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Party Time with Tazri

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Sports on a Frozen River by Aert van der Neer (1660). Shaman of the Great Hunt by Ryan Alexander Lee.

Happy Monday everybody!

Today I'm going to dive into a causal deck I threw together as an experiment to see whether the new Party mechanic would be fun and playable in Commander. I opened a box of Zendikar Rising and when I came across a Tazri, Beacon of Unity I knew I'd eventually wind up building a deck around her. The problem was that I wasn't particularly excited by the idea.

When a new mechanic is unveiled it's always fun to try to evaluate whether it will work well in Commander. A "party" is made up of at least one Cleric, one Rogue, one Warrior and one Wizard. Having more than one of these won't increase your party size, and no one creature can fill more than one slot. A single Shapeshifter, which has all creature types, can fill one party slot but not all of them.

This might seem like an odd mechanic until you remember that Magic is on a collision course with Dungeons and Dragons. It's not unreasonable to expect that there could be some major curveballs and possibly even a new format in the works with the 2021 Forgotten Realms set. If nothing else, we can expect the party mechanic to show up there. My question was a simple one - could I throw a ton of Zendikar Rising "party" mechanic cards together and end up with a playable or even a fun deck?

Tazri, Beacon of Unity

Tazri, Beacon of Unity will cost less if I'm able to get a few party members out early, and she will help me assemble my party with her activated ability. She will let me pay mana to look at the top six cards of your library, reveal up to two Cleric, Rogue, Warrior, Wizard and/or Ally cards from among them and put them into my hand. It's four colors, but if I don't have any of those colors I can instead pay 2 mana of any color, so this ability could cost up to 8 mana. It's notable that this just puts the cards into my hand and they are revealed, so I won't be able to hold back any surprises for my opponents.

Winning Made Easy

Using Tazri's activated ability does not require her to tap and is not limited in terms of how many times we can do it each turn. What that means is that Tazri represents yet another infinite mana outlet that is begging to be turned into a combo deck that wins off of just the right Cleric, Rogue, Warrior, Wizard and/or Ally card(s).

This is surely a puzzle that has already been solved. The Oath of the Gatewatch card General Tazri was a solid Food Chain combo general and there might be lessons to be learned from looking at that deck. Loading up a Tazri, Beacon of Unity deck with control elements, infinite mana combos and just the right creatures to let you launch into a loop of some sort sounds like fun, but it isn't the deck I wanted to start with. None of that combo business really explores the playability of the party mechanic in our format.

Rather than build that deck, I decided to build what I expected would end up as a low powered casual deck to see how it would play. There would be no infinite combo.

Planning My Party

My first thought was that I wanted to build using the familiar "slot" pattern. I started with eight slots of eight cards each and then shifted over to nine slots of seven cards each. I didn't restrict myself to only cards from Zendikar Rising, but I decided to lean on that set pretty heavily. I also decided to devote a slot of cards to the Cleric, Rogue, Warrior and Wizard creature types, but to leave Allies out entirely.

I did include a slot of Warriors even though Tazri is a Warrior herself. That was a bit of an oversight at first, but I decided not to go back, drop out a bunch of Warriors and throw in better cards. I was embracing the jank and mostly hoping to see how the mechanic would play if I leaned on it really heavily.

Clerics

It turned out that there were a lot more low-CMC Clerics worth throwing into this list than I had expected, but I was able to find a few in my Zendikar Rising cards as well. The litmus test was basically that they had to have "party" in the text box or they had to be good enough to be playable in our format.

Malakir Blood-Priest is like a mini Gray Merchant of Asphodel, but worse. My opponents will lose as much as 4 life if I have a full party and I'll gain 4 life. Shepherd of Heroes is also in the list, giving me 2 life for each creature in my party when it enters the battlefield. I can't have more than one party.so the most I can gain is 8 life. Orah, Skyclave Hierophant is also in the list, giving me a little recursion if I've got a Cleric in the graveyard. I'll freely admit that this project was in part an excuse to throw my full art Orah into a deck. I might take a look at building an Orah combo deck at some point, but for now I'm just happy to have that card in a deck rather than in my rare binder.

Drana, the Last Bloodchief
Suture Priest
Mother of Runes

Drana, the Last Bloodchief is another Vampire Cleric with a sweet attack trigger. That might also make for a sweet reanimator commander with some clever graveyard manipulation. I'm also running Suture Priest and Soul Warden to give me a little lifegain. The former will also hurt any opponent trying to go wide or run an ETB loop. Mother of Runes and Giver of Runes fill out my list of Clerics, giving me a way to give protection from a color of my choice. That could save a key creature from targeted removal or it could just let me swing through blockers if the colors line up right. Both can be very helpful in the right situation.

Rogues

A common theme across a few of these "party" cards is that they often cost less for each creature in your party. My first pick for my gallery of Rogues meets that criteria and could prove an effective threat against any opponents with planeswalkers.

Zagras, Thief of Heartbeats
Drana's Silencer
Seafloor Stalker

Zagras, Thief of Heartbeats has flying, deathtouch and haste and gives my other creatures deathtouch. I really, really like having deathtouch blockers and again, I'm tempted to build a deck around this vampire rogue. It also lets me kill planeswalkers just by doing combat damage to them. A second vampire rogue, Drana's Silencer, is also in my list. Silencer will help provide some removal. Seafloor Stalker and Sure-Footed Infiltrator both provide me with some potentially unblockable attackers that also have their own upsides. Cold-Eyed Selkie also joins the fun, giving me a card draw source with Islandwalk.

Acquisitions Expert will give me an enter-the-battlefield hand reveal and discard threat. Nimble Trapfinder is another potentially unblockable Rogue who can help me with card draw if I've got a full party. Notion Thief is a powerful threat to players who want to draw lots of cards, but if revealed off of a Tazri activation, will lose some of the surprise factor that makes it such a strong card.

Warriors

Whether or not to include warriors in this list started out as a no-brainer, but after playing the deck my first thought was that I should drop all of the Warriors in the 99 and load up with removal and boardwipes. I think that's still a sensible thing to consider, but let's look at the warriors I ran in the first draft of this build.

Squad Commander
Emeria Captain
Sea Gate Colossus

Starting off with Squad Commander gives the impression that we're going to have some pretty good cards in this section. When it enters the battlefield I'll get up to four Kor Warrior creature tokens. If I've got a full party, at the beginning of combat on my turn my creatures will get pumped by +1/+1 and will be indestructible. Emeria Captain is an Angel Warrior that will put +1/+1 counters on my party when it enters the battlefield. Sea Gate Colossus and Shatterskull Minotaur are also in the list, giving some decent sized bodies to put onto the field. Kor Blademaster is also in the list, mostly to give me a way to turn Tazri into a threat by giving her double strike if I can get a piece of equipment into her hands.

In any deck with this many creatures, Champion of Lambholt feels like a good fit. It will get a +1/+1 counter when another creature enters the battlefield under my control and creatures with power less than her power can't block my creatures. Marisi, Breaker of the Coil and Tahngarth, First Mate round out my list of warriors. The former locks my opponents out of casting spells during combat and if a creature I control does damage to a player I get to goad their army, forcing them to attack another opponent if able until my next turn. Tahngarth, First Mate is a weird dude who, if tapped, can be added to another opponent's attack.

Paring down this section is probably the first step to move this deck from heavy jank to a moderately playable deck. I'd drop out 4-5 of these cards and add in removal and boardwipes if I were going to keep it together for very long.

Wizards

The fourth class in our build is Wizard and we've got some decent options in here to look at. Some don't bring much beyond a minor ability and the ability to fill a party slot. Some of them are actually pretty decent.

Linvala, Shield of Sea Gate
Cascade Seer
Thundering Sparkmage

Linvala, Shield of Sea Gate is an interesting control card, letting me shut down a problem on an opponent's board until my next turn. She can also be sacrificed to give my team hexproof or indestructible. Cascade Seer might not give me the ability to cascade into more spells, but it will let me scry when it enters the battlefield. Thundering Sparkmage will give me some enter-the-battlefield damage to a creature or planeswalker. Also in the list is Ardent Electromancer, which will give me a little red mana for the trouble of casting it. These last few are underwhelming, but they do care about how big my party is.

Venser, Shaper Savant represents a powerful source of card draw if I can keep it around long enough to be able to tap and do its thing. Master Biomancer will give my creatures a little extra power when they enter the battlefield in the form of +1/+1 counters equal to its power. Wingcrafter is in the list to soulbond with a bigger creature to either have a flying blocker or try to get some damage past non-flying blockers. I'm also running Trinket Mage and if I had more artifacts I could see running Treasure Mage or Trophy Mage as well.

Shapeshifters

Filling out a party has proven to be a challenge in the few games I've played with this list. For that reason, I'm happy to have some flexible options to throw into my list.

Mirror Entity
Taurean Mauler
Tajuru Paragon

Mirror Entity is a Shapeshifter, so it has all creature types. It can fill any party slot and will let you pay X mana to give all your creatures all creature types and become base X/X creatures. Taurean Mauler is another shapeshifter and a great early drop. This guy will get a +1/+1 counter every time an opponent casts a spell.

I could load this list up with a ton of shapeshifters if I wanted to really leave Zendikar Rising behind. I'm not doing that today so we're also including cards like Tajuru Paragon and Veteran Adventurer. The former can be kicked to reveal the top six cards and reveal a Cleric, Rogue, Warrior or Wizard and put it into my hand. The latter simply has party-based cost reduction and vigilance.

I left out Stonework Packbeast, but that Beast is another creature that can fill in any slot in your party and conveniently acts as an infinite mana filter. Stonework Packbeast will be the key to a lot of Tazri, Beacon of Unity combo decks, but since I wasn't going to build this deck for a combo win, I decided to leave it out. I also really didn't like the flavor of your pack mule being able to be a Cleric, Rogue, Warrior and Wizard. It's super convenient in terms of functionality but for me it is a huge flavor fail.

Is the juice worth the squeeze?

The experiment of running way, way too many cards just because they have the word "party" in the text box is an interesting one, but it begs the question: is the juice worth the squeeze? Am I getting enough out of all these party cards to make the result be a strong, fun, playable deck?

Spoils of Adventure
Coveted Prize
Thwart the Grave

At first blush, I think the answer is a tentative yes. There are some pretty strong party cards I can run here. Spoils of Adventure gives us three cards and three life for as little as 2 mana. Coveted Prize is a one-mana tutor that puts the card into your hand, making it potentially better than Vampiric Tutor.

The problem isn't that there aren't good cards that care about the size of your party. The problem, at least with my initial experiment, is that leaning too heavily on a mechanic at the expense of what can only be described as "essential ingredients" of a good commander deck will result in a deck that is just a bit too janky. It's spread too thin and lacks focus. It's a pat of butter scraped over too much bread. You get the point - it's not the worst deck ever, but I don't think it's good.

The Decklist

I'm going to mentally file today's list under the category of "I built and played this so that you wouldn't have to." I might just as easily file it under "starting points." This is a deck you might put together if you, too, had way too many cards from Zendikar Rising and wanted to make a goofy casual party deck that might never win a game. It's the sort of deck you could easily spend months tweaking and refining until it got to the point where it had found a focus and a plan and was actually starting to perform well in games. Some people like long-term projects and if you love Tazri, love a long, drawn out build, or just love being able to joke about "party time" when you break out this deck, it might be worth your time.


I think it's worth noting that this deck was put together in my usual "cards I had lying around" process. The place where this causes the most problems is surely in the mana base. If despite my warnings you are still on board for building a "party time" deck, I would urge you to spend more time on crafting a useful mana base than I spent. I only had a smattering of fetch and shock lands and prefer to run full sets when I build a deck so I wound up just leaning really heavily on basic lands. Do not do this. You'll have better success if you craft your deck, look at the color spread, and then make good decisions on what two-color lands to run.

Final Thoughts

My experience with this build wasn't great, but I also only played this list in a few games. Variance can make a decent deck look bad and a bad deck look good if you wind up only looking at a small sample size, so I'm still not ready to declare this to be a no-good, terrible, failure of an experiment that you should not try yourself. In my games I was able to build a board and have a role in how the games played out - I just never felt like I had the upper hand and at the end I always felt like my deck was outclassed.

If you want to build a variation on Party Time with Tazri, I'd have you drop out the underperforming, overcosted cards that play better in sealed and draft and add in more removal and a few boardwipes. Then I'd probably suggest that you add in at least one infinite mana combo. Infinite mana likely won't end the game on the spot, but it might let you flood the board and make a serious push to close the game out. I suppose you could toss in Memnarch or some other infinite mana outlets and turn your Tazri into a high-powered deck. If your meta has a lot of high-powered decks, that might make more sense for you.

In retrospect today's project wound up being more of a "deck in a box" column than I had expected. Those columns were experiments in building a deck solely using cards from a booster box, and pretty much always left me with a janky, low powered deck. Today's experiment wasn't much more successful, but if you've had a different experience building around "party" as a mechanic, I'd love to hear about it. I'm especially curious about party-based combo wins that turn Tazri and infinite mana into a win. I'm sure those exist, I'm sure they involve Stonework Packbeast, and I'm hoping there are some versions of that game plan that are weird and use interesting, unexpected party members.

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

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