Welcome back to my article series involving Rhys the Redeemed. If you read my first article, you’ll know that my current series will detail my journey in Commander using this fun deck. Just to recap a bit, I’m an experienced Magic player that is new to Commander, and I’m on an epic journey to learn everything I can about the format, and my current goal at this point is to play as many Commander games (using Rhys) as I can. In my previous article the deck list that I provided was pretty bare bones—it was a stock Rhys the Redeemed list that I modified slightly to be more budget friendly, and it contained a few cards that were a bit suspicious. While I’d like to eventually get to a few more awe-inspiring plays, first I’ll give you an update on the deck.
Trimming the Fat, A Few Much Needed Deck Updates
I’ve been keeping a little diary, you could say, on the changes to the deck so that I can track it’s evolution over time. Some of the cards that I remove now may come back in at a later point, depending on the decks that I face or after I’ve become more experienced with the format. Also, some of the substitutions are not exactly one-to-one. That is, I’m not necessarily replacing cards with other cards with the same effect. Sometimes a card just is not performing, and needs to be removed and have another card, perhaps not even related, take it’s place in the deck.
This change seems fairly obvious. Nim Deathmantle is just not getting the job done. For one thing, it doesn’t really go along with the token theme at all, and for another, well, let’s be honest. I’m not really playing that many creatures in the deck, and both white and green have a heck of a lot better spells that recur cards from the graveyard. Skullclamp on the other hand can be a card-drawing machine. The way I see it, every token creature I produce with Rhys can now be equipped with the ‘clamp to draw me two cards. In other terms, I’m trading essentially four mana for two cards, and once Rhys really gets going, this number decreases exponentially. Sounds like a good deal to me.
Enshrined Memories → Sigil Captain
Enshrined Memories has never been a very exciting draw for me. It’s a mana sink, yes, which can be good late game when Priest of Titania hits her stride, but overall the card does not do that much. It also runs into the same problem as Nim Deathmantle in that there are not that many relevant creatures in the deck. The deck performs just fine with Rhys by himself, and every other utility creature or token-producer is just gravy. Sigil Captain seems like a great card because he now makes every 1/1 token you drop into a 3/3 beater. Admittedly I’ve only played one game where I actually drew him, and I couldn’t do anything because my opponent was rockin’ a Magus of the Moat, but it was still pretty exciting to witness all those triggers!
Acidic Slime → Creeping Corrosion
One of the problems that this deck faces is that it doesn’t have all that many ways to interact with your opponents, beyond simply overrunning them after amassing a gigantic army. While Acidic Slime is good, I feel that the deck has better ways to deal with the threats that the Slime purports to answer. Creeping Corrosion just seems like it fills this slot more efficiently, and can really be big game against most decks (since artifacts are a fairly common occurrence).
Masked Admirers is just generally a pretty underwhelming card. Early game it is expensive to use, and late game there are just so many better ways to draw cards. Furthermore, since the deck doesn’t exactly have that many creatures (is there an echo in here?) it doesn’t get a chance to return from the graveyard often enough to make it worthwhile. Spawnwrithe seems like it might be a cheap gimmick, but I want to live the dream. You hit the opponent just once with Spawnwrithe, and suddenly Rhys can create an army of self-generating tokens. Now every time you attack you can essentially double up on your army, and that’s even before you activate Rhys. Seems like it should be good.
Heartbeat of Spring → Caged Sun
Seems pretty obvious, especially considering how down I was on Heartbeat of Spring in my last article. Double mana is obviously nice, but I would prefer to be the only one doubling up. Caged Sun provides that for just three more mana, plus it pumps up all of my little tokens. That’s a good enough trade in my book.
Let’s speed up these evaluations a bit.
Fecundity → Spectral Procession
I don’t want my opponents to draw extra cards, and the deck is a bit vulnerable to fliers. Spectral Procession might be a bit hard to cast in the early turns unless you get lucky with the duals, but late game it seems pretty awesome, and can actually be cast for non-white mana if you really need to.
Sprout Swarm → Quest for Renewal
I talked about Quest for Renewal during my first article, and honestly it has exceeded my expectations. With any kind of creature that generates mana, you can really get a lot done while waiting for your turn to roll around again. And as I speculated, it’s very easy to activate with all the tokens the deck creates.
Death or Glory → Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
You all probably know the refrain by now. Not enough creatures to make Death or Glory worth it. Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite may just be a conceit from a player that loves to cast big bombs, but I have to say that it can be an absolute beating.
Invincible Hymn → Hour of Reckoning
Life gain really is not a particular issue with this deck. There are so many ways to increase your life total, the least of which is Essence Warden. This card, while it does gain you a lot of life, is too expensive, and usually by the time you can cast it, too late to serve it’s purpose. Hour of Reckoning, on the other hand, is just what this deck needs. It kills everything but your tokens, and with convoke, all you need to cast it is triple white. That’s good value.
And last but not least, a simple land update.
Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree → Temple of the False God
This one is basic. Vitu-Ghazi is an expensive token-maker, and an expendable one at that. Temple of the False God, I have been told, is a Commander staple, so pretty obvious that it should make it’s way into the deck at some point.
Here’s the new deck list with all the changes included:
Rhys the Redeemed Commander Deck
Enough Talk, Playing Some Commander
That’s enough discussion of card updates. Let’s get to some actual games. Like last time, I’m mostly going to provide a few highlights of really sweet plays from some of the games I participated in, and you can expect a few rants, eherm, asides along the way.
Well, with about seven or eight more games worth of material, let’s just start in order. A few of my clan buddies and I decided to start a game together, but we were one short, so we pull in an extra.
My opponents Commanders are arrayed thusly: Sachi, Daughter of Seshiro, Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund, and Reaper King. The last is being played by the extra, and it was especially notable to me because it was the first time I have played an opponent using a Commander representing all five colors. Honestly, I was a bit curious as to how he was going to prepare a mana base for such a monstrosity. It turned out to be pretty easy: play a lot of fetches and dual lands.
The game goes on and we’re all working on our mana bases. A few shots go back and forth, but for the most part it’s pretty friendly. Around Turn 7 or 8, the Reaper King opponent suddenly announces that the game is over, and that he now has an infinite combo going. On closer inspection, it turns out that he is right. The combo really involves only three cards: Eternal Witness, Crystal Shard, and Time Warp. Basically, he casts Time Warp to take another turn, casts Eternal Witness to bounce it back to his hand, and then uses Crystal Shard to continually bounce the Eternal Witness back to his hand to continue recurring the Time Warp for essentially limitless turns. As he also had a Primeval Titan out, he was in no danger of lacking the number of lands to pull it off. Since to my mind this game had barely started, I parleyed a bit and got this opponent to graciously concede the game as the acknowledged winner, but allow us to continue on. Not too much longer afterwards I had a token army and won with an Eldrazi Monument. For those that read my first article, this should sound familiar. Even so, I “won” with the knowledge that I had been outmaneuvered from the very start.
Only a day or so later, I played against another deck rocking a five-color Commander: Sliver Overlord. Now, I’m a big fan of synergy—in fact, that’s essentially what this Rhys deck is about. However, there’s something about Slivers that’s just overwhelmingly…tribal. Though my Rhys deck could be construed (incorrectly, I would argue) as an Elf deck, it is more appropriately a token deck, with a lot of elves. Slivers, on the other hand, does not try to disguise the fact that the game plan is to get as many of them on the board as possible, and essentially make it impossible to win because every Sliver now has more keyword abilities than Akroma, Angel of Wrath. The sad part about this game was that I was on a roll. Rhys was out and doing his thing, I had my Sigil Captain beefing up all of my creatures, and Graveborn Muse, Oracle of Nectars, and Wirewood Channeler were all making sure that I didn’t lack for opportunity, life, or mana. I even had my full-art Urza’s Factory churning out 2/2 Assembly Workers like nobody’s business.
It would have been a pretty epic win, except for the fact that another of my opponents played a Magus of the Moat in a vain attempt to stop the Sliver deck, which was quickly and effectively thwarted by Pulmonic Sliver. As I believe I’ve mentioned, if there is a weakness to the Rhys deck, it is in it’s relative inability to interact with the opponent’s board. With no way to remove the Magus, I was essentially a land army permanently encamped. I was hoping to draw into Spectral Procession, but unfortunately, counting on the appearance of one card with about 80 still left in the deck isn’t a very effective game plan. In the end, I lost the game as a result of Commander damage. If you didn’t think that Sliver Overlord was good enough yet, it’s a nice coincidence that it only takes three hits from a 7/7 Commander to close up a game.
My last story for the night actually has a rather interesting conclusion. It involves the dreaded poison mechanic. This game, my opponents were playing Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer, Godo, Bandit Warlord, and Stonebrow, Krosan Hero. Hint: The one to pay attention to this game is the opponent playing the Godo.
The game begins as you might expect. A few shenanigans here and there, but mostly pretty quiet. I’ve got an Oracle of Mul Daya setting up my lands, and play an Essence Warden for some life gain not long after. Eventually I drop a Soul Foundry and Imprint an Imperious Prefect from my hand. Rhys comes down, and my elves start to get pretty beefy. My opponent playing the Godo apparently has a red-equipment theme going on, and eventually has a nice armory piled up on his side of the board. The most notable of these is, of course, Grafted Exoskeleton. My board position is looking pretty good, but unfortunately it is no match for Intimidate.
It’s not too long until a Vulshok Battlemaster comes down, grabs up all the equipment on the board, and swings in at me for 13 points of infect damage. The stats on this thing are pretty crazy. That about wraps up the game. Another turn and I probably would have overrun the entire board with elves, but now it’s too late. Perhaps more aggression on my part was in order, but who can tell?
Conclusion
I’ve really been enjoying my time playing Commander, and just between us, it’s been great having an excuse to sit down and battle. I do need to get these articles written, right? Overall I think the Rhys deck is shaping up nicely. There are obviously quite a few cards that could be added, but at some point we’re going to be looking at increasing the price of things significantly. And while this article series is not precisely on the order of budget decks, it’s always nice to keep things inexpensive if possible. In that spirit, I’ll leave you with a few cards that I’ve been considering as potential adds to the deck: Joraga Treespeaker, Journeyer’s Kite, and Eternal Witness. Every now and then I run into some mana issues, and it would be nice to have another mana dork out there to help me accelerate into some serious token action. Also, a fully leveled up Joraga Treespeaker combined with about twenty elf tokens means you’re going to be generating quite a bit of mana. Throw in a Quest for Renewal and you’re golden. Journeyer’s Kite is just another answer to the mana problem. It’s not exactly the best solution, but it might help me cast that Spectral Procession early, which could be worth it. Eternal Witness seems pretty obvious, and likely should have been in the deck from the beginning. Playing a token deck, you can expect board wipes to clean the slate every now and then, so it would be nice to be able to recur a card now and then.
Well, that’s about all I’ve got for you this week. Thank you for reading, and please be sure to leave your feedback in the comments. I’m always open to suggestions for future improvement!
