Commander Top 10: Gor Muldrak, Amphinologist

Commander Legends previews are in full swing!  I was fortunate enough to be given some free previews from Wizards of the Coast (WotC) on the very first day and they were pretty cool cards. Check out the video from my stream if you haven’t seen it yet. 

As of this writing, previews are only four days in and already this set looks insane.  There are so many cool and interesting cards, my head is positively spinning.  All the partner legends explode all the various possibilities on combinations, and we’ll be exploring this new terrain for years to come. 

The structure of my weekly column here isn’t particularly conducive to partnered commanders, but lucky for me there are going to be plenty of brand-new multicolor legends without partner to explore in Commander Legends.  One of the first to catch my eye is Gor Muldrak, Amphinologist!

The Simic color combination has been on a tear lately of having stupidly overpowered cards printed that generates mana, card advantage, or both to the point that it’s just boring. You can build a broken Simic deck in your sleep. 

Gor Muldrak goes in a different direction, a weird and cool direction that brings to mind much more interesting Simic cards.

Just check out Gor’s flavor text:

“The day of reckoning is coming. Knowledge of the amphin may be our only refuge.”

I just love that he sounds like a raving lunatic.  The Salamanders are coming! Run and hide, they’re coming!

And to prove it, he makes 4/3 Salamander Warrior tokens.  Thankfully, he makes you practically immune to the impending Salamander invasion, so long as you have Gor on the battlefield.

So how do we build a deck around this weirdo?  Well first off, his static ability is quietly powerful against one particular creature type, but one that your opponents are probably not playing unless you give them Salamanders or they’re playing Changelings. Lucky for us, there are blue cards that can change other creatures’ creature types, so we’ll want to be on the lookout for those.

Next up, we’ll want to play a fair number of creature cards so we can give away Salamanders to our opponents that will be useless against us but can pressure other opponents’ life totals. Blue even has some cards that can encourage (AKA force) them to attack.

Though giving one opponent a 4/3 creature once each turn isn’t exactly going to light the battlefield on fire, so I’d also like to look for ways to give away more than that. Again, blue provides us with some ways to do just that.

Let’s get brewing!

1. Standardize

While I like a permanent-based way to change a creature type as a nice “rattlesnake” card to wave opponents away from attacking, I like the surprise factor with Standardize.  One way to get around some of the ways we can protect against one or two large threats is to just send a huge alpha strike in your direction, and Standardize is going to give them a nasty surprise when it ends up that all creatures are Salamanders. It’s also a great way to make your own army unblockable for the turn.

These two are going to do some serious work in this deck, and since they’re creatures they’ll help ensure that you’ll be giving away 4/3 Salamanders to your opponents.

2. Sakashima the Impostor

One way to ensure that your opponents have enough 4/3 Salamanders to start threatening each other is to copy Gor’s ability, and the Simic combination has several ways we can do just that.  Sakashima the Imposter comes down the turn after you cast Gor to give you two end step triggers, but of course has the flexibility to copy some other worthy target later in the game.

Spark Double and Helm of the Host can also copy Gor for profit, and these copies won’t be legendary, so then you can subsequently copy those with other copy effects.  How about copying Spark Double’s version of Gor with Progenitor Mimic?  Or a kicked Rite of Replication? 

They’re coming!  The Salamanders are coming!

3. Hornet Nest

So, step 1 is to keep giving 4/3 Salamander Warriors to my opponents. Step 2 is to get them to attack each other, and I love Hornet Nest as a good incentive not to attack me.  It works particularly well since it’ll generate multiple creatures if it takes most types of damage you’ll find in Commander, and that’ll mean Gor will continue to feed Salamanders to your opponents.

I’ve also included a bunch of other cards that either force or encourage your opponents to attack:

I’ve put Seedborn Muse in this category since it untaps your own creatures, which makes it much more difficult for opponents to find a shields-down moment to attack you.

4. Primal Vigor

This enchantment is dangerous, and there will be times when opponents are going to make you regret playing it — Atraxa, Praetors’ Voice players, I’m looking at you — but since we want to give our opponents a bunch of Salamander tokens I think it’s well worth the risk.

Parallel Evolution is another way to boost all those Salamander tokens. And since we’re looking at giving our opponents token creatures, I made room for Hungry Lynx and Hunted Phantasm too.

5. Spellskite

At some point, your opponents are going to get tired of pummeling each other with Salamanders and will want to point them in your direction, and in order to do that they’ll need to kill your commander.  So, let’s help ensure doing that won’t be easy, and one of the best ways to do that is Spellskite.

While blue always has counterspells to help with this, the Simic colors also provide some other great ways to help protect our boy Gor.

6. Amphin Mutineer

We’ll want some ways to deal with problematic creatures outside of temporarily turning them into Salamanders, and lucky for us Commander Legends brings an awesome new card that plays perfectly with our commander in Amphin Mutineer.  This also makes a superb copy target and once it eventually dies its encore ability is quite powerful and reasonably costed.

Here are some of the other ways we’ll want to deal with problematic permanents.

7. Llanowar Visionary

It’s funny that most of the good card draw spells in Commander are green, but it is what it is, and I’ll find room for a lot of it in this deck. But one of the best ones for our plans is Llanowar Visionary. This is a very innocuous way to dig a little deeper into the deck, gives a body for the battlefield to help ensure you can keep giving away Salamanders, and it provides mana. And it’s a great creature to pick up Blade of Selves later on for an infusion of cards.

Here are some of the usual card-drawing suspects I’ll be including too:

8. Tower of the Magistrate

People seem to like to play Equipment like Sword of Fire and Ice which would make my creature type shenanigans more difficult so I found room for Tower of the Magistrate which can force all Equipment to become unattached to target creature.

I’m including some other ways to interact with my opponents’ shenanigans too:

9. Fierce Guardianship

One of the worst things that can happen to our evil plans is a battlefield sweeper resolving, so I’ve made room for a few clutch counterspells to help put a stop to that if we can. Fierce Guardianship is particularly awesome for this since we’re planning on keeping Gor on the battlefield as often as we can.

Of the few other counterspells I like, Mystic Snake since it leaves a creature behind to potentially block stray Salamanders.

10. Wall of Roots

A lot of the best mana ramp options for green decks are spells, but I’d like to find room for a few creatures that provide mana, and I like Wall of Roots a lot for this since it can provide you an extra green mana once per turn on anyone’s turn.

Here are other great mana ramp options for our Simic deck:

Okay, so here’s how the deck ended up:

Here’s how the deck looks graphically, thanks to our friends at Archidekt:

What do you think?  Are there any cards I’ve overlooked?  If you see any new cards from Commander Legends that should find a home here, let me know! 

Do me a solid and follow me on Twitter!  I run polls and get conversations started about Commander all the time, so get in on the fun!  I’d also love it if you followed my Twitch channel TheCompleteCommander, where I do Commander, Brawl and sometimes other Magic-related streams when I can.  If you can’t join me live, the videos are available on demand for a few weeks on Twitch, but I also upload them to my YouTube channel.

And lastly, I just want to say: let us love each other and stay healthy and happy.