Readers!

Sometimes there is nothing you can do to avoid having the table turn on you. What I mean is, the people at the table all turn on you, you become the Archenemy of the match. The table, not the tables, although if the table turns on you, there's a non-zero chance someone turned the tables on you as well. If both of those things happen, it can feel pretty upsetting. We have a rule 0 chat at the beginning of our games a lot of the time, better online resources and more aggressive reprints have made it so decks are all relatively balanced to go against each other and the format is old enough that people know what to expect but sometimes you just end up getting focused. If you didn't do anything wrong, it can feel pretty unfair and a little deflating. This article isn't about one of those times.

Sometimes you don't deserve being the Archenemy, true, and maybe it feels bad those times, but think about how it would feel if you DID deserve it. What if your deck made people see you as the Archenemy and you did your best to both deserve and survive it? While that's not exactly a desirable outcome, there is a problem with that I dubbed "The Rafiq Problem" which is an admittedly dated reference considering no one has played a Rafiq against me since I wrote that article (previewing Shu Yun, which was a great experience, thanks, Coolstuff). Some commanders, by virtue of appearing in the command zone, send a signal to opponents that you're going to be a problem. I suggested the best way to avoid being treated like you're a fully tuned Rafiq decks is to not play Rafiq. Years later, I've had some time to test the 75% decks I build against other decks and while a 75% deck might struggle in some matchups if it draws more heat than a deck you tuned to be as efficient as possible, it's rare that you ever have to misrepresent your deck as worse than it is to keep up or even win. 75% decks aren't weaker, they're just built to ensure they scale well against the table. If you have to design your deck to not just be good against the table but also be good against the table, are there any tricks we can attempt to make it a decent gameplay experience for us without just spending $3,000 making the deck two turns faster?

What kind of commander suffers from The Rafiq Problem these days? Some are commanders you'd expect, such as Urza, Lord High Artificer, Muldrotha, the Gravetide or Tergrid, God of Fright // Tergrid's Lantern. Some are commanders you wouldn't expect (or at least I didn't!) like Archelos, Lagoon Mystic or Valki, God of Lies. In a lot of ways, the commander I want to talk about this week doesn't suffer as much from The Rafiq Problem as it does The Archelos problem. Archelos didn't make me the archenemy because Archelos is particularly powerful or easy to keep in the correct tapped/untapped state or because it was particularly effective to make their lands come into play tapped on some of their mid-game turns or because it could handle being focused better than the average deck. Archelos made me the Archenemy because it reminded everyone of Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger.

Can I be 100% honest with you? It wasn't until literally the last paragraph that I realized the nice symmetry of the Arch in Archelos and in Archenemy both and how if I used Archelos as a creature that framed how you become the Archenemy, the similarity in the names might make it look like I did it on purpose and that I'm very clever. This bit of honesty gains me nothing, but it was actually a total coincidence and I'm still just salty about getting focused in a game of Commander with my brand new Archelos deck and that bad experience that caused me to scrap the deck entirely is still fresh in my mind. An Archelos is a deck that makes you the Archenemy but maybe shouldn't because it reminds people of another deck that they hate to play against. Archelos is NOT Vorinclex, but people don't like playing against Vorinclex so much that they don't even want to play against anything that reminds them that deck exists. This brings us to the Archelos of the day - Grand Arbiter Augustin IV.

It's not just me who thinks so - Hinata has caused a lot of people to remember past games of Magic: The Gathering against one Grand Arbiter Augustin the fourth that were not so fun and have caused them to react with hostility to one of Magic's newest commanders.

Is it unfair to compare Hinata, who has done nothing wrong so far, to Augustin, a dirty commander for people who skew their answers on "what Mtg color are you?!" quizzes so they always get Blue so they can pretend their big brain is the reason they're bad at sports? I don't know. What I do know is that a lot of people are carrying around both of these opinions.

If you think Hinata will require you to pack your deck fulls of Distorting Wakes and Magma Opus in order to be effective, then it's not Grand Arbiter Augustin. Creatures, mana rocks, Enchantments - most spells won't be taxed, nor will you personally receive the benefit of a cost reduction. You have to play erstwhile unplayable cards to get the most out of Hinata, and you won't really impede your opponents that much and people are already acting like they got Hinata by crossbreeding The Locust God and Muldrotha.

If we want to survive what's sure to be a dogpiling, at least until people figure out Hinata is about half as good as they thought (or a fifth as oppressive), we need a plan. We can't pit our opponents against each other as easily as we normally do, but we can at least pit their creatures against them. Hinata can make your Treachery a mana cheaper, which is nice, but I was thinking a little bigger.

That's the stuff... Mass Manipulation costs now, which is still, you know, a LOT, but paying eight mana to steal four creatures is a FANTASTIC rate and I'm into it. It's not just this card, though, there are a few more.

Beating them with their own creatures is something we like to do a lot, and it's especially important in this deck.

What would a 75% deck where we're extra worried about them dogpiling us look like?

Hyuganna Wanna Attack Someone Else | Commander | Jason Alt

• Commander (1)
• 1 Hinata, Dawn-Crowned

• Creatures (17)
• 1 Archmage Emeritus
• 1 Battlefield Thaumaturge
• 1 Captivating Crew
• 1 Dockside Extortionist
• 1 Dualcaster Mage
• 1 Esper Sentinel
• 1 Hellkite Tyrant
• 1 Master Thief
• 1 Orvar, the All-Form
• 1 Spellseeker
• 1 Storm-Kiln Artist
• 1 Wandering Archaic
• 1 Willbreaker
• 1 Young Pyromancer
• 1 Zaffai, Thunder Conductor
• 1 Feather, the Redeemed
• 1 Kykar, Wind's Fury

• Instants (20)
• 1 Arcane Denial
• 1 Aurelia's Fury
• 1 Call the Coppercoats
• 1 Comet Storm
• 1 Crush Contraband
• 1 Disorder in the Court
• 1 Eerie Interlude
• 1 Fierce Guardianship
• 1 Generous Gift
• 1 Heliod's Intervention
• 1 Icy Blast
• 1 Magma Opus
• 1 March of Swirling Mist
• 1 Mystic Confluence
• 1 Paradoxical Outcome
• 1 Reality Spasm
• 1 Semester's End
• 1 Sublime Epiphany
• 1 Swords to Plowshares
• 1 Volcanic Offering

• Sorceries (15)
• 1 Aether Gale
• 1 Baral's Expertise
• 1 Blatant Thievery
• 1 By Force
• 1 Crackle with Power
• 1 Curse of the Swine
• 1 Distorting Wake
• 1 Harness by Force
• 1 Jeska's Will
• 1 Launch the Fleet
• 1 Mass Manipulation
• 1 Open into Wonder
• 1 Reconstruct History
• 1 Solve the Equation
• 1 Soulfire Eruption

• Enchantments (4)
• 1 Mechanized Production
• 1 Metallurgic Summonings
• 1 Smothering Tithe
• 1 Whirlwind of Thought

• Artifacts (9)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Azorius Signet
• 1 Boros Signet
• 1 Crawlspace
• 1 Helm of Possession
• 1 Izzet Signet
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Mimic Vat
• 1 Sol Ring

• Lands (35)
• 4 Plains
• 5 Mountain
• 8 Island
• 1 Arid Mesa
• 1 Clifftop Retreat
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Deserted Beach
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Flooded Strand
• 1 Glacial Fortress
• 1 Hallowed Fountain
• 1 Mystic Monastery
• 1 Raugrin Triome
• 1 Sacred Foundry
• 1 Scalding Tarn
• 1 Sea of Clouds
• 1 Shivan Reef
• 1 Spectator Seating
• 1 Steam Vents
• 1 Sulfur Falls
• 1 Training Center

Buy This Deck Export text format

This is not what I usually play, but I like it.

You may notice the treasure sub-theme with the optional Mechanized Production win out of nowhere. It's a very interact-with-able combo that usually gets disrupted but which is a very fun way to win the game. I recommend jamming Mechanized Production in a lot of decks - there is basically no bad target for it.

I'll be honest, I was hoping for a few more spells in the vein of Mass Manipulation. Don't get me wrong, I'm fine having the ones we have, but a few more, especially since they're so unplayable outside of a deck like this and it's fun when a bad card gets to live a second life as a very-good-in-a-niche-deck card, Magic's better for it. I don't have as many ways to swipe their stuff as I'd like, but I was mostly thrown off by how many Instants and Sorceries I had to run. I said I'd do more of that this year and I'm deliberately building decks that force me to and it's hard. I built a deck with 4 Enchantments. FOUR! ME! I did that! I am way outside of my comfort zone but the results are fun. I'd never play a deck like this ordinarily, but if you're getting the kind of value out of a Soulfire Eruption or Heliod's Intervention that you get out of a deck like this, it's worth it. I'm even jamming Orvar in here because it's hilarious.

What do we think? Is the juice worth the squeeze? Am I learning how to add more than like 11 total Instants and Sorceries to a deck even though it's physically painful? Let me know in the comments section. Thanks for reading, everyone. Until next time!