Why Overlap Is The Key To Good Deck Building | 733
62 min
•Apr 1, 202620 days agoSummary
This episode explores the concept of 'overlap' in Magic: The Gathering deck building—when cards serve multiple functions to increase consistency and synergy. The hosts discuss various overlap techniques including MDFCs, modal spells, split spells, and cards with multiple abilities, demonstrating how strategic card selection creates more flexible and powerful decks.
Insights
- Overlap creates optionality and decision trees that make games more engaging; players with more choices feel more invested in outcomes than those with linear plays
- The deck building template's 108-card structure assumes 8 cards will have overlap, compressing multiple roles into single slots to reach the 100-card limit
- Overlap should be intentional and thematic rather than generic; building synergy around card types or deck mechanics creates more satisfying gameplay than 'good stuff' decks
- Greedy overlap decisions (e.g., holding an MDFC as a spell instead of playing it as a land) can hurt deck consistency more than the overlap helps
- Tutors represent ultimate overlap as they can fill any category depending on game state, making them powerful tools for consistency when built with intentional search targets
Trends
Wizards of the Coast increasingly designs cards with multiple functions, making overlap-based deck building more accessible and rewardingModal double-faced cards (MDFCs) have become standard design tools, though their cost and complexity limit reprinting frequencyCommander deck building is shifting toward density-based thinking (likelihood of drawing effects) rather than spell countEquipment and permanents with multiple activated abilities are becoming more common as overlap vehiclesPlaneswalkers are being recognized as inherently modal cards, making them natural overlap candidates despite removal vulnerabilityLimited-format cards (like Bushwack) are proving valuable in Commander due to their overlap potential between ramp and removalThematic overlap (cards matching deck subtypes/mechanics) is gaining recognition as superior to generic overlap for player satisfactionDigital deck builders are becoming essential tools for measuring and optimizing overlap across multiple card categories
Topics
Modal Double-Faced Cards (MDFCs) in deck constructionModal spells and choose-one mechanicsSplit spells and adventure cardsCard type synergy and subtype relevanceTutors and toolbox deck buildingCommander deck building template (10 ramp, 12 card advantage, 12 targeted disruption, 6 mass disruption, 38 lands, 30 plan)Permanents with multiple activated abilitiesPlaneswalker modality and flexibilityOverlap measurement and deck optimization toolsComplexity management in casual vs. competitive decksSacrifice synergy and token generationSelf-mill and graveyard recursion overlapEquipment and creature synergyMana efficiency and cost reduction mechanicsThematic deck building vs. generic good stuff
Companies
Wizards of the Coast
Publisher of Magic: The Gathering; discussed for card design philosophy and overlap mechanics in recent sets
Card Kingdom
Primary sponsor; advanced deck building tool and card retailer used by hosts for purchasing and organizing cards
UltraPro
Sponsor providing card protection products (sleeves, deck boxes, binders); recently launched patchcraft customizable ...
Architect
Digital deck building platform with category labeling and overlap measurement tools; used by hosts for deck optimization
People
Rachel Weeks
Co-host discussing overlap mechanics and deck building strategies throughout the episode
Jamon
Co-host providing examples and analysis of overlap cards and deck building techniques
Josh
Contributes to discussion on overlap and deck building; mentioned as part of production team
Aaron Fusnacht-Largen
Featured patron shout-out at beginning of episode
Quotes
"The best feelings in Magic often for me are when I play one thing and then, ah, like two slash three other things happen at the same time."
Jamon•Early discussion
"If you're holding a hand of seven cards and they all do one thing, right? You've got three lands and you've got four spells and they all do one thing. That hand does four different things and that's great. But what if two or three of the cards in your hand did multiple things?"
Rachel Weeks•Overlap explanation
"The more overlap you have, the more boxes a single card checks, the more space in your deck for cards that you don't get to play as often."
Jamon•Mid-episode
"If you get greedy with your overlap cards, you're actually hurting your deck more than the overlap cards helping it."
Rachel Weeks•MDFC warning
"Magic is kind of at the point where everything should be good stuff because it just allows you to do more."
Jamon•Good stuff discussion
Full Transcript
Meet the new Hoker Speed Goat 7. Proven grip, comfort and control. For runners who meet the wild head on. From steep climbs, to slick descents, and loose rock. Speed Goat 7. Run Wilder. Explore more on hoker.com. Greetings humans, you have entered the command zone. Your destination for all aspects of Elder Dragon Highlander. Enjoy your stay. Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of the command zone podcast. I'm your host Rachel Weeks. I'm Jamon. And today we're talking about Magic the Gathering. As always. Has there ever been an episode where we don't talk? There's been like a, no, Magic's always mentioned. It would be so hard to do one without it. Well Josh, in an episode that was like how to build your channel from zero to hero. Sure, yeah. Which is like very informative and has like no views on it. Which is crazy because it's like a master class in how to, they'll put it up on the screen. But yeah, it would be very difficult. Today we are talking though about Magic the Gathering. We are. That's why you're here patrons. And specifically a concept that we call overlap. And this is when like a card checks multiple boxes. It fills multiple roles in your deck. And how you can use that very basic skill to get more synergy into your deck and make your deck work more consistently. Because commander is no longer a singleton format. Yes, look. Yes. First thing we should mention though is the card building deck building template, the commander deck building template. Yeah. Which everyone was like, you made a mistake Rachel. There are 108 cards on this deck building template. Absolutely. So when we made the commander deck building template, there's a whole episode about that. You should watch it if you haven't. We said that every deck should have roughly 10 pieces of ramp, 12 pieces of card advantage, 12 pieces of targeted disruption, 6 pieces of mass disruption, 38 lands and 30 plan cards. Which of course totals 108. Very nice number. 8 more than what you can put into a commander deck. Yeah, so either we're really dumb. Yeah. Or we're talking about cards that have overlap so they can play multiple roles. Thus the 108 is actually supposed to be 100. Yeah. And it is easier than ever to build with overlap. Wizards is building more powerful cards, cards that do multiple things in lots of different ways. So it should be very easy to build in cards that check multiple boxes in your deck. So the template assumes that that is what you are doing. That there's at least 8 cards that could be in multiple categories. Or just 5 ice till explorers. A lot of people will ask, well can I count something into categories? Like if I count it for one, does that mean I can't count it for the other? And the answer is just the opposite. Because the numbers are more about density and your likelihood to draw them than they are about the number of spells you're going to cast. Like we say you need 10 ramp spells. We don't expect that you cast 10 ramp spells in your deck. You just want to have a decent likelihood of drawing some amount of ramp. Yep. Percentages, all that good stuff. We're going to talk about lots of overlap today. But before we get into it, let's talk about our sponsors real fast. CardCardCardium.com slash command. You're probably going to hear about some cards today or think about some cards that you want to buy that are going to help with your overlap in your deck. CardCardCardium.com slash command is the best place to do that. You can also, of course, use their advanced deck building tool to build your deck from scratch. We always buy more cards than we need anyway. Absolutely. And of course you can choose the printing that you want, the quality that you want, and from whatever set there's all sorts of different versions of cards these days. Of course the deck building template is super useful because you can just do it all at once, get all the cards here to your doorstep in one convenient package. We trust CardCardCardium.com slash command for our own collections as well as the GameNightsLives.x that we do. We use them for a lot of our own shows as well. We love CardCardium. We've been with them for quite a long time now. So you can support the show by going to card kingdom.com slash command. And once those cards are in your hand, you're going to need to protect them, keep them safe, keep them organized, go to ultrapro.com slash command to get all of the magic accessories you need in your life. Whether it's binders or play mats or deck boxes or sleeves, UltraPro has everything under the sun that you need to keep your collection safe and organized and you know where all your cards are, that kind of thing. Plus they just came out with a brand new line. I don't know if you've seen this yet. They put up patchcraft products. Oh yes, patchcraft. So these are binders and deck boxes that are covered in hook and loop texture. So you can slap patches on the outsides of your deck boxes and your binder. This is a Rachel thing for sure. It's a cool thing. It's a neat way to customize your stuff that is more temporary. If you're like me and you're constantly rearranging your collection, you can change what binder is which and customize it to your heart's content. Or just make it look really nice. Yeah, or just make it look really nice. I know they have these kind of velcro-y patches for Magic Ones, so maybe you can pick them up there. There's some cool options with what to do with that. And honestly, I've never seen it in the accessory business yet. So a cool new thing coming out from UltraPro, make sure that you check that out and sign up for their newsletter because they're always commanding out with cool new stuff. Cool new deals. And the last one that's supposed to show is directly at patreon.com.com. Our patrons are awesome. We love our patrons. We talk to them every day on our Discord. We've been peppered by questions recently. I know, I love it. The frequency of questions on Discord has gone up and we have some amazing answers. So you can ask us, me, myself, me, myself and I. You can ask Jimmy or Jimmy or Jimmy, any question you want. Josh, Rachel, everyone in the office, they're all on the Discord. You can ask us questions there. You can also interact with our awesome community. You can also just be a part of our Patreon and get access to game nights and extra turns a day early, ad-free for a pure uninterrupted experience. So yeah, we love our patrons. Go to patreon.com. Slash command zone to sign up and find the tier that suits you best. And we shout out one lucky patron every episode. So this episode is dedicated to Aaron Fusnacht-Largen. So sorry, but you rock, Aaron. Cool name. Fusnacht. I mean, it's got to be German, right? I feel like it. Sick. Love you, Aaron. Thanks for watching the show. Let's talk about overlap. Yeah, let's start with the big question, which is why is this important? What? Why is overlap built into the deck building template? Why is it something that we talk about? Kind of a lot on this channel. Yeah, I mean, imagine drawing a hand of cards and each card only does one thing and none of them synergize with each other and they don't end up to do what your deck wants to do. It would feel bad. Yeah. The best feelings in Magic often for me are when I play one thing and then, ah, like two slash three other things happen at the same time. Sure. And like a bunch of options open up all at the same time. I think that's a good way to put it, actually. If you're holding a hand of seven cards and they all do one thing, right? You've got three lands and you've got four spells and they all do one thing. That hand does four different things and that's great. But what if two or three of the cards in your hand did multiple things? It could do this, could do that. Now we have a lot more choices. We have a lot more cards in our hand because we get to decide what card or effect is right at the right time. So it's almost like you're holding, you know, eight spells in your hand. Like let's say this is an MDFC. It's a spell or a land. Spree. Let's say, yeah, this is a spree card that could be protection or could be card draw. You've got a lot of different choices and a lot of different flexibility when you're building. Yeah, and the density of adding more cards that overlap in your deck creates consistency in your deck as well. So you're always building a well-refined engine when you're playing a game of Magic of the Gathering. So having more optionality as you go along overlap is what gets you there. Yeah, I want to say that we designed the template to help you balance the kinds of effects that you want in your deck and to help you hit minimums to make sure that your deck is functional. But also, more is more on these kind of things. Like the more overlap you can do, the more card draw you can put into your deck, the more ramp you can put into your deck, it's sort of the more overlap there is, the more density there is for all of these good effects that make your deck work. So it just means that you're going to draw all of the good stuff more often. Yeah, and there's a bit of a pushback sometimes where people are like, oh, you're just playing good stuff dot deck. But Magic is kind of at the point where everything should be good stuff because it just allows you to do more. And there's a lot of optionality too because you can choose what you want to do and it's not just all pure value, value, value all the time. And not all good stuff cards match with other good stuff decks. Like there's stuff that's good in one strategy that isn't good in another strategy where overlap will talk about what it means. It's not just modality, it's also synergy. It's kind of like card types and different ways that they interact together. So good stuff can mean really different things for each strategy. Yeah, overlap is kind of just synergy in a way. It is sort of a different way of seeing synergy. It's like the more situations that your cards work in, the better your deck functions. So if you have a card that's like, could do this and that's good or could do this and that's good or this, that just means that your deck works better together because there's so much flexibility and there's so much intentionality put into that. So it is sort of like a slightly different way of saying synergy. Yeah, and generally when we play games, having more choices rather than less is going to be the more optimal slash funner experience because you never want to be in a situation where you are restricted to what you can do, right? So overlap, synergy, all these things that we're talking about are basically about how you expand your play pattern so that when you are in a situation, you're never left with... It's a really bad feeling when you're like, oh, like, I can only do one thing right now and it isn't that great as opposed to, I have an option here, I can actually do something that moves me to a better position because I have the optionality or the modality here. Yeah, I mean, I think that a big part of having fun in Magic is just having choices and making decisions and thinking about should I cast this or should I cast this? And having that puzzle to unwind is what makes Magic engaging and is what makes it feel like you've participated in that game. It's the games where you didn't make decisions and you didn't get to play where you're like, I guess I just cast the one spell in my hand and that's it, like a computer could play my turn. Wait, wait, wait, you mean an AI could play my turn? Yeah, I agree with that. But also, I think that the more overlap you have, the more boxes, a single card checks, the more space in your deck for cards that, you know, that you don't get to play as often. So if you have a spell that's like, oh, this is my land and it's disruption, then it checks two boxes and condenses two cards into one actual slot in your deck, opening up another slot for something you're excited to play or something that's really good in your deck or is just a card you really like. Yeah, I do love overlap in general because it allows you to, like you said, make more complex game, a more fun game in general. I think gamers in general like complexity because it just means you're just doing more stuff. I think anytime you end a turn where you're like, just did this and then that's it. It doesn't feel as good as the person that's going, tick, tick, tick, tick. You know, just going exploding across the board or even just doing something that has some kind of sequence or overlap that makes it feel smooth. And like, oh, wow. You actually did more than one just, you know, rectangle theory again. If you make your rectangle bigger than everyone else's rectangle, it feels pretty good, right. Yeah. I mean, I think that's definitely something to keep in mind is that when you add overlap to your deck, it increases complexity in a good way, but also in a complex way. Where if you're trying to build a deck for a new player who isn't ready for that level of complexity, then reducing some amount of overlap is fine. Or if you're just like, you know what, my deck is complicated enough already. I don't need like a double-sided, transforming option card. Like I just, I'm good. I'm good. So keep in mind, as you add overlap, it also increases your decision trees. It increases the amount of text on your cards and just generally adds choices in a good way, but also in a way. Yeah. I mean, if you're a complex kind of person, you have a complex past. Look, I'm all for complexity, but I've been playing this game for a long time and I get the opportunity to play it a lot. If you have like one night a month where you get to play and you'll play three games and you know by the end of the night, you don't want to play a complex deck, then- You can have the simple straightforward, yeah. Then maybe you're trying to pull some of this. But we've got a lot of different ways that you can add overlap in your deck. We want to give you some ideas because we don't know your deck, we don't know what you're building, but we can give you some general categories and general techniques for adding overlap into your deck. And one of them we've mentioned already and is probably the most obvious. Yeah. This is just MDFCs. Yeah. This is when MDFCs were first introduced. I looked at Josh. I remember being like, what? This is kind of crazy, right? Are we doing it? Are we really doing it? It's like, yeah, we're putting two cards on one, everybody. Yeah, I mean this, so modal double face cards is what MDFC stands for and that means you can cast it as the front side or you can, well, play it as the front side or play it as the back side. Sometimes it spells on both sides where you get a choice of what to cast. Most often in Commander, when we say MDFCs, we mean a card with a spell in the front and a land on the back. Yeah. Which is my favorite thing because it replaces lands in your deck for the most part. So these are your classic sink into stupor, like the most expensive uncommon of all time probably. But this counts as targeted disruption and a land. Checks two important boxes. Sundering eruption is a really good one. I've seen this win a lot of games, just out of nowhere. Sundering eruption is also sweet because I consider this targeted disruption, mass disruption and a land because you can destroy a land with this. You can get rid of blockers with this. Mass disruption. And it's a land. Pretty sweet card. It's got six three boxes. And it's red. And it's red. Oh my goodness gracious. Yeah. Birgie, God of storytelling. Yeah. I mean, Birgie's on the front and says when you cast spells you make red. But there's the Harnfeld Horn of Bounty on the back. And this is an artifact that says when you discard a card, you can exile the top two cards of your library and play those cards this turn. Hey. I wanted to highlight this one because I think this is an MDFC that we play a lot. But I wouldn't count this as both ramp and card draw. Right. If you think you're always going to play it as Birgie or you think you're always going to play it as the horn. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I would only count it as both if you're actually going to use it for both. If you could see yourself casting either side. Yeah. A lot of times like the Storm decks that just want Birgie for the front side or like that. That's the reason Birgie's in the deck in a very like very narrow 1% situation that you can cast the opposite side of it. Then yeah, horn fell might be relevant or there's some artifacts energy or whatever. But yeah, you're right. It's a card that is very powerful on both sides but they're both so powerfully unique that you actually want to build into one or the other. You sort of know what you're going into, right? Yeah. I mean, I think you look at Turgrid and you're like, Turgrid has a backside? Oh, Turgrid. Like it's... There are some spells that you're just not going to consider the backside and shouldn't really be considered for both. Good call. I want to call attention to MDFCs. These are single use as one spell or another unless you build other synergy into them. So there are ways for... There are different ways that we're going to talk about but this is like, it's either the spell or it's the other spell or land. And then it's basically that unless you have a way to pick up your lands and recast over the spell or something like that. Yeah, agree with that. So these are probably the easiest types of overlap to include. Yeah, and I do want to add a note of warning because it's one I've had to have for myself. Every single time I draw one of these into my hand, I go, aha, it's not a land. It's definitely a spell. And then you ruin your game because you just don't play your land that term because you're like, I need to keep this whatever in my, the sink and the stupor into my hand. You should not do that, everybody. So the way that you see overlap sometimes, I think sometimes you get a little greedy. And I think overlap, it's just like general warning message over the whole episode. It's like, if you get greedy with your overlap cards, you're actually hurting your deck more than the overlap cards helping it. So you generally want to be more cautious on these sides. It's the, in terms of like, oh, I'm going to miss my land drop. I should just play my MDFC. Even though I know sink and stupor is going to be good in this game, missing a land drop and having access to that one mana over the course of the next five turns is way more important. So overlap sometimes can be very like, it's easy to like get into the mentality. I think for me especially of like, oh, I've got so much overlap. It doesn't matter what I do. So you forget about the basics of your gameplay. So don't do that. I mean, this is what we're talking about where it adds this complexity where you're like, okay, I have a bounce bell or I have a land. I have to decide what it needs to be today. And if you think sink and stupor generally is, you're going to want to cast it as a removal spell. You could not encounter it as a land and just know that you have that option in a dire situation, but you adjust your land count in the build to not include sink and stupor as a land or something like that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think the hardest thing about it, putting these into a deck honestly, is they're just kind of expensive. Yeah, I know. And they go into everything. No problem is like, yeah, every blue deck once, sink and stupor. Yeah, and they're really hard to reprint because they're double sided. So they're like harder for wizards to actually print. And the printer has to do it both sides. The printers work in double time. I mean, there's ink on the other side normally. I'm just making a dumb joke. All right. Brown ink costs less than the blue ink. Yeah, so that's MDFCs. I think that's what we think of when we think about overlap. And this next one is when we think about a lot too. And that's just modal spells. Yeah, modal spells, the classic, everyone wants to win a game by casting Rakdos Charm because it says choose one and you have a bunch of different options. And all of them are fairly relevant in any game of commander. So these are single use spells that have one or more options. These have been around for a long time. I feel like this is the classic, the original sort of overlap, modal spell, right? Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think MDFCs are like, you get the choice between this spell and this spell and they have, or this land. Choose one. And you have usually like different casting costs and you have different requirements. They're good in different spots. These are, they have all of the same casting costs but still have that single use-ness of them. Yeah, so this is targeted disruption, mass disruption, or just burn someone out. Kill them. It's a disruption, it destroys an artifact. Mass disruption, it takes care of an entire graveyard and usually at a very opportune time because of that instant speed. Instant speed, yeah. Or it deals one damage, each creature deals one damage to its controller, just a straight up win con in the right decks. So I think Rakdos Charm sees so much play because all of those are very good effects that can be relevant at any time in a commander game. Yeah. One I really like is choose one or more. This is mystic confluence. Oh yes. So this is choose three. Counter target spell unless its controller pays three. Manly. Return target creature to its owner's hand and draw a card. However, you may choose one mode more than one time if you want so you can counter someone unless they pay nine for instance or draw three. Bounce three creatures. Bounce two, draw one, et cetera. This is a really, really flexible card. It's very hard to die when you're holding up a mystic confluence. Cause you can bounce three creatures, you can counter a big spell, and if nothing happens, well you can draw three cards. So when I put mystic confluence in my decks, I counter it as target disruption. I also counter it as card advantage. And even protection, which usually goes in the plan section because you can bounce your own creatures in response to removal or board wipes, that kind of thing. It just has a lot of flexibility on it and you can really feel that overlap. Yeah, when someone has five men up in blue, mystic confluence is one of the worst things you can see on the other side of the table. Bushwack is a personal favorite of mine. I know this is a big favorite of yours. I've been playing this card a lot lately. This card, it's one of those cards that's sneakily good and it's like a common, right? It's a green sorcery. You can choose one, you can search your library for a basic land reveal, put it into your hand, then shuffle or target creature you control fights another creature you don't control. Yeah. Good. This is pretty sweet. It just counts as a land in the hand. So I count Bushwack as a hand. As a land. As a hand. As a hand land. I count Bushwack as a land because it only costs one mana for you to go get the land you need, which is functionally the same as a tapped basic. So it's sort of an evolving wilds where you pay one mana, it's the land comes in tapped to get whatever color you need or it's a removal spell. And those are great at different times. That's great when you need a really high land count and you're trying to just play as many lands as possible but don't want to flood. I think Bushwack is a great option. Yeah, it's one of those great cards too where it's really solid in the early game and amazing in the late game in certain scenarios. Again, you have to be a creature based deck usually or one that has, you know, because it's a fight spell you don't want a creature to die but Bushwack is one of those cards. And we've seen a lot of these cards that printed in a limited to make the limited formats more smooth in general, but they're really great for commander because it's able to fit that really nice spot where it's like, well, something you just need that land. Yeah. Like the evolving wilds. It's like twisted roots or something. Is the go get a land and proliferate. I played that one a fair amount too. Yeah, there's one, I forgot its name, it's from the Innistrad set. Shelle's a Innistrad where it's like you can delirium. Oh yeah. Yeah, you can land or a creature if you have delirium. Absolutely, it's traversed the evolving world. Yeah, traversed the even world. It's great. So those kinds of cards, they're because they only cost one mana, I count them as a land. If they cost two mana to go find it, then it's a little more dicey. You don't really want to be spending two mana to go get a land. You get it onto the battlefield at that point. Yeah. Similarly, Lorien Revealed checks this box. Yeah. And all of the one mana cyclers from Lord of the Rings. So Lorien Revealed is three blue, blue for a sorcery that says draw three cards. Great, we'll cast that spell. Or it says Island Cycling one. Go find any island, it doesn't have to be a basic. This is a really powerful land. Because it pays, you only pay one mana to go get it. And usually you're gonna want to get an untapped land with it unless you're really desperate. Cause then you're sort of paying two mana to get a land. But this is card draw and this is a land. This checks two boxes for you. And it's like index that care about it. It's an inciner sorcery in the graveyard. It's a cycling trigger, it's a search trigger. There's all sorts of different ways that you can have Lorien Revealed check multiple boxes. Yeah, and people play some Canadian Highlander. Oh yeah. It's a very competitive format. So cards like these are definitely ones you don't want to sleep on because they are just so sneakily good. Yeah, this whole cycle is like, I'll play the ant all the time. I wouldn't normally play a six mana, five, seven that makes a food, but it's a land. Yeah, I'm a big fan of the Swamp Cycler. Yep, that would. The thing can't be blocked by both of these. He's unbelievable. The troll is insane. The troll is crazy, yeah. All right, there's one more I wanted to talk about because there are modal permanents. We don't think about them very often, but it's usually the permanents that when they enter, you choose an ability. So this is like the siege cycle. I think is the most common one. So Glacierwood siege, I think is a good example. It's one green, blue, for an enchantment that says, as this enters, you choose either Timur or Sultai. Timur is whenever you cast an instant or sorcery, target player, mills, four cards, or Sultai, you may play lands from your graveyard. Ah, cool overlap here. So I chose this one specifically because I think these are, you could want either one of these effects. I wouldn't count it, it's not overlap unless you would play it for either side. So this one could be self mill or it could be recursion, both of which are usually go under the plan category, but it's worth noting that you don't have to check multiple boxes outside of the plan to count as overlap. If you have, like you wanna have 10 self mill cards to fill up your graveyard, because that's part of your plan, and you want some amount of recursion to play lands out of your graveyard and turn that self mill into card advantage, then this can check two different boxes. It plays two roles in your deck, even though it doesn't strictly meet the definition of ramp or targeted disruption, those kind of things. Yeah, that's cool. And again, it plays to the fact that magic is a game that does not start at one specific time, right? Like the cards that you draw are always evolving in a way as you draw them throughout the game. So the enchantments that have the sieges that let you choose something when it comes in are great because again, you can either draw it and just go, you know what, I don't need either of these, that's not gonna play it, or I really want this part of it now, or I already have another card out that lets me play lands from my graveyard, so I definitely want the top part of it, et cetera. So it's the funness of the overlap there. But again, it is common when you play these sieges that you only want one of them, and in that case, it's not really overlap because you're not realistically going to use the other side of it. The Burjee effect. Okay, we've got a lot more ways that you can practice overlap in your decks, that you can tighten up the screws on your decks to make them more consistent. Let us know your favorite overlap cards in the comments below, but right now we're going to take a break to hear a few words from our sponsors. Isn't life grande and making it better just got easier with Starbucks' new protein cold foam? A little something, something to take your favorite drinks up a notch with 15 grams of extra protein. Turn your usual iced caramel latte into a smooth iced caramel protein latte. Add a delicious swirl on top of your drink, just like that. Protein never tasted so good with Starbucks' new protein cold foam, subject to availability while stocks last. Are you at campaign's lighting of the dashboard? But not the pipeline. That's bull spend. And marketers are calling it out in dashboard confessions. My boss asked for results, so I opened my dashboard for the only positive-sounding metric I had. 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I used to take forever to do it in paper, but I can't go back to that life. This play tester is just too good. Architect is the best place to browse, brew, and play test Commander decks. Just go to architect.com slash command zone to get started. That's A-R-C-H-I-D-E-K-T.com slash command zone. Welcome back everybody. We are talking about overlap. We've talked about MDFCs. We've talked about modal spells. Next we're gonna talk about split spells. Split spells. Split it up. So these are cards that have more spells than one on the card. They often are ones where you can play one version of it and then the other side of it becomes active. Yeah, these are kind of two spells in one. Two in one, yeah. Split different from MDFCs where you have to pick one or the other. These are adventure spells. There's a great example of a virtue of persistence. Yeah, a removal spell. Two mana removal spell, so it's targeted disruption. And then it's a seven mana enchantment that brings creature back. So it will be in the plan section, but I would call it recursion. Yeah, monk class would also be in this as that. Oh yeah, classes are huge. Classes are very interesting because they don't feel like split spells, but they are because you cast... They're sort of forcing your hand because you have to do it in order, whereas virtue of persistence you could just slam down the seven mana version of it when you draw it if you wanted to. You could, yeah. Monk class is white and blue for an enchantment class, and it enters in with the first ability, which is the second spell you cast. Each turn costs one less to cast, so you could monk class into another spell. And then you can level it up on your turn for white and blue to return something at level two, and then at level three it does a bunch of other stuff. Yeah, I don't want to read it. Yeah, so it's like monk class does a ton. It's ramp for the first ability. It reduces casting costs. The second one is targeted disruption. It bounces at permanent at sorcery speed, but it can still slow somebody down. Oh right, sorry, sorry, it bounces, not return something. Yeah, it returns it to hand. Yeah, I think I said it to your hand, but it's someone else's stuff, yeah. But non-land permanent to its owner's hand, so you could rescue something of yourself, or you could just like set somebody back a turn. Yeah. And the third ability lets you cast stuff off the top as long as it's the second, it's the whole thing, but it's some amount of card advantage. And yes, you have to do this in order, but if you think that you could reasonably level it up, or this would be reasonably good in your deck, which I think is possible, these are all very affordable upgrades. Yeah. That you can count monk class as multiple things in your deck. Yeah, and monk class itself kind of makes it cost quote-unquote one less, because the next spell you cast after it costs one less, but because it's white blue, the casting cost is a little restrictive. But again, the beauty about these overlap cards is that when you find the deck that it runs, when you find the deck that it really works in, they shine brighter than everything else. Absolutely. I mean, I think one of the best wind conditions slash enablers in white that's come out in the last couple of years is Dollmaker Shop and Personum Gallery. Dollmaker Shop is great. It's whenever one or more non-toy creatures you control attack a player, create a 1-1 white toy artifact creature token. So for each person you attack, you get a toy. It's just a great little artifact engine. It's a great creature engine. It's very easy to cast and to trigger in the right deck. And then Porcelain Gallery is a huge overrun effect. Creatures you control have base power and toughness, each equal to the number of creatures you control. That's an enormous anthem that comes stapled to a thing that enables that anthem. Yeah, and again, similar to Virtua Persistence, you can play, because it's a room, you can play the four blue, white, white side of it first, and then if you want to unlock the Dollmaker Shop later, but again, great in the early game, great in the late game, and in the deck that wants it, very effective. These kind of spells are particularly good in the overlap category, because they can be multiple things. They do sort of represent multiple cards, even if those cards are slightly less powerful versions, or they're slightly less optimal versions, like we said, sorcery speed removal, or can only kill something small. They do check multiple boxes in terms of how they function in an actual game. Yeah, sometimes I'll look at like a Virtua Persistence and be like, one in black for minus three, minus three at sorcery speed is not an ideal commander rate, where you have cards that are way better than that rolling around at instant speed and for less mana, right? But the other side of it is so powerful that you would be like, okay, I'm going to put this in the deck that really likes the other side of it, and I'm not going to fully substitute this as, I would say this is like half a removal spell, because sometimes it just doesn't work on the board state, or it doesn't kill anything that you actually want to get rid of, but the other side of it is so good that you still include it in your deck, and that way you can like combine two overlap cards to sort of take the slot of one removal spell, because there's other cards like that are similar to what Virtua Persistence does on the removal side, right? The big thing about this is you have to want all the abilities. You're not going to run Virtua Persistence as a removal spell if you're not interested in the seven mana side of things. Yeah, exactly. And you're not really going to, well, I guess if you're going to run the seven mana top end, you're going to run the removal spell. It's free. It's there. They're attached. But you have to really want to check those boxes. You're not going to run a modal spell because it has modes if you're not interested in casting some of the modes. Yeah. And it can be meta-dependent too, right? Like syncing to stupor in some play groups is insane. Yeah. And in other play groups, it might just be a little less effective, right? Just depending on how the players play, whether or not an instant speed bounce spell is something that could completely disrupt what your opponents are doing. Yeah. I mean, end of counterspell on that one. Yeah. The next one is something that is getting more and more common with magic. And this is just spells that do a lot of things. They do all the stuff. The spells that are like not even modal, really, they just do it. So these are often permanents with multiple functions that can happen throughout the game. So a perfect example, I think, is black market connections. Yeah, a card I love and hate more every day. So for those who aren't familiar, you've probably seen this in our gameplay, but it's tuned to Blackbird Enchantment. And at the beginning, you can pay for a treasure, you can pay life for a card, or you can pay life, and you can pay life for a creature token. Shapeshifter. So you can lose a lot of life to this, but it checks a lot of boxes. It gives you ramp if you need it, it gives you card drop if you need it, it gives you board presence if you need it. Yeah, or sacrifice things. That too. Sacrifice fodder. It can help you trigger, yeah, sacrifice stuff. It can help you trigger your token stuff. It can help you enable typo strategies. It does all sorts of different things in a deck. And for you to be playing black market connections, you really want all of that overlap. Yeah, I find that black market, it's a great card to compare to like Frexian Arena, which is just pure card advantage. And it's pretty slow. And the life loss is a lot less on Frexian Arena. But I do like black market connections in a lot of games where it's just like, sometimes that 3-2 blocker that you make actually counts for like 10 life based on how the game is going and how people are attacking. Or even a chump blocker. Right, yeah. So like I think it's a good, again, very meta dependent card because I used to think that it was just like slam black market connections in every deck you can. And I started dying to it way more often than I liked. And I was like, wait a minute, maybe I don't actually need this versus just another card that does similar things. But the overlap is great because you can again choose one, two, or three of the options. But you always have to choose at least one. Yeah. Another one I was thinking about was Koma. Yeah, this is really cool. Koma is obviously a very, very powerful card. But this is the Sevenmana Serpent. It can't be countered. At the beginning of each upkeep, you make a 3-3 blue serpent creature token named Koma's Coil. And it has an ability. Sacrifice another serpent, choose one. Tap target permanent, its activated abilities can't be activated this turn. Or Koma Cosmos Serpent gains indestructible until end of turn. Now this checks a lot of boxes. Yeah, this card's crazy. I would consider Koma a mass disruption because it makes a ton of tokens and you can really control the board with multiple different things with all of your coils. But it's also board presence. It gives you token triggers. It gives you sacrifice triggers. Depending on what deck you're putting it in, it's going to check a lot of boxes. These are not really going to play Koma if it's just like a thing. Yeah. I mean, if you just want just pure raw power in blue, this could also just be a wincon in some decks depending if you want like a slower type wincon. Mass disruption, tokens, sacrifice, threat. In decks I just sometimes that I'm like especially cheating stuff into play. Sometimes you need a box that just says Threat. This card can win the game. Yeah, if I get this out, it's GG. Yeah. Yeah. Koma's a great example. Another really good one is Liliana Dreadhort General. Yeah, this card's awesome. Four Blot Black is a Planeswalker, but it kind of works like it's an enchantment because this is whenever a creature you control dies, draw a card. Comes in with six loyalty with three abilities. The first one is you make a two-two Black Zombie creature token. The second one is minus four to make each player sacrifice two creatures of their choice. And then the minus nine is the typical Liliana every opponent chooses. The permanent they control of each permanent time sacrifices the rest. Probably not going to get to that one because a lot of times it's Liliana, minus four, everyone sacks two mini board wipe. You draw a bunch of cards. Oh yeah. And you're just set up with this Liliana to keep taking up the next turn. Yeah, Liliana is card advantage. She's mass disruption. She makes tokens. She gives you sacrifice triggers. It's a whole lot of boxes for one card to check. And you're paying a lot of mana for her, obviously, but because she can do all of those things for you, there's a lot of power there. It is worth considering that Planeswalkers are great for modality. They definitely can do a lot of different things. All of them have modality, yeah. That's sort of what the type is designed for, but they're a little bit harder to keep on the battlefield sometimes. This one's great because it protects itself. So you need to think of them sort of more as modal sorceries with upside than like Black Market Connections, which sits on the board and is more reliably going to stay. It's harder to disrupt. The overlap card we've talked about the most in the last couple of years. Because it's insane. Is Ice-Tel Explorer. Yeah, I don't know why this card exists. Two blue, green, green for a two-four, insect scout. You may play an additional land on each of your turns. You may play lands from your graveyard. And why not whenever a land you control enters mill a card? This checks three boxes. Three very powerful boxes that a lot of strategies want. It gives you ramp. It lets you play an additional land. And if you don't have that land in hand, it's fine. You can play them from your graveyard. And if you don't have any lands in your graveyard, it's fine. Why not? We'll put some cards in your graveyard to help you find one. So this is self mill, which is a plan box to check. It's recursion, which is usually in plan as well. And then it's a ramp card. And that just shows you the power of overlap, the power of a card that does multiple things. Another one I think of a lot is like forensic gadget here. Reduces activated abilities of your artifacts and then makes artifacts. It gives you rectangles, it gives you card draw and also cost reduction. All of those cards are really powerful because they check multiple boxes and can condense so many cards into one. Yeah, if you're someone that plays like Moe Mir on Arena or whatever. I still explore it feels like you got a Moe Mir emblem. It's one of those cards where it's like, this is an emblem. It's insane what's happening here. It's nuts. Two turns with I Still Explorer is such a mana burst that it's like... Even just one turn in a fetch land, it's like, what the heck just happened? Yeah, it's ridiculous. Yeah, talking about taking game actions. The next few categories that we're going to talk about are a little less obvious in terms of recognizability of overlap. And I think one of them is a big one when I'm designing Commander Dex is just building in a relevant card types. Yeah. So if these are spells that check one box with their function, so they're like a targeted disruption spell. And then they check another for being synergistic with the deck. So if it's a typo deck, their creature type matches. Or if it's like built around artifacts, their card type matches. And that synergy just makes your deck work a little bit better and does give you some amount of overlap. I think Reclamation Sage is a great example. Ah, because it's an elf. It's an elf. You're probably not building around shamans, you might be. That's sick. You should. Go for it. But this is easily targeted disruption and checks one of those boxes. And it's an elf, so it checks one of your 30 plan card slots. Yeah, and oftentimes it's also just like, it's a bounce deck. It's a flicker deck. You don't care about the elf, you just care about the fact that's an ETB ability. So then that's the overlap there. It's just that's enter the battlefield effect. I think like a Dragonborn Champion in a Dragonborn deck, or Dragon deck specifically. We don't have Dragonborn decks yet. Or just big damage decks, right? Yeah, I mean, whenever a source you control deals five or more damage to a player, draw a card. And it's a 5-3 with trample. So this is one that I would say, yes, it's a dragon, so all my dragon stuff triggers. And yes, this is card draw, so all my card draw stuff. So I have a card draw in my deck. So it just checks multiple boxes. Yeah, subtypes are very important. Nivenerals disc in an artifact deck. Yeah. This is a fun one. I mean, this is Nivenerals disc is an artifact that you sacrifice to, well, you don't sacrifice. You tap to destroy all artifacts, creatures, and enchantments. Including itself. Including itself, sort of, unless you make it indestructible, which is gross. Don't do that. Don't do that. But you could, but don't. But it's cool. Yeah, I've seen it happen. But probably don't. Artifacts deck though are very good at untapping artifacts. So you can enter untapped, and you can hold the ability up. It's easy to tutor in artifact decks. And like Rachel said, you can make it indestructible. Don't do that. And it triggers all of your, like, when I cast an artifact stuff. Or I can play artifacts from my graveyard stuff. Right. Well, off the top of my lvl already. Exactly. It checks the artifact box, and it checks the mass disruption box. So it just works on two fronts. Yeah. All of your synergy pieces are improved, and also you're checking your vegetables off. Yep. Okay, the next category is the check all boxes. It's just a tutor. You can find whatever card you want. Yeah, this is the ultimate overlap. Yeah, because it represents a demonic tutor, or a vampiric tutor, represents any card in your deck at any point. Yeah. A lot of people are like, how should I classify, how can I classify tutors? Like when I'm using the deck building template. And the answer is it's anything it can search for. It could be ramp. If you think that you're in a situation where you're going to demonic tutor for a soul ring, for example. Yeah. It could be ramp. If you're in a deck where it's going to tutor most often for a combo piece, maybe you don't count it as ramp, or maybe you don't count it as a land. That kind of thing. Like I think the... Or removal, mass removal. Sure, you have tutoring for a board wipe. That's the power of tutors is that they fill any slot you want them to. Yeah. That's the other thing that we've talked about, like a view of a more narrow tutor, something like enlightened tutor that only tutors for artifacts or enchantments. The enlightened tutor is only as powerful and flexible as the cards it can search for. So if you're playing with an enlightened tutor, you probably want to be able to tutor for some kind of ramp spells, some kind of draw spells, some kind of mass disruption spells, some kind of targeted disruption spell. So that your enlightened tutor can check all of the boxes in your deck. Yeah. I think with more specific tutors, you're kind of doing it in opposite where you have the deck built and you're like, these are the artifacts and enchantments I really want in a game to make my game plan go well. And then the gravy on top is like sometimes you just need to get the soaring as opposed to your combo piece artifact or whatever the enchantment is. Yeah, but I mean, if I'm running a tutor, I definitely want my tutor to be able to search for anything that I'm looking for in a situation. So if I have an enlightened tutor, I want it to be able to find some kind of like mass disruption spell. I want to run a ghostly prison. Or if I need to find a removal spell, I'll help it find a grasp of fate or something like that. Yeah, right. I would change my targeted disruption and my mass disruption suite a little bit just to make sure that my tutor is as flexible and it has as much overlap as it could possibly have. And I think that's something that people don't think about as much. If you're playing a worldly tutor and you're like, well, I cast worldly tutor and I always find one thing. Your worldly tutor should be able to answer any problem that you could have. It can find graveyard hate. It can find... A wreck sage. A wreck sage. It can find life gain. The more options you have to search for, the more powerful your tutor is. Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Tutors, I don't play with as much because I do think it is a little boring. But I think if you're trying to just get more consistency and you're not doing it for combo sakes, combo sakes, then I think tutors can be a much... I actually think tutors should be played a little more. I've seen some games to sort of draw out because people just don't have the answers at the right time and someone runs away with it. And in the right situation, the tutor can really help alleviate that sort of like, oh, darn it, we just couldn't do anything. In games, I think where it's higher power level, there's a certain threshold that you cross with tutors where at a certain point it's less about the overlap and it's just more about the, I'm just going to win because of this thing. Sure, yeah. The way I think about tutors is toolbox. And I think that's the way that you can consider it overlap. That's the way you can build in a lot more synergy. And that's how you explain it at the table when someone asks you about that tutor in your deck. All right. Let's talk about the next category, which is commanders with overlap. Oh, yes. Because this is very common. There's a lot of modern commander designs, a lot of popular commanders that check multiple boxes. Usually one of the boxes is planned and the other box is a card advantage or ramp. Yeah. Is a very common way that they've designed commanders, especially pre-con commanders. Yeah. And I think it's a good key for recognizing whether a commander is very powerful. Is if they can overlap into multiple categories. If it has overlap. Yeah. Yeah, a good example is one that came out recently, which is Ishitola, Knights Blessed. Very popular commander. This is an Esper commander. It's a 2-4 with vigilance. At the beginning of each end step, if a player lost four or more life this turn, you draw a card. It could have just ended there, by the way. Card advantage, yep. But it says, whenever you cast a non-creature spell with mana value of three or greater, Ishitola deals two damage to each opponent and you gain two life. Plan. Plan. So the plan enables the card draw on it. So she gives you the tools to meet the stipulation that she set. Yeah. And I think that's what really makes this a compelling and powerful commander, is that she says, here's what you have to do to get card advantage. Just these spells. And I'm going to help you get there. Yeah. So, the Pontlazza Sun-Favored, I think, is a decent example as well. It's whenever Pontlazza or another dinosaur enters the battle, they don't do your control. Discover Axra Axe's its toughness, do it only once each turn. Discover is great because Discover is card advantage. It finds you a spell and it is mana cheating or it could be considered ramp. You need a little bit less ramp if you're mana cheating like this. Another one of the same colors is Balan. Yeah. Balan does everything. Does all the things on it. So you can tap two untapped tokens to make mana or you can tap three untapped tokens to draw a card or you tap four untapped tokens to put three one-man counters on Balan and it gains trample. Yeah. Mana, card draw, win card. All in one. These are commanders that are very popular and very powerful because all of the engine is sort of stapled to each other. You can check a lot of boxes in the command zone so you know that you always have access to some of the important effects. Yeah. It's also very directional in terms of what it wants you to do. Like obviously make tokens. I think a very clear one is Arcades, the strategist. Oh yeah. We don't see as much Arcades anymore because he's very on rails but Arcades says whenever a creature with defender enters the battlefield under your control draw a card. We're playing defender cards and then we draw cards. Each creature you control with defender assigns combat damage equal to its toughness rather than its power and it can attack as though it didn't have defender. And that's how you win the game. Yeah. So the card is very clear and we've got a card advantage very clear and it says exactly what you want in the deck, what your plan is for the rest of it. Yeah. A lot of the most powerful commanders of all time are ones that kind of do it all or at least have the card draw built into it and then a very easy way to make that happen or the ramp or whatever it is. Yeah. And when we say a commander does it all where it's the enabler and the payoff or it's ramp and card draw that's what we mean is it has a lot of overlap. It does a lot of things that the deck wants to do all on one card. Yeah. And usually those are very powerful commanders because they don't ask a lot of you. All Arcadies wants is creatures with defender. You don't have to do anything else. Yeah. You don't have to get away to assign defender to a creature or whatever. 40 lands. There's their toughness. Nope. 40 lands. 60 creatures with defender. Arcadies got the rest. Yeah. And you got some weirdos in there too from early magic. So that's a good way to sort of recognize that a commander is very powerful or recognize sort of why a deck is working so well when another one isn't working and it's because it fills multiple roles. Yeah. I think one thing that has sort of been coming up for me through this episode is I've heard a lot of you often hear some criticism about overlap in ways that are just like, oh, it's kind of boring because you're just doing the same thing. You're just playing the generically good. I still explore. It does everything. So I think there are ways to sort of get around that, which is sort of like when the type relevance or ways that you can feel more cute or more fun or more innovative. It's like, ah, it's also a shaman. Check that out. Because it could, you know, we do get into a format sometimes where people are just, you know, it is true. You kind of just play the same 25 cards over and over again and everything starts to feel really samey. Like it's similar with Arcadies. At a certain point, you've seen every Arcadies deck ever played. You play like maybe three Arcadies decks. You've probably seen most Arcadies decks. Yeah, you get the idea. Yeah, you get the idea. Yeah. It's hard to build an Arcadies deck that isn't exactly what it says. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there is. This episode is more about using, like understanding the tool of overlap. It isn't a mandate. It isn't all of your cards should overlap. Like the deck building template only says eight cards, right? You don't need every single card in the deck to check multiple boxes, but you should have an awareness of how much synergy you're sewing into your decks. And if your decks aren't working very well, it's possible that you don't have enough overlap and you don't have enough cards that are checking multiple boxes for you. Yeah. And I think the great fun in this is finding the cards like great train heist or the ones that are like, oh, look at the overlap that is just specific to this deck and is like really strong here that makes it feel really special. Because magic has done a really good job, I think, of making cards that are more like, all right, this is definitely more in the type of world and it more is about tokens or more about the card draw synergy or whatever it is. And you can sort of like find that lane to build into to make the overlap not just feel powerful, but also thematic and fun at the same time. Yeah. I really like building with overlap. And I think it's because of that theme meanness. Like if I'm playing a Murfolk deck, I want basically as much of my disruption is attached to a Murfolk as you possibly can. I want all of my card draw to be on a Murfolk. Because that overlap is sort of what makes the deck fun and gives the deck an identity rather than just playing a bunch of generic good stuff that checks a lot of boxes because it's good. Yeah. And I think also like for, I don't blame anyone for doing that too. There are some decks that I have in my collection that are just good stuff. Oh, yeah. They just function, they play well, I don't need to think too hard, it's going to do the thing. And at a certain point, I get a little tired of that and then you can find the deck that is more about the very cool theming into like very specific things. Yeah. As in life, variety is the spice of it. Before we wrap up, I want to talk a little bit about how to, a technique I use to sort of measure overlap, especially when I'm deck building. And it's all an architect, so I build entirely digitally. And a lot of other deck builders have this. But like when we use architect, I think it's very clear what cards overlap and how many cards you have in each category. Because architect will automatically put your cards into categories. If you like it too, it uses like data to just sort it into blink or tokens or whatever. Yeah, you can choose to organize your deck by type as well. So I've turned that off and I leave all of my labeling to do it by hand. But you can save a card with multiple categories. So like I mark Tiferry's protection as a protection spell, but also a mass destruction spell. Mass destruction, yeah. And you label that on your Tiferry's protection or on any card that you play a lot of. And then you can save the categories and now anytime you add it to your deck, it'll check multiple boxes. Oh, very cool. It does it across your account. Across, yeah, all of them. So it just makes it long term easier for you to deck build and easier for you to see what cards are in multiple categories and how many you have of each category. Yeah, you can also choose which one is like the primary category. You can like put a little golden star next to it as well. Yeah. I'm mostly going to use B.R.G. for mana, but I could use it as card draw. That'll be slightly less highlighted. Yeah. It's a good way to overlap your deck building in the way if you think about it. Well, yeah. Because I usually will sort by creatures and enchantments and artifacts to see what that balance is like. And then I'll sort it by mana valley to see what that balance is like. And then I'll sort it by categories to see what that balance is like, right? Absolutely. You can just do it multiple ways to look at what your deck is to see a more complete picture of what's going on. It gives you, if you're somebody who really likes to use the deck building template, it's a great way to see it. It's the second thing I do anytime I'm building a deck is I dump all the cards that I'm interested in putting into a deck into one document. And then I sort it out and say like, okay, I'm a little bit long on Master's disruption or I don't have enough card draw. I'm going to have to check some boxes and move things around. And like you said, we're going to switch between to types or mana value to make sure my curve is working as well. So architect is just a really good tool to sort of measure your overlap and to see how much your cards are, how much work your cards are actually doing for you. Yeah. And then sometimes in deck building, you can see the one card that's like, actually, this thing is kind of a stinker. It doesn't really do anything. Sometimes yeah, when you can't find a place to put it in like on the, in any category, you're like, oh, this isn't doing anything the deck wants it to do. I'm going to cut it. Easy cut. Easy cuts are one of the best parts of deck building. You're like, thank goodness. This isn't just, yeah, here. What was I thinking? Finally, down from 150 to 149 on my way. So we've talked about a lot of different cards today, a lot of different techniques for building overlap into your deck. We're going to talk a little bit about our pet cards when it comes to overlap, cards that we like to use in our decks in just a moment. But if you want to pick up any of the cards that we talked about now or we're going to talk about in a second, go to cardkingdom.com slash command. Cardkingdom has so many cards all under one roof. So when you're shopping or you're building a deck, you can paste your deck list or your shopping list all into their advanced deck building tool and they will give you all of the options, what version, what printing, what condition of each version there is all on one page. Click, click, click, click, click, click and hit buy and you're done. It's so much simpler than trying to compare a whole bunch of prices and with multiple shippings. It's just all under one roof and you get it done. Plus, they've got a great customer service to help you out if anything does go wrong. And you're supporting the show when you use that affiliate link at cardkingdom.com slash command. And then head on over to ultrapro.com slash command to overlap your protection because you might put the card into a sleeve or double sleeve and then into a deck box. And then talk about overlap. Back, back. Yeah, on top of a play mat. Yeah, on top of a play mat. Yeah, ultrapro.com slash command. They've got tons of great products, something for everyone, whether it's a play mat, deck box sleeve, dice, the keyword ability dice. Those go out of stock pretty often because they're very, very necessary these days too. But check it all out, ultrapro.com slash command and you support the show while you do it. All right, let's talk about some of our favorite cards with overlap. Yeah. I'm so glad you put this one here. Well, I know it. I know it's your favorite. That one's for you. It really is. It's PITBOY3000. It does it all. It's a one-mana equipment with equip two. Whenever equip creature attacks, choose one, draw a card and discard a card, put a woman counter on that creature or untap up to two target lands. That last one is so nice. So good. And they're all good. You need to draw a land, draw a discard, make this thing buffer, put a woman counter on it. Yeah. Untap lands, go for it. And it's an equipment that gives you attack triggers, that kind of thing. This card just checks so many boxes. It's so cheap. It's your PITBOY. It's so fun to play. Yeah, it does it all. It does it all. I don't know. I'm sure there's an advertising campaign for PITBOY that's basically that. I mean, they're pretty sweet in the game. They're kind of crucial. Yeah. A big one that I think about all the time is Goblin Bombardment. What a great card. Oh my gosh. So this is one in red, Sacrifice a creature, Goblin Bombardment deals one damage to any target. So this can be targeted disruption. This can be mass disruption. This can be burned. This helps you enable sacrifice triggers. And it's a two mana enchantment. When it comes down and you're playing a cheap commander, you're like, well... I think it's dead. I'm in big trouble. I've got to find an answer. I've got to find an answer. At any point, there's just a freaking anvil held over my head that can just delete my commander. It's so good. When you get to low life totals with Goblin Bombardment out. Oh man. You're like, okay, am I dead? I'm close to dead. I'm like two creatures away from dying. Yeah. The person with Goblin Bombardment basically becomes a puppeteer at that point. They're going to do whatever they want. And it's because of that flexibility. You're like, okay, if I block this creature, technically my creature survives, but it has three damage marked on it. Okay, will I just lose it to them sacrificing a Goblin? Maybe. Who knows? Make a deal. Goblin Bombardment, great card. Any original art for it? So nice. So good. So good. That's a huge one that I think about all the time. One that I keep wanting to put in decks, but just hasn't made it enough yet is Smuggler Surprise. This card is so good. All the spree cards are really good. It's green at its base and you get to choose one or more additional costs. The plus two is mill four. Then you can put up the two creatures and or lands from among them into your hand. Four in the green. So six total. You may put up the two creature cards from your hand on the battlefield. So just six mana cheat two. Plus one for so one in the green is creatures you control power four greater gain hex proof and instructable until end of turn. Wow. Just heroic intervention on top. Yeah. Heroic intervention for your big stuff. Plus a draw spell like that. What a blowout. An instant too. You can just choose any of these. I've had somebody cheat two creatures into play on end step and just be like, yeah, I think that'll do it. That's going to be really tough. I guess that's GG. That was totally something you could have done. Holy cow. Yeah. Yeah. It's just really, really flexible. It's great index that can make a lot of green mana. It's great index that have a lot of big things. Like. Yeah. Having a Smuggler Surprise in your power matters deck is so nice because you can even cut heroic intervention at that point. That only protects. How about garbage? Yeah, garbage. Garbage, guard heroic intervention. Especially with protection, I do like that overlap because protection is such a narrow effect. It's so powerful, but it's such a narrow moment where it's good that having spells like this that give you that protection if you need it, but also can be like, I need to hit a land drop and it's turned four. Getting both a creature and a land or a land, yeah, it's super nice. What we talk about all the time is professional facebreaker. I mean, facebreaker is an insane card. It gives you treasure when you need mana. It gives you a body that carries your equipment. It also is the creature that can attack because it's got menace. And when you can sacrifice those treasures and turn it into card advantage if you actually don't need the mana. If you're like, actually I have all the mana in the world, all I need is card advantage. Don't worry, the facebreaker has got you as well. A lot of flexibility there, a lot of boxes checked and it's why this card is so good. It's just generically good. Every single deck that plays red pretty much can play this. Yeah. Except for maybe like a burn deck. You want to be attacking, but like that's it. If your dragon's approach is like, doesn't play a facebreaker, doesn't need it. But it doesn't really need it because the card gets mana elsewhere. So it's just that kind of card that you're like, okay, if I have it, I know that I can kind of figure something out. I'm going to be able to dig. I'm going to be able to cast my spells. That kind of thing. I mentioned it earlier, but great train heist. This card really shown for me in the Avatar episode where I played Prince Zuko. Just needed to get damage in and the treasures and like the plus one plus. There's just so many parts of this where I'm like, oh, I always want more attack cards, more like combat cards in my decks. Extra combat. Yeah. And this card just checks that box and sometimes it's just a ramp spell. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of ways to make your decks more consistent, a lot of cool cards out there. This has really been zeroing in on the multiple abilities on a single card. So make sure you're taking advantage of it in your decks. All right. We're going to say thank you to our team here for just making this episode possible and all of them. Thank you to Karina Cruz, Josh Diaz, John Schneider, Grave Galati, Jamie Block, Jordan Pridgen, Jake Boss, Becky Bell, Eric Lem, Manson Lung, Josh Murphy, Evan Limburger, Sam Waldo and of course, Josh Lee Kwai. Thank you everybody. See you next time. Bye bye. 500 orders a month was manageable. 5,000 is madness. Embrace intelligent order fulfilment with ShipStation, the only platform combining order management, warehouse workflows, inventory, returns and analytics in one place. It used to take five separate tools, ShipStation does in one. Go to ShipStation.com and use code START to try ShipStation free for 60 days. In the race to scale with AI, you need data infrastructure that can match your pace. EverPeer's data storage platform brings all your data into one hub. 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