Ojer Taq, Deepest FoundationOjer Taq, Deepest Foundation | Art by Cristi Balanescu

Hello Everyone! I’m Levi from the Thought Vessel. With the release of Lorwyn Eclipsed, we accidentally received spoilers for the mythics and rares for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Among these cards was a Saga that I found to be quite intriguing, not necessarily because of its power level, but rather its flair.

The card I am referencing is The Cloning of ShredderThe Cloning of Shredder. Today, we'll be looking at ten of the most brutal creatures in all of Magic that we can "clone" with this Saga.

​

What Does The Cloning of ShredderThe Cloning of Shredder Do?

The Cloning of ShredderThe Cloning of Shredder is a six-mana mono-black Saga with three chapters. Chapter one exiles a creature card from your graveyard to make a non-legendary Mutant copy. The next two chapters each make another non-legendary Mutant copy. Over three turns, you end up with three copies of one creature.

While it takes time and is costly, resolving this card can do some pretty wacky things.

Before anyone rushes to the comments, we do have to exile our target from our graveyard to start, so unfortunately, our annihilating Eldrazi like Ulamog, the Infinite GyreUlamog, the Infinite Gyre, won’t work since it's shuffled into our library. Additionally, these tokens come into play, but they're not cast, so any casting triggers wouldn’t work.

Let's Break The Cloning of ShredderThe Cloning of Shredder

Honorable Mentions

For our honorable mentions, we have some typal cards that would get out of hand almost immediately with additional copies. Voja, Jaws of the ConclaveVoja, Jaws of the Conclave, as a pack of three, would be an absolute menace, building a lethal board and a full hand in the matter of one or two combat steps.

Our Dinosaur friends of Pantlaza, Sun-FavoredPantlaza, Sun-Favored and Gishath, Sun's AvatarGishath, Sun's Avatar, are naturally going to be heavy hitters, loading up the room with dinosaurs like it's a six-year-old boy’s birthday party.

Miirym, Sentinel WyrmMiirym, Sentinel Wyrm does have some merit as a standalone addition due to its cumulative effect, but ultimately it would be much stronger as an inclusion in a typal deck like Scion of the Ur-DragonScion of the Ur-Dragon that can throw Miirym into the graveyard directly.

These are all incredible options, but we're focusing today on cards that would be strong on their own if we were to build a deck to exploit The Cloning of Shredder directly. With our honorable mentions honorably mentioned, let’s kick off our list with number ten.

10. Kardur, DoomscourgeKardur, Doomscourge

Kardur forces all opposing creatures to attack on their turns as an enter-the-battlefield (ETB) effect. Playing Kardur, sacrificing it, then using The Cloning of Shredder on it can result in four turns of forced combat.

Four straight turns of all of our opponents being required to attack each other with everything they have is devastating. Not only that, any creature that dies while attacking will also result in life loss for our opponents and life gain for us. If anyone survives these turns, our board that didn't have to attack at all should be set up to wrap things up. 

9. Sheoldred, the ApocalypseSheoldred, the Apocalypse

​

Sheoldred on its own is quite a nasty Praetor. Every time we draw a card, we gain two life, and every time our opponents draw a card, they lose two life. In a deck that's built around wheel effects, like Nekusar, the MindrazerNekusar, the Mindrazer (who would also be a fantastic target for The Cloning of ShredderThe Cloning of Shredder), Sheoldred can drain enough life from the table to take players out and make combat damage all but irrelevant.

With the Cloning of Shredder, we can pump that life loss from two life per card up to six life per card. In a lot of games, barring a tutor, the only solution would be to dig for a response in the deck, which would result in even more life loss.

Even as a throwaway idea in a life gain deck, this will be quite impactful.

8. Koma, Cosmos SerpentKoma, Cosmos Serpent

​

Next up on our list is Koma, Cosmos SerpentKoma, Cosmos Serpent. Anyone who's had the misfortune of running into Koma as a commander knows how devastating it can be if Koma gets copied or cloned. Once Koma starts making multiple 3/3 Coils on each player’s turn, we'll have the luxury of keeping our Komas protected from destruction, building up a board state for lethal combat damage, or perpetually tapping down any attackers or blockers our opponents might have.

Adding nine power on each player’s turn once our Saga reaches its final chapter is really hard to come back from.

7. Elesh Norn, Grand CenobiteElesh Norn, Grand Cenobite

​

Elesh Norn, Grand CenobiteElesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, is both a finisher and kryptonite for go-wide or token decks. Giving all of our creatures +2/+2 and our opponents’ creatures -2/-2, this card can boost our board and prevent our opponents from playing any small creatures.

But, what if we took it from being unable to play with any small creatures to nearly any creatures at all? If we can get three Elesh Norns into play, all of our creatures would be at +6/+6 and our opponents' creatures would be -6/-6. Most creatures in Commander don't have more than six toughness, so this should clear out the board. But even if we're playing against a deck filled with big creatures like Eldrazi, that Ulamog in play that was a 10/10, now reduces to a 4/4, while our random 1/1 Soldier token is standing tall as a 7/7 creature.

Even the Elesh Norns themselves would be 8/11 creatures. It would be difficult not take our opponents out with combat damage at that point.

6. Otharri, Suns' GloryOtharri, Suns' Glory

​

With the emergence of new experience counter commanders from Avatar: The Last Airbender, we're seeing Otharri played more and more. We even had a new deck tech from Kurohitsuki using this commander, highlighting some of the neat things it can do with experience counters.

Though we wouldn’t be leaning into this card fully, having three Otharris in play that each will give us an experience counter assures that we'll be producing 2/2 Rebel tokens in the double digits per turn, almost immediately, without any assistance from proliferate or any other experience counter creatures.

5. Omnath, Locus of RageOmnath, Locus of Rage

​

Just like that, a wild angry jellybean appears. Omnath, Locus of RageOmnath, Locus of Rage has been a staple as both a commander and in the 99 of Landfall decks ever since it was first printed in Battle for Zendikar back in 2015.

With Omnath, whenever we play a land, we get a 5/5 Elemental creature token, and if an Elemental dies, we can deal three damage to any target. Once we get three Omnaths in play, every time we drop a land, we'll make three 5/5 Elementals, and dish out nine total damage for each Elemental that falls. If we get three Omnaths in play and only play one land for the three 5/5 Elemental tokens, and a board wipe happens, that equates to fifty-four total damage. If that land we played was a Fetch land and we had six Elementals tokens in play, we'd be up to a whopping eighty-one damage.

It almost gets to the point where players will have to avoid blocking so they take five damage instead of nine. It may not be the most broken thing we can do, but it's exciting.

3. Nesting DovehawkNesting Dovehawk

​

Those of you who have followed my work for any length of time are well aware of my admiration for Nesting DovehawkNesting Dovehawk. There is a reason that this is the only card on my list that isn't a legendary creature.

At the beginning of combat, Nesting Dovehawk lets us populate. This creates a copy of a creature token we control. Since Nesting Dovehawk is a creature token, we would select Nesting Dovehawk to make a copy of itself. By our second turn, we would have six Nesting Dovehawks. On the third turn, we would have fourteen.

That’s not all; these creatures also have the bonus of getting a +1/+1 counter every time a creature token comes into play for us. So these creatures are going to get bigger and bigger, and unlike other cards on this list, it just keeps going for as long as the copies survive as we continue to populate.

4. Kiki-Jiki, Mirror BreakerKiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker

It wouldn’t be a list of nasty creatures without an infinite combo. Kiki-Jiki is one of the most exploitable creatures in all of Commander since it has haste and can be tapped to create a copy of a nonlegendary creature we control.

In this situation, since the Kiki-Jiki token isn't legendary, we can simply have Kiki-Jiki copy itself over and over. These tokens will sacrifice themselves at the beginning of the next end step, so this, with any enter the battlefield or leaves the battlefield trigger, or sac outlet, wins us the game.

I could see any deck using Kiki-Jiki with some access to the graveyard or sacrificing like a Birthing PodBirthing Pod deck, adding The Cloning of ShredderThe Cloning of Shredder as plan B if things go sideways.

2. Toxrill, the CorrosiveToxrill, the Corrosive

​

We’ve talked about making tokens, and we’ve talked about combos; now let’s talk about some proper salt with Toxrill, the CorrosiveToxrill, the Corrosive.

On each player’s end step, each creature an opponent controls gets a slime counter which equates to -1/-1. With only one Toxrill in play, this means over the span of one rotation, each creature our opponents control would get a total of four slime counters, which Toxrill converts to -4/-4. Any creature that hits zero toughness would die, and we would get a 1/1 Slug as a result.

With one additional Toxrill in play, each creature would now get two slime counters and a total of -2/-2 per counter, since the -1 is now doubled. With all three in play, one rotation of the table would put a creature at -36/-36. Once our opponents' creatures inevitably succumb to the slime, we'll make a 1/1 Slug for each Toxrill we have.

If our opponents' scooping doesn’t win us the game, our unchecked combat sure will.

​1. Ojer Taq, Deepest FoundationOjer Taq, Deepest Foundation

Finally, we have a huge slice of overkill with Ojer Taq, Deepest FoundationOjer Taq, Deepest Foundation. This is your standard 6/6 God with vigilance that also says if we're to create a creature token, we'll create three times that many tokens instead. This isn't that many plus two, this is a multiplier that can be stacked. It starts slow, but as the ball gets rolling, the compounding nature of this is quite remarkable.

Our first chapter, unfortunately, only gets us one Ojer Taq token as it can’t see itself being created. But that second token is going to be tripled, leaving us with four Ojer Taq tokens. Once we hit the final chapter, we'll create 3^4 or 81 Ojer Taq creature tokens. Once we add the original four, we'll have a total of 85 6/6 Gods with vigilance.

That is more than enough to wipe out an entire table, but if we can create just one creature token, we would instead create 3^85 instead, or 3.591754554768605E40 tokens instead. It’s technically not infinite, but you will have more creatures than drops of water or grains of sand on planet Earth, which should be more than enough to take our opponents out and win the game.

​Wrapping Up

The Cloning of Shredder was designed in a very unique way. It's a powerful effect, but copying the Saga or blinking it doesn't have the same effect as we would have to select new targets every time. This allows us to do broken things without being completely game-ending at the same time.

I really enjoy this card and what it can do. Though I have selected ten of my favorite cards, this is barely scratching the surface of what The Cloning of Shredder is capable of. What will be the first card you target with The Cloning of Shredder? Let us know in the comments below. We’re all here for good vibes and celebrating neat cards.

Until next time, happy brewing!