Am I The Bolas? - The Goldilocks Problem
Torsten, Founder of Benalia Illustrated by Volkan Baǵa
Hello, and welcome to Am I the Bolas?
This column is for all of you out there who have ever played some Magic and wondered if you were the bad guy. I'm here to take in your story with all of its nuances so I can bring some clarity to all those asking, "Am I the Bolas?"
I'm ready to hear you out and offer advice. All you have to do is email amithebolas@gmail.com! You might see your story in the column. You might even hear it on the podcast. Which podcast?
I'm Mike Carrozza, aka Mark Carbonza, and this card's getting a live-action reboot!
Wait, so I got it completely wrong?
This week, riding the fine line for deckbuilding. This one comes from a long-time reader you might recognize from many an Am I The Bolas? comment section. True to Stephen's comments, this is a long one, and I've edited it down as much as I could without sacrificing Stephen's writing.
(Post edited for brevity, clarity, and then some.)
HEY, MIKE/MARK!
I am Stephen Bahl. Long-time reader with a first-time submission to the column. I've got a case in which I don't really think that I was the Bolas in the past, but one in which I worry I might tread on dangerous ground in the future. To explain why, I need to cover a bit of history here.
For 2024, I established a goal of slowing down my frenetic deckbuilding pace and taking some time to revisit past decks of mine that I want to update or give another shot. One of my pet projects in EDH has been to build decks around each of the 20 "Legends Retold" from Dominaria United. I've done nine of those now.
Well, the deck I've been wanting to revisit is Torsten, Founder of Benalia.
Some people liked it, for either the enters trigger, the death trigger, or both. Most players probably thought, "It's a seven-drop in a weak color identity." But there were surely a few people - my kind of people - who saw it and thought, "It says creature and/or land. If I kill this guy and bring him back a few times, I can load up my hand with so many lands." And to at least two of us (according to EDHREC.com), this meant a commander with a Manabond synergy.
Coincidentally, I'd already built a lands deck around the old vanilla Torsten Von Ursus back in 2020. So now I had a much stronger commander with a much better incentive for running a lands deck.
Here's the version of the deck as it stood before I took it apart in May of last year: https://www.moxfield.com/
I loved this deck because it was crammed with a bunch of personal favorites, but when it came to actual gameplay, things didn't exactly go well. The deck was on the slow side and could get beat before its tools came online. It could also be shut down by various effects, but I'd considered those issues.
What I hadn't considered was that the deck really did pack quite a punch once it got going and that, at the tables where the power level was a little lower and the deck didn't just get killed right away, the typical answers that my opponents were running were often things that killed creatures. My opponents were reluctant to kill my commander because they correctly perceived that doing so would benefit me.
It is frustrating and surreal to have three opponents forming an alliance based on not letting your commander die, leaving you stuck in topdeck mode. But it's worse if they fail, if despite their efforts to buy more time, you are the one to break the stalemate. And yeah, I was running Divine Visitation, but if I didn't get that exact card, those 1/1 tokens really were just 1/1s.
That's deadly to most opponents when there are several dozen of them, but it's not quite as deadly against three opponents. Given the choice to launch a strike aimed at eliminating one opponent while risking attacks from the other two or holding back and hiding behind Glacial Chasm, I'm afraid I chose the latter.
The deck wasn't really overpowered compared to the usual stuff I saw at my LGS, but the loops it presented could bog games down. It would often just get stuck, but stuck in such a way that low-power decks were incentivized to avoid attacking me if it meant that I could get my commander killed.
They were also avoiding playing board sweepers, which could also mean that they were avoiding making plays that would provoke other opponents at the table from using a board sweeper. Oops.
Over time, I noticed that my sac outlets were getting put on the bottom of my library by my commander, and that I'd be better served with sac outlets that were either creatures or lands. Phyrexian Altar was amazing the one time I actually drew it, but something that Torsten's ability would put in my hand could help the deck avoid getting stuck as I'd seen happen.
My revisions improved the deck and did help mitigate its tendency to get stuck, but now the problem with loops bogging games down became even worse!
I didn't want to be the guy taking a 15-minute turn and then passing with a dominant board position because I couldn't actually kill anyone. Actually, it was a bit worse than that, because once my opponents did wipe the board out of desperation, I would go on to rebuild over an even longer turn resulting in an even more dominant board position, but still passing the turn.
After two games in which the deck got a bit carried away with game actions that didn't end the game, I gave up. Fool me twice, shame on me. Maybe I am the Bolas. I guess in one of those games, I looped Terastodon multiple times to keep my opponents off the mana they'd need to stop me.
Pretty sure some would call "Bolas" for that alone. Seriously, though, most games with this deck weren't egregious, and once I realized that turning the game into a slog wasn't just a fluke, I stopped playing the deck.
I'd contend that I wasn't the Bolas, but what I'm more interested in is whether I can revisit the deck now without turning into the Bolas. Some new cards have been released in the time since I took this deck apart. I already have some tentative ideas for minor changes, but I do worry that maybe this is just a doomed endeavor.
Torsten is, after all, an awkward seven-drop Selesnya commander. If I try to push some of the faster and more immediately lethal options, then I've just got an unreliable high-power deck or I guess what amounts to a pubstomp sort of deck.
If I try to compromise by removing elements that made the deck bog down games in the old version (Genesis, Reveillark, Saffi Eriksdotter, etc.), then I'll just end up making the deck weak and boring. Perhaps it's too fine a line and I should just leave this dream buried.
I'm not exactly asking for deckbuilding advice.
What I'm trying to get a handle on is how I can do due diligence to keep this deck from making my opponents miserable. Do I risk bringing back a deck that I believe was a problem in the past, confident that I can make it fun for real this time?
Do I leave it alone as a lesson learned, that some decks are cool conceptually but in practice are unsuited to a fun casual EDH experience? Do I try to goldfish the crap out of it until I think that it's ready to play nice?
Is my love of ramping into even more ramping going to turn me into the Bolas?
Hopelessly addicted to Manabond,
Stephen Bahl
HOWDY, STEPHEN!
Thank you, thank you, thank you for writing in and asking me to weigh in on your story. As I mention every week, if folks don't write to me, there's no column, so, if you, the reader, want to send me a story whether it is your own, or one from Reddit or a friend's, please send it to amithebolas@gmail.com and I'll get to it here or on the podcast. Thank you so much again for being so great over the years.
Stephen, it was such a wonderful feeling to see your submission in my inbox. I knew you'd deliver a doozy, and here we are. It's incredibly difficult to edit down your email, but I did my best. You fill it with many wrinkles and bits and pieces that make this an interesting entry. Let's talk about it.
What this all comes down to is that you're focused on making the experience of playing against the deck a pleasant one, which automatically in my opinion inches you away from Bolas territory. The moment you take your opponents into consideration in terms of having a good time, you're already on the right foot.
The trouble with this deck is that it either does nothing or does too much. Ultimately, I have to recommend being a little selfish: does the deck feel good to play otherwise? Are you enjoying the long turns? Let's say you were goldfishing the deck and you had a long turn; is that fun and exciting for you to have lots of gears turning in this engine of yours? Then it's worth it. It's a matter of finding the right table who will find it equally as exciting.
Personally, I love watching a grip of cards doing a thing I've never seen. "You're telling me this six-card combo does WHAT?" That's fun for me even as the opponent on the receiving end. At a table with me and two others who feel similarly, this deck would be a spectacle and we'd talk about it for months. If we were a regular playgroup, this would mean finding more interaction points in your long combo turns and adjusting to seeing the deck again and again.
There is a "just right" for this deck. I know that for sure.
However, it ultimately comes down to you. If you find yourself revisiting this deck as something you would like to rebuild, it's your time, it's your money, it's your effort and enjoyment. If this is a deck that you shelf as something of a time capsule, then that's fine, too. As long as you're into that.
This is the selfishness of the whole deal. Listen to your own feelings on it. What's your gut say? You ever pack your bag with two decks for Commander night at the LGS and feel your hand itch to put the Torsten deck in with them? Do it! Propose it to the table. Explain what it does! Give your opponents the chance to opt in. You might find that you'll have already been sitting at Just Right.
It's not always going to be a stalemate or a pubstomp. You might be well-matched with players who can Path to Exile your commander when chump blocking is the plan. You might be well-matched against players who have experience disrupting and presenting an equal challenge to you as you levy to them.
I think there's a way to build this to satisfy everyone, but rather than threading that needle, I'd say build the deck for one person: yourself. Be ready for some people to not want to play it and some to be really eager to as well. It's a cool-looking deck.
I'll say the one bit of advice I really have with some practicality is to goldfish this deck like mad. I love an engine deck and I goldfish all the time and it really smooths out the experience when you've got a setup you recognize out in the wild.
Not the Bolas!
