Man-o'-War | Art by Una Fricker

Jellyfish Bouncy House

Welcome back to Singleton Shmingleton, where I bend the singleton rules of Commander by building decks with as many functional reprints of a certain card as possible.

This week we're brewing with one of the most iconic blue creatures in the game: Man-o'-War. This creature epitomizes tempo gameplay, giving you a temporary advantage and a small body you can use to capitalize on that advantage.

Once a potent Standard threat and Vintage Cube staple, this jellyfish has sadly become too slow and small for constructed formats. But it's one of the most tried-and-true Limited designs of all time.

From Mist Raven to Dinrova Horror to Foundations's Bigfin Bouncer, these cards are routinely some of the best utility creatures in the set. They can put your opponent on the back foot while still developing the board, and line up very well against any sort of overcommitting.

By my count, there are an incredible forty-six creatures that return a creature to its owner's hand when they enter. That is simply too many to stuff into a functional Commander deck, so I opted to only look further into the versions that cost four mana or less.

If we want to turn these creatures into an engine, we can't be waiting until turn six to cast Air-Cult Elemental and then start doing things. The cheaper our cards are, the more we can do. Here are the twenty-three cards that can be played for less than five mana:

The most played of these cards, in 49,290 decks, is Aether Channeler. Because of its incredible flexibility, it slots perfectly into anything from Blink decks to Wizard decks.

The next most-played card, in 48,799 decks, is Venser, Shaper Savant. This creature's strength also derives from its flexibility, with Flash and the ability to bounce spells making this a good temporary answer to almost anything.

The least-played card on this list is Lumengrid Drake, seeing play in only 67 decks. Metalcraft is not the easiest condition to meet, and the reward of turning this creature into a Mist Raven just isn't enticing. Building around artifacts, no matter the powerful cards you get to include, is somewhat of a limitation, and your payoffs cannot be Draft commons.

Nightscape Battlemage is also barely played at all, in only 77 decks. I like this one! While it will cost six mana if you want it to do anything, getting to bounce two creatures is a heckuva good effect, and being able to destroy a Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx or a Maze of Ith in a pinch is just gravy.

Getting Past the Bouncer

Now that we have a stack of fairly small creatures that can delay our opponents' boards, we need to create a plan around them. Returning creatures to our opponents' hands isn't card advantage, and Commander games stretch longer and involve more mana and resources, making bounce removal less effective.

One way to exploit Man-o'-War, as with any creature with an enters trigger, is to return it to the battlefield over and over with the likes of Ghostway. The more mana we force our opponents to spend re-deploying their boards, the more time we buy ourselves to chip in with our 2/2s and 3/2s.

But we can do better than that. There's another way to make putting our opponents' creatures in their hands into removal: manipulating their hands afterwards. If we make them discard their creatures, they sure aren't coming back, and, even better, if we fill their hands with tons of cards, they may have to discard their creatures themselves.

Enter Nekusar, the Mindrazer. He loves both to fill our opponents' hands faster than they can cast cards, and to make them discard their hands with effects such as Dark Deal and Winds of Change. Once a terror of the format, Nekusar, the Mindrazer is still a formidable general, and one that plays incredibly well with Man-o'-Wars.

Looking at Nekusar, the Mindrazer's commander page gives a great view at some of the options to pair with our bouncers. Effects like Molten Psyche are perfect, of course, since they make returning a creature to hand into permanent removal.

Howling Mine and Fevered Visions are also incredible, since our opponents will be less likely to be able to re-deploy everything if they have a glut. Scrawling Crawler is a new addition that pulls double duty, forcing an additional draw every turn and also punishing opponents for drawing.

Along the same lines as Scrawling Crawler, we can include other effects that punish opponents for drawing additional cards. Sheoldred, the Apocalypse and Orcish Bowmasters have made quite the names for themselves in other formats, and they are just as busted in Commander.

Going further, cards that punish opponents for having lots of cards in hand, like Ebony Owl Netsuke and Black Vise give the deck an angle of attack that feels almost akin to Burn strategies.

All we want to do is prolong the game until our cards can deal enough damage to knock our opponents out. Trading card advantage for direct damage is also a much more powerful strategy when we're drawing several cards per turn.

Since we're talking about burn spells, there are a few that I would never play anywhere else, but are incredible in this deck. Gaze of Adamaro and Sudden Impact aren't efficient, but they can threaten tons of damage here. Toil // Trouble offers a little bit of a discount, but the real dream is Runeflare Trap. Finally, Khorvath's Fury gives us options between wheeling cards and dealing damage.

Card Velocity

If our plan is to strand our opponents with more cards in hand than they can deal with, then our deck needs to be set up to make use of as many of our own cards as possible.

If everyone draws ten cards off of a Windfall but we can play eight while our opponents can only play four, then we'll be in a great position. To that end, we want to prioritize being able to cast our cards to any sort of one-for-one efficiency.

The two main types of effects that we can include to do this are typified by Dark Ritual and Force of Will. The former is card disadvantage, but accelerates our mana and lets us cast more of our spells before the next wave of cards hits us. And the latter lets us use additional cards instead of mana, which is even more broken when everyone always has a full hand.

Our only other Dark Ritual effect is Bog Witch, a seriously powerful card that can repeatedly generate mana boosts and fill the graveyard as well. In the Force of Will camp, we've got more stack interaction in the form of Force of Negation and Misdirection, as well as small creature removal in Contagion.

Snapback also plays incredibly well in this deck, synergizing with the bounce theme while being a free spell.

Individual Spotlights

Here are a few more cards that do something unique and really change how a game is going:

Sigil of Sleep: Talk about perfect! Slap this onto Nekusar, the Mindrazer, Orcish Bowmasters, or Kederekt Parasite, and you'll make sure your opponents boards are empty and their hands are full.

Teferi's Puzzle Box and Jace's Archivist: these are cards that I forget exist, and every time I see them I can't believe they're real. The force so many draws, and stop anyone from ever making plans about what they're going to cast next turn.

Cabal Therapist: This guy offers to turn Man-o'-Wars into removal spells if we really need to make sure something can't get cast again. We play our bouncer, and then sacrifice it to name the card we know is in our opponent's hand to get it out of there.

Arcane Laboratory: This card slows the game to a crawl. Each player drawing four cards per turn is scary, but much less so when they can only play one. Especially because we can play much of our deck at instant speed, we can break the symmetry of this effect and clog everyone else's hands.

The Decklist

This deck is the best kind of overstimulating. Forcing everyone to draw cards accelerates the game, meaning we have to respond to wild board situations almost every turn. Most of our cards that don't draw more cards are reactive, and so we have to be in a constant state of threat assessment.

But we're also dealing consistent chunks of damage, and always have to be ready to go for the win with a Gaze of Adamaro or Molten Psyche. Despite the dueling Group Hug and Group Slug elements in this deck, I do believe this is the true embodiment of a tempo deck in multiplayer.

We're trying to walk the line, speeding the game to its end while delaying everyone else's progress, and that feels very in the spirit of Man-o'-War.

Until Next Time

From one three-mana 2/2 with a situational effect to another! This monkey were once a Standard and Extended staple, but even in the format of Sol Ring and Arcane Signet, will we always have something to destroy? Find out next time on Singleton Shmingleton!

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Jesse Barker Plotkin

Jesse Barker Plotkin started playing Magic with Innistrad. He was disqualified from his first Commander game after he played his second copy of Goblins of the Flarg, and it's all been uphill from there. Outside of Magic, he enjoys writing and running.