Feels weird that this is uncommon as it seems very powerful and interesting to build around. I could easily see this as a mythic. I guess the requirement for three cards to exile makes this somewhat clunky, but potential is definitely there.
Recently I returned to the actual world of Commander after a hiatus of couple of years. After such a long time, what do you play? It’s sort of a special occasion and I also knew I wouldn’t be playing any more actively in the near future, so I knew I had to do something I would find especially enjoyable.
So, I went top-down. Well, most Commander decks are very much top-down with either the Commander itself or a tribal theme or something to similar to work down from. However, I decided to use a theme very specific to me: The art on my walls.
Honestly, my reason to do this is that Seth mentioned this idea on Commander Clash couple of episodes ago and I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, so I decided to do this before Seth could. Not that there’s that much to do here, as most of this stuff just writes itself, although I bet my approach is somewhat different from what anyone else would have done.
For some reason [scryfall]Chevill, Bane of Monsters[/scryfall] reminded me of Sir Hammerlock from Borderlands franchise, so why not build a deck around that? This is a continuation on this.
I don’t think Hammerlock would actually be black, but don’t tell anyone. He is a hunter, but he has (at least in the beginning) naturalist motivations, as he is interested in conservation more than killing. It just so happens that these attempts don’t quite go as planned and these rare creatures just happen end up as trophies on his wall. Later on, the character is depicted more as a hunter, who is interested in learning about these exotic creatures. His method just happens to be to pay someone to kill them.
After my Nethroi and Umori combo I started to think about other potential companions. [scryfall]Lurrus of the Dream-Den[/scryfall] seems like a very antithetical companion for EDH, so hypothetically what would one do with it?
There’s only two options for commander.
Although they do pretty much the same thing, I decided to go with the latter.
I was watching EDH and Chill, where they had a video game theme. What game would I use for such a purpose? I’ll probably make a series of this at some point, because games like Binding of Isaac and Dishonored (both of which I actually like more than the game I’m about to go into) would make interesting decks as well.
But, as I’ve been playing plenty of Borderlands 3 lately, Borderlands it is. But with a very specific view of the world.
Morphs are a favored archetype of mine. I just love them. The imbalance of information is fun for me. Sure, that also has a downside as that often means that you are the target.
Anyhow, before Kadena, it was hard to find a good commander for the deck. Sure, we had [scryfall]Ixidor, Reality Sculptor[/scryfall], but that definitely had limitations as a monocolored general. I was hoping for a Simic one, but they gave me a Sultai. As much as I like Sultai, I do wish they would limit the colors, as blue and green were the big morph colors on Tarkir, even if all colors had them.
I can’t be the only one who wants to read this name as ‘Errata’.
I should note that the effect of shuffling this into your deck is a trigger and the target is the other creature. The trigger won’t be countered if Etrata is no longer on the battlefield. Also, you can always just choose to put her into your command zone anyhow.
By now, if you play limited, you’ve probably heard what a bomb this is. Ben Stark apparently loves it, Mike Sigrist listed it as the best uncommon in the set and LSV saw a lot of potential at 3.5 out of 5, although I bet that’s changed since this initial rating. LSV also gave it a not insignificant 2.5 in constructed.
But what is this talk about this in Commander?
Weirdly enough (although obviously it doesn’t actually mean anything) I was designing a card for just this thing in a dream recently. I just don’t remember what it did. I do have a design of this on our Guild forums. Funnily enough, it was also a 12/12 with a casting cost of 2UG, but that’s pretty much the extent of the similarities. Well, that and it couldn’t attack early either. Mine required you control 20 lands. It also had a partner and it gained a +1/+1 counter any time any player revealed a land card from their library or put a land card into play from the library.
Aaanyhow…
Wow. What to do with this?