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 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: 0:29

Sean, what's something in the world of Magic that has you excited this week?

Shawn: 0:32

Well, currently as we record this, and By the time it comes out, it'll be maybe like two weeks old, but Pro Tour Thunder Junction in Seattle is happening. So after day one, there's currently one undefeated player, Yoshihio Ikawa, sorry, if my pronunciation is a little rough, who's running Domain Ramp, a standard deck that plays almost nothing from Outlaws of Thunder Junction, sadly, save two Rest in Peace, which is a great sideboard card, um, that basically eliminates graveyard decks. However, there's a few highlights. that I wanted to pull out. I know not everybody here plays standard, but I think standard kind of opens up the gates, especially pro tour standards. Typically they're like, Oh, let's innovate a little bit. Teamer Analyst, a deck that abuses Spelunking, great commander card. Aftermath Analyst, a new Murders at Karloff Manor card that allows you to pull lands out of your graveyard. Plus virtue of strength slash Garen Brig growth one of the new virtue cards that basically winds up making bundles of mana 27 30 33 just to kill an opponent outright with world souls rage no matter what they're doing it's pretty stellar. World souls rage is another good commander card for lands decks, by the way. And it's completely out of our store right now. So I know people are on it because I tried to get one for my desert stack and it's not there. It's X red, green, sorcery, world souls rage deals X damage to any target put up to X lands from your hand and or graveyard onto the battlefield tapped. So it's spelunking, obviously all your tap lands are coming in untapped and you just have shenanigans from there. But the standard deck that really peaked my eye, is really funny and plays a lot of the new cards is Orsov Bronco and OJ Simpson tribute deck. And if you're old enough to get that reference, congratulations. This thing runs two cards to basically dome people for 15. Um, never lick a gift snake horse in the mouth, I guess. Currently the player running it, Kevin Anktil, sits at 6 1 1. They're in day two and I think this has a bunch of people hoping for something so ridiculous that will take down the PT. Basically caustic Bronco, a one in a black creature snake horse mount for a two, two, says whenever it attacks, reveal the top card of your library, put it into your hand. You pay life equal to that card's mana value. If it isn't saddled. However, if it is saddled, each opponent loses that much life. Now, This runs a card from, I think, New Capenna called Shadow of Mortality that costs 15 mana. I think it's the most expensive magic card ever made. I can't remember. It's 13 and 2 black, so if you reveal Shadow of mortality off the top of your deck while caustic Bronco is saddled It will deal 15 to the dome and it also runs a new outlaws card insatiable avarice one black sorcery a spree card That says search your library for a card then shuffle and put that card on top if you pay one black plus two colorless That's the part that matters. It has an additional black blacks as target player draws three cards and loses three life Maybe in a pinch that could be handy, but in this deck you want to put that shadow of mortality on top.

Taylor: 3:44

I was going to say that avarice is really cool because if you do both options and you spree it with all of those, I mean, I don't know how much mana you're going to have, but if you can reveal the shadow of mortality, and then you also force that player to take three, um, that's 18 damage. And then the two from the caustic Bronco is exactsies for 20. And so that's a pretty cool line of just three cards that can win you the game.

Shawn: 4:05

I'm looking forward to see it on camera. Can't wait. I love to see like bonkers decks like this. Finally, I'm hyped for Reed Duke who've already expressed that I'm a big fan of. They're near the top at six one and one With a Golgari brew of their own concoction And they have brought back One of their favorite cards, Liliana of the Vale, classic Innistrad three mana Black Planeswalker who just causes people to discard and sack creatures and is an oldie but goodie. And thus Magic Boomer has got a root for the cards that we actually understand and remember playing in person.

Taylor: 4:43

Yeah. It's so funny to think how cards like Lilliana, the veil have been outclassed at certain times, but it's back in, in the standard rotation. And so getting to see it find a home again is really cool. And I think re Duke is known for playing that style of rock and John and getting to do that again. And standard has got to feel good for a player like re Duke, who's so known for that style of play.

Shawn: 5:06

Absolutely. And I think that a lot of his teammates were on like Esper mid range, which is the most played kind of safe deck at the tournament. And I'm glad that he went his own path. Cause I think in general, whether it's commander or standard or modern or whatever. Like even if your deck is not the quote unquote best stack or like the deck that everyone seems to be on, like play what you feel comfortable playing the style of deck that you like because you will get a lot of incremental advantage from playing cards that you're very familiar with and know how to play maybe better than your opponents.

Taylor: 5:39

Yeah. And that's kind of. The talk we're going to have today in our episode is to make sure you know the cards you're playing. So we're going to be looking at the Precon. We mentioned this in our last episode. I purchased the Grand Larceny Precon and the face commander on it is Gonti Canny Acquisitor. Generally this is a bit of a theft deck. And so you've got to know which. Stealing spells to play and win. And so just like you mentioned, Reed Duke playing the style that he knows, loves, and enjoys. If you're going to play a deck and you want to play it often, you've got to really learn it because it's not like he just woke up one day and was a perfect Jund player. It's from his experience in playing in that style where he became known as the Jund player. Ganti is a sultai commander. They cost two, a black, a green, and a blue. For a legendary creature, Aetherborn Rogue, it's a 5 5. It says spells you cast but don't own cost one less to cast. Whenever one or more creatures you control deal combat damage to a player, look at the top card of that player's library, then exile it face down. You may play that card for as long as it remains exiled, and mana of any type can be spent to cast that spell. I think it's a really cool concept here. You know, you kind of get to use your opponent's decks against them. I know that you're a fan, Sean, of the Aikido style, where you can play something like a deflecting palm, and it really just sends all that damage back. I thought this would be a great idea for this kind of project that we've got here. And the whole concept of this project is that I'm going to play this deck, and every time I play it, I can swap out one card. I get an upgrade for the deck. And I thought this would work really well for that because if I can use other people's cards, they might've already upgraded their decks to the point where I get to play a really cool and powerful card. It is an interesting deck. I've played it a few times. I have actually made the decision to swap the commanders though, to, uh, what I think is a really fun commander. And I think a lot of people are excited to see hit the battlefield. It's Felix five boots, the same exact mana costs to a black, a green and a blue for a five, four with menace and ward two, it's a legendary creature. Ooze rogue that says if a creature you control dealing combat damage to a player causes a triggered ability of a permanent, you control to trigger that ability triggers an additional time. We'll talk about why I made this switch a little bit later on when I. Made that decision and played some games, but I think that it's the right move for this deck. I'm excited to explain why. But Sean, we're looking at this kind of in a different way. We're not just talking about this pre con we're talking about pre cons kind of in general, some of the problems they face, some issues they might have, but we're looking at this, this lens of this specific deck. So what are some of the things that, you know, pre cons have a problem with?

Shawn: 8:33

Fair enough. Yeah. I think it's better sometimes to talk about these broad topics through a specific lens. So we'll be able to see some of these things that we talk about within Ganti and see how we can fix them by the end, hopefully. So one of the things that I noticed, I looked at the lists from every deck for the past four sets outlaws of thunder junction murders at Karloff manor, Ixalan, Wildsville drain. And there were 14 decks that were released in that year, basically. One common theme became apparent, all of these decks have trouble coming from behind, in part because a large majority of their card draw is situational or triggered by a creature hitting someone, or maybe even it's just a looting effect, so you're filtering more than you're drawing cards and gaining advantage. Phyrexian Arena, Common black enchantment card draw was only in one deck. Beast Whisperer, a staple in green creature decks was only in one deck out of 14. Jessica's will was in one deck out of 14. If you look at EDH Rex staple lists, which I did for each color, the common denominator at the top of each color is card draw. And of those cards, very few show up in any pre con. No Rhystic Studies, no Mystic Remorse, no Esper Sentinels, no Underworld Connections, no Mind's Eyes, no Greeds, no Black Market Connection. Well, there's one Black Market Connections. No cosmos elixir. That's not a staple by any means, but it's cheap card draw. That's pretty efficient Garruk's uprising was not in any lists Sylvan library was not in any list fevered visions for blue red not in any list No red wheel effects not even something like a miracle version of the wheel of fortune type effect or wheel of misfortune So I see this play out again and again pre cons get their threats removed and then they're sitting halfway through the game with like two cards in hand and inability to interact very well with the rest of the table because they have not been able to draw nearly as much as all these other more tuned decks have been able to. Some people sitting already with like seven or eight cards still in hand by mid game. What do you think about this?

Taylor: 10:42

Yeah. So when we look at this Ganti deck in particular, I think it's really easy to look and see. What it has. So again, looking at the specifics of one deck to kind of extrapolate some general, observations of precons as a whole. I'm, I'm looking at the deck right now. I think there are six cards that explicitly say draw a card, but even out of those six, they have conditions. So they have. Great cards in this deck, I think like shadow mage infiltrator, it's one, a blue and a black, it has fear. So it can't be blocked except by artifact creatures and or black creatures. And whenever shadow mage infiltrator deals combat damage to a player, you may draw a card. So you can usually find somebody to attack with this infiltrator and start to draw a card. But that's only one card per turn. And that's one of the reasons I decided to make the switch to Felix. So if I connect with this infiltrator while Felix is out, I can draw two cards. And that's kind of what I realized is I needed to find ways to maximize on some of these standard effects. Card draw being one of them. Some other card draw that this deck has are things like Baleful Strix. So blue and a black for an artifact creature bird one, one with flying and death touch when it enters the battlefield to draw a card. Now you can abuse this a little bit because there's a bit of a ninjitsu sub theme in this deck. And so you can bounce creatures back to your hand that are unblocked and nobody really wants to block a Baleful Strix because it's got flying and death touch, and so it can be really powerful in that way to sneak in some cards that Have on damage effects. And so again, Felix has this ability to compound those effects and make them stronger, but six cards that explicitly say draw a card, that's not enough. And so when we. Are thinking about being good deck builders and building decks, that do what they're supposed to do. We definitely have to up those numbers. So one of the very first additions that I put into the deck is reconnaissance mission. It's blue, blue, and two, it's an enchantment. Whenever a creature you control deals combat damage to a player, you may draw a card. Now with Felix, that's two cards and cards like Baleful Strix, the Cold Eye Selkie that's in this deck. They're drawing me a whole lot of cards when they start to connect. Card draw is so important because if you gain a bunch of mana and you're able to do stuff with it, you got to make sure you actually have cards to cast. And so I'm with you. Card draw and all of these are things we need to improve upon.

Shawn: 13:00

Yeah, I agree with Gonti in particular. We're hitting things with John Finkel aka his shadow mage infiltrator Which is a card I love but you're not necessarily winning a game by hitting people for one and two So hopefully through card advantage you can start digging with those early connections To get to these bigger More brutal Spells that the deck does have some of and I think we'll talk about one in particular that can be pretty game changing overall

Taylor: 13:35

And to mention one. Kind of thing I've noticed about pre cons is the Boros commander pre con that came out and that's led by Nayali, the sun's vanguard. I know how you feel about the art on that card, Sean. Um, we'll make sure to put a picture of that up on the YouTube version of

Shawn: 13:53

Yeah, let's make that into our logo Wonderful

Taylor: 14:01

But Nayali is doing exactly what a commander deck wants to do. And in Boros, which I think is really interesting. I've kept that deck as just the pre con for a while. And to be honest, I don't think it's actually lost a game yet. It says for two, a red and a white for a three, three legendary creature, human rebel attacking tokens. You control have double strike. That's impressive right there. But the second ability is even more so whenever one or more tokens, you control, attack a player, exile the top card of your library during any turn you attack with a token, you may play that card. This is such an amazing effect. And I think it's really underrated. You don't even have to deal combat damage. This deck makes a ton of little disposable one, one tokens that you don't mind just to throw into the, the, the deck. Grinder, so to speak, and let them get eaten up every time you do that with a one one, if you can at least attack each opponent, you're getting three cards to play later on. And the way that this is worded means that that ability that Naili has gets stapled onto that card. So if you lose Naili, but you still attack with a token, you get to use those cards. And so with Naili and Boros, you're basically drawing three cards a turn. That's insane. And this deck is insane. Built around making tokens and then giving them double strike. That one, one that's now doing two damage, or this deck has a court of grace, which makes four, four angels. Now you're dealing eight damage. That's exactly what we're talking about, right? This deck is not only drawing you cards, but it's also hitting for some massive damage.

Shawn: 15:35

and speaking of that, I think there's definitely some ways that Players can upgrade Precons very quickly in this regard. For instance, anything that has Monarch in it, in the colors of your Precon. Put a couple of those in there. It'll get you some advantage. Even initiative cards. If your playgroup's okay with them, I know that not everybody is, but we are, and uh, we think it definitely gives you all kinds of fixing, card draw, some extra buffs. Things like that can quickly go into decks and be pretty cheap changes that I think at least give you the way to stick out Through the middle and long games and I do like this boros commander besides the art I wish there was different something about the weird headrests and the giant fist the fists are like big Three times too big. I don't really know what's going on here. There's a bird in the background. I'm just noticing. That's weird. I didn't notice that before.

Taylor: 16:27

That's actually the other commander in the deck is that Phoenix it's back there. Um, so I think that's a cool little artistic

Shawn: 16:33

So there's some Lauren here about Naomi and the sunbird. Okay. I got you.

Taylor: 16:38

Heh heh.

Shawn: 16:39

Another piece that pre cons often, Difficulty with I think is a lack of land destruction which ties in with a topic We'll talk about next week, but good decks often have very powerful lands Nick those guys cradle Erborg who knows lots of things that make a ton of mana basically or Lands that are gonna be win conditions like mazes in Valakut the molten pinnacle So pre cons can not for their life interact with a good land unless there's a random beast within or a generous gift in a deck and out of the 14 most recent decks, the ones we talked about, there was one of each of those cards as far as that. I didn't do a fully comprehensive search, but it was pretty, I paid close attention. So I think that's right. Out of 14 decks, you've got two spells and only one singular demolition field and an outlaws pre con, that could potentially deal with any upgraded or higher power decks, major threats. That feels kind of bad sometimes. I think, if you're sitting down to a table and you just can't do anything, your whole deck, not even if you drew it into your hand. would have an answer.

Taylor: 17:51

I think that's indicative of a larger problem. So not just the targeted land destruction, which definitely matters, you know, getting rid of those problematic lands really matters, but also having any interaction at all. When I looked through the deck, I find four cards that have some, some sort of interactive ability. And again, one of them is even conditional. So you can't always rely on that. It's an oldie, but a goodie it's Trigon predator. It's one, a green and a blue in this Gonti deck. It has flying, which is great because it wants to be evasive and connect, but it has to deal combat damage to destroy target artifact or enchantment that player controls. So again, it's even conditional in that sense. What if the player that has the problematic artifact or enchantment can block your little two, three flyer? Can you always. Reliably get in probably not, but that's one way to remove things. And I think the interaction is so important. So yes, getting rid of those lands, but also getting rid of permanence other than lands that are creating too much value for that player. Another oldie, but a goodie, in putrefying for one, a black and a green destroy target artifact or creature. So again, there's a little bit of interaction there and it's got a plasma capture, which I think is a terrible counter spell and feed the swarm, which is an okay piece of removal, but that's it in terms of targeted removal, because what if that creature is attacking you and you need an instant speed way to get rid of this commander that's about to do Voltron damage and knock you out of the game, there is only one singular card that can actually save you there. I don't think that's enough. And so again, we have to look at improving the card draw on some of these decks and also improving interaction. So yes, getting rid of those problematic lands, but also the creatures, enchantments, artifacts, so on and so forth.

Shawn: 19:39

Yeah, absolutely. Like in the terms of Trigon Predator, I really have a soft spot for that card. I played it a lot 10 years ago. I really do feel some love towards it because I like the idea of combat damage being dealt triggering abilities rather than ETBs, which I think tends to get way too many cuts of the pie these days. The problem is that that's the world we live in. And if somebody sees a trigon predator on the table, it really telegraphs what it's wanting to do. And if you know that you're the one with the bad artifact or the bad enchantment, guess where trigon predator is going to go. And so it kind of tells the opponent, I need to get rid of that. I need to block it. Whatever. So that gives them kind of a turn to decide what can I do?

Taylor: 20:24

My problem with ETB is it encourages dirtily play and the game's not moving forward. Right. And so if we at least are chipping in for two damage, that's at least moving the game forward. Bye baby steps, but it's a, you know, it's getting the game going versus just everyone building these value engines across the table, but there's no real winner and I think that's a problem that I have with cards like, Loran. On E. T. B. she can destroy a target artifact or enchantment, and so what ends up happening is you just start to blink it or find a way to flicker it and just do that over and over again, but you never actually get to attack with it, so you're not moving the game forward. My sweet, sweet Prince Trigon Predator is going to at least chip in for two damage here and there, and I can potentially get rid of two things now thanks to Felix being on the battlefield.

Shawn: 21:12

I wonder if equipping some of these creatures with swords would be useful like protection effects or Maybe even like whisper silk cloak since you want to hit so many people like having something like that in the deck or trailblazers boots Just something that helps these creatures get in no matter what might be helpful to to change up the game a little bit

Taylor: 21:34

Yeah, the protection effects are huge, and I think to a lot of the swords have on damage effects, right? And so if Felix can double that, there's some cool interactions. I think the most notable sword is a feast and famine. And so you could float a whole bunch of mana in between the 2, triggered abilities there. A lot of the creatures that are in the deck that are the small ones are just inherently unblockable, like, there's no Kima in here that's just unblockable, but also things like Silhana Ledgewalker, it can only be blocked by creatures with flying and so you can usually get in. It's got some of the one mana ones as well because again, ninjutsu is a bit of a sub theme in this deck.

Shawn: 22:12

Fair enough. So, let's talk about the mana base. This is often in precons the afterthought, I think, in when they build them. They're like, let's put all these cool new commander cards and maybe a couple spicy reprints. And, oh, the lands are stuff from fallen empires or whatever.

Taylor: 22:30

Yeah, I think that the mana bases are notoriously bad. I was kind of impressed for this grand larceny deck. And it's mana base. There were a few land cycles that were completely filled in, but I think are just good lands to run. Notably, they had the scrying temple lands. So they tap for two different colors. They enter the battlefield tap, but they let you scribe one. So you don't feel too, too bad playing one of those. They runs all three pain lands. I love these. They tap for colorless on their own, but you can pay a life to tap for whichever color you need. It ran all three check lands, which I think are really good lands. They come in tapped unless you have whichever type you might need. So for instance, Drowned Catacomb enters the battlefield tapped unless you control a swamp or an island. And there are plenty of basics in this deck and you're going to more often than not have these come in untapped. It ran two of the filter lands, Flooded Grove and Twilight Mire, which are great lands that can tap for colorless on their own, or you can pay a color into it and filter it into whichever color combination you might need. That's pretty good. It runs the signet lands, which I'm not a huge fan of. They don't tap for mana on their own, you can pay a mana into it. And it taps for two now, two colored mana of some sort. Um, but yeah, there's some strange includes. It only ran one of the bounce lands and Demir aqueduct. So it didn't have the Golgari one and it didn't have the Simic one. It ran. Sunken hollow, this cycle isn't complete. Sunken hollow is one of the Tango lands. It comes in tapped unless you control two of them. Basic lands. So it's an incomplete cycle. And then similarly, it ran a fetid pools. That cycle is not complete either. This is the cycling land. It has a type to it, which is great. So you can fetch it up, but it enters tapped always. You can pay two to cycle it and it has one dark slick shores, which is one of the fast lands. It comes in untapped, but only if you have two or fewer lands.

Shawn: 24:30

Those lands that you just mentioned, make me think this deck was built by AI because they're so like outside the box and like bizarre. And just one of certain cycles is very strange. This is the rule zero podcast call. I think you can agree with me on this and we have no reach whatsoever yet. So you know, hopefully. Our drop in the bucket can add to an overwhelming tidal wave of support for wizards, putting all of the battle bond lands in commander decks stat, just reprint them to the point where they are no longer holding value. I don't think commander players will be sad about that. And for those who don't know what those are, they're basically the lands that come into play untapped. They make two colors of manna and They come in on tap if you have two or more opponents. So they're very specific to commander itself. Reprinting them into the ground won't hurt any other formats at all. And it will only make pre cons that much better. This should have had three battle bond lands in it.

Taylor: 25:28

Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly. I also think that it's a great place to gently reprint some of the, shock lands, maybe you don't print all three of them in them, but some of these shock lands are difficult to get. Watery grave is always going to be pretty expensive. Same for breeding pool. If one of those had been printed in this deck. What's he's going to get its money off of people buying the pre cons and this would make them that much more desirable and The battle bond lands again. They're not played in any other format. So Where else should you reprint them? You're never going to print it in standard You're never going to put it in a modern masters set sure we can put it in some of the commander masters sets But why not also tuck them into the pre con decks themselves?

Shawn: 26:11

You heard it here wizards and from everywhere else literally on Twitter I think it's kind of ubiquitous across the multiverse people wanting battle by lands in Commander decks, so let's do it. What's he come on?

Taylor: 26:24

I'm with you. Let's keep calling them out every chance we get.

Shawn: 26:26

Every chance Another thing and this is a little bit on the on the edges I think what's he's notorious for not including any kind of combos in pre cons I Think I would like to see one or two even if they're not infinite combos. Like let's see something that can go Hard in the paint maybe 10 or 15 cycles of a certain thing as much man as you have to put into it Just to see if you can When the game that way, let's reintroduce combo into the sort of language of commander players because newer commander players, I don't think ever see it.

Taylor: 27:01

And when they do, they're surprised by it, right? They see a combo and they think to themselves, Oh man, I have no way to interact with this. Yeah, because you don't have any type of removal that's built into the pre con a lot of combos, take a little bit of time to set up and build up. And the best way to stop that combo from happening is one having your own combo. So, you know, how things work together and you can then predict what's going to happen across the table and play removal as needed, or hold that counterspell that you do have, even though plasm capture is a terrible counterspell. If I see some pieces starting to fill up on the board, I know, Ooh, let me hold on to that plasma capture just in case. And so if we introduce some combos into the precons, the new players can begin to learn as well, right? They don't necessarily have to be infinite. And I don't think they need to be overly complicated. Like you just said, Any iteration of combo that's based on the amount of mana that you have available. I think that's a great place to start because how are new players going to learn unless they do right. And I think that if we only allow combos to be a part of say the CEDH metagame, new players are never going to experience that. I don't think. There are many people that make the jump from never having played magic straight into CEDH. We have to allow that middle ground to open up so people can learn how to interact with combos, but also to run a combo or two.

Shawn: 28:31

There's obviously some danger. So as you're listening, try to think of like best case, not worst case. You know, if you were introducing combo, then you can cultivate the type of combo you would be okay with seeing. at a pre con level. And maybe this is the kind of thing that could be introduced into some of these higher level, more expensive decks, like the modern masters decks that are coming out. I don't see any reason why combo shouldn't be in that type of deck. Cause I think you're getting more entrenched players buying those than you are like brand new people.

Taylor: 29:04

I know that you're not a big fan of Yawgmoth, but, uh, Yawgmoth has a modern master's card, has a lot of combo potential. And so the modern horizon three. Commander decks. That's a great place to look for cards like Yawgmoth that have a free sac outlet, but it's also limited because even though it's free, you've got to pay a life to do it. And so it can't always go infinite and it will teach new players how to do it. Do think that, the deck has some cool cards to help us finish the game, even if it doesn't have any combos. The first one is a brand new board wipe. It's called heartless conscription. It's six black, black, it's really expensive board wipe. It's sorcery speed, but it says exile all creatures for each card exile this way. You may play that card for as long as it remains exiled and man of any type can be spent to cast that spell exile heartless conscription. This card's really cool. It's a board wipe. You're ramping a lot in this deck. That's kind of what it wants to do. So getting to eight mana isn't always going to be a problem, but it's kind of hard to get to this one and have it when you need it. We played a game recently, with this pre con and, one of the players in the pod, Max, who listens to the show was playing his Knights deck and there were some problematic Knights that were indestructible and we had to try and exile them. If I had only drawn this card is what I kept thinking to myself, we would be able to live another turn. And what's really cool about this is you get to rebuild off of the best creatures that everyone else had. So this is a really cool way to finish the game, but I hate that it's a so expensive and be only a one off. What do you think of this card?

Shawn: 30:45

And this deck in particular, I really enjoy it. And I think that thing that conundrum you just mentioned of like, if only had I just drawn this card. is an excellent example of why Ganti is better off in the sideboard or outside of the deck than Felix five boots Felix five boots will draw you to this card because a lot of your creatures do draw cards when they connect so I think it's a excellent card in exile As much as it pains me to say, it is becoming more and more prevalent in games, so Indestructible, not as scary as it used to be, and I think that's on purpose by Wizards.

Taylor: 31:19

Yeah. And I think what's cool about this is. If I do cast that creature that I exiled from you and you find a way to destroy it or somebody else does, it goes back to your graveyard. And so hopefully if you're eating your veggies in your deck, you're able to recur out of your graveyard in some capacity. It's not as a permanent of an exile say is like a farewell. I think everyone knows how much I hate this card now. So are those conscriptions cool? And I'm, I'm glad that you mentioned. How Gonti isn't as effective as Felix five boots can be. It was in that game where at no point did I want to actually cast Gonti. And that's what I realized that I should switch over to Felix because Felix has some built in protection. So it would feel a little less bad casting him and putting my shields down, so to speak, running out of mana because it's got the ward too on it. I think that there's a little bit of protection built in, which is great. And Gonti, I never wanted to cast that card. I think that it has some cool potential, but it's also really hard to maximize on it in a particular line of play. Because say I cast Gonti, I managed to swing in with some of my little one ones that are unblockable. I'm not always going to have enough mana to play the cards that I'm able to rip off of my opponent's libraries. And I think that that's the problem with it. As much as I love this concept of the theft deck being the deck I do this project on, Gonti just wasn't actually doing it. It's hard to connect. It's hard to cast those spells.

Shawn: 32:45

Plus, Felix Fiveboots actually has a hidden ward. Ward, colon, adorable. Which makes it really hard to remove!

Taylor: 32:53

People forget his cute little cowboy hat. He's got an amalgous body with all of these boots, but he's also got a sweet little cowboy hat. He just wants to be an ooze out in the wild, Wild West.

Shawn: 33:03

flavor text is amazing. Multiple pseudopods and no vital organs make dueling a whole lot easier. And for people who are wondering, Felix has three right boots and two left boots.

Taylor: 33:15

The world now knows.

Shawn: 33:16

Yup. We've unlocked the hidden truth behind Felix five boots. So let's talk about this other card that exiles things off of players decks, but it's kind of a scary potentially game ending threat.

Taylor: 33:31

Brain Stealer Dragon gives a ton of value and puts strong pressure on opponents life totals. If it sticks around. And I think that's a lot of problem that I have with pre cons is they're really good cards aren't always protected or able to be protected. Brain Stealer Dragon is five and two black for a dragon horror, six, six, it has flying. At the beginning of your end step, exile a top card of each opponent's library. You may play those cards for as long as they remain exiled. If you cast a spell this way, you may spend mana as though it were mana of any color to cast it. And then the pressure comes from this last ability. Whenever a non land permanent and opponent owns enters the battlefield under your control, they lose life equal to its mana value. So it really starts to do some damage, but again, It has to stick around to actually make that happen. This deck does not have many ways of protecting its creatures. And that's the problem, right? If you are able to remove this with a simple path to exile. Yay. I get a land. No. Yay. I gained life.

Shawn: 34:37

Yeah, you're right. It doesn't have protection right? There's no ward adorable on this particularly on the old version Which had a mind flayers tentacle mouth on the front of the dragon this new version is a little less offensive and scary but it has weird like Praying mantis claws. I don't know what's going on with this flavor here it's a quick removal target. Most people have targeted removal and commander, especially if you're playing in a pot of non Precons with your pre con So as soon as they see this, I don't think anybody's gonna let themselves get hit by it so you have to hold up some kind of Protection simic charms something to give your folks hex proof or some kind of indestructible or something

Taylor: 35:19

guess the idea here is that by the time you're playing the brain stealer, you should have a lot of cards already in exile that you're able to use from your opponents. And maybe you have managed to hit some of the removal or maybe you've managed to grab a counter spell. And so I think that might be part of the idea of this deck is if you've done enough with Gonti out and you've been able to get some really good cards in exile that you can cast. Maybe you can protect your brain sealer dragon later on, but that's a whole lot of ifs. And I think that's the problem with pre cons is they rely on those ifs far too often,

Shawn: 35:55

Yeah, for sure, a seven mana enchantment effect, basically, to try and eke out some damage value in a pre con, not going to work out so well because we already talked about how the mana bases are. Nuts and not in a good way.

Taylor: 36:09

right? Right. The last card here that's included in the pre con I think is a pretty good one. And I think that it can do what this deck exactly wants to do, and it can probably do it better than any other card in the deck and it's villainous wealth. I think people know this card by this point, it was originally back in. The cons of Tarkir block. It's villainous wealth. It's an X, a black, green, and a blue for a sorcery target opponent exiles, the top X cards of their library. You may cast any number of spells with mana value, extra less from among them without paying their mana costs. You can rip some really cool cards with this and play them for free. And there's some really interesting ways that you can layer the stack and, really maximize value, but that takes a whole lot of know how it takes a whole lot of mana. And again, there are a lot of ifs here. If everything works out perfectly, villainous wealth is a great card, but how often do things work out perfectly in a commander game?

Shawn: 37:06

I Love villainous wealth. I will excuse anybody who runs it I know you're probably going to target me in the future. Whoever you are running your villainous wealth Because I'll have a lot of dragons or whatever in my deck. They probably seem pretty scary But this card is the type of card that honestly to me inspired this type of deck in the first place when this came out I It has captured and held the imagination for 10 years now. Since it's hard to say, but cons I think came out in 2014. So a car that's It seems like it might evoke salt But I think the randomness of it hits the right sweet spot of like maybe they don't hit anything And also it costs so much as you mentioned that if somebody gets to actually succeed with this Well, I think everybody just kind of has to throw their hands up in the air and be like awesome. Let's see how this random lottery ticket plays out

Taylor: 38:00

I think this is also a card that. We have to play with some caution. We're gonna talk about this in our next episode, about having kind of these meta conversations with your playgroup, and I think V Wealth is one of those, and it's a bit of a tricky card to put in a precon because not everyone likes their stuff being stolen. The first time I played this deck, I played it at a table that was. Kind of unfair. I was playing this deck. Another player had their own theft deck from. Excellent. That was playing pirates that steal things. And another player had a donate Zedru deck. And so the fourth player who was playing a normal EDH deck kept getting targeted because they were the only person that had cards worth stealing. And that did not feel good. And so villainous wealth is one of those cards. I think you should mention that you're playing it. So that people can say, yeah, Hey, I'm okay with you playing a theft deck because one, not everyone likes their cars to be touched. I know I don't, especially if I have an expensive card in my deck. And so, you know, ask before you grab my cards, please. I think that's just good common courtesy, but villainous wealth is one of those cards where people want to play their decks. And if you take it all from them, what's to stop them from scooping at instant speed. I'm a believer that. You should scoop at sorcery speed and scooping, I think is okay. But if you scoop in the middle of somebody trying to cast their villainous wealth, man, that's just a feel bad. And now that player who spent all of their resources building up to it is just completely out of the game at that point. Maybe they held off on playing other spells. In an attempt to cast this villainous wealth. Now they just get knocked out of the game too. That's two players that get knocked out instantly. It's not a feel good.

Shawn: 39:43

Fair enough, and I think that this does kind of lead into what was originally pretty tough about the Ganti. Whereas villainous, well for me personally might feel okay cause it's so flashy and I kind of love to see something so ridiculous happen. Little small theft effects tend to annoy me more like sort of a thousand cuts. Right. For instance, in one of the games we played, there was a Thieving Skydiver, who in Arena Brawl I am a full proponent of. Because I'm like, you should steal your opponent's mana rock on turn 3 or whatever. Because then they might scoop and you get to play another game. But in Not 1v1, um, you were able to play Thieving Skydiver early and steal my turn 2 play Smuggler's Copter. Oh, that was really tough to take a little bit. I tried to be like, Oh, this is what the deck wants to do. It is what it is. But there were also a lot of times where I was like, I need to activate this to throw some deserts in my graveyard. It's kind of what my deck does. Um, and so that was a little tough. And I think the Gandhi deck was sort of built with that ethos in mind. to where people would steal things for value but not steal things for like a purpose necessarily not saying that you didn't have a purpose with it you probably did but i think it leads to that sort of game play of like i'm just doing things to maximize my mana value rather than thinking about how the long term ramifications of this play out i don't know what's your thought

Taylor: 41:13

Yeah. So in that game, I had, I think two really good choices for my thieving skydiver. One was a soul ring. Jude was playing in that game and he had a soul ring out pretty early. And then you had the smuggler's copter. We identified a problem this deck has in card draw in that moment. I needed to draw cards. I thought, and so that was the reasoning behind it. And you make a really good note that you don't always have to steal. The best thing you're, you've got a car that you want to mention later on, and we can save that point for that. But I think in that moment I needed card draw. And so if this deck had better card draw built into it, then that interaction wouldn't have happened. And I also had the ghostly pilferer in my hand, which I have to untap to be able to draw a card. And so my thought was, okay, if I get the smuggler's copter, that gives me a free way to tap the, Ghostly pill for a second, then pay two mana when it untaps to draw one card. Not a great rate. And so I was looking for a way to maximize it. So again, this points to a problem the deck has, which isn't addressed in the past 14 decks. We need consistent ways to draw cards.

Shawn: 42:23

And I'm glad to hear that side of things. Cause to me, I'm like, well, that makes a really cool synergy. I enjoy the idea of like, Oh, I can tap this with a vehicle. Cause I love that pattern of play of like, I need a creature that taps, but I don't want to attack with it. So I crew vehicles with it instead. To me, that's like really fun. I love that idea. And in hindsight, we're always 2020. Think I might have stolen the soul ring just out of spite. That's my typical line Skydiver be like who kid who played the mana vault slash soul ring, whatever. All right, that's mine. No Like you brought it on yourself. You don't have any defense because you're the the one who's clearly ahead But I get where you're coming from And that seemed to you know, fill a hole that your deck had We don't have those holes then maybe we don't need to fill that You and I think the upgrading of Ganti or Felix five boots, whatever, once those holes are filled, you won't have to worry about taking things from your opponents, which can feel very bad. You'll actually be able to power your own deck, which is cool. It allows people to feel a little bit better. I think about the whole situation.

Taylor: 43:29

Absolutely. And I think we can use that as a segue into a, a different type of acquisitor card. Do you want to mention Thotta Adele first? And then we can go to your second hidden gym upgrade option.

Shawn: 43:40

Sure, this is a card that I wish they had reprinted in the Ganti deck Fata Adele acquisitor is a merfolk rogue legendary creature for one blue blue It has island walk It's a 2 2 creature and whenever Fata Adele acquisitor deals combat damage to a player search that player's library for an artifact card Exile it then that player shuffles his or her library Until end of turn you may play that card so it has some synergies with the exile casting spells from exile piece of the deck, but Also, it has island walk. And so if you're trying to hit somebody who has good artifacts I think a safe rule would be to hit the blue player who often at least depends on ramp from artifacts And maybe has something even more bonkers in there That you can take and so Think this would be a safe include. It's a little pricey. Unfortunately, I think it's like 14 15 at this point So hopefully we'll see some reprints What do you think about it?

Taylor: 44:40

The price spiked on this one for two reasons. One, the recent Merfolk deck from Ixalan wants to play the best Merfolks and this is one of them. And then two, this theft deck wants to play it as well as another acquisitor of sorts. And you make this note about, you don't always have to take the best thing out of the deck. You know, you can take a Sol Ring, you can take a Signet, you can take something that is Isn't going to make people feel bad. And I can totally empathize with it feeling bad. And I took this key value piece that you had in the smugglers copter. You wanted to get those deserts into your graveyard somehow. Well, thought Adele gives you the choice. And I think that's really important. And I think that we as players also have to have. That insight and know that we have choice. And so I have a really quick example of where I, as a player made a choice, I think was for the good of the table. I turned my Galta big power deck into a Yargle and Multani big power deck. Yargle and Multani are a combo card out of much of the machines and it's an 18 power card. And so I want to play around with that number 18 as much as possible. In a recent game that I played, I was able to cast on turn four culling ritual, which is to a black and a green. It destroys all non land permanents. I believe with Mana value two or less and you get a black or green for each one destroyed this way I managed to make enough mana off of that card to cast yargol and multani and then cast a traverse the outlands Which searches my library for x basic lands where x is the greatest power among creatures. I control Going into turn five. I had 20 basic lands on the battlefield And I drew into a torment of hellfire Nobody wants to see that on turn five. So I made it very loud and clear. I said, look, everybody, I'm discarding this just to maybe try and garner some favor because I was light years beyond everyone else. And so thought Adele giving you that choice allows you to be a little bit more in control versus some of the theft cards, which only look at. The top four, top five, whatever. And you're going to have to take the best card out of those options. And that's not always going to be a feel good moment for the rest of the table.

Shawn: 47:00

Absolutely, I think as you're playing your games commander a good rule or a good Ability to develop we're all in different stages of this and probably none of us are perfect at it But there was an old article written by Mike Flora as about competitive magic of like who's the beatdown? Think it's really valuable to be able to assess in a game. Who is the beatdown who is in charge? Who's way ahead even if that person is you and if that's the case? Do you really think you're gonna be able to survive 3v1 if you steal the most powerful crazy artifact with Tata Adele? Is it in that point where you can get a little bit of incremental value? by taking some two minute man a rock or who knows what, but you won't draw all the salt and ire or you can kind of steal a really funny card out of a person's deck that makes goats or whatever. Like who knows what you might find, but learning how to assess, like how is this going to be viewed by the other players at the table is probably a good skill to develop and thought it gives you that ability to choose. Which is nice. You're not just randomly pulling stuff off the top and being like, well now I have to play this random thing

Taylor: 48:12

So I think that kind of transitions us into the point that I wanted to make with this, other hidden gym that you have, it takes playing these pre cons to figure out what swaps to make. What is this deck really trying to do? And so we're looking at this through the lens of Gonti. Grand larceny. And now the new lead singer, Felix, when you play these decks, I think it's so important to not make these swamps blindly. I mentioned this before you watch these videos, you watch these content creators, take out 10, add in 10, but you don't always know why. And so I think that we can have a conversation about this hidden gem that you want to add. And we can talk about why I think. That we should swap this in after having played this deck a few times. So what's this hidden gem that you've got?

Shawn: 49:00

Very inexpensive card memory plunder It has hybrid blue black times four as the casting cost so it can cost any combination of four blue or black mana It's an instant you may cast target instant or sorcery card from an opponent's graveyard without paying its mana cost You So you can accrue a lot of value out of this, but the fact that it's instant speed Allows you to in particular cast things like board wipes If you're being overwhelmed and to do so at a time that is really advantageous to you Rather than spending that eight mana on your turn to cast the board wipe that came with the pre con for instance you could do it on the end step before your turn starts and then you are the first person who can rebuild. It's a very flexible card, it meets whatever moment you need it to, and it's not too, too expensive. You could even cast a counterspell with this, you know, on the floor basically. I like this one and I think it might be a little bit better than another card that's in the deck. Arcane Heist, that is a cipher card. That requires you to have these sort of unblockable creatures and has a lot of stipulations on it. What do you think?

Taylor: 50:12

You mentioned being able to cast a counter spell off of this for four mana. I think people oftentimes forget that one of the most well known, most powerful cards in magic is a counter spell that costs five mana force of will is known because you can cast it for free. but you can also pay 5 to counter a spell. I like the flexibility there. Memory Plunder gives you a lot of flexibility and choice. Arcane Heist is 2 blue blue for sorcery. You may cast target instant or sorcery card from an opponent's graveyard without paying its mana cost. If that spell would be put into their graveyard, exile it instead and it has cipher. This card is definitely a lot slower. This card is a lot slower. The fact that it's sorcery speed compared to instant speed. But I think this deck has the ability to kind of abuse the heist a little bit and it plays into the theme. And I think if I'm knowing my rules the right way, Felix would let you cast it twice, which is pretty cool. So I would argue instead for another card to swamp out of this one. And again, this is just for me having played the deck The card that I would swap out for memory plunder would be stolen goods. It's three colorless and a blue target opponent exiles cards from the top of their library until they exile a non land card until end of turn, you may cast that card without playing it's mana cost. This card would feel so bad to play target somebody and then whiff on. So. If I get their soul ring, awesome. If I get a really powerful spell, awesome. But what happens when you whiff on it and you get a path to exile, but you can't actually target anything with it. Or what happens when you get another ramp spell and you already ramped enough in this game. So stolen goods is my swap that I would actually make for memory plunder. It doesn't give you the appropriate choice you need. It's too random for my taste.

Shawn: 52:03

I think that's totally fine. I can see the upside particularly with Felix as the commander of the deck Because you get to double that ability. But as long as memory plunders in the deck, I think I would feel safer playing it in general You Because I can hold up mana and protect myself from almost anything that occurs At any point in the game because there's always gonna be a path to exile Some kind of beast within kind of card something from small to gigantic You know, maybe there's an insurrection in the graveyard and then you're just having a great time

Taylor: 52:37

The ceiling is much higher for a car like Memory Plunder than I think it is for Stolen Goods. Let me rephrase that. I think that the floor is much lower on a car like Stolen Goods. And Memory Plunder, it's a fun one. I've played it before. I love getting to cast that type of spell. I think we should start to kind of wrap it up a little bit. We've got some non bows and traps to be weary of both in particular with the grand larceny deck, but also with pre cons, Sean, why don't you start us off? What should we be cautious of when we're buying a new pre con?

Shawn: 53:09

Some precons can be great, but others are just total messes in my opinion and sight unseen. It's hard to know which of yours this is. So I think if you bought a March of Machines Tinker Time deck with a cute gremlin on the front messing with some machinery, I don't fault you for that. I was very tempted because it looked amazing, but the deck doesn't do much with gremlins at all and it really has almost no way to win if you look inside of it. Or blame game emerges at Karlov manor pre con focused on the goad mechanic. I love goad goads fun, but it's a very difficult mechanic to play. Competitively or like with any kind of, Hope of actually winning the game, because Goated, once you get down to 1v1, if you manage to get there, doesn't do anything. at all. So this deck has very little ways to win and I never saw it win on stream. So another option might be if someone is new to the game, watch one of the professor's videos on Tolarian community college. He gives these pre con guides that cost 45 or less where you can just buy all of the singles and he has a very like specific game plan, explains it well. And usually they're pretty fun builds. Or you can watch, your favorite pre con on stream before you maybe pre order it to see like, how does this play out? Does it look like something I would find enjoyable or worth upgrading? And that makes the decision a little bit more informed, a little bit better for you, I think.

Taylor: 54:34

That's one of the biggest problems with precons. I love the fact that they are such an easy way to get into the format, but oftentimes they're a little too confused. They don't have a good game plan for you to follow. And so it's hard to know what your deck really wants to do. And in this Grand Larceny Precon, the game plan seems to be theft, but that's hard for a new player to navigate and figure out. The other game plan or possibility when it comes to playing this is ninjutsu. And that's a really powerful way to play magic. But if you don't know how that interaction works, it can be difficult to figure out. So here's my take on it. I mentioned this previously. Pre cons great way to get into the game. But make sure you know why you're swapping out certain cards. I've seen some of these upgrade guides that take out cards that I would never consider taking out. And so I think it's important to know that. Why, why are they taking out certain cards? So my advice to all of our listeners is to make sure that you actually play the pre con as is a couple of times before you make out that swap, because you might not notice an interaction that's possible. And I also think that these content creators that we seem to trust so blindly, they probably don't have the time or the ability to make those informed decisions as well. It's easy to look at a list of a hundred cars and say that card's bad. This card's good. Let's drop the other one. But what happens when you actually play this game? The speed with which WotC is printing new sets, new commander precons, doesn't allow for a truly, I think, informed decision making process to create upgrades to precons. So if you're listening this far into the episode, take this as my only piece of gospel. Play the precon as it is, make your own decisions.

Shawn: 56:20

Absolutely. Thank you all for sticking this one out. It is a bit of a longer episode. But it's an important topic and I think that pre cons are the number one way that people get into magic these days, if I remember the numbers correctly. What I would say in closing Something that might be useful to our listeners is check out Taylor's guide to upgrading grand larceny It is a blog that is on moxfield. You're talking very specifically about each card that you take out and why? What are the goals of the deck? What are the experiences you have while playing it super informative? I think guide that can be extrapolated to any deck Next week, we tackle a topic that I think we tend to see eye on for the most part, land destruction. But it turns out the Magic community has opinions on the subject. Like a volcano, this topic is always waiting to explode under the right conditions. And we're going to do our best to help you and your playgroup not get burned. Also got thoughts on this five boots list. You can follow us on Twitter rule zero podcast. That's the number zero or email us at rule zero podcast at gmail. com

Taylor: 57:26

If you enjoyed this conversation about pre cons and the grand larceny deck list, make sure to follow us on moxfield. We've got this deck listed in every deck that we've talked about previously. And if you'd like for us to highlight one of your decks, we'd love to just reach out to us. If you regularly listen to us on YouTube, make sure to check out our podcast. It comes out a day before our YouTube releases and we're on every platform that you could get your podcasts on. And don't forget.

Shawn: 57:54

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