Hello and welcome to Commander Bites!

Today, we are going to be taking a look at Munda, Ambush Leader!

Munda is a four mana 3/4 with haste and a Rally ability of when they or another Ally you control enters, you may look at the top four cards of your library. If you do, reveal any number of Ally cards from among them then put those cards on top of your library in any order and the rest on the bottom in any order.

Game Plan

One thing I love about doing this blog is finding Commanders I have never heard about or seen and finding some way to see why they haven’t been built, and if there is something interesting that can be done with them.

For Munda, they are a two color typal Commander that for a good period of time has had limited representation and a five color typal Commander that does something more with the creature type to overshadow them in some regard.

With that being said, Munda still has some interesting cards and strategies to play around with, especially when considering some new Ally cards being printed fairly recently.

Support

We need to look at the wide variety of Ally options we have, past and present, to see what Munda is working with in terms of potential strategies.

Momo, Friendly Flier is a great card for us because they make it so that the first non-Lemur spell you cast during each of your turns costs one mana less to cast and whenever another creature you control with flying enters Momo gets +1/+1 until end of turn. This is a actually a really solid way for us to get some of the more pricey Allies onto the battlefield faster.

One example would be Hakoda, Selfless Commander who let’s us look at the top card of our library at any time and let’s us cast Ally spells from the top of our library. Not only does it synergize well with Munda, but he also has it so that we can sacrifice him in order to give our creatures indestructible and +0/+5 until end of turn.

Ondu Cleric gains us life equal to the number of Allies we control whenever they or another Ally we control enters, Kabira Evangel has it so when they or another Ally we control enters we choose a color for our Allies to gain protection from until the end of turn, and when Kazuul Warlord or another Ally enters we put a +1/+1 counter on each Ally creature we control.

Allies happen to have a lot of abilities that work really well together, and in red and white we do have access to a lot of really good ones. What’s also helpful is that Allies come in a good mix of Humans and non-Humans and our Commander just so happens to let us arrange the top four cards of our library.

Winota, Joiner of Forces has it so that whenever a non-Human creature we control attacks, we look at the top six cards of our library and put a Human creature from among them tapped, attacking, and indestructible until end of turn. There are a lot of Human Allies and non-Human Allies that trigger off of Allies entering the battlefield, and with Munda in play we can get the board wider and wider as Winota counts every non-Human attack as a separate trigger.

If we cast Unbreakable Formation on our main phase to give each creature we control a +1/+1 counter, vigilance, and indestructible and we also happen to have Iroh, Dragon of the West in play which gives creatures we control with a counter on it firebending 2, we can have a lot of mana to cast a Comet Storm or Electrodominance to deal a ton of damage to finish off our opponents.

Setbacks

We are a typal, go wide, aggressive deck which means that we have the usual weaknesses that those decks tend to have.

Go wide decks have trouble against board wipes, aggressive decks need to work harder in order to deal enough damage to three other opponents, and typal decks can fall to some specific removal and if you don’t have enough of that creature type in play then the deck can’t do what it wants to do well.

If we do happen to go with a Winota strategy then we also need to make sure that we have some number of non-Human Allies in play so that we can get the ideal amount of Human Allies as well, and that can be a tricky balance to get right.

There are some cards we can use to help mitigate that like Urabrask’s Forge or Assemble the Legion which make non-Human tokens as backup, but we also need to make sure that the deck still has a solid enough mix.

While white and red have been getting better access to draw and mana ramp, we can still have some trouble getting the right cards that we need in order to get the deck to be a much more optimized machine, but we do have the benefit of being able to rearrange the top of our deck into something more ideal.

This can be a bit of an issue if we need lands or certain spells because non-Ally cards do get shipped to the bottom of the library, so that can also become a problem if you are in a pinch.

Bracket Rating: High 2, Mid 3

I think that Munda has a lot more potential than a lot of people are giving him credit for and that I think is that people don’t know he exists.

I am positive my eyes have glazed over him when looking for Commanders to choose for the blog many times, and it is only now that I realize he exists.

While I don’t think that Munda is going to be topping a lot of competitive events, I do think that he is pretty fun and playing the roulette with the top of your library can be a real fun time that can actually win you a couple of games.

I think the lesson here is to explore some underused Commanders, you never know what you’ll find and what new things you can play around with because I am actually thinking about making a decently powered Munda deck.

Thank you for reading, see you all tomorrow!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual