Commander Clash S3 Episode 13: Core Sets!

Hello and welcome to Commander Clash, a video series where several MTGGoldfish contributors battle in a four player Commander game for fun and bragging rights. Tom is back from vacation and joins us again for some sweet games. This week we are celebrating the recent announcement that core sets will be returning by building decks around a commander that has been printed in a core set (not a corset!) before. Here's what we came up with:

• Tom pilots an unorthodox Mono Blue Mill deck led by Ambassador Laquatus
• Jennifer transforms her little tokens into giant threats with Jalira, Master Polymorphist
• Seth jumps through flaming hoops to kill everyone with Phage the Untouchable without dying to her himself
• Tomer plays "Phoenix Tribal," looting for sweet card advantage while everything he discards returns to his hand, with Squee, Goblin Nabob

Can Tom mill a staggering amount of his opponent's cards for victory? Will Seth die to his own Phage trigger? What random beatstick with Jennifer's tokens transform into? How many punts will Tomer make this time? Let's find out! But first, a quick reminder: if you like Commander Clash and other video content here on MTGGoldfish, make sure to subscribe to the MTGGoldfish Youtube Channel to keep up with the latest and greatest.

Tom's Deck (Laquatus)

Jennifer's Deck (Jalira)

Seth's Deck (Phage)

Tomer's Deck (Squee)

Post-Game Thoughts

This game highlights many of the struggles with playing a dedicated Mill deck in Commander. It's an all-or-nothing strategy like Infect, where either you mill out the opponent entirely or have accomplished nothing to kill an opponent, but unlike Infect it's harder to kill opponents when their deck sizes increase from 60 to 99. Mill draws a lot of hate, especially from Combo decks that don't want to see specific cards milled/exiled; meanwhile, graveyard shenanigan decks like Karador, Ghost Chieftain are hugely popular in Commander and many decks actually benefit from your putting more cards in their graveyard.

The best Mill decks end up running alternate win conditions that take advantage of filled graveyards, such as Guiltfeeder, while curating the graves with cards like Withered Wretch to make sure graveyard shenanigans are kept in check -- and take advantage of the graves you fill as well, of course, with cards like Sepulchral Primordial. That's why Mill tends to stick to Dimir colors; the guild itself is known for Mill themes. If you're interested in this style a play, check out my Budget Phenax article.

Next Week: Personal Commander

Next week, we're going to share a personal tidbits about ourselves by building a deck around a card that symbolizes something important in our personal lives. For example, Jennifer recently adopted a dog named Feldon, so she built a deck around Feldon of the Third Path. As always, we love to hear from you guys! Tell us what you like to see, what you don't like, any ideas that we can put forward for future videos, or anything else you'd like to tell us! You can reach us in the comments section below, email me at tomer@mtggoldfish.com, or tweet me @BudgetCommander.