I'm not so sold on Vela being tier 4. She feels like a mid-tier 3. I don't want to argue to much since I play her from time to time but she's definitely better than Mayeal and company. She has the same BS combos most Tasigur decks run but can actually win with it since she is the wincon. And Cloustone is really dumb in her

I feel like many of the tier 2 generals are weak in relation to some of the tier 3 generals. For instance while Meren of Clan Nel Toth and Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord are fine generals they would get stomped by an optimized Sidisi, Brood Tyrant deck. Even if we ignore what the generals bring to the table themselves The addition of blue to a graveyard deck is a massive upgrade. Sidisi affects the board much earlier than Meren or Jarad can and the deck is much harder to stop because sidisi is not essential beyond dumping 6 to 9 cards in the graveyard and spawning a few zombies. I think Meren is without a doubt the most overrated commander I have ever played against. Hes good but he takes several turns to get going. I have less experience with Jarad, but he seems very clunky and mana intensive and paying his regen coat seems like it would set you back a good deal.

I agree with wagnerr2 about Sidisi, Brood Tyrant. One just showed up in my play group and I've been stunned by how efficient she is. I might think that she should be moved up to tier 2.

Meren of Clan Nel Toth seems well placed in tier 2 though. Free reanimation specially considering how easy it is to get stuff into the graveyard, seems pretty crazy. You can reanimate big scary stuff (Terastodon) by turn 5/6 if you have a sac/discard outlet and blow up their board.

I'm on the fence about Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord being moved down however. Yes there's the whole recur Kokusho, the Evening Star thing which is brutal in multiplayer. But then again I see you point, it is a really mana intensive ability (first you have to cast the big things before you can sac them).

So, I've been discussing Teferi, Temporal Archmage more, and apparently in competitive circles he's regarded as the strongest mono-blue commander, beating out Azami, Lady of Scrolls by vote. Prison/Stax is just that much scarier than traditional control. I vote for moving him up to Tier 1.

I've never played against Teferi, Temporal Archmage before but it seems like if Stax/prison is your game then Grand Arbiter Augustin IV (though he's not mono blue) would be better than Teferi (you can add all the white stasis cards), though then again I guess his -1 ability is pretty awesome if you have your lock. Also he can't combo out with a 2 card general + Mind Over Matter like Azami, Lady of Scrolls can. Not saying he shouldn't be moved up but just curious why he'd be the top choice over those two.

@ irisfibers: The Chain Veil with a handful of mana rocks generates infinite mana and lets Teferi draw the entire library.

Teferi, Temporal Archmage has a one-card combo with Chain Veil, which is another reason he is very powerful.

Beat me to it...

Meren should absolutely not be moved down. She may not necessarily win as fast as other tier two generals (which is debatable, by the way), but it's nearly impossible to win a long game against a Meren deck. She just represents too much card advantage.

...Meren should remain precisely where she is. Frankly, I'm surprised that we're even considering the notion of moving her down. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that decks which have been built to present consistent late games via constant, steady accrual of resources and card advantage throughout their games are decks that actually score reliable win percentages. Meren is the most focused and distilled commander to headline such a strategy, at least in her color combination. Her abilities are nothing but pure, unadulterated value--it's a thing of beauty, from some perspectives. Granted, it's almost too unadulterated, so as to make it rather on-the-nose in a way that upsets both myself and likely many others, from a design standpoint, but that's not a relevant detail to the subject in the question.

I never suggested moving her down. She is certainly tier 2 quality if multiple mono red commanders are (apparently) at that power level. I just stated that an optimized meren deck seems weaker to me than an optimized sidisi deck. I suppose my comments about her being overrated are simply due to my observation that everyone in my playgroup seems to have a Meren deck. I have even heard people in my playgroup say "Meren is the best commander" when we have Zur the Enchanter and Sharuum the Hegemon in our play group. I just think the hype on her is a bit overblown.

It is rather overblown, actually--her abilities, powerful though they may be, certainly aren't overly complex or revolutionary in any way. Who knows, perhaps your playgroup is simply new to her dynamic.

That said, If an optimized Sidisi list is a generic BUG control deck that's using Sidisi as the commander instead of Damia or The Mimeoplasm, then, yes, it probably beats out Meren. I have a hard time believing that someone who actually optimized their deck around Sidisi is going to consistently beat someone who optimized their deck around Meren.

Lol, Meren. She's tier 3 at best. Value town generals end up their eventually anyways once the hype dies. She's is slow and really easy to keep off the board. The first 5 experience counters don't really amount to much, usually the Meren players in our Meta tutor a bunch, maybe wipe the board cast or a Gravepact then die to OK tier 3/4 decks.

Her hype is over blown.

I'm going to have to agree with Meren of Clan Nel Toth being over hyped. She has an excellent ablility but she suffers the same problems as the other commanders. She needs to be on the field before she generates value. However she definitely is better then Daxos, Ezuri, and the Boros one. Ezuri makes playing any creature before him useless. Daxos, while cool is slow. The Boros guy, while he suffers from being red and white. However, Meren does generate a lot of value and if a deck is built right I can see it being tier two. Meren encourages you to play creature before she comes out. Sakura-Tribe Elder and self saccing creatures can be played earlier turns just to be active the turn Meren comes out. Allowing you to re-use them. Also Meren can drain out an oppenent of their resources while just re-using her own. She has a strong ability that is fully supported in her colors.

Just out of curiosity what lands Titania, Protector of Argoth in tier two?

@Aggro-Blaster: Titania is a leftover from the original list that somehow completely escaped all attention until just now. True story.

She has some interesting interactions with Food Chain, Command Beacon, Zuran Orb, Scapeshift, and a few other cards, but I agree she's not really worthy of Tier 2 status.

Sen Triplets is tier two. She/They are very powerful and controlling. Seeing as cards like Arcanis and Roon made tier two, there isn't a reason that the Triplets aren't.

@Jaathik, the thing about Sen Triplets is that she dosen't support any powerful themes or synergies and she is basically mediocre card advantage at best. Each other Esper General is more potent.

Arcanis the Omnipotent is essentially a slightly weaker Azami: slightly slower, but less fragile. They combo out in much the same way.

Roon of the Hidden Realm is easily one of the strongest commanders in Tier 2. He plays Prison nearly as well as Derevi, but he has an added blink/EtB sub theme.

Sen Triplets offers very little to a deck aside from small amounts of psuedo-card advantage and the ability to prevent one opponent from countering your win condition. Her best strategy is combo-control with Ad Nauseam as the win condition, but Zur and Oloro both make much better commanders for that deck.

NoOneOfConsequence If I was making an "optimized" list I would almost never build only around my commander's abilities because it is way too predictable. To me an optimized deck compliments, but is not dependent upon, the commander (personal opinion). So no matter what your opponent does they don't have a sure response to anything you do. With that being said, Sidisi and Meren are all about reanimation at their core. Sidisi puts stuff in the yard while producing sac fodder and Meren puts whats in your yard back on the field or in your hand. Both are creature heavy decks by necessity. In my opinion, Sidisi is better simply because there are significantly more competitive cards that do what Meren does well than what Sidisi does well. More complementary options in the 99, leads to consistency, which ultimately wins games. Moreover, the clones, top deck manipulation, additional tutors, utility creatures, countermagic, and nasty reanimation targets blue provides allows even an unoptimized sidisi deck to consistenly dominate anything the best of golgari builds can do on its own. This is coming from someone that loves black/ green and hates blue. Golgari cannot repeatedly Kederekt Leviathan + Necromancy the board until an answer to your strategy is found. While as degenerate and infinitely annoying this combo is, it does not even scratch the surface of what blue adds to a reanimator strategy.

Holy cats all the "Meren sucks" truthers came out in full force. Strange hill to die on.

I'm not sure if Titania is tier 2, and since I run her I'm not going to try to argue either way, but I'm guessing an optomized list (mine isn't) is basically a really mean stax deck.

Sen Triplets is one of the weirdest and coolest commanders out there but isn't tier 2. She's worse than other Esper commanders and the only useful thing about her abilities from a competetive standpoint is that you get to Silence an opponent each turn, which would be great except you often have more than one opponent.

As a side note, I also run a Sidisi list (very far from optomized) so I'm not comfortable commenting on where she belongs, but the points about her raw power level are probably fair. I think she suffers from the Zedruu effect where she's a tier 2 general that people keep making tier 4 decks with.

After a bit more work, I could definitely see moving Sidisi, Brood Tyrant up to Tier 2. She plays extremely well in a shell similar to The Mimeoplasm (minus the Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon and Lord of Extinction combos, of course). Playing reanimator midrange-combo and winning with Mike and Trike or Necrotic Ooze with her at the helm is quite consistent, especially given her ability to better abuse stax stools like Smokestack.

Also, I agree with Eldred. Most people try to build their Sidisi decks as zombie tribal, which is for sure a weaker archetype. More than half of the decks I looked at, including those claiming to be competitive, ran some degree of zombie tribal. Even when I tinkered around with my own Sidisi brew, the feedback I got was to put more tribal tools in it like Patriarch's Bidding.

Sidisi is a fairly good Aluren.dec general.

There's something about tribal strategies that many find innately appealing. Perhaps it's because the synergies thereof are rather obvious, so they don't demand too much in terms of searching out what would superficially seem to be unconnected cards in order to use them together in the same deck so as to present a streamlined strategy for actually winning.

In other words, they don't require much in the way of actual skill.

If we're assuming that the aformentioned 'suggestions' were made in a truly competitive spirit, anyway--which I am, in fact, assuming. Thematically speaking, though, tribal strategies are quite fun.

But I'm reasonably certain that our mission here is not to pay attention to the subjective abstract of 'fun'--to put it rather surgically.

Look, Wagnerr2, if your argument is "Blue is good"....well, then you'd be right, frankly. Nonetheless, I can't help but feel that having "recur Spore Frog, Caustic Caterpillar, Sakura-Tribe Elder, and Solemn Simulacrum for free" stapled to your command zone is pretty great. Sure, it'd be a mistake to rely solely on this effect to grease the gears of your entire deck, but I don't exactly think that that's what anyone's trying (or should be trying) to do Meren, anyhow. Granted, you mentioned that there are much fewer ways to functionally copy Meren's ability in any given deck built around her, as compared to Sidisi, but Sidisi's ability isn't nearly as powerful anyhow, which is likely why this is, from a game balance perspective.

All told, they're of roughly equivalent power. I would support a motion to move Sidisi up to tier two, but any such similar motion to move Meren down to tier three or lower would be met with my disagreement.

I think Meren has a tier 3 look to her. I have not played against her though. She seems like a really fun commander, and when a commander feels that way to me it is usually a tier 3 type.

Sidisi is tough because bug just has a huge advantage in it's colors. Seems optimized bug decks almost bottom out in tier 2.(exaggeration, but you get my point)