Okay so I should have read the rules in full. I play Braids as my casual commander. I apologize for that. But I feel like my point still stands and I'm glad it started the discourse about her placement. (Which I thought at the time was a bit silly lol)

Any interaction with Yisan immediately slows it down -- if not shuts in down.

Torpor Orb is not even in a color.. and the small number of playable cards that hate on Yisan are the same small number of cards that are played by many decks with the intention of shutting down many strategies. All of the solid hate bears constitute "a small number of cards", but they are all good enough to handle Yisan and more. Sure, Yisan has a favorable matchup against resource denial, but not against outright lock strategies.

I really don't know, but all of my playtesting with Yisan has given middling results.

• Elf Storm -- Rule of Law, Linvala, Keeper of Silence, Cursed Totem

• Yisan generally -- Containment Priest, Hushwing Gryff, Torpor Orb, Humility, Grafdigger's Cage, Phyrexian Revoker, Pithing Needle, Linvala, Keeper of Silence ... even Consume the Meek, Sudden Spoiling, Sudden Death, Lodestone Golem

A good derevi, gaddock list plays most of these cards and more. Other commanders have access to fast, efficient removal and to counterspells ... which make them inherently better than Yisan in at least their ability to interact with opponents.

I really like Yisan, but diruptive strategies slow it down and it doesn't immediately win the game. As I said before, that seems really fit for tier 2. It truly does compete well with tier one decks, but if an early counter strategy card hits the board before Yisan starts moving, then the deck struggles to find a way around that and catch up.

To a certain extent, there are plenty of cards that deal with non-creature hate pieces available to Yisan, but creature hate bears or counterspell defended prison pieces are difficult for mono-green to dislodge, more so than other color identities.

I'm on the "Braids is goddamn awful" train.

Yes, most cEDH decks have a low curve, but that doesn't mean they can't take advantage of the free effect. In fact, MOST decks play cards like Consecrated Sphinx, Notion Thief, Elesh Norn, Dead-eye Navigator, Palinchron, Venser, Rune-Scarred Demon, Sidisi, Peregrine Drake, Gilded Drake, Azusa, Gilded Lotus, Oracle, Teferi, E-Witness, a boatload of manarocks, utility artifacts etc and will have one of these cards in their hand.

So you play your braids, each opponent gets to cast their best card in hand for free, and THEN their low curve comes into play, because it's chock full of removal, so good bye Braids and no upkeep trigger for you.

Braids is flat out awful unless you can flash her in at the end of your turn. She's a very fun commander to play, but she isn't remotely competetive.I guess a mono blue control deck dedicated to flashing her in EOT and then trying to win off the free spell would work somewhat, but the crux of the matter is that she can't cheat sorceries or enchantments, so even if you pull it off, you just went through a shitload of trouble to get a free Jin-Gitaxias (Which probably won't live long enough to draw you any cards).

But the thing is Sleazebag, you're talking about a group hug deck. Ultimately the point is that the person who drops the Elesh Norn turn 5 is the person who everyone turns to and goes...WTF? Now granted she is better if flashed in. But she's also very specifically built to be abused by you. Also you must be in a heavy spot removal meta. Mine is not nearly so difficult to keep her alive in.

Braids with Phasing is probably the best use of her I have seen.

Definitely not competitive, but better than t5 for sure

To be tier 4 the general should have an ability that has some utility if built around properly. Braids can win the occassional game in a semi competitive meta with the right political environment. On that note I believe that Phage the Untouchable should also be tier 4. There are more than enough ways to get around her suicide clause and, she like braids has an extremely potent ability.

Yeah agreed. Phage is a lot of fun and definitely kills when built around

I can second that!

i also agree that phage is amazing when built right.

Well Phage and Braids I could definitely see moving up to 4!

I might argue that Blind Seer could be moved up. There are a lot of really shitty color change or color specific cards that suddenly become playable if put in a Blind Seer deck.

Blue Elemental Blast

Douse

Hydroblast

Wash Out

Hibernation

Tidal Control

Mind Harness

...

Yeah Idk, he can be built around and still provides access to mono blue control regardless. You can also troll people to death with any kind of color protection in play, so that's fun.

Geist of Saint Traft -- definitely worse in multiplayer than in duel... but... really? Him and Barktooth Warbeard share a category?

Geist is flat out terrible in multiplayer.

really? there's no way to make a control deck that is better than unplayable garbage with geist at the helm?

Giest does nothing particularly useful though. I suppose you could harvest value from his tokens with a sac outlet and Skullclamp. But really what is the point? Theres no upside with him besides chump blocking and putting people on a 7 turn clock (on an empty board)...With Braids and Phage there is a point why you would want to get around their significant drawbacks. Dont get me wrong giest is a great creature, but he scales horribly.

Nothing useful? I mean, he's not great, I agree, but he is UW and hexproof. A good combo for voltron -- even with that being bad in multiplayer.

You say "7 turn clock" as if a Geist deck would just be attacking with him alone -- UW has great aura support and great control support. Not the best for multiplayer, but unequivocally better than Tier 5, I think. Can definitely build an effective (if not very competitive) voltron deck for multiplayer games.

Again, to reiterate, I get that he sucks in multiplayer, but "janky"? I don't know.

I could definitely see Giest aura/ equipment voltron beating down tier 3 commanders with some regularity. You might be on to something

A few things that I think we should do to avoid unnecessary hassle:

Add tier 6 in again, for the following commanders.

• Vanilla commanders (Tobias Andrion)

• French Vanilla commanders (Ramirez DiPietro)

• Commanders from Portal, sometimes with Horsemanship, and maybe a combat ability that only affects themselves (Zhao Zilong, Tiger General)

That being said, here's a bunch of changes that I think should be made. I'm going to try to be more concise with these, and only ramble on ones I have some experience with.

• Bassandra tier 4

• Blind Seer tier 4

• Braids tier 4

• Circu tier 4: I've actually been testing out a weird brew. I doubt it'll pan out to higher than tier 4, but it's certainly interesting. If you make an infinite loop, but without infinite mana, you can exile your opponents' libraries. It's like a worse Oona, but that still is decent enough for tier 4. Worst-case scenario, it's just UB High Tide without a general.

• Geist tier 4: Might kill people occasionally.

• Karona tier 3: Decent deck, will probably win some games.

• Avacyn, Guardian Angel tier 5: Bad colors, bad ability, too expensive.

Later, I'll write about tier 2.

Not the Tier 6 nonsense again....

Then just get rid of them. They'll almost never be used, except as bad jokes.

I don't know that there needs to be a tier 6, I also don't understand that reasoning behind 5 tiers. It seems like an arbitrary number rather than an actual attempt at finding the right number of clusters for the commanders. I guess sometimes an arbitrary number of groups is necessary and that 5 tiers fits the extremely qualitative spectrum pretty well, but that's not saying much.

It's hardly fair to call the idea of Tier 6 "nonsense" when there was absolutely no reasoning behind the current tier system besides "arguing over perceived expert knowledge"

It might be worthwhile to actually find a set of features for all commanders, judge each commander on a scale based on those features, and then cluster the resulting data accordingly.

It's nonsense in that the discussion has been beaten to death so many times that it's nonsensical to bring it up again for the umpteenth time. I can't attest for the rest of the list contributors, but I for one am sick and tired of the number of Tiers discussion. It wastes time and detracts from real progress.

Wasn't there someone some time ago who made a 6 tier list and then tried advertising it on this thread?

I believe Prime_Time had made a six tier list some time ago.

The problem is the sixth tier adds nothing. Pretty much all the commanders in tier five are equal garbage regardless of whether they have a text box or not, so having two tiers of equal unplayables is just a waste of time. This debate was also driven into the molten core of the earth and resolved already, so please, let's not do it again.