Wildfire393

Behold, a totally reasonable number of Commander decks

Another Secret Lair I was interested in, another instance of getting queued where I don't even get an ETA until after the thing I want is completely sold out. I know I'm screaming into the wind here, but this is a shitty system and there's no way this is actually good for the game.

Hidden Gem: Late game, Soul Echo acts as a psuedo timewalk, leaving you immune to loss via damage/lifeloss to at minimum the upkeep after your next one. This can be exploited with cards like Ad Naus that aggressively eat your life total, as you won't die to it no matter what, like Unlife.

There's also some nasty combos you can pull with it. Axis lets you trade your <1 life total for someone else's before the Echo goes away, while Delaying Shield can prevent counters from being removed from the Echo and they won't kill you when they come off it.

scryfall.comOmnath, Locus of No Text by @wildfire393A Commander format Magic: The Gathering deck list on Scryfall.

You can make a legal and playable* Magic deck using exclusively cards with no text. It's got approximately the right number of nonlands, and doesn't require $500+ headliners. *: Playable does not mean good, this runs like 8 vanilla guys and a bunch of burn spells

14 Sept

If you aren't using ManaPool as your go-to Magic Market over TCGPlayer, you should fix that immediately. I placed a sizeable order recently. I didn't even realize one of the sellers never sent, until I got an email from ManaPool telling me they'd already put in a replacement order, no cost to me.

2 Sept

Restoration of Eiganjo is one of those cards that I'm shocked I never see anyone else play. IMO it's an absolute staple white effect, and I run it in a lot of different decks. It ramps, it discards, it recurs threats, it spams the board with tokens, it does basically everything I want.

2 Sept

There once was a walker named Jace The whole multiverse he tried to replace With one that is nice But will it suffice Or will it blow up in his face?

27 Aug

17 Aug

Reporter: Mr. Wayne, what would you say to anyone asking if you're pro LGBTQ? Bruce: Yeah, I'm Pro LGBT - Lego Gotham Batman Tank!

13 Aug

One of my favorite underplayed hidden gems. there's almost always a target, and it's often a really good one. 2U steal your Sol Ring is always great. Steals key voltron equipment. Steal a Skullclamp and it immediately cashes itself in for 2 cards. Just a great value creature all-around.

13 Aug

I currently run this in two decks (unless I'm forgetting one which is possible). Nincanzil Explore/Merfolk Typal, it's just a generically-good Merfolk that soaks up whatever benefits my team dishes out. Jenson Carthalion w/ Lurrus Companion 5c Aristocrats, it's cheap interaction I can Lurrus back.

7 Aug

@gavinverhey.bsky.social Gavin, can you speak to why Muckslinger Gang has the "other than on the stack" clause? All of the all-zones typechangers just say "not on the battlefield". It's clear from "Creature spells" that it *does* affect the stack but the wording is leading to debate on that point.

mtgnexus.comDeep Cuts - The New Commanders of Myste...Dive into the lore and card sources on Mystery Booster: Commander Editions deepest cuts!

4 Aug

Confused by any of the new Legends in Mystery Booster: Commander Edition? I've got you covered! www.mtgnexus.com/articles/119...

23 July

Tickled by the idea of a The Great Goblin deck that feeds goblins into an organ grinder for value, so I drew that playing out while tinkering with the list (disclaimer: I am not an artist)

15 July

Marvel Super Heroes Commander design meeting like

29 June

There is little better than building a new Commander deck and having it Do The Thing in its very first game. Especially when The Thing is incredibly silly.

14 May

Me playing Emet-Selch and without fail getting either killed or my graveyard wiped every time I do one iteration of stacking a bunch of instants and then flickering/phasing/transforming Hades so they end up back in the graveyard

1 May

Jace: Behold, I have created my own multiverse where- Tibalt: Cuck chairs already exist, bro Jace: What?! Tibalt: We all know this is going to end with you alone in your pocket dimension watching sadly as everyone you care about goes on with their happy lives. Could have saved yourself the trouble

1 May

Jace: Why did I bring you back? Tibalt: I think we just established that you're overflowing with self-loathing. Now fuck off to the cuck multiverse, I've got some living to catch up on.

1 May

Jace: behold, I've created a new multiverse where planeswalkers are the opposite of their bad qualities so everything is better Loudly pangender Ashiok: So does this mean in this new multiverse, you're smart? Jace: ... Now listen here you little shit

26 Feb

Normalize the idea that all people are people and deserve to be treated like people and to live their lives in peace. Attacks on trans rights are a fundamental attack on human rights, and the obsession with hurting trans people is absolutely deranged.

23 Feb

@infinitokens.com doodle comic - "Inserting Fuck Arounds into the Fuck Around and Find Out Machine and then being Surprised Pikachu when a Find Out falls out"

moxfield.comHere We Go a Kiroling - Commander (Kirol, Attentive First-Year)A Commander deck featuring Kirol, Attentive First-Year by Wildfire393 • View on Moxfield

Daily ECL Build #5 - The final Student, Kirol Kirol is probably the most interesting of the five, with a really unique ability. To take advantage, we have a number of triggers that make tokens, many of which can self-reinforce when retriggered, like Chancellor of the Forge.

In every case, you copy the (copying/flickering/reanimation) trigger, which gives you a fresh Kirol and at least one bonus body to tap with them. So you can copy it again with the new Kirol and keep going indefinitely. Use Impact Tremors or similar for an instant kill or just make infinite tokens

Even outside of that, token generation effects, doublers, and Impact Tremors/Purphoros effects make for a persistent threat, and throwing in the occasional copy on that can really amp it up. Other good ETB effects like Sun Titan and Solitude make good Kirol targets as well.

moxfield.comHere We Go a Kiroling - Commander (Kirol, Attentive First-Year)A Commander deck featuring Kirol, Attentive First-Year by Wildfire393 • View on Moxfield

This particular build showcases several infinite options that are available to Kirol. On first glance, the "once per turn" clause limits infinites, but there's ways around it. 1) Make a token copy of Kirol, and then double a trigger like Ocelot Pride that copies the token and another.

2) Use an ability that can instantly flicker Kirol (Felidar Guardian, Teleportation Circle), along with something that makes a token when he enters (Genesis Chamber, Angelic Sell-sword) 3) Use a reanimation trigger, a sac outlet, and one of those token outlets.

moxfield.comTam O'Shatner - Commander (Tam, Mindful First-Year)A Commander deck featuring Tam, Mindful First-Year by Wildfire393 • View on Moxfield

Lorwyn Eclipsed daily builds #4 - Tam Tam is the opposite of Sanar. She easily enables vivid but makes you work for a payoff. There's only so many payoffs, but we run a lot of them, as well as a few other ways to enable it.

Reliable Painter's Servant lets us run a lot of old, powerful color hosers under the assumption that they're always cranked to 11. Cards like Compost, Reap, Snake Basket, and Lifeforce become extremely potent when they apply to everything.

Then some just general value cards to round out the deck, including a number of fun UG creatures that rarely find homes elsewhere, as well as a few ways to use Tam multiple times in a turn cycle for extra protection.

moxfield.comTam O'Shatner - Commander (Tam, Mindful First-Year)A Commander deck featuring Tam, Mindful First-Year by Wildfire393 • View on Moxfield

Painter's Servant has its own set of unique interactions with Tam. Because it adds the same color to all spells and all creatures, that means all of your creatures effectively gain Hexproof. And since we're in green, we can aggressively search the Servant to make this a reliable interaction.

moxfield.comA Big Ale - Commander (Abigale, Eloquent First-Year)A Commander deck featuring Abigale, Eloquent First-Year by Wildfire393 • View on Moxfield

ECL Dailies #3 - Abigale Abigale was a tough nut to crack, maybe even more so than Sanar. While the other students all have activated and repeat-triggered abilities, Abigale is stuck with a one-shot ETB effect, and one that's mostly designed around nerfing enemy threats. Not the most fertile ground

The other factor to consider was lifegain. Abigale grants Flying, First Strike, and Lifelink to her victims. So this can be used on your own creatures to trigger lots of effects like Karlov, Amalia, Dawn of Hope, or on opposing creatures in tandem with Tainted Remedy or Plague Drone to drain.

Finally, to round things out, we've got some of the best Soul Sister effects to enable alternate routes to trigger the "whenever you gain life" cards as well as profit from all the flickering going on. It's a slightly off-kilter take on the Soul Sisters archeype common in BW.

moxfield.comA Big Ale - Commander (Abigale, Eloquent First-Year)A Commander deck featuring Abigale, Eloquent First-Year by Wildfire393 • View on Moxfield

So next I thought about creatures that do something I don't want when they leave play, usually combined with an ETB. The "nightmare" creatures from Odyssey block do these, as do several Fiend Hunter shaped creatures and Thought-Knot Seer. Exile something, Abigale, it stays gone.

Next, we've got a number of exile and return effects. The instant/flash ones can be used to do the same Nightmare trick, stranding something forever, and any of them can be used to reset Abigale, or other ETBs as well. And a lot of ETB creatures do nothing after so don't mind getting Abigaled.

moxfield.comA Big Ale - Commander (Abigale, Eloquent First-Year)A Commander deck featuring Abigale, Eloquent First-Year by Wildfire393 • View on Moxfield

So where did I end up? A couple places. The first thought was removing downsides from creatures to turn them into huge threats. But we're long past the day where a 3 mana 5/5 or 2 mana 4/4 makes any kind of waves, so not much there. Death's Shadow seems exciting but it's hard to get it into play.

moxfield.comSanarly - Commander (Sanar, Innovative First-Year)A Commander deck featuring Sanar, Innovative First-Year by Wildfire393 • View on Moxfield

Second Daily ECL Build - Samar! Sanar is a weird little guy. They've got a Vivid ability, which rewards you for playing multiple colors. But as a UR Commander, and with the Hybrid rules not changing, there's some pretty big limitations on this as you can't actually run other colors of spells.

We can also pack a number of "Paradox" and "when you cast from exile" triggers to get additional value here. There is one other trick we can pull here - Painter's Servant. Call a color other than R/U and you make all your cards that color, letting you pick an extra spell each turn to cast!

We can even double down on this with some clone effects like Phyrexian Metamorph that copy Servant for further value. Overall, this is a deck on the weaker side of things, but can still do some fun stuff at a bracket 2 table.

moxfield.comSanarly - Commander (Sanar, Innovative First-Year)A Commander deck featuring Sanar, Innovative First-Year by Wildfire393 • View on Moxfield

We can cheat the front-end: Run things that can change their own colors (bet you'd never seen a legitimate usage for Shyft before!) or generate off-color tokens. However, there are some limitations on the back-end, you still only get to choose one spell of each color to cast from among the exiled.

So taking X from 2 to 4-5 helps a little, but not a lot. You get a bigger pool of cards to pick 2 from, meaning you're more likely to be able to pick two cards you can cast that turn. So how do we make this worthwhile? "Flurry" abilities are solid for this, since you'll regularly hit 2x spells.

In 2022 on Twitter I started doing daily deckbuilds for new commanders, doing all of NEO and SNC. I ended up dropping the project during Commander Legends Baldur's Gate because I couldn't find a configuration of Background + CAB Commanders I was happy with. I think I'll be starting this back up.

We've got a lot of the usual suspects for getting value off of lands in the graveyard - Life from the Loam, of course, Deeproot Wayfinder, Icetill Explorer, Six, and more. Tokens aplenty so effects like Earthcraft, Insidious Roots, and Gaea's Cradle turn into tons of mana.

Sac outlets like Umbral Collar Zealot and Altar of Dementia fuel the graveyard to set up the next activation, while we get other value out of tokens with cards like Yawgmoth, Nullmage Shepherd, Mesmeric Orb, and Moldervine Reclamation.

moxfield.comLluwen-more - Commander (Lluwen, Imperfect Naturalist)A Commander deck featuring Lluwen, Imperfect Naturalist by Wildfire393 • View on Moxfield

To start us off: Lluwen. Lluwen is exactly the kind of Commander I love, doing nonsense with a bunch of disposable bodies, graveyard interactions, and of course playing around with lands. I'd build it in paper except I already have like 5 of those, so instead here's my draft.