Commander Deck Tech: Alandra, Sky Dreamer
Jumpstart 2022 has turned out to be quite a bit better than most of us had expected. It's holding its price well, and casual players are really loving it. We got some great reprints here, as well as several new Legendary Creatures for which we can brew new Commander decks. I'd say some of the new cards are also just great supporting cards for existing Commanders as well. As long as they don't print this one into oblivion like the original Jumpstart, I see prices of sealed boxes and singles holding.
For this week I chose to cover Alandra, Sky Dreamer the cousin of Talrand, Sky Summoner. For 2UU we get a 2/4 Merfolk Wizard that has 2 key abilities. The first ability says: Whenever you draw your second card each turn, create a 2/2 blue Drake token creature with flying. The second ability says: Whenever you draw your fifth card each turn, Alandra, Sky Dreamer and Drakes you control each get +X+X until end of turn, Where X is the number of cards in your hand.
Her first ability is similar to Talrand, but instead of casting instants and sorceries it's drawing 2 cards per turn to get a Drake. The second ability is more like an Overrun for itself and Drakes when you draw five or more cards. Keep in mind both of these abilities can also trigger on your opponent's turn. This means you can make Drakes at the end of your opponent's turn, or give all your Drakes +X/+X and have some big ol' blockers.
To support our Commander's theme of drawing cards, we have 4 Enchantments which help us to gain card advantage: Mystic Remora, Rhystic Study, Teferi's Ageless Insight, and Wizard Class. We are also running 5 Sorceries which help us draw more cards in: Ponder, Sea Gate Restoration, Silver Scrutiny, Windfall, and Winged Words. We are running 10 Instants which can help us draw more cards in: Archmage's Charm, Brainstorm, Cryptic Command, Flow of Knowledge, Frantic Search, Opt, Pull from Tomorrow, Soul Read, Thirst for Discovery, and Tolarian Winds.
We've got several Creatures which help draw extra cards or give us certain advantages when drawing. These 12 Creatures consist of: Archmage Emeritus, Baral, Chief of Compliance, Consecrated Sphinx, Curiosity Crafter, Defiler of Dreams, Gadwick, the Wizened, Kami of the Crescent Moon, Ledger Shredder, Loyal Drake, Mulldrifter, Triskaidekaphile, and Wavebreak Hippocamp. We also have a few Artifacts which draw additional cards in Howling Mine, and Mind Stone. There's also a few key Planeswalkers which help us draw, or prevent your opponents from drawing extra cards in: Narset, Parter of Veils, Teferi, Master of Time, and Teferi, Temporal Pilgrim.
In all we have 36 cards or 36 percent of the deck which allows us to draw additional cards. Having a bit more than 1 in 3 cards giving us the ability to draw extra cards should really help to trigger our Commanders abilities. This version of the deck is more of an all out version versus a full on Drake version. There could definitely be a cheaper build for this deck that uses a lot more of the Common and Uncommon Drakes, but it did not seem to be as strong of a deck to me. However if you are on a budget the full out Drake build will be a lot less expensive to put together.
We also need some evasion and or removal to help deal with opponents' creatures. Unfortunately mono blue doesn't have a ton in that regard so we also run quite a few counterspells. We are running 5 spot removal / evasions spells in: Cyclonic Rift, Inundate, Wash Out, Rapid Hybridization, and Pongify. The deck also runs 9 counterspells in: Force of Will, Mana Drain, Counterspell, Cryptic Command, Archmage's Charm, Disallow, Rewind, Soul Read, and Wizard's Retort.
Other than our Commander, several of our Creatures have natural evasion since they have Flying. The top Creatures to help destroy our opponents are: Thassa's Oracle, Laboratory Maniac, Talrand, Sky Summoner, Hullbreaker Horror, and Lier, Disciple of the Drowned.
The rest of the deck is pretty straightforward; we basically want to build up our evasive Creatures and start attacking. We counterspell any major threats as we build up our card advantage. Eventually we will get enough damage to close out the game, or be able to overrun with Drakes and our Commander.
The biggest weaknesses this deck has is wrath effects and big Flying blockers. We have ways to deal with both already in the deck, but only after playtesting a lot will we be able to tell if it has enough. The manabase is pretty basic with only a few nonbasic lands and a bunch of Islands. This is an area which could be improved but since we are so Blue heavy I wanted to make sure all of our lands came into play untapped and that we had enough blue to play all of our multiple U costing spells. We can maybe end up adding some of the blue cycling lands to the build to up our ways to draw an additional card per turn. However I think this is a fantastic build and will be a ton of fun to play.
What's better than playing islands, countering spells, and drawing extra cards?
Until Next Time,
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