This is my first post - just found this haven and knew it would be the right place to solicit some advice.

I have a Mimeoplasm deck that's become more and more tuned as I've iterated it over time. I enjoy tuning and optimising things in general, so it makes sense that I've slowly honed the deck. But at this point it's a Voltron general that's designed to swing for lethal commander damage with a 21/21 reanimator. Death's Shadow + Gaea's Revenge is common, and it runs Triskelion with the Mikaeus, the Unhallowed combo AND the Necrotic Ooze/Phyrexian Devourer combo. My next purchase was going to be Putrefax.

But what I'm realising more and more is that Commander just isn't fun this way for me. I don't like suddenly saying, "I think I win," or, "I'm gonna kill you," seeing everyone (or, worse, one person) stare, shrug, and silently shuffle up ... I want to be jankier and more respectful of the other players. So I'm thinking of taking out Necrotic Ooze and Mikaeus, the Unhallowed (leaving Triskelion in as a janky bomb). I need your help: I'm looking for more fun ways to win and interact with +1/+1 counters and high-CMC creatures. Importantly, I want these to be telegraphed.

Some examples I've found so far:
Twilight Prophet
Simic Ascendancy
Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
Hydra Omnivore
Deadbridge Chant
Ixidron
Sepulchral Primordial
Unexpected Results
Villainous Wealth

Hope this gives you enough of an idea of the kind of fun I want to have (big swingy stuff, with a bit of randomness). If you can think of other cards that might fit well in a deck like this, I'd love to hear them!

One thing you might want to look at is how many tutors do you have? That includes things like Rampant Growth, I don't mean you should cut them all but most of the time if you replace every Vampiric Tutor with something like Ravenous Chupacabra or something else that is a "value" play it decreases the consistancy but doesn't completely neuter the deck.

Now with that being said if your play group has become way more casual you might need to look for janky pet cards rather than just grinding value.

The playgroup is actually decently tuned, they have infinite combos that go off etc. But I found I wasn't enjoying the format anymore because it feels like the cold war. Everyone's just holding off until someone can 'do their thing', and whoever does their thing first wins. But I realised I'd built my deck like that too, so I wanna make it more janky and fun and that way I'm gonna have a good time no matter what. :)

The only tutors I have are Mystical Tutor and a few ramp things (Kodama's Reach, Cultivate, Sakura-Tribe Elder).

Maybe post your deck and a few ideas on pet cards (like my favorite cards or Ink-Eyes and Brainstorm) or some general direction you might want to go. The more information you give us, the better we can suggest or examine your thoughts.

Stopping an arms race is hard, but depowering your own decks is a great first step.

Yeah, a decklist would be great.

Sultai +1/+1s counters and overpriced behemoths is an insanely fun deck, so if you give us some extra clues there's plenty of cool stuff to play.

What's this about an insanely fun deck with both the things I love to play in a color combination I love? What kind of overpriced behemoths are we talking about here?

Sultai dredge/reanimator basically. I rotated between Vorosh and The Mimeoplasm (Vorosh was better against GY hate and could use basically the same cards). I eventually broke it down for Sidisi, then Muldrotha. But there's tons of dinosaurs and idiots that have come out since then, so the Vorosh/Mimeoplasm rotation has probably gotten good again.

I LOVE Vorosh!!! I only switched to Mimeoplasm as commander because Vorosh was too slow to get off the ground.

I have the deck saved on tappedout here if you wanna take a look. (The maybeboard is even bigger than the deck - but that's par for the course when building a Commander deck, right?)

When I played my version of Mimeoplasm (this was years and years ago, probably around Gatecrash), I had a couple of cutesy includes: Cold-Eyed Selkie, Needle Specter (this one was maybe not so fun), and Mycoloth. There are now many more creatures that like +1/+1 counters (like Kalonian Hydra) or just like being big (Champion of Wits and Dreamstealer).

I think the big thing that kept my deck in check is that there were no sources of haste (not even Lightning Greaves). The big ticket was often "Here's my horrible amalgam, you have a couple of turns to answer." I even played Yavimaya Dryad and - if I was at the stage of the game where I wanted to close it out - would make a Mimeoplasm of it donating a Forest to an opponent so they would know they were on a two/three-turn clock, starting next turn.

The biggest NPE I had in the deck was Simic Sky Swallower; it admitted very few answers and was often a two-turn clock, but, I think my environment back then was not well-developed.

A few scattered ideas on the tapped out build:

It seems like a couple cards are listed more than once, so you might have more open slots than you think.

If you'd like to play more casual/janky, cut the smart player cards like Mystical Tutor or Brainstorm. Same with incremental advantage cards like Phyrexian Arena... that could turn into something bigger and dumber that fills the same card-advantage role (like Greater Good).

Windfalls are pretty fun with Mimeoplasm; you get lots of options for things to gobble up. Dark Deal, Flux, and Whispering Madness are all good adds. Nezahal, Primal Tide's another good discard outlet that I've been keen on lately.

Dredge is great for this style deck. I'd try hard to fit in Golgari Grave-Troll, Golgari Thug, Stinkweed Imp, and Dakmor Salvage. I'd also run Underrealm Lich; card's bonkers.

The big */* cards get boring pretty quick. I'd rather have a big dumb creature with a special ability attached, like Bane of Progress (BEST GREEN CARD EVER) and Artisan of Kozilek. I'd run Svogthos too, it gets big quick, and the deck will probably need more mana...

...'cause as decks get bigger and dumber, they also get mana hungrier. I'd run the 3-mana land-finding creatures (Wood Elves, Farhaven Elf, Yavimaya Dryad, the new Harrow-on-a-stick), and some of the better 2-mana tap creatures (like Kiora's Follower, Bloom Tender, or Gyre Sage -- which is extra dumb if it's a Mimeoplasm with a ton of counters on it).

Man, I had a Mimeoplasm pile once, never gotten to actually truncating it into a deck, mainly because of fearing what you've written about in the OP here. I applaud the sentiment, BTW. I went through the same thing and now I'm systematically omitting insta-win combos from all my decks and I'm having the best time ever with Commander =)

A lot of the cards you either already play or have been suggested by others, but there is one that I must mention:



Probably the cutest card I came across for 'Plasm. It gets your expensive reanimation targets into graveyard, it draws you the cards back when it croaks plus more if it's Mimeoplasm, it has natural trample and the best of all, it's 100% sabotage-proof. The draw is a leaves-the-battlefield trigger, so no one can rob you of your cards and the ETB trigger is dependent on you actually putting the counters on Thought Gorger, so if it dies with it still on the stack, you don't have anything to put the counters on, meaning you don't have to discard your hand.

Have you considered Ooze Tribal?

There are 22 Ooze in GUB for The Mimeoplasm, plus another 9 non-creatures with "Ooze" in the text box. You could even include changelings and faux-changelings (e.g. Metallic Mimic). Tribal would also open up nifty things like:

Cover of Darkness
Alpha Status
Kindred Discovery
Kindred Summons
Descendants' Path
Distant Melody
Stoneforge Masterwork
Heirloom Blade
Vanquisher's Banner
Patriarch's Bidding
Urza's Incubator

For counter manipulation:
Proliferate
Pentad Prism (et al, if using proliferate)
Retribution of the Ancients
Planewide Celebration
Power Conduit
Inspiring Call

Once I saw this thread, this was going to be my suggestion. I play it in my Varolz deck and it works surprisingly well.

Jodah's Avenger is great for evasion, and Gurzigost is great for evasion and gy styuff.