...when you can have 75% earth?

Hi, I'm Coolstuff's Jason Alt and I struggle with translating my comedic voice into text and I assume people still remember what 75% theory is or what this column is about. Do you get the pun with the title? If not, that's cool, you can read this article and you will be basically caught up. I like to be fun at Commander and sometimes being fun at Commander requires you to make some sacrifices or build suboptimally, something I try to avoid with 75% building.

It used to be that once a set dropped, I would go through and find all the cards that specifically went in 75% decks. I stopped doing it when the set releases became too frequent, but I feel like I miss a lot when I don't look through the whole set, if only for my own edification. Today, let's get back to our 75% roots and look at some cards that excite me as a 75% builder, a person who likes to be fun at Commander, and there isn't a third thing; but, having two different axes is still basically double value. Come along on a journey where at the end of it, I'll have to stop making Tolkien puns and get ready for a dark timey wimey in Magic history.

Forge Anew

An area of Magic I haven't explored much as a player is in decks like Boros. Sure I love decks with Deflecting Palm shenanigans, and Sunforger shenanigans, but I called the color combination "Bore-os" like I was Billy Madison and I meant it. I can't make a dedicated Boros deck appeal to me.

That was, until I saw Forge Anew. Forge Anew is a 3-in-1 tool that can enable the kind of shenanigans that could get me interested in Boros - Puresteel Paladin garbage! The idea of having a bunch of really big equipment on a bunch of creatures with first strike then putting the equipment on a bunch of other creatures without first strike to hit in a second wave. That's a lot of work to get a weird kind of pseudo double strike, but think about equipment that it's beneficial to move. We talked about Sunforger, reattaching Sunforger after first strike damage to deck cast another instant sounds like too much fun to pass up. You could do all of these things before, but this makes it so easy and intuitive to do all of this in one deck. Play a commander that gives your creatures double strike or first strike, or protects your board so playing a bunch of creatures doesn't mean your hand is always empty. This card made me think about how to have fun in a color combo I don't explore much and that's as good an endorsement as I can give any card.

Bill Ferny, Bree Swindler

I will admit to overlooking this card at first. All of the "splashy" commanders demanded a lot of attention, but Bill has always been there, daring me to make a deck where I give someone changelings or a Steel Golem or something, in order to get treasure tokens. I'm sold - One thing that I have always loved to do in 75% decks is not only play with their cards, but force them to play with mine, as well. Remember my Auntie Blyte deck, or the deck that is quickly becoming my signature deck, Blim? Making them play with cards they don't want to play with and potentially paying a price to get rid of them is fun, creates what is essentially a subgame, and creates political opportunities. Good players play subgames like "The Ring taunts you until you have enough card advantage to win" or "You go through the dungeon until you have enough card advantage to win," cards like Jinxed Idol create a subgame everyone can participate in and where the objective is to hose someone else. Creating a hot potato subgame is way more fun than people watching you slide a minifig around your dungeon card muttering to yourself for 8 minutes until I want to pick up my phone and be entertained so badly I have to throw it. What was I even talking about? Oh yeah, Bill is fun and reminds me a lot of my Cosima deck, and that's a lot of my word budget.

Press the Enemy

This set has a lot of tricks that remind me of Commander in 2015 and it's making me really happy. Remanding a spell they likely can't cast again this turn and getting to play your own for free? Bouncing a huge attacker and flashing in a blocker? A spell that does both? Keeping up five mana for Desertion is sometimes a pain, but keeping four up for a card I'm going to nickname Narset's Expertise, seems doable. This spell is just as good against spikey players and if played against a new player, might encourage them to see what other shenanigans Blue can be up to, but you're not countering their commander or exiling their mana rock, you're bouncing something they can play again. Don't discount the impact of a spell that newer players will grok the power of but won't feel as bad to have played against them. I wish they didn't have to design 10,000 cards a year to give us one this good, but I am grateful we have it. This card makes the game fun but still stops them from winning. Beat that.

Shadow of the Enemy

I was just looking at how many cards exile entire graveyards and thinking about how that kind of bums me out a bit. It's not that I routinely play decks that rely heavily on graveyard shenanigans, I just think if it's as easy as casting a Cleanfall to nuke someone's whole board, that person should be allowed to Replenish themselves back into the game. However, if I MUST nuke some Enchantress player's whole yard and deny them access to their fun cards, the LEAST I could do is play all of them myself. You're paying six mana for this, which makes it a mid-game card you likely don't have to tap out for, and you'll have better and better targets the longer you wait. Will someone play a Bojuka Bog first? You don't know! That anxiety you're experiencing about not knowing is why this silly format will always be the most fun.

Rise of the Witch-King

Assuming you still have a graveyard with lunatics like me running around with Shadow of the Enemy, Rise of the Witch-King is not a bad Edict, it's a good Victimize where you edict first and can turn your worst creature into your best permanent that they've already dealt with. It's rare that we get Reanimator spells like this, and in a singleton format, some cards are kind of tricky to recover from having removed. This seems like a Limited card, but this is our bread and butter in a 75% deck.

Sharkey, Tyrant of the Shire

Be honest, who thought I was never going to make a Sharkey deck? Land Shark, I'll not call it, probably, unless no one else has thought of that yet in which case DIBS. You might not realize how many of your lands have abilities you'd really like to be able to activate. Shutting them off is a minor annoyance, but not enough to get you totally aggroed. Being able to use the activated abilities of their permanents is a design space they're exploring more and more, and between Sharkey and Smeagol, a deck I wrote about recently, we have quite a few ways to mess with their lands. I'm really liking that they are exploring cards that require their cards more now that we're playing Commander more in person than we were the last few years. Make some friends, handle their cards, turn their fetches into dead draws, you know, fun.

Palantir of Orthanc

The one issue I have with this card is that it has a lot of text for newer players to read. That said, if you demonstrate how it works, they may play it themselves because this is a seriously fun card. In big mana decks, you're basically going to always draw cards because it will soon be dealing very significant damage. Meanwhile, your yard is full of big mana creatures to reanimate, or try to before I case Shadow of the Enemy on you and weep because I've become the thing I always hated. You know, fun.

This set as well as the new cards in the Commander precons, have gone quite a long way toward helping me re-engage with Magic. I am buying cards for the first time in months and building new decks, finally. Even if you are not a fan of The Lord of the Rings at all, the set adds a lot of great ideas to explore and I hope you were as inspired to build as I have been. Thanks for reading, until next time!