This is what I've been waiting for. A commander that both supports a favorite creature type of mine and is one of my favored color combinations. So naturally it's time to work on breaking her. Wizards are a lot less straight forward than most tribal types that amount to "I make 50 goblin/elf tokens and swing for game" or buffing up members of their tribe. Wizards are tricky and like to join forces to cast spells (or prevent others from doing so in the case of Patron Wizard) that alter the course of the game. On their own, they're weak, squishy mages who don't really want to swing in, but with Inalla, Archmage Ritualist, we're provided with both a means of building our numbers, even if briefly, and winning in a way that is in flavor for wizard tribal. Wizards are very much a combo and control tribe that don't focus on big numbers to win. They want to grind the game out. I realize that I've included some sub-optimal choices such as Omenspeaker or Sage of Epityr, but I love the idea of taking some small wizards, gaining card advantage, and eventually taking over the board.
One of the biggest goals of this deck is to produce a well-oiled machine that's fueled by WIZARDS. Wizards don't have traditional lords like Goblins or Elves do. No, wizard lords, instead of granting power and toughness bonuses, grant new abilities to other wizards. Like a mentor imparting new knowledge in the arcane arts to their student, you'll find certain wizards granting other wizards valuable effects. Sigil Tracer allows two Wizards to work together to copy an Instant or Sorcery that has been cast, Patron Wizard allows your wizards to tap themselves to potentially counter a spell, Azami, Lady of Scrolls turns all of your wizards in cantrips, and the new Galecaster Colossus gives your wizards the powerful ability to bounce problematic permanents back to your opponent's hand. This gives your normally small and weak wizards great potential and flexibility. A simple Omenspeaker may not be much on its own, but with Azami, Lady of Scrolls present you can scry for two and then proceed to draw whatever you left on top immediately. Inalla sets this machine into overdrive by potentially doubling the amount of wizards we have for a turn (or indefinitely if you have a Sundial of the Infinite) and is the general that Wizards have always needed to truly come together as a tribe. She even grants her cogs, er... students a way to win without ever having to go to combat.
At the moment, I've included a small reanimator suite that helps enable combos, but I think that I'll add some good finishers such as Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur if I can find the room for them. I've also toyed around with the idea of a more spellslinger-oriented build, but that would require me to reduce the amount creatures I run to make room for more spells, and that's not my goal. There are still some remnants of that idea in here with cards like Augur of Bolas, but they're mostly here to help with my value spells. I've tried brewing more tribal focused lists, but there simply aren't a lot of wizards worth playing that can add to my gameplan without just buffing and beating with them. You may notice that this list is pretty light on red despite being in Grixis, and that's because most of the red wizards really aren't anything impressive. Red Wizards tend to be pingers with few variations. The best red one worth running is easily Dualcaster Mage with Magus of the Wheel trailing somewhere behind. Neither of which are terribly impressive to me. I could definitely see running them both in a Wizard deck with more red focus, but I just don't have the room for them here. However, I have included Fireball as a mana dump because what kind of Wizard doesn't know how to cast Fireball?
Securing Victory
There aren't really any Fist Wizards here, so don't expect to win via combat that often with this deck. While it is possible with a nicely played Docent of Perfection
(Oh why couldn't you have been a Wizard!?), you'll be going the combo/control or pure value route pretty often. For that reason, I'll start a small list of combos here that may grow or shrink as time and testing goes on. I often find that a lot of my favorite and jankiest combos come from stumbling upon combos while testing. Wizards have lots of synergies that are yet to have been explored and I plan to look through a lot of the better ones here.
Commander 2017 brought a great combo piece for Inalla in Bloodline Necromancer. As soon as I saw this card and her ability, I knew it would be easy to break. This combo is functionally a 2 card combo since Inalla doesn't even need to leave the command zone to perform it. Just make sure that you're saccing your Necromancer to your Altar of choice in response to Inalla's ability trigger or the combo won't work.
Mistbind Clique + Ashnod's Altar + Inalla, Archmage Ritualist = Infinite Colorless Mana
Similar to the last combo, this one takes advantage of the Mistbind Cliques ability to be championed by the copy Inalla makes. It's a pretty neat combo and you can never go wrong with infinite mana.
Wanderwine Prophets + Inalla, Archmage Ritualist = Infinite Turns if Wanderwine can connect
Inalla busts Champion wide open with her ability. She basically insures that you'll always have a creature of the needed type to Champion. As you can see with the first combo, Champion creatures are no joke here. To perform the combo, cast Wanderwine Prophets and then activate Inalla's ability to copy him. Stack the triggers on the stack so that Wanderwine's is first on the stack. Inalla's ability will resolve, making a hasty copy. Use its Champion trigger to Champion the original Wanderwine so that its ability fizzles. Go to combat and swing at an open opponent. This will trigger the copy's ability, which you will pay for by sacrificing the copy. This will return the original to play, who you will then copy again with Inalla's ability and you'll Champion the original again. Once you go to the end of the turn and the token goes away, the original Wanderwine will return again, which you will copy and Champion once more in the same way as the previous two iterations of this little loop. The new copy won't disappear until the end step of the next turn, and by which point you'll be able to swing again in your extra turn, getting you another free turn.
Azami, Lady of Scrolls + Mind Over Matter = Infinite Draw
Ah, a classic combo. This one doesn't need Inalla's ability at all to function and is the core of Azami decks everywhere. While I don't play Laboratory Maniac because it feels like a boring way to win, even by Wizard standards, it's still incredibly valuable to be able to draw as many cards as you want for no cost once the two combo pieces come down. I originally was working on an Azami Wizard deck, but Inalla just provides so many more options with her colors and ability.
I'm still adding combos as I go and so I'm only going to add the ones here that I know for sure I want.
As always, I'd love to hear about any suggestions, ideas, or tech choices that you all may have that could help improve the deck.
