Locations
About the elephant in the room: I'm quoting Dana Carvey's George Bush: "Not gonna do it." I don't think less of people who do want to discuss the rotten fruit; I understand, as that's how things are done. You might believe I'm self-righteous and a party-pooper, but I'm ignoring it. I'm against the idea of proxies in general for Commander, so it does me no good. I don't think he was a hero, but an idiotic anonymous martyr who won't be able to cash in on the one thing he can't receive: fame. He's lost a job in an industry just to be the cool guy for twenty minutes. Everyone in Magic is now robbed for having experienced it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
Thank you for understanding. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I wish I were in your shoes.
Futurama is streaming on my computer screen as I shuffle up the deck for another time. It's not the first time this deck has gone under the microscope. I like to goldfish my decks after I alter them to see if I like the changes. The foil Rafiq of the Many, the first foil I ever opened, stares up at me through the ripped sleeve, and I feel like I need to get some new ones for this deck. After overshuffling the deck once again, I deal out my hand of seven face-down, then pick them up and look at them:
foil Wilt-Leaf Liege
foil Solemn Simulacrum
Le sigh. It's one of those typical I-need-one-more-land hands that you dread to see. While I could go turn-one Forest, turn-two tap, Ruins returning Forest and casting Into the North to hit my nonexistent 3-drop next turn, I wonder if I want to do it. I've learned that you never judge a hand on what you would draw next if you mulligan. If this was a multiplayer game, I would get to draw no matter if I went first or not, but you have to ignore that eighth card. No matter how tempting it is. I flipped the top card of the library over for fun.
If you don't know how to do the official Commander mulligan, it goes like this: Exile the cards you don't want to keep, and draw that mana cards minus 1. (If I wanted to do that with my hand, I would've tossed Wilt-Leaf Liege, Ajani Goldmane, and Konda's Banner, and drawn two cards—Terramorphic Expanse and a mystery card. Exile three, draw two.) You can do that as many times as you want until you like your hand. Once that happens, you shuffle all the cards you exiled back into your library. If you want a visual representation, check out the video I did a while ago. (If you want more videos, let me know and I will see what I can do. Now that Jeremy Blair is here, maybe we can do some teaming up.)
After playing with these mulligan rules for a while, I'm beginning to like them more and more. Some people still draw seven, then do the partial Paris (which is what the Commander way is called), and that's fine. This partial Paris way really rewards knowing your deck, as you have to know which cards you don't mind shuffling back into your library.
"Good news, everyone!" shouts Professor Farnsworth from my speakers. Wrong Professor, bad news. I shuffle my hand back into my library and try it again. My new hand of seven:
foil Glare of Subdual
foil Seaside Citadel
At least one of the new cards I swapped in showed up; that would be the Clasp. I stare at this hand as it shows what's going on with this deck: too much stuff.
The first article I wrote for ManaNation (now, obviously, GatheringMagic), was a piece called "Oscar Tan Hates Your EDH Deck." It said that you had to have a different path of winning besides around your Commander. But that's been the whole issue with this deck that I keep shuffling up; I have way too many paths here. It's all convoluted and mixed up to where I don't know what I'm doing half the time. It's evolved from a deck based around having Rafiq on the table and attack triggers . . . to the mess.
I've got Konda's Banner in a deck where I want the Exalted to trigger, there's a +1/+1 counter theme with Sovereigns of Lost Alara, and Equilibrium in a deck where I've dwindled the number of ETB abilities down. And now with Duel Decks: Knights vs. Dragons, I've shoved a Knight subtheme in there as well.
This deck has more things shoved inside it than Lindsay Lohan's jacket pockets.
The obvious thing to do would be to deconstruct it, yet again, and find out what I want to do. Or I can decide to build several decks for all the different subthemes I want to have. I look down at my large poster board with my fifteen Commander deck ideas and decide I don't want to do that. With too many ideas half-done, I don't want to commit several more.
Holding up the foil Glare of Subdual, I know what one of my problems is. When I get a foil in my Commander deck, I don't want to take it out. I've got so many of the foils across the different subthemes that I feel bad when I take them out. I could trade them away afterward, of course. Being a hoarder, I don't want to end up in a situation where I don't have that foil when I really want to put it in a deck. Yes, it's a personal problem; leave me alone.
I continue to shuffle up the deck and deal out new hands. After goldfishing a few games, I still don't know what to do. I want to win with my Commander, but I don't just want to rely on him for everything. It's time to break down the deck to see what I have going. Each of these subthemes work well with Rafiq, which is why they were included in the first place.
+1/+1 Counters
Attacking with Rafiq with plenty of +1/+1 counters can make it lethal pretty quickly. But before Scars of Mirrodin came around with Proliferate, there were some other good uses with +1/+1 counters, including this combo:
Juniper Order Ranger certain makes any creature bigger (plus itself, obviously), but with help from the Frogling, they can dominate a game together. Using the Graft ability when you play Rafiq, you have built-in protection as long as you have the mana. It's been relevant more than once. And it's also a politics card. Look at Plaxcaster; it seems so bored and indifferent. Make a note: I need to get one of those altered to look like the hypnotoad.
All glory to the Hypnotoad.
Auras
Yes, I've got the old Sovereigns of Lost Alara/Eldrazi Conscription combo in there. Though, to be fair, I had that combo before it was used in a competitive Standard deck and bought foil Conscriptions when the set was released. But there's more than just that aura in the deck.
An unblockable, Lifelink, Indestructible, Flying, Vigilant, Double Striking creature can be pretty powerful (as would be expected). When you've got multiple multicolored creatures in the deck, you might not always want to wait to cast your auras on your Commander. Luckily, there's an app for that:
Combat tricks galore! Plus, it interacts with the +1/+1 counter theme. Move +1/+1 counters to another creature to protect it from being Swords to Plowshares' favorite target with Frogling. I told you guys I love synergy.
Army Strategy/Knights
One of my favorite cards in this deck is Konda's Banner. Card note: A creature can't get more than a +2/+2 bonus no matter how many creature types and colors it shares. Still, a +2/+2 bonus seems rather good when you combine Hero of Bladehold and its Battle Cry. There are other power/toughness bonus cards in the deck, including Beastmaster Ascension and Murkfiend Liege that want more than one creature attacking. Knights smash! However, this is a little awkward when combined with
Exalted
Finest Hour would like a word with all of the attacking creatures. Yes, you get the double Exalted bonus if only one creature attacks. And if that creature is Rafiq? Or what if Sovereigns of Lost Alara is on the battlefield fetching Eldrazi Conscription? Stoic Angel looks at my attacking army and shakes her head, as she's there to help slow down opponents' creatures, not mine. All of this talk of multiple creatures attacking when I want just one seems a little backwards, especially when I want synergy.
But how to attack a problem like this? I want to do so much, yet I just don't have the space for this. Somehow, I feel this is a metaphor for my life. Is the best solution just to build more Commander decks? But that's just silly, right?
Sitting at my desk with my deck strewn apart across it, I just stare. The Futurama episode has ended long ago, and I sit in silence. My brains skips along from card to card, trying to see which subtheme stays and which doesn't. Sadly, this doesn't depend on which would be more fun to play but rather which is most powerful. I think that all options are fun and powerful.
This story doesn't end with my having an epiphany and then constructing the deck. There is no right answer to this dilemma. I wish I had a solution to give you, but I don't. If I try and force something with my deck, it won't work. The deck has to speak to me about what it wants, and right now, it wants me to put it out of its misery.
Yes, I'm a Commander deck-whisperer. What of it?
If the idea or concept isn't fun or powerful enough for me, I'll ditch it. While it's in this stage of construction, I'll continue to play it. A Commander deck is never finished, and this one is no exception. If you've got a deck in similar state, it's okay to play it like this. Listen to what it says; take out those unneeded parts; promote those areas that are lacking. That's the only remedy to this solution.
At least, that's what Dr. Zoidberg tells me.
