A little over two years ago, Wizards of the Coast released Ravnica: Clue Edition. While it wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, this standalone product featured some incredibly unique MTG cards.
Despite many of these cards being overshadowed by Murders at Karlov Manor, many of the legends actually make for great Commanders. Lonis, Genetics Expert is a great example of a value engine and combo enabler that makes for a perfect threat to lead your army.
MTG Lonis, Genetics Expert
At minimum, all you have to do to get value from Lonis, Genetics Expert is put +1/+1 counters on it. This allows your Commander to continually generate card advantage while buffing the rest of your team. With this in mind, your first step to maximizing what this three-drop has to offer is to incorporate plenty of +1/+1 counters synergies.
Notably, Lonis’s second triggered ability bizarrely rewards you for using batches of counters. Thanks to this, counter doublers like Hardened Scales, and Doubling Season can create a mass chain of Clue tokens. Combine this with recurring counter support like Forgotten Ancient, Inexorable Tide, and The Ozolith, and you’ll never run out of gas.
While this creates lots of tokens quickly, Clues still demand lots of mana to crack. Fortunately, Forensic Gadgeteer and Mutagen Man, Living Ooze help in this department, cutting your required mana in half. When combined with Jaheira, Friend of the Forest, you can essentially make the Clue-cracking process free. If you don’t want to draw cards with your Clues, using sacrifice engines like Krark-Clan Ironworks will still trigger your Commander.
Regardless of your Clue-cracking method, however, you’ll want to use other creatures that wear +1/+1 counters well. Fathom Mage and Evolution Witness fit the mold perfectly, threatening to generate value every single time you trigger Lonis’s final ability. Alternatively, growing Kami of Whispered Hopes for tons of mana, or Walking Ballista for tons of damage, can also give a massive advantage.
Infinite Counters, Card Draw, and Beyond
As powerful as Lonis is as a Clue-making, counter-distributing Commander, it’s the legend’s combo potential that puts it over the top. While there are a lot of different combos available, the easiest to pull off only requires two cards.
Lonis, and Extruder can easily go infinite together, so long as you have a spare artifact to sacrifice. In doing so, you’re able to put a +1/+1 counter on Lonis, triggering its middle ability to make a Clue. Of course, Extruder can sacrifice this again, growing Lonis further. All the while, Lonis’s last triggered ability also allows you to buff your other creatures. By repeating this process as many times as you wish, your whole squad will grow infinitely large.
Even though this combo is the simplest, there are also numerous three-card combos that put you in a winning position. For example, by equipping Lonis with Tarrian’s Soulcleaver while Cryptic Trilobite is in play, sacrificing a Clue sets you up to draw your deck.
By sacrificing the Clue, Lonis can put a +1/+1 counter on Cryptic Trilobite, while Tarrian’s Soulcleaver puts a +1/+1 counter on Lonis. This triggers Lonis’ second ability, netting you another Clue token. From there, you can remove Cryptic Trilobite’ newly acquired counter to float two colorless mana, and use that mana to crack your new Clue. This will trigger Lonis and Tarrian’s Soulcleaver all over again, so you can keep drawing cards as long as you want.
Interestingly, if you replace Cryptic Trilobite with Krark-Clan Ironworks, you can also net infinite mana. This sets you up nicely to draw a mana sink like Walking Ballista to win the game with. Alternatively, swapping Cryptic Trilobite for Grinding Station enables infinite mill, giving Lonis’s combo plan an alarming amount of redundancy.
An Underappreciated Commander
Between the wealth of combos it promotes and how easy it is to generate value, Lonis, Genetics Expert is quite a strong Commander. Despite this, the Detective appears only as the Commander in 1,166 decks, according to EDHREC. Even in the 99 of all other decks, Lonis falls well short of even 9,000 decks.
Notably, Lonis’ minimal play doesn’t necessarily signal its lack of power. Because the sole copy of this card comes from a supplementary product, many MTG may have just skipped over Lonis completely. Unfortunately, this also means the card has a low supply, fuelling a $9 price tag despite Lonis’s lack of demand.
Frankly, even at this price, however, Lonis Genetics Expert is well worth the investment. So, if you’re a fan of combos and card draw, consider giving Lonis, Genetics Expert a chance to shine.
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