The cEDH archetypes #03 - Underworld Storm

Hello my friends! How are you? My name is Fogaça and I'm here to talk about Commander. Last week, our series covered how a compact and high-value parts combo can affect the metagame, just as it would be almost a mistake to not use it on the strongest decks. Today, our discussion will be on a newcomer to cEDH, which has now allowed the decks to maximize their best magic: today is the day to talk about Underworld Breach.

THE COMBO

As I said before, the idea of Underworld Breach is not necessarily to be tied to a combo itself. Since our two-mana enchantment allows us to reuse our graveyard in a way that corrects the main problem of Yawgmoth's Will and Past in Flames (the fact that we exile spells after resolving), we open a new space for lists where consistency becomes cyclical, in a way where there is no downside for obtaining resources, in addition to taking advantage of traditional options from the format (such as the usage of fetchlands) as a fuel for our plans. Explaining in a practical way: we can mill and discard without mercy, in addition to having the option to reuse the same effect over and over again, reaching the full potential of a card (after all, who wouldn't want to use a Demonic Tutor over and over again , for example). Beyong the deck recycling and retrofitting aspect of a card with so little drawback and so low mana cost, we still have the upgrade of some loops based on it, which as in the previous article use cards of great individual value , in order to add another option for players and feeding the escape mechanics during the game. The Breach lines with Wheel of Fortune and Lion's Eye Diamond, for example, puts together an excellent mana stone and a very efficient draw spell in a combo that, incidentally, ends up happening (the same goes for interactions with rituals and tutors).

COMMANDERS

Basically, any commander in red can take advantage of the addition of Underworld Breach to his construction, however, only a few manage to use its potential for value and combos in a synergistic way with the it's decks idea.

When our concepts are subjective, it is difficult to explain what exactly I try to say, but in this case, Kykar, Wind's Fury exemplifies what we want. Imagine a deck where we play a ton of cards for the graveyard, having few cards of real individual value, with a build designed to dig them out as quickly as possible. It is simple to think that the generation of mana promoted by the commander causes us to ignore the explosive restrictions that other generals would provide us, in addition to allowing the same card to be recycled more and more times.

Again, you showing up here? For sure! The idea is to use a control shell, like the one we already know, but this time adding one more option to increase the deck's linearity and give redundancy to our commander's ability.

At some point we will talk about how the "Thieves & Wheels" builds work, but, as we can imagine, a card that allows reuse of the deck and that promotes a combo line with a characteristic piece of the archetype (in this case, Wheel of Fortune ), enter any self-respecting Opus Thief list.

VARIATIONS

In addition to being able to use the wheels to our advantage, we also make our lives easier by replacing the old Aetherflux Storm with the traditional Storm: a simple idea that consists of matching Lion's Eye Diamond with Grapeshot or Brain Freeze (the latter matches very well with Thassa's Oracle).

HONORABLE MENTIONS

The more I talk about Underworld Breach, the more I need to highlight the role of tutors here. Let's think about the following line: • Demonic Tutor for Underworld Breach; • Underworld Breach, recast Demonic Tutor and fetch for a piece from any combo; • Tutor again, fetching another piece of this same combo; • Close the game with the said combo. Can you see the potential of this? From a single card we went for an easy and consistent victory, even if at considerable mana cost. Anyway, the point is that we have the potential to search for anything as many times as necessary. At this point, we should also consider Gamble, as it does not matter to us whether the card that will end the game is played from our hand or from the graveyard.

BUDGET ALTERNATIVES

The lowest monetary cost alternatives for combos with Underworld Breach are related to a greater number of cards involved, usually featuring Lotus Petal, Rite of Flame, Dark Ritual, Grapeshot and Brain Freeze.

CONCLUSION

I feel that I might have not exposed clearly enough the main idea I wanted to show. So here it is: a card with a combo potential and such a high value cannot be left out of a deck that can have it, and that fact can make Underworld Breach overcome Demonic Consultation and Tainted Pact in usability. However, this is only possible if each move is well played and the other 99 cards in the deck are optimized in the direction for doing so. That's it for today. I ask you to leave your feedback so that we can always improve. This series aims to address only a part of an extremely diverse format, so I invite you to subscribe to my channel on YouTube, where I talk more about Commander, not only competitive, but also in other varieties, as well as about other formats. Until next time, my friends!