Taylor: 0:10

What's up wizards. It's time for rule zero, the show that helps you prepare for the best game of commander. I'm Taylor.

Shawn: 0:15

And I'm Sean. It is our hope that through our combined 20 years of experience playing EDH and cultivating a great playgroup, tons of great decks, and also trying a lot of outside the box variants and homebrew rules, that we can pass that golden knowledge on to you. Taylor, what's something that's going on in the world of Magic that you're excited about?

Taylor: 0:34

Last week we talked about cultivating a play group and bringing us all together to play some games. Something that I'm really excited about is that at the time of this recording, the fallout commander decks are released and I know that you've preordered those and you are going to sleeve them up and let us all have a fallout themed game night. So I'm looking forward to getting to play those. I want to play the Just Sky deck, but I also just love artifacts. So we'll see who comes out on top.

Shawn: 1:00

Oh yeah, I'm hoping it'll be a blast. I've actually ordered a Fallout lunchbox that I've converted into a holder for all four decks on theme for anybody who plays the game. So I'm planning on making an event, much like we talked about in episode four.

Taylor: 1:15

Yeah. I think having a battle box of sorts, kind of like a game board night, more than just everyone bringing a constructed EDH deck, it's a fun option to get to play Commander that way.

Shawn: 1:26

And your excitement in talking about that leads into today's episode, which is going to look at one of the commanders from that Fallout pre con. List, Mr. House, president and CEO from fallout universes beyond.

Taylor: 1:43

Yeah, this is a Mardu deck that cares about rolling dice. To read the card, it's Mardu colors. So red, white, and black for Mr. House president and CEO. It's a legendary artifact creature, human type. It's a zero four, but it has the ability. Whenever you roll a four or higher, create a three, three colorless robot artifact, creature token. If you rolled six or higher instead, create that token and a treasure token. And it has an activated ability. For generic mana and tap Mr. House to roll a six sided die. Plus an additional six sided die for each mana from treasures spent to activate this ability.

Shawn: 2:21

It gets to be a little bit wordy, but the important piece is that Mr. House based loosely on eccentric billionaire, Howard Hughes, who also had some ties to radioactive fallout. If you look into his history is a card that's all about a genius billionaire who hides himself in a robot bunker. and owns a casino and tries to take over the world from there. And so this card, the only thing that caught my eye was I am rolling dice. And that is all I needed to know.

Taylor: 2:51

And in the way that we're looking at this deck today, you have really focused on that ability and abusing it because there's more than one type of die that we can roll and magic the gathering, right? And

Shawn: 3:07

had a effect called roll a D20, which not news to anybody who plays D and D, but to magic players, it sure seemed like it was because man, there was there an outcry about like my cards are random. Ah, well. With Mr. House. What it, what it basically says is that you have to roll a dice. Doesn't matter what kind. So when you roll a D 20, you have an 85% chance to hit a four or higher and a 75% chance to hit a six or higher. So that means you're gonna be triggering both of Mr. House's ability 75% of the time at least.

Taylor: 3:44

yeah, in doing the math on a normal D six, You could potentially get a robot half of the time, and then a treasurer and a robot 17 percent of the time. So I think that's really important to think about how we can put those numbers in our favor, because, you know, thinking about the flavor of Mr. House, if it's set in a casino and you're gambling, you're supposed to lose sometimes. And the way that you're approaching this is to mitigate that and lose less often. Right.

Shawn: 4:09

Absolutely. And the deck that we're building today. The old adage applies. The house always wins.

Taylor: 4:15

And you're Mr. House in this scenario. We wanted to preface this build with a couple of notes. Number one, we are talking about some key players in the deck, some things that work well, some things that don't work well, some things to think about in terms of what's your commander or what this deck wants to do, and then maybe some hidden gems, it's not a full list of every single card that's going into this deck. But number two, we do link a full deck list on our moxfield page. So you can see how we go about building these decks

Shawn: 4:47

yeah, absolutely. This podcast was kind of based on this small formula of what really makes this deck fun to play. And in that vein, we're not going to tell you about every single land or every single man of rock, unless they add to a specific sort of theme or like, wow, this is super fun to play. It's different than other decks.

Taylor: 5:09

So why don't you kick us off with a couple of things from, I think some of your favorite sets in magic that work really well in a Mr. House deck.

Shawn: 5:16

I have been waiting to play. A dice rolling commander for a long time. Even before D& D came out, when they had a Sword of Dungeons and Dragons uncard. That allows you to roll a d20 for the first time in magic, I believe. So the two cards I want to reference are ones that just allow you to roll double d20s and then pick the higher result. One is a one manner red enchantment called barbarian class. It reads at level one, if you would roll one or more dice, instead roll that many dice plus one and ignore the lowest roll. Now this won't trigger Mr. House twice because you'll just be picking one of the dice, but you do get to pick the highest roll. Okay. On every roll from here on out and it's great Level two you pay one and a red into it to make it level two whenever you roll one or more dice Target creature you control gets plus two plus zero and menace.

Taylor: 6:07

I'll say quickly, you might not always get up to these different levels, but that second level is pretty good. Menace is a formidable form of evasion because not everyone has two blockers. And if they do, they will oftentimes end up losing something they didn't want to have to lose. If you're attacking a player that only has two creatures.

Shawn: 6:27

Yeah, and ideally you're playing this on your very early turns turn one when you're not really doing a whole lot anyways And and the extra levels Are good in this deck and they can just be used whenever you have a couple extra mana here and there Level three two and a red The top level now creatures you control also have haste, not a bad effect for just having some extra mana laying around.

Taylor: 6:53

Yeah, the fact that this has Many forms of utility, I think makes it a great card to include in this deck.

Shawn: 6:59

The second card like this is will blade of frontiers also super cheap, both money wise and mana cost. It's one in a red. It's a 1 1 legendary creature human warlock. If you would roll one or more dice, instead roll that many dice plus one and ignore the lowest roll. Whenever you roll one or more dice, put a plus one plus one counter on will, which is actually pretty solid in a deck where you're rolling an insane amount of dice. This guy can become a huge threat and for Baldur's Gate fans, well, you get to use a character that let's say was a little underwhelming for most. But in magic is great.

Taylor: 7:36

I think will is a really cool card. It is definitely possible to get home pretty big. And again, it's. It's just a two drop. So you can get it out early to start to put those counters on him pretty quickly. And I could see how this would get out of hand. And then you give them plus two and menace with the barbarian class. Seems like a pretty good way for this warlock to multi class.

Shawn: 7:59

Another type of card that I put in the deck currently this one bobblehead, it's a three mana artifact, the luck bobblehead from the fallout sets. It's a three mana artifact that. Taps to add one man of any color then has a different ability. Pay one tap roll X six sided dice where X is the number of bobbleheads you control. Create a tap treasure token for each even result. If you rolled six exactly seven times, you win the game. Granted the statistics on how often you'll win the game with this card are very low. However, I find it very weird. that of 12 percent of decks that run the luck bubble head just to get the dice roll, only half or less of those decks are running the additional bobble heads. And the more bobble heads you have, the more dice you're rolling. So to me, it's like, well, this is the one opportunity you get to roll with all seven bobble heads in the deck. It's an artifact deck. It cares about token making and several of the bobble heads make tokens so that you can exploit that. It makes artifact tokens. Thanks. Great. Some of them pump your creatures. I'm going for it. This deck is all about random chaos and luck.

Taylor: 9:14

Their mana rocks at their very worst, you know, adding. Whatever mana you need in that moment a three drop mana rock isn't always the best option But the fact they have this other additional utility is pretty cool I really like the fact that this is also an alternate win condition I think you know how I feel about having multiple ways to win in a deck and no you might not be able to Win every time off of it, but talk about a thematic win in this type of deck If you do roll six seven times that seems like a jackpot right there I think that's on flavor with the casino aspect here of Mr. House.

Shawn: 9:48

Yeah, a hundred percent. Like if you win with this, you can pretty much take the deck apart and then enshrine it somewhere. You don't need to play anymore. You've already hit the jackpot of magic life.

Taylor: 9:57

Yeah, exactly. So one card that I wanted to toss into what works well is an unset card. And not every play group is okay with playing silver boarded cards. But for the most part, we are in our play group. And I think this one is a pretty cool one because it's based on a card that's already out there. And magic. And this card is Crark's Other Thumb. It's two mana for a legendary artifact. If you would roll a die instead, roll two of those dice and ignore one of those results. So it's another redundant effect like Will and like Barbarian Class, but it's a silver boarded card. I would be okay with seeing this across the table because it's a mirror to Crark's Thumb, which lets you flip two coins. And so I don't see why we couldn't include this one.

Shawn: 10:40

If this card was released today in an unset, they would have used the you know, regular circular sticker versus the acorn sticker. That whole debacle is kind of annoying to me, but there is no reason that this card isn't legal to play other than arbitrary and well commander, we can overrule arbitrary and just make it what we want.

Taylor: 11:02

I think there's a lot of reason that people should be okay with this one. But a couple of cards that I wanted to mention that I think helped to fill out a couple of gaps. Help you draw some more cards, help you do more with those artifacts, tokens that you're creating. And the first one is low shield clockwork scholar. This was in the boros pre con from Strixhaven low shield is two and a white for a two, four legendary creature elephant artificer prevent all combat damage that would be dealt to attacking artifact creatures you control. And whenever one or more artifact creatures into the battlefield under your control, draw a card. This ability triggers only once each turn. So I think low shield is really cool because it protects your robots when you're attacking with them. But every time you make a robot, you get to draw a card. And I think that Marty struggles a little bit with getting to draw cards regularly. And this just helps to kind of fill in that gap by doing what your game plan is. Anyways,

Shawn: 11:56

Yeah. And there are ways within the deck to make robots on other people's turns. So I think this is a great include. I didn't see it when I had my first pass, but that Lorehold Precon is an absolute gem. I mean, it has so many good artifact things for Boros.

Taylor: 12:13

really does. And I think that it's kind of cool to see another identity for borrows to have. So it's not just combat based getting to lean into artifacts is pretty cool. So the last kind of Card that I think would work really well in this type of deck is Jan Jansen, and it could potentially be a backup or a hidden commander when I build decks, I think a lot about what's going to happen to my deck if I don't have my commander out. And I think this creates another opportunity to, to. perfectly and almost seamlessly work with what this deck wants to do. That's Jan Jansen, the chaos crafter. It's another Mardu card, red, white, and black for three, three legendary creature gnome artificer. He has haste and two activated abilities. The first one is tap sacrifice an artifact creature, create two treasure tokens. And the second ability says tap sacrifice a non creature artifact to create two one, one colorless construct artifact creature tokens. I think that's kind of cool. You can sack whatever you don't need to get what you do need with Jan Jansen. And you're making a lot of artifacts anyways, between treasures and artifact creatures. Or you can even use artifacts that you have in the deck. So maybe that bobblehead is not doing something for you and you can turn it into a couple of blockers in a pinch.

Shawn: 13:24

I had Jane Jansen in the deck list originally I can't remember why I took it out other than just a weird personal bias of why does it make construct tokens in a deck that makes robots and. There the two shall meet in my mind

Taylor: 13:43

That's fine. the last card I put in what works well is the value engine Academy manufacturer. If you would create a clue, food or treasure token, instead create one of each. I have started to face a bit of a problem in magic. I. Where I have like a mental fatigue, I don't like trying to keep up with all the tokens I need or a Cathars crusade, trying to do the math and figure out how many plus and plus encounters to put on these creatures and Academy manufacturers starting to do that for me in some decks where you're making a ton of treasures, but now you're making a clue of food and a treasure. But I can't deny how good this card is.

Shawn: 14:18

Yeah, 100 percent like if you take this deck into the route of token making which we pretty much have It's hard not to run this card. It's almost an auto include That life gain that you get from food tokens is not to be underestimated and nothing else in the deck really makes food tokens So this is a good pick

Taylor: 14:35

And I think too, when I was looking over your initial list, I saw a couple of gaps in card draw, I thought just to consistently be able to draw some cards and those clue tokens are really great ways to get to draw cards. I just think the utility here can't be denied.

Shawn: 14:49

I'm with you. So next up we talk about what doesn't work well, and this is kind of going from list for Mr. House, at time of recording I think there's been over 2, 000 decks on EDH rec for Mr. House. It's certainly one of the most exciting commanders to come out of Fallout for players. People saw it early in previews, and they've been building it for a while, and One of the cards that 50 percent of those decks put in was treasure chest, a three mana artifact in which you then pay for sacrifice treasure chest to roll a D 20. If you get one, you lose three life, two through nine, you create five treasure tokens, 10 through 19, you get three life and draw three cards and 20 search your library for a card. If it's an artifact card, you may put it onto the battlefield. Otherwise put that card into your hand, then shuffle. I took it out of my list. It only rolls one D 20. And it costs seven mana to do it. It's very expensive for a random effect. And I don't think the payoff is there.

Taylor: 15:49

If you're trying to play this deck where you're fixing all these roles, so it's a little less random. You're trying to roll multiple dice. Spending seven mana for an effect you can't fully control does seem like a bit of a wasted spot. I think it's a good call to take this out of the deck.

Shawn: 16:05

Another card that was in 57 percent of those lists. is an enchantment or a curse. Maddening Hex. Enchant player. When enchanted player casts a non creature spell, roll a d6. Maddening Hex deals damage to that player equal to the result. Then attach Maddening Hex to another one of your opponents chosen at random. This one's a tough one. The D six and doing damage is kind of nice, I guess. Weirdly in a chaos deck though, this is a card that I feel I can't control enough to make it perform well. And if you're choosing an opponent at random, what if you hit the guy that's running the Azusa deck? All of a sudden Maddening Hex is never going to trigger again cause they're just casting creatures.

Taylor: 16:47

I get the concern with this one, but I do think that Maddening Hex is a really powerful card. Like it sees play in a lot of vintage cubes where you're playing a lot of non creature spells. And, you know, depending on the meta, You may or may not want to keep this in the deck, but I do think that we run in a pretty creature heavy meta right now. And so Maddening Hex, yeah, it doesn't always trigger the way you want it to. And it might get stuck somewhere on the table and not able to move around. But I can also see why you might want to keep it in.

Shawn: 17:14

Next up, some of your cards that you wish to take out, which might. feel a little controversial to me.

Taylor: 17:23

So this very first one that I put down, I. Really enjoy this cycle of dragons and it's the ancient dragons. I don't think that the ancient gold dragon is as good as you do. I think it's a really powerful. Effect getting to roll the d20 and it's a flyer. So you're going to be able to get in with it. Ancient gold dragon is five white, white for a seven, 10 creature elder dragon. And that's flying. And whenever ancient gold dragon deals combat damage to a player, Roll a d20 you create a number of one one blue fairy dragon creature tokens with flying equal to the result That is a very powerful effect. I'm not denying that My only concern with this is that it doesn't have haste and so you can't guarantee that you're going to spend seven mana And get in with it There are ways to give it haste from swiftfoot boots to lightning greaves and plenty of other things in between but If this makes it around a full cycle of the table, then you're in for like living the dream. But I think at seven minutes, similar to treasure chest, this is one where you got to hope it comes out in your favor. Right? So why did you want to keep it on the deck?

Shawn: 18:37

First, let me offer a kindly rebuttal. You took this out, but you did not take out ancient copper dragon. And I think because there's a bias towards the idea of making treasure tokens being more exciting. I rebut that. I think that creating a D twenties worth of one, one flyers can literally win you the game.

Taylor: 18:59

Sure.

Shawn: 18:59

there are more ways to create haste like barbarian class. Like we talked about earlier, has that hidden haste connected on the end. And giving those creatures more power. So I think this could be a win the game card and rolls a D20. Granted, it's not the best. I know it's maybe the fourth worst ancient dragon.

Taylor: 19:17

I could definitely see. Keeping it in now. I'm totally open to it. And I think you make a good point that I checking my own bias and I do oftentimes think that those treasures are more powerful, but we've talked about it before, and I think we've seen that before getting in with those one ones are definitely a way to move the game forward and the fact that they have flying, make them great chump blockers if you need them, or Can get over a line of defense that you otherwise couldn't. So I don't think I'm a hundred percent sold on keeping it, but I definitely think I'm closer to keeping it than I was before.

Shawn: 19:49

Totally fun and for any listener out there keeping it in taking it out. I hear you I am honestly on the fence too But as we know I love dragons and I love rolling dice and this does both because I can't currently run sort of Dungeons and Dragons Which also does both

Taylor: 20:06

For my next pick about what doesn't work well, I think that we see this, a couple of really flashy cards have come out in recent sets and I want to talk about a net distinct. Difference between two of these really flashy cards that I think deck builders need to keep in mind And the first one is mandrake glory dominus. It's two white white for a four four legendary creature phyrexian horror This one says if one or more tokens would be created under your control Twice that many of those tokens are created and said One and then two Phyrexian white mana Sacrificed two other artifacts and or creatures put an indestructible counter on Mondrak glory Dominus I think that getting to double all of your tokens is a really powerful effect Things like anointed procession are great includes in this as well that double those Tokens and so if you're including that anointed procession in the deck I do think that including Mondrak is really important And I don't like the other splashy card that we're seeing more of lately. Which is O'Hare talk, the deepest foundation. It's four and two white for a six, six legendary creature. God vigilance. If one or more creature tokens would be created under your control three times that many of those tokens are created instead, and then it's got the lost caverns of excellent. God ability, where if it dies, it turns into a land and you can flip it back later on. I think at six mana, tripling your robots is definitely powerful, but I would rather get the utility of doubling all of my tokens for Mondrak than just getting to triple my Robots, because there's also a certain point where if you're tripling or doubling, it's just a matter of when more. So I've seen a lot of people putting O'Hare talk in this deck, and I think that you should replace that O'Hare talk with Mondrake because it gives you again, more utility and more. It also provides a sacrifice outlet and people, I think, forget about that ability. Being able to sacrifice things at instant speed is amazing. You can sacrifice artifacts and or creatures. And so if somebody comes at you with an insurrection, you can just sacrifice all of your creatures when they cast that

Shawn: 22:08

that's a great point. I'm a hundred percent on board with this Because Oh hair talk is in my opinion overrated I know a lot of people love it, but I just, Mandrake, the Sacrifice Outlet piece is what really sells the argument for me. That is an extremely underrated ability in Commander and everyone should have several Sacrifice Outlets in your deck, especially in a world where cards have been starting to exile things more often than Destroying them. You want to be able to sacrifice your thing before it gets exiled Super great ability.

Taylor: 22:49

Yeah, I think that that's exactly why I include it in decks now, because. I want to play with my cards and Mardu is really good at recurring things out of the graveyard. And especially in the sense of artifacts and creatures, you've got different ways to reanimate. You've got different ways to put permanence back onto the battlefield, but they're in exile. You can't do that. And sure. Oh, hair talk when it pops off, it could be a lot of fun. And if that's your jam, go for it. But I don't think that winning more is as valuable as having the utility here.

Shawn: 23:22

Yeah, and there's a seven mana spell that was recently reprinted in the Fallout sets called wake the past for a red and a white and That will bring back just your artifacts Out of the graveyard to the game. So there is a world, maybe if you're playing an artifact deck with a lot of ETB effects, that you could use Mondrak to sacrifice everything on the instep before your turn and then wake the past and then get this massive board state full of triggers. That could be fun too. There's just a lot of flexibility with the idea of you can sacrifice artifacts because you can always bring them back. There's always a way.

Taylor: 23:55

Yeah. And bringing things back. I think it's great, but things dying leads us into some of your hidden gems that you want to do include. These are cards that may not be as mainstream on these deck lists that we find on EDA track or elsewhere. But I think that these hidden gems can provide a lot of special uniqueness to this deck and what it wants to do. So what's the first hidden gem that you included?

Shawn: 24:17

Okay, so this is a rebuttal to my rebuttal about how Ancient Copper Dragon can stay on the deck. And how treasure tokens are probably better than fairy dragon tokens. And that is disciple of the vault, a one black mana, human cleric, one, one creature. Whenever an artifact is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, you may have target opponent lose one life. I don't think this has been a ratted. Somebody correct me in the comments if it has, but anytime you sacrifice a treasure token, you are pinging somebody sacrifice a food token. You are pinging somebody, whatever. Like this gets crazy.

Taylor: 24:52

But it's also whenever an artifact and it doesn't have to be one you control. So if your opponent is sacrificing those same exact tokens, treasures are everywhere, you can just punish them for playing those treasures by having the disciple of the vault, ping them for one.

Shawn: 25:08

And this is only in 13 percent of decks on EDA track at the time of recording. I think that number should go up cause this is a really cheap. efficient include that can potentially end a game for one mana, which is crazy. The next one I have is another fallout card because house in the game is famous for owning a Securitron squadron robot police force. And this is the perfectly thematic heavy hand of the law for him. So this is a new card that is a two, two, Artifact creature robot for one and a white. It has a squad three ability. Now squad means that. You can pay the squad cost any number of times as you cast this to get copies of this creature. This is a card that can make your robot army turn from little guys into giant crushing monster robots really quickly towards the end of the game. So for squad 3, this card has, it's a 2 2 with Vigilance, and whenever a creature token enters the battlefield under your control, put a plus one plus one counter on it. You put in several copies of squadron itself. All those are getting plus one plus one tokens. All your future robots are getting plus one plus one tokens. It gets crazy really quickly. Not a hard to include in my mind and it's in 0 percent of decks somehow, which was crazy.

Taylor: 26:25

I think that the way this scales is pretty incredible, right? Because it just five mana, you make two of these. Now, all of your creature tokens come in with two plus one plus one counters, right? If you're able to bump it up to eight mana to get that squad up to two, now everything comes in with three plus one plus one counters. And I think the way that the scales throughout the game is, it's pretty outstanding because as a turn to play, it's not that bad. As a turn five play after you've cast Mr. House, it seems like a pretty good play. So I think that the scales well throughout the game, that's something that you and I have talked a lot about on the show is how can this card play throughout the course of the game? Because if I draw this early, I'm happy to cast it early. If I draw this late in the game, I'm happy to cast it late. And so I think that. This fulfills that need to play cards that are good throughout the course of the game.

Shawn: 27:18

Yep. I'm with you. Let's go on to your picks now.

Taylor: 27:20

Yeah. So these might not be super hidden, but I do think that they are really good at what they do. So just a minute ago, when we were talking about Mondrak, We talked about being able to recur out of the graveyard. And this card is one of my favorites. It's trash for treasure. It's two in a red for a sorcery as an additional cost to cast the spell, sacrifice an artifact, return target artifact card from your graveyard to the battlefield. somebody gets rid of one of your favorite artifact creatures, you can get it back. You know, we've got some of the transformers in here and those are all artifact creatures. Also a really good board wipe and a card like steel hell kite, but then there are also some really good utility artifacts. Being able to do that is really useful to recur things out of the graveyard. I think it's important for decks to have a way to do that, especially when they're really good ones like vexing puzzle box or wand of wonder that you included in this deck.

Shawn: 28:12

A hundred percent. This is some of the recursion we were talking about earlier about how artifacts are so resilient and you're right. That is truly. Spending trash for treasure. Man, we can go on this deck forever, but we got to keep it short, I guess. Let's go to your next pick. But I am surprised to just throw in there that you did not talk about cosmic. I put it in there just for you.

Taylor: 28:34

or comment my, my sweet pup

Shawn: 28:37

Yes, I don't even know his name. I just put him in there for you.

Taylor: 28:39

Yeah, comment for the legendary planeswalker, it's white, red, and two at a five loyalty planeswalker. It has an ability that's zero and it lets you roll a six side of die. And it gives you a lot of options between making tokens, getting back cards out of your graveyard or dealing damage or repeating this ability. It's kind of crazy because in A deck where you can control the dice rolls. This would potentially go infinite because you can activate, or you can hit the jackpot on this, where you roll a six, you plus one comment, and then you get to activate his loyalty abilities two more times. I recognize that this is in a dream world where that would happen, but it'd be really funny to have the goodest, sweetest space boy go infinite and win the game. my last hidden gem that I wanted to mention was. Cavern Horde a dragon. So earlier you mentioned that you were surprised I didn't take out ancient copper dragon

Shawn: 29:38

Yeah, you got the color right.

Taylor: 29:39

I think this is actually a really good replacement for that because it makes treasures and it has haste. So it's red Red in seven cavern. Horde Dragon is a six six creature. That's a dragon. This spell costs X less to cast where X is the greatest number of artifacts and opponent controls. It has flying trample and haste. Whenever cavern horde dragon deals combat damage to a player, you create a treasure token for each artifact that player controls. So this has been compared to dockside extortionist as like a fair version of that. I think this is a really unfair card because it's a six, six flying trample haste creature that can also net you at a ton of treasures. I think it's a really cool include. I would easily replace that ancient copper dragon with this one.

Shawn: 30:26

I support it simply because it's a universes beyond card. And a lot of this deck is filled with crazy universes beyond cards. It would make Richard Garfield cry.

Taylor: 30:36

Yeah, this came out of the Lord of the Rings Commander decks.

Shawn: 30:39

Yeah, but the effect, you know, it's a deck about gambling. So it's a little risky because you are let's say you're, depending on your opponents having a lot of artifacts, right? I think that's a lot less risky in today's current meta that we live in.

Taylor: 30:51

I put a note here too that I think is really important to make sure the players know as a rules interaction. So you determine the casting cost of this card and your opponents can't respond to it. And what I mean by that is this. It has a built in reduction where it costs X less to cast. So for instance, if Sean and I are playing and I go to cast cavern horde dragon, and he has six treasure tokens out. He can still sacrifice those treasure tokens. That's fine. But when I go to pay the manna for this, it's going to see that he has those six treasures out and he doesn't get priority in between. And so I only have to pay one and two red to cast this cavern horde dragon. And so I think that's a really important piece of tech that players need to know about. The second ability, the That's a trigger that goes on the stack. And so Sean could sacrifice those six treasures and I would only get my own treasure tokens for whatever other artifacts he had, but I think it's important to know that for the casting cost,

Shawn: 31:50

Yeah, I think that's pretty cool regardless. Even if I did sack the treasures in that scenario, you're making me sack all of my treasures on your turn when I'm going to be much less likely to use them to any good effect. So it's kind of like a board wipe from a nasty treasure making.

Taylor: 32:05

right? And I think that's something that's really powerful about the treasure tokens is that they're extra mana that you can bank for later on. And so getting to force somebody to sacrifice that is pretty good.

Shawn: 32:16

This one's pretty cool. It's like a storm card for artifact sacking.

Taylor: 32:20

yeah. And. You know, you're sacrificing your treasures anyways, or maybe you have an outlet where you can sacrifice those robots. This card came from murders at Karlov Manor, it's crime novelist. It's two and a red for a one, three goblin barred creature. Whenever you sacrifice an artifact, put a plus one plus one counter on crime novelist and add one red mana. Your treasures now. Buff him and give you one extra mana. I think that's a really cool ability to have where you're wanting to sacrifice artifacts anyways. Maybe not always wanting to, but you're going to kind of naturally do this. And this gives you a little extra bump bump and mana. He can become really powerful. I just think it's a cool little utility creature.

Shawn: 33:00

And the next section that we have is kind of like non bows or traps to be wary of now because I am So biased in favor of this deck And it's hard for me to see what might be a trap other than not rolling every single dice card you can possibly roll with Taylor has a different opinion in the spirit of camaraderie and, you know, just discussion we want to foster with this podcast. I'm going to let him take the floor and say what his concern is.

Taylor: 33:30

Yeah. So. I think that there are a ton of synergies and you took the lead on building this deck. And I think that it's really an outstanding deck, but as a deck pilot, I think it's important to think about what your deck is weak at so you know how to play to your outs. And I think that if you lean too hard into that D20 synergy, it can be problematic because even though the probability is in our favor, it's not a sure thing. Right. And. I think that that's something that we have to kind of be aware of is cards that rely on our opponents to do things or we don't have explicit control over. It can be a card that might not be as good as we actually want it or need it to be. So I just wanted to kind of point that out and think about that. I do think it could be a lot of fun to exclusively play cards that let you roll the D twenties, but I just want players to know if you're relying exclusively on that, you could potentially shoot yourself in the foot at certain points in the game. But aside from that synergy, I think that this deck struggles to draw cards. I mentioned this a little bit earlier. So I included two cards that I think could help fill in some of that gap. The first one is the deck of many things. It's five mana for a legendary artifact, and it has three potential outcomes where you pay two. You tap it, you roll a d20, and subtract the number of cards in your hand. If the result is zero or less, you discard your hand. As a D& D fan, I love the Deck of Many Things because it is a lot of gambling. So, in this one, I think that there are three options that are really good. If you roll a one through a nine, you can return a card at random from your graveyard to your hand. Again, it's not super targeted, but it gives you some recursion. A 10 through a 19 lets you draw two cards, which is pretty great. Repeated card draws is always a nice thing. And if you roll a 20, put a creature card from any graveyard onto the battlefield under your control. When that creature dies, its owner loses the game. And I think that's a really cool, another jackpot to look for.

Shawn: 35:32

Yeah, I'm with you on this one. It was in the deck initially. And I've just had a lot of bad experiences with the deck of many things and both D and D and in a historic brawl and other formats. So Yeah, it kind of kind of lost its luster a little bit as I died multiple times or lost my hand over and over again. So but I understand the reasoning here and with all of our probability buffers that we have you're a lot less likely to, to hit that really bad, lose your whole hand roll.

Taylor: 36:02

When you're able to adjust and choose which die you want, I think some of these rolling manipulators that we have can let you choose whichever one you want. So the barbarian class and will both tell you to pick the highest role and usually you want the high role, but maybe you want to draw some cards. And so something like Crark's other. Thumb would let you get the lower role. If you want to say, get something back from your graveyard, or if maybe you rolled really high and you hit that 20, but you wanted to roll to be able to draw cards, then you can adjust there, which I think is a a neat little interaction to. Again, just know for when you're playing for your outs.

Shawn: 36:38

And this next one you have, I think is actually a good addition. I didn't think about it at all, but I've seen it in play especially in the drafts during the pro tour that recently happened. And it's, it can be really powerful. And I always love something that makes a flyer

Taylor: 36:52

This is TASA opulent oligarch. It's the newest TASA iteration out of murders at Karloff manor. And it's one white and a black for two, three legendary creature, human advisor. It has death touch and it has the ability at the beginning of your end step, investigate for each opponent who lost life this turn. Investigating is creating a clue token. Whenever a clue you control is put into a graveyard from the battlefield. Create a one, one white and black spirit creature token with flying. This ability triggers only once each turn. I've mentioned that I think this deck could use a little bit more in terms of helping it with some card advantage, and it's going to be really easy to do damage to at least one player a turn, if not all three, and taste is going to reward you for moving the game along, doing some damage, isn't it? Give you cards to. Get the game going even faster.

Shawn: 37:41

sweet. Well, now that we've given you a taste of Mr. House, president and CEO we hope that it helps you build and construct your own. hilarious fun box full of dice rolls and random robots and chaos. And so my final thoughts on the deck are that Fallout New Vegas is often seen as the best of the series. It was created more with the first person shooter aspect intact, but also like a, a biting satire that some of the other newer fallouts seem to lack a little bit of. And so, if you're a fan of those games, or if you're just a fan of rolling random d20s and you want to up your chances to 85 percent of the time, or maybe even more this could be the deck for you. I'd give it a shot.

Taylor: 38:27

I think it is going to be a really fun deck. And that's my only final thought there's not much better for me, especially in magic, the gathering, where you're able to link together all of these engine cards and see this beautiful machinery fire off perfectly. And so even though there's something chaotic about rolling the D twenties, this deck really plays to its strengths and it can manipulate those roles. Create a really strong engine. And I think that could be a lot of fun right there. Not to mention, I think artifacts just have naturally good synergy in the game. And you're capitalizing not only on manipulating the but also manipulating your artifacts. So I think this would be a lot of fun to play.

Shawn: 39:06

Yeah, last thought on it is really that Mr. House being an artifact himself is really important. As you'll see from other cards on our list, if you check out our moxfield page, because sometimes there's board wipes that only care about artifacts. And so him and his robots will be totally safe. And your opponents will be trying to pick up the pieces after they spent too much at your casino.

Taylor: 39:28

Oh, don't they say the house always wins.

Shawn: 39:31

Yes, in fact, I think that's probably true in this deck. Maybe not all the time in real life. Yes, I think the house does indeed always win, but this one will be super fun. With that said we hope you enjoyed the show. Next time. What we're doing is we're taking on a divisive, but not in the way you're thinking, not like emotionally divisive, but more of a card that had a split and we decided to make two episodes instead. So we'll tackle Judith, carnage, connoisseur, AKA the grand dame of the cult of Rakdos on next episode. You can follow us on Twitter at rule zero podcast or email us your own deck ideas. Let us know if you value chaos or certainty at rule zero podcast at gmail. com

Taylor: 40:17

If you enjoy this deck, be sure to check it out on our moxfield page, where we link all the decks we talk about. And if you would like for us to highlight one of your decks, we'd love to just reach out to us and don't forget.

Shawn: 40:27

There's no problem that a rule zero conversation cannot solve.