The banana man

I know it might be hard to believe in an era of secret lairs and collector boosters, but there used to be a time where alternate arts were rare and even sought after. [1] There was a time when you could hear “Bolt, Snap, Bolt,” from across the room at some Friday Night Magic events. [2] Okay, yah it wasn’t played that often but it was still played in fringe decks like Jeskai control, Breach, and the rare Grixis control, and yes you can technically still play them to some success, but magic for better or worse has moved on. Players have set aside their triple blue Cryptic Commands for four color Omnaths. Though one thing has not changed, there’s always that one player with a fully blinged-out alt art deck worth its weight in gold. [3] As much as we might resent them, we all know it's because they love the game and more importantly they love their deck. Even as alt art cards slide in value, as a whole the sentiment still lingers. Spending the time to pick out each individual piece of art in your deck shows the love that used to be linked with monetary value. Most of the time these cards are just another game piece to me, but one commander deck embodies that era of magic that I love and thus gets all the bling of an old control deck.

Tasigur, The Golden Fang (aka The Banana Man) used to be the spicy Gurmag Angler for control decks. [4] This was of course before Death Shadow crept out of the bulk bin cosplaying as Frank Reynolds with his classic problematic catch phrase “Suicide’s badass.” In eternal formats delve told you to ignore any generic mana costs. This finally gave Tarmogofy its first real competitors for beat stick extraordinaire. Now the main difference between Gurmag and Tasigur was a single point of power and an activated ability.

For an agro deck that point matters but Tasigur has one of the most disrespectful abilities in magic, so of course control players of the time tried to make it work. For 2 generic and 2 mana in any combination of green and or blue, you get to tell your opponent that they aren’t even worth your time. The ability has you mill two cards which just feels like you're wasting everyone’s time from the start and then has an opponent of your choice choose from the non-land cards in your graveyard and then you put that card directly in your hand. So let’s recap, Tasigur is a one mana ⅘, Tasigur’s ability cost either blue and or green, Tasigur lets your opponent pick their own poison. Now you might be right to pick out that this card is weak to graveyard hate but take a look at Tasigur’s color identity. That’s right, Tasigur has the color pairings of never ending removal (Golgari), you didn’t want to have fun anyways (Dimir), and endless value train (Simic). This seems great on paper but nowadays you’d be hard pressed to play a Sultai commander not solely focused on permanents or permanents in your graveyard. Of course this might be due to the one spell based Sultai commander being the one we shall not name and in that case I guess good job Wizards, I think? [5] Ever since then Sultai control decks have had one weakness. They’re clunky as all heck.

This deck is probably the closest I’ll get to casting an Ancestral Vision off of suspend ever again. [6] A deck with the equivalent energy of a villain giving their villain monologue in the first act. Just udderly disrespectful. First off the only “Synergy” in the deck is that every card can either reduce Tasigur’s cost or be returned with Tasigur’s ability which is like saying having lands and spells is a “Combo.” Secondly there are three types of cards in this deck: cards that help cast cards that say nope (ramp and tutors), cards that might as well have nope written across them in sharpie (removal, counters, and taxes), and finally the Celestial Colonnades of the deck (Thassa’s Oracle, Jace Wielder of Mysteries,  and Villainous Wealth). [7] On paper this might seem like a fine deck, a deck for bullies, but a fine functional deck until you remember how a control rises in a format. Only through a relatively stable meta can a control deck truly function at peak efficiency. Casual commander can only be best described as a fictional fight between toy capsule machines and yes your rich friend can bring his best buy vending machine, sorry. So you can imagine the conflicting nope cards you might need to beat a Zune player and bouncy ball. [8] What magical Christmas land can you get both a can of soda and one of those sticky hands from the same vending machine? [9] Well that’s my vending machine. I built it. It’s mine and no I don’t have enough sticky hands for everyone. Go, take care of your own bouncy ball related problems.

nope

Let’s start with cards in the deck that best exemplify the “Bolt, Snap, Bolt” era. Versatile removal that’s cheap enough to hold up a second one, maybe even a third, just in case. Cards like Rapid Hybridization, Cyber Conversion, and Deadly Rollick provide spot removal at the right price with little restriction. More specifically, providing a creature in return for their cost falls right in line with Deadly Rollick’s cost reduction of needing your commander because the creatures provided are unlikely to make it past Tasigur.

 Now cards like sexy Oko and Weeping Angel provide a way to continually remove creatures and artifacts. Both have the advantage of sticking around with Weeping Angel guarding you with its dreaded shuffle removal while sexy Oko has his elk based powers. Lastly there’s the only board wipes that we can get in black and green. Besides Damnation, black board wipes become more convoluted the cheaper they get, but it's commander so we’ll take all as many as we can get. With green we can destroy more than just creatures. With Pernicious Deed and Bane of Progress we can destroy all of those pesky artifacts and enchantments although with Gaze of Granite we can destroy any pesky permanent type that Wizards decides to invent next year. [10] A control deck’s strength comes from always having an out and that’s why the alternative to “Bolt, Snap, Bolt” is “Cryptic, pass, Snap, Cryptic.” [11]

Now I didn’t include Cryptic Command due to its more limited effect in a multiplayer format, but in its stead are 8 cheaper and less versatile counterspells. I’m gonna be honest most of these are included for their alt art instead of their optimized counterparts. Right off the top is the secret lair Voidslime with its bright pink background and cartoon aesthetic, competing against its “strictly” better comrade. Sure Disallow costs a generic mana instead of green, but where’s the pazazz of throwing my green goop into an arrogant wizard’s mouth? That’s right I’m calling you out Baral for being technically correct but boring. Mental Misstep’s inclusion on the other hand embraces this lapse in judgment with one of the cutest kitty arts. Though its use might be limited, that’s exactly why its inclusion can be so exhilarating. Imagine drawing this cute little cat and being left with two possibilities, you either get to have the biggest, most impressive brain at the table or you get to sit at the table and stare at this perfect little cat for the next hour, win-win. [12] Unfortunately the rest of the counterspells only stand out with alt frames just waiting to be replaced by the next dazzling altar to grace Wizard’s hit or miss secret lair store.

Where counterspells often tell your opponent nope once, tax cards let you say nope for as long you want. It might seem underwhelming to tell your friend’s many artifacts to calm down, but with Collector Ouphe you can be assured that the inner machinations of their mind will stay an enigma. Now that their toys are out of power, they might start looking for some removal but with Notion Thief they can now help you look for the protection you need on their dime instead. With things looking dire, their last place for any sort of advantage lies in their graveyard but with Dauthi Voidwalker you can literally steal their last ray of hope by not only exiling any card that craves death but by casting their haymaker once they’ve lost all hope. Due to Dauthi’s placement of void counters, you can recur its spell cheating ability with previously exiled cards by using tasigur’s ability to ask nicely. 

While these next few cards might not explicitly say nope, they do ask for a payment. Propaganda and its bigger brother Collective Restraint ask for your friend’s mana. Like any American tax it's not for you to decide but for your opponent to simply price themselves out of any unbecoming behavior. [13] Rounding out this cavalcade of annoying cards is every standard player’s favorite card, Sheoldred, the Apocalypse. If your opponents want to draw a card, they are free to, at the new totally fair rate of 2 life. Ask any Nekusar player! That’s a fair rate. If at this point you are thinking “Boy there sure are a lot of different types of nope cards. How do you always have the right type of nope?” It’s because I like to commit crime, but not like a cool crime. Like a lame Office space type crime. [14]

a nope themed platform

As discussed in The Goose Deck deck-tech, green ramp is far and above abusing the color pie due to the social stigma placed on its one counter play, land destruction. Due to this loophole this deck focuses on playing extra lands with few cards needing to ever stay around. There’s the classic 2 mana green sorceries that fetch a single land allowing the deck to curve up to four mana every game. Extra land drop cards like Explorations, Oracle of Mul Daya, and Wrenn and Seven provide smooth transitions with the Ravnica bounce lands. 

To go over the top in mana production Training Grounds, Biomancer’s Familiar, and Seedborn Muse turbo charge Tasigurs ability into a gatling of pour choices. Imagine if the knight templar in the last crusade kept asking you to find the holy grail for hours. [15] One slip up and you could get the bad guy in a Spielberg movie treatment. [16] The only notable inclusion is strangely enough Birds of Paradise which I mean is a great card in general but in a control deck lacks the permanence that lands provide. Even with its lightning rod attributes recurring it later can be a detriment as it provides minimal advantage in the late game. [17] This has led to a sort of ironic inclusion in the deck (or lack of removal from the deck). My friends always ask if birds is in my yard, and hey I’d hate to disappoint them, especially if I’m gonna ask nicely for that board wipe not even a second later.

Now we get to talk about the real crimes: tutors. As much as I’d like to just spin my wheels, sometimes I need that one answer to an opponent's unbeatable threat. The three main war crimes I run are Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, and Chord of Calling, but remember we are committing tax fraud and nothing else. Often these tutors fetch our turbo chargers for Tasigur’s gatling of bad choices, occasionally snatching a board wipe to clean up a few problems at once. [18] As Tasigur fills the yard, a second set of war crimes develop: regrowths. A few single use regrowths fill the deck along with case use cards like snapcaster and Ramunap Excavator to round out our options. At the highest level of crimes, Muldrotha acts as a sister companion to Tasigur picking up from where Tasigur left off.

Celestial Colonnades

With the cards that say nope and cards that help you say nope out of the way, I can finally talk about the deck’s Celestial Colonnades. There are two stages to the late late game. [19] Ramping leads to mana abundance out the wazoo with one outlet besides Tasigur in my favorite pet card Villainous Wealth. [20] By the time we get to 20 mana we get to play a fifth of an opponent’s library and with a regrowth we can often get the taste of second. If for some reason that doesn’t end the game, there is one final stop gap. Thassa’s Oracle and Jace, Wielder of Mystery provide the final stop in our wild ride of a deck. [21] 

I wanted the most useless win condition and this led to running lab maniac fairly. The only way to win in a consistent manner is to go through every single card in my library, wearing out the entire table in the process. Like the colonnades of old by the time they’re even a consideration your opponents will be asking for a swift end that you simply will not want to give them.

Those Things That Get Us There

As an epilogue, I’d like to go over the lands that always seem to get us there no matter how many we keep in our opening hand. 38 lands might seem robust in the current mana rock meta of today but the deck still needs that extra umph so each bounce land is included to artificially boost that count. The Standard array of shocks, buddy, fast, battle, and triome lands supplement the three color deck but nothing more. Takenuma, and Boseiju sneak some spells into our more risky keeps while the castles can catch you up from the “ I thought it was keep-able hand" as you tread water. Barad-dur, Hall of Storm Giants, and Field of the Dead provide a modicum of defense or maybe even a mercy kill. Finally my favorite card holds the deck together in thick and thin by milling when Tasigur costs just a bit too much and provides a cute little bear to boot: Argoth, Sanctum of Nature. Yes, Titania, Voice of Gaea is in the deck but only because it can recoup some life throughout a game. In general though, melding the two usually ends in disappointment so I just stick with my little bear replicator for the most part.

Decklist