Sorry for the double post but I thought of this too late to edit.

Can anyone link a Ramos, Dragon Engine primer. I want to play this guy so bad(he's doesn't look amazing, but he looks hella fun). I just want in on the discussion.

It might just be me but I don't think that Balan, Wandering Knight is included in any tier. I would say he's probably tier 4 considering I can't think of many great combos with him. Maybe tier 3 if there's something I'm not thinking of, but mono-white seems to make me think tier 4. Just wanted to let you know.

Derevi is decent, and cEDH viable, but hardly broke. Tymna is vastly superior as a stax commander. Even if people are on the fence about blood pod (which is admittedly pilot dependent, perhaps more than most lists) Tymna is also the key piece to sans red midrange decks that utilize stax peices and win via hulk, bombermann, or raz combo's. Having extensively tested those decks, I can say she is easily tier 1. Its not even close.

While Prossh is still tier 1.5. The gap between Prossh and Tazri is rather substantial. Prossh actually has a slightly lower concentration of turn 1 dorks, significantly worse removal, a less efficient combo (meaning he is more resource hungry), worse card advantage etc. Prossh is also worse than SBT (which I can now say with confidence) so tier 1 is not justified anymore. Its a classic case of other decks improving more than Prossh. What meaningful tech has FC Prossh gotten lately?

I think we should assume that the best possible player is piloting each list when deciding which general goes in what tier. From my limited knowledge of CEDH, blood pod seems extremely powerful when played correctly.

I have finally finished my rough draft of Kruphix, god of horizons. Link is here Kruphix, god of manaz

Penguin is correct. We are missing Balan. Tier 4 was the agreed-upon Tier.

Athraithe i believe you were going in a fine direction... then lost the point of cEDH. This curve is a little bit high and I dont see a clear wincon (eldrazi dont do a whole lot outside of infinites, and eldrazi are not cEDH material, along with veggies, cultivate, etc). When I saw kruphix I already saw 2 routes that sounded good: elfball (holy crap green mana battery. sure) or High Tide (I can store mana from previous turns for use when going off? wheres the downside?) What is ascetitism or telepathy going to do, much less the aforementioned veggies, cultivate, thran dynamo, doubling cube, gilded lotus. You dont have much setup time for cEDH so tapping out is really horrible unless youre going to win immediately or next turn. For example, what is aetherflux reservoir used for outside of paradox scepter?

Penguin_Gamer_1, You are completely correct.

All the other 2017 pre-cons had only 3 legends, and he was the only mono-color, so I guess he just slipped my mind.

I wouldn't say he's completely comboless, since I think he's probably the best commander for the old Darksteel Plate + Worldslayer lock. However that's not really cEDH worthy, so T4 is correct as well. I'll add him in.

Lilbrudder, We've listed enough reasons for demoting Prossh and enough people have agreed that I'm comfortable demoting him to T1.5. I'll put up that Blood Pod deck as well.

Gates88, If you're going to write us what is essentially a small essay, can you at least do us the courtesy of fact checking it like it's one?

• Mairsil, the Pretender, The combo for Mairsil has already been figured out. Simply get Mirror-Mad Phantasm (or Razaketh) caged and you have an "I win" button for 5 mana or less. Since you're already running LabMan and cantrips Doomsday makes a fine plan B. Tier 2 is accurate for that strategy.

• Razaketh, the Foulblooded, The deck I made for him goes off on turn 3 or 4 every game, and I haven't even improved it in over a month. If you think that Sidisi is going off 2 turns earlier than that you're insane.

• Teferi, Temporal Archmage, I think a deck who's main combo wants you to run as many 2+ rocks as possible can get away with having a 6 mana commander, especially when that commander is going to refund you that mana the turn you play him. If anything, Teferi's gotten an upgrade recently, because Paradox Engine and Dramatic Scepter can be run excellently alongside his main strategy (so can HT+Candelabra, for that matter). The decklist we have up doesn't reflect this, while somehow having time for trash like Manifold Insights, so maybe it's time for us to get a new one. If the meta really has been stacked against Teferi strategically recently then we can consider demoting him, but I'm not demoting him just because he's unpopular right now, and I don't think he should be dropped below T1.5 if we do.

• Karador, Ghost Chieftain, This is a 3 color, commander tax resistant commander, that turns your graveyard into your hand, generates value with any creature that puts itself in the graveyard, and has multiple win-on-the-spot combos that can be kicked off for as little as 3 mana. I'M NOT PUTTING HIM IN TIER 3.

Aside from all that, could you also try not to make statements don't bring anything new to the discussion?

"General Tazri - Fast, consistent, resilient - everything you'd want in a combo deck. Obviously tier 1."

Ok, sure, but no one has even been contesting that, so why did you need to bring it up? Almost half of your comments in that post are to say that a commander should stay right where it is, when there hasn't even been any talk of moving it down. Why bother telling us? It just distracts from anything interesting you might be saying.

I don't take an issue with you making a very long post, or with you sharing your opinion, but in the future, please try your best to make sure that everything you're saying is really worth saying, and that the comment you make is the best one you're able to make, before hitting send. Because reading all that as it was was annoying.

You did make some good points in all that, so let me give you a response to them:

• Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder, There's been some talk of moving him down. I will consider it. But after all the talk about sticking him and swinging the next turn in the KessVsJeleva discussion, I can't help feeling like we're missing an easier way to go off with him on the same turn. Adding Concordant Crossroads and Need for Speed to the deck might be worthwhile. JimWolfie's deck also doesn't run Hurkyl's Recall or Retract, both of which seem really good with the cascade trigger. Another solid plan might be to cut Lotus Bloom. Since mana is usually easier to generate than cards, you'd be certain without it in there that your first cascade trigger would give you gas, which makes trying to storm into a hasty Yidris much more reliable.

• Brago, King Eternal & Grand Arbiter Augustin IV, You had pretty solid reasoning for moving these guys down. A new deck like Blood Pod being a tough match-up is a good meta reason for demoting a commander. (For anyone wondering, "X new commander in Y color identity plays Z strategy better!" is a BAD meta reason, because it doesn't actually make the old commander any worse.) I would be willing to move them down to T2, but I'd like to get a consensus before doing so.

• Sidisi, Brood Tyrant & The Gitrog Monster, I could see these two moving up as well, but I'm a bit more hesitant about The Gitrog Monster. The reliability of the combo can't be denied, but like Sidisi, Undead Vizier, it's a bit difficult for it to play through counterspells. There are only like 3 or 4 effective ways to stop people from messing with your spells, and a lot of Gitrog lines rely on specific cards, so it's easy to know what to counter.

• Atraxa, Praetors' Voice, Finally, a demotion I can get behind. I feel like the only reason she was placed so high to begin with was people sort of expected proliferate.dec to have better synergies come out of it. At this point all we really need to do is figure out how low she should actually get dropped and what strategy is really best for her.

• Oona, Queen of the Fae & Dralnu, Lich Lord, You're saying these should stay, and my opinion on Dralnu is already out there, so I'm not going to get too into this, but as a general statement I'd just like to say that it's worthwhile to think of the .5 tiers as a section for commanders that are around the same power level as the tier above them, but have weakness or drawbacks in their strategy compared to those commanders. Dralnu is about the same power level as many T2 commanders, but has an obvious drawback that weighs him down a little. Same could be said for most of T1.5 and T2.5. However, all of that was a tangent, because what I started writing this to say was I disagree with your estimation of their color identity as "restricted." Dimir is actually one of the best color pairs right now for infinite combo decks, since it has Dramatic Scepter, PE, HT, the best control cards, great draw, all the general tutors, AND all the artifact tutors. Losing green hurts your ramp a little bit, but all the extra rocks you're including for your combos go a long way towards making it up, and creature tutors are all but unnecessary. Blue/Black is just awesome right now, all I'm saying.

• Baral, Chief of Compliance, This is interesting. Has he not been as effective as people were thinking, or did HT just fall out of favor? I'm open to the idea. What does everybody else think of demoting him?

• I'll swap to your Johnny, Combo Player list. I didn't really bother checking the last one that thoroughly since it's Un-set. Your's seems better.

To everybody else, I'm reviewing the decks that have been posted. I'll put up the ones that look good, and comment if I think something needs to be changed. Stay posted.

potatopotatopotato

Thank you for your answer. Yes I was aware that some cards were bad in that list ,but it seemed better at first glance (I did not goldfish it so that might explain that). And I am aware that my Flash Hulk list can be inconsistent at times, but I did manage to adress some of those problems and I admit the lines tend to be really complicated.After some upgrades I either win through Flash Hulk immediately or the turn after I drop Momir. Currently (I did not keep track of it but it feels like it) it goldfishes turn four kills on average.

As for your own deck, if you upgrade it, I highly recommend Vizier of the Menagerie since it is the closest you can get to a Glimpse on a stick.

I will definitely try it in the upcoming upgrade, I have hesitated on cards like that because it needs momir to win and he isn't exactly cheap to play but it probably works wonderfully in the all in eyeball variants, I will test but I suspect it won't be nearly as good if I do not go full elfball which may be just as well.

If Sram, Senior Edificer is tier 3, Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero is definitely as well. The better decks are hatebear combo decks that utilize Lin as a small CA toolbox that enables the more unfair cards like Skullclamp, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, and Aetherflux Reservoir. My list is a good example:

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/white-rebel-motorcycle-club/

My phone auto corrected elfball to eyeball, a hilarious oversight on my part.

michaelvlevine, I don't buy it. Sram is a combo engine that storms through your entire deck. Lin Sivvi tutors up one combo that doesn't win the game, and you still need a land tutor to complete it. Mono-white is the worst color identity in cEDH right now, and Lin doesn't do enough to mitigate that.

n0bunga, I sort of like [[]]'s Mairsil list more, as the curve's lower, and it seems faster w/ more lines of play. Also, you can't put stuff in for flavor on an optimized decklist...

I like your Kess list, and no one else's been posting. I'll put it up.

sonnet666 I appreciate your response. I'll start off by saying that mentioning the obvious tier 1s (Thrasios, Zur, Tazri) was really just for completeness' sake. In hindsight, it was just a waste of time to mention them and I regret bringing it up.

You're also completely right about Mairsil, I just straight-up didn't do any research on the way that deck was going at all. The Mirror-Mad Phantasm line is great in a Doomsday shell and it's the main draw for it. The Razaketh line is a little bit more questionable since it requires creatures in play and Grixis has few creatures it actually wants to run and it can only be uses once a turn, but turning your commander into Diabolic Intent isn't bad by any means. I still think that Kess and Jeleva are clearly superior Grixis commanders though since they can have 99 cards that are gas and not dilute their deck at all. It's similar to Teferi vs Arcum Dagsson. Teferi runs a couple of bad cards or cards that aren't good for reasons other than The Chain Veil combo (Thran Dynamo, Gilded Lotus, and The Chain Veil itself would be useless without the rules interaction that allows for the combo), but Arcum runs a lot more bad cards because it needs to have artifact creatures to sacrifice and most artifact creatures suck. There's less of a difference between Kess/Jeleva and Mairsil than there is between Teferi and Arcum Dagsson in terms of number of different cards in each deck, but the principle is that Mairsil requires more build-around cards than the other Grixis generals and it hurts him overall. Regardless, I apologize for my ignorance and I think that tier 2 can be a valid placement for now.

I forgot that Razaketh was your pet deck. I won't bother arguing with you about it then.

I disagree about Karador. It's true that he reduces his own cost, but only if creatures are in the graveyard, which there will probably be few unless someone has wiped or you have Survival of the Fittest/Fauna Shaman. In the latter case, you probably won't need Karador since you'll be able to tutor up Boonweaver Giant and a sac outlet (or whatever you're comboing with) relatively quickly anyway. It's true that he casts creatures from your graveyard, but only one per turn, so saying he effectively makes your graveyard your hand is a huge overexaggeration. Being able to cast creatures from the yard is also only useful if you have creatures in the yard, which is not too difficult to achieve but not always a common gamestate. Compare this to Tymna, who generates value at every stage of the game as long as you have creatures, and he looks much less favorable. The Abzan Boonweaver strategy has never really relied on the commander for anything but value, so the fact that Tymna can create more value more quickly than Karador speaks to her advantages and his weaknesses. If you won't put him in tier 3, consider at least moving him down to tier 2.5.

Everything I said about Teferi was in jest. In fact, I believe I even said later in my post that I was just joking around when I talked trash about Teferi. I don't post a lot on tappedout anymore so I don't blame people for not knowing, but I am a Teferi main and although I don't consider myself an expert, I know the deck pretty well. The Blood Pod matchup is probably Teferi's worst matchup (it's even worse than Ruric Thar, which is saying a lot), but it's not enough to keep him out of the top tiers.

Your suggestions for additions to Teferi are understandable but misguided. The primary reason that Paradox Engine and Dramatic Scepter aren't in Teferi is partially because the deck already has two and a half alternate win conditions - Rings of Brighthearth+Basalt Monolith is one, Power Artifact+Monolith is two, and Teferi+Stasis is almost a win condition - and doesn't need to dilute itself by running any more. All the cards I just mentioned are also good on their own - Monoliths for obvious reasons, Rings of Brighthearth for its ability to copy Teferi or Tezzeret's abilities, and Power Artifact for generating more mana while comboing with The Chain Veil. Neither Dramatic Reversal nor Isochron Scepter have utility on their own. Imprinting a Counterspell or a bounce spell on Isochron Scepter is a fine strategy in 1v1 (and I used to play Scepter Chant back in Mirrodin-era Extended, so I know how it feels), but it ultimately isn't good enough in the midgame to be worth running. Dramatic Reversal is effectively just a ritual and has very little utility outside of the combo. We already have access to a lot of good rituals, like Teferi for example, and we don't need another one that badly. Paradox Engine is too reliant on cards that are already in hand and costs 5 mana. Why would you tutor for a situationally relevant card that costs more to cast than The Chain Veil and is not a guaranteed combo? Furthermore, running these additional win conditions would require multiple cuts to either the manabase, card draw spells, counterspells, or bounce spells, which would weaken the deck in some other aspect. It's just not worth it to run these cards.

And just because Manifold Insights isn't as good as Lim-Dul's Vault doesn't mean it's trash. Being able to see 10 cards deep and getting 3 nonlands is a big deal, even if it's the three worst cards in that set. The fail state of Manifold Insights is either getting your 3 worst mana rocks or your 2 worst mana rocks and a counterspell that's not relevant (ex. Flusterstorm at a table full of creature-heavy decks). That's not great, but it's still 3 cards that will likely not be dead. The only major drawback to the card is its sorcery speed, which is unfortunate but ultimately not a dealbreaker. And obviously the card is unplayable with fewer than 3 opponents, but ideally that shouldn't happen.

Finally, do not under any circumstance go with a different decklist than what you have posted. Even though it does not match my personal list and I don't agree with every card choice in it (cough Expedition Map cough), the comprehensiveness of the primer section is encyclopedic, which makes it an excellent resource. It talks about primary combo lines, alternate lines, matchups, single card choices, and even budget alternatives. If you are already vaguely familiar with competitive EDH, you could become a somewhat competent Teferi player just by reading that primer and goldfishing a bit. Something drastic would need to happen in order for that primer to become irrelevant, on the scale of a major banning or maybe a change to the rules interaction between Teferi and The Chain Veil.

As far as Yidris goes, Jim has talked a lot on the discord about his deck and the gist of it is that Yidris is plan B. Plan A is jamming a turn 3 Ad Nauseam, which he aims to do as often as possible. That should give you an idea of how important Yidris actually is to the deck. His current list also still runs Mass Hysteria, so Concordant Crossroads could be a possible addition to improve it. I doubt Need for Speed would work well though, it overlaps with Rain of Filth too much and you'd rather sac your lands for mana than give your dorks haste in most circumstances.

I would argue that The Gitrog Monster can fight through counterspells more easily than Sidisi, Undead Vizier can because of cards like City of Solitude and Autumn's Veil, but you're right in that both decks are linear and somewhat fragile. Gitrog makes up for this by being able to clean up at really weird times, like their own cleanup step.

I think Tier 3 is solid for Atraxa. She has pubstomp written all over her, so it makes sense to put her in the pubstomp tier.

When I said that Dimir was a limited color identity, I meant in terms of what it can answer and how well it can answer it, specifically in regards to artifacts and enchantments. Black can't really interact with artifacts or enchantments at all, and blue only has bounce spells or counterspells. Hurkyl's Recall and other bounce spells are only temporary, and unless you can win the turn after a bounce through countermagic for sure, you will still be in danger of the problem card resolving the following turn again. Swan Song and other counterspells are reactive, which a combo deck really doesn't want to be. Compare this to Grixis, which has access to Vandalblast and By Force, or Esper, which has access to Disenchant and Detention Sphere (in Zur), or Sultai, which has access to every good card in the format, and Dimir looks worse by comparison.Even the creature removal isn't as diverse when it comes to wipes. Dimir only has Toxic Deluge while Esper has Supreme Verdict and Grixis has Rolling Earthquake and Fire Covenant. That's really the only weakness of the color identity, but it's not a trivial weakness and it does make Dimir combo worse than Esper/Grixis/Sultai/4 color combo.

As for your question on Baral, whether High Tide isn't strong or Baral is just bad, the answer is kind of both. Baral is a commander who gets outclassed by Jace in almost every way, and although he isn't weak by any means, Jace isn't outrageously strong to begin with.Jace can loot more consistently, can get more value in the midgame when cards have been binned, and can enable double Tide turns. Baral's cost reduction is nice, but that's about the only advantage he has over Jace. Blood Pod is also pretty brutal against Baral since all the win conditions either require Islands (making it weak to Choke) or artifacts (making it weak to Null Rod and Stony Silence).

Hey, how can you suggest a decklist for Inalla, Archmage Ritualist? :)

sonnet666

Sram requires most of the deck be bad cards - Lin just requires a small toolbox set to add a lot of value. I have played in a lot of cEDH games and have never seen Sram win, but my Lin list wins plenty. I've played in the r/competitiveedh Cockatrice games and Lin does in fact win (not more than 25%, but still wins), even against the decks you've listed as tier 1, piloted by the more well-known people (such as some of LabManiacs).

At the very least, Lin can pretty easily neutralize most decks attempting to turn creatures sideways, which is a huge majority of the decks you list at tier 3, while still being able to play the hatebears that slow down the higher tier combo decks.

Antec2005 if youre the one suggesting it, just tag the deck slug here or paste the url. We'll probably review and comment on it. If you need a decklist or template mine above should work as a starting place

i see you dont have a ramos deck up yet. i made a deck list for him that i feel is pretty strong. needs some work and i havent worked on much of a description yet. its basically cascade and counters with some dragon subthemes. ramos is a strong commander and could easily blow someone out with commander damage just from his own ramp ability casting 5 color spells. http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/ramos-like-them-big/

3InchMeatMonster, You have a.... lovely name.

This is a list mostly for discussing commanders in a cEDH context. Unfortunately, your Ramos deck has way too high of a mana curve to fit those kind of standards. In cEDH decks are expected to be able to win on turn five at the latest if they don't get disrupted. Most of the high mana spells you're running wouldn't even hit the board by that time.

Check out some of the other decklists in tiers 1 through 2.5 if you want to see what I mean.

chaosumbreon87 okay thank you!

What do you think about my deck?

Inalla, Archmage Ritualist http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/tricky-wizards-4tw-inalla-archmage-ritualist/

Few things about this list i dont like, while a majority of the t1 list is accurate, i feel as though youre missing some key commanders. Jace, vryn's prodigy and vendillion clique.

Jace vryn's prodigy : jace as of recently was just banned as to being too good 1v1, with a cheap 1U mana cost, you can sculpt your hand over 5 turns and then he flips over to create redundancy, whilst he may not be the best aggro commander (aside from the fact that he's blue, he doesn't have a bleeding edge with creatures), he is one of the best control commanders. Being able to drop him on turn 2 after mental misstep, force spike, spell pierce, annul, dispel, etc. And being able to create redundancy with the counterspells that occupy your graveyard, and providing damage reduction (provided the opponent has a creature on the field) to prolong the game, he also has a very unique toolbox of things such as his emblem, and the surplus amount of blue bounce spells ie. Unsummon, boomerang, capsize, cyclonic rift. You're already winning when you drop a jace on turn 2, let alone sculpt yoir hand to provide unsurpassable card advantage. Have i talked about blue's tendency for mass draw? Or extra turns? Extra turn spells are top notch in this deck and being able to get multiple extra turns because his loyalty is so built up because no one can touch him, can be a very big problem.

Vendillion clique : although not as good as Jace, he still prpvides the blue control shell but with a different approach, vendillion clique provides blue hand disruption with a lot of information. This theme recurs throughout the deck to the point of the player runs telepathy and counters everything that matters, while in 1v1 this effect is a lot more powerful, there is a surplis of synergies that are reachable in edh and with things such as; strionic resonator, panharmonicon, deadeye navigator, etc. You can essentially gut all opponents hands of everything. And whatever you couldnt get rid of, you counter. Being a 3 drop 3/1, it makes a 7 turn clock for either your opponents to scoop because they cant play anything due to your card advantage and information, or die to commander damage.

The issue with have is his lack of black tbh. He is a solid high tide deck, and can storm off with decent consistency, but without an expansive tutor package and no access to more solid creature removal (toxic deluge and friends) he can struggle against stax and tax, and can't rush to his finishes as quickly. Vendillion clique is not that good in multiplayer, at all. Again, their reach is limited due to being mono u, but they have another glaring weakness. Reactive counter Control in multiplayer requires a massive draw engine. Every time you counter a spell, you essentially go down 3 cards in advantage to stop one spell (you now have less cards in your hand against 3 players, instead of one. Damia sage of stone is the only reactive control deck I like, because she keeps your hand nice and fat. Mono u reactive control really isn't a good deck in multiplayer cedh. I'm not saying counterspells are bad, but counterspells.dec usually is.

Screptile I'd love to see those decks play at a table with three t1-2.5 decks. It'd be funny, because they are sounding very good with how you're talking about them, but I know they're not. The reality is JVP is a high tide commander, not control. You cannot win trying to play control against three combo decks that are a majority of t1-2. You just simply can't counter enough.

As for Clique, I feel as though she/he, whatever it is, (no knowledge of the lore behind the fae) most likely won't even come down before a game is already being won. Like I said earlier, sitting down with other decks that are ALL very threatening and powerful, you simply can't provide enough counter magic to three other people to do anything to stop them. Even if you do, you're going to win with a 7 turn clock to 1 of the 3 opponents? Ha. That's a joke in and of itself.

For example, just to show you, I was piloting the Thrasios/Tymna Doomtide deck played/created by one of the labmen yesterday against a Nath stax deck (that I built), a Keranos stax deck (Cameron of the labman piloted this on an episode and I fell in love with it, also my deck), a Paradoxical Arcum deck, and a Karametra Echantress with some prison aspects to it and my opening hand was 3 fetches, Mox Diamond, Mana Crypt, Imperial Seal, Vampiric Tutor, I'm on the play, play mana rocks cast seal (drew a flusterstorm) go get LED. turn 1 sol rings etc. from everyone else a bit of hand sculpting. Drew led, cast thrasios. turn 2 hand sculpting someone made every draw a card (some random kid that isn't included in my earlier listing as he's playing an AWFUL Nekusar deck) I respond with Vampiric Tutor, get Auriok Salvagers draw it, my turn draw land play salvagers, LED, response from the arcum player was force, i replied with a flusterstorm. Win.

You're going to tell me you can control me and two-four (my usual group) out of the game when we are all playing stax, combo, and prison decks? No. That's impossible. Literally. I think they're both fine where they are.

Hey all, I made my own variant of Inalla as promised. I found that she's generally best as a backup wincon or to gain additional value rather than a primary line for winning the game. My first draft of the list is here Alla Board the Wizard Express. I welcome any constructive criticism you have to offer and would like to have my deck considered for the tier list.