CUT #9 - True CUT

Cemetery Prowler

by Daarken

I hope everyone had a good and safe holiday and I hope this season has treated you kindly! Thanks to all who voted on who would win the game in the last article, and who you picked was...

Now what really happened was a surprise to even us playing the game. The game began with your typical land-go dance, with a little bit of ramp here and a little bit of ramp there. I was able to drop a Body of Research

It all came down to one turn, Ben was down to 3 life, it was Sinclair's turn, and he played Hungry for More

There you have it. Ben's Galazeth Prismari

Onto this round of CUT!

Edgar Markov

Now, 4 years later, we see the return of Edgar in Edgar, Charmed Groom

As much as I wanted to build my favorite Vampire commander, Olivia Voldaren

In this round, three new deckbuilders have challenges themed around Crimson Vow, which came out a little bit ago, but now we've had time to see and play with all of these new cards.

Here are the challenges our deck builders faced this round:

- Commander must be from Crimson Vow or the VOW Commander Decks

- Deck must be Pioneer-legal

- You must use an "Olivia Voldaren" or an "Edgar Markov" card in the deck

First up is Simon! Let's see what they brought to the table!

If there's one thing I love playing in Magic, it's a white midrange list. Whether that be my Sythis, Harvest's Hand

This list is fairly straightforward. You play a creature, you make a 1/1 Soldier, and you attack. What's not so straightforward is how to effectively play using the stax elements.

First off, why play stax at all? Well, the colors we're in don't offer very many opportunities to interact with our opponents' spells until after they've resolved. By playing stax, by changing the rules of the game, to limit our opponents' ability to cast what they want, we grind away their resources and we can more effectively hit with all our creatures from Torens.

Beyond that, I find games where you don't interact with your opponents incredibly boring. This leads us to the first rule of playing stax: you don't have three enemies. Instead, you have two friends and one enemy at any given point. To me, a stax deck is inherently a political deck where you're leveraging your stax pieces to stop one opponent from winning (usually the opponent on the throne or the opponent about to combo off). For those who play against stax decks, this is why you don't just try to kill them as quickly as possible - because when you do, you stop the only player at the table actually stopping your Storm opponent from winning.

The second rule of playing stax is understanding that stax as an archetype is incredibly complex. It requires a distinct knowledge of what your opponents are going to be playing, and then correct sequencing to deploy perfect answers at the right moment. This is why tutors are so good in our deck specifically; they basically read "find target silver bullet." For example, if you're playing against someone with a lot of fetch lands or an Ad Nauseam

We also run a suite of redundant effects that we always want to have on the field because they're incredibly good. The first of these effects is called a "ROL effect," a term that originates from the card Rule of Law

I really love this concept. I think the deckbuilding restrictions forced me to be incredibly creative in a lot of ways. Having to have either an Olivia or Edgar card in my deck forced me to spend hours looking through Scryfall for any mention of them. Resistance Squad

As I pointed out in my introduction, I particularly love white. What I failed to mention was that I absolutely loathe playing black. It's just not my cup of tea. Naturally, then, I gravitated towards the nonblack commanders, of which there were only a few, and of which I thought the most interesting was Torens.

Finally, the restriction of Pioneer legality was a big one. A lot of the best tutors, card draw, ramp, removal, and stax were printed in either older or supplementary sets that are not Pioneer-legal, so I had to get creative. For example, there simply weren't enough stax pieces for me to completely fill it out, so we're playing cards like Kefnet's Monument

Awesome, thanks, Simon!

Next up we have Alex!

For this challenge I went with my bread and butter: a creature-centric Commander deck. I chose Halana and Alena, Partners

When building this deck I focused on answering two questions: what are the best things I can do when operating at full steam, and how do I enable this? For me "full steam" means I have my commander in play with between 4-6 mana. This may seem like a low bar, but it's important that your deck functions when things aren't going according to plan. The haste effect makes cards like Etali, Primal Storm

Halana and Alena's counters aren't the focus of the deck, but I've included a few cards that have incredible synergy. Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin

Standard all-star Garruk's Harbinger

But how do we win the game? There's two main ways to close out the game: creature beats and combo. For creature beats one of my favourite bombs is Moraug, Fury of Akoum

If combat damage isn't an option, I've made room for a combo. The main package I've included is

Big mana dork + Hyrax Tower Scout

=

infinite mana, untapped and "enters the battlefield" triggers.

For "big mana dorks'' we need to generate six or more mana per activate to be mana-positive. Cards like Gyre Sage

From here we can cobble together a win from a variety of cards. Oran-Rief Ooze

Now, I know this is a four-card combo, but here's the rub: this deck has a secret commander. This secret commander helps find all of these pieces. Enter Yisan the Wanderer Bard

What I like best about this deck is how our commander raises the floor of any creature. Early game, our dorks accelerate us, and late game, they can turn into beaters. I love swinging with splashy cards like Drakuseth, Maw of Flames

Thanks so much, Alex! You can find Alex on various social media platforms like Youtube, Instagram, or you can follow him on Twitter!

Finally, we present Mark and his Edgar deck!

Greetings, creatures of the night! With the challenge presented I wanted to build a straightforward deck that comes off unassuming, and when your opponents let their guard down, that's when we shoot for my favorite kind of win: degenerate infinite combo. So, to get the obvious out of the way first, who's at the head of this deck?

With this challenge, the first part was pretty easy. When it came down to having an Olivia or Edgar card in the deck, I just went with the easiest to build around, so, we're going Vampire tribal with the new Edgar, Charmed Groom

But the cards we have access to with the second part of this challenge is the real reason I chose this commander.

PIONEER!?!? ALL MY BEST TUTORS AND COMBOS ARE GONE!!!! Well, we have access to some of the more budget and still effective alternatives in Orzhov, even with the Pioneer restriction. This is the real reason I went with this commander. We can run tutors like Grim Tutor

The most obvious is building an army of Vampires and pumping them up with anthem effects. We can add incremental power with cards like Vanquisher's Banner

Before moving on to the fun stuff, we have card draw and other utility that needs us to sacrifice creatures. So, if we need, we can just sacrifice our commander to flip him. We also have some other ways to get tokens that will keep us rolling.

Now if you're anything like me, and I know I am, you like having the ability to say, "I present an infinite loop". But being restricted to Pioneer-legal cards takes out the obvious combo with Exquisite Blood

Well, I hope this made sense and didn't sound like the ramblings of a crazy person. But I had fun building this deck within the restrictions of the challenge. If you want to see more of me and the skits I make I'm on TikTok @mookdubsmtg and Twitter @mookdoesgames !

Thanks Mark!

A big "thank you" to all of our deck builders this round for presenting their Crimson Vow creations. I invite you to vote for your favourite down below and who you want to see in the next round! I usually keep the challenges for the "Final" round a secret, but I have been wondering, would you like to see what they are? Let me know in the comments below or @ me on twitter @chipman007 ! Also let me know what you would've done with these challenges, and remember if you don't love it, CUT it!

If you or someone you know would like to participate in a future CUT article feel free to send an email to the.only.travis.stanley@gmail.com

Poll closes: January, 10th 2022