Come on baby, let's do the twist!

About a year ago I penned a column about Shorikai, Genesis Engine in which I extolled the virtues of using the enchantment Intruder Alarm to create a ton of 1/1 Pilot creature tokens. Today's commander can work with Intruder Alarm but has a built-in regulator to make it much harder to just go infinite. Before we get into the weeds, let's look at the card that will lead today's deck.

Saint Traft and Rem Karolus are in Jeskai colors and make creature tokens when it becomes tapped. The first time you'll get a 1/1 Red Human, the second time you'll get a 1/1 Blue Spirit with flying and the third time you'll get a 4/4 White Angel with flying. Additional taps and they may work off some of that pesky belly fat, but they won't be making any more tokens.

When I build around a new card my first instinct is to ignore any of the "hints" that might be on the card about how to best design the deck. Saint Traft and Rem Karolus have the added ability that they untap whenever I cast a spell that has convoke. That might seem to make you think that you should build with lots of cards that have convoke, and you'd be right. Convoke is an ability that lets you tap your creatures to help pay for a spell's casting cost. It's obviously very strong with Saint Traft and Rem Karolus as that free untap will help you get additional activations to make additional token creatures.

My habit of trying to think outside of the box doesn't always yield good results, but every once in a while I stumble upon something really good. I usually end up playing some of the cards the commander is so obviously asking for.

For this deck I went down the path of loading up the list with other ways to untap my commander along with a healthy assortment of vehicles. You can tap creatures to crew a vehicle, so I'll be able to tap my commander without just having to send them into battle. My goal is to make those 4/4 White Angels with flying as often as possible.

Tap Tap Tap

I'm definitely running spells with convoke in today's list. The chance to get that free untap is too good to pass up. They aren't all great, but with my commander on the battlefield I'll be able to tap them to help pay for the casting cost and they'll untap. That's essentially a cost reduction, but I'll also get a body on the field and that body can tap to help pay for other spells with convoke.

Chief Engineer may wind up being an all-star in this list, as he'll give my artifacts convoke. Not only am I running a bunch of mana rocks, I'm also running a lot of vehicles. There's no guarantee I'll be able to convoke a Mind Stone or Smuggler's Copter, but if I do I'll be happy to tap my commander to help pay for them and then untap because the spell had convoke. Kasla, the Broken Halo not only has convoke, but will let me scry 2 and then draw a card every time I cast another spell with convoke. Bennie Bracks, Zoologist is perfect in this list. He has convoke and if I create a token I'll get to draw a card at the end of the turn.

I'm running some suboptimal convoke cards as well. Halo Hopper might not be the next commander staple, but it and other cards that help me tap my commander will play a part in getting to that elusive third tap. 4/4 flying Angel creature tokens can win games if I get enough of them.

I am running the aforementioned Smuggler's Copter and Shorikai, Genesis Engine, and I'm running a few more vehicles as well.

Mobile Garrison will give me an untap trigger when it attacks. I can crew an already-crewed vehicle and I can "overcrew" a vehicle so I'm optimistic that these will be very helpful in executing my game plan. Mighty Servant Crew 4, which means I'll need another body to crew it, but if I use exactly two creatures it gains "Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, draw two cards" until end of turn. Card draw is always nice. So are Angels, and Parhelion II can give me two attacking 4/4 White Angel creature tokens with flying and vigilance whenever it attacks. Have I mentioned that I want to make Angels with this deck?

Cultivator's Caravan can tap to make mana. I can crew it even if I've used it to tap for mana. Hoard Hauler can make treasures for me. When it deals combat damage to a player I create a Treasure token for each artifact they control. In this golden age of Treasure tokens, and with all the artifact-centric decks that have come out recently, that could be a pretty sizable number.

Imposter Mech is a weird vehicle that enters as a copy of a creature an opponent controls, except it's a vehicle. That scary creature you've got on your battlefield? I'll have the Magic equivalent of a parade float that looks just like it - only it will have that creature's text box, power and toughness, and it won't be affected by summoning sickness as it isn't a creature until it gets crewed. If it enters as a copy of a planeswalker, it still has loyalty abilities but it's a Vehicle artifact and loses all other card types so it can't be attacked.

Twisting The Night Away

If all goes well, I'll be both tapping AND untapping my commander a lot. To that end, I've loaded this deck up with ways to untap Saint Traft and Rem Karolus.

Vizier of Tumbling Sands can tap to untap another target permanent. That could be a big vehicle that could become a surprise blocker, but it'll more than likely be my commander. Most of my untappers require some sort of payment for their services. Niblis of the Breath will tap for one Blue mana to tap or untap target creature. That could be useful to keep big attackers at bay. Pemmin's Aura is an enchantment aura that is a bit of a Swiss army knife. It will let me untap the enchanted creature, making it easy to get three taps in a single turn if I have the mana available and a way to tap my commander.

It requires a fair bit of setup, but you can actually go infinite with Saint Traft and Rem Karolus. If you've got Deadeye Navigator on the field, a vehicle so you can tap your commander, Intruder Alarm so you can untap when your token creature enters the battlefield, and Phyrexian Arena so you can pay to flicker your commander, you can make infinite Angels. Easy, right?

That is a lot of hoops to jump through, but one of the greatest things about casual, ridiculous commander is that sometimes games that go long enough and everything falls into the right places to be able to get up to this kind of nonsense.

It's worth noting that Intruder Alarm is amazing with creatures that want to tap. Any time an opponent plays a creature you tap for whatever activated ability you're trying to abuse and it will untap when the opponent's creature enters the battlefield. This deck is running Arcanis the Omnipotent, who taps to draw 3 cards. I'm also running Mulldrifter, which can work with Deadeye Navigator to draw cards at a pretty fast clip.

Adding extra pieces and combos that share key cards is a huge way to help increase your deck's ability to nail down a win. You may risk having your deck shift its focus from your commander and its interactions to the other combos you've added to the deck. You might win more games, but you might also find that you really wanted to have the deck more centered around the commander. It's fine to do either of these things but just be aware that if the deck isn't doing what you wanted it to do, you might need to pull out some of those more powerful cards and combos.

Early Results

I got the chance to play this list in my Thursday night Tabletop Simulator game. If it seems like I've been writing that a lot lately, you're right. We have months where we play a lot and months where we're lucky to get in a single game. Not only have we had a very good streak of games lately - I've been able to line up these decks so I can play them before finishing up my past few columns.

This week's game happened to be a three-player game, which is way better than no game at all, but isn't always the best litmus test for evaluating a new deck. A single game is also a terrible sample size, but I'm usually able to include a few takeaways in my column.

This game had me on my shiny new Saint Traft and Rem Karolus, up against Gimbal, Gremlin Prodigy and Marrow-Gnawer.

I had a much slower start than anyone else, playing out my commander and playing a Halo Hopper to make a 1/1 Human token, but not hitting any mana rocks or other small creatures. The Gimbal player's board looked much more imposing than it really was because of all the random tokens he was able to make, but he was still ahead of the rest of us. The Marrow-Gnawer player... was just playing Rats. I don't mean that in a disparaging way. It's what the deck does. I love the simplicity of very straightforward decks and while his Rats deck has a few tricks up its sleeve, it's basically just a Rats deck. Early game is rats.

I was mostly hoping to get a vehicle and an untapper out so that I could work up to making an Angel or two, but I drew into an Hour of Reckoning and decided my best plan was to try to weather another quiet turn or two and see if I could wipe the board.

Hour of Reckoning destroys all nontoken creatures. The Gimbal player had a bunch of tokens on the battlefield and the Marrow-Gnawer player had managed to get the Legendary Demon creature token Ormendahl, Profane Prince onto the battlefield. That 9/7 Demon with flying, lifelink, indestructible and haste was concerning, but I decided that less is more and wiped the board anyways. I lost my Halo Hopper along with my commander.

Both of my opponents rebuilt faster than me, or at least they seemed to. I drew into Arcanis the Omnipotent, Shorikai, Genesis Engine and Intruder Alarm. This is where things got wonky.

I ended up getting both onto the field along with Arcanis the Omnipotent and started to use the latter to draw cards and use the pilots produced by Shorikai to untap my board. Once I was a few iterations into the draw-untap process the Gimbal player realized that Shorikai shouldn't have been untapping because it hadn't been crewed so it wasn't a creature!

Shame on me for my oversight, but thank goodness Tabletop Simulator has a step-back function where you can roll back time to get to an earlier boardstate. I had been doing something I shouldn't have been able to do so I rolled time back and with my friends' help figured out that there was a very narrow window that would let me "do the thing." I had to tap Arcanis, activate Shorikai, hold priority with the Intruder Alarm trigger on the stack and crew Shorikai before that trigger resolved. My giant mech would then untap because it was now a creature.

I was grateful that they hadn't been sending too much aggro my way in the early game and I was doubly grateful that they were willing to help me figure my way through that turn. I built up my board, played as many creatures with convoke as possible, drawing cards with Arcanis and untapping my board each time. That only amounted to a few extra pilots and creatures, but it was something. I had some hasty dragons but just kept everything back and passed to the Gimbal player. It was the least I could do and now I was just hoping for another turn.

The Gimbal player took as much advantage of Intruder Alarm as possible but didn't have that many cards in hand so the potential for an alpha strike wasn't huge. On his turn I drew cards with Arcanis in advance of every creature he played, but he only played a few creatures. Still, he was able to swing at me with a pretty huge attack, forcing me to block with my best flyers.

I should mention that the Marrow-Gnawer player is the same guy who sometimes plays Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis and is well known in our group as a player who will occasionally just meddle in other players' attacks. Sometimes he's trying to keep everyone in the game, as nobody likes being knocked out early. I think sometimes he's just trying to find some fun in the game when his deck might not be doing what he wants it to do and it's more entertaining to mess with someone else's plans than to do nothing. I get it. I've done the same on occasion.

This time I was the beneficiary of his whimsy. Before damage the Marrow-Gnawer player cast Sudden Spoiling just before the damage step. That spell strips a player's creatures of all abilities and gives 0/2 stats until end of turn. He turned a very damaging attack into a minor hit and let two of my flying blockers survived!

I wasn't about to complain, but I felt a little bad when on my next turn I ended up overloading a Cyclonic Rift. I then played a City on Fire entirely with convoke mana from creatures and followed that up with a two-mana Dreamscape Artist to untap my board. City on Fire is a new enchantment that triples damage dealt by sources you control. I had lethal on the Gimbal player with no blockers in my path! I swung at both of them, killing the Gimbal player and damaging the Marrow-Gnawer player before passing turn. It was late. Game's gotta end.

I had blockers and a counterspell and my tablemates had been stuck trying to rebuild so I had game on my next turn. The Marrow-Gnawer player ended up committing Magic seppuku by casting a Death Cloud for enough to kill themselves.

It was definitely a game I didn't feel like I deserved to win, but once I had drawn enough cards I wasn't going to be easy to stop me. I had that Cyclonic Rift in hand along with an Aetherize and had counterspells to back up my play or try to stop anyone from messing with my board.

My first takeaway was that the deck needed Phyrexian Arena, which I added to the list after the game. It works with Deadeye Navigator to enable shenanigans. I do love shenanigans. My second takeaway was that when you build other combos into a deck, you can end up having the deck not really play the way you had intended. This game felt like a Shorikai game, not a Saint Traft and Rem Karolus game. That's OK, and I did win, but my goal had been to evaluate the commander and how this deck worked around this exciting new card.

If I have a third takeaway it would probably be that when you land Intruder Alarm you really want to have a lot of creatures with convoke. If you've also got Arcanis on the field, that's gravy, but those creatures with convoke will be free or nearly free to cast and you can pretty much dump your hand onto the battlefield.

This deck has a combo plan and a few tutors but I'll be the first to admit that it is not tuned up all that much. You could add in fast mana, drop out some of the weaker convoke noncreature spells and focus this deck much more around Intruder Alarm. Even then I'm not sure it would be a cEDH list, but it would be able to compete in high powered games if you added enough interaction and removal. You're in White, Red and Blue so you should be able to keep up with other high-powered decks, but this deck's current wincon isn't as efficient as many other high powered builds.

If you wanted to tune this list down I think you could drop out some of the combo pieces and still have a lot of fun. You might drop Shorikai and load up with more vehicles. Even when I'm running 8-10 vehicles in a list I feel like I'm lucky to see one of them. That might again be bad luck and a small sample size - I don't play vehicle decks that often. I think at its core, Saint Traft and Rem Karolus has a very fair game plan and you could definitely build a very fair deck for lower powered and casual play with them in the command zone.

Traft and Karolus | Commander | Stephen Johnson

• Commander (1)
• 1 Saint Traft and Rem Karolus

• Creatures (16)
• 1 Arcanis the Omnipotent
• 1 Bennie Bracks, Zoologist
• 1 Chief Engineer
• 1 Crackleburr
• 1 Deadeye Navigator
• 1 Dreamscape Artist
• 1 Faerie Mastermind
• 1 Halo Hopper
• 1 Kasla, the Broken Halo
• 1 Mondrak, Glory Dominus
• 1 Mulldrifter
• 1 Niblis of the Breath
• 1 Puppeteer
• 1 Shivan Branch-Burner
• 1 Thunderhead Squadron
• 1 Vizier of Tumbling Sands

• Instants (17)
• 1 AEtherize
• 1 Aerial Boost
• 1 Arcane Denial
• 1 Chaos Warp
• 1 Counterspell
• 1 Cyclonic Rift
• 1 Enlightened Tutor
• 1 Fierce Guardianship
• 1 Meeting of Minds
• 1 Path to Exile
• 1 Pongify
• 1 Rapid Hybridization
• 1 Swan Song
• 1 Swords to Plowshares
• 1 Teferi's Protection
• 1 Transcendent Message
• 1 Wicked Slumber

• Sorceries (1)
• 1 Hour of Reckoning

• Enchantments (9)
• 1 Anointed Procession
• 1 Astral Wingspan
• 1 Cathars' Crusade
• 1 City on Fire
• 1 Crab Umbra
• 1 Elemental Mastery
• 1 Intruder Alarm
• 1 Pemmin's Aura
• 1 Wild Research

• Artifacts (19)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Azorius Signet
• 1 Boros Signet
• 1 Cultivator's Caravan
• 1 Hoard Hauler
• 1 Imposter Mech
• 1 Izzet Signet
• 1 Mighty Servant of Leuk-o
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Mobile Garrison
• 1 Parhelion II
• 1 Phyrexian Altar
• 1 Puppet Strings
• 1 Shorikai, Genesis Engine
• 1 Skullclamp
• 1 Smuggler's Copter
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Thousand-Year Elixir
• 1 Wand of the Worldsoul

• Lands (37)
• 7 Island
• 7 Mountain
• 7 Plains
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Deserted Beach
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Forbidden Orchard
• 1 Glacial Fortress
• 1 Hallowed Fountain
• 1 Mystic Monastery
• 1 Prismatic Vista
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Sacred Foundry
• 1 Sea of Clouds
• 1 Spectator Seating
• 1 Steam Vents
• 1 Stormcarved Coast
• 1 Sundown Pass
• 1 Training Center

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The one interaction that I didn't mention yet is the very first one I lined up for this deck. If you enchant your commander with Elemental Mastery you can tap them to create X 1/1 red Elemental creature tokens with haste. Those tokens get exiled at end of turn. This is a three card wincon with Intruder Alarm and you're in the colors to be able to tutor for them both easily. You tap your commander, make a few Elementals, untap and do it again and again as many times as you like. The only major issue is that this two auras could enchant a ham sandwich and win the game, if said sandwich had been made into a creature and was not summoning-sick. It's not about Saint Traft and Rem Karolus at all.

If you enjoy cheeky wincons that are compact, efficient, and can either win through combat or through enter-the-battlefield damage sources, this could easily be the way this deck tries to win. I'll usually prefer to just play a deck and see what it gives me rather than race to this kind of wincon, but I've played a lot of EDH so this isn't as appealing to me as it might be to a newer, or to a spikier player.

Final Thoughts

I opened this card from a booster and I've been trying to figure out if I want to build it in paper. I'm tempted to build that Elemental Mastery / Intruder Alarm deck but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be able to threaten a win at a cEDH table. I'm equally sure that it wouldn't be much fun for my tablemates at a more casual table.

The more I think about it, the more I feel like it's a real shame that the top end of our format's power spectrum has so outpaced the "high-powered" decks that used to occasionally threaten a win. True cEDH is so fast that unless you can reliably interact or threaten a win on turn three or earlier, you aren't going to be relevant. That sounds insane, but that's been my experience lately as I've been dipping my toes back into cEDH with a Najeela, the Blade-Blossom deck. I've got a lot still to learn about playing cEDH but it's been a humbling experience so far.

So what do we do with all of those high-powered decks that are too strong for casual play and not fast enough for today's cEDH?

I think it comes down to finding yourself a meta or playgroup where that power level is embraced. You can play very powerful decks against each other, but you always risk having people who *think* they have a high-powered deck get stomped and then complain that you're playing cEDH against them. Those players might have no idea how fast cEDH really is, and how hard it is for a high-powered deck to keep up with today's cEDH, but that won't make them any less salty.

Ultimately I think this "problem" is nothing new. We've always had a power spectrum issue in Commander. The blazingly fast turn 5 wins of yesteryear have turned into turn 3 or even turn 2 wins today. If your goal is to have fun, and also to try to have games where other players have fun, you'll be fine. There will always be salt, but there will also always be fun to be had.

That's all I've got for today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!