Magic: The Gathering Commander Focus: Multistability, Grafdigger's Cage, & Edea, Possessed Sorceress

We're all likely familiar with optical illusions like the rabbit-duck, or ageless woman—upon a cursory look, they appear as one thing, but someone sitting right next to you might see another. This is formally known as the multistability of an image, or 'ambiguous patterns', and I feel this concept also resonates with some of Magic's most popular Commanders. As an example, where some players see blink & pure combo in Monk Gyatso, I saw Eldrazi, yet critically many of my deep cut decks arise not from peculiar takes on known Commanders, but genuinely unknown or unexplored options. Today's a bit different, as this Commander already has around 1,200 decks on EDHREC, based largely on her position as the head of a theft deck: Edea, Possessed Sorceress. She arrived in the holiday panoramas for Final Fantasy, a gift of a set that keeps on giving, and with her, a fixation on thievery. She's positioned as a 'nice' theft Commander, giving back Creatures you take and sacrifice while offsetting this return of value with a card draw; of course, this is done via a Beginning of Combat trigger, and that's where my own fixation lies. In building Edea, I saw a positively nasty grave-hate aggro machine, the sort you might see in White & Green. Let's steer away from pleasantries among crooks, and right into a Commander deck that's sure to win you the ire of your friends.

Credit: Wizards of the Coast.

"Whenever a creature you control but don't own dies"

First and foremost, Edea is a 2/5 for 5 mana that comes with Ward {2}; this is about as good a defensive profile as one could ask for, big enough to dodge most small damage wipes and with a costly enough ward to dissuade potential spot removal. Her unique effect, beyond the ability to nick an opponent's Creature until End of Turn, is to bring back those same Creatures you stole to their rightful owners' battlefields, rewarding you with a card for such benevolence. I see Edea as a reaction to the common complaint that people hate having opponents mess with their cards. She prevents you from taking someone's Commander and just sacrificing it, letting you have all the fun, and in a perfect world that return trigger would calm opposition to theft as a strategy. "I just need it for this turn, and you'll get it back", with no immediately obvious means of circumventing her condition.

The thing is, while her trigger does care about the Creature you don't own dying, them coming back can be responded to, with you retaining the draw whether they actually do or don't. This means Edea has anti-synergy with Dauthi Voidwalker and similar replacement effects, but a tremendous array of options to deny her intended niceties while still giving you extra cards. There's two main categories for this: Cards that respond to the death trigger, and those which apply static effects that render it moot. The former seem to be more popular as splashes in 'standard' Edea strategies, so let's talk about those first. These are cards like Abyssal Harvester, Ghost Vacuum, & Lobelia Sackville-Baggins that play reactively, either tapping or being cast to remove the stolen card from the graveyard before it can return. The benefit here is that they're also great to deal with opposing reanimator strategies, or straggling Angers that lurk in the yard with passive effects. Here's the thing though—we're playing none of them.

Despite All My Rage

Gravehate is a lifestyle at this point.

I have a proclivity for stax, or otherwise annoying static effects, especially in strategies where we simply can't go as fast as our opponents. Given our Commander is 5 mana, and doesn't necessarily accelerate our gameplan until we get additional pieces, it was immediately on my mind; critically, when those same stax pieces can be part of our proactive gameplan, they become a central component of the deck. Each is slightly different, but all do one similar thing: Prevent Creatures (or permanents) from coming back from the Graveyard. Grafdigger's Cage is perhaps the most well-known, also preventing spells from being cast from the yard or Library—this disrupts Underworld Breach combos, and even some Top loops. Weathered Runestone has that same second effect, but expands Grafdigger's first to include any nonland permanent, and from the Library. Soulless Jailer is the final member of this trio, stopping permanents from the yard, and non-Creature Spells from being cast from there, or exile. These are all relevant in their own way, and while each operates slightly differently, the critical synergy with Edea is present.

That's not all though, as Black has a few more tools to restrict the graveyard, one of which I'm extremely excited about sharing. Let's cover the less exciting option first, Bag of Devouring, which is both a sacrifice outlet and graveyard removal trigger. The fact it does both makes up for the sacrifice itself being a bit inefficient, and being a mere 1 mana helps it be worth a slot. Now then, let's talk about Planar Void. Void reads like a 1 mana Rest in Peace without the exile on Enters, but that text is actually a trigger, not a replacement effect. That means, while it is technically a bit weaker than RIP, it's perfect for us, and even hits things like discard or mill. On the whole, these tools give us a significant leg up against people not planning for Grixis as a shard to pack tons of gravehate; most graveyard decks can plan to beat one Artifact or Enchantment that hoses them, but given those cards actually help our gameplan, we run too many to just remove.

I Have a Plan: Attack

As I mentioned in the foreword, this is fundamentally an aggro deck, and we're leveraging Edea's ability not just to create an extra attacker every combat (and ideally an extra draw), but also to remove a troublesome blocker. So many aggressive decks can falter in the face of an annoying body standing in their way, and if cards like Captain Lannery Storm or similar ever go a combat without getting in they feel worse than useless, being dead weight on your board. Options that make mana on attack are a huge part of this deck, from Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer to (begrudgingly) Knuckles the Echidna. Grixis lacks many good routes to Land ramp, especially if we're not willing to commit to Urborg+Cabal Coffers, so it's imperative we find mana generation elsewhere. Professional Face-Breaker is practically a household name at this point, and Grim Hireling is about as good for an extra mana, but we're even on Magda in this list. If you squint, she makes an extra mana every time you attack, so long as there's any chance a naked 2/1 can get in safely. Also a squintworthy attacker is Thada Adel, Acquisitor, who does a superb job of stealing peoples' Sol Rings or similarly potent mana rocks, and can even pick away at combo pieces with repeated combats. The only 'normal' Edea threaten effect we're playing is Furnace Reins, which gives the Creature we steal the added bonus of being Ragavan-esque for the turn.

Breath makes for some hilarious turns with Edea.

We're not just making mana however, as we also have a need to get rid of the things we've stolen before they get returned. Broadside Bombardiers is an underplayed card, being both hasty and evasive removal, but do note that Boast is once per turn, not once per combat. Why I'm calling that out will be apparent shortly. Urabrask's Forge is another great attack-sac synergy piece, giving us an increasingly large and obviously disposable source of damage that ramps up as we swing out. If we want to make sure our opponents won't block, or perhaps will block their foes' stolen Creatures, let me point to Norin, Swift Survivalist—if you lack a sacrifice effect, you can hedge Norin against opponents via politics, ensuring you exile stolen Commanders, hatebears, etc with no harm coming to their blockers. Finally for cards that meet the attack-sac intersection, let me remind you that Rottenmouth Viper has an attack trigger. Not only can we toss away the copious Treasure tokens we're making, but any number of stolen Creatures, making it an excellent attacker that serves this dual role. You would be forgiven for thinking this was something like Grixis Pirates, however, with such a substantial aggro focus, why are we doing this in Edea again? Well...

Extra, Extra

Every time I looked at an Edea list, seeing ways to take cards temporarily or permanently, one idea nagged at me: 'These are just worse than taking an extra combat/turn'. Edea asks nothing of you to trigger, meaning that mana can be spent not on less efficient versions of her effect (e.g. Threaten) but on taking another combat, and not only swinging with what you've taken so far, but yet another as well. Being combat-reliant also greatly reduces the burden placed on Edea to be the core of the gameplan, as our attackers are just generally solid cards, and mana-positive turn-over-turn. If Edea gets removed (inefficiently, given she has a high Ward), we can just keep attacking, playing extra combat spells, and recast her at a later date. It's no skin off our back to lose the Commander, but resource-intensive for our opponents outside of a board wipe. This also gives us some freedom from being a combo deck, as the damage we output is a legitimate threat that comes tied to repeatable removal. We're still on a few low-priority combos, but they're not Plan A.

In terms of the actual extra combats we're playing, because Edea doesn't herself need to attack (or indeed, have anything attack) we can be greedy. Single-untappers like Fear of Missing Out & Sieze the Day help Edea just as much as Great Train Heist, and even a card like Savor the Moment still triggers all of our combat effects, on top of being at worst a draw+land drop. I have done my best to avoid too many easy infinite combats/turns, as this is still a Bracket 3 list and cannot 'chain extra turns' by the letter of the law, but we do have Aggravated Assault with all our mana generators to take what I term as 'enough' combats to push for a win. Infinite is only as necessary as our opponents have life and blockers, two resources we tax them on quite a bit. Breath of Fury is the most interesting extra combat spell however, as if we can get it going, Breath allows us to take, attack, sac, repeat until our opponents are dead or out of Creatures. Again, we're not looking for infinite, but merely 'enough'.

Not to dedicate an entire section to Azra Oddsmaker, but this is a card I'm shocked doesn't see near-ubiquity in Red-Black lists. If you call your shot, it turns 1 card into 2, but that effect lingers until the end of the turn; this means with extra combats, you discard 1 to draw 2, then discard 1 to draw 4, and so on. In any strategy where you have the colors and extra combats, Oddsmaker approaches The One Ring in terms of card advantage. This also goes for the +{R} Spree mode on Great Train Heist, and Dreadmaw's Ire, one of the last cuts for the deck. Neither of these are on the level of Oddsmaker though, meaning I hope we see similar cards pop up in the future. The high you get from a lingering draw 2 is just unbelievable.

Stealing the Win

Just like Pair of Kings, the cast cycles out quick.

In terms of explicit combos, this list finally makes use of one I've had my eyes on for some time: Éomer, Marshal of Rohan + Blade of Selves. By equipping the Blade, and attacking, the two Myriad tokens see one another dying and trigger individually. This means you can stack combats so long as you have 3 opponents, requiring you carefully math out the damage to leave each of them alive long enough to end the game in a single phase. It's a bit challenging, but with each piece being solid individually (Éomer seeing a stolen Commander die in combat is very common) we can steer into the combo while we're just doing our thing. We also have Combat Celebrant, a card liable to go infinite with a wooden spoon, though I've avoided most of the obvious combos (e.g. Helm of the Host) that would be more welcome at Bracket 4 tables. It can push for a win via Fable of the Mirror-Breaker//Reflection of Kiki-Jiki, but with that card being independently great here I'm alright with a telegraphed 2-card combo. Additionally, be aware that Breath of Fury can produce infinite combats alongside Edea, so long as you have someone to connect into, and lack a piece of gravehate on the board. This is powerful but counterintuitive, and if your meta is faster, you should run more Reprocess effects like Pitiless Carnage to clear away your own hate pieces before pushing for a win. Combat, steal attack, sac, put onto the stolen guy, rinse and repeat—the very definition of 'stop hitting yourself'.

As stated, this isn't a combo deck, and I mean that in earnest given my portfolio of 'hey look at this funny combo', as seen in previous Commander Focuses. The intent is to win...well I was going to say honestly, but as we're doing so with gravehate and theft a better word might be 'fairly'. To that end, this is a list you could bring if your group was combo-shy, and find ways to infuriate them without going infinite. With a few extra combats, Proft's Eidetic Memory feels as much a combo piece as Thoracle, and this deck stops a great number of opposing combo strategies with part of its core gameplan being tied up in gravehate. I do want to stress however: This is a fun deck to play, and while Edea seems designed to be a theft Commander which breeds less resentment at the table than others, given we're circumventing that you will find it's not especially fun for your opponents. Those lists can have trouble staying in a pod's regular rotation, and can earn a reputation within an LGS setting. Your results may vary.

Example Decklist: Quite a Bright Edea

I want to make a brief mention of Edea's fun interaction with Creature tokens you create for your opponents, such as from Strix Serenade. They do own that token for the purposes of Edea, and if it somehow becomes stolen, and dies, you'll get her trigger with no potential of that token coming back—it ceases to be as soon as the bird hits the yard. You could potentially build an entire Edea list around this interaction, such as with Forbidden Orchard, but I've reduced the number of these effects I play to only the best, with the Counterspells, Varchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor, and Tribute to Horobi//Echo of Death's Wail. Varchild is excellent with extra combats and our existing sacrifice effects, and Tribute represents a potential draw 6 for 2 mana, as well as a great attacker with a sacrifice effect. Knowing the interaction between Edea and tokens like this is key, but more of a cute add-on than a core feature of the list.

One other oddity here is the ramp package, with cards like Basal Thrull & Pentad Prism instead of more normal inclusions like Signets. Normally for a 5 mana Commander, your goal is to ramp on mana values 1 & 3, such as a Llanowar Elves & Kodama's Reach, but as you might notice, being in Grixis means these options are slim. Instead, we're relying on cards with mana value 2 that 'jump' us to 5 mana on turn 3, for Edea, usually by sacrificing themselves or using some other one-time effect. This is less efficient turn-over-turn, but as Edea represents a difficult to remove value engine we want down as early as possible, I've found the risk-reward acceptable for these odd ramp choices. It's worked out in testing, but for the less daring you can just swap to Talismans or Signets of the appropriate colors.

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

This is built as a strong Bracket 3, though because it isn't a combo list some of its contemporaries will be default present faster wins if you don't hold to the turn ~6 count as proposed by the recent Bracket update. I think a build like this could certainly be tailored to B4, with the Commander being a repeatable removal/advantage engine with Ward, but paring down a version like the above to B2 would be a tough ask. You'd almost need to cut the gravehate, which is a fundamental part of the list's identity. Edea played fairly (i.e. actually returning the cards you steal) can work at any power level, but the moment you intend to cheat the system without paying a substantial cost folks ought to squint at her being played in B2.

Soulless Jailhouse Rock

Luis Lasahido's art is excellent as a scene, but chopped up for each card...less so.

I actually came upon Edea, and my revelation regarding multistability, while looking for a new Commander for my friend to play. As a bit of background, I tend to only play Monocolor Commanders in paper, so Edea wasn't on my radar until I was put on the hunt for a Red/Black-ish engine Commander with theft elements. We discussed options for her, he put together a lovely build full of threaten effects, and yet...I stewed. Edea coming with Ward {2} is functionally Hexproof until players get really annoyed, and the fact her trigger cost nothing and could be repeated (given she's in Red) nagged at me. As I quietly cooked my own version, slowly more and more theft effects left, and more and more extra combats entered. Of course, given they not only provided another chance to swing out with what you'd already stolen, but also another chance to steal, rare was it to get more value from an individual theft effect than another combat. The thing is—he's had an absolute blast with his version, and I've spoken with other Edea enthusiasts all with the same opinion.

That leaves me in a peculiar place, given I've strayed so far from the path. They're all seeing ducks, and I've a rabbit in my sight. Looking at the EDHREC, you don't see players leaning into the token theme, or extra combats, and the only gravehate shared is Grafdigger's Cage; I don't think my build is obvious, or necessarily a strictly better path, but it's a fascinating thing to look at the same card and come away with wildly different 99s. I think that's part of Commanders with 3+ colors though, something that's broadly outside of my wheelhouse. Due to the fact you have such a wide cardpool, these vastly varied builds (both in terms of structure & budget) can emerge with similar gameplay priorities. All Edea players want to steal stuff, cheat their taxes, and probably win with combat—it's the routes we take that differ. The big happy takeaway is not only that Commander as a format continues to benefit from the immensity of its cardpool, but that conversing with other players, comparing builds, can show you new ways to look at the same piece of cardboard you'd have never considered.

Until next time, de day da, Edea, that's okay.

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