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 Phyrexia: All Will Be One Commander precon backup leader that has been officially revealed by MTG Muddstah: Otharri, Suns’ Glory.
Playing on the Rebels theme of the decks face commander, Neyali, Suns’ Vanguard, Otharri is the Phoenix I finally want to jam in my decks. A lot of people have had their fingers crossed for a Phoenix commander and personally I think Syrix, Carrier of the Flame should have whet that appetite and quelled that request, but here we are with another Phoenix in the command zone. Maybe a Mardu Phoenix is on the way!
For 3RW, Otharri is a treat at 3/3 with flying, lifelink, and haste. Let’s see that textbox!
“Flying, lifelink, haste
Whenever Otharri, Suns’ Glory attacks, you get an experience counter. Then create a 2/2 red Rebel creature token that’s tapped and attacking for each experience counter you have.
2RW, tap an untapped Rebel you control: Return Otharri from your graveyard to the battlefield tapped.”
I have always loved experience counters and am a sucker for a commander that dances in and out of the graveyard. While we’re hoping Otharri doesn’t get removed too much, keeping a Rebel around to resurrect it isn’t much of an ask.
Here are a few things to remember about Otharri:
Without further ado, let’s get into some cards to add to Otharri’s 99.
Proliferating the experience counters incidentally can be quite good in this deck, sometimes being the different between one new experience counter and a lot more. From the other precon deck of this set, Norn’s Choirmaster and Glistening Sphere are solid inclusions to pick up from the new set. Choirmaster proliferates on your commander’s ETB and attack, which means if you’ve already got one experience counter and you cast Otharri, you’ll be swinging with four experience counters. Not to mention if you blink Otharri with Teleportation Circle or Conjurer’s Closet or even return it from the graveyard with that second ability. The Sphere is a fine target for Sun Titan and a candidate to sacrifice to Throne of Geth.
Suit up Otharri with Sword of Truth and Justice, activate Karn’s Bastion or Contagion Engine, sacrifice Martyr for the Cause, swing with Grateful Apparition, exile something with Wanderer’s Strike, and cast Unbounded Potential. You’ll have an army in no time.
That first one was long, but this one is going to be quick. For each opponent you hit during combat, you get a Treasure token and if you have an abundance of Treasures, you can trade them in for some impulse draw. This is such a good spot for PFB, especially if you’re running two of the cards in section 7.
Remember what I mentioned about having a game plan in case Otharri is stuck in the graveyard? Exile all the graveyards with Scavenger Grounds and you’ll get it back to the command zone while disrupting some strategies. Or you can turn all your creatures into Rebels with Maskwood Nexus. Changelings are also a fine inclusion as fail safe here.
Besides combat, you’ll want to crank up the pressure to 11. Impact Tremors, Witty Roastmaster, and Purphoros, God of the Forge damage each of your opponents when creatures enter the battlefield.
Throne of the God-Pharaoh takes life from each opponent for each tapped creature you control at your end step, which means that even if you took out one player with combat, that pillowfort player isn’t much safer.
Goblin Bombardment turns all of your Rebels into cannon fodder to toss at opponents’ faces and to get rid of blockers, probably flying blockers to keep Otharri safe.
You’ve got great keywords on your commander and you’ll likely have a board of tokens. Odric, Lunarch Marshal will send your army skyward and gain you a ton of life at the very least. That’s not even accounting for other keywords you might have.
Inspiring Leader, Intangible Virtue, and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite are great anthems for your tokens, but the Praetor is top of that list given its ability to give creatures you don’t control -2/-2.
Your commander triggers on attack, so how do we take advantage of that? Extra combat.
Aurelia, the Warleader, Bloodthirster, Port Razer, Seize the Day, Moraug, Fury of Akoum, and Karlach, Fury of Avernus are all cards I would consider slapping into this deck.
Hey, it’s the aforementioned section 7! Token doublers Anointed Procession and Mondrak, Glory Dominus double your tokens, meaning double the beatdown. Mondrak can even make itself indestructible and share that with everybody thanks to Odric. Or Nesting Grounds can be a sneaky bit of tech.
If you stack your triggers with Rabble Rousing, well, you won’t have to wait long for that Hideaway card, then it’s just gravy!
Protect. Your. Commander.
Otharri is important to this deck. You need it safe. Not to mention Odric can help give the whole team hexproof!
It works the way you think it does. This will kill opponents outright with commander damage!
Yes, it’s been a long one but let’s just honourable mention the only eligible other creature with an experience counter capability. Kalemne can be huge and gives double strike and vigilance to the keyword soup chef Odric. You’ll already have at least one five mana creature to cast in Otharri, but let’s not act like you won’t have Sun Titan or Etali, Primal Storm in the mix too. Any of the extra combat creatures qualify for more experience counters courtesy of the Iroas’ Disciple. Give her a chance.
That does it for this edition of A Seat at the Table! Tell me which commander you’d like covered for the next one and I’ll get to it. @mikecarrozza on Twitter and Instagram!
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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 Phyrexia: All Will Be One Commander precon leader that has been officially revealed by MTG Muddstah: Neyali, Suns’ Vanguard. It’s been a while since we’ve seen Rebels!
Neyali is a 3/3 Legendary Creature – Human Rebel for 2WR with a textbox that is very clearly trying to get you to play a certain way. Let’s take a look at that textbox.
“Attacking tokens you control have double strike.
Whenever one or more tokens you control attack a player, exile the top card of your library. During any turn you attacked with a token, you may play that card.”
The more I read this card, the more I like it. Is it Boros aggro? Yeah. But does it give you a new focus and new advantages for it? Hell yeah it does. Here are things to bear in mind.
I’ll be staying away from cards that are in the precon as well, since we have the official list now. There are cards I really like that are already in there like Prava of the Steel Legion, Intangible Virtue, and Loyal Apprentice. I picked a lot of them. I couldn’t help myself. Let’s begin.
Look, we’re going to get a little silly. How fun would it be to have Myr Battlesphere come down on curve after you slammed a Mirror March? Very. Flip those coins. Maybe you’ll get no copies, maybe you’ll get six or seven. Who knows! That’s the fun part. Even if you get one, you’re getting a 4/7 token with haste that brings four more Myr in play with it and can tap all eight Myr it and the original created plus the original to just deal nine damage on attack alone! Give trample and your 4/7 (with +9/+0) with double strike just seals the deal.
Picture this with Determined Iteration in play, too. Even more swingy tokens.
You can play Sun Titan and get value from it and then some. Win a flip and you get a hasty 6/6 double striking bad boy about to bring back a fetch land or Wayfarer’s Bauble or whatever you’ve got that works. I think Mirror March is the fun card that your table will remember going off or doing nothing, and it works well with this deck. Whether it’s high value creatures or even just Loyal Apprentice, it does work.
I won’t say much here except red’s cloning has been incredible lately and these two make tokens like nobody’s business. Jaxis gives you the draw on death upside and Delina might let the token stick around if you roll high enough. Huge for this deck. Rionya, Fire Dancer, at worst, copies one creature per turn making you another token. Even just copying another little token is going to get you card advantage post-combat. You can play something like Phyrexian Processor and make big, beefy tokens that swing with double strike and copy them too! Do you miss that Sun Titan in your graveyard? Feldon can make you a new token one. It’s not the original, but in this deck, it’s better.
Your tokens are going to have low (or no) mana value. If you have a way to make tokens on each turn, say with Heliod, God of the Sun or Platoon Dispenser, you’ll be able to take advantage and draw a ton of cards per turn cycle.
You’re playing white and likely will play a ton of white permanents. Why not get a free token out of casting them. Not to mention, this is great on defence and if you’re using any of the clone effects I listed earlier, playing a Soul Warden could get you an army of Soldiers and gain you back that life you used to cast Soul Warden for free… and then some.
This Chandra is fantastic for this deck. Her second 0 ability essentially reads as “draw two cards” when Neyali is in play. The -2 can come in handy if you’ve got removal like Path to Exile or Generous Gift in your graveyard. The first 0 ability could be helpful if you’ve got a red planeswalker package in the deck, but I’m not holding my breath. Having Rite of the Raging Storm in play means that you’re going to swing every turn with a token and your opponents might clock each other, too. Speaking of which…
This wouldn’t be A Seat at the Table without a nod to aristocrats. Do I think you should be playing Ashnod’s Altar and Phyrexian Altar as well? Absolutely. However, there are a ton of tokens that are just going to die or get exiled at the end of turn. You can even play cards that create Eldrazi Spawns and Scions that’ll do this on their own. Rite of the Raging Storm, mentioned above, not only gets damage swinging everywhere, giving you extra value from the double strike, but the tokens also get sacrificed. Vicious Shadows sees them dying and it won’t be long before you take the win.
Casting the cards exiled with Neyali means that you get to have fun. Nalfeshnee copies the spells you play from exile and Wild-Magic Sorcerer gives the first exiled cast cascade, which incidentally would be casting from exile again, triggering Nalfeshnee. Passionate Archaeologist requires your commander in place, but starts to make those cards cast from exile really hit hard. Keeper of Secrets does the same thing without requiring your commander.
Trample will be your best friend when you’re making big double striking swings with your tokens. Taking away the trample also means that if you have tokens behind to block, you can feel a little safer knowing that you’re blunting the assault.
There you have it! That’s another edition of A Seat at the Table.
Let me know what commander you want covered next week! @mikecarrozza on Twitter and Instagram!
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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 Phyrexia: All Will Be One Commander precon leader that has been “accidentally” previewed on a Portuguese site featured on the box art.
Let’s talk about Ixhel, Descedent of Atraxa! Coming into play for a mere 1WBG, this 2/5 Legendary Phyrexian Angel has flying, vigilance, and Toxic 2, which means that players Ixhel hits get two poison counters. The last ability is what makes this legend interesting. Let’s see the rest of that textbox:
“Corrupted – At the beginning of your end step, each opponent who has three or more poison counters exiles the top card of their library face down. You may look at and play those cards as long as they remain exiled, and you may spend mana as though it were mana of any color to cast those spells.”
So what are some things to consider when building Ixhel with the card pool available to us?
Let’s get started. Bear in mind that this is before the precon deck list and the main set are released, so I may be naming cards that are in the deck already. I have a sneaking suspicion that we’re going to get some “cast from exile” payoffs in the precon, like the Prosper, Tome-Bound precon.
Okay, let’s start with ways to get your opponents to have poison counters. Ichor Rats ETBs and gives everybody a starter poison counter, which you can then proliferate for your opponents with something like Evolution Sage or Grateful Apparition. Ajani, Sleeper Agent’s ultimate ability can just be an outright game ender, but it’ll get you some cards to keep fuelling the poison if Ixhel is out.
Contagion Engine is costly but it will get the job done and draw hate despite just one activation sealing the deal. Proliferating twice with a poison counter on each opponent while your commander is out means that you’re going to basically draw three at your end step.
Another way to ensure that at least one player will net you a card at your end step is to give Ixhel Double Strike. Hitting with Toxic 2 twice will not only put a clock on your opponent, but it will also net you their top card at the end step.
If you are in a hurry to get someone to three poison counters, Caress of Phyrexia can give them three cards and also three poison counters, ready for your end step.
In these colours, these were the only payoffs for casting from exile. Poxwalkers will keep coming back from the graveyard for extra value when you cast your opponents’ stuff from exile.
Brainstealer Dragon is the top end here. Not only is it an automatic end step trigger like your commander, it also pays off playing nonland permanents, making your opponents lose life equal to the mana value. If you blink creatures of theirs with Conjurer’s Closet, you’ll trigger the life loss again. It also triggers off of stuff like playing cards exiled off of Elder Brain.
Tlincalli Hunter reduces creatures you cast from exile to 0 once a turn. That’s a huge discount, potentially!
With all those cards you’ll be exiling and still need to cast, you’ll need a ton of mana. Smothering Tithe is in your colours and Treasure tokens are Lotus Petals that speed things along. Azusa, Lost but Seeking will allow you to play multiple lands, and if you exile a few lands from your opponents or have a bunch of lands in your hand, getting them into play will mean being able to do more, more, more!
Empowered Autogenerator adds mana equal to the charge counters on it, and if you’ve got some proliferators, this one can get out of hand. You’ll want to untap it every turn.
Speaking of untapping every turn, Seedborn Muse is a great way to get Contagion Engine to really put a clock on the game. Why would you want to untap every turn? What if you have some instants in exile? Drumbellower and Bloom Tender will likely net you three mana a turn.
What about casting other things during other players’ turns? Vedalken Orrery will allow you to do that. Vivien, Champion of the Wilds will let you cast creatures at instant speed. This means that if you’ve got castable creatures in exile and Tlincalli Hunter, every turn is a free creature.
If you want to go deep on the theme of stealing your opponents cards and playing them like a Gonti, Lord of Luxury deck, Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor is an excellent inclusion if you’ve got a full grip of cards and a ton of mana. You get to cast spells without paying, which can be absolutely massive. A solid role player that opponents will enjoy too.
I’ve been waiting for the right deck for Kaya, Orzhov Usurper and I feel like we may have found it. With the possibility of Doubling Season or Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider being in play in a poison counter deck, you might be able to sneak an ultimate activation after exiling 20 cards from a player over the course of the game and taking back that life. I really like Kaya for this strategy.
If this precon deck does make more payoff cards for casting from exile or “anywhere but your hand”, Dream Devourer could be a great tool to put spells on layaway until you’ve got your payoffs set up. If that’s the case, I would be surprised if Dream Devourer wasn’t included in the precon list. That said, if it isn’t, snap up your copies. It’s just a really solid card.
That does it for now! We await official previews starting in a week or so. Until then, message me @mikecarrozza and let me know what you’d like me to cover!
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Hello! Welcome to a new version of my series A Seat at the Table that I’ve decided to not-so cleverly call: Upgrading the Table! We take a preconstructed Commander deck and talk about inclusions and exclusions I would make.
The Grave Danger starter deck seems like a great place to start because it is a deck based around a huge fan favourite creature type: Zombies!
Dimir Zombies, headed by Gisa and Geralf is popular enough as a deck, but with Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver coming out more recently and becoming the most popular commander for Zombies, it is refreshing to see Wizards build something out for the zombie aficionado siblings.
Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver is a freebie include. You can’t make me choose just five! I won’t let you!
You can check out the full precon deck list here!
Here are the five cards I would put in the deck followed by the five I would remove.
Hot off a reprint in the mythic slot of the retro artifacts in The Brothers’ War, Altar of Dementia is the perfect addition to this deck. I count five, that’s right, only five ways to sacrifice your Zombies. These creatures were meant to go into graveyards and get out of them. Playing a Fleshbag Marauder and sending it to the bin once a turn can be backbreaking for opponents, and luckily Fleshbag does it for itself. But what about getting Gray Merchant of Asphodel into play again? You need to send it to the graveyard for the siblings to cast it again. Altar of Dementia is perfect because it is a free sacrifice outlet that can put more cards into your graveyard for you to cast with your commander or target with Havengul Lich. A free sacrifice outlet in a deck with Undead Augur, Vengeful Dead, Diregraf Captain, and Midnight Reaper (not to mention some of the other inclusions I’m picking) lets you have more control over what’s going on with your board and your horde! Ashnod’s Altar and Phyrexian Altar get the nod too of course!
Not including Tormod, a Zombie who loves when cards leave your graveyard – like say, when you cast them from your graveyard – should have been included in the base list. I feel like a Zombie who makes a Zombie when you cast a Zombie from your graveyard should have been an instant inclusion in the precon. You get to find your $0.25 copy and pop it in over some cards I’ll get to later.
Since you’ll want your nontoken Zombies to go to the graveyard so you can cast them again, Headless Rider is an excellent inclusion to make sure you’re keeping the undead coming. With Tormod, the Desecrator and Headless Rider, you’ll have Zombies when they’re coming and going!
As someone who has played a token deck with Thalisse, Reverent Medium at the helm for some time now, I can say Gruesome Fate closes out games and people never see it coming. You’ll be making a ton of Zombies and non-combat options to bring down life totals for a follow-up swing if not outright eliminating your opponents. However…
If the image of your pile of Zombies led by a death obsessed pair piling over your opponents and ripping them apart is your fancy, Coat of Arms is a risky, yet powerful finale. If your opponents are also playing tribal decks, it’ll be a tough head to head, but drop this at the right time and you’ll steal the game away no problem.
You’ll have a graveyard full of creatures. Play this for one mana and make enough for a one mana Army of the Damned. Easier with Altar of Dementia!
Cast a Zombie, get a Zombie. Well worth the inclusion.
A six mana 5/5 that dies into a 6/6 that mills for five each time it enters sounds really good, but for six mana, you’ve got more to do than what this offers. I can see this being good for the first time it’s cast, but when it hits the graveyard for good, it likely isn’t going to be the card you cast with your commander.
You’ve already got Vizier of the Scorpion one more mana that gives your Zombie tokens deathtouch. Feels like an easy cut, especially if you knock a land off and replace it with a Fellwar Stone or something.
Unbreathing Horde can be really bad if you get it early or if your graveyard is wiped. You’re preventing damage, meaning you likely have a fine blocker for a while. Not really worth the include in my opinion. Diregraf Colossus is much better here.
Never liked this card outside of limited. It’s cool, it does a lot of different things you want in this deck, but frankly, this feels like it’s too low impact.
Tormod, the Desecrator IS Open the Graves stapled to a Zombie. I think Open the Graves is fine, but it comes down for one too many mana compared to the creature version you can actually play directly out of your graveyard.
That does it for this precon upgrade! If you like Upgrading the Table, sound off! Let me know on socials @mikecarrozza.
Thanks for reading!
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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, another legend from the new Jumpstart 2022 product!
Mizzix is back in a new form, but instead of needing experience counters, this new Mizzix just wants you to keep it interesting. For 4R, you get Mizzix, Replica Rider, a 4/5 Flying Goblin Wizard with a textbox right out of my dreams:
“Flying
Whenever you cast a spell from anywhere other than your hand, you may pay 1U/R. If you do, copy that spell and you may choose new targets for the copy. If the copy is a permanent spell, it gains haste and “At the beginning of your end step, sacrifice this permanent.” (A copy of a permanent spell becomes a token.)”
Things to note:
Let’s get to seeing some cool stuff in the 99.
Magecraft is an ability from Strixhaven that is absolutely ridiculous. “Whenever you cast or copy an instant or sorcery spell” triggers a few cards that are absolutely buck wild in a spellslinger focused deck (instants and sorceries, for those who don’t know). Archmage Emeritus gives you cards. Storm-Kiln Artist gives you Treasures and gets big for each of your artifacts. Veyran, Voice of Duality lets you trigger Magecraft more. Octavia, Living Thesis makes your team huge. Deekah, Fractal Theorist gives you tokens to swing with and can make them unblockable.
That’s just for Magecraft building around instants and sorceries. Let’s not forget Twinning Staff that copies copies and Harmonic Prodigy that lets you pay twice for another copy with Mizzix. Imagine Veyran, Harmonic Prodigy, Twinning Staff, Storm-Kiln Artist, Archmage Emeritus, Mizzix, and seven mana. You hit a Windfall off of Light Up the Stage last turn. To start the turn, play it for three mana.
Mizzix, Archmage Emeritus, Storm-Kiln Artist, Veyran trigger. This triggers Harmonic Prodigy and Veyran to copy all of them. Because you copy, Twinning Staff triggers. Draw a ton of cards, Windfall a ton, and as long as you have an Eldrazi shuffler titan like Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre in your deck, you’ll escape the mill.
Again, this is for a spellslinger-heavy deck, but wow that is some spicy Magical Christmasland stuff.
This one is simple enough. With Future Sight, you get to play with the top card of your library revealed and you can play it. Land? I can play it. Spell of any kind? I can play it. Is my library my hand? Nope! Mizzix triggers, pay 1U/R? Hell yes!
One with the Multiverse takes this further with the single free cast a turn, meaning you get a spell and a copy for 1U/R. Not to mention this doesn’t reveal your top deck to the table, but rather you can look at it at any time.
Mizzix can get spicy, but needs the help. You’ll need to be sure not to miss a land drop and also be sure to get these cards copied for the big turns. Jeska’s Will with your commander out is already one of the craziest spells you can cast. Three mana, you likely get seven red and three cards exiled for you to play until end of turn. Anything you cast from exile with it means you can trigger Mizzix. But if you cast Jeska’s Will from “not your hand”, copied with Mizzix, that’s six cards and 14 mana.
One of those cards can be Mana Gyser which routinely hits 20ish mana in my meta. Copied, that’s 40 mana and hopefully the game. Mind’s Desire copied and copy whatever you get from it.
I don’t want to write about Dockside Extortionist, just know that it is the best thing to cast, copy, bounce, flicker, reanimate, whatever – 90% of the time.
Possibility Storm turns all your cards into other cards. If you cast a Brainstorm, that can turn into an Etali, Primal Storm! Hey, five mana discount! But the inverse is also true. Cast Etali, Primal Storm, it can turn into Brainstorm.
That said, because you’re casting things from elsewhere, Mizzix will trigger and then you get to copy whatever you get. So if you do cast say an Izzet Signet and you get a Harmonic Prodigy, you get to copy the Prodigy for the turn if you want. Not to mention I’d probably prefer the Prodigy to the Signet!
Knowledge Pool works similarly, but for everybody. As it enters, it creates a shared pool from the top three cards of each library. Then whatever you cast from your hand actually lets you cast something else from the pool. This creates a different tension and dynamic to casting. You wouldn’t cast Dockside Extortionist if you couldn’t immediately cast something else so that you could actually get your Dockside Extortionist. However, if you cast it from the Pool, Mizzix lets you copy it. That said, if you have Dockside and spy your Jeska’s Will in the Pool, well, that’s an easy line, isn’t it. Cast Dockside, get Jeska’s Will, trigger Mizzix, pay Mizzix, get second Jeska’s Will, 14 mana, 6 cards in exile, cast something from your hand for Dockside, then go to town with the 6 exiled cards you’ll probably copy!
These are bombs costed at their rates for a reason. Mind’s Dilation lets you steal a spell for free off the top of an opponent’s library when they cast their first spell a turn.
Is this Mizzix copy eligible? You betcha.
Sunbird’s Invocation turns your big spells into more spells in a pseudo-Cascade way.
Is the spell you get off of Invocation Mizzix copy eligible? You betcha.
Wondrous Crucible from the latest Brothers’ War Commander precon product protects your board and triggers at your end step for you to randomly exile a nonland from your graveyard to cast it for free.
Is this Mizzix copy eligible? You betcha. If you hit a permanent and copy it, will you need to sacrifice it right away since Mizzix says the copy gains “at the beginning of your end step, sacrifice this permanent”? Nope! You get to keep it for a whole turn cycle.
Uba Mask is a card I love very much. I’ve always been a fan. I’ve always loved this card. It turns every draw into a card you can copy with Mizzix as long as it’s not a land. It also puts pressure on players to play the cards as they get them because otherwise, they’re gone.
That does it for this edition of A Seat at the Table! If there’s another commander you’d like me to cover, I’m @mikecarrozza on Twitter and Instagram! Let me know!
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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, another of the most popular legends from the new Jumpstart 2022 product!
Agrus Kos, Wojek Veteran was as Boros as Boros used to come: combat focused and boring. Play your little guys and they get buffed. Okie dokie. Feather, the Redeemed, Firesong and Sunspeaker, Alibou, Ancient Witness, and Osgir, the Reconstructor are all examples of cooler Boros commanders that have come out in the more recent years.
Today, we’re looking at not just a cool Boros commander but an exploration into newer design space: Agrus Kos, Eternal Soldier. Let’s take a look at this Red-White leader.
For 3W you get a 3/4 Legendary Spirit Soldier with a textbox that a lot of people have been getting excited about.
“Vigilance
Whenever Agrus Kos, Eternal Soldier becomes the target of an ability that targets only it, you may pay {1}{R/W}. If you do, copy that ability for each other creature you control that ability could target. Each copy targets a different one of those creatures. ({R/W} can be paid with either {R} or {W}.)”
Important things to note:
What does that mean?
With all of that in mind, let’s talk about some spicy inclusions.
Let’s have a fun party right off the bat.
No, we’re not copying the Equip ability. But with Agrus being targeted with the combat damage trigger, if copied, you will blink all of your creatures, and tutor up basic lands equal to all those creatures. Do you have tokens? Now they’re lands! Do you have a bunch of value creatures with great enters-the-battlefield triggers? Have some more!
This interaction has been played to death online so I’ll keep it brief – THIS IS SO MUCH RAMP IN A COLOUR THAT ISN’T GREEN!
Are you building Agrus to lead a team of weenies? Your Eternal Soldier leading a team of 1/1s to victory? What if you could equip Skullclamp to Agrus for 2R/W with a board of 10 1/1 Soldiers? You’d have 20 new cards in your hand. For 3 mana and little bit of set up. Hot damn, you’re going to want Skullclamp in a deck like this.
Jaxis, the Troublemaker is one of my fave mono-red commanders. Seeing the conversation about Agrus turn to Jaxis has warmed my heart. For three mana and discarding a card, you can tap Jaxis to copy Agrus, aka all of your creatures. They become “blitzed” copies of those creatures, meaning they will die, they will draw you cards, and they will hit the battlefield with haste to swing heavy. Sure, Agrus and Jaxis’s copies will die immediately, but that’s basically Divination… IN BOROS!
Kiki-Jiki and his new enchantment version from Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty does a similar dance. HOWEVER, they cannot target Agrus Kos because he is legendary and they specifically require nonlegendary creature targets.
These two bad boys let you blink without the combat step. Flickerwisp of course delays the return to the battlefield to the end step, but either way, being able to target Agrus and copy the blink for your entire board of creatures is value city. The Closet and Circle let you do it at every end step. Displacer is five mana (one colourless) for a mass team blink at instant speed. Resto Angel adds Flash but takes away angels. Either way, all of these are tools in the toolbox for Kos.
For more combat focus, Basri Ket’s +1 ability will give your whole board a boost and indestructible. If you pay the extra two on top of Key to the City’s activation of tap and discard, you get a board of unblockable creatures. A maxed out Paladin Class can take your board up a notch every turn for the low cost of two mana every combat.
All of these trigger on attack. Delina, Wild Mage will make a copy of Agrus and everybody at least once and if you’ve gone very wide, you’re bound to hit 15-20 sometimes. Flamerush Rider requires the other targets to be attacking and will make flash in the pan versions that disappear at the end of combat.
Fireflux Squad is my favourite of the bunch. The idea is to make a ton of little token creatures. Attack with Fireflux Squad and target Agrus Kos, Eternal Soldier, pay 1R/W and turn Agrus and all the attacking tokens will Polymorph into actual creature cards from your graveyard swinging in. Cheat out massive threats and cool ETBs for two mana on top of the Squads four.
There’s a lot of fun to be had with the new Agrus Kos. This guy is really interesting and will doubtlessly produce some extremely fun moments at the table. However, these can lead to complicated board states and stacks. Don’t be afraid to log on and ask JudgeChat for clarification and help.
Happy targeting!
If you have a commander in mind that you’d like to see covered on A Seat at the Table, message me @mikecarrozza on Twitter, Instagram, or Hive.
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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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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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Welcome to my set review where I will pick my five favourite cards of each colour from The Brothers’ War booster set!
I’ve covered the main set already. What I haven’t covered yet are the set booster Commander exclusives. Those will be included with these cards if they’re any good! If not, you might see them in the honourable mentions section. Given that I’ll cover all the cards, I’ll be more brief with my thoughts in this article.
I have wanted an Ashnod card since I understood the power of Ashnod’s Altar. With Ashnod the Uncaring, you get a Grixis powerhouse that makes me, the aristocrats player, very excited. Your activated abilities on artifacts and creatures are doubled if they sacrifice a permanent as long as they aren’t mana abilities. Is it silly that Ashnod doesn’t work with her Altar? Yes. But does that matter when you’re cracking a Clue token for two cards? Turning all your Blood tokens in to one mana Thrill of Possibility?
Blow up two lands with Army Ants. Bounce two creatures with Barrin, Master Wizard. Professional Face-Breaker turns one Treasure into two impulse draws. Razaketh, the Foulblooded gets you two Demonic Tutors.
There is so much to love about a deck that can come together like this and the engine that it creates. I look forward to the days of missing triggers out of sheer overvalue and taking a win after stitching together the mess of cards you weave in and out of the graveyard.
Wizards of the Coast clearly decided this was the year to break Devoted Druid. Machine God’s Effigy is a clone that turns any creature into an artifact. Cinderhaze Wretch is also in the Devoted Druid cycle, but now you can keep your opponents’ hands empty. There are bunch of creatures worth copying. See a Dockside Extortionist? Now you have one that taps for mana. Ever wanted a Pitiless Plunderer that won’t get swept away by creature board wipes? Enjoy! Why not have an artifact version of Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant, copying it too. Of course, you need a Sakashima of a Thousand Faces or Mirror Box out, but the possibilities that open up with this card making a creature an artifact are great. Echo Storm your Machine God Effigy-fied Dockside Extortionist and you’ll get a ton of treasures and Docksides that tap for blue.
Black’s answer to Dockside Extortionist is a bit of a whimper in comparison to it, but if you blow out a token player and follow up with Wreck Hunter, you’ve got yourself a whole lot of Powerstones. Ghirapur Aether Grid allows you to tap them when you’re not able to use activated abilities or cast artifacts. Reckless Fireweaver and Ingenious Artillerist love when these come in. What about Altar of the Brood which sees all the Powerstones and mills each of your opponents. Let’s not forget that the newest Karn that we mocked, Karn, Living Legacy, creates an emblem allowing you to tap artifacts to ping anything at all. When you have something like Wreck Hunter creating such a glut of artifacts, that emblem speeds up the clock considerably.
What a cool and strange card. It makes Forest Dryad tokens so you get a sort of Sword of the Animist trigger on attack that doesn’t colour fix, but you also get a huge buff. This is cool, this is good. This also does not have green in its colour identity and means that mono white decks can use this as ramp. I really like this card. As a matter of fact, this wasn’t originally in my top five, and as I was writing up this blurb I realized the non-green applications of this is pretty warped and wild. Thalisse, Reverent Medium gets more to play with. Boros aggro Voltron, go off, baby!
This Goblin wants to attack. It’s a 1/1 first striking trampler, so it must get buff somehow. How about +X/+0 where X is ALL of your opponents artifacts. You attack somebody, this is miserable to block unless you sacrifice a ton of those Treasure tokens you’ve been saving up to make the Avenger weaker. But whenever an artifact an opponent controls goes to the graveyard (tokens go to the graveyard before they stop existing, FYI) that player takes one damage. Ghyrson Starn, Kelermorph decks, Mechanized Warfare, Torbran, Thane of Red Fell, they all make your opponents think twice about their artifacts going to the bin.
This is the Treasure hate piece I’ve wanted for a while and I believe that popping a Brotherhood’s End after dropping this in the later game means you’ll be expecting some crack back, but it’ll be worth it and manageable.
That does it for me! Thanks for sticking around for the whole deal.
Catch me next time talking about any commander you want! @mikecarrozza on social media, message me a commander you’d like covered!
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