It would seem that Teysa Karlov would be a High power or competitive deck... guess more testing is needed?

Can someone please explain how Circu, Dimir Lobotomist is tier 2? I have literally seen him on worst commander options lists and I see no way his ability can work in a singleton format unless there are cards that change the names of other cards that I don't know about. Not sure if it is a joke or something, I can't find any decks on this site with him as the commander.

To my knowledge Circu is used as a sort of lantern control deck but I could be wrong.

DeathByDiddle

He's an Outlet for the Paradox Engine / Isochron Scepter / Dramatic Reversal combo package. Go infinite with this combo and you win the game. His upside is that you don't must to be mana positive. So you can do it with probably only a Sol Ring or Mana Crypt. The next upside is his potential with Lantern pieces and his strength in consistent cEDH meta's. Hit one Hermit Druid means you hit every Druid. Hit one players Brainstorm or Force of Will and no other opponent will cast them.

Sure. In regular EDH he's not strong. In a 100% and highly competitive cEDH meta he can be a blast and a lot of fun to play.

I have to say, this tier list is bad. Ishkanah, Grafwidow is nowhere near a high power level Commander, and to put the Spider Tribal Commander above Edgar Markov , Athreos, God of Passage and Skullbriar, the Walking Grave is absurd. Not saying those decks should be raised a tier, I'm just saying they should be ranked higher than a jank spider tribal commander. I also think there's a bias towards infinite mill combos, as Circu, Dimir Lobotomist , Oona, Queen of the Fae and Ambassador Laquatus are not at all comparable to Ghave, Guru of Spores , Narset, Enlightened Master and Prossh, Skyraider of Kher who go infinite in much faster and stronger ways. Varolz, the Scar-Striped is the biggest offender on this list. This is further noted by the deck examples, where the author seemingly pokes fun at Varolz, the Scar-Striped not being that great in cEDH but seems to have a personal bias towards the deck. If we're counting Protean Hulk combo decks as "competitive" there's plenty more worthy commanders to consider. Honestly, this list comes across like the author just put a few decks everyone knows is good at the top (Teferi Stax, Thrasios, ect.) then just based the rest of the list off of personal preference or whatever the local meta is where the author plays.

DeathByDiddle Circu has the most efficient scepter combo in the format and that means he has the potential of throwing out a very early kill. The commander doesn't provide card advantage but you can use his abilities and draw-limiting effects along with cheap mill rocks to create soft locks and to constantly filter the draws of yourself and others.

Here's an example build:

Brain Fart Stax

Commander / EDH Winterblast

SCORE: 28 | 24 COMMENTS | 2648 VIEWS | IN 15 FOLDERS

Brolamog_the_Infinite_Higher: Oona is very strong when built properly. Narset got a hell of a lot worse now that Partial Paris is gone, because all of her gameplan requires her to attack. Without Partial Paris to filter her opening draws, she's just nowhere near as good as she once was. Prossh took a hit because there are better options for Food Chain combo since his initial printing.

crstisalie Oh absolutely I agree, my point isn’t “X Commander should be Y tier” my point is that there’s inconsistency in this tier list. Oona is strong and I’m not trying to say infinite mill combos are bad, they’re just not what I would consider a viable cEDH strategy since so many other wincons are just better/more stable. However, even without partials and better Food Chain Commanders to say that Oona, Circu and Varolz are on the same level as Narset, Prossh, Yidris and Mizzix is insulting at worst and misleading at best

I dunno, my Oona list (which can be found on my profile page) is very strong. Average kill (realistically) is turn 3.5. She is a lot better than she is often given credit for. I don't know what your meta is like, but she hangs with the best decks in the format. No issues whatsoever.

From how the tiers are described now, the ones labeled at tier 1 (Maximum Power category) are simply the commanders that stand out as being consistently competitive, but the tier 2 commanders (Competitive category) can be, more or less, just as competitive as the commanders labeled tier 1. While I don't agree with all of their placements, for the most part it's pretty accurate.

This is just my understanding, though, based on how it's all structured.

Brolamog_the_Infinite_Higher

Bro.

Bro. Man we gotta talk.

You can't go disrespectin a hard workin girl like that. Dude like if you were a fae queen who always had to deal with random kingdom crap your subjects pull and the fact that you cant seem to get any welfare from WotC cause they hate Lorwyn like what kinda life would you be leadin. Look like sure you can go with your dragons, or your enlightened masters, or whatever you want but you know at the end of the day, what matters is you feed the fam. And infinite mill? It feeds the fam. Don't gotta be fancy. No glorious work that you need a PhD in stack theory just to show off. But you know what? Oona does it anyways. She gets up in the morning. Takes the hate from the haters. And goes to work anyways. Dude she cant even guarantee a promotion cause they replacing her with new technology and whatnot. All the bathrooms getting new sinks. Turns out there's better places to dump your colorless mana.

But you know what cant be replaced? Her hard workin no nonsense spirit. And I think its just not real nice bro to rail on her like that cause Dave and Glasscannon.deck might be more flashy when they go off.

And you know, she's definitely better than Prossh, Skyraider of Kher .

Know why?

She's blue.

Oh god AlwaysSleepy, that comment made my night LOL!

It's the same for oona as it is ishkana. The leading difference being that blue gives the best interaction&more resilient infinite mana lines, ishkana also gives you dudes to pod into finding your combos/interaction faster.

Varolz is the most consistent sac outlet in cEDH. If there's a cheaper one available in the cz - the deck would use it. Yes: hulk lines are fast. The fastest possible. It confused me too - the notion with circu, but try the playtest button on each of the decks, it'll give you a far better understanding of those you believe are unnecessarily higher in tier.

The most first thing that's considered when seeing a general for cEDH is what the card does. Tazri is so stromg because he finds your combo outlet. Najeela is a combo piece. Gitrog is a dumb engine & a combo piece. Further down the list you see: Ishkana - wins with infinite mana Oona - as above Circu - wins with storm count Brago - staxproof general who helps you to lock out the board & navigate around your own pieces with ease.

Like... the knowledge is out there. You just have to do some research.

This is probably a little embarrassing, but how does Tazri's tutor do anything useful, actually? Do you first play Conspiracy and then get Misthollow Griffin , or is there some other creature that combos with Food Chain (apart from the new squee) that's also an ally? I get that you can sink the infinite mana into her to make her and any other allies infinitely big, but iunno.

That's no argument against the competitiveness of the deck, by the way--I'm just curious.

@NoOneOfConsequence

As far as I know;

1) get infinite mana to cast creatures from FC

2) cast Tazri

3) Tazri trigger gets you Kalastria Healer

4) cast Kalastria Healer

5) sac Tazri to FC and return it to CZ

6) cast Tazri

7) KHealer trigger

Repeat steps 5-7 until everyone else is drained.

JohnnyCRO is on point with how Tazri works, he is there as your reliable gateway tutor to win. Misthollow Griffin can be interchangeable with Eternal Scourge and Squee, the Immortal to produce infinite mana with FC.

If Tazri isn't a she, then bob's my uncle.

I didn't know Eternal Scourge existed, actually. Also, yeah, that sounds about right, I guess. She could also just go get more allies for funzies, but you win already with Kalastria Healer .

why is prime speaker vannifar only high power o this list?

Winterblast Thanks for clearing that up, very interesting & informative. The tactic must be really new or tough to pull off based on how many decks are listed with him as commander on edhrec(currently 155). Maybe people are trying to keep it a secret so that it can be a surprise win out of nowhere. With how many people link to this list; I'm surprised there aren't more trying it.

In Dimir, the combo is definitely not hard to pull off at all.

CyborgAeon I’m not buying the “This Commander does stuff with Infinite mana so it’s strong” argument, mostly because if we were to use that argument almost any deck can be viable. Oona’s casting cost alone lowers her viability in my opinion, but as seen earlier in this thread there is a bit of personal bias I likely won’t be able to argue through. As for Varolz, Teysa, Orzhov Scion off the top of my head already comes to mind as a better sac outlet that is just as cheap and as I said earlier, if we want Green for Protean Hulk shenanigans every color combination can do what Varolz offers for the deck if not better. Your argument that a Commander is necessary when considering wincons that don’t even need the Commander to win comes across as weak to me. Infinite Mana and Infinite Storm likely can win a game regardless of Ishkanah or Circu in an appropriately built deck, so to say that those already sufficient wincons make those Commanders high tier comes across as either disingenuous or as a misunderstanding of what makes those win conditions strong to begin with. I can just as easily use Infinite Mana to Tutor Torment of Hailfire and win in literally any deck running Black than rely on 5-6 mana creatures like Ishkanah or Oona that are more susceptible to disruption

Lmao, what?! Oona's casting cost means nothing, because when she hits the table, the game's over. You were making arguments for Prossh, when he has the same cmc, but is harder to cast than Oona, since Oona can be cast with any combination of U/B. Oona is not really susceptible to very much disruption when she hits the table at all, because again, when she hits, the game is over. What makes her strong is her colors, and the fact that she's a good mana sink that just ends the game.

It really seems like you've never seen a good Oona deck in action, with a good pilot behind the wheel.

And the point of having a Commander that also acts as a wincon is so you don't rely on having an additional tutor to fetch up your wincon (because you always have it in the Command Zone), so your argument about Torment of Hailfire is rather baseless, and is in no way a good argument.

crstisalie I made my claims under the assumption that Oona is not being played in a scenario where we have access to infinite mana, which I do apologize for not clarifying but I figured when I criticized the mana cost that was assumed (Since complaining about mana costs with the context of infinite mana is superfluous). The argument with Prossh is that Prossh doesn't need the infinite mana set up to win plus needing only 3 colored sources makes him an easier target to ramp out as opposed to Oona's 4 colored sources necessary to win (counting the activated ability, of course), meaning Oona in that same context is significantly worse. Now, that is in the context of not having infinite mana available. In the context of having infinite mana, I'm saying that Oona (or any infinite mana/spell Commander) as a win condition in the Command Zone isn't necessary, as there should be a critical mass of tutors to the point that we should have a few in hand every game. In that case where we do have infinite mana, it really doesn't matter where our win condition is because in all likelihood we'll be able to grab it by tutoring, using the infinite mana to draw our entire deck, or by just having it in hand already. As you can see, if it doesn't matter where the win condition is located saying that Oona is high tier because that card starts in the Command Zone is silly because Oona's win condition should be able to win regardless of whether or not Oona is in play. This method of evaluation can arguably apply to every Commander however since most color combinations can pull off quick wins regardless of the Commander, so for the purposes of evaluation the Commander needs to be evaluated in a vacuum. Oona when she's not winning the game is rather mediocre, which is why (to me) it seems unfair for her to be rated so highly when other Commanders (like Prossh, for example) have value without the main win condition. Now, that evaluation of Oona is my opinion which you are entitled to disagree with, but I wanted to clarify that my argument is not baseless nor is it based on any anecdotal evidence as alleged in your comment.

So because Oona requires infinite mana to win to game on the spot, means that it's less viable than a commander like Prossh, or Narset? Riight. First and foremost, as was already pointed out, she's Dimir, which are the two best colors in the game. With infinite mana, she needs 6 colored sources to win in a four man pod, in any combination of black or blue... but when the deck generates infinite colored mana (which it does very easily), her casting cost, and the cost of her activated ability, is completely irrelevant, because the game is over. What are you gonna do? Counter her when I have infinite colored mana? I'll just cast her again. Destroy her when she enters? Activate her ability in response, and exile your deck, and everyone elses. And the deck, by virtue of its colors, runs other compact, back up wincons, to close out the game, for consistency purposes.

And your argument about how you should pretty much always have a tutor in hand to tutor up your wincon is just blatantly false, because if you've played this game enough, you would know that you don't always have extra tutors in hand when you need them (it's called variance, which every singleton format has a lot of), so having the ability to have a Commander that also doubles as a wincon is waay more advantageous to the pilot of the deck, than a commander that doesn't win on the spot, once it's cast, and has to rely on cards in hand to close out the game.