Baylen, the Haymaker - a trade offer [WIP]

[DirkGently]

I don't feel like actually constructing the meme, but Baylen, the Haymaker is basically:

[TRADE OFFER]

🤨

I receive: tokens

You receive: ramp, card advantage, and a wincon

Yeah, so Baylen actually seems really strong as a control commander to me. She (he? idk I get she vibes) provides basically everything you want outside of control tools themselves. If she was in Esper, she'd be an absolute slam dunk, but in Naya it's a little bit trickier. Still, at least we've got white, right? eh? eh?

Anyway I probably don't need to spell this out, but I guess I will - being able to activate all her abilities as often as you like, whenever you like makes her REALLY strong once you have a decent number of tokens because you can hold up a ton of mana for answers, and then if you don't need to use them, you can dump them all into CA...plus, when you're ready to go for a win, she's really effective - you can EOT a bunch of counters onto her, then dump a bunch more on your turn and swing for huge amounts of damage with evasion built in. So she really is the complete package.

Obviously besides control tools (besides white removal, I'm thinking fogs from green and...I dunno from red tbh), we want a lot of token production, but it doesn't matter at all what kind of tokens we're creating. The cheaper the better. food tokens, clues, 0/1 plants, anything so long as it's cheap.

I could see some advantages to going primarily with non-creature tokens if you want to play a bunch of wipes - you could even float the token mana to recast Baylen after you play the wipe. But if it's a good rate, it's a good rate. So what are the most economic token producers ever made? Academy Manufactor comes to mind, as a start.

[PrimevalCommander]

Scute Swarm, Springheart Nantuko, Awakening Zone, Rose Room Treasurer, Master of Ceremonies, Spawning Pit? Skrelv's Hive, Tireless Provisioner, Tireless Tracker, Farmer Cotton, Gilded Goose, Killer Service, Many Partings , Peregrin Took , Samwise Gamgee , The Battle of Bywater. I'm sure there are dozens of cheap creature token producers I missed.

[BaronCappuccino]

Red offers you goblins, which could easily become the entire focus of your token strategy if you let it - some gobs of note include: Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin, Legion Warboss, Goblin Rabblemaster and of course, Krenko, Mob Boss as the GOAT. White offers you similar with soldiers, and even has a Krenko curve topper in Myrel, Shield of Argive.

[DirkGently]

Yeah every color offers a lot of token options even if red and green are weak on their control options. I doubt I'd want to commit super heavily to any particular type, though - in addition to the fact that the quality drops off fairly quickly when you're only looking at one tribe/type, having creature tokens only would make the deck more vulnerable to board wipes. I definitely want a healthy amount of treasure/food/clues to shore myself up.

Currently going through my collection...I'm done with red and white and partway through green. Then multicolor and colorless...and lands...oh god 3c takes forever...

[Arebennian]

How are you going with this?

I've been mulling it over and have bought most of the cards I think I need to put the deck together.

I'm planning on playing it quite a bit like you said (holding tokens and mana up).

What do you think the combination of creature tokens to artifact tokens should be?

[samanater456]

Yeah I've been looking for a token deck. Commander seems strong. Be interested to see what yall cook up!

[DirkGently]

How are you going with this?

I've been mulling it over and have bought most of the cards I think I need to put the deck together.

I'm planning on playing it quite a bit like you said (holding tokens and mana up).

What do you think the combination of creature tokens to artifact tokens should be?

Currently trying to finish editing my book...and playing SotE...and also I'm leaving for a month-long vacation in a few weeks so...we'll see how much time I have for this xD Also I've noticed that Baylen is climbing up the ranks of EDHrec which dulls my enthusiasm somewhat, especially when I don't think my take will be thaaaaat unique.

But we'll see how things go, I still think it will be very fun to play so hopefully I'll find some time before the 8th.

[DirkGently]

Now I'm in a weird spot because I have sorted through most of my cards for this deck (a fairly herculean task I might add)...

aaaaaand Baylen just because the #1 commander from the set on EDHrec. My hipster cred is in shambles.

I think I'll probably try building it as a set-commander first and see how that goes? I suspect it's quite strong in general tbh, apparently it's generating some cEDH interest which isn't a great sign.

Not sure who else I'd consider building from the set instead -

I liked Glarb, Calamity's Augur at first blush, but thinking about it more topdeck-casting is kinda awkward for reactive decks - which is all I really want to do with a generic value engine in the CZ and excellent control colors.

Vren, the Relentless has the classic "basic people will build him as a tribal commander but he's actually just a great control commander" thing going on. Maybe too gross for me though tbh, the card is honestly just kind of insane. Playing against it at a prerelease made me want to die (but I won anyway because I'm just that good at limited).

Clement, the Worrywort seems cute and reasonably low-powered, also another of the "shouldn't-be-built-as-tribal" decks. Blink is a pretty overdone archetype but full recasting opens some maybe interesting possibilities and also a lot of restrictions on the basic-%$#% blink shells.

[EonAon]

Or you know you could just PLAY what you like or are interested in. Hell I've been twiddling about this for a bit and this is what I've I wont say put together since not all cards I own but still.

• Illustrious Wanderglyph
• Thopter Assembly
• Old Gnawbone
• Commander Mustard
• Seedborn Muse
• Mondrak, Glory Dominus
• Prava of the Steel Legion
• Knight-Captain of Eos
• Serra Redeemer
• Myrel, Shield of Argive
• Aragorn, Hornburg Hero
• Keeper of the Accord
• Mirror Entity
• wildfire awakener
• Drumbellower
• Esper Sentinel
• Agate Instigator
• Professional Face-Breaker
• Anim Pakal, Thousandth Moon


• Maskwood Nexus
• Awakening
• Virtue of Loyalty
• Horn of Valhalla
• Horn of Gondor
• Beastmaster Ascension
• impact tremors
• Warleader's Call


• Call the Coppercoats
• Rally at the Hornburg
• March of the Multitudes

Still has alot of WIP but thats the gist

[DirkGently]

Or you know you could just PLAY what you like or are interested in.

Eh, building a deck is definitely a matter of personal expression for me. It's not just that Baylen is popular - I built Golos when he was legal after all - but I don't think I really have anything to offer to a Baylen deck that isn't basically the typical build. If I had a more interesting idea maybe I'd still go for it. Also I do have other stuff I really should be focusing on right now - I've got a month-long trip to the US in 4 days and I need to find some readers for my book.

I do think it could be fun to play even if it's not interesting to build, which is why I'll probably do a set-commander deck for it. Set-commander is kind of a different situation since build options are pretty limited, generally it's just "play all the not-terrible cards in your colors".