Narset is too slow nowadays, compared to other competitive commanders. She'll win sometimes, but she's nowhere near as good as she was before the introduction of the Vancouver Mulligan into the format. She was WAAY better with Partial Paris (as were all combo decks, actually).

I still say Vaniffar is a glass cannon, until new cards are printed that make her more resilient. Just because you have access to countermagic doesn't automatically make your deck not glass cannon, when it can get shut down easily. The problem, which has already been mentioned, is her colors.

As far as I'm concerned, it is my opinion that she is glass cannon, if she gets shut down, and has a hard time recovering from it.

Yeah, w/o hulk, you know, a well-timed Extract for Sage of Hours or something and the deck is dead.

Warlock1258 Before I get into an analysis of Lazav's placement, I would like to rebuttal you and ask what your dream sequence is to not only turn 3 somebody, but to do so consistently. Yes, turn 3 wins are in fact possible, but to turn 3 consistently and reliably is an entirely different question. Lazav is in great tutor and draw colors, but his combo packages require a lot of set up and pieces to pull off, and if any one of those pieces are interrupted by getting exiled for example, you have to move on to another pile most of the time. My list is nowhere near being considered an optimal cEDH list, because I never intended it to play in a cEDH environment. However, I can confidently say that my game plan isn't far off from that of a fully optimized list, and what little improvements I would make if I were to optimize the list would not make the list noticeably more consistent. Tier 3 is appropriate in my book, I wanted him to be placed in tier 2 when he came out, but he gets stopped dead in his tracks by Rest in Peace, Silent Gravestone, Cursed Totem, and many others. Again, this is a short answer, but keep in mind that I have piloted the deck for many months now, and as much as I'd love to see him move up, I realistically don't see it as comparable to other tier 2 and above decks. It is very simply, the glassiest glass cannon around. Buried Alive decks are a dying breed I'm afraid due to higher relevance of graveyard hate in the meta, and backups to a failed Necrotic Ooze combo with another package consisting of Invisible Stalker/Vector Asp/Phyrexian Dreadnought are a little too mana intensive and janky for competitive play because that sort of backup requires multiple combat phases which translates to multiple turns to kill the table which is not ideal by any means.

I hope that clarifies some things for you, feel free to ask me if some things still aren't clear to you. I would love to provide a more in depth explanation for why I feel from experience that Lazav isn't quite tier 2, but I hope what I have shared here is enough of a concise answer to your question. Tier 3 is still good and viable against competitive decks, so don't let that confuse you. It's just that his combo packages isn't quite as condensed or as direct as other combo-centric decks in higher tiers, and are often highly interruptible as a result.

crstisalie, SynergyBuild, the same can be said for literally any hulk deck and that's a ton of the meta right now. Vannifar actually is pretty resilient as far as commanders go.

I also would like to leave a note here and say that I am taking a lot more credit hours than usual this semester, and as a result I may or may not be on here as frequently when classes pick up. If I'm absent from discussion, that's probably a good sign that I don't have free time to contribute like I normally would. I already got off of every social media outlet I was on so that I can focus on my studies, and I really don't want to remove myself from here too. I spend a lot of time and consideration when I post a comment more often than not, but if you guys don't see me around much these next few months, I'll likely still be in the background reading and keeping up with this discussion. I just don't think I have the time to invest in these discussions that I used to unfortunately.

Most hulk lists (good ones), don't rely on JUST Hulk lines to win. They usually have other outs.

The problem is her Simic colors don't offer the flexibility that most other Hulk decks offer.

crstisalie they have the same basic combo with multiple ways to get there. So do we.

Vannifar is about as glass cannon as every other commander-based combo deck, plus the addition of blue. During my playtesting sessions my commander got stolen from me with Willow Satyr and I was unable to recover from that. This concept of getting rid of a commander could neuter pretty much all commander-based decks. Also there is not one single card that Vannifar revolves around besides Vannifar that without it you lose. One of the whole points of the deck is to have multiples lines to victory so that if you accidentally draw Craterhoof Behemoth in the early game, or Flash gets Praetor's Grasped you just switch lines.

Vannifar is about as glass cannon as every other commander-based combo deck, plus the addition of blue. During my playtesting sessions my commander got stolen from me with Willow Satyr and I was unable to recover from that. This concept of getting rid of a commander could neuter pretty much all commander-based decks. Also there is not one single card that Vannifar revolves around besides Vannifar that without it you lose. One of the whole points of the deck is to have multiples lines to victory so that if you accidentally draw Craterhoof Behemoth in the early game, or Flash gets Praetor's Grasped you just switch lines.

No cEDH deck plays Wllow Satyr, though. Js

Soren841 to be fair, Gilded Drake and Vedalken Shackles are comparable and considerably common to see in cEDH.

Never seen Shackles and Drake is 1 card /shrug Sisay and Yisan manage tier 1 even considering their lack of blue.

Shackles is a pretty good card as is willow sage, but are meta tech. Many metas find them too slow, however staxier cEDH metas often have them as key inclusions to the mono blue, blue-white, and mono green decks, respectively, particularly Teferi, some high-tide jace, and some Azami lists use shackles, while Yisan, mono-green Selvala, and even the occasional Meren list use the sage.

I'm honestly considering shackles for my GAAIV list right now because it's just good stuff in my meta.

shackles is pretty nice when you run against commanders that have the deck built around them, just like gilded drake. definitely a meta decision and the needed islands make it a bit restrictive, so you won't see it as often as drake. taking control over something still has to be considered in general.

Winterblast my point exactly. The main point was not about Willow Satyr, but how commander centric of a deck it is and how that does not make it glass cannon.

generalrenard it's not that commander centric though

Soren841 the deck is a one-wincon list at least for your variant. Ezuri/Sage or bust. It runs a ton (around 30-40 last time I checked) of cards sued to get that combo and about half (around 20 or so) are only useful with Vannifar, things to untap Vannifar, things to chain up with Vannifar, things to give Vannifar haste, etc. All are dead without the commander, in comparison, Narset, while running an almost all-in commander deck only has 26 dead cards without the commander, while that is 7 more than this deck, that is NARSET, the most commander-centric deck I can think exists in the format. We are deadly close to it.

Zur normally runs 1-3 cards that are commander-specific, compared to any normal EDH esper storm deck, using Necropotence and Shimmer Myr and Grasp of Fate pretty often. I could list many more examples of decks without the 20 commander-specfic cards or 30-40 piece combo package, making Vannifar almost an all-in glass cannon almost by definition. Please Soren841, I love Vannifar, but it is a glass cannon, and I am okay with that, why can't you see it how it is?

The point here is that the deck isn't nearly as good on its own as it should be and even a Sisay deck will play better without the commander.

I have been working on a list that can solve these problems with Vannifar, at Vannifar is for Value, the deck is trying to maintain about 26 answers, a good sized interaction package, an average cmc of around 1.2, and a deck that can work with or without the commander, often only casting Vannifar when in need of some extra gas that it gives, and being a reasonably efficient Flash-Hulk deck without.

Winterblast that's debatable. A lot of top commanders need to tap and our untappers can also tap them down. We only have like 17 cards for Vannifar (untappers and haste) and 2 other ways to assemble our combo including one without Protean Hulk (obviously we'd prefer with Hulk)

Lemme see, well you dropped some untappers 3 minutes ago according to the revisions so here is what is left: Quirion Ranger, Wirewood Symbiote, Concordant Crossroads, Vitalize, Dramatic Reversal, Scryb Ranger, Kiora's Follower, Pestermite, Deceiver Exarch, Bounding Krasis, Intruder Alarm, Thousand-Year Elixir, Archaeomancer (used with Spellseeker on 3 for Vitalize or Dramatic Reversal), Breaching Hippocamp, Disciple of the Ring, Chakram Retriever, Woodland Bellower (used to fetch a Bounding Krasis), and Great Oak Guardian for untappers/haste enablers for Vannifar, that is 18, with 2 undesirable lands excluding their untapping abilities, Minamo, School at Water's Edge and Wirewood Lodge.

Otherwise, the commander-centric cards don't end there. Cards that are otherwise generally bad outside of a strategy aiming to sacrifice creatures as fodder like Dosan the Falling Leaf (does see play in Sisay because it is legendary), Manglehorn (does see play in blood pod because of Birthing Pod) or a card like Archetype of Endurance in the deck specifically to be fetched after you sacrifice Protean Hulk to Prime Speaker Vannifar are clearly bad outside of this commander centric build. This means 23 clearly commander centric cards.

Then, because of the way this deck uses Vannifar to get hulk without sacrificing it immediately, the deck has cards like Crop Rotation to find High Market, more dead cards outside of Vannifar.

SynergyBuild you cannot count lands as dead cards because they will never be anything but lands. Spellseeker is not solely an untapper and is not dead. Crop Rotation, again, would be in the deck regardless, and is not dead. Archaeomancer is not necessarily just an untapper either. Dosan and Manglehorn aren't bad either.

Glass cannon is, as glass cannon does, lol.

Soren841 I didn't count Spellseeker in the list, simply said the Archaeomancer was part of a chain with it. Don't mess with my words now, whether we disagree about how a deck can have dead cards, my point stands.

Also, I never said these cards are dead entirely, sure, a 1 mana 1/1 isn't... dead, but it isn't gonna do a lot, so Wirewood Symbiote I consider a dead card without your commander. A colorless land that doesn't get extra mana like Gemstone Caverns or Ancient Tomb isn't a good card either, and is relatively dead without the commander.