We’re back again with Part IV of the Rhys the Redeemed series! It’s been a fantastic journey thus far with Rhys, and I’m feeling much more hero-like after nearly five weeks of playing with this amazing Commander. This article will be the last normal article for Rhys, as the one following next week will be a complete (or as complete as I can make it) primer on how to play the deck. For now though, I’ll give you my customary preview of what you’re going to be seeing in today’s article. In my previous article I gave you a few teasers of potential adds to the deck, so we’ll start off talking about which of those made it in, and what I took out to make room for them. Then I’ve got two or three really sweet games for you to check out. I think you’ll enjoy several of the interactions that happen there. And finally, I’ve got more card suggestions for your perusal. And as always, I’ll throw in a few asides interspersed throughout. Let’s get this show on the road.
Culling the Weak, A Few More Updates
So in my last article I mentioned I was considering adding Sol Ring, Mimic Vat, Sacred Mesa, and Primeval Titan. All of that happened without a hitch. I also tossed in a few other cards that looked pretty interesting. For the sake of consistency, let’s go through the changes in alphabetical order.
Ant Queen has been an under-performer for me. Sure, it has the ability to create a lot of tokens (assuming you have a lot of mana), but there are some pretty big downsides. For one thing, it is expensive to cast, and for another, the tokens it produces are green ant creatures, which have really no synergy with tribal effects (such as elves) and that are limited to clogging up the ground (which, let’s be honest, we have a few million ways to do). Twilight Drover on the other hand is easier to cast, takes advantage of any token leaving play to pump it up into a pretty formidable creature, and also with a bit more mana it can produce flying spirit tokens. Some of you may recall that I have been trying to add more fliers to the deck, since that was one of its primary weaknesses during the first several iterations.
There’s nothing inherently wrong about Expedition Map—that’s not what I’m trying to argue here. I guess the reason that it got subbed out is because it fills a similar slot to Sol Ring in terms of function as well as its place on the mana curve. Expedition Map may come back at some point, since it can be good at ramping (just like Sol Ring) but it is a bit slower.
Myojin of Cleansing Fire → Genesis
The Myojin is a great card, but I don’t think it is at its best in a token deck where we are trying to avoid board wipes whenever possible. If we need board wipes, we can resort to things like Elspeth Tirel, or Hour of Reckoning, which both leave our token army alone while devastating our opponents. That’s more of the value that we want to get from our mass removal. Genesis on the other hand is just a sick card. There’s really not much graveyard recursion in the deck, which can be somewhat problematic. As you can imagine, since we are trying to build token armies, we are subject to board wipes quite often, and being able to recur our Priest of Titania or Seedborn Muse (basically, our mana engines) is incredibly helpful when it comes to restarting the process of assembling an army (sort of like reestablishing our supply lines). Plus, it combos great with cards like Survival of the Fittest and Fauna Shaman.
Oracle of Nectars → Eternal Witness
Speaking of graveyard recursion, we have Eternal Witness, which I’ve mentioned in the past as card I’ve wanted to add for quite some time. It’s a MTG Commander format staple, so there’s not too much to explain about why it’s good to add. Oracle of Nectars gets the boot primarily because it’s just not that useful. The lifegain sub-theme we had going on at the start of the deck is now mostly gone, and this is just one last vestigial organ that needed to be cut out (morbid imagery, I know).
Planar Portal → Primal Command
This is more of an experiment with tutors than anything else. The problem with the Portal is that it costs 12 mana to activate it for the first time, and that’s assuming that no one at the table decides to blow it up before you have a chance to tap it. Just like Citanul Flute, any card that lets you search your library every turn for answers is pretty scary for your opponents, and they’ll often gang up on you to remove it. Primal Command, on the other hand, lets you search your library for a creature for 5 mana, which is reasonable value, plus it has a few other utilities attached to it that might come in handy at some point.
Strider Harness overall performs just like a less efficient Lightning Greaves, since the power/toughness boost is never actually relevant, especially in a token deck where having a single 2/2 creature isn’t very impressive among an army of 1/1s. Mimic Vat on the other hand has the potential for some pretty abusive plays, especially with Rhys out. I talked about this card a bit in my last article, so if you’re interested you should check back there.
Sylvan Scrying → Primeval Titan
I have to say that Primeval Titan is just plain nuts. That’s probably not news to most of you, but in case you were on the fence about that, here you go. Being able to search my library every turn for two utility lands is amazing. That’s especially relevant in a deck as mana hungry as this one. Overall, Primeval Titan has been an incredible addition, and if you can afford one, it’s a must in this type of deck.
Mitotic Slime → Doubling Season
It was a bit difficult to figure out what to remove to make room for Doubling Season, but considering the power of the effect that it offers, it was pretty obvious I would have to find room somewhere. Ultimately I settled on Mitotic Slime, though this should in no way be construed as me disliking the card, since it can be good, especially if you can make copies of it. There’s not much additional explanation needed here, since simply reading Doubling Season should make it obvious why the card is so good in a token deck.
Qasali Pridemage → Hero of Bladehold
Honestly at a couple of points I was a bit sorry that I removed Qasali Pridemage, because even though it does not really work with the deck that well, it is still great removal. This deck really needs an Aura Shards. Even so, I wanted to try out Hero of Bladehold to see how she would work in the deck. Battlecry seems like it should be good with a lot of tokens, especially in the absence of Overrun effects or an Eldrazi Monument. Also, since she produces her own tokens, you’re essentially getting a two-for-one each time she attacks.
Spectral Procession → Sacred Mesa
This is the first card that I’ve removed that I was responsible for adding, but that’s because counter to my previous prediction, the mana just does not work out all that often for Spectral Procession. And even when it does, three 1/1 fliers on Turn 6 just doesn’t impress me. Sacred Mesa on the other hand is just what this deck needed. I have already had a chance to play with the Mesa, and I can definitely say that it justifies its place in the deck. It provides fliers to block (and attack) in the air, and the mana requirements are pretty low. Also, in a deck that generates mana and tokens as fast as this one, the drawback to sacrifice a Pegasus each turn is really no drawback at all.
Phew! Let’s take a deep breath. That was quite a few updates in one week, especially since last article I did not have any new changes for you all. Here’s the deck list with all the updates added to it.
Rhys the Redeemed Commander Deck
Reap What You Sow, A New Aggressive Strategy
Let’s get to some Commander games, shall we? For this first game, my opponents were playing Karona, False God, Vorosh, the Hunter, and Oros, the Avenger. There really are not too many amazing things that happened during this game, at least not amazing enough to justify too much web-space, except for the fact that I finally figured out how Karona can be good, and one of my opponents was playing a strategy that I had thought non-existent a few articles earlier.
Let’s get to this mystery strategy first. My Vorosh opponent somewhat surprisingly was playing with poison. I talked about poison last time in one of my asides, where I wondered why it wasn’t played more often since it seems like a very efficient way to win. Rather than having to do 40 damage to a life total (or 21 points of damage with a Commander) you only have get 10 counts of poison to lose. And Commander seems like a format where poison can be pretty broken (more so than it already is). One of the cards that I felt went a long way toward making this strategy viable was Inexorable Tides, one of those cards that are completely useless except in Commander. Essentially, all this opponent needed was to get a single poison counter on each of us, and then we would all collectively be nine spells away from a permanent death. I am not sure how this poison strategy relates at all to Vorosh. I suppose he just wanted to play all three of those colors and did not have a better option.
Nothing too exciting happens for a while. I’m stuck on five mana, so I’m gaining ground pretty slowly. We’re all about halfway dead to poison at this point, which is only slightly worrisome. The Karona opponent does something pretty cool though. They cast a Momir Vig, Simic Visionary (which I imagine also makes a fairly reasonable Commander on its own), and a Bituminous Blast. I have something here in my notes which reads like this: Momir + Cascade = awesome. I’m not exactly sure what I intended to say about this one, except I imagine that when you Cascade through several green and blue spells, you get some pretty good value out of Momir’s abilities. Ah, yes. The card I was thinking of was an Enlisted Wurm. Cascading with that does give you some pretty sweet value.
Right after this play the poison opponent finishes off the Oros player with a Caress of Phyrexia. Technically speaking, he could have finished off any one of us with that card, so I guess he just felt it was more poetic to destroy the other Time Spiral Dragon-wielding opponent. I thought this was worth mentioning because I’ve often tried to explain to people how Caress can be used as a finisher.
The game does not go on much longer after this. I die to a Throne of Geth, so I sit back and watch to see if the Karona player can make it out of this one. Turns out, all it takes is a little Karona lovin’. Apparently the proper use of a Karona is as a finisher. You would drop her the same way, for example, I would drop an Eldrazi Monument or a Beastmaster Ascension. The Karona player had eight creatures out, and once they dropped a Karona, they were able to swing in for the kill by naming Soldier and attacking with everything against a completely open field. Guess the poison opponent should have picked his battles more carefully.
This next game is where I decide to get a bit nastier. One of the dilemmas of playing with the Rhys deck is knowing when to go for gold. In other words, when to be aggressive, and when to hang back and throw up the ramparts. This time around, I decided to be a bit more hasty. For this game, my opponents are playing Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs, Sapling of Colfenor, and Jhoira of the Ghitu. I’m not happy to see an opponent playing a Kazuul, but still, I know basically how to handle that guy from experience. The other two Commanders I had never played before. Sapling of Colfenor just seems pretty bad. It does have the advantage of being indestructible, which is not a bad keyword to have on a Commander, but the card effect is a bit unexciting. That said, I never saw my opponent play their Sapling, so it’s possible (and likely) that I do not know what I’m talking about with this one. Jhoira on the other hand seems plain broken. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that being able to play any card in your hand for two mana on Turn 8 at the earliest seems pretty broken. Plus, since you can cast multiple spells that way, it can get a bit out of hand.
My opening hand was a bit risky, since the only land I was looking at was a Krosan Verge. The problem with this land is that, yes, it can get you out of some pretty nasty spots, but I’d need to draw into two other lands before it could be used. Even so, I felt that my hand was good enough to justify it. Here’s what I was looking at in addition to the Verge:
All I can say is, I got pretty lucky, because next turn I top decked a Sol Ring, powered that out with the Verge, and I was pretty much set. Next turn I activated the Verge, fetched a Plains and a Temple Garden, and played a Gargoyle Castle. Soon after I threw down my Guildmage, Rhys (with a Lightning Greaves), Priest of Titania, and a Garruk Wildspeaker. My mana was pretty much off the charts. This was all by Turn 4, by the way.
Primeval Titan came down next turn and got me a Wirewood Lodge and a Temple of the False God. With the Lodge I could untap either my Priest of Titania or Rhys, and the Temple was just basically like having another Sol Ring on the table. Barring a board wipe, my position looked pretty solid. Even at this point, it would take a Catastrophe to hurt me, since my mana base was just impressive. Unsurprisingly, a Nevinyrral’s Disk wiped the board a couple of turns later, but I was able to replay Rhys with a Sigil Captain to power all of my tokens up. With Garruk still active, things were looking good still. Even so, it’s worth noting that the Jhoira opponent was packing some serious cards. Strip Mine and Wasteland were both sitting on their side of the field, and had it not been for a bit of mana screw, I imagine I would have been standing on a considerably less stable ground.
As it was, my opponents continued to target my board with all of their hate, while the Jhoira player quietly prepared her kill. Several turns later, with almost everyone tapped out, Jhoira came down and suspended a Greater Gargadon and a Splinter Twin. The Jhoira player sacrificed three permanents to reduce the suspend counters on the Gargadon to one, and then played Apocalypse, exiling everything on the board. That’s a pretty solid win, since I doubt any of us could have recovered before the Gargadon (and eventual Splinter Twin on a Gargadon) would have killed us.
Lessons Learned, Trying a New Tact
So, lesson learned. I don’t know that if by playing more aggressively I could have finished off the Jhoira player before they went off, but I do believe I would have been a more formidable opponent. I took this lesson into the next game I played. This game will be the last for today, and it ends on a high note, so I’ll hopefully leave you with a happy feeling as I close up this section.
This game, my opponents were playing Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur, Dralnu, Lich Lord, and Intet, the Dreamer. This is actually a fairly interesting cast of Commanders. Jin-Gitaxias is probably the weakest of the bunch, but I can see how it could be reasonably useful, assuming you can ramp up to the disgustingly high mana cost it takes to play him. Dralnu looks plain good, and is in some ways like a Jhoira, but without the drawback of being too obviously overpowered, since you can flashback powerful cards, but you’re not doing it too early, or too cheaply. Intet is a fairly common Commander, and it has a very sweet effect.
This game started similarly to the previous game, in that I came out quite fast with a Priest of Titania and a Primeval Titan assisting with the ramp. I also got a chance to play with a card I had not seen up until this point: Doubling Cube. The Cube is a great card, but it does have a drawback, that being that you do need to be producing some pretty serious mana before it becomes useful. For instance, let’s say you have five mana out, and you tap all of it and then activate the Cube for three. You’ve essentially tapped five mana to produce four mana. The growth is geometric, so the more lands you tap, the better the ratio is. So producing 10 mana, and activating the Cube produces 14 mana. So, it’s not that useful for ramping up, but once you’re in a good spot, it can help you do some broken things.
Probably the most useful interaction during this game was Fauna Shaman and Genesis. I got the Shaman out there early and used her to tutor up a Genesis and throw him into the Graveyard. There are several cool things about this: 1) Barring graveyard removal, I can now get back any creature card from my graveyard at the low cost of three mana 2) I can recur a creature from my graveyard to my hand to use as fodder for the Fauna Shaman to get the actual creature I need. All in all, a very sweet interaction. At one point I was thinking of replacing the Fauna Shaman with Survival of the Fittest, but in this particular case, there is a good argument for sticking with the Shaman, since if it gets removed, I can recur it back to my hand with Genesis, which I could not do with Survival, an enchantment.
Regardless, the Intet opponent thought I was a good target to pick on, since they decided to use a Knowledge Exploitation on me, and eventually fetched a Storm Herd, which luckily was countered. I was getting a bit tired of his silliness, so the next turn I fetched an Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite from the deck, wiped out his entire board and, following my new aggressive strategy, attacked with everything. Just a bit of revenge for messing with my deck.
Unfortunately a Bribery next turn fetched my own Sunblast Angel to wipe most (but not all) of my board, but with Genesis I was able to get my Primeval Titan back, and my Elesh Norn was still alive and kicking. A Phyrexian Metamorph on my Titan allowed the Intet opponent to start fetching their own lands. At this point, I was getting a bit sick of having my permanents copied and stolen, so Mr. Tri-Color became enemy number one. A Decree of Pain shortly after cleared the board for real this time, but since I was sitting on a large mana base already, I was not particularly worried. Things started to get a bit more hairy, but I brought back my Fauna Shaman, Priest of Titania, replayed Rhys, and fetched a Seedborn Muse from the deck, so that I was now a token generating engine. Awakening Zone provided a few other much needed tokens. I also finally saw someone play a Praetor’s Counsel, which was interesting.
The game did not last much longer after this. For being such an aggressor, the Intet opponent was killed by the table collectively, leaving just myself and my two opponents. On my next turn I dropped a Beastmaster Ascension, recurred and played my Elesh Norn, and killed both players simultaneously for the win. All in all, playing more aggressively this game definitely helped me grab the win.
Conclusion
I was planning to leave you with a few more updates, but this article has already gone on for too long, so I’ll save all of those for the primer next week. Speaking of long articles, that one will probably be a doozy. I haven’t quite figured out exactly what the article will consist of, but I know without a doubt it will be longer than all the rest, and will take a considerable time to put together. That said, you can expect a lot more updates to the deck to be featured in the primer, as well as a whole ton of interactions that I would have liked to have added to the deck, but either did not have the time or the money to make happen. If you have any suggestions about what you’d like to see in a Commander deck primer, let me know in the comments. We’re practically at the end of the first leg of this Hero’s Journey. Though I love this Rhys deck, I am pretty excited to be able to try out a few different Commanders. However, I’ll save that discussion for another two weeks.
Remember, your comments are always appreciated, and I’ll be seeing you again next time.
