Our Favorite Underplayed Commanders | EDHRECast 243

[Music] thank you hello and welcome to the EDH wreckcast my name is Joey Schultz and I'm joined as always by my fantastic co-hosts up first he puts the stud in rustic study it's Matt Morgan so Joey do you know what the hottest letter of the alphabet is uh I don't know Z or something I'm not sure not even close it's B because it can even make oil boil oh that is yes it absolutely is what a very transformative letter well done letter B I turned the heat up on this joke and so I'm I'm sorry to listeners at home if uh it's too warm in here for you wow okay that's that's great all right up next he puts the Rhythm in Rhythm Of The Wild actually wait a second he puts the wild in Rhythm of the wild too it's Dana roach I like that second one better for sure um did you hear about the guy who started fixing breakfast at midnight on December 31st uh no he wanted to make a New Year's toast dang it oh no oh I'm not wholesome oh you guys are wordsmiths and Geniuses and I absolutely adore you both that was great all right this is the EDH wreck cast EDH wreck is the best deck building resource on the web for the commander format compiling data from deck lists all over the Internet to provide helpful recommendations for new Commander decks and here on the podcast what we like to do is give all of that data just a little more context Dana what is it that we're talking about in this week's episode our favorite underplayed commanders chapter 2 Electric Boogaloo yeah I suppose it is a kind of a revisitation of a topic we haven't mentioned uh anything about underplayed like way underplayed commanders since oh goodness like June of 2021 so we've had a lot of new I mean let's reveal that have there have been approximately 525 600 new legendary creatures in the interim time so yeah let's talk about some more of those legendary creatures that we like that have kind of slipped through the cracks that we think deserve a little bit more of the spotlight but before we get into our main topic we've got a couple of shout outs that we got to do first like to thank Chase also known as Mana curves for help editing the show you can find them on Twitter at Mana curves edhrack is also streaming on whatnot you can follow our content manager Jason alt as he does awesome stuff on those whatnot streams like giveaways and cool stuff like that follow edhrek on social media to learn more and if you want to sign up to be eligible for any of those awesome fun things you can go to whatnot.com invite slash EDH Rec and if you'd like to support the show you can do so by liking and subscribing the video and you YouTube subscribing on your local podcast apps or you can go to patreon.com edhretcast whereas Patron tears of all sorts of levels whether you want to join the Discord Community we have whether you want to see all the historic challenge stats picks see all the episodes a day early there's all that and more over at patreon.com edhretcast including the very special and exclusive tier where we give a shout out to a patron every single week and this week Ryan levrone thank you so much for your support we definitely appreciate it um I hope you're related to Kevin levrone as in like the bodybuilder because that person was massive literally and in in their their popularity oh well and you know what's also massive our appreciation for you Ryan thank you Matt and my dad joking correct did I do it you're Uncle joking you're getting close um not quite that is fantastic also I gotta I gotta pause and address you said our exclusive tier it's literally just one dollar one dollar patreon here is our exclusive to patreon.comcast so you're just trying to get the additional plugs in there as much as possible yeah I'm I'm just making sure that Ryan knows that their shout out was so exclusive they're the only one getting it this week that's how exclusive it is oh goodness well anyway folks thank you so so much for the support we really love shouting out everyone who supports the show it is it really it warms our hearts every time that we that we get to see the people who want to put their support behind it's that it means a whole lot but okay we've got a show that we've got to get into now so let's get to it our primary takeaway from the 2022 year in review show was basically to the effect of like the increasing product overload has led to a lot of cards getting overlooked in the format and we talked a lot about some of the cards in the 99 on that episode but for this episode we want to kind of give some more of the Legends a bit more of the spotlight too not just from this past year but there are just a whole bunch of commanders out there that since there are so many Legends I'm out nowadays we feel like some of them deserve a little bit more of the spotlight so yeah I guess we're going to just kind of get on into it I I suppose actually Dana I'll throw this question to you first how did you define in your head what underplayed means now that we have so many Legends out there like what does underplayed mean to you I mean there's a bit of a shifting scale like if the commander is you know three months old that's going to be a different number than if it's you know three or four years old or something but like basically I feel like it if it's in more than say 12 decks it's too popular for me no I'm kidding um I I felt like it it probably should be particularly if it's a few years old it should be under less than 500 decks I would say on average it's what I was kind of thinking in terms of underplayed Matt is that a similar metric for you I mean I don't think there's a hard number that you can really say is like qualifies as underplayed because there are so many commanders out there these days and only so many decks it's really hard to say like a definitive number I I think more if it's outside the top like 10 to 15 of a certain theme that you're trying to do then it might be underplayed because when you start digging into some commanders they do some really cool things but they're just kind of drowned out by you know the the two lanes and the corvolds of the world so underplayed to me like it sometimes I look at a commander and I think you can't tell me there are 10 better elf commanders than what I'm looking at right here that's kind of what I get to defining underplayed as is it should be played in more for what I'm I'm trying to to look at it for yeah I think it's an important thing for us to mention that underplayed can be like there are some hard lines that you can draw and yet also there's a lot of subjectivity that goes into it as well and it might even depend on the color combination that you're choosing like you can literally Go 24 golgari commanders deep before you finally find a golgari commander that has fewer than a thousand decks to it like we are dealing with some huge Legend overload in the format so there's a lot of different metrics but we've each got our own versions of what underplayed means and hopefully that these will just be uh hopefully these will each be fun commanders that folks out there might resonate with and that you want to give a try to because that strategy is pretty interesting once you start delving into it and they've just been historically overshadowed and we want to bring them back into the light uh Dana how about we start off with you what is one of your favorite underplayed commanders as of 2022 so my first choice here for a neat underplayed Commander is Rona disciple of gixx from back in the dominaria set Moroni is one a black and a blue so three Mana in the mirror colors for a human artificer she's a 2-2 um when Rona enters a battlefield you may Exile Target historic card from your graveyard and you may cast non-land cards exiled with Rona I'm Joshua's ability command format and Tapper excellent top part of your library to further feed that but um I think the strength of this Commander that's pretty aggressively costed three Mana for something that lets you play things kind of from one of your graveyard you have to Exile them with her first then you can replay them um and I think you're looking to do reanimation stuff there's like way better commanders to do that but I think the strength of this Commander is probably to do something like make it your Super Friends Commander or a planeswalker Commander oh in demure colors because those are legendary creatures and that that counts or legendary permanence excuse me and that counts as a historic permanent so any planes we occur that you either you know use its abilities and it goes to the graveyard naturally or someone else hits hard enough and knocks it to the graveyard you can recur it and reuse it with with Rona you're in colors that both have the ability to Blink her um in blue to reuse that ability or to just reanimate her if she dies to get that trigger off again um there's you know plenty of ways to to reuse that ability multiple times per turn if you want to do that to bring Planeswalkers back to your hand her ability also works with you know things like the chain Veil that you're probably going to want in that deck and if someone blows up the chain fail well you can bring that back or if someone blows up any of your perforate artifacts that are really useful to put more counters on your Planeswalkers like say contingent engine you can bring that back as well and perhaps most importantly the art on this card is awesome it's one of my favorite pieces I think for an actual commander and it should seem more play for that reason alone but I I legitimately think it's probably a useful Commander that you could do something with in a way that nothing else in damir really does and I think it definitely should see more play than the I think 215 decks it's in right now on the dhrek yeah right off the bat you're getting so specific with applications on maybe a little underpowered of a commander that I I can see why there's only you know 200-ish decks to the name sure um you're getting into the specifics of the specifics and when Dana even is is trying to to nitpick something that's when you know folks this is a deep cut up of a commander and I think that is kind of the key for a lot of the underplayed commanders you know I think you're not going to find anything when you're looking down in the 200 deck range you're not like oh this is the perfect elf command better for me because there's a reason no one else is playing that as the elf Commander I think you tend to have to look for something kind of obscure but if you're willing to dig in a little bit of the text and like how can how can I think outside the box I think that's where you find some real sleepers among these underplayed commanders for sure yeah and there are a lot of very interesting Planeswalkers that you could play in these colors like Dana I have seen you you have a a blue black artifacts deck and you'll drop a tesserate master of the bridge and do so much work you'll drop a teaserat the Seeker or a teseret artifice master and you'll do so it's like an agonizing amount of damage with those types of things and here they'd be perfect so you get the best of like you can get a whole bunch of cool artifacts to Tinker around with while also preserving your Planeswalkers to cast later this is that is very very clever I'm I I feel like you've been sitting on that idea for a couple of years now actually I have if I didn't already have a mono wet Super Friends deck I would have built this deck I've definitely thought about it quite a bit so this is not one I'd just like came up with this week and brainstorming underplayed commanders this is one I have absolutely had in the pocket for a while all right that is yeah that's fantastic so you mentioned there you've got like the deep cut among the deep cut like it's not just the historic stuff you're going this is like the the demure super friend so you're going Niche with a niche um and that is a great way to find stuff that could be on you know an underplayed Commander I kind of want to take a a slightly different approach here for there is an established archetype but I want to shift its colors I think that that can be another fun way that we find a an underplayed Commander an underserved legend that could actually do a whole lot of work for you I think I might have mentioned this Commander before on the show but I want to look at the back half of yuvilda Dina Perfection specifically I want to look at nasari dean of expression which only has 333 decks right now but I have played against this deck a couple of times and it's a house nasari dean of expression is a five Mana four four F rate Shaman at the beginning of your upkeep Exile the top card of each opponent's Library until end of turn you may cast spells from among the exiled cards and you may spend Mana as though it was made of any color to cast those spells and whenever you cast a spell from Exile you get a plus one plus one counter on nasari Dean of expression don't even it doesn't even matter what uvilda does like we're we're only here for the nasari that is such a potent effect that is a stolen strategy in the command Zone that's three cards per turn and it gets enormous as you're just doing the thing of casting spells like we've seen a lot of the cast from Exile get benefit rewards this year we've seen stuff like lalia and prosper have gotten really popular but nasari is sitting there to allow you to get access to those effects in red and blue not just in red and black like we've seen this historically and I think that means we have a lot of untapped potential that you can do because blue loves playing with exilely stuff too and this is a very but this has just so much potential that is neat to dig into there's also a few build paths here with this too like you know you mentioned how you don't really have to pay attention to to the uh evil I forget how you pronounce it on the other side the dean of perfection um you can ignore that entirely and play it as a is it commander and never Cathy that aside but you can also play to as a model red Commander I mean like or you can play with the intention of using either side depending on like what you need more at the moment but like you can tweak the deck with that in mind you can absolutely build this as an asari deck in monored you could build it as an asari deck and have is it cards in the play in in the deck you know blue cards that you'll cast that will play in with what it does with no intention of ever using the blue half like I think that's one of the things with with these two yeah two-sided commanders people looked at them like I don't know what I would do the other side ignore it like you if you don't want to do it you could ignore it and use the color or you could ignore the color entirely it's up to you you could make a model blue sorry Jack sure if yeah if you wanted to yeah yeah I I 100 agree that sometimes players get decision paralysis with all the things going on with any given commander and that just discourages them from playing that all together a with all the words that are on this one piece of cardboard which is I believe uh War and Peace only has like 17 000 Pages this has 16 0004. so it's pretty dang close but everything going on there you're absolutely right there's I I could imagine players getting so worried about missing out on some value by not being able to take advantage of one side that they ignore the card altogether when one side or the other both of them are probably good enough to be a commander just in general so yes I would like to see more people just enjoy this card but sometimes decision paralysis is a thing there's just too many words and folks get lost like I did well and there are like a lot of the play stuff from Exile get benefit strategy energies that we've seen have definitely appeared in red you know wild magic sorcerer is going to give your uh the spells that you cast from Exile the first one each turn gets Cascade or we've seen how Italy can play so many cards from Exile and that will pump up this Commander um passionate archaeologist is a new background in red that says whenever you cast a spell from Exile you'll deal damage equal to the man like we're all pretty familiar with those but blue opens up some really fun options here like Sphinx up the second sun and Paradox Haze are really cool with this Commander so that you can get that effect multiple times because you'll get additional upkeep triggers to steal even more stuff from your opponents or you can use Sage of the Beyond which will reduce the cost of the spells that you cast from Exile or dazzling Sphinx is another way to just straight up take stuff from your opponents or personal favorite mine's dilation giving you free stuff basically every turn from Exile like blue has a lot to offer the play from Exile strategy and it's all sitting right here with nasari waiting for people to to discover it and I think there's just a lot that you can sink your teeth entail well speaking of sinking teeth into something I'm going to steal the spotlight and sink my teeth into the next pick um don't don't don't worry about how bad that segue was it's just gonna happen um so this Commander I'm going to cheat a little bit because it is a fairly new Commander but the reason that there's less than 300 decks is 240 right now I believe is Titania Nature's force and the only reason it's not more popular I would gander is because it's so dang impossible to open this card in a pack I don't even know how you get it from a pack and that just means in general there's not gonna be very many of these out in the wild which means people can't really buy them from their shops and so yeah it just kind of puts a cap on how many decks can be built but Titania's Nature's force is in the new brothers War Commander sets kind of it's not in the precons you can only open in collector booster or something but for green green you may play a force from your graveyard right there that's pretty good whenever a force enters the battlefield near your control you create a five three green Elemental creature token and whatever Elemental you control dies you Mill three cards so right there this just got an amazing land package there uh obviously you're gonna put this into your omnath locus of Rage decks and your your omnaf locus of whatever but at the commander this is already pretty good I know you have the other Titania the other mono green Commander this does so much that I either it's one thing you're going to notice as a theme of the commanders that I like to talk about this episode is they do a lot of great utility things nothing is outstanding but they do so much of a bunch of little things that there's a lot of value to be had by putting these cards in the command Zone and I absolutely think that Titanic Nature's force is one of them uh it's so yeah it's so young of a card there's no way it's going to stay this unpopular for long people are finally gonna start seeing it in the wild and people are definitely gonna build this but for now there's less than 300 decks out there so I'm gonna pick this one this week because I think it's a fantastic Commander for one and then just yeah it's it's going to be built more well here's the thing like I this you you mentioned I have Titania protector of argoth uh as one of my my decks and so this new Titania is in a lot of ways competing against the old Titania like there's a big comparison to be had there the older one who when your lands die you get five three Elementals and that one is probably a bit more established in the field this is also though competing against a bunch of landfall decks that are very famous very classic so there's a big competition it entering onto the scene but Matt there's another version of Titania that was printed in the brothers War proper set a Titania voice of Gaia which is a meld half which turns into Titania Gaia incarnate when you meld it with a land and that one has uh 367 decks to its name right now so in addition to the fact that there were approximately 30 legends that came out in the brothers War and the brothers War Commander set there was another version of Titania that is getting more attention than the Titania that you just mentioned so this thing is up against a whole host of commanders from the brothers War set it is up against two other versions of itself and it's up against basically all of the landfall Decks that are already out there and all of the elemental trials that are out there too like this thing's got a lot of competition that it is up against right now so I think that this will probably stay as underplayed just by dint of comparison alone I mean you're saying there's a lot of landfall decks we say that about pretty much every cement Commander these days and every Summit Commander still finds a way to have 5 000 decks so Color Me jaded I think Joey's right and I understand why there's a lot of competition for this card to be played but I also agree with Matt it's a great Commander that should see more play for sure so like I I get the logic about why it's not being played very heavily so far and probably won't ever get played very heavily that doesn't mean it shouldn't be right like I think it's a super cool Commander that does a lot of really neat things and if you like playing that particular deck if that looks like an interesting play style to you but one of your friends or somebody in your LGS or whatever is playing one of the other titanias that plays a little bit similarly well this this lets you still play the play style without feeling like you're playing a clone of that same deck you can play something kind of similar run a few of the same cards but maybe not everything and still get that same feeling just playing a different Commander which I think is a really useful thing to have an option to do as well well then you just turn into that Meme of all the Spider-Mans right yeah it's all titanius it's like no I'm titanium no I know I'm Titania I I think we should actually do that we should on our next stream we should have a Titania off that's a titanium I meant yeah tune in at twitch.tv edhredcast for the Titans Showdown now now you're getting the hang of it there it is my next underplayed Commander here is from way back in etheros beyond death which was you know 2021 but it was 12 sets ago which Once Upon a Time would have been like five years um it so it seems like it was way further back than it actually was but it's only in 220 a decks and fluconos Unchained is four manaf um it's a zombie Hydra it comes into play with six plus one counters on it and it escapes with 12 plus one counters on it so if you're casting it from a command Zone it's a six six for four man and if you're casting it from your graveyard with the um Escape Clause it's a 12 12. um it has a clause if damage would be dealt to it while it has plus one counters on it you prevent that damage I didn't remove that many plus one counters from it but that's not really why I think it's it's cool what I would do with this Commander is just play it as a plus one counters Voltron Commander I think it's not a thing that you're really seeing in golgari colors you're in colors that have access to a bunch of really busted effects that interact with plus one encounters whether it's doubling season or you have things like solidarity of heroes or visions of dominance to like let you just double the counters as a one-off effect um you know pair it with a sack outlet and an oslet and you can sacrifice it move the counter to the azer with bring it back into play with the the Escape Clause move those counters that you just took off and back onto it there's a ton of ways to give things trample in green it doesn't have trample built into it but like hey throw a berserk onto it and it's a I think it would be a really cool like variant of the Voltron commander in colors that don't really do that that interact with plus one counters and I it's something that nothing else would really do and I would like to see that see more play that's how I would build it yeah golgari's had a lot of really cool plus one plus one synergies but sometimes it just gets overlooked or maybe pushed to the side by simic and and Celestia kind of doing the exact same thing so I like having golgari because you've you've seen viral is a scar strike you've seen other plus one plus one commanders in golgari colors but I really really do like palucronose I have it in my ukima and kazer plus one plus one counters deck and it always doesn't just a load of work I love it it's such a good card and I'm honestly kind of surprised that more people haven't latched onto that idea Dana literally all the stuff that you were describing there was reminding me of my Rayhan and ishi deck and like I had to Branch into four colors to achieve some of the stuff that you were talking about but the whole mission of that deck is exactly what you were talking about just like make a huge creature pile the plus one counters into something useful maybe Voltron someone down with Commander damage or use amazing like the the plus encounter doublers to just like go completely wild and especially since you're in Black you've also got access to some cards like uh Essence Harvest for example so if you did in fact make a huge paluchronose that you know doubled all of the counters with the corpse Jack Menace or whatever you can guess an Essence Harvest and then drain an opponent equal to the power of your huge Commander which could be up to like 24 just by having cast it because you got a bunch of token doublers like excuse me not token witch plus one counter doublers like yeah that's uh that's really cool that's really efficient I I if I saw this one in the command Zone against me I would be pretty worried actually because now that you've actually described the things that this stuff can do that's alarmingly efficient and this is another one that I've that I've kind of liked to be honest have thought about building before like I'm not gonna scope through a list I've I've been eyeballing this in the past like I wonder if I could so yeah this is again one I've been thinking about before and I don't think I'll build it because I do have a Celestia deck that's doing a lot of similar things um currently with my trim look at the Eternal deck which I believe is one we talked about as a commander the last time we did underplayed commanders and I told his advice there and built a deck yeah well I mean that's funny I think in that episode we also mentioned Martin stromgold and that's one that I ended up building so we need to rename these episodes not to our favorite underplayed commanders but like here's what the deck building forecast looks like for us in the future this is actually a future site commanders we might eventually get around to building yeah exactly uh that's fun stuff but hey uh well we've got a couple of other fun underplay commanders that we want to get into with other strategies to dive into as well we do also want to take a brief pause for challenge the stats too because there's so much data on Eda track but we don't always agree with all that data sometimes we think that cards are over are underplayed so let's take a quick break and come back with some challenges well I'm going to get us started here with my pick this week and my pick is a case of if you want one you probably want another so growth spiral is already played in almost 92 000 decks which is a significant amount of decks and if you want a second copy of that effect people seem to be sleeping on joint exploration from domineer United so it's only being played in 2600 decks so far and for one of the blue you get an instant that has kicker of a green and the card just says scry to then draw a card if the spell was kicked you may put a land card from your hand onto the battlefield so this is just kind of an upgraded and beefier version of growth spiral where growth spirals just draw a card and then you can put a land from your hand on the battlefield at instant speed so only having to pay one more Mana to get a scry 2 out of it that just seems like a very easy not quite upgrade but like I said if you want to grow spiral you probably want joint expiration if you want joint exploration you probably a growth spiral as well so so many decks just seem to be sleeping and forgetting that joint exploration exists so far it is from a fairly recent set but growth spiral exploded it literally it grew on people with how popular it was and so it's kind of surprising people haven't explored any additional options with joint exploration so I expect this card eventually to latch on this seems like the type of card that people are going to see in a pre-con and then buy five more copies for their simic decks but for now it's just not getting near as much love and it's just a simple easy little addition that it's just going to give you so much more consistency you're going to be able to find the land drops and get them into speed at instant speed so if you have any landfall triggers you like playing maybe get some surprise blockers or anything like that it's just a fantastic addition it's another copy of growth spiral and it's already we have the the base level which is 92 000 decks for growth spiral I'm not saying all 92 000 decks want another copy but I would guess at least have to and that's a significant amount of decks for joint exploration to find its way into so if you like growth spiral you want another copy explore your way onto the The Joint exploration card because that's just a great great addition dad jokes and the challenge the stats Matt you are killing me I mean you could join me in this and it could be a joint joke stop okay no we're moving I'm gonna move to our listener challenge do this together Joey come on we're going to move to our listener challenge uh this comes to us from Chad haverkamp who has a great challenge for a card that is currently a little bit overplayed in mildratha the grave tied deck specifically there's a rules nonbo but Chad this is a really great thing to to dig into to make sure that we'll do what the players are being as wise as possible about the cards that they play in their decks specifically the card that is named here is canoptic Tomb Sentinel which is a recent card from the Warhammer 40K set and about 511 mulratha decks have been built since this since the Warhammer set released and about 20 percent of those are running canopic tomb Sentinel and that's going to be too much because there is a rules nonvo here that Chad points out so canopic tomb Sentinel is a four Mana artifact creature insect it has a uh it is Vigilant it is a 4-3 and it has this ability Exile Cannon when canoptic tomb Sentinel enters the battlefield from a graveyard Exile up to one Target in online permanent so nothing when you cast it normally but it has an unearth ability that unearth ability is generally where you would get the actual Exile Cannon effect to Exile a Target nonline permanent the idea that looks to be happening here is that much other players expect that you can cast this as say your artifact for the turn with mildratha's effects you can cast it from your graveyard and then you would be able to Exile Target an online permanent the problem that Chad points out is that when you are casting that it doesn't enter from the graveyard it enters from the stack so you don't actually get that effect for the tomb Sentinel to Exile anything at all so the 20 of the recent muldrota Decks that are playing this one so far maybe reconsider thank you so much for pointing out this rules non-bo we appreciate listener challenge the stats so much especially when they help us get better about these types of tricky rules interactions so thank you for that and now let's move on to our final challenge the final challenge we have here comes from way back in Tempest um it's a sorcery named Ledger domain two and a two blue um it says exchange control of targeted artifact or a creature with another Target permanent that shares one of those types with it and this effect just lasts indefinitely it's not like a control magic effect where if someone removes it they can get control of their creature back you're just swapping the worst thing you control for the best thing they control or the worst thing one of your opponents controls for the best thing one of your other opponents controls if there's a logical reason to do that as well you don't gotta do it to yourself necessarily role reversal from war the spark is in 5000x this isn't only about 1500 but role reversal requires you to be in is it colors so it's a very very good card because you can exchange control of any permanence you can top up Planeswalker for a planeswalker an enchantment for an enchantment whatever um but you have to have access to both those colors not every deck does and I think Ledger domain should see more play particularly in decks where you're making tokens especially small tokens things like taloran Sky Summoner for examples where I run it I will gladly exchange control of a drake I already attacked with that's now tapped for whatever the biggest thing you have is while also making myself a replacement Drake because it's a sorcery spell things like marnius calgar from the most recent Warhammer set makes a star of warrior tokens you can swap out one of those those two two Warrior tokens for again some big awful beater that you don't want to deal with well why remove it when you can just take it legitimate I think is a really really solid card in the right deck and should definitely see more play if you are making tokens and you have access to Blue and and either want a second copy of roll reversal or just don't have access to Red so you can't run roll reversal why remove it when you can just take it absolutely this is another one of those car cards though that it was only printed back in Tempest so right nobody except for Dana knows this card exists you know what it reminds me of a little bit uh Matt I think it was you who challenged on a show a little bit ago several episodes back cultural exchange which also allows you to gain control of other people's stuff by exchanging Wii tokens and things like that and I I'm just gonna need both of you guys to stop um playing blue stuff that's gonna steal my things I want to play my thing stop stealing my stuff you guys don't don't run good stuff and I won't try to take it that's exactly it they won't take your stuff if your stuff isn't worth taking all right so I I came into that I was playing another card game with some friends this weekend I was playing here to slay which there's a card in there that's basically Ledger main but it's repeatable and it's absolutely right if you don't have anything worth stealing people aren't gonna steal your stuff so yes I that that applies to just any card game in general not just magic I suppose wow that is so so silly okay let's let's get back into our main topic here I will take the lead on this next underplayed Commander that I I hope gets to see a little bit more love this one is Inquisitor eisenhorn from the Warhammer deck so it's very very recent 84 decks to its name at the current moment but specifically the reason that I think this one isn't going to budge too much more uh highly even though it is recent is that it's currently in 19th Place of the 24 Warhammer legends that are available a lot of the other Legends have been able to to sort of take people's attention here specifically this is a blue black Commander that like I don't care about any of the other words on it the things that I care about is that it says whenever it hits an opponent it investigates equal to the amount of damage that it has done like it will create a number of clue tokens equal to the damage that it does to another person bruh that's amazing that is just so so cool that's so many clues that can be so many Clues this is feels to me like a clever artifact voltroni deck just waiting to happen and I I really hope it gets to have above 100 decks above 300 about 500 like this actually strikes me as being incredibly good if you stick a cranial plating or a nettle cyst in there all those Clues suddenly pump up the commander even more this is a machine this thing seems so so good yeah that was as soon as I was reading it I'm like oh nettlesis would be created in here solid cranial footing and then like three seconds later Joey's like run a little sister a cranial fighting yeah actually this is a card I don't I think I I read but it didn't entirely registrate in my brain what exactly it did because absolutely that that that will get stronger every turn in the right kind of deck yeah that's a that is very very cool I like that Commander Rod it's a good that's a good pick I wonder if like the first paragraph on it kind of buries the most important so this is the four Mana dimir 2-3 you may reveal the first card you drive Edge turn as you draw it whenever you reveal an instant or sorcery card this way you create a legendary 44 black demon creature token with flying and it's named something that I share a bail I can't pronounce that but like there's like four lines of text in front of the most important stuff on this card and I think that is what is burying it a little bit because the most important stuff that it can do making so many clue tokens is like not until you get down near the last part of the card and I just really think that this is a very potent effect it's it's very potent for sure yeah just not just the the ability on the text but like you said Joey there's approximately 1700 different commanders in Warhammer 40K pre-cons so this is just it's oh there's so many good designs that are just buried so far down that it's really hard you it's things that you have to kind of do your own homework to find a a powerful Commander that other people are doing not that they're not powerful but just they're they're so far down all these lists can you can you imagine just like can you imagine you hit someone with this and you'll investigate twice but oops you have an academy manufacturer in place so you actually get two Clues two food and two treasure each turn like I oh that's that's gonna be awesome or we mentioned some Demir Planeswalkers earlier tesseret Master of the bridge like that one pluses and you deal damage to your opponents equals the number of artifacts you have well Inquisitor eyes and Horn is gonna make a whole bunch of artifacts or like Dana a favorite of yours is Shimmer Dragon tap all of those things so that they can be they can draw a bunch of cards I really feel like this has so much potential just just waiting there this is a fantastic clue Commander I'm already trying to think if I want to try to brew this now you've convinced me to maybe give it a go yes wait don't you already have a blue black artifacts deck are you gonna double this three I think what's what's one more you have three not not artifact X just blue black decks but like lots of one out of four a thing right into the party it'll be a good time Dana like all of us has the type yeah no and I've got a whole bunch of golgari stuff that I think are around with too so yeah I I might be one that he mentioned earlier so like let's be honest with ourselves all right Matt let's throw it to you so another one of mine it's it's one of those commanders that I mentioned earlier that you look down the list and you're like you can't tell me there's 10 other commanders that are better at this thing than this one Commander um so I the next one I would talk about is General Kudrow of dranath it's It's one in orzoff colors for a legendary human Soldier it says other humans you control get plus one plus one uh whenever General Kudrow of dranath or another human enters the battlefield under your control you Exile Target card from an opponent's graveyard you're welcome Joey and also you can pay two mana and sacrifice two humans also you're welcome Joey to destroy Target creature with power four or greater so you've got a lot going on here that it's kind of like what I mentioned with Titania Nature's Force nothing not one ability is going to blow you away with how powerful or efficient is but it's doing so many things that are always going to be useful you have built-in gray fate you have removed level you have an Anthem for all the tokens or whatever you want to be making I just I like all the things that are going on here they don't stand out but there's so much utility I really love commanders like this that there's you have so many little things going on that they're just a very very useful and there's not really a time you don't want to see this card whether you're playing in the 99 or in your command Zone it's kind of like to me it feels like tristani discordant type of Commander yeah it's there's not a lot of wow factor to it but there's a lot of nice things that you want that you're always going to have relevant in a game and it's just it's just a fantastic commander and so I see that there's only 350 General Kudrow decks out there and I just wonder like what did people just not care was Aquaria was it such a complicated and crowded set that everybody just forgot this card existed I I just I can't figure it out I think it's just a great utility card there's a lot going on just so many small abilities that's never going to be irrelevant and I just to me that seems like a recipe for a great Commander one of the things that I think buries this the most is the fact that this can show up in other human decks like gerina Kudrow or train in silvar oh absolutely that is a thing that I'm pretty sure you noted it earlier but it's worth repeating here again is that we feel like we want to get as much value out of a thing as possible like I think this came up when we were talking about like maybe just play a mono rednessari that could also totally work and we as Commander players sometimes feel like we'd be leaving value on a table if we didn't expand into all of the options but I I love the comparison that you made to tristani discordant and for a while so you've just moved your Celestia deck into tristani Discord I did and for a while it was also a yasharn deck and that thing too like you look at it you read it and it's not blowing you away but holy crap it was putting in so much work for you and so does tristani again it's not the kind of thing that is like oh yeah this really like screams like you must build me but the amount of utility like it's got so many words on that especially this Cujo example here there are so many words here this is a very finely tuned card that is doing a lot of the things that you want once you're actually in a game even if at first blush when you first read it it doesn't blow you away the way that some other commanders that have access to more colors might be more dazzling at first to glance and I think that's the biggest strike against it too like you said Joy only being two colors that's probably what people generally people just like playing more colors because they have access to more cards and more options one thing I think that that kind of hurts them but maybe shouldn't too is like primarily we've been talking about commanders that are very much asking you to build around the commander and if the commander isn't in play the deck probably isn't going to function as well as it as it normally would and there's advantages to that but it's also disadvantages if commanders stolen if it gets killed too many times your deck works less effectively that's where commanders like General Kudrow come in if you are building a human deck like this it doesn't need General Kudrow to function it's just a piece that adds X sure utility the deck when it's already working right and there are downsides to that maybe it's not as powerful but there are upsides too in that your deck functions just fine if you don't cast your commander or someone kills it three times and you don't have the Mana to cast it again there's plenty of upsides to that as well and I think people prefer to go the splashier route and go with the commander that's a real important part of how your deck functions versus something like this where if you don't cast it your deck's gonna work just fine yeah I definitely fall into that picture or the the pitfall I guess you would say of my my deck does absolutely diddly without my commander in play I have probably of all my decks I probably have like three I would say that can do okay without the Commander in play but that's also that's just how I build my decks though I I play Commander because I want to do the one thing and I look at a commander and I say okay I want to do this thing and so yes it does feel kind of weird saying people should play this more generically powerful Commander because that's kind of the exact opposite of what I do when I build decks so my last Commander here I have is is actually relatively new it's from dominar United and it's it's one of the Box topper commanders and I think it's when we actually talked about a little bit when we talked about a few of those box Toppers and that's General marhalt L's Dragon um there's currently only 250 decks in dhrek and there's a lot of competition if you want to play creature Stompy stuff in in gruel which is what the commander is in two and a red and a green for a 4-4 he's an elf Warrior whenever a creature you control becomes blocked it gets plus three plus three to end of turn for each creature blocking it and what we talked about this a little bit and how like oh you can you know use a bunch of lure effects I do think that's the reason people should be playing this Commander I think there's nothing else out there that's going to demand that you build a deck built around forcing people to block your creature and I think like that's a really cool effect though if you can find yourself in that position where hey someone's got a bunch of creatures over there and you're going to make them all black whatever creature you want to attach your stuff to everything else will get through the thing that is being blocked will then get ginormous and hopefully trample damage over the top as well as killing all of their stuff in the process I think that's a really neat Niche Commander that again nothing else is really duplicating there's nothing else that you can really say I want to run like eight different ways to give my creatures a lure that's that right right and have that be like an effective strategy that you're going to build your entire deck around so yeah I think it's a it's a it's a strange unique thing that will look different than every other deck of the table and I think it just should see more play for that reason oh man can you imagine this but like that what is that one Mana taunting elf zero one All Creatures able to block taunting elf have to do so and then you've got this in place so you attack the token player Mr Matt Morgan over there it's just like all right cool my zero one taunting elf is now a 300 301 taunting elf and also your entire board is gone this is I I am I am very surprised actually this one doesn't have more to its name because there's a lot of unique stuff on offer here and you have cards and green like benefactors draft they'll let you untap every creature so like people can't even get away with it by tapping all their creatures down you can untap all of their stuff when you force them to block oh yeah I just what it's it's a it could be a super fun Commander I think um if you're willing to think outside the box and it yeah I I would like to see this this show up at tables more often I mean I remember when we talked about just all the the commander or not the commander Legends but the the dominaria Legends Revisited Legends Electric Boogaloo Legends whatever it was that we called it but but yeah we we both of us Danny you and I we were very excited about the things that you can be doing with this Commander just seeing the character come back and all that so yeah it is well granted there was a lot of these commanders that were kind of Revisited yes sure so yeah this one definitely was kind of caught up in the wash but I do love what it's still going on still and yeah it's just a it's a fun command yeah that that is really cool it gets the Nostalgia points for it as well this is this would lead to a fun time up until the moment that you've uh used that taunting elf to kill my entire board and I'm just like well what do I do now well I suppose I just get trampled over by the rest of the red green Onslaught that is sure to come my way the very next turn that is uh that's really cool um I'll go from that red green and move back into I have a final blue black example here that I want to bring up it is vohar vidalian desecrator also a commander from this year from the uh dominaria set I think that we got this year and it is a little merfolk looter type of effect right there in your command Zone and I think that's important for a couple of reasons so it is a blue and a black wizard a 1-2 it can tap to draw a card then discard a card if you discarded an instance or sorcery card this way each opponent loses one life and you gain one life and also you can pay to and sacrifice vohar to cast Target instance or sorcery card from your graveyard this turn and then if it would be put back if that uh spell would be put into your graveyard from there instead it will be exiled you can only use that effect as a sorcery speed effect um this probably looks a little nondescript but Matt I don't know you've played some of the older formats could you you know share with the class the best use of those merfolk looter effects and and what might be useful to get into the graveyards when you're discarding stuff from your hand any ideas Bud uh there's reanimation there's reiteration gold stars casting spells from your graveyard I hate that you make me do this it's embarrassing come on dad you are a dad you embarrass me in public you you got the job I've I've we've moved we've evolved from dad jokes to dead embarrassing there we've got oh man this is a two Mana looter in the command Zone and it can also flash back one of your spells that is a just such an efficient recipe for a demure reanimator Commander so you can use this turn two you play it turn three you tap draw card discard like an archon of Cruelty or a she oldrid or a triplicate Titan and then reanimate it with an anime dead or the spell reanimate or a necromancy or use Ever After as another one dance of the Dead persist there are so many amazing things that you can do here and I just love this as an option another option for demere reanimator we've seen reanimator in a bunch of different forms but this feels a very specific purpose for reanimator decks that is sometimes very difficult to actually get going like I play a lot of reanimator and sometimes getting stuff into the graveyard in the first place is a difficult hurdle and this Commander just Aces that quiz it does such a good job of getting stuff into your graveyard in the first place and it filters your hand and it can flash back your reanimation spells if you need it to this this has a just a gold star I just this has winter all over it I really think this one should get another look that's it yeah and the fact that it's two Mana mix it is a big deal too I'm a little bit surprised at a two Mana Commander that loots it isn't just being played just out of for Value reasons and into mere colors that's really really useful and and again I think it's because it has that like oh if you discard instance and sorceries you get extra effects so that takes the attention but who cares about that part you don't need that part you can just discard the big creatures discarded an ancient Silver Dragon or an ancient brass Dragon reanimate an extern and go to town ah man talk about Decks that we might build in the future I uh just I'm just in love all right I could I could probably spend the rest of the podcast talking about this one but we won't we won't Matt you've got one final example take the floor well my one final example is kind of a culmination of everything that we've seen over the past few years of just getting a whole bunch of different commanders different legendary permanence and legendary creatures and all that stuff so my pick is going to be Empress Galena so there's only 250 decks for Empress Galena and Joey your challenge talked about stealing people's stuff so why not put that effect into the command zone so as commanders get more and more powerful Emperor scalina decks get more and more powerful just by nature of stealing their commanders now granted yeah people don't always love it when you steal their commanders we've talked with this many times but because 80 of the creatures in the 99 are legendary creatures these days you get to steal pretty much whatever but also it does say a legendary permanent it does not have to be as Dana pointed out with his uh challenge stats a few weeks ago read the fine text it's not just legendary creatures if you want to steal somebody's um guy's cradle do you want to steal a planeswalker cool you can steal any legendary permanent for the low low Mana cost of two blue and tapping of briskelina so if you have ways to untap your creatures you can do this multiple times a turn so it's any legendary permanent and we've gotten so many legendary permanents whether it's artifacts you have all these legendary creatures and lands and just everything going on you can just steal a format full of targets this is just great so every time we get a new set you get 60 new targets for Empress Colina yeah that's just great that's wonderful so Amber scalina just it's forgotten about it hasn't been printed since Invasion but also it just gets better literally with every set so Matt I know that you were being facetious when you were like these days 80 of creatures and decks are legendary I know that that was just like an exaggeration but like we have absolutely we've done episodes in the past where we have noted the number of legendary permanents in Dex keeps going up and up each year so like yeah this is getting more powerful but also but also Matthew what about you I want to break your brain here real quick no you're talking about stealing legendary stuff right do you know the card leyline of Singularity I do I do if Leyland of Singularity is a new opening hand you can bid in the game with it and play yada yada uh it also is an enchantment that says all non-land permanents are legendary so Empress Kalina could just take anything 77 of Emperor scalina decks are already on to that idea they're hip to your gym Joseph um so so good job 77 of deck builders uh 33 get with the times oh man this this would be a very terrifying deck to go up against only 255 so far on the Eda Trek and um uh Matt if this goes up it's your fault I literally said during challenge of stats stop taking my stuff and what do you do I show I'm taking your stuff I'm exiling your graveyards I'm doing everything that you hate which means I'm probably on the right track yeah and this is a card you know we talked recently about um the the effect of reprints on prices too like this was a relatively expensive card for a long time because the only printing was an invasion um but there's a list printing now and a secret layer printing of it so it's I think the list first is under five dollars so this this also can be had for a pretty um reasonable price compared to what it once was yeah all right that's that's definitely good to note um again though Dana I'm gonna have to uh request stop encouraging people to take my stuff what did I just say okay that's fair that's fair dang well those were really cool Explorations I'm I'm way into a lot of these I can see why they are some of our favorite underplayed uh commanders but I guess before we actually close this episode out uh fellas do we have any other final thoughts that we want to share about these underplayed gems of Legends maybe not about these ones but like I think in general I mean we were all talking about how we're thinking about building these and taking ideas from one another I would love to hear from our listeners about some underplayed commanders they think should see more play and maybe specifically why like don't just say this is a cool commander tell us like how you would build it while you think an interesting unique Brew path would be um because I'm I'm always listening and open to new ideas and I think all of us are and maybe it's a way to get your ideas out there to other listeners so feel free to tweet at us or or send us a message somewhere about what you think you know would be a cool underplayed command to respond in the comments of the YouTube video down below um or whatever's best for you but yeah I'd like to hear some of these some of these ideas back from listeners yeah that's a really great idea it'll be yeah there's there's just again as we said there are so many Legends out there these days it's nice for some of these to get a little bit more time in the spotlight because there just are so many legendary creatures every single set and a lot of them are bangers and we just don't all have the ability to pay attention to every single one but again when we stop and we pause and we comb through a lot of these we find some terrific abilities including Matt's ability to steal my stuff which I'm gonna ask him one final time to stop doing but I understand I'm gonna tell you one final time no this is what happens when we let the Celestia player start playing blue it's um problem for me we become the things that we hate dogs and cats living together mass is an area mass hysteria all right but yeah like Dana said listeners we would love to hear from you about your favorite underplayed commanders especially any recent ones that have come out within this past year what things do you think aren't getting enough of the Limelight but totally deserve it with that though we'll call the episode to a close so fellas if our listeners want to get in touch with us where's it they can find us all Matt so you can find me on the twitters at mathmus55 that's m-a-t-h-i-m-u-s-55 and don't forget we are streaming over at twitch.tv edhrepcast every Wednesday evening we have guests on every single week it's a super fun time so make sure you tune in for all of that as well and Dana you can find me on the Twitter Dana roach you can hear me on the other podcasts cmdr Central and you can find all of us together at patreon.comcast and I'm Joey Schultz you can find me at Joseph M Schultz and you can find the cast at idiotretcast on Facebook and Twitter plus if you have a question for us you can contact us at edhrekcast gmail Dot Com or things go out once again to chase for assisting me with the post-production of the show you can find them online at Mana curves and listeners will be back at you next week with more data and insights but until then remember EDH wreck your deck before you wreck your deck [Music]

Channel: EDHRECast

Views: 68,350

Keywords: magic the gathering, commander, edh, edhrec, mtg

Id: QMiGs3e3L0w

Length: 53min 56sec (3236 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 16 2022