Consolidating decks

[JediCheese]

So, I've gotten up to 5/6 EDH decks. With only having a small number of duals and a single playset of shocks (along with other commander staples), I've been making sacrifices supporting all the decks. It's time to consolidate them down to only a few for a specific purposes.

I think I'm narrowing it down to 3 decks:
1) 1v1 competitive - V. Clique
2) multiplayer (4 player) competitive - unknown
3) fun deck - unknown

For 1v1, Clique is insane. I think there are a few cards that I need for it (Mana Drain for one) but overall it's finished.

I'm thinking about reactivating the Rubinia Soulsinger deck as the multiplayer competitive deck. It's a little slow but includes a ton of very useful items that stop opposing combos. Plus, while most of the WI playgroup plays non-creature hate for enchantments, it is somewhat rare here in AZ.

I would play Zur in multiplayer but he draws infinite hate and while he will sometimes overcome it's rare enough to not waste my time.

Sharuum is another potential deck. It contains a number of combos and tends to be fairly quick to assemble. My only concern is the level of hate it would draw being a tier 1 deck like Zur.

The other option would be some 5C combo deck. I already own Sliver Queen but I'm more tempted to play Cromat or Horde of Notions (both of which are cheap to purchase). Obviously, the number of combos they could play is very high.

As to the fun deck, I'm not sure what I should play. I actually would like to improve upon the Razia deck but I also want to build Riku of Two Reflections. Both are fun decks but Riku includes more broken stuff and is a deck that looks fun to play.

[Travis Lannoye]

I also categorized/consolidated my EDH decks a bit. At one point, I think I had seven decks, and now I'm down to four.
- Wort is the $50 budget deck, and also the deck focused on instants/sorceries.
- Sharuum is the $100 budget deck, and also focused on artifacts.
- Chainer is the fun deck focused on the graveyard.
- Yeva is the more hard-core deck. It's kinda focused on creatures.
- At some point, I might try to build something focused on either planeswalkers or enchantments, or just something that will use a few more duals/fetches (none of my EDH decks currently have duals or fetches).

Chris, for the competitive deck, I'd probably go with Rubinia. She is by far the least likely to draw hate from the opposition, and yet she's still presumably effective at doing what you want to do.

For the fun deck, I would start by seeing how much of an overlap there is between Rubinia, Razia, and Riku. If you can afford to assemble all three of these, then I'd go for it. If not, I'd probably start with Razia.

[JediCheese]

Jul 30, 2013 12:05:53 GMT -5 Travis Lannoye said:

- At some point, I might try to build something focused on either planeswalkers or enchantments, or just something that will use a few more duals/fetches (none of my EDH decks currently have duals or fetches).

How do you not play duals/fetches in EDH? Even in single colored decks I run 4 fetch lands!

This is a major part of the strain for me. I've got a playset of Zendikar fetch lands and shock lands. I also have a single set of duals and Onslaught fetch lands (plus some extras that end up totaling about half a playset of both).

I've recently started playing Modern and it is blowing a hole in my reserves of shock lands and Zendikar fetch lands. I'm also going to build a legacy deck here in the upcoming month or two.

When it comes down to other format staples, if I have a playset of many things but there are format staples that I only have a singleton of. For instance, I have a playset of Sensei's Divining Top (despite me moving away from using them) but only one Solemn Simulacrum and Duplicant.

Jul 30, 2013 12:05:53 GMT -5 Travis Lannoye said:

For the fun deck, I would start by seeing how much of an overlap there is between Rubinia, Razia, and Riku. If you can afford to assemble all three of these, then I'd go for it. If not, I'd probably start with Razia.

You've played vs my Razia deck. It's a very strange take on the deck involving global flame waves and creatures that do damage to opponents when they take damage (and pro-red creatures). I realized posting this that I don't have the decklist online anywhere. The deck is missing a whole bunch of cards to make it more consistent and let it do what it wants to do more efficiently (I estimate there are about 20 x $2 cards it requires to function more smoothly. Also with disassembling Zur I can repurpose many of the white cards from that deck).

I'm also just getting slightly tired of her. It's interesting at times to pull off shenanigans (and watch people cower in fear when Furnace of Rath hits the board) but she gets shut down too easily and there are serious mana issues with the deck (go figure that R/W has poor mana fixing and card draw!).

Riku is something I would like to try to see how the clones play out. I've been working on the Xerox deck in my mind for weeks now and am about to put together a decklist.

[Travis Lannoye]

It's actually not too hard.
- The Wort deck runs nearly every Rampant Growth effect ever printed, so there's infinite fixing.
- The Sharuum deck has 8 mana rocks, a Map, a Solemn, a Pilgrim's Eye, three bounce-lands, two storage lands, two Refuges, Arcane Sanctum, Terramorphic, E-Wilds, a Panorama, and a Rupture Spire for fixing. That's more than enough for my needs. EDIT: Also, it's an artifact deck, so a lot of the spells are colorless.
- Neither Chainer nor Yeva really needs fetches. I suppose it kinda thins out the deck and resets the occasional Top, and if Yeva were ever completely 100% optimized, I'd go there, but it's still doable.

One thing I've started doing is using the same sleeve combination for my Standard, Modern, and Legacy decks as I do for my cube: KMC Perfect Fit on the inside, KMC shiny black sleeve on the outside. That makes it real easy to move a card from one deck to the other. I can also put proxies in a different color sleeve and use them as markers in the deck(s) that I'm not currently using to make it easier to figure out what I took out.

If you're getting tired of Razia, try the new Boros commander Tajic. He works very well with sweepers and things that make creatures every turn (Elspeth KE, Assemble the Legion, Goblin Assault, etc), and he makes random guys like Angelic Overseer insane.

I was never a huge fan of Riku because it was way too hard to protect him. If I were going to make a RUG deck, it would likely be MW > Animar > Intet > Riku. He's just too fragile and too attractive of a removal target for my liking.

[JediCheese]

The way my land selection goes:
Step 1) Develop solid mana base
Step 2) Squeeze in more colorless lands (if nothing else, the full strip mine package)
Step 3) Add fetch Lands to re-solidify the mana base.
Step 4) Realize that Crucible of Worlds is awesome in the deck because recurring strip mine/fetch lands puts me crazy ahead
Step 5) Try to figure out how to squeeze in some basic lands so PtE isn't as solid vs me