How I Identified with Cephalid Snitch, One of the Crappiest Creatures in Magic

"Nuh uhhh, actually this other creature nobody cares about is technically worse." - some dumbass

Content Warning: Light Self Harm & Emotional Abuse. Yes, really in the stupid squid article.

Naomi Krause here, taking a break from my usual hard-hitting journalism to talk about my favorite creature type: Cephalids.

Last week, Wizards of the Coast decided to get rid of the Cephalid creature type, errataing them into Octopuses. Because of this, I'd like to take a moment and pay tribute to the not-squids by sharing my weirdly personal journey with them and how the stupid card game goons helped me become the person I am today.

Let us flashback to 2014. The Scarlett Johansson USB stick movie that includes footage of rhinos going at it is in theaters, Tarmogoyf is a $180 card, and I'm a severely depressed high school senior. 

The last class of the day was Journalism, which was slang for "hey, if you finish your work, you can leave school early". I'd write up awful video game reviews and work on the yearbook they cropped me out of (No, I'm not still salty, shut up.) Most of the time after I was finished with my proto-shitposts, I'd sit next to my friend and google funny Magic cards. It was during one of these intense sojourns that I stumbled across my star-crossed love, Cephalid Snitch.

Apropos of nothing, growing up fucking sucked for me. I had my parents calling me an embarrassing failure every day, people told me I looked like a school shooter, and I gave myself black eyes because I hated who I was so much. Lots of tragic backstory from the crappy Hard Drive lady that has made multiple therapists very wealthy.

I think it's because of this traumatic crap that the silly little octopus guy everyone called useless resonated with me. He looks so helpless and stupid; like, why would you ever need to use its ability? Suck it, Akroma, Angel of Wrath, I guess? I mean, the original block had a lot of protection from black cards, but even then this is an awful solution.

It was funny, but I found myself feeling a little sad for the li'l dude doomed to sit in the commons box at the back of the store for all of eternity.

Eventually I found a card that turned this dildo into a legitimate powerhouse, and I was pumped: Aboshan, Cephalid Emperor.

I felt like a scientist discovering the secret to cold fusion as everything clicked into place: a good Cephalid.

Not only a good Cephalid, one that turns bad Cephalids into insane control machines.

After building it out of the zero dollars I had at 17, I found that the deck was strong, too! Not even in an ironic "haha, I'm a hipster playing bad cards" kind of way. Everyone underestimated the little dudes until they ground the game to a halt and bought time to steal every creature on the board with a Xenograft/Willbreaker combo. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't cEDH-tier or anything, but for a long time it was the strongest pile of cardboard I owned.

As the years went by, I rebuilt the deck a few times to keep it fresh. Hardcore control, sea creatures (I ran Walking Sponge; okay, maybe I was a little hipsterish), Eldrazi Tentacle Monsters, etc. 

Throughout all of the changes, I kept Cephalid Snitch around, partially out of loyalty but mostly because Cephalids fucking suck and a two-mana 1/1 somehow meets that bar. 

It was also just cool being the only person playing a Commander deck, especially earlier in the format's life span when we didn't get 300 new legendary creatures every year. Folks at the LGS would slam down their Derevi, Empyrial Tacticians and my army of 1/1s would keep that shit tapped.

I slowly stopped playing Aboshan as much simply because I didn't really enjoy hardcore control in multiplayer as much as I did in one-on-ones. You can bend the card into a Möbius strip, but at the end of the day the Cephalid Emperor was designed to make permanents bow.

Cephalids perfectly capture what I love about Commander, and life in general, I guess. No matter how hopeless and downtrodden you are or how worthless the people in your life make you feel, you can find a home. You can find people who care about you. Things can always get better.

Except for Adarkar Unicorn; holy shiiiiiit, what a loser.