Sorry if this isn't the right community, and if it isn't hopefully someone can point me in the right direction!

I am looking for some input on an EDH deck I am working on. This is the deck and it revolves around [[Gandalf the Grey]] as the commander. So lots of instants, sorceries, and prowess. Mostly aiming for Gandalf commander damage as the win condition by combining the 3 damage to each player and then putting Gandalf back on the top of the library. I played this for the first time last night and while it has a ton of potential, I definitely feel that things are missing.

Things I am looking for are:

  1. More card draw. This was without a doubt the biggest issue and I'll take any input on how to improve this!
  2. More counters. Less of an issue than card draw, but definitely was struggling against my buddy's Balen/Token deck.
  3. Any sort of board wipe. This was definitely an issue but by the time I could've really used the board wipe, I had fizzled out due to no card draw.

Hopefully folk have some input! I would definitely love to keep this on the cheaper side as this deck so far has cost me $15 for a couple boosters. Most of the deck was inherited from someone in college years ago lol.

  • Belly_Beanis [he/him]
    ·
    4 months ago

    So Gandalf's damage ability doesn't count towards commander damage. Commander damage is only from when a commander deals combat damage to a player via attacking.

    You want the cheapo hard counters like Arcane Denial, Dispel, Mental Misstep, Red (or blue) Elemental Blast, etc. Basically, counters in EDH can be rather subpar because you have multiple opponents and you're 1-for-1'ing. You and the owner of the countered spell are each down a card, while the other players are the same. They means you want them to be cheap or have draw/replacement effects on them. tl;dr-- holy fuck get rid of that Cancel it hurts my eyes.

    For draw spells, there's Treasure Cruise, Gitaxian Probe, Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain, Windfall, Prosperity, Narset Parter of Veils, Lorien Revealed, Frantic Search, and some others I'm forgetting. One trick is to combine Ponder and Brainstorm with a shuffle effect from cards like Merchant Scroll and Scalding Tarn to act as an Ancestral Recall.

    And for fuck's sake where is you Command Tower and Sol Ring? That's how every deck in EDH should start lol. Both have been printed into oblivion so you should buy them for dirt cheap. Go do that. Like right now before you do anything else Magic related. Hell, someone might just give you one if you ask nicely.