Jodah, the Unifier

Legendary Creature — Human Wizard

Legendary creatures you control get +X/+X, where X is the number of legendary creatures you control.

Whenever you cast a legendary spell from your hand, exile cards from the top of your library until you exile a legendary nonland card with lesser converted mana cost/mana value. You may cast that card without paying its mana cost. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Alchemy	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Arena	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Brawl	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Pre-release	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Standard	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (20)

king-saproling on No Spells?

3 weeks ago

If you wanted, you could get access to black and make Kynaios & Tiro the "secret general" by running Jodah, the Unifier as commander and Jegantha, the Wellspring as companion. In addition to getting access to more manlands, another benefit to this is being able to use Jegantha to pay for manland activations.

Kcin on We're All Friends Here

3 months ago

Also, I am fully aware that this is a shameless deck plug, but I do have a WUBRG superfriends deck as well but i went with Jodah, the Unifier as my cmdr.

"For the Good of All, We Will Keep Watch"

Here is a decklink for those so inclined.

Darb_the_Bard on Buttercup: Princess Bride

6 months ago

Cutting Wasteland Viper is less straightforward to me. I like that it can be used at instant speed to surprise someone with deathtouch, which could mean causing your unblocked creature to create two poison counters with Westley, or it could mean surprise-killing a creature that your opponent thought was blocking favorably. You could even give deathtouch to an opposing creature, taking out a threat when you're not even involved in the combat. And I like that, in a pinch, the Viper could be used to buff Buttercup's power by 1, which could sometimes be the difference between tutoring for the creature you want or not. Of course, all of those are somewhat niche situations and you have to be holding up the one green mana. And if I had one green mana available, I wonder if I would truly choose to hold it up or to simply put the Viper on the board...

As for Spark Double, it's a generically powerful card so it would never be bad. It would be useful to double up on Reki, the History of Kamigawa for more card draw or Jodah, the Unifier to double his buff, or get a second copy of Shalai, Voice of Plenty so they give each other hexproof. It doesn't do anything for the keyword soup strategy since we only need 1 of each keyword on board, but it could copy Westley to double the poison counter we create, or copy Jegantha for even more mana. There's a lot you could with it. Having two copies of Halana and Alena, Partners could also get crazy, as they could buff each other on each of your combats.

And I like that it even gives itself a +1/+1 counter to synergize with Max! That's probably my favorite part. If it dies while Max is on the battlefield, then it comes back at the next end step and can copy something else (or the same thing if it's still around), and it even enters with another +1/+1 counter so it creates a slow loop that can potentially happen over and over. This one might be too good to pass up, so I'll have to find room for it...

I think it has even come down in price as I swear it used to cost more money. Still not "budget" necessarily but it's a reasonable price for what it does. Thanks for the suggestion!

Darb_the_Bard on Buttercup: Princess Bride

6 months ago

I like Garruk's Uprising a lot and have it in multiple decks. I have mostly used it for card draw, which means it's a natural fit in a deck with many creatures with power 4 or greater. For the current Buttercup list, I'm counting 8 total creatures that naturally have power of at least 4, but you could say 10 since Buttercup and Majestic Myriarch will almost always be at least that big. That number would normally not get me excited. However, since both our commander (Buttercup) and our companion (Jegantha) will normally trigger it, we should almost always draw a card when Garruk's Uprising comes into play. So at worst it's a 3-mana cantrip with the upside to draw at least another card or two during the game. Notably, the card draw activates when a creature "enters the battlefield" instead of upon cast. That's awesome with Buttercup as it means any creature we tutor for with power 4 or greater will also trigger the card draw. Most of the creatures we most likely want to tutor for meet the criteria, including Inigo (Samut, Voice of Dissent), Atraxa, Praetors' Voice, and Jodah, the Unifier. For that reason, I think Garruk's Uprising would be a great include. I was already thinking I wanted more card draw, so I may definitely have to find room for it...

The thing I haven't mentioned yet is that Garruk's Uprising also gives trample to all our creatures, which as I have said before is great with all our deathtouch creatures. Usually that has been an afterthought when I've played Garruk's Uprising in the past, but in this case it's perhaps even more powerful than the card draw aspect.

I've also realized after doing a bunch of playtesting/goldfishing, that I almost always want to tutor for Inigo and Odric to get the keyword soup synergies going, which seems to make it less important to have multiple deathtouch craetures in play. The main thought here is that I only need a single deathtouch creature (Westley himself does the trick!) and then Odric gives deathtouch to everything else. Because of this, I'm thinking of cutting some of the lower-power deathtouch creatures to add a couple more 2-mana ramp spells to help me get to Buttercup/Jegantha sooner.

Ramping on turn 2 feels really important in this deck since we have a 3-mana commander and it costs 3 mana to put our companion in our hand. If we can ramp on turn 2, we have two powerful play patterns:

1. Play Buttercup on turn 3, and then tap for Buttercup's ability to tutor on turn 4. This is quick and allows us to get the best cards from our deck really early.
2. Put Jegantha into our hand turn 3, then play Jegantha on turn 4. This is much slower, but on turn 5 we now have 10+ mana available (five from Jegantha assuming we have enough colored pips to utilize it, and six mana if we've hit each land drop in addition to the ramp on turn 2). We can use that 10+ mana to play Buttercup and other stuff from hand, setting ourselves up for a more impactful tutor on turn 6.

Whether I go for Buttercup or Jegantha likely depends on if I need Jegantha to get my five colors, although I'll say the deck feels way more powerful with Jegantha in play. Waiting for Jegantha is slower initially, but you'll be playing 2+ cards per turn sooner, which could lead to a quicker victory. The ultimate decision on which route to go likely depends on the match-ups and board states at the time.

As I alluded to before, the bummer with 3-mana ramp is that it gets in the way of both our commander and companion, which means the soonest we could tutor with Buttercup is turn 5 (ramp turn 3, play Buttercup turn 4, then she can tap turn 5). But at this point we haven't used our ramp at all, so the only benefit is perhaps color fixing. The Jegantha route is delayed until turn 7 (ramp turn 3, get Jegantha in hand on turn 4, play Jegantha turn 5, play Buttercup turn 6, tutor turn 7). Both routes are more awkward because you are forced into not utilizing all your mana for multiple turns in a row. Because of that I'm wondering if Cultivate, Kodama's Reach, and Relic of Legends are worth it. They still may be just for the color fixing aspect, especially since I'm running a very budget mana base, but it's something to consider.

Also, since it came up before, I'll say that Majestic Myriarch has felt great in my hand when I've been able to cast it on the same turn I tutor for Inigo and get him into play. The Myriarch instantly has double strike, vigilance, and haste from Inigo, plus it often has deathtouch and flying from other creatures on board. Even if I only have 5 creatures (Buttercup, Jegantha, Inigo, the Myriarch itself and one other thing) then it's hitting for 20 damage the turn it drops. Nice!

sxywalrus on Five Color God Stuff

7 months ago

Any thoughts on Jodah, the Unifier as your commander?

Blade19456 on Mythical Disappointments (<$1)

9 months ago

could you make Jodah, the Unifier your commander

TheoryCrafter on Rainbow Commanders without WURBG in …

11 months ago

Codie, Vociferous Codex

General Tazri

Go-Shintai of Life's Origin

Golos, Tireless Pilgrim, BANNED

Jegantha, the Wellspring

Jenson Carthalion, Druid Exile

Jodah, Archmage Eternal

Jodah, the Unifier

Kenrith, the Returned King

Kyodai, Soul of Kamigawa

Morophon, the Boundless

Najeela, the Blade-Blossom

Ramos, Dragon Engine

Sisay, Weatherlight Captain

Tazri, Beacon of Unity

Tazri, Stalwart Survivor

Urtet, Remnant of Memnarch

Source: Manabox, Search Engine, entered Legendary Creature and exactly {W}{U}{B}{R}{G} in its color identity. Then I sifted through the short list.

Happy Hunting!

Arrzarrina on What is Your Opinion of …

1 year ago

It's not just trying to make a budget deck work.

If you're like me and have a thing for more out there commanders (think Sasaya, Orochi Ascendant  ^Flip or Ben-Ben, Akki Hermit), then you need to work harder in the 99 to bring the deck up to parity since you're trying to get theme with less card support than Big stompy Jodah, the Unifier has.

Continuing in terms of card support, there are many effects that can protect a creature. Swiftfoot Boots gets reprinted every 5 minutes while Lightning Greaves is an extra effect in the same vein. Mask of Avacyn, Whispersilk Cloak, Neurok Stealthsuit and Mirror Shield all fill a very similar role. You can get 4 of those equipments to protect your commander for under a dollar each. On the flip side, an effect like Pariah's Shield exists on very few cards (I only know of Pariah as a similar effect) so outside of a white colour identity, you've got to use one card for that idea which was printed nearly 20 years ago and has never (The list is so diverse it basically doesn't count) been reprinted.

Pariah's shield isn't a bankbreaking card, but the scarcity of similar effects shows how even the most creative budget player is stuck away from creative/interesting strategies when their brew needs a specific piece which will cause problems in their budget.