander. I have always found win cons to be a fun way of playing games, as I’m just a sucker for them and it’s almost like a mini game inside the actual game. I just got a thrill out of it to see if I could pull them off. That’s what hooked me on it! I’ve changed it to Garth, One-Eye now to offer my self other ways to win, but I still think it’s fun. And that’s what matters!

[@pawelekqwert]

My through in middle of your essay. Magic by itself, all interactions, playing creatures, assembling combos and synergies- this creates a problems. All fun from mtg comes from resolving problems, avoiding inevitables, solving case on case with counter spell wars. Deploying engine and wining in one turn can be fun for one person, but what came in this mid- full of biting and biting back- section is, in my opinion, true essence of MTG fun

[@hi_its_stephen]

I just built an Animar deck with about 30+ overlapping creature combos. Every game is a blast. I have no tutors. It’s just what kind of hand is this, is this puzzle leading toward play patterns and a wincon that feels relevant on this particular table. If so, I keep and see what happens. I’ve played the deck a dozen times, the novelty hasn’t worn off. Recently discovered a new combo I hadn’t even considered.

[@RyanEglitis]

Same - I went with a Cascade theme, as the Cascade creatures both double up Animar triggers, and leans into the randomness more. I still like playing it, but it's pretty high power so I don't get to play it as often as I'd like. And I left out the obvious Ancestral Statue combo, because that one-card combo is boring af once you've done it twice. A fun obscure one from my deck is once you get infinite mana somehow, Etali, Primal Conqueror and Temur Sabertooth can let you just exile everything from everyone's libraries (Etali's form of cascade doesn't shuffle back misses). Then just pass the turn so everyone decks out before you 😂

[@hi_its_stephen]

@@RyanEglitis incredible 🤣

[@gabrielemarogna9444]

Random rant, I loved the idea of Radha giving you access to 4 mana land ramp cards, and ended up making my own list with Susan and the first doctor. I leaned all the way into the Battlecruiser thing and realized... I hate that play style 😂 I am glad you made this videos, because they had me really ask what I want out of my games. I am still unsure what I really love, but I seem to like being proactive or encouraging interaction while lying low, to then burst in with a big board or interruptible combo. I love approach of the second sun, and dragons, and equipments, and general Voltron stuff. I think I have learned this by making decks I didn't like though, and that made me not just happier with what I build, but I think nicer to play with. Even knowing that I love to see a storm deck go off, I build one or two and play test them by myself, because I ultimately just love the way the cards interact with each other, but I don't feel the need to show it off and play through interaction etcetera. I backseat a lot less, realizing that if I disagree with an inclusion in someone else's deck, that's my problem, and ultimately it's usually a taste based thing. That's all, not sure if that says anything beyond "hey, good videos, hope everyone else is getting as much value out of them as I am"

[@ivernedit]

4-5 piece combos with random cards you never see is my new favorite thing to do.

[@yenchitan7276]

Honestly my philosophy in casual EDH these days are "the game has to end at some point." "I don't want this game to last for 6 hour, or one that last 15 mins. There is a goldilocks zone" and "We shouldn't be playing the same game long enough to have any player die of exhaustion, thirst or hunger".

[@__-be1gk]

"Oh, you got the combo? ok" Is really just a perfect encapsulation of the feelings here. When you make Maze's End into an instawin, you're not really playing the Maze's End you see when you look at the card, you're not gathering up and protecting the janky lands as you make your way through the whole of Ravnica, you're just playing "the combo" and ending the game. You're losing the entire fantasy that makes you actually want to play the card in the first place. Maze's End could be anything else, by turning it into a combo, it really has just become "the combo" and stopped being Maze's End.

[@Melvin-rd3rr]

The solution I’ve come to (when it comes to combo decks) is Yusri, Fortune’s Flame. It’s an extremely high power dragons approach deck that purely relies on getting Krarks thumb and a Yusri attack trigger. I don’t know what the math comes out to with trying to flips heads 5 times, but they’re quite low. The deck, of course, doesn’t completely rely on the thumb to guarantee a win. A combination of the classic duplicate supporting cards make the deck run smooth in the mid/ late game. It’s basically a classic blue/ red DA deck with a luck based win condition. And even then that wincon is not guaranteed. As a player who loves stream lined efficiency, this deck is a breath of fresh air. It’s extremely fine tuned, but has just the right amount of variance. Some times you swing with Yusri m, with no thumb, and flip 5heads on a whip. Sometimes you get 4 heads in a row just to lose out on that last flip, or you lose all 5 flips and take a BUNCH of damage. Everytime I whip this deck out it’s always a blast with the table sitting there in anticipation. Waiting to see how many flips I win. Overall very fun deck that is both optimized and “random”. No one in the group has felt bad losing to the deck because if you win the 5 flips, then you earned the win.

[@Dsparky121]

The idea of a Sunforger focused deck always interested me. During Eldraine I saw the Boros Kellan get spoiled and finally built a deck that had been on my mind for a long time. My deck had all of the ‘silver bullet’ interaction pieces that I had a harder time justifying in a more traditional deck. Having cards like Comeuppance, Deflecting Palm and Settle the Wreckage made attacking me potentially perilous. I had my favorite answers to most gameplans and plenty of protection. Teferi’s Protection, Eerie Interlude, Blacksmith Skill and effects like Release to Memory for the pesky graveyard decks. Voltron was a logical way to close out the game with my Boros Control gameplan, however I didn’t like that it was encouraging the deck to be pulled in a new direction. I found a combo that could be included in the deck that didn’t feel very out of place with every piece being tutorable between Kellan or Sunforger. Mistviel Plains, Chance for Glory, Sunforger, Cloudsteel Kirin, and a creature to equip to. This combo is easily interacted with in many ways. It costs a lot of upfront mana, and even to maintain the loop requires 6 mana and mistvail plains. The deck is quite slow but has the interaction needed to survive that long and recover from boardwipes. During the deck building process i thought i was cooking and couldn’t wait to show my friends my newest brew. When I won my first ever game with the deck, my friends were not impressed and only saw this as another combo deck that lead to an anticlimactic end to it’s games. People just don’t enjoy combo decks. Regardless of how many cards the combo involves or how much mana it takes. I continue to play this deck from time to time because I genuinely enjoy it but not as often as I would like to because I don’t want to subject my playgroup to playing against a combo

[@skiddy6085]

Of the Decks with combos I own, my favorite is My Alesha Who Smiles At Death Deck. The concept behind it is that there are a lot of combo pieces in mardu that are also just good aristocrat pieces. (Reanimating guys that makes tokens, sacrifice outlets, drain effects) So the deck is basically an aristocrat deck until it manages to assemble the needed 3 or 4 card combos to win. Since aristocrats lowers life totals through drain effects and small creature attacks throughout the game it isn’t my only game plan, and since it isn’t a 2 card combo with my commander I have to use whatever pieces I can assemble to win the game. I think the fact that my commander isn’t a combo piece and instead a recursion element really helps.

[@haslittle8078]

I also built a Gate deck, but my commander was Omnath, Locus of Creation. Rather than focus on Maze's End, the deck ramps a ton of Gates into play and showcases payoff cards like Archway Angel and Gatebreaker Ram while using Omnath as a cash-back engine to cast more spells. I do run Scapeshift with Deserted Temple/Mazes End, but I also run Laboratory Maniac to win with Guild Summit and funny Warp World looping shenanigans to rebuy all the Gate etb procs. My most common win "combo" is to just resolve Crackling Perimeter, but the deck is very fun to pilot.

[@rossstewart9475]

I had a similar realisation in my own "kitchen table" modern environment when the ante upped to the point where my most powerful control deck was a Jeskai land destruction/wrath meta. Turns out you can't have fun if your opponent isn't having fun.

[@georgiahokie1994]

This is why I love toolbox more than anything. It means if I shuffle up and play a game of commander, I can go to any pod and interact and also have a decent chance of winning

[@crazyguyforhire]

I play a Grenzo, dungeon warden combo deck that's pretty powerful, can end up playing solitaire quite often, but I still find quite fun at the table. The reason for this is, instead of focusing on tutors like most combo decks, the deck simply seeks to maximize as much value off of grenzo's activations, and only tries to combo off at instant speed (usually with some other players game-changing spell on the stack) and only does so by activating grenzo as many times as the board state allows, without fixing the bottom of the deck. It's quite random, sometimes it completely whiffs, sometimes it interacts with the board in a meaningful way, and sometimes it just wins on the spot. It create exciting moments where other players are not quite sure when the deck could just explode, or just completely whiff.

[@AnoraksMuseum-eu9ph]

You had to post this while I'm trying to go to sleep? Now I have to watch it in lieu of resting smh this isn't my fault

[@realhyrulesoverlord]

Crazy. I was just thinking about Maze's End 2 days ago.

[@Dreaming_Kaleidus]

I've also got a gates deck, though it seems to align more with your latter description of being flexible. The commander is Jodah, Archmage Eternal and the Companion is Jegantha. Sometimes I use those two to cheat out big threats, sometimes I use untap abilities on Jegantha to spam WUBRG costs, and other times I just get value from the gates I have in play. Maze's End is in the deck and sometimes it's a win con, sometime it's an enabler for gate synergies, and other times, it's just a land. It could be optimized for sure, but in my low-power pod, I have fun with it.

[@FilmscoreMetaler]

I, a casual Johnny, have to admit, that playing combo is like asking people if they want to watch you mast****te. Everyone else is having fun and enjoying their time together, then you suddenly come and end it for everyone. While I love breaking down a possible combo piece and build a deck around it, I don't enjoy actually playing it so much. But I do have a soft spot for janky combo pieces like Barren Glory. You'll lose more often than not, but if you don't, it feels like a real achievement. I believe you have to make a combo your own one way or another.

[@expansionist4]

My high-powered deck is a Derevi combo deck. It's my most expensive deck in my arsenal, and it's been through many iterations to try to bring it to where it is now. My idea with it was always blinking creatures, and ETB triggers, setting up complex board states and reaping lots of value. Without going into the evolutionary story of this, where it is now comes partly from trying to keep this fun to play against. So there are no stax and no counterspells. The deck focuses on controlling my own library and protecting my board state and life total, but not through inhibiting others on playing their decks. There are 5 or more possible game-winning combos, all of which take at least 4 cards to pull off. So each game is a different puzzle that I'm trying to put together while others try to slow it down. I've been able to sit down at high-powered casual tables, and cedh tables, and engage in the game in meaningful ways that are usually appreciated. Simplifying my combos, and actually learning to run the deck efficiently were key in honing this deck to be powerful, consistent, and still fun for others, so I wasn't hogging turn time. I know what I'm after and when it happens it's usually simple and we can move on.

[@WillGardlcc1]

I’ve added Maze’s end to my Tricky Terrain rebuild, and I must say, it’s a pretty awesome include with the everything counters