Please help me improve my EDH deck
Commander Deck Help forum
Posted on June 11, 2023, 12:17 p.m. by Alphaeus
Hey ya'll,
Here's the deck I'm building: Blue Control
It's mono-blue control deck and curious to hear how I can improve it. It's centered around stealing creatures and permanents from the other players from a safe distance. I'm not set on the current commander, Thassa, Deep-Dwelling, but I like the idea of allowing my clones to pop back in as better creatures on the field as they come in. It also allows for creatures I obtain via attachments to permanently become mine (unless I misunderstand the rules). For instance, if I use her effect on a creature I'm controlling with Control Magic, it pops back in without the enchantment under my control for good, right? At the same time, it could backfire, since I must exile a creature, and might force a clone creature to come back in as something else if the originally cloned creature is no longer on the battlefield.
And so, other commanders I'm considering are Thassa, God of the Sea, Keiga, the Tide Star, and Sakashima the Impostor.
Thoughts?
Thassa, Deep-Dwelling's ability is optional; "exile up to one target creature to control" means that you can choose to exile zero creatures. Blinking a creature you control through Control Magic or whatever with Thassa also lets you keep it, since the blinked creature returns "under your control" (as opposed to under its owner's control, like Blur).
June 11, 2023 2:13 p.m.
seshiro_of_the_orochi says... #4
Your statistics are telling me the deck has 101 cards, so better choose something to cut.
June 12, 2023 12:20 a.m.
I concur with seshiro_of_the_orochi. Your current commander seems fine. I run the other thassa mono blue creature steal deck if you wanna check out my profile. It's old, outdated and limited counterspells on purpose but its a good starting point for you.
You definitely need more ramp, maybe 1-2 more lands as well. Creature steal spells are expensive, usually 4-5 mana so you need ramp to be effective. A strip mine/LD effect to blow up Homeward Path.
June 12, 2023 1:37 a.m.
If you like stealing creatures and have access to Blink Thassa, you might like Callous Oppressor. I'd also look at Helm of Possession for the same reasons. TBH I think I'd run Sower of Temptation over Gilded Drake with your Commander (Drake is a great card, but at least if you kill off Sower's creature you can just flicker Sower to get a new creature, at which point you can flicker Sower to steal something else), either way it's also worth a look.
If you're looking for ramp in Blue, I'm a fan of the usually clowned-on Dreamscape Artist, Myriad Landscape and Retraced Image, but I think it's probably a reasonable choice to run stuff like Arcane Signet/Fellwar Stone if you're struggling to get your ramp numbers high enough. A sneaky trick I heard about from The Command Zone (it's a Youtube EDH channel) is that you can use creature lands like Mishra's Factory or Faerie Conclave as a form of Blue ramp if you can copy them when they are creatures, Magic has few issues with cloning/copying lands if they are also creatures. Another unusual form of 'ramp' is to use the odd card like Walking Atlas to cheat extra lands in, but you probably would want a few more lands or card draw.
As one-off theft effects go, I find Bribery, Inevitable Betrayal and Cultural Exchange to all be pretty solid, Exchange does want you to have token generators, but Blue isn't bad at making small tokens. Bribery effects can be a LOT bigger than a theft effect, so Betrayal is deceptively powerful vs the right type of deck, but most decks have a few really strong creatures at least, and you should have multiple opponents to choose from.
It's not a Theft effect, but Rite of Replication is hilarious in practice, getting a single copy for 4 is pretty much market rate, getting 5 copies for 9 is crazy when it happens.
June 12, 2023 8:11 a.m.
TheoryCrafter says... #7
Have you considered Willbreaker? It will allow you to take control of the opponent's creature even if the spell or ability targeting it is countered. In the case of enchantments that steal creatures this helps to work as a double whammy. I hope this helps. Happy Hunting!
June 12, 2023 7:26 p.m.
FormOverFunction says... #8
Dance of Many is a near-steal if you’re running out of options, and things like Feroz's Ban and AEther Storm might slow your opponents down a bit if you have to recover from a board wipe or something. Not great recommendations, but possible concepts to consider.
Caerwyn says... #2
This thread was moved to a more appropriate forum (auto-generated comment)
June 11, 2023 1:28 p.m.