Commander Cookout Podcast, Ep 462 - Thinking Outside the Box for better Commander Decks

Who the table's not level.

Here?

Listen Clinical Podcast Episode four sixty two. I'm Brandon over. Here's Ryan. We're gonna think outside the box now in our theme.

So hey Ryan, We're back for yet another whirlwind adventure.

How you do it good?

What is going down?

A whole ton is going down? Today?

We're gonna kind of continue a bit of what we talked about last week. We're gonna talk about deck building challenges for new players experienced players, thinking out the box as the thinking out the box, thinking out the box, thinking outside the box as more ubiquity creeps its way into the game, how we can kind of avoid that to keep our decks and games feeling pretty fresh. But before we get to any of that, ex thank your

C CEO Side What Slam Season two.

Right here on YouTube, we are recording the season finale of Sidewalk Slam season two. Right after this, We've got our pile of bones for drinking. We've got our friends coming over for beating. We've got a couple little gifts to give to them once well we've killed them, Yes, very much so. And all of that is possible because of the wonderful support from Pile of Bones business daddies at Fusion Gaming Online dot Com. Special promo code CCO sum are still in effect for a little bit longer.

Important note if you're heading over to Fusion, they do have a new website up, so there's some growing pains with that, so be patient with them. They're working on it.

Everything will back up and running very soon, we are assured, and so we are internashuring you.

Yeah, and they are. Actually I was talking to one of their managers. They're really excited about the new functionality, the new look, and kind of the new services that

Correct.

Yeah, three days is usually how fast I get my orders.

Mine's usually four, which is weird. But you live closer to like the main highways.

I do, yes, Yeah, yeah, for sure. So Fusion Gaming Shop there. Use the promo code CCO Summer or CEO Perks if it's your first time and you spend an over one hundred Canadian dollars, which is like four US D freedom dollars. You know what.

I have a package that's out right now. Not magic related, but it's just it's out and I keep getting like the things. Your package is on its way, like three o'clock in the morning.

I love having my package out in three in the morning.

And then I get another email like six, well when I'm still home.

Yeah, we tried to deliver it, but you weren't there.

At six o'clock in the morning. Mm hmmm, A, no, you didn't because I'm home.

And b who does that? What kind of mailman knocks on the door at six it nobody does that. All I want is my stuff.

I'll be knocking on the door of killing Uncle Brando Fimo in Sidewalk Slam Season two finale. We're gonna do it right here in the Dufferin Avenue Media Network Network Network Studio. We're gonna change the tables we've got, We've got the benches, we've got the ceiling cameras, we've got the sidewalk. We've got the sidewalk over there. Producer Gary's gonna be doing all the switchboard. It's gonna uh, it's gonna be a ton of fun. Super excited if you

Under normal circumstances, I would ruin it for you, but I totally forgot what deck you said.

So, oh yeah, we've talked about it on the show before.

Okay, yeah, for sure.

It's one of my newer decks. But it's one that I'm sure can drop some some fatties. It's probably probably it can drop the fat fat on Uncle Brando's face.

Face, it's gonna be Animar because that's the only way he's gonna beat me.

I did beat you with Animar the other day. We had a we were both playing Animar and we just pounded some guys at the LGS.

Yeah, that was some shit.

Okay, Well, speaking of getting pounded, we have a new patron who needs their Patreon nickname. Okay, okay, So you know one of the benefits well, yeah, yeah, one of the benefits is of course getting in the discord voting on decks. Actual benefits going to the c Seal experience with is all booked up in Calgary in November.

That's gonna be so fun. I'm looking forward to seeing everybody.

I am actually looking forward to it. It feels a lot lower stress than a lot of the other experiences that I've gone to, which is very good for me.

That's because it's basically us not going anywhere. Really, Calgary is basically just six hours across Toway.

Yeah. Yeah, I do know how to drive there. I know everywhere in the city that I need to go, where it all is, and how to get there. I know all of my favorite restaurants, bars, places to buy beer, and I know where the venue is.

Yeah, there's no moty random, where's the liquor store? Where's the thing that a uber or something?

Nah?

No, man, we know what everything is.

Can I drive?

Yeah, we're just gonna take the train. It's gonna be great.

Yeah.

And I want to buy some new socks. Oh, I'm really excited a lot of my socks. I always give these guys a show out, even though they.

Don't ask for it. But sock Rocket so good. They buy the best socks.

And for every pair of socks you buy from them, they don't ate like three or four pairs to underprivileged children.

In Calgary and homeless.

Yeah.

So, like it's great stuff and the socks are really good. I'm wearing them literally right now.

I buy the hockey socks for my son every time I go. And if you know, like your inner sock that's in your skate. This isn't a scathing review against soft Rocket, but we go through lots of socks in my house, as you can imagine, playing hockey five times a freaking week. So I buy multiples of the hockey sock for my son.

There you go, there it is.

So all of that is to say those are the Patreon benefits. Yes, and we have a new Patreon, a pseudonym, but a good one that I'm sure we could dirtify.

Okay, c ceo it up if you will.

Okay, Joppy joppy hoppy like sloppy or h yes or jaloppy sloppy, sloppy GALOPPI sloppy jail. Isn't that a magic card?

No, there's a magic card called Sloppy Galoppy. It needs to be legendary so I can make yes.

No, it's it's a dodgy gealoppie. It's a vehicle. I play it in my Dinosaur and Vehicle deck.

Is it from the Riverdale Universes beyond?

No, nobody got that I did, and I certainly don't want that to be a frickin thing.

No, No, I don't know.

Man, like the Riverdale series near the end that superpowers and traveled through time like it's basically a doctor who except the superpowers.

Oh, I didn't want to know that, and I'm not happy that I did.

Archie's Wolverine and Bedy can like I mind.

I was thinking of like the Archie cartoon got the same color hair as Archie has bullied in high school and an elementary school and a preschool for being for having red hair. Yeah, Archie could get it.

What were you fucking I don't know.

Maybe they never read Archie before.

Man ho No, we even on the cover of every Archie comic. Is Archie fucking getting it?

Yeah?

Like that guy smashed.

More ass than anybody in comic book history and he's like fourteen.

Yeah I didn't. Maybe that's why I got bullied.

Like that guy just demolished chicks all the time, yea, which isn't what it's all about, but it's not something you should probably get bullied for.

No, also got called Tintin quite a bit.

That one makes more sense.

That one makes more sense, especially the twenty ten Tintin like a digitally animated remake.

Because he was always kind of like a little like.

A what he's a detective and looked like me, we's.

This shitty detective. Though it's not very good.

Oh yeah, I never saw the twenty ten remake, but I watched the shit out of Tintin the cartoon like in the nineties. That was a good show.

I like the Captain.

Captain had it all so funny and for some reason he always got into antics in trouble when he's brushing his teeth. It's like, what this guy has like a traumatic experience every time he's brushing his teeth. That's the only thing I remember about that one from when I was a child. You probably remember more because you were a grown man in the nineties. That's right, in the eighteen nineties.

I always tell him born in ninety one.

Beat into the tar Tarzan and Tintin podcast. We got a sloppy jeloppy patron that we wanted to say thank you for. Now to continue from last week.

He's always dodging slop and his jealopy. You could google that maybe, but you probably should.

I don't Google could probably make sense. You know what you could do jodge and slop in your jalop. You could you could put that into like an AI art generator and probably get something dirty.

Oh you don't know. It would just kick you out.

You would just install a virus on your computer and from this give you some slopping your jalop.

Right, okay, continuation from last week. We pulled the patrons and said what kind of stuff do you want more of? Do you want more? Deck text janky or competitive, et cetera. Do you want more topics? Do you want something else? And a lot of people picked janky deck texts, which we are wont to do every once in a while, if you know what we're saying, and more topics about generally the goings on of magic and product and the

Yeah, and the check it out anyway, because it's a really good thing. Bring it to your own community.

Oh yeah, for sure, you've got your deck built. I know what it is. I don't think anybody else does, do you though you told.

Me, ah yes, but at this point I have built too.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay. So the budget or the constraint last week was budget. That's the challenge. That was the thing that you maybe have to think outside of the box to kind of get around not being able to buy a new product or not being able to afford the single that you want. If your playgroup doesn't do the proxy thing, which we're not here to talk about. That's not this conversation. But like us, we played in LGS.

No, they're all like.

Sanctioned games, sanctioned games. So our LGS owner a little while ago said, hey, no proxies, guys, these are sanctioned games. Play with real cards, or don't play that is, go play with the Coachman licensed beverage room, which we also do.

Yes, we do that as well.

So the budget became a hot topic at our LGS for a while, and not wanting to play expensive cards or having proxies till I drop it, then I take it out of a box, and just kind of the social kind of taboo that that that was at the time for us, like people saying, oh, hold on, I got to take my whatever out of the bag and play it. I got to take it out of its top loader, or hey, is it okay if it goes

Box, because it doesn't anymore.

It doesn't. No, dh wreck is a conglomerate or it scrapes all the all the websites that it does for the most common things in each deck.

It's a fantastic resource, but if you're build from it exclusively, your deck is going to probably start to feel like everybody else.

And we want we used to talk about this all the time in the early days of Commander Cookoa.

Like the Milk list.

There's the Zata deck. Yes, right, there's the whatever deck.

And now because of like DH's dhreck is so prolific, I would say that a lot of decks now, like it's getting hard to find, not the this deck, right.

Yeah, there's this is the Bellow list, This is the.

I have a perfect example. So I'm thinking of building a Questing Beast deck, yes, out of because questing b says damage from your creatures can't be prevented, correct, But when I cast fog, it says prevent all damage. Right, So if I swing in or you swing in and I block, and then I cast fog, your creatures still take damage mine, don't. I was so amazed by this deck at Commandfest Bellevue a few years ago that I was like, Man, I gotta build this. It's so funny.

Don't.

How do you do it? What do you do to not build something that everybody else built, though still keeping a mind for like making your decks unique, interesting and powerful.

Here's my typical procedure now because it has changed my deck building.

Not philosophy, but just the way I go about doing it has changed a lot over the last little while.

In that, I mean, first you go to what you have obviously, Yeah, And again I can say that I come from a place where I can.

Do that because you've played magic for nine hundred years exactly. Yea.

So like I've got a collection that goes back a long way, and I've got stuff from then. So when I go to what I have, I have lots of things that other people don't.

Like. If you're building a dinosaur and vehicle deck and you need a dodgy GALOPI you just go into the binder or your capenna stuff or your stack of vehicles that were like holding up a table, Yeah, and you just pick a dodgy geloppe, put it in your.

Deck and there it is. Yeah, I actually do have a pile of vehicles. I went through it the other day. Here, I've got a stack of vehicles. So what I.

Typically will do and to avoid using dh records. I look at a card and I go, what does this shit do?

What does this like a card or a commander?

Commander?

Oh, what does this car do?

And how can I make it do those things? And then you kind of go through and you find like, Okay, it has to be these colors and it has to do whatever, it has to do something when it enters the battlefield.

Let's just say that. Yeah, so you find all the.

Things in those colors that enter the battlefield to make a big stack out of them. And then here's the this is the crutch part, which is why I wanted to talk about this because this is part that I think lots of people have a hard time with. Is once you've got all the things that enter the battlefield, then you fill it out with the other ship that goes in those colors. Let's say you're playing groll because of course it's me, so I'm playing gross.

Let me go onto eeda trek dot com and see what what you don't even want my removal spells are and what my ramp spells are.

You don't even have to because you know them off the top of your head. You get a chaoswarp, you get a beast within sure, get a maybe a fog frog, you get a rampant growth, you get.

It, cultivate, Cadamas, lightning bold.

There's all these cards that just kind of and okay, you dump those in and then I'll just take that pile of shit that's one hundred cards big, and I'll just play it.

I'll play it as it is, as a piece of trash.

And then as I run into cards that don't work, like we saw yesterday, I played a necro boom game with Ryan and so Cam, I'm trying to slow this down a little bit, and so I'm trying to identify pieces that I can take out.

Oh yes, alive. Okay, let's remember this example because let's let's go back to this when we talk about tuning a deck, whether you want to make it more or less.

Powerful, Because so I found we identified a card.

Okay, this has to go because it's like it's in the pile, but it makes the deck be way up here when it could be down when I want it in the middle somewhere.

Yes, or the opposite, like what would normally be the circumstance. I'm playing this card, I'm goldfishing, whether it be a stack of one hundred and forty cards, or I'm I've got it down to my hundred and I'm tweaking a little bit by just playing it out by myself against a Goldfish opponent. They can't think they don't do anything.

And then once I have that pile, once I start look at the okay, I'm going to start going outside of what I'm gonna do. What I'll usually look for is I think, okay, was there a set recently or in the past that does what I'm doing, Like, I can't use it.

What's a good example of that clash from Lorwin.

Or things that playing cards face down.

Morph megamorph the what what the cloak disguise?

Right?

So you go back to those sets and you look at them, and then then I find like, okay, like this set had some stuff and you you could do.

A creative search on scrip fall. You go to advanced search and you go to like text and you type in face down creatures or morph and and then you select your colors, your commander, and then you get all of the face downs or morphs.

Okay, And when you do that, when I when I do that, I'm coming through cards.

Guys kind of like to read cards too. It's fun to see all the pictures and colors.

And you know, I'm a child, and that's what And one of the things that's cool about that is when you're scrolling through lists, you're always going to find something else that that catches your eye, that's something neat right.

And I've had the trajectory of a deck completely changed, Like Fork in the Road. It's like, I found this card that works in my deck and two cards that go with that down this left hand fork, and I'm like, oh, I want to do that. I'm going to find two more cards that do that. Now I've got like five or six or ten cards that do this, like this sub theme you goldfish again, and it's like, Oh, this sub theme's actually better. I want to do this other thing.

You're still doing a really cool thing.

But I'm doing it in a way that's unique to my own build.

And the people won't go.

Ugh. I suppose they might if you do it enough times. They mean our particular example.

Yes, right, that's the thing that I've always tried. What is that?

Uh? Yeah, I think so. And when you when you take this, I want to specifically build this my own unique thing and put my stamp on it. There's usually extra steps because you're not doing the most efficient and most powerful thing. So it's like, yes, I can draw my whole deck by morphing creatures, but it's not just beast whisper and ancestral statue like Animar does. Right, two card combo with your commander it's like, oh, I need this,

I need crystal shards so I can pounce my exodron.

Yeah, exact exactly right. And then all of a sudden you've got like this Rube Goldberg machine or or like this totally unique not something that anybody's ever seen before kind of monstrosity.

And but when you're going through all these lists and cards in fact that you're gonna find other things that will inspire you to either build other decks or change in direction. And I think that that's kind of where we hopefully get.

Away from what edh wreck.

Again, we're not using them as it's not a negative thing to use dhreck, No, absolutely, But if you want to build something different, it's better to have it come out of your brain then to look at what's established and then just not do that, you know what I mean, Like, I'm just gonna do the exact opposite of whatever anybody else is doing. And that's how I'm going to be different, because that's not different, that's that's just as prescriptive. Yeah,

It's the exact same, but like it's.

Like that.

Rite that example, you're gonna end up at the same place.

Oh yeah, that's fantastic.

But and again, like you come across things like I wanted to talk without this car for so I'm just gonna say it because it's a budget card, but get it.

And it's in my top five cards all time ever.

Uncle Brando's Top five cards all time ever. Brash Hunter, brash Taunter, Brash Hunter, brash Taunter and.

Azure Beast Binder Azure Azer Beastbinder.

It's a little rat from Bloomboro that costs like fifty US sense it's like eighteen.

Oh yeah, we talked about this card on our bloom Borger review. I remember he's so good.

He's so good.

After playing a few games with them, he's like, look that guy up. He's infuriatingly efficient. He can just turn somebody's deck all the way off or like protect you from something, or it's so like it's so political. It's like, hey, can I hit you for one so I can turn off this threat to.

The table rat Rogue right blue one Vigilance two one three. Azurebeast Binder can't be blocked by creatures power to ur greater. Whenever Azure Beastbinder attacks up to one target artifact, creature or planes walker and opponent controls loses all abilities till and to turn. That creature also has base power.

Until your next turn.

That's why it's good because it's like, oh, in my example most recently, nice crash deck, bro, I'm gonna attack you who has nothing smaller than two for one damage, and I'm going to turn your crash into a two to two thereby turning.

Your whole deck off. Yep, and then until my next turn, he can't do the thing. Right. It's so good, it's so good, and you wouldn't.

Who'd have thought Top five of all time, azurebast Binder is going to be next to four brash Hunters, right man.

It's like all four printings of brash Hunder and then Azerbeest Binder. Yeah, my list is getting bigger, and it's you find stuff like that when you just kind of you comb through. And we were talking about this a little bit earlier. I want to just make mention of it. People like Ryan and I we have these really deep collections, and maybe you do too, or maybe you're like Thomas and you've only been planned for a couple of.

Years, Thomas from last week, and you.

You don't have a huge deep collection. Well, one of the benefits of having a set release every fifteen minutes, yes, is there's new cards every fifteen minutes.

I like how you went to this because this is actually going to be my next thing.

And when they come out, they're very inexpensive and very accessible and very easy to get. So you can develop a really surprisingly deep collection without a ton of investment or effort, and you can do most of the same stuff that Ryan Orrobrando could do with some of the newer stuff, and it might not be as janky and hilarious.

Well, or it might be because old.

Cards are typically janky and hilarious. US A Storm Cauldron and.

All these other yeah, yeah, right, yeah.

Look at rares from Mirage and just tell me that those guys weren't smoking.

Something exactly, Like, there's a lot of there's a lot of crack. Let's be honest, there's a lot of a lot of crack in a lot of butts and because but cracks.

Oh yeah, I love buck cracks.

And so you can do that now very efficiently and very quickly, just by paying attention to what's coming out, going through the list, like I said, and just kind of getting a little thirty and forty cent things that you pick up.

Keep your chaff.

I'll tell you, I'll tell you a story.

Just keep a.

Little stack of it somewhere in your house where nobody will find it, and then someday you're gonna be like, man, I really wish I had this shitty common from Time spiral.

Man. It's like, oh wait, no, it was reprinted in modern ho ho ho ho ho ho ho.

Ho squared And then you go and grab it out of the thing and you've got.

It, and it's a dollar now because people want it.

I have two stories now, oh man, Okay, I just did exactly what you're talking about. I need this piece of crap common from Lorwin to build my Marvel Deep operative deck. Okay, I need all four teen cards that have Clash on them, though I am only playing thirteen of them because one of them doesn't work with my deck. Yeah, it's like a clash. I don't know. I don't play it.

I want to know what it is now.

Ah, I don't remember. Okay, it doesn't matter. The point is I go into this big freakin' box of mine that I got as part of a collection, and it had it had from about Camagawa to about Zenda Car and it was like ten thousand commons like I'm talking like forty of the same common in some cases, and any of the Lotus pedal, No Lotus pedals, No Lotus pedals, but lots of things like Manageyser and Secure Tribeulder like

I like that you didn't just put a period after drink a bunch of pilot bones beer, because that's what I usually do when I sit down to build decks. It's like I'm gonna drink a bunch of beer and then Sam calls it, just like, hey, what are you doing?

It's like drinking all this beer.

I don't know.

I thought you said you're gonna do your magic stuff tonight. YEP, totally forgot. Yeah, I'm watching Friday the Thirteenth, Part three instead. So you went through ten thousand magic cards to find thirteen unique ones? Did you find them?

Did?

You're damn righty did did some? And remember going.

Through because you don't have to have a collection of ten thousand magic cards. Maybe your store is the one of those ones that has like the shitty white Fox. That's how we hit yeah, right, and you can just Fisher and you're like, oh shit, like this is a cool one.

A clash card here. You get a list on a little sticky note or on your phone like a normal human being, or you're.

Right it on your hand. Yeah, you used to, because then you're looking at it while you're going through.

I need this and this and this and this and this and like for me, like I'll do the creative scry Fall search, right, I'll go for Marvel particularly because this this has the very unique outside the box approach that we're talking about. I go to Scryfall Advanced Search.

O the scariest magic art that there is.

Yes, I knew that I needed that card and I'm just and I find it. Oh, I found it, right?

Is it a clash card?

It's clash card, of course it is. Yeah, And there's just like bog Art, jerk Off is like another one. He's like a four to one with Haste when he Etb's clash, and I'm like, man, when he Etb's clash, I have to farm ETB. So I'm playing like blue blink and shit that I can cast for free with Marvel, so I can farm clashes and like not go infinite, but try and really synergize and farm. If I win my clash, boun and blink or like blink them so I can ETB and clash again. If I win that,

And uh In Daring Apprentice.

Daring Apprentice, and and Odyssey block had a lot of wizards. Tap a Wizard, you control the counter a spell unless they pay one. If I got ten wizards, your spells getting countered. Morph wizards like Willbender and Void Void Mage turns face up counter your gagage Prodigy, Void Major Apprentice Apprentice, Yeah, turns face up counter your spell Riptide Laboratory. Bounce a Wizard so I can play it again. And I built all that on the back of just cracking booster packs

It apart jet What a piece of shit.

Yeah, creator Hoover the command zone, but you get more colors and he costs less. Look at the magic.

At least it wasn't printed into a commander deck. That's key.

Sure, that's important.

Shit. I remember I was gonna say something and then I totally forgot. Damn it, that was really important.

Well, I got our next way to think outside the box.

No I got Oh god, god, I'm sorry. Okay, you were talking about blank and bounce. You're doing the clash, and here's how you're doing it. You're blinking your class, you're blinking your bouncing.

You know the stuff.

Everybody out there who's thinking, yeah, blank bounce, clash ETBs black and blue, and there's a.

I'm gonna leave my opponent's black and blue.

For everybody who's listening to this and you and me, maybe not Producer Garret, but everybody else.

He's probably not listening anyways.

There's a short list of cards that appeared in their head when I said that's what we want to do.

That's the kind of.

Thing like there's there's the faca that bounces something at the end of your turn.

Yep, there's Crystal Shard. Yeah, there's Teleportation Circle that's white one.

But you know what Ghostly Flicker.

Ghostly Flicker, that's the one I play. There's there's so.

Many of those cards that are just like, this is what you do if you want to do this.

I think there's a clash bounce spell actually.

But there's like there's like a set bunch of removal. We talked about that when I said how I built ex Right, if you're building white, you have swords, you have path, you have wrath just because uh generous gift.

Right.

Do you think thinking outside the box includes limiting those as well?

Oh?

Because like when you pick a color these days, and I hate to say this because I don't want to lump everybody into a box, especially here in the nation, because.

We don't fit it in no boxes.

Where boxes there's like you pick your colors and you almost automatically have let's call it, ten cards that are just in your deck already because you picked the colors.

You know what I mean? Yeah, I feel so shitty, dude.

That's why lots of my decks don't necessarily run the most removal or interaction because it's like, no, I'm nottained by your fucked blasphemous act.

I don't need to kill it. I'll just kill you before you get dudes right.

Yes, that is a that is a vibe. That's a certain mentality. As a deck builder, I think it's very appropriate to do exactly that when your removal, your interaction, you're whatever you're using, like the nuts and bolts of your deck. Man, if you can find ones that fit into your theme, like I've got a clash counterspell, I've got a clash kill spell, I've got a clash bounce spell. Those are my interaction that also thematically or mechanically, not

And it's fun to kind of, I don't know, we have a show that we do it. It's more fun to talk.

About a deck that's kind of cohesive, and especially with kind of garble like that mm hmm garble. It's a yarbo garbo.

It's it's fun because well, why aren't you playing counterspells? Because this one clashes, right.

And that's fun.

That's right now talking on the show the show, and when when you say and you want me to hear something, this is my next way to think out of the box. And I actually love this one because we do it every week and we don't even mean to. We do it just because we're nerds. And we go to the Coachman Licensed beverage room. Right, talk to your friends about your deck. Don't don't talk about your deck, but talk

Manna, rex seal the Risen Deep.

Rex Seal the Risen Deep.

It's the first thing Leviathan.

Also, I want to say costs ten Yeah, yeah, blue blue, blue blue.

Six sacks, it comes tapped, sack two islands to untap it ye sack two more islands to attack with it.

Yeah, and that used to be a rare Yeah, our friend Levi traded that card for two tropical islands?

Is that the best trade ever made in magic? The Gathering? I think so?

Probably?

I think so.

Probably it is so Yeah, rex sealed the Risen Deep is blue black. He's a Kraken. So if I'm building like a sea monster, demere sea monster.

Deck, which is what I would do? And if I was building.

He fits in and and I sort of built a sea monster thing, but it's it's only because sea monsters and demons are the two kind of highest echelon of creature type in those colors. So I want to build like this agro beatdown deck that isn't typical of your demere deck. Right, And if it was just me, maybe I would do some other thing like I would try and combo. Maybe I would lean. I would lean into playing all of the free spells because my commander does

Shit, right, what's my theme? All free stuff?

Free stuff, all right? And that's not necessarily as fun to play with. And if I go to Force of Will on edh Reck, it's gonna give me a drastically different card set than if I go to Rexial the Risen Deep. Yes, but I got that idea from Uncle Brando. That's the kind of thing that he likes to place. So maybe if I play it, he won't be egregiously offended if I beat him with it, nice, He's not

Don't you think swamps can be pretty deep? Can't they like bogs and stuff?

Just your mom's ass.

Yeah, I've I don't know, like i've remember actually been to a real swamp though.

That's my next place. Now that I've been to the beach, Now I want to go to the swamp.

Let's go to a real swamp. We got like, we got like dugouts, we got sloughs.

Yeah, we have like Marshy areas, Marshall areas.

Yes, I want to be in like a swamp with like bugs they're this big.

Oh yeah, I don't want to go to a swamp like that.

Gator gaters, big snakes.

You know, we haven't swamps or sloughs where we live. Fraud and I find I will challenge you to find one that defies this rule. Okay, every swamp in Western Canada, slough has a fence running through it. Yeah, math checks out. I think if it doesn't have a fence, it's got power poles that are tipping over it. Yes, people from the prairies and like the western side of North America. Know exactly what we're talking about.

They're looking on they're driving down the highway, listen to this. They look out, Oh yeah, there's one.

Yeah, yeah, Okay. I've got one more way to think outside the box that.

You imagine sloshing through a slew or a dugout somewhere just to like pick up something that like your hat blew off your head and just get tangled and somebody's barbed wire fence it's been swampified.

And you say, I should have left it blowing the wind. This is how I die.

Man, It suck.

Then you've got a leech on your butt and you've got a barbed wire in your leg.

Ye, like on the movie stand by Me when he gets a leech right on his junk man, remember that?

Yeah I do. Yeah, I want to see a dead body.

Oh yeah, coming of age movie for the for the boys. I guess. Hey, I got one more way to think, tell me outside of the box.

That is, tell me.

Sticking to your theme. And this kind of goes back to the removal or the things that like go in your deck, like my clash deck.

And this can be deep or surface level removal, free spells, clashing or this is where you're running too stuff.

There's chairs, everybody is ball.

Yeah. I tend to think of clashing or free spells, or something that ties mechanically to my commander within the rules set of the game. I call that like a mechanical link.

No more than four vowels in a card name.

That's a theme. That is not anything that has to do with the rules set of magic. That's just a constraint. I play like everybody in the in the art is drinking a liquid is everybody has like a thong under their clothing. In my imagination, is a theme. It's just everybody except for that guy on on Wrath of God. Very definitely wearing a thong.

Wait, but his is not out underneath his clothing. His is outside of his clothing. Thus you couldn't play Wrath.

Of bet Oh well, no, those are sheer tights that he's wearing.

Those didn't exist back then.

Oh yeah they did. Okay, they were tight pants that were sore, so worn from going to war in them they were seen through.

See there we go.

Yes, yeah, definitely wearing a thong so threadbare you could just see right.

Count one and it's right up as butting.

Like the girl at the club that drops her drink. She got one string and that's all everybody looks at when she bends over, and it's like, oh, put that way. Yikes. Just me, just you, just me. Okay. Last time I went to the club, I freaking cut my lip on a glass that was broken. I got a free drink. Yeah, blood everywhere?

Oh no, yeah.

To be fair, it was for the Gray Cup in two thousand and seven and the Riders won. Good time.

Man, last time I went to the bar, there was a fingernail floating in my drink.

And it wasn't I'd rather have what happened.

But to me, it wasn't a press on fingernail that came off.

It was like a fingernail that clip clipped off and it went into the glass and then they put beer in the glass and the fingernail floated up onto the top.

Oh, man, is that the grossest thing that's ever happened to you at a bar?

That is one of the grossest things that has ever happened to me, Maybe in my life somebody else's pants.

You did right, because you saw your first female genitalia a dairy queen.

Yeah yeah, yeah.

Gross. One time we were at a beer night and you and I, yes, you and I were there and and Rebecca came and then I won't tell that story. Actually, the red flags were sounding in my brain like mega, stop.

Stop, close your mouth, and I'm like, oh, where does this story go?

I know where it goes?

Yeah yeah, yeah, not so good.

But sometimes I make like I don't.

Yes, okay, well, sticking to the theme. Sticking to the Sticking to the theme is the last way that I think that I like to be unique and be outside of the box. Because when I think of a theme, that's my own theme, right, like nobody And that's why That's why I say, like ladies looking left drinking out of a cup, guys probably wearing a thong under his pants. Those are things that I personally have thought of or

Right, Oh, this is my Lord of the Rings deck, but only characters that were in the movie exactly.

I was just gonna say, Colton McCarthy, he does. He does all of the editing and organization for CEO's curb Side Pickup EEDH games. You can watch him right here on YouTube. And he's got a Scouring of the Shire Lord of the Rings deck. He only plays characters and cards, and he only gets me to alter cards so they look like they're from the Scouring of the Shire, which didn't even happen in the movie.

So the opposite way, he's there right right, and he's like, yeah, I really like that card, but I couldn't figure out a scene for you to paint on it, so I never played it the deck, right, And that's sticking to a theme and makes his deck different than every other frickin' farmer maggot combo deck that's out there.

Yeah, right, a farmer maggot combo deck.

It is, yeah, and it's dirty, stinking, rotten car farmer maggot combo deck. And he's like, it's different because I have this theme that I'm sticking to no matter what, and that's what makes it unique and what can help kind of curb or put a ceiling on the power level, which I think is a good thing, especially especially when you when you have a theme or an idea that is like, oh man, this is gonna be my forever good deck, right, but you want to put a cap on it.

Oh my forever good deck is Nora in the Wary, and I think it's just been progressively getting worse.

That's perfect. That's perfect because the theme is everything that doesn't look like a magic card and you're sticking to it. Hell yeah, your your necro bloom deck. Your you want to play it because you your favorite mechanic is Dredged, right, and you want to play Dredge in DH because for fifteen years it was bad. Now it's got its own commander. But I can't play it in every casual game because I draw one fricking card that combos with my commander

It's very oops. And it happened with like we were talking about Buried Alive.

You just search for three combo pieces in your graveyard won the game.

Yeah, immediately I was like, oh are you are you tapped out? Yeah?

Okay, win buried alive when you guys can.

Play out the rest of the game and I'll I'll hit it out.

What was it? I searched for two things that go into my graveyard, a walkiebe in something, and I'm gonna play this necrotic ooz that's in my hand and I'm gonna win. So maybe you cut the beard alive because that's the tutor and you can put yourself at risk of graveyard removal by dredging your whole strategy into your graveyard.

Like I don't feel bad that I reanimate a nine card combo out of my graveyard.

No, absolutely, I mean, like that's pretty good.

Yeah, Like, yes, I can draw my combo faster than you can, but like it still takes a lot of time and you can see me doing it, and like.

Remove my graveyard, you can kill my commander, right, So a really.

Well placed piece of graveyard hate can get me like it's.

And I love the idea of socially thinking outside the box. This isn't gonna be fun for my opponents if I do this on turn three every game, or if I move it up kind of the competitive ladder, It's not gonna be fun for me because it's not action a CEDH deck either. It's just a really fast combo, right, So what do I have to do to either make it more powerful so it is a CEDH deck, or or make it less powerful so I can play it socially with my friends casually. And that's that's that's what.

I'm looking for currently.

I'm doing that physically, like all the time I'm sitting, I'm looking.

It's in my bag right over there. Maybe I'll get the guys to look over it. I don't know.

Which leads back to talking about your death about your friends.

Because maybe they've thought of something that I haven't. Do they know a card that I forgot, or maybe they know a card that I've never seen before, because those exist.

And you talk to your friends, you take the buried alive out and it frees up a slot, and then maybe you go to edh Reck and say what else is here that would either facilitate what I'm doing, Or maybe there's a piece of removal that I actually should be running, because you're famous for not running a lot of removal. Maybe there's a removal spell that says Dredge on it that you've forgotten and you find that on dh rev.

You know what I probably should play there that I'm thinking about it Ray of Revelation kills an enchantment out of the graveyard. So you get around like a maybe a rest in peace m Do.

You have a dark Blast?

Yes?

Oh, because it says Dredge three on it says Dredge three on tart Creach because minus one minus one one black instant speed right good card.

More importantly, Dredge three, Dredge three brandology fact three bigger than two or one or zero.

Yes, yes, card with Dredge better than card with not Dredge in that deck.

That's right.

What were you there and we were talking about like if the card said Dredge ten.

Oh yeah, no, this was my question to you from years ago.

We were talking without the other day again like if it said Dredge ten on it, Like how could you would it ever see the light of day?

Like would it be banned immediately?

Dredge ten, you go to one life. That's the question I asked you, and you said a hundred percent. I'd play four of those in every single deck. Dredge ten, your life total becomes one yep. And you know what I'd win, instant combo with a near death experience. I'd win.

Wouldn't that be actually, that would actually be really funny?

Dude? What if I got you with that?

Okay?

I got one more funny story. Then we got to call it because we got to set up for sidewalk slams. So I'm playing against Brando Is yesterday Thursday, and he goes like.

This, Oh oh dude, I was so excited. I was so excited.

I watched the man draw top deck style from the top of his deck blind like turn nine, yeah, brash Taunter. And then he then he then he fights his own guy and tends one of our opponents kills him, and I go, man, okay, do I win the game? And it's almost time to go to the coachman.

License beverage right now, like two more turns?

Me? Do I combo now? Because I have two tutors in my hand, or do I sandbag and hope we don't run out of time and hope that Brando comes at me with the brash Taunter for like thirty because you had some big guys. Yeah I did, and you were gonna fight because I had a deflecting swat in my hand and I was going to deflecting swat. Then you would have fought your own brash Hunter. You would have died and it would have been so fantastic. I'm

I still think that I won the exchange because brash Hunter still killed somebody in your example, where yes I have all the darknessprint visions Griffin canyons in my example.

Yes, but yes, I think that would have been very funny.

Actually I would. I would have got a kick out of that. But I also appreciate the not sandbagging the wind.

So we can just go grab a.

Beer, Yeah, very much so, and beer we did grab. If you want to grab beer, you go to Pile of Bones if you gotta be in Western Canada, because that's where they distribute. But if you want to grab some magic cards, where would you go?

I would go to Fusion Gaming Online dot com. Check out the new website.

Dealing again with the growing pains.

But it's all gonna come up in a couple of days. Probably by now, everything will be running smooth.

A baby's butt cheek.

You can use CEO Summer save yourself five percent of all the stuff that you were going to buy anyway, and let business Daddy know that business Baby's doing a good job, which I think we are.

I think so we are gonna go do our best job on. Look at there. It is CEO Sidewalk Slam Season two finale, where we are going to have a couple guests on. We're gonna slam. It's gonna be a

What else is what's below the show notes the comments. Let us know what you'd like us to do on the next episode of Commander Cookout. We got some decks coming in. We could take a look at that. We could talk more Marvel stuff, or we could talk more current events in magic and we're not gonna.

Know mind skinner, Oh, mind skinner and prove that beat.

We could do that too.

We could actually that might be actually kind of fun, that might be leading into what we're gonna do. That's probably what we're gonna do. We do have a mind Skinner deck, so tune into that next week on a very exciting episode of Commander Cookout.

Podcast, good Arth