While we sadly won’t be getting our hands on them for some time yet, Magic’s Star Trek precons are absolutely packed with bangers. Naturally, many of these are strong new MTG Commanders, the best of which may just be Hugh, First of Many.
This brutal Borg legend brings back one of Magic’s more obscure mechanics in Replicate, and pushes it to its logical extreme. The result is a new Esper Artifacts Commander that could have serious legs, both as a fair value engine and a spicy combo enabler.
Hugh, First of Many MTG
In case you haven’t seen Replicate before, which would be understandable given how rarely Wizards breaks it out, here’s a quick rundown of how it works. Essentially, when casting a spell with Replicate, you can pay the Replicate cost as a sort of Multikicker effect. For each instance of Replicate you pay, you get another copy of the spell.
Hugh specifically lets you do this with artifacts, which gives you a huge range of options. Paying extra to copy mana rocks like Sol Ring
Sol Ring{T}: Add {C}{C}. is a great way to use this, giving you more mana to sink into future Replicate costs.
Similarly, cost reducers like Foundry Inspector offer double discounts when copied, making them particularly strong here. It’s worth noting here that the total cost of each spell is calculated when you decide how many times to Replicate it, so having two Inspectors out will just reduce the overall total by two, not let you Replicate for one blue mana a pop.
Once you’ve built up a nice suite of mana, you can start using Hugh’s ability on more serious artifacts. High-impact Affinity creatures, like Panther Robot and Thought Monitor, are great options here, since they naturally offer a lot of value for little mana in an artifact-focused deck.
You can also get a lot of mileage out of copying removal effects with Hugh, turning Demonic Junker and Borg Cube into massive swing cards. Once you’ve secured the board like this, multiply Stax pieces like Sphere of Resistance
Sphere of ResistanceSpells cost {1} more to cast. to make sure your board dominance holds up.
Since Hugh creates token versions of the permanents it copies, you can start getting pretty funky with token copiers, too. Cards like Replicator and Worldwalker Helm are mainly meant to copy junk tokens like Food and Maps. With Hugh, however, you can have them making extras of Portal to Phyrexia or Simulacrum Synthesizer
Simulacrum SynthesizerWhen this artifact enters, scry 2.
Whenever another artifact you control with mana value 3 or greater enters, create a 0/0 colorless Construct artifact creature token with "This token gets +1/+1 for each artifact you control." instead.
Sadly, thanks to some pesky rules wrinkles, the tokens Hugh creates aren’t eligible for multiplication via cards like Anointed Procession. That said, you can double up on the effect with Twinning Staff, which is actually eligible for copying itself since it’s an artifact. With one or two of these bad boys out, literally any artifact you cast could swing the game in your favor.
Copy Combo Kookiness
Hugh is more than good enough to win games of Commander through raw value alone, but if you’re feeling less scrupulous, it also offers a wide suite of infinite combos. Perhaps the easiest involves casting and bouncing Ancestral Statue
Ancestral StatueWhen this creature enters, return a nonland permanent you control to its owner's hand. over and over, for infinite enters and leaves triggers.
To set this combo up, all you need to do is Replicate one of your cost reducers until you have a total discount of four generic mana or more. Urza’s Incubator is a great pick here, as you only need to copy it once to cover that. Once this is done, you can cast Statue for free then pick it up repeatedly, allowing for an easy win with Altar of the Brood or Aetherflux Reservoir.
If infinite mana and tokens are more your thing, Hugh has you covered there too alongside Worldwalker Helm and Urza, Lord High Artificer. With Hugh and Urza in play, simply cast Helm and Replicate it with Hugh to get things started.
Next, pay two mana and tap one of the Helms to copy the token version, resulting in an extra Helm and two Map tokens. Tap the Maps for two blue mana with Urza, then pay to make yet another Helm, with the number of extra Maps scaling up each time. This will result in infinite artifact tokens on board, and infinite blue mana to sink into Urza to cast your entire deck.
Finally, Hugh can even let you take infinite turns with the help of Ugin’s Nexus. Simply Replicate Nexus as you cast it, and the token copy will Legend Rule’d, putting the extra turn trigger on the stack. Use an artifact bouncer like Master Transmuter to return the original to your hand before the extra turn trigger resolves, and the coast is clear for you to start taking an endless stream of turns.
Whether you decide to make use of these combos or not, Hugh is a truly exceptional Commander from a design space perspective. The ability to copy any artifact, any number of times, is incredibly open, and ensures that this is a legend that will only get better over time. While there’s some stiff competition in MTG Star Trek, Hugh is undoubtedly one of the best Commanders the set has to offer.
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