A New Style to New Capenna's Hybrid Mana Commanders

“Magictating” is defined as getting into the zone with your Magic the Gathering collection--thinking, planning, organizing, reminiscing about past games, and imagining future games. It is a combination of hard thinking about the game and calm meditation, reveling in the joy it brings you.

Ravnica introduced the hybrid mana symbol. It was a very exciting time. We’ve returned to the plane of Ravnica many times since, and it’s exciting to see those hybrid mana symbols being reused each time. Now, with the introduction of the second in commands for the New Capenna guilds…er…mob bosses, they have an interesting twist to it all. These Cards can be cast for triple of the primary color. I’d like to discuss how this might apply to Commander. Now, if you run a mono-blue Commander deck, then you, in theory, could cast Toluz, Clever Conductor. However, its color identity is Esper (white, blue, black). So, that means you can’t actually run it in your mono-blue Commander deck. Yet, I’d like to propose that you could run in your mono-blue Commander deck. Likewise, you can run any of these penultimate bosses in a mono-colored deck.

If you haven’t guessed what I’m after yet, then let me make it clearer. These are all Legendary Creatures in their own rights, and so they can be your Commanders. They can also be cast for triple of the primary color, and so they don’t need access to the other colors. You can actually run these as mono-colored Commanders and not be upset for a moment because of your dedication, or dare I say devotion to that particular color. You can totally buck the system and surprise people by playing your triple colored Commander and then showing off your mono-black vampire themed deck that steals everyone else’s stuff.

What’s the advantage to going mono-colored? Well, have you ever had problems with your mana base in a mono-colored deck? Yeah, me neither. Have you ever felt like you wanted to include a few utility lands in your multi-colored deck, but then found out you were suffering from lack of colors? Yeah, I’ve had that issue too, but thankfully you don’t have that problem with your mono-colored decks. Also, the mana base is easy to build as well, and did I mention it was super affordable? Yeah, it is very affordable to jam a bunch of basics. Having an affordable, focused, and consistent mana base is joy. Yet, will the mechanics of the Commander actually fit with a single color?

The short answer is probably. The longer answer is a bit more complicated than that. The ones that have been spoiled at this point (four of the five) all show that they fit with a mono-colored theme for the color. Let’s take a look at each of the Legendary Creatures that can be played in a mono-colored Commander shell.

For example, when we look at Ognis, the Dragon’s Lash we see a huge payoff for playing with hasted Creatures. Well, Red loves Haste. It’s the color for hasted Creatures. Basically, this is a great example of a card that will fit beautifully within a mono-Red shell.

Moving on to Evelyn, the Covetous we find ourselves with a vampire sub-theme, and sure enough that checks out with a mono-black base. Heck, most of the original vampires were found in black. The tribe didn’t actually expand into other colors (outside of random one-offs) until around Shards of Alara.

Now, the heavily supported connive mechanic is prominently featured on Toluz, Clever Conductor. However, the conductor is really stellar at exiling anything you discard from your graveyard and then tossing all of those back into your hand when it dies. If only blue had effects that allowed you to loot. Oh, wait a second, good old looting is named after Merfolk Looter. Drawing a card and then discarding a card is inherently blue. The slightly modified version in Red is cute, but the original looting has always been a blue thing

At the time I’m writing this article the white one hasn’t been spoiled just yet, but the green one sure has. Jinnie Fay, Jetmir’s Second likes to create Creature tokens. It actually makes any Creature token you would create become either a 2/2 cat with Haste or a 3/1 dog with vigilance. Thankfully, green has tons of effects that pump out lots of little 1/1 saproling or 0/1 plant tokens. Now we can now make those all into beefy puppy dogs or hasty kitty cats! Being able to double or triple the power you put on the board is fantastically powerful. Green also has plenty of power in cards like Parallel Lives and Doubling Season.

Ognis, the Dragon's Lash - Mono Red

So, what other spicey cards might we pair up with these interesting mono-colored Legendary Creatures? Well, let’s do a quick run down on some fun little synergies in the Ognis, the Dragon’s Lash mono-Red version. I think you’ll be a bit surprised at the silly, powerful, and extremely interesting builds you can experiment with while building a mono-colored deck with a multi-colored identity. Let’s get to this as hastily as possible!

Ognis, the Dragon’s Lash wants us to attack with many Creatures with Haste as possible. So, naturally we want our Creatures to all have Haste. We can either play with only hasted Creatures, or use things like Anger to grant all our Creatures Haste. In addition to Anger we can also consider running a few other interesting pieces like Archwing Dragon. This thing dodges all those board sweepers and allows us to always have a flying hasted body at your disposal. Urabrask the Hidden is the original Red praetor, and that works wonders in an Ognis deck. It may not work wonders for the other players, but who needs them to have fun when you’re busy winning with hasted monstrosities? Speaking of fast and beefy, you might want to consider running Goldspan Dragon, because that’s just gross in a deck like this. Heck, that card is gross in any deck that it shows up in.

Let’s look at a few more for the Red deck. Cavalier of Flame is amazing in a deck like this, because you can give everything Haste, even when it doesn’t need it, and just pile up the treasures! I would also like to recommend a couple of sneaky enchantments to help your attackers sneak through: Goblin War Drums and War Cadence. War Cadence is particularly nasty in this deck, because you can use all those treasure tokens you generate each attack cycle to make your team nigh unblockable. I’ll swing with five Creatures, generate five treasure tokens, sacrifice those tokens for five mana, activate War Cadence for five, and now you can’t block one of my Creatures unless you pay five mana for each Creature you wish to block. Yeah, I’m excited to pull that little synergy off. It really only requires three mana to drop it and then having Ognis, the Dragon’s Lash in play with the rest of your team makes it just silly. Enjoy swinging for the fences! Oh, and if you don’t want to settle for only one swing, then be sure to run cards like Hellkite Charger to just infinitely attack everyone and win.

Other fun ways to channel all of your extra treasure mana include cards like Inferno of Star Mounts, Skyship Stalker, Stormbreath Dragon, and even Captive Flame. These are ways to leverage all those treasures into some powerful and exciting plays. Seriously, building a deck around these types of Red cards is a seriously fun piece of rage-filled combat just waiting to happen.

There’s really so many wild and crazy combat pieces to use with a deck like this I know I’ll be building this thing first out of the whole group. Unless of course the white one is just too good to resist. Well my friends, I hope that the hybrid mana and the cards remain ever in your favor!