Magic: The Gathering Puzzlebox - A Tale of Two Wan Shi Tong

If you've read any of my previous articles, you know I have a type when it comes to Commander. Unique rules text, Monocolor, able to slot in some combo or synergy seen in 60 card formats—in spite of being several years out from attending premier tournaments, my brain is still tuned to evaluate cards in the context of those days gone by. In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Wizards has opened the floodgates of reveals, and among the very first of this new wave were two versions of the same character, in Wan Shi Tong, Librarian & Wan Shi Tong, All Knowing. Both variations on this crotchety nerd bird are utterly captivating to me, and in the case of All Knowing, it wouldn't shock me if I end up building it in paper, with a full-length article to match. Still, I find it worthwhile to interrogate why each of these options is compelling for the Command Zone, and why that might just signify this set is far closer in quality to Final Fantasy than Spider-Man.

This is part of my shortform series for Goonhammer where I cover rapid-fire concepts for Commanders that are especially puzzling, or to whom I couldn’t dedicate a full Commander Focus, so if you like what you see, certainly let us know!

Appeal to Reason

Credit: Wizards of the Coast.

At a baseline, Wan Shi Tong, Librarian (hereafter Librarian) blends several of the things we look for in a high power-minded Magic card, tied together with a neat little bow. The crux of Librarian's power comes from punishing searching, and until recently the capacity to do so in Commander was tied to the Bracket one played in. The expectation is still, although more vaguely, that the number of tutors played trends upward as you move towards cEDH, and that means Librarian gets significantly better the stronger the decks are that he's sitting with. Flash allows him to be reactive, Flying evasive, and Vigilance even presents a blocker for opponents trying to max their draws from Tymna, the Weaver. Beyond that smattering of positive keywords however lies the fact that Librarian isn't just an early game value piece, along the lines of a better Archivist of Oghma in the Command Zone—he's also a mana outlet once you've comboed off. That can be via the good ol' Dramatic Scepter line or Rings of Brighthearth+Basalt Monolith (more on that later), perhaps even more niche means of going infinite, but from there it's as easy as a few free rocks and a Thassa's Oracle. While not flashy, Librarian offers a bevy of micro-advantages on top of being an outlet, resembling a Kinnan with more hatred in his heart, and fewer colors to his name.

10,000 Miles

Credit: Wizards of the Coast.

Librarian is going to be seeing play across a number of formats, but in contrast to my glowing review above, I don't necessarily think it will be as a Commander. This is due largely to the fact that, outside of Field of Ruin effects, Monoblue lacks ways to force opponents to search their library; while Librarian is an excellent midrange piece and mana outlet, the gameplay hook isn't there for players not focused on optimizing a non-goodstuff list. This stands in contrast to his counterpart in Wan Shi Tong, All-Knowing, whose gameplay hooks are practically barbed with how many juicy weird tools exist to make the very most of his abilities. All-Knowing cards not about opponents searching the library, but cards being returned to it—no library card required. Coupled with a phenomenal and fairly universal removal ability on Enters and you've a recipe for a card people pore through Scryfall to build around. It's a worse card in most scenarios, yes, but it is far more interesting, and in Commander that's often the important factor when it comes to popularity.

Richard 3x4

Credit: Wizards of the Coast.

While yes All-Knowing gives you value for playing such illustrious cards as Temporal Cleansing, the facet that calls out most to me is one I'd not consider below a high Bracket 3 or even 4 list. All-Knowing doesn't merely make underutilized pieces good, it unlocks the full capabilities of a deck that existed more in myth than at the Pro Tour: I am of course referencing the most infamous theoretical Legacy deck of all time. Four Horsemen, whose combo execution will invariably see you issued a game loss, could nearly always win if you had until the heat death of the universe. To briefly explain, combining Basalt Monolith & Mesmeric Orb, let one infinitely empty their library, and in the right order of 3x Narcomeba and a 'shuffle titan' (in our case, Kozilek, Butcher of Truth) and a few other cards between them, you could complete the combo. Unlike so many infinites, however, whether you could complete the combo in the allotted round time was nebulous, as like Schrödinger's cat it was impossible to know if a given iteration of mills was a win. Therefore, with it impossible to prove you could win, a Judge could argue you were stalling and not altering the gamestate...but with All-Knowing or an Altar, you would generate some resource each loop and could therefore continue your attempts. So long as something changes each loop, be it mana generated or Spirit tokens created, you would be allowed to spin the wheel once more. To be cynical about it, it helps as well that Commander as a format lacks a judge peering over ones' shoulder at the mere mention of this delightfully obnoxious gameplan, so if you can explain it to your pod like a 'true loop', all the easier for everyone involved.

Example Decklist: WSTAK Exchange

While I've built this version of All-Knowing as Bracket 3, I would say he epitomizes the spirit of what a Bracket 4 Commander ought to be at the highest level. You're reaching for a Legacy-level combo amidst a ton of permission control and combo pieces, even if nobody's batting an eye at Tomb Trawler until they realize what it does with All-Knowing and an Ashnod's Altar. All-Knowing has so many branches of appeal, from letting older-school Premier format players jam Vendilion Clique like it were 2010s Modern, to letting budget players turn every set's mandatory grave shufflers like Barkform Harvester into legitimate win conditions. You can build All-Knowing expensive with Power Artifact & Grim Monolith, or play all the budget removal which would be inefficient if not for the spare 1/1s you get in kind.

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

The biggest issue is that unlike a lot of Commanders, All-Knowing's best wincons are no doubt nearly all on the Reserved List. The aforementioned Grim & Power Artifact will set you back about $750.00 in paper, so unless you're proxy-friendly it's difficult to jam the bird in high power pods. Not unlike a lot of luxury goods, getting even 1% better costs more and more, the higher you climb in minor upgrades. The actual endgame of the deck, even with its budget pared-down, is nothing short of art, however. Infinitely shuffling your deck to allow Skill Borrower to sequentially hit the necessary pieces of your combo while not optioning them for removal? Explaining that you, in the midst of performing a Four Horsemen combo, will be holding priority with the final card in deck as a Kozilek to Flashback a Flash of Insight as a functional tutor? There's so many truly obscene maneuvers available to someone actually able to wrap their head around a deck with total known information, and frankly it makes you feel like a librarian. The bookkeeping is immense.

Two and a Half Horsemen

Everything I love about Magic is encapsulated between these two takes on Wan Shi Tong, and if this is the quality of Universes Beyond we're doomed to see, perhaps that's not such a bad thing. There's something for every player, every power level, on display; you will be seeing Librarian in the 99s of opponents soon, and perhaps I'll be more annoyed than amazed come that eventuality. If wouldn't surprise me to find myself covering All-Knowing in a full article, but from preliminary data it appears that both these Commanders have seen substantial numbers on EDHREC and may end up the most popular Monoblue options from the set. The one wrinkle is, I fear, their staying power—in the case of Librarian, it's bound to be a card seen in the 99, less than Command Zone, and one would require a patient playgroup to keep All-Knowing in your regular deck rotation. If you have opponents who are okay to shuffle up once you've demonstrated a loop that probabilistically wins you the game by the end of this century, definitely give the latter a spin! If not, maybe treat it like a gimmick deck, and bring it out once or twice over Tabletop Simulator for a history lesson on Legacy's favorite war criminal.

With that being said, what mechanic or Commander should I cover next on The Puzzlebox? This is a series built on rapid prototyping underutilized mechanics for Commander, and while I have a few ideas kicking around with the upcoming release of Avatar: The Last Airbender, I'd love to hear more ideas from my readers!

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