Unique Commanders | Unexpected Deck Builds | Magic the Gathering

[Music] hey everyone Mitch coming in for the CH SC studio with Eddie yes no offense Alec but Eddie is much better than you are at that it's just you know it is a learned skill right if someone points at you and you just say your name it's it it takes practice you know yeah there's like positive reinforcement early on it's like you had to like give me like here here's like a little candy for doing that reinforcement we're both like dog owners we know how that works yeah I I got Eddie treats right over here and and if Eddie's a good boy during the episode Eddie gets a get a Milky Way Milky Way is that I thought I was going to say Doritos for you oh yeah let's do that well on this episode we're not talking about Doritos hashtag not a sponsor what are we talking about Ed you should do that though get sponsored by Doritos Doritos shirt yeah and they send you all the flavors yes top five flavors go spicy nacho um they came out with this new one um that's like kind of a a smokey queso sort of thing that oneid cool ranch solid nacho cheese it's the classic um they had like a pineapple one that that's nah that's not for me that's like similar to like Hawaiian pizza you just don't put pineapple in yes you do you put pineapple on pizza right now okay we're going to talk about uh commanders that have like unique abilities for kind of like their archetype So like um we'll be talking about things that like you know is it is known for spell slinging we know that blue loves artifacts green loves you know land right no sometimes um yeah so we're going to be talking about commanders that kind of go off the beaten path and try to do something that their Brethren don't normally get to do 100% and uh see some interesting results of that kind of little Adventure they go on absolutely so just like there are unique flavors to Doritos they're also unique commanders in the idty too there we go look transition okay so what's the first one that we're talking about Eddie and this one bring up I believe yeah this is one that I added I actually just got back from uh magican Chicago and uh this was one of The Inspirations from that trip the last game uh I played against some great fellas and uh one of them had an a progenitor ooze deck spicy so it's monog green and it has storm written on it that is what monog green is all about always has been about you know um so normally storm is relegated to at least including blue sometimes red maybe black if you're getting a little spicy but almost never like green or white so a progenitor oo is two green green Green for a 2 two legendary creature ooze with as we talked about storm so whenever you cast a you copy it for each spell cast before it this turn um then copies become tokens because it's a permanent a progenitor ooze isn't legendary if it's a token so the original like actual card enters the battlefield as as usual and then you make a bunch of Clone cop Cy tokens um but those lose that legendary status so they don't get sacrificed to State based actions that makes sense otherwise if we didn't say that that would just be kind of disappointing for the most part yeah there's some weird things you could doat I suppose but that's not what it does very very disappointing for someone who didn't realize that and built a deck rounded yeah and then last line of text a enters the battlefield with a plus one plus one counter for each other ooze you control so that could be all the it will see all of the other aves entering the battlefield due to storm as well as any other incidental ooze tribal oo tokens that you've made up until that point so lots of tokens not lot of tokens lots of uh counters yes so those are very much up Green's alley um so with a you get to do some spicy things mostly if I'm being honest a little comboy so if you're looking more towards the Casual side you could totally just go ooze tribal because this will get stronger based on the number of ooes you control but the version I saw in Chicago that I was like yes this guy's on to something is uh slime Against Humanity a recent card from $3 for a common yeah yeah um so proxy it up folks you want to that's proba about $90 of your budget if you're if you're buying 30 of these I've also seen some people do and this is like completely personal preference but like you can have like one copy just for reference and then like sure like say you're in a monog green a deck you can say I have 30 mountains in the deck anytime I have a mountain let's pretend it's a slime Against Humanity cheaper yep um let's use your imagination too yeah so slime against humanity is two in a green for a sorcery that says create a z00 green ooze creature token with trample put X counters on it plus and plus and counters on it where X is two plus the total number of cards that you own in Exile in your graveyard that are oozes or named slime Against Humanity so very much oo tribal again and then a deck can have any number of cards named slime Against Humanity hence the $3 price that Mak sense um so yeah um not only is it a sorcery so you can like you know do some interesting things like you know um copy it with what is it twinning staff things like that um there's a few other artifacts then that can copy things on the stack but you can also just run 30 of them and get plenty um and monog green is very good at ramping so you could just hold on to a few of these and then ramp ramp ramp and then like do a whole bunch of these and then you know top it off with a and you'll get a reasonable amount of tokens and board presents and probably able to take someone out yep um so if you want to go like on the lower end casual totally but things get especially gnarly when you start adding in the more price com combo pie I saw some of the cards you include I'm like oh yep that's one oh yeah oh yeah uh so food chain classic it's monog find it says Exile a creature you control add X Mana of any one color where X is one plus the exiled creatures Mana value you spend this Mana only to cast creature spells so like you need a little bit to of storm count before this goes truly infinite with a because obviously Commander techs us two this only adds you know Mana Value Plus One um so if you've built up the storm count a bit then you truly can go infinite because when a is put under the stack you'll get all those a tokens and those tokens since their copies they have Mana value that is a copiable value for a so then you can sacrifice the token copies to food chain sacrifice the original to die you have you know 30 Mana you're good to cast a a few more times each time you cast that still count the storm yes each time you do that you increase the storm count by one so you get more and more AES blah blah blah you see where this is going yes math everyone loves math so then once you have INF creatures you can give them haste and and you know use various effects concordant Crossroads finale of Devastation there's lots of ways to do that or but then the other player casts fog and laughs at you that would be hilarious yeah I would I would applaud them for that um so there's also stuff like fexy and alter Ash noods alter of which like you sacrifice token copies um you can always filter a bunch of that ashnod's alter Mana through something like earn of godfire um so yeah a monog green storm just you know it was really you know your backup plan is I play a bunch of oozes and whack you in the face play something like biogenic ooze which is one that we could have mentioned earlier on the Casual side of things just makes a bunch of oozes the end step you put counters on all your oozes can activate an ability to put more ooes out yeah all fun things ooze and yeah again with sliming command becoming a card now like you just have like an auto ooze deck backup essentially AO oo h plus just 40 of these if I want to spend 120 or if you want to see it but yeah I mean definitely a commander that isn't all that threatening that you see kind of like out in the wild and you're just like it's like green doesn't want to do that what what okay fine like sure have your little ooze thing and all of a sudden like with a deck like that be like oh my gosh the potential I didn't even think about food chain with that but it's gross what is food chain these days price it's actually gotten reprinted so it's like expensive it's like15 dollar but it used to be like a $70 yeah that's one where I was just like is that Reserve list it's not no thankfully I mean thankfully or not I mean do we really want more food chains out there I may have picked one oh goodness for what I don't think you've seen that yet for what you don't have to tell me that's could be a surprise I'll give you I'll give you an any treat what flavor um so yeah but yeah I think you're right Mitch like this kind of goes for all of the decks we'll be talking about today but the saltiness Factor people see you know like uh vyn storm or you know all sorts of other like typical is it storm stuff and they like made like okay you did the thing congratulations all my eyes move on but when they see a storm they're like okay I don't really care that I lost this is new yeah this is something that unexpected takes some of the salt away and kind of just makes it a fun so if you want less salt get oozes they're probably like slugs you so if you put like salt onum use it would yeah yeah I would say so yeah I probably don't want to do that Mitch okay let me scroll down because I put these in the wrong order and I threw all mine at the very end so now it's just me trying to literally scroll down to try to find this while stalling and talking and here we go Aros Lagoon Mystic so this one is in salai which when it comes to its color identity it's it's kind of like what what would you say like ramp draw tutor control value I guess so I guess in the control aspect there is some of this to it but it is just a unique approach where this Commander let me just read it real quick a two4 turtle Shaman for four Mana insulti as long as it's tapped other permits enter Battlefield tapped as long as it's untapped other permits enter the battlefield untapped so basically uh whatever this is everything else is when it's coming into play and you can build this in somewhat of a politicky way which is something you really don't see in salai nearly ever usually salt is like no I get all the value you get none right so obviously you can build this one in a way where you're like okay I'm going to take the most advantage of this I built my deck around this and all of a sudden yeah I can control when L Kos is tapped or untap like you have something very simple like retreat to Coral Helm whenever Landers about for control choose one tap or untap to creature scry one so this one is just well it loves landfall decks and you're in salti so you obviously love landfall plenty of stuff to do there yep lots of things to do there so essentially you can utilize this to well tap down your B's creatures untap your own creatures or you just tap your own Aro so you're not selling it or sending it out into danger essentially and just say way to essentially say yeah you know what let's make sure you don't get any value or you might have some instant speed ways to get lands into play like a what I was say growth chamber what's the uh oh there's a few different spiral growth or gr spiral Spiral there's yep all those creatures that tap that put them into uh but essentially w to control when your commander is tapped or untapped of course there's other tapping effects you can utilize vehicles vehicles oh Vehicles work there you go you K Vehicles there you go driving around cars turt driving cars tur D they're so slow they just need a little help there you go kind of like uh what was it zootopia with the the car what's his name oh man I forget flash was it flash sure let me know in the comments below how wrong I am on that quite I don't know basically though so with this Commander the again the thing is you can make deals with players like hey do you want to speed things up on your turn a little bit maybe they have a land that's going to come into play untapped essentially or tapped essentially with like a a ramp spell again your ramp spells now have everything come into play untapped like a splend Reclamation which can be just absolutely massive especially we have fetch lands those kinds of things hey all land cards from your graveyard come back to the battlefield tapped normally but with this Commander it's like no no no that's a spicy card untapped yeah basically Amulet of vigor for your deck and of course is at a base level like simic growth chamber your your bounce lands your lands that would normally come to play tap your more utility style lands come to play untap they ramp you now that ramp you and they speed you up so much faster versus your opponents you are slowing them down basically a full turn by keeping your commander into play tapped so make deals politic yeah there's that kind of controlly aspect but in a very different way for salai and again one that players might not realize how powerful this Commander can be because it is something that's different it's not just your typical salai Commander absurd Tasker value yeah yeah no I love Aros I back when this uh I think it came out in Commander Legends right cuz I did like a boxing League where everyone got a box Commander Legends and built a yes no we built a we each got a box and then we built a whole commander deck out of that box and I picked Aros and he was super fun so can recommend um very spicy very spicy Commander yeah but yeah definitely I think something pretty unexpected for the most part when it comes to yeah how you might might expect the salty deck to go and again you could just Build It full kind of group hugg eish not group Huggy I guess but like political control more so because again you're going to have some times where it's tapped yeah no like it honestly like I don't know that this effect is very common in any color combination so you could have told me it was Jessica and I'd be like sure sure whatever yeah yeah like that effect could be Jessica that is kind of true that if it's something that's just so out there that you don't really see that on Commander at all like am Viger is colorless so like it's only really time we've really seen that blue seems to be like the TA un tappy matters color maybe but so yeah but when it comes to this you don't really think about hey bet he's a pretty unique Commander which is why I made the episode next up all right uh so this is one that I built and I'm hoping I'm clicking on the right one right now out of order there we go guys the shifting flame four blue red for a 55 legendary creature Sphinx wizard uh it has flying of course whenever you cast a spell put the cards in your hand on the bottom of your library in any order and then draw that many cards gross so Argin the shifting flame is the commander that you want to play if you're like I put 99 cards in here and I want to see every one of them you literally will if you will multiple times I don't like Singleton all that much so I really just want to see everything who needs a tutor when you can just go through your whole deck in one turn oh I just put this on the bottom of my deck well I guess I'll get back to it this turn yeah yeah so I've built this deck cuz um I had a wild hair and I wanted to build a unique Commander Y and I was like okay this is one of the most absurd ways to draw cards sure you're not getting true card Advantage because you're casting a spell just getting it out of your hand and then you're drawing your that many you know minus one Tech um so you of course you can play card Advantage spells which either keep you neutral or positive um but I knew of some cards and I had just disassembled a phoenix M deck and there's a card that's probably the the golden pig called psychic corrosion let see I oh there we go there we go two in a blue enchantment whenever you draw a card each opponent puts the top two cards of their Library into their graveyard wizard reprint this it's an uncommon please thank you it's $5 oh my gosh it is $5 I didn't know that yep um but yeah no so this basically says you know you're you're a few turns into the game probably turn five or six at this point you got your expensive Commander out so you need lots of ramp in the deck um so people maybe have like 80 cards in their deck on average at this point in the game so you just need to draw 40 cards since this Mills one you know just 40 just 40 cards oh yeah uh which is totally reasonable to do even on a budget yeah that's just what seven casts if you have a full grip six 42 um so there's super cheap can trips like opt brainstorm you know any of these sort of things there's a dozen or more of these types of effects in blue and red um there's of course redundant effects to pic corrosion uh such as Sphinx's tutelage not quite I mean it depends on the deck you're playing against if you're playing as a monocolor deck literally win you just with one activation of AR or trigger of Commander tarry's toage is another kind of backup effect for this yep um some cards that are important in my experience and one that I really want to note is T Fair's ageless Insight oh my gosh finally budget finally budget dollar I mean still it wasn't like absurdly budget but you yeah you can see immediately how ridiculous this card is if you would card except the first one you draw in each of your draw steps draw two cards instead so like this halves the amount of spells you need to cast if not even more because if you you know once you discard six and draw seven then you cast another spell discard you know that draw 14 draw 28 like I've played this deck and legitimately almost decked myself to the point where like I've I would recommend maybe considering a laboratory Maniac or other um effect that or if you want to be funny like obstinate familiar yes I I did I put obstinate familiar in the deck so janky it's so janky and where else do you get to play I don't think but it's it's it's like a one one lizard for a red and it's like you can choose not to draw a card right you just be like when would you do that here here is when you do that is when you would do that all right and I put a lot of other cards that we could talk about but um honestly the only other couple that I kind of want to mention that are pretty good U mind moil for an a red it's basically a substitute Argin in case it gets removed it's also a Mana cheaper in case you happen to draw it early uh whenever you cast a spell blah blah blah same thing as arent um some other finishers if you don't want to go the pure Mill route would be psychosis crawler it's a classic Commander card normally seen like Wheels decks M but um this is kind I mean it's kind of Wheels it's like it's self it's self whe yeah and then um there's some other Allstars like NIV M at Peron whenever you draw a card damage anywhere Locus God whenever you draw a card put a hasty insect out kind of functionally the same thing um and then there's some other stuff like tfairy temporal Pilgrim whenever you draw a card basically if it says whenever you draw a card it's pretty good in the deck yeah yeah just I fall search that yeah um so I I've never I played the deck a number of times and uh it's a little bit of a glass Cannon because arjin has six Mana the next if it gets removed then the next time it costs eight so you want to be ready to like if you're going to put arjin on the battlefield you want to be like ready to win the game MH um so in that way like it's a a bit comboy but which can be a bit difficult to do too sometimes because like you know what your first play is going to be but you're going to lose your hand so like you just hope you draw into something else that can help yeah which typically there's so many redundant effect you can do that no problem Dy is definitely very important in this one yeah um but like I never played a game and people were like oh man I lost to the m deck in is it like everyone loved playing against this de that's the only time I've played Mill and people were like excited about it well I like that's no offense to anyone out there that does not like to play against Mill like I never understood people having a problem with playing against Like a Phoenix deck like oh I got a lot of targeted I know I just don't get it it's like people don't like to see their own cards like in their graveyard it's like you weren't going to how do you know you were going to draw that card any like it was it's random on what you're getting it's random on what you're getting unless you're setting the top of your library and that player Mills that card you don't know what you're getting so like oh I would have got this and then that would have happened and I would have won would have could have show up who cares get milled trouble is they normally hit you in the face before you true doesn't win because yeah every else is like you Mil my cards everyone attack yeah darn you Phoenix player oh I what I needed to do I'm just realizing this years later what I needed to do is whenever I Mill someone I hand them a Doritos positive reinforc you get bring the Eddie treats with you yeah perfect get everyone's cards greasy yeah what that card do again I can't read it's too orange all right tooe so that's that's enough about Argin Mill I love the deck uh Mitch what's your next pick a really weird one and one that like I love when they explore I'm just say killing dualist I love when they explore spaces especially with uncommon commanders that we haven't gotten to before because again like I feel like Wizards has done a very very good job and also a very terrible job in my opinion with uncommon commanders where it's like literally just unplayable garbage or ones they're just like hey a copy of this other Commander but worse like just a strictly worse it's like no one's going to play that but when you get like hey like this isn't an overpowered effect but it is a unique different effect that we have not seen especially in these colors killing inas 22 human warlock with LifeLink and Menace who cares about those things I mean they might matter a little bit but I guess if you're like only Voltron you you can care a little bit can matter sure but uh Hey for just mana and all says spells you cast the target a creature cause two less to cast that is a huge effect in one that like you don't see anywhere and you especially do not see in orov colors so this you can kind of get into like a spell slingy type approach or like an auras type approach there's different things you can do with this and again it's any creature so creatures you don't control creatures you do control there's a lot of spicy things that you can do with this one and again it's just a different approach like orzo is typically like hey sacrifice things make tokens that's basically what orzo does death triggers you know ETB triggers that kind of stuff yeah no I I love Killian it was definitely one from strick Haven which seems like yesterday but it was actually years ago oh my gosh like three years ago at this point right yeah yeah it's been a while but yeah no I love it um kind of like combat trick tribal yeah um super fun yeah just the right amount of control and there it's it's one of those um effects to where Wizards of the Coast is always going to be printing this type of effect like every set Killian is going to get a new card to keep the deck fresh maybe improve it a little just SE the word Target and there you go yeah there's going to be so many things um so yeah I I love that Decks that tend to like be able to change over time it just for me it keeps them fresh keeps me like reaching for the deck and wanting to play because there's always something new that I haven't seen in while so 100% I mean cards like acrobatic maneuver not efficient at all a not not terrible card but one that is compared to over overcosted like compared to like a cloud shift it's just worse like you don't want to pay two extra Mana essentially to just you know blink a creep creature typically so ex creature control return the card of Battlefield aren't control draw a card notably Cloud shift does not say owner's control it says your control so if you happen to threaten a creature and then you Cloud you sealed forever ha anyways they messed up on that one maybe but now with the other ones mostly it's just this they thought of that no they like oh no uh because people are degenerates like me and play weired mean decks sometimes uh but anyways with this one though again this one draws a card so it's basically Cloud shift but drawing a card but two extra Mana does not equal card drawn typically right typically you don't have to pay that so with kilan this is a one Mana basically Cloud shift and essentially hey you get to draw a card as well so it's potentially good protection or it's actually just good well if you have an ETV value essentially you can do a lot of things with that yeah like you said if someone's trying to remove one of your creatures you can do that to blank the removal or if there's a giant a progenitor ooze coming after you you can block with Killian yep and then unless it has trample you can you know flicker it and then it'll be removed from combat no damage dealt you know and again it's just a canri you can kind of like turn these like three or two Mana cards out there into spicy canant trips which you typically don't have access to in these colors because like typically onean draw spell is usually in blue or maybe red yeah but basically like being able to get these kind of effects this kind of value you don't get and now you can do have some weird cards yeah and plus this is 15 cents like all those cards that everyone else is so focused on efficiency swords to plow shares pet Exile you know no colored colorless Mana because we just want the bare minimum to do the job Y and Killian's like I you know if you give me just a little bit of extra value for two colorless like sign me up 100% so you get to access a lot of cards that otherwise avoid abely yeah ones that aren't nearly as efficient absolutely like you said like utter end like it's a good card when it comes to being able to Target things but for Mana is a decent amount and so like it's outclass compared to other things like an assassin trophy just cost like two but yeah Exile Target online impr very very good but now for two Mana if this was if this was an actual card that was like Hey Warz of colors Exile Target permanent instant speed no downside for two Mana I I can't tell you an orzo deck that wouldn't utilize it essentially so yeah with Killian you get all the efficiencies of inefficient cards yeah yeah and also like of course you can go with oras too and like something like sages Riv Riv I never R Ry that I was wrong twice enchant creature for four Mana but again with killing it's just two ERS Battlefield draw a card for each or you can to attack to attach to a creature plus one one plus one for each AA you control attach to a creature again if you're going AAS my goodness the amount of value this has again for Just Two Mana for you you're drawing probably five plus cards giving a creature plus five plus five at least and it can just grow throughout the game too so again absurd amounts of value to be had for a commander that again thank you Wizards for actually putting some time and effort into uncommon commanders sometimes you don't do that all the time but yeah being able toan's a great one so yeah all right moving on next up moving on uh this is another one that people see across the table and are like yeah I'd play against that uh it's glunch the bestower one green white so we're in celesia for a legendary creature jellyfish 0 five it's a flyer um and it says at the beginning of your end step choose a player they get to put two plus one plus one counters on a creature they control choose a second player to draw a card and then choose a third player to create two treasure tokens really quick yeah why do they have like sea creatures just flying miscellaneously like jellyfish whales like why do they have just flying this is a D and D thing uh why you're going to have in the ocean like just magic MIT give them Island Walk instead that makes so much more sense no glun glunch is I think a um bring back Island Walk I would love to hear this in the comments but I think so there's a whole like creature class in D and called flumps so they're just floating creatures because like they wouldn't just be you wouldn't just like be walking around a d and d and then all of a sudden there's a jellyfish in this plain field that you're in yep because it has to be flying or just like flopping on the ground essentially is literally the reason that's only reason yep okay got it because of land combat that's basically it yeah because d anded man just you know continue sorry for that little side okay um so glunch can go a whole bunch of different directions um it can you know strictly be group hug like I'm going to give you resources some people just love to do that yeah totally cool if you want to do that that way alternatively it can just be really flexible because you can just choose whichever mode for you is most beneficial in that moment which is um true but you can also like build your deck around you getting one of those three more often than the others um and I think lunch opens up one deck in particular that celesia doesn't get too much access to uh and that is like treasure yeah de oh yeah um cuz mostly treasure we see it a lot in red um we Black's got decent amount too black got I mean every color is starting to get treasure which is kind of a common complaint actually but um most of the time you don't think Treasures as being a celesia thing if I saw this game I wouldn't be like yeah that's treasure travel right so you can you know like maybe give two plus one plus one counters to you know whoever's not that threatening you can give someone else a card draw who's like really far behind and then you can make the two Treasures cuz there's actually a lot of stuff in green and white that has treasure support but you just never really think of it that way yes um so I've got a few cards here I'm just going to go down the list real quick so dispatch um this is basically a better swords to plow shares very easily um in this deck so it's an instant for one white that says tap Target creature but if you have metal craft which is just three or more artifacts um your Exile like creature guess what Treasures artifacts great All That Glitters one and a white for an enchant Aura it says Enchanted creature gets plus one plus one for each artifact and or enchantment you control guess what when we have 20 Treasures very easy to do your commander is a one shot a flyer has evasion cuz it's a jellyfish and Jellyfish fly yeah of course what else would they do um there's another one snth steel Seeker it's been uh one that I've loved in a lot of decks one in a green uh for a human artificier Scout one two whenever an artifact notably not non-token artifact just whenever any artifact enters the battlefield under your control look at the top C of your library if it's a land card you may reveal it and put it in your hand if you don't put the card into your hand you may put it in your graveyard so you're like it's huge card Advantage this deck so even though you're maybe giving up the card draw off of clinch's ability like you're going to be hitting your land you're still just like oh I get like two lands off the top or I get one off the top plus I just get rid of this card I don't need put my graveyard yeah um there's one that's just coming out with Fallout uh the Brotherhood Verte bird it's a Flying Star 4 vehicle it has flying just like our friend clunch of course uh it's power is equal to the number of artifacts you control notably grunch uh glunch grunch glunch cannot crew it unless unless you put two counters on counters on there you go look at that synergy synergy there you go another one that people like were really hyped about but it's kind of falling down but it's really good in this deck monolog TX two in a white whenever an opponent cast their second spell each you created a treasure really fun art yeah uh tireless provisioner two in a green landfall whenever land enters the battle control creative food or a treasure you're going to choose treasure every how is this uncommon like it's a ridic ridiculous card my gosh Wizards evaluation on this is just absurd this should have cost I don't know two more Mana there are mythics that are 20 times worse than this card yeah um I'm going to skip a couple here but we're going to go to mandra Glory Dominus very simple if he would create one of more tokens just twice as many instead $36 so like You' play mandra on your unep glunch makes two Treasures turns into four you just paid for mandra gross free free spell free MRE um similar to monologue Tex let's have some more people throwing up coins that's smothering time of course everyone's favorite you had to have it here oh yeah uh another one from ion this one's pretty spicy uh thousand moons SM Al just brought this one up too yeah Al wants this one yeah me and Alec are pretty high on it um they have a lot of investment they've actually bought thousands of it in their stock puns they're hoping that just Skyrock and price my wife would kill me um uh 1,00 M smiy enters the battlefield make a gnome artifact creature token with its power and tness are equal to the number of artifacts or creatures you contr control um at the beginning your combat you can uh tap five untapped artifacts and or creatures you control to transform it it basically turns into a land that can tap for white and make more of those soldiers MH um this one's one of my favorites uh and it's very common in like osgear decks you know other artifact decks but we in cnia so we get to play it bronze Guardian for and white double strike W two other artifacts you control have W two and its power is equal to the number of artifacts you control so it's going to take someone out one shot yep yeah and the last three are maybe some of the most impactful that I have here despite the ridiculous cards we've already talked about Emissary green new card from the clue set don't forget some of those uh human advisor 33 whenever Emissary green attacks starting with you each player votes for profit or security you create a number of treasure tokens equal to twice the number of profit votes and put a number of plus and plus one counters on each creature you control equal to the number of security votes um yeah so you it's it's just pretty solid yeah and again if you actually just work with glunch that first time just get counters on this to start you can actually make it harder to block too and actually protect as well um boot Le stash this one also was talked about a lot when it first came out and I I don't think I evaluated that highly green has so many ways to do ridiculous man things but in this deck I think it really has a home um boot ler stash is five in a green for an artifact lands you control have tap to add a treasure token yep normally that's just like banking Mana which has been done before and is that valued but but when you have extra artifact synergies as well yeah this card goes nuts and we would be remiss if we didn't mention old one that I just cannot just oh every single time it comes out when I'm playing in Dragon it's like oh that's game over you get 40 Treasures for hitting me or forting everyone seven green green another D and D Card seven seven flyer whenever creature you control deals combat damage to player create that many treasure to gross even if it just said like when old naone did that that would be playable seven seven is fine that's great no every creature it's ridiculous ridiculous anyway like Mor of the story is celesia Treasures like people again you don't expect that you don't expect it um people don't love Treasures generally that's kind of overdone but when you do it in an unexpected way when it first came out like curse of opulence is that opulence I think veros I can't I think it's opulence is the is the treasure oh finally like we're giving other colors ways to ramp like red is finally getting ways to get Mana right and then it's like oh no what have we done oh no what have we done yeah and now we gave Green the two like best mass producers of treasures in Old Nao and Boer way they also have like doubling season those kind of oh yeah doubling season is ridiculous yeah yeah so I I really like it it's it's kind of a fun little twist on things and people see glunch and they're like oh glunch that's that's so nice 100% yeah all right Mitch next pick what do you got moving on rxa patient Professor I think this is a very funny commander in one that I do think okay so green is about power okay green is about power but typically it's like hey these days for Mana you get like an 88 with all this text on it that does all these things and and this is the exact opposite of that where it's like no no no no no let's simplify things okay vanilla best flavored Doritos too right don't give the I think they dorit like Johnson write that down write that down vanilla Doritos probably done it already before frosted Doritos frosted Doritos oh God okay so we've got a 44 barar Druid for two green green when enters the battlefield or taxs return to our creature carard with no abilities from your gra to your hand creatures you control no abilities get plus plus one you may have creatures you control no abilities assign their combo damage as though they weren't blocked so vanilla for those you don't know is just like the the term for creatures have no abilities basically just flavor text on the thing that is it you get your power you get your toughness exactly yeah and years and years and years ago we used to get vanilla creatures all the time and I think it was actually famously last year or two years ago we didn't have one we have like One Singular one yeah the last vanilla creature I believe was yeah yeah exactly we have had like again the number of text the amount of text that's on cards these days is going up and uh vanilla is going down but you know what Rox is like let's bring it back let's do some crazy things because with this one it's like okay I get card Advantage I mean from recursion essentially from getting things back out of your graveyard I get an Anthem effect and also I get basically Thorn Elemental effect for all my creatures where I can just assign my combat damage and be like it doesn't matter how big your army is I'm just going to say no you didn't block they take you out yeah and um even though they're has been a trend away from vanilla creatures in Magic sets in general notably like creature tokens token makers still make plenty of vanilla creatures you don't have to worry about like kind of that issue that one thing I said about killan where you're always going to get new cards you might think that rxa would be kind of relegated to never getting new cards but you just have to keep an eye out for green creature token makers that do not say like hey they also have trample just don't which I love that term is French vanilla if it's if it's otherwise vanilla but just has like one keyword it's called French by designers that was pretty I've heard that ter I remember what exactly apped to that's hilarious great but with this you get to play with complete garbage cards for like any other deck out there like leather back boff goodness gracious I mean okay I'm not trying to bash leatherback Bayo it's a cool card right four five or green green Green so not many decks can utilize it because it's very specific Mana cost and also like why would you it's four five with this Commander though I mean with that little pump as well it is a 56 for three Mana that you can assign com damage is not blocked also you have the potential to get back out of your graveyard and believe me there's ways to pretty to snowball pretty effectively once you get so many creatures out and some other Anthem effects out there which again with your anthems you have to be careful too that you're not like adding trample like overwhelming Stampede not good because it's like okay yeah I mean like still a good card but it's not like playing in a theme you're you'll kind of neuter some of the other effects exctly you want to just if you're trying to stick to the vanilla and really dedicate yourself to it you need to ensure that you're like okay all my pump effects are just generic pump effects that do not add any other keywords Essen which typically be worse but they're better with this one I mean also just say pump effect like Manda petroglyphs creatures no abilities get plus two plus two so now with that plus your commander you basically what's the dragons Roost is that the what's The Crucible fire whatever it is the cruci fire I said dragons Roost that's a different thing that's like PA there's only 26,000 cards p man a five five flying dragon I think is dragons Roost I think enchantment I you got me on that one anyways uh yeah this one though basically again your creatures get plus three plus three which again your vanilla creatures are already going to have an efficient power and toughness because they're vanilla and green the Bayo would with petroglyphs plus rxa would be a s eight for three Mana that is basically again Thorn Elemental yeah that like literally can just get damage through an opponents very quickly very effectively very efficiently also gigantasaurus you have like crazy things like this one where it's like a 1010 for five Mana because incredibly specific Mana value and again again it's vanilla it's not doing anything else yeah so yes you can do some pretty crazy things with rxa and in my opinion again pretty fun things that are unique to rxa because when are you ever utilizing vanilla creatures like basically never like gantosaurus sometimes in like very high power like syalala type deex like you care just about the power toughness but like but with this you're more so working on ones like leatherback bof se's no play at all I would love this deck is like an end of the night like my brain is fried want to think about anything I'm playing vanilla stuff yeah you don't have to worry about keywords you're just like put creature down put creature down swing with creature hit you with creature are you dead yet cool no no I swing with creature again I swing with creature you block don't care damage to you so yeah Ro I think is even for blockers in this one no there literally there's no math for Block I mean like yeah you got to get your creatures like out but that yeah you want them to survive you want them to survive but can get them back if you exactly you just get them back you swing again it's just yeah that's how it works okay next up um Maria scholar of antiquity one red and a green for an elf artificer she's 3 three uh she has two abilities one is to tap an untapped non-token artifact you control to add one green mana and the second ability is to tap two untapped non-token artifacts you can control to Exile the top card of your library you may play it this turn so um Mana generation a little bit of impulse draw uh it's basically like the urza we have at home saers sort of sort of thing um and I built it on a $30 budget I can send you the deck list later if you want Mitch but absolutely I've been really impressed and it's super fun and it's kind of like one of those rubbe Goldberg machines where like every turn is different because you're like okay do I need this for Mana do I need this like to hit my land drop or to do something else a lot of the things that I built into it also have uh Mana SNS so like abilities that you can sync into them in case you have a turn where you have a lot of excess Mana CU deck can make a lot of Mana um okay so for example uh and I also love that there's often in sets these kind of inefficient same for Killian like these inefficient artifacts that in this deck really shine I love commanders that kind of let those cards come through one of them being from Exelon dousing device one in red whenever dousing device or another artifact enter the battlefield under your control up to one target creature you control it's plus one plus o and gains haste until the end of the turn then transform dousing device if you control four or more artifacts which you will um and it transforms into a land that adds red or you can pay two in a red to tap it and until enough of turn Target creature gains haste and gets plus X Plus o where X is the number of artifacts you control but only as a sorcery um so I mean like having it as an artifact you can always tap it for green with Maria so like if you don't have that threshold met to transform it it's still Mana ramp on Two And still Mana Rock for two which is what the efficiency you're looking for typically right and um if you do meet that threshold then it turns into a land which is you know safe from like fand blast effects um plus you can easily threaten Commander lethal with Maria with that ability um and this deck loves cards like elsewhere flask uh it's just too generic when it enters Battlefield draw a card if you you see anything that looks like that it's good here literally um so similar to your Zyra deck in that it's like kind of an eggs deck if you want it to be eggs being you know something that you can sacrifice for Value a very cheap artifact um uh basically a lot of those also have a secondary effect that we don't care at all about so also has something else that it can do but I don't even know what uh golden egg just another example uh two and it replaces itself to draw a card and notably like even if these were creature artifacts um Maria's ability doesn't care about Summoning Sickness so like obviously golden egg doesn't care about Summoning Sickness since it's just an artifact but you can like tap them right away even if it is an artifact creature yeah just the clarification on that because it's artifacts it's part of the cost it's part of the cost it's not it's not like it's not giving them that ability right yep uh very similar to ur in that way yes uh some of the wind conditions in the deck one of my favorite is reckless fire Weaver it's one in a red whenever an artifact enters the battlefield under your control it deals one damage to each opponent there's a lot of different types of this effect like impact Tremors but still artifacts but for AR effect kissing Flame breather I think is on cast for non non creature spells um sarin steel Seeker one of the ones that I mentioned for glunch earlier again cares about AR effects entering the battlefield just Mak sure that you hit your land drops and here's a couple that I really love um battered Golem that thing is so janky and so good in this de it's so good so it's three Mana for a three2 artifact creature Das Golem so like we mentioned earlier even though it's an artifact creature and has suming sickness it can tap the same turn it enters with Maria's ability um batter Golem says it doesn't untap during untap step oh sh darn there's no way we can ever untap it whenever an artifact comes into play you may untap battered Golem uh keep in mind that also include your opponent's artifacts too yeah yeah um and so just picture this you got Maran play um you have battered Golem and play you play elsewhere flask yep um you tap batter Golem for a green float a green play elsewhere flask for one Mana using the floating green and and one other it enters the battlefield enters the battlefield untaps b Golem draw a card yeah basically like all these eggs that can trip you know do the card draw thing cost half as much it just it just goes bur like it just Taps a whole lot um and like I mentioned this deck has a few Mana SNS I don't uh I have one of them later um on here but that you can syn a whole bunch of Mana into and just go nuts so this is definitely one of those in a similar vein for one more Mana you get traxos Scourge of K what a janky Commander yeah I love this one I I had this one at a pre-release and really cool art I think you just see like I've not seen this art before uh trample 77 for four so that's a good rate by itself uh really good blocker it enters the battlefield tapped and doesn't untap during your untap St darn darn it whenever you cast a historic spell untap it artifacts legendaries and sagas are historic um so same thing just goes bur um santh greatworm this is a card that when it got spoiled I was like I want a home for this but I had no deck for it and then I started Brewing this deck and I'm like wait a second you're ruining this because the my exor might have this one too it's so good you've ruined it Eddie we're restarting the episode um so it's a seven six uh does this not have oh it's a worm I always thought this was like flying cuz it looks like a dragon no it's not a jellyfish it's just a worm it's just a worm have fly does F this isn't in DND D um so four green red for a 76 trample worm whenever a land enters the battlefield create a tapped Power Stone token doesn't say whenever a land under your control opponents as well and any lands players like to play lands and ramp lands and fetch lands and yeah and so Power Stone tokens um it's an artifact it is a token so you can't tap it to Maria's abilities which is a bit of a downside and Maria um but uh its only restriction is that it can't be spent to cast a non- artifact spell you have a ton of artifacts number one but it also doesn't say that you can't use it for activated abilities um so you can totally use that colorless Mana for any activated abilities you have such as the last card we're going to talk about Hite igniter such a fun I love this one number one the art is metal oh yeah um five red red for a five5 flying haste dragon unlike our worm friend um one and a red activated ability Hellkite igniter gets plus X Plus o until the end of the turn where X is the number of artifacts you control this thing just it has haste yeah so unless someone has instant speed removal someone's going to die as soon as this comes or they have a flying blocker but there's always one player that have a flying block and they're like oh no it's me oh no it's me oh no it's me so yeah hellc igner another great finisher I've just loved this Maria deck that I put together it's so fun especially even on a budget it really can can go fast well and again yeah just GRL you do not think artifacts you do not think artifacts at all and that's why they can make a command like this in GRL because I mean in blue it's already urza but like also urza is just brokenly right and people don't see this the same way they see urza in my experience they're like oh that's neat but it doesn't have like urza is a lightning rod like people see urza an alarm Bell you will be the first person taken out unless the other person has like Crick son H Mo or the other person has you know like uh corval or the other person has K who would play K who plays kenon anyways all right that's all I have to say about Mario super fun Commander spicy pick yeah all right I also have a somewhat similar Commander to that one uh in gr as well spella I shaper spella a two4 troll Warrior legendary snow creature for three Mana in GRL pay three tap create a color snow artifact token named icy manalith with tap at one man of any color basically just make a Mana Rock yep six in gral colors tap look the top four cards your library you may cast a spell from among them up paying its Mana cost with the rest Bott your library random order this a commander that again you do not think artifacts when you think rule I guess now you start should you should because you should after this episode after this episode in these two commanders that represent this essentially this is Commander that goes about in a different way whereas Mary is like hey utilize these artifacts to great effect again either temporary card advantage or Mana this is like no no no no I will make you the artifacts that give you the Mana which typically again with grle you're like no no no no focus on land ramp because if you have green you're almost always utilizing lands as your ramp source with this let like no no no let's play around with artifacts let's do some crazy things and let's get some random things off the top Library too let's do like a little urza spin essentially and just get some random value why not so with this kind of a commander and this is one that you've actually pointed out before to me Sting the glinting dagger I did not realize that was less than a dollar I kind of like I ROP this card off as one that was going to be more than a dollar automatically so I was like I'm not going to be able to use this but my goodness when you're like no no no it's like 90 cents is I was like what yeah we just no one tell the cranco mob boss players this card exists that's very true that'll keep it under and save us a lot of pain and there's a lot of crankle players out there that're probably watching right now I I would say don't pick it up you probably should you proba should Sting the glinting dagger uh two cost equipment equip two plus one plus one haste that's nice already be to activate right away at beginning of each combat not just your own each combat untap Qui creature so untap four times on each trip around the table and creatur First Strike as long as it's blocked or blocking a goblin orc that doesn't really come into handy come in handy too often but uh the rest of good enough apparently not trolls which are somewhat similar but that's SP as a troll but anyways whatever being able to untap your commander on each turn is absurd especially when your commander has an ability that gives you more Mana so basically what you need to do is just activate your commander cool I got another band Rock awesome next turn untap activate my commander every single time this I mean seedb M obviously is a very good one thing for too it's very expensive though but also you can kind of Stack onto that and get extra value out of something like you know Agatha the vile cauldron mhm I love this card it's so spicy activated abilities of creatures you control cost X less to activate where X zagi as power fact can't reduce the cost less than one Mana you can also pay and give other creatur control plus one trans one turn this is one that even if it's at one if you got no other way to pump this that is fine reducing the cost down to just two Mana to make a Mana rock is absurdly more effective so yeah just be able to find these like little efficiencies in there is great and if not yeah you still have a lot of Mana rocks that you're making you a lot of untab you're going to store up so many Mana rocks that you're creating more Mana rocks with and you can just get to a crucial point where you just have so so much Mana mhm yeah and I mean there's tons of hay makers in green and red that you can use as well to like finish the game all that Mana or you can just it syn it into spella I mean why would you finish the game though when you're having so much fun right yeah like if you're having a good time just keep it going making my little snowman over here out of man uh sth greatworm already mentioned by you Eddie stole my thunder on this one but yeah whenever L is about fi create tap powerst token so again maybe even if you aren't focusing on land rep maybe you have someone there too your opponents probably are you're also in you know greens so you got ways to get lands back that kind of stuff but mostly again just getting free Power Stone tokens that's great and you can utilize these of course for Spell's abilities which are incredible so you just building up this resource of power stones and again like I said utilizing cards like Hellcat igniter being able to finish off the game in those ways because finally I guess you can end the game put your you can if you want but yeah being able to utilize artifacts in a different way you typically don't see that in GRL so I just I like commanders like this where it's like you know what let's do something completely different outside of this color identities typical yeah wait it's really fun awesome all right last one I think Eddie right last one yep uh and it's a doozy it is a doozy so this is one that Alec actually kind of uh pioneered and built and he disassembled it because it was way stronger than he wanted it to be and Alec is a gentleman and didn't want to Pub stomp us all the um so rales Apex hybrid 2 green green blue for a 4 five legendary creature human mutant it has flamp um when Roes Apex hybrid enters the battlefield put two plus and plus1 counters on another Target creature you control sometimes relevant mostly not mostly what you care about is that last part yeah when rales dies proliferate then proliferate again so Roes came out in an era before the commander death rule changed um so it used to be that if your commander died there was a replacement effect that just put it to the command zone so it didn't actually trigger death trigger which is very confusing especially for new players right so cards like skull clamp anything that had like you know death trigger like saasa decks um you know they have a lot of death trigger matters things so um alenda the DUS grow didn't work at all unless you actively put your commander in the graveyard which typically you don't want to do especially and I guess there's like return permanent cards from your graveyard to your hand things inen there an extra Loop that you have to care about yeah you don't want to do that no generally speaking you don't um but then a couple years after roales was printed they changed the commander death Rule and some people cared but no one really went back I mean some people certainly but not very many people went back and were like this Ro guy except for Alec Alec did think about that and that's what brings us here today um Alec built um another off the beaten path deck so again a unique build of ples Walkers and I know you love Plaines Walkers they're my favorite thing I left magic before they existed I came back and I was like what are these things with all this text on them that players like to take their time when they're thank God you didn't come back in 20123 cuz well I've got three options here and three options here and five options here flips over to another side over side and this turn's going to take 20 minutes and I'm not even storming right yeah and so that's Bas Alec doesn't have this deck anymore because it did so so much done okay so for example this deck basically aims to get roalesk out maybe have a couple Plaines Walkers or maybe plus one plus1 counters or other counters matter sort of things that you'd expect and then clones Roes through a variety of means um you generally want to keep the original out and let the Clones die to the legend rule m since the rules changed you do get those death triggers um I mean you would have in the old world as well but you wouldn't have gotten the original Roes if it was removed um but anyway then you proliferate and proliferate again and you can basically ultimate most of your Plaines Walkers the turn they come out 100% um it's like build drone doubling season yeah it's build your own doubling season plus you can just put doubling season in the deck green that um there's a whole bunch of other kind of redundancy effects so blade of s can go under RS gives gives a myriad so you get generally three copies of RS so that's six proliferate trying to find this one what man it's very top very top oh it's the very top what why is that the very top cuz it's only two oh it's only two I was thinking of uh was I think oh you're thinking of Helm the H hel no we want our future to die we don't want it the cost is four there go cost is a bit steep there go um fantasmal image is just two to get another clone effect yep croaking counterpart you can get two for one off that one cuz it has flashback so great notably Ros is not a frog he's he's a nonf frog creature um let's see what else we got Mirror Image another cheap variant on that effect we got fexi metamorph the the grand of them all right of replication that'll make five copies which will then proliferate 10 times unless you have something spicy spicy like the new teal in quy Dominus mhm if you would proliferate proliferate twice instead so you know then you get 20 times so that's a a lot of indestructible counters on this and like plus if you have like tfairy master of timeout then you just get to take two extra turns after this one you're going you're going to win you're just going to get turn after turn after turn and people are going to scoop it up um there's all sorts of other spicy things you can get that put counters on it like Lux Cannon just turns into a machine gun Canon oh my gosh I wish that one was when I was building my charge counters I was like why is this above a dollar right who is using this barely just barely uh other fun things with counters crystallin crawler you can basically go Mana positive in a lot of cases uh ieron Gauntlet gets to basically make anything a tfairy for the if they have like five plan you just scoop because literally you just you can't get around them winning with this yeah no for sure um as for told is always a spicy oneic you just get one counter on it and then it's only 22 cents now it's super cheap yeah great yeah they've changed I think it was reprinted in Doctor Who so yeah uh um was GTE that you just have to hit once and then you can start like putting negative one negative one on creatures and just control the board way more than it's bam monor right I have no idea uh yeah there's just so much spicy stuff that you can do with Roes um you can put skull clamp in here because it now has death triggers aori stalker of sphere is in the list here so that says if you do um if you whenever you proliferate you can draw a card that's the I'm sorry but I'm trying to keep up with Eddie on this I'm I'm trying to go fast I know it's a long episode it is blame Eddy I can I can take it um but yeah moral of the story is roales Apex hybrid if um you are looking for an offbeat Plaines walker build and you understand what being a plaines Walker deck entails like give it a try like ATT tracks a you get to proliferate at the end of the turn that's tame once tame exactly I say no I say we proliferate 10 times in a turn I say we do some absurd things ultimate Plaines Walkers right away and then well actually that's the thing that that would speed up the game because ultimates some ultimat many ultimates end the game versus some ples Walker decks are like no value over time wipe the board value over time wipe the board decision we don't want any of that no no no no no no your decision is Ultimate win yes yeah so Roes plains walkers and simic I mean I'm a simic player at heart but even I have what what you play simic I did not know well I knocked something over anyway so there's our list of course there are tons of commanders that are pretty unique in what they do um whether it's their color identity whether it's just an effect that doesn't exist anywhere else so this is only scratching the surface um I'd love to see what you guys said down in the comments 100% any spicy Decks that you brw that you played against or spicy Doritos that Eddie should try y yep yep I take those for sure um we should have like a patreon tier to like just yeah just I'll I'll track my weight over time Eddie treat uh yeah that's thanks for indulging my my podcast idea here that's great that's great yeah I like talking about stuff like this uh yeah so let us know in the comments below what your favorite unique commanders are let us know if some of these you don't think are unique at all we're completely off base and that's a fun conversation to have too let us know what your favorite you know flavor Doritos is if you like Doritos there we should put a poll out yeah and also pineapple on Pizza yes or no I'm a yes Eddie's a no let's get that debate going on we really need that that's actually the main debate that should be happening in every magic chat regardless thanks again Eddie for joining of course and of course as always thanks again and blame Ed in the comments below and have a good one this show in episodes like this one are possible thanks to viewers like you if you're looking for an easy way to help support this show make sure that you like share and subscribe also hit that Bell notification icon so you don't miss any new episodes you can also go check out our playmats and other merchandise atth commanders quarters.com we also have a ton of brand new t-shirt designs in stock so make sure you check out those as well another easy way to support this show is with our TCG player affiliate links so whether you're buying a deck or individual cards you can use this General link right here or one in the description and the final way that you can support this show is by supporting us directly by becoming a patron there are many benefits to being a patron and I truly couldn't do this without all their [Music] support [Music] oh [Music] n

Channel: The Commander's Quarters

Views: 77,404

Keywords: commander, mtg commander, edh commander, commander decks, mtg, magic the gathering, edh, commander edh, commander deck building, unique commander, unique edh, powerful edh, powerful commander, underrated commander, underrated edh, unique commander deck, unique edh deck, unexpected commander, unexpected edh

Id: NRO4nOfg1pM

Length: 56min 43sec (3403 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 06 2024