Out of curiosity, does Dramatic reversal + Isochron Scepter Affect some of the tiers at all? It seems like a huge boon to Azami for one thing, but could also make Phenax, God of Deception go infinite (easily) and be useful for Dralnu, Lich Lord, both for untapping Dralnu and untapping mana sources to flashback more cards. Has anyone plinked around to see if this could qualify those two and others for higher tiers?

Definitely no on azami (I can offer reasons if you are interested), but I could see many lower tier commanders going up a tier or two.

Lilbrudder: Yes, I would definitely be interested in hearing the reasons. I'm still learning about cEDH.

Ok, before everyone jumps on the Thrasios bandwagon... This is important:

We can't start rating the partners in this list as if they have four colors.

Why? Because that's going to make this list super muddy, where every partner commander is being overvalued, and people will constantly be saying that partner commanders should be higher or lower.

Sure, Thrasios + Tymna sounds like a tier 1 combination. I can get behind that. But we have to hold off on just saying that Thrasios is T1 until we have a setup where we can say that the combination of Thrasios and Tymna is T1. Because otherwise it gives the wrong idea about Thrasios and all of his other combinations.

Combo decks need several elements to be tier 1.

1) 10+ good tutor effects

2) 15+ good Ramp spells

3) At least one mana efficient and easy to assemble combo, but preferably 2-3.

4) Several ways to protect or recur your combo(s).

5) Good card advantage engines

So lets me how Azami does:

1) Lacking other colors (particularly black) she fails the first criteria by a wide margin.

2) Having only rocks and High Tide she also does poorly on criteria 2 since she lacks the rituals of grixis or the mana dorks of BUG.

3) Dramatic reversal + Isochron Scepter is a fine combo but it requires 3+ cards to go off and/or have azami in play beforehand. Her being 5 mana makes this way too many hoops to jump through. Compare this to food chain, doomsday, or boonweaver and it becomes far less impressive. Mind Over Matter is way too expensive so thats another fail.

4) She does a good job of protecting her win condition, but her recursion is suspect to nonexistent. She gets a barely passing grade on this criteria.

5) Azami does well with card advantage and receives a passing grade, but even in this she is outclassed by Necropotence,Ad Nauseam, and Notion Thief + Windfall .

So that is 2 out of 5 essential features. That means she is far too slow and inconsistent as a combo general.

To be fair control is more her thing. The problem is control is kind of weak in multiplayer and she is severely outclassed by Edric, Spymaster of Trest and Leovold, Emissary of Trest as a control general.

She is middle of the pack tier 2 at best. The scepter combo puts her beyond a couple other generals within her tier, but there are still combo generals within tier 2 that are close to a turn faster on average at getting to thier win condition and Damia, Sage of Stone is arguably still better as a control general.

wait why would the partner have to be tymna specifically? What does she ad or is it just for the four colors? Unless im reading it wrong wouldnt she only be able to draw three cards in a standard four persona game? Deal damage to three seperate opponents, pay three life, draw three cards.

Although Lilbrudder highlights pretty much only negatives and is ignoring the good parts about Azami, he's right on the money. Having played Azami/Arcanis decks for roughly 3 years, I can say that Azami's pretty steadily secured to Tier 2.

TheDevicer: For the record I like Azami and think she is a great general. I was only so harsh due to the bar for tier 1 being so high. If I were describing her for tier 2 inclusion, I would be much more positive.

Yeah, I'm another Azami player and I tend to agree with that as well. She just doesn't have the tools to race the T1 decks. Dramatic Scepter (or Dramatic Sigil) is a good combo and focusing on that does help the deck but it's not enough for T1 by any stretch.

trorax I'm also a paper player. Never got into mtgo. The interface isn't very good and it lacks the social interaction that I like from playing in person. I get why people play online though it's definitely cheaper. I only own one truly cedh worthy deck out of my several because the staples are so expensive.

As another Azami player I find her to be VERY resilient but most of the combos with her are all mana intensive making her slower than others.

My only nitpick to what Lilbrudder said is #3, you don't need Azami in play 99% of the time mainly due to to density of mana rocks the chances of having 3 non-land mana is astronomical.

I almost ALWAYS have some combination that nets 3 total.

I've been able to set off Dramatic Scepter as early as turn 3 on multiple occasions, but doing it that quickly does require a pretty good opening hand. Getting either the rocks or the combo isn't super difficult but I've had trouble getting everything I need consistently within those first few turns. It's much more realistic to assemble everything by turn 6, which is nowhere near fast enough.

why does everyone here play azami???? lol. sereiously though, without the amassment of tutors and ramp that bug shells offer she is a bit slow/unreliable. also having 2uuu as a casting cost slows her down a bit, and with early had disruption could leave her much more behind, since people can remove relevant rocks to accelerate her (however this is unlikely, as thoughtsieze and friends have gone down in popularity, afaict)

Lilbrudder Thanks that was very helpful!

trorax, No, there's nothing specific about Tymna. It just that you want WBUG to support Thrasios, and I find her to be better than Ravos for a tier 1 deck. Having a Phyrexian Arena in the command zone is much better than having a Palace Siege, even if you won't play either most games.

Thats what i thought, thank you for the clarification.

Azami can be built on budget, is a classic commander, has a unique ability, and can be built to fit varying metas and power levels. I think she stands as a pretty common entry point into cedh for many people. Oh, and she's fun and lets you play lots of cool blue cards. Cedh is filled with blue players anyway.

I've been playing a lot of Breya lately. Granted, it's against my friend, who being a guy with good intentions, doesn't optimize his decks well. However, since he often builds non-interactive decks, it lets me see Breya's goldfish potential.

I built Breya as Doomsday, with Worldgorger backup. I basically built Zur, but took out some enchantments and added artifact removal, Gamble, and rituals. It usually wins on turn 4-5, but I can get it to win turn 3 if I mull aggressively. However, this isn't as consistent, and often has me ending up mulling to 4 to try to find a piece of ramp.

Anyway, I think Breya is pretty good. Worldgorger combo is risky, as they can stack a removal spell to permanently exile all your permanents, but I see her like Tasigur - a wincon when you have infinite colored mana, can be played late-game (often out of desperation, so you have a way to kill Labman or something), but is probably just played for the colors. I don't think that she can move to tier 1 just yet, I'd prefer that she stay down in tier 2 until people get more testing and an actual list. I'll try to get a list up when I get home.

TL;DR: Breya should be in tier 2.

I don't think that the earliest a deck can go off is what we want to use to judge its place in the list. A lot of decks can go off early, but that doesn't mean they always do. Forgive my use of Azami as an example (it's what I know best) but with a god hand, you can win on turn 1 while holding extra cards for protection. That doesn't make her good enough for T1, though.

Generally, it's not the fastest win that a deck can achieve, but the most consistent win a deck can achieve that we want to consider (I think).

I don't think they're determining Tier on just what turn they can win but what turn they can win CONSISTENTLY through lots of playtesting.

Speed is definitely a factor but it's also consistency to get there.

It's an average turn win that is usually gaged but some archetypes take a bit to win typically. Stax and others usually take a bit longer so it's hard to gauge those all on a "win by X turn" scale.

Leinahtan: I have found Lion's Eye Diamond + Auriok Salvagers to be her best combo, with George as a solid backup. The Breya list I have been building with mtgThaen can goldfish turn 2 or 3 wins with some regularity and often has more than enough combo protection to ensure turn 4-6 wins. She has unbelievably efficient Doomsday and Intuition piles and her combos are synergistic, compact, and mana efficient. She can win on turn one with about 6 or 7 different card combinations. The riskiness of her combos may keep her out of tier 1, but she is easily one of the fastest combo generals in the format.

Lilbrudder: Wow, I hadn't even considered Bomberman. That's actually amazing for Breya. Time to edit my build!

NarejEDOk so you said that Future sight needs to be dropped becasue it is too expensive. But in a tier 1 deck, with 15plus mana rocks, it is super easy to drop the 3 card combo turn 3. Mind over matter is an instant win 90% of the time you cast it. And I am very confused on why you think tendrils is worse than flux. My arguement is for one, you have to cast half the amount of spells to do the same damage, and tendrils gives you a net gain of life, and you can take out a whole board at once. Flux only takes out one player. Flux is easier to hate on, It has to hit the field and you have to get 50 life to use it. Tendrils can be countered and all the storm stacks still go off, most likely still netting you a kill. If you are removing these 5 cards, you are removing 3 win conditions, 1 mana rock and 1 draw spell. In Jeleva every card is in there for a reason. So if you are adding in green for Yidris, can 5 cards give you 3 win cons, a mana rock and a draw spell? MoM, ToA, and FS are all used in wincons that you get to use quite often. So you would drop 5 cards, to add in a color, what the heck would you add that would make it worth it?

@dalinius97: Aetherflux Reservoir wins at a storm count of 15 or lower-- a very reasonable number. Tendrils of Agony wins at a storm count of 60 or lower-- a number that's basically unattainable unless you've got an infinite loop going or you get Mind's Desire off twice. Every competitive Jeleva pilot I've talked to that has tested Aetherflux say they prefer it over Tendrils.