MTG Salvation

One thing I've always wanted to do is make a deck for a commander that doesn't have any representation on EDHrec. In other words - one of the worst commanders ever made. Right now, there are to my knowledge only four choices:

• Cao Ren, Wei Commander
  
• Zuo Ci, the Mocking Sage
  
• Telim'Tor
  
• Pang Tong, "Young Phoenix"

Let's look at each of them individually.

Cao Ren's inclusion is almost shocking on this list - he's a 3/3 functionally-unblockable with a minor downside. Nothing special, but certainly a functional commander. But his presence is almost certainly explained by the existence of the nearly-strictly-superior and far more interesting Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed - currently the most popular P3K commander. While Cao Ren could certainly be built, he'd be totally replaceable with any other competent mono-black voltron in general, and XHD in particular, so he's a bit uninteresting.

Zuo Ci has roughly the same problem, except with Thrun, the Last Troll who, despite costing more, comes with a massive +3/+2 buff, the ability to regenerate, AND uncounterability. So you'd really be a fool not to pay that extra mana. Again, he's not really the worst ever - but he's not very interesting, and offers really only one synergy to build towards, which could be better fulfilled by any number of other options.

Telim'Tor is slightly more interesting - he's got some synergy! That hasn't been covered by other commanders! Unfortunately that synergy is flanking. There are a total of 8 cards that can be played in his deck that mention flanking - himself, an aura that grants it, an artifact that grants it, and 5 incredibly mediocre french-vanilla creatures that wouldn't be viable with +3/+3, let alone +1/+1. While it could be built, it'd be hard to justify playing such mediocre cards, even with the boost from synergy.

Finally we come to Pang Tong. Pang Tong is ATROCIOUSLY bad. Let's start off with the stats: a 1/2 for 3. Ouch. The colors: mono-white. Double Ouch. How about the ability? He boosts toughness by...two. Except he can't do it after blockers are declared, or even when you're on the defense - the times you'd most want to use his ability. Truly, we have found the bottom of the barrel, commander-wise. It's hard to imagine playing a commander worse than kabuto moth in a stunning five different ways.

What would you even do with Pang Tong? You could just playing mono-white goodstuff and ignore him. That's probably the best option, but it's not very interesting. He's reasonably cheap, so you could just play him as voltron - once he's got enough equipment, he doesn't look nearly as bad. But then you may as well play someone that's actually good at voltron. You could just build around a theme - he is a famous real person, after all, so there's lots to work with. But I'm just not that kind of builder.

So what if we did the craziest idea of all - what if we took Pang Tong seriously? What if we actually tried to synergize a deck around his ability? How would you even do that? Well, his timing restriction isn't quite as bad as it first appears - while he can't activate it in combat, after combat, or during other people's turns, he can still activate at instant-speed during the front half of your turn. This means any etb effects can be responded to by activating him, and upkeep effects can be responded to in the same way.

There are quite a few lifegain effects that care about toughness in white, so that leads us to the main win conditions of the deck - felidar sovereign, test of endurance, and other lifegain synergy cards, along with some flash to help their triggers resolve.

Besides that synergy and other toughness-based synergies like bolster, the deck has some flavor-based inclusions like other P3K legends, and some other powerful stuff to make sure the deck makes sense.



It should be said - Magnus Magicus did make a decklist already for this hidden not-so-gem of commander. But his was made completely around the "theme" of things starting with the letter "P" - and also, as far as I know, he never actually played it.

Well I actually have a Pang Tong (and all the other garbage p3k cards) and I've put this deck together for real and by god, I'm going to play it. At least a couple times.

3 more to go until 100 different commanders!

Played 2 games with Pang. As I mentioned in my other deck I played last night (98 lands thrasios! + bruse!) I had to play against fairly powerful decks, which was a bit annoying considering how low-powered these decks were.

This deck performed surprisingly well, though I still lost both games. I was 1 life point away from winning one of them, though. The biggest disappointment was that Pang himself never got tapped, and only got cast a couple times. He would have gotten used to make my wave of reckoning amazing, but lands got wiped before that could happen, and by the time I recovered on lands he was dead and it was too late to recast him. I also had out a diamond valley, but shock of shocks, I didn't really want to sac anything during my turn before combat, so it wasn't that helpful.

I'll probably try to run it at least a few more times.

Have you considered Thousand-Year Elixir? You've got enough tap abilities to make it relevant outside of just Pang Tong.

Also I totally appreciate the desire to make a deck for a commander that doesn't have one yet. I regularly look down the list of commanders in the database here that don't have decks and see if any of them strike a chord, and did in fact knock Lathliss off the list.

Dragonlover

Played 3 more games - almost won the first one (died to exact damage on a khorvath's fury...and that raptor shutting down my lifegain, grr), got color screwed (!!!) in the second one and lost horribly, and then I did finally win the third. Victory for Pang Tong at last!

MVP was dawn of hope - along with an early "ulted" gideon for the emblem, and much later dictate of heliod, i must have lifelinked hundreds of damage, and eventually dug for second sun which won me the game, finally. It was at least turn 20 or so. Endgame was vs an athreos deck, so we were trading life for ages until i finally sealed the deal with second sun - although tbh, since i was making like 5+ 4/4 lifelink tokens every turn, it might have been able to win anyway.

LVP was pang tong. Sorry buddy. There are a few points I tried to cast him and get value, but that tap ability is so slow and the synergies aren't amazing to begin with. And once he dies once it's like....eugh. I don't wanna pay that much for a crappy 1/2. After dying to a couple board wipe, I finally just kept activating dawn of hope until i won, basically. But I recast pang for the big finale. So he finally got his chance to shine, before I pack this deck up and build something less...bad.