Introduction

This week, I want to write about Commander, but I’ll be back on the Legacy path soon. Check back next week, and I’ll be talking about Reanimator’s role in the current metagame.

I was first made aware of Elder Dragon Highlander from coverage on the mothership a few years ago, but didn’t like the looks of the format from the description I read in that article. Later that summer, I met a new friend who had come from the distant North, said only good things about the format, and sold several of us on it. I decided that Zur would be my first General; the Zur deck had recently broken in Standard, and it was likely the most fun I’d ever had playing the format, so it seemed reasonable that I’d really enjoy playing him in this new format as well. Since then, I’ve seen a lot of people pick Zur as their first General and sadly put him aside the same way I did because he was just no fun to play with other people. It’s difficult to play a Commander who tutors every turn in a way that doesn’t degenerate into a combo, regardless of how complicated the interactions are.

I went through a stretch for a couple years where I’d just build more and more convoluted combo decks that never seemed like they would win, let alone as frequently as they ended up winning. It wasn’t just that the decks won, it was that my decks ended up taking this incredibly long turn that everyone hated, and while my decks all featured different colors and often different themes, there was a solid core of cards that I always included in building: strong tutors and draw spells. To top it off, there was always some sort of infinite, multicard combo I was assembling that would win the game, such as Dream Halls plus cards, or Mana Reflection with Basalt Monolith, or the old standby of Future Sight and Sensei’s Divining Top.

For a while, I was in a place where I was building a new deck every week, playing it a few times and becoming distraught with how I still wasn’t able to build a deck that was very fun, or that other people enjoyed playing against. Even my tutorless deck dedicated to life gain was dominating multiplayer games. (For those curious, Brightfllame works well on Hazezon Tamar’s tokens.) It was getting really upsetting to never be able to sit down at the table without having people let out a painful groan, because even if that was a reaction I enjoyed in competitive Magic, EDH for me was a lot more casual; I played silly decks and just wanted to sit around and have a good time. The inability to really have a good time while playing EDH was really cutting in to my desire to keep up with the format, and so I stopped going to the EDH night at the local store and focused on Legacy again. However, while I was thinking about cutting EDH out of my Magic habits, I did build one deck that I really liked, that kept me playing the format: Warp World.

At this point, Warp World was just about to rotate out of Standard, and it was a deck that I occasionally liked to play; it was a lot of fun despite if it was ever very good. The challenge of actually casting a Warp World and then keeping track of all the madness associated with the card was a real source of enjoyment for me. It fit all of my criteria for a deck—incredibly complicated and taking a very long, chaotic turn. The goal I had for this deck was to be sure I could never conceivably fizzle with the deck, and the best way to do that was to play all permanents and a Warp World. This elective challenge meant that most of the draw spells and tutors that I normally played were going to be ineligible for the deck, which was great because I had no desire to do what several other people had already done with the deck, which was to just play a bunch of tutors and a Warp World; this deck was going to be different. Granted, in building this deck, I was playing a lot of the best cards possible for the slots, many of which were card choices that others had also made. The deck really needed every advantage it could get if it was going to operate with any degree of success; however, I could do it in a way that was in no form a linear deck. The resulting deck was a lot of fun for me to play around with, and I’d like to share an updated list with you now:

[cardlist]

[Commander]

1 Sliver Queen

[/Commander]

[Creatures]

1 Anarchist

1 Aven Mindcensor

1 Birds of Paradise

1 Coiling Oracle

1 Emeria Angel

1 Eternal Witness

1 Farhaven Elf

1 Fierce Empath

1 Gemhide Sliver

1 Karmic Guide

1 Knight of the Reliquary

1 Lotus Cobra

1 Magus of the Future

1 Oracle of Mul Daya

1 Primeval Titan

1 Rampaging Baloths

1 Reveillark

1 Rune-Scarred Demon

1 Seedborn Muse

1 Siege-Gang Commander

1 Sun Titan

1 Trinket Mage

1 Vexing Shusher

1 Wood Elves

1 Yavimaya Dryad

1 Duplicant

1 Pilgrim's Eye

1 Solemn Simulacrum

1 Azusa, Lost but Seeking

1 Nin, the Pain Artist

1 Riku of Two Reflections

1 Sen Triplets

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

1 Warp World

1 Future Sight

1 Mana Reflection

1 Mirari's Wake

1 Mystic Remora

1 Rhystic Study

1 Sylvan Library

1 Basalt Monolith

1 Boros Signet

1 Citanul Flute

1 Coalition Relic

1 Crucible of Worlds

1 Darksteel Ingot

1 Gilded Lotus

1 Grim Monolith

1 Gruul Signet

1 Izzet Signet

1 Lightning Greaves

1 Mana Crypt

1 Mana Vault

1 Mind's Eye

1 Planar Portal

1 Rings of Brighthearth

1 Scroll Rack

1 Seer's Sundial

1 Sensei's Divining Top

1 Sol Ring

1 Spine of Ish Sah

1 Temporal Aperture

[/Spells]

[Lands]

1 Ancient Tomb

1 Arid Mesa

1 Badlands

1 Bayou

1 Bloodstained Mire

1 Breeding Pool

1 Command Tower

1 Exotic Orchard

1 Flooded Strand

1 Hallowed Fountain

1 Krosan Verge

1 Marsh Flats

1 Misty Rainforest

1 Plateau

1 Polluted Delta

1 Sacred Foundry

1 Savannah

1 Scalding Tarn

1 Scrubland

1 Stomping Ground

1 Taiga

1 Temple Garden

1 Tropical Island

1 Tundra

1 Underground Sea

1 Verdant Catacombs

1 Volcanic Island

1 Windswept Heath

1 Wooded Foothills

1 Snow-Covered Island

1 Snow-Covered Plains

1 Snow-Covered Swamp

2 Snow-Covered Forest

2 Snow-Covered Mountain

1 Gaea's Cradle

1 Minamo, School at Water's Edge

[/Lands]

[/cardlist]

The Commander

The Commander for the deck is Sliver Queen, because she is the only five-color Commander capable of putting more permanents onto the table for Warp World to shuffle in, which is a good deal. Sliver Queen is even able to generate wins on her own with the help of Gaea’s Cradle, Seedborn Muse, or Gemhide Sliver (the only other Sliver in the deck), and they all work quite well with each other in conjunction with Sliver Queen, not to mention the times that an opponent will simply fall to a 7/7 attacking him three times.

The Mana

A bit over half the deck is dedicated to mana sources, as it’s important to have plenty of them to cast either the namesake card or one of the many large threats that the deck can offer. From what I’ve experienced with the deck, the mana is pretty good, and you can see that it’s slightly skewed to be sure that you’ll always have available to cast Warp World. If you play the deck or anything like it, while the Red mana can be cumbersome in the early game, you’ll often feel validated when it comes time to cast Warp World and you easily have the mana available. You may notice that there are only two lands in the deck that enter the battlefield tapped: Vesuva and Krosan Verge. While the temptation to play Karoos is really strong, they interact rather poorly with Warp World, so I took care to build a land base that was going to be resistant to the deck’s own Warping effects.

For a long time, I played a copy of Captain Sisay in the deck to help tutor up Legendary lands, specifically Tolarian Academy, which paired quite well with Minamo, School at Water’s Edge. After the banning of Academy, Sisay would find Gaea’s Cradle, which, while quite good, wasn’t nearly as impressive; though you may want to consider playing her, I think that just having Primeval Titan is about the same now, so that you can easily set up to have a plethora of mana in the future. If you like the idea of playing Sisay, be sure to include a few more Legendary lands for her to grab, such as Kor Haven and Volrath’s Stronghold, which are quite strong on their own, although for the most part, colorless mana sources are kept to a bare minimum for this deck, as it tends to have rather strenuous mana requirements.

The Creatures

Most of the creatures in the deck even double as mana-sources, the most valuable among them Wood Elves and Yavimaya Dryad for their ability to accelerate and color-fix—grabbing a Stomping Ground, Breeding Pool, or Temple Garden (or the equivalents) without drawbacks to get to the vital and helping another color as well. Farhaven Elf and Solemn Simulacrum are both quite valuable as they are able to color-fix, even if not quite as well. These cards that are able to set up small yet incremental advantages really pay off as the game goes longer, and they are an indispensable part of the deck.

Unlike most other lists I’ve seen since I made my Warp World deck, when building the deck, I really wanted to avoid playing a ton of the blanks that other people were using that work well when they come in off a Warp World, such as Nucklavee, Mnemonic Wall, and Izzet Conarch. The exception was Anarchist because the card’s name really struck a chord with what I wanted this deck to be: total anarchy. Anarchist is also a card that goes way back for me. I remember shortly after the release of Exodus, there was a guy at the local store who played an Oath of Druids deck that had two different creature: Anarchist and Camel. The goal was to mill all kinds of auras and use Anarchist to return Replenish, and Replenish all of them onto either Anarchist and/or (most desirably) Camel. In my impressionable youth, I tried to copy his deck, and just like him, I thought it would be great to get people to sign Anarchist when I killed them with it, so I sleeved up my signed, poor-condition Anarchist and made sure it was in the deck. If you’re looking to optimize the deck a bit, Mnemonic Wall is generally going to be better, as it has a decent amount of toughness and can be cast off a less relevant color of mana.

Most of the rest of the creatures in the deck focus on creating a permanent advantage by getting more cards onto the battlefield directly from the library, such as Oracle of Mul Daya and Magus of the Future. There are the cards that focus on letting you reuse cards, like Sun Titan and Karmic Guide, and cards that provide tokens for you to either attack or Warp World with, like Emeria Angel and Rampaging Baloths, and finally the utility creatures that I’d like to talk about in a bit more detail.

Siege-Gang Commander and Duplicant, when teamed with Spine of Ish Sah, make up the entirety of this deck’s removal. These cards seemed to be the most versatile, permanent forms of removal. I’d really like to use something like Oblivion Ring or Admonition Angel, but the liability of those cards once Warp World Resolves lets them netting a permanent, and likely one I never wanted them to have to begin with. Cards like Bone Shredder and Shriekmaw are cards I’ve played with in the past but was seldom thrilled to see, especially when my opponent had no targets off a Warp World, so I cut cards of that nature from the list.

Aven Mindcensor was initially the only disruption creature that I really couldn’t pass up, and could singlehandedly beat a fair number of decks. Over time, I added in Vexing Shusher to help a few of my spells resolve, and when revising the list, I realized that Sen Triplets functioned a lot like Grand Abolisher, but let me really rip some opponents apart. Considering the rate at which the deck is able to develop mana, Sen Triplets should be able to act as another win condition. Plus, I have three foil Triplets, so they can all be on the table at once (they’re triplets; it makes sense) and extravagant, excess foils are among of the most important things in Commander, I’m pretty sure.

Nin the Pain Artist is one of the few cards from Commander I saw that I really liked, and there have been many times in casual one-on-one play that an opponent will just concede to an active Nin. Rune-Scarred Demon gives the deck a rare opportunity to tutor for a card, and because of the strength of the effect, I decided to add in Fierce Empath. Before, I was playing Bringer of the Black down, but I don’t think I’ll be needing him anymore. A notable exclusion is Mulldrifter. I avoided playing it in this deck because it can kill me if I have no cards in the library after a Warp World. A logical response to this would be, “Well, don’t Warp World for your library,” and my retort is, “No.” I want to play Warp World over, and over, and over. That’s the whole point of the deck.

The Draw and Tutor

Not playing instants or sorceries cuts me off from many of the classic and certainly all of the most powerful draw effects in the format, so I have to get cards into my hand another way. Rhystic Study is a potent and often agonizing method of doing so, and it works quite well with Mystic Remora. Mind’s Eye is great in one-on-one and really shines with more players. Seer’s Sundial has been a great way to gain card advantage, especially considering that this deck seldom has trouble playing lands every turn. If there is another good way to draw cards, it’s slipped my mind, but I’m open to trying it out.

I wish there were a few more tutor effects that I could cram into the deck. Trinket Mage and Fierce Empath are essentially tutors, but they can’t always get you what you’re looking for. There was a time I was playing Skyship Weatherlight, but it was working a lot better when I had Captain Sisay there to navigate it (not to mention access to Tolarian Academy). Now, I have the old standards of Planar Portal and Citunal Flute, along with Rune-Scarred Demon, as great, expensive cards that help me find what I’m looking for. While Scroll Rack and Sensei’s Divining Top are not exactly tutors, the two both go quite the distance with the number of shuffle effects in the deck. The only other weird card in the deck that I can think to address is Temporal Aperture, which is a great tool for the times where you have a ton of mana sitting around and little to do with it; the best-case scenario is to hit Warp World, which has happened a few times, but often you’ll hit a land—in this case, Aperture is a great card to roll the dice with, as it normally pays off.

The Tricks

This deck doesn’t have too many really slick tricks, but it does have a couple that I’d like to share with you.

Ways to Produce Infinite Mana

These methods of mana-production will often win the game with and sometimes even without access to Sliver Queen:

Grim Monolith/Basalt Monolith + Mana Reflection

This is a simple interaction that generates infinite colorless mana.

Basalt Monolith + Rings of Brighthearth

This is a bit more intricate; if both are on the table, this is how it works:

1. Tap Basalt Monolith for
2. Use the to untap Basalt Monolith and pay to use Rings of Brighthearth to copy it.
3. There will be two instances of untapping Basalt Monolith on the stack. The first one resolves; in response to the second, you tap to add . When the second one resolves, you tap it again and bring yourself up to . Untapping Basalt Monolith costs , so you now have infinite colorless mana.

Landfall Triggers

This isn’t so much a trick as it is a rules interaction that works favorably. Whenever you cast Warp World, all cards with Landfall will trigger a number of times equal to the number of lands that come in from Warp World. A lot of people argue about this, but here is the support from the Comprehensive Rules:

603.6a

. . . Each time an event puts one or more permanents onto the battlefield, all permanents on the battlefield (including the newcomers) are checked for any enters-the-battlefield triggers that match the event.

The Aftermath

Once I started playing the initial builds of this deck, it was a lot of fun for the first few times. I remember being at my local store and just playing with some kids that walked in; they each walked out with a play set of Warp Worlds. Even though they lost, they saw how much fun the deck was, and that was a great feeling. Regrettably, that fun didn’t really last as I played the deck more with other EDH decks; people will often simply concede to Warp World, and that’s like ending a movie before the climax. It had dawned on me that I had made yet another convoluted, infinite-combo deck that people hated playing against, and so I shelved the deck for a while and quit EDH for a bit.

A couple of months later, I came back and saw that there were fewer original decks being played in EDH. Essentially, everyone was playing one of a few select decks: Sharuum, Zur, Uril, Karn, and other usual suspects. Seeing so many of the same decks and same card choices really started to bother me. Why was I changing what I was doing every week if so few other people were willing to? I resolved that the Warp World deck was fair enough; I’m not just playing a stack of amazing cards and endless tutors to find them. Warp World is a fun card, and if I’m going to play Commander, sometimes I just want to cast it. If people are going to groan about it, good; nothing is stopping them from building their decks to do what they want.

Modifications for Variant Banned Lists

I realize that not everyone who reads this is going to play with a banned list from mtgcommander.net, and to accommodate, I’d like to suggest a few candidates that I’d play if I were using this deck in a place that didn’t allow Sensei’s Divining Top, Mana Crypt, or Sol Ring. My short list looks like this:

Ondu Giant – He is one of the few creatures that fetch a land that I’m not playing; he’s fine for the slower grind of these other formats.

Bringer of the Black Dawn – He was in the deck until just recently, and you may still want to include him.

Stranglehold – This is a really strong piece of disruption that fits really well into the deck—you know, because it’s a permanent.

Boseiju, Who Shelters All – It’s difficult to find and is bad for anything other than Warp World, but that is the card the entire deck is based around.

Conescrated Sphinx – I like Mind’s Eye a bit more because it’s a tad cheaper to land and doesn’t die to creature removal, but this card is obviously very strong. I’ve only avoided it to keep the curve lower.

Grand Abolisher – The mana on this guy is rough, but he’s pretty nifty; he and Dosan the Falling Leaf may both be cards you’ll want to consider.

Vedalken Orrery – This is a card that I normally play in the deck, but is fine to cut if you’re not expecting heavy counter decks.

Of course, you could always just play the tutors if you are in the mood to get and play Warp World with a bit more consistency.

Conclusion

Writing about my Warp World deck was something that I’d wanted to do and looked forward to for a while. The deck is a test of patience and resource-management, but I have found the deck to be quite rewarding, knowing what lengths I have to go to in order to get my Warp World. I’m glad I’m finally able to share it outside of my direct group of friends who seem to really like it, and I hope that you play and enjoy it too.

Friday night, I was invited to go down to SCG: Cincinnati, and I didn’t think I was going to attend until I was asked. I thought about it for a few minutes, and then I came in twelfth place. I’ll talk a bit about that next week and share all sorts of stories while talking about my tournament experience and the deck itself.

~ Christopher Walton in the real world

im00pi at gmail dot com

Master Shake on The Source

@EmperorTopDeck on Twitter