(Tormenting Voice | Art by Volkan Baga)

Get Out of My Head!

Hello, and 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. Today we're looking at Tormenting Voice, a card that for several years defined red's ability to cantrip. Until the last few years, when impulse-style effects have taken over that morsel of the color pie. Requiring you to spend a card and discard another one to draw two is card-neutral, so the value is in the selection, as well as whatever graveyard synergies you can put together. Red is the secondary spellslinger color, and so it needs instants and sorceries that can replace themselves. However, red magic demands that there be some risk. Tormenting Voice provides, forcing you to discard to get new cards that aren't guaranteed to be better.

The original version of this effect was actually in Core Set 2013, with Wild Guess. the double-red cost stopped that card from seeing much play even in Limited, but Tormenting Voice in Khans of Tarkir made this effect playable. The first major impact this design had on Constructed was Cathartic Reunion, which enabled Modern's broken Dredge engine to warp the format and leading to the re-ban of Golgari Grave-Troll. Since then, these cards have mostly flown under the radar, with Big Score showing up in Standard for a few months and mostly no other news. But we have a critical mass in Commander to be able to rummage into our rummagers and keep the chain going.

I count seventeen cards that have the same effect as Tormenting Voice. I am not including cards like Dangerous Wager or Valakut Awakening, which force you to lose your whole hand to draw, though those cards might fit well into this strategy as well. Here's the list:

The most played of these cards is Thrill of Possibility, which shows up in 169,905 decks. That's 12% of all decks that could play it! It's simple, it's instant speed, it's easy to love. The second most played is Big Score with 101,105 decks, followed closely by its cousin Unexpected Windfall. These cards allow you to store mana from one turn to another, and open up Treasure synergies as well. The least played variant, besides the new Witch's Mark, is Quarrel's End, with 1,470 decks. Its top commanders page suggests that most of these decks are Lord of the Rings flavor decks, which makes sense, because it's hard to find a deck interested both in the creature and the rummage.

Do You Copy?

I want to draw a distinction between two ways these cards are formatted. Wild Guess asks you to discard as an additional cost, which opens you up to getting two-for-one'd by a Counterspell. Thrilling Discovery and Witch's Mark only make you discard a card as they resolve, which makes them safer to cast into open mana. However, there is an upside to the Wild Guess style of formatting: if we can copy the spell as it's on the stack, the copy won't ask us to discard cards, since it isn't being cast. It will be pure upside.

There are several of these cards that even create Treasures as they resolve, and copying them will allow us to recoup mana or store it for the next turn. If we can copy them cheap enough, they may even net us mana.

So what are the best ways to copy instants and sorceries? Classics like Fork and Twincast are fine in this deck, but they require us to spend a whole card and two mana just to copy our Magmatic Insight. We want effects that can copy our spells consistently. The first one I thought of was Swarm Intelligence, which is expensive but otherwise perfect. The last chapter of The Mirari Conjecture gives us the same effect as well as some value earlier. Thousand-Year Storm is the gold standard in this deck, allowing us to churn through our deck like nobody's business. Double Vision doesn't have the same potential as the other two, but it is cheap and reliable, and can help us dig to our broken cards.

Besides these effects that let us copy spells for free, there are a few cards that give us a standing offer of a few mana to copy a spell. Riku of Two Reflections is especially nice since he can be our commander, and Izzet Guildmage is cheap and doesn't limit how many times we can copy a spell. With all of these ways to copy spells, and now that we're playing green, there are other instants and sorceries that are totally playable on their own but also love to be copied. Harrow promises four lands for the price of one, and Nature's Lore and Skyshroud Claim can be mana-neutral if they're copied.

Speaking of Izzet Guildmage, however, this card also opens up an infinite combo that will be familiar to any Pauper Commander player. If we cast an Arcane sorcery with mana value two or less and splice Desperate Ritual onto it, then we can copy it infinite times with Izzet Guildmage's second ability, since the copies will add three red mana as they resolve and pay for the ability's cost. Now, this is a three-card combo that requires seven mana and also requires us to include an Arcane sorcery in our deck, but there are some totally fine Arcane sorceries. Ideas Unbound is a fine digging spell that allows us to draw most of our deck when we combo with it, and Eye of Nowhere lets us either bounce our opponents' permanents or make infinite mana by looping Sol Ring. None of the pieces are embarrassing to play on their own, and they give us a surprise kill that is very hard to interact with.

The rest of the deck can play a solid value game, drawing cards and interacting with opponents, but will often find itself with enough resources to have an almost Storm-like turn where it casts fifteen spells and draws between twenty and all of the cards. Since so much of the deck is digging, we will see Thousand-Year Storm or Swarm Intelligence a surprising amount of games, and once we get going with those cards out, we don't stop.

Hidden Gems

Renewal: This is usually a terrible card, but if we manage to copy it, it becomes a good rate. Three mana to net one land and one card is very solid.

Nostalgic Dreams: If we copy this spell, we can discard our whole hand, and then bring back the cards we discarded with the copy. The only limit is the size of our hand or graveyard, whichever is smaller. There are also some several-card infinite combos with this, Izzet Guildmage, and some rituals.

Geistblast: It feels great to discard this card to one of our Tormenting Voices, since most of its value is in the graveyard. It also allows us to play without a dedicated win condition, since if we've truly gone off and have all our cards and infinite mana, we can cast Thousand-Year Storm into Geistblast as a make-your-own Grapeshot.

Path of the Pyromancer: This card is formidable on its own, but if we manage to copy it, we'll net a ridiculous amount of mana. Just don't forget to Planeswalk at the end.

The Decklist

This deck appeals to my tastes. Storm decks are my guilty pleasure, and I love the puzzles that they turn into. Basing an engine around copying spells also makes the deck more resilient to Counterspells than the average spells combo deck. The Tormenting Voices play well on their own and also rock on the combo turn, and they definitely add their own flavor to the deck. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, since these cards have found homes in thousands of decks without having to be the star of the show, but they pull their weight! I would call this experiment a success!

Until Next Time

Don't forget your dice next time! (For counters and for all that extra life.) I love lifegain decks, and I love cheap aggressive creatures, so this is going to be a good week. How big can this kitty get? Find out next time on Singleton Shmingleton!

Read More:

Preview Review - Exile or Discard?

Singleton Shmingleton - Savannah Lions

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.