The Blue One (URG)

All good (or generally ok with some flashes of "slightly better") things must come to an end and thus we line up the Fifth and last of our Preconstructed Commander Deck reviews: the URG deck in the Blue packaging, Mirror Mastery.

Strategy

Copy and paste. Copy your spells and creatures with Riku and paste your opponets with them. In practice, it may be a little more conplex, but that's the basic idea.

And it's a good idea. Any creature is better when it's got a copy of itself sitting alongside but when that creature is a Simic Sky Swallower or similiar, you're talking great value. Two very synergistic legends in Riku & Animar and a lot of fun tricks with their abilities and the stack.


There's very little that is bad about Riku. You could argue that, 1.) given the huge mana demands he automatically generates, he's a little too expensive at 5cmc and 2.) I have a little niggle with the spell copying ability (that is, it being just "Copy that spell" rather than "you may play a copy of thet spell") but, all in all, he's a huge engine in a little body. Now, the counter arguament to my niggles are equally valid: 1.) He's expensive so that he's not too dominating, you're required to invest in him fully, and 2.) What? Did you want him to do your laundry, fetch your shopping and make you a cup of joe too?

My small niggles are essentially only to have something to detract from what is otherwise all upside. He slices, he dices, he spawns, he copies. As all of us in a relationship know, going solo is ok, but having a partner is a lot more exciting. Riku provides this by playing in a most excellent way with himself.

That.....came out wrong.
 

You get a non-token creature into play (note that it's not "play a creature spell"), pay a little extra and suddenly it's National Twins day. A Llanowar Elf is nice, two is better. Same for spells: A Cultivate is nice, two is better, etc., etc. That's the basics. In the Riku deck, you should be expecting to copy Simic Sky Swallowers, Prophetic Bolts and, repeatedly, Call the Skybreaker each time getting an extra 6/6 Shroud Flying Trample, 8 damage with 2 Impulse attached or lots of 5/5 fliers.

Or a pair of Nom Nom Hydras.

Also included in the deck is a spattering of Evoke creatures. While the seemingly obvious Mulldrifter is surprisingly missing (possibly because he's a little too good if you have means to copy and recur him repeatedly and you do, in a limited fashion) the strategy is fundamently sound: Pay less with evoke, copy the incoming creature, get the Kiss-Cool effect of the original and the copy, allow the original to die and keep the copy in play. So, for the missing Mulldrifter you'd pay 2GUU rather than 4U to get 4 cards and a flying 2/2 rather than 2 cards and a flying 2/2. What? You're not even paying more,just tapping your mana differently? In-sane.


The deck designers realised that the deck was very mana hungry so, at first glance, there's a lot of land-cyclers, Elvish Abberations and other cards like Magus of the Vineyard or Veteran Explorer, more often seen in Hug decks, that seem horrible but they are really very much in their element. You have to ramp your mana and this deck will do that, even if it's helping other players as it does so. Collective Voyage, a new "New Frontiers", is another example of getting the mana & to hell with the consequences because the upside of all this is that, once you have the mana, you are the best deck at the table because everything you cast is doing double duty.

Potentially excellent cards include anything that will boost your own mana exclusively rather than help out everyone else; Seedborn Muse seems like it could be very, very strong; Mulldrifter (did I mention him?) is an obvious exclusion and really should be added right away.


The huge "downside", if you will, is that this Riku deck, while being hella-fun to play, is very, very mana hungry. The packaged deck addresses this in it's own way but that will not appeal to those players who abhor giving opponents a hand up, whatever the circumstances.

Not a Fierce Empath

Secondly, a couple of thing need to go right for you to win. You need to get your mana up to about the 7-9 mark and have Riku in play. Then you need spells and creatures that will be worth copying and, in addition, provide some card value when you play them. That may sound like a lot, but when your last card is a Fierce Empath (which you copy) to get a Nucklavee & something else, you'll start seeing why. Or rather, if that last card wasn't a Fierce Empath, you'd rather it had been.


The next "issue" with Riku is not just that he's mana hungry, he's very colour mana intensive. Both his abilities and the spells/creatures you're casting require a colour investment of at least 3 coloured mana, likely more for CC spells: UX+Spell. What this essentially means is that accellerating colourless mana is not really the road you want to take unless your upper curve is all Eldrazi & artifacts. This necesitates you to run a fair number of land searching spells which, especially if copied, can get you out of the starting blocks. But you need to hit them early because drawing everything the wrong way round would be a drag.

You're starting to see the downsides but in reality, it just takes one or two of the right kind of cards early on to get you rolling and, when Riku gets rolling, you'll start having fun with the deck. Build a tight deck around Riku and this shouldn't be an issue. The last two "bad" points of the sealed product are the inclusion of two strategies generally held in very low regard within the EDH community: LD & Tuck. Ruination and a couple of other LD creatures feature as does the new Hinder. This is not going to go down well if the current view on both tactics holds true.


The Legends

A couple of things to note about our lead legend Riku: He puts a copy of an Instant/Sorcery directly onto the stack so he'll not help your storm count. This comes up because there's a Storm spell in the deck, Hunting Pack. In addition, when you play Hunting Pack and choose to copy it, you'll get just once copy, not a copy with accompanying Storm trigger. This is so contrary to what the deck is trying to achieve that it's a wonder they included it (unless to illustrate exactly that point).

Next is his inability to copy tokens that enter under your control, which begs the question about whether Call the Skybreaker wasn't also chosen to illustrate exactly this though it makes sense to avoid silly loops. Conversely, any spell that brings a creature directly into play from any zone can be copied as can both creatures brought into play in this manner. A clear example of what to do when you have UUURGGX open and are otherwise at a loss for what to do with it!

At 2/2 he needs to be protected though so think hard about that when switching up the deck.

Lots has been written about Edric already so there's not a huge amount to be added here. In multiplayer games featuring players who put a premium on card drawing, he's brilliant and he will force attacks just so players can draw cards, best of all, those attacks will be going elsewhere.

If there's a token horde out though, and it's not yours, think twice about throwing Edric out as a blocker as there's some cards advantage that will inevitably equal too much card advantage!

He's going to be huge heading up token decks of your own so I'm looking forward to an Elf Rogue deck!

Maybe a general for a different deck, Animar still has his place in here by helping you out on those creature mana costs as the game goes on. In fact, in the right metagame, he could be quite explosive as protection from White & Black are extremely relevant abilities and he will also benefit from any sort of +1/+1 counter or Proliferate strategy.

Get a few markers on him and your Blightsteel Colossus could be costing 6 or 7 mana. Scarily, if you also have Riku in play, for a mere UG more you'll have 2 Colossii....

Shrieking Drake, Palindron and all sorts of Shennanigans are probably  extremely happy with Animar's appearance but hopefully all that will get very old, very quickly and we can get on with non-insta-win Commander.



The New
Spell Crush, have I mentioned it already, golly gee!! It's in here too as is Ruination. Tuck & Mass LD: two of the most hated strategies in the format. In addition, with Riku in play, it's as good as certain that the original or a copy or either will resolve.

Some cards come along and are harbingers of new decks and strategies, some are upgrades of existing cards and some are metagame defining. Homeward Path is one of the latter. A colourless, free answer to any sort of creature stealing strategy, this must be dealt with before any shennanigans can ensue.

Is the extra step to control or destroy the Path sufficient to stall those kinds of decks? I think that it will be relevant more often than not. From having played a lot of Memnarch/Shackles, it would pain me to be required to steal or destroy a land before I could start ripping off everyone's creatures. A very solid addition with no drawback as it's available to every colour.

Geth, Shackles, Bribery, Debtor's Knell: This is your Nemesis!! (or speedbump!)

In this specific sealed product, a deck that wants it's lands in play rather than in exile, this seems like a strange choice. In addition, for the ability to be in any way relevant, the number of exiled land must be superior to six as the exiled land count replaces the printed P/T, not adds to it. Here, it's relevant because there's no LD in any of the other Pre-cons and a couple of trampling 10's could be used to seal the deal.

That said, huge, trampling beast is huge, trampling beast. An interesting card that could have a place in a gutsy Mana Severance deck or metas that continue to eschew land destruction.

Also, the strange additional rules niggle is the order or resolving the triggers: do you get a 6/6 with additional land-search or a 12/12 with additional land search?

Force of Magma: Yes! Red finally gets it's very own Force of Nature with 3 damage replacing the Saproling token (and not some lame "gain 3 life" clause). The Riku flavour text titillates with dreams of having two in play at once. It is repeating damage and a decent, if chumpable, body for 8 mana.

The only niggle (I'm allowed another niggle, amn't I?) is that 3 damage isn't really very much.

Yes, I'm greedy!!

Here he is, Nom-Nom Hydra, the one you've been waiting for, the new (almost) best green creature in Commander (ok, Primeval Titan is kinda hard to knock off the top rung but even the idea that he could compete is exciting, isn't it?!) The only thing keep this off the top, and that's a very big claim, is the lack of Trample but, hey, you're in green, how hard could it be? On any given table, there's someone you want to kill but is too well entrenched. In those situations and there's generally means to damage one of your other opponents, especially if you figure out the trample part.

What Nom-Nom Hydra gives you is a way to kill player A by killing player B. Any sort of evasion and boost on this guy is worth the slot which is evidently where the idea to include Colossal Might in the deck came from as it solves both issues. I'd have happily gone for the more resillient Rancor except that Colossal Might is Riku-able and almost certain to resolve at least once on one or, heaven forfend, both of your Nom-Noms.

And don't let that 8 attack fool you, it's really 8*#opponents, so, about 24 usually. A 24/8 for 4GG? What are you smoking?!


Summary:
This is a planning, tricksy, thinky kind of deck that URG mages will love and finally, with Riku, there's a general worth playing in those colours. You also get Animar who will spawn multiple decks of his own. This is far and away my favourite preconstructed Commander deck, and not just for the content in the decks, the style & challenges speak to me as a deck-builder much more than the others.

And there's Nom-Nom Hydra.

Top 5 non-legends (in no particular order):
Mana-Charged Dragon
Martyr's Bonds
Hydra Omnivore
Homeward Path
Stranglehold

Honourable Mention: Command Tower

 Top 5 Legend (again in no particular order):
Vish Kal
Riku
Animar
The Mimeoplasm
Edric