Commander Deck Tech: Narci, Fable Singer
Hello and welcome back! I took a bit of a hiatus away but with my return I’m going to dive deep with my new favorite commander from Commander Masters: Narci, Fabel Singer!
I have wanted an Abzan saga commander for a long time, and an Abzan enchantment commander for longer still. When Narci was spoiled I was overjoyed that such a commander had finally arrived.
Before we get into the deck design proper, I will address that the deck Narci, Fable Singer comes in, Enduring Enchantments, does have some cards that are helpful to build the deck for Narci but most of the cards work better with the face commander Anikthea, Hand of Erebos.
Without further ado, onwards!
The Fable Singer
Narci is an odd enchantment commander because it works when things end and go away versus when they come into play. This narrows even further when you realize the enchantments can’t just be destroyed, but must be sacrificed to get any of the sweet, sweet card draw.
Luckily sagas sacrifice themselves once the last chapter ability resolves. This helps hit both of her abilities and gives us the card draw, life drain and life gain. Undoubtedly we want a bunch of sagas in here, but which ones?
Sing and Sling Sagas
There are a LOT of good and decent sagas to add to this deck, so here is a short list of decent ones:
Battle at the Helvault
One Ring to Rule them All
War of the Last Alliance
Restoration of Eijano
Tribute to Horobi
A lot of our sagas can act as removal, tutors, recursion and some even help us get lands. Some cards mention sagas like Historian’s Boon can give us some defenses and later threats to the board. I want to mention again this isn’t a comprehensive list of sagas (I didn’t mention the Phyrexian Praetor sagas for example), and you should build to your metas and group(s) needs.
Ideally you probably want to run around 14-16 sagas in the deck depending on tutors, recursion and need. My personal list actually runs a bit below this number at 13, so I can speak from some experience and testing.
Fast Forward
Their utility however is countered with waiting for their chapter to trigger, which can be a bit of a hassle when you need something now and want to get some triggers for effects. For that we can use some proliferation to add lore counters.
Staff of Compleation
Karn’s Bastion
Unnatural Restoration
Vraska, Betrayal’s Sting
Many of these cards have a repeatable effect, so getting your sagas to go off shouldn’t be much at issue. Remember that adding any lore counters past the number needed for the last chapter won’t trigger the last chapter again. However, there are ways to manipulate that as well.
Satsuki, the Living Lore is definitely worth an include in this deck because it helps with adding lore counters but also helps us get sagas back to hand when it dies. If we use a few sacrifice effects in the deck that also care about permanents or creatures, like the attack trigger on Echo of Death’s Wail (the backside of Tribute to Horobi) or the Staff of Compelation’s first ability (specifically for Satsuki), we can do that easily if needed.
Other manipulations can be found in Strionic Resonator, Lithoform Engine and Weaver of Harmony. Each helps you double up on the last chapters’ abilities, thereby doubling Narci’s trigger to gain and drain.
You can also take counters off your sagas to get more out of them as well. Scholar of New Horizons, Power Conduit, Thrull Parasite and Hex Parasite can allow you to reuse some effects on the sagas including the last chapter. The last chapter on each saga checks to see if it has enough counters on resolution. If it doesn’t, the enchantment isn’t sacrificed. Doing this won’t get you any triggers for Narci for card draw, but you do get extra mileage out of your sagas and Narci’s gain and drain.
Break In Case Of Emergency
A small list of other enchantments that sacrifice themselves can also be good filler to get some card draw and act as kinds of removal and ramp.
Seal of Primodium
Each of these, and there are others, can be sacrificed for some effect and draw you a card with Narci.
Abzan Enchantress
The standard kind of enchantress package is used in this deck. Card draw from Sythis, Harvest’s Hand and Enchantress’s Presence, Constellation effects like Agent of Erebos and Archon of Sun’s Grace, and on cast triggers like Sigil of the Empty Throne all help out and make the deck more flexible.
The precon deck comes with some nifty stuff of its own that we can consider, and the unique take on the enchantress color identity and Narci that herself gives to the archetype make it more unique. Inside the deck we find Demon of Fate’s Design and Nyxborn Behemoth. Both of these cards are large and in charge enchantment creatures that can help sacrifice enchantments early for more card draw, especially in response to a sagas last chapter triggering. Remember that Narci only cares about the ability resolving, not the fact that it sacrifices itself! Extra value!
Another card in the precon is Composer of Spring. Once the enchantress engine gets going, you often have an Overabundance of land cards in your hand. In the early game this let’s you drop some extra lands, but gets even better later. Likewise Dryad of the Ilysian Grove is also in the deck and serves as another extra land drop. Add Courser of Kruphix and play lands straight off the top of the deck as well.
Lastly we need to protect our stuff, and enchantress style decks love doing that. Sterling Grove is definitely one to consider as it acts as protection, a tutor for an enchantment when needed (along with possibly Enlightened Tutor and Search for Glory), and is sacrificed for that search triggering Narci to boot. You can also run Privileged Position for some general protection or Sigarda, Font of Blessings if you have a bunch of humans or angels in the deck.
Getting our sagas and other things back for another round is also something we can do to extend our time with our storied triggers. Anikthea herself actually helps here by recurring our enchants for another go, though the sagas end up fading away after their final chapter to nothingness. The ever usual Sun Titan gets a lot of our smaller enchantments and creatures back with no issue. There is also always Eternal Witness to get back anything or Gloomshrieker if you want to up the enchantment count a bit. Cosmic Rebirth has an instant Sun Titan-esque effect or just general recursion to hand with some life tacked on.
Odd Star-Crossed Considerations
To my delight, Narci seems to be much more flexible in design space than I originally thought. I don’t want this article to go on forever and much as I want to fully brainstorm this deck out, but I’d be here all week! So, I wanted to just point out some other cards that might work out for you to consider.
Thoughtrender Lamia is a bit on the expensive side of mana, but it can provide an advantage over time that isn’t bad at all, especially since by that time you might be rocking a few enchantments into play every turn.
Sigarda, Font of Blessings is a card I mentioned earlier and keep coming back around to in my own design. While it is a flyer and offers protection via hexproof to all our stuff, it also cares about angels and humans. This isn’t specifically important to the deck, but a decent amount of each can be found within depending on the build. My deck currently has 9 humans and 4 angels. Sigarda also lets us look at the top of our deck at any time, so there might be some extra utility there. Even with all this, Sigarda is going to be very build dependent and probably won’t show up much.
Generally something more useful is Spirit-Sister’s Call. An enchantment from Kamigawa Neon Dynasty that can sacrifice enchantments to get enchantments or anything other cards that share types. Much like Anikthea mentioned earlier, this only gives a one time reuse of the card, but that may be all you need. It also sacrifices a card to get another. Even with the clause it gives to the returned card, sacrificing said card will still trigger Narci for her card draw, and potentially her gain and drain if you wait until the last chapter.
Femeref Enchantress is a card wanted to mention earlier, but it has already increased in price and is on the reserved list. It functions closely to how Narci does and I’ve seen the two compared. I just wanted to mention it here in case you haven’t heard of it, though the deck can function just fine without it.
The last card I’ll mention is Cleansing Meditation. An older card from Torment, it destroys all enchantments, but brings only yours back that were destroyed by this card if you have seven or more cards in your graveyard when you cast it. It won’t go in every deck, and might even work better in Anikthea, but I wanted to mention it as well.
All Articles Come to an End
There is SO MUCH I could keep writing about the deck you could design around Narci. Go and look at all the different things you can put in here, and I’d be here for pages still trying to weigh them all! Heck my own deck is on version 3 as I test deck designs.
The deck is about as slow a start as enchantress usually does, but can snowball like any other. The fact that Narci herself gives us a win condition, or at least gets us closer to winning, is amazing. I’m very happy with this particular commander.
Until next time, weave your own tale.
Community
Related Products
Accessories
