As far as Universes Beyond goes I’ve seen a pretty positive result on the people I play with.

One of my friends who stopped playing after he had his collection stolen a number of years ago started to play again after I gave him a tyranid deck.

One of my friends from work got really into deck building and has been active since lotr and fallout sets. He is also super into Marvel, so he is looking forward to the upcoming sets. My play group at work are also much more proxy friendly after the 30th anniversary proxies set, so I made him a proxy of Kelsien, the Plague themed as Gambit.

Another friend from work has started to play physical magic since getting the Riders of Rohan deck.

And the person I play magic with the most has been building themed decks around pop culture or stories we want to tell for years with me.

I was pretty skeptical of UB before, but I am now more concerned with poor game balance and half baked original stories from WOTC.

I was hoping there was an option for your uncle let you have a playset of dredge skeletons as the intro.

Well it is cheap so that means that it is lower power.

Bracket 4 will be for powerful cards like Drop of Honey.

Bracket 1 will be for more balanced cards like Porphyry Nodes.

I’m not mad.

Wotc would probably have another controversy right before release and the resulting backlash would cause it not to have a sequel.

“A character returns as a legendary creature that first appeared in flavor text in Alpha”

So this is Norin the Wary and not Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar if there is only going to be one alpha quoted character, right?

"Some of the other guys dared me to touch it, but I knew it weren’t no ordinary hunk o’ rock."Norin the Wary -Jade Statue

Ify’s intro had me in stitches and I loved the agreement to get rid of steel hellkite.

There are some legit sites out there that let you design proxies and ones that let you print them. They also let you make your own theme decks easily.

I have not gotten their token sets before, so I am not positive on how useful the tin will be.

They did a nice set for Eldrane, but I didn’t end up getting that before it sold out.

I think the fish definitely got a glow up from le leaked mockup.

“D&D has never been more popular, and we have really great fans and engagement. But the brand is really under-monetized,”

Hate to see here go.

It is crazy how quick some are selling out. Didn’t even get the chance to buy the tarot one.

This definitely went from a product line I would consider getting to something that is not designed to get into the hands of non-scalpers or the deeply entrenched collectors.

This was definitely an interesting take on Hogaak.

Congrats Kaiyo!

Prices on eBay and tcgplayer look reasonable for the strixhaven commander decks.

Happy to help.

I wasn’t able to find a history functionality otherwise I would have replied a bit earlier. Those are different decks, and when I went to the next step I just copied the previous step and worked until I felt like I was changing my methods.

When I want to do an overhaul of an existing deck I’ll setup a private deck list in the event I want to restore that to how I enjoyed it.

I thought it might be helpful to show with a few list how I tackle things

I am pro proxies, so budget is not the biggest factor for me. My play group also tends to believe that it makes sense to play test a $40+ card that might only work in a specific deck before you buy one.

That said I tend to buy decks in batches, so I might start playing the deck when I hit 80% purchased, and then either use some proxies or fill it with some of my existing collection.

For this deck I wanted to design something I felt would play like the T-X terminator after rewatching Terminator 3 recently. I really like tappedout’s tools for play testing decks, so most of my deck smithing happens virtually on that site.

Step 1: Initial starting point:

Blocking out lands and picking commander.

Maybe a few cards that that might have come up in thought process.

The north star for the deck is the T-X terminator from Terminator 3. Initial thoughts for deck is I want to have vehicles, might do something with time manipulation, and will probably want to run blue removal instead of counterspell suite. https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/t-x-terminator-cosima-step-1/?cb=1690509142

Step 2: Next we are tossing pasta at the wall to see what we can work with. Most vehicles that are viable, some animation effects, and utility/man lands. Basics are reduced to account for new lands.

Time effects are not settled yet. Looking at suspend, extra turns, and phasing as potential themes. Had a game where a commander was phased out by the ferris wheel attraction, and when they could no longer roll to visit attractions the creatures were permanently phased out. Could generate a similar lock with stasis and eon hub, but I think that might be losing the terminator theme too much.

Depending on the amount of vehicles cut it might be worth looking into mass creature bounce and wheel effects. Additionally polymorph could be used to sac a crewed vehicle to get one of the few creatures in the deck. May also need to look into token generation or alt win cons. https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/t-x-terminator-cosima-step-2/?cb=1690596198

Step 3: Adding in some token generation as well as some alt win cons. Reducing creature count is more appealing, so will look at effects that make bodies or become creatures.

Also including some mass bounce effects to remove creatures before I crew my board.

Land base modified to include some budget thinning, and some utility lands that I enjoy using. Also some mana accelerants added.

Some pet cards added. Next phase is cutting room floor. https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/t-x-terminator-cosima-step-3/?cb=1690598823

Step 4: Initial pulls are to decrease creatures since some good token generation was found, and animating effects are not as required. Not going creatureless, but did reduce the total.

Some sorcery speed bounce removed and getting to the harder point to make cuts.

Last cuts will be the final version of deck. Will be focusing on cmc and card types. Will not reduce more than 45 artifacts total in deck, but also will add a few artifact lands since those were missed on earlier passes of the deck. https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/t-x-terminator-cosima-step-4/?cb=1690741625

Alpha build: The deck should now be at a point where I use tapped out to get some sample hands and see what the first 5 draws look like.

I’ll then think over the deck for a few weeks to see if there are any other adjustments before I start looking to buy the deck. https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/t-x-terminator-cosima-alpha-build/?cb=1690741611

I love using [[Cosima, God of the Voyage]] in a mutate deck. If you mutate her before you exile her each of the creatures mutated into her gets her delayed trigger, so you can end up netting a decent amount of card advantage.

I was a big fan of Merchant as a streamer back when he still did mtg content. It was nice to see some gimmicky decks, and the mtg d&d streams were very nicely done.

Currently I am a big fan of making decks focused on an aesthetic or theme as opposed to just playing for efficiency.

I liked what Tomer on the EDHRecast did with their [[Baba Lysaga, Night Witch]] deck. Basically getting one of each variant and then using the different versions to keep track of commander tax. Doesn’t work on all commanders, but I thought it was cute.

I love seeing an artifact deck build up a board state, and then just activate a bunch of abilities on someone’s end step.

Also playing with something that changes the way the game functions like using a [[Leylines of Singularly]] to shut down tokens, forcing a game to close out with a [[forced fruition]], or equipping an opponent’s creature with [[spy kit]] and hitting it with [[eradicate]] to exile their non legendary creatures from all zones.