What's up, Wizards? It's time for Rule Zero, the show that helps you prepare for the best game of Commander. I'm Sean, and it is our hope that through our combined decades of 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. This week, we're being joined by a friend and guest from the LGS. Josh, how's it going? Great. How are you, Sean? I think I'm doing pretty great. I'm about to go on vacation. So I'm excited. And we're going to talk about a sweet and fuzzy rabbit today. Yeah. Miss bumbleflower. Yeah. She's so sweet. Right? She never hurt anyone. That's the, that's the story. So before we get to that, as is tradition on the show, kind of ask what in the world of magic has you excited this week? Well, I mean, I'm stoked about the, the 50th anniversary D and D secret layer. Like I know the whole secret layer thing is a shit show right now. And it, it's, is it okay if I say shitshow on here? Okay, it's, it's a shitshow. Because of the no longer doing the print on demand thing, so everybody wants stuff and they can't have it. And hopefully that's not the case with this secret lair. Maybe they'll get it together. But, uh, it's supposed to be like five or six different drops, right, for D& D. Uh, only two of which seem to be about Baldur's Gate 3, the video game, so that's cool. And I really hope that they'll give me a Warduke legendary creature, one of my favorite characters from their D& D cartoon. I saw you rallying for that online pretty hard. I mean you are Warduke at home on Twitter, so that makes sense. Yeah, I got a I got a bit. And being at your house, I've seen plenty of Warduke figures. I think it's fair to say that you've earned it, honestly. I know, come on wizards. Give me the Warduke card. Yeah, not just in the background of another card. Yeah. Yeah, the previous Secret Lair card. Right, and a cool counter doubling enchantment is fun, but, uh, you know, we need a Grixis commander. That's what he should be. Which is interesting, considering that we're talking about Bumbleflower, because counter doubling is something that this deck seems like it might be interested in. That rough transition, um Yeah, there's not really any of that in my deck list, but it should be. Yeah, fair enough. Yeah. Um, so, uh So we're going to talk a little bit about Mrs. Bumbleflower, the way that we do the deck techs on the show, or at least try to follow a general game plan is we talk about the play pattern. Um, is this deck sort of fun to play? How do we lead out of the gate with it? What works in the current list? Often we're looking at a list that's unpolished and as EDH players, I think we're just constantly tweaking our own decks anyway. And, What doesn't or what were some changes that we've already made, perhaps? Combos that are in the deck if we want to play combos. Non bos, things that we tried that haven't worked that well. And then to wrap up, maybe our elevator pitch, as we try to get people to even take a look at Mrs. Bumbleflower, which I would think shouldn't be too hard as the face commander for one of the pre cons. What do you think? Yeah, I think Ms. Bumbleflower, I looked yesterday, and she's currently the most popular commander on EDH rec. Uh, so it probably won't be too hard to get people to want to play this, this funny little bunny. Okay, well that's actually shocking in a good way for me because, or I say in a good way, but we're going to talk about the deck because it plays a style that I have been known to succumb to a little bit of tilt on when playing against. Yeah, so, but I'm going to hold that back. We're going to look at only the good, positive, wonderful things about this rabbit. I mean, tell us how you really feel, Sean. Oh, I will. That's the M. O. of this, this show. I think I preached for cutting the brake lines of people who played expropriate, but that's uh, not an actual suggestion. I don't want you to, that was just said in the heat of the moment. That's just funny jokes. Don't really do that. Yes, hilarious jokes. So, I'm going to read out Ms. Mobileflower for you all, listeners especially. On the screen, you'll be able to see it on YouTube. Mrs. Bumbleflower is 1, a green, a white, and a blue. A rabbit citizen legendary creature with vigilance, who is a 1 5. Whenever you cast a spell, target opponent draws a card. Put a plus 1, plus 1 counter on target creature. It gains flying until end of turn. If this is the second time this ability has resolved this turn, you draw 2 cards. Now, I'm I heard you talking a little bit about the deck. It was something to do with the fact that you just like drawing cards, right? It's my favorite thing to do in Magic Gathering. There's nothing better than drawing cards. Like, the only thing that comes close is making treasure tokens. I love making treasure tokens too, which this deck doesn't do at all. But it more than makes up for it by drawing lots and lots of cards. The way that you get to draw cards, though, is by doing a little bit of shenanigans. In your experience of playing the deck so far, how do you try to come out the gate with it? And, uh, when do you finally get to start doing the thing where you draw all the cards? So, yeah, I'd like to cast Mistbubbleflower on, like, turn 3, which isn't hard to do. And then start doing stuff on turn 4. I think there's a way to build a deck where you play on other people's turns a lot. With a lot of instants and flash and stuff like that, and I just haven't really done that. The focus of the deck is to play a lot of two and three and occasionally four drop spells. Super low curve, so that you can cast exactly two cards every turn. Because as long as you do that, you're every card cantrips, basically. So what is the success rate, Ben, would you say in the times that you've taken it out so far? I've played it. I've gotten to play it twice so far. Not a lot, but I won one game and lost the other. So 50 percent it's not a good sample size, but 50 percent is a pretty good success rate. I mean, that assumes that we're looking at success on this podcast as in winning, which if you look at the decks, that's probably not true. If the metric is just having a blast, then it's a hundred percent. It's so fun to play because you get to be the good guy in a way, because everybody likes drawing cards. It's not just me. Everybody thinks that's super fun and everybody's going to get to do that. And then the idea is that everything that somebody else gets to do as a result of you doing it, you're going to get to benefit a little extra. Yeah. From that also. Okay. So you're building sort of an engine that is for every card you draw, I'm going to draw a card. And maybe more. Maybe a lot more. And then I'm also going to put counters on stuff. I'm going to jump around and kick you. You know, all that stuff. Do you want to get a little aggressive with a creature or two in Mrs. Bumbleflower? Is that a hope of eventually, if I get a big enough dude on the board, I can Yeah, I think, I think that's the, that's the plan. That's plan A for winning, is to juice up Miss Bumbleflower and kick people. Putting the, the counters on them and making them fly means that they, they're pretty evasive and they get really big, really fast. Cause every single time you cast a spell, you put a plus one, plus one counter on something. Oh, yeah, that's true. Every single time. If you cast five spells a turn, you're only going to draw two cards, but you're going to put five plus one, plus one counters on stuff. And Yeah, I don't really want to do that. I want to cast two and kind of go slower, but you can, and there's a way in the deck, I put Narset in the deck so that later on, when everyone realizes that I was the villain all along, uh, I can turn off their card draw and just go ham. Um, yeah. So as soon as, as soon as they. Turn the corner on the happy go lucky bunny in the garden scenario. Yeah, eventually they're like, why is, why is that rabbit a 7 11 right now that is kicking me? It's gonna kill me in three turns. Narset is the heel turn sort of card in a lot of BDH decks. As soon as that hits, it's like all the games are over with, but Hopefully you've made the trap so that they can't get out of it at that point. You have enough, maybe counterspell backup. I'm looking through the list right now. You've got a lot of different options as far as protecting your game plan. There's a ton of interaction. And part of that is just like the, the MO of keeping the curve really low and playing at instant speed a bit, just leans into that kind of automatically. I mean, I'm sure you could build it differently, but I tend to like being more interactive than less. Yeah, of course, because you don't want to be helpless. And you said you want to play at instant speed a lot in some versions of this deck, and I think I think I always lean towards that type of playstyle regardless, because I hate just playing something at sorcery speed and passing and just having to hope and pray that I get back to my turn with a board that looks the same. And one of the benefits, if you're disciplined and you're sticking to the two spells on your turn thing, is that as the game progresses, eventually you're going to have more mana than that, right? So you're looking at spending five mana on your turn. You just cast a two drop and a three drop or something like that. A four drop and a one drop, something. And then, so after you get to turn six or seven, you're going to have extra mana that you can spend on other people's turns. And you can use it to just hold up interaction too. I can just hold up Beast Within or, or Arcane Denial or something like that. And I tried to, because I'm themey, You know, make sure that even though there's not a real benefit to me playing cards that give people stuff In a lot of cases, but there are some benefits, but mostly I just want to Lean into that group hug aspect where I'm killing your thing, but I'm giving you, you know, a 3 3, right? Let's soften the blow. Yeah a little bit. Yeah, I'm only interacting with you If you're trying to damage my game plan, feel free to kill everyone else on the table, you know Right, and you can sort of Mrs. Bumbleflower's house. You can politick it too. Oh, you well you attacked me last turn So this time I'm not letting you draw the cards when I cast spells And yeah, you don't have to make deals and stuff. You just do it and people will be like, oh, okay Well, I did want to draw those cards Yeah, it really comes down if you're in a group of players that love drawing cards I think mrs. Bumbleflower is gonna go over smashingly and literally and figuratively just kill them because they can't resist They're that forbidden fruit of drawing those extra cards. Well, yeah I think at the beginning you do the thing where you're like I'm just gonna be really fair and I'm just gonna go around the table and let you guys draw cards You And in turn, right, until you give me a reason to do it differently. Yeah, everybody kind of leaves you alone and does their thing and then somebody gives you a reason to not let them draw cards or I let the person that's a little behind on land drops draw cards or something and make a friend Yeah, yeah, there you go get a little bit of and I would say make them into a slave so that they owe you Much later in the in the game, but friend is nice. I like that. This is bumbleflowers subtle more subtle than that She is she's I don't think i'm subtle enough to play her What would you say is The key for you in trying to switch the way you usually play EDH into a mode where you're playing group hug instead. Because it's a really particular style of deck that a lot of people poo poo as if it doesn't work at all, and I don't think that's necessarily true. Well, I do tend to try to politic and manipulate people a lot. That's very normal for my Play style ask anybody and they'll tell you he's manipulating you and they're right so I do that So that's normal and I can just lean into that a little bit But like I guess like i've played nekazar for years and it's kind of like a group hug deck in the sense that everybody gets To draw more cards for a price. Yeah. Yeah for a for a hefty price I think group slug is the way they describe nekazar, right? Okay. Yeah. Yeah, but you know I don't think it's really that different. I think you're just like, okay i'm gonna accept in my heart That you are going to benefit from me playing magic Uh, and I just want to set it up and build this deck in such a way that I'm going to benefit more than you do. And to a certain extent you have to think, well, I have, uh, I don't want to play arch enemy. I want to have three opponents. Sometimes I want some of them to be my allies. I don't want to be the one that everybody's after all the time. And you can kind of lean into that some and be like, I'm gonna make, I'm gonna focus more on building alliances. I'm gonna, I'm gonna be slow and careful. I'm not gonna try to run out the gate. And get ahead and make enemies. That's really important. You want to not encourage people to attack you or bother you. And then sort of pick your, your moments and be subtle. Like we were talking about before. Sure. Because you've got a couple of haymakers in the deck. I think the. When you pick that lane, you pick that moment to jump out. You're like, surprise! I'm ripping the rabbit mask off and there's actually a chittering monster inside or something, I don't know. Yeah, you're gonna do a lot of stuff like play things like you've, we've got Esper Sentinel, for example, on the list. A card that normally will put a little bit of a target on you. And the fact that you're giving other people cards and stuff kind of will be like, well look, it's not a big deal. Yeah, I'm drawing more cards, but if you don't pay for Esper Sentinel, then I'll let you draw more cards. And if you do pay for Esper Sentinel, well, that's kind of annoying to me. Yeah, any deck that plays, uh, plus one, plus one counters, I think should, if they can, play an Esper Sentinel. Because, given that thing more and more power, making it impossible for people to pay is great. Yeah, that's true for the new card too, Poliwog Prodigy, or Polipocket, as I call it. Polipocket, okay. Okay. Which is, is, it's a 1, 3 for, for 2. It has evolve. It's never going to evolve really in the stack. Because everything has a 1 or 2 power. But it says whenever an opponent casts a non creature spell with mana value less than Poliwog Prodigy's power, you draw a card. So it's a lot like Esper Sentinel. And you're doing the same thing. You can just put plus 1, plus 1 counters on it with your bunny triggers. And it gets to where they can't pay. Well, they can't pay anyway. It's not a paying thing. It will just always be under that threshold. Yeah. So this card, was it surprising to you that it seemed to work well? Yeah, I read the card and I was like, that seems pretty good. And I was like, well, I'll probably draw a few cards. But it's, it's easily as strong as something like Esfer Sentinel. It's just bananas good. You can put it in any kind of deck that's going to be able to grow it. Just by its evolve trigger or from counters or whatever. And it's going to sing. This, it's a remarkably good card. Yeah, I love when we hit those cards when we're like, oh, I'm not, I'm not sure I'm on the fence And then you see it play out and then all of a sudden you're like, okay sold for life I'll take yeah, I probably put it in because it was a cute little frog that cost two mana, right? Sure, and I was all this is it's easy to cast all my spells cantrip as long as I only cast two spells So, you know worst case scenario, it's a two drop that gets a card. Awesome Maybe it gets you guys evolve on it. So it pumps itself as well, which is important. I think so Yeah, very little in this deck because everything in here has like I think other than A handful of cards everything in this deck has one or two power. Okay. Yeah, so so that's not necessarily the main strategy But you might get some incidental if you throw out a fairy mastermind, I believe is a two one So you might evolve it once or something with that. Yeah. Yeah, then you sling out consecrated sphinx later and it evolves again When things have escalated to a certain point in the game, right? So tell me about this next one psychic possession two two blue and enchantment aura enchant opponent skip your draw step Whenever enchanted opponent draws a card, you may draw a card. Yeah. So the whole point of the deck is we're making other people draw cards, right? Every time we cast a spell, somebody that's not me has to draw a card. So you just pick somebody and say, well, I'm going to let you draw the cards from now on, and every time you draw a card, I'm going to draw a card and you don't have to worry about only casting two spells to turn anymore because you're going to draw the same amount of cards that they would. Plus, you know, the two extra that you get for your second card. And it's just like every, every spell just is just, you're drawing so many cards and it's just crazy and you're making goodwill with one person. Well, you're my buddy now. We're, we're gonna share all these card draws and they know that you're friends because you've given them this and you have to skip your draw step. But that's okay because you're gonna draw on their draw step. So in a way it's very similar for the newer players at the table. It's kind of similar to a wedding ring. If you've seen that play out, you just kind of pick another player and you're like, okay, we're friends now. Now I'm drawing every time you draw. Yeah. Except like with, with wedding ring, they get to draw when I'm on my turn, when I draw, and this is not, they will not draw when I draw. This is a one way street. Yeah, it's the one sided Wedding Ring. One card I saw, that I'm very familiar with, and of course I gravitate towards it because it's got such a cute little bunny, uh, alternate art, um, Yeah, the special, the little special guest, or whatever they're called, or imagine, imagine Critters cards, is what they're called. Oh, imagine Critter's Cards. Cause when I think Critter's, I think about a 1980s horror movie with little balls that have teeth. Um, but yes, I believe it's the one where the, it's like the mere Battlesphere version, but it's like hamsters. Right. Isn't that right? I actually kind of love that idea. That's a, that's a funny card for sure. So Tamiyo Field Researcher. One green, white, blue, legendary planeswalker, four starting loyalty, for a plus one you choose up to two target creatures until your next turn. Whenever either of those creatures deals combat damage, you may draw a card. Negative two, tap up the two target non lane permanents, they don't untap during their controller's next untap step. And then the ultimate, which is one of the best ultimates in magic, in my opinion. Draw three cards, you get an emblem with, you may cast spells from your hand without paying their mana cost. Omniscience. Plus, draw three, just in case you didn't have a hand, you know. That's always embarrassing when you resolve omniscience with an empty hand. Well, I'm top decking up land. Dang. So do you win? Nope. Nope. Nope. Not this time. But I love the versatility in this planeswalker. Planeswalkers and EDH are a little tough. Sometimes they get taken out pretty early, but even if you were to get taken out and you're desperation mode and you use the plus one to, you know, Hit two of their creatures that are marauding in you're at least going to draw two cards off of four mana So at worst it's just like a four draw two spell. Yeah, but You can hit your own creatures, too Yeah, which I I like the versatility of both, right? If you're the aggressor and you've got that furry mastermind out in a clear shot go for it but I found that playing Brawl, I'm often on the back foot, so it's kind of a skewed perspective. But I love using it in that way as well, like, yeah, I'm going to hit one of your creatures and one of mine. Do you want to block now? And then it lasts through the next turn, so if they come at you the next turn, you still get the benefit, even if they kill Tamiyo. Or in any way, right? In an EDH, it's even better because there's so many more targets. So the negative two is helpful sometimes. I can think of a particular few artifacts in the world that I don't love to see untapped. But the real treasure here is that negative seven. Have you had a chance to ultimate yet with Tamiyo? No, no, no. Nobody ever will let you do that. I usually tell people when I play, planeswalkers very much because I think that they just, they just get killed. And I just don't think they're very good in commander. And that's probably an unpopular opinion, I don't know. But this is honestly the only commander deck I have that has planeswalkers in it is this one. And I think you've chosen a good one because Tamiyo is one of my favorites. Yeah Yeah, I think she's pretty sweet and cute with the bunny look but like I know I think mostly I just want to do the the plus one thing a lot to draw cards and Probably off just attacking with my own thing so that I know that it's gonna happen that you know That it's gonna connect for sure. Yeah, and if I cast two spells on the turn Then I have two creatures that are going to have flying So they're definitely going to hit, there's definitely an open opening somewhere for our creatures to come in with flying and get, get there. That's a truism of EDH. People will never perhaps learn that flying is so powerful in this format. Yeah. It's no matter what you play in typically a pretty high powered casual crowd, even in those spaces, just get some, sometimes it's like you still want to hit people's life totals aggressively all the time. Like. Like, even with this deck, as soon as Miss Bumbleflower isn't summoning stick anymore, she's swinging, you know? So, I think that's a great thing for newer players who haven't played Group Hug to listen to. Just because you're playing Group Hug doesn't mean you have to not be aggressive, or you're just passive. Just punch people, folks. People expect you to hit them. Nobody's gonna be weird about it. Like, if you attack a little bit. As long as you don't just focus fire on one person. You can do that too, I guess, if you decide that it's time for that person to go. But I tend not to do that. Yeah, and that's always the calculation. Is this person a big enough threat that it really doesn't matter? Either way, like, I have to kill them or they're just gonna kill everyone. And then I think everybody's okay with it regardless. Voltron them out. Next card is Jolriel Mwanvuli Recluse. One and a green. One, two, human, druid. Whenever you draw your second card each turn, create a two, two, green, cat, creature token. And then for four and two green, until end of turn, creatures you control have base power and toughness XX, where X is the number of cards in your hand. In this deck, this card seems perfect. I try to put this card in a lot of decks because I love cats regardless, but in this deck in particular, it seems like both modes of this are going to go off constantly. Yeah, the cats are nice, but the uh, six mana to like, make your team gigantic is pretty nuts. Yeah, and I like this card in particular, that it goes off every turn. Because if you're mid game, late game, you're probably able to trigger drawing that second card several times the table goes around. Mm hmm. Yeah, if you're not drawing two cards a turn, then something has gone wrong. Very wrong. And Moonvalley Recluse isn't going to fix it for you. No, for sure. I just like the idea that I've got a game plan, but now I've got this card that passively generates value because I'm just enacting my game plan. It's not like I'm jumping through hoops to draw that second card on each player's turn when it goes around. This is just giving me cats, and so I have like three or four cats the next time I even untap. So, love that. Yeah, that's like the plan for the deck is we're just going to do what we're doing with it. And we're gonna have this engine that runs in the background and just like generates value as we go Yeah, because those are great because they don't call a lot of attention to themselves until it's too late often Right, and they're cute little cats. So that benefits the group hug strategy, too You always want to be as cute as possible so that people don't think that you're bad That's true. If you can get tokens that are of your own personal cat or maybe draw a cat token that you really can engage with it at the table, you're like, Oh, look at this beautiful little kitty I'm drawing. You have some hello kitty, which apparently is not a cat anymore. Um, I know. Very strange. I agree. It looks too much like a cat. I love to have personalized just for that 1 percent of politics that allows me to maybe get away with something when I shouldn't. That's why I named all of my zombie tokens. I'm like, why would you kill Tito? Tito the zombie didn't do anything to deserve this. I try to get people to love the tokens instead of just thinking of them as mindless masses. Give them a little individuality. Yeah, good old hat. Some characters got a scarf on. He used to be somebody in real life. Now you're gonna take that away from him a second time. Come on. Yeah. For listeners and watchers, we'll have two deck lists up. One is the deck as Josh originally had it whenever I was first asking if you wanted to do the show and talk about Group Hug. The other list may have some changes that we've talked about in the show as well as far as maybe cards to add, which is a section we'll get to next. But before that, we have to take some cards out. So here's a card that Josh doesn't really love, but he's probably going to keep it in regardless because it does. It's got themed to it. Tell us about this next one. There were, there were two tempting offer cards in the like stock list when you buy the pre con, right? There's tempt with discovery. Which is the old one where you get lands and tempt with bunnies, which is the new one where you get bunnies and it's two colorless and a white tempting offer. Draw a card and create a one, one rabbit. And then each opponent can draw a card and create a one, one rabbit. And for each point who does you draw a card and create a one, one rabbit. So if like you just cast it and no one takes the offer that you get one card and a rabbit token. And if one person takes the offer, then you ended up with two cards and two rabbit tokens. And so on, right? I think tempting offer cards are generally just not very good because People have learned their lesson after years with them in the format and nobody takes the offer. It's still three mana So you're going to be able to cast it pretty easily Uh, you're gonna be able to cast two spells a turn and it's going to probably cantrip by itself So you think of it as two cards and a rabbit So that's a little better for three mana. But generally I just don't think the tempting offer cards are good. I don't think this one's that good. But I think it's so cute and so Miss Bumbleflower that I can't not have it in the deck. It's just, it's just hilarious to me. It's just a lackluster version of a tempting offer card in the first place. There are certain ones that I think are good even if nobody chooses to go along with you on that mission. Um, for instance, our friend Mike who runs the Perfrose deck, like he runs the tempting offer that gives him a ton of tokens for basically x men or whatever. And he honestly doesn't care in that deck whether you take it up or not, but occasionally other players I mean that other player being me have made calculations to be like if I give him extra tokens Then it kills both of my opponents and maybe I can take him out on the following turn. Yeah, so Every once in a while the flexibility of those cards can be good But it needs to be good if nobody takes you up on it That's kind of my bar for any of these types of cards I don't want my game plan in the hands of somebody else Because if I'm on the other side of the table, I'm paying for the Rhystic Study, I'm paying for the Esper Sentinel if I can, and I'm not doing the Tempting Offer. I think that's like the responsible Magic player. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the way you're supposed to play Magic. Most people don't. A lot of people will never pay for your Rhystic Study, but there are a lot of irresponsible Rhystic Study receivers out in the world. Really are. Folks, don't do that. If you listen to Rule Zero Podcasts, always pay for the Rhystic Study. Try it out. I know that you can't see the cards that they're drawing, but they're good because they put them in the deck in the first place. That Rhystic Study is winning the game. It doesn't feel like it did, but it won the game every time that you didn't pay for it. Absolutely. So there were a couple cards I looked at in the original list you showed. And honestly, you're such a good deck builder in general. And in playing this game for so long, there weren't a lot of things that really stuck out to me. Um, but the land base seemed a little suspect. I don't love these Mirrodin lands, Seachrome and Razor Verge Thicket. The fast lands? Yeah, the fast lands. I guess that's the name for them. So, personally I would take those out and replace with maybe some MDFCs or even like, Surveillance, cause if they come into play tapped anyway, might as well get a little bit of extra value. At least that was my thought. What do you think about that? I agree, these lands suck. Why'd you put them in there? Was it just because I want to have a home for them? They're leftovers from the, the, the pre con list. Oh. I thought this one had a, like, fairly bad mana base. So I took out a lot of lands and replaced them with better lands. And these are the ones that were still there when I took out all the worse lands to replace with, right? So they should go, I mean, they could go with, they could be replaced with like an island and a forest and it would be fine, you know? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that gets you right to casting Mrs. Bumble, Flo on time. Sure. Or mean, why not, or, or now that they're rotating out of standard, I could replace'em with an Odo and a Bos. So the other thing that I saw in there that I took out, and this may have been part of the stock list, was Fir stone. Um. I love the dark version. If you've got the dark version, I say play it because it's style. Um, I do have a couple of the dark ones, but that's not in here. It is the like stock Felwar stone from the Precon. Just with Mrs. Bumbleflower being, you know, not a heavy mana requirement, which I would hate if my opponents were red and black players. And I'm just like, okay, well, I've got a two mana rock, but it doesn't really do what I need it to do. Yeah, I don't know. I don't play like many mana rocks in green decks in general. Which makes sense. Yeah, I'd rather play Nature's Lore and Three Visits and stuff like that. But, I mean, this is still two mana for something that comes into play untapped. You can access the turn you play it. It's it's in that range of like I can cast it in a cantrip softness fumble flower Um, and then the way decks are these days, I guess popular is like five color and four color decks are it's honest to god It's like almost always an arcane signet fair enough. Yeah, I guess I see that so so like every once in a while like if let's say let's just make up a statistic and say that 70 percent of the time it's an arcane signet Right. I think that's probably fair and and like 90 percent of the time. It's a talisman. Yeah, I don't know I'm gonna think about it from a listener's perspective. Just look at your play group count the number of decks You know your people you play against all the time Do they have five color decks or do they have a budget one and two color deck? I mean even budget decks like Wizards has put out like what four five five color decks like pre cons in the past like two Years. Oh, yeah, it's possible for sure I'm not gonna poopoo it too much, but I just And green decks in particular i'm like give me everything that is not an artifact because I don't want to have my stuff blown Up necessarily with just incidental artifact destruction Yeah, i'm like running all the good two and three mana ramp except for like rampant growth Which I guess I could put in I guess I could put in stuff like those little one mana green Enchantments that you put on your lands See, I really like wild growth, like, or something like that. Like, if it were, if it were me, there's, there's so many beastwithins and, and, uh, and things like that in the, in the format that, like, if my opponent had a wild growth on their land, I would definitely two for one that land. Give them an elephant. Whereas if you, if your, if your artifacts get hit, well, at least you only got hit once. Yeah, for one card. Fair enough. That's a lesson for folks too. If you do play Utopia, Sprawl, Wild Growth, that type of thing. Or Wolf, Willow, Haven, any of those. Put it on your basic land if you can. Because at least that mitigates a little bit of the chance that something with a Ghost Quarter can take out your double mana. Yeah, for God's sake, don't put it on your bounce land. Yeah, please don't. Don't give me that. Because Josh will destroy it right away. I wanted to destroy that bounce land anyway, so. I mean, I do run strip mine for a reason. If I see it on a basic, I'm going to take it out also, but. Yeah. So let's get on to combos or game enders in this deck. So, you've got a couple cards here that to me are hilarious ways to win the game. I can never fault anybody for winning with these. Triska Decafile is the first one. For one and a blue, creature, human, wizard, you have no maximum hand size. At the beginning of your upkeep if you have exactly 13 cards in your hand you win the game And then you can have as like a static effect pay three and a blue to draw a card at any point It is a one three. So any good luck with this one? So I actually actually won a game with this card So the one winning game. Yeah, it was off to the back. Yeah. Yeah, it was amazing. I've got like a bunch of stuff that gives you no maximum hand size like Reliquary Tower and Thought Vessel and stuff like that. And you're usually gonna have way more than seven cards. I don't think it's it's hard to believe that you would get up into the 20 card range, though I haven't done it, if you have people who are being undisciplined about your Sixth Study. Yeah, I don't think so at all. Like, we play against a guy, Carl, who runs a quain deck. It's a blue white kind of version of group hug, like this. Um, also another rabbit. All rabbits are tricksters. Down with the rabbits. Yeah, quain's in here. Yeah, quain is in the right place in this deck. But Carl often gets up to 15, 20 cards in a game. And just kind of hides out. And I'm sure he's got a Triskin deck of file in his deck as well. So another new one we've got. More on theme with sort of woodland creatures is the 20 toad toad three and a blue frog wizard three three The maximum hand size is 20 Whenever you attack with two or more creatures put a plus one plus one counter on 20 toad toad and draw a card And whenever ttt attacks you win the game if there are 20 or more counters on it And if you have 20 or more cards in hand or if you have 20 or more cards in hand Or if you have 20 more cards and so you can win a couple different ways Yeah, both seem doable. I think it's good to have stretch goals in your deck I'm gonna aim to win with this card this time. Yeah, and it's good because it's an attack tricker So it doesn't have to connect right perfect like you win you win on the attack step before damage So like it doesn't matter if they if they could block it or whatever right as soon as you say I declare this an attacker. Trigger goes on the stack. Win game. Right? Oh, love it. Love it. I don't think, I don't think it's like super likely, but there are going to be situations where plan A just fails. Right? Someone kills Ms. Bumbleflower eight times, and all your creatures get warped wide to whole bunch, and this is just where you're at. Yeah, I mean, I'll take it. I mean, I'd much rather have a card that says you win the game on it than a card that doesn't, because at least there's something there that I can chase after. So, cards that I thought, possible additions, tell me if you thought about them. Council of four, three, white and blue, whenever a player draws their second card during their turn, you draw a card. Whenever a player casts their second spell during their turn, you create a two, two white knight creature token. It's a zero eight. I did think about this card. I think that like everything that it does is cool stuff that we want to do. The thing that put me off of it was the five mana because odds are the turn that I cast it, I'm not going to cast a second spell. Maybe, maybe that's fine. Right? Maybe I can just go one turn of not casting a second spell and just play the council for, and then let it just accrue value for around. But I think if you go bumble flower into this. On the turn after I feel like they're going to focus on Council of Four, at least to try and get rid of it. But, if it does make it around the table and you get to save and protect it, I've just seen it go off so many games where it just accrues such insane value. And the other thing about it that kind of puts me off of it is that like, it has that sort of same, Wedding ring kind of clause where it matters when they draw the cards. It has to be on their turn, right? Sure. So it makes me, it incentivizes me to play more on their turn and right now the deck's just not really set up to prioritize that. Like it can do it, but it's mainly playing on their turn. We had another card in there, this Kodama of the West Tree, which I kind of like in any plus one plus one counter deck, just because it's got reach so it can stop a flyer, which nobody can stop flyers as we've already laid out, and it also gives you bonus lands, which is nice, but I like secret reach in particular, but instead of that Kodama, which I think is fine, it's a fine card. I actually play Kodama of the West Tree in my Kibo deck. For the trample, like to give all my big monkeys napes trample And I forgot that it had the other text about putting land cards into the battlefield It's just an incredible card on its own. I mean everything about this card is amazing Yes, i've seen it go off so many times in little bristly bill aggro decks and stuff where it's just okay Well, if I don't stop this now i'm Behind four turns by the time it gets back to me But one card that everybody should focus in on and i'm pretty excited about because it just straight up won me Uh seven games of draft it was innkeeper's talent one and a green It is a class enchantment from bloom burrow at the beginning of combat on your turn put a plus one plus one counter on a target Creature you control that's just its static ability happens every turn then for one green you can level it up Permanence you control counters now have ward one, which is really annoying for everybody else, but great for you You And then for three and a green level three if you would put one or more counters on a permanent or player But twice that many of each of those kinds of counters on that permanent or player it includes things like poison And it also would make 20 toad toad go off very quickly. I would think if you're putting double the counters on it Yeah, I mean every time I cast a spell i'm putting a counter on something So, I mean that's a lot putting two counters on it. It's Significantly better twice as good even twice as good It'll make tamio ultimate the turn she comes into play because I think it also acts as a doubling season effect Probably looks doubling seasony. Yeah, I think so This card seems to me like it's a shoe in for the deck Not only is it bloomboro and and cheap because it comes out very cheap and you just kind of chip in extra as you can The first two effects are great on their own counters and then ward one on all my creatures. Sure. I'll take that It's surprising how discouraging ward one is. Yeah, I talked about this in the last episode actually But I have a view that magic players are lazy And so if we're imagining three yards across the table from us and one of those yards has a fence that is one and a half Feet tall easily clearable The magic player will not go after that person. They will go to the two yards that have no hurdle whatsoever. I think that's why people don't play in the heuristic study. They don't pay for these other tax effects. If somebody has got a ghostly prison or a baleful Strix, they just won't attack that person at all. I think it's just because they're just looking for the low hanging fruit. Yeah. I think with, with Ward too, there's plenty of threats. I've got stuff that's scary, you know, so and so has got stuff that's scary. And if you've got a removal spell, that's a burn in a hole in your pocket, then you're like, well. I don't want to pay the one extra. That stuff over there is just as scary. I'll just kill that. Absolutely. And so I don't want to rub listeners the wrong way. I don't want to be too down on you for doing that. If there's another threat, that's equal value. Take that one out for sure. My personal play style though, is, and if you'll see this, if you ever play against me, listeners. Is if you have a ghostly prison effect, I'm only attacking you even if it's damning to me I take it as more of a challenge. You're a special kind of magic player that not everybody's like you. Thank god. Oh, I'm 99 percent of magic players are not like me thankfully because if I played against me, I would hate it I was kind of down on these classes Initially, there were two that came in the pre con It took them both out because I was like, well, I don't want to spend my mana You leveling stuff up, I want to cast two spells every turn, right? But there is going to come a time later in the game when I am going to have extra mana, because I only want to cast two spells in a turn, right? And I'll have more mana left over, and that's something to spend it on. Plus, like, even this one, if I just use the first level, like, leveled up to level two to give the ward one to all the things with counters, that's worth the mana right there. Yeah, I mean even, you're running a couple other things we didn't talk about in the deck. One of which I'm sure terrifies people, Nadu, when it comes out. But, you can trigger Nadu with that. You've got an Ozolith in the deck, so any plus one, plus one counters, you don't really lose them. If the creature goes away for some reason, you can put those right back on something else. So, you've got Rishkar, which can allow, you know, your creatures to tap for mana if they have plus one, plus one counters. So that's nice, it's a benefit. So yeah, there's just so many synergies in here. That, and it's so cheap to play it. I think that's the thing that makes this class better than some others is that some of the classes are requiring boo koo mana and it's just ridiculous, but this is three for an excellent pair of effects. Yeah, I mean the deck really is trying to do two categories of cards, right? Things that benefit from counters and things that benefit from my opponents playing the game and some things like Polly Pocket or Naudu Are cards that sit in both spots, you know fair enough Well, i'll leave you to the hard work of trying to figure out what to take out to put another thing in It's never an easy task for a commander player, but I think that one would pay off for sure Well, it's not going to be it's not going to be tempted with bunnies. I'll tell you that that one's staying in no matter what Yeah That's your version of attacking into the ghostly prison player. Yeah, that's what that's the next pet card Every deck has to have a pet card. You can't just be a machine What are we animals Well, I guess in this case, yes. So as we kind of head out, do you have any last advice for folks that want to take on the most popular commander in EDH rec right now? I think that the advice is to lean into the idea that you're enabling your opponents to do more stuff, right? Because you're giving them resources. So they're going to cast more spells. They're going to take more game actions. So build in your decks with cards that will benefit from your opponents, casting more spells and doing more game actions. Yeah. And in a lot of ways I see this as almost playing out like a, a fun version of Descent into Avernus, which I also enjoy playing with. But a lot of people don't, but it definitely speeds up the velocity of the game. So everybody's going to be doing a ton more stuff when they've got a group hug deck, I think, at the table. It's just you finding your lane to take them into a back alley. Yeah. And you, you have to be prepared to deal with that too. If you've got somebody that's playing a combo deck, you're going to be enabling them to find their combo faster. So you need to run counter spells and stuff to be able to stop it as you gas them up You don't want to just let them win, right? Sure. Yeah, so if you know that combo player at the table Kind of subtly point out to every other player about how they're trying to end all the fun, and so They can now play in a 3v1 match as they try to get their combo off. Yeah, and we've got Glendalindra Archmage in the deck, which is just so funny because she gets negative one counters Then I can just fix that and bring her back to full health with the plus one plus one counter whenever I cast a spell Yeah, that's an absolute amazing trick to play. For folks that don't know, negative one counters just kind of disappear as you put a plus one, plus one counter on them, and then things would persist. Yeah, just come back. Totally clean slate. And you can use them constantly. It's such a good trick to play on people. I do definitely love that pick. Yeah, so that's the thing. Just have lots of interaction handy and be ready for For people to try to win and try to keep them from doing that. I mean, that's normal. That's normal. Good commander advice, but it's especially important when you're giving them gas. Yeah. So it's kind of a dangerous game. Would you say that a beginner player could play this deck pretty well, or do you need to be a more veteran player to take something like group hug on? I think group hug is like one of the hardest decks to run effectively. Like when I first started getting into commander 2012, 2013, I built a Feldergraf deck. And it didn't really have, it's kind of just like joke meme deck that just did stuff and it was kind of king makey and it was a fun police deck and it never won a game of magic. And frankly, it wasn't fun to play with or against. Thanks so much, Josh, for joining us. Thank you all so much for tuning in this week. Next week, the show will be off for one week due to me being on vacation. But if you're subscribed to us on YouTube, I'll be releasing two different box openings as I hunt for a Surveillance Treasure Trove in the old Murders at Markov Karlov Manor? Murders at Karlov Manor. Yeah. Because I absolutely love Surveillance. I talk about it in depth in those videos and maybe too much so because when I get fixated on a thing, I just kind of don't stop. But until then, fair listeners, if you have thoughts on this deck or others, or maybe you want to submit one of your own, find us on Twitter at rule zero podcast or email us at rule zero podcast at gmail. com like subscribe, share, and remember in magic, there's no problem that a rule zero conversation cannot solve.