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 plus years experience of playing EDH and cultivating a great play group, 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: 0:28

Ishan, what's something in the world of Magic that has you excited right now?

Shawn: 0:32

This past weekend, I got to witness three of the decks that we've talked about on this podcast playing against one another. Jude with his budget Azusa from episode three. Carl was running the burn the world down Judith list from ep seven and I was debuting Mr. House from episode five. I thought the listeners might be interested to hear kind of how they play it out. A highlighter too. For me, Mr. House was blast play. I got will barbarian class into play often. I was able to roll lots of D twenties, even if the effect of the D twenties was nothing more than just building a couple of robots. It was super fun to do so. But then. I got out ancient gold dragon and I had Swiftfoot boots on the battlefield and an anointed procession. So in two turns I had amassed over 60 fairy dragons and I'd probably done about 40 or so damage in the air split up amongst all three other players. Next turn I was definitely going in for the kill and then much to my Glee, actually. Carl's Judith deck really fired off what it was supposed to do when we envisioned it in the first place. He cast a Burn Down the House. No pun intended for me playing Mr. House. It was a death touching, life linking spell that did about 300 damage to all tokens on the board and creatures. Gained him 300 life and all of our stuff was destroyed. And we had this big back and forth and then I was able to actually win despite his massive life total with a White Sun's Twilight that amassed enough little infecting tokens to take him out. Super fun game. Um, and the next game Budget Azusa actually took us all out with just insane value from a mechanic we're going to talk about a lot tonight. The Initiative. Very powerful effect. I was able to take it away sometimes with Starscream because the deck is about robots. So I figured why not throw in some transformers,

Taylor: 2:24

seems like a good include.

Shawn: 2:26

yeah, people did ask me about it. They're like, well, this is a mr Haussack and i'm like, yeah, but You know, we're going universes beyond we might as well go beyond the beyond so let's Envision a world for a moment if you would but uh star scream super powerful card hadn't played it before and I was like Oh my goodness. This is next level like I may buy more star screams and make people sadder because You I love the Monarch and uh, I can't wait to play it. Anyways, Jude took us out with his Azusa list. 50 deck did the job against all the other multi hundred dollar decks, but uh, every deck did its thing. Every deck performed really smoothly. And with that said, let's talk about the first deck that you're bringing to us here at rule zero, a very spicy brew. I literally never would have come up with this on my own. And I love it. It's great. So tell us about Nadar.

Taylor: 3:17

So this is, uh, Nadar's astral slide into the dungeon. It's based around the commander and Nadar, selfless paladin. He's a three, three legendary creature dragon knight with vigilance. He costs two and a white, and whenever he enters the battlefield or attacks venture into the dungeon and other creatures I control get plus one, plus one, as long as I've completed the dungeon. A dungeon. And so the goal of this deck is to get an Adar out as quickly as possible. And then just start speed running through dungeons. And so he gets to one, as soon as he TBS, I can attack the next turn and go to the next level. And so I asked myself, how could I speed this up? And that's where the blinking sub theme came in was one of my favorite cards in magic is astral slide. This is an old card from onslaught. And it cares about cycling and this works out in really cool ways. And we're going to talk about some of those cool interactions with it that come up. But every time I cycle, I can blink in the dar. He TBS, I get to venture to the next level of the dungeon. And it's really cool. This deck was a many years process in the making, because at first I really wanted to play the card to Zenith Flare, which is two red and white. It's instant Zenith Flare deals X damage to any target and you gain X life where X is the number of cards with a cycling ability in your graveyard. So my idea was I'm going to fill my graveyard with cyclers. And then I can just bolt somebody out of the game and then find a way to get that back and do it again. The problem with that was it needed to be five colors to be as good as I wanted it to be. And I played Garth when I, it kind of worked, but it ended up being way too linear for my liking. I like to have multiple avenues that the deck can play on. And so I narrowed it down. I figured out what I liked most out of that deck. And I figured, Hey, I like the white cards the most. And after we looked at Jude's budget, mono green deck, I thought, Hey, maybe I can make this a budget mono white deck.

Shawn: 5:20

Yeah, I think that you made a good choice. First of all, I played against a lot of Zenith Flare in that draft format, for Ikoria and it was great there. It was incredibly powerful. However, in Commander, and I think I played against somebody's Zenith Flare deck a long time ago. It might've been yours. I don't know, but one Bajooka Bog, just takes out all the cyclers in the graveyard and then Yeah, it's it's really tough if that is your wind condition. It's fragile

Taylor: 5:49

There are some cool little value engines that you can get with cyclers, or there are a lot of cards that care about drawing your second card each turn. And so that was kind of the backup plan, but it never really worked as smoothly as I wanted it to. It either worked really well and nobody could stop me or I got shut down really early and I hated that. That's where this deck kind of came about. It makes a lot of tokens. There's a lot of instant speed play that occurs. And it's a lot of fun, but that was the whole crux of that deck falling apart. Zenith Flare was such a linear game path, so easy to interact with. It never felt good to not have it work.

Shawn: 6:27

Yeah, what I love about this deck honestly is that As compared with that going through dungeons even though it can feel a little Linear and that you want to go through the same path often You have options just in case so every time you go through the dungeon you get to make a choice pretty much Of like which room am I going to go into next? Maybe I go into this other one just in case for whatever reason so I do appreciate that about dungeons like we talked about two or three episodes ago a left path and a right path Have different places in a game. I guess we'll talk about what works well in the deck when I was looking through it if you're okay with jumping to that You

Taylor: 7:03

tell me what you thought

Shawn: 7:04

Alright, so speaking of Dungeons, Seasoned Dungeoneer. Card was so good it got banned in Legacy, and it is fortunately not banned in Commander. I love the card so much I got a signed copy from Gen Con. I think the art is angelic, to put it mildly. It's sort of like a Joan of Arc figure, but this card's very powerful. Yeah, this is amazing stuff

Taylor: 7:27

it does a whole lot. It's three and a white for three, four. It's a human warrior. It takes the initiative on ETB and whenever I attack target attacking cleric, rogue warrior, or wizard gains protection from creatures until in the turn and it explores, It does everything that I want this deck to do. It helps to keep attacking. It allows me to take the initiative. It also lets me start to filter the top of my deck a little bit more with that explorer mechanic. This deck does a really good job of getting lands into my hand. And so I can get flooded more often than not. And so it's nice to, you know, quickly get rid of those lands. Sure. They go to my hand, but That's a draw that I saved myself later on. It can beef itself up with some cool interactions with the initiative. I love it. And the fact that it got banned and legacy means it's great on a budget. I think it's super cheap right now. Maybe a dollar or two. It's not bad at all.

Shawn: 8:19

Yeah, and so the next card I wanted to highlight is one that you know I guess really you should be highlighting it, but it is the crux of the deck right astral drift astral slide peanut butter and jelly together What I love about the deck most of all is that nadar has about 151 blank decks on edh rec it is like the most played archetype of nadar, however Those decks do not run astral slide astral drift slash cycling and so To me like whereas I don't love blank all the time Sometimes I find it to be a little obnoxious and especially the most powerful blink decks It's like are you gonna do something or you're just gonna like draw cards and blink shit first Excuse my French. Are you just 15 minutes? But this one I love the cycling mechanic as a whole and it seems very entertaining in a much better way to blink

Taylor: 9:12

Yeah, we, you know, we've talked about playing a brawl on arena and my favorite arena deck is my Eorion. Blink deck. And what I realized in playing that deck on arena is that I'd never want to play that deck in paper. There's just too much to keep track of. I don't have the mental capacity to handle it all. And like you said, you end up just sitting there playing with yourself for however long, and it's miserable to watch. It's miserably a part of, I hate being that player at the table where I'm taking such a long turn. And that's, what's great about this deck. It's really straightforward and it's plan. I'm typically blinking the same exact target every time. So it, you know, it works itself out and we talked a lot about this. And we'll mention this a few times throughout the course of this episode, but I've goldfished this deck a lot. I've played it to get my mind space, right. For this deck. So I know what I'm trying to do with it. You mentioned. A mechanic, you know, talking about astral drift and astral slide. And I mentioned a minute ago with cycling, I tried to play as many cycling cards as there are that I can play in mono white. And for those of you that don't know, cycling is typically paid to generic mana to discard a card and draw a card. It's, I think a really powerful thing because it gives a lot of extra utility to your cards. And we'll talk about how I find use cases for that utility later on.

Shawn: 10:27

So tell me about this next card that you really enjoy on the deck What made it your number one pick for the cards that work?

Taylor: 10:34

Yeah. So initially I was just like, Oh man, the best card in the deck is the commander. I love the art on it too. I think it's really cool. I think it does a lot of things that I really like. But. A card that I've found really fights above its weight is palace jailer. It's white, white, and two for a two, two, it's a human soldier. And that's going to become a important creature type here in a little while. But when palace jailer enters the battlefield, you become the Monarch. When palace jailer enters the battlefield, exile target creature and opponent controls until an opponent becomes the Monarch. I love this card because it can get rid of the most bothersome problematic creature there is. But something that I think is. Really missed out on is if I blink this, I can hit multiple things as long as I stay the Monarch. So if I say the Monarch, which this deck does a really good job of doing, I could potentially get rid of two, three, four, five other creatures with this one cart, I think it really does a good job of taking care of those problematic things and keeping them away. So I think it's a better oblivion ring. Cause it can get rid of multiple things instead of just one at a time.

Shawn: 11:38

I am so happy with where White has gone in the past few years. I used to play a lot of mono white decks. But ever since they've started putting things like Initiative and Monarch, I think Palace Jailer saw a play in Legacy as well, if I'm not mistaken, or maybe still does. Cause it is just a very powerful, uncommon or common, whatever it is now.

Taylor: 11:57

It can hit things that it shouldn't be able to hit. I mean, especially in the vintage world and legacy world where you've got things like Emmerich cool sitting down and you need to get rid of that palace. Jailor does that. It's pretty cool. The next like series of cards that I included were the runes of protection. So I play all the ones that I think matter. Yeah. So the runes of protection that I think matter are the ones for the different colors. And then I also have rune of protection artifacts because there are some artifacts that can cause some damage and they all have the same. Effect more or less it's white and one for an enchantment. I can pay one white to prevent all damage to me from one source of whichever color. So for instance, runic protection red, I can target a red source and prevent that damage from happening to me, or they all have this cycling too. So if I draw runic protection blue, but there are no blue decks at the table. This is no longer a dead card in my hand. I can cycle it. I can blink something. Then if I have astral drift out or astral slide out and I get to draw a new card, maybe going to do more work for me. It's great. And I think that that's something that this deck really likes to do is dump the cards. It doesn't need and refill my hand with things that are straight gas.

Shawn: 13:08

It's, I think, going to be shocking for people in the audience who might try to play this deck as to how high the ceiling is for a Rune of Protection type effect. It's so rare to see it in EDH, but Rune of Protection Red versus our friend's Purphoros deck is going to be absolute dynamite. It's just an effect we don't see anymore, but wow, is it powerful in the right situations? And if not, these are great because you just cycle them away and you do what the deck wants to do anyway. Amazing. Love all six of them. And they turn heads, right?

Taylor: 13:44

I think so. And it's important to know the play pattern on that too, because it's been a rotted slightly. So it's the next time a red source would do damage, you prevent that one time from doing it. So what are some of the things that you saw on this deck that you don't think work too well? Maybe you'd like to see changed if you were to make some edits to this.

Shawn: 14:04

Full disclosure. I have not played this deck nor played against this version of a cycling deck maybe I played against your old Garth one eyed deck, So it was difficult for me I really had to goldfish a lot and try to Kind of build this deck in my mind palace and let's see how it played out as I was doing that I Picked out tome of legends, which is a two man artifact You Tome of legends enters the battlefield with a page counter on it. Whenever your commander enters the battlefield or attacks, put a page counter on tumble legends. Then you can pay one tap, remove a page counter from Tomo legends to draw a card. In arena brawl, this is a card that I play almost in every little aggressive commander deck I can because we're brawl deck rather cause you're, I'm, I want to be attacking a lot and I know Nadar wants to attack. So the dream pattern is Turn two Tome of Legends, I guess. Turn three Nadar. It comes in, puts another page counter on it, and you're off to the races. You can draw two cards off this thing. However, if you're not playing in that particular scenario, I did replace it with a card that I think does a very similar thing, but also produces mana for the deck. I replaced it with Dragon's Horde. Three mana, artifact. Whenever a dragon enters the battlefield under your control, put a gold counter on Dragon's Horde. Tap to remove a gold counter from Dragon's Horde, draw a card. Or, tap to add one mana of any color. What isn't it are doing popping in and out of the battlefield constantly so you'll have the same effect But in a pinch you can use this for an extra white mana if you need it So I thought they did similar things and yeah Toma legends I could see it just not doing something on a turn and for me. I was like, well, let's cut that out.

Taylor: 15:44

And you're right. I think that. It's too expensive. I think to do that, to save a mana, to tap the tome of legends, to then get to draw a singular card versus the dragon sword. I can just tap, remove one of those counters. That's nice to keep that mana up because what I find is that I want to be able to have as much man up as possible on other people's turns. So I like this swap. I think as soon as I get a copy, I'll swap it out.

Shawn: 16:07

I Have many I love dragons. So Anytime next one is a Sunfire bomb two in a white and instant prevent the next four damage that would be dealt to target creature or player this turn. Cycling for one in a white, discard this card from your hand to draw a card. When you cycle Sunfire Balm, you may prevent the next one damage that would be dealt to target creature or player this term.

Taylor: 16:31

Protecting one damage. Isn't good enough for you.

Shawn: 16:34

Are there any creatures of the deck that have toughness of one I'm not really sure

Taylor: 16:37

All of my little soldiers I

Shawn: 16:39

too. Oh, okay. We can protect a token, right?

Taylor: 16:44

that's what

Shawn: 16:44

this card is like So jank. I put in here in the notes, like I literally feel this way when I look at this card, if I imagine in my mind palace playing this, I feel such sadness. I couldn't even figure out what it was, but then I realized it was like, it's like if you see such a pathetic picture, like a dog that's so overweight that it can't turn over or it can't walk. That's how I would feel playing Sunfire Bomb. I would feel like maybe that's the reason Taylor had it in the deck. I was thinking maybe it's like, it's like a, they feel so bad for him that they're like, well, I can't attack him anymore. This is

Taylor: 17:22

It's like one of those infomercials where, you know, the sad music's playing and then the dogs are in the shelter and that's me, I'm that dog in that shelter because I'm playing sunfire bomb. Take pity on me.

Shawn: 17:33

It runs in the long line of white cards back when blue got ancestral recall and then the equivalent was healing salve for white three life does not equal the power level of three cards. I'm sorry, wizards.

Taylor: 17:49

You know, They didn't know what they were talking about then, but I don't think you know what you're talking about now. Cause Sunfire bomb is a great card. It's

Shawn: 17:56

I'm waiting to be proven wrong. I can't wait.

Taylor: 18:00

I am, I think the reason that I kept it in here and a couple of the other ones that I'm going to mention one that I think I need to take out. I'm just a sucker for old cards. I love the art style from the old cards and I like the way the cards are designed, like actual graphically speaking, how they look. And so that's one of the reasons I kept this one in, but I think that I can replace Sunfire bomb with a couple of other cards. I'm thinking about that would definitely make this deck a little bit smoother. Um, yeah, I hate to see it go, but I think it's got to,

Shawn: 18:30

Rest in peace, Sunfire Balm. You can put it on top of the deck box. Like, maybe it'll be a decorative thing what do you want to take out?

Taylor: 18:37

Well, the very first one is a old card. It's an old card from Urza's legacy. I believe is that the hammer one and it's iron will for one white target creature gets plus zero plus four until end of turn. It's an instant as cycling to this has very niche cases where it's good. Maybe that burned down the house is coming and this is going to help. Protect my creature that I want to live, but more often than not for toughness, isn't going to be enough to save the creature that I want to, because it's going to be a blasphemous act for 13. Or if I'm doing this on the dar and he goes up to seven toughness, he might be a good blocker, but I'm not going to be knocking anything out with this. My thought behind it was there's a cool combat trick that cycles in white. I don't think it's as good as I want it to be. It cycles. And I think that's why I put it in, but I don't think it needs to be in there.

Shawn: 19:31

Fair enough. I think the old artistic rule is it's hard to kill your babies, but sometimes you need to, or, the art is great. It recalls the time. when Magic was a simpler game. But we're living in 2024 and it is buck wild out there. So I don't know if this card meets the requirements anymore, sadly.

Taylor: 19:49

No, I don't think it does. The next one that I think I should cut is bag of holding. I played this in every iteration of my cycling decks and I think it's been a trap, actually. So it's one mana for an artifact. Whenever you discard a card, exile that card from your graveyard. I can pay two and tap it to draw a card, then discard a card, or I can pay four, tap it, sacrifice bag of holding return. All cards X out of bag of holding to their owner's hand. And so the idea is if I cycle all these cards away, I can tuck them underneath bag of holding and then get them back later on. It never works out that way for any number of reasons. And the most common reason is that four mana is a lot to do this effect. And do it at instant speed. Like I want to, I want to put a bunch of cards underneath it, get them all back, cycle them all over again. And that might happen sometimes, but more often than not, I'm afraid that somebody is just going to cast a basic disenchant and destroy this bag of holding when I don't have four mana up to get those cards back. I think it's been a trap. I've got a couple of replacements for it that I think would be really good ones. But I don't know, do you think it's worth keeping or do you think I should cut it?

Shawn: 21:00

I think you're right on this one. I've played a Azor deck. I believe it was Azor. Whoever the Sphinx is that runs the guild pact and he has Azor's gateway. It was a flavor theme deck kind of thing.

Taylor: 21:13

Yeah,

Shawn: 21:14

similar. You had to keep Tapping drawing Discarding cards to like try and meet a requirement and then before you would meet the requirement Inevitably or accrue enough value with it. A person would come and disenchant like you said Because they see what's happening on the table, right? It's like well, I don't want you to get all your cards back as soon as you don't have four mana available open to you That's when the person will strike and be like, oops Now my cool bag is empty You It's hard to get rid of cards like this, but probably smart

Taylor: 21:45

Yeah. And the replacement that I have in the considering section on our deck list is Thran foundry. It's a one man artifact as well. It has pay one and tap it. You exile Thran foundry and then target player shuffles his or her graveyard into his or her library. And so you, they don't go back to your hand, like you might want them to, but it does let you get those cyclers. In motion again, they go back into your library. You can start to cycle the whole deck again. It's kind of cool. iT's a slightly more expensive version of one of my hidden gems. I'm going to talk about shortly.

Shawn: 22:19

Fantastic Now we can get to the cards that we love, which is always a better section. It's hard to look at the cards that we're putting in the pound of magic and leaving them behind as they wave sadly from a cage. While the Sarah McLachlan music plays softly. We get to the things that are just spectacular and mind blowing about, what can we do to add to the deck? And for me, it was a pet card. Everyone knows me buy this card if they don't they will one day and I will make this card more than a dollar Or whatever it's going for these days It is none other than wind shaper planet are four and a white creature angel 4 4 flash Flying wind wind shaper planetar enters the battlefield during the declare attacker step For each attacking creature you may reselect Which player or planeswalker that creature is attacking lot of words, but what this card does is basically takes everyone's army and sends it to someone else who wasn't expecting it, but probably deserves it, at least in my mind. And I think it'd be great in a blink deck of all things.

Taylor: 23:31

Yeah, this deck can blink with astral slide and that's a great way to recur some value, that only comes in at the end of turn though. So I decided I needed other effects to blink cards. And so I play ephemerate, I play cloud shift. And so those are great little one mana instant spells that I can hold up. So if I've already cast the planetar and I need to do it again and redirect that damage again, I have other ways. To blink it. So I love this. I need to put it in there and I think that this would be a great replacement for that sunfire bomb.

Shawn: 24:03

There's no even descriptor for how beautiful and powerful this card is in a deck And I stand by that audience you can tell me I'm wrong, but I won't believe you next card. We're going to talk about That may go in the deck Well is a budget replacement because I had to pay attention to the 50 budget as much as I kind of didn't want to at times This is a card I played in modern constantly, which is where I get my love for it. I do love Eldrazi displacer, but apparently it's like 8, 10 right now. So it's not really in the budget. However, Lord of the Rings presented us with a new card, which does a half version of Eldrazi displacer Gilrain. I might be saying that wrong. I'm sorry. Dunedain protector. For two in a white legendary creature, human, noble, a two, three, pay to tap exile. Another target creature you control. You may return that card to the battlefield under its owner's control. If you don't at the beginning of the next instep, return that card to the battlefield under its owner's control with a vigilance counter and a lifelink counter on it, which I thought was a really neat, you get a little modal, choice in the middle of this blank. Do I want to blink it now or is there a board wipe happening and I want this card to come back post board wipe with more buffs to it. I think it's pretty sweet. And so with windshaper planetar, you could blink it right now, or you know, if you're not in the declare attacker step, you could decide, I want it to come back with lifeline. And vigilance, so I just think it would be a cool spicy include

Taylor: 25:38

Yeah. The deck runs a ton of creatures that have good ETB effects. It's not just the commander. I didn't mention and want to talk about all of them, but there's some really cool ones that you can do. Do everything basic from just drawing me a card to X on creatures like palace jailer, or maybe they do something like a night captain of EOS that I'll talk about in a minute, where they make creatures. And so having multiple ways to blink my creatures really matters. And I like this idea of having a repeatable way of doing it.

Shawn: 26:10

So the final card I kind of wanted to I guess I have two to highlight, but I'll try to do it quickly It's a land. It's a planes land. It's called Miss Vale planes. It enters the battlefield tapped, which is the downside, but for one white and tap, you can put target card from your graveyard on the bottom of your library. Activate this ability only if you control two or more white permanents, which in a mono white deck, one that has enchantments, not hard at all. It's in here because what I noticed was there's a couple of other blank creatures whether it's core cartographer or I can't remember the other one but they fetch specifically planes so you can get you a non basic land that has a little add on ability for very little cost and this card's dirt cheap so I thought it would be a neat one to add.

Taylor: 26:58

Yeah, I like it.

Shawn: 26:59

Finally, we have Under Cellar Sweep, four and a white enchantment. When it enters the battlefield, you take the initiative. Great. When you attack, if you, or a player you are attacking has the initiative, Important piece if they have it now you create two one one white soldier creature tokens that are tapped and attacking as well So this is a way I play a monarch deck that we haven't talked about in the podcast Maybe we won't but One of the important things that I include in there is like I need a way to haste out a lot of creatures to get The thing back because people are gonna take it from you. It's great value. You just need a way to steal it back So I thought it was a kind of a neat include

Taylor: 27:41

I like the suggestion because one of the cards that I think is a hidden gem in this deck is that night captain of EOS that I mentioned just a second ago. And. The night captain makes soldier tokens and the underseller sweep makes soldier tokens as well. And that actually matters a lot because, when we look at some of these cards and some of the interactions, it matters if they're soldiers. So I'll talk about a couple of those and let's start with that night captain of EOS. It's four and a white, which is kind of expensive. For a 2 2 creature, Human Knight, when Knight Captain of Eos comes into play, or enters the battlefield, as we say now, put two 1 1 White Soldier creature tokens into play. It has an activated ability, White Sacrifice a Soldier, Prevent all combat damage that would be dealt this turn. And so it's a fog on a stick, which I figured you would appreciate. And it does a really good job of when it blinks, it makes more soldier tokens. Or if I have this underseller sweep in there now, I can make soldier tokens that way, because what's really great is if somebody wants to swing out at me and I have this, I can declare no blocks, sacrifice one soldier instead of losing my whole board. Okay. And protect the initiative, protect my life, total protect the Monarch. It's great.

Shawn: 28:52

Yeah, this is the Windshaper Planetar of 2010. It is a fantastic include and I used to run this in my Taste of Orzhov Scion deck because it made tokens and it made fog and together, unstoppable. I don't know what you can't do with those two things.

Taylor: 29:09

Right. It's not on my list that I have on our show notes, but I did want to give a shout out to captions of the watch. I know it's probably over cost did for what it does. Vigilance other soldier creatures. You control get plus one, plus one and a half vigilance. When captain of the watch enters the battlefield, create three, one, one white soldier creature tokens. It's four and two white for a three, three that does that. I like the ability it makes soldiers and that matters in this deck. And so there is a bit of a soldier sub sub theme. And I think the night captain plays into that.

Shawn: 29:43

How would you feel, again, we're going off, off script here, but briefly, because I used to try and run a soldier deck. Mobilization enchantment Make soldiers for every extra mana you have you can just kind of pay into it and just make soldier tokens It's pretty cheap to put down. I believe it's two in a white for an enchantment and I Think that in a blink deck, you're right. I'm blinking my creatures, but six mana whoo, that's rough Godspeed if that's You If that's the, the finisher, it's like the crater hoof of this old jank. I've now made my soldiers twice as powerful. Then, you know, enjoy. But, yeah, I think I would feel a little worried I'd get it early and I wouldn't be able to cast the dang thing.

Taylor: 30:31

I'm looking at mobilization right now. And I love it because it has a static ability where it gives soldiers vigilance, which is really good. And yeah, it's two and a white to make a one, one white soldier creature token, which is really good at instant speed. You know, I've got a couple of ways to give Anthem type effects. Nadar, notably, gives all my creatures plus one, plus one. Once I've finished a dungeon, it doesn't stack, unfortunately. But those one ones become two twos, and that's really powerful, I think. I like that a lot, actually. It's a great place to dump mana, because maybe if I don't cycle all those cards, then I can just make a bunch of soldiers. And that's a pretty cool way to utilize that mana, too. I like that a lot.

Shawn: 31:10

Well, thanks for entertaining the idea, at least. I hope I don't lead you astray and make the deck a totally non functioning mess.

Taylor: 31:16

There are just two cards. I want to talk about that are, I think some of my favorite cards to play in this deck. And, the next one in keeping in line with the soldier theme is Abdel Adrian Gorian's ward. He's four and a white for a legendary creature, human warrior. He's a four, four win. Abdel Adrian enters the battlefield. I can exile any number of other non land permits. I control until Abdel Adrian leaves the battlefield, create a one, one white soldier creature token for each permanent exiled this way. I love this card. It lets me blink my entire board. It lets me like protect myself from a board wipe and it's any board wipe, which is, I think outstanding. So I have griped about the card farewell since it's been printed. And this helps to save my board from that. Sure. You exile my Abdel Adrian, but I'm going to get back everything that I tucked underneath it. I love this card. I love it so much that I'm thinking about building. A deck on this. That's not a budget one. And I want to go boros. I love boros as a color combination. And I think pairing this into red allows me to do damage with things like perforate or witty roast master. I think this has a lot of potential and I've seen it really pop off in the stack. I can only imagine what it can do as a commander.

Shawn: 32:33

Again, people always dig through battle for Baldur's Gate for gems a plenty. There's so much treasure in that deck and this is one of them at an uncommon. Even this card is so powerful. I know y'all have heard of Yorion. In fact, I think Taylor even mentioned Yorion earlier in his favorite brawl decks, but this does a very similar effect. And is a pretty fantastic. So excellent pick. And he's a warrior. So seasoned Dungeoneer will let him pass right through the defenses just in case.

Taylor: 33:07

Just in case the last card I want to mention, I think is my favorite card in magic. Don't think I can tell you why it kind of reminds me of one with nothing, but better. And it's Feldon's cane. It's a one mana artifact. I can tap it. I can exile it and I can shuffle my graveyard back into my library. I love this card because it does what Thran foundry does. Thran foundry can hit anybody's graveyard. This one gets mine back. It lets me cycle those cards one more time, but I love this card. I never seen anybody else play it, but I think it's really powerful. If you're worried about getting milled out, or if you draw a lot of cards and you want to do it all over again, or if you're worried about milling yourself out, this lets you save yourself from that.

Shawn: 33:52

Well, you didn't see me playing this in 1997 then because I certainly ran it then and it is definitely a throwback and you know what? Part of the joy of deck building is playing cards you love and you clearly have a love for this one. It evokes some kind of memory. The staff. Looks like an old car part tied to a bone. I'm not really sure what's happening with the art here, but, you know, whatever floats your boat and, in a pinch, instant speed. Sure. Shuffle my graveyard. Now that Bajooka ball can't hurt me.

Taylor: 34:24

Yeah. It can't hurt me if there's nowhere for that bog to fester. So what are some non bows and traps that we should be wary of? Sean.

Shawn: 34:31

The main trap that I saw and playing the deck out was it has 36 lands. Now I know there's so much cycling in here. So at two mana, And if you're doing the 12 card draw, like you, you should try at least, you probably have two, three lanes in your opening hand, but a six mana card, like we talked about a little bit with captain of the watch, but also the eternal wanderer for two white legendary planes, Walker five loyalty starting no wanderer. Each combat is a static ability. Her plus one is exile up to one target artifact or creature return that card to the battlefield under its owner's control at the beginning of the player's next instep can be used as a defensive weapon can be used on your own stuff. Zero ability created two, two white samurai creature token with double strike. Negative four for each player choose a creature that player controls each player sacrifices all creatures they control not chosen this way So you get to pick sort of a champion each person does and then everything else goes away Powerful card not gonna lie.

Taylor: 35:37

I see it as a six minute board wipe that gets passed and destructible. And that's really what it's in there for, because I have better ways of blinking one thing per turn than this. So I definitely think it's worth, you know, Maybe reconsidering it, for another board wipe that's cheaper. I think that's what I need to look for in this slot. That's what, that was the goal of this card for sure.

Shawn: 35:58

So the only thing I worry about in this deck and, and again, it's because I haven't played it literally, I'm sure it's totally fine. I just get a little frightened every time I see less than 38 lands in a deck and I start to think all kinds of crazy thoughts. So. For me Sun Titan in this deck is fantastic because it's gonna bring back things like I believe your astral slide if that's two in a white Or your astral drift. So it's like wow, I really need this. I have a lot of it cool enchantments mana rocks low CMC cards, so Sun Titans excellent in that regard captain of the watch Eternal Wanderer To me, it doesn't feel like it's advancing the game so much as it's kind of like I guess it's a good stopgap We all need rafts. We need to take our medicine, but At that mana cost I kind of want to win more than I want to like defend myself

Taylor: 36:43

that makes sense. And like that distinction that you make, you'd rather win than protect yourself at that point. That's a really good. Good way to phrase that. And I think this would be an easy cut to put in that planetar, becomes cheaper, lowers my curve just a bit. I think that's a good swap there.

Shawn: 36:59

And the planets are like not to harp on it But it really like you're not stopping the game from progressing. You're just killing someone else Which is why I love it more than even fog effects because it's just redirecting the lethal commander damage That's coming at you at another unsuspecting friend

Taylor: 37:17

As for me, my trap to be weary of is I've really tried to lean into this tertiary sub theme of soldiers and mono white is a bit of a hamstring in and of itself. Yeah. Doing monowhite on a budget is another form of handicapping that I'm doing to myself here. I think that's a bit of a problem because those soldiers end up being one ones. I can maybe get them up to two twos within a dar if I'm really lucky, they become three threes with captain of the watch, but that's a whole lot of what ifs. And so I think that my trap to be weary of is don't lean just on the soldier sub theme. Think of those as like added bonuses. And so. In a typical play pattern. I'm trying to blink something that gives me better value. So I find myself blinking the sun Titan. I have a myriad landscape in here and somehow in the games that I've been playing, I've managed to get the myriad landscape out, get the sun Titan out, and then start getting back the myriad landscape to keep ramping. It's kind of a cool little interaction there, but that's what you want to look for. Those types of interactions versus trying to maximize getting a bunch of one ones because you're gonna get blown out with those. They are easy to get rid of. They can be chump blocked and it takes a lot to make it happen where you get them up to being even three threes. And so the time and man investment that happens isn't worth it. So that's the trap watch out for it. Look for the good value. Instead, things like blinking. Now, this one shaper planets are, it seems like a lot cooler of a target to keep blinking versus captain of the watch and just making one ones.

Shawn: 38:53

I couldn't have said it better. The danger in this deck is something we talked about in another deck too. Like if you start to half butt everything, then you're not getting the full potential. And this deck wants to cycle and it wants to bounce and it wants to do all this stuff. So if we lean too, too hard into soldiers, it might become a whole different deck, or it might just become sort of muted in the two things that it's trying to do. And they might, you know, be less effective both.

Taylor: 39:21

Absolutely. So what are your final thoughts? What'd you think of my deck? Do you think it's cool? Do you think it's not, am I a fool? Am I not?

Shawn: 39:29

I think it's stellar. I'm, so glad we got to review it and who knows we might not get a ton of views on this one, but I mean like there's only a few decks on edh rec that play this commander But as I said in an early episode like the lower on The rankings that a commander is the more excited I am to try and build around it And what I think you've done with this deck Honestly is very impressive in that You it plays a lot of cards that I've never seen or played before. And it does so in a really effective and neat way, combining it with mechanics that are brand new and that's the dream in magic. We have 30, 000 cards through a 35 year history or whatever. Let's, I don't know if it's that much yet, but let's look at the new synergies that we can bring out and unlock in these old gems. And, I think you did that with this. So good job.

Taylor: 40:16

Thank you. Yeah. And that was. The impetus was cycling. I love being able to do that. I think it's an entirely overlooked ability, in my opinion. Sure. The effects on the card itself might not be as good. It's great because that card is never bad in your hand because at its very least, it says draw a card. Before we started recording, I mentioned a card that I think is a great card is forsake the worldly. It's two and a white for instance, spell exile target artifact or enchantment. That's a little overcosted for what it does, but it also has cycling on it. And so cycling, I think has a lot of great utility and that's what this deck really tries to capitalize on. Is that extra utility for a quick rule zero conversation. If you're introducing this deck to your play group and you want to sit down with them, I let them know that it's kind of low powered because it is at a budget. It's a budget deck that tries to capitalize on blink strategies to accrue value before winning with combat damage. There are no combos in this deck that are new infinite, but there are some really cool loops that can happen. I mentioned the sun Titan loop with myriad landscape. There are some more powerful loops there, but that's what we're looking at.

Shawn: 41:25

Well, fantastic. I would be more than happy to sit down across from this deck. Can't wait to do so. Audience, what do you think? Leave some comments about whether or not you think this deck is fantastic or things you might add, or if you've had experiences playing cycling decks in the past, and you can follow us on Twitter at rule zero podcast, or email us some of those stories at rule zero podcast, the gmail. com. Next time we're taking a look at theme decks Why how should you go about building one for yourself if you haven't before? How do you sift through the arts and the 30, 000 cards to do so? Maybe we'll give you some tips and tricks and then also highlight in addition to that One of my theme decks that I've been building the longest Thraxamundar, the story of Thraxamundar, a heavy metal theme deck based off of a famous documentary about a Canadian metal band called Anvil. It is a blast to play and magic has luckily been giving us more and more metal cards like corpse explosion to keep having fun with. Can't wait.

Taylor: 42:29

I'm looking forward to it too, Sean. And if you enjoyed this deck listener, be sure to check it out on our mocks field, where we link all of the decks that 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 if you've regularly listened to this show on YouTube, Check out our podcast that releases a day earlier, anywhere you can get your podcasts and don't forget.

Shawn: 42:51

And magic, there's no problem that a rule zero conversation cannot solve.