One Foot in the Grave | Graveyard Series

All right, so I've been. I've been taking forever to get around to this graveyard thing. And, you know, you, dear listener, there's just been some, interference, right? With review stuff, other ideas that have crossed the the, brainwave with me and Kyle. And then for just whatever reason, like, my personal life just keeps getting in the way of me getting ready to do it.

So even so, even today, me and Kyle are not in the same room. Because it's likely that me and Tiff are coming down with something, so I didn't want to expose them to illness. But we're going to go ahead and do the trick. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, dude, I've been back flipping to try to stay healthy this October.

I got, like, really sick last year. If you're a member. Yeah. And I think you and I both have had some stints where, like, those respiratory infections are not fun. Yeah, I'm kind of over it. I don't I think I've been too angry with people who have gotten me sick in the past. And, like, my whole thing is, if you know you're sick, can you stay away?

But for some people in our social orbit, they, you know, like they want to play commander or they want to get together or do the thing. And so they kind of make excuses of like, well, I'm, I'm probably over it by now or, you know, going going as far as to say, like it's probably allergies when it's like, dude, you don't really have allergies.

So it, it takes me to like, you know, how much of like a germaphobe I am, like, I just I it's not that I'm a germaphobe. I just really don't like being sick. The inconvenience of it is way too high for me. You know, what brings it into contrast is, you know, you and I both are people who do not have offspring.

And so being around a young niece and nephew and be like, oh, they have sticky hands. Yeah. Right. And their immune systems are as such. Yeah. That's that's another thing is like spending time around kids. You're like, just gonna get you're gonna you're just gonna get it. They're exposed to so many other kids.

But yeah. Anyway, we're gonna lower ourselves into this bathtub a little. Slowly. I, I'm trying to kind of get a series going similar to, you know, the Voltron thing that we did, the spell slinger thing that we did, the Enchantress thing that we did, or enchantment thing and chantries. But yeah, that's where we're kind of like, maybe don't use Enchantress as much, but Blade Champions.

But anyway, don't use enchantment, don't use Enchantress, but playing champions. This one's tough though, because it's it's really just kind of focused on a zone of the game. And I think there's this I don't want to say the word danger, but like for, for more experienced players, a lot of it might just be kind of obvious, strategic pathways that are, that are already well trodden.

Right. Like, we've had a lot of content, even on this own podcast about the exploitation of graveyards or playing around them, playing with them. But I'm your opponents from using them. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like hating out other people's yards. So it's it's something I want to try to make special and work, but at the same time, it's not as, it's not as sharp as, like, a commander damage strategy, you know, like it's way loose, loose, more loosey goosey.

You just thinking about your yard, so. Good point. It's kind of hard for me to figure out how to orient ourselves around this, and. And I think what I've come around to is let's slowly turn up, the grades in which our deck cares about that zone as we move through these episodes. And then we start introducing things like, well, because so, so like, for example, if you have a self mill deck, I would, I would hope that your your deck cares greatly like it's very deep in, in the graveyard.

Right. Like it is six feet under. Quite, quite into the graveyard. Yeah. Because it's, it's aiming to self mill itself and it doesn't necessarily need to be creatures but like oh instance and sorcery account or it's the quickest way to empty my library. So I can Thor says out or something like that, you know, depending on like what bracket level we're talking about.

But I'm not going to leave this zone, on underutilized. So I have ways to kind of like, get things out of the graveyard or cast things from graveyard, things like that. So, like a self mill deck, I think is, is very interested in, in its graveyard use or, you know, you find that you have a lot of SAC outlets in your, in your, in your 99 like you have five, ten, 15 maybe ways to kill your own creature and move them into the graveyard.

So I would think that's pretty down there too. You know, it's it's, it's a, it's a zone that is important. I've said kind of spell slinger decks need to be using their graveyard more than drawing cards, you know, especially when you're talking about higher mana value. Like getting stuff out of your graveyard again is is huge.

In fact, I think one of the big win conditions for at least for me, using a spell slinger type style of of deck is mastery, which is, yes, it's a huge graveyard play. That's really what it does. It just recurs everything that you've, that you've been using throughout the course of the game. Yeah. So, you know, even just kind of listing those things off and that's only three examples you can see, like how all over the place we are like, you can talk about artifacts getting welded. You can talk about, you know, more recently, even enchantments moving in and out of graveyards.

True, true. So that's kind of where I want us to go. But like starting today, I just wanted to talk to to a broader audience of people who maybe they didn't, not really in the market to learn about using their graveyard or make a graveyard focused deck. Re-Animator. A risk to create whatever your whatever your flavor is.

Maybe they're not in the market for that, but really something that we kind of do in our play group lately, which is not let go of our graveyard so much. Yeah, not letting go. Not saying that once something's in the graveyard, that that's the final. That was the final usage of that. That piece of cardboard.

Yeah, yeah. If I can kind of come back to your setup a little bit, I, I really like that we're diving into this and the nuance that you're setting up because I'm thinking about, you know, and I really appreciate the tool of Eddie H. Wreck. They've recently kind of gone through some of their look and style updates and adding some new tools recently to the site.

And so I like that they're continually evolving the utility of the tool that it is. But, you know, there are instances where, it's really kind of a blunt instrument, right? Like and I think that's evidenced in the tag graveyard. Right. So if you go look at the graveyard tag on Eddie H. Wreck. Like what what is happening here when you kind of go through and try to make sense of what each of these commanders are doing or what the tools are that you're using.

And I really like that you're drawing some attention to this for maybe somebody who's making first contact with thinking about graveyards, or for experienced players who are trying to be a little more nuanced about it, because there's I think it's something that's worthy of more definition. Yeah. I think this is going to be a little bit of a infomercial style episode a little bit, just because it's something that that we are, I don't want to say the word passionate about, but we've just seen too much success from exploiting this zone of the game that everybody in this meta I feel like has one foot in the grave one way or another.

Like almost all of their decks have some way, somehow to capture something out of their yard and bring it back into play where you think you've dealt with it, but you didn't kind of thing. So let me let me just start with this. Right. You'll you'll often hear on this podcast when Kyle talk, when Kyle and I talk about our playgroup experience, is that graveyards need to be managed.

And if you look at our list, we almost always include some form of graveyard hate. I think most people who just play this game out in the wild, they'll run like a bog. Maybe a couple will add scavenging grounds to their list because, you know, it's not really a slot consumed. Right? Like it's a it's not a really a 99 card.

Like you have to commit lands anyway. So if you're in black you it seems like just Paducah bogs always available for for the low price of it coming intact. You cook off an entire yard. And maybe people do this because they anticipate running into more infamous commanders that play out of the graveyard.

You know, like the, you know, back in the day, Mirren right. Mirren was huge. She was she still is. But like she was once for I think briefly like the most popular commander because of the graveyard exploitation that came off of her. It's a little tough with that because like, you know, she ends the turn and the thing you want to get is now back into play or in her hand.

But either way, you know, but over time, like, as we've wound back a couple, lubricating experiences on how to play commander, you know, mainly tutors and game changers are the big things that we're not partaking. We're not eating that, we're not drinking that wine of violence. Right? Like, anymore, we, we have to hold on to some of the resources that we've accumulated over the course of the game.

A little more than than. Okay, well, I'll go tutor for a solution, or I'll go find a functional equivalent of the thing that they've already dealt with. You know what I mean? So, it's just rife throughout our, our decks. So, yes, there are decks that care explicitly about the exploitation of yards in this meta.

I can talk about some if you want to kind of show you like how effective it is and how threatening it is, but even even the ones that aren't wholly focused on using the graveyard, they they have cards built into them to get back from a really bad board wipe or some kind of control situation. Which kind of leads me to the other half of this, which is my suspicion is because they know they're going to be playing against people like me and Kyle, who tend to remove other people's stuff rather than try to protect our own stuff.

They kind of know it's going to happen. They just they just bet on it, like our opponents, you know? Like Cameron bets on it, Chris bets on it. Tiff, Zach they all just kind of bet on I'm gonna lose all this stuff at some point. I'm not gonna, like, pretend like that's not a serious event or it's a I'm not going to pretend like it's an unlikely thing.

It's very likely. So as such, I'm going to pack some of these things in here so I can wind things back. Right, to get things back out of my yard, be it artifacts that I need, creatures that I really should be controlling throughout the game or, you know, instance, the sorceries in my case. Does that set us up a little?

I think so I think that's really good. And I think speaking to the group experience, like there's a lot of a lot of texture to this topic for us. Yeah. So we'll do more episodes. But like just for now, I wanted to talk about the, the idea around that. Right. Like of just like, okay, you already have a list and I'm not asking you to change a lot about it.

Like, it might not have, like, a lot of interest in using the graveyard. In some places this is harder to do, like mono red. It's more difficult to capture things out of the yard when you're not going into, like, some expensive colorless recursion stuff. But, you know, I've seen games turn around for a red player on a on a codec shredder, right?

That oh five mana activation that pulls something out of the yard, you know, so nobody's thinking they're going to use. But it's they will. Yeah, it's it's one of those funny things you wouldn't expect to see. Like their their yard isn't usually managed like the mono black player or the white player or whatever the or is off player, but they suddenly pull something back out of their yard and you're like, oh shit.

Like we we dealt with that a while ago and now it's back into play again or back into rotation in their hand. So, I guess my cell here is, is that it affords you a little bit of resilience. And often, you know, if you think about what you do as a graveyard hate purveyor, dear listener, if you're really only running, but you could bog and stuff, that's just like a non a non committed slot to removing yards, then would you agree that it's likely your the opponents you play against are doing the same.

So yes, this is a keyhole that you can fly through a little bit where everyone thinks you're, you're cleaned out but but you're not, you're not cleaned out like they, they needed to get rid of your stuff twice over. And now it's coming back into play either all at once or in, you know, piecemeal situations.

And, and that's just a very surface of using the graveyard. It's not an engine. It's not a it's not a strategy even. It's just a yeah, my stuff. I'm not going to I'm not going to continue to delude myself into thinking I'm not going to lose control of my permanence. So I'm going to just slot a couple things into my deck where because I don't have this tutor, you know, wormholes of tutors, where I can fly around inside the deck and find what I need.

I'd prefer just to kind of bounce everything back in the face, or even just like these precision things, like this one thing you thought you dealt with. Like it's coming back. Yeah, yeah. Let's let's talk storytime a little bit. Okay. So recently I've been playing with somebody who they kind of live a little further out of town.

They live in Logan. This is Zach's brother, Todd. Yeah, it's a bit of a trip. Yeah. What? It's like an hour and a half or 45 minutes. Probably something like that, depending on the time of year in the traffic. The dude's actually really into the game. He's he's made quite a bit of of. Progress with his collection, like, cards.

I'm like, well, that's a pricey card. You know, I kind of gauge people's dedication with the type of money they spend. But he's made a lot of decks to, some are his own construction and then some are kind of like ones that myself and Zach have have worked on together and they've, like, migrated their way over to him.

So I don't know if you remember for a little bit Zach was playing Castrol. The wind crested. Oh that's right. It's like a bird focused deck right. Do you remember this? I do recall this. Yeah, yeah. So Castle, the wind crested is really just kind of like it's this five man of flying bird situation where it sees bird triggers.

Kind of like, gradual acts where if you hit each opponent, you either can draw a card off of each or put a counter on all of the birds you control for each, or a put a bird right into play from your hand, or a graveyard with a finality counter. So for an A commander, he actually has some graveyard interaction where which is pretty cool.

And that. Yeah. So we played recently where it was like a, it was like a Thursday or Friday or something because the guy was down here. And so Zach wanted to give him a game or two. And I'm like, yeah, sure, man. Like we can do that. It was like it was a different day. And, I'm I'm trying to get on top of these, these birds, dude.

Like, I'm trying to stop all of this the way I can deal with it, because I'm like, I know I don't have a strong flying presence in this deck. Like, I just know I'm not going to be able to block for too long or at all. And there's only so much I can take from these flying creatures. And, you know, I, I remember we, we broke to go get pizza upstairs because Tiff had like, you know, generously gone and got pizza for us.

And it arrived and it was going to become my turn. So we, like, put our cards down and like, that's that. And I have a massacre girl in my hand. And as I'm walking, as we're walking upstairs, I look back at the board state to see if there's enough one ones to get her, like kicked off and start the drain going.

And I'm like, okay, yeah, there's like a soldier token or two. Like, we'll be okay. She's gonna start picking up those triggers. Yeah, dude. So we we go eat, we sit down and, you know, he's, you know, they're just talking about the game. And like, he's feeling pretty good about his position. I'm thinking and like. And I think Zach was too.

He had a pretty good board state. And I'm going yeah they don't really have a board state. They just don't know I'm gonna clip this thing down. And the other thing I checked for was that both of them were completely tapped out. So I'm like, there's very, very unlikely yeah, there's very unlikely going to be a moment where they're going to get in the way of this board wipe that's coming their way.

And she's a creature. So she drills through a lot of like the standard issue type of counter magic. People typically run right. Like the yeah the negate and it's cousins. So we get back downstairs and I try to maximize the turn. I like, move into my combat and swing everything I can at it. I think it was or whoever I knew it was.

Maybe it was a Nate, but, that's kind of a tell that, like, someone's going to clear their board, right? They have a board wipe where they just throw their creatures away, try to get some combat mission. Is that correctly reads it. He's like, oh, you know, like, why would he. Why would he discriminate attack.

Yeah. Why is he throwing these valuable creatures away? And so I bought him. Everything gets wiped down, Zach's gets plummeted. And in a Rivian. And same with Todd's birds. All of them, dude. And he had quite an array, including I think like an issue that was like really stacked up. But it couldn't it couldn't survive the drain. Right.

Like massacre girl made her girl does some work. She's sick dude, such a good card. So we go to that turn and. Yeah, man, you know, when we made this list and I. So he, he he didn't really make. I mean, I think he's made changes to the list since he's gotten it, but, like, Zach made this deck for him and then basically gave it to him as, like a birthday present or something like that or whatever.

But in the list, there is an ascend from Avernus in this, in this deck. And I'm like, I greedily pushed my turn through where I'm like, all right, it's wiped. I have some mana left over. I'm just going to capture some creatures and flood out a little bit, because I think it's unlikely that people are going to burn a board wipe just to clear my board of like, mask or Girl on like two other little guys.

That was kind of my read on it, right? Yeah, yeah. So I'm not ready to stop this spell. And he just rubber bands everything right back, you know, like just pulls it all back. Return all creatures and planeswalkers from your graveyard with mana value X or less. From your graveyard to the battlefield. Exile.

Ascend from Avernus. So, so good. Yeah. And I mean, like. And he has access to something similar in the zone. You know, like the Castro can slowly do it, but this just completely turned the game around. Like I was feeling really good about my grip on what was going to happen next for the next few turns, but in the end, I cleared my own board and Zach's and Nate's and I forced ascend from Avernus turn out of Todd and that's that.

And he completely took over the game from there because of one mass recursion piece. Yeah. You know, so these these events are valuable, you know, like this is this is a powerful moment for him like to to bounce his whole board back. So everything came back in the good the his many, many little birds, the strike force, the battle raptor, the C new the ledger shredder.

It all just kind of pulled right back into play. And then of course, Ishii was there too. And I'm like just like, oh tie. You know, like freaking the fuck out of that. Going to start picking up them counters again. Yeah. So I don't know. That's just like one little story of you know his deck is really not set up to exploit graveyard play.

Like even though it's in the commander. I mean, you could probably talk to somebody and be like, dude, if you don't care about finality counters, this is a way to cheat things in a little bit, but they come from your hand. It's covered from both ends. But it's just this one foot in the grave. Play that.

Holy shit, dude, you know? Yeah. Which which I will point out with that particular story, something that we talk about a lot as being kind of a game winning type play is, is if you can create a cemetery on the other side of board wipes. Right. And so like the obvious thing to do is to just protect your board.

But sometimes that's not possible. But you know, an ascend from Avernus is probably just as good because it'll get you that asymmetry in, in a different way using this zone. Yeah. And somebody could be hearing me tell the story and like they're not all that moved by it. Right. Like they can go well yeah it does. And from Avernus is a great card.

Like this is what I would use it for as a form of board protection or recursion. Sure. I, I would kind of layer it like this. Right. So like we, we talk often about things called step dodges in our, in our podcast, which is the ability to like grant everything that you control indestructible, hex proof or both out of nowhere.

Right. Like heroic intervention is like a well, I mean, it's like a 20. It will forever be a $20 card. Yeah, no matter if it's reprinted or not. Because because of this. Right. It is a I. Everybody loses their board except to me. Now that wouldn't have saved him from I mean, he doesn't massacre, but like, Dawn's truce or whatever wasn't going to save him for massacres, girl.

But, this is a way to do this. I what I could also say is that, like, if you have a deck that has a lot of enter the battlefield triggers moves like ascend from Avernus or a mass reanimate, actually, I think gets you a little further that the unwittingly through more trigger. They're bought your triggers when they cleared you out, or they blocked your stuff or or whatever, or you blocked them, you know, like when they rammed into you with their big creatures and you're like, I'm going to block with all these guys that have valuable enter the battlefield triggers and then bring them back during my turn.

This is another route of like, you know, a ascend from Avernus. Could look you could look at it like another way to flicker your permanence. It's a good point in a deck where we finally cleared them off and they weren't able to flick out of it, whatever we did. But then they get to their turn and they just bring it all back, including their commander.

So it's a way to obviate taxes. Well, he he he let he had a lot of mana. This was pretty deep into the game, I should say. But like he let Castle go to the graveyard. So. And so you're sitting there going like what? Yeah. Yeah. So it was just this huge. I mean, this is this is like, what is what is Cameron say?

Like Zac Will or Brad will often put his commander in the graveyard and and Cameron will be like, that's not a good sign. It's really not a mastery animation. Like he's going to bring it all back. Like that's that's his way of keeping the momentum up with his game. Not paying commander tax, not trying to find more land drops to pay for commander tax like it hits.

Just I'm going to pull it all back. Rather than pay that. So he he had to be at least I think eight mana with this ascend from Avernus, which is a huge amount. But it brought all these birds back and and yeah, I can't remember if we had killed some on the way there already. Sure. I think kanji Ward Sky warden actually was bricked on like on its own before that.

I do remember him starting with the kanji on the next turn, and I'm like, okay, that's way more damage than I thought. So yeah. Do you have any stories like this? Like some like any. Yeah. I mean, I like this mode of thinking about graveyards. A couple come to my mind from some recent experiences that are just like, hey, let me just reuse the utility of cards that I expect to end up in the graveyard.

You know, so for example, my calyx Guided by Fate deck. It's really built around having some low mana value fliers that I can slap Rs onto so that I can either Voltron with calyx if I want to, or I can use evasive fliers to get combat in on people. That's really the premise of the deck. And then for control, I use things like, Oblivion Ring and then clone that with calyx triggered ability from combat type effects.

Yeah, yeah. So that I can just like. And so I know that people are very interested in if they see an oblivion ring, they know there's going to be a copy of an oblivion ring, and then a copy of Oblivion Ring and a copy of Oblivion Ring. So my playgroups vary. Our play group is very interested in stopping at this chain.

Done. Because if there's more than one, they have to handle more than one. So you know, they want to head this off. Anyways, I don't have a lot of, you know, graveyard play type decks, but just two cards in the deck, the fit in land slots is sufficient to make it where. Okay, we've dealt with the oblivion ring problem like this.

This black mold issue that we've been dealing with has been been dealt with, but it's in the studs behind the wall. Yeah, because I just have a Hall of Hilliard generosity. Yeah. That's just that's not even a question that that's a problem. Yeah, yeah. And so I just put this thing, it's just an activation on a land and I could pay one and a white tap it, put target enchantment card from your graveyard on top of your library.

Okay. You thought you dealt with the oblivion ring problem. It's back on top of my library, and I'm going to draw it and start this over next turn. And then clone it with calyx. And there will be two in play. The other one is just another land slot, and I just this is a deck where I have Balaghat recovery.

Yeah. And see. Yeah. Like if I need to just use the land. Great. But I also have the option of if I've, I'm on my land draws. Otherwise I have this extra card that allows me to again get this gravy train going. And it's just enough, right? Like the decks not flush with all this graveyard play. But there's a few things that I know people don't want to see.

They don't want to see me clone with calyx. And there's a couple options for me to just be like, yeah, I'm going to recover anyways, despite the fact that you think you've dealt with it. Yeah, you're just being practical about the, you know, like not to not to sound neck beardy or anything, but like you're committing crimes and it's like if you really set out to go rob a bank, I don't just I don't think you just do that on a Tuesday on a whim.

I mean, maybe it works out, but like, there's some planning involved of. Okay, what will the bank's response to me doing this be? What will the police do? You know, like if you're a criminal like you, you need to, like, think a couple steps ahead and then, you know, realize the machine that's set up to stop you or get you from get you for doing crime has become so huge that it's not even worth it anymore.

But like, you know what I mean? Like, this is how a game of commander goes is that I think for the longest time, a lot of us were just kind of deluded in thinking that people aren't going to answer or go over. You know, I've kind of come down to this thing where it's like, I think a lot of choices in this in the format is either you go underneath people by way of removing their stuff, tearing their stuff down and making it difficult for them to establish their game plan, or you go over their head and that's the polite thing to do, which is like, I have a five five against your for for, you know, my big dragons a little bit bigger than yours and, and that's, that's just a, you know, I think you end up going towards a battlecruiser ship in the night style meta

where you keep but then the other one you start running into like a really control grinding meta two and what's unique about our I mean, like, you know, by my count, if our if our list is currently up to date, there are 91 commanders in our meta currently. Some are partners. So that number is loose, loosey goosey.

I'd probably be a bit inflated, but probably say 85 ish. Range is what that's at. So, you know, there's a there's a lot of different legends that we're playing with. And yeah, there's some that have no interest in in interfering with other people or doing. They're just going to go for it, you know, like TIFF's Yoshi Maru and Kelly List.

This is a dangerous deck. It's it's definitely like a you know, what was the joke that we cracked during the Voltron episode? Was like, I'm at your door with a gun. What are you going to do kind of thing? She's she's she's there. She's there very fast. Like, she really kind of puts into focus, like, develop a block or defend yourself or die.

You know, any deck that has a slow attitude about getting their game together in front of her, she's she will mercilessly push you out of the game. Like that's just because she knows that she can't play it against it. I developed a blocker and she's still fucking. She still I still died. Yeah, right.

I mean, yeah, so she figured out a way. But but even her deck has ways to at least keep those two on the field. And if not, recur them out of the graveyard. You know, like, she'll bring them back. She knows that. Like she's going to be. We're not just going to sit there and let her do it, you know, looking at some of Chris's list, like, Jenova gets huge, like Jenova makes huge big bigs and she herself gets big.

Like, it's just a crazy size scaling commander. And I'm looking at Chris's list and yeah, man, like, he has a lot of ways to get things right back out of the yard for sure. You know, like this is the one of the lists where he is running that, one of the more expensive double sided lands. What is it? Awakening.

Which is like a non slot too. But he kind of thinks. All right. Out of all the lists, he has a lot of black decks, but like this is the one I think that he committed this to because it's like it's gonna happen. Like I gotta come back from all of this a little bit. So yeah. Yeah, I mean the let me give another example recently from a game like of, of this kind of thread of just getting some extra usage out of cards that end up in your graveyard.

So I have a deck that I've brought to the table that I've just been trying to experiment with this idea of, can, can I build a list that's not really about like, hey, I'm going to try to build the most exigent threat, but I'm going to make it really difficult for any threat my opponents are presenting to have any chance at getting at me.

And so I've referenced this a little bit. It's this deck that I initially had Excel sign of attracts as the commander. Yeah. And first contact with that deck it. I ran into some issues with how well it worked in trying to game manage three opponents, but one of the things that did go well is I have it's premised on a lot of fog type spells and pillow fort enchantment type stuff.

And you know, if you've ever played pillow fort, you know that those cards, at some point somebody wants to bring it and they got to those things, got to go to the graveyard. So I'm like, well, naturally, part of this game's arc is going to be that these things will end up in my graveyard. So I am it's not a graveyard centric deck.

I'm not trying to get stuff into my graveyard, but those things will end up there. You know it. So I'm going to have eternal witness. I'm going to have a timeless witness. I'm going to put one of my copies of replenish in this deck to make sure that all those pillow forts come back. And you know, that first contact.

I wasn't planning this play, but one of the cards I have and it is the eldest reborn, you know. So first chapter on that saga. Each opponent sacks of creatures. Second everybody discards. And on the third one, I can put a creature planeswalker from a graveyard onto the battlefield in my control. So I played this one sided edict, a discard and a reanimate and a random card.

Yeah. All in one card. And so as a saga, it's gonna put itself in the graveyard by itself anyways. True. So I played it. It ran its course. I, I don't remember if it was like the UID or one of those. I used that to bring it back to hand, recast it. Somebody didn't want to go through the discard portion of it, so they used their removal on it.

And then I used another one of my, you know, graveyard interaction cards to get it back to hand. And it was just a it was one of the solid plays that I had with that deck through that game. I'm like, okay, yeah, this stuff's going to end up in graveyard. And getting to use it again is, is is just strong.

So like like what I'm hearing from this is like, yeah, the overarching asking arching strategy for the deck really wasn't finding itself in the few games that you played, at least specifically this one. Yeah. But just by way of having a vector of okay, well, I'm going to keep pushing this thing back to play that they're scrambling to stop.

It was the stronger move. It was just that was one of the better things that the deck was supposed to set up to like be set up to do. Like it's just a stronger move. So if you can apply this a little bit in different places, I think is is the advertisement for this episode, which is you already have a deck.

I'm not saying convert it into a graveyard deck. What I'm saying is you will have you will get forced to to lose your stuff, like even by blocking or attacking or whatever. And like I think there's a version of this where, yeah, I've got maybe one, or I've got one foot in the grave and all of my decks, all of them have it.

If it's if it's reasonable to do so that's. Yeah, that's where I'm weirdly enough, I have a story also like this is this is kind of the infomercial thing, I guess, which is about saga style effects. Yeah, recently I've been I had this list. I think it's approaching a year. I think it's about a year old or close to it, which is the zero, the eternal schemer.

Yeah. So when does morn first came out? This guy spiked up in prices a little bit just because of some of the. I think there's like a couple rooms and infinites that he could do. I can't remember what was going on in the standard at the time, but I watched this price just leap up out of nowhere. Around that period.

And I think it was because he was briefly in standard at the time, I'm not sure. But me and Brad were talking about rooms and how cool I thought they were. I'm like, dude, I think these are actually pretty sick. Sick cards, dude. Like there. Yeah. You know, kind of like a number of effect. It's it's like those sagas, right?

Like at a later time, you can activate the other half of the room and get get the effect off of it. And yeah, Brad being Brad was like, yeah, dude, I want to do like a gruel rooms list. And he started working on bellow as a oh no, as a commander and the man of you. Right. Yeah. Right. Like and all of a sudden they're attackers.

And I'm like, okay. So like, if he takes gruel, like, what's the rest of the idea? ID and it was, it was right. Like I'm like, okay, yeah, I'll get the s per side of everything. And I start working on it. And the whole, the whole idea about zero is that he can wake up an enchantment, he can pay one and a white and they just become a creature.

That's it. Yeah. Not till end of turn. Not whatever. Like they just are that from there forward until they get zone change or something else happens. Right. And then the other piece that he does, which is really crazy and I just, I just I don't think you're going to see this combination of keywords in one place for a while.

Is that all of the enchantment creatures you control have hex proof, they have death touch and they have life link wild. It's just it's just crazy, dude. Like, that's just a lot of of keyword soup on all of these creatures. So I make the list and it really was. It didn't really a feature a lot. It had a good amount of rooms like the lower mana value ones, and it started looking kind of like a draw go style deck where I'm holding up that mana.

And at any point could something wake up in block or wake up and do a thing or they try to target Death Touch? Yeah. So like I remember one, I remember one instance where I had trapped in the screen down, weirdly enough, an oust card that you, that you that you use I think in calyx and it already has like Ward two or something like that on it.

And it was currently holding out one of Brad's permanents. I can't remember which, but Brad was, he wanted it back dude. Like he wanted it. So he, you know, pays targets the thing the ward triggers, right? He pays through it to, to make it so he still doesn't get countered. And then, I don't know, I just respond by making it a hex proof creature so it fizzes his spell.

So there was some cool stuff you could do with that. But yeah, as we moved into a because we got through and, you know, in and through the, the, the universe that was beyond that is Final Fantasy. They introduced a battery of saga creatures that are both enchantments, and creatures. So when they're out and Zeus out at the same time, they just pick up all of those characteristics without me having to wake them up.

So to say, so to speak, with his ability. Sure. So I'm thinking about this list and I'm going, oh, a lot of these things just look like big draw spells that kind of end up in the graveyard, or big removal spells end up in the graveyard. They kind of run their they run their course and end up in the graveyard.

You know, that was the big thing. It's like they're headed there unless you do something to stop it. Yeah. And you know, I, I kind of like, I don't, I don't know which ones are worth their, their slot too much because I honestly wasn't playing a lot with the Final Fantasy stuff, even though Chris was all over it.

But it wasn't a space he was super in either. So, you know, I reached out to Empress Quinn and I'm like, hey, what are the ones that are good from the set? Because I know, like, they're just way into that. And, I get what I can from that makes sense for the meta. And then I'm going back in time looking at the Kamogawa ones too, because they eventually end up in creatures as they as they run their course.

There was a lot of like, creatures that are sorry sagas that they end up flipping over into an enchantment creature. Then I, I, I'm playing the list and I'm building graveyard recursion into it like and flicker two. So like resetting them was a huge interest of like a way big interest to me. Like teleportation circle that sort of hearth and home.

Dorsa. These are two of these already enchantments. So I can make them hex proof. They can become. Yeah, I can wake up early. I mean, she won't be a six five, but she'll be indestructible. Death, touch, life, link and hex proof and then flicker things, you know, like run that some of like some in some in Shiva back through at the end of the turn and tap a creature and stun it and then do it again and then, you know, so the deck became it's I don't know, I'm really actually weirdly proud of it.

Like it's a, it's a stiff deck. It's difficult to, for my opponents to play around it. It's playing on curve. It's not super interested in ramping. It's just, you know, I've got things kind of happening at different intervals in the mana cost range, you know, like here's a bunch of two mana enchantments and here's a bunch of threes and fours.

And it just kind of gets there, you know. But the big piece is that there's nine cards in the deck that are just set to get things out of the graveyard, you know, because if I don't manage them any other way, they're headed there on their own. But also, you guys are going to try to board, wipe and clear them off, you know, so like one of one of the ones that I really like in this deck is called Rate of Return.

It's five mana for a, for a sorcery that has cipher on it. Like and I should say that zero has flying. So this is a great card for for this deck. Return to our target creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield tapped cipher. So if there is already out, I get two of these like I. I shoot the spell, bring back, I don't know, a overlord of the flood pits or something.

Then swing with zero to somebody who can't block and then bring back, I don't know, summon Ixion and yeah, and exile something until this this creature leaves the battle. But if Zeus dead. I can return him and encode it on him and just get him out. So, like so. Yeah. So sometimes I'll let him go, and then I'll exile the spell and teach him the writ of return, and then let him attack.

And then we'd start from there, too. So it's this with this particular card, the language on cipher is very a of interest, right? Because it says, then you may exile this spell. So like the spell resolves, then the cipher goes on. Right. Which is cool. Yeah. So then it's like, okay, well then the next time I swing, I'm going to bring that some in the Anima and start drawing cards or, you know, master keys again and start maybe digging things out.

So the deck is set up just to get the graveyard emptied again. Last game I played with this, weirdly, it was the same night against, you know, it's like right back in that Todd guy's face. They they worked very hard to clear me off. They had finally gotten so basically it was going on as I had a teleportation circle and an undue spirit dancer and a it's I can't remember the summon, but it was a summon where it ETB summoned Vale for it. ETB and you have to pick the greatest mana value and bounce it.

It's just getting worse and worse and worse. Each opponent does each. Yeah, it's it's one sided. It's just getting worse. Like it's a board wiper die because they're hex proof and all of that. Like you got to get rid of a ZR first. Then you can start targeting these things. And what I'm holding in my hand though is I've got an awakening hall in my hand, which is one of the ones that I held on to from the original build.

But it's eight manages to rubber band everything right back into play, and they finally get a board wipe through, clear it all off, and you know they're feeling better and like, ready to kill me, dude. Like, she's in not a good mood at all. Like, she's just not weirdly enough, she was playing that Yoshi deck.

And she was she was running. She was running people down. But then eventually I just kind of, like, gone to her knees and. And was able to stun, stun, lock her with this summoned veil for her because that mode, because of chapter two through four, is put a stunt counter on a creature you know and like, stun them down.

So they finally get everything cleared. We get to my turn and it was all of my turn. It was this wasn't easy to do. It was eight goddamn mana. But his eight man had just a rubber band. Everything back into play. I value this card because it's an aristocrat effect on the other half the the funeral room.

But the awakening is fucking crazy, dude. Like, it just pops everything right back into play. And then I don't know if I ever wake this up with zero. It's it's a big it's a big life linking death, touching creature that's going to keep me in the game even longer. So there's one other example like is this deck a graveyard deck?

I guess I could make it more focused on that. Abandon some of these other things and just think about things that go straight to yard via the sagas, but it really is trying to. I just know they're headed there one way or another. I think you guys are going to try to board wipe me, because I've got some kind of weird bouncing engine thing going on or. Yeah, they, they naturally, they naturally put themselves in the yard like you're like your saga did, like if you, if you had a creature version of that saga like, dear God, because of just how much you are, it's I mean, it's interesting I didn't go look at this, but I'm like, oh, there's a lot of crossover.

But I've been recently tinkering with the Abdul Adrian Blink Enchantments deck because I'm like, oh, if I gave myself a building restriction with that legend, this one, that's a side tangent because the point is graveyard stuff. But I like what you're doing here because one way or the other, like the primary mode is, yeah, if I can set up some blink type stuff, that's what I want to do. But the graveyard is another way to just keep harvesting value.

Maybe, maybe one more other like example of like what I'm up to lately to just thinking about this. Like because of just the type of of meta we're in. I recently made a Khosla The Broken Halo. Commander. Originally I was like, okay, dude, this is like a Voltron deck. I'll use it to replace Chico and Na set, which was really just kind of a pornographic deck.

I didn't feel good playing it against you guys. And, Khosla the broken halo is is six mana for a five four. She has convoke, but she also has flying vigilance and haste. And whenever you cast a spell that has convoke scry to then draw a card. So you do. What is that? A preordained? Preordained. Oh, sure. To draw.

So every time you convoke, you preordained something. I started this list off with really just kind of the who's who of what I know works in these colors for Voltron strategy. Like, you wouldn't think I'm headed to the graveyard here, but I weirdly get forced to do it with this. Dag. Interesting. It weirdly didn't work like I.

I like she's a lot of goddamn mana like that. Like, even though she's six mana, and has haste. Which dude, mercifully, she has. Hey, she's just even worse without it. She's still only a five four, but she really only comes comes to life for me when I have a lot of creatures out to pay her convoke cost and get her.

So some of the best out there are like a bunch of one mana, maybe two, mana creatures. And initially I had this whole idea of like, running some of the, you know, going back to Kamogawa, the, the reconfigure creatures, like, so in the event that she dies, they kind of fall off. And now our creatures that can convoke her.

But even that was just too fucking slow. Like, I just needed to get her out and and working on people's life totals because she does nothing else. If you're not doing the whole convoke thing, and I don't, I don't think you can make all of it happen. Like late lately, I've been battling against some people in our playgroup, some of the newer players, about having to need two things to make one thing happen.

It drives me crazy. It drives me crazy as a as a pilot, as a opponent, where I look at somebody resolve something and I'm like, what is this going to do for you? Unless you find some other piece to it that's in your 99 and in our meta, it's hard to do this because you're not allowed to get into your, your library to find it.

So yeah, I, I, I, I think inevitably I start pointed I start getting pointed to what is what is the thing I do the best and most often. And if I can't do that reliably, I start thinking about letting the deck go. So for her, it's I want creatures of interest out. You know, like one of the most potent would be like esper sentinel, like the, you know, like it's a one man, of course, draw e type card or now the Queen of Dale where she even makes a token.

Stuff like that. Guide of souls, you know. But I was the more I played it, I started heading towards. Dude, I'm just going to do a giant killer. You know, the little guy that can remove something if it's powerful. But the other time it's just to do the can tap things down. Yeah. Selfless savior. Mother of runes.

Like to keep her in play. Zack fair. Even after watching Zack hurl that thing around and the debt got more and more. The demand of cost was just going down, down, down, down, down as far as as far as the deck is because you're just establishing cards out on the battlefield and going, yeah, it's just evolving in that direction, you know?

And I'm like, well, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to start hooking things with like, you know, welcoming vampire and cages. Welcome. So I can start extracting this. So this is the other thing that I've been kind of battling these, these newer players with is if you if you drive consistency where you keep doing the same thing over and over and over again, the designers have given you tools to benefit from that.

Right? Like the cage is welcome and welcoming vampire. They they start going well hey. Yeah man. Like you're you're clearly like little man of value plays here with the deck that you've put together. Let's also draw cards while doing it. Yeah. And then you can take it even a step further where you're like, well, I'm going to run board wipes like Austere command, you know, dust.

Yeah. Which you can create asymmetry with dusk or there's a, there's a whole ton of them now where it's like, hey, destroy everything power greater than this card or whatever. I mean, there's legit one that's, it's it's pretty wild. It's called localized destruction. It's three white, white. You get energy, you can pay one energy if you do.

Each creature you control with power equal to the amount of energy you paid this way gains indestructible toland of turn. Destroy all creatures. So this reads. You know, if you're not dialed in on energy, you get the one to save all of your creatures with power one. So if the whole deck is okay, well, it's giant killer.

It's that fair siren storm tamer. It's all of kami of the false hope. Like all of these stupid creatures that you're going to hold on to. Yeah, she goes back to zone, but then they just reconvert Coeur right the fuck back out, and she's. Hey, so she can just get on there, get on that opponent's neck again.

So as I'm playing the deck, a secret is revealed. You know, like my my group figures this out. They're like, yeah, killing her doesn't matter. I remember I distinctly remember a game playing against Cameron, and he's like, it doesn't matter if you kill her. Like I'm about to attack Zach because I want Zach the fuck out of this game like he's playing.

Mr. House, I won't go. I will not suffer that deck to live. I just want out of my fucking life. And I'm just saying. Sorry, dude. I learn my lesson against this deck a few times now. Like, I've let it breathe too long and I've regretted it every time, so I'm sorry, but, like, what's best to go is you're not here, you know?

And so I moved to I moved to kill him and he swords it in combat and Cameron's like, yeah, I don't know if that's really going to save you, dude. Like, he'll just come at you next turn, you know, because, like, that's been so kind of used to seeing a longer delay on a, on a commander getting zoned. But what he but he, he doesn't have an answer for what's really going on, which is, you know, he's got all these little dudes that just will reconvene her right back out and then she's back on him, you know?

So, it's a little bit of a dose problem, right? Like, you don't be worried about dose. Be worried about the damage. The whole thing has to go precedes dose coming. Yeah. 2.0. Perfect example. Right. It's not once he's out it's it's almost a little too late. Like you need to start getting creative and it's really like yeah it's really a deck check, you know.

And it isn't to say I don't want to protect her. Like, there is one man of creatures in the deck, like selfish savior, mother of runes that will do this. But it's not that pressing that I. It's these creatures, dude. So we start going around the table and. Yeah, dude, it changes from. Get rid of Khosla to clear Andy's board clearances.

Board clearances board. And I already kind of thought ahead of this like I, I know my play group is there. Smart dude. Like you guys are gonna fuck. You're gonna fucking figure it out like, in the course of the game. So I'm, I'm holding on to dewdrop here going, this is going to be the best moment this game, I think.

I think people are going to bug out. Right. And finally, I think it was Brad clears me off, I, I get to my turn and I'm like, I'm going to cast do do do cure two and a white gift a card. Return up to two target creature cards with mana value two or less from your graveyard to the battlefield. If a gift was promised.

Instead, return up to three target creatures with mana value to our list from the graveyard of the battlefield. So incomes these creatures again. You know the selfless saviors back the commies back a I do think actually among them was like a harmonized trio or something. So they're all back online and they're also means so is your convoke right.

So like towards Khosla, it's like I just made three land plays essentially like yeah okay. So like I spent three to do the dewdrop. But these all have their own independent value with the commander, you know. So it all worked out where I had, I had to tap out completely. But she was able to get reconvert and then slam down again on somebody.

So yeah, later I introduced a biting grace to this deck, which is, you know, at the beginning of your end step, choose one. You either gain one life or return target creature card with mana value one from your graveyard to the battlefield. So it went down to a one v one between me and Cameron, and it was the fact that I could just keep pulling this commie false hope back into play that he just gave me the game.

He's like, I can't deal with that abiding grace and you're going to unwind all my combats. It won't matter, you know? So those those modern horizon sets have to have some of the best uncommon. They really do, don't they? Right. Like they're so good. Yeah. So if you look at the list now, it's like, you know, there's seven recursion spells in the deck.

Yeah. I've got like, guarding the faith to try to step out from under a board wipe too. And and, flare a fortitude, clever concealment. Like you can see, the effort here is to keep my goddamn board more than keeping just the commander by herself. Right. Well, and but and one thing worth worth pointing out, I guess, with a deck like this is that, you know, you have a lot of draw in here, and that might be somebody impulse with a deck like this, right? As.

Yeah, just keep churning through the library like, okay, fine. You removed a bunch of low mana value creatures, like, I'm just going to draw more and play more. Yeah, you kind of like you can keep the velocity up. It's true. Yeah. And you're. And you're like, well, but I could also just have these because again, you have a sent from Avernus, which is a really hot pick for this deck where you don't have to put a lot into the X really cover.

Yeah. Maybe max three into the X I think is where it would top off, I think. And I would, I would characterize that as a lower effort play than trying to spin through your library to, to reload. Right. Like, okay, you cleared me, but I'm just gonna bring it all back with a little bit, like, am I all the way in on that? No.

But like, scout for survivors, patch up dewdrop cure. They're all. They're just a rubber band. Some of these out? Yeah. Testing a few of them to see what what's worth it and what isn't. Like, I'm kind of there, but this is, you know, it's of high interest for people to remove ground, abolish are in our meta.

It's of high interest to remove spell site. If I have a Voltron style commander, that's like looking to step on your neck and I'm going to just veer all the spells to the spell sky, or possibly even steal some of the stuff that you're interested in putting on your commander. You know, like, I'll, I'll steal it with the spell site.

So I kind of anticipate, like Silver Blade, Paladin, like, you know, the lizard blades. Like, people want these gone, but I'm going to do my best to protect them. But then the other piece is like, okay, well, a board wipe comes down. I'm actually good to see all of your guys's stuff go, and then I can zip them back out into play.

So like what? I characterize this as a graveyard deck? No, I wouldn't, but it's it's got one foot in the grave to keep my game game plan together. If I never have to cast, you know, do drop cure, then things are going right. I think, you know, like, they're probably going right from you guys haven't been able to rally the right kind of defense against her.

And this is, you know, there's other stuff that will happen, right? Like blockers and weird tokens and things I can't really account for. I can't plan for everything. I try my best, but, you know. Yeah. And can I just. I'm having this moment. Right? Because in a playgroup like ours, You know, like, I mean, people describe football as a game of inches, right?

Like, you know, if you if you manage to get a first down by a few inches like that, that could change the outcome of the game because you kept a drive going. But I think our meta kind of has a similar thing where, you know, the difference between going on a winning streak and going on a losing streak isn't that vast, right?

I don't think the competency of players in our group, the composition of decks, are such that, you know, like, I think there are people who are better players and better deck builders, but it's not so crazy that it's like, yeah, Brad's just so much better than me at building decks that I just can't beat him.

Like, no, I can beat Brad, but it's the little small minute things. Yeah. And the one that's crossing my mind. And I know I'm kind of being, like, harebrained with the setup of that, but that's the one. Soda is like, whatever. Yeah, but, like, what's striking me is you're talking through that is, you know, one of the things that we, we do in this game, we've already talked about it in this episode, is trying to preserve, a board state and creating asymmetry, which is kind of how you win.

And you talk about step dodges all the time. We do think the thing about a step dodge, though, is you've got to have it in hand at the right time with mana up. Right. And it's true. Yeah. In this way you can just kind of play out and overreach a little bit. Yeah, you can overreach, but also it doesn't have to be in hand when the catastrophic moment happens.

Right. Like you might draw your, your dewdrop cure after you've been wiped and you're like, okay, well, I didn't have to have it at the right exact moment. I drew it now. And now I'm ready to deploy it and create this asymmetry that I need to win the game. And I think that's another like just a tick mark that we can put in the column of just being able to play with that one foot in the graveyard as you've been putting it, is super beneficial because the timing doesn't have to be quite as right as step dodges do.

Yeah, I'm that's a that's a good a good thing to say too. Like you're not having to slow your turn for an event that might not happen. What do they it's you know you're not playing at the tempo really too much. If you were leaving the turn with an unused mana, that could have gone towards something that would advance your board state a little bit better than then.

Yeah, like this way you're like, well, I have a way to recur my yard. And they would have to do two things. You'd have to blow it out and clear my yard. In a meta where farewell is not allowed, I guess. But then there's only one way out from that anyway, which is a phase out. So it's. Yeah, one of the things you brought up in, like a previous episode was like the meta kit, and that could be what I'm trying to say too, is that maybe it's possible that Kyle and I are a little, like, meta pilled a little.

We we we totally are. Like, just because the way we play. But, I do just feel like these are common occurrences, you know, like, if I just pull up a random list on architect, people are going to have board wipes in there. They're going to have generous gifts and ways to remove things. And sometimes you can just play through, like you might have a deck where it just has such a critical mass of effects that you're better off just getting deeper into your library and pushing through, than trying to exploit something from your art, because the mana cost and the speed is, is usually is not really in your favor, I guess that way.

So it isn't right for every deck, you know, but like, but then there's somewhere it's like, yeah, I mean like, this is gonna have like I found that casa la. It seemed more it's those slots seem better to me than just, you know, she's not really all that equipped. She's not, like, jacked up like a typical Voltron is.

It's just. Yeah, she's persistently attacking, you know, picking up a counter from, like, Luminous Aspirant or Keyleth, for example. Like she is growing in power, but like Collective Inferno is the big one where it's like, okay, well, I convoke this inferno down and name Angel. And so now they're both she's dealing she's dealing double damage.

And it's like, Jesus Christ, I thought, I have more time than I don't. So, let me clear her off. All right. So borderline happens. Okay, well, I'm now way behind on getting her out. Now she's eight mana, so I won't I won't be able to probably do this manually on my turn. Maybe there's times where it could happen, but sure, I'll just do scout for survivors, bring them back into play.

A couple of these guys, and now you're connecting on the dog and and you're like, shit. Like, he now does have enough mana. Like, these creatures are going to be ready to convoke this chick again. So it just seems like the right path for her and her, you know, and your Calix deck a little bit where you're like, they want to destroy these enchantments. Like, I know they do.

They I yeah, I, I know they're going to I'm not zone changing them. I'm not involved in regular graveyard strategy execution. We're not doing that. I haven't described too much of that. Maybe a little bit with the list. Just because they run out of time and they do. There, there, there. They've exhausted their, chapters or whatever.

But, you know, I'm not talking about bouncing gray Merchant of Asphodel around or welding artifacts in and out of play. You know, like somebody could sit here and talk to me and say, yeah, I've got, like, this Monroe red artifacts deck or or a red adjacent, deck that that has a lot of equipment in it.

And Vandal Blast is a very popular card in my meta, and it's like, scrap master can push all this stuff right back to play. If you're commander is an artifact, which a lot are, and they're on that list, it's like, okay, well, you could let them go to zone from the blast event and just pull it. All right?

Pull it all right back. Like, this is not cool for your opponents because they lose all their precious fucking mana rocks that they're not zone changing so much. And you're on the bad side of a vandal blast. And now they're melted down in your stuff's back and your opponent stuff's back. But, you know, like, stuff like this, like, these are pretty strong plays like.

Yeah. And I just I just want to point out to the listeners that I don't think it's, I mean, reinforcing your point. It's not right for every deck. But there's an elegance here that can be explored. Like, I don't I don't know, but I'm guessing as you were building Khosla, a lot of people are probably doing tokens to try and beef up the capacity to conquer.

Yeah, it's what's kind of cool about her is that she doesn't. She is really kind of open ended, like, I do think you could do that for sure. Yeah, but I do. But the thing is, if you're doing a token list with Khosla, these graveyard plays. Yeah, they're not of interest. They're not of interest, they're not viable.

But I think they're really game shifting plays that you've crafted. Yeah. And so I deliberately kind of cool. Yeah I deliberately went out of my way for creatures that provide me value over the course of the game, you know, like the fairy mastermind, things like that, where I'm like, I just value these too much to have them be tokens.

But but token. Token play has its own compounding arena to to be in like like pivoting back to what I was saying earlier. Like, so one of the lists that that Zach's brother has is Azula. We don't really play with this, but like, he he brings it and it's it's essentially a Greek commander that it fire bends two.

So when she attacks, she adds red, red to your pool. And if you fire Lord Azula. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. Fire guess. Yeah. I'm sure there's a there's like there's like. I think you're right. I forgot what year it was. So essentially the big thing is, is that she's to me, this is how I read this, commander. Right.

It's a low man of way to twin spells out of your out of your command zone. Because the firebending effect, if they use that red mana when they cast a spell, they get, they get a double crack at it. So I'm playing against this. Listen, I've heard a lot about it from Zach. Zach's been saying it's a it's a good list.

It's tough, it's good, it's good. And maybe it's been just bad. I haven't really looked at the list until the last time we were together, but I'm just not seeing it. I'm not seeing the, the the consistency there, you know. So we were between games and Todd just hands me the deck and I'm flipping through it.

And there's a little of he wants to use only Airbender cards. But then he kind of abandoned that and started putting serious cards in the deck. And I'm seeing serious cards like the brand new Jace that's like 50 bucks or something like that. And I just get triggered. Kyle, I just go off on this on this thing.

I'm not being mean. But what I was trying to explain to him, this is this is the route I took when I was talking to him. I was like, as your opponent, Todd, you want to. It's really easy for me to just zone her and keep her out of range, or develop blockers where you're not really able to safely attack.

So. So my read on the commander is the following. Right. You need to be able to safely attack an opponent. And then on top of that in combat is the only window that you get to use this firebending mana. It's sort of introducing other cards that allow you to play it outside of that, outside of that mode. Right.

This is really strong, like, don't get me wrong, but a lot of these cards in this deck I'm seeing only make sense if you find another one. So like one of the things that he had was, Layla of anticipation, which, yeah, I get you could use that mana for your mana rock or something like that and twin them off because she just does that.

Like she'll let you do anything with it. So it's not that crazy. But there was a lot of sorceries in the deck, like too many, where I can see the use case of them being really strong. If we have a way to cast them in combat somehow, you know you don't want to flood your hand with too many of these. Yeah. So I was just trying to make the case of you need two things to make one thing happen to make these cards worth it.

Sometimes some they're just banger cards on their own. Like if I saw insurrection in the 99 of that deck, I would probably just go, yes, this is just a win condition card. You know, like roll your eyes at that, dear listener if you want. But like my point being is that it doesn't need to find another thing in the Azula list to be a good card.

And that's when you start getting into staple territory, when those when those cards are just, they're useful on the mana that you have to cast them. They're just good. But yeah, the magic I think of, of of magic is that as time goes on, as we get new tools, we can look at them as, as ways to compound on the thing that we're trying to do.

And you'll, you'll just have better games sometimes, even when you're compounding the hell out of your commander, you're beating the hell out of the dough and trying to make this thing into a sour duff loaf. It's just not happening, you know? Like there's they're just not they're not supported well by what you're trying to do.

But yeah, I was throwing things out like, yeah, man. Like, I really like enchantments, like the backgrounds for a commander like this, because I really want to make it difficult on my opponents to not to for one, my commander that's attacking. So something like Sword Sailor where I don't really care who I'm attacking with.

Azula, I just want to attack safely. Yeah. And I don't want to get two for one, because I guarantee someone's going to kill her. Either a surprise block or a removal spell, or an edict or just something, you know, like, does anything they expect her to go to zone? Let's not have acquiesce form on her, even though that's a good car because it's only one mana.

But like, you get what I mean, where it's like I'd rather make it tougher on my opponents to both solve two things at once. And that's kind of what this graveyard thing kind of does. Is that, like, if they're not prepared to board, wipe you and then nuke your graveyard or destroy your commander and then nuke your graveyard or exile, I guess is the other piece that we were missing here a little bit.

But like, there's only so much exile that goes around, you know? You're making it tough for your opponents in this reverse way, right? So, like, you can make it tough on yourself by making a deck that needs two different things to happen to get a good outcome. But you can kind of do this right back at your opponents in some cases where, yeah, they need to do two things to really, really get a good outcome out of managing me.

You see what I'm saying? Like, yeah. Which I think is a key principle, right? Like the more complicated that you make it for people to manage you, the better it is for you. Yeah. So like in the example, it was a board wipe. That was the answer. But no removal was really going to collapse this thing together.

They needed to remove multiple pieces to pull that deck down to their level so they can have their game again. There was too much going on in my little engine that I put together, and it just kind of worked out where I had. It kind of works out that in those colors, it just they, they, they put a lot of control, high style saga creatures in that, in, in those colors, you know.

So like it was about the sagas. The sagas in general are kind of kind of controlling. Right? Because and because Garnet has the same thing. It's just like, gosh, if we just keep letting Garnet go, she's just getting huge in that life total is just going into the stratosphere. Yeah. But, you know, a board wipe was the right move, and I kind of expect I didn't.

I, I kind of expect board wipes, like, they're, they're just a big thing in our meadow. That might be a lot of what's coming out of this is that like Meta's this meta does like to clear the board to reset things, you know, but, it it was it's kind of a lot for everybody to get their arms around, you know, like playing an artifact deck is also like.

Yeah. Like they're, they're they're the most vulnerable type of permanent. And I want to say nearly like red can manage them. Green can manage them. White can manage them. An artifact creature is extremely vulnerable. I'm learning this like, all the time where I'm like, oh shit, it is artifact like. Recently I've been playing with daydream in the 99 of this deck that I put together a Rocko Street chef, and I keep forgetting this guy's an artifact.

And my opponents don't they? They try to zip him back to the graveyard, and I'm like, shit, he I yeah, he's an artifact like artifact creature I think is probably the most vulnerable card in the game. It's very vulnerable dyes to every typical board white, plus the ones that just clear off artifacts. It's crazy.

So, yeah, I, I guess what I'm just trying to get out here is that, like, you don't need a graveyard focused deck to think about some plays that might help you along, and I and I'm thinking more about them lately to where I just don't have a density of those things that exist in this game. And to just keep going like some, some decks, that doesn't make sense to do that.

Like there's plenty of creatures, let's just keep going. But then there's also this other thing that you can like mine, which is, yeah, like pulling them out of the yard and pulling them right back into play or pulling into your hand or rubber banding them into your hand like they that in itself might just be a benefit to you, you know, like it might just expose an angle to the deck that you didn't really have before.

So, you know, specifically with like there's a version of this costless where I have a creature that can self-sacrifice it, it can kill itself off, and then it comes right back to play at my end step. But then, because I've got the stupid, welcoming vampire in the deck, I've now established a little bit of a monarch style draw engine, you know, like just little things like that where it's like, you know, like, okay, well, I'm gonna end the turn.

I got nothing left to do. So I'm going to use the self to save your sacrifice. It, I don't know, I'm going to make the the Khosla Indestructible or whatever. Okay, well, I end the turn. Abiding grace brings it back. But it's the first time a creature power to or less is entered. So welcoming vampire triggers. I draw a card.

Okay, like all of these cards, independent of each other, are pretty good for my list. Yeah, and that looks like a graveyard deck. Like that would not be a crazy. That little thing in something like an illicit core or a or a another style deck would be like, oh, shit, like this Ram, we're losing life.

Oh, God. You know, oh, he's got grave pack to Holy shit. Like this is fucking melting us down. That would be a graveyard focus list. Where? Here. They're all just kind of independently trying to support this idea a little bit. Or at least kind of give me a little toughness against what you guys want to do to me.

But I yeah, I look for these things where it's like, maybe I fall into this a little bit. Yeah, I've got my own drawer solved. I mean, you're looking at the list. I've got plenty of drawers. Yeah, there's plenty, but I'll take it. Yeah, I'll take that. That set up, you know, I, I like it because there, you know, I mean not to overly litigate it, but yeah, I mean, I think it creates this space where you can create angles of advantage that that maybe don't exist if you're not thinking about it.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm a big fan of, like, Akio Mansur and its cousins. I, I think it one more crack at an instant or sorcery in your deck is that if that's as far as you take it, it's. I mean, like read now has just flashback like that red card that just does it. Sure. I'm, I'm looking at those more and more of, you know, like, so, like the space I like to come from with those is it becomes an engine like, you know that I will I will throw an Arkham answer around like crazy.

I probably I probably do need just like, an archaic answer body pillow. Like, you know, I know, you know, I like doing that, but, for sure. But even just a deck where it's not, you know. So, like, for example, I have, like, a mono blue wizards thing going on with the pole jammer. I run all three. I run all three copies.

I think that makes sense, right? The salvage secrets. The shipwreck doors are in the Arkham answer in the list, because they're wizards and they'll be around. And there's just a lot in this deck that's set up to to abuse them. You know, like illusionist stratagem, ghostly flicker displays. And one of these is not cool broke like, because I can bounce some other creature and keep going with it.

Like pull, pull jammer just lets me draw a bunch of cards doing that. But really, like if you're looking at just any other list of mine where I'm trying to pick up instance of sorceries here and there, like I, I honestly think the ardent mentalist should just be in the red list, you know, like there's a lot of I want one more crack at this instant or sorcery, something as simple as, like, you, you just you just have a casual breach the multiverse in your in your ReactOS list.

So it's like this is one other shot at this thing. People really weren't expecting you to do that a second time. Like fuck off. That kind of just even that like is this a little bit more of a take it further kind of thing? Yeah. Even something like a sky shroud claim getting to play that again. Right.

Like, that might not seem like the sexiest play, but just getting to do you know you you've already jumped two lands ahead. Can I jump two more? That changes the texture of the game for you because you'll have significantly more mana than others and it's not, like I said, not sexy. But yeah, it's a it's a spell you already shot.

Let's do it one more time. But more mana is more game actions. I mean, I forget there's a land for this, right? The pinnacle monk. Like, even if you don't really specifically want to commit a slot to that and your red deck, like, you don't really have to. That's right. You just Rand. And if you look at this cost, the list, there's one in the 99.

Like I'm more than happy to play it tapped and or lose some life as a land. But there's other cases where it's like, oh shit, I need to get this back in my fucking hand. I'm almost positive I need this now. Like, after what? I just saw something, you know, like something got recurred. Maybe somebody. Somebody did something right in my face.

But it's in the 99 of this deck. Like getting getting it back. Right. Another. Another crack at my soul. Immolation or chopper's ignition. You know, like something that's just. I get one more shot at this thing. So I value that a lot. And it or or meta just reeks with graveyard recursion. Like, even if it's just not the focus of the deck, like, it's doing it some way, somehow it's it's to the point that I, I mean, you know, me, I fucking love a rest in peace dude.

Like you really do. Let's just let's just get a great get rid of graveyards. Nothing's gonna go to graveyards, but, like, it's to the point that so many people are are interested in using that, that I'm like, you know what? I kind of need my graveyard. Hate to be hidden. I've been relying on things like release to memory a little bit more, like, I'm just fucking suck, dude.

I'm just gonna do this instant speed, right when you're trying to make your move with your graveyard. And I'm going to get a little bit of benefit on the back side because it's happening. Yeah, man. That's those are, those are getting like because people are learning how to play around like that open graveyard hate a little better or just killing you for having it like exactly.

I'm just going to ram you out of the game. You have to go. I can't play without my thing because there are a lot of graveyard decks in our meta. But then there's also just this kind of stuff going on. Like lately, I've been trying to find it where I can. So like lately, like cig, the cig deck that I have, it's it's really it's pretty straightforward.

I'm just looking for aggressively costed, evasive creatures that at least deal three damage so I can end the turn and draw a card with CIG, but the rest of the deck is just kind of set up to manage combat the best way I can and and just hang in the game. It's not it's not really like a very pointed strategy at all.

Like I've got stuff like the plague drone in here to stop some life game that I keep seeing every game, but it's also a three damage flier, so I can trigger the sig and get the draw at the end of the turn. But but honestly, like if they get past me and and bored me pretty pretty effectively with this deck, I'm like, fuck I, I don't, I don't bounce back very well because I'm not producing tokens or a bunch of like, I'm not a like a weenie style list.

I don't have that rapidity. I only draw a card at the end of, you know, like it's not a flying man deck. Like, I don't know if that would be worth it for something like, I don't know, Edric, Spymaster of Trust or whatever, if even if it's not in those colors. But you know, I've got black. And so lately I'm like, well, I want I'm going to do stuff, but I'm going to make sure it's it's really flexible if I, if I do do it right.

So things like just from the catacombs to rubber band, something out of any graveyard if I have to. But then like, it's just, it just it brings the initiative in, which is something that like, I can, I think, reliably capture back with what the deck is set up to do, but it's just it's just out there a little bit or whip of which is like it gives them a life link.

And then there's that other one where it's like, all right, well, rip them out of the graveyard and they get one more combat on. Just give me one more crack with this thing. It's been pretty fucking crazy, man. Like, I had a game where I, I was two damage off from just taking Zach out, and he needed to goddamn go.

And that whip was what did it. It brought one extra body. I got one extra body on him and it went. It made all the difference. Like, I was like, all right, I'm gonna bring back this. I don't even remember what it was. I don't remember being, like, a huge one or anything, but I'm going to bring this thing back and crack you out with it.

And he's like, oh, I didn't, you know, because everyone's just kind of looking like the life link. Yeah, yeah, dude. It's like, no, you gain taste and now it's gone forever. But so are you. So I'm okay with it. You know, I think it was actually my doughty void walker of all cards. Oh. That's funny. Okay, well, it's got shadow, so die, die, Zach.

Go away. So stuff like this where it's like, can I get, like, grave veneration? Like, okay, well, the things are going to die. This is a if. But I find the monarch, then I get them back to my hand at end of turn. Pretty slow. But it's doing something to give me some resilience because I value it, I just do.

But if I had some kind of like, flying Man stylized, where I'm just better off recasting my, you know, like maybe the geeks or whatever, but there's, I don't know, it's really tempting not to put this stuff in the list because there's so much good mass reanimation in black these days. I'm thinking, like, the gaunt list I have is a lot of like, low one mana death touches in. No.

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if I need the things I've got in that is like back in town. I've got academia awakening in this list and with the various. So I have four ways to pull everything back a little bit with this deck, but it's mostly just a bunch of rogues that are like, you know, like the ores off in force or the guild sworn plows or the gifted ether born like just little dudes that are trying to connect a little bit.

But they're not. They're not really worth it, I don't think, like, hopefully by now I've captured something of yours out of your deck. That's worth more than what I can do. But you never know. You never fucking know. You know where it's just. Yeah. So I, I think is you're kind of getting through that.

I think that, you know, I mean, I don't know where you are with the episode, but like, just as a, maybe a close to closing thought on my part is I love what you just pointed out with that example, though, because it allows you it's kind of showing that you can play around with different types of cards for doing this right.

Like it doesn't have to be this, just staple centric. These are the cards you use. It's it can be this exploration of like what's right for your deck and the things that you're doing with that deck, you know, like that with Bavaria's play. You know, that's kind of I mean, yeah, it's a known card and people have used it for a long time, but like you've got the have you got the right situation for this where this fits in, you know, and then finding some other ones and yeah, you might end up using a staple card like Aberdeen's Awakening.

But what other unique finds can you come up with. Like some of those ones you haven't? COSLA I like what you're playing around with to just see what works, you know? And I think that's the thing about this style of utilizing a graveyard is that it's, you know, I mean, it's season to to to taste for yourself.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And so there's probably somebody listen to this episode. They're already doing this. They're like, you know, I run the Eternal Witness and the weird snake and all my green decks, like, because they just value it a little. It's it's a low investment way to do this. So but hopefully some of these I've kind of laid out where yeah, there's a little bit of an engine going on, but it's not really the focus of the list.

And then there's some instances where like it really was something that turned the game around in a list of all of all things where we really thought we were cool and we weren't, you know, like these birds were not dead. So moving forward with this whole idea, I think what I want to try to do is get, you know, further in under the ground.

I think my aim will be to try to talk about more specific things where the focus of the list is using the graveyard as a zone for exploitation, you know, like, it's, it's it's it's the strategy to use the graveyard, not just a, oh, this is kind of come back if it's nice. So like this is like the softest I think idea right now.

But yeah, kind of giving some ideas of, you know like self mill. That's a it's a I think you're very interested there discard like, you know, looting, rummaging reels even like these are effective ways to get things from hand, right, right to yard. And then, of course, like the classic that I think most people kind of think about when they are looking at a lot of lists out there is just sack outlets, but there's, I think, different ways to go about that, too.

You and I were talking earlier where it's like, this is a sack outlet without it looking like one a little way. So that's true things, things like. Yeah. And I think with those I'll try to just really beat the horse around, beat the horse dead around like see what's happening. Like the compounding of the compounding nature of what this deck is set up to do.

Funnily enough, like one of those guys that we're playing with now, like we're trying to get him into commander, and he seems really good with this. Like, one night, me and Zach just threw a deck together for him, using all of the aristocrat effects I had in my box, because I just had accumulated a lot of them.

And it's the deck that speaks to him the most. I think moving things in and out of zone is actually, weirdly, at least in my experience, new player friendly thing to do. Like they kind of it clicks on them pretty quick of like, oh yeah, it's something to connect to. Like I got, like I got to play that game against him.

And I was just like, oh, he's he's piecing this together. He's fallen in love with magic right here in this moment. Yeah, yeah. Because it's you know, and if we think about like Tiff, like one of her early stronger lists was Karadorde and it was, you know, like one of her, like, big brain plays that we all kind of scoffed at was she put was it the gift of immortality?

Is that what it is? Yeah. The gift of mortality on a sakura builder and and all the far as she took, it was just getting mana every site up on every cycle because it would just keep coming back. But I think at some point she introduced like, a Grave Pact style effect underneath it, and it was like, okay, okay, pal, you know, like she could and we didn't have the welcoming card draw at that point, but she could have had can you imagine that set up with a to welcome.

So she's drawing four cards every cycle for every cycle. I love it like this I adore stuff like this. Dude, I this is where I'm going, like, oh, when I see it. Yeah. So I married that chick because of that play. Like, you're fucking magic genius. Let's do this. It took me seven years to do it, but yeah, I'll stick to that.

But that's where I think I want to go next is like, you know, we'll do like, self mill and then and then hopefully just get away from creatures a little bit like, I think artifacts and enchantments, instances, sorceries. I feel like I've already maybe hit that. Maybe I'll look at it a little, see where I can.

Is there anything that wasn't coverage? But yeah, maybe a little too hard, but I think that's the the next thing where we'll just get it down to and not be so nebulous anymore about, okay, the, you know, it's less advertisement and more just like, here's a deck list that I think kind of exemplifies the motions of, I do think, I do think this was good for this, you know, foot in the graveyard, in the grave type thing, like, because, you know, it doesn't have to be like, you're not building around it.

It's just where does it fit? Yeah. If it makes sense for your list. And I don't know, dear listener, like what you're piloting, but maybe consider it where you're, you kind of expect these things to kind of go off during a game. And when they do, you know. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. All right. Cool, cool.

One Foot in the Grave | Graveyard Series

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