Anatomy of a Staple
Exxaxl: With 25,260 legal cards at the time of writing, it’s always interesting to see which cards see play in Commander and which ones don’t. I feel that in different formats, due to a smaller card pool, the lack of a multiplayer aspect and/or the absence of a social ‘burden’ to ensure everyone at the table is having a good time, it’s way easier to spot why a certain card is good.
Power levels aren’t just something we use on our platform, they’re the norm. Despite most people trying to balance out their decks and play experiences, which will be different on our platform compared to your store or your friend group, it’s clear that some cards seem to work in most decks because they’re just that good at what they do.
Why do people play one card over the other in what most people claim to be ‘the social format’? Why do we play the best cards we have access to? Are other cards just that much ‘worse’ in comparison? When does a staple reach the point where it’s worthy of a ban? Why wasn’t Anointed Procession reprinted in Commander Masters? Let’s take a look at some recent cards and see if we can shed some light on why cards become staples.
Lotho, Corrupted Shirriff versus Monologue Tax
Chief: Yee-haw! There’s a new Shirriff in town.
Exxaxl: I’m sorry, you’ve officially moved to ‘The West’ now so you get all the cattle and none of the yee-hawing.
Chief: For all the hype that Monologue Tax received when it was first printed, how often do you actually see it played? Lotho, Corrupted Shirriff is kind of the opposite—most people slept on him big time when he was previewed and only really got on board after the card had been out for a bit. There’s no question that these cards are very similar to one another, so what exactly sets Lotho apart? Costing less mana can’t be the whole answer.
I think the biggest draw for Lotho is that his controller is able to trigger his ability. This means that you’ll always be able to get something when you play him, even if opponents are playing around him to keep you from making Treasure. It’s extremely easy to cast multiple spells per turn, especially in higher power tables where efficiency is key. If your opponents don’t want to give you Treasure, it’s almost like having a Rule of Law in play.
While creatures are more fragile than enchantments, decks with commanders like Tymna the Weaver won’t mind having another body on board to help with combat and aristocrats decks might find a use for him as well. In a format where you start the game with 40 life, you’ll likely also shrug off the life loss in exchange for the velocity of reliably creating Treasure to ramp and fix your mana in color-heavy decks.
Bag of Holding versus Currency Converter
Exxaxl: While I’ve seen both get played in EDH, Currency Convertor seems relatively absent compared to Bag of Holding in our format even though they ‘do roughly the same thing’. I’m a fan of both of these cards, but opinions on which one is ‘the best’ here varies a lot from player to player.
At lower power levels, I feel Currency Converter is better. The 2/2 body will oftentimes be more relevant where swingy boards are more common. It’s a way to give your ‘draw, then discard’ double use. It’s almost like Faithless Looting. Pitch a land, tap Currency Converter, put the land back in your graveyard, make a Treasure. You’re only activating Currency Converter once per turn cycle, and it won’t become more than draw one discard one, create a Treasure or create a 2/2 black Rogue, and that probably might just be too slow for some environments.
Compared to that, the ceiling of Bag of Holding seems way higher. Initially you have the same benefits, discarding cards to exile and having the possibility to draw and discard one card per turn rotation. At higher power levels, you’re going to have more and better ways of discarding cards from your hand and you’ll have more ways of turning that into an advantage.
You can refill your hand when you need to, be that because you put combo cards into exile to ‘safeguard’ them for later or to skew the draw potential of a wheel. You might have access to fast mana, tutors, or winning game pieces in exile that you may not have an abundance of in lower power pods. You also put the cards back in hand instead of your graveyard, which saves you an extra step of having to use another effect of weaponizing what you put in your graveyard.
Faerie Mastermind versus Smuggler’s Share
Chief: Smuggler’s Share is another one of those hyped white cards that doesn’t seem to have panned out in practice. My experience with this card is that it’s surprisingly easy to play around this card unless you’re completely running away with the game to the point where giving your opponent a card and a Treasure at the end step won’t really stop you. It often feels like this card does too little too late and it does it in a manner that your opponents can often avoid.
I’ve almost always found the Treasure effect to be a lot less relevant than the card draw, so I think that losing that effect in exchange for flash and a way to help the effect trigger more often is quite a good trade-off. I love creatures with flash, so I’ve been very high on this card since it was first previewed and it does feel like it’s lived up to my expectations. I’m also a big fan of Invitational and World Champion cards.
Faerie Mastermind is a lot harder for opponents to play around because you can flash it in and surprise opponents while also drawing a card right away. This opens up play such as casting Vampiric Tutor or Mystical Tutor and drawing the perfect card to stop whatever your opponent is planning while also narrowing the window that your opponents can respond before you draw the card. Paying less mana for instant gratification is definitely a big draw.
Field of Ruin versus Demolition Field
Exxaxl: Running some instances of land destruction is great and should be normalized. I’m not saying ‘slam mass land destruction in every deck you have’, but there are way too many people who get away with running very powerful lands in EDH because people don’t even slot in singular land destruction.
Chief: Let’s be serious. Some people would also rather lose to a Glacial Chasm tutored off a Crop Rotation than have any way to remove it.
Exxaxl: All decks that win with damage should pass the Glacial Chasm test. A land getting played shouldn’t mean you can no longer win the game. According to EDHRec, Field of Ruin sees more play. I feel not enough people run Demolition Field! You’re taking down your opponent’s best land and both of you get to look for a basic.
It doesn’t ramp the entire table ahead by one land, and to me it makes no sense people still use Field of Ruin now that Demolition Field got printed, unless you’re running both for redundancy’s sake. I’d rather run a Strip Mine or Wasteland.
Maybe we haven’t had this card for long enough yet. I feel we keep seeing Field of Ruin time and time again, it’s been printed in several precons and I was quite surprised the Lord of the Rings cycle again had that card as a reprint over Demolition Field. It was in three of the four precons there and it was completely absent from Commander Masters for some reason.
Chief: I will say that I like it when someone else has a Field of Ruin and I have an Archivist of Oghma. Nothing beats drawing three cards because someone wanted to blow up a land.
Exxaxl: I’ve used an open Demolition Field and two swamps to find an island to Swan Song a Cyclonic Rift when I was out of blue mana before, it’s not just a land removal tool. This is why I keep stressing people slot more utility lands. Please stop making 30 of your 34 lands basics. It’s free real estate.
Chief: Totally unrelated to this discussion, but I just wanted to mention that I love Emergence Zone and Winding Canyons. The latter is even a good target for Demolition Field.
The One Ring versus Sylvan Library
Chief: Okay, so Sylvan Library is actually pretty much considered a legitimate staple on its own. Is it really possible for another card to come along and push it out of the spotlight? It does seem as though The One Ring is the most hyped card in the entire game at the moment, with significant appearances in every format where it’s legal. It’s also being heralded as a staple of casual and competitive Commander.
Sylvan Library does have its own advantages, costing half as much mana and allowing you to stack your topdecks while choosing when to pay life to keep the extra cards. It’s definitely easier to play it early. The advantages of The One Ring are also noteworthy. Any deck is able to run it because it’s colorless, which also means that it’s easy to power it out with cards like Ancient Tomb and Mana Vault. This flexibility definitely plays a role in its ubiquity.
The One Ring starts out slow, but you’ll easily exceed the card velocity of Sylvan Library within just a few turns. This means that the slower pace of casual EDH and decks that can grind out longer games in cEDH can likely benefit from activating it turn over turn and amassing a ton of cards. It’s easy to see why cards such as the next one that punish card draw almost seem necessary in today’s landscape.
Orcish Bowmasters versus Underworld Dreams
Exxaxl: Orcish Bowmasters sees play in many formats and feels like it became a staple overnight, and finding a card that did ‘something similar’ was not easy. We settled on Underworld Dreams, which sees play in some very specific decks, whereas Orcish Bowmaster feels like a mainstay in many decks throughout the entire spectrum of Magic.
Let’s be clear here: obviously these cards are not the same, though both of them will shoot 1 damage whenever an opponent draws a card. Underworld Dreams is harder to cast due to its triple black mana cost, at sorcery speed. In comparison, you can flash in Bowmasters in response for one mana less. Underworld Dreams can only hit players, Orcish Bowmasters can snipe down your opponents early game creature engines. It then grows a sizeable token each time it triggers on top. It’s not difficult to see why one is a more commonly played staple over the other.
‘Punish opponents for drawing cards’ is something we’ve seen get printed for many years, but I feel with recent cards like Smothering Tithe – 2019 is recent OK, let me have this – and Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, we got way better punishing tools now than we used to in the past. Due to the nature of how Magic is played, capitalizing on a game mechanic that’s bound to happen on every player's turn like drawing cards is always going to be a desirable effect, and can in some cases turn into too much of an advantage or unlock play patterns that don’t sit well with the community.
Hullbreacher versus Notion Thief / Smothering Tithe
Chief: I don’t miss Hullbreacher one bit, even though I’m of the mind that having ways to deal with excessive card draw is important for the health of Commander. I think that it has something to do with the fact that it was usually played in a way that allowed you to strip your opponents of answers while also making double digit Treasure tokens while being cheaper to cast than either of the cards that are its closest functional comparisons.
Exxaxl: I only saw the aftermath and complaints. I usually stick to Battlecruiser and Low, and in my local game store, the power levels are quite in line with Low Power on our platform. ‘Hullbreacher into wheels’ – plural – didn’t really happen there. Commander Legends released at the end of 2020 and I’d only been playing EDH for less than a year so I lacked the context back then as to ‘why’ people were so upset with this card.
Chief: It wasn’t a big surprise to me that this card wound up on the ban list. I saw it being played alongside cards like Windfall in decks aimed at all sorts of power levels, including precon tables! While this wasn’t as much of an issue in cEDH tables because this play pattern would typically result in the game ending pretty quickly, it would just grind the average casual game to a halt. There was little reason to not run it if you had access to blue and it wasn’t always easy to answer.
Exxaxl: I guess Notion Thief and Smothering Tithe are the obvious ones to compare it to. While both Hullbreacher and Notion Thief will prevent your opponents from drawing more cards, Hullbreacher turns that into any color mana. Notion Thief will give you a higher card advantage, but it being 4 mana and in Dimir colors makes it harder to cast.
Yes, card advantage is good, but you still need mana to cast whatever you drew into. Notion Thief into wheel gives you a large hand which you still have to discard in your end step, Hullbreacher’s treasures stay around until you use them and I assume decks playing on the higher end of the spectrum can use those treasures to get more ahead more quickly, or chain one wheel into another because you have the mana.
People can opt to pay for Smothering Tithe, and you’re not denying them a resource, something the other two cards will do. It’s also sorcery speed and four mana, so it’ll be slower and more telegraphed than both Hullbreacher and Notion Thief. You don’t ‘in response’ a Smothering Tithe as easily. I feel we’re also finally past the sighs and gasps when someone resolves a Smothering Tithe now that it’s been around for a while, though I don’t really understand the shift to Mythic over Rare. Pay your Tithe, Fish and Study, thank you!
Articles like these are made possible and kept ad-free due to the support of all of our Patreon, Twitch, and Discord subscribers. Come check us out on Discord to chat about all things Commander and play curated games with people from all over the world! You can also find us on Twitter (or… X...) if you feel like sharing your favorite ‘staple vs not quite staple’ cards!
“This article is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards.
Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.”
