You Have Too Many Commander Decks!

Kicking Off the Episode with Event Announcements Today we have a pretty fun episode for you. We're talking about how many commander decks is too many and our own personal philosophies on why we have, you know, 1210 a hundred decks. We also gathered a little bit of data from you, so we'll be thinking about that and discussing it as well. And we're going to talk about why you would even want multiple decks. Before we get into all of that, I have to tell you about this podcast sponsor, Laughing Dragon. We want to tell you about Laughing Dragon Tacoma, which is on the weekend of July 3rd to the 5th. It is Command Fest Tacoma, they have tons of awesome commander events and Alex will be there. Yes, Elk will also be there. Yep, and you could play commander against them. Maybe both at the same time, who knows, You only know if you go there. Link below to buy your tickets to the events today. Additionally, they will have lots of other cool sealed events. ELK is doing a special sealed cube event. I don't know if it's sold out yet or not, but you know, you have to check that out. Speaker 2 There are two slots left to participate in, the two at a giant draft. Yeah, it's a cube. Speaker 1 If you want to do the two at a giant cube, there are two slots left so click the link below for that. And additionally, the new Marvel set will be out, so there will be sealed events for that as well if you want to draft some Marvel superheroes. Speaker 3 I actually also have a little mini goal while I'm there, which is I'm going to start with a sort of project I'm doing to have my opponents help me build a deck. So if you come and beat me in a commander game, you will get to pick out a card for a deck. I'm building around the little unknown event card that I got printed for me by the lovely people. It was to the Coast. Speaker 1 That's pretty sweet. Speaker 3 It's gonna be funny. Speaker 1 So if you want. Oh yeah, sorry, I was just gonna cut just close out. Speaker 3 I don't think that. Speaker 1 So if you want to check all that out, the link isn't the description. Before we get into the main topic I guess. Are you guys doing pre release for this that marble superheroes? Speaker 3 I'm busy this month. I'm not, no. Speaker 2 It's less of a busy thing for me and a lot more just like I'm not really invested in the set all that much. I mean, I'm still looking at it and like it's my job to like know the cards in the set to help with like daiquiris and stuff. But like ultimately these are cards that I'm not going to be really running in any of my like, casual kind of decks. So yeah, I don't know. I'm just not really interested in pre release. Speaker 1 I will be at a pre release in Manhattan Beach on the 19th and if you go to Krim's Instagram which maybe I'll link below, I think there is a link to join the wait list. I think it might be full. But if you are able to join the wait list and then go to the event I will be there. Quips Guac will be there. Krim from MTG, Goldfish and some other craters will be. Speaker 2 There. I'm so mad at running Socal anymore. I would go to pre release if all my friends were there. Speaker 1 Yeah, I think I'm doing Travis's as well on Sunday. So actually we're doing 2 pre releases for this set that I'm not very excited about. Speaker 2 Yeah, it also so it doesn't help that none of my friends are going to pre release either so it's just like what's even the point? Speaker 3 Yeah, I was open to going to the Avatar one, but then none of my friends wanted to go and I was like, oh, OK, I guess I won't. Speaker 1 Yeah, I pretty much only go to pre release if like I have like friends going, there's like an event. Speaker 2 Yeah, and that being said, I have been looking through the Marvel set a little bit. There's a couple of fun designs, especially in the pre cons. I like the Wakanda precon quite a bit. There's a few cool cards in there. Speaker 1 Oh wait, yeah, I should say I might try and swing by the Downtown Disney Marvel event, which Laughing Dragon is also doing something there. So if you are in the Anaheim area, Downtown Disney has an event going on for the Marvel set on the 19th. I might try and swing by. Oh. Speaker 2 That's actually kind of fun. Speaker 1 Yeah, and I Laughing Dragon is doing something there as well. So I believe, I don't know if that's sold out yet or not. I'm actually not familiar. Our Personal Commander Deck Counts and 'Too Many' So here's the big question. How many commander decks do you have? And we're counting this as like 100 card deck in paper, like in a deck box ready to go literally right now. If it's a proxy deck, we're counting that. Speaker 3 I have 10 and I have them grouped into five primary decks that I really like and play regularly, and five secondary decks that I play less often. Speaker 2 I also basically have 10. I technically have 11, but one of those is the unmodified Necron precon that I like to keep around for like precon battles. The other ten are decks that I've made, so 10 is the real answer. And I also kind of have like my favorites. There's the cream of the crop and then the the other five typically rotate in and out of circulation. Speaker 1 I have 6, I made like a pact with myself to keep it at exactly 6 some years ago now. What was that? Like 20-15 maybe? And I've held that pretty strong. I have 6 decks. If I ever change a deck I am scrapping another deck. There's another. How many decks we have? How many do you think is too many? Is there such a thing as too many commander decks? Speaker 2 I think if you're carrying around like the 32 like DeWalt, like tool carrying case and you have like all 32 of like the, the squares filled up of commander decks and you, you haven't touched some of them in over a year. That's like we've we've crossed the line into this is too much, right? Speaker 3 I think when it becomes too many is a question. There definitely isn't over that will be too many, but I think partially a question of what power levels you play at what kind of play environments you play in. Because obviously if you are doing everything from bracket one memes to CDH, you're going to need more decks. You know, you can't have like 4 perfect decks if you're playing all 5 brackets right? And I think the same goes for if you are playing in multiple play groups. If you have like your you know, super intense local play group and then you have you go to conventions, you want more chill decks. I think that requires you to have a bit wider of a range as well. But to me, I think my benchmark for when you have found a problem is if you have two decks that are scratching the exact same itch for you when they're the same power level or close enough to the same power level. And when they are more or less kind of doing the same thing, you're enjoying them for the same reasons. And you're just carrying around two decks where you could be in carrying around 1. I think that's an indication that you're having a problem. Speaker 1 Yeah, I agree. Because so I on one hand, I respect so my my buddy Russell, which you guys met at the last Tacoma events, he was in the Twitter giant cube for that round that we did. Yeah, yeah. The like taller guy, he's doing the was a 36 deck challenge, the one where you have a commander deck of every single color combination and he's pretty close to finishing that, I think. And I respect that. Like big shout outs, but at the same time man, it's like I feel like there easily hits a point where you're just realistically not maintaining those decks very well. Not that you need to constantly be upgrading your deck, but like, you know, if you haven't played a deck in like 2 years or is this in your like, you know, 18 deck rotation, that one point is it kind of just like a forgotten thing and maybe you should just take it apart, you know what I mean? The Budget and Purpose of Paper vs. Online Decks Well. Speaker 2 I feel like with the like the 36 deck challenge or whatever, it's a lot more 3232. Yes, I think it's, yeah, something like that. I just think it's like it's so much more about the spectacle than actually building a bunch of decks that you actually like playing. There's some people too that I know of where they just do nothing but build commander decks and they just never play right. There's these people with like fucking like 500 commander decks in their mocks field and they've played like 5 of them. Speaker 1 Oh, but in in mocks field and in paper I think are different. Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly like I have. Speaker 1 Like a billion decks on like deck building websites. That's, you know, I think that's normal. Speaker 2 Making the transition for these decks into paper. I don't know, there's there's a point where you're just building decks to build decks and not because you're going to actually end up playing them or like them or anything. It's like, oh, this commander looks halfway interesting. I'm just going to like mindlessly throw cards into a pile until I have 99 of them and then here's my new deck. And then it's just like ends up on a shelf. Speaker 3 To me, I think if it stays online, I think that is perfectly cool. I think if you build decks online again and again and again, hundreds and hundreds, because that's what you enjoy doing and then you don't build them in paper because you know you're not going to play them enough. That is like a an enlightened approach. That is, you know, you know what you enjoy, you know your limitations. You're not the person who's going to play a whole bunch of commander. And so you chose to do this. This is your hobby. This is how you're enjoying Magic. Building decks is playing Magic, you're enjoying it. So that's, that's all good. But yeah, I think once you're building them in paper, I think I start to, I mean, not not judge that heavily necessarily, but I start to be like, what was the purpose of putting the effort into this? You know, what was the purpose of putting the money into this? What what is the purpose of putting the space into this? What? What is happening there? Speaker 1 I think the budget is also like kind of a big thing, at least for me personally. Like I would rather have one $300 deck than $250 decks that are for the same bracket. You know what I'm saying? Like I would rather be able to foil one out or like have all of the pieces for it rather than two decks that are making significant changes to them due to budgets. Like I would rather just combine. That's like the big reason for my like consolidation is like budgetary reasons. Like I kind of like having for commander specifically, I like having foiled out decks or like, you know, cool fancy versions of cards. And to me that's just something I think is like neat about the game. I just the funny arts you can put. So it's kind of hard to do that if you have a lot of decks, unless you're like, you know, balling out, I guess. The Joy of Cheap Decks and Gradual Upgrades I find it funny you say that because I've I've had the exact opposite mindset sometimes. This is one of my decks among my 10 that I basically never play. Like maybe like 2 games a year. It was $60.00 when I built it or $50 or something like that and it is a dumb combo deck that is janky as hell and the fact that it was cheap is why I built it, because I could. I had this stupid idea to build this Fiend Hunter based combo deck and I built it and I had some funny games with it and I'll still occasionally have a funny game with it, but I'm kind of OK with that because I didn't spend a whole lot of money on it. This wasn't some crazy investment. I knew exactly how much enjoyment I'd get out of it. Speaker 2 Yeah, I've, I've been finding recently and not recently, but like my entire Magic career, what ends up making me build a commander deck in paper is I've played, tested a lot. I've played it online maybe a little bit. I like the concept a lot, but it doesn't do anything that my other decks do or it does something better than what my current decks do. I'm replacing one and it's cheap. The cheapness is actually a factor that comes into play. When I first built Cormella for instance, my big Grixis slop big spells deck, it was like maybe 100 bucks to put together and now that I've had it for I think over a year at this point maybe closer to 2, the deck is just shy of $400.00. Like upgrading over time and taking a cheap deck and making it more expensive is like the life cycle of a deck that you end up enjoying a lot I've found just because you just piece meal upgrade here and there as you go along. Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, that's more what I'm thinking, right, Is like, because I don't, it's not that I always build the deck in one piece or whatever, but like, you know, if I had, oh, I got 50 bucks, I could build a $50 budget deck or I could use that to upgrade this list. I think I'm always on the upgrade path, or at least very often. Speaker 3 If I can get a different deck that does something different than what I'm doing already then that's fine. I don't know, sometimes I'll upgrade my decks but I feel like usually they don't creep much over $200, and a couple of my older decks that I built for pretty cheap back in the day I haven't touched in like a year because they still function fine and I don't really have a reason to upgrade them since they're like secondary decks that I don't play that often. The 32-Deck Challenge, Overlap, and Emotional Deck Attachments See, I like having fancy versions of really bad cards. Like I have the masterpiece Mines Eye and people always look at it and go like, why did you spend more than a dollar on Mines Eye? Just, you know. Speaker 3 That that is pretty funny. I will say about the going back to the 32 decks thing. I think one thing that I I guess confuses me about that is that I feel like you're just going to end up with a lot of decks that are the same in part just purely due to the numbers of it. Like if you're building 32 decks, some of them are going to inevitably end up having a lot of overlap. But also in the sense that if you are spending your time making this many decks as a goal, I feel like you kind of have to form a formulaic sort of deck building style, right? What I build like a new deck that I'm really excited about, that takes a lot of time and effort and thought and like gazing within at my own intentions of what I want to get out of this game. And if you're building 32 decks, you're not doing that for all 32 of them. So I, I kind of wonder what internal mechanism drives it. Are you just following a formula or, or do you truly have these, you know, 32 kind of unique ideas that you're excited? Speaker 1 About, I mean, Russell listens to the podcast, so he's going to hear this. I, I would love for him to answer and maybe we'll, we'll do a little recurring segment next episode and see what he says. But I'm, I'm pretty sure he started with one deck and then he waited till a new commander he's liked got spoiled or whatever and then he built that for the next one. And then like, you know, it's like an overtime build out of 32 decks. Speaker 3 Is there ever a point where one of them just completely subsumes another? Because I've I've had experiences before where I will build a deck and I will go. I now no longer have a reason to play next other deck ever again realistically. Speaker 1 Right, right, because it feels the same niche for you scratches that same I. Speaker 3 Had that with my my original Glissa Sunslayer deck because I was just like a dumb big creature battle cruiser deck. And then I built my Rata deck this this kind of much more streamlined budget big creature battle cruiser scratched the exact same itches, but maybe have more fun. And then I went, oh, guess it's time to scrap Glissa. And I wondered, does that do other people just not have that replacement effect? Like do they still find something they and joy about the old decks or do they just is there something that causes them to hang onto a deck even after it has become kind of unnecessary in some sense? Speaker 2 I think maybe in part of it is like you just like put so much effort into building it and you've like done a lot of investment and both in time and money and just like taking apart feels wrong, almost like you're like undoing all that work or losing it, like, you know, or whatever. It's like, I don't know. I think after you stop playing a deck for a while, you should baby just take it apart. It's not like you're killing a kid. I don't know, it's like. Speaker 1 Dude, I that's how I felt when I took apart Jace. Speaker 2 You're killing your child. Speaker 1 And like and it weighs heavy on my conscience. Speaker 2 Look at the flowers, Jace Yeah, I I just think there's, there's this like concept that taking apart a deck is like, like losing the value of it or whatever. And I, I I don't know if that's entirely true, but. The Importance of Deck Variety and Avoiding 'Too Few' No, but I do feel that because like, like for me right now, I'm I'm looking at that because I, you know, I built that J stack and I hate, I hate, hate, hate having like nice, expensive cool cards that I was playing sit in my binder and do nothing. Like I despise that like cards are meant to be played. Like I want the cool cards for that deck to be in other decks and I'm trying to figure out where to put some of these cards. Too bad Candelabra sucks outside of Sea. Speaker 3 Something that I've done recently is I built a second bracket 2 deck. It's in Jessica colors. My first one was in Golgari colors. And this means that between these two decks, I can SOP up cards of any color aside from multicolor cards that are in the wrong color combos. Who's the commander? That one is Yoshimaru and Ludovic Necro Alchemist, but it's just like a soaking ground for all of the like random pet cards that have caught my eye but I never had a a home for. And so I found that like having A5 deck span or A5 color span of bracket 2 decks that I can throw pet cards in freely has has been pretty positive. I definitely enjoy that. Speaker 1 You know what? All right, so maybe we can move into our next topic here of is there such thing as too few decks? Like, why not just have your favoritest, mostest, coolest deck and keep that forever and just upgrade that and foil it out and whatever. Speaker 2 There's not a lot of issue with that. If that's what you enjoy and what makes you smile every day. Do what is the most fun. Of course if one deck is the most fun for you, then have one deck. But there is some friction that can appear I think if you have a regular play group. Because if think about if you're just playing randoms all the time, you're 1 deck doesn't really matter right? Like you're still, the opponents are still experiencing that deck only once. But when you have a regular play group of like friends, like you have a Discord server or something of 20 people that get together and just form pods on the weekend or whatever. Or you like go to a friend's place or whatever and you only have one deck, right? The the dynamics are going to feel the same all the time for your opponents, right? This. Speaker 3 Is reminding me how much I enjoyed back when I had a A10 deck budget deck pool with my old play group. It was the same decks in theory, but we got to have like all different combinations with them. So we know what every deck does, but how the decks played with three other decks, it was interesting. And I think that I, I do see how that could be an issue if you have people rolling up with their one deck and then, you know, every single game Fred plays his, you know, goblin deck. And that's the only thing we ever get out of Fred. And so everybody else is building their thing and they can always expect goblins out of Fred. I I do kind of see how that could lead to a reduction in the kind of space that is being explored in each commander game. Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, just varieties like the spice of life, you know, just like having side options is like super important and like, you know, being able to run the full gambit of like what you enjoy about Magic the Gathering, of which there is a lot to enjoy. I think it's just impossible to capture it all in one deck, right? Speaker 1 I remember there was this guy at my game store back in Virginia like a long time ago. And he had, he always had like cool, interesting decks. And then one day we we're at the game store playing all like, all right, what are you going to bring out? Because he had, you know, different power levels and he was like, oh, I only have one deck now. Like what do you mean? And he's like, I sold my entire collection to build this one deck and it was like a toggatag enchantress with and it was the most foiled out fancy deck I'd ever seen in my entire life. Like all the fetches were like the original onslaught ones and stuff like that. You had all the duels and it was this totally like at the time there were no brackets, but this would be like a bracket too, like very mid power enchantress, a talk deck. It was really funny. And that was it. He just played that for the rest of the time that I noticed. Speaker 3 I want to respect that, I guess. OK, OK, OK, maybe if somebody gets like emotional value out of having duels and fetches, but as a budget player, I just am am completely out of that world. Like I don't know if cracking an original onslaught fetch land like touches your heart in a way previously unseen in your life. It wouldn't for me. Speaker 1 But it wasn't even just that, it was everything in the deck was the oldest possible foil. Like the entire 99 was like that. It was like actually maximally foiled out is insane for like not a very good deck. Speaker 3 I, I have to respect that at some level that that's funny. Speaker 1 It was really funny. Speaker 3 Wow, and what was it a fun deck to play against? Speaker 1 I mean it was like enchantress with like a random a tog A tog at the commandzer that did nothing. It was like OK he built so many cool interesting decks. Like I was just so baffled I didn't understand this. Speaker 3 And then this was the final project that it was all culminating to. Speaker 1 He built this deck once that I ended up actually building as well because it was so cool. And it was like in Nam, a death aspect where you'd put all the spirits into your bin and then had like an Ad Nauseam backup plan because it could pick up the rest of its deck. It was like so clever and cool. Like he always made really cool decks and this one was just so boring. Choosing Commanders and Managing Threat Assessment at the Table It was really weird. Speaker 3 But it was pretty. Speaker 1 It was really pretty though, yeah. I agree with you guys though, that like, you know, if someone only plays one deck, it does kind of like somewhat who horn the interactions that you can have with that person, right? Because yeah, if they're always playing mono red that they're always going to struggle to destroy enchantments, let's say, right? Or if they're always on Krenko, you just know you're like, OK, I need a board wipe and then this deck folds. You know you get similar play patterns. Speaker 2 God forbid their favorite commander is like some kill on site nonsense like the one who was on that gives everything like ninjutsu from hand. Yeah, so you just like, always need a kill spell in your opening hand if you're playing with this person, and you're fine. Speaker 3 My I think my brother first commander deck that he had recently that a friend built him was Joe to the Unifier and that's fucking insane as the only deck you have. Speaker 2 Oh my God, you just like unlocked a memory for me where we were introducing one of my friends to commander and his first deck was Joe to Archbage Eternal. And it was like, this is such a bad option. Like I was thinking this. I didn't say this out loud, but like, this is just such a horrible commander to like pick as your first one to like build a deck around the one that makes everything cost Wooburn. Oh yeah, And he built it as like Wooburn, like insane big bombs. So you just have to kill Jode on site and just sat there and didn't play the game. Speaker 1 I had the same conversation with someone recently where they were like, oh so and so was trying to get into actually it was Travis and his girlfriend Jade. Jade wants to like get into commander. And I was like, don't build something on the EDA track top 100. This isn't like a hipster argument or whatever. This is like a if you play something that is just obviously like a kill on site, super busted commander and everyone sees it, you're not gonna have a fun time as a new commander player. Like play something a little quirky. Speaker 3 Somebody builds Machine 2 weapons as one, I think they're gonna have a pretty good time. Like that's that's just a nice like amplifier on a deck that already did something. Penn Plaza. Somebody's gonna have a great time. Speaker 1 With an asterisk, I'll say yeah, with an asterisk, but I mean, like, don't go like I need a track, Sir or whatever. But it's like, you know, everyone's going to try to blow you up and then you're just not going to have a very exciting time. Speaker 2 I literally just like cannot fathom ever building a Traxza in any way that isn't like using her as a sorcery that proliferates because she's going to get blown up before it's your turn again every single time. I feel I've never seen it attracts a player untapped with a Traxza. Speaker 3 It's funny because I feel like there should be a more kill on site commander in a game where a conventional build of attracts is there, but I don't know, maybe people are playing it. Speaker 2 Just has the pedigree, you know what I mean? Speaker 3 I think that's it. Speaker 1 Yeah well I think it's also just an 8 life point swing every single turn and you can't attack into it because the most commander decks are just like mid range piles and it has flying death touch visual life, like just really good against creature. Speaker 3 Piles, I mean, it's really good, but like that doesn't I feel like that doesn't give the same kill on site time. Like if somebody plays a an Azula against me that's kill on site for. Speaker 1 That is. Speaker 3 Really obvious reasons, like if you let the player untap with it, they're just going to. Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, I'm right here saying Atraxa is kill on site. I'm just Speaking of my experience by the way. Speaker 3 She has a pedigree for sure. Speaker 1 But exactly like players go for it, yeah. Speaker 3 And she's a strong car. Speaker 1 Oh my. Speaker 2 It's culture. Speaker 3 Yeah, for sure for. Speaker 1 Sure. I think one of the main benefits of playing like a lower power commander is the fact that people perceive the unpopular ones as lower power, which is often correct. And then you don't get like hit so hard in the threat assessment. Speaker 2 That happens like other formats too. There's this idea of like Brewers advantage where like your opponent's playing something really wacky and you don't know what the fuck is happening, so how do you sideboard against it, right? Like this is partially what makes lootry like actually not a total throw. Like, oh, a Singleton deck in Modern? That's so weird. Why would you ever do that? Lutri being the companion that removes you for having a Singleton deck, but like, it's really hard to sideboard against the deck that Singleton because you don't know what they're going to do. It's hard to predict, right? Building Resilient Decks and Balancing Power Levels Yeah, I don't know there. There are definitely some cards high up in the EDA traffic list that I recommend to people, but most of them I'm looking at I I would definitely would not. Anything where if the commander gets removed you stop doing things should be an immediate note for sure. Speaker 2 Or one that doesn't like lend itself well to a backup plan. Because like even like Finn the Fang Bearer is like he should be in play and that that's the ideal for the deck, right? But like there's still other methods to going about. What that deck wants to do, I don't know. Speaker 3 I feel like that's a kind of a cheesy deck. Like, I don't know, the backup plans are that great. Yeah. Speaker 2 Hey, running Overrun in that deck is perfectly fine. Overrun plus death touch is perfect. Speaker 1 I mean that's true, the the trample plus death touch overrun effects are quite good. Speaker 3 You have like four snakes like that many, unless you get like what are the ones that make death touch tokens if you get that out maybe. But like if you just have like 4 snakes you're swinging at people within the fangbearer with like that's a 12 damage overrun. Speaker 2 OK, that's a little fair. But still like I don't know, I think Finn also just has proliferation. There's there's other methods to going about what that deck wants to do maybe? Speaker 3 Maybe I haven't. I haven't played against Finn very much. Maybe I need to be elucidated to the the great? Speaker 2 Also, it's green, so you know how can you lose. Speaker 1 Exactly. You should automatically see that's. Speaker 3 Kind of true for my mono green dragon. Speaker 1 'S deck. I don't know if it's. Speaker 3 True. For a low curved green deck, you're not following the usual green formula, that's true. Speaker 2 I don't know, lots of low mana value green creatures plus beast whisper. I just fail to see how this deck fails. You know what I mean? Speaker 3 Yeah, that's the classic fin curve of nothing, nothing, nothing. Beast Whisperer then. Speaker 2 That's what I would do. That's what I would do. I would do that. I love my value too much. I can't curve out. Oh, I could play this fag of Shigeki on turn 1 and get a death toucher and some tempo going. No, it's a card later. I need to keep it. Speaker 1 So I think we're in agreement, right, that generally we would recommend that players have more than one deck, right? Speaker 3 Yeah, well, I mean, I think there's the reasons to have more than one deck that are for the sake of other people, I think for for the sake of having interesting games. I think there's also a reason in that you might want to have different experiences, and I think it can be interesting to think about what the different experiences you're looking to have are. Speaker 2 I think the most like, like you're saying the most prevalent, like different experience appearances that we're talking about too is like different levels of power. Like here's my bracket 2 deck, like here's my unmodified precon, here's my bracket three deck. And then here's like a four or five, right? And then that's like a kind of cool spread to have. But then there's a lot of like variation within each of those power levels. And I can see how this can quickly spiral to accidentally like, oops, I have 15 commander decks now because I need 2 to 3 for each of the brackets. I like playing because they're all like different kind of environments and what not. And then you want to have like different like decks to reach for in each of those environments, right? Speaker 1 No, I agree with. I mean, that's, I mean. Speaker 3 That's what I was thinking kind of earlier of if you play a bunch of different brackets all evenly, then I think that becomes definitely a consideration. I play mostly bracket 3, so I have, I'm fine having only a little bit of bracket 2, a little bit of bracket 4. But if somebody else is playing significantly more of those, then yeah, I could see having multiple decks for each of those. Speaker 1 Yeah, that's what I do. I have one CDH deck, I have one bracket 4 deck. I have two twos and two threes. Speaker 2 I legitimately think you need to be some sort of fucking enlightened monk to have like one to three commander decks only. Speaker 3 I mean, I to be fair, I I feel like I have like consolidated myself down to three for purposes of like going to an event packing light and I can I can kind of do it like I always have my shroom deck on me because that's like my, my, my challenge deck, my I want to think deck. I want to do some fancy ass plays and be impressive if I'm allowed to be and then I have like my my always deck, my rat a deck, my deck. I could just plot wherever and then maybe I'll have like a bracket 2 deck or like an aggro deck is like the third thing to include. So I feel like it's not that hard to consolidate down. You just have to look for what experiences do you want to have at your disposal. Speaker 2 So when I went to my first Magic Con, I brought like 12 billion decks with me. And I see these people at Magic Con, they have like a fucking wheelbarrow full of like EDH decks with them. And I'm like, that can't be fun to do. Plus it's like, you know, there's security risk of like losing your cards. God forbid we should. Speaker 1 Do that as a bit once and a magic con we should bring like a wheelbarrow. Speaker 2 But I, I've been recently trying to consolidate it down to as little as possible and I'll still accidentally end up pick like packing like 7 decks or something stupid. And I, I, I really like what Rachel Weeks does for events. She'll have like a new deck that she's excited to play, an aggro deck for when the night gets like really slow. And then like a blue, you can't see the air quotes, an interactive deck that can kind of like participate in any game that it's in. And then those are the three modes that Rachel brings to a convention. Sometimes she'll bring a can Lander deck too. But yeah. Arbitrary Rules for Color and Archetype Overlap in Decks I mean I like to with mine I want to always have covering all 5 colours between my decks. I kind of like to have the the gambit of colours somewhere between them. I also never like to have overlapping colour combinations. So if I have an Izzet deck, I'm not also going to have a teamer. Speaker 3 Deck I've never understood that. I feel like, I feel like the people who get fussy about colours are, are similar to the people who get like fussy about what foods you're allowed to have for breakfast versus lunch versus dinner. Or like, you know, other people who are, who are kind of accepting these arbitrary guidelines as like. Speaker 1 Well, let me tell you, I'm fussy about colors, but I don't believe in that food. Speaker 3 Shit. OK, OK. Speaker 1 Let me tell you, I wake up and if I'm hungry, I'm eating lasagna. Lasagna. Speaker 3 For breakfast, eggs. For dinner, we're recording. Speaker 1 This one the Garfield secret layer goes out. Speaker 3 There you go. There you go. Do you find you do the color thing just because you tend to include a lot of staples? Because that's kind of what I would assume. And I haven't had that problem because I don't tend to run a lot of staples. Speaker 1 Well, do you mean staples as in you, you mean like cyclonic riff right now? Like pet cards? Because for me, it's like I want to play double negative in my is a deck and I would also want double negative in my teamer deck. And I'm trying to avoid having too many of the same cards. But I have a lot of like pet cards, so I kind of like having one of each pet card. So I don't want to overlap on the. Speaker 2 You know, so it's not that Con has like a lot of staples in his deck, He just like has a lot of dog shit cards that he loves too much that he puts in all of his decks. Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like an inverse staple of sorts. Yeah. Like if I'm playing a blue control deck and like a lower bracket I want to be playing like Mystic Confluence. So I don't want to have two blue control decks because I want my dumb 5 mana counter spell in both of them, and I want to have my decks be as distinct as possible. Speaker 3 Well, but I feel like that's not really related to color. Like you've listed counterspells as two different things that you're worried about. You don't have to put a bunch of counterspells in a blue deck, right? Couldn't you have like I'm? Speaker 1 Not saying that if I have a blue deck I can't have another. Speaker 3 Blue deck, but like if you had, if you have two Izet decks and one of them is like a control deck and one of them is like a weird funky aggro deck and you know, one of them didn't really run the high mana counterspells, one of them didn't really run the low mana counterspells, that would be a problem for you. Speaker 1 Yeah, I feel like I would just want a different color combination for one of those. I don't know, it makes me, it helps me feel like the decks are more distinct, even though, yeah, in theory they would be very different. I do also never overlap archetypes. If I have a blue control deck, I won't have another blue control deck, I'll have a non blue one. But I I like to not overlap archetypes very much. Speaker 3 That I'm on board with like I I don't have a reason to ever build another hard control deck because I already have you know one like turbo late game control deck and I I don't know why I would want a second one yeah exactly. You know that very much scratches the itch of I'm a late game God. I don't need to scratch that itch multiple times. I guess to be fair, I guess if somebody like really, really liked a particular archetype and they just wanted like a couple different iterations on on that, then I guess. But it doesn't really appeal to me personally. The Lifespan of a Deck and Personal Attachments to Commanders Yeah, what about you, Elk do? Speaker 2 You want to move on to questions. Speaker 1 And stuff. No, I was going to ask you. What about you? Oh. Speaker 3 We're not out of the woods yet. Come on, tell us about your colors and your archives. Speaker 1 Answer a damn question. Speaker 2 Listen, OK, I personally, I don't really find myself overlapping that much. I, I, I just have like old decks that I love and that I'm never taking apart. I would divide my decks into two different categories, the the ones that have tenure and the ones that don't right. And you can go from don't have tenure to tenure someday. But generally speaking, I'm never taking apart Safari. I'm never taking apart IRR, never taking apart Cornell even has made it there. Farika is probably the final member of that club. Everyone else's no holds barred. Kellen is like close to getting tenure. But for me, none of these decks really overlap because they're all just kind of their own distinct thing. Like I have big spells, life drain, Voltron token, like flying deck and then stacks hate bears and none of these really overlap with each other at all. And I think that's part of why they got where they are versus like something that's like a new deck that is blowing through like JAXA's. JAXA's just got made like not even a few months ago and it's like mono red delirium weirdness stuff. Speaker 1 So I was, I was going to search for questions and instead of putting Mirror Mirror in the search bar, I just commented on the last podcast Mirror Mirror. Speaker 2 That's awesome. Speaker 1 Sorry not to interrupt, you can continue. Speaker 2 Oh yeah, anyway, I, I don't know, I, I don't really see the the archetypes as like a thing that makes me keep my decks around. It's mostly just age how much I like have a personal connection with the deck. That's about it, one. Speaker 1 Doesn't make me keep it around. It's the opposite where it's like if a if a car if commander gets printed and I'm like oh cool this would be a real like the new Thor I think is a neat card the mana red one. But if I were to build that, I would build it as non blue control, which means I would have to take apart Flage. If I were to build the new Thor, it's like the opposite for me because I don't want to have two decks of the same archetype and I never have more than six. Yeah. Speaker 2 For me, I feel like I do it in like the opposite order where I'm like this has fun play pattern, I make deck, I play test deck. If I get it in paper. We're now officially in this territory where we have it in paper, then I'll play it and then maybe it'll stay around permanently or maybe I'll get bored of the play pattern and it'll go away. But if I don't get bored of the play pattern, it's permanent. It's forever. And that's where I am with like at least four out of my 10 decks is just like this is a permanent mainstay deck that I'm never taking apart. So like if they printed another like flying threat in mono white, that was like really cool. I'd go like, oh, that's a cool card. I already have Safara. I'm never taking her apart, right? Because I've just, you know, grown attached to Sephora so hard. Speaker 3 I'm curious about Kellan. It feels like one of these things is not like the other. What is what is, what is Kellen give you that so special? Because I think there are a lot of special things about that deck, but I don't really think. Speaker 1 Of the commander. Speaker 3 Kellen as being the special thing about that deck, right? Speaker 2 Kellen will be shot in the head the moment there's a better Selesnya commander that fits the bill. Right now. Kellen is just the best at what he does for that kind of deck where he's like an advantage engine and also cracks my Selesnya doomsday pile with Congregation at Dawn. Like he just fills a lot of roles really well. But if we ever get like another Selesnya self mill, like I can use it to open a doomsday pile up then and I'd be interested in that. Like I guess there's the four mana Segardo was the other one I'm considering the the Selesnia Angel one that lets you play angels and humans off the top. But it was too expensive when compared to Kellen. I already have a video talking about why my reasons for doing that. But yeah, I need a deck with Bruna in it. If I don't have a commander deck with Bruna in it, something has gone horribly wrong. Speaker 3 No, I I get that. I get that that that kind of answers my my question. I think I only actually have two commanders that I am really irrevocably attached to. Will never give up, ever. Will never take apart the deck ever. They are both 6 men and they are both from Alara Block. Speaker 2 It's it's Shroom and what's what's the other one? Malfagor is from Alara. I had no idea. I thought, I don't know what plate I thought Malfagor was from, but. Speaker 3 Yeah, I don't, I don't use the Alara printing because I I prefer the art of the iconic Masters reprint, but. And I guess that was the original promo art. Yeah. Speaker 1 It was the Magic Online promo. Speaker 3 It was also just the promo from the conflicts promos. Speaker 1 It's the pre release, yes. Yeah, back when pre release promos had art. Speaker 3 Clearly I need to get that one. It's only $0.74. You should. Speaker 2 Speaking of fucking promo art, there's the the one from the vault angels Iona and she finally got a non foil printing but it's like the white border mystery booster printing but the art is so hard. I love that art so much. Speaker 3 The white border on that looks weird. Speaker 2 I know white border on white cards low key kind of cooks IMO. I kind of like. Speaker 3 That OK, OK. I think if you're running this in like a like a Dragon Shield dual mat sleeve with like a black or dark grey border, I think that that looks good as hell. Speaker 2 Yeah, you pick your favorite podcaster and you use their code to check out. Seeking Suggestions for Orzhov Stacks Commanders Yeah, exactly. Speaker 1 I think I used to think my only Forever decks were like Jace and Mina and Den, but Jace actually became Raul because I like I kind of had to because I was like, I love Manual Storm so much and Raul is like so much the same thing. It is another flip planeswalker card manual Storm deck in CDH, but it's actually playable and I'm like, it's like exactly what Jace does. Speaker 2 I feel like it's a different dynamic in CDH though because you're you're you're kind of pushed by meta as opposed to casual where it's like, I don't think you're retiring a casual deck because there's a new better meta option. Speaker 1 Dude I played Jace like well into past. It was viable that it was. Speaker 2 I know, but you've, you've made the swap to rail because like you kind of had to versus wanting to. Speaker 1 That's true, Mean and done is is not going to change anytime soon. I love my my Japanese mean and done promo. Like I think the commander is so silly as well. Nobody plays it. It's a great uncommon commander. Well. Speaker 3 Lance is an arc lands in bracket 3 is not one that requires you to have a strong commander. You're going to do OK even with just have your your your over liable 4 men extra land play commander. Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly like 90% of the card is. It's like extra light drops. Speaker 3 Yeah, you'll get that. Speaker 1 Before we move on to questions, I want to ask you guys. I've been struggling with this for a while actually. I really like Orzov like stacks and I haven't found like a good commander for it. Do either of you have any like suggestions? Speaker 3 What sort of stacks? Speaker 1 Oh it could be hate bearsy stacks but it could also be enchantress stacks. Either or like like how high amount of enchantments you play, like pox effects or something to like just clear everything else or like hate. Speaker 3 Bearsy, that's a great question. I've never had Orzov hate bears feel good in my life. Speaker 1 Don't you play Brina? Speaker 2 Brina hate bears doesn't feel good because of the hate bears. It feels good because of Brina. Speaker 3 Yeah, I've played Brina, hate bears. I've played Liesa hate bears. I'm currently playing Liesa less hate bears. None of them feel like they all feel fine. I don't know. Speaker 2 Do we count my reanimator deck as hate bears Like as reanimating Valgevoth on turn 3 like a big hate bear play? Speaker 1 That's Reanimator. Speaker 2 If you think about Valgevoth as like a really big douthy void Walker, he's kind of a hate bear. He's like a hate Goliath. Speaker 1 I think about that as as reanimator. I kind of was interested in like a regional tesa. Speaker 3 This guy has. Speaker 2 Sechass art. That victor's so cool. OK, wait, Victor. Speaker 1 Oh, OK, The victor's good. The victor's. Speaker 3 I'd be running in half for the art. That's such good. Speaker 2 Art a Victor is legitimately a card I was experimenting with for a while. File. Sorry I'm about to go on a huge nerd tangent, but that's why people watch podcasts I guess. So Victor Valgebot Seneschal. When Enchantment enters he does stuff, you first survey you surveilled to and then each opponent discards a card. Then you reanimate something from any graveyard. And I was building him as a Orzov enchantment aristocrats because I found this really funny combo. This was just after Wildevel drain. There was the cards Warehouse Tabby and a night of doves, both of which say when an enchantment leaves, you make a 11 and so you have screams from within, which is 1 black black enchanted creature gets -1 -, 1 when the creature that's it's enchanting dies, you return screams from within to play. So you just have an infinite loop of like 11 enters because enchantment left enchantment returns attached to that one one and then it's infinite enchantment Etbs. Oh, interesting. And then until then you can just do like weird enchantment aristocrat stuff where you're like sacking your enchantments and bringing them back from the graveyard with like civilians reclamation and like sun Titans shit. I don't know this. This commander is really cool though. I love Victor a lot for that kind of shell. I feel like it's like 80% of the way there. We get like like a couple more like Ethonian nightmare kind of recursive enchantments it it would be such a cool day I feel. Speaker 3 Like Victorious is very like it's low mana. It offers a lot of, it just offers a lot of stuff like discarded. Each point of discarding is very good. Smoothing is is nice to bring creatures back. It's like a little bit of a wing cons. I think it's just you get a little bit of everything at a low man value. I think that's the kind of the appeal to me of Victor. Speaker 1 Yeah, maybe he is pretty good. I was thinking Tesa is just like a if you've ever seen. Speaker 3 Like some of the RTR tesa. Speaker 1 The work thar stacks decks where they go like ritual into like a big stacks piece of like you know, blows everyone's lands or like does something big and then they ritual into work thar and try to recover from. I was like, can I do the same with Tesa? Because if you've had your lands blown up once and then I which will into a Tesa, she is really difficult to deal with. Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, that's a way to like, yeah, you like swing the game around if your opponents are getting a decent board. Speaker 1 Yeah, but she doesn't do as much damage as work thar does, so maybe it's not not quite as effective. Yeah. Speaker 2 That's one of the big thing with like hate bears and prison stacks is like if you can like hate bears out a game, great. You know you have infinite time, but you should be like, you should have some sort of clock that is closing the game while it's kind of like slowed down and glacial like that, right? Speaker 1 Yeah, well, that's why I was also kind of think of like opposite head ghost counselor. Somebody's like really jank ones. Like they leave and then you can kind of like mess up stuff and then they come. Speaker 3 Back like come ball, console of allocation, get a bunch of life we'll do. Speaker 1 That that's not hipster enough? Come on. Speaker 2 Man, it's not hipster enough because of snail. Speaker 3 Don't run. Just don't run life games. Yeah, No, I don't. I don't. Speaker 2 Always on his anti life gain. Speaker 3 I I don't take much credit for for Comball being popular because that's not what I've talked about that much and the card just slaps. Speaker 1 Yeah, I think a lot of people are like very high on Comball. Speaker 3 Yeah, you should just slurp the table. Speaker 1 I'll think about it some more. I have I have some ideas on whatever. Answering Listener Questions and Wrapping Up the Episode I should probably do questions now, yes? Speaker 1 Yes, we do questions now. I I got fresh, fresh questions because we just uploaded the podcast. Oh yeah. So all right, hello from Mian, asks Mirror Mirror. I turn day to night, venture into the Throne of the Dead 3 and draw from the Monarch at end step to ask what is your favorite playmat and do you try to match your playmats to the aesthetic of your deck? Speaker 2 I legitimately just don't use playmats other than void monster anymore. Like every time I do like a void monster ad read for my videos, I also get that drop as well sent to me. So I just have like a shelf full of void monster play mats. And since I have one of for each color, I do match my play mat for what deck I'm wanting to play the most. So like I'll bring the black play mat out from void monster if I want to play my IRA deck all night, right? Speaker 3 If you're playing in a public place, are you like carrying around 5 play mats with? Speaker 2 No, I'll just bring the one for the deck that I want to play the most. Or like if it's modern night I'm playing blue white control, bring my the white one or the blue one, right? Speaker 1 So you do try to aesthetically match. Speaker 2 Yeah, I think it's fun, but I'm in a very privileged position where I have like 12 million playmats because of what I do, right? I would just, I just find the one that speaks to you. I don't know. Most people do that. Speaker 3 Yeah, I don't. I mean, I didn't use playmats for the longest time and I started getting that for free for doing advertisements for things. So now I have some. But I think giving any answer to this question other than I don't care, I don't use Playmats very much, it would be dishonest so. Speaker 1 I'm going to say that I use playmats. I also like the void monster ones. I usually just one grab one like at random and then use that. I do not aesthetically match them to my decks. I don't even aesthetically match like the colours of the deck boxes to my decks. In fact I intentionally do the opposite. I have a green deck box. The deck inside is not great. Speaker 2 For for me it's just like really hard to pick up cards without a playmat, you know what I mean? Like if it's on like a flat table. Speaker 1 Not for Alex. They all have the. Speaker 2 One. Yeah, exactly. They all have the cork, they all have like a convenient little handle of the quarter cause of how he slams them against the table. I. Speaker 3 I think if you've been using play mats, your, your fingers are weak, you've lost the ability to grab cards. You're, you're, you got to get back on that grind. Speaker 1 This person Tin Moana on Spotify says Mirror Mirror. What has been happening to Snail on the podcast videos lately? Why the hell is he glowing? Speaker 3 I'm feeling funny lately. Speaker 1 He ate the funny goop I did. Speaker 2 12 RAD counters. Speaker 1 Yeah, 12 rad. Speaker 2 And now he's even more in the new video because he's like spitting on his skateboard. That's extra rad counters. Speaker 3 Played against the Mothman player at my LGS one too many times. Speaker 1 Astrid asks. Mirror, Mirror. I cast Path to Exile on Zodihedron, a goblin. You draw grinder to ask what is your opinion on top deck filtering cards like abundance, season of growth, etcetera. Do you think they're underplayed or lean towards and tend to lean? Or do you tend to lean towards alternatives? Man, I. Speaker 3 Misread that. I love. Speaker 1 What is season? Speaker 3 Of growth. That's whenever you target a creature with a thing you describe on or something like that. Speaker 2 Whenever a creature enters, you scribe one, and then whenever you target a creature, you draw a card. Speaker 1 Oh, that's very different than abundance, Yeah. Speaker 2 Yeah, I think it means just like top deck filtering, like think of cream of the crop, right When big creature enter, I subscribe, not scribe, but you look at that many cards at the top, put one on top, the rest of the bottom. Like these things that fixed your draws. Sure, versus I don't know, I think I only run abundance in my green deck because it combos with cultivator colossus. That's my bracket for like, you know, like playing abundance and then natural ordering my stupid five drop into a cultivator colossus and putting every deck, every lane of my deck into play. That's why I run abundance. I don't run it for really any other reason. It also stops me from decking when I'm doing my combo, which also helps I guess. But overall, I don't know. I don't really like fixing top deck fixing. I think just running good card draw is better than fixing like your draws with like a ton of scry effects. Speaker 3 I'm addicted to to looting effects draw discard or or rummaging effects discard draw. I just I just love putting shit in my graveyard and also going to see more of a library give it to me. Speaker 1 You should put APSA for looting addiction on screen. Speaker 3 But I just want the card immediately. I don't want to set up my next turn. That's that's dumb. I I I need? Speaker 2 Exactly. Speaker 3 I don't have patience. Speaker 2 So let me talk to you about why I hate Forexing Arena. Speaker 1 I think that cards like this that scry a bunch or like help you set up are only useful if there's like something you need, right? Like it's the same thing with like a lot of you know, kind of tutor effects. Like if there is a single high power card that like you need for your deck or you want or that effect, then these cards get better. But if you're just kind of like a generic mid range deck, just like card draw. Speaker 2 Unless you're playing like Canessos or Miracles where like the top card of your deck matters that much. Speaker 1 If you're playing Karanos or whatever, like yeah, obviously I. Speaker 3 Think it's also like how how strong is the card? Like I think the one of these I play a lot is I have Francisco Malcolm deck, Francisco top deck manipulates and that's really good because it's a 2 manic commander that does it sometimes three times per turn. That's a good. Speaker 2 It gives you black in your color identity which is very strong if. Speaker 3 It wasn't my commander. If it wasn't, that rate probably wouldn't run it. But it's there. It's good. Finds me my combo. Hey, hey, hey. Speaker 2 Peace and love $50 if you want to get a deck review on my weekly Tuesday and Sunday stream. Also, if you watch for long enough you can spend 45,000 channel points to get a free deck review. Speaker 1 Users going to cut these. Speaker 3 Much of the questions followed by elf ads for Jack reviews.