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Halana and Alena Budget EDH

Commander / EDH* Casual RG (Gruul) Stompy

shlompidomp

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Creature (26)

Instant (6)

Enchantment (12)

Land (38)

Artifact (7)

Commanders (2)

Commander: Alena, Kessig Trapper
Commander: Halana, Kessig Ranger

Sorcery (7)

Planeswalker (2)

Sideboard

Enchantment (3)

Artifact (2)

Creature (2)

Maybeboard

Enchantment (4)

Creature (4)

Sorcery (3)

This is my take on the new Hal and Alena partner cards coming out in Commander Legends later this year!

A few things before we start

  • I built this deck on a budget. All the cards in this list that are over $3 are cards that I already own.
  • I'll get into non-budget options later.
  • This is my first time building a deck without an EDHREC page. I still used EDHREC, using the Gruul page, as well as the pages of other Power-Matters commanders such as Xenagos and Neyith.
  • Since I didn't have an EDHREC page to go off of, I know I missed out on a lot of probably great cards for this list. I'll get to some of those later.
  • This is my first time making a 'primer' type thing.
  • I'm in no way an expert on these commanders, especially since they literally haven't come out yet. This is just my take on them so far. I'll keep updating the list.

Is this deck for you?

  • If you're into the story and lore, like me, and want to build a deck around these two who finally got cards.

  • If you like big creatures and hitting things with big creatures

  • If you like big, explosive turns and huge board states

  • If your meta tends to be very quick and competitive; I think you'd be better of with Selvala, Heart of the Wilds

  • If you aren't into big creatures and winning with damage

  • If you look at these two and don't really like them. Hopefully I'll change your mind, though :).

    • Why not Selvala or Xenagos?

    Show

    The List

    Honestly, there's nothing too special about the land base. If you're on a bigger budget than I am, than the land base is probably the first thing you want to upgrade.
    I did skimp out a bit on the ramp, partially for budget reasons. Alena also provides incredible amounts of mana once she's on the field, so we don't concern ourselves with ramping past 5 to get her out as quickly as possible. We can also dump leftover mana into a giant Everflowing Chalice to set up our next turn.

    Side note: pick up some copies of the full art Cultivate while they're still cheap!

    We don't run a particularly large amount of creature-based removal, and that's mostly because Halana and similar effects can usually take out most creatures. In the cases where we don't want to kill creatures (maybe we're against reanimator, it's their commander, or we just can't kill it with damage), we have Lignify and Kenrith's Transformation.

    Otherwise, our removal is here for those pesky Asceticisms and Privileged Positions. But if something is truly backbreaking, we can usually manipulate our opponents to take it out for us.

    Most of our draw is in Soul of the Harvest type effects, that reward us for getting out creatures.

    We also run Rishkar's Expertise and Return of the Wildspeaker to draw, like, 20 cards off of a giant Genesis Hydra.

    Our creatures are the focal point of our deck.

    Deathtouch is an incredible keyword alongside Halana. While there are a lot of deathtouching creatures, most of them I felt were not good enough to take up a slot; usually, our other high-power creatures are enough to take nearly anything out. The deathtouch guys I did settle on were Acidic Slime, Ambush Viper, and Skullwinder.

    Acidic Slime does double-duty, taking out any permanent that's not a planeswalker. He can chain his ETB triggers to take out Lightning Greaves and then deathtouch away the creature they were attached to. Don't forget that its ability can take out lands.

    Ambush Viper is a great piece of surprise removal, as well as being a cute little combat trick as a surprise blocker.

    Skullwinder is my favorite. It allows us to politic, and get back any of our dead creatures or countered spells.

    In the high-powered creatures territory, we have: Phyrexian Soulgorger, a card that I feel is incredibly underrated. It has 8 power, netting us 5 mana and killing basically anything. And we don't really care about keeping it around to pay the upkeep cost, because it doesn't have trample, and it doesn't really serve a purpose other than ETBing.

    Hunted Troll is in the same boat as the Soulgorger, and having to give away faeries is a negligible drawback.

    Ilharg, the Raze-Boar is kind of crazy. He can sneak-attack a creature in combat and recur himself; both on a 6/6 trampling body for only 5 mana. Returning back the creature to our hand is also a blessing in disguise, since our commanders both rely on the creature ETBing.

    Ghalta, Primal Hunger is a mistake of a card. I don't think I need to explain why it's here.

    Kogla, the Titan Ape removes creatures, enchantments, and artifacts, on an overstatted body. His last ability is just icing on the cake, being able to rescue our commanders in a pinch.

    Nessian Boar is here for his 10 power, but his ability to allow our other big creatures to get in unblocked is incredible and can let us take out a player in one swing.

    Realm Seekers possibly has the highest cost-to-power ratio of all our creatures. It can easily get up to 20 power, and can trade out its power for some lands.

    Genesis Hydra is a way for us to dump a bunch of mana into a giant creature and dig down to get yet another big creature for free.

    Temur Sabertooth can protect itself, our other creatures, and bouncing our creatures allows us to replay them for extra ETB triggers.

    Ogre Battledriver enables haste, and the power buff lets us tap Alena for even more mana.

    Fierce Empath lets us find big creatures, and can even end games. It usually fetches Ghalta, Primal Hunger or Angrath's Marauders

    Arcbond is our budget Chandra's Ignition, and can turn our Ambush Viper into an instant-speed boardwipe.

    Frontier Siege is very flexible. Early game, it can ramp us into out big creatures. Late game, it can turn our Dragon Roost tokens into removal spells.

    Fires of Yavimaya is a second copy of Ogre Battledriver which is a second copy of Rhythm of the Wild.

    Myth Unbound helps alleviate the burden of commander tax since we have two commanders.

    Warstorm Surge is another Halana trigger, with the added bonus of being able to hit players.

    Decoction Module is just a subpar version of Temur Sabertooth, but it's what we can do in these colors.

    Swiftfoot Boots lets us haste and protect our creatures.

    Miming Slime is a way to get a cheap huge-power creature.

    Wildest Dreams and Reap the Past can let us get back key pieces for a huge turn.

    Domri, Anarch of Bolas gives us a power anthem, ramps us, lets us remove creatures, and ensures that our creatures won't get countered.

    Halana lets us turn our creatures into removal and direct damage.

    Warstorm Surge is a redundant effect with Halana, and lets us get even more damage out of one creature.

    Sometimes, we want to hit our own stuff with a ton of damage. Brash Taunter and Mogg Maniac, the masochist Gobbos, let us point a ton of damage at our opponents' faces. Hornet Nest can turn that damage into a wall of flying deathtouch blockers.

    Angrath's Marauders will literally end games. If you point damage at a Brash Taunter with this out, it will quadruple the damage dealt by doubling the damage dealt to it and then doubling the damage it will send out.

    As stated previously, Arcbond can be a board wipe, but with a big enough creature or an Angrath's Marauders, it can end games. Just make sure you'll survive it.

    We can untap Alena so that she can continue to generate mana multiple times per turn: With Seeker of Skybreak, Jandor's Saddlebags, Nature's Chosen, or Instill Energy, we can untap Alena so that she can continue to generate mana multiple times per turn.

    Sometimes, we'll generate a ton of mana with Alena, but not have anything to do with it.

    Since Alena only generates , we can use Prismite to filter it into .

    Gemstone Array lets us store up mana, as well as turn into .

    If we don't have the Array, then we can put it into Cryptic Trilobite, and let it grow, then dump it into the Array when we get it. Side note: No, you can't use the Trilobite's mana to pay for Halana's ability.

    Everflowing Chalice can store mana, but we can't add on to it later.

    And with all our generated mana, we can sink it all into some of these.

    Genesis Hydra and Savageborn Hydra reward us with giant hydras. Genesis lets us get something else, while Savageborn will grow and grow.

    Dragon Roost and Dragon Whisperer let us create a huge army of tokens.

    Gelatinous Genesis is my favorite of the bunch. With Warstorm Surge, we can create an army of, like, 12 12/12s and send out 144 damage.

    With Captivating Crew we can steal our opponent's best and biggest creatures for ourself for a turn.

    Strategy

    Our most obvious win con is through oppressive combat and giant creatures. Simple.

    Our secondary wincon is through Warstorm Surge. We can replay a huge creature multiple times in a turn with Temur Sabertooth, or we can drop a giant Gelatinous Genesis and kill everyone.

    Even though we're looking to be explosive, we have three opponents, and 120 life is a lot. So we have to be careful when we're building our army to not become the archenemy.

    In our early turns, we just focus on ramping, setting up Alena with untappers, and putting down either a haste enabler or a draw engine. Again, be careful about how much big stuff you drop in the early game. The way I see it, we use our early game board to detract people from attacking us and control our opponents' threats with Halana's ability. Halana and Alena have Reach and First Strike, making them good early game blockers. They also don't do anything without other threats, so they likely won't be on the receiving end of removal while there's something else out.

    Our mid game is when we start to build our (small) army and maybe swing a few times. We'll keep our Ghaltas and stuff to ourselves unless we're absolutely sure we can seize control of the game. We don't dump out our whole hand, because there's always the possibility of a board wipe.

    In the late game is when we have our big turn, because this is usually when everyone is spending all their mana on their own big spells. At this time is when we can drop everything without fear, and since we'll probably have a haste enabler, we can probably win in two, maybe even one turn.

    That's just the way I play, though. I'm not usually one to be the the big baddie of the game. The deck is absolutely resilient and explosive enough to be sending out tons of dragons, but I've actually never tried being the main aggressor.

    Notable Exclusions, Non-Budget Upgrades, and Cards I Missed

    • Sword of the Paruns is a way to make infinite mana, and it's in my budget. I just didn't want to put it in because I want to win with big creatures, not with infinite tokens or damage.

    • Stuffy Doll was cut partly because of budget, but mostly because it can only ever target one player, and we only have two ways to bounce it to reset the target. Even if it was within budget, I'd rather just have Mogg Maniac.

    • Helix Pinnacle was also cut just because I wanted to win with damage.

    • Elementals like Ball Lightning and card:Groudbreaker just didn't make the cut because usually they didn't have a big enough cost:power ratio to justify

    • I cut most Hydras and big X creatures because I felt that they weren't a great investment. They net negative on mana and don't really do anything once they're in play. All the good ones were out of my budget as well. Of the ones I did include, one brought a friend and the other I could sink mana into and had Double Strike.

    • Gigantosaurus was cut because is a bit difficult to hit, and using Prismite to filter Alena's would put it up to a 10 mana 10/10, not the most efficient rate.

    • Vivien, Champion of the Wilds was cut because the flash just didn't do enough for us.

    Since this patner pair doesn't have an EDHREC page yet, it was inevitable that I'd miss some all-star cards for this deck.

    • I orignially cut Force of Savagery because I didn't think it functioned the way it really does. It's complicated, but basically, even if it dies, it will still do damage with Halana and will still allow Alena to tap for 8. In fact, it works like this for all creatures and Warstorm Surge effects: Even if they get removed, it does damage equal to its last power as it died.

    • Wurmcalling is repeatable token creation, but can be countered

    • Ulvenwald Tracker is basically another Halana

    • Bloodshot Cyclops is a reusable Fling

    • Hydra Broodmaster is Gelatinous Genesis on a stick

    • Vigor can let us grow our creatures

    • Arlinn Kord  , our creatures can protect her and her emblem lets them all do a ton of damage

    • Brawl could probably let us kill someone at instant speed

    • Electropotence and Pandemonium are more copies ofWarstorm Surge

    Update Log

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    92% Casual

    Competitive

    Date added 3 years
    Last updated 3 years
    Legality

    This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
    Rarity (main - side)

    3 - 0 Mythic Rares

    29 - 4 Rares

    24 - 2 Uncommons

    13 - 1 Commons
    Cards 100
    Avg. CMC 3.48
    Tokens Beast 3/3 G, Dragon 4/4 R, Dragon 5/5 R, Faerie 1/1 U, Insect 1/1 G w/ Flying, Deathtouch, Ooze */* G, Wurm 6/6 G
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