Princess Luna, Friend of the Moon

Commander / EDH* Control Jank Mono-Black Voltron

Dischord

Artifact (22)

• 1x Blackblade Reforged
• 1x Caged Sun
• 1x Charcoal Diamond
• 1x Chromatic Lantern
• 1x Darksteel Ingot
• 1x Empowered Autogenerator
• 1x Extraplanar Lens
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Fireshrieker
• 1x Hedron Archive
• 1x Lashwrithe
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Loxodon Warhammer
• 1x Mind Stone
• 1x Nightmare Lash
• 1x Prismatic Lens
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Spectral Searchlight
• 1x Swiftfoot Boots
• 1x Sword of Sinew and Steel
• 1x Umezawa's Jitte
• 1x Wayfarer's Bauble

Land (35)

• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Cabal Stronghold
• 1x Castle Locthwain
• 1x Cave of Temptation
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Gateway Plaza
• 1x Grand Coliseum
• 1x Rogue's Passage
• 1x Rupture Spire
• 23x Snow-Covered Swamp
• 1x Transguild Promenade
• 1x Vivid Marsh
• 1x Witch's Cottage

Sorcery (14)

• 1x Black Sun's Zenith
• 1x Dead of Winter
• 1x Decree of Pain
• 1x Diabolic Tutor
• 1x Exsanguinate
• 1x In Garruk's Wake
• 1x Nightmare Unmaking
• 1x Night's Whisper
• 1x Promise of Power
• 1x Razaketh's Rite
• 1x Read the Bones
• 1x Sign in Blood
• 1x Syphon Mind
• 1x Torment of Hailfire

Creature (14)

• 1x Avatar of Woe
• 1x Bloodgift Demon
• 1x Burnished Hart
• 1x Crypt Ghast
• 1x Dread Presence
• 1x Erebos, God of the Dead
• 1x Fleshbag Marauder
• 1x Gray Merchant of Asphodel
• 1x Meteor Golem
• 1x Nirkana Revenant
• 1x Plaguecrafter
• 1x Silent Arbiter
• 1x Solemn Simulacrum
• 1x Vilis, Broker of Blood

Enchantment (4)

• 1x Greed
• 1x Painful Quandary
• 1x Phyrexian Arena
• 1x The Eldest Reborn

Commanders (2)

 ^Flip

 ^Flip

Instant (7)

• 1x Dark Ritual
• 1x Hero's Downfall
• 1x Imp's Mischief
• 1x Snuff Out
• 1x Sudden Spoiling
• 1x Tainted Strike
• 1x Withering Boon

Planeswalker (3)

• 1x Liliana, Dreadhorde General
• 1x Liliana of the Dark Realms
• 1x Ugin, the Ineffable

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Maybeboard

Creature (17)

• 1x Amateur Auteur B
• 1x Backdraft Hellkite
• 1x Daring Thief
• 1x Deadeye Navigator
• 1x Disciple of Deceit
• 1x Djinn Illuminatus
• 1x Etrata, the Silencer
• 1x Gravewaker
• 1x Illusionary Wall
• 1x Kami of the Crescent Moon
• 1x Lunar Mystic
• 1x Midnight Banshee
• 1x Mortivore
• 1x Phyrexian Gremlins
• 1x Swirling Spriggan
• 1x Vexing Scuttler
• 1x Windreader Sphinx

Enchantment (11)

• 1x Alpine Moon
• 1x Blood Moon
• 1x Cloak of Mists
• 1x Curse of Bounty
• 1x Dawn of the Dead
• 1x Dystopia
• 1x Future Sight
• 1x Imprisoned in the Moon
• 1x Oath of Liliana
• 1x Presence of the Master
• 1x Wreath of Geists

Artifact (2)

• 1x Helvault
• 1x Moonsilver Spear

Sorcery (6)

• 1x Castigate
• 1x Cemetery Recruitment
• 1x Granny's Payback
• 1x Merciless Eviction
• 1x Nighthaze
• 1x Paraselene

Instant (5)

• 1x Hallowed Moonlight
• 1x Humble the Brute
• 1x Moonlace
• 1x Moonmist
• 1x Tribute to the Wild

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Reddit Write Up 10/10/19: https://www.reddit.com/r/EDH/comments/dg7f1z/friendship_isonly_temporary_nightmare_moon/

PLEASE COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR PLAYGROUP BEFORE PLAYING WITH SILVER-BORDERED CARDS AND A WISHBOARD!

All cards in the Maybeboard are the Wishboard.

Introduction

I have never had a silver-bordered card call out to me as much as this one.

I always thought the silver-bordered cards from Unstable were really cool legendary creatures, but I haven't felt the urge to play any of them as my commander.

Then the ponies attacked. Welcome to the dark side of the moon, baby.

How does the deck work?

Spoiler alert! It doesn't. At least, in sanctioned EDH rules. First off, you can't play Nightmare Moon as your commander in a sanctioned event because she is a silver-bordered card. On top of that, even if the judges somehow don't catch your obviously very shiny silver-border on your commander, there is no wishboard in the rules of EDH, which makes flipping Nightmare Moon over to Princess Luna pretty useless.

But, if we're playing for fun with good "friends" anyways, they'll let us play Nightmare Moon and let us have our wishboard. Now we've jumped over the biggest hoops, let's go over the deck.

I built Nightmare Moon as a Voltron/Control hybrid, with a small emphasis on politics. On the front side of Nightmare Moon, she's essentially an 8/8 flying menace creature for 6 mana whenever people normally play MTG, which can absolutely slam people out of the game really quickly. However, the "drawback" is that anyone can declare to activate her ability, then the table can collectively transform her into Princess Luna, which loses menace and 4/4 of stats. However, this lets us essentially draw 6 cards when they do so, which is a ton of card advantage for us, and our opponents if we want to let them cast our spells.

Because both sides of Nightmare Moon are incredible, we can change up our game plan on the fly. If no one wants to try and transform Nightmare Moon into Princess Luna, we can equip her with cards like Sword of Sinew and Steel , Fireshrieker , and Lashwrithe to one shot opponents with commander damage. If the table declares her as a threat/wants to be our friend, we can turn our plan into a control/toolbox deck with cards like Tribute to the Wild , Hallowed Moonlight , and Deadeye Navigator .

Wait, aren't some of those cards in non-black colors?

Indeed. Most of the wishboard isn't mono-black. To allow us to cast those wishboard cards, we're running cards like Rupture Spire, Darksteel Ingot, and Chromatic Lantern to tap for other colors of mana. If your playgroup declares that our wishboard is too many cards, we can set aside the cards we actually want from the wishboard before the game begins and change it accordingly. If they don't like non-black wishboard cards, take them out too.

My playgroup allows it because we play for fun, especially if I bring out a silver-bordered commander, where nobody is playing seriously. This entire deck relies on how your playgroup reacts to the deck. Please communicate with your playgroup before playing these kinds of decks!

But, if any opponents have a big problem with our wishboard, they don't like fun and therefore you should definitely target them first in a different game out of spite.

So, how do you win?

We have an absurd amount of ramp at around 14 rocks (7 of them are castable on turn 2) + Dark Ritual that can accelerate the deck and 4 cards that can make our lands tap for even more mana. The goal is to play Nightmare Moon as soon as possible and threaten the table with her. We can protect her with Lightning Greaves , Swiftfoot Boots , Sword of Sinew and Steel , Imp's Mischief , and more. We can then start swinging at our opponents and put them on a really fast clock.

If we're forced into a corner, we can go for the toolbox control plan and transform her into Princess Luna and grab control cards. A really important card is Deadeye Navigator because wow when is that card not good. Deadeye Navigator can flip Princess Luna back into Nightmare Moon, and even flicker Gray Merchant of Asphodel /Gary as one of our win conditions. Liliana, Dreadhorde General is another really powerful win condition if our opponents decide not to interact with her. Finally, using all of the mana that we got from our ramp/doublers/rocks, we can cast a giant Exsanguinate / Torment of Hailfire , then grab it back with Vexing Scuttler if the table still isn't dead.

To control the board, we're running 5 board wipes and 4 single target removal cards. One of the absolute most important removal cards in mono-black is Ugin, the Ineffable . Not only does he draw you cards, but his -3 is one of the few ways that mono-black can destroy enchantments.

Finally, to get us to the win conditions, we're running 18 cards that can draw us more cards, 14 of them have the potential to draw us more than 1 card.

What cards do I even grab out of the wishboard?

The wishboard is pretty unique, since we can let anyone that helped transform Nightmare Moon cast our cards too. This is where the politics come into play. We want cards that our "friends" can use against each other without significantly hurting our own game plan too much. This is different for every situation, so assess the decks on the table first before going and picking up your wishboard cards. Here's my small guide (different for every deck in that archetype, so you have to make your own judgement):

Vs Combo: Hallowed Moonlight , Blood Moon , Castigate , Phyrexian Gremlins

Vs Control: Amateur Auteur , Granny's Payback , Disciple of Deceit , Tribute to the Wild , Paraselene , Presence of the Master

Vs Stax: Paraselene , Merciless Eviction , Tribute to the Wild , Phyrexian Gremlins , Imprisoned in the Moon , Presence of the Master

Vs Voltron: Imprisoned in the Moon , Oath of Liliana , Presence of the Master , Moonmist , Etrata, the Silencer

Vs Aggro: Moonmist , Merciless Eviction , Midnight Banshee , Granny's Payback

Win conditions: Nighthaze , Deadeye Navigator , Djinn Illuminatus , Vexing Scuttler , Backdraft Hellkite , Wreath of Geists , Cloak of Mists

Are there any alternate commanders I can use if my playgroup hates fun?

Not really...this deck was made with the wishboard in mind. The best possible replacement would probably be to replace the prismatic rocks & lands and get K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth because you can also play that deck with both Voltron and Control at the same time. If you wanted to do pure Control, Gonti, Lord of Luxury is the card for the job. For full Voltron, I'd suggest Yahenni, Undying Partisan . Note that those last two decks require serious changes to the entire deck structure, so make sure you take a look at other completed decks for those two commanders.

If you had infinite money, what would you-

Demonic Tutor ; Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth ; Cabal Coffers ; Liliana of the Veil ; Necropotence ; Jet Medallion ; Damnation .

Conclusion

Obviously, this isn't a competitive deck by any means. However, if you really enjoy toolbox EDH decks that are wacky, fun, and unique, Nightmare Moon is one of the coolest commanders you can try out.

Also, what other deck do you have an excuse to play Granny's Payback in? GRANNY'S PAYBACK!!!

Top Ranked	Achieved #26 position overall 4 years ago Achieved #17 position in Commander / EDH 4 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Control 4 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Jank 4 years ago
Date added	4 years
Last updated	4 years
Exclude colors	WURG
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	9 - 0 Mythic Rares 30 - 0 Rares 23 - 0 Uncommons 16 - 0 Commons
Cards	101
Avg. CMC	3.69
Tokens	Demon X/X B, Emblem Liliana of the Dark Realms, Phyrexian Germ 0/0 B, Spirit 2/2 C, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders	EDH Decks, commander, Liked Decks, Possible buys, Cool idea, Ideas to Try, Ideaboard, Awesome Ideas