Bro, have you ever played against a competitive Yisan deck? He is fast as hell and can easily be considered tier 2. He's not actually that vulnerable to wipes and removal because he can literally tutor out answers to whatever your opponents. He can easily turn 6 consistently while disrupting each opponent.

The deck has a high reliance on the commander, which in a competitive game is much harder to deal with. Without Yisan it makes for a very rough going. Omnath, and Azuza are slightly better, and it is about a tier level of difference. Yisan is also known to be a lesser Captain Sisay who is tier 2. I feel tier 3 is the right place for him.

Personally, I see Yisan as better than omnath in an elfball shell. Most elf builds don't need a commander to crush opponents and Yisan benefits from the same cards as elves. Granted so does omnath since his high power can draw tons of card with cards like Greater Good but omnath doesn't tutor for combo pieces and answers to problematic cards. In other green builds I agree with Didgeridooda that omnath is better

Great list! Me and my friends run a modern only (plus commander/conspiracy/planechase/2012) rule set with no infinites or MLD and just by going over the tiers it matches up with the decks we have for multiplayer also.

Modern only commanders, or Modern only cards? There honestly aren't that many great pre-modern commanders, sadly--in fact, the only ones in the entirety of tiers 1/2 are Captain Sisay and Sliver Queen.

Modern only cards, plus the extra sets I mentioned. It's a lot of fun and makes it more difficult but at the same time it promotes greater synergy and balancing as you know with most modern cards they do similar effects as some legacy cards but at a higher casting cost.

I have about 47 modern decks on herev(+3 regular), some are casual, some stand toe toe with legacy decks of similar tiers as I have played in a few commander nights. I am at the mercy of infinites and some legacy combos though but any combo can be gameover if it has all the pieces needed.

There are more cards in this game that are modern than there are cards that are not--and you're also allowing commander sets/conspiracy/what have you--so you're actually not restricting yourself all that much, but perhaps simply getting rid of Urzablock as part of this is good enough. I mean, Memory Jar, Gaea's Cradle, Phyrexian Tower, Citanul Hierophants, Yavimaya Hollow, Palinchron, Goblin Lackey, Goblin Welder, Yawgmoth's Will, Pattern of Rebirth, Sneak Attack, Show and Tell, Academy Rector, Turnabout, Replenish, Worship, Metalworker, Back to Basics--show me a balanced card of uncommon or greater rarity in this set, and I'll show you a bold-faced fucking liar. Fuck, I've even found Apprentice Necromancer to be a house in my Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker deck. But enough about that--sorry, I felt like ranting.

Haha no problem on the rant. There are a ton of cards we would like to use; just other things like Defense of the Heart, Sylvan Library, Humility, Forbid, Aggravated Assault, Gilded Drake and numerous other legacy cards like you also mentioned is enough, not to mention the altar and all the infinite mana combos (and infinites) we miss out on. Also the power of legacy lands for utility far surpasses modern lands. When I go through some peoples builds on here the lands I find and just some of the simple things they can do is just great. We have fun and this list matches well with even our modern playgroup for the most part. I'm sure some of them would be changed around if the rule of no infinites applied though but that is not the case. (I'd kill to use Academy Rector haha).

I don't know about that NoOneOfConsequence, Argothian Wurm seems pretty balanced.

So I'm confused how Doran, the Siege Tower is Tier 3? He's actually a pretty solid general in tiny leaders but there aren't ultimately that many non-defender, non-wall creatures that really make use of his ability. Further there are only 3 cards in the game that can allow walls/defender to attack and even being in white with enchantment/artifact tutors in a hundred card deck that seems like a tenuous strategy.. If you can keep him off the board or manage to disenchant one of the walls can attach cards then your decks strategy falls apart (to easily disrupted).

He's definitely not useless but I feel like him being in the same tier as Horde of Notions or Kokusho, the Evening Star or Saffi Eriksdotter or Eight-and-a-Half-Tails, etc is a bit weird.. Tier 4 would be a more appropriate place for him.

Yea, Doran can be fragile, If Mayeal is T4, I guess he should be. But The best Doran builds aren't "Walls". Most are grindy control/combo builds that use him as a general damage beater in the early game. AnafeNza is a better general for that since she has some built in disruption, but Doran has some strong points as well. Slagwurm Armor is hilarious in the deck. I think an optimized list could be tier 3 but so few people run him nowadays it's hard to say. I haven't seen one in about a year or so.

Side note, can someone link me a tier 1 Arcum Dagsson, a friend of mine is working on one and he has hit a plateau. He struggles in the local meta (partly because most have seen Arcum before). I think Azami is Slightly better for our Meta but he likes Arcum so I'm fishing for lists.

Actually, there's a Doran, the Siege Tower player in my group--and, yes, his deck has Slagwurm Armor. Really, though, my playgroup is fairly casual--that my Shirei deck puts up such good results in it should confirm that point. About the most competitive deck in the meta is Bruna, Light of Alabaster, but even then, I'm roughly 90% sure that it's not an optimized build of her. We do have a fairly optimized Roon of the Hidden Realm player, but most of us have learned to pack hate for it (Torpor Orb, Riftsweeper, etc.). I mean, there is an Oloro, Ageless Ascetic player in our group, but his list is mostly just an esper control/lifegain synergy deck--no Ad Nauseam/Doomsday, or anything. It even has Pyxis of Pandemonium in it, just for shits and giggles.

Also, @Sonnet666, the aforementioned Torpor Orb. Really there are way more creatures that synergize well with Stifle and Hushwing Gryff and whatnot than just Phyrexian Dreadnought--Nyxathid, Boldwyr Heavyweights, and Hunted Horror, just to name a few. The Johnny in me wishes that this could be a competitive legacy deck, but I'm pretty sure that that's never going to happen.

All that aside, I vote for Doran staying in tier three. Wall tribal isn't a tier three strategy, as has been previously noted, but Doran doesn't necessarily have to be built that way.

Ugh, typos. Whatever. I'm still amazing, and you know it. :l

You really want me to hunt through all the cards in Urza block, huh?

Fine, Barrin's Codex.

Also, as someone who's played Bruna, I've really been wondering what about her is putting her in tier 2. That deck is extremely hard to optimize. Bruna has no natural protective abilities or even haste, so she'll usually sit there looking extremely threatening but also vulnerable for a whole turn because you didn't have enough mana to cast her and put Protective Bubble on her in the same turn. You wind up having to devote more card slots to keeping her alive long enough to attack then you have for auras. As far as voltron commanders I'd much rather be playing Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon or Sigarda, Host of Herons.

@Lorderos23: The only truly optimized Arcum deck I've seen in action is Paramount's, and he's super greedy with his decklists. The next closest available online is probably TheTrueNub's Arcum Daggson: Tinker to Victory

@Sonnet666 Oh, you nitpicking ninny. Urza block has the highest amount of overpowered cards of any block across all rarities. Fair enough?

As for Bruna, well, the nuts in my friend's deck would be something like Hall of the Bandit Lord + Three Dreams for Eldrazi Conscription, Steel of the Godhead, Daybreak Coronet, or maybe Battle Mastery/Celestial Mantle, depending on what's deemed necessary. This doesn't happen often, but it does happen occasionally, and it's lights out for at least one player. And, what's more, my group mostly lacks the power to retaliate while he's open, sadly.

For Bruna, you just have to run Hall of the Bandit Lord, Boots, and Greaves to assure speed and protection, just like an optimized Zur the Enchanter build.

She's tier 2 because she has multiple methods of killing one opponent the turn she resolves or the one immediately following it. Plea for Guidance, Three Dreams, and Intuition fetching any combination of Battle Mastery, Eldrazi Conscription, Corrupted Conscience, Vanishing, or Protective Bubble is consistently lethal. These win conditions take up few enough slots that she can also afford to run a powerful slew of utility and control tools like Tragic Arrogance, Winds of Rath, Windfall, Mana Drain, etc. Sample List

....Quite.

In any case, while Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon is the most patently dangerous of any voltron commander when left unchecked, 'checking' him, as it were, isn't actually too difficult. The regeneration is rather irrelevant in the face of commonly played staples such as Wrath of God, Damnation, and Swords to Plowshares/Path to Exile--hell, even Pongify does the job. What's more, you can't at all safely tap out for Skithiryx, either, unless you have at least have Lightning Greaves. In addition, he's quite the hate magnet, so just being able to regenerate him once might not be enough. All this combined makes him too slow for tier two.

As for Sigarda, she's the most safe option out there, at the cost of speed and not having overpowered abilities such as infect or Bruna's rules text. You're almost guaranteed to get something out of her, if you pay for her, but doing so still winds up being too slow for real competition. She's still some of the best that tier three has to offer, mind you, and is also a safe commander from a political perspective (normally), but she's not quite tier two worthy.

Which brings us to Uril, The Mistalker. In my humble opinion, he's your best possible option for a voltron commander. He sacrifices some of Sigarda's resilience and some of Bruna/Skithiryx's Explosiveness for the best of both worlds, in a manner of speaking--Oh, and he's tricolored, which certainly doesn't hurt.

My two cents.

Uril, the Miststalker.

Christ.

NarejED: I know all that. Like I said, I used to run the deck, and I almost had my list optimized (only missing Intuition, really). The problem arose that with at least 15 slots being taking up by win conditions that were useless without Bruna, 15 with cards for haste and protection to keep Bruna from dying, and 10 for ramp to get Bruna out faster; the deck had a tendency to under-perform even with W/U's best control cards. Plus, the lethality was usually a strike against it in a multiplayer setting, because it was both under-performing and guaranteed to be ganged up on.

I do like your list though, even though I would never even consider getting a Timetwister or Mana Drain for Bruna. When I was playing her I came to the same conclusion you did about only running a few auras that would be guaranteed lethal, but I eschewed Righteous Authority and Spectra Ward for two out of three of Battle Mastery, Eldrazi Conscription, and Corrupted Conscience. Also, what purpose does Day's Undoing serve?

NoOneOfConsequence, with Skithiryx the clincher is more the built-in haste plus Nightmare Lash or Lashwrithe for a same turn kill. The regeneration is more of a nice bonus than something to be relied upon. The lack of equipment support in mono-black does limit him a bit, but at the same time you have unconditional tutors, so...

I played a newly revised prossh list today, and let some else play my Kaalia today in a bunch of pods. I guess my view of prossh was so skewed from playing Kaalia. If I was able to one shot the my Kaalia, I would win the pod easily. So I retract my previous clamoring for prossh to be taken off tier 1. He's really broke but has a horrible matchup with Kaalia. Also my Kaalia list is pretty bent to Blue-heavy Meta's so I guess I never understood why prossh was all around better. Also why do so many people Scoop to prossh playing Food Chain with no way to kill everyone? I noticed that all day I would cast Food Chain to bait a counterspell, because I wanted something else to resolve more, and no one would have one and just start scooping.

Also is anyone planning on going to the DC GP for the Commander celebration thing. A couple of my Friends are going. It would be nice to see some of the more competitive crowd and be able to attach names with faces.

I recently built a Uril for our modern rules and it was very powerful and easy to give evasives/indestructible. One game he was a 256/256 from Unflinching Courage/Sunbond/Runes of the Deus/Shield of the Oversoul/Pariah/Flickerform and a neat card called Mark of Sakiko. It was game over. I dissmantled it and an X themed jarad deck I built because they were too straight forward and worked too well for what I like.

@Lorderos23: Because that's the end-game for most Prossh decks. It's basically cast Food Chain, win, 90% of the time for the standard optimized build. The other 10% is mostly random Voltron kills or locking people out of the game with Grave Pact effects. People who know the deck well enough will just just pick up their cards.

Calculus_Lord Didn't notice that we were talking on the old one. Here is the new one. He is listed as tier 3 here. He is def not a tier 2 commander, that is one reason that we don't make the case for our own guys. I have played against him a few times actually, and he is not bad. The thing is in a highly competitive game, he is more of a good stuffs deck that depends on the commander to close out a game. Instead of the commander being just an option to do so. You really would need very favorable politics to win at a high level.

There is some fun, and cool stuff to do with him. Remember tiers are not trying to insult anyone's deck, but to compare them(fully optimized) against other decks(also fully optimized).