Commander Oracles: Flashy Fixation

Hello, internet, my name is Blue, and today I want to talk about an archetype in commander that got a little bit better with Ikoria. Recently on our podcast, Brandon and I went over some of the new cards from the set and I talked a little bit about the Flash support pieces that got printed, like Slitherwisp and Cunning Nightbonder. While I didn’t go over them in Commander, I did talk quite a bit about them at length for Constructed. Today, I’ll be remedying the exclusion of Commander from that discussion by going over the entire flash archetype, from other support pieces to the best colors, to the payoffs to actually doing this kind of strategy! Without holding you up any longer, let’s get into it starting with the support!

Support Pieces

So with any commander deck regardless of strategy, you need support to facilitate the gameplan. In Aristocrats, this would be your sacrifice outlets. In Reanimator, these would be your discard outlets. Flash is no different. Here, you want two different kinds of support pieces. The first is ways to give your spells Flash with things like Leyline of Anticipation. This is so the cards in your deck that don’t naturally have Flash can still be cast at the same speed as the rest of the deck for maximum trickery and efficiency. The second is mana. You want to have as much mana as possible during your opponent’s turn so you have the widest array of answers and tricks available at any time. Of course, just having mana isn’t enough. I’m talking about cards like Seedborn Muse and Awakening. These cards untap all of your lands during each turn so you can have answers available for every single opponent practically at all times.

Some additional options. I know Prophet is banned, but I thought I’d mention it since it serves both purposes stated above. If your playgroup allows you to play with banned cards, Prophet should 100% be included.

Payoffs

Next, let’s talk about why you should play this archetype. Obviously, it naturally gravitates towards a pretty controlling gameplan, so if you like to hold up countermagic and removal all the time, this style of deck is definitely something you’d be interested in, but as far as cards, there are several powerhouses that make you want to play Magic mostly on opponent’s turns. Some include the aforementioned Slitherwisp and Cunning Nightbonder. One gives you a discount on your spells with Flash while also making them uncounterable and the other draws you cards when you cast spells with Flash. Both of these are huge as it can allow you to win a counter war with a Frilled Mystic or stay ahead on resources as you take on your opponents with 1-to-1 resources. Additionally, there are cards that do things during your opponent’s turn, like Wavebreak Hippocamp and Faerie Tauntings. Though they both have small effects, they can add up quickly over a game.

Colors

You probably noticed through this that I’ve covered almost exclusively green, blue, Simic, and Dimir cards. That’s because I believe Sultai is the best color combination for this. All the support is there. There’s a handful of white cards I think are worth looking into if you wanted to try going 4-color, but I don’t think playing white is worth cutting any of the other colors for. That being said, there’s not really anything from red that’s exciting for the archetype so I personally wouldn’t bother trying to play red unless you really want to do 5-color.

Flash Cards

We’re almost done, but first, the meat of the deck: the cards with Flash. There’s a lot, so I’m just going to go over the most important packages of them. I’d say the counterspell package is the most important. Cards like Mystic Snake and Frilled Mystic can help you deal with troublesome spells that your removal can’t answer and they leave a body behind. You could just play regular counterspells if you wanted, but playing them on creature bodies means they serve as a threat, a blocker, and they trigger your cards that specifically interact with cards with Flash. Next would be the card draw. There are quite a few cards with Flash that draw cards one way or another, whether it’s something like Spectral Sailor with an activated ability or Dictate of Kruphix as a triggered ability, there’s enough to dedicate a package to it. For the last of the ones I want to cover, there are several Flash creatures that serve as huge threats, whether it’s one big card like Lochmere Serpent or an army-in-a-can like Nightpack Ambusher. These cards will overrun a game and can make it difficult for the opponents.

Potential Commanders

Finally, the good part: so, I’ve mostly gone over Sultai cards but the color combination doesn’t really have a Commander to support the Flash archetype, so I’d recommend using the best one for your generic purposes. I personally prefer Tasigur, the Golden Fang because the ability is relevant and it’s not impossible to cast him fairly regularly because of Delve. Alternatively, if you wanted to play Esper, I’d recommend Chromium, the Mutable since he naturally has Flash and can trigger all of your Flash support cards from the command zone and he’s easy to protect. I would advise against this though since green provides too many goodies to pass up.

Wrap-Up

Normally I wouldn’t provide decklists so you can interpret my information however you’d like but since the cards for this style of a deck are relatively complicated to find due to most of them having all kinds of different wordings, I will provide one this time. You can find the specific decklist I used during this article here. I tend to build my decks with fully functional mana bases and a full suite of tutors, so if you budget out the lands, drop Three Visits, and cut Vampiric Tutor, you can get this specific list down pretty cheap. Probably around $200 or so. I know that’s still quite a bit, but most of that is in the flexible cards like Damnation so you wouldn’t have to cut any of the meat of the deck to make it budget.

Anyway, that’s enough of my rambling for today. Did you enjoy the deck? Let me know on Twitter @TheRealBlueMTG and follow the site @MTGOracle to keep up with everything we do here! That’s all for now! This is Blue, Signing out!