How They Brew It: The Traitors

Let me tell you a story.

The year: 1983. A loaf of bread cost fifty cents, Thriller was the creepiest thing Michael Jackson did, and you didn’t go to jail when you punched a communist. Yes, life was simple back then, and so am I.

Anyway, two weeks ago, my partner and I were assigned a deep undercover mission in the lush, tropical jungles of Antarctica. The agency had intel that Nazis or sharks or whoever were channeling forbidden, supernatural magicks to foment global political chaos, and really, that’s about as good an explanation for the news today as anything else.

We slipped into their base under the cover of a blanket. Once inside, we worked our way through the labyrinthine catacombs, planting bugs, sabotaging vehicles, and minimizing scientist casualties. The seconds stretched into minutes, then the minutes into hours, and so on, and so forth, but finally, in the heart of their operation, we discovered a dark, glowing crystal. It tasted like blueberry and floated off the ground, as if it was buoyed by the very grace of God himself. At that moment, my partner stabbed me in the back — with her gun.

The bullet ricocheted off my rock-hard abs, of course, and was redirected into the crystal, which shattered into seven light shards and thirteen dark ones. I thought it was over, but the truth was that it laid a curse upon me; ever since that day, everyone I’ve met has double-crossed me. Even the milkman. Especially the milkman.

A Fated Encounter

Luckily, this curse can be broken. I just need to shake someone’s faith in their friends’ loyalty so utterly that the spirit haunting me decides it’d have way more fun with that guy instead. Hey, on a completely unrelated note, wanna play a game of Magic?

It’s not just fate that Aminatou shifts today. Today, she shifts loyalties — by which I mean allegiances, not the type of counters she uses since she’s a planeswalker, I swear it’s a good joke, go to the next line, just—

Anyway, her -1 allows you to exile another target permanent you own, and then return it to the battlefield under your control. Notably, that’s any permanent you own, not any permanent you control. Why does that distinction matter? Well, let me give you an example.

Everyone’s heard of the interaction between Aminatou and Wishclaw Talisman. It’s simple: activate Wishclaw Talisman‘s ability to pick a card (any card) from your library. As that ability resolves, you have to give your Wishclaw Talisman away to an opponent, but before they can make use of it, you use Aminatou’s -1 to takesies-backsies it to your side of the field.

In short, just because someone else controls Wishclaw Talisman doesn’t mean you stop owning it, and so, it remains a valid target for Aminatou. Let’s take this to its illogical conclusion, shall we?

Disloyalty Cards

Of course, there are other flakes like Wishclaw Talisman available to the color identity. All of them give you huge value, tempered by the understanding that you’re supposed to pay it forward to another player once you’ve taken your fair share.

Luckily, Aminatou doesn’t care for the optics that come along with giving a gift and then immediately taking it back, so these cards are excellent:

Swing Kain, Traitorous Dragoon into an enemy to draw a few cards and make some tapped Treasure tokens for the trouble.
Tap Yes Man, Personal Securitron to draw two cards and put a quest counter on him. When you blink him, not only do you reset his ability to draw more cards, you also immediately get his Soldier token!
Both Hithlain Rope and Bucknard's Everfull Purse ramp you in the early game. If you play these turn two, wait until just before your third turn starts to activate them. Aminatou can come in turn three, so your opponents never get an opportunity to use them.
In the worst case, Act of Authority knocks out the most problematic artifact or enchantment on the board, but you can take the deal on your upkeep to snipe anything else that comes along afterward.
And although Coveted Jewel isn’t strictly guaranteed to make its way into the hands of an enterprising thief on the other side of the table, you can still recover it without combat by blinking it back. In fact, you can blink it back even if you don’t have to recover it; three cards is a lot.

Life Swap

Let’s be real, though; if this entire How They Brew It was just Wishclaw Talisman, but more, then honestly, I would be the one betraying you, and that’s not my intention. I respect you, dear reader. No, the real way to win friends and influence people is to use a little Switcheroo:

It’s devilishly simple, but dangerously effective. The plan?

Use a card like Shifting Loyalties to trade one of your permanents for one of theirs.
Blink back the permanent you own with Aminatou’s -1 ability.
That permanent reappears under your control, and you now have both.
You win, because you have more permanents.
Your win inspires a girl to date you. It hasn’t happened for me, yet, but that’s the whole point of Magic, right?

Spy Kids

Of course, the first thing you’ll need to worry about is which creatures you’re going to give your opponent. You obviously can’t donate anything that they can immediately make use of, because then you’re actually giving them something in return for their stuff, which is not really a betrayal. That’s more of a bad trade, and like the White Sox, people do those all the time without understanding how screwed they are.

You also don’t want to give away cards that are too damaging, like Bronze Bombshell, for three reasons. One, this isn’t Zedruu; you don’t always have access to a method to donate your permanents, and you don’t want to be stuck with useless junk in hand while you wait for the Puca's Mischief to come around. Two, you have Aminatou’s blink ability, and you want to make use of that; if you give away terrible cards, you won’t want to blink them back. Three, throwing a Grid Monitor at an opponent in exchange for their commander feels more like an attack than anything else. Your enemy’s creatures aren’t leaving them out of spite, they’re being kidnapped, and a land mine is being left in its place. That’s not a betrayal.

No, the most damning thing to give away is the least obvious of all: regular-ass blink targets.

Yes, imagine your Eldrazi titan agreeing to a wife-swap, and instead of Catherine Zeta-Jones you get Wall of Omens. A wall that, mind you, leaves you the instant your back is turned. How absolutely devastating.

And, in the worst case where you don’t draw your swap spells, or (God-forbid) your opponents all have decks that are absolute crap and nothing is worth stealing, you still get to play a functional (if somewhat sub-optimal) blink deck. You still have that backup plan, because you deserve a deck that’s functional in all cases.

Stop ‘n Swap

Now that you understand what to exchange, it’s time to understand how to exchange. Unfortunately, I don’t have time for a semester-length treatise on microeconomics, so I’ll just go over what cards swap permanents in this specific Magic: the Gathering deck and assume you’ll get the rest from there. There are three distinct categories:

The first category consists of permanents that let you swap at-will, such as Avarice Totem, Eyes Everywhere, or Phyrexian Infiltrator. These are the traps you lay for the table. In reality, they’re extremely mana-intensive effects, and they require good judgment to use effectively. Luckily, your opponents don’t know if you’re bad, so they’ll be unwilling to play anything even remotely threatening until your swappers are dealt with or you’re out of mana. Think of it like an extremely obvious and high-stakes form of holding up Counterspell mana.

The second category are all the permanents that swap at a fixed time, like Puca's Mischief. These are less flexible than the first category, but they’re much more mana-efficient. Since you’re guaranteed one swap at upkeep, and you don’t have to pay taxes on it, you can plan around using Aminatou’s -1 to gain control of a creature while getting a decent blink ETB every turn.

The final category consists of single-use effects that outright swap two permanents. These are your panic buttons; you’ll use these ad-hoc as a way to deprive your opponents of their critical pieces without requiring a ton of set-up or careful planning around Aminatou’s loyalty. Most swap permanents are either slow or mana-hungry, and if you’re caught before your setup’s complete, you’ll be glad you had one of these to keep yourself alive.

Intricacies

I’ve laid the ground rules for what this deck is about. You’ll agree that it’s about fairly amassing value through theft over the course of the game; no cheesy instant-kill shenanigans here. I’ve spoken in pretty broad terms so far, so let’s give some shoutouts to the interesting interactions I just think are neat. In no particular order:

Hexproof-proof

This deck is extremely vulnerable to being blown out by hexproof. If you attempt to swap for an enemy commander and they’re given hexproof in response, you won’t get to exchange, and losing that tempo can be a devastating blow in a deck as complicated as this one.

That’s why I’ve included a few blinkable permanents that also hate on hexproof. Your opponents will truly have nowhere to run once one of these are on board.

No, Not Magic, Airbending

If Aminatou is out of loyalty, you’re not consigned to a terrible fate. Shift your focus to the deck’s removal, which is mostly temporary and tempo-based, like Airbender Ascension. Airbending an enemy permanent will get it out of your hair for a bit, but airbending or bouncing an enemy permanent you gave them puts them back in your court.

Captain Falcon

This might be the one deck where Coveted Falcon really earns its keep. You’re constantly donating permanents, so he’ll always be able to fetch whatever you throw. That’s right, who’s a good boy? Who’s a good boy?

The Answer To The Previously Posed Question

Not Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd. She’s a good girl! Who’s a good girl?

Got Your Goat

Not… well, I don’t know. I can’t tell a goat’s gender by looking at it, and frankly, if I could, that would be concerning.

Anyway, Oft-Nabbed Goat is hilariously good at being donated, given that you can activate it immediately to take it back and draw a card without using up any of Aminatou’s loyalty. You can always blink the goat to reset its -1/-1 counters if you want to keep it around, but if it actually dies with five -1/-1 counters on it, you get to draw five whole cards.

Low-Power Alliance

There’s not enough slots in the deck to waste on crap like Baleful Strix that can only draw you a single card, so it’s better to get card draw through enters triggers on creatures like Welcoming Vampire. That way, you can donate and blink whatever you want while still grabbing card advantage. I have no idea why these aren’t more popular in blink decks.

Wall ‘em Off

I will now immediately contradict my last paragraph by revealing that yes, Wall of Omens is in the deck — though that is genuinely more because it’s a 0/4 Wall. It just happens to be blinkable. Aminatou is extremely fragile and you often do not want to play her turn three; these Walls make her a little bit less susceptible to being hit with a car.

Weirder Removal

Reality Acid and Parting Gust are insanely synergistic removal pieces that lean into the deck’s blink focus. Blink Reality Acid to knock out a permanent each turn, including problematic lands, and you can use Parting Gust as either outright removal or a way to retrieve a swapped creature.

Flickerable Board Wipes

These are just disgusting, since you can arbitrarily reset them through Aminatou.

Commander’s Herald

Finally, while Herald of Leshrac is extremely impractical, there’s nothing more warm and fuzzy than the thought of stealing everyone’s land, donating Herald of Leshrac, and then blinking it while it’s not under your control to sidestep the repercussions of your eminent domain fraud scheme. Cut this card if you hate Christmas or puppies, but go for it if you don’t.

None Lives

Well, dear reader, I’m glad you’ve stuck with me to the very end. As mentioned before, I respect you and your time deeply, and have always intended to bring you a fair, challenging, and interesting commander deck that you can play with your friends in good faith. You’ll give them challenges, there will be back-and-forths, and they will either overcome them or you will triumph. Together, you can play great games with this completely fair deck, and have good ol’ fashioned 1983-era family fun doing it. Thank you so very much for reading.

It’s just such a shame that I have to betray you now.

Yes, there is bullshit afoot, and it involves cards like Nine Lives and Lich's Mastery (and to a lesser extent, Demonic Pact). Give them away with a swap spell or Stiltzkin, Moogle Merchant, and then use Aminatou to blink them, instantly killing your victim. After all, they left the battlefield under their control.

“But Michael, wait!” you cry, hoping the last 18-24 hours of reading wasn’t just all a lie, and that I didn’t fake every card review. “Those permanents both have hexproof! You can’t blink them with Aminatou!”

Tell me, dear reader, did you seriously think I included Shay Cormac merely to protect my gameplan? How foolish could you be? Was Volatile Stormdrake merely an accident? I’ve been playing you from the start.

True Colors

Ahh, finally! I can feel the curse lifting as we speak. I’d like to thank you for falling for it so utterly, but in a sarcastic, twisting-the-knife sort of way instead of genuinely. You know, they say that nothing stings like betrayal, but a word of advice from me to you: the beekeeper telling you that is fucking lying.

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