General Knowledge: Finding Inspiration in the Past

Hey everyone! Life got pretty busy over the past couple months, in a good way, but because of those things I haven’t had much time to brew and think of new Commander content let alone actually write ideas down. It didn’t help that I wasn’t overly excited about the Guilds of Ravnica commanders. Whenever I am stumped or in a rut I think looking back on past ideas as a helpful tool for inspiration so for this welcome back article I thought it would be fun to talk through a handful of my Commander decks that all follow a certain theme. The theme for the decks share is “Enter the Battlefield” effects and each deck handles them slightly differently.

For each deck I am going to be sharing a couple things:

1. Game Plan- I believe that when you play a deck you should have an idea of what you want to be doing. This doesn’t have to be a huge plan, a game plan can even be silly, but having a rough idea is a good start. For me this game plan typically comes from the commander or budget concerns but there are plenty of other ways to get a Game Plan.
2. Win Condition- Obviously every game of Commander has to end and knowing how a deck typically wins is important. For some decks this could be getting specific combinations of cards on the board, others it may be through combat, and for some others it might be an alternate win condition like Felidar Sovereign or Azor’s Elocutors.
3. Fun cards- I won’t be listing full deck lists here, I’ve got to save some for content later on, but I do want to share a handful of great cards that I have in each deck.
4. Story time- I love telling stories and I am excited to share some for each of my decks. They might be a specific game or how the deck came together but I hope you will love the quick stories!

I am going to list the decks in roughly the order that I built them and once I have gone through the decks I’ll take some time to wrap up. Let’s dive into the decks:

Roon of the Hidden Realm

Game Plan: Use “Enter the Battlefield” effects to value out opponents.

Win-Con: Combat or Tooth and Nail

Fun Cards: Angel of Serenity,Bramble Sovereign,  Illusionist’s Bracers, Lavinia of the Tenth, Tishana, Voice of Thunder, Ulvenwald Hydra

Story Time: Roon was my first Commander deck and I love coming back to play it. In Commander value is one of the most important things, especially in creature decks, and Roon’s ability to reuse ETB’s and protect value creatures is fantastic. One of my favorite things to do with Roon is to attack, have it blocked, and then blink the creature blocking it for some sneaky Commander Damage. This trick has caused me to have to explain trample to other players a few times but that is how MTG goes sometimes. The printing of Resolute Archangel gave this deck some legs against other combat focused decks as they have to hit for 40 in one turn. Make sure to brush up on how triggers work so you can use Angel of Serenity and Fiend Hunter to your advantage.

Marchesa, the Black Rose

Game Plan: Low to the ground creature to break through enemy defenses while keeping threats on the board despite removal.

Win-Con: Race using creatures then finish with Gray Merchant + Sac outlets

Fun Cards: Dack’s Duplicate, Fleshwrither, Grimgrin, Corpse-Born, River Kelpie, Toothy, Imaginary Friend, Unspeakable Symbol.  

Story Time: I think Marchesa is the deck that has had the most commanders. It started as Jeleva, morphed into Nekusar, and then I finally landed on Marchesa. With Marchesa I began to realize my love for ETB effects and part of my desire to run her as the commander was all of the sweet Black cards I wasn’t getting to play in Roon. The deck has a ton of fun combat shenanigans around Dethrone and fares really well against other decks that want to be attacking. I highly recommend looking into ways to get a counter on Marchesa as she enters such as Sage of Fables, Opal Palace, and Guildmages’ Forum. Marchesa’s one big weakness is the lack of land ramp but that can be overcome with artifacts to some extent.    

Purphoros, God of the Forge

Game Plan: “Burn” opponents out with Purphoros’s ability.

Win-Con: Big token generators especially Firecat Blitz

Fun Cards: Krenko, Mob Boss, Myr Battlesphere, Norin the Wary, Trading Post, Vance’s Blasting Cannons, Tyrant’s Familiar.

Story Time: For many groups Purphoros is a known quantity, he really in a one trick pony and that typically leads to there be a target on his back. There was a time in one of my playgroups through where that wasn’t the case; I was sitting across from my friend playing Nekusar and 2 other friends, who were newer to Commander. They had played against Nekusar before so they were scared of its controlling nature. At one point I put 5 tokens onto the board and burn everyone for 10. The other players weren’t concerned for some reason and really wanted to prevent Nekusar from winning. I managed to get the win in a few turns with a couple more creatures and an attack from Tyrant’s Familiar (which is really good when your commander is indestructible). If you find that you are getting hated out I highly recommend looking into more artifact ramp, ideally you want Purphoros down on turn 2, and more card draw.

Reaper King

Game Plan: Semi-Budget deck that uses Changelings to take advantage of tribal synergies (Think “Tribe Tribal”)

Win-Con: Cheese them out with Reaper King’s ability and pray you get there

Fun Cards: Chameleon Colossus, Harmonic Sliver, Knight Exemplar, Manaweft Sliver, Taurean Mauler, Utvara Hellkite

Story Time: Off all my decks this one is probably the least competitive but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a ton of fun or that it can’t do powerful things. The hard balance of this deck is that most of the Changeling aren’t that good and you need a solid mix of Changelings and Lords. Some of my favorite Lords are the Fate Reforged versions of the Dragonlords as well as slivers. One of my favorite moments was casting a kicked Rite of Replication on the Reaper King to completely destroy my opponent’s board (I think you get to destroy 30 permanents but it was on MTGO so I didn’t have to check with a judge). I really want to return to this deck now that has released some tribal support cards recently, especially Ixalan block and Commander 2017, but I haven’t really had time to give this deck the love that it deserves.

Meren of Clan Nel Toth

Game Plan: Sacrifice the thing, then return the thing

Win-Con: Gray Merchant, Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, Locking down the board with removal/sacrifice effects

Fun Cards: Demon of Dark Schemes, Golgari Grave-Troll, Journey to Eternity, Liliana, Heretical Healer, Ob Nixilis, Unshackled, World Shaper

Story Time: Meren, to some extent, is a combination of the green from my Roon deck and the black from my Marchesa decks. One of my favorite moments was assembling: Mikaeus, Viscera Seer, Butcher of Malakir, and Puppeteer Clique to lock my opponent out of playing creatures for the rest of the game. Protecting Meren can be a bit difficult, and it makes sense why some Meren players could be moving to Muldrotha, but there are big payoffs for the deck. The number of tutors, combined with the ramp, also gives the deck a great toolbox feel where you can typically tutor and cast any card you want in the same turn, and tutoring for cards like Birthing Pod are typically great choices.

Omnath, Locus of Rage

Game Plan: Landfall, make Elementals, and the beat face while keeping the dollar price per card to $0.99 or less (As of time of writing)

Win-Con: Warstorm Surge, Where Ancients Tread, Omnath’s ability.

Fun Cards: Chandra’s Ignition, Elemental Bond, Soulbright Flamekin, Spawnwrithe, Thunderfoot Baloth, Zendikar's Roil

Story Time: Back in May I wrote about this deck in more detail so you can go read in depth here! One of my favorite things to do with the deck, besides... you know... win, is to swing with a bunch of elementals and then blow things up with Chandra’s Ignition. This deck also does a really great job of punishing opponents who want to wrath the board a lot and this deck is able to ramp enough that it typically doesn’t have trouble casting Omnath 3 or more times. One of the big things that I think gets missed in Omnath decks a lot is the ability to sacrifice lands and then return them to the battlefield in huge chunks.

Closing Thoughts:

One of the joys in Commander is finding a way to incorporate the playstyle and cards you like into whatever commander you are playing. Enter the Battlefield effect represents the ability to increase the value of any creature so that it isn’t just a body on the field but is a spell that can push your game plan forward. At this point there are so many creatures with ETB’s that you can honestly get just about any effect on a body: kill spells, card draw, direct damage, and so much more. I also have found that themes that have mechanics in every set is a great way to keep a deck from feeling stale, though I have found that I typically end up having to get multiples of the cool cards as they fit in so many of the decks.

For the readers you can comment below with what you favorite mechanic is, let me know what some of your favorite ETB’s are, or ask questions about any of the decks that I have talked about above! I look forward to hearing from you!