The Set-Commander project: DMU edition

[DirkGently]

So last set, I decided to try building a deck exclusively from cards from the current set in order to match the power of my playgroup. I ended up on my Falco Spara, Pactweaver deck, which ended up being a good challenge to win with, and also reasonably fun and easy to build since I didn't need to comb through boxes and boxes of old cards, and I got to try lots of new cards.

So I think I'll keep it going for the new set, DMU. There's a ton of options to choose from, but fewer that might seem evident. Most of the 2-color options don't leave a lot of extra cards. Most give you 82 legal nonland cards, meaning you only get to cut ~22 cards out of all the draft chaff within your colors. Also difficult to find synergy, something like Tura Kennerüd, Skyknight only has a maximum of 16+1 triggers per game. King Darien XLVIII, Nemata, Primeval Warden...maaaybe Najal, the Storm Runner in a pinch, that's about the only options in 2c. Mono-color is straight out, obviously.

So we're mostly looking at 3+ color. There are 5 options at 3c - Zur, Eternal Schemer, Sol'Kanar the Tainted, Soul of Windgrace, Rith, Liberated Primeval, and Shanna, Purifying Blade.

Zur seems too low on synergy. There aren't that many enchantments, most of them are sagas which are very temporary getting 1 attack at most, and the remainder are almost all o-ring effects which I wouldn't usually want to risk in combat. There is Vesuvan Duplimancy which could be pretty sick, but that's only one card.

Sol'kanar is just awful. There are a few ways to bounce him or sac him, but only Golden Argosy can blink him. More pressing, though, even if he didn't have his downside, he'd still be unexciting. None of his eot abilities are all that great. I guess draw a card is fine, but you can certainly do better. So even if you enable him, he's not great.

Shanna, Purifying Blade activates itself, so it doesn't need support, though there is some. There aren't a lot of ways to pump her up, though, let alone protect her. I don't think the deck would focus entirely around her, mostly use her as a value piece when things line up right, but otherwise mostly play goodstuff.

Rith, Liberated Primeval - there aren't a ton of ways to force the trigger, however he is also just a big flyer and you can always bait chump blocks with whatever you have around. Combat tricks can make any block against you dangerous. It's obviously not high-powered but it seems decent.

Soul of Windgrace provides a lot of potential value on his own. He basically lets you cycle your lands while still "playing" them, or just get lots of free ramp from your opponents fetches or whatever. He's also hard to kill. That said, beyond being a strong card on his own, I'm not sure there's much synergy to be had. Even if you self-mill your entire deck, you're only getting back 1 land per turn, so that's pretty capped out, and there's no LFTL to let you reuse your lands with his discard abilities. So like Shanna, it seems likely to be fairly goodstuffy.

And of course there's Jodah, the Unifier. Definitely the right set for him in terms of legends. You could run 48 legends in the 99. Which is probably the entire nonland part of the deck, since you've gotta contend with a very shaky manabase. Sure, there are a lot of fixing lands, but most of them only fix for 2 colors. Definitely not the sort of commander I go in for, but the fact that the deck pretty much builds itself is nice. A whole lot of the legends don't really do anything except provide bodies, though. Feels like you're mostly just building an army of meat and hoping it wins, which is pretty yawn.

Right now I'm kinda leaning towards either Windgrace or Rith, but I could see building Shanna or Jodah. Anyone have thoughts before I start trying to put something together?

[duducrash]

There is so much product out I get lost on ocasion, but the mardu that rewards you for playing legends could be a good option, no?

[DirkGently]

@duducrash I should probably have mentioned, this is strictly within the main set, not the associated commander product. For the commander and the 99.

Haven't decided if the jumpstart cards count. They have the same set symbol as the main set and follow the numbering scheme, but they aren't available in draft boosters and the numbers go above the normal set. I'll probably chuck them in if I decide the deck wants a smidge more power.

I should also probably add that I only have about 85% of the cards in the set currently. Working on acquiring the rest. Of course most of the cards I still need are spicy rares, I've got almost all the commons/uncommons.