Imagine it’s 2002. Damage uses the stack. Affinity won’t be printed for another two years. Without double faced cards, sleeves are optional. And commander is only played by a small group of enthusiasts and judges.
(Casuals at the LGS are playing emperor, a true banger of a multiplayer format.)
You sit down to draft Onslaught and open Goblin Sharpshooter.
Damage flies everywhere.
You win the draft and are ready to run the emperor table with Goblin Sharpshooter, Skirk Prospector, and Patriarch’s Bidding.
But, it’s not 2002 anymore. We play commander now.
Instead of shooting single points of damage around the table, we look to damage everyone all the time.
While we look fondly back to Goblin Sharpshooter, the machine gunners have a new hero.
Printed in the Fantastic Four precon, Crystal is one of the most exciting new commanders from Marvel.
She gives us access to four colors, ramps and fixes our mana, and only asks that we play noncreature spells.
Part machine gunner, part combo enabler—let’s build a casual, relatively budget-friendly version of Crystal that can hang at the kitchen table.
Hijinks
Dealing damage with every noncreature spell is Crystal’s best feature. And, there are cards that reward us heavily for damaging our opponents.
Each of our opponents.
Every time.
Here’s how it works: Crystal is enchanted with Curiosity. We cast Strike it Rich. Crystal damages each of our opponents for one. Curiosity triggers for each opponent damaged. We draw three cards.
We cast Lightning Bolt. We draw three.
Swords to Plowshares. Three.
The same goes for Keen Sense, Ophidian Eye, Snake Umbra, and Tandem Lookout.
Truly ridiculous levels of card draw.
In case drawing three cards isn’t enough, with Sigil of Sleep or Arm with Aether, we are now bouncing three creatures every time we cast a noncreature spell, clearing the board of pesky commanders that might ruin our plan.
It is questionable whether tutors belong at a kitchen table commander game, however, our deck is entirely dependent on assembling Crystal plus enabler. At this power level, we will avoid adding Enlightened Tutor, Idyllic Tutor, and Gamble. But we will add Open the Armory, Kellan, the Fae-Blooded, and Wargate.
Yes, despite Crystal’s hero typing, we are the villain. But we don’t necessarily have to be a super villain.
Keep Damage Rollin
If most of our spells are one color, they will deal one damage we may draw three cards. Which means we will draw our entire deck before defeating our opponents.
(Note that all of our draw hijinks enablers say “may,” meaning we can choose to draw the card or not. Tandem Lookout, by contrast, forces us to draw, and can be an easy-to-remove liability if we start running out of cards.)
Enter Artist’s Talen and Torture Pit. With either in play, our Rampant Growth will deal three damage to all opponents instead of one, vastly improving our damage clock.
To dial things up further, instead of adding two, we can multiply with Annie Joins Up, Veyran, Quest for Pure Flame, and The Rollercrusher Ride.
Let’s walk through what happens when Crystal is enchanted with Snake Umbra and Annie Joins Up is at the Table. We cast Strike it Rich. Crystal’s damage ability triggers twice and both instances are put on the stack. The first instance resolves triggering the ability granted by Snake Umbra twice. We draw six. The second instance resolves. We draw six more.
Note that this interaction is specific to Snake Umbra and Tandem Lookout because they give the ability to Crystal herself. For Curiosity, Keen Sense, and Ophidian Eye, because the enchantments are the ones triggering the draw, we will instead draw three cards twice.
Which is likely plenty for a single red mana spell that makes a treasure.
Protection
Ok, ok. We are definitely a super villain and will need all the protection we can get.
And, honestly, we could go much further here. But, if we want to keep our invitation to the kitchen table, and if we really don’t want to venture into cEDH land, we should be modest with our deckbuilding.
(We will really hamstring ourselves in two sections with a bunch of nearly wasted cardboard.)
Not too much to explain here. We have our triad of reliable, time-tested protection spells for a single green mana, a lovely modal double-faced card in Sejiri Shelter, a Simic Charm to lean into our light cast-multicolored-noncreature-spells theme, and two pairs of boots.
The fact that the colored protection spells are also a draw three with our hijinks online… mwah.
Getting Mana Right
For our mana, we will shy away from the usual Sol Ring, signets, and talismans packages. Casting colorless noncreature spells is just not what we are aiming for.
In their stead, we will add land auras, temporary fixing, and Rampant Growth effects. The goal here is to have (almost) all our ramp and fixing trigger Crystal so that our spells are never dead in the late game.
For land auras, we will add Wild Growth, Fertile Ground, Trace of Abundance, and Utopia Sprawl.
For temporary mana boosts, we will add Carpet of Flowers, Strike it Rich, and Manamorphose.
To put lands directly into play, we will add Rampant Growth, Planar Genesis, Growth Spiral, and Cultivate.
And, as the one exception to the noncreature rule we’ve imposed, we will add a Gene Pollinator. Notably, we have a high number of enchantments and equipment in the deck that we can tap to activate Gene Pollinator’s ability nearly without drawback.
Yes, if we feel like spending more money we can add Birds of Paradise, Noble Hierarch, Delighted Halfling, and Badgermole Cub. But, we don’t feel like spending more money.
Draw
This is where we officially and intentionally slow ourselves down and make deckbuilding concessions to power level.
And here, it is a give and take.
If we are leaning into Curiosity combo, these ten slots would be much better used for single mana (or free) protection, tutors, and cheap interaction. Making these swaps would make our deck both better and more expensive.
But, what we give up in power level, we gain in having a backup plan.
If we are unable to assemble Curiosity combo, Jeskai Ascendancy, Song of Creation, Whirlwind of Thought, and First Family fuel our card velocity. On their own, they each deal damage to all of our opponents with Crystal in play and advance our gameplan in a slow, deliberate, kitchen table friendly way.
If we are making ourselves light on tutors, we can instead use draw and selection as our tool to find our redundant combo pieces.
But here is the crux of it, our deck is absolutely amazing at drawing cards as it is. Adding to our card draw power doesn’t promise to make our deck that much better, but having the most powerful version of the deck isn’t necessarily what we’re after.
If you are interested in a small change to make a big difference in gameplay, consider cutting from this section to protect Crystal and interact with your opponents. Defend the Rider and Loran’s Escape are much better here than Song of Creation and First Family.
Concessions have been made.
Removal
One of Crystal’s greatest strengths is that she asks us to play all of the good, cheap interaction and rewards us for it. We don’t have to wonder whether we are adding too much removal at the expense of our gameplan. Casting removal is our gameplan!
So, we start with eight tried-and-true spells. Cards we would want to see in almost any commander deck that can reasonably run them.
Then, we sprinkle in seven pieces of interaction that are particularly good alongside Crystal.
As cards with inexpensive initial costs and inexpensive flashback costs, Ancient Grudge, Ray of Revelation, and Lava Dart provide multiple pieces of interaction to keep our Curiosity combos going while picking apart our opponents’ board states.
Submerge and Mogg Salvage allow us to cheat on mana by casting free, instant speed interaction. With combos online, we will likely have a lot more cards than mana, and a zero-mana interaction spell that draws three would be pretty, pretty, pretty good.
Endless Detour and Crystallization are mostly here because their colors lend themselves well to trying to actually end the game with Crystal, though Endless Detour as a catchall removal spell that can effectively answer uncounterable spells on the stack will prove to be a big boon.
And, if once isn’t enough, we can Flashback and Noxious Revival our premium removal.
Cleanup Step
From here, we have one double faced land and will need to add thirty-seven more to complete the deck. For a budget build, we can add the Modern Horizons Three and Streets of New Capenna common fetch lands, pain lands, and Evolving Wilds.
Yes, we slow ourselves down. But, our Lightning Bolts draw three cards. So if we’re going to hang at the kitchen table, we gotta do something subpar.
For those looking for a full deck list, it can be found here.
Goblin Sharpshooter running emperor tables may be a thing of the past, but Crystal at the commander kitchen table is here to stay.
