NarejED

Wort has access to green ramp, Melek doesn't. Six mana is less of consideration in Gruul than Izzet. You might be right though, I was thinking specifically about this build by commandertheory: link. It should probably stay T3 though.

And you're wrong about Chainer's drawback. Every Chainer deck is going to be (or should be) running a critical mass of free sac outlets so they'll never be in position where they'll have to exile their stuff. And there are actually a lot of infinite combos for him with Gray Merchant of Asphodel and Kokusho, the Evening Star. Here's a decklist to look at: Black Box Messiah

PlattBonnay

I did misread Anafenza, but I've also never seen an Anafenza stax list, and my point of her not adding anything towards the strategy still stands. If you want to make one and prove me wrong, go for it, but I still don't think she belongs in T2.

Speaking of stax though, I've heard Nath of the Gilt-Leaf stax is really mean, but I've never gone up against it, so I don't know if it's T2 worthy.

I'm also confused by your argument for Xiahou Dun. You're saying you can use his use his unblockablity a win condition, but his regrowth effect is self-sacrificing, so you'd be losing your main win condition. That's kind of self-defeating. I hadn't noticed he was in Tier 4 though. He is better than most of the stuff in that tier, I could se him being T3 maybe.

My argument for Xiahou Dun is that he offers options, which is what a control deck wants, and one of those options is an effect that black has almost no access to.

sonnet666: Imagine if Athreos said either 'Whenever another creature you control dies, return it to your hand' or 'Whenever another creature you control dies, target opponent pays 3 life'. Both are powerful abilities. At that point, what choice your opponent makes is irrelevant. Both choices will give you an advantage.

Athreos is also indestructible, so you can be trigger-happy with your own board-wipes and not have to worry about clearing your field entirely.

But the fact that it can be either means that all the cards you put in to have synergy with "Whenever another creature you control dies, return it to your hand" are nerfed when your opponent chooses to take the life, and vice-versa with "Whenever another creature you control dies, target opponent loses 3 life."

It makes it really hard to build around him effectively when you're playing with people smart enough to always know what the "best" option is.

NarejED:That Saffi Eriksdotter deck you linked doesn't require combos to win. There is plenty of ramp and just generally powerful cards in there. If she leaves play or you don't assemble a combo, you've still got a very strong Selesnya deck in play.And I would argue that with all of the one-time reanimations of cards like Wood Elves and Solemn Simulacrum, Saffi can ramp just as well as many other Selesnya/green commanders.

It doesn't REQUIRE combos to win. It also doesn't win very often when it doesn't combo though. Selesnya goodstuff by itself doesn't get very far in EDH unfortunately.

Sisay, and Teeg are the best GW commanders, and a clear tier 2. Saffi is in the right place at tier 3. Just not to Sisay/Teeg's level. Slower to take hold, and lower consistency.

I like the new list a lot! I have a couple things to say about it (but who doesn't?)

1) Happy to see that Nekusar is tier 2.

2) Is Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter tier 3 because of his CMC? With a couple mana rocks it is easy to get him turn 5-6 then clear a board and/or swing face and win. I'd love to hear the rational behind his placement!

3) I think Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and Krenko, Mob Boss should be the same tier? Tier 2 seems good for both. They run both seem to do the same thing and at the same speed when I play against them.

Again great list! Thanks! :)

wordsmith29 did you read the tier descriptions? On Vish, you described tier 3.

I have not played against a good kiki deck, but turn 2 krenko, sometimes with haste is hard to beat. Does kiki win the game by turn 5 consistently?

@ Didgeridooda He can indeed win by turn 5 with decent consistency, but only in goldfishes. The Kikki deck capable of pulling off fast wins is a glass cannon combo build, which scoops if Zealous Conscripts gets countered nearly 100% of the time. Tier 3 is definitely the proper place for him.

I have played against low powered kiki, and figured optimized he was in tier 3, but wanted to check since I was not sure.

I was gone for the weekend and missed quite a lot O.o

I am gonna update and comment ASAP! Thanks for the support and interest!

I think we might need more defined standards for Tier 2. We have commanders like Krenko, Marath, Freyalise, Numot, Zegana, Progenitus, Teferi (Creature), and Taysa currently sitting in Tier 2, yet somehow Melek was mistakenly demoted to Tier 3, despite normally being at least marginally stronger than all of the above listed in multiplayer.

Almost of those listed can either control the game without a hand by turn 6, or draw you enough cards that you'll most likely be able to control the game henceforth.

Marath, Freyalise and Krenko are questionable though. Krenko is really easily disruptable because he's mono-red and mono-red has little protection or control. I've never seen a Marath build, but from his abilities, I don't see how he dominates games. Freyalise can hit stax with her -2 and she has both ramp and card draw, so she can play the long-game really well if she doesn't win fast enough, but I guess she's not exactly a combo queen. I do feel her flexibility makes her T2 worthy, but I can see why you might question it.

Melek is a 6-drop, so he's slow; and he relies too heavily on your luck of the draw. His abilities are good, but you need strong luck to pull combos off and if you don't consistently get great combos, you lose. His ability also just isn't very good in the long-run, when compared to evolving abilities like Mizzix' or consistent card draw like Selvala offers.

Having played both Melek and Mizzix, I can say definitely that Melek was the marginally stronger of the two, as I explained above. I can understand how you might not fully grasp his strengths though. Most people who build him build casually, so there aren't many well known optimized lists for him.

Do you rank these for multiplayer or 1v1? Because if so, some of the tier 2 generals have cutthroat combo decks that consistently win t3-4. Namely, Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord and other fast reanimator strategies

On the note above, do you think you could make a list more archetype specific for those looking for a control commander, combo commander, etc. Please take this into consideration as you've done a very well job on this list. +1

Currently we're trying to rank them based on performance in 3-4 player pods, so some decks that win via pure Voltron and non-infinite targeted damage aren't rated as highly as they would be in a 1v1 ranking system. And yes, with any luck, once the Tier list is reasonably well organized to everyone's satisfaction, we can hopefully start to list the strongest strategy for each Commander and / or links to the best deck(s) built around them, particularly those in Tier 1 and 2. That's a another project for down the line though, and only if Gigi has the time and energy for it.

Full of time and energy :)

That would be awesome once the list will be near complete!

May be breaking Rule 1, but where does Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts fail so badly that she's a T5 card?

I think it's simply because Teysa isn't a build-around card and there are so many better commanders in WB if you just want a good commander that doesn't need to be built around.

I'd say push her up to tier 4 though, because she's still a good play, even if she's only playable in casual good-stuff decks.

I like that the color pie is pretty even on this deck.

Wizards have done a pretty good job giving each colour a legendary representative :)

She's still listed as Tier 5 because we haven't gotten around to scutinizing that tier too closely yet. Big Teysa should be at least Tier 4, probably 3.

Okay, I'll start;

Braids, Conjurer Adept, Maralen of the Mornsong, and Melira, Sylvok Outcast to Tier 3. Braids basically just lets you run loads of high-cmc bombs and play them for free, and hope that your opponent is playing much more on curve. Maralen is a combo-enabler and shuts down some decks. Melira obviously works really well with anything with persist.

Sakiko, Mother of Summer, Shizuko, Caller of Autumn, Szadek, Lord of Secrets, Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts and Tymaret, the Murder King to tier 4. Sakiko is okay for snake tribal and also a cool ramp commander, though not really as good as other commanders like Azusa; Shizuko is an okay ramp commander, Szadek is a viable mill commander, Teysa has a few combos and is an okay goodstuff commander, and Tymaret is kinda viable for sac decks.