Mechanical Memories - Companions, Dungeons, and Monarchs
March 11, 2024 by
Jubilee Finnegan 
Jegantha, the Wellspring - Sefris of the Hidden Ways - Jared Carthalion, True Heir | Chris Rahn - Ryan Pancoast - Lius Lasashido
Have you ever forgotten dice on your way to a Commander game? Maybe you left your character sheet at home before a D&D session. You could even be like me, who once drove two hours for a game night only to realize they forgot all their decks on the counter. Whatever it is, tabletop gaming is a hobby with tons of tiny, moving pieces. Today, we’ll be talking about the kinds of cards that exist outside the normal game. You might know them as extra game pieces, trackers, or things that took over the Legacy metagame. For the sake of this, we’ll call ‘em ancillary cards.
Welcome to Mechanical Memories, the series where we look back at the history of Magic design through the lens of Commander. An ever-increasing critique of Magic’s design has been the complexity of recent mechanics, particularly ones that introduce outside game pieces or rules. Now, I started playing during Throne of Eldraine, so I have only known the game during its age of so-called “ultra power creep,” so I have a more detached perspective on this. As such, discussing the history of these ancillary mechanics meant I had to go back in time and see what folks have said about these designs. Is Magic design irrevocably changed by the existence of Staunch Throneguard? Let’s find out.
Thinking Outside the Box
Let’s begin like a good academic and define our terms. Ancillary cards are any Magic card that involves usage of game pieces from outside the bounds of a normal deck. A card like Avenger of Zendikar creates tokens, but those tokens are defined within the bounds of the card. However, Thorn of the Black Rose’s monarch ability effectively adds a new rule to the game. You may ask: “Jubilee, isn’t this a hard to define subject? Technically, you could say energy counters are ancillary. Are Wish effects ancillary? Where does it end?” To that, I say. . . Just roll with it. It’ll make sense by the end.
But you, hypothetical reader, bring up a good point with wish effects. We saw the first wish effect printed in Arabian Nights on Ring of Ma'rûf. This card lets you replace an upcoming draw with a card from outside the game. Mark Rosewater spoke on this card in a DailyMTG article about the design of wish effects. While it wasn’t a tournament powerhouse by any means, the card required eratta that only applied during competitive play. In casual games it worked as printed. You could open your trade binder and grab your copy of Phyrexian Dreadnought. However, tournament restricted you to cards in your sideboard. This went on to be the standard for wish effects, first seen with the cycle in Judgement.
These were all powerful cards, but the most famous among them was Burning Wish. Its efficient cost and wide range of targets made it the go-to wish for Type 1 decks. An archetype emerged called “long.dec” (named after Pro Player Mike Long) that relied on Burning Wish’s ability to subvert the singleton rule for Magic’s most powerful cards. This Star City Games article is a wonderful primary source, showing off the speed and efficiency of this toolbox approach to deckbuilding. I’ll take any chance I can get to play Replenish in tournament Magic.
This led to the eventual banning of Burning Wish, though it was freed in 2012. I guess Deathrite Shaman made them realize Magic was a lot more powerful now. While wish effects would continue to crop up on cards like Glittering Wish, we didn’t see any new mechanics printed that interacted with outside the game. However, there were some ideas that didn’t make it to print.
Innistrad block’s story featured the Helvault, an artifact capable of imprisoning powerful entities within its moonsilver prison. Design wanted to capture this idea of forbidden magic with the aptly named Forbidden mechanic. Rosewater described this as a static ability that prevented you from including a card in your deck. However, you could cast other cards that let you put forbidden cards into the game. This was scrapped in favor of the miracle mechanic, seen on Reforge the Soul and its contemporaries.
But this mechanic had new life! Strixhaven: School of Mages saw this reworked into lessons and learning. This was designed for draft and sixty-card constructed environments as Commander doesn’t allow you to grab lessons from outside the game. These cards were well-received in Limited and Constructed, showing off how sideboards can be retooled into a kind of holster for other effects. The ideas that spawned lessons are also being applied to Commander, though with a different approach.
It’s a Conspiracy!
Conspiracy: Take the Crown premiered the monarch mechanic, an absolute powerhouse in Commander and eternal formats. Representing the ascension of Queen Marchesa, this played into the sets multiplayer draft design. Card draw was an effective reward that encouraged players to swing at each other rather than hold back. Its design was inspired by the Edge in Vampire: The Masquerade’s trading card game. Some cards, like Custodi Lich, synergized with becoming or having the monarch. Because the monarch was only expected to show up in Commander and limited games, design felt comfortable adding this additional rule. There was an expectation that, if someone was in a game where monarch cards were being played, there were likely already enfranchised. While the monarch made more of a splash than expected in formats like Legacy and Pauper, it still kept itself fairly simple.
The monarch returned in Court of Cunning, and its sequel, Elminster needed a mechanic to match. This had them expand upon dungeons, another ancillary mechanic from Adventures in the Forgotten Realms. These cards required you to enter a dungeon, consisting of a predefined list of choices. Adventures in the Forgotten Realms had Lost Mine of Phandelver, Dungeon of the Mad Mage, and Tomb of Annihilation. Baldur’s Gate introduced The Undercity, a powerful series of effects that briefly made Mono-white Initiative a Legacy powerhouse. While similar in design to the monarch, the added complexity of the dungeons made this a hotly contested design.
There’s another (in)famous ancillary mechanic you are probably thinking of. Companions from Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths allow you to build your deck around the inclusion of what was effectively an eighth card in your opening hand. Smarter players than me have written on this, so I’ll be brief. It seems like Lurrus of the Dream-Den and her friends are similar to the hypothetical forbidden mechanic: Powerful cards that are “balanced” by a hurdle you have to jump through. While the cards were great in Ikoria and March of the Machine’s limited formats, their effect on competitive formats was monstrous.
Finally, the last mechanics I’ll be including as part of this group are attractions and stickers. These premiered in Unfinity to mixed reception. Some players felt that these were overly complicated, adding an unnecessary level of complexity to eternal formats. With the addition of logistical issues in the printing of stickers, it is unlikely that we’ll see these return in the future. Much like the companions of Ikoria, these really shine in their respective formats. The Most Dangerous Gamer, Command Performance, and Tchotchke Elementall are excellent cards to draft.
It’s easy to go with the crowd and malign these as design mistakes, but there is value in examining them as something more complex than that. Ancillary mechanics thrive in their microbiomes. Monarch cards are the peanut butter to multiplayer draft’s chocolate. Companions present a self-imposed challenge to drafters with a substantial reward. Commander players can easily fall into the tunnel vision of “Good for Commander = Good for Magic.” Lots of the complaints about these are valid, but I encourage folks to look beyond their favorite formats. I’m a lover of these cards, and I hope I’ve convinced you to try them out. If you need some more encouragement, then I’ve got just the trick! What if there was a deck all about ancillary mechanics?
Kynaios And Tiro Of Meletis Get Silly
Companions, Dungeons, and the Monarchy are at the center of this four-color deck. Helmed by Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis, this deck runs Keruga, the Macrosage as its companion. I wanted to run Keruga in this since so many monarch and initiative cards are a high mana cost to balance their effect. You may notice that there aren’t any attraction or sticker cards. While I love their design, I wanted to keep this deck somewhat focused. That meant some cuts. Sorry Angelic Harold! Maybe next time.
Most of our vital plays are, as necessitated by Keruga, three mana or more. That means we’re going to be best served with a control/pillowfort game plan. This will also help us keep the initiative and the monarch, ensuring our value stays steady for when we unleash a flurry of costly spells. Ghostly Prison and Propaganda are effective deterrents, keeping our boards safe until we’ve built up a presence of our own. Cards that technically skirt Keruga’s restriction like Venture Forth, Brazen Borrower, and Ravenform give us something to do with our mana in early turns. But what is our payoff for this control and lockdown?
The monarch and initiative were both featured in Commander Legends sets, meaning they’ve got plenty of legendary support for them. As such, there’s a legendary subtheme running through the deck, enabled by cards like War of the Last Alliance and The Peregrine Dynamo. While skimming through cards for the deck, I noticed that a lot of the cards were Humans. So, this isn’t just a legendary subtheme, it’s a legendary Humans subtheme! The bevy of humans in The Lord of the Rings: Tales from Middle-earth and Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate mean that it is easy to find powerful Humans to join our cause.
Kellan, Inquisitive Prodigy may be half-Faerie, but he’s all powerhouse by letting us double our land drops before Keruga’s three-mana limit. While not a human himself, Goldbug, Humanity’s Ally is a proud ally of Kynaios and Tiro, supporting the community through card draw and protection. Happy early Pride month!
Urza’s Incubator is this deck’s secret weapon. Lots of our Humans cost two generic mana and one mana of a given color. With the incubator in play, we can chainAzusa, Lost but Seeking into Archivist of Gondor into Loran of the Third Path, and so on! Once we have amassed a solid boardstate, we can break out the dino-hippo Keruga, the Macrosage to find our win condition.
Keruga is best used to win with Approach of the Second Sun. Rather than using him as a value play to draw two or three cards, saving him for our final turn lets us dig through our deck to find the Approach once it is seven cards deep. While it is certainly a mana intensive play, we can decrease Keruga’s cost with Peri Brown or double his draw with Virtue of Knowledge. Your opponents will come to respect the power of the Marosage!
This deck is by no means the most powerful thing in the world, but it sure is fun. Splashy plays and splashy cards is classical Commander to me. While it certainly isn’t everyone’s jam, ancillary cards can offer an injection of fun into a casual game. I have included the decklist below for your brewing pleasure.
If you’ve never thrown a Seasoned Dungeoneer or Coming Attraction into one of your decks, I encourage you to try it out! You never know what fun you’ll find outside of the game. I hope you enjoyed this journey, I’ll see you around!
Mechanical Memories - Companions, Dungeons, and Monarchs
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Buy this decklist from TCGplayer
View this decklist on Archidekt
Jubilee Finnegan
Jubilee Finnegan (they/them) is English literature student and writer based out of Southern California. They got hooked in Magic with Throne of Eldraine and haven't stopped since. When not deckbuilding, they're working on poetry, gardening, or trying some new artistic endeavor. They can be found on Twitter at @finneyflame or on Instagram @jwfinnegan.
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