When reader Marco Garten commented on a recent article about making a Superfriends deck that wasn’t 75%, I felt a little twinge of reluctance that I wouldn’t be able to address his point in an article, even though it was a good point and one worth addressing.

How to best address this? First of all, by deciding that if I want to re-visit a deck I should just do it, I guess. I’m not going to feel bad about not giving you a new deck every single week if something old becomes relevant based on printings and/or I want to address a specific question from a reader. I’m sure all of you won’t mind.

Second, we can take a look at our rules to see if there are any ways we can break any of them with a Superfriends build, Bant or otherwise.

Scalable spells help tailor your cards to the power level of your opponents' decks:

• Always start weak and improve the deck, never weaken a better deck.
• You can skew toward power provided you skew away from consistency.
• It is better to punish everyone equally for doing something rather than prevent someone from doing it.
• Building around a theme will keep the power level from skewing too high.
• Imposing limitations encourages creativity and promotes balance.
• Do what you need to do to protect the execution of your strategy.
• Try to vary the game experience, and build with multiple paths to victory in mind.

It’s easier to start from scratch and follow these breadcrumbs to our destination but it’s a little tougher to try and reverse-engineer a way to break them. When you think about it, what we’re actually trying to do is come up with a deck that seems optimized and that we feel like we couldn’t have arrived at following all of these rules rather than trying to start with a 75% deck and make it “better” until we feel like it’s not a 75% deck. What would a deck built from scratch to be optimized, a build we couldn’t have come around to normally, include that would “disqualify” it from our process? It’s tricky to approach the problem this way, but what choice do we have?

A Bant Superfriends deck that is not 75% only has to break one of our axioms. We’re not going to really be able to make a determination based on power level since we want 75% decks to be quite powerful. We’re more looking at not turning both the power and consistency dials to 11 like we try to if we’re looking to win a 1v1 tourney for prizes. Let’s look at the axioms one by one then see how I would build.

Always start weak and improve the deck—never weaken a better deck.

This is basically meaningless in this context. This is a guideline governing how to build 75% but not following it doesn’t mean we’ll get a deck that’s “better” than 75%, it means we’ll get an incoherent mess. This is no help.

You can skew toward power provided you skew away from consistency.

This is the point I want to spend the most time on because it’s probably going to trip us up the most. A Superfriends deck is bound to be pretty powerful. We have no reason not to run Doubling Season, The Chain Veil, and powerful walkers like the new Tamiyo, Field Researcher. We also have no reason not to run cards like Call the Gatewatch and Deploy the Gatewatch. Bant doesn’t give us a ton of face-down tutors and our issue is going to be mana development more than card selection, so even a lot of card draw isn’t going to push the deck too much. I think a deck with mana ramp, card draw, Planeswalker-specific tutors (and what, really, do we have access to other than those? Is Mystical Tutor that good in Superfriends?) and maybe some removal or counters isn’t going to look any different from a deck we build adhering to all of the 75% axioms. What could we add that would push the deck toward being too powerful or too consistent it wouldn’t be at home in a 75% Superfriends deck? I honestly can’t think of anything. You’re looking off-theme for “goodstuff” cards at that point and that doesn’t improve the deck.

It is better to punish everyone equally for doing something rather than prevent someone from doing it.

It’s tough to envision a scenario where you approach a Superfriends build that is headed toward a 75% build, but you veer off onto another avenue and start trying to prevent people from doing anything but still end up with a decent deck. Are you going to Counterspell everything? Who are the superfriends at that point, Teferi and Jace and maybe Jace and also Jace and Tezzeret? Are you going to Ajani Vengeant all of the lands away? What does the rest of the deck do? Do you want to run mana-hungry Planeswalkers and their costly doubling effects and throw in a few Armageddon effects on top of that? There are Planeswalkers, especially in Bant, that can make your opponent feel like they’re locked down but it’s far from breaking this axiom. Getting a Narset emblem is annoying. Are you getting that every game? That, to me, isn’t more powerful than something like Cyclonic Rift or Insurrection, and those cards are fine as long as you’re not tutoring for just them and getting them super often, provided they win you the game in an expeditious manner. I’m starting to regard Cyclonic Rift in the same camp as Armageddon based on how I see some people playing it.

Building around a theme will keep the power level from skewing too high.

Considering how effective this one axiom is at narrowing the cardpool, this is what leads me to believe that it’s going to be very difficult to build a Bant Superfriends deck that isn’t 75%. Try as you might to be oppressive, at the end of the day you’re either including mostly cards that help out this theme or you’re building Bant goodstuff and failing to make a Superfriends deck. Approaching 75% deck-building and aiming for a coherent deck with some synergy is crucial and it makes me think there isn’t really a “better” way to build Superfriends than the way we would have if we were following, at the very least, this axiom.

Imposing limitations encourages creativity and promotes balance.

Coming at this from the opposite angle for the purposes of this problem, what limitations are we removing when we try to build an unbridled Bant Superfriends deck? A 75% deck may try and not run creatures, for example, to stay on theme, but it’s not as if allowing ourselves to jam some goodstuff cards in the deck is going to be the third heat the deck needed to start winning every GP pod. This seems like it’s going to overlap with the last point since the only real restriction is that the card should make the deck work better and we’re going for synergy.

Do what you need to do to protect the execution of your strategy.

Again, we have another axiom that’s impossible to reverse engineer because it’s not as though not doing this will make the deck better.

Try to vary the game experience, and build with multiple paths to victory in mind.

Good luck not doing this with a Superfriends deck. You’re going to draw Planeswalkers, play Planeswalkers, activate Planeswalkers and try to draw more Planeswalkers. You’ll bury them in advantage, so the exact ‘walkers scarcely matter, varying the experience quite a bit. Even if you started every single game with Doubling Season in play, you’ll likely never play a similar game twice.

It’s really tough for me to see a dedicated Bant Superfriends build not qualifying as a 75% deck based on the deck-building guidelines we set out. An optimal Superfriends build basically affirms the important ones. All we can do at this point is build a Bant Superfriends deck and see if there is something that disaqualifies it. Don’t take my word for what makes a competitive list, either. I found a good one on TappedOut. TokenTym claims he went 7-2 in pods with this deck at SCG Baltimore and it looks pretty spicy. What did TokenTym build and is it 75%? If not, why?

Angus and Friends by TokenTym

Angus and Friends ? EDH | TokenTym

• Commander (1)
• 1 Angus MacKenzie

• Creatures (12)
• 1 Avacyn, Angel of Hope
• 1 Clever Impersonator
• 1 Deadeye Navigator
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Glen Elendra Archmage
• 1 Melira, Sylvok Outcast
• 1 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
• 1 Seedborn Muse
• 1 Sigarda, Heron's Grace
• 1 Snapcaster Mage
• 1 Sun Titan
• 1 Venser, Shaper Savant

• Planeswalkers (19)
• 1 Ajani, Mentor of Heroes
• 1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
• 1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
• 1 Garruk Wildspeaker
• 1 Jace Beleren
• 1 Jace, Architect of Thought
• 1 Jace, Memory Adept
• 1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
• 1 Karn Liberated
• 1 Kiora, the Crashing Wave
• 1 Kiora, Master of the Depths
• 1 Narset Transcendent
• 1 Nissa, Voice of Zendikar
• 1 Tamiyo, Field Researcher
• 1 Tamiyo, the Moon Sage
• 1 Teferi, Temporal Archmage
• 1 Tezzeret the Seeker
• 1 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
• 1 Venser, the Sojourner

• Spells (35)
• 1 Anticipate
• 1 Brainstorm
• 1 Counterspell
• 1 Cryptic Command
• 1 Enlightened Tutor
• 1 Force of Will
• 1 Mindbreak Trap
• 1 Overwhelming Denial
• 1 Path to Exile
• 1 Rewind
• 1 Swords to Plowshares
• 1 Call the Gatewatch
• 1 Deploy the Gatewatch
• 1 Farseek
• 1 Green Sun's Zenith
• 1 Skyshroud Claim
• 1 Sylvan Scrying
• 1 Time Stretch
• 1 Wargate
• 1 Cyclonic Rift
• 1 Defense of the Heart
• 1 Doubling Season
• 1 Helix Pinnacle
• 1 Leyline of Anticipation
• 1 Mana Reflection
• 1 Mirari's Wake
• 1 Privileged Position
• 1 Rhystic Study
• 1 Sterling Grove
• 1 Sylvan Library
• 1 Wheel of Sun and Moon
• 1 Rings of Brighthearth
• 1 Sensei's Divining Top
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 The Chain Veil

• Lands (33)
• 4 Forest
• 4 Island
• 4 Plains
• 1 Adarkar Wastes
• 1 Blighted Woodland
• 1 Breeding Pool
• 1 Brushland
• 1 Canopy Vista
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Dryad Arbor
• 1 Flooded Strand
• 1 Forbidden Orchard
• 1 Hallowed Fountain
• 1 Hinterland Harbor
• 1 Mana Confluence
• 1 Maze of Ith
• 1 Polluted Delta
• 1 Prairie Stream
• 1 Reflecting Pool
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Savannah
• 1 Sunpetal Grove
• 1 Temple Garden
• 1 Windswept Heath

Buy This Deck

There are cards here I wouldn’t play in a 75% deck and there are cards here I wouldn’t play, ever. I think Sensei's Divining Top is annoying, for example, and I also think that no Magic player in the history of Commander has ever lost a game because they topdecked a Temple Garden that they needed to be a Savannah. That said, if homeboy wants to put all of his eggs into one basket and that basket is a dirty Bant Superfriends list that has sexy foreign foils, ABU duals and a $75 Commander, more power to him. He clearly wasn’t going for 75% when he built this, at all. But does that mean you couldn’t run this as a 75% deck? There’s no rule against making casual players’ jaws drop, only against ruining their lives by making them feel like they never had a shot. What are some of the issues I see from a 75% viewpoint?

This seems like a pretty straightforward Superfriends deck with a Fog commander to keep them out of your hair for a minute while you get set up. While I’d likely run fewer counterspells than he does (especially ones like Mindbreak Trap and Force of Will) and I might run higher-impact spells than Brainstorm in that slot, it’s hard to say any one card isn’t really in the spirit of 75%. The tutors the deck runs are among the least problematic in the format. There is a lot of space dedicated to them and that is a bit of an issue. Perhaps the only real issue I see is with cards like Wargate and Green Sun's Zenith. However, those cards have such a capacity to be toolbox cards that it’s hard to say those ipso facto lead to linear play. If you use those cards to grab something fun rather than the same card every single time in a less competitive match, you can have a varied gameplay experience, something basically guaranteed by leaning on whichever Planeswalkers you draw as your main way to win.

Is that too tepid an answer? OK, fine. This is barely 75%. It has a lot of cards that, while they don’t explicitly violate our guidelines to such a great extent that it’s untenable, aren’t cards I’d necessarily choose were I to construct a deck myself. I don’t think ABU duals are necessary, but smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. I think Top is annoying, Avacyn sticks out like a sore thumb flavor-wise and Tokentym has way too many tutors and Counterspells. This looks like he turned his Legacy Bant New Horizons deck into a Commander deck when everyone stopped durdling around with Terravore and started playing either U/R Delver or U/R Sneak and Show and Legacy became a lot less fun. Is that a disqualification? Barely not. I wouldn’t hold this up as a paragon of 75% exemplification. How could I? But from another perspective, we set out to find a Bant Superfriends list that was obviously not 75%. There is a lot I’d change about this deck, but there is very little I’d need to change. So we set out to try and see if Superfriends, Bant specifically, could ever be more than 75%. I’d say no. This deck is competitive and does well, but it’s not such a bad example of a 75% deck that I think it needs to be overhauled. It’s just a good deck. 75% decks are allowed to be good. Can Superfriends ever be more than 75%? I guess, but only if you don’t think it’s harder to build a 75% deck than it is to build a straightforward competitive one. If we’ve proven anything in this series over the last few years, it’s that it really is.