Dig Through Time #1: Intro and Keeping Blue/Red Commanders Alive

This is going to be a recurring feature on this blog: a column about Commander deckbuilding. I want to build up a set of resources that anybody building a Commander deck will want to have access to. Commander, after all, is the format that lets you use cards from 1993 to the present day—but only one of each. Constructing a Commander deck means delving through twenty-plus years of cards not just once but multiple times, since if a certain effect is important to your deck’s functioning you can’t just rely on a single card to provide it. If you’re building a lifegain-heavy green-black deck that takes advantage of Defiant Bloodlord and Sanguine Bond, then you probably already know about Well of Lost Dreams since it was also printed in Commander 2013. If you go back a decade, though, you may find Ageless Entity from 2004, and if you go back another decade from there, there is the perfect card waiting for you in 1993: Simulacrum (go ahead and read the updated Oracle text).

Everyone knows that feeling—you are building a new deck, or looking to spruce up an old one, and there is a certain problem that you need to solve. Maybe you always get killed by fliers, or your commander always gets killed as soon as it hits the battlefield, or the deck runs out of gas by the lategame. For a lot of people, the standard response to these kinds of conundrums is to look through your box(es) of Magical Cards hoping to see an answer in your Commander’s colors. There is no need, however, to work on such a small scale! We have the internet, we have searchable databases of all twenty-plus years’ worth of cards… and you have someone like me, who has devoted far too much of his long-term memory to rectangular pieces of cardboard. Let me help you find the perfect cards for your decks, so you don’t have to wade through all the bad cards out there.

And, most of the time, you can really improve your decks without spending much money at all. With supply far outstripping demand for well over 90% of all Magic cards, you can often pick up really good cards for practically nothing. I mean, look at a card like Yeva, Nature’s Herald. This is a sweet four-mana 4/4 that solves a fundamental problem for an entire color, but it costs something like 50 cents. Sure, occasionally Commander staples will reach well over ten dollars, but these articles are all about looking past the staples and finding the other solutions to your deckbuilding needs. After all, you can only play one of each, so you are going to need some redundancy!

Here’s how these articles are going to work: you, the attractive and intelligent readers, share your problems or ask for help building up certain decks’ strengths in the comment section below each Dig Through Time article. I’m looking for things like “how can I get more defense against combo decks in a Ghoulcaller Gisa deck?” or “what are some cards that are good in the early game, but then still good later on, in an Alesha, Who Smiles at Death deck?” Even something as simple as “what are good cards for a Zurgo Helmsmasher deck?” would work, but I should point out that you are going to get a better and more helpful answer if you make your queries very specific. For instance, I could really put together something profoundly useful for a question like, “I have a Brimaz deck, but the 1/1 tokens keep getting killed whenever I attack or block, so I can’t take advantage of them at all…how can I stop that from happening?”

Every time I post a new Dig Through Time, I will take on one of the queries from the comments of a previous article.

For this article, since I clearly don’t have a backlog of requests from the comments to draw from, I am going to choose my own. Or, actually, not quite my own: I have several friends who have built new decks around the enemy-colored “experience counter” commanders from the Commander 2015 product. I suspect that they are not alone: I hope that this week’s Dig Through Time preemptively answers some problems you may be facing.

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Mizzix of the Izmagnus is clearly powerful­—making your instants and sorceries a lot cheaper tends to get broken pretty fast—but he is a four-mana 2/2. And, possibly even more so than the previous poster-boy for the “expensive 2/2 that tends to die quickly” category (Riku of Two Reflections), people are going to want to get him off the battlefield fast.

So…how do we keep Mizzix (or any weak commander) alive, in blue and red? It turns out that there are a lot of answers to that question, so let’s delve into some of them:

Category 1: Indestructibility

These are the heavy hitters: they stop most targeted removal, combat damage, and sweepers. Unfortunately, you have to pay for what you get… it is going to be very hard to use these effects on the same turn you cast Mizzix, which is when you really want them active.

Darksteel Plate. This is the best option, here, since two mana is much more manageable than the four or five mana you would spend on the other options in this category.

Soul of New Phyrexia, That Which Was Taken, and Shield of Kaldra. These are the runners-up, each with strengths and weaknesses—but all too expensive for everyday (or early-game) use. Soul of New Phyrexia is really good in the super-late-game but useless early, That Which Was Taken is fragile but can be activated at instant speed (in response to a kill spell), and Shield of Kaldra is basically just the clunkier version of Darksteel Plate.

Category 2: Shroud and Hexproof

This is generally the best-populated and most effective category, since blue as a color is really good with these keywords. Since Mizzix is likely to be a deck with a lot of spells and fewer creatures, you’re generally going to be fine with a board-wipe, which is one of the two ways that opponents can kill a Mizzix that can’t be targeted (the other way is Edict effects that make you sacrifice him—more on those in the next category).

Lightning Greaves, Swiftfoot Boots, Neurok Stealthsuit, Champion’s Helm, and General’s Kabuto. Here are the equipment versions of this effect, the real champions of keeping Mizzix alive early. Zero mana is a perfect price to pay for this, so Lightning Greaves is the best, but one mana is still a reasonable price, so the Boots, Stealthsuit, and Helm are all very worthy of consideration. Neurok Stealthsuit, in particular, is a great card because of the ability to move it around at instant speed in response to removal, particularly later in the game. General’s Kabuto is a powerful card, and it can help your Mizzix become a good blocker, but the two-mana equip cost can sometimes price it out of consideration. If you’re running a lot of artifact super-ramp like Worn Powerstone, Coalition Relic, or Thran Dynamo, though, keep it in mind!

Elgaud Shieldmate, Clout of the Dominus, Alexi’s Cloak, and Diplomatic Immunity. These are all good ways to protect Mizzix permanently from targeting, and they all have certain strengths you can build around. Elgaud Shieldmate costs four mana up-front but then zero mana to hook up with Mizzix: you can cast the Shieldmate first, then cast Mizzix on the next turn with enough mana to cast a spell and get a point of experience! Clout of the Dominus only costs one mana, which is fantastic, and gives both haste and +2/+2. If the game ever gets down to only two players, or if one opponent gains a ridiculous amount of life, then the Clout can turn Mizzix into a reasonable combat-based win condition. Just keep the game under control with removal and counterspells while a hasty Mizzix hits for four Commander damage a turn! Alexi’s Cloak and Diplomatic Immunity are similar-looking, but play a bit differently: although Alexi’s Cloak doesn’t trigger Mizzix, it is castable at instant speed, which can both foil a removal spell and let you keep up mana for other instants if nobody bothers to target your commander. Diplomatic Immunity, like Elgaud Shieldmate, is a more complete defense: it protects itself, so no random Aura-Shards-wielding opponent can crack open your defenses. (Note: you can also play the bad version of Alexi’s Cloak, Mystic Veil, but I wouldn’t recommend it.)

Veilstone Amulet. This one gets its own paragraph because of how cool (and underused) it is! You can throw it out on turn three, before casting Mizzix. From then on, any instant in your hand becomes a way to counter targeted removal directed at any of your creatures. In a deck centered around Mizzix, which probably wants to be able to cast a lot of instants, this card will do a lot of work.

Mizzium Skin, Glint, and Mage’s Guile. These bring up the rear of the category because they are more temporary than the rest. Mizzium Skin does cost only a single mana, and it totally matches the flavor of Mizzix’s Izzet-centric backstory, but you would often rather have something a bit more permanent. Glint and Mage’s Guile suffer the same drawback, and they even cost a bit more mana! It is important to note, though, that Mizzix wants to have a range of instants and sorceries with different mana costs in his deck. All the other options in this category are more durable, but only these three instants can actually trigger Mizzix’s ability while also protecting him in this way.

Category 3: Temporary Blinking

Another method of foiling targeted removal is to simply remove your Mizzix from the battlefield for a bit. The second crop of these can handle Edict effects, too!

Ghostly Flicker, Displace, Deadeye Navigator, and Nephalia Smuggler. These cards can stop any targeted spells from touching Mizzix, but only Ghostly Flicker and Displace trigger his ability. Deadeye Navigator makes people panic (and rightly so) while Nephalia Smuggler is expensive and fragile, but they are both repeatable. And all four of these cards are very good with enters-the-battlefield triggers on creatures, so they are worthy of consideration, particularly if you want to play with ETB triggers.

Vanishing, Vodalian Illusionist, and Tawnos’s Coffin. Here are the phasing (and pseudo-phasing) cards, which are good against Edicts! Vanishing is the simplest of them all, and it is surprisingly effective: for two mana, you can stop anything bad from happening to Mizzix and he will come back at the very beginning of your next turn. Vodalian Illusionist is basically the same thing, but capable of saving any of your creatures, including himself, and messing with opponents’ creatures, at the cost of having to survive a single turn of summoning sickness. Tawnos’s Coffin deserves some explanation, since it is expensive, both in mana and dollars, but has a lot of flexibility built into it—particularly if you are planning on leaving three mana open on opponent’s turns. Unlike phasing, this ability legitimately exiles its target, so you can use it to exile opposing creatures or save your own from removal… and, as a bonus, you can use it to reuse enters-the-battlefield triggers on your creatures.

Category 4: Counterspells

One rock-solid way to keep your commander alive is to counter anything that would kill him! There are, of course, all the classic cards like Counterspell and Forbid. In a Mizzix deck, though, you probably want to get more value for your mana while countering things. There are three types of counterspells you are likely to want in a Mizzix deck: 1) cheap counters to keep Mizzix alive at first, 2) expensive counters with cool add-ons that Mizzix’s ability can discount, and 3) pitch spells, which work both early and late.

Ignoring the standard options like Counterspell or Mana Leak, the first type only has a few representatives.

Intervene, Turn Aside, Arcane Denial, Confound, and Muddle the Mixture. Intervene and Turn Aside are perfect cards for a Mizzix deck, since people will be trying to kill your commander, and saying “no” for a single mana is very manageable. Arcane Denial and Confound both let you draw a card to replace them, which helps you get enough spells in your hand to both fuel Mizzix’s ability and benefit from it. Muddle the Mixture is just a great counterspell since it can stop most ways in which people will try to off your commander… and if you don’t need that effect, you can transmute it into something impressive like Cyclonic Rift or Curse of the Swine.

More expensive but value-added counterspells also get really good in a Mizzix deck once you have a few experience counters. This second type has a lot of representatives, so you can pick and choose what you want!

Dismiss, Contradict, Fervent Denial, Fuel for the Cause, Rewind, Desertion, Counterlash, Spelljack, Aethersnatch, Time Stop, Spell Contortion, Spell Burst, and Mindswipe. The first three cards here are very similar: they effectively give you an extra card to go with your counter; Fervent Denial, indeed, is good in a Mizzix deck but not many other places, since the flashback is usually too expensive. Fuel for the Cause, the next card, is worth noting because it lets you proliferate your experience counters! Rewind lets you untap lands and, in fact, generate extra mana if you have any experience counters at all. The next four spells—Desertion, Counterlash, Spelljack, and Aethersnatch—are the “stealing” counterspells. People cast terrifying, eight-mana-plus spells all the time in Commander, so getting to hijack that powerful of an effect for just a few mana in a Mizzix deck can be a real game-changer. Time Stop is perfect for a Mizzix deck because it isn’t just a counterspell—it provides a huge amount of utility and can solve problems that few other cards can. The final three cards—Spell Contortion, Spell Burst, and Mindswipe—can get really intimidating in a Mizzix deck. If you can get enough experience counters, then these can generate huge effects in the lategame. Spell Contortion can let you draw a card for each blue mana you spend beyond the first. Spell Burst can (at its most powerful) keep anyone from casting any spells that you disapprove of, all while ticking up your number of experience counters. Mindswipe can be a huge fireball attached to a counterspell, directly translating experience counters into damage to an opponent.

The last type of counterspells—that is, “pitch spells”—are going to be very good in a Mizzix deck. Early on, they are often worth casting with their alternate costs to keep your commander alive, and they will become cheap with just a few experience counters.

Force of Will, Foil, Thwart, Daze, Commandeer, and Misdirection. The first card mentioned here, Force of Will, is obviously the best one, but it is incredibly expensive in the real world, no matter how much experience you have. Foil and Thwart are both worse versions of that iconic spell, but they can both do the job if you want to run your commander out as quickly as possible and don’t mind some setbacks. Daze is a staple of formats like Vintage and Legacy, but it is too often completely invalidated by the larger manabases of Commander decks… only use it if you are desperate to have as much interaction as possible on the first turn you play Mizzix. Commandeer and Misdirection are both particularly good against the kind of targeted removal that will get pointed at Mizzix, so they are fairly good choices to keep him alive.

(Note that cards like Cryptic Command or Mana Drain, while clearly good counterspells with upside, are not included in this category at all: they don’t benefit much from Mizzix’s discount, and they won’t generally help Mizzix stay alive to get experience counters any more than more mundane counterspells would. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t play them if you have them…it’s just not within the scope of this article.)

Category 5: Random Stuff

Winding Canyons. This only takes up a slot in your manabase, and it allows you to sneak out your commander at the end of someone else’s turn, right before you untap with a bunch of spells to protect Mizzix! It might seem like too much mana to pay since you will have to wait until you have seven total mana available, but there are a lot of good setup cards you can play—and a lot of good counterspells you can represent—while waiting to flash in your commander.

Magebane Armor. This card is going to be very good if you’re playing damage-based sweepers like Comet Storm, Blasphemous Act, or Chain Reaction.

Rite of Undoing (and other cards like it, such as Peel from Reality or Aether Tradewinds). Rite of Undoing is sweet because it is going to cost very little mana, one way or another—either because of experience counters or because of spells you can delve away—but will still have a high enough converted mana cost to often give you an experience counter! And, of course, it will both save Mizzix and bounce an opposing permanent, which can be really valuable in Commander.

Category 6: Build-Specific Options

These cards can do the job, but using them only makes sense if you want to pursue a particular kind of deck theme that is slightly off the beaten path. Warning: these may spark your imagination and introduce a whole new subtheme to your deck!

Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer. This guy produces a really powerful effect, but you need to have an artifact-centric deck to use him. Fortunately, red/blue is quite good at that! Throne of Geth would be a great addition to a deck like this, since it can proliferate your experience counters, and cards like Fabricate, Sharding Sphinx, Thopter Spy Network, Phyrexian Metamorph, and Thada Adel, Acquisitor are just really powerful and fun cards in general. Plus, you could combine blue’s ability to turn things into artifacts with red’s amazing artifact destruction to have amazing removal spells! Argent Mutation, Liquimetal Coating, Neurok Transmuter, Thran Forge, Memnarch, and MycosynthLattice can turn opposing things into artifacts, then cards like Shattering Pulse, Shattering Spree, Viashino Heretic, Rack and Ruin, Into the Core, Vandalblast, and Hoard-Smelter Dragon can blow them up!

(Man, now I want to use Feldon of the Third Path to create artifact copies of a dead Nucklavee and sacrifice the copies to Slobad to protect my Silverskin-Armor-equipped Mizzix of the Izmagnus, all while casting and returning super-cheap spells!)

Eldrazi Monument and Tortoise Formation. These cards are only likely to work in a deck that is trying to “go wide” by producing a lot of token creatures. Eldrazi Monument is the bigger deal here, since Tortoise Formation would only be good once you had a few experience counters and Mizzix in play. A deck like this could play cards like Hordeling Outburst, Goblin Rally, Goblin Offensive, Empty the Warrens (Storm!), Talrand’s Invocation, Notorious Throng, Rite of Replication, Stolen Identity, Tempt with Vengeance, Clone Legion, and Call the Skybreaker (which is much better when cheaper!).

Now, in case you are still not satisfied with all the cards mentioned above, you can dig through the following pile of…

Cards That Probably Aren't Good Enough

Mask of Avacyn

Ring of Evos Isle

Ghosthelm Courier

Hisoka’s Guard

Robe of Mirrors

Shell Skulkin

Soratami Rainshaper

Spectral Cloak

Pemmin’s Aura

Whispersilk Cloak

Zephid’s Embrace

Anti-Magic Aura

Reality Ripple

And, as a final note: please play Mystic Retrieval in any Mizzix deck you build! This card is surprisingly good, and it gets amazing if it only costs one mana for either of its costs. If you want to really abuse the card, too, you can set up a near-infinite loop of value with Runic Repetition!

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Well, thanks for working through all of the above cards with me! It turns out that, if you want to keep Mizzix of the Izmagnus alive, you can fill up a lot of your deck with cards that will do just that! I hope this can serve as a resource for anyone building around a fragile commander in Izzet colors, and particularly for those making use of our new Goblin friend. Now, please head to the comments and give me some ideas! We all know how hard and how satisfying deckbuilding in the Commander format can be, and there are often cards out there, lost in the mists of time, that are exactly what you’re looking for to make your deck run like clockwork.

Also, of course, I would love to hear what you liked (or didn’t) about my approach to this series! I’m hoping to build a relationship with you, the ever-so-attractive and intelligent readers, so I would be delighted to get the chance to help you build your decks to do exactly what you want them to!