#I’ve still been meaning to draw that Armageddon rise design and haven’t gotten to it but now you’re telling me there’s another turtle?

[iced-souls]

So i really felt like doing the @lostcompanyofficial dtiys, but i was slightly busy prior and knew i wouldn’t finish it for the due date BUT

I DID IT ANYWAY WOWZERS YIPPIE!!

Just a couple of fun lads

Go check it if you haven’t already, if you have check it again haha

I also had a second urge to doodle the alien turtle teens are the same time that are complete strangers to me and i have absolutely no clue what they could be a reference to, reference? What reference pffff—

[radramblog]

My commander decks, Pt. 2

I don’t like leaving these two-parters open for too long, so I’m gonna nip this one in the bud now.

Zada, Hedron Grinder- Mono-Red Storm/Tokens

My Zada deck came from having played a weird Red/Green Werewolves/Zada Aggro/Combo deck in Shadows over Innistrad standard, and then getting to come back to it some time later since a lot of those cards took a really long time to rotate out for some reason. The deck was, admittedly, kind of a pile, but it was huge fun and could just kill people out of nowhere. This commander deck, based on a very well-put-together list on tappedout, spawned from how much I ended up loving Zada, with her unique effect lending surprisingly well to an all-in combo deck. 

This deck doesn’t come out of the box very often, and for pretty good reason. Not a lot of people appreciate getting combo’d off against, especially when it’s as loose and indeterminate as this deck is, and there is just so much math involved that even piloting it can become a pain. It’s incredibly powerful, being fragile in some ways but resilient in ways you wouldn’t expect. It’s actually probably the closest thing to a cEDH deck I have, though it would obviously stand no chance at an actually competitive table.

The deck, at this point, has deviated pretty heavily from the primer it was based on, both since I don’t want to buy overpriced cards that aren’t significant upgrades and because I have some jankier effects I wanted to play (also, because that list has been consistently updated and mine hasn’t). I’ve had it called a Goblins deck, and while there are a lot of Goblin cards in it (I mean, Goblin Matron is there), it actually kinda gets under my skin when people do that. It’s not a Goblin deck, Goblins just happen to be really good at making tokens! I don’t really like Goblins. (Zada is an exception.)

 Basandra, Battle Seraph- Boros Forced Combat/Pillowfort

Basandra was one of four decks I built after I got really bored, hit Random 4 times on EDHRec, and designed four decks based on the results. While I did end up proxying up 2 of the others (Seizan Mono-B Group Sl/hug, DL Atarka Dragons/Panharmonicon), Basandra was the only one that resonated with me enough to want to build it for real. It represents to me the possibilities of Boros beyond just aggro and the handful of archetypes the colour pair has been crumbed over the years.

It also happens to be a pretty political deck. While the plan of making people fight each other instead of me is all well and good, in a perfect situation you’re still going to have one more opponent left to deal with. The deck is pretty light in ways to actually win the game, although having a Flying commander does help a little bit (See, she does do something!). With that said, I’ve played the deck enough times to have racked up a few wins, so it’s far from helpless, and the random hate pieces that are mostly in to keep people from going over my defences can just lock some decks out of the game. (If you’re a deck that loses to Aven Mindcensor then you deserve to lose to Aven Mindcensor, sorry)

I really enjoy the Thalia’s Lancers package. Tutors like this and like Mwonvuli Beast Tracker in the Radha deck are fun to build around, with the right combination of cards letting them turn into mini toolboxes. In this deck, the Lancers can find land, ramp, removal, pillowfort effects, card draw, making them extremely versatile. While I am generally opposed to tutors, Lancers get a pass.

 O-Kagachi, Vengeful Kami- 5-Colour Spirit Tribal/Cast Triggers

This deck is stupid bad but it’s built around a bunch of silly cards that I love. The spirits of Kamigawa look and feel bizarre, but in an elegant way- they’re off in their own little world, doing whatever, while the rest of the game happens around them.

Unfortunately, most of them kinda suck. There’s a reason I didn’t build around Soulshift, and it’s not because I’d die to Rest in Peace.

This deck, therefore, is an eclectic collection of spirits, good and bad, with the stated goal of finding enough cost reduction to start loop-casting members of the -Onna cycle, generating value through “whenever you cast a Spirit or Arcane spell…” effects. Getting to this point, however, is it’s own endeavour. The deck is desperately in need of a rebuild, with way too high a curve and not enough ramp to support itself. The deck includes the entirety of the Myojin cycle, all 5 Dragon Spirits, and all 3 pieces of Iname- not to mention, most of the Spirits that actually have good effects are fairly mana-hungry themselves. Even the manabase is a bit silly, though I have gotten away with proxying fetches and shocks since the deck doesn’t need any help flopping.

When the deck does get going, though, it can get pretty out of hand. Literally, in fact-the deck can rip through people’s hands and occasionally lands, but the cards doing so are so expensive and bad that it feels more earned than just dropping Narset/Windfall or Armageddon. No-one can stay mad when they lose to Myojin of Infinite Rage, since the Myojin is the one with all the Rage. It can be resilient as well, with great recursion effects such as Karador and Iname, Life Aspect just happening to be Spirits. It’s still not good, but it’s something.

 Gonti, Lord of Luxury- Mono-Black Theft/Control

Like Zada, Gonti spawned from a standard deck I enjoyed playing, in this case the Azor’s Gateway Mono-Black Control deck I piloted to surprising success for a long time. A fair few cards in the deck come directly from that list, including the incredibly water-damaged Torment of Hailfire and some of the weirdo one ofs like Tetzimoc and Liliana, Death’s Majesty. The deck is grindier than anything, with incremental draw being the name of the game and murdering opponent’s threats the subtitle. Gonti, in addition to being one of my favourite cards of all time, supports Mono-Black Control quite well, being able to grab answers to things that would normally be pretty difficult for mono-B to handle off of other people’s decks, or creating synergies where no-one expects them. As a result, while there’s not as many of this type of effect as many Gonti decks, there is still some amount of cards that let Gonti re-enter than most decks they helm, there’s still a fair few ways to do so.

Theft is not a particularly well-supported strategy, especially in Black, but it serves to add replayability and versatility to the deck. The deck doesn’t play a huge number of threats, and most of the ones that it does are those that add to the steady value train or that double as something else. I haven’t quite committed to putting Praetor’s Grasp in, but I’m thinking about it. I also opted not to add in the new hotness of Opposition Agent, because as it turns out that’s not the kind of magic I want to play, and with a full hand and frequent planeswalkers on the board I don’t really need to go out of my way to generate more hate.

Playing this deck does harken back to that old standard deck, thinking ahead about which cards I need to keep around to answer certain threats I guess are coming up, and getting unexpected surprises off the top of my opponent’s library to win in unexpected ways (I once Gonti’d a Radiant Destiny off of my opponent’s Vampire deck, realised between Gonti and a few Gifteds I had a pile of Aetherborn cooking, and beat them down with that). Control is far from my favourite deck archetype, but it’s nice to have the option there if I want it.

 Hallar, the Firefletcher- Gruul Kicker

My Hallar deck was given to me as part of the EDH subreddit’s Secret Santa, the maybe only year it was ran, and it still shows some evidence of the budget limit that exchange carried. While I have done my best to improve on it and diversify it, there’s really only so much one can do with such a narrow commander.

With that said, it’s not like the deck is bad. Especially since the addition of more Kicker cards in Zendikar Rising, Hallar has more option to choose from, and they can get burning very quickly. From what I’ve seen, however, most Hallar decks build around cheap Kicker costs, trying to trigger their ability as many times as possible as quickly as possible. And while some of these cheaper cards are of course present in my list, I chose to instead play some of the other bigger kicker cards, along with more ramp, to help spread the attention away from Hallar as needed and to give the deck something to do if they start costing upwards of 10 mana. I’m not convinced this added resilience is the correct path, but it’s my path, and the deck performs admirably even faced against substantially more expensive lists.

 With that, I have listed all of my current commander decks. While I have a few in the build process, maybe I should stop? Because 10 is likely enough. Either way, I hope you enjoyed reading about what and why these decks are, and I hope to see you on the other side of a table soon. (I won’t play Zada game one, promise.)