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Underestimation

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I was originally going to call this article “The Untuckables,” and it’s a good thing I Googled to make sure I didn’t write that article already because I totally did last March. That means it’s been almost a year since the new tuck rule, and the Universe didn’t collapse in on itself like some people may have thought. Other unpopular and popular rules changes have been made since then, and when you view the rules changes on a cosmic scale, our problems are pretty insignificant. The new tuck rule, in particular, has been such a mild and intuitive change that people did about ninety-nine percent of their complaining before it went into effect since it’s mostly upside.

Intet, the Dreamer
Almost a year later, why was I inspired to write about the tuck rule again in lieu of something related to a newer rules change, a spoiled card from Shadows over Innistrad, or a popular commander on EDHREC? Well, it’s funny I should pretend you should ask that. You see, I wasn’t actually sure what to write about since the list of popular commanders on EDHREC right now wasn’t wowing me. It got me thinking about the third commander in a lot of the original Commander sealed product. Everyone wants to build Kaalia of the Vast and Tariel, Reckoner of Souls, but who cares about Oros, the Avenger? Animar, Soul of Elements and Riku of Two Reflections are enormously popular, but everyone was basically sick of Intet, the Dreamer before she was announced in that set. Sure, I have a lot of friends with cool Intet decks, but I associate them with the likes of The Command Zone’s Josh Lee Kwai who would probably make his Intet deck five colors and Brainstorm Brewery’s Jason Rice (of “Unified Theory of Commander” fame) who actually made a pretty tight Intet Dragonstorm deck. Similarly, everyone is excited about Karador, Ghost Chieftain and Ghave, Guru of Spores, but who is excited about Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter? Moreover, who is excited about Skullbriar, the Walking Grave when The Mimeoplasm exists? Who indeed?

I am.

Skullbriar is a creature I basically forgot existed forever and rediscovered recently. Skullbriar requires you to be very aggressive, which not everyone likes. It also gets pantsed by bounce and tuck effects. Somehow, the tuck rule changing and allowing you to stash Skullbriar back in the command zone with all of his counters still on him if someone tries to Chaos Warp or Hallowed Burial him escaped my attention. Skullbriar also seems to have escaped deck-builders’ attention for the most part. He doesn’t show up in any of the “most-built” lists on the sites I check. And why not? He seems to be the perfect 75% commander—allowing us to play strong but durdly cards like Increasing Savagery and Corpsejack Menace. It isn’t very easy to scale your deck to the power level of your opponents’ decks, but it allows you to run a ton of Wrath of God effects while still being very aggressive with a big beater and being able to control the tempo of the game with a lot of board wipes, and being able to threaten lethal means the deck is surprisingly political. You can even slap an Assault Suit on him and laugh like a Banshee while your opponents grow your monster commander for you. Cyclonic Rift sure pulls your pants down, but what doesn't Cyclonic Rift do that to?

I’m glad I was thinking about overlooked commanders and restumbled upon Skullbriar. Sure, it would have been timelier to talk about this card and how it improved in light of the new tuck rules, but even the rules change didn’t make Skullbriar more popular, and I think we can work with that. It’s rare for a commander no one encounters that often to suffer from the Rafiq Problem too badly, which makes Skullbriar a decent choice for the kind of unknown meta in which we play our 75% decks. Plus, who doesn’t love an underdog? Enough preamble—let’s look at the deck already.

Skullbriar the Untuckable ? Commander | Jason Alt

Momentous Fall
I am not going to lie—I love Assault Suit in this build so much I almost jammed a tutor or two in here to find it more often. Assault Suit is perfect for a commander like Skullbriar—always beating faces, gaining counters, growing bigger, and sticking around. He can’t be made to attack you, which is a lot of fun. Zurgo Helmsmasher may be the best Assault Suit commander, but I can’t not love it in this pile. I didn’t want to load up on too many Equipment since I like the idea of Whispersilk Cloak making your commander a real menace. I think there is room for a Strata Scythe or Sword of the Animist or some junk in here.

The more I looked at cards that would be sweet or taking advantage of your ability to throw your commander in the command zone rather than the ’yard and keep his counters, cards like Momentous Fall and Greater Good really stuck out. Phyrexian Arena seems to be a must-have in this deck, but I really like the idea of drawing infinite cards with a huge commander then jamming him right back out there. Saccing to Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord seems saucy as well, and it’s one of my favorite ways to win the game.

I put a lot more board wipes than I normally would, and I tried to avoid having to run Damnation since it’s expensive (until it’s reprinted in Eternal Masters, right?), but Crux of Fate is a fine replacement. Run what you want—Mutilate, Decree of Pain, Life's Finale—I find, in Commander, paying extra mana and gaining a huge benefit is better than having to play Damnation on curve. Who does more than durdle in the first four turns in Commander, anyway? I am not a big fan of Damnation, but smoke ’em if you got ’em I suppose. I’m not here to tell you how to live your life, I’m just offering alternatives. There are a ton of Wrath effects that aren’t Damnation, and running a few of them seems like value since you can replay your commander and he’s immediately a threat again.

Primal Vigor
The usual suspects are here: your Primal Vigor, your Corpsejack Menace, your Drana, Liberator of Malakir. We’re all-in on doing counter shenanigans, so the deck has a lot of cards baked in. I tried to put a bit of a 75% spin on a standard list, but it really involved me eschewing stock cards rather than adding anything new. I wouldn’t mind an Enslave or something in here to help scale to opponents’ power levels, but I at least managed to add a Mimic Vat, and that’s better than nothing. Nonblue decks traditionally offer few ways to swipe opponents’ dudes, and we’re okay with that as long as we stick to our build path, don’t jam tutors we don’t need to run, and generally just don’t menace the entire table, provoking them into dogpiling us. Having a relatively innocuous commander that has hidden potential seems to be a very 75% way to deal with an unknown metagame—Skullbriar seems to be an inverse Rafiq of the Many in some ways. Sure, they expect you to do what you’re going to do, but they probably don’t anticipate how arduous it will be to deal with your commander or how explosive he can be until it’s too late. Do League of Legends references go over in this series? Skullbriar is kind of like Talon. No one expects much until he or she is being one-shotted, but by then, it’s too late—you’ve already won. As a Talon player, the ability to sneak in under the radar and burst someone for 21 really appeals to me. But whom do you do this to? Let the table politics decide, or throw an Assault Suit on there and spin the crazy wheel of chaos. Either way, Skullbriar is going to be formidable, and that’s what we’re looking for.

What do we think? Is Skullbriar not as underestimated as I’m estimating? Am I overestimating how much he’s underestimated? Can you back that up or are you just estimating? Could you be overestimating how much I’m overestimating how much he’s underestimated? Leave me some love in the comments section or I’m going to start putting deliberate errors in here just to give us all something to talk about. Do you have Skullbriar in your meta? How does it do? How did I do? Do you want to build this, and what cards did I miss that you’d include? Who’s your favorite League of Legends champ? Let’s get a conversation started. Until next week!


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