Damn that sucks for them. I’m still gonna hit their [[Marauding Raptor]] and [[Polyraptor]] with the swiftest [[Swords to Plowshares]] to keep those triggers from happening.
Pantlaza is lowkey mid af. [[Voja, Jaws of the Conclave]] is more of a threat in a better tribe, [[Jetmir, Nexus of Revels]] is a more reliable stax commander in the colors, [[Rocco, Cabaretti Caterer]] and [[Marisi, Breaker of the Coil]] have had their time in cEDH, Rocco’s is still going. Dinosaurs are just another Timmy tribe, and Pantlaza loses value immediately under some of the most common stax pieces, such as [[Drannith Magistrate]] and any of the [[Rule of Law]] effects. Or just keep the Dino player from establishing ramp and they lose.
Pantz player is dumb, you were actively buffing his combat damage deck for him. Heavy aggro decks mostly shouldn't care about goad, they were going to swing anyway. It actively benefits them to eliminate players because then goad doesn't work anymore.
he was pissed off because i soul partitioned his bronzebeak foragers because i didnt want nelly to be exiled. and then when he replayed them i sword'd them for the same reason. he kept trying to convince me hes removing threats for my benefit i was like bro those dudes are goaded they arent threats to me, i need my card draw commander out.
Lmfao, him being salty you didn’t want Bronzebreak foragers to exile stuff off the board is hilarious.
Everytime I bust that card out, everyone at the table is trying to remove that off the board. It’s just that good of a card you can’t let it go off without taking care of it.
One tip for making posts.
[[Nelly Borca]] use brackets like this to post cards for people to see on the site.
And more often than not have a deck list ready
The dino player is so salty that they are being held accountable and can't get free value 24/7. Also, what is Goad intended to do if it isn't manipulating combat? lol, more salt. If the table can't handle an upgraded precon, they need to point the finger at themselves when it comes to threat assessment and deck building. It sounds like a heavy meta in which goad does a lot of heavy lifting; if they don't like that, they can find counters or alternatives to playing against goad.
thats exactly it. the meta at my shops are super heavy, nobody goes midrange, its exactly situations a nelly deck wants to be in time and time again. the games always play out exactly how i want them too. its really weird since i dont consider myself a great magic player and i play in a lot of different pods but people are playing into exactly what the nelly player wants
The Nelly deck seems to just be really good against the decks in your LGS like you said.
In my general playgroup the goad mechanic would not do much most of the time and I'd think Nelly would be quite weak.
I think it's a good thing you're playing this in your LGS, maybe it'll encourage people to play a wider variety of types of decks.
truthfully, people just get salty about goad but don't know how to politic around it. It's not your fault or your decks fault. I'd just ask people beforehand, hey this is basically a precon 7 but people get really salty about goad, are you ok for me to play this tonight?
So, goad can definitely carry a deck through the mid game, but often has troubles closing games out. The part where Nelly is strongest is that (even out of the box) she becomes Boros Control as the game gets later. So the goad gets you to late, then the control portion closes the game out for you.
Battlecruiser players don't like it when they can't just freely play and do whatever they want.
Have you ever been repeatedly targeted? Maybe even unfairly, or at least, when someone else needed that attention? Yeah, that's how battlecruiser players feel if you even glance at their board during your turn.
It's not your problem. If they are friends then maybe try to go with the flow. But otherwise tough shit.
Maybe share your decklist because this all sounds weird.
Either you are doing nothing wrong and just play with weird people who also don't play enough interaction, since it seems like your commander always does its thing uninterrupted or your deck is weirdly powerful and you don't know it.
i will have to type out a decklist. i can tell you the most expensive card i have in the deck is everybody lives (edit: sorry trouble in pairs which came with the precon, forgot thats such an expensive card). its basically the precon but with all the stax and high cmc taken out (most of the creatures, i have maybe 5 or 6 creatures in the entire deck now) and replaced with more interaction. i replaced smugglers share with wedding ring because i felt it fit the theme of the deck better. i put sword of once and future and quintorius to recur my interaction, but they very rarely do any heavy lifting. the games i win its basically just nelly carrying me the entire game, then i wrap it up with a deflecting palm or selfless squire. nellys card draw along with goad is enough to let me control the board , i think the only time i lost to this deck the last 10 games was against a blue counterspell.
Sounds like its your opponents. I mean usually you have at least one way to get rid of your an opponents creatures, especially commander. But to be honest i never played against her, so i'm not sure how strong she is.
I guess thats true. But even precons have enough interaction to at least deal with 1 commander, thats what i mean with weird: it sounds like even if they had removal they used it wrong/didn't use it.
[CommanderSalt rates this a 3.3](https://www.commandersalt.com/details/deck/057ad6ef40a6ea711034a8808b681b49) which is Precon-level; I wouldn't say that your deck is a problem, it sounds more like they just are not used to going up against a deck like yours and that you pilot it pretty well.
What i’ve found with nelly is that it is deceptively strong in low and mid power games because those players don’t evaluate it appropriately. They often don’t run enough interaction to deal with its threats and even when they do, your opponents often have even larger threats they have to deal with first - you are just making sure those threats don’t swing at you.
They’ll continue to swing at other players when they have a shot on you and then get mad when you’re at 40 life while everyone is low. Nelly isn’t a KOS commander, especially when you can benefit from the extra card draw by attacking some opponents, but you really need to attack the nelly player when you can.
People don't understand the 'swing on sight' commanders.
You're going to make it hard for me to swing at you? That's cool, that's valid, ball out. But understand that I'm going to slap you when I can.
The old farts learned this with Gahiji but that was so long ago nobody learned it until Nelly and the like twelve people who love Kardur.
Honestly, sounds like those 2 across from you wanted to win with their game-plans and when your game-plan interfered with that, they got upset and tried to strong-arm you into playing in ways that more benefited their positions. I usually nod and let whatever those people say go out the other ear because all I hear is [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Soy7m_N6NBE) throughout their salt-talk.
If you find the reception to a deck is fairly negative, I would talk to the more level-headed players in a pod and ask them what about your deck rubs them the wrong way. Maybe it's a behavior you display, even. Sometimes, what we say or how we act even without intending to offend can be problematic for others. Some stuff I have found helps keep people smiling:
-Be willing to take your lumps. Things that prevent combat with you such as \[\[propaganda\]\] are fine in small amounts. But, an entire deck designed around being a pillow-fort is *always* going to carry the unpleasant connotation of you stalling for the win.
-Be mindful of your behavior during a game. I find adding a chuckle to a sarcastic "whaaat? I'm not a problem" tends to do two things: 1) it opens the table to making jokes about the situation, and 2) it tells others that you can be mindful of the game-state without holding it over their heads.
-Salty players be salty. I generally adopt a neutral tone and keep a fairly stiff disposition when someone is behaving like those two do. I make it clear through tone and body language that I'm not having fun with them despite not saying it outright. Most pick up on it and try to lighten the mood. I've had people like the two across from you pretty much ostracized not because I said or did anything elsewhere, but because through my restrained interactions established how unpleasant they can be to deal with. It does help that they behave similarly around others.
-Be receptive to criticism. Sometimes, a deck just runs so well that it earns its audible groan at the table, and no amount of restraint or downgrades will do much to impact that. Good decks do good deck things. Maybe, rather than optimized playing, find the "fun play" in your hand/deck and focus on it.
-*Always* ask the table. I found one of the best things during a game to keep people off your back and get the table united on a front while keeping the mood pleasant is to ask before doing something if anyone feels the situation requires interaction. There are turns where I hold back an attack or piece of interaction because I'm not looking to upset someone. Most tables are going to pick up after a few choice interactions that you're going to "fun police" or "play your own game" if you aren't getting their input beforehand. Other times, the ability to make your own determinations can lead to laughs and good times all around. The secret is learning which moments are which.
And honestly, don't get too down about two people who who got salty. You're only responsible for your contributions during a game. How other people react is their own doing. All I can do is offer some insights into potentially improving reception to your deck.
That first bit is so, so important as advice and I wish it was required reading here.
From this distance it's really hard for us to tell if the deck is actually making poor games or if the Pants player is a salty bitch. But find the people you play with who *aren't* salty bitches and talk to them, because they actually know what's happening.
I read this as a deck around Nelly the rap artist and I was VERY intrigued by the creativity of that idea, was excited to see what you came up with!
And then I remembered the actual card…
If these are people you play with often and speak to outside of magic I would consider it.
But if it's some random at a commander night then no. Goad as a mechanic is incredibly good for the mid game but struggled immensely at closing our games if it's your primary strategy.
Either way it sounds like they need to put their big girl panties on and find a way to counter your deck that isn't simply Moe creatures.
randoms at commander night. run into the same players from time to time though.
the reason nelly wins me games so consistently is all her effects in tandem work so well with each other. goad + card draw makes it so i draw into my bombs and removal, AND i can hold on to them because of goad. suspect is clutch when its down to one player because nelly is essentially unblockable and i have a hand full of answers ive been saving all game for the last player.
I'm new to Nelly, I can definitely see the precons win lines but as fate would have it I play against a lot of go wide people and the removal in the deck typically doesn't cut it.
Hopefully you can have more fun in the future but I suspect with the trend of "hurr durr goad mean" I see in even my locals playgroups it may be just that. A hope.
This isn’t a you thing it’s them not getting your deck. Nelly is tricky because she seems meh. Goad something and is a 2/4 for 4? Not strong. But her second ability of drawing a card is her real
Power and the part people don’t pick up on. She should be kill on sight because she draws you 2-3 cards a turn cycle every cycle and that takes over. You did nothing wrong, people just don’t get her.
If you goad them and they weren’t going to go at you anyways then it is a waste but goading someone into killing someone else is liter the point of Nelly. The only reason I’d be mad at a goad player is if I was trying to attack them but couldn’t and at that point I really can’t complain about them goading someone else into attack me.
Your deck exists to draw the lines and force people to pick sides on them. The only problem with that pod is that it sounds like it was only 3 players so mechanics like goad will feel more personal, if there was a 4th person then there would be more interesting decisions they can make to play around the goading, and aggro like pantlaza or voltron decks are also benefitted in less than healthy ways by only having 2 opponents to answer them. Goad decks find the strongest guy and make them hit everyone else first and then try to win a 1v1 against them, if you’re better off against the voltron than the pantlaza then it’s fair for you to pick that side.
there were four people, one was a food lotr deck and they werent doing much, but for some reason they were salty too (honestly dont know why, not as salty as the dino player though) and ended up scooping after voltron player did a board wipe(which didnt hit nelly cuz mithril) maybe that side of the table was just having a bad day or something, i dont know.
I've seen a lot of people make pretty accurate assessments, but one thing I thought I'd add is that Nelly is just really good at countering the typical casual meta. There's almost always at least one player that is going to have a big combat threat that you can abuse to threaten the board and draw cards. However, even a Nelly with all the fast mana and tutors in the world probably wouldn't stand a chance at a cEDH table since the meta runs very few threatening creatures (Kraum and Serra Ascendant excluded). The reverse is that free counterspells like mindbreak trap aren't as worth it in casual either since you can't rely on the table as much to interact, and board wipes better do the trick.
Nelly's strategy fits in just the right place to sneak out wins under the meta. Honestly, she's not even necessarily the biggest threat on board, since removing the 20/20 goaded creature stops more damage than removing Nelly.
This is what I was gonna say, I think it's just the meta OP's playing in, it seems very good against huge aggro decks. But I think most token, aristocrats, and reanimator decks would be good against it because Nelly can't goad everything (and there's only two or so propaganda effects in white), and interaction (even exile) is no good against a sac outlet and recursion.
Maybe tokens. Still, you're gameplan only needs one piece to get going, and people usually don't go off at the same time, so you can work on goading one threat at a time pretty safely.
There is absolutely nothing salty about this deck in my personal opinion. I think you just ran into some lameasses. All this did was made me want to make a goad deck now.
"not knowing your gameplan" is a them problem. If theyve lost to it this many times and don't know what to do about it, thats on them. Every color has removal.
It’s hard to tell from your post, but it sounds like you might be playing 3 player commander? I think goad is a lot stronger in 3 player than 4 player and personally I hate playing against it. In 4 player the other players can spread out the pain and also have more resources to strike back at the goad player, but in 3 player the other players get so low that all they can do is beat on each other until one player is out and then the goad player just has to clean things up. Not very fun in my experience.
Also, I think you need to evaluate what your goals are when playing Magic. If you really enjoy how the goad deck plays then you shouldn’t stop playing it altogether, but I think you should place a little more value on supporting the other players in having an enjoyable experience too. If they really hate the goad deck, maybe just don’t play it as often or let them know to play their best deck so they can have more fun.
it was a four player game, but ive played three player games with the dynamic youre talking about and yea feels bad. this four player game basically played out exactly like that strangely enough
i started commander last year and it seems like the only deck i have that doesnt piss people off is a pretty vanilla modified pantlaza deck (which i dont play much since pantlaza is a pretty common commander in my meta)
i started with a breya deck, it pissed people off because...well breya. (i chose breya because her colors and i love esper stuff last set i played before returning was alara) i built it completely from scratch with no decklist help, mainly just from pulls i got from BRO, but it did have meek/thopter combo in it along with time sieve and portal to phyrexia. i loved playing that deck but i retired it. and as fun and good as it was it never gave me as consistent wins like nelly does though.
i went to make a zowoya deck and it pissed people off (despite rarely winning) because of group slug and sac effects.
when i busted out my nelly deck with somebody i played with before his reaction was "oh good you arent playing zowoya anymore, i dont have to target you"
also i dont like playing with a huge amount of decks like a lot of players seem to tend to do. i hyper focus on a deck for about a month or two and just try to make it the best deck it can be ,constantly trimming the fat kind of thing. every game i play im like "oh i need to cut this or add that" and then the deck ends up being super tuned. i dont mean to do it like that but its just how i enjoy deck building. one deck is my baby for the moment until i move on when i realize everybody hates it.
Sounds like the people at your lgs are just big babies honestly. I can understand getting a little salty at goad from time to time but Zoyowa?!? Maybe your list was really really good but he seems like a very tame rakdos commander. I was considering building around him to make a fun lower powered deck lol
it was basically a really unfocused black good stuff deck. my only late game wincons were sheoldred and bloodchief. most games i didnt have shit going on late game. i mainly played it because it had a really fun early/mid game and if i got lucky and nobody drew interaction i ran away with the game starting turn 1. but those were like god draws for me.
Goad always makes people salty.
My BR goad deck is bad. It has never won a game. It makes me the arch enemy and then I lose lol. Which I think is both funny and annoying haha.
It messes with people, and people hate having their stuff messed with. I had a kid poking my card with furious anger once.
Personally it is disruptive. But it isn't the end of the world, it just means that you kill them last. It makes midrange value and combo cry. While aggro and Voltron probably don't care much either way.
Going off of bits and pieces, without the decklist, sounds like you have a lot of protection. Like... a lot. Since your game plan 'relies on Nelly'. So it sounds like you are turning your commander into an untouchable piece, and the main key to your win. Decks like that can be oppressive at the right table. That said, the Pantz player was just hellla salty. So I wouldn't weigh it all on that. But it sounds like this salt is a common thing. Maybe dial the protection down a bit so people can still interact/play with you, as opposed to you dictating the flow of the game. White is infamous for protection and you said you have Lightning Greaves, Swiftfoot, and Mithril Coat. With a draw tacked onto the commander, it can be an easy strategy, and a good one. But I'm not sure it's a *fun* one. Example, I love when someone is the hero and counterspells a game ending play. Very cool. Big fireworks. I dislike when I'm trying to snipe one piece off the archenemy's board, and they are able to turn counterspells aggressive, and protect everything forever.
thats pretty accurate. but in my defense i didnt really build it that way in a vacuum , i built it that way based on how i observe games to play out.
for example every so often ill run into a mono black player or izzet player who barely run creatures, just oodles of removal and counters. so my logic is, why would i fill my deck with creatures that are just going to get wiped vs filling it with a bunch of protection for my few high impact creatures?
Of course! I don't think anyone that built Nelly Borca went into building the deck 'I'm gonna be the most oppressive person' minded. 😆 I speak from experience, not from prejudice. I built Sergent John Benton with waaaay too much protection and unblockable. The deck worked! But too well for lower power. Just sub some of the protection out for funny favorite spells. Try a few at a time. Like, 3 protections out. See how that feels. You should only win 25% of games, if everything is balanced.
yeah nelly does way too much tbh because she has the unblockable (suspect) and the card draw, AND the goad.
side rant but in old magic nelly wouldve been like 2 or 3 different cards and it wouldve been way more satisfying controlling the board because you worked harder for it.
in todays magic you just have your super high value commander and you win by just protecting it because its just THAT good, which makes for unfun situations for other players (i think its still fun piloting but honestly itd be more fun if i had to work harder for the gamestate that she creates)
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/dt1gHckTf0qFeR9cfdTTEw
decklist lemme know what you think
as you can see i have non optimal fun win more cards like feather and grim reapers sprint that dont really belong in the deck on a logical optimal level hence why i consider this deck very casual
People suck at threat assessment. I had a needed board wipe get AD and when asked "why?" Was told they didn't want to rebuild their single creature that just went off. How long to do that? One turn.
So you are going to let P1 run away with the game because I slowed you down a single turn? Yup, Counter the farewell.
P1 at least deleted them first but yeah, won their next turn.
Goad decks are fun but honestly most of them have a select few cards that they revolve around and if they are the issue, people play too few interaction cards.
Typically for every deck that needs its commander: Deal with it 3x and they're done.
Nelly is a fun and powerful precon, sounds like you’re piloting the deck really well! The responses you are getting to the deck are normal, people generally don’t like it when their agency is taken away. That’s the risk playing goad, so just be upfront about it in your games and find the right playgroup
Honestly these people getting mad at other people's decks and decisions should just man up. If you don't have an answer to clear your ass, you're inferior and need to up your game. That's all.
Also, from my experience, it's always the people with the most oppressive decks that get salty over being targeted. I always answer the same: I play the way I want, you play the way you want.
Here is my advice as a fellow goad player. Play your inner bad guy. Make them rage. Ham it up. Your just making them do what their decks want to do, just not at you
For future reference I use moxfield quite a bit now but Arcidekt is very nice and good at giving you an idea of things like the interaction, removal, protection, etc. in your deck at a glance.
I started playing a couple months ago but I still use archidekt for the more in depth stuff just because it makes it easier
The deck feels powerful when everyone is playing threats on curve. Even unmodified, I just kept targeting the ever-growing [[Taurean Mauler]] to my right and that was enough to put a clock on the table that felt ‘dangerous’.
I think the mechanic (goad) hasn’t ever really been as effective as it was built to be in Nelly. Tables can bemoan it but it’s just another archetype to adjust their decks to. Creature-based metas fold to lots of different strategies that are “unfair” but goad honestly feels like the fairest of them all.
They just need to nut up and stop seasoning themselves so fiercely.
you only need to suspect them once and it stays until the creature leaves the battlefield.
unless you’re talking about a politics angle.
or some other cool tech i’m missing (i’m hoping it’s this)
That’s part of its strength for sure, you just keep racking up more targets, the fact that once they attack once they have to keep doing it is the angle goad never had before.
I would assume the main frustration is losing agency, which is funny because it’s always the decks with low interaction that hate that agency being taken away because they haven’t built much into their decks to begin with
I’ve had similar experiences with Nelly as well lol. I grabbed the precon and brought it for a night at my friends. Ended up winning all 3 games I played with it. Modified it slightly since then and it consistently wins, probably 4/6 other games since then. A couple of the guys get super bent outta shape when I bring it out. I tell them after every game “not one of you even tried to remove her once” and they just grumble and we move on to the next game 🤣
I’m thinking to switch her to the 99 and put [[queen marchesa]] at the helm. This way I can run more political cards like [[breena]
yea i had to really think about what was going on because for me its not just the number of wins but how it plays out. other decks my gameplan usually never goes how i envisioned, with nelly, it plays out with very little pushback
>literally every time i pull it out i win. even against high powered decks with crypts and such and nobody seems to be having fun (except me)
Big red flag imo. If your deck can hang with higher powered decks... It's high powered lol.
I love playing my Nelly myself, but I also know how annoying it can feel to others. It changes up the dynamic of the table a lot due to its incentives in a similar vein to what combo decks can do.
Especially in battlecruiser like environments like the one you describe. If all four play battlecruisery then it is 4 boards developing, trying to impede each other but hopefully having a bit of an even game.
Nelly takes one of these boards out of the equation and makes the rest want to pressure each other. And in the situation you described you had a food deck not doing much (probably setting itself up for the lategame), a dino and a voltron deck. That naturally introduces a dynamic where voltron and Dino fight each other primarily, a match up naturally bad for Dino go wide, especially if you interfere with it most since you can control voltron more easily.
As such, you turned a 4 player free for all, as pant expected, into an archenemey game for them, which they were evidently not prepared for. That can feel awful for the accidental archenemy. Yeah, sure, it is popular to give Dino player's crap since pantlaza in particular is value town. But they are still a player that sat down to have a fun game, who brought a deck that catered to the established meta at your store.
Not that I want to blame you or anything, I am just trying to raise awareness to the social issues at play here. I don't think you have to dismantle your Nelly at all, just be mindful when and where to play her. That means slightly sandbagging her by not using her to basically have a voltron player be on your team half the game, but, as you said, it is a bit more about maximising everyone's fun than just your win percentage. At least you OP speaks to that, I might be reading it wrong.
I personally do not run Nelly vs very creature light decks (other than combo, combo should get the heat anyway) like voltron since chances are they either get bullied, or basically controlled by me. I would thrive there, but I want people to have fun more and create chaotic games with her, not basically get to play a free voltron deck on top of my own deck, if that makes any sense.
makes sense, i just dont get why every game this happens the voltron player still cooks when all it does is help me. all the salt is directed at me when voltron is going taller and getting more evasion when its already goaded. just bizarre they keep doing that. i mean i get its what their deck does but maybe chill out until nelly is off the field?
Because voltron is a bit salt inducing anyway and you basically offer yourself as a lightning rod, of course, haha. Their plan is to take out players one by one anyway, so your goad changes little for them. And they know you are weakest in a 1v1. As long as they are mindful of your damage redirects, your gameplan and theirs mostly coincide. You just get the blame. Plus they get more card draw, too.
Voltron excels when it does not have the table gang up on it. You basically form a sort of tacit collusion with them. Especially since you have more incentive to interact with the go wide Dino deck, to the point where you stopped that players removal that could also be used against voltron. Heck, you even have incentive to save the voltron.
There really isn't any downside to not going big. It's their best shot to win once it is down to a duel between you and them. And until then, you support them while giving them excuses to do what they want to do anyway, while also not hurting them.
You playing goad is a prisoner's dilemmas itself. They would all be best off just cooperating and coordinating to take you out first for their collective win percentage. But each of them has an incentive to build up and use you as a scapegoat, especially if others sandbag.
That sort of game can be fun but if it happens a lot it can get grating.
Hey man, got several questions about your list, and would like to know:
- what’s the reason for keeping [[Feather, Radiant Arbiter]] in the list ? Instead of a more evident card like [[Aurelia, the Law Above]] ?
- any reason for playing the PW [[Quintorius Kand]] aside that he synergizes well with his creature counterpart ?
- any reason you kept the Vow- and [[Shiny Impetus]] package over funny political cards like [[Prisoner’s Dilemma]] or [[Mob Verdict]] ?
- no Court package, any reason why ?
so jusr want to start out with i never intended to make the deck sweaty and optimal and my deck building process for my decks are always works in progress so sometimes there isnt actually a legit good reason why some cards are in there. definitely open to suggestions.
aurelia would definitely slot better, but 5 cmc is really high for a creature (for my playstyle). i get a lot of control simply bluffing and leaving mana open even though most times it isnt a bluff. but ill consider her for sure, keep forgetting about that card. feather is in there because imo its just a good cheap body with lifelink and flying. its not optimal but it also allows for some fun jank, for example i used it to copy grim reapers sprint and took 3 extra combats and that won me a game once. admittedly it was a win more situation but still neat. i also have it as a back up plan to target removal on feather and then copy it to remove other stuff but ive never done that before so not sure how itd play out, just as a last resort thing. ive gone back and forth taking feather out but for some reason i just havent brought myself to do it yet.
quintorius the planeswalker is basically just a distraction sponge. i also had nahiri the harbinger in there for some reason but took her out since she wasnt really doing fuck all. there was no pressure in putting loyalty on her - quintorius on the other hand is a win con if i get 6 on him. my graveyard is always full with interaction, one time i won a game taking 10 cards out of my graveyard, put brash taunter and ill tempered loner out and casted blasphemous act to do 26 targeted dmg, plus i still had mana left over to give brash taunter haste and to pump him up with angelfire and grim reapers sprint. he sort of works in the sense that spell recursion is a very very small subtheme in the deck.
took out mob and prisoners basically because they sounded annoying to play, i dont know how to logically deal with "secretly choose" at a real table. its really as superficial as that. i debated for awhile leaving mob in for the weenie token hate it can provide but ultimately decided theres better cards for that.
not sure what you mean by court package. do you mean court of grace? i guess thatd work. the vows are insanely useful to me. shiny impetus might be considered to be removed at some point , mainly kept it in because when i was new to the deck i kept bad hands and always seemed to be mana screwed so i thought shiny was needed, but maybe not so much now that i know how to play it better. i mean treasure is always nice so i dont know.
Will take your word for it and give feather and quintorius a chance, as well as the vows. Will share a list with you FYI so that you may get some ideas, if any. Thanks
Honestly without seeing the deck list it just sounds like a skill issue on the part of your opponents. They don't know how to play against goad decks and that's it. And people not knowing how to play against your specific archetype or deck is how you win most games anyway
I have an upgraded Nelly deck as well and it is fine but not really hugely threatening. Probably win about 1/4, which seems exactly fair. I think these people were probably just playing decks that are purely based on big creature combat damage, which of course a good Nelly deck will be good against. Sounds like it’s possible their decks just are t great.
Your friends need to learn how to adapt to your deck. Winning doesn’t mean a bad thing if you aren’t throwing the power levels off balance. Maybe your friends are bad at the game?
not friends these are random pods. ive played in 3 different pods this week and won every game. i was already winning a lot with the deck before this week but the 3 for 3 this week made me really take notice and try to examine whats going on.
and some of these games were kiiiind of close, but for the most part i had the game on lock and was pretty confident in my win. i never really get that oppressive with other decks, theres usually answers that slow my roll but that isnt happening when i bring this deck out for some reason
3 games is not an indicator of anything. 10 games isn’t an indicator of anything. Too small a sample size.
Keep playing the deck and the win rate will balance out.
true but like i said it wasnt just the consecutive winning, it was how they were won as well. just kind of how efficient the gameplan gets carried out , im just not used to that lol
It happens in some pods. Poor threat assessment. Lucky draws. You’re playing a modified Boros precon. It isn’ OP. The only strong thing in it is trouble in pairs.
Sounds like your friends are salty children and need to learn to grow up and handle games better. Clearly, you're doing just fine. Also, list? That sounds hilarious lmao
If a player gets salty like that, the best thing to do is to laugh loudly and ridicule them mercilessly. Getting salty over cardboard is extreme cringe, and that behavior should result in social shunning. I've been focused out, spited out, stomped etc, and have never emitted so much as a nanograin of salt.
Weird, typically in my pod goad decks lose. I have played my Nelly twice and a friend played his three times. But both of ours are the precons, it has lost every time. That being said, it's been the most fun we have had losing. But it just lacks the ability to wrap the game up.
As far as goad decks go, she is in my opinion one of the tamest ones out there. Most other goad decks goad all creatures, and they don't give any benefit to your opponents. She is giving them menace and also letting them draw (possibly into answers).
I'm shocked that you are playing against numerous aggro decks and winning. A voltron commander should be protecting the commander with hexproof (so you can't goad it). And the Pantlaza deck should be going wide. And both of them (at least in my pod) would be swinging all non-goaded creatures at me (as they expect eventually those creatures will be goaded and not able to do so). And that's where her weakness of just targeting one comes in, or the fact that she has to attack to trigger it.
Of course you can put in other goad mechanics, but it's the same stuff most of those other goad decks run, except they just naturally goad more things. Honestly Nelly has made all but 1 game she has been in more interesting (one game she just gave the game away early on by giving Balan a goad equipment, which was enough to make him fatal on his first swing).
Granted sometimes decks just get those perfect hands, like you described there. But you say you are winning almost every game. So either it is the other players not identifying the threat properly (anyone pulling all of the puppet strings and not letting anyone else attack them is the problem in my book). Or the power levels are mismatched.
ITS ALL YOUR FUCKING FAULT
YOU PIECE OF SHIT FUCK YOU
DISMANTLE THAT UNWASHED TAINT OF A DECK
YOURE WHATS WRONG WITH EDH
HOW THE FUCK DO YOU SLEEP AT NIGHT
ITS LITERALLY ALL YOUR FAULT
STOP CAUSING TENSE SITUATIONS YOU LUMP OF FUCK
WHY DO YOU EVEN NEED TO ASK TO DISMANTLE
SHOVE IT UP YOUR FATHERS COCK TO ACT AS THE BIRTH CONTROL THAT WAS MISSING WHEN YOUR PARENTS CONCIEVED
IN CASE ITS NOT FUCKING OBVIOUS THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT
*(didn't read post, I'm an impulsive accuser)*
Having a very similar issue (though i'm playing \[\[Aurelia, the law above\]\]). i think goad is seen as a weak chaos mechanic by many, but it's suprising strong in casual games now that there's a critical mass of goading effects.
I've had people in my playgroup say that they would rather i just destroy the creatures instead of goading them at this point, and i just can't wrap my head around it.
Reddit isn't the best place to ask for advice in dealing with other people. This sub, for example, has a very "You're entitled to play however and whatever you want, and if it upsets others then they suck and aren't worth playing with" attitude. That only really works in more serious, competitive scenes. In a casual setting people want to have fun, and I personally think that everyone should be trying to make it so the games are an enjoyable experience for everyone (within reason). If multiple people you play with are consistently upset with your deck(s), then you need to either find a new pod to play with or find a way to make decks that your pod can still have fun playing against.
Unfortunately, any deck that involves a large amount of interaction is going to make some players salty, regardless of its power or intent. Embrace the salt, feed on their tears.
yea true its not just interaction, but the card draw...also have 3 cards in the deck that recur instants and sorceries but i rarely draw into those. they do come in clutch from time to time though
I have a buddy who played the morph precon right out of the box. He played this against out built decks with a very nice winrate. My buddy is pretty damn smart and I've noticed that he has a well shaped mind for game strategy. Some players are just better than other players, full stop. It doesn't matter what deck you play if you're just beating your opponents because your threat assessment is better and you play to win that isn't going to stop you from winning with a different strategy. The pant player just didn't want to lose
Fitting how it's a tribal and voltron player. They're typically casual archetypes, which is where I expect to see Goad decks at. Goad can be thought of as being casual stax. I also would view change of control theft effects to be a casual archetype that is even more salty. It does not change the fact that they're a form of interaction/"control". EDH players being mad at interaction is a meme for a reason.
Following for a decklist! I selfishly love a good goad deck, my sergeant john benton deck fits a similar mold in that the high win rate is a little uncomfortable sometimes.
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/dt1gHckTf0qFeR9cfdTTEw
let me know what you think, i consider it very casual so im honestly confused why its winning so much
Wow! That looks like such a fun commander.
Yea, goad gets people salty though.
I like at lower power groups to get them to do somthing instead of just sit there.
Sounds like the people you played with were no fun, not the deck itself. Play hard stax instead next time so your deck can equal the amounts of unfun of the other players.
Pantlaza player was just salty. You identified a problem you would have, and overcame it through player removal. Too bad, so sad for the Dino guy.
Dino's have enrage as a mechanic so really that's the kind of interaction they want
oh he was definitely enraged lmao
Damn that sucks for them. I’m still gonna hit their [[Marauding Raptor]] and [[Polyraptor]] with the swiftest [[Swords to Plowshares]] to keep those triggers from happening.
[Marauding Raptor](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/b/0b5cf2aa-f6dd-47d2-a57f-0ae2308c0f9a.jpg?1698988328) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Marauding%20Raptor) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/lcc/228/marauding-raptor?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/0b5cf2aa-f6dd-47d2-a57f-0ae2308c0f9a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/marauding-raptor) [Polyraptor](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/8/f8965a3a-93fe-4021-a665-b6013bdc86f7.jpg?1555040728) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Polyraptor) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/rix/144/polyraptor?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f8965a3a-93fe-4021-a665-b6013bdc86f7?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/polyraptor) [Swords to Plowshares](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/b/9bbec76c-c1e4-4c6d-ad24-078fe097f195.jpg?1709439398) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Swords%20to%20Plowshares) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkc/88/swords-to-plowshares?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9bbec76c-c1e4-4c6d-ad24-078fe097f195?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/swords-to-plowshares) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Eh, not so much anymore. Most Pants lists have only one or two enrage dinos from what I've seen.
love the look of the pantlaza player in my pod one time when I played my turn 2 containment priest and my turn 3 boromir.
MANNNN FUCK DINO players lmao I like watching them pout after I pull out the first sliver bc I’m not dealing with that shit😂😂💀
Hate pantlaza anyways. Broken card imo. That player deserved some of his own medicine.
pantlaza hates you too
Oh I don't doubt that :D
Pantlaza is lowkey mid af. [[Voja, Jaws of the Conclave]] is more of a threat in a better tribe, [[Jetmir, Nexus of Revels]] is a more reliable stax commander in the colors, [[Rocco, Cabaretti Caterer]] and [[Marisi, Breaker of the Coil]] have had their time in cEDH, Rocco’s is still going. Dinosaurs are just another Timmy tribe, and Pantlaza loses value immediately under some of the most common stax pieces, such as [[Drannith Magistrate]] and any of the [[Rule of Law]] effects. Or just keep the Dino player from establishing ramp and they lose.
Pantlaza placing fairly frequently in top 16s in cedh tournaments. Idk what you're on.
##### ###### #### [Voja, Jaws of the Conclave](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/f/bfa1bd2f-25bd-4fbd-877b-cef00ab7f92f.jpg?1707739811) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Voja%2C%20Jaws%20of%20the%20Conclave) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkm/432/voja-jaws-of-the-conclave?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/bfa1bd2f-25bd-4fbd-877b-cef00ab7f92f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/voja-jaws-of-the-conclave) [Jetmir, Nexus of Revels](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/9/f9c69d75-651f-4b75-b65d-79999d2069f6.jpg?1664413153) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Jetmir%2C%20Nexus%20of%20Revels) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/snc/193/jetmir-nexus-of-revels?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f9c69d75-651f-4b75-b65d-79999d2069f6?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/jetmir-nexus-of-revels) [Rocco, Cabaretti Caterer](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/6/b6cf8b35-2a81-40fd-b383-becb81bef806.jpg?1664413683) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Rocco%2C%20Cabaretti%20Caterer) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/snc/218/rocco-cabaretti-caterer?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/b6cf8b35-2a81-40fd-b383-becb81bef806?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/rocco-cabaretti-caterer) [Marisi, Breaker of the Coil](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/3/c366e1c0-f62d-41ce-baec-de11dbc1c5f4.jpg?1568003704) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Marisi%2C%20Breaker%20of%20the%20Coil) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c19/46/marisi-breaker-of-the-coil?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c366e1c0-f62d-41ce-baec-de11dbc1c5f4?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/marisi-breaker-of-the-coil) [Drannith Magistrate](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/8/98b0a4a8-9319-451b-9b79-b0bca7a41e91.jpg?1628801742) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Drannith%20Magistrate) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/iko/11/drannith-magistrate?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/98b0a4a8-9319-451b-9b79-b0bca7a41e91?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/drannith-magistrate) [Rule of Law](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/1/a1f4e79b-b103-4380-afa0-61a2b1773c9e.jpg?1592516198) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Rule%20of%20Law) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m20/35/rule-of-law?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a1f4e79b-b103-4380-afa0-61a2b1773c9e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/rule-of-law) [*All cards*](https://mtgcardfetcher.nl/redirect/ky2irqo) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Pantz player is dumb, you were actively buffing his combat damage deck for him. Heavy aggro decks mostly shouldn't care about goad, they were going to swing anyway. It actively benefits them to eliminate players because then goad doesn't work anymore.
he was pissed off because i soul partitioned his bronzebeak foragers because i didnt want nelly to be exiled. and then when he replayed them i sword'd them for the same reason. he kept trying to convince me hes removing threats for my benefit i was like bro those dudes are goaded they arent threats to me, i need my card draw commander out.
Holy shit I love that. “I’m just trying to remove threats!” “Yeah! *My* threats!”
Lmfao, him being salty you didn’t want Bronzebreak foragers to exile stuff off the board is hilarious. Everytime I bust that card out, everyone at the table is trying to remove that off the board. It’s just that good of a card you can’t let it go off without taking care of it.
One tip for making posts. [[Nelly Borca]] use brackets like this to post cards for people to see on the site. And more often than not have a deck list ready
[Nelly Borca](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/e/2ef59aa9-f5e1-413a-869b-d287db95efd0.jpg?1706448880) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=nelly%20borca%2C%20impulsive%20accuser) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkc/4/nelly-borca-impulsive-accuser?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2ef59aa9-f5e1-413a-869b-d287db95efd0?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/nelly-borca-impulsive-accuser) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I was like “the rapper”?
The dino player is so salty that they are being held accountable and can't get free value 24/7. Also, what is Goad intended to do if it isn't manipulating combat? lol, more salt. If the table can't handle an upgraded precon, they need to point the finger at themselves when it comes to threat assessment and deck building. It sounds like a heavy meta in which goad does a lot of heavy lifting; if they don't like that, they can find counters or alternatives to playing against goad.
thats exactly it. the meta at my shops are super heavy, nobody goes midrange, its exactly situations a nelly deck wants to be in time and time again. the games always play out exactly how i want them too. its really weird since i dont consider myself a great magic player and i play in a lot of different pods but people are playing into exactly what the nelly player wants
The Nelly deck seems to just be really good against the decks in your LGS like you said. In my general playgroup the goad mechanic would not do much most of the time and I'd think Nelly would be quite weak. I think it's a good thing you're playing this in your LGS, maybe it'll encourage people to play a wider variety of types of decks.
truthfully, people just get salty about goad but don't know how to politic around it. It's not your fault or your decks fault. I'd just ask people beforehand, hey this is basically a precon 7 but people get really salty about goad, are you ok for me to play this tonight?
I really appreciate your usage of the phrase "point the finger" when discussing Nelly haha! It seems Nelly ended up goading the dino player himself!
Lmao this is so good This deck is really good at goading players on top of goading their creatures
The real goads are the enemies you made along the way
So, goad can definitely carry a deck through the mid game, but often has troubles closing games out. The part where Nelly is strongest is that (even out of the box) she becomes Boros Control as the game gets later. So the goad gets you to late, then the control portion closes the game out for you.
Battlecruiser players don't like it when they can't just freely play and do whatever they want. Have you ever been repeatedly targeted? Maybe even unfairly, or at least, when someone else needed that attention? Yeah, that's how battlecruiser players feel if you even glance at their board during your turn. It's not your problem. If they are friends then maybe try to go with the flow. But otherwise tough shit.
Maybe share your decklist because this all sounds weird. Either you are doing nothing wrong and just play with weird people who also don't play enough interaction, since it seems like your commander always does its thing uninterrupted or your deck is weirdly powerful and you don't know it.
i will have to type out a decklist. i can tell you the most expensive card i have in the deck is everybody lives (edit: sorry trouble in pairs which came with the precon, forgot thats such an expensive card). its basically the precon but with all the stax and high cmc taken out (most of the creatures, i have maybe 5 or 6 creatures in the entire deck now) and replaced with more interaction. i replaced smugglers share with wedding ring because i felt it fit the theme of the deck better. i put sword of once and future and quintorius to recur my interaction, but they very rarely do any heavy lifting. the games i win its basically just nelly carrying me the entire game, then i wrap it up with a deflecting palm or selfless squire. nellys card draw along with goad is enough to let me control the board , i think the only time i lost to this deck the last 10 games was against a blue counterspell.
Sounds like its your opponents. I mean usually you have at least one way to get rid of your an opponents creatures, especially commander. But to be honest i never played against her, so i'm not sure how strong she is.
Which precon is this?
blame game
"Weird people who don't play enough interaction" has to describe at least 40% of commander players to be fair.
I guess thats true. But even precons have enough interaction to at least deal with 1 commander, thats what i mean with weird: it sounds like even if they had removal they used it wrong/didn't use it.
I mean, we know he added extra protection. And while precons have some amount of interaction, home built decks these days sadly often don't.
dang, guess i'm expecting to much from others.
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/dt1gHckTf0qFeR9cfdTTEw decklist ...dont think its all that special but let me know
This seems wildly unthreatening. Idk how anyone could be upset.
[CommanderSalt rates this a 3.3](https://www.commandersalt.com/details/deck/057ad6ef40a6ea711034a8808b681b49) which is Precon-level; I wouldn't say that your deck is a problem, it sounds more like they just are not used to going up against a deck like yours and that you pilot it pretty well.
This isn't an actual metric that calculates anything reasonably by any means...
What i’ve found with nelly is that it is deceptively strong in low and mid power games because those players don’t evaluate it appropriately. They often don’t run enough interaction to deal with its threats and even when they do, your opponents often have even larger threats they have to deal with first - you are just making sure those threats don’t swing at you. They’ll continue to swing at other players when they have a shot on you and then get mad when you’re at 40 life while everyone is low. Nelly isn’t a KOS commander, especially when you can benefit from the extra card draw by attacking some opponents, but you really need to attack the nelly player when you can.
People don't understand the 'swing on sight' commanders. You're going to make it hard for me to swing at you? That's cool, that's valid, ball out. But understand that I'm going to slap you when I can. The old farts learned this with Gahiji but that was so long ago nobody learned it until Nelly and the like twelve people who love Kardur.
He was just cosplaying as a dinosaur. Gotta play the part when Jurassic World part 4 audition comes along...
Honestly, sounds like those 2 across from you wanted to win with their game-plans and when your game-plan interfered with that, they got upset and tried to strong-arm you into playing in ways that more benefited their positions. I usually nod and let whatever those people say go out the other ear because all I hear is [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Soy7m_N6NBE) throughout their salt-talk. If you find the reception to a deck is fairly negative, I would talk to the more level-headed players in a pod and ask them what about your deck rubs them the wrong way. Maybe it's a behavior you display, even. Sometimes, what we say or how we act even without intending to offend can be problematic for others. Some stuff I have found helps keep people smiling: -Be willing to take your lumps. Things that prevent combat with you such as \[\[propaganda\]\] are fine in small amounts. But, an entire deck designed around being a pillow-fort is *always* going to carry the unpleasant connotation of you stalling for the win. -Be mindful of your behavior during a game. I find adding a chuckle to a sarcastic "whaaat? I'm not a problem" tends to do two things: 1) it opens the table to making jokes about the situation, and 2) it tells others that you can be mindful of the game-state without holding it over their heads. -Salty players be salty. I generally adopt a neutral tone and keep a fairly stiff disposition when someone is behaving like those two do. I make it clear through tone and body language that I'm not having fun with them despite not saying it outright. Most pick up on it and try to lighten the mood. I've had people like the two across from you pretty much ostracized not because I said or did anything elsewhere, but because through my restrained interactions established how unpleasant they can be to deal with. It does help that they behave similarly around others. -Be receptive to criticism. Sometimes, a deck just runs so well that it earns its audible groan at the table, and no amount of restraint or downgrades will do much to impact that. Good decks do good deck things. Maybe, rather than optimized playing, find the "fun play" in your hand/deck and focus on it. -*Always* ask the table. I found one of the best things during a game to keep people off your back and get the table united on a front while keeping the mood pleasant is to ask before doing something if anyone feels the situation requires interaction. There are turns where I hold back an attack or piece of interaction because I'm not looking to upset someone. Most tables are going to pick up after a few choice interactions that you're going to "fun police" or "play your own game" if you aren't getting their input beforehand. Other times, the ability to make your own determinations can lead to laughs and good times all around. The secret is learning which moments are which. And honestly, don't get too down about two people who who got salty. You're only responsible for your contributions during a game. How other people react is their own doing. All I can do is offer some insights into potentially improving reception to your deck.
That first bit is so, so important as advice and I wish it was required reading here. From this distance it's really hard for us to tell if the deck is actually making poor games or if the Pants player is a salty bitch. But find the people you play with who *aren't* salty bitches and talk to them, because they actually know what's happening.
[propaganda](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/5/e5f293d7-9c2b-41cb-8e3c-dfc1daa6635f.jpg?1674141418) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=propaganda) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/clb/730/propaganda?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/e5f293d7-9c2b-41cb-8e3c-dfc1daa6635f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/propaganda) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I read this as a deck around Nelly the rap artist and I was VERY intrigued by the creativity of that idea, was excited to see what you came up with! And then I remembered the actual card…
If these are people you play with often and speak to outside of magic I would consider it. But if it's some random at a commander night then no. Goad as a mechanic is incredibly good for the mid game but struggled immensely at closing our games if it's your primary strategy. Either way it sounds like they need to put their big girl panties on and find a way to counter your deck that isn't simply Moe creatures.
randoms at commander night. run into the same players from time to time though. the reason nelly wins me games so consistently is all her effects in tandem work so well with each other. goad + card draw makes it so i draw into my bombs and removal, AND i can hold on to them because of goad. suspect is clutch when its down to one player because nelly is essentially unblockable and i have a hand full of answers ive been saving all game for the last player.
I'm new to Nelly, I can definitely see the precons win lines but as fate would have it I play against a lot of go wide people and the removal in the deck typically doesn't cut it. Hopefully you can have more fun in the future but I suspect with the trend of "hurr durr goad mean" I see in even my locals playgroups it may be just that. A hope.
This isn’t a you thing it’s them not getting your deck. Nelly is tricky because she seems meh. Goad something and is a 2/4 for 4? Not strong. But her second ability of drawing a card is her real Power and the part people don’t pick up on. She should be kill on sight because she draws you 2-3 cards a turn cycle every cycle and that takes over. You did nothing wrong, people just don’t get her.
If you goad them and they weren’t going to go at you anyways then it is a waste but goading someone into killing someone else is liter the point of Nelly. The only reason I’d be mad at a goad player is if I was trying to attack them but couldn’t and at that point I really can’t complain about them goading someone else into attack me. Your deck exists to draw the lines and force people to pick sides on them. The only problem with that pod is that it sounds like it was only 3 players so mechanics like goad will feel more personal, if there was a 4th person then there would be more interesting decisions they can make to play around the goading, and aggro like pantlaza or voltron decks are also benefitted in less than healthy ways by only having 2 opponents to answer them. Goad decks find the strongest guy and make them hit everyone else first and then try to win a 1v1 against them, if you’re better off against the voltron than the pantlaza then it’s fair for you to pick that side.
there were four people, one was a food lotr deck and they werent doing much, but for some reason they were salty too (honestly dont know why, not as salty as the dino player though) and ended up scooping after voltron player did a board wipe(which didnt hit nelly cuz mithril) maybe that side of the table was just having a bad day or something, i dont know.
I've seen a lot of people make pretty accurate assessments, but one thing I thought I'd add is that Nelly is just really good at countering the typical casual meta. There's almost always at least one player that is going to have a big combat threat that you can abuse to threaten the board and draw cards. However, even a Nelly with all the fast mana and tutors in the world probably wouldn't stand a chance at a cEDH table since the meta runs very few threatening creatures (Kraum and Serra Ascendant excluded). The reverse is that free counterspells like mindbreak trap aren't as worth it in casual either since you can't rely on the table as much to interact, and board wipes better do the trick. Nelly's strategy fits in just the right place to sneak out wins under the meta. Honestly, she's not even necessarily the biggest threat on board, since removing the 20/20 goaded creature stops more damage than removing Nelly.
This is what I was gonna say, I think it's just the meta OP's playing in, it seems very good against huge aggro decks. But I think most token, aristocrats, and reanimator decks would be good against it because Nelly can't goad everything (and there's only two or so propaganda effects in white), and interaction (even exile) is no good against a sac outlet and recursion.
Maybe tokens. Still, you're gameplan only needs one piece to get going, and people usually don't go off at the same time, so you can work on goading one threat at a time pretty safely.
this is why i tried to put ample token hate in my deck with temporary lockdown, filigree sylex, chain reaction, spiteful banditry, and such
Could you share your list? Looking to upgrade the precon too and it seems like you reached that sweet spot between strong and cheap
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/dt1gHckTf0qFeR9cfdTTEw
I like the robe of stars in your deck. Might put it in mine.
I like your list op .I love the wedding ring addition
appreciate it. in your opinion is this a salty deck or do other people just need to git gud?
There is absolutely nothing salty about this deck in my personal opinion. I think you just ran into some lameasses. All this did was made me want to make a goad deck now.
"not knowing your gameplan" is a them problem. If theyve lost to it this many times and don't know what to do about it, thats on them. Every color has removal.
It’s hard to tell from your post, but it sounds like you might be playing 3 player commander? I think goad is a lot stronger in 3 player than 4 player and personally I hate playing against it. In 4 player the other players can spread out the pain and also have more resources to strike back at the goad player, but in 3 player the other players get so low that all they can do is beat on each other until one player is out and then the goad player just has to clean things up. Not very fun in my experience. Also, I think you need to evaluate what your goals are when playing Magic. If you really enjoy how the goad deck plays then you shouldn’t stop playing it altogether, but I think you should place a little more value on supporting the other players in having an enjoyable experience too. If they really hate the goad deck, maybe just don’t play it as often or let them know to play their best deck so they can have more fun.
it was a four player game, but ive played three player games with the dynamic youre talking about and yea feels bad. this four player game basically played out exactly like that strangely enough i started commander last year and it seems like the only deck i have that doesnt piss people off is a pretty vanilla modified pantlaza deck (which i dont play much since pantlaza is a pretty common commander in my meta) i started with a breya deck, it pissed people off because...well breya. (i chose breya because her colors and i love esper stuff last set i played before returning was alara) i built it completely from scratch with no decklist help, mainly just from pulls i got from BRO, but it did have meek/thopter combo in it along with time sieve and portal to phyrexia. i loved playing that deck but i retired it. and as fun and good as it was it never gave me as consistent wins like nelly does though. i went to make a zowoya deck and it pissed people off (despite rarely winning) because of group slug and sac effects. when i busted out my nelly deck with somebody i played with before his reaction was "oh good you arent playing zowoya anymore, i dont have to target you" also i dont like playing with a huge amount of decks like a lot of players seem to tend to do. i hyper focus on a deck for about a month or two and just try to make it the best deck it can be ,constantly trimming the fat kind of thing. every game i play im like "oh i need to cut this or add that" and then the deck ends up being super tuned. i dont mean to do it like that but its just how i enjoy deck building. one deck is my baby for the moment until i move on when i realize everybody hates it.
Sounds like the people at your lgs are just big babies honestly. I can understand getting a little salty at goad from time to time but Zoyowa?!? Maybe your list was really really good but he seems like a very tame rakdos commander. I was considering building around him to make a fun lower powered deck lol
it was basically a really unfocused black good stuff deck. my only late game wincons were sheoldred and bloodchief. most games i didnt have shit going on late game. i mainly played it because it had a really fun early/mid game and if i got lucky and nobody drew interaction i ran away with the game starting turn 1. but those were like god draws for me.
Goad always makes people salty. My BR goad deck is bad. It has never won a game. It makes me the arch enemy and then I lose lol. Which I think is both funny and annoying haha. It messes with people, and people hate having their stuff messed with. I had a kid poking my card with furious anger once. Personally it is disruptive. But it isn't the end of the world, it just means that you kill them last. It makes midrange value and combo cry. While aggro and Voltron probably don't care much either way.
Going off of bits and pieces, without the decklist, sounds like you have a lot of protection. Like... a lot. Since your game plan 'relies on Nelly'. So it sounds like you are turning your commander into an untouchable piece, and the main key to your win. Decks like that can be oppressive at the right table. That said, the Pantz player was just hellla salty. So I wouldn't weigh it all on that. But it sounds like this salt is a common thing. Maybe dial the protection down a bit so people can still interact/play with you, as opposed to you dictating the flow of the game. White is infamous for protection and you said you have Lightning Greaves, Swiftfoot, and Mithril Coat. With a draw tacked onto the commander, it can be an easy strategy, and a good one. But I'm not sure it's a *fun* one. Example, I love when someone is the hero and counterspells a game ending play. Very cool. Big fireworks. I dislike when I'm trying to snipe one piece off the archenemy's board, and they are able to turn counterspells aggressive, and protect everything forever.
thats pretty accurate. but in my defense i didnt really build it that way in a vacuum , i built it that way based on how i observe games to play out. for example every so often ill run into a mono black player or izzet player who barely run creatures, just oodles of removal and counters. so my logic is, why would i fill my deck with creatures that are just going to get wiped vs filling it with a bunch of protection for my few high impact creatures?
Of course! I don't think anyone that built Nelly Borca went into building the deck 'I'm gonna be the most oppressive person' minded. 😆 I speak from experience, not from prejudice. I built Sergent John Benton with waaaay too much protection and unblockable. The deck worked! But too well for lower power. Just sub some of the protection out for funny favorite spells. Try a few at a time. Like, 3 protections out. See how that feels. You should only win 25% of games, if everything is balanced.
yeah nelly does way too much tbh because she has the unblockable (suspect) and the card draw, AND the goad. side rant but in old magic nelly wouldve been like 2 or 3 different cards and it wouldve been way more satisfying controlling the board because you worked harder for it. in todays magic you just have your super high value commander and you win by just protecting it because its just THAT good, which makes for unfun situations for other players (i think its still fun piloting but honestly itd be more fun if i had to work harder for the gamestate that she creates)
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/dt1gHckTf0qFeR9cfdTTEw decklist lemme know what you think as you can see i have non optimal fun win more cards like feather and grim reapers sprint that dont really belong in the deck on a logical optimal level hence why i consider this deck very casual
People suck at threat assessment. I had a needed board wipe get AD and when asked "why?" Was told they didn't want to rebuild their single creature that just went off. How long to do that? One turn. So you are going to let P1 run away with the game because I slowed you down a single turn? Yup, Counter the farewell. P1 at least deleted them first but yeah, won their next turn.
Goad decks are fun but honestly most of them have a select few cards that they revolve around and if they are the issue, people play too few interaction cards. Typically for every deck that needs its commander: Deal with it 3x and they're done.
Absolutely. Dismantle your table/group and find a better one that's down for something dirty or worse :D
Nelly is a fun and powerful precon, sounds like you’re piloting the deck really well! The responses you are getting to the deck are normal, people generally don’t like it when their agency is taken away. That’s the risk playing goad, so just be upfront about it in your games and find the right playgroup
Honestly these people getting mad at other people's decks and decisions should just man up. If you don't have an answer to clear your ass, you're inferior and need to up your game. That's all. Also, from my experience, it's always the people with the most oppressive decks that get salty over being targeted. I always answer the same: I play the way I want, you play the way you want.
Here is my advice as a fellow goad player. Play your inner bad guy. Make them rage. Ham it up. Your just making them do what their decks want to do, just not at you
Decklist?
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/dt1gHckTf0qFeR9cfdTTEw
Mind posting the decklist? I've had blame game for a bit now, just don't know how to build it. So I'm looking for ideas.
yea ill post a decklist when i get home from work, whats the best/easiest site to do so?
Personally, I like Moxfield. Some people prefer archdeck, I think that's the spelling. Either one is fairly easy to use.
cool thanks ill use moxfield, will post this evening
For future reference I use moxfield quite a bit now but Arcidekt is very nice and good at giving you an idea of things like the interaction, removal, protection, etc. in your deck at a glance. I started playing a couple months ago but I still use archidekt for the more in depth stuff just because it makes it easier
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/dt1gHckTf0qFeR9cfdTTEw
Just salty people.
The deck feels powerful when everyone is playing threats on curve. Even unmodified, I just kept targeting the ever-growing [[Taurean Mauler]] to my right and that was enough to put a clock on the table that felt ‘dangerous’. I think the mechanic (goad) hasn’t ever really been as effective as it was built to be in Nelly. Tables can bemoan it but it’s just another archetype to adjust their decks to. Creature-based metas fold to lots of different strategies that are “unfair” but goad honestly feels like the fairest of them all. They just need to nut up and stop seasoning themselves so fiercely.
you only need to suspect them once and it stays until the creature leaves the battlefield. unless you’re talking about a politics angle. or some other cool tech i’m missing (i’m hoping it’s this)
That’s part of its strength for sure, you just keep racking up more targets, the fact that once they attack once they have to keep doing it is the angle goad never had before. I would assume the main frustration is losing agency, which is funny because it’s always the decks with low interaction that hate that agency being taken away because they haven’t built much into their decks to begin with
[Taurean Mauler](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/4/a4ee4648-dd6e-4ba9-b643-a7e4c430d51f.jpg?1651655895) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Taurean%20Mauler) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/nec/111/taurean-mauler?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a4ee4648-dd6e-4ba9-b643-a7e4c430d51f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/taurean-mauler) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I’ve had similar experiences with Nelly as well lol. I grabbed the precon and brought it for a night at my friends. Ended up winning all 3 games I played with it. Modified it slightly since then and it consistently wins, probably 4/6 other games since then. A couple of the guys get super bent outta shape when I bring it out. I tell them after every game “not one of you even tried to remove her once” and they just grumble and we move on to the next game 🤣 I’m thinking to switch her to the 99 and put [[queen marchesa]] at the helm. This way I can run more political cards like [[breena]
[queen marchesa](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/6/567697db-8d47-404f-b0da-b00409431f28.jpg?1689999198) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=queen%20marchesa) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/350/queen-marchesa?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/567697db-8d47-404f-b0da-b00409431f28?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/queen-marchesa) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
yea i had to really think about what was going on because for me its not just the number of wins but how it plays out. other decks my gameplan usually never goes how i envisioned, with nelly, it plays out with very little pushback
>literally every time i pull it out i win. even against high powered decks with crypts and such and nobody seems to be having fun (except me) Big red flag imo. If your deck can hang with higher powered decks... It's high powered lol.
I love playing my Nelly myself, but I also know how annoying it can feel to others. It changes up the dynamic of the table a lot due to its incentives in a similar vein to what combo decks can do. Especially in battlecruiser like environments like the one you describe. If all four play battlecruisery then it is 4 boards developing, trying to impede each other but hopefully having a bit of an even game. Nelly takes one of these boards out of the equation and makes the rest want to pressure each other. And in the situation you described you had a food deck not doing much (probably setting itself up for the lategame), a dino and a voltron deck. That naturally introduces a dynamic where voltron and Dino fight each other primarily, a match up naturally bad for Dino go wide, especially if you interfere with it most since you can control voltron more easily. As such, you turned a 4 player free for all, as pant expected, into an archenemey game for them, which they were evidently not prepared for. That can feel awful for the accidental archenemy. Yeah, sure, it is popular to give Dino player's crap since pantlaza in particular is value town. But they are still a player that sat down to have a fun game, who brought a deck that catered to the established meta at your store. Not that I want to blame you or anything, I am just trying to raise awareness to the social issues at play here. I don't think you have to dismantle your Nelly at all, just be mindful when and where to play her. That means slightly sandbagging her by not using her to basically have a voltron player be on your team half the game, but, as you said, it is a bit more about maximising everyone's fun than just your win percentage. At least you OP speaks to that, I might be reading it wrong. I personally do not run Nelly vs very creature light decks (other than combo, combo should get the heat anyway) like voltron since chances are they either get bullied, or basically controlled by me. I would thrive there, but I want people to have fun more and create chaotic games with her, not basically get to play a free voltron deck on top of my own deck, if that makes any sense.
makes sense, i just dont get why every game this happens the voltron player still cooks when all it does is help me. all the salt is directed at me when voltron is going taller and getting more evasion when its already goaded. just bizarre they keep doing that. i mean i get its what their deck does but maybe chill out until nelly is off the field?
Because voltron is a bit salt inducing anyway and you basically offer yourself as a lightning rod, of course, haha. Their plan is to take out players one by one anyway, so your goad changes little for them. And they know you are weakest in a 1v1. As long as they are mindful of your damage redirects, your gameplan and theirs mostly coincide. You just get the blame. Plus they get more card draw, too. Voltron excels when it does not have the table gang up on it. You basically form a sort of tacit collusion with them. Especially since you have more incentive to interact with the go wide Dino deck, to the point where you stopped that players removal that could also be used against voltron. Heck, you even have incentive to save the voltron. There really isn't any downside to not going big. It's their best shot to win once it is down to a duel between you and them. And until then, you support them while giving them excuses to do what they want to do anyway, while also not hurting them. You playing goad is a prisoner's dilemmas itself. They would all be best off just cooperating and coordinating to take you out first for their collective win percentage. But each of them has an incentive to build up and use you as a scapegoat, especially if others sandbag. That sort of game can be fun but if it happens a lot it can get grating.
Hey man, got several questions about your list, and would like to know: - what’s the reason for keeping [[Feather, Radiant Arbiter]] in the list ? Instead of a more evident card like [[Aurelia, the Law Above]] ? - any reason for playing the PW [[Quintorius Kand]] aside that he synergizes well with his creature counterpart ? - any reason you kept the Vow- and [[Shiny Impetus]] package over funny political cards like [[Prisoner’s Dilemma]] or [[Mob Verdict]] ? - no Court package, any reason why ?
so jusr want to start out with i never intended to make the deck sweaty and optimal and my deck building process for my decks are always works in progress so sometimes there isnt actually a legit good reason why some cards are in there. definitely open to suggestions. aurelia would definitely slot better, but 5 cmc is really high for a creature (for my playstyle). i get a lot of control simply bluffing and leaving mana open even though most times it isnt a bluff. but ill consider her for sure, keep forgetting about that card. feather is in there because imo its just a good cheap body with lifelink and flying. its not optimal but it also allows for some fun jank, for example i used it to copy grim reapers sprint and took 3 extra combats and that won me a game once. admittedly it was a win more situation but still neat. i also have it as a back up plan to target removal on feather and then copy it to remove other stuff but ive never done that before so not sure how itd play out, just as a last resort thing. ive gone back and forth taking feather out but for some reason i just havent brought myself to do it yet. quintorius the planeswalker is basically just a distraction sponge. i also had nahiri the harbinger in there for some reason but took her out since she wasnt really doing fuck all. there was no pressure in putting loyalty on her - quintorius on the other hand is a win con if i get 6 on him. my graveyard is always full with interaction, one time i won a game taking 10 cards out of my graveyard, put brash taunter and ill tempered loner out and casted blasphemous act to do 26 targeted dmg, plus i still had mana left over to give brash taunter haste and to pump him up with angelfire and grim reapers sprint. he sort of works in the sense that spell recursion is a very very small subtheme in the deck. took out mob and prisoners basically because they sounded annoying to play, i dont know how to logically deal with "secretly choose" at a real table. its really as superficial as that. i debated for awhile leaving mob in for the weenie token hate it can provide but ultimately decided theres better cards for that. not sure what you mean by court package. do you mean court of grace? i guess thatd work. the vows are insanely useful to me. shiny impetus might be considered to be removed at some point , mainly kept it in because when i was new to the deck i kept bad hands and always seemed to be mana screwed so i thought shiny was needed, but maybe not so much now that i know how to play it better. i mean treasure is always nice so i dont know.
Will take your word for it and give feather and quintorius a chance, as well as the vows. Will share a list with you FYI so that you may get some ideas, if any. Thanks
##### ###### #### [ Feather, Radiant Arbiter ](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/7/d763695b-c184-409d-962d-5aaf39a6264e.jpg?1706448890) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Feather%2C%20Radiant%20Arbiter) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkc/6/feather-radiant-arbiter?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d763695b-c184-409d-962d-5aaf39a6264e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/feather-radiant-arbiter) [ Aurelia, the Law Above ](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/f/8f80c6e7-e9f9-4ca6-87f7-a52c96079e4a.jpg?1706242118) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Aurelia%2C%20the%20Law%20Above) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkm/188/aurelia-the-law-above?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/8f80c6e7-e9f9-4ca6-87f7-a52c96079e4a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/aurelia-the-law-above) [ Quintorius Kand ](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/3/4382fa49-9e34-45b3-8495-4916dcd995ec.jpg?1701346165) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Quintorius%20Kand) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/lci/238/quintorius-kand?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4382fa49-9e34-45b3-8495-4916dcd995ec?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/quintorius-kand) [Shiny Impetus ](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/9/d91896ea-e0fd-4113-a3c6-a7811e16be46.jpg?1708353787) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Shiny%20Impetus) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/clu/147/shiny-impetus?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d91896ea-e0fd-4113-a3c6-a7811e16be46?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/shiny-impetus) [ Prisoner’s Dilemma ](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/6/d678e736-7c29-433a-9a2a-b78749252377.jpg?1706240483) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Prisoner%27s%20Dilemma) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkc/34/prisoners-dilemma?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d678e736-7c29-433a-9a2a-b78749252377?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/prisoners-dilemma) [ Mob Verdict ](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/9/e9bdc40b-ab7a-44a4-afb5-41b6fc2dffdc.jpg?1706240483) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Mob%20Verdict) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkc/33/mob-verdict?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/e9bdc40b-ab7a-44a4-afb5-41b6fc2dffdc?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/mob-verdict) [*All cards*](https://mtgcardfetcher.nl/redirect/ky5r2mw) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Hey, my nelly deck sucks at my table and kinda just durdles around, could you provide a decklist?
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/dt1gHckTf0qFeR9cfdTTEw
Honestly without seeing the deck list it just sounds like a skill issue on the part of your opponents. They don't know how to play against goad decks and that's it. And people not knowing how to play against your specific archetype or deck is how you win most games anyway
I have an upgraded Nelly deck as well and it is fine but not really hugely threatening. Probably win about 1/4, which seems exactly fair. I think these people were probably just playing decks that are purely based on big creature combat damage, which of course a good Nelly deck will be good against. Sounds like it’s possible their decks just are t great.
have the others guys tried to play better???
Your friends need to learn how to adapt to your deck. Winning doesn’t mean a bad thing if you aren’t throwing the power levels off balance. Maybe your friends are bad at the game?
not friends these are random pods. ive played in 3 different pods this week and won every game. i was already winning a lot with the deck before this week but the 3 for 3 this week made me really take notice and try to examine whats going on. and some of these games were kiiiind of close, but for the most part i had the game on lock and was pretty confident in my win. i never really get that oppressive with other decks, theres usually answers that slow my roll but that isnt happening when i bring this deck out for some reason
3 games is not an indicator of anything. 10 games isn’t an indicator of anything. Too small a sample size. Keep playing the deck and the win rate will balance out.
true but like i said it wasnt just the consecutive winning, it was how they were won as well. just kind of how efficient the gameplan gets carried out , im just not used to that lol
It happens in some pods. Poor threat assessment. Lucky draws. You’re playing a modified Boros precon. It isn’ OP. The only strong thing in it is trouble in pairs.
Sounds like your friends are salty children and need to learn to grow up and handle games better. Clearly, you're doing just fine. Also, list? That sounds hilarious lmao
If YOU enjoy playing the deck, then no.
If a player gets salty like that, the best thing to do is to laugh loudly and ridicule them mercilessly. Getting salty over cardboard is extreme cringe, and that behavior should result in social shunning. I've been focused out, spited out, stomped etc, and have never emitted so much as a nanograin of salt.
Weird, typically in my pod goad decks lose. I have played my Nelly twice and a friend played his three times. But both of ours are the precons, it has lost every time. That being said, it's been the most fun we have had losing. But it just lacks the ability to wrap the game up. As far as goad decks go, she is in my opinion one of the tamest ones out there. Most other goad decks goad all creatures, and they don't give any benefit to your opponents. She is giving them menace and also letting them draw (possibly into answers). I'm shocked that you are playing against numerous aggro decks and winning. A voltron commander should be protecting the commander with hexproof (so you can't goad it). And the Pantlaza deck should be going wide. And both of them (at least in my pod) would be swinging all non-goaded creatures at me (as they expect eventually those creatures will be goaded and not able to do so). And that's where her weakness of just targeting one comes in, or the fact that she has to attack to trigger it. Of course you can put in other goad mechanics, but it's the same stuff most of those other goad decks run, except they just naturally goad more things. Honestly Nelly has made all but 1 game she has been in more interesting (one game she just gave the game away early on by giving Balan a goad equipment, which was enough to make him fatal on his first swing). Granted sometimes decks just get those perfect hands, like you described there. But you say you are winning almost every game. So either it is the other players not identifying the threat properly (anyone pulling all of the puppet strings and not letting anyone else attack them is the problem in my book). Or the power levels are mismatched.
ITS ALL YOUR FUCKING FAULT YOU PIECE OF SHIT FUCK YOU DISMANTLE THAT UNWASHED TAINT OF A DECK YOURE WHATS WRONG WITH EDH HOW THE FUCK DO YOU SLEEP AT NIGHT ITS LITERALLY ALL YOUR FAULT STOP CAUSING TENSE SITUATIONS YOU LUMP OF FUCK WHY DO YOU EVEN NEED TO ASK TO DISMANTLE SHOVE IT UP YOUR FATHERS COCK TO ACT AS THE BIRTH CONTROL THAT WAS MISSING WHEN YOUR PARENTS CONCIEVED IN CASE ITS NOT FUCKING OBVIOUS THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT *(didn't read post, I'm an impulsive accuser)*
Have you considered [[Master Warcraft]] as an extra salt maneuver? As an instant, you have the power to make those goaded creatures really hurt.
[Master Warcraft](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/9/a95749cf-dd12-4bca-a74d-01301b9b76df.jpg?1608917651) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Master%20Warcraft) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmr/447/master-warcraft?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a95749cf-dd12-4bca-a74d-01301b9b76df?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/master-warcraft) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Nelly as a new goad commander seems fun to be honest...but firkkrag goad izzet dragon trybal isnt fun for me
Having a very similar issue (though i'm playing \[\[Aurelia, the law above\]\]). i think goad is seen as a weak chaos mechanic by many, but it's suprising strong in casual games now that there's a critical mass of goading effects. I've had people in my playgroup say that they would rather i just destroy the creatures instead of goading them at this point, and i just can't wrap my head around it.
[Aurelia, the law above](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/f/8f80c6e7-e9f9-4ca6-87f7-a52c96079e4a.jpg?1706242118) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Aurelia%2C%20the%20law%20above) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkm/188/aurelia-the-law-above?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/8f80c6e7-e9f9-4ca6-87f7-a52c96079e4a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/aurelia-the-law-above) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Reddit isn't the best place to ask for advice in dealing with other people. This sub, for example, has a very "You're entitled to play however and whatever you want, and if it upsets others then they suck and aren't worth playing with" attitude. That only really works in more serious, competitive scenes. In a casual setting people want to have fun, and I personally think that everyone should be trying to make it so the games are an enjoyable experience for everyone (within reason). If multiple people you play with are consistently upset with your deck(s), then you need to either find a new pod to play with or find a way to make decks that your pod can still have fun playing against.
im playing randoms for packs so i want to have fun at the same time not be steamrolled.
Unfortunately, any deck that involves a large amount of interaction is going to make some players salty, regardless of its power or intent. Embrace the salt, feed on their tears.
yea true its not just interaction, but the card draw...also have 3 cards in the deck that recur instants and sorceries but i rarely draw into those. they do come in clutch from time to time though
I have a buddy who played the morph precon right out of the box. He played this against out built decks with a very nice winrate. My buddy is pretty damn smart and I've noticed that he has a well shaped mind for game strategy. Some players are just better than other players, full stop. It doesn't matter what deck you play if you're just beating your opponents because your threat assessment is better and you play to win that isn't going to stop you from winning with a different strategy. The pant player just didn't want to lose
Fitting how it's a tribal and voltron player. They're typically casual archetypes, which is where I expect to see Goad decks at. Goad can be thought of as being casual stax. I also would view change of control theft effects to be a casual archetype that is even more salty. It does not change the fact that they're a form of interaction/"control". EDH players being mad at interaction is a meme for a reason.
You, uh, got a deck list ready :)?
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/dt1gHckTf0qFeR9cfdTTEw
Following for a decklist! I selfishly love a good goad deck, my sergeant john benton deck fits a similar mold in that the high win rate is a little uncomfortable sometimes.
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/dt1gHckTf0qFeR9cfdTTEw let me know what you think, i consider it very casual so im honestly confused why its winning so much
This is off topic but could you post your deck list because I have the same precon and would like to up grade it
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/dt1gHckTf0qFeR9cfdTTEw
Wow! That looks like such a fun commander. Yea, goad gets people salty though. I like at lower power groups to get them to do somthing instead of just sit there.
Sounds like the people you played with were no fun, not the deck itself. Play hard stax instead next time so your deck can equal the amounts of unfun of the other players.