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bokkiedoke · 9 months

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Watch Me Flip - Elder Dragon House-Ruler #1

Welcome to Elder Dragon House-ruler, where we discuss the cards people should totally let you run as Commanders. For the first edition I’m gonna keep it pretty tame, we’re going to be talking about the Kamigawa flip cards that flip into Legends. Cards that makes me pause for a moment every time I realize I can’t run them as my Commanders. I understand why if the Legendary Creature was on the back.. But the typeline is riiight there, c’mon. And this will be one of those cycles that I believe would be pretty easy to house rule because you don’t need to make any exceptions. I’d bet a booster pack that most of what I’ll cover in this series falls along these lines. If you’re gonna let one in you might as well let ‘em all be used. Not planeswalkers though. Definitely not. Shout out to every planeswalker with an ultimate which wins you the game on the spot. Though I will admit there are legends that are more powerful than that at every LGS and kitchen table right now. My card got flipped, turn upside down Now when I say that this cycle would be easy to house rule, I meant it. Out of the 15 cards I’ll be talking about, I think two of them might get a bit of push back. You guessed it, it’s the one that counters spells for “free” and the one that steals creatures for “free”. And we all know it would really be Jaraku getting the complaints. Though I would point out to your local “Blue is EVIL!” player that if your deck folds to a 5 mana Quench after you have multiple chances to kill the 2/2 it was attached to, you were gonna lose to anything more powerful than my Homarid Matters deck.

“Before you know it my 3 mana 1/1 will be a 3 mana 3/3!” Moving on from power level, which of these 15 legends-to-be are interesting enough to warrant you grabbing a copy and spending an afternoon sipping on your favorite beverage and brewing up a deck? I’d say about 8 of them. Over half! For original Kamigawa cards, over half of them being interesting to a modern player is a miracle. At least none of them have Sweep. Nothing more exciting than putting yourself multiple lands drops back to get a spell that is almost worth the mana you spent on it! As for the seven little stinkers I wouldn’t be caught making a deck for, let’s go over them all real quick. Budoka Gardener / Dokai, Weaver of Life – Early ramp, flips into a guy that can drop a fairly big vanilla creature every turn. Alright at lower power level tables, but boring. Budoka Pupil / Ichiga, Who Topples Oaks – The first Ki counter creature I’ll be talking about here. They get Ki counters when you cast Arcane or Spirit spells, then you can choose to flip them when you get to 2 or more counters. This guy, the green one in the cycle, becomes an Instant speed +2/+2 on a stick. Yeehaw. Bushi Tenderfoot / Kenzo the Hardhearted – Now I will admit this card is a bit interesting. It gets my brain goin’. But my brain is goin’ “Wow, this guys seems nearly impossible to flip, and his flipped side isn’t good enough for me to bother.” He was in the first Magic product I ever got though, so I love the little guy.

Faithful Squire / Kaiso, Memory of Loyalty – Ki counters again, so not too hard to flip. Especially in White. But this is from the period where the White card in a cycle was either obnoxious and Stax-y or so boring and weak you forgot they exist. This one is the latter. That effect on the Legend side is so weak Wizards has printed it at 1 and at Instant speed and people refuse to even think about playing it.

Hired Muscle / Scarmaker – Remember Fear? Yeah, me too buddy. Remember how it definitely wasn’t good enough to spend at least 5 mana on? Yeah, me too buddy.

Initiate of Blood / Goka the Unjust – Ping a creature to death after it took damage, in Red? Simple enough. But nobody is gonna let you flip this thing, and if they do it’s going to die after one activation. So you get to spend 4 mana and jump through hoops to kill maybe a single creature. That’s a no-go(ka).

Nezumi Shortfang / Stabwhisker the Odious – A 1/1 that taps for repeatable discard? This little feller is deader than a door nail the second anyone actually reads what they do. I doubt it would ever flip and if it does it has the hidden effect of making you the first player to die at your table. Don’t believe me, trying making a random player at your table discard their whole hand with the payoff being “I will ping you for 3 next turn” and see for yourself. And now your main event!

The eight cards you may actually want to try out for yourself. I’m gonna make a little Top 8 list of which ones I plan on making a deck for. Yes, #1 is one of the cards I thought might make people reject this particular house rule. Turns out a lot of the cards I find fun also rub people the wrong way. So I like playing Stax and Control sometimes, does that make me evil? Yes? Uh oh.

“Pictured, me. Having ‘fun’ with my ‘friends’”

Number 8 – Akki Lavarunner / Tok-Tok, Volcano Born

“You just have to hit someone once in a 4-player game, how hard can it be? Oh, it’s a 4 mana 1/1. Wow.” That being said, the Legend effect is good. And if you wanted to make a creature-focused deck that wants all of those damage multiplying effects you’d probably throw in some way to protect the little guys. Or more likely some way to get value out of them dying, as is the Red way.

Number 7 – Orochi Eggwatcher / Shidako, Broodmistress

Now it is a bit difficult to flip this one, but she makes the list because her Legend side has an effect only one other Monogreen commander provides. She becomes a sacrifice engine. And unlike Zopandrel, using her sacrifice effect multiple times actually does something for you. So you can get those death triggers while growing your army and swinging in for even more damage.

Number 6 – Student of Elements / Tobita, Master of Winds

I love a good, clean card design. You make this guy fly, everyone else gets to fly. I wish I could have the clarity and conciseness of words that this card has. But alas, I have to blabber on and use antiquated words.

Number 5 – Kitsune Mystic / Autumn-Tail, Kitsune Sage

Another one that will be a pain to flip. Not so much because the hoops you have to jump through, it’s just that your opponents will see it coming from a mile away. And with the kind of shenanigans you can get up to with their Legend side ability, they’ll be blowing them up the second you attempt anything cool. If they can get through all the protective auras you have stacked on them, that is.

Number 4 – Jushi Apprentice / Tomoya the Revealer

That’s right, this card is this high up even though BOTH sides just read “Draw cards”. Drawing cards is fun. Doubling the amount of cards in your hand is the MOST fun. I suppose you could let someone else draw some cards too. Wait you can even do some absurd combo and deck people out with this thing. This card is so cool. Still number 4 though.

Number 3 – Nezumi Graverobber / Nighteyes the Desecrator

Graveyard hate and reanimation on the same card? In 1v1 this card is a pretty self-defeating but in multiplayer? Just take that one fetchland out of Richie Rich’s graveyard and then proceed to steal all of the other things from all of the other graveyards. Maybe even mill Richie Rich after you flip this guy and see what you can get. You know that deck is loaded with Eternal format Reanimator staples even though they said their deck was a “soft 6”.

Number 2 – Cunning Bandit / Azamuki, Treachery Incarnate

That’s right bozos! BOTH cards I said would annoy your friends are at the very top of the list. This will be pretty easy to flip (heck one of the Arcane cards in Red is a Ritual!) but I’d be a bit greedy and see if you could really pile up those Ki Counters before you flip this bad boy over. Steal a couple of creatures or try to steal them all! Remember that this doesn’t give them Haste though, so you’ll have to provide that if you want to attack with them. Or you could just sacrifice them all with Goblin Bombardment. That’s what I’d do. I am also surprised anyone will play Magic with me anymore.

Number 1 – Callow Jushi / Jaraku the Interloper

Okay before you click away, I’m not telling you to do a “make my Commander playgroup hate me” speedrun. You won’t be countering everything, or even most things. I think the best way to build this deck, at least the best way that won’t get your mugshot posted in every LGS in the tri-state area, is a combat heavy Spirit deck. You won’t be using Jaraku to bring the game to a screeching halt, you will use the counters judiciously to keep your army of spirits alive. I mean most counterspell heavy decks don’t counter every single spell anyway, at least if they are trying to win. It just feels like that because you don’t remember the decent spells you got to cast against the control player, you remember the handful of great stuff that got stuffed. To actually spell out my recommendations though it’s this. Throw in some Spirits Matter, a couple of cards that benefit from having lots of counters (the little glass stone ones, not counterspells), and some Proliferate cards. I’m not going to list anything specifically here because I won’t be giving specific card recommendations (other than the Commanders themselves) in these articles.

A brief aside to explain my reasons for not recommending you buy certain cards 1.) I like to recommend cheap jank when I do recommend cards, and if by some random chance an article of mine pops off I don’t want a neat card to spike up to CEDH staple prices because I told people to get it. 2.) I’m not really great at evaluating cards (and I’d posit that like 95% of all Magic players aren’t) so I don’t want you even spending $5 on some cards I thought were good just to be disappointed. I’ve had times where my monthly Magic budget was about $10. And I had many times where I spent half or more of that on some crap an internet stranger told me was awesome just to be bummed out as I chucked it into my “chaff for filling out ultra budget decks” pile. 3.) I’m a huge fan of deckbuilding and I want more people to give it a try. And if you personally aren’t, the tools exist to help you build a deck without too much time spent sifting through thousands of cards on Scryfall. Between online communities, EDHREC, and decklists you can find online you can throw something together without spending an entire afternoon researching jank from 2011 Standard.

Now back to the article

And there it is. The first article in what I hope will be a long, fun series. If you’ve got any recommendations let me know. My next article will either be about the Alara mythics or the Lorwyn/Shadowmoor Avatars. And one of the Avatars is a repeatable source of land destruction. Heck if you gave them Double Strike you can blow up at least two lands a turn. Oh and if you threw in some extra combat step cards you could blow up four or more a turn. I sure do know how to have fun!

#magic the gathering #commander #edh #gaming

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