![]() The raw power of two cascade triggers was not lost on me as a deck builder, but I believed the chaotic nature of the ability would result in high variance, negating the linearity often associated with combos. Finally, while not an infinite loop, Food Chain allowed us to cast Wanderer over and over often accruing enough value to end the game on the spot. One of my favorite combos involved playing a Time Warp spell, cascading into a tutor (Mystical or Personal) for Seasons Past, and then looping Seasons Past and a Tutor for infinite turns. ![]() ![]() The ability to cast an entwined Tooth and Nail off of a cascade trigger was a shortcut to infinite mana, or loops to achieve infinite recursion. And, yet, stacking Palinchron on top of the deck with cards like Sensei's Divining Top, Scroll Rack, Brainstorm, or Worldly Tutor suddenly gave me the opportunity to more reliably reach one of my most desirable combos.Ĭombos were a theme of this deck. Unlike most Palinchron focused decks, however, this deck did not have an obvious outlet for the infinite mana produced, and instead intended to invest the Palinchron mana towards recasting Wanderer or playing out the high cost spells in our hand. There are many arguments to be made as to why including Palinchron for was ill advised: other players knowing it was in my deck made me a bigger target, it didn't consistently ramp on its own, and cascading into it without premeditation made it vulnerable to removal. In this deck, Palinchron easily combos with Mana Reflection and Deadeye Navigator to produce infinite mana. ![]() Palinchron, much like Kiki Jiki is infamous in Commander for its ability to combo rather effortlessly with a wide range of cards. I wanted the deck to have several options to make use of Maelstrom Wanderer's Haste ability, mainly Scourge of the Throne, Balefire Dragon, and Pathbreaker Ibex, but in most cases I planned to win with Palinchron. I wanted to maximize my value, and I wanted to have the chance to smash things, and I wanted to experiment with cards that are uniquely synergistic with these two categories.Ī quick look at this list reveals several key characteristics. In the end, I opted for an approach that borrowed from each of these directions. I could build the deck focused on 6 and 7 cost spells in an attempt to get the most value from casting Wanderer, or I could focus on taking advantage of the fact that both cascade triggers resolve before Wanderer does, or I could try to take advantage of the fact that Wanderer grants haste to my creatures and play the biggest monsters in the Temur colors. Maelstrom Wanderer was a deck I wanted to build for a long time, but I always found myself perplexed by the multitude of potential directions. In Commander deck building there is a clear disconnect between theory and operation, and a lot of the time it can be difficult to predict the latter. What excited me was the unrealistic potential I had bestowed upon the deck, and when I realized most games involved me hard-casting weenies, the illusion was shattered. In my head, I was going to be building a mountain of value recurring my creatures with Reveillark, ramping ad nauseum with Burnished Hart, and tutoring for all my equipment with Stoneforge Mystic, but it never occurred to me that in most cases I would be lucky to get more than one successful recursion with Alesha's ability. I found that when I first approach a deck I have a bad habit of focusing heavily on the best case scenarios the commander presents, and this was the case with Alesha. It wasn't that my deck was poorly made, but playing a deck centered on 2-power creatures wasn't exciting to me in practice. When I finally played the deck, I discovered quickly that it didn't fit me. I fell in love with the idea of Alesha, Who Smiles at Death, and I spent hours agonizing over all the correct pieces to include. This exact scenario has happened to me many times. Sometimes this happens because we've built our deck too hastily, but sometimes it turns out that the new commander we love operates differently than we predicted. This time, we're going to go in a slightly different direction: what happens when the deck you make doesn't turn out the way you imagine? I'm sure that most Commander players have had the experience of falling in love with a commander, carefully crafting a deck, amassing all the cards, and then the deck just doesn't perform how you hoped. I wanted to start this series with a deck I know inside and out so that I could best introduce the thought process I use when designing decks. You can find my first article here, and part two here. Welcome back to The Knowledge Pool! During the last two installments I presented one of my longest tenured decks, Mayael the Anima.
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