How do you approach deckbuilding, and what sort of meta would this deck suit?

I play a good amount of EDH both at kitchen tables as well as on MTG Online, so in the #beforetimes I would brew a good amount of my decks under the budgetary constraints of the cardboard's secondary market. Nowadays though, it is very hard to get together with my homies to play a 7 hour game of EDH, so we instead play over mtgO, where cards are significantly cheaper, you only need to owna single copy of a card in order to use it in all of your decks, and Legacy-staples that are scarce in paper are much more available to play with. This environment lends itself to a higher level of play. I have a theory-crafted Garna, the Bloodflame "cEDH" deck on mtgO that's chalk-full of spicy combos and removal and aristocratic fun and flavour, and I also own a Garna deck in paper that's pretty dang cool, but there are a lot of combo-packages in that cEDH list that I won't ever have the cash to own in paper (there's an LED + Underworld Breach combo, as well as a Worldgorger Dragon + Animate Dead combo, staples like Mana Crypt, and some strong removal like Phyrexian Purge and Fire Covenant). I would need to liquidate my entire 12-deck collection and loaded binder of $0.50 - $12 cards in order to put together a deck that I couldn't play with my current group, since none of them play competitively.

Being mindful of our budget is obvious, so what I mainly look for are interesting qualities within an EDH deck that do one of the following;

  • Has a unique style of play. Either by using a commander / cards that don't see a lot of play, or by using these cards in a way that they don't often get used.

  • Brings an amount of proactivity to a 4-player pod that you don't otherwise see, or shakes up the group from their typical self-isolated gameplans in order to have an interesting group experience (with ulterior motives of winning the game (I'm looking at you Group-Hug...!)).

  • Except in the rare occasion, staying away from known oppressive strategies like MLD, and dedicated Control / Stax decks. I feel that every deck should have a non-zero amount of the aforementioned disruptive magic cards in their arsenal, but many players before me have poisoned the well by way of playing decks FULL of them, thus grinding those games to a halt, and neglecting to put a win-condition in the deck. No thank you. Control magic needs to put you time for your own proactive gameplan, or keep other disruption off of your win-con, I'll never play Control for Control's sake.

And so that brings us to today's decklist. As of the moment I'm typing this, I still have a good 60 cards to cut from it, but I feel like the overall theme of the deck has already been well carved out, and that cutting the next 60 cards will be a drawn-out formality.

With the advent of Commander Legends, we have been graced with many unique and interesting new Commanders to titillate our brew-minded brains and stretch our deckbuilding muscles, such as Alena, Kessig Trapper, which I have paired with Reyhan, Last of the Abzan to make this list today!

The idea of the deck is to make the most out of Alena's mana-producing ability, by playing creatures that have a nice power-to-cmc value, in order to power out EVEN BIGGER STUFF thanks to Alena. Reyhan, Last of the Abzan was chosen as a means to gain access to Jund, as well as being able to "cheat the system" with Alena on certain occasions, as Alena does not care about what the Power-value of the creature was when it entered play, only that it entered this turn, and what the value is when she taps; this means that a creature may come in small but then have the chance to grow before you tap Alena for however much mana. Reyhan's ability can facilitate this, and opens the doors to other +1/+1 counter strategies (and all of the synergies and shenanigans that it entails).

Because Alena's mana-production being directly related to big creatures and tapping her (and the decks access to Green), there's a significant amount of overlap with the typical Selvala, Heart of the Wilds deck for this reason. Alena has some significant downsides when compared to Selvala (higher cmc, only produces red mana, and a huge time restriction on that mana ability), but as I'm sure we'll find out, a bad Selvala is still VERY STRONG, and being able to give non-green decks some explosive Ramp potential in the command zone is huge. She would seem much stronger and unique in a Mardu / Grixis list, but I like the +1/+1 counters synergies I've teased out of this list, and I'm a sucker for a cool Jund deck!



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Date added 3 years
Last updated 3 years
Legality

This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

20 - 0 Mythic Rares

82 - 0 Rares

25 - 0 Uncommons

1 - 0 Commons

Cards 133
Avg. CMC 3.45
Tokens Beast 3/3 G, Goat 0/1 W, Kobolds of Kher Keep 0/1 R, Lizard 8/8 R, Morph 2/2 C, Pirate 2/2 B, Saproling 1/1 G, Thopter 1/1 C, Treasure, Zombie Army 0/0 B
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