I outright reject your definition of fair, as it seems to be something you've just arbitrarily made up, has a lot of ambiguities to it, and reflects none of the realities of Magic. By this definition, every single one of the cards I'm going to list breaks the mold of "fair":

And yet, by the same definition, the following cards are all perfectly fair:

This definition is a bad one that seems to have been just pulled out of the air with no justification. It reflects none of the way anybody plays the game, nor its original vision, nor the design philosophy at any point in the game's history. And it's especially a bad definition in talking about EDH. If that was the only "fair" way to play the format, EDH would be one of the most boring games in the history of gaming.

If you're going to provide a definition that implies "everyone but me is wrong", you have to provide some pretty strong evidence against the notion that you're just the outlier.

That's pretty much it. Except he's a general ARTIFACT and creature hoser.

That all 3 players can attack directly

Well, I think I don't have anything more to add to this discussion until I actually meet an Oko myself. I nearly did a few days ago, an opponent played him in his Tasigur, the Golden Fang deck, but the card just got milled away and never hit the table.

I don't think some of the people giving advice in this thread have either played through (or mental Magic'd through) how this plays out.

So let's say your running some sac outlets just to trash your general (I don't know that this is good advice, but let's run with it). Since Oko might Elk your altar or creature-based sac outlet, you've put High Market in your deck, and you've got some generic Expedition Maps to find your utility lands. Fine.

So Oko turns your commander into an elk. You've got your High Market ready... now what?

A. You sac and recast your commander so it can be re-elked.
B. You do not sac/recast your commander. Something else is elked.
C. You don't sacrifice your commander, and try to attack Oko's controller to death with general damage. At some point Oko -5s and swaps General Elk with a food token.
D. You spend mana, tutors, etc. to kill Oko before you do anything else. This is actually the best case outcome for Oko's controller, since you're spending time and resources while they advance their board state.

I also think people are overestimating how easy it is to attack Oko to death. Assuming you're not playing like a moron, and are spreading the elks around (ie, Elk Player A's Sol Ring, Player B's sword of whatever, Player C's general), you can brick a lot of attacks with a single blocker (the humble Wall of Roots does fine). And sure, you can throw down some spot removal on blockers, or commit a lot of time and creatures to attacking Oko, but that puts you back into option D.

A couple people in this thread compared Oko to Karakas... honestly, Oko's way more powerful. It lets you stall or disrupt more different types of cards, with fewer resources invested. For me, the closest parallel to Oko is Prophet of Kruphix... it's not immediately obvious how resource intensive playing against it is, but games tend to devolve around keeping it off the board.

That.

That seems like non-starter.

This is not a given. Also, it's not necessarily true that it's something of yours.

In A and B, sacrificing your commander was an option. Now is the time to exercise it. Enjoy your -5, keep your food token.

This isn't strictly true. I think players are going to gang up on Oko players, because they're going to stop them from playing the game they want to play. I'd be less worried about Oko's loyalty, and more about the Oko player's life total.


Ehhhhhh. I've played against a lot of walker decks. Most of them fail against sustained attack. Obviously, there are board wipes, and walkers can power through, but, I'm okay with that. This isn't the uphill battle that Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker is, where he can deal with any permanent while gaining loyalty or bodies. Or even Elspeth, Sun's Champion that so readily vomits out chump blockers and kills creatures that might be too big to deal with otherwise, all in the same colour known for destroying all creatures.
Like, okay. Wall of Roots. The Oko player can Elk one thing a turn barring shenanigans. How many power 5 or greater creatures get tabled in a full turn cycle? What about fliers? What if a player plays something that Elking does nothing to, like Elspeth, Sun's Champion or Sigil of the Empty Throne?

There's an unwritten assumption in this, and it's the idea of urgency in answering Oko (so much so that you're going to protect it with the very efficient Wall of Roots), and if you don't, you're just going to lose the game. Realistically, the Oko player is just going to end up making food tokens until one of the other players draws interaction for it.

There's also this kind of thought process where a creature or its relevant protections is getting Elked continually, without any opportunity to react. Like, a player could play a creature, play Greaves, equip, swing, and then pass the turn. The Oko player has to Elk the greaves, and then still deal with the creature. They can't just machine gun ElkElkElk, and those 3/3s aren't nothing.

Oko can (typically) Elk one thing per turn cycle. That means if you're casting your commander, they attempt to Elk it and you respond with Sanctum of Eternity nothing at all so you don't get Elked, that means they elked nothing else this turn cycle. If you had crystal shard, or anything to save your commander, they'd have had to elk that first.

Edit: Carthain points out that Sanctum of Eternity can only be used your turn. My point is, they can Elk one thing per turn. That means they have to Elk relevant protections, or something before your commander. Cards like Lightning Greaves are so commonly played that I'm not especially worried.


I'm going to disagree with you.

Karakas is beyond silly, and if it were legal in Commander, you could use it with Seedborne Muse, and plenty of other effects. Oko a) doesn't interact with much in terms of getting stronger and can be used three times per turn, tops (Oath of Teferi, The Chain Veil), tops, and b) leaves value behind.

Is Oko aggressively costed and a good card? Yeah, definitely. Does dealing with an Elked commander, even with the most efficient cards present an unfavourable cost proposition when compared to the Oko player gaining a loyalty counter? Yes, but that's probably true of all repeatable removal.


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Honestly, this thread reads like no one has ever faced a token generator deck with Attrition before. There are much more effective ways of locking players out of their commander than Oko.

Minor nitpick: Sanctum of Eternity says "only during your turn" so, hard to respond to Oko with it. But your point remains even if they use High Market to sac their commander.

Fair point. I mean, it could be something else, like Crystal Shard.

I guess my point is, in the universe where you want to Elk a player's commander, you might be looking at two or three untaps to Elk one commander, and while it's trivial to +1 Oko, especially with his aggressive cost... there are still other players in the game, they will see that Elkening, and take steps to ensure it doesn't happen to them.

This doesn't sound nearly as bad as games where someone has Attrition and bodies to spare, or something like Slaughter and a 40 point starting life total.

A not irrelevant point is that most (popular) sac outlets are artifacts and creatures, both of which can be elked.

I'm not too worried about Oko's player's life total, given he's in arguably one of the best life gain colors, both of the best fog colors, the best color for getting a bunch of creatures online real quick, and he himself can both nerf powerful threats and contribute to the life gain.

But more importantly, if the best way to get rid of a card is just to kill the player, might say something about the card. Especially if the card is a 3-mana early game card and not some enormous bomb like an Eldrazi.
Everything I just said still withstanding, which is it? Is the primary target of aggro Oko or his player?

Also relevant is that Simic is the best color combo in magic for en passant proliferation, and that Oko functions just fine outside of a dedicated PW deck.
Oko isn't played in a vacuum, and since he's been busy turning stuff into elks, that leaves other removal spells free to deal with things that might be a problem for him.

Or not, because by his second Elking he's already carried his weight pretty heavily. To make a comparison point, look at Dack Fayden. Dack's got a trio of solid abilities, but the only one he needs is his minus, as effectively paying 1UR for a sorcery that does that is still a really good deal. Oko's in a similar boat, where paying 1UG for "Turn target artifact or creature into a 3/3 elk with no abilities" is perfectly adequate as just a sorcery, and more often than not it ends up as if said sorcery had rebound.

This seems dubious at best, as there is really no downside to Elking turn after turn. The highlighted issue is for commanders, but I see little downside in shutting off my opponent's Sol Ring or big powerful monster or what have you turn after turn. Even if Oko gets stomped down by the elk stampede, he's still effectively nerfed 2-4 cards by then.

You say this like it's a horrid situation for Oko, but put pretty much any other 3-mana cost removal spell in Oko's place and the situation is still worse. It costs the Oko player less than nothing to attempt to target the commander.
I'm not seeing the value in comparing a 2+ card synergy that only works in a specific archetype to a single card that fits in pretty much any deck that has its colors. By this same logic, Karakas isn't really banworthy as at most you're getting 3-4 activations of it per turn cycle, whereas Attrition and friends can go all day long.

The issue with both Karakas and Oko isn't just the fact that they're powerful repeatable removal, it's that they're powerful repeatable removal with close to zero opportunity cost. Removal engines such as Attrition, Goblin Bombardment, Balefire Dragon, Aria of Flame, and most other sources of strong repeat removal are all garbage cards unless they're in a deck and boardstate that can support them. Oko and Karakas need very little support to be well above average, get just plain stupid with support, and do both in ways that interact poorly with the rules of Commander.

It's interesting that most people feel that you only have to deal with Oko once. Imagine facing this in a Muldrotha deck where you kill Oko and he just comes back again (having gotten around the 6/6 blocker)

Imagine facing Oko in an Atraxa deck, specifically built around planeswalkers and getting maximum value from them.

Please remember that players don't just play Oko and stop building around/with him. The consensus so far seems to be that the card is incredibly dangerous just by itself. Now add Chain Veil, Atraxa, recursion. Blue and Green have Propoganda and Fog effects. Your new Elk Commander might not even be able to get to Oko to remove him. When discussing a card, remember to discuss a realistic game. Not just the card being in a vacuum with no other interactions.

Lastly please remember that some decks are specifically built around a commander's abilities. You can argue that you should have redundancy and not be dependent on your commander, but sometimes that just shuts out deck possibilities. A single card can effectively shut one or more players out of a 10 turn game starting on turn 2. (pack all the sac outlets you want but if you dont see them that game...)

Are people really saying Oko is the worst thing that an optimized Muldrotha or Atraxa deck are going to build around?

Is that whats going on here?

No, they didn't. They are simply asking for some context, because apparently everyone who think's Oko is fine and dandy is assuming the player with Oko will just cast Oko and then do nothing else.

I think saying it cant control 3 other players isn't the same as saying 'it does nothing'. Yes it is strong, but its not even close to the most powerful planeswalker, let alone card, optimized decks are sporting.

Calling for it's ban is MASSIVELY premature.

And saying it's a miserable, unfun card to play against that is also likely to see a surge in use given its recent banning in standard, which will likely cause a price drop, is not the same as calling for a ban.