The Most Complicated Deck I've Ever Played

0:00 Introduction and framing device
3:11 The core of the deck
8:20 What makes the deck so complex?
11:16 Broader implications

[ZraphinSteinbacker-vkdv]

Snail is by far the most underrated MTG YouTuber.

[nathanielnickell]

I have a friend who built this monstrosity of a commander from scratch. This deck is terrifying. At its core it avoids board wipes while generating value repeatedly. After krark clan and the altars were put in, it goes full combo, to the point the only way to interact with the deck is to instant speed exile the graveyard (and no one can ever even figure out when to use it.) This deck has stumped several cedh players and confounds casual players to the point in which it's ignored even while its winning. Super awesome deck and I love to see more videos posted on it. I dont recommend it unless you literally want to melt your brain though!

[cornchip]

This puts into words my deck building proccess in ways i never could. when people ask about my power level i always say " im gonna do silly stuff with strong cards "

[casketbase]

14:25 I really needed to hear this. I've spent literal years working on Ghen, Arcanum Weaver self-mill deck, but new commanders like Anikthea or Coram really discourage me because they do his shtick more efficiently in stronger colors. Has all my work been useless? Should I just abandon Ghen for the objective upgrades?

No. I shouldn't. You're right that I shouldn't let "the things I really like get lost in the shuffle." If Jan Jansen can say no to Clock of Omens, I can say no to replacements for Ghen. Thank you for the encouragement. Sincerely.

[jakemf]

Everytime I watch a video like this, I feel like I don't know anything about making decks and I shouldn't make decks

[joachimpearson]

I built a similar deck last year with "Shimatsu, the bloodcloaked" as my commander, partnered with the Prismatic Piper to gain access to white.
My favourite memory of the deck was when another player wandered over to our table one turn after I had my Second Sunrise countered. They asked me "How did you die?" whilst I was still playing. I had just sacrificed everything to Shimatsu; lands and all, so my only permanent was a 20/20 demon sitting alone in the centre of the playmat. It looked exactly like I'd shuffled up and was waiting for the next game to start. To this day it's the funniest board-state I've ever seen.

My biggest learning with that deck was that I needed to cut a lot of the classic 1 mana eggs that sacrifice themselves to draw a card. 2 mana permanents that replace themselves on etb are often way better and easier to play; they allow you to keep up your card velocity and also stick around for your second sunrise turns. Could be a good edit for the Gerrard deck to simplify some of those decision trees.

[sakurasawa]

Your videos are all incredible in selling an idea for deck building. The Radha video was so incredible that made my friend create a Temur Doctor deck with the same idea, and this video showed me how a sacrifice Boros deck could actually work out.

[creditroll]

i think this is my favorite video on edh ever. every one of your videos makes me want to build the deck you talk about, but this is something else. its so cool and complicated and the way you talk about it makes so much sense. absolutely going to join the patreon

[nasutoe]

11:48 I feel like that was directed straight at me, I recently converted my Myriim dragon combo deck into a Ziatora reanimator deck, after a series of games of either doing nothing because Myriim was removed enough or waiting until I was able basically playing my entire deck because of duplicated dragon etbs.

The Myriim deck was not what I had hoped the deck would have been. I was hoping to make a dragon deck that would allow me to be a big threat on the board and winning through combat damage while eating some removal in the process. I was NOT hoping to just wait until I had enough mana and dragons to just draw and play my entire deck and kill everyone at once. It felt like when I had Myriim as my commander I was actively discouraged from playing dragons since why would I play a dragon now when if I wait 2 turns I could get a second copy for free? And the long turns and annoying amount of etb triggers to keep track of eventually led me to dismantling it.

The Ziatora deck, while most probably less powerful is definitely more interesting to play. I can do dragon things and eat removal due to the reanimator sub theme. Still testing it but it’s more what I had hoped for in the deck.

[SamHuggins]

Good Lord, $8 KCI sounds amazing. Also just wanna say you're one of my current favorite MTG channel snail, love the content :)

[SteeIdancer]

I generally imagine my decks complexity based on how easy it would be to give to another player and have them pilot it decently well. I prefer fairly complex, but not necessarily top tier decks that have many lines of play and innate complexity in interactions the cards have with each other. And of course, the most rewarding bit is when you find new lines and strategies mid game that you didnt spot until the situation called for it. When my decks can do that, I know I've crafted a masterpiece, regardless of its actual win rate, because I'll always have fun piloting a deck like that, one that really requires me to KNOW the deck.

[admiralcasperr]

12:35 Along years playong various versions of eggs, I can confidently say that with KCI it devolves into a "protect the Ironworks" minigame. That's th reason I ditched all my KCI decks except a Teshar cEDH which isn't as much of an eggs deck as it is a infinite combo deck.

[adamxue]

That poor card at the end got violated, that is both funny and horrifying

[chillinon]

The Necrologia mention brings me joy. I lovingly call it bAd Nauseam in my Amalia deck because I'm always paying like 20 life for 20 cards. Even with its strict timing restriction, the hand sculpting wins me so many games

[Keysispieces]

So I bought the shell for this deck. There were a few cards my LGS didn't have, and I replaced them with things I had lying around. It's really fun to just sit there and fiddle, and I can't wait to play it in a pod. The store's edh night is tomorrow, so we'll see if I feel comfortable enough eggsecuting its storm turns to actually try it out in front of other players. Will report back!

[marshall]

Excellent video essay, along with great analysis about focused optimization vs deck wide optimization. This essay made me think immediately about my Firesong & Sunspeaker deck which I’ve had since the Cows were printed. The deck runs the best card draw available to it because Boros card draw is generally weak, so cards like the One Ring and Trouble in Pairs help it keep up. But I don’t run a lot of fast mana beyond Sol because that mana build up is the key enjoyment loop in piloting the deck that I don’t like to shortcut.
Also, thinking about the “optimize until the point of not recognizing the deck” I initially it had Sunforger in, because why not in a Boros spellslinger? But the Sunforger demanded quite a lot of support to make it work, and that in turn demanded additional tutors to get the equipment, and soon it was actually a Sunforger deck instead of a Cows deck, so I took the Sunforger out. I still have this deck together and love it, and I really appreciate your philosophizing around what makes commander decks so enduring. Keep up the great work

[joeybelasco]

I would love to see a snail video on the topic of choosing your commander

[Natibe_]

I have a friend who built a very complicated deck on MTG Arena. He's a known tinkerer and rarely makes decks that are good, not so much because he is bad at making decks but because he mostly enjoys pulling ridiculous ideas out of weird cards and making decks out of them. The kind of guy that makes a deck with every Karn ever printed or whose objective is to roll a thousand dice a turn.

But one day he came to me with a deck that was not just good, it could consistently win against the best decks in arena on turn four. The catch? That win sequence was a 50-60 step long sequence of witches, squirrels, caravans, planeswalkers, health for mana trades, mana for health trades, health for card trades, searches, and anti-counterspell mechanics that was so confusing that after winning 80% of games for a week, when he finally put it down to make a deck out of yasharn and land curses he FORGOT THE COMBO TREE. For a while after the whole episode, we would just look at the seemingly random set of cards between MTG games and wonder what the hell he was on when he made it!

Edit: oh yeah, and the commander! It was old stickfingers. I dont remember how he played it, except for the fact that he wanted 3 specific cards in the graveyard and somehow used it as a search.

[soprettymuchthatsthewayitis]

16:20 This is such a good point, when I build lower power decks to play with my friends, I usually build them with high tier interaction (an offer, swan song, swords, usually like 16+ pieces overall), and pretty good ramp (only 2 mana rocks, but no sol ring in non-green, or only 1 mana accelerants in green), but the core synergy and gameplan of the deck is usually weaker compared to the other players' decks. I still have a winrate above 75% with them because I've been playing the game for a lot longer than them, but the games feel good because it takes more effort for me to win, which somewhat balances out the skill, but I can also play table police and make sure other players aren't getting too far ahead.

I like to separate my decks into interaction, ramp, engines, synergy, and wincons when thinking about my powerlevel, and can usually give each section its own powerlevel, and it's been really helpful for my deckbuilding.

[FyrebirdLP]

Hans sounds like an absolute madman. We need to see more of his crazy creations!!