When I got out of bed this morning I did not have "Ice Cauldron is amazing" on my daily bingo sheet.

Simic activated abilities with raised by giants.

I have a mono blue Vhal deck with Clan Crafter background. Artifacts , activated abilities and untappers. It is far more powerful than you would think, and a blast to play.

I built Vhal with Noble Heritage. And went a Level counter/adventure route. Creatures cast from adventure and activated abilities work with Vhal.

I built a vhal myself after you first talked of her a while ago, and I quickly noticed that the most expensive activated abilities were from the Rebel theme. Rebels are incredibly expensive to activate but with Vhal growing bigger every turn that's just a neat way to "sink" our mana, plus there is a fair amount of cool open handed rebels in the game that we might be glad to search for. This is, in my opinion, the best way to play rebels in the commander format and a great way to use Vhal

Fuckin awesome dude. I haven't looked at background commanders at all. Now i want to

This is so timely! I just built a Vhal commander deck last week!

Fantastic video! I think I might build the WU version. All look amazingly fun. Thanks for making the video.

"Scroll of Fate" absolutely SLAPS in any of these builds.

Ive been messin with her for awhile as well. Cant wait to see what you're doing with vhal

Thanks for nice videos. I have found many interesting cards watching them. Merfolk Thaumaturgist makes things happen with Vhal. I'm building pauper version. Burning candle from both ends...

my man realy likes the panglacial worm :D

One of my favorite cards to use with things like Vhal is Gemstone Array. Sure, it's not a great rate, but it allows you to bank Mana for later turns and filter if you really need it.

All of them sound fun

I designed Vhal as simic with the giant background as well. I loved the commander so much that I started designing a deck for each color combo with Vhal. I ended up making an Izzet deck but did not enjoy it. Which led to me not completing all the decks. Would love to go back and do it. Thanks for the inspiration!

I originally felt the same about background commands, but they quickly become some of my favorite commanders to build with because of the mix and match aspec. One of my favorite (and efficient) decks is 'Gut' with 'Inspiring leader'. It usually has the game in the bag by turn four.

I've really been enjoying Temur play from not your hand. It's really fun to mix all the different ways you can play from places such as exile, escape, foretell, and library. It's just that a lot of the Paradox payoffs suck.

I have like 5 Vhal decks in different colour combinations. Glad someone else is also a fan of her!

Backgrounds and partners go hard.

Just when I told myself I need to slow down on building new decks I gotta see this video and start wanting to build Dimir Vhal. The background cards are so great I just wish they had a couple that were 2 colors or let you pick 2 backgrounds instead of one but hopefully they can try that in the future

Yup! Some videos ago, I actually started brewing Vhal (Candlekeep Researcher), and I gave her the Raised by Giants background. Gemstone Array is one of my favorite cards in the currently under-construction and yet-to-be-sleeved build. I wonder if Boon of Boseiju could go in it?

I already was digging Baldur's Gate, even on release. People keep rediscovering the set all the time it seems or they'll have cards in their deck that came out in Baldur's Gate without realuzing it. Of course the high price, product fatigue and poorly received naming were big issues, but for a good while it was cheap to get. (Just don't get the awful set-boosters. go for draft or collectors, if they're at a good price.) And as it turns out, baldur's gate WAS a banger set for EDH, people just hated that there were so few reprints, e.g. complaints like "Why no Dockside Extortionist!?" But even despite liking the set, I kept ignoring the background mechanic for a good while. But really, there's a bunch of excellent backgrounds that you can just play in the 99. Especially with partner commanders where you can double up on the value the background provides. Stuff like Haunted One, which gives +2/+0 to all your dudes on tap/attack, if they share a creature type. If you're running a kindred deck with partner commanders that share that creature type. (e.g. black/green elves) Haunted one now gives all your elves, including your commanders +4/+0 and undying on attack. Like you just rump a bunch of dorks out, play your commanders and just go to town with your little pumped up undying elf-army. It's completely dumb and super-cool. There's really tons of good stuff to discover in Baldur's Gate.

I LOVE VHAL 💙💚✨ I have her Raised by Giants, which I felt was perfect to finally play my Simic Human cards. It's a very fun play to deck, it just have permanents inside as an added hoop 😹

Try out Haunted one as a pairing! very fun tribal deck and very easy to do combos, but you have the value side with sac effects and counter removal loops too

Here's a thought - Vhal Eldrazi.. Almost colorless :) Some blue. Some devoid. Vhal works great with several of the blue eldrazi mana sinks. As we all know there are tons of ways to make Vhal produce infinite colorless mana. Prophet of distortion draw your deck. Dimensional Infiltrator win con. Mystic forge cast from deck.

Sure looks like a ton of fun these decks. Were I not on some sort of other bender would give one of them a try.

In the simic version, what cards are options for replacements for Chromatic Orrery. The card works really well for the deck but trying to cut costs and this one is quite on the expensive side.

Can't use Colorless to "pay mana of any color", only for cards that say "pay mana of any type"

My mate uses Vhal with passionate archaeologist. Its amazing.

I have a Vega deck and it's a ton of fun to just play a bunch of weird stuff. Ice Cauldron is absolutely an all star.

Dammit dude, you’re gonna convince me to build a blue deck! 🙌 😂

I h Am currently trying to build a clue deck with it. The flavor of a researcher finding clues... But cant yet choose the background i want

Colossus of Akros and Dragon Throne of Tarkir are two of my pet cards and i was already planning before this vid an Azorius version with Vhal. Then going with Thopters or Soldiers or Humans or Spirits. Inspiring Leader or Folk Hero might thenbe better backgrounds dependent on how the concrete build looks like.

vhal is easily my favorite background commander. gave myself a 4in1 commander deck challenge where you have the same blue/colorless core and swap out the other colors when you switch versions

Simic version will be a super powerful deck

MONO BLUE VERSION COMING WHEN?? Vhal plus Clan Crafter can work real well in an artifact theme

Build the blue and artifact base and then make it so that you can randomly pick which color at each game. Just need to make multiple different backgrounds. That way it never the same playing experience.

Since this came out I have built Vhal in each color. 2 go wide, 1 spell slinger, 1 big drops. You seem to be on the same page as me, less "oh sh*t" more "wtf" strategies

Does anyone run the wurm in their Jodah decks?

Have you tried brewing a morph/ disguise theme

can I use her mana to pay Spree costs from OTJ collection cards?

So shipbreaker kraken in in all the decks?

This Commander goes infinite with Sword of Paruns also brother. I was waiting for you to say it and was shocked when you didn't 😅

Bro… tell me WHY I just started building this deck like 3 days ago

Panglacial Wurm??? Wtf did you make up that card lmao? Never seen it before but that's pretty sick

Thirteenth Doctor is so cool

Go watch another video if you want to know what “method 2” means…. or you could just use words that describe the concepts instead of numbering them arbitrarily