Welcome back to my review of the five WotC commander decks! If you want to read my thoughts on Heavenly Inferno and Mirror Mastery be sure to check out part 1 of this series.
For this article, we’re starting with the Black/Green/White deck Counterpunch, led by the fungus shaman Ghave, Guru of Spores.
This guy is just plain fun. He’s not overpowered, he’s not underwhelming, he’s just cool. And he does pretty much everything you’d expect a commander in his colors to do. What I like the most about him is that he brings along some interesting choices. After you play him, will you just bash with his substantial 5/5 body? Or will you split him into five parts and hope to do some damage that way instead? With this guy you’ll always be weighing the odds and deciding when to make small bets or when to go all in. And Ghave isn’t the only guy in your deck that will be facilitating these kinds of gambles. A large number of the cards in this deck exist simply to get tokens onto the field or to provide a way to use counters, and I love that synergy. You get access to so many interesting cards in this deck. To name a few: Skullclamp, Vish Kal, Teneb, Symbiotic Wurm, Scavenging Ooze, Nantuko Husk, and, possibly my favorite new card out of all five decks, Acorn Catapult. I could write an entire article just about how much I adore Acorn Catapult, but I think it pretty much speaks for itself. This deck wants versatility and it has it in spades. The best part is you can switch to Karador between games and the deck will play similar enough that it won’t be jarring but different enough that it will make you think. Another point to make is this deck has a TON of graveyard hate, and that’s something you cannot do without in a commander deck (as you would know if you read part 1 of my How To Make a Good, Fun Commander Deck series). Overall, this deck is solid, competitive, fun, and far from game-breaking. I seriously wouldn’t be worried at all about just playing this deck right out of the box and watching it tick. Wizards, well done.
My rating of this deck (compared to the other four):
Fun factor: 5/5
Value of cards: 3/5
Competitiveness: 4/5
Overall: 5/5
But is Counterpunch my favorite deck out of the five? You may be surprised to hear the answer to that question is “no.” If WotC had printed another subpar deck like Mirror Mastery, I would have been worried. But instead they printed this next deck, and I don’t know if I can say no to it. It may very well be the deck I pick up this weekend. So, without further ado, I present to you the one and only Red/White/Blue Political Puppets deck with this lady minotaur in charge:
Zedruu the Greathearted. WTF!? This gal is quite possibly the coolest legendary creature ever! Obviously, she’s probably pretty bad outside of commander. But used in her element she can be the greatest underdog (ahem, underminotaur). If you’re the player who likes to play passive-aggressive decks, this one is for you. If you want to lull your opponents into a false sense of security this one is for you. If you just want to have fun, you cannot go wrong here. I imagine this deck will be making some of the greatest comebacks people have ever seen and I can’t wait to see it in action. The deck is loaded with kookie stuff and they’re the reason that I still play Magic. I think the best scenario would be to play a few walls, give away some crap you don’t need like Howling Mine and Goblin Cadets, wait until all your opponents’ big stuff is on the table, act nonchalant, play Insurrection, and kill everybody in one turn. That’s the kind of potential this deck has. Unfortunately, I think the deck needs a lot of work to really compete. Ruhan of the Fomori is virtually unplayable as a commander and only slightly better when you give him away with Zedruu. He sucks. Numot the Devastator is cool but he doesn’t mesh with Zedruu’s idea of the deck at all, and I think this whole deck should revolve around this chick. Where’s Bronze Bombshell? Where’s Bottled Cloister? Where’s Mindstorm Crown (okay maybe not that card…)? Where are the countless other cards that you’d never want to have yourself but would love for your opponents to have? I’m not saying they all need to be in this deck, but Wizards dropped the ball on packing in some more fun ideas. Maybe they thought it was powerful enough as it is, but I can definitely see this deck losing a lot of the time before it gains any steam. If I had been designing it I would have included some more trick cards to make the deck just a little more aggressive. But that’s just me. Zedruu is still great and probably will be easy enough to find in your local dollar bin after a month or two.
Another concern with this deck is that it’s called Political Puppets for a reason. You aren’t going to be able to yell out your intentions every turn or else the table will turn on you. A lot of your success will depend on not just how you play, but how you act. I encourage this type of meta-design, but it definitely will not suit everyone, particularly the ten-year-old who just learned how to play last week and openly wants to attack everyone all the time.
Anyway, here’s my rating (if you haven’t left this page already to go design your own Zedruu deck):
Fun Factor: Eleventybajillion/5
Value of Cards: 3/5
Competitiveness: 3/5
Overall: 4/5
So there you have it; I think it’s pretty apparent which commander I’m most excited about now. But hey, we still have one more deck to go over and it’s a real humdinger. The last part of this series should be up some time later tonight, possibly within the next few hours. If not, I’m terribly sorry, but I like to have a life on Friday nights too ya know? 😉
Lamp out.
Grue Ate My Homework 