What even is the cEDH meta?

[Vafnar]

I started this project around August 2024. 

This is not finished, it won't ever be. 
The meta is always changing, your local meta will be different than what is posted below.
This is based off of my experience traveling and playing around the United States.

As context: for tournaments, I spent 2 years playing in Portland Oregon, 
Another year playing in Maryland and going to PA/NJ for larger events 
Now, I've been in Los Angeles and travel north to Central/Northern California

This entire time I've never stopped playing online. 
Tabletop Simulator is my favorite way to play when I'm not in person with other people.
 
I miss big Mox Masters and ka0s events 
despite the cheaters and logistical problems that come with online spelltable and organizing.


This is written with new players in mind.
Players who play at the bracket 4 level have limited experience with cEDH 
Players who have very few tournaments under their belt.


This is also written to highlight high conversion decks with a limited number of pilots
As well as concepts that have either been forgotten, or untested for some time.

I began putting timestamps into this as I finished the final blocking part and outline.
Some sections have been left with a timestamp when that section was finished.
As you read, you can see my thoughts change as the meta evolved and changed.

Don't take this as gospel, these are just my thoughts.

Have you ever tried to teach someone poker or chess?

They’re both incredibly connected games. “Why did you make this move?” or “Why did you play this hand?” To dive in and explain either of them its really hard to isolate the reasoning without having the full context of the game in mind.

I view cEDH in much the same way. This is my attempt at a holistic approach to the formats concepts and challenges.

TLDR

There’s about 40 viable decks that are not partners.

For partner decks the line for what a “unique deck” constitutes gets very blurry which is why they are not counted. There’s around 18 viable partners. I will not update the section on Ishai.

There are about 5 viable strategies in CEDH. Midrange and Turbo as concepts are outdated. Every deck is a combo deck. For a deck to be viable it must justify itself against the other options of the format.

Rhystic Study as a card warps the meta entirely around it. Underworld Breach, Necropotence, Silence, Gaea’s Cradle and Thassa’s Oracle are the defining pillars of the format.

Here is a master link to all of the decks mentioned throughout this.

Thank you for just clicking this. I know this is a long read, especially longer than my ususal stuff. This is formatted in a way where you can read a section and come back to it later. It would mean the world if you read a bit further.

How many decks do you think are viable?

This question circles the cedh space every once in awhile. People like Sam Black or Dylan & Cam and others - well respected players with a sizeable audience - make content about how a certain deck is or isn’t on top and that re-sparks this discussion. So back in June I asked a friend. Her response was “Tons I think.” That wasn’t really an answer to the question so I asked another friend and his response after narrowing down what a “unique deck” means (like the true pedantic finance bro he is) says “If we’re talking true cedh probably ±40 decks. If we’re talking tEDH it’s probably 15 or less.”

Maybe I just don’t know where to look, but best that I could find there is no “up-to-date” 2025-2026 meta (IE post dockside ban) beyond people stating what wins tournaments and the conversion rate on EDHtop16. This really bothered me since this is an extremely smart community that can’t really agree or come to a consensus on “the meta” beyond telling you that some decks suck (usually whatever that person doesn’t like playing against), and some strategies are great (Usually the strategy they’re playing). Now, I asked my friends that question all the way back in June 2025, which lead to me writing a private “cedh.rtf” document around the meta which I sent to a few friends. I wrote that from the perspective of someone trying to explain the meta and this idea that I had to people unfamiliar with cedh. This idea has been warped a few times and reshaped. But I want to answer that question with another:

“What is the best deck in the format?”

You ask this question to people and you normally get a range of 2 responses normally dictated by the local speed of the meta. Sometimes you get a philosophical discussion on what “best” means and a dynamic conversation on the direction of a given meta or playspace, if not: Tymna/Kraum BlueFarm. Everything beyond that though is a debate that would be heated if there were any stakes. Best I could tell and from my own experience this is what you’ll often hear. Sometimes you get the odd “XXXX deck just won 3 tournaments in a row it has to be the best.“ For the most part the community consensus ends there with “player skill matters most, but probably bluefarm.”

This is normally where I would end my thought experiment until my big move. turns out when you have 70+ hours of driving you tend to have a lot of time for podcasts. I listened to the entirety of Sam’s Table to understand the thoughts of a pro tour winner and how he views cEDH. His thoughts generally surprised me since they were just so different from my own experience and did not line up with my experiences of playing the format for 6+ years. So I revisited the two questions above and decided to take this and give it another shot.

I decided to sit down and grapple this after I’ve moved and settled/

After all how hard would it be to get my thoughts down, after all I’ve written them all out before?

Draft 1 was written November 3rd 2025.

The first idea that I want to approach with is the idea of ranking all the possible decks in terms of how viable they are. Tier lists circulate the internet which give different players their own take on what is or isn’t the best thing to be doing. After playing a frankly unhealthy amount of this format I think there are better ways to approach this than just a straight tier list for a number of reasons.

This list tells you how decks are preforming next to each other. The guy that made this wanted to say that Tymna/Thras was the best thing to be doing with Tymna/Kraum close by. Decks that were relevant when this was made are all ordered around the picture. These provide a nice starting point but don’t offer any justification or reasoning for why a deck might be better than another.

Its great to have that and show this to say “Oh well I think Oswald is actually C tier” and to talk about why a specific deck is better than another. I wanted to do better than this and approach this from a conceptual standpoint.

I want a bigger picture than just what my opinion is while typing this. I want to talk about the interplay between decks and about how you can come to different conclusions to the answer to both questions based on what your local scene looks like.

Some Housekeeping:

1) Many decks will be talked about. 
Due to the length of the article and the limitations of this media format,
I cannot link every deck without this website preventing me from uploading this. 
Each deck has a section talking about it and why its different or better than alternatives.

2) I'vn't played every deck that will be mentioned.

3) I've tried my best to talk about every deck which could be viable 
As well as the reasons behind why certain things are or are not viable. 
I have almost certainly missed something. My bad if so.

Blue Farm is the best deck.

This is Blue Farm.

If you play cEDH for more than 5 games at a random cEDH local you’ll play into some variation of this deck maybe 5-10 cards different. This is the deck that is most claimed to be solved since it is the most popular deck with the most data and its not even close. Ask a random person online and they will more than likely say that Farm is best.

What makes farm good is a combination of factors. In cEDH there are 5 fundamental truths to the game.

1. You spend the majority of the game not on your turn.
2. Interacting with opponents is generally bad as you are going down resources in almost every exchange compared to your collective opponent^[1].
3. Your opponents stopping each other is generally good as you effectively go up on resources
4. The starting lifetotal is 40; the majority of cards were designed with a starting life of 20 in mind (for standard or draft play)
5. The format historically has been determined between turns 3-6.

Keep this all in mind going forward. Scanning through the cards that blue farm plays and you’ll notice a quick pattern that every card has to abuse one of these rules to be a viable choice in the deck. The win conditions are compact. There’s arguably only 2-3 dead cards in most decklists. Most engines of the deck fundamentally break a rule here that doesn’t apply for 1v1 formats. The commanders are backup plans and you have a dynamic and flexible deck at your disposal.

To summarize, farm is the best since it has a unique combination of flexibility, resiliency, and card quality that the majority of other decks in the format cannot compete with.

So with that in mind, why playing anything else? The foundation of bluefarm is based on the fact that the card quality will just be better than most other decks it is against and in the mirror you have plenty of Grand Abolisher type effects to shut out the opposing decks from stopping you. Everything about the deck is made to be brutally efficient and play better into whatever you are against.

Something being playable outside of farm means that it must approach the game from a perspective of having overall “worse cards” that can do something Farm cannot. Understanding farm means you should know a few things

1. Farm is a midrange strategy
2. There isn’t usually interaction outside of stack based spells
3. Farm is always needing more resources.

I’ll elaborate on each of these points as I discus what’s viable. If you want to break the meta you have to understand what the best thing is good at, what it is bad at, and how each of those points are relevant. This will be the center of the meta for now.

For a deck to be viable it has to answer the question on what it can do to attack the meta, if it cannot justify itself against its view of the meta, it can’t justify existing. Let’s start there.

Starting with point one

Farm is not the fastest deck

Many decks can win much faster than blue farm can. The whole archetype of “turbo” justifies itself by having that core point. “Is this deck faster than the best midrange strategy?” Speed in cedh is a measure of consistency, so how quickly can you on average win the game before farm turns the corner and shuts you out? Here is in essence The Grixis Speed Shell

This is a grouping of about 20 cards which enable the most Turn 2 wins. If you see some combination of these cards in Grixis you likely have the ability to present a win so long as you have the mana. The decks that can abuse this pile of cards the most typical has the title for “fastest”. The common theme is that all these cards are very cheap for their effect. They give you a disproportionate amount of cards for their cost and they benifit from the nature of the format. Randomness is just a natural part of a format where the only archetype is Combo^[2]. Getting the average winning turn down is the goal. With that comes the important realization that this is a multiplayer game and 75% of the people playing are actively trying to stop you from winning.

If you are playing a Mardu based turbo strategy, your deck has to answer the question “Aside from fun, why not play blue farm?” For all of decks within that category it boils down to some variation of “It’s faster than bluefarm; sacrifices the counterspell utility of blue and the midrange plan for a more consistent turbo plan to win faster.”

The turbo strategy as a whole looks to punch first. Win before the midrange decks can try and get their engines and wheels spinning. The counterspells within turbo serve the purpose of protecting your wins and are purely defensive tools. You’re trying to leverage the political aspect of the game and deflect heat from your boardstate and make your opponents stop eachother. A large pitfall many new players fall into when starting the format is thinking of turbo as the “yappless” archetype. Just jam and win. The more comfortable you get with the format the more you start to understand turbo requires talking to be able to make smartly timed plays. Its not always T2 every game. Sometimes you have to evaluate if its better to make a fish pact and to slow the game down. Sometimes you want to get the other players to burn their resources before you jam.

Turbo is the second most played variation of decks in the format. Luckily describing them is very straightforward as they have very similar mindsets to eachother.

Translating speed

A tradeoff for having a lower color deck in the command zone is typically that you just lack the flexibility of having more options. This sounds straightforward but sometimes a hammer gets the job done. There’s a lot of lower color decks that can pack a serious punch without needing more tools.

Etali, Primal Conqueror is the best example of this mentality. The entire deck does one of two things.

1. Casts Etali
2. Uses Etali

When a commander’s effect is that broken you have room to get away with a lot more than you’d think. You already know your opponents are likely going to be bringing to the table something cracked in half, so you should be able to take advantage of that and cast their stuff to win too. Etali combos super hard with Food Chain (even without Squee) and if you hit one of your opponents tutors you’re likely winning on the spot. The combo and consistency you get from Etali is so potent you can really ignore the other parts of it. While it is technically a “nondeterministic deck” Etali makes up for that by utilizing every piece found and being able to stitch wins from random pieces. The biggest downside to the deck is learning what stickers do since Sticker Goblin is a core piece.

These lower color decks outside of Etali typically have a similar vibe going about them. They provide an incredible and consistent combo advantage that the lack of colors make up for. The reason you play them over blue farm is all boils down to one of two core points.

• The deck is purely faster than Tymna/Kraum
• The deck can present wins even after stopped. Sometimes multiple on the same turn.

Most of these decks listed can do both… so what are they -

Ral, Monsoon Mage

This is an Izzet storm deck which looks to never pass the turn. The discount Ral provides applies to cantrips and rituals allowing you to net mana and cards from what would otherwise be inefficient spells. Flipping Ral in one turn is the goal and this often leads to outright winning the game. Since the actual spells often do very little, the deck is surprisingly resistant to counterspells, but is especially weak to removal. Since alot of cEDH decks tend to skip on removal this tradeoff tends to work very well for the deck.

The closest thing this deck is, is to RubyStorm, a modern deck looking to play discount effects like Ruby Medallion and churn through the entire deck eventually finding a Wish effect to win from the sideboard. Since cEDH does not have wish effects, this deck runs a large number of Wheel and draw effects to attempt to dig through the 100 cards.

Vivi Ornitier

This deck is very similar to Ral. An Izzet storm deck only this time it comes stapled to it several combos. Curiosity effects basically turn Vivi into a machine gun since each spell will net you a card per opponent every cast. In addition to that, Vivi comes with several infinite mana enablers like Quicksilver Elemental which can in weird ways generate infinite mana on the stack. Again since only a very limited number of spells matter in the deck it shares the same strength as Ral, resistant to counterspells but weak to removal.

Another core difference of Vivi compared to Ral is the interaction package. While Ral fundamentally wants to get as much value as possible in one turn due to the effect of flipping him and being able to use him from the command zone multiple times, Vivi can instead run a wide interaction suite which can be used on the opponents turns to effectively act as a “mana battery”. This positions Vivi as slightly more flexible on when the window to push is since it can leverage taking smaller fights and holding more cards in hand.

Stella Lee

This is the last Izzet turbo deck. This deck presents the unique ability to present multiple wins over top of itself within the same turn. In short, if resolved smartly, you can at instant speed draw your deck multiple times over. Stella Lee gives you the incredible ability to be able to win from 2 spells and a Twiddle effect, even if none of your other spells resolve Stella Lee can just dump the whole hand in one turn. Every spell after the 2nd can technically represent a win attempt if your hand is stacked enough.

All your going to do is cast Stella and just wait. You can just use the counterspells in your hand to turn on your Stella. Every untap effect which can draw you a card can be copied by Stella to over the stack draw your deck. Once you’ve done that you can at instant speed figure out a number of winlines.

Rakdos the Muscle

Moving from Izzet, Rakdos says “screw all protection we are just winning.” and looks to assemble some type of sacrifice loop to exile everyone’s deck. On a sacrifice as well you get to Exile an entire pile of cards from your deck or someone else’s providing a unique angle for card advantage. Since all of it is until your next endstep you can also setup wins on your opponents turns allowing you to surprise a win from minimal resources.

Rakdos trades possible counterspells and protection pieces from blue to instead have black rituals and tutors providing more reliability compared to other turbo decks. The true trade-off is more so the combo package required of Rakdos means the card quality of the deck is overall much lower.

Rowan Scion of War

This commander provides MASSIVE mana advantage. Take out 3-4 life and tap rowan and suddenly you’re looking at a mana discount that all of the best decks envy. This deck is very difficult to pilot as seen in the limited number of tournament grinders with it, but those grinders are putting up consistent numbers. If you doubt the strength of the deck I highly recommend looking at it in action.

A trap many new players fall into is thinking you need to play a bunch of spells which deal lots of damage to you. Realistically, all of your damage for the deck is coming from the lands. The average cost of a good card is usually just 2-4 mana. Locking in 3 points of damage from a Tarnished Citadel means you’re discounting 66-75% of the cost of spells you want to cast.

Ratradrabik of Urborg.

While none of these decks are particularly popular outside of potentially Ral, this deck might be particularly obscure to those reading. However every set that gets released it just gets more tools. The layers and combos possible with this guy are higher than possibly every other deck listed within this section.

This list deserves a full primer, but pretty much you can loop creatures by using the “Ring-Bearer” mechanic from the Lord of the Rings set.

Zirda the Dawnwaker.

This is an enabler in the command zone. Basically you find Grim Monolith or Basalt monolith and you generate infinite mana. The total combined mana value for this trick is 4 to 5 mana respectively so this is very possible from turn 1. Using the suite of White’s protection spells you should expect either a fast win, or a protected win or possibly both from this deck.

Additionally, the deck plays a gigantic number of ways to find various outlets for your mana. The landbase contains tutors from Inventors Fair to Urza’s Saga alongside filters like Treasure Vault. At each CMC there’s a different outlet making Oswald within the 99 a good pickup.

The Gitrog Monster.

Deserves its own article. It’s the oldest deck that will be listed. A decade old and still going strong.

Many players write it off due to tournament constraints and people being dickheads about tournaments. This is a real cEDH deck don’t let anyone bully you from playing it. The majority of people are chill about the loops possible. Due to the rules as written there are specific loops possible in the decks that require you to “stack your deck” in a non-deterministic way.

If you have no idea what this whole thing is about the deck or what I’m even talking about, don’t worry about it just go watch the 23 minute ASMR read of the primer.

Selvala, Explorer Returned.

Any deck which runs 23 lands is a turbo deck in my book. This deck taps into a hidden stat in magic that very few other decks can called “The Yap Meta.” Words have power. Leverage the information around you and the words that you say to influence the game. Selvala allows you to reveal your opponents plans and direct attention away from yourself. This deck is constructed in a way that is difficult to piece together from single revealed pieces without experience against the deck. This deck makes all the resources it needs to win face up. Especially since the deck plays 9 MDFC cards to better take advantage of Selvala. This is not a stax deck it plays Concordant Crossroads, it will try to win faster than you think it can.

What Selvala wants to do more than anything is force everyone to draw their decks while under a Silence effect making all the cards your opponents draw useless. While you have your deck in your hands, you then use your effectively infinite mana to kill the table.

Gyruda, Doom of Depths

With every set this deck gets some more tools. Each commander that has the ability to get more and more tools as time goes on is always a consideration. Normally when the meta has tons of clones running around in it this gets slightly better, as more cards are printed with more clones this deck gets better.

On a surface level at least that’s what it seems like Gyruda does, Cast Gyruda and mill everyone out at once in one cast. Dig a layer deeper and you’ll find that the deck is also trying to cheat out Razaketh or another big creature like Hoarding broodlord as well as has the ability to get out Kozilek on cast. It has the ability to do a lot more than the surface level one trick might suggest.

While this deck does run a lot of janky and weird cards, the synergy that they provide is very real. A good enough pilot can at least make use of everything that it can do.

Anje Falkenrath

This is a throwback. This was one of the first decks that pulled me in the direction of cedh. Its the most straightforward of all the other decks; you load the deck up with every Madness card, and you dig through it all until you find your combo. That combo is Worldgorger Dragon.

Thats really it.

This deck has mostly been poweercrept out since the printing of Orcish Bowmaster, however I like it. This is my post, and if you disagree that this isn’t a cedh deck, that’s okay :).

Inalla, Archmage Ritualist

I have a soft spot in my heart for htis deck. I’ve written a few pieces on my experiences playing against the deck and my familiarity with the lines possible within it. The skill of inalla is a very different skill from most other turbo decks as the Inalla line can be pivoted at several junctions.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Inalla line- well most players are. Its been figured out the conditions and resources needed to win for 28 steps through most stax effects starting with a resolved Spellseeker.

Its a glass cannon that can be refired when interacted with. Grixis plays the best cards and wins in many of the best ways. Inalla gets wins over blue farm from speed and from its adaptability. If a Bluefarm or really every deck needs a specific resource, Inalla can twist the game to exploit that angle. Technomancer lines make it possible to win with infinite tokens, Spellseeker lines make it possible to setup a thoracle win, and breach ties the entire thing together smoothly.

Rocco, Cabaretti Caterer

This is another commander that has gone through incredible changes between the pre-dockside and post-dockside versions. Its been transformed into more of a food chain/Emeil flicker hybrid deck looking to tutor out a fast win more from a toolbox deck.

In a Rhystic Study hellscape where many decks are looking to capitilize off of other decks casting spells repeatedly, Rocco answers the question of how to win by saying “just dont cast spells.” Many non-blue style decks or creature bbased combos look to try and dodge interaction through the creatures being innately hard to counter. Rocco takes the a step further by saying “I want my commander to die.”

At the start of your turn you basically count your mana and cast your mainphase Chord of calling. If they don’t counter it, more then likely you have the means to win the game. Change your combo based on the board and figure it out.

My local Rocco player has been playing Rocco since preban, so their version of the deck might be warping the way I view it since tournaments show an emphasis on more flexibility than his.

Elsha of the Infinite

A classic by today’s standards, Elsha continues to put up occasional results. Typically all you need to win is to cast Elsha and pass. You can mostly filter through the deck by flashing out artifacts as you ned and by interacting where appropriate. The Helm + Top combo has mostly been upgraded by other discount effects, but its still very relavent and wins games easily when you need it to.

When you can’t turbo out the win, Elsha has the wonderful ability to play very chunky very grindy games, running a suite of copy effects like Steal Enchantment and Copy enchantment alongside all of the good stuff of jeskai means that you have a consistent package of mana and of card advantage to pair with a very fast combo. Alongside the counterspells and protection of blue and the silence suite of white gives you a solid strategy.

The weakpoint of this deck is how commander centric it s. Without Elsha you eliminate a large part of the card advantage and its main combo. Jeskai has always struggled in the win condition department so in situations where the commanderis removed you are often left with a large pile of interaction or artifacts that generate mana to cast the commander again. You can build the deck to be more ritual focused or you can build it to be focused around the artifact combos. Its flexible but still not the strongest strategy. A nice niche overall in the meta.

Lotho, Corrupt Shirriff

Most people look at the Orzhov section of the color pie and they tell you its a color that kinda lacks everything. Poor interaction, poor card advantage engines, poor winconditions. What it does have: lots of tutors, lots of mana.

The thinking behind putting Lotho in the command zone is similar to a deck that will be discussed later. Get an early mana advantage engine out and prey on your opponenets interacting with eachother to win overtop. Orzhov gets to play tons of Silence effects as ways to stop massive stack battles. And with all the mana in the world coming from your commander (up to 16 per cycle) it ends up that you don’t typically need a compact or particularly efficient wincon to close the game. The rituals and tutors that you start with or draw into let you capitalize very well on the monstrous position you find yourself in.

Unlike the other turbo decks, this deck doesn’t look to push on the first possible instant of having a key card out. Instead Lotho allows you to hit a critical point of mana and treasures to be able to win either overtop of everyone else or on the next instance of your turn. Use your large suite of Silences to prevent people from doing things on their turn, then try again the next turn if stopped.

This type of deck is better descibed as “annoying”.

Narset, Enlightened Master

Big Narset, or Original Narset or 6 mana Narset was once Narset. I’ll be talking about this one over the other versions of narset since its the most established and has the most players brewing and iterating on it.

Narset lets you storm off and cast spells for free once Narset is out. You can mulligan a hand of just mana and hope to spin to win. Build your deck right and you should be able to win quite handedly and consistently from that. Extra turn spells, extra combat spells, and spells which get you more spells is the easiest way to abuse it.

Its straightforward, but Silence stops the deck cold. If you land an extra combat spell, you draw the other players cards from their Rhystics and Mystics, if you draw an extra turn spell at the start of that turn you can just silence the Narset player basically just giving the ma glorified Dramatic Reversal. While this commander gives you the luxury of much more consistent and easier mulligans as well as resilancy from counterspells, it trades that for having a larger weakness to silence style effects.

Dihada, Binder of Wills

One of the rare planeswalker commanders, Dihada is a combo in the command zone. It gets you great card advantage and mana at the same time by filtering 4 cards into the grave at once making 4 treasures for each.

Dihada enables several combos like Flicker which also act as good filter tools. Anything that can flicker your commander nets you 4 cards and mana. At the same time Dihada can also leverage topdeck tutors like Scheming Symmetry to setup piles to win the game. Dump Citadel in graveyard, make 3 mana to cast it as well. The deck is mostly centered around Underworld Breach. While the win itself can range from infinite copies of Praetor’s Grasp to Mayhem Devil pings, Dihada is a breach deck through and through.

Diahda being a planeswalker also brings with it some interesting gameplay patterns that flip what the average game tells in cEDH. For example, most Dihada players upon whiffing need to “reset” the commander making the planeswalker staying on board actively good for the other players as you can’t use the -3 ability two turns in a row. The planeswalker aspect also makes it trigger non-creature effects like Esper Sentinel and Mystic Remora. At the same time Dihada lets you play awesome board effects like Out of Time since your commander can directly dodge the phase ability.

As far as turbo decks go, Dihada gives a unqiue angle of flexibility compared to other options, while also being able to supply much needed speed in the command zone for the lack of midrange tools.

All Turbo decks fundamentally push the issue of saying “This deck is designed to win before you. Stop me, win first, or lose.”

Challenging the midrange monster

Lets step away from the onslaught on turbo and talk about a different approach to beating UFarm. More midrange. This meta is deeply hated by some and loved by others. In this category of decks and grouping we have commanders that present ways to grind out an advantage that the raw card quality of BlueFarm can’t beat. This is possible through enhancing the cards in the 99 with your commander like with Marneus Calgar stapling a draw to every token producer or Malcolm Keen-Eyed Navigator stapling mana production to every creature. These lists focus on synergistic pieces which together combine into an engine that beats other decks.

In a midrange vs midrange meta you will have the common cadence of

1. First get mana
2. Deploy the first part of your engine and build up synergy pieces
3. Get value from your opponents doing things and play your core pieces to develop ahead
4. Grind value until you can present wins through 3 or more pieces of interaction.

I’m using 3 as the benchmark as that assumes every other player present tries to stop your win. Using the above deck as an example, a Marneus player’s gameplan might be

1. Fast mana like Grim monolith, Mox Diamond, Mox opal
2. Token maker like Smothering Tithe, Tataru Taru, or Lotho
3. Marneus and hopefully another token maker
4. Valley Floodcaller and present your combo at flash speed over everyone else.

Every midrange deck wants to have this general outline and plan when going into a game blind. The real skill expression and the trick to these matchups is understanding the precise engine and sequencing you need to have while balancing interaction against slower midrange builds or builds that look to attack the game on a different axis. Bluefarm attacks the game on the axis of having sheer card quality and having each base generally covered in most games. Marneus on the other hand has many overlapping layers which look to close out the game over top of other players. So long as you can stop the turbo players from winning before you, you should be able to get a close on the game.

Another requirement for midrange builds is being able to somehow beat interaction from other midrange decks. Using a different color combination for a second, Derevi Empyrial Tactician, circumvents command tax via the activated ability within the command zone. This gives you the ability to put Derevi into play at instant speed. In an intense stack battle, you can use this ability to suddenly enable Fierce Guardianship or untap your mana engine (like Cradle) to pay for a large mana sink (such as a Flusterstorm). This ability to burst mana on the stack as well as the ability to circumvent normal casting times of creatures can give you a very good edge over other midrange decks.

Going through every midrange list like that is going to be a bit difficult but generally speaking the underlying strategies usually involve using a commanders quality in conjunction with already existing good cards to grind an advantage.

Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy

Kinnan is probably the most popular commander. Very approachable and straightforward, doubling mana is always a good thing. Everything in the deck is mana since you can use Kinnan as the outlet to find your win.

Kinnan has many different layers and types of kinnan you can build due to how simple that base concept is. “NBC” or “No-Bad Cards” looks to just leverage Kinnan for a small boost in mana to better leverage card draw effects like Rhystic Study and clones instead of relying on activations of Kinnan to win. “Big Flips” on the other hand looks to get an explosive amount of mana on the board and repeatedly activate Kinnan looking to uncounterably put into play progressively larger men which win you the game. Adapt the deck to your playstyle.

In general the gameplan first revolves around a quick start with either a mana dork or rock into a Kinnan. Then you convert the mana into some form of card generation. If the game begins to stall out, Kinnan activations can begin to flood the table and break parity.

Kefka, Court Mage

Most of the time when people see a Grixis build you automatically assume this is going to be a turbo deck due to the ability to leverage your massive ritual and tutor suite to power out fast wins. Kefka flips the idea on its head and instead uses rituals to power out the commander and establish a resource imbalance by disrupting your opponents’ hands. The wide clone suite in the deck allows you to repeatedly get additional casts while also being great value draws in case of other decks at the table having pieces you do not have access to such as Grand Abolisher.

The deck has several flaws compared to other midrange builds mainly being the critical weak-spot of having to have Kefka resolve and stay around. However due to the resource hungry nature of many decks in the format it can propose a difficult question for the other players to answer if they are not prepared.

Overall Kefka forces the table to reveal information about their hands and creates moments with an “information gap” which can be exploited to create windows for yourself. As you can make an educated guess on the contents of the other players’ hands without revealing any information for yourself.

Derevi, Empyrial Tactician

Another very old deck, Derevi has survived the test of time and brings with it a massive base of possible options. Classically this was a Stasis deck which utilized untap triggers to prevent the opponents from doing anything. As the meta sped up over time, Derevi became a Pod deck and then began to fade over time. With the printing of Emeil the Blessed, The One Ring, and with innovations in the space with Breezecaller alongside other creature based combos, Derevi remains a relevant if somewhat uncommon force.

The activated ability of Derevi from the command zone can be used at instant speed and is a way to ignore command tax. Something that only a single digit number of decks can actually do. In high resource games Derevi can win around interaction and when the resource games go very long is possibly the best deck in the format at abusing The One Ring to draw through the deck in one turn.

Noctis, Prince of Lucis

This section will have a lot of commanders that tournament grinders will simply ask “What’re we doing here?” The esper midrange deck of choice for most players boils down to Marnues or Tivit depending largely on playstyle and how strong of a politics game you might have. Noctis sacrifices the draw consistency of both for added resiliency from counterspells plus alternate one card combos. Graveyard hate is extremely underplayed in most of the meta, so having a commander which can utilize Entomb effects and strange Intuition lines is a unique approach to the problem of beating Farm.

Noctis also has the unique ability to play a number of potent yet narrow tutor effects like Artificer’s Intuition in order to setup wins. Noctis with its ability to leverage a unique range of synergy cards allows it to break parity

Animar, Soul of Elements

This deck has fallen out of popularity as of recent with the explosive rise of RogThras taking up the Temur space. Animar still offers insane mana advantage and discounts on all creatures generic costs enabling a strategy where you can chain together what would otherwise be considered too expensive combo chains by piecing the clones with creature tutors.

What would otherwise be innocuous creatures in the deck like Imperial Recruiter can represent a full blown win attempt with Animar in play. The tutor chain possible enables you to put into play several clones all at once like Phyrexian Metamorph which become free with Animar to build the counters on him, this enables the copy of Recruiter to find and also discount a more expensive creature. The recent addition of Formidable Speaker takes this deck to a new level of flexible as the tutor chain can now pivot much easier.

Shorikai, Genesis Engine

Shorikai has come in and out of the meta several times, first as a stax based commander then as a more control based list akin to that of Talion, then back as a controlling piece. The idea is that the untap effects of cheap keys or unwinding clock can form a massive card advantage synergy piece that is very low mana cost compared to many other constant effects and low commitment making each piece not worth it on its own to counter.

Atraxa, Grand Unifier

Atraxa uses green cards to generate a steady mana advantage and closes the game out by combining silence effects with an overwhelming board state or fast combo, Atraxa can deploy all the action or counterspells and refill the hand to do it again with a massive draw effect in the command zone. Never underestimate seeing 10% of your deck all at once.

Atraxa since the banning of Jeweled Lotus and Mana Crypt has dipped significantly in popularity due to just how much harder it is to get out of the command zone. Atraxa still maintains some of the most explosive potential out of any deck. While overall the strategy can be on the slow side, the deck packs a serious and consistent punch being able to supply itself with the resources needed to win from nothing but mana.

Tivit, Seller of Secrets

Tivit looks to control the board using generically powerful stax effects until you can assemble one of few efficient and effective combos like Time Sieve, 3feri+Kitten or the classic ThoracleConsult. Tivit provides a slow and difficult body in the command zone which provides a constant threat. Similar to Atraxa. Unlike Atraxa the resource generation of Tivit can be put to use in multiple ways, giving you both cards and the mana needed to use them. The artifact bodies on board can also be put to work in multiple ways not just through the classic Time Vault combo.

Generally speaking, Tivit has fallen to the wayside as innovations in RogIshai and other partner based decks took off. Tivit has had a bit of a problem in the Tournament space since the timer acts in a way that is just purely detrimental to the pilot. Infinite turns is not technically a win and if the player is forced to play it out close to time, the opponents can sneak in draws early in tournaments that would otherwise be wins. While this problem isn’t unique to purely Tivit, I think it happens the most to Tivit pilots compared to other decks.

Glarb, Calamities Augur

Glarb provides nice card advantage from casting spells via the top of the deck. Notably this doesn’t stop free casting of spells like Force of Will allowing you to maintain a steady stream of advantage. Combined with Counterbalance and Sensei’s Divining Top are you can absolutely churn through cards.

In the recent meta, Glarb has begun to fall out of favor as more decks look to either speed up or hunker down with layers of clone effects. Glarb can be built with several “one card wins” such as being able to crack Doomsday piles or being able to abuse Bolas’s Citadel through alternate casts and surveils.

As interaction packages get tighter and decks begin to run thin on resource wars, Glarb provides a neat angle to stay ahead of other decks.

Tasigur, the Golden Fang.

Tasigur allows you to selectively bring cards from your graveyard to your hand and convert previous cards used like fetchlands into extra mana allowing you to cheat him in early. This is a deck that gets better the better you are at political thinking and the better you are at convincing your opponents to give you specific tools. Another fun thing this deck can do is transform the commander immediately into a game winning threat like Hullbreaker Horror or Hoarding Broodlord via Eldritch Evolution.

Tasigur when used in conjunction with another player willing to work with you cal allow for interaction to be used multiple times. Ritual cards like Emerald Charm in this way can act as a modal spells letting you pivot gameplay on the fly as the other players show you ways to stop you. So long as you are communicative yourself you can redirect this interaction towards other players to allow yourself a better window in the future without risking your own resources.

Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow

Yuriko is often called a “stage hazard” deck. A very uncharitable term given to decks which don’t actually impact the gameplan of other decks or can kingmake a table on accident.

Yuriko is one of the most unique decks in the format for being possibly the only one where combat is a legitimate wincondition. Due to the wording of Yuriko, it isn’t uncommon to be able to deal upwards of 20+ collective damage to the table. With many obscure ninjas printed throughout magics history and a whole suite of changeling cards to pair with it. Yuriko presents one of the most consistent gameplans in the format. T1 → play a dude T2 → Yuriko and a dude. Hopefully through Yuriko you draw into your large suite of interactive spells and stop the table from winning while you grind them out.

Alternatively, Dimir gives you the ability to just Thassa’s Oracle combo the table out. Use your interaction as protection instead and if you draw into the tutor side of things, make a B-Line to the real wincon of the format. Being able to have your backup plan be synergistic with your main plan means that your overall trade of low card quality for synergy works out being the main cause of several wins. Especially punishing greedy mulligans or glass cannon decks looking to rely on 1-2 key cards Yuriko can interact with.

Due to the old wording on “Commander Ninjitsu” Yuriko at all points in the game has the same functional mana cost. Making it the most consistent commander effect in the format. “Consistent” is the best and only way to describe Yuriko. It does what it does every game.

Talion, the Kindly Lord

Now what if you wanted to trade the consistency of Yuriko for having a static card draw effect in the command zone?

Talion doesn’t have many synergistic pieces and tries to lean much more on raw card quality. The issue that this deck tends to run into is that Dimir has a relatively shallow card pool compared to other color combos and as a result ends up trading a large amount of the consistency that you could have from other commanders.

In specific games, an early Talion can draw you 15+ cards, making explosive starts particularly rewarding. However a slower hand is going to be extremely hard to get nearly as much value from since Talion gets much harder to get advantage from as hand size goes down. In big games Talion can put in tons of work, but in games where resources run thin quickly, you can be punished for simply not being fast in a slow strategy.

Omnath, Locus of Creation

Food Chain wins games.

If you don’t want to play in black colors, Omnath is the best food chain commander outside of Aragorn. Omnath offers card advantage as well as a ritual effect stapled to each fetchland you could play. That massive ritual or “refund” can be used to deploy your combo pieces or value engines while also having your commander out.

Food Chain is a fun strategy but the fact that the deck lacks black tutors makes it weak to a lot of things. White offers wonderful protection and red gives you a great commander agnostic plan plus access to Squee. Omnath is a good pick into specific metagames but I wouldn’t call it close to the top of the meta for a few glaring weakpoints.

Tameshi, Reality Architect

In recent months, Temeshi has really fallen to the wayside of RogIshai as have many Azorius based decks or decks looking to play a slower control game.

Temeshi offers the ability to combo and win through some complex and hard to interact with means with cards that most people haven’t seen since drafting them. I’m talking Lotus Bloom, Codex Shredder, and Soul-Guide Lantern levels. Temeshi deploys disruptive artifacts that can put a stop to the shenanigans of other players.

Temeshi can afford to run disruptive pieces like Grafdiggers cage and Vexing Bauble since its not really casting any spells from Graveyard but is instead reliant on activations to get through its own stax. Another good meta pickup if you’re playing into very polarized metagames as you can stop early win attempts from Grixis players as well as dodge the interaction of counterspells. You otherwise couldn’t get through.

Ob Nixilis, Captive Kingpin

Captive Kingpin can be built in multiple ways. Historically it leaned much more on turboing out a combo as well as utilizing one card winconditions like All Will Be One in order to get infinite pings on the table. More recent iterations of the deck lean more on trying to play a grindy tempo-sih style game where you land an early advantage piece then power out Ob Nixilus utilizing Red and Black fast mana. With anything left over hopefully you’re able to land a second one and impulse draw 5-20 cards

Ob Nixilis doesn’t have counterspells. Rakdos has alot of tools to grind, but it is very weak at actually backing up what its doing. The idea is you can hopefully brute force through your pieces by sheer volume as well as use the recussion and tutors in your color combination to seal a win easily.

The fact that Ob can combo with such a wide range of cards and has so much synergy with very low commitment effects makes it very easy to be onk with losing 2,3, even 4 wincons and still be able to present more or recusion effects to try again.

Clue Farm (The Friends Forever Gang)

This list has taken many forms at different points in the meta. You might have heard of the tripple commander Will + Lucas + Lurrus refering to a 4 color turbo strategy or the more midrange version seen today as Cluefarm. The basic idea is to pair your commander Will, the Wise with a combination of either the Red/Green or Blue/Red to generate advantage throughout a game.

This archetype/deck centers around one commander more than the others using the tools the other brings with the color pairing to generate your wins. The real question on everyone’s minds is why would you play the Friends instead of the partner commanders.

This boils down to wanting a combo outlet in the command zone since none of the partner commanders aside from Thrasios function as an infinite outlet within the command zone and looping your commander Will instead functions as a cheap and easy way to present your wins

Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer

This is going to go much more into the realm of theory than the other decks. Especially as we move into a world dominated by Rhystic Study and big resource games, I think more and more about the potential of Manifest, Cloak, and Morph. There’s two ways you can approach meta building;

A) you can counter the meta and go against it

B) you can embrace the meta and try to go deeper into it

In a world where every deck wants to play a super high resource game with Heartwood Storytellers, Mystic Remoras, and Rhystic Studies, with massive stack wars, some players are slotting in Split Second cards again like Sudden Substitution, Word of Seizing, and Sudden Shock. The natural evolution it this is understanding that Split Second cannot be played around to a certain extent, but also that it absolutely can. Kadena gives you the ability to discount and get multiple draws per face down card deployed. This lets you build up resources and hopefully have counterplay into a Split Second meta.

This deck is to a certain extent a pure meta call where you’re looking to build as chunky and grindy as possible. Into lower resource games or games that are constantly ending T2 this gameplan beings to collapse.

I think Kadena though represents a very extreme meta where the chunkiest and biggest deck wins and with tools like Abhorrent Occulus at its disposal I think not much else can get chunkier

Thrasios/Bruse aka “Dawnwaker Thras” looks to assemble a critical mass of mana engines in play and convert a sweeping amount of mana into cards via Thrasios activations. This deck also utilizes Zirda the Dawnwaker to great effect in order to hyper discount combos to power out faster wins when needed.

What makes Thrasios/Bruse better than other decks though?

Simply put…

Partners Are Broken

Tymna is a mediocre card on first read. Life for cards at a rate of 1-1 for each opponent you hit is actually pretty good. Tymna smooths out game plans and allows for a tight package of little idiots you can customize to form a coherent backup plan to what you wanna do based on your colors. You don’t need a ton of them just 5 or so goes a long way. Tymna being a human as well allows you to run Cavern of Souls naming human to get uncounterable utility creatures your other commander might want such as Harmonic Prodigy for Krark decks. A robust and compact backup plan for when mulligans don’t go your way is very good for turbo decks that don’t have counterspell backup and can’t always get the perfect hand. This brings me nicely to the point. “What do you want from a commander anyway?” Broad strokes here for a second, there’s typically 4 points people bring up.

1. Card Advantage
2. Mana Advantage
3. Combo or Synergy Piece
4. Backup Plan

This is the minimal requirements for a commander to even be considered up for discussion. Tymna allows you to check off 2/4 of these and if your other partner can also check off 1-2, you’re cooking. Tymna appears so frequently in cedh not because its a particularly good game plan or even the best game plan, but because the “Tymna Plan” rewards you for playing Magic. As long as you keep a somewhat decent hand you can more or less dig yourself out of a hole in quick fashion for effectively no downside.

As a rule of thumb, partners enable consistency and explosiveness. Partners can be grouped into 2 categories, either they are A) “The Engine Piece” or B) “The Efficient Option”. Starting with the Engines

• Tymna has a small suite of WB support creatures that help enable a color combination’s main strategy. Normally these are humans to allow for Cavern of Souls and typal cards to shine more, however depending on the exact color combination use, the pool of cards tends to flex to also encompass what the other commander is good at. Tymna’s large strength is in pure consistency, giving you a very reliable source of cards and a very reliable supporting system to back whatever your strategy is.
• Thrasios can have one of three packages depending on your playstyle. The first is a small package of mana producers and discounters to allow you to activate Thrasios repeatedly across the other players turns (Biomancer’s Familiar, Training Grounds, Zirda etc.). The second is suite of lands to enable consistency by having low opportunity cost because of Thrasios (Shifting Woodlands, Talon Gates, Minamo, Dryad Arbor). The third normally uses Thrasios as an infinite mana outlet and allows you to have a clean line to win.
• Malcolm is a one card combo with Glint-Horn Buccaneer and enables a huge range of two card combos. Being a massive battery and mana engine also enables great explosive wins in combat or post combat.
• Rograkh (Aka Rog. Legal name of Roger) is an effective “8th card” in your starting hand. While difficult to understand *why* that’s exactly so broken out of the gate, think of him as being the key to unlock many cards. Jeska’s Will as an example becomes both modes at no additional cost or investment. Comparing this to every other commander in the format means for the same card to get the same value, you must pay more mana into it initially. Every Rog deck for that reason has a large suite of cards that are turned on immediately. This makes every Rog deck purely faster than each other commander in the color combination.
• Dargo year over year gets more complicated, once thought to be a dead commander, its basically a reverse Roger.
• Krark… This commander “escapes” the meta. Please read Coins and Covid, a deep dive on Krark as to why.

While this strictly speaking isn’t every partner you can run as your main engine, I feel like this EXTREMELY OVER-GENERALIZED overview encompasses a large section of the meta. You can of course partner them with each other nothing is stopping you from winning with RogKrark after all. These commanders are more often paired with an “Efficient Option” partner to allow for a tight color combination and a specific gameplan.

• Vial Smasher the Fierce, Silas Renn Seeker Adept, and Tana the Blood Sower are the only partners with their color combinations. If you wish to run a commander with those within your color identity and another partner listed above, such as Grixis Pirates, RogSi, or TymnaTana one of these three is going to be the only option for your plans.
• Kraum Ludic’s Opus, Bruse Tarl, and Reyhan last of the Abazan while not the only option, are generally considered the best over the alternative commanders. Reyhan as an example is generally picked over Ikra Shadiqi because of the mana cost difference and because the +1/+1 counters Reyhan enters with can synergize with specific pieces in your deck such as Agatha’s Soul Cauldron. Kraum on the other hand while more mana than most other options provides a very consistent source of card draw within the command zone often relevant for many games which go late.
• Ishai, Ojutai Dragonspeaker and Sidar Kondo of Jamura don’t really fall into either category. As of the writing of this section (Jan. 18th 2026) Having a GW or UW partner is just outclassed by other options available. The effects are not relevant for cEDH tournaments due to the time restraint placed there, however in previous meta’s Ishai was a serious powerhouse being a clock on the game. For most color combinations there are other things you can do which are better. For example, in Jeskai you more often want a Blue partner within those colors like Malcolm in order to provide some kind of wincon as Jeskai seriously lacks in tutors and effective wins. Both of these commanders are very important to keep an eye on as if in the future some card is printed to payoff a card within just that color combination (for example Dargo/Sidar having a Naya payoff or Krark/Ishai having a Jeskai only effect) then they would by default be the best and most efficient options.

Mono color commanders are generally used in conjunction with a specific commander to provide a broken effect or to enable a specific part of the gameplan.

• Jeska Thrice Reborn is used as an infinite mana outlet as well as an efficient option to clear the board. Most commonly paired with Tymna, Ishai, or Tevesh Szat
• Halana, Kessig Ranger. Only really paired with Tymna, Halana is used as an efficient combo tool as well as a potential removal piece in stalled out games.
• Tevesh Szat can be a very good source of card draw, token bodies, and function as a late game board breaker button in untimed events. Most commonly paired with Thrasios or Rog
• Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful is a good boy and is often ran because people have an emotional attachment to dogs to enable a Bant focused strategy with Thrasios.
• Sakashima of a Thousand Faces is the ultimate support piece. Giving 2 copies of a commander in the command zone to enable weird winlines. Most commonly paired with Krark, but some people do use Tymna.
• Ardenn, Intrepid Archaeologist. Normally paried with Tana or Rog to enable very fringe wins.
• Francisco Fowl Marauder enables a two card win. This is generally bad, but has a cult following playerbase. Normally paired with Malcolm, Tana or Thrasios.

I cannot stress enough just how broken “Partner” is. The mechanic is busted- potentially giving you a 9 card starting hand, everything with Partner on it is nearly automatically leagues ahead of most alternatives. These commanders listed above while not representing a numerically large number of commanders, represents the majority of what you’ll find in the wild at both events and in pickup games in the wild.

Soup and Veggies

A core concept for cedh; the more cards you have access to the higher quality your deck is likely going to be. So naturally you’d expect lots of 5 color decks to be the staples of the meta.

This is generally not true for the recent metas (December 23rd 2025 at time of writing) However those who have been playing the format long enough might remember Golos, Tireless Pilgrim a now banned commander who was banned for being just too generically good in casual, homogenizing the format. The existence of the 5 color-colorless scout kinda made it hard to justify playing anything else that wasn’t commander centered without good reason. Play your fast mana and ramp into Golos. Golos would then get you the utility land you needed to setup for a next turn win, often times Boseiju, Who Shelters All and setup for an uncounterable Ad Nauseam, Peer into the Abyss, or other game ending effect. This is all impossible now since Golos hasn’t been a thing for 5 years this September. Since Golos has been banned, nothing printed since has been fast enough or has had that kind of utility to fill the void in 5 color piles.

5 color decks generally exist in one of 3 groups.

1. Recent commanders that people try for a short period and either refine or leave
2. Older commanders that have stood the test of time and are between 10-20 cards apart depending on the specific commander
3. Sissay

Generally speaking outside of the third category most 5 color commanders share almost the same land base and card pool. Najeela the Bladeblossom, Kennrith the Returned King, Terra, Magical Adept, Tiamat, Esika, The First Sliver, and most anything that WoTC will print will all be within 10-20 cards of eachother. What makes each 5c commander different is normally the few cards that synergize with the commander to win. For example in Najeela you often see Gornog, the Red Reaper and Derevi within the 99 to allow for some wins via combat, and in Terra decks you often see Food Chain and 1-2 enchantment creatures to win through that combo.

Sissay is the exception. That deck continues to improve year after year as more broken legends are printed into the format, its the one 5c deck that runs a wide range and a huge swath of random cards you don’t see anywhere else. Sissay doesn’t win through casting spells and drawing cards like most decks. In fact what Sisay needs more than anything is just mana. There are so many cards which Sissay can theoretically run theres different versions running around each with their own ardent defenders and each who have their own stats and data to back their claims. While I personally am not a dedicated Sissay pilot, its a very popular deck often hovering around 4th-5th in popularity specifically because it continues to improve year over year. 5 color decks always have some amount of popularity due to being able to run the new toys of every set.

This section has been more defining different 5 color decks than it has been about what these decks do. In short these decks try to do everything they can within a strategy. Each strategy has a 5 color version aiming to run purely efficient cards for it. Kennrith functions as a powerful midrange plan and enables many layered wins through activated abilities. Esika functions as a generic mana piece in the command zone enabling alot of turbo strategies. Najeela functions as the second piece of many one card combos within every color combination allowing you to run a wide range of mass draw effects to win.

5 color commanders are often the first grounds for testing certain ideas or strategies within cedh. Like importing other formats monsters and transferring them over to multiplayer.

Sidebar: Oops! All Spells

This has become a hot topic for other formats such as Legacy as of recent. If you dont know what Oops! is as an archetype, just go watch Rhystic Studies video. Ezio has been used commonly to enable this strategy. Right now, Oops! doesn’t have enough support to fix the consistency issues within a 100 card singleton format, its only a matter of time before this becomes viable. Each time new MDFC cards are printed there is always an uptick in popularity.

Even so, while I call this “so far unviable” I do think we are approaching a breaking point. Oops! as an archtype really looks to resolve 2-3 spells then flat win. Its a glass cannon approach to turbo, while also solving some of the issues in the more traditional storm builds. For singleton though I don’t think theres enough redundancy and tutors to make up for the massive cost in increasing your variance.

If you’re curious on a starting point for the archetype, in the Cloud City P2W series, there’s an Ezio player who has been working and tinkering on the deck for the last year. You can find an earlier iteration here with his top16 placement.

Sidebar: The Wandering Minstrel & Lands

I’ve had to go back to this section a few times and rewrite my thoughts on this commander (Jan 18th 2026). As of right now there is a lands focused strategy still not quite refined but slowly gaining traction. This strategy focuses on Lumra and Aftermath Analyst within the 99 and has many layered wins. Currently it plays very similarly to Amulet Titian in modern but is day by day changing rapidly. I don’t know what this strategy will look like in the future, but more than likely this commander will be the best version for some time.

Lands as an archetype has never been a viable strategy within cEDH until the printing of Lumra. Lorwyn has just been spoiled and cards within the set look to really change the game for what this strategy can do, upcoming tournaments will likely have several players testing out things within the commander. I have a sneaking feeling that this commander is way better than its current form but there is just no proof or numbers to show right now. Time will tell, but for the purposes of future proofing I want to leave a small note. This commander is firmly in the “under explored” camp and very much needs more testing from more knowledgeable pilots than myself.

More than that, the “lands strategy” while being extremely prevalent in the more casual side of commander is almost untouched in cedh. Each set that goes by provides an array of new tools to test and try. With how complex the interplay is between cards many cards go overlooked for long periods of time before popping up again. Especially as new tools are printed overshadowing old ones. The lands strategy as a whole is nearly entirely dominated by Minstral, Lumra, and the rare Kodama deck. Occasionally a strange brew of Korvold or Thrasios makes the rounds, but the only lasting versions remain as Minstral and Lumra.

Lumra is the main competetor to Minstral for rules quirks about commander. Lumra allows you to create sacrifice loops milling your entire deck as well as loops forcing the table to die either by infinite tokens being created or through forcing them to draw their decks. The major downside to Lumra is the fact that Lumra is a mono-green deck with over 50 lands. Its still a fast and impressive deck, but it often looks to operate in the meta in ways that other decks really can’t interact with. Likewise though, due to the insane land count you are able t ointeract with decks on a completely different axis, like through Tabernacle or Bazaar activations.

I expect both decks to evolve rapidly as more time passes and more unique lands are printed.

What can you do with One Color?

After all this talk about why more colors leads to higher card quality and all these different high color decks, this brings the question. If its so good to be in multiple colors are there any one color decks that are even good? The short answer: Yes, but not many. The long answer -

In order for a commander to be good enough to be run in the command zone it has to do something that no other commander really can. Alternatively it has to provide an effect at such an efficient rate having access to it within your starting resources must be able to convert a win. Getting that win is going to be more difficult since you are sacrificing so much by limiting your card pool to 1/5th of every other deck. What makes each color good enough to be run on its own? Going in WUBRG order.

White gives you protection and recursion.

Blue gives you card advantage, counterspells, and efficient draws.

Black gives you tutors and rituals.

Red gives you efficient win conditions.

Green gives you consistency through effective copies of creatures as well as direct to battlefield tutors for the best creatures.

Lets highlight some facts of the one color life by saying what happens when you do not have a color.

• Every color outside of blue lacks a good density of consistent counterspells. This means that every non-blue strategy is going to sacrifice a large amount of its agency in a game since a lack of interaction leads to some board states where there is no “possible out” in your deck. Even if you had all 100 cards in your hand you’d still be dead. Blue also gives you Rhystic Study and Mystic Remora which are in the heavy weight class for best cards of the format.
• Every color outside of black lacks flexible and universal tutors. Demonic Tutor is the card that all other tutors is named after. It gets you anything you want even if the board changes for just 2 extra mana. With DT in the deck you are effectively running 1 extra copy of every other card in your deck. The same can be said for Vamp Tutor, Imp Seal, Diabolic Intent, really every universal tutor. Contrast this with Mystical Tutor. It only acts as an effective copy of your Instants/Sorceries. For artifact based combos and strategies this has to find something else making your combo lines just harder to find compared to black. The same can be said for every other color combo.
• Every color outside of red cannot play Underworld Breach. Underworld Breach is in a category of its own holding up the entire color pie of red. Its the best wincondition and its hard to compete with.
• Every color outside of white lacks silences. Grand Abolisher gives you universal saftey and protection on your turn. Casting GA demands an answer and so landing one cleanly gives you the green flag to win. Most other silence effects feel much the same, however the added flexibility of being able to stop wins with Silence, Orims Chant, or Ranger-Captain of Eos is very noteworthy.
• Green is the biggest supporting color. Unlike the other colors, there are no heavyweight champions of cards. Most of what green offers is solid workhorse cards like Birds of Paradise which you aren’t going to say no to without great reason. The green tutor suite putting cards directly to battlefield is particularly noteworthy since most other tutors in the game go to hand or some other zone first.

With all that in mind what are the commanders that can actually stack up to losing all of the other effects of the other commanders, again in WUBRG order

Oswald Fiddlebender

Being monocolor is hard to justify for every color. White especially lacks the depth of playable cards that most other colors have, you can’t just keep casting silences without followup and expect yourself to win. There needs to be meat and more to do after. So what better to do than to combo?

What you end up with is a commander that is able to rapid fire tutor combos to the board and win quickly under silences. Oswald turns your white pips into a combo. If the board has two 1-cmc artifacts and a 2 cmc artifact with an untapped Oswald. Oswald can likely win.

Many people assume that because white is a big color for stax effects that white is only capable of stax. While you can tutor out progressively larger stax effects, as cEDH players you want to be presenting wins. Stax might stop other players from winning, but not winning yourself is the same as losing.

So with all that what is the arguement and justification for play Oswald over any of the other powerhouses and other decks in the format? Oswald can supply you with wins that do not use the stack, circumventing the usual interaction of the format. While the wins are sorcery speed, since a major pull to white is the protection you’ll notice that most the deck pulls are undisrupted.

You’re going to notice a trend with most of the one color decks. Most of them have a similar hard to interaction with nature.

The tutor chains you can find online might look long, but trust me in the hands of a good player most of the steps can be shortcut down to less than 2 minutes of game actions.

Arcum Dagsson

Very similar to Oswald, Arcum is able to string together wins from just a few artifacts and an untapped activation. What you trade in white protective spells you gain in a few key areas. Firstly Arcum is instant speed. You can wait for the perfect moment to send your combo. Secondly Arcum lets you run counterspells.

I won’t run through this for every monoblue commander, but in short counterspells are pretty important in cedh. Having the agency to show an opponents a card and make deals about what people can and cannot resolve gives you the ability to dictate the flow of the game much more consistency than other colors. Agency in a game is also stress-prevention. Yes, you can make mistakes on what to counter and where to interact. However, since most other players don’t have the interaction package you do, you are the one free to dictate the game most often when you are running a counterspell suite compared to colors without it.

Arcum though is one of the older combo decks in the format. Change your small artifact creature out for a massive board destory like Portal to Phyrexia or a stax piece like God-Pharohs Statue. Alternatively you can find untap effects to be able to untap and tutor out a core combo of the deck and win outright at instant speed.

Blue also gives you access to Rhystic Study which will be talked about in depth much later.

Urza, Lord High Artificer

Urza is the most popular monoblue deck. Generically strong with a wide suite of combos, all you need to win is mana.

Urza for the cost of being monoblue gives you a massive mana engine in the command zone alongside an infinite mana outlet plus combo enabler. Given the new wave of combos inspired by Sewer-veillance Cam, there are now a plethora of instant speed ways to win, on top of all your other instant speed infinite mana combos.

Why play Urza though? Given that he is a mana engine and card engine in the command zone, this gives the pilot alot of flexibility with opening hands plus deck construction. In the fight to destroy bluefarm, you also have the aiblity to combo on top of yourself in multiple ways. You can use Sewer-veillance Cam to make mana with any loopable bounce effect or use Valley Floodcaller with Retraction Helix to bounce your rocks at instant speed OR you can use Hullbreaker Horror to bounce your opponents wins off the stack. These are all common and viable options for Urza decks that

Teferi, Temporal Archmage

After the EU Championship series had a Teferi pilot win it all I felt that it was important to talk about some historic decks of the format, and where they’re at.

This is by no means anything splashy by todays standards. Its a 6 mana mono colored deck revolving around a commander that can be hit by Force of Negation. There’s so many individual weakpoints of the deck you have to wonder how this can still preform.

For starters, individual weak spots does not make the whole deck weak. Monoblue still contains the strongest card advantage of the format, and the commander upon being cast allows you to “refund” the costs. Untapping your stuff after casting your commander means you can follow up with advantage engines or via holding up interaction. Most of the time you’re going to be casting a suite of artifacts to change the game ranging from clones like Imposter Mec to Grafdiggers Cage or alternatively just powering out wins like Hullbreaker Horror, Chain Veil, and Repurposing Bay.

K’rrk, Son of Yawgmoth

Phyrexian mana is crazy. Discounting every spell down to just the generic mana was a design mistake. 1 mana is not worht 2 life. In this format especially, its not really close since we start out at 40.

K’rrk is able to abuse the lifetotal part of this format better than any other deck. The idea is so strong it overshadows every other monoblack commander. Just pay the life and keep churning through cards. Cast your tutors at a hyper discount and get your combo. If you don’t have the tutors or you don’t think you have the mana, Krrk also discounts the casting cost on all of your rituals to make more mana to keep casting your stuff.

This is the cost of any and all black pips - including abilities on creatures and cards.

Mono-Black is always going to be a glass cannon, but at least with this commander you’re able to fire your gun before anyone else can usually react.

Godo, Bandit Warlord

The last cedh game that will ever be played will be Gitrog, Derevi, Jeleva and Godo.

Cast Godo, find Helm of the Host, Equip to Godo. Thats it- count to 11.

Except, its never that easy. Within those 3 steps, there’s a thousand things to be weary of playing around, timing, and understanding. Knowing how to count is the whole skill. 5+6 is never that easy. Sometimes its 1+2-2+3-3+5-3+5-1 which discounts 4 which makes 11. Sometimes you don’t search for Helm so you can instead find something to equip it. Its a shockingly difficult deck that is also the easiest at the same time.

This deck was for a long time called a starter deck as it teaches you the basics for finding a window and pushing in turbo. This will also teach you about alot of the countermagic in the format and show you what you should be playing around when.

Also teaches stickers.

Magda, Brazen Outlaw.

I firmly believe someone at WOTC is developing powercrept dwarves and has been sprinkling them into sets over the last 4 years to make Magda better in cEDH.

Magda is what most people think of when you think of mono red. The combos are hard, but you have a very cheap commander which is difficult to keep down combined with a deck that searches out and powers combos golore.

Magda has combos that can win at instant speed and over top of everyone else making it an ideal deck in meta games where people are either trying to play on their mainphase protected or for people who are trying to play in highly interactive games. Magda can simply wait back and win at the last possible second at any time. All wins that magda has are activated abilities making them impossible to interact with at all beyond a certain point.

Slicer, Hired Muscle

To most people, this is not a cedh deck. This is why it’s able to win tournaments and why Slicer shows up on tournament stat websites. When the deck made its debute, it won its first tournament and has struggled ever since.

As people forget that it exists, it will pop up and make topcut at an event. At the end of the day, Slicer functions as a “meta counter” if you expect some games to be hyper-turbo you can lay out stax pieces to slow the board as well as the fastest clock in the format and get wins in.

The reason why you don’t see it consistently is because communication goes a long way in stopping it from winning. So as you get better and better players communicating it loses its surprise factor and stops being able to win.

Selvala, Heart of the Wilds

Did you know Kyle Hill plays cEDH? He plays this deck. If you don’t know who that is, ignore this…

Getting into Mono-Green we have to start talking about Brostorm. Selvala has the sick ability of making mana and drawing cards in the command zone. In other decks its a combo tool and wins through filtering colors or providing support in other combos.

In its own deck what you ideally want to do is play out some untap effects and generate a big chunk of mana for a tutor. One tutor is all you need since you can then chain togehter a whole array of other shenanigans to eventually burst draw a whole lot of cards and get a win in.

Since everything you are doing is creature based you are hoping to dodge a good chunk of counterspells and interaction in the format. This also includes bounce spells and removal pieces since everything is either ETB based or revolves around mana abilities. Many of the untap spells you are casting have the secondary purpose of also providing some form of protection like Hexproof making these combos shockingly resiliant.

Yisan, the Wanderer Bard

Yisan has not aged well. Many commanders are agrueably just better Yisan now since the printings of Magda and Oswald. If you want to do this strategy in green theres strong arguements for why you shouldn’t.

What made this deck work in the past was how good stax was and how you could afford to not cast spells and instead spend your time deploying mana and placing proactive disruption pieces. While you accumulated your win. Yisan struggles to keep up in the meta due to the number of accelerants in the format as well as not having access to much of the free interaction and diverse combos.

DISPITE THIS: Yisan still manages to make topcut. I’m not talking about small events, im talking Gold and Silver topdeck catagory events. Events with 5+ rounds of swiss. Many people tend to focus on the newst splashiest commanders and what the current state of the meta is while forgetting that there have been some decks dominating for years.

The reason why Yisan was good 5 years ago is why he is good now. As we move into metas dominated by speed, Rhystic Study, and by players trying to leverage and bully others into interacting. A toolbox apprach that doesn’t cast spells really allows you to appraoch a wide range of situations and be ready for nearly anything.

The Cabbage Merchant

On the exact opposite end of Yisan we get to the newest meta pick which is specifically designed for the year of Rhystic 2026 - The Cabbage Man.

In a world where eveyone is going on the stack over eachother and trying to win at flash speed and while everyone else is casting spells. Just sit back and make a thousand mana. All you need is to cast TCM early and once the stack wars start breaking out, you can pay for every spell under the sun and you can cast anything you could ever dream to cast.

The combos might seem very strange and hard to get to, but remember; what green excels at is the creature tutor suite and making more mana. It doesn’t matter if you have a 3 piece combo if they are all creatures. Academy Manufactor is a busted card and lets you do everything you could ever dream of with this commander. Just find a way to find that and you’re off to the races.

TCM is a purely meta pick as showcased by Sylvie at the birdcage and by Arne at the EU qualifiers if you can correctly guess where the meta is headed and what will be played. You can load your deck in such a way to be able to get though the swiss undefeated and leverage your brewers advantage plus meta knowledge to secure your top table.

If you want to play this commander, I strongly reccomend studying your local meta and adapting your deck to what you expect will come. You’ll notice the differences between both example decks above are mostly in the silver bullet suite as well as adapting the wincons slightly to each meta (US vs EU).

The Kings Court

The true drivers of the cEDH format are not the decks; the general playpatterns and habits of players as well as their tendencies to exploit is what makes the meta. To this there are individual cards within the decks that drive the majority of the format because they break some truth about the format.

Underworld Breach - The best way to win.

Anyone that says Flash should be unbanned is wrong. Underworld Breach was in the meta during the flash hulk days for a brief period and no one was doing anything with Breach. It’s like Oboro Breezecaller and combos with it. There was a window where you could have played it alongside Dockside Extortionist. No one was because the combo was just bad compared to what you could be doing.

With Flash gone, and alot more time with Breach and its combos, I really don’t think anything else is better. Breach loops* with so many cards in so many different ways more often than not if you have 6 cards in your graveyard and you resolve Breach, you can put something together. Typically thats using Brain Freeze and Lion’s Eye Diamond. Breach is so universal you can basically pick your color and you way to win with it. If aboslutely nothing else, Grinding Station lets you filter your graveyard when combined with any mana neutral or positive rock (Sol Ring, Mox Opal, Mana Vault, Grim Monolith etc.) As you get up in colors you can win in however stylistic way you want typically ending with Thassa’s Oracle or milling the table out and using Faerie Mastermind to force draw them another card.

Breach is technically a 3 card combo. What makes breach so good is that in reality its just a one card combo. See if you have the mana and cast any tutor, you can find a combination of cards that win you them game from that tutor. Demonic Tutor finds you breach first, then can be reused to find first Lion’s Eye Diamond, then Brain Freeze for the combo above. If you don’t have that, then you can use Mystical Tutor to grab Demonic to start the process from the top. If you have Enlightened Tutor you can find to get you Wishclaw Talisman, which gets Demonic… and on it goes.

Point is Breach is just silly when combined with tutors.

More than that, Breach in the process of milling yourself and doing your own combo also protects itself. If you are playing into 4 or more draw engines, Breach has the ability to brute force through counterspells so long as Breach itself resolve. There’s only 2 counterspells widely played in the format which can wipe the entire stack away stopping a Brain Freeze combo (MBT and Fluster). The redundancy built into the combo post Underworld Breach still lets you secure a game even if you exile one or more pieces. I say “exile” because just countering one or more spells doesn’t do enough to stop the other player. Breach lets you keep going. As you dig for fuel you also find your protection.

The best combos do more than combo. Underworld Breach is the absolute peak of this. Its the best combo in the format since it protects itself, has almost no opportunity cost, and even when stopped allows you to continue to press your advantage to an overwhelming point.

Ad Nauseam and Necropotence - The old weathered pillars

Since the format has been a thing, 40 life has been a broken starting point. Necropotence and Ad Nauseam have always been a rotating part of the meta. At different points each has had a long time in the spotlight.

Ad Nauseam has been more popular as the time for winning slows down, when you have many resources in hand and can present wins over other players, the instant speed aspect built into Naus becomes extremly valuable. A properly built deck with Ad Naus should convert into a win around 75-80% of the time once resolved. Burst drawing an average of 23-28 cards is always going to be great.

For many years it was difficult to fully exploit Necropotence due to how limited flash speed was to get with Shimmer Zur being the only deck to be able to fully exploit it. In the last 3 years, many flash enabling cards have been printed, from Emergence Zone and Borne Upon a Wind to more specific and niche ones like Tidal Barracuda, Valley Floodcaller, and Heliod the Warped Eclipse. As a result the “Necro package” has become a widly popular include for most Dimir+ decks and nearly all Grixis+ decks. Necro has become more popular in recent months due to this increased printing making Necro much more consistent. The window to use a hand full of Necro things is much tighter since everything you don’t use will be exiled. On the other hand, fully sending an early necro can get you 30-35 cards in hand easily.

Normally with either of these, you want to leave yourself a small window of life to potentially use tools like Vampiric Tutor, Gitaxian Probe, or something as little as a fetchland. Each situation is different, but a good rule of thumb is to try and have 3-5 life.

I know I’ve said this many times, but its worth reiterating, Naus and Necro are such staples of the format because they were designed with the starting life being 20, and a deck size of 60. There is nothing in the format with the pure effectiveness of either of these in terms of burst card draw. There’s so much life in the format and such an over abundance of mana fixing that these cards define a strategy section.

Thassa’s Oracle - The c in cedh

Thassa’s Oracle might say “win the game” on it, but the truth of the matter is the rest of the game still happens. Its easy to boil a game down to “Thassa, DCon, Win” but that skips over the real story of the format.

Games have to end somehow. Thoracle is the thing that literally says on it “win”. Fact is for the majority of the game it is a flat dead card. Half of the combo which secures your points. Thoracle gets so much notice in the format as it is involved in the most mana efficient combos of the format.

Mana efficiency is not the full the full story. When looking at other combos possible in the format technically Devoted Druid combos are more efficient. Swift Reconfiguration and DD together is 3 mana for infinite green. The difference is that Thoracle literally says “Win”. Since its an ETB effect Thoracle is essentially a harder to counter Sorcery that wins with an empty deck.

In every color combination that has blue and black involved, you kinda have to run Thoracle. The other parts of the combo in Demonic Consultation and Tainted Pact are also extremely low opportunity cost. Consult at its worst can be a 1 mana hope and a dream to find your last piece. Tainted Pact on the other hand was made for a world of 60 card formats with 4 copies of each card. Pact was never designed to be run for singleton. Back then the opportunity cost was just too high to make it feasible. Within the bounds of cEDH Tainted Pact can at its floor be an instant speed riskier to use Demonic Tutor.There is little to no opportunity cost to run 2 of 3 cards. Thassa’s Oracle is the most dead card of the bunch being at its worst a 2 mana scry 2.

When put together you have yourself the easiest way to win in the format. 3 mana, fire the cannon. The combo is an all-in win button. Since the stack has to resolve to win the game, there’s some neat counterplay possible with cards like Faerie Mastermind or an unfortunately placed Esper Sentinel or Kraum.

Thoracle being the most mana efficent combo in the format creates a great tension and motivation for the format to not just be a Rhystic Slopspace. Remember - cEDH decks can win from 3 mana. The majority of decks have blue and black in them. If they don’t, they probably have red. Breach might be the best wincon in the format, but everyone has to respect the Oracle DCon.

20,000 words later and we finally get to Rhystic Study

I write this section Sunday, April 26, 2026 6:26 PM. Evan, Jase and Zach have slammed the United States meta, popularizing the Rhystic.deck archetype otherwise refered to as “NBC - No Bad Cards” in X color combination. The goal is to land mana engines paired with card draw engines and layer wins over top of other players countering spells and waiting until the last second to win. If each game action forces a Rhystic study trigger to draw cards simply put more Rhystics in play and burry your opponents. This entire category of cards exploits a function of multiplayer and one of the most common interactions in cedh. “Who can deal with this? Someone should.” When one of your opponents counters something another opponent is doing without doing something to affect the rest of the table if a 3rd person has an engine like Rhystic Study the player with Rhystic wins.

You spend 75% of the game on other people’s turns. When your deck consists of cards that get value from your opponents doing something, you will be getting value during 75% of the game. If each other player isn’t willing to do what you are, should the game go long enough you win. That’s the logic of nearly every Rhystic.deck. Draw efficient and good interaction, keep the game going. Win once everyone else has exhausted everything.

There is alot more nuance than that to this grouping of cards but Rhystic is the biggest offender - and its not really close

Sidebar: A Discussion on Bans and the Future of the format.

Purely my opinion for a second.

Rhystic holds back a majority of the format. When you really push what Rhystic can do and you start copying it multiple times you start to understand how easy it is to bury the table. If each player casts 3 spells on their turn. In one cycle, Rhystic draws 10% of the deck. So if you have 3 copies and no one respects it, the Rhystics have drawn more cards than an Ad Nauseam.

If you say “Just pay the one.” Going deeper on that, one player paying 1 additional for each spell might only allow for 2 of the 3 spells per turn. If no one else pays the Rhystic player still ends up drawing 6 cards a cycle. Even if everyone is paying then the Rhystic Study player for 3 mana has denied 9 mana worth of spellcasts. Taken to the extreme if there are 5 copies of Rhystic Study (via Mirrormade, Flash Photography, Clever Impersonator and Copy Enchantment) Then each spell that your opponenets cast effectively costs 5 more if they want to deny resources. If each player casts just one spell you are drawing 15% of your deck.

Personally, I do not find this chunky playpattern fun. I’m in the minority of players as many decks have been trending for quite some time towards this “stack war” playstyle. Of everyone trying to win over eachother and accumlate the most resources.

This is why Flash was banned. Everyone just holding resources in their hands until someone fires the first shot, then theres one massive stack that then leads to whoever has the last shot winning. This playpattern and style of game was what many players years ago were complaining about. Combined with the potential for games ending on turns 1 or two fro mearly turbo decks and the “stack wars” meta we find ourselves in. I really have a sense of deja-vu.

“Speaking of exceptional decisions, we are banning Flash (the card, not the mechanic). Enough cEDH players who we trust have convinced us that it is the only change they need for the environment they seek to cultivate. Though they represent a small fraction of the Commander playerbase, we are willing to make this effort for them. It should not be taken as a signal that we are considering any kind of change in how we intend to manage the format; this is an extraordinary step, and one we are unlikely to repeat.”

Toby Elliot, Commander Rules Update April 2020.

Rhystic as a card should be banned for the same reason as Flash. To me this is not a healthy or interesting playpattern for people to mull for Rhystic, draw counterspells and attempt to force games into a state where no one can win for the sake of tournament points.

Until it is, All you need to know is that its the best card in the format and props up an entire pillar of the playerbase.

TLDR, Rhystic Study is a good card.

CEDH vs Tournament Commander.

When you are playing under a timer with draws on the line, some truths about multiplayer begin to surface. Spite play, kingmaking, and griefing morph into politcal tools.

Part of this section could be one sentence: “Tournament logistics killed stax.”

Backing up a bit, what is stax? “The four thousand dollar solution” or “stax” is whats often referred to as the 3rd part of the strategy circle of cedh. For years the meta would speed up, only for people to counter builds to this turbo by running pieces like Rule of Law in order to traditionally stop those decks from winning. Over time though less and less support for Stax was printed as the vast majority of the player base doesn’t like having their cards messed with. The last “true hard stax” piece was printed in 2019. In the meantime though, turbo and midrange strategies have gotten between 1-2 cards every other set. This makes arguing for those strategies quite difficult, especially for those players who wish to play in tournaments.

The goals of every good competitive brewer is threefold.

1. Reduce the variance of the format by having a consistent plan which can be executed every game
2. Make a deck with the best possible plan or that has strong arguments for existing when compared to other gameplans.
3. Create a deck that can acheive an average winrate when played into equally skilled opponents and equally powerful decks.

Stax as a strategy looks to slow down the board and prevent your opponenets from playing the game. The way you win as a stax player is by breaking parity and accerlating out your combo or overwhelming boarstate before anyone can do anything about it.

Winota, Joiner of Forces

Rewind the clock 4 years ago. Winota was the top of the meta. Freshly banned in pioneer, what you do is you cheat out your big stax effects on your first swing, then you cheat out multiple humans to reinforce your board state and stop interaction from preventing your next swing. Then on the following turn you snowball that into a massive lockout to win.

Winota is possible the best commander at mana cheating massive game changing threats to play.

The unfortunate reality of Winota and the color combination of Boros - this commander has no political game. Due to the nature of this snowball playstyle every other person at the table has some kind of insentive to stop the Winota player from playing the game. Even if the Winota player is allowed one look , which isn’t even guarenteed to do anything, no other player can allow more than that. In a pod of 3 turbo players, no one wants the stax to hit the board. In a pod of 3 midrange players no one wants their interaction shut off. Even in a 3 pod of extremely grindy greed players looking for the game to go long, no one can let the Winota find the doublers and combo pieces that ends the game quickly.

This commander is fine - in fact, compared to alot of the earlier commanders one might be shocked several are even catagorized as viable. The problem that has caused this to be shut out of the meta nearly entirely is this “single player” transformation. The extreme warping of the political game is a massive hurdle to overcome when playing this deck. If you can and still navigate the mechanical game well, you’re often left to the mercy of random variance when flipping through your deck. Deploy the wrong stax effect and you might shut out a player from stopping the person actually winning. Worse yet, you might not flip anything.

Better players communicate more effectively. I’d be interested to see how some top players would build this for the modern Rhystic Grind, until the game changes on a fundamental level, or until players solve the politcal issues, this commander has more than likely has had its 15 seconds of fame.

Thalia & the Gitrog Monster

T&G exists in a strange middle ground between 2 very good Abzan decks.

On the one side is Tymna/Halana. A Protaen Hulk focused deck looking to power it out with its suite of rituals and dorks to combo the table out. Halana acting as a consistent sac piece or removal effect in the command zone alongside Tymna filling in the card draw for the deck to enable lower mulligans.

On the other side is Tayam, a much slower staxier build which can break parity on all of the stax effects; winning through activations instead of casting spells. Additionally Tayam can play a more flexible game milling over pieces and assembling a board of pieces to generate value in slower control matchups.

T&G acts as a middle ground combining the advantage of Tymna with the Sac abilities of Halana. As a minor stax piece and advantage engine in the command zone, T&G tries to split the flexibility of the other two decks creating a hybrid in-between that ends up being a “jack of all trades” but doing no one thing to an exceptional degree.

Abzan as a color combination takes alot to justify giving up the premier combos in red and the counterspells blue offers. To me, T&G doesn’t make up for that. Other players find success with the deck though. Play what you want.

Shalai and Hallar

Printed in the March of Machines set which brought many staple commanders, this was a one card combo in the command zone. Every creature tutor could find The Red Terror which in conjunction with the commander ended the game.

Naturally since the deck needed just 2 things in play to win, you could run tons of cheap and effective stax effects which hated the table out. Cursed Totem is an especially nice pickup for this deck when played into Thrasios or Kinnan centered metagames.

Naya also gives the option of playing Blood Moon and Magus of the Moon to shut out greedier 4 color mana bases and Dampening Sphere to shut out storm heavy turbo decks.

The deck never got massively popular due to how weak it is into bounce effects which got increasingly popular overtime. The lack of counterspell protection makes it much more of a glass cannon style deck than other stax decks which will be mentioned later.

At the end of the day the Naya color combination doesn’t struggle with combos. Even though you lack black tutors for consistency and the blue wincon of Thoracle, Naya still has many potent 2 card combos. If you want to play a stax build, there are better options to be discussed, and if you want to run a combo build, better options have already been mentioned.

Plagon, Lord of the Beach

Colors are very important. Plagon is a really cool concept that would work infinitely better if the commander was 3 color or even just in two other colors. What you do in Azorius is deploy a bunch of cheap stax effects like Drannith, Dauntless Dismantler, and Souless Jailer. Then follow it up with Plagon to reload your hand and deploy more cheap stax effects to slow the board. Hold up your leftover mana to interact, and if you dont have to, use your wide range of flicker effects to burst draw through your deck.

Azorius as a color combination doesn’t have much in the way for mana or rituals, so when deckbuilding you are at constant tension with the amount of mana you can include as well as your stax effects and Plagon triggers. Whats shown the best results is a higher density of Stax compared to mana. This creates a commander that wants to try and storm off, but all you are storming is stopping the game.

Azorius struggles to close out the game and Plagon - while being an amazing stabilizing force and engine - doesn’t answer the fundamental question of “How do you win?”

Atla Palani, Nest Tender

Commander 2019 was a very broken set. That was the set that brought Dockside, Sevvines Rec, Sudden Sub, and this commander here. C19 was also a very different world to play in. Back in the day you could layer stax effects to shut off artifact combos and storm combos. When you were ready to pop off, you’d find a changeling effect and begin shuffling through your deck as you sacrificed your creatures through various methods, typically something like Mirror Entity.

Atla was a fun deck to try, but as combos became more effiecient and card quality increased it became harder and harder to justify playing such a strange combo requiring many dead cards in your deck.

It’s instant speed though. This at least lets it attack the game on a different front from most other stax decks as a majority of them have to win on their turn, or win through lock-out esque strategies.

Ellivere of the Wild Court

Enchantress style decks often can’t survive into Rhystic onslaughts due to how many answers those decks run for storming off. Ellivere approaches this issue by solving a different one. Working backwards, Ellivere after locking the game out creates a rapid clock which shrinks each turn. Every combat swing buffs up another creature by 7-10 power. Similar to the next deck Jetmir, Ellivere solves the problem of how to win the game quickly.

To solve the Rhystic Study issue, all of the enchantments played in Ellivere are made to be lock pieces and stax effects to slow the board down. Good luck with your Breach combo after Rest in Peace hits the board. Deploy a range of enchantment stax effects, cast Ellivere and begin enchanting your board with tokens, then burst draw up to layer on more stax stalling the game.

Most cedh decks have cut many wide “fix-all” board wipes in favor of more efficient interaction or just in favor of speed altogether. The few decks that still run powerhouse sweepers like Cyclonic Rift and Wipe Away will always have a silver bullet ready for this style of stax deck.

Until more decks start playing those, Ellivere will share all the same weaknesses of the next deck and every other stax deck.

Jetmir, Nexus of Revels

Occationally you might see Jetmir spike in play when a pilot wants to take hard stax to a tournament. Jetmir was once the peak of true “winconless stax.” In Naya if you assemble a boardstate of a few specific stax effects, you can completely lock the game preventing anyone from doing anything. Normally in a tournament this is not considered a win.

Jetmir serves the functionality of “game closing.” If you have a board of 3 dorks, 3 stax creatures, and 2 tokens. If all of them are 1/1s, Jetmir adds 48 damage per turn. If no one can take actions, it just takes 2-3 turns to close the game assuming no one takes damage. The mana from Guul let this all happen quickly enough to win within the restraints of time. Even as you are ramping up, Jetmir’s effect has a few niche synergies that can allow incrimental advantage. For example, buffing Esper Sentinel by 1 power makes the mana requirement to pay for its trigger incriment as well. Giving all your creatures Vigilance lets you deplete life resources from turbo players while still letting you use dorks to continue to ramp.

Jetmir trades the ability to win quickly for an overwhelming inevitability. Tournament play doesn’t translate well for this playstyle as your opponenets who can eat the clock from you can work together unintentionally to prevent your wins.

As it stands, Jetmir is a decent choice for stax players looking to play pickup games of cEDH or just local games. If you wish to take stax to a tournament, I really recommending getting comfortable calling your opponenets out on slowplay and making sure you are comfortable calling for judges mid game. Your opponenets don’t even need to be malicious or even trying to burn you out, long political conversations and arguements on the stack can burn your clock just as much as a player slowly riffling through their lands while fetching.

A common theme with stax as well is that good players talk more. As you climb up in the leaderboards it will get progressivly harder to get away with sneaking in pieces to win. This one sided political game applies to all stax decks, but especially to ones that lack hard combos.

The Infamous Cruelclaw

Rakdos isn’t really known for its stax package. Cruelclaw enables a form of mana cheating in a very similar area to that of Winota and Kaalia putting stuff from your deck directly to the stack. Swing, reveal, discard repeat. By landing massive game warping effects like God-Pharoh’s Statue, Portal to Phyrexia or Sire of Insanity you can turn the game on a dime from very little resources yourself. The playpatterns of Cruelclaw also let you run a build thats more explosive; that version cheats out massive game closing spells such as Peer into the Abyss or Bolas’s Citadel and storm off.

This whole “combat mana cheat” playstyle of Kaalia and Winnota works so well because they skip over the stack. Cruelclaw while being more flexible in what you can cheat still has to actually put spells on the stack opening yourself up to countermagic that stops your plan. For mana cheating to be good you need to have a way to skip over that vulnerability - which is the big reason this never saw mass adoption.

Tayam is the last bastion of what you might consider stax, and every set thats eroding more and more.

Sidebar: The Tayam Tangent

Tayam is widely misunderstood. Tayam can leverage stax effects and stax as a way to stop other players from interacting with you. What Tayam is not is a stax centric deck. This might confuse some pilots if you are unfamiliar with the deck.

To summarize; Tayam doesn’t win through casting spells. Tayam wins through being able to activate Tayam. You just need to setup an engine to be able to meet the activation requirements.

3 mana and 3 counters per spin.

If you can spin forever you can mill your deck and play everything from graveyard. At that point its functionally creative mode letting you win however you want. Tayam approaches the win through a lens that no other deck really does or cares to interact with.

Except, sometimes the interaction other decks play completely hose Tayam out of existence. Grafdiggers Cage is an example of a stax piece most stax decks play that Tayam absolutely cannot. It stops the best wincon in the format, but it also makes it impossible to do the Tayam loops. Graveyard hate in general will fold a Tayam player whose trying to do their thing. If you can Endurance a graveyard at the start of a loop you not only prevent further iterations of that current loop, you also force one or more critical pieces of the loop to the very bottom of the deck.

Tayam in the increasing hellscape involving Rhystic Study stacking and Thassa’s Oracle loops presents an interesting problem other decks cannot afford to answer. Since Tayam is so different from the rest of the meta, and the best interaction against the deck makes it an effective 3 person game (which is not always the best idea). Tayam can either look like one of the scariest decks in the world if you don’t know how it functions…. or it can look useless.

On the surface this deck might also seem like a meta call due to how it preforms and how it can be countered so harshly. Tayam has been adaptable through many metagame iterations. Seeing play throughout the Hullbreacher Meta, the Clone Meta, post-Dockside, and now the Rhystic Slop meta.

Outside of stax though there were concepts and decks that were created that failed to stand against the test of time for one reason or another. These commanders are not bracket 4 decks most of the time. These are simply “not the best” thing you could be doing. They are still cedh. They check all of the criteria for a cEDH deck, other decks and concepts are normally stronger.

Hashaton, Scarab's Fist

Hashaton was one of the most hyped cards of 2025. Fresh of the dockside bans, we get a card spoiled that can win with the ultimate protection. Using a rules quirk involving split second and the way Lion’s Eye Diamond functions, you could have theoretical uninteractable wins. Put into play at instant speed a copy of any creature you could want, including Thassa’s Oracle. The most abitious decks would include things like Leveler or Phyrexian Devourer to instant speed remove your deck from the game.

The problems with this deck start with that core idea. Esper doesn’t struggle with protecting wins. Esper has a range of Silence effects, counterspells, and Grand Abolishers to back up everything you’re doing with. One of the core problems with Esper is more in closing the game out. The winconditions in Esper are very all or nothing. You have Thoracle and thats it. In tournaments, Hullbreaker Horror, Tidespout Tyrant, and other “lockout wins” are not considered true wincons. It doesn’t matter if you slowly beat everyone at the table to death, if all 3 players simply refuse to concede you’re on the clock to deal with everyone. It has happened many times where players have established a loop of infinite turns, were not able to close it out in time so everyone was given 1 point for a draw.

Hashaton doesn’t address any of the core problems of Esper. Reanimator as a strategy doesn’t translate well into multiplayer. Sure you can cheat into play a massive threat, but as it stands there is no single creature that is able to turn the corner and establish dominance fast enough in a 3v1 setting. Even massive creatures like Conc Sphinx or Tidespout do not close the game out in a true and effective manner.

Esper as a strategy has alot better commanders if you plan to bring it into a tournament. This deck remains at the fringes of cEDH, viable, but not the best.

Korvold, Fae-Cursed King

For those of you who haven’t played with me, I’ve run events a brewers games with previous banlists and “what if” deckbuilding challenges. Across the board all of them in some capacity have had attempts at making Korvold good. Korvold was the Dockside deck. Yes you can build it with like other combos like Food Chain or Witherspoon, however overwhelmingly nothing comes close to the power that was the preban Korvold. Turns out when you can turn the most powerful ritual effect in the format into a draw engine as well you can power out wins crazy fast and consistently

The modern Korvold has done a LOT of experimentation. Dredge builds which center around filling the graveyard as fast as possible has some decent success with some strange loops. Turbo Foodchain sees some play. Still, nothing has revived the king. On top of losing Dockside, Korvold being an expensive commander lost two other critical ways to power him out early in Mana Crypt and Jewled Lotus.

Korvold is likely one card or strategy away from being widely relavent again. The king has cracked abilities and synergizes incredibly well with entire Magic concepts not even cards, just the concept of treasure tokens. One day he might be real, until then I’ll enjoy him in my “One-Unban” league.

Edric, Spymaster of Trest

2011 was a turning point in magic’s history. Commander had its first “precon” deck sold on shelves and with it came what we would expect from future commander projects. A few super-staples and whole bunch of complete duds. Commander 2011 brought Flusterstorm, Derevi, Chaos Warp, and was the first product showcasing Command Tower. It also brought other great flavors you see pop up now and again like the Mimeoplasm, Karador, and Kaalia.

Edric also made his debute here.

You might read the card and wonder why I have even brought it up. Edric serves as a lesson in how the format got so efficient. For years, you would play your field of dorks, then play Edric and hope to draw into an extra turn spell, then another, and another. Since there was almost no free countermagic in the format (this was almost 10 years before Force of Negation would be printed) if everyone was tapped out you could safely chain extra turn spells and slowly whittle down the table or find a combo.

As more cards were printed, the potential cost of having the chain be stopped became worse and worse, slowly being phased out over time as the risk factor bagan climbing. The final nails in the coffin started as players began bending and experimenting with deeper political play to get wins. Free counterspells and efficient removal being printed made the chances of being stopped greater and greater until the true breaking point - Kinnan was printed.

It turns out that the resource imbalance of having mana is always going to better than cards, especially if your commander also gives you a place to put any additional mana.

Sythis, Harvest's Hand

Enchantress is an archetype from old formats looking deploy a ton of cheap enchantments to the board (mainly Enchantress’s Presence) and draw into more enchantments to generate mana and filter through the deck quickly. In cEDH this translates poorly as you are unable to effectivly stack up on the mana and card draw generation. This has been true the majority of the lifespan of the format. The way Sythis functions is allowing you to storm a great deal and finishing the massive turn with 1-3 stax effects which allow the game to make it back to you.

Sythis unfortunately suffers from being in a poor color combination, losing out on some of the best enchantments like Underworld Breach, Rhystic Study and Mystic Remora. On top of this the strategy at a baseline ends up feeding any blue player tons of cards since and early deployed Mystic Remora, Rhystic Study or even just a Faerie Mastermind will be triggered on your storm turn.

The archetype simply has not translated well into cEDH since it doesn’t exploit any of the fundamental imbalances of cEDH nor any fundamental of Magic.

Gwenom, Remorseless

Newly printed in the Spider-Man set in the breathtaking fantasy world known as New York City, Gwenom for 5 mana lets you… wait until your next turn. Then you get access to a Bolas’s Citadel after combat until your turns ends.

A deck built well only needs the one mainphase to win. Though along the way, you’ll discover some hurdles. Mainly, with how telegraphed the gameplay and goal is, you often fall victum to removal. Bounce spells make it an effective 3 person game, and removal spells in upkeep not only set you back 1 turn, but if you used a ritual effect to power out an early commander then you might even be set behind 2 or more turns for the command tax price.

You’re really at the mercy of the other players who have little incentive to keep you in the game without some very powerful deals in their favor. Most Gwenom decks contain a large number of 0-1 cost spells to allow you to shred through the deck for a rapid fire win. With that in mind, and the knowledge of black having some of the worst interaction, Gwenom has almost no grounds to stand on for political play giving up a massive portion of agency in your games.

In a turbo heavy meta where very little interaction is played, Gwenom can consistently put out wins as long as you have a T1 or T2 commander, you can potentially put out a win or possibly multiple within the same turn.

Kess, Dissident Mage

Kess comes from before the printing of many partners. Kess in fact was printed before most of the modern format was. Back in the day you would use cards like Thought Scour and Winds of Rebuke to mill over cards to use on future turns. The deck evolved into a tempo oriented shell which could use its removal multiple times to clear stax effects, then follow that up with using tutors multiple times to assemble your wins.

As more cards were printed the color combo shifted into being more about tutoring faster and more effective wins. You could use Tainted Pact multiple times to assemble your Lab Man combo or find Jace Wielder of Mysteries (which also had more self mill for your other plan). Then 2020 happened.

2020 was perhaps the best year and also the worst year for Kess. Early on, Breach was printed. Right alongside it came Thassa’s Oracle. Two hyper efficient wins right alongside the banning of Flash. 2020 printed more staples into the format creating a constant state of flux for a short time. Right up until the set that killed Kess - Commander Legends.

Within Commander Legends came an astounding 39 new partners bringing the total count to 66 - roughly 2,800 pairings newly possible. Also within this set was a fun card called… Hullbreacher. The meta rapidly warped into a wheels meta for a brief period. All sorts of new stuff was tried to break the card.

The combination of Jeweled Lotus and the new partners though proved to powercreep out the majority of commanders that costed 3 different pips. The rituals printed into the format like Jeska’s Will functioned much better alongside cheaper commanders or very big expensive commanders that could then be powered out.

Even after the banning of Jeweled Lotus, Hullbreacher, and more Kess still doesn’t ever find herself in the meta where she once thrived. Multiple stax players just don’t come around as often as they used to, and doubling up on spells has mostly been seen as a turbo strategy via Krark or Ral. The control/Midrange gameplan of returning value effects and removal just doesn’t work like it used to.

Minsc, Beloved Ranger

During the Dockside meta, Minsc was able to give Rocco a run for his money for fastest deck. From the command zone, Minsc offers something completely unavailble for the rest of Naya. After you cast the commander, you have a 0 mana way to immediately kill anything on your own board. Sacrificing without actually sacing.

With that ability you can run tons of different “1 card wincons”. These are cards that from just them alone find all the pieces you need to win. The most famous is Protaen Hulk. When Hulk dies, you are able to tutor in series, Sylvan Safekeeper, Karmic Guide, Kiki-Jiki, and Felidar Guardian. Outside of Hulk you also have both Rectors. Arena Rector lets you find Vivian on the Hunt which can sac Minsc to find Felidar Guardian, which then is saced to get Karmic Guide, then Kiki-Jiki which gets Felidar Guardian. Accademy Rector lets you get Pattern of Rebirth or Songbirds Blessing which both functionally tutor the cards above.

Most of the modern version of the deck looks to have alot of redundancy and tons of ways to quickly assemble the combo from nothing. What made Minsc so good in the past was the ability to include Dockside loops into this grouping. Without Dockside, Minsc lost a noteable amount of card quality and efficiency. Getting 7 mana off the ground for your combos isnt great when Dimir decks need just three to win.

Itll be interesting to see how each of the combo piles improve over time, though as of right now, Minsc is a solid pick into metagames without board interaction as well as metagames where players are looking to play a tad bit on the slower side.

Chulane, Teller of Tales

You’d think in a cradle storm world more people would be trying to make this work. Find a cradle quickly and power out multiple creatures and spells out to chain together some kind of tutor win. Reality is unfortunately almost never that clean.

Turns out, having a combo piece that synergizes with the rest of the deck is much better than a non-deterministic engine. Chulane as a commander wants you to build in such a way where your whole deck is creature based. This causes you to sacrifice alot of interaction and instant speed play in favor of having more creatures to keep your train going. Compared directly with Derevi, you could instead have all the same combo potential without the massive deckbuilding restrictions. Derevi argueably is a stronger combo piece being able to combo with a wider range of cards like Birthing Pod, The One Ring, and of course Cradle.

Chulane was tried for a short time, but as more cards were printed and as the meta changed, synergy without flexibility just proved to not work in a world of efficiency gains and constant card upgrades. This is before we even talk about the absolute weak spots of Rhystic Study or Orcish Bowmaster.

Heliod, the Radiant Dawn

More commonly called “Wheeliod” the goal is to cast a single mass draw card and then discount all your spells to storm through anything. The flash enabling backside allows you to win overtop the other pilots at the table. 7 mana to turn over and get online makes it difficult to justify. The sorcery speed transformation also presents a clear interaction point your opponenets can prepare and wait for to blow you out with bounce spells.

The other way to play this commander is closer to a counterpick commander. By playing in a parasitic style looking to deploy some engines as well as get a Wheeliod in play, you can use the Rhystic Study draws the other players get to discount your own spells. By accumulating value from the other players and picking your moment well you can easily get wins in over the other players.

Heliod came out in a metagame that was very unfriendly to it. With Dockside still around and many other turbo decks looking to jam fast wins, the more parasitic versions could never take off. Additionally the rituals omnipresent throughout the meta made wheeling and passing or even instant speed wheeling a very risky strategy overall.

It’s just never picked up like it used to when it was first hyped due to the constant train of spoilers and stuff to try out since.

Norman Osborn // Green Goblin

Printed around the same time as Kefka, Norman fit into a more turbo style of Grixis whereas Kefka fit into the midrange slot; Green Goblin tended to occupy the turbo slot. Norman - the front half - gives you a cheap card advantage engine which lets you recover from either poor mulligans or disruption from opponenets. Green Goblin - the back half - functions as a 5 mana wincondition. Similar to Hashaton, it turns Lion’s Eye Diamond back into the original version, letting you cast the spells as intended.

Mayhem is a powerful ability. Casting anything from your graveyard for the low cost of discarding a card is always good. Many cards within magic already have you discard or leverage the graveyard in other ways. Being able to use your LED to cast Underworld Breach Gamble to find your entire combo is always going to be good.

None of these issues is what Grixis as a color core struggles with. Grixis has the rituals and the tutors to be able to win quickly and to be able to win from few resources. Norman does not give you the support tools to backup your win better, nor does he give you the aiblity to reuse previously discarded cards.

Green Goblin can enable cool winlines, but they are just not as efficient as other possible winlines within the color combo. Just two tutors is all you need for most other decks to win.

Nekusar, the Mindrazer

The dividing line between bracket 4 and cEDH starts with Nekusar. In general it is very bad to give your opponenets resources. Life is not critical for cEDH, its very difficult to pressure life and to meaningfully win the game through a “group slug” strategy without someone first leveraging the resources that you give them. Remember the game can end from 2 cards once a person has 3 mana.

There was a brief moment in the meta between when Hullbreacher was printed and before it was banned when Nekusar was somewhat viable. If a similar type card is printed where you can benifit and exploit the additional draw you are giving your opponents then it might once again see fringe play.

The cEDH vets are wondering why I’m even mentioning this commander given its absolute irrelavence in the American topdeck circuit. Well it turns out that in budget cEDH Nekusar is able to gain a decent foothold. Showing up in the top16s in the spanish circuit as a slower control build. Granted the decks in the circuit were limited to just $300 USD. Sometimes you can walk into a room with a deck that is not as optimized as someone elses, but the variance of the format is just in your favor. Understanding this randomness and being mentally prepared and sharp can help your political game and longterm winrate.

Don’t play this deck. There’s better options.

Yeva, Nature's Herald

Flash speed is great. You’ll be hard pressed to find someone that doesn’t think that playing on everyone else’s turns is good. 4 mana for an only creature version for flash in monogreen is rough though. The combination of the colors and what the commander enables make it hard to justify putting in the command zone.

Flash speed is good because it allows you to play overtop the other players and present wins at the best possible moment. It also allows you to setup and deploy value engines at the most opportune time. Flash speed lets you have the most flexibility possible within magic.

Limiting the flexibility of that Flash speed is the fastest way to make the effect less useful. Monogreen has a very limited interaction pool, limited tutor pool, and pretty bad wincon pool. Giving the creatures that are available to it the abiliity to play at flash speed does not fix the core problems within monocolor, and Yeva’s passive is not strong enough to keep it within the competetive scene.

This deck has a cult following for reasons I will never understand.

Flubs the Fool

Flubs is truely the endpoint of several other commanders discussed above. The diea is to cast cards and don’t stop. Draw through your entire deck and win with an absolutely massive storm payoff. Normally, Underworld Breach.

Flubs stops working the second anyone plays an effect which profits off you taking actions. Unfortunately, thats a majority of the best cards in the format. Smothering Tithe, Esper Sentinel, Mystic Remora, even something as simple as Kraum or Lotho will always trigger when you are trying to go off.

Flubs truely folds to Rhystic Study in the most gloriest fashion. It’s not a question of if they’ll draw into removal or counterspells, but instead a question of “How Long?” Flubs in function always casts the full deck, so if anyone plays a Rhystic Study that player also gets to draw their entire deck. The natural evolution for Flubs is trying to play Flubs and combo faster than when the Rhystics can come out. Unfortunately for Flubs, Rhystics will come out. Even on a fast mulligan, turn order can dictate how your game goes. The deck does not play really any interaction since that interaction would instead prevent your own combo from working.

Flubs presents a fun trick. I find it repetetive and easily stoppable, however, if your opponenets don’t know the trick, its something you can sneak wins in with. Especially if you manage to dodge removal.

Ketramose, the New Dawn

Alongside hashaton, Ketramose was put out into the world to much less fanfare. Many pilots quickly identified the amazing potential that layed in Children of Korlis and Necropotence. Ketramose combos very hard and very well with many already broken effects like Abdel Adrian or Auriok Salvagers.

Ketramose combines a pile of various combos together alongside the large interaction suite in white to make for a strategy that always sees 60-80% of the deck when the game goes well. Ketramose does solve several issues within the Orzavh color section, providing massive burst card advantage as well as the ability to win from new angles. The problems start coming up when we look at the details of each of these combos and how you can win.

For Necropotence to combo with Ketramose you have to be in the endstep. This will begin a loop of discards and exile triggers drawing your deck equal to your life total. Post Necro, you need to hit one of 4 effects. Angels Grace, Flare of Fortitude, Children of Korlis, or Feast of Sanity. Of these 2 are instant speed and 2 need to be played beforehand. Children of Korlis specifically lets you double your necro count, giving you a statistical guarentee to hit the other instant speed effects so long as the Necro was for more than 35.

The next core problem is the actual closing of the game. Feast of Sanity specifically targets and doesn’t actually win. The main ways you win involve using Abdel Adrian alongside some exile effect like Animate Dead or Necromancy to loop another effect on board. Mainly Orcish Bowmaster for actual infinite damage. This can also be mana rocks for infinite mana, The One Ring for infinite draw, and Ninmana Skydancer for infinite mill.

Its a complex strategy that ends up folding to specific well timed removal. Due to the way this loop works and some quirks in the rules around when the end of the turn actually is, Silence and Ranger-Captain of Eos don’t protect you. Traditional white protection spells outside of static abilities on Grand Abolisher don’t last to the extra clean up steps Necro lines create.

Ketromose survives in a strange inbetween state of turbo and control. With such a comparatively large number of removal spells and sweeper effects to other decks, and a distinct lack of explosive mana potential from red and green - the variance of the format really shines through this commander. Sometimes if you draw the wrong half to start, you might control the game to a corner and lose. Sometimes you draw the explosive half and win on T2. Its a unique deck that I would be interested in seeing another go at. Conceptually though it remains unrefined and somewhat without identity having very awkward pacing compared to the rest of the format.

A Brief note on international metagames

I want to clearly seperate two ideas:

There are strategies which are not viable within a tournament structure, however player choice and preferance makes alot of the meta what it is, if you look at metagames outside of the united states and take a step back from Topdeck, you’ll find many more strategies and thought processes which lead to players having consistent wins within a different system.

Semi-Blue: Tentacle Sushi and American Politics

At the same time of the 2025 US Topdeck season closed, the Japanese “God of Commander” event wrapped up. With it brought one pilot’s long crafted dream. “Semi-Blue”. This is a RogThras deck built in a way to abuse the “free blue-creatures” as a way to exploit Cascade spells to chain together massive storm wins. Everything is a creature in the deck and as a result you are able to play through Mystic Remoras and Rhystic Studies much more care free. The deck was designed to play into a meta of many BlueFarms. It was built in a way to exploit the interaction being run in Japan and the tournament structure.

Semi-Blue leverages several older cards which give a massive edge to the caster compared to the other players. Spells like Eureka, Show and Tell and Sneak Attack all are able to put in massive modern threats like Ghalta, Etali, and Tishana for a much lower mana cost. If you don’t know what these cards do- thats the point.

In Japan, the games end in a draw once time is called. The time for each round is 25% shorter than in the US meta. Furthermore the game ends without the turn concluding, the stack is resolved and the game is declared a draw. There’s no overtime system and there’s no restarts. This encourages a much less political game compared to the US Meta or the EU meta. Less collaboration since it eats into the time too much, and because of what can be broadly called cultural differences.

Semi-Blue runs little to no interaction. If stopped it feeds a bunch of cards to the other players who are forced to deal with eachother. Its an engine run at full throttle without signs of slowing down. Everyone for a short time was very excited to try out this new idea and see how they could make it work.

It failed to catch on long term. The reasons for this are complex and differ from meta to meta, but pretty much: the deck was not built for long term yapping. People in the US want to play longer games, as shown by the trend of people picking up chunkier and chunkier midrange decks as a way to beat blue farm and other decks increasingly. Instead of speeding up to beat midrange hell, what many players do is buckle up and socialize for 100 minutes until a massive stack war ends the game.

Its player preferance and different region to region, but a large number of people in the united states prefer high-resource style games where everyone has massive grips of cards trying to convince everyone else that they are not the problem, but the other 2 players are your problem.

Restarts with a Portugeuse Dinner

A points system creating a loophole for draws is one way to solve a classic problem in 4 player competetive. Sometimes 2 players can attempt to win with a 3rd player who could stop either- but not both.

An alternative way to solve the problem: just play another game. Restart it and go again. To the best of my knowledge it was started in the European meta and allowed for players to restart one time instead of forcing kingmaking. This way no one would be insentivised to force a player to win and no one would have bad feelings. Just try again.

I have never played with restarts. I have no opinion on them.

What I find noteworthy is that there has been a slow divergence in political game skill and tactics as well as deckbuilding philosophy as a result. In Europe, many more players include low toughness creatures like Mana Dorks which run the risk of being hosed out of a game due to a single silver bullet (Orcish Bowmasters). The consistency that mana dorks provide is more worth the risk compared to running into the situation of one player punishing a player for running mana dorks. The restarts allow for a cushion to play against these players who may be assessing the board incorrectly.

In the US, many players value having protection from OBM as they want to have more agency in the one game they have a chance to play in. Creature heavy packages like the elves (Llanowar Elves, Elvish Mystic, Bloom Tender, and Fyndorn Elves) have mostly disappeared as OBM acting as an effective shut down tool is too much of a risk. Players in the US often favor ritual spells and artifact based mana instead as a hedge in case of bad variance for player matchups.

I don’t see many players talking about this slow divergence in deck building philosophy. When looking at decks online that are winning events, keep in consideration where the event took place and what local factors might have lead to a specific pilot winning.

The Biggest Wallet Wins

Originally this section was its own article. It has been paired down and reduced to my core opinion and what I felt was relavent to the story I want to tell here. Proxies being accepted has a tangible effect on the meta as shown by SCGCon events and Budget Brews. The format is overall much healthier with proxies.

I was in high school when I started playing Magic. My friend who was a fan of magic much longer than me told me to not buy packs. “Its cheaper and easier to build decks from just buying each single copy.” Coming from Hearthstone, this seemed very strange to me. The dust system I was used to basically ment that for collecting I would always want to open more packs and so it was engrained in my head that I should open more packs.

The summer that Modern Horizons came out I didn’t fully understand competetive yet. I was looking for cards to build for my Red Aggro deck, when I bought a Modern Horizons pack. I opened it and was confused to not see a rare. I was looking for the yellow symbol when I only saw black, orange, and Silver. I was then explained what Mythic rares were and how I should feel so lucky to have opened what I did.

I didn’t get the Aria of Flame - which was the burn card I was looking for - so I slid the now open pack into my backpack and decided I’d look it up at home. It wasn’t for a full 2 months where I decided I’d look up how much my pack fresh Wren and Six cost. By that point, it was one of the most expensive cards of the set and I resolved to sell my copy at a game store the next day. I sold it for what I thought was an awesome deal for $60 (the store employee only gave me $43 since I wanted cash) to which I promptly left and bought myself lunch at a local deli. It felt strange back in 11th grade to know that my $7 pack for my new hobby somehow turned into putting food into my stomach for multiple days.

I didn’t have a ton of money to spend on cards. I realized very quickly that the cards I wanted were not worth a ton. Yet some of the cards I did have in my collection could actually pay for things.

So I fell into the gamblers trap. I bought more packs. I didn’t open anything of value for a long time. I sold what I could to hopefully pay for something cool. I traded cards around and when I had the cash, I bought myself a sandwhich at that same Deli.

To me, card prices were absurd and random. It costs more to buy or just play most decks than you could possibly win at any event around the world. Even when looking at large events like 10k tournaments, to actually purchase real copies of the cards played would eclipse the first place winnings. CEDH as a format would not function without Proxies. New players simply can’t justify dropping hundreds upon thousands of dollars on expensive single copies of a hundred cards.

I say all this to vent my worries about Wizards of the Coast taking ownership of this format. I have always played with the idea of all players are expressing their skill in the best way they can. No bars held. Tournaments like SCGCon and WOTC official events show that the meta does tangibly change with many decks being underrepresented and monocolor decks being overrepresented due to how much the landbase cost shifts. Combos that are less efficient, but are monitarily cheap end up showing up at an even further disproportionate rate.

For this format to survive, I fully believe that proxies need to be embraced everywhere universally. If you have a store owner who is interested in making cEDH a thing locally, I strongly urge you to show them the price of cEDH decks and how proxies can bring more people into the game.

Wrapping it up.

The function of every commander is to provide tools that you think will thrive in a given meta or against your local play group. If you think a specific commander will be offering the tools to win compared to everyone around you, you should play that. The cards and “pillars” above are talked about to contextualize most of the meta.

Why is something good? There are fundamentals for the format, for a meta, and of magic. If you can exploit a fundamental part of the format, its probably very good. If you can exploit a fundamental part of magic, then you have a solid foundation for a deck. If you think you found a weakness for a given meta, then you have a great counterpick for playing into an expected group. In the end I really don’t care about what really is the “best” deck.

I care about putting my thoughts down and collecting them from various places in one place. The more I wrote the more I realized I had more to say.

For something to be cEDH viable it just needs to provide justification. Beyond fun, what makes this thing better than a similar thing? Why’s that thing good in the first place?

To explain all that, I felt I had to say a few words. Which turned into saying many more.

To my knowledge this is the only place to attempt a full breakdown of the format. As incomplete as it may be.

-Vafnar May 13, 2026

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1. Each game is played from the perspectives of 4 people without teams.

   From a top down view its a 1v1v1v1. This is how all cEDH games start and the context most people goldfish under. As a game develops, cEDH has moments where the table is forced to work together as a 3v1. So between players A, B, C, and D there are different “3v1 enemy” states.

   Player A vs BCD, Player B vs ACD, Player C vs ADB, and Player D VS ABC.

   Less commonly, though frequently in mirror matches, there comes to a board state where 2 players want an end result and 2 players want an alternate path. This creates a situation where you have AB vs CD and so on.

   Your collective opponent is the framework you operate on when you are in the 3v1. From the other players perspectives you have to consider that you are also within their 3v1 team. You might be trying to resolve something scary, but if you can navigate how it helps in the 3v1 against another player you can gain an edge and get value from your stuff. ↩︎

2. Comparing other classical card games, you have between 4-7 main archetypes;

   1. Aggro - Kill your opponent before they can kill you.
   2. Tempo- Stop your opponent from killing you by playing resource efficient cards which gain incremental advantage compared to your opponents’.
   3. Control - Prevent your opponent from establishing threats and win in the late game once they have no more tools.
   4. Prison - Completely shut your opponent out from taking game actions and win via concession or a very slow wincondition.
   5. Mill - Reduce your opponents deck size to 0. Most games have a functional alternate wincon if the other player has no deck.
   6. OTK or Combo - Assemble a series of cards which win you the game or cause your opponent to lose.

   Within cEDH, there is no other archetype than Combo that is viable. You can argue some decks try their best to emulate other archetypes. The closest any deck has gotten has really been just Yuriko with a more Tempo oriented playstyle. Slicer is the other closest emulating a type of Prison playstyle which requires your opponents killing eachother while playing cards that stop them from winning.

   The cEDH combo archetypes include

   1. Turbo - Looks to try attempting to win on turns 2 or 3.
   2. Midrange - Play a powerful engine , stop opponents, and attempting a win on turns 4-5.
   3. Stax - Get to a boardstate where your opponents cannot play the game and win on or after turn 5.
   ↩︎