Sakashima and Ilk

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Cyberium
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Post by Cyberium » 3 years ago

Sakashima of a Thousand Faces/Sakashima the Impostor/Spark Double

How frequently do people put these in their decks, just to have extra commanders? Aside from obvious combos with Vial Smasher the Fierce and such, of course.

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Ruiner
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Post by Ruiner » 3 years ago

It is generally worth considering if your commander(s) have any static abilities, triggered abilities, or activated abilities that are usually a once per turn deal (requiring you to tap).

If you have planeswalker commander(s) and are in blue, Spark Double is pretty great. I don't have any deck like this currently but it seems like a good idea.

Sakashima of a Thousand Faces as a commander partnered with another commander that gets huge could threaten a commander damage win faster (since you can split your attacks against separate people). I haven't seen this personally but it could work in theory.

I run Sakashima of a Thousand Faces partnered with Halana, Kessig Ranger as a way to always have a guaranteed clone effect for my creatures in my command zone, which has been fun.

I also have a Sakashima the Impostor commander deck that is based on clones, which is a lot of fun. I get to use some random clone in my deck to copy someone else's commander and have Sakashima as a second copy, which has made for some neat games.

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Dunharrow
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Post by Dunharrow » 3 years ago

They are so powerful. You can also add Helm of the Host to this list. I have a lot of decks that would improve by running these. I especially think that Reyhan, Last of the Abzan + Sakashima of a Thousand Faces would be a great deck. I don't want to cut white in my Reyhan deck but could definitely see how Sakashima would be a huge improvement in the command zone over Ishai, Ojutai Dragonspeaker.
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pokken
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Post by pokken » 3 years ago

It really depends on the deck. The only time I had huge success with it was spark double in amimatou.

I don't love them because of how they encourage you tomover extend but they can be really good

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Sinis
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Post by Sinis » 3 years ago

I think they're pretty wild. Obviously, having copies of some commanders can result in "1+1=3" scenarios, like Kodama of the East Tree, or Silumgar, the Drifting Death.

That said, I think there are only a few situations where having two copies is really exciting, and most of the time it's pretty boring.

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ISBPathfinder
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Post by ISBPathfinder » 3 years ago

I think in a lot of cases it takes a lot of time to set up and there is the question of what kind of return you get for it paired with the threat assessment it puts on you for having done it. If you get tons of immediate value it might be worth it but in a lot of cases I find its kind of slow and clunky to set up and it has a lot of vulnerability to spot removal responses.
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pokken
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Post by pokken » 3 years ago

ISBPathfinder wrote:
3 years ago
paired with the threat assessment it puts on you for having done it
I have found basically 90% of the time someone sticks two commanders there is a wrath immediately after :P

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ISBPathfinder
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Post by ISBPathfinder » 3 years ago

pokken wrote:
3 years ago
ISBPathfinder wrote:
3 years ago
paired with the threat assessment it puts on you for having done it
I have found basically 90% of the time someone sticks two commanders there is a wrath immediately after :P
Yea that is sort of where I was too. So the question is...... how fast do you get your value out of it because the perceived threat is like you just resolved a Seedborn Muse level of SMASH THAT %$#%.

I have essentially moved to just not bothering with trying it. Maybe if my commander was a god (aka indestructible) I might do it but I just find its a lot more setup and the threat perception of the play is incredibly high.
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JWK
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Post by JWK » 3 years ago

It depends. I have found using Spark Double in Animar, to create a second Animar, is usually pretty good,. That card, Sakashima, etc. are, unsurprisingly, pretty good in lots of U and Simic decks (Koma, Aesi) and alongside things like Kodama of the East Tree . There's a reason Sakashima has become one of the pricier cards from Commander Legends. .
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ISBPathfinder
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Post by ISBPathfinder » 3 years ago

JWK wrote:
3 years ago
It depends. I have found using Spark Double in Animar, to create a second Animar, is usually pretty good,. That card, Sakashima, etc. are, unsurprisingly, pretty good in lots of U and Simic decks (Koma, Aesi) and alongside things like Kodama of the East Tree . There's a reason Sakashima has become one of the pricier cards from Commander Legends. .
Honestly I don't think that price tag for commander cards reflects usefulness at all. There are a lot of expensive Timmy cards that are really really terrible but due to casual player interest they retain high price tags. I am not saying that its a bad card or that it shouldn't have a decent price tag, but I do think that the card is a little bit of an over extension trap with many commanders requiring several turns to recoup the mana and card investment.

With most things there is a question of what is the risk, what is the reward, and how fast / well am I rewarded for doing it? The faster you can justify recouping the cost of doing something like this the better but its going to draw a lot of attention and the more cheap and fast interaction you see in your meta the worse it will be.
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