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Spara's Company Takeover

Commander / EDH* Bird Counters GWU (Bant) Tokens

Thuthmoth

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Creature (31)

Sorcery (7)

Land (37)

Instant (5)

Commander (1)

Commander: Falco Spara, Pactweaver

Enchantment (10)

Artifact (9)

Maybeboard

Creature (8)

Enchantment (2)

Land (6)

Sorcery (4)

Instant (5)

Artifact (3)

Foreword

Hello, welcome, and thanks for checking out this deck! I like to theory craft deck ideas centered around specific thematical elements or characters but also enjoying optimizing and expanding my knowledge as a player. As such, I welcome all constructive feedback on how to improve my decks! Whether that be tweaking the ratios of specific card groups, or potential card swaps for things that do a similar thing but better. So long as it stays on theme for any particular deck of course.

Theming is generally the most important to me followed closely by performance. I also generally tend to avoid overly expensive cards ($20+ there abouts) but will make exceptions for particularly key pieces with lacking alternatives or the occasional fun card that piques my fancy.

To aid in discussions and visualization, here is a custom sorting for the deck.

Falco Spara, Pactweaver has grown tired of throwing the disloyal members of his organization off of balconies. He needs to surround himself with people he can trust. People that are quick, nimble, evasive, and most importantly... won't go splat. But what's an entrepreneuring bird demon supposed to do? Replace his whole entourage with fellow avens? Why... Yes, actually! Who better to keep an eye on all of the company's valuable assets scattered throughout the city than his fellow feather folk who can swoop in at a moment's notice to fulfill the terms of their contracts or collect payments when due.

As silly as it may be, I think the above flavor text sums up what I am going for pretty well; a bird tribal deck with a Brokers Family twist to it. Time for Falco Spara, Pactweaver to send his feathery bois out to collect.

With this being a tribal deck at its core, the basic strategy is fairly straightforward. Play a bunch of birds, make them strong enough to be a threat, profit. For the playing birds part, we have the typical creatures along with some token generation to go a bit wider. As for making our delicate feathery bois a threat, we are choosing to go with adding counters to them, in addition to the expected anthem effects, in order to synergize with Falco Spara, Pactweaver which will allow us to trade in those counters for card advantage if we need it.

The deck doesn't have any combos that can win on the spot, but it does have a few fun/interesting interactions that are worth highlighting.

The feather counters from Aven Mimeomancer can be used to buff up our tokens or go directly on Kangee, Aerie Keeper to buff the whole team for starters.

Aven Courier has some surprisingly flexible use cases since it can target any permanent. Firstly, if Falco Spara, Pactweaver still has his counter, we can start spreading it around to our other creatures. Or if Family's Favor is out, we can do something similar while still getting to benefit from the extra card draw. Have some spare feather counters laying around from Aven Mimeomancer? Why not put some of them on Kangee, Aerie Keeper or Soulcatchers' Aerie to buff the whole team again.

With Falco Spara, Pactweaver allowing us to cast spells from the top of the deck, it feels like there should be some form of deck manipulation to shuffle away additional lands or cards we don't need to cast. There are a few creatures in the deck that will help with that, as-well-as the various card draw effects throughout. But with little room to fit it in elsewhere, I am attempting to squeeze a bit of deck manipulation into the mana base with fetch lands. It's a difficult balancing act since most fetch lands either come in tapped or don't produce mana right away and we are running a tri-colored creature strategy. Cards like Misty Rainforest are a decent compromise but are a bit too pricey. As such, currently I am experimenting with lands such as Bant Panorama and Promising Vein. These have the benefit of being able to produce mana early on, even if it is colorless, but can still be cracked later if we really need to shuffle the top card of the deck away for something else, albeit at a cost. I've toyed with the idea of trying to fit some exploring into the deck with things like Glowcap Lantern, but most other sources of it I am aware of seem hard to justify thematically. So, for now I will stick with toying with the land base.

Speaking of things that are hard to justify thematically... Ugh, Gala Greeters and Galadriel, Light of Valinor why do you both have to slot in so perfectly with the mechanics of this deck but be so far from the theme? Gala Greeters is at least from the same set as our thematical Brokers takeover, so I can be convinced to let him slide if I don't find a replacement. Every great avian empire needs a door greeter after all. But Galadriel, Light of Valinor... she is honestly bothering me. I am really hoping after some playtesting she turns out to be a bit unnecessary/overkill so the optimizer and storyteller inside me can stop arguing.

In a similar vein, albeit to a much less extent, we have Tawnos, the Toymaker and Fable of Wolf and Owl. Both were introduced to generate more tokens and get some additional value out of our creatures. But I am wondering if they are necessary. I am very much less bothered by them than either of the two cards mentioned above, but atm they are high on my list of potential cuts. Who knows, maybe I will feel differently after I get some play testing in.

Even farther down my list of concerns are the anthem card Favorable Winds and Rally the Ranks. They are tribal stables, but they aren't bird cards. I'm not in a rush to cut them or anything, but I will be keeping an eye on them during play to see if they make that much of a difference given the counter sub theme of the deck.

Another area of doubt I have is with how the ramp package is setup. Not really sure what to say about it other than it's different from how I normally do things so I'm not sure how to feel about it. Again, more playtesting is needed.

Lastly, the deck doesn't have much in the way of interaction except for the small bit of disruption that is there to help prevent our own cards from being messed with. It may not be that much of a concern since the deck wants to be the somewhat aggressive one at the table, but I could certainly see adding in some targeted removal or a conditional sweeper for assurance.

Final Thoughts

I would say this deck is very much a prototype at the moment and most of my concerns/iffy feelings in certain areas will no doubt get ironed out with some play testing. The first things I'll be looking to solidify are the mana base and ramp package. From there, I imagine it will just be a matter of tweaking the ratios of various aspects of the deck till I am happy with the consistency. Once that's done, I'll be looking to see if I can either squeeze in some more deck manipulation, or removal if warranted.

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