Well thats like your opinion man...and I respect that

You can play Jund if you want (it's a free world and EDH is the format of creativity), but you'll probably lose. Sultai is objectively better in EDH - better cards and better generals - and this is an amazing Sultai deck.

Also; I find it hard to take someone seriously when their username is "Fartface31", lmao.

Daedalus19876 & Lilbrudder To be perfectly honest, it was just a remark at it's pricetag and Modern Jund's. This looks down right disgusting though. (in a good way)

Thanks brother :-)

Sorry for jumping on you, then. Peace out, man! :)

"please remember you can't ban your problems away." - Um... I think you can.

Anyways after play testing two of the decks using this General I don't think he needs to be banned. At least from the two decks I've seen if they go for a T3 Leovald and you mess them up they are in trouble.

If the opponent gets a T2 Leovold though I will admit the number of cards that can beat him is low.. mostly Lightning Bolt, Vapor Snag, Path to Exile, Swords to Plowshares and Ulcerate.

If you're trying to T2 Leovold consistently then I would run every 1 drop mana dork under the sun. I mean with as many wheels as you have sticking it nad having it live for a turn should guarantee victory.

The deck dosnt need the general to be powerful.The inate power of the strategy can easily win without him. His power and utility just help the strategy along (in my opinion of course)

kengiczar: While certainly self serving :-) my comment about banning has some validity. Most of the players that would auto fold to this deck would do so to about 50 other generals just as easily. I don't think Wizards of the Coast should ban cards just to appease lazy and bad players who easily could just add a Swords to Plowshares or Swan Song to their deck to help keep degenerate strategies in check. Prophet of Kruphix was a prime example of a card that got banned despite not being good in the majority of competitive decks that could use it. I agree with RandomGenesis that even if I never resolve a wheel+Leo against the table I have a decent shot of winning due to Leo's hatebear features and the strength of the color scheme, deck as a whole.

Have you considered leyline/helm combo? It would save you a card from the candle/tide/capsize combo. Leyline is incredible by itself and even if the combo is disrupted 1 or 2 people are gone and you should be able to take over with card advantage. Coming up with the wincons has been difficult. I started with tooth and nail targets but will test out the doomsday package to compare. The upside of labman not being able to be spot removed is huge!

This may be a newb question, but how does it save me a card? I definitely think that could be a good combo for this type of deck. What would you cut for the combo?

@ Lilbrudder - I just rereard your earlier reply to me and I have to clarify something: WotC does not manage the Commander/EDH banlists.

WotC thinks closer to the way you do although they do still want to ban cards that are "too" powerful such as Moxen.

The actual rules committee bans based around how much a card consistently warps tables and the card (usually) also causes a lot of players to feel bad. And anytime people are pigeonholed into Path to Exile and Swords to Plowshares to respond the comittee will ban the offender. Luckily your commander is also undone by Lightning Bolt, Ulcerate and Pongify but that may not be enough. They went with Vancouver partially because it favors people with "unoptimized" lists...

Any-who I'm not trying to say you're wrong about anything I just mean to let you know that if you may be walking into a situation like the Eye of Ugin banning in modern... I would just hate to see you spend money you worked hard to earn on a deck for a general that will get banned. Not saying it will...not saying it won't. That's entirely dependent on how often people T1 Birds of Paradise, T2 commander, T3 Wheel.

And yes the helm combo is just two cards: Helm of Obedience + Leyline of the Void. It kills one at a time and the helm is generally worthless otherwise but it is super fast and efficient.

Thanks for the clarification! I honestly am not too worried about the money I invest in this deck even if it does get banned because 90% of the cards that are good and expensive for Leo are also amazing in pretty much every bug deck.

Ah I finally get what you mean stiches. I was thinking you had said that the leyline combo somehow reduces the number of cards I need for the high tide combo. I don't really see the high tide combo as taking up 3 slots simply because high tide and candelabra are so useful with other cards in deck and in general. I will admit that capsize would be a borderline inclusion at best if not for the combo but bounce is extremely relevant with Leo due to its synergy with wheels and because it is able to slow degenerate commanders like zur the enchanter who can get around Leo's lock fairly easily.

This is not meant as a slam against your deck in any way, but I do think that Leovold is too strong. And although I'm not the kind of person to advocate banning on a whim, I somewhat wish he hadn't been printed. He's almost certainly the best general in the best color combination, and his ability is amazingly powerful.

When a general comes down T3 every game, demands a kill-spell within a turn cycle to prevent losing, prevents your opponents from digging for answers, and gives you a card to replace himself, that is too strong. He one-card-combos with at least 8 cards to turn him into a T3 Jin-Git. And while that's happened to me with some frequency (damn you, Animate Dead) the thing that sets Leovold apart is his consistency and low cost. It's not a stretch to say that he's probably going to be in the top three competitive generals in EDH. He's an amazing hate-bear that you have access to every game and that combos with a huge number of cards in your deck.

It's not an excuse to say "every deck should pack removal", because with a powerful early threat like Leovold, the game becomes "Do you have removal, and do I lack a counterspell T3? Otherwise, you straight-up lose. Nice playing!" That kind of degeneracy (in the game theory sense of a game that becomes a binary win/loss based on a single choice) isn't pleasant in commander when it happens with any frequency.

Don't get me wrong, I love constructing powerful EDH decks, and that would be harder without powerful generals. It has been a pleasure working with you to optimize this list (though I haven't contributed that much). But I would despise playing against it, because it gives a reliable degree of hand destruction that EDH has never seen. And I believe that the existence of such absurdly powerful decks with absurdly powerful generals undercuts the prime directive of EDH: to explore new archetypes and enjoy playing a beautiful game.

I play in a competitive meta though (only one within ten miles), so I'll have to get used to playing against Leovold every day. God have mercy on my soul, lol.

Is the $4k price tag on these top EDH decks typical, because that's what I've been seeing. I only play standard but wanted to get into Commander but if this is what it costs to be competitive, forget it. And people say it's expensive to play standard... sheesh.

OminousRex: For a fully optimized deck, yes, that's pretty typical. However, it's definitely possible to make a 95% competitive deck on $500 or so (and my shtick on this website is trying to do it in $200 or so). The last 5% is where the real money comes in, because it involves buying duals and absurdly expensive old cards. Feel free to check out my page if you want some examples of competitive-on-a-budget :)

There is also a 100% competitive deck for super cheap, which is Edric, Spymaster of Trest. But he's the exception, not the rule.

(Sorry for the shameless self-promotion on your deck, Lilbrudder.)

Bug is one of the most expensive color combinations and most of the cost can be acccounted for by 5-6 cards that can be replaced without a dramatic dropoff in power. A really good EDH deck in these colors would probably cost $1000. This is just an attempt at tournament level deck. An optimized Yisan deck can be built for between $200-400 dollars. A deck good enough to win conistently at commander night can be built for a couple hundred at most. I think there is even a 20 dollar mikaeus deck floating around this website that could beat the majority of decks I have played against.

Its all good man. I also see your point about Leo being too strong. He can be quite oppressive

There's a $11000 Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind deck and a $7000 Derevi, Empyrial Tactician deck running around my meta, so I'd considered this somewhat cheap, hehe.

Here's a link to the aforementioned Mikaeus deck, by the way: Mikaeus, Extreme Sub $20 Budget EDH

And here's a link to my $25 competition :) $25 Extreme Budget $idisi EDH

I'm sorry in advance for not making a constructive comment, but this is a huge pet peeve of mine on this site.

This isn't Stax or Suicide Black. Stax is an old control deck featuring its namesake Smokestack to make people cry and suicide black is the name given to a very old black aggro deck that used Dark Ritual to pump out things like Carnophage, Dauthi Slayer, and Hypnotic Specter really quickly.

Again, sorry for being a stickler it just bothers me

Anyways cool deck l0l this new guy is nuts

I am aware of where these archetypes got their names but the meaning of names often change over time. In today's parlance, Stax is essentially synonymous with resource denial (ex. Winters Orb). This deck has plenty of that. Suicide black is synonymous with trading life for power (ex. Necropotence). This deck also has plenty of that. From my perspective the hubs I used make sense but to each their own :-)

That's fair. I can't really tell you what you can and can't do. I would still argue that they're different things but the truth is it really doesn't matter. A lot of people just don't know what they're doing when they assign the hubs.

The worst offender is Cruel Control. Go look at that hub, there might be 1 or 2 actual cruel control lists. The rest are peoples' perceived mean decks l0l

Your deck is called "Oh, I'm sorry, did I break your concentration?" but you don't have a Weatherlight Disrupt in there? Seems like a flavor fail :)

Haha yes you are definitely right. If you want flavor Daedalus19876 has a really cool Adriana deck you should check out. I on the other hand have no such artistic talent. My decks are all about brutal efficiency. I would put a card in this deck that involved killing Leovold's mother while he is forced to watch in horror if it was cheap and effective. With that being said Disrupt is a pretty interesting card. It is a pretty weak counterspell, but it targets the things I want it to, it is only one mana AND a cantrip. That is a sexy combination especially since my turn one mana dorks give me exactly four mana on turn three when I am casting my three mana wheel to wreck the table. Also the flavor cannot be denied. Perhaps I can replace something like Negate for it Thank you for letting me know about this card!

If you can't find a spot for it, at the very least you can have it "in the command zone" as a cheerleader for your deck. I do that in my Angus Mackenzie with Prophet of Kruphix

flightsongs: Link is here ;)

Lilbrudder: I feel like cleanest 1-to-1 card swap for Disrupt would be Dispel. The latter is most vital in the first few turns (when Disrupt is also the most useful), and this swap would trade increased utility (hits more card types and cantrips) for decreased certainty (not a hard counter).