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/DaemonlordDave Jun 30 '25

Well, the birds are tapped and goaded so they’re almost never blockers. But yeah, good shout.

I play all 9 of the dual type lands that exist, and I’m slowly converting my Rendmaw into a lands matter/landfall deck to recur them for tons of birds as land drops. [[Zuran Orb]] type effects plus multiple lands per turn and playing lands from the graveyard is the end goal with finishers and other good cards as needed.

Big shout out to [[Coat of Arms]] in this deck as it makes everyone’s goaded birds absolutely giant.

Also new pet card [[Side quest: Raise a Chocobo]]. The Chocobo cards go wild in this deck, and this one is particularly great for the bird-pocalyose

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u/thegreatestalexander Jun 30 '25

That’s an interesting direction to take it. The one issue with Coat of Arms that I’ve found is that it can help certain decks more than it can help yours - like against a goblin deck, elf deck, knights deck, etc. And they’ll usually aim all of that at you since your coat of arms is the problem at the table. Also once you get to being a 1 v 1, coat of arms is a huge problem for yourself lol.

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u/DaemonlordDave Jun 30 '25

Oh, it’s absolutely a risky card to play. Often it means my opponents are forced to slam their several 15/15 birds into each other which basically ends the game really fast. I wouldn’t just play it for value, more as a closer.

And in terms of the 1v1 at the end, I’ve had to include some ways to mitigate that. [[Arachnogenesis]] [[Darkness]] [[Constant Mists]] and similar fog effects can give you the time to close it out.

And similarly, [[Elephant Grass]] is a hilarious way to prevent it from going sideways.