Because we only have access to these three cards, I recommend one of my old school favorite cards, Planar Portal, as a nice way to fetch one of these up and gain some originality points.Īs we continue to play into the unique qualities of our general, I was looking to find a few lesser-known gems that will work well with Cao Ren. While I am all for winning through commander damage, these effects will be contributing better to the overall pace of the game since we’re interacting with life totals on a global axis. Since we’re not afraid of missing our opponents when we swing at them, Cao Ren can make good use out of Scytheclaw and Quietus Spike, while Ebonblade Reaper can be an additional surprise copy of these triggers. In spite of this, I would rather we interact with life totals in a way befitting our general. Both are damage that you alone are contributing to and can’t be reasonably interacted with in current Magic rules. The comparison between commander damage and Infect is not that different in many respects. By slotting in Fireshrieker and Grappling Hook, we should be able to land multiple triggers off Spellbinder every attack step. Lastly, while not part of the actual package, we will want access to double strike if we can get it. And Rapid Decay or Scarab Feast are underwhelming effects on the surface that when repeated can help keep graveyard-dependent decks in check, especially since they will be cast after a problematic creature has died. Annihilate, Scour from Existence, and To the Slaughter help fight other Voltron decks. All four will be two-for-ones or better in most cases, and their repeated effects should bring you to a commanding position.Įchoing Decay and Consume the Meek are handy in a metagame with tokens decks. To me, some of the best cards that could be played normally, but improve while imprinted, are Grip of Desolation, Fated Return, Wretched Confluence, and Succumb to Temptation. So while Rend Soul or Walk the Plank certainly have their roles to play, I would rather have Hero’s Downfall or Vraska’s Contempt to allow me the option to pressure my opponents while also removing planeswalkers. Instants that give evasion, buff our creatures, or remove blockers are going to be impractical. The saboteur trigger creates a narrower subset of cards that will be good with Spellbinder. But Spellbinder was the eureka moment for me and requires its own section dealing with how we want to build around it. Whereas I used to structure these articles heavily on highlighting one specific card at a time, I have found that narratively things generally flow better talking about larger concepts and suites of cards. Spellbinder is similar, and seems very much at home in this deck. At the end of the day, maybe this is a really a “your general is Tormented Soul” deck, but did you even remember that card existed?Ĭommander players look at Isochron Scepter packages as being a collection of cards in the deck that you are happy to play without the Scepter, but combining them with it gives them unbelievable value. I want to leverage the fact that our general should not be seeing any interaction during combat. My goal for this deck is to be a mono-black Voltron deck that isn’t winning through Infect damage like Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon, but that also has something to do if our game plan goes awry and we need to make winning a long term goal. We want to pack our deck with “saboteur” effects-combat damage triggers-so we can reasonably assume they will trigger every turn. But while Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed, Lu Meng, Wu General, or Lu Xun, Scholar General could fill a similar role, I feel Cao Ren is built more aggressively than Lu Meng or Xiahou Dun -the latter being more of a Reanimator deck-and inspires more creatively than Lu Xun. Cao Ren, Wei CommanderĬalling Cao Ren an Invisible Stalker variant is a little sensational, as there is no hexproof and any of the creatures with Horsemanship from Portal: Three Kingdoms could have that acclaim. Today is one of those days where random searching allowed me to stumble upon my vision of the “Black Invisible Stalker.” This week we’re going to explore Cao Ren, Wei Commander. Sometimes it’s a literal colorshift like Planar Chaos had en masse or it’s something more subtle, like when Godo, Bandit Warlord was described as “Stoneforge Mystic, but it can be your general” on an old-school episode of Commander Cast. As a result, there is a healthy supply of “X is just a colorshifted version of Y” cards as you make your way through different discussions or hypothetical deck ideas. Magic: the Gathering has been around a long time now.
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