When the Commander decks were announced, I was both excited and skeptical. On one hand, Wizards of the Coast had just created the precedent for a
product that could revitalize Legacy, an Eternal-legal-only box set. While there were several statements made on Twitter by Aaron Forsythe to the
effect of “Commander is not a Legacy stimulus pack,” I felt happy with the progress. An avenue had been created for older
cards and entirely new cards to reach the hands of Legacy players. How much better does it get?
All that excitement, however, was tempered by my feelings toward Commander. As a very competitive player, Commander has never really appealed to me. I
totally get that you can do every insane thing in Magic that you love doing, but that’s mostly true of cubing as well. As a few good friends from
Washington have said, “The format isn’t even close to being fully min-maxed.”
In English, what they’re saying is that everyone has a tacit and unspoken agreement to not build decks that are as degenerate as they could be.
In exchange, everyone at the table gets at least a chance to assemble their Myr Turbine + Kuldotha Forgemaster + Krark-Clan Ironworks Rube Goldberg
device. It’s probably just better to put a Blightsteel Colossus in the deck—and I’m sure many people would—but a lot of people
also wouldn’t.
In Legacy terms, think of Commander as a format where half of the Storm decks don’t play Lion’s Eye Diamond; half of the Loam decks
don’t play Wasteland; and half of the Show and Tell decks don’t play Emrakul. I’m probably exaggerating about the “half”
part, but my point stands. The format is young; its audience is composed mostly of people who are playing for the experience of playing as opposed to
the experience of winning; and the format’s decks reflect that.
The Commander product also reflects that, and that’s the most important concept to keep in mind when evaluating the product for Legacy
playability: Wizards of the Coast made the product for a format that is non-competitive almost by design. It’s a format where Sol Ring
is legal; everyone plays it; and yet people apologize when they play it on turn one. The cards that one would design for the set, therefore, do a lot of really cool things. Whether they win games is somewhat less relevant, since my guess is that most Commander players would rather
play a Maelstrom Nexus than a Lion’s Eye Diamond. That’s nothing against them as people or players, but it leads to card design that
doesn’t much help out players in a competitive sanctioned format.
All of that is by way of saying that I expected new Commander cards to be sweet, to be cool, but to not necessarily be
Legacy-playable. And you know what? I’m glad I ended up (mostly) right. The Commander designers had to have tried to keep the
“Commander-playable vs. Legacy-playable” Venn diagram overlap as tiny as possible. In fact, had I been on that design team, “not
printing a Legacy staple” would’ve been one of the goals.
Had a card on the power and playability level of Knight of the Reliquary or Vendilion Clique been printed in Commander, it would’ve been a bit of
a financial fiasco. Since those decks are the only places to get specific Legacy-playable cards, the prices would be very high from the get-go. The
decks are all well-designed, powerful additions to a player’s Commander collection, so it’s unlikely that too many singles make their way
into the open market. After all, if you’re a Commander player buying a specific deck, it’s because the deck has cards you want.
You’re going to play them. The rares in the deck, the ones that are unique to exactly that deck, they’re designed to be especially
appealing to you. They’re a huge part of what’s selling that specific deck. You’re supposed to really want those cards. The
number of rares and mythic Commanders entering the singles market, then, is going to be even lower for that reason.
That’s why, absent any real Legacy market demand, rare Commander singles are already hitting $20. If Wizards had accidentally created a Knight or
a Clique or some other semi-staple as a Commander rare, the card would skyrocket to grotesque prices, the Commander deck would be unattainable, and
Legacy’s reputation as a format would be dinged yet again. I don’t like that one of the defining characteristics of Legacy is its financial
inaccessibility. Thankfully, I don’t see Commander creating much more of a problem for the format in that respect.
I still believe that there are several role-players in Commander. These cards will never see as much play as Standstill or Life from the Loam or Grim
Lavamancer, but they do have the potential to break out in a few Legacy archetypes. There are a few categories that my Commander picks break down into.
These categories are “role players,” “upgrades,” and “Rube Goldberg devices.” Without further ado, your role
players!
Role Players
Chaos Warp
To introduce this card, a quick story from the weekend. Ben Hayes and I had just split the last round of the Legacy Challenge at Baltimore (subtle
beat), and we were trying to decide what to do with our mini-shopping sprees. Ben walked back and forth along the case looking over a bunch of Standard
and Legacy playables, making two full rounds. Finally he leaned against the glass and, with the air of a ten-year-old in a candy store, asked a sales
associate, “Do you guys, uh, have anything really sweet?” The sales associate looked confused and stammered, “Uh,
like what?” Ben pressed on: “You know, foils, foreign cards, stuff for my EDH decks…anything, really.”
“Well, we have a few Commander singles that you might be interested in. Want to take a look?”
“Yeah, sure, why not.”
No more than thirty seconds later, Ben turns to me and says, “Hey, Drew, isn’t Chaos Warp like, really reasonable? I mean, it seems pretty
good.”
“Yeah, I suppose. It’s basically a cross between Beast Within and Path to Exile, right?”
“Sure, but sometimes you just get ‘em. Like, you hit their Jace, and they reveal Mental Misstep, and the game just ends.”
“That’s fair.”
The historical problem with red removal in Legacy is that none of it kills a Tarmogoyf. White has Swords to Plowshares; blue has Jace and
counterspells; black has every removal spell ever; and green has Noble Hierarchs that it can pair with its Tarmogoyfs to invalidate others. Red has
always been left out of the Goyf-killing fun. Chaos Warp could change that.
Chaos Warp is basically Path to Exile just under 40% of the time. Against blue decks, you’re just over 50% to kill their permanent and leave them
with nothing. Against green decks, you’re more likely to give them a permanent than not. In all honesty, the card seems a little like playing
Russian roulette: you know you’re fine, mathematically speaking, but there will come the day when you pull the trigger, and a Progenitus springs
up to replace their Tarmogoyf, and you’ll want to actually kill yourself. In that instant, you’ll forget every time that you Chaos Warped their Knight
of the Reliquary into a Bayou or their Wurmcoil Engine into a Voltaic Key. If you can accept those bad beats as part of the innate variance of the
card, though, I think it’s perfectly serviceable. Look at what a deck like RUG, for instance, can do with a card like Beast Within:
Creatures (10)
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (21)
Spells (26)
- 4 Brainstorm
- 3 Lightning Bolt
- 2 Counterspell
- 4 Force of Will
- 3 Spell Snare
- 4 Ancestral Vision
- 2 Beast Within
- 4 Mental Misstep
Sideboard
Chaos Warp is a very similar card to Beast Within. It has higher upsides and lower downsides, though, since I would argue that giving them a land is
better than giving them a 3/3 in the 40% of the time that they get a land. In the 20-45% of the time that they get nothing, it’s clearly better.
Less than half of the time, then, it’s a worse Beast Within.
Keep in mind, though, that we’re not playing green, and so we can also use Chaos Warp as an answer to permanents that red should never be able to
handle. Goblins is almost completely dead to a Moat or a Humility, but that can change with Chaos Warp. The deck wouldn’t have to splash for
Krosan Grip anymore! Never getting your colored sources Wastelanded seems awesome. Similarly, Dragon Stompy now has a real answer to problem cards such
as Jace and Tarmogoyf. Finally, the potential for playing a permanent-heavy prison deck that can use Chaos Warp to cash in dead permanents is not out
of the question.
If I were to play Chaos Warp, I would first test it in various forms of RUG,Goblins,Forgemaster, and Dragon Stompy.
Edric, Spymaster of Trest
For those (hopefully very few) of you who don’t read Megan Holland’s weekly Premium newsletter, I rated Edric, Spymaster of Trest as my
pick for “Commander card most likely to impact Legacy.” Rather than paraphrase, here’s what I wrote:
The card that really excites me from Commander is Edric, Spymaster of Trest. Tropical Island decks in Legacy right now are very
susceptible to getting ground out by the card advantage of opposing Jaces and Ancestral Visions. Edric could change that dynamic in a big way, letting
a Green Sun’s Zenith turn a few Lavamancers, Stoneforge Mystics, Dryad Arbors, or even a lone Noble Hierarch into major threats.Given the recent adoption of Wrath of God in U/W lists, Edric lets decks like RUG and Bant apply real pressure without overcommitting to the board,
forcing U/W to react while keeping several threats in reserve. The issue before this was that decks like RUG and Bant had to rely on mana efficiency
and threat density to beat U/W, since they had very few ways of getting ahead on cards. If those decks have cheaper counters, more threats, and a
potent draw engine, the matchup will definitely get much harder for the control decks.
Edric is good because of where the key interactions in the RUG vs. U/W Ancestral/Jace matchup exist. The important components of the matchup are
RUG’s Tarmogoyfs and Vendilion Cliques versus U/W’s spot removal suite and RUG’s Natural Orders versus U/W’s Force of Wills,
Counterspells, and Wrath of Gods. Edric, however, changes that dynamic. If RUG can get U/W to burn a removal spell on a non-Tarmogoyf, non-Clique
creature, the rest of their threats become that much better. If RUG’s Edric goes unanswered, the game will probably end shortly thereafter. The
real advantage that U/W has in the matchup is card advantage in the form of Ancestral Vision—all of the cards in the RUG deck are one-for-ones,
so refilling at one-for-three is a huge positive for the U/W deck. If RUG can keep pace with U/W’s card drawing, though, its threat density will
eventually overwhelm U/W. After all, four Swords to Plowshares only go so far in answering 4 Tarmogoyf, 3 Vendilion Clique, 2 Edric, Spymaster of
Trest, and 2-4 Green Sun’s Zenith for Tarmogoyf and Edric.
With the adoption of a four Path to Exile sideboard, however, the best plan may already exist. Alex Bertoncini’s Thrun, the Last Troll and trio
of Jace, the Mind Sculptor did a number on me in Round 5 of Baltimore, even through my suite of Paths and Swords. For reference, his list:
Creatures (14)
Lands (19)
Spells (27)
If you’re expecting a lot of control or other creature-light strategies, I could see replacing the Trygon Predators or the Grim Lavamancers in
his list with Edrics. Of course, that’s not all Edric can do. Although Lewis Laskin didn’t make it to the tournament on Sunday, he did tell
me that he planned on playing a midrange deck with a full set of Edrics! Since it’s not my place to write about another person’s
technology, I’ll leave you with that knowledge and the confidence that Edric is a Legacy-playable blue three-drop. If you’re having trouble
finding a place to start this decklist, may I suggest playing more Dryad Arbors?
If brewing with Chaos Warp and Edric, Spymaster of Trest isn’t really your cup of tea, might I suggest a few cards that will make you reconsider
what “strictly better” really means? I give you your upgrades!
Upgrades
Flusterstorm
When I saw Flusterstorm, I was unimpressed. I posted the following on Twitter:
“So Flusterstorm is either a worse Dispel, a very contrived Mindbreak Trap, or a narrower Spell Pierce? I
see.”
A few weeks later, my opinion has changed a bit. To start, though, let’s look at what this card doesn’t do:
- It’s not a particularly powerful reactive card, since it doesn’t interact with
creatures, planeswalkers, artifacts, or enchantments. (narrower Spell Pierce)
- It’s not a hard counter. (worse Dispel)
- It doesn’t reliably counter multiple spells. (contrived Mindbreak Trap)
That said, I think this is a card that proactive decks will want. Let’s face it: the reactive decks can have Spell Snare, Spell Pierce, or
whatever else it is that they need. Flusterstorm isn’t for the blue control decks; it’s for the blue combo decks. If you
wanted to play Orim’s Chant in your Tendrils deck but didn’t like having to splash white, Flusterstorm may be exactly what you want. If you
want a card that both addresses an iffy storm matchup and protects your business spell, Flusterstorm is a strong option. If you plan on fighting a
counter war where you know they have access to Mental Misstep, Flusterstorm may well be better than Dispel, since they could be tapped out for their
Show and Tell but still have the ability to counter exactly one Dispel. In such a situation, Flusterstorm will win the game where Dispel always loses.
Another such potential situation is that you have a dozen copies of Empty the Warrens or Tendrils of Agony on the stack. From either side of the table,
Flusterstorm is an ideal card to have in hand in this situation—it’s a one-mana Mindbreak Trap, no matter how you look at it.
Finally, on a more familiar level, Flusterstorm can counter your own copy of a Hive Minded Pact. How, exactly, does that work?
Player A plays a Hive Mind. It resolves. Player A plays a Pact of the Titan. It gets copied. Player B puts a copy of the spell on the stack.
Note that they don’t play it; they copy it. This becomes relevant. Player B casts Flusterstorm. Hive Mind triggers and Storm triggers,
in that order, since abilities go on the stack in (Active Player)(Non-active Player) order. Storm resolves, creating two copies of Flusterstorm. All of
them target Player B’s Pact. Player B elects not to pay for their Pact. Player A presumably counters their own Pact with their copied
Flusterstorm. All is right with the world.
Of course, Player B also could’ve Flusterstormed the Show and Tell that brought Hive Midn to the party, assuming Player A didn’t pay retail
for their enchantment. But I digress.
My point is that Flusterstorm has a lot of little utilities that makes it worth considering in multiple decks. Orim’s Chant or Pact of Negation
might be a really good card in a given deck, but one of the important parts about evaluating a card is figuring out when and where it belongs. Before
dismissing a card as unplayable, think about all of the situations where it could perform better than an existing card. Is it really strictly
worse? Think about it again. If you tried, I’m sure you could come up with several in-game situations where Flusterstorm is the exact card that
you want. Whether those situations ever arise depends on the metagame, of course, but putting in the thought work is important and useful regardless of
whether you end up playing a given card.
The Mimeoplasm
Flusterstorm took me a couple of weeks to come around on. I was not convinced that it would be particularly useful in Legacy. The Mimeoplasm, by
contrast, stood out to me as a “strictly better” card from the moment I saw it. I know I said I’m more about winning than doing
“cool stuff,” but The Mimeoplasm just oozes awesome. In practical Legacy applications, there are basically two decks in which The
Mimeoplasm is better than other cards. The first example is Cephalid Breakfast:
Creatures (16)
- 1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
- 1 Shaman en-Kor
- 4 Nomads en-Kor
- 1 Karmic Guide
- 4 Cephalid Illusionist
- 1 Sky Hussar
- 3 Narcomoeba
- 1 Venser, Shaper Savant
Lands (19)
Spells (25)
Joe Lossett has been a bridesmaid with Cephalid Breakfast twice, losing to a Blue-Red combo deck in the finals of both Legacy Opens. The deck is a very
real quantity, even though it’s incredibly underplayed for its power level. So how does The Mimeoplasm fit into this deck?
If you want to play it as straightforward as possible, The Mimeoplasm is a strict upgrade to Karmic Guide’s slot in the deck. Whereas the kill up
to this point was Dread Return Karmic Guide, Guide back Kiki-Jiki, Kiki-Jiki the Guide, Guide token back Sky Hussar, untap Kiki-Jiki, and go infinite
with Kiki-Jiki + Sky Hussar, there’s an easier way now. Instead of all that business with the copying and the triggers, you flip Hellkite
Overlord and Lord of Extinction. Dread Return The Mimeoplasm as Hellkite Overlord, put a ton of +1/+1 counters on it, and attack for well over 20 in
the air.
If they have infinite life, that’s no problem. Just substitute Putrefax for Hellkite Overlord, Dread Return The Mimeoplasm as a Putrefax, and
attack for a couple dozen poison!
Of course, the other option is that you could also look to splash blue in Ken Adams’ Buried Alive deck:
Creatures (26)
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 1 Triskelion
- 1 Quirion Ranger
- 1 Basking Rootwalla
- 1 Phyrexian Devourer
- 4 Tarmogoyf
- 3 Noble Hierarch
- 3 Bloodghast
- 3 Vengevine
- 4 Fauna Shaman
- 1 Necrotic Ooze
Lands (19)
Spells (15)
Sideboard
With the addition of The Mimeoplasm over Necrotic Ooze, you don’t have to worry about super-late games. Instead of Lord of Extinction, you could
play with Krosan Cloudscraper, who doesn’t care about how many cards are in your graveyard. In fact, you have additional utility from your
Phyrexian Devourer and Triskelion analogues – you can very realistically just Putrefax them and force them to respect the possibility of a
Reanimate for the poison kill. Besides, with Noble Hierarchs, Quirion Ranger, and Gaea’s Cradle, it’s not completely out of the question to
get to nine mana to unmorph a Krosan Cloudscraper.
The Mimeoplasm feels very much like a five-mana Tooth and Nail in certain decks. I’m sure there’s a place for The Mimeoplasm in Legacy
– a blue combo piece that has multiple ways of killing an opponent immediately is too good to pass up. I know that I’ll be brewing more
ways to kill my opponents with The Mimeoplasm for at least the next week.
If these cards haven’t piqued your interest, might I be able to show you some true Commander cards? Far from being the obviously powerful cards,
these cards are the perfect mix of appealing and complex. They are the next
Rube Goldberg Devices
I wish I had decklists for the cards I’m about to discuss. More than anything, I consider this section to be the “Extra Credit”
section of the article. The Challenge section, if you will. The “I wish I was good enough to break this card” section. These cards have
unique effects and reasonable costs. How can you say no to them?
First up is Animar, Soul of Elements. It’s a relatively cheap creature that can be Green Sun’s Zenithed into play. It
reduces the cost of cards like Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. You can just kill them with an infinite/infinite Animar if you can hook up a one-colorless-mana
creature with a Cloudstone Curio and an Animar, but that’s the best I can do. Does Animar have a home in Legacy? I’m dubious, but
everything in me wants it to happen.
Next up is Trench Gorger. This guy seems like he could be Mana Severances 5-8 in a Severance-Belcher deck while simultaneously serving
as some sort of backup plan where you Show and Tell in an Emrakul or something similar. I feel like there are more powerful things to do with a Show
and Tell or a Reanimate than remove all the lands from your library, but I could be wrong. Honestly, I’d love to see Goblin Charbelcher become a
“blue” card, since Mana Severance appeals to me far more than Tinder Wall and Desperate Ritual ever will.
Finally, the Johnniest of the Johnny cards, Karador, Ghost Chieftain. This weekend, I played against a very different version of a
G/B/W Midrange deck, piloted by Andrew Campbell. In game one, I drew three Swords to Plowshares against him and lost very easily. How? He went Dark
Confidant, Dark Confidant, Zenith for Knight of the Reliquary, Zenith for Knight of the Reliquary. I boarded in all of my removal for game two, only to
see him cast Life from the Loam on turn three! He dredged it, flipping Volrath’s Stronghold, and that’s when my stomach jumped into my
throat. I was pretty sure I was Just Dead, but played it out anyway. Over the course of that game, I saw a Gaddock Teeg, two Dryad Arbors, a set of
Confidants, a set of Tarmogoyfs, a set of Knights, and a Terravore as his creature suite. I very narrowly managed to pull out games two and three, but
the deck seemed much better against blue decks than other versions of Bayou decks I’ve battled. Whereas other versions have focused on hand
disruption that gets more than negated by Ancestral Vision, this version focused on overloading my removal suite. As my elders have taught me,
it’s the last fatty that gets ‘em. Alternatively, there are no bad questions, only bad answers.
Karador seems to fit in this sort of deck most noticeably. Perhaps not this deck exactly, but a deck where you can cast it for GBW and, if it survives,
just bury them in resource advantages over the next few turns. I don’t know how such a deck would look or how it would compete with cards like
Hive Mind, but the deck seemed to have a lot of promise. If you’re looking to brew with Karador, I would suggest starting with just such a
creature-heavy model and adapting it from there. No promises as to whether or not an eight-drop is good in a three-color midrange strategy, but it
certainly looks like a long-game trump to me.
Enjoy a week of brewing, and come back next Wednesday for a development-focused look at how Mental Misstep changed Legacy as a format!
Until next week,
Drew Levin
@mtglegacy on Twitter