Apex DevastatorApex Devastator | Illustrated by Svetlin Velinov

By and large, the average blue cEDH deck contains around twelve pieces of interaction. Force of WillForce of Will, Pact of NegationPact of Negation, FlusterstormFlusterstorm, etc; these cards serve a necessary role in defending your win attempts while quashing others. The only problem, however, is that playing interaction in a four-player environment just isn't as strictly optimal as it is elsewhere. Enter Semi-Blue, a new approach to multi-color blue decks that disavows just about every piece of interaction you'd naturally expect it to include. In this article, we'll break down just how valuable interaction is in cEDH, how Semi-Blue works, and what its future holds.

The Problem with Interaction

In 1-v-1 Magic, interaction works in equal measure as far as card advantage is concerned. By countering a spell, you've used up one card and gotten rid of one of your opponent's cards. The same is true for single-target removal; by exiling a creature with Swords to PlowsharesSwords to Plowshares, your opponent is down one card and you are, too. This equal trade means that playing interaction doesn't simultaneously put you at risk of card disadvantage. In Commander, however, things change greatly.

By casting a single piece of interaction, i.e., Mental MisstepMental Misstep, you're losing a card, one other opponent is losing a card, and two other players are entirely unaffected. Viewed through this lens, the table is now left split in half: the two opponents who didn't do anything now each have a plus-one card advantage relative to you, assuming things started out on an equal playing field. This discrepancy gets even worse when you consider cards like Force of WillForce of Will or Force of NegationForce of Negation, as the inherent card disadvantage that their alternate costs bring with them is now doubled thanks to unequal nature of interaction in Commander.

Things get even worse when you consider the politics of cEDH. Blue is one of the most played colors in the format, and even when players aren't playing blue they're likely still playing some sort of interaction (SilenceSilence if white, PyroblastPyroblast if red, etc). This means that, for politically savvy players, using their own interaction is only ever a last resort; why use up your own interaction when you can simply pass priority and force another player to interact?

Taken all together, the strictly optimal way to play interaction would be to use it as little as possible and to instead focus on ways to pressure the rest of the table into acting on your behalf, saving up your own interaction for defending your win attempt. However, this brings with it the risk of players simply ignoring table-talk politics, something which is a growing trend in cEDH. As such, we're left with the current state of things: players running more interaction than they necessarily should in order to prep for drawn out games and ineffectual politicking.

What is Semi-Blue?

Semi-Blue is a relatively new development in the cEDH scene. Initially brewing out of the Japanese meta and only making its way out globally over the past few months, this approach to blue decided to forsake interaction and instead focus on playing inherently resilient win conditions, thus combining the defensive approach to interaction with the very spells to be defended.

The initial Semi-Blue deck was a variant of Rograkh, Son of RohgahhRograkh, Son of Rohgahh partnered with Thrasios, Triton HeroThrasios, Triton Hero. Already a big-mana deck that has had more than its fair share of tournament victories since first being brewed, the Semi-Blue version of the deck took things even further, cutting counterspells to make way for more ways to profit off of Gaea's CradleGaea's Cradle as well as monstrous creatures to eventually cast with that mana, like Apex DevastatorApex Devastator.

Apex Devastator is a card that perfectly encapsulates how Semi-Blue is still able to present game-ending threats without relying on defensive counterspells. First off, as a creature, it already dodges nearly every counterspell that is popularly played in cEDH. Secondly, even if it does get hit by a Force of WillForce of Will, the quadruple-cascade trigger stapled to it is almost guaranteed to resolve, presenting four more opportunities to cast game-enders like Hullbreaker HorrorHullbreaker Horror, Void WinnowerVoid Winnower, or Mind's DesireMind's Desire. Of these, Mind's Desire is easily the most fragile, as it's subject to being stopped by FlusterstormFlusterstorm, but other than that normal countermagic doesn't really work here, either. A single counterspell only stops a single copy, after all.

The Semi-Blue philosophy has also been taking effect elsewhere, however Simic has proven to be the core of the archetype's success. The combination of cards like Peregrine DrakePeregrine Drake, Great WhaleGreat Whale, and PalinchronPalinchron plus Gaea's Cradle is a resilient and effective way to churn out absurd amounts of mana while simultaneously committing pressure to the board.

Semi-Blue and the Future of cEDH

While Semi-Blue is an interesting answer to the problem of interaction's additional costs in a multiplayer format, the deck suffers from a pretty significant problem: it can't stop other players from winning. Instead, it relies on other players in the pod using their interaction to stop an early win attempt. If Semi-Blue was a turbo deck then this issue would be of less concern, but make no mistake, the average Semi-Blue deck is a speedy midrange list, not a true turbo machine.

Semi-Blue isn't alone in this reliance on other decks at the table to stop the faster players. Lumra, Bellow of the WoodsLumra, Bellow of the Woods is a fast, viable, and resilient cEDH deck that leans heavily on just a single creature spell to win the game, shifting the duty to interact to its opponents. After all, the deck is mono-green, how could it possible stop an Ad NauseamAd Nauseam in the first place? However, at the meta level, this increasing roster of interactionless decks is beginning to cannibalize itself, as it's no longer hard to imagine pods where players sit down and run little, if any, interaction between them.

At the very most extreme, a pod with four Semi-Blue decks essentially boils down to a question of seat order. Assuming players draw reasonably equal hands, the player in the first seat will get more mana faster than the rest, that player will cast their big creatures before the rest, and they'll untap with those big creatures and attack before the rest. All in all, without anyone running interaction, the game is effectively decided by who sits in the first seat. In a pod with three Semi-Blue decks and a turbo deck, however, then the turbo deck wins, even in seat four. Those decks simply play too fast for Semi-Blue to catch up, so the average and will present a win turns before Semi-Blue has had a chance to deploy anything significant.

Ultimately, the point here is that - as players run less and less interaction - players are incentivized to build faster and faster deck. For Semi-Blue, this presents a problem because it just can't outspeed turbo. Can it outplay midrange, the current dominant deck? Absolutely. Are more and more turbo decks starting to pop up because of Semi-Blue's interaction revolution? You bet they are.

Semi-Blue Decklist

Wrap Up

Semi-Blue is a new, resilient take on a cEDH that feels a lot like classic Commander; massive Dinosaurs and Leviathans fighting it out, only this time backed up by a lot more mana and cast a lot early than they usually would be. A perfect breaker for slow midrange-plagued pods, this deck laughs at countermagic. The only problem is, other decks are starting to see the same light that led Semi-Blue to shed its interaction, and those decks are a whole lot faster.