As much as people treat me like the authority on 75% Commander deck-building because my name is on the byline of the article series, I’ve always seen this as a collaboration between myself and the community. That could be because I’m completely out of touch, but I think the reason is that I’ve never been afraid to incorporate feedback. I had a very laissez-faire attitude about a card like Possibility Storm as a possibility for cheating Eldrazi into play while still preserving “cast” triggers that we would lose if we cheated the card into play a different way. A lot of my readers suggested the possibility that anyone who played Possibility Storm was a monster and the possibility that I do something anatomically impossible involving my head and rectum.

Good. It’s more than arguing with me, it’s about taking ownership of this concept, taking it back to your own build space, and incorporating the stuff that I have managed to convince you is important. I hope I’ve managed to convince people all of the tenets of this ethos are equally important. (I kept the number manageable to make sure there isn’t too much. I can’t say whether I deliberately avoided the number ten to avoid having them referred to as “commandments”—I hadn’t thought about it until just now.) Sometimes, people read a few articles and all they glean is, “Don’t be a dick,” and I’m okay with that. It’s not the complete point I’m trying to convey, but it’s certainly not a mischaracterization of how I feel about things, so I let it slide.

When people interpret this series and take some ownership of it, I’m glad because it means the idea has legs. Not only that, but I sometimes get to see the decks they make, and they comprise a great acid test. If I make a deck and call it 75%, not a ton of people are going to argue with me, and I think it’s far more interesting for a reader to come up with something so we can see if the second stage of this little telephone game of ours is going to result in a garbled mess or some crystal-clear communication. Luckily for me, people are more than willing to share their lists. Sometimes people just, well, nail it.

This week, someone nailed it.

/u/silksmokingjacket posted that he was looking for a 75% Tasigur, the Golden Fang list, and /u/DrKillenger (my curiosity is automatically piqued by any and all Venture Brothers references) came through for him. Not only did he post his list and offer it as a potential 75% deck, I feel that he nailed it. Like, I’m not going to post my own decklist after I post his. That’s how nailed it was. I’ll talk a bit about how much I like the deck as a 75% deck after you see the list.

75% Tasigur, the Golden Fang ? Commander | /u/DrKillenger

• Commander (0)

• Creatures (23)
• 1 Archaeomancer
• 1 Coiling Oracle
• 1 Consecrated Sphinx
• 1 Consuming Aberration
• 1 Deadeye Navigator
• 1 Deathrite Shaman
• 1 Doomed Necromancer
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Fauna Shaman
• 1 Havengul Lich
• 1 Hermit Druid
• 1 Jace's Archivist
• 1 Kiora's Follower
• 1 Laboratory Maniac
• 1 Necrotic Ooze
• 1 Oracle of Mul Daya
• 1 Prophet of Kruphix
• 1 Rune-Scarred Demon
• 1 Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
• 1 Kruphix, God of Horizons
• 1 Phenax, God of Deception
• 1 Sheoldred, Whispering One
• 1 Thassa, God of the Sea

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 1 Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
• 1 Jace Beleren

• Spells (34)
• 1 Arcane Denial
• 1 Constant Mists
• 1 Counterspell
• 1 Fact or Fiction
• 1 Forbid
• 1 Intuition
• 1 Krosan Grip
• 1 Murderous Cut
• 1 Nature's Claim
• 1 Putrefy
• 1 Realms Uncharted
• 1 Stroke of Genius
• 1 Sultai Charm
• 1 Sunder
• 1 Vision Skeins
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Decree of Pain
• 1 Doomsday
• 1 Farseek
• 1 Life // Death
• 1 Life from the Loam
• 1 Living Death
• 1 Mind Grind
• 1 Praetor's Grasp
• 1 Spitting Image
• 1 Tooth and Nail
• 1 Victimize
• 1 Villainous Wealth
• 1 Animate Dead
• 1 Cyclonic Rift
• 1 Jace's Sanctum
• 1 Oath of Druids
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Sol Ring

• Lands (40)
• 5 Swamp
• 6 Forest
• 6 Island
• 1 Barren Moor
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Breeding Pool
• 1 Cephalid Coliseum
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Drowned Catacomb
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Forbidden Orchard
• 1 High Market
• 1 Hinterland Harbor
• 1 Lonely Sandbar
• 1 Opulent Palace
• 1 Overgrown Tomb
• 1 Polluted Delta
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Strip Mine
• 1 Temple of Deceit
• 1 Temple of Malady
• 1 Temple of Mystery
• 1 Tranquil Thicket
• 1 Watery Grave
• 1 Woodland Cemetery
• 1 Volrath's Stronghold

Buy This Deck

There are a few cards here that I nit-pickily disagree with, but there are quite a few that I think are perfect, so let’s get being catty out of the way and get to the ’mirin’ portion of the article.

I don’t like Forbid, and that could be because some dude made his wife cry with Forbid or it could be because I don’t feel that counterspells like that are necessarily right for 75% decks. I explained in the comments of the reddit post.

Sunder is dirty. Don’t run Sunder. I realize it’s powerful, and I also think it’s lazy. It makes games take longer, but this deck doesn’t even really make it clear how it would capitalize on Sundering opponents besides vaguely claiming, “I will have card advantage,” and playing what’s essentially Armageddon won’t make you any friends. You don’t want to tilt the table if you’re trying to get people’s help letting you bring spells back. You should be teaming up with people to keep someone from resolving Insurrection by having them let you bring back Counterspell, not making X−1 enemies, where X is the number of players in the game. /u/DrKillenger said the deck has begun to elicit some groans. Sunder may contribute. Groans aren’t bad for a 75% deck—it just means you may want to consider tuning to the playgroup rather than a vague, undefined playgroup like a 75% deck is supposed to. I’d cut Sunder and run something else that does something entirely different—maybe a creature. Skaab Ruinator would be cool in this deck, for example.

Doomsday is a card that could be a problem but that I’m not sure is a huge problem here. True, it can become a boring I-win-with-Lab-Maniac combo deck, which is why I worry a bit about Tooth and Nail, but ultimately, Laboratory Maniac is just one way to win. Still, I can see why his group chafes a bit, and maybe if we take out cards that KO our library in one hit, we can make a game of it. I like Living Death as a win condition, and I’d rather try to edge someone out with Phenax, God of Deception than with Lab Maniac cheese, but absent too many tutors, Druid and Doomsday seem to be more luck than skill, and there’s a chance you’ll be grinding your deck manually. You need to check yourself also. Is the deck too consistent? If so, cut something. Lab Maniac is usually first on my chopping block, but if you cut that, Doomsday starts to really suck. I think that’s fine. Take out a questionable card, and the cards that were relying heavily on just that one card start to identify themselves.

I don’t think “anti-social” cards that a lot of people hate, such as Deadeye Navigator (the deck doesn’t even have that many cards to abuse Navigator), Consecrated Sphinx, or Prophet of Kruphix, are necessarily wrong for a 75% build, least of all this one. Laboratory Maniac is more of a problem card here, but if we’re not tutoring for Doomsday (or running Dread Return), I think we’re unlikely to get the combo more often than 1 ÷ X games, and it won’t even succeed every time even with counterspell backup.

If you run the deck that way and go all-in on a combo finish, that’s your choice. However, it seems that it could be fun to do what the designer said he does with it.

This sounds cool to me. Tasigur can bring back card-draw like Vision Skeins, removal like Murderous Cut, and countermagic with the blessing of another player, allowing you to wheel and deal and make sure no one does anything too cheesy. If we take out our cheese cards like Sunder, we can concentrate on grinding out a ton of card advantage and going over the top.

While this deck is on the strong side of 75%, I feel that there are omissions here that would have made the deck too consistent, and those omissions show a dedication to the 75% ethos on the part of the deck-builder. I like that. I feel that there are enough paths to victory that the Lab Maniac plan is just one of the many possibilities, and I feel that homogeneity is almost impossible if you dredge greedily and rely on making allies to see what you can bring back.

What do we think? Is it easier to tell on paper if a deck is too weak than to tell if it’s too strong? Is this a rare Goldilocks deck submitted by a community member? What does your Tasigur deck look like? Leave it in the comments section (the place where you tell me how much you hate Possibility Storm and I laugh). Until next week, keep the submissions coming, and thanks for reading!