Trick-or-treating – the beloved annual tradition of gathering best friends, donning costumes, and running door-to-door tailed by chaperones in search of sweet treats.
Up to the door. Knock-knock-knock. “Trick or treat!”
“Oh my! There is a frog at the door! And a skeleton! And a chicken!”
But no, there isn’t a frog, or a skeleton, or a chicken.
The masks lift followed by, “I know you!” and a piece of candy, or two, or a handful, depending on how eager they are to turn out the lights.
The ritual repeats over and over across neighborhoods throughout the night.
Knock-knock-knock. “Oh my!” “I know you!” Candy.
Then again as all take their part to share in the magic of the act.
Young and old, trick-or-treating has a role for everyone.
Trick-or-treating is ageless.
Let’s brew up an ode to trick-or-treating aptly featuring Medomai the Ageless.
In this build, Medomai and his best friends will dress up for Halloween and visit each of your opponents over and over throughout the night until lights out.
For the list with access to a playtester, check out the link at the end of the article.
How it Works
For trick-or-treating with Medomai, we need four parts to work.
First, we need Medomai to show up to the party.
Second, Medomai needs a costume. Say, a chicken, for example.
Third, Medomai the Chicken needs a chaperone to make sure he gets to your opponent's front door safely. For this example, consider Crafty Pathmage.
Fourth and lastly, “surprise!” Medomai can ditch the chicken costume to reveal himself before dealing combat damage. For this example, Vedalken Mastermind will do.
And there we have it.
Next turn, Medomai can dress up as a chicken again (removing the can’t attack restriction), be chaperoned back to your opponent by Crafty Pathmage, and "surprise!" it’s not a chicken, it’s Medomai. Again.
And again.
Until our opponents give us all the candy and turn out the lights.
Next game.
Lucky for us, each of these categories features a great deal of redundancy, meaning that we get to play the best of the best in each category to fill out our deck.
But first…
Best Friends
Best friends round us out. Fill in a little of what we lack, so we are all better trick-or-treaters.
Medomai is a strong flier with a good ability, but lacks card advantage and lacks protection.
From the soon-to-be-released Mystery Booster 3: Commander Edition (AKA, the most recent unattainable Secret Lair drop), Grakk the Pacifist and Medomai bond over their mutual love for dressing up as frogs, fish, and chickens.
In fact, each turn that we target one of our opponent’s creatures with a costume, we will draw an extra card, ensuring that our four part combo comes together in time.
Linvala is the selfless friend that is ready to step aside at a moment’s notice. Getting all of our pieces in play to begin the combo will be an expensive ordeal with many exploitable cracks along the way. While we have some cheap interaction to stave off our opponents’ advances, Linvala provides a free on-board message of “Don’t touch my best friends.”
Our opponents will still try, and Linvala will sacrifice herself to save Halloween.
Costumes
So many amazing costumes.
As a variety of removal, we were looking for just the right fit. The creature must lose all abilities and have its stats reduced without being tapped or otherwise restricted from attacking.
Some of these costumes just turn Medomai into a little Medomai, such as Utter Insignificance and Quantum Reduction.
Mystic Subdual turns him into a silly Medomai.
And Dress Down, naked Medomai.
Not all costumes are equally flavorful. Not all costumes can be as great as Medomai dressed as a Chicken. (And our playgroup will need to be un-set-friendly and warned in advance that we intend to cast Fowl Play.)
The best part of having all these costumes as part of our combo is that they all double as removal to control our opponents’ game plans until we are ready to assemble our combo.
No one likes seeing any of these fifteen removal pieces land on their commander, but Halloween is Halloween and costumes are all part of the ritual and the game.
Chaperones
Chaperones always make things complicated.
Some parents don’t allow candy with artificial food coloring and are checking bags at every stop to ensure the offensive red and yellow dyes don’t make it home (that’s me).
Others are just happy to be out walking and lose sight of the kids they’re supposed to be watching.
The best chaperones give the children in their care enough space to feel independent and revel in the fun of the night while keeping careful watch to make sure the group stays together.
It takes all types.
The chaperones we include here all have their own style of getting Medomai through to the opponent at a variety of costs. And, while I am not a Magic judge able to carefully pick apart the unique layering interactions each of these has with the costumes, I am confident that each chaperone can do their job.
For example, Mother of Runes can grant protection from a color, enabling Medomai to safely attack past defenders of the chosen color. If Medomai is dressed as a chicken, and our opponent has a bunch of blue creatures out, we can attack, give Medomai protection from blue before blockers are declared, the chicken suit falls off as a result, but Medomai is now unblockable and triggers for an additional turn. It’s a tough cost to lose a costume, but it works.
Trickier still, Sword Coast Sailor grants our commander unblockability if attacking our highest life opponent. When dressed up with Dress Down, our commander will lose the unblockability, requiring that we again remove the costume after attacks but before blocks to get to our opponent’s front door.
In opposite fashion, Medomai the Chicken escorted by Tetsuko Umezawa will need to keep the costume on until after blockers are declared to retain unblockability.
And, Medomai is an old sphinx, ageless. With flying, Medomai won’t always need a chaperone. Against a rallied horde of ground-tied goblins, Medomai can chaperone himself through the skies by ditching the costume before blocks.
How chaperones, costumes, and reveals interact will come through in the course of the game. It won’t always be the same, but it’ll always work.
I Know You!
The final element. Lifting the mask.
It was Medomai all along.
Lucky for us, this seems to be an effect Wizards is interested in printing more often and at more efficient rates than in the past. Early decklists considered including Obelisk of Undoing, but paying 6 to bounce our auras is just too, too much.
Rescue Girl, Shi’ar Soldier, and Essence Reliquary are our speed.
As Wizards continues to print self-bounce permanents, this is the section of the list that will get the biggest boon. Teferi’s Time Twist, and Tradewind Rider will be the first two to go, despite how good the Rider was in 90s extended tournaments.
Sorry Tradewind Rider, your time in this list is limited. We just don’t have the wide board to support you.
Protection
With a large section of our combo doubling as removal, this build focuses our additional space on protecting Medomai. Whether providing hexproof or countering spells that target our creatures, we will keep our trick-or-treater safe on Halloween.
Muddle the Mixture is a lovely piece of protection that can transmute into any of our combo elements to provide a small additional degree of redundancy to our build.
Ramp
Nuts-and-bolts additions here. We have a six-drop commander and mana-hungry combo elements that require even more mana to be protected.
As a nice moment of double dipping, Agility Bobblehead and Sonic Screwdriver provide evasion to keep the combo rolling.
If your playgroup is a strict “No Fowl Play allowed” style playgroup, adding another mana rock in place of the chicken costume can buy you some time while you find a better pod.
Land
For our mana base, we have a light touch of five lands that can provide unblockability or protection to arrive at our opponent’s front door.
To stay within budget, we are including thirty-three basics alongside this suite of inexpensive lands. Any upgrades to your mana base are easy additions.
Bracket
We are chaining extra turns in an infinite, easily disruptable combo with no game changers and exactly one tutor. Our wins are highly telegraphed, placing us firmly at the bracket two kitchen table.
Bring your best friends, bring candy, and get ready for lights out.
https://archidekt.com/decks/27485397/dressing_up_for_halloween
Happy Halloween!
