(Inti, Seneschal of the Sun | Art by Victor Adame Minguez)

Technically Playable - Inti, Seneschal of the Sun

Welcome to Technically Playable, where our mission statement is "Every commander is Technically playable" (the best kind of playable). The way this works is every article will have a commander generated using EDHREC's random button, I'll talk through the card and then write about how we can build around it!

This week's random commander is

The EDHREC random button has blessed me this week with a card that I constantly lose to. This card has all of the features of Magic that I enjoy. Card advantage, an angle that allows you to interact with your graveyard and of course, trample.

Trampling over the competition

I absolutely love the trample keyword. My Xenagos, God of Revels deck is almost completely built around it and being able to force unfavourable blocks and prevent those little annoying 1/1s from completely wallking your huge 10/10 is always a good feeling.

Inti is in a good colour for trample to be very effective too. Red is second only to green in terms of giant scary monsters and none are bigger in Commander than Malignus. Effectively a 20/20 if any players are at full health, and it only gets bigger as players gain any life. It also has a sneaky line of text that stops any damage it deals from being prevented allowing it to get around any protection from either its colour or its card type (I'm thinking Serra's Emissary specifically here) and also having the upside of getting around any stray Fogs.

Another beefy red beater is Inferno Titan. This is always the 101st card in my red decks and I always end up cutting it at the last moment in deck building. I then proceed to get beaten up by other people's Inferno Titans all the time. My main issue with it is that while it has the ability to be a fantastic mana sink it does get blocked by just about anything in existence, but not anymore. By gaining trample from Inti Inferno Titan can directly damage any small creatures and either force incredibly awkward blocks that it will almost always come out on top of, or simply slam all of your mana into it to deal a huge amount of damage. This is definitely a deck where I'd never cut this card.

The other great thing about trample is that it gives you a way to pretty much guarantee combat damage effects getting through. Probably one of the most powerful of these is Balefire Dragon. By giving it trample and buffing it, Inti turns Balefire Dragon into a flying beater that also allows you to destroy whole boards. You could even add a cheeky little Repercussion to your deck if you really want to blow someone up out of nowhere.

This idea extends to any other combat damage cards too. Dragon Mage is a great way to trigger Inti while refueling your hand and Ancient Copper Dragon gives you the mana you need for big explosive turns (especially now that we have lost our trusty goblin buddy, Dockside Extortionist).

Which card? Discard

You know, like this card... But discard. No? Okay. The discard strategies in this deck can be broken down into what I feel are two really key elements. Providing card advantage through "Impulse draws" (named after Act on Impulse) and the ability to interact with or gain advantage the cards that go to our graveyard to negate the negatives of having to discard them.

Acting on Impulse

Impulse draw is the most common form of card advantage for red decks and while card advantage is the core of this mechanic, there are a lot of other ways to interact with cards that you cast from from exile.

In terms of generic impulse draws there are a ton of amazing options but we want stuff that synergizes with Inti. In terms of triggering Inti through discard, there are a lot of the typical options like Faithless Looting for a low-cost cantrip, Thrill of Possibility for an instant speed option, and of course Big Score and Unexpected Windfall for the instant speed draw and discard with the upside of leaving behind some treasure. These are all great options because they are card selection at a great rate with the upside of triggering Inti for further card advantage. but this is Technically Playable, let's look at some other options.

Since grabbing a copy for my Daretti, Scrap Savant deck I've found Veronica, Dissident Scribe to be an amazing card advantage machine, allowing looting and also creating Junk when I discard. In Inti, this effectively doubles up your impulse draws but with some of them being able to be activated when it suits you best. Veronica also works really well with Demand Answers by giving you the option to impulse draw or to sacrifice it to discard and draw.

There is a second Fallout card that works well in this deck too, Thrill-Kill Disciple. With the squad mechanic, this card allows you to discard your whole hand to impulse draw an equal number and also create a board of 3/2s that create further impulse draws (in the form of Junk) when they die. In terms of refueling in the mid to late game, this is one of the best options for this deck as it allows you to turn any dead cards or extra land in your hand into gas.

There is also the option of turning your discards directly into playable cards. Containment Construct and [/el]Conspiracy Theorist[/el] do this by giving you the option of exiling cards that you discard, with the caveat that you can play them this turn or lose them forever. Using this to discard mana rocks that you can then play and use again is a great way to effectively go even on cards you discard. Conspiracy Theorist even gives you additional value by giving you an option to draw and discard on the attack, effectively fueling itself. If I had to choose just the one to play it would be the Theorist for sure (opting into the Containment Construct if my deck had artifact synergy).

But if all we're doing is exiling more cards to exile more cards we're not really getting anywhere, so we need some ways to win. Keeper of Secrets and Passionate Archaeologist, both Prosper, Tome-Bound staples, give a great way to dodge any boards that people have built up and deal damage directly to our opponents. This reach means we can close out games very quickly when chaining our impulse draws together.

Flaming Tyrannosaurus on the other hand is a little more tricky. While it still has a small amount of direct damage the real payoff here is creating a huge beater and giving it trample with Inti's ability. Once you've cast enough spells from outside of your hand and kept the board clear you can then potentially threaten lethal if anyone plays a board wipe or removes it outside of exile-based removal.

Together, in Perfect Harmony

But this deck isn't just discarded, and it's not just impulse draw. The key is to use both in the deck in combination to create a synergy machine. In terms of discarding cards, you want to make sure you have not just enough ways to get the cards into your graveyard but also synergy. Glint-Horn Buccaneer and Brallin, Skyshark Rider are amazing ways to close out games through discard while Surly Badgersaur gives you the resources and strategies to not only accelerate your gameplan but also gives you board-based removal by allowing you to fight. If you can leverage some instant speed removal with these effects you can clutch surprise wins out of nowhere.

And when it comes to casting cards from exile you don't just have the options above, you also have Memory Worm, effectively a red Phyrexian Arena that with Inti in play draws you two cards, Party Thrasher allowing you to use red's love of small creatures and tokens to turbo out as many spells as you can from exile while fueling itself.

You can also gain some extra free spells with Wild-Magic Sorcerer and Nalfeshnee either cascading into more spells or getting copies giving you double value from your spells, and with Nalfeshnee, breaking the singleton rule.

And of course, you can't forget what started this article. By allowing you to buff your creatures, Inti even works really well with some of the more aggressive creatures that fit into these archetypes like Rose, Cutthroat Raider and Professional Face-Breaker allowing you to play mono-red as it was intended. Playing creatures and turning them sideways.

As with all Technically Playable articles, this was a very quick look at Inti, Seneschal of the Sun as a commander, and a few of the cards that can really make a deck with Inti as the commander tick. Let me know in the comments below if you play Inti, Seneschal of the Sun, if you want to build a Inti, Seneschal of the Sun deck, or even if you just enjoyed this article!

Read more:

Technically Playable - Aminatou, the Fateshifter

From the Brim to the Trim - Chaotic Plays for Orderly Budgets

Paul Palmer

Hey there, I'm Paul. I've been writing about magic for a really long time. I love to write about obscure commanders (one of my really early articles back in 2015 was about Skeleton Ship) and how you can make decks around them work, no matter how unplayable they are. I love Gruul, I love Mountains and I love casting Lightning Bolt.