The Edge of Eternities Commander preconstructed decks are some of the best ones we’ve received in some time. World Shaper is an incredibly popular deck to pick up and trick out. This is mostly due to Hearthull, the Worldseed, which can become incredibly powerful with just a few tweaks. A few small upgrades make Hearthhull a death combo machine.
Depending on how far you push it, you can easily build a Commander deck in Bracket Level 4 territory, and it doesn’t even take a lot of new cards to do so. While it is the latest example, Hearthhull is hardly the only Commander that can be upgraded in this way. Thankfully, if you are facing a few of these highly upgraded precons around your table, there is a solution.
They might be cheap, but these inclusions to your Commander decks can help keep incredibly powerful and popular Commanders at bay.
Confounding Conundrum
For two mana, Confounding Conundrum punishes any deck that wants to play multiple lands in a turn. Conundrum also replaces itself on entry, which takes away the card cost of playing the card in your deck.
This card heavily punishes Hearthhull, The Worldseed and Teval, the Balanced Scale Commander decks. Both of those decks want to develop by playing multiple lands per turn by synergizing with their Commanders. Confounding Conundrum, however, will force your opponents to play Magic fairly with their lands.
This is especially harsh with Hearthhull, since it wants to sacrifice lands to draw more cards. The secondary land drop would generally replace the land that Hearthhull sacrifices, but Confounding Conundrum forces Hearthhull to take a loss, at least as far as mana development goes.
Even if you aren’t facing these popular Commanders, Confounding Conundrum will slow an opponent down in most games. Any effect that could play a secondary land, like Cultivate, or Fetch Lands, all get affected by this enchantment. The card only affects opponents, allowing you to develop your lands as fast as you would like.
Confounding Conundrum is often an effective tech piece in Commander, but thanks to how prevalent Hearthhull is, Conundrum is even better. You do need to play this card earlier in the game to affect Hearthhull significantly, however. It will restrict their combo turns somewhat later on, since a Scapeshift or Splendid Reclamation will cause a lot of lands to bounce, but Zuran Orb will combo through it all the same.
The best part about all of this is that Confounding Conundrum isn’t even 20 cents!
Rule of Law
There are a ton of effects that do the same thing as this, but Rule of Law is the name coined for similar effects. Rule of Law is also incredibly cheap, retailing for less than 50 cents.
This might not be the most fun way to play Commander, but Rule of Law does shut down multiple popular Commanders that may be terrorizing your playgroup. The card is notably very effective against Vivi Ornitier Commander decks, as well as Y’shtola, Night’s Blessed and Ms. Bumbleflower.
All of these decks rely on playing multiple cards in a turn to generate value. Vivi excels in a Prowess-esque build where she can grow quickly and provide lots of mana by playing lots of cheap spells. Y’shtola wants to trigger her activated ability twice to draw cards at the end of the turn, and Ms. Bumbleflower really wants to cast two spells in a turn so she can draw an extra two cards. Rule of Law stops all of that.
Unlike Confounding Conundrum, however, you are also under Rule of Law’s effect. This is incredibly effective in any Commander deck that wants to run counterspells and control the game, but we can’t guarantee your opponents will be having a lot of fun.
Depending on the type of deck you’re playing, Deafening Silence may be a better choice than Rule of Law. This only restricts noncreature spells, which will stop Vivi and Y’shtola all the same. More often than not, Ms. Bumbleflower will also struggle to draw two cards per turn.
Suppression Field
If you really want to arm your deck with Hearthhull, the Worldseed hate, Suppression Field is another enchantment that will make that Commander’s life miserable. While Confounding Conundrum hinders Hearthhull’s land development, Suppression Field makes comboing with Hearthhull very difficult.
When this deck goes for the kill, you want to use land sacrifice effects like Zuran Orb and Sylvan Safekeeper backed by a fully Stationed Hearthhull to win the game. Suppression Field will make all those activated abilities cost two mana. This both makes it very difficult to sacrifice all of your lands efficiently, and it makes it even harder to follow up with a land reanimation spell like Splendid Reclamation.
Suppression Field also taxes Fetch Lands, and occasionally shows up in Modern as a result. Any landfall deck will likely run into some issues playing against this card. In Hearthhull’s case, this will also tax the card’s draw ability.
Suppression Field isn’t just strong against landfall strategies, either. Superfriends decks get completely shut down by Suppression Field. Suddenly, every single Planeswalker activation costs two mana, forcing your opponents to select what Planeswalkers they want to use. Other popular Commanders with activated abilities, like Ragost, Deft Gastronaught, also get slowed down by this.
Similar to the other budget options on his list, despite only having one printing, Suppression Field is still available for just under a dollar.
Stick with us at mtgrocks.com, the best place for Magic: The Gathering coverage!