Readers!

Welcome back to something I have been internally calling "The 75% Project" - a name I have never mentioned in any of these articles. My piece last week was an exploration of cards you would need to approach a 75% build with new commanders from Guilds of Ravnica, and this week I thought I would take the reverse approach; I want to talk about important, build-around cards and how I would approach them. I'll be talking about which commanders would be a good fit for those cards and which other cards would be a good fit for the deck. Naturally, the decks would be 75% in nature, much like my idea for a Tajic, Legion's Edge deck built around damage-based removal and cards like Repercussion last week - a build I have been seriously considering building for real now that a week has gone by and I'm more excited about it. We don't need more preamble than this - welcome back, thanks for reading, check out last week's article if you missed it and let's get into trouble with some Guilds of Ravnica cards.

Thousand-Year Storm

TYS, as it likes to be called, is a very exciting card. Sunbird's Invocation and Swarm Intelligence captured my imagination when they were release and I have had a lot of success and fun putting big, splashy enchantments like that in my decks. Thousand-Year Storm is aptly named because a card this ridiculous and fun only comes along a few times every epoch and it pays to be ready when it does. I don't want to rehash what I said in my set review but my mind has been going a mile a minute every time I think about this card since it was spoiled.

Niv-Mizzet (all of them) - I think Niv decks are an obvious place to start. Thousand-Year Storm can help you play a bunch of wheel effects, especially Winds of Change and Tolarian Winds. They're so cheap and you can dome your opponents with all of the card draw. When you can play a bunch of cheap cantrips, keep your hand full, and dome them in the process, you've got a recipe for having some big, splashy turns. Seething Song type cards, wheels, cantrips and the general infrastructure of the deck sort of ensure you will get Thousand-Year Storm reliably since you'll see a lot of your deck every game. That's good since those cards not only pair with Storm (and Niv-Mizzet), they also find it, which means you load up on that stuff and you won't be spread too thin trying to be a deck built around a commander AND an enchantment.

Kess, Dissident Mage - Kess is a pretty "classic" example of the commander people are tending to build with. The ability to Snapcast a spell every turn is useful, and I like the idea of using spells like Ghostly Flicker with Kess to buy more than one spell out of the graveyard on a big turn. Adding a spell like Lightning Bolt to the stack 5 times then again 6 times in a turn for two mana is doable in a deck like this and I like the idea of flickering and bouncing Kess to circumvent the "once a turn" clause. Don't forget to run ways to tutor for Storm if you're into that and don't forget you can run Ill-Gotten Gains and Past in Flames.

Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder - The last 75% Thousand-Year Storm idea I had was to play a few really big spells rather than many small ones. By all means, we'll still play cantrips, but our spells like Seething Song will be even more important as we try and ramp to a big spell. Playing some cheap or free cantrips, getting like five copies of Manamorphose and using the mana to play a Mana Geyser 6 times should give us all the mana we need to cast a big spell. With Thousand-Year Storm copying spells and Yidris giving each copy cascade, we're going to have gigantic turns. The good thing about Yidris is when you have a decent amount of mana and can cast a spell that costs six or seven or ritual into it, you'll at least get Cascade value even if you don't have Storm out. Big Mana Yidris, in my ideal scenario, would cast a Villainous Wealth whether or not I had a Thousand-Year Storm in play and that makes me cackle like a supervillain.

Cards to buy for any 75% Thousand-Year Storm deck - Mana Geyser, Treasure Cruise, Gitaxian Probe, Past in Flames, Frantic Search, Reiterate, Bonus Round.

Omnispell Adept

Spellvish Piper, as she likes to be called, is a great way to pay three mana for a spell that costs more than three mana, thereby playing it earlier and having mana left over to do other things. The more mana the spell costs, the better an idea it was to play it for three mana and a creature ability activation. Having Arcane Artisan and other ways to cheat at Magic in the same deck couldn't hurt, and having Paradox Engine to keep untapping Adept is a good idea, also. Playing a big sorcery for three mana on their turn? Sign me up!

Naru Meha, Master Wizard - I personally love the idea of paying seven mana for two copies of a seven mana spell, and that's exactly what this dynamic duo can do for you. The way Naru Meha is being built currently relies on cheaper spells it's advantageous to copy and being able to reliably cast Naru from your hand rather than paying commander tax. With the possibility of getting cheaper casts, we can play bigger spells. That likely means we'll want to run cards like Arcane Melee and Jace's Sanctum, but that's never the worst thing in the world. If you have Paradox Engine and some mana rocks out, you can draw your entire deck with Enter the Infinite and cast every instant and sorcery in your hand. That sounds like the kind of fun I like to have, especially if you are casting Brain Freeze on everyone after you Capsize all of their permanents. That's not a nice thing to do, but it's very 75% if you're assembling a combo with that many pieces. You know me - I'd be using Cloudstone Curio and Crystal Shard to keep Naru in my hands to be cast as a four-mana Fork rather than letting her go to the command zone.

Thada Adel, Acquisitor or Daxos of Meletis - If I'm going as 75% as possible, Omnispell Adept would be in the deck mainly to see if I couldn't ramp to early casts of big, game-breaking spells like Expropriate, Beacon of Tomorrows, Clone Legion, Time Stretch and Blatant Thievery. You can cast those spells pretty reliably if you steal their mana rocks, which is what I like to do with Thada, but an early Omnispell Adept accelerates your timetable a ton. River's Rebuke them out of the game, get full value from Aminatou's Augury or just Dig Through Time. Don't forget you can cast big, powerful sorcery spells on their turn with Adept to really screw up combat.

Kruphix, God of Horizons - This is the biggest big mana creature that has access to Blue in my opinion. Casting big Blue spells is great, but being able to cast big Green ones, too is even better. This seems like a bit of a non-bo with Adept at first, but if anything happens to Kruphix and your mana pool drains, you want a backup plan. Not only that, Adept also works with Seedborn Muse to make sure you can cast big, impactful spells every main phase. Also, Kruphix's no hand size clause is great in a deck where you have a ton of big spells to play and can pick your moment. This is an odd choice for an Adept deck on the surface, but I think it could do a lot of work in a big mana Kruphix deck provided you weren't mostly using X spells.

Cards to buy for any Omnispell Adept deck - Expropriate, Paradox Engine, Time Stretch, The Mirari Conjecture (Sounds like a Dan Brown airport novel, doesn't it?), Aminatou's Augury, Clone Legion, Enter the Infinite.

Underrealm Lich

Underrealm Lich is the final installment in my "I wish this could be my commander" series. I slept on Lich at first, but once I saw how much work he was doing in conjunction with other cards commonly found in decks that contained Green and Black cards, I realized I should be jamming this a lot more. If you can't draw a ton of cards, draw a smaller number of cards well.

Muldrotha, the Gravetide - This is a boring, obvious deck to talk about, so I'll only briefly say that Lich, The Gitrog Monster, and Laboratory Maniac is GG and that's pretty funny. It's a stupid combo, but Muldrotha is a deck where you'll catch a lot of heat for merely building the deck. You could disguise this combo by hiding it in another deck like Sidisi, Brood Tyrant or Vorosh, the Hunter but it's worth knowing this exists. Sylvan Library with Lich means you look at 3 cards 3 times and put none of them back. You can fill your graveyard quite quickly this way.

Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord - Elf Liches need to stick together, and while it's obvious and cool to use Underrealm Lich to grow our hand, filling our graveyard with creatures we can bring back, I don't hate just having a big 'yard to fuel effects like Izoni, Thousand-Eyed or Jarad. Being able to KO someone in one hit with Jarad is powerful, and between Jarad and Lord of Extinction, you could clobber people pretty hard. Make creatures unblockable with Whispersilk Cloak or Rogue's Passage. You could also say "attacking is for suckers" and sac that huge Lord of Extinction to Jarad and drain the whole table at once.

Pharika, God of Affliction - The last non-obvious home for Lich is to fuel Pharika. With plenty of ways to double your counters, getting a bunch of deathtouch creatures in exchange for your fallen comrades is a bargain. I like Pharika more than dedicated token producers like Izoni because you can use Pharika to thwart their 'yard-based plans as well as make your own, making Pharika a very versatile commander. You can fill your yard with Pharika fodder and at the same time, make a Muldrotha players' day miserable. You can even sac your tokens to Phyrexian Altar to keep activating Pharika. Muldrotha and Meren are obvious home for Lich but these 75% commanders are just as potent.

Cards to buy for any Underrealm Lich deck - Phyrexian Arena, Sylvan Library, Journey to Eternity, Dread Return, Sheoldred, Whispering One, Kessig Cagebreakers, Living Death, Deadbridge Chant.

That does it for me this week! I haven't been super inspired to brew much with the commanders from Guilds of Ravnica but a lot of these cards are a lot of fun to play and I wish they could be my commander. This time next month I'll likely have two or three decks that all feature Thousand-Year Storm if my current building rate continues, and next week I may throw in a polished list for that Tajic deck I am so excited about. Thanks for reading and let me know in the comments if you thought this article format was something you want to see it again or if you hate it and want it retired. Until next time!