Welcome back to the Epic Experiment! Today I wanted to discuss a Commander that has been slightly overshadowed by some of the other legendary creatures in the set. I wanted to share with you all why Tameshi, Reality Architect is not receiving enough attention and a couple of directions players could take Tameshi in order to have a fun and unique play experience.
Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty
Neon Dynasty has been out for a number of weeks now and we have started to see the trends around who the most popular Commanders are in the set. Isshin, Two Heavens as One is the top Commander in the set with over 2200 decks. Tameshi, for her part, has 480 decks and is the 6th most popular Commander being built. That is a pretty huge discrepancy and suggests that most players have decided that Tameshi is not interesting to build. However, I think there are a plethora of options that could give Tameshi the sort of appeal that would make her a deck worth building.
The Similarities
Tameshi draws automatic comparison to Hanna, Ship’s Navigator in many dimensions. First off, they are both 3 mana value creatures. Both of them offer a recursion package for enchantments and artifacts. They are even in the same base colour pair, namely Blue and White. However, clearly someone over at WOTC decided that Hanna needed an upgrade.
The Differences
Tameshi is a pretty dramatic upgrade over Hanna for a number of reasons. First off, Tameshi can be cast for 2 generic and a blue compared to Hanna who’s casting cost is one generic, a blue, and a white. The single coloured mana pip makes Tameshi marginally easier to cast. Next, Hanna is 1/2 while Tameshi is a 2/3. The fact that Tameshi doesn’t die to a Shock, or other 2 damage spells like a Pyroclasm or Golden Demise, means you could potentially see her dodge some modicum of cheap removal. Are these marginal upgrades? Sure. But any upgrade is an upgrade.
However, the real reason Tameshi is a dramatic upgrade is the activated ability does not require a tap. Hanna, as great as she is, needs to be able to tap or you can’t go and recur that cool enchantment back out of your graveyard. Tameshi can be used immediately, and repeatedly, to get multiple targets back out of your graveyard and get back the powerful tools your deck is looking for. There is no doubt if your deck is looking to recur expensive enchantments or artifacts, then Hanna is vastly preferable because you are assured cost certainty. But Tameshi could be wildly powerful in something akin to an eggs deck and recur all manner of inexpensive artifacts and potentially opening up loops and combos.
The other avenue that Tameshi opens up is tied to her clause surrounding returning a land to your hand in order to activate her enchantment or artifact recursion. By returning a land to your hand, this Blue/White deck could dive into the world of Landfall decks and leverage playing lands as a key component of the deck. This secondary flexibility is huge and really turns up the interest players may have in Tameshi and what she offers.
Let us not gloss over one final detail with Tameshi: that she can be a draw engine to power your deck. This might mean she gets paired with Barrin, has Cloudstone Curio in the deck, or some other package that allows to pick up and replay your permanents so you can leverage Tameshi into being an engine to make your deck churn through cards. However, Tameshi can also be leveraged to draw cards when your opponents pick up cards and return them to hand.
We have seen Commanders that have a draw engine built in to be extremely potent. I see no reason for Tameshi to be different. Think about it: many of the top Commanders have some capacity to draw their own cards and thus Korvold, Yuriko, and Kenrith are hugely popular. Tameshi can compare quite favorably to these Commanders, but requires a little additional work. If a Tameshi deck can be structured correctly, Tameshi might be an extremely potent choice.
What does a Tameshi deck look like?
Tameshi is suitably versatile in that you could incorporate a number of different strategies. My list includes a few different strategies to be deployed and allow the deck to attack the opposition in different ways.
Landfall
There aren’t a huge number of landfall creatures in this colour combination, but there are some very powerful options. Admonition Angel, Trove Warden, and Emeria Shepherd are all strong options. However, the real key to a landfall deck is Retreat to Coralhelm because it combines with Walking Atlas so readily. While this does not appear to be a prime strategy, it allows you to present a more aggressive front and force your opponents to respond to you.
Enchantments
If you are playing Tameshi then you clearly are looking to replay value from your graveyard and what could be better than enchantments that put themselves in the graveyard all on their own. Sagas.
Kiora Bests the Sea God, and Elspeth Conquers Death are two of the best options but there are others offered up in Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty like The Restoration of Eiganjo and The Modern Age. However, Tameshi is not alone in powering up the recursion package but is joined Hanna to give you twice the chance to reuse your enchantments.
Artifacts
The artifacts are perhaps the trickiest route to take and I opted to use them as a value engine with things like Burnished Hart , Mnemonic Sphere, and Solemn Simulacrum. However, previously unplayable cards like Ghirapur Orrery garner increased attention, as does The Reality Chip. In this endeavour, Tameshi can rely on support from Hanna once again, but also Emry, Lurker of the Loch which give this strategy a powerful recursion package.
Stax/Disruption
We are playing a disruption package to slow down our opponents and allow us to deploy our strategy by including things like Archon of Emeria, Confounding Conundrum, Ghostly Prison, and Propaganda. These are designed to derail our opponents and buy us time to set up our engines started. Of course, we can return destroyed pieces back to our hand and recast them, further slowing down our opponents.
Here is the full list!
Well, there we have our in depth look at Tameshi, Reality Architect. She is undoubtedly one of the more flexible Commanders offered and could provide a savvy player with an intriguing and potent deck.
Let me know what you think I missed or what other direction we could take the deck. If you enjoyed my thoughts or have something you would like to see explored in more detail, please check out our decks and much more each week on our podcast on iTunes, Google Podcast, Spotify, Amazon, and anywhere else you find better podcasts. Just look for the name The Epic Experiment Podcast! We’d love to have you join us!
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