Commander Clash S3 Episode 10: Commander Anthology
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. In celebration of Commander Anthology being released today, we're playing with the preconstructed deck that comes with the product -- well, three of the four decks; Derevi, Empyrial Tactician is temporarily banned on Magic Online, so we replaced the Evasive Maneuvers deck with Mind Seize from the same product line. Here's what we're running:
- Tom pilots the Mind Seize deck, exiling everyone's libraries and using their own cards against them with Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge
- Jennifer pilots the Plunder the Graves deck, abusing her graveyard for sweet value with Meren of Clan Nel Toth
- Seth pilots the Heavenly Inferno deck, cheating out Angels, Demons, and Dragons with Kaalia of the Vast
- Tomer pilots the Guided by Nature deck, ramping hard for big splashy spells with Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury
Four decks, one for each year of Commander products to date! How does the 2012 Heavenly Inferno deck compare to the 2016 Plunder the Graves deck? Let's find out! But first, a 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 (Mind Seize)
Jennifer's Deck (Plunder the Graves)
Seth's Deck (Heavenly Inferno)
Tomer's Deck (Guided by Nature)
Post-Game Thoughts
Magic Online was really struggling this week! It looks like Archangel of Strife and possibly Opal Palace are bugged, and exiling permanents in multiplayer remains a mess. Oh well.
These games demonstrate that Wizards are getting better and better at designing preconstructed decks. 2012's Heavenly Inferno just has a mess for a manabase. The deck makes it very difficult to just cast your spells, as if its designers had no clue how to make a tricolor manabase without Green. I count only 13 permanents (lands and nonlands) that can tap for more than one color, yet the deck is full of cards with heavy color requirements. And Zoetic Cavern, really? Really? As someone very familiar with the 2012 product line since that how I started with the format, this problem was obvious in the other non-Green preconstructed deck as well, Political Puppets. Compare that to 2016's Plunder the Graves, which has at least 10 ways to mana fix and is only dual colored! Each year's product line got better, more consistent, and more powerful. I'm certain that the upcoming Commander 2017 products will continue this trend.
It felt like Jennifer was the archenemy at the table, but I think it was for good reason: the 2016 commander preconstructed deck, being the latest of the bunch, is simply the strongest, with Meren of Clan Nel Toth being the most powerful preconstructed deck from that year. The deck is tight and Meren is incredibly powerful. I ran her as the commander of my Spooky Skeletons deck a while back and she made Tribal Skeletons look decent. Tribal Skeletons! The amount of card advantage/selection she provided my deck filled with Drudge Skeletons made me the archenemy of that game! So it makes sense that when we're all playing preconstructed decks, and Jennifer is running the latest precon headed by Meren, that she'll be hated out by default.
Next Week: Movie Commander!
Tom will be sitting out the next two weeks of Commander Clash for vacation, so Richard will be taking his spot! Since Richard is dropping by, we figured it would be fitting to bust out some ultra janky themes, so we're doing Movie Commander, where everyone is building a deck based on a movie! I promise you that it will be glorious. 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, email me at tomer@mtggoldfish.com, or tweet me @BudgetCommander.
