What a Deck Wants vs What a Deck NEEDS | EDHRECast 311

[@EDHRECast]

👟 Big ups to Vessi for keeping my feet dry! Check out vessi.com/EDHRE for 15% off your first order!

[@maguszanin5296]

Joey should edit that "your Voltron needs protection" rant into a short so I can send it to some of my friends. 😂

[@davidyi8559]

to address the akroan horse in the room: some therosian scoundrels saw the opportunity to reuse the trick on a whole new plane that had never seen it before - how often do you get to reuse a trick as iconic as that???

[@violetto3219]

the real issue is that the card's effects don't really have much to do with the trojan horse

[@jamescampbell2353]

It does start with one cmc and can put creatures onto the battlefield

[@jacob510]

Joey, I will not be gaslit. You came up with the idea of this episode while jamming out to Christina "What a deck wants, what a deck needs Whatever makes me happy sets you free And I'm thanking you for knowing exactly What a deck wants, what a deck needs Whatever keeps me in your arms And I'm thanking you for giving it to me"

[@UnreasonableOpinions]

Doublers are the classic example. When your engine is on, they crank it into overdrive - but when the engine is not on, it's a dead card. Anyone who's played long enough has had the moment they realise they've pulled out so many engine cards for doublers that there's no longer enough to double.

[@laytonjr6601]

My Slimefoot and Squee has parallel lives. The commander makes a token on ETB and can reanimate itself by sacrificing a token. Of course if my opponent has no interaction I make more tokens than I sacrifice but many times I couldn't chump block because my commander was in the yard and I needed a token on the field. A token doubler solves this issue perfectly

[@amdeaton]

When I built my Adrix and Nev, Twincasters deck, I found that what the deck wanted to do more than anything was find and cast Koma, Cosmos Serpent. After a few games of playing the deck I decided that it was better if I just made the commander Koma. The plan of getting and casting Koma is a lot easier when he is just sitting in your command zone.

[@Dragon_Fyre]

It might be worth noting that when you see Adrix and Nev in Command Zone you might think “Tokens deck, I will have to keep an eye on their board state because it could get out of hand quickly” but when you see Koma in the Command Zone you probably are thinking “That player needs to be dead before they get to 7 mana” 😝

[@jordansams6240]

I used to have an adrix and nev deck, and while most people still added in all the token doublers, i found mine mainly wanted to focus on passive token producing enchantments. That way when the board wipe happened so they could get rid of adrix the enchants would stick around and continue to make tokens for me to keep the pressure up

[@DrMeisterBabylon]

I also made a Adrix deck but focused on making non legendary tokens of the commander. It is a far more balanced Miirym deck. That's why you run Double Major in the deck and don't remove it before Joey Said so lol

[@0urher0nik0]

I have an Adrix and Nev deck, and I built it with a lot of the new convoke spells that came out, and tried to take advantage of old ones like Sprout Swarming. Mine is a spell slinger deck that uses on cast triggers to make tokens and control the game

[@mofomiko]

Let's just kick back and see how long it takes for them to be singled out every single time, until they switch back to Adrix'Nev and keep Coma a secret

[@Benjamin-on8td]

Anikthea was a learning curve as it NEEDED the mill and card draw but did not need the pillow fort, cause you resurrecting your enchantments as creatures is your pillow fort especially with token doublers.

[@Blacklodge_Willy]

May I suggest just one piece of pillowfort that has been MVP in my build: Solitary Confinement.

[@spawn9892001]

got to second this suggestion, with all the enchantress effects it doesn't even have a drawback

[@samcates5308]

I'd gently challenge the mill part - I built mine with only two or three mill sources and instead turbocharged the draw aspect so I could fill the bin by discarding to hand size. That way I get to keep any useful non-enchantments that would have otherwise been milled away. The deck has a 100% winrate (year-to-date) in my meta.

[@victhebum2836]

This is one I'm struggling to update, because what EDHRec says to do and what people are saying to do is 2 different things and my deckbuilding experience is very limited, and this is one precon I bought and was excited to learn to play it's been a thorn in my side since

[@laynegrey2003]

​@samcates5308 I'm hesitant to agree solely because the mill has been quite useful in my games and goldfishing with her... but I have absolutely noticed the same issue you mentioned with it, I throw away useful instants and creatures that would be beneficial to keep in my hand since they can't be pulled out of the yard. What's your supercharging of the draw aspect looking like, just typical Enchantress stuff like Sythis? I decided not to run those since I'm never usually hard casting things, but I suppose if I'm drawing more than milling, that issue fixes itself, right lmfao?

[@christopherdukett4158]

Even though it was a bad trampoline joke, Dana should be able to bounce back pretty quickly...

[@theunease5541]

I'm just picturing Borborygmos singing "What a Gruul want. What a Gruul need.... IS SMASH" *Gruul things ensue*

[@PsychoDiesel48]

YES! Please

[@dougmoody8418]

What I've found helps to ground me in deckbuilding is a theoretical ratio. 3 parts SOURCE 2 parts SPENDER 1 part MAGNIFIER I need more etbs in a deck than I need recursion or flicker pieces, for instance.

[@Hatneas]

How does that ratio change if your commander is any of the different parts?

[@dougmoody8418]

@@Hatneas I don't hold to it strictly, but if my commander is the spender then I'll probably go four parts source and only have 1 or 2 other spenders in the deck. Magnifier ratio would probably remain the same.

[@lelandwhitehead56]

How would that look for a reanimating deck? I’m currently building a Vihaan Goldwaker deck that is focused around extra combats and swinging with the treasure token 3/3s

[@dougmoody8418]

@@lelandwhitehead56 That one mostly looks like it writes itself for a decklist, Mardu and treasures are old friends. Make sure to include a pitiless plunderer and a descent into avernus and you can't really go wrong. Source here would be your treasure factories, so prioritize effects that do that above all else. Your commander is acting as a Spender/Payoff, reducing your own need to include additional effects to enable the treasures to do more. Look into overrun effects to act as additional Spender effects, but no more than 3 or 4, lest you take room away from standard treasure benefit effects like Agent of the Iron Throne of Disciple of the Vault. Your extra combat effects are probably going to be the Magnifier in this instance. Too many of them and the deck just won't function. Cap it around 3 or 4 to leave room for other magnifiers. Recursion effects and reanimation will best serve as magnifiers. You need stuff in the graveyard first, flicker effects need something to target, and so on. No target means dead card, and it's better to have a source at that point. Regular artifact reanimation shenanigans should be able to handle most of that work without detracting from the ability of the rest of the deck to function. Something like Osgir or Ratchet, but Mardu has access to plenty of effects that do that. Maybe take a look at Goldhound. Normally a 1/1 artifact dog that is also a treasure. Commander buffs that up to 3/3, serves multiple purposes.

[@Hatneas]

@lelandwhitehead56 I'd imagine it'd look similar to a Jetmir deck since it's a similar concept of build an overwhelming presence of X to turn into strong dudes.

[@dr00ness]

joey's point about putting a lot of goad effects into a goad commander makes a lot of sense. i made a Baeloth deck recently with Noble Heritage as the background, and he was great at just goading a lot of stuff anyway. i put Nelly Borca in the 99 as a card draw piece and later realised it made much more sense to just make her the commander with Baeloth in the 99. i know the episode seemed to be centric around changing the 99 to fit your commander, but sometimes swapping out the commander is a great way to 'fix' your deck too

[@digitalk1llraymon448]

That "Landfall" conversation is why I alway make my mana bases first in every single deck. Make the mana base, make sure you have an even distribution of colors, get your ramp up to an adequate lvl, then worry about the deck composition. I personally have 50-55 "total mana" cards in my decks, (this means lands (35-38) and ramp (12-18)) Try to have around 12-15 card draw (8-10 if CMDR gives me card advantage) and then work the deck from there. For my Landfall decks, I usually run about 43-48 lands, and usually switch my ramp to be more "Extra Lands" focused instead of "Search for" because I personally love land recursion effects and a nifty little card called "Storm Cauldron", and having more triggers per turn is better than more payoffs per land (In my opinion)

[@Urkkahlia]

I’ve been brewing the new Obeka recently, and this feels so relevant. As much as I want to jam 30 upkeep cards in that deck, it’s clear it functions best when most of the deck is dedicated to facilitating the gameplan with protection, control and voltron, allowing a few payoffs to work consistently

[@zym6687]

Whatever makes it happy and sets me free, and I'm thanking you for knowing exactly...

[@bretts3046]

Video starts at 5:17

[@thatguycam1989]

I've found you can run less lands in your landfall deck if you're good at returning lands to your hand to then replay afterwards. Storm cauldron for example is probably the meanest stax piece out there, so good in landfall, it's insane. Also, you can run the old moonfolk creatures and they will put in some work.

[@bryceosborne4357]

So glad to hear another person mention moonfolk for landfall. Highly under appreciated and under utilized

[@Werewolfoverlord12]

Mana breach works too then. Each time someone casts a spell, they return a land card to their hands.

[@thatguycam1989]

@@Werewolfoverlord12 One of my favorites in this playstyle. Also, overburden.

[@UnreasonableOpinions]

I especially learned this with Hazezon's desert situation. Because he has grave play on the cards, you don't need to get new lands into hand as muc has you want extra land plays and a free sac outlet. Recurring the same land several times is easier to set up than most other landfall engines.

[@Kararch]

I'm playing Kaalia for years and what I've learned is that this deck does not need more good stuff beaters. It needs tutors to refill your hard. Since then I'm playing all 7 tutor demons, that's a win win for me.

[@goobob33]

in case you ever wondered what chair Matt uses it is the Realspace Radano Mesh High-Back Executive Office Chair, Black

[@adrianocarrasco5286]

OMG THAT SYMBOL IS A VAULT DOOR? I was actually wondering why they put Enterprise on mtg

[@ospero7681]

I feel the "this deck needs a way to close out games" thing in particular. I have a Gavi deck, and yes, that deck is famous for generating massive amounts of value without going anywhere - a few tokens here, a bit of pinging there, but within the more narrow cycling/drawing/discarding remit, it's tough to find ways to win. I eventually decided to up the quota of "whenever you draw your second card each turn" triggers like Irencrag Pyromancer and Minn, Wily Illusionist (I was already playing the draw doublers). It helps, but I'm still holding out for an actual cycling payoff that isn't "deal a small amount of damage".

[@WIBYTIEDH]

I built my first actual Gruul deck a bit ago around Stonebrow and what I learned really fast is that, sure, it ramps super fast, but the lack of card draw and protection meant that I could run things that inately have trample, but they'll never benefit from Stonebrow's buff if he's constantly getting removed so I cranked the protection but it still lacked card draw to refuel the engine so it was a matter of adding things like Garruk's Uprising and Hunter's Insight and stuff that gained benefit when damage is dealt to players. Not to mention ways to give deathtouch to maximize the amount if trample damage. When I was originally building it, my mentality was that I just need big dumb trampling creatures to smash into things

[@carlosballesteros2721]

This I believe happened to everyone reading K'rrik Son of Yawgmoth for the first time, it looks like the deck wants a lot of big spells to be cast for less, but actually needs many things that can be baiscally cast for free, especially those that protect the mana rock that's cast from the command zone.

[@DaRalf23]

I ran/run at least 2 bounce lands in each of my iterations of landfall decks; basics are super important, but since you can bounce itself, it's repeatable land drops all day.

[@borislibaque1558]

Great episode guys. These lessons hit me hard with my Heliod Sun Crowned deck. Its a lifegain deck that makes tokens, pumps the tokens and attacks, and doesn't use broken cards like walking ballista or aetherflux resevoir, or infinite combos, its just a go wide deck. And what I thought the deck needed to cross the finish line in my first draft was card draw, removal, and anthems, but it turn out that wasn't it. Everytime I saw one of those cards I wished it was a lifegain card, and dealt less damage that turn than I could've. It took a lot of playtesting to figure out that more tokens was card draw, they're sort of reccursive value that means I don't have to play more cards because I'm winning on the board and can save the cards in my hand for the next wave. I repurposed those card draw slots with heavy duty ramp pieces instead and token makers I can pour mana into and that may be when the deck became consistent. I've never felt good playing removal, ever, so those were easy cuts but I always had the sense I needed them. I would put them in and take them out and put them in and take them out, and the day I finally stripped away all the removal for good I put in lifegain enhancers so I wouldn't feel as pressured by opposition, and that was absolutely the right call. Now I can ignore attacks, which is a big part of what makes the archetype fun for me. I remembered upon that change that my first iteration of the deck had Rune-Tail Kisune Ascendant as the commander and that I loved it specifically for its ability to endure. When I thought about the games where I had a really rough time and didn't enjoy playing Heliod, it was the ones where my friends got a little or a lot upset not understanding their window to cast a lightning bolt or some such spell. I try to be so so careful to never ever ever miss a trigger and properly pass priority but it still happens when they could've killed something as a 2/2 and then it's a 5/5 and I try to go back and let them do it at 3/3 becoming 4/4 but then they think I lose the last trigger and its feel bads all around. It took a lot of bad vibes to realize I do need interaction and it has to silence effects. That made it perfect, once I added as many silence effects as I could I felt like I could gain my life free of fuss and win or lose I was having fun and it was healthier for me and my friends. There's still cool cards I wish I could add but the truth is the deck is pretty tuned now and doesn't have a lot of room, so all the cards I wish I could be playing will just have to go into a different deck. Great episode guys, I love hearing the journey others go through with their decks, what they optimize towards, and how they go about it

[@jaredwonnacott9732]

Brago was a great example. I could pile up the board with a bunch of card draw ETB's and mana rocks, and token generators, but I'd deck myself before I actually can close out a game every time. I eventually changed up the deck almost completely, even going to Adbel Adrian and Candleleep Sage as the commanders, which gives me tokens and card draw in the Command Zone, and lets me focus on removal, damage, and other win-cons in my ETB's. I generally win by creating an infinite ETB loop with Inquisitor Exarch, Hierophant's Chalice, Meteorite, or (my personal favorite) Jace's Mindseeker.

[@SunsetHaste]

This is the first podcast of yours that I tuned in to, really enjoying listening to you guys, and a funny little coincidence that I got to hear something about my main edh deck - Chainer. Took me a long time to cut Flayer of the Hatebound even knowing of their interaction, cuz I was running quite a few Reanimate type spells, but he did get cut when I got to the conclusion you're actually talking about here - Chainer doesn't need that many of those effects since he already solves that by himself. Cool stuff, can't wait to listen through the entire backlog of your podcasts!

[@DetohGames]

I started playing around 2020 or 2021, my first deck that I built fully on my own (and not just netdecking) was last year, with my Beluana Grandsqual deck, which ended up being my current favorite deck. It ended up being a weird hybrid of a spell slinger, but also a creature heavy deck, as it plays quite a few ways of reusing my spells (lyr the drowned for example), while also being able to build and rebuild decent boardstates

[@fleamarketkeanu]

I've been going through my collection, challenging myself to build decks with cards on hand instead of ordering new niche cards. This is a video that I desperately needed as I reach towards the bottom of that barrel. For both Atraxa and Sythis actually. Typically I would spend time researching and sifting through pages of cards to find the best effects and chisel a deck out of the virtual pile of 500 cards that I accumulated, but not having that process in place has really forced me to look at deck building in a different light and pay attention to what the cards are doing and how they interact with one another, as opposed to slamming everything onto the board and playing with a plinko-pachinko-Rube-Goldberg machine.

[@dorsalfin22]

This topic comes up every time I brew any kind of control deck. So right now I've been tinkering with a Fog deck and originally the list had over 20 fogs. It's literally the name of the deck and I wanted to play with a card type I really hadn't and play with some of the less known ones. But as I built the deck I found myself needing to make more and more space for enablers such as token generators but then there had to be the standard sac package too. So it's a hard process for these decks sometimes. The deck wanted to focus on the fogs and while there are still over 10 and it is the focus, I could not make them as numerous as say a kindred deck with 25-35 of THE THING.

[@HanDaimond]

I like to pump up my creatures with Galadriel Light of Valinor, she triggers one of her abilities whenever another creature ETBs under my control to put a +1/+1 counter on everyone, so I thought running cards like Hardened Scales, Laezel Vlaakith's Champion and Conclave Mentor would be fantastic, but I realized it was kinda slow; the answer to optimize the engine was to spawn *more* creatures, specially *during my opponent's turns,* so token generators became a priority than having just more creature cards in my deck.

[@joshuaday9069]

Thank god yall dropped the better help

[@mightyone3737]

Really enjoyed this, it's a point I sometimes struggle with, my collection features more than a few cards that are 'wants' and not 'needs'. On the other hand, 'weird $#!7' is also great, part of me thinks a deck should run a few objectively bad cards to help signify when you've 'drawn poorly', but ymmv.

[@imaginarymatter]

Using Karazikar as a jumping off point. For more expensive commanders like him you want to avoid effects that only do something when your commander is in play. For example, without Karazikar on the battlefield Goad effects only just goad -- there is no other upside to goading opponent's creatures without Karazikar on the battlefield. So, you are better off avoiding Goad cards unless they are generically good on their own.

[@callmeflexplays]

Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdicar was the deck that helped me realize the need vs want distinction for sure. Took me a lot of iterations of the deck to work it out. Sometimes you just have to cook a deck for a while before you figure it out 😉

[@Syncopiia]

I learned the landfall 'play more lands' thing the hard way. Honestly I think Young Pyromancer is a better fit for Omnath than Rampaging Baloths. He's cheaper and you get elementals off your ramp spells that will turn into lightning bolts later with Omnath's ability. Functionally they become 4/1s when Omnath comes out.

[@RobThePrincess]

This is kind of genius and i never thought of that! Thank you! I'm adding Young Peezy to my deck right away!

[@thatzombifiedpotato4925]

By all means the hardest deck that i've ever had to brew, would be my Muldrotha The Gravetide deck. for the most part it's very overwhelming, because of the pure amount of tech you have access to. thankfully my deck is to the point where it's consistent, but it took a lot of work to get to that point.

[@rosinx]

Sythis was one of my first commanders and one of my favorites today. I think your point about running sythis in the CZ and needing less enchantress effects checks out. I always draw a lot of cards, but winning the game can be challenging. Approach of the Second Sun gets the job done, but it's not everyone's favorite card to see at the table. I mainly play "casual commander," and i personally try to avoid 2-card win the game combos, but Walking Ballista and Heloid would end games for me. I've just seen it done in cedh many times, and 2-card combo wins are not that casual in my mind.

[@JonReid01]

I completely missed scene of the crime was an artifact land! Great challenge, Dana.

[@the_wake_]

I *really* experienced this building Braids, Arisen Nightmare. I wanted to fill it with stupid little recursive dorks and drain effects that I could be cute with, but what it really needed was some gas that would let put together a threatening position with that extra card draw.

[@MeZimm]

Slimefoot, the Stowaway. You think you'll cram all the best saproling generators in Golgari colors in there - and you WILL put SOME in. But Slimefoot can actually mostly take care of that himself, if you just give him enough MANA.

[@S0ilStudios]

IT'S ABSOLUTELY THE STARSHIP ENTERPRISE!

[@thedanath]

I disagree about Sythis and having too many draw engines. Yes she is a low cost commander, but at least in my playgroup people will take her out every chance they get. So you do need some backup draw effects, personally I have 6 backup draw effects and iv always been glad to have it in my deck.

[@andrewp979]

Also let's be real, having 1 enchantress effect is strong, but you will trend towards ended up land flooded. Having 2 out really lets you get going

[@TheNewRidore]

I have a Jodah the Unifier deck with the joke theme being team up cards so every creature in the deck are cards like "Thalia and the Gitrog Monster" or "Shalai and Hallar" so in order to make this list actually function with all the contradictory needs of each team up card 15% of my deck list is taken up with command spells because they are capable of turning on whichever effects are most beneficial when certain creatures are on board... also just to be clear Jodah the Unifier is basically never cast in the deck as the main focus really is the team up cards.

[@Dragon_Fyre]

I imagine you have to explain at beginning of the game that you won’t be casting Jodah, or you would be arch-enemy in most games. This reminds me of the “It’s not that deck” video for Atraxa…

[@jamisonharvey9620]

For karazikar run vensers journal, you get no max hand size and heal for amount of cards in hand at upkeep, also its colorless. It is such a slept on card

[@narvuntien]

My second ever EDH deck was UW control. I just emptied my rare folder and stuck a deck together. My commander, Isperia Supreme Judge. I knew this card wasn't good, so every time a new UW commander was printed I tried them out as commander of the deck, Brago, GAIV etc. with always worse results. The reason that I didn't realse was just how important it was to have a 6/4 flying creature in the command zone, that since my deck is particularly annoying as UW control deck drew extra cards when other players attacked me. Eventually I swapped to Dragonlord Ojutai that fit the goal of large flyer that draws cards. I moved to an LGS with timed rounds now so I can't just have 2 hour games any more so my UW control deck has being forced to amp my ability to kill with Ojutai so I have added double strike enablers.

[@MeZimm]

Actually, I'm pretty sure Joey's mother has a deck that also followed this kind of journey :)

[@guyvanlaned3673]

A perfect example is Ishkanah, Graftwidow. It needs to activate delirium to make spider tokens as a etb but it wants to burn down the oponents for X amount of spiders for 6 mana and 1 black. It's really dificult to find the perfect amount of self mill, undying, card draw, removal, spiders and sac outlets.

[@jeffe2267]

Alexa, play What a Girl Wants by Christina Aguilara.

[@izaiahsundquist6877]

I've had a Sythis deck for about 2 years now and I agree with this take. I've recently been taking out many of my Enchantresses and replacing them with cards that do more for my game plan than just decking me out.

[@IneptCardCollector]

Great topic! I've thought this quite a bit looking at my 200 cards that need to be half that.

[@Dragon_Fyre]

For Chainer, Nightmare Adept, I checked EDHREC for the average deck and while it may not combo with the Commander, there were 11 cards in that deck list that had creatures enter the battlefield from your graveyard (12 counting the Flayer).

[@jordansams6240]

With my chainer deck, I learned that i don't really need to focus on reanimation spells since he is the main way im reanimating stuff. I just need to focus on having more reanimation targets and ways to synergize with them. So instead of havinf alot of reanimation spells i have stuff that makes those creatures hurt people as they come and go like warstorm surge and vicious shadows. I still run a few reanimation spells, but nowhere near as many as a traditional reanimation deck

[@ana-alyciajuarez5958]

Needed this as I upgrade and update decks. Thanks for the info!

[@jorgemendieta8085]

For the Chainer challenge, I'm aware of the nonbo, but the Flayer works with the strategy in general that's still worth running it, works with reanimate, exhume, etc. and more important, with itself. Also nonbo with living death.

[@simonblanchard2676]

not with bringer of the last gift though

[@PALIGames]

I like to work on my decks and always find out where improvements can be put in and what intentional flaws can be streamlined and more obscure.

[@jmanwild87]

I've learned this with my Minthara merciless soul deck. a deck I initially had a decent sized blink package in that i more or less gutted because most of the repeatable blink I wanted was at end of turn meaning I missed my minthara trigger turning the deck into an orzhov sacrifice list that doesn't really play like an aristocrat deck with a lot of ways to consistently generate fodder and sacrifice consistently if not en masse because I want that minthara trigger every turn. deck is also one of the few I've gone light on ramp with because I'm much more content to get my board set up with 1 drop 2 drop 3 drop minthara get first trigger on turn 4 compared to ramping into my commander and having no way to get that first trigger.

[@mrvirtualis]

After the first 2 or 3 games with my Regna & Krav Deck I realized how many cards Krav can draw. Even after getting rid of half or so of them I still had to be careful not to deck out. With that I also saw the need for more wincons, but at least I knew what to cut for them :)

[@danielgraves13]

As far as landfall is concerned, play lands you can sac or play with other abilities (cycle, channel, etc) and bring back.

[@pkfreya8836]

So glad I'm not the only one with Cristina Aguilara in my head. Sythis is the first commander I built I (not started by a precon) and almost anything I put in it to replace cards still works. I don't like attacking so it works for my play style but still too easy.

[@colinlynch6491]

Ik landfall decks and land decks arent the same, but it still blows my minds seeing how few lands are in most landfall decks. I just brewed a flubs lands deck, and i have 60 lands in that list.

[@BuppGuy]

My Rage Omnath deck had 63 lands. Most of the other cards let you play or find more lands. What's better than making multiple 5/5s every turn?

[@thadrin]

I have a Grismold voltron deck. There is almost no actual buffing stuff in the deck, but there are 7 different cards that grant hexproof, shroud or indestructible. The rest of the deck is removal, makes tokens, or scrifices stuff. Gris buffs himself. I don't need cards to do it.

[@Ironpecker]

As someone with a Treebeard generous host voltron deck I feel the "play more protection and less payoffs" so much. It's so easy to make the commander being able to two shot or even one shot an opponent, but keeping it around and keeping my grip full of cards were the actual things that deck needed. And still it's a work in progress because it's very hard to fine tune (eg I'm playing mana dorks because they synergize with stuff like "when creature enters gain life") but it's such a mess

[@sweatyluxury4701]

I have been building a clone deck with multiple shells, and I found what that deck needed was ramp, hence my commander deck landed on malcolm and sakashima.

[@iryanmadayana1904]

Regarding Sythis, having a ridiculous amount of card draw by virtue of the commander and several other enchantress cards on top of lots of cheap enchantments means you CAN blaze through large chunks of your deck every turn, so in THEORY you do not need as many cards in the deck that are some variety of win-con. And if you DO blaze through the deck that rapidly, playing tons of enchantments in a single turn, that means even the cheaper and weaker "whenever/for each enchantment" effects can have a big enough impact to be real game-changers. The real problem instead becomes that it takes you forever to play out your turns, which can really suck the joy out of the game for the other players. 😅

[@atevalve]

With my Greasefang deck I thought I needed more interaction and card draw but I really just needed more creatures to crew and backup my vehicles so I added a bunch more utility creatures instead of the non-creature cards that provided those things. They weren't as good as it those effects but they were worth being sub optimal versions of those effects in order to make the deck work.

[@ericjackman1143]

I am SO putting Nettlecyst in my Tivit deck is what I've learned so far xD

[@empurress77]

I've mentioned this deck a few times before. A Black, Blue, red, white deck. It WANTS green. It will make you have conversations with it, begging you to add green to it. Don't listen to it! It doesn't need green. Five color lands are something it wants. Does it need green from those lands, No. But i'll admit it probably does need five color lands.

[@melephs_cap]

I see a different form of this want vs need issue in decks where the theme doesn't have a lot of support, like the new Vannifar, Evolved Enigma. She seems to want a morph/manifest theme, but it turns out to get really effective she needs a ton of big permanents like eldrazi so she can cheat them out and blink them to flip them for cheap using a rules loophole. You can do a morph/manifest deck, but it just doesn't pull a lot of weight because there isn't a big card pool for making those cards that good.

[@Werewolfoverlord12]

I feel the same with Etratta deadly fugitive. Thinking of using her in the new grand larceny deck because it has several stealing effects that work with her. Hoping we get more cloaking effects later

[@brycematthew3115]

On the sythis question, and also just in general.. does anyone else find that 1 card per thing generally isn't enough in EDH? Like if I replace enchantments in hand with random cards from my deck, I'm going to run out of stuff pretty often, but with sythis+an enchantress on the board I should be able to actually churn through the deck. And then tied into that, wincons are usually the worst cards in the deck, so you'd rather run few of them and keep drawing until you find the few you chose to ran. I feel like the core annoyance of commanders like this is that building them better involves making them not win as "easily" from a dominant board state.

[@Wabiman70]

I play Hazezon with 30 lands + 5 mdfc lands, I feel it works because my deck wants to have deserts enters into play every turn more than increase the number of lands in play, I find it funny that I can have 5 lands and still have 20+ sand warrior tokens

[@JohnOConnell-u9o]

It’s ironic. I took apart my Sythis deck for the same reasons you stated. It had difficulty finishing opponents. I switched to Tuvasa, it was meh. Took out the blue, splashed red for voltron Uril. The enchantresses fill the card draw slots. The deck has Arden and Kediss as well. It has been stronger than Enchantress decks. I also have Obuun landfall. I run 38 land. Seems right to me though I could run 40.

[@zenalias3131]

yea, kinda agree that goad mechanic is like salt & pepper on a diner table. It's nice, cool and awesome when sprinkled but the flavour devolves when everything the deck do were just goad and goad payoffs

[@FinnyThePoo]

What a deck wants, what a deck needs: whatever makes me mana and sets you free

[@zizthesin]

I play 40 lands in my Obuun deck. but I also run 3 ways to play lands out of my graveyard and every good fetch available. I feel like what the deck wants most is better ways to draw cards, but I can see blue based landfall wanting significantly more lands. Maybe its commander dependent?

[@walterppk1989]

What a deck wants. What a deck needs. Whatever makes it happy sets it free

[@danpearman270]

My most successful 'refocus' so far has been my Cadira deck - I thought I wanted lots of token generators that make lots of tokens - turned out I mostly just want to keep her alive and evasive, and then have a lot of ways to make one token and start the ball rolling. My strangest discovery along these lines was that my Erebos (God of the Dead) deck doesn't really want cards like Night's Whisper and Sign in Blood (I know, I know, I'm sorry Dana, it's not my fault...) - he has the ability stapled on him and I can spend as much mana and life as I have to draw cards over and over - mostly I just need more ways to gain life (preferably by draining it from my opponents).

[@TheRedBaron2012]

Whatever makes the deck happy sets you free

[@Amishtroll]

Midnight haunting for Sithis enchantress is another win-con that works well for me.

[@4lifejackhammer]

Still gotta test it...but I'm thinking Greasefang is a blink deck needing blink creatures than a vehicle deck per se

[@EJB9]

I wanted to build a wraith tribal / cantrip hybrid Lord of the Nazgul deck, since I'm new to MTG with the Lord of the Rings Universes Beyond set... but after playing it I realised why everyone else builds the commander as cantrip payoffs... most wraith cards aren't very good, and aside from a few effects like kindred discovery, most tribal anthems were dead if my commander wasn't out to generate loads of wraiths. It's just a bunch of cantrips / instant and sorcery value now, and it's way better lol

[@beezer946]

My favorite thing with sythis is playing cards like celestial ancient and swinging with a super buff mesa enchantress

[@davidthorne5715]

The I think you should leave hot dog joke is spectacular 😂

[@ВасяПупкин-ш3ф4у]

I found that my prosper deck contains only good stuff but not wincons. That is why i switched to captive kingpin, who don't use treasures (more boring in this strategy) and can win even without commander

[@macemoesner3095]

Made the Weekly Patron Shout-Out!! BWWAA! BWWWWAAAAA!

[@joshrivet4011]

"Why is there a Trojan horse here?" Why not? Being upset or put off because a horse-based setting like the Wild West themed Thunder Junction uses a giant wooden horse in a way that is similar to our world's Trojan soldiers is like finding out several completely unconnected real world societies all built very similar structures without know each other existed. A good idea is both intercontinental and interplanar.

[@jeremyhayes1163]

Sythis does need all of the enchantress's. I originally did play less enchantress's because there was one in my command zone. But then Sythis just kept getting removed and I didn't want to waste a turn paying 4 or 6 for an enchantress. So I added the rest of them back into the deck.

[@breadpower]

why not just change the commander then? you could still run all the enchantresses but have a wincon in the command zone

[@jeremyhayes1163]

@@breadpower because having an enchantress in the command zone is still more powerful than anything else

[@alexandergartner8877]

Probably add the enchantresses that are enchantments themselves.

[@DrMeisterBabylon]

Chainer challenge: i use Chainer to throw the flayer and dragon in the bin to reanimate later. And especially Phyrexian Dragon Engine, i throw both half cards in the bin then double reanimate and attack. The ETB of the dragon is not wanted at times.

[@TheStephenation]

Uh oh, EDHRECast is talking about Landfall again and my 33-land Landfall deck has already rotated out of the database. Oops. Guess that means it's time to rebuild it.

[@kazeinu0151]

Every time you guys bring up sythis/enchantress decks I scratch my head a little. Is a deck with a ton of auras to make creatures huge and unblockable going to have trouble closing out a game? Do people not play enchant decks like this?

[@lokumo13]

Cheat code for votlron decks; In red: Extra combat steps, AND Chandra’s Ignition. These two will end the game quicker, you don’t need two extra equipments. In blue: Extra turns=extra combat step+ramp and card draw. In green: artifact hate like ouphe. You’re in green. You can ramp without them. In black and white, similar stuff I guess.

[@Alico_Reborn]

My Lord Windgrace Deck runs 44 lands, not counting the 2 MDFCs I am also running. In order to actually 9/10 times draw two cards with him, you need the fuel for that. The rest of the deck can be pure fire, then!

[@vincentcoo2244]

My karazikar is just a commander that draw me card + combat tricks to send problematic creatures to others, there are 2 hidden commanders in the 99

[@rorschach1]

Whatever makes me happy sets you free.

[@julioborjon4389]

That trampoline... He had all March to get a jump on that.

[@kaiwilken5330]

1:49 let's hope Dana will be able to BOUNCE BACK from that

[@cptregalz8091]

Lol @ Joey because I feel like in over half the videos, Baba Lysaga is ALWAYS the example

[@psychicnecrosis8376]

Tbh every red deck that lacks protection needs to play Possibility Storm for the sole purpose of never allowing cpunterspells to resolve

[@giantninja9173]

What a deck wants: a fun play pattern with a splashy payoff to win the game in style What a deck needs: 30 cards for ruining everyone else’s fun play pattern/negating the payoff so they’re out of the game.

[@schwarzertee7586]

strongly disagree on the sythis stance. Card draw is never too much. Even if you only have 2-3 wincons. With enaugh carddraw (especially in the command zone) you'll find it eventually. Nylea's Colossus, Fate Spinner, Triumph of the Hordes, Overwhelming Stampede. There you go. Spinner is an auto-include anyways. The colossus is just free real estate and Triumph and Stampede accomplish the rest.

[@makenawatkins]

I just built Merry and Pippin and my friends and I sat around at our LGS discussing how the deck worked, how it felt playing it, and what I have added but the deck already does on its own.

[@Bozzyverse]

Oh it's a vault door that makes more sense. I thought it looked like an American football helmet.