Commander Deck Tech: Lady Octopus, Inspired Inventor

We all have our preferences. For instance, I don't really vibe with artifact decks because, in my view, they're the most overpowered card type in MTG, and I find them just a tad bit generic. On the other side, I really enjoy mono blue in Commander, particularly when it's different from what you usually see.

In today's article, we'll see how Lady Octopus, Inspired Inventor takes advantage of the best artifacts can offer in a way only mono blue can. Our main focus is a great commander from Marvel's Spider-Man who could also destroy some traditional 75-card formats if her opponents underestimate her.

I decided to write this article because I found Lady Octopus, Inspired Inventor quite interesting. We only need to put her in play, so she'll be one of the first cards we put in play early on nearly every time.

Her main ability centers around stacking ingenuity counters and card draw, which you'll naturally do a lot when you play blue anyway. To use it, you don't need to do anything unusual: just draw your first or second card each turn, not just your own. This restriction makes this commander balanced and prevents us from creating absurd amounts of value with infinite card draw engines, but we'll still be able to use it consistently without jumping through hoops.

However, these counters are useless if Lady Octopus, Inspired Inventor can't use them. So, her second ability turns them into ramp, as it lets us use them to cast artifacts directly from our hand for free. We can use this to play around expensive mana costs, so it goes really well in blue artifact strategies.

This commander creates value from drawing cards every turn (as she gives you counters) and by letting us put an array of artifacts on the board that would make Urza proud.

Unsurprisingly, this deck will center around artifacts and ways to draw cards so you can get the counters that let you play these artifacts for free. We'll use as a base this list by Hado, who really understood how this strategy works and built a very well-rounded version.

This is a bracket 3 Commander list, if you're wondering, and only uses one game changer: Urza, Lord High Artificer.

Let's see it:

Ramp and Acceleration

Whenever we build a mono blue artifact list, we need to turn its ramp disadvantage into an advantage by leaning heavily into a powerful colorless ramp lineup.

You'll find all the usual suspects in this version: Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Thran Dynamo, Gilded Lotus, and even extra land support like Buried Ruin.

Each of these pieces will accelerate our mana and prepare our board for the midgame, when Lady Octopus starts offering her mana cheat services more consistently.

To make our expensive artifacts even cheaper, this list also plays some traditional cost reducers for this strategy: Etherium Sculptor, Foundry Inspector, and Sapphire Medallion. With them, whatever we can't play through Lady Octopus won't be so heavy we can't play them at all.

Patriar's Seal may seem like a mana rock, but, in many cases, we'll actually use it to untap our commander.

Otherwise, cards like Urza, Lord High Artificer are always welcome. In this list, they are something between ramp and payoff, and make sure even the most basic artifacts can create value.

Card Draw

No matter which TCG you're playing, drawing cards is what makes every deck consistent, and it is possibly one of the strongest things any deck can do. In this strategy, drawing cards creates even more value, as cards like Preordain, Serum Visions, Opt, and Consider are not just cantrips that filter the top cards in our deck: they're also cheap, easy ways to interact with our commander and draw our first and second cards each turn.

All of these small spells are great ways to start, but, in longer matches, we'll need more reliable card draw engines.

Vedalken Archmage draws cards whenever we play an artifact, while Riddlesmith and Unctus, Grand Metatect are great ways to loot. They'll filter our hand and gas up Lady Octopus, Inspired Inventor.

Insight Engine and One with the Machine are truly overkill, as they draw multiple cards at once and fill our hand easily. With them, we'll have multiple options to play.

What most stood out to me about this deck is that it doesn't play anything like Thought Vessel so that we can keep as many cards in hand as we want. These effects are great ways to expand this strategy.

Reliquary Tower is the most straightforward land to do that, as it makes sure we never have to discard our hand and keeps it full even after we draw several cards in a row.

Library of Leng is similar, but it lets us put the cards we'd have to discard on the top of our deck instead. This goes really well with the loot effects we mentioned before.

Doubling Effects and Accelerators

Remember that I mentioned Patriar's Seal is a great way to untap Lady Octopus, Inspired Inventor, considering that, to use her ability, we need to tap her? Well, that obviously limits her potential. However, this deck has the tools to play around that.

Mirran Spy, Chakram Retriever, and Vizier of Tumbling Sands let us untap her consistently and give us a better chance of playing artifacts for free. Corridor Monitor's ETB does something similar, as it lets us reuse Lady Octopus's ability once again immediately.

We can use cards like Dramatic Reversal and Refocus on enemy turns to catch them off guard, considering we can use Lady Octopus, Inspired Inventor's effect on enemy turns. Furthermore, Refocus itself draws cards, which will also put a counter on her. In that sense, it will startle our opponents even more.

Untapping our commander is not the only way we can speed up our main game plan. Cards that interact with the artifacts on our board and create value are also great in this strategy.

Sai, Master Thopterist is a classic card if you want to create tokens. Whenever we cast an artifact, even if we do it through our commander's ability, this card will give us a flying 1/1 Thopter.

Simulacrum Synthesizer does something similar, but it rewards us for putting more artifacts in play with bigger and bigger Thopters. Meanwhile, Cybermen Squadron creates a snowball effect in this strategy, as it gives myriad to our nonlegendary artifacts and thus lets us multiply them in combat.

Control and Protection

This list is mostly proactive, but it obviously needs some interaction. Luckily for us, that is what blue does best.

Counterspell and Arcane Denial are classic ways to protect ourselves from any threat our opponents can throw at us. Aetherize resets the board and is particularly efficient when we're still setting up our board.

Spellskite does the same thing it did when it was popular in Modern. It redirects spells and abilities that could disrupt Lady Octopus or our other key cards.

Furthermore, pieces like Cryogen Relic are an interesting way to buy time, as they deal with problematic creatures and give us space to set up our game plan.

Meteor Golem and Cityscape Leveler play a similar role but are more direct. They simply destroy problematic permanents.

Threats and Win Conditions

We'll spend most of our time stacking counters, ramp, and cost reducers so that we can play our main, heavy cards. In fact, Darksteel Colossus, Platinum Emperion, Akroma's Memorial, Cyberdrive Awakener, and Cityscape Leveler quickly turn the game to our favor when we put them in play for free.

One of our most unique win conditions is Aetherflux Reservoir, which takes advantage of our cheap spells and the spells we cast for free to deal 50 damage to our enemies.

Akroma's Memorial makes our board a tad "inevitable", as it turns our creatures into an unstoppable avalanche. The aforementioned Cybermen Squadron, Simulacrum Synthesizer, and Sai, Master Thopterist are alternative win conditions. They'll create numerous tokens that, in turn, will benefit from the cost reducers and the other spells we play again and again.

Uthros, Titanic Godcore and Uthros Research Craft, straight from Edge of Eternities, make our late game even more powerful. The first one is actually a sort of new Tolarian Academy.

We also play a few win conditions for slower games with more attrition. Platinum Emperion deals with aggressive strategies, God-Pharaoh's Statue suffocates boards that rely on fast strategies, like spellslinging decks, and Planar Portal lets us turn mana into any answer or threat we need. Chimil, the Inner Sun and The Endstone, finally, punish opponents that let the game last too long.

We'll always try to play Lady Octopus early on, preferably on turn 1. The idea is to draw an extra card on the following turns and start stacking counters. From turn 3 onward, with the right cantrips and by drawing extra cards, we'll most likely already be putting 3 or 4 cost artifacts in play for free. With extra ramp and cost reducers, we can also just pay for our artifacts.

In the midgame, we'll have to find our first payoff cards, that is, either our big creatures or cards that create tokens, so we can start enjoying the fruits of our labor. At this point, we'll need protection to preserve our board, and one or two cards that untap our commander could change the course of the game entirely on a single turn.

In the late game, we want to make sure the game is ours. Very few decks will be able to handle the pressure when we start casting multiple heavy artifacts for free each turn, and this is when we'll start playing our win conditions so we can end the match.

I was looking for Lady Octopus lists on Moxfield and I found this one, created by Maupken for a Commander League with a 70 Euro budget.

It might play some expensive cards like Auton Soldier, but I believe it is interesting as a budget version. It also plays around with affinity a bit.

I was very surprised when I found out Lady Octopus didn't first show up in the Spider-Verse movie but rather in the Clone Saga, a long time ago. Then I learned this Universes Beyond set only includes characters from the comics, as they didn't get the rights for characters from other Spider-Man media. As disappointing as it was, there's actually a lot we can explore in Marvel's Spider-Man.

What do you think? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below.

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!