a lot of what i love to do in magic would be classified as timmy behavior - i love playing green (gruul is my favorite), i love building tribal decks, and i love swinging wide with big creatures!! below, i talk about some of my favorite commanders/decks to play ^_^

omnath, locus of creation

link to my deck on moxfield

omnath was one of the first decks i built on my own! i remember seeing my spouse playing a ramos deck that utilized all five colors, and seeing the rainbow of basic lands laid out for lucky charms made me really happy. i also loved when her partner told me that five color decks were called 'WUBRG' (pronounced "wooburg") - and while omnath isn't a WUBRG deck, seeing his colors on the battlefield makes me happy enough even without bringing swamps into the mix. he's also one of the first decks i built that wasn't entirely tribal centered - while he definitely ended up having a lot of elementals on deck, the theme of this deck is landfall, not just storming over with a lot of big smashy boys.
a good game with omnath is one where i can get him to his third trigger a few times. a great game with him is when i can use a card like strionic resonator to make it trigger twice, forcing my opponents to take eight damage when i've already gained four life and played some fun cards for free...chefs kiss!! he also has peak character design - i get attached to commanders that speak to me on some level, and i love that he's a huge elemental force. he also has five different cards, each one with a different color combination - from the mono green omnath, locus of mana to the WUBRG (hehe) locus of all, he is truly the best boy in any situation. this deck isn't elemental tribal, but it does have an elemental subtheme, so it includes some counterspells like whirlwind denial and ice out. my dream is to have a cyclonic rift in it some day. for now, it has some cool landfall critters like tatyova, benthic druid, geode rager, and lotus cobra. of course, there's also lots of ways for me to get additional lands onto the battlefield each turn, like druid class, murasa rootgrazer, and others - as well as two more omnaths (locus of rage and locus of the roil), and some fun cards that play with lands, like sylvan awakening.

animar, soul of elements

link to my deck on moxfield

i fell in love with animar on sight. he's a huge tree elemental with smaller plant life growing off of him, and animals grazing on his back - he's perfect!! add in protection from white and black, and the fact that he can get surprisingly buff surprisingly fast, and well...he's swung for lethal commander damage on a mono black player at least once! i play him with a slightly modified version of the tyranid precon deck, which i fell in love with as it features some of my favorite themes. i also helped paint at least one tyranid army when i was in highschool, even though i never quite got into 40k - i still think they are very cool!! animar pairs perfectly with them, since his ability can help amp up creatures with X in their cost so that they get super buff.

i also added some hydras to the mix since they tend to be big creatures with x in their cost, like kalonian hydra and hydroid krasis. forgotten ancient and magus lucea kane do some fun stuff with counters, and the latter also lets me copy creature spells i cast that have X in their cost. nexos, biophagus, and troyan help me ramp into playing big creatures - and one of my favorite cards in the deck is screamer-killer, which is just a big creature that hits something for 5 damage when you play another big creature. yay!!

inferno of the star mounts

link to my deck on moxfield

dragons!! wow! who could have seen this coming! tribal, burn, and big creatures are my favorite things, so i combined them all into my friends' least favorite deck. this deck has a lot of friendly dragons inside, but also a lot of ways to beef up the commander to try and burn someone for 20 unavoidable damage. getting caged sun or gauntlet of power out makes it a lot easier, since it causes my mountains to tap for double red, while also giving my red critters a subtle boost. strionic resonator also makes an appearance in this deck as well as omnath's - and it's joined by lithoform engine, because i really, really want to make my opponents take 40 damage when i copy my commander's ability. (trivia: do you know how much life each player starts with in commander?? it's 40!!!)

aside from that, this deck has a lot of tricks to cheat out more mana or power for the win - if i can get inferno to 10, unleash fury or rush of blood can get him to 20, and fiery emancipation or gratuitous violence are also there to help ramp up the burn. this deck is fun for me because it's big and bold, and i get to make fiery plays that really put pressure on the battlefield. in some match ups, even having flying alone can make your creatures a credible threat - add in some nastier beasts like ancient copper dragon or leyline tyrant, who also help beef up my mana pool, and it really feels like having my cake and eating it too.

food & friendship

link to my deck on moxfield

this deck is probably the biggest departure from my usual playstyle, but i find it really delightful. it's an upgraded version of the food and fellowship precon, which a friend got for me as a birthday present (tho not my one hundred and eleventieth). i really enjoy the lotr cards - they give me a cosy feeling, and playing a food-based lifegain deck Also makes me feel cosy! nothing snugglier than sending frodo across to poke your opponents for 1 damage - but oops! he's actually your ring bearer, and once the ring emblem reaches its final stage, each opponent is suddenly taking an unavoidable 3 whenever he manages to connect. the hobbits are nothing if not persistent!

one of the tricks the hobbits have is enlisting their friend bill the pony to make it so that frodo actually deals his toughness' worth in damage instead - so whoever he whallops is taking six damage while everyone else eats three. yum! included in the precon was mirkwood bats, which makes generating and using food painful for my opponents - but so do nadier's nightblade and marionette master, each one packing a lil more punch into sacrificing food tokens; meanwhile sanguine bond and vito make it so that whenever i gain life, someone's going to lose that much. my only wish is that these wicked cards also had nice warm lotr alters...ah well, maybe someday :)

"eggsplorer"

link to my deck on moxfield

the very first time i played this deck, i fell in love. the way it works is that i put eggs onto the battlefield with my commander atla palani, and then use a sacrifice outlet like blasting station or ashnod's altar to crack open the egg, which lets me flip over cards off of the top of my deck until i (hopefully) hit a huge creature that i get to put onto the battlefield for free and terrorize my opponents with. my first egg hatched into ghalta, stampede tyrant, which then allowed me to play a few huge dinosaurs out of my hand for free as well. it also feels satisfying to hit something like trumpeting carnosaur and get to discover when it enters the battlefield, bringing in another free creature! if pantlaza, sun-favored is out, then the first time a dinosaur hits the battlefield each turn you will get a free discover as well, ramping into even more terrifying tyrants.

i built this deck when i was beginning to grow tired of typal decks, but i still wanted to play dinosaurs. they're such a cool class of creature, and perfect for fans of big stompy cards (like me!). this deck feels like popping open a plastic egg from one of those 25 cent machines at the grocery store from when i was a kid every time it goes off, and the roulette nature of it brings something interesting and fun to the table, rather than leaving it as just a stale stomping ground for big green critters.