Commander 2014

[Amon Amarth]

Decklists can be found here: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/arcana/commander-2014-edition-decklists-2014-10-31

I was super excited for the new Commander decks to come out! The decks all look sweet and focus on a specific theme or something that color does really well. In the case of the blue deck that "theme" is a little loose, I mean it's basically Big Blue which is one of my favorite decks but that's not really something blue excels at. The rest are stellar though. I've jammed a few games of the red deck (which is basically a pseduo-Wildfiredeck, gogo Saga Block throwbacks!) against the equipment spammy white deck. Mono-white has been hurting for quality generals and Nahiri and Jazal are really good. The red deck is nuts. Like it has some chaff but all of the cards in the deck are there for a reason to support either Daretti or Feldon and it does an admirable job of that whilst being full of good cards, fun reprints and even fleshes out the reds section of the color pie that "fucks with artifacts and shit".

Also, is Feldon of the Third Path the most emotive, flavorful Magic card ever? It is well designed and does so much with so little.

Any of you guys picking these decks up?

[(nameless one)]

I read the Feldon wiki and it was heartfelt. I was against the concept of a Magic movie but if it was about Feldon's quest to revive his wife, I would support it.

[Amon Amarth]

I read the Feldon wiki and it was heartfelt. I was against the concept of a Magic movie but if it was about Feldon's quest to revive his wife, I would support it.

I've always felt that starting at The Brothers War would be a great place to start but Feldons story would be pretty sweet too. It's also the beginning of the use of magic so that's pretty interesting. It doesn't hurt that it has a solid emotional core too.

[TsumiBand]

The guys at work all went in on a deal online where they could buy all 5 at a discount. I ended up with the White one. It hasn't arrived quite yet, but I'm totally looking forward to it!

Yeah the Red list is pretty clearly the most brutal one. Conceptually though I like the idea of SFM The Beats Sculptor. That list is quite solid and minus a few oddities like putting Sun Titan in with Containment Priest I think it appears fairly tight. I don't know that I'll trick it out more than I absolutely need to, we're having a 5-man unaltered run this Thursday so I guess I'll know more of what I like/dislike then.

[Ace/Homebrew]

We're having a 5-man unaltered run this Thursday so I guess I'll know more of what I like/dislike then.

Use Ajani's Bro as your general. :wink:
If you want to win that is.

[BBG|Scott-Spain]

I've always felt that starting at The Brothers War would be a great place to start but Feldons story would be pretty sweet too. It's also the beginning of the use of magic so that's pretty interesting. It doesn't hurt that it has a solid emotional core too.

Same here. My god, the feels from that wiki alone...

[TsumiBand]

Use Ajani's Bro as your general. :wink:
If you want to win that is.

Haha yeah, I mean I like the White planeswalker just fine but in general I'm surprised at how little starting loyalty these guys all get. With the random exception of Teferi having 5 starting, how are these guys honestly going to stick? +2ing a Llanowar Elves into existence isn't exactly as meaningful in this format regarding self-protecting walkers. Seems like a lot of games will revolve around getting value for Wrathing then playing the walker commander, as opposed to traditional creature commanders which typically get cast 'as needed'. That's a guess, but it's healthy; at least in my area, walkers never really stick.

[Davran]

I bought a set of 5, and had a chance to duke it out with the red vs. the black list this weekend, both using their respective planesmanders. My initial impressions are that the decks are a big step up from the previous products both in terms of overall power level and deck design. Previously, the decks were sort of bi-polar as WotC tried to include support for two radically different commanders. This time around, both commanders work well with each other, so it rarely feels like you're drawing the other half of the deck.

I'm hoping to get some games in with the other colors this week.

[kirkusjones]

I'm excited to replace Chandra Ablaze in my Norin deck with Daretti. He gives me some great filtering and extra reach with my griefer artifacts.

[Grillo]

I bought the black deck a few days ago and it really feels more synergistic and streamlined than previous pre-constructed decks.

The only downside of the black deck is that the plainswalker seems to be the weakest of the bunch... but I switched to Gisa as the commander and she's awesome.
I can't wait to try the red deck as well..... great pre-con decks.

I haven't given them much thought about how to improve them though.

Is there anyone already trying to break them while keeping the original theme of each deck?

[Ace/Homebrew]

Is there anyone already trying to break them while keeping the original theme of each deck?

I would assume anyone trying to break them isn't worried about the theme. Similarly, anyone worried about the theme probably isn't interested in breaking them. :wink:

[Grillo]

yeah... I should have probably said "improve on them" rather than breaking them

[Aggro_zombies]

There were threads on r/edh after the decks came out geared towards improving them, generally with an eye towards budget. As for me, I've been working on the red one; it's a testament to how good the stock list is that probably about 40% or so of it made it into my 99. The build is still kind of experimental, Stax-ish without the most obnoxious parts of Stax, and I'm not yet happy with it. I might post the list here when it gets into a better spot than where it is now.

I've seen people with improved versions of the black and green decks also. The green player stuck with Freyalise and basically just went full Elfball. The black player merged it with his already-existing Geth deck and swapped back and forth between the two. Both decks are absurdly powerful by precon standards and did just fine at a table with non-precon decks (although it did require more politicking to make up for having a weaker deck).

[Davran]

As for me, I've been working on the red one; it's a testament to how good the stock list is that probably about 40% or so of it made it into my 99. The build is still kind of experimental, Stax-ish without the most obnoxious parts of Stax, and I'm not yet happy with it. I might post the list here when it gets into a better spot than where it is now.

I'm in the exact same place with Daretti. I threw a deck together and it did alright at EDH night a couple days ago, but I want to get the list in a better place before I post it. I feel like it can do lots of interesting things with artifacts and such, but it also seems fairly easy to disrupt. As an example, in one game I went from a fairly dominant position to not doing a whole heck of a lot after a well-timed Return to Dust.

[TsumiBand]

Good grief, we had our 5-man all-colors no-alters showdown last night.

First of all, shit goes on and on and on foreveeeeeeeeeeeer because these decks are (surprise surprise) built to be played against each other. Also the Red pilot was making some poor choices, otherwise he had such a solid start and should have had about 5x the number of Wurmcoil Engine spawn but just never "saw it" and got blown out early.

I'm not super-sure about Nahiri just yet - I think there is potential but I think the deck needs some (a lot) of tweaking. I drew very modestly the whole game, a fuck-billion land though. Had a fair start; at some point definitely had like a 14/8 Sun Titan due to 2 Elephant Hammers (thanks Masterwork of Ingenuity) and Mask of Memory definitely let me filter like a madman for a second and anyway one of the requisite dozen board wipes got rid of all the things but I was at like 63 so w/e.

Stupidest play that came up was Teferi pilot having Reef Worm + Nev Disk + Rite of Replication with a kicker. That sort of put the kabosh on the board wipes for a minute.

Eventually it was down to me and the Green player after I topdecked Bonehoarder and put it on a goofy Pegasus token with Swiftfoot Boots and Ye Olde Loxodon Warhammer and took out the other two players in that turn and the next. I have no idea if I would have actually won because I had to scoop (had a crying baby that needed her mama, couldn't let her freak out) but I was a dumbass and neglected to take into account his lack of creatures in the graveyard due to a Praetor's Counsel the turn after I took out Ob-Nix player. So I swung and said "gg?" and he was like "well, no I don't think so" and I was like "ohshi right, no graveyard hurp, guess you take 5 and stay in the game". That's what I get for trying to game with my right hand and dad with my left, haha.

So yeah, I can't say that I'm dissatisfied with the deck at all, just not quite sure about its commander. She did some work in the early game, but I didn't really draw much gas so I stalled out. Probably the only gotcha I got in all night was removing the last two time counters from Deep-Sea Kraken by playing Grand Abolisher and some other spell. It didn't need to happen, but it was funny.

[Aggro_zombies]

Out of the box, the white deck is probably 60% of a good equipment deck and 60% of a good token deck. It definitely feels the most precon-y: schizophrenic by design to make it easier for newer players to customize after a couple of games. The green one has a bit of this problem too but its themes integrate better and Freyalise is a good crossover general for Elves and Big Monsters.

[TsumiBand]

Out of the box, the white deck is probably 60% of a good equipment deck and 60% of a good token deck. It definitely feels the most precon-y: schizophrenic by design to make it easier for newer players to customize after a couple of games. The green one has a bit of this problem too but its themes integrate better and Freyalise is a good crossover general for Elves and Big Monsters.

Yeah, my goldfishing and gameplay definitely agree with that; this deck has two halves, Equipment.dec and Jazal.dec, and they do clash a tad. I could see Jazal being a blitzkrieg shit-house though; any number of cards like Battle Screech, Spectral Procession, any dudes that put dudes in, and the gold standard acceleration for any given EDH deck; then drop DJ Jazal Jeff and swing for the fence for a billion. Brawr. Even on the merit of having big stupud commander damage, he's probably the most worthy of being built against.

[Aggro_zombies]

Actually, I've warmed up to Nahiri quite a bit since she was first spoiled. Someone pointed out to me - I think over on the mtgcommander.net forums - that unlike Kemba, you can build Nahiri with a lot of board control since you don't have to worry about your general dying to Wrath and she can pump out a steady stream of tokens to pick up equipment after a sweeper. It sounds interesting, especially since the biggest issue with white aggro is running out of gas after the second (or third) Wrath, while the issue with white control is that it has terrible library manipulation options so it's at risk of losing control of otherwise won games. Nahiri lets you sit somewhere in the middle: you have potential for equipment-fueled burst damage but can comfortably play a long game since you're guaranteed to affect the board every turn Nahiri is active.

The only planeswalker I think is unequivocally bad as a commander is Teferi, and that's entirely due to the dearth of other planeswalker options in mono-blue.

[TsumiBand]

I was actually pretty surprised at the reach the Teferi pilot seemed to have during our 5-way marathon, but like I was saying before some of us were only drawing "fair" stuff. Like the play I mentioned earlier, Disk -> Reef Worm -> Kicked Rite, that was all pretty much off of Teferi's stupid untap four permanents + controlling permanents that tap for 2+ mana.

Those are good points on Nahiri, I should take that into account when I dink around. White has a fine set of board wipes, even some that could be fairly one-sided like Austere Command or the Convoke Wrath or any of the "power matters" ones really, and even those that are just WoG or Terminus or whatever still don't affect her so she just +2s and chugs along. Not bad.