I realize that Gangnam-style references have been granted flying until the end of the turn and have used this temporary ability to jump the shark. Still, when I saw the card Dragon-Style Twins spoiled at PAX over the weekend, I got a real kick out of them. Not only that, but they inspired me to try to build around a commander that also gives things flying temporarily.

I’ll be honest; I was originally excited to try to build around Narset, Enlightened Master, another card Wizards spoiled at PAX. The more I tried, the more I realized I had two ideas on how to build Narset. One was to go creatureless and use Proteus Staff (homogenous), and the other was to try to get a ton of swings in and build Voltron (boring). Either way, it wouldn’t make for a good article. I will probably end up building Narset soon because I like how it’s going to play out, but it’s not going to make a great 75% deck, so I’m going to leave it alone for now.

Failing that, I went back to Dragon-Style Twins. I wasn’t very impressed with the first creature spoiled with the prowess ability, but Dragon-Style Twins seems to be a great impetus for playing some spells—and not just spells, either. We want to trigger both of Tibor and Lumia’s abilities if we can. What’s the best deck we can build in which all of our noncreature spells are both blue and red? Remember that one of our 75% principles says that if we build around a theme, we naturally restrict our card pool, allowing us to play cards without worrying about their power levels because our smaller card pool will focus our deck. This gives us a powerful deck and eliminates the temptation to keep tinkering with it, and that will eventually skew it out of control.

We’re going to have to see our creatures and artifacts do some real work here since we can’t add cards such as Rhystic Study, Bribery, Gravitational Shift, or Cast Through Time. Still, I think the deck we end up with will be serviceable, fun to play, and capable of wreaking havoc on even the spikiest of play groups. Besides, there are so many very good U/R spells such as Prophetic Bolt and Steam Augury. This is going to be fun.

Tibor and Lumia ? Commander | Jason Alt

• Commander (0)

• Creatures (24)
• 1 Archaeomancer
• 1 Crackleburr
• 1 Diluvian Primordial
• 1 Djinn Illuminatus
• 1 Dominating Licid
• 1 Dominus of Fealty
• 1 Dragon-Style Twins
• 1 Gelectrode
• 1 Glen Elendra Archmage
• 1 Goblin Electromancer
• 1 Hypersonic Dragon
• 1 Inferno Titan
• 1 Izzet Chronarch
• 1 Molten Primordial
• 1 Nivix Guildmage
• 1 Nucklavee
• 1 River Kelpie
• 1 Spellbound Dragon
• 1 Wee Dragonauts
• 1 Wonder
• 1 Godo, Bandit Warlord
• 1 Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius
• 1 Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind
• 1 Talrand, Sky Summoner

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 1 Dack Fayden
• 1 Ral Zarek

• Spells (19)
• 1 Cerebral Vortex
• 1 Dragonshift
• 1 Electrolyze
• 1 Izzet Charm
• 1 Leap of Flame
• 1 Prophetic Bolt
• 1 Research // Development
• 1 Schismotivate
• 1 Steam Augury
• 1 Thoughtflare
• 1 Turn // Burn
• 1 Call the Skybreaker
• 1 Epic Experiment
• 1 Invoke the Firemind
• 1 Teleportal
• 1 Clout of the Dominus
• 1 Cloven Casting
• 1 Mirror Sheen
• 1 Quicksilver Dagger

• Artifacts (15)
• 1 Basilisk Collar
• 1 Darksteel Plate
• 1 Gilded Lotus
• 1 Illusionist's Bracers
• 1 Izzet Cluestone
• 1 Izzet Keyrune
• 1 Izzet Signet
• 1 Mimic Vat
• 1 Mizzium Transreliquat
• 1 Neko-Te
• 1 Quietus Spike
• 1 Scythe of the Wretched
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Swiftfoot Boots
• 1 Sword of Kaldra

• Lands (39)
• 15 Island
• 15 Mountain
• 1 Cascade Bluffs
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Desolate Lighthouse
• 1 Izzet Boilerworks
• 1 Izzet Guildgate
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Steam Vents
• 1 Sulfur Falls
• 1 Temple of Epiphany

Buy This Deck

It really sucks not to be able to play fun Tibor and Lumia stuff like Charisma, but we don’t want our deck to look like everyone else’s, do we? Having to go a bit deeper on the list of eligible instants, sorceries, and enchantments helped me come across spells like Schismotivate, a spell I wouldn’t have normally thought to jam, but one that really gets there if we’re trying to KO someone with Dragon-Style Twins. I really want to swing with Twins and Teleportal, and Leap of Flame should be a big boost.

I didn’t want this to be a Voltron deck, so I mostly included Equipment that would be good on most of the creatures in the deck if Tibor and Lumia was tucked or if you grew bored doing the same things. Obviously, there is a lot of Equipment that will make Tibor and Lumia very good if you equip them and play a spell. Damaging each creature when you have a Neko-Te, Scythe of the Wretched, Basilisk Collar, or the like is going to gain you a ton of value. But those Equipment work well on Inferno Titan, Gelectrode, or any creature that has a Quicksilver Dagger on it.

I think River Kelpie can give you a real YOLO mentality when wiping the board with Tibor and Lumia when they have deathtouch. If you have a Wonder in your ’yard, super. If not, Kelpie can draw you a ton of cards and come back. I considered Cauldron of Souls, but that just seemed too cute and not enough consistent. I don’t plan on being able to wrath every game, so relying on Cauldron with no tutors seems weak.

I wanted to find a few more creatures like Dominating Licid that do good approximations of spells I couldn’t include, but that defeats the purpose of the color restriction to an extent, so I decided not to spend so much time searching. Dominating Licid is going to be a big boost to the deck, clearing blockers, turning into an Aura to survive Tibor and Lumia’s wrath, and generally helping the deck scale.

When more creatures with prowess are printed, I’d like to evaluate each one of them for the deck, so it’s likely this could receive an update in the next few weeks. The deck is a bit mana-hungry, but even playing a simple Schismotivate on a Dragon-Style Twins should be a real, formidable threat.

All in all, I think what we’ve done here is come up with a decent restriction to limit our card pool, built a dynamic and explosive deck that doesn’t feel like the same old boring Voltron deck we could have built, and found a 75% deck that can hang with the best of them but that won’t oppress the local game store. How do you think we did? Do you have any suggestions for cards we could have included? Feeling saucy and want to take a crack at coming up with twenty-four gold creatures so we don’t have any mono-colored, nonartifact spells? Leave it in the comments.

As always, thanks for reading and for leaving me great stuff in the comments section. You can hit me up on Twitter @jasonealt or e-mail me at altjason17 at gmail dot com if you have deck ideas or requests. Thanks for reading!