Yeah, I have an idea of what the top tier generals are. But what is the best general for a 4- multiplayer competitive metagame? I need some advice since I have ran across some pretty busted decks, but like in any format their is one deck that really shines above the rest *cough caw blade* like deck for EDH.

The blue based generals like Azami, Teferi, and Arcum Dagsson play more to their strengths on how the card text reads on them and they proceed to win that way.

The multi coloreds are not very good except for what I know.. Zur, and The Grand Arbiter(?).Sharuum(?)

The 5 (Child of Alara much?)colors are for combo and control, which I would need a good decklist for anyways.

So if anyone has a top tier decklist or opinon on what the best general flatout in EDH is please post. The trend of using blue generals is something I think will stay for a while. The question is which general seems like it gets the job done every time? I need to make money off this deck so I appreicate any post ahead of time.

The best, no exceptions.

EDH is fortunate not to have an established competitive metegame. There's no real consensus on exactly which generals are top tier, let alone which is actually the best. If you ask around, though, you start seeing a number of names show up repeatedly.

Azami, Lady of Scrolls, Arcum Dagsson, and Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir are all powerful mono-blue generals.

Sharuum the Hegemon and Zur the Enchanter are both extremely powerful.

Azusa, Lost but Seeking is a popular competetive general, but it may be based on Sam Black's advocacy as much as actual power level.

Five-color good-stuff or combo decks are also potentially powerful, and rarely care what general they use. Hoard of Notions, Child of Alara, and Sliver Queen are the most common ones I've seen.

There are a number of other generals who are sometimes mentioned, but don't usually make the cut to top tier in my opinion:
Erayo, Soratami Ascendant
Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon
Maga, Traitor to Mortals
Omnath, Locus of Mana
Momir Vig, Simic Visionary
Jhoira of the Ghitu
Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind
Grand Arbiter Augustin IV
Uril, the Miststalker

the BEST 4 player generals are the ones that combo out,so one of the blue ones, or 5c

Yes bit which general combos out the most successfully? I can go busted all day with Azami but it does me no good if that guy playing Child of Alara combos with Hermit Druid.

Captain Sisay is a vicious, vicious general. Absolutely in the top tier. Has a massive toolbox of answers, can go for a variety of effective and powerful combo kills, or it can simply play really, really strong, disruptive mid-range with a superior creature force and strong disruptive creatures like Gaddock Teeg, Crovax/Elesh Norn.. It also has really strong recursion..etc, etc.


The deck does require a fair amount of skill to play though.

Side-note: Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon is probably the best aggro general out there, as any kind of equipment means he kills in two turns - he has regeneration, evasion, and on his own, he represents a three turn kill, he's also in a very strong color, high amount of tutors, excellent removal and strong disruption.If you need to kill say, the COA play playing Hermit Druid, he's your man, err.. dragon.

a 4 mana general that does nothing until the next turn is a bit 'par' as far as sissay goes. I know she is pretty strong though since she goes into Green/White beats.

Blight Dragon does seem like it is very very strong at killing stuff since it has Regen, Flying, Haste.. that is really good and I see why it is good at Voltron.

Heres the thing about Generals.
They need to do stuff NOW! Like, Azami atleast will give you card advantage when you cast her. *(Casting from the general zone= card advantage regardless). Arcum suffers the same thing Sissay does. Teferi is the only one even close to Azami in terms of usefulness early on.

Also how does the Teferi lock with Knowledge Pool work? Picked up a foil one so it seems reasonable.

Sisay does nothing?

If you can't understand the value of a general that's fundamentally a survival of the fittest that you have access to at any time, so help you. Getting to tap her the turn after makes her lack of ability on the turn she comes out worthwhile due to the sheer power of her ability. Hall of the Bandit Lord and Lightning Greavess are pretty good cards too, according to rumor.

Put on your reading glasses and read.

http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=192101

That thread is old, and the list posted was for 1v1 play. Regardless the only time I have seen Sissay be good is when she fetched Teeg. *note the only time* I would rather play Teeg, then fetch Teeg. Sure, Survival is busted no doubt. Sure, Sissay draws less hate and is card advantage every turn too. I just think a General that wins faster like Azami is pretty highly tiered and now I know how Teferi-Knowledge Pool works. It seems strong, but was the reason I wanted to run him. Being able to cast generals and still use tricks to kill Teferi does not sound very good though.

@Gravy

Sisay's definitely not tier one. Look at the article you linked to - it mentions that Sisay "is not a broken general who will get hated off the table immediately." We're not discussing decks that are a good mix of casual and competitive. We're looking for the most powerful and cutthroat multiplayer generals. The article is also from several years ago, and the decklist is streamlined for 1v1. And having talked with Surging Chaos both here and on MTGSalvation, I very much doubt he would argue for Sisay as a top-tier competitive general.

She's solid, sure. But I'd add her to the list of second-tier generals like Jhoira and Uril, not the truly scary guys.

It's not so much that Sisay herself is top-tier, but that the deck she runs is very strong. At least in my experience with it.

Personally, I've piloted Sisay (and Saffi Eriksdotter) in very cut-throat environments with a high level of success. Against tables that had Azusa, Zur, etc in the same game.

If you're looking at just a top-tier general and just the general, Sharuum is one of the best. His colors and the deck he supports is very powerful and fairly flexible. Although I wouldn't play him in an environment full of decks hostile to artifacts.

It'd help to know what kind of decks you're playing against Shax, what do you see most often? Because the answer really depends on what kind of decks you play against.

The answer is not really what I play against, but really what I will play against. I go to Star City Games events and they have 5$ entrys for EDH 4 way multiplayer. So I need a deck that will dominate these events in a 4 way. Some people go in together on these events (mean move) and split the money they make when one of them win. I need something that can stop a table of people (Azami) or something that manipulates the board in a unfair way (Sharuum, Teferi) I am leaning more towards Azami but unless there is a deck that is better please speak up.

To be blunt I need to expect the best EDH decks anyways and that is usually what I try to playtest against.
Thats kind've why I made this topic, to know what the BEST GENERAL PERIOD. Is. If I the best general and know what I am weakest to I can expect this and use things like play politics (*if they are avalible, some people are basically playing 2v 1v1 here! Or try to learn what to answer if I am playing blue).

Sharuum would be a good option if you don't want to just play combo, here's why.

-The Sharuum deck has a lot of angles of attack, you're not stuck to a single plan or combo. It can function well without its general.
-While Sharuum contains combos, it can play multiple roles well, it can be both controlling or it can play the role of the aggressor.
-The deck isn't overly dependent on any one card. There are cards you want more than others, and you'll usually have a way to get them, but even without tutors, chances are you'll be able to have relevant means of interaction most times in the game.
-You've got ways to interact with both combo decks and creature based strategies, this is huge.

That's not to say the deck has no weaknesses.

-The deck is color hungry, and mana denial plans can be very effective against it.
-Recurrable graveyard hate is potentially really bad for you, but it's something you can play around.
-Artifact hate can be really bad for this deck, although honestly, it needs to be pretty high density to really hurt the deck's power. You can protect your artifacts pretty well thanks to things like Hanna's Custody and Guardian Beast, as well as good old countermagic
.
I'd choose Sharuum over other tier-1 commanders because

-Sharuum can actually function quite well without Sharuum, whereas Arcum and Zur's decks can usually be really crippled if you don't have a way to recover Zur or Arcum quickly.
-It's not a deck that needs a really linear, uninterrupted line of play like Azusa, Azusa can be very powerful, and really overwhelm a table, but overextending into a Rout for example can kill the deck. you'll be hard pressed to resolve Crucible most of the time, as most people are aware of what follows if it does resolve.

All in all, I think either Azami or Sharuum would be my choices if I was looking just to win.

In short, I'd take Sharuum because it has good plans against a variety of powerful and relevant strategies, and is fairly resilient to hate.

I think you should really look closely, and make a frank and honest appraisal of whether this is a good use of your time.

Besides, there's so much variance in a single game of highly competitive 4-player EDH. Do you want to have thrown away $5 because an opponent drew Mana Crypt or Sol Ring in their opening hand? Or risk getting colluded against?

No deck will handle the entire table, assuming everyone shows up with a strong deck and has put some thought into winning the game. Barring collusion, you should be thinking about the common political scenarios of 4-player EDH and deciding how to capitalize on them. For example, oftentimes a highly competitive table will feature someone trying to go broken and combo immediately, two people will team up to crush that player, and the fourth player will either go off or build an insurmountable advantage and win. In this scenario you want to eschew early disruption for more incremental advantage type cards, while being very patient in developing your game.

There are other scenarios. Some tables devolve to everyone towering up and hoping not to pick any fights. Like a control mirror, these are decided by incremental gains and lots of land drops. Surges to the lead are punished, it's all about the slow climb.

In extreme cases I've seen usually suboptimal decks like Stonebrow win because they simply attack one player after another and those attacked players either do nothing or do not do enough to save themselves because they are afraid of opening a window for a more broken deck. They would rather die to tramply creatures than let another potentially slip their combo onto the table.

Scenarios change on the fly if players don't behave optimally, either by choosing an insignificant deck or by making a questionable strategic decision. If you like to feel in control of your fate in a game of EDH, you will probably find this kind of battling frustrating, as it's highly dependent on the predictability of your opponents' decision making. An odd or insensible move will usually degenerate into a decided game pretty quickly because of the efficiency of the decks involved.

I'm a fan of Sharuum or Teneb, as they can play a lot of these roles well and have the basic power level required. A strong, synergistic general will help, but far more significant is a maindeck constructed with these political ideas in mind.

This is not a waste of my time. I have a partner in crime that uses a Sharuum deck in EDH for these events and would be happy to spend 5$ all day for us to win 20$ and make 10$ and piece. Even so I plan to do some of them by myself if he is doing something else. EDH is broken enough to where you will lose to Crypt and Sol Ring yeah or other people doing collusion. Shauum fits the needs of a good general in that it does something immeddiatley and has good colors to back it up. My partner in crime has a extensive collection so it is not like he could switch from Sharuum and let me use it to any thing in EDH and have it teched out.
Is Sharuum really good enough to beat a whole table? I mean sometimes my friend said he would have a full grip of spells that would destroy his other EDH deck(not sharuum?) but would just let those cards go through if it meant they were winning.

I understand the concept of how a 4-player game will be complete chaos sometimes and iincremental advantage is the way to go, but at the point I get my face beat in by White Weenie I have already won.

I'm a little late to this thread, so please exuse me for that.

But on the topic of "Top Tier" generals, they don't exist.

Its top tier players you need to watch out for. They can take the worst general and still build an incredible deck. I built a Rayne deck; which is a t2 or t3 general, but I can beat the pants off Sharum, Arcum, Sissay, Azami, and Teferi 60+% of the time. Maybe its because I know how to win attrition wars; or I know how to identify threats and deal with them accordingly.

Tier 1 player: awake and not hungry Joz
Tier 2 player: anyone that plays "Tier 1" generals.
Tier 3 player: sleepy joz
tier 4 player: hungry joz
tier 5 player: sleepy and hungry joz
tier 6 player: everyone else.


But seriously, enough with the "tier x" crap. For cards; the only thing that really matter is a persons ability to correctly pilot their/a deck/