Casually Commanding

Ask a Lv 1 judge questions about the commander format.

[blogging-phelddagrif]

EDH Deck Tech: Gitrog Monster

[you can see every deck tech here]

 I just want to start by saying that Gitrog Monster is one of the most “outside of the box” deck out there. Most decks rely on creatures, spells & such to win; this deck relies on lands. You WANT to draw lands and then sac those lands or discard them to get full value out of it. It’s a fun & very unique deck that plays so differently than any other deck. If it wasn’t of my very strict rule of “only 1 deck/format” I would for sure play this as a commander.

Now, the deck, while pretty centralized around lands, still has a lot of angles it’s coming from. First of all, you need Swiftfoot Boots & Lightning Greaves since you NEED your commander to stay alive, I can’t stress this enough. The deck relies on using the Gitrog Monster’s ability to draw you tons of cards and if it’s dead you’re screwed. There’s a lot to talk about so let’s dive right into it.

Ramping 

First things first; you need to ramp. The deck wants as many lands as possible, as fast as possible. You need cards like Sakura-Tribe Elder, Rampant Growth, Cultivate, Kodama’s Reach, Realms Uncharted, Crop Rotation, you name it. You also need a few mana dorks like Elvish Mystic, Birds of Paradise & stuff. You don’t need as many mana dorks as you need ramp, but it’s still nice to have that extra acceleration in the first couple of turns. Getting lands is VERY important!

Going the Extra Mile

Now that you’ve ramped, you still need to get some more lands out there quickly. Bourgeoning is amazing for that since it lets you play out all the lands you’re drawing very quickly. Exploration is also a very good option that let’s you play even more lands; Azusa, Lost but Seeking & Oracle of Mul Daya are also amazing cards, as well as Courser of Kruphix, that have a home in this deck. You want to get those lands out there.

Getting that Extra Value

By playing tons of lands you’re going to draw tons of cards, that’s what you need to remember. The deck wants to draw as many card and lands as possible, as quickly as possible; the rest isn’t too important. Also you’re getting to draw a card when a lands goes to the graveyard from ANYWHERE, like cycling some lands to net you 2 cards each time for example, or using Zombie Infestation to swarm out some with some 2/2s. You want to take advantage of these effects and there’s 2 big ways to go about that.

Dredging those Lands

Self-Mill is an amazing way to get some lands in the graveyard, even though the Gitrog Monster’s ability will only trigger once per mill effect, not once per land milled. Cards that have Dredge are usually pretty good, Grisly Salvage, Sudden Reclamation, Grapple with the Past, etc. This is not the MOST important part of the deck but it gets you that extra value that’s more than welcome.

Sacrificing those Lands

Another way to get those triggers going is by sacrificing your lands. You can have access to a bunch of good sacrifice outlets to let you draw tons of cards on top of getting the effects going. You NEED to play as many fetches as possible; Evolving Wilds, Myriad Landscape, Blighted Woodlands, Terramorphic Expanse, on-colour fetches & all you can get, those lands generate free value you can’t pass up on that! Sylvan Safekeeper lets you protect your commander, Reprocess lets you draw A LOT of cards and Scapeshift let’s you draw TONS of cards AND get a WHOLE LOT of lands from your deck and put them into play. Constant Mists lets you protect yourself for a while since your lands are pretty expandableAll of those cards are HUGE gamechangers. You don’t need a lot of sacrifice effects, but the few that you will play will most likely end the game very quickly. Oh, and Zuran Orb is a great way to gain life while sacrificing lands!

Recursion

Now that your lands are getting in your graveyard, you need a way to bring them back! Life from the Loam is an amazing way to do that! You also have some amazing options such as Creeping Renaissance, Tilling Treefolk and you also need to bring back nonland cards that you’ve lost along the way like Eternal Witness, Greenwarden of Murasa, Skullwinder, Reclaim, Noxious Revival, Regrowth.

Now that we’ve talked about how to take advantage of all that value your commander is providing; what about ways to use that value. You’ve drawn tons of cards, played a bunch of lands, you keep bringing back lands, but what do you do with all of that?

Attrition

Since you keep generating value and have ways to bring back your lands, you need to take advantage of that, by attacking other peoples resources. Smallpox, Pox, Desolation, Deathcloud & such. Making sure other peoples mana base is unstable or weak is how you take advantage of your deck. You need to play all the destroy lands like Wasteland, Strip Mine, Ghost Quarter, Encroaching Waste, Tectonic Edge; you’ll be able to keep bringing them back so you’ll be able to be very aggressive towards your opponents’ mana base WHILE drawing some cards in the meantime. You also need to manage the board with stuff like Pernicious Deed and other effects that let you wrath the board from everything besides your commander. Oh, you also NEED Krosan Grip, since you’re playing green, as well as Beast Within; you don’t really have a choice.

Landfall 

There’s no way around it, you will play a lot of lands, so why not take advantage of that? I’d say that just running Avenger of Zendikar & Rampaging Baloths is fine as far as landfall goes. You will get insane value out of those and if not dealt with, they will win you the game very quickly. Playing some cards like Ghost Town also guaranties you to never miss land drops! Also, Titania Protector of Argot lets you pop some tokens when you’re sacrificing some of those lands that you’ve just played, so that’s also a good direction to take. Boduka Gardner & Nissa, Vastwood Seer are also amazing win conditions, being really in their element here and being able to flip very easily; creating huge tokens & generating card advantage.

Using that Fat Graveyard

So, by now, your graveyard will be pretty full. There’s a bunch of cards that let you use that to your advantage. Stuff like Lord of Extinction, Terravore, Centaur Vinecrasher are HUGE creatures that will for sure put the pressure onto your opponent. You can also play a Creakwood Liege to make your Wurm tokens VERY big! Be careful about graveyard hate though since that can shut down the deck fairly easily, so you need to play around that and not put all your strategy into going full-graveyard style.

Going Infinite

There’s a little combo using Skirge, Dakmor Salvage & Exsanguinate that can be played as a last case plan. I’m not a huge fan of combos but having one in a deck is almost mandatory because other people often play combos and if you sense that they will go off soon, you need to be faster than them. I wouldn’t recommend always going for it, use it more as a backup plan. You also need cards like the old eldrazis or Gaea’s Blessing to be able to do the combo efficiently.

Wrapping-Up

That’s pretty much it. The deck is VERY unique and to be honest, is VERY fun to play. It’s somewhat fragile though since graveyard hate can really slow you down and if your commander gets killed too many times that really hits you hard too (though with Command Beacon now being a thing that’s less of a problem). If I ever go about making another commander deck this would probably be it as it’s so different than any other deck, it comes from such a different place and plays out so weirdly & fun. Hope you enjoyed it, if I missed anything let me know, and I’ll see you guys next week for another deck tech!

[casuallycommanding]

this is an excellent  way to play the gitrog monster, if you’ve ever been interested in building it you need to look at this list.

[titania-protector-of-argoth-dea]

I honestly can’t figure out which one I want to make next…. Any suggestions or votes would be appreciated!

[casuallycommanding]

When I’m deciding on a new commander, I usually pick whichever one is most or least like what I already have. So my advice is to not think of what you want to do, but instead think about what you’ve already done and if you want to do more or less of that.

[fresh-prince-of-beleren]

“I’ll cast Genesis Wave, where X is 49.”

[bace-jeleren]

“whose turn is it?”

[mushroom-shuffler]

“Exsanguinate for… 276? Is my math right?”

[maskedheromaskedchampion]

“The Squirrel Death Counter is at …. 125, currently.”

[casuallycommanding]

"I go infinite. Pass turn."

[casuallycommanding]

Help me make a Rashmi deck!

I was playing around with commander options and decided that I should build Rashmi, and I got a working deck list here. The deck functions as a counterspell control deck that uses a few infinite mana combos + x cost spells in order to win, but this has already been done. So to those of you who have built your own Rashmi decks, what have you done that went well? what would you change? and what made the deck fun for you?

[casuallycommanding]

Extract

Play this card.

If you are in blue play Extract. I don’t know if I could count how many decks rely too heavily on one card to win. How many green decks win with  Craterhoof Behemoth? How many decks use Deadeye Navigator combos? Every deck has a card that it wants to see more than any other card, and with this you don’t even have to know what it is before hand, you just have to know what to keep an eye out for.

Play Extract, it costs like 1.50 right now.

[casuallycommanding]

Fix your mana!

manabasecrafter.com is an easy way to fix your mana, and search for commanders in specific colors.

First you chose the colors you’re looking for, then chose a commander (probably your commander). Then it will list every land card you can run in your deck, organized by type (guild gate, search, manland, ect.) I just found it and boy does it make things easy.

[casuallycommanding]

Look at this website, I forgot about it and it’s really great.

[casuallycommanding]

What's the best place for Emrakul, the Promised End in EDH? Thanks!

Emrakul, the Promised End is an odd fit for EDH to be honest. Most of the time you can think of it as a 9 cost 13/13 that also kills at least one creature (because of the turn control effect). So my first instinct is to say as a win con in a control deck that plans on winning through damage, but could also take good advantage of a player being forced to take another turn, like Nekusar, the Mindrazer. In the same respect, Animar, Soul of the Elements and Rakdos, Lord of Riots both take advantage of fully generic creatures, and Emrakul is pretty good when free. 

In retrospect, the best place for Emrakul is not a deck, but instead it is a play group. If your playgroup has a lot of instant based control, then Emrakul basically has “protection from most spells” and you could use your stolen turn to do something meaningful with stolen spells.

So I don’t think you should be looking for a deck where Emrakul is a powerful when trying to figure out what to do with it, but instead you should look for places where playing Emrakul would be a rude thing to do to your friends.

*If I had one I’d put it in Zedruu as a win con and to force people to make bad decisions with stupid politics garbage.

[casuallycommanding]

Kaladesh

I like what Kaladesh looks to be, and am looking forward to playing with many of the cards coming out. A more in depth discussion of what makes any give card “cool” and “hype” is to come, but for now here’s five of the cards I’m excited to see and play with.

Every Gearhulk looks great, they will be a wonderful addition to any deck that can use them, especially if you’re just looking to add some big creatures to your deck. Each one does something great and worth mentioning, has wonderful versatility of use, and just seem plain fun.

The new Chandra has similar use to that of Garruk Wildspeaker, easily one of the best mono red planeswalkers printed so far, it will make a great addition to any deck which could run it. I think this card will definitely see play in quite a few commander decks (a few of which are mine)

My pick for the best new commander for flavor reasons, Gonti is the only rogue that has every made me feel like I was stealing a card from my opponents. Not the most powerful card, but I think I’m going to love it all the same.

Rashmi is going to be the most powerful commander option to come from Kaladesh, it’s a great way to play counter spells and big creatures as well a great number of other options, a deck list is to come for sure.

An effect I never get tired of seeing, Authority of the Consuls is a great card that is going to see play somewhere for someone. Control decks that see a lot of aggro or token should pick up a copy if possible. 

[casuallycommanding]

Thoughts on sliver overlord in a sliver commander deck? Rather than playing hivelord.

these are both really valid commander choices for you slivers deck, but there are differences between the cards they naturally want you to play.

A sliver overlord deck wants to control the early game so that you can get to the late game and utilize the sliver fetching ability that it has to give sliver overlord more keywords, and just get as many slivers out as it can.

A sliver hivelord deck wants to act more like an aggro or mid range deck. If a hivelord deck manages to play a sliver on each turn, then cap it off with hivelord, then they have put out a board state that is extremely difficult for most decks to deal with.

To be honest though, both of these decks could be played in any way you want, as playing slivers gives you a good aggro package, and playing 5 color gives you a good control package.

I prefer hivelord because you will always have access to indestructible, and it requires less set up to really go off. Overlord is better if your play group has a lot of late games anyway, but it feels extra bad when someone kills or counters overlord because most of your deck relies on it being in play and doing work.

Basically the way I see it is, if I’m playing hivelord as my commander, and someone removes overlord somehow, it sucks but not that bad, but if I’m playing overlord and someone removes hivelord somehow, that sucks a whole lot, especially if I can’t get it back.

[casuallycommanding]

Just built my first commander deck using Narset Enlightned Master. could I get your opinion on my list? My red and white aren't the greatest but I think it'll be ok for the combo I've worked out for her lol.

yeah sure thing, send me the list and I’ll check it out

[casuallycommanding]

Deck Building

Building a Commander deck is often difficult for first timers, as well as experienced magic player. There are a lot of small nuances which make deck building for Commander vastly different than building for a 60 card format like Modern. So I’ve got a few tips and tricks that will help you become a deck building master in no time.

Because this is the first installment of the Deck Building series, we’ll talk about choosing your Commander, and the process of starting to construct a deck.

The first thing to ask yourself is, “What do I want to play?” There are three things you might come up with to answer this.

1. A Specific Commander.

2. A Specific Play-style or Strategy.

3. A Specific Non-Commander Card.

Then you have to ask yourself, “What is the point of playing this?”

If you chose a Commander, then it’s time to break down what that card does, and what you want to do with that. Take Zedruu as an example. Zedruu gains life, draws cards, gives people your things, and pretty much nothing else. Because all of Zedruu’s effects are based on the number of things you’ve given out, the rest of the deck will be based on having synergy with this, most likely by giving out cards you don’t want to have, or giving out cards that aid you even if you don’t have control over it. Good questions to ask yourself are, “Does my Commander want me to attack often?” “Does my Commander rely on a specific type of card?” “On what step are my Commander’s abilities most useful?” “What is the outcome of my Commander’s abilities?” and “Should I be casting cards on my turn, or my opponents’ turns?”

If you chose a play-style, then it’s time to examine it. A good question to ask yourself is, “How does this play-style win?” Usually aggressive decks try to win by out pacing or out valuing their opponents by playing stronger cards faster, and Control decks usually have a small number of important win conditions which they rely on, while slowing down their opponents and preventing their opponents cards from ending the game. Knowing your play group is often what will cause you to choose a play-style first. If every deck in your group is super slow, then it may be a good idea to try out some aggressive strategies, as you may find it easy to outpace opponents who don’t play cards early. Or if you notice that all of your opponents like to play with enchantment based decks, removing key enchantments will probably buy you the time you’ll need to play your favorite combo.

If you chose a non-Commander card, then you’ll want to break down that card by asking yourself the following questions: “What does this card do?” “What other types of cards might be good with this card?” and “What is the overall outcome of those cards in combination?” Lets say you want to play with Sedge Scorpion. What does it do? It has Deathtouch, and low stats, so it helps you kill other creatures. What would be good with it? Any card that takes advantage of Deathtouch, one example would be cards which make your creatures Fight another creature, or cards that give First Strike. I think Fight sounds fun. What is the over all outcome of having Fight cards and Deathtouch creatures? A lot of creatures die. So at this point you’d ask yourself what commanders like it when creatures die, and what colors are good at Fight and Deathtouch . In this case I would recommend Kresh the Bloodbraided, but there are quite a few good choices.

If you can answer all those questions you’ll be one step closer to completing a Commander deck you’ll love.

So lets work through an example.

I want to play Werewolf tribal, but there are no legendary Werewolf commanders. What do I do?

First thing I ask is “What’s the point of playing Werewolves?” The answer to this is because they are cool and I like them. 

Ok that didn’t help. Now what?

Well I’ve basically chosen a non-Commander card, and now need to come up with a deck based around that. So the next question I’ll ask is “What does this card do?” The answer to this is it Werewolf, and it cool.

I’m not getting anywhere with this. 

So ok, there is nothing obvious that all Werewolves share other than their creature type. They are also Red and Green, and very rarely sometimes Black. We know that we’re going to put in some of the generic tribal cards, like Shared Animosity, but most of those cards are already in our required colors, Red and Green. Now we should think about more obvious aspects of these cards.

Werewolves are creatures who have valuable effects, and often want our opponents casting few spells so that they can be flipped over. We know that we’re probably going to employ an aggro strategy. So how do we maximize the value we get off of our Werewolves? 

Lets ask ourselves again “What dose this card do?” Its a creature, so it attacks, it’s a Werewolf so it flips on upkeep based on the number of cards cast, and they are non-token creatures, so we can capitalize on effects that watch non-token creature death. So we want something that likes attacking, helps us keep storm counts at 1 or 0, and something that works well with a lot of non-token creatures. 

What other cards are good keeping those ideas in mind? Silence is nice because it’ll help us flip our guys, Commanders with activated abilities are nice because they give us something useful to do with our mana, and on attack effects are nice because we’ll be attacking a lot. On death triggers aren’t as nice as I want them to be, because I am working with very limited resources, but maybe if I dig deep enough, I’ll find some on-death triggers that only work for non-token creatures and those might be good for us to work with.

What’s the outcome of having these cards? Silence and other cards which prevent players from casting spells will help us keep up with faster decks, and make sure our creatures flip, this would put us in White, so we are at the least going to be White Green Red, or Naya. In Naya we’ll have a lot of opportunities to use on-attack triggers, as well as get extra combats, so Naya is a likely choice. What if I really want the on-death effects, because I’ve never played with a deck that uses non-token death well? Effects like these are probably going to be found in Black, which would put us in at least Black Green Red, or Jund. In Jund we’ll also have access to some fun tribal cards like Cover of Darkness. What if I don’t want another color? This is often a tough one, but It as always can be done, you’ll just need to find a Commander that will in some way aid you in using your werewolves.

So now I’m looking for three things. 1. A Naya Commander which helps us stop our opponents from casting spells or aids us during combat. 2. A Jund Commander which is either good at combat, or likes creature death. 3. A Red Green Commander who has useful effects.

Now is when you should look up the legendary creatures in those colors, I’ll use Manabase Crafter to make it quick and easy.

I’ve decided that I will use one of these three Commanders. Now I’ll ask myself about them, what do I feel like I’m getting from playing one over the other.

Gahiji, Honored One and Ruric Thar, the Unbowed are both going to help me with the whole, I don’t want you to cast spells thing. Gahiji will do so by giving us access to white, and Ruric will do so by being himself. Personally I like Gahiji more, so I’m going to give up on staying only Red Green.

Sek'Kuar, Deathkeeper gives us access to Black which has a lot of fun spells, and he helps us keep the aggro going even when our creatures are killed. Having Black will also help us force our opponents to discard their cards, keeping them down to at most one spell a turn, so we get to keep our Werewolves flipped more often.

So now we’ve got it narrowed down to two. Gahiji and Sek’Kuar, and at this point it would be up to personal preference. I already have a good Jund deck, so I’m going to choose Gahiji.

There we have it, I’ve got a Commander. Now I’ve just got to build the deck...

We’ll talk about that next time, but for now, tell me about your deck building experiences. What do you like to do? What makes it easier for you? As always, send any questions you may have to the ask box here, and I’ll be sure to help in any way I can.

[magic-edh-talk]

Combo of the day: A lot of human wizards.

This one’s pretty simple, cast infatuation, copy it with Dualcaster Mage’s ETB effect, make another dualcaster mage etc. Pretty easy to pull off eh?

[casuallycommanding]

The Gitrog Frog

The Gitrog Monster likes to combo out, most decks build around this. Our version, which can be found here, is better described as a single combo within a light control shell. 

Unlike most decks featured on Causally Commanding, this one had no budget restrictions, so everybody thank @curtherocker​ for this thing.

Remember that because Big Frog Guy isn’t out yet I haven’t been able to really test this specific strategy against the other types of Dr. Toad decks. Though I believe that this deck will have a very high win-rate regardless of if it is the best Bog Blog Boy or not.

There are 3 steps in winning with Gitrog: Stalling, Filling the Grave, and Winning.

Stalling is the simple part of playing this deck. Use cards like Tangle Wire and  Putrefy to make the game go longer by hindering everyone, or spot removing big threats. The longer a game goes, the more likely you are to win.

Keep an eye out for any cards like Rest in Peace as they are hard counters to your deck, you must remove them before attempting to combo off.

Stage 2 is fill the grave, and we have one way to do it. Using a discard engine like Trespasser il-Vec we will repeatedly discard and then dredge back to our hand Dakmor Salvage. We do this till our library is completely in our grave, then we combo.

If Dakmor Salvage is somehow removed from the game a secondary win-con is present in Exsanguinate. We’ve got a few infinite mana combos using either Necrotic Ooze or Rings of Brighthearth, and with the number of tutors this deck runs, you should have no trouble ending the game with an X=40 Exsanguinate. 

But with our combo the win is so much easier, if not more complicated. So assuming that you have chosen to combo off only when you are able to win (which is the only time you should combo off). After milling yourself, you will keep going till you have Necrotic Ooze in hand or graveyard. If in hand cast, if in grave you have a few options.

Option 1 is use a flashback spell like Morgue Theft to move Necrotic Ooze. Flashback Acorn Harvest and Chatter of the Squirrel to get three creatures so you can flashback Dread Return.

With Necrotic Ooze on the field and Palladium Myr + Pili-Pala in the grave you can generate infinite mana. This mana can be used to untap Necrotic Ooze with the Pili-Pala ability, and tap to use Endbringer’s deal damage ability. With Thornling in the grave you can give Necrotic Ooze haste, so this combo wins right away.

You could also use the infinite mana from Necrotic Ooze, or infinite mana generated by discarding Dakmor Salvage to Skirge Familiar to infinitely cast Syphon Life, again using Dakmor Salvage, this time to pay the retrace cost.

If you only have one opponent left, you can kill them with only Wild Mongrel and Dakmor Salvage. Make your Wild Mongrel super huge then cast Traitor's Clutch for it’s flashback and kill some guys.

You have a few backups in case something goes wrong.

If your library is empty you can use Krosan Reclamation to put relevant cards back into your library, then discard lands to draw the two cards you just put back in.

Tutoring out Yawgmoth's Will before you mill yourself also guarantees a win. Simply use Yawgmoth's Will to cast any combo pieces you need. 

Having Elixir of Immortality our will save the day on occasion, sometime you’ll want to tutor it out early.

This deck requires setup and patience, so be careful when you cast Big Toad Mom, as the loss of lands may cost you more than you think.

This deck is very linear, but it’s combo so it should be linear. Be ready to learn the deck, because it’s weird, but it’s also super cool.

If you have input on the toad, let me know by sending an ask, or replying to this post.

[casuallycommanding]

Mina and Den Wildborn. Sorry XD haha

Sure. I’ll look into it.

[casuallycommanding]

Banana! A highly competitive, no restrictions on cost, The Gitrog Monster deck? I missed you!

You got it buster, I’ll give it all I got to make that frog dance!

[maskedheromaskedchampion]

[casuallycommanding]

If you’re looking to build an ultra competitive commander deck, here’s a list of commanders that everyone hates but still plays. (like prossh)

[casuallycommanding]

Cheap Upgrades!

The last thing I promised to do was find some cheap upgrades for Meren of Clan Nel Toth. The list can be found here, (sorry for taking so long @kytheon-hero-of-akros​)

Three cards every Meren deck simply must have are, Shambling Shell, Ashnod's Altar, and Strionic Resonator. I can’t imagine a game where I wouldn’t want to see all three early on. You’ll see similar cards on the list here, and a short explanation of why you want them below.

After you read, tell us about the Meren decks you’ve seen. What’s your favorite Meren card? What stories do you have from your games with Meren? And what are your thoughts about Meren?

There are a few kinds of cards I’d recommend for quick upgrades to Meren. Card Draw effects, Sacrifice effects, Grave Filing effects, and Creatures that are good at getting you experience. I’ll highlight 1 card of each type which I think is the best for the job.

For Card Draw, you want cards that will trigger on creature death or entry.   Smothering Abomination is a good example of a creature death draw engine, as it also helps you kill a few of your guys.

Meren can often get out of hand by just getting too much land out by the end game. Perilous Forays is a Sacrifice engine that will help you be WAY too far out of control when you get to the late game.

Milling yourself is not for most commanders, but Meren takes advantage of it by taking the creatures you mill and putting them onto the battlefield. Dredge is a great mechanic for doing this, as it often times can get you a whole lot of creatures as the turns go on. Stinkweed Imp is a great blocker that lets us fill our grave while also being extra hard for your opponents to get rid of.

Normally you want your creatures to keep themselves alive, but Meren likes to have a few creatures around that can put themselves in the graveyard. Yavimaya Elder does just that, while also netting you quite a few cards, this old man will help the young Meren become experienced in the arts of resurrection by dieing for value.

If you’ve got some good ideas (or stories) for Meren, don’t keep quite, share them! What cards have I missed?