Austere Command

Sorcery

Choose two &mdash

• Destroy all artifacts.
• Destroy all enchantments.
• Destroy all creatures with converted mana cost / mana value 3 or less.
• Destroy all creatures with converted mana cost / mana value 4 or greater.

Discussion (50)

multimedia on jodah archmage eternal

4 days ago

Hey, nice list of cards on a budget. You have several good cards, but also many stinkers.

Do you really play this deck? Or it is a deck you made here for fun? I ask because I don't see how this deck can win a game or consistently function well enough in a real game of multiplayer Commander. If Jodah gets disrupted you're done because your deck is relying way too much on Jodah. Problem is Jodah will be an instant target for removal when he's on the battlefield as your opponents can't let him stick around letting you take over the game. You want your deck to be able to function in gameplay without Jodah.

There's a basic deck structure you can use for a causal Commander deck that's a starting point for building a deck.

• 36-38 lands (Exotic Orchard, Path of Ancestry)
• 20-25 creatures (Faeburrow Elder, Maelstrom Archangel)
• 12 or more ramp sources (Arcane Signet, Fellwar Stone)
• 10 or more draw/tutor sources (Temur Ascendancy, Conflux)
• 10 or more removal/board wipes/counterspells (Beast Within, Stubborn Denial, Austere Command)

This structure doesn't cover everything, just the basics to help to make a functioning deck. For example with Jodah you will want to dedicate quite a few card spots for protection such as Boros Charm and Swiftfoot Boots for him and the big stuff you cheat onto the battlefield. Some areas such as number of lands, lands used in the manabase and ramp become much more important than others. Especially when playing five colors, needing one of each color to cast spells with Jodah and having many high mana cost cards you want to cast.

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You have Command Tower which is good, one of the best lands in Commander. When playing five colors then more color fixing from lands in the manabase and ramp sources that can make any color of mana are areas to focus more on and allocate more funds to make gameplay better with or without Jodah.

• Arcane Signet
• Fellwar Stone
• Exotic Orchard
• Path of Ancestry
• Faeburrow Elder
• Jegantha, the Wellspring
• Commander's Sphere

For lands on a budget if basic lands are the lands you count on most then include ramp and other lands that have interaction with basic lands.

• Cultivate
• Farseek
• Cinder Glade
• Canopy Vista
• Prairie Stream
• Sunken Hollow
• Smoldering Marsh

Glade and the four others are called Tango lands and they care about you controlling two or more basic lands for them to ETB untapped. Farseek can search for any one Tango land and put it onto the battlefield tapped.

You have Jungle Shrine which is good, it's called a Tri land and on a budget these lands are some of better lands you can play for color fixing. Consider more Tri lands?

• Savage Lands
• Frontier Bivouac
• Mystic Monastery
• Opulent Palace
• Crumbling Necropolis
• Seaside Citadel

I can continue with more advice in another comment. Would you like me to continue?

Good luck with your deck.

Tzefick on Critical Banishment

2 weeks ago

I really like the idea of more colors getting access to interact with the stack and I really think White is a good color to add some additional design space. Obviously it cannot get on par with blue so it needs some additional conditions or costs associated to get this effect.

I think this is a very good example to fit that space. Nice work.

Just a side note, for the sake of reducing word count could it be written as "... costs less for each spell cast and each ability activated by your opponents this turn." ?

I get the point in being specific about only caring about your opponents' actions but I think it would be consciously misinterpretation of the above line to think it isn't specifically for your opponents' actions.

Why is white a good fit? (wall of text) Show

First of all it seems like counter magic is a vital tool to interact with combo strategies especially when considering the Commander format, and it is the reason we've seen so many "free"-to-cast counter spells especially for Commander and why they drive sales so much. However that is only accessible to Blue, so the rest of the color pie is borderline useless in attempting to interact with most combos. I mean a Silence could work to interact with some combos, but that is such a narrowly applicable card in the rest of the game that it remains a tech card with a heavy drawback. And it might just eat one of the aforementioned "free"-to-cast counter spells and there's not much redundancy available either.

There's a reason why most competitive cEDH decks are including Blue. Coincidentally a lot include Black and Green as well as the three most powerful colors in Magic - at least for single-ton formats.

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White used to have some affinity for artifacts but that seems to have been handed over to blue/red. Right now White is mostly concerned about Equipments within the artifact realm and the synergies are not that widespread nor that powerful.

White used to be the best or on par to deal with artifacts and enchantments with Disenchant and Purify and similar effects but green has mostly taken over in acquiring design space for this mechanic - Bane of Progress Broken Bond You Find a Cursed Idol. The best improvement on the mechanic that white has is Austere Command due to flexibility and Heliod's Intervention to snipe multiple without harming yourself. And that's one of the bigger differences. White leans more on Enchantments and Artifacts than Green does, so Green doesn't have much drawback in including Bane of Progress. Whereas White leans on Artifacts for mana ramp and Equipments and they lean on Enchantments for strong synergies.

White once had their card advantage through ensuring their board survives, either through protection, prevention, regeneration, then shroud to a lesser degree, then indestructible - but only on creatures. However Black has gained exile mechanics, red has "burn to a crisp" mechanics and blue Cyclonic Rift or Curse of the Swine. So indestructible as a safety measure is getting worse and worse. Not to mention they get outdone by Green - again. Only exception is the ever increasing price on Teferi's Protection but that has its drawbacks too - namely you remove yourself from the game and can't interact further - unless you somehow can cast spells without mana from permanents.

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Cards like Rebuff the Wicked or Lapse of Certainty are interesting to expand upon within the design space for white and will grant it back some strengths and uniqueness it used to have. However to be able to properly interact with the stack it cannot just be conditioned behind being the one targeted - that would equate it to hexproof/protection and also make it useless against board wipe or the infamous Cyclonic Rift one-sided board sweep.

Possibly the design space could include some "punisher" mechanics loaned from red but transformed instead of inflicting pain on the opponent, you gain a benefit - for instance:

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Inspection

Instant

Choose target spell or ability an opponent controls. That opponent may have Inspection counter the chosen spell or ability. If they don't, choose one:

• Create three 1/1 white Human Soldier tokens.
• Create two Treasures then gain 4 life.
• Search your library for up to two basic land cards and put them into your hand, then shuffle.

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The flavor being to pass the spell you have to pay the toll (chosen by the Inspector for their benefit) or be rejected.

Taxing is the most recent mechanic that white has expanded upon and embraced but that is usually done on permanents as static or triggered abilities. This means WotC have to water down these cards' immediate impact and make the mechanic less enticing in the short run, which is often when it matters the most. Drawing Thalia, Guardian of Thraben on turn 5+ is often not that impactful, whereas on turn 2 you can cripple some decks. It would be refreshing if WotC would expand on the mechanic for ETBs or instant/sorceries with a here-and-now benefit rather than dragging it out.

Additionally the taxing mechanic could utilize other taxes than just paying mana to do stuff. Inflexibly taxing mana has a good chance to affix unfriendly eyes on you whereas gaining a taxing benefit - say Smothering Tithe is less likely to breed anger toward you but may instill fear.

Anyway, I think it would be good for White to gain a little more design space and I think more colors being able to interact with the stack would be a good thing - even if that means Blue has to share some of their mechanics to a degree with another color.

RambIe on I Can't Pronounce My Commander's Name

3 weeks ago

Arcane Sanctum 35 lands should be ok with a 3 cmc average since you have 8 rocks
Arcanis the Omnipotent- cmc
Time Wipe, Austere Command, - if the deck works as intended boardwipes will be a dead card in hand, of course you might need this based on meta but they can always be swapped back in
Monologue Tax - love it, its just not making or breaking the deck "undervalue"
Dakkon, Shadow Slayer - undervalue

stellarnear on Slivo EDH Aggro reland

1 month ago

Austere Command > Homing Sliver

stellarnear on Slivo EDH reland

1 month ago

Austere Command > Kindred Dominance

multimedia on Angels, Demons, Dragons OH MY

1 month ago

Hey, good work in progress and nice borderless alternative art Kaalia :)

Austere Command and Ruinous Ultimatum are two powerful board wipes. Both these wipes can be only opponent sided which can give you a huge board presence advantage. Kaalia really benefits from ramp as a backup plan to cast high CMC creatures if you can't cheat them onto the battlefield. My advice is find deck spots for more ramp.

• Arcane Signet --> Rapacious Dragon, since you have Goldspan Dragon, Rapacious is not needed.
• Rakdos, Lord of Riots --> Hellkite Punisher, subpar creature compared to the other seven drops.

If you only added two more ramp sources then these are the two to add. Rakdos can be cheated onto the battlefield with Kaalia and then he alone can be a backup being a source of colorless mana for ramp when he or any other creatures you control do combat damage to an opponent.

• Orzhov Signet --> Vow of Duty
• Boros Signet --> Aerial Assault
• Rakdos Signet --> Rumbling Rockslide

Can't go wrong with adding the the other Signets, more two drop ramp that's also color fixing to help the 20+ basic lands.

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You have several really good lands Mesa, Foundry, Spectator, Vault, Haven, Gemstone, Savai, but then the rest of the manabase has much worse filler lands as well as 20 basic lands.

• Command Tower --> Akoum Refuge
• Exotic Orchard --> Bloodfell Caves
• Caves of Koilos --> Scoured Barrens
• Battlefield Forge --> Wind-Scarred Crag
• Nomad Outpost --> Temple of Malice

Tower is a staple land for multicolored Commander decks. Orchard is also a staple land for three or more color decks in multiplayer. If you only added these five they would improve the manabase quite a bit, but you could take it further and add more dual lands in place of some basic lands to help color fixing which in return helps gameplay.

• Dragonskull Summit
• Smoldering Marsh
• Tainted Field
• Furycalm Snarl
• Shineshadow Snarl

Of course all these land suggestions are budget ones, there's many other more expensive price lands such as other Rainbow lands, more Fetch lands, more Shock lands, Filter lands, other Check lands.

Good luck with your deck.

DarkHero on I got a nice dragon

2 months ago

Kind of a Voltron type build I guess. He's basically a 7cmc 5/5 keyword soup, which isn't great, in colors that don't ramp, which is worse. The attack effect is cool, but I'm not sure what value you would stand to get from it aside from a Boros Charm , Double Cleave , Waves of Aggression , Seize the Day or maybe a Austere Command .

You would basically do a spellslinger deck because you want to make sure you can hit an instant or a socery when he attacks, with Voltron aspects to make him threatening and and hope you can protect him enough to swing for lethal.

He won't fit in much else I don't think. He wants to be Blue so bad.

Neotrup on Does ((Sundial of the Infinite)) …

2 months ago

Slight correct, the phased out creature phases back in as part of Oubliette leaving play, it doesn't wait for state based actions to be checked. This means if a spell or ability is doing multiple things sequentially the creature returns during the resolution. Austere Command can destroy Oubliette then the creature it phased out.