CUT #28 - Mirko Vosk vs Teysa vs Trostani

Happy New Year, everyone! This year we're starting off CUT by jumping on the train that's headed back to Ravnica! Ravnica is a favorite of both mine and many others in the Magic community. The giant city plane and its 10 guilds offer something for everyone. The first two sets of 2024 are going to be Ravnica-themed, so if you have never been exposed to everything Ravnica is, this is a great opportunity to dive in and embrace all of the lore.

For this CUT, I brought two CUT veterans on board to really embrace Ravnica and give it a proper treatment. I also thought I would throw my hat in the ring, as I haven't done so in a long while and I also love Ravnica.

Here are the challenges that folks had to build around for this CUT:

- Commander must be two colours

- Must have five cards that have the guild name in the name of the card that your Commander is a part of (e.g. Rakdos Signet

, Azorius Guildmage

, Selesnya Guildmage

, etc.)

- Can only use cards from Ravnica Block + Return To Ravnica Block

- You may use three cards that break rule #3

First up, we have a longtime CUT contributor, he has been featured on many of CUTs in the past, you know him, you love him, it's Mike Carrozza! Let's see what he brought this week:

I chose Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker

I have always been a fan of mill.

It's just one of those archetypes that brightened my world when I learned about it. It's essentially the first alt wincon. I have a "mono-blue" mill deck helmed by Oona, Queen of the Fae

In this deck, I kept in transmute cards, like Clutch of the Undercity

Part of the charm of Ravnica is in the guilds, and what better encapsulates the guilds than the gold cards. Give me two pips of different colors doing their own thing and coming together, it's like poetry that doesn't suck!

The three cards that aren't from Ravnica that I've chosen are Phenax, God of Deception

I did consider Dire Undercurrents

Cool things I learned while doing CUT this time?

Mirko Vosk with Skyblinder Staff

Anyway, thanks for letting me do this again, Travis. Happy New Year! Can't wait for the Murder Mystery House!

Thanks, Mike! I always very much enjoy reading your submissions whenever I have you on. You can check Mike out on the brand new podcast Am I the Bolcast? based on his article series Am I the Bolas?. After you've gone and listened to the podcast and read some of his articles, feel free to reach out to him on Twitter/X @mikecarrozza.

Next up, I've brought back Cooper for another round of CUT. We last saw Cooper on on CUT #24. Let's see what creation he has brought to this round of CUT!

Hello, Commander's Herald readers! I come to you today to collect the debt you owe to the Orzhov Syndicate...

Nah, just kidding. But, I do have a cool Orzhov Commander deck to share with you! My commander for this edition of CUT is Teysa, Orzhov Scion

There's just one problem: Teysa only lets me sacrifice white creatures for free, and only provides me with a payoff when I sacrifice black creatures. But, by including as many creatures that are black and white as possible in my deck, I can sacrifice creatures to control the board AND get a payoff for doing so at the same time! With that in mind, I got to deckbuilding.

First, I included every Orzhov creature that fit the deckbuilding rules. Some of these creatures were... less good, like Shrieking Grotesque

Even though there are some definitively janky creatures included in this list just because they happen to be black and white, I think that this is an entertaining direction to take a Teysa deck in, so even though I wouldn't be caught dead playing an Alms Beast

Because of this deckbuilding challenge's focus on Ravnica, I also got access to a personal favorite mechanic of mine: extort. There are some fantastic creatures with extort, including the mana-doubling Crypt Ghast

The rest of the deck is full of fun, powerful cards that fit into Teysa's color identity, like Bob

As for the other deck construction challenges, I included Ghost Council of Orzhova

Lastly, Bolas's Citadel

This deck has some less-than-ideal inclusions, but I like the idea of finding homes for janky cards. With a powerful commander that pays me off for having black-and-white creatures, this deck can generate more value from silly cards like Alms Beast

Thanks, Cooper! Each time that you've been on the series, your creations have been awesome! Cooper runs Brandeis University's community newspaper, The Brandeis Hoot.

For our last deckbuilder I would like to introduce...myself. Yes, this time I purposefully put myself into this CUT article. What can I say? I love Ravnica! War of The Spark is one of my favorite sets of all time, Return to Ravnica has been my favorite draft experience, and one of my longest kept together commanders was from Ravnica. I wanted to share in this challenge for selfish reasons, so here's what I came up with.

I am a Selesnya player through and through. I love making tokens, gaining life, and making my creature army as large and as wide as possible. As I mentioned before, one of my longest running commanders was from Ravnica, and if you can guess it by the commander of this deck that it is Trostani, Selesnya's Voice

The goal of this deck is to create as many tokens as possible, because Trostani's ability is pretty slow at populating the board, though their other ability of gaining life off of every token that comes in can start to build a nice cushion while you wait for the army to grow. Since it's been reprinted so much as of late, I totally forgot that Doubling Season

Looking through the deck, you may see a lack of a true win con, a card that would win you the game upon entering the battlefield. With my original Trostani deck, that card was Aetherflux Reservoir

Rounding out the deck, we're playing all of the heavy hitters from Ravnica's past. Voice of Resurgence

Thanks, me! Now that we're being bombarded with old and new Ravnica for the beginning of 2024, I would encourage you to seek out the older commanders and cards from Ravnica's past. As we saw from these three decks, there is a lot there and a lot that has been forgotten to time and power creep. Make sure you vote down below on who you want to see in the finals! Thanks for reading, and remember: if you don't love it, CUT it! See you next time.

If you or a friend would like to participate in a CUT article, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter/X @chipman007 or email me at the.only.travis.stanley@gmail.com.