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Volpes, Kingpin of Crossroads

This card, featuring Deriaz‘s incredible rendition of the titan, Volpes, was similarly conceived at least a year prior to the artwork it features. Although once I started testing it with my playgroups, it went through a few changes before ending up on this version.

Here was the original design:

The idea was simple. He takes in creatures from other players, makes them stronger, and them sends them back out to act as his double agents. And though they still work for the original bosses (read: your opponents), they refuse to lift a hand against their mysterious benefactor, which is why your forces are protected when Volpes is out. (I was inspired by this design that gave “Protection from Salamanders“.)

I used +1/+1 counters because there was already a ton of pre-existing support for +1/+1 counter strategies that could be adapted for use in this deck, both offensively and defensively to control the flow of the game. If I had my way, this would have been the final design.

However, Commander is a social format. And while testing the card, my playgroup started to grow irritated because many of their strategies also involved the use of +1/+1 counters. As a result, Volpes’s first line of text prevented them from making the most out of their own cards.

So I went back to the drawing board with a new version:

As you can see, this is still roughly the same idea, just with “enhancement counters” in place of +1/+1 counters, and a clause to give increasing power to enhancement counters.

This design was more warmly received, but it also meant a complete overhaul of the deck. Without the ability to fallback on +1/+1 counter synergies, it had to go more “all-in” on Volpes and the political control angle. As a result, the deck came far more fragile, and spending the mana to activate Volpes often left him vulnerable to destruction. Since the new deck fell apart without him, I eventually settled on the design at the top of this page.

Thankfully, this wasn’t the last time I explored this concept, mechanically representing the idea of brainwashing your enemies by making them stronger. Oh no, Volpes was far from done making a splash in my playgroups.