I know this video is forever old but, I just built my Kess deck and I went full in on copying spells. Swarm Intelligence, Thousand Year Storm, reverberate and so on. Talrand and Locust God create tokens to protect Kess...
i just started playing kess when she got reprinted in modern horizons, and with eldraine and a bunch of really fun red damage spells from m20, its a very fun, very powerful deck with a lot of repeat value. I was able to win a game last night by doing bearly 30 damage in one turn
It was confirmed that that is nicols shadow on the original art of Cruel Ultimatum and the flavor text was sort of a tribute to him cause you know, he's so powerful. 😂
I love that you called Aetherflux Reservoir 'a cannon'. In my play group we call it the Orbital Cannon. This was after I used it to kill two players in one turn rotation.
I don't know if it's too soon but I feel like kess has taken on a new level since her release and it would be cool seeing a revamp video. Also theres a small section where they say thrasios is a slow burn lol.
Dralnu, Lich Lord existed prior to this and was actually pretty good despite it's downside. Kess is similar enough that I'd say it has a lot of potential.
OMG!!!! I just started playing guild wars 2 yesterday and I picked Kess dissident mage as a random elementalist name, I found it in the gatherer website. This is mind blowing for real.
I'm running a Kess deck with a "threaten" spell theme. It just seemed like something to build since there are "threaten" spells across all three grixis colors and they're instants and sorceries. The flaw with "threaten" spells is that they don't do enough, but when you can use each one twice, well that's something. I've not played it a lot, but it is super fun the times I have. I'm playing sacrifice cards like Innocent Blood and Fling too. I'm not playing Dark Ritual, cause Culling the Weak, Sacrifice, and Burt Offering are just more on theme with the steal and sac theme. It is really demoralizing when you steal a creature "until end of turn," hit it's owner with it, and then sacrifice it to get a great effect. I'm not playing take "extra turn effects" and instead playing "extra attack phase" spells to take advantage of stealing creatures until end of turn. The other day I cast Act of Treason from my hand, cast it again from my graveyard, attacked their owners with them, then Ghostly Flickered them both so I got to keep them. The look on the player's faces was great. Pyromancer's Goggles is definitely in mine, cause most threaten cards are red. Deck's pretty budget too since the threaten spells are super cheap. I'm also playing many of the modular commands and charms in grixis for the versatility especially when you get two uses out of them.
A card not mentioned here you should definitely add is insult/injury. You can easily cast it twice and quadruple the damage on that turn through kess's ability
Snap is better in an emergency, but Kess is good for the long-game. I got into a game the day after release with Kess as my Commander and was getting the shit beat out of me: no presence and down to 21 life on turn 5...and then I hit the board with Damnation. And then I hit the board with a Black Sun Zenith. And then I brought Kess out and threatened the whole board with a third wipe in as many turns. At that point until the end of the game - NO ONE even considered attacking me until it was just down to me and the player who won. If I'd seen any of my card draw I probably would have been able to run away with the game, but I never did. Kess is good for a long-term plan, where you stabilize yourself and then play politics with your graveyard and your hand.
The other interesting thing about Epic Experiment relative to Mizzix's Mastery is that spells cast with epic experiment resolve normally and are put into your graveyard, where Mizzix's Mastery exiles them. Seems especially good for Kess.
So i ordered from Cardkingdom.... told them i came from you guys since i wanted to support the channel in a way. Usually dont order from abroad when i have a lgs so close.
My Kess deck was very similar. I found that it had trouble winning and needed more ramp, so I'm changing it to a Vial Smasher / Thrasios deck. casting Crypt incursion and Exsanguinate twice was fun, though. didn't expect to get to 144 life in a spells deck.
PacManTheSoulEater exactly, the only reason I clicked on the video is because I generally enjoy their videos. But the title is a real turn-off and I'm assuming they don't spend an entire hour on it. If I didn't know the Command Zone already I never would have clicked.
My biggest pet peeve is when people call Kess's or Baby-Jace's recursion ability "flashback" or even worse, "snapcaster ability" When a much more accurate analogy would be Yawgmoth's will. You can cast spells with overload and alternative costs.
I feel like the wizards deck came with two commanders that are legit more interesting and powerful than the main commander for the deck. Marsil is just value city, and Kess opens up a lot of neat spellcaster strategies. I really do enjoy some of the more open-ended commanders because they are a real challenge to build around effectively. If I had two grand to drop, I would totally build Kess's (the man, not the card) deck. Also loving the people misreading the (admittedly very click-baity) title. I wasn't aware Sanpcaster was a legal Commander :P
JIMMY! YOU WERE RIGHT! Nicol is on the original art of Cruel Ultimatum. The art is of a demon lord of grixis cowering and the shadow is of a massive dragon. Wizards confirmed that when Cruel Ultimatum was printed print they did that to kinda show that Nicol would make an appearance in the set and then his Planeswalker card was printed.
She's very good with the Paradox plan. You want your deck to be very heavy on ramp because you really don't want to just cast Kess on 4 and say go. You want to cast her when you can at least do something. That leads you to a lot of ramp spells, which in Grixis is artifacts, and that segues to Paradox Engine very well.
The one thing that I think the Kess(ler) deck really needs is cheap cantrips. I'm up to seven in my list; Ponder, Preordain, Brainstorm, Serum Visions, Thought Scour, Gitaxian Probe, Whispers of the Muse. They ensure you can do things in your early turns, set up your mid-to-later turns very well, and make sure Kess always does something when she comes down. They also let you politic your way to a much-less-scary Kess. "I just want to cast this Ponder and draw a card, okay? No need to counter her." At the very least I'd add Git Probe because it lets Kess do something if you have to tap out to cast her.
Kestral287 I personally hate cantrips in Commander, so I understand where he comes from. I don't think they do enough for multiplayer. Especially if you want to have fun instead of just winning as fast as possible.
Bradd Brandes It depends somewhat on your deck. You've kind of hit upon how this is affected by the power of the deck. When you play very powerful cards with a powerful, high-synergy strategy cantrips are awesome and big draw spells tend to get very clunky. If you want more cards they're unimpressive. If you want BETTER cards they're fantastic.
Hmmm...the Kess deck in the description seems pretty casual. I do think she's easily Tier 1 but so is Jeleva. Kess is great with Storm and can easily combo out quickly
I keep a grafdigger cage in my sideboard most of the time I play commander just in case I run across this strategy - 'cause you're right. It's popular, and the good decks use it.
any reason why you didn't choose temporal trespass for the deck, considering its one of the cheaper extra turn cards to cast, and it has the "exile it" clause which you stated to like for social reasons?
I'm actually more excited about Mairsil than I have a right to be, but I'm excited because I realized he's basically Inspector Gadget! Please Command Zone use this point of view when you try to discuss him!
I understand that you guys push CardKindom because it's your sponsor, but do they provide some sort of Customer Loyalty program where you can reach a level of discount after a certain threshold of spending? That's the number one reason why I would never leave coolstuffinc at this point.
It would be lovely if the Lifelinker app also took account for commander damage, could preset the players, for specific game nights, and a dope feature would be to be able to add decks, for W/L ratios. I'd pay a premium for that lol
You know, watching this, and listening to Kess's prediction, I have a feeling that M19 just might have something there. We're going back to Tarkir for magic 2019, so you never know!
If i was building this deck i would be worried about two extra things.Protecting my commander so i don't have to recast her all the time and protecting my precious gy that i have been dumping spells the entire game. This can be done with artifacts/creatures/enchantments that give me hexproof or with removal against gy hating permanents. Unless ofc your meta doesn't have much gy hate.
Could someone explain the text "during each of your turns" - don't you only have one turn unless you take another? Is there a difference between "During your turn" and "During each of your turns" ? Maybe I am just having a brain fart.
I preffered last year deck box design for the commanders... it had a dice box on the bottom, now is like the deck box for commander 2015 :( I liked so much the 2016 design
I already figured the infinite turns combo with her. 1. Cast Through Time + Unsubstsntiate + Time Warp. 2. Cast Through Time on board. Unsubstantiate and Time Warp in hand. 3. Cast Time Warp, with rebound. 4. Time Warp Rebounds during following turn, goes to graveyard. 5. Cast Time Warp from grave with Kess, cast Unsubstantiate to pull it back to hand, Unsubstsntiate goes into rebound. 6. Next turn is yours because Time Warp rebounded last turn. Unsubstantiate rebounds this turn, target itself, it goes to your hand. Time Warp and Unsubstantiate are both in your hand,
Honestly, after playing with Kess stringing together Enough extra turns is free enough that I wouldn't bother trying to infinite it. There are other infinites that fit far more naturally into her deck that you can look to instead.
Kestral287 No! It needs to be complicated and stupid and confusing to everyone at the table exactly how it works! None of this Dead-eye/Palinchron EZ mode scrubness!
I'm curious, couldn't you technically cast Increasing Vengeance from the graveyard, copy itself twice, then copy the original, and keep doing that until you have infinite copies, and then use some of those infinite copies (which wouldn't have all been used to copy themselves) and copy a damage spell or an extra turn spell or whatever?
You can never cast a spell targeting itself, as it requires a target on the stack before the spell has been cast. However, even assuming that it somehow has targeted itself, your subsequent copies have never actually been cast from anywhere, so you wouldn't be getting the graveyard clause. At best, you'd have a bunch of increasing vengeance copies copying themselves with no real rhyme or reason. You wouldn't be copying twice because they have never been cast from the graveyard, only copied from a spell that was cast from the graveyard.
Ohhhh that's right, I forgot about that. I'm still newer to Magic (although I realize now that my question was stupid because I actually knew that, I just wasn't thinking about it correctly) so thank you for the clarification. Though I'm still slightly confused on the inability to copy itself. If you cast the spell, it goes onto the stack, which allows it to be its own target because you control it, correct? Or is that trigger a precursor condition that has to be satisfied before the spell is put on the stack?
Spells can't target themselves, so no. Vengeance also can't simultaneously be on the stack to /be/ a target and in the graveyard to cast, so no again. And every method this deck has of casting Vengeance from the graveyard will exile it, so a third no. There are ways to pull off this kind of effect (Reset+Reiterate+Bolt is the famous one), but this is not one of them.
When a spell is being cast, you have to take multiple items into account, like how much mana you need and any additional or reduced costs, but the big one for spells like Counterspell and Increasing Vengeance is legal targets. A spell that requires a spell to be a target cannot target itself as it is not on the stack when you're in the process of casting it. However, once a spell is on the stack, it can now be targeted, copied, and countered as it is now a legal target. Also, there are no stupid questions! I'm in the process of becoming a judge, so I'm here to help! TL;DR Increasing Vengeance can't copy itself cuz it's not on the stack before you cast it, so you can't target it.
Thanks everyone for the clarification. I have a pretty firm grasp of the game and a lot of its intricacies, but there are always a few that evade my understanding until they're pointed out or until I have to research them. Thank you guys so much for being so helpful without being degrading, I love this community.
Quick answer: No, she is not better than snapcaster (in reference to the thumbnail). Short answer: In commander as your commander, sure occasionally. But there's a lot more to snapcaster that makes him inherently better 80% of the time.
The question was "Is she the best commander from C17?" not "Is Kess better than Snapcaster..." Even if Snapcaster could be your commander, I don't think it would be that good tbh. The value in him is the surprise flash and the cheap cost, commander tax ruins the cost and it being in the command zone ruins the surprise. I think Snaps is a better 1 of the 99 than Kess but that's not that this is about.
Stewart Jenkins My comment was in response to the thumbnail, probably should have made that clearer. In my opinion, Kess as a commander is slightly weak as a commander because you have to have to mana to both cast her and whatever it is you want to cast on the same turn, unless you want to risk her surviving a full rotation around the table. She also seems a lot worse as part of the 99. That being said, you can 100% build around abusing her ability and protecting her to make a good deck. It's just in terms of impact as soon as it hits the board, snapcaster seems a lot better than her most of the time.
But, as I said, This video isn't Kess vs Snapcaster. The point of "she isn't as good as snapcaster" is about as useful as "dies to removal". On the build around point, Leovold isn't OP as fuck in a random sulti deck, He is OP when in a deck full of card taxing effects and windfall effects so no one else gets to play. Narset isn't stupid till you make her a deck full of powerful spells and planeswalkers with top deck manipulation. A deck built around a commander that synergies incredibly well with them IS what makes that legendary creature a powerful commander.
Honestly, if you build a strong Kess deck she doesn't need to be around very long. Even a single turn could be enough. She may be one of the most powerful commanders we've seen in the past couple years. You just need to have the right spells for her to flash back.
Does anyone know if Mairsil´s ability works even if she is in your graveyard? Namely I have two examples. First: I exile a card with Eternalize or Embalm. Embalm says: "Exile this card from your graveyard: Create a token that's a copy of it, except it's...", so nothing about creating token copy of certain creature, but this creature. Can Mairsil use this ability? Second: I have a necrotic ooze and Mairsil is in my graveyard. Does the ooze have all the abilities? My intuition is saying that it does not work, but look at this: Necrotic Ooze: As long as Necrotic Ooze is on the battlefield, it has all activated abilities ... Mairsil: Mairsil, the Pretender has all activated abilities of all cards you own in exile ... The wording is notably different. The Ooze has very clear clause for it to have all the abilities only when it is on the battlefield, but Mairsil does not. Who it´s your take on this? I did not would an official ruling. Can Mairsil activate Embalm abilities? That would be awesome with the fact you really need to be able to cast Mairsil a lot in this deck. What about reasembling skeleton?
I feel they underrate the aggro style of the cat deck. Running mirri as the commander has got me a high win rate against the majority of the other decks. I'm not saying she's be best, just feeling like everyone underrated her ability.
Is there something going on with Patreon's uploading process? Because i think this is the 2nd time in the last month an episode came on youtube first. Im all for new content and i really dont care about when the new episode comes on but I can see some patrons getting rubbed the wrong way if the episode isnt available on both platforms especially those that primarily listen than watch. Hopefully I'm not being overly critical or rude its just something I've noticed. Otherwise this week's episode is a surprise for me because i thought for sure you guys would take a least a week after doing all the commander reviews, keep it up guys!
Apologies. We've gotten a bit off our game with so many episodes coming out. The patron feed is not an early-access point for the podcast and was never intended as such (except for Game Knights, when we can). But we should be better about getting those episodes up in a timely manner. Something we need/intended to work on improving for sure. Thanks for the feedback. As always, we really appreciate your patreon support and take it very seriously. You rock!
Thanks for the reply I really appreciate that and all the hard work you guys have been doing keep it up. Also looking back on the patreon page i only realize now I misread it the part about the early access my bad! Xo
Reaginic Wolf eh it's too slow. Every time someone plays it in my group they just hate out the dragons deck before it lands any significant dragons. The Ur Dragon certainly never lands. But my group is a lot more cut throat than most.
She only works on your turn so it's not comparable to snapcaster mage. If she could let you actually make use of your instant speed spells to be reactive then she would be good.
Funny enough, I recently finished the first iteration of my own Kess deck I chose to go with a heavy Wheel theme with lots of cost reduction and Laboratory Maniac as my primary wincon The idea is to use the wheels and chaos cards like Possibility Storm, Knowledge Pool, and Hive Mind to muck up my opponents' fields and hands until I either win or sow as much chaos as possible before I die
Papa Paws I agree it's a crap title. And now I'm scrolling through the comments and seeing that people are just automatically responding to the title without even viewing the content. I guess that will generate traffic so... Success?
@@piggisattk certainly is clickbait. If the title of whatever video asks a certain question and that question is never answered or brought up during the show, its clickbait.
Look, I get that you gotta give a shoutout to the sponsors and have to sprinkle your personalities in these videos, but come on. I had to ffwd to 7:00 into the video to get to the topic of the video.
Alex: "I live in 2020"
Me: "WHY DIDNT YOU WARN US"
I know this video is forever old but, I just built my Kess deck and I went full in on copying spells. Swarm Intelligence, Thousand Year Storm, reverberate and so on. Talrand and Locust God create tokens to protect Kess...
i just started playing kess when she got reprinted in modern horizons, and with eldraine and a bunch of really fun red damage spells from m20, its a very fun, very powerful deck with a lot of repeat value. I was able to win a game last night by doing bearly 30 damage in one turn
The demon on the ground in cruel ultimatum is cowering to Nicol Bolas. You can see his shadow.
I heard one of the designers say it on one of the R&D videos a while ago.
654billygoat Nicol bolas didn't always have that signature though. Shards of alara is 100% controlled by Nicol. So it is him here.
It was confirmed that that is nicols shadow on the original art of Cruel Ultimatum and the flavor text was sort of a tribute to him cause you know, he's so powerful. 😂
The demon on the ground is Malfegor.
No it isn't. Malfegor has four arms and four legs, like a centaur with four arms.
I love that you called Aetherflux Reservoir 'a cannon'. In my play group we call it the Orbital Cannon. This was after I used it to kill two players in one turn rotation.
Did you took that OC name from GTAO? Lol
I don't know if it's too soon but I feel like kess has taken on a new level since her release and it would be cool seeing a revamp video. Also theres a small section where they say thrasios is a slow burn lol.
Dralnu, Lich Lord existed prior to this and was actually pretty good despite it's downside. Kess is similar enough that I'd say it has a lot of potential.
Well, Kess costs 1 mana less and you can add red to the deck.
OMG!!!! I just started playing guild wars 2 yesterday and I picked Kess dissident mage as a random elementalist name, I found it in the gatherer website. This is mind blowing for real.
I'm running a Kess deck with a "threaten" spell theme. It just seemed like something to build since there are "threaten" spells across all three grixis colors and they're instants and sorceries. The flaw with "threaten" spells is that they don't do enough, but when you can use each one twice, well that's something. I've not played it a lot, but it is super fun the times I have. I'm playing sacrifice cards like Innocent Blood and Fling too. I'm not playing Dark Ritual, cause Culling the Weak, Sacrifice, and Burt Offering are just more on theme with the steal and sac theme. It is really demoralizing when you steal a creature "until end of turn," hit it's owner with it, and then sacrifice it to get a great effect. I'm not playing take "extra turn effects" and instead playing "extra attack phase" spells to take advantage of stealing creatures until end of turn. The other day I cast Act of Treason from my hand, cast it again from my graveyard, attacked their owners with them, then Ghostly Flickered them both so I got to keep them. The look on the player's faces was great. Pyromancer's Goggles is definitely in mine, cause most threaten cards are red. Deck's pretty budget too since the threaten spells are super cheap. I'm also playing many of the modular commands and charms in grixis for the versatility especially when you get two uses out of them.
A card not mentioned here you should definitely add is insult/injury. You can easily cast it twice and quadruple the damage on that turn through kess's ability
“Star Wars 9 was really good guys”
This did not age well
Just caught that!
Snap is better in an emergency, but Kess is good for the long-game. I got into a game the day after release with Kess as my Commander and was getting the shit beat out of me: no presence and down to 21 life on turn 5...and then I hit the board with Damnation. And then I hit the board with a Black Sun Zenith. And then I brought Kess out and threatened the whole board with a third wipe in as many turns. At that point until the end of the game - NO ONE even considered attacking me until it was just down to me and the player who won. If I'd seen any of my card draw I probably would have been able to run away with the game, but I never did. Kess is good for a long-term plan, where you stabilize yourself and then play politics with your graveyard and your hand.
50:00 my Kess deck is about me drawing cards and opponents discarding cards while i copy/cast spells multiple times.
The other interesting thing about Epic Experiment relative to Mizzix's Mastery is that spells cast with epic experiment resolve normally and are put into your graveyard, where Mizzix's Mastery exiles them. Seems especially good for Kess.
Speaking of wanting this product, if you want it, visit Cardkingdom! --->> out of stock
So i ordered from Cardkingdom.... told them i came from you guys since i wanted to support the channel in a way. Usually dont order from abroad when i have a lgs so close.
SGT Morningwood We super appreciate the support. Thanks so much. You rock!!
If you guys made a Facebook group I 100% would join. I need to break my feed up from all the guitar podcast groups I'm in.
My Kess deck was very similar. I found that it had trouble winning and needed more ramp, so I'm changing it to a Vial Smasher / Thrasios deck.
casting Crypt incursion and Exsanguinate twice was fun, though. didn't expect to get to 144 life in a spells deck.
Was this video for Kess or mana geyser? Cus all I can think of is how many decks I can shove mana geyser in. lol
Kenneth Lawson same here. My Neheb the Eternal will use it now, too.
Is having a bait click title, better than not having a bait click title?
PacManTheSoulEater exactly, the only reason I clicked on the video is because I generally enjoy their videos. But the title is a real turn-off and I'm assuming they don't spend an entire hour on it. If I didn't know the Command Zone already I never would have clicked.
I think someone else has been uploading their videos recently. The titles mean nothing.
PacManTheSoulEater is commenting some dumb shit on UA-cam, better than not commenting some dumb shit on UA-cam?
My biggest pet peeve is when people call Kess's or Baby-Jace's recursion ability "flashback" or even worse, "snapcaster ability"
When a much more accurate analogy would be Yawgmoth's will.
You can cast spells with overload and alternative costs.
Thrasios is murder and kill on sight. I've ensured that mentality after playing it a few times
I feel like the wizards deck came with two commanders that are legit more interesting and powerful than the main commander for the deck. Marsil is just value city, and Kess opens up a lot of neat spellcaster strategies. I really do enjoy some of the more open-ended commanders because they are a real challenge to build around effectively. If I had two grand to drop, I would totally build Kess's (the man, not the card) deck.
Also loving the people misreading the (admittedly very click-baity) title. I wasn't aware Sanpcaster was a legal Commander :P
To be fair, you can knock a grand off Kessler's list pretty easily. Just don't get the duals and a couple cards like Force. Xp
JIMMY! YOU WERE RIGHT! Nicol is on the original art of Cruel Ultimatum. The art is of a demon lord of grixis cowering and the shadow is of a massive dragon. Wizards confirmed that when Cruel Ultimatum was printed print they did that to kinda show that Nicol would make an appearance in the set and then his Planeswalker card was printed.
Hey Kessler did you think about throwing paradox engine in the deck? I am thinking about building her with Isocron Scepter/storm build.
She's very good with the Paradox plan. You want your deck to be very heavy on ramp because you really don't want to just cast Kess on 4 and say go. You want to cast her when you can at least do something. That leads you to a lot of ramp spells, which in Grixis is artifacts, and that segues to Paradox Engine very well.
Kestral287 Thanks Kessler! I really appreciate your advice! I built her and she has wrecked havoc on my playgroup.
Oh. I am not actually Kessler. D:
But good job. She's a ton of fun.
The one thing that I think the Kess(ler) deck really needs is cheap cantrips. I'm up to seven in my list; Ponder, Preordain, Brainstorm, Serum Visions, Thought Scour, Gitaxian Probe, Whispers of the Muse.
They ensure you can do things in your early turns, set up your mid-to-later turns very well, and make sure Kess always does something when she comes down. They also let you politic your way to a much-less-scary Kess. "I just want to cast this Ponder and draw a card, okay? No need to counter her." At the very least I'd add Git Probe because it lets Kess do something if you have to tap out to cast her.
100%. Those cards are gooooood stuff! Try Impulse too.
Kestral287 I personally hate cantrips in Commander, so I understand where he comes from. I don't think they do enough for multiplayer. Especially if you want to have fun instead of just winning as fast as possible.
They do twice as much in Kess though.
That's the thing, drawing 1 card once is not enough in EDH. Drawing 1 card twice makes it good enough? Debatable.
Bradd Brandes It depends somewhat on your deck. You've kind of hit upon how this is affected by the power of the deck. When you play very powerful cards with a powerful, high-synergy strategy cantrips are awesome and big draw spells tend to get very clunky. If you want more cards they're unimpressive. If you want BETTER cards they're fantastic.
Some of theses decks are almost 200 now
Hmmm...the Kess deck in the description seems pretty casual.
I do think she's easily Tier 1 but so is Jeleva.
Kess is great with Storm and can easily combo out quickly
I always thought the Shards of Alara Cruel Ultimatum had Bolas on it. Isn't that his shadow looming over the demon in the artwork?
You are correct. Also the demon on the ground is Malfegor.
Wei Wang no, no he is not. Malfegor has four arms and four legs, like an odd centuar.
I keep a grafdigger cage in my sideboard most of the time I play commander just in case I run across this strategy - 'cause you're right. It's popular, and the good decks use it.
In my play group, shuffling your deck like that (Kesslering) is called Cesaring your deck. My name is Cesar and lets just say it's well earned.
I'm most excited to finish building Inalla. I would also love to build Ramos, but that one will have to wait.
You know what’s hilarious? I just jumped over to this video after watching your latest one, and I didn’t even know this had Alex too
any reason why you didn't choose temporal trespass for the deck, considering its one of the cheaper extra turn cards to cast, and it has the "exile it" clause which you stated to like for social reasons?
Am I crazy, or does Tibalt actually have a home in a Kess Deck? Two mana draw one, loot one plus value if he sticks around?
Well you guys sold me. I wasn't sure which deck to get but Kess will be a wonderful replacement to Mizzix.
I'm actually more excited about Mairsil than I have a right to be, but I'm excited because I realized he's basically Inspector Gadget! Please Command Zone use this point of view when you try to discuss him!
I understand that you guys push CardKindom because it's your sponsor, but do they provide some sort of Customer Loyalty program where you can reach a level of discount after a certain threshold of spending? That's the number one reason why I would never leave coolstuffinc at this point.
It would be lovely if the Lifelinker app also took account for commander damage, could preset the players, for specific game nights, and a dope feature would be to be able to add decks, for W/L ratios. I'd pay a premium for that lol
the original Cruel Ultimatum has a dragon in sillouette that was meant to be Bolas.
I'm watching this a week before watching episode IX. Odd.
I also don't care about upside down cards. Watching friends look through my deck and freak out and start righting the cards brings me joy.
I think they released the C17 in August to be right before Ixalan that is tribal focused and hype that set for commander players.
You guys mentioned both the goldfish and lifelinker app. Do you guys have any other apps/resources you recommend for newbies?
I think Kess would bode well in a discard/madness deck. You can cast whatever from the grave and cheap for madness.
Those goosebump comment brought a really stupid grin on my face. :D
You know, watching this, and listening to Kess's prediction, I have a feeling that M19 just might have something there.
We're going back to Tarkir for magic 2019, so you never know!
If i was building this deck i would be worried about two extra things.Protecting my commander so i don't have to recast her all the time and protecting my precious gy that i have been dumping spells the entire game. This can be done with artifacts/creatures/enchantments that give me hexproof or with removal against gy hating permanents. Unless ofc your meta doesn't have much gy hate.
Totally thought they were doing touch me by the doors.
Cool deck Kessler, why did you to not include Talrand, Sky Summoner?
If you're reading this comment, can someone please explain if I can play instants on other players turns with Kess?
Nicol bolas is in the orginal art! He is the shadow overlooking the deamon
Do a deck build breakdown for Inalla!
I'd love to see the Ramos deck techs
Could someone explain the text "during each of your turns" - don't you only have one turn unless you take another? Is there a difference between "During your turn" and "During each of your turns" ? Maybe I am just having a brain fart.
I preffered last year deck box design for the commanders... it had a dice box on the bottom, now is like the deck box for commander 2015 :( I liked so much the 2016 design
I already figured the infinite turns combo with her. 1. Cast Through Time + Unsubstsntiate + Time Warp. 2. Cast Through Time on board. Unsubstantiate and Time Warp in hand. 3. Cast Time Warp, with rebound. 4. Time Warp Rebounds during following turn, goes to graveyard. 5. Cast Time Warp from grave with Kess, cast Unsubstantiate to pull it back to hand, Unsubstsntiate goes into rebound. 6. Next turn is yours because Time Warp rebounded last turn. Unsubstantiate rebounds this turn, target itself, it goes to your hand. Time Warp and Unsubstantiate are both in your hand,
Spells cannot target themselves.
Kestral287 Huh, might actually need swarm intelligence, then. I was so excited to not need it. oh well.
Honestly, after playing with Kess stringing together Enough extra turns is free enough that I wouldn't bother trying to infinite it. There are other infinites that fit far more naturally into her deck that you can look to instead.
Kestral287 No! It needs to be complicated and stupid and confusing to everyone at the table exactly how it works! None of this Dead-eye/Palinchron EZ mode scrubness!
What is this fabled app that Kessler was talking about? Decked Builder?
I'm curious, couldn't you technically cast Increasing Vengeance from the graveyard, copy itself twice, then copy the original, and keep doing that until you have infinite copies, and then use some of those infinite copies (which wouldn't have all been used to copy themselves) and copy a damage spell or an extra turn spell or whatever?
You can never cast a spell targeting itself, as it requires a target on the stack before the spell has been cast. However, even assuming that it somehow has targeted itself, your subsequent copies have never actually been cast from anywhere, so you wouldn't be getting the graveyard clause. At best, you'd have a bunch of increasing vengeance copies copying themselves with no real rhyme or reason. You wouldn't be copying twice because they have never been cast from the graveyard, only copied from a spell that was cast from the graveyard.
Ohhhh that's right, I forgot about that. I'm still newer to Magic (although I realize now that my question was stupid because I actually knew that, I just wasn't thinking about it correctly) so thank you for the clarification. Though I'm still slightly confused on the inability to copy itself. If you cast the spell, it goes onto the stack, which allows it to be its own target because you control it, correct? Or is that trigger a precursor condition that has to be satisfied before the spell is put on the stack?
Spells can't target themselves, so no.
Vengeance also can't simultaneously be on the stack to /be/ a target and in the graveyard to cast, so no again.
And every method this deck has of casting Vengeance from the graveyard will exile it, so a third no.
There are ways to pull off this kind of effect (Reset+Reiterate+Bolt is the famous one), but this is not one of them.
When a spell is being cast, you have to take multiple items into account, like how much mana you need and any additional or reduced costs, but the big one for spells like Counterspell and Increasing Vengeance is legal targets. A spell that requires a spell to be a target cannot target itself as it is not on the stack when you're in the process of casting it. However, once a spell is on the stack, it can now be targeted, copied, and countered as it is now a legal target. Also, there are no stupid questions! I'm in the process of becoming a judge, so I'm here to help!
TL;DR Increasing Vengeance can't copy itself cuz it's not on the stack before you cast it, so you can't target it.
Thanks everyone for the clarification. I have a pretty firm grasp of the game and a lot of its intricacies, but there are always a few that evade my understanding until they're pointed out or until I have to research them. Thank you guys so much for being so helpful without being degrading, I love this community.
Quick answer: No, she is not better than snapcaster (in reference to the thumbnail).
Short answer: In commander as your commander, sure occasionally. But there's a lot more to snapcaster that makes him inherently better 80% of the time.
The question was "Is she the best commander from C17?" not "Is Kess better than Snapcaster..." Even if Snapcaster could be your commander, I don't think it would be that good tbh. The value in him is the surprise flash and the cheap cost, commander tax ruins the cost and it being in the command zone ruins the surprise.
I think Snaps is a better 1 of the 99 than Kess but that's not that this is about.
Stewart Jenkins My comment was in response to the thumbnail, probably should have made that clearer.
In my opinion, Kess as a commander is slightly weak as a commander because you have to have to mana to both cast her and whatever it is you want to cast on the same turn, unless you want to risk her surviving a full rotation around the table. She also seems a lot worse as part of the 99. That being said, you can 100% build around abusing her ability and protecting her to make a good deck. It's just in terms of impact as soon as it hits the board, snapcaster seems a lot better than her most of the time.
But, as I said, This video isn't Kess vs Snapcaster. The point of "she isn't as good as snapcaster" is about as useful as "dies to removal".
On the build around point, Leovold isn't OP as fuck in a random sulti deck, He is OP when in a deck full of card taxing effects and windfall effects so no one else gets to play. Narset isn't stupid till you make her a deck full of powerful spells and planeswalkers with top deck manipulation. A deck built around a commander that synergies incredibly well with them IS what makes that legendary creature a powerful commander.
Stewart Jenkins they changed the title slide. When it was first posted it was Kess vs Snapcaster.
Honestly, if you build a strong Kess deck she doesn't need to be around very long. Even a single turn could be enough. She may be one of the most powerful commanders we've seen in the past couple years. You just need to have the right spells for her to flash back.
I have a friend we call Finch. And he plays with his cards all mixed up like that. We call it Finching.
Does anyone know if Mairsil´s ability works even if she is in your graveyard?
Namely I have two examples.
First: I exile a card with Eternalize or Embalm. Embalm says: "Exile this card from your graveyard: Create a token that's a copy of it, except it's...", so nothing about creating token copy of certain creature, but this creature. Can Mairsil use this ability?
Second: I have a necrotic ooze and Mairsil is in my graveyard. Does the ooze have all the abilities?
My intuition is saying that it does not work, but look at this:
Necrotic Ooze: As long as Necrotic Ooze is on the battlefield, it has all activated abilities ...
Mairsil: Mairsil, the Pretender has all activated abilities of all cards you own in exile ...
The wording is notably different. The Ooze has very clear clause for it to have all the abilities only when it is on the battlefield, but Mairsil does not.
Who it´s your take on this? I did not would an official ruling. Can Mairsil activate Embalm abilities? That would be awesome with the fact you really need to be able to cast Mairsil a lot in this deck. What about reasembling skeleton?
I feel they underrate the aggro style of the cat deck. Running mirri as the commander has got me a high win rate against the majority of the other decks. I'm not saying she's be best, just feeling like everyone underrated her ability.
couldnt you lightning bolt 4 times per copy in your deck with pyromancers goglles and kess?
If paired with Deadeye Navigator, when you bounce Kess back can you use her ability again?
TheBlueEspeon yes. She would be considered a new creature providing an effect that is yet unused.
N Maple Wow. That seems like it would be a good inclusion then!
Is there something going on with Patreon's uploading process? Because i think this is the 2nd time in the last month an episode came on youtube first. Im all for new content and i really dont care about when the new episode comes on but I can see some patrons getting rubbed the wrong way if the episode isnt available on both platforms especially those that primarily listen than watch. Hopefully I'm not being overly critical or rude its just something I've noticed.
Otherwise this week's episode is a surprise for me because i thought for sure you guys would take a least a week after doing all the commander reviews, keep it up guys!
Apologies. We've gotten a bit off our game with so many episodes coming out. The patron feed is not an early-access point for the podcast and was never intended as such (except for Game Knights, when we can). But we should be better about getting those episodes up in a timely manner. Something we need/intended to work on improving for sure. Thanks for the feedback. As always, we really appreciate your patreon support and take it very seriously. You rock!
Thanks for the reply I really appreciate that and all the hard work you guys have been doing keep it up. Also looking back on the patreon page i only realize now I misread it the part about the early access my bad! Xo
Wouldnt Disrupt Decorum be a good card to add?
I think the dragons deck is op especially after you tweak it
Reaginic Wolf eh it's too slow. Every time someone plays it in my group they just hate out the dragons deck before it lands any significant dragons. The Ur Dragon certainly never lands. But my group is a lot more cut throat than most.
Sarkhamy It also depends on the build one of our guys tweaked it and he can get Ur-Dragon consistantly T4-5
Hey Josh are you brewing a 5 five color marsil deck if so then Get to it!
great. I want to build that deck now!
34:18 You can't cast geyser if you exiled it with kess before ...
She only works on your turn so it's not comparable to snapcaster mage. If she could let you actually make use of your instant speed spells to be reactive then she would be good.
Every playgroup has one. We named it after our guy as well.
Put mana web in this deck and mana geyser would be insane
Why is there no Rise from the tides / Army of the Damned? Those seem good with extra turn(s).
You guys should do a video on ixanan
what happened to the guy in the middle? (going back through episodes as discovered this channel last year
Funny enough, I recently finished the first iteration of my own Kess deck
I chose to go with a heavy Wheel theme with lots of cost reduction and Laboratory Maniac as my primary wincon
The idea is to use the wheels and chaos cards like Possibility Storm, Knowledge Pool, and Hive Mind to muck up my opponents' fields and hands until I either win or sow as much chaos as possible before I die
I kinda want to know what app Kessler is talking about that let's him goldfish.
fazzitron It looked like the app Decked Builder, but I was wondering the same thing. Even if it's not, I recommend it.
also I forgot to mention it but, REMAND!
Why clickbait titles? Do you guys even need to have clickbait titles? You're a part of the magic community not the prank community
Papa Paws I agree it's a crap title. And now I'm scrolling through the comments and seeing that people are just automatically responding to the title without even viewing the content. I guess that will generate traffic so... Success?
RecklessFables Comments don't really affect the YT algorithm, but they are something you can report to sponsors to boost your desirability.
Big Cheese Slim not even clickbait
@@piggisattk certainly is clickbait. If the title of whatever video asks a certain question and that question is never answered or brought up during the show, its clickbait.
Would rebound work the way I think it does with kess?
Adlinarr Gaming Rebound only works when cast from hand. So you'd get to cast the spell a total of three times if also cast using keys, not four.
Can the command zone make a how to use video on life linker
I love Avatar: the Last Airbender!!! Definitely in my top 5 as well. Also love Kess, can't wait to make my Kess deck.
Where is the deck list?
I have a suggestion for a game knights episode where all 4 decks are under $300. This would benefit us budget builders.
I like the deck and everything, but I wish they would build stuff a little more affordable. This is a $2000 deck
CZ can you cover the Ixalan spoilers?
Just a better version of magus of the will however removing spells that you can play again isn't good.
Is c17 not out in the us yet or something?
Alex Quested No it is
Put in energy field to protect early game.
Knowledge pool can also help you abuse Kess' ability.
What about Josh Kim deck he built
Kess+deadeye= graveyard landcasts
Everyone knows the best blue creature is STORM CROW!!!!!!!
Mathas, the Fiend Seeker is the one I'm brewing
Look, I get that you gotta give a shoutout to the sponsors and have to sprinkle your personalities in these videos, but come on. I had to ffwd to 7:00 into the video to get to the topic of the video.
Vampires for life!
This dude lived in 2020 and decided not to warn us smh
the important thing is each of YOUR turns... not each turn. not flash and in that turn... nothing. just sorcery speed stuff