Legends Legends - Tor Wauki
Welcome once again to Legends Legends! This is the biweekly Legends report where we build a thematic and fun Commander deck with one of the original legendary creatures from 1994 at the helm! This week's Legend is Tor Wauki, a Rakdos Archer with an ability that's largely been relegated to Archers with green and white in their mana costs. How can we take this traditionally Selesnya effect and play it off of red and black's best Commander spells? Let's find out!
General Thoughts
Tor Wauki is a five-mana red and black 3/3 Human Archer with an ability to tap and deal two damage to target attacking or blocking creature.While there are some red and black Archers out there in the world (Orcish Bowmasters being the perhaps most famous), this effect of dealing noncombat damage to creatures in combat is mostly seen on green and white creatures.
Since we're not doing Lady Caleria this week, we're leaning away from a Kindred-style Archers deck and will instead make use of goad and forced-block spells to drag our opponents' creatures into combat before obliterating them with Tor Wauki. This deck is a simple one-two combo with a lot of punishing interactions, sure to make you feel like a sure-shot sniper like Tor Wauki.
Goads and Blocks
The first thing this deck needs to do, after sticking our commander, is create some attacking or blocking targets. The easiest way to do this is through goading effects and cards that force our opponents to block.
Some of the best ways to goad our opponents creatures include Goblin Spymaster and Bloodthirsty Blade. Both of these permanents are a repeatable source for forcing creatures to attack. While the Spymaster doesn't prevent those creatures from attacking us, we'll include a host of effects to encourage our opponents stay off our battlefield (covered below). Geode Rager also has a fairly consistent goad trigger so long as we hit one land each turn.
Kardur, Doomscourge and Disrupt Decorum are both great ways to goad the entire board at once, forcing our opponents to interact with each other and waste removal and burn blockers in an attempt to keep their board safe.
Similarly, Besmirch is a great way to flip the table and grab an opponent's big threat, like a Wurmcoil Engine maybe, and run it into another player. If we can play to the politics of the table, we might even get that goaded creature to go right back into the player we attacked with it on the following turn.
Several of our goading sources also include a little extra benefit. Vengeful Ancestor has a repeatable goad effect that'll ping our opponents while they lose their creatures, and Frenzied Gorespawn and Death Kiss turn those goaded creatures into veritable game-enders by granting evasion and a huge power boost.
I like Baeloth Barrityl, Entertainer in this deck despite not really running any ways to increase his power specifically. As a two-power creature alone, Baeloth will goad those pesky combo pieces and mana dorks, like Blood Artist and Llanowar Elves, into combat, converting them into some much-needed mana in a deck lacking many ramp spells.
Of course, we're running Shiny Impetus and Ghoulish Impetus for easy access to a goad effect with an upside. War's Toll forces a board with a single goaded creature to all attack together. Invasion Plans makes every creature block each turn if able, meaning no one is safe from a stray arrow from Tor Wauki.
Finally, Karazikar, the Eye Tyrant can tap down a potential blocker on an opponents' battlefield and send it on a death mission the following turn as it careens into another opponents' creatures. At least we can compensate that player with a little card draw!
Boom! Headshot!
Tor Wauki's two-damage arrows are fairly meager in the grand scheme of things. If we want our commander headshotting our foes left and right, we'll need to find spells and effects that'll increase his lethality.
Deathtouch is one of the best ways to turn Tor Wauki into a machine gun of bolts and arrows. Basilisk Collar is one of the best tools for the job, as is Death Pits of Rath, turning any amount of damage Wauki does into a lethal amount.
Red's very good at increasing the amount of noncombat damage dealt by its spells and permanents, and we're running a whole host of effects to turn Wauki into a major blaster. Fiery Emancipation, Solphim, Mayhem Dominus, and Torbran, Thane of Red Fell are three staples of this effect in Commander, while Jaya, Venerated Firemage and Gratuitous Violence also increase our total damage from each of Tor Wauki's arrows.
The Rollercrusher Ride is a new Duskmourn: House of Horror card with a damage-doubling effect, but it might be difficult to fulfill the Delirium requirement right out of the bat. Best to save this spell for the mid- to late-game for use as a board wipe after our graveyard's been filled with our handful of loot spells.
If we can't seem to find any of the aforementioned cards to make Wauki lethal, we can always surprise our foes with a Sudden Spoiling to make two damage enough to destroy them.
One shot each turn really isn't enough to make much of an impact on the game state, so we're running several artifacts to untap our commander to use his ability multiple times per turn. Magewright's Stone and Thousand-Year Elixir are the classics, while Sting, the Glinting Dagger and Sword of the Paruns see less play, but are still worth the include. Remember that we can tap Tor Wauki before combat and then at the beginning of combat when Sting untaps him.
Spread the Love
If we're forcing our opponents to beat up on each other all game, we might as well find some more ways to benefit from those combats.
Morbid Opportunist and Kardur, Doomscourge are both great payoffs for our opponents' dying creatures.
We can use Curse of Opulence and Curse of Disturbance to encourage our opponents to attack specific players in case they think they know better than we do when it comes to threat assessment.
What if our opponents don't have any creatures to goad? Don't worry, we're running Hunted Dragon and Hunted Bonebrute to donate some weaker tokens to our opponents, as well as Khârn the Betrayer so they always have something to stick in combat.
Eventually, there will only be one player left and our goads will start sending their creatures directly at us. Luckily, we've planned for this inevitability with spells like Blood Reckoning, No Mercy, and Fumiko the Lowblood. Our Brash Taunter makes an excellent blocker, and once he's been declared as such, we can shoot him full of arrows with our buffed up Tor Wauki to put that damage directly into our opponents.
Finally, both Revel in Riches and Sulfuric Vortex can end games for us if left unanswered, just based on the sheer volume of destroyed creatures and damage multiples present in this deck.
Mana Base
At , Tor Wauki isn't cheap to cast, and many of our damage-increasers/-doublers/-triplers are expensive as well. To that end, we're running a full 36 lands and nine mana rocks.
Budget
This deck runs around $288, which is turning into the average cost of making a Legends Legend playable in modern day Commander. Luckily, our most expensive cards are some of the easiest to replace!
I've included Demonic Tutor in this list, as it's one of the best tutors black has access to. It can easily be swapped for a Diabolic Tutor, saving you nearly $40 instantly.
Revel in Riches and Solphim, Mayhem Dominus are a little harder to replace, but I liked playing with running The Akroan War as another goad source and swapping a Blood Artist in instead for interacting with death triggers, too.
Tor Wauki Decklist
Wrap Up
This Tor Wauki Commander deck is reminiscent of Kelsien, the Plague, in that we want to turn a single pinger creature into a board-wide threat as soon as we can. Wauki is outclassed by both Kelsien and his DMU version Tor Wauki the Younger, but I think this deck list proves he can still hold his own in a pod that's unprepared for him.
Let me know what you think of this Tor Wauki deck in the comments! Am I running too many goad sources? Not enough? Too many damage-multipliers? What do you think is the sweet spot between the two effects?
Until next time! Thanks for reading!
