Hello and welcome to Weekly Commander!

Today we are going to be taking a look at The Regalia!

The Regalia is a four mana 4/4 Vehicle with Crew 1, haste, and whenever it attacks you reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a land card and you put that card onto the battlefield tapped and the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.

While The Regalia works really well as a ramp piece for decks that can use the help, having it as the Commander is a bit odd since we are a colorless deck, but what that means for us is that we get to use a lot more utility lands to help us gain small advantages until we can gain a more benefits.

While a lot of our interactive suite needs us to get a bit more creative, we still have plenty of options to play around with that let’s us get a bit more creative in how we play the deck.

Traversing the Land

The first thing to look for are the utility lands that help us slowly gain our incremental advantages.

One of the first series of lands that comes to mind are the Urza lands, namely Urza’s Tower, Urza’s Mine, and Urza’s Power-Plant, which all add a colorless mana, but when the three of them enter play then they collectively add seven colorless mana which is incredibly helpful as a ramp piece.

There is also Urza’s Workshop, which has a Metalcraft ability to add colorless mana equal to the number of Urza lands we happen to control, which when combined with the other Urza lands can make a lot of mana. We even have access to Planar Nexus, which is a land that is all nonbasic land types, which can also get the other Urza lands online even faster.

Speaking of lands that ramp us quite a bit, there is Temple of the False God and Shrine of the Forsaken Gods, which both can add two colorless mana when we hit the five land threshold with Temple and the seven land threshold with Shrine, with Shrine being a little more open since it can add a single colorless mana and the double mana it adds only being able to be used to cast colorless spells.

War Room is a very good utility land because for three mana and tap we can draw a card. Normally we would also pay life equal to the number of colors our Commander has, but since The Regalia is a colorless Commander, we only pay three mana to draw a card, and we shouldn’t be that short on mana.

Mikokoro, Center of the Sea to have everyone draw a card for only two mana, Mishra’s Factory and Mishra’s Foundry to give us some creature lands that can also boost our Assembly-Worker, Command Beacon to cheat The Regalia into our hand if we need it soon for a lower cost, and Amonkhet Raceway to give our creatures haste.

Since our goal is to cheat things out, Inventor’s Fair works really well since it can gain us 1 life if we control three or more artifacts at the beginning of our upkeep, but more importantly can let us tutor for an artifact from our deck for only four mana and if we control three or more artifacts, which should not be hard for us to accomplish.

Tools of the Trade

The next thing we need are cards that allow us to give or gain a benefit from The Regalia.

One of the ways that we can give a benefit for The Regalia is to make it cheaper to cast, so something like Foundry Inspector works really well since it makes it so that artifact spells we control cost one mana less to cast.

Jhoira’s Familiar makes it so that historic spells we cast cost one less to cast, Cloud Key let’s us choose a card type and have it cost them cost one less to cast, and Semblance Anvil has us imprint a nonland card from our hand to give cards that share a card type with the exiled card cost two mana less to cast.

There are also the plethora of mana producing creatures that are colorless like Palladium Myr which can tap to add two colorless mana, Manakin which adds one colorless mana, and Walking Atlas which can tap to let us put a land from our hand onto the battlefield notably not tapped inherently.

We can also have some creative ways to make The Regalia a bit more effective in combat with cards like Steel Overseer which can tap to put a +1/+1 counter on each artifact creature we control, which we can hold off until we Crew The Regalia in order to slowly grow it to deal more and more damage.

Iron Spider, Stark Upgrade is also a really great card for us because it can tap to put a +1/+1 counter on each artifact creature and/or Vehicle we control, meaning we don’t even need to Crew The Regalia in order to give it a +1/+1 counter, and we can even pay two mana and remove two +1/+1 counters from among artifacts we control to draw a card.

Speaking of drawing cards, we can gain some decent benefits from just playing The Regalia a bit later by playing Canoptek Spyder which let’s us draw a card whenever another nontoken artifact creature or Vehicle we control enters, which with all the mana we generate should let us draw a decent number of cards.

We can also gain benefit from all of this and more from all of the lands and mana we get with cards that have an X cost or cards that hose strategies that use more than one color like Stonecoil Serpent which does both since enters with X +1/+1 counters, has reach, trample, and protection from multicolored.

Zenith Chronicler has it so that for the first multicolored spell each player casts each turn each other player draws a card, Spectrum Sentinel has protection from multicolored and whenever a nonbasic land control enters the battlefield under an opponents control we gain 1 life, and Ugin, the Ineffable which makes our colorless spells one mana cheaper, puts the top card of our library onto the battlefield as a 2/2 creature that goes back to our hand when it leaves the battlefield and can destroy a permanent that is one or more colors.

There is even a way for us to play a bit more at instant speed by using Skittering Cicada which let’s us cast colorless spells as if they had flash and whenever we do cast a colorless spell, the Cicada gets trample and +X/+X until end of turn where X is the mana value of the spell we cast.

Premium Insurance

The next thing we need are ways to make sure that we can interact with the board in anyway we can.

Selective Obliteration is a solid way for us to do a good bit of exiling since each player choses a color, then each permanent is exiled unless it is colorless or it’s the only color its controller chooses. This allows each opponent to potentially keep some things while we are perfectly able to keep control off all of our things.

If we are dramatically behind, then we can also use Calamity of the Titans, which as an additional cost has is reveal a colorless creature card from our hand, and then we exile each creature and Planeswalker with mana value less than the revealed card’s mana value, which in a pinch can get rid of a ton of small creatures if we reveal a one or two mana creature.

Extinguisher Battleship is a decent way to also deal with some decent sized creatures since when it enters we destroy a noncreature permanent and then it deals 4 damage to each creature, which opens up our removal suite a bit and can clear the board. Since it is also a Station, we can spend some resources to make it a 10/10 creature with flying and trample.

Our instant speed interaction, barring having Skittering Cicada in play, is pretty light but still pretty effective. Null Elemental Blast works really well as a selective counter spell since it can either counter a multicolored spell or destroy target multicolored permanent.

Not of This World is really interesting because it can counter a spell or ability that targets a permanent we control, but it can potentially cost seven mana less to cast if what’s being targeted has power 7 or greater, meaning that if we buff The Regalia when it’s being targeted, we potentially have a free counter spell against spells or abilities.

Some other ways we can make this happen is with something like Forsaken Monument, which gives colorless creatures we control +2/+2, let’s any permanent we control that taps to make colorless mana make an additional colorless mana, and gains us 2 life whenever we cast a colorless spell.

Since we are colorless our Game Changer options are very light, but we can really make the most out of Field of the Dead, which synergizes well with our plan to get a lot of utility lands into play since if a land we control enters while we have seven or more lands with different names, we make a 2/2 Zombie token, which can be quite a few Zombies over a short period of time.

If you happen to have access (or proxy) Mishra’s Workshop, then we can get The Regalia into play even faster because it adds three colorless mana that can only be used to cast artifact spells, which means that as soon as turn two we can get The Regalia into play to start getting us more and more value at a quicker rate.

Crossing the Finish Line

The last thing we need of course is a way to win, and this is where the deck can go in several directions.

If we decide to go with the lands matter way of playing the deck, then we can make use of the classic Dark Depths combo with Thespian’s Stage. The way this works is that we play Dark Depths, which enters with ten ice counters, then we use Thespian’s Stage to become a copy of Dark Depths, and since it has no ice counters we sacrifice it to make a 20/20 flying and indestructible Marit Lage.

Speaking of winning with our lands, there is also something like Inkmoth Nexus, which for one mana can become a 1/1 flying creature with infect, which can give us a way to win via poison. We can even supplement this by playing Mirrex, which for three mana can make a 1/1 Phyrexian Mite token with toxic 1 that can’t block.

We can also choose to go in a more control and lockdown route by getting something like Ultima, Origin of Oblivion pretty early with something like Swiftfoot Boots to back it up, since once it attacks we can put a blight counter on a land and as long as that land has a blight counter, it loses all abilities and land types and can tap for a colorless mana.

There is also Chimil, the Inner Sun, which makes it so that spells we control can’t be countered and let’s us discover 5 at the beginning of our end step, which further let’s us cheat things into play and helps us keep a decent board presence or generates value for us.

Since we are ideally getting a lot of lands into play as well as ways to make a lot of mana, we can also of course go into playing a bunch of big mana spells like Portal to Phyrexia, has it so that our opponents sacrifice three creatures they control and at the beginning of our upkeep, we put a creature card from a graveyard onto the battlefield under our control and that creature is also Phyrexian.

While the Eldrazi Titans are certainly a way for us to get some really big bodies in play that also happen to give us some pretty great effects, one big mana colorless spell that I think is thematically appropriate with The Regalia, I would choose Summon: Bahamut, which for the first two chapters of the Saga let’s us destroy up to one target nonland permanent, then let’s us draw two cards, and as a finisher deals damage to each of our opponents equal to the total mana value of other permanents we control, which if we are playing big mana permanents, can be enough to win us to game.

In Conclusion

The Regalia, while a very solid support piece for decks that may struggle ramping, can be a pretty solid Commander that has a bit of variance in how it plays.

While The Regalia’s primary role is to get us more lands in play, we can make use of that effect so we can fast track our big mana spells, and since we are colorless we have additional options of ramping to get to The Regalia to give us some more difficult to interact with sources of mana in the form of lands.

The breadth of colorless utility lands also serves us well since we can tailor the deck to suit our needs, play style, and budget and have a series of cards that serve as our toolbox to deal with a decent number of situations.

What this deck has for a solid amount of ramp, we do suffer a bit on our interaction and protection suite, which means that The Regalia is more susceptible to removal than a lot of other Commanders. We should be able to compensate a bit for it when it ramps us, and since it has haste it can do so immediately, there are still plenty of ways for our opponents to deal with it.

Another potential issue is that a card we need may go from the top of our deck to the bottom of our deck with The Regalia’s ability, which can be a bit frustrating especially with our limited number of answers.

I still think that The Regalia makes up for it with an interesting game plan and decent number of options to take the deck in to make the deck more varied in how you decide to build and play it.

Thank you for reading, see you all next time!

Happy New Year!

From, J.M. Casual

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