The Best Commander Cards From... Torment
Chainer, Dementia Master by Mark Zug
Welcome back to The Best Commander Cards From..., a series looking at the most powerful Commander cards from across Magic: The Gathering's rich thirty-year-long history. Today's focus is Torment, the twenty-fifth expansion set, which was released in February of 2002, and is the second set in the Odyssey block.
Torment Lore
Torment continues where Odyssey left off, particularly when it comes to exploring the machinations and inner workings of the Cabal. Black cards make up about 30% of the set, a purposeful and disproportionately high amount. Many of these cards reference Chainer, whose tale is told through flavor text and mechanics.
Torment Mechanics
Threshold returns from Odyssey, alongside flashback and newcomer madness. Torment is the first set to experiment with non-mana flashback costs, which proved to be popular and opened up a ton of new design space for the mechanic. Odyssey's threshold cards left a lot to be desired, but made a decent resurgence here. Finally, madness was another instant classic that would see lots of use later on. With all that said, let's get into the cards.
Cleansing Meditation
What it lacks in ease of setup, Cleansing Meditation makes up for with potential. It's not quite Replenish, since it only hits your enchantments that have hit the graveyard that turn, but resetting all your enchantments can be quite strong. Just watch out if you're trying to create token copies of your best enchantments, as those won't come back.
Frantic Purification
If you ask me, Raffine, Scheming Seer is the best fit for this, as Frantic Purification is only noteworthy due to its madness cost, and any commander that can routinely discard cards can make great use of it. That said, white isn't the best color for discard, so it doesn't see much play.
Stern Judge
The three-mana slot is always contested in my decks, but Stern Judge interacts with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth in a particularly efficacious way. Add in a way to untap your Judge, and suddenly you've got a recipe for table-wide chaos. Narrow? Yes. Fun? Definitely.
Llawan, Cephalid Empress
Aside from being a generally nauseating stax piece against blue creature decks, this is a decent foil to decks trying to put Thassa's Oracle onto the stack. Llawan, Cephalid Empress also combines quite well with cards like Shifting Sky.
Plagiarize
A one-shot Notion Thief effect is pretty interesting, and Plagiarize can't get hit with a removal spell. This is usually where I'd put in a joke about James Somerton or something, so just imagine I said something really funny and laugh. Thank you.
Cabal Ritual
I don't have a whole lot of unique thoughts about Cabal Ritual. It's a ritual that's obviously way worse than Dark Ritual, but it still sees play in all manner of decks. I've seen this cast Doomsday on turn two on several occasions. It's a good card. You should play it.
Chainer, Dementia Master
There's no shortage of mono-black value machines that return stuff from your graveyard to the battlefield, but Chainer, Dementia Master is one of the originals. You do have to spend eight mana, even if it's in installments, before you get your first creature back. That said, the flexibility and power level of Chainer has kept him relevant.
Dawn of the Dead
Five mana, a stocked graveyard, and a full turn cycle is no joke of a setup cost, but Dawn of the Dead pays you off big time. Haste is a game-changer when it comes to reanimation, letting cards like Ulamog, the Defiler get immediate value. Additionally, the exile only happens at end of turn, so any sacrifice outlet allows you to loop that creature every turn. Archon of Cruelty, anyone?
Ichorid
It's easy to underestimate Ichorid, especially since exiling creatures from your graveyard is a huge cost in a color that's actively trying to do the opposite. Even so, it's hard to overstate the value of a 3/1 haste that costs no mana if you mill it. It's borderline free sacrifice fodder, a great way to pressure planeswalkers, and a nice way to threaten the player with the monarchy/initiative.
Insidious Dreams
At first glance, you might be disappointed at putting cards on top of your library rather than in your hand, but library manipulation is still quite powerful. Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow can make excellent use of Insidious Dreams, for instance. Not bad for a miniature Doomsday.
Last Laugh
Most sacrifice-themed decks have some incidental lifegain here and there, so don't be too concerned about Last Laugh also hitting you. If it wasn't already clear, that's exactly the kind of deck this fits into. You'll be surprised at how much faster life totals start flying once you put in cards like Fleshbag Marauder and Massacre Girl.
Mind Sludge
Five mana to really mess with the control player is a decent deal. If they can't muster a Counterspell for this, it's quite punishing. That said, I'm not always the biggest fan of intentionally running cards that will only ever hurt one player at the table. Feelings can get hurt, so don't say you haven't been warned.
Mortal Combat
The meme value is off the charts for this alternative win condition. Mortal Combat asks quite a bit of you, and I've never once seen this card work, but for every card like this I've known a person that would try it regardless. Personally, I think you've already won a moral victory if you play the Mortal Kombat theme when you play this card.
Mutilate
I've never been a big fan of Mutilate, but that might be because my playgroups tend to have creatures that rapidly outpace what Mutilate can reasonably deal with. In spite of this scaling issue, Mutilate has remained a relatively popular choice for budget players looking to spend only four mana.
Devastating Dreams
If you have a ton of mana rocks and don't much care about your creatures, Devastating Dreams is a great way to punish your opponents for playing lands. While those fools concern themselves with performing simple game actions like playing their first land, you can run away with the game.
Overmaster
It's incredibly easy to force through your combo spells using Overmaster, and the fail case is a cantrip that makes your opponents very nervous. I've won off the back of this card on numerous occasions, and its status as a secret spellslinger protection spell is something I want to share with the world.
Radiate
I learned about Radiate from this sweet article written by our own Jeremy Rowe, where he outlines the ways it can end games. You can use it to blast the whole board with burn, overload a removal spell, or copy cards like Crimson Wisps to draw tons of cards. Radiate also goes bonkers with Magecraft.
Far Wanderings
From Harrow and Recross the Paths to Cultivate and Kodama's Reach, there's no shortage of three-mana ramp spells in green. Far Wanderings, however, occasionally gets you a whole lot of value for a very low price. It might seem like a negligible advantage by the time you have threshold active, but Landfall decks would beg to differ.
Nostalgic Dreams
I instantly pegged this as a card that would fit into a wide variety of decks, but it seems to pretty unpopular. Rebuying my combo pieces from the grave is something I'm very interested in, but I guess green players prefer things like Eternal Witness. While you are down a card in the exchange that Nostalgic Dreams offers, I can't help but feel like the raw mana efficiency makes this underappreciated.
Parallel Evolution
It's so easy to imagine the upside of casting Parallel Evolution, but it is indeed a symmetrical effect. Depending on what your opponents have, this could be quite disadvantageous to play. If someone has a Dockside Extortionist in play, this could be a game loss. All that said, I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.
The Tainted Cycle
These lands are functionally duals as long as you control a Swamp. With how common utility lands are these days, that is a real cost, but they all have the same colorless mana consolation prize if you can't manage to find something with the swamp subtype.
Cabal Coffers
One of few premier mono-black payoffs in your land slot, Cabal Coffers has been making tons of mana for many years now. Since the printing of Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, that has only become more true. I can assure you that this land lives up to the hype.
That's all I've got for you this time. With zero artifacts or multicolor spells in Torment, I've always felt like this set was missing something. Even so, there's some true staples in this set, and I enjoyed looking through the gallery and spying some forgotten favorites. As usual, if I skipped over your favorite card, I hope you'll let me know in the comments. I've been Luka Sharaska, and I hope you'll return when we finish up Odyssey block with its final set... Judgment.
