It’s already mid-April, and we still have no idea what is going to be in Commander (2016 Edition) this fall. Commander product has covered the three-color combinations from Khans of Tarkir block, the three-color combinations from Shards of Alara block, one-color decks, and, most recently, two-color enemy combinations. What’s left? Well, allied two-color decks are, for starters, which seems to be the most likely theme for Commander (2016 Edition). They also have never done five-color decks or four-color decks. While it seems pretty easy to see why they haven’t done five-color decks (do they do just one deck or do they make five distinct ones, giving us little variance between decks and between five and fifteen new five-color legendary creatures?), it is less obvious why they haven’t attempted four-color decks.

Essentially, the color wheel is useless for determining what a four-color commander or spell “feels” like because all we know is what it doesn’t do. It’s almost akin to stapling Brilliant Ultimatum onto Clarion Ultimatum and saying, “When this spell resolves, don’t destroy any of your opponents’ artifacts or lands, that’s for sure.” I’m sure they’ll figure it out, but it’s a bit tricky, and that’s why they’re waiting to tackle it—it’s much trickier than saying, “This B/G deck should probably deal with the graveyard, right?” And that isn’t an oversimplification of the hard work they put into designing Commander (2015 Edition), but it does highlight how having a clear idea of what you need to do going into it leaves you a lot of time and energy free to be creative. I feel that Commander (2016 Edition) will be pretty similar, with W/U doing Azorius stuff, and so on.

Having to wait (I’m speculating here, but I also feel that my argument is supported historically) until 2017 at minimum feels bad for a lot of people because a lot of us really want a four-colored commander and, barring that, we want a cool playgroup that will let us use Nephilim as our commander. I already had a ton of fun building a mono-red Ink-Treader Nephilim deck—imagine how much fun that Nephilim would be in a deck with Lightning Helix, or even something like Riding the Dilu Horse. We’re never going to see errata that makes the Nephilim eligible to be commanders, so we’re stuck either building the deck in case we encounter a durdle playgroup that wants to experiment with ignoring certain rules strategically or we’re stuck building around a Nephilim and having Child of Alara or Reaper King be our placeholder commander, making it difficult to play a deck that’s built around a creature we have to tutor for.

How would we go about building this deck? Well, since some playgroups are pretty permissive, a few people have drafts of their decks already, and we can see what sort of fun times they’re having. However, we quickly run into issues. First of all, how much do we keep of the original “intent” of a deck like the one I listed, which is set up to benefit from Nephilim being your commander, and how much do we devote to making sure we find our commander reliably? We’re in black, which means we can run the kind of tutors we don’t like to run in a 75% deck—the open-ended, face-down tutors that black gives us, that is. We could run tutors devoted to finding creatures—Worldly Tutor, Tooth and Nail, Traverse the Ulvenwald—but we’re just a five-color deck at that point, and this is the only advantage of being forced to run a five-colored commander. That means we need green mana and the rest of the typical green “infrastructure” in the deck. We’re basically a really durdly Reaper King deck with no Scarecrows.

The final realization was that we don’t run tutors very often in 75% decks because we want a little bit of variance. The problem with having a Worldly Tutor in an Edric, Spymaster of Trest deck isn’t that it’s too good. It’s just okay. The problem is it’s boring. You can find something other than Laboratory Maniac, but will you? Not if you’re guaranteed a win. We avoid tutors in decks in which we’d always find the exact same one card every time irrespective of what our opponents are doing because that leads to linearity and boredom. This situation with the Nephilim is worse! We’re not boring ourselves by always fetching the same card and instantly winning—we’re relying on using linear, boring tutors to always find the same card before we do anything at all. The deck is built to give us then benefit from one card that isn’t our commander. If we don’t, our deck does nothing. We can mitigate that by making the deck a little more dynamic and able to pursue other strategies, but that dilutes our Nephilim focus. This was really starting to be a bummer.

We’re not running durdle-time tutor packages in this deck for the same reason we don’t run them in a deck in which we’ll always grab our Lab Maniac or Doomsday or Tunnel Vision or whatever, but also for a bunch of additional reasons. If you tutor for the same card every time, it becomes old quickly. Now imagine you don’t do anything at all if you don’t do that. If we’re going to run tutors like Demonic Tutor that solve all of our problems cheaply and effectively, we shouldn’t use them to durdle. 75% adherents are accused often enough of being durdles, and there’s no way we’re going to beat a tuned deck like a 75% deck needs to be able to do if we’re goofing around. There is a time and place for durdling—it happens to be with the kind of playgroup that would let us just use the Nephilim as our commander and have fun.

There is a time and place for the kind of deck I was building, and it wasn’t in a 75% context. I realized we’re going to avoid wasting time by having a clear picture of the kinds of circumstances we want our deck in. We haven’t written a new rule for this series (I use that word loosely—I’m not trying to tell you how to live your life, I’m trying to help you build your deck the way you want it to end up), but if I can try to codify what I’m feeling right now after realizing even attempting to half-ass that Nephilim deck in a 75% context, it would be this.

For the record, I’m not saying, Don’t build the Nephilim deck. I’ve played with plenty of groups who allowed things like that or Chromanticore or Genju of the Realm or any number of fun, goofy cards to be commanders because they were built in the spirit of fun and not maliciously. (“Hey, guys, can I bend the rules a little? My commander isn’t a legendary creature, it’s Prophet of Kruphix. How’s that sound?”) It never hurts to have that deck built and waiting in your bag. 75% decks don’t have to wait in bags, but not every deck you make needs to be 75%. As long as you’re aware of what you want your deck to do and you ask yourself, “Am I just doing a bad version of something I wouldn’t want to do anyway?” from time to time, I think your decks are going to end up just where you want them.

It wouldn’t be nice of me to leave you without a decklist, and I did put a little bit of thought into how I’d run the Yore-Tiller Nephilim deck, so I am going to leave you with the deck I’d build if I were going to play with a group that allowed the Nephilim to be the deck’s commander (and hopefully jammed a few Nephilim themselves).

Yore Gonna Be Sorry ? Commander | Jason Alt

• Commander (0)

• Creatures (31)
• 1 Angel of Despair
• 1 Angel of Serenity
• 1 Ashen Rider
• 1 Diluvian Primordial
• 1 Drogskol Reaver
• 1 Eternal Dragon
• 1 Flayer of the Hatebound
• 1 Frost Titan
• 1 Grave Titan
• 1 Hell's Caretaker
• 1 Igneous Pouncer
• 1 Inferno Titan
• 1 Jhessian Zombies
• 1 Karmic Guide
• 1 Lord of the Void
• 1 Magister of Worth
• 1 Master of Cruelties
• 1 Scion of Darkness
• 1 Shriekmaw
• 1 Sower of Temptation
• 1 Spellbound Dragon
• 1 Sphinx Ambassador
• 1 Sphinx of Uthuun
• 1 Sun Titan
• 1 Sanctum Plowbeast
• 1 Soul of New Phyrexia
• 1 Steel Hellkite
• 1 Reya Dawnbringer
• 1 Sheoldred, Whispering One
• 1 Thada Adel, Acquisitor
• 1 Wrexial, the Risen Deep

• Spells (28)
• 1 Izzet Charm
• 1 Return to Dust
• 1 Austere Command
• 1 Blasphemous Act
• 1 Bribery
• 1 Devastation Tide
• 1 Merciless Eviction
• 1 Praetor's Grasp
• 1 Supreme Verdict
• 1 Terminus
• 1 Victimize
• 1 Aggravated Assault
• 1 Compulsion
• 1 Cyclonic Rift
• 1 Zombie Infestation
• 1 Assault Suit
• 1 Chromatic Lantern
• 1 Coalition Relic
• 1 Darksteel Ingot
• 1 Darksteel Plate
• 1 Expedition Map
• 1 Jalum Tome
• 1 Jeskai Banner
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Mimic Vat
• 1 Nim Deathmantle
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Swiftfoot Boots

• Lands (40)
• 5 Mountain
• 4 Plains
• 6 Island
• 6 Swamp
• 1 Blood Crypt
• 1 Clifftop Retreat
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Desolate Lighthouse
• 1 Dragonskull Summit
• 1 Drowned Catacomb
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Forbidden Orchard
• 1 Glacial Fortress
• 1 Godless Shrine
• 1 Grand Coliseum
• 1 Hallowed Fountain
• 1 Isolated Chapel
• 1 Mana Confluence
• 1 Nomad Outpost
• 1 Rupture Spire
• 1 Sacred Foundry
• 1 Steam Vents
• 1 Watery Grave

Buy This Deck

I have said a lot already, but I tried to maximize ways to put stuff into the graveyard and make sure we connect with our “commander” often. I like landcyclers in this configuration quite a bit, and it shows. I made sure we can steal opponents’ stuff, but I decided to be fun and add Assault Suit in case we want our opponents to get in on the fun of having a Kaalia for their graveyards. This deck is a lot of fun, and it’s going to fit in perfectly with the kind of playgroup that will let you use it. The perfect deck for the situation—isn’t that what 75% is all about?