Ever made a deck designed to be the beatdown in
a multiplayer environment? It's actually pretty
hard. Ever made a deck designed to be the
beatdown in a 100 card singleton environment
where you may have redundancy, but still can't
really guarantee being able to use any
particular card at a given time? Just as hard.
Still, Eight-and-a-Half-Tails seems like a good
place to start for a beatdown deck in Commander.
In "regular" constructed play, he could
basically lock out a deck with a lot of spot
removal, but the problem was always having
enough mana - he's costed for an aggressive
deck, but those decks tend to be light on lands.
In Commander, playing lots of lands and artifact
mana acceleration is almost a given. Nobody in
such an environment is going to laugh at a
beatdown deck playing Marble Diamond or
Darksteel Ingot, and that's going to give him a
lot more chance to do his thing. He actually
seems just as suited to a slower creature-based
strategy, as white has access to good big
creatures, and a few ways to protect them but
mostly as a one-shot effect (mostly of the Stave
Off variety).
Welcome back readers commander week is in full
swing and now its time for me to weigh in on the
incredibly annoying kitsune, 8 Tails has the
ability to give target permanent protection from
white, he also has the ability to transform any
spell of permanent into a white permanent, this
can be incredibly annoying and with enough mana
can practically lock down the board or make
things highly unfavorable for your opponents, In
all constructed formats this card is slow and
fragile to start off with not a great
combination making it nearly useless in the
majority of existing deck types. In casual and
multiplayer is where this card undoubtedly
shines, the ability to protect anything you
control from removal, safely block gigantic
threats, push through damage, mess around
with auras is invaluable it is so versatile and
provides a game changing effect, the
downside in multiplayer and especially commander
however is your choice of general can have
repercussions and turning yourself into a threat
or a perceived threat can lower power levels. In
limited it would be a nearly unbeatable card
given enough mana and time to develop. Overall a
powerful and one of the most powerful mono white
commanders available.
Today's card of the day is
Eight-and-a-Half-Tails which is a two mana White
2/2 legendary that for two mana gives target
permanent you control protection from White
until end of turn and for one colorless mana
target spell or permanent becomes White until
end of turn. Aside from the obvious combo
with Painter's Servant and being very strong
against other White decks this works very well
alongside acceleration to make use of available
mana. As a Commander this needing three
mana to activate both effects whenever needed is
a bit mana intensive and slightly clunky, but
overall is solid and can have interesting decks
built around it.
I haven't had a whole lot of experience with
Tails here, it's a nice pick for mono-white. The
small cost and quick evasion of anything for a
minimum of 2 (or 3 for anything not white) is
impressive, but it takes a lot more than just
evasion to win. Lots of Tails decks use equips
to bump up his power and swing for unblockable
commander damage. It's a neat plan, though has
the opportunity to backfire if you can't keep
the mana flowing for evasive maneuvers.
Constructed: 3.5
Casual: 4
Limited: N/A
Multiplayer: 2.5 (This is where in my mind, it'd
be too difficult to parse out mana to keep
multiple opponents at bay)
