We bought all five of the new C20 Commander decks and ran them through a gauntlet against each other so we could see what each deck is good at, what it needs, and who is the strongest of the new Ikoria C20 Commanders!
Overview: Jirina Kudro is a powerful Human tribal commander that wants to build a huge army and make them even stronger with her +2/+0 ability. This deck is full of cards that care about playing Humans. And you know what? Sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the greater good so our deck has all sorts of ways to sacrifice the tokens we'll be making in order to get incredible value. What can I say, we're all a little greedy. And if your opponents start to become a bit of threat, our deck has some of the best removal out of all the pre-cons letting run over the rest of the table. Let's get into the deck.
Pros: The synergy! The value! This deck has so many cards that care about our Human tribe and give us a great payoff for keeping with the Human theme. Need removal? Banisher Priest and Devout Chaplain have got your back. Looking to draw some cards? Skullclamp, Species Specialist, and Disciple of Bolas are ready to go. Ramp? Knight of the White Orchid and Verge Rangers are your boys. Your opponents are going to have to find some early answers to your army because once it gets moving its not going to stop. Plus, the partner pairing in this deck, Silvar, Devourer of the Free and Trynn, Champion of Freedom, are a power house together. Get them out into play as soon as you can.
Cons: Our deck meets the same poor fate Mardu (Red, White, and Black) always meets, Ramping up in Mana is a little lackluster. We tend to find ourselves playing very on curve with the deck, hoping we always have a land to play each turn. If we don't we may fall behind the other decks at the table. Something to look at during upgrades for the deck. The Humans can be pretty inexpensive to play with most of them being at 3 or 4 Mana, but without that Ramp it takes us a little while to get our army marching. We also lack a way to make the toughness on our creatures higher consistently, so while Jirina Kudro makes all our tokens 3/1 they die in any blocking interaction. This makes you wary to attack into even the smallest of blockers which is bad for a deck that wants to be aggressive. THE GAUNTLET Jirina Kudro (Ruthless Regiment) Vs Kathril, Aspect Warper (Symbiotic Swarm) Wins: 1 Losses: 2
Game 1: We had plenty of options to play on turn 3 and 4, but we could only do one thing each turn. By turn six we had to face down a big flying Kathril, Aspect Warper that we couldn't handle. Humans aren't the best at flying and we ended losing to Commander damage in short order. Loss for Jirina.
Game 2: Here we found some of our Artifacts to Ramp us early (notably Sol Ring and Arcane Signet) which allowed us to get the army rolling quickly. With and early Jirina Kudro we started smacking Kathril early and by they time she could do any real damage, it was too late. Humans win this one.
Game 3: I said Mardu falls behind with those lands and that's exactly what happened here. We missed two land drops in a row and with no Ramp we were sitting ducks. Magus of the Wheel let us refill our hand looking for a way to win but the big bug was too strong. Humans down.
Jirina Kudro Vs Gavi, Nest Warden (Timeless Wisdom) Wins: 2 Losses: 1
Game 1: Gavi, Nest Warden was a super neat deck to play against but we really saw Jirina in action this game. We were making tons of tokens (with the help of Trynn) and gave Jirina protection from White with the new Sanctuary Blade. Everything Gavi had out this game was White and had nothing to stop Jirina from hitting turn after turn. Jirina leading Humans to victory.
Game 2: The only draw we had in this game was Humble Defector which is a bad card in this deck. I don't like giving my opponents the opportunity to draw more cards, especially when it means they may not actually give the Defector back to me in multiplayer games. Unexpectedly Absent is the only removal we saw and honestly its another bad card. It costs too much mana and there are a lot of other ways for White to deal with removing cards from play. All in all we just couldn't stop the Cycling machine that is Gavi.
Game 3: This game took FOREVER. Gavi and Jirina both took turns being the forerunner of the game and there was a lot of removal on both sides of the game. Fortunatley we had plently of draw for our Humans and a Silvar in play to keep around due to his ability to become Indestructible. Humans and Cat Nightmares for win.
Jirina Kudro Vs Otrimi, the Ever-Playful (Enhanced Evolution) Wins: 3 Losses: 0
Game 1: We're facing off against Magic's newest mechanic...Mutate! Let's see how it goes. This round our Humans had a little trouble getting enough Mana in the start of the game, but all that tribal synergy let us catch up soon enough. The partners Silvar and Tryn really made the difference. Honestly the best pair in the game. Making Silvar indestructible each turn gave us an easy blocker for Otrimi and the rest of the game was history. Humans beat the monsters.
Game 2: Jirina Kudro got taken out early and often, but recasting her only made her enter the battlefield ability even better. We were able to find our own decent amount of removal and keep the mutated Otrimi at bay. After a pretty quick Shared Animosity, the power boost our team got was too much for the monsters to handle.
Game 3: Species Specialist really kept this game in the hands of the Humans. Being able to draw cards everytime one of our Human tokens dies is a huge benefit for our deck. And trust me if you're playing properly you'll be sacrificing quite a few Humans, either in combat or to Silvar's ability. All in all the Human synergies just did too much damage for the monsters to handle.
Jirina Kudro Vs Kalamax, the Stormsire (Arcane Maelstrom) Wins: 2 Losses: 1
Game 1: Very little draw and ramp for this game but we made up for it in the form of removal! That's right there was basically no threat from Kalamax that we couldn't handle this game. Kalamax has a bunch of really cool interactions with doubling Instants, but he just didn't have enough finishing power to win the game. Score for Kudro.
Game 2: Both decks seemed to find a lot of removal this game, making it hard for either to keep their Commanders in play. While Jirina can suffer through without being on the field herself, this is rough for Kalamax. This was quite possibly the longest back and fourth game of the night and all in all Kalamax ended it all with one big combo knocking the Humans off their pedestal.
Game 3: Not a great showing for either deck here but Kalamax really fell behind. He started with three lands and never saw another the entire game. This really is just bad luck on behalf of Kalamax. With three lands (and only two of his necessary colors) Kalamax was unable to cast anything meaningful and by turn 7 the Humans had made short work of poor Kalamax. 4 Person Games Commander really is all about the multiplayer aspect so lets see how Jirina and her army do against a group, rather than one deck at a time.
GAME 1: Kathril Vs Kalamax Vs Otrimi Vs Jirina Kudro Early Sol Ring! Best ramp you can ask for! This lead to some pretty powerful early plays, and left us some Mana for helping the other decks with removal problems. Being in White we've got some of the best removal in the game at our disposal so we can use this to earn some friends. Don't be afraid to politic and make some deals. Kathril became a threat pretty early in the game and as a result was knocked out first. Otrimi was a bit of a glass cannon here. The Mutate mechanic worked beautifully but it kept eating removal and having to start back from square 1. At the end, Kalamax just had too much value using Twinning Staff and Kalamax to make a bunch of copies and deal lethal damage to our remaining players. Winner: Kalamax.
GAME 2: Kathril Vs Jirina Vs Kalamax Vs Gavi He we ran out of gas way too early and had no way to draw more cards. Turns 3 and 4 were great but we had a tendency to durdle and do nothing for the next couple of turns. Thankfully our non-threatening board helped us fly under the radar. The Human's found themselves lacking in White Mana to cast their spells and took a while to catch up to the board. By then we got taken out by an army of Flying creatures created by Gavi and her Cyclers. Humans are good at a lot but not at flying. With Human's out of the game, Kalamax just out valued everyone and took the game. Winner: Kalamax.
GAME 3: Otrimi Vs Gavi Vs Jirina Vs Kalamax
This game Humans did okay. The mana, ramp, and card draw were all there, they just weren't spectacular. Our removal (Unexpectedly Absent) was very underpowered and there were definitely better cards in our deck, we just never found them. The small army was assembled pretty quickly, but lacked the proper finishing power. Kalamax was our raining champ and the Otrimi deck went full speed ahead to kill them. A Flying 11/11 Otrimi will certainly make that happen in short order. But after that Gavi was pure value and swamped the board with tokens, and just walked right over the rest of the decks. Winner:Gavi.
What we learned- All decks need ramp, card draw, and removal to function properly. These are all aspects of the game that this pre-con is sorely missing. On top of that, we had several cards that didn't really fit with the main theme of the deck. On the bright side, this deck is a great way for new players to learn about the benefits of sacrificing tokens for value, and how to pilot a deck that wants to create a bunch of tokens and bull doze Opponents. for the win. UPGRADING: In order to make any upgrades to our deck, we'll have to remove a few cards. Our first choices are: Kelsien, the Plague (A cool card, just doesn't fit here), Unexpectedly Absent (Just bad removal) Titan Hunter, Titan of Eternal Fire, Fumiko the Lowblood, Humble Defector, Dearly Departed (All decent creatures, but there's better choices out there) Spinerock Knoll and Windbrisk Heights (Hideaway Lands are BAD) and Shiny Impetus, Martial Impetus, and Parasitic Impetus (again nothing we want to be doing with our deck). If you want to turn this into a full (way cooler) deck, check out our whole new decklist HERE!
Thanks for reading!
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