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Vela the Night-Clad Commander

Commander / EDH* UB (Dimir)

dontpanic503

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Commander: foil Vela the Night-Clad

Artifact (13)

Enchantment (6)

Instant (1)

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Casual EDH deck built around Vela the Night-Clad. I like Vela because she's not a particularly commonly used general, but I find her to be very unique and very flavorful.

I built the deck to capitalize on Vela's two main abilities. First, her ability to grant Intimidate to all creatures you control made me think that I'd want lots of creatures with effects that trigger when they deal combat damage to players. This led me to a classic staple of Magic: specters. Specters also seemed to fit with Vela's flavor, as beings that would naturally come out to haunt during the night. Continuing in this direction, I included numerous spirits, vampires, and horrors, which have helped to give the deck a really cohesive feeling that's lots of fun to play. Since many of the specters have discard effects, I tried to capitalize on that as well, with cards such as Waste Not and Consuming Aberration taking advantage of this, leading up to potential blow outs with Rise of the Dark Realms or setting off Liliana Vess ultimate to bring everything into play under your control. Sure, many of these things are a nonbo with Leyline of the Void, but having Leyline in there is good tech against regen strategies.

The second of Vela's abilities punishes all your opponents whenever your creatures leave the battlefield. This can act as a board wipe deterrent, and can also be a great way to land some blowouts, especially if you manage to have a couple other similar effects on the board, a la Blood Artist and Falkenrath Noble. In addition to board wipe effects, there are also a few mass bounce spells such as Evacuation and Part the Veil, which can inflict a huge amount of damage on a large board. There are also a few flicker effects from Nephalia Smuggler and Deadeye Navigator, as well as some creatures that can take care of it all by themselves, like AEtherling, Dimensional Infiltrator, and Voidmage Husher. These allow for continuous pings of damage to all your opponents when you have excess mana open.

In general, the first strategy of using specters to control hand size works best against small groups, and the second strategy of life draining works better against large groups. The deck is one of the most fun Commander decks I've ever made, and I get frequent compliments on how well I put it together for maximum flavor. It's far from competitive, but for a causal play group, it can be a blast to play.

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