Weaders!

Sorry

Readers!

I bring you more than mere alliteration, I bring you also a deck idea. It is Simic colored, it relies on making copies of cards and it's not another Vesuvan Duplimancy deck! I got sick of that because I was doing it a lot and so was everyone else and it was all anyone did! Now I have a huge pile of infinitokens and I need to use them for something because I spent all this time cleaning them! I don't know why I'm excited, it was a bit of a chore and I should really just buy new ones!

The fact of the matter is, it takes me less time to get sick of a new design space than it used to. It used to take a set coming out for us to get almost enough cards of that archetype to build a full deck, then 6 years later when we returned to that setting, we got a bunch more and we could make an almost serviceable but not really deck. Verazol, the Current Splitter came out at the start of Covid and we barely had enough cards with kicker worth playing to fill an entire deck. Now Ivy comes out with enough support right out of the box to make everyone get sick of Spark Double within weeks. I don't want to play new cards that have a ton of support, I want to play old, dumb six-drops like we used to. Remember when the dirtiest thing you could do was pair Deadeye Navigator with Diluvian Primoridal or Jace's Phantasm? You don't? That makes sense, 90% of the people who currently play Commander weren't playing before Thassa's Oracle was printed and they understand the format in a completely different way. That's good, obviously. We want new players, but sometimes I want old cards: Old, durdly cards with high mana costs, like my grandpappy used to make. Well even if you're too young to remember those days, my Pepperidge Farm ass remembers creatures that cost seven mana and weren't part of a game-ending combo. In my day we played Duplicant and we were grateful that a Selesnya deck had some removal. Let's harken back to those days with a commander that rewards you for not just talking the dinosaur but for walking the dinosaur to back it up.

Old Dalfy, as he likes to be called, is a Magic card based on the fictional character "Gandalf" a Wizard who once told his entire party to run away and let him solo a Balrog so he could snipe all of the XP and come back at the end of the quest 10 levels higher than everyone else with elite gear. He is also a fantastic enabler for shenanigans if you manage to jam your deck with enough high-cost cards to reliably trigger his ability and let you have a bunch of free copies of your impactful spells. Getting a Regal Behemoth is cool - getting two Regal Behemoths isn't worse.

After I toyed with the deck for a bit, I realized that getting Gandalf to trigger reliably isn't the win here. Sure, you can copy Rishkar's Expertise and have a great turn, but to me, the real win here is that we are going to be able to get away with playing big, dumb creatures in this deck. We're going to be cascading and we're going to be the Monarch. Every spell we play will be unfair with the likes of Hullbreaker Horror out, so rather than worry about playing a lot of Enchantment Creatures or Artifact Creatures to make sure we always hit, let's just play big, fun cards and trust getting three chances to hit will be enough to make sure we're not whiffing all day. Some whiffing is to be expected, and it's the spice of life to never truly know what can happen. Big spells, big mana - I expect big things in return, and if a laugh is one of them, let's hope the spell that triggered it was good enough that the copy doesn't even matter. Let's take a look at the spells I would play.

That said, the one last twist to the deck is that while I don't want to focus on making sure we can trigger Gandalf all the time, I do like the idea of playing spells that benefit us if we do copy them. Aetherspouts is a fun combat trick I like to play, but double Aetherspouts is not really much fun whereas double Arachnogenesis is Arachnodegenerate. We will be doing things that cheat big creatures into play, and I know you know I'm going to be using cards like Lurking Predators and Mind's Dilation. I want to make sure if I'm going to pay a lot of mana for a spell, it will be a spell I will be excited to copy. With all of that out of the way, let's look at what I came up with.

Conjurer of Expensive Tricks | Commander | Jason Alt

• Commander (1)
• 1 Gandalf, Westward Voyager

• Creatures (29)
• 1 Acidic Slime
• 1 Apex Devastator
• 1 Archivist of Gondor
• 1 Astral Dragon
• 1 Avenger of Zendikar
• 1 Birds of Paradise
• 1 Cirdan the Shipwright
• 1 Consecrated Sphinx
• 1 Dawnglade Regent
• 1 Defiler of Vigor
• 1 Elrond of the White Council
• 1 Fyndhorn Elves
• 1 Gilanra, Caller of Wirewood
• 1 Greensleeves, Maro-Sorcerer
• 1 Gwenna, Eyes of Gaea
• 1 Hullbreaker Horror
• 1 Imoti, Celebrant of Bounty
• 1 Mulldrifter
• 1 Peregrine Drake
• 1 Progenitor Mimic
• 1 Radagast, Wizard of Wilds
• 1 Ramunap Excavator
• 1 Rashmi, Eternities Crafter
• 1 Regal Behemoth
• 1 Sakura-Tribe Scout
• 1 Thryx, the Sudden Storm
• 1 Thunderous Snapper
• 1 Wandering Archaic
• 1 Wizened Snitches

• Instants (7)
• 1 Arachnogenesis
• 1 Constant Mists
• 1 Dig Through Time
• 1 Heroic Intervention
• 1 Mystic Confluence
• 1 Natural Reclamation
• 1 Return of the Wildspeaker

• Sorceries (8)
• 1 Aminatou's Augury
• 1 Blatant Thievery
• 1 Bribery
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Last March of the Ents
• 1 Rishkar's Expertise
• 1 Traverse the Outlands
• 1 Urban Evolution

• Enchantments (6)
• 1 Court of Bounty
• 1 Court of Cunning
• 1 Mind's Dilation
• 1 One with the Multiverse
• 1 Storm of Saruman
• 1 Zendikar Resurgent

• Artifacts (11)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Chromatic Orrery
• 1 Crown of Gondor
• 1 Crucible of Worlds
• 1 Gilded Lotus
• 1 Lantern of Insight
• 1 Simic Signet
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Sunstone
• 1 Thought Vessel
• 1 Twinning Staff

• Lands (38)
• 10 Snow-Covered Island
• 12 Snow-Covered Forest
• 1 Barkchannel Pathway // Tidechannel Pathway
• 1 Breeding Pool
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Dreamroot Cascade
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Fabled Passage
• 1 Flooded Grove
• 1 Hinterland Harbor
• 1 Misty Rainforest
• 1 Prismatic Vista
• 1 Rejuvenating Springs
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Throne of the High City
• 1 Vineglimmer Snarl
• 1 Yavimaya Coast
• 1 Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth

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This is the deck of my dreams. I am a little nervous in general, so I cut a lot of the Rampant Growth stuff for more lands. You don't exactly get flooded in a deck where the plan is to play a big creature and hope to copy it, so it's not like having a land rich hand early hurts. Sakura-Tribe Scout is great to get you to 5 on turn three or 4 and you'll be able to do some shenanigans with Crucible of Worlds and some sac lands. I wanted to be able to play Constant Mists or Sunstone early and often since we're a bit defenseless early. If we want to go wide, having reliable landfall triggers can help us spread our army out a bit, especially if we can copy Avenger of Zendikar or something equally spicy.

What do we think? Too unreliable? Mana curve too high? Too good, and you're awestruck at my ingenuity? Let me know what you think on twitter where I am still holding out some hope for the platform. Thanks for reading, nerds. Until next time!