Magic: The Gathering Commander Focus: Clones, Layers, & Princess Yue

How much should you need to know about the rules to play Commander? That's not a rhetorical question, as given Magic's largest format is a casual one, not everyone approaches it with the same zeal as once was given to premier competitive formats. A lot of preconstructed decks are now led by Commanders who are at once engine and payoff, and there's been a shift away from so-called 'lenticular design', discussed first in 2014, where a card's interest increases with system knowledge. That type of design is far from gone, however, and my absolute favorite example of it from Magic's newest set, Avatar: The Last Airbender, is Princess Yue. What at first seems to be a flavorful uncommon that helps Blue decks ramp a bit quickly spirals into a rules rabbit hole once you ask a simple question: How does she work with Clones? I endeavor to take a deep dive into that hypothetical today, discuss layers, and why this Uncommon represents everything good about Magic's commitment to evocative mechanics, even as it wanes. I hope you don't mind explaining copiable values every time you sit down to play.

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

"Layer 1a: Copiable effects are applied."

Layers in Magic are akin to those of paint on a miniature, being additive as you build up a stronger, richer color. There are 7 Layers in Magic: Those that concern 1. Copiable Values, 2. Control, 3. Text, 4. Type, 5. Color, 6. Abilities, and 7. Power/Toughness. Of those, Yue cares about 1, 3, 4, and 6, which are the ones you'll be forced to explain every time you sit down at a table. Copiable values are fairly simple to find—anything with 'except' preceding its text (and its name, mana cost, color indicator, card type, subtype, supertype, printed text, power/toughness, and loyalty) are transferred when a card is copied. This is why token copies of Bloodforged Battleaxe created by Firion, Wild Rose Warrior provide their Equip discount to further tokens, but not their trigger to be sacrificed. For further coverage on Copiable Values, you can read my Commander Focus on Firion which touches on that with a bit more depth. The key takeaway is that Yue's ability is not itself a copiable value, so if you copy something affected by it, that clone won't itself be a Moon Land. Copying Yue itself does provide the trigger, though, which means getting that text from the original source or a copy thereof will give you the chance to become the Moon. Keep this in mind for later.

Yes, this really is how it works. No, your playgroup won't believe you at first.

The basic play pattern for Yue and a Clone-style card is as follows: The Clone enters as another Yue, and due to the Legend Rule, dies as a state-based action. Because it died as a Yue, it inherits her trigger and is forced to come back as a Moon Land with {T}: Add {C}. Clone still has text, and Yue doesn't overwrite it whatsoever, so it can still come back as a copy of any Creature on the board; let's say an opponent has a Seeborn Muse, a really juicy option. At the base layer, the Clone is a Blue 0/0 Creature—Shapeshifter. Layer 1 turns it into Seedborn Muse, a Green 2/4 Creature—Spirit, and Layer 3 changes its name into Moon, a Green 2/4 Creature—Spirit. Layer 4 swaps Creature for Land, and Layer 6 gives it {T}: Add {C}. We end up with Moon, a green Land that can tap for {C}, that retains the abilities of Seedborn Muse. This also keeps its mana cost (for Devotion purposes), and technically vestigial Power/Toughness (though it does nothing given that characteristic does nothing without being a Creature). In short, if we launder our Clones through Yue, we're able to create Land copies of their relevant copy options, with a few caveats. Not only are your Clones able to become whatever is best on the board, but do so as the most untouchable permanent type in Commander, and that leads to a host of problems...and possibilities!

First though, those provisos & special cases. If the second thing you're copying is Legendary, the Moon still is, too; Legendary is a weird Supertype that doesn't get altered in the same way as Creature or Artifact, so it remains after the relevant layer. Therefore, while you can have as many Moons as you want, only one of them can be a Legendary Moon, so be careful what you're copying. In contrast, a card like Hulking Metamorph loses both its Artifact & Creature typeline in the process, even in spite of its text, and the only thing changed is the vestigial, pointless P/T. Clever Impersonator doesn't copy the starting Loyalty of a Planeswalker (given that is intrinsic to the card type, like p/t to Creatures), but given it's a Land (and not a Planeswalker), it both cannot be attacked and can still use its abilities once per turn. Unkillable Tezzeret, Cruel Captain, here we come. I'm also a huge fan of both Metamorphic Alteration & Blade of Shared Souls, as it allows us to 'transplant' Yue's ability to a non-Clone, effectively sacrificing it and turning it into a Land at will.

No Woman Is an Island

Something that might go overlooked when we get into the weeds about these copies is the fact that they're Lands, and Landfall is one of the best value-generation archetypes in Commander. In Monoblue historically that's been less the case, but Yue makes a darn good argument with the shenanigans she enables. When you think of Blue Lands-matter in Commander, your mind begins with Retreat to Coralhelm, which does a fantastic job of helping us to filter through our Library with Yue, given she does have that ability to Scry 2. There are combos enabled by it as well, with cards like Walking Atlas & Guildless Commons, but given that's really closer to a 4 card combo without our Commander I'd only add it if you feel the acceleration is necessary. One card I'm high on in spite of its Legendary status, however, is Cosima, God of the Voyage//The Omenkeel. She was the defacto Monoblue Lands Commander until Yue, but her effect interacts gorgeously with what we aim to accomplish; we need not exile her, but a Moon with her text, which can then accrue Voyage counters and return to copy Yue (and then something else). That's right, it flickers our Clones, on top of refilling our hand.

To leap ahead in terms of mana, we're pulling on a more unique thread of Yue's: Abusing Amulet of Vigor effects. Given Moons enter tapped, Amulet turns them on immediately, and with our capacity to copy Artifacts with clones like Waxen Shapethief these taplands actually tend to go mana-positive when we need them to. Better still, Amulet's effect is available in Creature form, by way of Tiller Engine & Tideforce Elemental. From the get-go, Tiller is just Amulet with a wider pool of Creatures that can copy it, really turning up the fun and giving us the capacity to storm off in a weird High Tide-feeling ramp turn. Meanwhile, although you need to give it Moontext first, Tideforce Elemental (or its Clones) being a Land with 'Landfall — Untap this Land' is utterly hilarious. These three cards make up the core of our funky acceleration package, but don't forget that cards with Landfall trigger themselves when entering as Lands, meaning we can stack bonus Energy with Roil Cartographer, and eke out just a few more milled cards with Hedron Crab. The Tideforce Elemental interaction should be...more obviously good, but these are still important interactions to keep in mind. Worth noting in the context of Tideforce Elemental specifically is another rule: 700.7. This concerns a rephrasing of self-references in Gatherer text, which might trip some people up! To quote it directly, "If an ability uses a phrase such as “this [something]” to identify an object, where [something] is a characteristic or other quality, it is referring to that particular object, even if it isn’t the appropriate quality at the time.", and Yue's middle name may as well be 'not the appropriate quality'. So, while you might see cards like Tideforce Elemental or Battered Golem say "untap this creature" and weep, don't worry—it still works just fine.

The Right Stuff

If you set aside the deck's gimmick for a moment, to turn reasonable Creatures (and occasionally Artifacts) into Lands, you're left with a tempo-y midrange deck that wants to be far deeper on Creatures than Blue normally is. This is where goodstuff tempo Creatures work best, such as Aboleth Spawn & Ghostly Pilferer. We need these options to meet two core criteria: They need to be decent as Lands (striking out options like Ledger Shredder, who fundamentally cares about its body), and non-Legendary. One of the quirks of Yue that's gone unmentioned is that the clones, despite ideally being named 'Moon', will still inherit the Legendary supertype if their chosen base card is Legendary. Luckily, the Legend Rule only kicks in when it comes to 2+ Legendary permanents with the same name, so we can have as many non-Legendary Moons as we want...and up to 1 Legendary Moon. Given this, we've forgone seemingly great options like Jwari Shapeshifter, a 2-mana clone that basically only becomes Yue; this would normally be great, but takes up our precious Legendary Moon slot. This also means Moons tend not to be copies of opposing Commanders, given there's diminishing returns there. That's not to say we have to play no Legendary Creatures, but that we need to be mindful that they're often not ideal Clone options.

Supertypes are wonky, but can lead to combos.

In terms of Creatures that fit this bill, we're looking at the standouts, namely Faerie Mastermind & Ghostly Pilferer, but cards whose downside is that they can be removed are of special interest. A card like Kitesail Larcenist can blank 3 Commanders, then force them to be sacrificed, get copied, and do it again. The difference is, while doing so as a Land with Ward {1} it is positively agonizing to remove without gritting ones' teeth and recasting their Commander. The same is true for Tishana's Tidebinder, who can stun an opposing threat, then when copied and turned into a Land, do so from a far more difficult-to-handle position (via our Flash clones). Speaking of, if you've ever wanted a Voltron player to weep, try turning a Wall of Stolen Identity Moon into their Commander. Good luck untapping that. If you thought Phyrexian Revoker was bad, try getting rid of it now that it's a land. As you can see from these examples, this deck thrives on the social mores of Lands being virtually untouchable, and it allows you to shift power from readily-removed places, to those where they may as well be emblems. In polite company, or a blind pod, these effects being on Lands will accrue substantial value with little pushback.

Nonland Ho!

It's important we can control the board given our gameplan is decently fragile to overwhelming pressure, but luckily Yue enables that as well. Remember how I said Lands are relatively untouchable in Magic? This has driven a lot of recent board wipes to specify nonland, but clear everything else, and we can very obviously use this to our advantage. Given we store our important effects as Moons, cards like Devastation Tide, Coastal Breach, Consuming Tide, & Flood of Tears all make sense here; not only does Yue tee us up to cast these big wipes, by giving us additional sources of Moon mana, but those cards are preserved on the board. These can be cast at the right pace for Brackets 2-3, but might fall behind a bit in B4.

What doesn't fall behind, however, is when we make a mockery of card types. Nevinyrral's Disk and Boompile each potentially represent repeatable board wipes, if coupled with an Artifact Clone & Yue. They were designed with the intent to get rid of themselves with their own effect, lacking a sacrifice clause...but if either lacks a type they destroy, you just get to keep the card on the table. It's not all gravy, given you likely see Yue die to this exchange, but if the game's getting scary, you can delay opponents and insulate your combo by simply threatening to get rid of everything at a moment's notice, turn after turn. It isn't a win condition, but it sure as hell prevents losses.

Moonshot

The path to victory for the deck is paved with a unique duo of Creatures: The Wormfangs. These are part of a greater cycle of Nightmares that all take something important away while they're on the battlefield. Wormfang Newt & Wormfang Turtle do something raucously funny when they're chosen as the copy for a Moon clone—they remove a Land from the game, including themselves. This then returns that Land, e.g. the clone, to the Battlefield, copying Yue, dying, copying the Wormfang, and repeating. Yue, a Clone, and a Wormfang provide infinite Landfall & death triggers, the former we can exploit to actually push us towards a win. As discussed, there's a number of Landfall payoffs that could, given infinite triggers, either provide infinite mana or outright win the game. If you play in pods that have shuffle titans or ways to avoid a mill loss, just jam Gravestone Strider or similar and hit their titan with it on the stack. Anyway, there's another less intuitive line that provides the same result, with it hinging on a card whose characteristics are the important bit.

Flickering yourself on Enters seems fair, surely.

Said line involves Nardole, Resourceful Cyborg, a card with the unique property of having Persist/Undying (either works) and being Legendary. This allows us to launder a Clone through Yue, then become a Legendary Moon with Nardole's text—if we already have a Legendary Moon, this causes the new Nardole-ish Moon to die as a state-based action, and trigger Undying, coming back as the base Clone with a +1/+1 counter. It can then enter as Yue, die, and come back with Yue's effect, rinse and repeat. There are other options for loops like this, the best ones being Glen-Elendra Archmage, River Kelpie, and Geralf's Mindcrusher, but each requires a free Land sac outlet (e.g. Zuran Orb) where Nardole can do it simply by having another Legendary Moon. They're great cards, but on the expensive side mana-wise, and are likely better at higher brackets where you need to reach a combo threshold faster. Nardole himself doesn't do anything beyond infinite Landfall, whereas both Kelpie & Mindcrusher either draw out your deck, or mill each opponent ad infinitum, meaning there's a need for one additional piece regardless. In all of these infinite Landfall win conditions, you'll notice that Yue is extremely involved, which would be worrying were she not dreadfully nonthreatening, and to the layman eye punished being removed in the normal fashion. Even so, stick tight, because there's ways of making use of Yue while she's not a Creature, too.

Example Decklist: Fly Yue to the Moon

I think it's important to touch on some of the cards that need dedicated explanations because of their unintuitive nature. First is the king of weird Yue cards: Copy Land. This falls victim to the fact that Yue's provided effect (of turning into a Moon Land with a mana ability) is not a copiable value. If you Copy Land a Moon, it will just enter as whatever the base card is, which is also an Enchantment, and will do nothing special upon death. If you do so on a Yue that has already become a Moon, it enters as...Princess Yue, raising her from the dead and upon death becomes a Moon clone of a land you control. The same is true for Vesuva. That's right, Copy Land becomes anything but—good lord I love this deck. In a similar vein, Wind Zendikon is a card I've seen in 0 other Yue lists and it's a stand-out! It allows you to animate a Yue that has died, allowing her to be live for your combos once more, and if she dies...well, a second time, she returns to your hand evading Commander Tax again. Even better, this can allow you to both reset Clone Moons, and/or make them live targets for other Clones, which enter as Creature versions due to Yue's effect not being copiable.

Two cards I see in a lot of Yue decks that likely don't work like you want are Mirage Mirror & Mirror of the Forebears. Most people assume correctly that their first activation turns them into Moon copies of the original Artifact, but recall that copy effects apply at Layer 1a. As a Moon, when you activate them again, they merely copy the text (and potentially Legendary) of the target, and not the name or type, which apply in layers 3 & 4. This means Mirror of the Forebears is at best a 3 mana Land ramp spell, and Mirage Mirror is only okay. These are not cheat codes to get repeatable Landfall triggers you can pay into, they're just weirder versions of the original card that can get a single extra relevant trigger. Also, if they activate to copy a Creature, even in spite of having a later timestamp than Yue, because this is a copy effect and applies in Layer 1 (1a), they're still stuck as non-Creature Moons that borrow the text, because timestamps only operate within layers, not between them. In short, these cards will disappoint you. Finally, take a look at the card selection tools we have, like Consult the Star Charts & Flash of Insight. We've chosen this route over raw advantage because I want to show off the funniest things the deck does, and those cards aren't easy to tutor in Monoblue. See also Long-Term Plans, which is close to a top-of-Library tutor by way of Yue's Scry 2.

One final note on cards not included: The tap/untap payoffs. These are cards like Surgespanner, Fallowsage, etc that gain a ton of value when given tap abilities, such as the sort Yue provides when their text is laundered onto Moons. I think this is an incredibly unique use case, and Yue's a fine home for them, but given they're not actually very good by themselves I've leaned into general value/tempo Creatures as the baseline for my Clone targets in the deck. These other payoffs are expensive and require some external help to be good (Springleaf Drum & Moonsnare Prototype come to mind), so if you did want to tailor Yue to this suite of underplayed Creatures that would certainly work. It is perhaps just a bit greedier, and requires less worry for opposing interaction, compared to my take below.

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

You'll notice I've positioned the current list at Bracket 2, and that's less to do with its power or potential, and more to show at apogee the lunacy one can do with Yue's rules. Certainly this could be Bracket 3, and potentially Bracket 4 (not kidding), but in relaxing the need to play the auto-includes in Blue, I can show more cards to choose from as you whittle down the fun-ofs. I think Yue actually benefits greatly from turbostax and land hate, especially those that return lands to hand like Mana Breach & Overburden. Similarly, Storm Cauldron was a card I had in here for a good while before admitting it was mass mana denial, although Parallax Tide got to stay, given we're almost exclusively using it on our own Lands. You can truthfully get very, very mean with Yue, and to include her as a secret Commander in a Blue-Green Clone deck seems a really great way to lose friends.

That's (a) Rough (Draft), Buddy

Carl Critchlow imbues Parallax Tide with the sense of untouchability coming undone.

Being frank, I have never had to consult with other judges and ask around the internet for any deck I've covered in this column until now. I think of myself as being more aware than most of Magic's mechanical skeleton, but Yue's ability isn't just unique, it's downright puzzling. This is a Commander whose EDHREC and discussions will be polluted for years by folks unaware of how some of her most niche interactions play out. I see cards like Homunculus Horde in decklists, and shudder to think of how these are being misplayed (Remember Yue's ability isn't copiable, you don't make more token Moons). That's kind of the point though, isn't it? Yue at her baseline is just another weird ramp tool, just like another favorite deck of mine, Harold and Bob, First Numens, yet her phrasing opens up a wide world of burying effects into Lands that were certainly never meant to be there. These slip-ups on EDHREC, Reddit threads, and at your LGS are something few recent Commanders have had to their name; there's little obvious about Yue, and that is the beauty of lenticular design.

My aim was to create a bible for how Yue functioned, but not a perfect list. There's so many profoundly silly micro-interactions at play here dependent on knowledge held basically only by judges, and disseminating that info is the first step in allowing Yue to become popular. That said, the flexibility of a Clone strategy is its strength, and there is equal cause for building Yue as fairly goodstuff like me, storm-themed with cards like Zephyr Scribe, or full-bore combo with Battered Golem. The beauty of this Commander is not merely in its esoteric allure in terms of rules, but variance in approach; I have seen nearly every Yue deck on the internet at time of writing this, and each has at least one nifty bit of tech.

Given I've already consigned myself to getting it in paper after testing (something something sunk cost), I'm currently workshopping some clear plastic overlays for this deck to print out. Being able to tell at a glance what is and isn't a Moon, Legendary Moon, etc is going to come in handy and game aids trend towards mandatory with so many complex interactions. Check back on this article, because I'll give those a share once they're ready. I absolutely cannot wait to take this for a drive in real life. That said, even on a digital simulator this list caused headaches, including in some regular playtesters of mine who thought they knew the rules well enough. This is a list you bring to a MagicCon for the sole purpose of being the smartest person at the table, not necessarily purely for victory. Your opponents are liable to gut you just to end the nuisance of asking what is and isn't itself, theirs, or otherwise. It's annoying, requires a degree of smarm, and is frankly the ideal deck for an absolute goober like me. Thanks a bunch, Avatar.

Until next time, bring ibuprofen to the FNM.

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