Overrated Commanders | Commander Clash Podcast 62

hey everyone and welcome back to the commander clash podcast where the commander clash crew discusses commander related topics and today we are going to be discussing overrated commanders commanders that we feel are being played more than we think they should be in commander and obviously this is a uh kind of clickbaity title i'm not going to be uh shameful about it uh there was an intent here to get you to click but it doesn't it's it's not as bad as it sounds the intent here is not to shame anybody for playing these popular commanders they're very popular for a reason and we're not saying these are bad commanders as well there's obviously a reason why these why these commanders are popular however we believe that there are some commanders out there that might be overshadowing other commanders that fulfill the same uh role as these and because they are so popular because they are on the top of edh wreck people don't really get to look at the lesser plate commanders despite me thinking that maybe they're better suited for what you want to be doing so we're going to be discussing basically the the most popular commanders in according to edh rec the ones that we consider might be being played too much and then maybe offer some alternatives on what else we can be playing instead of them and in other other aspects to think about these commanders like other things you might not think about before you actually go ahead and build it yourself so don't don't downvote immediately we're going to talk about it we're not going to shame anybody or anything like that um we might shame tomorrow we might shame tomorrow but other than i was the one who pitched it to you so you could you can shame me all you want um but uh joining me as always for this hot button debate which is not really hot button uh is seth probably better known as saffron olive how's it going seth i'm doing great tomer i love telling people how they're wrong at magic we have a podcast listen to us yeah you're wrong to play your play like play a casual format the wrong way you're wrong to play the big hearts that you liking commander come on come on now loud you're not being a try hard and that other voice you just heard is crim aka the asian avenger how's it going krim good morning i i am awake my trick it is it's almost 2 30 my time and criminal in the afternoon it's 11 30 your time i am not up for another three and a half hours phil is about to go to bed all right okay it's not that late also phil you like you are usually up at like four o'clock in the morning according to uh when i when i see the discord messages yeah that's true aka brewer's kitchen how's it going phil hey hey hey everything's good and now with a non-squeaky chair listen to this or don't listen to this was that the one the ikea one that i recommended no it's not it's a different one no i i tested i went to ikea actually uh and tested the one but there was something off with it and this one's pretty really good they are so cheap if this isn't also naked yeah if this one survives two years i'm happy with that that was super cheap and it feels great actually what's the name plug so we can get hashtag sponsored by something swedish i don't know right yeah that's fair if you ask me what chair i i was getting i got from ikea i remember texting you but i don't remember what exactly was called marcus yes no that was lilian mine was the marcus yes i got it i said on it a few days ago so this one i don't know actually marcus is easy though the other ones if they start with weird letters yeah yeah when there's like the double the double accent thingy double dot accent on top yeah i mean we have those two in germany but the the different pronunciation yeah they sound a little bit different i mean i want to sit on it i don't want to know how it what's its name that sounds weird let's get it well speaking of sponsorship we're not sponsored on this podcast i don't think but you can still support the channel or the podcast two different ways uh the first way is you can like and subscribe wherever you're listening to this podcast and the second way is you can purchase our beautiful merch at mtugoldfishmerch.com you can purchase deck boxes deck sleeves t-shirts and so much more over at empty goldfishmerch.com all right with that out of the way let's start it off seth what is the first commander that you consider is overrated and why all right so this was an easy one and it's morophon the boundless more if on the boundless on an eda track it's like top five i think i'd have to check the exact number but it is like literally one of the most played commanders in the entire format uh if you don't know what morphon does it's the seven mana colorless changeling thing but it's actually five color because as ability this has spells of i guess i should read the whole card when it etb's you get to choose a creature type and then spells of the chosen type cost wooberg less to cast uh reduces the fact only of the the reduces amount only of the colored manner you play and then other creatures of the chosen type get plus one plus one so morophon is like the commander for any tribe that doesn't have a commander and i think that's like a legit use for morophon if you want to build around some janky tribe that you just don't have a legend i think that that's where morofon actually shines and it does have a role in commander filling that purpose however there's two reasons i think it's overrated number one is number one is we're getting more and more commanders for janky tribes like every single set we're getting like commander pre-counts have like badger tribal commanders worm tribal commanders bird tribal like skeleton tribal think of any weird tribe and if it hasn't already gotten a legend it's probably gonna get one in the near future the way that cards are being printed these days the other reason i think that morophon is super overrated is if you go to edh rec you can actually see the builds that people play of morophon it has them all listed there and some of the most popular builds are like dragon tribal a tribe that has many very strong five color commanders sliver tribal another tribe that's built around strong five color commanders those are like the most popular ways to play morphon like some of the most popular ways so i think that if you're using morphon as you're like five color dragon commander or five color sliver commander it just feels so so cheaty to me and wrong remember when richard tried to play uh like scarecrows and he played a bunch of cherry slings and everyone freaked out because that's not actually scarecrows morphon is like the epitome of that like when you put that as the head of your dragon deck you're like literally kind of just cheating and ignoring the flavor to such a huge amount that it drives me a little bit insane so i think play it for the janky tribes if you don't have a good leader go for it but come on play an actual dragon for your dragon tribal commander play an actual sliver for your silver travel commander i don't understand what you're talking about it is a slipper it is a silver yeah it says that on the on the reminder text yeah it except this card is every creature type yeah you all are exactly the problem that i'm trying to address here it's defense all right if you look at the themes edh rec as you said uh i could show you what the most common played themes are the first two and by far the most popular ones the first one is eldrazi tribal which allows you to run all the void eldrazis and the second one is shapeshifter tribal which is the changeling tribal so that's at 7.95 for eldrazi 745 for shape treasure driver then at number three is the dragon tribe of 423 which is almost half half as much and i will say okay just to toot my own horn a little bit when morphon came out the first budget commander brew i did for it like the week after came out was devoid eldrazi tribal so this guy that's the sky listen and then the second one was tribal tribal with more fun listen listen listen to him he's got a podcast i didn't even have a podcast back but it was so long ago in the before times but that's a that's a legit use of it like devoid of drowsy tribal that's where like i think that you should be playing marafon as your commander because there's really not another option that's going to fit the flavor deck in the theme your deck so i think that's a very legit use it's just like when you're playing it with tribes that have other options that are literally their tribe members and not the changeling version that's where it feels weird to me like i don't know rivals legends god tribal god tribal is kind of interesting we don't really have god five color gods i mean we got yeah right we got to see that yeah probably better at it yeah too uh probably jodah because aren't they creatures or maybe they guess they're not creatures but they will be creatures when when you have enough of them on the battlefield i guess another reason to play morrophone would be to combo with its ability if you i mean you can play like five color cards of the chosen type for free so if you say oh i got this combo deck that tries to loop a whatever like something i guess first sliver does something if you bounce it also is a fist of suns because it costs less and you can cast all your spells with 50 sons with woo bird mana so if you have physical suns and morph on the battlefield whatever the chosen creature type you can cast for zero mana so i mean that's cool there are cool combos with it so i would i mean that's we can probably say this about every card on this list i mean they are the most played commanders yeah but there's a cool way to play it and a [Music] boring way to play it i guess it adds colors to certain tribes but yeah maybe rogues don't need blue or green or something so they do yeah a little bit of the green but it's fine oh like okay i am going to come clean with you seth i do have a dragon deck with horror fun at the helm yeah he mentioned this podcast i'm actually curious why why would you choose morofon over like whatever dragon we have an inside scoop on on why it's the dragon tribal because they're dragons boring yeah i mean like like if it like super everybody has the er i don't like eminence right so because okay okay absolutely okay so what is the next step down right because obviously or dragon is by far power level wise just the best dragon commander and i genuinely like i like i i think by by far like i don't know what would you think is a better five color comma a dragon commander than that i mean sorry not i meant to say scion the er dragon is the best dragon commander yeah so so like that like the the next step down would be like what bird dragon dragon actually well so the best one's the dragon right and then the step down would be like cyan of the er dragon ramos engine uh oh kagachi vengeful like there's several five color dragon like potential commanders that don't require you to cheat right quote unquote but this also i don't even play changes i genuinely play all dragons right you're commanders of james you're not playing all right yes no no no no no but i am playing all dragons seth but what do you mean i don't understand it says so right on the card the mana reduction is sweet right like two-headed hell kite is just one mana like why would i want to do this and i'm not trying to combo off and like yeah like i'm not trying to do anything that's like you know fist the sun's like broken stuff all like combo right i'm genuinely just playing cheap dragons so i mean ah obviously play whatever whatever you like to play that's kind of the disclaimer for this whole episode but i reserve the right to make fun of you if you play more fun as your dragon tribal commander just guys yes it's so much cooler because you get the mana reduction it's sweet what and so and it helps because uh it is only seven colorless mana it doesn't matter what what mana sources are spent into it i could just store up one of my dreadship reefs and just put it all into more of fun but for like for other ones like it's tough because it's seven mana that's why like i are initially the first tribal tribal primer that i made was with morophon but i switched it to erdragon because seven man is so much like yeah it's really good when it's on the battlefield but it's gonna die and then well you're gonna spend nine minutes or recast that that's like really hard it's hard to just cast the first time to be honest so that's why i really like in the 99 over over as the commander i don't know any other commander you would play for dragons right if you cast it you don't have to cast though yeah that's the well okay dragon is obviously we agree right like that's easy mode yes sure that is cruise control right like we got so like but like er dragon's boring more fun at least like i i like it i don't like using eminence i just genuinely don't like using eminence so i don't know i agree with that yeah and so ramos is cool like ramos is like fine but that's you know like i don't know i like the mana reduction for more and also on top of that that i have a judge for it so i was like okay all right fine anyways just think about it think about it as you build your decks if your neck has a legitimate commander that's not a changeling consider it because people like to make fun of you yeah i'm gonna be the total of the podcast again we're not trying to shame anybody for picking whatever commander we're talking about but seth will shame you for it so i'm just gonna listen to shame thank you for it shame now yeah get to play for two mana all right oh you could play tia mata is so sick but you can you can cast him on and then find more fun and four other i mean he's got a point if you if tm like you can cast it before morophone right or is it no it's all seven also the rainbow and two oh yeah that's the problem in five cut again with that five minutes you just recreate you still got your value right like tiamat is sure is like it's bonus if it stays on the battlefield it's a seven seven flyer but then more fun if you cast it and you tap out to do it and then it just dies and then you're just like oh i guess i guess my commander's not going to do anything in this game always has a free counter that's true i mean if it's five colors i'm gonna load it up with everything except the fog like yeah like cryptica man boom got him the ability to just play cheaper dragons is cool it's like to satisfy my inner timmy right like cheap dragons just jammed that and that's it like draw maybe off a dragon's horn like that's the goal how is that not how is that not sick how how is that like not sick dragon with extra steps yeah urgency it's like it's like it's only your home is actually on fire and then you have to drag out the the the card somewhere in the ashes one mana oh kagachi just saying one man okay whatever all right uh moving on i guess uh phil what do you offer us for a card that you is pretty overrated yeah well we're gonna wrestle some jimmy's in this episode i know a lot of people like the cards and i kind of like the card too it's uh kranko mob boss 4 mana 3 3 goblin some people might be screaming right now tap put x-11 goblin tokens on the battlefield where x is the number of goblins you control so you play this it probably has haste and then you tap it and create a bunch of goblins and sacrifice them to an altar and then you win the game it's super fun for everybody fashion um i don't see how many times this is fun i know a lot of people swear on this commander and they are gonna be angry with me but i mean f that's just the thing in this episode my replacement is a card that i hate and i don't even hate crank or it just seems boring but i hate maxes but i think it's a cooler commander for goblins it's a six man of four four i think when it enters the battlefield it looks at the top i think six cards i sorry i don't even have this card it is [Music] [Laughter] if you played historic on magic arena like a year ago you definitely know what moxis does yeah so the thing about marxists is in historic brawl it it's a pretty insane commander uh because it usually just wins the game just as it as it does in historic but i think it's just a bit more i think it fits goblins a bit more to have something random and you can't really control it with crank it's just always set up a combo board state and now you all know this i did this every game here's a combo with max's i think it's a little bit more interesting what you do also the backstory i don't know the backstory behind cranco but max's is actually five goblins and while the rest of the goblins just worship him and say he's the greatest they are all just siblings and every morning they roll a die and whoever hits whatever number becomes like takes on the crown and the other ones carry him and it says in the law that if they roll a six they take a day off i don't know how they do this as a king or whatever but that's just a funny story that it's just not one guy but actually the ones carrying him as well which is fantastic i don't know five goblins they're the ones who have to carry him around yes i mean that's just i don't know it just seems a bit more yeah fun and interesting if you play like your fourth game of the evening you probably don't want to assemble one of these combos that is tapping untapping sacrificing this doesn't really feel too gobliny just have some chaos don't know what's happening you can set up your the top of your deck with goblins obviously but yeah have some fun there's like goblin recruiter that you can stack yeah i mean maxis is also probably pretty strong goblins are pretty strong unless they get bored wiped what do they do i i don't know you recast moxis when you get another oh yeah it's great yeah with franco it's like i don't know i mean i'm gonna probably get some comments and like cranco's the best so i'm gonna find out why i think i think kranko is like actually like just again objectively probably the best goblin commander but muxus is probably a lot more fun however in a hundred card commander i forgot was it not on commander clash someone played muxus as a commander and they kind of whiffed a lot just because there's mana rocks there's lands there's a lot of that right so like and like like i think i either thought it was a real life game somebody played muxus and they got like a goblin so it's fine i don't know i mean it is it is random it is random but like why not try shattergang brothers right because then you gotta go into jund you get to play gun goblins they are goblins and you get a built-in little bit of a sacrifice theme right where you can sack your creatures your your goblins and make them sack a creature right yeah but you do the same around the board because you also have what are what are the the artifact goblins the ones that get an artifact from your deck put into the yard uh like you know like all of those goblin welders engineers shatter gang brothers allows you to sack artifacts and like it kind of perfectly like i don't care about the third mode the second enchantment part but i guess you can since you have green however like the red and black parts of shatter gang brothers are things that you see like goblin decks trying to like you know like don't mind doing right they have the goblin sling leader or whatever you siege gang commander you can just sack creatures pretty easily already sacrificing artifacts goblins love artifacts so like you can kind of play to all the themes that goblins love there i have an alternative though i mean i like i like that one too because they also have access to like the green black and there are black goblins like from uh i think lorwin block that happens yeah um i will give one though that i think is also quite good and that is pasha lick monsters from modern horizons yeah it's like three mana mono reds are in the same color um it's when it or another goblin you control dies it deals one damage to any target so a little bit of ping um but you can pay for mana sacrifice a goblin create two goblin tokens so if you want to go into like that sacrifice matters type thing you have a sack outlet it's kind of expensive but you do net two goblins at the same time and you know if your board gets wiped or whatever or you sacrifice goblins for value you're pinging stuff so i think it's it's all right but yeah i mean i think like yeah the thing the thing about goblins is there's really like a ton of options the part that blows me away about kranko is if you just look at like goblin decks on edh rec there's like thousand six hundred cranco decks and the next closest is under a thousand so this is just like if you added together all the other goblin decks that probably doesn't equal up to the amount of people playing cranco so i think it's definitely overrated not because it's bad but just because it shouldn't be that far ahead of everything else because you all mentioned a bunch of other ones and there's like warts on there there's other krankos there's multiple grenzo's that are like legitimate leaders and if you want to go like more janky there's like if half-heart is like a pretty funny car the like one of the old yankee goblins or like squee so you just have so many options that i wish people would diversify a little bit or at least think about it like i don't know it seems like you would get bored of playing cranko after a while because as phil mentioned it just it does kind of do one thing so i think if you're a goblin player you don't have to tear apart your cranko deck but it would be pretty easy to like kind of do a two-for-one and like switch up a few cards and throw in a different commander and get a little bit of a different experience once in a while then you can put franco back together after you try one of these other commanders i think kranko is like a very str like it's one of the most simple decks to play it so it has appeal to newer players for sure because like let's say let's say you have someone who's new to commander sitting at the table with you and you have a bunch of decks and one of them's krenko i think franco is probably going to be the best one to just hand to them there's like no shuffling or searching no combos or anything the commander's incredibly straightforward all you do is you tap it every single turn you know and you play goblins so it has a lot of appeal for for for newer players as especially as like a loner uh thing and i think it's also one of the more affordable car uh one of the more affordable decks if you want to play at like a higher power table because all you do again is you just play krenko you play whatever goblins you know it doesn't really matter as long as they're cheap which goblins are and you will overwhelm the board unless unless people can repeatedly stop krinko from going off so i i understand the appeal to it but i also think like if you if you uh want to play goblins regularly it's a very linear deck so i do think it would get boring very quickly um so yeah i do and also yeah like like like like you said south like if you just have a krenko deck all you can do is just have muxus which is probably already in the 99 already and just swap that in or your pal shake or whatever a pathfart or whatever and they'll give a different flavor and yeah they're less powerful but they do give a little bit more something to the deck make it a little bit less linear you know more focus on the cards in the 99 as opposed to just the commander's tapping and not really caring about what goblins are on the battlefield um yeah and also it would be more appropriate for like lower power tables like somebody brings out a pre-con and you bring out krenko it's like yeah you're going to stomp you you look you crinkle you gets shut down and does nothing or grenko pops off and wins like there's no in between there's no like give and take in that deck all right we'll move on crim what's the first overrated card on your list overrated commander uh okay so i have ac tyrant of uh gear guyer uh yeah i don't i don't know what is is it gear or guyer seth i i would say guy here i i would go i don't know if that's right but all right then i'm going with gear i'm just kidding i think it's gyro there's the third option no no okay so this one is like actually like what the 45th highest ranked commander uh and i'm curious why it's for green blue you may play an additional land on each of your turns whenever it land enters the battlefield under your control you may draw a card right that's it's obviously great it's pretty sweet but why would i want that over like error but yeah it's more powerful but it's definitely more powerful but she's way more powerful than her uh but url i don't mind if it like because i just put it in the graveyard right it dies i put it in the graveyard i just keep putting it in the graveyard unless you have like a ley line i feel like like is this you just gain three and make one land drop ac is like you play it on the battlefield you draw like three cards and you put an extra lane onto the battlefield and the next turn you like ramping growth and like all all those ramp spells in your deck that you want anyway just turn into card draw and you're playing additional lane drops it's like ac is ridiculous it's like silly silly strong yeah we only i mean i know it's silly strong but like i guess i don't know i i feel like ero coming down like on turn three and allowing me to just immediately ramp pretty easily right i i i guess it's not really a problem for simek because it is green so they'll be able to get to six pretty easily six is like probably like four mana so i could understand that but i don't know i just feel like earl having escape is pretty cool and i think like uro is cooler but coming from like i only play uh commander for a year round about now and i remember in the beginning thinking of i easy like oh i gotta play this and i almost did a bunch of times but the more you play commander maybe it's us playing another deck every time like the cool it's super fun if it's on the board it's just a bit too it's just you just play a game and get rewarded for it i mean that's it yeah feels a bit boring because this is fun obviously but in commander yes i don't know it's that's kind of my problem is it really doesn't it doesn't really force you any direction to build around it like it's just kind of i think it's just kind of a dull commander like you just play all the cards you would play in a simic deck anyway and it's really busted and draws you a ton of cards so i just don't find it very interesting i think it is like incredibly powerful if your goal is to build like the most busted deck it's definitely like super super strong but i don't know like i would rather play a commander that pushed me in more of a direction than like play cultivate play rampant growth which just are the cards i was gonna put in my deck anyway so as phil said it kind of just like is just like this absurd payoff for playing just a good stuff value deck and that's fine but eventually that gets a little bit dull for me it's like especially as a six drop it's a six drop which seems expensive but keep in mind like you're actually encouraged to run more ramp than you usually would in an average to mcdeck because like if you have let's say your average sim deck you run like 13 12 12 ramp and growth effects in ac you want to run like 18 or even like higher than that because once ac is on the battlefield you don't you don't get mana flooded all you do is all those ramp and growth effects that now are sitting here in her hand they just turn to card draw you're just cycling them to not only a ramp even further but then also like draw cards in the process and that's what really makes ac like the absurdly thing like absurdly strong is like yeah it's a six drop but you're going to get there so easily because your deck is just like ramp.deck and ac just converts all your ramp that you want to be doing anyway into also card draw and then you just win whatever right like so yeah it is very boring i i think i think they're i i would say yoga is actually much more interesting of all things and they're almost literally the same part it does the same thing but you gain one life so at the very least you can build like a life gain sub theme off that at least it gives you something to work off ac doesn't even give you that ac just is like you can play an extra lane drop each turn and also every single time you're playing lanes uh you get to draw more cards at least hat yoga gives a little like they the fragments of of some spice that you can work with obviously nobody actually does a life game diet because god god forbid you try something a little bit spicy uh the in your in your in your lane fall soup but um but yeah at least there's something there that you could work with the ac is just the most the most vanilla like do the thing that you were doing anyway draw a card commander design it sounds pretty fun though just again very popular and very fun but like it is like the blandest design i can think of i i also think it's super popular because it was in a very inexpensive pre-cut yeah that was one of the like 15 commander legends pre-con so that was one that i think uh a lot of new people picked up the card itself is like there was somewhere around like seven dollars eight dollars or something like that yeah you can still get the whole con for like 20 i will also say like this is like emblematic of why people hate simeking commander this is like the literal number one most played cinema commander in the entire format is a sigh and it's just like what we were talking about just like oh i play all my ramshells and draw all the cards like i feel like people would think of simic as a color a lot differently if i don't know whatever like volo or uro or you know amadi something more interesting commander was like number one but if this is what you play against most often when you play against a simic deck it makes sense to me that people are like okay this is like kind of just a boring overpowered color combination yeah i like i like commanders where you actually have to run like unique cards to actually get value out of them instead of being like ah yes i'm just running more rampant quotes the stuff that i was doing anyway and that is those are the most powerful cards in my deck yes very very interesting behavior but what would you recommend as like an alternative for like a landfall deck like this sort of like this sort of ac strategy what would be like a more interesting commander that you would more be interested in playing you mean like omneth locus of creation would you prefer that i actually think that would be like you're already doing all i i i despise on now right like i would rather play that right ac is yeah just boring does a lot of things and he looks cool he definitely has a great promo the textless one yeah oh yeah i would love that as my commander oh my god yeah on this i don't know it looks like a you got to play crypt if you were an undergrad and you just took graphics design 101 or something and you drew that i don't know oh what no i don't want to shame anybody's art after after the the children's debacle just a kid's possible debacle but it looks like it looks exceptionally bad i don't know wow i thought you were going to say there were the children's art debate i was like there's no debate homer you should be dunked on random random children for no reason oh no not not even random father i don't even know who charges this i'm just not even going to make this joke so to go back to the question though like i think there's a bunch of potential simic landfall commanders if you want to stay in simic like eric smithy's is a pretty cool car that was like pretty high it's like a creature that can also be an extra land slot jerk's a new addition like getting your lance back to your hand from your graveyard really cool and if you want to go really cheap there's a couple of uncommons like gretchen twitch willow this is a two mana commander that you pay for and draw a card and put a land from your hand on the battlefield so there's like several options i think that i would say are more interesting than acai if you want to play the same play style but not but not play aside in specific just player url voltron earl voltron lets you draw ramp gain life all three of those every time it attacks and then you just beat and like you know you you know tumer you could even put cauldra on it and then eventually yeah it actually helps you cast and pay for the absurd equip costs on the cards you know what i mean so like like uh i i don't know i would probably just play uro because that just seems fun yeah and i mean i know nine fingers keen isn't in the best spot because she's salty and she tries to do gates but i can i i like that sort of i like that sort of uh land style commander like nine fingers king is a lens matter commander she cares specifically about gates and i like that i like i like the idea of like a land type commander carrying us about a specific type of lanes you know that you can you can try and assemble during the game that's super fun so if nine fingers unfortunately soul tie so if if she was five colors she'd be way better um but you know that we are getting more gates and i think she will get better in time but that is a style that i like a lot i like obun mulday ancestor it's naya you you uh animate lands equal to the number of like lanes you have on the battlefield you put plus one plus one counters on them so you can build a plus one plus one counter theme like you gotta you gotta have some some sort of extra extra text there that allows you to build around like you can actually go a boon for like animate lanes matter so you can run like the stuff that uh pumps up your animated lanes like the kamal like the partner command kamal or stuff like that you're putting counters on things so you can add a plus one plus one counter theme to it you know something that sets itself out instead of just being like whenever you play lane draw a card and that's it even on that yeah four color omnath is like very strong but at least there's stuff there that you can build around this is more colors too so you can play with more lane fall trigger cards i don't know oh boy the soul of wind grace that just came out yeah yeah every once in a while in the standard again if you play ac we love you please like and subscribe maybe i i almost played it i just think it's at least not good for content if nobody's looking and i'm online who i would play this and just not look at the chat it seems super fun all right we'll move on um okay my pick so in case in case the viewers weren't mad enough i literally the most popular commander for i don't know how many years at least like five uh this is right now in the top on adhrac uh the most popular commander in the past two years and i think this has been the trend since it's been printed is attracts a prater's voice and i'm here to tell you that this card super overrated so for people who don't know i don't know how you don't know but if you don't know uh this is uh four color commander four drop green white blue black no red that's the only color it's missing for a four four angel horror flying vigilance death touch lifelink and at the beginning of your end step you proliferate this is the go-to commander for super friends it's the most popular super friends commander um so for planeswalker decks you get to copy a loyalty counter then the next most popular thing you do will fit is plus one plus one counters and i'm here to say that no matter what direction you take atraxa i think there's going to be more interesting and i dare say more powerful options for you out there so for example planeswalkers i get that she's a very good blocker she's flying vigilance lifeline death touch she not only is she's a great way to protect your commanders because she's a fantastic deterrent that just kind of sits here in the command zone uh she's also just passively gaining life because she has vigilance of flying and lifelinks so she can just smack something passively um drain some opponents while while progressing your board say and she does add loyalty counters to your commanders however i think you can do a lot better with specific commanders than just put one loyalty counter on each of your commanders i think ammunatsu for example is a more interesting and more powerful uh yeah more powerful commander because not only are you getting to um basically you if you down tick a planeswalker you can uh use ammunato reset the loyalty counter so you gain loyalty cameras too but then you can you can activate them again as well so i'm going to talk amanato has more power there and then also just like five color commanders something like asika is uh i think underrated as as a planeswalker commander too you get access to red so you get your nickel bowl asses you get your chandras you get all those other cool planeswalkers that attraction does not allow you to have access to but also a seek of the prismatic bridge side especially allows you to cheat out planeswalkers incredibly efficiently too and she works well with a lot of the effects that would be good with planeswalkers as well like uh leaf aforementioned you can copy the triggered ability of prismatic bridge but you can also use level form engine to copy the triggered ability or the the activated abilities of your planeswalkers as well so i think a lot of commanders out there can do what atraxa does in terms of super friends but just better and the fact that atrax is just kind of sitting there at the top of edh rec a lot of people um don't really consider other options and i think that's a shame i think she's very good she's fantastic uh but i think for what you're trying to go for whatever the sub theme i think there are better or more interesting or just alternative commanders out there and i don't know i don't know why attracts is like number one for like the past six years that's a lot what if what if you want to play energy though wait which commander do you pick uh i like to actually yarok the desecrated because most of your energy stuff or enter the battlefield permanence though they enter the battlefield you make x amount of energy so yarok doubles that and i think you can generate energy faster with yara desecrated then you can play that enchantment that all right all right so okay fine but yeah but planeswalkers what about plus one plus one counter is it are there i mean i'm better side i was yeah obviously i mean there's lots of lots of options for plus one plus one counters too yeah i got a lot of new ones even like falco we just got falco tomorrow which is a really cool card we got this is a really good card yeah we got the tyranids so yeah plus one plus encounters there's tons of support which again is probably better than proliferating once like wouldn't you rather have uh hamza like giving this massive cost reduction on all your things or like falco letting you play through the top of your deck and like it seems like that's more impactful than just like i had encountered everything on my own stuff with proliferate i know what drugs body like you said is really good though like we've seen that's actually one of the reasons i dislike it if you build janky themes with atraxa is attracts his body tends to like overshadow the theme of your deck sometimes because its body is just like so strong on the battlefield yeah i mean yeah like i i don't know i mean she's she's probably just because it's atrocious right kind of grandfathered in at this point now like just iconic one of the what do you think of when you think of like one of the commanders everyone knows who atrox is and like the that's i think that's really it it's just the recognition of what atrox is as opposed to what she does because i agree on all those fronts that like as someone who plays aminatu super friends it's just better to play aminatu right like if you're if you care about super friends unless you really like having the green in there but having an aminatu just allows you to like activate like it pairs well with all the double activation stuff right it's just better uh there's so many better like falco is just more interesting of a a one one counter commander and then and then yeah like like like the only thing i can think of is like maybe infect because that is where proliferate is kind of nice right you always have it in the command zone uh like but you know like i just heard one over infect actually saskia whenever you deal damage to uh you choose when sasuke enters the battlefield i think it's like the the red version same same cycle red doesn't have [Music] blue oh yeah it doesn't have blue the double damage one that yeah damages the battlefield you choose you choose a player and then whenever you're dealing damage uh you deal that much damage to that player too so you basically double the effectiveness of your infect and i think you get you can infect people out a lot faster than attracts it because you're just like giving one person one counter that's the thing is like attracts is so so slow like they're she's capped she has a power ceiling cap she only does the one counter each time and that's it whereas like there's there's more explosive commanders out there i don't know also for super friends i gotta i gotta shout out karth karth is my favorite super friends commander by far like i know it's not all the same colors as atraxa which is probably the downside but i've had so much fun playing with that card karth is sweet i just oh god that that that would be one of one of the things that i would probably the reasons why i would play attractive super friends is because you get access to karth and things like that [Music] but he's it's too much green for christmas season yeah yeah you know what in doubling season who wants to do that that's cheating i'm altering my planeswalkers slowly yeah i respect that she's she's four colors so you get a lot of like green has a lot some of the best super friend support cards but then you can go five color and you can go like a seeker even new jota uh the the cascade it works with your planeswalker so every single planeswalker you cast you get a second one and he's a big body he's a six six like on the battlefield just by himself and if you have any legendary creatures but i think like a zika prismatic bridge would be just a better option than attracting i think i don't know let us know all attractive players i know you're you're out there you're listening because there's a lot of the most popular and i played one for energy and i liked it and it always felt correct to play atraxa uh on my jank tribe which i guess i thought might be a downside sometimes but like for planeswalkers if you're not playing super janky i feel like you can do better than the traxxa i'm sorry all right now that we've lost all our viewers seth what do you got next oh my god all right we have uh uh remember remember aside that we just talked about the summit commander we have ricksis assai probably better known as cast dissident mage uh four manigrix's three four with flying it's a human wizard says during each of your turns you guessed the insert source of your spell from your graveyard if a spell was cast this way or if the spell would go in your graveyard this way exile it instead so essentially you get to snap caster mage once during each of your turns if you have cass on the battlefield cass is a powerful card but to me this is literally grix's society it it just rewards you for doing what your deck does like oh i got spells in my deck i just have spells on my neck i get to cast him a second time it's so boring like it doesn't push you in any direction all it wants you to do is put random spells in your deck that you're going to be playing anyway play and helo play zevlor play cormela play geliva there's so many options even if you want to be spellslinger and grixes there's like several different options they actually like do interesting and cool things and aren't just like oh i'm playing a modern staple in my command zone and i get to do it every turn like it's so spiky and boring to me so people play is this this one well no snapcaster you're just snapchatting you're essentially don't oh man i haven't seen snapcaster played in years don't do years ponder anymore i don't know ponder was banned like a decade ago tomer bring back monitor that's the that's the main reason van ponder cassie's the second most played grix's commander by the way it is it is very popular sega most played am i off base that it's kind of just like a green card that doesn't push in any direction i don't think she's ac level though because ac is just like all that ramp just recast it and turn into car she's she's once per turn i mean that's that's like that's that's like fair design for 2022 magic that's like that's just it's so generic it doesn't push you in any direction yeah it's just like oh it rewards you for doing what your grix is deck was going to be doing anyway and now you can do it twice and i've done it i don't i don't know about that but i will say that i will say she's overrated but i but i do i do i don't know if it's like a face roll right like i i cause like grix this is a little bit all over right so it does lock you and tune you into being more spell eccentric right where where the like because like grix's actually has a lot of things you could do in there uh whereas it's just land draw no probably it's not yeah yes but not like right so something but like i think grix's has way more archetypes within itself right yeah and i but i do agree that kess is absurdly overrated uh-huh i i don't play kess i don't have it like a cast deck just because of that right i it's kind of just what everybody plays when they i don't know i'm gonna just play grixis and i'm gonna she's not very good with drago that's for sure because you can only cast it on your turn i guess but like i mean i i don't think niko bolus is good in draco either i play the hell out of that so but i i think that like she's just overrated and really popular and i play a zevlar deck and if i want to go spellslinger i just do that like like zevlar is hilarious and you get to play a bunch of like really niche spells that nobody that everybody would like just pretty much openly tell you do not play that commander like be able to play thoughts and then clone that and like in commanders that's pretty darn funny or yeah the other day i was playing with rebel and a bunch of others and like she was able to just copy plo polaka predation that's that's pretty sweet right and then you get to like of course then do bribery and then you know head games all that like that's just way more interesting and fun and it's hilarious and like like just for like a spell slingy style of deck so i don't know i mean i guess cass is like great if you're trying to like storm off or something or cdh i would agree there like it's good in cdh because that is it is a tessa is the most consistent yeah because she's four mana she's not that expensive and then like you know at the very least you're gonna like recast or ponder or whatever for one mana and you keep doing that every single turn you don't have you don't have any ridiculous like build arounds you have to be spell singer you have to have instant sorceries in your graveyard which any spell singer deck will but i think there are better they're more interesting alternatives like and hello is really interesting to me because there's a casualty involved so you mix in aristocrats you know and spillzinger is inherently good at making tokens that you can sacrifice later with young pyromancers howard and all that stuff but you can build you can build in like putting more morbid opportunists building your grave packed effects and stuff and build from there and it's not just your average spell singer and zevlor like you said you focus mostly on targeted spells as opposed to just any type of spells which is also really interesting too and kes is basically the vanilla version of that so i agree that she might be played a bit too much and there might be alternatives that are a little bit more interesting i can also understand why floors got haste dude so you can just kind of get in there you know but that's six you pay for four passengers and then an additional two to tap them so and then you have to cast a spout but then you play training grounds right now so then it doesn't cost anything or or you have things that reduce activated abilities which i do and and so yeah like i don't know i mean it's more fun yeah kes has the least amount of hoops you just have to have her on the battlefield and uh instant inner sorcery in your graveyard boring bribery the whole table exactly yeah that's pretty cool yeah that being said cass can flashback blatant thievery which is that's you can kind of see the truth and you can draw three cards off it for two mana that's kind of cool yeah i don't i don't know man briberying the whole table is pretty good there's like some stuff you can build around like there's some stuff there like whenever you cast a spell from the graveyard you draw a car or like the river kelpie or whatever yeah i'll create a [ __ ] there's there's not much though i don't know i don't know if i've ever seen anyone build around cass it's always just like um value stuff true yeah again we love everybody who plays cast but oh sure we love you we just hate your cards we made it clear at the beginning we love everyone play what you want commander is for everybody moving on yeah oh we gotta pick it up we're almost an hour in already and we've gone through like five there's no way we're doing we're doing 12. all right here's a quick one i think this one is like i think this one is just in here because of the precon or something kyla seaguardian emissary five mana tutu human cleric whenever another human enters the battlefield under your control blood plus put a plus one plus one counter on it and other humans you control get plus one plus one for each counter on it in celestia colors isn't that just just a generic engine like how humans don't have a problem growing that team right you can play am i missing something are there is this like a combo piece why are so many there's like so many cool humans you can play even if you stick to celestia you got cathedral which turns everything into mana bops and then you can grow them which is i mean this one just grows and it's five nine four two two is there anything i'm saying here he's a huge anthem you just plop him on the battlefield you cast a bunch of humans or you don't even have to cast a bunch of games he works with human tokens and then all of your humans attack for lethal like i found like putting a gun here in your command zone right like you just kind of like comes down comes in this one you have to follow it up and it's a five drop i mean i'm not even saying yeah of course it's a huge anthem but so is code of arms or anything else it also has to stay in the battlefield it's not like it's just putting the counters on things it gets the counters on itself so it has to stick around yeah i feel like this is actually a good reminder of how precon cards tend to be overvalued on edh rack when you're looking through the rankings and you see something like kyler that's like way at the top of the list i think it gets a pretty meaningful bump just like we were talking about acai to some extent like because it was in a cheap pre-con that a lot of people have and a lot of people just go with it upload the pre-contact list or whatever so i think that probably is part of it at least yeah yeah it's gotta be it's so so two-dimensional i mean you play it everything gets huge all of the other cards did that already it's also a human have so much more colors you can explore even if you play like five colors with canvas or something i play even if you want to stay in celestia i don't play celeste why would you play celestia you don't even get like i i don't see why you would play celestine humans it's just more colors because because you're gonna get bored wiped right at some point you assume yourself's gonna die adding black then immediately means that you can like bring it all back right so that's why i love my tren and silva uh humans deck because i just get all the sweet things that come in come with black uh you're losing out on red red has professional face breaker you're losing out on zulaport cutthroats things like that uh you're losing it on general's enforcer which by far is like one of the best humans because all humans are legendary pretty much thalia kudrow all these things like you just get more resiliency out of your your like just playing like mardu or like anything like that like i just don't think what you're getting from green makes humans like like better i i think i mean get like you you lose out on judith right like there's a lot that comes in mardu i think mardu is just strictly the at least you don't have to like exclusively play marty you can play five color whatever but like if you have the mardu base you're able to then return it with like haunting voyage uh patriarch's bidding you have all that extra stuff to reoccur your humans so because you're i assume my humans will always die so having like like morbid opportunist so that you draw cards when anything dies like these are just things that are very good in humans i mean i my favorite human tribal is also it's an introvert till uh chill true yeah you know what i'm talking about tren and silva there we go my favorite my favorite human tribal is are those two but there are they're kind of aristocrats and i don't know i still think selesnia brings a lot like torrens is probably my favorite piece for human trouble so it makes human tokens whatever you're casting creatures uh katilda turns all your humans into mana dorks um you also have heron blade elite which generates a ton of mana uh whenever you're playing humans you get counters on and taps to add min equal to its power um so green brings a lot to the table also you have like 101 ways to refill your entire hand shamanic revelation draw cards for each each uh creature you have on the battlefield [Music] like whatever species specialist or whatever whatever like there there's a lot that isn't worrying about cart no it's black no that's why anything that you're worried like because like if you're worried about heart advantage mardu's got that right but does he also mean the most humans outside of white like is it aren't green and white like the primary human colors in magic or no i mean i think i guess there are like like green humans you have like king darian now all that other stuff but like a majority of the like the the i think what i consider like some of the best ways to make a tribal deck work and then on top of the human deck uh is is to have black right because then you you can punish people for killing your stuff you can because you i just assume my stuff's dying left and right just don't have your creatures died beforehand yeah you know i didn't i didn't factor that into it so yeah maybe i'll go back to the drawing board i mean it is the one thing that green gives you is sagarda champion of light which i like and like realm walker i think there's a bit more that green the strongest color in commander gives any deck but sure yeah it's a creature deck and green is all about rapping if i would play humans i'd probably play bands and just run with shulain if you want to be powerful i did i think i don't i don't care if you wipe my board if i drew a card for every creature i played but shulain is just going to be loop white main lion and then just play humans with it i mean i'm not it's a bit boring but it's pretty powerful there's definitely upside to having guardian project great henge like all those cards i feel like that's doing the same thing as the black cards are doing to some extent like the black cards let you get back your stuff when it dies the green cards just let you draw so many cards that if your stuff dies you don't care because you're just like generating card advantage everything you cast so i can see arguments for both of them but i think like i don't know i don't think green white humans are bad i do wonder though like is tauren's just a better green white if you want to stay straight celesnia isn't torrens like more interesting and maybe even better than kyler i like carlo though i would put carla in the 99 but i don't think he's he's worthy of the commander's thought i think you just replaced him with torrens or katilde and you're good i think torrance is probably the best overall definitely not worthy of being like five times as much played as those options or whatever it is by the actual data yeah king darian is like something that i would probably look into right because he kind of just makes an army on his own of course they aren't human which is unfortunate but whatever yeah that's awkward like i i i got five man to make one token i mean sure but training but like i i think i think tauren's is definitely better that actually no torn just sits there and makes tokens for just casting creatures which are trying to do anyway and he grows them because they all have training this is like woof yeah i do like that also like my taurens i i do like so the main things in green are just like agar of autumn realm walker and like maybe sarith i think those are like the main powerhouses that i don't think you can get like that that but i see the appeal of green is druid of purification a human on elf just one other stapler purification is it's a human i think that's enough oh it's a human human group it is yeah yeah that shot that's a pretty good one that is [Music] make a human warrior token so i don't know i thought i wouldn't count out green i think i i like i like the marty the most like i said i do think is the most fun for me but i think celesnia humans are sick as well i think mardu is just strictly better just like it's a hard sell that cutting the best coloring commander is going to improve your tribe i'm not i'm not convinced how is i i mean i'm being serious like i think that the zoo like losing out on all the drains like if they are able to like kill your stuff they're gonna lose a lot of life and then you're gonna refill your hand so you're able to like it helps you expedite the aggression right because you don't have reach with with like green white other there's no zulapor there's no blood artist i know blood artist is a vampire but like i'm just gonna kill you with my finale of devastation or whatever it doesn't matter that's almost fine sure like there's the main way they're two different decks almost it sounds like there's so many humans in magic that i don't even know how many cards your mardu human deck would share with your green white human bag yeah like one's aristocrats and one is they're like a beat down tribal overrun style like tribal decks so yeah it feels like maybe they're hard to compare because even though they're the same tribe they're just like working on very different axises celestia is more like an elf ball deck it's a human ball deck whereas mardu is like an aristocrat stack like synergy yeah yeah they both have them also also mardu has like the best ways to like interact with your opponent without actually like hurting your own game plan uh like opposition agent well that i mean that yeah but like you also have like ruinous ultimatum you have like the dictates right like i don't have to do too much i don't like sync a ton of slots in for like removal and like i have general kudrow which is also removal and graveyard hate like so you get to do everything in martin and you get me hook massacre i i demand the human tribal commander clash yeah i will run celesnia let's let's [Music] [Laughter] these will be pretty different text that actually sounds pretty cool human is by far the most popular in terms of card type in magic so yeah like by a mile so we could definitely make it happen i always find that funny it's really funny that humans like in a fantasy game where you want to like get away from humans like yeah like it's like playing an like i always i have a theory that like if you play like you play an mmo or d d and you make a human you were very much so an alien or like i'm being or very suspicious here because yes hello fellow humans how are you it is i being a human doing human things i enjoy humanity because we have a bias because we're all humans so we if we want to see ourselves in these characters it's much easier for us to see ourselves in communities as opposed to yeah telmer is trying to hide the fact that he is definitely an ugly yes no no no i i'm myself as a human in humans yes i'm a basic when it comes to d d that's why i play a tiefling you think you think humans are the most popular in dvd no every single person is a tiefling well that's right but that would make sense that's fine no i think it's because the sets need an antagonist that threatens a species and if the species isn't huge yeah i don't care if the crows and forest gets blown up because yeah i don't know they didn't even invent the wheel or something but humans build stuff i guess it's human bias but it's not like i want to identify with it getting ripped apart by a demon and it's also where's human tribal is kathil the torins are all from innistrad and what's the theme of innocence humans are being hunted if it was like i don't know kithken being hunted people real like ah it sucks to be them yeah you know wouldn't have the same resonance before we have to see ourselves as a victim if it's like slivers or something who cares the poor slippers are being hunted it's like all right well that's what they deserve like i mean that happens in nature right every like this no you don't feel bad for the sliver player at the table that's what they get for playing more fun as their slavery commander that's what i'm going to say that's probably why yeah i grew a fella all right speaking of humans uh you got a human on your list oh i do have a human uh well kind of uh okay no wait she she actually is just straight up a human she is i think she's a cleric uh she is an original an og one of the faces like when you think of a pillar of like a commander right it's kalia of the vast one in mardu uh it's a human cleric flying when kali of the vast attacks an opponent you may put an angel demon or dragon creature card from your hand on the battlefield tapped and attacking that opponent uh it's a tutu so you know how this it's a story as old as walk time when it comes to commander you know hall of the bandit lord and you know all of a sudden surprise master of cruelties an onslaught of dr like dragons angels whatever right but i feel like if i were going for a sneak in show or like a sneak attack play style there's new cards like there's perfroza of course you lose out on black and white and it is just locked in a monoret but in the current year i think kalia is just underwhelming like kalia is very underwhelming she's a 2-2 that is easily dealt with uh and then on top of that like when you don't have kalia it feels like the deck doesn't do anything like it actually just feels like i'm sitting here with like nine to ten mana cards that kind of just do nothing or this five mana clunky threat that's like you know oh the cool that is a master of cruelties that i'm fairly casting right like it is it just doesn't seem that powerful anymore it doesn't seem like it it sounds weird to say this it doesn't seem like she does enough anymore and she is mostly in this format and still highly played and like she's got 8 217 decks on edh rec right which is she's the number two the second most played commander and i just don't see like it must be because of the fact that she is and much like atraxa an iconic card right she is an iconic card so that's why she has the numbers to back it up otherwise if you're looking for like function and like power level of this command i think usually oftentimes you're just gonna sit there with nothing like a bunch of cards in hand that you're gonna have to wait till turn nine and then and then pray that you get to like you know cast that that's a that's a tough one i mean on one end i think you're right that it's not very powerful anymore on the other hand i have a hard time figuring out what i would play in place of it like if i want to do like jam all my angels demons and dragons together in a deck or like the sneak in show play style it's like what what would i play in place of that and that's where it gets really like really tough so i feel like yes isn't that one that one's probably even worse i don't know you don't get to cheat this stuff into play although it does get an etv trigger so you don't have to worry about it dying which is nice i mean that's the problem about the vast right it doesn't cheat the cards into play because it just it feels like it just dies but it feels like you draw your hand and see like oh that's crazy keep if my thalia so every kalyan survives yeah i think more often than not it doesn't and then it's just a feel bad moment and i think the fear bad moments are more than the feel good moments and you're not gonna get a replay with it but because i just don't think i'm going to attack with it i mean that's dice to removal is kind of boring to say but with kalia it's like the rest of the deck is so clunky and if it's not clunky and you can just cast it it's probably not the coolest thing to cheat into play you are like a table priority number one if you're a colleague right that's another thing you're not even green to ramp like yeah you're not in the green to ramp everyone knows that your commander is like a one-trick pony we gotta kill kalia or like there is no politicking like you quite often i find that i there is no situation where i'm like oh yeah sure hey i'll swing this and then you know put this in a plane help the table out [Music] i'm gonna just kill your commander she's she's she deserves her love i don't know it's popularity makes a lot of sense to me it's like three of the most timmy and iconic creature types in magic and like cheating your big things into play like to me that just sounds like casual commander players like perfect card it's not a good card and i bet people don't win very much with it so i agree with kim that from like a power level perspective i don't think it's the 12th most powerful commander in the format by any stretch but i do think like if you want to play and do the if you want the play pattern that calia provides i don't think there's anything else that does what cali does like really but there's so much easier like so many easier ways to go about it right like if you want to cheat things into play i'm all for cheating things into play you've literally heard me defend morophon just to play big dragons for cheap right like kalya like why don't you just ram or reanimate like that's like cheating in a plane of course yes graveyard hate stomps you out but like you know like like they're if you're trying to cheat those out then like you have black right then okay reanimate you even white randomly has reanimation right uh tomer you've played mono white reanimator like like there are ways to go about it if you want to cheat things into play then you have red you could play perfrost an actual resilient commander right you can cheat all your drag your red dragons and play by paying three mana and then just smacking people with it right like real quick or and you get to cheat things in that aren't refined like or like you know kind of contained in the angel demons or dragon box you can hit people with like i don't know a random blight steel colossus if you wanted out of performance i guess i think i got a um if you want to play this style and i i mean let me know in the comments if that works how many times you get away with it if you have swift foot boots or something sure that's pretty very good but i think it's more interesting to play if you want to play this kind of deck i think hans eriksen the cut that looks like seth doesn't they also cheat things into play but then he has to fight them i remember playing against this on [Music] stacking the top of your deck and then if you hit a crease you get to put it into place so kind of similar but not exactly the same either more random and you have to have hansel live so you need better beard though better beer than kalia okay yes by a bear i mean hansen is the same problem but at least it's green so you can also ram and play you can actually just cast the things that you're trying to cheat in the play not saying that you couldn't with kalia i'd go to bat account for kalia though she was basically just a glorified mana discount on a stick like she she doesn't do card advantage she just says man at discount yeah she she brings all the hate but i think a lot of her popularity might be like uh a holdover from the old days because you have to keep in mind she was printed she was one of the she was the original like commander set stuff she came out over a decade ago and this was before we had any sort of angel tribal commander like there was no giada obviously there was no real demon tribal commander and there was no er dragon or anything for dragon tribal so if you want to run these really expensive iconic uh timmy cards she was the go go to thing and even to this day she's a four drop when she attacks you get to basically cheat out like a six drop or seven drop an eight drop or something like that and you kind of give it haste at the same time too because it's entering the battlefield already attacking so i think that's that's already still pretty decent but i do agree that she will get a lot of hate and you will be the arch enemy at the table so some people kind of like that and they they lean in on that like they just try to you know uh cheat out cali a turn two turn three give her a lightning grooves or something like that put a throttle on the board and armageddon and you're a pretty cutthroat commander that way yeah that's that was that was an old play pattern that was like i'm a boomer so i was i was experiencing this in 2011 2012 that was the way you played cali and you had to because if you were trying to play fair calia like you would get killed because people would be like it's kalia he they can have whatever in their hand in 2011 there is no fair cal but the ta the tables were generally kalia nekusar maelstrom wanderer and you know like so you would sit and so like these are cards of like the old like of the old guard when you think of like commander so like these are the pillars right i think she's still fine now but it's like i don't know i mean i could still play nekusar right i could still play maelstrom wanderer i i could still play like maybe the sedisi deck right i mean like back then but like calia i feel like she is so painful once she dies the first time because then you're like okay six mana oh god she dies again now it's like you're actually just paying for the thing you're cheating yeah but at the same time aren't like cali adex built to try to get around that aren't you like loading up on mother roons and lightning reeves and like i assume if you're building calia like a big chunk of your deck is dedicated to hopefully getting in the first hit with that now that it's always going to work but but then therein lies the balance problem right so then okay you have these cards that protect calia and then you have like these shoes all these other things but then you have the clunky things and it just feels like you're doing three different things and it often just messes with what half of your deck you have like i can see that you draw you draw your boots and no and nothing big to put into play or something and you have a rough go of it so yeah that that makes sense and then you're still the enemy yeah if you don't have anything to cheat out but everybody wants to kill you that's yeah probably pretty frustrating right like you will die you could just not build around cali yeah you can see save for basically like your mardu deck that deals with angel demons and dragons and cali is just a man or rock in your command zone you know you play italia old kalya then yeah one could play with three more kalyan or card advantage engineer command so do you want a card advantage engine in your command zone or do you want a mana engine in your command zone so you like to play calia and if you do get to swing in with her great if not you'll stick to like a reanimation plan a sneak attack plan or you just ramp a lot and then you just hard cast your command or your big beaters anyway i i don't think she's she's that impressive anymore like i think she's overplayed for sure especially because now if you want an angel tribal deck you got angel tribal if you want demon tribal you got demon tribal and if you want dragon tribal if you want all three then yeah she's she's great at that she still has that aspect but like in 2011 you didn't have these options in 2022 you do have these options i think you i think it would be you have the fact that you have more options you probably should be trying out different options absolutely like and subscribe we don't hate california again like i don't hate it either as a matter of fact i i love the card right i mean it was one of the og ones it's a sweet card like i just i don't know it just doesn't seem like it does it for me anymore it's and like it just overrated yeah on the note of people being offended i almost had a riku of two reflections on my list and this is probably the most fun command i can imagine but it's also like it dies very quickly kind of like kalya so don't take offense so i mean it's super fun but it's fun and it's like i will i will let riku live yeah like like you also have to pay mana for whatever you're doing too like riku is slow he costs a lot and you have to pay mana to even get any value out of him i will leave him alone kelly i won't i'm gonna have respect yeah yeah i think this is maybe a holdover um from the old days because it's not an iconic it's one of the most iconic commanders it made it started off commander as a format right um all right i have i have one i don't know how many we're gonna end up doing but i have one uh that that might shock some more people if there are any more people listening um i'm sorry because i'm going to drag the er dragon down a little bit uh one of the most popular commanders ranked number four in in terms of edh rec um for people who don't know their dragon uh i don't know how you missed dragon tribal it's kind of a big thing these days uh it's a nine mana wuburg dragon avatar 1010 so very expensive to hard cast but thankfully you don't actually have to ever cast their dragon to get the most value out of him uh it has eminence as long as in the command zone or on the battlefield other dragon spells you cast costs one less to cast and then if it is on the battlefield for whatever reason it's a flying and whenever one or more dragons you control a tank draw that many cards and you may put a permanent card from your hand onto the battlefield eminence is really the reason why it's so good it's five colors so you get access to all the dragons you don't have to worry about uh this is not in my color identity or whatever you have all of them and it doesn't even need to be cast not nine mana whatever mana value you can ignore that and you can just enjoy the fact that all your dragons which are just naturally very expensive thing is an expensive tribe they usually are like five drops and higher all of them cost one less which is amazing that's exactly what you want from a dragon tribal deck is it very strong yes is eminence a mistake absolutely yes however and and i will say it's a fantastic dragon commander however i think it actually is an overplayed dragon trial tribal commander because there's actually an older um other dragon tribal that i think is is actually stronger and also a little bit more interesting like more you can't see more interesting no this is the original er dragon this is the original dragon scion of the earth dragon sign of the urgent also a wooberg uh commander not nine mana just five uh legendary creature dragon avatar it's a four four flyer you can play two mana switch your library for a dragon permanent card put into your graveyard and if you do it becomes a copy of that card until end of turn then shuffle this card is very unpopular for some reason i mean the reason is it gets over showered by the er dragon it looks very innocent on its surface which i think is another reason why it's not that popular or dragon is kind of like in your face like look at me i am choose me as your commander this one is just like hey how's that getting going i can put stuff in your graveyard is that cool and it actually is cool though that's the interesting thing is it's cool like you can you can pay two mana and turn this into any of the ancient dragons you can pay two mana and like uh turn it into an ancient blue draw up to 20 cards for two mana and also you it's a tudor ability it's an entomb it's a repeatable tomb for two mana each time you just put it into the graveyard it's great for reanimation so you can actually get a you could actually like cast your uh dragons for a lot cheaper than the er dragon provides uh by just entombing stuff and reanimating them and adding like a reanimate something to the scion obviously you can also one shot people very easily too you can turn cyan of the dragon into like uh a thingy that uh lets him pump up his power and then you can turn him into something with double strike and then just like one shot easily that way too um it's it's really strong and it's a very different take on dragon it's dragon reanimator it gives you five color just like the error dragon it can give a much better uh mana discount than the ear dragon can ironically and uh it's a repeatable tutor effect in your graveyard i know it's really good but people just like don't know about it or don't realize how powerful it can be i think that cyan is sweet sounds like a walking ad and billboard to just go build the er dragon though it's the cyan dragon like it's just like the spine like it's life is the real thing you start at the scion and you're like oh the sign of the air dragon what's the air drag oh i'll just play the air drag it's like do you need this like even the art is like kind of wimpy in comparison to this right right with you guys her dragon is like you ever hear of my older brother it's just so hard to compete with mistakes like eminence i think you run into this with like vampires with edgar too uh wizards with the nala like just like the mechanics so busted the ability through the entire game without ever spending any mana just to like get an effect is like it's so good so i love scion i think science is way more interesting but boy i can see why people trend towards erdragon because eminence is just it's busted it was a mistake i think is legit and no joke's stronger though yeah do you think it's stronger than her dragon really because it's better than that i'm actually wondering yeah yeah i think it's easier to kill with the scion but the eardragon itself makes your whole deck just bro i mean eminence is you can't compete with this because it's it seems like a heavily downvoted custom card on reddit like oh you start the game with a very strong emblem sure the only cool use of the ordering itself is thomas tribal travel deck i like this idea but just make seven drops cast costs five mana for zero investment just in your command zone obviously you can't compete with this but the commander itself i think sign of the ordering is way more interesting maybe a lot more shuffling through your deck if you cut that out it's just super interesting way more combos and it kills i mean the order i can sure it kills if you actually cast it but who would do this the only time i've seen the eur dragon is if the other dragon puts it on the battlefield four turn and i'm always trying to charge whatever yeah yeah i mean the ordering also has a crazy other ability which sure if you want to cast it but you don't have to so theodor dragon yeah it's just a mistake it's like awkward and constructed to a dragon or eminence and kumana just doesn't make any sense that's wow but why wouldn't i dragons boring too why don't i just play team at then or or or like i i feel like team ad knowledge like these sound is just fun interesting but the sign is super science way i think science is the most interesting like out of the out of the five color dragon commander cyan is probably the most interesting to me i'm not convinced that it's more powerful than the dragon all right but i think that like as far as like which would be the most fun to build around and play and do like cool things it's got to be cyanothere dragon how did you know it's kind of like there's no way that you okay i think this scion first off fails on a few fronts here it's not as powerful as her dragon it doesn't have no way [Applause] it what the as your it makes your deck better right somewhere actually i think you're drinking it's best and then one of the tiamat right because it doesn't have the casual appeal like tiamat like looks cool it is cool i'm getting more dragons so like my inner timmy loves that right like like it just it doesn't it it fails on the appeal for me at least like it's like i would just play her dragon cause it's super powerful or and if i want something more fun and like cat like you know like for a casual thing then i would gladly play tmf that just feels way cooler we all know you'd be playing more okay so for people who aren't aware of scion their dragon which is everyone uh easily you can start taking people out like you can't allow cyano their dragon to basically untap and attack people because the moment you attack with sign on the earth dragon you can first like pay 2 mana turn into like scourge of the throne attack the creature attacked opponent with the highest life toter and you're going to be taking an extra combat after this turn that into let's say an ancient gold drag or the ancient copper dragon make a make a bunch of mana uh you can also turn it into a molten what was it molten steel dragon you can pay one ferexian life to give it plus one plus o turn into skipperix when when you have 10 or more power at that at that point one shot somebody with an effect you're taking your extra combat so you go and attack somebody else oh you have a bunch of mana maybe you turn into a hell charger you dump your extra mana into the hellkite charger when it attacks uh you get to one shot another person on the same combat like it's it's really good even if you're not one-shotting people which you absolutely will be doing uh you can turn it into like what is the hellkite tyrant that steals all the artifacts you could turn it into old nawbone and make that many treasure equal the amount of damage you're dealing like it's it's it's really good i mean for me you all understand how good it is i think i think it's good but that just doesn't compare to the her dragon like i think it i think it's very strong but like our dragon is just like it's it's a that's a mistake card like we talked about before it's more like the spirit of commander i think oh dragons yeah but then you can like patriarch's bidding and just reanimate all those dragons you entombed as well too in case in case you didn't win the game with scion itself you just like mastery animate with like an eerie ultimatum effect or like i do i do really like the graveyard aspect that's something that's pretty unique and you can play like the uh bladewing the risens you got rivas another cool new addition that cares about dragons in the graveyard so there are like a lot of really neat synergies so if you want to play like voltron dragons i guess voltron kombue dragons or like graveyard dragons it probably is the best at that but still if you just want to play like generic i'm going to play all the best dragons it's hard it's a tough sell to tell me that it's just actually better than their dragon disrespect the the deck we're describing right there tomer is essentially the lazav multifarious deck right but like oh yeah you know but like yeah like yes where you're turning into something that gives it unblockable and then you turn into something that has like double strike and then you turn something with an effect and you finish the job yeah right right so like i mean yeah that's that's not like but this one also gets actually combats you're turning into dragons what do you mean it does seem like you got a lot better with commander legends battle for baldergate because it's probably the best dragon commander to play all the like ancient dragon cycle with their combat triggers so you don't actually have to like cast your eight-man ancient silver dragon just like turn your commander into it and hit and draw a ton of cards or whatever so there are like there are shenanigans but isn't that what you want to do in a dragon you want to actually play the dragons you're not really like your animate thing you play more fun dragon scream we don't have to listen to this mine's cooler i put them into the graveyard and then i re mastering them in a glorious fashion also i have an urge because i'm not playing a fake fake dragon diamond what faker you just play a dragon deck with fake weapons i don't know where the fake dragon is because like yeah like i don't know this i don't know if i i obviously can't like kill somebody out of nowhere but i don't know it sounds super interesting uh i i am with toma here i think the old dragon it's it sure it makes your deck more powerful but sign of the ordering is at least way more fun and actually kills somebody sure the ordering in itself i mean it's just yeah you get a huge board listen to what thomas said that sounds so much fun like with eerie ultimatum and stuff it's ooh big value and actually playing magic not cheating by having an emblem on turn zero and then like insane like i had i actually have a dragon try ball that counts per froze but if i was going five color dragon tribal i'd actually go sign them their dragon yeah i could do something or more fun so what i always i think we need to do a human battle in a dragon battle to settle these arguments you better take me out first that's the thing the earth dragon better win like it is just the dragon will only win because i will be the problem at the table and you will have to stop me mostly kill everybody and then i guess the dragon is technically better in that regard because it does win but throwing it in the graveyard oh i'm glad you acknowledged it in the dragon episode cool so you do agree that it is a dragon three dragons on one posture the imposter the only one shape-shifting here is the scion of the earth dragon morophon is everything i always always all right i think i think that's a good good spot to end it right we're out hour 30. that's probably going to be like two hours all right uh well we talked about a bunch of overrated commanders we went over eight of them uh we have more that we could have talked about but we didn't really want to lose any more subs uh so we'll stop here um if you think a commander is overrated uh and you can say say it nicer than we can leave a comment down below and we can uh discuss that as well if you think if you disagree with our assessments obviously this is just our opinions uh you can also leave a comment uh saying why we're wrong because we're usually wrong about things and remember keep it civil everybody can play whatever you want but we have a podcast so listen to us youtube comments asking them to keep it civil all right let's let's see it let's see it oh boy all right that's it everybody we'll be back with something spicy next week that probably will be less or more spicy more spicy tune in next week even more spicy um all right uh bye see ya

Channel: MTGGoldfish Commander

Views: 56,991

Keywords: Magic the Gathering, MTG, EDH, Commander

Id: JtU8kaYmGSA

Length: 94min 27sec (5667 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 27 2022