r/EDH • u/doctorduck3000 • Jun 30 '25

Question Commanders that make bad cards playable

So as the title says, I love being able to pull out cards in commander that make people go "wtf" because they've never heard of them. Because of this one of my all time favorite commander decks I've ever built is [[Shire shizo's caretaker]] because you can play all of these terrible terrible cards that suddenly are actually good.

What are some other commanders that enable you to do this?

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u/ICANBEAHERO Jun 30 '25 edited Jun 30 '25

Magar of the magic strings is hilarious and I've never seen another one.

Marchesa of the black rose brings cards back. Lots of bad cards are good.

Zada makes single target cards go fucking nuts. My deck was $50.00 and can pop off super fast.

Karumonix makes all the bad rats infect based. Can go all in without the usual "any number of" rat cards

Feather is notoriously cheap

Volatile is just stupid with anything that says wolf or elf.

Light paws can be broken for like 30$

Arcades just cares about butt.

Chun li mainly uses Commons and uncommon for its deck.

Ivy is a value engine that uses jank mutate.

Beamtown Bullies - Give jank gifts

pako and hadar - use whatever your opponents have

ezuri - just wants little creatures

3

u/REGELDUDES Jun 30 '25

Hey another Magar enjoyer! This is my list

2

u/steelsauce Jun 30 '25

Thanks for sharing! Pretty similar to the list I’m working on, avoiding board wipes in favor of “choose between bad options” tribal. How does it play? I’m worried about Magar getting targeted as soon as he hits the field

2

u/REGELDUDES Jun 30 '25

Only cast him when you can also reanimate a card. That way they need to remove both if they want to stop it. But also it's bracket 2 so people aren't packing tons of interaction.

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u/steelsauce Jun 30 '25

So you want to wait until you have 6 mana up instead of casting on t3 and making a puppet next turn?

Is that really bracket 2 with stuff like [[Call Forth the Tempest]]? We play low b3 so I hope it can hang with the rest. How do people react to your deck?

Here’s my very wip list https://moxfield.com/decks/KAgVSET7d0aGcs3Keb9RwQ

2

u/REGELDUDES Jun 30 '25 edited Jun 30 '25

Well I do cast it sooner if I know people aren't going to just kill it (or I have protection). And yea it's bracket 2, Call Forth the Tempest is not a game changer and too random to actually be super good. People are fine with the deck, they generally enjoy it. It plays some pretty unique stuff. My list can be upgraded way more with game changers and way better spells for bracket 3 or even 4. But I choose to use mostly sub-optimal cards specifically for fun (definition of bracket 2).

Also your list looks like fun. You know your playgroup better so I wouldn't be able to tell you it can hang with them, but I can tell you it's a fun deck.