In this experiment, we reward ourselves greatly for having expensive permanents on the battlefield, though we acquire them cheaply.

Yep, that’s him. That’s the guy. He’s only 8 mana for a 1/1. Gigantomancer is the Egotist’s only challenger for the title of Most Overcosted for Its Power and Toughness, with Maul Splicer and Trostani's Summoner coming in close behind. Of course, those three green creatures have additional abilities—such as bringing along some pals—that help make up for their exorbitant entrance fees. Scornful Egotist’s only ability is morph.

That means he has the additional upside of being castable as a 2/2 for 3, though I hardly think the versatility of being able to transform into a 1/1 for makes a Stonework Puma worthwhile. Scornful Egotist seems almost completely downside, leading many Magic players, especially those unfamiliar with Onslaught block, to question why he would have ever been printed. Here are a few cards, also from Scourge, to answer that question:

It appears that Scornful Egotist’s superpower is his high mana cost—or, rather, his ability to hit the battlefield with a hefty 8 converted mana cost for only . Today’s experiment will be finding ways to take advantage of that cost.

Redundancy

We’ll be building around the Egotist, which means our spells won’t do much if we don’t have high-cost permanents around. With only four Egotists, we’ll either need to find more ways to find the Egotist or find more ways to lay down high-cost permanents cheaply. Garruk, Caller of Beasts, Dramatic Entrance, and Elvish Piper could all do the job, but I think that’s a different deck reserved for the like of Mayael the Anima.

A card familiar to Mayael, however, is Fierce Empath. As a powerful creature tutor, its presence is felt in many Commander decks, able to tutor for Rune-Scarred Demon for more tutoring, for Kozilek, Butcher of Truth for a bunch of card-draw and beef, or for whatever else. Here, we’ll just be searching for another innocuous 1/1 to enable the other elements of our deck. We’ll have a few other sweet options for the Egotist’s Scourge companion to find later on.

For example, here’s Avatar of Might. The Avatar costs , but he can be cast for only if an opponent has at least four more creatures than we do. With relatively few creatures in our deck, that could come up, especially in multiplayer. It isn’t guaranteed to happen, though, but we do have ways to cast expensive stuff, and Avatar of Might is part of our big-creature suite. He just so happens to have earned his spot from his 6-mana-cost-reduction ability.

Besides morph, there are other creature keywords that allow us to put expensive creatures onto the battlefield for cheaper. One such keyword is suspend, allowing us to trade mana for time. By paying for Deep-Sea Kraken, we can queue up a giant sea monster for nine turns. However, any time an opponent cast a spell, that number goes down by one, and eventually, we have a 6/6 that can’t be blocked and that bears a nice, hefty, 10-mana cost.

Playing with the Big Boys

Here, things become interesting. After we play our Egotist on turn three and then morph him up for only (or, you know, maybe hold him back for a few turns until we’re ready to let something loose), we want to make sure to have powerful spells to take advantage of his massive cost. It’s dangerous playing into his ego, but I guess we have to do it.

The aforecited Rush of Knowledge and Torrent of Fire are great ways to leverage permanents with huge mana costs. The Torrent can subtract from opponents’ life totals in huge chunks, and Rush of Knowledge helps dig us deep into our deck to find the cards we want to play with. These two cards feel a bit like cheating though: As was Fierce Empath, they are both from Scornful Egotist’s home in Scourge, the mana-cost-matters set. (Oh, also there were Dragons.)

Diverging from Scourge and all the way back to the third expansion for Magic, Legends’s Energy Tap is an interesting way to turn a little mana into a lot of mana. For the low cost of and the tapping of our untapped Scornful Egotist, we can generate 8. And generating that much mana will let us cast some of our more expensive cards, such as our Avatar of Might when no opponent has four more creatures than we do.

Jumping from Magic’s third expansion to its fifth, we see another card that cares about converted mana cost. Homarid Spawning Bed will let us sacrifice a Scornful Egotist for eight Camarids. If you want to cut a card to make the deck optimal, I’d probably start here, but come on—Camarids! A bunch of Camarids! And we have to keep the Egotist’s ego down somehow. (We’ll be able to bring him back though.)

Flashing forward several years from Fallen Empires, but not quite all the way to Scourge, Apocalypse gave us Aether Mutation. Normally, Unsummon effects are saved for opposing creatures, and though I wouldn’t rule it out here, bouncing one of our own huge (in cost if not in size) creatures can yield a lot of Saprolings. (Tangentially, I’ve found that Aether Mutation is a pretty exciting card in my Edric, Spymaster of Trest Commander deck, removing a blocker and creating a veritable army.)

I said we’d be able to bring back the Egotist after sacrificing him to Homarid Spawning Bed, so here we go. Two multicolored blocks after Invasion’s Apocalypse, Alara block’s Alara Reborn brought us Vengeful Rebirth. This sorcery lets us rebuy our lowly 1/1 after his untimely demise while also granting us all the upside of Torrent of Fire.

And as the last stop on our trip across semi-randomly-selected cards that care about mana costs, we hop forward only one year to Rise of the Eldrazi and Hedron Matrix. Designed to play well with the colorless—and extremely expensive—Eldrazi creatures, Hedron Matrix provides a massive pump for a not-unreasonable amount of mana. A Matrix’d-up Egotist becomes a 9/9, and that guy can be attacking on turn five. Deep-Sea Kraken is even more menacing as an unblockable 16/16, though it comes online much later. And Avatar of Might is also a 16/16, though his tramply evasion is slightly worse than the can’t-be-blocked variety. Even Fierce Empath surrounded by a Hedron Matrix becomes a formidable 4/4.

A Bit of Utility

Rounding out the deck, we have a couple things to attend to.

First, for good measure, I’ve included one of the aforementioned Eldrazi. Kozilek, Butcher of Truth or Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre might work okay if you are all-in on the Energy Tap plan, but one Artisan of Kozilek is what I’ve settled on here. It even does the hard work of buying back a binned fatty, and it’s slightly cheaper than its legendary superiors, meaning we could imagine actually casting it in this deck (without an Energy Tap)—you know, if our opponents are goldfish.

For a bit of card-smoothing, and to serve as an early play, we have Ceta Sanctuary. I enjoy Apocalypse’s Sanctuary cycle, and the Ceta variety allows us some sweet smoothing in a U/R/G deck. It also lets us put cards into our graveyard for Vengeful Rebirth. Of course, we’ll need both red permanents and green permanents to combo with our Sanctuary, and we don’t really have too many. Including four Firewild Borderposts in some of our land slots should clear that issue up and allow us card advantage from early in the game to help lead us to victory in 8-point chunks.

"Egotistical Rush"

• Creatures (12)
• 1 Artisan of Kozilek
• 2 Avatar of Might
• 2 Deep-Sea Kraken
• 3 Fierce Empath
• 4 Scornful Egotist

• Spells (28)
• 3 Aether Mutation
• 3 Torrent of Fire
• 4 Energy Tap
• 4 Rush of Knowledge
• 4 Vengeful Rebirth
• 1 Homarid Spawning Bed
• 3 Ceta Sanctuary
• 2 Hedron Matrix
• 4 Firewild Borderpost

• Lands (20)
• 4 Forest
• 4 Island
• 4 Mountain
• 4 Hinterland Harbor
• 4 Sulfur Falls

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Andrew Wilson

@Silent7Seven

fissionessence at hotmail dot com