(Lord of the UnrealLord of the Unreal | Art by Jason Chan)

Appetite for the Unnatural

There are good Magic cards, from Black LotusBlack Lotus to Oko, Thief of CrownsOko, Thief of Crowns, and there are bad Magic cards, from Scornful EgotistScornful Egotist to Storm CrowStorm Crow. But what players often miss are that the cards that aren't really good or bad - instead they are, if you like, so bad they're good. These are the cards that serve a function that is so niche and hyper-specific, they seem useless – but in the right deck, can become the lynchpin of an entire strategy. Today, we’re building around one of my favourite examples of this kind of card:

I first stumbled across Unnatural SelectionUnnatural Selection years ago and found it a fascinating card almost immediately. It's the kind of card that immediately gets the brewing gears in my brain whirring; how exactly do we make such a bad card good? Today, that's what we hope to answer, as we find this forgotten Apocalypse rare - which sees play in fewer than 3000 decks, with many of them revolving around a few specific infinite combos - a loving home.

The Gameplan

Unnatural SelectionUnnatural Selection most commonly sees play in Shapeshifter typal decks – a surprisingly popular theme, aiming at messing with creature types to get value from niche typal payoffs like Lord of the UnrealLord of the Unreal.

But don’t worry – we’re making a much spicier list than a Shapeshifter typal deck today. The real advantage of Unnatural SelectionUnnatural Selection over similar cards like Maskwood NexusMaskwood Nexus is that the SelectionSelection allows us to fiddle with our opponents' creatures as well. This allows us to do two of my favourite things possible in Commander– do ridiculously wacky things our opponents would never expect, and slot some of the most unplayable cards ever printed into our list.

Take King SuleimanKing Suleiman, for instance: bizarrely non-legendary, and unfortunately costing hundreds of dollars thanks to his place on the reserved list. Unless you keep getting crushed by your friend’s Djiin typal deck, he usually isn’t worth playing – indeed, the King sees play in only 93 decks on EDHREC. But combine him with an Unnatural SelectionUnnatural Selection, and suddenly we’ve got a repeatable MurderMurder for only one mana. Even spicier than the King is Spirit MirrorSpirit Mirror, allowing us to repeatedly gun down a number of creatures equal to the amount of mana at our disposal.

Picking a General

Immediately, I knew we wanted to be in five colors – the weird typal hosers we’re looking for come in all colors of mana. My first pick was Karona, False GodKarona, False God, once one of the go-to commanders for any five color typal deck – but not only did her name conjure up bad memories, I soon found an infinitely better option: Sliver OverlordSliver Overlord.

There's a reason why decks commanded by the OverlordOverlord are among the most popular homes for the SelectionSelection: the two pair together to give us a repeatable Control MagicControl Magic effect. In my experience, some players find Slivers a salt-inducing archetype. According to EDHREC's salt score index, for instance, The First SliverThe First Sliver is an even saltier card than extra turn effects like Beacon of TomorrowsBeacon of Tomorrows - and I can't think of a better way of managing that salt than making a deck built around wanting our opponent's creatures to be Slivers.

Filling the Deck Out

The first thing to do when building around any secret commander is to find similar effects. I achieved this by combing through Shapeshifter typal lists, and was surprised to find a number of similar cards:

StandardizeStandardize almost challenges Unnatural SelectionUnnatural Selection in terms of power in this deck; with the aforementioned Spirit MirrorSpirit Mirror, for instance, we’ve built a two mana Plague WindPlague Wind, while with a card like KarthusKarthus we've got ourselves an indefinite InsurrectionInsurrection. My favourite combo with StandardizeStandardize, however, has to involve Floating-Dream ZuberaFloating-Dream Zubera. With a board wipe on the stack, cast the StandardizeStandardize naming Zubera and suddenly your opponents will learn the power of Zubera typal as you draw dozens of cards. Not bad for a creature type without a single deck built around it, according to EDHREC's typal page. Also worth noting is the fact that our general's tutor ability can grab several of these cards from our deck - Amoeboid ChangelingAmoeboid Changeling, Blades of Velis VelBlades of Velis Vel and Shields of Velis VelShields of Velis Vel - due to their Changeling ability technically making them into Slivers.

The bulk of our deck, however, is going to consist of weird typal hosers. Since the majority of these effects remove creatures of the given type, in many ways our list plays out, in practice, as perhaps the world's weirdest control deck.

Finding all these cards was far from easy - I'm probably not the only one who's never heard of the Prophecy powerhouse Mercenary InformerMercenary Informer. EDHREC was an enormous help here - using Advanced Filtering to search exclusively for decks including cards like Unnatural SelectionUnnatural Selection and Amoeboid ChangelingAmoeboid Changeling was infinitely more efficient than relying on endless Gatherer searches.

Among the cards in the deck that, on first glance, look relatively nonsensical, are the effects that give creatures of a certain type shroud – notably, EladamriEladamri and Steely ResolveSteely Resolve. These aren’t just protection for our creatures once we've got an Unnatural SelectionUnnatural Selection, or similar effect, in play, but a way to mess with other players. Say an opponent goes to equip one of their creatures; make that creature into an Elf with EladamriEladamri in play, and suddenly it’s got shroud, causing the ability to fizzle.

From here, with our synergies and wincons established, it's mostly a case of filling in the gaps with the usual effects - ramp, card draw and redundancy.

As usual, we're going to want to be running enough tutors to consistently assemble the pieces crucial to our synergies - thankfully, being in all five colours gives us access to both black's universal tutors and white's enchantment tutors. Indeed, our plentiful access to tutors, combined to the numerous cards offering similar effects to the SelectionSelection mean this is one of the few times that, with a hidden commander deck, I haven't bothered shoring up a back-up plan very much.

Regarding ramp, meanwhile, this is one of the few lists where I'd argue that the omnipresent staple Sol RingSol Ring isn't even the best ramp option we've got - generating two mana a turn is great, but Training GroundsTraining Grounds and Biomancer's FamiliarBiomancer's Familiar, paired with our general, often generate a lot more.

That leaves us with the following list:

Wrapping Up

Well, that's another item crossed off my commander bucket list - finally building a deck around Unnatural SelectionUnnatural Selection. Play testing revealed this deck wasn't up to the same power level as last week's list, but it more than matched it in terms of fun. Indeed, this is a deck that really epitomizes what Commander is about to me. I largely got bored of constructed Magic because, after a few turns at most, I could usually tell exactly what my opponent was playing - even the healthiest, most diverse constructed metagames will only have a dozen or so truly competitive decks. But Commander is truly the Wild West of Magic, where you can play whatever strategy you want - imagine an opponent's surprise when they discover your Sliver OverlordSliver Overlord plays hardly any Slivers, and is instead interested in stealing enemy creatures to grab the win.

That’s all for this episode of Pet Project. Feel free to leave your ideas, criticisms and propositions for the next episode in the comments. Until next time!

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Martin Conmy

Since around M14, Magic has been taking up far too much of Martin's time, to the detriment of his wallet and his social life. When he isn't arguing mono-white is superior to all other color combinations in EDH, or claiming MTG peaked during original Kamigawa, he lives a (relatively) normal life as a student.