Commander Budget Builds: Delina, Wild Mage
I have been a lover of flicker decks for a long time. Or at least, a lover of them in theory. Roon was a popular option back in the day, later being replaced by Brago, and these days there are a wealth of options for flicker decks. I’ve even seen (and built) flicker decks based around Feather, the Redeemed! But all of these decks need either white or blue to function, and sometimes you want to do things a bit differently. Thankfully, Wizards of the Coast has expanded this effect into red, with its own red twist. Cards like Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and Jaxis, the Troublemaker both make copies of cards, which, just like flickering, generates a lot of value from enters-the-battlefield effects.
All this brings us to the queen of mono-red flicker: Delina, Wild Mage. I’ve had a Delina deck for years in various forms, and I decided to see how it translated into the budget realm. Today’s version of Delina comes in right under $25 at $24.80, and even with that tight budget we still get to run combos that can end the game on the spot. It provides a lot of value, just like most flicker decks, but with a more aggressive angle due to Delina’s need to attack in order to make copies.
The Core
This deck has a few special things it needs in order to function. First and foremost, it needs juicy “flicker” (or clone) targets. Since Delina’s ability makes the copies tapped and attacking, I’ve slightly extended the definition of what counts as a “clone target” for her to include creatures that trigger off of combat damage, and we can even use her ability on legendary creatures since Delina’s ability explicitly makes the copies not legendary. By my count, this deck has 29 creatures that are at least decent flicker targets, letting you grind value by copying them. Of course, listing all of them would take way too long, but almost everything the deck needs has a version that’s a copiable creature so you can do it over and over again. Need to ramp? Wily Goblin and Gemcutter Buccaneer can help. Card draw? Rotisserie Elemental is maybe your best bet, but Circuit Mender and Skyscanner are here too. Removal? There are three different version of Flametongue Kavu, Plundering Barbarian to hit artifacts, and Meteor Golem for anything else.
This deck also needs ways to put the die rolls more in our favor. Making extra copies on a 15-20 is nice, but what would be even better is if we could make those copies more often. For this, we have just two cards, since they’re the only ones that exist: Barbarian Class and Wyll, Blade of Frontiers. Both of these cards give us, in D&D terms, Advantage. Just one of these effects in play gives us a 50% chance to hit that 15+ threshold, making it significantly easier for us to get extra value from our clones.
We also have to keep in mind that Delina needs to attack in order to get value, since a single 2-power creature could stop us being able to safely attack an opponent. Barbarian Class also helps with this at level 2, at least early on, by giving Delina menace to help her get through. We also have Psychic Paper, which has some silly text but ultimately gives Delina ward 1 and stops her from being blocked. Manifold Key and Key to the City also let her get through undisturbed, albeit at a cost each turn.
There are also some things that I would say the deck definitely doesn’t need, but are nice to have. First of all, haste enablers. Delina is a 4-mana creature that needs to attack to get value, so being able to attack with her immediately would save us a lot of headache. Lightning Marauder is the cheapest option available to us, but Barbarian Class can also do this with its third level, and Frenzied Saddlebrute gives our team haste while also encouraging our opponents to attack each other. Second, we could use some Sacrifice Outlets. We don’t need to do anything with those tokens we make, but being able to get value from them before they leave with cards like Dark-Dweller Oracle and Goblin Bombardment would be nice.
And then of course there are the basics that every deck needs. Cards like Idol of Oblivion and Breeches, Brazen Plunderer give us card draw, and for ramp we have Fire Diamond, Arcane Signet, and Curse of Opulence to try and get us casting Delina before turn 4. Unfortunately I only managed to squeeze a single board wipe into this deck with Chain Reaction, but it seems like commander is trending towards fewer and fewer board wipes anyway, so we’ll pretend this was an intentional decision.
Winning
This deck has a variety of ways to close out a game, even ignoring the combos we have. My personal favorite is Fanatic of Mogis, which can hit for a lot of damage when you copy it, since each copy will count the devotion from itself and the other copies. I’ve easily hit the table for 20+ damage each with a single combat step just by getting a handful of Fanatic copies. But we also have things like Myr Battlesphere and Devilish Valet, which both benefit from either being copied or from having you copy other things. And while Impact Tremors itself couldn’t quite make the cut due to budget, we do have similar effects on other cards, including Warstorm Surge.
Then, of course, we do have combos. Two of them, to be exact (or like one and a half, depending on how you count them). First, there’s Wyll. His version of the combo is pretty easy to do, but does require getting a bit lucky. This combo relies on the fact that Delina technically makes a copy before asking you to roll again, rather than just making all the copies at once at the end. Because of this, the combo works like this:
You have Delina and Wyll in play. You attack with Delina, and target Wyll with her ability.
You roll two dice to resolve Delina’s ability and ignore the lowest. You have roughly a 50% chance to hit the 15+ threshold to roll again.
Assuming you hit 15+, you’re rolling again, but this time with three dice instead of two. You have roughly a 65% chance to hit the 15+ threshold to roll again.
Assuming you hit 15+, you’re rolling again, but this time with four dice instead of three. You have roughly a 76% chance to hit the 15+ threshold to roll again.
And so on. At 7 dice, you have a ~92% chance to roll again. At 8, it goes up to ~94%. And at 9…well, at 9 anydice wouldn’t run anymore. But you get the point. At enough copies of Wyll, it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll get another copy, which then just forces you to ask the question: How many copies do you want?
Oh, and don’t forget about Wyll’s other ability while you’re at it.
Our second combo is based around Port Razer. This one is easier to understand mathematically, but can be a bit harder to actually pull off. It starts the same way as any good Delina combo: You control Delina and Port Razer, attack with Delina, then target Port Razer with her ability. You’ll get one or more copies of Port Razer, and this is the tricky part: That player has to not be able to block at least one of your Razers. Sizzling Soloist is great for this, and Barbarian Class can help too. But once the Razer connects, you’re off to the races. Delina can attack again, and you can start sending the copies at other players to force them to decide whether they want to block and start letting you chip away at their board, or wait to see what happens when that first player gets knocked out of the game.
While the Razer combo relies on having an opponent who can’t stop your attacks, I think you’ll be surprised to find out how often this happens in the average commander game, either through coincidence or because you were able to line up your “can’t block” effects just right.
Spice
It wouldn’t be one of my decks if I didn’t have at least a few pet cards or potentially-questionable inclusions, so that’s what I want to focus on here. First we have Critical Hit, which is almost certainly not the best thing that could be in that slot, but it fits too perfectly for me to cut it. And with how many dice we roll, it’s pretty easy to put it back in our hand. We also have Grishnákh as a fun target for Delina, getting us a potentially huge orc army while also letting us steal stuff from our opponents. And even though we can’t make the stolen things attack since we’ve already declared attackers, we can use it to get rid of blockers. Or, if we have a sacrifice outlet, we can use it as straight-up removal. Then there’s Arni Metalbrow, who gives us a way to cheat in creatures, since he triggers both on our creatures attacking and on the Delina copies entering attacking, which is a pretty rare trigger condition. Putting something into play with his ability even causes him to trigger again, letting you chain together creatures if you have the mana.
Crown Jewels
We are a budget deck, but that doesn’t mean we can’t run some expensive cards. It does, however, lower the bar of what “expensive” means, and in this case, since the average cost of a card in our deck is ~25 cents, I’d say we can comfortably count anything over a dollar as “expensive.” I’ll start with the cards I’ve already mentioned: Port Razer, Goblin Bombardment, and Delina herself. Razer and Bombardment both come in around $1.50 – a fair price for their power, I’d say – while Delina will cost a little over $3, making her the most expensive card in our deck. But given that the entire deck is built around her, I’d say she’s earned that price tag. Next let’s look at Trumpeting Carnosaur, which is $1.14 at the time of writing. For 6 mana, we get a good set of stats that also “draws” us a card and plays it for free when it enters the battlefield, making it a very good target for Delina. And, in a pinch, it can even be used as removal. We also have Combat Celebrant, who used to be well over $10 but has thankfully fallen back to a more reasonable $1.63. Celebrant can give us some explosive turns thanks to the extra combat he provides, but remember: Delina’s copies don’t stick around from one combat to the next. And finally, we have the true Crown Jewel of this deck, a card that I maybe should’ve cut due to budget but just couldn’t: Harmonic Prodigy. Prodigy gives us an additional Delina trigger each combat, which could let us get twice as many copies of something. But it can also let us copy two things in a single turn, which I generally find to be much more useful. There are even a few other Wizards and Shamans in the deck that Prodigy can help with! Prodigy is almost $3, but the utility of this card for just two mana is impossible to match.
Something’s Missing…
There are some cards that might seem like auto-includes to you, or cards that I really wanted to put in the deck, that just couldn’t quite make the cut. So what’s not here?
Sol Ring is the most obvious one. Most people (or at least most people reading this, I assume) have copies of it lying around, so I probably could’ve justified going over budget just on that fact alone. But I want to stay true to the budget, and when the budget is this tight, I prefer to run unique cards that help the deck’s gameplan over something like ramp. If you’ve got Rings around, it should be pretty easy to find a cut for one.
Impact Tremors. There are already a few similar effects in here, but they’ve printed a lot of these effects recently, and more of them probably couldn’t hurt.
Stigma Lasher is a pet card of mine for Delina decks, partly because it always elicits that reaction of “Wait this card does what?” Unfortunately, I couldn’t justify it here given its $1.24 price tag.
Dragonhawk, Fate’s Tempest is a great include if you can spare the extra $3.24, since each Dragonhawk that enters will trigger the other Dragonhawks that you already have, and this’ll result in you getting a lot of card draw.
Wrapping Up
Delina is easily one of my favorite commanders of all time. She’s fun, she pushes an archetype into a color it’s not normally represented in, and she even gets to have combos on a tight budget, which isn’t the only thing that determines if a deck can compete with higher-power decks, but it sure does help.
You can find me on Twitter and Bluesky if you want to ask questions or talk about this deck, or even follow me there or on Moxfield to see what I brew up in the future! You can also leave a comment on the deck on Moxfield if you want to chat there.
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