Hello and welcome to A Seat at the Table, the column where I pick a commander and talk about what I’d include in the 99. This week, a popular little guy from Jumpstart 2022 gets some shine to talk about his 99.

Kibo, Uktabi Prince is a little troublemaker who comes to us directly from the art of Uktabi Orangutan and Uktabi Kong (at least that’s what I believe).

For two and a green, you get a Monkey Noble 2/2 with a stacked textbox. Let’s look at all three sections of it right now.

“{T}: Each player creates a colorless artifact token named Banana with “{T}, Sacrifice this artifact: Add {R} or {G}. You gain 2 life.”  

Whenever an artifact an opponent controls is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control that’s an Ape or Monkey.  

Whenever Kibo attacks, defending player sacrifices an artifact.”  

Holy Toledo, that’s a lot of words! Let’s do these in reverse order.

“Whenever Kibo attacks, defending player sacrifices an artifact.”

This one is fine, but doesn’t give you the decision. Your opponent can sacrifice an artifact of their own choice, but if you get Kibo out early enough and you swing at the person who only has a Sol Ring as an artifact, that’s pretty great. Just don’t give them a Banana before you do. Not to mention that any artifacts that go to your opponents’ bins gives Kibo and his Ape/ Monkey friends a +1/+1 counter as evidenced by his second ability.

This means that you’ll likely want to have a ton of Monkeys and Apes, and there are a little over 30 eligible Ape and Monkey creatures without Changeling that fall in Gruul colours. They’re not all great, but I’ll go over a few soon.

Finally, that first ability. Tapping Kibo to give everybody a Banana which is like a limited Treasure and a limited Food all in one. This fuels the second ability because for each opponent who cracks a Banana, your Apes and Monkeys get chonky and this will make for some fun political shenanigans in the early game.

Let’s get to some fun cards for the 99.

  1. Silverback Elder

Probably the best Ape printed in a long time, Silverback Elder does it all. It requires you to really like green, but rewards you with a 5/7 whose triggered abilities are amazingly powerful. When you cast a creature, you can destroy an artifact or enchantment, or you can look at the top five cards of your deck and put any land among them into play tapped, or you can gain four life. One of these options is definitely less useful than the others, but in a deck that I am assuming will be packed with other primates, that first mode will be useful to nuke Bananas or Powerstones or Thran Dynamos or whatever you want.

If Kibo’s in play, this 5/7 doesn’t stay at that stat line long. The ramp option is the graviest of the gravy trains. If every creature spell ramped you and then some (maybe you’ve got a Beast Whisperer in play too), it’d be difficult to get used to playing any other way.

  1. Viridian Revel

One of the best anti-Treasure cards out there, Viridian Revel, is a card I have been hyping up for some time now. “Whenever an artifact is put into an opponent’s graveyard from the battlefield, you may draw a card.” What a clean textbox that says, “hey, crack all the Treasures you want, I’m about to go off with 17 cards next turn”, or in the case of Kibo’s Bananas, “Hey, I help you, you help me! We’re all friends!”

Viridian Revel deserves a slot in any of your green decks these days. That’s how strong it is. The Treasures alone, not to mention Blood tokens, or Powerstone tokens, or Clues! Sardian Avenger is on track to being one of the sneakiest best cards in The Brothers’ War set, as is Brotherhood’s End, and for good reason – Treasures are out there and they are powerful. Viridian Revel turns each cracked Treasure or Banana across from you into an optional card for you. Isn’t that beautiful?

  1. Parallel Lives / Doubling Season

You give everybody Bananas, but you get more because you did all the work, after all! Parallel Lives and Doubling Season will double up your tokens and give Kibo and friends all the potassium he desires.

But Doubling Season also cares about counters and that means that one artifact hitting the graveyard while Doubling Season and Kibo are in play means that you’ll be getting TWO +1/+1 counters for each of your chest-beating friends.

  1. Taurean Mauler / Chameleon Colossus / Masked Vandal

These are the best of the Changeling creatures for your Kibo deck. Masked Vandal doesn’t destroy artifacts or enchantments, it exiles them, but then benefits from breaking them when Kibo is around. Say bye-bye to your opponent’s Darksteel Forge and start wrecking the rest of the artifacts with your Silverback Elder triggers.

Chameleon Colossus gets huge already with two activations of its ability alone bringing it to 16/16 with protection from black. If you have Kibo out and kill an artifact, those same two activations make this a 20/20 and you can activate at your own discretion! You don’t need to do it before combat, you can do it during! After blockers are declared.

“But the activation is costly!” First of all, you’re in green. Secondly, if you stocked up on Bananas, you can feed this Colossus enough to kill somebody outright. Then FLING at someone else!

Taurean Mauler already gets huge because of your opponents’ spells, but add to that Kibo’s second ability and you’ve got a huge beater that demands attention, drawing removal away from more important pieces.

  1. Titania’s Song + Vicious Shadows

With Titania’s Song turning all artifacts into creatures with power and toughness equal to their mana value, that means all the Bananas you make go bye-bye, therefore netting four death triggers. And what card really loves death triggers in red? Vicious Shadows.

Every time you tap Kibo with Titania’s Song and Vicious Shadows, you get four instances of damage to an opponent equal to their hand size, three rounds of +1/+1 counters for your Apes and Monkeys, and the satisfaction of knowing that a “gift” just blew up in your enemies faces.

Honorable Mention: The Stations

If you feel like getting a little silly, the Darksteel Stations – Blasting Station, Grinding Station, Salvaging Station, and Summoning Station – seem like a fun inclusion. Pairing them with Titania’s Song feels wacky and there seems to be a bunch to be done with the artifact tokens that are created

That does it for this week! Let me know what Commander you want covered on A Seat at the Table! @mikecarrozza on Twitter, Instagram, and Hive.

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