I honestly think that “Drawing tons of cards, making tons of mana” is the biggest problem with Commander. People complain about tutors, but what’s better than tutors? Drawing 12 cards with Skull clamp in a turn. Not only are you getting your win come, you’re just out drawing your opponent with answers. Broken af. I’d rather people run tutors.
Im a big fan of mono color control decks, my 3 favoritea rn are patron of the moon, vilis broker of blood, and minn wily illusionist. Each has a unique way to win. But when i play i have a slightly different view, i only care about 2, maybe 3 spells i truly care about all game
The prismatic bridge is low key a great draw-go control commander. 5 color and card advantage where instead of cheating out big beaters like eldrazi like most bridge decks go for, you run a small control engine that you know you will eventually see one of per turn. Every upkeep will see you snowballing the advantage with things like consecrated sphinx, seedborn muse, and various creature/planeswalker combos that give you repeated removal on a stick
Who needs control? I just play slivers with a tutoring commander and all my slivers have flash and... Nevermind, I play Sliver control. I play a lot of decks control style. Drawing is not necessary when your commander is a tutor, but I definitely still use draw, even in Slivers. As best as possible, I attempt to play control in a lot of my decks. You're absolutely right that the typical pod should see a decent degree of control in each deck so that you're not completely beholden to the whims of "the" control player lol. I do think there's pods that would be fine with very limited control. The decks need to be balanced to really make this possible, so it's not best to just design a single deck like this
There is so much to say. I currently have a mono black sheoldred, mono blue baral(guile polymorph) and Kellen(sun forger) control decks and I love them all. Guile and Farrell are deff my favorite control cards. Your videos have made me try more draw go in commander and it’s been a lot of fun. I love building a deck where I can one for one 4 people and just shut the table down. When my atraxa resolves it’s just over, I end most games with unused free counter spells in hand.
I recently found your channel and have been really enjoying your deckbuilding advice! I recently rebuilt my Galea deck to run a lot of goad / "vow of ..." / frogify type enchantments and it felt very smooth in the two games I played with it this weekend. no wins, but I was a consistent threat and the control I put out was fun for everybody, to my surprise. Control is very different than my usual big stompy naya style, but I really enjoyed it! This video is giving me a lot of food for thought as I build a new Jolrael, Voice of Zhalfir deck. Thanks!
I'm brewing around Xolatoyac just because it's cute af and was struggling on which direction to take it ... draw-go might be fun (since you can actually play at sorcery speed and maintain interaction mana) just gotta find a fun wincon now (also with the untapping on end step draw X spells are gonna be FUN)
I can definitely say that my Orvar and Elminster decks are two of my favorites AND are my main control decks. The former focuses on building resilient infinite combos while totally outvaluing everyone else. The fact that my commander can EASILY just make token lands, including for ones with utility like mystic sanctuary or the lifegain locus land, is far and away one of my greatest advantages. Plus the fact that I can easily copy all of my most useful and powerful permanents at instant speed is not to be trifled with. Plus my suite of Archaeomancer effects allows me to easily loop my spells, especially Ghostly Flicker, to always have ways to deal with troublesome boards (and thank the stars for Amphibious Mutineer for being blinkable spot removal in blue!) As for Elminster, it's a deck focused on drawing and scrying to totally outvalue everyone else. Plus since my scrying helps me cast big spells, I can pump out dangerous instants and sorceries far too many turns before they should be. Plus with so many cards that let you scry and draw, especially big ones that have large scry numbers attached, I can essentially chain my spells for super cheap, refill my hand like nobody's business, AND end up casting a game-changing spell while still keeping up mana for counterspells and removal. The deck mainly wins one of two ways: using extra turns to beat everyone down with the army of faerie dragons Elminster can just dump onto my board (thanks to the sheer number of 6+ mana spells), or by Approach of the Second Sun, which I can EASILY cast twice in one turn thanks to my copious amounts of draw and scrying to dig 7+ cards AND those same scry effects allowing me to reduce the cost of the spell itself! The actual engine is split into two strategies: UW superfriends and Blink. Most of the planeswalkers (actually all of them sans the commander if I remember right) are various Teferis and Jaces that help me scry, draw, or otherwise control the board like with Te5ri's land untapping or the kicker Jace's Scry 2 and clones. Blink is useful for multiple reasons: it lets me reuse Archaeomancer effects to get back removal or value spells, Cryptic Annelid and a few others give me effectively free scrying (and A LOT at that) when I use blinking triggers, Oji does what I mentioned previously with free scrying as he has a built-in blinking trigger off of your second spell cast each turn and has his own lifegain and scry etb, etc. etc. The package of both blinking and superfriends comes together thanks to Oath of Teferi, which is a must-include anyways thanks to your commander being a UW planeswalker! While the blink for it is more secondary to the card itself, it never hurts to have a relevant permanent (which does include lands!) to take advantage of the etb and so many etbs greatly benefit Elminster!
I am indeed one of the control aficionados you mentioned. I do think in some ways I differ greatly in how I play/think about control. But over all, I agree with you and think multiple methods are valuable. One of the things I love most to put in my control decks are the instant speed wipes such as blue's many bounce wipes (Aetherize, Aetherspouts, etc.) or Settle the Wreckage. That or some other combat tricks like Tefari's Protection. Point is, I like cards that mean you only need to answer the threats if they come your way. Or alternatively, you can focus on answering the threats to you (like you said, card draw engines, cards that shut down your instant speed interaction etc.) I also love the x cost card draw spells and stuff like Rhystic Study and Magic Mirror (all though my favorite card in all of magic is still Greed because I am a black mage at heart). But I think my favorite card in control decks is Leyline of Anticipation. Being able to do everything at instant speed is just such a huge buff for a control deck, since it essentially eliminates the need to choose between playing stuff and holding up many for potential answers. And finally, while I totally see your point with Arcane Denial, I am actually a big fan of the card. The specific reason I like it is that part of my main strategy is when playing is to not do things that piss off or scare the table. I sit back with mana up for interaction but don't play much that is threatening (or much at all frankly), doing your "draw land go" style of control deck that you mentioned primarily. I like cards like Arcane Denial that let me answer a threat but give my opponent something to soften the blow so to speak. But that's just personal preference and how I play control generally in Commander.
I heavily recommend watching The Salubrious Snail's video on the Erinis, Gloom Stalker + Street Urchin , Gruul control deck . it reimagined control for me. I always thought control was blue black white and that's it. but this gave me a new insight and made me realize my King Macar deck was actually pretty similar to that playstyle
This makes want to turn either my Tezzeret, Master of the Bridge or Mirrodin Besieged into wincons for my Silas Renn and Armix deck. Right now my wincon is Master of Etherium, Metalwork Colossus, and a couple other big beaters
Lord of the Nazgul. Play tons of instants, counters, and removal along with hate cards like Notion Thief and Opposition Agent. Acrue value for casting control spells with commander swing with 9/9 wraiths.
@@thetrinketmage heck yes, I am not interested in learning a lot about stax because of other's enjoyment, but you made me want to discover control, without 2 cards combo, it seems like you help the table more than other archetypes. But the late big payoff that you are going towards must be pretty strong to beat 3 people (and not be a torment of hailfire, type of card)
@@pajurr9437 that’s the trick is finding what your payoff is without it being something boring like just a big torment! It really depends on the deck but there are options! Like Mizzix’s mastery! Also don’t rule out stax just yet I think it has a place in casual, especially if you don’t like combo. I’ve got a few videos on stax out on channel
@@thetrinketmage I watched one ! But limiting the ressources of the other players, or group slug aka punishing the other players for playing the game, meh, ya know, maybe not for me right now. At maximum maybe a Yurlock deck, giving too much and taking life as a payment. But yeah control seems interesting, plus other players need to play around it and so on
I tried building Noyan Dar as my control commander deck. But I don't really know how to build him / how to play him. I am used to playing more pro-actively so maybe I am playing him wrong / he's not the right commander for a control deck. He's one of the oldest decks I own and I am hesitant to take him apart, but lately I've been tempted to do so, even though I just ordered some new cards for him to try out. Right now I built him combo-ish with generating land tokens and untapping those lands with untap-creatures effects. But this plays really slow and doesn't really do anything. I also have this King Macar, the Gold Cursed vehicles / artifacts deck that makes for a pretty controlling playstyle since King Macar is a removal tool and value engine (generating gold tokens) himself. I will probably keep this deck because I often lend it out to one friend and it plays pretty decent. Then I have the Faceless Menace pre-con but I am thinking about taking this one apart as well. I did see a pretty neat cEDH decklist with Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer recently. however, my playgroup isn't interested in cEDH. I am looking for opinions: what decks should I keep / change / take apart?
I feel as if you forget that put simply non perminent decks are just less fun to most people. I agree most ppl should use removal but its just not sthm ppl like to fight
I agree that "Just play less creature-heavy decks" is not good advice and it's not an argument in favor of Control/Stax being fun, because some people just don't find amusement into playing something that isn't creature-centric. Maybe better advice would've been "Include more removal in your creature-oriented decks if they get beaten so hard by Stax/Control", but just telling people "Play things designed to beat Control/Stax" is tone-deaf at best. I don't want to play Control, I don't like it and Trinket Mage does not make a good enough argument to convince me to rethink it, I don't think it's unfair but I hate the design, I just need to know a way to deal with it semi-reliably so I actually get to play my Reanimator deck: if I need to cut on ETB creatures to reanimate and instead pack more removal no problem, but I'm not changing deck entirely just because the local Stax/Control aficionado sat at my table today.
didnt think ud resond but consistncy is just not what i like to see in my commander games I enjoy the variance between matches instead of just dead cards. @@thetrinketmage
I honestly think that “Drawing tons of cards, making tons of mana” is the biggest problem with Commander. People complain about tutors, but what’s better than tutors? Drawing 12 cards with Skull clamp in a turn. Not only are you getting your win come, you’re just out drawing your opponent with answers. Broken af. I’d rather people run tutors.
Virtual card advantage is a very cool way of illustrating your point about value
Im a big fan of mono color control decks, my 3 favoritea rn are patron of the moon, vilis broker of blood, and minn wily illusionist.
Each has a unique way to win. But when i play i have a slightly different view, i only care about 2, maybe 3 spells i truly care about all game
The prismatic bridge is low key a great draw-go control commander. 5 color and card advantage where instead of cheating out big beaters like eldrazi like most bridge decks go for, you run a small control engine that you know you will eventually see one of per turn. Every upkeep will see you snowballing the advantage with things like consecrated sphinx, seedborn muse, and various creature/planeswalker combos that give you repeated removal on a stick
Who needs control? I just play slivers with a tutoring commander and all my slivers have flash and... Nevermind, I play Sliver control. I play a lot of decks control style. Drawing is not necessary when your commander is a tutor, but I definitely still use draw, even in Slivers. As best as possible, I attempt to play control in a lot of my decks. You're absolutely right that the typical pod should see a decent degree of control in each deck so that you're not completely beholden to the whims of "the" control player lol. I do think there's pods that would be fine with very limited control. The decks need to be balanced to really make this possible, so it's not best to just design a single deck like this
There is so much to say. I currently have a mono black sheoldred, mono blue baral(guile polymorph) and Kellen(sun forger) control decks and I love them all. Guile and Farrell are deff my favorite control cards. Your videos have made me try more draw go in commander and it’s been a lot of fun. I love building a deck where I can one for one 4 people and just shut the table down. When my atraxa resolves it’s just over, I end most games with unused free counter spells in hand.
I recently found your channel and have been really enjoying your deckbuilding advice! I recently rebuilt my Galea deck to run a lot of goad / "vow of ..." / frogify type enchantments and it felt very smooth in the two games I played with it this weekend. no wins, but I was a consistent threat and the control I put out was fun for everybody, to my surprise. Control is very different than my usual big stompy naya style, but I really enjoyed it! This video is giving me a lot of food for thought as I build a new Jolrael, Voice of Zhalfir deck. Thanks!
I’m glad I inspired you! That’s what I aim to do!
I'm brewing around Xolatoyac just because it's cute af and was struggling on which direction to take it ... draw-go might be fun (since you can actually play at sorcery speed and maintain interaction mana)
just gotta find a fun wincon now
(also with the untapping on end step draw X spells are gonna be FUN)
I recently made my first control deck and its way more fun than i expected although it did end up kinda stomping my playgroups decks
Control usually has a lot of decisions so I think it’s a lot of fun
I can definitely say that my Orvar and Elminster decks are two of my favorites AND are my main control decks. The former focuses on building resilient infinite combos while totally outvaluing everyone else. The fact that my commander can EASILY just make token lands, including for ones with utility like mystic sanctuary or the lifegain locus land, is far and away one of my greatest advantages. Plus the fact that I can easily copy all of my most useful and powerful permanents at instant speed is not to be trifled with. Plus my suite of Archaeomancer effects allows me to easily loop my spells, especially Ghostly Flicker, to always have ways to deal with troublesome boards (and thank the stars for Amphibious Mutineer for being blinkable spot removal in blue!)
As for Elminster, it's a deck focused on drawing and scrying to totally outvalue everyone else. Plus since my scrying helps me cast big spells, I can pump out dangerous instants and sorceries far too many turns before they should be. Plus with so many cards that let you scry and draw, especially big ones that have large scry numbers attached, I can essentially chain my spells for super cheap, refill my hand like nobody's business, AND end up casting a game-changing spell while still keeping up mana for counterspells and removal. The deck mainly wins one of two ways: using extra turns to beat everyone down with the army of faerie dragons Elminster can just dump onto my board (thanks to the sheer number of 6+ mana spells), or by Approach of the Second Sun, which I can EASILY cast twice in one turn thanks to my copious amounts of draw and scrying to dig 7+ cards AND those same scry effects allowing me to reduce the cost of the spell itself! The actual engine is split into two strategies: UW superfriends and Blink. Most of the planeswalkers (actually all of them sans the commander if I remember right) are various Teferis and Jaces that help me scry, draw, or otherwise control the board like with Te5ri's land untapping or the kicker Jace's Scry 2 and clones. Blink is useful for multiple reasons: it lets me reuse Archaeomancer effects to get back removal or value spells, Cryptic Annelid and a few others give me effectively free scrying (and A LOT at that) when I use blinking triggers, Oji does what I mentioned previously with free scrying as he has a built-in blinking trigger off of your second spell cast each turn and has his own lifegain and scry etb, etc. etc. The package of both blinking and superfriends comes together thanks to Oath of Teferi, which is a must-include anyways thanks to your commander being a UW planeswalker! While the blink for it is more secondary to the card itself, it never hurts to have a relevant permanent (which does include lands!) to take advantage of the etb and so many etbs greatly benefit Elminster!
I am indeed one of the control aficionados you mentioned. I do think in some ways I differ greatly in how I play/think about control. But over all, I agree with you and think multiple methods are valuable. One of the things I love most to put in my control decks are the instant speed wipes such as blue's many bounce wipes (Aetherize, Aetherspouts, etc.) or Settle the Wreckage. That or some other combat tricks like Tefari's Protection. Point is, I like cards that mean you only need to answer the threats if they come your way. Or alternatively, you can focus on answering the threats to you (like you said, card draw engines, cards that shut down your instant speed interaction etc.) I also love the x cost card draw spells and stuff like Rhystic Study and Magic Mirror (all though my favorite card in all of magic is still Greed because I am a black mage at heart). But I think my favorite card in control decks is Leyline of Anticipation. Being able to do everything at instant speed is just such a huge buff for a control deck, since it essentially eliminates the need to choose between playing stuff and holding up many for potential answers. And finally, while I totally see your point with Arcane Denial, I am actually a big fan of the card. The specific reason I like it is that part of my main strategy is when playing is to not do things that piss off or scare the table. I sit back with mana up for interaction but don't play much that is threatening (or much at all frankly), doing your "draw land go" style of control deck that you mentioned primarily. I like cards like Arcane Denial that let me answer a threat but give my opponent something to soften the blow so to speak. But that's just personal preference and how I play control generally in Commander.
Interesting you mentioned arcane denial. Working on a longer video about the card right now
I heavily recommend watching The Salubrious Snail's video on the Erinis, Gloom Stalker + Street Urchin , Gruul control deck . it reimagined control for me. I always thought control was blue black white and that's it. but this gave me a new insight and made me realize my King Macar deck was actually pretty similar to that playstyle
This makes want to turn either my Tezzeret, Master of the Bridge or Mirrodin Besieged into wincons for my Silas Renn and Armix deck. Right now my wincon is Master of Etherium, Metalwork Colossus, and a couple other big beaters
Lord of the Nazgul. Play tons of instants, counters, and removal along with hate cards like Notion Thief and Opposition Agent. Acrue value for casting control spells with commander swing with 9/9 wraiths.
Damn, it makes me wanna learn me about the different control archetypes
Great video, have a nice day
You know… what’s not a bad idea. I might make some videos about draw go vs tappout control
@@thetrinketmage heck yes, I am not interested in learning a lot about stax because of other's enjoyment, but you made me want to discover control, without 2 cards combo, it seems like you help the table more than other archetypes. But the late big payoff that you are going towards must be pretty strong to beat 3 people (and not be a torment of hailfire, type of card)
@@pajurr9437 that’s the trick is finding what your payoff is without it being something boring like just a big torment! It really depends on the deck but there are options! Like Mizzix’s mastery! Also don’t rule out stax just yet I think it has a place in casual, especially if you don’t like combo. I’ve got a few videos on stax out on channel
@@thetrinketmage I watched one ! But limiting the ressources of the other players, or group slug aka punishing the other players for playing the game, meh, ya know, maybe not for me right now. At maximum maybe a Yurlock deck, giving too much and taking life as a payment.
But yeah control seems interesting, plus other players need to play around it and so on
I tried building Noyan Dar as my control commander deck. But I don't really know how to build him / how to play him. I am used to playing more pro-actively so maybe I am playing him wrong / he's not the right commander for a control deck. He's one of the oldest decks I own and I am hesitant to take him apart, but lately I've been tempted to do so, even though I just ordered some new cards for him to try out.
Right now I built him combo-ish with generating land tokens and untapping those lands with untap-creatures effects. But this plays really slow and doesn't really do anything.
I also have this King Macar, the Gold Cursed vehicles / artifacts deck that makes for a pretty controlling playstyle since King Macar is a removal tool and value engine (generating gold tokens) himself. I will probably keep this deck because I often lend it out to one friend and it plays pretty decent.
Then I have the Faceless Menace pre-con but I am thinking about taking this one apart as well. I did see a pretty neat cEDH decklist with Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer recently. however, my playgroup isn't interested in cEDH.
I am looking for opinions: what decks should I keep / change / take apart?
Love control decks in a 1 vs 1 format, but it’s hard in a 4 player game.
I built a Combo/Control deck and the Eldrazi/Dinosaurs player told me to change my deck :'(
Not a deck but I want to know what do you think about the card Telepathy? In general.
It’s pretty ok. A funny card but not that useful I think. Maybe in a politics deck it could be good!
I feel as if you forget that put simply non perminent decks are just less fun to most people. I agree most ppl should use removal but its just not sthm ppl like to fight
I agree that "Just play less creature-heavy decks" is not good advice and it's not an argument in favor of Control/Stax being fun, because some people just don't find amusement into playing something that isn't creature-centric. Maybe better advice would've been "Include more removal in your creature-oriented decks if they get beaten so hard by Stax/Control", but just telling people "Play things designed to beat Control/Stax" is tone-deaf at best.
I don't want to play Control, I don't like it and Trinket Mage does not make a good enough argument to convince me to rethink it, I don't think it's unfair but I hate the design, I just need to know a way to deal with it semi-reliably so I actually get to play my Reanimator deck: if I need to cut on ETB creatures to reanimate and instead pack more removal no problem, but I'm not changing deck entirely just because the local Stax/Control aficionado sat at my table today.
Also tutors r lame
Gotta disagree here… I think they can be a lot of fun. I made a whole video about it too! Why do you dislike tutors?
didnt think ud resond but consistncy is just not what i like to see in my commander games I enjoy the variance between matches instead of just dead cards.
@@thetrinketmage