#alquist proft master sleuth

[magicmalcolm]

Alquist Proft, Master Sleuth

[art-of-mtg]

Alquist Proft, Master Sleuth (Murders at Karlov Manor) - Peter Diamond

[almostlookedhuman]

[corvidcall]

my top 5 favorite commanders of 2024

I know a top 10 is more traditional, but... I mean, I didn't want to pick any commanders I didn't actually build!!

Before getting into the list, I do want to give an honorable mention to Bonny Pall, Clearcutter, which is a deck I built but never got the chance to really play. But as a Minnesotan, I gotta show some love to my girl Paul Bunyan.

Now, onto the actual list!

5. Kellan, the Kid

The difficult thing about this list is that, as a Vorthos, I really just wanna put down all my favorite characters. And I LOVE Kellan. My sweet boy. People love to tell me that "Thunder Junction had no story," and I genuinely still don't understand what they mean by that, because I read the story!! It very much existed and was good! Kellan tries to sacrifice his own morals to win his deadbeat dad's affection, and it just doesn't work, because his dad is fundamentally incapable of caring about him.

Anyway, uh, the card is cool too I guess. Kellan looks very handsome in it and I'm so proud of him.

4. Yuma, Proud Protector

Would.

...I was just gonna leave it there because its funny, but unfortunately I have "can't shut up" disease. Yuma is the first trans man in MtG! (At least, the first canonical one. We all know Jace is trans but he's stealth and used his mind magic to erase the knowledge from WotC's memories). The sidestory about him was one of my favorite bits of mtg writing this year. Also, he's from fantasy Chicago and moved to Thunder Junction, and as a trans person who moved from the midwest to a desert, I find him very #relatable.

...ok technically I live in a semi-arid region and not a true desert. BUT STILL.

Also, this deck is fun because everyone always gets concerned that I might run mass land destruction in it. And if the guys at my LGS keep pissing me off, one of these days, I will.

3. Flubs the Fool

Its kind of funny that this is on the list, because, by all accounts, it should not be a deck I enjoy. It doesn't have either of my favorite colors (white and black). It's from a set I hated (i did NAWT enjoy Bloomburrow lol). Its a cEDH deck (I think cEDH is an abomination). Its a storm/combo deck (I dont like having to keep track of that much, AND i don't like taking that long of a turn).

... but tbh its a hoot! So far, it's had a 100% win rate against the cEDH players at my LGS, and it just makes me laugh. You want to be Hellbent (have no cards in hand) as soon as possible, which is usually the OPPOSITE of what you want, and you just draw a card, cast it no matter what it is, draw another card, until you manage to draw into your wincons (infinite storm combo + Brain Freeze to make everyone mill, or infinite mana combo + Walking Ballista to ping everyone for infinite damage). It runs exactly 0 interaction. What other opponents' decks are doing is not your problem. What YOUR deck is doing is not your problem. We're on empty brain mode babey!!!!

2. Alquist Proft, Master Sleuth

Must a commander be powerful in order to be on the list? Must a card be "good"? Is it not enough to see a beautiful face, small?

I had two goals with this deck: First, I wanted a lower-power deck that I could play with my sister, who is just learning how to play, and second, I had such a blast playing Azorius Detectives at the MKM pre-release that I wanted to build a deck that had all the fun cards from that.

Alquist is certainly not... the best commander ever. His activated ability is REALLY overcosted, considering how low impact it is. By my math, it's not even worth using unless you're able to make x=3 (for anything less, you'd be better off just using your clue tokens normally). But he helms a deck thats honestly one of the most fun in my collection! There's a lot of fun cards in there, like the one that makes detectives unblockable, or turns all your clue tokens into equipment, or gives your clues Exalted, and it's really fun to sit down at a table with this guy and see people have no idea what the hell kinda deck its gonna be. My partner plays this deck more than I do, but I cant stop thinking about the time I was sitting at the pod next to them, and I overheard one of their opponents go "Azorius aggro???????" like he couldn't believe what he was seeing. And he was right!!

1. Shilgengar, Sire of Famine

I built this because the art of a demon sitting on a throne of angel wings was the sickest thing I'd ever seen in my life. And it still is.

This is my #1 because this deck is just so... me, back on my bullshit to be honest. Orzhov is far and away my favorite color pair, but thus far most of the typal decks you see in Orzhov are vampires, and tbh I... don't really like vampires. I like vampire-type EFFECTS (draining enemies while healing yourself is the ideal tbh!!) but as a creature type? snore. Sick of seeing vampires in everything, sick of hearing about vampires, and I don't think vampires are sexy because vampires are one of the most culturally thin movie monsters, second only, perhaps, to the Slender Man himself. show me a fat vampire and we'll talk.

Anyway, this is an angels deck, which is way way cooler because I love angels. Big huge lady with a sword who can FLY??? HELLO???? very sick. And its all about sacrificing my own angels to make Blood tokens, and then sacrificing the Blood tokens to get all my angels back from the graveyard. I love an Aristocrats strategy (a deck built around sacrificing your own creatures) because I think its really funny. I show up to a wizard battle with my army of cool angels. I shoot them all myself before you get the chance to. When the dust clears, I have won somehow.

Its funny that, considering that I mostly build decks based on characters I like first and for gameplay reasons second, my most favorite deck of the year is of a character I couldn't care less about lol. Sorry man, I don't care that you invented vampires in Innistrad! I'm busy admiring all the big beautiful sword ladies I put in here. And then pinging everyone to death with Mirkwood Bats. And that's gonna take up pretty much all of my time!!

Overall, I'd say it was a pretty good year for Magic for me!!! I had a lot of fun building these, and I actually started going to my LGS weekly to play. It's been a blast! Can't wait to report back next year to talk about all the fun I've had in 2025!!!!!

[corvidcall]

i do think "inexplicably, azorius aggro" is a pretty apt description of the deck

corv made an alquist proft commander deck after mkm and i've been using it now that we've started going to commander, because it's incredibly unassuming and also easy to explain (detectives matter + clue synergy + a few alternate wincins). i tried playing my gruul dragons deck and i feel like everyone sees a dragon and they're like "i don't like that and you're immediately a problem" so i'm kind of hesitant to play it before i fix the lack of board wipes, so i switched to proft because it was the one other deck that wasn't in a state of disarray at the time

but i'm finding him to be pretty sturdy in ekeing out second place, and i finally won a game this week! in one of my games, an opponent watched my first few turns and was like "azorius aggro????" which. is funny. because it lowkey is. corv made it to be an alternate win con machine but it has enough tricks that i've done best when having a field of 100% unblockable creatures or one nasty exalted flier.

anyway i was trying to squeeze leyline of transformation in there tonight to shore up non-detective aspects like artifact creatures and juuuust managed to find one card to cut but it was honestly REALLY tight, because the only other maybe to cut had a cute art of etrata and proft and i needed to keep it in for the flavorrrrrr