I suppose this is trying to be something between a focused and optimised list.
About Our Queen:
Ephara, God of the Polis lets you play control in a multiplayer format by (ideally) drawing you four cards per turn cycle, keeping your hand full of gas. She also likes creatures, which lets you explore control options strapped to creatures.
Pros:
- Hard to take down. She's indestructible and also not a creature a lot of the time.
- Consistent card advantage.
Cons:
- CMC 4 is pretty high, since the deck is quite reliant on her. If she's not on the table by turn four, every star has to align for you to win.
- Likes a grindier game so matches can drag sometimes (Personally, I like games where I slowly choke my opponents for two solid hours but just take that into account)
I see two ways to play Ephara: Fast with combo or Slow with more stax pieces. I played the fair slow one but people keep bringing fast kills to tables, so this is an attempt to adapt.
Combo Win Suite:
Gameplan with the combo is to create unlimited mana and use it to win the game.
- Capsize allows you to bounce all opponents' permanents to their hands.
- Venser, Shaper Savant does the same thing but requires additional effects to bounce him to get unlimited ETB triggers.
- You can summon Walking Ballista with unlimited +1 counters and machine gun all opponents down.
- You can cast Blue Sun's Zenith to draw their entire deck to achieve one of the combos above, or deck out all opponents.
How to create unlimited mana:
By flickering Peregrine Drake or Palinchron over and over again with Deadeye Navigator or Eldrazi Displacer (Obs. Displacer does require a colourless land to get a clean combo). Alternatively, you can use Archaeomancer or Mnemonic Wall with the "Drakes" by flickering them both with Ghostly Flicker or Illusionist's Stratagem, Mancer or Wall always recuring the flicker spell for reuse. Palinchron also creates unlimited mana by itself, if you have Panharmonicon on the table.
Control Suite:
Azorius has some amazing board control tools with blue counterspells and White having many answers to threats already on the board. There is a light stax subset with Lavinia, Azorius Renegade, Lavinia of the Tenth, Aven Mindcensor and Smothering Tithe to get over the early-midgame.
Some key pieces to help out the combo are Silence and Grand Abolisher which bypass the need for a grip full of counterspells for the turn you want to combo for the win.
Acceleration and Card Selection:
Instead of the usual suspects of blue card draw, the deck plays several ways to trigger Ephara's ability as conveniently as possible: Whitemane Lion and Stonecloaker are inexpensive flash creatures that bounce themselves to your hand, letting you to draw a card on the next upkeep and cast the creatures again. Saltskitter and Faerie Artisans get you a creature ETB for Ephara when your opponents get creatures.
Ideal pace of the game would be:
- Open with a mana rock and enough land to get Ephara out by turn 3.
- Accelerate with Kor Cartographer, Solemn Simulacrum or the creatures mentioned above.
- NOT ending with a target on you.
- Get your combo pieces and win.
Pros for this deck:
- You get to play with a literal God. how cool is that?!
- A lot of cards do double duty as combo and control pieces, reducing dead cards.
- Ability to keep the table playing fair, until you get to make your big, unfair play.
Cons:
- Much slower and more demanding than a lot of other combo decks.
- No green leads to worse ramp.
- Reliance on the commander to stay on the field.
- Reliance on not becoming targeted early in the game.
Currently I'm tinkering with adding some more staxier options to the deck, like Ghostly Prison and Propaganda to make me an undesirable target for attacks. It's always a toss-up between the rations of Combo, Stax, Wraths and Control elements.
Suggestions welcome!
