MTG Salvation

Of all the new legendary creatures in Commander 2016, none might be better poised to take a bite out of the new 20 life total than Vial Smasher the Fierce. This is entirely due to her ability:

Whenever you cast your first spell each turn, Vial Smasher the Fierce deals damage equal to that spell's converted mana cost to an opponent chosen at random.

I've highlighted the four reasons why Vial Smasher works so well in the duel commander format.

• First, it's a triggered ability, which can be a lot harder to suppress than activated abilities.
• Second, the ability triggers whenever you cast a spell, meaning the damage gets dealt even if the spell gets countered or otherwise fails to resolve. All you have to do is place it on the stack.
• Third, it works each turn, meaning that you can dish out the damage on both your own and your opponent's turn.
• Fourth, an opponent chosen at random means nothing in duel commander. On top of that, the ability doesn't target.

Now, there are dozens of spells in red and black that can be either have their cost reduced or have alternative costs. This includes cards with Delve, Evoke and the alternative casting costs from Ice Age block (including Coldsnap) and Masques block. I've considered including Madness cards but I've found that including enough Madness enablers to be reliably able to use those cards is unwieldy.

With Vial Smasher out, Fireblast and Pyrokinesis allow you to deal ten damage without spending any mana. Soul Spike becomes a fifteen point life swing. Pretty spicy.

Of course it would be fun to win by casting Vial Smasher on turn three, cast Fireblast on the opponent's turn and finishing them with Pyrokinesis when they pass the turn, but that's pretty unreliable. Thankfully red and black provide a wealth of highly efficient one and two drops to apply the early pressure needed to make casting just one of the 'cheap' spells enough to close out a game.

This strategy is complemented with what I've labelled the pain package, cards that punish an opponent just for playing the game. These are generally symmetric, but between the early aggro and Vial Smasher's ability they'll generally hurt the opponent more than they hurt me.

Finally, for the card draw, I've chosen all three draw seven wheel cards to compensate for the fact that a lot of our cheating spells require us to exile cards from our hand. They also empower spells with Delve. Sin Prodder and Browbeat become a lot better with all the other sources of pressure on the opponent's life total. The choice between losing eight life or losing three life and letting me draw three cards is a lot more painful than the choice between losing five life or letting me draw three cards.

I am just wondering why not add blue for both protecting and access to more card draw/ advantage while also being able to protect vial. I mean you forceing something and before they can respond they take five is great, assuming this is on their turn. In general turning it into grixis control with an aggro tilt might be for the best.

I've considered the Grixis and Jund options but I've decided against it for several reasons. First, I enjoy playing decks that are very commander focused. Second, I believe that the R/B aggro strategy provides the ability to overwhelm control early and provides a viable alternate path to victory if the opponent is too focused on shutting down Vial Smasher. Third, it would make the mana base somewhat clunky in a deck that relies on untapped multicolor land drops in at least two of the first three turns. Finally, the spells that require me to exile cards from my hand have a colour requirement that I'd be less reliably able to pay in a three colour deck.

My skepticism of going rakdos aggro is in wondering how you beat midrange decks such as Abzan? Bant or Jund. They have enough removal to keep VS at bay while having larger creatures to block your little aggro dudes all day long. With blue you can counter their removal spells and with Green it's basically a mirror midrange race.

Actually, Vial Smasher is even scarier. If you look at his rulings on Gatherer, you will find out that cards with X in the mana cost now count towards checking a card's converted mana cost ( http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=420666 ). For instance, if I had Fireball and I paid 5 for the X part (making it 6 in total), the converted mana cost of the card would be 6, and Vial Smasher would deal 6 damage to the player. If you target the player with fireball, that player gets dealt 11 total damage (assuming it's a 1 on 1) for 6 mana. Cards like Chimeric Mass can be used to obliterate your opponent by just using all your mana to get a massive creature.

No offence but I think we all already knew that. It still doesn't really answer my question. VS works that way regardless of colours so why not add blue x cards?

Agreed. Even if you don't want to add blue, there's no reason not to run a partner (Kraum, I guess) plus a few lands to be able to cast it. If VS dies, i'd often rather spend my 5 mana casting a 4/4 flying haste beatstick than recasting VS, or at least have the option to do so, even if I wasn't really running any other blue cards in my deck.

Is Vial Smasher a her!? I never would have even begun to think, but I suppose that could be the case.
I've always been a fan of Bedlam in this kind of deck, even if there are better things floating around. Nugging for 4 makes bedlam a lot better, though.

Grenzo, Havoc Raiser could provide a lot of value and remove some blocks here and there.