Woo hoo!! Team Enchantment won the run-off for You Make the Card 4! I’m pretty stoked about it…I’m hoping the Magic community at large—with hefty doses of R&D guidance—can craft a sweet enchantment that both casual and competitive players will be excited about opening in future booster packs. I think back to things like Sylvan Library, Oath of Ghouls, Form of the Dragon, Fires of Yavimaya… let’s really work hard and knock this one out of the park!

So what color do I want? Well, green naturally! I’d also love something black that’s not just a “lose life, draw cards” variant. But honestly, I’m fine with any color other than blue. Why the blue hate? Well, I think it’s clear that, when trying to make a cool and powerful card, when you give it to blue it often becomes too powerful. Think about giving hexproof to blue; think about giving a planeswalker four abilities and making it blue; and think about Cryptic Command as opposed to the rest of the Commands in the cycle. No, I think if we make a non-blue enchantment, we’ll get something that can be pushed hard without crashing the metagame with a problem card.

Modern Commander

So a couple weeks back I wrote about a Commander tournament that Richmond Comix held, to a smashing success. They quickly scheduled another two months down the road, and that date is rapidly approaching (April 13). The TO decided to add a twist this time around and limit the card pool to just Modern-legal sets. Not to be confused with Modern-legal cards—you can still play with Green Sun’s Zenith and crew—but you also can’t use the Commander-specific product, which strikes me as weird. It’s not like those cards are difficult or expensive to acquire…but then, no one asked for my opinion. It is what it is, so I’ve been thinking of what sort of decks I want to make for the format.

I’ve come up with three concepts I want to brew around. First, I wanted to dust off my Kaldra token and have some fun with Helm of Kaldra, Shield of Kaldra, and Sword of Kaldra. This would involve all the sweet white equipment cards, but I wasn’t sure what other colors to add to the mix.

Next, a Relentless Rats deck! I made one a few years back, and it was a lot of fun, if a little one-note, but now we’ve got Ogre Slumlord to add to the mix, and he’s a perfect addition to the deck!

My last idea was a Sakashima, the Imposter deck, stuffed to the gills with copy effects. I’m talking Clones, Twincast, and things of that ilk. The idea is to craft each game based almost entirely on copying what my opponents are playing, which I think would be quite fun and challenging, as well as doing a decent job of scaling to whatever power level is at the table.

Sigarda, Host of Herons

I was originally wanting to make a green, black, and white deck with Kaldra so I could have Glissa, the Traitor in the deck—an awesome card for any sort of artifact-centric plan. But that would pretty much force me into running either Doran, the Siege Tower or Teneb, the Harvester. I’ve actually made quite a few decks around both, and they each want me to build around them a bit differently than an Equipment-heavy build.

So I reluctantly decided to drop black and Glissa and instead build around Sigarda, Host of Herons. I built a deck around her last year, but it was more of a “Voltron” build that focused exclusively on equipping Sigarda into an unstoppable killing machine. It also used the entire Commander pool, so this one will have some differences. Sigarda will still be a good creature to add Equipment to…until we get all three Kaldra pieces into play, and the real shenanigans begin!

Here’s what I’ve sketched out so far:

Sigarda, Host of Herons

Bennie Smith

Test deck on 03-31-2013

Commander

Creatures (30)

Lands (36)

I’ve got a lot of fun things going on here, but the main game plan is to search out a Shield of Kaldra—which makes all the Kaldra pieces indestructible—and then search up the other two pieces to bring our kickass Kaldra Avatar to play and start beating on people.

Marrow-Gnawer

Next up, Relentless Rats! I made a Marrow-Gnawer deck a while back and did indeed get to experience the wonder of casting a Relentless Rats with a Thrumming Stone in play and threw a ton of Rats onto the board. Not too much has changed since then, but we do have a few new toys. Ogre Slumlord is by far the best thing to come along for a Rat deck in quite a while, giving us built-in protection from most sweeper spells that would otherwise ruin our verminy fun. Limited bomb Pack Rat also gives us an opportunity to have fun with more and more Rats.

Restricting us to Modern makes it difficult to bring a bunch of dead Rats back all at once—my kingdom for Immortal Servitude not being a hybrid spell—so I’ve tried to build a lot of sweeper resistance into the deck. In addition to Slumlord, I put in Cauldron of Souls, Eldrazi Monument, and Mikaeus, the Unhallowed.

Aether Vial is a nice inclusion, since such a huge percentage of your deck is creatures that cost three mana. I also like Grafted Exoskeleton and Tainted Strike to give me some options of killing people that might otherwise be difficult to kill with regular damage alone. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

Marrow-Gnawer

Bennie Smith

Test deck on 03-31-2013

Commander

Creatures (43)

Lands (38)

Spells (19)

Sakashima the Imposter

Last up is what I think is a pretty sweet idea, something I’ve been kicking around for a while. I will likely keep this together and expand a little bit into regular Commander once the Modern event is done. I’ve always loved Sakashima the Imposter and thought it might be fun to build a deck stuffed with copy effects and just riff off whatever everyone else is doing. Who knows what epic plays I might be able cobble together piecemeal from creatures and spells different opponents are playing? It puts a smile on my face just imagining the possibilities! I’m definitely curious if any of you have tried something similar? Here’s my first draft:

Sakashima the Imposter

Bennie Smith

Test deck on 03-31-2013

Commander

Creatures (13)

Lands (50)

Spells (46)

Basically the idea is to draw cards, sometimes help my opponents draw cards so they can draw something worth copying, and then copy ’em! I’ve got a lot of weird cards in here I’ve never tried before—Cryptoplasm, Shapeshifter’s Marrow, Spellweaver Volute—but they’re on theme, and I think they’re going to be very interesting! I’m a little nervous about Mirror Gallery—after all, playing a clone is a nice way to kill a problematic Legend, and Commander is all about Legends—but I think Mirror Gallery allowing clones to copy Legends feels very much like something Sakashima would be all about, right?

I’m definitely curious to hear your thoughts in the comments below as I tweak my lists for the big tournament coming up. What would you add to these decks? What would you cut? What do you have questions about? Which one do you think I should play for the tournament?

Have a great weekend!

Take care,

Bennie

starcitygeezer AT gmail DOT com

Make sure to follow my Twitter feed (@blairwitchgreen). I check it often so feel free to send me feedback, ideas, and random thoughts. I’ve also created a Facebook page where I’ll be posting up deck ideas and will happily discuss Magic, life, or anything else you want to talk about!

New to Commander?
If you’re just curious about the format, building your first deck, or trying to take your Commander deck up a notch, here are some handy links:

Commander Primer Part 1 (Why play Commander? Rules Overview, Picking your Commander)
Commander Primer Part 2 (Mana Requirements, Randomness, Card Advantage)
Commander Primer Part 3 (Power vs. Synergy, Griefing, Staples, Building a Doran Deck)
Commander Starter Kits 1 (kick start your allied two-color decks for $25)
Commander Starter Kits 2 (kick start your enemy two-color decks for $25)
Commander Starter Kits 3 (kick start your shard three-color decks for $25)