Commander Deck Of The Week: Secret Lair “Secret Card” Themberchaud!

If you’ve been reading me for a while, you’ll recall that I have a long history with Dungeons & Dragons, and I’ve simply loved the D&D and Magic mash-up products (Adventures in the Forgotten Realms and Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate). It’s my ultimate nerd Reese’s—D&D peanut butter in my Magic chocolate!  So when the Secret Lair came out featuring characters from the movie Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves as Magic cards, I quickly pulled the trigger and bought a set.  I was pleasantly surprised that 1) it shipped so fast that I got my product this past Friday, and 2) it featured a super cool “secret card” – Themberchaud!

Chonk!

People seem to be quite excited about this chonky boi, and with good reason!  First, its enters-the-battlefield ability deals damage equal to the number of Mountains you control to all other non-flying creatures, and it deals the same to each player.  If we play enough Mountains, that can be a significant chunk of damage, and it scales higher the later in the game we go.

But the second reason is just how flavorful Themberchaud’s drawback is.  This Dragon doesn’t inherently have flying like most Dragons do, and has to use the exert mechanic when attacking to fly; a Dragon that has to exert itself to fly because it’s too chunky is cute and hilarious, and I think makes it endearing to many Magic players.

With all that in mind, I decided to go ahead and build my own Themberchaud deck, and it came together quickly, so I wanted to share it with you today.  The Secret Lair is available for another week or so, so if you want to order it you’ve got time; but if you’d rather wait, I imagine there will be copies of Themberchaud floating around for sale since it’s been shipping out so quickly.

Let’s fly in and check it out!

Chonky Spice

One of the first cards I thought of for this deck was Power Matrix. It lets our chonky Dragon fly without exerting itself, and the other boost it provides is nice too.  My deck ended up having some number of non-flying creatures, so if I have it on the battlefield when I cast Themberchaud, I can give one flying to save it from the damage.

The second card I reached for was Conjurer’s Closet, which will let me get an extra Themberchaud trigger during my end step. Another idea is Helm of the Host, though if I don’t have a Power Matrix on the battlefield, the copy’s effect will destroy Themberchaud before I get a chance to attack and exert it. Still, it might be worth sacrificing the original to keep the battlefield clear and continue to punch through damage, and also I’ve got other creatures that could benefit from making copies of them.  Sanctum of Eternity is another way to redeploy Themberchaud without having it go to the command zone first.

Brash Taunter doesn’t have flying, which makes it a perfect complement to Themberchaud. Getting to double up the damage to one player from my Dragon could be lights out for them.

Damage Opponents

To further push the damage that Themberchaud can dish out, I added Fiery Emancipation. This is obviously scary since it will triple the damage dealt to all players, including me, but this Dragon is all about burning down the world, so let’s lean into it. Red Dragon and Demanding Dragon push the player damage theme further and do well with the Dragon synergies I’ve got in the deck. I’ve even thrown in a Lightning Bolt, since I can easily see getting someone’s life low enough for that three damage to matter.

Enchanter’s Bane isn’t something I’ve played with much recently, but the ability to make players choose whether to keep their enchantment or take damage becomes much better in this sort of deck.

Dragons/Flyers

Themberchaud doesn’t deal damage to flyers, and since most Dragons are flyers, I decided to run a bunch of Dragons and take advantage of Dragon synergies. I’ve got a few other Dragon decks in my collection, so I might be missing a few of the better ones in this list, but I covered as many bases as I could.  I’m particularly excited about Hellkite Courser since it can temporarily bring Themberchaud out a turn early if you want to, or engineer a brief jailbreak from the command zone if the commander tax has gotten high.  Glorybringer has an exert ability too; I figure it can be Themberchaud’s workout buddy.

Dragons Matter

Here are all the Dragon synergy cards I tossed into my deck. It’s hilarious that Dragon Tempest won’t give Themberchaud haste since it doesn’t fly, but it can still throw that Dragon damage around. Dragonlord’s Servant and Dragonspeaker Shaman don’t have flying and will likely die when Themberchaud enters the battlefield, but that’s okay; when you mess with Dragons, you’re likely to get burned.  If they’re lucky, we might have a Power Matrix around to give one of them flying!

Lifelink

Since Themberchaud deals damage to all players, I thought it wise to include some ways to gain life.  Suiting up a Dragon with Shadowspear or Basilisk Collar goes a long way towards buffing my life total. 

Witch’s Clinic can give my commander lifelink, and if I have enough mana, I could give Themberchaud lifelink in response to its enters-the-battlefield trigger—I think that will work, and I’ll gain a ton of life for all the damage it deals to all creatures and players?  If I’m wrong about that, please let me know!

Card Draw

I want to keep the cards flowing, so I’ve got card drawing in my lands with War Room and Mikokoro, Center of the Sea.  Skullclamp is a given for creature decks, especially since opponents will have incentive to kill my threatening Dragons. I could even equip one of my non-flyers prior to casting Themberchaud. Wheel of Misfortune’s ability to damage one of my opponents plays right into the theme. It should be pretty easy to activate Spinerock Knoll’s ability, given how much damage I can unleash at my opponents.

Removal

Even though Themberchaud will often clean up cluttered battlefields, I did still want a couple of other sweepers like Inferno and Star of Extinction. I’ve got artifacts covered with Vandalblast, Red Sun’s Twilight, Shattering Pulse, and Abrade.  Steel Hellkite, Wild Magic Surge, and Chaos Warp provide some other flexible removal options.

Interaction

Even though I want to keep my Mountain count high, I did slide in a Demolition Field because a land like Maze of Ith can get plenty tiresome holding back a big ol’ Dragon. Soul-Guide Lantern provides a little bit of graveyard removal, and Wyll’s Reversal and Wild Ricochet give the deck some mid-game interaction that can swing some moves in my favor.

Mana Ramp/Mountains

Some mana rocks are always nice in a mono-red deck, especially Liquimetal Torque, which can double as removal in conjunction with my artifact-destroying spells. Pyromancer’s Goggles is an expensive mana rock that also does fun things with red instant or sorcery spells I cast.

Mana Geyser and Seething Song can provide a huge rush of mana to execute a big turn, hopefully involving casting Themberchaud.

Of course, we mainly want to keep hitting our Mountains, so I’ve got Thaumatic Compass and Koth, Fire of Resistance. If we can somehow get Koth’s ultimate ability to go off, that emblem is going to be mighty nice with our general gameplan of burning our opponents’ faces.

The Deck

Okay, here is the full decklist:

Here are the deck stats from our friends at Archidekt:

The mana curve is a bit heavy in the three-, four-, and five-mana area, but it’s a Dragon deck and chonky is on-theme.

What must-have cards might I have missed including here?  Will you be getting this Secret Lair, and if so, which of the cards will you be building Commander decks around?

Talk to Me

Do me a solid and follow me on Twitter!  I run polls and get conversations started about Commander all the time, so get in on the fun!  You can also find my LinkTree on my profile page there with links to all my content.

I’d also love it if you followed my Twitch channel TheCompleteCommander, where I do Commander, Brawl and sometimes other Magic-related streams when I can.  If you can’t join me live, the videos are available on demand for a few weeks on Twitch, but I also upload them to my YouTube channel.  You can also find the lists for my paper decks over on Archidekt if you want to dig into how I put together my own decks and brews. 

And lastly, I just want to say: let us love each other and stay healthy and happy.