We all have that deck that just survives even though it isn’t the best. For me that’s [[Torgaar, Famine Incarnate]]. It’s not the best mono black commander in any way but its particular combination of effects to me is emblematic of mono black. It’s a bit of a swiss army knife and so I find myself hard pressed to really change anything about the core of the deck.
What’s your pet deck?
[[Captain Ripley Vance]] it goes hard and fast, and by far it’s my best deck for coming in third. I’ve had to pull back its explosiveness, because it’s no good to take someone out on the third turn only to be stuck out of gas as archenemy. It can still wreck face out of nowhere, though, and most of my pod gives the deck a healthy dose of respect. I love it so much I got a custom alter of the commander and now I joke I own the most expensive copy of the card in the world, which may not be too far off from the truth.
That does seem like a go hard or go home deck. You’re going flat out to commit to casting three spells on as many turns as possible. It’s like the opposite of a [[Birgi]] deck where you have the payoff in the command zone instead of the enabler. I like it! I’m also a sucker for any commander that actually wants you to buff your creatures. It’s something I think is less prevalent than I would like in my experience.
One of the things that it’s really good for, too, is that it forces you to pay attention to your sequencing. Because the effect is on cast, it puts the trigger on the stack before the spell you’re casting resolves. So if you do something like arcane Signet>Seething Song> Infuriate, the trigger goes off before you can pump yourself with Infuriate. So you need to play games with the stack and hold priority to get things to land where you need them to.
[[card name]] to call