The Most Complicated Deck I've Ever Played

[@ZraphinSteinbacker-vk2dv]

Snail is by far the most underrated MTG KZbinr.

[@ry7hym]

I wouldn't say underrated. I think he's pretty highly rated by the people that watch him. but not enough people watch him (yet)

[@moxfrog3]

I think he is on the upswing and deserves it.

[@davestier6247]

He is galaxy brain levels compared to most

[@garak55]

It's true but also the bar is on the floor. Like who's out there who is likeable and knows about magic? The entire team of channel fireball are unsufferable. That fake geek girl in her liliana cosplay that sucks at drafting. The command zone who tell you to play 8 draw spells in your commander deck. That professor guy who looks like a nonce. Covertgoblue is ok and bryan kibler is a cool dude I guess but the others man...

[@arthursmit8468]

Dare i say the only good one i've seen so far (for edh)

[@nathanielnickell7662]

I have a friend who built this monstrosity of a commander from scratch. This deck is terrifying. At its core it avoids board wipes while generating value repeatedly. After krark clan and the altars were put in, it goes full combo, to the point the only way to interact with the deck is to instant speed exile the graveyard (and no one can ever even figure out when to use it.) This deck has stumped several cedh players and confounds casual players to the point in which it's ignored even while its winning. Super awesome deck and I love to see more videos posted on it. I dont recommend it unless you literally want to melt your brain though!

[@ry7hym]

that is brilliant

[@salubrioussnail]

Yeah, Gerrard ends up being a really complex card as far as timings are concerned, and having sac outlets for both artifacts and creatures ends up making the deck difficult to play around if it's being piloted well.

[@VoodooDuck]

Jo we NEED a deck list bro

[@kylemorin3945]

Do you have a decklist? that sounds awesome.

[@seankingmagic4639]

@@michaelmcdonald2005 the decklist in the video doesn't include krark clan. literally the whole video was about how that makes a completely different deck.

[@cornchip8139]

This puts into words my deck building proccess in ways i never could. when people ask about my power level i always say " im gonna do silly stuff with strong cards "

[@garak55]

Oh that's so funny! I always say "I'm gonna do strong stuff with silly cards". Right now, I'm trying hard to replicate the worst deck from pre 2020 modern : GW boggles.

[@__E__]

I tried that, mostly because my pods are not very high power and I wanted to play with the cards I own. Turns out a force of will (or other bangers) always feels weird to play in the middle of a cute fiddly deck, both for the opponents and myself, regardless of the power. In my experience strong with silly works but the other way around doesn't.

[@bigzigtv706]

⁠@@garak55my play group has a boggles deck, we had to play rock paper scissors to decide who got to play it

[@garak55]

@@bigzigtv706 I know. Mine is now on a 2 weeks winning streak and will soon be hall of famed from/retired from our playgroup lmao Ellivere is such a silly commander somtimes

[@jakemf9771]

Everytime I watch a video like this, I feel like I don't know anything about making decks and I shouldn't make decks

[@RagingAcid]

yeah but making decks is fun

[@casketbase7750]

14:25 I really needed to hear this. I've spent literal years working on Ghen, Arcanum Weaver self-mill deck, but new commanders like Anikthea or Coram really discourage me because they do his shtick more efficiently in stronger colors. Has all my work been useless? Should I just abandon Ghen for the objective upgrades? No. I shouldn't. You're right that I shouldn't let "the things I really like get lost in the shuffle." If Jan Jansen can say no to Clock of Omens, I can say no to replacements for Ghen. Thank you for the encouragement. Sincerely.

[@wydx120]

Yeah This reminds me of the many times I discussed my latest grouphug/maniac deck while it was still in progress. My main goal was to make a draw-heavy grouphug deck that could snatch a surprise win at some point by fiddling with the card draw (with the aforementioned Maniac, Jace Mysteries, and a Triskaidekaphile); and a couple other jumpscares for my opponents, like a secondary cloning theme and a Biovisionary. Every single person I showed the WIP decklist to, told me to add Thassa's Oracle. But then it wouldn't be a grouphug bant deck!! It would just be another run of the mill Thoracle combo deck, and a mediocre one at that!!! It was infuriating to say the least

[@Lucarioguild7]

Sub optimal decks are way more fun imo, whether that's using a "worse" commander for a particular archetype or playing a powerful commander on a hyper budget.

[@elizabethhicks4181]

@@Lucarioguild7I make so many people angry with my Kestia, The Cultivator “Build Your Own Big Dumb Idiot” enchantress/auras deck. Everyone tells me to add loads of cards to make it more powerful, chief among them: Sol Ring. I don’t run sol ring, because there are tons of times where I’m low on hand size, and basically playing off the top of my deck, and hitting land-Sol Ring-Land is almost always an instant recipe for the enchantress draw chain stopping. I used to run it, as the only artifact in the deck, but ran into the same situation too often: sol ring stopped the chains. It makes people really upset that I don’t run it by choice!

[@nasutoe]

11:48 I feel like that was directed straight at me, I recently converted my Myriim dragon combo deck into a Ziatora reanimator deck, after a series of games of either doing nothing because Myriim was removed enough or waiting until I was able basically playing my entire deck because of duplicated dragon etbs. The Myriim deck was not what I had hoped the deck would have been. I was hoping to make a dragon deck that would allow me to be a big threat on the board and winning through combat damage while eating some removal in the process. I was NOT hoping to just wait until I had enough mana and dragons to just draw and play my entire deck and kill everyone at once. It felt like when I had Myriim as my commander I was actively discouraged from playing dragons since why would I play a dragon now when if I wait 2 turns I could get a second copy for free? And the long turns and annoying amount of etb triggers to keep track of eventually led me to dismantling it. The Ziatora deck, while most probably less powerful is definitely more interesting to play. I can do dragon things and eat removal due to the reanimator sub theme. Still testing it but it’s more what I had hoped for in the deck.

[@W0lfguard1997]

Funnily enough I had a sort of opposite experience. I started playing edh with big stompy (Morophon dragons) and last year I built an Ovika deck all about playing cards with a much higher cmc than you need to pay, to make lots of tokens combined with efficient ramp. Then I made the mistake of including sac outlets for the gobbos. It has turned into a combo deck that almost surely kills if an altar hits the board after ovika is in play (which tends to happen when you ramp it out on 4 because noone wants to pay ward 3): 1. almost every spell creates more goblins and therefore mana than it's cost 2. blue is really good at drawing loads of cards 3. Red is really good at turning lots of mana into lots of face damage It ended up being one of my favorite decks (although it could probably handle about 10 or so counterspells to protect the gameplan instead of going all in on value)

[@MisterWebb]

My Ziatora deck is elemental kindred Primal Surge

[@Jsimon402]

Decklist? Ziatora dragon reanimator sounds rad and much more fun than the usual suspects like Ur-Dragon or Miirym

[@SamHuggins]

Good Lord, $8 KCI sounds amazing. Also just wanna say you're one of my current favorite MTG channel snail, love the content :)

[@sakurasawa77]

Your videos are all incredible in selling an idea for deck building. The Radha video was so incredible that made my friend create a Temur Doctor deck with the same idea, and this video showed me how a sacrifice Boros deck could actually work out.

[@lancesmith8298]

And in turn, while the actual gears of the engine might look different compared to what’s on offer in Boros with Gerard, non-exile creature board wipes might be the secret sauce that makes my Teysa Karlov Rally the Ancestors deck work without being just a worse Storm deck.

[@creditroll176]

i think this is my favorite video on edh ever. every one of your videos makes me want to build the deck you talk about, but this is something else. its so cool and complicated and the way you talk about it makes so much sense. absolutely going to join the patreon

[@admiralcasperr]

12:35 Along years playong various versions of eggs, I can confidently say that with KCI it devolves into a "protect the Ironworks" minigame. That's th reason I ditched all my KCI decks except a Teshar cEDH which isn't as much of an eggs deck as it is a infinite combo deck.

[@OmegaFerretMusic]

the mollusk giveth

[@garak55]

May he never taketh away

[@joachimpearson4892]

I built a similar deck last year with "Shimatsu, the bloodcloaked" as my commander, partnered with the Prismatic Piper to gain access to white. My favourite memory of the deck was when another player wandered over to our table one turn after I had my Second Sunrise countered. They asked me "How did you die?" whilst I was still playing. I had just sacrificed everything to Shimatsu; lands and all, so my only permanent was a 20/20 demon sitting alone in the centre of the playmat. It looked exactly like I'd shuffled up and was waiting for the next game to start. To this day it's the funniest board-state I've ever seen. My biggest learning with that deck was that I needed to cut a lot of the classic 1 mana eggs that sacrifice themselves to draw a card. 2 mana permanents that replace themselves on etb are often way better and easier to play; they allow you to keep up your card velocity and also stick around for your second sunrise turns. Could be a good edit for the Gerrard deck to simplify some of those decision trees.

[@SteeIdancer]

I generally imagine my decks complexity based on how easy it would be to give to another player and have them pilot it decently well. I prefer fairly complex, but not necessarily top tier decks that have many lines of play and innate complexity in interactions the cards have with each other. And of course, the most rewarding bit is when you find new lines and strategies mid game that you didnt spot until the situation called for it. When my decks can do that, I know I've crafted a masterpiece, regardless of its actual win rate, because I'll always have fun piloting a deck like that, one that really requires me to KNOW the deck.

[@chillinon3263]

The Necrologia mention brings me joy. I lovingly call it bAd Nauseam in my Amalia deck because I'm always paying like 20 life for 20 cards. Even with its strict timing restriction, the hand sculpting wins me so many games

[@adamxue6096]

That poor card at the end got violated, that is both funny and horrifying

[@2LettersSho]

WTB: 12x Chromatic Sphere, good/clean condition Reason: hungry for a good scramble

[@Keysispieces]

So I bought the shell for this deck. There were a few cards my LGS didn't have, and I replaced them with things I had lying around. It's really fun to just sit there and fiddle, and I can't wait to play it in a pod. The store's edh night is tomorrow, so we'll see if I feel comfortable enough eggsecuting its storm turns to actually try it out in front of other players. Will report back!

[@marshall4439]

Excellent video essay, along with great analysis about focused optimization vs deck wide optimization. This essay made me think immediately about my Firesong & Sunspeaker deck which I’ve had since the Cows were printed. The deck runs the best card draw available to it because Boros card draw is generally weak, so cards like the One Ring and Trouble in Pairs help it keep up. But I don’t run a lot of fast mana beyond Sol because that mana build up is the key enjoyment loop in piloting the deck that I don’t like to shortcut. Also, thinking about the “optimize until the point of not recognizing the deck” I initially it had Sunforger in, because why not in a Boros spellslinger? But the Sunforger demanded quite a lot of support to make it work, and that in turn demanded additional tutors to get the equipment, and soon it was actually a Sunforger deck instead of a Cows deck, so I took the Sunforger out. I still have this deck together and love it, and I really appreciate your philosophizing around what makes commander decks so enduring. Keep up the great work

[@joeybelasco]

I would love to see a snail video on the topic of choosing your commander

[@FyrebirdLP]

Hans sounds like an absolute madman. We need to see more of his crazy creations!!

[@masterhedgemon5381]

Once again its Hans cooking

[@TemporallyAnarchaic]

I recently just updated and rebuilt my Breya Eggs list from 2017/2018. I missed it. Eggs, in all forms, is absurdly complex unless you’re taking the easy combo outs. And sometimes that’s a thing. I find that I more often find the way more complex lines. The modern day version gets to run God-Eternal Bontu and Pitiless Carnage in addition to Reprocess and Paradoxical Outcome. Obviously I’m also on KCI, but I also can go off with Breya and Scrap Trawler doing shenanigans in tandem. Or Displacer Kitten and Teferi, Time Raveler. There’s also a lot of overlap once combo density starts to ramp up to those levels. At that point, the eggs deck becomes a game of recognizing jank. I had a game the other day where Saheeli, Sublime Artificer looped in with Sol Ring, Displacer Kitten, Lotus Petal, Scrap Trawler, Sword of the Meek, and Breya to yield an unbound mana and servo creation engine. Recognizing that all those pieces fit together in an engine that is usually far more simple is what I love about decks like this. There are easy combos, but more often you tend to find the six or seven card lines that kinda sorta work the same way because there’s some complex redundancy that exists almost as an accident. It’s like sifting through a junkyard looking for stuff that fits together just well enough to be useful.

[@Bladius_]

My breya deck isn't eggs, but it's very similar, I call it a "combo trash pile" . It's a pile of stuff that eventually lines up into a combo. There are straight forward combos, Nim deathmantle for example, but over time I've just discovered "oh, that's a loop" while mid turn. It's running quite a lot of high power control magic though, as my brother and I play very cutthroat with each other. I'm looking to depower it in some areas when I get around to it; cards like balance and armageddon are admittedly unfun when not playing vs very tuned ramp decks that can handle the setback.

[@soprettymuchthatsthewayitis]

16:20 This is such a good point, when I build lower power decks to play with my friends, I usually build them with high tier interaction (an offer, swan song, swords, usually like 16+ pieces overall), and pretty good ramp (only 2 mana rocks, but no sol ring in non-green, or only 1 mana accelerants in green), but the core synergy and gameplan of the deck is usually weaker compared to the other players' decks. I still have a winrate above 75% with them because I've been playing the game for a lot longer than them, but the games feel good because it takes more effort for me to win, which somewhat balances out the skill, but I can also play table police and make sure other players aren't getting too far ahead. I like to separate my decks into interaction, ramp, engines, synergy, and wincons when thinking about my powerlevel, and can usually give each section its own powerlevel, and it's been really helpful for my deckbuilding.

[@laytonjr6601]

So in short, if you play a lower power Synergy/Wincon you're playing high power Everything Else to go with it

[@soprettymuchthatsthewayitis]

@@laytonjr6601 I'd say that's a bit of a stretch, I just build my decks with high-power sensibilities towards how much of each thing I should run, and run efficient ramp/interaction, the rest of the deck is usually below what the rest of the table is in power level. The most high power piece of interaction I run in those decks is Swan Song, which tons of people run in low power, and I only run 2 mana rocks or 1 mana elves (no sol ring). I just don't run bad/no ramp/interaction. For example, I have a lowish powered Shorikai reanimator/polymorph deck. Azorius reanimator isn't great, and my wincon is just reanimate enough fatties to deal enough combat damage, but I'm running 18 pieces of interaction and 6 2 mana rocks.

[@iniquumiudicium811]

One of the big issues in my playgroup is that they all tend to play powerful cards and powerful decks so anything that isn't up to quo will fail. I spent a while cooking up some kind of selesnya midrange reanimator with Shalai, Voice of Plenty to prevent a lot of wincons from going off too easily. It shifted and it's now a toolbox commander deck that locks out interaction from opponents through creatures. A sort of "I'm not gonna lose the game" idea, it's neat

[@jackcois6077]

It's not just a "I'm not going to lose the game idea" you have become a Stax player. Rocco caberetti caterer might be a cool commander for you to look into if you enjoy this toolbox style of game or Jetmir if you want a consistent way to close out games.

[@Thomas-vn6cr]

14:24 the amount of new players I've seen go through this process and then get bored of the game as a result is just tragic. By spending more they only accelerated their burnout.

[@nunyabeeswax4588]

I made this commander into a self explosion deck a long time ago. Super ridiculous to play but so rewarding when you pull off an asymmetrical armageddon and board wipe so you can close out with a good beat down

[@AvACircus]

Gosh your videos have been extremely helpful from start to finish every single time. I feel like this alot when I am building decks or thinking of fun new idea, but I was always terrible with words in how to express my decision making. Thank you!

[@TwintailNami]

I used to have an Osgir Eggs deck. Fun stuff. Without paradoxical outcome effects it's not as easy to work, but having tools like reservoir and ignite memories it could be done.

[@Pyroshax]

BTW I don't know who needs to hear this, but for lands players, second sunrise and faith's reward are additional splendid reclamation effects for bigger combo turns.

[@Tsarius11]

scrambling eggs with an egg. Impressive.

[@GageTheMage2003]

Hey! Great Break down! I have real aspirations to build like an at home boardgame of all the dual (Or tri colors) but I love this deck boros artifact is something I really like and I like th price point of these decks, hope you do a series on all ten to see your thought process on the updates

[@giocommentary]

11:25 my most expensive deck is a Hazezon Tamar Token naya deck that plays itself. 0 brain power required, play ramp play big scary stuff, turn sideways. one of my pet decks is relatively cheap without the expensive stuff i've put into it, its a Tasha Dimir deck that plays opponents cards to disrupt or copy them. it is one of the hardest decks to play that i've ever made because every card in your deck that steals something from your opponent gives you so much choice. knowing your opponents decks or themes helps, the more experienced of a player you are the better you'll be able to pilot the deck. inherently not possessing a wincon of its own you have to scramble it together by using the knowledge you have of your opponents. i completely turned the meta of my playgroup around when i made a Sol'kanar the Tainted Goad deck. incredibly cheap to make, incredibly fun and effective. force your opponents to hit each other whilst buffing their creatures or for example not allowing them to block. no creatures to goad? play commander get card value, donate to opponent and goad XD inspired by Disrupt Decorum. cards like the eye tyrant, barrityl entertainer, firkraag, bloodthirsty blade, Geode rager, homeward path, i personally LOVE confusion in the ranks, brand, thieves auction, donate someone a Rakdos the defiler or a Blim comedic genius then goad it and watch it burn...

[@austinsmith4730]

The snail posts and I watch, best edh content on the internet. Can’t wait for the next one man!

[@icelord7598]

Great, I never understood how it worked even after looking though it

[@shiv3rcubesolver664]

This deck reminds me a little bit of my fun little 50 dollar teshar deck. Its horrendously balanced but teshar is such an insane engine that is nearly impossible to *not* combo with

[@ChuckGrossFitness]

This is the first content I've seen of yours! Awesome!! Do you by chance have a version that's the unlimited budget? I love eggs.

[@tillfreitag4446]

thanks for making these videos! fav mtg youtuber

[@HaakonSuelzle-lh9yc]

ALL HAIL THE SNAIL

[@RxBriggs]

I would LOVE to see Hanz Chainer deck. I've been looking to build a budget version of him.

[@salubrioussnail]

Here's the decklist, it's pretty budget even with some pricy acceleration and graveyard tutors: www.archidekt.com/decks/6090004/chainer_slay_the_spire

[@MajorLeagueNerd]

Your videos are great and make me want to get far more creative with my deck building. I'm still new and EDHrec is my crutch. Any tips on how to get better/more creative with deck building?

[@bohdanjoza]

Incredibly interesting videos, I'm very glad I discovered this channel

[@david21216]

Damn hurts to hear my windgrace deck put so plainly. I used a list that was very low to the ground, and over time replacing cards, I have definitely lost out on almost all the cards I enjoyed playing through that process. But squandered resources and gitrog was too cool for me to pass up (ive never cast either cards).

[@escapegrass]

I love this deck off the explaination

[@claytonwilde5750]

I remember you mentioning multivalent combos in one of your other videos (I think it was the winning the game one) is this the kind of thing you were referring too or is that something else when I heard it I immediately thought persist combo, either way, would love to see a video on how one would go about constructing a multi-valent combo deck

[@salubrioussnail]

I recall coming up the phrase multivalent combo family and using it in a semi-jokey context because it sounded dramatic, but what I was thinking of was cEDH decks with several different combos that all share some common fulcrums and whose pieces interact with one another in a variety of different ways. The best example of this is Sisay cEDH decks--these decks will generally have flicker engines that can be grabbed by the commander (such as Aminatou) as their centerpiece, but there are countless combos that branch off of these. Some of these combos can play around ETB stax, some can play around artifact stax like Ouphe, some of these can play around creature ability stax like Cursed Totem, and so on, and this makes the deck very flexible and resilient. I'd say that sort of deck exists in a similar territory to this one, though eggs decks will generally be principally stopped by exactly one type of hate, which is instant speed graveyard hate. If opponents have a lot of that you're in trouble, though if opponents have only a single piece of it, it's possible to play around it and mitigate a lot of the damage it'll inflict on your gameplan (though a misplay against a piece of graveyard hate can lead to getting utterly blown out).

[@1lovIt]

Would be nicer in this video to have the cards enlarged, the text way too small to read. A no wait, I can enlarge the screen with my fingers. 👌

[@shiv3rcubesolver664]

I played a really janky ravenous intruder fling deck in standard. It was a blast to play.

[@Thomas-vn6cr]

Sounds really similar to my Brion Stoutarm deck. Or at least along the lines of what I would like it to be doing.

[@Natibe_]

I have a friend who built a very complicated deck on MTG Arena. He's a known tinkerer and rarely makes decks that are good, not so much because he is bad at making decks but because he mostly enjoys pulling ridiculous ideas out of weird cards and making decks out of them. The kind of guy that makes a deck with every Karn ever printed or whose objective is to roll a thousand dice a turn. But one day he came to me with a deck that was not just good, it could consistently win against the best decks in arena on turn four. The catch? That win sequence was a 50-60 step long sequence of witches, squirrels, caravans, planeswalkers, health for mana trades, mana for health trades, health for card trades, searches, and anti-counterspell mechanics that was so confusing that after winning 80% of games for a week, when he finally put it down to make a deck out of yasharn and land curses he FORGOT THE COMBO TREE. For a while after the whole episode, we would just look at the seemingly random set of cards between MTG games and wonder what the hell he was on when he made it! Edit: oh yeah, and the commander! It was old stickfingers. I dont remember how he played it, except for the fact that he wanted 3 specific cards in the graveyard and somehow used it as a search.

[@mees8711]

I hear you got sick towards the end of this video. Hope its not too bad and you’re feeling better (if not then soon!)

[@nicholasrichard6847]

I have a glissa, the traitor deck that kind of fits under this same umbrella, although it mostly works because my playgroup has a LOT of token decks. I might add more wipes to it now though, for a bit more reliability. Also, access to things like marionette master and pitiless plunderer does help quite a bit

[@burningpapersun1]

Kci making broken decks even more broken. A tale as old as time.

[@derekpreston1989]

These are the types of deck discussions that need to exist, great video

[@MoonshadowFTapflE]

this was a very creative outro!

[@waywardScarecrow]

Easily my favorite magic youtuber

[@daredewley9231]

New snail lore

[@icecreambone]

i dont play mtg, but these videos are super interesting. what if you had a system of different deck tiers based on their cost, like how pokemon has different competitive tiers based on usage rates

[@lordbumus6087]

Osgir feels like it helps a bunch

[@Cybertech134]

It's a greater sign of skill to be able to optimally build suboptimally. It's the difference between a guy seeing how hard he can hit and knowing how hard he hits and practices the greater skill of holding back.

[@MRAIClassroom]

Snailmyster! Can’t wait to hear what ya cooked up!

[@MoonshadowFTapflE]

Eggs.

[@JakeTheJay]

This deck reminds me of my slimefoot and squee deck, where it was a reanimator aristocrats deck that is capable to pivoting to almost any strategy type it wants. It can combo, it can go wide, it can go tall, it can grind, it can go aggro, and it's also surprisingly resilient to graveyard hate. It's become one of my favorite decks I've brewed but sadly my friends don't really like combo existing so I don't play it often with them. I love this style of deck and I want to build more of them sometime. A more budget build of that style of deck could be fun

[@twistedtachyon5877]

That sounds like exactly what I want from that deck. I've got a pile of stuff on my table as a starting point for it ... Really oughta get that thing built.

[@JakeTheJay]

@@twistedtachyon5877 Funniest part is that my deck became that way on accident. I simply added some saproling cards to make sure my commander can't get stuck in grave and things kinda just went from there

[@laytonjr6601]

​@@JakeTheJayI did the same thing on Arena: I wanted a commander to play all my saprolings cards and Slimefoot and Squee is the only Jund saproling cars on Arena. Having only Ashnod's Altar and not Phyrexian Altar is painful however

[@MrCobaltScar]

You have an extremely high level understanding of game theory.

[@stevenkirton6373]

When that years commanders decks where spoiled I sae him and thought eggs right away. My group hated it and begged me to take it apart

[@snek8421]

oohh yes good content, can't wait to engage with it

[@Nick-qb9zv]

looks like a hella sweet deck.

[@RronKarahoda]

A few videos ago, I mentioned I was building a Zaxara deck that was trying to do too many things - I finally figured out that what I really like about the deck was not having power cards that could make Zaxara's output as cranked as possible. Instead, it was having a suite of cards that cared about me playing noncreatures to create creature tokens, a suite of discount givers, and just the right amount of X spells to give me that hit of sweet sweet X heaven. Now, the 'hydra' is the deck itself, where the other heads are these suites that merely do a part of what Zaxara does, and it feels just right!

[@jonashoneyman-colvin6699]

the snail supply

[@RocketTheMinifig]

I’m currently building a rakdos stax treasure egg deck and this has been instrumentally validating just to hear someone describe an egg card as like… even existing. I was trying to describe them to my pod and no one even believed that “”eggs”” existed, it was just this…. Thing, this quirk of some archetype of artifacts that they found worked. Goblin firebomb? Oh thats just super slow removal. Sleep dart? Thats just a stun card. Conjurer’s bauble? Why would you play that? Thank you for the tech but mostly the validation.

[@SirDanyTheWarrior]

I too play Jan Jansen without infinite combos... It definitely feels like trigger hell sometimes, but hey, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do (throw an army of buffed constructs at an opponent's face)

[@YakubTheKid]

THE SNAIL GIVETH

[@SwedeRacerDC]

It was nice to see what this deck actually was. I have a very different kind of eggs deck...Atla Palani so I was curious as to what you meant by this being an eggs deck. I do agree that it's more fun to build with more unique options that work for your deck. Lots of great points

[@NikitaGrygoryev]

The idea that you can consciously lower the power level in selected aspects with keeping other high is brilliant. I've been doing something similar for some time and never realized that.

[@mitchelldkirby]

Complete bullshit and super convoluted. Liked and subbed - I need more.

[@felixschoe3074]

Queen Kayla is THE one commander I always wanted to play as an EGG commander!! feels like the perfect alternative with Gerrard as the WINcon.

[@thatmtgnerd]

One of my fav mtg channels.

[@robotic-race]

11:30 yugioh is similar. Archetype matters more for complexity and thought needed then deck strength

[@frederik1201]

Thank you for your time! And mindfully Thoughts!

[@Vrezmo]

I would love to learn more about the other decks for this experiment you guys did, me and my friend have started doing something similar after watching your last video but we're making the three colored combinations instead!

[@thetwixlord]

I am still a beginner magic player, so I would love to hear your thoughts on tribal decks in edh, especially slivers as there are only so many different sliver cards printed. I mention it because you happened to briefly mention slivers in this video. I have an upgraded sliver gravemother precon, but I struggle with giving it flavour besides "add all the slivers". Keep up the good work with the videos! I am learning tonnes of stuff from your videos.

[@bluesight_]

I built this deck too a few years ago and it has remained one of my favorite and most interesting to play.

[@Fedetoro]

Exists a non-budget list of this deck?

[@wickederebus]

KCI decks. literally just watch the video, note down the non-budget cards he lists, and slot them in for the jank that does the same thing but worse.

[@oogaboek]

So I built a gerald deck a few months ago on moxfield. Not 25 budget but also not too expensive. I really like the deck itself but after playtesting a few games in the moxfield playtester I felt the deck would not be too fun to play because of the long turns (I live comboing but its just the feeling of making your opponents wait that sucks, same with my zada deck) and might get repetitive quick. I didnt end up building the deck but this video gives me second thoughts. What do you think? Is Gerald fun enough?

[@salubrioussnail]

Gerrard is fun if you like fiddly combo decks. Hans loved playing the deck back in the day, whereas that playstyle mostly just stresses me out. As for the time thing, I imagine that would improve with practice and experience. I recommend goldfishing with a deck like that a bunch so you don't need to figure out any of the more basic lines on the fly.

[@aidangray7087]

Does Hans have a moxfield account?

[@giornojihyovanna8461]

I notice that the Zaxara commander deck has been mentioned in your multiple videos recently. I am curious as to how you would build Zaxara yourself, or what kind of path you think would be best for this particular big mana commander 🤔❤ could you do a video of that please?

[@salubrioussnail]

I mention that one often because I helped my brother build a Zaxara deck so I have a decent base of knowledge base around the types of cards it uses, and because it's a great example of a commander that includes lots of "traps" for less experienced deckbuilders. One of these traps is are running too many amplifier cards like Doubling Season and not enough X-cost spells, which results in the deck being clunkier and ending up either doing nothing or pubstomping with little in-between. The other main trap is thoughtlessly including Freed from the Real, a card that turns your commander into a combo piece. This might be okay for some players, but it will cause opponents to kill Zaxara much more eagerly, which may be frustrating for a player who really just wants to do timmy hydra stuff. Here's the list I helped my brother build, though I should specify that Exponential Growth has since been cut as my brother felt like he'd had his fun with the card and no longer wanted it: www.archidekt.com/decks/5487164/biggo_xcost_goofballs

[@paolomandala02]

singleton eggs mentioned, Benjamin Wheeler is popping off

[@TrulyVerity]

I was always amazed whenever my friend won with their derevi deck. It would always seem like they spent the whole game tutoring a tutor to tutor a tutor that found ephemerate. Eventually she’d have enough pieces to build a whole computer. Definitely changed the way I looked at magic

[@faerievandal]

RECKLESS FIREWEAVER MENTIONED. ‼️‼️

[@hbot2758]

This reminds me of one of my most favorite decks I've ever built, God-Eternal Bontu mono-black storm. It's basically Eggs but with creatures, where my commander turns all my permanents into eggs, so in response to its etb I sac Bontu to draw it again and loop it by drawing more cheap fodder, and token generators like Endrek Sahr and getting mana from Altars and other effects like Skirge Familiar and Carnival of Souls. I can drain everyone out by looping it with an aristocrat piece in play while drawing my entire deck.

[@nikdi]

Why is there 25$ on the preview, but in fact deck costs almost 100$?

[@salubrioussnail]

Because it was bought for $25 in late 2019

[@wickederebus]

its only $50 on TCGplayer.

[@cursedluigi]

I always thought "eggs" as a name for a deck archetype specifically referred to cards with exactly 0 mana value, because the 0 in the casting cost was an egg shape... It sounds stupid looking back on it...

[@siosilvar]

Not unreasonable. Cheeri0s got its name from the shape of 0 and the tradition of naming combo decks after breakfast foods.

[@davidrosenberg9615]

I used to play it with the goal of turboing out an Obliterate while having plenty of mana rocks with the goal of restabilizing faster than opponents. I stopped playing it because folks dislike MLD. Who knew?

[@zanehaythorn4140]

Honestly ive had no idea how to even build gerrard in a way that makes sense, but boros is my favorite color combo and i love me some artifacts. Time to make a version geared to my group

[@SporePunch]

I'm glad you talked about your friend's deck at the end. I built a really janky bullshit deck, but I found the same issue where I needed generic mana acceleration to make it actually function and get to do its janky bullshit. Unfortunately, it wound up yielding a lot of complaints like "oh no mana acceleration this is too powerful" and I'm like no, it's not, it's just allowing to put stupid silly bullshit on the board. There's nothing powerful happening here.

[@SporePunch]

What people often forget about "enabler" cards is that they aren't powerful in and of themselves, what they enable matters. Dark Ritual can enable some actual war crimes, but if I use to play a silly little bean a little faster, the Dark Ritual didn't enable a warcrime. It just let me be stupid faster.

[@TheKreve]

Hey funny Snail man, can you do a video about board wipes? and if you even need any in creature based decks? So often i see videos that says you need to run 4-5 board wipes as a rule but i am not so sure. I am also new to edh.

[@salubrioussnail]

I made a video discussing board wipes back in September, but I didn't really touch on how many people should play. Whether or not they should be played in creature-heavy decks really depends on what sort of deck it is. If you're running an aggressive deck that can consistently threaten player kills by turn 6 or 7 (in a mid-power game), you might only want to add 1-2, or even none at all if you're playing a Voltron deck. On the other hand, if you're playing a slower, grindier deck that is likely to get overtaken by other players on board at some points in the game, running 3+ board wipes becomes a good idea.

[@TheKreve]

@@salubrioussnail my thought process was that my Kutzil deck mostly aims to grow tall and trample over creatures. To ensure that i need creature with higher than base power to draw more tempo.

[@shideon]

This is a lorehold deck not a boros deck

[@nathanielb5659]

the first deck i built, a spell slinger/storm deck, is one of the fiddliest decks i’ve piloted. it took me probably 20 games to figure out how the deck was actually trying to win. even now knowing roughly what the deck is trying to do the win turns can be long and fiddle around a lot trying to optimise the number of triggers or the number of extra turns when it doesn’t go infinite. i found a new high synergy in the deck the other week, im sure people know about it but i never looked or thought about thermoalchemist dual casting especially with harmonic prodigy to be able to copy spells for as long as i had mana and instants to cast

[@Lenvyathan]

I've been also working on convincing my friends to make budget decks to face off against each other with (since my friends often complain about the increasingly high power level of our pod), I've run into an interesting issue: the price. I'm not sure which price is the most suitable for interesting gameplay, and what sort of rules we should add to deckbuilding to keep it interesting and balanced. Should tutors be allowed? Should infinite combos be allowed? If we do settle on a price, what if the prices fluctuate, and what currency/shop prices should we use? I noticed in Archidekt a lot of your decks are quite a lot more than the 25$, like the egg list almost reaching 100$. If I were to build the same deck in Moxfield with euro prices from Cardmarket, it would probably be like 1/5 of that. How do you balance the prices between each deck and what kind of rulings do you rely on?

[@totallycarbon2106]

Just pick one that is consistent and relevant to your group. My playgroup are all in the UK and we predominantly get singles from cardmarket so our budget decks are built on moxfield using cardmarket price sources while making sure to use the "update to cheapest" button. We have a pool of €25 budget decks and €50 budget decks, both are interesting and building for €25 is an absolutely brutal challenge. Also we built the decks around the same time as eachother so we just price checked them at that time - decks do fluctuate and there's no real way around that. When we periodically review the decks we can update the lists based on the budget requirements - although fundamentally if you built all the decks in paper there's not much incentive to dismantle a perfectly balanced pod deck just because it's become out of budget over time.

[@totallycarbon2106]

We so far haven't added any extra rules, mostly because the budget alone makes the challenge interesting especially at €25 The closest we have come is considering banning sol ring on the basis that it injects inconsistency, but ultimately we haven't yet as it hasn't proven boringly problematic.

[@Lenvyathan]

@@totallycarbon2106 Interesting, personally I found 25€ with MCM prices to be very lenient so I suggested 10€. At 25€ I would still be able to build a deck that doesn't meaningfully differ from my unlimited decks power level-wise, especially if there are no extra rules. Winning by turn 4-5 would not be a problem if were to allow combos, and even without them the standard turn 7 win has been pretty consistent based on testing.

[@derpypanda2215]

Seems a bit durdly. Wouldn’t Feather just be better for the price?

[@wickederebus]

the price now, or the price back then? also factor in, this was another guy's deck.

[@ws04]

RHYSTIC STUDIES MENTIONED

[@cerietke]

I like a ton of different playlines in my decks. I find thinking about them during building and goldfishing helps speed things up for actual games. To me a deck with the KCI would be pretty boring if it leads to it always being the best option. Ideally a deck can take several different strategic routes depending on the board state. My best traditional 60-card multiplayer deck before we started with EDH could reasonably switch between beatdown and control and even morph into combo through Research/Development and a wishboard. The EDH card set is starting to approach the point where I can manage to make similarly flexible decks (depending on the general). I'm currently working on a Grothama deck that does pretty well at beatdown but that can easily go combo off of extra abilities Wizards tagged onto big creatures (Kodama of the East Tree is busted, but there are plenty other ways). Similarly I have a Codie based control deck that can generate a lot of tokens or a few creatures for a beatdown win, while a single Turnabout turns it into combo if needed. As someone who lives for this kind of deck, yours seems pretty cool. Complexity wise I can certainly see the challenge, though I think a combo deck that doesn't just go infinite and thus needs to think of what gives the best chances to keep itself going may sit even higher. You have kinda inspired me to look into building for the same general. I wonder if rather than always aiming for the Eggs finish there might be a way to turn it into a deck that adjusts to what the board state requires as I described above.

[@King_Optimistic]

As a resident Jan Jansen player with no clock of omens in my deck . I second the idea of fiddle harder than anyone else.

[@zombieslayer1408]

Don't have a chance to watch the vid just yet, but GERRARD? IM HERE FOR IT