To be fair, TSG makes his own zombies but yes.

Wait in light of this, I suggest revisiting an optimized Atraxa superfriends variant. I swear now that we can have a party without worrying about uniqueness, chain veil and doubling season can be quite great with atraxa's color identity and ability.

Superfriends will always be a casual archetype, imo. Honestly, if "Astaxa" can't be the marquis deck for her, there is no high level, competitive deck to be built. Revisiting what a superfriends deck would do is probably a waste of time. You're still paying the full cost for these PWs, which makes the deck plodding and slow. The problem isn't having multiple of the same PW and not being able to play them, it is that PWs are slow and durdly before they manage to win... if they manage to win.

I know I am coming out of nowhere with this, but I was looking at tier 3 decks and would like to try and make something up for Medomai the Ageless (at least some were discussing UW commanders above so not totally out of place).

I figured out stax would probably be the best archetype for him. We break parity by taking extra turns, obviously. It would have all the same problems as other UW commanders though, needing to attck, but at least we have an actual win condition right there. With the turns we could take, it should not be that difficult to figure out a win, and to break parity...

The only thing is I would like to get something of a combo going around, and I found out by doing some research that Humility+ Capsizewould let me attack with Medomai the Agelessduring extra turns. Swing with original, take the extra turn. Drop the Humility, then swing with the ability-less Medomai, then Capsize on Humility. Rince and repeat for infinite turns. I mean, both cards are useful at some extent, so they are not dead, and we can quite easily search for both half in those colors...

I simply wanted to know if anyone else ever tried to build something at least remotely competitive, to see if we have a base to work on, or if I would build everything from scratch.

OK so what is goldfishing and how do i do it?

Play out your deck unopposed. Assume your opponents play the best possible scenario for you to win (land go is often the strat i use) in the case i have mana drain or carpet of flowers, i guesstimate how much mana i would gain (usually estimate 2/turn count for carpet, 2 for drain, etc) through that, record the turns taken to win (against however many decks the one is meant to combat)

Talking about Atraxa, I had a deck that did really well but I haven't played it in a while:

Atraxa's super(un)friendly Stax

Commander / EDH Winterblast

SCORE: 12 | 25 COMMENTS | 2787 VIEWS | IN 5 FOLDERS

It's Stax with combo and a few game ending planeswalkers

While my first deck was Mayael the Anime I can say that her placement is fair. In the highest level of play this deck could stretch its standing to a 2.5 tier.

The deck does have many pros that can give it an edge to most others, but at the end of the day the RNG is somewhat high. That's why I wouldn't put it higher than a 2.5, because there are decks that can more consistently win the game earlier.

You are playing massive creatures so naturally you will have some dead cards in your hand at the beginning of the game. There are times when Its ok to keep an all land opening hand due to this problem. That being said there are ways to make this less punishing such as Eureka. This can win you the game extremely early. The problem with this is that its a single card in a 100 card deck. Other "cheat into play" cards such as Sneak Attack further counterbalance the big creature con.

Late game this deck is in a pretty good place. The only decks that can beat a set up Mayael the Anima deck is blue and black to a small degree. Blue decks can steal your big baddies or bounce them making you hard cast them again. Black decks have Black Sun's Zenith which they can search for. While you don't need Mayael the Anima in play to get the win, it does speed up the process. Blightsteel Colossus and Xenagos, God of Revels is the main one shot kill you are looking for.

I would consider changing this deck to a 2.5, but would understand if it stayed in the tier 3 category due to its cons.

While this is my deck, Its the only one I could find that used Eureka. Most other decks will be fairly similar due to the deck requirements. Although, my deck is not the kind that cares what others are doing. I just race to the top of the mountain and try to stay there.

Claws of Vengeance

Commander / EDH* Komamura

SCORE: 13 | 32 COMMENTS | 3872 VIEWS | IN 6 FOLDERS

Didn't we JUST finish going through this?

Komamura I'd highly suggest you look at the deck lists in the tier list. You are missing MANY ramp staples that would accelerate you further among many other things. Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, etc.

If your answer is "I don't own those cards" or "those are expensive" take a look again at the purpose of this list. It's to represent the tuned, optimized, and budgetless maximum potential of a given commander.

I have both of those cards. This deck is more creature based. I can easily search for them with Green Sun's Zenith and my other tutors. Most of the creatures tap for multiple mana. I want to have more creatures in order to maximize the use of Aura Shards. Protean Hulk also puts all the creatures into play. (optimally using Sneak Attack.)

• Birds of Paradise

• Bloom Tender

• Gyre Sage

• Joraga Treespeaker

• Oracle of Mul Daya

• Selvala, Heart of the Wilds

• Shaman of Forgotten Ways

• Sylvan Caryatid

• Sol Ring

• Sword of the Animist

• Chromatic Lantern

• Mirari's Wake

• Mana Reflection

• Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger

Can any of your other ramp spells produce 3 mana on T1? 5 mana on T2?

Gyre Sage, Oracle of Mul Daya, Sylvan Caryatid, Sword of the ANimist, Chromatic Lantern, Mirari's Wake, Mana Reflection and Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger are not competitive in the slightest and should all be replaced with Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, and a bunch of 1/1 elves that tap for G. Hell, Selvala doesn't belong in a cEDH list either if she isn't the general.

To be fair Selvala has her own deck in the tier here. She's quite capable, but just cause your creatures can produce more than 1 mana doesn't make them good. Again, I invite you to look at the top decks here. All of them share some cards in the ramp slot

@kyuuri118 To be somewhat fair, oracle of mul daya does have use with mayael to filter lands from off the top.

Looking at 2 marchesa stax sample decks, what makes the deck (and marchesa herself) good?

Selvala's fine as a general when you build a list around her. Do you really want to just toss her in the 99 as "ramp" though? Prob not.

In any other commander is say no but mayael is an exception

I took out domri and chromatic lantern for an elvish mystic and a carpet of flowers so far.

I enjoy gyre sage because my general lets it evolve the turn after. (bloom tender also taps for 3 when it can tap)

I have played regal force in the past but in general there arent more then 5 or 6 green creatures in play. Thats why I play garruk instead due to it being less mana.

vorinclex is more of a anti control card than it is ramp... but it does ramp.

But thanks for the advice. I'll continue brainstorming.

Added Avacyn's Pilgrim as well for combustible gearhulk. too much RNG

I swear theres a combo you can do with savage ventmaw/soff and hellkite charger/aggravated assault that would be way more optimal than big creatures galore. Hell, scroll rack can possibly enable this with mayael

The combo is sword of feast and famine and hellkite charger/aggravated assault for infinite additional combat steps.

Also, Neheb can fill the role of SoFaF on the AggAssault combo.

Seems pretty stnergistic with your deck as well.

Plus :

neheb

sword of feast and famine

Hellkite charger

Minus :

sword of the animist

gruul ragebeast

selvala's stampede

(they can choose to pick your hand if you dont have anything in your hand making it not as good)

I assume Kess, once released is going to be dethroning Jelva as the go-to grixis storm commander?

More to the point, is Jelva going to get bumped down to tier 1.5?

No. Jeleva is still quite good. Jeleva gives you gas whereas Kess gives you grind capacity.