Magic: The Gathering Puzzlebox - Pregame Actions & Max Speed

When we think of speed in Commander, it almost always correlates with the power of decks in a pod. Going faster than your opponents matters more and more as you scale the Brackets, with cEDH being predicated on playing enough interaction to stop a potential turn 1 win. Let's take a step back though, and talk about the fastest actions you can take in Magic: Pregame actions. Since the printing of Serum Powder in Darksteel, these actions have been expanded to include the opportunity to see more cards, begin the game with an Enchantment on the board, or even ramp before the first land reaches play. That being said, with a 99 card singleton deck, you're sitting at a 14.1% chance to see any individual card if we include your free mulligan, increasing 7.1% each additional mulligan. It's far too often that these cards aren't where they're needed, namely, your opener, and instead rot in the library until they're drawn with a groan. I wanted to re-contextualize some of these cards today, with another weird mechanic that's highly dependent on the opener: Speed.

This is part of a new shortform series for Goonhammer where I’m covering rapid-fire concepts for Commanders I couldn’t cover in a full Commander Focus, so if you like what you see, certainly let us know!

Opening Gambit

Credit: Wizards of the Coast.

Doing a cost-benefit analysis on these start-of-game effects would be insufficient without mentioning the fact that, outside of their initial impact, each is weaker than a similar card in some way. The opportunity cost associated with highrolling into one of these effects is that you're on something worse, or more expensive, than similar options but there's a very good reason many of these cards have seen play in 60 card formats. Leylines in particular, like Leyline of the Void, Leyline of Resonance, and Leyline of Abundance (which has even been banned in Pioneer) all have enough of an effect to warrant inclusion at 4:60 in a normal deck. That scales from a ~40%-66% chance to open in your first 7 or 14 cards, so if we can approach that chance in Commander it's probably good enough to plan around. For reference, that's about 7 Pregame actions in 99 cards.

Kachow!

Credit: Wizards of the Coast.

On the topic of mulligan-dependent gameplans, why not double down and take a look at everyone's favorite recent parasitic mechanic, Speed. Speed is a trait, like Monarch or The City's Blessing, which a player has as soon as a card with Start Your Engines hits the board. Beginning at 1, Speed scales once per turn, up to 4, at which point you're capped and the best payoffs all turn on. Importantly, without a means to copy the trigger, the soonest you can reach max speed is turn 3, by 'starting your engines' on turn 1 & making an opponent lose life that turn to get to 2, then doing the same on turns 2 & 3. Few as they are, the means of hitting this ideal curve (or one turn slower) are often dependent on the raceways, Avishkar Raceway, Amonkhet Raceway, & Muraganda Raceway. Coupling these with a Colorless Creature, ideally with Haste, or some other way to deal damage is vital during our mulligans; much the same as our Pregame actions we can increase the odds of a given hand to have at least one of these premier accelerants.

Speed²

Credit: Wizards of the Coast.

So, we're looking for a Commander to lead a Speed-centric deck that benefits from ample Pregame actions, which leaves us with two real options: Hazoret, Godseeker & Samut, the Driving Force. The good news is that each of these have Red, the most important color for Speed, and whose Pregame action cards actually have significant synergy with that very mechanic. Chancellor of the Forge is my pick for 'best Speed card you don't see on EDHREC', giving you a free Hasty 1/1 to couple with your raceway. Discounting Chancellor, the two second-best options were Gingerbrute & Bomat Courier, and another potential means to accelerate is thus appreciated. Red also gives us Leyline of Lightning, a questionable card at first glance, but which pairs up with 0 mana Artifacts to allow for damage off of a raceway's mana turn 1. Red alone via Hazoret does this gameplan admirably, and Haz herself being a 2 mana Start Your Engines improves the mechanic's consistency alongside a 1-drop. The issue mostly stems from her not scaling especially well with Commander as a format, being an aggressive payoff that takes significant buy-in to be a Commander Damage threat. This is assisted with cards like Leyline Axe, but it's a steeper hill to climb.

Credit: Wizards of the Coast.

Samut meanwhile is one helluva payoff. Making your board massive and noncreature spells functionally cost {4} less is no small feat, though being 6 mana as the top-end to an aggressive strategy isn't the best place to be. Still, her simply resolving turns on a bevy of Artifact combos, so if you're looking to take this concept to Bracket 3 it's likely the right path. Having two more colors also gives you not only better Speed payoffs, but crucially, more Pregame choices. Chancellor of the Annex is profoundly annoying, and cheating her onto the board with some of White's recursion makes for a solid body as well. Leyline of Vitality, meanwhile, is a fine enough sustain piece that also makes your Creatures a slight bit less profitable to block. And who could turn down an extra mana by way of Chancellor of the Tangle? Getting Green is the big draw here, actually giving you the Creature cheating and mana to play these cards which might otherwise be inefficient at their base cost, offsetting the opportunity cost that comes with drawing one of these cards after the game's begun.

Winning the Race

The actual win conditions are important to focus on as well, given so much thought has been put into the very first actions one takes with these decks. For Samut it's fairly straightforward—you find a Buyback piece and win. Sprout Swarm is the most obvious, given it can Convoke future copies with the Saproling token made, but alongside something like a Storm-Kiln Artist or Birgi, God of Storytelling//Harnfel, Horn of Bounty you go truly infinite. This also works with your Haze of Rage, your Reiterate, etc. Hazoret asks a bit more of you, but I prefer to lean into the Voltron angle in pursuing a win, backed by lines stemming from Squee, the Immortal, Eternal Scourge, or even Flameskull. We're already potentially beginning the game with these in exile, via Serum Powder or Devourer of Destiny, so reducing the burden of exiling a combo piece is much appreciated here. Slap on a Birgi, sac outlet, and/or reducer and you have a deathloop that can win any number of ways. This is, of course, secondary to good old fashioned beats but I think every deck should have some 'turning point' to cinch a stalled-out game.

A Dire Need for Speed

Ultimately I think I favor Hazoret in terms of this deck concept, because not only do I think pushing it into Bracket 3 might be a bit tough for most players (given the power of my playgroup, at least), and Hazoret providing Speed redundancy means we can cut down on the less-than-stellar draft chaff from Aetherdrift. While Samut does give you additional colors and a clear endpoint in Sprout Swarm loops, actually getting to max speed means you're forced to find a way to Start Your Engines by turn ~2, lest she come online too late. In either case though (and for Speed decks in general), I think Pregame actions should be a greater consideration. At minimum, playing a package of Devourer of Destiny & Serum Powder will smooth out draws, and in Vnwxt, Verbose Host a Sphinx of Foresight might just help you play lower to the ground. Outside of the odd Leyline here or there, Commander is not a format where these effects are used plentifully, and coming from a Modern background there's little that feels better than knowing you're ahead before the first Land touches the battlefield.

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 racing around my head, I'd love to hear more ideas from my readers!

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