Commander Focus: Stax vs Tax, Myriad vs Morph, & Commander Liara Portyr

I think there's some rosy-colored glasses concerning the world before Brackets. While a number of people still continue to play Commander without the stricter definitions afforded to us by Wizards, now that they manage the format, that tends to be people with well-established groups and intra-pod dynamics, not your randoms at FNM. While there's certainly downsides to Wizards itself managing the Commander format, being less so an impartial body and arriving to the table with some measure of profit motive, the categorization of the various sub-formats into Brackets 2-5 has helped reduce the number of severe mismatches in terms of power level. While certainly I have my gripes that ending the game through a turns combo is verboten when Thoracle is not, I'd much rather play in a world where everyone has a concrete benchmark. We jest, but the amount of "My Deck is a 7" Yurikos back before Brackets was troubling. I want to use this as a jumping-off point to discuss a deck that carried me through the latter half of college and into the first year of me covering Magic content: Commander Liara Portyr. Liara, until the release of Doc Aurlock, Grizzled Genius, was the sole way of discounting cards cast from Exile, and even back then I was smitten with a card you've seen pop up in a number of my articles, Eternal Scourge. That said, the way I played Liara back then was...rude, frankly, and not only have Brackets assisted in making her more fun, but also broadly encouraged taking otherwise-discouraged strategies into more socially-aware directions. In short, I want to talk about how I've grown not only as a deckbuilder, but as a person.

"Spells You Cast from Exile This Turn Cost {X} Less"

Liara is built for one thing: Attacking three different opponents, and slamming Colorless Spells that cost {3} or less off the top. She's fairly simple in that regard, encouraging you to jam as many pieces that meet that criteria as possible, but the fact she's best-enabled by aggressive pieces also pushes you towards some of niche, small Myriad bodies like Wyrm's Crossing Patrol. The sooner you can start triggering Liara for {3} and 3 cards, the better, but she does come with a few caveats...as an Uncommon from Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate. First, it's specifically cast, and not play, unlike so many modern impulse draw Commanders. That means she can have issues with Lands (which we'll get into), encouraging you to have as many in hand as possible. Second, she's a whopping 5 mana, meaning there's both problems with her coming online period, and the utter dismay one has at casting her after removal for 7 mana. This isn't a Commander you want to be casting twice, and because she doesn't readily find Lands on her own, you're required to consistently make Land drops outside of her extra 3-6 cards per turn.

The upside, however, is not insignificant. 3 cards for "close to free" more often than not is a solid payoff for a fairly modest input. There's a few things to know about how cost reductions work to fully grasp the capabilities of Liara, but in short, you apply additional costs before reductions, meaning a Sol Ring cast from Exile while you had a 2 mana discount from Liara costs {0}, but still would cost {0} even if someone else had a Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. The same is true for effects like Sphere of Resistance, or Lodestone Golem, all of which are key facets of how Liara breaks parity. The thing is, though, I wasn't just doing tax effects back before the guidance of Brackets—I was doing stax.

Stax Player in Rehab

What are some of the most powerful, parity-breaking Colorless cards available to Boros with a cost of {3} or less? If you groaned with the acknowledgement that yes, she synergizes with Winter Orb and its peers, you're unfortunately right. Slamming a Static Orb off the top, knowing you only need to untap with a single Myriad Creature to then roll 3 more potentially-free cards, was the entire crux of that gameplan. You could tap them down before your untap, as well, with Ghirapur Aether Grid, or later Network Terminal, as to not even bother with your own stax effects. In short, it was brutal, and played similarly to a non-Creature focused Winota. The problem mostly came down to one of value: If they removed Liara once you established a stax piece, with no way to break parity, how did you ever find the mana to cast her again? When the deck was humming, it felt unbeatable, but an anger-inducing gameplan like that wasn't the kind you wanted to be fragile. While Liara worked well on paper with these cards, in practice she'd either fall flat, or steamroll—neither of which were welcome outcomes, when I was playing with new people.

This social mismatch between everything seeming to line up for Liara, and yet human nature being the thing that really put a bullet through that deck's head, is why she was disassembled. Nobody wanted to play against that kind of list twice, even though it was far from cEDH. She's sat as a Commander I built, past tense, and not one I was eager to put back together. Enter the Bracket System. Now we have a newly-forged amendment to the social contract of Commander, with clear outlines of cards that folks already knew they wanted to see, or not—it may seem obvious now, but there's both a right and a wrong way to approach slowing the game down even within the context of Stax. If Liara was still able to slam those 3 free-ish cards each turn, could it work out if their goal was to push my gameplan forward, faster, than slow down the rest of the table to Red & White's speed? I think part of the character arc of Liara is tied to the identity of those colors, seen as the worst for a literal decade of the format, now with far better tools available.

Rigging the Slots

Spells cost {3} less! Like the game! Hit game, Liara Portyr 3!

Before I dive into the deck's intended path to victory, I want to highlight some of the genuinely cool things Liara enables, given her effect is one that stood as mechanically unique for about 3 years. First up: Alternate casting costs, specifically Morph. Liara's cost reduction happens after all costs of a card are calculated, meaning you could in theory "pay" for things like Offspring or Squad using her discount. This is especially pertinent when talking about one of the most unintendedly skin-crawling card names as of late, Endless Foot Assault. Liara asks you to attack all your opponents, of course, but checks after attacks are declared; this means you can actually see your discount (ideally X=3) after all tokens from things like the Assault and Myriad are created. Not only is it a great way to swarm the board, and get maximum use out of your discount, but because the costs prior to the additional Kicker-style effects are reasonable, it's likewise not a feelsbad to cast from hand. The real shame comes down to a lack of stellar playables for some of the best mechanical opportunities; aside from the debatable Prosperous Bandit, is there another Offspring card in the colors you'd be excited to rip off the top? Still, as with many wide-ranging cost reducers, Liara is only going to get better with time, as Wizards can never truly stop designing spins on Kicker. Sneak from Turtles is another example, and I certainly considered a cards like the Techniques here (e.g. Raphael's Technique), returning an unblocked Myriad token to hand as part of the cost.

That's not all, though, there are more cards still which don't intend to be cast for less than their printed mana cost. As an example, Priest of Urabrask is an easy way to get a free body on the table, but if played from Exile for {1}, is his very own costless Infernal Plunge. The same is true of Grinning Ignus, which can 'throw' Liara's discount into the future, and even build infinite Storm count with Birgi, if your build wants to do something like that. Onto an example mechanic we are actually playing more than a couple of, Morph (or Megamorph, or Disguise) asks you to pay {3} instead of the normal cost of a card, in order for it to arrive to the board as a face-down 2/2. You'll notice that cost has appeared frequently in this article, and yes—Liara lets you Morph cards from exile for free, with a single maxed trigger. This is clearly a potent interaction, given Morph's benefit of hidden information is offset by its inefficiency, but this is ultimately Boros we're talking about, and until Murders at Karlov Manor, these weren't colors with a great suite of tools for the mechanic. At the time, actually, the only Morph card I played was Zoetic Cavern, as a Land that actually did something when exiled to Liara. That's still certainly an auto-include in the deck, along with its modern cousin Branch of Vitu-Ghazi, but sadly we've yet to receive a full cycle of Morph-Lands.

It's Disguisin' Time!

He cannot be placed there (he is Airbent).

Times have changed, though. Red & White have gotten quite a few playables with Morph/Disguise in the time since this deck was conceived, and while it's not the crux of the list there's enough to mention as high-quality cards even outside of a dedicated list. Boltbender is a stellar onboard trick, and the fact it re-routes any number of spells or abilities can even stop a Storm win in many cases. Similarly, Essence of Antiquity protects the board about as well as you can ask, with a massive Toughness once face-up; both of these tools also speak to something worth noting with Liara, broadly, that she tends to dislike reactive pieces from hand. I'm talking about your Tibalt's Trickerys, your Teferi's Protections, cards which can be absolute blow-outs when cast from a zone of hidden information, in response to opposing play. With Liara, we ideally want every potential hit with her effect to be something we'd consider casting on that turn, as cards left unplayed in exile are as good as Lands there—not very good at all. I do think an entire Boros Morph list headed by Liara could be sweet though, and certainly very unique, though I'd position that as a Bracket 2 option more than anything, with a Creature base of ~35-40 and as many Thorn of Amethyst effects stuck in there as one could fathom. Morph things out for free, pay to flip them with your Bender's Waterskin and similar, and never forget to tell your opponents that they've triggered your Trap card. Sounds like a blast, although perhaps a mite slow to get started, especially without ample Myriad attackers.

Doom Toots Where He Pleases

When it comes to asking about win conditions, I'd like to pose a question: What's made you feel the smartest in your Magic career? Whether a cleverly-sequenced out through unimaginable odds, or exploiting a niche interaction, I think quite a lot of players are here to chase that high of feeling like God's smartest little Johnny. For me, that started here. The crux of the core wincon is finding Sensei's Divining Top and Birgi, God of Storytelling//Harnfell, Horn of Bounty. Via Liara's discount of at least 1, we can place Top on top, draw a card, and discard it to exile the top 2 cards of our Library, including Top itself. It's free to cast from exile, in much the same vein as Top/Future Sight-style lines, but where this gets funny is the endgame: Mimic Vat, Blasting Station, and a card I've likely featured in more Commander articles than anyone else, Eternal Scourge. All of these, being a sac outlet that closes the game, a way to exile Creatures after death, and an infinite body from exile, cost {3} Colorless—the exact discount on a maxed single Liara trigger. So, if you line Harnfell+Top through your Library, these close out the game in an incredibly neat little package, all while being quite reasonable cards on their own. Well, except Birgi.

It's wildly funny to me, as someone who's seen their fair share of Birgi combos, to see her backside also enable a combo like this. Not a modicum, a morsel of that card is fair, except for perhaps the Boast doubler. This combo was born of my chosen Modern deck at the time, Serum Scourge, which intended to use Serum Powder (a card I talked about in my Speed overview) to start the game with 1-2 Eternal Scourge in Exile, easy to cast as undercosted beaters via Eldrazi Temple. If I hadn't begun my Magic experience with 60 card formats, I'd likely not have known about either of these tools, and therefore miss out on an extremely compelling route for this already-weird Commander; Liara sat at ~110 decks on EDHREC for a period of years, so there wasn't anyone in the tank on her best combos. Beyond the aforementioned line though, she does have the ability to just...kill opponents via combat, as a good ol' Boros list does. Though she uses the Combat Phase more as the means than the end, you do in fact win games of Magic by reducing opponents' life totals to 0. To definitely quote Sun Tzu here, people die when they are killed.

The CCA wouldn't let me say 'Doom Tops as he pleases'

In terms of hard stax, we are on a few soft-locks, being Uba Mask & Drannith Magistrate, or to a lesser extent, Magistrate + Memory Vessel. Neither entirely locks away the game, but applies pressure in terms of preventing access to newly-"drawn" cards...by preventing them from being drawn at all. Memory Vessel meanwhile allows us a mostly-one-sided wheel that sprays our discount onto 7 new cards, and by the time it goes off we're likely handless anyways. Monk Gyatso & Lightning Greaves also make appearances, though more for what they do outside of any combo context, than within. Gyatso is often a great little protection piece for a single {W}, with our {3} discount from exile, and in turn gives us a chance to Airbend, and therefore recast, any number of our pieces onboard. Just remember, you can't Morph a card from Airbending, that's not a legal way to stack alternate casting costs! In both these cases, beyond the core line, the combos include cards we're rather happy to play independent of one another. This means we can, as intended, jam pieces out from Liara's trigger even without the other, without feeling bad to see it removed before the second piece comes down.

Example Decklist: Commander Liara Portyr? Yeah, She Sure Is

While there's obviously these grand, sweeping philosophy changes between the lists of yesterday and today, Liara's biggest change comes down largely to new tools being printed. Back then, if you wanted to give something Myriad, you'd be paying 6+ mana via casting & equipping Blade of Selves, or Duke Ulder Ravengard. Now, that comes in the form of the 4—often 1—mana Ironwill Forger. 3 mana token generators have been replaced by those at 2 mana, the changing of the guard between Hanweir Garrison to Voice of Victory being especially telling. The game is getting faster, especially for both Red & White, because frankly it has to. If you can't get pressure rolling early, you're often still a steamrollable hunk of asphalt in the face of Simic bullshit, so cut down those mana costs and keep swinging!

Something worth noting, if you're trying to shift this list to a budget if proxies are off the table (an entirely reasonable venture) is that quite a few overcosted, fully colorless ways to find Lands are better here than most lists. Liara doesn't help you hit your Land drops, sad to say, so cards like Planar Atlas and company are lifesavers. Pilgrim's Eye isn't a card I'd hate to see in the context of Liara, as a way to turn your non-Land hits on exile into future mana, and I'm not kidding. These smoothing tools will quietly save games you aren't drawing Lands, and that happened to me more often than not when I was playing the deck at a scant 32 (though perhaps I've not well enough learned my lesson, at a current 35). In short, while less flashy, for pennies you can hit all your Land drops, instead of worrying about $100+ enablers in a proxy-free playgroup.

Decklists are kept updated, and may change with set releases.

Despite being a 5 mana Uncommon in Boros...Liara actually has some very real use cases across the normal Brackets. At 2, Liara's a stellar head for Morph, being a rather interesting counterpoint to [[Kumena, Slinking Sorcerer]] for the face-down aficionados in exactly the colors she's not. At 4, meanwhile, you can live the 2022 Saffgor dream of slamming free Winter Orbs and hearing the groans of those around you, which does still have some teeth in a world where your friends have already told you to stop playing [[Winota, Joiner of Forces]]. Jokes aside, that gameplan was compelling, and between a bit of fun slot machine action and the ability to break parity inherently, true Stax Liara is a very real option even in today's Commander world. Still, I wanted to offer the midpoint, a smorgasbord of all the cool tools she affords to those in Bracket 3, where total mana denial is forbidden. There's still lots you can do, and given about 2/3rds of all Commander games *are* B3, it's the likeliest list for the curious sort to pick up and play. Give it a try!

A Better Outlook

Winona Nelson's been doing art since OG Innistrad, and yet this is the piece I've seen most.

The same year I built that Liara list, I started writing about games as a side project, in order to not only get my thoughts out there but do so in a way that could help expand my horizons, on the hobby side. The person who built that list wanted more than anything to win, and do so in a way nobody could expect; the surprise factor was the point, it was the secret sauce that could ideally carry an Uncommon all the way to fringe cEDH, were I so lucky. The problem of course is that what works on paper doesn't always translate to in-person wins, or indeed in-person fun. If you're afforded the luxury of playing with a regular group, they're going to adapt to your style of play, and metas will become balanced in peculiar ways, something even more common when it was the wild west pre-Brackets. What was kosher and what got you hit with The Stare at a given LGS was something of a crapshoot, and my glib inclusion of some pretty severe mana restriction meant that the second Liara game against someone never went as well as the first.

My growth therefore comes not just from ideally being a kinder person & player, but from an understanding that the fun comes not necessarily from winning out of the blue (though I do still crave those juicy laurels of victory). Instead, you want opponents to 'catch on', to feel smart right alongside you for figuring out what your gameplan is, how to potentially interact with you. Explaining that master plan like an offbrand Bond villain, and setting yourself up for potential failure, is where that fun lies. After all, while I certainly prize being my opponents' first time against a given Commander—drawing me towards more niche picks for the CZ—there's less fun for everyone when flying blind against a strategy, especially if they're new. I say all of this not just to soapbox about deliberately guiding new opponents against your gameplan (mild self-sabotage creates bi-directional fun, people) but to implore Wizards...please put Commanders back on the Bracket list. The Yuriko player who, with twinkling eyes, pleads that it's 'just a 2' is no different from the collegiate ne'er-do-wells with the same shtick I beat back in '22. Adding 'problem Commanders' increased their visibility, and prevented the obfuscation of their inherent power to players who weren't too tuned in. Not everyone can learn to be forthcoming, but that's precisely why Brackets facilitate a more quantitative pregame conversation, and should point towards the hard questions about how willing a pod is to deal with some of the most frustrating pieces in this format.

Until next time, Commander? I barely even resolve her.

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