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Main » Articles » Safety First

Safety First

Carlos Gutierrez
Posted on August 24, 2015
 Reddit

Throughout high school and college, I took a lot of chemistry classes: general chemistry, organic, inorganic, physical, analytical. I even had a project that purported to be catalytic-oxy-organo-metallic chemistry. Needless to say, I spent too much time in closed rooms handling chemicals and inhaling fumes that I’d rather not think about. I’m also intimately familiar with all of the terrible safety programs designed to maintain a high level of awareness in the lab. This classic has always been my favorite, and it has risen to meme status in recent years:

When I first saw Pyromancer's Goggles, I thought about Carol, smiled a little, and assumed I’d never worry about the card again. Then, at some point, I started thinking about what kinds of awesome spells there are to copy. My first thought was of things like Radiate and giant X spells like Lavalanche. As I started thinking about what kind of chaos Pyromancer's Goggles could cause, I remembered one of my favorite Constructed decks of all time—and about my several failed attempts to port it to Commander. For someone who loves playing all the colors and generating all the value, it should be no surprise that my favorite deck was Lorwyn/Shards of Alara–era Five-Color Control:

[Cardlist title=Five-Color Control ? Shards of Alara Standard | Gabriel Nassif, Pro Tour Kyoto Champion]

Cruel Ultimatum
This is among the most absurd Standard decks ever to see play, not because of how powerful it was, but because it could cast any spells in the format in any sequence imaginable. There were people regularly playing Cryptic Command, Cloudthresher, and Cruel Ultimatum on consecutive turns, which just isn’t a thing that should happen. This deck was a dominant force in Standard for many months—so much so that some variants took to playing Fulminator Mage, Makeshift Mannequin, and Incendiary Command to break mirrors. I loved every minute of it, and ever since then, I’ve looked for every possible excuse to start casting Cruel Ultimatums again.

It seems that Commander ought to be the perfect place for that, right?

Unfortunately, there’s a problem with cards like Cruel Ultimatum in Commander. It’s not that Cruel Ultimatum isn’t powerful enough. Oddly enough, it may be that cards like Cruel Ultimatum are too powerful. Effects like Cruel Ultimatum and Identity Crisis are powerful enough to all but end heads-up games on the spot. The problem in multiplayer is that these cards grab the attention and imagination of every other player at the table. Sure, you buried one opponent in card advantage, but now the rest of the table is wondering who’s next. Suddenly, you’ve become the archenemy and are conveniently tapped out—that almost never ends well.

The issue is that cards like Cruel Ultimatum only affect one opponent, which means you have to make an enormous investment, leave yourself very vulnerable, and hope that you get enough time to restabilize against the other opponents in the game. It’s all a question of tempo. Sure, you buried one opponent, but you have to wait a whole turn cycle before you can interact with the other opponents at the table.

Pyromancer's Goggles by James Paick

Pyromancer's Goggles changes everything. Suddenly, I can cast Cruel Ultimatum targeting two of my opponents at once, which is a much better proposition in terms of tempo. I’m still the archenemy, but I’m much further ahead of multiple opponents instead of just one.

But why stop there? It turns out that each individual red mana generated by any Pyromancer's Goggles has its own delayed trigger. What does that mean? It means if I Copy Artifact my Pyromancer's Goggles and cast Cruel Ultimatum, now I have three of them. It means that if I have Mana Reflection and two Goggles, I can cast five copies of Warp World if I’m so inclined. The ability to cast multiple copies of busted spells completely changes the in-game dynamic—now you can bury all of your opponents at once instead of targeting one player and giving everyone else multiple turns to take you out.

This leaves us with two questions. First, how can we maximize the amount of mana produced by Pyromancer's Goggles? Second, what kind of crazy spells can we cast with that mana? With regard to the first question, there are plenty of effects that copy artifacts: Sculpting Steel, Copy Artifact, and many more. There’re also plenty of Voltaic Key effects in addition to the aforementioned Mana Reflection. As far as which wacky spells we want to be casting, you’ll just have to take a look at this crazy list:

[Cardlist title=Five-Color Goggles ? Commander | Carlos Gutierrez]

  • Commander (0)

The game plan is simple: Ramp a bunch, find Pyromancer's Goggles, copy it a bunch, untap it a bunch, and start casting giant spells with as many copies as possible—nice and simple.

Exploding Borders
This deck has two major categories of ramp. I’m generally not a fan of mana rocks like Gilded Lotus, but this deck wants an enormous amount of colored mana and already intends to use powerful artifact synergies, so it’s hard to turn down the raw power and synergy of artifact mana. The second category is spell-based ramp, most notably Frenzied Tilling and Exploding Borders. These cards are the only red ramp spells, which means you can Goggles them to create many copies. Frenzied Tilling is not usually the kind of card you want to copy a bunch of times, but Exploding Borders can easily turn into multiple copies of Searing Wind, which is pretty sweet.

As far as maximizing your access to Goggles, this deck has all manner of ways to tutor and dig for the Goggles themselves. Testing will show whether the deck needs more cantrips or tutors. When we do find Goggles, we have Sculpting Steel, Copy Artifact, Clever Impersonator, and Phyrexian Metamorph as ways to copy it in addition to Tezzeret the Seeker, Ral Zarek, and Teferi, Temporal Archmage as mechanisms of creating multiple activations. If we can’t find our Goggles, Chandra, the Firebrand, Wort, the Raidmother, and Mirari do reasonable impressions.

So what kind of crazy things are we actually casting? Desperate Ravings and other red looting effects aren’t exciting, but they do put you ahead cards once you’re generating extra copies. This helps you tear through your deck, find more copies of Goggles, and set up a truly degenerate turn if you are able to untap. As far as payoff spells, Cruel Ultimatum and Violent Ultimatum are givens, but I think we can do something a little more exciting. The problem is that we actually want spells with a lot of red or colorless mana symbols so that we can invest as much mana from our Goggles as possible. That leads to some truly wonky card choices.

Prophetic Bolt
Prophetic Bolt is probably my favorite card for this deck since it’s an instant that helps you control the board and kill opponents out of nowhere, and it gives you unbelievable card selection to sculpt a backbreaking turn. Similarly, Warleader's Helix isn’t enormously exciting on its face, but the ability to kill multiple creatures or players and gain an inordinate amount of life should not be scoffed at. Volcanic Vision and Vengeful Rebirth are incredible recursion tools that help close out games quickly and keep the board under control once you’ve reached your top end. Din of the Fireherd is the card that I’m least certain of in this deck, but I can’t really imagine losing if you manage to put four or five copies of this card on the stack at once.

There are a lot of Fork effects in this list, which may or may not prove to be necessary, but I like the ability to use them to create many copies of nonred spells like Wargate. Depending on how well this deck can set up two-card combos, these effects may allow you to use Pyromancer's Goggles on cards like Demonic Tutor or Dark Petition.

The last thing I want to mention is the inclusion of Laboratory Maniac. I don’t know if this is a reasonable thing to try to do in this deck, but when you can set up turns in which you’re drawing ten or more cards at once, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to imagine looting through your whole deck. Besides, this gives me an excuse to play my all-time favorite Commander combo: Prismatic Omen plus Last Stand. Many years ago, Last Stand was a card that I played without the benefit of dual lands and Prismatic Omen to power it up. The combination of Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth or Prismatic Omen with Last Stand is enormously powerful. The idea of resolving Last Stand off a Pyromancer's Goggles makes me positively giddy, and I don’t know that my life will be complete unless I am able to use that setup to win off Laboratory Maniac.

Last Stand
Prismatic Omen

I don’t know if this deck is good, but I know it’ll be a blast to mess around with. What other deck can seriously play Fiery Gambit and have a reasonable chance of hitting all three coin flips? There’s so much wacky stuff that goes from unplayable to enormously overpowered when you add Pyromancer's Goggles to the mix, and I can’t wait to start exploring it all.

Whispers of the Muse

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TAGS articles, casual, commander, carlos gutierrez, karona, karona false god, goggles

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