Came here for the promo of our show...ended up eating lunch and learning some things about Commander. All in all a solid win.

I "rules lawyer" but after I explain why an interaction doesn't work the way someone thinks I ALWAYS allow them to take it back and reconsider their options. I always aim to help people better understand this incredibly complex game

#1 Taboo never mentioned.... Being a bad loser... the biggest problem edh has.

I love how you folks emphasize communication, understanding and fun. It applies to so much more than just Commander

About the kingmaker part: I feel like if someone takes you out you have the right to weaken them as you go down. There is a price to swing at someone. Also if someone breaks a deal I think it is fair game to hate on their cards for that game and cripple their deck if you can.

Y'know... my favorite part about Commander... is when you, as a player, discover a new combo in your deck while playing that you had no idea was a thing until you have the pieces in play. Y'know the rare moments where you just go "hold on. Does this go infinite?" Its moments like those that really make Commander for me. The "Unintended Infinite Combo"

"Don't play Superfriends." *glances at Planeswalker collection* ... Pass, my good sir.

"I drew 12 cards how have I not won?" Been there on both sides of that sentiment.

"Commander taboos" Me : "Ho cool, I bet there aren't that much" "50m long" Me : "... Hold up, wait a minute"

Don’t forget the other common taboos: - Having fun - Curving out - Effectively executing your gameplan

I once made a nine piece combo that made infinite 0/1 goat tokens in a deck where the main objective was not to get hit. It accomplished nothing but make all of my friends laugh. Good times. It's also the only infinite combo I have ever done.

My friend and I build commander decks as if we were Yugioh anime characters. Optimal, sub-optimal, good, bad, doesn't matter. We only play cards that are on theme. Often makes you miss out on some balancing staples BUT it almost always makes for way more fun building/playing.

“Superfriends tend to run a lot of wraths” Jokes on you, I play a super friends deck with umori as a companion so I can’t run any

Rules Lawyering is all about language, never had someone get really upset when I said something like "Oh you may not be aware but because X... Y... do you still want to do that?"

My first ever commander game, there was a player named Dan, and I was told EDH stood for "Eliminate Dan Hahaha". So I built a deck whose only job was to consistently hit a single player for 40 damage on turn 1. Never won the game, but I always had the first kill.

The one thing they don't acknowledge about these taboos in commander, is that for many people their commander decks are more a showcase of their collections, and some of the most abusive and obnoxious decks are highly valuable/ rare cards. The deck gets played once to show off to the new guy at the table and then gets swapped out for subsequent games.

I don't care what kind of deck people play as long as they play quickly.

What I learned in boating school today is: people get salty over everything

for me, the reason infect feels so bad is because there's very little way to remove poison counters, there's a couple of cards but only being able to take 10 damage from someone with no way to reset or stabalise feels rough

Thank you, now I have all I need to build the perfect deck to teach new players how to play commander.

*sees "Taboos of Commander and that it's 50min long* Better get the popcorn. This episode is gonna last longer than a fair portion of my 4 player games.

Timestamps 2:13 - Intro ==Taboo Deck Types== 4:15 - Mass Land Destruction (MLD) 8:47 - Infect 11:58 - Combo 17:49 - Stacks 23:07 - "Superfriends" 26:49 - Storm 30:11 - Extra Turns 31:34 - Mill 34:35 - Chaos 37:43 - "Goodstuff" ==Taboo Gameplay== 41:36 - "Pubstomping" 44:10 - "Kingmaking" 46:39 - Rules Lawyering 48:16 - Distractions 48:49 - Closing Thoughts

I agree with the list but you can't deny that feeling and memories these cards make the first time they're played.

I've watched three videos like this in a row now, and they've managed a miracle trigger, making me optimistic about future playgroups. My old group had a habit of targeting me on the basis of "you know how to build a good deck." I kid you not, those were the exact words I got during a game where I had two lands on turn 5. Because of that, I did away with the "spooky Halloween" theme of my Reaper King deck and started pushing it to be as competitive as possible, only now I'm realizing that the lack of theme is why I haven't been able to settle on a list. Think I'll head back to the drawing board again and throw my best shot at making the old "Stalked in a cornfield/Fiddlesticks" vibe that I loved so much in my tribal constructed days.

🤔 I always imagined Niv Mizzet would sound more like Gilbert Gottfried

This has taught me that whatever I do to try to win, someone is going to hate it.

I love rhub-goldberg combos. I always end up with at least one in basically every deck

Great show! I took apart a few of these decks. My Shalai board-wipes was really bad, her + Avacyn and novablast wurm happened a lot. I do still have Warp World in my Jund tokens.

*Sees MLD, Combo, Storm, Stax, etc* Is that like, a personal attack or something?

Crap, just realized that I have basically one of every type of these decks.

I'm listening to their list of 'Taboo Decks and Strategies' and realizing that, in my group, we either play or do these yet we still all have fun and laugh with no sore losers. I think this is more for if you're playing commander in a public setting rather than your friend group and someones house.

I feel like everyone should build and experience these decks. It helped me understand particular strategies, and what to react to. By playing these "taboo" strategies, I've become a better magic player

this whole episode is essentially a list of my decks and I have no shame

I find it fun to put weaknesses in my decks that I’m aware of but stuff that gives my opponents an opportunity to interact with my permanents and forces me to try and work around the obstacles

Back before I played commander, my favorite deck was a red/green creatures matter deck. I typically used a bunch of ramping creatures (llanowar elves, somberwald sage, sylvan caryatid, etc), as well as xenagos planeswalker. This deck would run myojin of infinite rage, and I would revel in just demolishing all lands, but still be able to play all my stuff. First thing I was taught when I started playing commander was that everyone would hate me if I did that. I was taught this before I even played my first match, before anyone even knew I had a myojin of infinite rage.

Best EDH deck building guide I’ve seen in a while.

When i realized my reaper king deck was shredding everyone's lands. "I am so sorry I didn't know it could do this!" Hahaha I felt like a dick.

You guys highlighted all my favorite strategies!

The long-shot of your miniature with the dice on the wood table, is extremely visually pleasing. Like getty-quality.

One combo i have that gets people at my table really salty is i play the pre-con twincaster deck from strixhaven and i added in Sakshima of a thousand faces and then i use right of replication on sakashima effectively creating if everything has gone perfect 7 twin casters with each of their doubling tokens triggers going off one after the other creating at minimum 128 tokens every time i create a token. I have only had it work ONCE but man was it great XD

I love Encounter Party! Extremely high quality production and an epic story line.

I keep hearing about this vaunted social contact in commander. I have NEVER played in a pod that abides by it.

Our playgroup consists in its core of: Me: constantly deconstructing and reconstructing low to high-middle tier decks around the newest drafting scraps. Mrs. "i just like these cards" : Literally plays vanilla cards because "she likes them", not caring for powerlevel, despite actually having a decent collection. Mr.WomboCombo: Constantly on the hunt for cards that upgrade his near top tier Decks, and consuming 75% of the game time in his final combo turn. Mr. Mono green: Has 8'164'120 of basically the same Go Big monogreen or gruul decks ranging from low to high-middle tier Mr." Don't worry i don't play Mill" : will play Mill, or random low tier decks Mr. Magic: Actually plays flavourful well thought out decks at a high-middle tier power level ... so we are accustomed to a lot ^^

Im in a tricky playgroup where theres like 3 casuals including me which pretty much have precons with upgrades, and 1 competitive player, and the competitive player doesn't "get" why they would play their deck weaker if that makes sense? so all the games do often become, 3v1 trying kill the competitive player asap, but they still win most of the time

There's a chaos deck in my playgroup, and playing against it is some of the most fun games I've played. Changing the decision points to working arond new cards especially ones that don't synergize, and finding how to pull a win out of it.

Imp's Mischiefing an opponent's Time Stretch feels good.

You know, it's funny that when my friends and I first started playing EDH almost a decade ago in high school, we just had crazy decks with infinite combos or combos to lock down everyone else as well as tutors to get them. Now, most of us have taken out all the infinite/ unfun combos in our decks or if there is an infinite combo, we don't tutor for them.

My only issue with infect is that it tends to take out one player really early, but stalls in the later game. Then that player is forced to watch a half hour game of magic before they can jump back in. This just isn't fun for the group as a whole in my opinion, and my playgroup has agreed to not play with infect for this reason exclusively. If infect was more consistent in its ability to remain powerful it wouldn't be as much of an issue.

Okay... I knew it was coming. MLD is a taboo. “How dare anyone touch my green ramp!”. But as a MLD player on occasion, I appreciated the nuance in the discussion, & defending MLD’s proper use. Thank you!

One of my most fun games was when I was running group hug and someone else was running stax. The two of us were basically having a fun side war while everyone else got to enjoy the shifting tides. Talk to your group.

Thank you for teaching me how to play commander correctly.

Thank you for making a list of my favorit deck archetypes :D

Oh hey, #PartyPerson from Encounter Party! stoked to see this promo spot!

If I ever play Mitch I'll be sure to play my atraxa superfriends deck with armeggedon, stasis, and winter orb

Thanks for providing me with some ideas for cards to purchase.

On distractions: I’m on my phone because my opponents take too long.

Everyone: How can I ramp out a turn 1, 2 or 3 game winning infinite combo? Me: How can I bounce everything to their owners hands over and over with Dromar the Banisher?

I am still playing this jhoira deck you built after all these years. This is how I started commander and this is how I still like it. Started it from scratch as budget and upgraded it over the years of playing to an almost competitive deck Sorry guys, I love you but I love drawing cards even more so I’m still gonna play her for a while 😚

I think the tip for good stuff and building on a budget to make mitigate the flaws is a good idea. That plays up the novelty factor that makes commander appealing. That could be applied to some of the other categories too I suppose- like swapping a combo piece to something more inefficient. I think the core element of a lot of these come down to respecting other player's time.

Chaos is great! I once played wild evocation and forced someone to end 2 turns (immediate end the turn spell, and teferis protection phasing out his land)

Mitch while I dont agree on everything I find myself in agreement with a majority of your takes. Generally we are trying to get similar things out of mtg and edh specifically. Keep up the great work!

Based on my group its always the "Oh by the way I played X so you lose" setups that people hate. One person made a whole deck around getting purpheros and avenger of zendikar out at the same time. It ended up not being fun for them either because we knew we had to remove them early every game.

Is there a place where I can buy the artifact playmat in the background? It looks awesome! Thanks!

One of my friends used winter orb and stasis and none of us knew he had it, but because of the way we make our decks we just removed them, and even after he brought I back from the graveyard, which we dealt with a couple turns later, none of us where salty and we respected why he used it, and we all kinda agreed to remove it asap, but like not in an angry way.

"No Infect, no mill." Me: _Looks nervously at my Fynn, Vraska, and Phenax decks_

"Casual" Commander Taboos. I don't think infinite combos are taboo at all in most groups. They are reasonably cheap to assemble these days too.

I watched 4 CEDH decks go at it. Was crazy to watch. Lots of counters and answers.

A lot comes down to how you play the game, I've held a winter orb in my hand all game because the group was more relaxed and it didn't fit the room. I've tutored it up as an emergency button when a deck was getting out of control. Its not what you have, it's how you play it that really defines all this

I remember playing with some of my friends recently and one ran a stacks deck with a winter orb and he knew I’m relatively new and a casual player so he made an extra effort to make sure the winter orb didn’t mess with me too much. He made the play experience decent for me despite playing a mean deck.

The best example I have of how you can play a stax piece similar to MLD where you will close out the game soon after is playing Smokestacks in Titania. You feed it your lands and get tokens, which is what your decks wants to do in the first place; so you don't just break parity, the card *accelerates* your games plan while it increasingly hamstrings everyone else's ability to stop your beats. It's basically a 2-3 turn clock once it comes down because the first counter is annoying, the second is rough and the third is brutal at 6 permanents for each opponent. If players let the card stay around for the 4th counter it's basically game over because the resource swing is just too much to get past. It's also pretty fair imo because 3 opponents have 3 whole turn cycles to deal with a single artifact before they are really in trouble, if they can't I really don't feel like they have a lot of room to complain.

I played my first game of Commander yesterday when I stopped by my LGS to preoder a box of crimson vow I had a lot of fun and some of the card interactions are interesting with multiple pepole at the table. No one got overly salty or punched themselves in the face :) I played the "Draconic Rage" precon and I gotta say it needs some work!

I do love my infinite near everything combo in my Grixis superfirends deck that requires about 5-8 specific cards to go off.

In reference to infect, the problem for me with it is, it hard punishes the decks commander is known for (battle cruiser decks with synergy) in a way that basically disentivises playing the slower decks commander is known for, and I've found aggressive decks just take out the guy that's behind turn 6-7, (whose already pretty low thanks to not having creature's that can effectively block) the aggro player soon after loses the game, and the game might as well have been a 1v1 from the top. This is without infect being considered to clarify, though infect certainly doesn't help in that respect.

I will definitely tune in DnD/MtG podcast. Maybe some day Mitch will get Rob to be there XD

Nice tips! I've had a commander deck with Walking Atlas, Retreat to Coralhelm and Simic Growth Chamber in it and accidentally discovered this infinite. Would never want to play Tatyova in that as well. Just no fun.

I really enjoyed this video. Had to send it to my playgroup as I’ve seen every one of the examples. Also guilty of doing some lol.

Re: The name "Stax" I played Vintage in the time period when that term was coined. The name was coined by Kevin Cron of Team Meandeck and yes, it is an anagram of $4TKS, or "The Four Thousand Dollar Solution" because running a full set of power and a full set of Workshops made the deck cost about $4000 at the time. And because it ran Smokestack and a host of cards that made spells more expensive or denied mana. A blue deck was half that, as dual lands were just $30-40 and Mana Drains cost about $100 for English copies (Force of Wills at $20). It was about 2004 and Darksteel had just come out, giving a new toy to Mishra's Workshop decks: Trinisphere. Mirrodin had given Chalice of the Void but it wasn't popular with Workshop players at first because the deck had a shaky manabase that was susceptible to opposing Wastelands and relied on its own Moxes to power out expensive spells when Workshop was not drawn or destroyed. Workshop decks running Sphere of Resistance and Smokestack had been around for a while but it was Trinisphere that gave the deck its trademark scary opening and free wins. Trinisphere was restricted in 2005 but Fifth Dawn gave Crucible of Worlds, which allowed for locks with Wasteland, and that really pushed the deck to premiere status in the format.

I thought Mitch was mean to Eddie in the beginning of the video, and then I heard his opinion on olives. Deserved

I used to believe that I had some power level 8 decks, just to realize that it was probably closer to a 4.... I basically played myself with the "threat" of a grand consistent deck

I'm building a hazezon deck, and I want to have lands on grave, and happens that detroying all of them is a great way to put them in there, do you think that have 2 or 3 mld sorceries just to dump my own lands there and accelerate my gamplan is less salty? or I should avoid this and be happy with nahiri's lithoform and scapeshift?

Hold up a d and d podcast? That sounds sick. Will definitely tune in

Land destruction or just land balancing would be a great way for white to knock green down a notch, but I'm sure people would complain that iT's NoT fUn or healthy for the game...but having one color that can do basically everything somehow is

Great video! I think a lot of it boils down to fair and open communication before the game starts, and knowing the pool you're playing with. I for example used to play highly competitive commander with another couple guys at our LGS many years ago, and we were constantly evolving our decks and adjusting with new cards, and budget wasn't really a consideration at all. After a few years of break I went back into the LGS trying to play some commander, and ended up getting one game in all day and not being allowed to play at any table for the rest of the day, leading me to just not hang out at the LGS at all anymore. The reason I was removed from their commander friend groups after a single game was of course, because my deck's power level was above theirs, and I didn't have other decks to play at the time. This in isolation feels okay to me to some extent, but the way it was handled made me just irk on the thought of returning with a bad deck, just to be allowed to play with them. I had spent hundreds of hours perfecting my masterpiece and I'm not even allowed to touch it in public because people I played with consistently refused to play with me any further. They're not having fun, so it makes sense. Being made fun of for purchasing all of my cards, and "trying too hard", isn't fun to me, so I didn't really come back until very recently. Although I did try to play with some friends on occation outside of the LGS. The LGS community still has the same issues, I'm not allowed to play my decks, but nowadays I take less offense to it. I've grown up more, and realize that my fun doesn't trump a whole table's fun. I've built a custom 100-card deck (all cards are bottom-up custom made) which was made to be adjustable in power level depending on the table I'm playing at. It has powerful interactions, but is mostly a value machine with many big glaring (designed) flaws, so that any table is able to win vs it, no matter the power level. It'll do just as well vs a 2-power deck as a 6-power deck, and fall off pretty quickly above that power level. I do wish I could find local friends here that push the boundaries with me again though, and I hope that I don't have to forever have less fun because other people dictate it. This became a really big wall of text, I guess I still have lots of emotion on the controlling players at our LGS haha :D In conclusion: I really despise the controlling nature of commander tables, to make people play in a specific way or even remove whole archetype from the table, just because their decks aren't ready for it. Magic is a huge and beautiful game, and I would want anyone I play with to be able to try out any cards that is legal in the format against me. I want to see the full creativeness of the players in action, not just "creativeness limited to these terms which we socially decided but didn't inform you beforehand". If that means I die to aggro decks and have to start including an extra wipe or removal next wednesday night, I'm good with that, to me that's the most fun I can have, adjust to the current meta-game at our tables. (Or combo and have to add counters/removals, etc) I understand why this exists though, just like cards are banned in certain formats, certain playstyles aren't fun or interactive for some play groups. They need to be allowed to voice their opinion on that as well. It's a tough issue for me, as I'm one of those power gamers who value having win conditions and not sitting for 3 hours in the same game - it's hard to see the other side properly, but it's like, during deck building process, I think "How does my deck win while counting in this cool interaction I really want to use" - where I *believe* the other side of the argument thinks "How does my deck include as much of this cool interaction as possible? Win, what's that?" and therein lies the disconnect. If anyone's read this huge text block, what do you think? Agree or disagree? How far can you take the social politics and when are players allowed to 1. ban playing against certain players or things - and 2. What is a good balance between being inclusive to newer players and existing players.

If I played commander....there's a lot of great recommendations here. Stax seems great! Thank you

Something very important for combos, apart from the ''more pieces=fairer combos''. The less tutors you have, the more fair and accepted it will be.

The "it depends on the group" is why I have 102 cards in my Sliver deck. I have 2 MLD cards because of Gemhide Sliver allowing slivers to seize a game through a MLD card. If a group says "no" not an issue I can just swap out those 2 cards for my 2 in the folder that are sitting there as replacements.

Eddie rocking that awesome Fargo sweater, love it.

I'm 2 years into magic and I'm really glad I saw this video! I used to go to a relatively new LGS and it was so painful because there was literally a community of players there that consisted of one of everything that was listed lol 😂 from taking a card out of a deck because they didn't have a "real" rhystic study and writing the name of the card on a blank text card (literally also did it for other cards like scroll rack 😭) MID-MATCH BY THE WAY, to a guy getting ready to leave for work but wanted to test his "superfriends golos" deck cause he wanted to see how fast it wins in the little time he had to get somewhere important... I just take everything as "welcome to Magic the Gathering" lol I also don't go to that LGS as often anymore 😅 probably for the best

Mitch should do some D&D related stuff... either here or another separate channel. Unwritten Rule wise: 1) Suggest Wayfarer's Bauble as a budget card -Also 9:40 "Infect player may take one player out..." - laughs in Triumph of the Horde. - 10:40 Mitch "Life gain is a powerful strategy and white is lucky to have it" - Mitch cast Sarcasm, does not pay 2 for the Smothering Tithe.

Speaking of nutty combos. I used Kenrith as a commander to pull off an 8 card combo involving aeon engine and isochron scepter pull from eternity to be able to aeon engine swap turn rotation once every single turn. So I could just bounce the turn order between 2 players forever.

superfriends is alot more palatable when you protect your planeswalkers with loyalty abilities that summon blockers instead of boardwiping

I'm surprised you guys didn't mention a playstyle like Horsemanship! Not one I'd ever pull on people I don't know, but having my buddies read the text for Sun Quan was amazing.

My 2 cents on "kingmaking" is if someone is about to win, then on your way out from them killing you, take 'em down a bit to give the rest a fighting chance :P

Love you and your content Mitch!!

My tip for playing against mill: Don't look at what you're milling. Treat it as a time trial challenge

Infect is a problem in EDH at ten BECAUSE the infect player can surprise insta-kill only one player. One player gets Tainted Striked on turn seven, then has to sit it out for another hour until everyone else finishes the game ,EVEN IF THE INFECT PLAYER LOSES.

this is a long boy episode!

on the subject of mld, my old play group had a sort of house rule that armageddon was ok as long as you won either that turn or in the next table rotation. meant that the guys who had armageddon didnt feel like it was a dead draw but also meant that the rest of the table didnt have to suffer no lands for too long. had a white blue artifact deck at the table once (loads of mana rocks in play) and they tried to cast armageddon, the simic deck to my left countered it and I did something that will haunt me to the end of my days. I cast herkyl's recall into the artifact deck's micosynth lattice, targeting the artifact player... he scooped.

I had two types of decks on this list, the first was an MLD Gishath deck which rushed to get Gishath out on turn 2 or 3 then spend the next turn blowing up all the lands and just slap people with dinosaurs and then also a Hope of Ghirapur with a 17 card infinite. The Hope deck was fun but Gishath was designed to take one person out specifically.

Hey mitch, love the episode! Could you maybe add timestamps for future videos like this? I'd love to be able to skip to certain topics where I'd want to know your opinions :)