The legends in Unstable didn’t seem that great at first for Commander. But now I’ve come around and think Mary O’Kill may be a fun thing to try anyway. Sure, she doesn’t have much direct support. There are only 4 different Killbots available, and with different I mean different names. They all have the same art and stats. Curious Killbot, Delighted Killbot, Despondent Killbot and Enraged Killbot.

Still, it’s fun to see a deck around (reverse?) Ninjitsu. In fact, adding some ninjas to the deck might be fun, and make combat full of wicked surprises. It helps that the ability on Mary is so cheap, so it’s not impossible for her to be replaced by a Killbot, and then hop over to another Killbot.

So, what makes her better? More Killbots! Beyond the four in the set, there are ofcourse the changelings. And those fit thematically as well. You thought you where fighting Mary O’Kill? No, it was just some shapeshifter pretending to be her!

Things get really crazy with Conspiracy in play. Now all your creatures are killbots! This means that it’s possible to switch her out for Phage the Untouchable or Master of Cruelties mid-combat. Yikes. And that for the cheap cost of . Note that her ability doesn’t trigger any enter- or leave the battlefield triggers, so you won’t die to your own Phage. A similar trick would be switching to Rakdos the Defiler after attacking, so you don’t have to sacrifice anything, but your opponent still does when they get hit.

The downside is that Mary can’t switch from the command zone, so you’ll probably have to fork up the initial to get her into play and start to get tricky. That makes it fair right?

All in all she is a promising commander, and potentially a very lethal one at that. When building the deck you’d probably will need some tutor effects, because the cardpool isn’t that deep when it comes to Killbot related stuff, and that makes her a little more linear, but at least once things get going, combat is going to be very intersting to say the least.

So, I’ve made a huge pile of Merfolk-related cards, so I can start picking things I want to include in my Kumena, Tyrant of Orazca deck, and while most Merfolk for the deck are historically in blue, I’ve been looking at green things to do. One of the cards I want to use is a card I have for almost decades. It always intrigued me, and I think it’s actually good in Commander, where there is a decent chance someone is using islands, and especially in Merfolk, where I want to change lands into Islands.

I want to do plenty of terraforming to take advantage of the Islandwalk ability that comes with many of my Merfolk, so Spreading Seas and Aquitect’s Will are autoincludes in all their cantripping glory. Reef Shaman, Tidal Warrior, Tideshaper Mystic and Streambed Aquitects become mana-elves with the carpet out but best of all, there is Quicksilver Fountain which is especially messy. Stormtide Leviathan tops everything off.

I do hope that Kumena’s card draw works as well as I hope it does. Carpet of Flowers may give me the mana-push to just keep spamming Merfolk.

While drafting Ixalan, I got a Tishana. I like how Merfolk plays in draft, and Tishana seemed like a good Merfolk commander. Now that the Rivals of Ixalan prerelease is around the corner, I’m wondering what I want to get out of the set. The thing that keeps drawing my attention is probably Kumena, which is even more fitting for a Merfolk commander deck. He’s cheaper, does much of the same thing and is a bit of a swiss army knife. Add to this that there are a lot of “untap every players’ turn” effects in green, as well as Merrow Commerce in blue (which counts as a Merfolk itself for tapping) and Kumena could potentially make me live the dream of drawing a lot of cards and growing my merfolk to gigantic size. That, all without the downside of Tishana potentially entering the battlefield as a 0/0 once I get to .

Thanks to the recent Merfolk duel deck there are some cards to get started with. Mostly Master of Waves which seemed awesome with Tishani, but still doesn’t seem bad with Kumena.

Theros block had some other interesting Merfolk like Dakra Mystic and Kiora’s Follower.

Ixalan block offers a ton of tribal support as well. Deeproot Waters makes tokens. The tribe goes deeper with +1/+1 counter support, with Merfolk drawing cards of that as well, using Give // Take, Sage of Fables and Shapers of Nature. And ofcourse Herald of Secret Streams making the team unblockable.

All in all Kumena seems like the most fun new commanders out there, leading a tribe with lots of carddraw and fiddly counter and token stuff. Throw in a few counterspells agains the inevitable board wipes and yes, I want to make this deck ASAP.

In the past, I tried to make an Isperia EDH deck, but I didn’t quite get it to work. In theory its fine; Get attacked, draw a card, hope it is instant removal or a fog effect (Settle the Wreckage, Wing Shards or Angelsong maybe) and don’t be attacked anymore.

The problem was not getting to in time, maybe. Maybe I was too all-in on flavour things and my deck was just bad. Too much other Sphinxes as a tribal thing or something, even though Unesh, Criosphinx Sovereign has been printed since. But now that we get to see the Parun (founder) of the Azorius guild, maybe it’s time to revisit the idea.

 I think I still prefer Isperia, but Azor has some nice upsides too, and making a deck where I can switch out commanders from time to time might not be a bad idea. Azor has some upsides though. At least he stops wrath effects for a turn. I don’t know how good stopping instants is, since, well, they are instants and typically not played in the players’ own turn. Blinking Azor can stop a lot bad things from happening.

Time has passed since I last tried Isperia. Time for a retry, I think. Some notes:

• Approach of the Second Sun is a thing now, and a fitting endgame for these lawmage-sphinxes.
• I was planning an Alexi, Zephyr Mage EDH deck, but she is also cool here in the 99, as are some of the other Spellshapers. Avenger en-Dal makes excess lands I draw into Path to Exile. Overtaker is especially evil, by stealing an extra blocker from someone.

It’s weird to see the Azorius Parun on Ixalan, just when Jace ended up there who happens to be the living Guiltpact (because of a spell Azor created) and Jace having a shady past involving Sphinxes, but hey, if a cool commander deck comes out of this, I won’t complain.

I’ve managed to finally get some games in with my Hapatra deck, and I loved it. It turns out she doesn’t need a lot of mana to get going and hold her own. This is a good thing, because I didn’t get a lot of mana in one the games, and still managed to do well, although with more mana I could won that one game by playing my larger finishers.

I did learn a bit about the deck though; Even though the can function on low mana, it doesn’t want mana sinks like Trigon of Corruption. The Trigon just isn’t a second Serrated Arrows like it was intended. Instead, I’ll probably run Grafted Exoskeleton. Hapatra makes lots and lots of snake tokens, and I’ve experimented with running infect creatures, and now I just want more infect.

Infect doesn’t seem that bad in Commander, from a gameplay perspective. From my design philosophy of “What do I want my opponents to experience while playing this deck?” it’s tension and fear, but it looks a lot more dangerous than it actually is.  Turns out Infect is totally okay for a couple of reasons:

• Most Infect creatures are small and easilly blocked or dealt with.
• If I attack someone with Infect, unlike regular damage, other players often can’t help compound the damage as they mostly attack the regular life total. Infect players have to work alone most of the time.

No, edging the event horizon into unfairness has to do with Archfiend of Ifnir. I really like that card in this deck, and tried to include as many cycling cards as I could fit, and to fit the snake theme, a Noose Constrictor. I’m really hopefull about the Hush I added, because it cycles and there is always someone who has an Enchantment deck of sorts, or at least a pillow fort strategy.

No, the reason the deck threatens to go beyond a good fun deck into linear and overpowered is because Archfiend combos so well with Survival of the Fittest. Survival finds Archfiend and helps discarding cards to activate him. The combo doesn’t win on the spot and takes time to fully set up but I imagine it’ll go a long way wiping opponents boards and help Hapatra create a lot of snake tokens.

I tend not to use a lot of tutor effects, except for land ramp, and Survival ís repeated tutoring, but should come up once every five games or so, so I hope it’s not too linear.

Ixilan previews seem to have started and I have to share my enthusiasm about Revel in Riches; I like the art and it seems a fantastic fit for my [mtg]Queen Marchesa[/card] deck. Kill stuff with Assassins. Get paid. Win when you kill 10 things.

The only downside if this design is that it doesn’t work with Gold tokens, that are functionally the same. Or Etherium Cell. What is great is the new map-frame for lands. Or at least, some transform card that turn into lands:

That’s pretty cool. Then, there is a cool legendary Pirate, Admiral Beckett Brass that would make a cool commander. I’ll have Kari Sev I think.

And then there is the news that Planeswalkers are legendary now, and you can have multiple versions in play at the same time, which opens up a lot of opportunities. The question is: Can Planeswalkers now lead Commander decks?

Back when Magic Origins came out, I attended a prerelease and my promo foil was Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh. This meant I had to make a commander deck with her, right? The idea to make something whimsical, with cards that featured Chandra in the art or in the name. Still, I wanted it to be somewhat powerful. There is some overlap there, but I also wanted to be able to protect the Planeswalker side a little, and decided to go with the various Phoenix cards there are to be able to block flyers that came her way. Most red sweepers leave flyers alone, so that felt important.

After a long time, I was finally able to bring the deck to a game of commander. Ofcourse, being a burn deck in a format with multiple opponents all at 40 life is already a little problematic. The others brought more sensible commanders, like Breya, Etherium Shaper and Prossh, Skyraider of Kher that work very well as combo pieces, and here I was playing a card that plays mostly a fair game of Magic. I was outclassed and I didn’t win in the end. But it didn’t feel like a problem because it did get kinda close.

Being the red player did give me an edge. Red is not only the colour of fury and rage, but also the colour of love and friendship, and while it technically doesn’t count as a win, there is a chance to draw the game by killing everyone (including myself) with a large Earthquake. There is no friendship like fire-forged friendship, and drawing the game is kind of a win in my book.

I did learn a lot from the playthrough though. First of all, a mono-red burn deck brings a great sense of immediacy to the table. Even the player who is the furtherst ahead feels like they can die at any moment due to damage doublers like Furnace of Rath. I opened with Obsidian Fireheart and it drew hate immediatly, which is quite a reaction to a card that maybe pings for one or two. (The idea of the deck was to also use Chandra’s ultimate and the Fireheart to keep pinging people even after I was eliminated.) It’s good to know that the deck evokes such a strong reaction, even when others play dangerous combo decks.

That means the deck meets it’s goals. Now it just needs to win sometimes. I will have to tweak the deck a little, but as chaotic red is, there are a lot of nombo’s and anti-synergies when using reds more disrupting effect. I want to include some creatues, but they don’t work well with mass-burn like Earthquake and similar effects.

Take [mtg]Blood Moon[/card] and Burning Earth. Both work against greedy manabases, but they also work against each other. Navigating the deck can be difficult at times. Playing monored this way means you must not care about your lifetotal or worry about invalidating your own cards at times.

Other notes:

The Chandra isn’t reliable, and even though the deck doesn’t have many creatures, having enough haste granting effects is a must, because waiting a whole turncycle to activate her (or a Heartless Hidetsugu) is a tall order, concidering life is cheap in a format with so much (mass) removal. So I better include stuff like Anger or Fervor to make sure I can use the few creatures I have immediatly on them hitting the battlefield, denying opponents the opportunity to deal with my setups.

Haste also helps with Aether Flash. I’m tempted to run this, but it does have anti-synergy with my commander, killing her when she enters the battlefield. Haste gets around it, as she can spark into a planeswalker before the Aether Flash damage hits her.

Another upgrade I made is adding a Mirage Mirror. This may become a commander staple, and in this deck, in addition to becoming a copy of the best card on the table, it also allows me to activate another damage doubler on a whim, or provide an extra copy of Valakut, also doubling some damage and spreading the love around a bit more.

The whole Phoenix thing can be toned down a bit, because outside of flavour, it didn’t really add that much. Some of the Phoenixes must attack every turn, and this works again the idea that I use them to block and protect things. Instead, a little more ramp and maybe some extra carddraw doesn’t hurt the deck. After all, you threaten the board with burn, making sure you don’t get hated out that quick by offering a deterence. This doesn’t work that well on an empty hand, and not enough mana to back it up.

It’s never going to be the best deck at the table, and it probably doesn’t win that much. It does accelerate the pace of the game and keep everyone on their toes. I also have some red legends in my 99 which I can run instead of Chandra. Neheb, the Eternal is one with potential in this deck, that I can swap Chandra with once in a while and make giant explosions out of all the mana it can produce. All in all I’m not scrapping the deck, even though there are a lot of hurdles to overcome to make it competative enough for most tables.

I’m still trying to make a Queen Marchesa deck.  Looking at what themes to include, one of them is definately deathtouch. Deathbringer Thoctar is a card I’ve been wanting to use for years, but haven’t found the deck for. The idea of machine-gunning entire boards with a deathtoucing Thoctar seems awesome.

It does need a card that actually grants deathtouch though. Marchesa and most of her assassin minions already have it, so granting something extra is very welcome. Enter Touch of Moonglove. By itself it’s a bad combat trick. But if I can get it to kill multiple creatures, the life loss is getting really relevant. The dream play is to have Deathbringer Thoctar, play Touch of Moonglove on it, then play Chandra’s Ignition against a full board. Not only will it wipe the board clean, but everyone will be brought down, and I’ll have a huge Thoctar that can take care of all players.