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Double Do Overs

Nobody has more great Commander projects than Sheldon himself! See the two new builds he has challenged himself with, as well as the latest on his acclaimed Commander Draft League!

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The Do Over Project is flagging behind a little, so I’m going to do a little catch-up by putting together two different decks. We won’t go into the same kind of detail I normally do when I make a new deck, so I’ve made the designs reasonably straightforward in order to offer you a kind of jumping-off point if the idea appeals to you. As with all Do Over Project decks, no cards from the original 99 were used (save for basic land). It wasn’t by design that all five colors are represented, but it’s a neat secondary effect. Both decks are things I’ve had on my mind for a while. Now that I’m on summer break for the first time in three years, I have more time to build new decks… or in some cases, assemble the ones I’ve previously designed.

Thraximundar Do-Over (Thraxi-MILL-dar)
Sheldon Menery
Test deck on 11-30--0001
Commander
Magic Arena

Creatures (31)

Planeswalkers (2)

Lands (40)

Spells (31)

Magic Card Back


Conceptually, the deck is straightforward. It wants to mill everyone, including yourself, and then have a big reanimation effect. The Ally sub-theme is meant to do work even without reanimation. The board wipes are to help you get there without dying in the process. There are a few sacrifice outlets which are intended to keep your Thrull count from Endrehk Sahr low, once again helping to either mill people via Altar of Dementia or deal damage with Goblin Bombardment. Thraximundar obviously loves when you sacrifice creatures, but unlike the original version I’ve mostly kept this one to sacrificing only your own things – although Butcher of Malakir and Dictate of Erebos should help you make other people sacrifice creatures.

Thraximundar is of course a single-card strategy. In this particular deck, I’d use him mostly as a backup plan, especially if your group likes the board wipes. Casting him multiple times in a deck which doesn’t ramp can get a little onerous, so waiting until mid- to late-game, when you have a good amount of mana, is the right call. Unfortunately for our Zombie Assassin friend, Sheoldred, the Whispering One is in the original deck and can’t make an appearance here. Basilisk Collar is another single-card strategy. It’s just good on anything you equip it to. Murasa Pyromancer is what got me thinking about it, but there’s no sense in being shy about putting it around anything you want to battle with.

There are a few techy little bits. Millikin was in the first build of Thraximundar I ever did, and it plays right into your self-mill plan. Tainted Aether is there to keep things like Avenger of Zendikar in hand, although you have to be careful with your own things which create tokens, like Abhorrent Overlord and Infernal Genesis. I’m surprised we don’t see more Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs in the format. It seems like either good defense or crack-backing offense. Makes me want to play it with Fumiko the Lowblood and Avatar of Slaughter. Chains of Mephistopheles is there to slow down decks which like to draw too many cards, plus it puts stuff into graveyards for you to reanimate. I feel a little bad about playing Myojin of Night’s Reach, but the deck is intentionally a little loose so it seems reasonable. In a tighter, higher-powered deck, it’s a card that I wouldn’t likely play that often. Mindslicer is fine because it’s symmetrical.

That loose design is also intentional because of the Ally subtheme; you can take those slots and repurpose them into any kind of tribal element you want, or just go with creatures that you like to reanimate. If you go with a higher tribal count, Patriarch’s Bidding might be a fine card to add.

Trostani Do-Over (Tokenfall)
Sheldon Menery
Test deck on 11-30--0001
Commander
Magic Arena

Creatures (41)

Planeswalkers (4)

Lands (37)

Spells (18)

Magic Card Back


The original Trostani is an Angel tribal deck, so it’s easy to avoid most of the cards in it. Since that original deck is also all about the lifegain, this one needs to be about Trostani’s other ability, namely to populate. You can’t avoid the life gain, nor do you want to, but you don’t have to make it the focus like it is in the other deck — in which I once had Serra Avatar and Wall of Reverence stay on the battlefield for something like eight or nine turns. By the time they were finally destroyed, I was at 22,000-something life. Unfortunately, not many of the Populate cards are all that great, so the search for cards which put other cool tokens onto the battlefield (and were in the colors — blue is certainly spicy in that regard!) revealed that a token plus landfall theme could power a reasonably fun deck.

It was easy to get lost in all the things that might fit into the deck, so I had to be relatively well-disciplined when I was looking through card lists. I focused mostly on cards which make larger tokens instead of 1/1s. Perhaps that’s a byproduct of my local environment, in which there are people (which includes me) who love Massacre Wurm. Unfortunately, Minion Reflector is also in the original, so that can’t come into the deck… I promised at the beginning of this project that I wouldn’t specifically take cards out of the originals just to be able to put them in the Do-Over. Populating a Minion Reflector token would be great, although it’s a commitment of four additional mana for each creature. I think we can do enough trickery with Blade of Selves to make up for what we’ll be missing. Of course, Doubling Season and Parallel Lives both make Myriad even crazier. I don’t suppose the deck will ever get too far out of hand unless it’s playing against other decks which have no removal. Unless I have Eldrazi Monument on the battlefield or Rootborn Defenses up, the deck is highly susceptible to mass removal; Hallowed Spiritkeeper is there to help with rebuilding after a Wrath of God.

The deck is nearly Modern-legal. Only Primal Order and Penumbra Wurm came out before the Modern era. Hallowed Spiritkeeper is a Commander product card, so while it was released during Modern Times, it’s only legal in Vintage and Legacy. This is definitely a kitchen table-type deck. It’s not frequently going to dominate games, but it’s going to get in there with some creatures and definitely fits the splashy Commander mold. Every now and then going to do really epic things, like populating Giant Adephage or Desolation Twin tokens.

Commander Rotisserie Draft League Update!

We’re through four weeks of our Commander Rotisserie Draft League (if you like, you can check out the setup and the actual draft) with eight games under our belts. It wasn’t until the last two games in which my deck came around. I’ll note there were two significant factors to me sweeping all the points in two games, save for Shea grabbing the point for most damage done in one of them. The first major difference is that Todd and his Temur deck weren’t there. It may seem like a small thing, but not having an aggressive deck potentially breathing down my neck gave me the opportunity to play a bit more of an offense-minded game. His deck can lay the smackdown, sometimes out of nowhere, so it must be respected.

The second difference is that I switched from playing Roon of the Hidden Realms as my commander to Derevi, Empyrial Tactician. I know what Derevi can do in a deck which is built around abusing it. After playing a few games with it, I’ll freely admit it’s kind of bonkers – no, not the ban-worthy kind – even if you haven’t built around it. Derevi’s enters-the-battlefield trigger gave me the opportunity to get blockers out of the way in the final turns of both games. I had one potential line of play in which I could have reanimated Gigantoplasm from my graveyard, copied Derevi (thereby getting the trigger), used the legend rule to put the original into the command zone, then use Derevi’s activated ability to come back onto the battlefield yet again and get another trigger. At that point, I can just have the original go back to the command zone and, for every packet of 1WUG, do it over. The card is much stronger on its own than I had originally thought. Again, the only way it’s broken is if you build around it, but I’m thoroughly happy that I chose it as one of my commanders. I picked it initially because I wanted to throw some doubt into how I was going to draft; I didn’t want to reveal the Roon plan too soon. After these few games — again with the caveat that things will be decidedly different with Todd and his Maelstrom Wanderer around — I’m ready to give Derevi a fair shake at commanding the blink deck.

Unlike the Commander 2015 Draft in which we made a pick after each game, in the Rotisserie League we can go to the waiver wire only once each week. Here are the four weeks’ worth of picks (in order) so far:

Keith

In: Crypt Incursion; Out: Korozda Gorgon

In: Doubling Season; Out: Spirit of the Labyrinth

In: Necrogenesis; Out: Ghave Guru of Spores

In: Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief; Out: Unstoppable Ash

Michael

In: Hive Mind; Out: Tempt with Reflections

In: Tidespout Tyrant; Out: Elemental Augury

In: Etherium-Horn Sorceror; Out: Terrain Generator

In: Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir; Out: Increasing Vengeance

Shea

In: Hammer of Purphoros; Out: Alliance of Arms

In: Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded; Out: Alesha, Who Smiles at Death

In: Sacred Foundry; Out: Basilisk Collar

In: Manabarbs; Out: Westvale Abbey

Me

In: Angelic Chorus; Out: Garruk’s Packleader

In: Dueling Grounds; Out: Slithermuse

In: Terminus; Out: Elemental Bond

In: Reins of Power; Out: Brago, King Eternal

Todd

In: Wonder; Out: Avalanche Riders

In: Molten Primordial; Out: Conclave Naturalists

In: Equilibrium; Out: Shardless Agent

In: Combust; Out: Mystic Retrieval

Through a one-time change in the schedule (we’re moving League from Monday to Thursday night so that the Monday Night RPG can start back up again), we played games seven and eight after the Week Four picks but in the same week. We’ll play Week Five before we make new picks. Shea’s Manabarbs made an immediate impact. He drew it in both games, and combined with Michael’s Nekusar, the Mind Razer, our life totals started evaporating quickly in game seven. What positioned me to win was drawing and playing Angelic Chorus and cloning Nekusar. Damages were happening everywhere, but Angelic Chorus mitigated most of it for me.

In game eight, copying Keith’s Baneslayer Angel with Gigantoplasm and then turning it into a 10/10 set me so far past everyone else that Manabarbs didn’t matter to me. After Shea was out of that game, it featured everyone having an Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre after Michael copied it with Supplant Form and Keith used Teneb, the Harvester to get my Gigantoplasm after I recast Ulamog. It didn’t much matter, as the aforementioned Derevi tricks saved my bacon. I ate one Ulamog attack but it didn’t hurt too badly because I had a pile of land and Karmic Guide and Solemn Simulacrum to sacrifice. I even caught and passed Shea on damage on the last turn.

After those eight games, here’s what the standings look like:

Although we’ll see what happens next week when Todd is back, I’m happier with a slightly more aggressive version of the deck. Swapping out Rhystic Study for Edric, Spymaster of Trest may pay more dividends in the long run since it will occasionally send attackers in other directions.

Looking at the upcoming SCG Tour® schedule, there’s an Open Weekend in Orlando on June 18th and 19th. Since Orlando is reasonably close to the house, I’ll probably be there at least one of those days. I’ll try to broadcast via social media which day I’ll make it and where I’ll be.

This week’s Deck Without Comment is the original Trostani and Her Angels, mentioned above.

Trostani And Her Angels
Sheldon Menery
Test deck on 11-30--0001
Commander
Magic Arena

Creatures (35)

Planeswalkers (1)

Lands (37)

Spells (27)

Magic Card Back


Check out our awesome Deck List Database for the last versions of all my decks:

ADUN’S TOOLBOX;
ANIMAR’S SWARM;
AURELIA GOES TO WAR;
CHILDREN of a LESSER GOD;
DEMONS OF KAALIA;
EREBOS and the HALLS OF THE DEAD;
GLISSA, GLISSA;
HELIOD, GOD OF ENCHANTMENTS;
DREAMING OF INTET;
FORGE OF PURPHOROS;
KARN, BEATDOWN GOLEM;
HALLOWEEN WITH KARADOR;
KARRTHUS, WHO RAINS FIRE FROM THE SKY;
KRESH INTO THE RED ZONE;
LAVINIA BLINKS;
LAZAV, SHAPESHIFTING MASTERMIND;
ZOMBIES OF TRESSERHORN;
MELEK’S MOLTEN MIND GRIND;
MERIEKE’S ESPER CONTROL;
THE MILL-MEOPLASM;
MIMEOPLASM DO-OVER;
NATH of the VALUE LEAF;
NYLEA OF THE WOODLAND REALM;
OBZEDAT, GHOST KILLER;
PURPLE HIPPOS and MARO SORCERERS;
ZEGANA and a DICE BAG;
RITH’S TOKENS;
YOU DID THIS TO YOURSELF;
RURIC THAR AND HIS BEASTLY FIGHT CLUB;
THASSA, GOD OF MERFOLK;
THE ALTAR of THRAXIMUNDAR;
TROSTANI and HER ANGELS;
THE THREAT OF YASOVA;
RUHAN DO-OVER;
KARADOR DO-OVER;
KARRTHUS 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 and starting June 6 will be running a prequel to our saga The Lost Cities of Nevinor), ask for an invitation to the Facebook group “Sheldon Menery’s Monday Night Gamers.”