Judge's Familiar would be better for sure, you could run both but Raptor is certainly wrong if over the Familiar
Or are they a little too un-fun and unnecessarily prolong Commander games
But in the case of this one, the core of this remained almost untouched the entire time
Another solution is simply to play Destructive Flow in a deck full of cheap cards and kill your opponent with one- and two-drops while no one can cast anything bigger
This is one of the most prominent cards in Modern and still sees play in Legacy, all while being one of the most expensive as well
It just makes a lot more sense to curve out with Blazing Bomb, Sahagin, The Emperor, Ultros and Shantotto, THEN start chaining together copies of Retrieve the Esper, rather than trying to play noncreature spells the whole game