Commander Deck Tech: Falco Spara, Pactweaver
Well it's finally time for Streets of New Capenna, and I think lots of people were ready for this one. The flavor of the set kind of reminds me of Alara Block with all the tri-color and filter color cards. The set definitely has several high profile Commander cards which should be played at a tabletop near you soon. When building this deck I was looking at all the great Legendary Creatures, and man are the precon decks just fantastic. In some cases I used some of the precon cards in this fresh Bird build. I think for most starting off with one of the precon's and then modifying it would be the best route for a New Capenna brew.
So let me introduce Falco Spara, Pactweaver:
This Bird Demon costs Bant and 1 colorless and is a 3/3 Flying Trample for 4 converted mana. Not bad on its own, but it also comes into play with a Shield Counter giving it some built in protection. The coolest ability is to play spells off the top of your library by removing a counter from a Creature. Note that it doesn't specify what type of counters have to be removed to do this. You can remove -1/-1 counters, +1/+1 counters, Shield Counters, Flying Counters, and any counter that is on any of the Creatures you control. So hopefully you keep the Shield Counter on Falco for protection, then remove counters from your other Creatures to gain more card advantage. I could see it happening ever so often that you remove Falco's Shield Counter to cast a better spell, or if you know that Falco will die within the next turn anyways. I also decided to put Augur of Autumn in the deck so that if it is in play with Falco you can filter lands off the top to get to your spells to cast off the top.
With this build I tried to include several Birds to keep the tribal Bird theme, but I also went after a lot of the Creatures that get counters, give counters, or have some kind of synergy with counters. The deck also has several proliferate cards in: Inexorable Tide, Evolution Sage, Karn's Bastion, Sword of Truth and Justice, and Thrummingbird. The deck also runs several protection spells to help keep Falco in play, and also to protect whatever Creatures or board state you might have at different points in the game. The cards that offer protection to your Creatures are: Teferi's Protection, Agent's Toolkit, Lightning Greaves, Family's Favor, Heroic Intervention, and Slippery Bogbonder.
With any Commander deck we also need some mana fix or mana acceleration, and this deck has some great ones. I think this deck is the first deck where Birds of Paradise is actually within the tribal theme which is pretty cool! Here is what we are running for mana fix/acceleration: Birds of Paradise, Noble Hierarch, Avacyn's Pilgrim, Arcane Signet, Sol Ring, Cultivate, Farseek, Rampant Growth, and Devoted Druid.
We also need some spot removal whether it be for Creatures or other types of permanents that might give us problems. The spot removal in the deck consists of: Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, Force of Vigor, Brokers Charm, Bant Charm, Lagrella, the Magpie, and Knight of Autumn. We also have a few board wipes or board resets just in case we get really behind, or in case you want to play a bit of control. You can always hold your best Creatures and let your opponents run out all their threats and hit them with one of the following: Farewell, Cyclonic Rift, or even the multi-situational newcomer Damning Verdict. In this deck I think Damning Verdict is amazing as it can potentially protect your board while wiping everyone else's, but in some cases your opponents may have counters on their Creatures too. This is one that definitely needs to see some play to see how it ends up working out. It could always be replaced with Supreme Verdict or any other wrath effect. You could always main phase Teferi's Protection then cast Farewell also, but that takes two cards vs. one.
The deck definitely acts similar to an Atraxa deck but with one less color, and some potential card advantage from Falco. I think we will be doing most of our winning by attacking with Creatures that have lots of +1/+1 counters or some type of evasion like Flying. Here is everything that gives or gets +1/+1 counters within the build: Oran-Rief, the Vastwood, Llanowar Reborn, Agent's Toolkit, The Great Henge, Branching Evolution, Brokers Ascendancy, Hardened Scales, Simic Ascendancy, Dromoka's Command, Quandrix Command, Fathom Mage, Forgotten Ancient, Good-Fortune Unicorn, Knight of Autumn, Ledger Shredder, Lion Sash, Luminarch Aspirant, Managorger Hydra, Mikaeus, the Lunarch, Rishkar, Peema Renegade, Scavenging Ooze, Shalai, Voice of Plenty, Skyboon Evangelist, Toothy, Imaginary Friend, and Vorinclex, and Monstrous Raider. So basically, most of the deck has something to do with counters.
There are also some cool interactions with Falco and cards like Devoted Druid or Wall of Roots. You can remove the -1/-1 counters to play your spell off the top of your library then add another one for more mana etc. It's not an infinite combo but it definitely can cycle through several cards while adding mana several times.
I also think I may eventually add Sensei's Divining Top back into this build to help stack the deck to hit spells with Falco, but I was leaning more towards a budget, and trying to incorporate as many newer set cards as I could.
This deck should be fun for a Simic, Selesnya, or Bant type of player with some aspects of control and aggro within the deck. The deck could definitely have more Birds, but a lot of the Birds I was running into didnt fit the counter theme, or their casting cost was way too much for what the card did. I tried my best to keep higher power level Creatures and cards that all fit within the synergies of the build, however there are some I could not fit in, or may have possibly missed.
I hope this build gives you a start at your own Falco Spara, Pactweaver deck, and if you find any good additions please drop me a comment!
Have fun experimenting with all the new cards from Streets of New Capenna.
Until Next Time!
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