Are my Commander decks overtuned, or is this mostly a playgroup/piloting issue?
My regular playgroup has had an ongoing disagreement about the power level of some of my decks, and I’d like some outside opinions.
One of my friends feels my decks are generally stronger “card for card.” The decks he has complained about recently are Thorin, King of Durin’s Folk, Lord of the Nazgûl, Edward Kenway, and Molecule Man.
The part that makes me unsure is that he isn't playing low-power decks himself. He proxies lists he finds online and specifically looks for Bracket 4 decks because he has been losing fairly often. Some of his commanders include Kaalia of the Vast, Sauron the Dark Lord, Esika/The Prismatic Bridge, Gargos, Vicious Watcher, and Ulalek, Fused Atrocity. He looks on Moxfield, though I know a deck being labeled Bracket 4 there doesn't necessarily mean it's actually optimized to the level Wizards describes for B4.
For some context:
-Our recent games have been either 1v1 or a 3 pod.
-My group is big on proxies. This game is way too expensive.
-Thorin is Dwarf tribal with Treasure synergy and a small Equipment package. Nazgûl is copy/spellslinger, Kenway is Pirates/Vehicles, Molecule Man is Eldrazi/artifact Miracles, and Sentry is Voltron with copy/blink and pillowfort subthemes.
-I'm aware of the huge ceiling Molecule Man has.
-My Lord of the Nazgûl deck is 1-2 overall and 1-1 against him. (the one win was a 1v1)
-Thorin beat him once in a 1v1 and won a 3 pod game.
-He recently built an Ulalek, Fused Atrocity Eldrazi deck and thought Molecule Man was stronger after another very experienced player said the same. We played them twice afterward and he won both games.
-Most of my decks have pretty normal win/loss records. I do own a few genuinely stronger decks, but I don't play them often and I'm not including them here.
I build my own decks and focus on synergy/theme rather than just putting the strongest staples possible into every list. He generally finds completed lists online and proxies them.
What I'm mainly trying to figure out is:
- Are these decks actually stronger than I'm giving them credit for?
- Is the individual card quality unusually high, or are they mostly just very synergistic?
- Would you consider any of them inappropriate against typical Bracket 3/high-power casual decks?
- If his decks are genuinely optimized/B4 lists, would you expect a meaningful power disparity between his decks and mine?
I'm not looking for validation that either of us is right. If I'm unknowingly overtuning my decks, tell me. I’d rather have people actually look at the lists and point out where the discrepancy is. I can provide some of his lists if asked.
Decklists:
([Thorin, King of Durin’s Folk])