Bennie did it last week
, and I’m doing it now: taking a look at the Commander 2018 decks
as whole pieces, as opposed to their constituent parts,
which I did last week
. The individual cards will matriculate into existing decks, but since the
pre-cons are playable as soon as you unwrap them, we’ll talk about how they
might play with each of the commander choices, as well as what kind of
upgrade paths you might take with them.
One of the strengths of having professional developers to follow up on the
work of professional designers is that we get consistently good, coherent
decks that you can crack and run, but haven’t locked you into a path you
can’t escape from-whether you’re upgrading wholesale or one card at a time.
They’re built with the fact that you’re going to update them already
considered, so there’s some clever construction that goes into ensuring
that your first few changes won’t completely upset the structure of the
decks. Let’s take a look at each.
Exquisite Invention
Planeswalker Commander:
Saheeli, the Gifted
Other Commanders:
Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer; Tawnos, Urza’s Apprentice; Varchild, Betrayer
of Kjeldor
I’m with Bennie that Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer is an exciting new Izzet
commander that feels very red and blue, mostly in its token creation and
copy making. It’s the “what you’d hope for” choice. Unlike other six-mana
commanders in the colors, it has a beefy enough body to hold its own down
in a battle, making it more worth casting additional times. Brudiclad is
who you want to command the deck the first time you unwrap it, because it’s
centered around what the deck wants to do-make tokens, both Thopters and
Myr, and have swarms to attack with (buffed up by Chief of the Foundry)
and/or sacrifice to your other artifact abilities-so making them for free
is what you want to do. You’ll also want them to cast a giant Saheeli’s
Directive so that you can dump most of your deck onto the battlefield and
then have Hellkite Igniter be more than lethal.
Tawnos works better as 1 of 99. It pairs nicely with Mimic Vat to get two
copies of something, but it doesn’t copy Hellkite Igniters since it’s not
an artifact. Copying Bosh, Iron Golem’s ability for double the damage is
great, but the deck wants more high converted mana cost artifacts to do
that with. Tawnos will be the commander that you build around with all
kinds of artifact activated and triggered abilities, like destroying
something with Spine of Ish Sah or killing more than one thing/drawing
extra cards off of Nin, the Pain Artist.
Varchild is a token-creating element of the deck which has its challenges
going it alone-although the payoff is worth the risk. I expect to see lots
of folks lining up to build a version of it.
Saheeli can be better than Brudiclad if you want to go in that direction,
but it’s still more of a build it than play it out of the box. Especially
compared to some of the artifacts run in many Commander decks, the ones in
Exquisite Invention are nice to copy, but aren’t all that saucy.
Best New Card:
Enchanter’s Bane. The color pair needed a way to get rid of enchantments
and Enchanter’s Bane is a step in the right direction. It’s not foolproof,
but it will work often enough that you’re happy with it. Honorable mention
to Treasure Nabber.
Best Reprint:
Unwinding Clock. It gets you to the silly parts of the deck in which you
create tokens forever or draw a card every turn with Endless Atlas.
It’s obvious that the upgrade path for all Preconstructed decks involve
working on the manabase, so I won’t feel the need to repeat that every
time. An Academy Ruins would be a sweet land upgrade for this one, though.
The deck seems to get rolling when creatures connect, like with Sharding
Sphinx, so I’d go with something like Archetype of Imagination or Sun Quan,
Lord of Wu, to make everything unblockable. The next buffs, such as Master
of Etherium and Chief of the Foundry, make Archetype of Aggression a little
more viable. In general, the upgrade path for this deck continues along its
original arc, just does it more.
Tawnos is where you’d go off in a completely new direction, so much so that
you’d probably just want to build it instead of cannibalizing major parts
of the deck.
All in all, the deck is solid, but I wouldn’t jump to have it be the one of
the four I played.
Subjective Reality
Planeswalker Commander:
Aminatou, the Fateshifter
Other Commanders:
Varina, Lich Queen; Yennett, Cryptic Sovereign; Yuriko, Tiger’s Shadow
Not grooving on Varina as the commander for Subjective Reality. She’s
clearly designed to lead a new Zombie deck, not this one. Sure there’s Army
of the Damned and a few Zombies, but that’s not enough. In fact, she might
be one of the first cards I would remove. Yennett, Cryptic Sovereign, on
the other hand, which leads this one out of the box. It becomes a bit of a
Sphinx Tribal deck with a proper Sphinx leader. It has a good air game and
a reasonable card draw engine, plus you get to cast some stuff for free.
You have to keep an eye on the skies to make sure things don’t overwhelm
Yennett, but having menace means it can’t be from just one big creature.
Using Yuriko to lead the deck might be a precursor to playing Skull Storm
since it’s so cheap to cast. There are only two other Ninjas, Silent Blade
Oni, and Ninja of the Deep Hours, so you have plenty of room to expand
into.
The right commander for this deck is clearly Aminatou, the Fateshifter. Her
ability to manipulate the top of your deck makes a card like Yennett
extremely strong while getting you to the cards that you want now instead
of later. Her second ability is best on Sphinx of Uthunn or Sower of
Discord, one of the finest of the new cards. Of course, we’re all going to
want to play with her ultimate ability just to see what kinds of tomfoolery
we can get into. People like Aminatou, and it’s probably because it seems
like an Un-card.
Best New Card:
Magus of the Balance, obv. Props to Skull Storm, and as much as I love
Entreat the Dead, it’s not as spicy in this deck.
Best Reprint:
Djinn of Wishes. Card doesn’t get enough love.
The upgrade path is to do even more top of the library manipulation,
running Aminatou as the commander. Scroll Rack, Sensei’s Divining Top,
Future Sight, even Crystal Ball and scry lands are a nice place to start.
The best thing about Aminatou is that you can go full tribal with either
Zombies or Ninjas, although there’s some room to just play which creatures
you want and add Arcane Adaptation to hit your theme. The Zombie deck led
by Varina is a complete retooling. The Sphinx deck with Yennett doesn’t
need too many buffs, just some of the other techy Sphinxes like Unesh,
Criosphinx Sovereign or Sphinx of Magosi.
Aminatou all by herself makes choosing this deck desirable, but there are
plenty of other things to love about it as well.
Nature’s Vengeance
Planeswalker Commander:
Lord Windgrace
Other Commanders:
Gyrus, Waker of Corpses; Thantis, the Warweaver; Xantcha, Sleeper Agent
Nature’s Vengeance is right up my alley. Creatures, plenty of them, and big
ones, plus some cool tricks and some graveyard stuff-just I want from a
Jund deck. It then adds the “lands matter” sub-theme and we have something
new. Gyrus, Waker of Corpses still isn’t getting my vote, because there are
just not enough ways to get those exiled cards back. I want to use things
several times. One day, when exile retrieval is better, we’ll see. Thantis,
the Warweaver is the way to go. It forces everyone to be aggressive, but
since you’re set up for it from the start, you have the advantage. Unlike
cards like Avatar of Slaughter, Thantis helps protect you somewhat from the
violence going, since it gets bigger for each creature that comes your way,
which of course can get out of hand in a hurry. Xantcha is a fun and
slightly chaotic 1 of 99, which would need something built around her to
lead a deck.
Lord Windgrace wouldn’t have any trouble leading this deck either. It feels
like it wants more graveyard recursion to take advantage of his +2 ability.
There is plenty you can do, however, ping-ponging between the +2 and the
-3.
Best New Card:
Windgrace’s Judgment. Honorable mention to Gaze of Granite.
Best Reprint:
Charnelhoard Wurm. One of the ways of getting back creatures from Lord
Wingrade.
Thantis makes a great upgrade commander. The first card you’ll want to grab
is Arachnogenesis. You might not go full Spider tribal, but Ishkanah,
Grafwidow and Silklash Spider are worth the price of admission. In your
upgrade, you’ll want to play your share of Fogs. Tangle and Spore Cloud are
great because they keep creatures tapped down. You’re not in Propaganda
colors, but Crawlspace will send creatures toward other faces instead of
yours. Rampaging Baloths and Baloth Woodcrashers hint at Beast tribal,
which is always great if you like to turn them sideways.
If you’re running Lord Windgrace instead, fetchlands become even more
highly desirable. I’d have a tough time not overhauling the deck if I were
to use him as the commander because I’d like to take advantage of his
ability to put the card I want into the graveyard without having to go
through the trouble of casting it. You know Living Death would make an
appearance, along with Patriarch’s Bidding if we held onto that Beast
tribal idea. You’d have head a more defensive direction if you want to use
the ultimate-at which point, you’ve probably already done the job of
controlling the battlefield, so you might not have cause to activate the
ability.
Adaptive Enchantment
Planeswalker Commanders:
Estrid, the Masked
Other Commanders:
Kestia, the Cultivator; Tuvasa the Sunlit; Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle
Our first legendary creature with bestow is the first reason to like the
Adaptive Enchantment deck, because it gives a new take on the old
enchantress favorite. Having the option of casting Kestia for the bestow
cost then gives you some built in protection against Wrath of God effects.
Enchant up any creature you like, get your commander onto the battlefield,
providing the same benefits it did a moment ago-namely drawing cards.
Eidolon of Blossoms now does double duty, drawing cards both when
enchantments enter the battlefield AND when they attack (assuming they’re
enchantments as well). While Tuvasa the Sunlit might seem like a better
Enchantress commander, that appearance is deceiving. Sure, it gets bigger
for each enchantment you control, but you’re only drawing on the first one
you cast each turn. That severely limits the ability of the deck to do
infinite things, which is probably reasonable. To me, Tuvasa only becomes
the better choice to up your commander storm count for Genesis Storm and
Empyrial Storm. Then there’s Arixmethes, which you’d have to take too much
out of the deck to play (since you couldn’t have the white spells). I’ve
already talked at length about directions we could take the card in. I
certainly wouldn’t take it out of the deck, but I wouldn’t let it be in
charge, either.
Estrid, the Masked leading the deck leads to some compelling possibilities,
especially if you want to get in with Bruna, Light of Alabaster. Although
Estrid’s middle ability is neat, not to mention an affordable -1, I’d want
to spend my time ensuring I had enough loyalty counters to get to the
Replenish ultimate. Of course, that -1 ability is quite nicely synergistic
with the +2, so you’ll have to do some long-term math.
Best New Card:
Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle. Really, can’t stop raving about this card.
Besides that, it’s Myth Unbound, which is gasoline all the way.
Best Reprint:
Winds of Rath. Nice that we have a new deck to play it with.
Kestia is the commander for your upgrade path. Load up with enchantment
creatures (44 choices in all in Bant, which includes some of the ones in
the deck) or your favorite auras and enchantments. Remember that the
Archetypes are all enchantment creatures, as is Courser of Kruphix, Ephara,
God of the Polis (kind of), and our favorite chaos card, Perplexing
Chimera. Using Estrid as a piece of Kestia seems like the direction I’d go.
For heading off into Simic land, Arixmethes will be your jam. There are
certainly cards from Adaptive Enchantment that I’d keep around, like
Cold-Eyed Selkie, but otherwise you’ll want to explore more of the drawing
cards/beating face angle. Don’t forget Oracle of Mul Daya, so that you can
play your commander as a land and play another land on the same turn. Also
give due consideration to Explore as a ramp spell that’s not completely
useless lategame.
While I wouldn’t be sad getting handed Adaptive Enchantment in a pod or a
league, it’s not quite my cup of tea. For my particular playstyle, I’d go
Nature’s Vengeance first, then Subjective Reality, Adaptive Enchantment,
and finally Exquisite Invention. The good news is that they’re all good, so
you can pick the one that fits the way you like to play. They have all some
elements which make multiplayer a more fun format, so big props for those.
Unfortunately, due to other commitments (like coming to the next SCG Con!),
my local group and I won’t have time to do a league with this until after
the New Year. If we do, I’ll be sure to report on it. What I’ll definitely
be reporting on are which of these new Commander 2018 cards are
going into my suite of Commander decks.
Question of the Week
I thought that I’d ask the Question of the Week this time. I
tweeted out that
I had never built a planeswalker-as-commander deck, and offered a poll of
the four from Commander 2018 to choose from. Here are the results:
Aminatou 36%
Lord Wingrace 29%
Estrid, the Unmasked 23%
I’ve already started brainstorming ideas around what kinds of things would
be compelling to see other players control-Demons seem like a strong choice
at the moment; I certainly want to pass that Abyssal Persecutor around.
Look for that build in the coming weeks. Until then, enjoy your Commander 2018 release events and all the fun that comes with
exploring new cards.
Check out our comprehensive Deck List Database for lists of all my decks:
SIGNATURE DECKS
Purple Hippos and Maro Sorcerers
;
Kresh Into the Red Zone
;
Halloween with Karador
;
Dreaming of Intet
;
You Did This to Yourself
.
THE CHROMATIC PROJECT
Mono-Color
Heliod, God of Enchantments
;
Thassa, God of Merfolk
;
Erebos and the Halls Of The Dead
;
Forge of Purphoros
;
Nylea of the Woodland Realm
;
Karn
Evil No. 9.
Guilds
Lavinia Blinks
;
Obzedat, Ghost Killer
;
Aurelia Goes to War
;
Trostani and Her Angels
;
Lazav, Shapeshifting Mastermind
;
Zegana and a Dice Bag
;
Rakdos Reimagined
;
Glissa, Glissa
;
Ruric Thar and His Beastly Fight Club
;
Gisa and Geralf Together Forever
.
Shards and Wedges
Adun’s Toolbox
;
Angry, Angry Dinos
;
Animar’s Swarm
;
Borrowing Stuff at Cutlass Point
;
Ikra and Kydele
;
Karrthus, Who Rains Fire From The Sky
;
Demons of Kaalia
;
Merieke’s Esper Dragons
;
Nath of the Value Leaf
;
Queen Marchesa, Long May She Reign
;
Rith’s Tokens
;
The Mill-Meoplasm
;
The Altar of Thraximundar
;
The Threat of Yasova
;
Zombies of Tresserhorn
.
Four Color
Yidris: Money for Nothing, Cards for Free
;
Saskia Unyielding
;
Breya Reshaped
;
Yidris Rotisserie Draft Deck
.
Five-Color
Partners
Tana and Kydele
;
Kynaios and Tiro
;
Ikra and Kydele
.
THE DO-OVER PROJECT
Adun Oakenshield Do-Over
;
Animar Do-Over
;
Glissa Do-Over
;
Karador Do-Over
;
Karador Version 3
;
Karrthus Do-Over
;
Kresh Do-Over
;
Steam-Powered Merieke
Do-Over;
Lord of Tresserhorn Do-Over
;
Mimeoplasm Do-Over
;
Phelddagrif Do-Over
;
Rith Do-Over
;
Ruhan Do-Over
.
If you’d like to follow the adventures of my Monday Night RPG group (in a
campaign that’s been alive since 1987) which is just beginning the saga The Lost Cities of Nevinor, ask for an invitation to the Facebook
group “Sheldon Menery’s
Monday Night Gamers.”