Commander Clash S3 Episode 7: Penny Dreadful Commander
Hello and welcome to Commander Clash, a video series where several MTGGoldfish contributors battle in a four player Commander game for fun and bragging rights. This week is extra special because we're dipping into a variant of Commander called Penny Dreadful, where every card must have been worth a penny (0.01 tix) on Magic Online at the start of the latest Standard set release date. For this week, that means we're only allowed to play with cards that were worth a penny when Amonkhet was released; you can see a full list of all the currently legal Penny Dreadful cards here. Here's what we've built with this unique restriction:
- Tom ramps hard to fuel his Token deck and other shenanigans with oldschool Hazezon Tamar
- Jennifer blinks all her nonland permanents for value with the help of Brago, King Eternal
- Seth enforces Azorius rules and regulations with a Tribal Flying Control deck championed by Isperia the Inscrutable
- Tomer gets aggressive with a Voltron Spellslinger deck led by Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest
The decks we feature on Commander Clash are typically around $20-$30 USD (20-30 tix) on Magic Online. For this week, however, each deck is only $1 USD! Can we still build sweet decks with such a heavy restriction? Let's find out! But first, a quick reminder: if you like Commander Clash and other video content here on MTGGoldfish, make sure to subscribe to the MTGGoldfish Youtube Channel to keep up with the latest and greatest.
Tom's Deck (Hazezon)
Jennifer's Deck (Brago)
Seth's Deck (Isperia)
Tomer's Deck (Shu Yun)
Post-Game Thoughts
I was torn between playing Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest and Dralnu, Lich Lord. I ended up building both and playing both for one game on stream before deciding to bring Shu Yun. I wanted to try out Voltron, something we almost never do in this series, and Shu Yun seemed like a fun option without being too overpowered. Unfortunately, a single practice game didn't reveal what Shu Yun was truly capable of. Poor judgment on my part made for a short game, and I know you guys prefer longer games where everyone gets to show off their deck properly, so I'm sorry about that. If I had a chance to do it again, I'd probably replace Shu Yun with Melek, Izzet Paragon and go for a more controlling Izzet Spellslinger deck, or go Dimir Spellslinger with Dralnu, Lich Lord.
Despite the short game, I adore this Penny Dreadful variant -- in fact, it's probably my favorite theme out of the entire series so far! I play Commander primarily to experience new things, and Penny Dreadful forces you to play with so many great cards that you'd otherwise skip over for the slightly better staples of the format. As you saw, despite the huge deckbuilding restriction, we all still managed to produce powerful decks. And the decks are so cheap! Literally $1 USD (1 tix) to build on Magic Online! That's a lot of entertainment for a buck. I hope we end up playing more Penny Dreadful in the near future.
If you're interested in the Penny Dreadful format, you can learn more about it by reading Jennifer's article about it, visiting their official website, and checking out the community on Reddit. To build the decks, we used the Scryfall search engine, which has a Penny Dreadful card filter.
Next Week: Viewer Submitted Decks!
Last week, we asked you guys to submit your decks that you'd want to us to play in a future Clash. Next week we will show off the four decks that we chose to play. Viewer Submitted Week has been a favorite staple of the series and we love it as much as you guys, so thank you to everyone for submitting and we hope you'll enjoy the game! As always, we love to hear from you guys! Tell us what you like to see, what you don't like, any ideas that we can put forward for future videos, or anything else you'd like to tell us! You can reach us in the comments section below or tweet me @BudgetCommander.
