I really like the card Indulgent Tormentor. Demons are fun, and this one has—at least when I used it at a prerelease—a relevant ability that really messes with your opponent. For Commander, though, cards like Indulgent Tormentor seem pretty useless, as 3 life is almost trivial, and that assumes the opponent doesn’t have a random Plant or Soldier token to sacrifice. So I started to think about ways to make the Tormentor, and other cards like it, more valuable in multiplayer. Then it hit me: What if we had, like, four of them? That starts getting serious. So how do we find more of them?

Spells like Cackling Counterpart make copies, but they only make one. We can run more spells like it, but we’re still limited to what we’ve drawn. If we return those spells to be cast over and over, though, we can make multiple copies of things like Indulgent Tormentor. Sultai seemed to be the obvious color combination to do this kind of thing, and what do you know? Sultai’s the last wedge in the series! But first, we need a commander, so why not one who’s just good, all on its (their?) own.

We can make nice use of this guy as the game goes long, whether nomming our own dudes or the cream of the crop from our enemies. We’re not going to Buried Alive for an instant-win combo or anything—just grind the ’Plasm for value. Meanwhile, we’re going to attempt to make a whole bunch of copies of our own guys.

As always, we start with the mana.

We don’t want to be the only one without cards in our hand, so we have a number of ways to keep refilling. Mind Unbound gets out of hand in a hurry, and Baleful Force will refill us with one pass around the table. Soul of the Harvest and Harvester of Souls take advantage of the natural ebb and flow of a game. Disciple of Bolas is underrated—chances are it belongs in every deck running , including this one. Prime Speaker Zegana is great here as part of the ninety-nine—as a commander, she’s broken, but she’s just value in a deck like this. Finally, we have some cheap creatures that offer a draw or selection. Sage Owl, for example, lets us look at four, while Elvish Visionary gums up the ground early and works well when copied.

We have a boatload of threats to keep our opponents on their toes. A bunch of Demons all offer their own brands of threats, but Desecration Demon is especially fun here—imagine four or five of those flying around. Primordials (Diluvian Primordial and Sepulchral Primordial), another Soul (Soul of Ravnica), and a Chancellor of the Spires round out our biggest threats, though it’s worth noting most of them are here because they’re good in multiples. The fact they’re big and scary is sort of a sweet side effect.

And that brings us to what this deck can really do. The gist is to create a soft, slow combination that creates difficult board states for the opponent. We start with a threat, such as the aforementioned Indulgent Tormentor. We cast Fated Infatuation, making a second one. Then, we cast Archaeomancer, returning our Fated Infatuation to make another Tormentor. We sac the Archaeomancer to our Trading Post and imprint it on our Mimic Vat, allowing us to return our Fated Infatuation over and over, making more and more tokens.

All the creatures in the deck either create a nuisance on the board or do something when they come into play, which means they can be copied or imprinted on a Mimic Vat for great value. Most of the copying spells have ways to be recast on their own. Clone Legion is really funny, whether cast on our own stuff or someone else’s. Spawning Pit and Trading Post both let us sacrifice tokens on their way out—whether from Mimic Vat or someone else’s removal—for some use. And we have a few ways to return spells to our hand so we can keep recasting our copiers. Often, just a few copies of one of our big dudes will do enough to sew up the game.

The Mimeoplasm ? Commander | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commander (0)

• Creatures (38)
• 1 Acidic Slime
• 1 Archaeomancer
• 1 Archfiend of Depravity
• 1 Augury Owl
• 1 Baleful Force
• 1 Bloodgift Demon
• 1 Bone Shredder
• 1 Chancellor of the Spires
• 1 Cryptoplasm
• 1 Dawntreader Elk
• 1 Desecration Demon
• 1 Diluvian Primordial
• 1 Disciple of Bolas
• 1 Elvish Visionary
• 1 Embodiment of Spring
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Evil Twin
• 1 Farhaven Elf
• 1 Frontier Guide
• 1 Gatecreeper Vine
• 1 Harvester of Souls
• 1 Indrik Stomphowler
• 1 Indulgent Tormentor
• 1 Masked Admirers
• 1 Merchant of Secrets
• 1 Mnemonic Wall
• 1 Mulldrifter
• 1 Nest Invader
• 1 Progenitor Mimic
• 1 Reclamation Sage
• 1 Sage Owl
• 1 Sepulchral Primordial
• 1 Shadowborn Demon
• 1 Shriekmaw
• 1 Soul of Ravnica
• 1 Soul of the Harvest
• 1 Burnished Hart
• 1 Prime Speaker Zegana

• Spells (21)
• 1 Cackling Counterpart
• 1 Fated Infatuation
• 1 Murder
• 1 Supplant Form
• 1 Tragic Slip
• 1 Clone Legion
• 1 In Garruk's Wake
• 1 Life's Finale
• 1 Necromantic Selection
• 1 Pull From the Deep
• 1 Rite of Replication
• 1 Spitting Image
• 1 Stolen Identity
• 1 Followed Footsteps
• 1 Mind Unbound
• 1 Commander's Sphere
• 1 Darksteel Ingot
• 1 Mimic Vat
• 1 Soul Foundry
• 1 Spawning Pit
• 1 Trading Post

• Lands (40)
• 10 Island
• 8 Forest
• 8 Swamp
• 1 Dimir Guildgate
• 1 Dismal Backwater
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Golgari Guildgate
• 1 Jungle Hollow
• 1 Jwar Isle Refuge
• 1 Opulent Palace
• 1 Salt Marsh
• 1 Simic Guildgate
• 1 Tainted Isle
• 1 Tainted Wood
• 1 Temple of Deceit
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 Thornwood Falls

Buy This Deck

This deck is slow—there’s no way around it. The average converted mana cost is high, and it really doesn’t start to do anything till after turn five. The thing is that once the mana is there, it starts throwing serious haymakers that muck up the board and other players’ plans. It’s also really fun to go into a game with a plan and a deck that can get there—we’re making a choice to play a deck that is not optimized for power, but instead for fun. We’re quite disruptable, but even if we are stopped, the next threat we play will be just as strong. And we can always just beat someone over the head with The Mimeoplasm. Just keep hands with lands, and start dropping bombs. Win or lose, your playgroup will be talking about the time you had five Indulgent Tormentors on the field.

As a point of reference, we have a number of ways to make tokens. Here they all are, in a handy list. Note that they don’t all work the same way—Followed Footsteps, for example, is an Aura that can only come back with Eternal Witness. The creatures just copy things ’cause they’re fun. On the other hand, the sorcery and instant versions have multiple ways of coming back.

• Followed Footsteps
• Cackling Counterpart
• Fated Infatuation
• Supplant Form
• Clone Legion
• Rite of Replication
• Spitting Image
• Stolen Identity
• Soul Foundry
• Cryptoplasm
• Evil Twin
• Progenitor Mimic

There are a lot of things that could change about this deck. The threats are all interchangeable, as are most of the answers. What would you change to make it fit your playgroup? More Wraths? More Naturalize effects? Also, do you think this deck qualifies as 75%? It leans into power over consistency, doesn’t attempt to keep anyone else from playing Magic, and can even use opponents’ threats against them. That seems pretty 75% to me, but I’m no expert.

This deck either goes big or goes home. Commander is the format, though, where we can afford to play around like this—if we lose, at least we lose with style. And if we win, it’s because we managed to have several copies of Indulgent Tormentor.

Total cost: $74.60