Hey there folks! I’m currently reading up on all the rules of magic in order to study for my Rules Advisor test (page 13 or 207…), but I realized I had not yet set up the post for the next give-away!
Lands are very important to a Commander deck. The ability to tutor up non-basic lands is rare and far-between though.
Realms Uncharted gives you a way of grabbing those essential non-basics, at the exchange of dumping two other lands.
However, in decks that play Crucible of Worlds, Life from the Loam, Restore or Regrowth, it basically has no drawback, which makes it more than playable in my book.
Remember the Fallen is a pretty good regrowth type effect in White. Both Artifacts and Creatures feature prominently in White decks, and the ability to get one or both is excellent. The versatility is what puts this card over the edge for me.
EDH deck tech - Songs on the Damned! Put that on isocron sceptre
Songs of the Damned loses a lot of points for only being usable once unless you can recur it a lot.
Isochron Scepter does work well with it, however I’d rather run Crypt of Agadeem instead, provided you don’t mind the restriction to only black creatures counting for the amount of mana produced.
Crypt also is a lot better than Songs (in my opinion) as it a land, and thus doesn’t take up a Spell slot in your decks.
Blue decks tend to not run many creatures. Riptide Shapeshifter perfectly complements this strategy.
All you have to do is make each creature in your deck a unique type, and the Shapeshifter’s ability becomes “2UU, Sacrifice Riptide Shapeshifter: Search your library for a creature, put it on to the battlefield, then shuffle your library.”
Types that you can run to abuse this ability include:
Eldrazi (Ulamog and Kozilek)
Praetor (Jin-Gitaxias)
Golem (Solemn Simulacrum)
Blasphemous Act is a nice cheap board-wipe. It’s perfect for Commander, as it gets cheaper for each creature on the board.
If you are playing a 4 player game, Act will only cost one Red mana if everyone has two creatures. Thirteen damage is enough to kill almost anything, with only 4 creatures printed that have a base toughness higher than that.
Being recently printed in Innistrad block, Act is a dollar rare, so it is perfect for budget players as well.
In case you haven't seen, all five of the "Face" commanders for the upcoming "Commander 2013" pre-constructed decks.
Let's take a quick look at them, and how we'd (ab)use them in our games.
Derevi, Empryrial Tactician is one of the only Legendary Creatures that bypass the Commander Tax. This alone would make him quite good as a Voltron general. His last ability, though, is much better than what you first see. You can basically cast Derevi as though it has Flash, and it (mostly) can't be countered!
His saboteur ability is very good as well. You can give your creatures pseudo-vigilance, untap or tap an opponents creature for political reasons, or even untap your lands so you can cast Derevi again if an opponent destroys him later in the turn-cycle!
Oloro, Ageless Ascetic seems like a Bleed commander if there ever was one. He will have already gained you 12 life before you can cast him, and it doesn't stop after that! Every single turn with Oloro in play, you will gain life, draw cards, and the opponents will slip closer and closer to death.
There are so many cards that synergise with his second ability that it's not funny. Roiling Horror; Well of Lost Dreams; Etherwrought Page; Ivory Tower; Obzedat, Ghost Council; Venser's Journal; Pristine Talisman; and any card with Extort would be perfect additions to this type of deck.
Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge is a revisit of the highly popular plane of Innistrad. Jeleva can easily be turned into a Milling commander in my opinion, with each cast shaving precious cards off everyone's library. With the assistance of the big spells that can be found in almost any Commander game, Jeleva could turn into a powerhouse if left unattended.
Jeleva could do really well with some supporting equipment, as one point of damage every turn isn't really going to get you anywhere. We shall see, but currently Jeleva is the commander I'm least certain about.
Prossh, Skyraider of Kher is a very nice throwback to the Kobolds of, well, Kobold. The first time you cast him (or her?), you get 6 tokens, and you only get more after that. Jund already has a lot of things that wish to be "eaten", thanks to the support of the Devour mechanic from Shards of Alara, and your Commander acts as a very good sacrifice outlet for those.
Prossh can combo well with everything from Grave Pact to Food Chain, so I'd expect to see a little bit of everything from him.
Just before we start on Marath, Will of the Wild, it should be noted that he has already received errata, appending the phrase "X can't be zero." to it's last ability. That's right, no easy infinite combos for you.
But it still works well with Doubling Season, Parallel Lives, Mana Echoes and countless other cards. But it's also a Naya commander that require you to build around it, which I think is nice.
Personally, my favourite of these is Oloro. Which of these is your favourite?
New Commander preview!
Looks very interesting, a Commander with Flash that is not subject to the Commander Tax, with a relevant Enters the Battlefield ability to boot.
I am currently in the process of building a Commander deck with Melek in charge.
Melek, Izzet Paragon - Art by Jason Chan
In my opinion, Melek is walking on the line. He She It is sitting there, waiting to be abused with stuff like Storm and Infinite Mana combos, when my playgroup doesn't like those. There are ways you can fix this, making a commander deck that is both good, and fun to play against. By following these four three two (I ran out of ideas) easy steps, you an be sure to inject some fun into your playing experiences. For this article, I'll be using my build in progress as an example.
Step 1 - Themes
In my Melek build, I have decided to include a few themes, either to fill up space or to demonstrate that some themes can be good.
In my Melek deck, I have two themes going on: Tribal, and Copying.
Tribal
Melek has two creature types - Weird and Wizard. Now, both of those don't have a lot of tribal support, but there are a lot more Wizards than there are Weirds, so I decided to construct a Wizard theme in the deck.
Fortunately, there are a lot of good Wizards that are suitable for use in a Melek deck. Goblin Electromancer, Archaeomancer, Izzet Chronarch, and Snapcaster Mage (and a few others) all fulfil a very important role in the deck, and all share a common type.
However, it couldn't be tribal if there was nothing to use that "Wizard" typeline. Doing a quick search reveals all cards that support Wizards, that are also legal to play in my deck.
Of these, I have decided to use Riptide Laboratory, Sigil Tracer, Diviner's Wand, and Vedalken Æthermage. (Wizardcycling sounds so cool!)
Copying
Sure, copying may sound obvious in a deck that's focused all around Instants and Sorceries. However, when you build it, there's a definite theme of copying in there, so I wanted to expand upon this theme.
I wanted a way to repeatedly copy both my spells, and abilities.
Copying spells is easy enough. We can use Reiterate, Reverberate, Twincast, Wild Ricochet and the classic Radiate for that. Another legendary card for this purpose is the Mirari.
Copying abilities is a bit harder. Fortunately, there are a set of Artifacts which do just that: Rings of Brighthearth, and Strionic Resonator. And then I thought "Why stop at Spells and Abilities?" So I included Mizzium Transreliquat, Thespian's Stage, and Rite of Replication, to complete this theme. (I decided not to run Copy Enchantment, as I don't run enough Enchantments to justify it.)
Step 2 - Randomness
There's nothing that makes a game better than a laugh. Either some weird interaction that no one expected suddenly appears or there's a highly dramatic wait before something goes completely silly. Randomness is part of what makes EDH fun, so it is only natural that you would want to include other cards that purposely generate randomness.
Cards to this effect generally want to benefit all players equally, or randomly. Most of the recent cards in this category are Red, Rare Enchantments, which includes things like Guild Feud, Possibility Storm, or Heretic's Punishment.
That's not to say, however, that all "random" cards have to Red, although it certainly helps. The cards I'll be running in my build are Epic Experiment, Ignite Memories, Kaboom!, and Radiate. That'll certainly bring some laughs to the table.
Join me next time when I walk through the construction of a very popular deck.
The aim of this blog is to provide useful information for everyone who plays Commander (or EDH, if you prefer). Whether it be deck ideas, obscure card choices, undervalued cards, fun stuff or simply play tips, it is my hope that every player will find something to their liking on this blog.
So, without further ado, welcome!
Commander in Charge @commanderincharge - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
prguitarman
theartofmadeline
kaledo-art
turnnoffyourmind