A Commander Compulsion #4

A Commander Compulsion

squire1

6 January 2015

3594 views

Hi again everyone and welcome to the latest edition of "A Commander Compulsion" where I walk us through the deckbuilding process for a casual multiplayer Commander deck. I apologize for the long break but vacation waits for no man. So if you are anything like me, you are having a great time enjoying spoiler season. Fate Reforged is looking to be a really fun limited set. There are a few cards I am keeping my eye on for Commander as well. Anyway, I know that many people would like to see another FRF legendary creature featured here, but I am going to wait. In all honesty, most of them are not all that exciting yet (though that dragon is kind of sexy).

So instead of exploring a new Commander, we will go back to our random number generator. Today's number is 83. According to http://magiccards.info/ that would be Cao Cao, Lord of Wei. Now this guy is a real throw back but luckily has been reprinted fro cost sake. For those of you on a budget, this deck can be built for not too much money by replacing just a few cards. I am not going to detail these replacements, but I think the conversion is fairly simple. Anywho let's take a look at our man.

Cao Cao, Lord of Wei

Let's look at this guy. I mean really look at him. I love this picture; he looks so hardcore. Anyway...so a 3/3 for five is meh at best for a Commander. He is a human soldier which are somewhat relevant subtypes, but not really relevant enough in black to build around. He does have an activated ability though, which is pretty good. He taps to make an opponent discard two card, very nice. Now there are three issues with his abilities:

1. The timing of using this guy odd, it is actually sub-sorcery speed since you have to do it pre-combat. This is no bueno, but it is what we have to work with.
2. He taps to use his ability, which means he cannot attack or block if you want to activate him. Additional, you only get one activation per turn. This problem can be worked around by using some synergies that I will discuss later.
3. The last issue I see is that we are playing a multiplayer format with a single player targeted effect. The problem here is that this slows down our ability to make people discard a lot and we are already going to be slow because of the five casting cost. To work around this we really need to work on ways to trigger this guy multiple times in a turn. The up side to this is that targeting one player or another can be used in Commander politics very effectively.

Regardless of the issues, I think that what we have on our hands here is a good old fashion discard deck. Let's dive right in by taking a look at the discard spells for this deck.

Discard spells

In MTG there are a few spells that make people discard cards (or a few hundred) and because our time is limited I will not be discussing all of them. I will just stick to the ones that looked enticing while I was reviewing all of the discard cards I could find. I broke the discard spells into three categories: creatures that tap to force discard (like our Commander), targeted discard effects, and global discard effects.

to Discard

Since Coa Coa, Lord of Wei taps to make people discard, I figured that whatever we use to exploit that ability would be good with other creatures that tap to force discards. This is slim pickings to be honest. Cards like Cat Burglar, Rag Man or Cabal Inquisitor are not very good, they are all very mana intensive. Tainted Specter is an interesting card. Note that while it slows them down the same way a discard normally does it does not fill their graveyard; however, it does still trigger discard triggers. I digress. In the end, only Cinderhaze Wretch and Cunning Advisor join the ranks of Cao Cao, Lord of Wei in our deck as they are not as mana intensive as the rest of their ilk. Unfortunately not much to use here.

Targeted Discard effects

Unlike targeted effects on creatures for discard, targeted discard spells are a plenty and there are a ton of very powerful ones. The problem with many of these spells is that they cannot be reused easily in our deck and hence become often not very good. There is no question to the viability of Hymn to Tourach, Cabal Therapy, Thoughtseize and the like if we had one opponent, but in multiplayer these are usually pretty weak. Of the spells I looked at, Hymn to Tourach, Mind Peel, Mind Shatter, Mind Sludge, Mind Twist, Pulse of the Dross, Raven's Crime, and Wit's End made the short list. Of these, I tended to only keep the cards from which I could potentially get multiple uses. So only Mind Peel, Pulse of the Dross and Raven's Crime made the cut. Something important to note here is that these are all pretty loose in many situations, and if through playing the deck they become not all that useful, they will be switched out. I always like to make about 7-10 flex spots in Commander decks that can switch out depending on the meta, playgroup dynamics, budget, or card not working for you. These cards are all in flex spots as far as I am concerned because they are all somewhat weak. A few permanents that are also single use that were considered are Abyssal Horror, Bloodhusk Ritualist, Ordeal of Erebos, and Entomber Exarch. Of these four, only Entomber Exarch was kept. I have a feeling that I will rarely use the discard side of Entomber Exarch, but it's there if needed; additionally the exarch has a body that can be used to block or sacrifice. I have a feeling that Bloodhusk Ritualist is actually fairly strong but toward the end of the building process he got slotted out for other tech.

There are also several permanents that can be reused for discard turn after turn which increases their value to the deck. Some that were considered are:

• Disrupting Scepter - This is a classic discard card, going all the way back to LEA. The scepter is perfectly reliable, but it is a bit slow and just feels clunky. If we had a Voltaic Key or something...who am I kidding, it's too slow, but just.
• Scepter of Fugue - This I suppose is the upgraded form of Disrupting Scepter. The mana cost is still prohibitive for activation, but seems possibly workable. I think this card too becomes a flex spot, but when you have nothing else to do, this can do something. I like that this can make people discard at instant speed. So it is possible that we waste someone's draw step by forcing them to discard before they can do anything.
• Honden of Night's Reach - This costs four to make one person discard a card each turn, which is a lot, but it does have advantages. Commander games often go long and this would have time to work. It is passive discarding; all you have to do is choose a target each turn. And it is repeatable. I think this earns a spot.
• painful quandry - So yeah...not much to say here. Its passive for triggers, it deters progress, makes people discard, hurts them. I'm sold.
• Sadistic Hypnotist - So five mana for a 2/2 is not great. It also only works at sorcery speed, which is really bad. It needs creatures to sac to it which is something we will have to work on later. On the surface this seems not too good, but I think that there are enough ways to make creatures that will make him worth having (Note: playtesting all-star in a lot of cases). I mean sacrificing five creatures will likely wipe out everyone's hand.
• Triumph of Cruelty - This is maybe an okay card in the right deck. In here it is just bad. Look at our creature base so far. Not so big; which makes this almost always useless.
• Mind Slash - Since we already agreed to the creature sacing for Sadistic Hypnotist, it seems like this will work really well also as long as we build in support for these cards. This has the added bonus of removing specific cards from a player's hand which can foil an opponent very quickly.
• Nezumi Bone-Reader - This guy acts as something between Sadistic Hypnotist and Mind Slash. I think this one can be a keeper too for many of the same reasons and it comes with the same concerns.
• Liliana Vess - The OG lily is pretty good indeed. She has targeted discard, tutoring and recursion. This is kind of just what we need in here. She is a keeper.

Keep in mind that we are in black, so we will often be able to deal with bringing creatures back that we sacrifice. This makes some of these cards much more viable.

Global discard

The last category of discard spells is the global discard effects. Some of these effects are symmetrical (they effect us too) and some only effect opponents. These cards are likely to be of more value in a multiplayer game like Commander than in other formats. Some of the cards that I looked at are: Bite of the Black Rose, Liliana of the Veil, Myojin of Night's Reach, Words of Waste, Bottomless Pit, Cunning Lethemancer, Death Cloud, Necrogen Mists, Syphon Mind and Unnerve. Bottomless Pit, Cunning Lethemancer, and Necrogen Mists are all passive discard, so they are very efficient and earn spots for that alone. In order to make them work more for us than against us, we will need to make sure to include recursion tactics and/or card draw though later on. Death Cloud offers quite the same proposition. You must be prepared to steer into cards like this, as they can be very dangerous when played incorrectly, but extremely powerful and game-changing at opportune moments. Syphon Mind is another great card for multiplayer that helps to bounce back from some of the other global effects, while still hurting opponents, so this is a keeper. All of the Myojin are very strong and can be just big beater that get around all of your sweepers. In this case, Myojin of Night's Reach is a great, resilient beater that has a huge impact from its ability if they find a way to get rid of it. Words of Waste works very well if we have something like Phyrexian Arena out. Every turn we could pay one life and one mana to have everyone discard a card. Unnerve is just good value even for a one time spell. You likely 6 for 1 your opponents as a group which is value town defined. Then we have another Liliana. If you question her skill, check out the price tag. There is a good reason for it. Sure, she makes us discard too, but she also is just great removal. Obviously lily is not in a budget build of this deck. I might switch it out for some other removal like Chainer's Edict. As we have seen, most of the global effects that I looked at made the build because of the value in multiplayer, but Bite of the Black Rose did not make the cut. Most of the reason is its lack of dependability. It can be very good at destroying hands or a token army, but it is very hard to get it to swing the right way sometimes. That said, this is also a great budget replacement for Liliana of the Veil as well.

Results of Discard

Now that we have all of this discarding ability what do we do with it? While discarding slows the game down, generally disrupts other players' strategies, and breaks parity; discard alone does not win anyone the game. In order to move forward we will need ways for us to gain even more benefit from discarding. There are several cards that award you for having other players discard cards. In addition, there are a number of cards that punish players for not having many cards in their hands.

Benefit from discarding

When reviewing these cards, there are some obvious staples to consider. Discard decks have traditionally used Megrim, Bloodchief Ascension and Liliana's Caress to great success. These three cards can deal a load of damage if your opponents are discarding. {[Abyssal nocturnus]] is a cheap creature that can get very big in this deck. An activation from our commander makes it a 6/6 with evasion and Unnerve makes it a 14/14 in a 4 player pod. So far we are very good at discarding things, but drawing cards would also be helpful, so a card like Geth's Grimoire can be very useful by making Cao Cao, Lord of Wei say, ":Target player discards two cards and you draw two cards. 'Some crappy limitations'". Geth's Grimoire and Words of Waste are best of friends by the way. While Waste Not is a new kid in this party, it is welcomed with open arms. Just the 2/2 zombies alone from Waste Not can make Sadistic Hypnotist amazing and could chain together activations. There are other cards that could fall into this category, like Profane Memento, but we really want every discard to be maximized value and adding "gain 2 life" to Mind Rot is just not that amazing.

Hand size punishment

So above we have things that trigger for each discard, now we need to look at things that trigger because our opponents have discarded so much. There are a few cards that do punish players for having small hand sizes. The Rack is a classic for this sort of thing, but falls short because it only effects one player. The Rack's creature version, Rackling however, effects all players and is a very playable card in this deck. It did not make the cut only due to lack of space later on but is a great cheap add if it is needed for a budget substitution. Paupers' Cage, Quest for the Nihil Stone, Shrieking Affliction, and Skullcage were all considered as well for their punishing small hands. Of these cards, only Shrieking Affliction will make the cut as it does deal a nice amount of damage and effects all opponents. In addition it is an enchantment, which is harder for many decks to deal with. More of these could be added in after extensive testing if you find that players are not drawing many cards to refill their hands and are hence left with low hand sizes often. This is not the case in my meta. Players in my group routinely draw extra cards, so I would rather trigger on discard than punish for hand size.

I think at this point we have milked the 'discard matters' theme for all that it is worth. Let's start getting into the technology section of the article and specifically about some cards that we might want to add to synergize with those we have already added to make them even better.

Tech

Synergistic additions

As mentioned earlier, one of the problems with Cao Cao, Lord of Wei, Cinderhaze Wretch and Cunning Advisor is that we can only activate then once a turn. An additional issue with having a ability it that you have to wait a turn to use it. Lightning Greaves is a great way to work around the summoning sickness issue while also protecting our creatures. I think that the addition of Thousand-Year Elixir will help with both of these issues as well. There are a few other cards that will be able to untap our creatures. Magewright stone seems like a good card at first, but it is extremely limited in what it can untap. Only having 3 targets in the deck sounds pretty bad to me. On the other hand Puppet Strings and Jandor's Saddlebags both untap any creature for surprise blockers or extra discard activations. I think in this case, just Puppet Strings will be added to the final product as it is the more efficient of the two. Another way to get milage out of our creatures is Illusionist's Bracers. This will double all of the abilities of our tap creatures when equipped and quite a few others like Sadistic Hypnotist and a few more that we will be adding.

We added a few symmetrical discard spells earlier which do hurt us by making us discard. To play around this loss we have added a couple cards so far that draw us cards like Syphon Mind and Geth's Grimoire. I think a little additional card draw from Phyrexian Arena will go a long way here too. Even with these few changes, we will be discarding some cards and should be prepared to use some cards in our graveyard. Sever the Bloodline is a great card for some removal that is also playable from the yard. It is great for getting rid of those indestructible creatures or token hordes, both of which are very common in Commander. Increasing Ambition and Chainer's Edict are both solid, but I would rather have the tutor than the removal at this point, so the edict is left out. Army of the Damned is an army in a can and can turn games around whether from the bin or the hand. In addition, all of those zombies are great sacs to the Sadistic Hypnotist, Nezumi Bone-Reader, and mindslash crowd. Eventually we will have nontoken creatures die though and Soul of Innistrad is a way to get them back while he is out and even if we discarded him, he can still do a bit. Our last graveyard synergy is the irreplaceable Sheoldred, Whispering One. Even in a budget deck, this is one to spring for. She brings creatures back, holds the board back, and is a huge body, like brick house big.

Our last additions for synergy reasons are token generators. We have a number of cards at this point that want us to sacrifice creatures and yet be are not running that many actual creatures. In order to help with this, we will add a few token generators. We already discussed adding Army of the Damned but in addition, Bitterblossom, Grave Titan, Pawn of Ulamog and Skeletal Vampire all seem like good additions. Bitterblossom is a great consistent source of blockers and sacrificial lambs (faeries, whatever). This is the first of these I would cut though because this with Phyrexian Arena and no life gain could make for a quick game. Grave Titan is a powerhouse on its own and rarely needs justification in a monoblack deck, but it is also a very efficient token generator if left unchecked. Skeletal Vampire can be a very resilient beater with the additional bonus of making sacrifice fodder. I think he is a good add at this point since he both makes tokens and is a creature. Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder is another great token generator. Cast a creature to make dudes, sac the dudes to hypnotist and repeat.

Removal

Even though we have left the synergy section, it does not mean that as we discuss removal we will not consider synergy. As stated in previous articles, removal is important in Commander and is often centered around board wipes (sweepers).

We have already added Sever the Bloodline for spot removal. The only other spot removal I would like to add in here is Avatar of Woe. She is a large creature that we will rarely pay full price for and has a lot of synergy with all of the doubling abilities and untap effects we already added.

Note that we do not have a lot of creatures in this deck still. Moreover, the creatures we do have, are not so amazing that we need to tiptoe around them. We are also playing what looks to be a rather slow and grindy deck. To make that work and lot of mass removal will be necessary. Luckily black has a decent amount of sweepers available to it. Damnation, Decree of Pain, Dread Cacodemon, Extinguish All Hope, Life's Finale, and Necromantic Selection are all considered for the lineup. I especially like Necromantic Selection because we have the additional resurrection and we already have a lot of ways of filling opponents' graveyards. I thing in the end we keep all but Extinguish All Hope since it really costs a lot for nothing all that special in our deck.

Another option that we have for removal is repeatable sacrifice effects like Dictate of Erebos and Grave Pact. I may be living in magical Christmas land again, but I can see playing Army of the Damned and then sacrificing all of the zombies to Sadistic Hypnotist for a ton of discards and having gravepact out for all of the value to wipe the board. Make this happen people! In all seriousness, I think both of these fit nicely in our deck.

A final type of removal to consider is grave removal. We could get ourselves into dangerous situations if we play against a reanimation or dredge deck. To play around that problem, we have to have graveyard removal. Relic of Progenitus is a solid standby in Commander that we will not be using because I think that we have better options available in this color. Nezumi Graverobber  ^Flip is my first pick because it is very useful for grave hate, but usually flips easily early game as well for some solid recursion tactics on opponents' graveyards. Bojuka Bog is an obvious one just because it is a tapped land away from being free. Withered Wretch is a cheap and targeted solution to all sorts of problems and a keeper in here. My next pick might be a bit loose. Gravestorm might be a great card in our deck and it might be horrible. It seems like passive grave hate and card draw would be good; but if the discard is too effective, then our opponents may always opt to exile a land rather than let us draw which does nothing for us. I think this bulk rare deserves to be tried out at the very least. My last pick makes Withered Wretch and Nezumi Graverobber  ^Flip worse, but makes Gravestorm better. Leyline of the Void is a Commander staple for a reason. Making players not just discard but exile cards from their hands is pretty amazing.

Ramp

Now that the deck is almost complete, we should start to notice that our curve to cast is fairly low but we will need a way to cast all of our spells and get value from activations in the same turn. My first additions for ramp are Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and Cabal Coffers because it is pretty much always good in black. Along with that, I suggest Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. I think we really have to make room for Sol Ring since an early Sol Ring really shapes games. Due to us being in mono-black, Jet Medallion works pretty well also. Crypt Ghast and Nirkana Revenant are both beasts in mono-black strategies and need to be in here. Nirkana can almost win on her own and Crypt Ghast will help with the casual lifegain. (I actually got both out in playtesting and I only had two swamps out and it was still glorious.)

Miscellaneous tech

For the rest of the tech I have mostly lands that serve multiple functions. Here is a quick rundown of why each was added.

• Koskun Falls - As mentioned earlier, we do not have many creatures and I expect this to be a very grindy long game deck, so I am adding this additional control element.
• Sensei's Divining Top - Because it's Commander. It helps to filter draws, very good card.
• Leechridden Swamp - I can see no reason not to. It is a swamp and it hurts opponents. SOLD!
• Myriad Landscape - I like this for a touch of ramp in mono colored decks. In multicolor, not sure its worth it.
• Opal Palace - Making Cao Cao, Lord of Wei bigger seems like it could be useful and it is only one land slot.
• Shizo, Death's Storehouse - Nearly no downside other than being nonbasic and it could allow us to change strategies or be a political tool.
• Strip Mine - Just to clear out cards like Maze of Ith and the like.
• Ghost Quarter - Same reason as Strip Mine.
• Urborg - No downside other than being nonbasic and might be useful at some point.
• Volrath's Stronghold - A bit more emergency recursion.
• Winding Canyons - Because we have nothing to make things instant speed yet and that can be very important in Commander.

Well everyone, that is about it. Here is the final deck.

A Commander Compulsion #4

Commander / EDH squire1

SCORE: 6 | 618 VIEWS | IN 2 FOLDERS

I think that Cao Cao, Lord of Wei can be a fun Commander and I tried my best not to fall into the trap of just making a mono-black good stuff style deck. Let me know your thoughts on the build in the comments. I hope you all enjoyed this editions of "A Commander Compulsion". I will be back in a week or two with our regular random commander from which to build. Until then, have fun brewing and playing out there.