We Roast Each Other's Decks w/ Tomer (MTGGoldfish) | 742

This episode is sponsored by Reddit. One of the best parts of magic is sharing your excitement with the gathering. And Reddit is where players gather first to react, geek out, and share ideas. Whether you're gushing over new cards at r slash magic tcg, speculating on lore at r slash mtg-vorthos, or checking out trailers at r slash gaming, Reddit is the hub where everyone can find their interests and their people. Whatever your niche, Reddit has a sub full of fellow players ready to share tips, theories, and discoveries. So download the Reddit app today and dive into r slash magic tcg for the latest gaming updates. Greetings humans, you have entered the command zone. Your destination for all aspects of Elder Dragon Highlander. Enjoy your stay. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Command Zone Podcast. I'm your host Rachel Weeks, and today I'm joined by a very special guest, it's Tuller! Thanks for having me. I'm so excited that you're here in town, in the States. I know, it's very rare for me to fly over from Paris, but I knew if I'm coming to Vegas, which I'm doing in a week from now. Oh, I shouldn't say that. You know, whenever this video comes out, I decided I was going to do a stopover, come to LA for the first time in like two decades. Two decades? And visit people for the first time. Yeah, I was a little kid, I went and I did Universal Studios and I don't remember anything about it, but I remember it was wonderful. Well, it's changed a lot since then, but you've got to go back right after this. Thank you so much for making the time, we appreciate it. For those who haven't seen your face around the internet, tell them a little bit about your content and your background. Well, I work for MTG Goldfish and I specialize in commander content, specifically budget brews. I love doing commander decks on a budget somewhere between like $20 to like $50. So impressive. And I like doing huge compilations over the years. So like two videos, I'll do like 45 decks under $45 or 50 decks under $50. And I just, I love budget brewing and I've been doing it for since 2012 or so. Every time I see one of those videos, I'm like, Tomer is a mad man. This is crazy. It's so cool though. I mean, for people to just have one place that you can go to and watch a ton of episodes and see like what sparks joy and what jumps out to it is really awesome. Yeah, I found just like having everything all at once appeals to a broad set of people because you might not be interested in one commander, but out of the 45, you know, one of those might speak to you. Yeah, there's enough commanders these days that you could do a 45 every other week. Pretty much. Tomer is also on the commander format panel alongside Josh and I. So helping to advise wizards on the decisions of commander and, you know, just tell them what we think and what's going on. If her sixth study gets banned, it's my fault. It's specifically. Sorry, Josh. Thanks for having me. Okay, bye. That's what this entire episode is about. No, so for this episode, we wanted to do something specific because I think you and I are both known as like brewers as people who build a lot of decks and try and do something special and sort of intricate with them. So I wanted to do something that was more deck building based. So what we decided is we're going to pick two decks from each other's collections that we like and make swaps that we would make to that deck. So like a pre-con upgrade, but for our decks, basically. And then we get to ask questions and learn a little bit about the four decks that we are talking about today. So I think our audience knows a little bit about how I build, but I want to make sure they have a little bit of context for what they should expect in your decks as well. So tell me a little bit about like your deck building philosophy as a builder. I really like synergy and focusing on themes and I try to avoid too many staples like generic staples. I try to make sure that cards like interaction or ramp even kind of fit what the general vibe of the deck is doing. And sometimes that means I leave out things that are probably strictly better and more just like more self sustaining. Like let's say we're playing a higher power deck and I want to draw engine in blue. Risk study is going to be better in every single deck, but like I just personally derive more enjoyment from finding a thematic choice. Even if it's a little bit weaker, I just find that a little bit more fun because it feels more unique. So when I pick up this blue deck, the draw engine is going to be different than another blue deck that I play. And also at lower power tables, I don't play Sol Ring. I keep that for like bracket four and obviously CDH, but at lower tables, I just don't really enjoy Sol Ring that much. So I don't put cards that I don't enjoy in my decks. That's not like a value judgment on any be else, but it's just like I like putting cards that I enjoy in my decks. And I think that's how everybody plays it. So if it's a card that I personally don't like as much, I just leave it out. Yeah, we have that in common. I've actually cut Sol Ring from a lot of my lower power decks and it's been great. You don't miss it. You don't have those games where you play it early in the game and it feels like a non-game that the Sol Ring won for you. And you don't draw a card in the late game that you're like, oh, well, that's not like anything special. It's a Sol Ring I play. I keep moving. Yeah, we have a houseband on Commander Clash for years now. We really like it that way. Yeah, it's pretty fun. It's nice buying a slot back in your deck, which is cool. So for this episode, we wanted to talk a little bit about what upgrading in this context means. Looking at somebody else's deck and giving recommendations for it. A lot of this is going to be like taste changes or it'll be questions like you don't understand some of the actual intentions behind the card selections. It could just be like in my meta, this card wouldn't do anything. So I'm going to swap it with a card that like I am more excited about or that I like to play generally. And then the other thing that we talked about is any changes that we make to the deck should really maintain the deck's philosophy or the deck's theme. Because you don't want to be like, add Sol Ring. Yeah, yeah. Like I know that a Sol Ring would improve any of my decks. So if the deck is a budget deck, not adding cards that will blow up in the budget. If the deck is really themed around one specific kind of card, trying to find stuff that fits into that ecosystem better than just a deck. Well, this is obviously the best in class of whatever. Yeah. So sticking to the guiding philosophy of what the deck is all about is really fun. I also think the process is really cool too. Because sometimes when you're brewing and you have a deck that you've had for so long that you get into the weeds of like the minor details. But having a second pair of eyes to look at it with a totally new perspective is so helpful. Yeah. I saw like some of the recommendations we're going to be seeing from you is like, I didn't consider it because I've been like looking at this deck for so long that I don't have that different perspective anymore. I have a very narrow perspective. So it was really cool to do this and have another person who is like a very good deck builder just look at my thing and have a totally different perspective on things. And it was like really enjoyable. Like this is really cool to do. It was so much harder than I thought it was going to be. It took so long. I was like, okay, I'm going to goldfish each of the deck. I'm going to see what I'm having problems with. I'm going to like now I have to look at the deck list. I basically duplicated all your deck lists and like resorted all the cards how I would sort them and to try and like recognize patterns and then like just get to know the deck and it took so long. I was like I brew every single day and I love doing it and I'm like I brew a lot of decks. How hard could this be? Let's open up Rachel's deck list. I built none of these decks before. None of them. I built two that I picked. The ones that I did but I was like, oh, thank God I see Mirko Vosk on her list. The surveil coming in from Murdoz at Call of Manor. I've built Mirko Vosk. I've gifted one to you, Crib actually, my coworker. And I'm like, I open it up. No, it's closed. What? You know nothing. I'm like, I'm not thinking this one. No, I'm not thinking that one. Let's go on. It's definitely the thing to look at a deck and to see a card that to you sticks out and you're like, look, I know Tomer. I know Tomer has a reason for the discard being in here. I don't know what the reason is and there has to be a reason. So there's a few of them that are really exciting and we're going to talk about sort of the discoveries that we made going into each other's decks. But before we get into the decks, of course, we have to talk about our sponsors. We're going to be talking about a lot of cards in this episode if you want to pick up any of those while supporting our channel or supporting MTGGoldfish, you can go to cardkingdom.com and use our affiliate link slash command or what's yours slash MTGGoldfish. That's what I assumed, but I didn't want to confirm. That supports the show. Plus Card Kingdom is the best. If you're buying a new deck, I will build the entire thing on Architect. I copy the entire deck list and I paste it into Card Kingdom to see what's in stock. And then you can make all the decisions all on one place. What foils you want, what printings you want, what condition you want. Click all the buttons and you hit buy and you're done. You don't have to pay shipping multiple times. You don't have to do a ton of research. It's just all under one roof. It makes it really easy and they have a great team to take care of you to make sure that your stuff gets to you safe and sound and it's all in one package. So support the show at cardkingdom.com slash command. And once those cards are in your hand, you're going to need to protect them. Go to ultra pro.com slash command to get the highest quality magic accessories in the business. My new favorite sleeves are apex sleeves. They shuffle so well. They have beautiful art sleeves. There's a whole line of Bob Ross art sleeves that is really touching my heart right now. And they have the mana eight line, which is the bright bold mana symbol. So if you've got monocolor decks like I do, you could let the deck really wear its identity on its sleeve. So check out ultra pro for binders, play mats, deck boxes, sleeves, anything that you need and user affiliate link when you're shopping at ultra pro.com slash command. And the final way to support us is directly at patreon.com slash command zone. Our patrons are the very best. You guys are directly helping us make content like this or like our most recent 10 player commander game. What were we thinking? Wild. Dear Lord, for that game, we give you a sneak peek at some of the benefits that our patrons get. There is a post game conversation that replicates our turn talk series, which is exclusive for patrons at certain tiers. So if you liked that conversation and you want to see the conversation that we have after every game of extra turns, you can join our patreon and get access to all of the turn talks we've ever had. If you're a big fan of extra turns, it's truly the very best. And you get access to our discord where you can talk to me, Josh, Jimmy, any members of our team or our community. Talk about the strict saving pre cons and how you're building those or just ask us questions about our own personal decks or yours. In our discord, again, that's at patreon.com slash command zone. And we shout out one lucky patron every single podcast episode. And this one is dedicated to Brian Kendall. Brian, you rock. Okay, let's get into it. We've got lots of cards to get to. I figured I would kick things off with one of your decks and it's one that is a commander that I am obsessed with. I love this commander. It's Mellik Reforged Researcher. So this is three, a blue and a red, very legendary creature, weird detective. His power and toughness is star star. And it says Mellik's power and toughness are each equal to twice the number of instant and sorcery cards in your graveyard. The first instant and sorcery you cast each turn costs three less to cast. I love this little guy. He's so cool. I like that he's a weird, I like that he gets huge. Yeah, so big. Nice. It's perfect for me because I'm a huge Is It Fan Boy and I love Spell Slinger. But also, I'm a bad player who plays very slow. So I cannot be trusted with like 90% of Is It Spell Slinger decks because they are all storm. And then storm means if I get to do my thing, everybody else, it's a 20 minute turn with Tomer. And you're probably going to have to help me out too because I'm really bad. And this one is so good because it's like, no, you want to cast one spell turn. One spell. And then he's huge. So he just punches people really hard. He's one punch man, punches people really hard, no storm. And it's like, that's perfect for me as a very slow player. And you get to play so many spells that are like, you can't really afford to play in other decks because like you're playing all these four mana spells. And like you said, a lot of Is It Spells decks are based around like, casting as many one drops as you possibly can. And this is like, no, you will cast one four to five drop every turn. But it will be one mana. Neat. It's pretty fun. So I was really excited about this one. And there was a lot of cool things in this deck that I was like, oh, we have to talk about that. So before we get into it, I did want to ask you a couple of questions just to like get to know the deck a little bit better. So why did you decide to go with so many board wipes rather than more of like the board presence spells? Because I feel like Is It Decks either go one way, is either low board presence, high disruption like this deck is, or you're running all like the, whenever you cast an Incinerous or Zeray, make a Drake or a Bird. So the reason why is because when I first was trying to select which Is It Spells Linger deck I would be building next because I built too many of them and they always become Storm. So I ended up, I was like, okay, I'm going to build Melik. And then there was another commander that I was very excited for. It's called Magnus. He's Magnus from Warhammer 40k. Is this the, your spells cost less for the tokens you have? Yes. Great. And I was like, he looks dope. I like the art. I don't know anything about Magnus, but he looks really cool. And he's like a very much a token strategy. Sure. So I built two decks and I had overlapping cards for both of them. And I tried the Magnus one and I tried the Melik one. And the Magnus one ended up being Storm. It's Storm, yes. It's Storm. It's a big, full-smells cheaper than I was the story going on. I'm like, oh no, I can't be trusted because it's Spells Linger. And then I was like, Melik, you can't have any tokens. I'm sorry. So then he kind of just went boardwipes, but it's not, it doesn't have a gameplay, like a power reason or optimization reason. Like a lot of the boardwipes in the deck are, they deal enough damage that Melik actually survives it. I noticed that. It gets so big. So it can kind of be one-sided, but I think the only reason why I don't have like more token makers is because I was building a Magnus at the same time. So it doesn't make sense in a vacuum, but if you know the history of it, that's how I got there. But it could definitely have tokens. It could have more of a board presence and less boardwipes. It also plays like propaganda and that kind of stuff. So it's definitely choosing to disrupt creatures in a slightly different way than like having a bunch of creatures, which is, you know, a way to disrupt creatures sort of. Is I have a bunch of creatures, so your creatures do less, I guess. But I liked that plan. It felt like a very specific choice for this deck. And I liked that a lot of the boardwipes were one-sided with Melik because he's enormous. So big. And then there's no blockers and he's like a 2020 and he punches people really hard. And you're like, okay, I've killed all your blockers and now my guy survived. The other thing I noticed is I was going through the deck list. I was like, what is Wyrw of Invention doing in this deck? I was like looking at your artifacts and I was like, is it to find the dowsing device? There's no way it's to find dowsing device. Okay. It's a bit of a rabbit hole. Okay. It was a rabbit hole. I like weird tech. Yes. Wyrw of Invention is actually part of a package of cards. So Wyrw of Invention is actually to find the artifact lands. Why? Well, first of all, three mana, instant speed, ramping in blue, kind of cool. Kind of cool. It's got improvise, so it's not always three mana too. Deck makes a fair amount of treasures. Maybe not like you can make it like you can get something bigger and probably not, but like, it's neat. I like neat things. And then the other thing is then, okay, so that's like the iceberg. Right. And now let's go into the madness territory. There's two cards in the deck. They're like two red sorceries. They do the same thing. It's cleansing wildfire and Geomancers, something, something. Gambit, I think. Yes. And both of them are, it's you destroy target land and then its controller gets to search up a basic land and put it onto the battlefield. So here's what happens. The artifact lands are indestructible. You get dark steel, you get a lot of damage. You're indestructible. You get dark steel citadel and it's indestructible. You target it. You don't have to destroy it. It's not, if it is destroyed, you get the land. No, you destroy it and then you just get the land. Also get a land. You target yourself of it and then it's, is it ramp and it's weird and I love it and is it good? No. When I discovered this package, I was like, it started with the word of invention because I was like, what's going on? Maybe. And then I saw the other two and was like, I think this madman is blind. Because I looked at dark steel citadel and was like, well, there's a reason this is here. Clearly. What? It's so cool. It's such a fun package. So I really did want to highlight that because I think it's neat and it's all sorcery based with a fairly little like, you don't need to like put a ton of random other artifacts in the deck to make that functional. But it was very cool. I wrote, is word of invention to find lands lol? Yeah. But it doesn't always work. But when it works, you feel like a genius. It's like so cool. And everybody's like, that works. I'm like, yeah. It does. And when it doesn't work, you're like, I'll blow up your utility land, I guess. Yeah. Yep. That's what I thought Geomancer's Gambit was originally. I was like, I guess it's disruption that cantrips. It's very cool. So let's talk about the cards I wanted to add to this deck because there's, I have a Octavia deck, which is also like a graveyard-y spells deck. I know that one. So there's a couple of cards that I was like, oh, these are all stars in my deck. And I loved that you had, oh no, the tutor that puts three cards of flashback to the graveyard. Quiet speculation, one of my favorites. Love quiet speculation. It's also in Octavia. It's great for any deck like this that just wants a ton of instant sorceries in the graveyard because it intumes three cards with flashback and then it puts itself in the graveyard. So it's four instant sorceries right away. Yeah. That one's so fun. So I put in a couple of cards that have flashback that I really like in my deck that goes with my quiet speculation deck package. And the first one was Otherworldly Gaze. So this is single blue for an instant. It surveils three and it flashes back for one in a blue. So it's up to three mana to put like six cards in the bin or put some amount of stuff on top. And I've just found this card is unreasonably efficient. Yes. And like it does a similar thing where it can end up putting a ton of instant sorceries in your graveyard before you even have Melec down because it is efficient. One of the big things I was finding when I was playing this deck is the deck gets so, so much better once Melec's on the battlefield. And if Melec isn't on the battlefield, you have a lot of four mana instance that costs four mana. Yeah. So I wanted a couple of things that are a little bit more efficient that can be your second spell on the turn and help you set up in the earlier game. That is such a good point that you said second spell because when I was brewing, I'm like, I'm just going to always cast one spell each turn when Melec is out. But really, like you do have extra mana available. And what I really like about this choice is that it's such a great, like it adds a lot of extra consistency to the deck too. Surveil three just means like you can cast it on turn one. Yes. So you can keep like a hand that you're like, well, this is like a two-lander, but like I have otherworldly gaze and now I feel a lot more can, I feel a lot more safe to keep this rather than going down to like seven or something like that. Yeah. Because looking three cards deep, especially with a flashback means you're probably going to find that third lane and everything. And I also love that it's instant. So it's like you can, you can hold up your counterspell or something, which Melec likes to do because, you know, you can't let him die basically too many times. And then like if you don't need it, you can do that. Or like you said, double spelling with Melec. Yeah. This is an incredible one. And I think the art is so sick on it. It's so sick. I want it in foil. I am big on this card. I like it a lot. The other flashback card I wanted to include was Defy Gravity. So this is a single blue for an instant that just says target creature gains flying until end of turn and it has flashback blue. So it's one of those things that you're like, okay, Melec's huge. I have a free attack on somebody and it's a great card that you can rummage away in the early game with all of your like fill the graveyard type spells. So you discard Defy Gravity in the late game. It's something that you can use later or it's something that your opponents need to be aware of that you have this option to one shot them in the sky. I also like this one. I think I definitely neglected just the cheap efficient spells because I'm just like, ah, yeah, well, three mana discount. But like this is really good again for the double spelling. I also think it could be very cute if you use it on your opponent's creature. Be like, hey, listen, aren't you going to have flying and punch them? It's my favorite with Octavia because you're like, I can give your thing flying and make it an 8-8 and you can get in there and you can do it with two creatures too with the flashback. So Defy Gravity is one of my favorites. The other thing I wanted to add was to bulk out the World of Invention package a little bit and I added a little bit more flying with some winged boots. A classic. They're a little bit more expensive, but it's one in a blue for an artifact equipment. Equip creature is flying and Ward 4 and it equips for one. So if you draw World of Invention in the late game, you're like, I don't really need it to get a land and I don't really have any other thing I'm looking for. Winged Boots is a great wind condition and it's protection for Melik all in one. Ward 4 is basically Hexproof. Yeah, Ward 4 is, yeah. We've learned this with like Voja after Ward 3. It might as well write Hexproof on it. So I do think this is also a good one because, yeah, Ward is just there to do my little silly, my silly isn't ramp non sense. And then once you have Melik on, you don't need to ramp anymore. So yeah, this makes sense as having another option that makes sense to the mid to late game. Right. Up next was a card that I am just obsessed with. I played against, this is, oh my gosh, it's so good. I played against it in the budget episode on Extra Turns. This is a reminder tech stack. It's the Emperor of Palomacia. It's blue and a red for a legendary human noble wizard. It's a tutu that taps add blue or red and it only casts non-creature spells. Not a problem in this deck. But whenever you cast a non-creature spell, if at least four mana was spent to cast it, put a plus one counter on Emperor Palomacia, then it has, if it has three or more counters on it, transform it. And it flips into a nasty creature, the Lord Master of Hell. Well. Of course. It's the Lord Master of Hell. So this is a 3-3 and it says, when the Lord Master of Hell attacks, it deals x damage to each opponent where x is the number of non-creature non-land cards in your graveyard. So Lord Master of Hell is obviously very powerful in the deck and can do a ton of damage. The Emperor of Palomacia, the counters is a little bit more difficult because you're only spending one blue on your four mana spells. But what I liked about this card is it's a mana creature you can play in the early game and cast a four mana spell on turn three. And it sort of is an alternate commander for if Mellik gets shot out of the sky too many times. Which definitely happens. I've played against Mellik deck here at the office. You have to answer Mellik. You gotta, or else you die. So this is just sort of an alternate threat that you're like, hey, you also cannot let the Emperor of Palomacia get out of hand. As I found that decks that can diversify their threats is a sort of an alternate form of protection. Like if you don't necessarily need lightning greaves, if you have just something else that also needs to eat removal, it just thins out people's targeted removal. So I thought this card was kind of cool. Yeah, I remember I was on the fence on this one just because I was like, oh, how will I ever flip it if I'm not casting it? The reality is, like if Mellik is allowed to survive, the deck will win. So then, like, it doesn't really matter if I flip it. And the nice thing about this card is that it's actually early game ramp. It's early game ramp. You can play it on turn two and you're very happy with it. And then if Mellik's being shut down, well, you have all these four mana spells. So we'll flip. And then your opponents have to deal with this, and that might buy you some time to get Mellik back out. And I think maybe there's too many board wipes for it. Maybe. That's true. I think this is an incredible, this is the first one that I would throw in. And also, the backside name is so cool. The Lord Master of Elves. I've never played this game before. But also, I love the drip. Oh, yeah. Like he's like this demon clown. Like I love him. He is very bowie-coded. I'm sad. I'm not a cosplayer because I would, this would be the thing I would go for. He's so cool. I just think this card's really neat. It's so neat. Another one that I included that I'm sure you've thought about is Frantic Search. Frantic Search, of course, is two in a blue for an instant. Draw two, then discard two, and untap up to three lands. Frantic Search, really good if you can cost reduce, because you only cast it for blue, and then you untap three lands. So it actually puts you up, mana. And it's good in the early game, because it just helps you with this election, which you have a lot of in the deck already. So I put it on the list, but it definitely felt like one that I was like, well, Tomer knows Frantic Search exists. So I actually, it should be in the deck. Because again, you know why? I had it in my Magnus Pile. And I was like, this is a storm card. I'm not allowed. I came. I'm not allowed. They won't let me. So, but yes, I think I just, there was like cards that I left out, and it's, they should, some of them should definitely go back in. And this one was just like, now listen, my Magnus Storm, Tomer, not allowed. It definitely allowed. Pile. It definitely is more of a storm card, but it's really great when you can untap your lands, and then you're like, okay, I have my mana up for my next counterspell, or my next draw spell on the later turns. You really can cast an instant every turn. It doesn't choke up all your colored mana. And then I was like, no factor fiction. It's not cast to have a factor fiction. It fills the graveyard. It's three and a blue for an instant. You reveal the top five cards of your library and opponent separates them. Piles some go into your hands, some go into the graveyard. So it fills the graveyard. It's like the exact right cost. You only have to pay a blue mana for it. And something that I did notice about this deck is it has a lot of cards election, but not a ton of card advantage built into it. So I could see games where you can cycle through your hand really fast, but wind up only having like one or two cards actually in your hand at the end of the day, and have a lot of cards in the graveyard. So having a couple more things that just restock your hand and actually put you up cards felt helpful. I remember it was in the deck, and I don't know why it's not. Mmm. I know no one will ever help you because I like this card when it's like, hey buddy, you know, I'm behind. You know, maybe you give me a five-oh split and we can help. This never happens. Oh, it never happens to me either. You know what I'm behind? People are like, make sure he's dead. But still like one mana draw two, one mana draw three, put three or two cards in the graveyard is pretty good. Yeah. Is it available in old Border Foyle? It is, but it's expensive. I can't wait and pay. That's a consideration. Inspired Tinkering is one I wanted to mention. I love this card. It's a five-man assortory, four-in-a-red. Exhale the top three cards of your library until the end of your next turn. You may play those cards and then you create three treasure tokens. So if it's reduced by three, you only pay two to cast it. You get three treasure tokens back and you get to impulse draw three cards. That was in the Magna Spile. Yes. It is also kind of a story card. But it's not in the stack. Yeah. So yes, that is another one. The biggest downside to this card, of course, is that you impulse draw three cards that you only have a full turn rotation with. So you do need to kind of get them out of exile, and you do have a lot of expensive cards. So if Melix not in the battlefield, this card feels a little bit worse, but it's so good when it's in the battlefield. It is on the battlefield. And the fact that it puts some treasures on, so it kind of sets you up for like a really big next turn. For sure. I really like that. The next one's a new card. I cheated a little bit. It's a rapturous moment. This is from Strixhaven. The secrets of Strixhaven. It's four, a blue and a red for a sorcery. So six man altogether. Draw three, discard two, but add blue, blue, red, red, red. This card is like so good here. Yeah, I just, I don't have the Strixhaven cards yet. This is a great one. Oh yeah, this is total cheating. My brain hasn't processed the set yet, but like this is perfect. No, because there's so many cards that are coming out. I think it's even impossible for like, like for me at least, and this is my job, right? I look at cards and I brew decks every day. All day, yeah. And I still miss stuff, you know? Like I don't even understand when people show me a card from New Capena Commander, that set is like a black hole. That sets incredible. In terms of my knowledge. It's so good. Every time. But everybody's like, where does the card come from? I don't even know the logo and it's like, it's Capena, obviously. It's always New Capena Commander. But yeah, this is another one that's like, these can always, my mind, even though like I'm doing like set reviews and stuff. Totally. This is perfect. This is perfect for it. It's so cool. And it gives you that five mana so you can cast another second spell. So it's great to reduce. Then I have Sublime Epiphany. I think one of the coolest things about Melek is you get to play these big dumb counterspells that are like, six mana, five mana, expensive stuff. And Sublime Epiphany is one of the ones that I would play. Just because it has enough upside that if I'm casting it for its full cost, it still feels worth it. Because you can counter a spell, you can counter an activated or triggered ability, you can return something to their owner's hand, you can make a token copy of Target Creature Control, not great in this deck. And then of course you draw a card. So it's one of those disruption spells that's just like, if I'm spending six mana for this, I can get six mana worth of value out of it, even if Melek's not on the battlefield. I've been like just an irrational disbeliever of this card. Yeah? Yeah, since it came out. So I've never, I've, I've a disbeliever who has never played the card yet, which is the worst kind of disbeliever. I need to give it a shot. Like I even have, I have a six drop deck, which is just the mana value of every single Nulling card is six. It's so sick. And I didn't put it in there and everybody's like, why don't you put it in here? It's so good. And like, I don't know, I just don't think the cards, I don't know if the card's going to be any good, but then I never played it. I mean, I, I will try it. I will have to try it. Josh plays this card a lot and I've been wrecked by it a few times where you're like, okay, bounce your attacker counter your trick. Like, and you're like, no. So you can get super, super wrecked by this, but it may feel expensive in your hand. That's very possible. And the art is so neat. Another thing is like, if the art, if you can, if the art is neat, I will just put it in. Yeah, done. Solts. The final one is one that I'm sure you're aware of. It's Sol's fire, two in red for an instant. Target creature you control deals damage equal to its power to any target. So it's removal. It can kill a player more likely. He gets so big, but the thing I like the most about this is it's an instant. The instant speed stuff is so big when like somebody goes to remove melloc, you can kill them in response when, or you can at least do a ton of damage before he leaves. And you don't have to fire it off until it's like absolutely necessary, which I think is nice. So I, it's, it is a great card. And the reason why it's on the list right now is because it's so good that I, I wanted to test some other cards. I was wondering if that was why. Yeah, this is, I have like a pile of cards that like, I already know they're good, but when I want to try new cards, I take out the cards that I already know are good because I've like, I've tested you. I know what that is. And you're good. So Sol's fire, you're 100% correct. It's great. It should be here. And it definitely is. I think I put in like soul blight or something. There's a new low when eclipsed. I haven't drawn it yet. Oh, that card's awesome. It is basically another one of those one sided board wipes. Like a Shonda's ignition type. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just, you take out everybody, but it's, it's, it's, it's Sol's emulation. Yeah. Yeah. Sol's emulation, but it's more mana and sorcery speed. So it's much more disruptible in a way. Or Sol's fire is just like, yeah, in response to your nonsense. You die. Yeah. Man, then none of that happens. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, this is, this is an excellent one. I'm just like, it's in my guaranteed pile. Yeah, of course. Yeah. No, I think that's a really cool way to deck build where it's just like, well, I have cards to test and I don't really know, I don't want to take out the cards I haven't tested yet. Yeah. It's so hard to draw the cards that you put in sometimes. 100 cards is too many cards. Too many cards. How many games do you have to play to seal the cards? I swear there's some of the cards in my deck that I've had for like a year and I've just never seen them. Yeah. I know they're there because I, I check the like, I never draw them. Yeah, and we play constantly. Constantly. So I don't know how anybody else does it. Speaking of too many cards, I made a couple of cuts that I would make as well. We're going to go through these pretty quick. Dowsing device was my first cut. This is one, whenever an artifact enters the battlefield, a creature gets bigger and then it flips into a land. So it's like once it triggers four times or if you have four artifacts, it flips over and it's an artifact. So it's kind of cool Boros ramp. You don't have that many artifacts in the deck. No. I can tell you why because we have a very, we have a very inbred commander clashman where we had like a full season, like three months straight and we play commander, we play commander every single week with this group and it's in a weekly episode commander clash and it was like, we were so dominated by farewell that we're like, man rocks, unplayable. Get them out of here. So even before like, I didn't even have like, is it a signet? Yeah. Because we're like farewell, we're going to get farewell every single game. I cannot run these early game ramps because we're just going to get farewell and then I won't be able to cast Malak. I was like, if I have ramp, it has to be a land. It has to turn into a land. Yeah. I think that's just like a relic of that. I don't think it's good in the deck. So I think that's very easy cut. The next one I pulled to cut was Sojourner's companion. This is here to cycle for an artifact land. Whoops. But it's like two man on a cycle for an artifact land, then you play the land, then you have the spell. It's a little too expensive. Yeah. No, that's an easy cut. Easy cut. Just the iceberg again. I love it. I love it though, because I do the exact same thing. Surveyor's scope was one that I was going to cut. This is more like artifact land ramp. It only gets you lands if you're behind on lands and it feels like you have a lot of plans to get ahead on lands. So having an artifact that just doesn't really do anything in the deck unless you're in a very specific moment. But if you're all land ramping, then maybe Surveyor's scope is always good. That's a pack card. Sometimes it works so well, but usually the decks that work so well are the ones that put themselves back in land count. If you are in multicolor and you run a lot of the bounce lands, the Ravnica Bance lands, there are some ways to really make it work. But yeah, it's more of a pack card. It's also another relic of the farewell, where it's like, it's not a man or rock. You have to have lands. You can't exile my basics. Jewary Disruption is another one. This is an MDFC that's a man-o-tive on one side and a land on the other side. I like running a lot of the MDFCs in decks that care about types like this. But you also have Lorian Revealed, so you're kind of at like 39 lands. So I just didn't think you needed the extra one. And Jewary Disruption is pretty bad as a land and pretty bad as a spell. This is a meme card. It's just like, it's for the content. But if you get to worry Disrupted. Is it a good card? No. But is it very funny if you make somebody have to pay the one and they don't have it and you're like, bam, I got you a Force Spike on a land. Two man of Force Spike. Yeah, it's not good. Scavige Brawler was one that I went to cut as well. This is cool. You can rummage it into your graveyard and then you pay five mana to exile it from your graveyard, put a bunch of counters, a flying counter, a vigilance counter, a trample counter, a lifelink. All this stuff on Demelik. But Melik is already such a target for removal. You spend five mana to do this and they kill it in response. You're like, I lose. I lose the game. But I love this card. Yeah, I have it in a bunch of decks because I just like it. But it doesn't fit here. Again, it feels very win-more because the Melik's around. The one you added, the one that gets flying with Flasphax, that's infinitely better than this. Because this doesn't give it haste or anything. He's already huge. Yeah. Do you need the lifelink when everybody's dead? Yeah. Because it's like, yeah, okay. A lifelink when you're gone. Yeah, either Melik lives or he doesn't and then everybody else is dead. So this is, yeah, I need to cut this one. Another one is clearly a medical. This is flaring pain. Hell, yes. One in red for an instant. Damage can't be prevented this turn and his flashback for a red. In Fog Meadow. Fog Meadow. The Fog Meadow is real. We're still on Commander Clash. I don't know how prevalent Fogs are on Commander. Not very. I mean some. But we live in fear of the Fog Meadow. Because every time they show up, it's so good. You have so much non-combat damage. We have this really strong bias of like, yeah, we're very combat heavy. Yeah. And we have this very strong bias of like whenever the Fog actually works, we're like, the Fogs are overpowered. And we don't remember the times when the Fogs are sitting in our hand doing nothing. The Fogs are narrow and then flaring pain is like, for the moment when Fogs are good. Yes. And yeah, it does nothing else. But it's like, well, if you counter it the first time, you got to swap flashback. It's so funny. It's entirely a medical. So funny. So dumb. I love it. Team or battle rage is one that I was going to cut as well. This card's fine. We have so much in many ways to non-combat damage people that I just don't think you need a team or battle rage. It doesn't draw you a card or anything. Yeah, you're right. Like he doesn't need it. He's huge. Double strike is only like so good. Like it's mostly there for their trample and it feels like the flying stuff is a little better. It just feels good when you're like, I hit you for 40 double strike. Yeah. You already got me. You're like super dead. I don't even see the second strike. 100% win more. The pass and flames is one that I cut. I just don't love this card. Three in a red for a sorcery. It's each instant sorcery in your graveyard gains flashback until end of turn. The flashback cost is equal to its mana cost. So in this deck, the pass and flames is reduced and then everything else in the graveyard is still for its regular cost. And you have so many expensive spells that it just doesn't feel like you're going to get a ton of value out of pass and flames. It'll be like you pay one extra mana for a sorcery's speed. Flashback a four drop or something. I think that first of all, this should have been in the storm do not touch pile. Yeah. Okay. My piles are mixed. I think it's like a relic of when I had acquired speculation is one of my favorite cards. So I was like, that was a big reason why I wanted to pick mellick and I didn't have enough flashbacks. I think I had like five in the deck when I started and I put in pass and flames because it's like, well, it's another flashback target. It's a good one with flashback. Yeah. Like it feels more stormy and typically when I want to do very naughty things with my graveyard, you just cast like an overloaded mizix's mastery. That's way better in this deck. In terms of mana efficiency, just overloaded, you pay like, I think it's like seven mana to overload it, but then you get to cast all the spells for free. Yeah, you get like 25 mana worth of spells. This one makes you pay all 25 mana if you want them. Do you think like maybe pass and flames is just like a relic of like an older time because I remember was so prevalent, but like every time I look at it, I was like, that's a lot of mana. Yeah. I mean, if you think about like, we just got the card flashback in Strix Haven. That is 25% the cost of this and it basically does essentially like the same thing. It's four mana, but all your spells gain flashback. You're like, yeah, how many are you going to cast? You just cast a four mana sorcery. You just cast a flashback on it. Wizard just making like a seven mana flashback, please. Yeah. Ooh. This is one that worked. Then I cut refuse to cooperate. This card's cool. It's a copy spell that you can cast from the graveyard is the big thing is the cooperate side of it. You have a lot of copy effects in the deck. So I just trimmed one and I felt like this one was the worst, but you know, it's cool. Yeah. I've never been cooperated. It's a gotcha. Also, we again, you can get somebody with a big spell. Yeah. Like one of my one assess favorites cards is Seagate Restoration and he also just doesn't care about walkers. He just casts Seagate Restoration. Sometimes he's like, yeah, so he's like, I got seven life or something. It's very funny. He's cast in Seagate Restoration at seven life. It's like, fuse, die, please. I love that. It's just another meme card. Reviews deals damage to target spells controller. Equal to that spells converted mana cost. So if they cast something big and splashy, you can punish them for it. Finally, I cut planetary annihilation. I think this is this deck wants as many lands as possible. Most of your land, your ramp is lands and you have a lot of board wipes. So it felt like it could go. Yeah. I don't need the mana board wipes, especially because I've just added a new one from Lord of Wynn Eclipse. Yeah. Soul emulation. That's way better than this one in this deck. Yeah. I think this card's cool, but it's just not quite as potent, I think. Okay. So that is Mellick. We've taken a lot of time to go through it. We've got three more decks to talk about this episode. So we've got to get moving, but please stick around. We're going to talk about two of my decks and my favorite of Tomer's decks. I'm very excited to get to it. So stick around. Good morning. Josh, Josh, did you see what happened? Yeah. About the one ring? No, something else. The union stuff? No. The Pinkerton's? Dude, that was years ago. You got to check Reddit. When magic news breaks, Reddit is the first place players go to talk about it. It's one of the biggest online magic communities out there, full of real players sharing their love of the game or sometimes other feelings about the game. My go-to subreddit is r slash magicTCG. You get reactions to big announcements, theories about lore, and tips on everything from strategy to navigating live events. But it'll also just browse r slash gaming to check out new trailers, reviews, rumors, you name it. Plus, there are subreddits for every genre, niche, or magic format out there. So whatever you like to play, there's a community where you'll fit right in. Hey, did you guys see what happened? Yeah, the Star Wars Hall of Stamph? No, no, no. There's something else. What? Yeah. All right, I got to download this app. One of the best parts of magic is sharing your excitement with the gathering. And Reddit is where players gather first to react, geek out, and share ideas. So you're gushing over new cards at r slash magicTCG, speculating on lore at r slash mtg Vorthos, or checking out trailers at r slash gaming. Reddit is the hub where everyone can find their interests and their people. Download the Reddit app and dive into r slash magicTCG for the latest gaming updates. Download the Reddit app today. Oh, hey Rachel, what's with all the papers? Do you know how there are daily calendars? Uh-huh. And monthly calendars? Sure. What about weekly calendars? What about them? Do those exist? They do now with my brand new product, Rachel's Weeks. I know that this is a billion dollar idea, but between design and inventory and still hosting the podcast, my to-do list is through the roof. Oh yeah, that is a lot, but you know you don't have to do this alone, right? Really? 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It's me, JackedRabbit, out here in the forest, getting my pump on. Now I'm big for a buddy, honey, but trust me, there are things in these woods even more ravenous than I am. And frankly, I'd rather look like a snack than be one, wink. That's why I always wear my Raycon essential open earbuds on leg day, which is every day. Their open ear design gives me crystal clear audio while still letting me hear what's going on around me. So I can jam my workout hip hop. Then if a predator sneaks up mid-squat, I'll pivot to a regular hop and bounce out of there. Raycons are lightweight and adjustable, so they fit perfectly over my big ol' floppy ears and never fall out. Even when I'm tapping down to attack or new push-ups. Plus, they're so high quality, it's no wonder they've got over 3 million customers. Why, that's almost as many rabbit buddies as I'll make when I'm done getting carrot cake dump. 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Start planning your own Scottish holiday today at Expedia.co.uk slash Visit Scotland. Aha, Psycrift. Yeah, this deck feels like a 3. Updating your decks? No, I'm just sorting them into commander brackets. Oh, just use Architect. It's the easiest way to get an estimate of your deck's bracket. Plus, you can click the number and it'll lay out the reasoning. It takes things like tutors, extra turns and land destruction into account and game changers are all clearly marked. It even recognizes two card combos. See, it's saying your deck is actually a 4. It'll be a 3 if you've got Ristic Study. Huh. Okay, 4 it is. Architect is the best place to browse, brew and check your deck's commander brackets. Just go to architect.com slash command zone to get started. That's A-R-C-H-I-D-E-K-T dot com slash command zone. Welcome back everybody. We are upgrading decks and it is my turn. Tomer has picked a deck of mine to upgrade and I can't wait to hear all of it. This is my favorite deck of yours. When I think your decks, obviously the first one I think about is the Felda Griff. Sure, yeah. I feel like that's one of the first signature decks that I think about for Rachel. But then obviously Octavia, but the one that I like the most is the little goofball, Noren the Wary. Yes. Which is whenever anybody plays a spell or a creature attacks, Noren exiles itself and comes back and it's a one-man of commander and basically because basically it's impossible to remove Noren, right? Yep. It's just every single turn you can kind of guarantee that he's going to exile himself and then come back and end step and he's going to do that on your turn, he's going to do it on everybody else's turn. So he's like this really funny, very consistent blink commander and the thing that I love the most about yours is I think you're the only person in the world who would look at Noren or look at any deck and be like, look at any deck and be like, you know what? Stickers. Stickers. Stickers. Stickers. Who uses stickers? I was like this is so good with Noren. I was like, there's no way it works. And then I watched you play it. It does. And it works and I was like, what is going on with stickers? Did Mark Rosewater put you up to this? When somebody told me that stickers don't fall off in exile, I was like, oh no. I'm going to have to figure out how to get stickers on Noren the Wary in mono red. That actually leads me to my first question. Yes. Stickers don't fall off in exile, but they fall off physically. Yeah, they do. How do you get around this? Stick them back on there and cross my fingers. They're not sleeved or anything. And if I get an ability sticker on Noren, I will peel it off and stick it on there because it's hard to do. I don't play this deck that often. And you only use three of the sheets per game. So it's not necessarily like you're using the same three sheets over and over and over again. It's more random than that. But the ones that are really good, like there's one that says whenever this creature leaves playing, you make five clown tokens, which is dumb. That's not supposed to be attached to Noren. That one is a little worn. So logistically, it's a bit of a nightmare. Do you have like extra copies of each of the stickers? I should. How often do you lose stickers? I haven't lost one yet. I will forget to like take them off cards in the deck and we'll like find them while I'm shuffling. So that's good. It does require more cleanup than most decks. And then beyond the stickers, you went the extra mile and you're like, you know what? Stickers will make this work. Why not? Sure. Now we're going to go attractions. Yeah, you have to have attractions because that's like some of the ways to get stickers on. Right. It's really hard. There's ten attractions. Only a couple of them actually put stickers onto permanence. But if I have a chance, an attraction can just put a sticker on them and it doesn't scare them at all. My goodness. So there has to be attractions in there also. Yeah. This is one of the things that gets me so excited about this. First of all, I'm such like a brewer hipster. I love decks that are like utterly unique that like you can associate with a person. And this one definitely checks out box. I've never in my wildest dreams would I even think about the concept of putting stickers on Noran the Wary. But it works really well. So that's why I love this deck. And then also I really like decks where it's not super easy to do the thing. Like that's kind of counter-intuitive with like a lot of commander design. But like I like decks where it's like, yeah, you want to do that thing, you got to work for it. And this deck works for it because there's like some creatures that will enter and they'll be like, ah, I'll give you a, I'll give you, I'll put your sticker on one of the things. But if you by casting it, Noran's like peace gone. So you can't. So how do you do it? You have to like copy it. You have to clone it. You have to throw in the graveyard and then turn it into like a dinosaur with dinosaur DNA. And I'm like, I love this. You are working so hard for your stickers, Rachel. I'm running Aether vile to put in sticker. Why is Aether vile in here? What does he barely have? And he's like, oh yeah, of course, because Noran's going to peace out if you don't put the book on. The annoying thing is like, if you go to like put a sticker on Noran's someone, if anyone has an instant, they can stop it. No! Nor the betrayer. Yeah, like, ah! He's great. I love this deck so much. And I love these suggestions that you have. Okay, so we'll move on to suggestions. Yes. Keep it going. So the first one I want to throw in is a card that I have loved for so long. It is Curse of Opulence. It's an aura curse for one mana you enchant the player. And then whenever anybody attacks that player, you, the owner of the curse and the person who's attacking that person, gets a gold token. And gold is basically a treasure, but better, you don't have to tap it to make the mana. What I like about Curse of Opulence is it's a one-drop that can essentially generate one mana every single turn, because Noran can trigger it. Noran attacks and then he disappears, so he's never going to have to die. I did not think of this. I love that you let this end the next one. I was like, I never considered attacking with Noran. I'll do it like as a joke, but I didn't build anything around attacking with Noran, because he triggers himself. It's whenever a player plays a spell or a creature attacks, he leaves. So he's never going to do damage. But he does attack them. That's so smart. So sometimes I know some people get a little bit salty about this card, because if you curse somebody along turn one, you're like, ah, you've been an enemy for life. I like, at least it's kind of cute with Noran, because you're like, I'm not hitting you. I'm never going to hit you. I'm never dealing damage to you. Just, Noran's going to aim at you. He's just drawn to your opulence and afraid of it. Yes. And then if other opponents attack you, I mean, that's their prerogative. Yeah. The deck also has a bit of an artifact sub theme, so it goes on really well with that. Yeah. And same idea with the Guild Artisan, which is the next card. It's a two-mana background. And whenever a commander creature you control attacks a player, as long as no opponent has more life than that player, you create two treasure tokens. So again, this is another thing where it's like, typically you're going to have an opponent who meets his criteria. And it's a two-drop, and Noran is never going to die. Yeah. So he's basically always going to be guaranteed to attack every single turn if you want him to. And there's a two-drop that makes two treasures. That seems sick. I thought it was like, it's cute. A background with Noran is hilarious, because he's never on the battlefield, so like, your background doesn't do anything, but he is if you can go to combat with him. Long enough to trigger the treasures. Very cool. I guess going on the ramp theme, I had a lot of ideas for ramps. I love this. Takra and Razar unsupervised. This is a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle card. And I feel like this one also slaps with Noran. Whenever another non-token creature you control leaves the battlefield, you put a counter on it, a plus one, plus one counter, and you make a treasure. And oh, by the way, it only triggers once a turn, which who cares for Noran? So you played this, Noran will immediately leave, and comes back. I don't know how I missed this card. And then every subsequent turn. So if you go around the table, it's triggering on your opponent's turns too. So that's every single turn cycle. If there's four people, you're making four treasures, and you're growing this 3-3 first striker with four plus one, plus one counters. I mean, that seems like a slam dunk in any Noran deck. It's definitely one that I missed with the spoilers coming out when turtles. There's a lot of cards. A lot of cards coming out. You know, I can't read all the tacos and razors. No, I do. I just immediately forget them. I think this is a perfect inclusion. It's definitely like the deck has a funny problem where it has cards like this that grow bigger than the deck is fast. Oh, true. Where you're like, like, I will talk about this one in a second, but sometimes Noran is very low board presence unless you can get like a couple specific engines going. So having like one big terrifying thing is almost bad because you're everyone's like, I'm coming for you. And you're like, I can't handle it if you come for me. I'm trying to put a sticker on that guy. I just want to put the treasures. I swearly. Oh yeah, but it's perfect. It's definitely a slam dunk on the deck and it has other effects like it. Yeah. So I also saw that there was a strong discard beam and there's a lot of cards that I was looking at. And I'm like, well, obviously you want to be discarding cards. You want to turn them into dinosaurs and stuff. And also it looks like Noran doesn't have a lot of ways of getting stickers on. So it's very important to find those cards. I noticed you had a lot of ways of like rummaging through your deck to find certain cards while putting stuff in your graveyard. And then also a bunch of tutors. So look to me like you were looking for specific cards. Yes. Really trying to find anything that can put a sticker on Noran. There's only like three cards that do it in mono red. So finding those pieces is really important. So there's a lot of like repeated rummaging and then there's retutors or something like that. Yeah. So on that idea, because you're doing the rummaging and you're looking for things, I figured why not maybe try out artist talent. Artist talent does a bunch of things. But I think the first part of it, level one is the most important is whenever you cast a non-creature spell, you can rummage. And I noticed there was like 20-ish non-creature spells in the deck. So I think this one has the ability to rummage more than some of the other cards that I was seeing in here. So I was thinking that could be good. And then the other modes are actually kind of neat. They're less important level one, but level two is a little bit of ramp for your non-creature spells. And then level three, a lot of the ways that Noran is winning the game is with impact tremors effects, wherever it's entering the battlefield, you do damage to everybody. And this actually, especially with like a bunch more mana engines and stuff going, it starts dealing an extra two damage as well at the end. Yeah. It's a little torban effect for your non-combat damage at the end. I mean, it seems really perfect. I have just started to lean into the discarding a little bit more since we've got a couple of repeated rummaging engines in the Dusk Mourne, like two mana guy. Whenever a little creature enters, you discard and draw. So you can rummage four times a turn. It's pretty sweet. I think that was one of the best rummagers in the entire deck. It really is. It doesn't need you to cast anything. It's just Noran's going on. So yeah, more repeated rummagers makes a lot of sense. So you also mentioned like Taka being this big thing might be actually not good for you. But also having a big thing means I can block. Sometimes I can block. Yeah. So this one may not work for that situation, but it's one of the first things I think about with Noran. It's Gimli of the Glittering Caves. It's a three mana one-on-one double strike, but whenever another non-legendary creature enters. Another legendary creature. Oh, sorry. Whenever another legendary creature enters the battlefield under your control, you get a plus one plus one counter on Gimli. So it's a one-on-one double striker that gets a plus one plus one counter every single turn. Yeah, really gross. It gets huge. And whenever it deals combat damage to a player, you create a treasure token. This treasure token kind of feels like it's nice, but the main thing is the opponent's dead. Right? The funniest thing about this card is that it makes one treasure token when it hits, but it does like seven damage. Yeah. Per hit. So you're like, okay, you take 14 and I get two treasures or you jump. Yeah. You're like, I guess I jump. Sometimes you don't even get a second treasure because they're dead already. Yeah, they've died to the first hit. Gimli's sweet in the deck. Yeah, have you been considering that, but does it not work with the problem of being attacked and stuff? It was in the deck for a long time. It kind of had this similar thing where I was just like, I know this kind of does the thing, but there's always new cards that I'm trying to find. And there's so many impact tremors effects now. Yeah. That I'm like, I'm trying to figure out how many I want in the deck, what are the best ones in the deck, like do I want the deck to be just that because that feels kind of boring. Yeah. So I've had some trouble with like card slots and figuring out how to make it all happen and Gimli got cut somewhere in that shuffle. I can see that because he's mostly a finisher. He's a very good blocker, but like he's not really like a mana engine because like what the time he's starting to swing, your opponents have to block him. Or else they die. So yeah, that's maybe not the best, but the next one kills people before I can get a sticker on him. Hey, hang on. I needed a second attraction with my hotbox stand. I love this next one. I did not read this card. The next one is also a card that's like, you know, void because it came out in like a holiday season. Yeah, yeah. Cards basically don't exist. VV's persistent. Also good luck trying to find a copy. So it's two mana instant. It makes a zero one black wizard creature token that whenever you cast a non-creature spell, this token deals one damage to each opponent. So it's kind of like an impact trimmer is the type of effect. But the cute thing that I really like is that it says whenever your commander enters or attacks or pay two mana, if you do, return this card for your graveyard to your hand. And I was just like thinking like, first of all, you have a lot of the scarred stuff you're reaching away. So you can throw this away for two mana. You get it back every single turn guaranteed, basically. And then it's essentially like, you can always do like, I pay four mana. I'm going to make a one one. It can or a zero one. It can block, but also it can deal a lot of damage. And then as you get more of them, it just kind of like becomes an exponential threat. You have all these little little guys and they're just like, oh, when you cast the spell again, I'm going to ping and I'm going to ping and I'm going to ping and I'm going to cast it again. And I'm going to ping and I'm going to ping. And I'm going to ping and it's like, oh boy. This also adds to the like the energy of the deck as it's so aggressively upsetting. Like all the mountains are different. All the art is crazy. I've got sonic cards and dark pool, uh, dead pool cards and like putting vivis persistence and really adds to the energy of the deck, which is chaos. So I love this one. I got to find one. I was also seeing like ways of getting more card advantage. I thought might be helpful in the deck. It definitely is. Too many. There was like a lot of rummaging effects, but they don't put you up in cards. They're more for like the selection. I know like some of the stickers, the attractions might help in that regard. You got to find them. I got to find them. You got to find them. I'll be honest. I open like maybe two attractions a game. Maybe. So I have two options that I think might help with just like finding those cards. The first one that really impresses me is the Legend of Roku. It's a four mana saga. It does a whole bunch of stuff, but really the important thing is just chapter one. It's four mana. You exiled top three cards of your library and you can cast them until the end of your next turn. So I see this as basically a four mana harmonize. Also, I noticed that the mana value of the deck, the average mana cost of all the spells are on the low sign. So it looks like it could handle this style of card draw, impulse draw really well. So I just saw like four mana essentially draw three might be good. And then it does extra stuff, you know, turns into a creature eventually. Adds mana, puts a threat on the board. I mean, it seems really sweet and that makes sense. Having, I have a lot of sort of like fast ways to turn through your deck, but some more expensive like stable ways to actually see extra cards is really important. And there's a lot of games where you're like, okay, I have nothing in my hand because I have two cards and I have been rummaging. Yeah, it's got low mana value. So I was thinking like a little bit more steady card draw. Yeah, makes sense. And that's the same idea with the second one too. I love this card. The flux from Doctor Who. It's a saga with six chapters. My goodness. But the first chapter is just, it's four mana. First chapter, it enters the battlefield. You deal four damage to a target creature and a poke controls. It's not going to blow up the biggest thing, but it's going to blow up something. And then the really good part is chapters two to five. The best chapter. Yeah, you got four turns of exiling the top card of your library. You can play that card this turn. And again, low mana value of this deck. I feel like almost always whatever you're going to see, you're going to be able to play. If it's a lane, you just play that. If it's a non-lane spell, you usually have the mana to cast it because it's just a low mana value thing. Yeah, I'm running. I'm running the red, red, red Impulstra turn, which is great. What I really like about the flux is it's a little bit more expensive, but it enters, kills something right away and then gives you your value. I've played the flux in my Cast from Exile deck. You basically never see the end of the chapters. It just keeps going. It lasts long enough for the rest of the game. Yeah, for sure. So this is cool. And then the next one, I was like, well, this is an Impact Trammer's deck. And I saw one, I was like, maybe this one. I can't believe I haven't put this in the deck yet. Like this is the speed of cards. Yeah, Webstalker Ardent. It's a three-mana, it's another Impact Trammer's, but it counts creatures entering and artifacts entering. So even your attractions. Yes! It has worth one. So even like, oh, I'm ready to kill everybody. Probably not so much, but you can. Yeah. I mean, this is the best version of this effect for sure. And the fact that it triggers when Naurin enters and when all of the artifact tokens enter is a big deal. The reason I have both Impact Trammer's effects and the Restless Fireweaver effects, other artifacts, is different sticker sheets for Naurin. One of them is like, make three foods. And you're like, I don't know what I was supposed to do with a million foods. So it has fireweaver type stuff for that. And it works well with a couple of other things that are good with Naurin. So the fact that this is artifacts and creatures makes it a slime dunk. Yeah. It's like a little bit of an improvement, like huge, but like a little bit. For sure. And then this, okay, this one's a pet card of mine. It's great. But I can see where it's freaking good. It's so good. Maximum Carnage. It's a saga that's cost five mana and has three chapters. And the first chapter, again, I love sagas that have like a very good first chapter. And this one is fantastic. Until your next turn, each creature attacks each combat if able and attacks a player other than you if able. It's essentially Goad, but it works a little bit better than Goad, because if an opponent plays a creature that has haste, for example, if you just go to everything, they could maybe like attack you still. But this one is like, no, if your creatures can't attack, they got to attack and they can't hit you, which is quite nice. And then the second chapter, it makes some mana, which is quite nice. I think it's a little bit less important here just because you have such a low mana value. But then the third chapter, I like a lot, just five damage to each opponent. Done. That could sometimes be enough with all your impact tremors and stuff. Maximum Carnage. I mean, the deck definitely has a lot of pinger effects and a lot of enhancer effects. So this feels like it leans into the energy of the deck too, which is Spider-Man. Yeah, Disrupticorm's in the deck. Anything that just kind of says like, okay, while I'm doing my garbage, you need to worry about each other. So the Goad stuff is really, really good because Norton is sweet, but it is very slow. I can imagine. But yeah, I'd say just a way to like, if you also don't have that much of a board presence, it could be nice. Absolutely. Then for cuts, the cuts for the heart part. That's always so hard. I agree with a lot of your cuts though, and I think especially with your adds, it makes sense. Let's go through these pretty quick. So we've got Ingenious Artillerous is the first one. That makes sense. It's like an easy, it's just worse than Wefts of Starcraft, Norton in the deck. Three mana, this one, Link is right at artifacts. Yeah, a little bit of just an upgrade. And then Treasure Nabber, I had a question for you. I've seen Treasure Nabber and it looks sometimes good, but then sometimes not so much. Also, I've seen it in Metas where we don't have Soul Rings. Right. It's a lot worse if there's not Soul Rings running around. Yeah, maybe it's a little bit better with anything, but I just was like, I'm throwing in these really good like Treasure engines. So I felt like I don't want to have too much ramp and nothing to do with it. I think you're right. So it was like maybe just cut Treasure Nabber if we're adding more like Treasure Generators and stuff that are more consistent. Yeah, I think it is not super consistent. I don't really have ways to sacrifice their stuff, so I can't like take advantage of any of the stuff that Treasure Nabber really does. It just sort of says, I'm annoying, which the deck is plenty annoying. It probably doesn't need a three-man card. That is also annoying. That's fair. Okay, then there was a bunch of cards that the first one I was like, I probably would, I'd be very on the fence, but I wanted to make a little bit more room for like the other value engines. And the first one is a card I absolutely love, it's Wheel of Misfortune. It's basically a Wheel of Fortune, which everybody gets to discard their hands and then draw the cards, but it has a lot more weirdness going on. Everybody chooses a secret number, zero or greater. They basically place bets with their life total, and then everybody reveals what number they chose, and then like the highest numbers lose how much life, and then they get to discard their hand draw seven. And the lowest number, nothing happens. So if you don't want your hand to wheel, you just choose zero, and as long as everybody else is choosing a higher number, you get to wheel. I don't know, like sometimes wheels can help your opponents a lot. I know this deck really wants more card draw though, so this is like the last card I was considering cutting. But what did you think about this one? It's challenging. I tend to put these in my red decks, especially the decks with all the rummaging, just because I bet I could use a reset in my hand a lot more than other people can, because my engines aren't as good to keep my hand full. So I often think that I can take better advantage of a Wheel of Fortune than my opponents can, but there is that risk that you're playing with people that you reload their stuff. They draw the walking ballista, the one answer to Noren. No. It's fine. The stickers stay on them in the command zone. He's only three mandatory cards. Yeah, it's fine. I guess it'll be fine. So it's probably not super necessary, but it's one I just default to in red decks. Okay. The other ones I felt these ones probably are easier to cut for me would be... They're all basically the same. They're instant speed rummagers, the main answers, and thrill of possibility. There's just two mana, discard a card, draw two. And then the four mana ones, big score and unexpected windfall. These ones, you discard a card, you draw two, but you also make two treasure tokens. So cost more mana, but you get two treasures. I kind of felt like with the adds, we added a lot more mana engines. So the mana from unexpected windfall and the other two are not as important. And I kind of felt like artist's talents and the other card draw engines might be a little bit better for the deck than these rummagers because they don't put you up in cards and the other ones do. Because it is a low mana value deck. I wanted to make sure that the deck has more ways to just continually having cards in their hands. Right. And that's why I wanted to swap out those things that are not card advantage over stuff that are card advantage. Absolutely. I mean, these are the kind of cards that you like. The treasures are the big upside. They're supposed to put you into your big spells, but this deck doesn't have a ton of big spells and it hasn't put you up cards. I think these were just in because I had all the way, like, when artifacts enter, you deal damage. And I was like, oh, these are fine. It's a good way to spend my mana. And they're not actually that integral to, like, how the deck actually works. Better with cost reducers or copying spells, that kind of thing. Same idea with Mind Stone is like, I think we just added a couple more ways of making mana a little bit better than Mind Stone. I like that it can draw a card later on, like you play it early and then when you're low on cards, you just cycle it away. But I felt like... You also don't need that much ramp. Like, the deck doesn't really have that many expensive spells. Maybe just casting a two-mana engine though is better. This is my scariest one. Yeah, I love this card. It's a Warstone Surge. So it's like, whenever a creature is entering, it deals damage equal to its power to any target. But it's a four-mana Warstone Surge that affects everybody. Any creature entering. Look, it's very good with Nourn because you get to shock things, but you're shocking things. And then your opponents are like, I'm playing a six-mana 8-8 creature and they get shock your face. I think this is a way for cards that I would be like, okay, well, if you're trying to win the game immediately, fine. But if I'm just playing it and slowly... Like passing and he's going in. Slowly balling people, like, okay, now I'm a little bit scared. Here's my crazy line. You put a power and toughness sticker on Nourn. So you can make him into like a six-mana or like... Keep it at you. You sold me. You sold me. It's so bad. You sold me all the stickers. It's so bad. Yeah, but it's so funny. I love it. I feel like the funny cards have to stay in. Sometimes you just have to like, put pandemonium rods in your hand and sometimes you rummage it away if you're playing against a big stompy deck. But sometimes you play pandemonium and you're like, you can't kill Nourn and I'm happy for you all to go nuts. Okay, you sold me on this one. I guess cut a land. Always, always. And the last one, Wild Magic Surge. It's kind of like a chaos warp. It only targets your opponents permanence. And then they get to basically shuffle that away and they get another card of the same permanence type. Yeah. Directly onto the battlefield. They don't get to choose which one. It's like just random off the top, but they're always guaranteed to get something and it goes onto the battlefield. So I feel like it's a lot degrees down compared to chaos warp. And I think almost always when you cast this, like typically you're going to get rid of something that's scarier than whatever they get. But I don't like that they guarantee to get something compared to chaos warp. I feel like this is a type of card that is entertaining that I would run a lot, but I'm not quite sure how effective it is. So it is one of the ways of dealing with like a champ is it's tough though, so I do like it. But I felt like one of the cards that I would maybe cut for some other upgrades. Yeah, I think that that's a fair cut. I really like a package in my red decks that uses stuff that can turn things into artifacts and then a braids. And like, you know, you use the removal that red's good at and use it to get rid of other permanents when you can turn their enchantment into an artifact. So with the amount of artifact tutors that I have in the deck, I probably have enough to just play something a little bit better and less risky. And there definitely has stuck in my head where I'm like, if I cast this, I lose. Okay, that's Noren. I'm so stoked about it. There's definitely some cool things to look at. Again, like having clean eyes is such a big deal. But let's move on to the next deck. This is Selenia Dark Angel. This deck is awesome. It also works. I'm glad you picked this one. So Selenia is an old commander. It's three white black for a 3-3 with flying and has pay to life return Selenia Dark Angel to its owner's hand. That seems terrible because it is. But basically this is a pay life outlet in the command zone. So you have a way to adjust your life total really quickly and the deck will swap your life total with other people's life totals and will pay life for benefit. The weirdness with Selenia is that you can actually respond to her own ability. So you can hold priority, activate her ability as many times as you want. And so if you're at an odd life total, you could just activate it until you get to one life and then do a life swap or something like that. Which is not super intuitive to read it, but that is how it works and it's just silly. I love life swap decks. I built Mr. Negative for Game Night. He's so fun. I also have a Nashi deck that like halves life totals. It's really designed around like making my opponents pay a bunch of life as well because I'm paying life. It's like why gain life when I can make everyone lose it? So I was excited about this one mostly because I just wanted to do the research and seeing how different people handle white decks is my favorite. Because white decks have a couple extra hoops that they make you jump through to get ramp going, to get your card draw going and make sure that you're stable. So let's jump right into it. The first card I wanted to mention was Peter Parker's camera. This card's incredible. It's like $2. It's one mana for an artifact. It enters with three film counters on it. You pay two and activate it to remove a film counter and copy target activated or triggered ability you control. You may choose new targets for the copy. So I like this card into a few decks. Decks with Feshlands is the best. Even copy Feshlands triggers get two lands. So this can be like two mana ramp growth in the right moment. But also it's really good with decks that are doing big impactful expensive things. So if you're like I'm swapping your life total on ETB then you end like doubling those things are so good in the late game. Obviously you don't swap with the same person twice that doesn't do anything. But you know what I mean? It lets you choose new targets. So it takes those like big impactful plays in the late game and it can really make sure that you can slam the door shut. And in the early game it's a nice little ramp piece. I think this is a slam dunk. I just forgot this card existed. Me too. A lot of Spider-Man stuff is just like I don't remember. This card's incredible. And I keep putting it in decks and I want to build like Fetchland packages around it and it's really fun. So that was my first one. I did want to add another Fetchland. You have two in there naturally but I added a fabled passage as well. Cards only like three of like four or five bucks right now. So it's been reprinted in a lot of Precon. So I was like all right well now's the time to get it. But it's also good with your Sun Titan and like Angel of Indemnity. You have some ways to get permanence back from the graveyard. I just forgot that it's I thought it was like a expensive card. It's not a budget card by any means but it's like but it's yeah it's in Precons. It's a lot more accessible than it's ever been. So I have a lot more fabled passages floating around than I think I do. Yeah easy. And then so your deck really uses like a bounce land package to be the primary ramp suite for the deck. And it uses a ketchup ramp so stuff that says if you have fewer lands then you get a land into play and then bounce lands to give you make sure that you're always behind on lands but never behind on lands. If you know what I mean. So I like this package. I do that kind of thing a lot in my white decks but I also really like pairing it with stuff like Pupu UFO. There's a two man artifact creature. It's an angel. It's a construct alien but he's an angel. And it's a zero four with flying and it says tap put a land from your hand onto the battlefield. And then it says something about towns. That's not important. No. I love him so much. I love the Pupu UFO so much. I love saying the name. He's so good. It's a little alien guy. He flies. So he's like will chump lock in the late game but he's really good with bounce lands because you're just always putting more lands back into your hand. So you can play the bounce land return the land and then just put the land that you bounced right back into play. You also have land tax and a few other ways to repeatedly draw lands like weathered Wayfarer in the deck. So I was like you've got good land draw engines and this lets you convert the land draw into actual ramp. It's one of my favorite cards that came out last year. I just I have it in other decks. I just forgot to put it in here. Yeah. It's not one that I think a lot of people think about in white decks and it's great as long as you're full of bounce lands. And this deck is a horizon of progress is along a similar line. So when I was gold fishing this deck I was having trouble with the mana base. There's a lot of colorless lands and a lot of pips. It's a mess. There's like a whole desert package. We'll talk about that later. So I cut a few of those just because the colorless lands were really gumming up the works. And I put in a couple of lands that tap for multiple colors. Horizon of Progress is one that I picked. I think this card is still a little underpriced and it's tap, pay one life, add one mana of any type that a land you can control could produce. So it's two lands. You have to pay a little bit of life for it. But Selenia doesn't mind that. No, not at all. That's a benefit. Yeah. And then three tap you may put a land from your hand onto the battlefield tapped and then you can pay one man at a sack it and draw a card. So that's good with Sun Titan. That kind of thing. What I like about it is it's a two color untapped land that lets you cheat lands from your hand into play. Some of the games that I was having with Selenia, I didn't have a ton of action in the early game. I had a lot of cards that were good once my life total was low or once I had a way to swap. But I didn't have a ton of ways to spend my mana in turns like two through four or even two through five when I wasn't really ready to get Selenia on the battlefield. Because she's kind of more of like a late game finisher thing. Yeah. So having a rise in a progress that says like, look, this isn't a great way to spend all my mana, but at least I have something. And in the meantime, it's a two color land. I think that's a great point. It's that if you don't have a commander that is not like a value engine, like a lot of commanders like face commanders on pre cons and stuff, they usually say like play me early to mid game. As fast as possible. Yeah. Early to mid game, I'm going to help you with the ramp in the car drop. But like if you have a commander that doesn't have that and it's like a late game thing, you really need to emphasize more to having that early game presence, early game value engines in the 99. And that's a great point. Like this deck is very slow. And that is the pain point of the deck is like sometimes I just am not, I have not ready to get going before the game. People are trying to actually win. And it's because my early engines are a little bit lackluster sometimes. So I think horizon progress is going to be a nice way. But I forgot about it. It's also like, I don't know, when you're building a deck like Selenia, you focus on the part where Selenia is sick and where the moment is really cool. So you put all this stuff in that you're like, this will be really great in this situation. And you're like 20 mana. Wait a minute. I like swap. That's not good until turn seven to ten. So having some more stuff that just makes the early game feel a little bit more stable gives you a little bit of like board presence, like Pupu UFO or just stuff to do. I also put in shattered sanctum. This card just got repented in Strix Haven. So the slow lands are a little bit cheaper right now. It might be worth picking up right now. And then I put in a little bit more disruption because I have, you have a lot of ways to deal with creatures, but not a ton of ways to deal with non-creature spells. And I really like Heliod's intervention in decks like this. X, Y, Y, you can destroy X target artifacts and enchantments and then target player gains twice X life. So you're doing risky stuff with your life totals, dropping your life total really low, gaining a ton of life back. What I like is this is an instant that if something goes wrong, you're like, okay, I can fire this off and like gain eight life and it doesn't, I don't lose on this spot. So it's not a great way to spend your mana, but it's also a removal spell that you can dump a ton of mana into. I mean, there are ways of saying like in a deck, there are some cards that say like whenever you gain life, an opponent loses that much life. That is in the deck. And this is a great way of actually utilizing it because yeah, the primary game plan with Selenia, it's so fragile. I like that it's fragile because it's like very dumb. And like sometimes I just kill myself. Yeah. Like I'm going to go for it and then somebody's like, oh, you're at one life total. I'm going to deal one damage. Oh, lightning bolt. Yeah, you're lightning bolt and you're dead. So like having somebody this in the back pocket when things are not working out, especially when you're using your life total so aggressively, sometimes you're just not ready. You don't have a life swap or something, but you're at 10 already. Yeah, and you're going to swing at you for lethal and Heliod's intervention. But also it is really nice at just being able to pick off multiple things. Yeah, I like this card a lot. It scales really well. Three-maned kill a thing isn't super efficient, but the option to do four or five and like clean up somebody's crazy equipment. Like I keep losing to Captain America. Oh, that's a scene. So maybe that's this. No, that was a great one. Yeah, I like that one a lot. The other thing I wanted was a little bit more flexibility with like creature ETBs. There's a lot of creature ETBs in the deck and some really powerful ones. So I was like, I don't want to put a ton of blink spells in there that don't do anything, but maybe a parting gust is at home here. This is white white for an instant. Exile target non-token creature. If the gift wasn't promised, return that creature to the battlefield under its owner's control with a plus one counter on it at the beginning of the next end step. But if it was promised, that creature doesn't come back. So this is just an exile spell for a creature if you're in trouble and it can blink your Mr. Negative or it can blink some of your ramp cards at the right time. You can do a block and blink situation and it just sort of gives you a little bit more flexibility. I've been liking parting gusts a lot in my decks and it feels like it's a nice toolbox here. I didn't think about it because I didn't consider it as a blink deck, but it is. There are a lot of creatures that have anything to do with it. There's a lot. Yeah, it's not a blink deck, but it's like, could use a blink or two. Yeah, I always especially like, oh, I'm a blink deck. I'm going to run parting guards. If I'd known, I don't, but like the fact that it has that flexibility is quite nice. I really like flexibility on removal spell supposition. And 2-Man is very respectable for that. It's not that much more than like a sword supply of shares. So I think it's a great pickup too. It's hard to concentrate when you're worried about your health. It can feel like there's a wall between you and the rest of the world. Like you can't be fully present. Hello, AXA Health. How can I help? At AXA Health Insurance, we build our teams with people who care. So when you need us, we're here to support you. For cover that cares, search AXA Health Insurance. Pre-existing conditions are not covered. Let me interrupt your podcast to pitch you on another podcast. 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Thanks for letting me in on up. Now back to the show. The next one I wanted to mention was a Soren of House Markov. So this is one in a black for A14 with lifelink and extort. And at the beginning of your post-combat main phase, if you've gained three or more life this turn, exile Soren, then return him to the battlefield transformed under his own control. It's very easy to gain three life with Soren. You only have to extort one time in commander. So you have a number of extort effects in the deck already. So I was like, that'll be right at home. But then he flips into Soren ravenous neonate, which ticks up to make a food sick. That's not why we're here. Minus one, Soren deals damage equal to the amount of life you've gained this turn to any target. So this is repeatable removal. This is a way you would actually kill somebody. It is another extort effect in the deck and it's like two bucks. Wait, wait, deals damage equal to the amount of life to any target. You can go face, you can get creatures. It's really tidy. I think like I read this card when it was like previewed or something and I'm like, this looks okay. It's just too much text so my brain just shut off. Totally fair. I'm not even going to read the ultimate. Who cares? What? This card is, how much mana is it? Two. It's two mana. What the heck? It's also a two mana one for a life link that you just put on the board and like have a body. And you exert one time and it flips. How is this not in my deck? Your deck's not great at defending planes, Wagers. You're fair. But if you can use it, the turn it comes down, you can like kill a thing or if you're in the late game, you can kill a thing early and be like, you can't have a professional facebreaker or whatever, you die. Oh my God, you can play it and then immediately flip it and use the bow. Oh my God. It's pretty nasty. What are you doing? Yeah, well, a lot of formats have that question. I put Tenuous Truce in here. This is a two mana enchanted opponent at the beginning of enchanted opponents end step. You and that player each draw a card. When you attack the enchanted opponent or a planeswalker, they control when they attack you or when they attack you or a planeswalker, you control sacrifice Tenuous Truce. So you both say like you and I will benefit from card draw and we will not attack each other. You don't have a problem making that promise. This deck isn't much of an attacking deck. No, no. And if you can put it on an opponent in the early game, when you know you're a slow deck and not necessarily going to be like, I'm going to kill you in the early game, this is a nice slow engine that you can cast on turn two, give yourself a little bit of protection from an opponent, because they will be greedy and try and get a couple of cards off of this. I think, Rachel, these things are freaking brilliant because again, this deck is so freaking, it has these great ambitious plans. It wants to get to like, okay, I'm going to play Selenia and then hopefully nobody kills it, so I don't have to bounce it and recast it again for five mana. Because that would suck. That's always happened. Somebody boardwipes and you're like, it's been another turn recasting Selenia. Right. And then when I have Selenia, I'm going to have my seven mana life swap ability. Then you'll see and I'll be at one life and hopefully nobody killed me. Then you'll see. But getting there is so freaking hard. So yes, it makes so much sense that you're focusing on like these immediate effects that can like make sure my opponents don't win, you know, by the turn 12 before I'm ready to go. You can do some six stuff. We just have to get there. And I was like, I've never read this card in my life. And then I'm like, what's the best part of it? It's New Copaña Commander. Yeah, it is. I've never remembered these cards. You know it is. I'm going to forget this card. I'm glad that you put it on my documents. I need to be like the Momento guy and I need to write like New Copaña Commander exists. I've done that so many times with Magic Guards. Oh my God. New Copaña Commander. Just a treasure trove. So good. Just reread all of them. We'll put a link in the description just to the scryphal page with all new Copaña Commander. And finally, I thought this was a really cool decorum dissertation deck. This is a new one from Sturksaven. This is three black, black, first sorcery lesson with paradigm. Target player draws two cards and loses two life. So there's a nice draw engine. It's really hard to disrupt. You can turn it into a burn spell if you needed to. You're already running sign in blood. So it feels like it has that flexibility and like you have a lot of setup turns. So you spending turn four casting this is like, yeah, I'm going to draw a couple extra cards. I don't look like the problem. If you're going to attack me for some damage, that's fine. I'm used to it. I'm going to swap anyway. So I like this one as just like a five mana draw four-ish to six. This is actually a slam dunk because I do run. There's certain draw spells that are target player and that's the reason exactly. Like I will swap you down to one, but then I saw off to finish you off. And like I like the flexibility there. I skipped right through a couple of questions I had for this deck. And I do want to ask them before we get to the cuts here. So there's a couple of cards that I was like, what is going on? Yes. Why is Almanquette Raceway in the deck? This is a Starier engines and it taps to give a thing haste. Okay. It's not good. Yeah. There was a phase when either drift came out. Yeah. And not the best received set. No, not really. But for some reason when it came out, all of us were obsessed with that stupid land. We all ran it in the Commander Clash Crew. And my favorite was Crim. He had, was it Need for Speed? There's a movie with like Keanu Reeves in the 90s. Whenever he would need the speed counter, he had placed the DVD on the thing to mark his speed. I don't know. We had a phase. Yeah. We had a phase where we're all like, oh my God, this card's so good. It's not. If you draw it, it's not. If you draw like turn one and you're... It's really good. It's not. Your deck's also so bad at increasing your speed. And the color bib actually hurts so bad. So bad. Yeah. I just never took it out. Yeah, you should take that one out. That's like even a basic is better than the... Yeah, I agree. Then you have an expedition map in here, which is really cool. And then you have some neat lands. What is the first one that you go grab? Is it the Leech Ridden Swamp? It's not Amon Kettrace. It's not Amon Kettrace. It's usually like a bounce land. I really think a lot of catch up ramps. Bounce lands are good answer. So I'm like grabbing like a Gildus Commons or something like that. And usually that just means like I have so many catch up ramp cards. But I was like, well, I need to find more of the bounce lands so I can run more of them. Even though I'm probably just running just too many catch up ramp spells. That's probably the real answer. Yeah, I've got a couple of them on my list. But I think it's really cool. And I also find myself looking for bounce lands a lot. So this isn't on my list for ads, but I do think it's kind of neat in the deck. Here we are. What? So I was like, this deck might actually want sundial of the infinite, which is a two-in artifact that's one tap and the turn activate this ability only during your turn. This card is unreasonably expensive. It's like the cheapest person is like 12 bucks. But with the amount of bounce spells that you're playing, you can end the turn with the bounce on the stack. No way, Rachel! I've never thought this would be my life. What the fuck? I was like, wait, that's actually like super cool. This is like this beat cleansing wildfire. It's very narrow and weird. This was like $12 for this like mediocre advantage. But it's pretty cool. So you could activate sundial and then not bounce any lands to your hand. And then you've just played a regular lint, the test or two. That's cool. But also you're playing a deck that is so risky that something could go so terribly wrong that you're just like, never mind. There's a lot of times when I go to one and I cast a spell that maybe will put you in a position where you die and they're just like lighting the balls and I'm like, Yeah! And I have a lot of cards that are just like, I can't die this turn. I'm a little please let me try again next turn. Please be me again. Let me try again next turn please. This says like, okay, you put my death on the stack. I'm just gonna stop. I'm just gonna stop this entire turn and I won't die. I'll be at four, but like I'm so dead. It passed. So I was like, maybe there's enough moments that sundial the infinite is good, which is crazy. But anyway, that is beside the point we have to keep. Okay. This makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're gonna talk about some cuts. You have to cut cartographer's talk. That card is terrible. I heard the argument is not good. It should die. Playing this card in White Dex is like, white is still bad. It's not. You don't need to like, talk about it. It's silly. It is super silly. And it, yeah, like these kind of things stick around because they're fun. But yeah, I would cut cartographer's talk so fast. Makes sense. I also think I would slim down your catch up ramp selection. The, you only really want to draw one card that's catch up ramp because once you've played one, you're back to parody and the next catch up ramp spell isn't very good. So I was like, okay, we're going to cut this back and give you a couple of ways to just ramp that works after you've caught up. So I cut claim jumper and sand scout as well. Sand scout is really cool and gets you a desert, but also the deserts are kind of mucking up your pips. So having colorless, like I have a desert stack. They are terrible. They're your, your mana base is terrible when you have a bunch of deserts. So I was like, okay, we're going to cut conduit pylons and last step, quarry as well, which are both colorless under, unless under extreme circumstances. And then, yeah, I, we got to cut reliquary tower from the stack is Well, what if I'm drawing so many cards? You have so many white, white, white spells. There's so many white pips every time I drew. I've mulled so many games where I'm like, I have turned to play. Like literally don't have any white sources. So I just cleaned house on a couple of the colorless lands. Yeah, I know this is correct. I'm off the bandage. And then I had a couple other like early plays that I just think are like kind of fine, but not great. Dawn of a New Age is a really cool draw spell that I actually run a lot. And I think if you draw like three or four cards off of this, it's great. In this deck, it feels very likely that you're only going to draw one or two. Yeah. Because it counts the number of creatures you haven't played, which isn't that many creatures. Off-Nab Goat, hilarious, very fun. Don't know why anyone would activate it. And you can't really take advantage of it. I was just obsessed. Like I looked at the art and it's like a silly goat that you hit around. He's the freaking coolest. This was my favorite card from Lorwyn Eclipse. The entire set. It came from one of the pre-cons. And it makes sense in the pre-con because it's all about minus one, minus one counters. Right. But it doesn't make sense here, but I'm like, look at it. It's, no, I agree. And then I was like, it doesn't make sense. I tried so hard to keep this card in, but I was like, if you play a two-man creature and someone steals your only creature on the board, you're like, oh cool, I'm just getting slammed. Yeah. I also wanted to cut Font of Agonies. This card's really good, but it's only good when Selenia's in play. So it's like a one-man-of-play that isn't good in the early game. And if you play it in the early game, people will kill you. Yes. Because they're like, you could later blow up one thing. And you're like, if I pay eight life. Please don't kill me. But it just threatens to do something you can't really do. So it's just not a good early play. You actually nailed this one where I added it because it's like, obviously, obviously you have put it in a deck that loses life on command. But like, what I've started, at least my current preference for playing commander, is don't put things that make a huge threat on a maybe. Yeah. Like this could be very scary to your opponents and it holds a gun to the table being like, you can't play your creatures because what if, accidentally kill it. I much prefer replacing this with like one of your suggestions like a parting dust. Where it's like, you don't know that I can get rid of it. So you don't have to like, you're not going to dog pile me. I much rather, I like having answers. But I don't like telling you that I have the answer. Right. Some rattlesnakes are good, but this rattlesnake is really tough to actually sting. Like sting, what do rattlesnakes do? Bite. I don't know what a snake is. We're going to have to talk about that later. And finally, I cut Marlboro. I don't know why he's here. I'm sure there's a reason. There's a reason. Yeah. It's not good. Okay. That's fine. It's commander. Demon Lord excruciator. Yeah. Okay. I was going to ask what demon Lord excruciator is doing. Tell me about this. So I have ways of winning in goofy ways. Yes. Okay. Of course. The only way to win the game needs another goofy way to maybe win some time. I love it. So I've just obsessed with this card. It's also like so hard for this deck to cast by the way. Hopefully better now that you're taking how the stupid coverless lands. It's like 12. It's like a bajillion blacked. It's like six. Five or six blacked. It's something ridiculous. So unplayable on the stack. But I love the card. It's so cool. I think it's such a cool design. And I have like two blacked decks that I could run it in. and I was like, screw it. I'm throwing it in here. I love this card so much. I'm throwing it in. And it sometimes works with, you know, the things target player has to draw cards. Again, so ambitious, but this entire deck is so ambitious. And I was like, you know what, this deck doesn't need early game plays. We'll just throw in more stupid crap. And also it makes two of my coworkers salty because they hate mill. And all they do is they draw cards. It's Seth and Phil, by the way, if you're listening. All they do is draw cards. They're Mr. Seagate Restorations. All they want to do is make a token that draws cards, never even think of it like winning the game or attacking. And this like puts them, like this like sends them feral. They have to discard a end mill. Well, they have like seven cards remaining in their deck. And then they're like, but I need to draw cards, but now I'm going to die if I draw cards. I'm like, yeah. Do it. That's the point. I want you to be afraid. So the Marlboro is there too. It's also like swap of the Losers three, but again, overly ambitious, which is, yeah. When you have an ambitious plan to be like, this is the ambitious plan. Do everything for this ambitious plan. A second ambitious plan is like, what if the first one fails? Then I have a second one that will also fail. Cause I've only half supported both of them. The deck is not good. I can't wait to see your demon lord excruciator deck though. Whatever his name is. He's the doomed state pile. Yeah. This deck is awesome. I love Selenia. I was really excited to do some research on it. So I hope you keep it together cause it's cool. I will. And there's another Orzhov commander. Yeah. This is really cool that I was obsessed with because it's like, if I ever have to swap out Selenia for another Orzhov deck, it's going to be this one. And I was so excited to see how you built it. It's Shilgengar Sire of Famine. I've done a little bit of research on this commander just because I did like a $45 deck on it, but I've never really gone super deep on it. I've done very minor play testing. So Shilgengar Sire of Famine is a really cool like black, white, angel sacrifice deck. It's a five mana six six. When you can sacrifice another creature, you create a blood token, but if you sacrifice an angel this way, you create a number of blood tokens equal to its toughness instead. So you sacrifice any creature you make a blood, but if you sacrifice an angel and it has like four toughness, you make four blood tokens and blood tokens, you can sacrifice a blood token for one mana. You discard a card, you draw a card, so you rummage. And then you could pay three mana. These are three Orzhov hybrids, so white, black, hybrid pips. Sacrifice six blood tokens, return each creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield with a finality counter on it. Those creatures are vampires in addition to their other types. So your deck is fantastic. And it's like Orzhov angel reanimation gets around kind of a lot of the issue of angels being like, they're usually like a lot of mana to cast and stuff. And this is a great way of just like putting them all on the battlefield and medial it. Yes, they have finality counters, but who cares, you're probably gonna win the game. And also I love that it's also like instant speed, all this stuff too. Instant speed is nuts. Shulgangur is such a cool commander, also like the most badass art in magic, maybe. It's like a demon sitting on a throne of angel wings. It's gross, sick. Also like he's the demon that created the first vampire. Yes, he worked for Edgar Markov and manipulated him into doing it. He did a famine out of the world. He's cool. And it's been so cool. So yeah, I'm excited to see your ads for this deck because I've just really struggled getting all the pieces that I want into this deck to fit in the hundred cards. Yeah, because it feels like it has to juggle a lot of things which I wanted to lead into a question. So Shulgangur, you wanna be sacrificing ideally angels and a bunch of blood tokens. You also want to get angels in the graveyard because then you can reanimate them. Obviously sacrificing them helps that. And blood tokens, you can discard the ones in your hand to set them up in the graveyard, which is very nice. How does a deck feel when it's not working well? Like what are the pain points of the deck where you're like, the game plan is not working properly? Like where do you think it kind of goes wrong? The deck's really interesting because it has a decent amount of angels that you can cast, like four mana, three mana angels so that you can sacrifice to get blood. That doesn't feel like I cast a seven mana thing and then I sector seven mana thing to get that same seven mana thing back. Yeah, I saw there was like a two drop. There was, it's two mana, three, three angel. You can only play, you can't play it in those first three turns, I believe. But like that doesn't matter. Three blood and it dies and comes back. So I play a fair amount of things to like get the blood going. But that really puts all of your eggs in the Shulgangur basket. You can do a lot of stuff at instant speed but a well placed removal spell usually means that like Shulgangur doesn't get activated. So if you play all your angels, play Shulgangur and then somebody fires up a removal spell before you have the triple black up, then you're in sort of a weird pickle and you can put yourself in a tough spot where you sacrifice your whole board to get blood tokens but then still have to recast Shulgangur and activate it after he gets removed. So those are sort of the major points. Basically, if you want to tap with Shulgangur, the deck can do it. Like it will bring a bunch of stuff back. Even if it's not like the best angels in the graveyard, you have a lot of flyers, you can usually close it out. Right, that makes sense. So it's kind of reliant on the commander to really do its thing, but the commander's payoff is so good that it's like really worth having him around, right? And really worth removing if you're my opponent. And building around. Yeah. Okay, so those are like the how I was thinking about the approaching like some cuts and adds maybe we can consider finding ways of ramping out Shulgangur a little bit easier. Especially once you've developed a couple of blood tokens, maybe there are a couple ways of utilizing them in a way to get them out a little bit earlier and then maybe adding a little bit lower cost consistency so that you're hitting your lane drops always and making sure Shulgangur has the mana to do its thing and maybe also find that spot removal. Because I know it's a very well-rounded deck too, which I love seeing. You're not like, oh, if I don't cast Shulgangur, I'm not gonna do anything. You also had like a mass reanimate, multiple mass reanimation spells. There's like a bloodline something something. But yeah, the one from Lorwen, yeah. Yeah. And is like these are great ways of being like secondary ways of like fulfilling the primary game plan. So I really liked it. So my ads, the first one, I feel like you probably considered it. So I want to hear your opinion on it. Rampage of the Valkyries kind of feels tailor made to this tile play style. It's a five mana Aura's of enchantments. When it enters a battlefield, you create a four four white angel creature token of flying and vigilance. And whenever an angel creature dies, each other player sacrifices a creature. So it's a grave packed. That makes an angel. That makes an angel. So you can immediately start grave packing. And it's a four four. So you make four blood. Oh yeah. And it sacrifices a Shulgangur. This guy's great in the deck. This is a big one that a lot of players will put in Shulgangur. I don't love grave packed effects. I don't love how I feel playing against them. I don't love holding like a gun to the table to be like, I will stack all my stuff. Because it's like, I don't really care if you have other stuff. I have bigger flyers. I'm not really worried about that. This card would be great in the deck if that's more of like the meta appropriate thing. But the people I play with for the most part, grave packed effects are not played a lot. That's fair. Maybe Game Changer one day. Maybe. Look, I've asked about it. Yeah. I want to bring up because it seemed like an obvious thing. So I want to hear your opinion on that. But the next one, I think, might be a little bit more fun. Inspiring statuary. Inspiring statuary is a three mana artifact. And it gives your non artifact spells improvised. You can cast a move improvised. So that allows you to tap not only inspiring statuary, but all your blood tokens that you're making for mana. And you mentioned that one of the pain points was what Shulgangur gets taken out. You have the blood tokens already, but now you have to recast them. And I feel like the blood tokens might be a great way to like accelerate that. So if you do have blood tokens, you can immediately turn those blood tokens into the ramp. You don't have to tap them to sacrifice them to Shulgangur's ability. So you can, you know, cast out the next angel you needed or whatever to immediately activate Shulgangur. But also if you have blood tokens and Shulgangur's gone, now you have a bunch of extra mana to recast them easily. Or just cast angels that you've drawn. Yeah, that's so funny because I've thought of all of the other like artifact cards to put in there where it's like Malakir, the, you know, whenever an artifact leaves you drain the table. And I was like, I'm not going to play any of those. I don't want this to be an artifact deck. I want it to be an angel deck. But inspiring statuary is like great in this deck and doesn't make it more of an artifact deck really. It just makes it easier to actually cast your angels. That was a big thing I ran into where I was like, I'm not winning the game with angels. I'm winning the game by sacrificing blood tokens. So I made a big gear shift in the deck building process to be like refocus and I'm like, I want to win by attacking my opponents with angels. That's what the deck is. So. Yeah, you don't want to just be like a aristocrat's loop that you want to feel like an angel deck. Yeah, I wanted it to feel like what it was. I wanted it to feel like what it looked like. So I just sort of stopped looking at artifact cards. But this one feels like a really good spot for it where it's like, it's actually not that good in artifact decks. So it doesn't live well in artifact decks. So it's actually a great spot for inspiring statuary. And what I like about it is because you don't have that many artifacts. It's a three man like a mind stone. Yeah. It does help you in the early game, but obviously once you have that engine going, then that's what takes you the extra mile to like immediately turn that into like a very scary board say or just recast. Yeah. I mean, Shilgengar is basically converting your blood tokens into a mana advantage. And this does effectively the same thing, which is sweet. And then I had less, okay. So I had less suggestions on the other one just because the deck feels very tight. It's so tight. It's so tight. It's crazy. Obviously like you have a lot more experience with this one and I haven't played Shilgengar that much. I've played tested it twice and that's it. And I brewed around it. So I thought about it a lot, but like, yeah, a lot of the tight list, but there was a couple options that I thought maybe might help you in the early game, which I felt like pre Shilgengar, this might be a way of kind of like setting up for a way to have the board not overwhelm you early on. For sure. So the first one was, they're actually just two cards that are very similar to each other. Ancient Venom is a Spider-Man card. It's a three man of black flash menace. And whenever another non-token creature, you control dyes, you draw a card and you lose one life. So if you're sacrificing creatures, doing anything with that, if you have Shilgengar around, this is just a way to just keep your hand full. And then if you get answered or anything, well, now you have a way to redeploy, make sure you're hitting your land drops and everything. And the one that I think is actually better in this deck is actually Morbid Opportunitous. It's not every single time a creature dies, it's only once per turn, but it counts also your own creatures. And I believe- It's your opponents as well, yeah. Yeah, it's your opponents. Does it count tokens? It does count tokens. So you're not a token deck, but like if your opponents are losing tokens or whatever, it's a very consistent source. This is something that you can play early on. And even if you don't have Shilgengar on, just stuff is naturally dying. So it can get you a little bit of card advantage. And once you do have Shilgengar, I don't imagine you're sacrificing that many angels in a single turn. So I feel like it's gonna work similar to Agent Venom. The other one that I like is an angel that's relatively cheap, it's Thraben Watcher. Oh yeah. And what I like about it, it's just a 2-2 flying vigilancer, but it gives all your non-token creatures plus one, plus one and have vigilance. And what I like about it is it's not a very expensive angel, so you can play it relatively early. And it pumps up your other angels. So now they have one more toughness, which means one more blood token. And if you do reanimate it, or if you just have a couple angels on the battlefield, that means you can start pressuring the table without having to worry about getting attacked. Cause your angels are really big. So I feel like they can really benefit from vigilance there. There's definitely moments like this deck becomes a threat all at once. And the vigilance is really important to not just be like swing out with all the stuff that you just got back, but now everybody thinks you're the opponent. So well, obviously you are, because you just reanimated a bunch of angels. So now everybody comes for you. And you don't have enough to actually take a player out. But yeah, vigilance huge index like this. This one I wanted your opinion on. Yes. Because I am not sure how relevant it is to your way of winning, but Thief of Blood kind of caught my eye for this deck. And I was considering putting it in my own version, but I wanted to hear your opinion on it. Thief of Blood, it's an expensive spell. It's six mana, one, one vampire, or flying. But when it enters the battlefield, you remove all counters from all permanence. And then Thief of Blood enters the battlefield with a plus one, plus one counter on it for each card counter removed this way. So the idea behind this is use a blood token to discard it. You don't want to be casting it from your hand. You discard it. And then when you do a mastery animation with Shilgengar, it will come back with all your angels and it will remove the finality counters from everything. So if you do get boardwiped, you're not losing all the creatures. You can in fact, you know, just re-sacrifice everything to Shilgengar and then have a huge blood token army. And then, you know, you can recast Shilgengar afterwards and just do it all over again. But like, how relevant is that for you? Do you find like once you do have a big board, say it's kind of GG, or would that be actually helpful to recover from boardwipes? It's interesting. Most of the time, I feel like if I've reanimated my stuff, this is only good when I have Shilgengar and I've activated Shilgengar, which is a situation I'm already pretty good in. And then the benefit is I remove all the finality counters and I have another big thing, which is good. But I've sort of built my deck to not really fight the finality counters all that much because it's sort of like, yeah, that's an okay break. I'm okay with all my stuff like being exiled and having to figure it out again. So I'm okay with like the finality counter nerf. A lot of players will play solemnity in this deck, which I think is like, like so you get no finality counters. And that's okay. That feels like a jackhammer to answer, like a regular hammer problem. And you place the solemnity in the counters deck will kill you with everything they don't have. Right. So I stayed away from stuff that sort of like, can remove all the counters multiple times, have a few things that benefit from them. So it feels a little bit wind more, but also it's cool and it's a vampire with sick art. So it's definitely one that I like, could include in the deck and just haven't really been tempted to cut an angel for it. I was thinking just because it can just reanimate for free, but you do have to spend a blood token on it. And then the question is like, okay, well once you have that big board say, how much are you actually afraid of board wipes? And I don't know because I haven't gotten to that point that many times. It's definitely one of the ways that you can lose. There's enough angels that protect your board from like damage or indestructible and stuff that it hasn't been a huge problem, but the board wipe answers the deck and exiles everything. And you're like, okay, back to square zero. Or you know what I mean? Yeah. So this would definitely be like a good protection spell, but I don't know if I would play it over something just like a flawless maneuver or something like that. Yeah, that's fair. Okay, so then I had only two more cards. No, please. The first one is my favorite type of like plague belcher type. What was it, plague belcher? Plague bearer. Plague plague. Something is, oh, wow. I was looking this up. I think it's like Moraner. It's one of the things. Plague bearer, I think it is. Yeah, I was looking this up recently. There's too many plague cards. I think it's plague bearer. Playcrafter. There it is. Plague it, we crashed the plague. He doesn't bear it. My goodness. Well, this is my favorite variant of it. He's great. A cursed Moraner. It's a two-mana version of this. When it enters, each player sacrifices a non-token creature. I really liked that it's non-token too. So like if somebody is like a token deck, they don't care about sacrificing a one-one soldier or whatever, but it gets around it. And I just kind of like this as like a nice way of kind of keeping the board more chill without being super aggressive with like a great pact effect. And I do think that kind of works a little bit better here because you have a little bit of sacrifice payoffs. And then also now it's gonna be in the graveyard. So when you do go reanimates, now you've also cleared a creature from each opponent. Yeah. I'm just kind of following this a little bit more in the direction. And it exiles itself, so it's not something that you can like loop over and over and over again. Once it has the finality counter on it, I mean. Yeah, I think having some early disruption that's just sort of cheap to like make it so when, you know, when I'm casting angels and stuff, I'm not just dying to people who were set up earlier is probably smart. It's a, I haven't put this card in a deck yet because I just don't default to the edict effects like this. But they're like, this is just an early tempo play that like if you're not planning to do it every single turn, it's not that big of a deal. Yeah. I'm definitely with you on like great pact effects. And also it just puts like such a large target on you too. On top of like the feels bad, but I feel like the one one type of thing, as long as you're not going super hard on it. Yeah, yeah. It's totally doable. It could be more useful. For sure. Then the last card is another card that I was seeing like just to like speed up the game plan a little bit more to get to the point where Shulgangar is doing its thing. And it's a sister supplier. It's just a one mana, it enters or dies, you mill three cards. And with Shulgangar, it just means like you enter, it enters for one mana, you mill three, and then you eventually sacrifice it to Shulgangar and you mill three again and you make a blood. Yeah. And it's all for one mana. So it just, just to kind of like lower the curve a little bit and get it going. It allows you to run a little bit less angels if the idea is just reanimating that. Right. Because then you just dig more to find out. You don't have to play the four mana ones, the three mana ones. Yeah, it's, I think sister supplier was in an early draft of the deck because I love this card. I put it in just about anything, but it's when I was putting up all the angels in, I was like, well, I gotta cut something and I have sister supplier and other decks, but. We're angels. But it's so good. It's so good. It continues to surprise me how good this one drop is. So those are all the things that I was looking for and looking to cut. Yes. Add. Or yeah, just to add. And it wasn't as many as before because I feel like the deck is so tight. So I was like, I gotta, I gotta throw in some. And I really wanted to pick Shildengarde because I am personally very invested in this. He's so cool. I really think it's cool. So yeah, it was a little bit out of my comfort zone compared to some of the other ones, but like this one was the one that I wanted to hear mostly from you about. So for in terms of cuts, I love path to exile, but my hot take is path to exile is a ramp spell that can sometimes be removed. Be removal spell? Sure. Yeah, I like that. So I run it a lot in token decks, but I don't run it outside of it. So I considered maybe cutting it. What do you think? The deck has a lot of disruption as is a lot of angels enter and blow stuff up and like it can control the board in a pretty real way. So it's possible that it's not worth spending a slot on efficient removal. I like that is one of my deck building defaults is just be like it pass swords, because it's like I'm always happy when they're in my hand. The big thing with path for me is I only spend it in the late game. That's not when I'm gonna fire off to kill an early creature. It's only one that's basically gonna save my life in the late game. And sometimes it's not enough. And in the late game, I got a bunch of angels. So maybe I don't need it. That's why I was thinking like basically would take out that for like those a chrysanthemum rotter effects. The early disruption. Maybe like two more of those. Yeah. Two like great pack. I just don't want a couple of them. And I thought maybe that could be a way to utilize the removal earlier when you're in. That was my thought process. The second one was Mind Stone. Again, I think it's a fine card, but I wanted to swap it out for the inspiring statuary, which I felt like has a little bit more. It's worse just by itself without any blood tokens than Mind Stone. But once it's not that much worse, especially when you're so top heavy and choking guards out of five, you could still get a shulking at on turn four with either of these cards. And then just the upside of the statuary, I thought might be more interesting than Mind Stone. Yeah, I agree. This one, okay, point to discussion. I think it's good. It's good. So I was like, ah, I need to cut something. It's tough. Is this a three mana draw two lose two mega blood as a sorcery? It's a divination, but it's better in this deck because it comes with that blood token. Blood tokens are so good. They're so good. So like, I think you need to sacrifice six blood tokens. So if you're at five and you do point to discussion, that feels great. But I just feel like overall, it's just like the lesser of different ways. And also just like three mana draw two is just, I feel like that's not impactful enough for how much mana you're spending on it. No, I agree. So I was thinking like, I would probably cut like that for like a morbid opportunist where I do a three mana and it's not gonna draw cards immediately. It doesn't have a blood, but I feel very confident that it's going to draw more cards. More than two certainly. And it still gives you that blood if you sacrifice it. This one, I was like, okay, this one looks bad as a cut, but I have never been personally very impressed with it. Although I'm the most impressed by the art. I think the art is absolutely stunning. It's Sarah's emissary. It's a seven mana, seven, seven angel with flying. When it enters, you choose a card type. You increase your control, have protection from the chosen card type. So this is a really like safe protection spell. You play, you have a just giant, really cool looking angel. And typically what I see people choose is instant because that means I'm protected from target removal, which is quite nice. So you can't just like swords the Sarah's emissary and stuff and turn it off. Or they choose creatures, which means, you know, you can't attack me. Can't be blocked, yeah. Yeah, you can't be blocked. Or you can't attack me, that too. You can't be blocked. You can't attack me and I feel very safe. So choosing creatures, I feel like is not super impactful because by the time you have this angel out, you have a seven-tongue flyer. They'll fly. Yeah, so like good luck attacking me. And then also good luck blocking me. Because again, they all fly. And then choosing sorcery, I almost never choose, I had never seen it be choose because like... Basically Blasphemous Act. Yeah, and that's not gonna, yeah. Outside of like some red burn spells, it's not gonna protect you from most of the wipes. And then choosing like instant, like yeah, that's a little bit better. But like, if I've mass reanimated everything, then, and I lose emissary to like a sword, who cares? Like I have emissary. I have a bunch of other things. Yeah. Yeah, if you're trying to spot remove the board, I just reanimated it, I guess. Go ahead. And then I was just thinking like, it's seven mana, so hard casting this must be a knight mana. So that's why I was like... Oh yeah, this one gets banned for sure. Yeah, this is mostly just an angel I like, but I agree it is not particularly impressive in a deck that is all airborne. Yeah. The Sarah Avenger, I don't even know if I would want to cut. She's so cool. This guy fish her art is so good. It's also very efficient. Yes. We went over this is two mana, three three angels. So two mana get three bloods. The only downside is that it's not very impressive angel by itself, but yeah, and you have high concentration thing. I was just thinking like, I would replace this with the three been one that gives everything plus one, plus one in vigilance. Actually gives you an impact. It's four mana. So it's also not the best saktoga, but I like the fact that it gives you extra bloods on all your other angels. And then also it's just kind of like, yeah, now I have a critical mass and now I can swing out because I don't have to be afraid of blocking or anything. Right. And then the next one, okay, fogmata is real. Fogmata is real, but we're cutting fogs here. I'm a believer of fog meddas, but like I go my number, my quota on fogs, which I like running fogs one. I go for one and yeah, maybe that's not enough to see that every single game, but I hate seeing two. Yeah, I also think there's kind of three in this deck. Three? I mean, there's this one, there's ink shield, and then there's the one that like re-chooses how attackers attack, which is basically fog. Oh yes, oh yeah, there's Sarah. Yeah, he is also basically a fog. It's like the blue man group, but the green one. I love, that one's the coolest one. That was cool. Because you could reanimate, yeah, and instant speed, and it's strong. And instant speed, right? That is so, Thank you. That's so freaking cool. I was like, that's really cool. That's so cool. So cool. So yeah, three, okay, three. Three's way too many. I feel good about cutting this one. No, three is way too many. That one, Brune, I love, it's also the cheapest of the ones to actually cast consistently. I have seen it kill people before, but we ain't cutting ink shield. No, ink shield is goaded. And the angels, obviously, the goat of the, like that's the coolest thing. It's cool, though, this really makes sense. It's just, I only have the white black deck, and I was like, you gotta play Batman, Brune, and you can, it's great. That's the cool one. And then the last two, again, I just needed to find something to cut. It's so hard to cut cards in this deck. Fracture, instant speed, two mana, you blow up an artifact, a shambon, or planeswalker. It's a disenchant. Yeah, yeah. Sometimes it hits planeswalker, but I just personally haven't come across planeswalkers that much. It's absolutely a naturalize, and it's like, has more words that makes you think that it's good. The amount of times I've had Fracture in my hand that it's like, this kills creatures, this doesn't kill creatures. No, it's not very good. It should not be in the deck. So I don't like cutting too much instant speed. That's cheap, that's interaction, but I felt like this was weak enough that maybe replace this one. And then animate dead, it's like an amazing card. Yeah, what do you want? It's an amazing card. You can also, it also synergizes so well if the deck in terms of like, you discard an angel with your blood, and then you don't need Shilgengar. Right. But I don't know, we got reanimates. Yeah. We got, what's the other one? I'd probably cut reanimate first, honestly, because this deck has Serra Paragon, and so you can recast the animate dead from the graveyard with Serra Paragon, I think. Which is cool. Yeah, so, there are good back-ups, but how do you see me cut something? It's tough, it's tough. The commander reanimates, you don't want to spend a ton of cards in the 99 on the stuff the commander already does. But you don't want to be over-committed to it too, which I totally understand, but then I was just like, right? It's a lot of reanimation. Trust me, this is my pain with this deck, where I was just like, all the angels are so pretty, so I can't get any of those. And I can't get any ramp, because then it won't work. I loved it though. I'm so glad you liked it. I'm so glad you liked it. I'm so glad you liked it. Thank you so much for looking at my decks. I really enjoyed looking at yours. I hope this was fun for all of you guys to watch as it was for us. We talked about a ton of cards today. So many cards. So many cards. If you want to buy any, you can support us at cardkingdom.com slash command. Card Kingdom's the very, very best. They've got so many cards all under one roof. If you're like us and you do a ton of brewing, you've got a new deck list that you're excited about, you can copy the whole thing, paste it into the deck building tool. It gives you a whole page where you can just pick all the ones that you want. We're picky. We're commander players. I really, I'm very specific about what versions I want. So having it all in one page, so it doesn't take me all day is a big deal. And you're supporting the command zone when you shop with cardkingdom.com slash command. And then once those cards are in your hand, you've got to keep them safe, keep them pretty, keep them themed. Go to ultraproot.com slash command to get sleeves and deck boxes, play mats, binders, card sorting trays. That thing's my favorite. I use it literally every weekend when I suddenly new magic cards appear. I don't know where they got there. Plus they go on sale all the time. If you haven't signed up for the newsletter yet, you should do it because they'll send you an email and be like, everything's like 30% off all of a sudden. And you can support the show. For user affiliate link at ultraproot.com slash command. Okay. I wanted to take a moment just to talk about this exercise because this was sort of the first time I've really like sat down to like dig into somebody else's deck. And especially somebody that I respect so much that I'm like, I know this is intentional. I know all of these decisions are here. What am I missing? So what did you like? So the reveal is shattered when I'm like, demon lord, it's not good. I like it, but I like it. And that's part of deckbuilding is like knowing when you're breaking the rules, knowing when the decision you're making is like for you. And because it's fun. Or sometimes you're just so much in this like specific meta that you don't see those like, oh yeah, this is you've gone too far. Totally understand. You're in too deep. Did you think this was hard? Like digging into somebody else's deck? Cause I thought it was so hard. I thought it was so hard because like, you're a very unique deck brewer. So it's not like I'm looking at like the top 100 of EDH rec over here, you know? Like it's, it's a lot of very unique and specific styles of deck, which means I do not have the most experience with most of these acts. I looked at a lot of them and I was like, I cannot contribute this because I never even thought. Like again, I was like, I was like, finally, Merko surveilled that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Easy. Straight forward, I got you. And then you're like clones and I'm like, what? There's always another line. It's always like the name and like something else. Yeah, yeah. It's no end. It's surprisingly hard. Stickers. Yeah. I mean, it's crazy. Like thinking through somebody else's thought process and trying to goldfish, you know, you're playing a deck a different way than they would be playing it. You're like, I don't know what I'm supposed to find with this like expedition map. I know the thing that I want is a bounce line. Is that the thing that I should be getting? I don't really know. So getting to live through that, that lens and be like, okay, what, what makes this deck work? How does it ramp? How does it draw? How does it use the tools that it has in the colors that it is to like at its fullest? Because I think a lot of the ways that you and I think about cards is we look at stuff more deeply than what it says on the card. Like the dowsing device, you know, you look at it and you're like, this cares about artifacts. This is a spells deck. What the hell is this doing here? But you're like, ah, this is a ramp spell. This is a two and a red ramp spell. And it dodges very well. It dodges very well. So just trying to like see that third layer is really cool and interesting. And it was a cool insight also into each other's metas because I could see from here like, there are some especially enchantment threats that I expect that you're dealing with that I am not dealing with on a regular basis. I'm like, that checks out. Yeah, you gotta be able to answer it. It's Mother Titan, it was studied, it was the President of the... Yeah. Terrorist symbiosis, cantile that, those things sit around, the cards crazy. Having those, different answers for different things is always really interesting. Anything that you noticed in particular that you were just like, oh, I don't do this thing that you do, like any weird little habits. Because I definitely like look at your decks and it was like, I can see the synergy, I can see you making decisions, like all to sort of serve the theme and the thought behind it. But you're really into like packages of things where it's like, I have this and this whole thing goes in here. And I could recognize that a few different ways, which is not necessarily how I think. And I think it's really cool. Where it's like, I have a whole plan, this is the ramp plan. And it's like a whole sub synergy of the deck. Cause that's in both Selenia and in Melik. Which is cool. I think for you, what I noticed is that you're very well rounded and you're very much expecting that interaction is going to be not only necessary for you and are gonna be building around it. Like we just looked at Shulgingar and how it's like, yes, when Shulgingar is doing its thing, it's gonna be great. But like I have backup plans, like I'm ready for doing reanimation stuff without Shulgingar because I expect it's gonna be gone. Or- I assume this is not gonna work out. I'm gonna run a decent amount of cheap interaction because I expect my opponents are gonna have something absolutely disgusting on like turn four or five that I will answer to because I've lost a lot to it. That was the vibe that I got to it. Whereas I feel like a lot of times I'm just so greedy. I'm just a greedy, like when I make budget brews, I'm like, you gotta have like 10 spot removal and stuff. And when I'm with myself, I'm like, let's, sky's a little bit, baby. Let's throw in another, let's throw in a five more finishers. Why not? It's like hope for the best. That was definitely a big thing. Like the difference between my content decks and my like personal decks are really real. Whereas like my personal decks are a mess because I'm just like, well, I think this is fun. I think that's fun. I have this one in foil and like here they go. And my content decks are all very like very decision based and very like all of these are to serve the plan of the thing. And then you look at my decks at my house and I was like, oh yeah, that has 101 cards in it because I just didn't cut one from the digital list yet. Yeah. This card was banned. I forgot about that. Exactly, exactly. It was very funny because I was updating one of my decks and my partner was going through it because I put like some little proxies to test stuff. And he was like trying to see what was behind it and he found manicrypt, backside, jewelblown as well. Like, oh yeah, I mean, That's where they are. I knew they were good. So I was testing other cards obviously. And it was like, It was like, now we have to go through every single card. And let's see your bulk because there could be stuff hiding. There was stuff hiding. You gotta check your bulk. Well, thank you so much for taking the time, Tomer. I know this was the long one, but I had a lot of fun. This was such a pleasure. Good. Well, thank you all for watching. We hope you enjoyed it. And let us know in the comments what you thought of these decks. And hopefully you learned something, because I know I did. So we'll see you next time. Thank you to our amazing team here at the command zone. Thank you to Karina Cruz, Josh Diaz, John Schneider, Grabelot, Galati, Jamie Block, Jordan Prijin, Jake Boss, Becky Bell, Eric Lem, Manson Lung, Josh Murphy, Evan Leverga, Sam Waldo, Josh Lequie, and Jimmy Wong. Bye. Bye.