Singleton Shmingleton - Twiddle
Jesse Barker PlotkinJanuary 1, 2024
Start the new year with a Simic combo deck!
( | Art by John Avon)
Get Those Thumbs Moving
Welcome back to Singleton Shmingleton, where I bend the singleton rules of Commander by building decks with as many functional reprints of a certain card as possible. This week I'm building around an effect that is always difficult to make worth a card in . Tapping and untapping permanents is useful, and can be exactly the thing you need at a given point, but the joke is right there in the name: usually this isn't much more than twiddling your thumbs. Despite the card's flexibility, it's still just about the smallest game action you can take. So how can a deck filled with this style of card expect to function?
Well, over the years, players have taken up that challenge, using and its lookalikes as engine-pieces alongside permanents such as and to generate piles of mana and cards. -style decks always look for the easiest ways to make more mana and draw more cards, and doubling as a great impression or an is pretty powerful. That's if all of the pieces line up right, of course, but it's a powerful strategy to aim for.
There are thirteen instant-speed ways to untap a permanent at the cost of a card. Of them, most are blue, and most have never seen play in competitive formats. Here they are!
The most played of these effects is , featured in 23,922 decks. The flexibility of being able to cycle it for a one-time use or to play it and use the effect multiple times makes this a staple of any deck that wants to tap permanents for abilities over and over. The next-most-played card is , with 16,411 decks to its name. The sheer amount of mana it can generate makes it a mainstay of combo decks of all kinds. The least played of these effects is , in only 961 decks. All of the other three-mana versions of this effect cantrip, and this card doesn't combine well with the commanders that make many of the other versions tick.
Speaking of which, most of these s saw much more play than I expected, thanks to players who have found combos with some funny commanders. First up is one I have heard about, . With in play, every one-mana way to target a permanent you control will copy that permanent, which can lead to ridiculous ramp or crazy shenanigans with powerful creatures. The second commander is , who I hadn't even heard of. After Suspending some huge spell, using 's ability on a one-mana will set the clock forward by one, and then immediately untap him. And finally, using s with can generate Storm count and Magecraft triggers at no cost by allowing to re-activate. All of these are sweet combos, but they're not why I'm here. I'm here to play Twiddlestorm in Commander!
More Redundancy!
Current decks look pretty similar to some of the earliest combo decks around, the old decks. By using to make lands tap for double mana, lots of Urza's Block cards like and turned into powerful mana-generating spells. There are quite a few cards that untap as many lands as they supposedly cost to cast, since this was a (broken) mechanic of Urza's Block. Here they are:
Of these spells, only and its reboot have not found their way into absurd combo decks, since they cannot be played proactively. Otherwise, these spells are all design mistakes that have enabled broken decks from Pauper all the way up to Vintage. The idea of making free spells was already treading a fine line, and the way these cards were implemented left miles of room for degenerate brewers to scheme.
What Will We Untap?
The next challenge is to find enough lands that tap for more than one mana so that we can draw a couple of them every game. is an obvious include, but there is also the land that inspired it, , and that land's cousin . Even before , these were the original lands that could tap for multiple mana, the first inspiration for combo. Beyond these lands, and fill the role well, as does Reserved List sleeper . There's even a potential commander in , who can guarantee us a solid permanent to untap. And of course, can turbocharge all of our Islands for a turn, and does a fine job as a redundant copy.
Using Our Mana
The first step in any combo deck is to generate a massive amount of one resource, in our case mana. The second step is to use that resource. This can often be as simple as turning it into a different resource, which can be more easily used to kill opponents (or to escalate the engine). Thankfully, turning mana into cards is trivially easy. Effects like and can do it directly, and we can often chain these effects once we get going. In a deck full of s, cards like and become very tempting as well. And once we have both mana and cards, winning the game becomes an afterthought. can take out a player or two, can gain three gazillion life, and perennial killjoy can save everyone the brainwork of how the game will end.
The rest of the deck fills in the gaps with , creatures like and that can ramp us into and sustain the combo, and a couple "distraction threats" like , who works very well with and friends.
The Decklist
Lotus Vale
This is a linear combo deck, so playing it definitely gets old. I love figuring out how to pilot convoluted combos; it just satisfies a puzzle-loving part of my brain to try to find the line to get the most possible mana into this and hold up the right amount for what I might draw from it. But after a few times around the block, my puzzle urge is satisfied, and all that's left is a fairly non-interactive deck that tries to take one very long turn and end the game.
The more I experiment with building Commander decks around redundant effects, the more I realize that the challenge isn't to make a functional deck, but rather to make a re-playable deck. Most people don't play Commander for the same reason that they play in Pioneer or in Legacy. They want their games to be different, and that becomes even more of a challenge when a deck is built around drawing a couple copies of the same exact card every game. But it is possible. At some level, all Commander decks select cards that will lead to patterns in how games play out, and I have found some of my favorite decks through this project. My next step is to try and find patterns in which cards lead to the novel gameplay I like.
Until Next Time
Did you know that there are now twelve two-mana creatures that draw a card when they enter the battlefield? That sounds like enough for a deck. This rate has always been impressive, performing well in formats from Draft all the way to Legacy? How can these utility dorks become an engine? Find out next time on Singleton Shmingleton!