I'm old enough to remember Nekusar being a genuine threat. And I'm talking the classic Nekusar Do Nothing builds, not the still very viable Nekusar Wheels build.
I have a nekusar deck that isn’t really wheels im just making everyone draw and discard a bunch with howling mine effects and profit off that with a fee pillowfort effects
With the Alesha - Master of Cruelties combo, it doesn't just put someone to 1. If Alesha (or another of your creatures) goes unblocked, you just straight up kill someone; since Master of Cruelties sets them to 1 in the declare blockers step ("attacks and isn't blocked" abilities trigger in the declare blockers step), and then Alesha connects to kill. Making Alesha unblockable is one of the main strats of the deck, since that keeps her really safe to let you use her ability all the time. Cards that are perfect for keeping Alesha safe: Key to the City, Whispersilk Cloak, Reconnaissance, Sleeper's Guile, Angelic Destiny, Demonic Embrace, Gift of Doom, Nahiri's Machinations, Dolmen Gate, Iroas
I made a commanderless deck wbg colors that the shop owner asked me to stop playing because people were too afraid of it. This was way before cedh. I believe it was around og innistrad. Then I had a Darien king of kejeldor that would swing for 144 on turn 5 fairly regularly. It's not the commanders I'm afraid of. It's the 99.
I have a “causal” prossh deck, first commander I ever built, I don’t get to play it very often because even without playing combos the deck is still very strong
I still have a Wort the Raidmother deck and you hit the nail on the head. It can be very strong if I ramp into her a turn or so early, she sticks, and I actually have something in my hand. Although, still being a 6MV Commander caps her quite a bit. Minimum it’s turn 6 or so until you start doing the thing, and by that point, game may well be over for you. Still fun as hell to play. Dance with Calamity and Escape to the Wilds are fun to copy!
Back in 2017 I had a lot of these: Alesha, Chainer, Prossh, and Sidisi. Sidisi is an amazing deck and I might rebuild her… but interesting how it was not that long ago, and how power crept everything is today.
Maybe Omnath used to be just a Big Mana/Voltron commander, BUT now he can be an incredibly powerful storm commander. Thanks to all the big draw spells and additional mana multipliers, he can easily draw and put out a deck onto the battlefield. Omnath is just incredibly versatile now. He's also very easy to get big and use him as a megaton nuke for direct damage. GG.
@@mattbutt3163 You’re right, my mistake. I thought Proliferate rules were more all encompassing… Edit: Proliferate doesn’t target, but it does only apply to permanents and/or players. When in exile, they are spells not permanents.
A couple of things: 1) mill is still very strong if well made. It's so much more effective as a form of sabotage in a singleton format. 2) Jhoira remains scary, especially when they can suspend a Decree of Annihilation to go off right before the Eldrazi arrive. 3) Narset, Enlightened Master is missing.
Having won a few games with Phenax since the pandemic, I think folks underestimate how out of control its mill potential can be nowadays. The better for me to give folks deck dysentery!
I’m so happy to see Mayael on the list. I recently built the deck because I’m nostalgic and it is still a lot of fun. Doesn’t scare anyone but still fun.
Great video lots of classic commanders. I'd love to see the opposite version one day, ''20 Commanders that have become terrifying'' or the ''New commanders that are terrifying'' - Poor Ghave - Xenagos is still TERRIFYING! I love using the new Etali with the Boar God, Ilharg and each combat cast more spells from my opponents libraries and than use Seize the Day (Carpe Diem), if anything I think Xenagos just has more crazy synergies than ever before - Jarad and Lord of Extinction have moved on into my ''Yargltani''. - The Narset player in my old playgroup tended to always pick on my Xenagos; always felt so satisfying to smack them with double digit damage - Sharuum= CLASSIC, That beverage is as big as the people - Sram was fun but I switched them for Zetalpa-tron - Ezuri Claw of Progress was an abysmal battle vs Meren in precon ;p
I built Xenagod back in the day and he is still terrifying, even with old threats like hasting in Scourge of the Throne and getting a second trigger to quadruple the initial stats lol
Ah Sidisi, I have such fond memories of her. She was one of my first and favorite decks. She’s the first one I splurged on upgrades for the deck because I wanted her to be special
As someone with both a Ghave and Jhoira deck I feel personally attacked 😂 Have to say Jhoira has become pretty fun now Worldfire has been unbanned, any creatures behind it in the suspend queue and that’s game.
So funny revisiting these oldies but goodies. I have won with mill so many times. Teferi recently won a cEDH tournament I had to take mine apart because I won too easily and nobody liked playing it.
As far as a mill commander, Bruvac is a monster. 2 card combo to mill the whole table. Lost to it a couple times since my new to magic friend discovered 2 card combos...
Jhoira was always a weird one. Without way to accelerate the suspend, you wind up telegraphing all your threats and everyone saves their removal for you
Thats why you play every decent card that removes the suspend counters. Throw off their perception of time to kill you and things get very hectic. Even though I lose alot of games, its very fun to play.
My Sigarda is still by far the deck that puts me on the archenemy side with my playgroups. I would say she is the only voltron that is worth pumping due to the can't sacrifice ability. in my playgroups filled with jund grixis and golgari decks many of them began putting the lighthouses lands in their decks. A friend of mine asked me to play the deck and there I understand why they throw all at me lol I began playing around the same time like u so I can relate with many things you say. Great vid
I built a Prossh deck a long time ago, I put korvold in his deck and those two change off leading the deck but its mostly stayed prossh and its still very effective but i purposefully avoided using food chain because having a 1 card combo just didnt seem fun, the deck was just find food chain
If anyone wants a quick reference on how much EDH has changed over 10 years, back in the day, from TCGplayer, I bought a mana vault for $5 and rhystic study for $3, lol.
Many of these can still easily obliterate casual pods when build properly tbf. Interaction or not. Episodes like this always make me feel old. Hey Sram is still somewhat rece... almost 7 years ago? Well then.
My Sidisi deck is definitely nothing to be afraid of. Sure I can pump out a lot of zombie tokens via various self-mill stuff, but getting to attack with her is actually kinda the biggest issue. I do think it's one of my more functionally enjoyable decks, but I'm terrified of any graveyard hate.
Had a Nath deck that was discard/Elf themed for a while but it still had the Sadistic Hypnotist combo I never lost with that deck because my playgroup would eventually scoop Eventually took that deck apart when I realized it wasn't fun to play or play against It's a Dina Soul Steeper deck now
When I made an Izzet deck, I was not finding a good commander. Ended up getting the Baral and that girl... didn't work much. But I had a Jhoira in my box, put her as a 'temporary commander'... She is now the commander I use. Her only job is to suspend some of my nasty spells like City on fire or Thousand-year storm... Kinda turned into a big target in my playgroup hahaha
Basically any UBG deck can potentially just have Ad Nauseum and Thassa’s Oracle with enough ramp to end the game in a few turns. The Commander really doesn’t much matter…
@@Suhrvivor I have neither but a lot of people insist on playing those combos in EDH. For some people, winning is important. Whether they have earned it or not.
There was a time when dredge decks were just utterly broken. Edit: Ad Nauseum and Thassa’s Oracle can make most decks CEDH. These UBG decks tend to basically be 90%+ copy and paste.
Back in the day, white and red were basically unplayable colors in edh and there were barely any 3-color commanders yet. So you basically got the chance to be in three colors in addition to being the best three colors.
I still play my c17 cEDH prossh. Everyone says Korvold is the better version, but my prossh is still a house. I'm trying to de-power the deck but it just works so well without much help.
I still have my Sigarda enchantment voltron deck. It's pretty solid, though it lacks the game ending power of any combo deck and you need to have an idea of what the other players use, in order to evaluate who's the biggest threat at the moment. If there was a card like Kediss, Emberclaw Familiar for Selesnya, it would really help the deck.
I keep the fear of god in my playgroup with my wort deck hahaah. With new cards for storm if you untap its over, because you put 40 lands into play and no amount of removal can bring you back from that point
For me, it was almost always the 99 for the longest time, not what's in the command zone. I'm not sure I can say much, due to being a lover of blue and black goofy meta-busting jank, but I brewed my decks to endure the assault of powerful decks. People I played against liked infinite mana, stax, Armageddon, and so on, so I built my own combos to do massive damage, especially with my mono-red lava-moat pillow-fort Squee (the Immortal) deck. Now... ...nowadays... ...commanders are more often much nastier, and need to be removed sooner... especially 3-color dinosaurs, 4-color angels, and 5-color slivers... but... ...it's not that easy. You also have to have a wider variety of panic-buttons and possibly modal removal, because the 99 can still be quite fierce. It also helps to be the only madlad in the area who built a Ruxa (Patient Professor) deck, complete with Muraganda Petroglyphs... ...and Varis (Silverymoon Ranger), complete with elf good-stuff and Ellywick Tumblestrum.
I'm confused what the message of this video is? Are you saying these commanders have been overshadowed by power creep in recent years or that just numerous answers to them have been printed.
I love my Prosh deck. It's the first EDH deck i ever got, I bought the precon and i thought it was great value and it's probably the strongest deck i have? I don't do a foodchain combo. Mostly because I only heard of that card 5 minutes ago. It has a bunch of token poopers, sack outlets and instant damage stuf, it's great. But ever since my buddy got his hands on an Elish Norn those tokens it produces don't seem so hot.
I find any commander with indestructible pretty scary still as i usually only have a few ways to deal with them, especially in certain colours. Edit: Prosh will forever be scary
I have been playing Xenagos, for close to 7 years, and i agree that it’s not as scary as he once was landing on the table, but I think the supporting cast is overall scarier than ever. Bloodthirster is a scary card, Karlach, fury of Avernus is a scary card. Mix in a healthy level of contingency and players just die left and right. The god of revels may not scare the table but it should be respected. Same as kallia of the vast. These decks just turn and decimate out of nowhere.
A friend of mine have a Xenagos deck and to me it's STILL terrifying to have that indestructible guy doubling some already gigantic monsters and one shot me.... 🥲
I'm old enough to remember Nekusar being a genuine threat. And I'm talking the classic Nekusar Do Nothing builds, not the still very viable Nekusar Wheels build.
What’s the do nothing build?
I have a nekusar deck that isn’t really wheels im just making everyone draw and discard a bunch with howling mine effects and profit off that with a fee pillowfort effects
@Colton Prentzel
Step 1: cast Nekusar
Step 2: play two cards per turn and wait for your opponents to die.
My first commander was braids..
@@coltonprentzel1220play commander and howling mine effects.
Step 2:????
Step 3: profit
With the Alesha - Master of Cruelties combo, it doesn't just put someone to 1. If Alesha (or another of your creatures) goes unblocked, you just straight up kill someone; since Master of Cruelties sets them to 1 in the declare blockers step ("attacks and isn't blocked" abilities trigger in the declare blockers step), and then Alesha connects to kill.
Making Alesha unblockable is one of the main strats of the deck, since that keeps her really safe to let you use her ability all the time. Cards that are perfect for keeping Alesha safe: Key to the City, Whispersilk Cloak, Reconnaissance, Sleeper's Guile, Angelic Destiny, Demonic Embrace, Gift of Doom, Nahiri's Machinations, Dolmen Gate, Iroas
As someone who’s recently played against a couple 5-year-old decks…they’re still terrifying!
Ezuri was the second commander I ever built (I started playing commander in 2021) and I love him he’s still definitely a house.
Totally agree. Guy in my playgroup built a $20 Ezuri deck and it absolutely slaps.
I made a commanderless deck wbg colors that the shop owner asked me to stop playing because people were too afraid of it. This was way before cedh. I believe it was around og innistrad. Then I had a Darien king of kejeldor that would swing for 144 on turn 5 fairly regularly. It's not the commanders I'm afraid of. It's the 99.
I have a “causal” prossh deck, first commander I ever built, I don’t get to play it very often because even without playing combos the deck is still very strong
same, prossh was my first real commander, took me 5 years to get it done. Doesnt really matter since i cant even play it cuz its too strong :c
I still have a Wort the Raidmother deck and you hit the nail on the head. It can be very strong if I ramp into her a turn or so early, she sticks, and I actually have something in my hand.
Although, still being a 6MV Commander caps her quite a bit. Minimum it’s turn 6 or so until you start doing the thing, and by that point, game may well be over for you.
Still fun as hell to play. Dance with Calamity and Escape to the Wilds are fun to copy!
Back in 2017 I had a lot of these: Alesha, Chainer, Prossh, and Sidisi. Sidisi is an amazing deck and I might rebuild her… but interesting how it was not that long ago, and how power crept everything is today.
Maybe Omnath used to be just a Big Mana/Voltron commander, BUT now he can be an incredibly powerful storm commander. Thanks to all the big draw spells and additional mana multipliers, he can easily draw and put out a deck onto the battlefield. Omnath is just incredibly versatile now. He's also very easy to get big and use him as a megaton nuke for direct damage. GG.
Jhoira of the Ghitu is basically crippled by the abundance of proliferate decks. Opponents can just keep adding suspend counters.
Can you? As far as I know you have to target the thing and suspend spells are in exile. I could be wrong though
@@mattbutt3163 You’re right, my mistake. I thought Proliferate rules were more all encompassing…
Edit: Proliferate doesn’t target, but it does only apply to permanents and/or players. When in exile, they are spells not permanents.
A couple of things:
1) mill is still very strong if well made. It's so much more effective as a form of sabotage in a singleton format.
2) Jhoira remains scary, especially when they can suspend a Decree of Annihilation to go off right before the Eldrazi arrive.
3) Narset, Enlightened Master is missing.
Having won a few games with Phenax since the pandemic, I think folks underestimate how out of control its mill potential can be nowadays. The better for me to give folks deck dysentery!
I’m so happy to see Mayael on the list. I recently built the deck because I’m nostalgic and it is still a lot of fun. Doesn’t scare anyone but still fun.
Great video lots of classic commanders. I'd love to see the opposite version one day, ''20 Commanders that have become terrifying'' or the ''New commanders that are terrifying''
- Poor Ghave
- Xenagos is still TERRIFYING! I love using the new Etali with the Boar God, Ilharg and each combat cast more spells from my opponents libraries and than use Seize the Day (Carpe Diem), if anything I think Xenagos just has more crazy synergies than ever before
- Jarad and Lord of Extinction have moved on into my ''Yargltani''.
- The Narset player in my old playgroup tended to always pick on my Xenagos; always felt so satisfying to smack them with double digit damage
- Sharuum= CLASSIC, That beverage is as big as the people
- Sram was fun but I switched them for Zetalpa-tron
- Ezuri Claw of Progress was an abysmal battle vs Meren in precon ;p
I built Xenagod back in the day and he is still terrifying, even with old threats like hasting in Scourge of the Throne and getting a second trigger to quadruple the initial stats lol
I know leovold is banned but I’m surprised he’s not on here for how much of a menace he was
Ah Sidisi, I have such fond memories of her. She was one of my first and favorite decks. She’s the first one I splurged on upgrades for the deck because I wanted her to be special
This was a really good content video and was incredibly enjoyable to listen to. Speak for everyone when I say I’d like to see more of these!
As someone with both a Ghave and Jhoira deck I feel personally attacked 😂 Have to say Jhoira has become pretty fun now Worldfire has been unbanned, any creatures behind it in the suspend queue and that’s game.
Really wonder what happened to voltron strategies. It can’t just be spot removal, since the hexproof ones have also gone way down in popularity
So funny revisiting these oldies but goodies. I have won with mill so many times. Teferi recently won a cEDH tournament I had to take mine apart because I won too easily and nobody liked playing it.
As far as a mill commander, Bruvac is a monster. 2 card combo to mill the whole table. Lost to it a couple times since my new to magic friend discovered 2 card combos...
Watching your videos at lunch has become my tradition.
Same here !!!
Rafiq of the Many was the scariest deck in our playgroup for a long time, until we got better at deck design and early removal
Jhoira was always a weird one. Without way to accelerate the suspend, you wind up telegraphing all your threats and everyone saves their removal for you
Thats why you play every decent card that removes the suspend counters. Throw off their perception of time to kill you and things get very hectic. Even though I lose alot of games, its very fun to play.
@@michaeltaylor4492and run all the land destruction in the format
I knew a guy a few years ago who had a Blind Seer deck that seemed very much up your alley
Proshand food chain...... Talk about PTSD
My Sigarda is still by far the deck that puts me on the archenemy side with my playgroups. I would say she is the only voltron that is worth pumping due to the can't sacrifice ability. in my playgroups filled with jund grixis and golgari decks many of them began putting the lighthouses lands in their decks. A friend of mine asked me to play the deck and there I understand why they throw all at me lol
I began playing around the same time like u so I can relate with many things you say. Great vid
I built a Prossh deck a long time ago, I put korvold in his deck and those two change off leading the deck but its mostly stayed prossh and its still very effective but i purposefully avoided using food chain because having a 1 card combo just didnt seem fun, the deck was just find food chain
That was exactly the Prossh CEDH deck. I built that in 2017 and got bored of it so fast. I’m now building Jund Elves Aristocrats with Miara and Tana.
@@NightOfCrystals my prossh is jund aristocrat with treasure and token makers etc
“Use to be” under the right hands. All of these decks are still dangerous.
If anyone wants a quick reference on how much EDH has changed over 10 years, back in the day, from TCGplayer, I bought a mana vault for $5 and rhystic study for $3, lol.
Many of these can still easily obliterate casual pods when build properly tbf. Interaction or not.
Episodes like this always make me feel old. Hey Sram is still somewhat rece... almost 7 years ago? Well then.
They just have more answers now.
This was my exact thought with sram. It's Wierd to think I have been playing for over 10 years now
Now... Can we proliferate counters on suspended permanents?
I mean, they're exiled, so technically we shouldn't be able to interact with them...
@@zackkelley2940 yeah, I knew about them, buy the doubt came out of the blue.
Thanks, tho!
My Sidisi deck is definitely nothing to be afraid of. Sure I can pump out a lot of zombie tokens via various self-mill stuff, but getting to attack with her is actually kinda the biggest issue. I do think it's one of my more functionally enjoyable decks, but I'm terrified of any graveyard hate.
Had a Nath deck that was discard/Elf themed for a while but it still had the Sadistic Hypnotist combo
I never lost with that deck because my playgroup would eventually scoop
Eventually took that deck apart when I realized it wasn't fun to play or play against
It's a Dina Soul Steeper deck now
I was planning on building a Sidisi deck before I watched this video.
100% doing it now haha
Food Chain in general is dead in CEDH now. Kovold doesn't even need it.
Prossh is still a massive problem in edh I know because I have a high powered version of him and at times I end up in 3 against 1 games
When I made an Izzet deck, I was not finding a good commander. Ended up getting the Baral and that girl... didn't work much. But I had a Jhoira in my box, put her as a 'temporary commander'... She is now the commander I use. Her only job is to suspend some of my nasty spells like City on fire or Thousand-year storm... Kinda turned into a big target in my playgroup hahaha
Ah, fond memories of my
Teferi stax deck
Basically any UBG deck can potentially just have Ad Nauseum and Thassa’s Oracle with enough ramp to end the game in a few turns. The Commander really doesn’t much matter…
Bro why would you play that boring combo in a casual format...
@@Suhrvivor I have neither but a lot of people insist on playing those combos in EDH. For some people, winning is important. Whether they have earned it or not.
Had no idea Sidisi was even considered 'good'
There was a time when dredge decks were just utterly broken.
Edit: Ad Nauseum and Thassa’s Oracle can make most decks CEDH. These UBG decks tend to basically be 90%+ copy and paste.
Before Grixis was the strongest color package, Sultai anything was dominant
Back in the day, white and red were basically unplayable colors in edh and there were barely any 3-color commanders yet. So you basically got the chance to be in three colors in addition to being the best three colors.
I still play my c17 cEDH prossh. Everyone says Korvold is the better version, but my prossh is still a house. I'm trying to de-power the deck but it just works so well without much help.
I still have my Sigarda enchantment voltron deck. It's pretty solid, though it lacks the game ending power of any combo deck and you need to have an idea of what the other players use, in order to evaluate who's the biggest threat at the moment. If there was a card like Kediss, Emberclaw Familiar for Selesnya, it would really help the deck.
I used to play the o.g. Jhoira back in my High School TCG club, oh how powercrept it's been
Xenegos is still incredibly scary.
I keep the fear of god in my playgroup with my wort deck hahaah. With new cards for storm if you untap its over, because you put 40 lands into play and no amount of removal can bring you back from that point
For me, it was almost always the 99 for the longest time, not what's in the command zone.
I'm not sure I can say much, due to being a lover of blue and black goofy meta-busting jank, but I brewed my decks to endure the assault of powerful decks.
People I played against liked infinite mana, stax, Armageddon, and so on, so I built my own combos to do massive damage, especially with my mono-red lava-moat pillow-fort Squee (the Immortal) deck.
Now...
...nowadays... ...commanders are more often much nastier, and need to be removed sooner... especially 3-color dinosaurs, 4-color angels, and 5-color slivers... but...
...it's not that easy.
You also have to have a wider variety of panic-buttons and possibly modal removal, because the 99 can still be quite fierce.
It also helps to be the only madlad in the area who built a Ruxa (Patient Professor) deck, complete with Muraganda Petroglyphs... ...and Varis (Silverymoon Ranger), complete with elf good-stuff and Ellywick Tumblestrum.
I'm confused what the message of this video is? Are you saying these commanders have been overshadowed by power creep in recent years or that just numerous answers to them have been printed.
I love my Prosh deck. It's the first EDH deck i ever got, I bought the precon and i thought it was great value and it's probably the strongest deck i have? I don't do a foodchain combo. Mostly because I only heard of that card 5 minutes ago. It has a bunch of token poopers, sack outlets and instant damage stuf, it's great. But ever since my buddy got his hands on an Elish Norn those tokens it produces don't seem so hot.
I actually just cut Mayael from my Legendary Dragons deck. Just wasn't efficient enough.
Master of Cruelties is my favorite card, so Alesha has always been a favorite of mine
I still have a nath cedh deck. It’s not gonna win any tournaments but stax is still a viable archetype
I find any commander with indestructible pretty scary still as i usually only have a few ways to deal with them, especially in certain colours.
Edit: Prosh will forever be scary
I used to run 5 of these as commanders and 3 others in the 99s, this is what commander was before it got insane
Trip down memory lane
How does the reveillark x karmic guide combo work with Alesha?
alesha is just there to get karmic guide out of your graveyard. the combo is mostly reveillark/karmic guide.
My group still groans when i play chainer
I have been playing Xenagos, for close to 7 years, and i agree that it’s not as scary as he once was landing on the table, but I think the supporting cast is overall scarier than ever. Bloodthirster is a scary card, Karlach, fury of Avernus is a scary card. Mix in a healthy level of contingency and players just die left and right. The god of revels may not scare the table but it should be respected. Same as kallia of the vast. These decks just turn and decimate out of nowhere.
Have you tried PreDH?
Been thinking of making a Jhoira deck since worldfire was unbanned
I killed the table today with purphoros.
I still play jhoira too.
Alot of them arent played that much anymore. Maybe cause we are at a point we get ridiculus amount of new potential commander cards.
You should definitely still be afraid of purphorous you will die sooo fast
Still playing my Mayael Deck. It used to be a beast. Today it's a joke.
Xenagos is still terrifying. One Bloodthirster and it's basically GG
Xenagos is also a house and huge threat…smh
I'm old enough to have truly loved this game and every release and now I truly hate it and with each release I am further reminded why.
if someone tried saying that sadisi is too competetive today, i would think they were crazy
Is Sen Triplets terrifying still?
more annoying i would say
Used to? I still play my xenagos deck xd
Nice list but u forgot Kalia of the Vast. She isnt scary anymore.
Purphoros is a huge threat lol wtf
yey shu yun one punch man
A friend of mine have a Xenagos deck and to me it's STILL terrifying to have that indestructible guy doubling some already gigantic monsters and one shot me.... 🥲