Commanders by Power Level [EDH Tier List]
Commander / EDH*
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Aggro-Blaster says... #2
yavimaya_eldred I am in no way attacking this list. There is a reason I am even reading the comments. With new commanders come new possibilities and you guys typical will mention it in the comments. I will agree it is not easy making a list like this and it will have its flaws. The whole argument about commander colors and combo cards running a deck verus the actual commander is just an example. All I was saying is that the people who typically cast votes are frequent users so they in a way control the list. He did not have any of those regulars supporting him. I am in no way saying Obzedat should be moved up or stay in the same spot. I was simply encouraging a different outtake on a deck. And sure he is alone in this recent argument about Obzdats position, but I am almost certain he has been brought up before simply to be brushed aside.But again, I just want to be clear, I dont discredit any of you for your comments. Edh is considered more causal and you guys look at it in a more competitive way. And you guys definitely know strong decks. But for the lower tiers, things like 2 life gain and drain seems a lot weaker. I was simply offering support to a differing opinion.
June 30, 2016 3:03 a.m.
"Edh is considered more causal and you guys look at it in a more competitive way"
Unfortunately the idea that EDH is a casual format can cause a big divide between the player base and can cause people to get butt hurt about opinions (not saying that you specifically are calling it casual, but the refering to the concept in general).
There is always a lot to analyzing a deck and a commander, whether it be it develoop a tier list or to improve some of the cards in the deck, or for any other reason. Unfortunately playgroup (and in general power level) bias can very easily skew results. For example, I have seen many decks that are decent, but not great. They however happen to be the "big fish" deck in their playgroup and as such a player can have an overinflated idea about their deck or their commander. And I'm sure we've all seen the comments like "in my playgroup the deck almost always wins" or somethign to that accord. This unfortunately doesn't tell us about the playgroup's decks and the level at which they play.
Quick story - I remember playing in an EDH league a few years ago. It was a 1v1 week and i was running my Damia deck (it wasn't as good then but still decent) and I was matched up against a Vorel of the Hull Clade deck. There was not a single momentin that entire game where I did not feel in control of what was going on. I had a hand full of answers and counterspells and had a bunch of mana on the field from ramping hard. Hell, I even got some commander damage in with Damia herself. I remember that in the later stages of the game, my opponent said something along the lines of "I don't know whats going on, my deck is normally faster than this". If I had to bet though, his deck probably didn't run much slower than it normally did. Mine was just faster again.
So bringing this back in, how does this realte to my earlier point? Typically "competitive" decks (and players) are designed to win. There is much less room for error and if a card under-performs, it typically gets replaced. Or if a commander under-performs, it will very often be switched with a stronger commander. But at this level, good is good and bad is bad.
Unfortunately however, at mid tier decks (not commanders, but decks themselves) there is a bit of an interesting efffect that goes on. These decks I have found to usually be around the $600 +- 100 mark. I know that cost is not a good way to judge a deck, but it provides a good entry point. Here, especially if people don't play in tournaments and if people have a deck that is even 10% better than the rest of their playgroup's decks, some people can have a habit of developing a bit of an inflated ego for themselves/their deck/their commander. And no matter what anyone says, their deck can crush a Zur deck or a Sharrum deck because they play against one and beat it no problem with their Zurgo Helmsmasher deck. And again, I'm not saying that everyone is like this.
The other thing is that people can get butt hurt about others saying a Commadner is or ins't good becuase "Hey, I worked really hard to build a good [insert commander here] deck and you can't tell me it's bad". Again, typically this comes from that kind of mid tier play where there is a lot more variance and therefore more skew in the results.
June 30, 2016 3:45 a.m. Edited.
Lilbrudder says... #5
I definitely agree that most visitiors to this deck have a tough time viewing commander in competive terms. Back when I went to commander night at my LGS, my decks were miles away from competitive, but I had a bad reputation in my playgroup for making degenerate decks. Since the vast majority of commander players don't have any idea what a competitive deck looks like it is hard for anyone to see why some of the tier 1 or 2 decklists are better than their bounceland homebrews.
I do agree with Aggro-Blaster that innovation gets shot down too quickly at times, but that is a natural consequence of being in a group with a shared set of beliefs. Assumptions are often treated as facts and those "facts" can be hard to let go.
On another note, while I understand why there is a prohibition of promoting your own commander, the issue is not clear cut. Bias can certainly make a commander seem to the user better than they objectively are. However, only promoting commanders we have seen or played against can be equally biased. For instance if you always play against a crappy Animar or zur deck you are likely to see the commander as less capable than it is and thus you will be resistant to new information. The best conversations we have had lately are because people have argued from their own experience piloting a commander. Sadly some of the worst discussions have also come from that place. To ban commander promotion outright will only lead to stagnation, but it is also tedius to hear arguments for placing tier 4 or 5 commanders in tier 2 or 3 because their deck "always wins" against tier 1 generals
June 30, 2016 10:40 a.m. Edited.
Aggro-Blaster says... #6
To be fair, you can have a tier one deck that consistently loses in a tier 3 meta due to the arch enemy status. Most of the game will be 3 v 1 until someone else becomes a bigger threat. With a tier one deck, players kind of know what to expect. They know where to slow them down. Someone is playing a HD 5-color deck, okay I'm going for Blood Moon. Someone has Karador, Ghost Chieftain, be ready with graveyard hate and instant speed exile or instant speed artifact/enchantment removal. It suddenly becomes a game where when a bomb hits the table it won't stay. I maybe over simplifying it, but hopefully my point is clear
I don't know about you guys but if someone is playing a commander that is considered to be in a weaker tier, I am more relaxed about their turns. I may not know the importance of some of their cards until it is to late. Weak tier generals may run a strong deck but the commander may even act as a decoy.
And to be fair, all of magic is a social format. You are playing with other people. Edh, to most is considered casual.
Also Lilbrudder is right. Prohibiting comments on commanders you run will lead to stagnation. It should be allowed. If anything, no one knows a deck better expect the pilot.
June 30, 2016 11:27 a.m.
Somewhat off-topic, but it looks like we have our first truly playable card out of ELM. I'm of course talking about Eldritch Evolution.
It has a place in just about every deck that already runs Birthing Pod plus a few miscellaneous others. It will likely find a permanent home in Animar, Derevi, and especially Meren/Karador, among many, many others.
Thoughts?
June 30, 2016 12:34 p.m.
Lilbrudder says... #8
I would add this card in a heartbeat to any graveyard matters deck. It makes creature based infinite combos so much easier to assemble. Being able to skip up two cc or down gives alot of flexibility. Too bad it has an exile clause.
June 30, 2016 12:56 p.m. Edited.
Ohthenoises says... #9
I'm going to be adding this to Yisan and Sidisi, both of which love this.
Sacrifice Greenwarden of Murasa and go get Craterhoof and use the Greenwarden's dies trigger to get something else like E-Witness back? Yes please.
June 30, 2016 1:36 p.m.
Yea, Eldritch Evolution is looking to be nuts in any green based creature combo deck. Think it's gonna be fantastic in my Saffi Eriksdotter deck. Not sure if Azusa wants it... but it's probably going to be hard for that card to be bad.
June 30, 2016 3:21 p.m.
yavimaya_eldred says... #12
The new Craterhoof seems very strong, too. Generally going to be worse than Hoof on balance, but gives redundancy and the Overrun effect can't be countered.
July 1, 2016 12:20 a.m.
yavimaya_eldred says... #13
I'll also add I'm still not a fan of lifting the ban on discussing personal commanders. It's inevitably going to lead to more bias than rational discussion.
July 1, 2016 12:23 a.m.
yavimaya_eldred: To be honest, the ban seems a bit pointless as there is really no wat to enforce it. If somebody wants to talk about about commander XYZ that they run, they'll still talk about it, ban or not.
July 1, 2016 12:50 a.m.
Might as well get the ball rolling with some preliminary discussion on [Ishkanah, Grafwidow]. (http://www.magicspoiler.com/mtg-spoiler/ishkanah-grafwidow/)
My immediate thoughts: On its own, or helming a GB spider tribal decks, it's awful. However, it provides a sink for infinite black mana. It feels lower Tier 3 in terms of power.
July 4, 2016 5:54 p.m.
Might as well get the ball rolling with some preliminary discussion on Ishkanah, Grafwidow
My immediate thoughts: On its own, or helming a GB spider tribal decks, it's awful. However, it provides a sink for infinite black mana. It feels lower Tier 3 in terms of power.
July 4, 2016 5:55 p.m.
Seems like the right tier for it. It appears pretty straight-forward: you play this as your commander to have a win condition you don't have to tutor for when you get infinite mana.
July 4, 2016 5:58 p.m.
Tier 3 is too generous. There are plenty of infinite mana sinks in Tier 4 that are better than it, namely Ambassador Laquatus. I say Ishkanah belings in Tier 4.
July 4, 2016 6:05 p.m.
Ohthenoises says... #19
If sliver overlord is in a lower tier due to the deck it "usually" pilots (sliver tribal) then the spider belongs in tier 4. No one who's looking at this guy isn't thinking about tribal spiders.
July 4, 2016 7:25 p.m.
Dredge4life says... #20
All I know is which janky tribal deck I'm pulling out in casual metas. I'm sadly all for tier 4 on the spider.
My dreams have come true! Innistrad is the best!
July 4, 2016 7:47 p.m.
Ambassador Laquatus = Mono- and a useless ability until you have infinite mana.
Ishkanah, Grafwidow = /, free blockers you can boost with generic tribal effects, free bodies you can sac to black's outlets, and an abusable ETB effect.
Put it in T3.
Ohthenoises = "Usually" and "more suited for" are different. I looked at it and thought infinite mana sink. We don't have to downgrade commanders because they're being used by people who don't know how to play. If we did, Narset would be in T3. Should we demote her just because most players don't go the infinite turns route?
July 4, 2016 10:11 p.m.
Ohthenoises says... #22
sonnet666 But most people DO go the infinite turns/MLD route with narset.... In fact whenever I meet someone with a Narset deck they invariably say "I could have done turns/MLD but I don't feel like being that much of a spike/dick/prick/dink/etc". (meaning people are aware of the optimized list/theory) So that example doesn't exactly hold water.
You and I see an infinite mana sink because we are in this thread and we think like spikes. Most people who want to build G/B will pick Meren if they are a spike anyways, if they are building this spider they aren't going to be building the most tuned, optimal G/B deck they can simply because it's not Meren.
If they pick the spider they are GOING to be building a spider deck 9 times out of 10.
Going back to my example of Overlord, I have an Overlord deck. It's tribal. However I run the deck as a toolbox combo deck similar to how Yisan operates. I tutor out Queen, Gemhide, Blur, and a way to make her ability cost 1 (Or Mana Echoes because lulz). However, at the end of the day it's still a tribal slivers deck and thus less optimized than a Queen combo deck. (I just prefer it for the toolbox). Point is that certain decks are almost ALWAYS a specific strategy and the spider is one of those commanders.
Im not saying that the spider isn't good or anything, it's amazing for that type of deck, however it's GOING to me a spider tribal deck 90% of the time.
July 5, 2016 1:33 a.m. Edited.
Most experienced commander players are going to run the 5 or so spiders that are playable in EDH plus Conspiracy.
Your argument to me seems to be, "Most people are going to build a bad deck, therefore we should rank the card lower." How does that make sense? Why should we overlook a card's potential based on people who think Penumbra Spider is good in EDH?
July 5, 2016 7:18 a.m.
Ohthenoises says... #24
I'm not saying we should overlook it.
What I'm saying is if we have certain commanders ranked lower due to their typical builds we shouldn't break from that tradition.
The spider lends itself to tribal so that's what a vast majority of people will build.
July 5, 2016 7:21 a.m.
MagicalHacker says... #25
This is bigger than a giant spider: why is there a disconnect in expectations for people looking at the list? Namely, why are some commanders representative of the most optimized deck for them while others are representative of the most common/obvious deck for them, especially when there exists a better deck for them. What's the problem?! And more importantly, how do we fix this?
yavimaya_eldred says... #1
Gisa and Gerald is super neat, basically turns Vampiric Tutor/Imperial Seal into Entomb. As noted, looping Sidisi is cool. My gut says tier 3 to start.
@Aggro-Blaster You're not exactly being fair. There's been plenty of generals more on the casual/innovative side that have been moved up due to discussion and multiple requests. But we're not going to move up a commander without good reason, and in this situation Obzedat isn't good enough to be tier 3 material. I already mentioned I could possibly see it as tier 4, but there has to be more support than one person who is clearly pimping their own general, which is against the rules.
June 30, 2016 1:15 a.m.