Sunday, February 15, 2015

Brago, King Eternal: A new way to flicker

I'm not going to waste your time with a boring intro, I will just jump right into this. It all starts with one card:
Brago, King Eternal makes for one of the coolest generals I have ever see, but flicker generals have always been around, so what does Brago bring to the table? Let's take a closer look.
  • CMC: 4 (2WU)
  • P/T: 2/4
  • Flying
  • Whenever Brago, King Eternal deals combat damage to a player, exile any number of target nonland permanents you control, then return those cards to the battlefield under their owner's control.

Any number of target nonland permanents. This most important bit of his text makes him different than any other flicker general.  He can hit artifacts, enchantments, even planeswalkers, he can hit them all at once, and all he has to do is deal combat damage to a player. No pesky activation cost required.

Granted, the rest of him is unimpressive, a 2/4 flyer for 4. Note however that his ability can untap him when he hits, giving him a form of pseudo-vigilance, which takes him from abysmally crappy to mildly shitty. His flicker ability, however, is completely redeeming.

We forgive you Brago.

So we can flicker nonland permanents, so what? Well, let's start with planeswalkers.

Walkers

"Jace, the Unclassified" usually comes out, minuses, and dies. 3 mana to cycle a card and stop a few points of damage? Bad. If your smart you plus him, but then why play him? no net gain, well I'll have none of that! With Brago we shall simply play Jace, minus him, swing with Brago flicker Jace putting him back to 3, and then plus Jace. Jace will then sit there, daring someone to hit him for 5, and do it all again next turn.

This combo works better with more expensive walkers, like Karn Liberated. Play Karn, exile a thing, flicker Karn, and bring him up to 10.

Artifacts

Artifacts are cool to flicker, but most are pretty straightforward. However, some interactions are noteworthy. Brago untaps mana rocks which is great for mana pump, but even better when you have something like Basalt Monolith, that would otherwise not untap.


An auto include in any Brago deck, Strionic Resonator, allows you to flicker permanents as many times as you have mana for, even infinitely with mana rocks. In case you don't see it, you copy Brago's ability before it resolves, then use the copied ability to flicker the resonator and the mana rock, and do it again (the original is still on the stack)

Enchantments

This is the best of all of the destruction spells. It adds to Brago's ability "Whenever Brago, King Eternal deals combat damage to a player, destroy target permanent"

Now put it all together with:

Conclusion

Brago is one of a kind, and this makes him by far my favorite commander. I've only gone over a few of the beautiful combo pieces here, but I continue to edit and update this decklist on tappedout.






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