Welcome everyone to the third installment of A Hero’s Journey! We’re nearing the end of the road with the Rhys the Redeemed deck. More than likely, there will be at least two more articles posted about Rhys (for those of you who are interested, the very last article will be a complete, or at least as complete as I can make it, primer about the deck). At this point, I’ve now been playing the Commander format for around three weeks. That’s not a very long time, admittedly, but it has been with essentially the same deck, so I think it’s fair to say that I’ve got a smidgen of authority at least in that area. So here’s the deal with this week’s article: I’m going to talk a bit about the politics of playing with the Rhys deck. This is something I’ve been wanting to cover for quite some time, as I find that the diplomacy of Commander is what makes it unique and interesting. I’ve now played enough games with Rhys that I’m fairly confident I can at least make a intelligible argument about how best to lure your opponents into complacency. I haven’t had too many opportunities to scout out amazing plays for you all, but I did manage to get in one game in particular that I think bears mentioning; so there’s that. And finally, there are a few more updates to the deck that I’d like to leave you with.
Rhys the Redeemed Commander Deck
Politics in Commander, The Hidden Hand and Veiled Eye
I’m actually relieved that I finally get to talk about politics in Commander. I’ve wanted to discuss this very topic since the first article, but I realized that anything I said would be more questioning than authoritative. At this point, I have enough experience that there are a few things I can say with reasonable authority, mostly regarding Rhys in particular. There are a few ironies in this discussion that I’d like to highlight for you. In my first article, there was an aside where I discussed the casting cost of Commanders, and Rhys in particular. The point in question was how early to play a Commander, especially one like Rhys that can essentially come down on Turn 1. Well, the answer I’ve come up for this one is pretty simple: you should cast your Commander only at the point where you can do something with them. That seems fairly obvious, since that’s really not a rule of Commander, but rather of Magic itself. However, I’ve found that a lot of times, people neglect this rule of Magic in favor of playing their Commander as early as possible. Rhys can come down Turn 1, but he can’t actually do anything at least until Turn 3. This means that if you want to get your token generation on as early as possible, you can play Rhys on Turn 2. In some games, this is the route you want to go, but your actions are most certainly dictated by your opponents, especially since Rhys, and really Commanders in general, can be easy to remove.
Most often, I tend to play Rhys once I have some method to protect him, such as Lightning Greaves. Regardless, typically I’ve played Rhys for the first time somewhere between Turn 2 and Turn 5. I’m not exactly afraid to throw Rhys out there, primarily because he is so cheap to cost, but also for another reason, which is the key to this discussion today. I’ve been getting a lot of wins lately because people underestimate the power of the Rhys deck. It’s due to another of the little ironies I mentioned above. Readers of my previous articles will remember that I’ve often claimed the one weakness of the Rhys deck is that it has so few ways to actually interact with the opponent’s board. You won’t have a hand full of answers while playing Rhys; if you’re on the right track, you’ll just have a hand full of gas, which is not necessarily the same thing. However, as a result of this, people tend to leave you alone, which is somewhat surprising. Clearly these opponents just are not familiar with how quickly a token army can be created. Here’s where the Commander politics comes in. People are generally afraid to use removal, or attack an opponent, unless that person either is in a special position of strength or weakness, or if that person has been attacking or removing other people’s permanents. This is really where the Rhys deck shines, and one of the reasons why Rhys makes the perfect Commander. The key to the Rhys deck is to maintain a happy medium: having enough tokens to say “Don’t bother attacking me, I’ll just chump block”, but few enough to say “I’m not the main threat yet”. Furthermore, since the Rhys deck mostly doesn’t interact with opponents, no one is retaliating against you for blowing up their favorite card. The game I will be highlighting later should illustrate this point.
The final comment I’ll make about the Rhys deck is this: you want to hold your game-winning cards for as long as possible. This is more of a general (no pun intended) comment on the Commander format than anything, but the reason I bring it up here is because one of the most important things about learning your deck is learning which of the cards in it are truly game-winning. In the Rhys deck, two cards in particular stand out: Beastmaster Ascension and Eldrazi Monument. The problem with these cards is that they are easy to remove. Enchantment and artifact removal is rampant in Commander, and often these two effects are present on the same card. As a result, you want to hold these cards in your hand for as long as possible. When you finally play them, it should be to kill someone out of the blue. For instance, everyone expects an army of forty tokens to be a threat. Before that board-wipe (which you always have to anticipate) every opponent will be watching you like a hawk. However, if you only have eight tokens, and weak ones at that (like Spawn or Plant tokens), people are going to be ignoring you for the most part. Which is why dropping a Beastmaster Ascension at an appropriate time and attacking for lethal can be such a devastating and unexpected move.
Practical Commander Battles, Luring in Your Opponent
At last, here’s the Commander game that I promised you. My opponents this game were playing Jenara, Asura of War, Michiko Konda, Truth Seeker, and Fumiko the Lowblood. Let’s see, a few notes before we begin: with the exception of Jenara (which was actually my first Commander, prior to Rhys) I haven’t encountered either of these Commanders before. The sheer variety of Legendary Generals deserves it’s own aside at some point, but I’ll leave that one for later. Fumiko looks interesting, but unfortunately it was never played this game (which seems strange to me, because if you don’t play your Commander, you’re essentially just playing 100-card Singleton). Michiko Konda is scary—she’s like a white Phyrexian Obliterator that works for player damage. Jenara was probably the least exciting card in the bunch. While I do love Jenara, it’s not because of her abilities, which are mediocre, but rather because A) she’s Bant, a very sweet shard, and B) she’s an angel, my favorite creature type. The only real purpose to Jenara is her ability to beef up and eventually kill an opponent with Commander damage. The downside is that whenever she is killed, all those counters you sunk all that mana into are gone forever. Enough about her though; back to the game.
In some ways, this is the most politically complicated game I’ve played yet. Part of this is due, obviously, to the way that the players interacted. The other part of this is the cards themselves. For example, at one point in the game, the Michiko opponent had a really annoying combo going with a Sun Titan and [/card]Aura of Silence[/card]. Basically, no one could play an artifact or enchantment because of the increase in cost, and also because anything would be destroyed (repeatedly). The other annoyance this player provided was in the form of Crovax, Ascendant Hero. Truthfully, this card was not as annoying as it could have been, since most of my cards are either white anyway, or hybrid-colored, like Selesnya Guildmage. Oh, and this opponent also had an Extraplanar Lens, which was pumping up all of the Plains on the board. I didn’t mind, since I had a Weathered Wayfarer tutoring up a Plains each turn, basically doubling up on my mana (as a side note, this was first time I’ve played the Wayfarer in Commander, and I have to admit that it’s pretty sweet).
As you can perhaps deduce, the mono-white player was getting rather aggressive. That kind of aggression is a double-edged sword, since it’s so fragile. If you take a look at their board, you’ll see that they only have four mana and a Sol Ring keeping them from going broke. The Lens is keeping them afloat and allowing them to cast cards. All it takes though is a bit of artifact removal and a board wipe to completely deflate that kind of position. Eventually, the Bant player started bouncing the Lens with Capsize, and in order to play it again the mono-white opponent would have to exile another land, thereby decreasing their already lacking land count.
One thing worth noting about this part of the game is how frightened people are by Citanul Flute. Whenever I played it, I never got a chance to untap with it. This is really the only time that my deck ever drew mass fire from everyone on the board. It was answered twice by two different opponents. Clearly, they didn’t want me to be able to tutor up any creature in my deck. So much for my fun.
For the most part though, my opponents left me alone. Mainly this was because the Bant and mono-white players were really going after each other, and since my board was basically empty, I was relegated to the back of the bus in terms of threat level. If they had seen my hand, they might have been a little more scared. Here’s what it looked like:
Soul Foundry is a fine card, though a bit useless in this situation. Ant Queen has actually been pretty bad for me. I’ve had it in my hand several times, and never really had the inclination to cast it. It will probably be removed in the next deck update. The two most notable cards here are Avenger of Zendikar and Beastmaster Ascension. With these two cards, I knew I had a shot to win this game, if only I could lure my opponents into complacency. One other notable card that I haven’t mentioned yet is Slate of Ancestry. It’s obviously a powerful card, but since I didn’t have any creatures on the board (yet), none of my opponents saw fit to remove it.
Well, long story short, I eventually played the Avenger of Zendikar and started attacking the mono-white player, since he was the most defenseless. For the most part, my other opponents aided me in this endeavor. The mono-red player tried to be diplomatic at one point and let the white player live another turn when he could have (easily) killed him. I’m not sure what he hoped his act of mercy would give him in return, but it was ultimately useless. I waited until the Bant player tapped out, then played Beastmaster Ascension and killed both the Bant and mono-white players at the same time, leaving just me and Mr. Red. He didn’t have an answer to my Ascension, and even if he did, my Slate of Ancestry had just drawn me nine shiny new cards. This game was over.
Tune Up, A Few More Tweaks
All of these updates happened after this last game, so I won’t be able to tell you how they perform until next week, where I’ll also be telling you what I removed to make room for them. For now, I’ll just leave you with a few thoughts on each.
Sol Ring: Yes, I know this probably should have been in the deck from the very beginning. I’m not sure why it wasn’t. This card is clearly amazing, and no words I can say here haven’t already been said before, and probably more eloquently.
Mimic Vat: This is actually a card that I have been considering for some time, but have never gotten around to actually adding. This card really only shines when you have Rhys out, and lots of mana, but I feel that the potential for this interaction is worth it. Essentially, you can copy any creature that dies and put it on the Vat. Very nice, but everyone already knows that. The interaction I’m interested in is making a permanent copy of that token using Rhys’ ability. And if you activate the Vat during an opponent’s end step, and then once again during your turn, and then use Rhys’ ability, you will be looking at two permanent copies. I’m really looking forward to trying this card out.
Sacred Mesa: I’ve complained before about the lack of fliers in the deck, and this seems like a great answer to that problem. Once you have a few of these tokens out there, and Rhys generating more each turn, the upkeep on the card becomes meaningless, and you can dump the enchantment once you have everything set up if you like.
Primeval Titan: Unfortunately with the banning of Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Stoneforge Mystic the price of this titan has jumped again, but I still feel it’s worth adding to the deck if you can afford to. There are some really sweet lands in the deck that make it so much easier to build an army, and the Titan can fetch all of them.
Conclusion
Another week’s article comes to an end. Like usual, I’ll leave you with a few random thoughts on the deck for you to think about as you head back to your usual routine (which I’m sure involves checking CommandersGathering.com religiously for new articles by yours truly—though I can save you some time, and just tell you that they are posted every Wednesday). As of this writing, I’m a bit sad to say that there are still a few cards in the deck that I have yet to play. One of them is Caged Sun, which is one card that I was truly excited about. Another worth mentioning is Llanowar Mentor. This seems like such a great card, and the saddest part is that I’ve actually played him before, but he’s always been killed before I could activate his ability. Oh well. One other card I’d like to talk about is Thada Adel, Acquisitor. I thought at one point that she would be a powerhouse in Standard, because of all of the artifacts, but that was just wishful thinking. Even so, she seems pretty awesome in Commander, which suggests to me that perhaps the next deck I should check out after Rhys should include blue.
As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments, and I’ll be returning again next week.
