CUT #13 Finals - Critical CUT!

Ancient Brass Dragon

| Illustrated by Johan Grenier

You and your party trudge through the swamps, trying to find the cave that the old witch told you about. The dense fog air seems to choke you as you get further and further through the boggy terrain. As you use your perception and scan around, you don't seem to see anything... wait, the rogue in your party spots some glowing lights up ahead, though they can't quite tell what they are. Cautiously, you move towards the lights; as you get closer they come more and more into view, until it's too late. You and your party are surrounded by dozens of these floating lights! Roll initiative!

Welcome to CUT #13 Finals, Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate edition! Wow, that was a mouthful! As always, you voted last round and picked the two deck builders that we will see in this article, so without further ado..

Congratulations, Alec and Andrew! You made it to this week's finals! A big thank you Kenneth to and to your contribution to the all-Golgari party that was the previous round. I won't soon forget your Jaheira, Friend of the Forest

Now that we have the winners from last time, let's take a look at what they had to work with for this round of decks:

• Must use a commander from the CLB Commander Decks

• Max 12 Rares/Mythics

• 10 cards must Venture into the Dungeon/Take the Initiative

Who's at the top of the initiative order? It's Alec! Let's see what he brought!

Hello, and welcome to my deck write-up for Zellix, Sanity Flayer

I was so excited to see a lot of support for Horrors in the Baldur's Gate preconstructed Commander decks. I am a big fan of horror movies and games, so they have always been a favorite creature type of mine! Even though it isn't October, seeing Zellix, Sanity Flayer

How do we go about taking advantage of this horrifying commander? Let's dive into Zellix's abilities! The first one is: "Whenever a player mills one or more creature cards, you create a 1/1 black horror creature token". At a glance, this effect looks like "mill your opponents to create an army of creatures", but that's only scratching the surface of how cool this ability is. It triggers whenever ANY player mills creature cards, so we can mill ourselves to have a lot more control over the chances of hitting creature cards. It also triggers when an opponent mills themselves, so if you go up against a Muldrotha, the Gravetide

Zellix's second ability is: "{1}, T: Target player mills three cards", which we can use on ourselves to help fuel the first ability. Then, of course, Zellix can choose a Background! But there are so many cool ones, how do we decide? I think the best way to choose is to look at the holes in Zellix's gameplan, then pick a Background that helps fill them. Zellix's end goal is to create a big army of 1/1 Horrors, then go wide to win with combat damage. Unfortunately, without extra help, Zellix can only create one per turn. That's not enough! This is where Haunted One

Haunted One says: "Commander creatures you own have "Whenever this creature becomes tapped, it and other creatures you control that share a creature type with it each get +2/+0 and gain undying until end of turn". You can tell that this came in the same precon as Zellix because it's a perfect combination! Zellix taps itself, which triggers this effect, tripling the power of your Horror army! Not only that, but it adds protection with Undying! This is a powerful and exciting combination.

Now, we just need to bring it all together. There are 20 cards in this deck that self-mill so that we can both create Horrors with Zellix and get big creatures into our graveyard to reanimate later. My favorite self-mill card in this deck is Sewer Nemesis

We have our strategy laid out, but we need to support it with card draw, removal, and mana ramp. Some spicy card draw in this deck that also supports the self-mill strategy are Atrocious Experiment

This deck is a blast to play. I am a big fan of graveyard strategies, and this is a very unique one! Hopefully you enjoyed reading up on Zellix, Haunted One and thank you for being here. See you next time!

Thanks for the fantastic and horror-fying entry Alec! You can follow Alec and the Faerie Conclave Podcast here!

Closing the round we have Andrew!

It's great to be back! I'm glad that enough of y'all enjoyed a janky Elf brew for me to be here again! Hope you're ready for more! You can find me on Moxfield as ALiteralOnion, Tappedout as WebbofLies, and Instagram as custom_mtg_concepts.

Burakos, Party Leader

When I saw the prompt for this challenge, I immediately thought of the Haunted One

With my selection made, I immediately went to find all the dungeon cards I could to satisfy the second requirement without using too many rare slots. All things considered, I'm pretty happy with the selection: From the Catacombs

The next step was to figure out how to best leverage Burakos and Haunted One's synergy. After thinking it through, I decided I needed three things to make it work: party members, tap/untap tools, and +1/+1 counter removal.

Party members were first, and along with the three (relevant) Changelings in black, I figured 5-7 creatures for each of Cleric, Rogue, Warrior, and Wizard would be satisfactory. Viscera Seer

The next hoop we need to figure out how to tap Burakos to trigger Haunted One. Combat is the main method, but we'll also need some tools. Springleaf Drum

The final piece of the puzzle is +1/+1 counter removal. Thrull Parasite

To round out the list, we have interaction, ramp, and card advantage packages to smooth out the deck. Most of the card advantage is tied up in recursion and looping our creatures, but there is Dockside Chef

A fun inclusion I found is Dark Supplicant, a Cleric which can tutor to field Scion of Darkness. This choice is made possible thanks to Double Masters 2, which downshifted the Scion to uncommon! Finally, once we have a big enough board, Shadow Alley Denizen, Mogis's Marauder, and Smogsteed Rider will give most of our board evasion to close out the game.

The 10 rare limit was certainly a tough criteria, with lots of great Party and Venture cards having to be left out. However, this deck is a fun, swingy take on mono-black and recursion, and I am very pleased with the final result!

Thanks Andrew! I hope your Haunting Party raises the roof along with your votes!

You struggle as these floating lights seem to take less damage from your blows and start to over take your party! Going in and out of sight and attacking when they see an opening, your party seems to be drained with every hit. Suddenly the wizard falls unconscious, quickly followed by the cleric! As you and the rogue stand back to back over your fallen teammates, you brace yourselves as another bright light shines in the distance. "Get down you fools" the voice cries through the fog, having no other choice, you and the rogue hit the deck. Charging through the fog on a magnificent stallion sits the old man that you helped in the tavern. "Here's my payment for the drink lad!" he says as he casts a brilliant spell and makes all of those floating lights dissipate into nothing. You say thanks, he nods and leaves as you tend to your allies.

That was the finals for the CUT #13! Which deck did you like the best? It was interesting that both of our competitors chose the same Background. Make sure to vote in the poll below and we will see the winner next time! Speaking of next time, it's double trouble as the next edition of CUT will be themed around Double Masters 2! Thanks for reading and remember if you don't love it, CUT it! If you or a friend would like to participate in a future CUT article, feel free to email the.only.travis.stanley@gmail.com or @ me on twitter @chipman007!

Poll Closes: July 8th, 2022