Remember purple mana? Back in 1997 or so, Inquest Magazine ran a few fake articles about how Wizards was introducing a sixth color, purple, and the basic land was to be “Portal” (“Say, ‘Portal’ is a pretty good name, I think we’ll use that” — Wotc, probably). Inquest even showed a few “spoilers” which were in reality poorly-designed and poorly-templated cards their intern made in MS Paint. Needless to say, they fooled a lot of people. Wizards of the Coast knew better than to invent a sixth color. That’s why they invented a sixth basic land type (Wastes) and a sixth, seventh and eighth color of mana (Phyrexian, true colorless, and energy) but they waited a really long time until they were totally out of other ideas. Does anyone else kind of really like the eighth color of mana?
Energy is pretty strong in Limited and I’ve had a lot of fun with it. I didn’t realize how easy it would be to accumulate a ton of energy easily and it caused me to severely underrate cards like Electrostatic Pummeler with respect to Standard playability. Seeing how things actually played out in Limited and Standard made me realize that there is some real potential for shenanigans based around energy in Commander and I should try to see if I could get a list together that helped me pull off some shenanigans.
In addition to noticing (late) that Winding Constrictor could give you extra experience counters, I also eventually realized you get extra energy counters with Constrictor out. That little snek is doing WORK out here. With killer sinks like Gonti's Aether Heart, Aetherworks Marvel and Whirler Virtuoso, we should be able to create some sort of advantage. Will it be enough to win? It never hurts to try it and find out.
Starting out, I want to play Winding Constrictor and Whirler Virtuoso, so I’m pretty sure I just decided that my color decision is “Do I play White or not?” I don’t really want to build another Yidris deck this soon, but I do want to play those colors. I guess I need to take a look at which partner commanders let me in those colors, and a few popped out at me right away. Silas Renn, Seeker Adept is a card I’ve used already, but I don’t even care because he lets me re-buy puzzleknots and other artifacts as well as keep my stuff on the table if they attack my combo pieces. He’s also in half of the color of Whirler and Constrictor. If I pair him with a Red and Green commander, I’m in like Flinthoof Boar. But which one? My thought process was that if I am playing with Silas Renn, I’ll want a lot of cards like Rogue's Passage, Whispersilk Cloak, and similar cards to make sure I connect with their faces and I can run pet cards like Thada Adel, Acquisitor and Glint-Sleeve Siphoner. Looking at the Red and Green partner commanders, Tana, the Bloodsower leapt out at me. The same “hit them” infrastructure that rewards us for serving into their facemeat with Silas Renn also benefits us when we swing into their suckhole with Tana. We’re getting a ton of tokens with this deck and I couldn’t be more excited. I might even jam a Parallel Lives to help me celebrate. Maybe.
I guess this is as good a point as any to just make the deck and talk about my choices after because I’m actually sort of overwhelmed with trying to make something serviceable from such a small card pool. Let’s reconvene after the decklist and I’ll tell you what I learned from building.
I don?t have the energy to think of a clever name ? Commander | Jason Alt
- Commanders (2)
- 1 Silas Renn, Seeker Adept
- 1 Tana, the Bloodsower
- Creatures (24)
- 1 Aether Theorist
- 1 Aethersquall Ancient
- 1 Aethertide Whale
- 1 Aetherwind Basker
- 1 Architect of the Untamed
- 1 Craterhoof Behemoth
- 1 Demon of Dark Schemes
- 1 Dragon Broodmother
- 1 Electrostatic Pummeler
- 1 Empyreal Voyager
- 1 Glint-Sleeve Siphoner
- 1 Lightning Runner
- 1 Multiform Wonder
- 1 Mycoloth
- 1 Peema Aether-Seer
- 1 Psychosis Crawler
- 1 Sage of Shaila's Claim
- 1 Servant of the Conduit
- 1 Shielded Aether Thief
- 1 Sly Requisitioner
- 1 Thada Adel, Acquisitor
- 1 Thunderfoot Baloth
- 1 Whirler Virtuoso
- 1 Winding Constrictor
- Planeswalkers (2)
- 1 Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast
- 1 Daretti, Scrap Savant
- Instants (4)
- 1 Cyclonic Rift
- 1 Grim Affliction
- 1 Harnessed Lightning
- 1 Insidious Will
- Sorceries (5)
- 1 Attune with Aether
- 1 Decimate
- 1 Die Young
- 1 Farseek
- 1 Live Fast
- Enchantments (7)
- 1 Beastmaster Ascension
- 1 Era of Innovation
- 1 Gonti's Machinations
- 1 Impact Tremors
- 1 Inexorable Tide
- 1 Nature's Will
- 1 Phyrexian Arena
- Artifacts (18)
- 1 Aetherworks Marvel
- 1 Animation Module
- 1 Commander's Sphere
- 1 Conjurer's Closet
- 1 Consulate Turret
- 1 Deadlock Trap
- 1 Decoction Module
- 1 Dynavolt Tower
- 1 Fabrication Module
- 1 Glassblower's Puzzleknot
- 1 Gonti's Aether Heart
- 1 Metalspinner's Puzzleknot
- 1 Prismatic Geoscope
- 1 Sol Ring
- 1 Swiftfoot Boots
- 1 Throne of Geth
- 1 Whispersilk Cloak
- 1 Woodweaver's Puzzleknot
- Lands (39)
- 4 Mountain
- 5 Island
- 8 Forest
- 8 Swamp
- 1 Command Tower
- 1 Evolving Wilds
- 1 Exotic Orchard
- 1 Frontier Bivouac
- 1 Golgari Rot Farm
- 1 Gruul Turf
- 1 Izzet Boilerworks
- 1 Kessig Wolf Run
- 1 Opulent Palace
- 1 Rakdos Carnarium
- 1 Rogue's Passage
- 1 Savage Lands
- 1 Terramorphic Expanse
- 1 Thespian's Stage
I normally am loathe to jam Craterhoof Behemoth in my 75% decks, but this one felt like it needed the boost. We’re trying to go wide when we can and Thuderfoot Baloth and Beastmaster Ascension may be enough, but they also may not. If you find yourself struggling to get enough tokens for Hoofy to matter, I suggest looking into something like From Beyond, Goblin Assault, or Goblin Rabblemaster. There’s also always Avenger of Zendikar who loves to team up with Mycoloth and Dragon Broodmother. You have a lot of options, frankly. If you have too many tokens and want more ways to grow the team, there are options like Gaea's Anthem, but you should be fine as is. No tribal bonuses, unfortunately, since there are way too many different types of creature tokens. That’s fine, frankly, because Craterhoof and Ascension don’t discriminate. You can, but I wouldn’t run Triumph of the Hordes, also. I think that card rewards you for doing a poor job of accomplishing your aim of taking over the board by letting you KO one player as a lame consolation prize too often. Yeah, you don’t HAVE to play the card that way, but I’ve seen it used like that too often to be a big advocate for it. By all means, customize your pile, player.
I think the energy outlets here are pretty good but they’re clearly optimized for 20 life, one opponent formats. I think we’re going to do more work with Impact Tremors than we are with Electrostatic Pummeler, but with our energy outlets like Pummeler and Aetherwind Basker threatening lethal when we get a nice energy stockpile going, they still have to be careful. We may have to kill one player at a time more often than we’d like, but being able to do that and threaten to reload and do it again is not to be underestimated.
I think straightforward “Drill them in the squishiest part of their head with a Lightning Runner” strategy is warranted but this deck can also get up to some shenanigans. Namely, cards like Decoction Module and Gonti's Aether Heart give you triggers that give you energy when you put a creature into play. If you did that off of Tana, you can bank that energy. If you did it with Whirler Virtuoso, you can make an infinite number of tokens. Gonti's Aether Heart even lets you circumvent their summoning sickness and insure the number of tokens you made can get the job done.
I am currently not quite taking enough advantage of Silas Renn. Perhaps running Banners or other artifacts I can sac for value or something like Wurmcoil Engine (a great card to swing with or pair with Throne of Geth, though perhaps sort of overrated in general) could shore the deck up. I’m spitballing — as always, I’ve played 0 games with this pile. I did, however, build with 75% principles in mind. I think we’re going to have to lean a lot on card drawing if we want to eschew tutors and I’m fine with that — there’s plenty of that in here and we can easily jam a little more.
We may need to take some cutesy stuff out and add more cards that interact with our opponents but for now, this looks serviceable. The creatures are a little underwhelming and I wouldn’t hate cutting some of them for spells, but the spells we do have like Decimate and Cyclonic Rift do a lot of work. If you find you need to interact more, more removal (and removal that doesn’t suck as much of your energy like Harnessed Lightning could help), board wipes or maybe some counterspells is the way to go.
Currently, Thada Adel is the only way to swipe their stuff. I don’t like that. I might favor swiping more stuff, but we don’t have as many sac outlets as normal, either. We’re basically all-in on energy, for better or worse. Probably worse but who knows? This deck looks like it can scrap and it looks like it can take them by surprise. Sometimes being underestimated is an excellent path to victory.
What do we think? Did I cut your favorite energy card? Do you irrationally hate these purple cards and their Portal mana? Should I cut something you hate? Leave it in the comments. Also, while we’re commenting, what do you want me to write about in the future? Interact with me, nerds. I won’t bite. Until next week!