Oh Boy, Here I Go Killing Again! | Toshiro Umezawa | $100 | Commander Abridged Gameplay
Today's gameplay features one of the most unique oldschool commanders ever printed: Toshiro Umezawa
Toshiro's power is fueled by the deaths of your enemies: whenever an opposing creature dies, you can cast an instant from your graveyard. If that card would be put into the graveyard this turn, it's exiled instead. Basically Toshiro lets us double-dip with all our instants, getting double the value of each of them. This is pretty much a proto-flashback ability similar to Snapcaster Mage, except you can still casts instants for alternative costs; you can still cast Snuff Out by paying four life instead of its mana cost with Toshiro's ability, for example.
By having such a powerful ability tied to instants, Toshiro encourages you do build a Spellslinger deck, something way out of Mono Black's comfort zone, but ends up working surprisingly well. This is essentially a Mono Black Control deck that leans heavily on instants that we can get double the value from thanks to Toshiro. We control the board with a variety of mana-efficient removal like Liliana's Triumph, Defile, and Force of Despair, which also triggers Toshiro's recursion. As we're killing stuff we're also weaving in powerful utility spells like Dark Ritual for ramp, Succumb to Temptation for card draw, and Malakir Rebirth for protection. Eventually we win the game by reanimating our opponents creatures with cards like Thrilling Encore and Sepulchral Primordial, or blow out the table with a huge Torment of Hailfire fueled by our mana doublers.
For this gameplay video I settled on a $100 budget, which is a price range that I think Toshiro excels at. Despite not having the most expensive Mono Black Staples, a ton of the best Toshiro cards happen to be dirt cheap instants which makes the commander extremely budget-friendly. I've also written an in-depth guide to Toshiro which you can check out here.
Post-Game Thoughts
I'll be honest: I was very relieved to have recorded this game. I think this deck is solid; it's not the strongest deck I've ever showcased, but it's definitely a well-rounded deck that is capable of some awesome turns. But unfortunately it took me a long time to get this footage: this game was actually from my third streaming session with the deck since the first two streams had a string of horrible mana flood. Usually I only stream once a week soooo yeah that was bad. But thankfully this game showed what the deck could actually do, and I think it should operate around this level most of the time.
As for tweaks, I'm pretty happy with how the deck looks at the $100 mark. But if I were to increase the budget I would definitely pick up the Bolas's Citadel + Sensei's Divining Top + Aetherflux Reservoir combo as an easier win condition for the deck. There's plenty of Mono Black staples that can increase the deck's power if you're willing to spend the cash, like Vampiric Tutor, Deadly Rollick, and Cabal Coffers. But for $100 this list gets the job done and I'm happy with how it functions when it's not mana flooded.
And that's it for budget Toshiro Umezawa! I hope you enjoyed the video. If you'd like to see the full games then feel free to join my streams where I play these games live here on YouTube each Wednesday at 6PM EST. You can watch my punts at real time and I'm happy to answer any questions you've got while we play. Also be sure to like, subscribe, comment, and click the dingle dangle to make YouTube happy. That's all for now so until next time, friends ... see ya!
