pie chart

Olivia's Ragtag Army

Commander / EDH

rshizzle


So you want to enlist in Olivias Army? A RB Rakdos General, Olivia, Mobilized for War is an aggressively costed legendary that controls the battlefield with the minions you play from your hand. Much like a Karador, Ghost Chieftains toolbox is the creatures it runs, Olivia relies on the creatures you run. In almost all forms of the deck, you will be the aggressor. Swing fast, swing often, and swing hard.

Notes:This list is far from complete. Expect changes, and all comments are welcome!

Why Olivia?

Olivia is an interesting commander in the fact that she can be played a few different ways. As a haste enabler, she can be a foundation for several aggressive archetypes, namely rush, tribal with either vampires or knights (I could even see goblins or zombies as well), reanimation, and megrim hand disruption. Additionally, being able to give haste to any creature takes a lot of mediocre cards and give them a reason to be played. Also, this makes already good cards even better. I can imagine you can make very good budget decks with her, but here I will be focused on abusing her abilities as best we can. She has built-in evasion, so furnishing a few swords on her is another alternate win con for all of these decks. Costing only three mana initially, her decks are very quick to get online.

Why reanimation?

I am choosing to build her as reanimation deck, as she enables the graveyard without having to use a lot of cards like Entomb. This allows a very quick and reliable start to most games, as you will start being able to swing with both her and others as early as turn 3. Also note that her ability applies to a creature that enters the battlefield under your control, so you dont have to cast a creature in order to trigger her ability. Reanimating a card will allow you to give it haste and the buff as well.

The Army!

The creatures of this deck are the most important, and as such, they are broken down into 4 categories: beaters, reanimation, card draw, and utility.

  1. Beaters: Their role in this deck is to, simply, do lethal damage. Cards like It That Betrays and Sheoldred, Whispering One can win us games very easily if out before turn 5.

  2. Reanimators: Creatures used to get more from the yard. Balthor the Defiled, Coffin Queen and Feldon of the Third Path help empty the grave.

  3. Drawers: This deck relies on its draw more than almost any deck out there. In order to use your commanders effect, you are basically casting at a 1 for 2 rate. We need as much draw as we can get. Dragon Mage is especially great with Olivia.

  4. Utility: Other cards that deserve slots to accomplish things like removal. See Walking Atlas and Filth.

Non-creatures!

While creatures are hugely important to us, no deck would be complete without an arsenal of spell-slinging cards to aid in our battles.

Most of our prowess enablers come in the form of draw or reanimation. We run as many wheels as possible, as we will often be running out of cards in hand, and disruption helps keep our board relatively safe. Also, while Olivia is great at getting things into the graveyard, she has no way of then getting them into play. We run a lot of Reanimates in order to make Olivias downside into a positive.

Lands!

The typical assortment of lands, designed for both speed and utility.

See my original post and discussion at MTGSalvation! Here

Suggestions

Updates Add

Comments

Attention! Complete Comment Tutorial! This annoying message will go away once you do!

Hi! Please consider becoming a supporter of TappedOut for $3/mo. Thanks!


Important! Formatting tipsComment Tutorialmarkdown syntax

Please login to comment

Revision 6 See all

(6 years ago)

-1 Balthor the Defiled main
-1 Cauldron Dance main
-1 Crypt Champion main
-1 Grimoire of the Dead main
+1 Izzet Chemister main
+1 Kheru Mind-Eater main
+1 Murderous Redcap main
-1 Phyrexian Rager main
+1 Shifting Shadow main
+1 Worldgorger Dragon main
Date added 7 years
Last updated 6 years
Exclude colors WUG
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

10 - 0 Mythic Rares

49 - 0 Rares

20 - 0 Uncommons

8 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.73
Tokens Copy Clone, Wurm 3/3 C w/ Deathtouch, Wurm 3/3 C w/ Lifelink
Folders I want, Commander decks, interesting
Votes
Ignored suggestions
Shared with
Views