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BOOM, Headshot (Wakeen EDH)

Commander / EDH* Bracket 1 Burn Goblins RW (Boros) Tokens

Jokulmorder1

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Sorcery (19)

Enchantment (8)

Artifact (8)

Land (39)

Creature (10)

Commander (1)

Commander: Taii Wakeen, Perfect Shot

Instant (16)

Maybeboard

Instant (3)

Creature (2)

Sorcery (2)

  • Archetype: Burn
  • Subthemes: Goblin typal
  • Planar Flavor: Zendikar, Lorwyn, Dominaria
  • Basic Land Art: Dusty, scrubby, arid

Theory Corner

The red deck wins archetype has enjoyed years of popularity in most 1v1 constructed formats, but was basically unplayable in commander until fairly recently. As of Thunder Junction there are two general burn commander archetypes, what I call "buffing" and "rewarding." Obosh and Imodane punch up burn spells by raising their damage output, helping them scale to the larger creatures and life totals of commander. Meanwhile, commanders like Neheb, the Eternal and Aegar reward you for casting burn spells by converting damage into resources like cards and mana.

Taii Wakeen breaks the mold by doing a little of column A and a little of column B, and does so in a way that nudges you toward a more offbeat burn deck. While many initial impressions on Reddit focused on Taii's second ability for its similarity to Ojer Axonil   and Ghyrson Starn), people do be sleeping on that first abil: Taii rewards you handsomely for dealing damage to your opponents' creatures equal to their toughness. We don't necessarily want damage doublers to obliterate opposing creatures, we want to land headshots.

Game Plan

In the early game, our goal is to get Taii down and start headshotting creatures. Try not to make too many enemies at this stage by killing commanders or key utility creatures, but a lot of folks will have expendable early creatures they won't shed a tear over losing. If you're unsure, it may not hurt to ask. Play your cards right and keep a low profile—as a bonus, the deck's board presence is relatively small.

The various 1-damage board clears can happily be cast at base value to pick off one or two small creatures and cantrip, or get buffed by Taii for a massive board wipe. We also have a lot of goblin tokens that remain at 1 toughness (no gods or masters here), so symmetrical 1-damage sweepers can farm cards off our own creatures as well.

When the cards start flowing, you can dig for a source of recurring damage Taii can buff to close out the game. Dumping a whole turn's mana into Taii's second ability with something like Raid Bombardment or Impact Tremors on the field can wrap things up in a hurry.

Sort by Custom to view burn spells by the minimum amount of damage they can deal creatures. Spells that allow you to deal divided or variable damage are found at base 1 as that's the floor of what they're capable of. Burn cards like Guttersnipe that can't hit creatures are tagged simply as Burn, because Taii can still boost these effects to lethal heights.

Rules Corner

Maybe you want to cast two X spells in one turn and boost them for all you've got with Taii. That's great, but don't make the mistake of casting them with X=0: zero damage is not an amount of damage, which means Taii can't boost them. You need to commit at least 1 to each X cost.

Remember, to trigger Taii's first ability, you just need to deal noncombat damage equal to the creature's toughness in one shot. That means you still draw from headshotting indestructible creatures. She can even draw a card for headshotting...herself. (You do not draw for "finishing off" a damaged creature evenly, eg. 1 damage to a 3/3 with 2 marked on it).

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Revision 29 See all

(6 months ago)

-1 Aurelia's Fury main
-1 Boros Fury-Shield main
+1 Keldon Megaliths main
-1 Mountain main
+1 Play of the Game main
-1 Wind-Scarred Crag main