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X a n t c h a

Commander / EDH* BR (Rakdos) Curse Enchant

SpeedGodNinjask

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Messing (15)

Ramp (9)

Removal (5)

Wipe (2)

Lands (39)

Curse (9)

Discard (5)

Combo (2)

Out (1)

Commander (1)

Commander: foil Xantcha, Sleeper Agent

Other (9)

Draw (7)

Recursion (2)

Maybeboard

Lands (2)

Wipe (1)

Curse (1)

Messing (1)

My budget-challenge Xantcha deck - for Christmas me and some friends challenged each other to build budget commander decks, mine was of course, Xantcha, Sleeper Agent.

You might look at some of the cards in this deck like Awaken the Erstwhile, and think "that's rather dumb". However, I've come to the conclusion that when dealing with Xantcha, you wanna get rid of cards in folks' hands so that they turn to Xantcha for card draw and end up sapping the life of the poor person who ends up with her on her battlefield.

=+= How It Went =+=

Well, to be honest, it can be hard to optimise Xan and make the deck self-sustaining, given that you won't get to use her yourself, with an un-large budget. The addition of a learning-curve when learning a new type of deck, group hate/slug without many big creatures to attack/defend with, was also a challenge as; unlike my group-hate demons deck, where I could afford to make a ruckus due to my big scary demon blockers, with this deck, I had to more covertly sow my seeds and be careful not to draw too much attention to myself and become a target. Becoming a target was troublesome as I wouldn't have things to defend myself with or really gain life with, so my opponents' best option of removal would often be to remove me rather than spend their spells removing my curses. Another learning point was figuring out how to properly distribute my curses and the like, and when to cause a ruckus and reset the game with Last One Standing, for example. After a many games, I have come to the conclusion that this deck works best in 1v1s (which I will briefly mention post-this thought), 1v1v1s are interesting - you just have to be able to make it to the 1v1, 1v1v1v1s are tough to be honest but that field is what the deck was designed for.

=-= How it went: 1v1s =-=

Let's be clear about one thing, the deck is made to be played in a pod of 4 due to the nature of the group-build challenge. After playing many multiplayer games and having fun but only doing okay, I tried the deck in some varied 1v1 situations and much to my surprise (not sure why I was surprised), Xantcha slayyyyss!!. well Xantcha doesn't slay, obviously, since she won't be able to do much but block. What I should say is that the deck is usually good enough to keep you alive until you flip the game and get enough curses to dominate your opponent. I'd say its a rather fun POV for piloting a deck with a more interesting winCon.

That being said, the deck was made for multiplayer in mind... This means there are a decent amount of dead cards which you wouldn't want to play on your opponents, such as Inevitable End which makes your target opponent sacrifice a creature each turn, which is nice, but they'd just sacrifice Xantcha, which sucks a bit to be honest.

One hilarious happening I experienced once was to cast Cruel Entertainment and switch our turns. Of course on my opponent's turn I would waste mana, not play a land, even cast Grapple with the Past and choose to not return anything, normal stuff for that situation, but boy howdy did that come back at me. On my turn, my opponent drew the one card they shouldn't have: Glorious End... They promptly cast it, ended my turn and I proceeded to lose next turn. lol.

This is the final decklist before taking it apart to put it's pieces back into Anje Falkenrath and Rakdos, the Showstopper.

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92% Casual

Competitive