How To Play The SpongeBob SquarePants Commander Deck In Magic: The Gathering

SpongeBob SquarePants is a part of Magic: The Gathering’s Universes Beyond product line where franchises from other media are brought into the game. For SpongeBob SquarePants, this was done in the way of a Secret Lair, a release of a handful of cards. The SpongeBob cards are all reskins of existing cards in Magic as opposed to mechanically unique ones.

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SpongeBob SquarePants is put on top of the card Jodah, the Unifier. Thanks to being all five colors, you can play every SpongeBob card in one Commander deck. The commander is all about legendary creatures and spells, something all of the SpongeBob characters are.

Decklist

The decklist contains 38 creatures, nine sorceries, ten instants, seven artifacts, one enchantment, and 34 lands. This decklist isn’t an optimized Jodah decklist, but rather, one that’s more thematic to SpongeBob. As such, the decklist contains very few humans and instead mostly animals (both traditional and anthropomorphic) with as many aquatic legendary creatures that could be played included.

Key Cards

SpongeBob SquarePants

SpongeBob SquarePants (Jodah the Unifier) is your commander and the glue that holds the whole deck together. It causes all legendary spells being cast to bring another one along with it (of lower mana value). It also provides a giant stat boost to all of your creatures.

SpongeBob SquarePants is relatively easy to cast, only requiring one mana of each color before you can start taking advantage of it. Just a few extra legendary creatures, and you can start swinging out with creatures that have a ton of stats.

Sandy Cheeks, Martial Astronaut

Sandy Cheeks, Martial Astronaut (Toski, Bearer of Secrets) is one of your main ways to draw cards. It makes any creature connecting for damage turn into a card draw. So if four creatures deal combat damage, you’ll be drawing four cards. Since you want to constantly be casting creature spells, this gives you a constant source of them.

Sandy Cheeks is indestructible, allowing it to safely attack into any player. The attack is mandatory, but with SpongeBob on the battlefield along with other legendary creatures, this attack will often either draw you cards, or take care of a creature on an opponent’s battlefield. It makes for a great blocker as well if it can’t attack.

Helga, Skittish Seer

Helga, Skittish Seer is one of your primary mana dorks in the deck (creatures that can tap themselves to add mana to your mana pool). Most of the creatures in the deck have a mana value of four or greater, so most of them will grow Helga’s stats which in turn let it tap for more mana.

With SpongeBob on the battlefield, Helga’s power will be even higher to generate even more mana. The card that SpongeBob brings out when you cast a legendary spell is also cast, which will also trigger Helga’s stat-boosting and lifegain ability.

Sisay, Weatherlight Captain

While humans aren’t common in SpongeBob, there are a few, and the few there are tend to be pirates. So you can imagine Sisay, Weatherlight Captain as a stand-in for Patchy the Pirate or the Flying Dutchman. Sisay is a way to bring any legendary creature onto the battlefield directly from your library.

Sisay’s ability to tutor (search a card directly from your deck) is determined by whatever its power is. This can be raised up by SpongeBob so that you can tutor any legendary permanent out from your library at the cost of five mana.

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How To Play The Deck

A SpongeBob SquarePants Commander deck is all about casting a ton of legendary creatures and flooding the battlefield with them. The deck is heavily combat-focused, utilizing SpongeBob’s effect that causes all legendary creatures to boost each other. With how easily you amass a battlefield, this stat boost can become massive very quickly.

While SpongeBob SquarePants can raise the stats of creatures, there are a few others to make combat easier. Mirri, Weatherlight Duelist can make it so only one creature can block, Sovereign Okinec Ahau will put +1/+1 counters on creatures that have stat boosts without counters, and Jetmir, Nexus of Revels will give attack boost and keyword abilities depending on how many creatures you control.

The primary win condition is winning through combat. Nearly half the deck is made out of creatures, many of which have fantastic effects that make winning with them easier. SpongeBob SquarePants very easily snowballs once you start casting spells with SpongeBob on the battlefield and getting an established board state.

The biggest downside of the deck is its heavy requirement on mana. A lot of cards need specific colors, and being a five-color deck, you need access to all five colors constantly. Ramp cards like Farseek, Nature’s Lore, and Three Visits help somewhat, but there may be situations where you’re stuck with lands that can’t produce the right color you need.

The deck is very susceptible to board wipes, and it can be hard to recover from one. You can stop it with Everybody Lives! or Counterspell, but those may not always resolve.

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