The Unplayable color combo... | Deck Driver MTG
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- čas přidán 16. 05. 2024
- I am not a fan of 5 color decks within EDH. I find most decks pretty uninspired and very lost in what they define themselves by. In this video I cover why I'm not a huge fan of 5 color!
Moxfield:
www.moxfield.com/users/PizzaD...
Stuffing your deck with goodstuff and calling it a day is a problem, but it applies to every color combination, not just to 5 color decks.
Another way to look at it is that you require another type of creativity when you're doing a (good) 5 color brew - The ability to limit yourself, to pick a lane and make the most of it.
Especially with more open-ended commanders, this is a must, to stop it from ending up a mess of either uninspired goodstuff or a pile of jank that doesn't synergize pretty much at all. It takes focus, and vision. I reckon this is a kind of skill that fits into the creativity frame as well.
As for the cash side of things, you can skirt around that, on a pretty strict budget and without losing much tempo, with land fetching ramp spells, panoramas and recent slow fetches that also can tap for a colorless. Long gone are the days where a budget 5 color deck pretty much always plays a turn behind optimal curveout because of tapped lands. It does take more careful thought than "Smash 10 fetches and 10 shocks in there and call it a day", but it definitely works. And, yet again, uninspired goodstuff builds exist in every color combination, and how people tackle not doing that is what makes 5 colors interesting to me.
Fact is, at my old LGS, we did a challenge at one time: 10 players had to brew a Kenrith deck on a shoestring budget, and what we ended up with was 10 very different decks. One landfall deck, one tokens deck, one control deck, one reanimator deck, and so on. All functional, all very different and utilizing a slew of diamond-in-the-rough cards that probably wouldn't have seen the light of day in that LGS unless we had done the challenge.
So I don't think it's fair to dismiss 5-color as uncuringly boring. The fun part is in finding your lane and making it work :)
We need more 4-color commanders man
Yes
Totally agree.
can i liek this twice?
Agreed
True
I remember seeing Jodah the Unifier spoiled for the first time and thinking to myself “what a lazy design”
That's why colorless is better
Eeeh I'd disagree and say it's just the opposite side of the coin. Colorless is different than 5c in that you are forced to play with a smaller pool of cards but it takes things so far that the only options you're left with are artifacts and eldrazi. In the end you're basically still a brainless goodstuff deck only with extra steps.
I personally limit myself in 5-color decks by having a mandatory Companion since they restrict the list of available cards that can be played by at least half.
guys is ok if i rule 0 lutri as my companion?
@@robertomacetti7069
_The Pod has deemed you may have precisely one deck that uses Lutri as a companion. However, that deck may never be changed whence you add the abominable spellchaser_
_The pod has also decreed that Lutri is completely fair and balanced so long as you aren't using it as a companion; and you may employ it as your commander or in the shell of nine nine at your discretion_
*(If someone complains, just show them this very official CZcams comment)*
This is a great idea honestly.
🙋🏻 Jenson Carthalion, Jegantha Companion player here
@@jslrnzrbntn Jared Carthalion, Jegantha Companion reporting in!
If you want a budget 5 color mana base, run half your lands as Green sources.
You can run all the decent land ramp cards, most of which are budget, to fix your mana pretty well.
“The commander just determines what the deck is constructed around”
Uh I mean yeah? If I had a tergrid as my commander I’m gonna run discard effects.
If I had prosper I’m gonna run exile effects.
Like I’m pretty sure building around what the commander does is like 90% of decks…
Yes, but this is a discussion about how what colors you have access to factors into deck identity.
Veyran is a spellslinger/storm deck and Ganax/Feywild is a Dragon deck, but both are Izzet; they draw a crap ton of cards, have a high damage output, and ramp using temporary mana (treasures, instants/sorceries, and triggered abilities to get more mana).
@@yusheitslv100 every deck I build, regardless of color, will draw a bunch of cards, have high damage, and ramp. Because those are basic/core tenants to a good magic deck.
The commander in the command zone is what steers the design into a refined direction, AKA what the deck is built around.
As a newer player, one of my first decks (slivers) was 5 colors and I love it because it was easy to make and somewhat powerful. It makes it easier to build a deck fast without having to know a lot of the card pool.
Shoutout to the Painbow precon for having the only 5 color commanders that actually care about the fact they're 5 colors.
My hot take is anything over two colors falls into the same trap as five colors. 4 color might as well be five, and oftentimes 3 color decks only lack in very specific niches because of the pushed modern card pool. It's to the point now where having format restrictions is almost necessary to limit everything. Pauper EDH, Brawl, Oathbreaker, etc seem like better ways for deck expression than just color identity nowadays, but that's harder to prep for
3 color typically can have an identity, the thing is, 2 colors and mono have an identity+ they have an obvious or inherent weaknesses that cannot be confronted, which I enjoy much more
the 3colors can just be mostly perfect in the stat it wants and flexing against weaknesses
Lately I have been building almost exclusively mono colored decks becuase of this. You have to have some genuine creativity in deck design to overcome your pitfalls in mono color, but in 2+ the card pool is large enough that you can do a serviceable job with rare exception.
The fun thing about 5-color is you get to make your own restrictions, and that breeds creativity. "5-color but 50 basic lands," "Tom Bombadil but 75 Sagas," "Every single MDFC," etc. You can build off of cycles in 5 color, like the Kamigawa Dragons. Basically, you build 5-color bottom-up, by selecting the commander last. You are correct, however, in saying that 5-color needs less generically good commanders.
My 5 colour decks have fun restrictions. My omnath x spells deck uses only basic lands. My 5c legends is only creatures. And only legends. The deck is 64 legendary creatures. I call it the commander deck!
I made a 5 color deck recently that's "Color Matters", so there's a lot of sunburst, prot from colors, and stuff like that. It's really fun and interesting. Playing a lot of cards I've never really seen before.
I very much disagree about the mana base comment and how 5 color ones are expensive and hard to do fixing in. With how many different types of dual lands both rare uncommon and common that have been printed not only in recent times but overall in magic you can build a dirt cheat mana base for any color combo even 5 color. People always say its hard to find room for basics in any color combo especially 5 yet all mine run 10 to 15 and thats with a 36 land average across most deck builds.
I love building 5 color decks because of the freedom to include whatever i want for the theme im working on. 1 of my 5 color decks isnt even truely 5 color. Its a jund dragon deck but has ur-dragon as the commander for the cost reduction it gives, and since its 5 color i do run a couple dragons not in the jund colors but all the mana base and none creature spells are jund based. I do run a few extra lands that can tap for either any color in general or any color just specifically for a chosen creature type so i can cast my none jund dragons and the commander along with mana rocks that help with that.
@azelia2464 I didn't say you had to use tap lands and even then what does it matter if you dont win every game that's not the point of edh It's not a competitive format.
Also you can easily build on the cheap between 10$ to 30$ at max a mana base for a 5 color deck and thats with rares that don't come into play tapped.
Lol dude deleted his comment
the guy that use sunforger in boros saying 5c have no identity, laughing in shrines and gates.
Sunforger chads stay winning
Wait I also run shrines and gates in a deck of mine that’s wild
@@blackbear36 no way tthat's impossible cause gates enter tapped, its against 5c mentality
Gond gate your welcome @@SilverAphelion
@@AceManRevived shhhh dont let he be big brain or he will toss that sunforger
I think that the building restrictions you impose on yourself are what can make even a 5 color deck feel very unique.
I built 5 color Dinos because I wanted to run all the Jurassic World cards in one deck.
It is a ton of fun.
And like John Hammond, I "spared no expense" 🤣
I only think the creativity point is true when you're in a very specific mindset, which comes about when you're aiming at higher powered but casual EDH. In cEDH, 5 color decks tends to be pretty different (partially because you need to justify why you'd play a particular 5 color commander over another). Look at the top few 5-color decks: Najeela is mostly cEDH all-star combos like Breach Freeze, Thoracle, plus the unique Derevi infinite. Najeela herself being low cost means that the deck wants to go fast, even for cEDH. Compare that to Sisay, a frequently slower commander. Traditionally Sisay's main wincon is a planeswalker based infinite that she can tutor, and often plays some level of stax to slow the game to her speed. Then there's Kenrith, who is specifically looking to resolve a Dockside infinite. Kenrith basically by himself will win the game with infinite treasures, so the deck is light on tutors other than for a Dockside combo. Due to this centraliztaion, Kenrith players often sit back and play reactively until they are sure their Dockside combo will resolve. In many ways, Kenrith is more similar to another slower-paced, high cost commander like Tivit than he is to the quicker Najeela, despite sharing a 5-color identity.
Meanwhile if you instead play in casual, low power EDH, you're free to go for goofy themes, which 5 color commanders often enable. Yes, it's true that being in 5 colors means you can simply play every staple. But you then go on to mention how Ur-Dragon just runs the best dragons, Jodah has the best legendary creatures, Sisay has the best legendary spells, and Tom Bombadil has the best sagas. Well, those are all going to be very different, even if they often will have a similar backbone of generically good cards like Swords to Plowshares or Mystic Remora. Even within a singular commander, you can get a lot of variation. Ur-Dragon can theme towards treasure generators like Ancient Red Dragon and Old Gnawbone, which you can use to enable an infinite with Time Sieve or an alternate wincon like Mechanized Production/Revel in Riches/Hellkite Tyrant. Or you could build for self-mill and reanimation. Or you could play Sneak Attack to help get instant value and avoid counterspells while Ur-Dragon refills your hand. A lot of these varying strategies are only plausible because being in 5 colors allows you access to the tutors necessary for playing a narrow, thinly supported theme in a reliable way.
Ultimately, playing staples is a choice each player makes. You could say that choosing not to play powerful cards is handicapping yourself--fair enough, but that can be said of basically every commander deck that isn't tournament-stable builds of Sisay, Kinnan, Blue Farm (Kraum/Tymna), or Rog/Si. We are all picking levels we want to play at. It sounds more like you have a problem with commanders that build themselves, regardless of the number of colors.
(This is a little unrelated but you might find it a fun personal challenge to try to build: 5-color Omnath actually works a little differently from how you and most people read it at first glance. He doesn't actually need 3+ color spells, he needs 3+ colored pips of any kind. For example, Archdruid's Charm is GGG and triggers Omnath. You can play monocolor 5-color Omnath!)
To the top with you.
Been playing almost every conceivable color combination of MTG in the format for over a decade now, and the five-color decks all have been interesting for me to build and play. And I mean this from a vareity of power levels, too.
How do you want to make a budget manabase work? How do you do it WITHOUT that restriction? What spells are viable since you can't run too many colored pips because you won't have that color in as much abundance as a deck with fewer colors might.
And each of the commanders in five-color can be build differently, too. Sure there are others that come pre-built, but being too monolithic can put you in a situation where you're easily blown out if you aren't careful. Do you want to build too far in that direction?
Decks like Go-shintai can be built as everything from an enchantment reanimator, staxx, or control. There's no shortage of enchantment-based interaction and advantage engines, and you can play around with them entering or leaving the battlefield on account of its ability.
Kenrith is everything from a combo outlet, a reliable -- if expensive -- reanimator engine, a group hug political tool, a beater, or a way to break parity in a staxxed-out board. It's what's inside the deck that matters, and what'll dictate what play pattern he's going to have.
Even Najeela's been played as warrior tribal, a one-card combo with effects like Derevi and Nature's Will, and can even run cards like birthing pod which let you convert those warriors into something else since you won't have a shortage of them (Najeela even hits the three MV sweet spot that lets her get a whole birthing pod combo from her if you want).
Certainly some commanders let you be more creative than others, but that applies to lower color commanders, too. Decks like Tatyova will always be land-play heavy as that's a great way for them to accrue advantage, but that's not unexpected.
Besides, we also can't just jam all the staples. There isn't enough room. And even if we have most of them, there'll usually be slots in the deck that show variety. This even applies to cEDH decks which most people say have the same-iest decks in the format, and I'm speaking from first-hand experience here.
Bro hasn't played Niv Mizzet Reborn
Ehh, tend to disagree with some points here and there. You can absolutely build a 5c mana base on a budget that doubles as an alternative win condition (guildgates with maze's end and gond gate). And the "just a goodstuff pile" thing applies to most commanders nowadays, it's just the nature of the format being more popular with more access to information on sites like edhrec or moxfield
limits creativity in that most of the 5c commanders are not that interesting to build around imo. you have to consciously limit yourself if you want to make a 5c deck that is interesting to play against
@@alexanderficken9354 but how different is that to +3 color commanders nowadays? There are a lot of decks that fall into the traps of "staples galore", it's not exclusive to 5c just more pronounced due to the wider cardpool. I've had that problem recently with my tetzin gnome champion deck where at inception it was a jeskai flip artifact deck but somewhere down the line it was just a generic jeskai artifact goodstuff deck.
I definitely can agree about 5-color decks being kinda uninteresting. For me, it mainly falls to that same topic of restriction inspiring creativity. If I can play everything, its hard to argue against playing the BEST of everything. I like brewing with constraints, most often within creature type for kindred decks and going off-type as little as possible, if at all. And there's just how expensive things get when you need a 5-color manabase. I'll stick to 3 colors or less, thank you.
my ur-dragon deck land base is pretty easy. i just use Gond Gate and ramp spells/artifacts that find me gates. Gond Gate makes every gate enter untapped. i threw in a maze's end cus that helps find gates. most of my dragon deck has dragons that i got from playing through the years. i got the dragonlords, some forgotten realms dragons (not the d20 dragons but ones like lymrith, gnawbone, ebonlich) and a few dragon discount cards like sarkhan.
100% agree, I extend this to 4 color as well. Once you get beyond 3 colors you really start to lose identity I think
Just be rich or use proxies or both?
I think 5 coloc decks tends to become good stuff. I don't care about facing a 5 color themed deck (saga, kindred,...) but I don't enjoy 5 color good stuff, often with kenrith or Jodah...
Yeah I love my sliver tribal deck, and it’s 5 colors just to let me run as many slivers as I can fit to get the whole tribal effects innate to slivers.
The coolest 5 color deck I've seen was Mono Blue Progenitus. The player could only cast his commander via Geode Golem or Chromatic Orrery, so he had a lot of Artifact synergies. And also Legacy Weapon for another five-color payoff.
I enjoy my Niv-Mizzet Reborn deck. I think it's because of the restriction I put on it. Every card is 2 color and I kept guild representation as balanced as I could.
Ur-Dragon and Jodah definitely got power issues. Sitting down against Cromat doesn't usually signal to me that there will be a barrage of ultrastaples being resolved.
I've always had this take.
It ignores one rule of the commander format. A very important rule.
Brother it sounds like you haven't tried Horde of Notions elemental toolbox tribal
I'm still kind of new to the game. I knew I had to play wubrg dragons and I've been enjoying ur dragon a lot. I don't feel like my deck is lacking in identity tbh. I mean I've focused more on cardadvantage and discouraging my opponents from attack me (e.g. wrathful red dragon, bonehoard dracosaur)
I'm also trying to build a weaker version that can be considered a 7. The manabase is also work in progress. I know that you can easily build a 5 color manabase if you are willing to sacrifice some tempo.
I feel like I've learned a lot from playing a 5 color deck.
The next deck I'm getting irl is gargos, vicious watcher - hydra tribal on a strict budget.
3/6 of my decks are 5 color. I have a Ramos deck with Sunbird's invocation as a secret commander, a Ramos deck that's 70% green that's all counters stuff with a few adds for creatures that enjoy board wipes and an Ur Dragon deck with no dragons but just changelings and random cheap lords that give them different stuff each game. I'd argue they're all creative but I think it's how you build them. Obviously I can see why Ur Dragon but just the 30$ + Dragons or a well built Jodah are frustrating to see so often. Like you've played vs one, you've played vs almost all.
Ive yet to build an uber commander because its so challenging. I can hardly do monocolor, i almost always have to build 2--4 colors
If you're not using gates as your mana base, then yes you will begin to break the bank for a mana base.
As a WUBRG player, I adore the combination of The Fourteenth Doctor/Clara Oswald (set Color as Black.) It’s got the cohesive theme of build and control Doctors on the board, and Go wide doctors. It’s so fun. Especially with the graveyard recursion, and it’s allowed me to introduce niche mechanics like Horsemanship or Banding into it, to give more flavor.
White: I'm just gonna play white weenies and board wipes.
Blue: I'm just gonna play draw spells and counter spells.
Black: I'm gonna find the answers and remove the threats.
Red: GOBLINS, GOBLINS, GOBLINS!
Green: EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLVESSSSS!
Colorless: Have you ever heard of Cthulhu?
All colors: A little of everything, please.
I disagree partially. I've built my Jodah with half the lands budget tapped lands that provide great fixing. Then I made it human tribal with budget human legends and legends that protect them. It provided both the card selection and the restriction to make it creative and budget. I do agree that most commanders build themselves, like Korona auras, Tom sagas and Slivers, but legend tribal still has some creativity possbilities behind it, particularly with the number of legends printed now, which weirdly people complain about
My Jodah deck is named Jodah, Dragonspeaker because surprise, surprise.oops! Nearly all legendary dragoins!
That's pretty much how I build my Jodah. Tribal/Legends Protection, Counterspells, and board build up, cause people who complain about Jodah don't realize that a 1 mana Path or Swords on an unprotected Jodah means the player has to spend more than 12 mana across 2-3+ turns just to get anything out via Commander.
I think building reaper king as a colorless deck would be a cool experiment
I fully agree and feel the same way about 4 color decks as well.
That said I just theory crafted a 5c Kenneth Maze’s End deck and I’m really wanting to build it
1:15 I laughed too hard when u had upbeat descriptions for each 5-color commander only to say "Slivers" in the most flat, condescending tone imaginable...and found it hilarious as a Sliver player.
What about ramos dragon engine?
A player in my group insists on 5 color decks. He has 3 already and is looking to build the 4th. Will not listen to anyone when we tell him all of his decks do the exact same thing. Its really frustrating, but I'm not sure what I can do at this point that isnt just not play with them.
I actually really like Tom Bombadil because sagas are some of my favorite cards in the game, but I did start to get bored with the deck after it just became "spam out all the best sagas and win." To counteract the boredom I will occasionally put restrictions on what type of sagas are allowed to give each version of the deck its own identity. The version I'm currently using, and my current favorite, is exclusively universes beyond sagas
I love my Jared deck. ALL creatures are either WUBRG or directly interact with "more color is more better" while all instant/sorceries are dual color, as are all non-creature permanents, with a Gate manabase and Jegantha as the companion. The main gimmick is that it lets me slot any of the WUBRG Niv-Mizzets into the command zone and a slight dragon subtheme through Ur-Dragon, Scion etc. It's a funny pet deck and always shits itself every time because my playgroup is dogwater at threat assessment and bullies me to death over and over.
thats why almost everytime, I play tribal decks.(except when playing control decks)
Honestly, you can build 5 color decks as 2 color with splash for the rest. I built Shrines focused on green and white for enchantress effects, digging for the other colors and running enough five color fix effects to splash the rest. My next 5 color will be Elementals with Horde of Notions, with a focus on red/green punchy elementals and a little splash to evoke others.
I have a ramos deck with all of the “Partner with” commanders in it and it feels very unique to me.
Still enjoying Ur-Dragon even if i’m not done and almost everything is a Secret Lair, Foil, or an important non-foil piece like Two-Headed Hellkite or Scalelord Reckoner. But i also play Turbo Aristocrats Korvold (Jund) and Storm Rowan (Rakdos) my mono color deck would want to be Krenko but haven’t gotten to it.
Mate has a tzari deck with gates and a party strategy and it's cheap and straight up runs over the game sometimes. Its so much fun to play against.
regarding the manabase, the cheapest option would be, buying the painbow precon and sort out what you need
I totally agree 5 color has never been for me but… I built Ramos lucky charms (although not full charms more villainous wealth type stuff) and found that deck really fun and fresh. Ramos has a lot of really fun build paths and space for creativity because best in slot means something different when multicolor is important, I recommend giving it a look
well I Have the UR DRagon and Omnath as commanders.. and my Omnath is a Preator tribal deck.. its super fun
As a writer and designer the FIRST piece of advice I give people is to give themselves limitations and restrictions to work within. Limitations beget creative solutions.
I guess that how you feel while I love five color. However less color tends to be more consistent and powerful. Nothing feels better to me then playing big dragons in Ur-dragins and wrecking the field.
I've been working with Niv-Mizzet God Tribal (predominantly dual colored gods) with Gates as a sub theme for reliable mana management (Buldar's Gate is a off brand Nykthos). I wanted to run Niv-Mizzet, Guildpact but I couldn't find opportunities to play him, either he's on the board with like one or two cards on board to generate value or if I have a wide board, he gets killed off before I have a chance. I swapped to Reborn for the immediate value generated by him fetching for dual colored cards from the top ten. This can whiff, getting one or two cards, but this is still far more value than can be said for Guildpact.
I run two 5 color decks. I do the most I can to limit them. One is a Kenrith Legendary Humans deck, where the only non humans must support Kenrith, or Humans in some way.
The second is a Licid tribal deck. But I’m probably rotating that when 6 color Eldrazi comes out, and I’m making that on the spot.
I basically agree with all your comments in the video. For me, even if they are less offensive in terms of creativity and identity, 4 color deck are also boring to watch and interact.
With that said, I think you're correct in saying that limits improve creativity. In my playgroup we use a 100usd budget without the commander for building our decks. Using Carskindom prices. This oviously removes a lot of powerful cards, but also forces us to improvise and think on how to build the deck to have consistency without the easy answers like fetchlands.
I build with this rules a 5 color Shrine deck. And because of the budget, it is really an Abzan deck, with the blue and red splash only for those color shrines and the 5 colored shrine. And I had to build the mana base with cheap manarocks and duals. Even now, after seeing the video I thought of things I should modify to improve it even more.
Back to the 5 color problem. I think the most offensives are the ones that really shouldnt be 5 colored but the are for no real reason. Najeela comes to mind. But Tom Bombadil or the new Ezio which is mono black with a useless 5 colored ability just to have another 5 color tribal are the worst.
Ironicly, I think (which fits into your argument), the best 5c commander ive ever built is mono white kenrith, which contains only white and colourless spells and all white lands, all the colour fixing are from rocks that taps for all colour, it feels very cool playing it when I don't have access to everything.
My gripe with 5c is that it’s actually overall worse than 4c because of that untenable mana base. The consistency of a 4c mana base to produce correct colours is already almost inconsistent. 5c ones make you have to mulligan worse just to make the hand playable.
I own one 5 - color deck and its the friends forever from stranger things (eleven and mike) mtg versions are cicely and othlem. Its a spellslinger deck at its core but That deck is a blast because the theme of it is like queza style death by card draw but i have a goal to draw 13 cards to win from triskadekaphobia or locust god, clone legion, elminster simulacrum, nerd rage from the fallout set, duggan private detective, alandra sky dreamer and other cool janky cards that care about hand size or drawing a bunch of cards, i have a few wheel effects.
My Jodah, Archmage Eternal deck’s identity is the meme “RANDOM BULLSHIT, GO!” with a side of Superfriends. I have entered a state of zen where by having no identity, THAT becomes the identity.
“But is it any good?” You may ask…
…
That’s not the point here…
I'd say Salubrious Snail has a good solution to your lack of inspiration: which is to build your deck's foundations on top of a couple different cards, not just your commander. His example is an Esper cycling deck he built inspired by Astral Slide. His commander Sharuum doesn't care about anything seemingly related to cycling, but it was chosen _later_ in the deck building process because it fit the deck in a more holistic way. The commander was chosen to suit the deck, not the other way around. Of course this example isn't 5c, but I think it's pretty clear how the concept applies.
As for me, I built Jenson Carthalion. He wants you to cast 5c spells, but I only have two in the whole deck. Why? Because I don't care about that part. There's no commander for the deck I had in mind, so I just chose what I saw as the best fit; a 2 mana filter dork.
The deck, if you're curious, is clone tribal full of alternate win cons. (That's why it had to be 5c.) The deck is set up in such a way where my clones can pivot into meeting whatever specific condition I need to win. And I could never have come up with this if I chose a commander first and built the deck second
I feel the same way tbh. Thats why I love what they did with Ulalek, the eldrazi precon face commander. It's five colors, yeah, but you can build it as a 1/2/3/4 color deck if you want. You can play him however you want. Wanna go simic? Go simic. Wanna try rakdos eldrazis? Go for it. Cause lets be honest, if you wanna go 5 colors (Its actually 6, considering you need a lot of colorless), you are probably gonna flop bad or be really slow.
Yeah let's just ignore Tiamat led dragon decks. My tiamat deck is expensive, yes, but my dragons are a wrecking crew.
Urtet is my favorite 5 color commander. He has a pretty clear identity.
My next favorite are slivers. Then dragons.
The only time I've made a 5 colour deck in commander and have it not be the most boring thing in existence is when I purposefully only chose cards that broke/bent the colour pie. Holding up double black for a counterspell while everyone thinks they're safe because they've tapped down all the islands is endlessly funny to me, and it's the only way I'll do 5c anymore.
I think Kenrith, Esika and Golos are actually great 5c commanders. All of them them kinda do everything so you can some cool themes and the commander be the glue. Eg I have an Esika deck that only plays Gideons and the rest of the deck is various support cards. Golos was fun in similiar way where you could tutor out cool support lands like Emeria, Nytkhos or sorrows path.
I definetly agree that 5 color loses identity, and if you look at it that way its definetly boring. But that just opens up the door for synergy to blossom! My phyrexian proliferation deck runs the all will be one proliferate destroy arrifact or enchantment, counterspell, and stuff like that where i would never use it anywhere else. Sure its not optimal but it feels way better to succeed in my own synergy than just following whatever theme or identity
In the Kamigawa neon we got Satsuki, the Living Lore, where got me excited to try make ''saga works in commander'', sadly the selesnyas sagas lacks impactful cards(not using fall of the thran haha)and satsuki itself is a lackluster payoff to build a deck around her. I was overjoyed when tom bombadil Been released and every now and then i test new cards,like proliferate,removal of counters(hexparasite), but the deck is more like a colorful selesnya enchantress where basically 90% of my multi color cards it is the sagas and the rest of the deck is mostly white and green cards with enchantment synergy.
sisay is very fun. love the deck.
So the limitation of 5 colored decks can be budget, so a budget 5 color commander can be interesting?
If you build with staples yes. For me it's great way to play any new cool cards you get from boosters.
My `$90 Ramos Charms deck with gates/maze's end backup plan would like to have a word with this video
5 color isnt the problem its players. You can build all types of cool decks with 5 colors, a fast aggro with najeela, a slow control with sissay, tribal, artifacts, ive seen people make decks where the whole purpose it to cast every wierd enchatment from magics past and is 5 colors so they can add all the wonky cards.
Thank you so much 5 color is so lazy i play alot of brawl on arena and just yesterday went against the same lazy 5 color Jodah the Unifier decks and they arent even hard to play against it just gets so boring
I think the new Ezio card might change the 5 color format
I think with 5-color you need to really choose a theme and stick with it. And I dont think I can really say "Legends matter" or "Dragons" or "Slivers," or even "Sagas" really even count here, unless you really start to limit yourself to a particular sub-theme. But I did up a 5-color deck recently themed around the Attractions from Unfinity. Its a bit of a die-rolling deck and a bit of "Artifacts matter," and so between that and the Attraction-makers, the card choices are somewhat limited. And since there are so few choices for the Attraction makers and die-rolling assists/payoffs, I'm only not running a very small amount of them. And thats actually why I landed on 5-colors for the deck, as all the various Attraction commanders from Unfinity were two-color commanders who either lacked enough Attraction-makers for consistency, or lacked the colors necessary for die-roll manipulation/payoffs to make good use of them. So 5-color it became, to give me enough options to make a functioning deck.
Now that isn't to say I haven't fallen into some of the pitfalls explained in this video. The mana base is costly (though I luckily had to buy very little of it), and supported by a bunch of color-fixing staple ramp pieces. I've also thrown in a few of the really good removal/wipe spells (though I've also got a few that are more to theme). Hell, I've actually had to tone the deck back, as I initially had the Ancient Metalic Dragons in there, who warped the deck around them. If I was playing two-colors or so, they probably would have been a less intrusive inclusion due to the lack of other choices, but here having access to all 5 made them stand out more and detracted from the theme. So it is what it is.
But this is all to say that I think 5-color decks can still be doable, you just need to actively limit your options to a very specific theme. The broader you go, the harder it is to build, and the harder it is to not just go for the generic "good-stuffs" builds.
tbh, i still wish that Slivers had more options among their ranks. I almost never run a sliver as my commander when playing slivers, its more interesting to do other playstyles with them.
Classic; reading omnath as a multicolor matters, when its ability is not restricted to multicolor, but rather pip count (you can build omnath L.O.A. to be mono color since its ability only wants to see 3 colored mana symbols, not 3 _different_ colored mana symbols)
(Its more fun to build it into full tri-tribal to get jegantha as a companion but i digress)
Literally everyone does this the first time they read the card (i definitely did), so no shade.
Your third point is only a problem for decks that are trying to push cEDH or near cEDH. There's increasing options to untap your tapped lands if you really want. But with this point, I think the 4 color decks particularly struggle as well. 3 color decks actually are the ones that start to be doable with a more budget mana base.
people always told me "ah, your voltron is strong? so you don't mind if I play Jodah?" and I tell them "go ahead, by the time you found all your colors, I swing my 30/30 flying commander at you for the second time"
People underestimate speed a LOT
Honestly, my most creative deck is a dredge deck I built with Kenrith at the helm.
LMAO too bad Im playing 5 color Buttercup Preators!
Agree about how stale the decks tend to be, disagree about the mana base, if just because gates are super cheap and basically add a free win con with maze's end.
also there simply aren't any silvers that are legendary to build less than 5 colors and it wouldn't be very good or viable without running all 5 colors
I hear what your saying, but the best way to play 5 color is build a deck then chose a commander after
Najeela is just "Warriors! Assemble!!"
is my only 5 colored deck.
i hate mana bases in 5 colored decks
As a 5-color enjoyer, I mostly agree that it's difficult to find a concrete indentity within 5 color decks. Especially compared to color combos like Jund and Grixis.
Those color combos share 2/3 colors and yet because they differ in blue//green, which are enemy colors, you get combinations that are: Green but enhanced by red and black, and Blue but enhanced by red and black.
5-color has two major limitations/Themes, in my opinion.
1.) Cost as a theme. This is twofold, 5 color cards and commanders mostly start out at 5 mana, and only go up. Progenitus is one of the most flavorful 5c cards imho because you pay 2 of each mana and get something over the top on its surface. While it is ultimately not impossible to deal with, it is the pinnacle of splashy effects.
I would enjoy another double WUBRG commander being printed with today's level of powercreep. Watch the modern and vintage players groan at a new reanimator target.
Then you factor in the cost of building a deck that will reliably prodice 5c when you need it. While it's not impossible or very difficult to do so on a budget, running Fetches+duals will be better than anything you can do on a budget.
2.) Over the top splashy, battlecruiser style effects. I think this potential hasn't been tapped as much as it could be in favor of the Jodahs, and Ur-dragons, and Golos that sell packs.
I think the level of creativity that goes into making Eldrazi effects that translate into a sense of helplessness in a game could work nicely for 5c. Why shouldn't a double WUBRG card do some insane thing?
Main reason i love mono or 2 colour
Lucky for me my Omnath is all about casting big x/cost spells.
Another issue with five color generals is just how narrow they are in design. Ur Dragon or Tom Bombadil don't leave much room for creativity. Kenrith is arguably too generic because he just does everything. I know you touched on this in the video a bit but I think it definitely hurts the interestingness of five color builds. The auxiliary support packages like ramp or removal nobody really cares if you are playing the best of the best, but the actual meat of your deck with the five colored generals is just so predictable that it destroys any potential creativity.
The new Ezio commander to me feels more interesting that most other 5color commanders because it requires heavy leaning into black with the freerunning cost being 2 black, and furthermore, it relies heavily on Assassin's as a tribe, which is... not a super expansive tribe, so in terms of creatures, there is some creative restrictions because there are only so many assassin's that aren't complete garbage.
Glad I’m not the one who thinks this. 5C is just boring.
I have a 5 color kenrith with jeghanta companion on a budget , most of the games I don't cast any of 2. Basically is a gates deck. That how I solve the 2 problems of the video, but I totally agree 5 most of the time is boring piles of value
The only 5 color commander I Play is silvers and that's because silvers wants to play their best slivers the creativity actually comes in the noncreature spells which you run around 20 of
Jegentha is a fun companion to limit 5 colour
Built the omnath locus of all with jegentha as a companion just to kneecap the deck as omnath cares about having 3+ coloured pips and jegentha says no 2 pips the same
Jegentha can’t even take advantage of omnaths mana container as all the black mana it turns into can’t pay generic costs and no card has more than one black pip
But yes agreed, 5c often turns into good stuff piles rather than being unique
My sisay deck is exclusively shrines/gates and cards that care about those 2 things. Definitely far from "5 color good stuff". But I agree with the sentiment in general.
Naaaaaw 4 colors don’t make no sense, I’ll choose 5 colors all the time.
I've got some thoughts feel free to take them and make a video out of it I don't care:
First off I want More four color combo cards, wizard seems to not want to print it so fuss at them not at me. Me and my playgroup often have five color decks, and we feature some of the commanders you've shown there. My friend Dan run Sissy, because he's trying to do five color myojin with progenitus. Joe runs joda, that way he can have starscream and a Time Lord and Jurassic Park characters all in the same deck because it's ridiculous to see them actually interact. I have a Tom bombadil shell that is a blue black heavy fairy Deck with sagas, literally fairy tales. We've made a Kodi deck which is five colors but there's absolutely no monsters in there so having the flexibility of having all the colors is actually super helpful because there's no monsters other than the book. It's totally unfair to complain about slivers when any of those commanders are only trying to make more slivers do more sliver things it's always been an archetype since I've played. The same goes for dragons people just want to play some fun dragons, I'm sorry that you don't have fun playing with the local Timmy's.
That said none of us are trying to make competitive decks we're trying to have fun with the cards from our personal collection without having to buy singles online. It seems that when I hear you or other CZcamsrs complain about generic Commander problems they seem to revolve around the fact that you're playing with people that aren't making their decks in fun creative ways. This should be your primary complaint not the commander that people are not being fun and creative.
Dan and Joe have literally made a deck in five colors to do all the normal things but just in the wrong colors. Green card draw blue aggro red ramp. It's a hilarious deck and it will fail if someone tries to snipe it early. We even joked about making one of all colors that fly that are very weak creatures.
Additionally I'm going to propose that having a commander is an additional point of focus for a deck. If your entire deck is designed around having the commander on the field well then personally I think it sucks. That means your entire deck has a single weakness that is so easy to Target. The 99 or the heart of the cards is where all of your entire game plan should be, that last Commander card is just the cherry on top of the icing that the five-story cake has been made out of. And I can't believe that you're complaining that five color seems generic and boring when there are so many generic and boring versions of all the other combos that are out there.
Lastly I want to attack you personally because you had a weak form of argument. Although your premise and thesis are sound you give no solid conclusion or remedy step. It makes you seem like a solid hater you have no inclination that you want to see it in a different way, so provide a solution.
This post was made by speech to text if you are upset at the grammar get upset at the technology I do not care if it comes out bad use your critical thinking brain to understand what I'm saying thank you for your time grammar Nazi
I agree with you in some respects but I disagree in others. Generally I think it's easy to fall into the 'staples only' trap especially if you just want to build something generically strong or you don't have very many pet cards in theme. That said, I think it's very easy to show and maintain identities beyond 'Boros is aggro' the more colors you add so long as you consider that throughout the process.
As an example, I built Urtet because I really wanted to finally have a Myr deck. I went out of my way to take the cheaper and thematic approach and played all of the Mirran bridges and the original artifact lands as a portion of the mana base. Generally this has worked fine, if slowly, as many of the Myr produce mana and many good multicolor support cards mitigate the issue a bit as well. Generally having access to all five colors let me play more fun pet Mirran/Machinery cards and make the Mirran lands more thematically pertinent to the deck by mitigating their weaknesses. There's no argument I haven't lost some space for novelty by finally being able to play a few value pieces like Rhystic Study, but, this is true even with my two color lists.
Arguably some of this is still possible the more colors you exclude, but especially for more niche subgroups like small Kindred/Tribal factions or larger Coalition style groups you are often missing out on strong and fun cards in theme because the commander happened to skip the appropriate colors.
But yeah, all that rambling aside, I do tend to personally like more 2/3 color commanders as they often tend to encapsulate a theme directly that I enjoy like Iroas. I'm just not as firm on additional colors being a strict negative so long as the premise is fairly firm to start with.
I generally agree here but one of my favorite decks is my Horde of Notions deck. Besides the lands which is budget, the deck is super cheap. Elemental Tribal beat down. The way to make fun 5c decks is to set limitations on yourself when deckbuilding. Problem solved.
*AS A MIDDLE-AGED MAGIC PLAYER OF 20+ YEARS, I'D LIKE TO EXPLAIN WUBRG AS A CONCEPT:*
1. Do not use a central theme, that's why slivers are mid tier.
2. Do not play a linear game plan, that's the strategy everyone else is using.
3. Go wild! You don't have to play with responses in mind, every card you play can be a board threat or a combo piece, keep your opponents guessing on what to respond to.
4. You can play a turn 1 land into a mana dork, lotus petal, sol ring, arcane signet, and a second mana dork...on turn 2 you can play Nomads en-kor and Heliod, Sun-Crowned, guaranteed the table instantly freaks out.
5. You then use this to your advantage by playing them against each other as "looming threats" while "I'm just top decking now", reverse politics becomes hilarious.
6. When everyone loses to your Thoracle combo while you have 4 unrelated combo pieces on the board...that feels f&$king amazing.