Seascape in the Morning by Simon de Vlieger (1640-1645). Stormtide Leviathan by Karl Kopinski.
It's time to say goodbye to Sea Monsters and all things Simic and take another look at a deck I've written about before here in Commanderruminations.
If you're a regular reader you may remember that as a way to deal with a troublesome mono-blue Wizards deck I built "Saskia Screw Blue". It was a rework of Saskia with a single purpose - to screw with blue players as much as possible. I ran as much blue hate as I could find and I think the deck was a success.
There was one small problem, however. I didn't enjoy playing it.
It wasn't actually a good deck. It was a trick deck. Its trick was to blow up islands and screw around with anyone playing blue, making it so that hopefully someone else would wind up winning the table. That's the kind of trick that is amusing at first, as most blue players deserve a little screwing with now and again, but it gets old fast.
I have lots of decks, so Saskia Screw Blue has been gathering dust. I have lots of better decks and lots of more interesting decks, and any deck I've been working on (I'm always working on something) will always get more love than something old and tired.
The other problem is that I genuinely don't like targeting someone. Half the time I wound up second-guessing my choice. When you do pick someone with Saskia, they may be getting extra damage but they also have a sworn enemy and will focus on you with everything they've got. I don't like making enemies when I don't have to, and I don't like being locked in on one opponent.
There are some things I do like about Saskia. I like having the chance to focus extra damage when I need to. I like having her in the Command Zone as a potential threat and a reason for opponents to not mess with you.
Today I'm going to talk about my plans for Saskia. I think it'll be way, way more fun than Saskia Screw Blue ever was.
Cat... Dragons?
In May of this year we saw leaked cards from the Commander 2017 decks. They showed us that one of the decks was going to be a 5/color Dragon tribal deck. I've already written extensively about Ramos, Dragon Engine but that's not the only dragon that caught my eye.
This little fellow was pretty intriguing.
Wait... that's not right.
Wasitora, Nekoru Queen is neat enough.
She's a 5/4 with flying and trample - that's not nothing, but this isn't the card I'm excited about.
THIS is the card I'm excited about!
I'm excited enough about these adorable little kitten-dragonlets that I'm tempted to build an entire deck around Wasitora.
I'm not super optimistic that if I built this it would be much of a powerhouse. I may circle back to a build around Wasitora as the commander, but right now let's look at that adorable token. If we want to make a deck that can create these little 3/3's, without running Wasitora as our commander, we'll have to build a deck with Black, Red and Green in the commander's color identity.
Hold that thought, because in early July we got another leak.
The second Commander 2017 deck is going to be Cat tribal!
Enter Arahbo
My prediction of four 5/c decks looks to have been off the mark. We will be getting a 5/c dragons deck but from the look of Arahbo, Roar of the World the cat tribal deck is going to be 2/c in green and white.
It's kind of hard to read, but Arahbo looks like a pretty decent cat tribal commander.
My problem is that I now want to buy this deck and I want to play Wasitora in it so that my cat dragons are where they truly belong - in a cat tribal deck.
Unfortunately, there are rules we have to follow and you can't just run a GW deck with a BRG commander, nor can you run a BRG card in a GW deck.
It's possible that when the full Arahbo deck is previewed, I'll like it so much that I'll be happy to run it as-is with no changes. I've got a funny feeling that even if I do run the deck as-is, I'll eventually want to screw around with it and I'll always want Wasitora in the mix.
Fortunately, I have a solution and it's one you have probably guessed by now.
Saskia, the Crazy Cat Lady
Let's take another look at Saskia.
She's really a pretty strong commander. Folks have built decent mid-range decks around her. Certainly no one ever wants you to cast her and name them.
There's no reason to send her to the rare binder. She's got GW in her color identity so she can herd my cats, and BRG in her color identity so she can also handle Wasitora and try to oversee the creation of lots of adorable little kitten-dragonlet tokens. It's probably unwise to plan out an entire deck around Wasitora when we have no clue what's going to be in the GW Cat Tribal deck, but I think we can make a few plans at this early juncture.
The Basics
The good news is that we're probably going to be able to take the Cat Tribal deck and run fairly large portions of it with no changes. We may be going 4/c but if we're trying to build cat tribal with Saskia at the helm I'm guessing the C17 deck will have a ton of basic stuff in it already. WBRG may be our color range but WG should be spoken for fairly nicely.
That should mean that our ramp and our card draw will hopefully be in decent shape without too much work on our part. We may even find ourselves struggling to cut cards. I'm probably not going to be happy running a 4/c deck as a 2/c deck with a tiny splash of BR so let's look at what we might want to throw in.
The Red
There are cats in every color - even blue, but the preponderance of them are definitely in GW. In red we've got a few interesting options.
Blistering Firecat could be a nice surprise to spring after a boardwipe, and if we can cast it and Saskia at the same time that means someone without blockers might get hit for 20 damage. Marisi's Twinclaws is in Naya, and with enough pump it might be a fun little dude to throw in. Rubblebelt Maaka doubles as an instant speed combat trick. Sabertooth Alley Cat both provides us with a way to get damage through and makes us wonder who was naming cards back in the day. Slash Panther might be one of the best of these five, as if you're willing to pay 2 life it doesn't matter what lands your 4/c deck has on the board - you can cast it with any colors.
Sadly, none of these are spectacular. There's a reason the precon cat tribal deck is Selesnya (GW), but I'll probably be hard put not to include at least a few of these in the deck.
The Black
Black brings us a few black cats including the aptly named "Black Cat" who might get in just for being pretty darn cute for a zombie cat.
Mirri the Cursed is both strong and perfectly on theme for this deck. Undead Leotau is expensive can be pumped from a 3/4 up to a 6/1 if we've got enough red mana. Rakshasa Deathdealer was a strong card when it was in rotation and could be a strong card in this deck as well. Rakshasa Gravecaller can make zombies, which isn't exactly what we're trying to do with this deck. My favorite Rakshasa card is Rakshasa Vizier, but the blue in its casting cost means that sadly, it isn't even an option.
Some of these are decent and I'll probably at least try to build 4/c cats rather than 2/c cats with random red and black cards thrown in.
Extras
When you're adding colors to a precon you wind up with lots of staples that become an option. I could throw in my Damnation, Endless Scream, some red burn spells, or any of dozens of other cards that could shape this into a fun and effective deck. There are lots of tribal options that are good but uninteresting like Adaptive Automaton, Brass Herald and Coat of Arms. They should probably be considered but they aren't exploring our new colors and to put it simply, they don't have anything to do with kitties.
Triumph of the Hordes doesn't have anything to do with kitties either, but I'll be hard pressed not to consider including it in our deck. Cat tribal isn't going to be that strong and having ways to finish our opponents is important. Triumph will sometimes let us finish a whole table in one turn. Shared Animosity might be too expensive to warrant serious consideration for a janky tribal deck but it's gold in decks like these and should be looked at. Firecat Blitz is another way to deal out a bunch of damage after a boardwipe and have the damage doubled if we've got Saskia out. If there's a way to generate infinite mana... well, I don't expect Wizards will put something like that in their precon decks but that would be a wincon unless we run into a fog. Roar of the Crowd is a nice little bit of tribal removal if we've got a big enough board of cats and Tribal Unity both pumps our creatures and has tigers on it. Yes, in this case both of those facts are equally relevant.
I expect I'm going to want to run a lot of boardwipes in this deck. One of our biggest hopes is to make those cat dragon tokens so if our opponents have no creatures Wasitora can make her precious little tokens. Also, boardwipes are something I don't build with often enough. This may be the kind of deck that will really benefit from them if we have the mana to be able to take advantage of an open board. It's a pity Wasitora doesn't have haste...
If the cards I've shown you so far aren't overwhelming, that's because taking a perfectly good Selesnya cat tribal precon and shoehorning black and red cards into it may well make it worse, not better. That doesn't mean we probably aren't going to do it anyways, but we should be honest about what's going on here.
The Closer
I haven't talked much about Saskia yet. She has no built-in cat synergy but she will bring a lot to the party if I play her the right way. I think that means keeping her on the sidelines, admonishing my opponents for messing with my kitties and warning them that they shouldn't make Crazy Cat Lady Saskia angry. This deck will be as much about having fun with the social side of the game as it will be about winning.
In many games she'll play the role of the "closer" in baseball. That would be a pitcher who comes in at the end of the game to finish things up. When we have a single opponent remaining Saskia will need to hit the table. If one player is setting up a strong pillow-fort, that might also be a reason to get her out early, but we're going to try to resist the temptation to just run her out as early as possible. That commander tax needs to stay at zero so when we do play her, we hopefully have the mana to do something else on that turn as well.
We're going to build this deck to be as strong as we can so that it can hopefully keep us in the game and survive the elimination of a few of our opponents. Saskia has haste. We can wipe the board or watch someone else wipe the board and then hit any opponent unable to rebuild for at least 6 damage out of the blue and still have a blocker available because she also has vigilance. We're in black so we may be able to pump her and give her infect on that turn if we're not paying any commander tax. Maybe we'll be able to throw some firecats into the post-wrath field to finish off an opponent.
With the rationale that Saskia will come out to avenge any of her precious cats killed by my opponents, I think this has the potential to be a lot more fun than Saskia Screw Blue. Whether I make the precon better or worse as a result is another question entirely. Hopefully it will be both fun and better.
Final Thoughts
Any suggestion that I write these blog posts as an excuse to make goofy magic-related artwork is... well, it's entirely reasonable.
This week was one of those weeks where the lack of a fully spoiled C17 Cat Tribal deck really did make it a challenge to be able to properly explore this idea but I hope I've entertained and maybe even put some ideas in other deckbuilders' heads.
As for Saskia...
I couldn't resist the temptation of making another proxy card. Unlike my Ramos proxy, this one is decidedly goofy and fun.
Meet Saskia, the Crazy Cat Lady!
Yes, it's the artwork of the Crazy Cat Lady from The Simpsons.
I'll probably print this out, spray-mount it on a bad magic card and sleeve it up for when I play this deck. I'll keep the real Saskia with the deck as well in case anyone wants me to use that instead.
As always, I hope you've enjoyed this week's installment of Commanderruminations! Next week I'm probably going to write about how I'm building Neheb the Eternal. Yes - we're bringing burn back to EDH!
Thanks for reading!