Dear Azami – Beauty Is Only Skin Deep

My first instinct was to look at this and ask if maybe you instead wanted a Starke of Rath deck—that little man causes some trouble, let me tell you, as he goes around the table—but upon looking more closely it became clear I needed to do a little more rules research. You asked if you were playing Diaochan with the right rules, and her rules text (translated from ten years ago) is “Tap: Destroy target creature of your choice, then destroy target creature of an opponent’s choice. Activate this ability only during your turn, before attackers are declared.” 

You do target a creature with the first ability, not just an opponent, so it’s not like Preacher where you do target a player but can take whatever they have that they choose regardless of whether you can target it. And since you control the ability no matter what the opponent you target decides, you are correct—shroud protects Diaochan from herself whereas hexproof would not—but there is something much more interesting in the mix, as you noted. The magic words are “conspiracy” because the opponent you target with the ability does not need to be the controller of the creature you are killing, so Diaochan in fact reads “Destroy target creature you choose. Then choose who you want to team up with, and that player destroys target creature they choose too.”

Treachery is in the mix, and we shall plan for it, methinks.

Building a winning red deck is hard, and it’s the sort of thing where you have to balance everything just right if you want it to come out right in the end. Looking at the list straight up you are very light on victory conditions, and that needs serious addressing. It’s clear that some of the ‘win the game’ potential you’re using is enchantment-based, so you’re not desperately lacking in end game closure just because your creature count is low, but you need to have your own board presence in order to close a game out. To get there, we need to move a fair bit of things around, and that means this is going to be more of a ‘major surgery’ operation on your Diaochan deck than a gentle afternoon’s Lazik and a couple days of taking it easy.

Some things you like are simply not going to be there at the end, and the things you didn’t like definitely aren’t going to be. You noted a serious sensitivity to land destruction effects affecting how much fun your opponents were having and also how much fun you were having while you’re at it. These sorts of issues aren’t things that we just let stand, so we’ll address that while we move everything else around at the same time.

Starting with the lands, we can balance some of the things out right here. You have more of them than you need even without counting Maze of Ith as a mana source, which clearly it is not even though it takes up real estate. 39 lands plus other artifact mana sources is quite a lot for a deck that’s not capitalizing on them, like you would expect from an Azusa deck, and we’re going to smooth that down a little bit and get more mana out of fewer lands to have the same effect. In the end, we’ll end up with 36 (not counting Maze of Ith) when I’m done with things here, which gives back three slots for later use in some other capacity.

Cuts: 20x Mountain

Additions:

Smoldering Crater, Forgotten Cave, Blasted Landscape — Drawing the right mix of lands and spells is critical to get working early on. These help modulate just how many you draw in whichever direction you need them to at the time, being lands when you want them to be and cycling for a chance at a real spell when you want something else instead.

Arid Mesa, Scalding Tarn, Naya Panorama, Jund Panorama, Grixis Panorama, Evolving Wilds, Terramorphic Expanse — There is going to be a mini landfall theme added in, and more significantly perhaps we’re going to add ways to reuse these or double the value they provide you in order to get more work out of your Mountains than regular Mountains offer. The added value to store these up for Valakut to kill something with more than three toughness or on another player’s turn is also quite worth considering…but we’d need more reason to play them than that. Fortunately, we’ve found plenty and will be putting them to good work.

Thawing Glaciers — So good it hurts. You want to get more mana on the cheap, and it doesn’t get much cheaper than a free extra land every other turn. The number of free cards a Thawing Glaciers effectively draws you over the course of a long game is actually just astounding when it’s left to do its own work.

Temple of the False God — Two mana for one land is a good deal, and working your lands harder from the get-go means you don’t necessarily need as many spell slots dedicated to working on mana. I like free slots for more spells just in general, so every little bit helps.

Strip Mine — You’re entirely correct to note that mass land destruction stinks and is no fun. Strip Mine sometimes is rude, but when you wait on it for the right problem to appear, instead it’s a lifesaver because you stop the guy with Urborg and Cabal Coffers from making fifty mana a turn with their Deserted Temple powered shenanigans. Hard problems require straightforward answers, and Strip Mine works against the hardest permanent type to take care of (without, ya know, blowing up all of them and making everyone frown).

Kher Keep, Springjack Pasture — You have an equipment heavy plan but not a lot of actual creatures to hold Swords and stuff. Backup plans are good, and both of these token-generating lands help to make spare Sword-holding critters and keep the game rolling as you figure out whom your mighty 2/3 is attacking for Sword of Fire and Ice triggers.

Spinerock Knoll — A free spell attached to a land since you’re not the one who has to deal the damage, just the beneficiary of the trigger going the right way for you. It looks to me like you want to try and gain access to specific cards disproportionately more often, and a chance to potentially start with one of your linchpin cards or at least dig four cards deeper towards one of them seems like a significant advantage to me in this deck.

Hellion Crucible — You want creatures but you don’t necessarily want them around when Diaochan taps, and you can’t always guarantee their survival in the first place so to hang with the Artful Beauty they have to be pretty durable to begin with since they will be repeatedly targeted for death and all time and again. Hellion Crucible fits very well in alongside Crucible of Worlds and provides a steady amount of pressure at a pretty minimal investment. Surprise 4/4s out of nowhere that can immediately attack are very solid, and with Crucible of Worlds online you can produce them over and over again all at the price of just a land slot.

Moving on to the spells, I want to work on your creatures next even though I tend to leave that for last because I want to figure out what an actual, robust fighting force looks like to try to close a game out with before deciding what to do with the other sections so that I know how deeply (if at all) I need to cut into them to make it work right.

Cuts:

Darksteel Juggernaut — While you have a lot of artifacts and indestructible is a good ability to have on a serious threat, the requirement to attack every turn is a major turn-off to me in wanting to include it. You’re aiming for under the expected creature count as it is, which makes it hard to accept limitations on how intelligently you can use them since you will presumably want to be able to both attack and block from time to time.

Myojin of Infinite Rage — If mass land destruction isn’t making you happy and isn’t making the people you’re playing with happy, step away from the Myojin. Yes, this is otherwise technically an indestructible creature and you like those…but this makes people unhappy by design and thus is to be shunned.

Greater Gargadon — I doubt this is anywhere near the correct answer since you don’t seem to be able to meaningfully benefit from the sacrifice outlet and don’t really get anything out of the tricksy suspend part. I like this card a lot and happily play it with some regularity, but this is not its proper home.

Additions:

In deciding what to add, I looked for creatures that could substitute some of the spells you are playing, as you can have creature removal with legs instead of creature removal without at what appears to be basically no price for so doing. Streamlining in this regard tells me I’m going to need to make five more total cuts from the artifacts and other red spells—we’ll get to that later—but we’ll be filling in until we have a more reasonable creature count while still being entirely unafraid of tapping Diaochan even if the opponent picks a good creature to kill.

A lot of these will buy back in some capacity or do enough while they’re on their way in that you won’t have to bemoan their loss if they die at an inopportune time. The secret to using Diaochan, after all, is knowing when the fix will in fact be in and it will be an opportune time to tap to murder two opponents’ creatures with a little help from your temporary ‘friends.’

Orcish Librarian — The only small creature I saw fit to add to your deck, and I do so confident in the knowledge that few (if anyone) will want to kill it, assuming that if you want to do that much damage to your deck they should let you do so. As I said before, it seems like you are highly focused on a few key cards to win the game, namely things like Stuffy Doll, Repercussion, and Vicious Shadows to take out opponents while you’re using your damage-based mass removal spells. There are only a very few pieces like this, and the Librarian can help you tear through your deck in search of them but also finds you the kinds of cards you need right now and can change what’s there at short notice.

If you hit one good card and three dead ones, take the good card and use the Librarian again, putting the three bad ones in the blender lottery to potentially get purged entirely as you look for what you need. While he seems dangerous to the tools you have to work with, for the most part you have interchangeable things so it won’t really matter which mass sweeper you draw and the damage to be done to your long-term plans is effectively negligible.

Shard Phoenix — Both a recursive creature so you can keep having a body to carry equipment and a small sweeper as well, sacrificing as often as you need it to for two damage all around at a clip.

Kuldotha Phoenix — A bigger body but just as durable a one thanks to the fact that you can anticipate always having metalcraft in this deck. Who cares if things aren’t indestructible and can die if they don’t stay dead?

Inferno Titan — Part pinpoint removal, part ridiculous bomb in a mono-red deck in that he attacks at a very attractive conversion rate starting at nine mana and turns open mana into damage at a one-for-one basis. You want the maximum effect for each creature you do play, and this starts as an Arc Lightning with a body attached then swings mightily, as the body is built to be incredibly punishing.

Wurmcoil Engine — While it’s not indestructible, it is quite durable, and adding back another source of potential life gain is something I’m always happy to do as an incidental bonus. I don’t plan for life gain, but I do respect it, just only on cards that gain life while they do something.

Duplicant — A solid removal creature that can target problem cards like Blightsteel Colossus that otherwise you have a very hard time doing anything about. We want to cut removal spells and add bodies but don’t want to dilute the number of such effects we have available, and Duplicant is towards the top of the list for efficient guaranteed two-for-ones.

Crater Hellion — Big body and a big boom when he comes down as well. I haven’t seen very much of the Hellion lately—he seems to have been forgotten in my local area—and I am always one for showing people what things were like in the good old (bad old) days. That I also made Top 4 of a PTQ in the Urza’s Block Constructed format that featured both Gaea’s Cradle and Tolarian Academy with four copies of him doesn’t hurt either; opponents were doing degenerate things while I was just goofing around with a fun but admittedly terrible deck. Fond memories and a solid creature.

Balefire Dragon — You’re adding Swords and other cards that help sneak this past unblocked, and this particular Dragon has a mighty powerful effect if you connect even the once. While it’s not the most consistent—this is Commander, so creatures die a lot—the value to be gained is high and the price premium is basically nonexistent.

Bogardan Hellkite — Another potent removal spell attached to a good creature. A bit expensive for my tastes, but considering you’re so creature-light that adding Winding Canyons didn’t seem to get you anywhere, having at least the one creature you can flash in is important in my mind so that at least you can always threaten to maybe have a surprise blocker with that open mana.

Scourge of Kher Ridges — I see Rough / Tumble in the spells and added the Dragon that invented Rough / Tumble in its stead. Scourge is actually just an oppressive defensive machine so long as you only have to kill ground critters, and a fair bit of your equipment gives him protection, indestructibility, or even just a simple size boost so that you can use the air suppression ability without costing you the card itself. I haven’t met a red deck yet (or at least a non-Goblin one) that didn’t get better by adding Scourge of Kher Ridges. The card simply has a beautiful overlap between what it does naturally very well and what opponents playing Commander are in general trying to do.

Kozilek, Butcher of Truth — Card draw is key, as is potentially being able to have a dash of recursion over a very long game, and Kozilek is a big dumb fatty that comes with a fresh grip of cards attached. While the annihilator effect may be strongly negative, just like the land destruction we’re cutting (and for the exact same reason), it’s also just a big dumb guy that eats a Terror like a champ, so there is an easy and obvious balance to that negative initial response. Just kill it if it’s making you so unhappy, dude.

Moving on to the red spells, I see a few things that are easy to cut since we’ve found replacements for them already and others that were either already making your opponents unhappy or just aren’t the kinds of cards you need.

Cuts:

Act of Aggression — Word of Seizing is the best first effect of this sort thanks to the beautiful interactivity choke point that is the split second mechanic. Grab the Reins is the second since it can do everything Act of Aggression can but also has the entwine mechanic that allows you to do so much more. Act of Aggression is an okay card, but it’s just not an effect you need to duplicate so we’re cutting it to make more room.

Wild Ricochet — This is the best thing in the world you can possibly do to a Time Stretch, but for every other card it’s just not as good as Reiterate and thus only really has a home because of one card. It’s solid and plenty of decks will want it, but I don’t think this deck is one of them. You’re creature light by design so a lot of the common scenarios you might expect, like redirecting a Path to Exile and getting a bonus copy while you’re at it, just isn’t that vital to you. Also, never ever Wild Ricochet a Pact you can’t pay for. I learned that one the hard way.

Inferno — The damage to the opponent is something you want, but the damage to yourself is something you don’t. You have enough ways to find the vital cards like Repercussion that turn other cards into better Infernos and don’t need to stick with the old school version.

Fork — I’m just not convinced you need this since many of the spells you’re casting don’t benefit from duplication, leaving this as a counter for an opponent’s counter or a beneficial bonus copy whenever the opponent casts something neat for you like an early Explosive Vegetation. Reiterate is miles better thanks to buyback and is frankly only played because of that buyback. No Fork for you.

Aftershock — You have easier ways to kill creatures, and the versatility to potentially take out an artifact isn’t a compelling reason to play this as itself. Sorcery speed and the self-destructive nature of the card lean me away from it, and we’ve already fit in substitutions like Duplicant in its slot to cover the effect that you wanted with a different card.

Ruination — I would be willing to believe that a Blood Moon based land control strategy would be reasonable and something you could do without making too many enemies. Ruination is awesome but will earn you the ire of your opponents game after game, and you will well deserve it because this card is lopsided and mean.

Rough / Tumble — Neatly replaced already in convenient Dragon form.

Mogg Infestation — There’s a lot to be said for this in your deck when you have mostly damage-based removal. You can even do a lot with opponents spontaneously having twice as many things for Repercussion or Vicious Shadows to punch them over, but this has actually just kind of been a disappointment in the games I’ve played.

Furnace of Rath — Doubling damage is good in general. Doubling damage to you is very bad specifically since you’re playing a board control deck with very few ways to make up that lost ground and no way to say no to an opponent who would be so cheeky as to use this card’s doubling effect against you to kill you. It’s powerful but risk-laden, and as a controlling deck you want instead to be risk-adverse.

Stranglehold — Another card that is basically just good against Time Stretch, though it does have a solid anti-Tutoring clause as well that gives it considerably more life in this format. Unfortunately, through consistent play I have had it drilled home to me that the inability to be choosy with when and who this card effects can do as much harm as good. People don’t always Tutor for just the best threats, after all, but quite often Tutor for the best answers a well. Thus, this largely answers problems that you won’t always encounter and which won’t always be negative just because they could be so. A hoser card makes sense in some decks, but I would say not in this one.

Additions:

Three slots move over directly to those creatures that roughly approximate them, which gives us just seven, not ten, to fill back in.

Mindmoil — You really want to be able to churn for very specific cards in your game plan, and Mindmoil does nothing but churn over and over again. A reasonable grip and a spell cast each turn will dig you five or six cards closer to the one spell you really want to find, letting you go through your deck at a rapid clip to find the things you’re looking for. It’s a good way to have it feel like you’re drawing a spell each turn since excess lands will just be held onto and alter how deep this digs, and when you’re doing you really will just draw a spell every turn no problem. There’s also a spicy trio in the artifacts section that is very pleased when you put it together, which this will help you find like no other card possibly can.

Starstorm, Blasphemous Act, Magmaquake — Improved sweepers compared to the ones you’ve taken out. Magmaquake is especially interesting since planeswalkers are a weak point for your deck and this hits all of them at the same time, while it’s worth noting that in four-player games by the time you really need to use Blasphemous Act it will probably cost one or two, not six or seven. The ability to do thirteen to your Stuffy Doll while sweeping the board on the cheap is just too good to pass up.

Koth of the Hammer — A little bit of acceleration maybe, but the emblem is really where it’s at for you. You might play this out fast and even do some quick hits with a 4/4 Mountain, but it’s really the ultimate you want to have since it gives you both a control mechanism and a steady damage source turn in and turn out.

Mizzium Mortars — As good as Bonfire of the Damned is in the context of this format sometimes, where you might get to see double-digit Bonfires as you never do in other formats, it’s still a ridiculously expensive card and only affects one opponent. Mizzium Mortars is a sort of split card in that you can play it on turn 2 to kill a Rofellos and can definitely overload it with relative ease in the middle of the game, and the ability to choose between those two is very critical—critical to the point where I almost want Dead / Gone as both a cheap pinpoint removal and a bounce option for impossible problems. That the other half of the spell is a multi-opponent Flame Wave is what ultimately made it clear this was the one I was looking for despite the other options being convincing in their own right.

Rite of Ruin — This one’s for experimenting. You’re creature-light and averse to mass land destruction, but a little bit of a Wildfire every once in a while is not something anyone will ever truly fault you for. Rite lets you pick the card type you have the least of—let’s say ‘creatures’—and punish everyone sorely for their commitment to that card type while also forcing sacrifices of a few artifacts and lands while you’re at it. Mostly, this is just to experiment with and see how happy it makes you, but I think you’ll find it an improvement over the Ruination in that it never completely destroys anyone and always has a meaningful effect you can pick and plan for that affects you least of all.

Moving on to the artifacts, we’ve got some streamlining to do here as well and owe two slots to the creature department while we’re at it.

For this last section, we’re a little equipment-heavy. Your deck has as many equipment cards as it has creature spells, and that indicates to me something is significantly off-balance. I don’t think everything fits, and we want something that flows neatly rather than just playing all of the best cards and calling it finished. I will admit that seeing Crawlspace and Ensnaring Bridge made me happy since I haven’t seen Crawlspace in a long time here and am pretty sure that’s the first appearance of the Bridge here on Dear Azami. One particular piece of equipment sparked my interest, however, and led to a few of the other decisions like Mindmoil making it into the deck, so I’m going to expound a bit more on that decision as we get to it.

Cuts:

Crystal Ball — With so many similar cards and functions overlapping each other, this card doesn’t do as much as I’d have hoped. Yes, it is another card to help dig you to the most important ones in your deck, but to do that you have to eschew everything else and just push all of the time, so if that was all we were going to do I’d rather try to draw the cards than peek at them.

Caged Sun — I like building to a plentiful amount of mana more slowly and without exposing a permanent to be destroyed, and that means we’re going to be looking to more self-contained engines for resource acquisition purposes than just outright doubling it off the bat. You’re not looking to get anywhere fast and are not really going to be able to abuse it, so I stick to the cheaper one and play one copy but not two. That’s just too dedicated to jumping ahead and potentially making yourself a target too often.

Helm of Possession — Possibly better now that there are token creature generators in your land base, but overall you just don’t have enough creatures to reliably activate this at a price you’re willing to pay since the sacrifice a creature clause is very steep with as few creatures as you’re starting with in the deck.

Sculpting Steel — For most of your artifacts, I simply had to ask myself whether having a second copy did anything impressive that got me excited, and the answer here was simply no. This is more of a utility good stuff addition than a card that is critical to your strategy. It may be good a fair share of the time, like letting you cast Dreamstone Hedron and tap it immediately to cast another Dreamstone Hedron via Sculpting Steel, but it isn’t really helping with the theme, just capitalizing on the fact that some of your cards are good. The second copy of Lightning Greaves doesn’t do much for you, however, and the same is true for a lot of other cards. Two Tops are not, in fact, better than one, and a second Crawlspace lends you no additional defense.

Basilisk Collar — Deathtouch could be good with a few of the creatures that deal damage as part of their shtick, and I have in fact made Top 8 of a SCG Standard Open by attaching Basilisk Collar to an Inferno Titan with a grin and a giggle so I’m not discounting the Collar for nothing, but its usefulness scales alongside your creatures and most of the help would be coming from the life gain. If that’s all we wanted, we could do better than that; controlling the board is not a debilitating concern to the point where we need to make Scourge of Kher Ridges that much better.

General’s Kabuto — You want shroud, yes, but not at that price. We’re going to make up in redundancy by playing more cards like Mindmoil and Orcish Librarian to find the copies you already have rather than to play additional (weaker) copies that are more expensive than is reasonable.

Whispersilk Cloak — Shroud is vital to you, but you actually need it less now that you’re going to have an easier time finding one relevant piece of equipment with consistency. Using other cards, you don’t have to work as hard to double up on additional ways to get protection on your commander.

Shield of Kaldra Darksteel Plate — Originally I cut the Shield of Kaldra since it is just an incredibly expensive way to be a Darksteel Plate, but the more I poked and prodded at it the more I liked the idea of using this deck to chase the impossible Timmy goal. Instead of cutting the ‘random’ body part of Kaldra, we’re going to be adding all three together and try assembling Kaldra since you’re going to have recurring fetchlands + Sensei’s Divining Top or Scroll Rack to work with, and Mindmoil, and more card drawing, and, and, and.

I think you actually can assemble Kaldra often enough to potentially tear up a game with it and that this can give you your massively Darksteel Colossus like way to withstand whatever the opponent could hope to throw at you over the course of a long, controlling game. You have cards like Godo and Hoarding Dragon in addition to less-focused ways to get individual specific pieces, and the only travesty of justice would be if the Orcish Librarian misfiled a piece of the Kaldra wardrobe under “e for exile” by accident.

Additions:

Helm of Kaldra, Sword of Kaldra — The missing pieces of the man (?), the myth, the legend: Kaldra, the original and clearly most badass Germ token of all time. Both have reasonably useful abilities even if they are overpriced for equipment, and there’s a fun bit of goof factor involved in suiting up Diaochan with a mighty +5/+5 boost from Sword of Kaldra and actually having a speedy path to commander damage with your 1/1.

Two slots move over to the creatures, so we have only four more slots left, two of which were clearly farmed out way back in the land base discussion.

Rings of Brighthearth — In addition to being potentially fancy with your commander, this doubles the efforts of your fetchlands to not just be card advantage but actual ramp too while you’re at it, which is a pretty absurd use for the card. This doesn’t actually effectively interact with any of your creatures or enchantments, and while it technically can interact with Koth I somehow doubt it will. Merely interacting with your lands and all of your artifacts is pretty good though.

You can actually double the number of cards you draw with Mind’s Eye, if not at the same affordable rate, and blowing Dreamstone Hedron or Mind Stone is more interesting when it’s doubled as well. The real sickness comes with Sensei’s Divining Top since you might as well have the emblem “3: Draw a card” at that point. It interacts with seventeen of your lands (even if some of those are only ‘make two 0/1 guys instead of one!’) and nine of your artifacts, so a solid quarter of your deck can be more interesting with Rings around.

Crucible of Worlds — Quite the spend-y, card especially when you add that it comes with two Zendikar fetchlands as parts of its dependencies, but when you really want to build a solid control deck in commander, Crucible of Worlds is a key part of acquiring resources on the cheap and developing the higher reaches of mana development that really let you hit the sweet spot—the part of the game where you can cast Insurrection and still have mana left over for Reiterate with buyback if an opponent tries to get fancy with countermagic.

Druidic Satchel — You won’t get many tokens out of this, but you’re reasonably adept at setting this up to get you free lands. Without any cards helping it, this works pretty adequately on its own to help make sure you are drawing spells more often than not by pulling lands off the top of your deck. It’s also a bit of extra life gain, though this isn’t the mode I primarily use it for. It just happens to be the mode that triggers for fifty of the cards in your 99. I’d rather have Druidic Satchel than Crystal Ball when your spells are pretty generically interchangeable. Rather than scrying til you draw them in roughly the right sequence, you just clear the top of your deck so you draw more spells than normal. Specifically which creature sweeper it is doesn’t have a massive impact, I’d assume, while getting a bunch of free lands over the course of a long game is a serious benefit.

Seer’s Sundial — Another way to make sure you only draw gas and the landfall card that was promised back when we added all those fetchland effects. Seer’s Sundial helps make sure you get a second chance at a spell every turn you draw a land, and a good number of those lands will get you two cards instead of one. Flooding out is a pain, and this helps make sure you always have action and helps dig deeper down into your deck by providing bonus resources. And clearly you don’t have to be a deck focused around putting lands into play, like Azusa would consider itself. Every deck plays lands, so every deck can capitalize on the Sundial if they want it, but the colors that don’t really have native card drawing as part of their color pie are the ones that need the bleedovers like this one the most.

Putting it all together, we get the following decklist:

Diaochan, Artful Beauty

Sean McKeown

Test deck on 10-21-2012

Commander

Creatures (18)

• 1 Darksteel Colossus
• 1 Shard Phoenix
• 1 Diaochan, Artful Beauty
• 1 Godo, Bandit Warlord
• 1 Duplicant
• 1 Orcish Librarian
• 1 Crater Hellion
• 1 Bogardan Hellkite
• 1 Stuffy Doll
• 1 Scourge of Kher Ridges
• 1 Magma Phoenix
• 1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
• 1 Hoarding Dragon
• 1 Inferno Titan
• 1 Wurmcoil Engine
• 1 Kuldotha Phoenix
• 1 Urabrask the Hidden
• 1 Balefire Dragon

Planeswalkers (1)

• 1 Koth of the Hammer

Lands (37)

• 1 Strip Mine
• 1 Thawing Glaciers
• 1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
• 15 Mountain
• 1 Smoldering Crater
• 1 Temple of the False God
• 1 Maze of Ith
• 1 Forgotten Cave
• 1 Blasted Landscape
• 1 Kher Keep
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 Spinerock Knoll
• 1 Springjack Pasture
• 1 Grixis Panorama
• 1 Jund Panorama
• 1 Naya Panorama
• 1 Arid Mesa
• 1 Scalding Tarn
• 1 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Mystifying Maze
• 1 Homeward Path
• 1 Hellion Crucible

Spells (44)

• 1 Sensei's Divining Top
• 1 Scroll Rack
• 1 Ensnaring Bridge
• 1 Wheel of Fortune
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Earthquake
• 1 Smoke
• 1 Fissure
• 1 Starstorm
• 1 Helm of Kaldra
• 1 Crucible of Worlds
• 1 Sword of Fire and Ice
• 1 Shield of Kaldra
• 1 Crawlspace
• 1 Repercussion
• 1 Sword of Kaldra
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Mind's Eye
• 1 Insurrection
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Mindmoil
• 1 Gauntlet of Power
• 1 Reiterate
• 1 Word of Seizing
• 1 Pyrohemia
• 1 Molten Disaster
• 1 Rings of Brighthearth
• 1 Cloak and Dagger
• 1 Jaws of Stone
• 1 Vicious Shadows
• 1 Expedition Map
• 1 Comet Storm
• 1 Seer's Sundial
• 1 All Is Dust
• 1 Dreamstone Hedron
• 1 Brittle Effigy
• 1 Mimic Vat
• 1 Sword of War and Peace
• 1 Chaos Warp
• 1 Druidic Satchel
• 1 Blasphemous Act
• 1 Rite of Ruin
• 1 Magmaquake
• 1 Mizzium Mortars

As always, for your participation in this week’s edition of Dear Azami you will receive a $20 coupon to StarCityGames.com, which should help take a little bit of the dent out if you do in fact have to reach outside of your available Commander card pool to get a Crucible of Worlds. The Crucible and that pesky Kozilek are apparently really expensive, which I hadn’t noticed on behalf of the Eldrazi legend since I assumed the price would stay reasonably stable, say, a year after Rise of the Eldrazi rotated. Hopefully some of these cards will be realistically findable without needing to rely on the coupon, like the in print or at least recently printed cards, and you can rely on finding the weirdoes from old sets like Blasted Landscape and Crater Hellion at an attractive price instead.

Here are the additions with their associated prices at the online store:

— Sean McKeown

Want to submit a deck for consideration to Dear Azami? We’re always accepting deck submissions to consider for use in a future article, like Sean’s Ruhan of the Fomori deck or Jacob’s Skullbriar, the Walking Grave deck. Only one deck submission will be chosen per article, but being selected for the next edition of Dear Azami includes not just deck advice but also a $20 coupon to StarCityGames.com!

Email us a deck submission using this link here!

Like what you’ve seen? Feel free to explore more of “Dear Azami” here, in the Article Archives! Feel free to follow Sean on Facebook… sometimes there are extra surprises and bonus content to be found over on his Facebook Fan Page, as well as previews of the next week’s column at the end of the week! Follow Cassidy on his Facebook page here, or check out his Commander blog — GeneralDamageControl.com!