Here's a set filled with downshifts, likely to alter the landscape of the format forever! Commander Masters released on August 4 and includes many cards as commons for the first time. Shifts in the metagame are to be expected. Let's explore builds and see how and where the new cards fit in!
Number Four: White-Blue Familiars
and were downshifted to common, and they seem to fit perfectly into Familiars' game plan. It's a complex deck that plays as a classic White-Blue Control with a few infinite combos. I went into more detail in this article, but long story short: You use to discount your blue spells, employ the classic control kit of and along with value creatures like and , and establish late-game inevitability through and .
The Mystic has a relevant body, in particular surviving or a with , and can amass a squadron to block everything from the usual Faeries to the fatties of the format, buying time to swing the game into your favor. The tokens also fuel , a powerful card that nevertheless was recently seen struggling to earn its keep. Then there's indirect synergy with as both of these creatures care about casting spells and give you reason to run even more low-cost instants and sorceries, like . Finally, by running the Mystic you create another kill as you can generate infinite tokens by an Island and an Archaeomancer with two Sunscape Familiars in play.
Generous Gift is an answer to any permanent in exchange for a 3/3 Elephant token, which looks too good to ignore. The deck normally runs to deal with things like or a , but now you can turn that slot over to the Gift. With Faithful and Mystic around you barely need to talk about the Elephant in the room, and if things go bad, you always have .
If these downshifts had come a year or two ago, I'd rank the deck higher. But currently they seem to give a decent improvement to an already established strategy without stirring the meta too much. Thus it gets fourth place.
White-Blue Familiars
Main Deck
Sideboard
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1
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Number Three: Pinger Storm with Guttersnipe
Pinger Storm is an old deck that revolved around damage triggers from cards like and . To fuel these you'd run and spells such as and as well as tons of card draw, from to .
It was once the best deck of the format due to the insane card advantage provided by . Alas, the deck died with the card's banning. The remaining ways to generate card advantage weren't good enough to push for lethal: You would either brick midcombo or just lose the pinger creatures and not have enough resources to restart the combo.
The winds seem to be changing, however, with the downshift of . Instead of resilience through card draw the Goblin will march us to victory by being a better source of damage. A reasonable trade as we now get twice the damage, needing half the cards. You still have to be careful about losing your pinger, so things like are important for redundancy.
Another important card is , which is going to be equal or better than the majority of times and can be brought back by Unearth too. It also shares a creature type with Guttersnipe so we can add a to tutor them all, an idea found by the player Kampo. Sadly the Ritual Goblin doesn't exist on Magic Online, where we will need to swap it for the Song. If that is your reality, I suggest tweaking some slots like removing the Matron and giving less weight to reanimation spells postboard.
There is a lot of potential and a lot of finetuning still needed to reach the optimal build. Maybe one should go Grixis and play or the also recently downshifted , something the player saidin.raken is testing right now. As things aren't obvious yet and changes may not stick, I gave this deck the bronze medal.
Pinger Storm
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Sideboard
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2
Number Two: Affinity
Wizards filled the set with downshifts for all sorts of Affinity builds, foremost and . The first is catching some attention, but the deck already has so many draw options that one wonders how to fit it in. The gold lies with the Aura, which is similar to , a banned card, even if the enchantment has the fundamental weakness of not being able to reattach itself to other creatures and can open you up to two-for-one trades.
At first I considered a Jeskai build trying to clear the board. After some testing I'm leaning toward Esper, but maybe both versions can coexist, and at this point we might even explore something else entirely. Jeskai takes advantage of removal like and and has a wrath in . You also get postboard to play a better control game. With Esper, on the other hand, you keep the best draw of the format, , and one of the best artifacts, , as well as a broader removal in . You can stick to Grixis and try to cast All That Glitters via the Treasure from Deadly Dispute, or a , but will this be good enough?
I decided to try something in white, blue, and black to maximize the new enchantment. To that end I included to give the enchanted creature evasion, for the protection, and . The rest is the usual Affinity fare, without the red removal part as we plan to present the stronger beatdown. If that plan fails, we can always pivot, especially postboard, take advantage of and as well as , gaining life instead of removing creatures.
There is only one in this build, even though animating an indestructible land is great and later using All That Glitters on it would grow our own Marit Lage. But the format has plenty of bounce effects, from to , and the steep cost of Kenku makes me want to run no more than one.
After sideboarding we get even more protection spells in and , which also doubles as insurance against the usual hate. Unfortunately there's no for us, so the mirrors can become a problem, but the whole plan hinges on the sheer raw power of , and I believe that may be enough.
Esper Affinity
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Number One: Blue-Black Terror
is the twin monster to pair with to wreak havoc across Pauper's seven seas. The first order of business for the deck is to fill the graveyard with things like , , while holding some interaction in , , and . After you amass some cards in the graveyard, you get to discount your threats and cast them for as little as one mana. I explored the deck in greater detail in another article.
So far the deck was using eight creatures, a set of Terrors and another of , which creates problems not just because it could take a while to find those creatures, but worse, you could find yourself having to deploy an Angler too early, robbing your graveyard of instant and sorceries and making it harder to cast Terrors. The new Serpent wonderfully solves all these issues, albeit at a permanent double-blue cost. It enables ridiculously aggressive draws that currently are only possible when you get multiple Terrors. Unfortunately it isn't a black creature so it will suffer under opposing Snuff Outs, but can help—or simply having more creatures. Sometimes the best way to tackle a problem is not to go around but through.
Because of the extra layer of redundancy and solving the grave tension of the Gurmag-versus-Terror love-hate relationship dynamic, I think will be Commander Masters' best addition to the format. It should put Blue-Black Terror in an even better spot, although it may be time to call the deck Blue-Black Serpents or Sea Monsters now.
Blue-Black Terror
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Sideboard
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10
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1
Honorable Mentions
Bogles with All That Glitters
is a slightly more costly . The deck already has plenty of pseudo-evasion with and , so it makes sense to stick the new Aura into a build instead of weaker cards such as or or to swap out some copies of . Frankly I'm not too eager to play this deck as long as Black Gardens remains popular and we see an influx of and and similar whenever Auras are on the upswing.
The deck will still be a powerhouse, and there is a real improvement. But I'd argue the bigger factor is whether the hate tones down and you can punish less prepared builds. For that it deserves just an honorable mention.
Petal Festival with Vizier of Tumbling Sands
An uncounterable untap effect with a draw attached fits perfectly into Petal Festival, Pauper's equivalent to Legacy's Twiddlestorm and Pioneer's Lotus Field. In Pauper the deck revolves around a enchanted with a couple of allowing to generate an outrageous amount of mana to be spent on .
is an addition one could explore together with . This might lead to something if it weren't for a meta so punishing to decks based on lands, with Ponza and Burn packing such popular choices.
One-Land Spy with Dread Return
This iconic reanimate effect, preliminarily banned in Modern, got downshifted to common! Everyone is already wondering how to break it, but Pauper lacks the usual enablers, for example and , so maybe the card isn't going to give trouble.
There is a fringe strategy where may work well: One-Land Spy, which is named for and uses to mill the library and win from there. However, this just provides another route to close the game after the combo, not really a huge improvement to the combo itself. If you want to see a full breakdown of the potential of the card in this deck, check out this video by Raptor56.
Some further potential in graveyard shells, especially in black and green, exists. Other downshifts, like and can aid that plan, but I fail to find a good way to mesh them all together into a cohesive, competitive build.
Opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, not of Cardmarket.
