Who Names a Cat "Kitt"?

Posted on May 12, 2022

Readers!

Last week I barely escaped without having to include a bunch of Instants and Sorceries in a deck that really called for them and I'm having trouble staying dedicated to this year's theme. I really thought I would have an easier time not cutting cards like Swords to Plowshares and Swan Song on sight but it's too tempting to cut boring interaction and just add an extra gas tank for the maximum EDH gameplay experience. All nitro, no brakes on this... nitro-powered hype train? (Also, as a chemist, everyone deciding it's OK to abbreviate the word "nitrous" as "nitro" bothers me but I suppose a hype train going so fast the rails are starting to glow is the wrong venue for that pedantic little discussion). However, our hype vehicle is powered and whether or not it's truly a train, one thing is for certain - Swords to Plowshares represents the braking mechanism.

When I first started playing Call of Duty, I took the Stinger missile as my backup weapon every game. It was incredibly useful - you could down their spy planes and even their killstreak rewards and the extra weight was pretend video game weight and it didn't slow you down at all. I started to notice no one really appreciated me downing their UAVs or a second thing that I'd remember the name of if it were 2009. My Kill:Death ratio suffered because fighting the other team was harder with no backup weapon and with play being sort of rough as I improved my game mechanics and became increasingly held back by my inferior loadout, I began to resent the sacrifices I made, sacrifices... no one asked me to make. I wasn't being altruistic in the face of adversity; I was just playing the game wrong. Is it wrong to put Swords to Plowshares in your deck? Depends - do you get a nice little dopamine blast when you Stinger an enemy Harrier Jet or are you just walking around with a backup weapon that makes you resent the rest of your pod?

There is a lot of this year left and there is plenty of time to take a serious look at my Instants and Sorceries usage, but this week I want to leave the Stinger missile behind and build something I like to build. What I want to build most of all is a combination of two decks I really like, united under a commander that maximizes the benefit you get from attempting to unify two disparate strategies. Unfortunately, something like that's too far-fetched to ever become reali- just kidding, the new Goad tokens commander just dropped and I can't stop staring.

Despite being named like a Jedi who got killed in season 3 of the Clone Wars TV show, Kitt Kanto allows me to Goad their creatures, but also reminds you that you should be making tokens because you'll be able to reliably Goad 3 creatures a turn cycle if you have 6 creatures. You can also block if you have more than 6 creatures, making it pretty necessary to generate a ton of tokens to do your bidding. We could recast Kitt Kanto a bunch of times and do this the hard way, but, as much as I appreciate a commander who can generate its own tokens, maybe we should just generate them the easy way.

In fact, I have made so many decks in these colors that generate a bunch of tokens, you don't even need a paragraph about it here. The infrastructure for making a bunch of tokens is well established and there will be no real surprises here - you can count on me to jam a ton of Enchantments in the deck and all of them will help me generate tokens. One new bit of tech I don't think I have covered in this series yet is the absurd interaction between Paradox Zone and Doubling Season.

This card gets out of control fast, unlike Assemble the Legion which gets out of control slowly (but is still going in the deck, come on). I included Paradox Zone in an article or two when the Strixhaven decks came out (1 year and 39 sets ago) but I haven't written about it since I got some games in with it, and this card is the real deal. Is Outlaws' Merriment the real deal? No, in fact. Is it going in this deck? Yes, in fact. Yes, it is. Because, you see, it makes tokens.

Now that we have tokens, what to do with tokens? The short answer is attack them and Goad their creatures, but only being able to Goad one creature is a little loose to me since they can attack you with everything else. My solution is to have a ton of blockers, but also call upon our old friend, Glare of Subdual. Not having Blue in this deck means we can't do long, protracted Opposition shenanigans which means we need to use our Red to speed up our clock. Glare of Subdual won't be used to keep them from attacking, it will be used to keep them from blocking. You know what else Glare of Subdual can do? Tap 15 creatures, in case there was a card printed recently that might want you to be able to tap 15 creatures. Goad makes them attack each other, true, but we want to be punching them in the face as much as possible. This will be a much more aggressive version of the kind of deck I typically run with Cryptolith Rite and Doubling Season and I'm excited to beat face.

One way to beat face is to have cards that give you a large number of small creatures give you a large number of large creatures instead. Casting Avenger of Zendikar is a strong play the opponent should respond to. Casting Avenger of Zendikar with Divine Visitation or Jinnie Fay out is a play that they MUST answer, and the deck is full of must-answer cards - hopefully more must-answers than they have answers for. I'm actually pretty excited to just build the deck, so let's do that already.

Kitt Kanto's Goad Tokens | Commander | Jason Alt

Commander (1)
1 Kitt Kanto, Mayhem Diva

Planeswalkers (1)
1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion

This looks like a lot of fun. If you want to Goad more, you can remove some of the Enchantments and load up. The Impetus Cycle, Assault Suit, Brash Taunter - there are quite a few cards you could add. I like Disrupt Decorum a lot and it was sad to cut it, but it was at the point where I would have to cut a Cultivate or something to fit it and that felt too greedy to put in an article. I'm not saying I wouldn't cut Cultivate for Disrupt Decorum in the decks I build, I'm just saying I'd never admit that in an article because that's a little extreme and you might not take my opinion as seriously if you found out I would definitely do that.

Extra combat steps are another way to go - you can very easily cut some stuff to add Moraug, Fury of Akoum, Relentless Assault and Aggravated Assault. There are a lot of variations on those three classes of extra combat card, also, so go nuts with it. If you're going to beef up your team, add Jetmir, Nexus of Revels, or just have Craterhoof somewhere in the deck. You really can't go wrong by going tall and wide together, and attacking again with anything that survived is great if you have cards that trigger when creatures attack.

This was a lot of fun and I hope you all enjoy digging into the 38 new Legendary creatures we got this month because a new set of Commander precons is already being spoiled. We live in a hellscape tormented by an endless parade of new products designed to wear you down so you shut your brain off and consume the products in a desperate attempt to use the resultant dopamine to stave off the hopelessness and despair that accompany a double-digit percentage price increase on all products. Plus, the precons come with a mini collector booster pack! Until next time!