Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Gonti, Canny Acquisitor!

Gonti is a five mana 5/5 that gives spells we cast but don’t own cost one mana less to cast, and whenever one or more creatures we control deal combat damage to a player we look at the top card of that player’s library and exile it face down, and we may play that card for as long as it remains exiled and mana of any type can be spent to cast that spell.

Theft decks tend to be pretty tricky to play, mostly because we never know what we are going to get from our opponents and letting random chance decide what we play can be pretty annoying, especially if we keep playing lands.

So what if we have this deck have a bit of an espionage element, where we seek to get as much information from our opponents as possible before we make an attack so that we can make an informed decision on who we attack, as well as potentially using that knowledge to curry favor from our other opponents and playing other cards to divert our opponents attention from us.

In order to explain what I mean, we need to first find cards that look at the top of any library.

Bamboozle is the sort of effect I’m talking about here because we can choose an opponent to reveal the top four cards of their library and put two in the graveyard and two on top of their library in any order, which allows us to look at those cards and pick which ones we want to be able to cast in the future.

Dimir Machinations is another way to look at the top of a player’s library, this time three cards and exile any number while putting the rest back. This means that if an opponent has cards that we don’t want or can’t use, but will benefit our opponent, we can choose to exile all three or exile the two worst ones and then take the one we want.

Eye Spy can be used to look at the top card of an opponent’s library and either keep it on top or put it in the graveyard, Cruel Fate lets us look at the top five cards of our opponent’s library to put one in the graveyard and the rest on top in any order, or Draugr Thought-Thief who enters and lets us look at the top card of any player’s library and we may put it into the graveyard.

There is also the fateseal mechanic, otherwise known as cards that allow you to look at the top card or cards of your opponents library and either keep them on top or move them to the bottom of their library or somewhere else.

One of the most famous examples of this effect is Jace, the Mind Sculptor, who for a +2 can look at the top card of a player’s library and have it remain on top or put it on the bottom, a 0 to draw three an put two back on top of our library, a -1 to bounce a creature to an opponent’s hand, or a -12 to exile a player’s library and have them shuffle their hand into the library.

If Jace isn’t your kind of card then there is also Spin into Myth, which let’s us bounce a creature an opponent controls to the top of their library and fateseal 2, which means we look at the top two cards of that player’s library and either keep them on top in any order or put any number of them on the bottom.

The next thing that we need to do is have ways to cast our opponents spells efficiently, which means cheap evasive creatures and cost reducers.

For the cheap creatures front, something like Silhana Ledgewalker is really good because not only do they have hexproof, but they also can’t be blocked except by creatures with flying, which we can avoid by not attacking opponents who have flying creatures.

We also have access to a vast swathe of blue creatures who are unblockable like Invisible Stalker, Slither Blade, and Triton Shorestalker, which makes it easy for us to spread out the attacks that we do on our opponents to get the most number of cards in exile for us to cast.

Speaking of evasive creatures, deathtouch is a great way for us to take advantage of dealing damage since our opponents generally don’t want their things to die. So something as simple as Fang of Shigeki who is a one mana 1/1 with deathtouch can be used to get an attack in fairly early on or something like Thieving Varmint, which can tap for one mana and have us pay a life to add one mana of any color that must be used to cast spells we don’t own.

Speaking of, we also need ways to discount the spells that we are going to be casting from our opponents. This is where something like Doc Aurlock, Grizzled Genius comes into play, because these cards are exiled we get a two mana reduction to cast them, as well as discounting casting spells from our graveyard.

Fortune Teller’s Talent is a bit of an investment being a Class enchantment, but if we get it active early on then we can not only look at the top card of our library, play cards from the top of our library if we’ve cast a spell, but also discount spells we cast from anywhere other than our hand by two mana.

If we manage to exile a creature card from an opponent’s library then we can also use Tlincalli Hunter to let us cast a creature from exile for zero mana once each turn, while also having the Adventure Retrieve Prey to exile a creature from our graveyard and letting us be able to cast it until the end of our next turn.

Now that we are casting things that our opponents control, we need ways to curry a bit of favor before we can win the game.

Gonti, Night Minister is an interesting group hug creature in that it rewards players who cast spells they don’t own by giving them a Treasure token, and whenever a creature deals combat damage to one of our opponent, then that creature’s controller looks at the top card of that opponent’s library and exiles it face down and can play that card for as long as it remains in exile, using mana of any color to cast a spell.

If we give our opponents a way to steal our other opponent’s things, then we can move some of the heat away from us so we can continue taking things from our opponents while also giving our opponents an incentive to attack each other.

If we want to incentivize some early bargaining power, then we can play something like Collective Voyage, which let’s each player pay any amount of mana and for each player to add the total number of mana spent this way in basic lands and puts them on the battlefield tapped to not only let us get a potentially large number of basic lands, but to also have our opponents focus on other players before they notice our game plan.

Once we have a decent amount of mana, then we can let the niceties fade as we cast some more ways to steal cards from our opponents. Brainstealer Dragon let’s us steal the top card of each opponent’s library and let us play them while spending mana of any color and whenever a nonland permanent an opponent owns enters the battlefield under our control, that player loses life equal to its mana value.

If we really want to dive into a haymaker then we can always save the mana that we accumulate for a massive Villainous Wealth to exile the top X cards of an opponent’s library and cast spells from among them with mana value X or less without paying their mana cost.

Gonti is a tricky deck to play since it relies on us playing our opponent’s cards. The reason why we have cards that let us look at the top of our opponent’s library is to help us make an informed decision on what to steal to help mitigate some of the randomness, but there will always be that randomness to make it difficult to be incredibly effective in playing our opponents cards.

Still, there is something deviously enjoyable in playing our opponent’s things, especially if we have some ways to divert attention until we release our salvo of theft cards to win us the game.

Thank you for reading, see you tomorrow for the next Daily Commander!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual