Which commanders do you think are the most powerful Commanders in the set? Did we miss any? Are you planning on building any of the Commanders we talked about today? What are the hot pieces of tech that we missed?

A 3 hour podcast... A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one!

Saul is one of my best friends in the entire world and I’m SO excited for him to be on the show!! Congrats to both saul and Allie :D

Putting Living Weapons in Ahau seems really fun! The germs get bigger each turn, and eventually you can equip it all onto Ahau for a big swing

With Tetzin, Gnome Champion, surprised Rachel and Josh didn't mention the Transformers cards from Brother's War. Being able to transform them at your pace seems pretty good, no?

For Ojer Axonill, I love Commanders Plate. Buffs the power to 7 and protects from 4 colors

Xavier can also get rid of finality counters if they become a thing across sets

rachel finding a word she likes is hands down the highlight of each episode rejection counter, juggernaut, etc

Watched the winners before the review. Congrats to Saul and Alie. Cannot wait for your episode because Joe and Violet were such a blast last time. You both will inspire me to audition next time.

Xolatoyac says put a counter on target land, meaning you could give even your non-blue opponents islands and then hit them with islandwalk creatures.

@58:40 or so, you mention that Flame Fusillade would allow your lands and artifacts to tap and deal 4 damage, but I don't believe that would work for the same reason Valakut doesn't. The permanent tapping is still the source of the damage, thus colorless cards like lands and artifacts shouldn't do more than 1 damage.

Please tell me we get to see Rachel bringing Chaos Theory to Game Knights or Extra Turns!!! This is too good! BTW, for Xavier, Trenzalore Clocktower and The Sixth Doctor take the deck up towards super saiyan levels.

Don Andres works well with the Villains Doctor Who stuff. Alot of the cyberman cards are turning your opponents stuff into face down cyberman. Kinda like the thieving amalgam stuff.

Yall inspired me to build Anim Pakal, Thousandth Moon. I cant wait to play it and make an army of gnomes to trample my friends >:) (I loved the podcast was super interesting and wondeful for listening to at work) I am from NZ and love u guys

I love long content like this. Makes work suck so much less. Thanks team!

Another route you could potentially take with Tetzin is a sort of liquimetal torque/Mycosynth Lattice build where you use mdfc cards and lands and do funky weird stuff like flip a rowan or one of your mdfc lands, because ha ha funny.

Shout out to team mom and dad. Sometimes they are sweet, sometimes they are sour, but they love us all equally. Rachel has been an incredible edition to the team.

56:33 Great callback, Josh! 😃 I can still see Sprankle's face mouthing "finally" when that thing ultimately died.

58:23 The damage from lands and treasures won't increase because they're colorless and Flame Fusillade grants them the ability and isn't itself the source.

For Indominus Rex - they may have double strike on there to leave it open for future creatures like you suggested. It also could just be on there for people putting it in the 99 of a 4/5 color deck or people playing a different format. Also - Xolatoyac is so close to being an anagram for axolotl

Anim Pakal is cool. Very boros in design, for sure. I can see Reconnaissance being a solid include as well so you can manipulate combat a lot more. Fun, simple design that seems easy to build and fun to play.

Congrats Saul and Allie! Can’t wait to see you on game knights!!!

I'm surprised it wasn't mentioned, Ahua is a great Hydra commander.

I may not have won, but I can still TECHNICALLY say I appeared in an episode of the command zone. (I was one if the many faces in the movie reel)😂

Ian Malcolm is my favorite commander ever. The card feels like it was designed for me. I’m so happy with him.

I'm kinda surprised that the Ancient One and Kutzil are not on here.

Kellan, Daring Traveller I think might be the most overlooked commander in this set. Produces a lot of currency on differently axies and really efficiently. Kind of crazy when you consider all they do.

Great episode. Lots of neat ideas! Really enjoy the chemistry all the host combinations seem to have. I genuinely laughed along with you both during several moments.

Awesome video. Congrats to the two winners can’t wait to see your episode! Was hoping to see the Indoraptor :/ always like to hear your takes

I made a first draft of a Tetzin deck the moment I saw him and I disagree with the comments that you won't have many double-faced artifacts to be able to use and transform with his ability. The current incarnation of my deck has 26 double faced artifacts, with some heavy hitters being the new Dowsing Device, Brass's Tunnel Grinder, Thousand-Moons Smithy, and Matzalantli (like you mentioned) as they all have pretty good backsides and trigger Tetzin's ability when they enter. Not sure you considered all the other new, potentially good double-faced artifacts coming within LCI.

The Indoraptor with Dragon's Approach looks insane in theory. Only issue is, you have to cast a few of those to make the Indoraptor powerful.

What's great about Indominus is that it counts any counter when it draws, which means cards that make your creatures enter with counters(like Master Chef or Long List of Ents) are amazing here

There's always next year for me to try again, I am not too mad about it.

I love Shared Animosity for Anim Pakal

I switched my Selesnya 1/1 counters deck to a Sovereign deck and I’m absolutely loving it! So much fun to play and actually stayed pretty budget too which is awesome!

Tetzin is such a goof big little guy I'm obsessed with him. I have a deck drafted with him in Archidekt rn and its actually so fun to churn through your deck and get value from the double faced artifacts. I just wish we had a bigger selection because a lot of them are kinda rough. Also, there's definitely a route you can take him where instead of needing to invest heavily in self mill to craft him you can use token creators like Third Path Iconoclast, Mirrodin Besieged, Sai Master Thopterist, Chrome Host Seedshark, etc. It also lets you go a more aggressive artifact creature route as a payoff for the mana from Sanctum of the Sun and The Core with Alibou, Illustrtious Wanderglyph, Thousand Moon Smithy. Brudiclad is also always nice obviously, being able to turn all your little dorks including the 2 1/1 gnomes into */*s with power and toughness equal to the number of artifacts you have you can make with cards like Thousand Moons Smithy and its backside feels great

Unless I’m misunderstanding Flame Fusilade won’t make your lands deal more than 1 dmg when they tap cuz they’re not red and they do the damage.

Flame fusillade wouldn’t change the color of the source that you’re tapping to do the one damage. So it would only be good with red permanents tapping for that ping.

Flame Fusillade does NOT let your lands ping for 4, unless you can somehow make them red.

56:30 "take a damage" is a thing that my brain quotes regularly, and i'm happy you mentioned it again

Tetzin seems like the perfect transformers commander. Double sided artifacts, robots in disguise

You mentioned in the podcast that there are no cards with the "double strike" counter, but there actually is: Goring Ceratops Creature - Dinosaur which would of course synergize well.

Nice impersonation of Ian Malcolm describing chaos Josh!

So excited for Wayta! Just started with magic/commander and the enrage playstyle looks really fun

I hadn't considered Malcolm before watching this... its interesting. One sort of spell you didn't mention that are "the essence of chaos" in my mind are wheel effects (the ones that effect everyone). They don't care who cast them and they fill your hand with cards AND they instantly dump at least 3 cards into Malcolm's spell pool. Thought of this as soon as you mentioned Commit // Memory. The discard ones are even better than the shuffle ones because they fill the graveyard with your flashback/retrace cards. Wheel of fate is actually interesting for a change since it can't be suspended from Malcolm's pool... not sure on that one though. Teferi's puzzle box is super chaos - no planning ahead allowed, plus it fulfills the draw 2 every turn. One reason I'm liking this deck idea is it basically forces you to not play the cards you always play because they are too good to give away. No way I put Rhystic in this deck. That's crazy. Fast mana, no way. I do think one way to go is to have a mass of topdeck control cards so you can choose what you put in the pool. Old Jace, top, and scroll rack all do work. Unfortunately, they do work for opponents as well. Finally, bouncing Ian is killer in this deck. You can shut off everyone's access to the spell pool if it gets too scary by just putting him back in your hand or blinking him. When you cast him again (or he returns to the battlefield), it is a new instance, almost like he's in another damn sequel movie, so it doesn't remember the cards previously exiled. Very simple way to keep a little control of the chaos.

All of the transformer cards are also double-sided artifact cards that Tetzin can transform if they have the proper color identity with Tetzin.

My favourite idea with xoloyotac is using old bad islandwalk cards, since you can turn other people’s stuff into islands

SO. MUCH. DINO.

Wish indoraptor would've been in the episode, but it was already three hours long so I totally see if you can't fit it in. I'll probably play it as my enrage commander, as I can use both Pyrohemia and Pestilence.

Sovereign Okinec Ahau is going straight into my Jodah, the Unifer deck. "Oh, my board is +5/+5? How about +10/+10?"

One of my favorite episodes for sure

Ojer Axonil is soo flavored, it perfectly match the mono red color pipe.

i’ve been running Ojer Axonil for a little bit now and some MVPs in the 99 are Neheb, The Eternal and Chandra, Flame of Kaladesh (magic origins transform planeswalker). Neheb generates SO much mana and Flipping chandra is so easy with the commander on the field.

Tetzin looks nuts, especially if you try turning non artifacts into artifacts that have double sides with Liquimetal Coating/Torque and flip things like Westvale Abbey.

Hearing you guys pronouncing Ojer Axonil using pre-Columbian syllabics made my day

1:41:05 Some fun things I thought of when looking at this one. Karn, the great creator lets you buyback any exiled artifacts Saheeli, sublime artificer gives you an extra artifact for every artifact you cast Shark typhoon! Make them artifacts into sharky boys to beat down with!

Yk the thing i noticed when looking into tetzin is, there are a lot more double sided artifacts than we thought lol

Alil disappointed thallids weren't talked about with Xavier but I get it lol also a good card for Ian Malcom is shared fate for those interested it basically says everybody draws from an opponents deck but it doesn't fix mana coats.

Cool video I always enjoy seeing what cards are going to be powerful before I draft. First set I might try and make a proxy cube.

Ring of valkas for +1 and caste and ring of Thune for vigilance and +1counters each upkeep on Anim Pakal.

Mana barbs is amazing for flipping Axonil - just float 4, you’ve taken 4, and now you can flip back using the mana you just floated to take the damage!

I love tribal decks, and Don Andreas really make me want to make a "You are a Pirate", steal all the creatures deck...

Am I the only one who wants to build Carmen just so I can make a Carmen Sandiego reference when I play her?

Had one thing wrong about indominus rex, if you discard two cards with trample thats two trample counters on him. creatures can have more than counter of a keyword.

The second style of Carmen is definitely my style lmao

I gueds you can also cast Kaldheim gods in their artifact form and then transform them back when you need them with Tetzin.

Excited for Carmen, Cruel Skymarcher!!!

No love for Rite of Passage in Wayta? 😢 Grows creatures, and doubles up with Wayta. It's perfect.

Xavier Sal is going to be AMAZING in my ishai/Reyhan deck. It's a birthing pod/Agatha's soul cauldron deck built around creating a boatload of tokens by sacrificing cards like Elenda the Dusk Rose, getting counters on them, then doing busted stuff from there

Another great card for Don Andres is Missy from Doctor Who. Who wouldn’t want 4/4 Cybermen Pirates

The Mimeoplasm would be great in Indominus Rex (or vice versa) as a way to reanimate your commander, avoiding the tax, and drawing even more cards!

If you like flame fusillade Rachel, you’re going to love lightning volley!

The Strixhaven Stadium game is called Magetower. I was just reading the D&D book earlier lol

Carmen is definitely going into my Minthara deck

I built an aclazotz, deepest betrayal voltron/discard tribal, and it goes burrr.

It was at 3:42 that Rachel realized Josh is analyzing her as a player with the TurnTalk footage.

I built Indominus Rex when she was first revealed with a clone/copy subtheme, absolute monster of a deck. Use keywords to draw into a copy effect, copy Indominus, use keywords to draw into copy effect, etc. (Obviously be wary of the legend rule) Eventually you have a board of hastened, indestructible, hexproof, vigilant 10/10 clones ready to end the game.

quicksilver fountain also puts in work with Xolatoyac, the smiling flood :)

I know Rachel enjoys a good pun, but missed an opportunity to point out that Howling Mine on the battlefield with Ian Malcom will have everyone howling “Mine!” as they cast others’ cards.

I am very excited for some Chaos, good ol' Ian!!!!!

Any of the swords that give protection from red also really help in the Ojer Axonill deck too if you’re going the pyrohemia route

1:25:48 Interesting synergy with the Crystalline Crawler, if you use treasure or a mana dork that taps for any color of mana, it can technically come in as a 6/6.

Thanks for this guys! I'm building Don Andres and Mycotyrant so this was very useful! Also planning on building something with the Blood Rites precon, but I'm thinking about Vito, Fanatic of Aclazotz instead of Clavileño or Carmen. Still interesting to see all those suggestions for sac outlets :)

Josh plays wow? That's awesome!

1:29:07 Y'all are forgetting about The Transformers cards with their "More Than Meets The Eye" abilities 😅

Indominus Rex doesn't have to be the Commander. It could just be a creature in a four or five color deck and get double-strike that way.

Don't forget that Transformers are double sided artifacts as well for Tetzin. Lol

"There are not gonna be enough double sided artifacts to really trigger this milling thing" Huh? There are like, 46 double sided artifact cards you can run in his colors, not including cards like Chrome Host Seedshark that consistently make double-sided artifact tokens (incubate tokens). I built a deck using all that I could, and it is surprisingly solid (and it's not like people are going to target Tetzin with removal, he isn't super threatening when you first read him)

Xavier Sal is more like Bootstrap Bill Turner than Davy Jones haha. If ever I build this deck I’ll create an alternate art of it. 😅

Thousandth Moon is the Best! Tech cards you missed: Rosie Cotton of South Lane (3 mana Cathar’s crusade on Legs) Grateful Apparition (2 mana evasive proliferates) Reckless Fireweaver(2mana 2nd copy of Impact tremors on legs) Warleader’s Call (3rd copy of impact Tremor’s + 1 power for all creatures) Abzan Falconer/Ainok Bond Kin/Abzan Battle priest (Creatures with +1/+1 counters get Flying/First strike/Lifelink) Oketra’s monument /Defiler of Faith(reduces Commander tax by 1 and gives a constant supply of 1/1 soldiers lead the gnomes to battle) Ollenbock Escort (2nd copy of giver of runes. Sacrifice to give Anim lifelink and indestructible for 1 turn)

"Plague crafter is mean" The things they don't talk about: pox, cataclysm, balancing act, global ruin, limited resources,

Indominus Rex might not be able to get double strike as a commander, but it can still be relevant if it is in the 99 of a four or five color deck. Although that seems unlikely.

Best way to play son andres is get as much treasure as possible and then cast mass manipulation to end the game

They did Tetzin, mentioned the transforming artifacts, but didn't mention Transformers. I get rushing him, because he's weird. All the Transformers are double-sided artifacts.

I didn't expect rectangle theory! Sad you didn't mention its creator though! Shout out to @lordsoflimited

I'm actually relieved I wasn't chosen. All my vacation time from work is already accounted for, and I wouldn't be able to get the days off, lol

No one will see this, but another combo with Xavier and Scurry Oak is with helm of the host. You make a copy of Xavier, put a counter on Scurry oak, tap the copy and remove the counter from oak to populate Xavier, and that copy still has haste. Gives infinite squirrels and infinite Xaviers

Got a friend who's going to change Torbran for Ojer Axonil, fun times

Surprised Saheeli, the Sun's Brilliance didn't make it on this list. Cheap Izzet token creator with artifact synergy.

Painter's Servant and artifact-based damage could be fun in Ojer, but probably not worth running unless you are also going to play Grindstone. You can burn out a player, mill another, etc.