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Dear Azami – Captain Malfegor: I Aim To Misbehave

This week Sean and Cassidy work on the same deck with a budget limit in a special Dear Azami challenge. See Sean’s take on Christopher’s Malfegor deck here.


This week on Dear Azami, we’re trying a variation on a theme we’ve done a few times before. Once in a while, we’ll look at two decks in the same article, and this time we’re taking advantage of the fact that Dear Azami has not one but two writers and writing about the same deck from two perspectives. Both Cassidy and Sean will be working on the same deck, with an agreed-upon $20 coupon that is given out for participation—and to keep things interesting, both authors have to make at least twenty changes to the deck with that $20.

This is Sean’s article; you can find Cassidy’s article here to read them both. At the bottom of each article will be a poll—vote for which author you think made the better improvements to this week’s submission!


Dear Azami,

Let me start by saying I am a big fan of the format and a big fan of the column.

I have been building Commander decks since the format was first adopted and have always enjoyed huge haymakers, swarms of Goblins/Soldiers/Plants, and devastating spells that cripple me or (hopefully) my opponent. I would have to classify myself as a pure casual player though. I am more interested in building a themed deck than an overpowered monstrosity that gets me banned from the kitchen table. I have a Soldier deck, an Elemental deck, an artifact themed Animar deck, and a “Warriors, come out and play” deck that are all fun to play, but I think they are fun to play against as well.

I have been trying to build a deck for every color combination, including mono-colored, but the hitch I have incorporated into this endeavor is that I am trying not to duplicate any cards (except land) in any of the decks. It has provided me the opportunity to research and find new cards that are similar yet maybe not as powerful as well-tested staples. That alone has made things fun for me as I get to debate whether a card should be in one deck or another.

Anyway, here is my submission, Malfegor. I don’t think I have seen an article for her yet so I thought she may provide an interesting test of your skills. It is a new deck so I am still figuring out balance and what the limitations of Malfegor as a commander create.

Commander

Malfegor

Creatures

Flayer of the Hatebound: since Malfegor discards my hand I was building in some recursion elements which makes him fun, plus there is A LOT of sacrificing going on.

Tsabo Tavoc: underplayed commander killer

Sheoldred, Whispering One

Extractor Demon: it has unearth (on the chopping block for sure)

Withered Wretch: utility graveyard removal

Kuro, Pitlord: I have a thing for Demons and Devils; does that make me evil?

Twisted Abomination: never hard cast this card ever

Blood Speaker: I don’t play tutors very often…

Bloodgift Demon: …but Speaker always gets this one

Avatar of Woe: Malfegor fills graveyards pretty quickly

Plagued Rusalka: meh, maybe I need a token theme to make this better? I just like sac effects to keep my stuff from getting stolen

Rakdos, Lord of Riots: love this guy; he’d be my commander but, frankly, I have seen it built and built well so I want something new

Rix Maadi Guildmage: early beats? I like that she makes combat math difficult

Stinkweed Imp: not sure she’s needed

Skull Collector: fantastic when you board wipe with Malfegor but then they drop some uncounterable beast; bounce Malfegor to hand, recast, swing for three

Skinrender: bounce me, bounce me!!!

Igneous Pouncer: should stand next to Twisted Abomination since they never get hard cast

Dark Hatchling: underperformer

Reassembling Skeleton: works overtime, all the time, anytime

Anger: loves to be sacrificed, just saying.

Lyzolda, the Blood Witch: I was putting in as much card draw as possible to recoup from Malfegor, plus she sacrifices stuff at instant speed, YAY!

Gatekeeper of Malakir: meh

Slum Reaper: these effects are rough versus token decks so can be replaced

Phyrexian Obliterator: never cast it but imagine it never gets blocked

Arc Mage: can do cool things but never seems to consistently

Bone Shredder: me like

Dimir House Guard: second tutor, essentially gets Damnation every time

Disciple of Bolas: card draw on a dude—sign me up

Shriekmaw: efficient

Phyrexian Plaguelord: I may need more tokens to make him more efficient, but I like this guy a lot

Manaforge Cinder: fixes any mana issues but I have yet to experience any; I haven’t even added mana fixing lands yet

Instants

Grab the Reins: super fun

Rakdos Charm: I want to marry Rakdos Charm

Act of Aggression: I enjoy stealing and sacrificing people’s dudes

Word of Seizing: did I mention I like to do this?

Terminate: on the block to be cut

Slaughter: reusable/efficient removal but not necessary

Sorcery

Innocent Blood

Act of Treason: I still like to do this

Mark of Mutiny: I still…ok, you get the picture

Damnation

Flesh Allergy: love this card but again wonder if I could get more mileage adding tokens

Dreadbore: I face enough planeswalkers to keep this over Terminate

Twilight’s Call: obviously, this is a mistake; I find that I wipe their boards plenty only to give it back

Living Death: and I do it twice—again, I am still working out the kinks, of which this is one

Unearth: probably not necessary; should be a reusable piece

Decree of Pain: card draw

Dregs of Sorrow: card draw

Wheel of Fortune: my favorite topdeck after a Malfegor wipe

Wheel of Fate: you can set it up for this to be cast after a Malfegor wipe—FUN!

Reforge the Soul: yeah, I really need to refill my hand

Shatterstorm: utility that doesn’t hurt me too much

Rise from the Grave: I killed it, now it’s mine

Beacon of Unrest: I get to do it over and over

Enchantments

Breeding Pit:  Demons gotta eat or have stuff to sacrifice

Infernal Tribute: absolute favorite card; cast Malfegor, sac Malfegor to draw a card, recast next turn for two (if necessary)—FUN!

Artifacts

Armillary Sphere

Rakdos Keyrune

Ashnod’s Altar

Lands

I have yet to begin to correct this mana base. I honestly have not had any issues with flood or screw, but I am sure you can help identify more efficiency and maybe some tricks.

23 Swamp

14 Mountain

Rakdos Guildgate

Take it whatever direction you’d like. I play in a very casual group that fits my style very well. I don’t usually have to worry about infinite loops, life, turns etc. so no need for hardcore turn 3 kills or locks.

Here are some things I thought about but have not tested at all:

Harvester of Souls

Promise of Power

Bone Harvest

Corpse Connoisseur

Faithless Looting

Shoot me back if you have any questions or require deeper thoughts on why I have sold my soul to Demons, Devils, and Horrors.

Christopher J Vosburgh

Welcome to this week’s special edition of Dear Azami, Christopher, where both of the authors will take a crack at your Malfegor deck and we’ll compare the two final decks for your consideration. We’ve been pondering for some time how to do the opposite variation of something that’s come up once or twice, using two submissions for the same commander to build a shared deck for both of them. Since Dear Azami is already an unusual column in that it has not one but two authors writing it, we thought we could just write two columns about one deck.

We are giving away the same $20 coupon and battling for your support on the changes, giving us a budget restriction to work towards and putting our feet to the fire.

Malfegor comes with some serious upsides—assuming your opponents care about their creatures going to the graveyard, you can really take down a board full of creatures in one fell swoop without wiping your own board, potentially crippling your opponents or even opening up for a lethal attack now that their blockers are out of the way. Malfegor also comes with some serious restrictions because playing without any cards in your hand is a serious disadvantage in Commander since having options and being able to make plays is a strong position to be in.

Casting Malfegor puts us in a strange position of both strength and weakness, and we can plan to cover over those weaknesses fairly effectively by taking advantage of recursive effects or even just permanents that you play on the table before casting Malfegor. Even something as simple and old school as a Jayemdae Tome will help out by giving you more cards to work with and thus more plays you can make. When looking at Malfegor a few things were clear to me:

1) Permanents that play on the table and generate advantageous effects were going to be better here than in other decks, especially if those permanents helped with drawing extra cards.

2) Things that recurred from the graveyard would be unusually beneficial here even if they were somewhat weak effects. Anything that counts as a card—even if it’s just some crappy Eidolon—will help out every time you cast Malfegor to increase the size of that effect when you need it to work hard.

3) Suspend will be very good in this deck because it allows you to plan on making plays on the turn after you cast Malfegor even though you have no cards in your hand. Looking at Wheel of Fate in your deck and how you can set it up to cushion the blow Malfegor has on your hand makes that very clear, and there are other ways we can play around in this space profitably.

4) We absolutely need ways to control small creatures that are made on the cheap because Malfegor is very weak against token strategies—you want to discard one card in your hand to deal with three real cards in play, barely dent one player’s Plant Token horde, and leave the core power cards untouched. The things that do this can also be permanents in play so we can reuse them if we pick the right cards.

Honing in on the experience of casting Malfegor and maximizing the benefits led me down something of a different path than you had pursued, as I tried to focus on using Malfegor to clear the way for a powerful attack and also really, really dislike the sharing side of Wheel of Fortune effects. I wanted there to be more self-centered card drawing effects where we could get them so that we weren’t helping the opponents we just tried to cripple back onto their feet, and I also wanted there to be a little bit of an extra focus on dealing damage incidentally to our opponents so that people died more often when Malfegor was used to clear their blockers.

Starting with the lands, I wanted to use a bit of the limited budget we’ve got—it’s just $20, and we have to make at least twenty changes, so we’re averaging a dollar a card assuming we don’t make more changes. (Spoiler alert: I do.) We didn’t have a lot to focus in this section, but it’s clear with cards like Igneous Pouncer, Twisted Abomination, and Manaforge Cinder that you want to pay at least a little attention to your lands and some basic upgrades would be desirable.

Building on a budget is tough stuff, and that meant that even some very inexpensive changes I would aim to add like Shadowblood Ridge and Sulfurous Springs would end up being too costly in the face of other changes we wanted to make. As it is, though, we’re adding eight cards to improve your colored mana access in order to free up some of those slots you’re using in other places to fit in power cards instead. Your decklist had 97 cards in it, and I’m going to use one of those free slots as well as switch out three Mountains and four Swamps to add eight cards: seven lands and one virtual land.

Wayfarer’s Bauble: It’s a small and subtle effect, easy to miss, but it’s cheap and stable acceleration as well as colored mana fixing that gives a little bit of that green mana feel to the deck which you shouldn’t be able to access out here in the Badlands. Mana rocks are pretty common in Commander but go away fairly often when a board sweeper is played, and Wayfarer’s Bauble has the advantage of putting your investment in the most stable kind of permanent there is: a basic land.

Bojuka Bog: Not all of our additions are going to be color fixers; Bojuka Bog helps with interacting with the opponent’s graveyard-based shenanigans, the most common sort of shenanigans you’ll encounter in the Commander format. At a very low cost of your land coming into play tapped, Bojuka Bog nerfs everything one player has built towards, and it’s not even a spell they can counter.

Evolving Wilds, Terramorphic Expanse, Rocky Tar Pit: These three are basically identical for your use, being able to grant you access as needed to both of your colors of mana and make sure you draw enough of each color rather than leave it up to random chance. They don’t make both colors of mana, but they do make sure you have both colors of mana, which is good enough at the right price.

Akoum Refuge: Just a dual land at a cheap price with the slightest dash of benefit added on to be worth your while. Life gain is really not something you’re very good at, with just Disciple of Bolas to recoup lost life points, and every little bit should help.

Rakdos Carnarium: A little bit of card advantage never hurts, and this lets you cast Malfegor off of five lands rather than six, potentially giving you another card in hand to discard and increase the size of the effect. Since you’re going to toss away your resources pretty hard sometimes in order to accomplish your goals, small things like this will help considerably.

Molten Slagheap: Like Rakdos Carnarium, this lets you stash resources away for later benefit or even cast Malfegor with fewer than six lands in play and thus have more cards to discard to Malfegor for a larger effect. Unlike Rakdos Carnarium, you can use this to hit quite high reaches of the mana curve, as there’s no reason it has to stop at providing just one extra mana. This will help ease the cost on some of your more expensive spells and help with the couple of quite expensive things I also intend to add to your deck as well.

For the budget-conscious trackers, that’s $3.20 used so far, and 16% of our budget has gone to helping steady a shaky manabase enough so that we don’t have to play also-shaky spells and creatures and can instead focus on the game we want to play instead of the mana we need to play it. Obviously, more changes could be made still and there are a lot of dual lands you could slot in that would still improve colored mana access, but just because a Blood Crypt would be good to have doesn’t mean it’s absolutely necessary.

I do, however, want to address one land I think would be worthy of inclusion but which we cannot afford at the price it would cost as part of our budget. It seems like a lot of the sacrifice effects you’re playing have been included because you want to keep your stuff out of other players’ hands; if that is in fact the concern you have and not just what I’m reading into things here, Homeward Path would be an excellent inclusion to keep meddlesome opponents from beating you with your own stuff. At $5 to include it, however, it’s out of reach of our budget even though I would normally include it even on a budget-conscious Dear Azami were I not head-to-head and fiercely tied down to just $20 to work with.

Three other changes I think would be fantastic for your deck but cannot be included within the budget confines we have self-selected in this case are Phyrexian Arena and Necropotence. The former is a key staple that pretty much every black deck includes, and I’m suspecting the reason it is not here is because it already has a home in one (or more) of the decks that share a color overlap with this one and your desire to not duplicate too many cards between decks means this one’s not included. If so, fair enough, and we’ll find other ways to make up that one card drawn per turn bonus and just have to spend a bit of mana rather than life in order to do so. Malfegor really wants you to have access to additional card draw, and we’ll get there regardless.

The latter is the Power of the Skull, and I never include Necropotence in a deck—in fact, I don’t even have a copy of my own in my big box of Commander cards I build decks out of. (Other noteworthy absences include Tooth and Nail and Blightsteel Colossus for those who might be curious about how I will never ever roll.) Necropotence seems like it would be at its best but still very fun in your deck, letting you set up Malfegor and then recharge afterwards, but it’s not 30% of our total budget “fun.”

The last one is It That Betrays, which is pure hilarity alongside Malfegor since you get to keep all of the creatures your opponents sacrifice. Twelve mana may be a lot for your deck, and I know there is a lot of hate on for Eldrazi in general because of how feel-bad the Annihilator mechanic is. But I think it would be at its very best in this deck and be fun doing it, just like Necropotence. Taking seemingly unfun cards and finding them a fun home is what I like to do more than anything, and like these other three I would include them were I not on a strict budget. As it is, I can’t afford to spend 25% of the total budget on just one card, no matter how awesome the card.

You may feel free to include any of these four; they’d be good for your deck overall, and if you’re not playing Necropotence because it’s in a different deck instead, you should give consideration to moving it into this one where it will be more fun and goofy. If it’s not here because it’s in your Zur deck, for example, it is doing bad things to good people there and would do good fun things here instead.

Moving on to the next section, I tend to follow lands by going on to the artifacts section and in fact have already snuck in an artifact by adding in Wayfarer’s Bauble as part of your manabase. I’ve got one cut to make but five more additions, meaning we’ll fill that free slot and owe three more cuts from your spell selection. Most of our focus here will be in helping you draw more cards, but it won’t be the only focus.

OUT: Ashnod’s Altar: I think you’re overfocusing on the ability to sacrifice creatures at-will because that ability doesn’t clearly work very much with your overall strategy and game plan. You have enough ways already to sacrifice in order to protect your interests, and this card is either part of a combo engine or pretty much useless—and if it’s the latter, how many people do you think are going to believe you when they could just kill you (or it) instead? I’ve found the answer to that to be “not very many,” and thus if it’s not actively contributing to what you’re trying to accomplish, it’s just going to be a liability.

IN:

Nihil Spellbomb: Another cheap, more-or-less invisible way to gain a little bit of extra control over your opponents’ graveyard-based tricks without having to pay anything meaningful to gain that benefit. To you this is just a cycling cantrip as you go merrily on your way playing your game, but to your opponent whose game you stuff down the memory hole into oblivion it has a considerably more meaningful effect. That it also has the benefit of playing on the table and counting as a card you can get back later after discarding your hand to Malfegor is a nice little side benefit as well, making this the right card for the job.

Mimic Vat: It’s not quite like drawing a card every turn, but that’s because it’s way better than that with almost any reasonable usage. This plays on the table before Malfegor then picks from your choice of whatever Malfegor killed and lets you do something powerful despite having an empty hand, and that powerful thing will have an immediate (and hasty!) impact on the board. While it’s a frequent companion of Commander players everywhere, it’s very good in this deck and fills the role that needs filling exactly. We’ll pay down this fun debt elsewhere.

Scrying Glass: An easy and informative way to draw a few extra cards over the course of a game. The chances are very good that after the first time you use it you should be able to collect an extra card with every usage, especially against a multicolored deck that can draw cards of different colors. A little bit of memory tracking is needed to make sure you always hit—pick a color to track and just remember if your opponent has played one of their cards of that color since your last usage. This has the added benefit of potentially telling you when trouble is brewing, and feel free to tell the rest of the table what you’ve seen there…or, on that note, feel free to occasionally fib as well if you think it will sometimes give you political advantage at the table.

Bottled Cloister: This comes with a real downside—not having a card in your hand on opponents’ turns means you can’t spend cards to interact. Being vulnerable in this way is already part of your game plan, however, thanks to Malfegor’s tendency to expose you in just this way to harm—you might as well reap the rewards of extra cards drawn while you’re at it and get comfortable with the idea that you can’t actually control everything. This is a cheap personal Howling Mine if you can let go and learn to love the bomb.

Temporal Aperture: My personal favorite addition to make once it became apparent that I was not in fact going to be able to afford to add It That Betrays due to the super-tight budget restriction Cassidy and I both agreed to work under. Spinning the Aperture and hitting some awesome spell or big creature is such a good feeling, and Commander is exactly the sort of format where the big plays you can hit for free are plentiful in your deck. The Aperture asks just a little bit more than what Jayemdae Tome would for the card it gives you access to and gives you all of that mana back and more if you hit a spell. Like Scrying Glass, however, a little memory is needed before using it—you don’t want to play a land before you spin the Wheel of Fish because if you flip a land it will stay on top and be the stinker you draw next turn instead of “hey look, free land.”

Moving on to your spells, we’re going to cut a few cards for underperforming or because their role is better filled by one of the artifacts above and build up more of what you liked about the Threaten effects even as I cut some of your favorite cards by trimming the sorcery speed Threaten effects. (I know you like them and thus this act is treasonous, but there’s a certain irony to that, no?) We’ve added more direct card draw so we don’t need all of your Wheel of Fortune effects, would rather focus on the creatures in play rather than use spells to reanimate dead ones, and have a fancier idea of how you can get the same bang out of your Act of Treason effects while getting some additional play and utility out of the experience you desire.

OUT: Breeding Pool, Flesh Allergy, Beacon of Unrest, Rise from the Grave, Unearth, Living Death, Twilight’s Call, Shatterstorm, Slaughter, Innocent Blood, Mark of Mutiny, Act of Treason, Reforge the Soul

IN:

Delirium, Backlash: These are the two cards I set out to replace Act of Treason and Mark of Mutiny; like both of these cards, you can take an opponent’s creature out of commission and use it to deal damage to them directly instead. You lose the ability to take it and sacrifice it but gain the ability to make sure the damage happens and also the ability to use this sort of effect at instant speed and potentially play defensively instead of just aggressively. You’ll get one Threaten effect back later—don’t panic.

Phthisis: Dealing damage outside of the attack phase is very key for a deck that lives off of aggression, and Phthisis does this in spades while your Flesh Allergy had the potential to miss, be uncastable, or even just be too small. Phthisis lands like a load of bricks, and thanks to the suspend ability you can set this up nicely as a follow up to your Malfegor turn.

Agonizing Demise: Surprise damage to your opponent is going to be one of the keys to eroding their position and letting your team attack for the win, and Agonizing Demise is better in this regard than your Slaughter would have been. You weren’t enthusiastic about it for its buyback utility, but stapling on aggression should excite you.

Wrecking Ball: “Just” a removal spell, but having the additional utility to hit a land means we can take out an opponent’s Maze of Ith instead of let it rule over combat in addition to having the ability to kill whatever creature we want at instant speed with no restrictions like “nonblack creature” to worry about.

Enslave: It’s better to take a creature that is still alive away from your opponent than it is to resurrect a dead one. This way, at least you’re using your card not just to gain a threat but to take one away as well, meaning you can come out ahead instead of just playing a one-for-one exchange.

Evincar’s Justice: Leaves more room for the big ones to fight in. Evincar’s Justice is a reusable way to take out tokens so that Malfegor can take out real creature cards and actually hamper your opponent’s board position or can even be used with buyback to clear the way then discarded to Malfegor to increase the size of that effect. Anything you can reuse is going to be desirable when your plan involves throwing your hand away repeatedly, and Evincar’s Justice fills a clear need.

Grim Harvest: Like Evincar’s Justice, we’re reaching for this one because it lets us do something repeatedly rather than just once, and in this card’s particular case it can allow you to have something to do over and over again even after you’ve discarded it to Malfegor. Grim Harvest turns open mana into stuff done, especially when you can trigger recover at will, which you can with your plentiful access to sacrifice effects.

Hammer of Bogardan: Even if the spell is a little unimpressive for Commander, just being able to put a card back in your hand turn after turn will help make Malfegor a live card every time you want to use it. The ability to point three damage somewhere every turn for eight mana is a steep price to pay, but sometimes you’ll have that lying around unused in addition to wanting to recur Hammer to discard profitably.

This leaves one slot unfilled as we move on to your creatures and not very much budget left—accounting for the changes made to your lands, spells, and artifacts, we’ve used $13.02 of that $20 coupon budget and have $6.98 left before we’ve hit the cap and can do no more. I didn’t even do this on purpose, but with the remaining swaps I am going to hit that $6.98 exactly and hit the $20.00 threshold with not one penny wasted while adding 30 cards, not just the minimum twenty arbitrarily decided upon by myself and Cassidy as we set out rules for this challenge.

Here we go, down the home stretch. First, we cut nine creatures: Arc Mage, Dark Hatchling, Extractor Demon, Igneous Pouncer, Manaforge Cinder, Plagued Rusalka, Rakdos, Lord of Riots, Stinkweed Imp, and Twisted Abomination. All of these cards save Rakdos you noted were underperforming or not being used in their creature capacity, and Rakdos I am cutting here simply because for the difficulty to cast he doesn’t really give very much back. Sure, you get an undercosted flier, but there are other times you just can’t cast him at all and he’ll be collateral damage lost when it’s time to cast Malfegor, a missed opportunity. Since you can’t really take advantage of the life-loss-as-mana benefit Rakdos offers you by casting something nutty like It That Betrays on the cheap, it may be awesome but another card may be more awesome instead.

IN:

Conquering Manticore: My pick for replacing Rakdos, Lord of Riots with—I went with something similarly sized and possessed of a nice and juicy effect that you love in this deck, a Threaten effect stapled to a Dragon. You can afford to cut the three-mana effects and pay twice the price instead when you get these sorts of bonuses to go with it. For sorcery speed Threaten effects, I preferred upgrading to instant speed stuff like Backlash instead, but there’s nothing wrong with it stapled to a creature. Molten Primordial and Zealous Conscripts might also be quite solid, but I went with the best body for my first choice to add—a 5/5 flier is always going to be solid, while a 3/3 with haste is not.

Harvester of Souls: You mentioned this as a card sitting on the sidelines that you were thinking about, and alongside Malfegor this allows you to discard your hand and draw a whole bunch of cards to replace the resources you’ve invested. This is already a very solid card in the format, but it’s even better in the context of your deck and lets you do your trick with Malfegor without crippling yourself to do it.

Thrashing Wumpus: Like Evincar’s Justice, this will help you clear the board of small creatures in order to make sure Malfegor kills the ones that really matter. Thrashing Wumpus also beats down and deals a lot of damage to a lot of people very, very quickly, able to dish out two damage each turn cycle while still surviving and letting you turn a fair bit of mana into a whole lot of damage.

Shard Phoenix: Another enabler that will help keep small creatures in check so the rest of your plan proceeds accordingly, Shard Phoenix also happens to do good work recurring to your hand in order to increase the size of Malfegor’s trigger and thus his impact on the game time and time again. I’ve put this one to good work personally and think you will find it is very solid in the role you’re asking it to fill.

Pyre Zombie: Yet another card that has the ability to return to your hand turn after turn in order to generate its beneficial effect, Pyre Zombie may not be very big and it may not deal very much damage but it does it very consistently. You’ll mostly use this to increase Malfegor’s reach, but taking out small creatures or even working it with Lyzolda instead of its own sacrifice ability gives it additional utility.

Krovikan Horror: This one is trickier because the text on how you return it to your hand is more complicated and conditional than we usually see these days, but it is able to return to your hand with fair regularity if you’re careful and is a replacement sacrifice outlet for the Plagued Rusalka I felt needed to be cut. The dash of direct damage won’t hurt, and we’re benefitting by aligning your sac outlet to Malfegor’s game plan.

Entropic Eidolon, Sandstorm Eidolon: These two are a bit of a reach because they actually don’t do very much if they’re in play; Entropic Eidolon at least deals a bit of damage and gains a bit of life or can kill someone who has a Worship in play, but sacrificing a potential attacker in order to stun a potential blocker is not actually very good combat math. We’re clearly playing them in order to cast Malfegor time and time again, and they return to your hand in order to be discarded again and count as +1s to Malfegor’s sacrifice trigger. In that role, they’re good enough, and they can at least theoretically attack or do something without your commander so they’re not completely awful. (They just look it—but then, we’re not playing them for their bodies, we like their card text much better.)

We have just two additions left, and these are played to cover some of the deck’s general needs rather than align specifically with Malfegor’s text and maximizing both the size and reach of his comes-into-play trigger. The first is Deepfire Elemental, which covers some of your basic need to be able to kill an artifact at least sometimes and doubles up in that duty as another way to control token-based strategies.

The second is Nezumi Graverobber, which helps interact with cards out of your opponents’ graveyards and replaces your single-use Reanimation effects with the potential to flip and Reanimate anything it wants over and over again and at instant speed. With the graveyard removal access you have in the deck, it won’t even be hard to flip in the later stages of the game—just eat one player’s graveyard and wait for their next card to go there (or kill something and put it there yourself). It provides the same utility access as Withered Wretch but with bigger perks to make up for the fact that it costs twice as much mana to use.

Putting it all together, we have the following decklist:


As always, you’ll be receiving a $20 coupon to StarCityGames.com for your participation in this week’s Dear Azami, but just the one coupon between myself and Cassidy’s companion article—you’ll have to look at what we’ve suggested and decide for yourself whether you like one better than the other or would rather find a middle path between the changes I’ve made and his own. We’d love to know which author you all think did a better job of improving the deck and making interesting, fun changes while on a tight budget.

I’m still sad I couldn’t afford the $6 for Necropotence and $5 for It That Betrays, but I am entirely content that I’ve filled the holes in the deck’s game plan all with just that $20 coupon. We’d love to get some reader feedback as to who did the best at our little non-competitive “competition” this week.

Here is the priced list of cards added this week so my math can be checked to prove it does in fact come out to exactly $20 on the nose and compared to Cassidy’s—and also so that Christopher can weigh the merits of each card for its price point as he considers adding it to his deck.

This little face-off had a lot of interesting things going for it. I found the challenge of working under a specific budget to be quite challenging and interesting indeed, especially when it seemed I was going to have to pull out considerably more than the arbitrarily-chosen number of twenty slots Cassidy and I had agreed upon in order to get the deck where I wanted it to end up—at the intersection of fun, effective, and interesting that I knew it had the potential to reach. If you, gentle reader, also found this aspect of the challenge interesting, feel free to let us know in the comments below or even as part of your submissions if you email us using the link in the footer of this article, giving us a firm budget limit might be better overall than what we’ve been doing so far, which would be best described as “letting us guess for ourselves.”

On a slightly off-topic note, my local gaming store here in Brooklyn, 20 Sided Store in Williamsburg, is kicking off its support for Commander tonight with the first of hopefully many Monday Night Commander game nights. I’ll be there to try a pair of decks I’ve been working on lately: one new brew for Prime Speaker Zegana and one retake of an old favorite, Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter. If you’re in the NYC area and want to prove that you may have 99 Problems but losing ain’t one, come on down and put them to the test tonight or any night!

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 Chad’s Karona, False God Ally deck or Doug’s Karn, Silver Golem 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! 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!