Misha’s Workshop

Building on a Budget for EDH/Commander

[mishas-workshop]

Full list of all my current commander decks:

[mishas-workshop]

It has been a very long time since I did one of these. I wanna get back to these, however, I would like to focus on the decks I have or my friends have built, rather than just constantly trying to brew new stuff for the sake of writing.

Long intro done, gonna keep this short and sweet. Let’s talk about my favorite robot bug, Zabaz the Glimmerwasp.

Zabaz is a Boros artifact deck. It uses artifacts and focuses on recurring them for value and the modular ability to boost my creatures, namely Zabaz itself. While loading up the bee with +1/+1 counters is the most obvious strategy, it can also spread them wide with cards like Steel Overseer and proliferate effects.

Scrap Trawler, Junk Diver and a few other cards help with the recursion of artifacts sacrificed to Arcbound Ravager or Zabaz’s ability. Ozolith is fantastic for saving counters. It is still a Boros deck. So it does have issues with card draw, so being able to reuse the cards in play or the bin is helpful.

One card I would like to highlight is Abiding Grace. It allows Zabaz to block or destroy itself at base level. But, there are also a bunch of 1 drop creatures that can be recurred with this.

Zabaz is a weird deck, not gonna lie. There are certainly stronger artifact commanders. But none of them are bees, so… HA! 🐝

Decklist here:

ManaStack is suite of tools for creating and playtesting Magic: The Gathering decks.

[ajani]

[draconic-nova]

Hello! May I ask about what edh decks you have and which ones are your favorites

Amareth is one of my new favorites, I had a deck that I had been working on for a long time and when she got spoiled, I knew she would be the new commander for it.

Ishkanah is another fav of mine, a deck of my own design. Tried very hard to make her as powerful as I can. Strong deck that I don’t play too often, very unique.

Mimeoplasm is not a unique commander, but I built it in a very idiosyncratic way. All Halloween type monsters: Horrors, Skeletons, Zombies, Mad Scientists, Godzilla, etc. It is “The Monster Mash”

Siona is another fun one, simply because I built it from scraps and like $20 worth of stuff I bought. I refuse to sleeve it to keep it’s budget under $50 by playing tbe cards. It also can combo on turn 3 if I’m lucky and can beat a whole table of powerful and expensive decks. Sort of my “you don’t need to spend a ton of money to win” deck.

A lot of my other decks are built with some sort of theme or style in mind. For example, Cromat is mutate theme, Angus Mackenzie is all old school, Oona is lorwyn and eldraine block.

[draconic-nova]

Hoard of decks

[jacebeleren]

[mishas-workshop]

So, I know it has been quite some time since I last posted to this page. For awhile there, I was going pretty steady at a post a week, but then, I just dropped off the face of the earth. Truth is, I have been extremely busy, working two, now three jobs during this pandemic has been stressful, but I am finally starting to pivot into doing things I love for a living.

As much as I love Magic and writing about it, I have had little time to do so. As far as future posts are concerned, I would like to start writing them again, but only when I have the time and only about interesting and fun decks. Which was the point of this page when I first made it. I may do a little bit of a name change or page update in other ways too, but I am still figuring things out. I have two decks in mind I would like to write about, and I will be sharing them with y’all in the near future.

Thanks to everyone who is still following this blog! I appreciate it. - Misha

[mishas-workshop]

While Theros Beyond Death is front and center in the world of Magic: the Gathering, the following set, Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths, remains something of a mystery.

Here is a new article of mine

[allbollocks-deactivated20220819]

reblog this if you’re jewish or your blog is a safe space for jewish people

in light of recent events as well as a new rise in creating nazi ocs I think this post is an important one to have on your blog if you stand behind your jewish followers or are jewish yourself.

[bentondrowned]

If you can’t reblog this unfollow me.

[veemopusvulgaris]

excuse me WHAT OCS NOW

[tooquirkytolose]

Straight Men just Be Like That sometimes

[draconic-nova]

My #mtgsecretlair came today! #magicthegathering https://www.instagram.com/p/B6KH3wOHI50/?igshid=1q7rb2to7mnsp

[mishas-workshop]

NeW decklist tomorrow!

Life has been busy and I haven’t been able to post a new decklist or anything else for a little bit. However, after last night’s MTG get together, I came to the conclusion that I am going to fuse two of the decks that I already have in matching color combinations. The full list for what is became will be in the next write up, which I plan to have up tomorrow.

[mishas-workshop]

Xira Arien, Queen of Bugs

Every now and then, I come across a commander that compels me to build it out of curiosity. The deck I am writing about today was born out of that emotion. Xira Arien is a card I have been curious about for as long as I can remember. Her amazing, classic MTG artwork, her Jund color scheme and the ability to draw cards at will, all made her an appealing commander. But, what do I do? All of the deck lists are either straight up land based value decks, or hard insect tribal. When going to EDHREC, I couldn’t find a cohesive theme to the deck, and that only added to the allure, the mystique of this card. It seemed so open ended, not having a solid structure to build upon, unlike Zur or Kaalia or other, much more popular commanders. With that open-ended nature, came the freedom to create.

I first started by filling out the deck with some of the most useful and powerful cards in Jund. Cultivate, Kodama’s Reach and a few other ramp spells, plus Sol Ring and the signets. All of these would allow us to use Xira’s ability without fear of running out of mana for other spells. Star of Extinction and Black Sun for boardwipes, along with a plethora of removal spells like Beast Within and Casualties of War. These and a handful of other more “generic” utility spells helped form the core of the deck. I now knew it could have consistency and sustainability, but I still had no end goal, no plan on how to win.

The Insect tribal thing did have some appeal to me, but it seemed like it might play kind of jankily and be a bit too underpowered. My favorite deck (Ishkanah, Grafwidow), was once tribal spiders, so I had quite a few arachnids laying around. Maybe that could be a part of this deck? General bug tribal? Seems fun and maybe a bit stronger than straight up insects. Plus, I already have a couple of Aristocrat style decks, so leaning super hard into that wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted something a bit more versatile, something that could take advantage of the grave, but not hard focus on it. Something that could create an army to overwhelm or defend, but not be dismantled with board destruction strategies. I was starting to obsess over this deck, not knowing what to do with it. Then, it hit me.

My partner had a Scorpion God deck that revolved around card advantage through -/- counters. She also had a Hapatra deck that was built in a similar fashion. This, combined with the infect deck I recently dismantled seemed to be all of the pieces falling into place. I was going to build Jund -1/-1 hell.

Lets start with the obvious, infect did become a part of this deck, and it can function as a win condition, helping this deck step up to another level. Phyrexian Swarmlord was the card that pushed me to include some infect. Making bugs that can act as vicious attackers, obnoxious defenders or sacrificial pawns meant that it did everything I wanted the deck to do.

The main strategy of this deck revolves around abusing -1/-1 counter on our own creatures. The Scorpion God is a perfect example of this. Being able to shrink our creatures for extra draws is very useful, especially if they are 1/1 insect tokens, or even 1/2 spiders. Cauldron of Souls can also work in tandem with Scorpion God, allowing us to get even more value. Mazirek can also factor in, as adding + counters to creatures will remove the - ones, which can create some very powerful synergy with other cards like Izoni. Blowfly infestation is another loop that works with these cards.

If we are gonna go after opponents, making an army of creatures is great. The little tokens can serve as fodder for our combos, chump blockers, or if we are able to make enough, overwhelm. Honestly, I thought the overwhelming attackers might be something that was a bit more difficult to achieve, but, due to our shrinking capabilities, we can minimize opposing creatures and take them down with even the weakest tokens. Contagion Engine is a marquee card for this, as it can create a continuous imbalance of strength. Izoni and Ishkanah can also come in later in the game and create forces out of nowhere. Gleancrawler is yet another way to get extra value out of our creatures, making everything useful in life and death.

If either of those strategies are being heavily disrupted, using the graveyard is always an option, or even falling back on Xira’s draw ability if combat is being prevented. Because this deck is filled with a plethora of utility cards, it can get itself out of most unfavorable situations through sheer card advantage. While it can be a bit clunky at times, once the pieces begin to fall into place for whatever strategy you need to do, it can be a headache for your opponents. Not to mention that it can shift from one strategy to another fairly easily, due to the overlap in which cards are used.

So there it is! I’m sorry it has been so long since I have posted a deck tech or anything. Life has been busy, but I still want to share some fun and weird decks and strategies when I have the opportunity. I enjoy playing MTG and writing about it as well and I hope that those of you who do read my posts enjoy them as well. Here is the deck link and as always, have fun brewing your own builds! https://manastack.com/deck/buggin-out

[mishas-workshop]

Deck Tech Coming Soon!

I am sorry for my lack of content. I kind of jumped from writing one article to another, to another and then being swamped with work. The post will hopefully be up tomorrow and it will document my obsessive spiral into weird theory crafting and deck construction. Prepare yourselves haha! Here is a little hint about it: 🦋

[mishas-workshop]

32 Commander Decks

I mentioned some reasons as to why I have been absent lately in an earlier post. What I did not mention was I have also been working on a very large scale Magic: the Gathering project. Over the 20ish years that I have been playing Magic, I have mostly played commander. I tried standard and modern and pauper and while all of those formats are great, they lack the multiplayer aspect, which I find very appealing about the commander format. Not to mention, when I was a kid, I didn’t have access to a lot of money, or even online card shops. Everything I got was from trading with friends and scouring any LGS I had heard about.

Over the years, and once since I started this blog, I have attempted to narrow down my collection of commander decks. Making lists about which ones I like the best, how to condense less powerful ones into a single, optimized power-house. However, I always find myself wanting to make another, wanting to create something new. I had thought about the idea of sleeving all of my cards in the same color, so that I could continuously tinker and swap cards around from deck to deck, but instead, chose a different path. I decided to build a commander deck of every color combination possible.

Truthfully, the cycle is not 100% complete and this is due to the lack of diversity in commander decks that are of four colors and colorless. In theory, I could make all six of those decks, but the world doesn’t need ANOTHER Atraxa deck. Maybe if they make more four-color and colorless legends, but not until then. However, I have multiple five color decks, and at least one of every three, two and single colored decks.

Part of why I did this is so that, in the future, I can just swap out the commander and some key cards if I want to make a change. Another reason is that, I like trying out different strategies, finding new ways to play the same game that I was playing as a child. On top of that, all of my decks are at varying power levels. At my LGS, the play group is ever expanding, and there are often people who are new to Magic as a whole, who wish to learn. I can hand them a more straight forward and simple deck and teach them as we play. It also helps if someone forgets their deck, or would like to try out a new strategy. These decks aren’t just for me, but for my friends.

Now, comes the list. I am not going to go into major detail about all of my decks. That would make this arricle so long, I would possibly break this site. The decks will be rated on the 1-10 power scale, along with a very short description of what the strategy it uses. So, without further ado, here are all of my commander decks:

W - Avacyn, Angel of Hope - 8

Angel tribal with mass boardwipes

U - Taniwha - 7.5

“Big Blue”, mass bounce tempo

B - Bontu, the Glorified - 7

Aristocrats

R - Lathliss, the Dragon Queen - 7.5

Dragon Tribal, fast aggro

G - Gargos, Vicious Watcher - 5

Hydra tribal, mass ramp

UW - Temmet, Vizier of Naktamun - 4

Tokens and copies

UB - Oona, Queen of the Fae - 9.5

cEDH combo/control

BR - Xantcha and Chainer - 7/7

Xantcha is a politics and control deck

Chainer is reanimator

RG - Hallar, the Firefletcher - ?

Kicker synergy, have not played it yet so no rating.

GW - Dragonlord Dromoka - 8

Stax control/midrange

WR - Tiana, Ship’s Caretaker - 6

Voltron equipment

UR - Jhoira of the Ghitu and Adeliz - 6/4

Jhoira is suspend big nonsense

Adeliz is pauper spell-slinger wizard tribal

BG - Ishkanah and Slimefoot - 8.5/7.5

Ishkanah - dredge/graveyard combo (favorite deck)

Slimefoot - Fungus tribal, token combo

WB - Tymna & Ravos partners - 5

Cleric tribal

UG - Experiment Kraj - 7

Combo and +1/+1 counters

WUG - Angus Mackenzie and Phelddagrif - 8/how do you rank group hugs?!?

Angus - Bant Superfriends

Pheldagriff - OLD SCHOOL group hugs

WUB - Varina (upcoming, Alela) - 7

Tribal Zombies (Tribal Faeries)

UBR - Admiral Beckett Brass - 5

Vorthos Pirates

BRG - Wasitora, Nekoru Regent - ???

Dragons/goodstuff (too early to rate)

WRG - Zacama, Primal Calamity - 6

Dinosaur tribal

WBG - Doran, the Siege Tower - 6

Tribal Treefolk

WUR - Pramikon, the Sky Rampart - 5

Chaos and group interaction. Walls

UBG - Yarok, the Desecrated - 8

ETB value, Primal Surge

WBR - Alesha, Who Smiles at Death - 8

Reanimator combo with ETB value

URG - Animar/Omnath, Locus of the Roil - 6

Elemental Tribal (still debating commander)

WUBRG

Sliver Overlord - 8.5

Sliver Tribal, combo, toolbox

Reaper King - 7

Scarecrow Tribal, artifacts, control

Golos, Tireless Pilgrim - 5

All foil, lands matter

So there we go! All 32 of my current commander decks ranked. I still have some cards I want to acquire for these decks, but for the most part, I don’t see myself building a new commander deck from scratch in the future.

[mishas-workshop]

My absence

I know I have not made any new posts lately. I had been working an article, and then started another, than another, and so on. Unfortunately, I am not paid to write about Magic: the Gathering. It is something I do in my free time. I have been busy with not only my regular job, but writing, recording and performing music. While I do love Magic, music has always been my biggest passion. I have an article that I plan on posting later today, but after that, I am not sure when the next one will be up. I am slated to begin recording an EP early next month and there are still things I am working out with the lyrics and compositions. Perhaps when that is over and done with, I will be able to go back to writing a new article every week, however, until then, I may be a bit spotty. I know this blog doesnt have that many followers, but I still want to be professional and at least let you all know why I seem to have dropped off the face of the earth.

[2minutetabletop]

How To Design a Town – Beginner's Guide for Aspiring DMs

Most tabletop adventures begin in a humble town in the countryside. But how do you design a town? We break down the process in this detailed guide.

A new article by my brother Troy has just hit our blog. Please come check it out, and let us know what you think!

Read more: https://www.2minutetabletop.com/how-to-design-a-town/

[mishas-workshop]

A little bit of crossover with this blog. I’m always stuck as a GM!