Commander Clash S2 Episode 26: Aether Revolt

Hello and welcome to Commander Clash, a video series where several MTGGoldfish contributors battle in a four player Commander game for fun and bragging rights. This week we're building decks around the new legendary creatures from Aether Revolt! Here's what we've come up with:

• Tom mixes together a unique hybrid of Elf Tribal and +1/+1 Counters with Rishkar, Peema Renegade
• Seth polices the board with Countermagic Tribal led by Baral, Chief of Compliance
• Richard pilots possibly his jankiest tribe yet, Aetherborn Tribal, championed by Yahenni, Undying Partisan
• Tomer gets to play a Mono White deck full of card advantage to keep him happy thanks to Sram, Senior Edificer

You guys seem to prefer longer games, so I hope you'll enjoy this one! But first, quick reminder: if you like Commander Clash and other video content here on MTGGoldfish, make sure to subscribe to the MTGGoldfish Youtube Channel to keep up with the latest and greatest.

Tom's Deck (Rishkar)

Richard's Deck (Yahenni)

Seth's Deck (Baral)

Tomer's Deck (Sram)

Post-Game Thoughts

I'm very impressed with the legendary creature cycle we got from Aether Revolt. All except for the Red one are great in Commander, either as the commander or as part of the 99, and they're open-ended enough to fit in a couple different archetypes. I ended up running Sram, Senior Edificer as a mostly Equipment deck, but you could just as easily run him with Enchantress and focus on auras. Unfortunately, I don't think Kari Zev, Skyship Raider does anything particularly good in Commander that other cards can't do better, though she might find room as part of the 99 of a Pirate Tribal deck.

I noticed while editing the game that I made some really big mistakes. I should've played Sram, Senior Edificer before Puresteel Paladin because Sram's card draw is less restrictive and he can be recast if he died early. The most glaring mistake was not equipping Flickering Ward, giving my treefolk protection from green, and killing Tom before he had a chance to retaliate, because that was the most likely way I'd lose the game. I didn't play Ward or even Swiftfoot Boots despite having the mana to do so. Not sure what's up with that!

Unfortunately I didn't get to pull off the main goal of the deck, which was to assemble Kaldra with Helm of Kaldra, Shield of Kaldra, and Sword of Kaldra. My deck runs 8 tutors that can fetch the pieces, ways of getting destroyed pieces back from the graveyard, and even from exile with Pull from Eternity! That means, for better or worse, you're going to keep seeing Kaldra decks until I get the darn thing assembled. It'll happen!

Next Week: Viewer Submitted Decks!

Back by popular demand, we're doing Viewer Submitted Decks! Send us your deck lists that you'd like us to run in next week's episode by posting a link to it in the comments section below. We have no budget restrictions this time! Here's a quick criteria of stuff we're most likely to pick:

• Roughly the same power level as our usual Clash deck. No hyper competitive "Vintage" decks please. The decks can be good, but not "I consistently win turn 3" good. Jank is fine too. I mean, I've picked Bear Tribal before just for the puns!
• Entertaining to watch. While you might find hardcore Stax fun to play, it will make for a boring game for the audience to watch. Interaction is good!
• Some ramp/removal/draw would be nice! I find a lot of previous submitted decks would have a super cool concepts but we would skip over them because they'd be totally devoid of ramp, removal, and card draw. I know it's the last thing most people think of adding when they build a deck and it sucks cutting some cards to make room for them but just adding 5/5/5 would go a long way to make the deck run smoother.

The deadline is Wednesday, February 8th. I'm excited to see what you guys come up with! As always, we love to hear from you guys! Tell us what you like to see, what you don't like, any ideas that we can put forward for future videos, or anything else you'd like to tell us! You can reach us in the comments section below or tweet me @BudgetCommander.