Readers!

When I heard there was a new Memnarch card, I preordered a playset in foil because I know I'm going to build 1, maybe 2 decks and have the others in the 99 of other decks. Memnarch gains control of their permanents and can exist in the command zone, what other creature is Mr. 75% going to go nuts for? I decided I would be able to cut it close to my deadline because writing this article is going to be a breeze. Time to take a look at Memnarch for the first time so I can see which exact abilities the new version of Memnarch had transferred to the new one. I'll put the card up on the screen so you don't have to go find it yourself.

@#$%

OK, OK, we're not going to panic here. It sure would be nice to be able to put all that brewing I did when I thought we were getting a new Memnarch that was actually Memnarch to use. Unless there is a mono-Blue commander, either in the set or the precons that would play like I'd hoped Memnarch would, I think I'm going to have to start all over, something I'd like to avoid if at all possible. Luckily, they very cheekily snuck a card into the main set that is a good pairing with Memnarch Classic and made me extremely happy to see. It's not Urtet, but it's close.

While we're not replacing Memnarch with a better Memnarch, we're getting a commander that goes right in the Memnarch deck I wanted to build and that's good enough for me. This card is a HOUSE if you're going to be about some nonsense and I'm going to try my best to be about just that. Let's make some mana, draw some cards and SWIPE SOME PERMS. That's what I'm calling "permanents" now. I'm calling them "perms." So that's new. What's old is the card that Unctus was styled after, Grand Architect.

Grand Architect helps create approximately a bajillion mana in Memnarch decks, fueling the deck's win condition of "have every permanent and they will probably give up because life is too short to play it out when we could just keep the good times going and shuffle up for a new game" which is a legitimate win condition. Grand Architect can't be in our command zone and give us reliable mana, but Unctus gives us reliable card draw, which is essentially reliable mana. I am going to resist the natural temptation to make this a Laboratory Maniac deck because, and I know I sound like a broken record, I personally find that super boring, but if you want to do that, this is the perfect deck for it. In fact, eschewing that possibility makes Unctus a bit of a liability because I could deck myself before I make enough mana to do what I want with the Grand Architect combo. It's absolutely worth it, because this is the most geeked I've been for a while. I have been thinking about jamming the Aladdin/Liquimetal Coating combo in more decks, and here comes a bunch of Memnarch nostalgia to knock me off the "I'm going to write about something other than stealing their stuff" wagon. I have no regrets.

The Return of Memnarch | Commander | Jason Alt

• Commander (1)
• 1 Unctus, Grand Metatect

• Creatures (27)
• 1 Alandra, Sky Dreamer
• 1 Cytoplast Manipulator
• 1 Dominating Licid
• 1 Drafna, Founder of Lat-Nam
• 1 Etherium Sculptor
• 1 Foundry Inspector
• 1 Grand Architect
• 1 Jhoira's Familiar
• 1 Liberator, Urza's Battlethopter
• 1 Master Transmuter
• 1 Memnarch
• 1 Myr Retriever
• 1 Padeem, Consul of Innovation
• 1 Palladium Myr
• 1 Phyrexian Metamorph
• 1 Pili-Pala
• 1 Psychosis Crawler
• 1 Roil Elemental
• 1 Shimmer Myr
• 1 Silver Myr
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Tribute Mage
• 1 Trinket Mage
• 1 Trophy Mage
• 1 Vedalken Archmage
• 1 Vedalken Engineer
• 1 Willbreaker

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 1 Tezzeret the Seeker
• 1 Tezzeret, Betrayer of Flesh

• Instants (7)
• 1 An Offer You Can't Refuse
• 1 Banishing Knack
• 1 Counterspell
• 1 Narset's Reversal
• 1 Retraction Helix
• 1 Stoic Rebuttal
• 1 Whir of Invention

• Sorceries (4)
• 1 Mass Manipulation
• 1 One with the Machine
• 1 Rise and Shine
• 1 Thoughtcast

• Enchantments (3)
• 1 Artificer Class
• 1 Mechanized Production
• 1 Mind's Dilation

• Artifacts (24)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Basalt Monolith
• 1 Blinkmoth Urn
• 1 Darksteel Forge
• 1 Encroaching Mycosynth
• 1 Everflowing Chalice
• 1 Gilded Lotus
• 1 Hedron Archive
• 1 Helm of Possession
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Liquimetal Coating
• 1 Liquimetal Torque
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Mycosynth Lattice
• 1 Prototype Portal
• 1 Sceptre of Eternal Glory
• 1 Sculpting Steel
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Swiftfoot Boots
• 1 Thought Vessel
• 1 Thran Dynamo
• 1 Unwinding Clock
• 1 Vedalken Shackles
• 1 Voltaic Key

• Lands (32)
• 23 Island
• 1 Academy Ruins
• 1 Buried Ruin
• 1 Darksteel Citadel
• 1 Inventors' Fair
• 1 Mystic Sanctuary
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Seat of the Synod
• 1 The Mycosynth Gardens
• 1 Urza's Saga

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This deck looks like a lot of fun, honestly. Instead of leaning into making tapping be the combo, which is a nonbo with my commander who would mill me out, instead I decided to just play Blue creatures that tapped to do productive things and get some card draw incidentally. Instead of playing do-nothing creatures like Fatestitcher, I'm playing Dominating Licid and Cytoplast Manipulator. It will be harder to accidentally mill ourselves out since we don't have the safety net of Thassa's Oracle.

If you are, however, interested in playing Thassa's Boracle, don't let my personal opinion sway you. This is a great deck for it, and you can easily make room for Oracle, Maniac and Jace for redundancy. Leave Mechanized Production in so you can have a backup win-con. The deck is perfect for that sort of degeneracy, and remember, there's no wrong way to be a degenerate in Commander - it's why we play a slow format where people get a chance to ramp and play dumb, expensive spells we can't anywhere else.

What do we think? Is this worse than just building around Memnarch or Unctus rather than smashing them together? Would you have liked to have seen me steal more permanents or deal with my own Commander's drawback better? Leave it for me in a tweet. Until next time!