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INTRODUCTION:  OTHER PEOPLES' DECKS

Well hello again!  Sorry for the long delay, but I have been in a little bit of a deck creation rut recently.  I guess it is to be expected, you can only make so many new decks before you start to feel like things have been done before.  On top of that, with the holidays I hadn't been able to get on MTGO and play nearly as much as I would have liked, which only leads to more problems with my lack of creativity.  Not being able to put deck ideas into action means that I have no idea how they will play out.  I don't like giving you guys unproven and untested decks, so that left me with a little bit of a quandary.

What the hell am I going to write about?

You see, I wanted to make sure that I got you guys some Commander content to look over.  And since I wasn't coming up with anything on my own, I was at sort of an impasse.  Since I found that there were many instances where I just didn't have the time to play a full game I decided to do a little lurking.  It's almost always interesting to watch other people play without having to worry about making the next move or looking to see who the biggest threat is.  Instead, you can just sort of watch along, and be surprised when something crazy happens, as has been known to happen in Commander games.  You can also see other types of play styles and cards you wouldn't expect to find.

And that's how I found the following two decks.  Both of these seemed powerful, and the deck creators were interested in talking with me about their decks.  I have featured other people's decks before, so I thought this would be a great way to get out some additional content for you guys.  It is interesting to note that both of these decks use Commanders from the recent Commander product.  I started writing this article, when the unthinkable happened:

I dumped a full glass of water on my keyboard.

Oh well, I finally got that taken care of, and now I'm back!  Let's dive in, shall we?   

RIKU OF TWO REFLECTIONS

I started watching one game during what appeared to be turn 5.  Everyone seemed to be building up their early board state at that point except the Riku player, who had twice as many lands out already as the player with the next most lands.  He was already casting Time Stretch and other powerful spells, and the remaining players seemed almost powerless to stop him.  I just had to get this guy's deck list.

Now, we all have known since Riku was spoiled that he would be an extremely powerful Commander.  The ability to copy just about anything for 2 mana, especially in the land that of bombs known as Commander, is pretty nutty.  The colors provide you with the ability to ramp and counter, and if necessary, blow up some stuff.  Let's take a look at the first deck today:

 

In talking with Alex about the deck, he noted that it was almost a card for card port of one he has in real life.  He also noted that his real life metagame is pretty cutthroat, and that this was built to be about as mean as possible.  Just by taking a quick look through the deck you can see what he means.  The deck has pretty much every powerful sorcery available in these colors, as well as a lot of combo enabling and tutors. Let's start with a quick breakdown of the deck.

Ramp

Sakura-Tribe Elder, Solemn Simulacrum, Azusa, Lost but Seeking, Oracle of Mul Daya, Primeval Titan, Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Cultivate, Explore, Explosive Vegetation, Farseek, Kodama's Reach, Rampant Growth, Search for Tomorrow:  As we all know, it's usually the player with the mana advantage that takes control of the game.  What we have here are the best artifacts and Green cards to make sure that you get ahead, and stay ahead.  Azusa is probably the most interesting, but with the amount of card draw any ability to drop extra lands is good.  Keep in mind that just about all these cards can be copied with Riku, leading to additional ramping.

Extra Turns

Capture of Jingzhou, Temporal Manipulation, Time Stretch, Time Warp, Walk the Aeons - After you have accumulated all your mana, what are you going to do with it?  Why, take a bunch of extra turns!  This might not seem like the most interactive way to play a deck, but it does give you the time to set up your plan of attack, get another draw phase and play some more lands.  On top of that, you can draw the card you just used a Mirage tutor to put on the top of your deck.  And again, copying these spells with Riku is hard to deal with.  On top of that the deck has the ability to take infinite extra turns, essentially locking opponents out of the game.

Recursion

Anarchist, Eternal Witness, Izzet Chronarch, Snapcaster Mage, Mnemonic Wall, All Suns' Dawn, Call to Mind, Praetor's Counsel, Regrowth, Restock, Life from the Loam, Crucible of Worlds - This deck plays a lot of tutors and other bombs.  It is nice to have the opportunity to play those bombs over again if need be.  Snapcaster Mage has shown to be a powerhouse in the format, and his ability is invaluable.  We also have the fun Life from the Loam to help out with mana issues, as well as Crucible of Worlds, both providing help in ensuring that the deck continues to make its land drops.

Tutors

Survival of the Fittest, Chord of Calling, Intuition, Mystical Tutor, Gamble, Green Sun's Zenith, Personal Tutor, Primal Command, Tooth and Nail - Tutors are the best way to provide consistency to a deck, and we have some of the best in the business here.  Survival is pretty much one of the best repeatable creature tutors in the game, and Tooth and Nail grabs your creature combos and puts them directly into play.  If you don't own a Survival, buy one now.  They have never been cheaper (I paid over 30 for mine).

So as I have noted, the deck basically works by using early ramp to start playing big powerful spells before the rest of the table.  All those Farseeks and such actually add up to the ability to really take over the game quickly.  On top of that, the deck has a lot of redundancy, with multiple copies of the same spell as well as tutors to go grab what you need.  It has the ability to blow up problem permanents and draw cards, as well as beat down with some large creatures.  Finally, if you have lost a key card to the graveyard, you can always get it back for another use.  Then, you can win once you get one of your combos online.

Now, I knew that the deck was good, but playing it just reinforces the fact.  I didn't have much time to play a multiplayer game, but I did get a couple of 1v1 games in with it.  Even though the deck isn't built for 1v1, it still did exactly as you would think:  Ramp up quickly and start casting powerful stuff before your opponents can deal with it.  The deck may seem like it is almost perfect, but there are a few key cards that cause it tremendous problems.

As you can see, the deck performs a ton of library manipulation, and if you limit its ability to do slow you slow the deck down tremendously.  On top of that, Stranglehold basically knocks out the most powerful portion of the deck:  The extra turn. I know I haven't been playing a ton recently, but I haven't seen Stranglehold played at all.  This may be due to a stigma for limiting players' ability to search their library, or maybe because people don't play the Time Warp cards all that often.  But Stranglehold is a tremendous hoser, and great for shutting down decks like this.

I know, you are probably thinking "Why the heck would I play with Teeg?  That guy is so annoying!"  While true, he is a great answer for dealing with people that are playing large spells over and over again.  Plus, if anything using Teeg in your deck will be an exercise in deck building.  I know that everyone likes to stack their decks with huge spells and effects, but you would be surprised at how effective a deck can be while keeping the average CMC under 3.5.

Finally, the deck can have problems with mass land destruction, but that's pretty much true of all decks you see online.  If you go into a game knowing that you are going to lose to Armageddon, that's just the chance you take.  And the odds of running into mass land destruction are currently pretty slim.

So if you like taking extra turns and dominating the board early, this deck could be for you!  But what if you like something that is more of a grind, staying low key until people all of a sudden realize that you are winning?

KARADOR, GHOST CHIEFTAIN

Karador was the first of the new Commanders that was spoiled, and I remember that people were really excited about him.

Karador is still a pretty popular Commander.  He seems like a pretty simple guy to build around:  Use lots of powerful creatures, and get another use out of them later in the game.  But what if you don't use the biggest and baddest creatures all the time (with some exceptions)?  What if you lean toward incremental advantage?

 

Let's break it down a little more.

Recursion

Eternal Witness, Genesis, Riftsweeper, Saffi Eriksdotter, Sun Titan, Animate Dead, Necromancy, Living Death, Regrowth, Victimize, Yawgmoth's Will, Volrath's Stronghold, Emeria, the Sky Ruin:  Just like with the Commander of the deck, there is a lot of emphasis in the deck with getting multiple uses out of a bunch of cards.  Again, this provides the redundancy necessary to make sure that you have answers and threats at all time.  Yawgmoth's Will is pretty underplayed in the format, probably due to the number of huge haymakers most people try to stuff in their decks.  But here, you should be able to get at least a few answers out of your yard.  And you will find that the majority of the deck can be brought back to play with Sun Titan.

Tutors

Survival of the Fittest, Entomb, Buried Alive, Eladamri's Call, Worldly Tutor, Demonic Tutor, Diabolic Tutor, Grim Tutor, Imperial Seal:  With access to black, you get some of the best tutors in the game.  On top of that, you can put cards directly into your graveyard to be re-cast with Karador.  One of the most commonly tutored for cards is Bloodghast, who turns out to be exceptionally versatile here, typically as a sacrifice outlet.

Destruction

Braids, Cabal Minion, Acidic Slime, Duplicant, Fleshbag Marauder, Harmonic Sliver, Necrotic Sliver, Shriekmaw, Terastodon, Beast Within, Fracturing Gust, Path to Exile, Krosan Grip, Swords to Plowshares, Maelstrom Pulse, Revoke Existence, Wrath of God, Oblivion Stone:  There is a ton of destruction in the deck.  Braids is obviously a beating, especially in tandem with Bitterblossom.  But Necrotic Sliver is the true all-star here.  In certain situations you can get multiple uses out of him a turn, blowing up key permanents all over the place.  Good times.

Draw

Bloodgift Demon, Mentor of the Meek, Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, Necropotence, Phyrexian Arena - Not a ton of draw, but it's all good.  Black has access to some of the best draw available.  But Mentor of the Meek really works hard in this deck.  The Mentor works well with Bloodghast, Bitterblossom, and a whole bunch of other recursion.  Necropotence is almost always risky, but there is a bunch of enchantment removal in the deck.  If you have to blow it up yourself, so be it.

Ramp

Birds of Paradise, Farhaven Elf, Oracle of Mul Daya, Primeval Titan, Solemn Simulacrum, Yavimaya Elder, Mana Crypt, Sol Ring, Cultivate, Kodama's Reach:  Just like the Riku deck, this deck has a significant amount of ramp to it.  This is obviously one of the major benefits of playing with Green.  As there is a lot of creature recursion in the deck, you often have the opportunity of getting back your Oracle or Titan after it has been destroyed.  This deck doesn't have as much sorcery based search as the Riku deck, but it still has plenty.  On top of that, using creatures for ramp is great when you have Karador and other methods of creature recursion.

On top of that, this deck is one of the fairest decks for using Hermit Druid that I have ever seen.  Most people use the Druid to dump almost their entire library into their graveyards, for recursion and other shenanigans.  However, this deck has a high basic land count.  In fact, it is extremely high for a Commander deck.  Neo, the deck creator, has noticed in the past that there is an over reliance by players upon their non-basic lands, so he goes out of his way to use as many as possible.  This helps him avoid the random Ruination and Back to Basics, which are both cards that he plays in his other decks.

The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale is a great way of dealing with token hordes, as well as people that get more than a few creatures out early.  It's not perfect, but it does a good job of slowing players down.  Wurmcoil Engine and Baneslayer Angel provide life gain to off set some of the life loss effects in the deck.  Sudden Spoiling is a random blowout against indestructible and other large creatures, and Living Death wipes the board and brings back all the dudes in your graveyard as well.

Of course, like most graveyard based decks, this one has problems with dedicated graveyard hate.  

True Believer is there to help with the targeted stuff, but that still doesn't prevent a Relic of Progenitus from taking out everything.   And then there's that brand new card that everyone is up in arms about, but there is enough destruction in here to deal with it, as well as the Leyline.  Then it's just a matter of rebuilding or restarting the graveyard dumping process.

The deck is sort of an attrition based deck.  It doesn't really stand out a whole lot on the early turns usually, just slowly builds up mana and accumulates card advantage until your opponents are overwhelmed.  Of course, the deck does have the opportunity to lock things down early using Braids, but most of the time it just sits back and deals with threats, before becoming a threat.  Of course, once people see Bloodghast with Skullclamp, that brings more attention to the deck.

CONCLUSION

So there you have it, 2 very powerful decks for you guys to peruse.  While they may appear to be different, they do have similarities.  First, both have access to Green, giving them the ability to accelerate past those decks that don't.  Honestly, this is something that every Green deck should take advantage of.  The Riku deck especially takes advantage of the taboo against playing mass land destruction.  Until the time happens where Armageddon becomes common (not saying that I'm looking forward to that), many Green decks will have an advantage.

In addition, both decks have a large amount of tutors as well for added redundancy and the ability to find answers/threats.  Finally, despite the power that both of these decks bring to the table, they do have weaknesses.  However, their weaknesses are to cards that many players are loath to include in their own decks, either because they don't affect the board immediately, or because the answer cards present problems for the caster as well.

Finally, it should be noted that the Karador deck has a pretty cheap mana base.  Sure, it includes some powerful lands in the form of Volrath's Stronghold and Emeria, the Sky Ruin, but otherwise the land base is pretty much basic land.  Combine this with the fact that the average CMC of the deck is around 3.1, and you are looking at some outside the box thinking.

I hope you enjoyed this look at some powerful decks, and they give you a couple of ideas to work with.  I'm working on a couple of different decks right now, some more competitive than others.  But hopefully I can get a deck article out soon, followed up by my Dark Ascension Overview.  If you guys want me to build around a specific legend, cover a specific topic or provide a deck doctor article, I am always willing to listen.  Until next time!

Leviathan, aka Tarasco on MTGO
mrmorale32 at yahoo dot com

CONQUEROR & COMMANDER ARCHIVE