CUT #22 - Vaevictis Asmadi vs. Palladia-Mors vs. Arcades Sabboth
Last CUT, we talked about the future of Magic: the Gathering, or the near future rather, so this article I wanted to take a look back, not quite on Magic, but CUT. Doing the 2nd anniversary article for CUT, the idea dawned upon me: I wanted to bring back the original three people that helped kick off this article series and have challenges that would really represent the meaning and spirit of CUT. After I emailed them all, two of them gave me an enthusiastic yes, and the other one, unfortunately, was too busy so they couldn't participate. Seeing as this third person is my brother, I thought who else better to replace him but me! The players are set, now all we need are the challenges. Knowing that if I came up with these all by myself I would have an unfair advantage, so instead, each of us came up with a challenge so that no one had an advantage that the other ones didn't. Before I show you what those challenges were, let's see who won CUT #21!
Congratulations, Jordan! Bright-Palm, Soul Awakener was enough to get the job done and complete the sweep! Thank you so much for participating, and I really hope to see you on again soon, I loved reading your builds! A big thank you, again, for the fourth time to Mike; even though you didn't win, your deck was as awesome as always!
Go and check out all of our competitors links:
Jordan: EDHREC, Youtube, Instagram
Mike: Commander's Herald, Twitter
Now let's see what challenges the three of us cooked up!
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All nonbasic land cards in the 99 must have their first printing be in a Commander set/Commander Precon
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Your commander must be one of the original Elder Dragons from Legends (Nicol Bolas, Arcades Sabboth, Chromium, Palladia-Mors, or Vaevictis Asmadi)
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Your deck must include one Background, one card with Partner, a Sol Ring, and an Arcane Signet
First up is David! David still holds the record for most votes in a single round of CUT, and has been on three times now. Let's see what he cooked up for CUT #22...
One-Shot Vae
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When given the option to choose a restriction for this challenge, I wanted to take us back to a simpler time. A time before spoiler seasons, artificial scarcity, and an average of one major release coming out every month. The five Elder Dragons were the original five commanders that you could select for Commander; Commander's original name, Elder Dragon Highlander, refers to this explicitly.
The five Elder Dragons vary widely in power. Nicol Bolas lets you force an enemy to discard their hand when he hits. Chromium has Rampage 2... which makes no sense in Esper, and Palladia-Mors... just has trample. I picked Vaevictis Asmadi (Vae) because I wanted to build something simple and fun. In terms of power levels, I would place Vae one step below Bolas. Fire breathing is a powerful effect, especially in Commander where we need only 21 damage to kill our opponent.
Big, bold, and battlecruiser-y, this deck plays like a Prossh one-shot deck, except without the degenerate combo potential. The goal is to build up excessive amounts of mana and one-shot players.
Mitigating Limitations
As far as other limitations go, not having access to dual lands was a big limitation in a three-colour deck. Having a ramp focus hopefully will help me fix my color. Aside from Command Tower, Command Beacon was the only "Commander land" that really mattered to me. Getting Vae back to hand is crucial if he dies.
I also had to include a Partner. Kediss, Emberclaw Familiar was an obvious choice. Being able to mirror the damage from Vae seemed like a winner to me. I also included Alena, Kessig Trapper. She's hit or miss, but if you can get Vae out with haste, she can effectively double his power. I would potentially swap her out for Jeska, Thrice Reborn. Jeska's triple damage +0 works great, but waiting until after we've cast Vae once in order to play her at all is a huge liability. I see her being a dead card in 30% of games.
The inclusion of Sol Ring and Arcane Signet as mandatory restrictions to me seems a bit odd. Gavin Verhey, the creator of Arcane Signet, regrets creating it, citing that it and Sol Ring have become auto included in almost all Commander decks. They provide no flavour to a deck and reduce diversity. Needless to say, adding them in was not a challenge.
I also needed to include at least one Background in the deck. I feel Backgrounds in the 99 are deeply underestimated in terms of power, and doubly so with Partner commanders, though that's beyond the scope of this article.
Four Backgrounds made the cut in this deck: Master Chef, Agent of the Shadow Thieves, Guild Artisan, and Hardy Outlander. For the most part they help us by giving us extra power when attacking the player with the greatest health.
When I first read the challenge, I thought Companions were on the laundry list of restrictions, but even after realising my error, I decided to keep Umori, the Collector in the deck. A 4/5 for four with a cost reduction ability is very strong. I don't understand why he doesn't see more play.
So How Does This Deck Play?
Our early game, we have three things we are aiming to accomplish. The first is to ramp. I've veered away from creature-based ramp because we want to be able to recover from a board wipe. Cultivate, Kodama's Reach, Harrow, Wayfarer's Bauble, and others allow us to fix our mana and build up towards swingy turns. Later on we want a mana-doubler effect to secure our endgame, like Zendikar Resurgent or Nyxbloom Ancient.
A niche pick is Braid of Fire. It will help us pay our tax to Vae each turn and feed his fire-breathing.
The second goal is to build a resilient engine. We want to play many small but useful planeswalkers and enchantments to build up a resilient board. The Backgrounds fit into this goal nicely. We also have Primal Rage for trample, Fervor, Dragon Tempest and Samut, Tyrant Smasher for haste, and Asceticism for hexproof and regeneration.
The last is to play the game. The deck is filled with mid-game threats that lets us play be a threat while we build up to our end game. Ulvenwald Oddity, Thrakkus the Butcher, and Primordial Hydra are all ways of keeping the pressure up.
End Game
The end game for this deck is when you go over 10+ mana.
The hope is to get enough mana (Nyxbloom Ancient, Zendikar Resurgent, Omnath, Locus of Mana)/power (Mr. Orfeo, the Boulder, Blood Mist, Thrakkus the Butcher and Atarka, World Render)/combat-step-doublers (World at War), combined with haste and trample to one-shot the strongest enemy player.
Barring that, our goal is to be able to untap with Vae. A number of spells, like Heroic Intervention and Tyvar's Stand, are there to ensure that happens. Asceticism with some spare mana makes Vae very resilient. After that, pay our tax and then go all in.
Vae is likely to die, but we can get him back with Bladewing the Risen, Command Beacon, Animate Dead, and Rivaz of the Claw
If the threat of Vae is too high, or he has died too many times, the deck can win with just the 99. There's enough big creatures to power through, or we can get a ton of mana and play Genesis Wave to out-value our enemies.
All in all, Vae is a well-balanced casual deck with some hilarious damage potential.
Thanks, David, that's such an awesome deck! Since I didn't want David to start building all over and have him restart (also due to time constraints) I let him submit his deck even though it didn't quite follow one of the challenges (though I can see how he interpreted it). This is where you come in: is his not quite getting that one challenge perfect a dealbreaker for you? I'll leave that for you to decide.
Now onto our next deckbuilder, Sinclair! This will also be his third CUT, what has he constructed for the occasion?
Stirring Up Combat
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The point of this deck is to control combat and to give the illusion that your opponents would gain more value from attacking each other rather than you. Hopefully, they leave you alone long enough so that you can close out the game with Palladia-Mors. With cards like Marisi, Breaker of the Coil and Mystic Barrier, you get to decide in what direction most of the combat goes. However, these should mainly be used as a last line of defense, as Curses, such as Curse of Opulence, make your opponents more attractive targets to attack.
Spectacular Showdown is probably the best way to close out a game by making your opponents attack each other with double-striking creatures, and you should, if all goes according to plan, only have one player to remove. While Akroma's Will will not help further opponent-on-opponent violence, it will let you remove at least one player from the table, making it harder for a game of 3-on-1 to break out.
One of the tricky things you will find with this deck is that you will always need to be calculating the time to go on the offensive. While it looks like most of your creatures are attackers, this is not the case. The majority of the time, you will need to hold your creatures back until you can play cards like Bruse Tarl, Boorish Herder and Hellkite Courser to give Palladia-Mors haste, double strike, and lifelink, to basically guarantee that kill.
This deck is very political, so you'll need to make yourself look like the least threatening one at the table until near the end of the game. Don't be afraid to make deals that help you stay in the game as long as possible. Your opponents are your friends, or at the very least unwilling allies, so don't be afraid to help them ramp with Collective Voyage and Tempt with Discovery, or pump their creatures with Archangel of Strife and Crescendo of War.
Great job, Sinclair! Finally it's my turn, here's what I came up with!
Arcades, CUT Strategist
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It's definitely been a minute since I last had to make a deck for CUT. I knew with these challenges I wanted to embrace the Dragon part of Elder Dragon Highlander. Arcades Sabboth wasn't my first choice; I originally wanted to build around Palladia-Mors, but unfortunately Sinclair claimed her first, and I didn't want to make the cover image two of the same Dragon, so Arcades it is!
Thankfully there were lots of draconic options in the Bant colours thanks to Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate. I get to play the Olympic podium worth of Dragons, Gold, Silver, and Bronze! Also in that set, there are lots of options for ramp to power out those Dragons, though, as you can see from the decklist, there are a lot of cards from CLB and not a lot from anywhere else.
Some other support cards I leaned on were the Kindred cycle from Commander 2017. Starting with the powerhouse that is Kindred Summons, pair that up with Kindred Discovery and you're cooking with gas. Arguably in the greater Commander metagame, Kindred Boon should see more play. Creatures like Renari, Merchant of Marvels and Korlessa, Scale Singer help cast Dragons faster, while Giant Ankheg and Scalelord Reckoner deter/prevent removal from my opponents.
Obviously this deck aims to play as many Dragons as fast as possible. With the lack of Rampant Growth, Cultivate, or even Lay of the Land at my disposal, I had to dig deep. Of course, the staples Sol Ring and Arcane Signet were in the challenges already, so I threw in Commander's Sphere and Decanter of Endless Water to add some more multicolor-producing options. The Jade Orb of Dragonkind and the Lapis Orb of Dragonkind have the added bonus of not only producing mana but giving me a bonus whenever I cast any one of my precious Dragons.
I chose Gilanra, Caller of Wirewood as my Partner creature because of the ramp and the card draw I'll get when I cast any of my big Dragons. For Backgrounds I chose: Folk Hero, Shameless Charlatan, Feywild Visitor, Acolyte of Bahamut, and Master Chef. I may have gone a little overboard with the Backgrounds, but they're all integral, I swear! Folk Hero and Acolyte of Bahamut support the Dragons in my deck and allow me to either play more Dragons or draw more cards because of playing said Dragons. Feywild Visitor and Master Chef are what I like to call "Hey look, value!" type cards, where they give little drops of value as the game goes along. Lastly, there's Shameless Charlatan. You might be wondering why I have it in there, but it's simple: sometimes I want my commander to not be Arcades Sabboth anymore so I don't have to pay that ridiculous upkeep cost.
After building this deck, it has inspired me to maybe build a Bant Dragons deck, as it's a niche that not very many people have explored. Hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed building it.
There be Dragons about! Now that you've seen and read all three decks, it's time for you to vote! Pick which deck was your favourite, or who you thought made the most out of the challenges presented. Even though there will only be two that move on to the next round, the person in third place doesn't walk away empty-handed; nay-nay, on top of the challenges already decided, they will get to add their own fourth challenge that the two finalists will have to abide by. Make sure you vote and come back next time to see who made it and what challenge gets added. Thanks so much for reading, and remember, if you don't love it, CUT it!
Poll Ends:
