Rules change sometimes. Commander has its own independent rules committee, and they sometimes make changes to the rules. Sometimes, those rules make no sense to some of us (Vancouver mulligan?), sometimes, they hurt us on a deep, personal level (I have a Fat Pack box full of Prophet of Kruphix), and sometimes, the rules change just feels right. Recently, the rules committee made a change to what they call “Rule 4.” Rule 4 basically governs color identity and how mana is produced during the game. For example, a Kruphix, God of Horizons player has a Birds of Paradise in play. Under the old Rule 4, that player could tap the Birds of Paradise, but if he or she declared he or she was adding a color other than green or blue to his or her mana pool, colorless mana would be added instead since only green and blue mana are covered by Kruphix’s color identity. This made it particularly tough to use spells that allowed you to play cards out of your opponents’ decks by paying their mana cost, such as Praetor's Grasp. If you were mono-black and chose a white spell with the Grasp, you would not be able to add white mana to your pool to play the spell, no matter which lands or mana rocks you tapped. This was a little clunky and counterintuitive by their estimation, so they decided to change things a bit. They issued the following statement:

That is a lot to unpack, but the gist of it is Sen Triplets works better, and so does Praetor's Grasp. We can play Mana Confluence in a Sen Triplets deck, and then we can tap it for green mana and use it to cast an opponent’s green spell that we have swiped from him or her. This is very good news. This has made spells like Praetor's Grasp much better. How much better? We don’t actually know yet, but what we do know is that we can use Sen Triplets to steal more than we used to. But why is that so important to us? Scaling.

If you joined this series recently, you may not remember the very first article in the series. In it, I introduced the first topic I wanted to discuss, and that was my intention to use as many of my opponents’ cards to beat them as possible. The reasoning was simple: You’re not going to have to worry about your cards being over or underpowered relative to their decks if you just use their cards instead. You won’t hit a casual deck with anything too tough for it to deal with since you’re using its own cards, and you won’t worry about bringing a knife to a gunfight against tougher decks either. Scaling the power level of your deck relative to the power level of opponents’ deck is the perfect way to narrow your deck in on the 75% range we look for. I still love Bribery and Desertion in 75% decks and include them a lot of my own decks where I can. Can we build an even more 75% deck by including all of the scaling spells we can? We can sure try! What would that look like?

Sen Triplets ? Commander | Jason Alt

• Commander (0)

• Creatures (24)
• 1 Cemetery Puca
• 1 Clever Impersonator
• 1 Clone
• 1 Cryptoplasm
• 1 Grand Abolisher
• 1 Havengul Lich
• 1 Herald of Leshrac
• 1 Knacksaw Clique
• 1 Nightveil Specter
• 1 Perplexing Chimera
• 1 Sepulchral Primordial
• 1 Sire of Stagnation
• 1 Duplicant
• 1 Etched Oracle
• 1 Phyrexian Metamorph
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Chainer, Dementia Master
• 1 Daxos of Meletis
• 1 Ertai, the Corrupted
• 1 Geth, Lord of the Vault
• 1 Merieke Ri Berit
• 1 Thada Adel, Acquisitor
• 1 Wrexial, the Risen Deep
• 1 Memnarch

• Planeswalkers (4)
• 1 Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
• 1 Liliana Vess
• 1 Narset Transcendent
• 1 Ob Nixilis Reignited

• Spells (35)
• 1 Desertion
• 1 Misdirection
• 1 Mortify
• 1 Soul Manipulation
• 1 Spinal Embrace
• 1 Swords to Plowshares
• 1 Acquire
• 1 Beacon of Unrest
• 1 Blatant Thievery
• 1 Curse of the Swine
• 1 Merciless Eviction
• 1 Praetor's Grasp
• 1 Rite of Replication
• 1 Supreme Verdict
• 1 Telemin Performance
• 1 Confiscate
• 1 Control Magic
• 1 Cyclonic Rift
• 1 Enslave
• 1 Hedonist's Trove
• 1 Paradox Haze
• 1 Rhystic Study
• 1 Shapeshifter's Marrow
• 1 Take Possession
• 1 Treachery
• 1 Volition Reins
• 1 Chromatic Lantern
• 1 Coalition Relic
• 1 Darksteel Ingot
• 1 Gilded Lotus
• 1 Manalith
• 1 Mimic Vat
• 1 Mycosynth Lattice
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Mindslaver

• Lands (36)
• 1 Plains
• 1 Swamp
• 5 Island
• 1 Adarkar Wastes
• 1 Arcane Lighthouse
• 1 Arcane Sanctum
• 1 Caves of Koilos
• 1 City of Brass
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Drowned Catacomb
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Flooded Strand
• 1 Forbidden Orchard
• 1 Gemstone Mine
• 1 Glacial Fortress
• 1 Hallowed Fountain
• 1 Isolated Chapel
• 1 Mana Confluence
• 1 Mystic Gate
• 1 Prairie Stream
• 1 Reflecting Pool
• 1 Rupture Spire
• 1 Sunken Hollow
• 1 Sunken Ruins
• 1 Temple of the False God
• 1 Transguild Promenade
• 1 Underground River
• 1 Vault of the Archangel
• 1 Vivid Creek
• 1 Vivid Marsh
• 1 Vivid Meadow
• 1 Watery Grave

Buy This Deck

Will this play at all? I don’t really know for sure. What I do know is that I like it. The spells in the deck are mana-intensive, but you can mitigate that a bit by picking more affordable spells out of your opponents’ decks to fill the gaps in your curve. The mana rocks that tap for multiple colors, especially the ones not in your deck, are very important. The mana base has a lot of ways to tap for red and green as well giving you a good shot at casting opponents’ spells.

This seems rougher than the decks I usually build, but I think that is just because the average mana cost is so high. Feel free to cast Cultivate and spells like that out of their hands to make sure you can ramp to your expensive stuff. Once you have Memnarch mana, the real fun can begin.

I tried to avoid the usual combos we see in a deck like this. I avoided making this just a Sharuum the Hegemon deck with a different commander, which is how my non-75% Sen Triplets deck was built in the past. No Sword–Foundry combo here, just smashing opponents with their own dudes. Tutors may be okay in a deck like this, but I feel that a card like Vampiric Tutor would be a second copy of Bribery, and I am not sure I want that. We have decent card-draw, and besides, we don’t need as many of our own cards as normal since we can pick someone at the table and start slamming Signets and Sol Rings out of his or her deck instead of depleting our own hand. In this way, our hand is enormous.

What do we think? Is this deck too clunky and expensive? That may be the case, but this is merely a blueprint to start down a path toward your own 75% Sen Triplets build. Philosophically, this is the deck I want, and if we trim some things to make the deck play better, as long as we don’t change the thrust of the deck, we should be fine. We want to swipe opponents’ stuff and bludgeon them with it—just remember to stick with that, and you will be fine.

Did I forget something major that benefits from the change to Rule 4? Do you have a Sen Triplets build of your own? Did you update it when they made the announcement? Leave me some of your thoughts in the comments.

Finally, on a personal note, there was no article last week because my wife and I were busy summoning our first Planeswalker. On Monday morning at 3:11 A.M., we welcomed Liliana Bradley Alt to our family. Things are still pretty hectic around here, but I managed to carve out a few hours to write this article, and it was a nice break from new parenthood. A lot of you have messaged me on Twitter and Facebook, and I wanted to say thank you for your well wishes. Until next week!