Politics with Tivit in Commander

Posted on May 24, 2022

Hello! Happiest of Days to You and Yours! Today we are taking a deep dive into your political options from Streets of New Capenna, Commander edition. This is my 9^th and final deck from those sets. My first 8 are linked to and discussed below.

Streets of New Capenna Previous Decks and Articles:

My first deck was a Jund build featuring the powerful Ziatora, the Incinerator, the leader of the Riviteers Family. I tossed in Ball Lightnings that swing out of nowhere and die anyway, so they can be sacrificed for 6 damage with Ziatora's ability. I also packed the list with Threaten effects like Zealous Conscripts that can steal creatures for a turn for Ziatora to snack on. I also included temporary token copy effects like Feldon of the Third Path that provide more bodies to be sacrificed, as well as damage increasers like Fiery Emancipation. You can check out the deck here!

Next, I built a Esper colored deck around Queza, Augur of Agonies. I included Group Hug cards like Howling Mine and Temple Bell to get loads of card drawing fun times as well as winning triggers like Psychosis Crawler and Underworld Dreams. I even snuck in the winning Approach of the Second Sun that will be able to be cast twice, and the trio of game winners like Thassa's Oracle and Laboratory Maniac. Check it out here!

Third, I built a Commander deck around the Naya token loving Jinnie Fay, Jetmir's Second! I tossed in loads of cards that care about making Food, Treasure, Clue and Blood tokens like Tireless Tracker and Old Gnawbone that you can convert into 2/2 or 3/1 swingers with Jinnie. We have ramp that plays into this like Growth Spasm and removal like Root Out and synergetic lands like Kher Keep. We have a double-digit number of cards from Streets of New Capenna. Good stuff!

My fourth deck was built around Bess, Soul Nourisher. This Selensya colored lover of 1/1 dorks was built around life gain from the Soul Sisters archetype like Auriok Champion and Essence Warden, as well as hate bears like Esper Sentinel, life gain matters like Well of Lost Dreams and going wide effects like Decree of Justice as game winners alongside things like Test of Endurance and Voltron to win with a giant Bess like Rogue's Passage and Light of Promise. Love it loads - check out my Bess Brew here.

For my fifth deck I built a Grixis Vampires deck around Evelyn, the Covetous which is the first Grixis Vampires matter Commander. Since she can exile opposing cards from all libraries when Vampires arrive, I tossed in a ton of mana matters cards like Cabal Coffers and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth; a bunch of cheap instants to cast one on each turn like Vampiric Tutor and Swan Song; a bunch of Vampires like Anje, Maid of Dishonor and Midnight Arsonist. Nice stuff! You can check out my 5th deck here.

For my next deck, I built an Azorius Counters Matter build around Denry Klin, Editor in Chief (which you can find here) around whom I built a deck to give Denry flying counters with cards like Avian Oddity and Spontaneous Flight and then a bunch of combat damage triggers like Augury Adept and Cephalid Constable. I also have some Ninjas here like Ninja of the Deep Hours and Mist-Syndicate Naga. Good synergy here!

Vazi, Keen Negotiator is the next one I built around, and she has a nice and fun Treasure theme where you give them to your foe and then draw cards when they cast spells with Treasures no matter how they got them. You can find cards in here like Old Gnawbone that make massive amounts of Treasure, ones that give them away like Bucknard's Everful Purse, and then ways to use and sacrifice those Treasures like the win-con of Imperial Hellkite or the sacrificing to make a 1/1 dork like Stimulus Package. Powerful stuff!

Last week I built a deck around Parnesse, the Subtle Brush which was built to copy a ton of things for triggers and is basically Copy Tribal in Grixis colors. Swarm Intelligence? Reiterate? Lithoform Engine? Insidious Will? And then it uses game win cons like Magecraft and triggers (Professor Onyx, Guttersnipe). You can find it here - (Copying with Parnesse in the Streets of New Capenna | Article by Abe Sargent (coolstuffinc.com)).

Ready?

I am building around Tivit, Seller of Secrets, a nice sized 6/6 flyer with ward 3 for a decent 6 mana. Whenever Tivit arrives to the battlefield (or deals combat damage to a player, likely with flying) you have a vote. For each evidence vote you make a Clue token to sacrifice for two mana for a card. For each bribery vote you make a Treasure token to crack for mana. Also, when voting, you vote another time so you can give yourself two Clues or two Treasures or one of each. I am building this deck around the latter ability. Tivit is a big hit in Commander with 949 decks registered over at EDHREC.com. We'll try to play into the political space that Tivit opens up. I am also adding some ways to make sure that Tivit punches.

Let's start with these two common Human Advisors! The former is a 2/3 that will let you vote an additional time, as well the latter. They each combine to have five combined power and toughness, a bit behind the curve. They are quite powerful when you control your leader. If you draw the other while you control the one, please do not play it, no matter how good they are as a tag team, since you can drop it post-mass removal and keep on trucking.

Two good cards beginning with "C." Punishment is a powerful six cost that is a serious commitment to mana, but the result is worth it. You get the dilemma, and starting with you, you vote for taxes or death. For each death vote that's a sacrifice of your foe's dork only. For each taxes vote you get your opponents to discard from their hand. Combined with another vote from Tivit that's pretty game changing. The Judgment is heavily played in Commander. You can drop it and then choose a (nonland) permanent your foe controls. They vote as well. Then you exile the one with the most votes, or all of the ones tied. So that's usually the one you chose, and they cannot choose your stuff to out vote you.

Two more good cards, beginning with "M." The common is a mono-Blue 2/1 flyer a smaller dork. Your table votes for feather or quill. Feathers give it a +1/+1 counter and quills will loot you a card, and that's nice card flow. Typically, I choose quill, they choose feather, and you wind up with a 5/4 5 mana draw and discard effect attached. The rare is a six drop Orzhov Angel that flies. Nice. And then when it enters the battlefield everyone votes for grace or condemnation. If grace gets the most, everyone returns all of their dorks from the graveyard to the battlefield like a Twilight's Call on a stick. If they choose condemnation (or is tied) you each destroy all other dorks, and then you keep a 4/4 beater. Either way that's very flexible. Since many of your game winning things are dorks, bringing them all back in a mass format is pretty nice. You can also do a sweep and keep. Note that in a duel or three player game you will always get what you want when you control Tivit with this one. Nice dork which can win the game quite ably.

Card Draw

Most of my card draw is pretty obvious like Fact or Fiction and Mulldrifter and Tivit's clue making. But I wanted to add in some more mechanical card flow with these two dorks that have all three of my colors among them. The Spirit is a 4 drop 2/3 with flying. On arrival to the battlefield you make three Clues in a four player game. Four in a five-player game, and two in a three player game. You can crack those Clues for cards drawn. Then when you draw your second card each turn you can make a 1/1 flying Spirit to slowly add dorks to your side of the battlefield that fly.

Wernog, Rider's Chaplain is a nice 2-drop Orzhov 1/2. When Wernog arrives or leaves the battlefield, you allow each foe to make a Clue token. If they don't they lose 1 life. Then if they did, you make a Clue token for each one that made their own. This happens twice and the second trigger is not a death, but a leaves play, so exiling, tucking or bouncing will also trigger it. Good pair of mass Clue making for you.

Check out these two mono-Black dorks that begin with "G." The first is a 2/1 that, when your foes voted differently than you, they lose two life. Starting at 40 life means that this may not be as big of a brake to voting as you would with a 20 life format, but it still adds up. Nice! The second is a 3/2 that will, when one (or more) of your dorks smashes face, give you two Treasures. With your unblockable stuff here like Rogue's Passage and Whispersilk Cloak and Tivit's natural flying that's pretty likely. Note that you cannot make more than two each combat damage step unless you have first strike or double strike. Then you can sacrifice Treasures to give a dork -X/-X where X is your Treasures sacrificed at sorcery speed which adds to your creature removal and gets around indestructible. Nice pair!

Next, check out Academy Manufactor and Sakashima of a Thousand Faces. The artifact is a powerhouse here. Since Tivit will make Clues and Treasures for you based on how folks vote, you can now make all three of the key artifact tokens, Food, Clue and Treasure each time you make one. This is downright nasty here! Love it loads. The creature is a 3/1 that can copy another dork you control on arrival and then the legend rule doesn't apply. It's here to copy Tivit since it is so powerful and we don't have that many synergetic voting matters dorks, so you can also copy a key synergy, although I'd copy Tivit 8 times out of 10. Nice tag team!

The first up here is the heavily played Disciple of the Vault, which will serve as the Blood Artist of this deck. This will force one foe to lose a life each time any artifact dies, which means Treasures, Clues and Foods you control as well as your foe's. This is a nice brake on the opposing use of Treasures since they'll now take a life loss foreach Treasure they crack, although you can tag team and send the damage to a nastier foe. Then you get the three drop 1/3. When your tokens leave the battlefield (including death, exiling, bounce or tucking) you'll drain a life from each foe. Nice pair here!

I wanted to toss in another powerful win-con, although we can win with Commander damage with Tivit in four hits, and then life loss from the Nightblade and Disciple above as well as combat damage but this is another win con people might not see coming until you drop it pre-combat, equip it with Swiftfoot Boots, and swing at a foe with no Black or artifacts to block since it has fear, and win out of nowhere with massive life loss. When this 5-drop Horror swings at a foe, if it's unblocked, they'll lose life equal to their graveyard count. This cannot be stopped with normal land-based defenses like Maze of Ith or Kor Haven. Since people like to massively power out a big fat graveyard this can easily kill in one or two triggers. It also benefits as another target for unblockable equipment in case we have another besides Tivit, or it they don't have flyers or reachers to block Tivit and we can move over that Whispersilk Cloak to this Horror. Nasty here!

All my unblockable stuff comes straight off the expected express elevator like the aforementioned Cloak and Trailblazer's Boots but check out this Aura! It gives White stuff lifelink and a +1/+1 boost and Blue stuff another +1/+1 boost and unblockable. That's a nice bonus when on Tivit since you can kill in three hits, gain 8 life each punch, and cannot be blocked.

Check out this pair of lands. The Forge is a untapped colorless land that will tap to place a +1/+1 counter on Tivit for free without any mana needed if it arrived this turn to the battlefield. The Palace will tap for a colorless mana and then make any color, so it mana washes. If you use that mana to cast Tivit, you can place the number of times you've cast it this game +1/+1 counters on it. Either one will give you at least a 7/7 Tivit. I always add these in with 6 powered legendary leaders that could kill in four hits, now three so they are a Time Walk in land form. Good pair!

Cards from New Capenna

I have added in 6 cards from Streets and it's Commander set.

Kamiz leads the deck that Tivit is printed in, and I like it as a sub for Tivit in the 99 as well. When you swing with anything (not just Kamiz) you can make a dork unblockable this turn and a smaller dork double strike so that will be liked by your combat damage triggering Treasure Maker. If you drop him in precombat you can swing with and make unblockable your leader and hand double strike to another attacker if you need it, someone is usually open for your Disciple of the Vault or Cloudblazer.

Also note the power of double strike with the deathtouching Baleful Strix although you might not want to swing for just two damage total with it. The counter is a nasty cheaper Negate variant that just costs one mana but leaves your foe two Treasures. It's worth the cheaper cost. Note that this will trigger the Disciple if you control it so they might not want to use it. It was my clear #2 best card in the set in my Top Ten list, and only the a certain land cycle at #1 kept it from being a runaway #1.

Check out the pair of Writ of Return and In Too Deep. The Writ is a Zombify variant that returns the target tapped but can be ciphered and placed on Tivit with his unblockable pants and then you get another Writ cast each time it deals combat damage to a foe, which is pretty likely here. Since most of my synergies are creature based, we can bring them back and then keep up the pressure or power for a few turns until Tivit is answered. The Aura is a 2-drop answer that has split second and cannot be traditionally answered. It can enchant a dork or planeswalker and turns it into a Clue. That can be sacrificed for a card for two mana by the holder of the Clue so it doesn't get the hate that other removal spells get.

Check out this final pair. The Master is a 4-drop 3/4 that helps everyone out! In your upkeep, each foe chooses one thing - money, friends, or secrets. If they chose Money, you each net a Treasure, and then a 1/1 dork for friends and you each draw a card for secrets. Nice card flow, Treasure making, and dorks making no matter what. The mana screwed player can get Treasures to get them past their mana issues. It's really nice in a political deck like this one. The Rend is also in my Top Ten list linked above. This is a powerful version of the Vindicate variety of Orzhov colored removal spells that add blue to it, but then gives it uncounterable. This swaps in the inability to answer lands for instant speed, blue, and uncounterable, but it is just a destroy effect.

Wanna see my deck?

Tivit Politics | Commander | Abe Sargent

Commander (1)
1 Tivit, Seller of Secrets

There you are! Note that Tivit is a six drop that we really want to cast as soon as we have six mana available, and we need mana for both casting and Clue cracking, so I didn't swap out lands for anything, I am running 60, although one, Maze of Ith, doesn't tap for mana, so it could be really 61 if you considered that.

I hope that you enjoyed my take on Tivit. What did you think? Anything in here missing or inspire you? What does your version of this deck look like? Let me know!