Readers!

My son reacts favorably to Sesame Street. I am not sure if he likes it or not, because he never requests it, but if you play the wrong episode of the shows he does request, he throws a fit, but has never thrown a fit when Sesame Street is on. He might very well like Sesame Street a lot, he might like it less than I do which, I have to admit, I still kind of do. The writing is pretty tight, I understand the references in the parodies more than I used to and I know who all of the guests are. They ask questions and I can usually answer them before my son does, which is a huge boost to my confidence. Is it the Sesame Street I remember? Hard to say, I really don't have a ton of memories of watching that show 30 years ago, but I assume the Game of Thrones parody is a relatively new thing.

Seeing that WotC very cleverly gave us a trash creature named Oskar gave me some mixed emotions. They're definitely jabbing you in the ribs pretty hard - it's very on the beak, if you will. It's also kind of cute, though, and charming in a small way and since I have a lot of love and reverence for the PBS-HBO pipeline, I'm not only going to let it slide, I'm going to lean into it and build the deck.

The first block of text on Oskar is... fine? Having a five-mana commander isn't great because Dimir decks kind of hate to tap out and they really hate to pay 9 for the card their deck hinges on, so a cost reduction is super welcome. However, the real money text is the second block - you can cast spells out of your graveyard if you discarded them.

My first instinct was to run a bunch of Bottomless Pit effects. Oskar breaks parity by allowing you to cast the spells you pitch and forces the opponent to discard, netting you cards and something called "tempo" which is a term that means basically anything a person wants it to mean when they talk about Magic. My second instinct was that I have decks that do that and no one wants to play against them and they're actually kind of terrible to play with because you slow the game down a ton by making it tougher for your opponents to deal each other any damage. Hey, real quick, what's the name of that Dimir creature that is super good at dealing 120 combat damage? Oh, right. There isn't one. Dimir is good at being tricksy and fey and unblockable, not good at hitting people. Professional Face-Breaker is a Red card for a reason. We're not going to break any faces, we're not going to break parity. What ARE we going to break? We're going to break our thesis Enchantment, that's who.

Dream Halls is a Magic card that can best be described as "cheating." You cheat pretty hard with Dream Halls, ignoring a card's mana cost in favor of just chucking it out there. What happens when you pitch a card to Dream Halls to play a spell for free? Well, ordinarily you just end up down a card, which has made Dream Halls pretty fair, historically, only occasionally showing up in Legacy and Vintage despite the fact that free spells are cheating. If you could cast the spell you discarded then your deck is going to cast two spells for the cost of one and everyone knows BOGO times are boom times.

You could honestly play this deck with 50 Enchantments and it would be superb. Attunement is pretty good with Oskar. Oath of Ghouls is pretty good with Dream Halls. Null Profusion lost me and my 2HG partner a spot on the Pro Tour in 2007. We can load up on so many Enchantments that my hands will be way too full to hold onto the indication I gave early in the year that 2022 would be the start of me caring more about Instants and Sorceries.

The Dream Halls deck of my dreams is within my reach, but I need a plan for when I don't have Dream Halls, which should be fairly often. Dream Halls isn't the deck's engine, it's the secret tank of Nitrous Oxide that Vin Diesel uses as he is about to lose an important race in the movie 15 Fast 15 Furious. If we draw it, the deck sort of pops off, but if I build correctly, we won't need it to win. By "build it correctly" I mean "put a bunch of Enchantments in the deck because that's my move." Let's build correctly, shall we?

Don't bang on my Can! | Commander | Jason Alt

• Commander (1)
• 1 Oskar, Rubbish Reclaimer

• Creatures (20)
• 1 Archfiend of Ifnir
• 1 Big Game Hunter
• 1 Bone Miser
• 1 Containment Construct
• 1 Curator of Mysteries
• 1 Dauthi Voidwalker
• 1 Dreamscape Artist
• 1 Ghostly Pilferer
• 1 Gravebreaker Lamia
• 1 Lazotep Chancellor
• 1 Merfolk Looter
• 1 Notion Thief
• 1 Ominous Roost
• 1 Opposition Agent
• 1 Patrician Geist
• 1 River Kelpie
• 1 Shadowgrange Archfiend
• 1 Skirge Familiar
• 1 Syr Konrad, the Grim
• 1 Tormod, the Desecrator

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Teferi, Master of Time

• Instants (6)
• 1 Ancient Excavation
• 1 Cyclonic Rift
• 1 Dihada's Ploy
• 1 Drown in the Loch
• 1 Frantic Search
• 1 Thirst for Discovery

• Sorceries (9)
• 1 Bone Shards
• 1 Careful Study
• 1 Dark Deal
• 1 Feed the Swarm
• 1 Reanimate
• 1 Toxic Deluge
• 1 Welcome to the Fold
• 1 Whispering Madness
• 1 Windfall

• Enchantments (14)
• 1 Attunement
• 1 Chamber of Manipulation
• 1 Court of Ambition
• 1 Drake Haven
• 1 Dream Halls
• 1 Dying to Serve
• 1 Faith of the Devoted
• 1 Feast of Sanity
• 1 Mystic Remora
• 1 Oath of Ghouls
• 1 Oversold Cemetery
• 1 Secrets of the Dead
• 1 Tortured Existence
• 1 Unfulfilled Desires

• Artifacts (11)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Desecrated Tomb
• 1 Dimir Signet
• 1 Helm of Possession
• 1 Key to the City
• 1 Mana Crypt
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Talisman of Dominance
• 1 Thought Vessel
• 1 Wayfarer's Bauble

• Lands (38)
• 10 Island
• 10 Swamp
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Clearwater Pathway // Murkwater Pathway
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Drowned Catacomb
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Fetid Pools
• 1 Morphic Pool
• 1 Otawara, Soaring City
• 1 Polluted Delta
• 1 Shipwreck Marsh
• 1 Sunken Hollow
• 1 Tainted Isle
• 1 Takenuma, Abandoned Mire
• 1 Underground River
• 1 Watery Grave
• 1 Geier Reach Sanitarium
• 1 Ledger Shredder
• 1 Tainted Indulgence

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This looks like a lot of fun to me. I wanted to add some cards with Madness that would work with the deck's many Discard outlets but the only two cards I ended up adding were Big Game Hunter, a card you probably know, and Shadowgrange Archfiend, a card so obscure that my autocorrect is going berserk. Being able to play cards for their madness cost instead of with Oskar's ability is good if the madness cost makes them cheaper and if you wanted to forgo Oskar's ability in favor of a cost reduction, there are plenty of solid cards with Madness to choose from. Circular Logic could be good in this deck, Curse of Fool's Wisdom is fun and Archfiend of Spite would be very funny at Instant Speed. Have some fun with it - no one expects a Circular Logic in year of our lord 2k twenty-two and that's just how I like it.

I get to play Chamber of Manipulation in this deck, which has me very excited. This is one of the better homes for the card that I've found for it. This barely warranted its own paragraph but I'm happy about it.

That does it for me, folks. I hope you enjoyed my trash this week and if not, maybe I'll hit you with a different kind of trash next week - I am nothing if not consistent. Until next time!