idle gull
I’m new to magic and this is the first deck I’ve built with cards I already have. Will this be competitive at my LGS or would I be better off buying a pre con? Curious to see what the experts here think.
https://archidekt.com/decks/14224571/mono_black_ayara_first_of_locthwain
barren sorrel
Whether or not this is "competitive at your LGS" is not really something anyone other than people at your precon can answer.
What I will say is that if you're a new player, then I think buying a precon would be a better first step than to straight jump into deck building. EDH precons follow a deck building structure that makes then play smoothly in most games, following a specific game plan while also containing enough basic deckbuilding "vegetables", such as ramp (mana accelerators), card draw and removal, which every deck needs to function.
Starting with a precon also helps because you can examine how they are set up and apply that knowledge to your deck bulding.
What I can say about your deck is that you currently have a bit too much removal in my eyes. I would say the average commander deck runs ~10-12 single target removal spells and 3-4 board wipes. 24 single target removal spells (a lot of which are also just kinda bad) is quite a lot, and it comes at the cost of your deck neglecting other aspects, such as ramp and card draw.
I also think the overall game plan isn't very clear. It very much looks like a deck where you play cards and hope that they end up doing something. The overall card quality of your cards is also just not very strong, a lot of cards are just random draft commons, which tracks with you saying that you built this with cards you just happened to have.
Perhaps you could take a look at Ayara's EDHREC page, which gives you an overview of what other Ayara decks tend to include. This can be especially helpful if you're new and just don't know much about the vast card pool magic has. https://edhrec.com/commanders/ayara-first-of-locthwain
The way I would build Ayara is by leaning into what is known as an "aristocrat" strategy. Black is very good at generating value by sacrificing its own creatures. There's a variety of token producers in black, specifically ones that produce more creature tokens when other things die.
In general, going for token producers that create black creature tokens is very useful here, because these all trigger Ayara's ping ability. But they also make for great sac fodder, which obviously let you activate Ayara's draw ability, but which also fuel other payoffs, such as things like [[zulaport cutthroat]] and [[blood artist]].
Basically, you're trying to drain opponents out by repeatedly making creature tokens, sacrificing them for value and repeating the process.
arctic stag
LGS really depends on lot of things, my is either chill or sweaty with very few in between.
experience in the game in general (1vs1), experience in casual commander, how much of an asshole the players are can completely change those factors
i think my rule of thumb [for powerlevel] is almost relative to the number of cards drew that game
oak pond
