Jackal, Genius GeneticistJackal, Genius Geneticist | Illustrated by Pavel Kolomeyets

Welcome back to Plot Twist, the series where we build a Commander deck that looks like it's going to tell one kind of story only to throw out a twist for our opponents mid-game.

On the last edition of Plot Twist, we built a threaten + sacrifice deck with Fire Lord OzaiFire Lord Ozai that stole our opponents' creatures, sacrificed them to our commander, and turned the extra mana into extra value. This week, we're continuing to look at Marvel's Spider-Man commanders with Jackal, Genius GeneticistJackal, Genius Geneticist and seeing how we can ensure that Jackal always copies any Hydra creature spells we cast.

How Does Jackal, Genius GeneticistJackal, Genius Geneticist Work?

Our commander this week is just a humble 1/1 for with trample.

Oh, wait, Jackal also has a triggered ability that reads "Whenever you cast a creature spell with mana value equal to Jackal’s power, copy that spell, except the copy isn’t legendary. Then put a +1/+1 counter on Jackal. (The copy becomes a token.)" So, if we cast our commander and then an Elvish MysticElvish Mystic on the same turn, we'd end up getting a copy of the Elvish Mystic and a +1/+1 counter on Jackal. Seems strong.

However, Jackal's power will continue to climb with each creature we cast, eventually making it difficult for us to a get a free copy, assuming we're able to chain creatures with the right mana values along the way. There are going to be times where we don't happen to have a creature with the right mana value to trigger Jackal, or where Jackal's power is too high for us to reasonably trigger it.

In taking a look at Jackal's EDHREC page, we can see brewers are running lots of mana dorks, like Birds of ParadiseBirds of Paradise, Delighted HalflingDelighted Halfling, and Elvish MysticElvish Mystic, to both ramp early and provide a reasonable first spell for Jackal to copy. They're also leaning heavily on creatures that can remove counters from Jackal, like O'aka, Traveling MerchantO'aka, Traveling Merchant, Nesting GroundsNesting Grounds, and Goldberry, River-DaughterGoldberry, River-Daughter.

That's something we'll be borrowing for this week's Plot Twist decklist as well, since we want to control the number of counters on Jackal. But what if we also featured a full suite of creatures that we could copy at almost any point in the game? That's right, our particular build this week will be running lots of Hydras and other creatures with X in their casting cost so we can control their mana value.

Doing the Twist

If we want to make sure that Jackal, Genius GeneticistJackal, Genius Geneticist is able to copy as many creature spells as possible, one of the best things we can do is ensure our creatures have variable mana values. Creatures with in their mana cost are a bit odd because counts as zero when they're in our hand, library, graveyard, et cetera, but X counts as what we pay for it when the creature is on the stack.

That means that we'll be able to pay mana to ensure that the creature spell's mana value is equal to our commander's power relatively easily. With 20 creatures with in their mana cost, we should see several of them over the course of a game, allowing us to trigger our commander reliably and get two creatures for the price of one.

Since many of our creatures, and our commander, care about +1/+1 counters, we're also running Doubling SeasonDoubling Season, The OzolithThe Ozolith, The Earth CrystalThe Earth Crystal, and tons of other effects to help us get extra counters on our creatures. Combine that with ways to shift counters around, like Nesting GroundsNesting Grounds and Goldberry, River-DaughterGoldberry, River-Daughter, and we'll have counters moving and multiplying nearly every turn.

Our deck this week looks to be an explosive-but-flexible go-tall deck that might require us to do a whole lot of math from time to time. It should be a blast to play and allow us to both make interesting decisions over the course of the game while also turning the corner to close out games after turn 8. Hopefully we should be right at home in Bracket 2 or Bracket 3 games.

X Spells for Jackal to Copy

With 20 creatures with X in their casting cost, and almost 40 creatures total, we have plenty of creatures to copy with our commander. The copies Jackal, Genius GeneticistJackal, Genius Geneticist makes are are even nonlegendary, so we can copy Gadwick, the WizenedGadwick, the Wizened and Kurbis, Harvest CelebrantKurbis, Harvest Celebrant.

Things get a little tricky when Jackal's power is exactly one, since that will require us to cast some spells like Ingenious ProdigyIngenious Prodigy, MockingbirdMockingbird, and Stonecoil SerpentStonecoil Serpent for a total mana value of 1 if we want to copy them, but that shouldn't come up often enough to prevent us from being able to copy spell after spell. We'll just want to get a counter on our commander first through some other matter.

Benevolent HydraBenevolent Hydra and Wildwood ScourgeWildwood Scourge are some of our best X-cost creatures since both of them will allow us to keep generating additional +1/+1 counters when they're on the board. Ochre JellyOchre Jelly and Vastwood HydraVastwood Hydra also allow us to make additional counters when they die, giving us a density of this effect.

Gadwick, the WizenedGadwick, the Wizened, Hydroid KrasisHydroid Krasis, and Ingenious ProdigyIngenious Prodigy give us some serious card advantage that scales up as the game goes along, helping us refill our hand when we need to. There are also tons of flexible X-cost creatures in the deck to help us get a piece of extra removal or interaction when we need it, like AberrantAberrant, RavenerRavener, and Voracious HydraVoracious Hydra, all of which get better when we can clone them with our commander.

Multiplying Our +1/+1 Counters

If we're going to be relying on +1/+1 counters, then we'll need plenty of ways to multiply them. Doubling SeasonDoubling Season is one of the best cards in our deck for this reason since it'll double the counters we add and it'll create an extra token copy when Jackal triggers. You probably don't need a lesson in how broken Doubling Season can be, but when you can clone it itself (like I do in my Gandalf, Westward Voyager deck), the game is about to get absurd.

We're running a lot of staples in this archetype in Branching EvolutionBranching Evolution, Hardened ScalesHardened Scales, and Innkeeper's TalentInnkeeper's Talent. They all work well with more than a third of our deck, so we'll want to see at least one of these effects each game. We're also running The OzolithThe Ozolith since it stores the counters from our creatures who die.

Defiler of VigorDefiler of Vigor, The Earth CrystalThe Earth Crystal, and Tromell, Seymour's ButlerTromell, Seymour's Butler are all sneakily powerful in this deck since they'll allow us to quickly amass a large amount of +1/+1 counters by themselves and go absolutely bonkers with any other counter-doublers. Defiler of Vigor and The Earth Crystal even help us cheat on mana to cast bigger creatures and multiple creatures in a turn.

For more counter shenanigans, be sure to check out Plot Twist #21 and #11.

Shifting Counters Around

Being able to move counters between our creatures does two things for our deck:

First, we can control Jackal, Genius GeneticistJackal, Genius Geneticist's power if it gets to be too high for us to clone a particular creature. Goldberry, River-DaughterGoldberry, River-Daughter, O'aka, Traveling MerchantO'aka, Traveling Merchant, and Power ConduitPower Conduit all let us remove counters one at a time if that's what we need.

If we need to remove more counters, we can use Galloping LizrogGalloping Lizrog, Hierophant Bio-TitanHierophant Bio-Titan, or Tekuthal, Inquiry DominusTekuthal, Inquiry Dominus to remove as many from our commander or other creatures as we need to. Each of them also nets us a little something extra in return for the counters we give up, too.

Our second reason for moving counters around is simply to trigger Branching EvolutionBranching Evolution, Hardened ScalesHardened Scales, and our other counter-multiplying effects. We can trigger these effects at-will and make our creatures grow quite tall by shifting a few counters a turn, every turn.

Keeping Our Creatures Alive

This week's decklist is particularly reliant on its creatures, so we're packing a wide variety of ways to save our team. Fortunately, the +1/+1 counters archetype got some new tools in the last few years.

Mutational AdvantageMutational Advantage is probably the best of these effects, acting as a Heroic InterventionHeroic Intervention that has proliferate stapled on. We even have a second copy of this effect in Tyrant GuardTyrant Guard, which we'll want to ensure we can copy with Jackal's triggered ability whenever we can to get two of them.

Ripples of PotentialRipples of Potential functions similarly, except it phases our creatures out. Most of the time phasing will be worse for our deck than hexproof and indestructible, but occasionally we'll need to dodge a FarewellFarewell. Remember that creatures phase out until the beginning of our next upkeep, so we won't be able to use them as blockers for any turns in between.

Kurbis, Harvest CelebrantKurbis, Harvest Celebrant acts like a mini-FogFog to save one of our creatures. Most of the time, our creatures should be some of the biggest on our board, but sometimes we'll need an effect to save our commander (or our whole team) from a Blasphemous ActBlasphemous Act.

Winning the Game with Jackal, Genius GeneticistJackal, Genius Geneticist

Our primary win condition this week is going to be attacking with big creatures (as it frequently is). We'll be able to multiple the +1/+1 counters on our creatures easily with Branching EvolutionBranching Evolution, Doubling SeasonDoubling Season, and friends while also just occasionally casting a gigantic Goldvein HydraGoldvein Hydra or Wildwood ScourgeWildwood Scourge that can run away with the game all by itself.

Occasionally, we might might run into a token deck that can simply block all of our gigantic creatures, which is where Herald of Secret StreamsHerald of Secret Streams really shines. This card is an all-star in my personal Wizard kindred deck, that enables us to get an alpha strike through on the turn we cast it. It does tend to become a magnet for removal spells, though, so we'll want to hold it for a turn when we can definitely knock one of our opponents out.

ClamavusClamavus can help us go even taller when we need to, effectively turning our +1/+1 counters into +2/+2 counters instead. Ideally, we'll have Garruk's UprisingGarruk's Uprising or one of our many creatures with trample to ensure we make the most of Clamavus since our creatures don't have a lot of ways to avoid being chump blocked.

Finally, we're running Simic AscendancySimic Ascendancy because we're going to be adding a lot of counters a lot of different ways in this week's deck. Sure, we have to untap with 20 or more counters on Simic Ascendancy, but adding that sort of tension to our games is one of the hallmarks of a Plot Twist deck. Check out Plot Twist #34 for another deck that knows how to build a bit of narrative tension.

A Few Additional Twists for Good Measure

Time for the best part of every Plot Twist deck tech: the goodies that various Scryfall searches turned up!

First and foremost, Power ConduitPower Conduit. Note that it just says "remove a counter" on it, meaning we can use it to manipulate Sagas, slumber counters from Arixmethes, the Slumbering IsleArixmethes, the Slumbering Isle, or any other counter we want. There's a lot of fun that we can have with cards that don't care about a specific type of counter.

We're running both Hickory WoodlotHickory Woodlot and Saprazzan SkerrySaprazzan Skerry in our deck this week since we have a variety of ways to proliferate. Being able to have two colored 'Sol' lands is amazing if we can keep them around for more than two turns. The cycle of depletion lands has been on my mind a lot lately, so it was exciting to find a deck where they fit in perfectly.

BiophagusBiophagus, Elementalist's PaletteElementalist's Palette, and NexosNexos all supercharge this deck's mana production. More and more Wizards seems to be making mana dorks and mana rocks that are super strong in the right archetype. We'll be happy to have any one of these three in our opening hand since they'll let us accelerate into giant X-spells quickly.

Last, but not least, don't sleep on Defiler of VigorDefiler of Vigor. Not only does it help us cheat on mana, it makes our creatures huge, fast, especially if we can chain multiple spells in a single turn. We'll quickly turn the corner from cheating on mana to closing out the game after only three of four creature spells cast with Defiler of Vigor in play.

Jackal, Genius Geneticist Commander Decklist

Here's the full list for you to peruse:

Roll the Credits

I hope you enjoyed reading the latest edition of Plot Twist featuring Jackal, Genius Geneticist. Next time you sit down for a game of Commander, see what sort of plot twists you can add to take the game's narrative in a new direction.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on today's deck and what cards could find a home in it in the comments below or on Archidekt. The Maybeboards of my deck lists are always filled with cards I thought could work but didn't make the final decklist.

You can check out my other articles here or see what decks I'm currently playing here. I finally got around to assembling a Bracket 4, colorless combo deck that I'm trying (and failing) to make work and having a blast. I'm also always adding new cards to my favorite deck of all time, Secret Commander: Wild Pair.

My inner Timmy also seems to be back in full force as I've been playing my Yeva, Mono-Green Stompy list again lately and falling in love with it all over again.

Stay tuned to see what other twists and turns are headed your way in the next edition of Plot Twist.