Thanks to Wizards of the Coast’s insane release schedule we are only three months into the year and there are already two sets out with a third coming in April. To be honest neither of the two sets released so far this year interested me that much. The first set Lorwyn Eclipsed left me entirely cold. I have no interest in the plane. I’ve no interest in it’s aesthetics. I did pick up the Auntie Ool -1/-1 counters precon deck. I like counter decks and I hadn’t played with a -1/-1 deck before. But after seeing it played at Commander night I went off the idea entirely. It looks just fucking annoying to play against and I don’t really want to inflict that on people. Other than that deck I only bought a few singles, around eight or nine, to update my existing decks. None of the other legendaries really make me want to build a deck around them.
The next set released was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (it’ll always be Hero Turtles to me) one. I was initially uninterested in this set. The IP doesn’t really interest me and the initially previewed cards didn’t grab me. But then we got the accidental early release of all the mythics and rares and they looked like a good mix of fun and power. The rest of the previews continued that theme and I found myself sort of hyped for the set. The precon had probably the best mana base of any precon released so far and the new cards in it were pretty good as well. I even picked up a fat pack to rip some boosters and the four player co-op box to introduce new players (it’ll never happen). That said, while the set had a fuckton of legendary creatures none of them really made me want to build a deck around them. I still wanted lots of cards from the set, lots of my decks will be getting some. But new decks? Other than the one I cover down below the only other one I’m thinking off is Super Shredder. But he’s incredibly one note and will be a giant removal magnet. Might still put it together to play once.
I was very interested in making a Kitsune, Dragon’s Daughter deck. I loved the art and her name. Just really grabbed me. Sadly she is super expensive (in terms of mana, the card itself is 20 cent) and her effect is good for causing chaos but bad for winning the game. I tried to build a deck but it never really came together. It’s not clear if you’re better leaning into the chaos aspect or going more for a Jon Irenicus or Beamtown Bullies approach (giving people terrible creatures). The problem with the latter is that you’re in mono blue. It never really came together for me and I ended up sticking a pin in it.
Retired Decks
These are decks I had assembled in paper but which I have now unsleeved and disassembled. I would probably do this more frequently if I could think of a good way to make my decks more modular – in the sense of making it easier to physically use one card from a deck in another deck without getting confused about what should go wear or having to use various clunky ways to track it.
Golbez, Crystal Collector
I wanted this deck to work so badly. I started building it at the end of last year and ordered the cards I was missing on December 26th. They took two fucking months to arrive. Which was very aggravating. But I kept tinkering with the deck over those two months and then when I finally got it assembled and sleeved it took another few weeks until I got a chance to play it. I played it in two games back to back, even winning the second game. But I just didn’t enjoy the deck. It’s hard to gauge how a deck will play against other people when you’re gold-fishing it in a simulator. Playing against actual people with actual interaction revealed how clunky and fragile the direction I went with the deck was. It can get there in the end – as evidenced by my win in a fairly tough and drawn out match. But I couldn’t help but feel that I could do what I wanted to do with the deck much more easily and more reliably with not just other Commanders I could think of but with other decks I currently have. I was sad to take this one apart.
Jetmir, Nexus of Revels
Wow, weird to think that New Capenna came out four years ago. It feels like a million years ago. Anyway when it came out I made very straight forward tokens deck headed by Jetmir who is a very powerful and very straightforward commander. He’s basically a win condition in the command zone. The deck’s gameplan was very simple, get nine or more creatures on the board, cast Jetmir, kill everyone. Which creatures didn’t really matter and so I updated the deck when new token makers like Anim Pakal, Thousandth Moon or Jacked Rabbit caught my eye. But it always felt very samey. I played the deck two or three times and then it just naturally fell out of rotation. When it came to select the three or four decks I’d bring to a Commander deck I never thought of Jetmir and on the odd occasion that I did I’d dismiss it as boring. I think I kept it around so long because it was my “tokens deck”. But then I realised that a lot of my decks make tokens in one way or another e.g. Elenda, Zurgo, etc. and I’d rather play any of them than play Jetmir. I also have another Naya commander deck so into the retired folder Jetmir goes.
Zhulodok, Void Gorger
I love Eldrazi. Big fucked up tentacled monstrosities from beyond, what’s not to love? I’ve had an Eldrazi deck of one kind or another for a long time. It was Jhoira of the Ghitu for a long while. I took that deck apart because I got tired of people seeing me suspend big threats and then blow me out of the game before they came out. That deck became my Zhulodok deck and it was fun and pretty solid at the power level I like to play at. I’ve no real complaints about the deck, the gambling element of Cascade is fun and the value usually speaks for itself. But I fancied a change. I was initially thinking of going with Azlask, the Swelling Scourge but to be honest “Annihilator tribal” just felt like it would be really unfun to play against. So I went with Ulalek, Fused Atrocity instead. So technically Zhulodok is retired but really he just went from being the Commander of my Eldrazi deck to being in the 99 of my new Eldrazi deck. More a demotion than a retirement.
Yuriko, Tigers Shadow
Yuriko is one of my all time favourite commanders and my ninja typal Yuriko decks is one of my favourite decks to play. So why is it getting retired you ask? A valid question and the answer is very straight forward. It’s hard to get it to the table. I usually play in Bracket 3 games and Yuriko is a very powerful commander even at Bracket 3. I don’t like to dominate a game nor do I like constantly being the arch-enemy and that’s what tends to happen when I play Yuriko. I was happy enough with that and with rolling the deck out occassionally when people were ok with it. But there are some newer ninja commanders that I wanted to test out and there was no point leaving the Yuriko ninja deck sitting there and buying a second copy of all the cards I wanted to use. So I ended up taking the deck apart. Though unlock my other retired decks this is really more of a vacation than a retirement.
New Decks
I’ve only included decks here that I have assembled and intend to play or have played in paper. There were some other decks that I’ve put or am putting together on Moxfield. But I’m unsure if I’ll make them in paper. I do just like building decks. The one’s closest to making the cut are Dr. Eggman (Robotnik if you nasty), The Lord of Pain and Mister Negative (hey at least one of them isn’t from Universes Beyond!).
Splinter, Radical Rat
So this is the first of two potential “inheritors” for my Yuriko deck, well moreso for my ninja deck. As I mentioned I like the ninjutsu mechanic and I watched too many American Ninja movies in my formative years to ever not find ninjas at least a little bit inherently cool. Splinter, Radical Rat apart from making me sing the TMNT theme tune in my head, is an incredibly straight forward ninja commander. He doubles all ninjas triggers. So the deck is also very straightforward. Use unblockable creatures as setup to ninjutsu in your ninjas and win through a mix of combat damage and value. The problem I encountered while putting this deck together, and for its one disastrous outing so far, is that a lot of ninja effects are good as a supplement to a decks gamplan but on their own they really lack oomph. Which leaves you hunting for the three or four really good ninjas in your deck. Which is a gameplay pattern I do not enjoy. I don’t really have any great love for Splinter either. So if I’m honest this deck probably isn’t going to survive the next three months. Oh and “Sneak”, the “fixed Ninjutsu” from TMNT, is more correctly described as “shit Ninjutsu”.
Goro-Goro and Satoru
This is the second of my two new attempts at moving my ninja deck away from Yuriko. Unlike with the Splinter deck here the ninjas and the ninjutsu ability is used to enable and supplement the Commanders ability to shit out 5/5 flying dragons. So you could argue it’s a Dragon Ninja deck, now all I need is some Bad Dudes to defeat (I’m sure everyone will get that super topical reference). But my incredibly (dated) clever references aside the deck is very focused on pumping out those dragons. I get the feeling that relying so heavily on the commander may make it quite fragile in actual play. Though the stuff that enables the commander also should work without him on the board. The deck is fast and aggressive which is very much an all or nothing gameplan in commander. You can run out of gas as the game progresses and fail to capitalise on your early aggression. I do suspect that focusing on ninjas may be the weaker way to go with the deck and that concentrating more on hasty evasive creatures would work better. But this is meant to be a ninja deck! So we’ll go with this for the moment and see how it fairs in real play situations.
Ulalek, Fused Atrocity
This is just basically my new Eldrazi deck. Though that might be a bit reductionist as it did turn out to be fairly different. My old Eldrazi deck helmed by Zhulodok basically tried to ramp as hard as possible to vomit a load of Eldrazi titans onto the board and win that way because they are quite powerful. This deck on the other hand doesn’t even run all the Eldrazi titans. The other big difference is that Zhulodok is a colourless deck but this deck is five colours but still sort of colourless because all the Eldrazi have Devoid. This made the deck feel pretty fresh and the majority of the Eldrazi here couldn’t be run in Zhulodok. The gameplan is also quite different. This deck is much more focused on the Commander, getting them onto the field and then using their ability to copy as many triggers on the stack as possible. In my first actual play with the deck I managed to get 18 triggers of casting one card. Which was very fun. I might end up going back to Zhulodok but for the moment this feels a lot more interesting and fun to me.
Be’lakor, the Dark Master
I have made this deck three times now I think. Though the last two times I built it I ended up taking it apart before playing with it. I’m determined to give it a proper outing just so I can put the idea to rest once and for all. There’s nothing really innovative here. I like the Warhammer 40K demons that came in the Chaos Commander Precon deck and I wanted to use them in a deck. There are several other demon cards I think are fun so “Demon typal” was the obvious route to take and Be’lakor is the only commander who specifically cares about just Demons. The problem is that as a tribe/type demons have fucking terrible synergy. Zombies, Dragons, Vampires, Angels, Merfolk, etc.? They all have multiple cards that work great with others of the same creature type across a wide range of mana costs. Demons? Nah, fuck that, it’s every demon for themselves! Demons tend to cost a lot to cast and have splashy effects which makes them great as big value or capstone pieces. It doesn’t make them too great when you want to run out a ton of them. So the deck always felt clunky. Nothing has really changed about that from the previous times I built it. While there have been (almost literally) a handful of new demons none of them really stand out. Maybe I’ve just mellowed? We’ll see. While testing the deck it is certainly when it pops off. But how viable that will be against actual opponents remains to be seen. Still, the dream of killing three opponents with a Bloodthirster and multiple extra combats does appeal.