(Redshift, Rocketeer Chief || art by Xavier Ribeiro)

Ready To Kick-Start Three Aetherdrift Commander Decks? I Got You!

Hello friends, and welcome to another Start Me Up! In this column I will pick three legendary creatures from the most recent Magic expansion and provide you with ideas to help get you started brewing your own Commander deck around them.

The current set racing to spice up our Commander collections is Aetherdrift with its interplanar death race themes!

As always, there's a good number of new legendary creatures we can build Commander decks around, so I've picked three juicy ones and a nice starter kit for each to get your deck brewing ideas flowing!

Mendicant Core, Guidelight

We'll kick things off with Mendicant Core, Guidelight, a very cheap two mana artifact creature that makes a decent leader of an artifact-heavy deck.

A lot of artifact-synergy commanders tend to be accrue value in a long, grindy way, but Mendicant's awesome max speed ability makes you want to deploy cheap creatures -- likely artifact creatures -- that can attack early and often so you can crank your speed as quickly as possible and start to make copies of your artifact spells.

Plus, Mendicant Core can just be a terror on the battlefield, having power equal to the number of artifacts you control and if you've a way to punch through you can kill opponents with commander damage.

Let's start with a look at the high synergy cards currently showing on EDHREC.

EDHREC High Synergy Cards

The awesome Thought Monitor and Thoughtcast play great with artifact synergies, and help keep the cards flowing, while Etherium Sculptor is very helpful in shaving a mana from artifact spells you cast-- which can pay for the max speed copy ability!

Kappa Cannoneer is an excellent attacker for any artifact-heavy deck, and if you can copy it with the max speed ability, things are looking good for you.

Organic Extinction is a powerful battlefield sweeper that leaves your artifact creatures intact, though you may need to tap a few of them to help cast this high mana value spell.

Foundry Inspector is another artifact creature that discounts your artifact spells, while Illustrious Wanderglyph provides an excellent power and toughness boost to all artifact creatures if you have the city's blessing from its ascend ability, and to help with that if you need that, it will spit out a 1/1 Gnome artifact creature token each upkeep-- that's each player's upkeep, so it will usually get you that value almost immediately.

Artifact lands like Seat of the Synod, Ancient Den, and Darksteel Citadel offer free extra artifacts to boost your commander and power up other artifact synergies without taking up nonland slots.

Zero or One Mana Artifact Creatures

To get optimize Mendicant Core's start you engines! ability, you'll want to run enough one drop creatures that can come down on Turn 1, and attack after you play your commander on Turn 2, hopefully ramping your speed to two right off the bat.

I'd look for as many artifact creatures to fulfil that role to play with the artifact synergies, especially ones that have evasion like Gingerbrute, Hope of Ghirapur, Silver Raven, and Swooping Lookout. Voyager Glidecar is big enough that at least one opponent should be open for business by Turn 2, and later you can use it's ability to give it flying.

K-9, Mark I and Skrelv, Defector Mite come down fast, can get an attack in early, and then provide value later with their activated abilities.

Artifacts Matter Artifacts

When looking for cards that care about artifacts, I'd put a premium on ones that are also themselves artifacts, like Repurposing Bay, Nettlecyst, and Master of Etherium.

Bronze Guardian is awesome since it helps protect your artifacts with ward 2, and it's power will be as big as your commander -- but it's got double strike!

Research Thief and Mystic Forge provide nice card drawing or card selection, and Scourglass gives another battlefield sweeper that will leave artifacts alone.

Other Artifacts Matter Cards

There are still some non-artifact cards with artifact synergies that are powerful enough to make the cut. Losheel, Clockwork Scholar jumps to mind since it plays excellent when you're trying to attack and increase your speed.

Sai, Master Thopterist and Thopter Spy Network can help crank out 1/1 flying artifacts that can help increase your speed too.

Urza, Prince of Kroog provides a nice pump to all your artifact creatures, and a sweet activated ability to go with your copy theme. Mirrodin Besieged played early can pump out Myr artifact tokens, and later if your opponents have been cruel enough to sweep your artifacts into the graveyard with Vandalblasts, you can use it to extract your vengeance.

Artificer Class provides more artifact mana discounts, and is an excellent mana sink later on for more effects. Archway of Innovation is an incredibly good card since giving a spell improvise can be quite powerful when you've got to squeeze out multiple spells and effects in a single turn.

Redshift, Rocketeer Chief

Redshift, Rocketeer Chief is another two mana commander that is chock-full of good abilities. Why is it a Pilot? Who knows!

But Redshift could certainly lead a Goblin deck if you run a bunch of cards that can pump Redshift's power and have activated abilities you want to pay for.

What's cool about the exhaust ability is that, once you've used it and Redshift dies and gets redeployed from the command zone it's fair game to use it again!

Let's start with a look at the high synergy cards currently showing on EDHREC.

EDHREC High Synergy Cards

Agatha of the Vile Cauldron and Marvin, Murderous Mimic synergize great with Redshift as your commander since they also care about activated abilities. Goblins, witches, and murderous Toys, working together? Madness!

Pumping Redshift's power is going to make it more powerful, and something like Invigorate that can do it for no mana is going to be great for the big turn you're planning.

Speaking of big turns, Umbral Mantle can basically make Redshift "go infinite" with a huge number of activations, making him as large as you want and having tons of mana to activate abilities, such as its exhaust ability.

Sword of the Paruns won't boost Redshift's power sky high, but if it's at least four you can tap it for mana and use three of it to untap Redshift and get you all the mana you want for activations.

Whenever your deck can generate infinite mana, Staff of Domination is a good place to put it-- go up to a million life and draw most of your deck, which means you'll be able to deploy all the permanents in your hand with Redshift's exhaust ability.

Aggravated Assault is another way to potentially generate a bunch of mana for activated abilities if Redshift's power is great enough, and oh yeah -- you get additional attack steps if you want them.

Magus of the Candelabra is an excellent way to "wash" your Redshift activation mana by untapping lands that you can then tap to cast spells with. Tyvar, the Pummeler's activated ability can pump your team, and is particularly awesome if you've been increasing Redshift's power.

Svella, Ice Shaper has two activated abilities which can be excellent mana sinks for Redshift on turns where you're not set up to "go off" and are just looking for value.

Power Boost

Boosting Redshift's power should be a primary goal in your deck, and cards like Xenagos, God of Revels, Scale Up and Rancor are great for this.

Blackblade Reforged is one of my favorites in many Commander decks and does awesome work here. I might even consider Belt of Giant Strength, which can slip onto Redshift relatively cheaply on the turns where you've boosted Redshift's power and set it's base power and toughness at ten.

Activated Abilities

Keep an eye out for powerful activated abilities! Etali, Primal Conqueror has a powerful enters trigger, but transforming it is a fearsome thing to do too.

Shigeki, Jukai Visionary can be discarded to bring back a ton of cards from your graveyard if you've got a bunch of mana from Redshift, while Kessig Wolf Run power boost and trample can just win games.

End the Game

Speaking of winning games, creatures like Walking Ballista and Leafkin Avenger can take all that huge amount of mana from Redshift and kill your opponents.

Shaman of Forgotten Ways's ability is a little more circumspect, but it should be able to bring everyone's life totals low enough to manage, or even kill an opponent who has no creatures on the battlefield.

Wash the Mana

Soulbright Flamekin can wash six Redshift mana into eight red mana you can use to cast anything you want, while Castle Garenbrig can wash four mana to give you six green mana to cast creature spells.

Basalt Monolith can wash any amount of Redshift mana for colorless mana you can use to help cast a flurry of spells.

Card Draw

To make full use of Redshift's exhaust ability, you'll want to ensure you have plenty of card draw so you've got a bunch of permanents you can deploy.

Disciple of Freyalise is a great card and works particularly well here since it likes to see creatures that have high power and this deck will have pump spells, as will Greater Good.

I love the flexibility of Season of Gathering and Return of the Wildspeaker for card draw with other options, and Rishkar's Expertise which will let you cast an extra spell.

Samut, the Driving Force

Last but not least we have the fifth incarnation of Samut with Samut, the Driving Force which is more expensive to cast and much more on the casual side of the power scale than the previous two we've discussed.

It's worth the mana investment though, since it boosts the power of all your other creatures by your speed, and it also discounts the mana of your noncreature spells by your speed.

Let's start with a look at the high synergy cards currently showing on EDHREC.

EDHREC High Synergy Cards

Not surprisingly, the early decks on EDHREC feature a lot of other start your engines! cards like Hazoret, Godseeker, Perilous Snare, Point the Way, Nesting Bot, Racers' Scoreboard and Burnout Bashtronaut.

I'd lean towards creatures that can attack and increase your speed since start your engines! only starts your speed if it hasn't been started yet.

Spells like Secure the Wastes and Forth Eorlingas! are awesome here since they appreciate both sides of Samut's ability-- you use the discount to make more token creatures, and each token creature gets that power boost.

Full Throttle has a powerful effect that appreciates the discount from Samut, can if you've got a wide enough army can just end the game.

Kolodin, Triumph Caster is a bit of a head-scratcher here since Samut isn't naturally a Mount or Vehicle commander, but I'm guessing that early Samut deckbuilders might be going for the flavor theme of Samut racing! What Vehicle or Mount would you be running with Samut?

Go Wide

Creatures that make more creatures are great like Adeline, Resplendent Cathar and Agate Instigator. Then there are spells like Call the Coppercoats, Artifact Mutation, and Aura Mutation which can create an army out of nowhere. Song of Totentanz is another X-spell that enjoys both sides of Samut's abilities.

If you like "storming off" by casting a flurry of spells thanks to Samut's mana discount, Elemental Eruption is an awesome payoff card that makes a bunch of flying Dragon tokens that are up to +4/+0 with Samut. Plus, the tokens have prowess, how crazy is that?

Deathtouch

Whenever I have a commander with first strike, I like to look for ways to give it deathtouch such as Ohran Frostfang and Bow of Nylea.

X-Spells

Other X-spells you might want to consider are March of the Multitudes, Grand Crescendo, and White Sun's Zenith. Finale of Glory's max-value mode costing twelve or more is usually tough to unlock for most decks, but with Samut shaving up to four mana you can more easily summon forth an army of Soldiers and Angels!

Noncreature Spells With Mana Value 4-5

Outside of X-spells, we'll want to keep an eye out for powerful cards that can sometimes take a whole turn to cast, but with Samut you could cast them for cheap. Rabble Rousing or Akroma's Will for one white mana?

Guardian Project or Hour of Promise for one green mana? Imposing Grandeur for one red mana? Storm decks will love to cast Aetherflux Reservoir for zero mana!

Never Stop Brewing!

Which of these three commanders do you think you might build a deck around? What other cards do you think you'll add to your deck list?

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Read more:

Innistrad Remastered: Start Me Up!

Foundations: Start Me Up! (Part 2)