Rob,

That's a very interesting observation. I'd never really considered the correlation between staple heavy decks and who we as a community view as threats before, but this reasoning should be a great way to convince players who fall closer to the Spike end of the spectrum to run fewer staples. Thanks for the insight!

I would certainly expect this to be less of an issue the more often your playgroup builds new decks, so that may be the source of our differing experiences. That said, on your point about not seeing the entire deck every game, I don't think that any deck having a bunch of staples is necessarily problematic in and of itself, but if everyone's decks share thirty cards, most of those will come out of somebody's deck every game.

On Sheldon's Sliver deck, the fact that it's weak can certainly inhibit having fun playing it, but that stems mostly from the extreme linearity imposed by tribal mechanics. For instance, were I to build a deck focused on blinking 187 creatures, I would be able to include power players like Terastodon, Eternal Witness, and Karmic Guide. These card are staples, but I'm including them because of how they interact in the deck. On the other hand, while both Solemn Simulacrum and Cultivate are strong ramp spells, I'd play Wood Elves instead of Cultivate because it interacts with the way I've built my deck. Often this sort of decision will detract from a deck's power (for instance, choosing not to play Necropotence in a Balthor, the Defiled deck), but usually not to a degree which makes it unplayable. In general, I think most people would enjoy playing many very different games that validate the goals they set in building their decks with slightly weaker ones than repeating the same (admittedly fun) game ten times.

That's debatable, situations are inherently defined by the cards that appear within the current game. What you are saying is correct if you are drawing your entire deck every game. Not sure about you but I have plenty of win cons in my EDH deck, and I consider myself a very competitive EDH player. Though I am competitive staples vary from deck to deck, because you're doing it wrong if you are just jamming blue cards into blue EDH decks cause they are staples.

But how can you argue against having the most fluid deck you can make? Like believe me I completely understand that the format is supposed to be different and exciting and I think that means everyone should be running different decks. My playgroup although not recently playing EDH, have a general rule not to have the same general as someone else, and to not have the same colors as someone else, like if someone is running sharuum, try not to run Sen Triplets if it can be helped. And we all make new decks all the time because it's so easy to make your shell of staple lands mana accel card advantage cards and just slide in the cards needed for the new general.

As much as the deck should be about "Theme" it's pretty easy to do that without making the deck impotent. Take for example Sheldon's new Sliver Thrax deck, honestly that thing is terribad and couldn't handle a one on one with a competitive deck, it doesn't interact with the other player and doesn't combo off so what does it do? It just plays slivers and attacks :/ meh… That was supposed to be the most interesting deck, and when you look at his play by play, the deck doesn't even do anything spectacular. So why not play a deck that at least does something whether that's one of five things or not?

I agree with your view on staples, at least for the most part. I definitely have a number of cards I look at playing in particular decks pretty much every time I build a deck, but not all of them make the cut. They have to fit the theme.

The funny thing is that while generic goodstuff.dec is often very powerful, it can easily end up rolling over and dying to a well-tuned synergistic deck designed around a theme. Goodstuff.dec is almost always the most threatening deck at a multiplayer table, so you're highly likely to be The Threat and have the entire table gang up on you from the start as well.

All in all I think goodstuff.dec is almost never the right way to go, personally.

It's not so much that there's something inherently wrong with running powerful cards, nor am I arguing that in a vacuum it's not in your deck's best interest to run staples. My point is that a big part of why Commander is so much fun is that the games are so unique and unpredictable. The issue is that if everyone's decks are 75% staples, the games will be a lot more repetitive, and therefore less fun as a whole. I'm not even saying that you shouldn't run staple ramp spells, but a lot of people I know just start by jamming staples into their decks, and the truth is that these staples are utility cards that fill specific roles, and they should be included because they do what your deck needs and are the best at doing so in your deck, not because they are 'good' in some vague sense. Even if throwing a Jace, the Mindsculptor into your Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir deck (with an all instant speed theme) will make it stronger, it makes the deck less interesting to play with and against because the deck is no longer as focused on what you set out to accomplish with it.

your a sexy beast

I'm a predominantly casual player who has branched into EDH/Commander as a way to play more games of Magic. My theory regarding Commander deck construction is that it should be possible to identify the general based on the other 99 cards, or else why even have a general? The links can be mechanical or flavorful, but they should be there.