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Browse > Home / Strategy / Articles / Commander Clash S5 E5: Viewer Submitted Decks (Athreos vs. Gahiji vs. Inalla vs. Raff)

Commander Clash S5 E5: Viewer Submitted Decks (Athreos vs. Gahiji vs. Inalla vs. Raff)


Welcome back to Commander Clash! Two weeks ago, we asked you all to send decks that you want to see us play in an upcoming episode. The response was amazing: over a hundred decks were submitted! Big thank you to everyone for sharing your sweet brews! We had a ton of great decks to choose from but in the end we can only pick four:

  • Richard summons the Cleric tribe for a holy sermon about lifegain and sacrifice in devotion of Athreos, God of Passage (submitted by Desdomen)
  • Seth does Seth things, aka durdles, draws cards, and gets value out of Panharmonicon with a Wizard Tribal list led by Inalla, Archmage Ritualist (submitted by Big-Foot)
  • Tomer plays Draw-Go with a Historic Tribal deck flashed in with Raff Capashen, Ship's Mage (submitted by Omry Gribov)
  • Vincent desperately tries to encourage the rest of the crew to not attack him, this time by pillowforting and group hugging with Gahiji, Honored One (submitted by Gendarmes)

Four sweet decks have been selected, but which will end up being victorious? Let's find out! But first, a quick reminder: if you like Commander Clash. and other video content here on MTGGoldfish, make sure to subscribe to the MTGGoldfish Youtube Channel to keep up with the latest and greatest.

 

Richard's Deck (Athreos)

 

Seth's Deck (Inalla)

 

Tomer's Deck (Raff)

 

Vince's Deck (Gahiji)

 

Post-Game Thoughts

All the decks selected were really sweet. Heck, the vast majority of submissions were very sweet; it seems like the quality of submissions keep going up each time we do this. There were a few "hey play my MLD Stax deck" and "this deck consistently wins on turn 3" submissions but the vast majority were awesome brews at just the right power level for our show. Even if we didn't select your deck this time, there's at least 10 decks I've bookmarked as references for future brews, so thank you!

My only criticism for future submissions: add some graveyard hate. Every deck abuses graveyards to various degrees, so if we can all agree that creature / artifact / enchantment removal are all important, how about tossing in a Bojuka Bog, Scavenger Grounds or heck just a Tormod's Crypt? I totally understand skipping on it -- I am guilty of this too often as well -- but a single GY hate card that you can tutor up when needed goes a long way. 

Finally, Seth let slip that he only considers decks that are running Strip Mine, so there's a tip for next time. Oh, I guess one tip for me: I have zero interest in playing a Wheel deck, so sorry to the dozen of Arjun, the Shifting Flame lists that were tagged "perfect for Tomer!" I've played The Locust God a single time and it was great fun, but once you've played one Wheel deck you've played them all.

$ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00

 

I really liked all the decks this week. The Gahiji, Honored One deck looked very similar to my Budget Gahiji article, and the Politics archetype is one of my favorites to play. Athreos, God of Passage Cleric Tribal was a nice twist to the traditional build. My least favorite was Inalla, Archmage Ritualist just because she's absurdly strong, randomly combos off a million ways, and the Eminence mechanic was a mistake that WOTC should've known better to make by now. But Seth didn't pick her because she's strong, he picked her because he saw Panharmonicon and Naban, Dean of Iteration in the same list and his mind drifted off to Value Town.

My favorite of the bunch those was Raff Capashen, Ship's Navigator, which kinda makes sense since I picked it, but I was really impressed when playing it. I initially dismissed Raff as kind of a generic, less interesting Ephara, God of the Polis, but in reality they're very different decks. I love the idea of flashing in Padeem, Consul of Innovation in response to someone trying to target my artifact, or Michiko Konda, Truth Seeker after creatures are sent to attack me. Really unique, fun deck. It doesn't look like the "needs" any key expensive cards, so if I ever clear my backlog of Budget Commander articles before the next set comes out (oi!), Budget Raff is a top candidate.

As for the game itself: poor Vince can't catch a break. He really tried his best not to be the archenemy for once, and even savaged Richard early on to contribute to the "kill Richard first" campaign, though he then kept Richard's life total nice and high (ultimately the reason why Richard won) because he wanted to spite Seth, a bit of a whoopsy. Once the game was going over two hours though I think we all wanted to wrap things up, and Seth just went after the person with the lowest life total, which unfortunately was Vince. From my point of view, I was going to try and kill Seth first no matter what because I felt Inalla was the strongest deck at the table and could just steal games, then kill Richard because he's Richard, and then hope my Raff deck could find Urza's Ruinous Blast and erase Vince's pillowfort to win the game.

Finally, I'd like to point out that Richard not only one, he won with his Commander being bugged and not actually working. What. I did NOT expect that Aetherflux Reservoir!

 

Next Week: 1 Tix Challenge!

Next week we're playing with a special budget restriction: every deck has a maximum total budget of 1tix on Magic Online at the time of the recording! That sounds like a crazy restriction, but there's so many great cards worth only 0.01-0.05 tickets online that it shouldn't be an issue. Exhibit A: Survival of the Fittest, one of the most busted cards in Commander, costs a whopping 0.02 tix online. Our decks might end up being more busted than with our usual restriction!



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