Evolving Wilds

by Sam Burley

Of Mice and Men (and Mana)

Welcome back to Ways to Play: Partner Jumpstart, where we will build a Jumpstart-style modular gameplay experience around Commanders with the partner ability. Throughout this series we will build a mini-deck around a selection of commanders with partner to create a Jumpstart-style battlebox experience so that we can choose any two, shuffle up, and play with friends for a fun game night experience!

If you are clicking on this series for the first time, you can find the first article here, that explains clearly what we're up to!

This week we have a two objectives:

1. We want to describe the ideas behind the shared mana for the box and give you a place to start.
2. We want to look at the two partner commanders you all voted for and add them to the box: Akroma, Vision of Ixidor
   and Ravos, Soultender
   !

With that in mind...

My Land and Your Land: The Mana Problem

In any given self-contained format (like a Cube, for instance) the goal of the land base is to provide enough dual/tri/rainbow lands to let each person at the table play the deck they built and, hopefully, allow for less mana screw overall. Since we are building a self-contained format, our goal is no different.

Making Mana Work

I want to lean on budget-friendly lands. Trilands like Sandsteppe Citadel

Fabled Passage

Here would be my recommendation: have at least 3 of each uncommon tri-land, 4 of each tapped life-gain dual land and the snow duals from Kaldheim, 4 of each budget fetch land mentioned above (including the slow fetches), 4 Command Towers, and 4 Exotic Orchards. These plus a bunch of basic lands should make for an excellent start.

Rallying the Ranks

Here's where we get to the sweet stuff! Based on your votes, Akroma, Vision of Ixidor

When I was researching her EDHREC page, I expected to see a ton of keyword-soup cards in the "High Synergy" section. Low and behold, it is chock full of...angels.

Don't get me wrong - I have nothing against angels. But, I do think this may be a sign of the vacuum left for an excellent angel-tribal commander. It is worth noting that angels tend to have multiple keywords, but we can do better I think. So, let's run through our core questions.

What does Akroma, Vision of Ixidor

want us to do?

Our commander's text box cares about each creature having as many instances as possible of different keywords. She wants the team ready to brawl in an alpha strike, and so we are going to want the ability to have enough evasive creatures with multiple instances of keywords to be able to swing the tides of a game the first combat she's in play or just close the door on an opponent.

What cards, effects, or themes would maximize our commander's impact?

About halfway through the creature section on her EDHREC page we find what might be the single best card to maximize her text box:

Mr. George Clooney gives each of our creatures each instance of a given keyword as long as it appears somewhere on our board at the beginning of each combat. Meaning, with Akroma, Vision of Ixidor

The vast majority of the creatures in this list have multiple instances of different keywords to help add consistency. With just a handful of creatures we can really take control of the battlefield. Crystalline Giant

Finally, our commander costs basically infinite mana if she is removed, so we have included a package of simple ramp spells like Gold Myr

What interactions or win conditions would make games with our commander memorable?

There was one card that stood out more than any other as I pondered this question:

Other than overwhelming board-states and massive, swingy combats (which, if we're really honest, feel pretty memorable), a "target player loses the game" creature that plays fair seems really cool and on theme at the same time, granting a bonus for both double strike and flying.

Next up, we have Ravos, Soultender

What does Ravos, Soultender

want us to do?

Ravos, Soultender

What cards, effects, or themes would maximize our commander's impact?

While I was a little hesitant at first, it seems like a cleric-tribal theme would be super sweet and open up some options for cool recursion loops.

Clerics are a unique tribe in that they, ultimately, haven't had a tremendous amount of direct support outside of Onslaught-block and Zendikar Rising but have been consistentlt present throughout Magic's history. This class of creatures tend to care about the graveyard a lot, and sacrificing creatures for fun and profit is a mechanical through-line. Standard all-star Priest of Forgotten Gods

Being able to recur creatures from the graveyard seems really powerful and on-flavor for our commander. Cards like Priest of Fell Rites

What interactions or win conditions would make games with our commander memorable?

This is a tricky one, because I think our commander really wants to grind and not really have giant, swingy turns. However, Haunting Voyage

Wrapping Up

That's it for this week. Would you make any changes to either of our commanders' lists? What synergies seem sweet? Did we miss any cards you think should have made the cut?

Next time we will tackle another 3 lists as we continue our journey towards the Partner Jumpstart Battle Box. Vote for the commanders you want to see included, and we will build the top 3 next time!