Now that we've got a nice fresh start, it's a great time to start really delving into Tier 2. Lein and others had some excellent insight on a lot of commanders before the comment sweep. More debate / voting is needed before any final decisions are made though.

I'll briefly list some of the commanders currently up for demotion discussion.

Arcanis the Omnipotent, Azusa, Lost but Seeking, Bruna, Light of Alabaster Child of Alara, Ezuri, Claw of Progress, Ezuri, Renegade Leader, Marath, Will of the Wild, Marchesa, the Black Rose, Melek, Izzet Paragon, Memnarch, Omnath, Locus of Mana, Purphoros, God of the Forge, Reaper King, Shattergang Brothers Sydri, Galvanic Genius Teysa, Orzhov Scion, Titania, Protector of Argoth, Uril The Mist Stalker.

These are commanders I and others have shown skepticism on in the past. The question at hand is whether they can truly compete at cutthroat tables with any hope of actually winning. Any insight / opinions / past experiences with the above mentioned commanders is encouraged. If you have any misgiving on other current Tier 2 commanders that should be demoted, please bring them up as well.

@Sleazebag

I could definitely see Ruhan of the Fomori being bumped to tier 4, according to the tier description. He could be really funny at higher levels of play, but the random factor just prevents him from getting any higher, in my opinion.

Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer I could definitely see it being bumped up to tier 3, but not 2. Yes, he can make some good combo plays and protect your resources, but I still think he is weaker than Daretti, Scrap Savant, which is currently tier 2.

I will still wait on some more discussion before applying these changes.

NarejED: On that list, theres quite a few I agree with.

Particularely, I believe Melek, Shattergang, Bruna and Uril don't belong on that list. There are some others I'm suspicious about but I don't really have much experience with them so I won't try to pass myself as an authority on their topic.

I think it could also be smart to approach from the other direction, which ones do you think do NOT deserve to be demoted.

Azusa is amazing ramp, and can quickly lock down the table with strip mine / crucible or play her T&N while others are at 3 mana.

Titania is just disgustingly aggressive. Force everyone to sacrifice their lands while gaining 5 power each time you do so? 10 power the turn you play her, AND she ramps, avoiding half her commander tax?

Similarly, Marchesa allows you to mostly ignore your own stax effects as everything you sacrifice comes back.

Sydri and Marath are extremely good combo enablers.

I believe those at least should stay in the tier 2 list. 5 color commanders are really hard to pinpoint as they all in reality belong to tier 1. I don't know too much about elfball in competetive metas.

As for those I believe don't belong in t2, Uril and Bruna suffer from the HUGE problem of winning through COMBAT damage. That's simply not tier 2 material. First you need to assemble your death machine, THEN you need to kill 3 players. Other decks just need to assemble their death machine, and everything is over.

Shattergang just takes too much mana to be good enough for T2. Melek has the same problem, he costs 6 mana and has no immediate impact on the board. I believe Keranos is better than Melek, usually only needing to be cast once and giving gradual CA while slowly burning down opponents.

@NarejED

I will only comment on commanders I have faced before, so that my opinion will be valid.

Arcanis the Omnipotent is meh. Often have I seen a player use him instead of Azami, Lady of Scrolls just not to be a target from the begining of the game. He was winning when he was able to draw into Azami and cast her... Also, he costs a lot of mana, which can be difficult to obtain fast in mono-blue... You have to play a lot of mana rocks to accelerate fast in this color, and there would be far better choices if you go that way. I could see him go down to tier 3.

Azusa, Lost but Seeking is an amazing card. I mean, you play green, with a lot of ramp and land search. You will thin your deck a lot, getting at the same time much better draws. You will be able to get some big creatures really fast. There also is the Crucible of Worlds + Strip Mine lock to get rid of problematic lands quite easily. It's mono-green, so it's only problem is creature removal, but I'd say she is one of the best mono-green commanders and deserves her place in tier 2.

Ezuri, Claw of Progress seemed really good when he was spoiled, but up to now, I have never seen an optimized version of this deck. The best I faced was an infect build... But it was quite slow. It can only pump one creature a turn :/ There are still some nice combos available to it, such as Sage of Hours, but it is quite easy to disrupt, you just need to remove the good creature at the right moment. I don't think it is as powerful as Momir Vig, Simic Visionary, I could see him down to tier 3.

Memnarch would be in between 2 and 3, but I'd say it is more of a 3. He is quite slow to get running, even if once he is online it is a real pain in the ass for your opponents. Again, you need to run a lot of mana rocks to get it going, but it also requires blue mana to activate it's abilities, so even if you get the infinite colorless out of Basalt Monolith + Rings of Brighthearth , you need some colored sources also, so no infinity... I'd definitely say tier 3, even if strong tier 3.

Omnath, Locus of Mana playstyle is similar to Asuza, but I think he is more fragile. If you can get rid of Omnath, generally the rest of the deck is quite easy to deal with. They won't be able to keep the mana. Even if there are a lot of ways to protect him, it is mono-green so it cannot really answer those... I'd say down to tier 3.

Melek and Uril still feel tier two to me. Melek can go off the turn after he's cast pretty consistently and Uril is nearly impossible to interact with and gets out of hand extremely quickly. Bruna is similarly insane but seems a turn too slow. I could see her being tier 3 but my experience against her is limited.

As for other changes, moving up Ruhan and Slobad seem reasonable to me. I never thought Cromat was tier 5 garbage, but Karona is still awful enough to stay there.

yavimaya_eldred: The problem with Uril is that it straight up loses to cards like Diabolic Edict, Fleshbag Marauder and Grave Pact.

As someone who played Omnath for a while I do have to point out that Nim Deathmantle, Aluren, and Yeva, Nature's Herald can all let you keep your mana even if he dies.

I used to play omnath as an elfball commander to store the massive mana they can produce and easily 1 shot someone with combat and then second main dropping an avenger with the floating mana.

I felt it was more flexible than Ezuri as an elfball commander just due to the fact that you weren't going all in on the overrun path.

So... Why did we go back to 5 tiers?

I agreed to go back to 5 tiers when I realized tier 5 and 6 were pretty much the same... We just put really unplayable commanders (mostly vanillas) in 6, but some commanders in 5, ecen if they had abilities, were not really better. Tier 5 now is a fusion of the old 5 and 6

With enough mana dorks edolons (and possibly even tokens and / or enchantment answers), uril can be T2 in 1v1 (but not T1 because he can be outraced).

However, in multiplayer he resorts to taking on one at a time and the bigger the table, the worse that is. The element of surprise goes away after the first target and a competent table will focus uril after that - so choose that first target wisely ... and hope for a scoring system because you might reliably take 2nd to last if you don't play politics well. That threat that relies on politics to bring home a win screams T3 to me.

One major advantage that Omnath, Locus of Mana has over every other mono green commander is that he has synergy with most the good card draw spells in green. It is very easy to draw out your entire deck and play it in a single turn by chaining one of Garruk, Primal Hunter; Soul's Majesty; Life's Legacy; Momentous Fall; and/or Greater Good. That plus his ability to store mana for later use make him superior to Ezuri, Renegade Leader in multiplayer. He's even better than Ezuri in an elfball shell since the primary thing holding elves back is not reneneration and trample damage. Its running out of cards in hand when your trying to combo off. Nonetheless, Omnath can't consistently hold his own at a cutthroat competitive table and should be considered a strong tier 3 commander. Ezuri, Renegade Leader, while great in 1v1 is not even close to a tier 2 commander in multiplayer.

@Sleazebag: Surprisingly enough, Uril does alright against sac effects. The best builds run about 10 mana dorks and various utility creatures, so they don't have a whole lot of trouble throwing out fodder for Fleshbag. It's Bruna, Narset, and occaisonally Zur that struggle with them.

Kozilek, the Great Distortion > Kozilek, Butcher of Truth

Why is Sliver Overlord at a lower tier than Sliver Queen? The the Overlord's toolkit like tutor ability seems much better than Queens token production. He can also just tutor Queen when he needs her.I think that either Overlord should be at 2, or Queen should be at 3. Just personal opinion.

Sliver Queen is tier two because of her combo potential. She's worse as a dedicated sliver deck than Sliver Overlord would be, but an optimized Sliver Queen deck isn't a dedicated sliver deck. Take Mana Echoes, for example. It's a better deck than any sliver deck could even hope to be.

Didn't we already discuss this?

I have playtested arcum daggson since the mulligan change and I must say that he is not what he used to be. He may be teir 2 now. The fact that he hits a turn or 2 later gives everyone a chance to respond quicker. I have seen the same for narset as well.

I really like this list otherwise, much better then the top commanders of edh which has meren as the "ultamate teir" commander.

Alright, here we go again.

I'm a big proponent of a "smaller tier 2." I feel that a lot of the commanders in this tier don't fit the description of "Only slightly weaker than tier 1." While since my last post, people have (rightly) corrected me on archetypes that I had very little knowledge of (Marchesa, Omnath), I still feel that there are certain commanders that could be debated. I'm going to give my opinion on ones that I tested more, or have more experience with.

Daretti

This is tough, because Daretti was probably my favorite deck, when it had partials. It was interactive, could dump its hand and wheel, it could get its general on turn 1-2, and was generally mono-red's only truly competitive commander. However, without partialing, everything changed. Daretti needed to get out on the first few turns, or else your opponents would get interaction and prevent the ult. Without partialing, this is no longer a reality. Since mono-red doesn't have the card-filtering of colors like blue, the deck relied extremely heavily on the mulligans to find early mana. However, without this, the deck isn't consistent enough for tier 2.

Ezuri, Renegade Leader

I don't like him. Like I said, it's like comparing Sliver Hivelord to Sliver Overlord. Yes, Sliver Hivelord is great, and protects your creatures and is a powerful effect, but why play it in the command zone when you can play Overlord? Similarly, Yisan is just a better elfball commander. Yisan can just get Ezuri instead of Archdruid on verse 3, and there's pretty much no difference. The deck has the similar "120 damage is hard" argument, and since the deck relies heavily on spamming dorks and other elves, it dies hard to Toxic Deluge for 3. Bottom line, I think that Ezuri is just a weak Yisan.

Jhoira

This is one of the decks that people get beaten by in casual matches, but can't really stand a competitive table. Most of the time, you'll get a turn 2-3 Jhoira, then next turn exile a few cards. This If we assume you win/get empty board with your Blightsteel that turn, then we get a goldfish of turn 7. If you haven't noticed, that's really slow. Since tier 2 decks should realistically be only a turn or 2 slower than most tier 1 decks (which combo off around turn 4-5), this just isn't tier 2 at all. Another problem with the deck is that it's really general-centric. Decks that rely on their generals, like Yisan, can still win (albeit slowly) without their general, but this deck really can't. Your 9 mana spells aren't going to cut it when your opponents are comboing off. At least Yisan has stuff like Green Sun's Zenith to act as a surrogate general. This deck doesn't. On the turn that your suspended cards come down, if anyone has a counterspell, then you're pretty much screwed. The deck is fragile, slow, and not even close to a tier 2 deck.

Memnarch

Again, my biggest question for the deck: Why? Why would you run this instead of Azami? Most of the best removal spells hit him (Krosan Grip says "nice counters"), he costs 14 mana before he does anything relevant, and most other mono-blue generals are just better. In the early game, he brings pretty much nothing to the table, and late game, the best he can usually do is steal a Sol Ring. I just don't see any real reason for playing him over Azami.

Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind

This is one of those "classic EDH combos" that every new EDH player should know. However, it's slow, vulnerable, and easily countered. If anyone sees Niv-Mizzet in the command zone, then the hatebear decks will tutor up their Spirit of the Labyrinth, and you have to pray you don't get matched up against Nekusar. Blue-red usually plays few creatures, so the deck is vulnerable to edicts, and since his color identity has very little enchantment recursion, you're screwed if they get rid of your Curiosity. I suppose you could build him as a control deck, using the general as an extremely slow wincon, but at that point Nin is just better.

Reaper King

I just wanted to say, despite having little experience with the deck, I'm extremely skeptical that this deserves a tier 2 spot.

Sidisi, Brood Tyrant

I don't see why you would play her. She self-mills, decent for a reanimator or dredge deck, she can occasionally create zombie tokens, which aren't that relevant, and that's it. Running Mimeo in the command zone seems like a stronger option. If anyone knows of any combos with her, that would be helpful, as I can't really see any benefit to playing her.

Sliver Queen

Everyone keeps going on about the Mana Echoes combo, but if we assume you cast it all in one turn, that's an 11 mana combo. Now, you could cast Mana Echoes turn 3, then Queen turn 5 and combo off, but when your opponents see Mana Echoes hit the table, it's kind of obvious what you're trying to do. In a deck like Yisan (wow this guy is obsessed with Yisan), where your main wincon is Craterhoof/Kamahl, but you can randomly combo off, I've never had anyone notice the combo with Illusionist's Bracers and Seeker of Skybreak. (Bad example, it's not a great combo, but it illustrates the point.) Since I assume you'll build her as a combo-control list, not a sliver tribal list, this will probably be one of your first non-ramp permanents. People will read it, and know, and the Beast Withins and Aura Shard triggers will be heading your way.

Sydri

After further playtesting with a more optimized version of my list (young Leinahtan was an awful deckbuilder), I guess that the deck could be tier 2. (Yeah, I messed up. Don't be an ass.) While slower than other artifact combo decks like Sharuum and Slobad (even though without partialing he's wildly inconsistent), Sydri is a decent deck with a fine backup plan. You could put her in tier 2, but she's fine in tier 3 as well.

Titania

To start, I just did a quick search of lands that sacrifice themselves. Certain lands (completely off-color fetches, "sac and pay mana for creatures" lands) I ignored, mostly cards that either entered tapped or fetched lands tapped, or required a target. Basically, the good lands. I came up with about 13. Admittedly, Dust Bowl sacrifices other lands, and Strip Mine and Wasteland are really good, but that can, sans tutors, reliably get you 1 or 2 sacrificing lands per game. Since Crucible makes the deck worlds better, I'm going to ignore it for now. With that number of sac lands, you can play Titania, respond to the ETB by saccing the land, then return that land and sac it. After that, you have 15 power on the board. Assuming you play your second land and sac it, that's 20 power. I'll use this as a baseline for the rest of the analysis: 5 mana for 20 power. Let's compare Titania to another tier 2 mono-green commander: Yisan. Both have a specific gameplan. Yisan's usually is drop turn 2 Yisan, tutor an untapper, tutor a mana engine, find Gaea's Cradle, and combo off into Craterhoof. Titania's is usually ramp out, drop a turn 3/4 Titania, sac and return a land, and get a few 5/3's. However, the "120 damage" argument can be made. You require about 6 turns of combat to kill the table. While Crucible can be brought up, it's ridiculously hard to find an artifact in mono-green, due to the lack of tutors. You're relying on draws and mulligans to find it, which isn't very consistent. Yisan could be a top-tier deck like Brago if it could easily find Staff of Domination the way Brago finds Resonator, but due to his color identity, that's just not possible. It could be tier 2, maybe tier 3.

Other notes:

• I've been tinkering (ha) with a Yisan-type Arcum Dagsson stax list. It uses Arcum to tutor up artifact silver bullets against most of the top decks, such as Orb of Dreams against Brago and Cursed Totem against Azami. It's probably not the most competitive deck, but it can tutor for Possessed Portal and Static Orb to stop people from interacting with the eventual Monolith + Rings or Lattice + Disk + Forge. I'll also build a combo deck for him, and goldfish with that. I think that he should drop down to tier 2, but testing will reveal more.

• I don't think that Tasigur is tier 1. The only real point of him is casting him, and Regrowthing a random (but probably good) card. If you cast him for B, activate him for 4, then you've gotten back maybe a counter, maybe a dork, but I just see him as a worse version of Damia. Sure, he always costs 1, but if you mill your wincon, then your opponents are never giving it back.

• Seriously, upgrade Jace to at least tier 2. It's only about turn slower than Jeleva, it's really consistent, and if it goes off, it always kills the table. It's certainly a better deck than Azusa or Memnarch (why is this still tier 2).

• Paramount's list is generally regarded as a joke. Meren > Zur!!!!! As Moxnix said on a discussion thread, the main point of the tierlist is to sell decklists. Yes, Paramount literally tries to sell his crappy decklists to newer players. His "consistent t2-3 combo wins!" lists are $40.

• I've been building a Freyalise stax list. It's decent, and if I ever finish it, I'll bring a list here.

Well, I suppose some clarification is in order.

I wasn't arguing for the continuing placement of Sliver Queen in tier two, per se--rather, I was merely pointing out that she's more competitive than Sliver Overlord. Granted, you never mentioned me by name, but I was involved in the discussion, nonetheless.

Also, Mono-Green stax? What's next? Mono-White Mill? Mono-Red Discard? Mono-black Lands? Mono-blue Burn?

Yes mono green stax probably won't work. Green does not have any stax cards except for Hall of Gemstone and has no way of tutoring for artifacts.

To be fair mono red can do a fair bit of discard thanks to the 16393727 wheels that they have haha.

/joking

Leinahtan the reason you play Sidisi, Brood Tyrant is because unlike The Mimeoplasm Sidisi doesn't make you a target the second she comes into play. People often overlook her because she is a facilitator general. That and some people seem to think that zombie tribal is a thing... Even so, her zombies are slightly better than you might think since they buff Craterhoof Behemoth's effect and are useful fodder for cards like Dread Return. She can more than hold her own at most competitive tables if you run a creature combo reanimator build around some combination of mike+trike, Necrotic Ooze and Deadeye Navigator + Palinchron . However, she usually wins with Craterhoof Behemoth. Her casting cost is also ideal for Birthing Pod since you can pod her to find an answer to most board states (ex. Ixidron; Sidisi, Undead Vizier, Acidic Slime etc.). In playstyle she is similar to Meren of Clan Nel Toth, despite their abilities being essentially the opposite from one another. They both utilize graveyard shenanighans and have similar win conditions. Meren's ability is better, but slower and easier to disrupt since you actually need Meren to live a turn or two. Also the power that blue adds to a midrange reanimator combo deck cannot be understated. These factors make an optimized Sidisi deck slightly more powerful than meren in my estimation and Meren is generally considered a strong tier 2 general. With regard to combos, She does produce infinite tokens with Mesmeric Orb something that self untaps like Basalt Monolith and a card like Kozilek, Butcher of Truth.

I currently am working on a Sidisi deck where I run Meren and Ezuri. Ezuri to get exp from sidisi' zombies and then land a Meren and go to end step to reanimate a kill condition.

It works well so far. I lean pretty heavily on Jarad but the grimgrin+bloodline+necrotic ooze combo also does a fair bit of work.

I believe Sidisi Brood's main appeal is her superior Hermit Druid combo. Her ability to generate sac fodder makes Dread Return a safer option, and gives her more food for Diabolic Intent and Birthing Pod. The Druid combo is a fairly standard Return into Laboratory Maniac and flashing Deep Analysis that can go off for 3 mana, which is an upgrade over Mimeoplasm's 6-mana Druid combo (which occasionally doesn't kill all 3 opponents). She's for sure not as strong as Plasm overall, and she runs a similar build, but again, that is not a strong enough reason alone to be written off. Except for 5C commanders that bring absolutely nothing to the table, similar decks with different commanders should not immediately be immediately invalidated. That leads to inaccuracies.

Alrigt, I suppose I stand corrected. [Excuse]! I'd actually like to see an optimized list for Sidisi. It would be interesting to look at. Sorry, I suppose.

Also, the mono-green stax isn't meant to be that strong, just a challenge from a friend who wanted me to build a stax deck in every color. I built 8.5 Tails, Arcum, Kothophed, Daretti, and Freyalise. Mono-white and mono-green were tough, due to the lack of relevant generals. They aren't tier 2, but they're fine... I guess. Sorry for getting people confused.

No offense taken Leinahtan. Noone can be well versed in all playstyles or commanders. I was actually planning on making an optimized list for Sidisi in the next week or so. I recently built a deck for her and have played her alot lately, but my current deck is toned down quite a bit (no infinite combos; suboptimal landbase etc.) in an attempt to appease my meta. Ill post it once I finish my cutthroat list to get some feedback.