I would say I have 2 favorite commander decks right now, well 3 but two of them are always played together.

My top favorite right now is my Mardu Slivers deck. It was a tiny leaders deck for a little while them morphed into a commander deck when I stopped playing TL as much. Morphing it from one format to another was an interesting challenge, especially when considering it used to be a favorite deck in an another format as well (Time Spiral standard).

My other 2 favorite decks are a pair of decks to play 2HG with. Again it was a fun exercise to build these decks and they play insanely well together. One is a control deck piloted by Aurelia and the other is an aggro deck with Agrus at the helm. There are no overlapping cards other than basic lands in the 2 decks.

Of the decks I've got built right now, I'd say the one I built with The Gitrog Monster is my favorite. It doesn't have any combos to close out the game, so piloting it is rewarding, but tense. In a nutshell, it's a control shell with Gitrog at the helm. It's had games where I'm trying desperately to feed the monster, and other times where he's fat and happy. But once the trample train gets going, it's on.

It is a little hard for me to pin down a single one, so I'm going to break it out by psychographic profiles.

Spike:
My favorite deck is my controlling midrange Zur the Enchanter. It doesn't have prison or combo pieces, but every Zur attack involves a sidetrip through valuetown.

Johnny/Timmy:
I don't have a any decks that are purely Johnny because I like my friends too much to put Unexpected Results into an Eye of the Storm. I do have some Johnny element in most of them, though, and Zirilan of the Claw is my favorite Johnny element in a Timmy deck. Ramping out dragons is super sweet, but occasionally lining up a few untap effects to pop out a Worldgorger Dragon when you have a Scourge of Valkas and several other dragons that are destined to be exiled at EoT has that delicious combo feel to it.

Johnny/Spike:
Morph control, featuring The Mimeoplasm, is more "Johnny as a creative show-off" than "Johnny Combo Player," but it definitely lets me feel smart when I chump block with a face-down Krosan Cloudscraper. There are a lot of little interactions that stop short of full combo, but they are cute and clever.

Timmy:
My favorite true Timmy deck has actually been retired for a while. Borborygmos Enranged was a fantastic blitz of ramping and ways to accumulate lands, and eventually resulted in a mad cyclops chucking so much real estate at people's faces.

Why do people think Johnny = Combo? Johnny = Synergy (usually with cards nobody else uses).

Anyway, when I do get to play (I build way more than I get to play), it's been Progenitus Hydra Proliferate mostly unless testing some of the new decks (Ulrich, Howlers; Nin, Tim Wizards; Kaseto Snake Nest, etc)

Why Progenitus? Well, even though he makes me a huge target (people are scared of Protection, maybe?) I've always been a hydra fan (so glad they made it the go-to Green creature, though I wish we would start getting some multicolor Hydra again) and I really like Proliferate decks (I think I have 3 or 4 decks heavily proliferate sub-themed). Once people realize it's not just a deck to power out Progenitus, it usually has some fun games and great synergies.

Almost enough Hydra to go full tribal, but for now it still has 4-5 non-hydra creatures to round it out.

Well, I mean this exists...


So you are both right. Spikes are more likely to play combos that have been proven, but it's Johnny that INVENTS those combos. Building combo is not the only way to build creatively and with obscure cards, but it is the most common way, probably.

Sure, a joke card from 2004. I'm not saying there aren't Combo Johnnies, just that Johnny =/= combo (only). There's also this:



I would classify nearly all of my decks as Johnny decks, and none of them have that kind of "Combo." The closest would probably be my Enduring Ideal deck, because once cast I can only search out enchantments (and nearly all Synergize).

In the interests of Total honesty(TM), there is one "combo" in Enduring ideal (if you want to call it that - backup Wincon in my mind). Rise of the Hobgoblins and Day of the Dragons. When I'm getting 2 or more epic triggers per turn, if on the ropes I can grab these two to attack with as many 5/5 Dragons as I have mana to pay for the goblin tokens when Rise ETBs.



Concur, I equate the "I Win" combos more with Spike, the Rube Goldberg combos with Johnnies, and everything else somewhere in between all the archetypes.

Basically this, yeah. And I may be overgeneralizing here, but I feel like virtually all EDH players - true EDH players, that is - have at least some Johnny in them. Sure, there are plenty of people who play either net-decked lists or at least just always play the same list of staples and OP auto-includes in every deck... but the vast majority of EDH players do seem to have a need to make their EDH lists personalized and expressive of themselves in some fashion.

As for my favorite deck or decks... jesus that's a big question. I currently have 24 decks and I can certainly say that some I like more than others... but favorite? Yikes!

RIGHT NOW, I'd say my favorites are:
Sidisi (Zombie Tribal), Maelstrom Wanderer (Dragon Tribal)
Queen Marchesa (Dirty, backhanded politics / weenie aggro)
Rashmi (Buy 1 Get 1 Free Sale)
Karlov (It's Karlov, so you already know what it is)
Gitrog (non-Infinite land combos, easily the hardest deck to pilot I've ever built, but it's insanely fun to just sac all my lands to draw 20+ cards and just pray I get there)

Also, I'd have to say my Karametra deck is probably the most perfect EDH deck I've ever built. When I say "perfect" I mean in terms of expressing the idea I originally had in my head and having it actually function in real games the way I envisioned it as I was putting it together. It's not that it's the most powerful or competitive deck, or that it wins an absurd amount of the time. It's just that its performance in games is the closest to matching "what I expect as I'm building" vs "how it actually plays out". I've had decks exceed and outperform my expectations and I've certainly had decks fall far short as well... but Karametra is one of the few that almost EXACTLY met my expectations - it took me between 4 and 6 months of playing the deck exclusively and constant fine-tuning, but after all that effort, it got there. It does precisely what I designed it to do, no more, no less.

Combos are just synergy that has gotten out of hand

I didn't mean to imply that Johnny only equals combo; just that that the most visible form of a Johnny deck is some sort of wacky cleverness, often in the form of an original combo. In a format where everybody (hopefully) puts their own touches on their decks, it really takes something else for me to call something a pure Johnny deck.

To me, you can sum up the psychographics with one sentence each.

Spike: Look at how good I am!
Johnny: Look at how clever I am!
Timmy: Look at my Primalcrux!

Since Johnny is about expressing oneself, I'd say the best example of Johnny decks are ones built with unique themes. Stuff like "all cards must have a guy with a beard in them" or some really janky tribal deck that doesn't have all that much support. (Well supported tribes can also be Johnny decks, but sometime it's hard to tell if it was built because the person liked the tribe or just because the tribe is really powerful.)

Timmy is about the experience, and the best example I can think of is a guy with an U/R chaos deck I played recently. His deck didn't win, it just caused all sorts of crazy effects to happen and he mentioned one day a game ended because no one could figure out how stuff resolves. That's clearly a Timmy deck, built for the experience; I'd call it a Johnny deck second.

I don't have a favorite deck. Each of my decks has a different play style. The only deck that has a purpose is Mayael and that's my end of the night deck where I don't have to think.

Mayael - Turn big stuff sideways
Glissa - Voltron
Damia/Mimeoplasm - Draw all the cards and abuse Maros
Kurkesh - use multiple activations of something to win
Phenax - it wins in a few ways. Mill, Aggro, Lab Maniac, Grey Merchant


I like them all evenly and which deck I play is determined by my current mood and the other commanders on the table.

Squee, Goblin Nabob

I was getting around the Commander Tax before it was cool. Derevi was late to the party. The deck plays Goblin Bombardment effects, expendable critters, and threaten effects. (Though it kind of spawned a reliance on threaten effects in my playgroup. Now you can't throw a stone without someone dying to their own 12/12s).

Honorable Mention:

Alesha, Who Smiles at Death

Commonder. The decklist (sans general) is all commons/uncommons, no creature with power greater than 2. It's pretty good against the aforementioned "threaten-heavy" games. No one ever steals Abyssal Specter or Necrite.

Three decks sprang to my mind as I contemplated this question:

Evershrike: When even the commander is something no one else plays, you know you're onto something, Johnny Opponents see it, think "Oh, so it's like a would-be Uril deck.". Then they get surprised by the amount of control and the number of cards they have to look up in Gatherer for their oracle wording. Then I go voltron and kill them Uril-style. Priceless

Nin, the Pain Artist: Goblins who can refuel. Simple and effective, this deck is surprisingly adaptable. Can push early, can break stalemates. Can. Kill.

Rakdos, Lord of Riots: This is MY go-to no-thinking-required deck. It's for when I need to satisfy that primal need for raw fat. After a few games of combos and synergies, it feels reeeeally good to just dump four 6/6s on the table and go "Deal with this, guys, or die."

damn I wish Evershrike was a legit Legendary...that would be a blast!


@thaumaturge do you have that Q. Marchesa list up here? I really want to get some ideas for her.

EDIT: nm, just found the list on your blog

House rules all the way, my friend

This thread makes me want to un-mothball/rebuild some things.

My favorite decks have been some of the worst or most underwhelming. I still play my Scion of the ur-Dragon deck, because it was my first, but I'm not sure if it's my favorite anymore. It tends to (understandably) draw a lot of negative attention, which makes it less fun to play. That having been said, these are the decks that I've made which I liked the most:

Jaya Ballard, Task Mage: I played what madness and red/colorless draw cards existed at the time I built it to try and overcome the inherent card disadvantage, but slowly the deck migrated towards generic burn that anyone could be the Commander of, which felt lame to me. I always liked the character since the many, many quotes through the Ice Age block, and was thrilled when I returned to Magic to play Commander, pulled up the list of all the legendary creatures and saw her and the next two in the list...

Thelon of Havenwood: I want him to be Azban so I can play all the Fungus cards, but it was not to be, alas. :/ Waiting 20 minutes to put a spore counter on all my fungi on my upkeep and not much else is kind of disappointing (no, I don't have a Doubling Season and I'm not gonna buy one), esp. in the face of constant board wipes.

Lovisa Coldeyes: This is definitely one of those "every card has a beard in it" decks except that the theme is destroy all artifacts, no artifacts that aren't things a barbarian could pick up and use, which means mostly equipment, so there's practically no ramp in it. Either it starts out good and runs out of steam quickly, it gets out classed, or it never gets started. I still pull it out every so often and get psyched to play Rally the Horde and Five-Alarm Fire.

I still have my Kresh deck but that's more of a favorite because of the story around it- in my old group there was exactly 1 Kresh, and it seemed that everyone tried to use it to build a deck except me, handing it off with resigned sighs and complaints that it was unwieldy. I took it home and jammed Lhurgoyfs around him and made it work.