Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa and Silas Renn, Seeker Adept
There are a few themes in here. First, small stuff matters. We play a lot of bears, which cannot be blocked because of Sidar. This means cards like Edric, Spymaster of Trest and Spawnwrithe are really good.
With Silas Renn, I play a lot of cheap artifacts which draw a card. Barbed Sextant, Chromatic Sphere, Chromatic Star, and Terrarion are excellent for fixing my mana. The spellbombs have decent utility. The others just draw a card, but drawing an extra card per turn for 1 mana is always good. Silas Renn does double duty in recurring cards like Winter Orb if they're destroyed.
The deck is on a budget, so the ramp package is built around lands which tap for multiple mana, and creatures which untap lands. This ramp package takes a few turns to get going, but then will suddenly ramp up to a casual 15 mana. This lets us cast Primal Surge, a big Genesis Wave, or go nuts with Future Sight. And if we draw a new hand with Edric or Bident of Thassa, we can dump it and keep the engine going.
I have a few decent wincons. The primary wincon is Mirror Entity, but True Conviction and Beastmaster Ascension also put in work. Spawnwrithe can easily get out of hand and kill players. And in a long game, sometimes swinging for 8 or 10 per turn with an army of small creatures is enough to get there.
Recently I've added a prison package. This is a response from players complaining about my deck; after going off, my turns were taking too long. How do I shorten everyone's turns? Make everyone unable to play! Because my lands tap for multiple mana, I can break parity and still operate with a Winter Orb in play.
The sideboard cards are cards I swap in for Winter Orb, Rising Waters, Hokori, Dust Drinker, and Static Orb if I'm playing against a more casual group and don't want to ruin people's days.
I'll be honest, I don't understand the commander format. I can't convince myself that I'm having fun while playing it. In the group I play with (school magic club), there are a lot of social expectations. It is expected that everyone gets to have fun and do their thing every game. This oftentimes means if your deck goes off and could start killing players, you'll sit back and not attack and give the other players a chance to get out of it first. I am also annoyed that they endlessly play oral magic (where you put down other people's decks by saying what your deck can hypothetically do to counter it). I think that for them, commander is supposed to be 'synergy show and tell', where you put together a good synergy, show it off to the other players, and do nothing with it while other people get to show off their synergies.
I'm very competitive by nature. I do not understand a game where the goal is to win, but it's unacceptable to actually try to win. I can't do this artificial dance. I built this deck because it was very durdly. I could spend a lot of turns playing 2/2's for value and never actually pose a threat. I had hoped this would comply with the social expectations of commander.
But alas, here we are. I now have a new philosophy, and have accordingly added the prison package. I'm done playing this format apologetically, trying to cater to the other players. I'm convinced it can't happen and that they somehow enjoy this format regardless. I'm going to play a deck which is low-power, but focused. The prison pieces should keep proactive decks in check, while rewarding interaction.
