If a friend of mine did a video essay on a deck I made I would consider it the best compliment I ever got, win rate be damned

I mean, if it’s an interesting social topic, yeah?

my play group hates my angel deck, they sadly never made an essay about it

Even if just for learning how to play better against your friends new deck, not a bad idea!

I think people underestimate the advantages of playing the game from a different angle, or with an intentional restriction. There's an elegance to simplicity.

You'll only ever be able to do that once. Or once per play group. Once people learn you could just kill them easily with commander damage when they thought you where trying to help them out they're probably not going to take the bait again.

@@toolittletoolate You could make a deal with them. As in: "I will not butt it this turn, if you let it through" or even "I promise not to kill you this turn" and then dealing only 20 commander damage (:

i mean ultimately they are just playing a xyris deck as intended. the ability is literally printed on the card.

@@toolittletoolate I do have a variant of this deck (Xyris with Combat Buffs, not a Xyris wheel deck) since like 2021 or smth, and it works and has been since then. People do want to have cards, and people are willing to risk some damage for cards

@@edhdeckbuilding All abilities are printed on cards.

lol, my friend built the reaper king just for me after i strip-locked him XD i love him

@@fairygoodmuller8065 ooooh, yeah the Reaper King is a spicy card. I take it he went the changeling tribal route due to there not being a ton of scarecrow support?

ehhhhhhh. maybe if you're friends with the player. we have a douchebag guy who does spite decks. i'm his current target and it's nothing but annoying

Jack IS awesome even though Hans is getting all the credit here 😊

One of my friends tells me I play mtg wrong. For context, I played sparingly in my youth but was never quite as hooked on the game as other tcgs like yugioh and stuff until the unfinity set came out and I loved the space carnival esthetic as well as the art style of the alt cards. So I make commander decks using the eternal legal commanders from that set and try my damndest to break them or make them good, my friend hates it but I'm gonna keep going till I have one for every eternal legal legendary in the set. Like toy maker/ liquid metal combos using Captian Rex Nebula as the medium.

Nothing good comes of giving the Gruul Clans blue mana.

lol!

Nothing good comes of giving the Izzet green mana.

Because ferocious!!1

or giving the gruul blue mana

And the most important mechanic of all: social interaction with the other players.

Woah, wild to see the best creepypasta content creator in a mtg comment section. I agree with you, this commander is so cool. I played him with a bunch of wheel effects so I would make maximum snake bois.

It's why I love my scry landfall deck. Scry cards are cheap as hell and makes for an incredibly consistent deck

Bro didn’t you groom minors ☠️

Your videos got me through covid mate, cheers

Ooh Yorion sounds fun. Do you have a deck list I could view?

@@Aigis31 I had written a whole reply but it seems like it got deleted because it had a link to the decklist Sadge It is my first deck ever I've built, I've tinkered it a lot, it's my baby at this point. I don't have a lot of the expensive cards that I'd ultimately like to put in (talking things like fetches or Solitude) because I'd like to build it in paper at some point. I basically play it as a heavy control deck, I run a TON of card draw and interaction/removal; the best way I've found to play is sort of hang back at the start and then take down the first person to pop off, taking advantage of the time you're gonna get left alone since you're helping taking down the threat. By the time you have a set board with Yorion in play it's very hard to interact with you in a successful way. The idea is that single target flickers on Yorion turn into boardwide blinks, which is doubly useful as both a lot of value and protection from interaction, including boardwipes (because stuff comes back on endstep, the boardwipe will miss everything but yorion himself), eventually even your own wipes. Yorion can blink any nonland permanent, particularly your mana rocks, which allows you to tap out but still retain mana for following turns. I generally win through sheer attrition (exhausting their resource through reusing etb removals) and the implied eventual Yorion beatdown, up to looping Agent of Treachery to chain steal their best permanents, but I do have 2 infinites that I get to use reasonably often. Peregrine drake+Archaeomancer+Ghostly Flicker+any ETB draw Preston the Vanisher+Felidar Guardian+Any land+any ETB draw+ a way to flicker the Guardian once to start the loop These get me both infinite mana and infinite draws, with the payoff being Blue sun's Zenith (to deck everyone else) I like them because all the cards are individually quite useful (the worst is Zenith, which can still be quite useful if I get a bit stranded to refill) The deck is built for consistency and resiliency, it may not be extremely powerful but I will get to meaningfully be part of the game basically every time. It's also quite resilient, a decent amount of redundancy and some recursion, with high amounts of card draw, means it's hard to put me down for good (plus as I said once setup I'm very hard to actually remove in the first place) I also like that I'm not too reliant on my commander, which is why I went for Yorion over something like Brago; in fact, I have won quite a few games before casting Yorion once, since it's manly there to pull double duty as a big value turn and pseudo protection/multiplier for my blink cards. I've been eyeing some cards to swap out, mainly tech cards that I've found not useful, but unfortunately I don't get to play this deck as much as I'd like to (commander players LOATHE control so I try to mix it up) Unfortunately I can't post a link to the list it seems. If you want I can just comment the whole decklist here, I guess?

@@Aigis31 Maybe you can find it like this, on deckstats the code is 236714/3149471

No fear, make them have the answer. If they do have the flicker/counterspell, the card is a brick anyway outside of niche situations where you're using your hand to discard for value. If they don't, it wasn't useless. If you wait because you're scared and are waiting for them to make a mistake, that gives the opponent time to draw the card that you were worried they had.

LOL three people in a pod, just politic with those three to force all the cards out of your hand. Out of 5 cards, the possibility of you having enough interaction and open mana to respond to three different forms of removal/interaction is minimal.

The sheer audacity of tricking someone into protecting your commander who's halfway to killing them is amazing. Being happy about it is one thing, I'll take the cards for 3 damage two or three times happily. But spending cards to protect it, when I'm one hit from dying to commander damage (assuming they have 2 buff spells)? Insane.

"Instant buffs are inherently balanced around the idea that they're one-time use." *laughs in Feather, The Redeemed*

It reminds me of my friend's Lathiel deck, which turns lifegain into 1/1 counters. An unplayable card that only gains you five life for one mana now gives a creature five counters for one mana. Some of the best commanders are the ones that make bad cards good.

@@LibertyMonk Sure, you're spending a card to protect it... but that's because you'll get to draw cards next time Xyris attacks you, so when you really think about it isn't that negate just a delayed two-mana draw-five? (NOTE: Hand size doesn't matter if you lose to commander damage.)

You start out by not buffing it. 3 damage doesn't worry anyone, and 3 cards? Wow, you might be their best friend! And all you're doing really is making a finite number of 1/1s, and drawing some cards to do that more. Later on, you discover that snakes are actually not anyone's friend.

me \(^_^)/

I play Xyris, and I’m beginning to think it’s a universal phrase for us

Indeed. Forced Fruition is also a beast in there

Helm of the host plus mystic reflection. Swing wkth xyris

I even spice it up mine with a bit of all-player ramp and tutors, as there are several win cons in the deck that just suddenly throw out wins after a Wheel effect (Impact Tremors, Purphuros, Devlish Valet) so I tell the group "Ok, I'm going to give you all the card draw and ramp your deck needs, if you can't beat me by the time I assemble a handful of pieces then idk it's kind of your fault."

Xyris players assemble! I run mine with a strong politics theme :D

The core tenets are: 1: Don't use power unless you're willing to be "the threat" or "the archenemy". 2: Silver linings (without going all the way to group hug) are a major political tool in FFA formats. 3: Make the deck predictable, so people don't remember that one time you got lucky. Performing the same way every time lulls them into false security. 4: Seriously, check your curve, your mana base, and card selection. These boring things are the easiest way to make a deck stronger without anyone noticing.

Welcome to the dark side

nice, it was probably my next deck as well! would you mind sharing yours? :)

Could you post the deck list? I couldn’t find a link.

oh god, i love my volo deck. how many copys of blightsteel collossus do i want? yes, all of them.

People KNOW Volo needs to be removed, but he's not a problem; until he is. XD

Do you have a decklist for the animar deck?

You can also play it in pioneer where it just got second place at the ProTour

@@ColossaldreadmawOP Niw, certainly. Pioneer didn't exist at the time, though.

@@ColossaldreadmawOP Slick-shot showoff + soul-scar, got second place? yea, magecraft/prowess has been popping off the last 4 years.

That is so spicy, I can't believe I never thought of that! Xyris truly is one of the most weirdly interesting commanders WotC has made.

I am tuning a CEDH playable version of what you described. We play weekly and I have been trying to make a wheels deck that can compete with the T1 CEDH decks (Yuriko, Talion, Blue Farm, etc.) decks that everyone brings to the table. Xyris has been the most successful so far

That also sounds like a solid way to go with Xyris. Hans' version is definitely not wildly strong in the interaction department before turn 5-6, so it probably doesn't work so good if you're trying to play the "no, stop, don't do that" role with some faster decks.

Things have changed now. You're either getting your shit popped or honest gets negated

Yeah, ~40 cards to move your gameplan, ~40 more as a mana base (lands + ramp/fast mana) and 20 slots for removal and pet cards usually results in some very focused lists

@zakading you want more ramp than that especially if you are green. I typically run 10-14 ramp cards (rocks, spells, and dorks) in any deck that isnt below average mana curve. It keeps you resistant to boardwipes and from losing to commander getting zapped.

@@Aaron0000014 I usualy try to run 36 or 37 lands and 5-8 ramp effects (depending on the deck's needs/the Commander's cost). Usually seems reasonable.

@@Zakading I think 36 is the most lands i would run in a deck. Even in my highest curve deck (ur dragon) i run 36. At some point you either are maintaining land drops through card draw or are generating mana in better ways and would rather be finding good cards. I run proxies and full fetches which helps thin out the deck too

@@Aaron0000014 In the end it still all comes down to what a deck needs, and it's gonna be different every time. 39 is the most lands I run in a deck, and it's actually one of my lowest curves. I run that many lands because I don't run the ramp, i don't run the ramp because i just want to 1-2-3-4

Purphoros go brr

Was it a mtg game?

You guys are going on dates? :o

Well $20 is $20

awww

Why date a 20$ bill though

He's missing out on the powerhouse that is Embiggen. {G} for a draw 4 is better than Ancestral Recall.