Decklist
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I know there's a lot of ill will towards the D&D sets, but I love them. First of all, I AM the demographic this set was targeting, as I play both MTG and D&D, I realize I'm falling hard for the nostalgia bait but I don't care, I like it anyways. Secondly, I think D&D and MTG crossovers work a lot better than many of the other IPs because they have a very similar aesthetic (High fantasy). Thirdly I actually think that a lot of really cool cards and mechanics were printed in these sets (except Prosper, Tome-Bound, they can't all be winners).
One mechanic that I really like in concept is the venture/initiative mechanic but I havn't actually done much with the mechanic, I tried Dungeon Descent a couple times but it's WAY too expensive for the effect (just look what they did to it in Alchemy, lol). I also use Immovable Rod in a couple decks, but the venture bit is more of a bonus than a core feature of the card.
So I'm going to try to brew a deck around the dungeons.
Let's start by looking at all the commanders that interact with the venture/initiative mechanic:
Potential commanders
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Acererak the Archlich is kinda neat, if very linnear.
Barrowin of Clan Undurr has a great ability once you complete a dongeon, but you'll have to use other cards to get there (complete a dungeon isn't that bad of a minigame so maybe)
Hama Pashar, Ruin Seeker seems like the obvious "venture into the dungeon over and over again for fun and profit" commander, but the number of venture cards out there are pretty small and she doesn't actually get you venturing so idk.
Nadaar, Selfless Paladin I actually kind of like, white doesn't have card draw and Nadaar is card draw in the CZ, he's also cheap and fairly easy to venture with. I'm reluctant to run him simply because he's mono-white, but when I finally decide to try a mono white deck, I might come back to Nadaar.
Sefris of the Hidden Ways is pretty cool, to be honest I think @DirkGently took this commander in a really neat direction and I feel like anything I come up with will be lame in comparison XD (leave some good ideas for the rest of us Dirk).
Varis, Silverymoon Ranger probably the second least interesting, sure it's reliable but "just cast creatures" I'm not finding particularly compelling at the moment.
Zalto, Fire Giant Duke the fact that he only has three toughness when he screams "deal damage to me" is kinda weak sauce. I feel there surely must be better enrage commanders out there.
Imoen, Mystic Trickster Choose a background means I can get Dungeon Delver which is kind of huge because it's really the only dungeon synergy card out there, lots of ways to venture and a couple rewards for clearing a dungeon, but Dungeon Delver actually makes venturing better. She also gives you a pretty big boost when you do have the initiative. Unfortunately, she can't get you the initiative in the first place. The nice thing about the initiative is you only need to get it once, but it might be tricky getting it in the first place.
Rasaad yn Bashir is easily the most boring of the dungeon commanders, it's just a mono white Arcades, the Strategist/Doran, the Siege Tower.
Rilsa Rael, Kingpin, Nothing fancy, but she gets the job done. She gives you the initiative and her 2/5 death touch stats should help you keep it.
Safana, Calimport Cutthroat the other card that lets you have a background, her ability is way Weaker than Imoen, Mystic Trickster, but you add black, doubling your options for getting the initiative in the first place and giving you access to much better tutors.
I really like the idea of having Dungeon Delver So I'm leaning towards Imoen, Mystic Trickster or Safana, Calimport Cutthroat. Imoen, Mystic Trickster is clearly more powerful but you're mono colored, and it's essential to run enough initiative cards to get the initiative consistently. Let me check how many initiative cards we have in mono blue:
... Six, only six. That's not enough to expect to draw into it (not to mention one of them has a mana value of 5 and one is 6 which is a bit too high for my liking) and unfortunately, none of them are instants or sorceries (blue has a lot of good spell tutors), we've got Bar the Gate but we really need to get the initiative so we can venture in the dungeon once each turn, Bar the Gate is a one and done card. We only have access to creatures and artifacts that can give us the initiative. Blue doesn't have any creature tutors, so we are looking at artifacts. The best one is probably Sarevok's Tome, it's a Hedron Archive, that can also give you some value when you've completed a dungeon. Now let's see what we can use to tutor for it:
Technically 12, but some of these are really bad (Skyship Weatherlight, Tezzeret, Artifice Master, and Planar Portal) and a LOT of artifact tutors involve sacrificing another artifact (Arcum Dagsson, Kuldotha Forgemaster, Reshape and Transmute Artifact) which is ANOTHER hoop you have to jump through. I don't know, there might be a deck here, but I'm not really feeling it.
Okay, fine, making treasures with Safana, Calimport Cutthroat is not nearly as exciting as drawing cards, but maybe i can do something more exciting with the treasures than just adding mana, things like Urza, Lord High Artificer. Let me see what other treasure synergies I can find:
Oh... I think I found it: Clock of Omens, Once we complete a dungeon we can use all the treasures to untap Sarevok's Tome and spam its second ability.
Alright, so the game plan is to tutor up Sarevok's Tome, speedrun the dungeon, than spin Sarevok's tome over and over again, tutoring up clock of Omens ASAP. we're probably just making a bad Urza, Lord High Artificer or Golos, Tireless Pilgrim deck at this point but oh well.
The last thing to consider before I start building is how to keep the initiative, we can either try to defend the initiative or we can try to steal it back. Defending it will be significantly more difficult, as "hit oponents with creatures" is something MOST decks are pretty good at, and if stopping that was easy, pillowfort decks would be a lot stronger. Stealing the Initiative back in these colors is actually pretty trivial (Hello Invisible Stalker and friends), but flipping up Gingerbrute when we take Sarevok's Tome for a spin is gonna feel bad every time. I think the right call is to plan on stealing the initiative back but maybe also running Propaganda.
As I final note, I'm committing a huge flavor fail by building a deck around Sarevok's Tome and not making the commander Sarevok, Deathbringer but oh well.
