The Lab Maniac Commander - Kess, Dissident Mage

Hello my dears!  All right with you?  My name is Fogaça and I'm here again to talk about Commander. Last week our article dealt with Storm's archetype related to Spellslinger's idea from Commander Mizzix of the Izmagnus, but the most interesting thing about this was a comment on the deck page, where we talked about the evolution of Storm to Kess, Dissident Mage. This fact intrigued me, since I have a different conception of Kess than the Storm itself, and so today I will bring you a build of this beautiful lady based on the darling of the cEDH - Laboratory Maniac.

INITIAL CONCEPTIONS

Our friend Human Mago has a unique ability for Magic - recently getting a friend to share it (Jace, Wielder of Mysteries) –, but what really makes it what it is in Commander is the set of your CMC with its type and other features that are combined with the skill itself. The idea of ​​the archetype built around the Maniac is to empty our library to buy a card with him in the field, thus using massive and unbalanced effects that would not work alone.

DECK CONSTRUCTION

Several constructions can be made with Color Pie variations, one of the most consistent being the combination with Kess, Dissident Mage, where the focus of the list will be to use low cost spells and reuse them from our graveyard to gain advantage in the game,  while controlling our opponents. Our feature pack will include tutors and static effects that prevent opponents from playing, as well as overrides and removals that we may also use to protect ourselves. We can highlight three specific situations of this deck, which are the use of cost reducers to increase the advantage we will get, the presence of low cost mana stones to give consistency to our early game and the option of cards like Snapcaster Mage and Mission Briefing to maximize the instant and spells we will purchase during the match. Noteworthy, too, is the presence of rituals to increase the number of spells cast in one turn, giving the first rounds a bigger explosion - allied with the mana stones.

Talking more about the win condition itself, we will have two main methods for taking advantage of our pair - we can exile our entire deck with Tainted Pact or Demonic Consultation by naming a nonexistent card on our list or using the classic Doomsday Final to ease our task of exhausting the library. If we use Doomsday, we will have some specific cards to put in the stacks, depending on the way the game is conducted previously;  We have some examples of batteries:

Option 1

1. Gush; 2. Frantic Search; 3. Pact of Negation; 4. Gitaxian Probe; 5. Laboratory Maniac.

Option 2

1. Gush; 2. Frantic Search; 3. Unearth; 4. Gitaxian Probe; 5. Laboratory Maniac.

Opção 3

1. Gitaxian Probe; 2. Predict; 3. Laboratory Maniac. 4. Unearth; 5. Street Wraith. The stacks are based on a reality where we will not have access to Lion's Eye Diamond and Yawgmoth's Will, thus requiring mana to be effective beyond the classic initial cantrip. The first one is for a game where we will not have any cancellations in hand, now having access to one of these cards; the second and third are based on discarding our maniac and lowering its cost using Unearth, so we can use a removal or nullification present in our hand. We see in the lists of the category that benefit from the interaction with the cemetery (fact before already quoted), therefore, it is interesting to point out that cards like Rest in Peace and Relic of Progenitus are worthy of concern for our strategy, although not necessarily beat silver bolts against us.

REPLACEMENT OF HIGH VALUE CARDS

As in the case of Geist of Saint Traft, the cost of Mana matters a lot for the choice of each card, however, as we have a control feature, we can replace cards as Mago da Conjuração-relâmpago based on the samely as the Arqueomande example. To change our mana base, focus on land that have the same color identity of the replaced and who walk in when we need.

WHERE TO START?

Being the deck center-focused on Maníaco, he and Jace should be the first cards obtained along with DD and his piles. After that, Tainted Pact and Demonic Consultation will provide the necessary consistency with the tutors and purchase options for which we choose. Control functions are secondary in purchase priority, being something else for Kess.

CONCLUSION

With all this information in hand, we can conclude that we do not necessarily have to stereotype each commander in a single game mode, even in the ECHR. That's all for today. Thanks to everyone who has been following this series of articles and I ask you always leave your feedback to keep improving. See you next time, my dears!