Hello and welcome to Commander Bites!

Today we are going to be taking a look at Melek, Reforged Researcher!

Melek is a five mana */* whose power and toughness are each equal to twice the number of instant and sorcery cards in your graveyard and the first instant or sorcery spell you cast east turn costs three mana less to cast.

Game Plan

Melek is an interesting spell slinger Commander in that we want our instants and sorcery cards in the graveyard and the first one we cast each turn has a massive discount, which means that ideally we can make better use of some pretty expensive instants on our opponents turn and some solid sorceries much earlier than needed on our turn.

Not only that, but we can fuel Melek by getting more instants and sorceries in the graveyard, which while it can make Melek bigger, can also be an additional way for us to make use of instants and sorceries in the graveyard through a variety of ways.

Support

Since Melek gives us such a massive discount, we can consider some more mana intensive cards to play that normally would work well in the mid to late game, and have them much earlier to provide us a much better advantage.

Sublime Ephiphany is such an example where it allows us to choose one or more of counter target spell, counter target activated or triggered ability, return target nonland permanent to its owner’s hand, create a token that’s a copy of target creature you control, and target player draws a card. While this is a solid card for six mana, it’s an amazing card at three mana.

Some of the more expensive to cast counter spells are also considerations like Access Denied, which counters target spell and we create X 1/1 Thopter tokens with flying where X is the mana value of the spell. A five mana counter spell becomes Counterspell with upside.

We can also use cards like Rewind or Unwind, with the former being a counter spell that untaps up to four lands and the latter being a counter spell for noncreature spells but allows us to untap up to three lands becoming really solid ways for us to not only save on mana, but end up massively mana positive on our opponents turns.

Speaking of, Unexpected Windfall is another such card where we do need to discard a card as an additional cost, we do draw two cards and create two Treasure tokens, with the discarded card being able to help make Melek bigger and we end up card and mana neutral.

Bolt Bend is also a great card because it already costs three mana less to cast if we control a creature with power 4 or greater, which for Melek would only need two instants or sorceries, but it can change the target of target spell or ability with a single target to help protect Melek or gain us another benefit.

The sorcery side of things is where we can get nutty, with something like Mana Geyser being a much cheaper investment on our turn to cast a bunch of big spells because it adds a red mana for each tapped land our opponents control, which we can help facilitate with something like Mana Short to tap all lands an opponent controls and then make that player lose all unspent mana.

As we go through the game casting a ton of instants and sorceries, we can also make use of Cosmic Epiphany, which draws us cards equal to the number of instants and sorceries in our graveyard, and we can also fuel that by using something like Traumatize to put half of our library into the graveyard.

From there we can use something like Past in Flames to give each instant and sorcery in our graveyard flashback until end of turn with the flashback cost being equal to the mana cost while it also has flashback so we can do a bunch of nonsense with it.

If we happen to have some extra turn spells in the graveyard like Capture of Jingzhou, Temporal Manipulation, or Time Warp, we can get a good number of extra turns to continuously make use of the instants and sorceries in our graveyard to get a bunch of mana with rituals, go wild for a Storm deck, or even cast a huge spell for cheaper to win the game.

Setbacks

Melek has a solid plan for making use of instants and sorceries in the graveyard while also providing a discount, which is stymied by the fact that Melek is five mana.

We don’t have too mana issues finding ways to ramp into the first casting of Melek, but we may have issues casting Melek more than once because once our opponents figure our what we are planning to do, Melek is going to be a prime target.

With us needing all the mana possible in order to cast Melek, we also need to be pretty sparing on what instants and sorceries we cast when we eventually do get Melek onto the battlefield. If we cast one before we cast Melek we don’t get the bonus, so we need to hold some mana up in order to make sure Melek is protected so that they can stay in play so we can keep getting the bonus.

While Melek’s discount would stack with a Clone effect, we do need to make sure that it is either a creature or enchantment in order for us to maintain that bonus for the rest of the turn in order to make full use of multiple Melek’s in play.

The first instant or sorcery restriction is much more of a big deal than one would assume because it allows us to have a way to keep an expensive card in our hand that we can cast at any time, but we also need some ways to generate mana in order to keep casting spells.

Also since both Melek’s power and toughness are reliant on instants and sorcery cards in your graveyard, if someone were to use a Scavenger Grounds or have some other way to mass exile cards in your graveyard then Melek just dies. It’s even worse if there is a Rest in Peace, Leyline of the Void, or some other similar effect because then Melek can’t even stick onto the battlefield.

Bracket Rating: Mid 2, Low 3

Melek plays more into the big spells sort of spell slinger rather than cast as many spells as you can aspect of the archetype, which does affect how effective Melek can be in higher brackets.

While they can do decently well if you just want to cast one big spell each turn at a discount, it does make Melek more narrow in what they are capable of as a Commander.

However, they can still put on a decent showing if the deck is built well enough where you can take advantage of those discounts and get Melek onto the battlefield quickly enough, which would be easier in lower brackets.

Thank you for reading, see you all tomorrow!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual