This week I present you with our first reader submitted deck brew by Monty sent in via brewmesomespice@gmail.com. You can consider me very excited about this. You can also consider me very intrigued by the suggestion that came through as it is something I had been considering for a while now. This is what was submitted to us:

Hey Mate,

Just read your Astral Slide article, deck looks sooo sweet, will be making it in paper for sure. My EDH deck is zur Slide 🙂 
As for the spice, my first legacy deck (legends miracles was what I was building until the ban) is going to be RUG Eternal Command! Don’t know if you are familiar with the modern deck that Shota played in 2012 but it’s incredibly fun and quite powerful. Thought you might enjoy brewing with the concept. Anyway here’s where I’m at:

 

Maybeboard:
Scavenging Ooze
Umezawa’s Jitte 
Sylvan Library 
Keranos, God of Storms
Grafdigger’s Cage
Chill
Cursed Totem 
Life from the Loam 
Submerge
True Name Nemesis 
Winter Orb 
Dismember 
Blood Moon
Back to Basics 
Blazing Volley 
Sudden Demise
By Force 
Faerie Macabre 
Stifle
Sweltering Suns 
Garruk Relentless

Kind Regards, 
Monty

 

For those of you that are not familiar with Eternal Command in Modern there is a great primer written here on mtgsalvation.com. The deck is value-based control deck that utilizes Aether Vial to cheat on mana for your creatures—including Eternal Witness which has some decent synergies with Cryptic Command (bounce Eternal Witness, counter a spell, Vial in Witness to return Command, etc.) to establish a soft or hard lock on an opponent.

The deck also features additional value in Snapcaster Mage to rebuy some of the cheap removal and countermagic. Snappy can also be put into play with Aether Vial, allowing us further ability to cheat on mana so we only have to pay for the spell. This also makes Snapcaster Mage into Force of Will much easier and viable if necessary.

While I like a lot of the revisions Monty has made to move the deck from Modern and into Legacy, now I present you with my slightly modified version of Legacy Eternal Command:

Eternal Command

Lands (21)
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Flooded Grove
1 Forest
4 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Mountain
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Tropical Island
2 Volcanic Island

Creatures (13)
2 Eternal Witness
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Vendilion Clique

Spells (26)
4 Brainstorm
4 Counterspell
2 Cryptic Command
1 Fire/Ice
3 Force of Will
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Spell Pierce
4 Aether Vial

Image result for tarmogoyf

Creatures

Eternal Witness and Snapcaster Mage both serve similar roles here by being able to buy back spells while being cheated into play with Aether Vial so we only have to use the mana for the spell being targeted.

Tarmogoyf is the big dumb beater that a slow control deck like this wants. Personally I would love to replace this with Thing in the Ice, but after some discussion with Jerry of the Spice Cabinet it was settled that Thing in the Ice is just too slow. If I were to test this deck out I would certainly try it and see for myself but Jerry is likely correct here.

Vendilion Clique is a great piece of disruption for combo like Sneak and Show and a way to break up Miracles which apparently still has yet to die. (Quitters never win though.)

Dryad Arbor has replaced Faerie Conclave as a surprise chump blocker off a fetchland as well as the neat interaction with Aether Vial that allows us to ramp into three mana by turn two using a Vial with no counters. It is rare that this will be relevant but I have always wanted to try it out and in a deck like this that wants to hit three and four mana early it was a perfect inclusion.

Countermagic

The only change that I made here was substituting Spell Pierce for Spell Snare. Snare is a great spell and I very rarely brew in blue without it anymore but Spell Pierce has taken its place because it interacts with more early game spells that we want to stop while also being able to hit planeswalkers which could give us issues.

Cryptic Command being modal means that we have multiple uses for it and each mode can be relevant in Legacy. Using the “Counter target spell” in combination with “Return target permanent to its owners hand” allows for the aforementioned soft lock with Eternal Witness. In a longer grindy game we can mix the mode to bounce with the “Draw a card” mode to draw additional cards and still use our Eternal Witness to continue digging and gaining card advantage.

Image result for cryptic command

Removal

Lightning Bolt is our one mana removal spell to manage problems like Deathrite Shaman while shutting down the assault from other creatures like Delver of Secrets and with all of the easy ways to get it back we can use for some reach to close out a game after beating down for a few turns with our value creatures.

I absolutely kept Fire // Ice as that card really brings some nostalgia to my life. Fire can hit multiple X/1 Creatures or just eat a Deathrite Shaman while Ice allows us to tap an opposing blocker or attacker.

Planeswalkers

Jace, the Mind Sculptor is here to throw us further ahead of our opponent and ensure we can continue drawing enough relevant spells to keep everything flowing smoothly to keep up the pressure.

Image result for keranos

Sideboard

My suggested sideboard for the deck is this:

Sideboard

(15)
2 Flusterstorm
1 From the Ashes
1 Grafdiggers Cage
1 Huntmaster of the Fells
2 Hydroblast
1 Izzet Staticaster
1 Keranos, God of Storms
2 Surgical Extraction
3 True-Name Nemesis
1 Umezawa’s Jitte

The sideboard gives us a lot of options for both the fair and unfair matchups that we may face. Personally I don’t believe that so many copies of Pyroblast or Red Elemental Blast are necessary and I would like to trim them since we are very heavy on countermagic as is. The Curfew seems a bit too cute to me and if I want to answer an opposing creature I would rather something like Submerge or Dismember as a cleaner answer.

I will definitely say that I love From the Ashes for many of the tough matchups like Lands, BGx Depths and Twelve Post since the mana base can’t really support Wasteland and it does have the added benefit of being able to dig us out from under an opposing Blood Moon.

Keranos, God of Storms is here for late game card advantage as well as a solid way to grind out against control. The best part which I haven’t gotten to yet: it can be put into play with an Aether Vial. I bet control decks thought Vial was annoying putting in small creatures like Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and Mirran Crusader. Just wait until you get to put this baddy in off a Vial.

True-Name Nemesis alongside Umezawa’s Jitte gives us the advantage on the board when creatures are the main road to victory.

Izzet Staticaster is mainly here against Death and Taxes and Elves which both require a reliable and repeatable removal spell to beat them.

Against combo we have Flusterstorm, Grafdigger’s Cage, and Surgical Extraction mostly geared towards graveyard hate since graveyard based strategies tend to be the fastest and are different in general to interact with in a fair game of Magic.

I have included the pair of Hydroblasts as a way to slow down Burn while also keeping the Huntmaster of the Fells to pad our life total against both Burn and other aggro decks.

Initial Thoughts

Though this deck may turn out to be too slow to keep up with many of the decks of Legacy it certainly has a lot of tools for stalling a game to establish the Witness/Command soft lock to keep the board clean while our Tarmogoyfs clean up our opponents life total.

Thank you again Monty for sharing your brew with us and the rest of our readers!

Happy brewing to each and every one of you. If anyone has an idea for a brew that they would like to see, I will gladly take requests and challenges on twitter or in email at brewmesomespice@gmail.com.

Aaron Gazzaniga works part time at a game store and in his off time has been an avid magic player/brewer since 2003. Having begun in Odyssey Standard Block and always favoring control and prison style decks, we come to this moment in time where Aaron finally gets to talk about and share his ideas. If you want to contact Aaron tweet @aarongazzaniga

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