CUT #20 Finals - Rashmi and Ragavan vs. Gimbal

During the barrage of the Phyrexians on the planes of the Multiverse, heroes from all planes teamed up to push back the invaders! Just as fast as the Phyrexians landed on foreign soil, they were driven off by that plane's forces, with the help of some angels of course. I will leave the details to the story team over at Wizards.

As they wrapped up March of the Machine's story, today we wrap up CUT #20 and find out who you voted to get to the finals!

Congratulations to Jubilee and Joshua! Looks like their duos brought this duo to the finals. A big thank you to Arnaud and his Yargle and Multani brew! You can go and check out his stuff on EDHREC, he writes the budget deckbuilding article series From Trim to Brim, you should go and check it out if you haven't already!

Back to the battle at hand! Here are the challenges that our finalists had to work with

• Commander must be from MOM Commander set

• Must use two legends from the Multiverse set

• Must represent 10 different planes on separate nonland cards.

• Must play 5 cards from your favourite plane

First up we have Jubilee; take it away!

Featured Planes - Eldraine, Dominaria, Ravnica, Fiora. Mirrodin, Kaladesh, Zendikar, Tarkir,

Arcavios, Theros

"Kintsugi - The Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold lacquer, meant to

reflect the process of breaking and repair."

When I saw Rashmi and Ragavan, my first thought was "How could they replicate Ragavan's power?" But this Temur artifact value engine feels like you're playing the classic Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer. The four-person nature of Commander allows for the powerful cards of other formats to feel much more fair. I love being able to play broken cards from Legacy or Pioneer in Commander, where they can shine as fun game pieces, so when I built this deck, I thought I'd throw an extra stipulation on it. Every card other than the basic lands and commander must have been banned or restricted in a sanctioned Magic format.

That's right. Every card in the beautiful deck you see before you was once seen as format-warping, so much so that the authorities had to step in. But this isn't just a random hodgepodge of the Scryfall search "ci:temur is:spikey f:edh." No, this is a deck that focuses on the card theft and artifact synergies of Rashmi and Ragavan using these banned cards in powerful ways.

First, ramp! I didn't want to run all the broken rocks, so I focused on lots of instants and sorceries. Growth Spiral lets us ramp with an effect that made Standard Simic Flash a powerhouse, and Summer Bloom lets us dump out lands so fast it makes Amulet Titan blush. I'm also highlighting my favorite plane, Eldraine, with Escape to the Wilds. It provides easy card advantage, ramp, and it's a banned cards deck, it has to include Eldraine. One of our multiversal legends, Baral, was banned as Commander in 1v1, so it'll give us a nice discount. To make sure we have our colors, the allied fetchlands help us out here. Thanks to the banning of those, Pioneer is a more diverse format, and this deck has an okay mana base! Finally, Thawing Glaciers is bad mana-fixing that was banned in Ice Age block constructed. Add it!

One of the main reasons cards are banned is because they break resource management in Magic. The game is held together by limiting mana, card draw, and damage. But we're running the busted cards, so we'll need places to spend our surplus mana. Rashmi and Ragavan want us to always cast a spell on our turn, so simple cantrips, like Faithless Looting, Ponder, or Regrowth, help us get their trigger. In order to effectively use our mana on other turns, Wilderness Reclamation lets us always have access to our lands. With our spare mana we can draw off of Bonder's Ornament or Staff of Domination, allowing us to restock for our future pilfering.

Now, we need to make sure we can stop our opponents and put some pressure on them.

Jace, the Mind Sculptor (Better than all) lets us make sure we have a good theft target and bounces enemy creatures. Memory Lapse was a menace in Historic, and here it lets us stop our opponents' spells and take them later. Same thing with Divide by Zero! We'll run some threats to beat down others. Did you know Serendib Efreet was banned in Extended? Or that Kird Ape was as well? Now they're here!

Closing out the game is tough here, but we can certainly make a push. We've got an abundance of mana to pour into Braingeyser or Stroke of Genius to give us tools or deck an opponent. With our rituals we can recreate the Pauper Storm decks that got Temporal Fissure banned, or swing in with the Banned-Due-to-Misprint Orcish Oriflamme.

This is a love letter to competitive Magic. All of these banned cards have a history with them. A lot of these I remember playing on Arena during the early days of lockdown. Once they were banned, I thought they'd never see the inside of a sleeve again. But this deck shows that EDH can be a second life of sorts, and I love that.

Also, if your playgroup will let you, make Lutri your Companion. It's only fair to her.

Thanks, Jubilee! Hopefully all of the value generated by the only Elf Monkey in Magic will be able to craft you a win! After reading the rest of this article go and check out their article series Welcome to Flavortown here on Commander's Herald! When they aren't writing articles, you can find them on Twitter @FinneyFlame, or on Instagram, @JWFinnegan.

In the opposite corner we have our other finalist, Joshua!

Gimbal, Gremlin Prodigy is a pretty wacky artifacts commander that specifically cares about the number of different artifact tokens we control. Similar to Urza, Chief Artificer, we make large artifact creatures and have a way to give them some form of evasion. What I like about this commander is that it wants a variety of token-makers and asks you to get creative with it. And not just Treasures or Clues, but token copies of artifacts work too!

My favorite plane is Eldraine because it was the first Magic set that I was introduced to. A stranger at my LGS had recognized that my friends and I were newer players and gifted us his box of bulk Throne of Eldraine cards. From there, I'd sift through those commons and uncommons, slowly finding new cool cards to add to my kitchen table decks. The decks were messy, but I grew fond of the art style and the set as a whole.

My five ELD inclusions are Gilded Goose, Shimmer Dragon, Emry, Lurker of the Loch, Witch's Oven, and Oko, Thief of Crowns. (With Fae Offering being an MH2 inclusion as well.)

Gimbal, Gremlin Prodigy has so much potential as a commander that I don't think I've really covered every niche thing you can do with them. To support our deck's theme of artifact tokens, I've included our usual Treasure-makers to help with the mana needed for this deck to function.

Having repeatable Treasure-makers means we can use them liberally while ensuring we can have at least one token left to count towards our Gremlin token. Eldraine had some great cards that fit perfectly into our theme. Shimmer Dragon's possibly one of the best pieces of card draw in the deck, Oko, Thief of Crowns will remove any pesky threats, and Gilded Goose             is an early mana dork that later makes us tokens to full Gimbal.

From there, I wanted to explore ways to make unique artifact tokens. Feldon of the Third Path and Dollhouse of Horrors make artifact token copies of creatures in our graveyard, acting as our recursion pieces and adding to our artifact count. Stolen Identity and Schema Thief can make copies of other artifacts, either of ones we control or that our opponents control.

This deck can output an insane amount of damage. First of all, we have Reckless Fireweaver as an easy inclusion in the deck. But what about Dragonspark Reactor? It will get charge counters for every artifact that enters, so we can sacrifice this and potentially kill one of our problematic opponents. Fathom Fleet Swordjack can be Encored to deal damage to our opponents equal to the number of artifacts we control, and that's before we swing with our giant Gremlins. Then there's Swashbuckler Extraordinaire that can give any number of our Gremlins double strike if we sacrifice that many Treasures.

Rise and Shine will turn all our noncreature artifacts into 4/4s allowing us to swing with a huge board out of nowhere. It's notable, too, that these artifacts keep their +1/+1 counters, but we could possibly turn them into creatures with Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer. While making all our artifacts become copies of one artifact is technically a non-bo with our commander, it still has the potential to turn all our tokens into 2/1s if we have nothing better on board (since the Gremlin tokens are 0/0s.) Or we can turn them into 1/1 flying Thopters with Loyal Apprentice out.

I like that we can use less powerful spells from sets like Vampires' Vengeance, Root Out, and Glistening Dawn which all make artifact tokens. They're not amazing on their own and can easily be swapped, but the incidental value they provide is unique to this deck. Plus, where else will you really get to use these in Commander?

Gimbal, Gremlin Prodigy feels like the glue to all these random artifact token makers, and there's no shortage of them. Artifact tokens are the new norm for Magic sets and we're only going to get more. As new sets come out, Gimbal will get new pieces that'll help add new life to the deck long after March of the Machine has been out, and I think that type of commander design is exceptional.

Both contenders brought Temur commanders? How fascinating! I hope for your sake Joshua, that Gimbal can out-artifice some elf and a silly monkey. In case you didn't know, Joshua writes the article series Nearly Identical over on EDHREC, after you vote, go and give it a read!

That brings us to the end of the article and the finals decks for CUT #20! Make sure you vote for your favourite below, and let us know what your favorite cards from your favorite plane are. Watch for the next article where we learn the winner of CUT #20 and introduce three more deckbuilders to take on the CUT challenge! Until next time, and remember, if you don't love it, CUT it!

If you or a friend would like to participate in a future CUT article, please feel free to send an email to the.only.travis.stanley@gmail.com, or reach out to me on twitter @chipman007!

Poll Closes: May 8th, 2023