Gale, Waterdeep Prodigy - early brainstorming

[DirkGently]

Gale, Waterdeep Prodigy is probably the coolest background commander. Actually I take it back - he's easily the coolest background commander. He's not exactly the most synergistic with any of the backgrounds though.

The coolest thing about him imo is his ability to cast sorceries from the grave with functional flash. However this requires an instant to burn, so you're motivated to run cheap, flexible instants like cantrips. Casting an instant when you cast a sorcery is…okay…but trickier since it will lose value it normally has by being instant speed. Counterspells in particular are pretty bad, but it works great with Forks, and some counterspells are modal which makes them decent. Probably don't want too many anyway since they're time-restricted, if you want to cast a sorcery at a particular time I.e. combat.

As far as sorceries, board wipes get a big boost. Day's Undoing is funny…oh wait no, they thought of that. Dumb. I guess ramp is decent? Other suggestions on good sorceries would be appreciated. Except time magic.

Backgrounds and colors are the elephant in the room. Scion of Halaster is probably the only truly synergistic option, and black is decent. Red's best choice is probably boring old Tavern Brawler, or maybe Guild Artisan, though burn with Dragon Cultist is a cute idea too. Green doesn't have great options…I guess Raised by Giants for voltron? There are some token-focused options though I don't think gale is a strong choice for tokens overall. Noble Heritage is a solid political card that makes him a voltron option as well, and white has nice wipes ofc.

Too many options! Thoughts?

[TheGildedGoose]

Too many options! Thoughts?

Scion of Halaster for Dimir Control or Passionate Archaeologist for Reality Scramble into Thousand-Year Storm.

I'd go with Scion because combo is *fart noise*. Just stay away from Time Walks.

Also, I don't think casting instants off of sorceries is as bad as you think. Yeah, it's definitely the weaker of the two options, but turning Toxic Deluge into Toxic Consider ain't so bad. If you do a public decklist I'd be down to contribute.

EDIT: Off the top of my head, black brings at sorcery speed:

Tutors
Board wipes
Some good spot removal
Pinpoint discard (less good with countermagic, but still)

I think white would be a better color combination overall, but Scion is such a strong background with Gale that it's hard to ignore.

Is this a Rise from the Tides deck?

EDIT #2: No small rocks, but I'm curious to try Thran Dynamo/Gilded Lotus and the other big rocks here. I have a feeling this deck will, eventually, be mana hungry, and those midsize ramp cards put you far ahead while being slim on deck slots.

EDIT #3: Brief list of sorcery speed spot removal:
.
Ashes to Ashes
Wicked Pact
Feed the Swarm
Soul Transfer (meh)

Into the Roil and Blink of an Eye seem extra good here,as do cheap bounce spells in general. They're incredibly versatile and, as you cast a board wipe, you can bounce Gale so you don't have to pay the tax.

Ideal sequencing is t1 cantrip, t2 Scion, t3 Gale, t4 whatever. From there we try to hold up counter magic and sculpt our hand/graveyard, as you do with control. I think we play all the 1mv cantrips, for obvious reasons.

Hmm. Time to fire up Archidekt.

EDIT #4: Oh, so, what I learned from playing another background commander is that protecting your creature commander is paramount. Obviously, this is easier in blue because counter magic, but Slip Out the Back and possibly Reality Ripple could be worthwhile. It's best to let your opponents wipe the board for you while you protect your boy.

41 lands is probably where we want to be. This gets us 5 land drops in a row on average, and combined with a plethora of cheap cantrips will likely get us to 6 drops no problem. I would think this makes our top end 6mv spells, and emphasize 3-5mv spells.

[darrenhabib]

There seems to be a large amount of directions to go.

Black is probably the most powerful. Demonic Tutor can search for Vampiric Tutor, which when cast means you can cast Demonic Tutor assembling a Thassa Oracle+Demonic Consultation combo (or whatever).
With mana probably being one of the bigger bottlenecks of casting many spells in a turn, Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual are perfect.

On that note Red is great because of Rite of Flame, Desperate Ritual, Pyretic Ritual.
Gamble is extra good because going to graveyard is fine if instant or sorcery.

As you mentioned counterspells are not the best as it's hard to get secondary value out of them, but you are unlikely not to play them in a Blue deck and they are still instant enablers to cast sorcery.
Najal, the Storm Runner, Teferi, Time Raveler, Alchemist's Refuge, Vedalken Orrery are ways to get value.

I think the way it works with Buyback is that they will go back to hand because they are not going to graveyard (and therefore exile). So in theory you can loop spells to get constant value.
Buying back say Slaughter means that you always have an instant to cast as an additional enabler. And if it ever goes to graveyard then you can buyback when you cast it from graveyard to go back to hand.

Krark, the Thumbless on a similar note is super interesting and powerful because you can keep casting a spell to enable trigger (if goes back to hand) and then if you cast from graveyard and lose the flip then it goes back to hand rather than exile. It's obviously random what happens, but you can get really nice value loops going.

If I was to go into White then Far Traveler and using lots of "exile return to battlefield" instants could be a direction. So there are 12 instants at 2 mana and under that do this (Ephemerate, etc).
Spellseeker and Kaho, Minamo Historian would be great targets. Kaho, Minamo Historian wouldn't trigger Gale, Waterdeep Prodigy but is a good way to keep getting instants to graveyard for further value.
Pull from Eternity is cool as it allows you to cast spells from exile potentially a couple of additional times.

[TheGildedGoose]

Here's a quick decklist for Scion of Halaster/Gale, Waterdeep Prodigy I was thinking of while making some curry. Sorry if I'm hijacking your thread, but...

Scion Gale

DecklistCMCManaPricesChartsDraw 7

Land

1 Academy Ruins

1 Bloodstained Mire

1 Bojuka Bog

1 Clearwater Pathway

1 Command Tower

1 Contaminated Aquifer

1 Drowned Catacomb

1 Fetid Pools

1 Flooded Strand

1 Ice Tunnel

13 Island

1 Marsh Flats

1 Misty Rainforest

1 Morphic Pool

1 Otawara, Soaring City

1 Polluted Delta

1 Scalding Tarn

1 Sea Gate Restoration

1 Shipwreck Marsh

1 Sunken Hollow

1 Sunken Ruins

4 Swamp

1 Underground River

1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

1 Verdant Catacombs

1 Watery Grave

Big Ramp: 5

1 Gilded Lotus

1 Skyclave Relic

1 Sol Ring

1 Thran Dynamo

1 Worn Powerstone

Cantrip: 9

1 Brainstorm

1 Careful Study

1 Consider

1 Gitaxian Probe

1 Opt

1 Ponder

1 Preordain

1 Serum Visions

1 Sleight of Hand

Other Draw: 6

1 Impulse

1 Night's Whisper

1 Ransack the Lab

1 See the Truth

1 Sign in Blood

1 Strategic Planning

Tutor: 5

1 Demonic Tutor

1 Imperial Seal

1 Mystical Tutor

1 Solve the Equation

1 Vampiric Tutor

Countermagic: 12

1 An Offer You Can't Refuse

1 Bane's Contingency

1 Counterspell

1 Cryptic Command

1 Disallow

1 Fierce Guardianship

1 Forbid

1 Force of Negation

1 Mana Drain

1 Negate

1 Swan Song

1 Wizard's Retort

Spot Removal: 11

1 Ashes to Ashes

1 Baleful Mastery

1 Blink of an Eye

1 Capsize

1 Deadly Rollick

1 Feed the Swarm

1 Heartless Act

1 Infernal Grasp

1 Into the Roil

1 Maze of Ith

1 Wicked Pact

Board Wipe: 6

1 Consuming Tide

1 Cyclonic Rift

1 Damnation

1 Evacuation

1 Oblivion Stone

1 Toxic Deluge

Win Condition: 3

1 Metallurgic Summonings

1 Rise from the Tides

1 Shark Typhoon

Approximate Total Cost:

Looking at it now, it probably needs more win conditions and less spot removal.

[DirkGently]

@darrenhabib lol you dare to suggest consult oracle in one of MY decklists? Hard no on that one.

While casting sorceries with flash to enable casting counterspells from the grave is an option, I tend to prefer having fewer setup pieces to make things work. So I'd rather have more modal counterspells like Mystic Confluence, Cryptic Command, Archmage's Charm, Decisive Denial, Drown in the Loch, Insidious Will, Izzet Charm, Silumgar's Command, Soul Manipulation, Disrupt, Sublime Epiphany, Supreme Will, Thassa's Intervention, Tibalt's Trickery, or You Find the Villains' Lair. Then I don't need to worry about finding extra pieces to make use of them. That does probably mean somewhat clunkier counterspells than are otherwise available, but it means fewer moving parts. Considering our commander already sorta gives sorceries flash, and that's a big part of why we're using him, it seems like a real waste to use more slots to accomplish it more thoroughly.

Far traveler is an interesting background but seems hard to synergize. Even getting him safely tapped isn't necessarily easy. And anything you're blinking probably isn't directly an instant/sorcery. Noble Heritage isn't super synergistic, but it also doesn't ask anything from us to be effective, so that's an easy pick to go white imo, unless you wanted to go the token route.

Rituals are good but idk that they're, like, AMAZING. I guess they might be if you were trying to go storm (which I'm not interested in personally). When casting a small number of spells they seem a little clunky since you can't use the ritual to pay for the sorcery you're casting from the graveyard. So you're casting one pair of spells to then enable casting a second set of spells. Not useless but kind of niche I think.

Buyback has occurred to me as a way to get some interesting value. Could even change the instant/sorcery balance to instead focus mostly on using a few strong buyback spells as the graveyard triggers. Only issue is that I think they're all kinda pricey, so you really need a lot of mana before that becomes a great option.

Krark is definitely strong with this commander if we're in red. I do want to keep the total number of permanents pretty low, though, so spots are likely tight.

@TheGildedGoose Why Passionate Archaeologist over Guild Artisan? I don't get why passionate archaeologist is as popular as it is tbh, seems kinda jank.

Big selling point for scion of halaster I didn't notice is that it works every turn, not just yours. So any instant-speed draw is a lot better. 1 mana cantrips are great. So that really does make scion the easy synergy pick unless I just really want a different color.

Don't like Rise from the Tides. I wanna keep my graveyard pretty small tbh, just switching between instants and sorceries to keep using up the value in my graveyard, rather than amassing a bunch of potential grave value.

Tricky thing about board wipes is that we kinda get the option to either protect gale, or wipe at instant speed, but not really both. If we cast an instant to trigger casting the board wipe, the wipe will resolve first. So any bounce spell will be too late to save Gale. If we cast the wipe to trigger casting the bounce/phasing (instant) in our grave, then we can protect gale nicely, but we're doing it as a sorcery, bleh. I guess having either option is nice, but I think I'd probably just prefer to have the instant-speed hair trigger more than saving mana on Gale.

Looking at it now, it probably needs more win conditions and less spot removal.

Now there's a sentence I've never said in my life

[TheGildedGoose]

@TheGildedGoose Why Passionate Archaeologist over Guild Artisan? I don't get why passionate archaeologist is as popular as it is tbh, seems kinda jank.

Dramatic Scepter. I said what I said about combo.

Tricky thing about board wipes is that we kinda get the option to either protect gale, or wipe at instant speed, but not really both. If we cast an instant to trigger casting the board wipe, the wipe will resolve first. So any bounce spell will be too late to save Gale. If we cast the wipe to trigger casting the bounce/phasing (instant) in our grave, then we can protect gale nicely, but we're doing it as a sorcery, bleh. I guess having either option is nice, but I think I'd probably just prefer to have the instant-speed hair trigger more than saving mana on Gale.

Well, wiping at instant speed is very nice, of course, but having the ability to do so publicly is sort of okay as a rattlesnake. Some players will wisely figure out that you should probably attack the person with the instant speed wipes, but the average EDH player ain't so good.

As far as bounce spells go, the idea is to take advantage of Damnation → Into the Roil on your turn. Roil/Blink are already eminently playable. This just makes them even better and a fantastic way to get value out of the Sorcery → Instant trigger. That's all.

Now there's a sentence I've never said in my life

I know, right? The biggest weakness of the deck is that it doesn't really have a win con in the command zone. Outside of combo, getting there can be very difficult.

Honestly, Scion might be a little passé. It's the most played combo with Gale for obvious reasons. Why don't we do something spicier? That list I threw together practically built itself. I think I have a Noble Gale list somewhere around here, but when the optimal play is to not personally use your +1/+1 counters for political reasons, something is wrong.

Folk Hero human wizard "tribal" featuring a select few humans and/or wizards as a way to draw additional cards in a pinch? Stuff that complements the game plan of slinging spells like Archaeomancer and Augur of Bolas as well as a few utility creatures like Reflector Mage and Tribute Mage (grabbing Boots or something, I don't know). Even if it only draws two cards, that's all you can really ask for from a 2mv white card. Plus, it's not particularly threatening and is unlikely to eat a Disenchant, curves into Gale, and is hilarious; the idea of a farmer becoming a wizard is great.

[DirkGently]

@TheGildedGoose I can't really figure out wtf is up with EDHrec's counting. Scion Gale is listed as 561 lists on the CLB page. Then you click on it, and bam, now it's 207. Nearly all of them behave in the same way. Same miscount looking at the Gale background page (that shows the popularity of each background). All of them are wrong, to the extent that some are in the wrong order entirely. Somebody sucks at databases I guess. The whole implementation of partners and backgrounds on EDHrec is....not amazing. But every comment I've sent to them about anything has been seemingly screaming into the void, so I guess we just have what we have.

Anyway, 207 isn't exactly wildly popular for a commander that's less than a year old, but it is definitely the most trod path for Gale. And I do love me some meta off-roading.

Folk hero doesn't really give me any good vibes, though - it gives us draw, but Gale already provides really good CA, and he doesn't particularly love having creatures in the deck. Given that Gale is, by himself, a strong control piece, having a background that provides some wincon potential isn't a bad thought. I don't think Folk Hero really does that, but I've got 2 alternative pitches that I think fare better - Dragon Cultist and Inspiring Leader.

Dragon Cultist is better than I originally thought - the damage can be spread over multiple instances and multiple recipients, so Guttersnipe and all his knock-offs can trivially accomplish this with help from Gale. Admittedly 5 is kind of a lot though. And it's a slow grower at only 1 token per turn cycle. Wish it could trigger on enemy endsteps so bad

Inspiring Leader might be my current favorite, surprisingly. +2/+2 is a pretty major boost for just 3 mana, and being able to flash things in EOT is spicy. Imagine eot Call the Coppercoats and Deploy to the Front (order sucks though, I keep thinking I see sweet combos but it's always backwards). Ooh, Crush of Tentacles off Access Denied would be pretty spicy. You'd have to replay both pieces of your commander but whatever, instant-speed board wipe with a bunch of fat tokens on board is pretty excellent. Gale can play interference with control spells, then you hit 'em with the right hook (i.e. a huge Secure the Wastes) when they're not expecting it. I dunno, spellslinger tokens in UW isn't something I can remember seeing, so it seems like a pretty unique build.

edit: lmao Increasing Devotion is an auto-include.

[Gamazson]

Passionate Archaeologist might be interesting with Rebound spells and Cascade. Both mechanically exile spells.

[Chromaticus]

Raff, Weatherlight Stalwart would be great in the tokens deck you mentioned.

[DirkGently]

@Gamazson I don't hate the idea, but I don't think there's enough support with just those mechanics. Other passionate archaeologist builds seem to focus on impulse draw, which seems kinda mana intensive and wheely-spinny.

@Chromaticus True, though nonland permanent slots will be very tight.