Casual Commander Nights with Mathas, Godzilla, and a False God

Posted on May 6, 2020

Over the last few weeks, many of us have taken to the internet to play our games of Magic. Unable to play in paper due to the recent global crisis and subsequent quarantining, players the world over have taken to the likes of MTG Arena, Magic Online, and good old fashioned webcam games to get their fix. Some have even gone so far as to utilize games like Tabletop Simulator just to emulate the game with what they have. Some groups have even started streaming their friendly games as a way to help get others through this difficult time.

I am no exception to this. Over the last month or so, I've found myself playing a lot more Commander with friends over Magic Online to help have some fun since I can't make it to my LGS. As I began to stream recently, it turned into a regular weekly outing that we'd stream and play up for laughs. The hope being, of course, that we could just cut loose, have a good time, and bring some joy to one another as well as to others.

This series, which we've simply been calling "Casual Commander Nights," has been a joy and has been bringing a ton of wild decks and interactions to the table. Today I wanted to talk about some of the decks I've played over the last few weeks and one of the decks I'll be playing this week. First up is #LuckVampire Mathas, Fiend Seeker, which I ran during our first night recording the series!

#LuckVampire Mathas | Commander | Kendra Smith

Commander (1)
1 Mathas, Fiend Seeker

You might be wondering why the theme of this deck is "#LuckVampire" and what that even means. It actually comes from an in-joke with me and fellow content creator and friend Erin Campbell. She'd often joke that I'd show up in people's streams, suck their luck away so their record would tank, and then I'd go and spike an event. So, naturally, when she invited me to play Commander with her a few years ago, I put this little deck together based around that theme.

I liked the deck for a lot of reasons. For one, it plays pretty hard into the luck theme with the likes of coin flips. If I were running this in paper, I'd also probably consider a few oddball silver-bordered cards that require die rolls, such as Goblin Tutor or Strategy, Schmategy. For another, I also like that curses work within the idea that I'm sort of "cursing" whoever else's luck I'm sucking away. This proved especially effective when I ended up playing against friend Mike Vadman's Norin the Wary deck thanks to the surprisingly powerful Trespasser's Curse.

The most original aspect of this list for me was, in fact, the coin flip effects. I'm no stranger to this style of play, having implemented in the past in decks like alternate win-cons Brion Stoutarm (which morphed into a Zedruu, the Greathearted deck when Commander 2011 released). Because this is so much more all-in, I found myself trying out cards I simply hadn't previously, such as Impulsive Maneuvers, Risky Move, and Rakdos, the Showstopper. All of these have turned out to be a riot when being played and are always guaranteed to make tons of big, splashy plays at the table. You haven't lived until you see the reactions at a table when you play Volatile Rig.

The rest of the deck - including the curses, funny enough - came from a lot of looking around EDH Rec. Truth be told, I'm still not quite sure why the curses seem so standard, yet somehow it manages to work super well all the same. It's a great deck that's been an absolute joy to build. If you want to play it, you might need to cut a handful of the higher end cards like Mana Crypt and the Duals, but it shouldn't be too difficult to find some solid lands or mana rocks to put in their place.

I will say, though, that if there's one thing that bums me out, it's that I can't play the new Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths card Chevill, Bane of Monsters in this list. That's because the card is Golgari colors and so can't work in this list due to the Green. That's fine, though, because I instead went and build a whole deck around a new Ikoria legendary for our Ikoria Commander night last week: Godzilla, King of the Monsters (aka Zilortha, Strength Incarnate).

Go Go, Godzilla! | Commander | Kendra Smith

Commander (1)
1 Zilortha, Strength Incarnate

Instants (2)
1 Beast Within
1 Chaos Warp

This deck posed some number of challenges in building it. As I started putting it together, I kept wanting to put in a bunch of classic creatures that I remembered from when I was younger. Things like Deadly Insect, Hungry Mist, and so on. Big creatures with huge power and very little toughness. It seemed like the ideal sort of thing this new reverse Doran, the Siege Tower effect wanted after all. As I looked, however, they either struck me as a card that barely even passed the vanilla test by today's standards or else just weren't all that great. Ball Lightning effects weren't great for Commander either for the most part since they were usually one use and then they were gone for good, baring a Genesis hitting the graveyard.

As a result of this, many of the cards in the deck look a bit more modernized. Many of them don't even have a huge disparity between power and toughness, though I did still go out of my way to try focusing more on creatures with higher power. A few of the old cards did make the cut, with classics like Eron the Relentless and Giant Solifuge finding a fresh home. I even discovered that the recurrable Gigapede, once a card forever doomed to staying in bulk piles, finds new life here as a body that keeps coming back. It can even fill your yard with cards you want, like Genesis or Brawn.

The rest of the deck is pretty straight-forward as far as a power-themed Commander might be expected to be. Spit out big creatures and make them attack. As one of my group's fellow players, Mike Petschek, put it, the deck is essentially "unga bunga, creature good!" Unsurprisingly, a few newer cards fit right at home in this deck, with the likes of Proud Wildbonder and Lukka, Coppercoat Outcast feeling right at home in this deck.

The point is to go big, go hard, or go home, and boy does it ever. I had a total blast with the deck last week right up until Magic Online crashed due to a few too many triggers on the screen. If you want to try it in paper, though, I'd definitely recommend finding a few swaps for cards like Eureka, Gaea's Cradle, and Survival of the Fittest. These can be particularly cost prohibitive, but all generally have pretty easy swaps in the likes of Hypergenesis, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx; Growing Rites of Itlimoc, and Fauna Shaman. If you're looking for a great way to make use of your buy-a-box promo when the set hits in paper next week, I can't recommend this enough.

Finally, there's one more list. Tonight the gang is gearing up to do another run on my stream and people are prepping what to play. While I'm going to settle in and brew up something fresh, I also wanted to break out one of my longtime favorites to play on stream and record. That list is Karona, False God Five-Color Girl Power.

Karona Girl Power | Commander | Kendra Smith

Commander (1)
1 Karona, False God

Much like my Sharuum, the Hegemon list I talked about when Throne of Eldraine was coming out in September, this list is a deck I've enjoyed playing with for years. The original version of this list amazingly look very similar to this, as the deck features lots of oldies, but has changed drastically since I first put it together in my college years. The theme here is a five-color deck themed around Karona's girl squad, therefore featuring characters who appear in the art of every non-land card to be or are female-presenting. Some of the cards may not appear this way in the list above, but through promos and alternate printings, it's able to work.

This deck is about as straight-forward with EDH fun as you can get. Tons of good stuff with nothing that'll overtly break your table's game in half. It manages to find the tools and utility that you need with cards like Orim's Thunder, Austere Command, Anticipate, Joiner Adept, Swords to Plowshares, and more. Once you get going you can drop big planeswalkers, powerhouse Tammy cards, or even the big bad False God herself. If there was ever a great way to create havoc and and push to a game's conclusion, playing Karona is certainly the way to go about it.

(card pics: Captain Sisay, Maelstrom Archangel, and Braids, Conjurer Adept)

The awesome thing about the theme as well is that it's in fact quite customizable to fit one's needs. Cards like Akroma's Vengeance, Joraga Treespeaker, Mother of Runes (or Giver of Runes), and Damia, Sage of Stone all fill great roles if you want to try them out in the deck. Heck you could even stay somewhat on theme and try out some of the Decree cards from Scourge, all of which feature a silhouetted Karona somewhere in the art. You can even find a handful of surprising gems out there too. Let me tell you, you haven't lived until you've seen the look on an opponent's face when you pay Jund mana to draw a card with Xira Arien.

Of all the decks I've shown today, this one is by far the most pricey. This list has been played on Magic Online as is thanks to the accessibility of the program. Online this deck only costs around $250 in tix, but in paper, it's probably closer to about $7000 on a quick guesstimate. As such, it's one that almost demands finding budgetary solutions, especially in the mana base. While the shocklands are pretty reasonable inclusions right now to their recent reprintings, it might be hard to justify a full set of fetches and original duals. For these, consider the Magic 2010 check lands, the Shards of Alara and Khans of Tarkir tri-lands, or even the brand new Ikoria tri-cycle lands like Zagoth Triome or Ketria Triome.

A few of the long pricey cards in this list like Queen Marchesa and Maelstrom Archangel even saw some price drops thanks to Mystery Boosters. You could even throw in a Sen Triplets here if you happened to get one in one of those packs. Survival of the Fittest once again sees a wonderfully easy swap with Fauna Shaman, but I wouldn't count out something like Evolutionary Leap either. You can also have Azusa swap with another ramp card like Joraga Treespeaker or perhaps Frontier Guide if you opt for more basics. There's tons of options and ways you can build around this theme if you want to show off some girl power!

I know I will be tonight at 8PM with the usual gang of Alex Ullman, Mike "Big Mike" Petschek, and Mike "Dr. Mike" Vadman on my Twitch channel. If you want to come hang out and join the fun, the link will be posted below here. I'm excited to break out one of my favorite decks once again, and might just have to put together a fresh surprise as well. The fun times are just beginning and I could see us continuing playing like this even when the quarantine times come to an end. Magic is, at the end of the day, one of the most fun things to do with friends after all, and nothing's going to stop us all from enjoying it how we do.

Kendra Smith

Twitter: @TheMaverickGal

Twitch: twitch.tv/themaverickgirl

YouTube: Kendra Smith

TAGS articles, casual, edh, commander, decklist, karona false god, mathas fiend seeker, kendra smith, zilortha strength incarnate, 05062020