The Best cEDH Decks to Play on MTGO
"Yeehaw" - Daybreak Games, immediately before pushing Commander leagues to prod
A new age of growth and prosperity for cEDH is beginning as the folks over at Daybreak Games announced on Tuesday that competitive Commander leagues have been added to Magic Online! Honestly, this is a day I thought would never come, and I am beside myself as I write this.
How is cEDH on Magic Online Going to Work?
The natural and obvious upside to having cEDH on Magic Online is the vastly cheaper cost of decks, around 350 tix or so for any given cEDH deck compared to the thousands of US dollars for a paper copy, and being able to play without having 3 other people in the room with you or with a webcam setup. It's going to be SO much easier to get games whenever you want and practice for your next cEDH event!
However, cEDH on Magic Online does not come without some deviation from paper cEDH. Some of those include:
Not all cards in Magic's expansive history exist on MTGO.
While most do, some notable cards, like Flesh Duplicate from the Universes Beyond set for Doctor Who is unavailable and widely played in paper cEDH, as well as Sacrifice, a card from Alpha that for some reason has never been added to the program.
The "chess clock" time system.
One of the more iconic aspects of Magic Online that lead to some players actually preferring the program over paper play is the "chess clock" pool of time that each player gets in a match before they automatically lose. While this can be great for preventing any "slow play" issues on the program, some of the cEDH combos simply would take too long to execute to be viable options on Magic Online.
This has come up in 60-card spaces before with Devoted Druid combos, but Dockside Extortionist loops are much more pervasive in paper cEDH today and in some instances would be entirely unrealistic to execute within the time constraints.
You may concede at any time.
As it stands today there have been no announced intentions of adopting any timing restraints around when a player can concede. This is a nerf to some existing cEDH decks, like Najeela, the Blade-Blossom, where an opponent conceding prior to actually losing within the rules of the game could actually prevent the player who would otherwise win from doing so.
No voice chat means less politics.
Magic Online does have a text chat, but it is a feature players are able to disable entirely. Doing so closes any avenues for deal-making and "table politics" that is otherwise a big part of paper cEDH. The "chess clock" system is an additional enemy of trying to make deals via text chat given the additional time tax.
These deviations will have an impact on deck choices. Simple, deterministic wins with Thassa's Oracle get stronger, while combos involving infinite Thrasios, Triton Hero or Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy activations get much worse.
Top 5 cEDH Decks for Magic Online
Below have compiled a list of the top 5 decks from most expensive (according to the MTGGoldfish pricing tool) to least expensive that I believe capitalize on all the ways Magic Online deviates from paper cEDH while still being strong competitors in paper cEDH as well.
1. Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh / Silas Renn, Seeker Adept - 370 tix
This explosive deck is a great way to get games of cEDH over with quick. The deck more commonly known as RogSi costs a little over the average at around 370 tix for the whole list, but given it's a top tier cEDH deck that wins in concession-insured ways and has all its cards on Magic Online already, it's an early front runner for best deck on the platform.
2. Kraum, Ludevic's Opus / Tymna the Weaver - 335 tix
Another top tier cEDH deck that loses very little being ported to Magic Online. You may have to watch the clock a little bit in the grindy games played with Blue Farm, but the wins are still concession-insured and the deck is actually a sizable chunk cheaper than most options. This deck is easily the best bang for your tix.
3. Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow - 335 tix
Yuriko is a classic cEDH deck that many players build as their first paper cEDH deck that is still on the cheaper end on Magic Online as well. While there is some potential for players to concede before taking damage from Ninjas, the deck does not rely on this for a combo and can continue to play through those concessions without much of an issue if a player does decide to concede in the blockers step.
4. Dihada, Binder of Wills - 318 tix
Dihada is a deck that has fallen out of favor a bit in the cEDH metagame in paper but stands to gain quite a bit of stock in the online queues thanks to its cheap cost and incredibly fast wins that are in no way hampered by the nature of Magic Online. As the deck on this list that wins the fastest on average, I would not be surprised to see Dihada become the weapon of choice for players looking to play as many pods of cEDH as quickly as possible.
5. Krark, the Thumbless / Sakashima of a Thousand Faces - 300 tix
This recommendation may look odd for a platform with a chess clock, but Krarkashima actually gets to leverage the power of digital Magic the most. Being able to auto-yield to Krark triggers, set triggers to the same targets, and have the entire stack managed for you are huge boons to making the deck operate much faster. While no Flesh Duplicate does hurt this deck choice a little, Krarkshima is well poised to be a serious competitor on Magic Online and represents the cheapest of the decks on this list at only 300 tix!
Decks to Avoid for Magic Online
- Any deck that wins by activating Thrasios, Triton Hero to draw your deck. This includes most partner pairing with Thrasios, as he is often an infinite mana outlet.
- Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy. This often wins by activating Kinnan "infinite times" which, while faster, can incorporate Basalt Monolith or Hullbreaker Horror combos, which would be tedious at best to resolve on Magic Online. This deck also loses some stock to the lesser role of politics.
- Malcolm, Keen-Eyed Navigator. This calls out Malcolm pairings with red that win with the Glint-Horn Buccaneer combo. Being tedious and disrupted by untimely concessions is not the way to play cEDH for stakes on Magic Online.
- Any deck featuring Displacer Kitten or Hullbreaker Horror combos to win. This calls out decks like Kraum, Ludevic's Opus/Tevesh Szat, Doom of Fools, Tivit, Seller of Secrets, and Atraxa, Grand Unifier.
- Decks using Dockside loops to win. There is some double duty here calling out Thrasios decks, but this also accounts for decks like Kenrith, the Returned King, Sisay, Weatherlight Captain, and Korvold, Fae-Cursed King.
- Najeela, the Blade-Blossom. The combo of attacking requires you to connect with your opponent. If they concede during the declare blockers step, your combo is disrupted and you have to pass the turn instead of winning. Not a good experience and something you'll run into on MTGO in a way that you won't playing paper cEDH.
The Dawn of a New Age
Magic Online having competitive Commander queues is something I've dreamed of since I started playing the format in 2016, and now, eight years later, that dream has become a reality. The number of games of cEDH that can be played by a player on a given day is going to go up dramatically and, assuming the missing cards are added to Magic Online in a reasonable timeframe, Magic Online is going to be the best place to test new brews and tune old favorites alike in record time. Thank you for reading!
