Tomer's Deck Updates: Commander 2021 / Strixhaven Edition
Strixhaven and Commander 2021 have arrived, which means it's time for another round of updates for my paper collection! I've added a bunch of new cards to my played decks, relegated some decks to storage, and have a new project that I'm slowly assembling:
Happy Toshiro Umezawa Noises!
While writing my Toshiro Umezawa primer and playtesting for the article, I fell in love with the deck and built a paper version of the $50 sample budget deck, which I've been slowly upgrading it ever since.
Toshiro Umezawa is a unique and powerful oldschool commander that lets you cast instant spells from your graveyard whenever opposing creatures die, doubling the value of your instant spells. The deck is essentially Mono Black Control with a Spellslinger twist, running a ton of instants and controlling the board with removal spells like Snuff Out, Liliana's Triumph, and Force of Despair, drawing cards with Dark Bargain, Necrologia, and Wretched Confluence, generating a ton of mana with cards like Crypt Ghast, Cabal Coffers, and Nirkana Revenant, and eventually winning the game by stealing opposing creatures with Thrilling Encore or a giant X spell like Exsanguinate or Torment of Hailfire.
Mono Black rarely supports the Spellslinger archetype, which makes Toshiro stand out even more, as he enables a strategy that no other Mono Black commander does.
C21 / STX Update
STX and C21 are all about instants and sorceries, adding powerful Spellslinger support to all colors, even the ones that don't normally support the archetype. This had led to some of the greatest additions to Toshiro decks in years, a rare gift that we're unlikely to see again soon.
By far the greatest addition to Toshiro has to be Professor Onyx. It's a fantastic inclusion even when played fairly since it's removal and its magecraft can be triggered easily and often in the deck, passively draining a ton of life. But pair it with Chain of Smog and you've got a game-winning combo: cast Chain targeting yourself, then copy the spell targeting yourself over and over. You don't need cards in hand to copy the spell so you can repeat this process infinite times, triggering Onyx for infinite drain. I absolutely love this combo because it's a powerful on-theme way to end the game! If the combo is too strong for a playgroup I can just swap out Chain for a random card and still go off with Onyx.
| In | Out |
| Professor Onyx | Exsanguinate |
| Chain of Smog | Syphon Mind |
Maybes:
- Crushing Disappointment
- Oriq Loremage
- Plumb the Forbidden
- Sedgemoor Witch
- Stinging Study
- The Biblioplex
- Wandering Archaic
Niv-Mizzet / Tibor & Lumia(?)
I've long been a huge Niv-Mizzet fanboy. I loved the character's lore and aesthetic ever since the original Ravnica set and accompanying books. Back when I got into Commander in 2011 I always wanted to build a Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind deck, but I avoided it since it was already the main deck of a player in my original playgroup and I didn't want to step on his toes. Years later though we got a stronger version with Niv-Mizzet, Parun, which I wrote a budget primer on and loved to so much that I built a paper version of the $50 deck that I've been slowly upgrading ever since.
This is a pretty straightforward Spellslinger Combo deck: Niv-Mizzet, Parun + Curiosity / Tandem Lookout / Ophidian Eye is infinite damage and infinite draw. Our secondary combo is Isochron Scepter imprinting Dramatic Reversal plus mana rocks that tap for at least 2 mana for infinite mana and infinite instant casts, which again is infinite damage/draw with Niv-Mizzet, Parun. Easy peasy win. The rest of the deck is a Spellslinger list full of card draw and removal, plus secondary win conditions like a giant army from Talrand, Sky Summoner and The Locust God.
C21/ STX Update
Since STX / C21 is all about Spellslinger, unsurprisingly there's a ton of sweet cards that I'm adding and considering. An absurd amount of cards, actually, which makes this update the most agonizing of the bunch, not just in terms of figuring out what to swap but figuring out what exactly I want this deck to be fundamentally about.
What I've settled on is I want this deck to be Spellslinger, but not Storm. Despite how much I love the archetype, I've played both with and against Storm decks many times and honestly they just hog too much of the spotlight, tracking storm count, chaining tons of spells, taking forever to either win or fizzle out. I love it in theory but in practice it's just not fun for the rest of the table. I'd rather just win with a boring Curiosity Combo that takes 10 seconds to establish the infinite than 10 minutes storming off while everyone watches.
So under Niv-Mizzet, my deck still wants to win off Curiosity Combos or Dramatic Scepter, but the way we get there will be Spellslinger-focused, and I made changes based on that:
| In | Out |
| Frostboil Snarl | Forgotten Cave |
| Archmage Emeritus | Teferi's Ageless Insight |
| Galazeth Prismari | Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind |
| Storm-Kiln Artist | Midnight Clock |
| Saheeli, Sublime Artificer | The Locust God |
Maybes (so many!): Deekah, Fractal Theorist, Draconic Intervention, Culmination of Studies, Efreet Flamepainter, Expressive Iteration, Fiery Encore, Mentor's Guidance, Octavia, Living Thesis, Prismari Command, Reinterpret, Resculpt, Rionya, Fire Dancer, Rousing Refrain, Solve the Equation, Tempted by the Oriq, Theoretical Duplication, Veyran, Voice of Duality, Wandering Archaic
Veyran Swap
My Izzet deck also has a sideboard package which swaps out Niv-Mizzet's combo pieces and puts Niv-Mizzet, Parun into the 99. I make this swap if I'm playing in a lower power playgroup or I just feel like playing a different style of Izzet Spellslinger. Just a few quick swaps makes the deck feel totally different to play while avoiding the hassle of building a brand new deck.
This sideboard used to be helmed by Tibor and Lumia, an oldschool commander that has hipster cred since hardly anyone knows the card exists, let alone plays it. But with the release of C21 / STX I've fallen in love with a new option: Veyran, Voice of Duality. This card is essentially Spellharmonicon and I'm so excited to give it a shot, so I'm swapping out T&L for it.
| In | Out |
|---|---|
|
Niv-Mizzet, Parun (into 99) |
|
| Wandering Archaic | Muddle the Mixture |
Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded
Like most of my decks, I wrote a primer on Purphoros and more recently did an Abridged Gameplay video that I enjoyed so much that I ended up finishing my paper deck. My personal version is based on the one I played on stream but with a heavier emphasis on Dragon Tribal because I just so happened to have all the dragons that I wanted already in my collection.
Purphoros is a Mono Red Stompy deck that uses the commander to fling huge hastey beaters at our opponents faces. Some of our beatsticks blow up stuff, like Balefire Dragon, Drakuseth, Maw of Flames, and Steel Hellkite, others refill our hand like Sandstone Oracle, Knollspine Dragon, and Dragon Mage, and some specialize in just murdering our opponents, like Terror of Mount Velus, Lathliss, Dragon Queen, and Angrath's Marauders. The deck is super explosive and aggressive. I love it!
C21 / STX Update
There's at least two cards that I'm instantly jamming into the deck without a second thought: Cursed Mirror is such a cool mana rock that can enter the battlefield as any of our huge beaters, and Ruin Grinder is another way to refill our hand, which honestly our deck can never have too much of since Purphoros can dump our hand so quickly. There's more stuff I'd consider, but this is what I'm starting with.
| In | Out |
| Cursed Mirror | Hedron Archive |
| Ruin Grinder | Gadrak, the Crown-Scourge |
Maybes: Creative Technique, Draconic Intervention, Rionya, Fire Dancer, Rousing Refrain
$50ish Gargos
While the vast majority of Gargos, Vicious Watcher decks focus on the commander's mana discount to build a Hydra Tribal deck, I found that the commander is far more powerful if you ignore that and focus on its incredible fight trigger, which I've covered in my Budget Gargos article. The idea is to use mana-efficient targeted spells like Warriors' Lesson and Invigorate to trigger Gargos, nom-nom'ing all opposing creatures while smashing in with your 8/7 commander. It's essentially a Mono Green Control deck, locking out your opponents from keeping creatures on the battlefield as you quickly KO them with commander damage. Since all the key cards are dirt cheap the deck ends up dominating even on an extremely low budget.
After destroying the Commander Clash crew with the $30 and $50 versions of this deck, I decided to build a paper version of the deck for my own personal collection.
For a long time I kept the deck's price under $50, swapping out cards as they increased in price, but I've now given up: downgrading my deck every single update since prices keep going up just feels bad to do, so I'm going to stop doing that. I'll still update the deck with new budget cards but I'm not going to stress about budget anymore.
C21 / STX Update
It doesn't look like much, but Charge Through is exactly what type of jank this deck loves: cheap, instant, triggers Gargos, gives evasion, and draws a card. It's not fancy, but it does what the deck needs.
| In | Out |
| Charge Through | Yeva, Nature's Herald |
$100ish Siona
Siona, Captain of the Pyleas is my strongest dollar for dollar deck. It regularly surprises folks how fast and consistent it can combo off, and even when the table is prepared there's just so much built-in resiliency that I can still steal wins after being shut down multiple times.
My Siona is a Combo deck, looking to generate infinite Soldier tokens thanks to the primary combo Siona, Captain of the Pyleas + Shielded by Faith or the secondary combo Siona, Captain of the Pyleas + Reins of the Vinesteed + either Altar of Dementia or Blasting Station for infinite damage / mill. These combos are uniquely suited to a low budget because one part of our combo is in our command zone and the other is an aura which can easily be tutored up by a bunch of budget-friendly cards: Heliod's Pilgrim, Auratouched Mage, Boonweaver Giant, Open the Armory, Three Dreams, and Pattern of Rebirth. Our combo can be assembled very quickly and consistently even at a low budget. But even without our insta-win combos, the rest of the deck is a powerful well-rounded Enchantress / Aura deck that can win via a token army (Archon of Sun's Grace) or even single creature beatdown (Ancestral Mask).
Like Gargos, I initially challenged myself by keeping Siona at just $50 and trying to make it the most optimized possible at that price point, though I do have a sideboard to boost its power with more expensive cards if I'm playing at a higher power table. But constantly swapping out cards to keep up with ever-increasing card prices has become more stressful than enjoyable so I'm no longer going to keep that restriction.
C21 / STX Update
Unfortunately for Siona, a set focused on instants and sorceries doesn't bring any sweet enchantments for us. I'm not making any changes.
Evil Zedruu
Zedruu the Greathearted is the very first Commander deck I've ever owned. I bought the Political Puppets precon back in 2011 and have been tinkering with the deck ever since. Zedruu was love at first sight for me, stirring up nostalgic glee of when I was a little kid sleeving up a proxy version of a deck called Trix, a Standard all-star back in ancient times that revolved around Donate'ing Illusions of Grandeur to your opponent and winning when they can no longer pay the cumulative upkeep and lose 20 life.
My Zedruu deck has gone through so many different iterations throughout the years. It started as a traditional Donate deck, then was a Lifegain deck, an Enduring Ideal combo deck, Coin Flip, even briefly Goat Tribal, but I always came back to that original design of just giving away bad stuff to my opponents while stealing their good stuff. We give away our permanents with Zedruu the Greathearted or we swap them for better stuff with cards like Puca's Mischief, Role Reversal, and Sudden Substitution. The permanents we give away are either mean, like Illusions of Grandeur and Pyromancer's Swath, or neutral, like Akroan Horse and Vedalken Plotter. We can even get back the permanents we've traded with cards like Homeward Path, Leave // Chance, Venser, the Sojourner, and Brand.
The deck wins the game by stealing our opponents' best threats, overwhelming the board with a token army, or most stylishly by casting Fractured Identity on Nine Lives and respond to its leave the battlefield trigger by casting Patrician's Scorn, killing our opponents before we would lose the game.
C21 / STX Update
Nothing caught my interest from the latest sets for Zedruu. No changes.
Tribal Tribal
Tribal decks are built around a single tribe. But what if we built a deck that was all tribes at once? This was the challenge I set for myself when building Everything Tribal aka Tribal Tribal: the idea is that by using changelings (ex. Universal Automaton) which are all creature types at all times, we can mix and match any tribal support cards together to create incredibly unique and interesting decks. The end result is the Budget Commander article that I'm most proud of creating. I spent so many hours researching all the tribal support cards out there, figuring out my preferred ratio of changelings to tribal payoffs, and finding which tribal mixes work best to create a cohesive game plan. It took a lot of time and effort but I think it was worth it.
In the article I highlighted two different builds of Tribal Tribal. The first is a deck built around tap/untap shenanigans, using powerful tap abilities like Gilt-Leaf Archdruid and Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero and untapping them with cards like Myr Galvanizer and Merrow Commerce for extra value. The second is a Combat Trigger deck, looking to give your attackers evasion (Cloudshredder Sliver) and double strike (Sylvia Brightspear) and then rewarding combat damage with cards like Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow and Notorious Throng.
My personal list is an updated Combat Trigger version. The deck has grown more powerful over time, swapping Morophon, the Boundless into the 99 and replacing it with The Ur-Dragon, whose eminence ability means all our changelings cost 1 less to cast. On top of winning through combat damage we've also got a powerful recursion engine with Haakon, Stromgald Scourge which lets us cast our changelings / Knights from the graveyard but more importantly our changeling tribal instants like Crib Swap or give our creatures infinite power with Blades of Velis Vel + Morophon, the Boundless. There's also infinite token combo with Turntimber Ranger + Arcane Adaptation naming Ally, or winning on our upkeep with Liliana's Contract.
The deck can pull off incredibly powerful and flashy turns. However, it's also inconsistent, which is by design. I found that I could make the deck way more consistent by adding a bunch more tutors and focusing on a specific tribe and combo -- cough cough Slivers cough -- but that defeats the purpose of building this style of deck. By keeping it less focused and not leaning too much on any specific tribe, it's weaker than my tuned budget brews but nonetheless it's my current favorite deck to play.
C21 / STX Updates
There's a couple sweet inclusions in these sets that I'll be testing. The first card I wanna try out is Spawning Kraken: it costs a ton of mana but it can quickly fill our board with 9/9's, like a more mana-efficient Utvara Hellkite.
Finally, while it's not a tribal card so I usually wouldn't consider it ... Stinging Study draws 9 cards at instant speed thanks to our huge chonker The Ur-Dragon. I can't ignore that level of value.
| In | Out |
|---|---|
| Stinging Study | Tazri, Beacon of Unity |
| Spawning Kraken | Graveshifter |
Maybes: Blex, Vexing Pest, Blight Mound, Hofri Ghostforge
6-Drop Tribal
Of all the decks in my arsenal, 6-Drop Tribal is the weirdest. It started as a meme deck for a meme week in Commander Clash, CMC Tribal, where each of us built a deck with each nonland card being the same cmc. While the rest of the crew stuck with low cmcs, I went big and dived into 6 cmc. The deck was swiftly crushed, but I was so intrigued with the concept that I went back to refine it, spending literally hours researching and optimizing 6 CMC Tribal, math'ing out the correct amount of lands, cyclers, ways to cheat on mana cost, and the best win conditions.
The end result was my 6 CMC Tribal article/video, which I feel is one of my best pieces of content. Despite the restriction, the deck is actively advancing its game plan right on turn 1. We're running a bunch of cycling cards and fetchlands to quickly fill out our graveyard with cards that will fuel various cards, like delving with Tasigur, the Golden Fang and ultimately culminating in one of our best win conditions, Twilight's Call, to make a game-winning army.
We also have a bunch of spells that we can cast for less than six mana. Cards like Avatar of Growth and Curtains' Call cost less based on the number of opponents, split cards like Reason // Believe can be cast either side for less mana, we have ways to cheat out multiple 6cmc spells with cards like Selvala's Stampede, etc. We even have cheeky ramp options like Myriad Landscape and Shefet Monitor to get us casting spells earlier than turn 6. Eventually we win with big beaters or Triskelion + Mikaeus, the Unhallowed combo.
It's a silly control deck and the weakest deck in my arsenal but I love it and love that people enjoy playing against it.
C21 / STX Update
There's a great pickup here: Verdant Mastery can be cast for four mana and gets us immediately to casting our 6-drops.
| In | Out |
| Verdant Mastery | Nemesis of Mortals |
Maybe: Inspiring Refrain, Revival Experiment
New Deck: KALDRA
You might know that I'm a strong advocate for the almighty Kaldra: Helm of Kaldra, Shield of Kaldra, and Sword of Kaldra. I've been trying to win with an assembled Kaldra on Commander Clash for many years now, never achieving victory (yet). I never had a paper Kaldra deck until recently, however, with the release of Akiri, Fearless Voyager. I love Equipment decks and Akiri is basically everything I want from an Equipment commander, so her printing finally pushed me to make a Kaldra Equipment deck.
This is basically a Mono White Equipment deck splashing Red for extra power. The ultimate goal of my Kaldra deck is to assemble Kaldra and then win with Worldslayer, destroying everything but Kaldra and the equipment. I have yet to pull off this win, though I have won plenty of games just through plain ol' combat damage.
C21 / STX Updates
I haven't added any new cards yet, but I have my eye on a couple maybes: Archaeomancer's Map, Battlemage's Bracers, Bronze Guardian, Strict Proctor, Venerable Warsinger.
New Deck: Kicker 2-For-1
One of my most ambitious projects, my Kicker 2-for-1 deck is actually two very different Kicker decks sharing the same core card pool. It's composed of three sections: a Green Core containing all the deck's green and colorless cards, a Hallar, the Firefletcher section containing red and gruul cards, and a Verazol, the Split Current section containing blue and simic cards. Depending on what style of Kicker deck I feel like playing, I shuffle up either the Hallar or Verazol section with the Green Core and to have a fully functional 100-card deck.
Despite both caring about Kicker spells and +1/+1 Counter, the commanders have very different playstyles: Hallar is very explosive, looking to burn out opponents by chaining together a bunch of kicker spells in a single turn, and Verazol is a Midrange value engine, looking to bury opponents in card advantage and copied haymakers. I often switch between the two to keep things interesting.
C21 / STX Update
There's some nice pickups for Verazol thanks to having access to Quandrix cards. Nothing for Hallar though, unfortunately.
Green Core:
| In | Out |
| Hall of Oracles | Forest |
Maybe: Fractal Harness
Verazol Section:
| In | Out |
| Decisive Denial | Counterspell |
| Vineglimmer Snarl | Woodland Stream |
Maybes: Deekah, Fractal Theorist, Oversimplify, Quandrix Command
Chandrafriends (Retired)
What started as a meme Abridged Gameplay video about jamming all Commander-legal Chandra planeswalkers into the same deck ended up being surprisingly powerful and fun to play! Seriously, check out the video, I honestly couldn't believe how functional this pile of Chandras ended up being! I liked the deck so much that, you guessed it, I built a paper version. Now this deck is way pricier than something I'd usually build, but I had most of the expensive cards already so I just bought the remaining Chandras that I needed and I was pretty much done.
This is a Chandra Superfriends deck. It runs every single version of Chandra that is legal in Commander, plus a bunch of other planeswalkers for good measure. Heck, even Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded is here, because I wanted to show off my white-borded version of it. The idea is to ramp out our planeswalkers as quickly as possible, ticking them up while controlling the board. We have a lot of great planeswalker support like Chandra's Regulator, Rings of Brighthearth, and The Chain Veil. Most of our Chandras burn stuff, so we make them burn hotter with cards like Fiery Emancipation, Chandra's Incinerator, and Torbran, Thane of Red Fell. We win by burning out our opponents. This is basically the Burn version of Superfriends.
Retired
While I do still enjoy Chandrafriends, my deck collection has expanded so much during quarantine that I simply don't have the chance to play all of them, and Chandrafriends is the one that I reach out for the least. While not exactly a problem, this deck is also one of my most expensive ones, so it feels more of a waste when I'm not doing anything with it.
Maybe I'll dismantle the deck and use its parts to upgrade other decks. Maybe I'll fall in love with it again and play it more. But for now, I don't see a reason to update the deck if I'm not playing it.
CEDHish Edric (Retired)
- Primer
Edric, Spymaster of Trest is one of my oldest decks. Like most decks in my personal collection, Edric started as one of my budget articles that I ended up liking so much that I bought a copy for myself. The deck was under $50 when I bought it and the closest thing I've got to a true CEDH deck. I almost never play CEDH though and Edric is way too strong for my playgroups so I only bring out Edric for a game or two each year. So despite being one of my oldest decks, it's also my least-played deck, and I have little motivation to update it.
Retired
While I don't go out of my way to update retired decks, I'll probably pick up Vineglimmer Snarl and Decisive Denial since they're so cheap.
Coming Soon!
At this point I have far too many decks than I'll ever have time to play with, so if anything I need to start cutting down to a reasonable number. However, the heart wants what it wants, and I've been strongly considering two more Orzhov commanders: Breena, the Demagogue Politics and Selenia, Dark Angel Life Swaps.
That's All For Now!
Hope you enjoyed this peek into my personal collection. Thanks for reading and I'll be back when the next set is released!
