Spoiler season for MTG Star Trek is now in full swing, and the hits just keep on coming. In addition to a bunch of great new cards for various formats, we’ve also seen some truly intriguing new Commanders to boot. Interestingly, one of the best so far, Hemmer, Fixing What Is Broken, comes in the uncommon slot, which is unusual for MTG. Despite its low rarity, however, this is a great new build-around with some serious combo potential out of the command zone.
Hemmer, Fixing What Is Broken MTG
For two mana, Hemmer gets you a 2/3 body with a couple of highly useful abilities. While the Spacecraft protection effect only works on your turn, it’s still nice to have some extra resilience here. Since Spacecraft often take multiple turns to fully Station, this prevents opponents from just removing them as soon as they become creatures and denying you your payoff. With powerful Spacecraft like Uthros Research Craft and The Seriema available in Azorius colors, there’s plenty of upside to building around the card type with Hemmer.
You’ll also want to run some Spacecraft to support Hemmer’s ‘loot on tapping’ ability, which is the real star of the show here. Early on, Hemmer’s 2/3 stats will let you do this each turn simply by attacking, but later on you’ll want to rely on guaranteed tap outlets instead. Spacecraft are ideal here since you can use their Station abilities to tap Hemmer even once they’re fully charged, and the Station lands like Uthros, Titanic Godcore work here as well.
In a similar vein, Vehicles like Smuggler’s Copter and Shorikai, Genesis Engine are excellent unlimited tap outlets as well. Alternatively, you can grant Hemmer a tap ability with something like Paradise Mantle or Ocular Halo to tap him on demand. With these cards in the mix, untappers like Thousand-Year Elixir
Thousand-Year ElixirYou may activate abilities of creatures you control as though those creatures had haste.
{1}, {T}: Untap target creature. will let you double-dip on looting each turn for even more selection.
Once your looting engine is up and running, you can tap into various payoffs to develop your game. Discard synergy cards, like Monument to Endurance and Containment Construct, are a great place to start, offering extra value for every Hemmer trigger. Similarly, Hemmer’s extra draw is fantastic for getting value from cards like King T’Challa and Mischievous Mystic, which care about your second draw each turn.
Since Hemmer dumps so many cards into your graveyard as it loots, there’s even room for a graveyard sub-theme. Spells with Flashback, Harmonize, or even the new Beam Me Up mechanic are all ideal inclusions, since you can discard them to Hemmer and replay them later. Harmonize spells like Winternight Stories are particularly good options, as they can tap Hemmer itself when you cast them from your graveyard.
With so much discard, cards that use your graveyard as a resource, such as Abhorrent Oculus and Dig Through Time, are also fantastic in a Hemmer deck. Add in some recursion tools, like Mystic Sanctuary and Sevinne’s Reclamation, and you’ll have a surprisingly versatile and resilient Azorius brew.
Dig For Victory
Beyond its plentiful fair potential, Hemmer, Fixing What Is Broken also enables several infinite combo lines, letting you loot through your entire deck with ease. The easiest way to do this is to kit Hemmer out with both Paradise Mantle and Freed from the Real. With this setup, you can tap Hemmer for blue mana, trigger a loot, then pay blue to untap him and repeat.
You can also pull off this combo with Hemmer in other ways, such as exiling an Aphetto Alchemist with Agatha’s Soul Cauldron and giving Hemmer its ability, letting it tap to untap itself repeatedly. Alternatively, with a tap outlet like a Spacecraft in play, you can use Ioreth of the Healing House and Marvin, Murderous Mimic to untap each other and Hemmer over and over. This redundancy, paired with Hemmer’s natural looting, makes this combo fairly easy to pull off.
Once your deck is empty, you can close out the game with one of the classic ‘if your deck has no cards’ win conditions. Thassa’s Oracle is easily the best of these, but Jace, Wielder of Mysteries
Jace, Wielder of MysteriesIf you would draw a card while your library has no cards in it, you win the game instead.
+1: Target player mills two cards. Draw a card.
−8: Draw seven cards. Then if your library has no cards in it, you win the game. and Laboratory Maniac make great backups. If you’re feeling particularly spicy, the new Fblthp, Impossibly Lost is also an option, albeit a worse one since you need to connect for damage.
Overall, despite being an uncommon, Hemmer, Fixing What Is Broken looks like a very legit MTG Commander for multiple brackets. If you’re looking for a flexible strategy that can win games without breaking the bank, this is definitely one to look out for come next month.
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