(Tymna the Weaver | Art by Winona Nelson)
(Kraum, Ludevic's Opus | Art by Aaron Miller)

When It Comes to Their Favorite James Bond Film...

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Recross the Paths, the series that gives commanders a typal twist.

Today's commanders are the deck in cEDH but, this time, we're going to make them fit for casual tables. I'm referring to the partner pair of Tymna the Weaver and Kraum, Ludevic's Opus. These two have been wreaking havoc in the competitive scene for quite a long time and they're still at the top of the game, given how easily they can generate card advantage.

This time, they'll be paired with a pretty much forgotten creature type: Specters. The catch of these creatures is that they make our opponents discard cards. To do so however, almost all of them need to deal combat damage to other players. This means that, through a simple combat step, we'll be able to both strip a card from an opponent's hand and draw ourselves a card. We'll ride this engine to the end of the game, while keeping Kraum at the ready as a backup plan in longer games.

Stage One: The Deck

Part One: Our Secret Agents

The base template for Specter creatures has been repeated quite a few times in Magic's history. For this reason, we can play the original Hypnotic Specter and also the slightly bigger version of Abyssal Specter, up to the more complex iteration of Sedraxis Specter.

Yet, there are some variations on the theme. Nightveil Specter rips cards from the top of an opponent's library and also allows us to cast the cards it steals. On the same note, Thief of Sanity goes a step further, offering card selection among the top three cards and milling the remaining two. Lastly, Blizzard Specter pairs up hand disruption and board disruption, granting us the opportunity to remove pesky permanents if we need to.

More recent designs also take into consideration multiplayer environments. For example, Scythe Specter forces every opponent to discard a card while also dealing accidental bonus damage. Hollow Marauder gives way for some politicking at the table and comes with some potential card draw. Staying on this last theme, Urgoros, the Empty One doesn't address multiple players at once but does reward us for emptying an opponent's hand.

Part Two: The Tools For The Mission

All of our Specters have flying, a keyword that grants them evasion to keep up the pressure. Hence, cards like Favorable Winds make sure that we are pairing our hand disruption skills with some needed attack buffs.
Gravitational Shift plays a similar role, giving more firepower to our creatures, reducing that of ground attackers and also working as another political tool, as fellow flying creature enjoyers can benefit from it.
Lastly, Mudslide works as a soft protection, giving us just enough time to get our engine going.

I also considered including some other flying-matters cards, but I ended up cutting them as I try to keep the count of non-typal creatures in the deck as low as possible. The excluded cards will all be visible in the Archidekt version of the decklist. They include generic stats buffs such as Empyrean Eagle, defensive tools like Magus of the Moat and synergistic pieces such as Siani, Eye of the Storm.

Part Three: The Reward

We want to capitalize as much as possible on our creatures dealing damage, so we run a number of cards that give us additional rewards for doing so. Rogue Class straight-up doubles the number of steals per attack, while also being a possible additional evasion tool. Bident of Thassa is old-but-gold, giving us access to a traditional powerful draw engine. Lastly, Great Train Heist is a newer toy to play with and its flexibility in granting more damage, treasures and/or an additional combat step seems at the very least interesting.

We also want to be rewarded for the actual discarding we have going on. For this reason, we run Liliana's Caress and Megrim to keep up the pressure on our opponents' life total. Likely, Raiders' Wake offers us the same effect but also pairs it up with an additional discard engine.

Lastly, Painful Quandary soon starts stripping away cards from other players' hands, as the damage is pretty difficult to keep up with. Regarding other types of rewards, Waste Not is a jack of all trades, awarding us bodies, mana or cards depending on what gets discarded. Geth's Grimoire is a simpler version of this card, but it is pretty efficient at keeping our hand flowing with value.

Part Four: The Complete Decklist

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Stage Two: The Data Room

Just like last month, this time around the data room will be a bit different from the usual. In fact, Tymna and Kraum are a strictly cEDH pairing and, if we look at their EDHRec page, it clearly shows. Hence, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to see if any of the cards in today's list are usually played with these two creatures at the helm. What we can do is checking out how popular our Specters are in dedicated decks.

Part One: The Average Specter Deck

Specters aren't by any means a popular creature type; there are only 150 registered decks on EDHREC and Crosis, the Purger leads 100 of them. Let's see how popular are the cards we included today when compared to the most played Specter deck.

These numbers are astoundingly clear and they make way for some crucial considerations. First of all, Specters are not at all a creature type Wizards of the Coast is currently interested in. There are currently 27 creatures with this type and I included 20 of them in today's list. This means that, in order to play a typal deck, you basically have to include all of them and not because they're especially good, but because they're the only ones available. In this regard, cards with a lower inclusion rate such as Entropic Specter, Shrieking Specter but also Shimian Specter don't see the same amount of play because they are where players draw the line. In other words, many consider them simply too bad to include them in Specter typal deck even though there are basically no other options available.

To add insult to injury, all of these creatures basically see play only in dedicated Crosis decks. In fact, the synergy stat available on EDHREC is the difference between the popularity of a card in decks with a specific commander and the popularity of the same card in the commander's color identity.

For example, Counterspell is played in 56 out of 100 Crosis, the Purger Specter decks. The +12% synergy means that this inclusion rate is 12 points higher than its inclusion rate in Grixis commanders in general. In other words, only 44% of Grixis-colored decks play Counterspell.

With all of this in mind, it is relevant mentioning how the inclusion rate of all of our Specters is basically equal to their synergy score. This means that no other Grixis deck is playing them and that, most likely, no other decks is playing them. So, while Hypnotic Specter, Abyssal Specter and Blizzard Specter all see a ton of play in these Crosis decks, no one else is even considering them. Hence, the ultimate meaning is that these cards (which are absolute staples in typal decks) are overlooked by every player that isn't building a Specter deck, speaking very loud about their actual power level.

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Takeaways From Today's Article

• It was very interesting to brew around a cEDH-only commander pair. In fact, many of these commanders have a very intriguing text box that gives a lot of breathing room for innovation and experimentation. Perhaps it's only a personal perception, but I always feel as if creatures such as Tymna, Kraum, Ludevic's Opus, but also Kenrith, the Returned King aren't fit for casual commander and that, instead, they should only be played at the most powerful tables. My intention with this brew was to remove from them the stigma of being those commanders and, instead, to show how fun they can be to play around with;
• On the other hand, I can't really say it was a fun and experimental experience to build around Specters. While I think their design is unique and extremely cool, it also seems to me that they are criminally under-explored. The sheer lack of options is lackluster: it is basically impossible to innovate and the numbers reflect it. I wish there were more creatures with this type that carry on the tradition of making opponents discard cards when they connect and I hope more of them are included in future sets or even in a precon, who knows;
• All in all, this experimentation leaves a bittersweet taste in my mouth. While I'm really happy I brought the most popular competitive pair to casual tables, I wish I could have innovated more in the creature department. Nonetheless, I still think Specters are extremely fun and bring something new to the table in commander, as discard strategy aren't really popular. In conclusion, I'll be waiting for the missing piece for this brew: more variety and exploration of the prototypical Hypnotic Specter.

That’s all from me for the moment. I hope you enjoyed this deck tech, but now it’s onto you: What do you think of it? Would you have changed anything? Or there’s something you particularly liked? Most importantly, do you believe this was a true innovation? Let me know in the comments below!

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