New fan, this is a breath of fresh air in mtg podcasts, you talk about interesting subjects nobody else does! And the new intro rocks!

Coming from the Command Zone, I've just discovered this podcast. It looks like Dana matches exactly my style of deckbuilding. I think I'm going to enjoy this. :)

This has become one of my favorite MtG podcasts in such a short amount of time. Keep up the great work everybody

Muldrotha and Chulane are both generically good stuff tbh. Muldrotha reads: Do sultai things and Chulane reads: play cards to get cards

I don't know what to think anymore, Joey's always been my EDHRecrush, but Dana's mustache curl has me swooning over here lol

Something Mitch from Commanders Quarters got a lot of flack for was saying that Rift doesn’t belong in Golos, and I’d say it actually a great example of a good stuff card that doesn’t belong in a good stuff commander. When you’re trying to cheat out big costs, hitting a 2 mana instant instead of a board wipe is kinda sad and really doesn’t synergize.

I disagree that removal isn't goodstuff. To me it feels bad to make room for autoinclude removal that doesn't synergize with my deck. And it gets even worse if the opponent doesn't run enough targets for my removal. (Admittedly rare in commander, but happens in brawl.)

Another white good stuff card is wrath of God. It's my first go-to wrath for white inclusive decks because it's the OG wrath but also is really effective at 4 cmc.

Correction regarding the history of Braid of Fire: Mana didn't empty from your pool when phases changed until the rules update in 2010 (this was also when the rules regarding mana burn went away.) Braid of Fire came out in 2006 and so was less of a liability at the time if you didn't have an instant to spend the mana on if you had a creature or sorcery you could cast in your turn. THAT SAID.... I have to disagree on Cyclonic Rift. Every color needs a way to sweep the board, and Cyclonic Rift is just that card for blue in 99% of the times I've seen it played. If you're claiming that is too ubiquitous, you'd have to also include Blasphemous Act or Damnation in the list. And as for me, your basis of "would you play this in a 5-color deck" for me is a no, and I can say so considering it's not in my Breya deck. I'd rather run Merciless Eviction, Wrath of God, Damnation, Blasphemous Act. I'm in a meta where enough players are playing decks that can generate large amounts of mana and tend to have no maximum hand size, making a rift something that is only really useful if I'm being attacked after an overrun effect.

The theme among a lot of these good stuff cards is that they can target any permanent, the more generic their range the more useful they can be.

Damia herself is a "goodstuff" commander imo. As far as removal goes, I always first look for a synergistic card to fill in necessary gaps in the deck first before I ever consider something inherently powerful

I agree with the whole limiting tutors thing. I have a Meren deck that I will never get rid of, but have updated a number of times. When I first built it, I had all the "good stuff" that you would expect to be in that type of deck and the tutors to get the pieces that I wanted. I found out that it's very boring to win the same ways all the time.Also all that searching takes forever and then you gotta shuffle and everyone is staring at you...Overall, I have been limiting my decks to maybe two tutors because sometimes you gotta find that one card that will keep you from dying. LOL

An example of when good stuff is bad stuff is when they nombo with each other. Two examples I can think of when alternative or X costs are nulled by cheat into play tactics. i.e. hitting Torment of Hailfire off of Golos. The other time is when part of the effect runs counter to your strategy. I had an opponent once discover in real time that running Necropotence and Survival of the Fittest out at the same time is not a good idea for a Meren deck. Another example is that you probably don't want to play Smothering Tithe in a Kataki deck.

Haven't seen this episode yet but thank you for keeping me sane in these dark times, I've been working backwards on Spotify and it helps with the daily commute! Matt Morgan best husbando

I would argue against avenger of zendikar being "good stuff". I think it is in so many green decks because it is synergistic with so many green commanders. Tokens, etb, landfall, sacrifice, there are just so many commanders that are kicked into overdrive when the avenger hits the battlefield. Its synertastic! :D

I play at a high powered playgroup, sitting just below CEDH. I wanted to make Anowon, the Ruin Thief but all my attempts were lacking. It ended up being basically a UB 'goodstuff' control deck with the best rogues thrown in - and it works. The UB transmute suite is a range of budget friendly tutors that work around low powered tables' salt. No Jeska's Will for red? A lot of red's best cards are pretty recent. I'd say Purphoros too, just because in any sort of red deck with even just a small number of token generators it can be disgusting.

I just want a clip with all of Matts jokes! :D

One thing I would like to say is that there is some inherent synergy with a goodstuff deck. Someone I used to play with would only build goodstuff decks, and they were always very strong since they didn't rely on getting a certain board state, only sticking one or two threats. Their game plan was a lot harder to stop, whereas one might only need to remove one or two key cards to significantly reduce a synergy based deck, but it was also really boring to go up against at times. Always going up against the same threats over and over again meant that each "new" deck felt the same after one game. I never understood it myself, but my friend still enjoys their goodstuff to this day.

I suck at using sensei divining top .... and now I'm putting it in every deck thanks guys

I have two copies of Vedalken Orrery sitting in my binder, they used to be in decks but as I kept improving them building on their synergies there just was no room for good stuff in them any more.

I find that I tend to like to play good stuff cards, but I feel like that’s a result of wanting to play on a budget with a variety of decks, so having a few staple good stuff cards to switch out between decks allows me to have a workable deck without needing to buy specific expensive synergy cards. In order to keep up with an average table at my local store, I need to be able to make sure that I don’t fall behind on resources due to an inability to make the entire deck consistent/synergistic. One of my favorite decks is Muldrotha, where most cards are from my middle school collection or other fun cards I’ve enjoyed, but I use C-Sphinx and Cyc-rift to be able to get back in the game, or more likely to close out games (such as with an archeaomancer loop)

Great episode, thanks. Lots of funny moments and jokes, but also food for thought. Cheerio!

New big fan! One thing that would be nice that I noticed after listening only (driving down to my family), is at least briefly saying what the cards your talking about do. Don't know every card, and when doing something else I can always look them up. Keep up the good work!

"Mana Burn is gone" . . . . . . . Yurlock has entered the channel

I like the editing of people showing up and cards. Good job. You also work really good together. Lucky you. EDIT: About "Goodstuff", I think you nailed it.. I wish more people had the mentality of "putting on a show". I like synergies and weird combinations. I for one would play every deck with a Kamigawa theme, because that's my jam and I would like for more people to love it as well.

49:00 An example of a deck that does not want Vedalken Orrery: Muldrotha! Her ability only works on your own turn, so if you're maximising value out of her ability, you should be playing more of a 'tap out control' kind of play style.

This is brilliant

Dana's intro is the best I've heard....even though it's 3 years later and I watching these episodes in reverse 😅

What’s interesting about this discussion IMHO is that this harkens back to the discussion regarding variance. The takeaway was(if I remember correctly) that variance tends to happen in four and five color decks, which also correlate with high good stuff amounts. Also it gets pointed out that people don’t like to win the same way every time and that’s why combo tends to be frowned upon. So there’s almost a push-pull happening between making things interesting albeit generically good, and not so much “good stuff” but high synergy with tends to have to win the same way every time because like you stated, they aren’t that good on their own, and taken to its logical extreme, high synergy equals combo. Here’s an interesting “challenge the stats” thing to try, and I don’t know if it’s actually testable, but look at all the popular archetypes that aren’t creature/beatdown oriented, how many of those types of decks have high synergy but either struggle to close out the game unless combo oriented, or have wincons that are “good stuff” and not necessarily tied to the theme of the deck? How does a blink deck win outside of a peregrine drake related combo, or how does a muldrotha or meren deck win, probably some good stuff creature that has high P/T?

I have a challenge the stats for you. Aetherflux reservoir inst in any Edric spymaster of trest deck lists. i run this Death Star of an artifact in my 99. with all the cheap 1/1 (CTP creatures) it creates a healthy life gain for the longer games that you couldn't push for. also leaves you with the ability destroy an opponent with a "single reactor ignition" basically Edric with hes draw effect plus the decks desire to play tones of cheap 1/1s on main phase two let Eatherflux reservoir do a lot as a different synergy. please let me know if you would like my deck list. CHEERS!

My most memorable win was having grimoire of the dead reanimate a master of cruelties with a pathmaker intiate on board.

At Magic 30 in Vegas I brought 4 decks: two cedh and two casual (Najeela, Anje, Edgar, Trostani). I got two promo Arcane Signets in the swag and the I realized that none of the four decks I brought use Arcane Signet. Neither casual deck even ran Sol Ring. All of these lack of cards were because Arcane Signet doesn't help any of them, while there is no turn in Edgar or Trostani that I'd even want to cast a Sol Ring because there is so few cards that have 2 generic mana in the casting cost. Basically, I didn't run two of the most "autoinclude" cards in multiple decks not out of some protest or creative stunt, but because they aren't useful cards in those decks. Running them would weaken those decks.

Thanks for making this GOLOS deck list ;)

I usually use goodstuff cards cautiously to make the otherwise mediocre, vorthos-y theme decks I like to build more competitive (or even work at all). For example, I have a Basandra, Battle Seraph deck which is all about the chaos of war, with cards like War's Toll, Crescendo of War, Archangel of Strife and Avatar of Slaughter, alongside token generators and creatures with attack triggers. It wants all creatures on the board to be in the red zone constantly, and it's a ton of fun. But being a Boros deck, it desperately needs Land Tax, Smothering Tithe, The Immortal Sun and Sun Titan to be viable in my meta, with my friends playing pimped precon decks and the Atraxas, Edgars and Ur-Dragons are all over the place. Also, as a deckbuilder, I want to always have a small story to tell if someone points at ANY card in my decks and asks "why is that in there?". "Because it's a strong card" is not a good answer in my opinion. Black tutors, for example, have to have a synergy with my commander. For this reason, my Aminatou mill/reanimator deck has my only copy of EMA Vampiric Tutor, because putting any card on top of my library at instant speed is crazy "synergistically" good in her deck, and Raymond Swanland's art really adds to the overall creepy flavor of that deck. Glissa, the Traitor on the other hand uses Entomb for obvious reasons. I would not even consider to put Demonic Tutor into either of these two decks. It's just a strong card with no real synergies or flavor and doesn't even FEEL black, because it only costs two mana and has no additional costs or downsides whatsoever.

Yarok, the Desecrated using a Landfall theme and Avenger of Zendikar :)

Braid of Fire looks like great ramp!

subscribed, good stuff!!

Joey making an UnnhhH reference for the straight boys out there for the sign on is everything xD

A card that comes to mind is necropotence. I'm used to adding it into my black decks but when tuning up Anje i realized it was a great card but distinctly antisynergistic.

Killing Wave from Avacyn Restored is highly underrated

for my Akiri/Silas artifact deck I just run Silas for the colors since it extends the amount of options that I have in general.

I thought my opinion on good stuff was already pretty well developed, but this definitely introduced a couple of scenarios I hadn't taken into consideration, especially for red and white. Even when extrapolating that to the other colors, where do you draw the line between a card being too generically good and a card just allowing you to play the game. Rhystic Study, Smothering Tithe, Sylvan Library, Dockside Extortionist and Phyrexian Arena are all staples and great in just about any deck, but what they're doing in effect is allowing you to play more magic. You could look up obscure draw and ramp, but personally I can't blame people for playing cards that allow you actually play your cards, especially in poorly supported strategies. That said, cutting staples/good stuff (especially tutors) can be a great way to add variation to your decks and games! Playing is for fun, so play however you and your group feel is best suited for you constellation of players and don't hesitate to try out new things every now and then

Time stretch synergyzers quite well in landfall decks 😊

Torment of hailfire for 5 on T5 is practically nothing, sure I'll take 9, no biggie

before watching, I figured you were talking about things like howling mine biting you in the end

5 minutes in atm, but I find the easiest way to describe goodstuff.dec is basically any BGx midrange deck from modern/legacy, the poster child being Jund.

dryad of ilysian grove is absolutely the new goodstuff card. people are putting it in every deck and i have no idea why.

Some of the good stuff for red, feels more like stuff it needs to do. There's some nuance there you hinted at. They didn't seem like things you add to the deck without thinking about.

Ewat for green? I find it strange eternal witness was not mentioned but nyxbloom ancient was

I try to only run "good stuff" cards if they really synergize with a deck. But for cards that fulfill what you might call a commander deck's "essential services"--things like removal, board wipes, and other answers to what my opponents might do, as well as ramp and card draw,--there are some cards that are clearly the best, and if I own them, I'll pretty much always run them. For example, when I play Golgari I'm always gonna run Assassin's Trophy and Beast Within in two of my removal slots, and Toxic Deluge in a board wipe slot, even in a Meren deck that is going to be milling itself a lot and wants as many creatures as possible.

I’m suprised sen triplets wasn’t on the “good stuff” commanders list. But otherwise really great vid (edit) when it comes to finding a downside of good cards like vedalken orrery, one point to bring up is how it essentially puts a big target on your head. Like command zone has said, stuff like a turn one sol ring actually lowers ur chance of winning because it makes you a target, so a downside is that you could play stuff like orrery then have it immediately removed or have everyone trying to kill you simply because of one artifact

Dana’s “you can find me working as a barkeep” at the end had me dying!!

A Goodstuff deck is to me a deck that runs high powered cards, where there may or may not be synergy, but the point is that the deck plays 'well' regardless of what it ends up with. Goodstuff is generally doesn't require combo to win, and I think of modern/legacy Jund as the archtype of this, as it is based around just using great GRB cards. The decks do have synergy, but if you don't get a Goyf out right away, you aren't necessarily doomed because you have so much raw power per card. Combo cards should generally be good even without the combo is the hallmark, and these decks are usually very expensive and powerful. These are almost always multi-color, since it needs too many good cards to be single color. I run into this Goodstuff not working a bit with my weirdest deck, my Talrand one. It almost always wins by Drakes, so lots of Goodstuff doesn't fit in the deck I suspect, since it won't help me pump out drakes. In most games, I would probably prefer to have a counterspell over most other cards, and hence the deck is a mix of counters/hindering cards and card draw/cantrips. It has 1 enchantment atm, and very few non-ramp artifacts. Tutors are anti-fun if they are the good ones I find, a 1 or 2 mana tutor is just too good usually, especially if you can dig out combo pieces. Then again, I have a Zur deck kicking around, so fetching things is definitely a strong strategy, it just seems contrary to the nature of the singleton format, since as noted, you have too little variance between plays. I suppose I think fetching/tutoring is unfun if their isn't equal access in the playgroup, since most decent tutors are very pricey (...Imperial Seal?!). I don't think low CMC tutors are 'fair' cards for decks, so if your group likes 'fair' decks, then they don't fit, but if you're all playing competitive, then everyone should be on the same page imho. Low CMC tutors are definitely 'Goodstuff' though, possibly Beststuff in edh, a singleton format.

Loving the new stache, Dana! Tried to grow that out myself, but didn't quite work...

My personal example would be Cultivate vs Fertilid in a +1/+1 counter deck. Turn 3 Cultivate is much stronger than turn 3 Fertilid, but Cultivate's high floor is also its' ceiling, and it always feels bad to topdeck a rampspell late in the game. Fertilid takes a while to get going and will consume more mana, but as soon as you have a way of continuously replenishing the counters, you can get so much out of him. And it doesn't feel like a dead draw late in the game. Sure, you may not need the ramping anymore, but it still provides a body with counters that you can move, multiply or pay costs with. (I still run both cards though)

First time watching and loved it! Is that intro music a modified version of music from Final Fantasy 9?

I definitely think Damia is a good stuff commander. Although I like running her just to eliminate needing card draw in my +1/+1 counters deck

Vedalken orrery definately got in my way in my Prossh deck. I either cast it and got knocked out or it got destroyed and was a waste of a turn, or, I just ended up not casting it

This is probably really random, but the fact that the split second math on 2 to the 5th was correct and not just a random number just speaks to how well this show is put together and how much thought goes into all of it.

Thx for the great consistant content. I have 8 wel turned decks that are collectively singleton with exceptions to signets and shock lands. I like the challenge of filling the roles of ramp, draw, interaction without leaning on good stuff and try to find the cards that synergize with the theme and commander. There are more than enough choices to play more than just the good stuff.

Vedalken Orrey is also not good in Decks that mostly operate at sorcery speed, such as Muldrotha and lots of Plainswalker Commanders (not all). Or decks where the commander already allows you to cast at instant speed such as Elsha. You could put it in those decks for redundancy, but often times it does nothing.

I wish i had the capacity to be as happy as joey always is 😂

good videos as always

I cut Veldaken Orrery from my Yawgmoth and Ayli decks. Just not that effective.

Krosan Grip vs Vedalken Orrery is basically a time walk : )

How can anyone build a deck and end at 98 cards. I usually end at 130-150 and didn't even put in lands that aren't utility. Where do i get this power to not spent an extra hour just staring at i don't want to take out of my deck.

I have a sydri vehicle deck that is super good. I run a lot of wraths and of course a lot of artifacts

I have 2 friends who both played Abzan in Highlander back in the day and I think that 100 cards without a commander always go more towards the good stuff. So they had a lot of very big powerful and mana intensive creatures and because of that chose the pretty generic commanders Teneb and Anafenza when we switched to commander which is totally fine. Most of the Abzan commanders only really support the low CMC kind of reanimation strats so whenever they play their big guys decks against my say Ghired or Aminatou deck most often the reason why I'd lose the game is because they Tooth and Nail into Avacyn + the black Primordial or T&N into 2 Eldrazis or something. It can feel boring if I play too often vs those good stuff type decks but at the same time it also feels like a cool challenge to win against them via synergies to the point that my deck interacting with itself generates too much advantage for their "generic" strong individual cards to handle!

Synergy with commander? Yawgmoth and Hapatra

I run vedalken orrery in my werewolf tribal deck so i can pass on my turn to flip my wolves then cast stuff on other peoples turns

Obliterate is good stuff for me, wiping the board from 4th turn onwards is sweet. For me i play removal only deck

Matt: Golos is probably playing all of them. Me: Not anymore

Is there a foil version of Boomerang?

I can proudly say that I have a morophon deck that is almost entirely simic barring 6 cards, of which only 1 is a generic "goodstuff" card. That card is bojuka bog. I do not have a single spell with black in the casting cost, it is entirely a random land hatepiece against graveyard decks that does not synergise with my plan at all.

I love your intro so much

On Vedalken Orrery in Edric - yeah, I play Aluren instead, it's much better in that particular deck. Sure, it helps my opponents, but I'm often getting ten free creatures compared to their one or two. Also, is it bad if this video makes me want to build a five color all-goodstuff deck just to see how it plays?

White has a lot of goodstuff cards, but because White is generally weaker the goodstuff cards aren't relegated to just being "goodstuff". Like, Elesh Norn is a White "goodstuff" card. Its just good, and run in decks regardless of whether she actually makes the deck any better. A lot of stax pieces are played as White goodstuff, even if they don't do much as far as the deck goal. Ghostly Prison is run in a lot of decks just because.

I can think of plenty of decks where Vedalken Orrey is bad. Grenzo is mostly creatures you’re already playing off the bottom at instant speed. 4 mana is 2 bodies off Grenzo (4 with heartstone out), and the Orrey isn’t affecting most of what you’re doing.

My Golos deck has both Smothering Tithe and Teferi's Protection...and Cathars' Crusade

I have a Kestia Enchantments deck, I don't run Rhystic Study because I draw enough cards off of my Commander and assorted enchantresses that a card that only draws cards is kinda redundant.

My yidris cascade deck does NOT want vedalken orrery, it wants to cast on it's turn... because that's when I have cascade...

At 31:13 they are going to discuss when goodstuff becomes badstuff, the title of this 57:22 long video. 45:30 gives the examples.

Extra turns spells synergize with literally everything.

I don't know how Matt can build a deck and not have cards to fill slots. I've never build a deck where I don't have to cut like 20 cards. 😅

My Thrasios // Vial Smasher goodstuff tribal partner deck feels called out and wants an apology

Jhoira artifact storm doesn't want any of those high cmc good stuff cards because they prevent going off when you draw into too many of them.

So I noted (if I didn’t get it wrong) that the rather synonymous “auto-include” interestingly wasn’t mentioned in the vid nor discussed in comment? Would like to support the 3 good hosts here in sayin: Down with auto-includes! Thoughtful intent matters. Sol Ring is in very few of my overall decks (basically the artifact 1s only). Sakura-Tribe Elder doesn’t c play in even 1/2 my green decks.

as someone who has brought my edh deck into modern night i do have to say it can do alot of things there still for restrictions

I have a sythis, harvest’s hand deck that has no non-land permanents that are not also enchantments, an akiri line slinger and Silas Ren seaker adept equipment creature themed deck with no enchantments, and other funky decks. I only want to run generically powerful cards in decks that I want to be higher powered, in which those cards fit the theme or work really well. I dont have many staples, and only one if each, plus 4/6 of my decks are mono-colored so they can’t be repeated that easily anyways. I really enjoy building decks that are interesting for me and the table vs. just generically strong decks

Removal is hard to think of as good stuff, unless you have gone really hard into getting everything on creatures. I have adequate removal (4 mass, 7 targeted) in my Meren of Clan Nel Toth deck, and none of that is anything but a creature.

how many times did they mention Gavi? Is this why those precons are preselling for inflated amounts? XD

Surprised no discussions on land.

This episode has inspired me to finally build a chaos deck.

Every Sultai commander except Kadena is a goodstuff commander

Here's a thought experiment: if it were legal, would you consider ancestral recall as good stuff? I don't think I would, and I think the reason is the opportunity cost / the downside of the card. Not only is incredibly ancestral strong, it's so cheap that there is such a minimal cost to running the card. As an example, smothering tithe is fantastic. But it's also 4cmc and does nothing right away. There absolutely is an opportunity cost to the card. Similarly, something like swords to plowshares is likely the best creature removal spell in the game - 1cmc, exile, and no real downside. It doesn't really feel like a 'good stuff' card to me, though, it feels more like an auto include. I'd love to hear the EDHRECast's thoughts on this, but it seems to me like there is a bit of a difference between 'good stuff' and an 'auto include'. Both groups are essentially just really good cards, but auto includes have nearly no down side or opportunity cost. This is likely where the negativity of a 'good stuff' deck comes from; because good stuff cards (as you mention) often AREN'T correct in all decks, thus their inclusion is potentially thoughtless, though none-the-less powerful. Meanwhile, auto include cards probably are always correct (how many times is it correct to NOT run sol ring or swords?).

I have never cast torment of hailfire early to any siginifcant effect

to commanders that are just good: all commanders that can tutor will every time be good and all vallue decks like thasios + here the other one or kinnan.

Mana burn, those were the times D:

Boros, White and Red: What is good stuff?

Burn to the stake. Rarely play but if the chance comes up. Like last game I found a way to play it. And also throne of the God Pharoah. Help me finish off the other players.