(Kira, Great Glass-Spinner | Art by Yuko Shimizu)

Technically Playable - Kira, Great Glass-Spinner

Welcome to Technically Playable, where our mission statement is "Every commander is Technically playable" (the best kind of playable). The way this works is every article will have a commander generated using EDHREC's random button, I'll talk through the card and then write about how we can build around it!

This week's random commander is:

Tempo is one of my favorite archetypes in 60-card formats and Kira feels like a great way to build it in Commander, so let's go.

Tempo in Commander

The main goal of a tempo deck is to land a cheap threat early and to consistently deal damage while using a combination of protection like Hexproof and Ward alongside protection spells, normally counterspells. In multi-colored decks, you can use cards like Feat of Resistance or Gods Willing just like the old standard heroic decks. But tempo struggles in Commander for the same reason aggro decks do. With 6x as much life to deal with and 3x as many players able to interact with you, it's very easy to run out of resources to keep your threats alive. Add on top of that the average power and toughness of creatures being much higher in Commander your Snapcaster Mages are going to find it much more difficult to close out a game two points of damage at a time. So let's look at just three of the key elements of tempo decks and how they can be adjusted to fit into Commander as a format.

Built-In Protection

One of the most important parts of tempo decks is making sure that your small number of threats aren't easy to kill. Hexproof is the best way to do this but recently more and more cards have been printed with Ward that provides protection that can be interacted in for varying costs. This creates more interesting board states with more decisions to be made around when you can/can't afford to interact with your opponent's creatures. One of the most famous creatures in tempo decks is Invisible Stalker which would be paired with Trusty Machete to create an unblockable, difficult-to-kill threat. While Trusty Machete is not as powerful in Commander and is less good with creatures other than Invisible Stalker, you can instead replace it with something like Blackblade Reforged. With Kira being a monocolored commander, you can even use Strata Scythe to ensure you have a huge threat that is nearly impossible to remove.

Another alternative is Mirrorshell Crab a newer creature with Ward that can also double up as a counterspell, one of the other cornerstones of blue tempo decks that I will talk more about later. This protection is one of the most important parts of making a tempo deck work in a format with as much cheap spot removal as Commander and the reason why Kira allows you to build such an effective tempo deck is because it gives any creatures you play some level of protection. This is key as it allows you to play some creatures with their own removal like Invisible Stalker but also allows you to play other powerful creatures like Hullbreaker Horror or Stormtide Leviathan while also keeping them alive.

Cheap Evasive Threats

Another cornerstone of tempo decks is cheap threats that you can get on board quickly to ensure you get as much damage down as fast as possible. Making these threats cheap is vital in smaller formats like Standard, Modern, and Legacy where playing a one-drop like Pteramander or Delver of Secrets is key to making sure you can kill your opponents before they can make a comeback. Commander demands more damage since your opponents all have 40 life each, meaning you will potentially need to look down other avenues for bigger creatures as well as the typical powerful one-drops. Roil Elemental is a great tempo threat in Commander for a couple of different reasons. Firstly it's an evasive threat, by this I mean it has a keyword or ability that makes it hard to block. In the case of Roil Elemental this is flying but some other creatures you may want to consider may be unblockable or could even have something like islandwalk or Shadow. The other reason why Roil Elemental is a great tempo creature in Commander is that it allows you to build a more powerful board state while also making your opponent's worse. This is something that is considered to be a "swing in tempo" where you are gaining a major advantage while an opponent also loses resources at the same time.

If you're looking to play tempo in a bit more of a traditional way with flying threats that you want to win with through combat damage, one important factor is to consider when these cards are played. One really important element of keeping up the tempo in Commander is making sure you're able to hold up mana to interact with things your opponents are doing while also holding up mana for threats. To do this, you need creatures you can play at instant speed like Brazen Borrower and Venser, Shaper Savant which double up as interactive spells and threats. One really powerful tempo threat however is the new Malcolm, Alluring Scoundrel. Malcolm is not only playable at instant speed but also provides card advantage selection on combat damage and even allows you to play big powerful cards for free if you can keep him alive. And of course, if you're looking for tempo creatures that can grow over multiple turns, give you card selection and has evasion you need look no further than Ledger Shredder. So close to being the perfect tempo card, it just needed to be given Ward 2 (Can you imagine? Gross...)

Counter Magic

The last pillar of tempo, in my opinion, is counter magic. Yes, you can have non-blue tempo decks but being able to simply prevent a threat from landing or a board wipe from resolving can be a huge tempo swing that can often mean the difference between winning and losing a whole game of Commander. Since Kira gives your creatures a form of protection from spot removal counter magic is key for preventing opponents from being able to remove your creatures through Kira's ability either with board wipes or edicts like Grave Pact. As I mentioned above being able to hold up interaction and threats at the same time is really important for tempo decks in Commander so of course free counterspells like Force of Will and even pseudo-free spells like Rewind or Unwind are no brainers but also consider a much less played card, Thwart. Not only is Thwart $1.79 instead of the $64.99 that Force of Will is, but the cost can also be beneficial. In the same way, people use Gush, Daze, and sometimes even Snap in Legacy, you can use Thwart return utility lands like Mystic Sanctuary to double up on the effects you get when you play them. It can be equally as effective if you also run Field of the Dead to return multiple lands to replay to create more tokens.

But we don't want to just think about the actual counterspells we can use but also the ways we can benefit from using counter magic. Archmage Emeritus acts as an amazing way to provide value from controlling the game by giving us more resources and works with spells that aren't just counterspells. Equally Baral, Chief of Compliance gives card collection and allows you to fill up your graveyard to flip an early Search for Azcanta. The great thing about Baral though that the Archmage doesn't have is the words "spell or ability" which means that Kira's ability will also allow you to cycle through cards with Baral. But if you thought looting was the ceiling of what our counter magic can do let me introduce you to Guile, a creature that allows you to steal that spells that your spells and abilities counter. This is obviously powerful as well since Guile is included in 50% of all Kira decks (which I'm actually kind of surprised isn't higher)

These aren't all of the different things that are important in tempo decks; you also need to make sure you have enough resources to protect yourself and your permanents. Naturally, card draw and ramp are both important, but I wanted to focus more on the things that were a little more unique to tempo since all Commander decks want to have great ramp and card draw.

Kira's Weaknesses

But of course, tempo decks aren't perfect and have some fairly glaring weaknesses. One of the issues with the protection that Kira gives and keywords like Hexproof and Ward are that they are only effective when your creatures are targeted by spells. This means that board wipes like Wrath of God and Farewell can easily get around this protection to remove your small number of threats. This is part of why counter magic is so integral to blue tempo decks however even cards like Supreme Verdict or, if you only have noncreature counters like Fierce Guardianship and Negate, creatures like Deathbringer Regent are able to get around your counter magic fairly easily.

Another weakness of tempo decks is a strategy that is often seen to be quite weak but is still popular regardless, lifegain. A lot of the best creatures in tempo decks are often quite small due to the need for them to be cheap to get down as early as possible and this can lead to some issues if your opponents are gaining any life as it can sometimes act as a Time Warp if they gain the same amount, or more life than you deal damage. This can be negated by using Equipment like Blackblade Reforged but against decks that are more dedicated to a lifegain-centric strategy you may struggle to deal enough damage to defeat three opponents.

The last, most common, and probably biggest weakness of tempo decks in Commander is the presence of so many big threats in the format. Playing an early Pteramander or Invisible Stalker and suiting it up with powerful Equipment like Batterskull or Sword of Fire and Ice can get you quite far when you are facing down cards like Etali, Primal Conqueror or a wide board of elves backed up by Craterhoof Behemoth. However, you can very quickly become overwhelmed in a race to have the most powerful board state and this will often lead to losing those games. Because of this, a lot of tempo decks in Commander will hold up mana to play a more controlling play style, relying on reacting threats like Torrential Gearhulk and interactive spells like Aetherize and Cyclonic Rift to hold out until the most opportune moment to land a flash creature and finish off opponents instead of going down the traditional route of an early, evasive threat.

This article was particularly interesting to write because I always enjoy trying to turn my favorite 60-card format archetypes into Commander decks (my Imodane, the Pyrohammer deck didn't work so well when I tested my first draft but the deck lives rent-free in my head... One day...)

As with all Technically Playable articles, this was a very quick look at Kira, Great Glass-Spinner as a commander, and a few of the cards that can really make a deck with Kira as the commander tick. Let me know in the comments below if you play Kira, Great Glass-Spinner, if you want to build a Kira, Great Glass-Spinner deck, or even if you just enjoyed this article!

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Paul Palmer

Hey there, I'm Paul. I've been writing about magic for a really long time. I love to write about obscure commanders (one of my really early articles back in 2015 was about Skeleton Ship) and how you can make decks around them work, no matter how unplayable they are. I love Gruul, I love Mountains and I love casting Lightning Bolt.