Readers!

I am a value maven, as I am sure you all know. If there is value in doing it, then I'm all about it and if that value is repeatable, I'm about it repeatedly. I had a thing this year that I basically have already abandoned because it was anathema to my building style where I was going to play more Instants and Sorceries. I really tried, but I just got so bored. Give me Enchantments because they give you value every turn. Some Creatures give you value every turn, too, and some give you a ton of value if you're doing a little work for it. Are we going to do a little work for it? I mean, obviously, I wouldn't even finish this paragraph if we weren't. Whenever you encounter a creature with an ability that triggers when it enters the battlefield, I have a sort of gut feeling that tells me whether I think it's worth doing that thing I always do where I dust off Cloudstone Curio and Erratic Portal again. Is the juice worth the squeeze? Or, in this case, is it worth the scream?

Screamyboi, as he likes to be called, is not a boy at all but rather a robot that turns into a plane and then back into a robot. He is what is known as a "decepticon" because the guy who pretends to be a semi truck thinks it's deceptive that Starscream pretends to be a plane. Wait, a plane? I wanted the boombox guy. What's his name? Soundwave? Yeah, I wanted Soundwave?

I'm being told it's too late to switch, which is fine because I am actually excited to brew with screamo. If I am giving you the impression that I do not bear the same sort of reverence for Transformers that I do for Street Fighter, for example, I guess I'm just showing my age. Kids born in the 80s love two things - one incredibly stupid television series that only existed to sell toys to kids and making other people feel uncomfortable for genuinely loving their favorite embarrassing and deeply 30 minute stupid toy commercial. Mine was Masters of the Universe. I don't know why, I was like 4 when that Dolph Lundgren movie came out and my parents have a tape of me running around in my underwear and a bandolier that made me look way more like Sean Connery in Zardoz than Dolph Lundgren in Masters of the Universe. I assume if I try to put my parents in an inferior nursing home, that video of me jumping up on the couch in cowboy boots and screaming "I HAVE THE POWER" until our downstairs neighbors banged on the ceiling with a broom hits YouTube. Well played, Mom and Dad. My point is all of our favorite stuff is in a way indefensible but also unassailable. Transformers wasn't my thing but my point is, I have a thing, too, and it's stupid also and I'm not better than you because I got a laundry basket full of discarded He-Man hand-me-downs like Stinkor and the one dude who shot actual sparks out of his mouth and not a laundry basket full of robots that hide their sinister nature by disguising themselves as enormous hand-cannons complete with scope. So, while it's true that I don't have the love and reverence for this IP you might, I am building a fun deck and I'm going to give it a name I am proud of (Decepticon Air) so I hope you keep reading and I hope we can agree that Thundercats was terrible and we're both better than those fans.

Starscream turns into a jet which means he is rad which means he's a Decepticon. Kids everywhere spent every decade since the 1980s thinking it was unbelievably useful to have a jet on your team when you're fighting against a bunch of pieces of construction equipment and a Volkswagen Beetle. WotC Research and Design, not so much, for you see, they have made a jet plane that leaves something to be desired.

A vehicle that does not need to be crewed is a cool innovation within the design space and I am honestly not inclined to nitpick the design of this card. The one aspect I do not like is the idea of having the back of Starscream in play for more than one turn, ever. I want to introduce the Monarch into the game and then always be the Monarch. Hitting someone with Starscream and then later hitting whoever hit them to get the crown back is one way to get Monarch status, giving it the record for second slowest way to become a Monarch, second only to waiting like 75 years for the previous monarch to die of natural causes. There are faster ways to become The Monarch, and if you saw my previous mention of Cloudstone Curio, that was absolutely foreshadowing, we're absolutely going to do some shenanigans. Because, you see, our Commander is great for being the Monarch but not great for making you the Monarch, and not for recapturing the Monarch. The back of Starscream is bad, and creatures hitting you flipping him over is more bad. One card can solve both problems for us.

It says "target player" and not "each player" which is a bit of a bummer but can't be helped. If we bounce this a bunch, however, we stay the Monarch, someone has to sac a dude, and we can use those same blink and bounce tools to reset Starscream, ensuring we're always the Monarch and our weird plan of killing them just by owning a copy of Seizan, Perverter of Truth stays on track. Starscream is a very popular card that they balanced by making it difficult to keep him face-up. If they don't want us to keep him face-up, that's exactly what I will do, then. We're making a blinky, bouncy, Black deck, babies. Look alive.

Decepticon Air | Commander | Jason Alt

• Commander (1)
• 1 Starscream, Power Hungry

• Creatures (24)
• 1 Braids, Arisen Nightmare
• 1 Crypt Ghast
• 1 Custodi Lich
• 1 Dauthi Voidwalker
• 1 Draugr Necromancer
• 1 Dread
• 1 Dread Presence
• 1 Fate Unraveler
• 1 Garrulous Sycophant
• 1 Gisa, Glorious Resurrector
• 1 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
• 1 Morbid Opportunist
• 1 Pontiff of Blight
• 1 Ravenous Chupacabra
• 1 Sheoldred, the Apocalypse
• 1 Staunch Throneguard
• 1 Tenacious Underdog
• 1 Thorn of the Black Rose
• 1 Burnished Hart
• 1 Noxious Gearhulk
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Gonti, Lord of Luxury
• 1 Seizan, Perverter of Truth
• 1 Vilis, Broker of Blood

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Liliana, Dreadhorde General

• Instants (6)
• 1 Deadly Dispute
• 1 Deadly Rollick
• 1 Malakir Rebirth
• 1 Necrologia
• 1 Saw in Half
• 1 Village Rites

• Sorceries (7)
• 1 Damnable Pact
• 1 Dark Deal
• 1 Feed the Swarm
• 1 Night's Whisper
• 1 Predators' Hour
• 1 Read the Bones
• 1 Sign in Blood

• Enchantments (9)
• 1 Black Market Connections
• 1 Court of Ambition
• 1 Cunning Rhetoric
• 1 Exquisite Blood
• 1 Greed
• 1 Marchesa's Decree
• 1 No Mercy
• 1 Phyrexian Arena
• 1 Underworld Dreams

• Artifacts (18)
• 1 Bolas's Citadel
• 1 Bontu's Monument
• 1 Cloudstone Curio
• 1 Commander's Sphere
• 1 Coveted Jewel
• 1 Crawlspace
• 1 Erratic Portal
• 1 Fellwar Stone
• 1 Howling Mine
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Panharmonicon
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Sunstone
• 1 Sword of the Animist
• 1 Teferi's Puzzle Box
• 1 Thought Vessel
• 1 Vorpal Sword

• Lands (33)
• 25 Snow-Covered Swamp
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Cabal Coffers
• 1 Cabal Stronghold
• 1 Myriad Landscape
• 1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1 War Room

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This looks like a lot of fun, honestly. Even if you don't get one of the many artifact-based ways to do shenanigans with your creatures, we are still a very solid mono-Black deck that is up to some shenanigans. I'll be honest - this deck came together a little too easily. Even with me changing almost all of the creatures and adding a lot of "cute" artifacts, this looks just like every Post, Son of Rich deck out there.

That said, this deck built itself for a reason - it's good and it's fun and you're running Snow-Covered Swamps which are always a blast. Draugr Necromancer and Sunstone alone are enough of an impetus, and Dread Presence rewards you for playing a lot of Basic Swamps, which I did. I wish I had more post-game to do here, but, honestly, this deck is what it is. I added a lot more blink and bounce than the stock list and barring adding another color, we basically just have Artifacts to do that for us. That said, this deck is going to be fun, resilient and it's got a few loops that can be quite frustrating for the opponent. I hope this is as fun to play as it was to build - until next time!